A HISTOEY OF THE UNITED STATES
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LIMITED
TORONTO
A HISTORY
OF
THE UNITED STATES
BT EDWARD CHANNING
VOLUME V THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION
1815-1848
Neto ff otfc
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1943
COPTBIORT, 1921,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
All rights reserved — no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1921.
' PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
YRL
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PA««
I. THE WONDERFUL CENTURY ....... 1
IL THE WESTWARD MARCH . . - . . . . .37
in. THE URBAN MIGRATION . . ..... 70
IV. THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT ...... 94
V. THE PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM . . . 120
VI. SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE
CENTURY .......... 172
VII. THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE ..... 204
VTQ. EDUCATION .......... 242
IX. LITERATURE .......... 274
X. THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE ..... 307
XL POLITICAL SEETHINGS, 1824-1828 ...... 351
XII. PRESIDENT JACKSON ........ 378
XIII. SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION .... 404
XIV. THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 ..... 434 XV. WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS AFTER 1840 . . 467
XVI. TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON ..... 499
XVH. THE YEAR 1846 ......... 550
XVIIL THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY ..... 587
INDEX .... 817
MAPS
MM!
TRANSPORTATION IN 1838 . : . . \. • ty» » > !— ^^
THE UNITED STATES IN 1820 . . ...',. 1.- Js< . ., .. , '. 46
THE UNITED STATES IN 1840 . , .';'.'- . . . 47
GROWTH OF THE STATES . . .. ;- =.-..:. - —v'V *. ^' • 1 • 381
TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON . , . .» » '"*.. • s *.] * ^ ~\ . 500
TEXAS IN 1835 . . . . . :. . v. . -. . . 519
" THE KING'S MAP " . ..,".'.'. . . . .537
THE NORTHEASTERN BOUNDARY . V '... . ; . . /,'.• . 539
BATTLE OF BUENA VISTA . . . ^;. . . ; ... -; . -'."i. , • 595
ROUTE FROM VERA CRUZ TO MEXICO CITT . . . ; 601
Vii
CHESAPEAKE AND OHIO CANAL
190. , ...... aoo, ,.,..,. .100. ......
TBANSPORTATION IN 1838
(From Sterenson's Civil Engineering of North America. The profiles are from Trotter's Observations, 1839)
A HISTOKY OF THE UNITED STATES
CHAPTER I
THE WONDERFUL CENTURY
THE Roman Emperor Tiberius travelled two hundred miles in northern Italy in twenty-four hours; in 1800 President John Adams, journeying from Washington to his home in Quincy, Massachusetts, was fortunate if he could cover fifty miles in one day.1 By the middle of the nine- teenth century fifty miles an hour was no uncommon speed on an American railroad. In the last seventy years the application of steam and electricity to the movement of machinery and the invention of the internal explosion engine have again accelerated the rate of human travel, have made all parts of the earth accessible to man, and have provided for the navigation of the air above and the waters underneath and for the transmission of intelligence and administrative orders from one part of the world to another without other medium than the atmosphere. Why all this should have happened in the Wonderful Century from 1815 to 1914 — in the hundred years between the world-wide wars — is hard to ascertain. Coal, iron, steam, electricity, have all been present in the earth and in its atmosphere from the
1 See the present work, vol. iv, 2- hired coach. Fifty or forty miles was
8, 75, and Caroline A. J. Skeel's Travel the usual speed for ordinary travellers.
in the First Century after Christ, 69. I am indebted to Professor Clifford
Tiberius was hastening to his dying H. Moore of Harvard University for
brother, but "the Dictator Julius" this reference, rode one hundred miles a day in a
VOL. V. B 1
2 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY [On. I
carboniferous age and yet they have not been used as they now are until the era of machinery. Why was it left for Watt to utilize steam, for Fulton to apply steam to the propulsion of boats, for Stephenson to make the first prac- ticable locomotive, and for Morse to use electricity for the transmission of thought? These are questions at present insoluble. Certain it is that the American mind, which had concerned itself only with political organization, sud- denly turned to other problems of human existence and became renowned for fertility of invention, for greatness in the art of literary expression, and for the keenest desire for the amelioration of the lot of humanity.1
For forty years before 1815 the world had been at war and the French Revolution was the greatest wrecker of complacency that had occurred in modern times, — before 1914. In itself, war is a frightful scourge ; but in its effects it oftentimes has produced most beneficent results. Wars and revolutions lead to readjustments in social relations, in political affairs, and in the mental outlook of nations and of races. Ordinarily, our rules and regulations, our ordi- nances, and our laws are directed to the preservation of human life, to the protection of individual liberties, and to the conservation of property. In war, on the other hand, our design is to kill, to destroy, and to make existence painful to men and women on the other side of the boundary line. In such times, the mind breaks adrift from its every- day moorings and turns to thoughts and theories that in peaceful hours seemed fantastic and incapable of attain- ment. War leads to a loosening of the mind, to a breaking
1 McMaster treated the social con- tellectual conditions of the American dition of the American people in 1784 people in 1800, — the last four of these in the first volume of his History. chapters presenting a remarkable anal- Henry Adams devoted six chapters of ysis of the American mind in the the first volume of his United States early years of the nineteenth century, to a description of the social and in-
1815] INFLUENCE OF WAR 3
of associations, to new thoughts and groupings ; and human- ity leaps from one stage of civilization to another. In the thirty-five years after 1815, men and women threw off the shackles of the past : they exalted the position of the individual in society, burst the bonds of education and reli- gion, experimented with schemes to better human life, sought the abolition of slavery, and the reformation of drunkards and criminals. All this led to the giving the masses of the people more direct participation in the govern- ment of town, city, county, State, and Nation. Unfortu- nately with the good there was also the bad, for war leads to a slackening of the moral sense, and to an increase in the desire for rapid gain. In such times, men forget their obligations to their fellow men and embark on speculative ventures without other thought than self-enrichment. This was particularly true after the fall of the Napoleonic Empire, for great discoveries in mechanics, in chemistry, in physics, in biology, and in the medical sciences gave opportunities of pecuniary profit that the world had never dreamed of before in historic times. For America, the most important of them all was the application of the new inventions to the transportation of persons and of goods and to the transmission of intelligence and of administrative orders from one part of the country to another. Modern life in all its branches from day to day, in peace and in war, depends upon the mobility of men and of things, for it is this that makes possible the association of human beings for the prosecution of sociological, political, and economic objects.1 It enables them to work in larger units and results in the enormous and rapid accumulation of wealth. After
1 The beginnings of the machine- R. Coxe and Thomas Cooper and
made world can be visualized by a published at Philadelphia in the years
study of The Emporium of Arts & 1812-1814. Sciences that was edited by John For a radically different view of the
4 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY [Ca. I
pondering these things and viewing the tremendous devel- opment of production and the enormous accumulation of wealth which has gone on with constantly accelerated speed from one decade to another, one turns to Webster's exhorta- tion that in the "days of disaster, which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to come upon us also," we may turn our eyes to the standards of the Fathers of the Republic and be assured that "the foundations of our national power are still strong."
In 1815, the horse-drawn stage, the ox-drawn wagon, and the wind-propelled sloop or schooner formed the main reliance of traveller and forwarder. The roads were, for the most part, of the colonial dirt type. Already, a glimpse of the future might be discerned in a few stone roads leading out from the largest towns, a few miles of canals connecting important water courses, and a few steamboats plying along the coast and on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers; but the lack of capital and the want of technical skill stood in the way of rapid development. The country was new, the demands for capital and labor were great, banking facilities few, and credit was in its infancy. Moreover, knowledge of modern business methods was lacking, except in a few isolated spots. There was not a technical school in the country and, except for a score of men — all of them born on the other side of the ocean — there was no mechanical skill anywhere to be found and there were no machine- shops where actual mechanical work could be done.
The first advance toward the betterment of transportation facilities was the construction of stone roads after the mode
main springs of our national develop- 1906; his Rise of the New West in
ment from that given in the text, see Albert Bushnell Hart's American No-
Frederick J. Turner's "Contributions lion series; and his The Frontier in
of the West to American Democracy" American History (New York, 1920"). in the Atlantic Monthly for January,
1815] MACADAMIZED ROADS 5
proposed by John Loudon McAdam. This extraordinary man was born in Scotland, came to America with an uncle, and went back to Britain with the Pennsylvania Loyalists in the year 1783. By analysis and experiment, helped by observation, McAdam found that by the use of small angular stone fragments — none of them exceeding an inch in any one dimension — spread ten inches deep, a roadway could be constructed that would grow stronger with time and use. Moreover, it could be made nearly flat and laid over soft ground as well as on rock foundation. The expense of such a road was small in comparison with any kind of block pavement and could be kept in repair at small annual cost.1 The establishment of the new govern- ment under the Constitution greatly stimulated the demand for better facilities for transportation in America and this demand grew more and more insistent in the years of em- bargo and war.2 As no State or community, in the crude methods of taxation then prevailing, could provide the means for the construction of any extensive system of roadway private enterprise came in. Corporations were formed often with financial aid from the State ; they procured the rest of their capital by lotteries and they charged tolls for the use of their highways. These were called turnpikes and that word, of somewhat obscure origin, was generally used as synonymous with an artificial stone road. In the first twenty-one years of the century, from 1800 to 1821, twelve hundred miles of road, nearly all of it of approved con- struction, were built. Soon after that time canals and rail- roads attracted public attention, and the turnpikes failed to
1 See John L. McAdam's Remarks on pp. 199-236 of this book, gives the
on the Present System of Road Making best idea of his career and invention. (London, 1824), 34, 35. There is no 2 See ch. x for a treatment of the
adequate account of McAdam's life political and constitutional aspects
and work. His evidence before a com- of internal improvements, mittee of the House of Commons,
6 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY [Ca. I
pay expenses and had to be taken over by the public. In these years, the State of Pennsylvania had subscribed nearly two million dollars to the capital stock of the road companies within her limits, besides contributions that had been made by counties and towns. The construction of bridges on these roads was usually undertaken by other companies which were also often aided by public authorities.1 Most of these bridges were of timber, with stone abutments in some cases, and they were constantly being destroyed by ice, flood, or fire.
Albert Gallatin made the first suggestion as to giving federal aid to the building of roads. On February 13, 1802, he wrote to William B. Giles of Virginia, who was then chair- man of the committee to consider the admission of Ohio into the Union. Gallatin proposed that one-tenth part of the net proceeds of the land that was hereafter sold by the national government within the boundaries of the new State should be applied towards making roads from the Atlantic seaboard to the Ohio Valley, and, later, to the Mississippi. Giles followed Gallatin's recommendation and Ohio was admitted to the Union with such a condition in the act of Congress.2 In 1806, Congress authorized the Presi- dent to appoint three commissioners to survey a road from Cumberland, Maryland, to the Ohio and appropriated thirty thousand dollars to defray the expense of laying out and making the road,3 — and Thomas Jefferson, as Presi-
1 See the section on "Turnpike, * Adams's Writings of Gallatin, i,
or Artificial Roads" in Gallatin's 76; Annals of Congress, 7th Cong.,
Report ... on ... Public Roads and 1st Sess., 1100. The debate follows
Canals. The writings of early travellers on succeeding pages, but relates almost
are filled with the discomforts and entirely to the constitutional questions
delays of stage-coach travel over these involved. The act is in the same vol-
roads. Zadok Cramer states that in ume, 1349.
the year 1813 no less than 4055 wagons 3 See Annals of Congress, 9th Cong.,
passed along "the great road" from 1st Sess., 1237. For a report of the
Philadelphia to Pittsburg (Navigator, commissioners, see "Message from the
9th ed., p. 63 note). President of the United States, trans-
1816] THE CUMBERLAND ROAD 7
dent, by his signature approved the act. In this case the consent of the States through which the road should run was to be obtained before beginning the actual work of construc- tion. Within the next dozen years or so, this road was constructed from Cumberland on the Potomac in Maryland, to Wheeling on the Ohio in the western part of Virginia.1 The eastern portion of the Cumberland Road — or National Road — followed generally the lines of the old Braddock Road, which had itself pursued roughly the course of an Indian path. In later years the National Road was con- tinued westwardly through Ohio and Indiana to central Illinois, and it was proposed to build a connecting line southward from Zanesville in central Ohio, to Maysville in Kentucky on the Ohio River and thence to Lexington and southwestwardly, even to the lower Mississippi. From 1816 for ten or fifteen years, the eastern and middle por- tions of the Cumberland Road were literally crowded with emigrants, their families, and wagons laden with household goods and chattels, pursuing their westward way.2 In later years it was equally crowded with wagons bringing the products of western farms to the markets of the East. Farther south, through Cumberland Gap and along the Wilderness Road, a smaller tide of emigration sought Kentucky and the country south of the Ohio River, and, at a later time, many of these migrants or their children crossed that stream into the States of the Old Northwest.
mitting a Report of the Commissioners berland Road, and Thomas B. Sea- appointed under . . . 'An act to regu- right's The Old Pike. A History of late the laying out and making a road the National Road, but none of these from Cumberland, ' " etc., dated January books is satisfying. 31, 1807. Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey
1 For an enumeration of the acts, stated in the House of Representa-
see Statutes at Large, ii, 357 and note. tives (February 1, 1827) that the
1 For an account of this road, see Cumberland Road had cost fourteen
Jeremiah S. Young's Political and thousand dollars a mile up to 1823,
Constitutional Study of the Cumber- or about one and a quarter million
land Road, Archer B. Hulbert's Cum- dollars for a road 130 miles long.
