w. ^ -:^;^ *1 o » A <^ ♦ O « ' ^ 1 1 •<* V v^^ /.'i^.%% /.c:«i:/V /.'J.^%*°3 .,-^*' *' o .'^" • ^^. •vt-o^ 'oK v-o^ .V ^^..^^^ :iS»% \.J^ :'^^\ %.^^ /- ' ■ ^/ .^^' "^^ •• o,^ *.T7r' A <, 'o,»* ^,0 ^:>. *'Tvr* / 'bV •^*o< »bv" «. » o A> V •'•"-. o P^ ^^Z-!^'/ \^^''J> v-^\/ 0^ cM*-*. ^O. Ho^ ^' ^: OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING GEORGE WASHINGTON From the painting by Gilbert Stuart, owned by the Boston Athenaeum OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING BY HELEN NICOLAY Author of "Personal Traits of Abraham Lincoln," etc. ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1918 Exteneion Division Copyright, 1916, by The Century Co. Published, October, 1916 nUtNBFBB I •» TWVLIC 1*1 598165 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PROPERTTf TRANSFERRED FROM PUBUO LIBRARY TO THOSE WHO WILL MAKE HISTORY PREFACE It occurs to the writer that we take our history too seriously, as if it were a medicine rather than a cordial, and that a little volume written in cheerful dis- regard of established rules for history-books may find a place upon the bookshelves, perhaps even in the hands of a few readers. Such a volume must of necessity be sketchy, not strictly chronological, and cannot pretend to tell even the larger part about, anything. It cares less for dates than for happenings, less for specific happenings than for movements and currents of feeling. When forced to choose between picturesquely typical incidents and a conscientious narrative of dry fact, it gravitates shame- lessly toward the picturesque. Its one effort is to es- tablish a connection between the soil, — our soil, — and those volatile dates that are forever escaping us, and names which mean less to us than the dust of the road. For American history " as she is taught " in the schools is certainly no pastime for the average Ameri- can, old or young. It is frankly a bore, made up of dates that refuse to stay memorized, and names triple- plated against imagination and as hard to connect with real life as it is to believe that mummies in a museum ever breathed and walked. Those shriveled brown PREFACE bundles labeled with processions of meaningless sylla- bles after this fashion : " U-ser-te-sen, son of Amen- em-het I, XXth Dynasty, circa 2000 b. c." seem about the deadest things in civilization; yet we are assured that once they were palpitating flesh and spirit, swayed by the same emotions that stir the girl and youth who drift by with eyes only for each other, or the graybeard who pauses before the mummy case to gaze wistfully across its barrier of glass and silence. The author honestly believes that the little she has been able to tell between the covers of this book is true, — that while it may not be history in the accepted sense, there is not one word of fiction in it. Her rea- son for writing it, and her hope in publishing it is that it may serve to emphasize the fact that American his- tory is not mummy-like after all, but full of inspiring incident, and brimming with human nature. She wishes to express her thanks to the authors of the hundred and more books she has consulted in mak- ing her little composite sketch, as well as to the friends of ripe experience who have generously opened for her their treasure-houses of memory. To beg pardon of one and all if she has appropriated too much of their labor to her own use, or if upon the other hand, she appears to have disregarded it merely to state her own opinion. Above all, she wishes to assure them that she is per- sonally and permanently their debtor for many hours of delightful instruction. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I An Idol's Successor 3 II Democrat or Imperialist 28 III The Map and the Shuttlecock Prov- ince 46 IV A Baleful Don Quixote 63 V An Amazing War 82 VI The Opening West 108 VII One Born Out of Season 124 VIII A Democratic Despot 143 IX Giants in Congress 172 X As Others Saw Us 201 XI Roads of the Promised Land .... 222 XII The Red Menace 245 XIII Women in a Free Country .... 264 XIV Religion in a Republic 287 XV Schools and Inventions ..... 313 XVI A Rollicking Campaign 336 XVII America's War of Conquest .... 357 XVIII $20,000 or $200,000 A Year 384 XIX Sentiment Among the People . . . 406 XX Suffrage and Reform 426 XXI News and Books 448 XXII The Seers and the Prophets .... 471 XXIII The Sweep of the Years 500 Index 513 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS George Washington Frontispiece FACING PAGE Thomas Jefferson 24 Alexander Hamilton 104 John C, Calhoun 152 William Lloyd Garrison 184 Daniel Webster 216 Robert Fulton 232 WiNFiELD Scott 280 Horace Mann 328 Henry Clay 360 Horace Greeley 392 John C. Fremont 440 William Cullen Bryant 456 Samuel F. B. Morse 472 Abraham Lincoln 488 Maps Showing Density of Population, 1800 and 1850 56 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING CHAPTER I AN idol's successor THE Articles of Confederation, adopted by our Continental Congress in 1777, appear in re- trospect more like a travesty on government than the deliberate, earnest work of reasoning men. The patriots of that day were too deeply moved by principles to see the absurdity of the means by which they sought to enforce them. Congress, the central authority during the Revolution, was allowed to impose taxes, but was forbidden to collect them. It could de- clare war, but was powerless to enlist a soldier. And being made thoroughly helpless and penniless, it was required to pay armies it had no right to call into being. Comic operas, but not nations, flourish upon such foundations. War's overshadowing concern held the different parts of the country together while it lasted, but true to the law which decrees that virtue shall ebb and flow in nations as in men, nature saw to it that peace was fol- lowed by speedy reaction. Intent upon reaping local benefits, the sections became quarrelsome neighbors, each clamoring in a different tongue for its own rights and privileges. The East talked of fisheries and tim- ber; the South of tobacco and cotton ; the opening West 3 4 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING had needs and interests to which the others were deaf and bhnd. A few years of such discord brought the new country to a pass where it was equally difficult to keep order at home or treaties abroad. National finances, long precarious, reached the vanishing point, then disappeared. The army withered to a skeleton of fewer than a hundred men. Legislators, elected to the shadowy honor of seats in a Congress without real power, showed small interest in its meetings. It had been difficult to get together a quorum to ratify the treaty of peace with Great Britain. The attendance grew less and less; then only two members appeared; finally only one met with the clerk. That faithful offi- cer wrote his last entry in the journal, closed the book, and without being formally adjourned, the Continental Congress also faded from sight. The new nation seemed doomed to die of its own vital principle, — liberty; but fear of disunion, or, rather, of the consequences of disunion, roused the States to their folly. Disunion meant almost certain reconquest by England, with the sacrifice of every- thing for which they had fought. Even before the shadowy Congress vanished into the land of ghosts, Virginia, leader among the States, asked that delegates be sent to a convention called to revise these Articles of Confederation under which time had proved that Americans could fight, but could not live peaceably together. With the exception of small, but truculent, Rhode Island, all responded, sending their best men, some of whom were already members of the old Con- gress. And this, it is only fair to say, accounted in part for its deserted halls and dwindling numbers. As the delegates rode toward Philadelphia through ^he young green of mid-May, 1787, the country looked yery is^lr,-^ altogether too fair to be given up without AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 5 further struggle. They had three alternatives: dis- union, more amiable and brotherly efforts at popular government, or an American monarchy. Europe, watching eagerly, would welcome this last as a con- fession of failure only less absolute than disunion it- self. England and France stood ready to offer candi- dates from the house of Hanover and the house of Bourbon, their greed thinly veiled in assurances of friendship that were insults in disguise. Of one thing these Americans were sure: if it came to an American monarchy, they need not cross the sea to find a king. A man of their own number had been tested in temper and strength for more than a decade through war and the more quarrelsome years of peace. It was his tact and common sense that had saved them time and again while they tried to live under the opera- bouffe provisions of the Articles of Confederation. Like themselves, he was now riding soberly toward Philadelphia. A crowd met him and escorted him into the city with public honors, and he was made chairman of the convention. After the country decided that it was not yet ready to give up the experiment of popular government, he was elected President, and in due time, clad in his dark- brown suit of home manufacture, he took the oath of office, while prayers ascended and bells rang, and the budding Government put forth all the pomp and cere- mony it could muster to make his inauguration im- pressive. Then came eight years during which everything had to be determined, from homeliest details of govern- ment to questions of gravest moment. " I walk as it were on untrodden ground," the new President wrote, and being humble-minded as well as earnest, he asked help and advice from many, even from men much 6 'OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING younger than himself, with the winning apology : " I am troublesome. You must excuse me ; ascribe it to friendship and confidence." The problems of his administration foreshadowed almost every issue that has since arisen to trouble an executive pillow. There were relations to be reestab- lished with the outside world; for though the States had boastfully cast off the yoke of Europe, they found themselves bound to it, now that war was over, by ties of memory no war could break, and dependent upon it, moreover, for tangible necessary supplies, like bricks to build into their houses, and dishes from which to eat their food. There were boundaries to be adjusted to the north and to the south. On the west was the vexed ques- tion of navigation of the Mississippi River. There was constant, nagging anxiety about expenses of gov- ernment ; there was among the people an unrest that did not stop short of actual rebellion ; there were humiliat- ing scandals in the President's official family ; and there was jealousy in all the various departments of govern- ment. States were jealous of encroachments upon their sovereign power; municipalities were fearful of losing one jot of local authority. The newly inaugurated Federal Government was tenacious of its dignity as representing all these collective units ; but among them- selves the three subdivisions of the Federal Government manoeuvered for place and power. The judiciary was busy establishing its functions and its new code of laws ; Congress and the executive experimented upon ways in which they could work together. The Senate showed no enthusiasm when the President and his sec- retary of war knocked at its door, expecting to take part in an executive session, and Washington went AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 7 home vowing he would never place himself in that posi- tion again. The House, still less minded than the Senate to brook what it termed " interference," flatly- refused to receive the popular Hamilton, secretary of the treasury, and hear his report on the public credit. Washington's Presidency saw the shaking together and adjustment of the whole complicated system; and how much its final success was due to his unemotional persistence in well-doing, we, his political descendants, can never know. He brought no whirlwind enthusi- asm to the task, he was not over-sanguine; but con- vinced that the new system was " well worth a full and fair experiment," he enlisted in this, as he had in the Revolution, with all his heart and " for the war." Gifted above his fellows, it was with an endowment of endurance and calm common sense rather than with the fiery touch of genius. He must have had a very broad and impartial mind; for even the impatience of those who differed with him testifies to this. He had a way most trying to men of quicker mental habits, like Jefferson, of never expressing approval on first hearing a plan, but of reserving judgment until he had thought it over. He had a capacity for continuous, grinding hard work, and this he in turn exacted from his subordinates; but he had also enough sympathy and imagination to understand that they might find such uninterrupted devotion to duty hard and trying. ^ The training of his entire life had been toward self- mastery. Lessons of obedience in early military life, the loneliness of supreme command, and the great stake for which he played, — all tended to that end. He had been born with no talent for the trivialities of life, no grace of wit or social ease, and he was occupied with engrossing cares. His deafness, moreover, made it 8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING impossible for him to take part in general conversation even at his own table, a circumstance that has unfor- tunately added to the gloom of the mental portrait be- queathed to posterity. We think of him as a man of stately presence, a little slow in his mental processes, but very just and very sure; a man almost dull in the monotony of his virtue, who lived on a plane of con- scious benevolence, holding resentments and kindly im- pulses alike in leash, ready to turn them in the direc- tion of his country's good. Yet there are hints that under this chilling calm glowed a furnace of emotions. In the intimacy of a portrait sitting he confessed to Gilbert Stuart that he was " passionate by nature," and he was really the per- son best fitted to know. The little girl who lived op- posite, and saw him daily with his two aides, all very correct in their laced hats and well-brushed coats, cross the street and start on their customary constitutional, wondered if the great man ever spoke or smiled ; but Senator Ross, blundering upon a domestic scene soon after Edmund Randolph was dismissed from the cab- inet in disgrace, found Nelly Custis cowering " like a partridge " in a corner and the President's wife " awe- struck," while he thundered, in answer to the question whether he had yet seen Randolph's pamphlet of vin- dication : " Yes, sir ; I have read every word, every letter, of it, and a — er scoundrel God Almighty never permitted to disgrace humanity ! " In writing home about one of the depressing Presi- dential dinners, which were indeed rather terrifying festivals, owing to the host's deafness and the de- meanor of most of the guests, who seemed to feel that they were assisting at some sort of national funeral, Mrs. Adams showed a gentler side of his nature. She told how Washington, with awkward and unavailing AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 9 kindness, tried to dispel the gloom for her at least by asking minutely after the health of members of her family ; and then, picking the plums from a cake, sent them with his compliments to " Master John." The stately ceremonies of birthday, New Year, and Fourth of July celebrations, the formality of his levees, and the way congregations lined up on Sundays out- side the church to make a lane through which he and his wife entered the sanctuary ahead of all the rest, grew partly out of the people's respect for him, partly out of what seemed to him and his advisers fitting to the high office of President of the United States. Dig- nity, not ostentation or display, was the aim. That neither ostentation nor display resulted, Chateaubriand, in America on his way to discover the Northwest Pas- sage, amply testified. His romantic conception of the American Cincinnatus had been shaken by his first sight of Washington, flashing by in a coach and four; but it was completely restored when he went to present his letter of introduction, and saw the simplicity of his dwelling, and that, far from being guarded by soldier or lackey, its door was opened by a decent serving- woman, who inquired his name, and, finding that she could not pronounce it, trustingly bade him enter and be seated while she went in search of her master. The President's cream-colored coach, with four, and on occasion even six, horses to it, and attendant serv- ants in livery, was nothing uncommon. That was still the custom among the well-to-do. Indeed, the wretched state of the roads, " rather marked out than made," rendered such turnouts a matter of prudence instead of pride. Like every other Virginian, Wash- ington was fond of horses; but the fleeting glimpses we have of his coach, and of his own figure on horse- back, grave and composed even when some misguided 10 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING admirer had dropped a laurel wreath upon his brow, indicate that the same handsome white animals served thriftily alike for saddle and draft. That laurel wreath must have been more vexing than pleasant to his sober tastes, and in the almost royal progress of his longer journeys he doubtless wel- comed an occasional greeting like the old Quaker's, " Friend Washington, we are pleased to see thee," as a relief from the customary adulation. On the other hand, when the Governor of Massachusetts, jealous for the rights of the commonwealth, developed a sudden " indisposition " to make the first call of ceremony upon a mere President of the United States, Washington stood upon his dignity, and brought the governor to his feet, albeit enveloped " in red baize " and protesting that he came at the risk of his life. Washington, in short, was a conscientious, earnest gentleman, striving with businesslike thoroughness to fulfil the will of God and the wishes of the majority. Every one of the sixty-nine electoral votes had been cast for him; and both from desire and the sense of duty he set himself the hard task, unfulfilled by him or any of his successors, of being President of the whole country, regardless of party. Already factions were showing themselves. To rep- resent these fairly, he chose for his cabinet four men who could not have difYered more in character had he summoned them from the ends of the earth. For sec- retary of state he chose Jefferson, the ardent theorist who had done his country the service of formulating the Declaration of Independence, and was perhaps better known abroad than any American save the aged Franklin. For secretary of the treasury he called to him the phenomenal Hamilton, with the frame of a lad and the intellect of a giant, to whom it was given to AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR n perform miracles with an empty exchequer. The sec- retary of war was General Knox, large and showy, but, despite his pompous speech and grandly flourishing cane, a man of experience not only in battle, but in ad- ministering this same office under the Continental Congress. The attorney-general was Edmund Randolph, who proved of weaker moral fiber than the others. Since the first duty of the new Government was to bring the States into line after years of pulling asunder,* the measures of Washington's administration were of necessity centralizing in their effect. Little things and large, from the ordering of his daily life to sending troops to crush the Whisky Insurrection in Pennsyl- vania, — without a battle, it is true, but at the cost of " invading " a sovereign State and imposing outside authority upon it, — stamped him a Federalist, roused the ire of the Republicans, and forever put an end to his dream of being President without distinction of party. Jefferson, naturally enough, became spokes- man for the faction whose mission was to point out the difference between acts of the Federalists and theories of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson, indeed, was the strong opposing personal- ity of the administration. He had little patience with General Knox, whom he called " a man of parade," and he and Hamilton quarreled almost daily upon every conceivable topic ; for Hamilton, Federalist to the core by instinct and conviction, became as inevitably spokes- man for the party in power. Even Washington could not preserve harmony in such a cabinet, and before the end of his first term both Hamilton and Jefferson re- signed. Afterward the President had still greater difficulty with his council. His critics taunted him with being able to get only second-rate men to fill their places ; and Vice-President Adams, asserted that it was 12 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING this, not high devotion to principle, that caused him to refuse a third term. But Adams was neither generous nor always just in his estimate of others. Party differences grew until the bitterness of politics invaded social life, and men who had been friends for years crossed the street to avoid meeting, looking in any direction except into each other's eyes. Wash- ington was accused of loving arbitrary power, of long- ing for the substance as well as the forms of monarchy, of lining his nest at public expense, to choose only three from a long list of political and moral crimes it is thankless to repeat. As one of his supporters justly said, constant reiteration of such charges " would tend to debase an angel." Yet when it was definitely learned that he would not again be a candidate, his critics awoke to the fact that they had trusted even while they vilified him. They were suddenly aware that the country was to be put to a new test. " His secession from the adrhin- istration will probably, within no distant period, ascer- tain whether our present system and Union can be preserved," was a clumsy and wondering admission that the American experiment could never be thor- oughly tried so long as Washington remained Presi- dent. Because, despite all machinery of ballots and election, the relation between him and the voters was more that of loyal subjects and a beloved monarch than the colder one of constituents choosing a public servant to do their bidding. Washington's Farewell Address, with its wealth of warning and suggestion, showed that he, too, felt this personal relation. He retired gladly to the country life at Mount Ver- non, busied himself in its affairs, riding over his fields daily, and dismounting, perhaps, at the bars to receive a former aide with courteous civility; while AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 13 happy in renewed ties, his wife looked well to her household, and chatted with neighbors about the public Hfe of her husband and herself, which she called her " lost days." But this was not to last. Within two years menace of foreign war caused the new President to call the old President from retirement. And what Washington considered the new President's injustice in appointing officers to the new army caused him to dictate redress as the price of his services. War did not come; but the people knew from this that as long as Washington lived he was at his country's call, as ready to respond as ever. So the months went by until in the dark closing days of December, 1799, news came that his life was at an end. Europe bowed in acknowledgment of the passing of a great soul. England's channel fleet lowered its flags to half-mast; France draped her standards in black, and Napoleon, soldier of the cen- turies, who craved power as ardently as Washington had desired peace, paid his tribute to " the warrior, the legislator, the citizen without reproach." In the dead man's own country personal grief was overshadowed by deep national apprehension. The guiding, steadying influence of more than twenty years had been removed. Friends and critics alike expressed one thought. " America has lost her savior," Hamil- ton exclaimed. It was only afterward, as memories of intimate personal years pressed hard upon him, that he added brokenly, " And I, a father ! " In the towns bells tolled and grief-laden prayers ascended from church and hearthstone. In remote and lonely clearings, beyond the sound of bells, grief found its own expression. At night, after the few animals had been folded close to the cabin to protect 14 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING them from wolves and prowling savages, little children lay wakeful, looking through chinks in the log walls at some star twinkling in the sky, and, oppressed with a strange sadness, fell asleep at last to the sound of their elders singing the lament for Washington : Where shall our country turn its eye? What help remains beneath the sky? Our friend, protector, strength, and trust Lies low moldering in the dust. Thus the new century found the Government enter- ing upon a new phase of its career. The choleric John Adams had been President for more than two years; but so long as Washington lived the country refused to look upon any one else as its real head. The way of the transgressor may be hard indeed, but it is a path of roses compared "with the thorny road the successor to a popular idol must tread; and when one reads the frankly expressed opinions of Adams's party friends and party enemies, one's sympathies go out to the man upon whom Washington's Presidential mantle fell. " His Superfluous Highness " was the title the opposition had suggested for him in the days when discussion raged as to what the high officials of the Government were to be called. He had great learn- ing, great patriotism, and an unquenchable spirit ; but overlaying and enveloping them all was a positive genius for doing and saying untactful things; for ap- pearing at the worst possible advantage. A member of his cabinet once said of him that whether he was " sportful, playful, witty, kind, cold, drunk, sober, angry, easy, stiff, jealous, careless, cau- tious, confident, close, or open," he was " almost al- ways so in the wrong place and with the wrong per- son." The kindly Franklin characterized him as " al- ways honest, sometimes great, but often mad." One AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 15 less genial remarked that even in his soberest moments Adams was " the greatest marplot in nature." And John Randolph of Roanoke, whose tongue added the poison of ridicule to the bitterness of gall, called him " that political Malvolio." The Vice-Presidency, which he had occupied during the eight years of Washington's term, was not an office fitted to soften the asperities of his nature, or to hide them. The chief duty of a Vice-President, — waiting to step into a dead man's shoes, — is thankless at best, carrying with it unjustly enough a little of the opprobrium that clings to the executioner and the scavenger, necessary, but not honored, servants of civilization. But a President can die only once, and is likely not to die at all. The thrifty makers of the Constitution, therefore, bent on having the Vice-Presi- dent earn his salary, added another duty, fortunately for the incumbent one of great dignity and occasionally of great importance, — that of presiding over the Sen- ate, and casting the deciding vote in case of a tie. This links the Vice-President in a manner wath the adminis- tration of which he is nominally a part, but still leaves plenty of time for criticism, if he is so inclined. Adams sympathized with Washington's general policy, and respected him as a man. He had, indeed, been the one to propose him for commander-in-chief. During the eight years he was Vice-President he loyally cast his vote with the administration when occasion demanded; but he thought Washington's talents over- rated, and on becoming President in his turn was am- bitious to make a record brilliant enough to over- shadow him. Certainly no easy task, even without the handicap of Adams's obstinate personality. The twin curses of sensitiveness and unpopularity darkened even the ceremonies of inauguration for this i6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING unfortunate man. Writing to his wife about that im- pressive moment in the Hall of Representatives when every eye was moist, and even Washington's great self-command was sorely tried, he told her that there had been more weeping at the inauguration than at a tragedy, "but whether it was from grief or joy; whether from the loss of their beloved President or from the substitution of an unbeloved one ; or from the novelty of the thing, or from the sublimity of it ... I know not." He knew that he was vain. " Thank God I am so ! " he exclaimed, " Vanity is the cordial drop which makes the bitter cup of life go down." But it had its lingering after-taste, and justly proud of his record, — having, as one of his biographers puts it, " stepped from his little country law-office and proved himself a match for the diplomatists of Europe," — Adams resented the narrow margin by which he had been elected, calling himself with some bitterness " the President of three votes only." It has been said that he achieved the honor only because a political trick missed fire, — that the Federalists, like their opponents, considered him a " Superfluous Excellency," and placed him and Governor Thomas Pinckney in nomination, intending so to juggle with the election that Pinckney the less known and more pliable of the two, should re- ceive the larger vote, apparently by accident. Instead, they found themselves saddled with Adams for Presi- dent, stubborn and unmanageable, while Jefferson, leader of a growing opposition, having reached to within those three votes of the higher office, became, by virtue of the law at that time in force, Vice-Presi- dent, with a Vice-President's unlimited opportunity for observation and criticism. It was not then the custom for the cabinet to go AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 17 out of office with the President. Adams began his term with a group of men that he described as a legacy from General Washington. They smoldered along to- gether in uncongenial accord until about the time of Washington's death, when the inevitable explosion and reorganization took place. But a Vice-President can be removed by nothing short of crime or physical in- capacity, and Jefferson remained, an ever-present and irritating thorn in Adams's side. Adams had found it hard to learn and accept the passive role de- manded by the office, and he evidently took some satisfaction in impressing the same uncongenial lessons upon his successor. Jefferson asserted that he was never consulted upon any question of government after Adams had been two days in power. And he did not make the charge in the humorous mood of a later in- cumbent, who used to declare that his chief had asked his advice only once, and that was about the wording of a Thanksgiving proclamation. Jefferson's party was growing, and he was its un- doubted leader. It appeared almost certain that he would be Adams's successor. They had long been per- sonal friends and were to become good friends again, after lengthening years sent both to the retirement of private life. But as heir-apparent Jefferson was ob- noxious, and the breach between them soon became complete. " I believe he always liked me," Adams ad- mitted in a retrospect of his long career, " but he de- tested Hamilton and my whole administration. Then, he wished to be President of the United States, and I stood in his way. So he did everything that he could to pull me down. But if I should quarrel with him for that, I might quarrel with every man I have had anything to do with in life. . . . Did you never hear the lines : i8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING I love my friend as well as you, But why should he obstruct my view? I forgive my enemies, and hope that they may find mercy in Heaven," Adams, however, had no idea of making life easy for his enemies on earth, and no illusions whatever about being President of the whole people. He was of the opinion that party divisions " begin with human nature," and was prepared to fight every inch of his way to a success rivaling Washington's. That he even found zest in the fighting may be gathered from a re- mark he once made that he was glad he did not live in the millennium, for that would be " the most sickish life imaginable." His Presidency in no way resembled the millennium. Before he had been in office a twelvemonth a day came when the street outside the door seethed with excited citizens. The governor ordered out horse and foot to keep the peace. Members of Adams's household in- dulged heroic, unnecessary dreams of a sortie into the mob, and the President himself, having caused chests of arms to be brought from the war office by back ways, stood ready to defend his home at the cost of his life, if need be. And this was only one outward and visible sign of his inv^^ard state, for politics, domestic and foreign, kept him in constant and truculent irritation. Eng- land and France each seemed bent on provoking the United States to war, and partizans of the English and French waxed contentious at home. The surging tide of the French Revolution, sending its wash of ship- wrecked and distressed across the Atlantic, had made of that great struggle a vital local issue. The country had been predisposed to French sympathy, but the ex- cesses of the Terror had naturally enough caused a AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 19 reaction. Now Adams and his followers pointed to the carnival of butchery and atheism as the logical out- come of those doctrines of equality that Jefferson and his party upheld. It was primarily a question of tem- perament. Largely, also, it was a question of locality, and in some localities it became a matter of religious prejudice. In New England, for example, Federalism and Christianity were supposed to be on intimate terms, while Democracy was looked upon as " a wicked thing, born of Tom Paine, Tom Jefferson, and the Father of Lies." Bent on combating this formidable trio, Adams labored on in his unpopular way, striving to harden into custom and precedent the policies that Washington had adopted of necessity. And the faction that had objected to Washington's acts was not slow in con- demning his. He was criticized for many things, but chiefly for being himself. Personal likes and dislikes played a greater part in national affairs then than now, for the natural reason that the country, though wide in extent, was still very small in population, and only a fraction of that population as yet belonged to the governing class. A property qualification re- mained a barrier between the poor man and his vote in every one of the States, while the difference between yeomanry and gentry was still recognized, though, thanks to the new teachings, poor folk plodding along in the dust left behind by great folk as they passed in their coaches were beginning to see that all moved toward a common goal. The fundamental difference between the two parties lay in this : the theory of the Democratic Republicans was based on the belief that " the people " were reason- able and teachable, and therefore quite capable of tak- ing part in government. The Federals, on the other 20 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING hand, maintained the superior fitness of the educated and well-to-do for tasks of this kind, and their conse- quent obligation to attend to such matters not only for themselves, but for their less fortunate neighbors. Their position, apparently borne out only too well by tragic events in France, was summed up with pic- turesque brutality by Hamilton one night in the heat of after-dinner debate, as he flung back the Answer: " Your People, sir, — your People, — is a great beast!" Cordially as Adams disliked Hamilton, and shock- ing as he would have found such words uttered by any one except himself, he agreed with this in principle, grumbling that all projects of government based on the wisdom of the people were " cheats and delusions." Letting his peppery tongue run away with him, he did not scruple to state, — to the wrong man, — his doubt that the nation could endure unless the executive ofifice was made hereditary. " What necessity of saying these things, even if he thought so? " his hearer asked in disgust. Once indeed during Adams's term of office popular sympathy was with the administration. This was when* the country learned about Talleyrand's action in what is known as the X. Y. Z. affair. Little as Adams approved French ideals, he had no wish to go to war with France; and even after differences had reached a pass where our American minister was asked to leave Paris, the testy President controlled his re- sentment, and sent a commission of three distinguished men to see if the trouble could be adjusted. They were kept waiting in anterooms and corridors, put off with transparent excuses and one flimsy pretext after another, until even a babe in diplomacy, innocent of the French premier's tortuous methods, could not fail to AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 21 see that bribery was hinted at. Pinckney's spirited " MilHons for defense, but not one cent for tribute " voiced the popular indignation, and turned election majorities into Federal success. But larger majorities in Congress did Adams little good. With war imminent, it was necessary to raise a new army, and this brought so much added work upon the Government that the President felt obliged to recommend increased salaries for some officials, and even to ask for a new cabinet officer, a secretary of the navy, the work of whose department had heretofore been divided between the war department and the treasury. The opposition was not slow to raise the cry of extravagance, ever potent in republics, and jealous- ies incurred in assigning commands in the new army proved an added pitfall. By common consent Wash- ington was the one man talked about for commander- in-chief. Many thought Hamilton equally entitled to second place, but distrust of Hamilton blinded Adams alike to justice and policy. He named another. This raised a storm of protest, and Washington, taking sides with the friends of Hamilton, flatly refused to leave his retirement at Mount Vernon until what he deemed a wrong was righted. In the correspondence between them Adams lost not only his point, but another frac- tion of popular good-will that he could ill afford to spare. The Alien and Sedition laws, too, passed by Congress at the instigation of the administration, overshot the mark. These made it difficult to obtain citizenship, and gave the President authority to order out of the country any foreigner he might deem dangerous with- out giving his reasons or affording the man uhder sus- picion a trial ; and there were other provisions impos- ing fines for " illegal " combinations and conspiracy, 22 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING and for " scandalous and malicious " publications against the Government, that proved fine ammunition to Adams's enemies when the next Presidential election drew near. The Democratic Republicans, using all their political skill, managed, moreover, to take the wind out of the sails of certain administration measures that should have been popular by making them seem like truckling on the part of Adams to the growing anti-Federal senti- ment. Altogether the task he had set himself of con- ducting an administration more brilliant and successful than that of Washington was ending in sad disappoint- ment. This did not increase his serenity and peace of mind. Nothing worked to that end. Even the re- moval of the seat of government from orderly and con- ventional Philadelphia to the quagmires of the new capital on the banks of the Potomac was one more trial in his last year of office. The opposition of Hamilton to Adams's reelection proved the last straw. How far this was due to Adams's treatment of Hamilton in the military appoint- ments was a question eagerly discussed and gossiped about by their contemporaries. They were all very human men, and the passions of the day were much in- flamed. Hamilton lost his usually clear head and wrote a pamphlet attacking Adams that the other Fed- eralist leaders tried vainly to suppress, and which a certain Aaron Burr of New York, whose dislike of Hamilton was notorious, read with malicious glee, and used for Jiis own ends. Political dread of Hamilton was at this time almost the only sentiment held in common by Jefferson and Adams. • Jefferson saw in Hamilton the brains of the Federal party. With xA.dams it seems to have been largely a matter of thwarted ambition. As strong a AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 23 Federalist as himself, Hamilton was more brilliant, if not so learned, and he had the gift of popularity, which Adams woefully lacked. Even in the face of a mob Hamilton could win personal support and applause. One might love him, though disapproving everything he did. Had it been possible to approve of all Adams did, he could not have won love or spontaneous ap- plause. The Presidential election of 1800 brought Adams defeat, this time by more than three electoral votes. JefiFerson received eight more than he ; but even so Jeflferson was not elected, because that same Aaron Burr, whom the Democratic Republicans had been sup- porting with an idea of making him Vice-President, received exactly the same number. This, according to the Constitution, threw the election into the House of Representatives. Three months must elapse before the House chose between them, for it could not proceed to an election until after the date for officially count- ing the electoral votes. Therefore there was plenty of time for sobering thought, and Burr was not a man to inspire confidence. He was talented, but unscrupu- lous, — " Hamilton, with Hamilton's nobility left out." It was known that the vote in the House of Repre- sentatives would be exceedingly close. Jefferson's own account asserts that influential Federalists, among them that rock-ribbed. God-fearing man President Adams himself, caused it to be made plain to him that Federal opposition to his election would cease if he would only assure the country he meant to do none of those radical things threatened by his party, such as dismissing all Federalist office-holders, abolishing the navy, or wip- ing out the public debt. Jefferson refused to make any promises or to dis- close his plans. Anxiety increased; and as had been 24 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING apprehended, the contest that followed the official counting of the electoral votes was long and close. The first votes by the House resulted in a deadlock that lasted almost a week, and the final struggle to break this deadlock occupied more than thirty hours. Those near enough to follow the proceedings watched breathlessly. The more distant parts of the country waited impatient for news. In Washington all thoughts centered on the unfinished Capitol crowning its hill ; few had eyes for the President's house, equally unfinished, among the trees a mile away. The town was as yet scarcely begun. Scattered groups of houses were to be seen here and there, few in any one place, and most of those small and unimposing. A mile be- yond the President's house lay the little village of Georgetown. Among them all the members of Con-' gress and officers of the Government had managed to find more or less uncomfortable lodging. On this oc- casion every representative had been summoned, even those who were ill. Then the doors were closed. " Not an individual left that solemn assembly," a diary of the time tells us. "The necessary refresh- ment . . . was taken in rooms adjoining the Hall. . . . Beds as well as food were sent for the accommo- dation of those whom age or debility disabled from enduring such a long-protracted sitting. The ballot- ing took place every hour. In the interval men ate, drank, slept, or pondered over the result of the last ballot; compared ideas and persuasions to change votes." One woman was present. She had accompanied her " almost dying husband " through the raw February chill from his lodgings two miles away, and watched beside his bed in an anteroom, ready to rouse him and guide hJs weak fingers as he wrote his ballot. Hour THOMAS JEFFERSON From the painting by Gilbert Stuart AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 25 after hour the vote was taken, counted, and the same announcement made. Daylight settled into dark; darkness dragged wearily again into light. The in- valid slept and stirred. The wife sitting beside him grew perceptibly haggard. On the faces of the mem- bers determination gave place to anger and sullen, ut- ter weariness. It became evident that Jefferson's supporters would not yield; but which of the opposition could bear the reproach of making the first move? It was managed by a flutter of blank ballots and skilful beating of the devil around the stump. . One member from South Carolina withdrew his vote by prearrangement. The sole member from Delaware, voting blank, " gave up his party for his country," as the diary picturesquely says ; and so, to quote Jefferson, the election occurred " without a single vote coming over." News was quickly given to those waiting outside, who cheered dutifully, if not enthusiastically, and the wearied legis- lators hurried off to their lodgings, " the conspirators," as they were darkly called, pursued by fears of bodily vengeance. It was in this unflattering manner that Jefferson's " lurching for the Presidency," of which he had long been accused, was satisfied. But the choice undoubt- edly reflected the popular will. Confronted with the alternative of Jefferson or Burr, a large majority of Americans preferred Jefferson's frank theorizing to Burr's shifty politics. But to Adams's mind even the lesser of the two evils was a national calamity. Angry and disappointed, he set about doing all that he could during the short remainder of his term to thwart the incoming President's plans. Two weeks before Jefferson's inauguration, Congress voted cer- tain changes in the judiciary system which involved the 26 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING appointment of new judges. As a matter of precedent and courtesy, these should have been left to the new executive. But Adams conceived it his duty to set patriotism above politeness, and signed appointments up to nine o'clock on the third of March; then early next morning he drove away from the city, too bitter to remain and take part in the ceremonies and amenities of the inauguration. From his retirement in Massachusetts he exercised his privilege of free speech to lavish upon the new President the vigorous disapproval that his failure to realize cherished ambitions and a sincere appre- hension for the country's future caused to well up in his nature. Time and the logic of events softened his resent- ment. Ten years after leaving the White House in such unseemly haste he had come to see that the differ- ence between himself and his successor was one of method only. In 1811 he wrote to Dr. Rush: In point of Republicanism, all the difference I ever knew or could discover between you and me, or Jefferson and me, con- sisted : 1. In the difference between speeches and messages. I was a monarchist because I thought a speech more manly, more re- spectful to Congress and the nation. Jefferson and Rush pre- ferred messages. 2. I held levees once a week that all my time might not be wasted by the visits. Jefferson's whole eight years was a levee. 3. I dined a large company once or twice a week. Jeffer- son dined a dozen every day. 4. Jefferson and Rush were for liberty and straight hair. I thought curled hair was as republican as straight. Further lapse of time completely healed the breach between them. It is agreeable to remember that the tact of Mrs. Adams revived their old friendship, that AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 27 they exchanged long and cordial letters during the latter years of their lives ; and on the memorable fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, when the spirits of both these brave men passed on, each died thinking of the other, comforted in the belief that the other still lived. CHAPTER II DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST THE country waited in anxiety to see what the political reformer would do. He had re- fused to bind himself by promises, and had remained withdrawn upon his estate during the entire campaign summer, following the precedent set by Washington and Adams, who held that the choice of a President was no matter for a candidate's meddling, but one exclusively between the voters and their own consciences. While the country did not know what Jejfferson meant to do, it did know that Jefferson's election was in effect a minor revolution, giving sanction to the trial of a whole brood of new theories. It was re- served for an American of abater day to call the Declaration of Independence a self-evident lie, but many looked upon its broad assertions as dangerous and its author as a dangerous man. Politics was a vital matter, so vital that statesmen whose interest wan- dered were regarded with suspicion, and Jefferson was known to have explored in many fields of thought. He was suspected of holding lamentably lax views upon religion. He enjoyed converse with men of lawless minds under the guise of research in philosophy and science. He had even entertained such men as Priest- ley and Tom Paine in his own home. His service as minister to France had given him a large acquaintance and experience. Less erudite than Adams, his knowledge was wide rather than deep, but 28 DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 29 it was ample to afford him a grasp of many practical things, and ready sympathy in realms of thought to which his countrymen gave Httle heed. The sum of this knowledge was to make him an all-around, wide- awake man, given to theorizing, but with enough com- mon sense in the long run to ballast his theories, a mental equipment providential in a President at that moment, but one to fill conservatives with deep forebod- ing. The campaign had reeked with personalities. Social and political sins had been piled before Jefferson's door in unreasoning profusion, and the aims of his party had been denounced in no measured terms. " In plain language," one good and earnest Federalist mourned, " the greatest villain in the community is the fittest person to make and execute the laws, . . . Can imag- ination paint anything more dreadful this side Hell ? " While all this was unpleasant, it was far less irri- tating to Jefferson than it would have been to one of Adams's intensely morbid egotism. " Whig and Tory belong to natural history," was his more genial way of echoing Adams's crabbed " parties begin in human na- ture." He serenely refused to recognize the Jefferson they abused as anything more than a man of straw, made up of all his supposed vices. There were of course some politically opposed to him who saw no reason to believe the country in ex- treme peril. " So, the anti-Federals are now to sup- port their own administration and take a turn at rolling stones uphill," Chief-Justice Ellsworth wrote to Rufus King. " Good men will get a breathing-spell, and the credulous will learn to understand the game of out and in." This was the first exchange of places in the political game of out and in, and both sides had yet to learn 30 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING how astonishingly pliable new theories become in bend- ing to hard conditions of fact. The optimists were justified. Responsibility had its usual sobering efTect, the liberals becoming more conservative, just as con- servatives had already been more liberal than their creed. It is always so ; hence the paradox that human fallibility (another name for abstract sin) eventually brings about an approach toward perfection. Of the fourteen points emphasized in Jefferson's inaugural address there was scarcely one over which honest Federals and honest Republicans could not in- dulge an honest handshake, and it is hard to see v^^herein his treatment of large questions differed greatly from that which the Federalists might have given them under like conditions. Indeed, in the crowning act of his administration, the purchase of Louisiana, he was more imperialistic than Adams could have been, for Adams's near-sighted New England vision was incapable of reaching beyond the Alleghanies. The two great achievements of Jefferson's life, for which all his mistakes must be forgiven and his whim- sicalities condoned, stand at the two extremes of his wide political range. The writing of the Declaration of Independence was an exercise of his intellect, a state- ment of what he believed ought to be, which caught popular sentiment and focused it to power, as rays of light are focused in a burning-glass. The purchase of Louisiana was quite beyond reason or even theory. He knew it by inspiration to be the will of destiny in regard to his country. His democracy was always a matter of the head rather than of the heart; and to his honor be it said that whenever his carefully cultivated principles bumped in painful collision against his sense of what was fitting for a great nation, he threw theory to the winds and followed instinct rather than be ham- DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 31 pered by the kind of consistency that Emerson called the hobgoblin of little minds. Jefferson's first acts as President were not at all alarming. Far from turning out all Federal office- holders, he " proceeded with moderation," appointing party friends only as the terms of Federals expired; and he returned to the rule observed by Washington, which Adams was inclined to violate, of refusing to ap- point his own relatives, no matter what their politics. Justly enough, he resented Adams's *' midnight " ap- pointment of new judges. " So far as they are during pleasure," Jefferson wrote, " I shall not consider the persons named as candidates," " nor pay the respect of notifying them that I consider what is done a nullity." Adams had tried by these appointments to safeguard the reorganized judiciary. It was an act justifiable only on the plea of extreme necessity, as was the be- guiling offer made to Jefferson when his election hung in doubt in the House of Representatives. But, after all, morality is not a fixed quantity : had Jefferson been the unsafe man Adams feared, the country would have been in danger, and Adams justified in any measure he could take to lessen it. Actuated by the highest mo- tives, but without the excuse of necessity, these acts degenerate into stupid political blunders that the white intensity of Adams's patriotism is enough to burn from the record. Adams's hasty departure had already shorn inaugura- tion day of half its ceremonial importance. The Democratic President further curtailed its splendors, and for some time kept official society in a flutter over details of his Republican reforms. From the distance of a century we are forced to admire the wit and skill with which Jefferson thus managed to divert attention from more serious issues until he could get his bearings 32 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING and measure the forces for and against him. Some of his minor reforms, Hke his " Canons of Etiquette to be Observed by the Executive," ^ which promulgated the rules of " pele mele " and wiped the social slate free from title and precedence with one mighty Republican sweep, roused a buzzing like angry bees among diplo- mats, and even threatened international trouble. But, yielded at the opportune moment, they could be bartered for more important concessions. In the early days of Washington's Presidency ques- tions of social usage had required speedy settlement. Washington had appealed to a number of leaders, among them Adams and Hamilton, Jay and Madison, for help in making rules of official conduct, begging rather wistfully to be told whether one day in seven was not enough to set apart for visits of mere cere- mony, and one hour of each day, — eight o'clock a. m., which was a favorite time, apparently, with the Father of his Country, — to receive visitors who came on busi- ness. Might he himself make visits not as President, but as a private citizen ? What must he do about din- ner-parties, etc. ? 1 Extract from " Canons of Etiquette to be Observed by the Executive " : 4th. Among the members of the Diplomatic Corps, the Ex- ecutive Government, in its own principles of personal and national equality, considers every Minister as the representative of his Nation, and equal to every other without distinction of grade. Sth. At dinners, in public or private, and on all other occasions of social intercourse, a perfect equality exists between the persons composing the company, whether foreign or domestic, titled or un- titled, in or out of office. ^th. To give force to the principles of equality or pclc mclc, and prevent the growth of precedence out of courtesy, the mem- bers of the Executive, at their own houses, will adhere to the an- cient usage of their ancestors, — gentlemen en masse giving place to ladies en masse. DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 33 Little by little the code of manners had defined it- self. Mrs. Washington held her Friday evening levees; and at stated intervals the President gathered companies about his table for those oppressively silent dinners — " the most solemn I ever sat at," a participant feelingly confided to his diary. Adams's reply to the President's inquiries had bristled with chamberlains and aides-de-camp. He had reminded his chief that the royal office in Poland was a " mere shadow " compared with the dignity of the American President; had mentioned the dogeship of Venice and the stadtholder of Holland slightingly in the same connection, and had warned Washington that "if the state and pomp essential to this great depart- ment are not in good degree preserved, it will be in vain for America to hope for consideration with foreign powers." So when he came into the Presidency, the stately ob- servances of Washington's day were not allowed to lapse. Even transplanting the seat of government from Philadelphia to the unfinished town on the Po- tomac had served only to jolt and rather humorously distort them. With the chill of new plaster pervading the executive residence, Mrs. Adams despaired of get- ting sufficient wood cut either for love or money from the growing trees surrounding it to fill its yawning fireplaces and dispel the dampness. She put the great audience-room to the only use its unfinished condition permitted, — drying the Presidential linen. Looking from its unglazed windows over the small and scat- tered groups of houses, all that had yet materialized of L'Enfant's imposing plan, she reflected that their in- habitants must subsist " like fishes, by eating each other." But she played her role of President's lady with spirit, maintained her hours for levees, and 34 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING answered the " fishes," when they came to call, that she thought the new capital had " a beautiful situation." It had indeed. Half-way between Maine and Georgia, at that time our northern and southern bound- aries; inland, but at the head of tide-water on a noble stream ; planned along generous lines to cover a suc- cession of hills upon which a city once built could not be hid, it was, and seemed likely to remain, fairly cen- tral. Even the most optimistic patriot could not fore- see how far that mythical reality, the center of popula- tion, was to travel westward decade by decade during the next century, unimpeded by war or misfortune, until the city on the Potomac was left upon the edge of our great country. Jefiferson's imagination was vivid enough to see the city of the future, with its avenues and stately build- ings, in Major L'Enfant's plan ; but it is also quite possible that he saw the absurdity of trying to keep up the fiction of present ceremony in a capital whose houses were non-existent and whose thoroughfares were marvels of ruts and bad drainage. Personally of very simple habits, both inclination and conviction urged him to dispense as much as possible with the mummery of his office. The story that he rode to his inauguration, tied his horse to the picket-fence at the foot of the Capitol, and mounted the steps to take his oath of office has been relegated time and again to the limbo of lost, but cherished, fable. Even the knock- down objection that there was no fence fails to keep it there. The bit of truth at the bottom lies in the curtailed ceremonies of the day, and in the fact that soon after he became President he changed the custom of making a speech on the opening of Congress, pref- aced by " a stately cavalcade attending the President to the Capitol," and followed by an equally stately DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 35 procession of Congressmen and Senators in coaches back again to the President's house with answering addresses. Jefferson instituted the simpler method of sending Congress a written message, a custom that endured for over a century, until another Democrat chose to return to the more ancient usage of direct speech. The change, however, had neither political nor spiritual significance. It was purely physical. The taunt of Jefferson's critics that he never made a speech is almost literally true. An infirmity that caused his voice " to sink in his throat " when he attempted a public address at once explains it and absolves him from criticism. In ordinary conversation he was ready enough. Winfield Scott, who observed him with the critical attention of ambitious youth toward famous maturity, thought him " an incessant talker." From others we learn that his conversation, while not brilliant, flowed on, thoughtful and agreeable, seasoned with old-fash- ioned compliment in the style of Virginia gentlemen of pre-Revolutionary days. He was not handsome, if we may trust Tucker's description of him as " tall, thin, and raw-boned," with " red hair, a freckled face, and pointed features," but his height, — more than six feet two, — and his rather loose-jointed carriage made him a marked man in any assembly. In dress he was governed by comfort rather than by elegance. " Pride costs more than hunger, thirst, and cold," he used to say; and as he lived in an epoch that witnessed a mighty revolution in men's clothing as well as in men's government, monarchy's queues and velvets giving way to short hair and the useful, ungainly pantaloon, only the watchfulness of his body-servant saved him from unbelievable anachronisms of costume. Indeed, in later life, at Monticello, where this Democrat ruled 36 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING absolute king, he often wore the garments of several different periods together, like superimposed geologic strata, or the historic remains in the Roman Forum, Left a widower many years before he became Presi- dent, he maintained at the White House only a simple establishment, though visited occasionally by his mar- ried daughters. His family affections were very strong, and frequent letters to them bore a recurring burden of questions about all things alive at Monticello, from his grandchildren to his cabbages, interspersed with good advice, reports on politics, or the wonders of science, and gallantly attempted descriptions of the fashions, which he hoped were detailed and accurate enough to serve as working models. When the White House was in need of a hostess, warm-hearted Mrs. Madison, wife of his secretary of state, discharged that duty for him. One of Jefferson's earliest reforms, in the interest of economy of time, was to do away with levees. He announced that he would receive publicly only twice a year, on January first and the Fourth of July. The ladies of Washington, loath to give up what little courtly elegance Mrs. Adams's weekly drawing-rooms had lent to the embryo capital, tried to coerce him by ap- pearing in force at the usual time. Told that he was not at home, they waited. He returned at last, and received them readily and courteously enough, but just as he was, dusty from his ride, without a word of apology for his appearance. His perfect unconcern gave them to understand unmistakably that he would not change his plan, no matter how often their petti- coat invasion might be repeated, and they retired beaten, but laughing at his tact and their own discom- fiture. He refused to make journeys of ceremony, although DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 37 both Washington and Adams had done so, pointing out that Washington's action was no precedent, since his place in the affections of his countrymen set him apart from all others, and indulging in a covert fling at Adams : " I confess that I am not reconciled to the idea of a Chief Magistrate parading himself through the several States as an object of public gaze, and in quest of an applause which to be valuable should be purely voluntary." He strove to be a consistent Democrat ; to keep the business approaches to the White House wide open, but to close those of merely social character, believing politics, not society, to be the duty for which he was elected. And politics was no child's play. Reversing positions in the game of out and in had not materially bettered affairs. Public irritation against England and France was still rife, though somewhat changed in character. Those two countries were now at war, and, in striking at each other's trade, were dealing stagger- ing blows upon our commerce. The United States had built up a successful trade with the West Indies. England now decreed that neutral ships must not carry goods from the West Indies to France or to any European country that sided with France in the quarrel. France, on her part, forbade neutral vessels to enter British harbors. Both combatants seized vessels they caught disobeying these orders, and American shipping suffered now from one and now from the other until the battle of Trafal- gar ended French activity at sea. Afterward England continued her seizures in a manner even more galling to America, stopping our vessels wherever she found them, and impressing our sailors into her navy on the charge that they were British subjects. In 1807 the British ship Leopard capped the affront by overhauling 38 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING the frigate Chesapeake at our very doors, just outside . the port of Norfolk, Virginia. On the refusal of the American commander to give up the men demanded, the Leopard opened fire, killing three and wounding eighteen of her crew. The wrath of the United States knew no bounds, but it had to be satisfied with a half-hearted apology from England, for the American navy, intrepid in spirit, was lamentably weak in numbers. Driven to some kind of retaliation, the administration hit upon the policy of the Embargo, which resulted in greater injury to ourselves than to Great Britain. Theoreti- cally such a decree, forbidding vessels to sail from America to any foreign port, could not fail to cripple England's immense trade with this country. Con- gress and the administration merely overlooked the fact that while England's commerce might be crippled, ours would inevitably be killed, since we were much more dependent upon Great Britain in the matter of trade than Great Britain was upon us. New England, stronghold of Federalism and center of the American shipping industry, waxed derisive and voluble against what it called the " terrapin policy " of the Embargo, comparing it to the tactics of the lowly animal that pulls feet and head within its shell when struck, instead of showing fight. Jefferson was harshly criticized for all the poHcies and shortcomings of his administration. His popularity seemed for a time to wane ; but this was only temporary, and he was reelected at the end of his first term by what has since become known in political language as a landslide, the Federalist candidate receiving only fourteen electoral votes. He was delighted, and claimed that Federalism had come over in toto to the Republican party. The truth DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 39 is that by a lucky combination of circumstances the people were able just then to eat their cake and have it, too. Professing the " political metaphysics " of democracy, as Chief-Justice Marshall styled it, they reaped the benefit of measures that would have done credit to the reign of an emperor. At the moment Jef- ferson was reelected the issues freshest in public mem- ory were those picturesque and undemocratic ones for which his administration was to live in history, — the war with Tripoli, the Oregon explorations, and the purchase of Louisiana. Fortunately for his country, his republicanism worked only intermittently, and served as a check, not a deterrent, to those empire-wide schemes toward which his mind gravitated by nature. His conception of the office of President left him powerless to protect a few shade-trees growing near the Executive Mansion. His party's conception of states' rights made it diffi- cult to keep a wagon-road in order if it crossed the border-line between two commonwealths. Yet he found no difficulty in reading his title clear to purchase the third of a continent, or to fit out at government ex- pense an expedition to cross the whole of North Amer- ica and clear up mysteries in uncharted regions not then owned by the United States. Nor did his distrust of a navy prevent his sending our very young one half around the world on police duty that the nations of Europe refuse to undertake. The navy was one of the bugbears of the Demo- cratic Republicans. They called it the Great Beast with the Great Belly, because of its cost; and they had much to say about the arrogance navies breed in na- tions. Jefferson cherished a scheme, based on some- thing he once read about Venice, for keeping a nice little one exclusively for coast defense, safe and dry 40 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING under cover in times of peace ; yet his first act as Presi- dent, in gallant disregard of principle, was giving con- sent to the spectacular sea-fights known as the war with Tripoli. On the whole round globe there is no spot so adapted to the trade of piracy as that portion of the coast of Africa upon which Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco crouched for years to prey upon the rich prizes of the sea. Dominating the Strait of Gibraltar, that needle's eye through which three fourths of the commerce of the world must pass, with a desert behind them into which to retreat with their plunder, and with the waves of two seas constantly wafting ships toward their shores, they had only to gather in what fortune brought them. Everything it brought turned to profit, men as well as goods ; for sailors made sturdy slaves, or, if not fit for slaves, could be held for ransom. Through their bloody hands the Middle Ages reached out and took toll of the nineteenth century; and noth- ing so links the new United States of America with a far-off undesirable past as that for sixteen years our sailors were made slaves, our American officers languished in captivity, and our country, like the rest of the civilized world, paid tribute to " the pests of Christendom." It remained for our young coun- try to bring this state of things to an end, for the strong trading nations of Europe had one and all submitted, a fact which seems incredible unless there is truth in the dark hint that England, strongest of them all, was not ill pleased to have these cutthroats aid her by attacking her enemies. In other words, that " Barbary piracy was a protective tax in favor of British bottoms." The pirates plundered only where plundering was DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 41 worth while; it may have been with a gleam of pride as well as of wrath, accepted as a sort of commercial and naval accolade, that this country learned in the autumn of 1785 that the Algerines had declared war upon the United States and captured two of our ships. Some of our statesmen were frankly not sorry. " The more we are ill treated abroad, the more we shall unite and consolidate at home," wrote John Jay, who was at the time secretary under Congress for foreign affairs. " Besides, as it may become a nursery for seamen, and lay the foundations for a respectable navy, it may eventually prove more beneficial than otherwise." Jay evidently did not view a navy with Jefferson's dis- trust. In the course of ten years over one hundred Americans had been made slaves or held for ransom, and over a dozen vessels had struck their colors to the pirates. While Washington was President a treaty was concluded with Algiers, agreeing to pay a large sum for the release of all Americans in captivity, and promising further tribute if our ships were left alone. " The terms," wrote Oliver Ellsworth, " though humiliating, are as moderate as there was reason to expect." Other negotiations were held with other members of the piratical band, and it was to one of these that John Adams referred when he said that the Sultan of Morocco had made an easy treaty with us " because we were Unitarians," meaning that as a nation we made no official statement of belief in the Trinity. But though they might regard us as coreligionists, the demands of our rapacious friends grew faster than our inclination to fulfil them. In 1800, Tripoli asked for a frigate or brig, and insisted that Captain Bain- bridge carry the Algerine ambassador to Constant!- 42 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING nople with his goods and his presents, a bit of service that went sorely against the grain of the American commander. Next year the Bey of Tunis demanded forty cannon and ten thousand stand of arms. These not being forthcoming, TripoH declared war, and be- fore Jefferson had been President two months he found himself despatching Admiral Dale to the other side of the world with two thirds of our available navy, — four of the six ships then in commission, — to admin- ister to the Barbary pirates a well-deserved trouncing. It was done in a manner so thorough and salutary that the Pope of Rome, officially bound to consider Jeffer- son and his countrymen heretics, publicly declared that they had done more for Christendom against these plagues of the sea than the whole of Europe combined. The audacity of our infant navy in taking up a challenge refused by all Christendom is equaled only by the incredible picturesqueness of this war with Tripoli, which seems to have been invented by history expressly to lure boys in heart and boys in years on through less readable pages of its musty volumes. Admiral Dale held a commission to chase corsairs, — the obsolete name in itself gives a thrill, — but those were the leisurely days of sails. They were also days of bitter opposition at home. He was despatched upon his errand in 1801 but with orders that greatly hampered him. It was 1803 before actual fighting took place, and it was not to Dale, but to Commodore Edward Preeble sent out in the latter year with a freer hand that Congress voted thanks and a gold medal and a sword. Meanwhile pirates had been sighted and chased, and had given chase, but escaped into the shelter of harbors where Americans could not follow them. The Americans always followed to the verge of safety. On November i, 1803, the narrow DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 43 line of safety was crossed by that same Captain Wil- liam Bainbridge, who had so unwillingly carried the Algerine ambassador to Constantinople. In his frigate the Philadelphia he pursued a corsair into the very harbor of Tripoli, found himself suddenly upon a sunken rock, was surrounded by a cormorant throng of the enemy's smaller boats, and captured, his crew and officers being plundered even of their clothing be- fore they reached the land. All were dispersed into slavery; Bainbridge himself, kept a prisoner in Tripoli, had the torment of seeing his ship refitted under her new owners. Somehow he found means of writing letters. In one, sent out at random in the hope it might fall into helpful hands, he outlined the possi- bility of recapturing the Philadelphia before she could leave the harbor. His hope was justified. Chance, — or should it have another name ? — carried the letter to the right man for the task, and Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, in com- mand of the little Intrepid, a captured prize of only forty or fifty tons, overloaded with men and under- supplied with food, sailed to the rescue. The insuffi- cient food they had was of poor quality, mainly hard- tack, water, and spoiled salt meat ; but high spirits and good weather went far to overcome these drawbacks. Nearing the harbor of Tripoli on a moonlight night, they sighted the Philadelphia lying a mile within the entrance. Her masts were not yet all in place, but her guns, as events proved, were loaded and shotted. Near her lay two corsairs, with a few gunboats and smaller craft. Decatur gave his commands. The Philadelphia was to be boarded, her spar-deck first taken, then her main-deck. After that she must be given to the flames, since she was in no condition to put to sea. 44 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING True to her name, the little Intrepid steered directly for her mark, most of Decatur's men lying concealed, with orders not to show themselves until the signal for action was given. When hailed by those aboard the Philadelphia, she answered that she belonged to Malta, was engaged in trade, had lost her anchors in a recent storm, and wished to lie near the frigate until morning. Decatur stood beside the pilot and em- broidered upon this theme, prompting him with many and ingenious details about the cargo and the heavy weather experienced, as with each phrase the Intrepid edged nearer and nearer the exact spot where she would be most protected from the enemy's guns. But a puff of wind shifted their relative positions, and passed on, leaving her fully exposed to the frigate's broadside. Several Turks were looking over the rail, curious, but as yet unsuspicious. They even lowered a boat and sent a line to the visitor, with which Decatur's men, still concealed, brought the two yet closer to- gether. It was only when the Turks caught sight of the Intrepid's anchors that they learned they had been duped. A sharp order to keep off was followed by the panic-stricken cry " Amerikanos ! " as a last strong pull brought her alongside, and men heretofore in hid- ing swarmed over the rail. The Turks gave way. Some rushed below, some jumped into the sea. In ten minutes Decatur was in possession, and soon the Philadelphia was in flames. She burned like tinder; so rapidly, indeed, that the Americans had barely time to escape from the fire they had kindled. For a breathless moment the lines of the two ships were entangled, and the Intrepid, jammed against the burning frigate, seemed in danger of shar- ing the fate of her adversary. A sword-stroke cut DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 45 her hawser, and a vigorous push sent her out of harm's way as the flames leaned hungrily toward her, then leaped hissing up the Philadelphia's rigging. A cheer burst from the Americans. Until then they had worked almost in silence, too absorbed to make unnecessary sounds. The Turks, on their part, had seemed as paralyzed in voice as in resistance. But the American shout woke noise everywhere. Turkish batteries, the corsairs, and a galley all sent a rain of shot after the Intrepid as she sped out of the harbor, her pathway lighted by the burning frigate. Even the Philadelphia s guns, heated by the fire, began to ex- plode, one broadside discharging itself toward the town, as if in revenge for Turkish indignities, the other toward a guarding fort. This exploit and others as dramatic brought the war in 1805 to an end satisfactory to European com- merce, and laid the foundation for that confidence in our navy, closely akin to vainglory, which a century of experience has only intensified in American breasts. Its picturesque successes doubtless had much to do with the light-heartedness with which the country went to war with England in 18 12. During that struggle the Barbary pirates again began harassing American ships, but when the end of hostilities released our navy for other duty, Decatur, now become an admiral, returned to the scene of his early exploit and speedily and finally convinced them of the error of their ways. CHAPTER III THE MAP AND THE SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE THE crowning achievements of Jefferson's term had to do with terra firma rather than with the sea ; but they were equally picturesque and undemocratic. It was providential that his many theories neutralized one another. Although a linger- ing remnant of the old landed aristocrat's prejudice against trade made him deplore commerce as " cor- rupting," his dislike of war bade him argue that in trade, not in guns, lay our greatest national weapon. Common sense also made him see how necessary trade was to the development of the country. He therefore planned to invade close-shut Asia with the American commerce that did not as yet exist, and he joyfully set out to find a road for it through an unexplored wilderness. The blank spaces on the map teased him. They were still vast, despite exploring expeditions that had come to America in ever-increasing numbers since Sebastian Cabot's initial voyage of 1497. Such ex- peditions along the coast had been too numerous even to mention. Those that penetrated the interior fell into interesting groups as they multiplied with the cen- turies. The four principal ones of the sixteenth cen- tury were Spanish, and the territory they pierced was that of our Southern and Southwestern States. In the seventeenth century they were French, and their wanderings covered the region approached by the St» 46 AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 47 Lawrence and the great lakes. In the eighteenth cen- tury the names connected with such enterprises were unmistakably English. The area was smaller, but it was explored more in detail and opened up to perma- nent settlement. This was the fertile country drained by the Ohio and other eastern tributaries of the Mis- sissippi. With the beginning of the nineteenth cen- tury interest was transferred west of the Mississippi to the wide spaces designated on. maps of the day by three imagination-haunting names, Oregon, the Span- ish Territory, and Louisiana. Progressive Americans were convinced even then that some time in the future these must be ours " by law of nature." But conservatives, on the other hand, were aghast at the idea of annexing land, especially beyond the Mississippi. The country's chief danger, they said, was its unwieldy size. New England felt that such a course would justify her in withdrawing from the Union, But to all alike the map was an un- solved enigma. The Stony Mountains loomed large upon it as a barrier between Louisiana and the other two tracts. The Missouri River, draining the eastern slopes of this vast range, was a well-established fact. Jefferson thought that indications pointed to a river of equal importance on the western side, flowing into the Pacific. To a mind like his such speculations were irresistible. While he was minister to France he talked with young John Ledyard, the American traveler, then in Paris, and so worked upon his imagination that he gave up his project of Egyptian exploration to attack the mys- tery of his own continent. Together the two planned that Ledyard should cross Siberia far to the north, sail from Kamchatka to the coast of America, follow the coast southward until he came to the mouth of this 48 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING unknown river, ascend it to its source, and then, cross- ing the continental divide to the headwaters of the Missouri, sail down to the Mississippi and civilization. In his capacity of minister to France, Jefiferson gave Ledyard a passport to St. Petersburg, that he might ask leave of the Empress Catharine to cross her territory. It was granted, and Ledyard had reached Siberia when the permission was suddenly revoked, and he was or- dered out of the country on suspicion of being a spy. Four years later Captain Gray, in command of the ship that first carried the Stars and Stripes around the world, discovered the mouth of the Columbia. This confirmed Jefferson's theory, but the upper reaches of the vWer and its relation to the Missouri remained as mysterious as ever. At intervals, when his republican- ism slumbered, Jefferson's mind played with the prob- lem, and before he had been President many months the expedition of Lewis and Clark began to take definite shape. Its objects were threefold, as the President out- lined them to Congress : to establish trading relations with the Indians of the Northwest; to search out a route for commerce with Asia; and to add to the world's geographic knowledge. On the map the transit of the eye and mind from the Pacific coast to densely populated Asia is instantaneous and inevitable. Asia spelled commerce, and so did a fur trade with the western Indians. Knowing the nature of Con- gress when it came to a question of appropriations, Jefiferson was diplomatically practical and enlarged upon this point, though personally he found the scien- tific features of the expedition more interesting. He placed at the head of it two young army officers who had between them ideal qualifications for the task. Meriwether Lewis had seen military service, and AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 49 had been acting as Jefferson's private secretary. He had thus learned to understand thoroughly his chief's desire and habits of mind. William Clark was a man of less education who had served under " Mad Anthony " Wayne. With the exception of one Negro servant, the whole party, numbering about thirty, was enlisted in the army before it set out in the spring of 1803 in a blaze of social glory. Mrs. Madison and the ladies of fashion provided every possible comfort, from that kindly impulse that prompts giving men doomed to execution a last good meal. But the fear that " they might never return from the distant land of savages " proved unfounded. After a silence of years they emerged from the wilder- ness with their tale of adventure that makes pulses quicken even yet. How it must have moved those' who heard for the first time of the marvels and perils of the Western region can be easily imagined. Both the commanders kept diaries. Lewis's trained style pales a little beside that of Clark, whose pen, like his sword, was coercive and drove panic-stricken letters into words perfectly intelligible to the sense, if not to the eye. His account has in it the very ripple of the Missouri on that May morning when they set off up-stream in a " jentle brease " past the huts of French habitants, " pore, polite, and harmonious." That jabbing pen of his had strange power to make pictures and draw character. Reading on, we seem to accompany the travelers into the unsettled country, rich in game, but purgatorial with all manner of crawling, biting insects. Camping with them on a sand-bar and watching while they sleep, we see the stealthy Missouri eating it away, piece by piece, above and below. We call out in horrified alarm, and the company has barely time to 50 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING take to its boats before the last square yard of earth vanishes in a dizzying whirl of. muddy waters. We stand beside brave Sergeant Floyd when he is " taken verry bad all at once with a Biliouse Chorlick," and see him die " with a great deal of composure " ; and we spend five winter months with the party inside a stockade at Fort Mandan, sixteen hundred miles above the mouth of the Missouri, where perils of flood and field are exchanged for a game of exciting diplomacy with the Indians and with French and British fur- traders. Beyond this point, where they wintered, all was un- known. In the spring they set forth again to push on through a region of fantastic mountain grandeur, over ground whitened by alkali, or black with coal, or red and yellow, or all four colors at once. Monster ani- mals invaded their camp at night. Rattlesnakes and mosquitos added effective torment by day. A worth- less Frenchman and an infant three weeks old were taken into the party, vicariously welcome for the sake of the Indian wife and mother, who had been captured in childhood from a Rocky Mountain tribe and was relied upon as guide. With her baby pressed close to her heart and the welfare of the party on her shoul- ders, she slipped into her place on the march and " made good." The dividing of the river left them at a loss which fork to follow. It split again, this time into three streams; and it was almost mid- August when Lewis stood at last beside the icy spring in which the Missouri takes its rise. On the very same day a stream was found flowing toward the Pacific. Caching boats and surplus stores, the party began crossing the heavily timbered Bitter Root Mountains, where the whole world seems to be crumpled in a serier of pre- AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 51 posterous ridges. Sacajawea, the Indian mother, ojjened friendly relations with a band of Shoshones, who directed the party and sold them horses. But after this snow-storms came to blind them, game dis- appeared, and they were obliged to eat some of the horses and set the others free. Finally, after great hardships, they came into a region where Indians knew the commodities, — and the wiles, — of white men, and on November 7, 1805, Clark jubilantly wrote in his diary, " Great joy in camp, — we are in sight of the ocian ! " following this by a tale of seas that " roled and tossed uproriously " and made several of the party very sick. They retraced their steps, and before the end of March, 1806, the principals made their report in per- son to the President. Neither of these young men did anything more that is noteworthy, which is perhaps not strange. They had done their full share by suc- cessfully piercing the continent from tide-water to tide- water. That a woman and a baby helped them, and a Negro and a dog loyally followed every step of the way, adds to the wonder and the human interest of their achievement. Yet it is disappointing that both gallant leaders faded from sight, one of them under a cloud. Made Governor of Louisiana Territory, Lewis died a year or two later in a squalid cabin either by murder or his own hand. The fate of Clark was not so dramatic. He, too, was Governor of the Louisiana region after it became Missouri, and later served as Indian agent, vanishing finally into total obscurity. Their places were quickly filled by others. The march of the West was too rapid and buoyant to halt either to search or to mourn for those who served it and dropped out. Far-off Oregon was soon to claim 52 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING the attention of the country, but now interest centered upon a West nearer home, the Louisiana Territory, which stretched between the Mississippi and the Stony Mountains. For three hundred years the threads of national destiny had been twisting and knotting themselves about the mouth of the great river while Spain and France, and later England, played the game of empire with that rich delta as the stake. The devious paths of exploration early sought it out. In 15 19, Alonzo de Pineda gave the river a Spanish name, and twenty- three years later De Soto went to his last long rest beneath its waters. Then the French claimed it. In 1682, La Salle and his men, carrying the cross and the banner of St. Louis down the stream, had buried leaden plates on its banks after the French custom, and taken possession for their king of all lands watered by it and its tributaries. Their high-sounding phrases reached no further than those of the Spaniards before them. The river flowed on unchanged even while their chants of Te Deum and Exaudiat, the sharp crack of firearms and their throaty cries of " Vive le roi ! " frightened the waterfowl that rose with a great flutter of wings, to settle again as soon as the echoes died away. But still their act was potent. It made the little band of wanderers less homesick ; and from that time on French loyalty grew among the few and scattered colonists, while French pride and avarice at court kept tight hold upon the distant valley. A hundred tricks of speech and name testify that the dwellers on the river were more French than Spanish, though in the lapse of years, as France and Spain both came to look upon America with a fierce and instinctive greed, they were ordered to shout now for Louis le Roi, now for AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 53 Carlos el Rey, at the whim of ministers or the exigen- cies of war. There were martyrs who dared protest, whose sen- tence of hanging no man, black or white, could be found to carry out, and whose death at the hands of a platoon of Spanish soldiers was witnessed only by blind walls and empty streets, the whole sorrowing population of New Orleans having streamed sadly through the gates into the open country to get beyond earshot of their guns. When the game of empire went against Spain finally, in 1763, she was forced to cede to England all her territory lying east of the Mississippi and north of latitude 31 ; but she kept for herself the Floridas and a strip of land safely covering both banks at the mouth of the river. At the end of our Revolution the land Spain had transferred to England passed from Eng- land's hands into our own, and became the North- west Territory. Meantime four of the States, — Connecticut, Massa- chusetts, North Carolina, and Georgia, — laid claim to portions of it; shadowy, overlapping claims stretch- ing westward through space and backward through time to kings' patents or original discovery ; as coolly impudent as New York's claim to another bit of land as legal heir of the Indian tribes. One after another these claims had been waived in order that the States might unite and adopt the Articles of Confederation. During the period of government by Congress the Northwest Territory was held in common, for the good of all ; and when the time came to mend the Ar- ticles of Confederation or break the bond, interest in this vast territory, and the certainty of losing it if they parted company, became the strongest motive for keep- ing the quarrelsome States together. 54 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Historians of the Convention of 1787 may there- fore paraphrase Mokke's bluff axiom that " geography is three fourths of miHtary history," since geography won our battle of nationality. It did more. It fur- nished the wherewithal to run the nation. The coun- try was bankrupt, but in a flash of inspiration the leaders saw their opportunity and seized it. Properly handled, even the uncertainty enveloping the great tract might be made an asset. No government could be maintained without funds. It was equally certain that money could not be coined out of thin air, though it might be coaxed from the earth. So with true Yankee ingenuity they seized upon this Pandora's box of conflicting claims and boldly turned it into the national money-chest. But Spain, holding its little strip of territory at the mouth of the Mississippi, had a strategic position. Only by free use of the river could the Northwest Ter- ritory hope to develop, and Spain seemed inclined to make trouble. In addition, a large number of people in the Eastern States could not be persuaded to regard the country west of the Alleghanies seriously except as a threatening menace. Hamilton, intent on issuing a currency based on Western lands as security, might point out the wisdom of keeping the Mississippi open to American commerce, and Jay wax eloquent over " extensive wildernesses, now scarcely known or ex- plored," " vast lakes and rivers whose waters have for ages rolled in silence and obscurity to the ocean," that would yet " hear the din of industry, become sub- servient to commerce, and boast delightful villas, gilded spires, and spacious cities rising on their banks " ; but there were others as patriotic who turned away from the glittering mirage to look cold facts in the face. They knew that there was not enough com- AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 55 merce west of the Alleghanies to keep open a trout brook, and were convinced that if those gilded cities ever materiaHzed, it would be a sure sign that the Union was too unwieldy to endure. They knew also that even in colonial times the cod-fisheries off the coast of Newfoundland had yielded threefold : choice fare for the Catholic countries of southern Europe, coarser, but wholesome, food for native Americans, and an abundant, if unsavory, refuse that was bought up eagerly by planters of the West Indies to keep life in their slaves. To their eyes such an industry dwarfed in importance any possible golden dream of Mississippi commerce. If something must be con- ceded to the demands of Spain, let her have the con- trol of the mouth of the Mississippi despite Franklin's homely protest that it would be cheaper in the end to buy Spain's interest outright ; that a neighbor might as well ask 'him to sell his street door. These unimaginative patriots were blind to the fact that even during the Revolution, when the fishing trade was cut off, leaving the poor blacks of the Antilles to starve, another stream of commerce, small and sluggish at first, had begun to move westward and southward, and was still moving and growing. Be- fore the Revolution the number of white settlers west of the Alleghanies, but within the limits of the thir- teen original States, had been few. But emigration persisted even during the years of war, and when peace was signed the few hundreds had increased to thousands. These people were clearing and tilling fields, and their produce, with furs from the wilder- ness, was being loaded on flatboats and floated down small streams into larger ones, then on through the Ohio and Mississippi to the sea. From New Orleans an enterprising merchant might take passage to Cuba 56 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING and make more sales, and, returning by way of Balti- more or Philadelphia, invest his gains in goods that could be transported by wagon across the Alleghanies and sold to his neighbors in the " back country." Such a round trip lasted from four to six months, and offered a fair equivalent in education for the schools and opportunities of the East. In the course of it the traveler saw many kinds of life, met many people, and heard many things, some of which were not soothing to his patience. He learned, for in- stance, that to transport his goods across the moun- tains by wagon ate up one third of their value; that he could send them down the Mississippi for only one twentieth of their cost, but that before reaching the mouth of the stream they must pass through one hun- dred miles of foreign territory and run the gantlet of Spanish officials, who made increasingly rapacious demands. He learned, too, that his co-citizens of the Atlantic seaboard, especially those of New England, were so hypnotized by the sea that they would pay no heed to his protests. This coldness the men of the West were quick to resent, claiming that the East was willing to exploit their region, but not to give it fair play ; and that this attitude was the same that England had held toward her colonies. The Democratic Republicans sympathized with the Western point of view more heartily than did the Federals ; but they were beset by a multitude of prob- lems, all of them pressing and many of them nearer home. They were therefore inclined to look leniently upon Spain's demands, if by so doing they could gain advantage elsewhere. Spain, growing bold, claimed exclusive control of the Mississippi as far north as Kentucky, and our ministers abroad were on the point of conceding the right as of little moment when in THE UNITED STATES // '=^ IN 1800 Ij,^. AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 57 1802 rumor came that the storm-tossed province of Louisiana had once more changed allegiance and was French again by secret treaty, Napoleon having bribed the Spanish king with the shadowy Kingdom of Etruria in Italy. This roused dwellers in the Mississippi valley to another protest, for they realized that while Spain was not an agreeable neighbor, her colonial strength had departed, and the United States could suffer little beyond temporary annoyance at her hands. With France it might be otherwise, for the Revolution had set many refugees upon our shores who were still French at heart, no matter what their fortune ; and Napoleon must be reckoned with, whose dream of empire, expanding with success, might no longer be confined within a single hemisphere. Jefferson's mind was hospitable to the Western point of view ; but he was a man of peace, fully convinced that the stars in their courses would bring about our ultimate ascendancy in the Mississippi valley. He was inclined to leave the matter exclusively ta them, putting off the day of reckoning " till we are stronger in ourselves and stronger in allies," and " especially till we have planted such a population on the Missis- sippi as will be able to do their own business." He recognized the river's commercial importance, and wrote to Robert R. Livingston, then our minister at Paris, that New Orleans was the one spot upon earth the possessor of which was our natural enemy, since the produce of three eighths of our territory must pass through it to go to market. Thinking it time to act if France was actually in possession, he instructed Liv- ingston to try to purchase New Orleans with the small strip of ground on which it is built. There was a tremendous outcry. It was not only 58 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING undemocratic, but ruinous both in money and policy. The United States already owned too much territory. Every added inch increased the danger of our un- wieldy republic breaking into pieces. Besides, — and this Jefferson's political opponents emphasized with undoubted relish, — what had become of the strict con- struction of the Constitution about which the Repub- licans were forever prating before they came into power ? Proposing to buy a foreign city was a greater liberty than Federals had ever dreamed of taking with the sacred document. Jefferson was clear-sighted enough to see the point and partizan enough not to enjoy it. " The less that is said about any Constitutional difficulty, the better," he warned his supporters. He tried to draw the sting by buying just as little land as possible, — so little that the manifest advantages would outweigh the in- discretion. Yet realizing that a destiny larger than party was moving upon the Western waters, he stuck to his plan to buy New Orleans, and sent James Mon- roe ovtr to Paris to help Livingston in the purchase. The French had received Livingston's opening sug- gestion with disdain. " Only spendthrifts sell their lands," he was answered. How far this show of virtuous indignation was genuine he could only guess. Talleyrand's compound of genius and duplicity was particularly baffling to the Americans. They knew by experience that he was not above demanding a personal bribe, and that a rebuff in no wise lessened the jaunti- ness of his bearing. They had encoimtered him offi- cially in the X. Y. Z. affair, and socially on our own ground when he visited America after making England too hot to hold him after being forced to flee the rigors of the French Revolution. Undeterred by the cold politeness of those who could not well refuse to AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 59 receive him, he had shrugged his GalHc shoulders, ac- cepted our provincial attitude as a tribute rather than a rebuke, and walked through the homes of America as he had through the palaces of Europe, charming, ac- quisitive, and observant. Now he was back in power upon his own soil, where his methods were understood and applauded. It was Livingston's turn to be watchful. He was by no means confident, because it was understood that Napoleon had promised Spain not to turn Louisiana over to an- other power. This, however, might mean much or nothing. Livingston could see for himself that France and England were rapidly drifting toward war, and it took no gift of prophecy to foretell that in case of war Napoleon would stand in desperate need of money. Meantime Napoleon seemed bent only on taking possession of his American domain. He sent a French army corps to Haiti as a preliminary to garrisoning Louisiana. Livingston was prepared to fall back upon the compromise of a right of deposit at New Orleans, with the privilege of holding real estate for commercial purposes, when the negotiation underwent a spectacular change of character and scope. Literally, Napoleon thrust Louisiana upon us. It was no skill of American diplomacy, but the acid of the Corsican's genius, working upon undeniable and un- pleasant truths, that caused him to change his mind without troubling to explain his reasons. Meeting Talleyrand by accident one April day, — it happened to be the day before Monroe arrived in Paris, — Living- ston renewed his offer. Talleyrand repeated his as- surances that his chief was firmly resolved not to sell New Orleans, since the province would be of small value without the town. Then he asked casually whether the United States cared to buy the province 6o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING and town together, and left Livingston speechless. The stars in their courses were working for America. The army corps sent to Louisiana by way of Haiti had been detained on the island by revolution and decimated by fever, and an opportune and very earnest report from one of his trusted agents made Napoleon medi- tate on the difficulty of holding Louisiana permanently, and hence on the follv of hampering himself in that far-ofif quarter while England and Austria were both menacing. If he lost the w^ar with England, Louisiana would undoubtedly be the price. If England did not get it, the United States might acquire it in time by mere energy and growth of population. Here was a chance to thwart England, strengthen friendship with the United States, and obtain a goodly sum for his war-chest, all at the cost of surrendering something it was uncertain he could keep in any event. The skill and courage of the Americans lay in taking a gambler's chance and closing with the offer, though they had no real authority to do so. Monroe brought with him Jefiferson's offer of $2,000,000 for New Orleans and the two Floridas, a very different proposi- tion. Livingston was inclined to regard Talleyrand's proposal as a jest, being unable to believe his ears. It was renewed two days later, however, in more concrete form by the French minister of finance, Marbois, whom Napoleon substituted arbitrarily for Talleyrand in the negotiations, perhaps partly out of distrust of his pre- mier, but mainly because Marbois had married an American, and, being an old friend of both Livingston and Monroe, was likely to reach quicker results. One hundred million francs was the price he asked for the province. Monroe, realizing that it was well to act promptly in dealing with Napoleon, shouldered the re- sponsibility and offered fifty. AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 6i Napoleon's two brothers, Liicien and Joseph, not yet aware of their own insignificance, heard of the pro- posed sale and attempted to remonstrate. Lucien in his memoirs has left an amusing account of the Corsi- can brothers, en vie intime, telling how Napoleon re- ceived them while seated in his bath, the w^ater pleas- antly scented and whitened by eau de cologne. They, having previously conspired to meet in his rooms for the purpose, stood shivering on the edge of the pool of discussion, each unwilling to make the first plunge, un- til the call was nearly at an end, and the body-servant approached, bathrobe in hand, to envelop his master. Then Napoleon, who had probably long since divined the reason of their call, opened the subject himself, and the amiability of the interview gave way to heated dis- cussion, the apoplectic purple of Joseph's face and the white anger of the First Consul culminating in a final burst of temper and waterworks, as with great vivacity of gesture and total disregard of the element in which he sat, the great man raised himself in his tub and sank back again, splashing the choleric Joseph from head to foot. But all protests were vain. His resolve once taken, Napoleon hurried negotiations to the utmost. With characteristic Latin cunning, the boundaries were left vague " as a safeguard," and also because defining them exactly would require too much time. On the thirtieth of April, eleven days before he declared war against England, a compromise was reached. The treaty was signed soon afterward, Napoleon remarking in a flash of prophecy, " I have by this act made the United States so great that that nation will sometime humble the pride of England." In less than three weeks from Talleyrand's first hint, Livingston and Monroe reported to their chief that although they had 62 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING exceeded his authorized expenditure by the bagatelle of $13,000,000, about the sum then required to run our government for a whole year, and had not secured Florida, they had at one stroke of the pen doubled the area of the United States. Jefferson's mingled emotions can be imagined. It was hard for his party principles, but his personal sym- pathies were all with the purchase. He knew the West' would enthusiastically sustain him, and also that mere patriotic pride could be depended upon to stifle some of the opposition. Meanwhile the inhabitants of Louisiana were still living under Spanish rule, ignorant that they had been once more made French by secret treaty in 1800. It was in December, 1803, after the province had passed into American hands, that the French prefect Lausant arrived to inform them of the earlier transfer. As a finale to these astonishing gyrations in nationality, they had the dizzying experience of changing within twenty days from Spaniards into Frenchmen, and from Frenchmen into Americans, while flags were lowered and flags were raised, national anthems sounded, and polyglot proclamations were read in which, from the very nature of the case, they could take but a sullen in- terest. CHAPTER IV A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE PRESIDENTIAL elections were a serious mat- ter. The Constitution originally provided that the man receiving the highest number of elec- toral votes should be President, and the one receiving the next highest number, Vice-President. This was ideal, but it did not serve the purpose. The first elec- tion after Washington retired was a disappointment; in the opinion of many the second narrowly escaped being a disaster. While the fright over this election was still upon the country, Congress proposed, and the States ratified, a constitutional amendment obliging Presidential electors to vote distinctly and unmistak- ably, upon separate ballots, for one man for President and another for Vice-President. Jefferson's second election was conducted under the amended law, and this time there was no uncertainty either in the vote or in the character of George Clinton, the man chosen to succeed Jefferson in case he should not round out his term of office. The country shuddered even yet over what might have happened had death removed Jefferson while Burr was Vice-President. \ Personality counted for more in American politics than it can to-day, after the leveling effects of free schools and free criticism have been at work for a cen- tury pulling down heroes and exalting the rank and file of the voters. Every member of that earlier group of leaders, — Washington, with his unfailing rectitude; (>3 64 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Adams, learned and hotly partizan ; Jefferson, with his many interests; Franklin, of broad charity and homely epigram ; John Marshall, " master in the common sense of Constitutional law " ; Randolph of Roanoke, body and fine intellect alike wrecked by drugs and self-es- teem; and all the rest of them, — stand out individual and distinct against a blurred background of "the people." But of all the political characters of that day, or, indeed, from that day to this, there is not one quite so mysterious, so elusive, so apparently useless as Burr, weaving the dark pattern of his ambition into the coun- try's history. And because no man can live exclusively to himself either for good or evil, with every mention of Burr's name the figure of Hamilton rises, an avenging ghost. Even before that precocious young native of the West Indies walked into our military history at Princeton, a lad only nineteen, lost in thought, a cocked hat pulled down over his eyes while his hand rested upon a can- non that he patted absent-mindedly as if it were a favorite horse, he had done valiant work for American liberty with his pen. From the time he touched our shores to the July morning more than thirty years later when Burr's bullet laid him low he was a force to be reckoned with. And his was one of those natures, keenly alive on many sides, whose astonishing maturity of intellect did not snuff out the zest of life. He be- came " my boy " to Washington very early in his serv- ice; worked willingly at headquarters day in and- day out, with a sober application equal to Washington's own, yet contrived to snatch from such never-ending drudgery youth's dear and fleeting joys. He brought gaiety even to Washington's mess-table, courted black- eyed Elizabeth Schuyler under the muzzles of British guns, and in the years of their married life together A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 65 managed \Yith all his prodigious labors to bend social graces as well as the solid qualities of his mind to en- riching their days and nights. Besides being a great statesman, he was " an enjoying gentleman," to use the quaint old phrase. Talleyrand, corrupt and ap- preciative, looked upon him with amazement. " II avait divine I'Europe," he said, which, from a Euro- pean of that day, about an American, was near the highest praise. Hamilton's management of the treas- ury, without breath of scandal or self-seeking, filled the Frenchman with even greater astonishment. " I have beheld one of the wonders of the world," he ex- claimed, — " a man who has made a nation rich laboring all night to provide his family with bread." To Americans such clean devotion to country was a matter of course, commendable, but no more than duty. But all acknowledged Hamilton's remarkable ability. Some even of his own party feared him. Adams's dread of him amounted to obsession. Many who ab- solved Washington from leanings toward monarchy charged Hamilton with deliberate intent to change the form of government. Jefferson, who opposed him politically and clashed with him personally, fully appre- ciated his power. When an old man at Monticello, looking back over the past, he used to say that the Re- publicans had done so and so; but if he spoke of the Federalists, he was apt to say that Hamilton took this or that ground. Taxed with this, he admitted, smiling, that it was quite true. He had fallen into the habit, he supposed, because he regarded Hamilton as the " master-spirit of his party." Burr also was a master-spirit, a name to conjure with, — in black magic. About the same age as Hamilton, he was, like him, slender of frame, delicate of feature, and refined in all small matters of taste. In his blood 66 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING were warring elements : German aristocracy on his father's side; on his mother's, uncompromising Puri- tanism. Death deprived him of both parents when he was very young. His unusually quick wit conspired with the fact of a considerable inheritance to render his childhood less disciplined than it should have been. One is tempted to believe that his early trend toward evil was at the outset only the revolt of childish, un- trained logic against shams as he saw them in his elders and guardians. Being misunderstood, it quickly be- came the bravado of proud youth, and in manhood grew to larger villainies threatening to involve a con- tinent. At the age of sixteen he was leaving Princeton equipped with his diploma, disillusionment concerning his professors, and a precocious knowledge of dissipa- tion. In some directions all he craved of the latter was knowledge. For instance, he never gambled after an early success at billiards. At seventeen he was deep in the study of theology, from which he soon emerged with the conviction that " the road to heaven is open to all alike," and thereafter shelved the matter as un- profitable for discussion. His youthful ambition was military. The excite- ment, the sudden changes of fortune, and the opportu- nity it gave for indulging that bent toward mystery which he possessed, all attracted him. Despite his refusal to follow up that first success at billiards, the game of war offered gambling on a scale grand enough to compel his interest. In his first campaign, — with Arnold to Quebec in 1775, — he showed both audacity and bravery. He played the spy in priest's robes dur- ing the advance, and it was he who rescued Mont- gomery's body where it fell. Like Hamilton, he became military aide to Wash- A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE dj ington, but the sober atmosphere of headquarters was not to his taste. The slow-moving rectitude of his chief's mind reproached and irritated this descendant of Jonathan Edwards, whose rapier-hke intellect was already turning to devious ways. The General was coldly unresponsive to the questions about military science that thronged to the younger man's lips, and on his part he had no mind to remain a mere drudging clerk, as Washington seemed to expect. The relation soon came to an end, with resentment on the part of Burr, and on Washington's a distrust that after events failed to remove. Three times while he was President, Washington was waited upon by committees of Con- gress to urge Burr for the French mission, a sugges- tion he put aside with the remark that he had no confi- dence in the young man. Burr's undeniable military genius was for small mat- ters and sharp emergencies. He was blessed with a body needing little food and little sleep, while able to endure immense fatigue. He was a strict disciplina- rian, had a power of detecting wrongdoers that bor- dered upon the miraculous, and in a crisis he could exercise an almost serpent-like fascination over un- trained men, bringing them under perfect, if temporary, control. His resignation from the army appears to mark the time when he definitely broke with the established code of morals. Until then he seemed, intermittently at least, to follow St. Paul's injunction to prove all things in a half-hearted hope of finding somewhere one " good " enough to claim and hold his loyalty. But he made his choice and cast adrift, with no rudder save ambition. " The adventure is the best of it all," he told a young acquaintance, speaking of life in general, and that came to be his guiding motto. 