8 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY [Cn. 1
The opening of the canal between Liverpool and Man- chester, England, in 1772, gave a great impulse to the pro- viding of internal water communications everywhere. The Revolution postponed all such attempts in America, but in 1783 Washington noted that the Mohawk River with Wood Creek and Lake Oneida offered what seemed to be a practical route to the western country.1 As a Virginian, however, his interests and sentiments pointed to the im- provement of the James and Potomac rivers by clearing their beds, accelerating the current in places by constructing wing dams, digging canals around the falls and impassable rapids, and connecting the highest point of river navigation by roadways with the Mississippi system. Companies were formed, individuals subscribed for stock, and States also were induced to face the tax payers by voting money for the schemes ; 2 but nothing of any importance was ever accomplished and the canal and canal rights of the Potomac Company and its successor, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, proved only hindrances in the way of the construction of the National Road and later of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Early in the new century, a water route from the Mohawk to Lake Ontario was opened. It accommodated ten-ton boats at ordinary stages of the river, but, owing to its dependence upon variable water supplies, it was never satisfactory.
1 Washington's Writings (Ford), x, Early Life of Washington, in connec-
325. lion with Narrative History of the Po-
* See John E. Semmes'a John H. B. tomac Company (New York, 1856). Latrobe and his Times, 1803-1891, The "Report" of a committee of the pp. 336-352; Corra Bacon-Foster'a House of Representatives (May 22, Early Chapters in the Development of 1826, 19th Cong., 1st Sess., No. 228) the Potomac Route to the West (reprinted is a convenient account of the connec- from the Records of the Columbia His- tion between the Potomac and the torical Society, vol. 15) ; G. W. Ward's Chesapeake and Ohio projects. See "Early Development of the Chesa- also Journal of the Internal Improve- peake and Ohio Canal Project " in ment Convention . . . 8th Day of De- Johns Hopkins Studies, xvii; and cember, 1834, which is preceded by an John Pickell's A New Chapter in the interesting map.
1808] GALLATIN'S REPORT 9
Many short canals were dug to overcome obstructions in otherwise navigable streams and attempts were made to connect the bays and sounds of the coast, to provide a line of communication from Boston to Charleston that would be sheltered alike from storm and foe. When Secretary of War Henry Knox had a route surveyed across Cape Cod on the line of the present canal, he esti- mated the expense of constructing the canal at half a million dollars ! : Robert Morris advocated connecting the Dela- ware and Ohio by canals wherever possible, with roads between.2 John Nicholson, writing to Jefferson 3 from Herkimer, New York, in 1806, proposed that the national government should open communications for vessels of eighty tons between the Hudson and Lake Ontario and thence to the Ohio and the Mississippi, using canals wherever necessary. Nothing came of any of these schemes at the time ; but in 1803, the Middlesex Canal 4 connecting the Merrimac with Boston Harbor was opened.
The discussions over the Cumberland Road project and the growing interest in canals culminated in a resolution of the Senate requesting Gallatin to prepare and report a plan for "the application of such means as are within the power of Congress, to the purposes of opening roads, and making canals." The Secretary of the Treasury replied on April 4, 1808, with one of the most remarkable documents
1 The locks were to be 120 feet long. * Thomas Jefferson Correspondence
The labor was estimated to cost about (Boston, 1916), p. 136. $250,000, the mechanical utensils to * See "The Middlesex Canal" in
be used were estimated at $3600 and Lowell Historical Association's Con-
$1800 was allowed for contingencies. tributions, iii, 273-308 ; and G. Arm-
"Knox Papers" and The Medley or royd's Internal Navigation of the United
Newbedford Marine Journal for Febru- States, 32. Writing to Knox in 1793,
ary 3, 1797. James Sullivan and Ishem Russell
* Hazard's Register, ii, 119-122. declared that they needed a man
A convenient statement of the knowl- "skilled in canal business" to sur-
edge of the time in regard to canals vey the proposed Middlesex Canal,
may be found in A Treatise on They had heard that "such an Artist"
Internal Navigation (Ballston Spa, was at Philadelphia. See "Knox
1817). Papers" under date.
10 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY [Cn. I
that ever came from his pen.1 In it he proposed constructing a line of canals along the Atlantic coast and other systems connecting the seaboard with the Mississippi Valley and the St. Lawrence. This plan, if carried out, together with turn- pikes and connecting roads, he thought would cost twenty million dollars. The cost of the canals would be more than sixteen million dollars and the connecting roads or canals about three or four millions more. Two Appendixes to the "Report," written by B. H. Latrobe and Robert Fulton, were printed at the time. In a postscript to the former, Latrobe describes "rail roads." These, he wrote, were constructed of iron or of timber covered with rails of cast iron forming in section the letter "L" on its back; the gauge of these railroads was from three and a half to five feet and the total cost of such a road with " a set of returning ways" would be about ten thousand dollars a mile. The carriages to run on these roads might be of various dimen- sions, but they were to have low cast iron wheels fastened to the axle. Astonishing loads, Latrobe wrote, could be drawn on these railroads with one horse. The objection to them was that ordinary carriages could not travel upon them, but even with this disadvantage, they might supple- ment internal navigation.2 Fulton argued most strongly
1 Report of the Secretary of the Treas- pendixes E and F, is appended to A
ury, on the Subject of Public Roads Treatise on Internal Navigation (Ball-
and Canals; made in pursuance of a ston Spa, 1817).
Resolution of Senate, of March 2, 1807. 2 John Stevens of Hoboken, New April 12, 1808, Printed by Order of the Jersey, whose steam propelled Phoenix Senate (Washington, 1808) and Ameri- almost anticipated Fulton's side- can State Papers, Miscellaneous, i, wheeled Clermont published in 1812 No. 250 (pp. 724-921). The separate a pamphlet entitled Documents tending issue does not contain Appendixes A-D ; to prove the Superior Advantages of these are printed in the State Papers Rail-Ways and Steam-Carriages over and contain much information on Canal Navigation (reprinted in Ab- contemplated internal improvements. batt's Magazine of History, Extra Interesting items concerning the Cum- Number — No. 54) . In this Stevens berland Road are in Henry Adams's argued that railroads on which wagons Writings of Gallatin, i, 78, 79, 304, could be hauled by horse or steam power 305, 309, 395. Gallatin's Report . . . would be much cheaper and better than of Public Roads and Canals, with Ap- canals.
1825] THE ERIE CANAL 11
for the construction of canals, which were vastly superior to any form of turnpike. He calculated that the saving on the transportation of one barrel of flour for one hundred and fifty miles, if carried by canal instead of by road, would be one hundred and fifty cents, which was equal to the existing import duty on thirty pounds of coffee or thirty gallons of molasses, and the saving on the bringing of fifty thousand cords of wood to a city of fifty thousand inhabitants in one year would pay all the duties levied by the govern- ment on those people during that time and leave a surplus.1 It followed, therefore, that canals could be dug and operated at public expense with a great saving of money and of effort, even though they were operated free of toll.
The Erie Canal 2 stands out from all others of that period in its influence on building up the industries of the East, peopling the farms of the West, and providing the laboring masses of large portions of Europe with food. It has been so successful that its origin has been clouded by the claims of many persons and their descendants. It makes little difference to whom the idea first occurred, for the canal would not have been dug when it was had it not been for the powerful, continuing support given to the project by De Witt Clinton 3 and to him, therefore, must fairly be given the credit for its construction. The Western Inland Lock Navigation Company had provided a somewhat uncertain
1 This matter is summarized from sketches of the canal engineers in his
Fulton's Treatise on the Improvement second volume. of Canal Navigation (London, 1796). 'Clinton published essays under the
* On the New York canals, see Noble names of "Atticus," " Hibernicus,"
E. Whitford's History of the Canal and "Tacitus" and he was president
System of . . . New York (2 vols., of the New York Association for the
Albany, 1906, — forming the Supple- Promotion of Internal Improvements
ment to the Annual Report of the which published Considerations on the
State Engineer for 1905, and issued Great Western Canal from the Hudson
separately with the above title) and to Lake Erie in 1818. Of these papers
Meyer and MacGill's History of Trans- his Canal Policy, printed in 1821, had
portation, 180-195, etc. Whitford has the greatest influence, a long bibliography and biographical
12 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY [Cn. I
navigation between the Mohawk and Lake Ontario using existing water courses wherever possible.1 The Erie Canal, on the other hand, was constructed independently of any parallel river or lake navigation2 and connected the Mohawk with the Great Lake system above Niagara Falls ; it ran by the side of the Mohawk and even crossed it, but never utilized its bed. The canal was close to Lake Ontario, but soon changed its course for Lake Erie. Its only dependence upon lakes and rivers was for the necessary water to operate the locks. In this way it avoided all the dangers and diffi- culties besetting river navigation : high water, low water, rapids, rocks, and tumultuous current — and connected the Hudson with the navigation of the continental interior and not with that of the St. Lawrence Valley.3 The digging of the Erie Canal was authorized by the New York legis- lature in 1817 at the expense of the State, application having been made in vain for national assistance.4 There proved to be many critical engineering problems to be solved and no trained engineers to face them. The difficulties of the enter- prise may almost be said to have laid the foundation of American constructive engineering, for they were studied and overcome in a manner that aroused the admiration of English experts who visited the canal. As at first con-
1 For the doings of this company, brought in seventy-three thousand
see the Report of the Directors of the dollars in tolls. See Whitford's Canal
Western Inland Lock-Navigation Com- System, i, 113, 416-418, 979-987, ii,
pany . . . 16th February, 1798; Buf- 1064.
falo Historical Society's Publications, * For maps and profiles of New York
ii, 157 ; and Elkanah Watson's His- canals, see Engravings . . . accom-
tory of the Rise . . . of the Western panying the Annual Report ... on
Canals, 92, 93. the Canals for 1859. There is an ex-
* The bed of Tonawanda Creek for cellent short "Account of the Grand
ten or twelve miles was used for the Canals" in A Brief Topographical and
canal ; otherwise it followed an arti- Statistical Manual of the State of New
ficial channel. York for 1822. A reduced profile
3 The Champlain Canal connect- of the Erie Canal and some interest- ing the Hudson and St. Lawrence ing details are to be found in the systems was opened in 1822 ; in twelve Biography of William C. Young, — one months, from October 1, 1825, it of the early surveyors.
1825] THE ERIE CANAL 13
structed, it was 363 miles long and the highest point was at Lake Erie, 568 feet above the Hudson at Albany. Owing to the fact that the canal ascended and descended to avoid expensive cuttings or embankments, the total lockage was increased to about 700 feet.
The effect produced by the opening of the Erie Canal was immediate and great.1 It provided a comparatively easy and uninterrupted mode of transportation from the Hudson T,o Lake Erie. It facilitated the movements of western emigrants and provided a commercial outlet for the surplus products of their farms. At once the increase in the demand for food by the western emigrants raised the price of grains along the western portions of the canal, but this was temporary. Salt making at Salina, or Syracuse, and the manufacturing of many kinds of household goods developed at several points along the canal ; but its greatest effect was to stimulate the growth of New York City. The older Western Inland Lock Navigation Company's canal and slack-water system had lowered the cost of transpor- tation between the Hudson River and Lake Ontario, but it was unsuitable for the conveyance of bulky and heavy goods, because everything had to be shifted from boat to wagon and back again several times to pass the falls and rapids of the Mohawk. Sections of the Erie Canal were open for traffic as soon as completed. By 1825, when it was opened for its full length, the cost of transportation of one ton of merchandise from Buffalo to New York City was reduced from one hundred dollars to less than eight dollars.2
1 For some illustrative figures, see the debt, $78,862,153.84, leaving a
Note III at end of chapter. balance of $42,599,717.25. After this
* Meyer and MacGill's History of there were no more tolls to be col-
Transportation, 168 note. In 1882, lected, as the canals of the State were
the State auditor reported that the made free. Wm'tford's History of
gross revenue of the Erie Canal to date the Canal System . . . of New York,
was $121,461,871.09, the gross ex- i, 317. penditure, exclusive of interest on
14 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY [Ca. I
In other words the conveyance of merchandise between the Great Lakes and the seaboard was now a commercial possibility. The outstanding and continuing result was the decline in prosperity of all the seaports on the Atlantic coast, north and south of New York, in comparison with the wonderful growth of that commercial metropolis.1 As early as 1827 Governor Troup of Georgia wrote that the wheat of western New York was already supplanting that of Georgia in the Savannah markets, for no fertility of soil or geniality of climate can overcome "a difference of freight of five to one." Since 1825 the Erie Canal has been reconstructed again and again, and, practically following its course, run the railroads, from Lake Erie to the Hudson. The ultimate influence of the break in the Appalachian system through which these lines of transportation run may be seen in the fact that in 1910 nearly three-quarters of the inhabitants of the State of New York lived within five miles of the line of water communication between New York Harbor and the eastern end of Lake Erie. Had there been no Erie Canal the development of that region would have been delayed for twenty or thirty years until the railroads reduced transportation costs, but it would have come then. The settlement of the Old Northwest, north of the line of the National Road, would also have been greatly retarded, so greatly retarded, indeed, that the War for Southern In- dependence might have terminated otherwise than it did. Finally, the part played by lessening costs of transportation on social evolution may be seen in the fact that of the four
1 In 1829 a paragraph in Hazard's and Lake Erie and by the Erie and Annals of Pennsylvania (iii, 320) Ohio canals, for Jl.STj; on the stated that one hundred weight of other hand, it cost $1.50 to transport goods could be transported from New the same weight of goods by wagon York City to Middleburg in central from Philadelphia, 140 miles, to Mil- Ohio, a distance of 750 miles, all the ton in central Pennsylvania. way by water by the Hudson River
1834] THE PORTAGE RAILWAY 15
hundred and sixty men of highest literary attainment who were born and nurtured in the United States between 1815 and 1850, three hundred and fifty-eight first saw the light of day in the section north of the Potomac and east of the Ohio.
The Pennsylvanians earlier had enjoyed an almost com- plete monopoly of western traffic between the Atlantic and the Mississippi Valley and north of the Potomac. Conestoga wagons lined the roads leading westwardly through Pennsylvania. This traffic had centred at Pitts- burg for so long a time that at first the Pennsylvanians were disposed to minimize the dangers of impending competition through the Mohawk Valley. They may also have been deterred from taking up any canal projects through their own State by the great difficulty of overcoming the moun- tains that nature had flung from north to south -across its limits.1 With the actual opening of the Erie Canal, more attention was paid to westward transportation and, in 1834, an independent route by canal and railroad was opened from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. This system was often referred to as the Portage Railway from the name of the project
1 The following facts are taken from a "Comparison of the Great Routes proposed to unite the Atlantic with the Great Lakes" in the "Biddle Manu- scripts" in the Library of Congress under date of February 12, 1825.
No. I. New York, by her Grand Canal Lockage 655 ft. Distance 506 miles
No. II. The National Route by Harris- burg, Wilkesbarre ; Seneca Lake to Lake Erie .... " 1593" " 511 "
No. III. Philadelphia by Schuylkill,
Harrisburg to Lake Erie . . 2033 " 559 '
No. IV. Trenton by Easton, Lehigh, Wilkesbarre to Lake Erie, by
upper tunnel 3266 " 1 ., ^og «
By lower do " 2700 " /
No. V. From Washington City, by Po- tomac River and Cumber- land, to Lake Erie .... " 4833 " 559 '
No. VI. From Philadelphia by Union Canal, Juniata to Alleghany and thence to Lake Erie . . " 4410 " " 650 "
16 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY [Cn. I
by which the mountainous mass was overcome. The total distance from Philadelphia to Pittsburg by this route was 395 miles. David Stevenson, a British engineer, made the journey over this line in 1837. He covered the whole distance in 91 hours' travelling time. He went by railroad from Philadelphia to Columbia on the Susquehanna and then by canal and slack-water navigation to the eastern end of the Portage Railway. The highest point of the portage was 2326 feet above the mean level of the Atlantic Ocean.1 This was overcome by ten inclined planes with stretches of level railroad in between. The planes were from 1480 feet in length to over 3000 feet, the height varied from 150 feet to 307 feet. Up these planes, railroad cars and canal boats were hauled by an endless rope, actuated by stationary engines, of which there were two at the head of each plane. Bits of railroad from one-sixth of a mile to thirteen miles in length connected the planes. Stevenson took seven hours to pass over the Portage Railway. In the first seven months that it was open nineteen thousand passengers and thirty-seven thousand tons of merchandise were conveyed over it, — a most convincing proof of the necessity of this particular internal improvement, whether it could or could not compete with the New York route or whether it ever repaid the cost of construction or, indeed, of operation.
The temporary success of the early trunk line canals incited the people of other parts of Pennsylvania to demand the construction of canals,2 either connecting their towns with
1 See David Stevenson's Sketch of vania for 1898-99, Pt. iv, No. 8, xli-
the Civil Engineering of North America, xcvi. There is a brief and clear ac-
262-274. A most interesting and count of the Portage Railway and of
ample account, giving helpful illustra- the connecting systems in C. B. Trego's
tions, including one of an inclined Geography of Pennsylvania (1843),
plane, is " The Evolution, Decadence 147-156.
and Abandonment of the Allegheny 2 The canal commissioner's report
Portage Railroad," by W. B. Wilson, forms "Appendix" to vol. ii of The
in the Annual Report of the Secre- Journal of the Senate of Pennsylvania
tary of Internal Affairs of Pennsyl- of 1833-34.
1833] THE OHIO CANAL 17
the main system or, in some cases, merely for transportation of goods from one town or county to another. The legis- lators could not resist these appeals and multitudinous canals were dug. Many of them had no economic justi- fication whatever and few of them provided enough business to repay the cost of operation. Moreover, there was great inefficiency in the construction and carrying on of these public utilities and there was also corruption and extrava- gance. The State, -too, had gone into the venture of public ownership and operation without making any adequate financial provisions. In the end the people of Pennsylvania found themselves burdened with canals, most of them not paying expenses and unable to compete with the railroad systems when they came to be built.1
West of the Alleghanies, the canal fever raged with nearly as great severity as it did on the Atlantic seaboard. In 1822, the Ohio legislature authorized a survey to be made to determine the practicability of connecting Lake Erie with the Ohio River by a canal. The committee reported in 1823, and ten years later the canal was opened for business from the "southwesterly corner of the Village of Cleveland" to Portsmouth on the Ohio. It was 308 miles in length and its summit was 395 feet above Lake Erie and 491 feet above its entrance into the Ohio. On portions of the route, there were serious engineering difficulties and the sudden risings of rivers more than once seriously interfered with the maintenance of the canal after it was opened and occasioned large and recurring expenditures. In the early years the
1 See Thomas K. Worthington's scheme, but useful also, as showing
"Historical Sketch of the Finances the best thought of the time on trans-
of Pennsylvania" in the Publications portation, in the Journal of the In-
of the American Economic Associa- ternal Improvement Convention that was
tion, vol. ii. There is a good deal of held at Baltimore in 1834 and in the
interesting matter relating mainly "Report" that accompanies it. to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
VOL. V. — C
18
THE WONDERFUL CENTURY
[CH. I
traffic on this canal was heavy, — the tolls, fines, and water rents in 1837 amounted to nearly three hundred thousand dollars.1 Its early success led to visions of vast interior navigations. Some of these were abundantly realized, but for the most part there was disappointment. There were many other western canals, the most important, perhaps, being the Illinois and Michigan Canal which was designed to connect Chicago with the Mississippi system.2 Work was begun on it in 1836 and continued off and on for a dozen years greatly to the relief of many groups of settlers in northern Illinois, who otherwise would have found difficulty in securing the necessities of existence.
The Southerners also projected extensive systems of canals ; one from the Tennessee River to the Atlantic Ocean and another from the Flint to the Savannah,3 but the only southern canal of any length to be constructed in this period was that connecting the Santee and Cooper rivers in South Carolina. It was very expensively con-
gee "Annual Reports" of the Ohio Canal Commissioners; W. F. Gephart's Transportation ... in the Middle West, 107-128; Dr. R. B. Way's article on the "Mississippi Valley and Internal Improvements, 1825-1840" in Mississippi Valley His- torical Association's Proceedings, iv, 153-180; James L. Bates's Alfred Kelley, 69-93; and the History of the Ohio Canals published by the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society in 1905. An earlier and shorter account is Charles M. Morris's essay in American Historical Associa- tion's Papers, iii, 107-136. There is a valuable "List of Works relating to Ohio Canals" in C. B. Galbreath's Ohio Canals, 8-17, published by the Ohio State Library in 1910.
On Indiana, Logan Esarey's article in the Indiana Historical Society's Publications, v, No. 2, is detailed and careful; and much out-of-the-way material can be gleaned from The
State of Indiana Delineated that was published at New York in 1838.
2 See James W. Putnam's "Illinois and Michigan Canal" forming vol. x of Chicago Historical Society's Collec- tions, and see also the Illinois State His- torical Library's Collections, vii, pp. htii- Ixxvii.
* E. J. Harden's Life of George M. Troup, 174, 180. In 1824 Gov- ernor Troup advocated undertaking a system of internal improvements by the State of Georgia. If this were done, instead of "decaying cities and a vacillating trade . . . seeking an emporium elsewhere than within her own limits, she will witness the proud and animating spectacle of maritime towns restored and flourish- ing, new ones rising up — her trade steady and increasing — ... and she may witness . . . the Western waters mingling with her own, and the trade of Missouri and Mississippi floated through her own territory to her own
1830] CANALS 19
structed and without adequate engineering oversight.1 It was of small utility, was dug and operated by a private corporation, and is interesting mainly as an example of Southern desire for better transportation facilities.2 In the country as a whole, in 1830, there were 3908 miles of canal either finished or well advanced toward completion and 6833 miles more either under construction or actively con- templated.3 These canals were constructed at vast out- lays for those days. States and municipalities issued bonds to provide the necessary funds out of all proportion to their ordinary taxable receipts.4 With the coming of the steam- boat and the railroad, most of the canals went out of use and, finally, in many instances they proved to be menaces to the public health. The great changes that the appli- cation of steam to transportation on coastal and inland waters and on the land itself were to make within a score of years could not have been foreseen by the statesmen, financiers, and promoters of that time, and they should not be held blameworthy for these miscalculations. Of all the canals, the Erie alone retained its vitality. Even as late as 1860, it had a grain tonnage equal to that of the railroads paralleling its course, partly because the roads paid heavy taxes from which the canal was exempt.