68 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING He established himself as a lawyer in New York State, where Hamilton was also practising; but his real interest was politics, law being only a tool to that end. Hamilton was diffuse and eloquent in argument ; Burr chose to be concise and conversational. Hamilton was the heart and brains of Federalism; Burr aimed to be- come the leader of the Jeffersonian Republicans. He saw the chances for political combinations latent in our form of government, and set himself to use them. An instrument lay ready to his hand in the benevolent and patriotic society started by Hamilton some years before to offset General Knox's well-meant blunder, the Society of the Cincinnati, whose " aristo- cratic " tendency had set the country by the ears at the end of the Revolution. This younger organization had mouth-filling titles, Wiskenkee lodges, and Sachems, grand, high, and plain, that fitted into his plans ideally. Its sub-title also, " The Columbian Order," suited him to perfection. To it and to politics he applied army principles, demanding perfect obedience from the rank and file, adding company drill in the form of committee rule, thus lodging power in a few capable, if not always scrupulous, hands, and started Tammany on its long and vigorous career. That Hamilton himself had been the founder made its deflection to Democratic uses all the more delightful. By adroit management, by refusing to admit failure even when party fortunes were low, and by his hypnotic power over men, he became one of the most skilful, as he was one of the earliest. New York politicians in the unenviable sense of that word. He reached to within one vote of the Presidency, helping himself in the final climb by use of the injudicious pamphlet Hamilton wrote attacking John Adams. Hamilton thought Jefferson " an atheist in religion and a fanatic A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 69 in politics," but of the two he vastly preferred him for President. Aside from personal prejudices, he pointed out that if Jefferson were elected, all responsibility for bad measures would rest with his party, while if the Federalists interfered and effected Burr's election, the whole responsibility would rest upon them. Jefferson, on his part, was little drawn towatd Burr. Hamilton, watching them, thought that there was " a most serious schism between the chief and his heir- apparent." Yet they never quarreled. Burr dined at the White House when etiquette demanded, and also at the tables of the cabinet. His daughter became a general favorite in society ; but on the whole he was a disturbing element in Washington. More than one of the many duels of the period can be traced to his door, and he continued to lose in popularity. As the time for the next Presidential election approached he went to the President to learn his intentions. Jeffer- son replied coldly that he had not interfered in 1800 and did not mean to do so now. Months before the election Burr's evil genius settled the matter beyond recall. He and Hamilton had been singled out for antagonists from the beginning, and the story of their duel is too familiar to bear repetition. Hamilton's opinion that Burr was " in every sense a profligate " had been often repeated with details and amplifications. It is only astonishing that in a period of high feeling and strict adherence to " the code " their final encounter was so long delayed. Yet when Hamilton fell mortally wounded on that early July morning, his death seemed nothing short of a national calamity and Burr's act wilful murder. Men forgot the" bitterness with which they had assailed Hamilton as a monarchist and an abettor of South American revolution. They remembered only his charming per- 70 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING sonality, the immense services he had rendered the country, and his magician's success in making a sound financial credit for the nation out of doubts and debts _ and an unexplored wilderness. " No one wished to get rid of Hamilton that way ! " John Adams declared, shocked into sincere and regretful speech. Burr- returned to his home after the duel apparently unmoved. A kinsman arriving from a distance to breakfast with him had no inkling of what had oc- curred, and on resuming his journey could not credit the news, so sure was he from evidence of his own senses that it was a lie. " The subject in dispute is, which shall have the honor of hanging the Vice-President? " Burr wrote his daughter, after the grand juries of both New York and New Jersey found indictments against him. Seeing that the storm of denunciation continued unabated, he left his house at night by water and disappeared for a time. But with the reopening of Congress he was on hand, took his seat as presiding officer of the Senate, and discharged his duties throughout the winter, though a fugitive from justice and under indictment for a capital offense. The fantastic situation reached its climax when it fell to his lot to conduct the impeachment trial of a Justice of the Supreme Court before the Senate. The spec- tacle of this malefactor thus engaged must have caused laughter among the immortals. Mortals, however, were impressed, he bore himself with such dignity and composure. A reaction set in, and for a time the duel w^as almost forgotten in admiration of his conduct of the trial " with the impartiality of an angel and the vigor of a devil." For a moment this admiration changed to emotion, even to tears, when, two days be- fore his term as Vice-President ended, he took leave A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 71 of the Senate in a short speech grave to the point of coldness. " It was the solemnity, the anxiety, the ex- pectation and the interest which I saw strongly painted in the countenances of the auditors that inspired what- ever was said," he explained. " I neither shed tears nor assumed tenderness; but tears did flow abun- dantly." Jefferson was undoubtedly glad to have him out of his official family. A Vice-President hanged for murder would not have been an edifying spectacle to present to the nations, but a Vice-President guilty and going unpunished was an object-lesson even less de- sirable. A month later Burr went into the South. His er- rand is even yet a subject of doubt. In that day of slow and difficult communication his projects and his progress were shrouded in eloquent mystery. Yet he traveled in a state befitting one who had held high office. ** My boat," he wrote his daughter, " is, prop- erly speaking a floating house." And when he reached the rich and settled regions of the lower Mississippi, he chose his society with the regal assumption that he would be welcome. " During the residue of my voyage to Orleans, about 300 miles, I shall take breakfast and dinner each day at the house of some gentleman on shore. ... I take no letters of introduction ; but when- ever I hear of any gentleman whose acquaintance or hospitality I should desire, I send word that I am com- ing to see him, and have always met a most cordial re- ception." To all these people he told variations of one story. To an angular major-general of Tennessee militia named Andrew Jackson, whom he visited at Nashville, he talked about Spanish aggression in the Southwest. For the benefit of Harman Blennerhasset, an excitable 72 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Irishman who lived with his young wife in a fool's paradise on an island near Marietta, Ohio, he hinted at interesting conspiracy. To others he explained that his sole intention was to buy and colonize a large tract known as the Bastop lands on the Washita River, To General Wilkinson, the highest military officer of the United States, and incidentally in the pay of Spain, he unfolded a scheme of a new Western empire made up of Mexico and the dissatisfied Southwestern States. He had known Wilkinson of old and did not over- estimate his loyalty. To no one, however, did he com- mit himself definitely. Perhaps he had not mapped out, even in his own mind, the limit of his desires. He was an opportunist, with a leaning toward surprising coups, and in this first trip he may have been merely taking soundings, trusting to chance to determine the final outcome. The throne of Montezuma is believed to have gleamed as his ultimate goal, and there are indications that his plottings began even before he left the Vice- Presidency, — in fact, at the very time when he was impressing the country by his dignity in trying circum- stances. If these suppositions be true, the scheme in- cluded such spectacular events as the capture of Wash- ington, the kidnapping of President Jefferson, and tam- pering with the United States navy. The British min- ister at Washington averred that he dangled part of such a plot before his eyes, offering to put the new empire under protection of the British flag in return for help in taking New Orleans. But finding that his Majesty's home office refused to be dazzled, he turned with characteristic effrontery to Spain, attempting to get money with which to rob her of her own colonies. With such unlikely foreign help, the aid of young and wealthy adventurers in the East and West, the ac- A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE • 73 tive cooperation of General Wilkinson, the credit of the rich Allston family of South Carolina, into which his daughter had married, and last, but not least, as- sistance from the priests of Texas and Mexico, he would take his seat upon the throne, make his daughter chief lady of the empire, his son-in-law heir presump- tive, Wilkinson general-in-chief, and Blennerhasset minister to England. The scheme is as grotesque as any nightmare, and this final touch encourages the sus- picion that Burr was playing upon personal vanity and enjoying his own sardonic joke. He was a knave, but no fool, and the idea of the gullible Blennerhasset in the role of ambassador to anything could never have entered a sane man's plans. But there was no harm in raising hope ; and he went his charming, insinuating way, scattering his poison and relishing the antics of his victims. His desire for the help of the priests made necessary marked attentions to the Catholics of New Orleans. Always alive to the dramatic contrasts of his posi- tion, he set himself to win their favor with a keen de- light in the situation. In view of his reputation as a libertine and his late prominence as a murderer, it es- pecially pleased him to visit the chaste ladies of the Ursuline convent in company with the reverend bishop. He wrote his daughter a detailed and lively account of the visit. We conversed at first through the 'grates ; but presently I was admitted within, and I passed an hour with them, greatly to my satisfaction. None of that calm monotony which I expected. All was gaiety, zuit, and sprightliness. Saint A. is a very accomplished lady. . . . All except two appear to be past thirty. They were dressed with perfect neatness, their veils thrown back. We had a repast of wine, fruit, and cakes. I was conducted to every part of the building. . . . 74 GUR NATION IN THE BUILDING At parting I asked them to remember me in their prayers, which they all promised with great promptness and courtesy — Saint A. with earnestness. ... I will ask Saint A. to pray for thee too. I believe much in the efficacy of her prayers. Burr's vague hints met with astonishingly cordial response. One resident of New Orleans promised $50,000 toward the enterprise. But to rail at condi- tions in the exaggerated and sometimes profane man- ner of the Southwest was one thing; it was quite an- other to follow words with action. The American privilege of free speech, bought and paid for, was easy to exercise while Burr sat opposite, listening with the absorbed interest that was his subtlest flattery. But after the fumes of wine had passed and the hypnotic charm of Burr's presence was removed, it was a more serious matter to count the cost of treason. Burr returned to the East, very possibly duped by the dupes he had made, a not uncommon form of auto-suggestion. August, 1806, saw him again jour- neying westward, this time accompanied by his daugh- ter. But sane and loyal men had had time to rally, and seeing the connection between Burr's plot and old jealousies of East and West, as well as old border resentments still smoldering against France and Spain, they denounced him in the newspapers. A few of his partizans were active. Blennerhasset set about a noisy attempt to raise a force of Ohioans, and Jackson, who should have seen under the tempter's mask by this time, called out the militia of western Tennessee, ready to invade either Florida or Mexico, though the United States was at peace with Spain. But even his im- petuous eagerness could not overlook certain dark hints, and he demanded assurance of Burr's loyalty. Society in the Southwest made much of the Burrs, A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 75 but the authorities began to deal blow after blow. In Kentucky, Burr's name was twice presented to the grand jury for treason. Henry Clay, a young and al- ready distinguished lawyer, acted as his counsel. Though successful in this case, a doubt lingered in Clay's own mind, and he, like Jackson, demanded a statement of intentions, which Burr cheerfully fur- nished.* One after another the men Burr had counted upon as supporters ranged themselves against him. General Wilkinson, having sounded his subordinate officers and found them hopelessly loyal, took the next logical step for a man of his caliber and turned in- former. Jefferson, deeming the time ripe at last for Federal interference, issued a proclamation for Burr's arrest. He had been in possession of some facts and many suspicions as early as January, 1806, but thought the enterprise too fantastic for government action. " It is," he wrote, " the most extraordinary since the days of Don Quixote," " so extravagant that those who know his understanding would not believe it if the proofs admitted doubt." At that time he was in- clined to leave it to be dealt with by the state au- thorities. The President's proclamation was answered from all parts of the country by military organizations of- fering their services. The document itself, traveling westward from post to post, overtook Burr near Natchez as he was dropping down the Mississippi with the flotilla Blennerhasset had collected for him. These boats were supposed to contain settlers and supplies for the Bastop lands. Burr slipped his chests of arms overboard, surrendered gracefully to the acting gov- ernor of Mississippi, gave bonds, then vanished in disguise into the Indian country. A reward of two thousand dollars was offered for his capture, and a 'jd OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING month later he was taken into custody near the Spanish border in Alabama. On his arrival in Richmond, where the trial took place, he found himself overburdened with social at- tentions. He invited his daughter to visit him in jail. I have three rooms in the third story of the penitentiary, making an extent of lOO feet. My jailer is quite a polite and civil man . . . you would have laughed to have heard our compliments the first evening. . . . While I have been writ- ing different servants have arrived with messages, notes and inquiries, bringing oranges, lemons, pineapples, raspberries, apricots, cream, butter, ice, and some ordinary articles. ... My friends and acquaintances of both sexes are permitted to visit me without interruption, without inquiring their busi- ness, and without the presence of a spy. It is well I have an antechamber or I should often be gene with visitors. If you come I can give you a bedroom and a parlor on this floor. The bedroom has three large closets and is a mXich more commodious one than you ever had in your life. Released on bail, he accepted hospitality outside his hundred- foot suite, and Chief-Justice Marshall, who was to preside at the trial, found himself one day at the same dinner-table, to his manifest great embarrass- ment and the prisoner's covert glee. The attention of the whole country centered upon Richmond, and the nation's most famous men crowded the courtroom; the younger aspirants to political honor eager to see and take note, the older men bring- ing with them their burden of experience and their personal liking or distrust. Witnesses were sum- moned from far and near, for, as Jefferson pictur- esquely expressed it, Burr's crimes had been " sown from Maine through the whole line of western waters to New Orleans." Andrew Jackson was one of these witnesses. If Chief-Justice Marshall had had his way, President Jefferson would have been another; but he A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE yj refused to do more than send his papers. The right of a President of the United States to the custody of his own executive papers was a by-subject of discus- sion. Clad in black, with queue and powder, Burr was once more a model of correct dignity, and con- ducted his own case with consummate sl>ill, the four eminent counsel he had retained being thrust quite into the background. The verdict of not guilty reached after a trial lasting weeks was at least technically cor- rect for it was proved that Burr had not waged war against the United States or adhered to its enemies, and that the levying of men that actually occurred had not taken place in the State where the trial was held. Poli- tics, of course, entered into it at every turn. It was claimed that the Federalists made Burr's cause their own and did everything to shield him. He had never been a Federalist ; but this shifty soldier of fortune had a way of enlisting the sympathies of every party in turn. Jefferson took a deep, some thought a vindictive, in- terest in the trial; but if personal dislike entered into it, he did not let it interfere to the hurt of others. " Remove the Major ! " he exclaimed, when urged to retaliate upon an officer at Richmond who opened his house to Burr's friends. "Remove the Major! I would sooner divide my last hoe-cake with him." Again at liberty. Burr went to Baltimore ; but, feel- ing the chill of public sentiment against him, made a hurried departure for England. The story of his wanderings abroad, of his return to America and of his existence in ostracized poverty until death released him at the age of eighty, reads like some grim master- piece of fiction. Whatever the portion of malefactors beyond the tomb, that thirty years' martyrdom in the flesh, within sight of those he had hoodwinked and those he had envied, ought to count as no small part 78 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING of his final expiation. Success, had it been possible, would have made him Emperor of Mexico ; death as a traitor would still have been attended with some splendor and renown : but the sordid existence to which he was condemned for more than a quarter of a century had in it not one drop of balm. Yet he bore his reverses, as he had his success, with a malevolent grace all his own. One cannot help ad- miring his courage after all zest had died out of " ad- venture." For at first there was zest in the game. He cut an attractive figure abroad in society, some- times under a borrowed name, sometimes under his own. Invited at last to leave London, he had the audacity to claim that he was a British subject, which so puzzled the cabinet that they referred it to the law officers, thereby granting him a respite of some months. Afterward he wandered through Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, always asked to move on. growing daily poorer. Learning that Napoleon had given his consent to the independence of Mexico, he hurried to Paris, to meet with studied coldness and have his passports refused at the instigation of the American minister. It was here that he received that oft-quoted message from Talleyrand, " Say to Colonel Burr that I will receive him to-morrow ; but tell him also that General Hamilton's likeness always hangs over my mantel," and even Burr's effrontery was not enough to carry him to the interview. Americans living in Paris would have nothing to do with him. One of them, however, lent him a little money upon which to live through the chill of a Pa- risian winter. His letters to his daughter, infrequent for lack of wherewithal to pay postage, mocked at want. " How sedate and sage one is with only three sous ! " he wrote, recounting gaily the subterfuges by A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 79 which he sought to outwit poverty. When remittances came he indulged in all sorts of speculation in the hope of recouping his fortune, invading for this purpose the opening fields of science and mechanics. His restless mind was as eager in these directions as that of Jeffer- son, with this important difference : Burr thought of them with himself as the center and beneficiary, while JeiYerson's interest was philosophic and impersonal. In one of his rare moments of affluence Burr or- dered a new set of false teeth, became intimate with the operator, watched the process closely, and when permission was finally given him to sail for America, bought and carried with him a thousand artificial teeth as a speculation. But the French ship on which he sailed had the bad luck to be captured by the British, and he found himself in London instead of America, with this strange luggage as his only asset. He placed his newly acquired knowledge at the disposal of his hosts, but they patriotically spurned the idea of having anything to do with French teeth. Reaching America at last under a name not his own, he made his way in wig and ill-fitting coat to the cus- tom-house to get permission to land his effects. The official on duty proved to be the son of an old enemy who would gladly have reported his arrival : and when his books were opened, all bore the name of Burr, in- stead of the Arnot he had just signed. But there was no need for his elaborate precautions ; he and his mis- deeds were forgotten. War had just been declared against England ; even his two largest creditors had no eyes for his return. It was humiliating, but convenient. He slipped into an unimportant law practice in New York City. Clay, meeting him, refused his proffered hand ; and as such rebuffs were repeated, he drew more and more into himself. 8o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Then came the great sorrow of his life. His daughter, saiHng from Charleston to join him, fell a victim to one of the unexplained tragedies of the ocean. There were weeks of suspense; but when the last slender thread of hope was broken, he put away everything that could remind him of the one being he had really loved, and bore his grief in silence. He sank lower and lower in the professional scale into mere pettifogging practice. Women took care of him out of pity, as they had before out of love. He could make love even yet. In a last effort to mend his fortune he persuaded a rich widow to marry him. They soon parted, and when paralysis claimed him three years before his death, it was in the home of a humble and kindly matron that he awaited the final summons. It is a sordid story, and morally quite what he deserved ; but it is a sad story, too, with enough of doubt in it to indulge the hope that the blackest charge against his name is false, — that he did not deliberately plot to break up the Union for his own personal glory. He denied this at his trial, and in old age in the very presence of death. He admitted plotting revolution in Mexico, but as for the other, he asserted hotly that he would ds soon have thought of dividing the moon among his friends. Feeling against Mexico was in the air. Jackson's eagerness to cross the border never called forth serious reproach. The time came when the feeling could no longer be restrained. Burr's biographer described him lying a paralytic, eyes blazing, newspaper in hand, when war was finally declared. " There ! You see," he exclaimed, " I was right. I was only thirty years too soon. What was treason in me is patriotism now." The final estimate of a man may not agree with A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 8i even his honest opinion of himself, and it is possible that this being of strangely warped and gifted nature was sincere in his own villainies, the victim of his own talents and eccentricities. Since the Almighty works with what to the finite mind seem such very poor tools, it ill becomes fellow-mortals to usurp day of judgment power ; but it seems strange indeed that Destiny could not have used his youthful military talents and spared a bullet for him in some brilliant brush with the enemy. CHAPTER V AN AMAZING WAR JAMES MADISON, who succeeded Jefferson as President, was a warm personal friend of the latter, and had been for eight years his secre- tary of state. He was Jefferson's logical successor, too, according to the custom that had grown up of bestowing the office upon a man of great prominence and long service. His mind was of the same quality as Hamilton's, if less brilliant, and Jefferson used to declare that he was the one man in the Republican ranks who could answer that colossus of Federalism. Although now of Jefferson's party, he had begun his political life as a Federalist, and his admirers called him the Father of the Constitution because he was the author of the resolution that brought about the Con- vention of 1787, with its train of momentous conse- quences. Despite his ability and this grandiloquent title, he was personally insignificant and uninspiring. "What Presidents we might have had, sir!" a Washington barber lamented soon after Jefferson went out of office. " Just look at Daggett of Connecticut or Stockton of New Jersey ! What queues they have got, sir! As big as your wrist, and powdered every day like real gentlemen, as they are. But this little Jim Madison, with a queue no bigger than a pipe-stem, sir ! It is enough to make a man forswear his country." Jefferson's face beamed on inauguration day. His friends noted this during the ceremonies at the Capitol, 82 AN AMAZING WAR 83 where Madison read his address in the newly ^nished Hall of Representatives. " I do believe father never loved son more than he loves Mr. Madison," wrote a spectator. " And I believe, too, that every demon- stration of respect to Mr. Madison gave Mr. Jeffer- son more pleasure than if paid to himself." Short and wrinkled, with a cast in his eye, and a voice scarcely audible in public speaking, the new President did not make a good impression as he began his in- augural address. He was pale and " trembled ex- cessively," and the swaying motion of his body, and all the peculiarities of his poor delivery, including his air of having risen casually with no intention of making a speech and desiring above all things to escape, were as annoying as usual. But he gained poise as he pro- ceeded, and Jefferson was convinced that his friend would develop equal assurance in dealing with the problems of his administration. That night at Long's Hotel in Georgetown, where guests thronged to the inaugural ball, the Ex-President was in evidence again, joyous and smiling, a contrast to the dismal little figure in black standing beside Mrs. Madison, regal in her yellow velvet, pearls, and turban. Some thought her the abler, as she was the better favored, of the two. " As to Jemmy Madison," wrote Washington Irving, who had come with a host of others to seek office, — " ah, poor Jemmy ! He is but a withered little applejohn." To intimate friends this withered little man could talk delightfully, but in the presence of a crowd he re- treated into bored and almost repulsive silence. He had the misfortune to be born with the sober character- istics of an old man. Even in college he had been pain- fully correct and industrious, doing double work, and shunning the slightest appearance of frivolity. His 84 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING president made the damaging assertion that during his whole stay at Princeton Madison never did an indis- creet thing. It was fortunate that his lively wife was at hand to supplement his lack of magnetism, Madison certainly did a very briUiant thing for his own career when he persuaded the young and attrac- tive Widow Todd to marry him. Blessed with energy and social tact, and that genuine love of her kind with- out which social tact is Dead Sea fruit, she had emerged from her Quaker chrysalis, donned the brocades of fashion, and entered heart and soul into his ambitions. She dressed his shrunken little queue with her own hands, saw that his black clothes were tidy and smart, and in every possible way, from such wifely service to the more subtle and intimate infusion of her own spirit into his apparent timidity and indifference, strove to make others recognize the qualities of greatness that she saw in her short and wizened husband. She brought eight years of experience to her new position, for she had often acted as hostess at the White House during Jeff'erson's term of office, and his demo- cratic experiments in the rule of " pele mile " had pitted her more than once against angry diplomats and their women-kind. In such encounters her infectious good humor usually triumphed, just as it enabled her to keep her old friends, even those wfio dressed in gray, while making worldly new ones. A story is told of her entertaining a staid and worthy Quaker at dinner after her transformation into a woman of fashion. " Here 's to thy broad beaver, Friend Hallowell! " she said merrily, raising her glass. To which he replied, letting his glance just sweep her bare bosom, to rest quizzically upon the paradise feather in her turban, " And here 's to thy absent kerchief, Friend Dorothy ! " But the strictest could not make serious objection to her AN AMAZING WAR 85 frank and open pleasure in pretty things, and all were forced to admire the social generalship with which she helped on her husband's projects. She did not invade the realm of politics. That was her husband's busi- ness. Hers ended in the drawing-room. Madison's ability proved to be intellectual rather than executive. His long experience had been with public measures, not in directing men ; and while Jefferson concluded the eight years of his Presidency with virtually the same cabinet he chose at the outset, Madison's counselors changed with the frequency of April weather, and, like April weather, not always for the better. One secretary of state, two secretaries of war, and one each of the navy and the treasury retired in haste, either voluntarily or by request, and there were other changes of a less painful character. As the years went on, the war department became the post of greatest difficulty; and after Monroe entered the cabinet as Madison's secretary of state, circumstances compelled him to act also as secretary of war at three or four separate periods. Since the National Bank, which had been established by Hamilton for a period of twenty years, was to end by law in 181 1, questions of finance would naturally have loomed large in this administration; but in retro- spect Madison's term of office is occupied, to the virtual exclusion of other matters, with the preliminaries, the fighting, and the aftermath of the War of 18 12. The greater part of his first term slipped away in seasons of alternate hope and gloom. War had seemed almost inevitable when Jefferson retired from office ; then for a time the cloud appeared to be lifting. The Embargo had given way to the less stringent Non-Intercourse Act, which forbade American ships to trade with Eng- land or France, but permitted trade elsewhere. The 86 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING British minister at Washington, over-sanguine, prom- ised that if this act were not enforced, his country would stop its tactics of capture and search and allow our ships to go where they would, unmolested. Madi- son, believing he had authority to make this promise, agreed to the terms, and American vessels to the num- ber of a thousand or more joyfully shook out their white sails and put to sea, only to find that the agree- ment was disavowed and that the English captured our vessels and impressed our seamen more vigorously than before. Such acts had already exasperated the country to the limit of endurance. At this renewal of them the war party clamored louder than ever. Henry Clay, who was now leader of the Young Republicans in Con- gress, made speeches bristling with aggression, to which Congress responded by voting to increase the regular army and authorizing the President to accept fifty thou- sand volunteers. Clay also urged the building of ten new frigates, the policy of the last administration having in effect re- duced the navy to a f^eet of gunboats for coast defense, with a tendency to capsize in anything but a mirror- smooth sea. But the feeling that a navy was danger- ous to a republic still persisted despite national satisfac- tion over the outcome of our war with Tripoli. Clay therefore dwelt artfully on the need for ships to pro- tect the mouth of the Mississippi. Monroe in the cabinet was as ardently in favor of war as Clay in Congress ; but Madison held off. Per- haps he was constitutionally averse to the great step; perhaps he felt that the country was ill prepared, what- ever the justice of her cause. His delay was not for lack of thought upon the subject, for three years before he became President he made a study of the British AN AMAZING WAR 87 position as to neutral trade, and summed up its results in a pamphlet which he caused to be laid on the desk of every senator and member of Congress, a study that John Quincy Adams thought " not inferior to the works of any writer upon those subjects since the days of Grotius." The Young Republicans lost patience and declared that he " could not be kicked into a war," and, as his first term was nearing its end, cast about for somebody to nominate in his stead. They approached Jefferson ; but Jefiferson had managed to keep up at least a fiction of peace while President, and showed no desire either to supplant his friend or to resume office at this critical moment. It has been asserted and denied that the war party finally forced Madison to action by this threat to nominate some one else. At any rate, war was de- clared ; whereupon both sides fell to abusing him, the Young Republicans for having delayed so long, the Federals for daring to make war at all. They called it " Mr. Madison's war," and waxed sarcastic over the effrontery of one who " glimmered in harmless debate in times of peace " presuming to interfere in world politics. Some of them voiced the opinion of Europe that he was only the tool of Napoleon, who was using the United States as he would us^ Bavaria or Saxony, and had ordered Madison to stab England in the back " while her hands were tied." This European idea, absurd as it seemed in America, is scarcely surprising in view of the neat chain of circumstantial evidence. Napoleon's plans had materially aided our purchase of Louisiana, and the money paid for Louisiana had all gone to finance campaigns against England. The na- tions gathering to deal the French emperor a crushing blow could scarcely fail to see in this inopportune 88 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING declaration of war another proof of secret understand- ing, and to frown upon a measure that distracted Eng- land from their common purpose and cut off food-sup- plies that otherwise might go to feed their own armies. The chances of the struggle, as seen from the far side of the Atlantic, appeared from the first more favor- able to the United States than when viewed nearer home. The poor harvests, the wretched financial con- dition of England, even the bad weather from which she suffered, helped by aggravating local distress. And the first news of actual fighting to reach Europe was Captain Isaac Hull's dramatic capture of the Brit- ish ship Gnerriere, which more than counterbalanced his uncle William Hull's surrender of Detroit without a blow, word of which was received at almost the same moment. British sea prestige was very dear to Eng- lishmen and very real to other nations. In conjunction with the disquieting events on the Continent, — Wel- lington's troubles in Spain and Napoleon's entry into Moscow, — the loss of the Giierriere assumed magnified importance, and Europe began to look upon this new war with growing respect. But it would have been a very bold prophet who could have predicted its course and final outcome, since the War of 1812 was one of those freaks of history wherein facts and figure and conclusions tumble over one another to bring about results at variance with ex- pectation and common sense. In the first place, the wrongs and injuries that led to it were not directed primarily against tlie United States. England and France were striking at each other's com- merce. Ours, being in the way, suffered the fate of the innocent bystander. For a time it appeared uncertain which of these countries was to be our enemy; yet the two had been at swords' points for years, and it would AN AMAZING WAR 89 seem that the foe of one must necessarily become the friend of the other. After war was declared, it was found that New England, the part of the country that had suffered most from British depredations, was most bitterly opposed to it. In Rhode Island bells were tolled as for a fu- neral. In Massachusetts the governor proclaimed a fast. In Connecticut representatives of all the disaf- fected regions met in the Hartford Convention and pro- posed to break up the Union as a lesser evil. The United States was virtually without a navy, yet by some miracle our ships accomplished incredible things on every ocean of the globe ; while on land, where we had an entire population to oppose to an enemy that came by ship-loads a distance of three thousand miles, we seemed unable to fire an effective shot. Fighting ended by common consent, not because of our success in battle. Our one brilliant land victory did not take place until the signatures upon the treaty of peace had been drying eleven days. That treaty failed even to mention the chief cause of the war, and the out- come of the whole topsy-turvy struggle was to gain for us an amount of consideration quite out of keeping with the numbers involved or the intensity of the contest. Of course such inconsistencies are only apparent. As Admiral de la Graviere remarked, " Fortune was not fickle, merely logical." Injuries had made the inno- cent bystander an active participant, and protests and retaliation having failed, the only alternatives were war or complete withdrawal from the seas. England and France had treated our commerce in the same way, but England was the stronger. It had passed into a saying that when France launched a war- ship she was only adding it to the British navy, and in the long run England captured nine hundred of our 90 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING vessels as against five hundred and fifty seized by the French. England, moreover, added to injury of our trade the insult of habitually taking from our vessels such sailors as she chose to impress into her own navy. Although we had a whole population to draw upon, it was poorly trained for fighting, if, indeed, it could be said to be trained at all. The regular army was a mere handful, and its higher officers were most of them incapacitated by age or infirmity. The militia lacked everything a militia should have except individual cour- age. Hence it is not strange that what little fighting took place on land did not redound greatly to our credit. The young and enthusiastic war party had declared that there was no need for a navy ; this was to be a land war. But the fighting refused to stay on land ; even the long Canadian border, by a Hibernicism worthy of the other eccentricities of the conflict, resolved itself into a land frontier composed mainly of water, lakes Ontario, Erie, St. Clair, and Champlain, with the Detroit and Niagara rivers, being strategically of more importance than the unbroken wooded solitudes of northern Maine or New Hampshire. Our tiny navy, on the other hand, was well trained and waiting. Within an hour of receiving official no- tice of hostilities Commodore Rodgers put to sea with his five ships. Even the way in which victories seemed to roll out from this nucleus toward every quarter of the globe is not so mysterious, after all, for as in the case of the children of Israel at the Red Sea, the forces of nature took sides, and " a strong wind " helped the weaker party. One glance at the map that shows ocean currents makes this clear. Our frontier was very long. Begin- ning in the Gulf of Mexico near the mouth of the AN AMAZING WAR 91 Mississippi, skipping Florida, which still belonged to Spain, it began again at the southern limit of Georgia, extending from there to the Bay of Fundy, and then westward as far as population existed or hostilities might reach. The British owned two points from which to attack us. Bermuda and the islands of the Greater and Lesser Antilles gave them a base from which to menace New Orleans and the Southern coast; while Halifax, their main base in the Western Hemisphere, furnished them the point from which to attack our Northern harbors, strike at the fisheries of New England, and provision Quebec, England's principal depot for the Canadian waterways. But all British war-vessels ordered to America, no matter whether their destination was Hali- fax or the South, were obliged to sail directly toward our shores. Our navy's tasks were three : to keep British ships and supplies from reaching Halifax or entering the St. Lawrence ; to intercept those bound to the West Indies ; and lastly, to harass British commerce wherever found. The declaration of war put an end to the small remnant of trade that had managed to survive the Embargo, but it released American merchant ships and their well- trained crews for other work, and they speedily entered the navy or took out letters as privateers and began to prey upon British trade. The English reached our shores in numbers large enough to threaten and burn as far inland as guns could carry, but they were never rich enough in secrets of inlet and harbor to prevent dozens of such vessels slipping out to sea, manned by a class of sailors that Great Britain had already paid the un- welcome compliment of gathering into her own navy to the number of six thousand or more. So the " fir-built things with a bit of striped bunt- 92 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING ing at their masthead," as the English press derisively called our ships at the outset, grew under the stimulus of British guns into a very efficient navy that was heard and felt not only on our own Atlantic seaboard, but off the coasts of England, Ireland, and Portugal, the West Indies, the shores of British Guiana, at the easternmost point of Brazil, the Canary Islands, Chile, the Gala- pagos Islands, even in the jMarquesas group in far-off Polynesia, — a confusion of hemispheres and continents unaccountable until it is seen how all were bound to- gether not only by patriotism, but by ocean currents and the winds of heaven. As was the case in our war with the Barbary pirates, these encounters might have taken place in the Middle Ages. Steam had indeed been harnessed to move upon the waters, but it had not been adopted for the battles of life. The one steamer on Lake Champlain was speedily remodeled with schooner rigging because its machinery gave endless trouble. The Fulton, proto- type of modern ironclads, with its ram and its few heavy guns, was launched only toward the end of the conflict, too late to influence the character of the fight- ing; and torpedoes, tried and found wanting during the Revolution, were frowned upon not only because they failed in their purpose, but because they were a new and " dishonorable " mode of warfare. Sails were still the motive power, and seamanship was a matter of superlative skill nowhere shown to better advantage than in the three-days' chase that Captain Hull led five British commanders, using every artifice and expedient, venturing into perilously shallow water, kedging and towing when the wind failed him, and escaping at last in a heaven-sent squall of wind and rain. A month later he sought out one of the five and closed with him in the fight between the Constitution AN AMAZING WAR 93 and the Giierriere. The battles were for the most part duels of the old sea-rover type, echoes of which reach us across the century in words fast becoming obsolete and actions already consigned to melodrama. The fighting was no child's play. The clash of cut- lasses and grappling-irons, the falling of masts and entangling rigging, fierce courage, and a fiercer regard for the gallantry of war, as when the British Captain Dacre sent his ten Americans below so that they need not fight against their countrymen, — all these things went into it. A heart-warming amount of courage went into it, and a heartrending amount of carnage, too. When the Americans from the Wasp boarded the Frolic after forty minutes of fighting in tremendous seas, they found only four men alive, one seaman still at the wheel, and three officers, all wounded. War was indeed hell then as now, but it was a more showy and picturesque hell than the cold-blooded, machine-made, mathematically calculated inferno of twentieth-century battle. With the same long ancestry of sea-rovers behind them, British and Americans acquitted themselves, man for man, equally well. The difference lay in their training. As a rule the Yankee sailors had practised their calling in varied forms since childhood, and could turn from setting sails to firing guns, from ship's car- pentry to hand-to-hand fighting, as occasion demanded. The British, trained to only one kind of sea duty, were less versatile. The greatest difference lay in marksmanship ; and in this English gunners were scarcely to blame, since a conservative and economical Government limited the number of shot that could be " wasted " in mere practice, making it so small that it amounted to none at all, while the Americans, with reckless extravagance, were continually aiming and 94 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING firing their guns and practising at close range with small arms and single-stick. In the few cases where the preponderance of training and discipline was on the other side, as it was in the fight between our Chesapeake and the British Shannon, whose com- mander loyally disregarded hampering orders of Gov- ernment, victory remained with the best gunners. The Americans fought and captured, and fought again until in turn they were captured. Porter on the Essex, losing his consorts hundreds of miles from a friendly harbor, pushed on rather than turn back, doubled the Horn, broke up the British whaling in- dustry in the Pacific, and lived for a year and a half upon the enemy, capturing all his supplies, even the money with which to pay his officers, before the hour came when the Essex had to strike her flag. In the first six months of such warfare America captured from England as many ships as the latter had lost to the whole world in the previous twenty years. On the Canadian frontier the contest grew into one of ship-building as well as of ship-fighting. The prob- lem there was to get complete control of the inland waterways, and this could be done either by capturing the enemy's vessels or by forcing them into port and keeping them blockaded. When one side launched a ship, the other tried to outclass her by a larger and better one. The falls of Niagara made it necessary to maintain separate fleets on Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, thus doubling the labor. On Lake Ontario, where this preliminary warfare of planes and saws was carried to the greatest length, Kingston and Sackett's Harbor were the respective headquarters of the British and the Americans. On Lake Erie the Americans were at Erie and the British at Detroit, surrendered by General Hull at the beginning of the war. AN AMAZING WAR 95 All supplies for such ship-building contests except timber had to be brought from a great distance. For the British they came from England; for the Ameri- cans they were hauled by wagon from towns on the Atlantic coast by way of the Mohawk valley, over roads so bad that in effect the source of supply was farther rerrioved than England itself. Crews also had to be provided on both sides, since war demands its sacrifice of human flesh and trees could not be fashioned into sailors. British tars could indeed be ordered from place to place, but Americans could not be sent to the Lakes against their will, since at that time men enlisted in our navy only for duty on particular ships. Population on our side of the Canadian border was sparse, and the service was one of hardship and small pay. Americans who took part in the battles in which these ship-building contests ended were there- fore a strangely mixed company, coming from a dis- tance, often at great personal sacrifice. It is said that of the 430 men under Perry in the battle of Lake Erie over one fourth were Negroes and many more belonged to the state militia. On his side Barclay had Indian sharpshooters and British regulars as well as the lake sailors and frontiersmen who made up a large propor- tion of both fleets. That these freshwater sailors fought with as much gallantry as their brothers on the high seas the story of the lake contests fully testifies. Perry, erect in his little cockle-shell of a boat, with his flag floating over him and shot plowing the water on all sides, is a picture that has stirred the blood of American school-boys for the last hundred years ; and there were other lake battles as creditable and picturesque, if not so dear to school historians. On salt water and fresh the sailors acquitted them- 96 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING selves well, and won the stakes for which they played ; but rarely has there been greater discrepancy between prophecy and fulfilment than in the land operations of this War of 1812. The Young Republicans boasted that they would carry hostilities into Canada, capture it without an army, and dictate peace at Halifax. They counted upon the sympathy of Tories who had departed from among us during the Revolution, and also on help from French-Canadians, — vain hopes both. The French-Canadians showed that they felt themselves of an alien race, while loyal subjects of King George had seen nothing to change their minds since the battle of Bunker Hill. The American army proved as fruitful in disap- pointments as the navy was prodigal of glorious sur- prises. Here, also, fortune was merely logical. Mus- ters and training-days had degenerated into seasons of carousal or at best into political rallies. Each inde- pendent American prided himself on knowing how to shoot and was confident that he had courage to defend his home ; but he strongly objected to having any other man, particularly a neighbor whom he knew in the damaging light of horse trades and prayer-meetings, order him to do either. The militia, therefore, while made up of the best fighting units in the world, was woefully deficient. The small regular army was a mere skeleton, with many necessary parts missing. These were supplied by Congress with all possible speed. One of Presi- dent Madison's letters mentions " a very large batch of nominations for the army, of twenty-five thousand," which must be followed by others. As invariably happens when so many are called, few are divinely chosen to lead in battle. As Jefferson once said, " The Creator has not thought proper to mark those on the AN AMAZING WAR 97 forehead who are of stuff to make good generals." In- stead of gaining victories, most of them lost reputa- tions. The few older officers who had served in the Revolution fared rather worse than the untried men. General Hull opened the ball by surrendering Detroit and the whole of Michigan Territory without firing a shot, was court-martialed and sentenced to be shot for cowardice, but pardoned because of his fine record in the earlier war. A second attempt at invading Canada a few months later, while not so disastrous, was equally barren of victory. General Wilkinson, squandering in ill-considered and fruitless movements the little honor he managed to bring out of his en- tanglement with Burr, was also court-martialed, and though acquitted, w-as never again trusted with a com- mand. Things were going very badly. Madison proposed to make Clay a general, since his ringing speeches for " Free Trade and Sailors' Rights " had power to rouse patriotism and inspire hope. " But what shall we do without Clay in Congress? " was asked in remonstrance, and the question was en- tirely justified. Clay was needed in Congress and had a wider field of usefulness outside the army than within it. In time the war developed officers of true metal, like Jacob Brown, who was a born general although a Quaker farmer; young Winfield Scott, equally predestined to military glory; and William Henry Harrison and Andrew Jackson, whose exploits in this war carried them far on their road to the White House. But temporarily the outlook was not cheer- ful. Stonington, Connecticut, and Lewiston on Delaware Bay suffered bombardment and its train of conse- quences. Cape Cod saved its salt-works only by pay- ing a ransom. In the Northwest the situation was 98 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING seriously complicated by Indian troubles, Tecumseh, the powerful Shawnee chief, having made an alliance with the British in the hope of ending once for all American encroachments upon Indian lands. It was against these party-colored allies that Harrison won his victory and his military reputation at the battle of the Thames, In the South also, in that wild region into which Burr had fled after his arrest, there were Indian uprisings. The Creeks lived wedged in between growing American settlements and the semi-hostile Spanish frontier, while to the south of the border were the troublesome Seminoles. These likewise seized the opportunity to regain, if possible, lost ground. Andrew Jackson and his Tennessee militia were sent to cope with them. Jackson had almost as much difficulty with his troops as with the savages, but, showing himself as fiercely impetuous in dealing with mutiny and famine as in striking the foe, gained a notable victory at Horseshoe Bend, and established once for all his character as a general to be obeyed. After all, only the very edge of the country suffered from the English. We \yere holding our own, though apparently doing nothing more. In truth, however, experience and careful drill were improving the army. The best man at this imperative, if monotonous, duty was the handsome General Scott, the most showy product of the war. A lawyer by profession, not one of his rather spectacular early experiences was more spectacular than the way he turned soldier, as heroines of ghost-stories turn gray, in a single night. It hap- pened, according to his own account, at Richmond, whither the budding lawyer had gone to attend the Burr trial, looking on it as a fine professional study, and by no means oblivious to the dramatic interest of the crowded court-room. The proclamation issued by AN AMAZING WAR 99 President Jefferson after the Leopard's bold attack upon the Chesapeake reached Richmond late one night and threw the town into a state of excitement. It forbade the British warships entering American rivers or harbors for water or provisions, and called for volunteers. Scott belonged to no military organi- zation, but the next morning found him in the ranks of the Petersburg troop of cavalry, fully equipped, " having traveled twenty-five miles in the night, ob- tained the uniform of a tall, absent trooper, and bought the extra fine charger " upon which he rode. The un- certain course of the Government made him hesitate for some years between law and arms, but there was never any doubt of his real vocation, and the War of 18 1 2 gave him experiences in active service ranging all the way from that of prisoner to successful general, not omitting an excursion into regimental medicine. In this he dealt with a threatened outbreak of cholera, supplanting the efforts of a scared and drunken sur- geon by his own heroic, if irregular, methods and liter- ally forcing his men to keep well " by command." But the greatest service he rendered was through persistence in drill and discipline. The Government trusted such matters entirely to Providence, furnishing no text- book or manual to its officers. Scott improvised one from a French work on infantry tactics, formed his officers of all grades into squads for practise, and drilled his troops mercilessly ten hours a day, if weather permitted, giving attention at the same time to sanitation and other details of camp life, of which his soldiers were as innocent as babes. The value of his work was seen, and his became the recognized sys- tem of the Government, remaining in use until the Civil War, when new inventions in guns and ammuni- tion made changes necessary. 100 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Matters dragged along with no decisive result until the summer of 1814, when a lull in the fighting on the continent of Europe enabled England to send to this country a larger force than she had hitherto been able to spare. In August the British Admiral Cockburn arrived off the coast of Virginia with twenty-one ves- sels, bringing with him General Ross and three or four thousand veterans of the Napoleonic wars. Un- able to prevent a landing of this force, Commodore Barney of the American squadron disembarked, to make what feeble resistance he could, with the aid of militia, at 'Bladensburg, a few miles from Washing- ton. He was taken prisoner, and the invading force marched on toward the capital. Such of its in- habitants as could get away fled, taking their most precious and portable valuables with them. The archives of the state department were hastily bundled into linen bags and carted off to Leesburg, thirty-five miles distant; and President Madison and his cabinet disappeared into the Virginia woods. The spectacle was not inspiring, yet it would have done the country no good had these high officials waited patiently at their desks to be taken into custody. Of the subse- quent burning of Washington, the less said the bet- ter for American pride or British glory. Ross of Bladensburg, to use the title conferred on the British commander by the regent, lost his life at Baltimore within the week. The invaders themselves were never very proud of the exploit, which was vehemently de- nounced in 'the House of Commons. A story easy to believe is told to the effect that the British officers sailing up the Potomac on this ungrateful errand un- covered as they passed the burial-place of Washington, and remained with bared heads until Mount Vernon faded from sight. But respect for his ashes did not AN AMAZING WAR loi prevent their reducing to ashes a large part of the city that bore his name. Mrs. Madison, cheerfully assuring her husband that she had the necessary " courage or firmness to re- main in the President's house " when he rode away to find what was left of the army, makes quite the most- heroic figure in the picture silhouetted against the burning Capitol and the bursting shells of the navy- yard. " My friends and acquaintances are all gone, even Colonel C. with his hundred who were stationed as a guard in this inclosure," she wrote her sister. " French John [a faithful servant] with his usual activ- ity and resolution, offers to spike the cannon at the gate and lay a train of powder which would blow up the British should they enter the house. To the last proposition I positively object, without being able to make him understand why all advantages in war may not be taken." She waited until the enemy was virtually at the gate, delaying even then until Stuart's large portrait of Washington could be wrenched from its frame and added to her carriage-load of government property. " Our private property," she wrote, " must be sacri- ficed." Then she, too, drove away, and French John, forbidden to carry out his bloodthirsty desires, care- fully locked the White House door, deposited the key with the Russian minister, left his mistress's pet macaw at the house of a friend, and retired to Philadelphia to await the outcome. A storm that broke in tropic fury the day after the British entered Washington, unroofing houses that their torch had spared and burying some of the invad- ing soldiers in its ruins, did more to hasten their de- parture than they would care to admit. Warned that the enemy had discovered his whereabouts, Madison 102 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING spent the last hours of this storm in a miserable hut in the woods, where his wife joined him; and after all manner of danger was over the bedraggled admin- istration returned to take up its labors in such quar- ters as were still habitable. ■ At the end of a campaign of a week or more in the neighborhood of Baltimore, productive on the Ameri- can side of Francis Scott Key's patriotic song " The Star Spangled Banner," and on the British side of little that endured, the English departed. They went South to join the relative and able lieutenant of Wel- lington, Sir Edward Pakenham, who had been sent to take Nev Orleans. The military situation at the mouth of the Missis- sippi was not reassuring, and the administration could do little to better it; but it did the one thing needful when it put in command that same angular Andrew Jackson who had already made several brief, but effective, appearances in American history. He ar- rived on the second of December, and instantly set every local resource to work, denominating factions, and coercing all to united action in throwing up earth- works, mounting guns, and searching out every avail- able ounce of ammunition. The campaign lasted from the eighth of December, when the foremost of the British vessels anchored off the Chandeleur Islands, to the eighth of January, when the decisive battle of New Orleans was fought, eleven days after the treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent. Peace negotiations had indeed been going on almost as long as the war itself. The Czar of Russia offered his services as mediator, through John Quincy Adams, our minister to Russia, in September, 1812, virtually as soon as he heard of it. The delays of winter mails AN AMAZING WAR 103 brought his friendly offer to Washington in March, 1 813. It was instantly accepted, and James A. Bayard and Albert Gallatin were sent to help Adams in the negotiations. They reached St. Petersburg late in July, and there learned that England had declined the Czar's offer. Hoping that the refusal was not final, they waited. In November England proposed to re- open negotiations, this time directly with the United States. British diplomatic dignity and the slow course of communication again delayed matters, so that it was early August, 1814, before the English and American commissioners began their joint sessions in Ghent. Two more Americans, Henry Clay, leader of the war party in Congress, and Jonathan Russell, minister to Sweden, had been sent to join Adams, Bayard, and Gallatin. The mutual relations of these five men were not free from friction. Adams and Clay were especially uncongenial. Adams, son of the former President, middle-aged, learned, and precise, " one of the kind of men that keep diaries," was dominated by Puritan austerity. Clay, ten years his junior, hot-tempered, and brilliant, if only superficially educated, according to Adams's standard, was emphatically no Puritan, and outraged Adams's sense of fitness a dozen times a day. Russell, a man of only ordinary attain- ments, was under the influence of Clay. Bayard showed a disposition to stick to his own opinion when it differed from that of the rest. To the genial and patient Albert Gallatin fell the difficult lot of peace- maker not only in acrid private disputes among them- selves, but at the tedious formal dinners through which etiquette compelled the Americans to sit with their British antagonists and jest over the impossibility of ever agreeing. Thus weeks and months dragged on 104 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING as they fought their way point by point to final settle- ment. The treaty as signed on the twenty-eighth day of De- cember was variously regarded. Clay thought it " a damned bad treaty," and did not hesitate to say so. In certain high quarters in England, on the other hand, it was looked upon as a great opportunity thrown away. " An able minister would have continued the war," Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Napier declared, " until the Northern States withdrew from the Union, making a separate treaty with England; after which England could have raised the Negroes of the South, marched to Washington at the head of an immense force of armed and disciplined black regiments, and dictated peace, making Delaware an independent black State in alliance with England." So much depends upon the point of view ! The treaty was certainly a great gain over Great Britain's original demand that the United States set apart all the territory now occupied by Michigan, Illi- nois and Wisconsin, with large portions of Ohio and Indiana, to be a buffer between Canada and the Union, and for the perpetual use of the Indians; that the United States, moreover, give Canada a piece of Maine through which to make a road from Halifax to Que- bec; that it renounce the right to keep armed vessels on the Great Lakes, and assure to British subjects the right to free navigation of the Mississippi. As finally agreed upon, it left the question of terri- tory exactly where it had been at the beginning of the war, and it failed to mention impressment or the rights of neutrals, for which the United States had taken up arms. But it carried our point in fact if not in words. In the House of Lords it was declared that the Ameri- cans had " shown a most astonishing superiority over ALEXANDER HAMILTON From the painting by John Trumbull, in the Governor's Room City Hall. New York AN AMAZING WAR 105 the British during the whole of the conference," and in Canada it was predicted that such a disgraceful peace could not last. " Torrents of blood must flow " on both sides, the Montreal " Herald " declared, be- fore a real peace could be obtained. Despite the chagrin of those Americans who had talked so grandly about invading Canada and dictat- ing terms at Halifax, the treaty was welcomed at home with suitable and, for the most part, hearty rejoicings. One sarcastic newspaper asserted that more citizens of Massachusetts were hurt in celebrating peace than had been wounded in the whole course of the war. The manner in which news of the treaty became public shows the speed, — or lack of it, — with which im- portant tidings traveled one hundred years ago. The British sloop of war Favorite brought Mr. Henry Carroll, one of the American secretaries at Ghent, to New York with copies of the treaty on Saturday, February 11, forty-four days after the sig- natures were affixed. He departed next day for Washington, which he reached shortly after dark on the afternoon of Tuesday, February 14. Meantime New York had been flooded with hand-bills and illumi- nated with candles, and the stock-market had re- sponded to the joy sounding through the streets. Merchants, anxious to get advance word to their cor- respondents in the South, sent off an express ahead of Mr. Carroll, and on Monday morning, more than twenty-four hours before he and the treaty reached Washington, a Connecticut congressman asked the city postmaster to oblige him by delaying the de- parture of Southern mails for half an hour or so, an easy-going practice not uncommon, and always granted when asked for by a man of sufficient prominence. The postmaster, inconveniently inquisi- io6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING tive, insisted on knowing why. He was sworn to secrecy and told. Then he refused to shoulder the responsibility, and the matter was carried to the post- master-general. That official declined to act without authority of the President. Mr. Madison, shaken from his usual air of indifference, declared that he would make the news public at once; but all felt hampered by the pledge of secrecy already given. So Mr. Cole, the President's private secretary, was sent to the war office with orders to repeat the news as a rumor, vouching for nothing, but leaving each per- son to draw his own conclusions. An army officer, hearing Mr. Cole, volunteered to mount at once and spread the story broadcast as far as his horse could carry him. Meanwhile the congressman, having been balked of his mails, sent off a private messenger, and these two, army officer and messenger, galloped in an exciting fifty-mile race to Fredericksburg, from which point an obliging innkeeper forwarded the officer's message. But it was all energy thrown away, since the British squadron ofif Amelia Island had notified Savan- nah on the very day that Mr. Carroll landed, and the South had the news even before he left New York. By noon of Monday the rumor, released by the President's order, was frying about Washington. Men flocked into the streets asking if it could be believed. At dusk the editor of the " National Intelligencer," the one paper published in the city, waited upon the Presi- dent to ask the same question. He found Mr. Madison sitting alone in the twilight, apparently unconcerned. He showed an affable interest in the rumor and hoped it would prove true, but professed to know as little as his questioner and had no advice to give except to suspend judgment and await events. Confirmation thundered down Pennsylvania Ave- AN AMAZING WAR 107 nue the next evening in the coach and four that carried Mr. Carroll toward the office of the secretary of state. Again the streets filled with people cheering and gesticulating as the carriage clattered over the wooden bridge that spanned the Tiber. That night the doors of the Tayloe house, tempo- rary home of the President since the British burned the Executive Mansion, stood wide open, and all Washington, resident and official, crowded around Mrs. Madison, who did the honors while her husband and the cabinet, in another room, sat in judgment on the treaty. All were in gala attire, ladies in their choicest finery, judges in their robes, major-generals and aides and foreign ministers in their uniforms. Quarrels were forgotten and political animosities buried in hearty hand-shakes and general rejoicing. In his character of newspaper editor, Mr. Gales was summoned from this happy assembly to the room where the President conferred with his cabinet. Sub- dued joy sat upon the faces of every one of them. The President, after kindly stating the result of their deliberations, addressed himself to the secretary of the treasury in a sportive tone, saying to him : " Come, Mr. Dallas, you with your knowledge of the contents of the treaty derived from the careful perusal of it, and who write with so much ease, take the pen and indite for this gentleman a paragraph for the paper of to-morrow to announce the reception and probable acceptance of the treaty." This Mr. Dallas did in terms as stilted as those in which the command was given, for in such dignified and leisurely fashion was American journalism con- ducted in the year of grace 181 5, CHAPTER VI THE OPENING WEST WITH the signing of the Treaty of Ghent His- tory blotted the page, turned a leaf, and bade the United States begin a new chapter. Issues, conditions, and the point of view all changed. Europe regarded the United States with vastly in- creased respect; but the great achievement of the War of 1812 was the transformation it wrought at home. The experience of common danger and a com- mon pride of victory welded the States together as nothing else could have done. It opened wide to them the vista of what they were to become, united and powerful. Up to that time our chief concern, all unconsciously, had been our relation to Europe, — what Europe would think of us, how we should fare in the making and keeping of treaties. With the return of peace, what the rest of the world might choose to think suddenly became of minor importance, and the country entered upon the second phase of its life as a nation, — thirty years or more devoted to the contemplation and eulogy of its own greatness, — giving the rest of the universe only such time as it could spare from this engrossing occupation. It was the hobbledehoy, boy-who-can- do-without-any-help stage, doubtless necessary to de- velopment, but unattractive, and most provoking to European onlookers. In this second period political domination passed 108 THE OPENING WEST 109 from Virginia and New England to the cotton-grow- ing regions of the South and the new States of the Mis- sissippi valley. Cotton assumed immense importance in industry and in politics, and the region beyond the Alleghanies, which had been a disturbing possibility to Federalists of the old school, became a vital and vocal fact in Congress and in commerce. The land-hunger that has played so large a part in changing the face of the American continent appears to be ours by inheritance, a legacy through a long line of Goth and savage ancestors from some remote, naked colossus, who wielded his club in obedience to primal instinct. It seems stronger than volition, stronger far than reason. Parties and men who have honestly tried to oppose it have gone down to defeat. Parties and men who have dishonestly urged it on have flourished for a time at least, and the country has profited by their acts. Manifest destiny is an arro- gant phrase, sadly overworked ; yet history seems to whisper that there may be something in it. The early explorers annexed in the name of their sovereigns all the land that they sighted and all about which they were told. The colonists coming after them took all they needed at the moment from the Indians, and with the growth of new settlements claimed ever-widening western horizons. At the end of the Revolution the Federalists, dis- mayed at the size of the Government, limited their desires strictly to what lay near at hand, voicing the sentiments of the humble-minded farmer : " I ain't graspin'. I only want the farm that j'ines on to mine." But even the Federalists admitted that sooner or later the land that " j'ined " would have to be taken in, — admitted it sorrowfully or with resignation or secret elation, according to their natures. no OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Upon the Western map Hamilton read balance- sheets written close with figures of the country's pros- perity. Jay, it will be remembered, saw in his mind's eye, and tried to make Congress see, " delightful villas, gilded spires, and spacious cities rising." Gouverneur Morris, turning resolutely away from the beguiling mirage, strove to regard the Western region in the cold light of fact. He wrote: As to the navigation of the Mississippi, everybody knows that the rapidity of the current will forever prevent ships from sailing up, however easily they may float down. Now, unless some new dragon shall be found whose teeth, sown on the banks of the Ohio, will produce seamen, I know not where else they will be obtained to navigate ships abroad, which can never return home. He felt obliged, therefore, to favor admitting Spain's claim, and advised giving up the mouth of the river. Which goes to show that that far-off primitive an- cestor, land-hungry without knowing it, wielded his club in rhythm to a higher law than mere reason. Jefferson, unhampered by Federalism, let his mind run riot over the map. He saw the empty spaces filled with population, and, dividing them into States, gave them names mostly of his own devising: Sylvania, Saratoga, Cherronesus, . Assenisipi, Metropotamia, Michigania, Illinoia, Polypotamia, Pelisipia, and Wash- ington; monstrosities like lumbering centaurs, half- buffalo, half-Mercury, the very look of which inspires gratitude that the map he really saw was so nearly blank. Even before the Revolution the region between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi had been well blocked out. Posts, founded by early French explorers at dates remote enough to be respectably ancient accord- THE OPENING WEST in ing to European standards, nourished themselves upon our wild beasts, and endured as centers of the fur trade. At St. Louis, Kaskaskia, and Vincennes, French accents could be heard, mingling with Indian gutturals and the drawl of pioneer speech, and in such places unexpected elegancies of life were to be found side by side with the rudest of frontier customs. Who had been first among white settlers of the Atlantic coast to cross the mountains, or when or where they crossed, no one knows. Little by little the American sequence of trapper, pioneer, surveyor and husbandman pushed westward, drawing its alien civili- zation with it. One after another names of new settle- ments appeared upon the map. Among the earliest was Cumberland, given in a fit of nostalgia by Dr. Thomas Walker, forerunner of Boone, to the noble stream and mountains that reminded him of England across the sea. Another was the Watauga Common- wealth, where John Sevier, as President of the " State of Franklin " lived in primitive luxury a republican king, dispensing justice and dealing out mercy accord- ing to his own sense of right. This was the state so far away in the wilderness that eighteen months elapsed before Franklin heard of his Western namesake, and sent embarrassed thanks, supposing it had really been called Frankland, and regretting he was unable to ac- knowledge the honor more substantially than by good wishes. There were the Holston settlements which were to endure and become Kentucky; the ill-starred Moravian community, wiped out by massacre in 1782; and year by year an ever-increasing number of lonely clearings in the forest where men toiled and hunted and defended their homes, and women drudged and bore children in ever-present dread of Indian attacks. Even before the Revolution so many settlers had come that 112 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING whole regiments marched from behind the mountains to take part in the struggle, and at the close of the war hundreds went West where one had gone before. The great difficulty of the mountain barrier lay in its immense length and width rather than in its height. Three hundred miles of ridge upon ridge from east to west made hard traveling for the early settlers ; but it could be pierced at four separate places. In the north the Hudson and Mohawk valleys led to the upper Alleghany, and that in turn led to the Mississippi River by way of the Ohio. Farther south was the valley of the Potomac, which offered a route direct to the upper Ohio. Still farther south lay the way through Cum- berland Gap, a natural entrance from Virginia and the Carolinas. This was a favorite also with Pennsylva- nians because of comparative ease in travel, though it lengthened their journey many miles. Last of all, the Western country might be reached through the strip of low land along the gulf coast. Once beyond the moun- tains, emigrants had before them the whole great mid- dle plateau of the continent, with its varying zones of richness, from the tree-clad Alleghanies to the poison- ous alkali-beds of the Western desert, from the north, packed with undiscovered coal and minerals, to the regions of sugar-cane and cotton. Through the center of this, dividing the known country from the unknown, the Mississippi coiled on its southward way, fruitful and predatory by turns. The four routes across the mountains were so far apart that emigrants started westward along their own parallels of latitude, to which they were apt to cling, it being easier and more natural to remain in a climate to which they were accustomed. As yet the greater portion of emigration came from the Southern and the central Atlafitic States, for it was only with the com- THE OPENING WEST 113 pletion of the Erie Canal in 1825 that New England poured its overflow into the upper Ohio and Mississippi valleys. The southward trend of the Ohio River, chief natural highway into the West, swept the few who ven- tured from Northern States south as well as west ; and the fact that the country to the north of the Ohio, " the Indian side," remained for many years in possession of the red men, delayed settlement there long after its southern bank, as far as its junction with the Missis- sippi, was dotted with clearings and towns. As the warlike Creek and Choctaw and Cherokee Indians of the South were likewise effectually pre- venting settlement in their neighborhood, the frontier swept northwestward from Cumberland Sound, then the extreme southern limit of United States territory, toward the Mississippi, which it reached at the point where the Ohio flowed into it. White settlement thus, even before the War of 18 12, had assumed the form of a great wedge of invasion that was later to press forward, spread out, and possess the land. Kentucky, already an old State and a strong one, lay at the point of this wedge. It had been the second to enter the Union after the Revolution, and when it did so in 1792 its population already numbered 100,000. It was progressive, too. From the time it had been a mere oasis of white settlement in the wilderness it had supported institutions " for the teaching of Latin, Greek, and the different branches of science." As eager for new ideals of political freedom as for these old ones of culture, it had forged rapidly ahead to prominence in national councils. It owned cotton mills and nail factories, dancing-schools and societies for the promotion of useful knowledge, long before it was out of the pioneer stage. It had even produced a few 114 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING painters of portrait and landscape. It also developed many citizens with an aptitude for politics and a gift for oratory, — a new and effective school of states- manship of which Henry Clay was the eloquent flower. Its rich country was originally a sort of neutral zone threaded with Indian trails, a territory where none might dwell, but through which all were at liberty to move in hunt or war. The shade of its forests was so dense, the story of its white settlement so full of tragedy, that it was known as the " dark and bloody ground." The great character of its pioneer period had been Daniel Boone, whose picturesque, half- legendary figure stands for all that is typical in that vanished phase of our national life. Born in Pennsylvania, he had grown to manhood on the banks of the Yadkin in North Carolina, had built his hut, and married early, after the fashion of the locality. But he found tilling the ground dull work when the forest called. Expeditions into it to hunt game or to make salt at the salt-licks where animals and men alike went to satisfy their cravings, only fastened its dominion more firmly upon him ; and when a wan- dering Indian trader strayed across his pathway and told him of the rich country to the west called Ken- tucky, which in the language of the red men meant " at the head of the river," or " Long River," he gave himself up to his task with a fervor that was little short of fatalism, believing himself " ordained of God to settle the wilderness." With this Indian trader for guide, he and five others left the Yadkin in May, seven years before the out- break of the Revolution, and hunted all that summer through a country he never tired of extolling; for Boone had the eye of a lover for nature's beauties and no little eloquence in describing them. When win- THE OPENING WEST 115 ter came he and one of his companions were cap- tured by Indians. Making their escape, they searched long and imavaiHngly for the rest of their party. In- stead, that marvelous coincidence only found in the drama and the dealings of Providence led them through unnumbered miles of wilderness straight into the arms of two other white men, one of whom proved to be Boone's younger brother, who had started out to fol- low him. Their companions were soon waylaid and killed, but the two Boones spent a long winter un- molested in the forest. By spring their ammunition had run low, and the younger brother went back to the settlements for a new supply, leaving Daniel alone in the woods " without bread, salt, or sugar, without company of my fellow-creatures, or even a horse or dog " for three long months. He exercised great caution, hiding his camp and sleeping in the cane-brake if the signs were not to his liking, but he was absolutely without fear, " which," as he sagely wrote in his memoirs, " is vain if no danger comes, and if it does, only augments the pain." After the safe return of his brother they hunted a year longer, and then made their way back to their homes. In 1773 he started westward again with a party that met disaster at Cumberland Gap. His eld- est son and a number of others were killed by the In- dians, and the rest, dismayed, retreated to safer regions. Soon after this he was called upon by the Governor of Virginia to guide a party of surveyors through Ken- tucky, his rude, but practical knowledge of com- pass and chain being an added qualification. Later he was given command of three garrisons in the new region, and after that the history of the State is for some years the history of his own personal prowess. A month before the beginning of the Revolution he ii6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING was opening up the " Wilderness Road " from Virginia to Kentucky. Afterward he made his mark in the legislature of the infant State, as he had already done in its forests. It is sad and also characteristic that as the country filled up and pioneer virtues were supplanted by subtler arts of peace, Boone, who had done more for Kentucky than any other man, found that the land upon which he had settled, and which he thought his own, had been wrested from him by trickery. Once again he emigrated, this time across the Mississippi into what is now Missouri, but was then still the Spanish colony of Louisiana. Here he accepted a commission from Spain, and here Lewis and Clark, on their way west in 1804, found him with his married children settled around him. In all the arts of woodcraft and those strange super- senses by which men so gifted find their way unerringly without trail or guide he was wonderfully endowed. He had a serviceable knowledge of medicine as well as of surveying, and a " way " with men white and red. " He was my father, my physician, and my friend. He tended me as his child, cured my wounds by the use of medicine from the woods," wrote one of his road party. His influence with the Indians was a mystery even to himself. In the course of his strange career he killed dozens of them with his own hand, but he did it with- out rancor and without incurring their enmity. Even the murder of his eldest son, the loss of other relatives, and the capture of his own daughter by the savages, failed to move him from his attitude of impartial, im- personal justice. Three separate times the Indians made him prisoner, but they never harmed him. Once they carried him in triumph to Detroit and exhibited THE OPENING WEST 117 him as a trophy to the Long Knives of King George, but they could not be induced to give him up. He carried on the game of hfe and death inspired by certain notions of chivalry even toward animals. Mighty hunter that he v^as, and he " hunted steadily " " when not on other duty," one of the bills he advo- cated in the legislature was for the protection of game. Deer and their like he killed only when hunger or need of their skins for clothing drove him to it, but he warred relentlessly upon beasts of prey, as he did upon hostile savages, as enemies of the whites who were flocking into the new region. He and his class were followed by the husbandmen who took up the lands pioneer and surveyor opened to them. Such lands were abundant and cheap. Hamil- ton's early scheme for making the Northwest Territory banker and pledge for the young nation had undergone some changes. Hamilton had reserved certain tracts for subscribers to the national loan, and placed the rest upon the market to be sold in lots of a hundred acres to actual settlers, or in townships ten miles square to capitalists, at a price of thirty cents an acre. He originally suggested twenty cents, but a virtuous Con- gress demanded more. Small purchasers were re- quired to pay cash, the others to finish payment in two years. But under these conditions there were few small purchasers. Even the poorest had confidence enough and enough of the gambling spirit to try to buy in larger quantities. So in 1800 the price was changed to two dollars an acre, and again in 1820 it was changed to one dollar and thirty-five cents, without credit. But even at two dollars an acre a man was shiftless in- deed who could not hope to own a family estate. Though not necessarily better Americans, these peo- ple west of the mountains were more distinctively ii8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING American than those to the east. Long after pioneer days were over their closeness to pioneer conditions in- fluenced their point of view. They built schools and called them colleges before their fields were fenced, just as the colonists on the coast had done ; but the old feudal distinctions of caste and privilege that had successfully crossed the Atlantic a century before, and still persisted in older communities, had been unable to gain a foot- hold beyond the mountains. Accidents of birth or of wealth no longer set a man apart from his fellows. In subduing the wilderness it had been found that a horn of powder counted for more than an ancestral sword. Europe, with its arbitrary standards, its politics dyed in oppression, its wonders of architecture, and all its luxury of worldly gear, seemed very far away. Hav- ing demonstrated to their own satisfaction that they could create new homes and keep bright the ideal of liberty, these Westerners were in danger of forgetting their country's place and obligations in the family of nations. England was not to them the mother coun- try, but the country they had successfully fought and whipped. The Spaniards on the border to the south and west were a subtler, though less immediately sinister, menace than the Indians. France was not the country that had sent us Lafayette, but a nation of maniacs flying at one another's throats. Settlers from the North and settlers from the South carried with them their own sectional ways and prej- udices, which circumstances gradually modified; but there was one point upon which they united as one man against the people of the East. That was the future greatness and present needs of this new region. They charged the East with inability or lack of will to pro- tect them from Indian raids and the harassments of THE OPENING WEST 119 Canadian and Spanish allies of the red men ; and when specially incensed they indulged in threats of following their own destiny, of breaking away from the indiffer- ent older States, and forming a confederation of their own in the Mississippi valley, ignoring the fact that even if all they charged was true, they would be no better able to cope with Canadians, Indians, and Span- iards after secession than before. The successful outcome of the War of 181 2 silenced these threats, if it " did not effectually remove the distrust between the regions. Then followed years when conditions on both sides of the Atlantic literally pushed people into our Western country. A great growth in manufactures at the end of the war largely changed industrial conditions in America. In 1800 nineteen twentieths of the population had lived upon farms. Even yet the raising of food-stuffs was the great national industry, but the change to manufactures was too rapid not to cause hardship. It became diffi- cult to find employment either in town or country, and hard to sell the produce grown upon Eastern farms. The roads leading westward filled with processions of men and beasts and goods, the well-to-do traveling with their flocks and herds in caravans numbering from two wagons to fifty, the poorer in little household groups, sometimes grotesque and sometimes pathetic, the man pushing the scanty household belongings in a cart or even carrying them on his back, while his wife and babies trudged beside him. Thus the Western proces- sion moved forward, impelled in part by enthusiasm, in part by want. Capitalists went upon an impulse of business expansion that opened new roads and new industries in reckless disregard of momentary needs and resources. As for those dependent upon their two hands, who had no plant to sacrifice and little to lose I20 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING in any event, it was but natural they should betake themselves westward in the hope of bettering their fortunes. There was still another element in the great move- ment. New types of faces were now to be seen. After Napoleon's downfall the breaking up of Con- tinental armies released thousands who hurried away from battle-scarred Europe to try their fortunes in a new world. For the most part they were wage-earn- ers, in need of instant employment. Coming at a time when the United States was itself in the throes of business depression and recovery from war, they com- plicated not a little the industrial situation in the East, and numbers of them joined the westward procession. But the presence of these Europeans did not lessen the aggressive Americanism of the West. The French Revolution and Napoleon's meteoric career had left as residuum not so much the fruit of victory as horror at their excesses. Anarchy had staggered back into respect for order. Fear of one man's imperious will had driven bickering nations into the semblance of con- cord out of which present-day Europe was to emerge. Battle, murder, and sudden death had sent emigrants flocking to this country, but they all accepted as fore- gone conclusions the principles for which the soldiers of our Revolutionary armies had died. The older im- migrants might sigh in secret for Europe, but it was for a long-past, golden vision of their youth, not for the recent misery from which they had fled. The younger ones knew only the misery, and as they became used to the New World and its ways, they were well satisfied with a country where there was no conscrip- tion, where the industrious had a chance to rise, where even in times of want there was usually enough to eat. They wrote to their relatives left behind, these THE OPENING WEST 121 came, too, and the westward stream of emigration, both foreign and domestic, grew in volume every year. After the completion of the Erie Canal opened an easy water-route from the north, travelers went both up and down the Mississippi Valley. " More than half the whole number of emigrants now arrive in the West by water," was the statement made in 1832. " The remark applies to nine tenths of those that come from Europe and the Northern cities." Germans ar- rived in substantial numbers in 1820. In 1833 came many thousand more to settle in Cincinnati, change St. Louis from its early French aspect, and lay the foundations of broad and solid industry throughout the Middle West. There was still unlimited land. The sequence of hunter, pioneer, surveyor, and husbandmen pushed on. The great wedge of invasion that had broadened and flattened and pressed hard against the Mississippi, * crossed it and took its way over the plains. Trains of white-covered emigrant wagons, streaming in broken lines by day, at night formed circles, with the women and flocks inside, to make improvised fortresses against the Indians. And before the rich prairie lands of Kansas and " loway " were well settled, while broad reaches of arable land and an unknown desert yet stretched to the west, discovery of gold on the Pacific coast sent many more thousands on a new venture across the continent. Meantime the East as well as the West was experi- encing changes. Wide differences of custom re- mained. Slavery and a genial climate had, in our southern Atlantic States, grafted care-free prodigality upon feudal English notions. New York was still strongly Dutch. New England was Puritan to the backbone. Even their holidays were different. On 122 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING New Year's day visiting and the exchange of greetings possessed the inhabitants of Manhattan like a frenzy. Ladies in their best frocks and the clergy in their vest- ments received in state, while men of all grades of so- ciety hurried from house to house, intent on covering the whole list of their acquaintances, lest a failure to call might be taken amiss. Confectioners advertised giant seed-cakes weighing as much as fifteen hundred pounds baked for the festival season, and people thronged to see the huge loaves before they were cut up. In the South, Christmas was the season of feasting and rejoicing both in the " great house " and the slave quarters. Farther north, " Deeds, not words " was the motto of the New-Englanders, who chose to be ungracious in both. They frowned upon Christmas as popish and expressions of good will at the beginning of the year as a waste of breath. Thanksgiving was their day for what to other temperaments would hav^ been jollity. Reunited families gathered " in their usual places of worship," and after the lengthy duty of thanking the Lord was over, went home to eat an inexpressibly hearty dinner and to conceal more or less successfully covert criticism or approval of " in laws " and blood relations. While such diversities remained, dawrting national consciousness rapidly drew the different regions to- gether in self-satisfied glorification. There was one holiday in which all parts of the country, even repressed New England, joined with abandon. This was Fourth of July, with its speechmaking and its noise of cannon and hurrahing. " The whole atmosphere was filled with Independence " in a sort of inspiring, national in- toxication. The one sentiment in which all united re- gardless of region or religion or politics was the con- THE OPENING WEST 123 viction that the United States had the best form of gov- ernment upon earth and that American society was more moral, and therefore more highly desirable, than anything to be found in the effete monarchies of Eu- rope. De Tocqueville wrote : Nothing is more embarrassing in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A stranger may be very well inclined to praise many of the institutions of their country, but he begs permission to blame some of the peculiarities which he observes, — a permission which is, however, inexorably refused. America is therefore a free country in which, lest anybody should be hurt by your remarks, you are not allowed to speak freely of private indi- viduals or of the State, of the citizens or of the authorities, of public or of private undertakings, or, in short, of any- thing at all except it be of the climate and the soil ; and even then Americans will be found ready to defend either the one or the other. The national self-esteem even rose to a pitch where it could tolerate with good humor certain affectations in foreigners, though for itself it would have none of them. A British minister who reached New York on his way to Washington during this era of self-esteem drove through the streets with two footmen in livery upon his carriage. New York looked on more amused than impressed, and the gamins finally voiced public sentiment in the cry : " Hurrah for the Englishmen ! Hurrah for the Englishmen I It takes two Englishmen to make one nigger ! " CHAPTER VII ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON AT the close of the War of 1812 the old Federal party died. For some time before this there had not been the wide difference between Fed- erals and Republicans that distinguished them in earlier years. As Calhoun once put it, " When the Repub- licans, headed by Mr. Jefferson, stormed and carried the citadel of government in 1801, they were not such fools as to spike the guns." Once in office they had been forced to adopt certain Federal practices even while proclaiming Republican theories. Federal rep- resentation in Congress steadily decreased, and opposi- tion to the war finally killed it. It is almost impossible for a party to oppose a war in which the country is ac- tively engaged and still live. It is said that when the number of Federals in Con- gress dwindled to eleven a conference was called to decide whether it were worth while to continue their futile opposition. It was not a cheerful meeting, but one of them still had spirit enough for an army. " Friends," he cried, springing to his feet and beam- ing upon the little company with a persuasive energy that brought answering light to the faces of all who heard him, " just remember that we are as many as the apostles were after Judas deserted them. Think what they did, and fight it out ! " But even such spirit could not stand against facts. 124 ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 125 In their stronghold of New England the Federals ral- lied, and late in December, 18 14, called together the Hartford Convention to consider ways of ending their unwilling connection with the war. They even pro- posed to withdraw from the Union if it could not be managed otherwise. Commissioners were sent to Con- gress with a respectful petition, but they reached Wash- ington just in time to witness Henry Carroll's triumph- ant entry with the treaty of peace, and quietly faded away in the general rejoicing. One witty journal issued an advertisement, " Lost : Two gentlemen of Boston," etc. The country had had its fill of strife, and the old issues being gone, there were new ones on which all could unite. The first task was to draw the nation out of the financial depths into which it had sunk. The Bank of the United States, organized through Hamilton's eloquence and genius, legally expired in 181 1 when war with England was about to begin. How the Government got money for its expenses is an unexplained mystery. Long before peace was signed both gold and silver had vanished from circulation. Notes issued by local banks overspread the land, growing less valuable with every mile they traveled. The Government had issued treasury notes, — not money, only promises of the Federal Government to pay local banks for their poor paper, — in such quantities that army officers setting out from Washington with a supply of these to pay the troops found that the value of every third dollar had entirely disappeared by the time they reached the Northern frontier. Small change took the form of " cut money," either actual silver dollars chopped into halves and quarters and eighths, or *' shinplasters," which were merely scraps of paper decorated with 126 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING coarse woodcuts of such precious fragments. Both forms invited dishonesty, for coins could be, and often were, fraudulently divided into fifths and ninths, and woodcuts were obviously easy to reproduce. In the two remaining years of Madison's term Con- gress chartered a new National Bank, for a period of twenty years, like the first one, and passed laws to pro- tect manufactures that had sprung up when war and the Embargo cut off all possibility of importing from abroad. These had grown rapidly, but with the re- turn of peace, English manufacturers rushed their goods to America to compete for their old trade. To shut them out, Congress placed a prohibitive duty on such foreign articles and grades of cloth as could be made at home, a lower tax on those that could be partly supplied by American factories, and a tariff for revenue upon articles largely consumed in this country, but made abroad. This raised a clamor of protest from the regions injured, and a clamor of support from those aided by the new law. The shipping interests of New England complained bitterly. The South, which raised cotton and used much coarse cloth for its slaves, approved. The new tariff proved an immediate stimulus to industry. In a short time the mills of New England were making all the cotton goods needed, and the de- lighted country entered upon an orgy of business ex- pansion, of speculation, and of internal improvement which speedily overshot the mark and brought about the " hard times of eighteen hundred and starve to death," when America experienced the first taste of bitter fruit that was to follow. Reasoning that the tariff of 1816 had been a good thing. Congress attempted to find the remedy for these hard times by imposing higher duties in 18 18 and again ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 127 in 1824, though the measures of the latter year passed by only narrow majorities, as against the almost unani- mous vote of 1 81 8. Madison, meanwhile, had been succeeded in 181 7 by James Monroe, upon whom the choice settled by com- mon consent, the Young Republicans favoring him be- cause of the zeal he had shown in the war, while the conservative element accepted him because he reached the Presidency in the usual way, from the position of secretary of state, as the culmination of long and credit- able public service. The " last of our Revolutionary stock of Presidents " is a shining example of what ordinary talents may at- tain when united to great industry and high purpose. He had entered the American army at its very forma- tion, when only seventeen, and had literally taken part in the making of his country's history from the begin- ning; but only once in all that time had he shown exceptionally brilliant qualities. That was in his prompt willingness to assume responsibility at the time of the Louisiana Purchase. Whatever the device upon his coat of arms may have been, — if he possessed one, — it should have read, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Three separate times he lost political favor and dropped from a lofty place to the very bot- tom of the political ladder, but each time he entered the Virginia general assembly and from there rose to greater heights than before. It has been said that Monroe " lacked genius, but possessed judgment." It would be hard to find a shorter or truer summary. He was wise enough to profit by experience, as few do, and he grew with his opportunities. With the exception of those who op- posed him on the ground that all the Presidents save one had come from the same State, his fellow-citizens 128 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING seemed to feel that he would make a safe President, and at the end of four years were sufficiently of the same opinion to elect him for a second term. Jefferson, an onlooker now, took almost as deep an interest in Monroe's career as he had in Madison's. He was frankly delighted at his election and still more delighted when he heard that John Quincy Adams was to be Monroe's secretary of state. The two men were made for each other, Jefferson declared. Monroe could be trusted to furnish sound judgment for both, while Adams wielded a pointed pen. Monroe was so thoroughly honest that, if his soul were to be turned inside out, not a blot could be found upon it. As for the new secretary of state, Jefferson somewhat spite- fully added, give Adams a conclusion, and he could be relied upon to adduce the best of reasons in support of it. There were few appointments to be made, most of the offices being already filled by the party in power, which was perhaps fortunate for Monroe's popularity. In the matter of appointments a bit of unsought ad- vice came to him that took on amusing significance in the light of after events. This was a letter from An- drew Jackson, begging him " to exterminate that mon- ster called party spirit," and give the best men the of- fices, regardless of party, so that even the Federals might be drawn into the " great and united Republican brotherhood." The great and united Republican brotherhood seemed an actual fact during the first years of Monroe's Presidency.' The country was so agreeably busy in reorganizing its plans and its resources and its ideas that there was no time for quarreling. His second election was almost unanimous ; but even at that mo- ment the much vaunted Era of Good Feeling was on ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 129 the wane, and four years more sufficed to bring about partizan wrangles that again threw the Presidential election into the House of Representatives. Five issues of Monroe's administration were im- portant enough to color national history for all time. It is significant of the new America that only one of these issues had to do with Europe except in a sec- ondary way, and that this was the most distinctively and aggressively American of them all. It was during his term of office that the protective tariff ceased to be an experiment and became a party creed, discussion merging into contention as to whether the tariff ought to be applied for the purpose of protecting American manufactures or solely for the purpose of raising revenue. Under his Presidency the system of Internal im- provements, — the building of roads and opening of waterways necessary to the country's development, — was pushed to such extremes that it became fatal to the national finances. During his administration the slavery question, al- ready a disturbing element in national politics, though still regarded as a matter of policy more than of morals, reached the point of heated discussion and was lulled again into comparative quiet for forty years by Clay's ingenious plan of the Missouri Compromise. It was during Monroe's administration that destiny for the country, — and for Andrew Jackson, — ad- vanced a long and fateful step by way of Florida. Most novel of all. It was during this administration that the United States had to decide what attitude it would take toward the fledgling independent states of South America. This was a thrilling point, for it marked how far the country had traveled beyond its colonial status. I30 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING In its turn it was called upon to pass judgment on rebellious colonies. It was in Monroe's message to Congress of Decem- ber 2, 1823, that he announced the doctrine of America for Americans. How far credit for this belongs to the President, how much of it was in the air, it is fruitless to inquire. Responsibility for particular historic acts attaches itself like a bur to the first convenient object and sticks. Jefferson has popular credit for the pur- chase of Louisiana, yet important shares in the credit belong to Napoleon Bonaparte and James Monroe, who are rarely mentioned in connection with it. In the formulation of the Monroe Doctrine it is quite likely that John Ouincy Adams, who held the pointed pen and the office of secretary of state, had some part. The idea was not a new one. In 1808, fifteen years be- fore the events that called out Monroe's statement, Jefferson, referring to these same Spanish colonies, wrote in a letter to the governor of Louisiana, " We consider their interests and ours as the same, and that the object of both must be to exclude all European in- fluence from this hemisphere." History had been miaking since 1808. Our success in war with England and the reestablishment of a re- public in France had, as Captain Mahan says, " roused Spain's indolent, but passionate colonies " to announce their freedom. But Europe, having just safely in- terred the bugaboo of Napoleonic domination, had no mind to exchange it for a plague of republics in either hemisphere. Austria, Russia, and Prussia formed their Holy Alliance, which aimed at nothing less than the government of the world, and showed unmistak- able signs of interfering to help Spain regain the upper hand in South America, and at the same time tighten ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 131 Russia's grip upon American territory near the Arctic Circle. It was to this that Monroe replied by declaring America to be no longer ground for colonization, and that hereafter Europe could not become possessed of American soil either by purchase or war. Fortu- nately for the Monroe Doctrine, it happened that Eng- land just then was as eager as the United States to prevent such interference, though from totally different reasons. She proposed an alliance with the United States to offset the Holy Alliance, which Adams politely declined, replying that every purpose would be gained if England recognized the South American re- publics. One can imagine even the precise and serious Adams, as he penned the message, chuckling a little over the change a few years had brought about. From the very nature of the case this great friendli- ness on the part of England could not last. Her in- terests and ours were too far apart ; but at the moment the spectacle of the two countries standing shoulder to shoulder sufficed to turn away threatened interfer- ence. Owing to more pressing m^atters, England de- layed recognition of the Spanish republics for two years, and when at last she did act. Canning, the British prime minister, explained in swelling words, " I called the New World into being to redress the bal- ance of the Old," a boast at variance with the idea Monroe and Adams had in mind, but one which they could afford to pass over in amused silence. Before long England was calling the position of the United States " extravagant," but the Monroe Doctrine was an established policy; and although it has never been written into American law or had the full sanction of Congress, from that day to this it has been a guid- 132 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING ing national principle, cited perhaps more often than any other in American diplomacy. In consequence Monroe's name has never ceased to be upon the lips of his countrymen, though his personality is probably less vivid in their minds than that of any of his predeces- sors. The new and aggressive American spirit showed a distinct trend toward democratic ways of doing things. One evidence of it was the growing sentiment against having candidates for President nominated by a con- gressional caucus, as had been the custom since Jeffer- son's day. States had been giving the right of suf- frage to more and more of their people, and all wanted a hand in President-making. Monroe's second elec- tion had been almost unanimous ; it was agreed that he was to be the candidate ; how the nomination was made did not much matter. The campaign of 1824, on the contrary, has been aptly called a scrub race for the Presidency. There were five principal aspirants, be- sides others locally popular, but dropped upon evidence that they had no large following. With the exception of William H. Crawford, who was nominated in the old way by congressional caucus, all these became can- didates by acclaim, so to speak. It at least showed wide-spread interest and a belief that there was an ample supply of Presidential timber. One of the visitors from across the sea, — who, by the way, were becoming frequent, — noted our national preference for numbers rather than for quality in political life: " The Americans themselves generally admit that their system is adverse to the formation of men of commanding talents. But they always add that in the present state of affairs they do better without what we call leading men. * When, however, moments of ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 133 danger and difficulty shall arrive,' say they, ' the general intelligence which is spread over our country will in- sure us leaders enough for all possible exigencies of the State.' " Such reasoning, of course, struck a good Englishman as absurd. Of the five chief candidates to succeed Monroe as President, three were members of his cabinet, which speaks volumes for the caliber of the men he chose as his advisers. The first was John Quincy Adams, sec- retary of state. The second was William H. Craw- ford, secretary of the treasury, a man of showy parts and good luck, who passed at the time as great. The third was John C. Calhoun, one of that famous trium- virate of intellect and oratory that ruled the country from Congress for many years, but never reached the Presidential chair. Henry Clay, speaker of the House of Representatives, another member of this trio of con- gressional giants, was the fourth candidate. The fifth was Andrew Jackson, whose rugged personality gained a stronger hold upon the people every day. This was the first campaign in which the West exer- cised marked influence. Two of the candidates, Jack- son and Clay, came from this region. Calhoun and Crawford were from the extreme South. Adams was from New England. There being at bottom little dif- ference in the principles advocated by the five, cam- paign oratory had to depend mainly upon personali- ties. " It seems as if every liar and calumniator in the country was at work day and night to destroy my character," Adams wrote. " It is impossible to be wholly insensible to this process while it is in opera- tion. It distracts my attention from public business and consumes precious time." Crawford was charged with being corrupt; Jackson was denounced as a 'murderer, Clay as a gambler. 