It is an interesting thought how one invention supplants another. For a time, the cry was for roads and more roads ; the Nation, the States, and private companies undertook their construction and operation usually in return for tolls
seaports, and all this within the com- Carolina Booklet, x, 122, and the "Mur-
pass of her own resources." phey Papers" in the North Carolina
1 U. B. Phillips's Transportation in Historical Commission's Publications,
the Eastern Cotton Belt, 34-43. ii, 103-151.
1 Alexander Trotter's Observations * George Armroyd'a Internal Navi-
on the . . . Credit of such of the States gation, 447-482.
. . . as have contracted Public Debts 4 See B. R. Curtis's "DebtB of the (London, 1839), chs. v-viii. J. A. States" in The North American Re- Morgan's "State Aid to Transporta- view for January, 1844. tion in North Carolina" in the North
20 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY [Ca. 1
that were levied on all traffic passing over them. Then came the canals which rendered partially useless the stage- coach and the wagon, and also the stone road except for merely local purposes. In their turn the canals were hardly completed as a system when the steamboat and the railway took business away from them. Is it not possible that the automobile and motor-truck with the airplane and the electrically propelled car will one day, and perhaps a not far distant one, likewise deprive the railroad of its place in the transportation system of this country?
The Clermont and the Phoenix made their trial trips in 1807 ; but the application of steam to movement by water did not become effective on the seaboard until after the close of the War of 1812 l or on the Mississippi until about 1819, and even later on the Great Lakes. The speed of the first boats was very slow, from four to six miles an hour, — a rate of progression that was ineffective against the current of a rapidly running river. The early Hudson River steam- boats took thirty-six hours to make the run between Albany and New York City which is now covered in a quarter of that time.2 By 1820, however, they were carrying sixteen
1 For the history of the steamboat ister for 1831 (Utica, N. Y., p. 5).
in America, see Stevenson's Sketch My attention was called to this book
of the Civil Engineering of North by Mr. F. S. Owen. The time by
America, 116-169. The successive edi- the mail-coach from Boston to New
tions of Samuel Cumings's Western York, 210 miles, was forty-one hours
Pilot from 1825 to 1841 give an ac- and the fare $11.00; but by going
count of the Ohio River and the Mis- somewhat slower by stage and steam-
sissippi River below the Missouri boat from New London, Providence,
and of the towns and settlements or Norwich, the fare was $7.25 (The
along the banks of those streams. New England Almanac and Masonic
* The Republican Crisis, July 22, Calendar for 1828, stage-list at end). 1808. The "Telegraph Coach" with The rates of postage had increased
seats for eight passengers only was since 1800, being 15 cents in 1816
advertised to make the run from Al- for ninety miles for a single letter as
bany to Buffalo in fifty-six hours, or against 10 cents in 1800 and 12^ in
ninety-two hours in all by steamboat 1832. The rate on the shortest dis-
and coach from New York City to Buf- tance, under 30 miles, was reduced in
falo, — four days for the run that is this' later year from .12 to .06. See
now made in half a day or less. See the present work, vol. iv, 6, and al-
The Stage, Canal, and Steamboat Reg- manacs of the period.
1820] THE STEAMBOAT 21
thousand passengers a year between the two cities at a fare of six dollars for each person. By that time, traffic through Long Island Sound was also active, steamers running to Norwalk, Hartford, New London, and even to Providence in Rhode Island. The use of steamboats from New York southward grew more slowly, but after 1820 there were many of them plying along the seaboard. In 1825, Nicholas Biddle wrote to William H. Crawford, who was then at Washington slowly recovering from an illness. He invited him to come to Philadelphia and wrote that the "steam- boats will render the travelling very easy — and in less than four and twenty hours you can be in Philadelphia," — a distance that is now covered by train in one-eighth of that time.1 The route followed in 1825 was from Washington to Annapolis by coach, across Chesapeake Bay by steamer, thence to Newcastle, Delaware, by coach, and up the bay and river by steamer to Philadelphia. This does not sound very inviting at the present time, but the people of those days were accustomed to great hardships in travelling.
The first steamer to be launched in the Mississippi Valley was the New Orleans, which was built at Pittsburg in 1811. She was constructed for Livingston, Fulton, and Nicholas Roosevelt, and was built under the superintendence of the last named. In September, 1811, she started down stream with Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt as passengers. After some delays, while awaiting high water at the falls of the Ohio at Louisville, she passed them safely and in due course reached New Orleans.2 For two years she plied between that city and Natchez, but in 1814 was destroyed by acci- dent. In 1815, the Enterprise that had been built at Browns-
l" Biddle Manuscripts" in Library Steamboat Voyage on the Western
of Congress, under .date of February Waters" in Maryland Historical So-
15, 1825. ciety's Fund-Pvklicatwn, No. 6.
'See J. H. B. Latrobe's "First
22 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY [CH. I
ville, in Pennsylvania, not only went down the river, but ascended against the current to Louisville and thence to Pittsburg, thereby demonstrating the possibility of river steamboat navigation.1 The building of steamboats now proceeded with rapidity and before the end of 1819, no less than sixty of them had been launched on the waters of the Mississippi or its affluents. It seems to be impossible to estimate the number of steamboats plying on the Mississippi and its branches at any one time, for the life of a river steamer was brief. The boats were flimsily constructed, the engines were weak and clumsy, and the boilers were poorly put together. The sudden and frequent changes from motion to rest at the various landings made it very difficult to control the making of steam. The pressure was very uneven and resulted in blowing out of cylinder heads and bursting of boilers, — the burning of the boat being an almost in- evitable result. The navigation of the rivers was also peculiarly perilous. In addition to shoals and swiftly running currents, they were infested with drifted trees that had become anchored by their branches to the river bottoms with the trunks swinging down the stream at an angle of from thirty to fifty degrees. These were the snags, planters, and sawyers that brought many a steamboat to an early end.2 For these reasons, the life of an early Mississippi steamboat was about four years, which was
1 Ben Casseday's History of Louis- 1836. Donald McLeod (History of
ville, 129. Wiskonsan, Buffalo, 1846) estimated
1 J. T. Scharf'a History of Saint that in 1842 there were 450 steamers
Louis, ii, 1094-1123, which is repeated on the Mississippi River and its afflu-
in E. W. Gould's Fifty Years on the ents with an aggregate tonnage of
Mississippi, ch. xxiv; De Bow's 90,000 and valued at more than seven
Commercial Review for 1849, pp. 279- million dollars.
288. Chapter xii of James Hall's The spirit of western steamboat
Statistics of the West (Cincinnati, 1836) navigation of this early time is set
is an interesting early account. A down in John Hay's "Jim Bludso"
table on pp. 252-263 gives the names, with a vigor and truthfulness that one
tonnage, and dates of building and loss seldom finds in this world, of all western river steamboats to
1820] THE STEAMBOAT 23
later increased to six. In 1836 there were only eighty-seven steamboats on the river that had been launched before 1830. In 1835 the fare for cabin passage including board from Wheeling to New Orleans, a distance of 1908 miles, was thirty-five dollars and deck passage one-quarter as much, the passenger "finding himself." 1 The ten years between 1840 and 1850 saw river navigation at its height ; then the railroads grew quickly west of the mountains and set a limit to the commerce of the northern Mississippi Valley by way of New Orleans.
Steamboats made their appearance on the Great Lakes at a later day than they did in the Mississippi region. The Walk-in-the-Water made her first trip in 1818 on Lake Erie. With the opening of the Erie Canal the demand for steam navigation grew and it was supplied. In 1834, it was ar- ranged to run a weekly steamboat from Buffalo to Chicago during the summer. In 1837, there were said to be forty-two steamboats in active employment on Lake Erie and six more on the stocks.2 By 1840, they had established regular business with the harbors on Lake Michigan. From that time on, steamer traffic on the Lakes exercised an extremely important influence on the settlement of the northern part of the Old Northwest. By 1848, the time from New York to St. Louis by rail and steamer had been cut down to eight days and could be made with a fair amount of comfort and certainty.
The application of steam to transportation on land was demonstrated to be commercially possible by George Stephenson, an Englishman. There were locomotive engines as good as Stephenson's from the theoretical point of view,
1 Hall's Statistics of the West, 249. Steamboat Travel on the Ohio River"
Many interesting details are given in in Ohio Archaeological and Historical
Monctte's "Progress of Navigation Quarterly, xx, 358. ... of the Mississippi" in the Mis- z J. N. Larned's History of Buffalo
sissippi Historical Society's Publica- i, 33, 45. lions, vii, and L. S. Heushaw's "Early
24 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY [On. 1
but he managed to combine correct mechanical appliances with a commercially profitable line of railroad.1 He con- structed the Liverpool and Manchester railway in the face of doubt and legislative refusal of aid. It was open for traffic in September, 1830, and its success spurred on the building of railroads in Europe and more extensively in America. The earliest or one of the earliest railroads to be built was the five miles of "way leaves" that connected near-by collieries with Sunderland, England, and was in working order in 1723.2 These early railroads were used to haul the coal from the pit to the shipping point. Almost one hundred years later, Stephenson equipped the railroad leading from a colliery to Durham with a steam locomotive that drew seventeen loaded wagons at four miles an hour.3 The first railroads to be built in America were one on Beacon Hill, Boston, and another in Delaware County, Penn- sylvania, in the first decade of the nineteenth century, but the details are indefinite. The third railroad or tramroad or possibly the fourth was built at Falling Creek, Virginia, in 1810. It was about a mile long and at one point ran across a trestle some seventy-five feet high. One of the rails was grooved and the other tongued to fit corresponding wheels on either side of the wagon. The sixth road was
1 As was the case with Fulton, Ste- that these inventions were combined phenson combined the devices and ex- to produce a practicable locomotive, periences of his predecessors in the See Samuel Smiles's George Stephen- production of a machine that would son and William H. Brown's History go commercially and keep on going of the First Locomotives in America. profitably : these were the smooth * Royal Historical Manuscript Corn- wheel in place of the cog wheel of mission's Report on Welbeck Abbey earlier types, the exhausting the steam Manuscripts, vi, 104. from the cylinders directly into the 3 William H. Brown's First Loco- chimney, thus creating a strong draft motives in America (ed. 1871), 55. without the use of bellows, and the mak- Lewis H. Haney's "Congressional His- ing of a tubular boiler in which twenty- tory of Railways in the United States five three-inch copper tubes con- to 1850," forming Bulletin No. 211 of ducted the heated gases from the fur- the University of Wisconsin, contains nace to the chimney. It was not until much useful information in a brief the making of the "Rocket" in 1829 compass.
1830J THE RAILROAD 25
built at Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1826. This road had wooden rails laid on stone sleepers and covered with iron plates, the wheels of the wagons being flanged.1 These railroads were all for the transportation of heavy material for short distances. They were either gravity roads or the propelling power was provided by horses, or, on one of the later roads, by men.2 Some of the early roads, especially in Pennsylvania, were constructed at public expense. These were open to any one who had the necessary locomotive or horse equipment and on one of them the regulations provided that the slower conveyance, whether steam or horse drawn, when overtaken by a speedier must make for the first siding and allow the swifter to pass.3 The first steam locomotive to be used in America was the "Stourbridge Lion" which was imported from the Stephenson engine works in 1829.4 For some time it was blocked up in the yard of a machine shop and operated with steam from a stationary boiler to run the machinery of the shop. At a later time it was used on the Delaware and Hudson railroad, but was too heavy for the rails and disappeared. The natural prejudice against the employment of steam loco- motives comes out in a conversation with Governor Troup
1 See article by Jamea L. Cowles in roads were built at public expense,
Boston Evening Transcript for May they were open for use by any one who
12, 1900; W. Hasell Wilson's Brief had the proper equipment upon pay-
Review of Railroad History, 20; and ment of a toll. The rules provided
George Smith's History of Delaware that no car should carry more than
County, 389. The best brief account three and a half tons and no "bur-
of land transportation with helpful den car" should travel faster than five
illustrations is George G. Crocker's miles an hour. The occasional shipper
From the Stage Coach to . . . the found it too expensive to provide the
Street Car. vehicles with flanged wheels to run on
1 The advantages of railways are the rails, and the business drifted into
set forth in the Report as to the prac- the hands of individuals or companies,
ticability and expediency of construct- See abstract of Antes Snyder's article
ing a railway from Boston to the Hud- in Scientific American Supplement,
son River that was presented to the November 28, 1903. Massachusetts House of Representa- * W. H. Brown's First Locomotive*
tives in January, 1827. in America, 74-92.
»Afl the early Pennsylvania rail-
26 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY [On. I
of Georgia in which he assented to the advisability of rail- roads, but as for the employment of steam locomotives exclaimed, " Good God, I cannot stand that ; I will go to the extent of horse power."
The "historic moment" in the railroad history of America was on July 4, 1828, when Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the sole surviving Signer of the Declaration of Independence, laid the "corner stone" on the line of the contemplated Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.1 The first steam railroad to be operated in the United States was the Charleston and Hamburg Railway connecting South Carolina's great sea- port with the Savannah River, opposite Augusta, in the State of Georgia. It was constructed partly at the cost of South Carolina to divert the commerce of the upper Savannah River to Charleston, which had been the point of transshipment for the interior trade in colonial days. It was an attempt to revive the waning fortunes of Charleston, which were already beginning to feel the effects of com- petition with the cotton lands of Alabama and Mississippi and the diversion of trans-Atlantic traffic to New York, and other northern seaports. The new railway was lightly built, running for miles over low trestles, and the final ap- proach to the Savannah River was made by an inclined plane. The stage-coaches had carried twelve passengers or so a week between Charleston and Augusta; after the opening of the railroad in October, 1833, the number of passengers increased to fifty a day. The South Carolinians deserve great credit for the energy and public spirit that they displayed in carrying through this enterprise. As an instrument of transportation, however, the road was not a success because the Georgians forbade its extension across
1 Lewis A. Leonard's Life of Charles Brown's First Locomotives in America. Carroll of Carrollton, 229-231 and 83.
1830] THE RAILROAD 27
the river and constructed a railroad of their own to tap the resources of the State above Augusta and to concentrate commerce at Savannah.1
The first engines used on the early railroads were very light and of small power, and the earliest lines were built with sharp curves and steep pitches. These could be over- come in dry weather, but a very small amount of moisture on the rails stalled the locomotives. An example occurs in the early history of the Philadelphia and Germantown Railway, which was very steep in places. It advertised that a locomotive engine will depart daily with a train of passenger cars "when the weather is fair" ; when not fair, cars drawn by horses will be used.2 So uncertain was early steam locomotion in New England that trains were some- times lost in rain or snow and it was thought expedient to provide relays of horses at convenient spots to rescue any locomotive that might be unable to proceed. It was also thought dangerous to run in the darkness and therefore all motion on these roads came to an end at sundown.
The electric telegraph came into existence most oppor- tunely to make possible the running of trains on the rail- roads with the minimum of danger and the maximum of speed and certainty of operation. As was the case with Fulton, so Samuel Finley Breese Morse 3 was a portrait painter by profession. He was the son of Jedidiah Morse, the geographer and a Calvinistic minister. Permitting the son to study art must have seemed a good deal like consigning
1 U. B. Phillips's History of Trans- 2 History of the Baldwin Locomotive
portation in the Eastern Cotton Belt, Works, 1831 to 1907. A facsimile of
ch. iii ; T. D. Jervey's Robert Y. Hayne the above advertisement is on p. 13.
and his Times, using index; H. Ham- 3 See E. L. Morse's Samuel F. B.
mond's South Carolina, 629-633 ; Hand- Morse: His Letters and Journals
book of South Carolina (2nd ed., 1908), (2 vols., Boston, 1914), and Samuel I.
pp. 505-508 ; and Meyer and MacGill's Prime's Life of Samuel F. B. Morse,
History of Transportation in the United LL.D. (New York, 1875). States, 422-427.
28 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY iCa. I
him to perdition ; but his parents consented and the profits of the "Geographies" provided the necessary funds. While returning home from one of his European trips, a fellow passenger — Dr. Charles T. Jackson of Boston — asserted that the electric current went instantly from one end of a line of wire to the other. At once Morse declared that if that were so there was no reason why "intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity." From that moment telegraphy occupied Morse's mind to the exclusion of everything else except that he was obliged to exercise his profession to procure bread. In devising the telegraph, he freely used information that he obtained from Joseph Henry, Alfred Vail, Ezra Cornell, and others ; but the success- ful assembling of their ideas and combining them with his own to produce a workable electric telegraph has given him deserved immortality.1 The first line was opened in 1844. It immediately attracted attention and the telegraph came into common use within a few years ; but Morse's later life was very largely occupied with defending his invention against the infringements of others.
The first improvement in the railroad was the substitution of the solid U-shaped iron rail for a combination of strap- iron and wood. The next was to substitute wooden trans-
1 An account of the origin and de- depositions from various persons ex- velopment of Morse's invention by posing errors of dates and statements William B. Taylor was printed in the of his opponents. The telegraph com- Annual Report of the Smithsonian panics and the miles of wire in opera- Institution for 1878, pp. 262-360, tion in 1850 are given in Report of the under the title of "Henry and the Superintendent of the Census for 1852, Telegraph." See also Alfred Vail's p. 112.
Description of the American Electro As a scientific man Joseph Henry
Magnetic Telegraph: now in operation probably deserves in our history the
between the Cities of Washington and place next to Franklin ; but he was an
Baltimore (Washington, 1845) and experimenter rather than an exploiter
J. C. Vail's Early History of the Electro- and the oblivion that attends the man
Magnetic Telegraph. From Letters and in the laboratory seems to have sur-
Journals of Alfred Vail (New York, rounded him. See A Memorial of
1914). Morse, himself, prepared an Joseph Henry. Published by Order of
account in 1867 entitled Modern Congress (Washington, 1880). Telegraphy, which has, as an appendix,
1844] THE TELEGRAPH 29
verse sleepers laid on the surface of the road bed instead of on the stone posts or walls that were used at first and found to be inelastic and disturbed by the frosts of northern winters. As it was financially impossible to build reasonably straight and level road beds in a new country and over the moun- tainous approaches of the Appalachians, it proved to be feasible to change the form of the locomotive by providing it with four front wheels on a truck to which the engine was attached on a pivot. A locomotive mounted in this way could go around a sharp curve, and then the same principle was applied to the coaches or cars in which the passengers rode or freight was carried. This again led at once to the substitution of a long boxlike car for a replica of the old stage-coach, which had been the form of the first railroad passenger conveyances. Then a doorway was cut in the end, the passengers were seated on either side of an aisle, and thus the American locomotive and coach were evolved.
With each improvement of the steamboat and the railroad, speed was increased and the conditions of travelling were improved. In 1817, the time from Boston to New York had been cut down from eighty hours to forty or so. Pas- sengers left New York by boat on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday morning for New Haven, where they transshipped to another boat for New London and from there proceeded by stage-coach to Providence and Boston. In 1826, the time was further reduced to twenty-four hours.1 From New York southward, one went by railroad through New Jersey. In 1833, Adams travelled over this line. He timed the rate of speed at sixteen miles in fifty minutes ; " We had flakes of fire floating about us in the cars the whole time," he wrote. Between Amboy and Bordentown a wheel on one of the coaches burst into flame and slipped
1 J. Q. Adams's Memoirs, iv, 4; vii, 315; viii, 541 ; iz, 30; rii, 70.
30 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY [Cn. I
off the rail. One of the cars was overset and the side crushed in. Two persons were killed and one only in that car escaped unhurt. In the same year Audubon, journeying southward,1 from Petersburg, Virginia, was dragged in a "car drawn by a locomotive" at the rate of twelve miles an hour and " sparks of fire" came into the car in such quantities that the passengers were kept constantly busy extinguishing them on their clothes. In 1844, Adams left Baltimore at nine o'clock in the morning and reached the Astor House in New York before midnight of the same day.
These improvements in transportation were greatly for the public benefit. They were essential to the peopling of the West and to the building up of the industries of the East.2 Capital was in scant supply and the citizens naturally turned to the public authorities for aid. The federal Con- gress, State legislatures, and the cities and towns answered the demand. The Erie Canal was constructed by the State of New York ; States and cities subscribed to the stock of road companies, and legislatures gave promoters the right to hold lotteries. When the railroads came, therefore, the people were accustomed to public contribution. In the western country especially, public aid was very necessary because roads, canals, and railroads could not possibly earn any return on the money invested in them, until the coun- try served by them had been cleared and was producing a surplus for transportation. The result was a mass of public debt which was, for the most part, entirely justifiable from economic and political standpoints, but was none the less burdensome. It was under these circumstances that many of these States went into the banking business with the
1 F. H. Hemck's Audubon, ii, 53. Economics, xvii; D. R. Dewey'a "State
*G. S. Calender's "Early Trans- Banking Before the Civil War" (Sen-
portation and Banking Enterprises ate Document!, 61st Cong., 2nd Seaa.,
of the States" in Quarterly Journal of vol.34).
1845] TRANSPORTATION 31
expectation, apparently, that they could secure enough profits from banking to relieve themselves of a part, at least, of the burdens of railroad building. In many cases these hopes proved to be elusive, but in some States, notably in Virginia1 and South Carolina, the State banks were well managed and profitable. The Bank of South Carolina was founded in 1812. The act for its establishment provided that all the assets of the State should form its capital and that all the taxes collected by the State should be deposited in it. The bank might receive private deposits, discount bills of exchange, loan money even on mortgages, and issue paper currency ; but the amount loaned on real property was to be apportioned among the election districts, according to the number of representatives in the Assembly.2 The income of this bank was regarded as a part of the revenue of the State. This act was amended from time to time and the operations of the bank aroused jealousies and envy on the part of legislators and of financial institutions. It lived down all these troubles and in 1847 had received and paid out over twenty-eight million dollars.
Three journeys made in 1796, 1836, and 1845 reflect the changing conditions of travel. The first was made by Moses Austin,3 who left Virginia on December 8, 1796. He and his comrades rode on horseback about thirty miles a day to Harrodsburg, Kentucky, which they reached on the 23rd of that month. On the 29th they crossed the Ohio by ice and by boat and on the 9th of January reached Kaskaskia on the Mississippi, having been almost exactly a month on
'Richard L. Morton's "Virginia 'See A Compilation of All the Acts
State Debt and Internal Improve- ... in Relation to the Bank of the State
merits, 1820-38" in Journal of Po- of South Carolina (Columbia, S. C.,
litical Economy, xxv, No. 4, April, 1848).
1917; and William L. Royall's His- * American Historical Review, v,
tory of Virginia Banks . . . Prior to 523. the Civil War.
32 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY [Ca. 1
the way. The second journey was made by Lucian Minor.1 He left Baltimore by stage on November 29, 1836, over the National Road, which he described as a "fine McAdamized turnpike." On December 6 he left Wheeling by steam- boat for Cincinnati. The ice was running in the river and the voyage proved to be full of peril. But he reached Louis- ville on the 16th. There he passed through a canal with two locks which had cost nearly a million dollars, five- sevenths being paid by the United States. At Louisville he stayed at the Gait House, which he described as " a new and elegant hotel, almost vicing with the Tremont of Boston " ; he had a warm room on the fourth story and clean towels. On December 21 he reached Shawneetown in Illinois. Nine years later, in May, 1845, W. W. Greenough 2 travelled by steamer and railroad from Detroit to Boston in less than three days and a half.