134 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Clay's partizans in Ohio met and resolved that all the candidates were honorable men, and that his friends, at least, would " not indulge in the unworthy prac- tice " of vilifying them. A rumor that Clay was about to retire called forth an answer in winged words that Clay " would not be withdrawn from the contest ex- cept by the fiat of his Maker," and the campaign pro- gressed at a lively pace with meetings, campaign clubs, pamphlets, rallies, rhymes, and invective. Before its end Crawford was stricken with paralysis. His friends and family strove to conceal the nature of his malady, but succeeded only in adding a touch of futil- ity and pathos to the struggle. Calhoun was believed to stand little chance of being elected President, but almost everybody favored him for Vice-President. He was therefore considered and voted for only for that office. Thus the South was eliminated from the contest for first place, which narrowed down to a very personal trial of strength between Adams, CIay,-»and Jackson, West and East each offering a candidate of virtually the same views, while Jackson, who re- lied more upon the strength of his military record than upon theories of government, opposed them both. At that time the Tuesday after the first Monday of November had not come to be the national day of election. The States still voted for Presidential elec- tors at their own convenience. The slow mails de- layed news, and it was late in December before it was definitely known that the vote stood Jackson 99, Adams 84, Crawford 41, Clay 37, giving nobody a majority, and throwing the election into the House of Representatives. The House had to choose between > the candidates having the three highest votes. This eliminated Clay, who frankly wanted to be President. ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 135 But as speaker of the House he wielded immense in- fluence, and might be President-maker, if he could not be President. He had neither personal nor political confidence in Jackson. He told a friend that he could not see in the fact that Jackson had killed twenty-five hundred Englishmen at New Orleans any proof that he would make a good President. Nor had Jackson's actions in Florida since the battle of New Orleans furnished any such proof. Crawford was incapacitated. There seemed, therefore, only one thing for Clay to do, — to use his influence for Adams, though Adams was far from acceptable to him personally. This he did, and Adams was elected. When it be- came known that Adams, in turn, purposed to make Clay his secretary of state, the partizans of Jackson raised a mighty cry of bargain and corruption. Clay unwisely replied, thus giving prominence to the charges ; and the chorus swelled to a furor of denunciation strong enough to defeat Adams for a second term and to keep Clay out of the Presidency through a long and most popular political lifetime. A lively writer has said that " the Adams family furnished two Presidents from two successive genera- tions, neither fitted to the task." But two more up- right and conscientious men never lived. The younger Adams was even more thorough and less warmly im- pulsive than his father. He was not popular, and it seems fitting that the final act of his election should have taken place in a chilling storm. The town was muffled in heavy snow when the House and Senate met to count the electoral vote with all the formality and ceremony due the occasion. The House uncov- ered in honor of the Senate, for it was still the custom for members to wear their hats during ordinary ses- 136 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING sions. After the counting, the Senate retired, and the House cast its ballot and declared Adams elected. There was not the least enthusiasm either in the Capi- tol or out in the snowy streets. Only the black peo- ple cheered a little when they heard the news. The new President had been in public service since the age of fifteen, when he became secretary to his father. Edward Everett said of him that there " seemed to be in his life no such state as that of boy- hood," and a painfully earnest or unspeakably priggish letter written at the tender age of nine bears out this uncanny suggestion. His rigid code of self-discipline began with distressingly early rising, — 4 A. M. winter and summer, — and his day extended well into the midnight hours, as is attested by the elo- quent witness of seventy-five folio volumes of diary, dedicated impartially to great events and the minutiae of his own and other people's lapses. If there was a fearsome amount of " ego in his cosmos," there was great ability. He was so con- scientious that he appeared surly. For example, he would not consent to make a speech in German to the farmers of Pennsylvania when he went north to open the Erie Canal, because that would be " electioneer- ing " ; and when offices fell vacant, he followed Jack- son's advice to Monroe and appointed political enemies, if he thought them the better men. It is said that he removed only two officials during his entire term, and those " for cause." This was pleasing to the limited number who drew government salaries, but not to the vastly larger number of voters who wished to do so. One brave person dared remonstrate. Adams replied with blunt stubbornness that he did not intend to make removals; whereupon his interlocutor, a witty Irish- man, bowed, and remarked that in that case he had ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 137 no doubt his Excellency would find himself removed at the earliest opportunity. Adams was a Puritan born out of season, with all the virtues and defects of the Puritan temperament. He had strong prejudices, but his sense of justice was stronger, and when he thought duty demanded it, he could waive personal prejudice even to his own politi- cal hurt. The suspicion lingers that such sacrifices were not without their mitigating pleasure, that the greatest satisfaction he got out of life was in running counter to his natural impulses. He was more generous toward his defeated rivals than the most exacting conscience could require. However much the wisdom of making Clay his secretary of state may be questioned, or Clay's astute- ness in accepting the office doubted, the fact that Clay threw his influence in favor of Adams's election, and that Adams chose Clay for the highest ofifice in his gift, shows freedom from personal pettiness on both sides, for they had clashed almost continually during their joint service at Ghent. Adams freely acknowledged Clay's good points. He wrote : Clay is an eloquent man, with very popular manners, and great political management. He is, like all the eminent merr of this country, only half educated. His school has been the world, and in that he is proficient. His morals, public and private, are loose, but he has all the virtues indispensable to a popular man. He may have thought it well to attach this sort of popularity to his administration, feeling that he could amply supply erudition and moral tone. They worked well together on the whole, and toward the close of his administration Adams offered Clay a place on the supreme bench, which the latter, with his eyes upon the White House, refused. 138 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING With his conscientiousness and his obstinacy, Adams did not find the Presidency a bed of roses; He man- aged to antagonize Congress and popular sentiment in the measures that he particularly championed, notably a bill for a yet higher tariff. The Twentieth Congress, elected after Adams had been President about a year, was hostile in both branches, a thing which had never occurred during the existence of the Govern- ment, Adams dolefully noted. Another administra- tion measure that brought forth unexpected opposi- tion was an innocent proposal to take part in a conven- tion of American republics held at Panama. For this Adams reaped the blame, though Clay likewise seems to have welcomed the suggestion as likely to promote American sentiment and strengthen the Monroe Doc- trine. The meeting was to be upon an isthmus. The Greek republics had made wonderful history upon an isthmus ; why should not Americans do the same ? Europe had made a Holy Alliance against liberty ; could not the New World do as much against despotism ? Popular imagination failed to catch fire. Perhaps it was not sufficiently well read in classical history to grasp the comparison; but race prejudice was readily inflamed when the opposition called attention to the fact that Haiti, a republic of revolted slaves, had been asked to take part in the conference. This led not only to heated verbal battles, but to actual duels, the most notable one being between Clay and John Randolph of Roanoke, whose venomous tongue hinted at state department forgeries in these invitations to Panama, and wove the names of Clay and Adams together as a " coalition of Blifil and Black George, the combination, unheard of till then, of the Puritan and the Black-leg." The fiery Kentuckian had lately denounced dueling as a relic of barbarism, ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 139 but at these words he forgot all about his objection. Two shots were exchanged, Clay being in deadly- earnest, Randolph not intending to do his adversary harm. Fortunately Clay's shots went no nearer than his opponent's coat. The other emptied his pistol in the air, remarking, " I do not fire at you, Mr. Clay," and the two shook hands, to the admiration and de- light of their seconds. " It was about the last high- toned duel that I have witnessed, and among the highest-toned that I ever witnessed," wrote Thomas H. Benton, regretfully. Political abuse grew more violent as time passed. Jackson, who meant to be a candidate again, kept his forces well in hand. At first the friends of the ad- ministration contented themselves with defending their party chiefs, but the temptation to retaliate with countercharges was too strong, and the campaign of 1828 became one of the most abusive in our history. The old charge of bargain and corruption was revived, and did vociferous duty against Adams and his secre- tary of state. Clay was denounced as every kind of villain, public and private. Adams was held up to execration as a monarchist in disguise, a friend of duelists, a man of luxurious habits, who even desired a billiard-table and chessmen in the White House, and of having drawn such vast sums from the public treas- ury that the total amounted to sixteen dollars for every day of his long life. The tariff was the one real issue of the campaign, but all the charges, absurd or serious, that could be twisted to fit the purpose were used by an enemy trained under Jackson's leadership to a degree of subordination that left Burr's adroit manip- ulation of Tammany far in the background. The partizans of the administration, on their side, flung themselves upon every one of the vulnerable 140 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING points in Jackson's career, placing the worst construc- tion on each ; and both sides were guilty of dragging the names of women into the contest, Adams went down to defeat, but he was a gallant loser, A Washington lady, whose diary has already been quoted, drew two companion pictures, — one of Adams in victory, the other in defeat. The earlier tells of a White House " drawing-room " held at the time the vote in the House of Representatives made Adams President. Mr. and Mrs. Monroe were host and hostess, and about them surged a crowd that con- tained thieves as well as honest folk, for General Scott had his pocket picked of eight hundred dollars that night. Adams, Clay, and Jackson were all pres- ent, Jackson outshining the successful candidate as a center of interest. Ladies climbed chairs and benches to get a look at the hero of New Orleans, and Mrs. Adams " very gracefully took his arm and made a tour of the rooms." Clay, exultant and expansive, walked about as well as he could for the crowd, with a lady on each arm. Van Rensselaer, the representa- tive who cast the deciding vote, was also there, devot- ing himself to a beauty and trying to appear unaware of the whispered word " treachery " which accompa- nied glances in his direction. Adams, despite his triumph, had not thawed out of his customary gla- cial manner, and " was scarcely more attended than usual." He stood in comparative isolation while wits made jokes among themselves about their Clay Presi- dent. Four years later the same lady wrote that the mem- bers of the administration were taking Adams's de- feat very much to heart, the gentlemen more than the ladies ; but that Mr. and Mrs. Adams had gone a little too far in an assumed gaiety. ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 141 At the last drawing-room they laid aside the manners which until now they have always worn, and came out in a bril- liant masquerade dress of social, gay, frank, cordial manners. What a change from the silent repulsive haughty reserve [the writer was prodigal of her adjectives] by which they have hitherto been distinguished. The great audience cham- ber, never before opened, and now not finished, was thrown open for dancing, a thing unheard of before at a drawing- This, then, was the first appearance in society of the famous East Room of the White House, where John Ouincy Adams's mother dried the Presidential linen in the uncomfortable days of her occupancy. In the hour of his defeat her son filled it with music. Its walls have looked down since upon many historic scenes, the bivouac of volunteers, the acclaim of suc- cessful generals, weddings, diplomatic gatherings of wide significance, and the coffin of America's most precious dead, but they have never echoed to more unexpected and yet more characteristic sounds. In a time of stress the elder Adams sent for a sup- ply of arms, gathered his servants about him, and pre- pared to defend his home with his life, if necessary. The son defended the citadel of his emotions in the same way. Most men retire from the Presidency to private life. The younger Adams had no thought of rest this side the grave. He is the only one of our ex-Presidents who has subsequently made for himself a successful, even a brilliant career. The opposition in both branches of Congress to which he ruefully referred, and his knowledge that Congress all through his term had disliked him and paid as little heed to him as pos- sible, appear to have put him on his mettle. Elected to the lower House on the wave of anti-Masonic feel- ing that swept the country in 1831, he served until 142 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING mortally stricken in his place on the floor, February 21, 1848, as he rose to present a handful of petitions. As he had not been prominent in either the House or the Senate before his Presidency, his friends feared that he could not sustain his reputation. But he proved himself an adept in the rough and tumble of debate, a " free-lance and a hard hitter," who loved a fight better than he loved his friends. McCulloch, in his " Men and Measures of Half a Century," calls him one of the most remarkable men that this country had produced, " in no respect more remarkable than in the fact that he became a great offhand speaker after he lef^ the Presidency and had reached the period in life after which there is usually a decline instead of improvement in bodily vigor." Yet he was never genial, never could escape his Puritan concept of evil and sinful humanity. He be- lieved that the United States was blessed by nature above all other countries, that we had " mingled in our cup a portion of enjoyment as large and liberal as the indulgence of Heaven has perhaps ever granted to the imperfect state of man upon earth," but he distrusted the wisdom of his fellow citizens, and despaired of the future. The westward movement of immigration troubled him. Western ideals and man- ners outraged his sense of fitness. He thought that this wild and unstable element was destined to overrun Texas and Mexico, and that the inevitable outcome would be the breaking up of the Union he loved into two or three confederacies. CHAFER VIII A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT ANDREW JACKSON was sixty-two years old when he became President, and " his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated," though seven years before, in a fit of disgust and temporary ill health, he had retired to his estate to pass the sun- set of life in stock-breeding and horse-racing. Washington had given him his first office in 179T, making him United States district attorney for part of the new region southwest of the Ohio. He was a mem- ber of the convention that formed a state constitution for Tennessee, and represented her in both branches of Congress within a few months of her admission to the Union. What little impression he made upon his col- leagues and upon the staid city of Philadelphia was then unfavorable. Jefferson, who was presiding offi- cer of the Senate, remembered that he was " so pas- sionate he would choke with rage when he attempted to speak." He had not the judicial temperament, yet in 1798 he was made judge of the supreme court of Tennessee, and held the office successfully for about six years. Thus he had more than twenty years of experience, legislative and judicial, to his credit before he came into his own as warrior. But nature will out, and even on the bench his methods were militant. " Though unlearned in the law, he knew well how to enforce 143 144 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING order," says General Scott, who tells a picturesque tale half tradition and half fact of Judge Jackson order- ing himself summoned as a posse to subdue an offender who proved too much for the sheriff ; descending from the bench, personally knocking the culprit into submis- sion, placing him before the bar, and then remounting to pronounce sentence, proceedings unusual, but emi- nently suited to the emergency. To keep his own counsel, to move straight toward his object, to strike hard, and to care little what prece- dents were broken by the blow were his invariable rules of action. " The red tape was never made that could bind those lean muscular limbs of his," says a biographer. He had little opportunity and no desire to learn the technic of arms. As President he held cabinet counsels in small esteem. He was willing to be judge, sheriff, and posse in one, and he would doubtless gladly have acted as an overwhelming ma- jority in Congress, but not as a unanimous vote, for opposition was as the incense of battle to his nostrils. His military fame began with the campaign against the Creek Indians in 1813, when, in addition to the usual hazards of Indian warfare, he faced mutiny and starvation among his own troops. He rode along the rebellious line, threatening to shoot the first man who turned homeward; he himself set the example of living upon acorns; and he brought to a victorious end an expedition unimportant in itself, but one that combined with others to bring about notable results. Tecumseh, the moving spirit among the Indians of the Northwest, had recently fallen at the battle of the Thames, in Canada. His scheme for a federation of the tribes perished with him, and this campaign of Jackson's broke the power of the Indians in the South- west as well, making it possible for military forces to A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 145 move where they would through territory that the Indians had heretofore held against all comers. This campaign had also an important bearing on the war with England. At the beginning of his ex- pedition he informed the secretary of war that he had no scruples whatever against crossing the border and carrying the flag to Mobile, Pensacola, or St. Augus- tine, the excuse for such invasion being that England was occupying these places and profiting by the hos- pitality of Spain. The administration's cautious an- swer, not forbidding this, but pointing out that it was necessary first to make sure that Spain willingly al- lowed England to occupy her territory, reached Jack- son after the war was well over. Meantime he forged ahead and did what he saw fit, his success shining brighter by contrast with the gloom elsewhere. As a reward, he was appointed from the volunteer serv- ice into the regular army, which he had twice before tried to enter. Then came his high-handed and brilliant defense of New Orleans, carried on very much as he conducted his campaign sigainst mutiny and desertion, by force of indomitable will and heartening example. He had several thousand good men, each one of whom could shoot straight and think for himself, but who together made up a very badly disciplined army. They were of many nationalties and of every complexion under the sun. One of the small gunboats in the river was manned by New Englanders ; another by a swarthy crew drawn from the sailor population of the water- front, Portuguese, Norwegians, West Indian Span- iards, and French smugglers like the notorious broth- ers Lafitte, who in this time of stress scorned British overtures and rendered Jackson such service that their former misdeeds were pardoned. The local militia 146 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING was made up of blacks and whites, French and Ameri- cans, among them a band of free Negroes. Jackson had a few regulars, but they were raw and new to the service; his chief hope lay in the Tennessee volun- teers, who reached him over nearly impassable roads on the very day that the British commander forced his way through watery lanes of swamp and bayou into the Mississippi River, only a few miles below New Orleans. These volunteers were the sort with which Jackson had won his victories over the Indians, — frontiersmen in leggings and coonskin caps, of un- questioned bravery and unerring aim, only a shade less determined than Jackson himself. In the final encounter the British commander Pak- enham had double the numbers at Jackson's disposal, all veterans seasoned in Napoleonic wars; but they were too well trained to presume to use the brains the Lord had given them. Pakenham mistook the character of his opponent, and threw away much of his usual caution, so that the two generals met on an equality of rashness, if iwt of numbers. They had also the same material out of which to build' redouts, Mis- sissippi mud, for the tale that Jackson defended New- Orleans from behind bales of cotton has been relegated to fable. At the end of the battle, after barely half an hour of fighting, the British works were battered to pieces, while those of the Americans came out of the ordeal almost uninjured. The British loss was twenty-five hundred, including the commanding gen- eral; that of the Americans was eight killed and thir- teen wounded. Nothing further need be said either in eulogy of American marksmanship or British cour- age. There were picturesque features in the defense, apart from the fighting. The tact of the " Tennessee A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 147 Barbarian " in handling the high-spirited inhabitants of New Orleans was equaled only by his success in bending them to his will. He pressed rich and poor, slave and free, into his service; proclaimed military law, put a stop to all business except the imperative one of preparation, and after his victory over the British completed his conquest of the people by call- ing upon the Abbe Dubourg to hold public services of thanksgiving in the cathedral, by allowing him- self to be crowned with laurel by the gentle nuns of the Ursuline convent, who had prayed for him during the battle, and by a personal court scene of dramatic intensity. During the preparations for defense he had paid small heed to civil authority. A judge tried to inter- fere when he proclaimed martial law. He ignored the writ, ordered the arrest of the judge, and sent him beyond the military lines. After civil authority was restored, the judge returned the compliment by arrest- ing Jackson and fining him a thousand dollars for con- tempt of court. By this time Jackson was the idol of the city, and the audience in the crowded court room seemed on the point of becoming an angry mob. Jackson mounted a bench, begged his friends to show their regard for him by showing respect for the law, paid his fine, and turned to depart ; whereupon the popu- lace went quite mad, and, taking the horses from his carriage, dragged it to his hotel, shouting all the way. Twenty-five years later Congress, with no little ora- tory and ceremony, remitted the fine. General Scott, whose professional admiration for Jackson was tinged by personal dislike, thought him all wrong in this struggle with the courts. " For the glorious defense of New Orleans, Congress voted thanks and a gold medal," he wrote in his autobiogra- 148 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING phy. " That measure of justice was short at both ends. Censure and a monument should have been added." At the end of the war the army was reduced to a peace footing, but Jackson remained in the service, and in 18 17 another Indian campaign brought him before the pubHc in a far from agreeable light. Florida still belonged to Spain, and the Seminole In- dians had a way of making sudden raids across the border into Georgia. The Spanish colony offered them a safe place of retreat after an orgy of murder and pillage. It was also a refuge for white criminals of many nations and kinds, who added their iniquity to the forays. The raids became so frequent and dar- ing that Jackson was ordered to put an end to them. The exact degree of authority given him was later a subject of bitter dispute. He claimed that he had dis- tinct orders to invade Florida, and that the Govern- ment knew and approved his belief that eastern Florida should be taken and held as indemnity for out- rages upon our citizens. The administration denied this. Whatever his orders, he did not stop until he had taken Pensacola and incidentally executed two English men that he found there helping the Indians. This raised a storm at home and abroad. Resolutions of censure were introduced in both branches of Congress, and debated to the exclusion of all other business, in one house or the other, for the space of twenty-seven days. The House finally voted to sustain him, while the Senate laid the resolution on the table. Clay making a speech arraigning Jackson, for which he was never forgiven. In Monroe's cabinet discussion was equally violent, though not made public. Long years afterward Jack- A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 149 son learned that Calhoun, then secretary of state, had favored disavowing Jackson's acts and holding him to account, and on the instant his previous admiration for the South Carolinian changed to undying hate. John Q. Adams upheld him, being the only member of the cabinet to do so. He cited authorities on inter- national law and instances of history to prove that the impetuous general was well within his rights. Jackson learned of this at the time, but ungratefully pooh-poohed the attempt to thrust him into the aca- demic past. "Damn Grotius!" he said. "Damn Pufendorf! Damn Vattel ! This is a mere matter between Jim Monroe and myself." Jim Monroe meanwhile, with Adams's help, framed a reply to Spanish protests which was a triumph of diplomacy, since it upheld Jackson, promised to give up Pensacola to any one authorized to receive it, and of- fered Spain a sum of money for the territory in dis- pute, thus managing successfully to be on every side of the question at once. And Spain, seeing that Florida would sooner or later pass into our hands, took the reply and the cash in a friendly spirit, con- cluding a treaty in 1819 by which she transferred her colony to the United States for the sum of five million dollars. The first important act of Monroe's second term was to appoint Jackson governor of the new Territory of Florida, a position the annoyances and embarrass- ments of which the hero of New Orleans found to out- weigh its advantages. It was from this office that he resigned in 'disgust to pass his declining years in Ten- nessee. But he was too much a born leader of men to be content with molding the destinies and promot- ing the victories of horses and cattle. I50 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING He returned to the United States Senate in 1823, and in 1824 Adams, alive to the strength the general's popularity would add to his own unemotional ticket, suggested that the vice-presidency would be a nice place for his old age. Jackson was in truth less than four months older than Adams. The idea of deliber- ately accepting second place to anybody did not appeal to him, but his claim to first place was worked up so effectively during the campaign of 1824, largely through the efforts of his friend Major Lewis of Ten- nessee, a most adroit politician, that the House of Representatives had to choose between him and Mr. Adams. General Lafayette was in Washington at the time this vote was taken and witnessed the meeting between Adams and Jackson that night at the White House. Jackson hastened to congratulate the successful candi- date, and the newspapers noticed and praised the cor- diality of victor and vanquished. Perhaps the in- fluence of the kindly Frenchman smoothed over the rough edges of the situation. They did not long re- main smooth. Clay was unforgiven because of his speech of censure, and when Jackson learned that Clay was to be Adams's secretary of state, the charge of bribery rose naturally to his impulsive lips. With the passing days his anger grew to include Adams as well, and on October 13, 1825, he resigned his seat in the Senate and came out squarely as a candidate for President in the next election, still more than three years in the future. His charge was corruption in high places. " Shall the Government or the people rule?" he asked, coining a good phrase 'that carried far. Soon he was accusing Adams, in effect, if not in words, with being a usurper, and calling him and his administration " these enemies of liberty." A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 151 His election was an innovation. The American Presidents heretofore had been men of a different type, differently educated, and achieving the Presidency as the crowning honor of a long official career. Jack- son's civil experiences had been sufficiently varied and stretched over a sufficient length of years, but were more remarkable for energetic disregard of precedent than for carrying out the laws. This, however, troubled the rank and file of his followers very little. He was a candidate from the new West, where short cuts through means to ends were the fashion, and his military record, always a formidable asset in this peace- loving land of ours, was eminently satisfactory. His political methods were largely those of the mili- tary chief. This campaign of 1828 showed on both sides a more thorough organization and more skilful use of party machinery than any that had gone before. Feeling ran high, and quarter was neither given nor asked. The " silk vestings, printed with excellent like- nesses of the candidates," and the tape-needles stamped with their names, which can still be found among the treasures of granddaughters of that generation, were hidden under a deluge of abusive pamphlets. Hand- bills spread abroad woodcuts of scurrilous import. One headed by a row of coffins charged Jackson with pre- meditated murder in duel and in court martial. An- other, issued by Jackson's partizans, showed John Quincy Adams using a horsewhip on a crippled old soldier who dared come near him to ask a favor. Newspapers published extras full of slanders and refu- tations in a succession that would seem slow enough now, accustomed as we are to a dozen editions in a morning, but were then a marvel of journalistic enter- prise. After Jackson's election his party machinery was 152 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING not allowed to rust. He and his friends were astute enough to see the " penetrating " power of the press, and used it throughout his administration. " Every deputy postmaster is required to insert in his return the title of every newspaper received at his office for distribution," Mrs. Trollope was told while in Wash- ington. " This return is laid before the secretary of state, who perfectly knowing the political character of each newspaper, is thus enabled to feel the pulse of each limb of the monster mob." David Crockett, whose career in Congress was cut short by Jackson's mandate in 1831, testifies that " each editor was furnished with the journals of Congress from headquarters, and hunted out every vote I had missed in four sessions whether from sickness or not, no matter, and each was charged against me at $8 [a day's pay]. In all I had missed about seventy votes which they made amount to $560, and they contended I had swindled the Government out of that sum, as I had received my pay as other members do." In addi- tion his political enemies made spurious engagements for him to address meetings all over his district; en- gagements that he failed to keep because he knew noth- ing about them, while they took care to be on hand to ridicule and denounce him. These tricks cost him his seat ; but at the next election he was ready for them, and won despite such tactics. When Jackson was renominated and reelected in 1832, his running-mate was Martin Van Buren of New York, whose whole li f e had been spent in adroit manipu- lation of his fellow-voters; and in this union of the political forces and methods of East and West the country witnessed an exhibition of political team-work the like of which it had not dreamed. This same year 1832 saw the beginning of the system of nominating ^ JOHN C. CALHOUN A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 153 Presidential candidates in national conventions and of setting forth party aims in party platforms. But the " spontaneous unanimity " of Jackson's renomination was doubtless greatly aided by his firm hold upon the press. At the time of his first election Jackson's wife was still living. Her name was dragged into the canvass, and she was subjected to rougher usage than should fall to the lot of any woman. She died in the Christ- mas season preceding his inauguration. He was de- votedly attached to her, and a wave of personal sympa- thy swept over the country. The crowds that gathered to greet him on his lonely way to Washington met him with a respectful silence more eloquent than applause. Being American crowds, they remained for the most part covered as their ranks opened for the gaunt old man in deep mourning who walked bareheaded among them in the chill air. " He looked," said a foreigner who saw him, " like a gentleman and a soldier." It was on February 1 1 , the day the electoral votes were counted, that he arrived in Washington and took up his residence at Gadsby's, an inn famous in stage- coaching days. He declined to call upon President Adams, implying that he could not bring himself to touch the hand of a man who had attained office through unworthy means. He busied himself with the office-seekers, who rushed to Washington in incredible numbers, likewise avoiding Adams, to flock around the power that was to be. Adams, resenting this breach of etiquette, took no official or social notice of his suc- cessor, and left the city on the third of March, neither he nor any member of his cabinet remaining to wel- come Jackson to office. But the populace was there in force. Never had Washington seen such inauguration crowds. A man 154 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING of the people had been elected President at last, and the people came rejoicing to see him take his oath. " They really seem to think the country has been rescued from some danger," wrote Webster. On the morning of the fourth of March those fortu- nate enough to secure a commanding position on Capi- tol Hill looked down upon Pennsylvania Avenue alive with carts and carriages full of women and children, their male escorts walking beside them. At last a small company of men was seen marching compactly through this crowd up the middle of the avenue, one tall figure holding his hat in his hand while the wind played through his wilful gray locks. There was something military in the sight, something most unmilitary in the rabble of people shouting themselves hoarse in ac- claim of the spare, erect figure. It was an expression of popular will and popular trust that gripped the heart and sent an ache to the throats even of those who feared the " Tennessee Barbarian " and his host. After taking the oath of office, Jackson returned to the White House on horseback, followed indiscrimi- nately by white and black, rich and poor, men, women, and children, who swarmed over the lawn and through the rooms of the Executive Mansion, where no police provision had been made for such an onslaught. The courageous old warrior was forced that day to do what he seldom did ; he retreated, and sought refuge in his old quarters at Gadsby's. Current rumor had it that a quantity of china and cut glass to the value of several thousand dollars was broken in an attempt to get re- freshments to the multitude, and that finally great tubs of punch were carried out in front of the house, but that " hogsheads would not have been enough." No man has had warmer supporters or bitterer ene- mies than Jackson, and of no man have more contra- A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 155 dictory descriptions been written than of him. He had innate dignity. Webster thought him " more presi- dential " than the other candidates in 1824, when the others included* the imposing Crawford, the learned Adams, and Clay with all his magnetism. A life of hardship made him look all of his sixty-two years, but his long, straight legs still bore him well, and his long, narrow face under the iron-gray hair tumbling all ways at once was illuminated by small, but wonderfully alert, blue eyes that seemed to " scintillate light." He was not arrogant, although " not a man to suffer a difference of opinion with equanimity." He was simply so sure of being right that the possibility of being wrong did not find lodgment in his brain; and being energetic in the cause of right, things hap- pened wherever he might be. Things began to happen the moment he was Presi- dent. He hated fiercely, and at this instant hated no man more bitterly than Henry Clay. Van Buren, who was to succeed Clay as secretary of state, was governor of New York and could not immediately assume the new office. But Jackson did not purpose to leave Clay in possession one minute longer than the law required. As he was starting to the Capitol to take the oath, he thrust a paper into the hands of Colonel James Hamil- ton of New York, son of Alexander Hamilton, saying: " Colonel, you do not care to see me inaugurated." " Indeed I do," the other protested. " I came here for that purpose." " No," Jackson insisted. " Go to the State House, and as soon as you hear the gun fired, I am President and you are secretary. Go, and take charge of the de- partment." This was the manner of his first appoint- ment, and the others were quite as arbitrary. Fewer than seventy-five people had been removed 156 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING from office during the forty years of the Government's existence. Washington had removed nine and recalled one foreign minister ; John Adams also removed nine ; Jefferson thirty-nine ; Madison five, three of them de- faulters ; Monroe had displaced nine, and John Quincy Adams two. Sentiment in favor of a short tenure of the higher federal offices had gradually increased, helped on by the refusal of both Washington and Jef- ferson to be President a third time. In 1820 a law had been passed making four years the legal term for certain federal financial offices, and in the States it became more and more unusual for governors to serve more than two or three successive terms, while in some of them the entrance into office of a new gover- nor was a signal for turning out the appointees of his predecessor. But it was through Jackson that the idea of rotation in office reached the national civil service. He came into power on a wave of reform, making the question, " Shall the Government or the people rule? " do alternate duty with charges of bribery and cor- ruption; and in the first year of his Presidency he made upward of seven hundred removals, selecting successors on some whimsical plan of his own that he did not trouble to explain to his supporters. " No thought appeared to be given to the fitness of the per- sons for their places," according to Colonel Hamilton. " I am sure I never heard one word in relation thereto, and I certainly had repeated conversations with him in regard to these appointments." There was doubtless need of change. Forty years of undisturbed possession had given time for old age to creep in and occupy the chairs of many minor offi- cials; one of the great bureaus was known as the " Octogenarian Department." But such wholesale turning out spread terror through the government A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 157 service. When Jackson had been President only a week Clay compared the plight of the office-holders to that of the inhabitants of Cairo in time of plague. " No one knows who is next to encounter the stroke of death or, which with many of them is the same thing, to be dismissed from office. You have no con- ception of the moral tyranny which prevails here." And against this moral tyranny he inveighed in the drawing-rooms of society, " reclining," as was his fashion, perhaps the fashion of the day, on friendly and comfortable sofas, while the air pulsated to his rich eloquence, and his hearers, many of whom were feminine, and most of whom were suffering in appre- hension, if not in fact, from the acts of the new tyrant, fervently wished that Providence had seen fit to make this wise statesman President. The Senate, dazed and hypnotized, confirmed Jack- son's many appointments as they were sent in. Web- ster was convinced that it would have rejected half of them if freed from the compelling power of his popularity with country constituents. The charges of corruption, which had been lavishly used, had been sadly overworked, but Jackson made the most of the very small proportion of fraud he did discover. The only official of any prominence caught robbing the Government, a fourth auditor of the Treasury, whose stealing amounted to about two thou- sand dollars, was promptly convicted and placed in a cell, over the door of which Jackson, with grim feroc- ity, ordered a label to be placed reading, " Criminal Department." Thus he started on his term of office, opinionated, energetic, and sincere. He was soon at daggers' points with Calhoun, who had accepted the vice-presidency on the understanding that Jackson wanted only one 158 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING term and that he was to be his successor. The Presi- dent was as bitter as ever against Clay and had quar- reled with every member of his cabinet except Van Buren, the secretary of state, who was as diplomatic as his chief was dictatorial, and deliberately set him- self to humor Jackson's eccentricities with a view to mastering the situation and climbing into the Presi- dency. Fortune favored him in this by throwing a social scandal into the political arena, one of those small tempests that carry large consequences. The cause of the trouble was the vivacious lady lately married to General Eaton, Jackson's secretary of war. She was referred to in Washington as Bellona, because she was plucky and a stirrer-up of strife. The ladies of the cabinet thought they knew entirely too much about her past both as Peggy O'Neil, the jolly and clever daughter of a local inn keeper and later as the wife of a purser in the navy who had chosen to end his earthly troubles by blowing out his brains. They had no intention of taking such a person into their exclusive circle, ahd, drawing their skirts about them, refused to sit at table with her or to attend receptions to which she was invited. Mrs. Calhoun sided with them, thus helping to widen the breach between the President and the Vice-President. Van Buren, on the other hand, in the freedom of widowerhood, sided with the testy Jackson and acquired merit thereby. Jackson chose to believe the attack on Mrs. Eaton an attempt to drive her husband out of the cabinet, and suspected Clay of being at the bottom of it. It was in a way a repetition of attacks that had been made upon his own wife. His political animosity, his gallantry, — he was an ar- dent defender of slandered virtue, — and his natural pugnacity were all aroused. He stormed, and or- A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT . 159 dered his cabinet to order their wives to treat the wife of his secretary of war with respect. The cabinet, caught between the upper and nether mill-stones of Presidential and domestic tyranny, signified that it was helpless. One man, braver than the rest, answered that he could not allow the President to interfere in the management of his household and that he was willing to resign. Jackson thundered that he had not made a cabinet to please the ladies, but to govern the country. In his encounter with the ladies of Washington, Jefferson had routed them. In this more serious affair the more wilful President had to submit. Gradually the matter died down, but not before it put an end to all cordiality between him and the heads of the departments, Van Buren only excepted. It was common gossip that this quarrel played its part in mak- ing Van Buren Vice-President. With his eye on his ultimate goal Van Buren retired from Jackson's cabi- net in June, 1831, to work up his own candidacy. Friendly to the last, Jackson " rode with him out of the city," and in August made him Minister to England, a recess appointment that could not be confirmed until the Senate met in December. Calhoun saw here a chance to deal his rival a blow, and raking together the embers of the old quarrel, contrived when Congress met to have Van Buren's nomination rejected, himself casting the deciding vote. Senator Benton heard Calhoun exult. " It will kill him, sir. Kill him dead. He will never kick, sir, — never kick." Benton told a colleague who had voted to please Cal- houn that they had made a big mistake. They had broken a minister only to elect a vice-president. " Good God ! " exclaimed the other. " Why did n't you tell me that before I voted? " i6o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING After the Eaton episode Jackson's cabinet ministers remained heads of departments and nothing more. When Jackson wished advice or help he received it from a group of half a dozen men personally agreeable to him, but without official position or responsibility, who became known as his kitchen cabinet. One of them was Major Lewis, who had ably managed his campaign in 1824. Another was Amos Kendall of Massachusetts and Tennessee, whom Harriet Mar- tineau described as a " twilight person " working with " goblin extent " and " goblin speed " in the affairs of his chief. Another was Francis P. Blair, who long remained a power in politics. These men were honest enough, but deft and crafty, working his bidding with consummate skill and keeping the public guessing. In this their chief was no whit behind them. One element of Jackson's interest for friends and foes alike was his unexpectedness. Nobody was quite sure what he would do next. Some laid this to studied design, some to the natural expression of a tempera- ment the very violence of which had its- fascination. His favorite threat was to " cut off the ears " of any one who differed with him : his favorite oath, " By the Eternal," a euphemism for a shorter word that would have immeasurably distressed his pious wife. His intentions were uniformly good. The summing up of his foreign policy, " Ask nothing but what is right, submit to nothing wrong," was really the sum- ming up of his attitude toward the world. When not angry he was just. When angry, which often hap- pened, the chances of his being just were about fifty in a hundred. Long experience had taught him that a certain amount of bluster was effective. Henry A. Wise insisted that he was a consummate actor, and that often his towering passions were simulated for A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT i6i a purpose; after which, the moment the door closed be- hind one of his victims, he would resume his pipe with a chuckle and say, " He thought I was mad." He smoked, Mr. Wise tells us, " as he did everything else, with all his might," puff, puff, whiff, whiff, until the room was so blue that it was difficult to see the spare figure sitting with knees crossed, the long reed pipe- stem resting in the hollow between them and extending nearly to the floor. Naturally choleric, he had the tenderness that goes with a warm, rich nature. Ben- ton surprised him at his home in Tennessee sitting be- side the fire in the twilight fondling a lamb and a little child. He seemed a bit embarrassed at being caught thus off his guard. Kendall, his trusted friend and amanuensis, protested that in all their intercourse he never saw him in a rage or heard him swear. On the whole, he usually acted better than his friends dared hope. Buchanan, himself a model of propriety in dress and deportment, tells of going to inform him of the visit of a distinguished English lady, and of finding him looking more than usually unkempt and unpresidential behind his haze of tobacco smoke. Gathering his courage, Buchanan asked re- spectfully if his Excellency did not wish to make some change in his toilet before granting the interview. Jackson eyed him while he knocked the ashes out of his pipe with great deliberation and answered : " Buchanan, I want to give you .a little piece of advice that I hope you will remember. I knew a man once who made his fortune by attending to his own busi- ness. Tell the lady I will see her presently." And " presently " he appeared shaven and brushed, in clothes of ceremony, with a manner so gracious and cordial that the lady exclaimed on leaving, " Your republican President is the royal model of a gentleman." i62 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Naturally hospitable, his home in Tennessee was overrun with guests, among whom he moved more as a fellow-guest than as a host. Sometimes he sent out and compelled friends to come in. Learning that the son of Daniel Boone was staying at a near-by inn, he sent him the message, " Your father's dog should not stay at a tavern where I have a house." He did not leave his hospitality behind him in Tennessee, but as President lived up to what he considered the require- ments of the position, spending all his salary in a hos- pitality both lavish and generous, though himself par- taking sparingly of only milk, bread, and vegetables even at state dinners. In Tennessee he had kept his coach, with four hand- some grays and servants in suitable livery, and w^as so much inclined to follow such fashions that plain John Brown of Virginia, an old Revolutionist and " one of the near 200,000 freemen which I hope have taught Congress a lesson not soon to be forgotten," felt con- strained after his election to warn him against the pomp and frivolity at Washington that could be pardoned in *' General La Fiatte " because of the " vole- tile fancy of a Frenchman," but that no truly wise man should approve. Jackson understood the homely, well- meant advice, and indorsed it, " A friendly letter, — worth reading. Private." While ignorant of books, Jackson talked remarkably well, though occasionally mispronouncing or even mis- using words. He did not write with ease, but knew enough to use the talents of one better educated. Amos Kendall, that " twilight person," served him as scribe. Jackson dictated his ideas through a cloud of smoke, Kendall writing and reading aloud paragraph by paragraph, Jackson correcting for greater clearness of meaning, and the collaboration going on until of a A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 163 sudden the younger man would be astonished at the masterly power of the President's thought. Jackson had the keener mind, Kendall the readier pen. The two combined well, and their joint political letters are marvels of apparent frankness covering subtle sug- gestion. While on the subject of Jackson's literary accom- plishments it is permissible to recall the fact that Har- vard gave him the degree of LL.D. He had been a judge and presumably a lawyer, but the absurdity of conferring this degree upon a man who heeded no law but his own will weighed heavily on a part of the Cam- bridge community. President Quincy of the college was approached and solemnly asked if it could not be avoided. " Why, no," he replied. " Since the people have twice decided that this man knows law enough to be their ruler, it is not for Harvard College to maintain that they are mistaken." Jackson rose from a sick-bed to receive the degree. At sight of him the critical Cambridge audience was moved to something like admiration, the younger Quincy tells us, and he goes on to repeat the apocryphal story of how Jackson responded to President Ouincy's Latin speech. What he really did was to answer in a few modest words of English spoken so low as to be scarcely heard. But rumor had it that he replied : " Caveat emptor : corpus delicti ; ex post facto ; dies irae ; e p.luribus unum ; usque ad nauseam ; Ursa Major ; sic semper tyrannis ! quid pro quo ; resquiescat in pace." " The story," says Mr. Quincy, " was on the whole so good as showing how the man of the people could triumph over the crafts and subleties of classical pun- dits that all Philistia wanted to believe it. And so i64 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING it came to pass that as time went on part of Philistia did believe it, for I have heard it mentioned as an actual occurrence." That part of the voters who resented the tyranny of " King Andrew " rallied around Clay, and taking to themselves a name consecrated by English usage to the \ opposition, became the Whig party, while Jackson's partizans, especially the unlettered, who saw in him a man pure in motive like themselves and strong enough to put his theories into practice, loyally applauded all his acts as much from devotion to the man as from belief in his policies. Thus early in his administration the country found itself again divided into two great political camps. The distinction even entered peaceable kitchens, where Whigs and Democrats be- came the names of two breakfast breads, the recipes of which survived down to the date of a childhood not yet remote. Democrats were rich and smooth and crumbly, almost like pound-cake, a little deceptive corn- meal smuggled into the flour adding to their specious air of butter and sugar richness. Whigs were a sort of popover, very high and imposing to look upon and very empty in the middle. It was an invidious distinction. The Whigs num- bered among themselves men of solidity and substance quite as much as their opponents. In fact, substance in the monetary sense was one of the crimes charged against them by the Democrats. The Whigs advo- cated the National Bank, which Jackson, for reasons wholly sincere, though partly personal, — and it was hard for him to consider anything impersonally, — bent every energy to destroy. This became the great issue of his second term, as the overshadowing question of his first term was Nullification. At some time in his political career Jackson favored A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 165 a constitutional amendment making a President ineligible for renomination. But circumstances alter cases, and whatever prejudice he may have felt against a second term vanished utterly as the election of 1832 drew near. Although Nullification was an issue, he himself seemed to take greater interest in the over- throw of the National Bank, for which he had con- ceived intense dislike, believing its officials corrupt, and that it was being " converted into a permanent elec- tioneering machine." He proposed to remove the Treasury deposits in its custody and place them with State banks. The charter granted to the National Bank in 18 16 would not expire until 1836. There was therefore no need for making it an issue in this campaign and the Bank officials were not anxious to have the question raised. But Jackson's hostility was no secret, and Clay argued that it was best to apply for a renewal of the charter at once, while its friends were sure of safe majorities in Congress, and while a veto would alienate democratic supporters of the Bank. Late in 1831 the National Republicans nominated Clay to be their candidate for President. Jackson was the inevitable candidate of the Democrats; thus the campaign opened with the champions of the Bank and of its overthrow as the respective party leaders. In January, 1832, Clay introduced a bill for the charter's renewal. This was passed, and Jackson, not the man to decline a challenge, promptly returned it with a veto message that made an excellent campaign document, whatever its merits as a treatise on finance. In one sense it was a contest between town ways and country prejudices, — the distrust of the farmer for the methods of the man of business. Jackson, the people's candidate, adored in the rural districts, cham- i66 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING pioned hard coin, and his " yellow boys " were con- trasted sonorously in campaign speeches against " Clay's rags " and the paper notes issued by the bank. Advocacy of the bank was one of the few questions upon which Clay, Webster, and Calhoun were all agreed; but the rural population still far outnumbered that of the towns, and Jackson won. His victory was made more decisive by a wave of anti-Masonry, one of the semi-patriotic, semi-religious agitations against secret societies that sweep over the country at intervals. A weak member of the order of Masons had attempted to reveal its secrets, and soon after mysteriously disap- peared. This added a touch of grisly human tragedy to the campaign, and the cleverness of Democratic man- agers made it a potent counter-irritant to the bank question, winning thereby many a voter from Clay's standard. Jackson received 219 electoral votes, and Clay only 49. Fortified by this tremendous majority, Jackson gave his will free rein during his second term, using the veto power more frequently than all previous Pres- idents and conducting himself generally after the man- ner of a warm-hearted, well-meaning tyrant. He pursued his war against the Bank, dismissing one secretary of the treasury who refused to remove government deposits from the national banks to state banks already in existence, appointing in his stead the same Roger B. Taney who later became Chief- Justice of the United States, and achieved a lasting and unenviable place in the history of American slav- ery by his famous Dred Scott Decision. The President's removal of government deposits to state banks precipitated a long discussion in Congress, but neither Clay's eloquence nor Webster's arguments, nor the combined oratory of a three months' Senate A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 167 debate sufficed to turn Jackson from his purpose. He honestly beHeved the National Bank corrupt, dis- trusted and personally disliked its president, and cherished the scheme for its downfall with the devo- tion of parenthood. Clay's final efifort, a personal appeal made to Vice- President Van Buren upon the floor of the Senate, to use his great influence with Jackson to defeat the measure, was met by studied insolence. That usually well-mannered politician meant to succeed Jackson and did not purpose to endanger his chances by a quarrel. Clay thereupon introduced a resolution censuring Jackson, which was passed by the Senate, but not agreed to in the House.* Another senator instantly moved that this gross insult to the President of the United States be expunged from the record, a motion that he repeated at intervals for the next three years, until it was agreed to, and the book was brought in with much solemnity, black lines drawn around the resolution, and the words " Expunged by order of the Senate " written across it. Jackson in recognition gave a great dinner to the expungers and their wives. Contrary to Jackson's expectations, suppression of the Bank did not work unalloyed good. For a time, indeed, there was an illusion of great prosperity. Large transactions in public lands took place, and in- creased imports went on piling up revenue. By 1835 the national debt was virtually extinguished. As a means of disposing of the government funds that still went on accumulating, non-interest-bearing loans were made to the States in proportion to their population, on the understanding that part of the money was to be used in establishing a system of public schools. This was a favorite project of Clay's. But the great apparent increase in wealth all over i68 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING the country brought its own troubles. A craze for all kinds of speculation took possession of the people. Internal improvements on a scale too big for even the marvelous growth of America, and private enterprises of every degree of imprudence, were begun. The number of state banks, — Jackson's Pets, as they were called, — greatly increased, and " wild-cat " banks sprang into being, difficult to distinguish from actual counterfeiting, since they had no more solid claims to respectable business life than "a. mythical home, a re- sounding name, and a supply of handsomely engraved notes." What little hard money had previously been in circulation speedily disappeared under a drift of state bank-notes good, poor,, and utterly irredeemable. Jackson tried vainly to counteract all this by order- ing the coinage of gold and silver, and forbidding the issue of paper money in denominations smaller than five dollars. Then, against the opposition of his cabi- net, he issued the famous Specie Circular, which an- nounced that after a certain date only gold and silver would be received in payment for public lands. Far from helping matters, this made them worse, and his ill-considered measures resulted in the panic of 1837, during which the next administration reaped the har- vest of his attempt to bend the laws of trade to his stubborn will. The spoils system. Nullification, and war upon the National Bank had given the country much to talk about during his first four years of office. The other four were quite as prolific. The Bank remained an ever-present issue. Nullification, though defeated, let loose the slavery question to be argued in its moral as well as in its economic aspects, with immoral and un- economic accompaniments of riots, lynchings and in- cendiarism even in New England, where Whittier was A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 169 stoned, and a gallows was erected before Garrison's Boston home. Anti-Masonry, a minor issue of the campaign of 1832, was followed by a wave of anti- Catholic feeling in which church property was attacked and destroyed. The unexpected evils of the new bank- ing system led to much suffering. Bread riots and the gutting of flour warehouses resulted. One victim of this violence issued a card pointing out that wanton destruction of an article is not the way to make it cheaper or more plentiful; a grim truth, hard to im- press upon an angry mob. While Jackson's whole administration was a sea- son of growing lawlessness, there is one aspect in which this turbulence appears natural and not at all to be re- gretted. It was the country's age of belligerent op- timism, a season comparable to the fighting age of the growing boy, who is not so much bellicose as boy. It is his youthful way of expressing dissatisfaction with things as they are, and also the optimistic young faith that is in him that things as they are can be altered for the better. Jackson, the commanding figure of the administra- tion, came in for much praise and much blame. He was the first President upon whose life an attempt was made. A pistol was aimed at his heart at the distance of only a few feet as he was leaving the Capitol after attending a congressional funeral. The percussion-cap failed to act, and the would-be assassin tried again with another pistol ready in his left hand. The wiry old President rushed upon him with blazing eyes and uplifted cane, and at the same instant a by- stander felled the man to the ground. He was so evidently insane that he was never brought to trial. Public feeling, stirred by discussion, took absurd forms of revenge. One young eccentric vented his I70 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING spite by sawing off the head of an image of Jackson that had been placed as a figurehead on one of the old warships. He accomplished this queer task on a dark and stormy night, when the sound of wind and rain drowned the noise of his saw. The vandalism raised a great outcry, — almost as great as though the surgery had been performed upon Jackson himself. A reward of a thousand dollars was offered for the offender, but he remained undiscovered, until years later he chose to boast of the exploit. Democratic party managers were skilful enough to turn much of the distress into political capital. There was some talk among Jackson's admirers of a third term, but it was not encouraged by him or by the man who meant to succeed him. The Whigs mean- while were so divided among themselves that they failed even to hold a national convention. Van Buren was triumphantly elected, and on a beau- tiful and balmy fourth of March, the kind of inaugura- tion day that dawns once in twenty years in Washing- ton to lull suspicion of that treacherous date, with its blizzard possibilities, Jackson and his chosen successor rode down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the Capitol in a barouche made from timbers taken from the old frigate Constitution. It was upon the older man that the eyes of the vast crowd rested rather than upon the smug and smiling^ Mistletoe Politician whose fame and fortune had been nourished on the virile sap of Old Hickory. There was silence, not so much in distrust of the new incumbent as in tribute to the passing of a man of mark. It may be, as one of his critics declared, that the outgoing Presi- dent owed everything to a chance of battle, the vic- tory at New Orleans, " that springboard from which General Jackson vaulted into the saddle." But once A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 171 in the saddle he had ridden gallantly, stopping at no obstacle, and had never been unhorsed. He had been obstinate, and often blinded by passion, but on the whole he was leaving the difficult office more popular than when he entered it, an achievement equaled only by Washington and Jefferson, Now he was laying down the cares of office and passing into the solemn shadow of old age. There was silence as the two rode down the avenue ; but after the ceremony was over, when Jackson began to descend the steps of the Capitol to his carriage, the feelings of the multitude broke forth in a tribute of real affection. The old man bowed in acknowledgment in the kingly way he sometimes had, and those who were near enough saw that his thin, wrinkled face worked with emotion. CHAPTER IX GIANTS IN CONGRESS THE greater the naval hero the less inclined does he seem to leave his chosen element for the uncertain and uncharted sea of political favor. The many marine victories of the war of 1812 added nothing but pride and enthusiasm to politics, but the sparse land victories developed three new Pres- idential possibilities in Harrison, Scott, and Jackson. Its effect on the country in opening up new territory and introducing new ways and thoughts, was to bring into public life a distinctly new type of man. These younger men were far less conventional in mind than their predecessors ; far less like transplanted Englishmen. Even their bodies showed the impress of life upon a new continent. Tall and spare, their deep-set eyes glowing with purpose, the Clays and Websters and Calhouns of that period could not for a moment have been mistaken for men of the generation that produced Washington and Hamilton. They had drawn something from the wilderness they conquered ; something more from the fact that they had conquered both the wilderness and their English kinsmen. Like the men of the earlier generation they were intensely earnest in their politics, but America loomed very large in their eyes, and they wore their earnestness with a different air. It had in it less of the proselyting spirit and more of the joy of strife. The boast of victory 172 GIANTS IN CONGRESS 173 was often on their lips. They were the Wagner heroes of our congressional annals. Politics were a deep national concern and at the same time the great national sport. Most of the new men aspired to seats in Congress and many were elected. That epitome of the people was exceedingly varied and picturesque, for besides the new element, noted men of the old school were to be found in both branches of Congress. John Quincy Adams had returned to the House of Representatives to carve a new reputa- tion out of the years of middle life and old age. John Randolph of Roanoke, descendant of Pocahontas, showing the Indian strain in his strange complexion, was a marked figure in his buckskin breeches and blue riding coat of antique cut. In the last century when a lank stripling, he had had the temerity to oppose Patrick Henry in debate and he kept the ascendancy this youthful assurance won him. Always dreaded as an enemy, never quite trusted as a friend, he had been a power and was so still, though now emaciated and old, the victim of drugs and driven by his restless demon into all manner of physical contortions. Some one called him the " shadow of a monkey " as he rose to fling vitriolic remarks into the arena of debate. Among the new men were some that the fathers of the Republic would not have deemed fit for places in the Congress they created. These were men of small learning with no claim to belong to the " gentry." David Crockett, for example, that Irish American of keen mother-wit and lamentable lack of refinement, could scarcely have been a member of the earlier body. Yet he was typical of an important element in the growing West, He grew to manhood on the banks of a creek in Tennessee, ran away from his father's uncomfortable cabin before he was of age; married 174 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING early, and gladly exchanged the sordid life of a frontier home for the less monotonous privations of Indian fighting. After the Creek war he had pressed on into the wilderness beyond the zone of law and order, con- vinced that he could get along without order as well as anybody; and by processes as imperceptible and inevitable as the movement of a glacier, found himself first local magistrate and then a participant in state, and later, national affairs. When the number of set- tlers made some rude kind of government necessary, a " corporation " was formed, and Crockett as leading citizen dispensed justice, relying on " natural born sense," for he boasted that he never read a page of a law book in his life. Reading and writing were so foreign to his habits that making out warrants in " real writing " vexed him sorely. He learned to do this, however, and in time brought himself to write an autobiography, in which he registered his protest against convention in one delightful line : " I despise this way of spelling contrary to nature." Conscious that he was ignorant of " government," he prided himself on knowing a great deal about human nature, and acted on what he knew. He let other can- didates talk politics while he listened and learned ; and when called upon for the inevitable speech told stories until he was ready to draw his audience after him to the bar leaving a vacuum to be addressed by his suc- cessor. His costume on these occasions was one which he pronounced ideal for campaigning, its principal fea- ture being a large buckskin hunting shirt with two huge pockets having a capacity of " about a peck each, one to hold a twist of tobacco, and the other a bottle." Such tactics bring to mind General Bosquet's criticism of Napoleon's way " C'est magnifique, mais, ce n'est pas la guerre." War or not, they landed him GIANTS IN CONGRESS 175 twice in the national House of Representatives; and after being once surprised off his guard and beaten, he defeated Jackson's perfect pohtical machine and re- appeared on the floor of the House so elated as to be quite insufferable. Honest George Kremer of Pennsylvania, forceful by mere weight of good intentions, whose legislative equipment consisted of a gaudy leopard-skin overcoat and an innocent propensity to be a cat's-paw for more wily congressmen, was a man of some education but not of the old type. Neither was Samuel Houston of Tennessee, later of Texas, with his broad sombrero, his rings, and his ruffles, whittling little bits of wood, as he sat listening to his colleagues, or laying aside this amusement to launch into vivid descriptions of West- ern life. Statesmen of an earlier day held their auditors by their subject rather than their eloquence. Their style was solid, and top-heavy with Latin quotation. The new men not only had something to say, but greater charm in saying it. The speeches of the unlettered were as free and breezy as the West from which they came. Those of the more educated took on a captivat- ing swing and roll. In the mouths of master orators high-flown periods rang true, like golden coin, adding poetry to patriotism. The country went orator mad. Political speeches were unrivaled in public interest even by horse-racing. Here, too, the spirit of the new generation was felt. Official and resident Washington crowded the halls of Congress to hear a good speech. A waiting world lingered patiently from early morning to candle-light if necessary, to be instructed or entertained; but it was restive at being bored. In Congress, all through the country, and on the frontier were people deeply inter- 176 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING ested in politics and politicians, but knowing neither Latin nor Greek. These refused to accept a speech as good merely because it bristled with dead words. Randolph, a brilliant example of the old school, was a rank offender in their eyes, flashing his " intellectual jewelry " before dazzled and often scandaHzed listen- ers. His opponents were chary of rousing him to use that caustic tongue, but George Kremer one day replied to him with a torrent of Pennsylvania Dutch and a whirlwind of angry gesture in such feigned indigna- tion that Randolph took offense at the manner, the matter of the discourse being quite beyond him. When Kremer sat down, mopping his brow, Randolph curtly demanded a translation, to which the Pennsylvanian retorted : " When the gentleman from Virginia con- descends to translate his dead languages so that com- mon men can know what he is talking about, I will translate my remarks, made in the living tongue of my own constituents." For once the laugh was against the Virginian. The upper chamber was impressive also, if less pic- turesque. " At a few yards' distance from this spot," wrote De Tocqueville, when he visited Washington in 1 83 1, "is the door of the Senate which contains within a small sphere a large proportion of the celebrated men of America." The roll of its members justified De Tocqueville's estimate ; but the majority served only as a background for the great triumvirate : Webster, Calhoun, and Clay. Their span was nearly the same, Clay being five years the senior of the other two. All died within a space of little more than two years, Calhoun in 1850, Webster and Clay in 1852. All began their congres- sional careers at about thirty and were absorbed in the same questions. Coming from the West, the GIANTS IN CONGRESS 177 North and the extreme South, they approached these questions from the angle of their respective sections. Each had a great following, yet not one reached the goal of his ambition, the Presidency. Clay was the most picturesque; Webster the most imposing; Cal- houn the most coldly logical, perhaps the most am- bitious. Clay had the fewest advantages in youth. His cam- paign name, " the Mill-boy of the Slashes," referred to his days of poverty near Richmond when he car- ried grain to mill and trod the obscure round of coun- try drudgery, deprived of even the little school training then available. A few months in a store, and the good fortune of being taken into the office of George Wythe, that fine man under whom Jefferson and John Marshall studied law, opened his way to a career. Four years in this office as amanuensis and one year as a student under the attorney general of Virginia, won Clay his license to practise. He then went to Kentucky to begin life as a lawyer. The verdict that Lincoln so unsparingly passed on his own attainments, " education defective," can be ap- plied to this slender equipment of Clay's. But legal training was not then the elaborate technical business it has since become, and etery bit of knowledge Clay possessed was always ready to use, his gift of words rounding out all deficiencies and creating the impres- sion that he knew a great deal about any subject under discussion. One of his biographers calls this his " in- voluntary showiness." For many years he labored to supplement his limited education by reading history or science daily and repeating what he read " off hand," sometimes to an audience of cornstalks, some- times in the barn before ruminating cattle. Prominent in Kentucky by the time he was twenty- 178 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING three, he was elected to the United States Senate and took his seat in that body, nobody objecting, three months or more before reaching the legal age of thirty. From that time until his death at the age of seventy- five, he was a giant figure in politics, equally in the public eye as senator, speaker of the House of Repre- sentatives, secretary cff state under Adams, Presidential candidate, or serving his country abroad. Five times he tried to be President and was beaten ; twice in convention, three times by popular majorities. Yet he enjoyed a personal devotion unique in our history. One of his admiring critics said he could gather larger audiences and poll fewer votes than any man in Amer- ica. Clay has been accused of a cuckoo-like propensity for annexing the ideas of others. This is hardly fair when almost every American statesman whose career covers many years can be convicted of boxing the political compass on one or more popular issues. Rapidly changing conditions made this almost inev- itable; and in the forty odd years of their prominence, Webster, Calhoun, and Clay performed an intricate and solemn sort of political dance, now all opposed, rarely all united, but changing partners with the vary- ing issues. The word compromise is fhextricably bound up with the name of Clay. Had he been less anxious to please all factions, he might possibly have realized his dream of being President. But his fearlessness in pushing any measure dear to his heart does not accord with the idea of a time-server. Some one said he was not a good judge of political distance. His course in first opposing John Quincy Adams, then making him Presi- dent, and accenting ofiice under him, was a political indiscretion, but not a crime. As a young man he opposed slavery at a time when the act was most un- GIANTS IN CONGRESS 179 popular in Kentucky. He did not hesitate to incur the enmity of Andrew Jackson, nor to champion the " American System " of protection, declaring himself willing if need be to defy " the South, the President and the Devil." How much of his success depended upon the charm of his personality, who can say? The " Gallant Harry of the West " was tall and plain of feature, but digni- fied and affable ; and there was a ring in his voice that convinced his hearers of his deep sincerity. In the cold light of print his speeches do not read well, either as literature or logic; but charged with the persua- siveness of his voice and the impulsiveness of his man- ner, they thrilled his audiences. Webster instructed his hearers, but Clay carried his by storm. He was filled with that strange compelling power of personal magnetism, to which his friends gave themselves up without reserve and that his op- ponents recognized as something to be fought but im- possible to be ignored. The wary hesitated to venture within its influence. " General, may I introduce you to Henry Clay ? " Horace Greeley heard a friend ask a new congressman. " No, sir ! " was the answer. ** I am his adversary, and choose not to subject myself to his fascination." Twice he announced and carried out his determi- nation to retire from public life. In 1831 Webster called him back to battle against Calhoun and Nullifi- cation. " Everything valuable in the Government is to be fought for, and we need your arm in the fight," he wrote him. " It would be an infinite gratification to have your aid, or rather your lead." Ten years later his farewell to the Senate was dramatic in the extreme. Galleries and floor were crowded as in stately sentences he paid his tribute to the i8o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING grandeur of the body he was leaving and called down the blessing of Heaven upon his successor. The silence when he ended was itself a tribute. Then after a moment the Senate adjourned. " Clay's leaving Congress was something like the soul leaving the body," wrote Crittenden, on whom fell the difficult task of filling his empty seat. But neither weariness of office nor the malice of his enemies could keep him long away from the post that was his by right. Those who saw him back in his old place in the closing years of his life felt all the old charm and all the old eagerness, though the hair that tumbled over his brow was white and the hand that brushed it aside was pallid and shaking. Despite his five years' seniority he still seemed young, compared to Webster. Of the latter Fredrika Bremer wrote: "In the middle of the camp sits the Colossus, Daniel Webster, in his arm-chair, with his sallow cheek and brow." To her he seemed possessed of kingly dignity, and she thought that he must once have been very handsome. Above middle height, powerfully athletic in his young manhood, with hair and skin rivaling those of the darkest Spaniard, his appearance had been striking, if not handsome. His expression was not at all benev- olent. There was a bon mot current in Washington that nobody could be as wise as Webster looked, — not even Webster himself. Majesty and impressiveness were gifts with which he was dowered at birth. It is said that when Mr. Christopher Gore of Boston took the tall New Hampshire lad into his office he did so entirely " on his looks," and for a week forgot even to ask the name of his new law student. We are also told that when Webster entered Con- gress in 1813, a practically unknown man, he was at GIANTS IN CONGRESS i8i once appointed to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, again " on his looks " apparently. Calhoun was chair- man of this important committee, — doubly important in time of war, — and Clay was speaker of the House of Representatives. This was the first time Fate brought together the three men whose names added luster to Congress for forty years thereafter. Being of the opposition and unknown, Webster's first duties were insignificant, but the power of forg- ing to the front was his birthright, and in six weeks his leadership was established. Like Washington, he is reported to have said that it required constant effort to keep down the strong passions of his nature. Per- haps both men over-emphasized repression and pro- duced the idea of stilted formality in the minds of their countrymen. It is equally hard to imagine Webster sober and yet genial, or Washington indulging in a really hearty laugh. Naturally Webster's unusual complexion and his unconcealed presidential ambitions brought forth a crop of sly congressional jokes which we may be sure stopped short of his ears. Some of them sur- vived to the time of the Civil War. Benjamin Butler reporting on the number of " contrabands " within his lines early in the "rebellion, remarked in passing that many of them were " about the complexion of the late Mr. Webster." And Caleb Gushing, pretending to overhear a group of Negroes talking about Webster's prospects in 1838, reported that one of them said, " We-all kin begin to hoi' up our haids now. Dey say Mr. Webster gwine' be de nex President, — and jes' look at him, — he 's black as any ob us." Despite his New England birth one can imagine the flash in his eyes at such a story, — those wonderful deep-set eyes to whose power every observer paid i82 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING tribute. There was a legend afloat in his lifetime that a mere look from him was enough to unmask deceit and send a perjurer stumbling from the witness-box. An even greater tribute to the accusing power of his gaze is the story Horace Greeley tells in his " Recol- lections of a Busy Life," of how Stephen A. Douglas, a young man in the Senate when Webster was an old one, tried with all the tricky cocksureness of youth to move forward a bill in which he was interested. " That is not the way we do business in the Senate, sir," Webster admonished him, and under the reproof of his look and words Douglas quivered like a school- boy. Webster's voice, a " deep and impressive bass," ac- corded well with his majestic appearance. Instead of raising it and thundering forth his emphasis, as was the fashion of his colleagues, he had a way of dropping it at moments of climax, and was the more impressive for the quiet. One who heard him address the Sen- ate in his old age, said that he began " calmly, heavily, and without apparent life," but that before the end of his speech, " his cheek had acquired the glow of youth, his figure became more erect, he seemed slender and full of vivacity; and as he spoke the last concluding words he stood in full, manly, almost Apollo-like beauty in the midst of that fascinated, listening as- sembly; stood, still calm, without any apparent design, but as if reposing himself happy and free, in the quiet grandeur of the song which he had sung." He did not impress this sympathetic observer in the way that Clay did, as the patriotic hero, shouting his battle-cry and leading on to victory. He was rather the great national watchman, on the lookout that no harm befall the Constitution. Herein perhaps is the reason for the core of failure GIANTS IN CONGRESS 183 in the midst of Webster's success. He was a critic rather than a workman in the repubhc. He was in the opposition most of his pohtical Hfe, in an attitude of finding fault, but not of offering an adequate remedy. His one earnest enthusiasm was the Consti- tution. But he could not quite forget himself in any- thing he did, and missed the Presidency because of self-seeking. Clay also miissed it because of self-seeking. He tried to reconcile things unreconcilable. Calhoun missed the same prize by opposing the in- stinct of the people that the country must remain one and undivided. It has been said that he had a noble intellect, but that his nature did not stand the strain of politics. During his father's lifetime and his own, the family fortunes traversed the long distance be- tween the bottom and the top of the slave-owning Southern aristocracy. His early attitude was far less sectional than it became in later years. Marriage and increasing means and ambition all impelled him toward that advocacy of States' Rights upon which he staked his reputation and almost his life. Native of South Carolina, graduate of Yale, and student for three years in the law school at Litchfield, Connecticut, his train- ing was more conventional than that of Clay, tumbled bodily into the Senate with practically no schooling; or Webster, entering the House with his inexperience veneered by his amazing dignity. Personally Calhoun impressed men with a conviction of his superiority. His stiff hair stood erect over features capable of great play of expression, though stonily calm in repose. A person who saw him in one mood called him " the cast-iron man." Another likened him t© a burning volcano. His style of speak- ing, while clear, was monotonous because of a recur- i84 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING ring emphasis that tired the ear ; and his speeches were without eloquence and delivered almost without ges- ture. Greeley called him " eminently a logician, terse, vigorous, relentless." As Vice-President he did his own presiding over the Senate, which was something of a novelty, it hav- ing become the custom for the Vice-President to stay at home and allow some senator to perform that duty. He announced that he would draw no salary without assuming its responsibilities. In private speech he was very frank, especially with young men, whose society he courted and over whom he wielded great influence. One from Boston, to whom he was especially gracious, says that while he rarely mentioned slavery, it colored all his opinions. The substance of his confidential talks with these young men appeared to be : " Now, from what I have said to you, I think you will see that the interests of the gentlemen of the North and those of the South are identical." ■ Step by step his political utterances led him on from his early attitude, that disunion would be a calamity and that trade in slaves was an " odious traffic," to the point where he became so vigorous a champion of his section's passionate belief in slavery, that only Web- ster's eloquence and Jackson's imperious will backed by powder prevented his bringing about the disunion he had once openly condemned. Perhaps the most famous speeches ever made upon the floor of the Senate were those inspired by his States Rights doctrine of Nullification, which was in effect that the rights of individual States so far exceeded the right of the United States as a whole, that any one of them might declare laws passed by Congress to be null and void; and if this were objected to, might withdraw from the Union. It was no new theory. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON GIANTS IN CONGRESS 185 The Alien and Sedition laws of 1799 had brought forth the same assertion in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions; and the Hartford Convention of 1814 voiced the same idea. This time the question arose over collecting certain taxes and duties prescribed by the high tariff of 1828, which the Southern States thought unjust to their section. Slavery sentiment en- tered into it, as did also ambition and personal enmity. An attempt was made by means of it to array the West against the East, and to combine the dissatisfied ele- ments of the West and South. Weeks and months of discussion removed it from the original plane of a tariff discussion to the acute stage of interpreting con- stitutional law. The heightened sectional bitterness culminated in full-fledged plans for disunion, with all the essentials of incipient revolution, — oaths, agree- ments, pledges of troops and funds, and sacrifices of the most sacred honor, as well as the trimmings of such enterprises, — badges, medals, blue cockades, and but- tons stamped with South Carolina's emblem, the pal- metto tree. These last, by the way, were manufac- tured in Massachusetts and when President Jackson went North to receive his degree of LL.D. he was shown whole cards of them and told in Yankee jest, that was half earnest, that he ought to pay for them, since his action had rendered them worthless. He " seemed amused that * treason in South Carolina had a commercial value in Massachusetts.' " Calhoun, although Vice-President of the United States, was the center and forefront of this movement, both in South Carolina and in the long discussion of its varied phases in Congress. It was in January, 1830, that Robert Young Hayne, gifted, eloquent, and charming, who acted as the mouthpiece of Calhoun, made the great speech for the Nullifiers in an argument 1 86 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING that lasted the better part of two days. It was an effort thought by his own side to be unanswerable. Webster, roused by the peril of the Constitution from an apathy into which he had fallen on the death of his first wife, more than a year before, was to reply, but as Hayne proceeded even Webster's friends became uneasy. He had not even heard the first part of Hayne's speech. Men had made journeys three days' long to be pres- ent at the great debate, and the cloakroom and cor- ridors around the Senate chamber were blocked long before Webster appeared, serene and unterrified, care- fully dressed as always when he spoke before the Sen- ate, in the high white neckcloth, the buff vest, and blue coat with brass buttons that he affected. His very ease alarmed his friends. They knew he had had only one night's preparation. " Are you charged? " one of them asked anxiously as he entered. " Seven fingers," he replied in sportsman's phrase, meaning a double charge of powder then used in a gun. To another he showed his notes, scribbled on a bit of paper the size of an envelope, with the remark " There is Hayne's whole speech," and forthwith entered upon his argu- ment for judicial, not for personal or sectional, inter- pretation of the Constitution, ending with the impas- sioned plea for " liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable." It is said that it was from this speech that his am- bition mounted to the Presidency. Heretofore he had aspired only to be minister to England. But if Cal- houn, arch-apostle of States' Rights, was plotting to reach the office of President by weakening the fabric of the Union, it seemed but fair that Webster, its chief defender, should aspire to the same honor. President Jackson's attitude on Nullification had GIANTS IN CONGRESS 187 been and continued to be unknown, for in spite of his explosive and vehement nature he could maintain a discreet silence when he chose. Both sides were eager to find out, for his stand would of necessity have great influence on the result. A strict constructionist in theory, he was a law unto himself in practice, and no man could predict what he would do. Even the speeches of Hayne and Webster failed to draw from him a word of illuminating comment. The NuUifiers, who claimed Jefferson, reputed au- thor of the Virginia Resolutions, as their patron saint, arranged a banquet for the 13th of April, Jefferson's birthday, and invited the President and cabinet to at- tend. They accepted and the NuUifiers were filled with joy believing that this foreshadowed their in- tentions. An elaborate series of toasts, one for each State in the Union, was printed and laid at the plate of each guest. Several gentlemen on reading them re- fused to stay and drink to such sentiments. Jackson gave no sign. It was noticed that he wrote something on the back of his printed slip, then re- lapsed into an attitude of grim attention. The twenty- four set toasts were drunk with varying degrees of enthusiasm and sobriety. Then came a moment of eager silence, — the moment for which the dinner had been planned. It was customary at this point for guests to offer toasts without the formality of an in- vitation, but out of courtesy for the most distinguished guest, the toastmaster called upon the President to propose a sentiment. Jackson was ready. Rising to his slim, gaunt height, he said forcibly and distinctly : "Our Federal Union: it must be preserved," and sat down. It was a thunder-clap. Under and through the per- functory applause there was a very apparent and i88 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING palpable alarm. The toastmaster quickly called upon Calhoun to retrieve the day if that were possible. He also was ready, and gave " the Union, next to our liberties, the most dear. May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and distributing equally the benefits and bur- dens of the Union." Then Van Buren, secretary of state, true to his self-imposed office of oil-pourer upon political waters, was upon his feet to propose " Mutual forbearance and reciprocal concessions. Through their agency the Union was established. The pa- triotic spirit from which they emanated will forever sustain it." After which followed seventy more vol- unteer toasts, unheeded and unremembered. Jackson's position was now clear, but it remained to be seen which side, if either, was prepared to back up words with deeds. South Carolina's attitude might be bluff; the President's might be bluster. The game of threats and preparation went on for two years longer. The governor of South Carolina gave notice that his State would not pay the obnoxious duties after February, 1833, and called upon the legislature for troops and guns. Jackson quietly ordered military and civil officers to be on the alert, but dismissed the matter with a casual reference in his annual mes- sage to Congress. The country was dumfounded, and wondered if the old fighter had lost his nerve. But his Nullification proclamation to the people of South Carolina a few days later, declaring roundly that •" to say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say that the United States is not a nation " settled all doubts on that point. The matter never came to a trial of arms. The Nullifiers gave way, but not until after the passage by Congress of a Force Bill introduced at Jackson's re- GIANTS IN CONGRESS 189 quest, which gave him ample authority to meet the situation. This was denounced as being worse than the AHen and Sedition laws of 1799. Webster came to Jackson's aid and championed it. Calhoun ap- pealed to Clay for aid and received it. Everybody had an opinion; everybody expressed it. John Randolph, sick unto death, roused himself to journey through the counties of Virginia in his carriage, making speeches of loyalty to the Union, but warning against Jackson's pernicious doctrines. General Scott, a man of considerably more egotism than Jackson himself, allows it to be read between the lines of his autobiography that the final happy issue was due principally to his tact, Jackson having ordered him to Charleston a month before the Nullification proclamation was issued, ostensibly on a tour of in- spection. Ex-President Adams, though in Congress, held no communication whatever with his successor. He was a keen observer and saw instantly the true bearing of this visit, according to the General, He said when Scott called upon him to say good-by, " You are going south to watch the Nullifiers." Scott reminded him that it was time for his customary tour of inspection. Adams waved aside that fiction. " Yes," he repeated, "to watch the Nullifiers"; adding, "Mr. Calhoun will be the first to give way. He will show the white feather." Calhoun meanwhile continued to preside over the Senate; ambition and sectional prejudice having so warped his mind that he saw no incongruity in his position. He did indeed resign the Vice-Presidency before the matter came to a final trial of strength in 1832, but only to accept the senatorial seat made vacant by 190 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Hayne's election to the South Carolina governorship. People turned curious eyes on him as on a man tread- ing a dangerous path that might lead to the scaffold, and when he presented himself to take the oath as Senator they listened wondering whether his voice would falter over the words pronounced by Washing- ton and all patriotic office-holders since Washington, — the vow to uphold the Constitution of the United States. But serenely sure of himself, Calhoun took the oath and took his seat, persuaded that he was in the right ; and continued to act as Senator, though in South Carolina medals bearing the inscription " John C. Calhoun, First President of the Southern Con- federacy " were passing from hand to hand. Burr, shifty and unprincipled, denied the charge of treason, but died in ignominy, unbelieved and un for- given. Calhoun, who made no denial, lived and died the idol of his section, holding office until the day of his death, and after death was accorded funeral honors more imposing than those given the President who died almost at the same time. It speaks volumes for his personal rectitude that this could be. The national capital, where these representative Americans gathered to make laws, resembled a town much more than it did when the elder Mrs. Adams circumspectly announced that she thought it had " a beautiful situation." Yet it was very crude. The public buildings and scattered groups of private houses were still divided by magnificent distances of red-clay mud or dust, though more and more buildings were rising and more and more gashes, that it was trust- fully believed would become streets, were being cut through the green or gray woodlands and meadows. Commerce there was none, and shops were noticeable GIANTS IN CONGRESS 191 chiefly by their absence. Harriet Martineau com- plained that when she wanted to buy trimming for her bonnet she could find in the whole place " in the sea- son " only six pieces of ribbon from which to choose. Few people called Washington their home, but many came to it on personal or political business; and if crude it was very much alive. It might not boast, as New York did years before, that all known tongues were to be heard upon its streets, but the changing pro- cession of officials, bona fide residents, Negro slaves, and visitors gathered from far and near, — Southern- ers, Westerners, Northerners, Indians, traders, globe trotters, land speculators, gamblers, and adventurers generally, — gave it a " tone of carelessness and reck- lessness " that none of the Northern cities could equal, and an energy greater than that of any Southern town. James S. Buckingham, who came over from England in 1837 to instruct us on the " Scriptural and Clas- sical Regions of the East," said reprovingly that Wash- ington had " all the pretensions of a metropolis, with all the frivolity of a watering place." Amos Kendall, writing to his wife about the great show in dress and extravagance in entertaining, hoped that Jackson's ad- ministration would institute much needed reforms, and averred that if there was a spot on earth more given up to folly and corruption he did not wish to see it. Its standards had moved a long way from the rules of ultra simplicity laid down by Jefferson in 1801. But for that matter so had the standards of the whole country, since steamboats and even railroads had pushed their way into human life and set a pace out- distancing the old coach and four. French fashions that used to arrive by way of England, taking two years for the journey and becoming thoroughly An- glicized en route, now came direct and were not prized 192 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING for their simplicity. Gambling was high and card playing common, and in Washington at least rooms were reserved for such diversions at most evening parties. Dinners of ceremony were formidable affairs, with menus that read like nightmares of culinary waste and show. " The big bugs here," wrote Kendall to his wife, " pay no attention to the sun or time of day in regu- lating their meals. They are above that. They in- vite you to dine with them at five o'clock, and the company gets together about six. Then they sit down, and it is eight, nine, or ten before dinner is over. At the 8th of January dinner which I was at the company did not leave the table until eleven o'clock, and then many of them could scarcely leave it at all. About 1 20 persons drank 200 bottles of wine, and the dinner cost us only $5 apiece ! . . . Last night I dined at the house of the Postmaster General. . . . The party con- sisted of Mr. Calhoun, Vice-President; General Scott, and Colonel Neale of the army; Mr. Ingram, Colonel Johnson, and four or five others with half a dozen ladies. The table was highly ornamented and loaded with every kind of luxury. There was ham, beef cooked in various ways, mutton, turkey zvith bones and without, pork, chicken, partridges, canvas-back ducks, jellies, puddings, olives, grapes, raisins, custards, ap- ples, and a half dozen things I know no name for; Madeira wine, sherry, champagne, and two kinds the names of which I do not recollect. . . . Mr. McLean, who gave this entertainment, I suppose you know, is a Methodist. " You seem to fear that if I go to such dinners and parties I shall have to give them. Not at all. These are given by very rich men or public officers who have $6000 salary." GIANTS IN CONGRESS 193 The waltz, new and shocking dance, had been pub- licly introduced at a large ball in Washington when the elegant Baron Stackelburg revolved solemnly the length of the room with a big pair of dragoon spurs bound to his heels; always on the point of bringing destruction to the ladies' flounces, always dexterously avoiding them. A murmur of applause for his skill could not be withheld, but there was murmuring among the chaperons for another reason. Yet in itself the waltz was not new. The ex-Quakeress, Dolly Madi- son, had shamelessly taught it to a young friend in the White House twenty years before. But it was now a nightly occurrence, though it still required years of whirling and reversing on the part of its devotees to establish its blameless character. The difference between the old ways and the new was exactly the difference between this giddy dance and the statelier ones of former days, — a difference of pace and manner rather than intent. A few of the old regime lingered in drawing rooms as they did in legislative halls. That eager youth, Josiah Quincy, just come to Washington in 1826, was much impressed by a matron of Georgetown, a Blue Light Federalist, if there ever was one, who had named her three daughters America, Columbia, and Britan- nia, — the latter in rebuke to dalliance with French enthusiasm. She spoke of Jefferson's administration and those that succeeded it as " our present rulers," and for twenty-five years had lived in unrewarded hope that a Federal President would again be elected, so that she might emerge from her self-imposed re- tirement and take up the social leadership to which birth and talents entitled her. But the years passed, and her daughters could not be deprived of all inter- course with mankind, so she led them as circumspectly 194 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING as possible through undesirable ballrooms frequented by the " present rulers." Young Quincy met Miss America and thought it very like meeting the Goddess of Liberty and trying to entertain her with ballroom gossip, — which indicates that Miss America " favored her ma." To that formidable lady and the patriots of her class, Federalism had been like a religion, as solemnly binding upon their consciences as the Nicene Creed. Free-thinking and democracy seemed to them identical, while " our present rulers " and particularly the young and ardent Whigs, appeared to look upon politics as nothing more than an exciting game to be carried on at all hours of the day and night. The white building on Capitol hill was the focus of social as well as political life. The Senate chamber was a small room, semi-circular in shape, with little accommodation for visitors. The House of Repre- sentatives, though larger, was scarcely better. In- deed, the spectators' gallery in the House was not a gallery at all, only a platform raised a foot or two above the floor, " which gave the honorable members an excellent opportunity of attending to the ladies who had come to listen to thefn." It was, moreover, so divided by pillars that it was hard to find a place from which the whole room could be seen at once and it was important therefore to know who was to speak. Everybody was partizan, everybody attended the de- bates, and the ladies,' who were gallantly allowed upon the floor on occasions of special interest, swarmed everywhere, respecting only the speaker's chair and the desk of the reading clerk. Politics and society were the two absorbing occupa- tions of the town. Matrons of position pursued them both from ten in the morning, when they sat down in GIANTS IN CONGRESS 195 their drawing-rooms ready to receive callers, to the hour when the astral lamps were extinguished for the night. Even on Sundays the Capitol was the focus, for religious services in the House of Representatives drew the frivolous and fashionable as well as the devout. Visiting ministers preached the sermons and beauty lingered before wood fires in the lobby, absorbing spiritual grace and coquetting with politics in Sunday clothes. On week days there were political theater parties ; for while theaters were only grudgingly patronized by the best society in more staid communities, in Wash- ington partizan hostesses gathered men of their own affiliations about them at the play, rejoicing in their numbers. They sent into the very halls of Congress to drum up recruits, congressmen and senators be- ing especially prized as guests, — though whether they were rated like the prisoners held for exchange in the War of 1812, one brigadier equaling thirty privates, and one major-general forty, contemporary records do not say. There were also interesting evenings when groups of lawmakers and ofiicials, unaccompanied by women- kind, met in the private rooms of one of them to indulge in refreshment, intellectual and liquid. Sometimes the entertainment took the form of a debate that would have done credit to the floor of the Senate. Sometimes it was an improvised program of nonsense. Sometimes the company was moved to tears by the recitation of an actor they had applauded the night before with their fair hostesses. There was an ample supply of drink at these and more public gatherings. It was a custom of the time, based on the idea enshrined in a popular toast : " To 196 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING the bands of friendship, which always tighten when they are wet," At political dinners a dozen or more regular toasts, and " extras " mounting to near a hun- dred, were drunk. Indeed the use of spirits was much more common everywhere. '* Grog " in the army and navy; in the wheat field; toddy even in the slippered relaxation of the deacon at bedtime; was considered almost a matter of necessity. It was as much a part of the daily ration as flour or salt, and when workmen were hired was carefully nominated in the bond. Even horses were given their portion after a hard pull on the bad roads. Experience had not yet proved that in America's nerve-rasping air it was unsafe to follow a time-honored English custom. Almost all the public men drank, at times to excess. Both Clay and Webster were sinners in this respect, but drunk or sober, exercised their magnetic fascina- tion. " Clay is perfectly enchanting, an irresistible man," wrote Dickens. As for Webster, Josiah Quincy tells an anecdote to show the " overwhelming effect which his mere pres- ence wrought upon men." He was accompanying Webster upon a journey. When they reached New Haven, Webster complained of feeling ill, and asked him to go with him in search of some brandy. They entered a barroom and the order was given. " The at- tendant, without looking at his customer, mechanically took a decanter from a shelf behind him and placed it near some glasses on the counter. Just as Webster was about to help himself, the bartender, happening to look up, started as if he had seen a spirit, and cried * Stop ! ' with great vehemence. He then took the decanter from Webster's hand, replaced it on the shelf whence it came, and disappeared beneath the counter. Rising from these depths he bore to the surface ari GIANTS IN CONGRESS 197 old-fashioned black bottle, which he substituted for the decanter. Webster poured a small quantity into a glass, drank it off with great relish, and threw down half a dollar in payment. The barkeeper began to fumble in a drawer of silver, as if selecting some smaller pieces for change; whereupon Webster waved his hand with dignity and with rich authoritative tones, pronounced these words : * My good friend, let me offer you a piece of advice. Whenever you give that good brandy from under the counter, never take the trouble to make change.' As we turned to go out, the dealer in liquors placed one hand upon the bar, threw himself over it, and caught me by the arm. * Tell me who that man is ! ' he cried with genuine emo- tion. * He is Daniel Webster,' I answered. The man paused, as if to find words adequate to convey the im- pression made upon him, and then exclaimed in a fer- vent half whisper: * By Heaven, sir, that man should be President of the United States!' The adjuration was stronger than I have written it; but it was not uttered profanely, — it was simply the emphasis of an overpowering conviction. The incident was but a straw upon the current ; but it illustrates the command- ing magnetism of Webster. Without asking the rea- son, men once subjected to his spell were compelled to love, to honor, and (so some cynics would wish to add), to forgive him. No man of mark ever satis- fied the imagination so completely." Given the custom of drinking, the excessive number of toasts, and the hot political feelings of the day, it is small wonder that frequent quarrels and duels fol- lowed in their train. There had been remonstrance for years against both. More than one wave of tem- perance agitation had spread over the country, and every prominent duel since that of Hamilton and Burr 198 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING had raised a storm of protest. But the custom was deeply rooted, and abstract condemnation of both prac- tices fell before anger and the supposed test of brav- ery. Theoretically the duel was a distinct step in advance from the pioneer way of a fight at the moment and on the spot with knives and fists. This more elegant and cold-blooded method gave time for reflection; but on the other hand it hedged the encounter about with formality and a false pride that went far to undo the good which should have resulted from the lapse of time between quarrel and combat for the cooling of anger. The South was more given to it than the North, and New Orleans was the focal point in the South, more duels having been fought in the passionate South- ern city in 1834 than there were days in the year, — fifteen of them on a single Sunday morning. As the practice fell into disrepute in the older communities, it was eagerly taken up in new ones. In Washington, where representatives of all sec- tions and all shades of political opinion came together, assault and battery found a place even in the halls of Congress. Houston of Texas, brave and loyal, and ut- terly dissolute in his personal habits, rushed upon and knocked down a colleague. He was reprimanded merely as a matter of form. 1 Another congressman was shot at on the street. No official notice was taken of this incident, the honorable member making it understood with some pique that he could take care of himself. Out at Bladensburg, the suburb where the British had emphasized their power to burn our capital if they saw fit, there was a dueling ground that saw its full share of encounters, and, owing to the prominence of GIANTS IN CONGRESS 199 the combatants, was better known perhaps than any in the country. To this dismal spot principals and seconds used to hurry in the fog of early morning to dissipate the wine fumes of the night before in sin- gle combat, which belonged by right to the period of Arthurian legend rather than to a nineteenth century republic. Fortunately most of the encounters were bloodless, Americans fired too straight and were at heart too free from malice to risk pointing their pistols directly at their adversaries. But there were many lamentable cases where, owing to ill-will or ill-luck, the outcome was not so fortunate. The diarist so often quoted tells of one week in March, 1820, that was to have been the gayest of the year, when the city was startled by the news that Commodore Decatur had fallen in a duel with Commodore Barron; and calamity following upon calamity, instead of receptions to Monroe's daughter, the White House bride, and a gay round that was to have marked the season's climax, funerals occurred in succession day after day. A congressional funeral was a very dismal affair. John Randolph shudderingly said that the fear of dy- ing in Washington, to be eulogized by men he de- spised and buried by the side of an enemy in the con- gressional cemetery, had haunted his whole con- gressional career, adding a new terror to death. A generous Government provided accommodation for dead lawmakers in a dreadful cemetery where they might either be buried or have monuments raised to their memory if their mortal remains were laid else- where. Even, the preliminaries to interment in this place were grotesque. A liberal appropriation was made for the expense of such funerals. Both Houses adjourned, ostensibly 200 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING to attend the ceremonies in the chamber which had been the scene of the member's labors. In point of fact few or many attended, according to his popu- larity. There might be nobody present, except the eulogist, the committee having the funeral in charge, and a handful of chance sightseers. The committee, and sometimes the physician of the deceased, wore as badges of official mourning long white linen scarves that were afterwards treasured by thrifty housewives and cut into the family supply of collars and cuffs. The chilly indifference of the obsequies was followed by a nondescript procession to the cemetery made up of all the hacks that could be hired in Washington, in whatsoever degree of dilapidation. These trundled along empty as often as not, but bound in some sort of unity of woe by broad bands of white that deco- rated the drivers' hats and descended half way down their variously colored backs. Such incongruities struck the stranger within our gates as odd and repulsive, but those most nearly af- fected accepted them apparently without seeing any- thing amiss, or at least without knowing that they could be altered. They were too busy living to be fastidious about details of dying. Nowhere was this more manifest than in the nation's capital, — a strag- gling, ill-kept Southern town with a characteristically representative, and what seemed to Europeans, a naively self-satisfied, society. But it had in it ele- ments of greatness, — largeness of intellect, loftiness of aim, and abounding new-world vitality. CHAPTER X AS OTHERS SAW US AT the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century the change in scale and standards of Hving was apparent even in the rural districts. Though the old coach and four, with its liveried serv- ants, had passed out of existence, more people rode in carriages than ever before. Cooking-stoves had displaced the old crane and kettle and Dutch oven; wherever the first one appeared, it drew as many visi- tors to the house as a funeral or a bride would have drawn. People recklessly ignited lucifer matches de- spite the cost, instead of making fire with the good old flint and steel or running to a neighbor's to bor- row a shovel of coals. Many new contrivances now added to the expense, and the comfort, of living; but in town and country alike there were conservatives who held out for the old ways of doing things, and particularly for the old scale of paying for them. No- where was this more true than in paying for public service. The only time Henry Clay had trouble with his Ken- tucky constituents was over a question of this kind, in 1816, when he voted to change the salary of con- gressmen to fifteen hundred dollars a year from the six dollars per diem then the rule. The impossibility of making both ends meet in Washington on that basis seemed to him and his fellow-congressmen a logical 201 202 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING ground for the change; but to hard-working farmers fifteen hundred dollars for sitting in cushioned comfort a few months " with nothin' to do but vote " appeared ruinously extravagant. It was a far cry from the Methodist banquet de- scribed by Amos Kendall to the frugal, but substan- tial, table of the elder Adams, where for many years a "pudding" of boiled Indian meal had been served before the roast in the interest of economy, and hun- gry boys were deceitfully urged to partake, a prize of a second helping of meat being offered to the one who ate most pudding. But that was in New England, where careful man- agement was essential, the ground being so poor, ac- cording to Southern scoffers, that you had to plant a herring in every hill of corn in order to raise a crop at all. There had always been careless prodigality in the South under slavery. The banquets described in detail by the guests of General and Mrs. Washington were almost as lavish as those of President Jackson's day. And in the newly turned loam of the West corn grew rank, even while venison and wild turkeys strayed within rifle-shot of the cabin. The low price of meat and game in America, com- pared with foodstuffs of any kind in famine-gnawed Europe, astonished travelers of all classes. Immi- grants listened incredulously to farmers who assured them that it was the custom of even poor people to satisfy hunger three times a day. More wealthy so- journers noted not only that the woods were full of game, but that the waters of stream and inlet were cov- ered with wild fowl and their depths rich in " shell fish called clams " and other aquatic dainties. James Stu- art, who came over at this time, deemed it worthy of entry in his diary, as it certainly would be if a like AS OTHERS SAW US 203 incident happened to-day, that he ordered a chop at a Baltimore hotel before setting out on his journey, " but canvas-back ducks are so abundant here that I found one of them prepared for my dinner without extra charge." Food and fire were two things that any one could have almost for the asking. In the forbidding winters of New England these essentials were provided for as in a siege. The woodpiles were of incredible size, and the supplies of " durable " vegetables, such as tur- nips, potatoes, and pumpkins, and they had few others, were stored indoors or buried deep in the earth to keep them from freezing. Housewives baked a prodigious number of pies and deliberately froze them for preser- vation, to be thawed out and presented to expectant households as needed. The size of this toothsome, if indigestible, store was a matter of family pride. One dear old lady whose memory stretched well back to- ward the beginning of the century told the writer, a flush still mounting to her cheeks at thought of it, how ashamed she felt one autumn nearly eighty years be- fore when a boastful little schoolmate asked how many pies her mother had baked for the winter, asserting in the same breath that at her house they had one hun- dred and fifteen ; and truth wrenched from the other a reluctant admission that her mother had made only ninety-seven. With food so plentiful and the more obvious crea- ture comforts within the reach of all, theft was rare. Even so, there was plenty of scheming and sharp prac- tice in pursuit of wealth. Mrs. Trollope, who sought our shores for the avowed purpose of gain, complained that every class was occupied in getting money and no class in spending it. According to her, Americans could never converse together without pronouncing the 204 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING word " dollar," '' Such unity of purpose, such sym- pathy of feeling, can, I believe, be found nowhere else, except perhaps in an ant nest." The code of business ethics, though so narrow in some places, was strangely broad in others. Smart- ness and honesty appeared to be two separate and dis- tinct business qualities. In communities where boun- ties were still paid for the scalps of wolves, honesty required that a whole bona-fide scalp be produced for every bounty claimed. But smartness did not forbid deliberately breeding wolves for the market. That was merely a form of speculation, exciting and involv- ing a certain risk, as speculation must. Some of our visitors thought the country specula- tion mad. " From Maine to the Red River," wrote Chevalier, " the whole country has become an immense Rue Quincampoix. ... I said that everything had be- come an object of speculation. I was mistaken. The American, essentially practical in his views, will never speculate in tulips, — even at New York ! " The American sense of equality, the way men en- gaged in the humblest occupation said " our Presi- dent " and " we did " so and so, identifying themselves with the governing power, struck foreigners as both humorous and amazing. Even before landing they were apt, if they crossed on an American vessel, to moralize on the fact that every member of the crew could read and write and converse intelligently upon the history, laws, and future prospects of his country. Every man, indeed, seemed to feel himself quite capa- ble, on demand, of leading the country through any crisis likely to arise; a state of mind that is perhaps the quintessence of Americanism, and that was shared, it will be remembered, by Lincoln, who told an Indiana regiment that competent men could be found in any AS OTHERS SAW US 205 volunteer regiment in the service to fill all the important offices of government. Visitors who came to the United States before the days of steam were impressed with the number of swift little rowboats, manned by slim oarsmen with piercing eyes and keen, intelligent faces. They darted out to hail the newly arrived ship with a friendly " All 's well ? " followed by a volley of questions about the voyage and the latest news from Europe, inter- spersed with laconic remarks on politics, the harvest, and the health of the city. After all these were dis- posed of, casually and as a side issue, would come the query whether any one wished to go ashore. They appeared to be conferring a favor instead of earning a living, and the monarchy-steeped soul of the trav- eler was torn from the moment of landing until his departure between admiration of this high-headed at- titude and resentment at the " coldness and indiffer- ence " with which they met his demands for personal service. No matter where he went, he met that same aggres- sive American equality. He soon learned that the word " servant " was not to be tampered with. It meant slave, and there was no such thing in the Free States. The Dutch word " boss " was tolerated in the place of " master," but the employee took orders only grudgingly from him and not at all from his mas- ter's paying guests. Feeing the waiter, if by chance there happened to be a waiter, was more apt to result in making him want to fight you than in improved service. Usually it was the innkeeper's daughter who waited at table and the innkeeper's son who put up the horses. They did not scruple to show that they did it as equals, not as inferiors, and once the service was rendered, hastened away to take their part in local 2o6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING social activities. " Help " was a euphonious subter- fuge whereby maid and man, if hired, saved their pride and pocketed their dollars for services more or less skilful, and less rather than more willingly given. Any attempt to run a household according to trans- atlantic traditions was foredoomed. Fanny Kemble wrote in 1835 that the task of managing six Repub- lican servants was " enough to make a Quaker kick his mother," an American expression she had just learned and thought the acme of desperation. But let the traveler approach these same persons on a different plane, the maid-servant would set down her basket and walk a block out of her way to direct his steps. The hired man who could not be hired to black his monarchical boots would put a broad shoul- der to the wheel in more senses than one to help him out of trouble, and would discuss the present admin- istration or the prospects of the next one until the cows came home and chickens went to roost. And despite the reputation Americans had for pursuing the fleeting dollar, a civil " thank you " in a tone of real friendliness, not of condescension, was all they desired or expected in return. Equality was their luxury, and with true sporting spirit they were willing to pay for it. The great trouble was that once this friendly foot- ing was established, it endured. *' I contradict an American at every word he says to show him that his conversation bores me: he instantly labors with fresh pertinacity to convince me; I preserve a dogged si- lence, and he thinks I am meditating deeply on the truths which he is uttering. . . . This man will never understand that he wearies me to extinction unless I tell him so; and the only way to get rid of him is to make him my enemy for life," wrote De Tocqueville. If while the maid-servant was escorting him to the AS OTHERS SAW US 207 next turning the traveler cast apprehensive glances back toward her well-filled basket waiting unprotected on the curb, she quieted his fears. Nobody would touch it, she assured him; and before he had been many days in the land he was recording in his diary that she was right, and that " very little attention is paid to locking up at night." Soon he accepted hon- esty in this sense as a matter of course, but he never could bring himself to regard the feehng of equality as other than a grotesque perversion of nature. The fact that here was a broad land where master and man, provided both were white, might change places in the dance of fortune over night was a source of never-ending wonder. " The servant of a lawyer or physician," wrote one such traveler, " perceives no material difference be- tween himself and his employer. , . . One brushes clothes, the other pleads a cause, or feels pulses or preaches or judges or governs, — and all for money. . . . Let him fall ill or have a lawsuit, and he will give his custom to his master, pay him like anybody else, and consider himself quoad as having changed characters with him." And this was no mere theory. " I spent an evening at the house of the president of Harvard University," wrote Miss Martineau. " The party was waited on at tea by a domestic of the president's who is also major of the horse. On cavalry days, when guests are invited to dine with the regiment, the major in his regimentals takes the head of the table, and has the president at his right hand. He plays the host as freely as if no other relation existed between them. The toasts being all transacted, he goes home, doffs his regimentals, and waits on the president's guests at tea." 2o8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Our towns, even the oldest, seemed very bright and new and flimsy to foreign visitors, our " improve- ments " ephemeral beyond belief. Although scourges of yellow fever had fostered a certain amount of com- munity spirit in street cleaning and sanitation, there was still much to be desired in these matters. Dick- ens in the forties noted that pigs worked as scaven- gers in the streets of New York, and years after his visit buzzards were doing the same friendly service in Southern towns. Statutes and ordinances regulat- ing such matters were opposed as an infringement of private rights, just as Franklin's desire to substitute modern police for the old watch that used to wander through the night and inform the wakeful about the weather, had been bitterly denounced as an " assault on liberty." New York had no waterpipes or cisterns. Men drove about the city, as they did in Paris, with huge water-butts, leaving every house its daily supply. Fires were numerous, as was to be expected, and were fought by volunteer fire companies. These were pop- ular social organizations service in which for seven years exempted their members from militia and jury duty. They ran through the streets at all hours of the day and night, dragging their inadequate apparatus after them, and shouting as though noise were as essen- tial in putting out the blaze as the Chinese seem to find it in driving away an eclipse. Omnibuses with doors held close by a strap in the hands of the driver were the new means of public conveyance. Passengers paid not to get in, but to alight, passing the fare through a hole in the roof, when the hold upon the strap would be relaxed and the door fly open. When they were crowded, the men, with American gallantry, " stood, or took the ladies on their knees." AS OTHERS SAW US 209 The streets were gay with people and movement. Chimney-sweeps walked about singing their pecuHar song, " always agreeably, sometimes melodiously, so as to awaken ideas of cheerfulness and content." Locksmiths and bell-hangers passed with coils of wire over their shoulders and bunches of keys in their hands. Gentlemen wore picturesque full capes of black broadcloth, with velvet collars and rich tassels. The women, handsomer than the men, who looked pale and careworn, were out in force, better dressed than seemed to the visitors quite justifiable. Signs and ad- vertisements suspended over the sidewalks added color, and the rapid pace of pedestrians and the clatter of carts driven at a gallop over the rough pavements kept up an air of hurry and bustle from Monday morning till Saturday night, when suddenly all signs of life van- ished, and nine tenths of the inhabitants might have been dead so great was the Sunday quiet that pre- vailed. But early Monday morning the bustle began anew, and everybody seemed to be trying to make up for lost time. The national desire to get ahead impressed all our European visitors. Restlessness and change not only with reason, but without it, appeared to them characteristic of our young and energetic people. Captain Basil Hall, who traveled in this country in 1827—28, had the curiosity to visit the room in which the Declaration of Independence was signed. To his shocked surprise he found it much altered, presumably for the worse. " The unpleasant truth seems to be," he commented, " that nothing whatever is venerated in America merely on account of its age, or, indeed, on any other account. . . . The Turks who pounded the frieze of the Parthenon into mortar had an ob- ject in view; but I never could hear that the Amer- 210 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING icans had an equally good excuse for dismembering their Hall of Independence." De Tocqueville, more sympathetic, summed it up thus : America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion, and every movement seems an improve- ment. The idea of novelty is there indissolubly connected with the idea of amelioration. . . . This perpetual change . . . keeps the minds of the citizens in a perpetual state of feverish agitation which admirably invigorates their exertion . . . The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle. Those who penetrated to the " far West " of Cincin- nati were astonished to find life moving at an even ac- celerated pace, and to discover there hotels rivaling those of New York and a society resembling that of Boston. Cincinnati was perhaps the most progressive of the Western cities, and was made up largely of former residents of New England. Scattered here and there over our vast country were such unexpected oases of civilization. There were also marvels of nat- ural scenery like Niagara, but dividing them were what appeared to the denizens of closely populated Europe endless stretches of barren desolation, tangled wood- land, and ill-cultivated fields. To go from town to town one had to travel for days and nights in boats or cars dangerously propelled by steani, or over bad roads by stages that stopped at impossible inns. Every town had its characteristics that struck for- eigners as oddly provincial. " In Boston smoking is forbidden in the streets," wrote Ampere. " You see them beating carpets in the public parks of Boston, as they dry clothes in those of New York. The people is at home, — doing its housekeeping." It did its housekeeping very openly, its business AS OTHERS SAW US 211 feverishly, its praying decorously, and went about its politics with whole-hearted enthusiasm. Everywhere, from the halls of Congress to the cabin of the pioneer, where two or three were gathered together, you could hear discussions of politics, local and national. But the attitude of this energetic and warm-blooded young people toward relaxation puzzled Europeans even more. It was as though the whole nation had entered into a conspiracy to stifle a natural and perfectly legiti- mate longing, which it considered something to be ashamed of and not quite nice, if not actually sinful. " Even their drams they take standing! " was the com- ment of one on our haste and strange ways. As for art and music and acting, they seemed to be waging an uphill battle against the ingrained Puritan notion that beauty must inevitably be an ally of the devil. They existed only on sufferance, and yet ap- pealed to an ineradicable instinct. In this new coun- try a civilization rich in old culture had been grafted upon the wilderness, but neither Puritan nor Cavalier ■ could bring much worldly gear with him, and distrust of art as beguiling and morally dangerous added to the difficulty of transplanting the decorative features of life. A few pieces of furniture, a few books, a few cherished keepsakes and family miniatures found lodg- ment in the seaboard settlements, and became, for the women especially, precious and visible links with the old life across the sea. The little art we had was ex- cused by sentiment. Pictures merely as art hardly ex- isted, and statues, it will be remembered, remained " graven images " even to Whittier, who died not so very long ago. Love of beauty, however, had been too strong for re- ligious scruple or the restraining arm of circumstance. Little girls were encouraged to work their samplers 212 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING and blend colors and contrive designs under the pre- tense of learning to make incredibly small, neat stitches. Maidens embroidered their romance into their wedding-clothes, and young mothers their hopes into a christening-robe. A box of precious hard cakes of water-color paints with the glossiest of Bristol- board and the smallest of brushes gave scope to family affection and love of craft in self-taught attempts at portraiture or flower-painting of artless sincerity. Shuttles were constrained to fly in patterns through looms, and after garments had served long and faith- fully, in a descending scale of evolution from father's Sunday best to the youngest Joseph's much-patched coat, they found their apotheosis in a braided rug of many colors. But manifestations of this very humble and domes- tic character were not likely to impress Europeans fresh from their galleries and art treasures. They found few works of art in our public buildings, and almost nothing to indicate that we knew which of those were good and which were bad. We had our group of painters in Revolutionary times vvho painted in the delightful manner of their English contemporaries, but whose works, particularly their portraits, were prized more for historical value than from any sense of their worth as art. We had developed a few artists since then whose canvases were interesting, psycholog- ically at least ; and lately some young men had discov- ered the glory of American landscape, and were cele- brating it in the loving, if laborious, manner of the Hudson River school, trying to paint both sides of every leaf in a country full of red and yellow trees. A few American sculptors had made their appear- ance, one in a watchmaker's shop out in Cincinnati, an- AS OTHERS SAW US 213 other in the family of a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, But graven images were even harder than pictures to reconcile with the lingering Puritan standard of virtue, and the sculptors lived, when they could, abroad. Music we liked in theory. Young ladies were taught to play a little on the piano, and those who could sang a little. " But ... as to expression," wrote a visit- ing Frenchman, " our ladies are too chaste to include that in their singing; so that the finest pieces assume in their mouths a tone of icy virginity," Oratorio so- cieties reflected the more mature and serious musical taste of the day. Concerts were rare, and if a concert singer happened also to be an actress, halls and school auditoriums in the smaller towns might be closed to her; and the chances were that if she found a place in which to sing, her audience would dwindle because of her profession. Perhaps three fourths of the people of the United States disapproved of actors and acting. Surely the evil fruit of the tree of knowledge was self-conscious- ness. Although religious emotion had found vent in dramatic movement since the acting out of the first dawn myth, after Protestant " conviction of sin " came into fashion, body and soul alike were forced into straight-jackets of conventional behavior. Those who claimed special knowledge of the will of Heaven put a ban upon harp and psaltery and dancing before the Lord or elsewhere. No instrument more melodious than a tuning-fork was allowed to invade the meeting- house, and no actions more enlivening than head-shak- ings to punctuate the long sermon. Yet the bodily contortions and broken ejaculations of our Western camp-meetings, and the singing or intoning that form 214 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING part of almost every ritual under the sun, testify how impossible it is to sever this relationship between mus- cles and emotion. Commercialism was not slow to appropriate to its own baser use the instinct toward laughter and leap- ing and tears so unwisely disowned by the church. Though all the solemnity of Puritan denunciation was vented upon the stage, it managed to keep a foothold, and back in the days when Congress met in Philadel- phia a theater of that city painted triumphantly above its stage the legend, " The Eagle suffers little birds to sing." Disapproval was strongest in the middle classes, from which the greater part of our population was re- cruited. The " gentry " of colonial times went to the play, as did the more liberal of our later citizens, and all the early Presidents attended the theater, to see and to be seen as well as for relaxation; but the large ma- jority thought it a questionable proceeding at best. It resolved itself finally into a matter of denomination. Catholics and Episcopalians attended without scruple. Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists, if they went occasionally, did so with the feeling that they were braving public opinion and tempting the wrath of Heaven. Quakers never set foot inside a playhouse. A fatal theater fire in Richmond on the day after Christmas, 1811, in which seventy perished, was looked upon as a merited judgment. A church was built upon the spot, and for seven years no other playhouse was opened in the town. In Massachusetts theatrical performances were forbidden for many years, and as late as 1830 their houses were dark and deserted on Saturday nights. In New York, about 181 5, a commit- tee " of substantial citizens " gathering money for the relief of the poor refused a gift of a hundred dollars AS OTHERS SAW US 215 because it was offered them by the manager of a theater. The century was well advanced before a native ac- tor of prominence appeared, though every city had its stock company to support the stars, usually natives of Ireland or England, who followed erratic orbits from town to town as business dictated. In the early days manners were free and easy. Men kept on their hats in the boxes and took off their coats in the pit if so inclined. One hundred years ago box seats cost a dol- lar each, those in the pit fifty and seventy-five cents. Servants were sent to hold them until the patrons ar- rived, and theater advertisements announced that serv- ants positively could not remain during the perform- ance. At that time, too, some of the larger theaters set aside proscenium-boxes for the use of women who had no reputation to lose, who thus sat in full view of the house, a spectacle that did much to foster preju- dice and to explain the statement made by more than one traveler that " ladies of the first fashion do not go often to the theater," for though the custom died early, the prejudice remained. Unless some well-known star was playing, the per- formance left much to be desired. " Dans ce pays lointain 011 on fait des machines que 1' Europe admire, on ne sait pas faire des vaudeville," wrote Ampere. When the Duke of Saxe- Weimar saw " William Tell " performed at the Park Theater in New York he had some difficulty in recognizing his old friend, the play had been so thoroughly " dressed in English taste," with plenty of battles ; and whenever liberty was men- tioned, the shirt-sleeved pit applauded by cries and vigorous stamping of feet. Good arguments, moral, social, and artistic, could be and were urged against attending the play. Only 2i6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING in ungodly New Orleans did the institution find un- qualified support. There not only drama, but opera, which for some reason seemed wickeder than mere act- ing, flourished. Perhaps the blacker guilt of opera is to be explained by the fact that it supplements act- ing with the singing that even rigid Puritanism could not banish from the sanctuary, and thereby it adds in- sult to iniquity. New Orleans supported its annual season of French opera, and before 1815 every city of any size had experienced the seductive combina- tion of sound, motion, and emotion, at least in English translation. But it was too exotic to find favor. About 1830, when New York supported no fewer than five theaters, Achille Murat wrote down the exag- gerated account that had been given him of the night upon which an opera with a corps de ballet dawned on New York. The sight of the dancers in their short skirts was startling enough, but at the very first pirou- ette, when the filmy things, weighted with lead at their edges, began to expand and mount rapidly heavenward, half the audience fled in alarm, while the rest rocked and sobbed with mirth, seeing no beauty, only the gro- tesque, in these strange gyrations. Such exhibitions grew more shocking in retrospect than in actual experience. " The ascetic practice of taking care of one another's morals has gone to such length in Boston as to excite the frequent satire of some of its wisest citizens," wrote Miss Martineau. " When there was talk of attempting to set up Italian opera there, a gentleman observed that it would never do ; people would be afraid of the very name. ' Oh,' said another, * call it lectures on music, with illustra- tions, and everybody will come.' " The satire was biting, but not undeserved, for the instinctive craving for amusement without loss of pres- DANIEL WEBSTER AS OTHERS SAW US 217 tige in this world or the next tempted the ingenious Yankee mind to amazing invention and subterfuge. The law against play-acting by professionals, which closed all the theaters of Connecticut just before the year 1800, was evaded by calling their performances " moral lectures." Similar efforts by amateurs and school-children were called " exhibitions," a name to which they were undoubtedly entitled. Circuses were anathema, but menageries, being educational, were ap- proved by the authorities, if not always by stern par- ents. " I remember running away from home to see the animals when I was a little chap of eight," an aged gentleman told the writer. He " made a safe get-away," as his graceless grandson would express it, and had almost reached the magic canvas circle wherein hyenas raged and lions roared when he looked back and saw the family horse bringing retribution after him. " My father and mother in the one-horse shay were coming to catch me. I can see that chaise climb- ing the hill now." " Oh, yes, I was caught," he added with a satisfaction that showed how far he had trav- eled from the persecuted small citizen who was forced to improve his mind when the process was painful, and disgraced for trying to do the very same thing the min- ute it became alluring. Marvels in the way of mechanical devices, real or faked, and " museums " of more or less doubtful at- tractions, fed the insatiable desire for amusement and novelty. " The people have a most extraordinary pas- sion for wax figures," wrote Mrs. Trollope about the inhabitants of Cincinnati. " Hell," an early mechan- ical work by Hiram Powers, made in the transition days from his labors as a watchmaker to his career as a sculptor, was one exciting attraction of that Western Athens. An enterprising Swede bought it, 2i8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING and connected it with an electric battery, then some- thing of a novelty in itself, and brought up a large family of children on the proceeds of showing the timid and curious " how. things go in hell," to the ac- companiment of electric shocks and realistic thunder and lightning. Redheffer's Perpetual-Motion Machine, which was raided by Fulton in his wrath and forced to yield up its secret of a pathetic old man turning a crank; The Automaton Chess-player; the Automaton Trumpeter; and panoramas, far-off prophecies of to-day's movies, were famous drawing-cards in their day. And to Niblo's Garden in New York came the delightful Sig- ner Blitz, who combined philanthropy with his fool- ery, and sometimes used his wizard tricks to reform the erring and comfort the distressed. But the man who knew best how to turn American curiosity into dollars, past master in the art of ad- vertisement, something of a fraud, and withal a very real benefactor to his fellows, was that shrewd Yan- kee peddler of Connecticut, Phineas T. Barnum. After the versatile manner of his countrymen, he was legislator and author, mayor and temperance lecturer, as well as king of showmen. Acting on his theory that " the public is a very strange animal," he catered to it in very strange ways : exhibited a " Feejee mer- maid " of doubtful authenticity to wondering New Yorkers; got possession for a single day of the boats plying to the Elysian Fields at Hoboken, and arranged the forerunner of Wild West shows, a buffalo-hunt, which was not much of a performance, but a great success in harvesting ferry-tolls to the number of " forty-eight thousand sixpences." He imagined more ways of flamboyant advertising than had ever been invented, and he did one thing for which much more AS OTHERS SAW US 219 could be forgiven him, — he brought Jenny Lind to this country. She was comparatively unknown in America when he imported her charming personality and voice. His advertising made of her tour a triumph and a delight never again equaled during the lifetime of those who heard her, and that has now passed into tradition as a standard of perfection. She had sung in opera, but she appeared here in concert. That was in itself a triumph of business shrewdness, reducing at once the expense and the opposition. Barnum offered a prize of two hundred dollars for an ode in her honor, which was won by a young man named Bayard Taylor. When her ship was nearing port he erected triumphal arches on the wharf. Guns announced her arrival off Sandy Hook, and he ostentatiously climbed aboard the Atlantic to welcome her " with a choice bouquet stuck in the bosom of his white vest." Another man, ostensibly Barnum's business rival, was already at her side, presenting her with a bouquet three times as big; but he may have been part of the advertising scheme in disguise. At any rate, she smiled upon Barnum, and he mounted the box of her carriage, white waist- coat and all, and drove off with her in triumph through the crowd, a move which his autobiography confesses was a detail of his well-thought-out plan. The newspaper account of her arrival was as pic- turesque as it could be made, and the auctioning of seats for her first concert proved as exciting as a flurry on the stock-exchange. Three thousand people were present, and bids rose by leaps and bounds until the first seat was awarded to a hatter, with a talent for advertising equal to Barnum's own, for the modest sum of two hundred and twenty-five dollars. Great preparations were made for the opening con- 220 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING cert, which took place, as did the auction, in Castle Garden. A reporter could jfind only one thing to criticize, — a large motto, " Welcome, Sweet Warbler," done in flowers that stared Jenny Lind in the face as she came out in her simple white dress to sing " Casta Diva." The great place was filled to the last seat, but only one eighth of the audience, the reporter estimated, were ladies. " They must stay at home, it seems, when the tickets are high." The gentle modesty of the singer's bearing and the wonder of her pure, rich voice all of us know, though not one of us has heard it. " Jenny Lind was the very music, for the time being," wrote the enthusiastic reporter. Low of stature and ** rather more robust " than her portraits indicated, with a face that would have been plain had not dignity and kindli- ness made it beautiful, she sang as simply as a child, and stood as simply to receive the applause that broke in torrents when she finished. At the end of the con- cert an even greater burst of enthusiasm greeted Bar- num's dramatic announcement that she would give her share of the proceeds of the entertainment, consider- ably more than $10,000, to local charity. It must have been a wonderful evening, but more wonderful, emotionally and artistically, was a night soon after, described to the writer by one of the many ladies who " must stay at home when the tickets are high." She was at her hotel a block or so from the one that flew the great flag of Sweden and Norway in honor of Jenny Lind. Sitting beside her open window and thinking about the treat she had missed, this little lady heard the music of a band not quite in tune come to serenade the songstress, heard the burst of applause that greeted her when she appeared upon her balcony, and then in a hush that seemed to still the noises of the AS OTHERS SAW US 221 whole city, heard that clear, incomparable voice rising above the housetops and filling the darkness with the notes of " Home, Sweet Home." We were not musical; the word "artistic" was not in our vocabulary, or, if there, was a synonym for ques- tionable pleasures rather than for beauty ; but we were sentimental and big-hearted and genuine, and we could go wild over this genuine woman with her golden voice, as we did over Lafayette when he returned to us after an absence of fifty years. We could and often did appear callous and alto- gether crude to our visitors. We were boastful, but not about the things that seemed to them to redound to our credit. We were courteous, but we were rarely polite. We were practical, yet we were forever dream- ing dreams and seeing visions of great power and great possessions and greater luck. And we were maddeningly self-satisfied. A visit to our shores was like seeing a familiar face in a glass that slightly distorts the features ; it was the same, with a disturbing difTference, We had new standards of value for everything, — for words as well as for deeds and things. We used the same speech, yet had a radically dififerent vocabulary. Americans ** fixed " everything from an enemy to a cut finger or a baby's broken doll, not forgetting a political nomina- tion; and after all there was nothing really fixed in their changing, hurrying life save a colossal belief in their country and their future. In reading what visiting foreigners wrote about us during those early days the sum of their remarks seems to be that America was like olives, a matter of personal taste. People liked or disliked us rather vigorously. But whether they liked us or not, our vital young civi- lization interested them enormously. CHAPTER XI ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND MEASURING rods and mathematics to the contrary notwithstanding, the second period of our national hfe was to be one of contrac- tion. Even at the moment that Jefferson was con- summating his purchase of Louisiana, the " dragon's teeth " Gouverneur Morris demanded, had been sown. Although Jefferson's purchase added a third to the na- tional domain, and before leaving office Monroe bought Florida, thereby turning over to his successor a coun- try twice the size of the one Washington governed; and although we have since reached out to annex glaciers and tropic islands across the sea, all this ex- pansion has been more than offset by new inventions in the way of annihilating space. The country was larger at the beginning of the nineteenth century than it ever has been since. Early in the fifties of that century Fredrika Bremer attended " a grand humorous procession " near Boston. It would now be called by a shorter and more imposing name, a pageant. " Among the historical tableaux of the procession was a series which exhibited the prog- ress made in the means of communication within the last fifty years. First came a horseman riding slowly along, with the following inscription : * From Salem to Boston in 48 hours' time.' Then came an old heavy diligence with the same inscription, * From Salem to Boston in 12 hours' time.' After these came a rail- 222 ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 223 way train inscribed * From Salem to Boston in half an hour's time.' And lastly an iron wire of the electric telegraph inscribed, ' From Salem to Boston in no time at all' " This sums up in few words the process of contrac- tion just hinted at, but it may be interesting and worth while to follow it a little more in detail. The wilder- ness had not been entirely " trackless " at the first com- ing of Europeans. Buffaloes and elk were excellent engineers, and the Indians widened and improved these first natural highways. Indeed some of them are fol- lowed to this day by railroads, no better routes having been found. There were other trails, too, for which red men alone wefe responsible, so ancient that the rocks had been hollowed deep by the tread of moc- casined feet. Gradually these were widened until rough roads had been chopped through the forest, leaving stumps stand- ing, and paying only such small heed to grades and bogs as was absolutely necessary. Over such roads freight was hauled with infinite labor to man and ox- in clumsy wagons with huge, solid wooden wheels, each a single round cut from some giant tree. Then miles of " corduroy road " were built by laying tree- trunks side by side, over which wheels and travelers rattled and bumped with painfully regular irregularity, well suggested in the movement of Tom Moore's lam- poon on the highways of old Virginia: Ruts and ridges And Bridges Made of planks In open ranks Like old women's teeth — Except that these corduroy roads were not even plank, but unhewn, unmitigated tree-trunks, without the soft- 224 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING ening intervention of tools or even a superficial cover- ing of dirt. Before the time of the Revolution, stage routes were well established in the more densely settled regions, but as each colony, in fact each community, attended to the keeping up of its own highways, the roads ex- hibited a varying scale of discomfort from bad to very worst, as they wound from settlement to settlement. They increased in number but hardly in quality with years and extending settlement. As late as 1834 Har- riet Martineau commented on the number of broken windows she saw on her travels and explained it thus : " Persons who happen to live near a canal or other quiet watery road have baskets of glass of varying sizes sent to them from the towns and glaze their own windows. But there is no bringing glass over a cordu- roy, or mud, or rough limestone road." The rivers were the chief means of reaching the new Western regions during the Revolution and even later, there being no roads worthy the name beyond Pittsburg. But though pioneers might build flatboats to carry themselves and their scanty belongings down the Ohio into the Mississippi, and persons of wealth float in luxury over the same rivers, as did Burr in his Western journeys of evil omen; all who returned from West to East had to rely on the willing, straining muscles of horses to overcome the upward grade. As early as 1803, when Ohio became a State, a cer- tain share of the money from the sale of government lands within its limits was set aside to build a road connecting the Ohio River with the Eastern States. This was hotly contested in Congress, on the ground that it was not only unconstitutional but ruinously ex- travagant for the general Government to undertake the building of post roads. But necessity overcame much ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 225 oratory and during the session of 1805—6 it was de- cided that the road should be laid out. The same Con- gress passed the bill establishing a Coast Survey, — likewise in the interest of travel, — two measures di- rectly at odds with Jefferson's State Rights theories, but which his good sense championed and his signature made laws. Work upon the Cumberland Road, as this first enter- prise of the kind undertaken by the National Govern- ment was called, began soon after. It started at the town of Cumberland, Maryland, and though Congress continued to wrangle about its constitutionality, it pushed on across southwestern Pennsylvania and reached the Ohio River at WheeHng, West Virginia, by the year 181 8. From there it continued westward under the name of the National Road, intent on reach- ing the uttermost verge of civilization, an ambition thwarted only because railroads overtook it and got there first. Meantime Congress, still a prey to qualms, evolved the theory that while the general Government had a right under the Constitution to build roads through " sovereign " States, it had no right to keep them in repair after they were built; and acting on this theory turned the Cumberland road over in 1831 to the tender mercies of the States whose territory it crossed. Thereafter citizens of indifferent industry "worked out " their road taxes upon it with lamentable results. The roadbed was of the kind known as Macadam where for their sins, weary pilgrims, four-footed and human, are condemned to tread upon angular frag- ments of stone, pressing them into a pathway that be- comes imperceptibly less torturing for each succeeding victim. When well made it is very good, but the haste of a young country and the carelessness of the workers 226 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING seldom allowed it to be well made. Often only a single layer of stone was spread over yielding loam. Then it grew worse with every footfall. Great holes were speedily worn, repairs became necessary even be- fore the road was completed, and the torture continued in a never-ending round. Business shrewdness came to the rescue and offered turnpike companies as a remedy. These took up the work under contract and entered on a cheerful career of monopoly, charging what tolls they pleased, and making what repairs they saw fit. The system spread to other roads, and for half a century remained the accepted American mode of dealing with the problem of public highways. Rates of toll were supposed to bear some relation to the amount of damage done; so hogs were charged more than sheep and cattle more than either. Car- riages and wagons with narrow tires had to pay heavier toll than wagons whose broad and heavy wheels acted as rollers. If the tires were only broad enough, — the number of inches was carefully specified at six or eight, — they might pass free. The road also maintained a free list which varied according to time and place, but included persons, vehicles, and animals going to or returning from church, or their usual places of busi- ness, from mill or market in their home counties, or when attending musters, funerals, or elections. School children, ministers, and United States soldiers were passed free, and all military stores of the Gov- ernment, and the United States mails of course. It seems a miracle that anything remained to be taxed. Yet the public looked upon the tolls as a burden and many and odd were the devices to evade payment. " Shun Pike " in Pennsylvania between Watertown and Erie embalmed for a long time in its name local ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 227 efforts in this line, which went to the extent of build- ing a whole new road around an objectionable toll- gate. The great increase in manufactures after the War of 1812 developed the need for moving goods from place to place and gave further impetus to road building. " Internal improvements " became a leading issue in politics. Localities went wild over schemes to better their means of reaching the outside world. Canals and even a new-fangled contrivance called a railroad were discussed, though the chief reliance was still upon the roads. Freight and passenger traffic were already as distinct and separate as they now are upon railroads, freight then exceeding the other as it does to-day. The old carts with solid wheels had disappeared. Goods were transported in " Conestoga " wagons whose long bodies, gay with red and blue paint, curved upward at each end toward their white canvas covers. Over the harness was a thin iron arch hung with bells, the number of which showed the prowess of the team, it being the custom in certain localities when a wagon got stalled for the team coming to the rescue to carry off the bells of the luckless one in triumph. The men in charge of these teams were hardy and rough in speech and act ; almost a race by themselves who har- bored a grudge against travelers by chaise and stage- coach, and were likely to do them a mischievous turn. Their wagon houses were dotted along the road with greater frequency than travelers' inns, for the good reason that heavy loads moved slowly, even measured by the slow schedules of that day. These teamsters' houses might be small but they invariably contained two essentials, a capacious fireplace and a highly " prac- ticable " bar. The enclosures about them were ample, presenting a most picturesque sight at nightfall, when 228 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING the men camped beside their horses and Ht their fires to cook the evening meal. By the time John Quincy Adams became President, the passenger coach on well established stage lines had become a thing of elegance, though somewhat re- sembling a gigantic hearse, into which travelers climbed over the backs of the horses. Such coaches were given fancy names like our sleeping cars, and " Jewess," " Ivanhoe," and " Loch Lomond " showed distinctly the influence of Walter Scott. Advertisements of their luxury and speed never failed to mention the good condition of the horses and to dilate upon the sobriety of the drivers, " which as everybody knows is the most difficult and dangerous part of the running of stages." The horses were usually four and the number of pas- sengers eleven, nine inside and two seated with the abstemious driver. Luggage took the shape of diminu- tive hair-covered trunks, brass studded and built for hard usage, which were swung on behind; and each lady was, moreover, allowed her bandbox that accom- panied her inside, to the great inconvenience of all concerned. But this was submitted to with the in- variable good humor that Europeans found so charac- teristic of American travelers. The departure of the stage was always at a deplor- ably early hour In the morning, no matter what the length of the journey, — a phenomenon of travel paral- leled in England to-day (though immensely improved upon) in the way the destination is invariably reached in time for tea. The difference between good stage lines and bad was wide indeed. At the one extreme was the lively, if dusty, procession of nine or more coaches, whirling its loads to boats upon the nearest river, to be delivered in turn to nine other coaches that carried them to other ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 229 boats, and so on all the way from New York to Wash- ington where they brought up at " Gadsby's," an inn of national reputation "on the Avenue west of 21st Street, beyond the ' Seven buildings.' " Here long dinner tables awaited the hungry travelers, and an army of " likely " colored waiters responded with military precision to the commands of the stout little host. " Re-move covers ! " he would cry, and they stepped forward as one man, lifted them, and stepped back again, wheeled to face their master and awaited the next signal ; walked away, keeping step, deposited the covers, and returned to serve the guests. That was the luxury of travel. At the other ex- treme were days and nights of weary rolling and pom- meling over roads " marked out rather than made," through barren Southern pine lands, or in that rice country nearer the coast, " a sort of hasty pudding of amphibious elements " where " the river wants strain- ing and the land draining to make either properly wet or dry." In such lonely regions meeting another stage-coach was like the meeting of ships at sea; each clamorously demanding news from the region the other had left, travelers from the South asking about the doings of Congress and those from the North about their friends in Charleston or the latest packet from Europe. On parting each passed on through more pine barrens or over a purgatory of corduroy road across bogs and bayous, until they halted to " water the horses, and brandy the gentlemen " at some ill- constructed hostelry such as the Duke of Saxe-Weimar would have described politely but adequately as " rather transparent." Here the food was apt to be of a char- acter to please the host rather than the guests. *' Good honest fried bacon and hot Christian cornbread. Nothing like it to fill a man up and make him feel 230 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING righteous. You get a heap better living up in this country than you can at the St. Charles, for all the fuss they make about it," a boniface in northern Mississippi told a traveler who found it difficult to swallow any part of the meal set before him. " It's lucky you '11 have something better to travel on to-night than them French fritterzeed, Dutch flabbergasted hell-fixin's," he added. That was the worst of it ; the travel went on mer- cilessly by night and by day, heedless of wearied bones or suffering digestion. Distances were so great that it had to go on if the wayfarer wished to reach his destination, at the rate of six miles an hour. And the passion for arriving is no new growth on American soil. Small wonder that osteopathy and massage de- veloped into a science only after stage-coach days were well over. Canals of Dutch model became popular in Europe during the half century before our War of 1812, and their advantages were not overlooked when our people awoke to the necessity for better means of communica- tion. Many such projects were discussed in many places. The Erie Canal, chief among those that were actually built, and chief in the changes it wrought in our physical and financial history, was a growth of forty years from its earliest inception to final accom- plishment. It had its small beginning as far back as 1785 when a bill came before the New York legislature " for the improvement of inland navigation at various points betw^een Albany and Oswego." Fifteen years later Gouverneur Morris, shy of " chimeras " but gifted with imagination, pointed out that a continuous water- way between the Hudson River and Lake Erie was inevitable and that hundreds of large ships were des- tined to " bound on the billows of these inland seas," ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 231 and that " the proudest empire of Europe " was " but a bauble compared with what America may be, — must be." Seven years after that a series of essays signed " Hercules," written by Jesse Hawley, a patriot lan- guishing in a debtor's prisonj was published in the " Genessee Messenger " in the winter of 1807-8 and brought the matter before a larger public; but it took the War of 181 2 to demonstrate the need for such a waterway. With the glow of triumphant ship-building and ship- fighting on the lakes still warming the hearts of New York voters, and the heavy cost of transporting muni- tions of war to Buffalo over nearly impassable roads still tugging at their pockets, plans for the canal almost completed themselves, though there were those who ridiculed " the ditch " and averred that no man living would see it finished. De Witt Clinton, governor of New York when actual work was begun in 181 7, turned the first spadeful of earth and he also poured the keg of water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic in the ceremonies that marked its completion eight years later. He had imagination to see that this canal would turn the country east of the Mississippi into " one vast island, susceptible of circumnavigation to the extent of many thousand miles " and save to the Eastern cities much commerce that would otherwise find its way down to New Orleans. But even he did not divine that it was to wrest business supremacy from Philadelphia, up to that time our chief seaport, and make New York the undisputed commercial center of America. Nor did he see how mightily it was to influence American history by turning a stream of New England energy and thrift into the upper Ohio and Mississippi val- leys. 232 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING The opening of the Erie Canal was made the occa- sion of much ceremony and rejoicing. Cannon sounded in succession all the way from Buffalo to Sandy Hook and all the way back again, to announce the letting in of the waters. A fleet of gaily decorated boats starting from Buffalo was joined at intervals by others during the eight days it took them to reach New York. Met there by another fleet, the two pro- ceeded down the bay " amidst the roar of cannon," with a fine display of bunting, and much speech-making to witness the union of " our American Mediterranean with the Atlantic " when Governor Clinton poured the sweet water of the lakes into the brine of the Sound. Twelve years later New York alone had over 650 miles of canals within her borders; and even before its completion the prospective success of the Erie Canal had stimulated similar ventures elsewhere. Ground was broken to join Lake Erie and the Ohio River by a canal. The Delaware and Hudson canal was begun with music, prayer, and speeches. The Delaware and Chesapeake and Delaware and Ohio canals were also started and plans were afoot to do great things in the valley of the Connecticut River by way of uniting Long Island Sound with Montreal ; as well as less ambitious schemes to connect New Haven with Northampton, Providence with Worcester, and the like. The echoes of the Erie Canal celebration had scarcely died away when a merchant of New York wrote to Henry Clay, announcing that he and several others wished to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. But this scheme was ahead of its time and died at birth. To the elegancies of travel by stage-coach were now added canal boats de luxe, each containing a " ladies' dressing room " with berths for " four females," the ROBERT FULTON From a portrait in possession of Robert Fulton Blight, Esq. ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 233 inevitable bar, a cook's galley and a long cabin used by day for dining- and sitting-room and transformed promptly at nine o'clock into a sleeping place of sar- dine-box ventilation, by means of hanging berths, mat- tresses, and curtains. During daylight hours the roof could be used as a place whereon to pass the time, though the warning cry "Low bridge!" was apt to send every one prostrate until the obstruction was passed. The agile could also relieve the tedium of the journey by vaulting ashore at any moment and running along the towpath until they chose to drop again upon the boat from one of these low bridges. Altogether it was a distinct advance in comfort upon the crowding and jolting of even the most elegant Sultana or Loch Lomond. It was a gain in purse as well, the rate in cost and speed being " a cent and a half a mile, mile and a half an hour," as opposed to the four cents a mile charged by the stage-coaches, though the latter, on the other hand, claimed to cover the ground four times as fast. Another and more speedy kind of boat had also come into being. In 1785, within a few years of the time when Gouverneur Morris wrote that letter filled with sage reflections about the current of the Missis- sippi, James Rumsey was propelling a boat by stSam upon the Potomac. Other inventors did the same else- where, to their own satisfaction though not to the con- version of a doubting public. One of these, Robert Fulton, carried his idea to Paris, where he pursued his experiments upon the Seine, and had the good for- tune to enlist the cooperation of the rich and influen- tial Robert R. Livingston, then our minister to France, the same gentleman on whose estate the brown cloth for Washington's inaugural suit had been spun and woven. He had money and interest to lavish upon 234 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING inventors as well as upon Presidents ; and a shrewd eye for profit. By 1807 he and Fulton were in full en- joyment of an exclusive right to navigate the waters of New York State by steam. Four years later this monopoly having become valuable enough to evade, the " team boat," a rival ferry, operated safely and sanely by means of horses walking in a circle, was evolved to avoid paying them royalty ; and soon a flock of lawsuits moved by steam descended upon the courts, to hover over them to this day. But it was long before the full possibilities of the new motive power were realized. Even as late as 1838, at the very moment when the Siriits and the Great Western successfully crossed the ocean under steam. Dr. Dionysius Lardner, a worthy and by no mean uncelebrated Englishman of science, was explaining to the world conclusively why it could never be done. For a time steam power was unsuccessful on our Western rivers, chiefly because the experimental boats were built with holds too deep for use in seasons of low water. It was only after they had been adapted to the fluctuating character of the streams, given added length and so little depth that they could be said to " slide on a drop of dew," that any appreciable number of fhem followed the wake of the pioneer boat launched on the Ohio near Pittsburg by " a Mr. Roosewalt, a gentleman of enterprise," who made a thrilling voyage in 181 1, that year of flood, comet, and earthquake, his boat being connected in the minds of many who saw it with these disturbing natural phenomena. About the time of Jackson's victory at New Orleans, colored laborers, roused from congenital lethargy, rushed ex- citedly along the levees shouting and pointing at a boat, unmistakably on fire, that floated persistently up stream. But it was quite ten years after the battle of ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 235 New Orleans before steam caused a marked change in the number of craft propelled by hand that swarmed upon the Mississippi. These were varied and picturesque. There were bark canoes quickly made and quickly worn out ; pirogues propelled by oars or setting-poles, and hard to take against the current; barges like great square boxes ; and batteaux, wide in the middle and tapering toward each end. " New Orleans boats," great pointed covered hulks with a capacity of forty or fifty tons of freight and carrying almost as many men ; and keel- boats, long, narrow, and completely roofed over, whose crews manipulated their long poles from running- boards extending along the outside. Occasionally an " Ark " was to be seen, an early form of Western houseboat, invented by a frugal citizen of Dutch name upon the Juniata, to avoid paying rent. There were rafts alsQ, bobbing fields of logs more than a hundred feet long, in the center of which a rudimentary home life went on in the little cabin whose hearthstone was a wooden box lined with clay. Then there was the galley, a model boat with covered deck, and oars for motive power. Most important of all to the opening West were the flatboats or Kentucky Broadhorns, square at the ends, half roofed over, and managed by two great " sweeps " on a side, worked by two men each, a long steering oar in the stern, and a short oar at the bow called the " gouger," for additional help against the current. It was upon boats of this type that pioneer families, singly or in groups of two or three, floated down the rivers to their new homes, and sometimes into history, as did the Lincolns, father and son. As the population increased, peddler-boats were fitted out for river trade, and the sound of their horns 236 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING might announce the arrival of dry goods or hardware or even a floating lottery. Those who manned the river craft were as distinctly a race by themselves as the freighters of the Conestoga wagons. Among them was a goodly proportion of criminals who had flocked to the Ohio Valley as the Indians left it. All were rough and given to profanity, but all were daring and brave. When the steamboats came they did not languish. They simply climbed aboard the new craft, adapted themselves to new re- quirements, and increased with increasing trade. It was estimated that in 1832 90,000 people were sup- ported by the river traffic in its various forms. Once established. Western steamboats took on an air of luxury, rather specious than real. Mrs. TroUope in her frank criticism complained that they carried an overplus of mirrors and a dearth of towels. Sleeping accommodations bore about the Same ratio to passen- gers that lifeboats bear to souls aboard a transatlantic liner; and men stood small chance of getting a bed be- cause of the heartless American custom of providing for the women first. The few bunks that remained were distributed by lottery. " A set of tickets equal in number to that of the gentlemen " was provided, from which each man drew as he paid his fare. If there happened to be a number upon his ticket it served as a voucher for his sleeping place. If he drew a blank there was nothing to do but stretch himself with other unfortunates upon the lockers or on deck. This gambling was at least conducted without favoritism. Bargeman and belted earl fared alike, so long as each had the price of a ticket. Because a foreign traveler happened to be " one of them there kings " in the land of his birth, was no reason for interrupting this im- partially democratic arrangement. The tall Duke of ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 237 Saxe-Weimer found himself the center of a group slumbering upon benches, himself given the longest bench and that pieced out by a chair, — not on account of his title, but of his height. Being a friendly duke he did not mind. " It had the appearance of a heredi- tary sepulcher, in the center of which I lay as father of the family," he thought. At meal times a long table running the length of the gilded " saloon " was set out with a solid and inelegant equipment of dishes, cutlery, and food, punctuated by pitchers of water and decanters of spirit placed down the center at convenient intervals. Here the pas- sengers flocked upon notice that the meal was ready, ate in the ravenous silence that so astonished travelers from across the sea, and departed as quickly as they had come, many hastening to the bar ; for by some un- written law (possibly explained in the quality of liquor provided) the decanters upon the table, free as the water beside them, were rarely touched, though the consumption of alcohol upon the boat was not light. The American way of hurrying to one thing and then to another was a never-ending source of wonder to the stranger within our gates. One who was fortu- nate enough to get a berth wrote of being disturbed before five in the morning by movements of his fellow passengers, which led him to believe that they were nearing their destination. But he learned that the boat would not make a landing before nine or ten o'clock. " You would not be at all surprised at their getting up at four o'clock with the intention of arriv- ing at nine," he asserted. "If one hundred Americans were going to be shot, they would contend for the priority, so strong is their habit," The one place where they seemed willing to linger was in the men's saloon, where play waxed high and 238 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING exciting, and professional gamblers reaped their har- vest. This saloon was often divided from that allotted to the women by folding doors. The writer will always remember the description given her by an old lady of a night on the Mississippi in her youth, when the boat struck a " snag " with such force as to roll these doors back and display as in a picture the gamblers in their seats, transfixed, every motion arrested, every cheek blanched, during the slow-moving seconds that passed before it was known whether the shock was merely an incident of the voyage or the beginning of a catas- trophe. For these river steamers were scarcely as safe as they were comfortable. Their boilers had an unstable way with them. On the Hudson, because of this tendency to explode and also on account of the " disagreeable motion," cautious Easterners made it profitable to at- tach " safety barges " in the rear, real floating hotels, furnished '* even with silk curtains and surrounded by a piazza, which in warm weather must be extremely pleasant." But in the hurrying West no such concession was made to timidity. The mad passion of unrest seemed to concentrate in the boats themselves. The flimsy things were built in haste and run at top speed until a spark, or a snag, or a bit of bravado brought about the inevitable end. Usually they " burned a hole in the night " and disappeared, carrying passengers with them sometimes ; always carrying regrets, for their engineers and captains loved them as men love race-horses. Their careers were usually short. " She died in three years," one old riverman said with feeling about a boat that he had seen built and perish. Often the catastrophe came as the climax of a race more exciting than any race on land, and so close in ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 239 every sense that railings scraped against each other and the roofs of the great side-wheels knocked to- gether. Boilers grew overheated, and men cheered and women went into hysterics, and nobody cared for anything except to cram more wood into the furnace, — " rosin and pine," — until one boat or the other ran out of fuel and dropped behind, or else caught fire and sank. It took nerve to hold one's place in that profane, dare-devil aquatic profession. Quick wit and clear eye were essential in a pilot on the Mississippi with its tugging, treacherous current. It took heroism, too, of no mean sort. " England expects every man to do his duty " had its silent counterpart in the rough code of these river men. We all remember Jim Bludso, drawn for us by John Hay. " He war n't no saint. Them engineers is all pretty much alike, — One wife at Natchez-under-the-hill and another one here in Pike. A keerless man in his talk was Jim, and an awkward hand in a row." But when the fire burst out as the old boat cleared the bar, " Quick as a flash she turned and made for that wilier bank on the right. There was runnin' and cursin' but Jim yelled out over all the in- fernal roar, ' I '11 hold her nozzle agin the bank till the last galoot 's ashore ! ' " — " And Bludso's ghost went up alone in the smoke of the Prairie Belle." By 1825 the country east of the Mississippi was overlaid by a network of turnpikes, canals, and steam- boat lines. They were most numerous in the Atlantic States, from Maine down to Maryland. Then they grew sparse, to thicken again in the Carolinas. New York and Pennsylvania were well supplied; and the Ohio Valley south of the river had almost as many as New England. They were thick also in the valley of the Mississippi, from the region of Alton down to the 240 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING mouth of the Ohio. Another group centered upon New Orleans; but the long stretch of valley between showed scarcely one ; and only two crossed the wastes of Northern Illinois and Indiana, to converge upon a point on Lake Michigan that had long been known as Fort Dearborn but was now called Chicago. Beyond the Mississippi there were practically none at all. The canals were comparatively few ; and as turn- pikes followed streams and natural configurations of the ground the effect of such a map was to show that, while there were many roads, there was no direct route from anywhere to anywhere else. Then came the railways, built at first merely as short, connecting links between watercourses, natural or artificial. Once their usefulness was demonstrated, the country adopted them with a rush, but their previous history had been slow enough. Oliver Evans who died in 1819 at the age of sixty- four spent the larger part of his life showing in- different countrymen in how many ways steam could be used on land and water. He claimed that he could make a railway upon which cars could move at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. John Stevens of Ho- boken also believed this possible, and tried to persuade the Erie Canal Commission to build a railroad instead of a waterway. His enthusiasm of invention being overlaid by a comfortable blanket of philosophy, he consoled himself with the thought that no country could be expected to make the change from execrable roads to steam railways at a single bound. If his generation adopted canals he ought to rest content. The next might take an interest in horse-tramways, and the third perhaps countenance railroads run by steam. In 181 5, after the War of 1812 had opened the eyes of the Delaware legislature. Stevens was granted the first railroad charter issued in the Western ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 241 hemisphere, for a Hne to connect the Delaware and Raritan rivers. But there the matter ended, money to build the road not being forthcoming. About the time Oliver Evans died, a bold individual from Boston, named Benjamin Dearborn, appealed to Congress for aid in demonstrating a new invention by which he expected to move, at the rate of a mile in three minutes, a car large enough for twenty or thirty people to stand in " without stooping," and to eat and sleep and otherwise disport themselves " as in packets." A practical Congress scorned him as a dreamer and he and his petition were forgotten. Meantime, Stevens, who was persistent, albeit a philosopher, turned to Pennsylvania, having failed to get recognition in New York or money in New Jersey. The business men of Philadelphia, alarmed at the havoc the Erie Canal and Western steamboat lines seemed likely to play with their trade, caught at this means of bettering transportation between their town and Pitts- burg and asked the legislature for permission to build a railroad between Harrisburg and Pittsburg, trusting to turnpikes already in use and to canals already begun for the rest of the way. But the legislature insisted that if the road were built at all it must be longer, in order to deflect the commerce of the valley of the Susquehanna that was now flowing toward Baltimore. The charter was granted; then another delay oc- curred. People began to ask just what it was that they had undertaken to do. "What is a railroad?" was a question printed in newspapers, with the editor- ial addendum, " Perhaps some other correspondent can tell." The Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvements sent an agent abroad to find out all he could about railroads in Europe. Meanwhile the public prints were flooded with detached facts, es- 242 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING says, and descriptions, published when possible with accompanying plans and cross-sections, and padded where information was scarce, with wordy eulogies of the proposed improvement. After all, very little was known. Experienced engineers there were none. Skilled workmen were equally lacking, and all the practical details of construction had to be evolved and tested by experiment. The business community divided speedily into two camps, one favoring canals, the other willing to mort- gage its future upon the success of railroads. Discus- sion waxed clamorous. The friends of railways pointed in triumph to the fact that freezing weather would not render them useless as it did the canals. Partisans of the latter answered that winter lasted only a small portion of the year, wdiile curves in tracks were inevitable and permanent, and they doubted if a loco- motive could drag a train of cars around a bend. They also asserted that the supply of strap iron in the whole country would not suffice to cover the tops of the wooden rails necessary. Gradually the friends of the railroad triumphed and the day of railway enterprise began. Baltimore, wak- ing to the fact that Philadelphia was stealing a march upon her, bestirred herself, and on July 4, 1828, .in- augurated with much pomp the system which has since been known as the Baltimore and Ohio. By 1830 steam and rails were well established in the favor of the business world, although only about thirty miles of road had been built. By the end of 1831 about a hundred miles had been laid. At the end of 1832 the figures had jumped to almost 1300. In 1834 Michel Chevalier, sent over by the French Govern- ment to inspect our public works, declared that the word " railroad " assailed his seasick ears every ten ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 243 minutes during the voyage, and that on landing he found them everywhere, — in the w^ater, at the bottom of coal mines, in the bowels of the earth, and suspended in the heavens upon trestles. He even found them used for bringing food into the prison at Philadelphia. And optimists were predicting that a continuous line would shortly be built from Boston down to New Orleans. Some concessions had, of course, to be made to the conservative. For a time the cars on the embryonic " B. & O." were drawn by horses ; and the first trial of strength on this road between steam and horse power ended like the race of the hare and tortoise, for the locomotive broke down and the horse won in a walk. As late as 1842 public spirited individuals who prided themselves on being abreast of the times passed a reso- lution in Dorchester town meeting directing their rep- resentatives to prevent, if possible, the " calamity " of a railroad entering their town. And a citizen of the threatened district deploring in a local paper the gar- dens, farms, and interests which " all, — all are to be sacrificed under a car ten thousand times worse for the public than the car of Juggernaut," made one last ap- peal to reason in these words : " What better or more durable communication can be had than the Neponset River or the wide Atlantic?" Observe the sequence, — the Neponset River or wide Atlantic. The absurd and sublime have gone hand in hand " most friendly " in this new land of ours. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between them. As a means of broadening the outlook and bring- ing far-separated regions into sympathy, nothing in world history has equaled the inventions of modern transportation. Not only in the East^but in farthest pioneer communities such questions were weighed and 244 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING discussed. The merits and practicability of railroads formed, it will be remembered, part of Lincoln's first public paper, his " Address to the Voters of Sangamon County," when, young and unknown, he presented him- self as candidate for the legislature. Indeed, the atti- tude of the West toward steam and rails was quite as intelligent and more friendly than that of conservatives along the Neponset River or the wide Atlantic. The iron rail is, in truth, the link, symbolic and ma- terial, that unites not only far-scattered sections but our American past and present. It was Charles Car- roll of Carrollton, a venerable signer of the Declara- tion of Independence, who laid the corner-stone of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. And all the railroads that cover the land have been built within the lifetime of those still taking an active interest in affairs. Thus the span of life of two men bridges not only our entire national existence but the marvelous changes from the old Indian trails to the railroad, the auto, — and wings. " To think," said one whose journey out into the world began amid the splendors of the newly opened Erie Canal, " that I have lived to see with my own eyes, a successful flying machine ! " CHAPTER XII THE RED MENACE THE time-honored gibe that the early colonists fell first upon their knees and then upon the aborigines, has in it more truth than it is pleasant to remember. The whites, arrogant in their superior mechanical skill and intolerant in a theology that they believed directly inspired by Heaven, could see only sloth in the Indian's mode of life and only idolatry in symbols that had for him deep religious meaning. On their part the Indians, proud and cruel, had keen eyes for inconsistencies between the promises and acts of white men, and only scorn for a set of virtues that seemed to them mere weakness, like the white man's willingness to till the land, his unwill- ingness to fight from ambush, and the courtesy he showed to women. Fleet of foot, keen of vision, courageous and versed in secrets of the wilderness, the Indians at first held an immense advantage ; and it is evidently true, as we have been told, that the country was sparsely settled in pre-Columbian times, or else that they were most un- wisely hospitable in allowing the newcomers to gain a foothold. After it was done the leaders among the red men were pitted against picked men and the great mechanical aids of a strong and acquisitive race. Race antagonism was sharpened into a life and death struggle by the natural impulse of a brave people to defend its homes against the insatiable land hunger of the whites. Year after year the struggle continued, with wrong 245 246 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING now on one side, now on the other, and massacre and horrors unspeakable on both. The warfare continued almost to the beginning of the twentieth century, and in it a race of mighty beasts as well as a race of men was practically wiped from the face of the earth. The buffalo, upon which the Indian depended for food and raiment and sometimes for shelter, originally ranged the continent from the Alleghanies as far west as Nevada, and southward nearly to Central Mexico. Boone, on his first trip into the wilderness, saw them " more frequent than . . . cattle in the settlements, browsing on the leaves of the cane or cropping the herbage of these extensive plains, fearless because ig- norant of the violence of man." But the trapper went before the settler and by 1800 there were few left east of the Mississippi. After the war of races began again west of the Mississippi, and the Indians, resent- ing the presence of the whites, recommenced their piti- less vengeance on emigrants and unprotected settlers, the United States army deliberately hunted and killed the buffalo, in an effort to bring the red men to terms by destroying their supply of food. Even as late as the seventies the herds were so large that they could break through a military command on the march if a gap were unwarily left between sections; and some- times soldiers and wagons meeting them on their mi- grations had to " go into park " and wait until the great four-footed army passed by. But it was an un- equal contest and the herds retreated before the white man at the rate of about ten miles a year. At the time the United States became a nation there were three great groups of Indian people upon its borders, — the Iroquois or Six Nations to the north, extending from Canada down into Pennsylvania ; the THE RED MENACE 247 Algonquin trib.es between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes; and in what was then the far Southwest, the region between the Tennessee River and the Gulf, the Appalachian group, composed Hke the others of many tribes, some of whom were partially civilized. The triangle between the Tennessee and the Ohio rivers and the Allegliany Mountains was a neutral ground where none might live but all might hunt or travel. Farther to the west were unknown tribes with whom our settlers had successively to deal as they pressed forward, the personnel but not the problem changing with each generation of pioneers. The Continental Congress early divided the territory occupied by the Indians into two districts, with the Ohio River as the boundary between them, and sent agents and missionaries to live among their people. South of the Ohio settlement increased. North of it, where a different system of disposing of public lands prevailed, it languished, and for years the Ohio re- mained the dividing line between savagery and civil- ization. The Federal Government took up its obliga- tions where the Continental Congress left them, and tried more or less effectively to interpose between the Indians and the greed or injustice of individuals. The national ideal from the first appears to have been edu- cation and gradual absorption into the body of citizens ; the national practice was too often abuse, for which the Indians took fearful revenge. Washington pointed out to Congress that we were " bound in honor to treat them with kindness and even generosity," and it was he who gave official sanction to the Indian Factory System, originated in 1796, to sell them goods " at cost and carriage," receiving their furs in exchange and selling these to defray the expense. It remained in operation twenty-five years, but proved 248 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING a hotbed of graft and extortion, instead of a benevo- lent institution. As might be expected, Jefferson took a lively though an academic interest in the red men. When a turn of fortune presented the country with the unexpected and breath-taking treasure of Louisiana, he saw in it a solution of the vexed problem of the Indians by setting apart land beyond the Mississippi for their perpetual and exclusive use. He corresponded with John Jacob Astor about establishing trade with little known tribes in the Northwest and did what he could to introduce among those nearer home vaccination and other benefits of civilized life. We are told that a large trunk, broken open and looted by thieves as his eft'ects were being sent by water to Monticello from Washington on his retirement from the presidency, contained fifty Indian vocabularies that he had been thirty years col- lecting, some of the dialects being even then extinct. The thieves, having no use for such booty, tumbled them into the bay, from which only a few muddy leaves were rescued. Alliance offensive and defensive between the Indians and our white neighbors added to the bitterness of feeling. It was hard to forget the French and Indian massacres of colonial days; and most unwise to over- look a menacing friendship between the British and Indians on our northern frontier, where it was to the interest of both to discourage our settlement : on the part of the Indians because it threatened their food and their lands; on the part of the British because it inter- fered with their profitable fur trade. Nor was it pos- sible to ignore the fact that in the South lawless Creeks and Seminoles streamed at will over the border into Spanish territory to escape punishment for acts com- mitted on United States soil. THE RED MENACE 249 With repeated offenses and growing population the friction increased and fighting was carried on both North and South on a continually larger scale. In 1794, General Wayne, known to the Indians as "The Chief who Never Sleeps," broke the power of the In- dians of Ohio at the battle of Fallen Timbers. A quar- ter of a century later Tecumseh, a really great leader, inspired by the vision of federation among his people, called upon his Indian allies to unite and end once for all the advance of the whites, — and his defeat raised an obscure General William Henry Harrison to a Presidential possibility. The wars from 1812 to 1818 with the Creeks and Cherokees and Seminoles greatly increased the reputation of Andrew Jackson and has- tened, if they did not actually cause, the purchase of Florida from Spain in 1819. Emigration streaming westward left Indian reser- vations in States east of the Mississippi like islands surrounded by an encroaching flood. There were well- defined geographical lines which the two races were supposed not to cross, but on both sides greed and ven- geance often overstepped the boundaries. The prob- lem grew more vexing with the years, and Jefferson's suggestion of removal across the Mississippi was more and more favored. Monroe made it the subject of a special message to Congress. John Quincy Adams advocated the same course, repelling the idea of grant- ing independence and statehood to those among the Cherokees who had become largely civilized, owning herds and houses and orchards, weaving cloth, keeping inns, and trading with the whites. When Jackson be- came President he changed the policy of removal be- yond the Mississippi only in the manner of its execu- tion. A country west of Missouri and Arkansas had been 250 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING set apart in which each tribe was allotted a tract larger than it occupied in the East. Tribal govern- ment under supervision of the United States was to be maintained, schools and churches, council houses and dwellings, the mechanic arts and farm utensils, being given the Indians in their new home, which they were assured was to remain theirs " while the trees grow or the streams run." A fiction of voluntary choice was left them. Delegations from the tribes went out, looked over the land, and reported to their people. Some went gladly; others refused. The Cherokee na- tion split; those who wished to follow their ancestral mode of life moving on, the rest staying by their farms and orchards. But Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi refused to consent to permanent reservations within their borders, broke up the tribes, seized the lands the Indians claimed as their own, and practically forced the Government to move them. In Jackson's adminis- tration a congressional act of May, 1830, decreed wholesale removal, which was consummated in the next ten years, all the tribes from Michigan to Florida, with some trifling exceptions, crossing the river in a migra- tion, the picturesqueness and hardships of which De Tocqueville caught and fixed forever in his book upon America. " At the end of the year 1831," he wrote, " while I was on the left bank of the Mississippi at a place named by Europeans Memphis, there arrived a numer- ous band of Choctaws. . . . These savages had left their country and were endeavoring to gain the right bank of the Mississippi, where they hoped to find an asylum which had been promised them by the American Government. It was then the middle of winter and the cold was unusually severe ; the snow had frozen hard upon the ground, and the river was drifting huge. THE RED MENACE 251 masses of ice. The Indians had their families with them ; and they brought in their train the wounded and sick, with children newly born, and old men upon the verge of death. They possessed neither tents nor wagons, but only their arms and some provisions. I saw them embark to pass the mighty river, and never will that solemn spectacle fade from my remembrance. No cry, no sob, was heard amongst the assembled crowd; all were silent. Their calamities were of an- cient date, and they knew them to be irremediable. The Indians had all stepped into the bark which was to carry them across, but their dogs remained upon the bank. As soon as these animals perceived that their masters were finally leaving the shore, they set up a dismal howl, and plunging all together into the icy waters of the Mississippi they swam after the boat." No American could see the pathos of such a hegira ; no foreigner feel the bitterness or the necessity that drove red men from the country in such wholesale fashion. Irreconcilable conflict of interest was at the bottom of the whole matter and it must be confessed that in following our own interests we have been far from fair or logical in our treatment of these real Americans. We have too often regarded with ridicule and suspicion, almost as an affront, unsuccessful efforts on their part to conform to our standards, and have judged them in the mass as a distinctly inferior race, instead of judging each one upon his own merits. The wide gulf between their native best and their civiliza- tion-tainted worst is no greater than that between the heroes and scoundrels of any other race. As a whole, their intelligence has not been very high or their moral fiber very strong, and the grafting of our vices upon their nature has wrought quick and permanent de- generacy. 252 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING The renegade whites, outcasts from our own civi- Hzation, " men who painted their faces," and entered into more or less lasting ties with them, have been justly looked upon with unqualified contempt. The drunken and thieving Indians lounging in white cabins and outposts, drinking whenever possible and begging or stealing continually, have driven settlers and set- tlers' wives distracted with their shiftlessness and squalor. Their lapses into savagery, as quick and ap- parently as unreasoning as lightning, have been the abiding household terror of every frontier cabin from one ocean to the other. But the wrong has not been all on one side. De Tocqueville compared the Indian's lofty idea of personal worth and lofty scorn of the white man's tricky methods to that of the noble of the Middle Ages in his castle. " He only requires to become a con- queror to complete the resemblance. Thus, however strange it may seem, it is in the forests of the New World, and not amongst the Europeans who people its coasts, that the ancient prejudices of Europe are still in existence." Perhaps he was not wrong. The Indian was re- ligious after his own fashion, and many of his customs and ceremonies were as full of mystic symbolism as those of the devout medieval Christian. The trouble was that, like the Christian, he seldom lived up to the standard he professed. The moral cuts both ways, and the story of the chiefs from the far West making their solemn pilgrimage to the East in search of the wonder- ful Holy Book of which they had heard, carries in it a stinging rebuke as well as rather grim humor. Davy Crockett's description of an old battle ground where the skulls of dead Indians lay so thick that it " looked like a great gourd patch " brings up a vivid THE RED MENACE 253 picture of their bravery in battle. A bravery equaled by their cruelty; but if they were cruel they suffered cruelty in return with a stoicism that could not fail to wring admiration from their adversaries. The fact that a man like Daniel Boone could suffer heavy personal bereavement at their hands, even to the killing of his first-born, and feel no enmity in return ; could hunt them in warfare with the same im- partial thoroughness with which he hunted beasts of prey, and when the fortunes of war delivered him into their hands receive from them no bodily harm, speaks volumes for uprightness of character on both sides. They had good minds. The simple savage soon learned the wiles of the white men even though he disdained to profit by the white man's kind of wisdom. Calhoun, when secretary of war, conceived the bril- liant idea, or accepted it from one of his subordinates, of impressing the savages on the Yellowstone River by sending among them a steamboat built like a great water-snake, that should charge up-stream, belching forth smoke, and reduce them to awe by the detona- tions of a heavy gun concealed in its painted sides. This and similar efforts met with merited contempt. Even a dog would have scented the imposture, and these men with the keenness of wild animal instincts still upon them had native mental gifts equal to the whites. Born orators, their speakers, on occasions of treaty-making, were as logical as their opponents. Poetic in thought, flov^ery in expression, and untram- meled by the notion that time is of value, their pre- ambles were endless ; but when they came to the point, they could state it without wasting a single word. Their characterizations were as witty as they were sharp. " There walks a wigwam," said one of them at first sight of a woman in crinoline. General An- 254 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING thony Wayne, " The Chief who Never Sleeps," was also " General To-morrow," because a dilatory govern- ment made him so slow to fulfil the treaty promises he made. Red Bud, a Cherokee chief who was suffi- ciently civilized to take advantage of modern con- veniences, paid two buckskins to have inserted in the nearest newspaper a " talk " with another Cherokee chief, warning him to leave alone one William Cocke, " the white man who lives among the mulberry trees," because " the mulberry man talks very strong and runs very fast," — not a flattering description of one who afterward served as senator from Tennessee. Mrs. Trollope, critical of all things American, waxed almost enthusiastic over a sermon preached by a young Pequot Indian which she said was the best that she heard in America. And Dickens described a young brave who quoted Marmion and presented him with his visiting card on one of the Western steam- boats. The veneer of white civilization upon the Indian tem- perament produced bizarre and often lamentable re- sults, but red men of wit and character remained men of wit and character to the end. " Indian giving" is proverbial and an Indian's promise has often been as treacherous as a treaty signed and sealed between rival diplomatists abroad; but again an Indian's word of honor given to one he respected, has been as sacredly kept as the word of a Bayard, — even to his own hurt. General Scott, a man whose personal fearlessness and love of the showy trappings of war made him a soldier after the Indians' own heart, saw a striking instance of this toward the end of the Indian troubles of 1832. There were, he tells us, at Fort Armstrong on Rock Island in the Mississippi River, " three civil prisoners, Sacs, confined by an Indian agent on the charge of mur- THE RED MENACE 255 der, — that is, surprising and killing a party of Meno- minees, old enemies, in exact retaliation and according to Indian habits, of a like act on the part of the latter." An outbreak of cholera among the white soldiers made the fort an unsafe place for whites and Indians alike, and Scott was anxious to clear it temporarily of as many of its inmates as possible. " If I permit you," he said to the prisoners, " as you desire, to seek safety in the prairies and if attacked with the disease, to cure yourselves with your own unscientific remedies, will you, when the cholera shall have left the island, return here to be dealt with, — probably hung, — as a civil court may adjudge? " They said they would, and it was agreed that a cer- tain signal, hung from the branches of a dead tree, should announce that the cholera was over. " Loaded with hard bread, and armed with guns, they were put ashore on the mainland. The cholera having passed away, the signal was given," and true to their word the murderers presented themselves. The General placed them again on parole, pending the answer to an appeal he had already made to Washington in their behalf, which in time was granted. The clash between the two races is the phase of our new civilization that corresponds most nearly to the medieval in picturesqueness and strong contrasts of light and shadow. To quote again from General Scott, who admired the red man " not yet taught by his white brethren to lie, to cheat and steal, except to and from an enemy," we have here an example of American life in the thirties worthy of the wildest days of the Scot- tish border : While treaty-making was in progress after the upris- ing of 1832, " a demand came up from a judge in Illinois, sixty miles below, for an Indian murderer, his 256 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING name unknown . . . who had been . . . traced to the camp of the great body of the Sacs and Foxes, whom the chiefs had contrived to hold in neutrality during the recent hostilities, influenced mainly by Keokuk, not a hereditary chief, and only a principal brave or warrior, the sense bearer, orator, and treasurer of the confed- eracy. The demand was communicated to this remark- able man. After a little musing, the painful truth of the story seemed to flash upon him. ... A young brave of some twenty years of age, the son of a dis- tinguished chief, had long sought to marry a handsome young squaw, the daughter of another famous chief; but the maiden repulsed the lover, applying to him the most opprobrious epithet, — squaw, — he never having taken a scalp, killed a grizzly bear, nor, by surprise, robbed an enemy of his arms, horse, or wife. . . . Her sympathies were, moreover, with Blackhawk, her only brother having run off with that reckless chief." Keokuk did not know all these facts, he only knew that the obdurate fair one had suddenly eaten her words and married her lover. By a process of detective reason- ing he arrived at his conclusions and promised to in- vestigate and report. " The next day he called at headquarters and whispered that his fears had proved prophetic ; that the happy bridegroom had, for the good of the confederacy, confessed himself to be the guilty party, and was at hand." Mindful of dramatic effect, however, Keokuk begged the General to make his demand for the murderer in full council. This was accordingly done with all the ceremony and parade possible. As soon as Scott's peroration " I demand the murderer ! " was interpreted, the young Apollo stood up and said, " I am the man ! " With a violent stamp of the foot Scott called upon " The Guard! " and the youth was taken into custody. THE RED MENACE 257 " When the blacksmith began to place and rivet irons upon him he struggled furiously. It took several of the guard to hold him down. He said he did not come forward to be ironed ; he did not wish to be tried, that he preferred to be shot at once." He was sent down to the Illinois court, and in spite of strong circumstan- tial evidence, plus sworn testimony that he had admitted the killing, the jury rendered a verdict of not guilty. But he had yet to pass another ordeal, — one of fire and water. "A swift horse, halfway between the court and the Mississippi, a few hundred yards off, had been provided for the occasion; but frontiersmen al- ways have their rifles in hand, and their horses ready. The lawyer hastened his client out of court, and gained for him a good start. ... In a minute, followed by some whizzing shots, he was in the saddle. In another horse and rider were plunged into the great ' father of waters,' swimming side by side. Now came up furi- ously a dozen mounted riflemen, who threw their lead at the too distant game. The last news of the romantic Sac represented him as the happy father of a thriving family of young barbarians, by a more than Dacian mother, — all far beyond the Mississippi." General Scott does not explain the justice or the legality, under either Indian or American law, of this second putting of the prisoner's life in jeopardy for the same offense ; and the conviction steals upon us that the frontiersmen, whose unerring aim was a thing of note, chose to connive in a wild frolic with Justice and Love and give this trial an end worthy of its romantic beginning. According to their own ideals there v^ere patriots among the Indians who saw only their side of the ques- tion, like some white patriots ; and when there was a question of right versus expediency were willing to 258 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING give their own cause the benefit of the doubt. Keokuk, who urged the hero of Scott's tale to stand his trial, was one of these. Osceola, the Seminole halfbreed down in Florida, was another. Such halfbreeds were found more often in the South than in the North. If they remained with their mothers' people they were apt to cherish deadly hatred of the whites, and if, as in Osceola's case, this hatred was coupled with ability, it presaged danger. In Osceola's romantic story the wrongs of three races mingled. Many fugitive slaves had found shelter in the Everglades and intermarried with the Indians, they and their children being known as Maroons. Osceola's wife was a maroon born in the swamps. He unwisely took her with him on a friendly visit to a United States fort, where she was claimed as a slave by the former owner of her mother and carried away. Osceola was placed in irons at the same time. He vowed vengeance, and on his release led his people in stubborn opposition to removal beyond the Mississippi, to which they had previously consented. In their Everglade stronghold they carried on a war of ambush and assassination for years until the tribe was well-nigh killed off and the cost in money had mounted up to more than three times the sum paid to Spain for the whole of Florida. While bearing a flag of truce, Osceola was treacher- ously seized and confined in Fort Moultrie where he died " after furnishing recitations to generations of schoolboys and sentiment to many of their elders," as an anti-Indian historian puts it. It was for love of country that the old Sac chieftain, " the indiscreet but honest Blackhawk," a rival and enemy of Keokuk, waged the futile war whose sole claim to memory now is that Lincoln served in it as a volunteer. " Rock River was a beautiful country. I THE RED MENACE 259 liked my town, my cornfields, and the home of my people," was his explanation of why he fought for the land after it had been deeded away by treaty. Even though there be no morality in his speech, it is full of patriotism. His romantic story did not end even with death. At the end of his unsuccessful war he sought asylum with his friends, the Winnebagoes, who gave him up to the United States authorities. Confined at first at Jeffer- son Barracks, he was later taken to Washington, where he met Jackson eye to eye with unquenched spirit. " I am a man and you are another," he told him. He was conducted to Fort Monroe by a young officer, Jefferson Davis, whom Fate was to bring back as a prisoner to this same fortress many years after. Blackhawk was finally liberated and went west to die among his own people. He was buried " in gala dress, with cocked hat and sword, and the medals presented to him by two governments." But his grave was rifled and his bones exhibited to gaping sightseers, as his living body and unconquerable old soul had been to thousands during his sojourn in the East. Protests at last caused the skeleton to be turned over to the state authorities of Idaho, and finally a merciful fire put an end to its wan- derings. These were heroes after Indian standards, though perfidious and bloodthirsty after our own, but their aims were narrower and their patriotism less bold than that of the Crouching Panther Tecumseh, and Olli- wochici known as the Prophet, strong brothers of the triplets a Shawnee mother brought into the world about the time our Declaration of Independence was rousing the white race to its rebellion. All three of these In- dian babies grew to manhood, but the fame of two of them has blotted the name of the third from history. 