By 1840 there were nearly three thousand miles of steam railroad in operation in the United States. About one-half of this mileage was in the Middle States, — Pennsylvania with seven hundred and fifty miles having the greatest extent of railroad of any State in the country. Indeed, there were more miles of railroad in Pennsylvania than in all the Southern States put together. In the next ten years the railroad mileage tripled to about nine thousand miles in all. By this time, New York had outstripped Pennsylvania and Massachusetts was pressing hard upon the Keystone State. In 1850, something less than one-quarter of the total mileage was in the States south of the Potomac and the Ohio. The seasonal variation of cotton and tobacco carriage in that region and the multiplicity of navigable waters made against railroad building. In Kentucky there were only
1 Massachusetts Historical Society's * Massachusetts Historical Society's
Proceedings, 2nd Ser., vii, 264. Proceedings, vol. 44, p. 339.
1850] TRANSPORTATION 33
seventy-eight miles of completed railroad, and in Virginia there were less than four hundred miles in comparison with thirteen hundred in New York. Georgia, indeed, in 1850, was the only Southern State that had a railroad system in actual operation that was at all comparable to those of the States of the Northeast.1
Important as transportation has been in determining the growth of cities and towns and the settlement of farming areas — in the development of the material side of life — the effect of these new forces on the relation of man to man has been even greater. By making practicable the working together of human beings in larger units it has conduced to the development of democracy and direct government ; democracy has outgrown the town and State until now, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico, the whole force of the community in a brief space of time can be thrown in any one desired direction. Peering into the future and embarking on the dangerous path of prophecy, it is not at all out of the realm of possibility that the same forces that have broken down sectional barriers within national borders will shatter national barriers themselves and racial lines, too, and lead to international action on a scale and in directions hitherto undreamed of. So, too, in a similar way and for similar reasons the old associations of man to man, of the employer and employed working to- gether, side by side, have disappeared. The man of executive mind and of power can now direct far more than the gang of working men laboring by his side or within easy reach by eye or horse ; he now can administer a factory or a group of them, or even groups of groups scattered widely over the
1 These figures are taken from the ures, see Dudley Leavitt's New-
table in Poor's Manual of the Rail- England Almanack . . . for the Year
roads of the United States, for 1868-69, 1841, pp. 41, 42. p. 20. For somewhat different fig-
VOL. V. D
34 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY
country or the world. Entrepreneurs combining together can conduct operations limited only by the demand for their goods, without much regard to distance, country, or clime. So, also, labor has been forced to act in larger and larger units, to disregard political barriers, and even to leap over the bounds of race and religion : the town guild has become the labor union by federation extended to many trades and employments and tending to disregard the lines of political and physical geography. Under these cir- cumstances, schemes of living and working that have hitherto been impracticable are every day coming to be more and more the usual mode of action.
NOTES 35
NOTES
I. General Bibliography. — Hildreth's annalistic work stops with the year 1820 and Henry Adams's survey of the administrations of Jefferson and Madison closes with the accession of Monroe in 1817. James Schouler's History of the United States (vols. iii-iv) is the only work of the formal historical type that covers the period from 1815 to 1850 in detail. It is especially worthy of note for this time because the author takes a sympathetic view of Jacksonianism. McMaster's History of the People of the United States (vols. iv-vii) covers the period in a most comprehensive manner. The author has discarded the sprightly style of the opening part of his work and the volumes are unusually hard reading; but owing to the mass of detail in them and to the abundance of quotation and citation, they are extremely useful. Possibly most readers will find Schurz's Clay, Lodge's Webster, and Shepard's Van Bur en, in the " American Statesmen" series, more useful than either Schouler or McMaster. Books dealing with the more important topics of this era will be cited in later notes.1
n. Transportation. — The best general work is Meyer and Mac- Gill's History of Transportation . . . before 1860 (Washington, 1917). A much shorter, but useful essay is Henry V. Poor's Sketch of the Rise and Progress of the Internal Improvements . . . of the United States; this was first printed as an introduction to his Manual of the Railroads for 1881 and was published separately with the same title, but with a slightly different pagination. An earlier comprehensive sketch is contained in the Report of the Superintendent of the Census for Decem- ber 1, 1852. David Stevenson's Sketch of the Civil Engineering of North America (London, 1838) and George Armroyd's Connected View of the Whole Internal Navigation of the United States (Philadel- phia, 1830) have already been mentioned several times, — a list of canals completed and projected is on pp. 454^189 of the latter. Part iv of the second volume of Noble E. Whitford's History of the Canal System of the State of New York is a comprehensive view of the " Canals of the United States and Canada."2 G. G. Huebner's and
1 The student of inquiring mind can but really has a much wider significance
find information arranged in usable than its title implies, form in the State Gazetteers, of this * A vast amount of useful informa-
period, especially T. F. Gordon's tion on these topics and on social and
Gazetteer of the State of New York that political matters, also, may be easily
was published at Philadelphia in 1836, gathered from the successive volumes
36 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY
T. W. Van Metre's articles on " The Foreign Trade of the United States since 1789," " Internal Commerce," and " The Coastwise Trade" in E. R. Johnson and associates' History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce of the United States give a convenient conspectus of the subjects studied.
m. The Effect of the Erie Canal. — It appears from Delaval Carpenter's Address to the People of the United Kingdom, on the Corn Laws (London, 1840) that the price of wheat in England by the quarter of eight bushels was 65 shillings in 1820, 43 in 1822, 66 in 1825, and thereafter varied from fifty-six to sixty-six until 1833, when it went to fifty-two ; in 1835 it went to the lowest point, 40 shillings a quarter ; but in 1838 it was up again to sixty-three shillings. The price of wheat in America had similar inexplicable variations. In 1820, flour by the barrel was $6.00 at New York ; in 1829 it was $8.50, in 1831 was $6.12, in 1835 just under $5.00, and in 1837, $11.00 a barrel.1 It would seem from this that other factors than cheapness of transportation between the Great Lakes and the sea- board governed the price of food.2 The figures and titles in this Note were given to me by Mr. F. E. Milligan of Pittsburg, Penn- sylvania.
of HezeMah Niles's Weekly Register, 39s, 4d, in 1835
published at Baltimore from 1811 64s, Id, in 1838
onward ; and Samuel Hazard's Reg- , a , . , , . .,
. r, , • ii. .e .. i See also tables of the exports of
ister of Pennsylvania, the first volume , , .
, /. , , ,. , j , T>VI wheat, flour, and manufactures in
of which was published at Phila- „,, n !~, , Tr , , ~ ..
, . , . . ,orio j ,, , e Inomas (j. Cary s Use of the Credit
delphia in 1828 and the six volumes of , ., e, . , J ., „ ' „, ,
i.- rr -A j CIA A • ; j °f t"-e ototc JOT the Hoosoc Tunnel
his United States Commercial and ,v, 4 IQCO^ oo oo
„.....,„.. ,., , (Boston, 1853), pp. 22, 23.
Statistical Register which was pub- De Bow>9
hshed at the same place beginning with p ^ giyea & ^ Q{ ^ ^^
., r> ,. value of breadstuff s and provisions
> According to the Parliamentary exported by five-year periods • Papers (Accounts and Papers, 1843, * :? ' " '
liii, No. 177, p. 18) the "Annual -
Average Prices" of wheat in England g6- 830 :
and Wales per "Imperial Quarter" •»;}»
1841-1845 =$80,016,657
67s, lOd, in 1820 The smallest amount exported in a
44s, Id, in 1822 single year was $9,588,359 in 1837 ;
68s, 6d, in 1825 and the largest amount was $68,701,921
62s, lid, in 1833 in 1848.
CHAPTER II
THE WESTWARD MARCH
THE migration from the "Old Thirteen States" on the Atlantic seaboard and from European countries to the Mississippi Valley is one of the marvellous phenomena of history.1 The coming of the Germanic hordes to western Europe in the days of Alaric, the West Goth, and Attila, the Hun, and their overthrow of the Roman Empire is com- parable to it by reason of far-reaching success ; it has no relation to the occupation of the trans-Appalachian region in point of size. Moreover, the Germanic invasions de- stroyed, or greatly modified, the most highly developed institutions of that time ; the migration across the Alle- ghanies and the occupation of the Mississippi Valley sub- stituted civilization for savagery at the cost of the extinction of the original occupiers of the land, to the accompaniment of warfare, treaties, and the inevitable effects of the contact of savagedom with the vices and diseases of civilization.
Transappalachia includes the greatest portion of the United States. Measuring across the continent from Cape Henlopen on the Atlantic to Cape Mendocino on the Pacific, seven-eighths of this territory is to the west of the Appala- chian Mountains. In 1815 the United States was limited on the west and on the south, but by the Florida Treaty of 1819, the Oregon Treaty of 1846, and the treaties following
1 For the earlier time, see the present work, vol. ii, 650 and fol. ; iii, 15-24; vol. iv, ch. ix.
37
38 THE WESTWARD MARCH [CH. II
on the close of the Mexican War the boundaries of the homelands of the United States were established as they are today. Transappalachia may be roughly divided into the Mississippi Valley with the accompanying alluvial- coastal plains, the Rocky Mountain region, and the Pacific Coast. For practical historical purposes the country west of the Appalachians may be regarded as divided by the one hundred and fourth meridian which forms the eastern boundary of the present States of Montana and Wyoming. It is with the eastern section that the present chapter is concerned. Journeying westwardly from the Alleghany Mountains, one came, in the old days, to a densely forested country extending almost from the Lakes to the Gulf. The hardwood trees were of no structural value at that time, but they offered a great impediment to the pioneer as they must be cut down before corn could be grown for the sustenance of himself and his family. Nevertheless, for years the pioneers hesitated to go out from the protection of the trees to the naked prairies beyond, for there, there was no shelter from the summer's sun or the winter's storms. Moreover, surface water was scarce, although, as the pioneers did not know, by sinking wells it might be obtained almost anywhere. The prairies stretch westwardly to about the ninety-seventh meridian, where they are succeeded by higher and drier level tracts known as the "high plains." It is not known why there are no trees on the prairies and the plains. The best explanation perhaps is that forests to live require a certain amount of moisture.1 When the rainfall is below that point, minor
1 See papers by J. D. Dana, A. lani.es, ch. ix. See also Bowman's
Winchell, and Leo Lesquereux in Forest Physiography, 427 ; Daniel E.
Silliman's American Journal of Science Willard's Story of the Prairies; and W.
and Arts, vols. xxxviii, xxxix, and xl ; V. Pooley's Settlement of Illinois. An
and John D. Caton's comments on interesting old-time view is in Jamea
Lesquereux's theories in his Miscel- Hall's Statistics of the West, ch. vi.
1830] THE PRAIRIES 39
factors, that ordinarily would have little influence, become decisive. Thus in a region of abundant rainfall, a fire started by lightning would have slight effect, but in a drier country it might prove fatal to tree life. So, too, the pulver- ization of the surface soil by drought keeps the scanty supply of water near the surface and thereby prevents the reforest- ation of burned-over areas. With artificial encouragement, trees can be grown as far west as the one hundred and fourth meridian, except in limited areas where special considerations apply.
South of the Ohio River and between the mountains and the Mississippi, the country is suited to the production of corn, tobacco, and cotton. The Black Belt, extending from western Georgia to the Mississippi River, possesses a dark soil which in its pristine condition is exactly suited to the needs of the cotton plant, and the rainfall and temperature of this belt of land are also exactly what the growing cotton demands.1 Northward of the Ohio River, corn and wheat grow luxuriantly. Indeed, nowhere else on the earth's sur- face is there a block of half a million square miles of land so thoroughly suited to the needs of agricultural man as eastern Transappalachia and impinging upon it are areas of iron and coal and copper, in richness beyond the dreams of the most ambitious manufacturer.
The obstacles to the occupation of this country had been the difficulty of reaching it from the Atlantic seaboard and the lack of surplus population in that section to take advan- tage of such means of transportation as then existed. In 1800 there were not enough people living in the original States
1 See J. W. Mallet's Cotton . . . Survey and a Ph.D. of G6ttingen. A
the Actual Conditions and Practice of modern book on the same subject is
Culture in the Southern or Cotton States C. P. Brooks's Cotton: its Uses, Varie-
of North America (London, 1862). ties, Fiber Structure, Cultivation, and
Professor Mallet was analytic chem- Preparation for the Market and as an
1st of the Alabama State Geological Article of Commerce (New York, 1898).