26o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Tecumseh, daring and energetic, an orator and a consistent hater of the white man, added to his purely Indian virtues a broad grasp of politics and a skill in reading men that might well have made him the envy of statesmen of any race. He saw that by purchase and force the whites were driving the original owners of the soil steadily westward, taking here a little and there a little and never giving back one inch. Like Pontiac he had a vision of empire; like other Indians he believed that the wrongs his people had suffered blotted out treaty obligations, and he saw that they must strike at once or be willing to give up their homes forever. His dream was of an Indian republic stretching from Canada to Florida, in which tribes counted for little but warriors for much. To them was to belong the land, and with them was to rest the final power in a great central congress of Indian representatives. OUi- wochici seconded his brother's plans and supplemented his talents with his own equally important gift of prophecy. He became a great medicine man, known far and wide, holding communion with the unseen world, interpreting its decrees, foretelling earthquakes, and explaining comets and the visitations of nature in accordance with his brother's needs. They made their stronghold at a strategic point in the western part of Indiana, wnthin striking distance of Fort Dearborn, Fort Wayne, and old Vincennes. a spot from w^hich by water, when the time vvas ripe, they could devastate the whole Ohio Valley. Here they made a town, and planted corn and talked peace, setting an example of sobriety to their white neighbors by avoiding the use of alcohol. This was in 1808. Not- withstanding their exemplary conduct, Indian agents and settlers became uneasy and sent word to the mili- THE RED MENACE 261 tary authorities that the Prophet's village was not as peaceful as it seemed. A treaty of 1809, that deprived the red men of their last hunting grounds in Indiana, further excited the several tribes that by this time had joined Tecumseh's confederacy. But British traders, seeing how a wide- spread Indian defection could be turned to their own advantage in the war they felt was at hand, urged the Indians to await their signal ; and to them probably be- longs the credit of delaying the outbreak two years longer. Meanwhile Tecumseh, mindful of the strained rela- tions between English and Americans, delivered his ultimatum to General Harrison. He wanted to be his friend. He had no fault to find with the Great Father at Washington except in the matter of land. The United States must give up the recently purchased lands and promise to make no such purchases in future with- out the consent of the allied tribes. In return Tecum- seh would help the United States soldiers in their war against England. Otherwise he would join the Eng- lish, Harrison told him the Government would make no such bargain and the interview ended. The winter of 1810-11 passed without serious outbreak, but there was unrest with a growing belief that Tecumseh's acts were merely a part of the larger British scheme. Te- cumseh and Harrison held another futile interview, at the end of which the chief and his suite of twenty braves passed southward to visit Southern tribes, talk- ing peace and inciting to war with consummate di- plomacy. Harrison began to enlist volunteers and to send them to occupy the new Indian purchase, and the inevitable clash occurred in the battle of Tippecanoe on Novem- ber 7, 181 1, fought for two hours in the darkness of 262 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING early morning within a short distance of the Prophet's own village. The aim of the Indians, firing by the light of the soldiers' dying camp fires, was deadly, but with the coming of day they were driven into sur- rounding swamps and victory was completed by de- stroying the Indian town. War with Great Britain did not formally begin until June of the following year, but Tecumseh returned from the South soon after the battle of Tippecanoe and the series of murders and massacres that occurred from the month of April on, was laid at his door. In January, 1813, the massacre at the River Raisin of American prisoners surrendered to "the British roused popular fury, and when in October the opportunity came to try conclusions with Tecumseh and his follow- ers at the battle of the Thames, it was with the cry, " Remember the River Raisin ! " that our soldiers went into the fight, fired with an avenging zeal that passed the bounds of humanity. The winning of that battle finished the work against the British that had been begun by Perry on Lake Erie ; and it crushed forever the hope of a Northwest Indian confederacy. Tecumseh, the life and inspiration of that idea, was dead. Kentuckians had been the princi- pal victims on the River Raisin, and Kentuckians took a revenge as barbarous as any ever perpetrated by savages. Tecumseh's body was found after the battle, lying on a heap of more than thirty slaughtered war- riors. At sight of it the Kentuckians, under Colonel Johnson, went wild and fell upon and mutilated it, cutting long strips of skin from the thighs for razor strops in memory, they said, of the River Raisin. Such vindictiveness may be easily explained but not con- doned. In the feeling of the time, however, the killing of Tecumseh was accounted a praiseworthy act. It THE RED MENACE 263 was accredited to Colonel Johnson personally and used as an argument for electing him Vice-President of the United States. It must be admitted that championship of the Indians as a cruelly persecuted race has always been strongest in those parts of the country where contact with them is lacking. On the other hand, unqualified blame is equally to be taken with reservation. Even those whose friends or families suffered the- unspeakable horrors of Indian raids, are apt to end their sweep- ing denunciations by recalling with admiration at least one red man, personally known, as a noble type, physi- cally and mentally. " Elder Brother," said a Chippewa chief in sur- rendering land in southern Ohio, " you ask me who were the true owners of the land now ceded to the United States. In answer I tell you, if any nations should call themselves owners of it they would be guilty of falsehood; our claim to it is equal. Our Elder Brother has conquered it." The right or wrong of the whole dark question lies there. The land belonged to them; the Elder Brother has conquered it. Given the component parts of the problem, — dif- fering standards, two centuries of mutual wrongs and misunderstandings, the barbarous cruelties practised by the Indians, and the role the white race was to play upon this continent, — there seems in retrospect, to have been no other possible outcome. It was a relentless working of Fate whereby she molded the fortune of nations regardless of misery or merit in individuals. Perhaps we can do no better than to call it Destiny, and pass on to episodes more cheerful and more flatter- ing than this tragic record that spells the annihilation of a race. CHAPTER XIII WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY THE Osage Indians have a symbol to express their idea of woman's place in the scheme of creation. A circle represents the world. In- side the circle is a square which stands for the home. Inside the square is a cross typifying the four winds. And in the very center of the four winds sits a spider whose weaving they carry to the uttermost parts of the earth. The Indian Arachne was content to work in silence from the center of her little universe, but whether she was less boastful in spirit than her Greek sister who shaU say? We are prone to think of her as downtrodden and patient only because she had not the spirit to be other- wise. Yet the short space of our white man's history in America affords glimpses of more than one dusky Helen for whom wars were waged, of Indian queens respected in council, and of Indian prophetesses who were veritable furies incarnate. We know that there were tribes where property rights rested solely in the wife; and where the blood money exacted for killing a woman was much greater than for killing a man. There were also Indian women whose loyalty to our white men it ill becomes us to forget. The fair and frail Caroline, who warned Major Gladwyn of Pon- tiac's treachery, was one whose apostacy damns her forever in the hunting grounds of an Indian hereafter. 264 WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 265 Sacajawea, the Bird Woman, had the Hves and for- tunes of the whole expedition in her care as she guided Lewis and Clark over the mountains. And we must not forget the gentle savage of many aliases, Lady Rebecca or Matoaca or Pocahontas, who was kinder to white men than they to her. Captain John Smith showed little gratitude for the service she rendered him. A few years later she was bought from some Indian " friends," for the ignominious price of a copper kettle, by Captain Argall, another Eng- lishman, and held as hostage; and later still she was married to a third, John Rolfe, how willingly we do not know. He took her across the cold sea to a cold and alien England, where the white plague laid icy fingers upon her and claimed her for its own. The interest foreigners display in our national atti- tude toward women centers in the fact that it reverses that of Europe, where a woman must marry to attain a certain degree of freedom. De Tocqueville wrote that the unmarried American woman was as free as air; but that the American wife lived in her husband's house " as in a cloister," — which was truer at that time than now. Legend has it that a young girl, Mary Chilton by name, was the first to step ashore from the history-laden Mayilozvcr; and popular belief, abroad at least, pictures the young American girl in the fore- front of every movement, invading with buoyant ig- norance regions that even the angels shun. Like all exaggerations there is " something in it." Heredity is in it for one thing, for in considering the unique position their sex has held on this continent we must not forget that our foremothers were picked women. They were not necessarily wise or amiable or always good, but they were capable and they were not weaklings. Even the hundred and fifty " maids " 266 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING sent out to the Virginia colony and eagerly bought, to state it brutally, by young planter-adventurers for one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco each, were women of courage, since they were willing to cross one stormy sea to embark upon another with untried part- ners. The conditions these venturesome foremothers of ours encountered in America fostered self-reliance. Hands were few, needs many. They met each duty when it presented itself as best they could. It is curi- ous, in looking over the record, to see how decidedly progressive the colonial women were. Mistress Mar- garet Brent, kinswoman and executrix of Lord Cal- vert, Governor of Maryland, who died in 1647, boldly claimed a vote in the General Assembly as part of her right as administrator of his estate. This she was re- fused, but the chief court of the province allowed her to appear before it to defend her private interests and those of her brother as well as those of the Calvert property. Thus she practised as attorney 220 years before Mrs. Arabella Mansfield, the pioneer woman lawyer of the United States, was admitted in 1869 to the bar of Iowa by an examining board that gallantly stretched the words of the statute " white male citizen " to include an excellently equipped female. Women preachers have carried inspiration and dis- cord among us from the day Anne Hutchinson set her foot upon Massachusetts soil in 1634. Twenty years after she arrived, a mother and son appeared at Reho- both and worked together, he as physician, she as mid- wife, " to answer to the town's necessity which was great." And in every community there were sturdy old women versed in simple remedies who traveled through storms by day and by night, ministering to the sick, comforting the dying, and helping to bring the WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 267 babies into the world. America's first professional poet was a woman, Anne Dudley, wife of Simon Brad- street, Governor of Massachusetts; who, like many a better poet, wrote her verses in " hours curtailed from her sleep and other refreshments." That women of an early colonial period expressed their minds and passions openly and freely in public, the ducking-stool and other man-made correctives bear witness. How much such devices had to do with silencing their voices, those who have studied the sex longest will be least able to tell. For some reason silence became a fashion that lasted long. Then, al- most two hundred years to a day from the time when those first American ladies argued law and practised medicine, their descendants bestirred themselves in clubs and conventions, by tens and by hundreds, to wring from the men acknowledgment of their " right " to do the very things their great-great-grandmothers had done single-handed. The men meantime, having become accustomed to silence, — in public at least, — were loath to give up what they deemed an advantage, " And that 's the way the trouble began." The intervening hush was more apparent than real. It might be called a conspiracy of silence, for in private women went right on doing things, often aided and abetted by their male relatives. Abundant evidence proves that American women of revolutionary times labored in many fields; and in spite of the fact that schools worthy of the name were not open to them, and, as Mrs. John Adams says, " it was fashionable to ridicule feminine learning," the studious managed in some way to master studies that school boards would have opposed their attempting. Miss Hannah Adams, one of the first American women to make literature her profession, was prevented 268 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING by ill health from attending such poor schools as were available to her. To earn her daily bread, while writ- ing about history and religion, she spun and sewed and made bobbin lace, — and taught young gentlemen Latin! The mother of Chancellor Wythe of Virginia was able to teach her son Greek ; and the Adams men took a distinct pride in the literary attainments of their women. Such women, on their part, did not hesitate to throw the weight of their private advice into politics. John Adams complimented his wife on the appositeness of her political maxims, though it must be confessed he paid small heed to her admonition to remember the women in forming the new government " and be more generous and honorable to them than your ancestors have been. Do not put unlimited power in the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could." Mrs. Mercy Warren, one of the first advocates of separation from the mother country, corresponded with many of the political leaders, " teaching them their duty," and calling their attention in pungent words to the truth that liberty and the pursuit of happiness should be the lot of all mankind. She was a sister of James Otis who thundered *' taxation without repre- sentation is tyranny," and we are told, she " had more political wisdom." La Rochefoucauld wrote of her, " Seldom has a woman in any age acquired such as- cendency by the mere force of a powerful intellect." It is said that almost one-fourth of the newspapers published in the colonies in 1776 were edited by women, and that one of these was the first journal to publish the Declaration of Independence. But, after all, there were comparatively few women, or men either, in the colonies qualified to teach Latin or to publish a news- WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 269 paper. Education might go with patriotism, but it was by no means a necessary part of it. That women did not lag behind the .men in devotion to the cause, we know, not only through tales of law- less and loyal girls in male attire who fought at the front, as a few women will in every war ; but through endless family traditions of sacrifice and courage, of cherished pewter melted into bullets, and of the women of Puritan repression who sought their husbands in the field, disengaged their hands from the plow, took the reins, and with scarcely a glance of farewell went on with the furrow. To these are added the stories of the Hot Water War in Pennsylvania, where women poured that fluid and their wrath upon Authority come to collect the window tax ; and of other spirited and often useless expressions of militant energy ; all going to prove that the women of the period, educated and uneducated alike, felt a sense of shoulder-to-shoulder responsibility and equality with the men, tempered with the subtle arrogance of the Osage women. A touch of this, by the way, is to be found in the simple answer Washington's mother is said to have made to Lafayette when the latter broke into eulogy of her son : " I am not surprised at \vhat George has done, for he was always a very good boy." One more revolutionary story, admittedly apocryphal and very modern, is too much to the point to be passed over. It is that " prose epic in four books, the joint production of two boys," that Jane Addams says is the way Hull House thinks Betsey Ross made the flag. " Book one. Wunst the soldiers fighting King George found out that they had to have a flag. The soldier that thought of it fii"st said, ' Bill, we ain't got no flag,' and Bill says it was so. " Book two. So they went to General George 270 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Washington, the Father of his Country, an' they says to General George Washington, * General Washington, we ain't got no flag. Ain't it fierce ? ' And General George Washington says, * Yes, that 's so, we ain't got no flag. Ain't it fierce? ' " Book three. So General George Washington, the Father of his Country, went to Betsey Ross who lived on the corner of Beacon and Chestnut Streets, and Gen- eral George Washington says, * Betsey, we ain't got no flag. Ain't it fierce? ' " Book four. And General George Washington says, ' Ain't it fierce ? ' again, three times. And Betsey Ross she says, * I should say it was fierce. General Washington, the Father of his Country! Here, you hold the baby, and I '11 make one.' " In the march westward American women left neither their heroism nor their feminine traits behind them. As often as pioneer conditions were renewed, they re- newed their strength to meet them. Not alone through the anxieties of Indian menace, but in the never-ending warfare against the wilderness, they were the compan- ions of the men; and just this sense of comradeship nerved them, from ocean to ocean, to withstand the inexpressible monotony and hardship of a pioneer woman's lot. Since it was usually the less educated and well-to-do who strove to better their condition by moving on, we hear little about women lawyers or women poets among them ; but no family with pioneer traditions is too poor to be without its story of one or a dozen ancestresses who outwitted savages, tilled fields in the absence of the men, and guided their families through times of stress with brilliant fortitude. Some- times, as in the case of Lincoln's mother, it was the wife who taught the husband to write his name. Yellowed family letters tell of almost unbelievable WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 271 indecencies, of filthy inns, and drunken wretches met on the roads where pioneer conditions were already past. In other letters agony over a child dying for lack of medical care throbs through every ill-spelt word. " The waggoner was hired by the hundred- weight & could not stop unless I paid him for the time that he stoped & for the Keeping of the horses that I could not affoard to do. So we were obliged to keep on," says one of these. " We were now on the Alle- ghny Mountain & a most horrid rode. . . . The waggon golted so " that the father took the poor sick baby in his arms and walked, a compassionate young bachelor of the party relieving him of his burden when fatigue overcame him. At a house where they break- fasted the child was taken with convulsion after con- vulsion. They appealed to the landlady for aid. " She said she did not love to see a person in a fitt but she came into the room. Polly ask her if she new what was good for a child in a fitt she said no & immediately left the room & shut the door after her & came no more into the room." But her husband remained ; and when Polly, the poor mother, voiced her fear that the baby would die, answered " in a verry lite manner " that it would save the trouble of carrying it farther. Out- raged, the parents took up their child and " walked on to the next house ware we come up with our company . . . the Man of the house gave it some drops that stoped the fitt he handed me a vial of the dropps, — gave directions how to use them the child had no more fitts but seemed to be stupid all day ... his face and eyes appeared not to come in shape as before." They carried it many more miles that day, " up and down the most tedious hills as I ever saw," walking until well into the night to reach shelter, and next morning at dawn the father saw that the poor baby's journey would 2^2 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING soon be over. " Polly was obliged to go rite off as soon as his eyes were closed for the waggoner would not stop." The father stayed to see his little son laid in a grave that the man of the house sent Negroes to dig " ware he had hurried several strangers that dyed acrossing the mountain his family all followed the corps to the grave black & white & appeared much affected . . . thus my dear pearents you see we are deprived of the child we brought with us & we no not whather the one we left is dead or alive. I beg you to rite & let me no Polly cant bear her name mentioned without shed- ding tears." At best the journey was a trial of strength. At worst it was torment for body and spirit. Truly, suf- ferings more cruel than Indians could inflict lurked on that old Braddock's Road to the West. With every advance from pioneer life toward ease, the round of women's activities grew more circum- scribed. This was not all due to cares they found or invented for themselves in their more comfortable homes, or to the gross selfishness of the men. In no small measure it came about through the men's desire to protect the loyal and plucky companions of their strenuous days from some of the buffetings of fortune. Every man worth his salt was supposed to be able to take care of the women of his household; to provide for all their material wants and to shield them from harm. If a woman had to go out into the world and earn her living, it was a reflection on the ability or the manliness of her male relatives. Even socially it be- came the fashion for women never to go about alone or to do things independently. Wives having greater household cares either stayed at home " as in a clois- ter " or went into society in company with their hus- bands. Young girls with more of freedom from re- WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 273 sponsibilities, had greater liberty, and secure in the chivalry of the whole male sex went in company with any man who might turn into a desirable husband. Socially a chaperone was unnecessary, a male escort indispensable. The girl who had to go alone to a dance was sadly unpopular. The woman who traveled alone, except under the pressure of extreme necessity, was " inexcusable." In the West this feeling was peculiarly strong. Even to-day a Western man is apt to resent the bachelor maid's assumption of self-suffi- ciency in the matter of latch-keys and midnight prowl- ings. With purely American variations it was a swinging back to the old chivalric attitude of the knight toward his lady, — just as ideally attractive, just as abnormal, and as unsatisfactory in its working out. But it was insidiously flattering, and the change coming little by little, women slipped into it with a comfortable sense of well being, as if they were reentering a lost king- dom, instead of w^alking blindfold into a generous and uninteresting prison. Feminine education and ideals gravitated toward virtuous insipidity. American women of leisure read few books and rarely invaded the reading rooms of libraries. They went little to the theater; and never, if they were women of position, to such questionable outdoor resorts as the Elysian Fields. Indeed, the out- door world was supposed to be a rude and boisterous place, unsuited alike to feminine complexions and powers of endurance. Their sphere was narrowed within four or at most eight walls, the four of their church and the four of their homes, within which they specialized in the domestic virtues. " A genteel person, a simple nature, sensibility, cheerfulness, delicacy, softness, affability, good man- 274 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING ners, regular habits, skill in fancy work, and a fund of hidden genteel learning " were the characteristics most admired on both sides of the Atlantic, for this was at the beginning of the Victorian reign in England. The popularity of this kind of pseudo-elegance and an increase in wealth encouraged " finishing schools " to supply the veneer permitted by the distressing code of manners. Schools where the young ladies " re- tired " at night because it was vulgar to go to bed; where they embroidered biblical subjects in chenille; learned sixty lace stitches; studied a little French; learned to strum a little music; and where occasionally a very lucky girl had the chance, — and embraced it, — to elope with a red-blooded, susceptible young parson. That " hidden " loophole in the list of feminine per- fections, was a boon and a blessing, not overlooked by the women whose impulse to meddle in larger affairs could not be restrained. They pulled concealed wires, or wrote under assumed names, unashamed of the act, though they might weep with vexation at being found out; or if they were too straightforward for conceal- ment and still must write, proved their respectability and " worked their passage into authorship by first compiling a cookery book." A conscientious endeavor on the part of the less gifted to live up to the new artificial standards produced occasional freakish results and a few instances of that inconceivable stupidity over which Mrs. Trollope gloated when she wrote about the women who slipped furtively in to see a collection of antique casts when no one was looking, and vetoed the suggestion for a picnic with the reproof that " it was considered very indeli- cate for ladies and gentlemen to sit down together on the grass." Only a few indulged in such nonsense. On the WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 275 whole, our women were too sensible and too energetic to enjoy the role of useless fine lady; and being ex- ceedingly capable, if not very progressive, did wonders with the limited amount of education permitted them, accomplishing a prodigious amount of work in what- ever they were allowed to do. They brought up many children ; cooked or superintended the cooking of count- less meals ; took as large a part as talent and custom sanctioned in the activities of town and church; and in addition managed to snatch stolen half hours with needle or pen or cherished water colors for soul-vital- izing, creative work. The namby-pamby ism of which Mrs. Trollope com- plained found its cure in the awakening social con- sciousness and the desire for civic and national better- ment that took possession of men and women alike about the year 1830. Societies to reform anything and everything had always a strong hold on the American fancy. Now women found in banding together a potent force to use for their own advantage as well as for the regeneration of mankind. With philanthropy as their ultimate aim they dared demand more than they otherwise might have felt justified in doing; and before their earnestness and spirit artificial barriers of pro- priety went down one after another. A geographical frontier had existed from the first where women held to the bitter-sweet ways of comradeship and crushing labor. Now there came to be a frontier of the spirit where women made claim to their lost place. Being refused in half-shocked, half-laughing protest, they re- solved to conquer it for themselves, — to fight against the men if not allowed to fight with them. It required courage, and it must be added not a little help from husbands and brothers who could not with- hold admiration of individual women for the very inde- 276 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING pendence they condemned in the mass. The Kentucky lady, successful manager of a model farm and long a prize winner at county fairs, who gathered an escort of gentlemen about her carriage and with a woman by her side to share the criticism, nerved herself to go to the fairgrounds and see her own display of horses and cows, was a reformer in her way quite as radical as the Eastern ladies who felt " a woe upon them " to cut off their hair and practise dress reform. No amount of fervor for reform in dress or any- thing else could obscure the feminine charm of those plucky and progressive women of the nineteenth cen- tury. " My dear, you never looked so pretty as in your little checked silk bloomers," said a gallant husband who did his courting under the depressing influence of that fortunately fleeting phase of American earnestness. Those of us who knew his wife with her soft gray curls and her soft matronly gray frocks found it hard to believe him ; but we would have staked our eyes on the proposition that her youth could have lent grace to the most uncompromising costume ever sewed to- gether. One step led to another, and, as so often happens, to most unexpected results. The varied movements for reform gravitated inevitably toward the overpowering issue of freedom versus slavery. On this great ques- tion the influence of women was more welcome and less laughed at than on many others. But having been granted a small inch they claimed a very large ell. It was a protest against slavery that resulted in the Amer- ican Woman's Rights movement of to-day. In 1840 an international antislavery meeting was held in Lon- don, to which all antislavery societies throughout the world were invited to send delegates. By that time America had become somewhat accustomed, though not WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 2'j7 converted, to the idea of women taking part in such gatherings. Across the Atlantic, however, it was still most unwomanly for them to speak in public or even to sit upon a platform. When six or more of the dele- gates sent by America turned out to be ladies, London was rocked to its center. They were reviled and al- most mobbed in the streets, and pulpit and press vied in denunciation. The vote to admit them to the Con- gress failed by a large majority. Two of the Ameri- can men sent as delegates refused to take their seats if the women were excluded, and attended the meetings only as silent spectators in the galleries. The history of slavery was probably little changed by that London gathering; but this by-product of the meeting grew to a movement that has been felt the world around. Up to that time all discussion of the equal rights of women had been incidental to some- thing else. Now it became an issue in itself. At the close of that uncomfortable ten days Lucretia Mott, one of the delegates excluded, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, bride of one of the gentlemen admitted, agreed to combat boldly the accepted idea of woman's place, and to hold a Woman's Rights convention in America to educate the people. " Demand the utmost and you will get something," was the advice of a wily friend. They carried out their idea at Mrs. Stanton's home in Seneca Falls, New York, in July, 1848, and reaped a harvest of ridicule and social ostracism. Two years later a " national " Woman's Rights convention came together in New York, with delegates from nine States; and the decade that intervened before the open- ing of Civil War saw a steady if slow decrease in opposition. During the great conflict all efforts in this direction were put aside ; but the confidence women had gained, 278 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING and their experience in working together stood their countrymen in good stead. Preparing supplies for the wounded, nursing in camp and hospital, caring for families left destitute by war, the colossal sanitary fairs, and other money-making enterprises undertaken and carried out by women with excellent business man- agement, were an immediate tangible result. The world-wide Red Cross has been its ultimate outcome in philanthropy; and the revolution still in progress in social and economic conditions its inevitable se- quence in the fields of politics and business. Concentrating attention upon one point, to the ex- clusion of everything else, after the manner of crystal- gazers, brings about astonishing results in vision and prophecy, but at the expense of proportion and com- monsense. It is well to remember that the broadening field of women's activities is no triumph of altruism. Cupidity had as much to do with it as conversion. Be- cause women would work for lower wages than men in the newly opened factories and because they would consent to teach children for less money were un- answerable arguments for making them mill hands and training them as teachers. With growing freedom has come growing oppression of conditions. The best of mills to-day are very different from those white-cur- tained, flower-decked affairs at Lowell, whose young " ladies " turned out in white frocks and green para- sols, high combs, and silk stockings, to greet Jackson on his tour through New England. Those girls came from wholesome if monotonous farm life and returned to it after they had earned money for their wedding outfits, and while employed in the mills found time and strength after working hours for literary labors. Doubtless even that picture has taken on touches of idealism with the lapse of time. . WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 279 However that may be, it is certain that the need for watchfulness and wisdom among the leaders of women did not grow less with the years. Whether they are more efficient or happier now than before they ex- changed the routine of the kitchen for the treadmill of modern industry, is quite outside the field of discus- sion. They are better educated, they have more liberty; and their problem has become infinitely more complicated. We may gain a fair impression of the average in- telligence of the women of the first half of the century if we pass by those who were born great and those who never achieved greatness, to consider briefly a few who had greatness thrust upon them in the course of politics. In such a group would come not only wives and daugh- ters of Presidents and statesmen, but some who served their country by marrying foreigners, like the daugh- ters of Governor Clinton and of Samuel Osgood, the first Postmaster-General, who contrived between them to quiet that vain little pouter pigeon of a French Minister. Genet, " hot headed, all imagination, and no judgment," who intrigued under Washington's very eyes but was subdued by those of the ladies, married each in turn, and " subsided into a useful and public- spirited American citizen." Nor can we forget the women like Mrs. Nicholson of Maryland, of whom we know little save that she sat all night and all day in the lobby of Congress to minis- ter to her sick husband and guide his hand as he wrote ballot after ballot while the House wavered in its choice between Jefferson and Burr, . Mrs. Washington, always plainly but suitably dressed, receiving her guests with formal courtesy and returning their visits punctiliously after three days, was never so happy as when clicking her knitting-needles 28o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING- and overseeing the work of her household at Mount Vernon, Nobody spoke of her sprightly conversa- tion, or remembered her reading or discussing a book ; but she was typical of a larger and better-loved class than her successor, Mrs. Adams, who had a frosty manner and a ready pen, though a warm heart as her letters testify. Mrs. Madison made a lasting place for herself in the political annals of her country through sheer kindli- ness. Though her slaves preferred to take their small requests and troubles to " Marse Jim " rather than to her, free white people of whatever age or sex had but one opinion about her. Congress voted her a seat on the floor of the Senate, an honor accorded to no other woman. President Tyler's five-year-old granddaugh- ter adored her ; and Madison's old mother at the age of ninety-seven, sitting in her room so eloquent of bygone days, with her knitting held in slender fingers like polished ivory, looked lovingly at this daughter-in-law of hers, so full of vigor and said, " She is my mother now, and tenderly cares for all my wants." Mrs. Monroe was a woman of different type, culti- vated but without social gifts. She had been known as la belle Americaine when her husband served as Minis- ter to France, and had saved from the wreck of her youth and health, her low voice, her grace of move- ment, and a desire to appear younger than she really was. Like many other ladies of her generation and ours she seemed to think paint a part of her costume. Society, spoiled by Mrs. Madison's democratic friend- liness, highly resented Mrs. Monroe's withdrawal into the formality of her official position. Mrs. John Q. Adams was scarcely more popular. The fact of her English birth was used against her WINFIELD SCOTT, BREVET LIEUTENANT-GENERAL, U.S.A. WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 281 husband as campaign material ; and while he was secre- tary of state she gave offense by refusing to make first calls, — as a matter of principle. " She did not re- quire any lady to call upon her," she said. She had unusual experiences for an American woman of her generation. She lived five years in Russia and on leav- ing it traveled to France alone through regions deso- lated by war and dangerously infested by brigands. In Paris she saw the furore of the people for Napoleon, when, after the flight of the Bourbons, they literally lifted him in their arms and carried him to the Tuiler- ies. Like the elder Mrs. Adams, she had a ready pen, writing verses for the amusement of her friends and translating Plato from the French to the satisfaction of her bookish husband. In Tyler's time the country was treated to the spec- tacle, distressing or charming according to the point of view, of an old President very much in love with a young wife. The first Mrs. Tyler died in the White House and her duties descended upon a married daugh- ter, one of many children with whom the pair had been blessed. This seemed fitting and the country rested in the belief that whatever Tyler's political vagaries, his domestic concerns would move with middle-aged decorum. But in February, 1844, occurred the tragedy on board the Princeton, when the great gun called the Peacemaker burst, killing several of a distinguished party that was being entertained on the fine new war- ship, among them the secretary of state and the secre- tary of the navy. The President's great kindness to the two daughters of Mr. Gardiner, another victim, speedily merged into feelings of a warmer character for Miss Julia, the elder. A few weeks later he confided to a friend that he was soon to be married. The friend 282 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING unwisely remonstrated on the score of age. " Pooh, pooh," Tyler chuckled. " Why, my dear sir, I am just full in my prime." The wedding took place in New York, quietly, in an attempt to keep details out of the newspapers ; but a national salute thundered from forts and shipping ; and in this day when we do things differently if not better, it is amusing to read that the wedding trip was an ex- cursion around the bay on the ferryboat Essex. Cen- ter of all eyes and of much criticism the bride enjoyed her few brief months of splendor, clad in velvet with ostrich feathers in her hair, and then retired with her elderly husband to the Tyler estate in Virginia where in her turn she presented him with many children. Andrew Jackson's honest, God-fearing wife was " Aunt Rachel " to all the young people of her acquaint- ance. " Plain " in manner and almost illiterate, she had two great requisites for social success, a genuine interest in people and the faculty of remembering names. She was also eloquent in spite of her lack of schooling and had an earnest, upright nature that im- posed itself upon her husband's to curb and regulate his more violent temper. She influenced him for good from beyond the grave, — and that in itself shows how strong and sweet a woman she must have been. She died only three months before his inauguration. Much talk and no little malice had gone into speculating how she would behave in the White House. Gossip had it that she had tried vigorously if vainly to reform the Catholic ways of Pensacola while her husband was Governor of Florida. The ladies of Tennessee, deter- mined that she should at least have clothes suited to her station, prepared an elaborate outfit that was to have been presented at a great celebration at Christmas time. She died within a few hours of the time set for the WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 283 presentation. The story of her funeral, — of the fren- zied slave woman who threw herself into the grave, de- manding to be buried with her mistress, and of Jackson rousing from his stony grief to comfort and reason with her, — forms a picture of slave days and ways that cannot be read unmoved. According to Senator Benton, Van Buren was made Vice-President by a woman, that lively Bellona whose cause Jackson so warmly espoused, and whose unlikeness to ladies of exemplary manners but color- less personality then in society gave her perhaps greater fame than her impulsive actions merited. Society was very conventional. Old Madam Calhoun used to say that she and Andrew Jackson were the only people of independence in Washington.. Madam Calhoun's in- dependence seems to have taken the form of religious zeal and the wish to impose her own views upon others. Calhoun's daughter was one of the brilliant young women of society. " I well remember the clearness with which she presented the Southern view of the situation, and the ingenuity with which she parried such objections as I was able to present," wrote Josiah Quincy. " The fashionable ladies of the South had received the education of political thought and discus- sion to a degree unknown among their sisters of the North. * She can read bad French novels and play a few tunes on the piano,' said a cynical friend of mine concerning a young lady who had completed a costly education in a fashionable school in New York ; * but upon my word, she does not know whether she is living in a monarchy or a republic' The sneer would never have applied to the corresponding class at the South." This is quite true. Politics and society were almost one in the South. Girls went earlier into society and were more in the company of men. In fact, they were 284 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING apt to receive what higher education they acquired in their homes, from tutors or their own fathers and brothers, whose chief interest lay in poHtics; and being no whit behind their fathers or their Northern sisters in mental astuteness they took readily to this kind of teaching. It might be said that the chief intellectual training of New England women lay along lines of theology and that of Southern women in politics, with excursions into the field of classical literature from both sections. In practical training the New England woman learned to do things with her own hands. The Southern woman, mistress of many slaves, was often untrained in this respect, but she learned to direct a large retinue and exercised her power with rare execu- tive ability. This kind of experience aided her to grasp political problems that are of similar nature but on a larger scale. Much has been said and written about the efficiency of our New England mothers, and the energy of Western women, but comparatively little about the same efficiency developed in other directions by the women of the South. This is quite enough about political ladies to show that while only a few were specially gifted, all were efficient and some were clever; but a brief quotation from Ampere's " Promenade en Amerique " may be pardoned. He is describing the great three days' celebration at Boston on the occasion of the formal opening of a railroad between the United States and Canada, — the same at which Fredrika Bremer saw the " grand humorous procession." The President and Lord Elgin were there, with many lesser dignitaries, and there were many imposing functions. " Le soir j'ai ete dans le beau monde, " says Ampere. " Le President a paru dans un salon, ou il ne s etait pas trouve autant d'uni formes anglais depuis la guerre de WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 285 rindependance. On venait saluer Mademoiselle Fill- more, qui prenait tres bien sa situation de princesse du sang, et ne montrait ni hauteur ni embarras." That is an adequate summing up not only for Presi- dential ladies but for American women in general. They " took very well their sutuation," showing " neither arrogance nor embarrassment," whether they happened to be temporarily " princesse du sang," or defending a frontier cabin, or working in a sanitary fair. Comradeship and cooperation were what the women of this new country wanted above all things and what they managed to get in larger measure than women ever got before, though by methods older than Egypt. The baby of three and a half in a New England parsonage knew the way full well. She knew too the stern law her mother had made and respected the letter of it, — the law that she could have no dinner until she had finished her square of patchwork or knit three times around her troublesome small stocking. " I can re- member as if it were yesterday," said this same fem- inine creature, whose hair has been white now for two score years, — " I can remember how I used to climb the stairs and knock on the door of my father's study. * Well, what does my little daughter want ? ' he would say. * I can't have any dinner to-day.' ' Why not ? ' * 'Cause I have n't done my patchwork.' " And there the mite would stand, her blue eyes facing down his purely official frown and her tiny -hands clutching the tools she despised. " Come here," and he would lift her on his knee and take the needle she most willingly resigned. " Hold fast now." This referred to the shreds of calico. Then he would stick in the needle, awkwardly, but carefully to avoid pricking an incau- tious, waving finger. " Now pull." The long thread 286 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING would begin to move slowly, the smile on the face of each broadening as it ate its way through the cloth. " Now pull again," he would command, when the needle was once more in place, and this time both would laugh aloud. " And the square would be fin- ished long before twelve o'clock ! " said this old lady who is still young. Perhaps this is executive ability. Perhaps it is beat- ing the devil around the stump. Perhaps it is woman's wile. Perhaps it is self-preservation. Whatever it is, the American woman has it in large measure. She keeps the law; she does what is required of her, — in her own way, — and down in the bottom of her heart she knows her power. Kipling was quite right when he said that the Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins. So also are the Indian Arachne and Mary the mother of Washington, and this minister's mite, and all the other daughters of Eve. And there is reason to believe that American men like them that way. CHAPTER XIV RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC BRILLAT SAVARIN'S summing up of our crude young civilization in his famous mot " One hundred religions and only one sauce! " could scarcely have been improved at the time he made it, for seven words better calculated to open up vistas of American miracles and misdeeds in politics, philoso- phy, and domestic science would be hard to find. We had at the moment the most abundant food supply and the worst cookery on the planet; yet we complacently assumed that human beings who so abused the gifts of Providence were wise enough to reason out, each for himself, a plan of salvation. • " And all these sects live peaceably in the vicinity of each other!" wrote Saxe Weimar, after enumerating the twenty-odd varieties of Christian he found wor- shiping side by side in Philadelphia, No one could deny that the miracle existed ; but no one, not Ameri- can born, could expect it to endure. " The next Aaron Burr who seeks to carve a kingdom for himself out of the overgrown territories of the Union may discover that fanaticism is the most effective weapon with which ambition can arm itself . . . and that camp-meetings may be very well directed to forward the designs of a military prophet," wrote Robert Southey, England's poet laureate, in 1829. " Were another Mahomet to arise, there is no other part of the world where he would find more scope or fairer opportunity." 287 288 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING In view of the many delusions practised in the name of reHgion, and the many times the ghtter of gold or the sullen gleam of fire-brands has been mistaken for the white light of truth, such skepticism was justified. Fortunately for us the working out of the problem on this continent has been so full of inconsistencies that they have neutralized each other, Philadelphia's twenty-two sects got along more amicably together than ten could have done, or two. North America was cosmopolitan long before the United States became narrowly national; and in spite of the overwhelming influence of New England on our national customs, there were many sections where Puri- tan notions did not prevail. St. Louis showed French influence for decades after the French flag vanished from the Mississippi, and New Orleans was a godless foreign city where theaters flourished and quadroon balls, not to be mentioned in the hearing of sisters and sweethearts, exercised their fell charm. The Spanish ways of Pensacola greatly disturbed good Mrs. Jackson. There were customs in the Carolinas that New England disapproved; but, taken all in all, Sab- bath observance was strict, a day of long prayers.Mis- mal cold dinners, and a theology calculated to terrify children into convulsions, being deemed most accept- able to the Almighty. It was inevitable that strong opinions and hard rules should prevail in those colonies settled by men who crossed the ocean for conscience's sake. But when the colonies came to form their union, precisely the same causes worked together to wring from them the ap- parent inconsistency of making no rules at all. Agree- ment being the paramount need, the less said on this vital matter o^ religion the better. John Jay even opposed a motion that the first Con- RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 289 tinental Congress be opened with prayer, on the ground that religious sentiments were too varied. But his colleagues, accustomed to lay affairs of far less consequence before the Lord, were not disposed to em- bark on a venture of such gravity without it. Samuel Adams answered Jay by remarking with some asperity, that he at least was no bigot and would gladly listen to a prayer by any pious gentleman who was also a friend to his country. Congress approved this, and next morning Mr. Duche "with his clerks, in his pontificals," appeared at the appointed hour, read the Thirty-fifth Psalm and several prayers, and then launched unexpectedly into extemporaneous petition. If any were scandalized they had been silenced before- hand by agreeing with Samuel Adams; while those who looked upon printed prayers as wicked relics of Popery were of course pleased. Thus the spectacle of the reverend Duche " in his pontificals " talking fa- miliarly to the Lord, instead of reading to him out of a book, was the most illuminating that could have come before Congress; and Congress wisely decided to leave religion out of organic law and trust it entirely to custom. Custom clamped it in bands more inflexible than law. An eminent writer has lately pointed out that the Puritan Sunday was no native growth, but an im- portation from England where it had its root in pol- itics as a protest against driving the poor in work- fetters twenty- four hours a day for seven long days in the week. So the American Sunday drew its strength from the two underlying impulses that brought New Englanders across the sea, deep religious feeling and equally deep political conviction. Persecution for religion came to an end in the col- onies before the Reverend Duche offered his prayer. 290 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING It had ceased to be lawful to hang Quakers in Massa- chusetts or to hound men out of a community because they called their belief by an unpopular name ; but per- secution of irreligion went on unrelentingly for many years. People might call their faith by almost any name they chose, so long as their practice measured up to one fixed standard. " Surely the Jews could not ex- ceed this country in their external observances," wrote one critic of our ways. Harriet Martineau, usually so kindly in her judgments, said that the worship of pub- lic opinion was the real established religion of Amer- ica; and Fanny Kemble, who married here, declared that we had spent all the years since gaining national independence in trying to divest ourselves individually of that same great boon, and were reduced to a pain- ful conformity in everything from churchgoing to the trimming of petticoats. For the better part of a century every visitor to our shores commented on the American Sunday. *' Noth- ing," wrote De Tocqueville, " strikes a foreigner on his arrival in America more forcibly than the regard paid to the Sabbath. There is one in particular of the large American cities in which all social movements begin to be suspended even on Saturday evening. You traverse its streets at the hour at which you expect men in the middle of life to be engaged in business and young people in pleasure, and you meet with solitude and silence. Not only have all ceased to work, but they appear to have ceased to exist. Neither the move- ments of industry are heard, nor the accents of joy, nor even the confused murmur which arises from the midst of a great city. Chains are hung across the streets in the neighborhood of the churches; the half-closed shut- ters of the houses scarcely admit a ray of light into the dwellings of the citizens. Now and then you perceive RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 291 a solitary individual who glides silently along the de- serted streets and lanes." As late as 1850 another French writer noted with glee the warning which he called " tres caracteristique " posted in the Boston Public Gardens to the effect that breaking shrubs and flowers would be punished by a heavier fine if committed on Sunday. " Elsewhere such fines are imposed solely that the offense may not be repeated. Here they are considered from the angle of moral responsibility. The guilt being greater on the Sabbath, it follows naturally that the punishment should be more severe." That was years after the Puritan Sunday had been mitigated. What the rank and file of the people really thought of it in its full severity, — in the days when, as one New Englander put it, " I would as soon have thought of picking a neighbor's pocket on Saturday as of smiling on the Sabbath," we can only guess. What- ever they thought, they follow^ed their self-made rules with painful literalness. Yet expressions of religious belief culled from the letters of eminent men show a liberality far in advance of custom. Washington writing to Lafayette, confessed that he was quite willing to allow others to follow " that road to Heaven which to them shall seem the most direct, easiest, and least liable to exception." " But of course," said some one less liberal, " no gentleman would care to travel to Heaven by any road except the Episcopal Church." John Adams, destined by his father to the ministry, was repelled by the doctrines taught, but later acquired a comfortable belief of his own. In old age he re- ferred to a passage in De Senectute where Cicero, look- ing happily forw-ard to reunion with friends, and a meeting with interesting people about whom he has 292 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING only heard, combats the idea that death is an evil. " That is just as I feel," said Adams. " Nothing would tempt me to go back. I agree with my old friend Dr. Franklin, who used to say on this subject, * We are all invited to a great entertainment. Your carriage comes first to the door, but we shall all meet there.' " While yet a boy, Aaron Burr confronted the exact- ing theology of the moment with fatal sincerity and made his choice. One cannot stifle the belief that much of his after-career is explained by the effect of this ill-timed study on a precocious, undisciplined mind. To others less acute in reasoning or less perverse in disposition, it brought comfort or suffering as the case might be. In the humbleness of old age John Ran- dolph, another of the erratic children of men, wrote in the last volume of his Gibbon a recantation of all the bitter notes he had made in the earlier volumes, ex- plaining that they were the expressions of " an un- happy young man, deluded by the sophisms of infidel- ity." Lengthening years were apt to change men's views, and life and death brought each the answer to his own riddle. Hamilton, we read, received the communion upon his deathbed. Madison, not a member of any church, passed through the varied phases of a revival in his youth, and mild skepticism in early manhood. He opposed the union of church and State on political grounds, but never did or said anything hostile to the church, both out of respect to the institution itself and for love of his pious and somewhat domineering mother, who lived' under his roof to extreme old age. Out in the wilderness Daniel Boone summed up his creed, toward the evening of his life, in these words to a kinsman : " All the religion I have is to fear God, RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 293 believe in Jesus Christ, do all the good to my neighbors and myself that I can, and do as little harm as I can help ; and trust on God's mercy for the rest." The " infidel " Thomas Jefferson, for whose eternal and fiery punishment certain ministers gave thanks when they heard that he was dead, answered the Rev- erend Isaac Story on the subject of transmigration of souls, in the following humble and trustful fashion: " When I was young I was fond of the speculations which seemed to promise some insight into that hidden country ; but observing at length that they left me in the same ignorance in which they had found me, I have for very many years ceased to read or think concerning them, and have reposed my head on that pillow of ignorance which a benevolent Creator has made so soft for us, knowing how much we should be forced to use it. I have thought it better, by nourishing the good passions and controlling the bad, to merit an inheritance in a state of being of which I can know so little, and trust for the future to Him who has been so good in the past." At Monticello he invited men of the most varied religious beliefs to visit him, and was rigid in exacting courteous treatment of all, — which was good manners, whatever it argued for his theology. Andrew Jackson, who was a daily reader of the Bible, and never lacked courage, shocked his auditors one evening by boldly defending certain conceptions of Swedenborg as being as " sooblime " as any to be found in the books of the Prophets. When he was an old man he joined the church in fulfilment of a prom- ise made to his wife, long dead. Some of his political enemies chose to regard this act as a personal afifront. " And now," one of them bitterly remarked, " when he is approaching his last hours, when good men are pray- ing that he may be punished for his many misdeeds 294 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING he turns Presbyterian and cheats the Devil him- self." It seems a far cry from free trade to Sabbath break- ing, yet it was the War of 1812 that battered the first dent in the circle of Thou Shalt Nots with which Sun- day was surrounded. Hostilities put an end to even the little coastwise traffic that had survived the Em- bargo and futile attempts at retaliation ; but merchan- dise had to be moved, and the only way was by wagon, over miserable roads. This was costly as well as slow, and merchants who paid freight did not care to add to the delay or the expense by keeping horses and men in idleness one day in seven. Heavily laden wagons began to rumble through scandalized towns on Sunday, furtively at first and at odd hours ; then boldly during hours of service, within sight and hearing of the meet- ing house. Tithing men lay in wait at toll gates and cross-roads to intercept them, and this gave rise to a merry mimic war. Meantime deacons who were mer- chants, and other " professors " of religion whose in- terests were divided between the world of trade and the world of the spirit, ripped holes in their souls' sal- vation on Sunday and repaired the damage as best they might during the week by the difficult process of thread- ing the Needle's Eye. An ungodly order was issued by the Postmaster- General at Washington directing that post offices be kept open for one hour after letters were assorted, when the mails arrived on Sunday. Another innova- tion of about the same date was the institution of Sun- day schools for children with services adapted to their needs and mental development. Times were changing indeed. Liberality was in the air. The day was not past when a schoolmaster could dismiss his pupils after a four-hour week day session with the announce- RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 295 merit : " There will now be a prayer-meeting. Those who wish to lie down in everlasting burning may go; the rest will stay." But the hour had already struck when the earnest man, overcome with the brutality of his own words, had the grace to seek out the boys who were plucky enough to leave, and beg their pardon with tears in his eyes. Not one of the innovations was visited with blasting retribution. Conservatives shook their heads, but more and more individuals gained courage to act ac- cording to their own way of thinking. In the very stronghold of Puritanism the liberal movement took form that split the churches of New England during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. While it did not go to such lengths in other parts of the coun- try it showed itself everywhere in lessened church at- tendance. Public opinion still had immense weight, — enough to condemn men to go more or less w'illingly to their death in the duello, — but it could no longer drive them en masse to the sanctuary. The women, dear souls, being more conservative, went and prayed the harder. " What the gentlemen of Philadelphia do with them- selves on a Sunday I will not pretend to guess ; but the prodigious number of females in the churches is very remarkable," wrote Mrs. Trollope at the time that chains were thrown across the streets to impede traffic. New York's first amusement park, the Elysian Fields at Hoboken, cast its spell of green grass and fresh air about the minds and vagrant steps of city men ; and the era of clubs for every conceivable object was dawning. A marked change was also taking place in political methods. The sway of party increased as the influ- ence of church discipline diminished ; and it would be a curious study to determine what relation one bore to 296 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING the other. It is certain that when church-going was more nearly universal there were fewer secular organi- zations to compete with it. It remained for Lafayette to shatter the rule that guarded the Sabbath from invasion by purely social functions. On his second visit to America enthusiasm so far got the better of custom that the last evening re- ception given him in Boston took place on Sunday, — in the community where even driving out to dine was stamped as reprehensible, if not actually illegal. That custom also Lafayette defied by going to break bread with his venerable friend ex-President John Adams. But out of respect for the day the four white horses that usually drew his carriage were summarily cut down to two ; and it is significant that no sound of wel- come rose from the crowds that gathered to see him pass. The breach could scarcely be pardoned even in "the voletile fancy of a Frenchman." "On a week day," an eyewitness tells us, " no police would have been strong enough to repress the shouts." It is hard to realize what a very large place the church then held in the social life of the people. Out- side the home, politics, business, and the church were the great divisions of human activity. The home and business were affairs of tiie individual, great combina- tions in trade not having come into their own. Poli- tics and the church, therefore, were the two forms of organized endeavor. Politics, engrossing as it was, had its periods of intensity followed by long intervals of comparative torpor. In the vocabulary of to-day it was a seasonal industry. The activity of the church, on the other hand, was continuous, with meetings every week, and all business giving way to it com- pletely one day in seven. It claimed authority to oc- cupy itself not only with the soul of the individual, but RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 297 with the present deportment and eternal welfare of his neighbors, — which opened vast possibilities of scandal and helpfulness. It ran the whole gamut of emotions from heights of spiritual ecstasy to black despair. Last but by no means least, it was the one public or- ganization in which women had a recognized place. It offered them, indeed, all they could get outside of the home in the way of aspiration or diversion or grati- fication of charitable impulse, since education was but grudgingly meted out to them, and amusements, or a business life, or philanthropy in the modern sense, were not to be had. In the cities, interests centered in the substantial churches with their well-established round of social and parish duties, occasionally broken in upon by vis- its of revivalists exhorting to a more godly way of living. These were men of great power and usually from a distance, for the prophet in his own country rarely works miracles of conversion. Even Franklin, whose " strong prosaic commonsense and feeble spir- ituality " were certainly not of a type to be easily swayed, found copper and silver and " five pistoles of gold " charmed from his pockets by the Irishman Whitefield, who came to tell the Philadelphians that they were half beasts and half devils, and as a logical sequence to beg money of them to build an orphan home in Georgia. Franklin's reason told him that since the orphans and the money were in Philadelphia it was unnecessary to transport both to Georgia at great expense before putting them together; and if Franklin was moved to give coin for a plan his judg- ment condemned, we can well believe that others were influenced as strongly. In long-settled country districts the meeting-house became the focal point toward which the people made 298 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING decorous pilgrimage once a week, with elders and chil- dren piled into carriages and wagons, or coming afoot or on horseback according to their prosperity and the state of the roads. Between services, and before and after them, they lingered in the church-yard, exchang- ing salutations or glances that carried more weight than words. It was a gathering of subdued demeanor as befitted the day, but it served as a clearing house for the business and the courting and the excitement of the whole community. It was an excellent place to keep an eye and a rein on the actions of youth; and the young were very much as they are to-day, — not nearly so wise or sedate as their elders thought they should be. Fourteen hours were still considered a reasonable day's work; yet youth had energy for merrymaking afterward and drove oflf at every oppor- tunity over the snow or through moonlit, summer nights for supper and frolic. Dancing would get into their feet and would be indulged in with increasing gusto until the scorching breath of religious criticism put an end to it. Then after a season of repentance, tearful on the part of the girls and sullen on the part of the boys, a singing school in the church would merge into something a little gayer and the cycle begin anew. In the more recently settled country, " stationary " preachers labored among their scattered flocks on a pittance incredibly small, made up mostly " in kind " from voluntary contributions. And out on the very edge of civilization sturdy " circuit riders " carried their message from clearing to clearing. In the arid intellectual life of the frontier the itinerant preachers were a godsend, though few had the education and mental caliber of Samuel Doak, the Princeton graduate, who was moved by the Spirit in the early days of the Holston Settlements to wander along blazed trails, RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 299 driving before him a sorry old gray horse loaded with books that he distributed as he passed, dropping with them a word in season, and thus linking the forest dwellers once again with a far-off intellectual life that might have been on another planet. Most of the frontier preachers were men of staunch piety whose small amount of learning was yet greater than that of the people to whom they ministered. The crowning event of their year was the camp-meeting. To attend it plans were laid long in advance, and to reach it long journeys had to be taken, not always with- out danger. The meeting was usually held in the woods, where tents and wagons surrounded a central gathering place dominated by a raised platform, from which hymns were given out and the half dozen preach- ers in attendance, one after another addressed an ever- changing audience that filled the rough benches facing this rostrum. Beyond the benches tents gleamed between tree trunks, horses stamped, or fed patiently beside the wagons in which they had dragged their owners over miles of stump-infested road. Children were every- where under foot ; dogs played their friendly part be- tween beasts and humans, poking sympathetic noses into the concerns of each ; and lovers stole away from the preaching about hell-fire to wander through still places of the forest in a paradise of their own. Busy Marthas watching well-filled pots that sent incense heavenward, strained their ears toward the fervor of exhortation and the sharp responsive ejaculations "Glory!" "Amen!" "Lord have mercy!" that came to them muted by distance and rustling leaves. The heat of midsummer enveloped the camp ; and when checkered patches of afternoon sunlight gave way to deepening shadows, great torches of " fat " 300 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING pine flared out from iron baskets high above the ground to Hght the speakers' platform. The faces of the audience took on added intentness in this fitful illumination as gusts of wind caused the flames to veer and send pungent smoke curling among the trees. Lightning and the low^ growl of thunder added their menace and unrest. Hymns wailed, the exhortation became more imperative and the pleading more intense as the ministers called upon sinners to repent before it was eternally too late. One after another men and women rose from their seats and moved forward as though under a spell, to fall upon their knees before the low railing that sep- arated the preachers from their audience. Here they ag(5nized with groans and contortions, or in the utmost silence, while the singing went on. Ministers came down to the railing to pray with them individually, and sympathetic friends lent them the aid of hand- clasp and sustaining arm. A child's cry, the hoot of an owl, or the muttered oath of some ruffian on the outskirts of the crowd broke oddly upon the scene, which gained in emotional intensity as the hour ad- vanced until, like the torches, it burned out of its own heat. Then the crowd dissolved, preachers and peni- tents and congregation seeking their tents or riding away into the night ; and only a dull glow of live coals and small forest sounds broke the peace of the woods until sunrise woke the camp again to the commonplace of breakfast and the spiritual crescendo of another day. With all their features that seem to us objectionable and puerile, these meetings filled a large need ; and in spite of their excesses did something to raise the moral standard. After a season of camp-meeting men neither drank nor swore so hard; for a time at least. RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 301 To get away from the cabin's sordid, interminable duties ; to meet with friends in the crowd ; to turn their thoughts however crudely to things of the spirit, counted for much in the lives of these pioneers. In their homes they had almost no books, no amusements at all, and no means of self-expression save the toil- some one of converting the wilderness into a dwelling place for men. Sometimes months passed without their seeing a face beyond the members of their house- holds. Gatherings such as these provided at once their society, their drama, and their souls' inspiration. On the frontier and in the cities alike the profession of preacher was held in high esteem. The temptation is strong to say that as a class they were held in too much reverence. Mere men could not live up to all that was expected of them, and when the spell was broken it was the worse for them and for the souls to whom they ministered. Some of the ablest among them felt and vainly strove to overcome the barrier be- tween themselves and their congregations. Channing deplored the distance his parishoners insisted on plac- ing between them. " My profession requires me to deal with such men as actually exist," he lamented, " yet I can never see them except in disguise. I am shut out from knowledge which is essential to my work." He was never able to reach across this arti- ficial wall. The young especially could not believe his utter simplicity and forgetfulness of self. But the picture Fanny Kemble draws of this frail old gentle- man with the wonderful voice, intent upon showing her his garden, seizing the first wraps that came to hand and pacing the grass with her for an hour within arm's reach of passers by, so absorbed in talk of things spiritual that he was oblivious to the fact that the shawl about his shoulders belonged to his wife and that it 302 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING was Mrs. Channing's poke bonnet that covered his gray- locks, makes one certain that he should have been loved by everything with a heart in its breast. The range was great from this man in his atmos- phere of intellectual power and scholarly eloquence to Father Taylor, friend of sea-faring men, who chose to hoist a flag in front of his chapel instead of ringing a bell, and having been a sailor himself knew how to talk his way into the hearts of the most ungodly, and to find his illuminating path through the blackest of their boarding houses. Even greater was the distance between the men of education and broad views and old Peter Cartwright of the frontier, about whom even during his lifetime so many legends grew that in the region where he lived he has become a sort of Protestant Friar Tuck. Yet all three were great preachers and the country needed them all and many like them. It is doubtful whether Channing or his audience could have appreciated to the full the fluent, prejudiced, old frontiersman with his primitive and satisfying scale of rewards and punishments ; and it is certain that Cartwright would have had small use for the liberality of the Bostonian. He had only scorn for " the ret- icences of modern theology." " Brother Blank, three prayers like that would freeze Hell over ! " he re- marked to a young minister of his own denomination, who had, as he noted with sorrow, absorbed the new poison. The brave, devout old man died at a green old age after baptizing 12,000 persons and preaching 15,000 sermons; and that he loved the frontier and waxed sarcastic over the East was no barrier to the sympathy between him and his people. One of the stories told about him, that he liked too well to con- tradict, was how he became confused in the mazes of RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 303 a New York hotel and settled the matter by getting a hatchet and blazing the way, pioneer fashion, along the mahogany corridors from his room to the office. After public opinion had sanctioned some liberty in the matter of church-going, it came to be a question of whether it " paid." Even in earlier days that point was raised. A regimental chaplain who was a friend of Franklin's complained that his men would not attend service. Franklin had a disconcerting practicality. He answered that he supposed it was beneath the dig- nity of a minister to dispense the daily ration of rum, but that if he could bring himself to do that, and give it out immediately after the benediction, his difficulty would be solved. That has been the test from the be- ginning. The men who had reviving spirits to offer, of whatever kind, were sure of a hearing. As the sway of the church-going habit lessened, so- cieties and associations for many purposes increased to usurp its place. Among them were endless new schemes for betterment and regeneration, half religious and half social. Even to name the phalansteries and monasteries and Shaker communities; the Brook Farms, the New Harmonies, the Free Inquirers, the Rappists, and all the other abnormal forms of living, accompanied by undue partiality to dirt, or undue in- sistance on cleanliness, or a ban on buttons, or some equally tangible and negligible evidence of being dififer- ent to their neighbors, would be profitless, even were it possible. They appeared sporadically in various parts of the country and ran their course, short or long. Some of them reached out into politics. For though church and State were sundered at the beginning, re- ligion and politics have touched hands or parted com- pany continually during our history, — as was in- evitable with people brought together as ours were. 304 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING All the early state constitutions had religious or anti- religious provisions. Some began by forbidding min- isters of the Gospel to sit in their legislatures. Others went to the opposite extreme of excluding all men not willing to swear to believing in God, heaven, and hell. Some denied the franchise to various sects like Catho- lics or Jews, discriminating against them as though they were criminals. Others discouraged nonsec- tarianism by obliging every taxpayer to contribute to the support of some church. Religion slipped into the debates of Congress many times in varying ways. The discussion over buying Jefferson's books to replace the Congressional Library destroyed by the British, was strongly tinged with it. The question of a Sunday inauguration had to be faced and settled. Protests and petitions against moving the mails on the day of rest poured in at the time the order was issued requir- ing post offices to remain open for one hour on Sunday. The Government answered that the mails had always gone forward on that day, that its own despatches must travel as fast as possible, and that granting the petition would mean a delay of five days between Bos- ton and New Orleans. But the protests were kept up for twenty years by what was known as the Christian party ; and they increased and multiplied until state legislatures took a hand, begging on their side that Sunday mails should not be stopped. While religion thus made conscious and more or less unsuccessful efforts to invade politics, politics uncon- sciously and inevitably invaded religion. Anti-Ma- sonic and anti-Catholic feeling have swept the country at recurring intervals like waves of the sea ; and when the overpowering, unavoidable question of slavery was before the people it split asunder the great Baptist and Methodist and Presbyterian denominations. RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 305 Anti-Catholic feeling was a hatred brought across the ocean. According to tradition, Free Masonry had its birth back of the Pyramids. Most of the other religions or religious hatreds that have left an impress on our country trace their beginnings far in the past. Only one is thoroughly modern or thoroughly Ameri- can, — Mormonism. And, as it happens, that is the only one of them all which came near to justifying Southey's prediction. The story of its genesis and growth is one of the incredible romances of the West- ern world. Its' founder was a man of the common name of Smith, born in 1805 in the rocky State of Vermont, who grew up to farm labor in northern New York. A scanty knowledge of the three R's and a strong religious bent were his principal intellectual assets. Occupied with his soul's salvation, he saw visions and dreamed dreams but lapsed at times into ways of vanity. Be- fore he was twenty the visions led him to discover buried treasure in the shape of a stone box containing metal plates upon which was written a new holy book. At first he was warned not to make its contents known ; but some years later this injunction was removed and he began translating the engraved characters that cov- ered both sides of the " gold " plates, bound together into the likeness of a book. This he did by means of a pair of giant spectacles providentially buried in the same box. Being unable to write with ease he per- suaded a well-to-do farmer of his acquaintance, named Harris, to act as scribe, the two pursuing their labors in the secret of an attic chamber; Joseph Smith with his plates and spectacles being hidden from his com- panion behind a curtain. All went well until Mrs. Harris, in cleaning or otherwise invading the attic, came across the manuscript and promptly destroyed it. 3o6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING In spite of this domestic contretemps, Harris con- tinued to back the venture, mortgaging his farm to de- fray the cost of printing when the translation was finally done, this time with Smith's own wife acting as amanuensis. The book contained nearly as many words as the Old Testament and saw the light of print at Palmyra, New York, in 1830. It attracted little no- tice, even locally; but its few believers established a church according to the rules laid down, and in an incredibly short period its enthusiastic converts num- bered over a hundred ; a Campbellite preacher of per- suasive tongue named Sidney Rigdon, who presided over two congregations in northern Ohio, coming into the fold and bringing many of his parishioners with him. The very audacity of the new religion appealed to the imagination. Being a present revelation, the Book of Mormon proved that the Lord was neither dead nor sleeping, but vigilant as of old to protect his chosen people. It directed them to establish a kingdom of righteousness on earth ; gave them a title satisfying to sound and vanity,- — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, — demanded tangible evidences of faith in perfect obedience and the paying of a literal tithe into the coffers of the church ; and in return prom- ised guidance by means of direct revelations from on high. The charge that the Golden Bible was written in a jumble of characters copied haphazard from Greek and Roman alphabets, sprawling in unseemly attitudes and interspersed with crosses and strange marks that bore a faint resemblance to signs on the Mexican calendar, could not be proved, since nobody had seen the golden plates, and few had examined the fragment of trac- ing that Harris submitted to a learned gentleman. RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC' 307 The report current among the elect that the book was written in " reformed Egyptian " hieroglyphics was perfectly satisfactory to them, and the fact that it was expressed in stilted and occasionally ungrammatical phrases troubled them not at all. It purported* to contain the history of the early in- habitants of America, descended from a lost tribe of Israel. How an uneducated man like Joseph Smith could conceive and execute such a work, formidable in bulk if in nothing else, and for how much of it he was actually responsible, no one knows. Opponents of the new sect affirmed that an unpublished historical novel inspired by the same idea of Indian origin had been written by a retired clergyman of scholarly tastes for his own amusement about the year 18 12. The Prophet Mormon and his son Moroni, both of whom figure largely in the Golden Bible, were prominent characters in this novel. The author lent the manu- script to a publisher friend, but refused to have it printed. Rigdon, the Campbellite preacher, was a type- setter in the employ of this publisher, and the infer- ence is that he copied the manuscript and in time pre- vailed on Joseph Smith to lend himself to the deception ; and that they together added a certain amount of re- ligious matter to Solomon Spaulding's old novel and foisted it upon a gullible public. If a tale more far fetched than the original could be invented it is this one of explanation ; and the Book of Mormon .remains a mystery, fascinating and inex- plicable. In two years Mormon churches were to be found in almost every Northern and Western State, and mis- sionaries were sent out, first to the Indians, then to Europe. Soon converts began coming from England. The Federal Government turned back Mormon agents 3o8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING from Indian Territory on the ground that it was not lawful for white men to take up their residence there. Then their town of Zion was founded near Indepen- dence on the western edge of Missouri, Smith having learned by revelation that that was to be " the land of promise and place of the city." Twelve hundred peo- ple came to it in the course of a few mouths. The older inhabitants tried to sell out and leave them in un- disputed possession, but converts were too poor to buy, though they continued to flock toward Zion. There- upon their neighbors began a series of petty persecu- tions, burning haystacks and breaking windows in the hope of driving them away. Failing in this they charged them with blaspheming and stealing, and the more heinous crime for that day and place, of anti- slavery doctrines. When the Mormons refused to move they demolished their newspaper office and treated two of their elders to tar and feathers. An appeal to the governor was met with the advice that the matter be brought before the courts. Meantime flog- ging and incendiarism carried such terror among them that they crossed the Missouri River to take refuge in more northern counties. Smith, who had remained with the parent colony in Ohio, started to their assistance with a band of men armed with butcher knives, old swords, and guns and pistols of many styles. The governor of Missouri met him and warned him to disband his army, which he did; but as individuals its numbers stayed on to hearten the brethren. In this manner the Mormons lived for the space of about six years in northern Mis- souri, founding new settlements and increasing in num- bers until driven away by indignant citizens. As was natural under these circumstances, they perfected a military organization inside the church which they RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 309 obeyed blindly in preference to Federal or State au- thority. This constitutes the most serious charge against them as a body. Individually there were sin- ners and martyrs among them as among their Gentile neighbors. An attempt on the part of the Gentiles to keep the Mormons from voting was resented, and resulted in a state of war that ended only when the Mormons were driven from Missouri in the winter of 1839. They took refuge in Illinois, where by the law of manhood suffrage every white man over twenty-one turned au- tomatically into a voter after a residence of six months. The Presidential contest of 1840 was close at hand and Democrats and Whigs alike saw something providen- tial in this influx of a thousand potential voters. They vied in expressions of sympathy, and the Mormons, pleased with their reception, refused offers of land in Iowa and got possession of an unsuccessful town on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, half way be- tween Burlington and Quincy. Here they staked out their city of Nauvoo and laid the foundations of a great temple on a bluff overlooking a wonderful sweep of water, in a situation not unlike that of Leghorn, Inspired by natural acumen and divine guidance, Smith guessed correctly as to the outcome of the elec- tion and caused his followers to vote the Whig ticket. In return the legislature gave him just the kind of charter he wished for Nauvoo, with leave to establish a municipal court that could dispute the mandates of the state courts. The legislature also chartered the Legion, which was the Mormon army, independent of state control, though bound to defend the State if called upon by the governor for that purpose. Nauvoo grew even faster than Zion had done. Its population numbered 3000 one year, 7000 the next. 310 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING By 1845 it had reached 15,000, St. Louis being the only town in the whole Northwest that was larger. Fifteen thousand more men and women of Mormon faith were also scattered in surrounding towns. But their evil star was still in the ascendant. In 1842 the governor of Missouri was seriously wounded while sitting in his home. The Mormons, who were known to bear him no love, were accused, and a requisition was made for Smith's arrest on the ground that he had inspired the deed. His own court instantly re- leased him on a writ of habeas corpus. Complications growing out of this clash between state and Mormon authority raised high feeling which was not lessened by a vicious attack upon Mormonism in general, and Smith in particular, made by a former friend of his who had been the first mayor of Nauvoo. Moreover Smith began to preach and to practise polygamy, which caused a quarrel within the church itself. Trouble brooded and grew. In 1844 the whole countryside was aflame. Smith was arrested again on the old charge of inciting to murder. His friends rallied to prevent his extradition. The state militia was called out. Summoned to surrender he fled, but was prevailed upon to return and stand trial. He and his brother were lodged in jail at Carthage near Nau- voo, and there a mob with blackened faces entered and killed them both, adding in the eyes of the faithful, the supreme glory of martyrdom to all their other vir- tues. Enmity between Mormons and Gentiles grew more bitter daily. The' legislature repealed Nauvoo's char- ter and once again they had to abandon their home. This time they promised to remove beyond the Rocky Mountains. Brigham Young, now the Mormon leader, sent out parties in the spring of 1846 to build RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 311 and plant for those who were to follow. Their ene- mies affected to believe this a ruse, and in September of that year practically drove the last of them out of Nauvoo. They camped for that winter at Council Bluffs, and early the following spring pioneers again set forth into the unjknown with a precious train of wagons filled with grain and farming tools. It trav- eled, when possible, two wagons abreast, and was guarded by men with loaded guns. Great herds of buffalo impeded progress and Indians made the matter of convoy no mere ceremony. They made their way through the region of semi- desert and wind-carved buttes up the north fork of the Platte, over the South Pass and on across the country of the Green River, until suddenly the land seemed to drop before their very feet, disclosing a broad plain where lines of cotton wood trees traced rivers as on a map and in the distance gleamed the unmistakable blue of a great lake. Three days later the party camped upon this plain, and after short but very earnest cere- monies of prayer and dedication began to till and plant before the sun was high. The energy that had twice before wrought miracles was in this new home to bring to pass even more marvelous results. The Mormons led water from the mountains and made the arid lands break into blossoming fields ; and by mere force of purpose and willing hands raised in the wilderness a city with noble temples. Joseph Smith had grown with responsibility from a mere farm hand to an efficient and resourceful leader of men. Brigham Young developed into the greatest business man of his time upon our continent; and through his Midas fingers all the interest of the church and of his followers had to pass. Unfortunately the Mormon record in Utah is marred, as it had been in 312 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING the East, by questionable practises and opposition to Federal authority. Mormon wives living together in peace if not in amity, was a triumph of grace too often to be found ; and the policing of the strange community was in the hands of the band of Danites, who wrought swift and secret vengeance alike on Gentiles and apos- tates. With all this these people were God-fearing and industrious and by far the most important and efficient element in their- section. Holding themselves as a peo- ple apart, they were yet in our political sense " the people " and when the territory of Utah v^as organized in 1850, their city, Salt Lake, became almost of neces- sity its capital, and their ruler Brigham Young, the territorial governor. The deserted Nauvoo meanwhile had been filled by another sect, French this time, calling themselves Icarians. But prosperity had departed with its build- ers; and to this day it remains perched upon its bluff an empty shell, eloquent of glories that are no more. CHAPTER XV SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS IN 1850 Ampere, the French traveler who thought that President Fihmore's daughter, " took very well her situation," wrote in his notes on the West : " there is also an Astronomical Society in Cin- cinnati. Its composition is somewhat peculiar. It counts among its members 25 physicians, 33 lawyers, 39 wholesale grocers, 15 retail grocers, 5 ministers, 16 pork merchants, and 22, carpenters and joiners." If the shoemaker had stuck to his last this United States of ours could never have been created, or it would to-day bear a very different aspect. In the young nation everybody meddled with everybody's business, to the manifest advantage and discomfort of all concerned, and it would seem that about five out of every ten noteworthy Americans achieved their great- est success in some other than their deliberately chosen field of work. The restless energy satirized in the French description of an American, hurrying from en- deavor to endeavor, planting his garden but never gathering its fruits, building his house but never liv- ing in it, traveling madly on in search of work or rest or pleasure, always going forward but never arriv- ing, struck down at last by death before he has come to the end of his journey or his hopefulness, — this is democracy with elbow-room and riches and freedom to develop as it will. At the other extreme lies a caste 31.3 314 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING system like that of India ; so fossilized that a man's one escape from the surroundings of his birth is through reincarnation. Whether or not the sight of greengrocers and pork- packers and carpenters pausing in their prosaic labors to look up and speculate about the stars moves the gods to laughter, certain it is that nowhere else in the world could such a company have come together for such a purpose. And having come together (only a short half century after their town was virgin wilderness) nowhere else would they have thought of calling the ex-ruler of their nation to deliver the address on the opening of their new astronomical observatory. It was John Quincy Adams who went on this errand to Cincinnati in 1843. He was no more an astronomer than they were, but he was an American and a man of such unusually wide reading that, as the story goes, a minister who succeeded in naming to him a work with which he was not familiar was known for the rest of his life as the man who had read one more book than President Adams. Moreover, he had been President of the United States. Whether his learning or his official dignity had the greater weight in inspiring the invitation, perhaps not one of them could have told. They combined their politics and their local pride and their interest in the stars in a truly American mixture and made his coming a day of rejoicing. In politics the very kernel of the American idea is that everybody shall take a hand in the game. That has come to be the American idea in education also; but it must not be forgotten that both were of slow growth. When the Union was formed only the well- to-do had a right to vote, and free instruction as a nation-wide system was barely established at the time of the Civil War. The notion of political equality had SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 315 been preached but not practised during the first phase of our national Hfe ; during the second it got out of ink and oratory into the blood of the people and clamored for wider suffrage and more and better schools. And through better schools it expressed itself in ways strange to the old Puritans that yet proclaimed it an outgrowth of the old Puritan spirit. Schools and votes had both been closely associated with religion in the old days. Godliness had much to do in determining a man's right to voice in matters of government, and the prime argument for establish- ing schools had been to outwit the Devil, " It being one chief piect of ye ould deluder Satan to keepe men from the knowledge of ye Scriptures." Afterwards schools came to be favored for their political value, " that intelligence might rule the empire ; " but that edu- cation is a right which the State owes to every citizen, is a very modern notion. The first settlers carried an earnest respect for learn- ing into the woods of the New World. Those who could afford to do so sent their sons back for educa- tional advantages. Those who could not, transplanted education to the new soil as early and as well as their means permitted. Among the first six hundred Eng- lishmen to settle in Massachusetts was a goodly num- ber of Cambridge graduates, and very early in the his- tory of the Colony they founded a new Cambridge, '* that learning may not be buried in ye graves of our fathers." Primary and grammar schools - followed. Taxes were levied to maintain them, and within a few years of the landing of the Pilgrims, the foundation of the free school system had been laid. But the foun- dation of the college was laid first. It has become the fashion to ascribe to these Massachusetts worthies all our country's civic and moral virtue, but they were not 3i6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING the first to imagine free scliools on American soil. The earhest indigenous school tax on record was that raised to pay Adam Roelandsen who arrived in 1633 to teach the children of Manhattan. There is a tradi- tion too, that a free school was attempted in Virginia about twelve months after the Pilgrim fathers landed in Massachusetts. If so it failed, for fifty years later Governor Berkeley piously thanked the Lord that there were " no free schools nor printing " in his colony and hoped there might be none for a century to come. Education took kindly to the new soil. By 1800 there was a college of some sort in every State but one. College, however, was an elastic term. Harvard and a few others already had established reputations. So well established that we are gravely assured, though inclined to doubt, that during the colonial period " many families in Great Britain sent their children out to these colleges for the excellent education they af- forded." Other institutions of equally pretentious names could pretend to no reputations at all. North and South, East and West, such schools mul- tiplied, some to enlarging usefulness, some to wither like seeds sown on stony ground. Most of them were under denominational control, and were built or main- tained by means curiously at variance with present no- tions of what is right and fitting. Lotteries for ex- ample were a favorite mode of raising funds for such ends. Some of the best were housed in the roughest of log caljins; some in beautiful buildings; but even in the richest the equipment of classroom and dormitory w^as simple, because there was no other to be had. It is hard to remember that the well-to-do artizan to- day has household conveniences of which a sybarite did not then dream. " We w^ere not brought up in luxury," an aged gentleman assured the writer, speak- SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 317 ing of his days at Yale. " The pump on the Green was the source of our entire water supply. In our rooms we had stone china pitchers holding perhaps two gal- lons. We had to fill these at the pump and carry them upstairs. We made our own fires, — and broke the tutor's windows." " That last was luxury, Mr. O." " Yes," he admitted with a chuckle, " that was." Primary education was taken up by each State and treated as seemed to it best. Some provided tuition, such as it was, free for all. In others only the poor were so favored, — a doubtful boon, since a man had to pocket his pride and declare himself a pauper to re- ceive it. Usually his children went untaught. In the East the district school teacher was paid by taxes ; in the South by tuition fees. In a general way the his- tory of the schools parallels the history of the spread of the franchise and of the country's industrial develop-' ment. Local conditions forced or retarded results, but as a rule the Western States, profiting by the experi- ence of their elders, began near the point where the East left off; and less hampered by precedents and less fearful of experiment, were inclined to take short .cuts toward the end in view. To hazard another generalization, doubly dangerous where it extends over half a century and the width of a continent, it would seem that the South cared less for free schools and what they stood for, than the North, or those portions of the West settled by people of Northern origin. Taking for example two towns whose population in 1850 was about the same, ap- proximately 19,000, the one in Mississippi had a school enrolment only one third the size of the town in Illi- nois. The latter's public library was ten times larger, and while the churches of the Southern town could seat 7700, those of the other had been hopefully built to 3i8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING accommodate several thousand in excess of the total population. Here it is plain that local conditions were responsible, since a community in which slavery exag- gerated class distinctions could not in the nature of things take much interest in widely diffused public instruction. In this same year, 1850, the State of Ohio alone had within its borders almost the same num- ber of schools as were to be found in the whole eleven slave States. The Government early defined its policy toward edu- cation within Federal territory. The Ordinance* of 1785 relating to lands in the Northwest Territory set apart "lot No. 16 of every township for the main- tenance of public schools within said township." Two years later the famous Ordinance of 1787 asserted that " schools and means of education shall forever be encouraged " and stipulated that in land purchased by the Ohio Company, not only lot No. 16 should be re- served for schools, but that " two complete townships shall be given ' perpetually for the purposes of a imi- versity, to be laid off ... as near the center as may be, so that the same shall be good land, to be applied to the intended object by the legislature of the State." In this stipulation lay the germ of future state uni- versities. Early presidents cherished longings more or less keen for an institution of higher learning under gov- ernment direction. The younger Adams went further than some of his predecessors in believing that the Constitution already gave ample authority for such a national university, with observatories and laboratories, and suggested to Congress the wisdom of establishing one quickly, because Europe was advancing along simi- lar lines with giant strides. But this opened up vistas of government control SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 319 greater than the average American cared to face. Even the idea of state universities aided by a grant of government land had been looked upon coldly in some quarters as an insidious Federal measure, cal- culated to breed an aristocracy of learning, — aris- tocracy of any sort being the one unforgiveable sin in the eyes of democracy. The mountaineer of twenty years ago who " thanked the Lord that his blue jeans had n't brushed the dust off 'n no college walls, and the he wa 'n't all pomped up with the pride of learnin' " still reflected this spirit. But neither he nor his earlier prototype objected to the building of that school- house provided for by " lot No. 16 " and when it was built he "aimed" that his children should be well ac- quainted with its opportunities. It was this small temple of learning, with its meager equipment and its curriculum barely extending beyond the three R's, that became in reality the great univer- sity of the nation. The " self-made man," the distinctive gift of the United States to the world's dramatis persona', re- ceived a large part of his training and mounted to na- tional or international reputation almost invariably by means of it. In his childhood he attended it intermit- tently as a barefoot lad, working between whiles in the fields or at the crossroads store. He managed some- how, still working, to get the little added knowledge that fitted him to return to it as a teacher, and in that capacity entered on its wider course of training. In retrospect he was apt to look back upon this season of instructive instruction as the most fruitful of his life.' " I advise every young man to keep school," said one of the most experienced of our public men. " I acquired more knowledge of human nature while I kept school than while I was at the bar, than wTiile 320 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING I was in the world of politics, or at the courts of Eu- rope." This was its effect upon the exceptional man. Of its effect upon the people as a whole De Tocqueville wrote : " I do not believe there is a country in the world where in proportion to the population there are so few uninstructed, and at the same time so few learned individuals. Primary instruction is within the reach of everybody ; superior instruction is scarcely to be obtained by any." Professor Huxley once compared an adequate sys- tem of schools to a great ladder, with one end in the gutter, the other in the university. We were still pre- eminentl}^ an agricultural nation. Figuratively speak- ing there was no gutter in America, only a great plowed field. In the year 1800 only one person in twenty had lived in a large town. Even as late as i860 the proportion was one in six. The great ma- jority of those who tilled the soil stopped with the little book learning given them by the district school, or at most with what they could pick up in a year or two more at the nearest county town " Academy." As might be expected, Jefferson, preeminently American in his alert, almost meddlesome interest in everything that concerned the welfare of his coun- trymen, had distinct ideas on education; and his hobby was the raising of the plowed field, — literally, not figuratively, — to its rightful place in relation to the college. He opposed what he called the Gothic idea in intellectual training, — the notion that we must look back into the past for inspiration, — and in that child of his affections, the University of Virginia, he strove to put his Ideas into practice. In institutions like this " meant chiefly for use " he thought " some branches of science formerly esteemed might now be SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 321 omitted; so might others now valued in Europe, but useless to us for ages to come." Oriental learning he placed under this ban and also " almost the whole " of the course proposed for the new military academy at West Point. In their stead he would exalt agri- culture, " the most useful of all the human arts," to the rank of a learned profession. It numbered, he said, among its handmaids the " most respectable " sciences, like chemistry, natural philosophy, mechan- ics, mathematics, natural history, and botany. Thus his enthusiasm foresaw and blessed a statute placed by Congress among the laws of our country twenty- six years after his death, — the Agricultural College Act of 1862 that gave to each of the States a large additional grant of land, the proceeds of which were to be used for colleges where " without excluding other scientific and classical studies " such studies were to be taught " as are related to agriculture and the me- chanic arts." With the marvelous growth in manufactures after the War of 1812 came a temporar}^ lapse of interest in education in the States where manufacture made its greatest gains. Statistics for Pennsylvania showed that school attendance was very considerably less in 1823 than in 1820, and the explanation given was that many of the children had been taken away " be- cause of the high wages, which vary from fifty cents to a dollar and a quarter a week according to the de- mand for labor by the manufacturers." Pennsylva- nia was one of the States where parents were obliged to swear that they were paupers before their children could receive instruction free. An increasing sense of responsibility in matters of education followed this first wild and unwise ef- fort to reap the fruits of victory. Schools were es- 322 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING tablished for the deaf and dumb and the blind and others physically handicapped, — in New England even for colored people. And soon enthusiasts were going up and down the land calling upon parents to give more heed and more money to their children's teaching. Horace Mann, secretary of the newly founded Massachusetts- State Board of Education, the foremost of these, invaded the realms of philosophy and ethics, the hidden treasures of earth and the mys- teries of interstellar space for illustrations to prove that the course he advocated was not only wise and expedient but a matter of simple justice, a good education being a " right " the State owed to every citizen. Inspired by the eloquence of Mann and his follow- ers the country began to see the relation between men- tal training and human welfare, and to regard school- ing as something more than a personal desire or lux- ury. His plea that teaching should no longer be consid- ered as a temporary employment for rising young men, a stop-gap between apprenticeship and mastery in some other calling, but as a profession in itself, full of dignity and importance, began to bear fruit. Some one said that Mann took up the common schools in his arms and blessed them. Some one else called him the father of the Normal School, though the idea of such schools was not new. His influence extended beyond New England to schools of all kinds and grades, including schools for girls, which up to that time had lagged far behind. A few men upheld from the first woman's right ^nd ability to profit by the same instruction her brother received. Judge Joseph Story was one of the few in his generation. In the estimation of the masses it SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 323 was a rash experiment. " All a girl needs to know is enough to reckon how much she will have to spin to buy a peck of potatoes in case she is left a widow," was a callous statement of a widespread belief. Aside from the dangers supposed to be involved, there were not many fathers in colonial times who could afford to ride in coaches and indulge whims in educating their girls, as Burr did with his brilliant daughter Theodosia, — and small good her knowledge of mathe- matics and languages brought her, poor lady. The community as a whole was prosperous because each member was rich in industry and courage ; but it worked for its prosperity and had no time to spare for the folly of teaching womenkind things out of books. All the fine statements in early town-meetings, therefore, about the education of " children " and " youth " referred to boys alone. Pressure to allow girls the same privileges was resented. " A woman might come into the room while I was writing a let- ter and look over my shoulder and say, * That word is spelt wrong.' I should not like that," a city father of Plymouth admitted with frankness. A compromise was reached by bringing girls to- gether under the care of some worthy woman who would otherwise be a town charge. For obvious rea- sons more attention was paid to manners than to schol- arship in such schools. Later girls were allowed to attend the same schools as boys but were taught less ; or were permitted to use the same building in sum- mer, under a poorer teacher, when most of the boys were at home doing farm work. Gradually they were admitted to a wider range of studies, including geography and fractions. Then an unheard-of experi- ment was tried. A high school for girls was opened 324 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING in Boston but speedily closed in alarm, for the reason that so many clamored for admittance. The expense was too great, the public exchequer could not stand it, the authorities declared. A few private seminaries received girl pupils under the old state of things. The Moravians opened a school for both girls and boys in Bethlehem, Pennsyl- vania, as early as 1749, and Quaker schools welcomed both as boarding pupils, though they were not always given the same course of study. In New Orleans for three quarters of a century before it became American, the nuns of the Ursuline Convent had conducted a school for young ladies founded by his ineffective Majesty Louis XV. Some of the colleges under de- nominational control maintained a department for young women, but as a rule girls found much more difficulty than boys in obtaining anything more than primary instruction. If they did so it was usually under private guidance. This was especially true in the South, where schools of all kinds were fewer. Even that travesty of education the " finishing school " was at last quickened by Horace Mann's in- fluence, and to appeal to the class whose daughters had been sent to such institutions Mrs. Emma Hart Willard broke away from precedent and founded the Troy Female Seminary, where the course of study was more sensible, yet feminine enough to convince doubt- ers that she did not mean to invade the province of "nan. " Domestic instruction should be considered important," she assured them. But she examined her pupils in geometry as well. Five thousand girls went out from her school during the thirty years of her labors, five hundred of them to become teachers in their turn. Her sister did similar work in a school near Baltimore and these schools in tim.e opened the SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 325 way for women's colleges, finally achieved more than two hundred years after tlie founding of Harvard. Poor as our schools for girls were, we have the testimony of Saxe Weimar in 1825 and of Fredrika Bremer twenty-five years later, that they excelled those abroad. Saxe Weimar found both sexes in the United States " very well educated and accomplished." In- deed, he was inclined to think the care spent in teach- ing mere women an amiable New World eccentricity. We had various other eccentricities that he could not understand. For one thing it puzzled him that Americans who were so clever at inventions should be willing to waste time and labor upon " things of little importance," like a contrivance for peeling apples that he saw when he visited the Patent Ofiice at Washing- ton, where he was also confronted with ninety-six dif- ferent models for making nails, " some of them " he admitted " very remarkable." That United States Patent Office with its models of inventions was a fair index of the interest Amer- icans took in things concerning their own lines of work, — and every other. It was born in the year that Franklin died, when the present Government was barely a twelve-month old, and had received models and issued patents at a rate that increased from scores to hundreds and then to thousands a year. Three hundred and six patents were issued in 1806. In 1830, 4000 or 5000 models were on view. By i860 the average was nearly 5000 annually. That this increase bears some relation to school training seems certain. On the heels of the impulse toward better teaching came an epidemic of improve- ment in articles of household use; little things, un- important according to Saxe Weimar, that neverthe- less had far-reaching influence on American fortunes 326 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING and the manners of the entire world. The next fif- teen or twenty years, years during which the school children influenced by the new generation of teachers took up the active work of the nation, witnessed the application of machinery to the varied activities of daily