40 THE WESTWARD MARCH [Cn. II
to more than scratch the surface of opportunity. Those who sought the lands over the mountains in the earlier time were actuated mainly by the love of adventure, by the lure of the wilderness; stern economic necessity had not as yet touched the people of the older settled area. From 1800 to 1820, the embargo, the war, and the hard times spurred on migration ; but it was not until the finan- cial revulsion of 1837 and the critical years thereafter that eastern people sought the western wilds in great numbers. This gradual strengthening of the tide of emigration from east to west synchronized with the development of the new modes of transportation.1 Until the opening of the National Road, travel toward the Mississippi Valley was arduous, dangerous, and prolonged, — and that highway served mainly the needs of Pennsylvania and the States to the southward. It was not until the Erie Canal and connecting links of transportation became available about 1830 that emigrants from New York and New England could gain the western country with any fair degree of safety, speed, and comfort.2 By 1840 the railroad began to influence migration, but only to small distances from tidewater. It was not until after 1850 that this mode of transportation became an important element in the settlement of the Northwest.
A contributory cause to the growing march of westward migration was the development of the national land system. Land acts were passed in 1800, 1820, and 1841, and the movement increased in volume after each one of those years, but whether there was any direct relation between these two facts cannot be stated. It is certain that the land legis-
1 Professor Albert P. Brigham has count of the Pennsylvania route be-
a readable article on "The Great fore the days of the Portage Railway
Roads across the Appalachians" in in his Journal (ed. 1824, p. 147). the Bulletin of the American Geo- 2 See Michigan Political Science
graphical Society for June, 1905. Association's Publications, iv, 13. Moses Guest gives an interesting ac
1820] NATIONAL LAND SYSTEM 41
lation explains some of the peculiarities of western settle- ment and, therefore, would better be briefly examined. In 1785, when the land ordinance was passed, western public lands were looked upon as prospective producers of wealth for the States of the Confederation and the idea that the lands were a valuable financial asset to the older settled part of the country remained into the constitutional period as can be seen in the land act of 1796. 1 In 1800, while the Federalists were still -in control of the government, a land law was passed that marked the beginning of a different policy.2 In the future, the national domain should be used for the benefit of the country as a whole by encouraging the settlement of unoccupied lands. In the future, land would be sold in good sized lots to settlers at a minimum price of two dollars an acre, a portion being paid down at once and the remainder in instalments at interest, — the govern- ment, on the other hand, allowing a discount for cash on the payments that might be deferred. The mode of sur- veying that had already been adopted was continued with some alterations. Under this system, settlers often outran the surveyors and demanded recognition of their preemption rights. It is easy to see how many complications might arise. Men were often tempted to buy as much land as they had money in hand to pay the first instalment ; and,
1 For this and later land laws see Jefferson came into power, and W. H.
Annals of Congress and Statutes at Harrison, himself a Virginian, was
Large under date ; these laws and il- Ohio's delegate in Congress, a new act
lustrative matter have been collected was secured, largely through his in-
in four volumes as House Miscellaneous fluence, which permitted tracts of 320
Documents, 47th Cong., 2nd Sess., acres to be purchased by individuals."
No. 45 (Washington, 1884). For a It is perhaps needless to point out
scholarly r6sume of the earlier his- that in 1800, the Federalists were
tory of the land system, see Payson still in power and this act was ap-
J. Treat's National Land System, 1785- proved by President John Adams.
1820. Harrison did favor it, but one of the
1 See however, Robert E. Chad- strongest opponents of it was Henry
dock's Ohio before 1850, p. 54. He Lee, likewise a Virginian, and father
writes "In 1800, when the party of of Robert E. Lee.
42 THE WESTWARD MARCH [Cn. II
with the frontiersman's speculative hopes, relied on the future to provide the funds necessary for the deferred payments. As long as everything went well — as long as the Indians kept quiet, new settlers came pressing in from the East, and frost and malarial sicknesses held off — the lands would constantly increase in value and a man by selling off part of his holdings could raise the money to pay the instalments as they came due. After 1810 for a dozen years or so, there were Indian troubles, sicknesses, and droughts which culminated in financial distress. On September 30, 1819, it appeared that settlers owed to the United States government more than twenty-four million dollars of unpaid instalments. The condition called for a remedy and had been calling for a remedy ever since the passage of the act. So, too, had the case of the unauthorized dwellers on the government land, the squatters as they were later called. If the object was to increase the power and strength of the United States by the rapid occupation of lands and the building of homes, why should men wait for surveyors to run their chains over bog and mountain ? Why not take a bit of good land and pay for it when the surveyor did come ? But this of course created trouble. Not infrequently it happened that when a man had regularly purchased land, he would find one of these pregmptioners already living upon it. Some- times the matter might be amicably settled by payment for improvements, but often there was friction.1 Settlers were constantly appealing to Congress for extensions of time in which to make their payments or to have their squatter rights legalized. Congress might have insisted upon the law being rigidly enforced or it might have provided some entirely new system. It did neither, but granted extension
1 For a description of the mode by Horseback Tour" in Wisconsin Hia- which the settlers overrode the law, toricol Collections, xv, 277. see Alfred Branson's "Circuit Rider's
1820] THE PATHBREAKERS 43
of credit no less than thirteen times and passed no less than thirteen preemption acts that were limited in their appli- cation. At length in 1820, Congress put an end to the credit system and provided that lands should be sold in eighty acre lots at a minimum price of one dollar and a quarter an acre. Twenty-one years later, in 1841, it passed a general preemption law, and twenty-one years after that President Lincoln put his name to the Homestead Act by which it was hoped that actual settlers would acquire farms practically without money payment.1 In all these earlier years, Congresses and Presidents, generally, stood firmly against making special grants or special exceptions, but there were some instances and some of them were entirely commendable as the presents in 1803 and 1825 of thousands of acres of the public lands to General Lafayette.
The first settlers were backwoodsmen, or frontiersmen, or pioneers, or pathbreakers, — they cannot be called farmers or planters because as soon as they had brought a little patch of ground into farming condition, they sold out to the next comer and moved away into the wilderness. They were temporary reversions to the hunter type ; they did not belong to the agricultural stage. They loved solitariness and the smell of the smoke of a neighbor's chimney was in itself enough to drive them back to the wilderness road. The mother and children had as great a fondness for the life of the fringe of civilization as the father and moved willingly on and on with him. Daniel Boone is the stock represent- ative of this type and he is a very good one, because not until age stiffened his limbs could he be brought to quiescent living. Next came the farming and planting pioneers
1 Emerick's "The Credit System horn's "Some Political Aspects of
and the Public Domain" in the Pub- Homestead Legislation" in American
lications of the Vanderbilt Southern Historical Review, vi, 19. History Society (No. 3) and San-
44 THE WESTWARD MARCH [Cn. II
following hard on the first rank of wilderness invaders. They exhibited some symptoms of settled existence, build- ing better cabins than the half-faced camps. They cultivated the fields for several years until the ground was free from stumps, the soil pulverized, and neighbors appeared. Then the "Western Fever" seized upon them and drove them once more to the wilderness : — to the Connecticut River, to New York State, to the Western Reserve, to Illinois, to Minnesota and beyond.1 An interesting example of this restless type was Hezekiah Lincecum and his son, Gideon. The latter was born in Georgia in 1793. In the course of the next ten years or so, the family lived in eight or nine different places in Georgia and South Carolina. The Lince- cums 2 then settled for a time near Tuscaloosa, in Alabama, and finally on the Tombigbee River near Columbus, Mis- sissippi. There Gideon struck out for himself. He became a self-taught doctor and collector of insects and lived his last years in Texas and in Mexico. Although belonging to a later generation Hamlin Garland's family well represents the farming wanderer. The grandparents left Maine before the Civil War and moved by canal and steamer to Wisconsin. Hamlin's father was a soldier in the Union army. Returning to his Wisconsin home, he lived there for a time; then "Fair freedom's star" pointed to the sunset
1 "At first the west was the Con- West," it has been found advisable necticut river; then the hill country to use a definite geographical term — of Western Massachusetts . . . and Transappalachia — to describe the coun- finally the regions beyond." Aaron try beyond the Old Thirteen. At W. Field's "Sandisfield: Its Past the present time (1920) there seema and Present" in Berkshire Histori- to be a reaction against the term cal and Scientific Society's Collec- "the West" as used by Mr. Field, for tions for 1894, p. 81. In point of fact, W. P. Shortridge in Minnesota His- the Atlantic beach was really the first torical Bulletin, iii, 116, speaks of the frontier, because the three thousand region beyond the Alleghanies as mile voyage across the ocean brought "the first real American West." to many a man and woman entirely 2 Mississippi Historical Society's new ideas of the responsibilities and Publications, viii, 443-519. See also possibilities of life. Owing to the Southern History Association's Pub- shifting geographical position of "the lications, i, 89-97.
1820] NUMBERS 45
regions and away he and his wife and children went to Minnesota, to Iowa, to southern Dakota.1 In reading this family life story, one is impressed, as he is with the life stories of other migrant farming families, with the absence of home ties. They had no feelings of affection for the houses and lands that they left behind ; they only looked to the future and over the mountains and rivers to the westward. As years went by and the fringe of settlement moved out from the wooded country to the prairies, the hunting pioneers disappeared. Now, when the railroad brings immigrants from the Atlantic coast in one journey to the railhead on the prairie, the first comer is no longer a farming migrant, but himself belongs to the group of home making farmers or homesteaders, as they might well be called.
The magnitude of the westward movement and its mean- ing can best be expressed, perhaps, by a study of population statistics of different parts of the country in years that are a generation apart. In 1790, ninety-four per cent of the total population of the country of about four million human beings lived in the Old Thirteen States, the takers of that census reporting under one-quarter of a million people in the western settlements. By 1820 practically one-quarter of the whole population of nine and a half million people
1 Hamlin Garland's A Son of the the Vermont and New York shores of
Middle Border. The author himself Lake Champlain. After tarrying there,
came to Boston for training in litera- representatives of the family moved to
ture and then removed to New York, Michigan and Wisconsin and Ne-
and in 1893 brought back his parents braska; some of them, revivified by
from their Dakota farm to Wisconsin. contact with the western wilderness,
The family history of my colleague, returning to their first landing place
Professor Frederick Jackson Turner, in the New World.
furnishes an admirable example of a A good illustration of re-migration
migrant and re-migrant family. The is the Ohio Society of New York,
first immigrants from England settled In 1889 a list of its 303 members,
in eastern Massachusetts. Thence, giving the places in Ohio whence
after a good interval, the Turners they had come to New York, was
took up the westward march, going printed in Henry Howe's Historical
first to Connecticut, and then north- Collections of Ohio, i, 177-183. westwardly through Massachusetts to
THE UNITED STATES IN 1820 (From The Statistical Atlas of the Twelfth Census.)
THE UNITED STATES IN 1840 (From The Statistical Atlas of the Twelfth Census.)