life: the wizard change that ushered in social and industrial conditions of the present day. Europe also experienced a wonderful awakening in science and mechanics. We held our own, how- ever, in practical use of discoveries made abroad and in original invention. We had always been an in- genious people. Pioneer necessities had sharpened our wits into making the most of small resources or evolving substitutes for things entirely lacking. Learned men like Franklin from the earliest days had taken deep interest in science and had thought and invented and inquired. Widespread schools now brought within the reach of many the knowledge hitherto reserved for the few. New teachers, better fitted for their work, gave more heed to deep and broad principles than those who preceded them could have done, and ingenious young minds, responding with the directness of youth and the sublime assur- ance of democracy, set themselves to solving their lit- tle problems by very big rules. They had the impu- dence to harness eternal law to pare their apples and beat out their shingle-nails for them. A hundred conveniences found their way into the household. The iron plow, invented in the closing years of the eighteenth century, but condemned as " poisoning the ground," came into general use. Gas was adopted for city lighting. Anthracite coal be- came a favorite fuel, though a few tons had here- tofore been enough to glut the market of Philadel- phia. Machines, big and little, run by hand or foot, SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 327 by water and by steam, multiplied to cover the earth. There were sausage mills and sewing machines ; ma- chines that made cloth and machines that made watches; the camera, a machine that made pictures; the " revolving pistol " ; the screw propeller ; the ro- tary printing press; the McCormick reaper; railroads and the telegraph; and in between such great inven- tions thousands of small ones that turned old ways into new. One of the most important of them all, and purely American, was the secret of vulcanizing rubber, which made that hitherto sticky and evil-smell- ing substance a world-wide blessing. Of all the inventors of the first half of the nine- teenth century, Charles Goodyear, who discovered this secret, was the one American who kept unswervingly to his original idea. Feeble in health and so poor that he was often thrown into prison for debt, after the beneficent custom of the time, he worked for thirty years with undiminished patience and courage to find some means whereby rubber could be deprived of its tendency to melt in summer and break in the cold of winter. His one thought was rubber. "If you meet a man who has on an India-rubber cap, stock, coat, vest and shoes, and an India rubber money purse in his pocket, without a cent of money in it, that is he," was the description given to a man who asked how Goodyear might be recognized. But even this devo- tion was not enough. It required the whimsical in- terposition of accident to point the way. In the ex- citement of violent discussion a bit of rubber treated with sulphur slipped from his fingers and bounded upon a hot stove. To his amazement it did not melt. He tacked it outside his door in the bitter cold, and next morning found it still pliable. After that, work- ing out the problem was merely a question of time. 328 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING But he reaped little pecuniary reward from his discov- ery; probably much less than Daniel Webster, who re- ceived a very large fee for those days, $25,000, from the manufacturers who held the right to make rubber shoes alone. That too is characteristic of American in- ventions. To the victors do not belong the spoils. The strong bent of our people toward " practical " things caused inventions of that kind to be adopted and pushed with amazing vigor. In the matter of the telegraph, for instance, the chance that the Polk and Dallas convention happened to be sitting in Baltimore when Morse sent his first message did much to con- centrate attention upon it and possibly much to hasten its use. Accounts of the convention were read in every household, and in these accounts was the story of how Senator Silas Wright had sent a message by the new contrivance from Washington to the conven- tion, declining the nomination for Vice-President. The papers said the message was received almost as soon as sent. It sounded incredible ; but there it was in print. And if it were true! Every mother's son and daughter who read the tale began dreaming of how such an invention might affect his or her personal life. Four years after this first message was sent, 3000 miles of telegraph were in operation. Two years later the total had mounted to 22,000 miles, and by 1861 all the obstacles of deserts and mountains and savage tribes were overcome, and New York was linked with the Pacific coast. The way was more difficult for schemes of less ob- vious and immediate use. Everybody felt competent to pass upon them. That was another of the privileges of democracy. Government bureaus with a scientific basis, like the Coast Survey and the Geological Sur- vey, which had been added to the administrative de- HORACE MANN SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 329 partments as need for them arose, had a precarious tenure of life, entirely at the mercy of " practical " legislators who made or withheld appropriations at their capricious pleasure. Congressmen gifted with a vision beyond immediate outlay were not plentiful. Inventions and discoveries that touched their own or their constituents' projects might interest them, but even admitting the good of scientific bureaus and re- search, some of them objected to spending the money of the taxpayers for such purposes. The Coast Sur- vey, obviously the most practical of them all, was discontinued for a number of years in spite of elo- quent appeals against " putting out the eyes of the ocean." Many good citizens questioned the wisdom of our Government in accepting a bequest like that of the lonely Englishman who left the United States his for- tune " to found at Washington under the name of the Smithsonian Institution an establishment for the in- crease and diffusion of knowledge among men." Even a man with so clear and unprejudiced a mind as Lincoln confessed that up to the time he became President and talked with Joseph Henry, then head of the Smithsonian, he was inclined to regard that institu- tion as a rather useless government luxury. " But," he said, " it must be a grand school if it produces such thinkers as he." As for grants of government money to aid in carry- ing on experiments, they encountered much opposition when they were asked for. " Machinery! " thundered one congressman in answer to the plea of another for such a project. " Yes. You can do this and that and the other with machinery. We hear a lot about machinery in these days. But, Mr. Speaker, there 's one thing it can't do. You can't raise bull calves by 330 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING machinery! " And to a certain type of mind that was conclusive. Politicians were very human; so were the scientists in the government bureaus. Both being highly charged with ideas of equality and of their own im- portance, differences between them were apt to strike out sparks of picturesque criticism. Very typical is the story Henry Wise told about his friend Ferdinand R. Hassler, one of the learned foreigners who came to this country through Jefferson's influence. He ran the base line of our surveys and remained for many years in the employ of the Government in one capacity or another. He was a fine old man with a leonine head, a heart that feared nothing, and a foreign ac- cent that grew noticeable under excitement. In Van Buren's term charges of extravagance were rife, and there was strong pressure for economy in unpopular government bureaus. Hassler was then at the head of the Coast Survey. His son had been made his as- sistant and was also drawing a government salary. Hassler, moreover, kept a carriage, a queer vehicle hung on springs in a way to guard against the least jar. He was summoned before the Secretary of the Treasury to explain these crimes. He answered that the carriage was for his " babies," meaning his scien- tific instruments. The Secretary objected that they did not need to ride about Washington, and that when he took them into the field they could be better transported by rail- way. " No, no. Tat jarring makes dem nervous, puts dem out of order und unfits dem for exact use. They shall not be vexed by your railroad cars." " Well then, your salary, Mr. Hassler ; and that of your son. You and he in one family receive $8,000, SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 331 whilst I, the Secretary, get but $6,000 for superintend- ing the whole Department." " Well, tarn it, tat is right ! " he thundered in an- swer. " A Bresident of the United States can make a Segredary of the Dreasury, but it took a God Al- ■ mighty to make a Hassler ! " The country seemed confident that God Almighty had made a nation of Hasslers. Lawmakers who wished to tamper with the Government's scientific in- struments, farmers who glibly suggested " a little im- provement " in any intricate machine that came to their notice, lawyers who dabbled in mechanics, artists who played with electricity, were as plentiful as blackber- ries, as much a part of American life as the Fourth of July. Humbleness of mind was not a national trait, but agility of mind was. Franklin's inventive genius roved like lightning from stoves to circulating libraries, from experiments in vegetarianism to a self- supporting postal service and a paid police force. Monticello was full of ingenious devices of Jefferson's own contriving. Lincoln patented a device for lifting steamboats over shoals, \\'hile he was yet unknown to fame, and in his busiest and most harassed days got rest and pleasure from examining the inventions of others. Invention was a national habit. It is often the by-product of a man's brain that brings him fame, while those nearest him think lightly of his greatest achievement. Eli Whitney's friends considered his factory at New Haven for making guns more important than the cotton-gin he invented " by request " of his hostess during a visit South. His family was justified in so thinking, for it was by means of this factory that he recouped the losses brought upon him by his famous invention. In no department of knowledge did more revolu- 332 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING tionary changes take place during those fruitful years than in medicine. We are told that colonial medicine was empirical and founded on nostrums. So for that matter was medicine everywhere, only a few great dis- coveries, scarcely more than one to a hundred years, rising above its dead level of superstition and guess- work. The seventeenth century saw Harvey's discov- ery of the circulation of the blood. At the close of the eighteenth century Dr. Jenner announced his dis- covery of vaccination. The first half of the nineteenth century brought the mercy of anesthesia to suffering humanity; chloroform in England, ether in America, almost simultaneously. The latter half was to bring us the boon and the plague of the germ theory. When we read of the many important additions made to medical knowledge and resources between 1800 and 1850; additions to the pharmacopeia; the in- vention of instruments like the stethoscope ; changes in surgery made possible by the total unconsciousness of the patient under the tortures of the operating table ; the making of cunning artificial limbs to supersede peg-legs without form or joint ; advances in dentistry and in curing diseases of the eye, until then believed incurable ; and the amelioration of small but persistent miseries in the way of taking doses, so that the worth of medicine was no longer measured by its bad taste, — the wonder grows that human beings ever survived the crude and heroic methods in vogue before the nine- teenth century came in. American doctors and patients of an earlier time had no lack of courage or experiment. The national agility of mind worked in this also. John Adams when young formed one of a party who went volun- tarily into a pest house to remain several weeks and have it out with the smallpox " as was the custom be- SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 333 fore vaccination was introduced." In 1844, Dr. Wells of Hartford had gas administered to himself while a tooth was extracted to test its power as an anes- thetic; and America's greatest contribution to medical science, the use of ether, was the result of experiments in Boston by Dr. Morton and Dr. Jackson, a dentist and an eminent scientist. President Jackson, taken ill when he went north in 1833 to receive his degree from Harvard, was put to bed and thoroughly bled, a fashionable but ques- tionable remedy to apply to that thin elderly gentle- man ; but under the impetus of new discoveries such practices speedily languished and a body of well-trained and sensible doctors grew up in the United States. There was plenty for them to do. Our ill-considered ways of preparing the foodstuffs Nature had provided, our national liking for hot and under-baked bread ; and our haste in eating as in everything else, had fastened indigestion upon us as a national disease. Our na- tional tendency to jump at conclusions, to make a lit- tle learning bridge much ignorance and to expect marvels, made a wide and easy path also for the quack and the impostor. With American optimism it was believed that drugs and chemistry could accomplish anything. All sorts of new medical schools were eagerly welcomed, from Dr. Hahnemann's homeo- pathy, with its theory that like cures like and its remedies comfortably concealed in " little nothing pow- ders " and tiny globules of sugar, to others whose use- fulness has not been demonstrated by experience. A habit of believing what was seen in print if it was stated with sufficient emphasis, helped immensely the success of remedies that fed on advertising and hu- man credulity. A flourishing business sprang up in patent medicines, and patent systems of medicine, like 334 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING the much-heralded Thompsonian method that treated disease by sweating and purging in a way drastic enough to convince the most miserly that he was getting his money's worth. Very slowly did the idea of preventing ailments rather than curing them, creep in. At first it seemed both a profanation of science and an impertinence to- ward the Almighty to hint that " dyspepsy " was the price of unwise eating and not a cross to be en- dured with pious resignation, if it could not be cured by something out of a bottle. Or that while pestilence was undoubtedly a punishment of sin it was only the uninteresting sin of slack city housekeeping, Volney who visited us in 1795 prophesied that the United States would have to learn to pay attention to pav- ing, drainage, and the like if it w^ished to escape the ravages of epidemics like the "putrid fever" that raged through Philadelphia in the summer of 1793.' Yet so slow was the public to believe this that we are told on good authority, that as late as 1842 the entire milk supply for the city of New York came from cows kept in city sheds. Heaven knows we are far enough yet from perfec- tion in such matters. Heaven knows too that the changes that came to pass as the result of the awaken- ing of physical science and the quickening of inven- tion m the early years of the nineteenth century have led us into strange paths, some of them veritable. cj//^" de sac. Who would have dreamed that the colleges of the country, established by the pious Puritans to confound " ye ould deluder Satan " were to become hotbeds of free-thinking that boldly denied the exist- ence of Satan himself. That clever inventions, each one a saving of labor and of time, taken all together were to overturn old ways of thrift and bring about SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 335 reckless extravagance. That the labor-saving device of the cotton-gin was to fasten the shackles of labor upon millions of human beings, black and white, and become a juggernaut in politics, rending and destroy- ing. Or that the early mills, steam heated, white-cur- tained, blooming with flowers and happy faces like those of Lowell, were to degenerate into poisonous and SGul-atrophying prisons. In short, that the blessing of modern invention was to prove the Frankenstein of modern industry. CHAPTER XVI A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN VAN BUREN'S administration has been wittily likened to a parenthesis, because its history can be read hurriedly in a low tone of voice, or omitted altogether, without disturbing the continu- ity. This is more clever than true. His reputation as President suffered equally from his own faults and those of his predecessor. All his life he was busy being a politician ; but he never lost his intention of becoming a statesman. Born a poor man's son, he became a rich man. Blessed with a good mind, he amassed a good library and made excellent use of both. He was handicapped by a small and rotund person which he kept with neatness and elegance, but which no amount of grooming could make imposing. He took on readily the polish of the world and be- came so adept in pleasing that his manner brought dis- trust upon his intentions. John Quincy Adams, critical as he was, had to ad- mit to his diary, that though he detested Van Buren the magistrate, an acquaintance of twenty years led him to respect Van Buren the man. ,Van Buren be- lieved in and practised " politics," but he aimed to keep politics as clean as he conveniently could. Chevalier, the French traveler, thought he aspired to be the Amer- ican Talleyrand. Josiah Quincy remarked that he might have posed for a statue of diplomacy. Gen- eral Scott, who claimed to have set the Presidential 3.36 A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 337 bee to buzzing in Van Buren's ambitions, said that few men have ever suffered less wear and tear of body and mind from irascible emotions. Others bru- tally called him thick-skinned. Carl Schurz summed up his character and achievements by calling him " the finest pattern of baby-kissing statesman." He la- bored so hard to produce a good impression that he overshot the mark. And on stepping into the Presi- dency, he stepped into a hornet's nest of problems in- herited from Jackson that might have proved the undo- ing of the wisest and most popular of men. The bonfires kindled in jollification over his elec- tion had scarcely died into ashes before there was an equal cooling of enthusiasm on the part of those who elected him. His own State gave him an unprece- dented majority but turned against him almost at the outset; and in matters entirely beyond his control he had the worst of luck. He had not been President a month before the great panic of 1837 began its devas- tating course. Even the elements conspired against prosperity. Two years before the panic a great fire had ravaged the business section of New York. Though the loss was very heavy not a merchant had failed in consequence; but this strain left them less able to withstand business depression ; and bad har- vests, following close upon the heels of the panic, added greatly to the distress. Commercial failures began in New York about a fortnight after Jackson turned the office over to his successor. Almost a hundred firms went down in the first week. After that, failures were too numerous for even local papers to notice in detail. Before the end of the month the same state of things extended over the entire country; prices went tumbling; and business fell to ruin on all sides. The panic was espe- 338 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING daily severe in the South, where cotton that had been selling at twenty cents dropped to ten, to rise again in the course of two years to sixteen and then sink to five ; for this serious condition was not to pass quickly. Fortunately the winter of 1837—38 was mild, but it saw much suffering. The years between 18 16 and 1820, known as the hard times of eighteen hundred and starve to death, did not approach this season of scarcity. Indeed, this was the first time that our peo- ple experienced the hardships of modern urban life. Numbers of laborers, unskilled in trades and unused to the ways of the cities, flocked to the larger towns. A house-to-house canvass had to be made in New York to collect funds to relieve the distress ; and, as always, it was the poor who gave most in proportion to their means, men who earned only five dollars a week shar- ing their wages with the " really poor." But it was not charity these people wanted. " We are not beg- gars. Give us work. Why can we have nothing to do?" was the pitiful plea heard on all sides. With the coming of spring the suffering due to inclement weather disappeared, but the real situation was scarcely altered. The two classes to feel the pinch most se- verely were the laborers who had to work for their daily bread and the farmers who produced that bread. Foodstuffs were either tragically high or almost with- out value, as they were considered from the viewpoint of producer or consumer. Even with beef at two and a half cents a pound and eggs at three cents a dozen, or a dozen chickens to be had for half a dol- lar, mouths had to go unfed while good laborers hunted vainly for work at a dollar a week with board. The disease ran its course and the depression did not reach its lowest ebb until 1842, though long be- fore that the wild panic of the first weeks had given A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 339 way to a dogged pessimistic endurance. It is true that Jackson's meddling with the National Bank was looked upon as the chief cause of the distress, but Van Buren was of the same household of political faith and had promised to tread in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor. He was importuned to bring back the good times, and because business de- pression did not instantly take wings at his bidding, criticism of him and his measures assumed unwar- ranted and steadily growing proportions. He was called a British tool because he did not encourage preju- dice against England in troubles that arose on the Canadian border, and he was held responsible for all the evils of the spoils system. He was accused of gross extravagance, a set of gold spoons said to have been purchased for the White House assuming as great political proportions as John Quincy Adams's mythical billiard-table ; and the charge that he was receiving the Presidential salary in hard money and living in luxury while thousands of his fellow-countrymen starved brought not only caustic comment but a derisive mob almost to the doors of the White House. He did everything he could to bring back prosper- ity, but he could as easily have brought back the golden age of Pericles. Believing, as did his critics, that Jackson's financial measures had much to do with the hard times, he called an extra session of Congress and proposed that for the first time in its history the United States establish an independent treasury and assume full and exclusive charge of its own funds. As this was an entirely new departure it drew the criticism of all conservatives for that reason, in addition to the opposition of his political enemies and of those who distrusted him on personal grounds. Some 340 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING urged that an independent treasury would give the Government too much power. Others said it would lock up bullion that ought to be in circulation. Oth- ers still failed to see wherein notes issued by a United States Treasury would be superior to notes issued by banks, which already covered the land with waste paper. Clay and Webster saw in the new scheme vast possibilities of villainy. It was pro- claimed " the first step toward an Executive Bank with Tyranny as its aim," and at a monster meeting of pro- test, some patriot with a talent for epithets invented for Van Buren -the mouth-filling title of Machiavel- lian Belshazzar, The poor man was reaping the harvest of his own too industrious planting. He had so successfully pulled wires through a lifetime that large numbers of his countrymen could not believe him sincere, and suspected a trick in this innocent, and as the sequel proved, perfectly workable scheme. After more than two years' discussion the bill passed and Van Buren affixed his signature on the Fourth of July, 1840. But in spite of this apparent victory he labored against constantly increasing oppo- sition. When the time came for active work in the campaign of 1840, he and the Vice-President, Richard M. Johnson, were renominated by the Democrats, but the Whigs carried things all their own way. From the moment of Van Buren's election in 1836, Clay's supporters had been planning to elect their perennial candidate in 1840. Popular dissatisfaction with the Democrats made a Whig victory at this elec- tion almost certain and it seemed that Clay's ambition was at last to be gratified. The Whig national con- vention met early and Clay, confidently expecting to be the nominee but mindful of the proprieties, sent word to his friends to sacrifice him if necessary to the A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 341 welfare of the party. They tried for three days to bring about his nomination, but fruitless ballotings convinced them that his very prominence and the num- ber of political battles in which he had fought with vigor would work against his polling as many votes, either inside or outside the party, as a less conspicuous candidate might do. They took him at his word, therefore, and nominated William Henry Harrison, to Clay's very great astonishment and chagrin. In the first moments of wrathful disappointment he told a companion that his friends were not worth the powder it would take to blow them up. But his better self soon triumphed and rising to the occasion he did valiant work for the man who had supplanted him. Disappointment was not confined to Clay. It was shared by many members of the nominating conven- tion and by thousands of Clay's admirers throughout the country. John Tyler of Virginia was reported to have shed tears, whereupon the leaders of the ponven- tion had the inspiration to nominate him for Vice-Presi- dent. They did it not so much on account of this dis- play of emotion as because he had been a partizan of Jackson until alienated by Jackson's action against the Bank and on Nullification. He had resigned his seat in the Senate rather than vote for the Force Bill. This endeared him to the South and he was therefore an ideal candidate to bring Southern sympathizers and disaffected Democrats to the Whig standard. Harrison and Winfield Scott had been the alterna- tives to Clay's selection for first place on the ticket. Both were successful soldiers and intensely loyal Whigs, but as different in other respects as men of the same race could well be. Scott was an aristocrat and an autocrat; a man of such explosive temper that he could not play a game of cards with a group of 342 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING friendly children without frightening them half out of their wits ; nor could he keep peace in his own house- hold. It was said that he and his wife " were never in love with each other except when apart." Even in the matter of naming their four daughters the pair could not agree. He gave them Roman names; she ones that she was pleased to call Christian, " Camilla does thus and so," he would announce; to which she would answer with barbed intent, " Yes, Adeline al- ways does." Gallant and efficient as he was, this was manifestly not the man to nominate in a campaign where con- ciliation was necessary; so the convention wisely passed him over for Harrison, a man of extreme sim- plicity of manners and of little wealth. He was sixty- seven years old, as old as Washington had been at the time of his death, and he had been in public life since before the beginning of the century, having come as delegate to Congress from the Northwest Territory in 1799, and served as governor of Indiana Territory from 1 801 to 181 3. It was during this pe- riod that he won his military laurels, by defeating the Prophet, brother of Tecumseh, at the battle of Tippe- canoe in 181 1, and again two years later by his vic- tory over the combined forces of the English and Tecumseh himself in the battle of the Thames, where the British commander fled, and Tecumseh met his death. Harrison had been rewarded by elections to both branches of Congress and a more or less complimen- tary nomination to the Presidency in 1836. John Quincy Adams appointed him to a diplomatic post, presumably on the theory that a man who could cope with the wily savage would be a match for the wily diplomat. Jackson summarily deprived him of this A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 343 office in the first days of his political housecleaning, and Harrison came home from Colombia to take up again the life of a farmer in Ohio. His record con- tained nothing distinctively Whig or Democratic. It was that of a plain, efficient, American citizen, illu- minated by his success against the dreaded Indians and that rarest of American military triumphs, a land vic- tory in the War of 1812. The Whigs were clever enough not to complicate the issue. Their convention formulated no party platform, and issued no address to voters. Deprived of the usual statement of party principles against which to direct their attack, the Democrats were driven to personalities. The unlucky sneer of a Baltimore paper gave the characteristic turn to the campaign. Provide Harrison a pension of $2000 a year and a barrel of hard cider, this paper declared, and he would spend the rest of his days contentedly in his log cabin. The Whigs took this up as the challenge of wealth, construing it into a statement that only men rich enough to live in fine houses and drink wine should aspire to the Presidency, That was a proposition upon which Whigs and dissatisfied Democrats, anti- sub-Treasury and anti-State Bank men, States Rights partizans. National Republicans, strict construction- ists, latitudinarians, and all the varied antis and outs could unite in vigorous denial. And unite they did in a campaign the like of which had not been seen before. " The Union of the Whigs for the sake of the Union " was their official motto. Their real rallying point was the humble log cabin with a raccoon skin nailed to its door. This they made their campaign emblem ; and a barrel of hard cider standing hospitably open near by did not lessen its attraction. . More enthusiasm than intellect went into the 344 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING speeches and the shouting. Political gatherings were numbered, not by hundreds or even thousands, but by the square acre. In the Whig processions, which were measured by the mile, battalions of men carried corn- husk brooms and transparencies that echoed old slo- gans of 1812, like "Don't Give up the Ship;" while other transparencies, lauding " The Farmer President," " The People's Candidate," " The Hero of Tippe- canoe," escorted real canoes and models of Fort Meigs mounted with real guns, and log cabins on wheels from which real cider flowed the length of the route. Cam- paign papers were dramatic with woodcuts of Harrison battle scenes highly idealized, and vocal with music printed on the pictured sides of log cabins; and similar triumphs of journalism foreign to the habits of the moment. One particularly successful campaign paper called the " Log Cabin " was published at Albany by a young man named Horace Greeley. It had an unprec- edented circulation which could have been greatly in- creased had his facilities for printing and mailing allowed. Brass bands and processions filled the streets from dawn to midnight, political songs filled the air with a lilt and swing that echoed for many a day. Even after the leaves of that campaign summer had been dead for forty years the writer knew a little dog named " Tippecanoe and Tyler Too," in honor of the Whig nominees of 1840. Lincoln's advice to a young friend in the campaign of 1848, "Let every one play the part he can play best, some sing, some speak, and all holler," was followed to the letter at this earlier date. Even the women took part, which by the way also accorded with Lincoln's advice. A carefully guarded family tradition of some friends of Ohio descent tells how their grandmother saved the honor of the town of A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 345 Wooster in that state when General Harrison ap- peared unexpectedly to speak. He had been billed to attend a meeting in a neighboring village, where all the Whigs of the surrounding country had gathered to hear him. Through some mistake he found his way to Wooster instead. Only Democrats were left and not many men of that faith. But this lady, quick to see and to act, grasped the situation, received the candi- date cordially though herself an ardent Democrat, hur- riedly notified all the citizens that remained, male and female, and got together an adequate audience. When upbraided for doing this for the candidate of the oppo- sition, she answered with spirit that General Harrison was more than the mere candidate of the Whig party. He was a candidate for President of the United States, the greatest office in the gift of the people, and as such worthy of all honor; and she asked scornfully if the principles and convictions of her Democratic friends were so weak that they feared to listen to the other side. Van Buren and his party labored heroically against their fate. They had campaign papers of their own and good speakers and large meetings, but the memory of four lean years was against them, and the Whigs distanced them in songs and electioneering emblems and mottoes that appealed to popular sympathies. One of the trump cards of the Whigs was a campaign document, a reprint of a speech delivered in the House of Representatives by Charles Ogle in which he de- scribed " the Royal Splendor of the President's Pal- ace " in words that not only magnified the gold spoons to heroic proportions, but did wonders with the very modest fittings of the White House and told of gardeners paid with the people's money, whose sole duty was to pluck up burdock and sheep sorrel in the grounds that surrounded it. Honest farmers gasped 346 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING in astonishment. In vain the Democrats denied it. In vain they used equal exaggeration in statements about Harrison's tottering senility. In vain they ac- cused him of having advocated the selling of white convicts to slavery while he was governor of Indiana. The Whig songs which, it must be confessed, had an uncommon amount of vim and " go " for campaign songs, took on added glee and derisiveness as the cam- paign advanced. " Van, Van, is a used-up man ! " the Whigs shouted at their meetings. And the election proved that this was true. Harrison received almost four times as many votes as the Machiavellian Belshaz- zar, a piece of news eagerly awaited at outlying mail stations by bands of young men mounted and ready to gallop away, who passed it on to remotest hamlets in races that rivaled the one which brought the good news to Aix. Part of the extraordinary enthusiasm and abandon of this campaign was mere reaction from the depres- sion of hard times. The country was still in its " cub " stage. Youthful physical energy had to have an out- let. The shouting and the speeches over, it subsided to more normal actions and took up again its sobering daily tasks. Van Buren kept his head and his manners in defeat. His message to Congress the last year of his term was stronger and better than any he had written before; and in social courtesy he heaped coals of fire upon the heads of such of his opponents as remembered the flight of Adams and his cabinet when the Democrats came into power. He invited General Harrison to the White House and entertained him as his guest for sev- eral weeks before the inauguration. The President-elect was old, though far from being the doddering old man described by the Democrats in A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 347 the heat of the campaign ; and he was not as strong as he himself liked to believe. The excitement of the canvass had worn upon him, and the fatigue and ex- posure of a journey to Washington in inclement weather drew heavily upon his remaining strength. Whigs flocked to Washington in droves to ask favors of him, " every man with a raccoon's tail in his hat, tugging at the string of the latch," as though the White House were indeed a log cabin. To receive and sat- isfy these was in itself no light labor. On inaugura- tion day, which was cold and stormy, the new old Pres- ident addressed the people for an hour in the open air. What he told them was not very satisfactory, except, perhaps, to himself. An anecdote of the period tells how Webster was asked by Harrison to revise the inaugural address before its delivery. He returned from the ordeal looking so tired that his sympathetic landlady asked if anything unpleasant had happened. "You would think something had happened if you knew what I have done," Webster replied with convic- tion. " I have killed seventeen Roman pro-consuls ! " But a good many classical v/orthies escaped, and those who heard the address learned more about ancient history than they did about the incoming President's ideas on questions of the day. This may have been craft or caution on Harrison's part, or because he was a generation behind fiis time in literary composition. That he did not lack a will of his own was soon demonstrated by his break with Clay. Clay had been offered the office of secretary of state but declined. It was then offered to Webster who accepted. Clay, however, felt himself at liberty to make suggestions. These Harrison resented, believing that Clay presumed upon his high place in the party to influence him, " Mr. Clay, you forget that I am President," he re- 348 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING minded him before he had been in office many days, intimating that it would be better in future to make such suggestions in writing. " It was a terrible disap- pointment," wrote Clay's biographer, " first to be thrown aside by the convention of his party for a sec- ond-rate man, and then to be thrown aside by that sec- ond-rate man." Deeply hurt, he left Washington and never saw Harrison again. Pressure of work and pressure of visitors lengthened the President's official day until after midnight; and contrary to the entreaties of his friends, he followed his lifelong habits of early rising to go to market or to walk in the morning air without an overcoat. Fatigue and exposure brought on a chill which developed into pneumonia and he died on April fourth, exactly one month from the date of his inauguration. It was the first time a President had died in office. The country was profoundly moved. Even Harri- son's political opponents acknowledged his life of pub- lic usefulness and the great military service he had rendered his country. All the houses of Washington, from rich to humble, displayed tokens of mourning on the day when a black open car with white horses, nod- ding plumes, heaps of flowers, and a wealth of funeral pomp that contrasted strangely with his simple life, carried his body on its last earthly journey. Tradition has it that while Harrison lay dying he addressed some imaginary person in these words: " Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of the Government. I wish them carried out. I ask no more." After events made this seem a prophetic vision, for Tyler was a Democrat at heart and soon showed his true colors. He was at his country place in lower Virginia when summoned to the office of President. He had felt it A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 349 indelicate to hasten to Washington unsiimmoned ; and the cabinet, though convinced that Harrison could not survive, felt equal delicacy about calling him while the doctors held out " professional hope." His handsome face was very thoughtful as he took his place as chief mourner at the funeral of his prede- cessor; " not as if he were thinking of what was then and there passing," an observer noted, " but as if he were laying deep plans for the future." The country was most anxious to learn what those plans might be. He had been elected as a Whig. Would he remain true to the party that placed him in power, or would he return to the Democrats and em- brace this opportunity, divinely offered it seemed, to rescue the country from the madness of the last elec- tion ? Particularly would he save it from the " threat- ened usurpation of a Moneyed Monster?" — meaning the National Bank now being urged by Clay to replace Van Buren's scheme for a national treasury. A little knot of friends, mostly Virginians, so few in number that Clay contemptuously called them the cor- poral's guard, rallied about him to urge this course and to strengthen his resolution. Beyond these he found few supporters in either party. Congress was speedily estranged by his action on the National Bank. He vetoed Clay's bill, but at the same time indicated the features of one that might meet his approval. Congress obligingly passed a bill framed upon these suggestions. He outraged them by also vetoing that. He had never in words promised to aid in establishing a new National Bank, and it is at least debatable whether he did not do the country a real service in preventing it ; but feeling ran so high that while Dem- ocratic senators called upon him in a body to congratu- late him on his courage and his patriotic conduct. 350 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING a crowd gathered outside the Executive Mansion and made known its disapproval by catcalls, the beating of drums, unhinging gates, and such generally disgrace- ful behavior that a congressional investigation was ordered. It was in the course of debate upon this in- vestigation that Clay indulged in that clever satire of his upon the meeting inside the White House, dramatizing the supposed speeches that passed between the Whig President and his various Democratic ad- mirers, in such masterly fashion that even those cari- catured joined in the applause. Convinced that Tyler had no intention of remaining a Whig, if he had e\'er been one, the Whig cabinet resigned in disgust, with the single and very important exception of Webster, who remained in the State De- partment some months longer for the purpose of con- cluding the Webster-Ashburton Treaty that defined the boundary line between Maine and Canada. When this was finished, he also withdrew and Calhoun suc- ceeded him as secretary of state. This severed the administration's last pretense of Whig affiliations. But even after the sensational break with the party that elected him, Tyler failed to reestablish himself in full confidence of the Democrats. To the end of his term he was distrusted by one party and execrated by the other. He was nevertheless very active, and having the interests of the South at heart, the project to annex Texas became his ruling ambition. That coveted portion of Mexico lay just west of Louisiana. It took its name from an old Indian word signifying " friends " ; and for a quarter of a century, in fact ever since Philip Nolan and his band had made their way into it from Natchez in 1800 to capture wild horses, and had themselves been captured by Spanish authority, it had been looked upon with more than A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 351 friendly eyes by ambitious and adventurous spirits who made rendezvous in the Mississippi town. Napoleon had left the boundaries of Louisiana vague " as a safeguard." This gave opportunity for Americans to claim more or less of Texas as United States territory ; but all such claims had been officially given up by the treaty of 18 19 with Spain, when one condition of the Florida purchase was our. acceptance of the Sabine River as the western limit of Louisiana. Popular feeling in the Southwest strongly resented this on several grounds. One argument was that it brought an alien frontier too close to our great artery of western travel, the Mississippi River. Another was that England would very likely get possession of the territory claimed by us, if we did not, and use it as a base from which to attack us and our institutions. This meant attack the institution of slavery; for England was strongly antislavery. The administra- tions of John Quincy Adams and Jackson tried in vain to arrange the matter by purchase, offering a choice of several boundaries and terms. Mexico had become independent shortly after our treaty ^f 1819 was con- cluded with Spain, but insisted that these provisions concerning the boundary be strictly carried out. Meantime successive unstable Mexican governments made grants of land to Americans, and settlement of the coveted region began in earnest a very few years after Clay's Missouri Compromise of 1820 limited the amount of United States territory still open to slavery. Whatever the reasons they might urge, slavery was the underlying fact that made the minds of Southerners so hospitable to Texas. Southern statesmen were al- ready looking forward to the time when land would be needed out of which to make the new slave States abso- lutely necessary to the South if she meant to hold her 352 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING own against the ever growing North. Here provi- dentially lay a stretch of country as large as the whole Louisiana purchase, waiting to fill this need. It was true that slavery was already forbidden by Mexican law; but it was equally true that settlers from the United States ignored this and took their chattels with them. It was also true that when Texas was once within the United States she could change this law to suit herself. The region had few inhabitants besides the Ameri- cans, who were racially out of sympathy with the Mexi- can people and'with their rulers who climbed to supreme though brief authority, one after another, by Latin- American methods of revolution and assassination. A few years of life under such government brought them to the point of rebellion on their own account un- der the leadership of the picturesque and effective Hous- ton, a character only to be found in such a young and crude society. Personally very brave if very dissolute, his career had covered the wide range of lawyer, Indian agent, gallant soldier in the War of 1812, member of Congress, governor of Tennessee, Cherokee chief, and bridegroom who fled from his newly acquired white wife back to the comforts of Indian life, before he gath- ered to himself a handful of kindred spirits and passed on to make history in Texas. His companions in the enterprise were by no means all bona fide residents. Scenting trouble, many of them had come across the border to help their friends and their acts could not be justified by law, national or international. They were typical frontiersmen of the Southwest, as boisterous and turbulent as the Mexicans themselves though in a different way, — " the glory of the race of rangers " as Whitman sang of them. Whatever their shortcom- ings, they had a chivalrous code of their own and lived A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 353 and died by it unafraid. Fannin could have escaped massacre with his 350 at Goliad haS he not felt in honor bound to await the return of a detachment sent out to rescue some settlers; and when the Mexicans made a shambles of the Alamo, that old adobe fortress that had once been a church, killing its defenders to the last man, each little group died where it stood, isolated but heroic. Bowie, the inventor of the favorite frontier knife, was one who fell in this way. Another was Davy Crockett, who was found after this day of carnage, face upward, still grasping his weapon, with a heap of twenty or more Mexicans dead before him. Although the battle of San Jacinto by which the Texans gained practical independence in April, 1836, was so ridiculous in detail that its story reads like some distorted bad dream, it was fateful for the country. Houston was retreating when he heard that the Mex- ican army was temporarily divided by a freshet. He suddenly turned and attacked the vanguard, though it outnumbered his men two to one. To reach the place of battle his army made use of a timber raft and one leaky scow. The cavalry horses swam. Transport- ing the artillery was no serious matter, since his chief if not his only battery consisted of two six-pounder guns, called the " Twin Sisters." The army band, one fife and one drum, led the advance, playing not martial music but the popular air, " Will you come into the bower?" The battleground itself was surrounded by marshes, with only one bridge leading to safety. After the last man had passed over. Deaf Smith, a cele- brated scout, dashed up and dramatically announced that he had destroyed that. There were 200 bayonets for a little less than 800 men in Houston's army. Santa Anna's force which so greatly outnumbered them was behind breastworks, but the Texans felt no regret 354 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING for the bridge and entertained no thought of retreat. Shouting, " Rerrtember the Alamo " and " Remember Goliad," they rushed upon the Mexicans, who secure in their position, their greater numbers, and the late hour of the day, were taken off their guard and completely surprised. Santa Anna was asleep; the soldiers were playing games. They had not time even to discharge their guns, and their losses show that the Texans were not generous victors. Some of the Mexican officers made gallant attempts to rally their men and make a stand, but in fifteen minutes the battle was over. Next day Santa Anna was captured in the marshes and with him Mexican control was lost. The Texas army demanded a bloody revenge ; and if ever a commander was treacherous and shifty, a murderer of prisoners and the sick, well deserving hanging, it was Santa Anna. But Houston, though no saint himself, was not vindictive. He was shrewd enough, moreover, to see that Santa Anna living was worth more to his cause than a dozen such malefactors dead. He thriftily protected him from the fate the Texans would have inflicted, and bargained with him instead. Although Texas speedily applied for admission to the United States, years passed before it was attained. Jackson, who had tried to purchase a portion of Mexi- can territory, would have nothing to do with this proj- ect of annexation because of its obvious bearing on slavery. Van Buren adopted the same official attitude. Southern and democratic newspapers meanwhile were deluged with articles about Texas and its resources and general attractions, and Congress became the target for petitions for and against annexation, John Quincy Adams, as might be expected, leading the stubborn fight against it in the House. He occupied the morning hour A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 355 day after day in a never-ending speech which kept it from coming to a vote in the sessions that ended with Van Buren's term on the 4th of March, 1841. Thus the question descended to Tyler by inheritance. The death of President Harrison and Tyler's break with the Whigs drove it for a time from the public mind; but in 1842 it came uppermost again. Texas renewed its request and the President would have ap- proved it gladly, had not Webster, who was still secre- tary of state, taken a firm stand in opposition. It was known, too, that the Senate would not consent. Ty- ler's "corporal's guard" therefore set itself to work to manufacture public sentiment by means well known to politicians. Among other bits of strategy it man- aged to get a letter from Ex-President Jackson express- ing his own private views in favor of acquiring Texas; this it laid aside to be published with a changed date when the proper time should come. Tyler meanwhile arranged a treaty of annexation, which the Senate de- feated. The question was not allowed to die and the cam- paign of 1844 was fought squarely on this issue. The Democrats nominated James K. Polk and conducted the canvass to the cry " The Northwest and the South- west," which meant that not only Texas but Oregon must be added to the Union. Clay was once again the Whig candidate and once again unsuccessful, though he attempted to please both sides by first oppos- ing annexation and later intimating that personally he did not object to it. The Democrats won and Tyler, feeling that his activity in the matter deserved recog- nition, urged Congress to annex the new State while he was still President. On March i, 1845, three days before the eijd of his term, a joint resolution annexing Texas to the United States passed both houses, and he 356 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING laid down his official cares feeling that although he had become President by chance and had been dis- trusted by all, he had succeeded in carrying out the desire of his heart and thereby added greatly to the future strength and power of the South. CHAPTER XVII America's war of conquest THAT rallying cry of the Polk campaign, " The Northwest and the Southwest," was fashioned to cover a multitude of national longings. It held within itself not only the vigorous young Ameri- can instinct to press forward and possess every- thing in sight, but the necessities of slavery, the dis- quieting fiction of foreign invasion, and the wish of many good and pious people to see the conversion of the Indians. From the first, something in the air of our western horizons has magnified national acquisitiveness. The Northwest Territory seemed vast to the makers of the Constitution. Then Louisiana dawned upon their vision. Louisiana appeared so inexhaustible that Jefferson thought to settle the Indian problem for all time by establishing the tribes on reservations in its limitless extent. Yet scarcely had Louisiana passed under our control before we began looking westward again and coveting what lay between us and the Pacific. There was Oregon; we were conscious too of a spot called California; but nearer at hand was this matter of Texas. Looking back, it seems inevitable that Texas should have become part of the Union. Our own pioneers had redeemed it from the wilderness and our whole people recognized kinship with them, both in the valor with which they defended the Alamo and the shrewd- 357 358 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING ness with which they kept Santa Anna as hostage after the battle of San Jacinto. When they asked as an independent State to be taken into the family of the Union, sentiment, cupidity, and blood all argued for them, " There are certain temptations that no government yet instituted has been able to resist," the biogra- phers of Lincoln wrote. '* When an object is ardently desired by the majority, when it is practicable, when it is expedient for the material welfare of the country, and when the cost will fall upon other people, it may be taken for granted that . . . the partizans of the project will never lack means of defending its morality." President Polk took up the scheme of annexation with as much enthusiasm as Tyler had shown, and despatched a messenger to Texas. A convention of Texans was called for the 4th of July, when the pro- posal was accepted and ratified ; and in the closing days of 1845 Texas was formally admitted as one of the United States. President Polk's annual message to Congress called it a bloodless revolution; but it is doubtful if the most optimistic believed that this was to be. Mexico recog- nized Texan independence only during the brief time that Santa Anna remained in Houston's power, a pris- oner of war. The Bustamante administration speedily repudiated his treaty, and war had been fitfully waged against Texas ever since. The Mexican government had served notice that it did not propose to submit to " an aggression unprecedented in the annals of the world," and even were it minded to submit now that annexation had formally taken place, the amount of territory involved would still give ample cause for quarrel. Santa Anna had agreed to whatever limits Texas AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 359 chose to claim. The joint resolution admitting Texas left the matter open to " adjustment," but from the mo- ment Congress agreed to annexation our Government assumed that everything east of the Rio Grande be- longed of right to Texas, though in fact Texan terri- tory was settled only as far west as the Nueces River. The area between, only a few miles wide in some parts and several hundred miles wide in others, and extend- ing from the coast northward to the vicinity of Denver, was a piece of ground as irregular in shape as a gerry- mandered congressional district and as large as the whole of New England. The Whigs, in Congress and out, and the North generally had opposed annexation. Anti-slavery men pierced the haze of special pleading with which its advocates strove to surround it, and dwelt on the fact that first and last and fundamentally it was an effort to enlarge slave territory. Clay's unwise attempt to tem- porize with this instinct of his party cost him the Presi- dency, though his letter, admitting that he had no personal objection to the admission of Texas, in case certain quite impossible conditions could be fulfilled, seemed, on the face of it, likely to anger the friends rather than the enemies of slavery. Lowell denounced annexation in the Biglow Papers with a humor and sar- casm that outlived the issue and became literature ; and in Congress that master of dramatic speech, Corwin of Ohio, answered Cass's frank statement, " We want room," with his vehement, " If I were a Mexican I would ask, ' Have you not room in your own country to bury your dead? If you come to mine we will greet you with bloody hands and welcome you to hospitable graves.' " The Democrats and the South were a unit on the necessity of having Texas, even at the cost of war; 36o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING but the widespread opposition made them wary and alive to the wisdom of beginning the war in a manner that would dispel, not increase, the strong feeling against it. Mexico must be made to seem the aggres- sor, and the war must be short. It would be best to end the matter by purchase. It was very awkward under the circumstances that the only generals in the army available for supreme command belonged to the Whig party. Military success might tend to their glory instead of to the credit of the administration, while blame for failure would inevitably fall on the party responsible for war. However, the administra- tion must take what came. General Zachary Taylor and a considerable part of the small United States army was ordered to Corpus Christi on the border, in the summer of 1845, i^ the hope that fighting might come about through mere proximity without orders from Washington. General Taylor knew perfectly what was expected of him but took a grim pleasure in thwarting the administration by delaying the event as long as possible. Aware that it must come in the end, however, he turned the season of waiting to good account in drill and organization. The Mexicans, on their part, were more inclined to catch wild horses and sell them to the Americans than to give them a shower of bullets; and Taylor's young officers, in the intervals of his vigorous drilling, bought the wild ponies driven in by their future enemies, attended their dances, and made night melodious with sentimental song. Burns's " Green grow the Rashes O " sounded so often in camp that the brown men across the line assumed it to have a national significance and dubbed the blue-clad soldiers Gringos, a word that saved three syllables over Americanos every time it was uttered. HENRY CLAY AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 361 In this friendly fashion the winter passed away. The administration lost patience. Since the Mexicans refused to show proper spirit they must be prompted in their duty, and in March, General Taylor was or- dered to advance to the Rio Grande. The interven- ing country was practically a desert, relieved only by a few pools of water scooped out by travelers, or trampled into shallow lakes by the feet of buffalo and wild horses. The distance between these oases de- termined the length of a day's march. Taylor's army, winding across the arid land in a tnin blue line, looked very inadequate to conquer a country ; but nothing ap- peared for it to conquer. It reached the Rio Grande and set to work building a fort under the very guns of Matamoras on the opposite bank. Then the break desired by the administration came; for the Mexicans tilled fields to the east of the river. Their cavalry, circling round parties of Americans that ventured too far from camp, killed several men and made prisoners of two companies of dragoons. Polk, in a special message, announced that " the cup of for- bearance has been exhausted." Congress declared war, and Taylor's army, crossing the Rio Grande, passed on to more serious work. The opening of hostilities placed the Whigs in Con- gress in an embarrassing position : it was difficult to denounce a war and at the same time support the army and rejoice in the victories of a Whig general. Draw- ing a sharp line between voting that it was a righteous war as the Democrats wished them to do, and voting supplies for soldiers who were not responsible for its commencement but were obeying orders and fighting battles, they sustained every measure to supply and en- courage the troops in the field. But when the Presi- dent asked Congress for a sum of money, at first two 362 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING million dollars and later three, to be used in negotiations for peace, — which meant purchase of territory, that be- ing the one object of the war, — the Whigs and a few anti-slavery Democrats united in fastening on the ap- propriation the Wilmot Proviso that slavery should never exist in territory acquired from Mexico. They voted for this whenever they could do so without en- dangering the welfare of the army. Lincoln, whose congressional experience came at this time, often said that he voted forty times for the Wilmot Proviso dur- ing his single term in Congress. General Taylor's campaign, from his opening en- gagements at Palo Alto and Resaca on May 8 and 9, 1846, to the taking of Monterey on September 24, was confined to the northern part of Mexico. He was in no haste to confide to Washington what he meant to do, and left the question of the Secretary of War unanswered for a month. Then in answer to a second anxious letter he replied that he could not feed his army in central Mexico if supplies had to be brought all the way from the Rio Grande ; that towns on the seacoast could not be held because of the yellow fever; and that therefore he should not attempt to attack the City of Mexico but only to cut off the northern Mexi- can provinces. This did not sound specially dramatic; but the de- tails of his marching and fighting were rather too satisfactory to please an administration bent on only enough military success to accomplish its purpose and not enough to give the General a popularity that might prove inconvenient in the next Presidential campaign. Taylor paid little attention to politics, but went on with his fighting. The weapons on both sides were primitive. His small army carried flint-lock muskets, while the Mexican cavalry was armed in part with AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 363 lances and spears, and their cannon were as much out of date as those used by Cortez in the original con- quest of Mexico. In the opening battle of Palo Alto, which was mainly an artillery duel, Taylor's batteries were drawn into place by ox teams and the solid shot from the antiquated Mexican guns struck the ground and bounded along so slowly that the Americans, see- ing them coming, were sometimes able to open ranks and let them pass harmlessly through. Compared with this leisurely engagement Resaca was a whirlwind fight, every man for himself, ending in a rout of the Mexicans that drove them through their own camp where cooks were preparing the meal to be eaten after the Gringos were disposed of, on into the waters of the Rio Grande. A certain young Lieu- tenant Grant was one of the participants. In an auto- biography dedicated thirty-nine years later " To the American Soldier and Sailor " he made quiet fun of his part in this battle, saying it would have ended quite as well if he had not been there. Its numbers were so small that it would hardly have merited the name of battle in the Civil War; but the standard of valor was not low on a field where the commanding general, urged not to expose himself, answered, " Let us ride a little forward where the balls will fall behind us." That he was pleased with the conduct of his troops may be inferred, for after the fight was over he looked with frowning tenderness on them and gave the accolade in four words, " Gentlemen, you are veterans." For purposes of its own the administration took care not to minimize these victories ; and in the news- paper accounts that came back to the army after many days, it had difficulty in recognizing its own exploits, so magnified were they. They were still more magni- 364 ' OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING fied in the hearts of those who had friends and kindred in the little army. Each mother knew it was her boy alone who had made the victory possible. Each father swelled with pride at the thought that his son had showed the stuff that was in him. Each com- munity felt honored that its townsmen had taken part. And there were hundreds of thousands who deplored the war but whose sympathies went out eagerly to their unknown countrymen fighting on foreign soil. These two small but complete successes at the be- ginning of the war set the key for deeds and for ex- pectations. The list of victories rolled up as sea victories had rolled up in the War of 18 12, with scarcely a break, and with much picturesqueness and novelty and stimulus to imagination in the stories that came back to the home people. When General Taylor had received enough of the 50,000 volunteers authorized by Congress to warrant his advance toward Monterey, the largest town in northern Mexico, he started up the Rio Grande to Camargo, the farthest point to which men and sup- plies could be carried by boat. The first day's march demonstrated that northern men could not endure the heat of the Mexican sun at that season; so thereafter they moved at night, keeping on till the dawn bright- ened into a glare that forced them to shelter until dark- ness came again. One experience with mule trains showed them also that there were not men or profanity enough under the Stars and Stripes to drive them. Fortunately the enemy was expert at the task, and friendly enough to perform it even while at war. Monterey with its population of 12,000 was en- circled by a string of forts. It had street defenses in addition that made every street an avenue of death ; and each flat roofed house with its parapet was a AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 365 fortress in itself. The town was defended by 10,000 Mexicans. It required three days of sharp and pic- turesque fighting on the part of Taylor's army of 7000 to bring it to the point of surrender. In this Lieuten- ant Grant and another officer named Jefferson Davis bore gallant part. In arranging terms of surrender General Taylor agreed not only that the Mexicans should march out with all the honors of war, but that the Americans would not advance beyond a certain line for eight weeks, or until ordered to do so from Washington. The administration professed to be much dissatisfied with this, and directed him to end the truce at once, which he did. Taylor was not giving the Democrats the short war they desired, while on the other hand his successes were making him very popular. The only available man to substitute for him was General Scott, who was likewise a Whig and was known to have Presidential aspirations of his own. Scott, however, had not ap- proved of Taylor's advance from the north, but favored landing an army at Vera Cruz and making straight for the City of Mexico along the route fol- lowed by Cortez 300 years before. Sending him to Mexico would appear to discredit Taylor; and after anxious conference the powers at Washington de- decided to take the risk, hoping that the political rivalry of the two men would result in the undoing of both in that field, yet afford enough military success for the Democrats to reap the glory. Awaiting his orders from Washington, Taylor marched and counter-marched to the help of detach- ments under Quitman at Victoria and of General Worth at Saltillo, where the latter was being threat- ened by the professional revolutionist Santa Anna. 366 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING While engaged in these movements he learned with amazement of the new plans in Washington and that he was to be deprived of the larger half of his force, which was ordered to join General Scott. With the remainder and what recruits could be sent him, he was expected to hold a defensive line against overwhelming numbers. He protested, but the troops were marched away and he established himself in a camp of instruc- tion. Santa Anna meanwhile learned the same news through a captured letter, and conceived the idea of beating Taylor's diminished force in northern Mexico and then hurrying south to oppose Scott, though this involved, besides two great battles, a march of a thou- sand miles over barrens where the sun had cruel power by day and a deadly chill brooded at night, — condi- tions that would have rendered such a feat physically impossible for a northern army. Taylor fell back to a narrow defile in the mountains near the hacienda of Buena Vista, to await Santa Anna's coming. There on Washington's birthday the Mexican General sent him a flag of truce and the message that he was allowed an hour in which to make up his mind to surrender. Taylor answered in terms more forcible than polite that all eternity would not be long enough for that ; and next morning at dawn the great battle of the war began. It ended in a victory that sent the brown men spinning southward and increased Taylor's popularity to an extent that landed him in the Presidential chair. Scott on his part had been loath to go to Mexico. It placed him, he said, between two fires : one at the front and the other in Washington. He felt that the administration was not friendly; but being assured of the President's confidence and promised everything he AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 367 asked in the way of men and supplies, he set out. The promises were broken, as he feared they would be. He received only half the troops agreed upon and sup- plies in the same proportion; while the higher officers detailed to accompany him were almost all men whom he regarded as personal or political enemies. But his fighting spirit was roused : he had been sent against his will and would show what he could do. " A little arrogance near the enemy when an officer is ready to suit the action to the word, may be pardoned by his countrymen," he wrote in his autobiography. For swaggering audacity the thing he did would have been criminal had not success crowned it. The land of Mexico rises from the sea in a series of giant steps. After the sea level, sickly with fevers and unsightly with cactus, come low hills that lead to an upland very like the plains of Texas. More hills rise, with beautiful almost tropical forests; and beyond these at an altitude of 7000 feet .is the plain on which Mexico City lies, guarded by mountains w-hite with snow. In his march of 260 miles from the seacoast to the capital city Scott's army therefore encountered the climate of every zone, a fact that added not a little to the difficulties of the undertaking and the wonder of his success. He first laid siege to Vera Cruz, the old walled town founded by Cortez. It surrendered on March 29, 1847, a year after Taylor first appeared upon the Rio Grande. At that season it was guarded more effect- ively by the dreaded vomito than it could have been by any number of guns ; and knowing that his men could garrison It only at their peril, he started his army toward Jalapa on the road to Mexico City. That old sinner Santa Anna had one characteristic in common with Truth and his Satanic Majesty. 368 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Crushed to earth he would rise again. Although so thoroughly beaten by Taylor a thousand miles to the north late in February, he was waiting by the middle of May with a fresh army, to oppose Scott at Cerro Gordo just where the mountains begin. This time it was the Mexicans who attacked. The winding road built by order of Cortez was raked at every turn by guns placed on the heights above. A direct attack would have been suicidal, and from the nature of the ground a flank movement seemed equally impossible. But there were young officers in Scott's army as there had been in Taylor's, whose names were to be written large in a greater war. These set to work to ac- complish the thing that seemed hopeless. A way was found where a road might be cut, though it looked too steep for mountain goats. At night soldiers dragged artillery along this secret way; lowered it by ropes over precipices, raised it again on the opposite side, and while the Mexicans were sleeping silently but gleefully placed it where it commanded their bat- teries of ancient bronze pieces. The surprise was complete. Three thousand prisoners, besides arms and stores fell into American hands. In the headlong pursuit Santa Anna's traveling carriage and mules, minus the one on which he escaped, were captured, and, tradition avers, his wooden leg also. These very personal belongings Scott returned, paroled the Mexi- can prisoners, and destroyed the munitions of war. His report, dated " fifty miles from Vera Cruz," re- marked with ostentatious carelessness that he found himself somewhat embarrassed by the many bronze cannon he had captured. The army pushed on next to Jalapa in its region of perpetual spring. Some of the officers thought they had never seen so beautiful a spot. Then they AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 369 went to Perote on the upper plain, whose gates opened to the invaders without a shot. Santa Anna was re- treating toward the capital to make his last stand, and the people, left to themselves, showed their appreciation of the good government and good money the American army brought with it. They fought when ordered, but welcomed the Americans individually as paymas- ters and friends. At Jalapa, Scott faced the loss of half his troops, through no fault of his own, nor by battle nor by sick- ness. The term for which the volunteers had enlisted was not quite ended, but if he kept them until their time fully expired they would have to await transports at Vera Cruz at the season when the fever was most deadly. He had no reason to require this, since there was no battle in immediate prospect, and he must part with them in any event before the final struggle at Mexico City. He therefore dismissed them at once ; an act of humanity that very likely came more easily to him than to a commander who had real faith in volunteers. The Government meanwhile, intent on ending the war by purchase rather than conquest, alike from motives of humanity and of politics, sent Nicholas P. Trist, the chief clerk of the Department of State, to Mexico with the draft of a treaty, and armed with power to suspend hostilities while negotiations were in progress. Scott's wrath at this proposal, that a general of the army defer to a mere clerk of the State Department on the military question of fighting or not fighting, can be imagined. A most venomous cor- respondence passed between them, but resulted in nothing because the Mexican government settled the matter by refusing to consider President Polk's offers. Trist lingered in Mexico and in time he and the Gen- 370 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING eral were ashamed of their temper and became good friends. The campaign went on meantime and Puebla, next to the capital the finest city in Mexico, fell into Scott's hands without resistance. When his army had again reached the number of 10,000 through the arrival of new troops, he pushed on toward Mexico City, guided by two Americans who evaded Santa Anna's watch- fulness and came to show him the way. In this last stage of his journey Scott could no longer expect to provision his army from Vera Cruz, and had to rely on getting food in the country through which he marched. To invade a nation of seven or eight million people with an army of only 10,000 was in itself audacious, but to take it through mountain passes deliberately out of reach of his source of sup- plies and regardless of a line of retreat, was carrying things with a high hand. The Duke of Wellington, who had a slight personal acquaintance with the gal- lant American soldier and had followed the campaign with interest, and up to this point with admiration, now remarked to a mutual friend that Scott was " lost." He had been carried away by success. He had placed himself where he could neither take the city nor fall back upon his base. Some of the loftiest mountains of the continent still lay ahead of the Americans. Rio Frio, the pass over which Scott led his army, is 11,000 feet above sea level. It could easily have been defended, but Santa Anna, having had two disastrous experiences of bat- tles in mountain defiles, chose to make his stand in the capital itself. Unopposed Scott's army reached the summit and looked down upon the city, lying as Mexican cities so often lie, in a plain surrounded by hills. The town itself was picturesque, with belfries AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 371 and many towers, and fields green as emerald from recent rains, pressed close about it. To the south and east three lakes sparkled in the sun ; farther away were the encircling mountains, Popocatepetl dominating them all, as it lifted its huge bulk into the sky. It was a wonderful sight, a fitting climax to the march up from the sea through all the varied zones of climate and vegetation, from tropic forests with their strange birds and gaudy flowers to these regions of snow. But the city in its fair setting w-as not yet taken. Santa Anna had three men to Scott's one, and he held not only the town but several villages in the plain, while a rocky hill directly across Scott's path bristled with defenses at base and top. The task before him required not only fighting but skill. Scott decided to skirt the lakes and attack from the south. Seeing this, Santa Anna shifted his men, and set the Indians of nearby hamlets to cutting ditches across the road and fortifying the church in the village of Cherubusco. The Americans, on their part, began hewung their way across a great lava field that lay between them and their goal. On the 20th of August the heights of Contreras were success fuly assaulted and next Cheru- busco in its level fields marked off by ditches, was taken. Many years afterward Grant pronounced Scott's strategy upon this day of battle to have been "perfect." Scott's report to the Secretary of War states that he could have entered the city that night had he not been assured " by intelligent neutrals and some Americans " that it was best to make haste slowly, " lest by wantonly driving away the govern- ment and others dishonored, we might scatter the ele- ments of peace, excite a spirit of national desperation, and thus indefinitely postpone the hope of accommoda- tion. Deeply impressed with this danger, and remem- 372 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING bering our mission to conquer a peace, the army very cheerfully sacrificed to patriotism . . . the eclat that would have followed an entrance sword in hand, into a great capital." Elsewhere we gather that there were other reasons. The loss of life would have been great and pillage was almost sure to follow. The army halted, therefore, and next morning when about to take up assaulting positions that would have justified demanding a surrender, Scott received pro- posals for a truce to discuss terms, which he accepted. Mr. Trist of the State Department being still at hand, the outline of the treaty he had brought from Wash- ington was submitted to the Mexican cabinet, which on its side proposed terms of its own, entirely un- ' satisfactory to the Americans. Both were settling down to a comfortable, time-consuming interchange of demands when Scott discovered that the Mexicans were secretly strengthening their defenses, and imme- diately declared the armistice at an end. On the 8th of September he took Molino del Rey, a one-story stone building surrounded by a wall. It had once been a powder mill, but now stored grain, and with its flat roof and parapet of sandbags had been turned into a formidable fortress. For his good work there Grant received that most coveted military honor, a brevet for gallant and meritorious conduct in battle. On the 13th the rock of Chapultepec, rising one hundred and fifty feet from the plain, frowning with batteries, defended at its base with earthworks and crowned by a castle and military school, was carried in an assault where scaling ladders and personal dar- ing played parts as conspicuous as in any conflict of antiquity. Chapultepec ended the fighting of the war. That night Scott's troops cut their way through soft AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 373 adobe walls of houses outside the town toward the city gates. But next morning there was no need for secrecy, or indeed for farther advance, for Santa Anna and his army had fled to Guadeloupe Hidalgo. When our army entered the city " under a brilliant sun " it was with an aspect so gay and martial that the Mexi- cans, crowding windows and parapets of the flat roofed houses, cheered their conquerors. General Scott raised his flag in the plaza and from his head- quarters in the palace took charge of the government of the city. The troops had yet to remain in Mexico several months while the treaty of peace was discussed and signed and sent home for approval. Twenty thousand new muskets of British manu- facture that Scott found stored in the citadel were con- verted into shoes for his horses and mules; and part of the moneys that came into his hands in various Mexican cities was used when the war was over to establish the home for old soldiers near Washington. Scott as'serts that his reign was so beneficent that the Mexicans " felt and acknowledged the happy change," and that when it was known that a treaty of peace had been signed, political overtures were made to him by certain leaders suggesting that since the Ameri- can army would soon be reduced to a peace footing he could easily get together 15,000 selected American officers and men, add to it an equal force of Mexicans, and declare himself dictator for a term of four or six years, " to give time to politicians and agitators to recover pacific habits and learn to govern themselves." The final aim would be to annex all Mexico to the United States. Scott declined the scheme, though he found it, he said, " highly seductive both as to power and fortune." The Mexican province of California, meanwhile, had 374 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING by a combination of accident and daring, come into the hands of the United State almost before the war began. Besides Indians, its inhabitants consisted of a few thou- sand Mexicans and a few hundred " foreigners," Eng- Hsh, French, and Americans, jealous among themselves but inclined on occasion to make common cause against their half -Spanish, half-Indian hosts. Like most of Mexico it was ill governed and not over loyal to its own authorities. Although the number of foreigners was small, the English among them were influential because of their connection with the fur interests of Canada. American distrust of this important monopoly in the Northwest, and the fear that in the event of war Mexico would favor England and give California to her in preference to losing it to the United States, prompted President Polk and his secretary of state, Buchanan, to do everything in their power to avert such a disaster. In 1845 word was sent to Commodore Sloat, com- manding the United States squadron on 'the Pacific coast, to guard against everything that might be deemed aggression, but to protect the persons and property of Americans, and in case he should learn that war was actually declared to take Yerba Buena and whatever other ports he could. Yerba Buena was the village of about 200 inhabitants that was even then beginning to be known as San Francisco. Instructions even more specific were sent to the American consul at Monterey, then a town of about 1000 inhabitants. He was warned that the people of California might at any mo- ment revolt and that the United States would strongly object to California becoming a French or an English colony. He was to use all proper means to " inspire them with a jealousy of European dominion," to show sympathy in case they asserted their independence, and AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 375 if they manifested a desire to link their fortunes with the United States he was to assure them they would be " received as brethren whenever this can be done with- out affording Mexico *just cause of complaint." In short, he w^as to let no chance escape to lead California gently but firmly in the way she should go. Most op- portunely also Captain John C. Fremont, whose bril- liant explorations had already earned him the title of the Pathfinder, started w^ith government sanction on his third expedition west. He was as ambitious as he was young, and his previous record gave promise that he would welcome rather than avoid responsibility if it came his way. He made explorations in the neighbor- hood of the Great Salt Lake, then, traversing Nevada, his men entered California in two different bands. On the outbreak of war Colonel Kearney was sent in command of a force gathered at Fort Leavenworth into New Mexico to capture Santa Fe and proceed to Upper California. Since he might need more men than he had with him, he was authorized to muster into his force such Mormons as chose to enlist, provided they did not number more than one-third of his entire party. It was reported that 500 actually joined him. Following orders he took Santa Fe, and when eleven days on his way to California, rnet that famous scout Kit Carson traveling toward Washington with mail and despatches from Fremont and the naval com- mander. From Carson, Kearney learned the amazing news that California was already conquered, that the American flag w^as floating at all important points, and that Fremont was governor. This was true in sub- stance, though somewhat premature. Fremont and a party of fifteen men had reached CaHfornia, and while waiting to be joined by the rest of his force he went to call upon the consul at Monterey. This visit 376 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING brought a prompt letter from the local Mexican offi- cial Castro to the consul, asking why United States troops had entered California and what their leader was doing in Monterey. Fremont answered that his was a party of hired men, not soldiers, that he was en- gaged in surveying a route to Oregon, and had come to Monterey to buy supplies. This reply quieted but did not convince the Mexican authorities, who kept a sharp watch upon his movements, and when his actions seemed to belie his words, ordered him out of the de- partment. He fortified himself instead and raised the Stars and Stripes. The consul, much alarmed, sent a call for help to the navy, in response to which the sloop of war Portsmouth appeared off Monterey. Not waiting to be attacked, Fremont moved slowly northward and had just crossed the Oregon border when, either on account of deep snows or Indian hostil- ity, or because of news received from the Americans in California, he turned south again. Alarming rumors were current, to the effect that Castro had or- dered all Americans who had not been naturalized to leave the province, and that the Indians were being roused to destroy the crops. This was not true, but circumstantial evidence made it appear plausible. The American inhabitants of Sonoma on the north side of San Francisco Bay announced a republic and raised their new flag, made of a piece of white cotton and a strip of red flannel, and painted with a red star and the white bear they adopted as their emblem because of its fighting qualities. Meantime a band of horses destined for Castro and the INIexican officials of Sonoma had been captured by some of the men who came to tell Fremont of the Mexican and Indian ag- gression. Castro sent a force to retake Sonoma, and the Bear Flag men called on Fremont, who entered the AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 377 town, took command, and promptly set off to attack Castro. It was at this point that Fremont first learned of the declaration of war between Mexico and the United States. The only difference it made in his plans was that at sunrise the next morning the flag of the United States replaced the white and red flag with the Bear. Commodore Sloat was too old and too cautious to enjoy the situation. He had acted with the utmost care to avoid aggression, but hearing that war had really come and what Fremont had been doing, he sent the trim old Portsmouth to San Francisco Bay and himself raised the United States flag over Monterey, summoning Fremont to join him with a hundred men. When the two met, the prudent old commander was hor- rified to learn that the harebrained young one had been proceeding on his own initiative, without orders from Washington. He remembered only too well how for a few brief hours in 1842 the American flag had floated over Monterey through excess of zeal on the part of an American naval officer, who paid dearly for the in- discretion. Much distressed Sloat turned over his command to Commodore Stockton and set out for home. As it happened, orders relieving him were even then on the way. Stockton had no such scruples and cooperated vigorously with Fremont in finishing the conquest already more than half complete. " We simply marched all over California from Sonoma to San Diego, and raised the American flag without opposition or protest," said one of the conquer- ing handful. " We tried to find an enemy, but we could not." This was hyperbole. There was a little fighting, particularly in the south, and a counter revolu- tion at San Diego, but not enough to invalidate the statement. 378 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING California had become ours without orders, through a series of silent understandings and happy misunder- standings, but it would have been ours in any event, since the treaty signed at Guadaloupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, included it in the tract that passed from the possession of Mexico into our own. The territory thus ceded covered an area equal to seventeen States the size of New York, embracing Texas, for which we had gone to war. New Mexico, and Cali- fornia, and stretched from the Pacific coast eastward to take in western Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. The Senate manifested some inclination to reject the treaty as not securing us enough land, but it was finally rati- fied. First and last, this peaceful republic of ours has seen a good deal of fighting. Of all the wars in which the country has engaged this one, coming in the hey- day of its youth, is the hardest to justify and the least dreadful to remember. It seemed more like a gay and romantic excursion than like deadly earnest. There was plenty of physical exertion in it and no lack of danger, but little of war's cruelty or revolting horror. Even the Mexican country over which our army marched, with its glamour of ancient history and the wonders of its scenery, added to the spectacular un- reality and charm of this digression from the path of virtue; while the half-naked brown men, who fought us by day with their antiquated weapons, were half friendly and welcomed the Gringos to their dances at night in a fashion that made it all seem not so much like real war as a successful and brilliant make believe. But it had consequences much more serious than make believe. It hastened the Civil War and it trained Union and Confederate ofiicers for that strife. " My experience in the Mexican War," wrote General Grant, AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 379 "was of great advantage to me afterwards. Besides the practical lessons it taught, the war brought nearly all of the officers of the regular army together so as to make them personally acquainted. It also brought them in contact with volunteers, many of whom served in the war of the rebellion afterwards." The names of the officers in the campaigns under General Taylor and General Scott, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Sher- man, Grant, Thomas, Reynolds, Bragg, and a score of others show what kind of young men these were who marched and fought and danced through Mexico, and their after history proves how well they learned in this gay pilgrimage lessons they turned to serious account in a war that was no holiday parade. General Scott had reason to be well satisfied with his work. He had made a wonderful march and captured a great territory with a loss of very few men. He had the right to expect the approval of his country- men. He had already been once a Presidential can- didate and he hoped national approval might take this form most coveted by him. This ambition had to go down before popular enthusiasm for General Tay- lor, who by the irony of Fate cared far less for it. General Scott intimates in his memoirs that he himself would have been more popular if his victories had been less bloodless. " That won't do ; Taylor always loses thousands ; he 's the man for my money ! " a man in a New Orleans crowd had been heard to shout when told that Vera Cruz had been taken with a loss of less than a hundred. Taylor did not lose men by the thou- sand or he would have had no army left. There were reasons more plausible to account for the furor. He was much more a typical American than Scott, as simple in manner and as shrewd and honest as he was successful in battle. And he was brave all through, 38o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING morally as well as with the kind of rare physical cour- age that made a hail of bullets as powerless to affect his nerves as a summer shower. He cared greatly for the essentials of his profession and absolutely nothing for its trappings. He was called affectionately Old Rough and Ready by his soldiers and the thousands who shouted themselves hoarse over his victories. The name by which General Scott was known in pri- vate conversation was Old Fuss and Feathers. Pos- sibly that explains why Buena Vista, fought with de- pleted forces by an apparently discredited general, took firmer hold on popular imagination than the capture of the halls of the Montezumas, or Cerro Gordo with its almost superhuman achievements in mountain scal- ing and its humorous incident of the wooden leg. Besides, Buena Vista happened long before Cerro Gordo, and from the moment news of it reached the States papers began their work of propaganda. By the time Scott's victory was reported, Taylor's candi- dacy was a well-established fact. He was nominated in a hundred different places and in a hundred differ- ent ways before the party convention met and ratified the choice. Personally he showed no enthusiasm or even great interest. He was a passive candidate. He would not cross " yon ferry " to influence the result, he told a friend, but hinted that his wife had stronger preferences, — that for months she had been praying nightly that Henry Clay might be the choice of the party. If the people wanted him he was at their serv- ice, the General said, but he refused to pose as a parti- zan. He called himself a Whig but not an ultra Whig, and seemed not to care how his attitude on slavery affected his chances. He was from Kentucky. A planter who wrote to him to find out his views, saying that by a lifetime of hard work he had accumulated a AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 381 plantation and a hundred slaves, received the follow- ing answer: " Sir: I too have worked faithfully these many years, and the net product remaining to me is a plantation with three hundred Negroes. Yours truly." This appeared practical and satisfactory to the South, and Taylor was elected by a handsome majority over Cass, the Democratic candidate. The military experiences of Wm. Henry Harrison, the other Whig general who had been transformed into a President by popular enthusiasm, had been brief, almost casual episodes in his long and honorable and not very distinguished civil career. With Taylor it was just the reverse. He is probably the only one of our twenty-seven presidents who never even voted. He had entered the army before reaching the age of twenty-one. When R. C. Winthrop, speaker of the House of Representatives, called upon him to explain the details of the inauguration ceremonies, the Presi- dent-elect informed him that he had only once been in the Senate chamber and then as a mere spectator in the gallery. Winthrop was much impressed by General Taylor's earnestness and simplicity. The unaffected, brave old general made a better President than was to be ex- pected of a man utterly ignorant of politics and of civil life. Webster had declared the nomination " not fit to be made," yet in the short year that remained to him of life he showed himself well able to cope with his new task. General Scott, whose opinion under the circumstances was not likely to be too favorable, called him prejudiced and narrow in certain unim- portant ways. He hated a coxcomb and had small pa- tience with men who made a parade of learning. " He would not touch them with a pair of tongs," he said. 382 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING " Few men," wrote General Scott, " have ever had a more comfortable labor-saving contempt for learning of every kind. Yet this old soldier and neophyte statesman had the true basis of a great character : — pure, uncorrupted morals combined with indomitable courage. Kind hearted, sincere and hospitable in a plain way, he had no vice but prejudice, many friends, and left behind him not an enemy in the world." Daniel Webster had been offered the Vice-Presi- dency and refused it, with what feelings can be divined. Had he pocketed his pride and accepted the second place, he would have gained the goal of his ambition. On July 4, 1850, the President attended the laying of the cornerstone of the Washington Monument. He complained of the effect of the sun and on his return to the White House imprudently drank cold water and ate fruit, and in a hour's time became very ill. Fred- rika Bremer, who had a strong antipathy to our oysters, was sure he must have been made ill by oyster patty. She was in the Senate chamber when Webster an- nounced the President's approaching death. A speaker was prosing away on the slavery question. Webster approached and stood beside him for a moment. A thrill as from an electric shock seemed to pass through the assembly. People entered hurriedly, and Webster with a deprecatory gesture indicated that he must in- terrupt on account of important business. " The ora- tor bowed and was silent. A stillness as of death reigned in the House and all eyes were fixed upon Webster, who himself stood silent for a few seconds as if to prepare the assembly for tidings of serious im- port. He then spoke slowly and with that deep and impressive voice which is peculiar to him : ' I have a sorrowful message to deliver to the Senate. A great misfortune threatens the nation. The President of AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 383 the United States, General Taylor, is dying, and prob- ably may not survive the day ! ' Again was that silent electrical shock perceptible. I saw many persons turn pale, and I felt myself grow pale also from the un- expected announcement and from seeing the effect which it had produced. One senator bowed his head upon his hands as if he heard the thunder of judg- ment," Then after the first moment of emotion had passed, some one moved that the Senate adjourn. On July 9 the old warrior died, and Millard Fill- more who had been elected Vice President, succeeded to the higher office. CHAPTER XVIII $20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR OUR gains and desires in western territory did not stop with California and Texas. The idea of possessing Russian America was first broached in Polk's administration, to be consummated twenty years later. In 1853 the Gadsden purchase of a tract of land about the size of Pennsylvania was made to round out our boundaries in Arizona and New Mexico; and before the war with Mexico was well started, Oregon, so long a bone of contention be- tween the United States and Great Britain, came un- der the American flag. English claims to Oregon were based on the voyage of Sir Francis Drake in 1579 and subsequent visits of Vancouver and Captain Cook. The United States pointed to the actual discovery of the Columbia River by Captain Gray in 1792, to the Louisiana purchase, the explorations of Lewis and Clark, and the treaty of 1 8 19 with Spain, whereby the United States ac- quired all the rights and claims north of latitude 42°. Each country contended for a different boundary, Eng- land demanding ever\^thing down to the Columbia River, the L^nited States insisting on the line 54° 40", the limit set in an arrangement with Russia when that country withdrew its claims to certain rights farther south. Very likely the presence of the Russian Bear on 384 $20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 385 American soil rendered easier a compact made in 1818 between Britain and the United States for joint occu- pancy of the territory in dispute for a period of ten years, without prejudice to the claims of either. This compact had been renewed and was still in force, but could be terminated by either party on twelve months' notice. England valued the Oregon country solely for its furs, and therefore discouraged settlement. The re- ports of Lewis and Clark turned the thoughts of American fur traders in the same direction, and the Missouri Fur Company was speedily organized at St. Louis and established posts so far beyond the Rockies that they had to be abandoned, because of Indian hos- tility and the impossibility of keeping them stocked with food. About the time they were given up, how- ever, another American enterprise entered the field in the Pacific Fur Company. This was John Jacob Astor's princely scheme for establishing a chain of posts in the northwestern country, carrying the furs there collected to China, and bringing back from China to New York cargoes of tea and silk. As the small beginning of this world-embracing enterprise, the post of Astoria was established on the south bank of the Columbia River, a few miles from the sea, in 181 1. During the war with England it fell into British hands, largely through a successful bluff, and changed its name to Fort George, a fact unknown to the makers of the treaty of Ghent when those gentlemen were laying the foundation for the agreement that ended in joint occupancy. When joint occupation w-as actually begun, Astoria was quietly restored to the United States. The fur trade did not flourish in American hands as it did under British control, but adventurous spirits 386 OUR NATION IN THE* BUILDING from the East began to go out to Oregon with a view to settling there. Our claims to the region were dis- cussed at intervals in Congress, as well as its value and the advisability of taking steps to secure it permanently by establishing a military post and giving it a terri- torial form of government. Few congressmen would admit that it had value except possibly as a penal colony, and they indulged in flights of mathematical rhetoric to prove how long it would take a delegate to travel from his constituents to his seat in the House of Representatives and back home again, and the stu- pendous amount of mileage he could collect by the way. Statesmen from the South who were glib with reasons for the annexation of Texas could see no reason whatever for this. According to them, " no gentleman of the most prolific mind " could conceive a time when we should really need Oregon to accommo- date our population or occupy our energies. Besides, was not the God-planted boundary of the Rockies there to mark our western limit? It would be madness to cross it. But the question would not be silenced by sarcasm or theology. An Oregon colonization society was formed in Boston as early as 1829. It came to noth- ing. Nor in any definite way did the journey east of the four Nez Perces in search of the Bible. Two of them died in Missouri, and another on his way home, and they did not get the book. But their unique quest fired public imagination and added missionary zeal to other impulses that were urging settlers toward Ore- gon. In 1834 the Methodist denomination sent Jason and Daniel Lee with a small company to live among them, and that same year the Presbyterians also sent out a party. In 1836 Marcus Whitman, a physician sent by the Congregational Board, with his young wife, $20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 387 and H. H. Spaulding, lately graduated from Lane Theological Seminary and the girl he had just married, traveled with horses and cattle, blacksmith forge, plows, seed-grains, and clothing in a strange patriarchal bridal procession, to take up the work of physical and spiritual healing. These two plucky young brides were the first white women to make the long journey across the continent. The little party, especially Whit- man with his medical skill, served white and red men faithfully in their new home, and it was a bitter recom- pense that Dr. Whitman and his wife both fell victims to Indian rage after eleven years of devoted labor among them. Courtesy was the policy of the English traders toward white neighbors, even though they did not wish the country settled. Dr. McLaughlin, in charge of the Hudson Bay Company's affairs, was a kindly man as well as an able one, and he and the American missionaries lived on terms of -hostile friendliness, each respecting the good qualities of the others and feeling a personal liking, but never losing the sense of national difference of interest. The posts of the fur traders and the missionary settlements were the only oases of white influence and comfort in a country where nature was on a scale of gigantic, austere beauty and Indian nature seemed low and disappointing in proportion. The tribes near the Columbia though so friendly at first soon ceased to show the same confi- dence and interest. Proselyting efforts of the mission- aries did not meet with large success. The Lees did better with agriculture than in sowing the seeds of faith, and gradually turned their attention to the wel- fare of incoming white settlers, while the affairs of the Presbyterians went so badly that in 1842 the board decided to discontinue the two missions in which Whit- 388 OUR NATION IN TH-E BUILDING man was specially interested. He made a desperate winter journey east, tortured by cold and suffering hunger to the verge of starvation, and appeared in Boston in buckskin and furs to plead against this or- der. Then he went to Washington to advocate with equal earnestness a line of forts along the Oregon trail for the protection of emigrants now traveling in that direction in greatly increased numbers. In neither place did he receive warm encouragement, but his representations, added to those of Jason Lee, who had also visited the East, lecturing and urging a territorial form of government, had weight. Fremont's pictur- esqueness and popularity likewise aided to bring the region into general notice, for it was at this time that he returned from his first expedition to the South Pass and started on his second one, that carried him to the Pacific coast. The influx of settlers into the Oregon country in the summer of 1842 made some kind of organization necessary, and in the autumn English and French Canadians were asked to cooperate with the Ameri- cans in forming a provisional government. Dr. Mc- Laughlin answered very properly that his loyalty was due first of all to England, while Father Blanchet, the leader of the French, thought a provisional govern- ment likely to bring more evil than benefit. The Americans therefore acted alone, and on the 4th of July, 1843, adopted the law of Iowa, somewhat remodeled, as the First Organic Law of Oregon. Under this they elected a legislature, judge, and lesser officers as well as a treasurer and secretary, but no executive, holding their government to be merely a temporary makeshift until the United States should provide one for them in due form. The Hudson Bay Company's officials con- tinued to act as British magistrates and to send crimi- $20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 389 nals to Upper Canada for trial, so that in addition to the dual occupation, there was the anomaly of two dis- tinct forms of government, exercised at the same time in the same territory. Those interested in the West had been disappointed that the Webster-Ashburton Treaty failed to settle its boundary dispute as well as that of Maine. Presi- dent Tyler's message transmitting it to the Senate al- luded to Oregon, saying that the questions involved could not be settled in this treaty without delaying other more pressing matters, but that a settlement must speedily come or the peace of the two countries might be in danger. This paragraph, attributed to Webster, attracted wide notice in England as well as at home, and from that time the Oregon boundary became an important issue. The campaign cry of the summer of 1844, "The Northwest and the Southwest," showed the trend of popular feeling. But the Southwest was by far the more important of the two in the eyes of Democrats. Another of their slogans in that cam- paign " Fifty-four forty or fight," was effective rather than sincere; for at the very moment that the Polk nominating convention was declaring our title to Ore- gon " unquestionable," Calhoun, the secretary of state, was hinting to Great Britain a willingness to compro- mise on a boundary at the 49th parellel. It was not necessary for voters to know this, however, and the cry continued its work of winning votes. With its alliteration and its pugnacity it was well calculated to rouse enthusiasm, even if it had not gained unexpected force through the championship of that good old fighter, John Quincy Adams. He had been secretary of state when the agreement for joint occupancy was made, and had been President at the time it was re- newed. He might, therefore, be considered an au- 390 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING thorlty, and he upheld our right to all the territory we claimed. But by the time public interest had overcome dis- tance, and Congress in February, 1846, voted to give the necessary notice and terminate joint occupation, the certainty of war with Mexico had brought about a state of things where the United States could not afford to quarrel with England. Either an aggres- sive Mexican policy or a vigorous prosecution of Ore- gon claims must go to the wall, and it required no gift of prophecy to tell which would be sacrificed. When the negotiations took place, 54° 40', or at least the threat to fight for it, was forgotten and the present line agreed upon. In 1826 England had scouted the idea of accepting the 49th parallel. In the opinion of men whose views are well worth recording, Calhoun and James G. Blaine among others, a season of patient wait- ing might have secured to the United States all she asked and more, — possibly all of British Columbia, through mere force of peaceful American invasion. The rush to California that began two years later would have been all in our favor; but that was yet undreamed of, and American settlers in the North- west clamored for American protection and American territorial government. There were fewer Americans in California at that time than in Oregon. Although " foreigners " in California formed only a very small percentage of the population, they were important in influence and energy, for, as one who had personal experience said, very few cowards nerved themselves to meet the real or imaginary dangers of a journey across the Rocky Mountains, and no indolent man could have done so, though he possessed the bravery of Caesar. About one third of the people were Mexicans of Spanish descent, $20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 391 shading from those of high class and intelligence to others who by reason of habits and intermarriage were scarcely to be distinguished from the Indians who made up the great mass. The Mexican and Spanish elements gave the country a medieval quality totally lacking in the tall forests of Oregon. The priests of the Catholic missions, with their rich church buildings and far-reaching lands, and their absolute do- minion over Indians and devout Mexicans in matters both spiritual and temporal, exercised a power closely resembling vassalage; while the governing class of the days before American possession was an aristocracy that lived in a mixture of barbaric elegance and crude simplicity. Small wonder that they had wished to keep foreigners from entering and establishing them- selves in their archaic society. There was little for Americans to do but to chafe at Mexican ways and make money out of their shiftless- ness. In the autumn of 1843 there were only two saw mills in operation in the entire country, though an- other run by steam and a steam flour mill were con- templated by these same restless invaders. But it is easy to see that Oregon offered a ground more con- genial to the average American than the half-feudal conditions to be found in California. The usual time required for the journey to the Pacific coast was 120 days from Independence, on the western edge of Missouri, or from Council Bluffs, two great points of rendezvous where emigrants gathered to wait until a sufficient number arrived to make the journey together in safety. May was thought to be the best time for setting out, since that would bring them to their destination in September. If they de- layed their departure beyond the middle of May they might be overtaken by winter storms in the mountains. 392 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING From these two points of departure travel diverged north and south. Those bound for Oregon or Upper California crossed the Rocky Mountains over the South Pass and made their way to Salt Lake by the route taken by the Mormons, and so on to the coast; or they followed the Snake River up to the Columbia. Those going south took the old Santa Fe trail broken in 1803 when an American trading expedition made its way across the plains to invade the somnolence of New Mexico with salt and silk and the vanities of manufacture, in exchange for bullion and wild horses. From there by way of the Gila River they reached San Diego over the route Kit Carson followed when he rode east with despatches announcing the capture of California. Or bearing a little more to the north, they journeyed to Los Angeles over the Spanish Trail taken by Fremont in 1844 or\ his return journey east. The Santa Fe trail had been the earliest to see regular established communication; but most of its traffic ended in New Mexico. Along the California coast trade could be carried on more profitably by sea ; and there was little except trade to lure Americans thither. Only thirty American hunters were added to its popu- lation in the five years between 1830 and 1835. The oak and acorn simile is hackneyed and outworn, but nothing proves its truth like the history of Cali- fornia, where a single small yellow nugget changed this lazy remnant of the Spanish Middle Ages to the wild push and scramble of an Anglo-Saxon race for wealth. The finding of this bit of treasure happened almost at the moment of the signing of the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo. It was as though Nature waited for the passing of Mexican indolence, and re- warded American thrift with her questionable gift of gold. HORACE GREELEY $20,000 OR $30,000 A YEAR 393 The discovery was made as casually as the great things in which Nature takes a hand usually happen, A man named James W. Marshall, engaged in building a sawmill near Sacramento, caught a glint of something shining in the mill race. He picked it up and showed it to a companion, and handed it, after the two had wondered what " that yellow stuff " could be, to the woman who did the camp cooking, with the request that she boil it in saleratus water. She was busy mak- ing soap and tossed it carelessly into the soap kettle, where it remained a day and a night and came out brighter for the boiling. Marshall then took it to Captain Sutter of Sutter's Fort on the Sacramento River, his partner in the mill enterprise, and behind closed doors with a cyclopedia and a pair of scales they endeavored to work out a problem with which they were totally unfamiliar. So far as their blundering guesses could go it was gold, but the idea seemed too wild for credence. Nothing much was said about it at the mill and the work of building went on, but the few men employed looked sharply at dirt they had carelessly walked over a hundred times, and were re- warded by finding occasional thin, scale-like particles of the same yellow substance. The Indians brought in similar pieces and turned them over to the lady of the soap kettle, she being the fountain head for food and supplies dear to the Indian heart. In about three weeks several ounces had been thus collected, when Marshall took the stuff to San Francisco to have it tested. On his return he and his partner bought a large tract of the land thereabout from the Indians for some beads and cotton handkerchiefs, — and the sawmill was never finished. A Georgia miner named Humphrey, who had been consulted in San Francisco because of his experience, 394 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING went quite mad his friends thought. He tried to in- duce some of them to join him, but they refused and he had to go to the site of the find alone. What he saw there pleased him. He made a rocker and began the business of placer mining in California. The owners of the land so easily bought from the Indians required a third of all gold mined upon it and collected this tribute until the following autumn, when an enter- prising party from Oregon declined to " pay tithes " as they called it. By this time there were many miners and the area of their labors had greatly broadened. But the news was so unbelievable that at first it traveled slowly. It was more than three months after Marshall's discov- ery before the San Francisco newspapers announced that gold mining had become a regular California in- dustry. By the latter part of the year miners began to arrive from Oregon and the Sandwich Islands and Mexico. In September the first fabulous tales of gold- finding on the Pacific coast, that had been slowly filter- ing eastward to set towns and farming communities agape with wonder, reached New York. They were treated at first as American humor, — Munchausen romances of the first water. In October they attracted real attention. In November new reports were awaited with eagerness. By December the stories began to be believed : and when early in the new year some of the actual gold reached the Philadelphia mint and was pronounced genuine, excitement took possession of the whole country. It was like a call to battle and its answering enthusi- asm, save that for patriotic ardor and the red glamour of war were substituted the lure of exploration and mirage of wealth. All the young men hungering for adventure saw here the chance of their lives. The dis- $20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 395 satisfied found their lot the blacker for this golden vision ; and those who had met disappointment grasped at an opportunity to set themselves right with Fortune. Announcements, jesting or eager or desperate, that they meant to seek the new El Dorado, followed, and preparation, open or secret, went on for the journey. Then came the wrenching loose from old ties and the starting forth to a life of danger and immense odds. Newspapers printed lists of those about to leave and of companies being organized. Greeley's " Tribune " kept a standing headline, " The Golden Chronicle," on its front page and filled two columns of each issue with names and details, while each local sheet echoed with the news afifecting its own circle of read- ers. The furor grew until every hamlet had given up at least one of its able-bodied men while towns sent them out by companies and even regiments. From fifty to one hundred thousand rushed to California that first summer, and the numbers increased for three or four years. Every family had a kinsman embarked in the venture; and just as in the case of armies in the field, those who remained behind followed them in imagination and waited hungry for news through in- terminable intervals of silence. Whether they traveled by land or sea, it was a long and perilous journey, with small chance of sending back word to those at home. What these weeks and months of vivid emotional imagining did to awaken our people to the extent and possibilities of their coun- try, can never be measured. There had always been a frontier with its lure of the beyond; but it had been an indefinite beyond, bounded only on the near side and stretching far out into space. Now they were forced to contemplate the country as. a whole, with its wide plains, its mountains, its perils, and its treasures. 396 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Every line of writing about it, in books or in letters which found their precarious way back to old friends, every story of success or failure, every detail of physi- cal geography, every mocking casual hint of hardship or of fabulous wealth, was discussed and brooded over and prayed about in the homes they had left behind. If the adventurers chose to go by sea, they had the alternatives of a voyage six to ten months long around Cape Horn; or thirteen days to Panama and a trip across that narrow and fever-infested bit of land, with a gambler's chance of finding a vessel at the other side on which to continue their journey. Every bit of merchandise they took with them, and often these seafarers put their available funds into something profitable for trading in the gold fields, had to be transported in small boats or on the backs of half- naked bearers up the Chagres River and through a jungle bewildering to northern senses in its medley of tropic sights and sounds and the wonder of malignantly luxurious vegetation. Cholera added terror to the uncertain length of their stay in Panama, for it might be weeks or even longer before the opportunity came to go on ; the vague sched- ule of the western coastwise ships being subject to sud- den and unexpected change through mutiny or a gust of gold fever that swept their sailors into miners and left the decks empty. It is said that Collis P. Hunt- ington was kept waiting three months, but with true mercantile genius made it a season of gain, tramping back and forth from the Atlantic to the Pacific twenty times, adding several thousands to his gains by vari- ous transactions. For those unblessed with business instinct it was a season of alarming encroachment upon their capital ; and.it was apt to be a season of education for the waiting American, not only in money values, $20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 397 but in those frank details of living and dying which the Latin races take as a matter of course. From the piles of discarded and dishonored bones in the ceme- tery to the cock fighting and the deportment of the black-eyed sefioritas, the code was different to that in which they had been trained. When they finally took passage on an overcrowded and not altogether sea- worthy vessel, they were apt to be broader-minded if not better men. Travelers from the East continued to press in, with no way of relieving the pressure, until the town was dangerously congested and sickness came, and shortage of food was threatened. If the voyagers chose to cover the three thousand miles by land, there was the long journey to some frontier post where fitting out for the real expedition took place. Long before that the trip for Eastern men had assumed the proportions of an adventure. Typical jottings from Horace Greeley's diary show the gradual but inevitable fading out of civilization. " May 12, Chicago, — Chocolate and morning jour- nals last seen on the hotel breakfast table; 23d, Leaven- worth, — Room bells and bathtubs make their final ap- pearance ; 24th, Topeka, — Beefsteaks and washbowls (other than tin) last visible. Barber ditto. 26th, Manhattan, — Potatoes and eggs last recognized. . . . Chairs ditto. 27th, Junction City, — Last visitation of a bootblack. . . . Beds bid us goodby; 28th, Pipe Creek, — Benches for seats at meals disappeared giving place to bags and boxes. . . . Our trust under Provi- dence, is in buoyant hearts and a rubber blanket." And when the frontier post was reached, the good weapons and the good advice that the voyager accumu- lated ! The calculations that took place about food and ammunition and clothing; the weight involved and what was really needed for the journey! A reliable 398 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING gun was the first requisite, for on that Hfe itself might depend. " From the moment of leaving St. Joe to the time of reaching Placerville or Sacramento the pistol should never be absent from a man's right side," wrote a man who had made the journey. " Remember it is handier there than on the other, — nor the bowie knife from his left." " As to food," another man of experience wrote, " it should always be observed that children as well as adults require about twice the quantity of provisions which they would require at home for the same length of time." The reason being that " deprived of vegetables and other sauce " and living in the open air, they were ravenous for more of the food that could be carried than even the most liberal provider would dream. There were fewer women and children in this mad rush than in the normal emigration of settlers. These parties were chiefly made up of men, and young men at that; but there were women too and even children; and care had to be taken in the forming of companies that moved westward together to see that the number of fighting men equaled or exceeded the number of noncombatants. The departure in high spirits and all friendliness was apt to give way in forty-eight hours or less to friction that an unwonted mode of life and unknown qualities of companions inevitably occasioned in such chance combinations. Then these descendants of the men of Runnymede followed their racial bent and stopped their journey to elect a leader and form themselves into a sort of legislature to enact rules and try offenders, a town-meeting on wheels, apt to be swayed by oratory and emotion, but a form of government that effectively quelled disturbance and soothed the spirit of discontent. " The Prairie," wrote Ampere, " is for Americans $20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 399 a magic word. One hears no more from them about the primeval woods. ' Prairie ' spells to them the future, it means progress, it is poetry." Slowly, by crawling ox-teams, the parties made their way over the varied zones marked out by Nature on the great fiat map of the plains. The " weed prairie," rich in flowers; the " rolling prairie," like a great undulating hayfield, stretching as far as sight could reach; the " motte prairie " ; the " salt prairie," where tufts of blue buffalo grass gave place to naked trodden earth around the " licks " and muddy springs where the great herds came to satisfy their craving for salt; and so on out to the sage-brush and the poisonous " soda prairie," where alkali glistened like hoar-frost. Then in time came the Rockies with their wonders and their hard- ships ; and after they were safely passed, more and ap- parently endless desert, where sage-brush and cactus grew too sparsely to cover weather-worn outcroppings of dull red stone and the crumbling beds of black lava, eloquent of a stormy geologic past. But few who made the journey were trained in science to note these signs of planet building. They saw only an arid landscape across which a well-worn, dusty trail stretched ever westward, marked at inter- vals by whitening bones of draft animals that had died of thirst and weariness; a trying, dreary desert where " a mule bitten in the jaw by a rattlesnake, lying dead beside a station tent," might be one of the freshest and most cheerful sights. And they were occupied with the threatening dangers and daily happenings of the march. The first death in the party, from the discharge of a gun, accidental or otherwise, was a tragic enigma, more mysterious than death at home. The illness of a woman or child brought a rush of sympathy, and the whole caravan 400 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING halted until the suffering was over or the delay im- perilled the safety of all. The great herds of buffalo that darkened the plain like a cloud ; the mockery of a mirage that intensified the torturing lack of water; the heat or the fierce storms that swept the region in alternating seasons; all had their effect on the spirits and courage of the little company, as did the play of personality on personality under such soul-revealing conditions. And ever present was the menace of In- dian attack that make necessary vigilance by day, and by night the guarded wagon-stockade, wagon chained to wagon with all the beasts and goods and women gathered inside its circle of canvas-covered prairie schooners. And when California was reached, all dun colored and dusty gray at the end of the dry season, save for the vivid green of an occasional pepper tree, or the almost black growth of its coniferous forests, what a land of exaggerated, impossible contrasts it seemed. Its mushroom towns of a hundred tents and shanties, where tents rented at twenty or forty thousand dollars a year, and games of chance went on under their roofs in which equal sums were staked on the turn of a card, appeared scarcely less abnormal than its landscape. Tents and players might vanish in a night, leaving nothing behind; or they might give place in a few weeks to closely built city blocks that housed thousands where the tents had sheltered scores, but where all lived at the same mad speed. The gambling, the boasting, the drinking and shooting, the lavish, ill-ordered spending, the uncouth and unexpected bits of senti- ment and the crystal pure " grit " with which the ups and downs of that wild life were met and borne, have become trite to us through much repetition in graphic pen pictures by Bret Harte and his imitators. It is $30,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 401 a kind of life America has known ever since, in one part or another of its territory, — in CaHfornia or the Rock- ies or Alaska, — but then it was absolutely new, a burst- ing of American energy out of the trammels of Puritan- ism and the sober hardships of backwoods pioneering. The staunchest Puritan Father would have had his manners, if not his morals, wrenched a little in that atmosphere. The most carefully trained Methodist lad took to ways and forms of speech that would have horrified the gentle ladies and pious men of his family back East. But early training dies hard, and when Sunday came, the diggers with one accord laid aside their shovels to devote the day to, — purposes of washing ! If morals were lax according to the Eastern code, they had one of their own. It was not etiquette to in- quire too curiously into a man's past, particularly to ask what he had been called " when he lived at home." The journey west wiped the slate clean. Least said was soonest mended, and misfortune or a too straight aim might explain much. But if a man transgressed the elastic code of the community to which he had come, there was a vigilance committee to see that he did not violate it a second time. There was a rude kind of generosity in the justice. Stories of the murderers allowed to choose their own juries, which hung them, with no hard feelings on either side, have been told often enough to be believed. And quite aside from crime or deserved misfortune, there was hard luck in plenty which set men " temporarily " to strange tasks, — an ex- judge to driving an ox team, an ex- governor to playing the fiddle in a saloon, or lawyers and doctors to turn their hands to various and uncon- genial tasks. But whatever they did they were all good Americans and incipient millionaires. 402 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING From the nature of their new calHng they were nomads. The pioneer settler had depended on his own labor for food, and was stationary for the time being at least, on the tract of land upon which he settled. He felled his trees and tilled his field, with a rifle ready beside him. But the miner did not plant and took no pleasure in broad fields. It was not the surface of the ground but a small portion of its inside that he wanted. He wandered about in search of it and when he had found it, dug it up and washed it prodigally away to cull his one harvest of golden grains. Mean- time he had to eat, and provisions were brought to him across thousands of miles. He bought them at exorbitant rates when he had funds, and fasted or was grub-staked by a friend when he had none. When he had the money nothing was worth haggling about, if it was worth considering at all. A dollar a pound was the accepted price for foodstuffs, when they did not cost more. Eggs might soar to three dollars apiece if the extravagant miner took a fancy to have them. Doctors charged $ioo or $50 for a visit, or gave their services for nothing. Boots worth $6 in New York sold for $100, and twenty dollar revolvers for $150. Fractional money was a nuisance; ten-cent coins, the smallest in circulation, were apt to infuriate the re- cipient and land in the brush instead of in his pocket. There is a tale of a $20, twenty-gallon cask of brandy which was kept full during the long trip to California by the simple expedient of pouring in water whenever brandy was extracted; and which finally sold in Sac- ramento for more than five hundred per cent, on the original investment. Yet for all the wild extravagance of living, statistics prove that the money dug out of the earth in those frenzied years, came to only about $600, or less than two dollars a day, for the whole $20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 403 number of men engaged in mining. Laborers in va- rious branches of industry received many times that much; yet such was the excitement of the game, the dazzling reward of success, and the hope springing eternal in each miner's breast, that other callings lan- guished and the hills were full of lean and often hungry men. Some of them stayed on for the rest of their lives, searching hopefully till the end. Those who re- turned, rich or poor, were greeted as though come back from the dead ; and had material for conversation and reflection for more years than they were likely to re- main above ground. And besides their personal ex- periences, good or bad, they brought back with them a life-giving breath of Western energy and belief in the future of the country whose vast extent they had measured and proved. They brought back also a different standard of values. Once acquired, that reckless disregard for ten- cent pieces might be curbed, but could never be eradi- cated. California changed the national and the indi- vidual viewpoint regarding money. In his impecunious youth Henry Clay centered his financial ambitions on " one hundred pounds a year Virginia money." Van Buren's $200,000 accumulated by his own energies had seemed to voters more than a man could honestly come by; and in the North, at least, $20,000 had long ago crystallized into a synonym for riches. " That 's Abner Johnson's boy," a little lad in New York State overheard a townsman say, referring to his small self as he sat holding the horses while his father traded at the country store. " Who 's Abner John- son ? " a new-comer asked. " Why he 's the richest man in Lewis County. He 's got $20,000 clear." Such a conversation could not have taken place after '49, though to this day in rural New England $20,000 404 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING has a significance to the conservative mind far above its money value. " I 've figured it all out," said a dweller in the hill country, not many years ago. "If a man owns his farm up here and works, he can get 'most everything he needs for his livin' off it. He wants a little money for groceries and clothes, but not much. If he has his farm and $20,000 in the Savin's Bank and good bonds, he 's better off than the fellow worth $100,000 who lives in town. He has to work like thunder, an' pay rent, and in the end he ain't got nothin' to show for it." A city man who has his summer home on this same airy hilltop, musing aloud to the writer about his long life, told of running away to China when he was a youth, determined not to return until he had made a fortune large enough to retire upon. His people were well-to-do, he was accustomed to the best, and he re- solved that the amount should be ample. Twenty thousand dollars was the sum firmly fixed in his mind. He carried out his purpose and returned to find that $20,000 had shrunk meanwhile from a competency to a single year's income. Before the gold fever, one of our foreign visitors wrote that " nobody spends more than $10,000 a year in America." California miners when thoroughly aroused and interested were capable of spending $20,000 a minute. With the wide territorial expansion and the pictur- esque excesses of the gold fever, another period of our national life came to an end. Through very fullness of prosperity we ceased to be sufficient unto ourselves. An energetic business on the Pacific coast made neces- sary much traffic by sea; and steamers not being able to carry their motive power in a sheet of canvas as the old sailing ships had done, there was need for coal- $30,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 405 ing stations. This led to our friendly but not too gentle knocking at the door of Japan in 1852. That hermit kingdom had received foreigners kindly two hundred and fifty years before, had observed them with intelligent Asiastic eyes for a quarter of a century, and then closed its ports firmly against all professing the Christian faith ; had forbidden the building of ships large enough to sail for Christian lands, and confiscated all such Japanese-owned ships then in exist- ence. And at the time that happened Japan had colon- ies farther away than Massachusetts is from England. What occurred to turn hospitality to such black depths of distrust we can only conjecture. It required a fleet and guns, commanded by the brother of the hero of Lake Erie, and backed by a young republic's sub- lime confidence in its own good will, to force open doors that refused to be unlocked. On our own continent the mere weight of travel brought to the front new questions. The movement toward California across the Isthmus gave new life to that old chimera, a ship canal. The desert had to be bridged by law and order to link the East with settlements so far away. Kansas and Nebraska terri- tories were organized ; and with this the slavery ques- tion, that had brought on the Mexican War and that had lurked cloaked and specter-like in the background from the beginning of the government, threw off its disguise and c&me out into the open, no longer a specter but a demon. CHAPTER XIX SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE A THOUGHTFUL writer has said that Ameri- cans have " a national capacity for expecting national greatness." It was of course just this capacity that made the country in the first place and then developed it. Lafayette summed up our ideals and our early resources when he called our American Revolution " the grandest of contests won by skirmishes of sentinels and outposts." The out- come of that contest and the next one with England did not shake our young confidence in our motives or our destiny. Our wonderful physical growth con- firmed the belief that everything of ours must be big and good and bound to rise higher; that just because it was American it would expand and was quite in- capable of sinking. To a cynic these properties sug- gest an unflattering comparison ; but the enthusiast sees in them only aspiration. The same optimism, our buoyant hope .springing from a substratum of Puritan consecration, has enabled us many times to overcome impossibilities. It enabled us to keep clean and wholesome such a scramble for wealth as that rush to California. In a word, our motive power as a nation is spiritual rather than utili- tarian, wide-spread belief to the contrary notwithstand- ing. We are a sentimental people, and though over- laid with a substantial covering of practicality, senti- 406 SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 407 ment has come to the surface time and again to change our history in the making. At Monroe's second election, for example, the vote in the electoral college was virtually unanimous. It just failed of unanimity, but, oh, the wide difference! A New Hampshire man wrote upon his ballot the name of John Quincy Adams, explaining to his colleagues that since Washington had been elected by unanimous vote, it was due to his memory that no one else should share the honor. The unexpected act is typical of our American ways. We go along in humdrum fashion, intent on the busi- ness in hand, which is as often as not a work of de- struction, and is oftener than not connected with dol- lars. Quite without warning a word is spoken, a chord of memory struck, and suddenly no persuasion in the world could tempt us to do the thing that a moment before seemed natural, if not inevitable. Whatever it is, it is done without breast-beating parade, almost with levity, for race amalgamation has corroded phlegm and sharpened stolidity and slowed up Latin emotionalism into a type of mind blessed with a keen sense of the absurd and cursed with a most cowardly horror of making itself ridiculous. The grim frontier jest that pictures a lynching party discovering its mistake too late and apologizing to the widow in the cryptic words, " The laugh is on us, ma'am," is nearer truth than fiction. We act as though ashamed of the sentiment that moves us and indulge the national sense of the ridiculous at the expense of emotion, even of rever- ence. With changing conditions, national sentiment has showed itself at different periods in varied and char- acteristic ways. Before so many racial elements came to dwell among us, its expression was more sedate. 4o8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING It is doubtful if any of the continental worthies could have understood that lynching story, with the possible exception of Franklin, the only one of them born with the quality that has since come into its own as Ameri- can humor. Even in the sedate days our tribute to public men was apt to be paid in somewhat free and easy fashion. Washington is the only one in our national pantheon to whom decorous reverence has always been made. The admirers of Franklin who knew his reputation abroad were astonished when they came to this coun- try and made a pilgrimage to his tomb to find only a plain white slab in " an obscure corner of an obscure burying-ground." Not even a path led to it. But they might have found food for thought in the fact that the tall grass about it was pressed down by the tread of many feet, and that there was no need of a guide to show them the way. The roads leading to the homes of our early Vir- ginia Presidents were filled with admirers who arrived, according to the custom of the South, by coach and chariot, bringing their horses and their servants, and staying sometimes for days to cumber the stables and empty the larder. Washington, one of the richest Americans of his generation, escaped bankruptcy, hav- ing the fortune to die within three years of laying down the Presidency. The others all suffered. Jefferson paid the penalty of fame by being literally eaten out of house and home, and his biographer's idyllic state- ment that " no hard work was done at Monticello " scarcely tallies with the assertion of his daughter that she and her household servants were sometimes called upon to provide beds for half a hundred people. Monroe said of his visitors that " some were bounties and some were taxes." On the whole he thought that SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 409 there were enough of the former to offset the latter; but in his opinion pensions for Ex-Presidents were a necessity, since under our republican plan they could not shut their doors and refuse hospitality to this sentimental horde without discredit to the country. Aiitres temps, autres moctirs. Ex-Presidents are left in comparative seclusion now, and the lawns of Presi- dential candidates suffer. But there is a deal more than selfish and lively expectation of favors to come in the acclaim given a President or a President- elect. Monroe's shrunken figure in his old-fashioned military coat, light small-clothes, and obsolete head- gear, the " Last Cocked Hat," was insignificant enough ; and neither his personality nor the few offices at his disposal explained the furor with which he was greeted on that tour of his into the enemy's country shortly after he assumed office. The campaign had been un- usually bitter, but the whole population turned out and politics were forgotten in enthusiasm for the mighty country this unimposing little man represented. Men who for years had never willingly entered the same room suddenly found it agreeable to sit side by side at banquets and to shout themselves hoarse to- gether in the frenzy of fireworks, cheers, and artillery salutes that marked the President's progress. " The demon of party for a time departed and gave place to a general outburst of national feeling." Amazed and delighted, the people fell to analyzing their own sensations, and when the Boston " Sentinel " called it an era of good feeling, enthusiastically adopted the phrase into the language of the day. Such furors have swept the country again and again : sometimes for a person : sometimes in recognition of a great gift, as in the case of Jenny Lind ; sometimes in an ovation to foreigners, like Kossuth and Garibaldi, 410 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING for gallant efforts in behalf of principles Americans hold dear. The crowning tribute of this kind was given to one who belonged both to Europe and America, to the first by birth, but to us if brotherly sympathy counts for any- thing at all. When Lafayette returned after fifty years to lay the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument, the number of our States had doubled. As Clay said in his address of welcome, a whole new world had come into being. Lafayette himself had experienced tragic vicissitudes in that half century. He had done his ineffectual best for Marie Antoinette, kneeling in dumb show of loyalty to kiss her hand on the balcony at Versailles while the mob howled below. The French Revolution had spared his life, but it had swept away all his wealth and inflicted upon him imprisonment and hardships too painful to remember. He had come to us as a young man in a ship of his own purchasing, with a gift of arms for the continental soldiers. For this second visit President Monroe, who as a subaltern had been wounded on the same American battle-field with Lafayette, offered him the courtesy of a na- tional ship. This Lafayette declined, preferring, he said, to come as a private person to meet old friends and renew old ties. Having little vanity, he could not dream of the welcome that awaited him. " It will burst ! " he cried, pressing both hands upon his heart, while tears streamed down his honest cheeks when on landing he realized the fervor of the greet- ing. The pent-up enthusiasm of fifty years was in those shouts, not only in tribute to his winning personality, but in gratitude for the help and comfort he had brought us on his first visit. Young and old, grave and gay, were caught up and carried out of their ordi- SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 411 nary behavior. Dr. Bowditch of Boston, the mathe- matician, confessed that instead of waiting in quiet dignity as he meant to do to watch Lafayette go by, he seemed to lose his senses at first sight of him, and regained them to find himself out with the crowd in the middle of the street battling to reach the barouche and huzzahing with all his might. If Lafayette had not been the sincerest and most genuine of men, and full of wiry health as well, he could never have survived that twelvemonth of ova- tions. He visited every State, almost every important town, interested in all that was new, reminiscent of all that was old, graciously playing his part in every cere- mony, whether it was standing godfather to all the children born in his path, as his compatriots said he did ; or leading the blind, white-haired widow of Gen- eral Montgomery through a minuet; or fraternizing with Harvard graduates on class day; or gossiping with old men who had served as privates in the Revo- lution. Interminable processions by day and recep- tions by night robbed him of half his rest, but left him apparently unwearied. Light-heartedness and tact helped him through moments that would have been trying to a more self- centered man; and he was not above slyly seeking in- formation to use it again with happy effect an hour later. " Now tell me all about this place, and for what it is remarkable," he commanded Josiah Quincy, who as governor's aide accompanied him through Massa- chusetts. " This place " happened to be Andover, where Quincy had attended school, and the answer lacked neither detail nor picturesqueness. Lafayette treasured all the hints, and in his speech, seasoned with his French accent, made happy reference to An- dover's pride, the theological seminary, as that sacred 412 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING hill from which hope had gone .forth to the heathen and light to the uttermost parts of the earth. A little later Quincy met a proud and beaming townsman, " I was really surprised," he said, " at the particu- lar and accurate knowledge that General Lafayette possesses. I always knew that in the religious world our theological seminary was an object of great con- cern ; but I never supposed that in the courts and camps of Europe so much interest was taken in it." Quincy answered diplomatically that, after the talk he had had with the General, he was not surprised by his knowledge of local conditions. But there were many places where Lafayette's memory needed no prompting. On the trip up the Hudson he was on deck betimes to show his son the spot where Major Andre had been arrested; he de- scribed Wayne's capture of Stony Point with eloquent hands and voice ; and pointed out the house where the Commander-in-chief and he were breakfasting with Mrs. Arnold at the time Washington learned of Arnold's treason. In Washington his mind ran for- ward as well as back, for here in a capital that had not then existed was most clearly to be seen the difference between the country he had left and the one to which he returned. As Clay put it, here he was " in the midst of posterity." The brilliant and dashing Clay captivated him. That was the man he wished to see President, he declared. But in his kindness of heart he found time to spend an hour with another of the unsuccessful Presidential candidates of 1824, the stricken Crawford, sitting so close to his paralyzed side that his attitude seemed an embrace. Three of his good friends of other days, Madison, Adams, and Jefferson, were now Ex-Presidents. La- fayette's meeting with the latter on the lawn at Monti- SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 413 cello, whither he had been escorted with trumpets and banners, was a moment of sudden change from gaiety to pathos. The trumpets ceased in the middle of a note and every head was bared as the General, a fine portly figure betraying little infirmity save the slight limp he had carried since Brandywine, dis- mounted to embrace his host. Jefferson, advancing to meet him, looked emaciated and old as well as ill. He was suffering physically, and mentally also, from troubles that were soon to drive him from the home he loved. And for all Lafayette's jauntiness, he was no longer young. Pie was nearing seventy, and there were wrinkles upon his face that the fine brown wig pulled low on his forehead could not hide. It was in the ceremony at Bunker Hill that enthusi- asm culminated. The weather was perfect, justify- ing the pious belief that the Lord would not permit it to rain on that day; and the number of spectators was limited only by physical possibilities of space and transportation. " Everything that had wheels and everything that had legs " moved toward the monu- ment. In a room apart from the crowd Lafayette met the forty survivors of the battle, greeting each with the tenderness of a personal friend. No officer of field or staff remained alive, but one old captain, tottering with the weight of his ninety-five years, brought the far-off days of King George very close indeed. A young aide, the only person in the room who was not of that past time, pinned a badge over the heart of each veteran, and they filed out into the June sunshine for the cerernony. With them and the other survivors of the Revolution Lafayette elected to sit after he had done his part in laying the corner-stone. " I belong there," he said, refusing the chair of honor that had been prepared for him, and took his. place 414 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING among them, his chestnut wig giving him a strangely youthful air in that company. The same chaplain who had invoked a blessing be- fore the soldiers went into action made a prayer, and Webster, rising, set the emotional key in those two opening words of his address, " Venerable men " spoken to the gray-haired band in that wonderful voice of his. It was more wonderful than ever that day, vibrant with feeling, and all his power of oratory and all his wealth of patriotism seemed concentrated in his speech. He played upon the vast audience as upon an instrument. Wave upon wave of feeling passed across the sea of upturned faces as cloud shadows pass over a meadow. He himself felt it as something almost uncanny. " I never," he said, speak- ing of it, " desire to behold again the awful spectacle of so many human faces all turned toward me." His popularity had lately been under partial eclipse, but this address, so eloquent and adequate, set him in full favor again, and many little accustomed to weep found the sunshine suddenly dimmed by a mist of sentiment and tears. Materially the country felt itself still much in La- fayette's debt. Besides the aid of his sword and cour- age, he had expended a fortune in our behalf, equipping a regiment and bringing us a ship. As an officer of the Revolution he was entitled to a grant of land and pay for his services. The latter he accepted only after his patrimony had been swept away by the Revolution in France. The former had been assigned him in the new territory of Louisiana, which, as Jefferson wrote one of his Italian correspondents, " enabled us to do a handsome thing for Fayette." " Locations can be found adjacent to the city of New Orleans . . . the value of which cannot be calculated. I hope -it will SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 415 induce him to come over and settle there with his family." A thousand acres of such land were set apart for him by his agent, but Congress, not being informed, granted the same tract to the city, and Lafayette with princely unselfishness refused to p^ess his own prior claim. " He could have no contest with the Ameri- can people," he said. During Lafayette's second visit. Congress bent on reparation, voted him two hundred thousand dollars in money and twenty-four thousand acres of " fertile land in Florida," which, so far as known, never proved of great benefit to him or his heirs. But it is a satis- faction to remember that this greatest wave of popu- lar feeling did not ebb without leaving a token more tangible than sighs and good wishes. And without that perhaps the account between Lafayette and our- selves was balanced, after all. No man is without his faults; even neighborly gallantry may get his best friends into trouble ; and we are told that it is to Lafay- ette we are indebted for that pest of our farms, the thistle, sent over from France in a package of seeds addressed to Mrs. Madison and marked " very rare." Sometimes, alas! a wave of popular sympathy in this sentimental country of ours lapses without prac- tical result. This happened when Jefferson's financial straits became known. A subscription was started, and twenty thousand dollars was sent him, with the intimation that it was merely a first payment for value received. Jefferson accepted it in the spirit in which it was sent. " I have spent three times as much money and given my whole life to my countrymen," he said. " Now they come nobly forward in the only way they can and save an old servant from being turned like a dog out of doors." But the impulse died down, and his home had to be sacrificed, after all. 4i6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING An interesting and possibly pertinent fact to be re- membered in considering national sentiment is that the successful warrior has cast his spell over us as he has over other nations since the dawn of history. The United States is a country devoted to ideals of peace, but war Presidents elected by the people would have governed about half the time had not death intervened. Peace, like heaven, seems indeed a hypothetical state of bliss, laudable and longed for in theory, but secretly feared as deadly dull to live in. In his autobiography General Scott sets forth the idea that men at heart adore fighting, and to prove it asserts that he had been told by Revolutionary worthies that Jefferson, brilliant and successful though he was, felt himself discredited and ill at ease in the presence of Washington, not because of Washington's calm dignity and great wisdom, but because of his military record ; and that it was this " painful sense of inferiority " that forced him into political opposition. It is an interesting theory; and it must be confessed that we find a military record a valuable asset in any walk of life. It would make curious reading could a table be compiled that would show how many candidates for office, from coroner to President, have been helped up the political ladder by bayonet and carbine. Perhaps the real reason is that a successful military record argues fearlessness and ability to strike out from the shoulder, qualities that have always had their fascination for us. We have done not a little in the way of hero-worship in the United States, but we have done much more in worshiping the heroic spirit; and the admiration of which we have been lavish has been most freely offered before the shrine of pure motive and high ideal. One proof of this is that although our national sense SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 417 of humor is keen, there is a distrust of the very same quality when it comes to serious matters of govern- ment. A pre-Revolutionary earnestness lingers among us yet to discredit wit and condemn satire in our public servants. Humor has been a pitfall to many unwary politicians, and a quick tongue and a Sense of the ridiculous have proved the undoing of more than one statesman amply endowed with talent and patriotism. Voters are willing to be amused by such men. They elect them to Congress, sometimes even to the Senate, but there they stop. John Ran- dolph's opium-tinged display of " intellectual jewelry " had rightly the morbid charm of a pathological ex- hibit ; but the saner brilliant speeches of congressional wits from his day down to Thomas B. Reed have kept them from higher offices in the gift of the people. The one man with a reputation for humor who has been elected to the Presidency was elected not because of, but in spite of it. It was the unanswerable logic of his Cooper Institute speech and the white fearlessness of Lincoln's character, not his stories, that brought him success. Americans laugh at and with almost any- thing, but they take their country seriously. They often shirk their own part in the job of government, and revile political methods ; but they hold their Gov- ernment too sacred to be trusted in the hands of a jester. " In the privacy of their houses," wrote Miss Mar- tineau eighty years ago, " many citizens have lamented to me with feelings to which no name but grief can be given that the events of 1832-33 have suggested the words ' use ' or * value of the Union.' To an Ameri- can, a calculation of the value of the Union would formerly have been as offensive, as absurd as an esti- mate of the value of religion would be to a right- 4i8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING minded man. To Americans of this order the Union has long been more than a matter of high utiHty. It has been ideahzed into an object of love and venera- tion. In answer to this cui bono? many have cried in their hearts with Lear, ' O reason not the need ! ' . . . But instances of carelessness or levity about the Union are very rare, and this is the reason why more show of attachment to it is not made." Protestations of devotion are still rarer now. Even on the Fourth of July they are thought to be in ques- tionable taste. But question the fact of patriotism and see what happens. The change in the fashion of expressing sentiment can be seen in the political nicknames that have fol- lowed one another through the century. Washington was the Father of his Country; Madi- son, Father of the Constitution; Jackson, the Preserver of the Union; Webster, Defender of the Constitution; Fremont, the Pathfinder; William Henry Harrison, the Cincinnatus of the West, Names all of them as high sounding as titles in the age of chivalry, as well merited, doubtless, and acquired in the same way by popular acclaim. They have in them a world of grati- tude and admiration, but little levity. Side by side with them, though beginning a little later and growing more marked as the new Western note crept into poli- tics, is another group equally admiring, but expressing greater intimacy of feeling, and more daring, if not more wit. The Last Cocked Hat, applied to Monroe ; J, Q, Adams's Old Man Eloquent; Jackson's Old Chief and Old Hickory; Zachary Taylor's Old Rough and Ready ; Clay's Gallant Harry of the West ; Doug- las's Little Giant; and the Honest Old Abe that grew with Lincoln's cares and responsibilities into the fond and trusting Father Abraham, Of late years still SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 419 greater familiarity has crept in. Each can extend the list to suit himself. But it must not be forgotten that parallel to both, beginning very early and continuing on,' is a third set, cruelly caustic, like His Superfluous Excellency applied to the elder Adams, and the Fox of Kinderhook directed against Van Buren, showing how keen is the people's demand for virtue, and that their criticism never sleeps. First and last enough sentiment has been expended upon American politics to equip a regiment of poets laureate. Distinctly American holidays are full of it. Fourth of July, of course, made itself. The twenty- second of February became one by common consent. It had its origin at a convivial supper in a New York tavern in 1783, when a company met to listen to an original ode and drink .innumerable toasts. Enthusi- asm survived the wine, and as the gentlemen went gaily and unsteadily home they swore to meet again on future anniversaries. Regarded at first as a purely party custom, it broadened beyond Federal circles to take in all Americans. Jefiferson's followers attempted a similar observance in his honor, but he countered with another bit of sentiment, refusing to divulge the date, on the ground that only the birthday of the nation should be so treated. Thanksgiving was sectional and religious as well as political, and sentiment graced it in plenty. One of the customs that lingered in good old New England households until the middle of the last century was to lay five grains of corn upon the plate of every person at table in memory of a day in early colonial history when five ships came sailing into harbor just in time to chase away the specter of famine. It was Washington who appointed the first national day of thanksgiving at the instance of Congress, after the adoption of the Constitution. For many years. 420 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING however, annual observance of the day remained a matter of state action, virtually confined to New Eng- land. Like the twenty-second of February, it became a national custom only gradually. Unlike the twenty- second of February, it spread largely through the in- fluence of a woman, Mrs. Sarah Joseph Hale, who ad- vocated it for twenty years, in the editorial columns of " Godey's Lady's Book " and in private letters to many governors. On the first inauguration day both Washington and Vice-President Adams took the oath of office clad from head to foot in garments grown and spun and fash- ioned on American soil. And the form of oath in which they pledged their loyalty has been carefully re- peated by office-holders high and low ever since. The color of the West Point uniform records an- other bit of feeling. It is a little sentimental note on the forgotten battle of Chippewa, when there was not enough blue cloth in the country to cover our small army, and the British commander, seeing a gray line of regulars advance, mistook them, to his undoing, for " nothing but a body of Buffalo militia." How quickly our public ear responds to rhythm or effective wording is seen in the eagerness with which some telling phrase is caught up and made to do duty as a rally ing-cry. Even the lilt of campaign songs and ephemeral, but temporarily popular campaign slang have turned the tide of battle. Marcy's glib justification of rewarding party loyalty, " To the victors belong the spoils," and the not quite frank " Fifty- four forty or fight," each did yeoman's service; and when it comes to more serious and sentimental utterances, their influence has been enormous. " Mil- lions for defense, but not one cent for tribute " both added to and steadied excitement in the X. Y. Z. affair. SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 421 Gay's " Free trade and sailors' rights " helped on the War of 18 1 2. " Liberty and Union, one and in- separable, now and forever " out of Webster's reply to Hayne was a resounding line plucked from among the innumerable words of the Nullification debates and exalted into a national watchword. How much the glowing title of that new patriotic song the " Star- Spangled Banner " did to inspire enlistment, and the harder duty of cheerful endurance in the discouraging days of British invasion and burning, or how far Lawrence's dying injunction not to give up the ship has carried individual Americans from that day to this in deeds of heroism each heart must determine for itself. Once in a long while sentiment obliterates for an hour even our sense of humor. When Saxe-Weimer was traveling in this country, a dinner was given in his honor by the German Society of Philadelphia. Wishing to pay him the highest respect, they arranged to have only German music. Fortunately the genial duke's sense of fun was equal to the strain. " Our waiters were black," he wrote describing the occasion. " Even the music was performed by blacks, because white musicians will never perform at public enter- tainments. After every toast the music struck up; but our virtuosi were only acquainted with two Ger- man pieces. After drinking my health, they played * Fin Schiisserl und ein Reimerl,' and after the toast was given of ' Thef German Athens,' they played ' O du lieber Augustin ! ' " " On the eighth day of January next, wind, weather, and snow permitting," a frontier paper announced late in 1837, " the Great Prairie will be set on fire in com- memoration of the great Whig victory in New York. The Prairie is about 300 miles long, with an average 422 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING breadth of from ten to twenty miles. The fires to be Hghted at eight o'clock in the evening." There is a wide and breezy enthusiasm about that which can not fail to awaken a responsive chord in every American breast, though as to fitness there might be room for difference of opinion. However enthusi- asm may stray from the path of fitness in such minor matters, in great crises American sentiment can be trusted not to go wrong. There were no huzzahs at Yorktown when the British gave up their swords ; at Vicksburg no humiliating cheers added to the bitter- ness of defeat. Instead, there was a brotherly pres- sure of hands and a breaking of bread. The end of the Rebellion was marked by no widespread celebra- tion of victory. Men, as best they could, set about obeying Lincoln's injunction to bind up the nation's wounds. In the early Western migration there was little time for anything except daily tasks, and little room to carry anything beyond the barest practical necessi- ties. But sentiment found a place in the pack of every immigrant family that crossed the Alleghanies. They could carry names with them, if nothing else. The cabin and the fare might be poor indeed, but a loom in the corner reproduced patterns woven " back yonder," and the names by which they were called, repeated over and over, carried the mind far rolling through biblical history in the wake of " Chariot Wheels," or through the heavens with the " Seven Stars," to bring it to earth again in some dearly loved garden spot beside a " Double Snowball " or a " Briar Rose." The names these Immigrants gave their new homes are themselves a record of no mean interest. Often they repeated the name of the old home left east of the SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 423 mountains, as that had recalled some village around a gray Norman tower under moist English skies. They tell a tale of loyalty and homesickness, and of sturdy New World faith in ability to carve a home " equally as good " out of the forest or the rich prairie loam or the alkali of their new dwelling-places. In their trail can be followed successive waves of thought and culture. Lexington, Kentucky, was christened by some hunters who were camping on that spot when they first heard of the battle. The revolt against Puritan dominion is to be seen in the nightmare medley of Greek and classic names with which central New York is covered. The few Indian names that have survived race prejudice for their music's sake tell a story of their own, as does the boastful exuberance of those names ending in " opolis," planted along the line of march in a spirit of commercial optimism that withered into failure, which remain to clog the land- scape like last year's burrs. As w^e journey westward, alongside exotic French and Spanish saints and royal personages who fastened their tenacious names deep in our free soil years before men of English origin came to dispute them, are harsh descriptive phrases that etch like a biting acid the picture of a brave and virile and not over-squeamish phase of our young civilization, — the Deadwoods and Mudholes and Long-a-Comings of the miners and ranchmen who carried abundant senti- ment in their hearts, but counted it weakness and strove to hide it under callousness and profanity. How senti- ment grew and flourished on the new soil, and what strange and sometimes perverted forms it took, many a bit of local nomenclature show^s. They are interesting reading, these names on our map. And rightly read, they yield up an unassailable history of American politics. The number of Clay and 424 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Calhoun and Webster counties testifies to the popular- ity of those famous leaders, and the Scott and Taylor and Harrison counties show what a hold military suc- cess had upon our peaceful imagination. While an oc- casional state capital may bear the name of a President, or a large and thriving city the name of our favorite Frenchman, even the beloved Franklin was not deemed worthy of having a State named after him, that honor being reserved for Washington alone. It is too soon for the country to have attained the finished beauty that covers the seamy side of Europe. We are still delving in our soil, and still cherish our American ideals, some of us with yearning, some with a hot conviction that makes it hard to remember they are still only a hope for the future, not an accomplished fact. When we think of our nation as hopelessly material, given over to pursuit of wealth and without the saving grace of poetry, it is well to remember that a vision brought our forebears across the sea ; that American conceptions of liberty are not prosaic, however short of ideal their working out may be; that the country's industrial development has been like an epic, and Amer- ican invention a dream of magic. Stern necessity forced the early workers of the country to be practi- cal. Men had instantly to take up their part in feeding and defending the struggling settlements; and women found their hands more than full in rearing children and contriving orderly households out of the abundant lack with which they were surrounded. Even after pioneer days were over they were under the same ne- cessity to dig or die. Confronted by the unsightly gashes such work makes in nature's beauty, they scarcely heeded them, so intent were they upon what these gashes were to become. It has not been through SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 425 lack of idealism, but because of it, that we have over- looked much that was crude and even laughable in our daily life. And if the time ever comes when this flame of hope dies out, leaving only ashes of criticism, it will usher in sad and perilous days for our beloved land. CHAPTER XX SUFFRAGE AND REFORM THE American mind tends to idealism but not to reverence. With a passionate belief in things that are to be, it has shown small re- spect for things that are or things that have been. Perhaps optimism for the future is incompatible with reverence for the past. To fight toward an ideal one must be willing to destroy. Reform was the reason for our being a nation ; it is not strange, therefore, that efforts tow^ard betterment have from the first appealed to our people, nor that we have chosen to do such work in companies. " Wher- ever," wrote De Tocqueville, " at the head of some new undertaking, you find the government in France or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association." First there was the association of the colonies. In- side this combination grew up the great political par- ties. Then came the banding together of groups of men in the interest of many social reforms. Some of these remained aloof from politics, but others honey- combed the great parties and brought about the forma- tion of new ones. From this point of view our history has been a series of associations, breaking up into ever smaller units until like figures in a kaleidoscope, a multitude of them rush together again to form some new and dominating combination. The broadening opportunities for education and the 426 SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 427 narrowing of opportunities to make a living can both be traced in such associations ; the first in their grow- ing numbers; the second in their history of increasing bitterness and changing methods. Unhappily the saying that anarchists are " the result of a university education on an empty stomach," is too true to be amus- ing ; but fortunately in the years of which we have been thinking there were few empty stomachs in America, and those devastating furies of the modern world were as yet unknown. A leaven of political unrest was at work however. A disillusioned portion of society ad- mitted that neither the Declaration of Independence nor the triumph of the Democratic party had brought about the millennium. But it still had faith in a mil- lennium, and went about its labor of reform ardent and earnest, and bothersome to fellow-citizens who were inclined to let well enough alone. Its desire for change found expression in move- ments of many kinds, three of which were notable be- tween the beginning of the century and the Civil War. The first occurred about 18 12 and was semi-religious in character. It led to the formation of many mission- ary and temperance societies and to nation-wide federa- tion of church denominations, which until then enjoyed only local organization. Through interest in orphan asylums and like enter- prises with a civic as well as philanthropic bearing, these gradually merged into reforms more social than religious. Increasing rapidly in number, they reached their greatest loquacity and popularity during the dec- ade between 1830 and 1840 which has been called with uncomplimentary levity, the hot-air period of American history. Discussing the need for reforms such as these reawakened class consciousness that had slumbered peacefully during the years when all America worked 428 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING with its hands. Roused afresh, this once more en- tered pohtics, chiefly by means of organizations among laborers to secure better hours and better laws, — the first beginnings of vast industrial armies that were to pit their strength half a century later against almost impregnable combinations of capital. The third align- ment, at once political and moral, was the one that took place for and against slavery just before the Civil War. Although reform is no matter of latitude and longi- tude, it seems true that less thought was given to it in the South than in the North. In the lavish care-free Southern life, with many servants, much was allowed to go at loose ends. Little attention was paid to de- tail and none at all to economy ; and it was natural that where effect rather than accuracy was esteemed, showy talents of oratory and emphatic speech should be ap- preciated. There was large tolerance for human frailties. More drinking and card playing went on than in the North. Horse-racing was so important that schools were given holiday during race week as a matter of course ; and men were quick with their words and their weapons. They were large-hearted and generous, but less inclined to weigh moral values than New Englanders trained from childhood in careful management, and born with a cold-blooded preference for logic over emotion, and a grudging distrust of the pleasant things of life. But it is instructive to remember that up to the time of the Civil War our country was governed for forty- eight years by Southern presidents and only twenty- four years by men from Northern States. Further- more, that not one of the Northern Presidents was given a second term, while those from the South who lived to complete their terms of office were popular enough to win reelection, with but two exceptions. SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 429 Like many other salutary and wholesome things, the spirit of censorship and reform in the New England temperament had to be taken in small doses with long intervals between. The nation was, however, predisposed to reform, and once inoculated its work went on even in periods of apparent rest. Nowhere is this more evident than in the change that came over voting in the United States. We who were brought up to consider man- hood suffrage almost a birthright, receive something of a shock when we learn that as late as 1800 only about one third of the heads of families in the country were allowed to vote. Accidents of religion or property deprived two men out of three of the right. Vermont, the first new State to join the original thirteen, lived gallantly up to the spirit of the Declaration of Inde- pendence and adopted manhood suffrage in its consti- tution of 1777, but the other States hedged it about with whatever restrictions their lawmakers deemed safest and best. The Constitutional Convention with really masterly inactivity had refrained from raising, a tempest that would have burst upon the country had it tried to im- pose uniform qualifications for electors of Federal officers. It contented itself with providing that elec- tors for representatives in Congress should possess " the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature," thus leav- ing the matter entirely within state control. Hamilton had wished to make property the basis of representation in order to enlist the solid material in- terests in preserving the Union. Jefferson's ideal of democracy, on the other hand, held suffrage to be a distinct right of the individual, no mere privilege of his possessions. Half way between the two was 430 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Franklin's indulgent assertion that any form of gov- ernment may be a blessing to the people if well admin- istered, with its inescapable corollary that since the best has possibilities of evil, moral uprightness is the root of all political well-being. Jefferson's idea gained headway, and even before Washington died property qualifications had been re- duced in some of the States, and public sentiment al- ready showed a marked trend toward dropping all re- ligious tests from politics. The States admitted to the Union after 1800 were comparatively liberal in be- stowing the franchise, especially west of the Alleghan- ies, and gradually the older States changed their con-r stitutions to conform to the new spirit. New York tried to compromise by making its senate represent property and its lower house persons, but this was decided to be unconstitutional. The South made slaves do duty for the benefit of their masters as both persons and property, five blacks being counted as three whites in apportioning representatives in Con- gress. This implied that they were a little more than half human; but Chief Justice Taney's decision in the Dred Scott case that Negroes " had no rights which the white man was bound to respect " robbed them of even this fractional personality. They continued to be rep- resented in Congress on this basis, however, as long as slavery lasted. Taken all in all, men with brown skins have not fared well as to suffrage in the free United States. Negroes were enslaved in the South and disfranchised in the North after slavery went out of fashion there ; and Indians and Mongolians have both been discriminated against. Women, on the other hand, were allowed to vote in several of the States in the early days, despite the restricted suffrage, provided they fulfilled all the SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 431 conditions of age, religious tests, tax paying, and prop- erty holding. In New Jersey this right was granted in the constitution of 1776 and exercised by a few enter- prising spirits until 1807 when the legislature illegally denied it. It was properly a matter for constitutional amendment, but the legislature acted on the assumption that three women had " repeated," an accusation they indignantly denied, claiming that men bribed to impersonate them voted first in their own character, and returned to the polls again after donning petticoats. Not many women seemed to care, however, and when a new constitution was made they were ignored. With a few exceptions, changes in state constitutions were toward greater liberality, and by 1832 seven of them, Vermont, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, — one in New England, three in the South and three in the West, — had al- ready reached the point of requiring no property quali- fication whatever. Two other New England States, Maine and New Hampshire, granted suffrage to any man not on the pauper list. The remaining States appraised the privilege of voting as worth all the way from an estate valued at sixty pounds to merely pay- ing a tax, or serving in the militia as an equivalent. In North Carolina and New York it cost considerably less to vote for a state representative than for a state senator. In North Carolina a man might do the former if he paid taxes, while to do the latter he must own fifty acres of ground ; in New York both were rated higher. In Rhode Island at the present day cer- tain questions of imposing taxes can be voted on only by persons owning $134 in property, .but this is prac- tically the last vestige of the restriction. Jefferson likened our system of government to " the planets revolving round their common sun, acting and 432 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING acted upon according to their respective weights and distances," to produce " a beautiful equilibrium . . . unexampled but in the planetary system." The ideal of our Government is of course diversity in unity. There is no doubt that we attained the diversity, for up to the time of the Civil War more constitutions had been drafted than there were years in our national history, — and no two of them alike. Such of these variegated instruments as ran the gantlet of approval and became laws in their respective States were speed- ily supplemented by legislation on every conceivable subject, from abolishing primogeniture to keeping crows out of cornfields. There seemed only one thing with which state con- stitutions hesitated to tamper. That was the judiciary system. As a rule they let the courts alone, which was wise, since the complicated system of state and Federal courts was itself a bold experiment. To the Federal courts fell the task of reducing the great mass of conflicting state regulations to a code that could be administered in harmony with the supreme law of the land, the Constitution of the United States. They proved equal to it, — the first effective bodies of their kind in history. In addition to all the newly made indigenous laws, there was a background of English law that we in- herited as we did the English language, and that like the English language proved in need of change to adapt it to new necessities. Fortunately these vast labors did not come upon the judges all at once. A faded little diary kept by John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, bears witness that American law was a matter of slow growth. Fre- quent entries in his clear handwriting state that the Court adjourned for lack of something to do, — a fact SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 433 as hard now to believe as that the present great De- partment of State began with a secretary and one as- sistant, and at the time Madison took charge of it mus- tered only nine employees, himself and the colored messenger included. Once the English mind conceded our right to na- tionality, our efforts at self-government were watched with interest, even with secret pride. But it took time to reach this point. Chief Justice Jay attracted little notice as a lawyer in London when sent there on a foreign mission. Four or five years later his succes- sor, Ellsworth, who appeared in Westminster Hall during the progress of a famous trial, drew many curious glances. When study of his marked and un- familiar features had established the fact that he was no red Indian, lawyers of the Crown crowded about him to find out how English law bore transplanting. The third Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, could have answered them much better, for it was he who established American law upon a firm foundation, and in doing so raised his office to its pres- ent high place in public esteem. It was not at first considered an honor rivaling the Presidency. Both Jay and Ellsworth were sent abroad on missions of im- portance to fill up their time to advantage ; and twice during the six years Jay served as Chief Justice, he was candidate for governor of New York, resigning when successful to assume what he evidently thought the higher office. John Marshall's great opportunity came to him in a threefold manner, — a long term of service, increased business before the courts, and a mind peculiarly fitted to the task. In constitutional law he has been called " master of the Commonsense," and this he used to make over English law, by democratic patterns, into 434 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING workable American form. Appointed by the elder Adams almost at the beginning of the century, he re- mained Chief Justice thirty-four years, a picturesque, as he was an important, national figure. " No one who really knows how the national life of the United States has developed," says a recent writer, " will dis- pute the assertion that no man can be named to whom the nation is more indebted for solid and far-reaching services." Federalist in politics, and wisely conservative in his great work, he was democratic in personal behavior to a degree that amazed foreigners. A tall man, careless in his dress, and seeming to regret his height, there was little in his appearance to warrant a second glance, ex- cept his brilliant and penetrating eyes. But his de- portment could not fail to attract attention. " People in Washington don't begin to understand him," a Richmond admirer declared. " Why, do you know, I have met Marshall carrying his dinner through the streets in an open basket! " On the part of a South- erner of position such conduct was scarcely credible. " Yes, sir. And I have seen that man walking on his hands and knees with a straw in his mouth." This Nebuchadnezzar performance was not due to temporary insanity, but to love of the game of quoits, a favorite pastime in the South. In the course of it disputes arose that no amount of judicial acumen could settle. Mathematics and careful measurement constituted the only court of appeal. Once a group of elderly gentlemen, coatless and engaged in a hotly contested game, was pointed out to a French nobleman, a guest of the Barbecue, the Richmond Quoit Club, and he was told that it con- tained not only the Governor of Virginia, but the Chief Justice of the United States, and several judges of the SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 435 high court of appeals. He was incredulous. Was it possible, he asked, that dignitaries of the Government could thus " intermingle with private citizens " ? When assured that the proof was there before his eyes, he exclaimed in rapture that he had never before realized the full beauty of a republic. This democratic " intermingling " counted for much in our national development and for much more in the reforms that little by little invaded law and custom. " Public discussion," Hart tells us, " is the antiseptic of politics." It was well that legislators who made the laws, and judges who administered them, should hear at first hand from humbler private citizens who were likely to feel the weight of them. In every such group lawyers and farmers were sure to be well repre- sented, the wide term farmer including the owner of broad acres as well as the poor who made a scanty living from the soil. Agriculturists formed by far the greatest part of the population. Agriculture, the law and the ministry were the three callings then in good and regular standing in the United States. Ministers were a small class with a large but visibly decreasing in- fluence. The lawyers were by training and disposition best fitted to take an active part in politics, the absorb- ing national concern. Often they were both lawyers and farmers, for they were not necessarily dwellers in towns. The many spots of sparse population marked " Court House " on Virginia maps, and the many sub- stantial New England homes with small but equally substantial " offices " in the same garden enclosure, testify to that. When we read that an ambitious youth entered the law ofiice of So and So, it does not follow that he forsook green fields or lost touch with the people who tilled them. It probably meant that he left an elm-shaded village street where he was born 436 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING for another under whose trees the man of the region who was best educated and most bountifully endowed with brains happened to dwell. When the country- side came to this local celebrity for advice it might find him getting in his hay if a Northerner, or watching his slaves in the field if a Southerner. Or he might be preparing a case for court, or away at the state capital making laws. Such were often the phases of a many- sided career. There were merchants, of course, and a few phy- sicians and other professional men; but it was a broad- minded father who encouraged his son to adopt any except one of the three professions. If he became a preacher his future salvation was assured, however poor he might remain in this world's goods. If a farmer, he could probably continue an honest man and raise turnips and potatoes to feed his family and stock. If he showed an aptitude for exercising his mind out- ■ side of theology, a lawyer's training was the thing for him, useful alike in legislative halls, on the bench, or in efforts to break laws already in force. One of our English visitors asserted that " the very first object of the Americans after a law is passed is to find out how they can evade it." This was scarcely fair; but in one sense it was more flattering than de- rogatory. There was room for improvement along many lines, law not the least among them, in spite of many statutes and the guiding influence of patriots like John Marshall. Broadening suffrage and diffused edu- cation, friendly quoit playing and lively political argu- ment, all had their part in softening rigors that now seem to us barbarous, and the half century witnessed the amelioration of many a crying abuse. Criminal as well as constitutional law underwent a decided change. All the horrid prison accessories of stocks, pillory, SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 437 whipping-post, ducking stool, treadmill, shears, and branding" iron continued in evidence down to the Revolution and even later, and laws had hardly been changed since, though various grotesque penalties had become a dead letter through sheer inability to obtain a conviction. As late as 1830 branding, ear cropping, exposure on the gallows with a halter around the neck, flogging, the wearing of scarlet letters, and the like could be found upon the statute books. Severe as these old laws now seem, it must not be forgotten that America had been progressive compared with the rest of the world. William Penn sent a code to England so humane that Queen Anne and her coun- selors would have none of it; and Pennsylvania, lead- ing the colonies in such matters, afterwards led the States when her revised code of 1794 inaugurated what proved to be the beginning of a prison system for the United States. Other States copied more or less of it, the bad as well as the better elements. In some States white convicts were practically sold into slavery like Negroes, their services being auctioned off to the highest bidder. The jails were places of horror and the details of prison management too re- volting to read. The death rate within them was shockingly high. There was no attendance on the sick, no clothing provided for the needy. Decency was not to be found, and comparative degrees of misery depended solely on the compassion or brutality of the jailer in charge. The worst prison of all, pos- sibly, was Newgate of evil memory, near Granby, Con- necticut, an underground hades in an abandoned cop- per mine, w^hose forlorn and rotting captives were reached only by means of a ladder down a seventy- foot shaft. The people of those days appear to have been 438 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING strangely callous and absurdly sensitive at the same time. With political ideals rarely equaled in history, they were oddly indifferent to human misery, though their nerves vibrated in indignant protest at things that to-day seem harmless enough, or mere matters of taste, like a dance tune on the Sabbath or a statue undraped. Perhaps it is an evidence of their largeness of viev^ •that they worked first for great political reforms, and were content to let individuals struggle along as best they might until these were attained. But to us who enjoy the fruit of their labors and have not yet suc- ceeded in bringing to pass lesser reforms for which common sense clamors aloud, their code of manners and morals seems warped, to say the least. It became evident that change of some sort was im- perative, for in spite of many and strict laws and a long list of capital offenses, the number of criminals increased alarmingly. Highway robbery, though pun- ishable with death, was so common that it might be called a fashionable occupation. Robbing the United States mails was a crime of crimes, yet the United States attorney at Philadelphia averred that in no country on the planet was the mail exposed to such danger. Some critics wished to return to old and even harsher laws. Others contended that repressive measures had definitely failed of their purpose. Still others advocated establishing a Botany Bay at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon, where male- factors could be transported to work out their own destruction. The hard times of 1816-17 at once increased the troubles and brought a season of enforced and chas- tening meditation that led to systematic inquiry into their cause. This disclosed how large a proportion of city dwellers depended upon charity. In New York SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 439 it was one seventh. One reason for the many infrac- tions of order appeared to be that city government was still attempted by methods that had been adequate enough when introduced, but were now utterly out- grown. Drink, lotteries, pawnbrokers, and charitable institutions were named as four chief causes of dis- tress. It seemed unkind to class charitable institutions wath the evils they were designed to relieve, but, as Lafayette's gift of thistle seed amply proves injudi- cious giving is itself almost a crime. Philadelphia, foremost in charity as it had been in prison reform, was a veritable paradise for beggary. Much of the iniquity of life in our seaboard cities was traced and solemnly laid to the national partiality to oysters, which furnishes another illustration of the fact tiiat the difference between a blessing and a curse is after all only in degree. The oyster boat at the town wharves had been fol- lowed by the oyster man who drove about in his cart, and wheelbarrow men who sold the luscious bivalve upon the street corners. One of these had the enter- prise to set up business in a cellar and reaped such success that oyster cellars grew to be almost as numer- ous as tippling houses and as much of a menace. They provided other things besides oysters and rapidly be- came the club houses of idle and vicious youth, where gambling and imbibing all sorts of moral and physical poison went on. Scarcely less demoralizing were the second-hand shops in which a business of selling stolen goods and other kinds of illicit trade was pursued. But chief of the causes of distress in town and coun- try was intemperance. " The great evil still is drunk- enness " is a sentence to be found in almost every book v^ritten about America, although occasionally a frank Englishman would add that he saw less outward 440 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING signs of it in several months' residence than in a single walk from Charing Cross to Cornhill. It affected all classes and brought to each its own punishment. Even Clay's great talents did not exempt him from inexorable law. Although esteemed not less in so- ciety because he gave way to this weakness, and pos- sibly even helped by it politically with those who felt closer akin to a man tempted like themselves, the sins of the father were visited very heavily upon his chil- dren. One of his sons was insane and another hope- lessly dissipated. Citizens who had an uncomfortable turn for statis- tics estimated that more money was annually spent for drink in the United States than for religion and edu- cation combined. It was an old-accepted habit that awakening social conscience was just beginning to recognize as an evil that might be combated. Spirits had been part of the daily ration in the harvest field and in the army. Drink flowed like water on militia training days and rum had been served to horses as well as to laborers in that " most diabolical " work of road building. Stimulants were supplied at funerals as a matter of course, and decanters appeared unbidden and without extra charge on the tables of inn and steamboat. As late as the time of Lafayette's visit the militiamen who were sent out to meet him at Bos- ton's city line were served while waiting his coming, with bread and cheese and free punch. This use of the town's money was deemed perfectly proper, though as one who recorded it adds, a proposal to furnish free school books to the city's children would have called forth amazed denunciation. Temperance societies had been a feature of that semi-religious period of organization about the time of the War of 1812. They were not confined to white iilliiiiiiiiiiiii{iiiiiiiniii'|iiiiiiiiiii!iiiiiiiiii!iifliinBiiiiiiiiiliiiiiiify JOHN C. FREMONT SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 441 men. One of the earliest and most successful owed its existence to a Miami chief, named Little Turtle, and Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet set an ex- cellent example to their white neighbors in their vil- lage of Tippecanoe. Some of the societies were most temperate in their pledges. One organized near Sara- toga in 1808 exacted a pledge not to drink except at public dinners. The members of another, formed a year after Lafayette's tardiness gave Boston militia- men their free punch, agreed not to consume more than a pint of applejack daily, a quart having been the previous limit. Temperance was a new fashion; but it grew surely if slowly. By 1836 public opinion had so far changed that total abstinence was advocated. Four years later the far-reaching " Washingtonian " movement was started at Baltimore. But to diagnose intemperance as a disease was a much later develop- ment, and we had no inebriate asylums before the one established near Binghamton, New York, in 1858. In the early part of the century marked intemperance and not a little blasphemy had gone hand in hand with strict Sabbath observance. Public gambling houses had been regarded as legitimate business enterprises. Lotteries flourished and had the approval of the best elements in the community as a means of raising funds to build churches and endow colleges and also to cancel government debts. John Adams had sanctioned such an undertaking to pay off Holland's claims against the United States. Not only lotteries but lottery insur- ance flourished. Although some of the States had scarcely been called upon to grant a divorce, it might have been better for the peace of mind of wives and the morals of the whole community had the " practice of unmarrying " been a little more common and laws on the subject better defined. Illegitimate births were 442 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING not uncommon and certain forms of loose living were leniently judged. A widespread dread of hospitals prevailed, which was not strange, considering their quality. They were for the indigent or the sick and friendless stranger. No well-to-do patient was to be found in them. The Pennsylvania Hospital, one of the earliest, had been built partly to care for the insane. This class, to the shame of society, was treated little better than crimi- nals. Hospitals received such patients without en- thusiasm, looked after them in a way more barbarous than humane, and if they became too violent sent them on to prison. Dr. Rush's " tranquillizing chair," in which a patient could be strapped so that he was un- able to move a muscle, had been an example of what the best and most benevolent did for these unfortunates in the early days. They were still the victims not only of disease, but of ignorance and stupidity. Gradually, however, manners and morals and philanthropy were being measured by a new standard. With the change in the point of view children came to be regarded in a new light, as a class that needed special safeguarding. It was recognized as monstrous that drink should be sold by the pennyworth to mere babies of five years, or that orphans and such small unfortunates as became public charges should be placed in almshouses sheltering derelicts of all ages and every degree of infirmity. The manifest injustice of bring- ing up children in such company led to the estab- lishment of orphan asylums. The very first banding together of the women of New York for charity was for the relief of widows and small children. This developed into an Orphan Asylum Society to which the legislature made a grant of $500, and in so doing com- mitted the State to its responsibility in educating such SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 443 waifs. Reformatories were inaugurated soon after, where useful trades could be taught boys who were less criminal than idle, but were likely to become criminals if left to the tender mercies of jail wardens. Unsatis- factory as such institutions for wholesale treatment of the young have since proved, they were an immense advance over what had gone before. The systematic education of defective children came in its turn, partly as a result of this movement, partly through the quickening influence of Horace Mann in his crusade for better schools. The first school for blind children was founded in New York in 1831. Dr. Gallaudet's school for deaf mutes was opened in Hartford as early as 1817. That the Federal Government took a hand in the schooling of such children was due to a sorry little band taken to Washington for exhibition by " an adventurer " in 1844. The impression got abroad that he maltreated them, and it was evident that though he expressed a desire to found a school, and asked leading citizens for funds, he proposed to account to no one. All but five of the children were returned to their parents. These being foreigners were absolutely at the mercy of chance. Their helplessness appealed to Amos Kendall, Andrew Jackson's " twilight " friend and amanuensis. He had them bound out to him in order to give him legal authority over them, and later gave for their use the property that has since grown into the government college at Kendall Green. One of the greatest reforms of the period was the abolition of imprisonment for debt practised in Amer- ica ever since the days when Georgia was a penal colony of the Crown. Originally it had been possible to cast a man into jail for failure to pay the smallest sum, even one cent, and the state of such a prisoner 444 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING was worse in some ways than that of a common male- factor, for the latter was at least entitled to prison fare, such as it might be. The debtor, on the contrary, had been forced to provide his own food and fuel and covering, and his indebtedness went on increasing the longer he stayed in jail, where he was liable to remain until his creditor's heart melted or he was released by death, unless meanwhile he was fed by some humane society. The law had been so amended that a small provision for food and blankets was made at the ex- pense of the creditor, whose refusal to pay resulted in the discharge of the prisoner. Some of the States also fixed a minimum sum for which a man could be sent to jail. New Hampshire, one of the earliest to do so, made it $13-33. A few States exempted women and two or three exempted soldiers of the Revolution. Constitutions of the newer States usually contained a provision that no citizen willing to give up his estate to his creditors should be so imprisoned. If a sufficiently large bond was furnished, a debtor might reside within certain specified limits outside the prison, and in the cities there were large colonies of such persons living in dramatic and sometimes pictur- esque discomfort. In spite of all these changes debtor's laws were harsh and unjust. This last pro- vision contained in itself obvious opportunities for ex- tortion, which were not neglected. It was estimated during Jackson's administration that seven or eight thousand persons were sent to jail annually for debt, most of them for very trifling sums. The hard times of Van Buren's administration would have increased their number enormously, had not public indignation already risen to such a point that the practice had to stop. It was an issue that the Workingmen's party justly and very cleverly made its own. New York, SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 445 the first State to fall in line, abolished imprisonment for debt in 1830. Three years later Congress went to the fullest extent it could by passing an act that for- bade imprisonment for debt under process from Federal courts. It really went farther than this, for by ex- ample and influence it hastened action in the various States. Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, afterwards Vice- President of the United States, was especially diligent in urging Congress to pass this law. He was ambitious and probably saw in the measure both justice and policy. At any rate the career of this gentleman em- phasizes the recurring thought that Providence uses the tools that come to hand without being over par- ticular as to their quality. He was not above " politi- cating," to use a term current in the Middle West half a century ago; that is, making a trade of politics; for in the early pages of Amos Kendall's autobiography we find the two of them engaged in a post office transaction hard to distinguish from plain buying and selling. In the popular mind Johnson was personally credited with the death of Tecumseh, with its lurid details, and much lauded for it. On the whole, he was an honorable man according to the standards of his time and locality, and this effort of his to abolish imprisonment for debt ought to go far toward balancing, if it does not entirely blot out that post office deal, on the books of the Re- cording Angel. The same may be said of all the efforts at reform and of most of the men engaged in them. Good and bad and indifferent worked together and produced good in the long run. Not any section or group of individuals had a monopoly of virtue. The States that were foremost in establishing free schools, or those earliest to adopt manhood suffrage, were cer- 446 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING tainly not the first to respond to all such impulses, Pennsylvania, a leader in philanthropy, was one of the States where children suffered most from factory labor after machines made the work of small hands and bodies profitable. All that can be claimed is that the trend was toward a sane and courageous study of sore spots in our civi- lization and an effort to treat them as a physician treats disease, rather than as superstition treats fetiches. With absolutely the same ends in view that have been the goal of governments and individuals since the be- ginning, religion and law and custom emerged from their old attitude of coercion to try measures a little more in harmony with the Golden Rule. There was decided gain in many directions and a falling back in others. Great advance was made in laws governing labor, in the care of dependent chil- dren, in sobriety. Extradition treaties were entered into between the' United States and other nations. Prison conditions were improved and penal laws so changed that they were no longer too drastic to be en- forced. There was much less ferocity in the manner of inflicting punishments. Stocks and branding irons were banished to museums. Public executions became things of the past. And if in some cases, like the grudging admission that married women have property rights, the small gain came as much through fear on the part of frugal fathers of what sons-in-law might do with their hard- earned wealth, as through a sense of justice or the efforts of- the women themselves, that is simply in line with the humorous way things seem to go in this queer old world. Indeed, the study of half-hearted movements for re- form in some quarters and earnest but unwise efforts in SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 447 others, leads to the moral reflections that the growth and fostering of public sentiment in this country has been like the building of coral insects, — a work of many poor worms, but tending always upward. CHAPTER XXI NEWS AND BOOKS AMERICA and the art of printing came into being at the same time. It would be tortur- ing coincidence to dwell unduly upon this, but the temptation is strong to moralize on the part the one discovery played in developing the other. No great country has come under the thrall of the printed word so completely as the United States ; and no great country was ever made in such a hurry. Statesmen early saw what a weapon printing put into their hands. Political battles before and after and during the Revolution were waged with pamphlet and press. Jefferson's very first message to Congress recommended abolishing postage on newspapers " to facilitate the progress of information " ; and elsewhere he declared that if he had to choose between a Govern- ment without newspapers and newspapers without a Government, he would unhesitatingly favor the latter. The effectiveness of these purveyors of opinion grew with the years until, when Jackson's strong hold on public imagination was strongest, they were almost an instrument of torture in the hands of his political lieutenants. Such use forced newspapers into a prominence far ahead of national development in other fields of letters. In literature we were children of Europe, respectful but backward. In material things we were children of 448 NEWS AND BOOKS 449 Europe, poor but resourceful. In politics we were young giants, forging ahead in ways that were not the ways of our fathers. De Tocqueville described the American pioneer in- vading his wilderness " armed with the Bible, an axe, and a file of newspapers." The picture was not far- fetched ; for the newspaper followed him to the farthest clearing. Travelers told of riding " with the mail " by day and by night along roads scarcely marked out in the forest, the driver throwing papers recklessly right and left where there was no sign of habitation. Asked if the bears took an interest in politics, he ex- plained that there was a settler somewhere in the neigh- hood and that he or his children were usually waiting. " But when I don't find them ready I throw the paper under a tree ; and I warrant you they '11 look sharp enough to find it; they're always curious of news in these wild parts." Sometimes the stages themselves served as vehicles of information, bounding along with bands of white muslin fastened around their tops that proclaimed some startling message in letters large enough for all who saw to read. It was thus the news of peace went out from Philadelphia after the War of 1812. There seem to be national types in journalism just as there are national peculiarities in noses, — or con- sciences. Editorials, for example, born in France at the time Marat's Ami du Peiiple added to the frenzy of the French Revolution, took root only after they crossed the Channel, and found congenial soil in the English press. Even in times of political tragedy French papers have managed to give more space to art and drama and literature than we, with our British inheritance, think quite seemly. Our national desire has always been to print news; even if next day we 450 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING had to make news by confessing that the news of the day before was all a mistake. And next to news, as a specialty of American jour- nals, has come advertising, used and paid for by our impatient countrymen with lavish recklessness. Its tone has changed but never its purpose. Back in 1 704 the " Boston News Letter," the second venture of its kind on this continent, set forth in language of ex- treme and injured dignity the " loss " of two anvils weighing over a hundred pounds each, with the request that " whosoever had taken them up " return them and receive a reward. Advertisements soon ceased to be so polite, but they have never ceased to be interesting reading. Merchants have described their wares with beguiling effect. Doctors have advertised " a large • stock of genuine medicines." Lotteries have printed seductive lists of prizes which, in what one of our foreign visitors called the " Despotic States," might include a human being or two. Notices of runaway slaves have emphasized the tragic cruelty of that sys- tem. Preliminaries to the duel have been printed in " cards " denouncing some worthy citizen as a coward and worse. The page of progress has been illumi- nated with advertisements of the " locomotive engine " scheduled to leave daily with a train of cars " when the weather is fair." And many a pathetic notice has been inserted asking for tidings of family or friends captured by the Indians. Though news has been the constant desire of our press it was satisfied at first but slowly. In the real colonial period of American newspapers, which ended long before our colonial relations with England ceased, editors had to obey orders or go to prison. Therefore they printed little real news and fewer real opinions. NEWS AND BOOKS 451 There came a time of rebellion when they went to prison rather than obey orders, even though their busi- ness suffered, and it would have paid them well had it been possible to follow an oriental custom and engage a " prison editor " for the express purpose of going to jail. After the Revolution came the party press, a result of rule by the majority. And after that the independent press, outgrowth of railroads and tele- graphs, with such wide facilities for gathering news that no party could control it. About forty papers weathered the Revolution and the years of uncertainty following it. With a more stable form of government they began to increase, and by the middle of the century there was scarcely a hamlet in the North or West that did not publish its own little weekly sheet and receive the larger jour- nals that printed the proceedings of Congress. In the Southern States l®cal papers were less plentiful, for the conditions that retarded free schools worked equally against an untrammeled press. It was not a thriving speculation in districts where law and pub- lic opinion alike demanded silence on one engrossing topic. Daily papers early became common, but while most of the newspapers were still weeklies and semi-weeklies, it was etiquette in towns large enough to support several to have them issued on successive days, giving the com- munity all the benefits of a daily press and insuring a better sale for each in turn. In those early papers long letters signed by Veritas and other gentlemen with borrowed Latin names occupied much space. Crime was consigned to delicate oblivion, or if mentioned at all was treated in the most guarded manner. Local departments received scant attention and there was 452 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING almost nothing in the way of pungent paragraphs. On the other hand the editorial vocabulary was lurid in the extreme. " The Americans are certainly a calm, rational, civil, and well-behaved people, not given to quarrel, or to call each other names," wrote one of our visitors in 1820. " Yet, if you were to look at their newspapers, you would think them a parcel of Hessian soldiers. An unrestricted press appears to be the safety-valve of their free Constitution. . . . Were a foreigner im- mediately upon landing to take up a newspaper (espe- cially if he should chance to land just before an elec- tion), he might suppose that the whole political ma- chine was about to fall to pieces and that he had just come in time to be crushed in its ruins. But if he should not look at a newspaper he might walk through the streets on the very day of election and never find out that it was going ow, unless, indeed, it should happen to him, as it happened to me, to see a. crowd collected round' a pole surmounted by a cap of liberty, and men walking in at one door of a house and walking out at another. Should he then ask a friend hurrying past him, ' What is going on there? ' he may receive for an answer, ' The election of repre- sentatives. Walk on. I am just going to give in my vote, and I will overtake you." Several causes worked together to bring about a change from this early journalistic style. One was the growth of the new West, with its earnestness overlaid by a casual offhand manner. Another was a dawning national sense of literary style. A third was the quickened pace of life propelled by steam. A fourth was the moral issue that was already taking hold on men's minds. With a great question like slavery looming in the background, ' traitor ' and ' beast ' NEWS AND BOOKS 453 seemed extravagent terms to apply to fellow citizens who differed only about the tariff or who would make the best candidate for the legislature. Extravagant language of another sort flourished, being part of the exuberant young country's process of growing up, but it provoked little notice beyond wonder and mirth. It had its root in country printing offices, where the time hung heavy and editors were filled with a praiseworthy desire to " liven up the town." Sometimes their imaginations soared to really poetic heights. One masterpiece of this kind described a totally empty hack drawing up before the office of a rival paper, the carriage door opening and the editor of that damnably adjectived journal slipping furtively from it to his sanctum. Even in 1830 the pace set for printing news was slow enough. Though it had been the custom for many years to print long reports of congressional speeches, the country waited day after day for a transcript of the great debate between Webster and Hayne. It did not see the light of print in Wash- ington journals for two weeks, and March came in before it could be read in Boston, though Hayne's speech was delivered on the 25th of January. But there was impatience at the delay and the newspapers felt it necessary to apologize. " We do not know what has become of Mr. Hayne's and Mr. Webster's speeches," the " Philadelphia Gazette " admitted on February 15. As causes and reforms became fashionable, they began to have papers devoted to their own ends. A paper printing religious news and no other made its appearance soon after our second war with England. This was not only a novelty but an inspiration, and several good Americans disputed the honor of thinking 454 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING of it first. The " Boston Recorder," claimed by two citizens as being a paper of their own invention, de- veloped within itself another novelty destined to great growth, — a children's department which expanded in time into the " Youth's Companion." Papers printing secular news on Sunday made their appearance about 1825. The first one, strange to say, was edited by a theological student, and, as might have been expected, was denounced as a through ticket to perdition. The work of " Our Special Correspondent " at Washington and elsewhere scored a decided advance in 1830, through the imitative cleverness of James Gordon Bennett. Browsing one day in the Congres- sional Library he came upon the witty letters of Horace Walpole, describing court happenings in the reign of George II, and forthwith decided to apply the same method to the " court of John Q. Adams." Published anonymously, these letters of his made a sensation and were widely copied, being infinitely more amus- ing than the effusions of Veritas, or the unskilful marshaling of political facts sent back by the average congressman to his home paper. Somewhat later a woman boldly invaded the field of journalism in Washington, where she established the " Huntress," and let fly barbed arrows in all direc- tions. She v/as aggressive and unprepossessing, not very clever, and she wore a man's manner as well as a man's hat and umbrella. John Ouincy Adams re- ferred to her as *' that virago errant," and one of her own calling said she was a terror rather than a tempta- tion. Though neither as woman nor editor of a type to make feminine invasion of journalism popular, she added one more complication to its field. Another de- veloped in a new way of selling papers. Up to 1833 they could be had only by subscription, with possibly NEWS AND BOOKS 455 a few extra copies to be bought at the printing house. Then suddenly they appeared on the newstands and in the arms of ubiquitous urchins forever dodging under foot. This invasion of the street was the crowning piece of strategy of the party press, and took place soon after Jackson and Van Buren pooled their useful knowledge of politics and human nature. Almost in- stantly the journals that had grown arrogant under the fostering care of politics and were now beginning to prove ungrateful, found themselves obliged to fight for their lives against a flock of lesser papers, partizan in tone, that were sold upon the streets for half their cost. With the founding of the independent press, led by the " New York Herald," all the elements of modern journalism were in the field, at least in embryo. There were news boats and news expresses, both well-defined attempts at systematic news gathering. The sema- phoric telegraph displayed its signals, and extras burst like bombs upon a peaceful town. Bennett, now editor of the " Herald," set a wild pace of three editions, morning, evening, and weekly; and, having injected wit into special correspondence, began printing finan- cial articles that were the despair of the other papers. All this induced rivalry and hustling, and by the time Dickens reache.d New York Harbor in 1842, American reporters had acquired something of their later agility, and leaped gaily aboard the vessel as he neared shore, to get his impressions of America be- fore he set foot' upon its soil. These enterprising young men discovered too that they could wield power by concerted action, and did not scruple to do so on occasion, to avenge insults fancied or real. When the magnetic telegraph was perfected, it opened up undreamed possibilities in news gathering; 456 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING and two years after Morse demonstrated its practi- cability, Richard Hoe's invention of the "lightning" rotary press added thousands to the number of news- papers it was possible to print in an hour. This again increased the pace, the competition, and the appetite for news. Alliance, both for profit and defense, fol- lowed, and in 1848 seven journals of New York City made an agreement with each other and the owners of telegraph patents for a news service favorable to them, which they would consent to sell to other newspapers on condition that these supply to the association special news in their own neighborhoods. This was the be- ginning of the Associated Press, which has expanded and changed and suffered the ups and downs of modern business, and is now incorporated as a '* gentleman's " fish and game club under the laws of New Jersey. Not content with being able to telegraph on land, invention aspired to telegraph under the sea, a proj- ect encouraged and hoped for by the press. English and American enterprise and English and American capital worked eight years to accomplish the marvel. Time and again ships with endless lengths of cable, and tenders laden with necessary supplies, set forth from both shores to meet in midocean, splice their respective portions, and cautiously begin the work of paying out as they sailed homeward. Time and again the cable parted and the work was lost; but at length in 1858 words of congratulation flashed between the English Queen and the white-haired President Bu- chanan, and New York went wild in an ovation to Cy- rus Field, the American millionaire who had made our part of the venture possible, and to the officers of the ship that had carried the American half of the cable. But almost before their shouts had ended, the cable parted again and even the hopeful press was cast down. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT NEWS AND BOOKS 457 The " Tribune," not always hopeful, registered its fear that the project must be given up " as a complete failure." It required eight more years to prove the "Tribune" wrong; but when the two hemispheres were at last united, American journalism spread its activities and embraced the whole world in its tentacles for news getting and news telling. The connection between our newspapers and the growth of American literary activity in other fields has been more intimate than we are wont to remember. From Franklin down, few of the writers whose names endure escaped editorship sooner or later. We have Franklin's word for it that at the time he established himself in Philadelphia there was not a good bookstore south of Boston, and that " those who loved reading had to send for their books to England." Those who loved writing imported their ideas from the same source for many years after. The significant fact is that they did import them, and that books were wTitten and poems composed upon American soil al- most from the landing of the first settler, under condi- tions most unfavorable to such expression. These works were serious and the public they reached was small. It wished to be instructed and did not expect to be amused, which, considering the output, was a mercy, like tempering the wind to the shorn lamb. Even as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century, after American writers were fairly numerous and some of them had won recognition from British critics (with proper reservations, of course), they wrote in an English way and usually upon English themes. There were a few literary rebels, like Noah Webster, who miscalled that " blue-backed speller " out of which millions of little Americans learned their a-b abs and all they ever knew about the science of 458 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING words, " The first part of a Grammatical Institute of the EngHsh language." He meant the American language, and in the Grammar which formed a more advanced part of the same Institute, held that it was correct to say " you was " because " the practice is universal except among men who learn the language out of books." He chose the broad democratic basis of popular support. It was no passing enthusiasm with him but a lifelong conviction upheld in the crown- ing work of his life, the great dictionary published in 1828, which championed American spelling and illus- trated its definitions by examples from American au- thors. His classmate, Joel Barlow, attempted the same service for American poetry in the Columbiad, which was to be a New-World Iliad; but such rebels could be counted on one hand. Even Charles Brock- den Brown, commonly named as the first of our novel- ists, was English in manner and theme, though he set a lively American pace by publishing his seven novels in four years, besides founding a magazine, of which he wrote most of the contents, and having meanwhile the best reasons to consider himself an invalid. During the years of political revolt and the years after it, while we were yet unimaginatively English in many ways, and our writers were conscientiously copy- ing English masterpieces and thinking English literary thoughts, American babies were being born who were to change all that. Washington Irving, who sounded the first note ; Richard H. Dana ; Fenimore Cooper, the first to produce a truly American novel ; Fitz Greene Halleck; James Gordon Bennett, responsible for so much that is American in our press ; and William Cul- len Bryant, the first poet his country could not easily do without, were all born between the end of the Revo- lution and the beginning of the new century; while NEWS AND BOOKS 459 Bancroft, Emerson, ^Hawthorne, Whittier, Holmes, Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stovve, Horace Greeley, and that child of actors and misfortune, Edgar Allan Poe, were born before the War of 1812; and almost every year since has seen the birth of some American destined to literary fame on both sides of the Atlantic. Although Irving published Diedrich Knickerbocker's immortal work in 1809, and only two years after Diedrich made his bow to the world, a boy of seven- teen in Massachusetts wrote " Thanatopsis," our dis- tinctively American literary life may be said to have begun at the time that so many other great changes took place in the United States, soon after the close of the War of 1812. The nation in this, as in politi- cal and material ways, was waking to consciousness of its power. Young Bryant left his remarkable poem lying in a drawer without troubling to show it to any one. Six years later it was found by his astonished father and sent without the author's knowledge to the " North American Review." Cooper's " Spy " published in 1 82 1 was doubly a surprise, because his novel of the previous year had been so English in subject and treatment that British reviewers assumed as a matter of course he must be one of themselves. Groups of authors interested in the development of an American literature appeared in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York; and a feeling for the value of words more marked than had as yet been shown manifested itself in every parsonage and law office and printing estab- lishment in the land. The new style in public speak- ing was one result ; a distinct improvement in the qual- ity of newspapers was another. Quarterlies and monthlies had early been established and had kept pace with newspapers. In those half- 46o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING way houses between books and. the daily press new writers found opportunity to try their art; and the number of American classics, from " Thanatopsis " to " Uncle Tom's Cabin," first printed in magazine or newspaper, induces the belief that the periodical press has in truth been the fostering guardian, if not the real parent, of a distinctively American literature. The increasing number of journals and magazines provided many editorial chairs to be filled; and in a country destitute of the mellow atmosphere of scholar- ship, where everything was new^ and almost everybody was in a hurry, the responsibilities of editorship sub- stituted a craftsman's knowledge of tools for theory, and the need for accuracy in the use of those tools taught greater respect for form than any amount of basking in historic atmosphere would have instilled in an American mind. Editing was thus a practical and chastening experience, comparable for the author to the benefit of stage training for a playwright. The work-a-day part of editing also rendered a service not to be lightly esteemed. Comment has al- ready been made on the number of Americans who have gained fame in some other than their ostensible calling. Every self-respecting American had a prac- tical business. It was a law imposed by the wilderness, where it was as binding as the old Levitical code that decreed a handicraft for every Jewish child. It had not yet been outgrown; and since literature had scarcely come to be classed as a profession, all these writers had to be something else in " real life," — doctors or law- yers or W'hat not. Thoreau made lead pencils, Lowell was a lawyer. Poe was trained in the navy. Holmes was a physician. The list could be extended indefi- nitely ; but to realize the universal custom it is only necessary to remember how the old soldiers crowded NEWS AND BOOKS 461 around Lafayette and asked, " What do you do for a living in your own country? " Editorship proved a business obvious enough to ful- fil public expectation, tedious enough to satisfy the demands of the most exigent conscience, yet congenial at bottom to a writer's turn of mind. One may love one's business, but the love of a hobby glows with a warmer flame. The love of craft reflected back upon routine work, and a beneficent circle was established. The worthy Dr. Buckingham wrote that the " New York Evening Post," edited by a poet named Bryant, who might fairly rank with Campbell, the author of " Pleasures of Hope " showed its superiority over its rivals in " talent, wit, taste, and above all in gentle- manly fairness of argument." The reverend gentle- man looked askance on Bennett's hustling activity and thought the price he charged for advertising good English-made lectures grasping to the point of avarice. Not all editorial chairs could be filled by authors worthy to rank with the perpetrator of the " Pleasures of Hope " ; but those of less ability added each his por- tion to the growing interest, and contributed many a bit of excellent work. Like, for instance, that clever " Moon Hoax," purporting to be what Sir John Her- schel saw through the " nearly seven tons " lens of his telescope at the Cape of Good Hope, but which was really what Richard Adams Locke saw in his mind's eye through the editorial rooms of the " New York Sun." Interest did not exhaust itself in editors' sanctums, or in cities east of the Alleghanies. The mails had been opened to books as early as 1804 and these fol- lowed newspapers westward into lately invaded haunts of deer and bear. Not in very great numbers, to be sure, Political news was an American necessity; 462 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING books were a luxury. But respect for books and for those who read them was great. " If a stranger sup- posed to understand Latin sojourned in the neighbor- . hood he was looked upon as a wizard," Lincoln wrote, in his fragment of autobiography. And in that fron- tier neighborhood where Lincoln grew up, hungering for intellectual food, he found books that could scarcely have been chosen better with reference to his coming needs. Love of literature and literary ability manifested themselves in the most unlikely places. The mill girls of Lowell, recruited from the farm kitchens of New England, flowered into authorship in the " Lowell Offering," a series of annuals of distinct merit. When Vandalia, the early capital of Illinois, was barely ten years old it had its Antiquarian and Historical Society, whose proceedings were published " from the Black- well Press of Vandalia " with as much gravity and decorum as though Vandalia had been for centuries a seat of learning like Oxford or Leipsic. A shoemaker plying his trade in a village on the banks of the Susquehanna might have a great love for books and know not only some law but enough medi- cine to make his presence in the village doubly valuable, and work away in his leisure hours when past middle age to teach himself the wizard's tongue, Latin. After the Erie Canal was opened, a traveling bookstore was established on a boat that made several trips a year, and did " considerable business " at the towns along the way selling chiefly the ancient authors, medical, reli- gious, and law books, with a sprinkling of new novels. One could almost believe the enthusiastic Frenchman who wrote at the time that newspapers began to be sold upon the streets in New York, " everybody is literary in America." There was as much truth in his NEWS AND BOOKS 463 rash statement as ther^ had been in Sydney Smith's sneer of a decade before, " Who reads an American book?" " Every one," wrote this Frenchman again, " besides a paper from Washington or from some Atlantic town, receives that of the village from which he has emi- grated. , . . Reviews and magazines, literary journals, novelties of every sort, come to us from New York, Philadelphia, and England at a moderate price, and a month or two after their publication over the Atlantic." " I had read, I have no doubt, the last romance of Sir Walter Scott before it had reached Vienna." Miss Martineau, never backward about asking ques- tions, has left a curious note of what she conceived to be the relative popularity of British authors in the United States. She found Hannah More better known than Shakespeare, but admitted that this might be an index of religious sentiment and not of literary taste. Scott was idolized. She did not need to tell us that : the favorite names of stagecoaches and steam- boats prove it without her testimony. Miss Edgeworth was also a great favorite, but Bulwer was read more than either. Byron was scarcely mentioned. You could not buy Wordsworth's poems in every shop, but she thought they lay " at the heart of the people." Our citizens had a bowing acquaintance with Coleridge and Lamb ; and she mentioned " Sartor Resartus " as perhaps " the first instance of the Americans having taken to their hearts an English work which came to them anonymously, unsanctioned by any recommenda- tion, and even absolutely neglected at home." She had small opinion of American writers. She thought the moral beauty of Miss Sedgwick of a much finer char- acter than the bonhomie of Irving; and pronounced Cooper's novels to have " a very puny vitality." Bry- 464 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING ant was our one poet, and Bancroft, who had then pub- lished his first two volumes, our only historian. Our interest in visiting literary celebrities was marked. A contemporary has written that with the single exception of Lafayette, Miss Martineau herself was more feted than any foreigner who had up to that time visited us. Her outspoken opinions on slavery caused her popularity to wane in some parts of the country; and Dickens was never forgiven for his " American Notes," but during his stay here enthusi- asm knew no bounds. His movements were chronicled with a fidelity that the press of his own country would have reserved for royalty. Forty dollars were paid for tickets to the ball given in his honor in Boston, and an unpoetic and envious Philadelphian figured that at the current price of hogs those little bits of pasteboard represented the equivalent of 40,000 pounds of pork. Officials and private citizens vied to do him honor. President Tyler entertained him at a reception. "What think you?" wrote young Mrs. Tyler, the President's daughter-in-law. " He and Washington Irving were both speaking to me at the same time ! " She preferred Irving, who exerted himself to be agree- able, while Boz showed plainly that he was bored by the crowd surging about him and jumping up and down in a desire to get a sight of his short person over the heads of taller neighbors. After an hour he retired ** and left the unused enthusiasm to Irving." The country waited expectant for the book he was to write about America, and nineteen hours after a copy of it reached New York it had been reprinted and was on sale. The New York publishers disposed of 50,000 copies in two days, and Philadelphia's first con- signment of 3000 was exhausted inside of half an hour. Anger and astonishment filled the breasts of his NEWS AND BOOKS 465 friendly hosts. What they read seejned like a breach of hospitality, — and hurt the more for the truth in his criticisms. But resentment of his sharp words never materially affected Dickens's popularity in America as an author. New Orleans was the one city in the United States where little attention was paid to reading. Even its newspapers were poor, and in 1830 its population of 60,000 supported only three bookshops, whose stocks were made up mainly of French works that merited the criticism so unjustly heaped upon Jefferson's library. " A collection of books, good, bad, and in- different, new, old, and, worthless, in languages which many cannot read and most ought not." This was what was said of Jefferson's collection when he offered it to Congress to replace the one burned by the British. It was really the best library of its size in the country, but it was suspected of being atheistic in tone, and the tirades against it were, like Hannah More's popularity, an index of religious feel- ing. It was colored by politics, also. Indignant pa- triots who disapproved of Jefferson's lack of belief in theology and superabundance of faith in the people were not sorry to see him on the verge of bankruptcy, and they vigorously opposed the purchase. Rufus King said it would " bankrupt the Treasury and dis- grace the nation," The purchase was made, however, becoming the nucleus of the present great Library of Congress. It could be reo^arded with more pride as an index of the real literary appreciation of Congress were it not for the fact that these books were bought " by the pound " so to speak. Jefferson himself suggested an impartial method of determining their worth by their size, — ten dollars for a folio, six dollars for a quarto, three for 466 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING an octavo, regardless of subject matter or any mitigat- ing circumstances inside them. He may have done this in honest simplicity, but one suspects an under- current of subtle derision. This purchase occurred about the time that the *' Knickerbocker " group of authors in and near New York, Irving and Cooper and Bryant and their fellows, were coming into their own. Their most important work was done by 1850, and long before the half cen- tury struck New England's literary promise had also flowered. By that time Longfellow and Whittier had been publishing for twenty years and Emerson for ten. Hawthorne too had made his rare genius known in " Mosses from an Old Manse " and Poe, one of that Northern company by accident of birth, had given the world his haunting melody and died. It is quite right that the poets and philosophers of this New England group should hold first place in the affections and remembrance of their countrymen, but it is pleasant to dwell for a moment on its historians, with their record of brotherly courtesy and triumph over physical pain. Of the four best known in this smaller circle, Prescott labored, as did his fellow his- torian Parkman, in a twilight of blindness, unable to use his eyes for more than ten minutes at a time, while he wrote those vivid pictures of Spanish rule on two continents that read like brilliant romance and were instantly acclaimed and translated into many tongues. Parkman did for the history of the French in Can- ada what Prescott did for the record of the Spaniards in Mexico, though even more cruelly handicapped by ill health. Motley's inauspicious debut as a writer of romance turned to triumph when he found his in- spiration in the history of the Netherlands. Ban- croft's theme was the history of his own country. NEWS AND BOOKS 467 Sympathy and courtesy enter into the story in the fact that Irving, who meant himself to write a his- tory of the conquest of Mexico and had already gath- ered material for it, gave up the plan when he heard of Prescott's ambition, and sent him his notes. And Prescott a few years later passed on the kindness to Motley by resigning that part of his scheme which would have encroached on the territory Motley had chosen for his own. On the poets and the philosophers and the fun- makers of that large New England company there is small need to dwell, for their names and their thoughts are a national heritage. But it is significant that in a nation endowed with a gay and optimistic impudence, and given over in common estimation to pursuit of the dollar, the psychological and the spiritual have exer- cised the strongest fascination and been accorded the highest place. When one thinks of distinctively American writers, it is not of those who dealt with material subjects, but of the men like Hawthorne and Emerson, tuned to a spiritual key. The Knickerbocker group had developed purely American themes in literary forms of unquestioned merit. The mission of the writers of New England was to add an ethical and spiritual force to American letters. They were of Puritan stock, and they were ten years nearer the fiery trial of the Civil War. The men who brought about the liberal movement in re- ligion that split the churches of that section during the first quarter of the century were their intellectual forerunners, and an undertone of austerity is to be found in the most genial of their writings. Right was right to them as inexorably and inevitably as it had been in the eyes of their Puritan fathers, though those worthies would have felt obliged to consign these dcT 468 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING scendants to perdition for the way in which they ex- pressed their belief. Some stopped on the brink of unorthodoxy in mere Hterature, and covered up their granite sense of truth with the flowers of fable and verse. Some carried it into the realms of philosophy. These were the men who in spirit dominated all the rest. They were exceedingly liberal in being willing to cull good from any source, Christian or pagan. They were as rigid as their forebears in insisting that every- thing they accepted measure up to the high standard they set, and like their ancestors they were revolution- ary in applying these rules to every-day custom. They chose to be led by the inner light wherever it might take them. They were, in short, idealists trying to apply their system based on the old Platonic doctrine of ideas, to the hard and often balky facts of New Eng- land village life. And they were withal kindly, im- practical gentlemen and ladies whose unconscious singleness of purpose and gentle lack of humor moved their neighbors to mirth, but toned the entire nation for the struggle that lay before it. The dreaming Alcott was a target for criticism as well as for wonder. Townsfolk might be pardoned for thinking his daughter, writing her wholesome stories for girls and working hard with hands and pen to offset her transcendental father's objection to thwarting the business of canker worms, or taking other practical steps to help nature feed his flock, the better citizen and truer philosopher of the two. They might wonder at Thoreau in his hut on Walden Pond, living out his theory that " a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone." The volume that came from that hut in the woods might seem to them a very useless waste of time and NEWS AND BOOKS 469 ink; but not one of them could help being impressed by Emerson. Fredrika Bremer, who attended an Alcott " con- versazione," wrote that " both the proposition and the conversation were in the clouds," though she made ineffectual efforts to focus them on something more solid. " Alcott drank water and we drank, — fog," she wrote, " but the good Alcott hears an objection as if he heard it not." Emerson appeared to her as strong and positive as Alcott was vague. He both attracted and repelled her. She felt his " ice-alp na- ture " to be repulsive and chilling, but she could see that this was only one side of him. In Emerson's study where the furniture was grave, useful, and com- fortable but not beautiful, hung a single picture, a large copy in oils of Michael Angelo's Parcse, — like the furniture, grave and useful, but not beautiful. The great man took her driving, and alighting to get her a glass of water from a favorite spring, tied the reins to a tree ! Truly a guardian angel as well as the Parcse was domesticated in his house, and had the upper hand of them. Both he and Alcott made their way into the West in books and in lecture tours as well. The new coun- try showed itself as eager to meet and hear these prophets of New England as the East was to behold the literary lights of Europe. Cincinnati early had its Dorfenville's Hell and similar attractions, but these were soon rivaled by lyceum lectures by Emerson and Theodore Parker, at a price so low that it cost scarcely more to wander with them in realms of philosophy than to descend to Avernus. A letter from Emerson to Mr. Ainsworth R. Spofford, who was arranging for such a course of lectures, brings to mind vividly the standard of plain living and high thinking then 470 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING current all over the country. After promising to de- liver five lectures Emerson added in a postscript : " I observe that you set your course tickets at one dollar. You must do what is best in your city, con- sulting your usage. But at New York my friends I believe convinced themselves that Mr. Horace Greeley with whom it had been left, should have made the single tickets 50 cents instead of 25. The lecturers complained of me as an injurer of the profession." Year after year, East and West, the moral note rang stronger in the works of these older writers and the young men and women who joined their ranks in ever increasing numbers ; and when at last all other issues merged in the great battle for and against slavery, they lifted their voices and some of them gave their lives for freedom. CHAPTER XXII THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS FORTUNATELY the number of seers is limited, for prophecy is a heady wine. Like the character in French comedy who was sur- prised to learn that he talked prose without knowing it, the average citizen goes about his business un- conscious that he has an " aim " or a " tendency," much less that he is living it. But studying history by cancelation brings to mind that passage in which Ruskin speaks of the " awful " lines of a tree, mean- ing the lines which tells of its struggle up into the air, — the real story of its life. One by one material details shrivel like leaves, revealing the vital framework with- out which no leaves, perfect or misshapen, could have found nourishment. The rush toward new lands; the country's wonder- ful, increasing wealth during those years of national expansion ; its almost indecent haste to reap the benefit of new inventions; the hustle of business; the tempta- tions and personalities of politics; the grotesqueness of the newly rich, adopting luxury without assimilating it; and the bitterness of the poor, envying luxury while lacking bread, covered with a dense mantle the old principles and ideals that had moved Americans up to the time the Constitution was adopted and for twenty- five years thereafter. "While individuals or groups might be heedless, or 471 472 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING rascally, or vicious, men in the mass had at heart the real good of the community. This was the essence of democracy and harked back to the basic idea of personal worth and responsibility, — no American monopoly, but a human tendency that had an uncom- mon chance to develop on our soil. It had already undergone one mighty transformation. It came to the country originally as religious conviction, and by im- perceptible degrees grew into political revolt. It was now on the verge of another change. The people as a whole cared more to speculate in dollars than in philosophy. They were blind to the large significance of small things ; were too much en- grossed in the details of their full young life to see the big trend and sweep of them all together. They did not discern the kinship between their forefathers' revolt against spiritual dominion, or their grandfathers' re- volt against kings, and this lately developed national antipathy to laws of entail and debtors' prisons ; nor did they stop to wonder at the white man's increasing sensitiveness to blows upon a black man's skin. Yet it was the inherited tendency to think, and to experi- ment boldly by putting thoughts into practice, that was driving political parties into a new division on the question of slavery and was about to shatter old dogmas of belief. They failed to see the likeness between science with a large S, that began to invade life at every turn, and religion with a large R with which their childhood had been familiar. If the majority of Americans thought at all about the theological side of their new civilization, they were loyal to their fathers, even though falling away from their stiff code in practice. Straws already indicated the direction of the great storm that Darwin and his followers were to let SAMUEL F. B. MORSE THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 473 loose, but their books were only in process of being written. Time would convince many that " revelation might come through the microscope," but to a genera- tion that shuddered at the thought that the world had not been planned and neatly finished off, and Adam and Eve set up in housekeeping, in the space of six days, this bit of revelation was hidden. Good people, pained at innovation, felt obliged to protest, and enacted once more that comico-tragic scene in life which is played whenever the radical of one genera- tion slips unconsciously into the conservatist of the next. This new cult called science, seeming to threaten the very foundations of religion, had to such minds noth- ing in common with invention, working comfortable magic in daily living. They did not see that in ac- cepting one they must of necessity admit the other; that in stepping aboard a railroad train they were be- ginning a longer journey than was indicated on their tickets; or that in opening the doors of their barn to a new threshing machine they opened the covers of their Bibles to the prying lever of higher criticism. To conservatives, the men who gave themselves up to science and followed wherever it might lead them seemed utterly without excuse; infinitely more blame- worthy than the Concord philosophers with their half- pagan ideas, or even the anti-slavery maniacs who were threatening to turn civilization upside down. The world was full of strange noises ; each one of these bands proclaiming a different thing. We know to-day that their varied notes united in one great chord of moral earnestness : an earnestness for which thousands of that generation and the next willingly laid down their lives. We can see now that all shared the same sturdy Puritan characteristics; claimed the right to think for 474 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING themselves ; denied that one mind had authority to im- pose conclusions on another; recognized individual responsibility in the choice between good and bad ; and stood firm rejecting compromise, unw^illing to buy in- dulgence for body or soul. The anti-slavery enthusiasts made the greater clamor for their crusade was by word of mouth as well as print, and their protests were the most disturbing be- cause directed against a custom that could not conven- iently be dropped. The Concord philosophers and their satellites had leanings in the same direction, but could be more readily forgiven since they dealt in ab- stractions, and impartiality is easier in matters not personal. The scientists worked usually in silence, and it was confessed that they had brought forward practical marvels like the telegraph; but they were looked upon as a dangerous class, secretly fomenting opinions that reason could not refute but which meant death to cherished religious beliefs that had been good enough for holier men than they to live and die by. Up to that time even the word by which they set such store had a more restricted meaning. Science had been any one of the speculative arts. Philosophy embraced them all together, expressing what science does now, — with this important difference : science bears a vital relation to everyday life; philosophy was a region where the trained intellect might exercise, but it had no connection with practical affairs. It seemed quite reasonable in 1840 or 1850 for a brilliant young- ster of twenty-one to be made " professor of natural sciences " at an excellent academy, and expected to teach botany, chemistry, astronomy, and all other in- teresting and unpractical systems of mental gymnastics that students saw fit to demand. This was commonly the first step in the public career of the young men who THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 475 adopted the new profession and worked out many im- portant problems during the following decades, among them that idea of scientific agriculture about which Jef- ferson had vaguely dreamed. " His lifetime saw the development of chemistry out of alchemy," said the daughter of one such man, speak- ing of the wonderful changes his quiet devotion helped to bring about, and the trenchant yet humorous philoso- phy of life that enabled him to labor in silence while noisy comrades claimed more and did less. He and his like, faithful of heart and bold of vision, toiled in many fields, slowly fathoming mysteries and translat- ing truths of nature as they saw them into formulas which were to revolutionize commerce and agriculture and medicine. Criticism they braved hourly; occa- sionally they braved indictment for manslaughter. The doctors had taken this grave risk in their experi- ments with ether. They were all gallant knights errant of the mind, tilting against problems half for the fun of it, half for love of humanity, — without thinking overmuch about that part of it, or caring at all what became of their souls according to a theology dear to their fathers, but narrow and inadequate to them, since their glimpse into wide new realms. This glimpse made of them the seers and poets of the nineteenth century. Like mountains, the greatness of poets and seers can be best measured from a distance. As a nation we prided ourselves on being practical. We frowned, on artists as useless folk, and poets to be quite re- spectable had to write according to time-honored rules in " hours curtailed from their sleep and other refresh- ment," working by day at an obvious and more re- munerative trade. Yet, as it happened, the two men who accomplished most in the wizard's work of trans- 476 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING forming the work-a-day world were artists by pro- fession. Steamboats and fine arts seem far apart. A poetic vision bridged the distance, and mechanics came to have such sway over Fulton's mind that it displaced portraits and landscape painting. He saw the part canals might perform in opening up inaccessible parts of the country and cementing the Union by bringing the people together. Dreaming of universal peace, he dallied with the problem of submarine explosives, first used in warfare about the time Sir Walter Raleigh sailed home from Virginia with a weed called tobacco. It was while coquetting with the French government about torpedoes that Fulton continued experiments on the Seine with his steamboat, the ugly duckling of his brood of inventions. Even Franklin had thought the idea of propelling boats by steam impractical. " Ful- ton's folly" this particular model was called; and we have Fulton's word that while experiments were in progress no one encouraged him by a single hopeful remark. It required a man like Livingston, broad- minded and wealthy to help him out; in addition, the vigorous opposition of a man like Vanderbilt to crystal- lize their combined faith into business sagacity; and, when the time was ripe, a man like Webster to argue before the Supreme Court with an eloquence that re- leased " every creek and river, every lake and harbor " from the monopoly they held so long. Morse the artist was earliest president of the Ameri- can Academy of Design. Morse the inventor worked in the growing solitude of his studio while dust gath- ered upon his canvases. For economy's sake he ate and cooked and slept in the narrow space that housed his inspiration, which was, to link by the mysterious " electro-magnetic " force that had been tamed to run THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 477 along a wire, those lines of signal posts from which messages had long been sent laboriously, letter by letter. Twelve years of his life went into making the vision a reality, while his friends believed him mad and his family faced the possibility of putting him under re- straint. It took three years of labor to achieve a working model. Two years later, in 1837, he received his first patent. Then followed five years of besieging Congress for money with which to build a practical line. Granted finally in the closing hours of a session, it was ridiculed to the last by scoffers who recommended that half of it be spent on experiments with mesmerism, or denounced the whole scheme as a manifest fraud be- cause the dot and dash alphabet could only be under- stood by one versed in Pottawotomi. After that came two years' exciting battle with cir- cumstances. Twenty-seven thousand dollars of the precious $30,000 allowed by Congress went into the ground in vain experiments at laying wires in lead pipes. When this was found to be impractical, Morse told his superintendent of construction that the public must never know of the failure ; and the superintendent, being loyal and clever, broke the great plow used in the work. Newspapers dilated on the " accident " and the time necessary for repairs, while Morse in despair snatched at the brief respite to cudgel his brains for some substitute. Finding none he. was forced to adopt the poles that he had distrusted and rejected early in his experiments. But the line was finished; and the first message it carried, " What hath God wrought ! " had the old Puritan ring. It was at once a psean of victory and a sglemn hymn of praise shortened to " telegraphese." Inventions such as these turned poetry to practical uses with a vigor that smacked of impiety. Men 478 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING grasped eagerly after the " practical " benefits they brought, but were shocked at the clear thinking and dis- regard of precedent that inevitably followed. Willing to be cured of diseases, or to take short cuts through time and space, their eyes were holden to the new heavens and new earth visibly unrolled before their eyes. This was what might have been expected, for the school of experience is thorough. They were going too fast; and lessons slurred over have to be learned later in painful review. The nation had profited by many truths in its advanced course in politics and sociology, but one fundamental fact had been glanced at askance and hurried by in the hope that through some miracle, it might cease to exist when the time came to open the book at that spot and hunt for it. In the important matter of slavery, the country, as Henry Wilson so graphically put it, " attempted the impossible feat of moving at once in opposite direc- tions." Slavery had been with us from the first. A year before that Christmas season of 1620 when the Mayflower landed its Pilgrims, a Dutch slaver sailed up the James River with its load of evil omen, and the twenty black wretches in its hold slipped unnamed and dumb into the life of the people, to wield an influence greater than that exercised by the later comers, whose names are remembered and revered. Little heed was paid to them, for slavery was found the world over, in savagery and civilization. The Bible recognized it; and God-fearing seekers after righteousness, like the worthies of. Connecticut who felt constrained to reject the jury system because there was no warrant for it in the laws of Moses, had little THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 479 difficulty in accepting a practice as old as history and so advantageous to thrift. The Crown encouraged it. Colonists both North and South were offenders. Newport became a flourishing slave mart, and Yankee commerce and shipping profited quite as much as Southern agriculture. There were over half a million bondmen on our free soil when the framers of the Con- stitution came together. These statesmen recognized the grim anomaly, but the need for harmony was paramount, and they felt unable to deal with it in the drastic manner it deserved. Whether slaves were to be considered at all in the representation in Congress; whether importation of Africans should be encouraged or prohibited; and what must be done with fugitive slaves, were questions around which the compromises of the Constitution re- volved. A program of conciliation seemed best, and where that was impossible one of discreet silence. The makers of the Constitution hoped to accomplish by atrophy what they feared to undertake by ampu- tation. They were silent even as to its name, feeling it an evil, and shunned the very word, referring to the oppressed class as " persons held to service or labor." They rejoiced that there was a decided and apparently growing sentiment against it, and hoped that their provision for ending the trade In slaves from Africa after 1809, and taxing it meanwhile, would bring about its ultimate end. Six years later the invention of Eli Whitney's cotton gin struck the knell of that hope, rousing slavery from the coma they had sincerely regarded as the be- ginning of its death. From that moment its peaceful extinction receded into the distance. More and more excuses were made for it. For a time the question of 48o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING its morality disappeared from view. It was first as- sumed to be a necessity, then asserted and believed to be a positive blessing. Later the right or wrong in- herent in it again came under discussion and the old Prophet's cry, " Repent ye ! " rang through the country from end to end; but for years only its economic and political aspects interested society. It had long been known that the soil of the South could produce excellent cotton, but the labor of sepa- rating the fibers from the seed was too great to make it a profitable crop. A negro woman working the en- tire day could clean only a single pound. With this newly invented machine, a slave by turning a crank prepared fifty times as much in the same number of hours. Only one thing could happen. There was an immense rise in the value of cotton lands, and a great increase in the demand for slave labor. During the fifteen years that intervened between Whitney's inven- tion and the day when the slave trade ceased by law, thousands of captives w^ere brought into the country from Africa, while the purchase of Louisiana added 30,000 more slaves to the South as well as a vast territory. This removed slavery from the old patriarchal re- lation of master and servant as members of one household to that of callous business in which the slave was merely an animal whose work and profit were to be calculated like those of the cattle whose labors he shared. His hours of toil were fifteen or sixteen out of the twenty-four. The estimated cost of his food for a year was $7.50. A like trivial amount covered his clothing and his blanket, and the sacks he used in picking cotton. An easy sum explains why the early hope of slavery's extinction vanished, and how money- lust gradually dulled or obliterated the sense of right THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 481 In Virginia in 1790 the price of a field hand was $250. In i860 it had increased to $1600. By that time one third of the population of the South was slave, though only about one white man in twenty was a slave owner. The system created social dis- tinctions unknown elsewhere in America. The slave- owners were an aristocracy blessed with wealth and cursed with the idleness wherein Satan finds his choicest opportunities. They " did not vex themselves with the harassing cares of commerce, nor were they reduced to the necessity of toil. They devoted them- selves to social intercourse, to the cultivation of ele- gant literature and fine oratory," to quote one of them- selves. They gathered into their own hands political and social consequence, ruled despotically over their slaves, and insisted in national politics on the demo- cratic principle of State rights to safeguard them in the exercise of this feudal power. In addition to the aristocrats and their dusky vassals, there was a large class of " poor whites," looked down upon by even the Negroes themselves; and also a small and distrusted element of free blacks. The slaves were more disliked and feared as they grew in number ; partly because their increase made them a race menace, partly because of the viciousness in human nature which makes a man want to kick the fellow man he bullies when he can not kick back. Mrs. Trollope, with her strong preference for the comforts of England, felt happy and at her ease under the ministrations of the slaves of the South. Nowhere else in America did she find domestic service of a kind to be endured. But she deplored the effect of the sys- tem on the masters. She " could not but think that the citizens of the United States had contrived by their political alchemy to extract all that was most noxious 482 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING both in democracy and slavery, and had poured the strange mixture through every vein of the moral or- ganization of their country." From worst to best the possibilities of the system were wide. There were pampered house servants in plenty, and touching and beautiful friendships between masters and dependents whose dark skins condemned them to servitude. But for scores of these there were thousands driven to the fields in herds, whose patience and tractability speak more eloquently for their loyalty than for their intelligence. The fear of slave insurrec- tion under which the masters lived seems to have been a mirage of their own guilty consciences, for the few attempts of this kind serve only to emphasize their rarity. Yet laws for the two races were notoriously unequal. An Englishman who visited South Carolina about 1830 wrote that " until recently " there had been seventy-one crimes for which slaves paid with their lives, for which the severest punishment meted out to whites was im- prisonment in the penitentiary. The only severe laws controlling whites in their dealings with blacks were those against educating these profitable dependents out of sheep-like acquiescence in their fate. Intelligence might bode ill to their oppressors; so the penalty for teaching a slave to read was very heavy. In some States even free Negroes could not be educated. They were, indeed, particularly feared, the fact of their being free arguing more brains or greater thrift and therefore greater possibilities of danger. Under the laws of South Carolina free Negroes who once left the State could not return; nor could such un- desirable citizens enter from another State; while if brought by ship they must be detained in jail at the cost of the captain until his vessel put to sea again. THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 483 Economically slavery was to the South like some high- power explosive, — immensely valuable and potentially most dangerous. Politically it v^as also valuable, and as events proved even more explosive. The fact that each State was entitled to two votes in the United States Senate made the relative number of free and slave States a matter of great political importance. It was about that cen- tral fact that the political battle raged. The Ordinance of 1787 made United States territory north of the Ohio River forever free. That little was heard of slavery in national politics and that there was a practi- cal balance of power between the two sections up to 1820, was due to the chance that the eight new States entering the Union during that time lay four to the south and four to the north of the Ohio, and that they happened to be admitted in nearly alternate order, so that neither side gained any marked advantage. There were eleven slaveholding and eleven non- slaveholding States at the time Missouri desired ad- mittance with slavery. It was known that Arkansas had hopes of the same kind. This prospective gain by the South of four votes in the Senate roused the North, heretofore quiescent if not indifferent, to an animated discussion of slavery's moral status. Ex- tremists argued that it ought to be restricted in both Missouri and Arkansas. Radical Southerners con- tended that Congress had no right to impose restric- tions of this kind on new States, and fell back on an old threat of disunion that had already done service for both North and South. Hot debates in Congress and among the people re- sulted in a plan of compromise, — a proposal to settle the dispute by dividing Federal territory arbitrarily at the line of 36° 3c/, and permitting slavery to the 484 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING south of it but forbidding it to the north, except in the case of Missouri, which was to be allowed to enter the Union as a slave State, though it lay entirely north of this line. This was the famous Missouri Compro- mise. Henry Clay made it his own during the two years it was before the people, and gained thereby his greatest reputation. Attached to a bill to admit Maine as a free State, it became a law in March, 1820, and the final trial of strength was postponed forty years. But these proved to be years of increasing unrest. Although the balance of power in the Senate was kept for a time by admitting new States in couples, a free State and a slave State on the same day, the moral question was not allowed to lapse. In the furor for reform that gained headway soon after the Missouri Compromise, so grave a matter as this of slavery in a free country could not fail to attract attention. That season of agitation in behalf of the poor and oppressed strengthened the inborn convictions of those opposed to slavery, and their denunciations added materially to the bitterness of those who thought their rights as- sailed. Each side advanced to more radical ground. Then came the movem.ent for Nullification in 1832, adding patriotic indignation on the part of the North. The South's need for new territory out of which to make more slave States, forced the annexation of Texas and brought on the Mexican War. But the very territory wrested from Mexico introduced irritating slavery questions of its own. Whether the line of 36° 30' applied to this new acquisition, or only to regions under Federal control at the time the Com- promise measure was passed, could be vigorously argued on both sides. Mexican law prohibited slavery. It was easy to declare that void; but when the lapse of years and unforeseen conditions in California ex- THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 485 hausted slave territory while there yet remained stretches out of which free States might be made, the South began a determined effort to repeal the Missouri Compromise and throw open to slavery all United States territory wherever located. This was success- ful, but opposition to it brought on the Civil War. Abolition societies had existed before the Constitu- tion, but they had little political importance up to the date of the Missouri Compromise, and even after it. While slavery was regarded as a question of labor rather than of morals, instinctive feeling against it spent itself in efforts to palliate the evil, not to remove it. Such was the object of the national society for colonizing Negroes in Africa that was formed in 1816 at a meeting over which Henry Clay presided. Madi- son became its president and Henry Clay its vice-presi- dent. Chief Justice Marshall was a member. Jeffer- son favored it. So did John Randolph, for the char- acteristic reason that it was meant for free Negroes, and by taking these dangerous firebrands out of the country would in the long run secure property in slaves. For fifty years it enlisted the interest of many brilliant minds, some for reasons quite the opposite of those urged by Randolph; but it failed at any time to win the confidence of the Negroes themselves. The less enterprising did not even know of its existence and some of the most intelligent shared Randolph's view. A national convention of colored men in Phila- delphia in 1 83 1 addressed the members of the Coloniza- tion Society in a petition respectful in form, but flatly suggesting that it was " pursuing the direct road to perpetuate slavery with all its unchristian con(:omitants in this boasted land of freedom; and as citizens and men whose best blood is sapped to gain popularity for that institution we would in the most feeling manner 486 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING beg of them to desist; or, if we must be sacrificed to their philanthropy, we would rather die at home." A scheme which might have worked to the good of all, and ended slavery without the horrors of civil war, if passions could only have been held in leash, was that for gradual emancipation, credited by his admirers to Thomas Jefferson. But Providence willed otherwise. And, as Lincoln, greatest of the prophets and martyrs of the years that lay just ahead, admonished his coun- trymen in the solemn words of his second inaugural, if God willed that all the wealth piled by the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil should be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn by the lash be paid in another drawn by the sword, " as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said, ' the judg- ments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' " In a general way the militant abolition movement dates from the time of the Nullification excitement. It was then that the prophets' note of warning that had been sounding here and there began to be heard above other notes, and that the missionary impulse gained a force which threw prudence to the winds, and under the motto inscribed on Garrison's paper the " Libera- tor," " Duty is ours, Consequences are God's," began its active crusade, — a crusade in which it must be ad- mitted the wishes of the Lord and the works of the Evil One were at times hopelessly confused. Anti- slavery societies increased at a prodigious rate between 1835 and 1840, and the words and acts of their mem- bers began to sting like scorpions. In spite of this such agitation was deplored both North and South and once again it was proved that prophets are without honor in their own country. The first marked result was to rouse in the North resentment and a feeling of hostility against the col- THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 487 ored people themselves. Indeed, the Negro as an indi- vidual had been steadily losing favor through all the years that his cause gained in importance. When Lafayette, who belonged in France to a society called " Les Amis des Noirs " and early applied for member- ship in one of our own abolition societies, returned to the United States he was astounded at the race preju- dice that had developed between his visits. At the time of the Revolution free Negroes had been allowed to vote in New Jersey and in North Carolina; and he remembered that they fought gallantly at Lexington, and that white and black soldiers used to mess together in utmost friendliness. After the manner of reformers, the abolitionists were more zealous than diplomatic, and their willingness to match words with deeds shocked their conservative neighbors. Often when they were merely trying to follow the Golden Rule at great inconvenience to them- selves, they were accused of a wanton desire for the most intimate relationships. Anger roused a super- sensitiveness that found expression in divers and often turbulent ways. In 1835 Garrison was mobbed and hustled through the streets of Boston with a halter round his neck. Whittier was stoned. For the crime of admitting a colored girl to her school in the free State of Connecticut, Prudence Crandall, who acted in utter disaccord with her name, was imprisoned in a cell from which a murderer had just been led to execu- tion. Tried three times, her case was not decided upon its merits, but finally quashed for informality. Her brother meanwhile spent eight months in a Wash- ington jail on the charge of giving an antislavery paper to a man who had asked for it. Webster complained with bitterness that there was no North; that resistance to demands of the South 488 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING was overborne by Northern men. Feeling grew until mob violence ceased to be new or startling. In 1841 Cincinnati, which some one called " a conquered province of Kentucky," was for two days under con- trol of rioters ; the cause of the disturbance being an abolition paper called the " Philanthropist." After the publication of Dr. Channing's book on slavery, South Carolinians declared that if he should enter that State at the head of 20,000 men he would never get out alive. Handbills and lithographs were sent to abolitionists showing them hanging from the gallows, and offering rewards for the heads or ears of such disturbers of the peace. The murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy at Alton, Illinois, in November, 1837; the oath of his brother Owen be- side his dead body to further the cause in which he had lost his life; riots and burning in Boston and Philadelphia and Cincinnati, were the serious side of feeling that found a quaint expression in the Native American newspapers that scored Forrest the actor for playing Othello. One of these asserted that if caught, Shakespeare would deserve lynching. Whether the editor imagined him a contemporary is not clear. The " Gladiator," a play in which slaves successfully revolt, came under condemnation, Forrest was warned not to act the character of Spartacus a second time. Even John Quincy Adams astonished Fanny Kemble as he sat beside her at dinner by breaking out in expres- sions of sincere disgust at Desdemona ; whose mis- fortunes, he said, were nothing more than she deserved, — a just judgment upon her for marrying a " nigger." Adams had never identified himself with the anti- slavery men. He thought the colonization scheme more impractical than casting nativities by the stars, and said that if the Almighty wanted to get rid of iSgi, by M. P. Rice ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 489 slavery He would find better means than either the colonization or the abolition societies. Yet he fully realized the magnitude and the menace of slavery. No one attentive to the progress of our history, he wrote in December, 1838, could fail to see that in the silent lapse of time slavery had been winding its cob- web thread around all our free institutions; and his fight against the passage of a " gag " law in Congress designed to make it impossible to consider petitions on the subject, was one of the stirring achievements of his later years, for which he was accused of conspir- ing with British abolitionists and threatened with ex- pulsion. The issue was bigger than men ; it compelled them to take sides. Congress seethed with feeling. In the House an hour came while Giddings of Ohio was speaking when a colleague from Georgia questioned him; he re- plied; the Georgian threatened to knock him down if he repeated certain words; he did repeat them, and while the bellicose Georgian was being borne from the hall by his friends, a fire-eater from Louisiana with a cocked pistol took his place, threatening to shoot. A friend of Giddings placed himself opposite the Lou- isianian, his hand conveniently near his concealed wea- pon. Members from the Democratic side took posi- tions near the Southerner, each with his hand in his pocket, while New Englanders lined up on the other side, and " thus confronted and thus supported, Gid- dings continued his speech to the end." If there was a crevice of weakness or inconsistency in a man's nature, slavery found it out. Personal feel- ing about it made strange political fellowships, and in- dividuals changed sides upon it most unexpectedly. They either succumbed to its insidious poison or joined the chorus of denunciation. They could not stand 490 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING still. Usually men became cautious as they grew older and wished to drop discussion and if possible to let sleeping dogs lie. There are few instances more pathetically dramatic than the last great debate in which the three congres- sional giants, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, took part. It occurred in 1850 at the time California was ad- mitted to the Union. Part of this new State lay below the line of 36° 30", but the argonauts who had peopled it so suddenly were not of a sort that took kindly to slavery or its doctrines. There were already fifteen free and fifteen slave States. To admit Cali- fornia free would break the balance of power, and the South protested quite as vigorously as the North had done when Missouri entered. It seemed that the peo- ple were ready to fly at one another's throats. Clay had quieted a similar disturbance in 1820. He was besought to exercise his great influence again. He was now an old man and had retired from the Senate seven years before; but to meet this crisis he was re- elected, and shortly after his return, rose to offer a " comprehensive plan " for adjusting the difficulty. He proposed that California be admitted as it wished without slavery; that the rest of the land acquired from Mexico be divided into two territories in which slavery should be neither authorized nor forbidden, presumably leaving the old Mexican law in force. That the slave trade be forbidden in the District of Columbia, but that slavery as an institution be per- mitted there. That Texas receive $10,000,000 for the adjustment of her state boundaries. Finally, that a new and much stricter fugitive slave law be enacted. The compromises of the Constitution had been mutual concessions necessary that the people might learn to live and work together; they endured thirty ■ THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 491 and three years ; those upon which Clay had staked the reputation of vigorous manhood lasted thirty years, but proved like the half-hearted measures of the Colo- nization Society, only a postponing of final decision. These of his old age were meant to hush discussion for all time. They only lasted three years, instead of thirty. Neither side was pleased by them, which is perhaps the best evidence that they were as truly a compromise as that heated subject and time could af- ford. After allowing a week for this plan of his to filter through the minds of the people, Clay supported it in a speech that continued for two days. He seemed feeble when he rose to begin ; he was so feeble in fact that he had asked a friend's assistance in mounting the long flight of steps that led to the Senate chamber ; but he would not listen to the sug- gestion that he defer his speech. The country was in danger. H anything he could say might avert it, his health, even his life, was of little consequence. As he proceeded his voice gained in strength and his audience succumbed once more to his old eloquence and charm. But it was pathetically evident that in thus summoning back old energy he was making an effort of will over failing powers, for which his life might indeed be the forfeit. In the debate that followed Calhoun opposed him. He was opposed to giving in to the North on any point whatever. He too was feeble ; his death was to occur within the month. He was already too ill to speak. What he had to say was read to the Senate by his friend Mason of Virginia, while he sat by, pale as a statue, the mark of death visibly upon him, but with burning eyes that flashed in feverish haste from face to face to read the effect of his words as they fell from the lips of another. 492 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING On the /th of March, Webster, the last of the great triumvirate, spoke in his turn, and to many his speech was the most pathetic of all, for it seemed to his anti- slavery friends to show not failing bodily or mental powers, but how far the corroding effects of slavery had eaten into his New England spirit. " I speak to- day for the preservation of the Union, hear me for my cause," he said, and went on to plead for com- promise ; to admit that slave labor was necessary to the South ; to imply that slavery had changed from the curse it had once been into a blessing, religious, social, and moral; that the age of cotton had become the golden age of the South. It was a powerful speech, one of his greatest, but it " fell heavy " on many hearts. He was denounced as one who had placed himself in the " dark list of apostates," a " rec- reant son of Massachusetts who misrepresented her in the Senate," and compared to Benedict Arnold. On the other hand, the patriots who feared strife and still wished to throttle discussion, crowded his mail with letters of appreciation. "If Washington had risen from his tomb and addressed the Senate he would have uttered the words of your speech," wrote one of them. Although Clay's plan at first pleased neither side, each thinking that the other gained too much, there was a sincere desire in all sections to end contention, and the law was passed. Its friends rejoiced in it as a " finality." Calhoun died before it became a law. Two years later Clay and Webster followed him. If either hoped to gain the Presidency by means of it, Death intervened. Their places in the Senate and in the public eye were speedily filled by new leaders. The country settled itself to an honest attempt to consider other matters, but the old question would not down. THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 493 The contest in Congress, and the death of the men so long prominent as leaders, had shaken and demoral- ized both political parties. A considerable portion of the Democrats rallied round an .entirely new man, Stephen A. Douglas, whose partizans were blatant against " Old fogies " and clamorous that " Young America " be given the reins of power. The Whigs who had begun their party career as *' Clay's Infant School " and had grown old with him, remained loyal as an organization to this last compromise of his, but as individuals found that they could not honestly reconcile it with their sense of right. Those whose sympathies leaned towards the South allied themselves with the Democrats; the antislavery elements in both camps flowed together into a new free-soil organiza- tion; and the Whig party was dead. "Died of an effort to swallow the Fugitive Slave Law," was the epitaph suggested for it. The Fugitive Slave Law was harsh indeed; but it is notorious that injustice and misery in the abstract make little appeal to individual men and women, though single tragedies can fire the mass of people with avenging energy. Even a telling bit of fiction may exert more influence than a hundred authentic cases considered together. From this comes the world-old habit of teaching by parable. A parable called " Uncle Tom's Cabin," written by a young woman and printed as a serial story in a newspaper in 1852, had no little part in firing indignation against this new Fugitive Slave Law. The lash and the sundering of families were unlovely details that the advocates of slavery could not deny ; and this story set them forth in a way that gripped the imagination. Even Southerners themselves could not face un- moved concrete instances of the working of their sys- 494 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING tern. John Randolph was once asked by a young man, who was the greatest orator he had ever heard, his questioner meaning to draw out reminiscences of Patrick Henry. To his amazement Randolph an- swered : " The greatest orator I ever heard was a woman. She was a slave. She was a mother, and her rostrum was the auction block," and rising he imitated the tones and pathos with which this woman appealed from law to the innate justice of the bystand- ers, and the scorching words of indignation with which she finally denounced them. " There was eloquence! " he said. " I have heard no man speak like that. It was overpowering," and he sat down as though over- come himself by the recollection. Then, as if fearing that he had expressed himself too freely to a North- erner, he entered upon an explanation and defense of the policy of the South. Every free-state sympathizer in the North, man, woman or child, knew by actual experience or by hearsay of just such instances as this. Genuine stories that were typical became almost as widely and pas- sionately familiar as the imaginary woes of Uncle Tom. There was the Edmonston family, " educated, religious, and refined, and valued in the market at $15,000." And Emily Russell, the quadroon girl who was sent South with a coffle gang, her ransom for any reasonable sum having been refused for the sinister reason that she was " the most beautiful woman in the country." Fortunately she died ; and her poor old mother learning of her death broke out, not in lamenta- tion, but in praise to the Lord who had heard her prayer at last. Many who lived near the border talked with and fed and passed on to their next good friend the shiver- ing wretches who came to them in the dead of night THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 495 by means of grapevine telegraph and underground rail- way; and after passing them on rejoiced to hear no news of them, for in this case no news was good news and meant probable escape. Sometimes such white sympathizers were forced to witness and actively assist in returning the miserable fugitives to bondage. The new law required citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves whether they liked it or not, and did not even allow the Negro to testify in his own defense. Sometimes the men en- gaged in such efforts at helping Negroes to freedom were cast into prison for " slave stealing " and suffered even to death. Happenings like these did not tend to break the spirit that had made Garrison's " Liberator '' a factor in American history, though the paper had been started without funds and even without the promise of a single subscriber. The new Fugitive Slave Law was a subject that rent the churches- Theodore Parker said th'at for two weeks he wrote his sermons " with a sword in the open drawer under the inkstand, and a pistol in the flap of the desk loaded and ready." Anti-manhunting leagues were formed to which octogenarians and young enthusiasts alike belonged. They carried no firearms, but met to practise a sort of jiu-jitsu drill for their self-imposed mission. " First persuasion, then force," was their motto. H it came to the latter they proposed to seize and hurry away the man who would not be persuaded. Each member had his work assigned him, " even to the particular limb to which he should devote his atten- tion." The inflammable South meanwhile was not quiet. It demanded more and more, and set about the repeal of the Missouri Compromise under the leadership of that champion of Young America and of " progress," 496 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Douglas, upon whose shoulders frayed and trailing remnants of the mantle of Clay's popularity had de- scended. He was wonderfully effective, a shrewd speaker of untiring energy, whose audacity was matched only by his ambition. He was so zealous a believer in " manifest destiny " and in the Monroe Doctrine that he desired, so the papers averred, to have the Caribbean Sea declared an American lake. Although still comparatively young his convictions on slavery had already undergone marked changes. In 1849, he described the Missouri Compromise as " can- nonized in the hearts of the American People " ; "a sacred thing which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb " ; but in a few years he came to a point where he regarded it as only a matter for local police regulation. In 1854, mainly through his efforts, the bill to organize the two territories of Kansas and Nebraska, both of which lay north of 2,6° 30', leaving the question* of slavery in them to be decided by what Douglas called squatter sovereignty, the vote of their own people, was passed by Congress and signed by President Pierce. At once smoldering resentment of the new Fugitive Slave Law, which after all had been obeyed in the main, and indignation at such wholesale retrogression in principle blazed out anew; for the effect of the bill was to repeal the Missouri Compromise and open all the territory of the vast Northwest to slavery. In the excitement that followed, it was found that the Prophet's cry of warning had been heeded even where most resented. That slave pen within sight of the Capitol, crowned with its gracious figure of Liberty, had been accepted heretofore as a matter of course; now it had become a mockery too bitter to endure. Once again the mandate, " Choose ye this day whom THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 497 ye will serve ! " thundered imperative and clear. Once again the great question hurried men off their old footing on to new ground. In this new crisis freedom, like slavery, found its foremost champion in the State of Illinois, but in a man the opposite of Douglas, physically and mentally. Douglas w^as short and thick-set and aggressive. The figure and character of Lincoln, we know as we know those of no other public man. Like Clay, Lincoln had opposed slavery where slavery was popular in the days of his ambitious adolescence. Unlike Clay, he firmly opposed it in the day of his power. He was already a state leader. In his one term in Congress during the Mexican War he had voted forty times for the Wilmot Proviso and he had introduced a bill to rid the national capital of that crying scandal, the slave pen. At the end of his term he had returned to Illinois, where in his growing interest in the practice of law, politics almost faded from his mind. But the repeal of the Missouri Compromise " roused him as he had never been before." A young man who was after- ward to live in the closest touch with him during years of stress, had his first sight of him at the moment when quivering with excitement, Lincoln burst into the office of his friend and neighbor, Milton Hay, waving a newspaper and exclaiming, " This will never do ! Douglas treats it as a matter of indifference mor- ally whether slavery is voted down or voted up. I tell you it will never* do! " When the militant in spirit and young in years gathered in the Bloomington convention of May, 1856, where the Republican party of Illinois came into being, Lincoln, teacher and prophet, predestined leader and martyr, immovable in the granite of his stern moral 498 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING convictions, stood upon the platform and made that ringing " lost " speech of his, an utterance so inspired that even practical reporters forgot their duty and let the eloquent words escape. Lincoln himself could never recall what he said; but those who listened, and who saw his rugged face transfigured by emotion, never forgot the hour. Later he supplied cold logic in addition to magnetic enthusiasm, opposing the clever word-juggling of Douglas with relentless reasoning to pierce his casuistry. Events followed thick and fast. The clash between Southern ambition and free-state feeling soon brought about actual civil war in Kansas, where one after an- other four Democratic governors with a strong bias toward slavery, turned free-state advocates in spite of personal advantage and party loyalty. Men who had withstood the beguilement of Nullifi- cation cast their fortunes with the South. Howell Cobb, who had been against disunion in 1832, became an arch conspirator in the cabinet of Buchanan. Jef- ferson Davis, who had asked indignantly in the Senate if that chamber was " to be the hotbed in which plants of sedition were to be nursed," and as secretary of war had declared that rebellion must be crushed, was hurried along the road that was to bring him to leader- ship of a great rebellion. Oregon in the far Northwest, swinging pendulum fashion as far as it could go without adopting slavery, entered the Union as a free State but with laws more severe against Negroes than those of the South, for there was not a slave State in which a free Negro could not sue in court. In 1857 the United States Supreme Court rendered its decision in the Dred Scott case, affirming that Negroes had no rights the white man was bound to respect. In 1858 the great Lincoln- THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 499 Douglas debates took place, in which Douglas gained a senatorship and lost the presidency, goal of his ambi- tion as it had been of Clay's. His antagonist, uncon- scious of destiny and unshaken by defeat, rejoiced that he had been able " to make some marks " which would tell for the cause of civil liberty, and resolved to fight in the ranks in the political campaign of i860. In 1859 occurred the John Brown raid with its useless sacrifice of lives and its train of tragic after- events that served the purpose of expiatory justice, — and more ; for the song, " John Brown's Body," im- provised by the Massachusetts 12th in Boston Harbor, grew into an emotional and far-reaching force. Finally, in i860 the Republican convention gathered in the Wigwam at Chicago and nominated for Presi- dent the man who had expected to fight in the ranks, — Lincoln, with the heart of gold and the sense of right that only pity could make swerve a hair's breadth from strict justice. Providence willed that he was to carry the sorrows of a nation upon his sorrowing spirit through four bitter years of war ; and that through his act the tragedy of slavery should come to its end. CHAPTER XXIII THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS WHEN kindly Harriet Martineau was in this country about 1833 working with bee-like industry to gather material for her book, " Society in America," almost every man of note marched up and placed himself at the end of her ear- trumpet. Commendable gallantry, urged on by curi- osity, prompted this obliging readiness, for a live au- thoress was not often to be met with in the United States of those days. But the good lady was more earliest than sprightly, and it is to be feared that some of the gentlemen lived to regret their politeness. One citizen of Cincinnati, — " one of the noblest citizens," she assures us, — writhed impaled while she prosed on in eulogy of his raw little town as a dwelling place for the ambitious and the philanthropic, until at last he got a chance to answer : " Yes, we have a new creation going on here. Won't you come and dabble in the mud? " " Mud " there was in abundance during those forma- tive years, but the mud had a quality all its own. Our new political creation differed, even in its materials, from others about whose beginnings records have been kept. When it became Ex-President Madison's turn to approach Miss Martineau's ear-trumpet, he explained this difference by telling her that the United States had been created " to prove to the world things here- tofore held to be impossible." 500 THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 501 America has indeed been a place of experiment ever since its discovery flung a challenge to the discontented whisper already running through hovel and palace of the old world, the insistent, disturbing question whether common people had not a right to a voice in their own affairs. Men willing to sacrifice all they owned to learn the answer took up the challenge. Women akin to them in spirit were not wanting; and so it came about that this portion of North America was settled by a class radically different to those who went forth where hunger or lust of conquest were im- pelling forces. Unworthy motives were by no means absent; but, broadly speaking, the best impulses of humanity rather than the worst inspired its coloniza- tion. A large proportion of the settlers crossed the ocean for the privilege of doing their own thinking on one subject or another. During the colonial period the injustice of arbitrary taxation roused loyal subjects of the British King to protest and then to revolt. After they had gained their independence the relation of the newly formed nation to its component parts, — State Rights, — and later still the rights of the indi- vidual tangled in the tragic question of slavery, occu- pied them with ever-increasing intensity until the Civil War. Since then one or more such questions has been with us in varying form. Lately we have been face to face with the wrongs of the commercially op- pressed. Our whole national, intellectual life might be summed up by saying that it began with insistence on the Rights of Man and has now reached considera- tion of the Rights of Men. In other words, side by side with the " mud " inseparable from opening up and settling a new country, great and purely moral ques- tions have occupied our people, who have alwa.ys 502 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING craved and always had such problems on which to whet their minds and their courage. It has been said that the United States became a nation in spite of themselves, because up to the point of actual rebellion, the colonists had no thought of changing allegiance. But they came of fighting stock; and after town meetings had changed imperceptibly but inevitably into continental armies, they fought as they had argued, with such whole-hearted earnestness that in the end they found themselves free when they had only meant to be rationally governed. Whether the unexpected outcome be looked upon as the largess of Providence, or only a sarcastic renewal by Fate of that challenge flung to the masses when the New World was discovered, depends upon the mental angle of the observer. Circumstances working upon human nature form the dynamo of history. After seven years of fighting, although waters three weeks wide rolled between Americans and their former allegiance, they were only at the threshold of their real* struggle. They had boasted that they meant to be a new and specially righteous nation. Instant proof was demanded. And the proof required of them was a sacrifice of the first-fruits of victory, — that they give up a portion of their newly won liberty for the common good. All told they were only a handful on the edge of an unexplored continent, — in numbers less than are gath- ered now under the roofs of our largest town. They were scattered far and wide in helpless little groups, divided by leagues of wilderness; a wilderness not even comfortably empty, but alive with savages who came and went like shadows, who barely tolerated the set- tlers when friendly, and when angered were enemies more to be dreaded than wild beasts. Behind these THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 503 mysterious deadly people stretched cordons of white men far from friendly. Spaniards to the south of them; French along the Mississippi River; their own blood-brothers in Canada. More disquieting than any or all of these was their own division of interest. No longer colonies, they had not yet become states; but they were already hemmed in by sectional needs and prejudices. A South and an East had long existed. A West was be- ginning to make itself heard; and the citizens of one section had difficulty in understanding the others. Even Washington, for all his breadth of view, is reported to have said to General Lincoln : " We know what we Virginians have been fighting for, with our fine farms and climate. But can you tell what it is that you New Englanders have fought for, with your cold and barren lands? " " Yes," the other answered with some asperity, " for the liberty of using our heads and our hands." With Washington as President, the new Govern- ment took up its work. The half century that "fol- lowed falls naturally into three divisions, not unlike those in the unfolding life of an individual. They might be called the years of Consciousness, of Growth, and of Conscience. During the first, which ended with the signing of the treaty of Ghent in 1814, the country was engaged m establishing its relations with the outside world. De- tails of domestic adjustment, engrossing as they were, fade historically into insignificance before questions of international import. In the next period questions of foreign policy gave way to the demands of national growth and develop- ment. Manufactures gained upon and overtook agri- culture. Domestic commerce grew to overshadow 504 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING foreign trade. Exploration and annexation brought vast tracts under the potent young flag. Invention took a long step forward, opening a new chapter, not only in American history but in the habits of the whole civilized world. Far reaching as these changes proved to be, they were inspired primarily by home needs. With the egotism of youth the country was interested mainly in itself; was voicing its own desires, and vaunting and testing its own lusty strength. As in the case of a growing lad, moral development went on silently with the physical and when the time was ripe, suddenly and imperatively claimed attention. The absorbing questions of the third period, differing radically from those that preceded them, came upon the country before it knew it and engrossed it com- pletely. It is curious to note how strands of varied and purely material interests braided and wove themselves into one great moral issue which dominated the ten years preceding the War of the Rebellion. Develop- ment of machinery, invented merely to manufacture cotton, led by devious but clearly traceable ways to the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico. Dis- covery of gold in California sent a large and eager part of the population sweeping across the continent in a mad rush. Though a rush primarily after gold, it was in truth more; it was a test of endurance and a strengthener of character. In that rough battle with fortune artificial barriers crumbled. Right might as- sert itself in uncouth form, but wrong could not mas- querade as right under shelter of convention. Possession of Aladdin caves of treasure gave the country the comfortable assurance that it was rich. But with this assurance grew the feeling of noblesse oblige, the conviction that it could not only afford THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 505 but was in duty bound to take thought for the things of the spirit. The invention of the Hoe press led, about the same time, to the formation of the Press Association with hitherto undreamed of facihties for spreading a gospel. Discoveries in science fostered inherited tendencies to think bravely and truly along new lines. These in turn led back to the truth, lost and rediscovered time and again, that there is no es- cape from moral obligations. And all together con- spired to let loose that mighty flight of words for and against slavery that brought about the purging cata- clysm of civil war. The leaders of the three periods were as different as the issues they upheld. In the first period they were a group of gentlemen of fortune and position, essen- tially English in birth and training; who wore the lace ruffles and many of the prejudices of Europe. They revolted, not from hatred of England, or of monarchy, but from loyalty to an idea. Their foothold was only a narrow strip of land between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic. Standing firmly on this, with their backs to a wilderness, they looked regretfully eastward across the sea toward " home " and everything they had been taught to value, — everything, that is, except liberty. At the opening of the second period the frontier had already passed the barrier of the Alleghanies and was pushing toward the center of the continent. Before it came to an end the frontier had reached the desert, had leapt that again, and established a rude but virile civili- zation on the Pacific coast. The leaders were no longer men of wealth and inherited position. A younger gen- eration was living out ideals for which their elders had cheerfully given up whatever advantages inheritance had brought them. These younger men, especially those across the mountains, faced life under condi- 5o6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING tions of more than theoretical democracy. Mentally and physically a new type of citizen had been created. They and their followers looked toward the West rather than toward the East. Some of them, dazzled by the rapidly unfolding vision of national greatness, cher- ished a contempt for the Old World, which was far from being in the hearts of their elders. More than one of the older leaders had frankly be- lieved that seoner or later our political experiment must end in some form of monarchy. It is hard to conceive a surer means of political suicide, or a shorter road to oblivion, than to breathe such a doubt in the hearing of this generation of aggressively American patriots. In another way also they expressed the democratic change. The leaders of popular thought no longer sat in the Presidential chair. This interval of nearly forty years gave the country only one Presi- dent of strong personality ; and he happened to be a dictator by nature, though a democrat by profession of faith. The real leaders were in Congress. Of the three foremost, one was the popular idol of his day; another the greatest orator the country has produced; the third embodied sectional ambition in a superlative degree. Each wanted desperately to be President, yet not one of them achieved the coveted honor. Malice asserted that they desired it too much, — that even their friends feared they might barter opinion for place. May it not have been instead the working out of an obscure democratic instinct wliich prompted the coun- try to keep them close to itself, instead of setting them apart in an aloofness which even a republic wraps about its chief officer? In the decade between 1850 and i860 the type of leader again changed. The second period had been a carnival of oratory, which furnished at once the THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 507 amusement and intellectual stimulus of the hour. There had been time for long speeches. People flocked to hear debates and listened willingly for hours, even for days at a stretch, to the great leaders or their clever imitators. Early in the third period the greatest leaders died. Even before it began the telegraph had been born; and with the telegraph came impatience of unnecessary words. At the same moment new leaders made their appearance, — men with something less of eloquence, something more of the fanatic in their makeup. In- tellectually they were a reversion toward the standard of the Puritans. They looked neither eastward toward Europe, nor w^estward toward the future, but inward, searching their own consciences for truth. Thus ora- tory suffered a partial eclipse, while the moral question gained in importance, to be argued in a new eloquence made up of fewer words and ever-increasing earnest- ness. These new leaders were to be found neither in the White House nor in Congress. They were scattered among the people ; each at first with only a small fol- lowing and a reputation made up far more of blame than of praise. Some of them were rich, but most of them were poor. Some were criminal in act, if noble in spirit. From such intimate and lowly beginnings their influence grew till it invaded Congress, and flowered at last in Lincoln, to find its culmination and its consecration in the White House. Each of the three periods develops its own climax. That of the first was war with England. In the second period there was war also, but it was only an incident in the unfolding drama; — a pictur- esque incident, whose easy success added one more item to the sum rolling up for final accounting. The 5o8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING real victories of that period were over the powers of earth and air. The continent was measured; elusive forces were harnessed; doors to the wonder-house of the chemical laboratory were thrown open. The cli- max came in a wild orgy of invention and then the rush for Eldorado. The third period opened with the nagging dis- comfort of reawakened conscience. Moral responsi- bility dimmed the luster of new-found gold, and turned the enjoyment of riches to bitterness. The keenest minds spent themselves in futile endeavor to find a plan by which the slavery question could be settled to the liking of all concerned, — some way of reconciling God and Mammon. The Compromises of 1850 were attempted, rejoiced over as a solution, and broken al- most as soon as made. Then came the striking hour of costly retribution. In point of years this period is still very close to us. Our grandfathers and our fathers were the men called upon to work out its problems to their often surprising conclusions; yet already it is so remote from present habits of life and thought that it might be divided from us by centuries instead of having ended, so to speak, day before yesterday. Time is undoubtedly the greatest factor in history. With the lapse of years so many names dwindle to nothingness; so many dates drop out entirely. And Time does such astonishing things with the few that remain, playing with them as a master juggler plays with his balls ; exalting some and abasing others out of all semblance to their original state; changing all suddenly into something else; until finally individuals merge into types, — men and women who may or may not have drawn the breath of life, but who live immor- tal because they embody some force or tendency for THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 509 which battle has been waged, and won or lost, in the course of the world's progress. History in this way takes on an epic quality, — ceases to be mere names and dates and becomes drama. In looking at far distant periods we see only a few bare facts, against a chilly horizon, so bleak and compellingly true that we seek instinctively to clothe them again In human flesh and frailty. To that end it is considered virtuous for history to borrow from archeolog)^ even occasionally to filch from poetry. Coming down through the years facts multiply and the ethics of the game change. A poet's vision is still demanded of the historian, but a poet's license is de- nied him. His task becomes a labor of choice and rejection, principally the latter, — and woe betide him if he choose unwisely. Names and dates, coupled with deeds important or futile, swarm upon the printed page in smaller and ever smaller type as we approach our own day, until just as the vision is blinded, the type suddenly becomes very large again, the page expands to monstrous size, a smell of fresh ink assails our nostrils, and wakes us to the realization that we are reading, not history, but the morning's news which will be history before an- other dawn. The epic quality, — picturesqueness in a story worth the telling, — is perhaps the final and only passport to an enduring place in history. Of the picturesque, American history early had its full share. Viking voyages, for example, seen dimly through mists of the past, as their high-prowed, many-oared boats must have loomed through the fogs of our northern coast upon the eyes of astounded natives. Then the lonely figure of Columbus, grown old and shabby in pur- suit of his magnificent idea, towering over a hand- 5IO OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING fill of mutinous sailors and forcing them on and on over unknown seas to prove him right. And the romance of Spanish conquest in the Southwest with its gallant, high-sounding names, its high animal spirits, its dare-devil bravery and its shocking cruelty. And the no less marvelous if soberer expeditions of black-robed priests from France, who carried loyalty to their God and their King through endless leagues of our wilderness to the portals of death and beyond. These are far enough in the past for Time to have worked his will with them. In comparison all that has happened since seems tame and colorless, even the Revolution with its high ideal of personal and religious liberty ; while the interval between that and the crimson stain of the Civil War, appears a mere jumble of names and dates. Perhaps the most difficult page of history for any generation to read with real sympathy is the one that lies immediately back of its own day, hidden by the shadow that falls forever between new and old. In this eclipse issues once vital look merely commonplace ; modes of thought once startling dull to self-evident truism; the charm of novelty has departed forever from fashions'and manners; and the glamour of the antique has not yet had time to gather in mellowing haze and convert it into a " period " more or less odd and picturesque. Such has been the fate of this period we have been considering; an eclipse in this case rendered doubly dark and doubly lasting because of the great interest of the Revolution that preceded it, and the poignant tragedy that came after. Yet in itself it was a won- derful time, in which a few struggling colonies became welded into a great nation and expanded to fill a vast continent. THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 511 No one can foretell Time's final verdict on this stretch of years. The Master-Juggler works in his own fashion and will not be hurried; but no one can help guessing, and study of it fosters the belief that in picturesqueness it c^n hold its own with any of the centuries that went before. Not only our own peo- ple, but great principles and world-wide movements were involved. Kings and nations of Europe flashed into the story, effectively, if briefly. Napoleon's covetous glance rested a moment upon New World soil and added an empire, not to his own government, but to ours. Japan and China, hermit nations, old and nodding when the States of Europe were in the mak- ing, opened their doors and woke to new life at the friendly, imperative knocking of our young republic. Buccaneers and Barbary pirates and laws of gross injustice connected it with the Middle Ages. The crime of slavery, for which we were to pay later in blood, linked us inexorably with the iniquity of all time. Savages in our own woods brought us face to face with prehistoric man. The spectrum brought us in touch with distant stars, and anesthetics sent us out trustingly upon the edge of that great sea whose farther limit no man. knows. Not content with the mere surface of the earth, the young nation invaded heaven and the deep places of land and sea, and forced them to yield up secrets hidden since the beginning of time. And all this happened in a little over fifty years, — a short time in which to bridge the gulf between an almost archaic past and the America we know to-day. THE END INDEX Abolition movement, 485-9- See Slavery. Adams, Abigail, 8, 26, 33-4, 2>^, 141, 190, 267-8, 280. Adams, Hannah, 267-8. Adams, John, 11-23, 25-33, 27, 41, 63-5, 68, 70, 141, 156, 202, 268, 291-2, 296, 2ii^, 412, 419-20, 434, 441. Adams, John Quincy, 87, 102-3, 128, 130-1, 133-42- 149-51, 153, 155-6, 173, 178, 189, 228, 249, 268, 314, 318, 336, 339, 342, 346, 351, 354-5. 389-90, 407, 418, 454, 488-9. Adams, Louisa Catharine, 140-1, 280-1. Adams, Samuel, 289. Addams, Jane, 269. Alabama, 76, 250, 431. Alamo, 353. Alaska, 384, 401. Alcott, Amos Bronson, 468-9. Alcott, Louisa M., 468. Alien and Sedition Laws, 21, 185, 189. Ampere, Jean Jacques, 210, 215, 284, 2\2, 398-9- Amusements, 193, 195, 211, 213- 20, 298, 428. Andre, Major John, 412. Argall, Samuel, 265. Arizona, 384. Arkansas, 249, 483. Army of the United States, 4, 86, 89-go, 96-102, 111-12, I4S-8, 246, 360-73- Arnold, Benedict, 412, 492. Art, 113-14, 211-13, 221, 275, ^75-7. Articles of Confederation, 3-5, 53- Astor, John Jacob, 248, 385. Austria, 60, 130. Bainbridge, William, 41, 43. Bancroft, George, 459, 464, 466. Banks First Bank of the United States, 85, 125. Second Bank of the United States, 126, 164-8, 339, 341. State Banks, 12$, 168, 340, 343. Tyler's veto of National Bank, 349. Barclay, Robt. H., 95. Barlow, Joel, 458. Barney, Joshua, 100. Barnum, Phineas T., 218-20, Barron, James, 199. Bayard, James A., 103. Bennett, James Gordon, 454-S, 458, 461. Berkeley, William, 316. Blackhawk, 258-9. Blair, Francis P., 160. Blanchet, Francis Norbert, Father, 388. Blennerhasset, Harman, 71-2, 73-5- Blitz, Antonio, 218. Boone, Daniel, 114-17, 162, 246, 253, 292-3. Boston, 210, 291, 304, 457, 459, 487, 488. Bowditch, Nathaniel, 411. Bowie, James, 353. Bradstreet, Anne Dudley, 267. Bragg, Braxton, 379. Bremer, Fredrika, 222, 284, 325, 382, 469. Brent, Margaret, 266. Brown, Charles Brockden, 458. Brown, Jacob, General, 97. 513 514 INDEX Brown, John of Ossawatomie, 499- Brown, John of Virginia, 162. Bryant, William CuUen, 458-9, 461, 463-4, 466. Buchanan, James, 161, 374, 456, 498. Buckingham, James S., 191, 461. Bulwer-Lytton, 463. Burr, Aaron, 22, 23, 25, 63-81, 97-8, 139, 190, 224, 279, 287, 292, 323- Burr, Theodosia, 69, 71, 73-4, ^e, 78, 80, 323. . Butler, Benjamin, 181. Cabinet, 21, 144, 148, 153, 158- 60. Cabot, Sebastian, 46. Calhoun, John C, 124, 133, 149, 157, IS9, 166, 176-7, 178, 179, 181, 192, 253, 350, 389- 90, 424, 490-92, 506. Calhoun, Mrs. John C, 158. Calhoun, Madam, 283. Calhoun, Miss, 283. California, 357, ZlZ-l'^, 384, 390-405, 406, 484, 490, 504. Calvert, Leonard Lord, 266. Camp meetings, 299-301. Canada, 66, 90-91, 94-97, 104-5, 119, 246, 339, 350, 374, 388^. Canals, 113, 224, 227, 230-33, 240-42. Canning, George, 131. Caroline, 264. Carroll, Chas., 244. Carroll, Henry, 105-7, 125. Carson, Kit, 375, 392. Cartwright, Peter, 302-3. Cass, Lewis, 359, 381. Castro, 2>7^7- Channing, Wm. Ellery, 301-2. Channing, William Henry, 488. Chevalier, Michel, 204, 242-3, Children, 442-3, 446. Chilton, Mary, 265. Clark, William, 48-50, 116. Clinton, De Witt, 231. Cockburn, George Admiral, 100. Cocke, William, 254. Clay, Henry, 75, 79, 86, 97, 103-4, 114, 129, 133-5, 137- 40, 148, 150, 155, 157-8, 164, 165-7, 176-81, 196, 201, 232, 340-41, 347-8, 349-51, 355, 359, 380, 403, 410, 412, 418, 421, 423, 440, 484-5, 490- _ 93, 496, 497, 499, 506. Clinton, George, 63. Cobb, Howell, 498. Colorado, 378. Columbia River, 384-5, 387, 392, 438. Columbus, 509-10. Commerce, 46, 48, 54-6, 88, 91, 109, 126, 227, 23s, 294, 503. Colonization Society, 485-6, 488-9, 491. Congress, 6-7, 21-3, 42, 48, 53, 63, 86, 96, 109, 124, 126, 131, 138, 141, 143-4, 147, 165, 166-7, 172-200, 201, 211, 214, 224-S, 241, 247, 250, 280, 304, 321, 342, 349, 354-5, 358-9, 361, 364, 390, 415, 417, 419, 445, 451, 465, 477, 479, 483, 489-93, 496-7, 506-7. House of Representatives, 23-5, 129, 140, 141-2, 150, 173-6, 329, 345, 354, 386, 429. Senate, 70, 150, 157, 166-7, 176-80, 189-90, 341, 355, 378, 382, 389, 417, 483-4, 490-92, 498. Connecticut, 53, 487. Continental Congress, 3, 4, 53, 247, 288-9. Constitution of the U. S., 23, 58, 6z, 182-3, 186, 190, 357, 432, 452, 479. Convention of 1787, 4-5, 54, 429. Cook, James, Captain, 384. Cooper, James Fenimore, 458, 459, 463, 466. INDEX 515 Cortez, Hernando, 2,(>2), 365, 367- Corwin, Thos., 359. Cotton, 109, 479-i^, 504- Courts, 6, 25-6, 143, 147, 257, 432, 498. Crandall, Prudence, 487. Crawford, William H., 132, 133-S, 155, 412. Crockett, David, 152, 173-5, 252, 353- Currency, 125--6, 165-6. Cushing, Caleb, 181. Custis, Nelly, 8. Dallas, Alexander James, 107. Dana, Richard H., 458. Davis, Jefferson, 259, 365, 379, 498. Decatur, Stephen, Admiral, 43- 45, 199. Dale, Richard, Commodore, 42. Dearborn, Benjamin, 241. Declaration of Independence, 28, 30, 209-10, 244, 259, 268, 427, 429. Delaware, 25, 104. Democratic Republicans. See Political Parties. Democratic Party. See Politi- cal Parties. De Soto, Hernando, 52. De Tocqueville, 123, 176, 206, 210, 250-2, 265, 290, 320, 426, 449. Dickens, Charles, 196, 208, 254, 455, 464-5. Douglas, Stephen A., 182, 418, 493, 495-9- Drake, Francis, Sir, 384. Dubourg, Abbe, 147. Duche, Rev. Mr., 289. Duels, 64, 69, 138-9, 197-9, 450- Eastern States, 3, 54, 56, 72, 74, 118, 121, 152, 185, 243, 249, 316-17, 386, 401, 469- 70, 503, 506. Eaton, John Henry, Gen., 158. Edmonston family, 494. Education, 267-9, 273-5, 278, 283-4, 294-5, 314-25, 426, 428, 436, 443, 451, 482, 487. Edwards, Jonathan, 67. Ellsworth, Oliver, 29, 41, 433. Embargo, 38, 85, 91, 126. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 459, 466-7, 469-70. Emigration, 55, 1 19-21, 142, 249, 270. England, 5, 13, 18, 37-8, 53, 5^ 61, 77-9, 85-95, 98-100, 102-5, 118, 125-6, 130-31, 145, 248, 261-2, 289, 307, 332, 339, 351, 374, 384, 387, 389, 426, 449, 457, 463, 505, Equality, 132-3, 204-7. Era of Good Feeling, 128-9. Erie Canal, 113, 121, 136, 230- 2,2,, 240-41, 462. Evans, Oliver, 240-41. Everett, Edward, 136. Explorations, Early American, 46-7, 52, 109, 510. Fannin, 353. Federal Government, 5, 6, il, 125. Field, Cyrus, 456. Fillmore, Millard, 284, 313, 383. Fillmore, Miss, 285, 313. Florida, 53, 60, 62, 74, 145, 148-9, 222, 249, 250, 258, 288, 351. Forrest, Edwin, 488. France, 5, 13, 18, 20, 37, 46, 52, 57-62, 74. 79, 85, 88, 89, no, 118, 130, 248, 288, 374, 388, 426, 449, 503, 510. Franchise, 3i4-i5, 429-31, 452. Franklin, Benjamin, 10, 14, 55, ■ 64, III, 292, 297, 303, 325. 326, 331, 408, 430, 457, 476. Fremont, John C, 375-7, 388, 392, 418. French Revolution, 18, 57, 120. Fugitive Slave Law, 490, 493-6. Fulton, Robert, 233-4, 476. Gadsden Purchase, 384. Gales, Joseph, 106-7. Gallatin, Albert, 103. 5i6 INDEX Gallaudet, Thomas Hopkins, 443- Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 409-10. Garrison, William Lloyd, 169, 486-7, 495. Georgia, 53, 250, 297, 443. Genet, Edmond Charles, 279. Giddings, Joshua R., 489. Gladwyn, Major, 264. Gold, Discovery of, in Cali- fornia, 392-5. Goodyear, Charles, 327-8. Gore, Christopher, 180. Grant, U. S., 363, 365, 37i, 372, 37^- Gray, Robert, Captain, 48, 384. Greelev, Horace, 179, 182, 344, 395, 397, 459, 470. Hahnemann, C. F. S., 333. Haiti, 59, 138. Hale, Mrs. Sarah Joseph, 420. Hall, Basil, 209-10. Halleck, Fitz Greene, 458. Hamilton, Alexander, lo-ii, 13, 17, 20, 21, 22-3, 32, 54, 64-6, 68-70, 78, 82, 85, no, 117, 125, 172, 292, 429. Hamilton, Elizabeth Schuyler, 64. Hamilton, James, 155, 156. Harris, Martin, 305^- Harrison, WilHam Henry, 97, 98, 172, 249, 261-2, 341-9, 355, 381, 418, 424. Harte, Bret, 400. Hartford Convention, 125, 185. Harvey, William, 332. Hassler, Ferdinand R., 330-1. Hawley, Jesse, 231. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 459, 466, 467. Hay. John, 239. Hayne, Robert Young, 185-6, 187, 421, 453. Henry, Joseph, 329. Henry, Patrick, 173. Herschel, John, Sir, 461. Hoe, Richard, 456. Holidays, American, 121-2, 419-20. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 459, 460. Holy Alliance, 130-1, 138, Hospitals, 442. Houston, Sam, 175, 198, 352-4, 358. Hull, Isaac, 88, 92. Hull, VVilliam, 88, 94, 97. Huntington, Collis P., 396. Hutchinson, Anne, 266. Huxley, Thomas Henry, 320. Illinois, 104, 309, 317, 431, 462, 488, 497. Indiana, 104, 240, 342, 431. Indians, 48, 50-1, 53, 98, 104, III, 113, 115-17, 121, 144. 148, 173-4, 245^3, 264-5. 307, 342, 352, 357, 374, 385, 386-7, 391, 393, 423, 441, 450, 502-3, 511. Internal Improvements, 129, 167-S. Invention, 201, 217-18, 325-31, 455-7, 473, 476-7, 479-8o, 504, 505, 508. Iowa, 121, 388. Irving, Washington, 83, 458, 459, 463, 464, 466, 467- Jackson, Andrew, 71, 74, 76, 80, 97-8, 102, 128-9, 133-6, 139- 40, 143-72, 175, 185-9, 234, 249-50, 259, 278, 282-3, 293, 333, 337, 339, 341-2, 351, 354-5, 418, 443-4, 448, 455- Jackson, Mrs. Andrew, 153, 158, 282-3, 288, 293. Jackson, Charles Thomas, Dr., 333- Japan, 405. Jay, John, 32, 41, 54, 28S-9, 432-3- Jenner, Edward, 332. Jefferson, Thomas, 10, 11, 16- 17, 19, 23-32, 34-42, 46, 48, 57-8, 60, 62-5, 68-9, 71-2, 75-7, 79, 82, 85, 87, 96, 99, no, 124, 128, 130, 143, 156, 177, 187, 191, 222, 225, 248-9, 279, 293, 304, 320-21, 331, 357, 408, 412-16, 419, 429-32, 448, 465-6, 485-6. INDEX 517 Johnson, Richard M., 192, 262, 340, 445- Kansas, 121, 405, 496, 498. Kearney, Philip, 375. Kenible, Fanny, 290, 301. Kendall, Amos, 160-63, 191-2, 202, 443. Kentucky, 56, 75, iii, 1 13-16, 177, 380, 431, 488. Kentucky Resolutions, 185. Keokuk, 256, 258. Key, Francis Scott, 102. Knox, Henry, General, 6, 11, 68. Kossuth, Louis, 409. Kremer, George, 175, 176. Labor, 206, 278, 289, 321, 338, 403, 446, 479-82. Lafayette, 118, 150, 162, 269, 291, 296, 406, 410-15, 439- 41, 461, 464, 487. Lardner, Dionysius, 234. La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, 268. La Salle, Robert Cavelier de, 52. Lawrence, James, 421. Ledyard, John, 47-8. Lee, Daniel, 386. Lee, Jason, 386, 388. Lee, Robert E., 379. L'Enfant, Pierre Charles, 33, 34- Lewis, Meriwether, 48-51, 116. Lewis, William B., Major, 150, 160. Lewis and Clark Expedition, 39,48-51,116,384-385. Lincoln, Abraham, 177, 204, 235, 244, 329, 331, 344, 362, 417-18, 422, 462, 486, 497, 507. Lincoln, Benjamin, 503. Lind, Jenny, 219-21, 409. Literature, 267, 274, 457-7°, 493- Livingston, Robert R., 57-60, 61, 233-4, 476. Locke, Richard Adams, 461. Longfellow, Henry W., 459, 466. Louis XV, 324. Louisiana, 30, 39, 47, 51, 52, 57, 59-62, 87, 116, 127, 130, 222, 248, 350-1, 357, 384, 431, 480. Lovejoy, Elijah P., 488. Lovejoy, Owen, 488. Lowell, James Russell, 359, 460. McCulloch, Hugh, 142. McLaughlin, Dr., 387, 388. Madison, Dolly, 36, 83, 84-5, loi, 107, 193, 280, 415. Madison, James, 32, 82-6, 96-7, 100-102, 106-7, 126-28, 156, 280, 292, 412, 418, 433, 485, 5C0. ]\Iadison, Madam, 280. Maine, 104, 239, 350, 389, 431, 484. Mann, Horace, 322, 324, 443. Mansfield, Arabella, 266. Manufactures, 119, 126, 227, 278, 321, 503-4. Marat, Jean Paul, 449. Marbois, Frangois, 60. Marie Antoinette, 410. Marshall, James W., 393-4. Marshall, John, 39, 64, 76, 177, 433-5, 436, 485. Martineau, Harriet, 160, 191, 207, 224, 290, 417-18, 463-4, 500. Maryland, 225, 239, 266. Mason, James M., 491. Massachusetts, 53, 89, 105, 185, 290, 315, 492. Medicine, 266, 331-4, 450. Mexico, 72-4, 78, 80, 142, 350- 56, 358, 360-80, 390, 391, 394, 484, 490. Michigan, 97, 104, 250. Mississippi, 75, 250, 317, 351. Mississippi River, 6, 47-8, 52-7, 86, 102, 104, 109-10, 1 12-13, 121, 224, 231, 234-6, 238- 40, 246, 248-51, 254-5, 257-8, 288, 351, 503. Missouri, 116, 249, 308-9, 391, 431, 483-4. Missouri Compromise, 129, 351, 483-5, 491, 495-8. 5i8 INDEX Monroe, Elizabeth, Mrs., 140, 280. Monroe, James, 58, 59, 60, 61, 85, 86, 127, 128-33, 136, 140, 148-9, 156, 199, 222, 249, 407-9, 4 TO, 418. Monroe Doctrine, 129-32, 496. Montgomery, Richard, Gen., 411. Mormons, 305-12, 375, 392. Morris, Gouverneur, no, 222, 230, 22>i. Morse, Samuel F. B., 328, 456, 476-7. Morton, Wm. Thomas Green, m- Motley, John Lothrop, 466-7. Mott, Lucretia, 277. Music, 213, 216, 219-21, 421. Napier, Charles, Sir., 104. Napoleon, 13, 57, 59-61, 78, 87, 120, 130, 174, 351, 511. Navy, U. S., 39-45, 72^ 86, 89- 96. Nebraska, 405, 496. Negroes, 55, 95, 126, 136, 146, 181, 191, 322, 380-1, 430, 437, 450, 472, 481-2. Nevada, 375, 27^- New England, 3, 38, 47, 56, 91, 109, 113, 121-2, 126, 133, 168, 202-3, 210, 231, 239, 284, 288-9, 291, 295, 322, 359, 403-4, 428-9, 431, 462, 466-7, 469, 503. Nevi^ Hampshire, 407, 431, 444. New Jersey, 70, 241, 431, 487. New Mexico, 378, 384, 392. New Orleans, 53, 55, 57-6o, 71-4, 91, 102, 135, I4S-8, 198, 216, 231, 234-5, 240, 243, 288, 304, 324, 414, 465. Newspapers, 151-2, 241-2, 254, 268, 344, 363, 394-5, 448- 57, 460-63, 477, 486, 488, 493, 495, 505, 509- New York, 53, 70, 155, 239, 241, 337, 403, 423, 430, 431, 442, 444-5- New York City, 121-2, 123, 191, J208-9, 210, 216, 231, 295, 337, 394, 438-9, 442, 456, 459, 462-4, 466. Nicholson, Mrs., 279. Nolan, Philip, 350-1. Non-Intercourse Act, 85-6. North, 1 12-13, 118, 177, 184, 158, 283, 307, 316, 352, 359, 428, 430, 451, 479, 483-4, 486-8, 490-4, 503- North Carolina, 53, 112, 239, 288, 431, 487. Northwest, 97, 248, 355, 357, 374. 389, 496, 498. Northwest Territory, 53-4, 117, 342, 357. Nullification, 164-5, 168, 179, 184-90, 341, 421, 484, 486, Ogle, Charles, 345. Ohio, 104, 224, 308, 344-5, 488. Ohio River, 55, 112-3, 143, 224-s, 231, 236, 239-40, 247, 260, 483. O'Neil, Peggy, 158-9, 283. Ordinance of 1787, 483. Oregon, 39, 47, 51, 355, 357, 376, 386, 387-92, 394, 438, 498. Osceola, 258. Osgood, Samuel, 279, Otis, James, 268. Paine, Thomas, 19, 28. Pakenham, Edward, Sir, 102, 146. Panama, 138, 396. Panic of 1837, 337-9, 444. Parker, Theodore, 469, 495. Parkman, Francis, 466. Penn, William, 437. Pennsylvania, 112, 239, 241, 246, 321, 324, 437, 446. Perry, M. C, 405. Perry, OHver Hazard, 95, 262, 405. Peter, Mrs., 193. Philadelphia, 4, 22, :22>, 56, 143, 209, 214, 231, 241-3, 287^ 290, 295, 297, 334, 394, 421. 439, 449, 457, 459, 463-4» 485, 488. Philanthropy, 278, 438-9. INDEX 519 Pierce, Franklin, 496. Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, 16, 21. Pineda, Alonzo de, 52. Pioneers, 235, 422-4, 449. Pocahontas, 173, 265. Poe, Edgar Allen, 459, 460, 466. Political Parties, 151-3, 295-6, 304, 328, 488-9, 497-8. Anti-Masonic, 141, 166, 304. Democratic, 164, 166, 170, 309, 340-41, 343, 346, 349- 50, 355, 359, 361, 389, 427, Democratic- Republican, 11- 12, 17, 19, 22, 26, 30, 38-9, 56, 6s, 68, 82, 124, 128, 427. Federalist, 11-12, 19-23, 26, 30, 38, 56, 58, 65, 77, 82, 109- 10, 124-5, 128, 193-4. Native American, 488. Republican, 497-9. Whig, 164, 170, 194, 309, 340- 41, 343-50, 355, 359-62, 421, 493- . „. Young Republican, 86-7,- 90, 96, 127. Polk, James K., 328, 355, 358, 361, 366, 369, 374, 384. Pontiac, 264. Powers, Hiram, 217. Preeble, Edward, Commodore, 42. Prescott, William H., 466-7. Priestley, Joseph, 28. Prisons, 231, 243, 436-7, 443-6. Prussia, 130. Public Lands, 54, 109-13, 116- 17, 121. Punishments, 436-8, 446, 482. Quincy, Josiah, 163. Quincy, Josiah, Jr., 163-4, I93- 4. 196-7, 336, 411-12. Quitman, John Anthony, 365. Railroads, 222, 227, 240-44, 284. Randolph, Edmund, 8, 11. Randolph, John, 15, 64, 138-9, 173, 176, 189, 199, 292, 417, 485, 494- Reed, Thomas B., 417. Reform, 275-7, 426-47. 484- Religion, 192, 195, 209, 214, 245, 252, 287-312, 317, 318, 453-4, 467-8, 472-5, 495. Reynolds, John F., 379. Rhode Island, 4, 89, 431. Rigdon, Sidney, 306-7. Roads, 9, 39, 95, 116, 119, 222- 31, 240, 271-2, 440. Rodders, John, Commodore, 90. Roelandsen, Adam, 316. Rolfe, John, 265. Ross, Betsey, 269-70. Royall, Ann, 454. Rumsey, James, 233. < Rush, Benjamin, Dr., 26, 442. Russell, Emily, 494. Russell, Jonathan, 103. Russia, 47-8, 88, 102-3, 130-31, 384-5. Sacajawea, 50, 51, 265. Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de, 353-4, 358-9, 365-71, 373- Savarin, Brillat, 287. Saxe Weimar, 215, 229, 236-7, 287, 325, 421. Schools, 113, 118, 274, 294-S, 314-25, 443, 451. Science, 113, 472-5, 505, 5o8. Scott, Dred, 430, 498. Scott, Walter, 228, 463. Scott, Winfield, 35, 97, 98-9, 140, 144, 147-8, 172, 189, 192, 254-7, 336-7, 341-2, 365-73, 379-80, 381-2, 416, 424. Secession, 47, 119, 125. Sedgwick, Catharine Maria, 463- Sevier, John, iii. Shakespeare, 463, 488. Sherman, William T., 379. Slavery, 41, 121-2, 129, 178, 184-5, 276-7, 304, 318, 351-2, 359, 362, 382, 405, 452, 464, 470, 478-99, 501, 50s, 508. Smith, John, Capt., 265. Sloat, John Drake, Commodore, 377- Smith, Joseph, 305-11. Smith, Sydney, 463. Smithson, James, 329. 520 INDEX Southern States, 3, 46, 75, 98, log, 1 12-13, 118, 126, 133, 177, 184, 185, 198, 202, 229- 30, 248, 283-4, 316-18, 324, 338, 341, 350, 359, 381, 386, 428, 43(^1, 451, 479, 481, 483, 484-S, 486-8, 490, 492- 5, 498, 503. South America, 129, 130, 138. South Carolina, 25, 112, 185, 188, 239, 288, 482, 488. Southey, Robert, 287. Southwest, ']2, 74, 247, 351-2, 355, 357, 389, 510. Spain, 46, 52-7, 62, 72, 74, 88, 98, 116, 1 18-19, 130, 145, 148-9, 248-9, 258, 288, 350- 51, 384, 390-91, 503, 510. Spanish RepubHcs, 129-31. Spaulding, H. H., 387. Spaulding, Solomon, 307. Speculation, 204. Spofford, Ainsworth R., 469. Stackelburg, Baron, 193. Stagecoach, 222, 224, 228-30. Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 277. States' Rights, 125, 183-90, 481, 501. See Nullification. Steamboats, 92, 233-40. Stevens, John, 240-41. St. Louis, 288, 310. Stockton, Robt. Field, Com- modore, ^m- Story, Joseph, 322. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 459, 493- Stuart, Gilbert, 8. Stuart, James, 202. Talleyrand, 20, 58-61, 65, 78, 336. Tammany, 68, 139. Taney, Roger B., 166, 430. Tariff, 126, 129, 138-9, 185, 188. Taylor, Bayard, 219. Taylor, Father, 302. Taylor, Zachary, 360-68, 379- 83, 418, 424. Tecumseh, 98, 144, 249, 259-62, 342, 441, 445. Temperance, 195-6, 211, 228, 237, 260, 428, 439-42. Tennessee, 254, 352. Texas, ^z, 142, 350-56, 357-9, 378, 384, 386, 484, 490, 504. Theaters, 195, 211, 213-17, 488. Thomas, George H., 379. Thoreau, Henry David, 460, 468. Tippecanoe, 261-3, 342. Trafalgar, -zi. Treasury, U. S., 339-40, 343- Treaty of Ghent, 89, 102-8, 125, 385, 503. Tripoli, war with. See War. Trist, Nicholas P., 369, 372. Trollope, Mrs., 152, 203-4, 217, 236, 254, 275, 29s, 481. Tyler, John, 281-82, 341, 348- 50, 355-6, 389, 464. Tyler, Julia, Mrs., 281-2. Tyler, Letitia, Mrs., 281. Underground Railway, 494-5. Ursuline Nuns, 73-4, 147, 324. Utah, 311-12, 378. Van Buren, Martin, 152, 155, 158-9, 167, 170-71, 188, 283, 336-7, 339-40, 345-6, 354-5, 403, 419, 444, 455- Vancouver, George, 384. Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 476. Van Rensselaer, 140. Vermont, 429, 431. Victoria, Queen, 456. Virginia, 4, 35, 109, 112, iiS, 127, 481, 503. Virginia Resolutions, 185, 187. Walker, Thomas, Dr., iii. Walpole, Horace, 454. War, Civil, 378, 422, 427-8, 432, 467, 504, 5 10. Mexican, ZS7-1Z, 390, 405, 484, 497, 504, 507. of 1812, 45, 85-108, 113, 119, 124-5, 145, 227, 240, 294, 343, 352, 364, 406, 421, 449, 459, 507. Revolutionary, 3, 451, 487, 501-2, 510. Tripoli, 39-45, 86, 92, 511. Warren, Mercy, 268. Washington City, 22, 24, 33-4, 72, 100-102, 104-7, 125, INDEX 521 153-4. i/S, 190-200, 229, 283, 325, 347-^, 412, 463, 496. Washington, George, 5-15, 17- 19, 21-2, 28, 32-3, 27, 41, 63-7, 100, 143, 156, 172, 181, 190, 222, 233, 247, 269-70, 291, 342, 407^, 412, 416, 418, 419-20, 424, 430, 492, 503- Washington, Martha, 8, 2>2,y 279. Washington, Mary, 269, 286. Wayne, Anthony, Gen., -249, 253-4, 412. Webster, Daniel, 155, 157, ido» 172, 176, 179-83, 196-7, 328, 340, 347, 350, 355, 3^2, 389, 414, 418, 421, 424, 453, 470, 487, 490, 492, 506. Webster, Noah, 457-8. Wellington, Duke of, 370. Wells, Horace, Dr., 2,iZ- West, 3-4, 46-58, 62, 72, 74, 1 10-123, 133, 142, 152, 172-5, 185, 210, 224, 231, 234-40, 243, 247, 270-72,, 284, 307, 316-18, 384-405, 430, 431, 451-2, 469-70, 503, 506. West Indies, 37. West Point, 321, 420. Whigs. See Political Parties. Whisky Insurrection, 11. Whitefield, George, 297. Whitman, Marcus, 386-7. Whitney, Eli, 331, 479-80. Whittier, John Greenleaf, 168, 211,459,466,487. Wilkinson, James, Gen., 72-3, 75, 97. Willard, Emma Hart, 324. Wilmot Proviso, 362, 497. Wilson, Henry, 478. Winthrop, Robert C., 381. Wisconsin, 104. Wise, Henry A., 160-61, 330. Woman's Rights Movement, 276-8. Worth, William J., Gen., 365. Wright, Silas, 328. Wythe, George, 177, 268. Women, 36, 209, 213, 236, 253, 264-86, 295, 323-5, 430-31, 442, 444, 446. X.Y.Z. Affair, 20, 21, 58, 420. Young, Brigham, 310-11. C15 80 ■9' >1^^% ° ^P-^^ . »* A 1^ - * • O- '^ ^^^c."^^ : ^•^^s^' ■ <* o V ^°*^<^. * ' '>^' ,^ »o- ^^-n^. ,4' '■n^^O^ :^M^r^- -^r.^ ^<^^^\ '^Mr.^ > 'oK ,0' OCT V'9 INDIANA 46962 .0 ■ ^