47
48
THE WESTWARD MARCH
[CH. II
lived beyond the western limits of the Atlantic seaboard States, and in 1850, forty-five per cent of the twenty-three million inhabitants of the United States lived there. Since that time, the proportion has slowly increased, until in 1910, nearly fifty-nine per cent of the dwellers in the home- lands lived to the westward of Pennsylvania and New York and the other original thirteen States.1 So great, on the other hand, has been the growth of urban population that in 1910 as many people lived within a radius of thirty miles of the New York custom house as inhabited the country to the westward of the one hundred and fourth meridian, even to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. By far the greatest part of the increase in the newer part of the country was by emigration from the older States on the seaboard. In 1820, the western population, instead of being less than half a
1 The following table is compiled from the Compendium of the Seventh Census (1850), pp. 40, 41; Census of 1870, vol. i, p. 4; and Census of
1910, vol. i, p. 146 and fol. It illus- trates the points noted in the text and gives comparisons of a later date:
|
TOTAL POPULATION IN UNITED STATES |
POPULATION OF ATLANTIC SLOPE |
% OF POP. ON ATLANTIC SLOPE |
POPULATION OF TRANSAPPALACR i A |
% OF POP. IN TBANS- APPALACHIA |
|
|
1790 |
3,929,827 |
3,708,116 |
94ft |
221,711 |
5ft |
|
1820 |
9,638,131 |
7,013,154 |
72ft |
2,624,977 |
27ft |
|
1860 |
23,191,876 |
12,729,859 |
54ft |
10,462,017 |
45ft |
|
1870 |
33,589,377 |
15,752,507 |
46ft |
17,836,870 |
53ft |
|
1900 |
75,994,575 |
31,490,175 |
41* |
44,504,400 |
58ft |
|
1910 |
91,972,266 |
38,063,468 |
41ft |
63,908,798 |
58ft |
|
1920 |
105,708,771 |
43,651,927 |
41ft |
62,056,844 |
58ft |
In 1800 the total urban population of the United States as a whole was less than one-quarter of a million; in 1850 it was over two millions, and in 1920 it was approximately fifty-four millions as against fifty millions as the total rural population of the country. In 1910 the total population of the States west of the 104th meridian, which is the western boundary of the Dakotas and Nebraska, was 6,825,821
and at the same time there were more than 7,225,416 human beings living within a radius of thirty miles of the New York custom house. In fact, in 1910 more people lived on Staten Island in New York Harbor than in the whole State of Nevada. The people of Nevada were represented by two Senators in Congress, while the people of Staten Island were represented by r J j part of two Senators.
i850] NUMBERS 49
million as it would have been by the usual excess of births over deaths, was over two and a half millions ; 1 at least one million and a half of this increase represented immi- grants from the older States. In the second thirty years from 1820 to 1850, the inhabitants of Transappalachia more than doubled by some five millions ; the seaboard section, notwithstanding the great immigration from Europe in the last ten years of that time failing to double by at least two millions. It would seem probable, therefore, that in those two decades, the West took at least four million people out of the East. When we consider also that the migration from the farms to the manufacturing towns and commercial cities was very large in these sixty years, especially in the last thirty of them, we can realize what a strain was placed upon the old rural population.
Looking over the figures given in the "Census of 1850," one is impressed with the large proportion of the migration from the four South Atlantic States. Two-fifths of the free- born South Carolinians — whites and blacks — were then living outside of the State of their birth. This was a larger proportion of emigrants than from any other State in the Union, but nearly one-third of the Virginians and North Carolinians and nearly one-quarter of the Georgians had
1 The figures given in the text are estimate of the total loss of the Ameri- based upon somewhat intricate cal- can army in the whole war, including dilations about which there may be a those killed in action and those dying good deal of doubt. In a new coun- of disease and wounds, as less than try population is supposed to double twenty-five thousand. See the pres- by natural reproduction about every ent work, vol. ii, 492 note and Wil- thirty years, but the rate declines liam Jay's "Table of the Killed and rapidly as a country emerges from the Wounded in the War of 1812" in New pioneer stage. Some of the accretion York Historical Society's Collections, of the population of Transappalachia Second Series, ii, 447-466. was due to the acquisition of Louisiana For other calculations limited to which brought two hundred thousand New Englanders, see Professor Tur- people into the United States at one ner's "Greater New England in the time. On the other hand, the in- Middle of the Nineteenth Century" fluence of the War of 1812 may be in American Antiquarian Society's Pro- eliminated, if we accept William Jay's ceedings, October, 1919.
VOL. V. — E
50 THE WESTWARD MARCH [Ce. II
likewise sought the newer lands. The inhabitants of the Southwest from Alabama to Arkansas and Texas were almost entirely from the Old South ; there were some foreign born immigrants and rather more from the Northern States, especially in Texas, but most of the settlers were Southerners born and bred. Moreover, Southerners crossed the Ohio River from western Virginia and from Kentucky and formed the predominant element in the Old Northwest, south of the line of the National Road. Indeed, the New Englanders at Marietta and vicinity were almost the only Northerners in this region. The causes of this Southern migration are easily found in the crude methods of agriculture of that region and in the tremendous demand for cotton that devel- oped almost beyond belief in each decade from 1800. The area of cotton culture rapidly grew and the cultivation of the plant became more intense, more a matter of business, of the application of capital to labor. The units of cultivation grew larger and the small farmer could no longer compete with the man of capital. By 1830 cotton growing had spread from western Georgia to the Mississippi River. The planters in the older States could not compete with the cotton growers of the "black belts." J The only thing for the less advantageously situated planters and farmers to do was to go to the newer cotton lands and westward they went. George Tucker, a Virginian, writing in 1824,2 de- clared that "the west" was "the el Dorado of all bad man- agers" ; but he was unjust to his neighbors, for it was the
1 See Phillips's "Origin and Growth or Memoirs of the Graysons, i, 169.
of the Southern Black Belts" in This work of fiction, which was printed
American Historical Review, xi, 798- in two volumes at New York in 1824,
816. Some conditions of life in the gives an intimate view of the life of the
South and circumstances of migra- planters of Virginia by one of them-
tion are vividly set forth in Edwin J. selves ; Paulding's The Banks of the
Scott's Random Recollections (Co- Ohio; or Westward Ho ! (3 vols.,
lumbia, S. C., 1884). London, 1833) is a remarkable picture
* See his Valley of Shenandoah; in prose of the Virginia migration.
1830] SOUTHERN MIGRATION 51
general economic condition of Virginia planting life and not especially bad management that made migration inevitable. The tobacco plant was a destroyer of the soil and Virginia methods were undoubtedly extravagantly wasteful. Wash- ington and Jefferson were both of them disturbed at the outlook. They studied books and corresponded with emi- nent agriculturists in other parts of the United States and in Europe, but both of them seem to have been helpless in introducing thorough-going reforms even on their own estates. Then, as the century advanced, Kentucky-grown tobacco appeared in the markets and added to the distress of the Virginians. The years after 1815, instead of bringing relief from the conditions of embargo and war, only in- creased the troubles of the tobacco men. Droughts and insect-pests were added to the pressure of old debts, and the hard times in the cotton region greatly lessened the demand for Virginia slaves, which were offered for sale by the thousands.1 Jefferson's experience is interesting. It would seem that an estate of over five thousand acres with one hundred and thirty-two slaves might have been made to pay, but it is very doubtful if Jefferson ever secured any net return from his property.2 In fact, as the tobacco acreage on Virginia's exhausted fields diminished, the amount of labor, as measured by the number of slaves, increased so that the plantation slowly ate itself up. Vir- ginia planters, following the example of the South Carolinians, migrated to the westward, taking their slaves with them,
1 Speech of Thomas J. Randolph esting picture of the condition of
... on the Abolition of Slavery . . . Eastern Virginia at the time of the
Jan. 21, 1832, p. 11. Ambler, citing westward migration.
Thomas Marshall, states that the agri- 'See the "Jefferson Papers" in the
cultural products of Virginia in 1831- cabinet of the Massachusetts Histori-
32 were " worth no more than they had cal Society under date of August 11
been eighty years prior when the and 27, 1819, and his Account Book
population was only one-sixth as large." for 1823. "A List" of Jefferson's
Sectionalism in Virginia, p. 111. Pages property is in the same collection
110-117 of this book give an inter- under date of May 14, 1815.
52 THE WESTWARD MARCH [Cn. II
or one or two members of the family with some of the slaves established new homes in Transappalachia. In these years, the population of eastern Virginia including the Valley of the Shenandoah was actually declining, — in 1840 there were 26,000 fewer inhabitants living there than in 1830.1 It will be interesting to study the migration from a more personal point of view. There were the Cabells of Virginia who were connected by marriage with the Brecken- ridges of Kentucky and Missouri and with the Shelbys of Alabama ; and there are few States of the Union that have not representatives of the Cabells and their kin. The best known Southern-Western migrating family was that of Jefferson Davis. His grandfather came to Pennsylvania from Wales and moved to Georgia. His father went next to western Kentucky, where the future President of the Confederacy was born in the year 1808. In infancy he was taken by his father to Louisiana and then to Mis- sissippi. Also in western Kentucky, and one year later in point of time, Abraham Lincoln first saw the light of day. His ancestors had come to Massachusetts in 1637 and the family had moved slowly through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia to Kentucky, leaving members behind at various points of the route.2 Abraham Lincoln with his father and mother crossed the Ohio River to Indiana and later he removed to central Illinois. Of the other two great characters in the secession struggle, General Grant belonged to a Massachusetts family 3 that migrated to Ohio by way of
1 These figures were compiled for of tide-water had decreased by 3274
me by Mr. R. L. Morton. From between 1820 and 1830 ; and five Pied-
them it appears that the white popu- mont counties had likewise suffered a loss
lation of the Piedmont district actually of 1522 white inhabitants in those years, decreased over 4% in the decade. 2 For a complete and careful ac-
J. B. Harrison in his Review of the Slave count of the Lincoln family, see Lea
Question . . . By a Virginian (Rich- and Hutchinson's Ancestry of Abra-
mond, 1833), p. 19, gives figures that ham Lincoln (Boston, 1909). show that the white population of 3 Arthur H. Grant's The Grant Family
nine Virginia counties below the head . . . Descendants of Matthew Grant.
1830] NORTHERN MIGRATION 53
Pennsylvania ; the immediate family of his great opponent, Robert E. Lee, remained persistently in Virginia, being the only one of the four to have no Western associations.
Viewing the course of the movement from a more general standpoint, one is impressed by the part played by Vermont and central and western New York and western Penn- sylvania as temporary abiding places for these western going families. An almost endless procession begins in Massachusetts and moves through Connecticut or western Massachusetts, to Vermont or to the New York shore of Lake Champlain. There a family remained for a generation or two and then in the 1820's moved to the " Genesee coun- try" l in western New York, and then another generation went farther west. If the migrant family found itself in western Connecticut, the line of march was often farther south through New Jersey and Pennsylvania to Ohio, or sometimes even farther south to Kentucky by way of Virginia. The liberal institutions of Vermont coupled with an abundance of vacant land drew people to that northern country ; but the life there was very hard, the labor severe, and the reward small. Western New York attracted families of passage by its greater economic oppor- tunity, and also because in a larger and rapidly growing State the chance for service and personal advancement was much greater there than in a smaller and longer settled community. Frequently ill health necessitated a freer open- air life and drove many a promising, but physically weak, lad from eastern town or farm to the western wilderness,2 as was the case with Luther Burbank.
The great migration from central and western New York
1 A good example is to be found in paternal grandfather from Connecti-
the family of William L. Sill of Wyo- cut.
ming. He was born in Wisconsin, his 2 W. S. Harwood's New Creation*
father was a native of New York ; in Plant Life. his mother was from Vermont and his
54 THE WESTWARD MARCH [On. II
between 1830 and 1840 is not easily accounted for At first sight it would seem that the opening of the Erie Canal, by subjecting the farmers of that region to the competition of the workers of the fertile lands tributary to the Great Lakes, would so have reduced the price of flour and other agricultural products that the New Yorker would abandon his farm and proceed to a new country. It does not appear, however, that the price of flour at New York City and at Philadelphia was materially affected by the radical reduction in the cost of transportation from Buffalo to tide-water. Moreover, the marvellous increase in the manufacturing population of the Northeast created a new demand for agricultural products, for these workers abandoned the production of food for the making of shoes, cloth, and other commodities. It is probable that, contemporaneously with the drifting into towns, there was a change in the taste in food from bread made of corn and the dark grains to bread made from wheaten flour. Owing to the shifts in the methods of census taking, it is impossible to state the growth of the urban population as distinguished from the rural at different periods. All that can be said is that in the first half of the nineteenth century the urban and suburban population had grown from something like a quarter of a million in 1800 to about ten times that amount, or two and a half millions in 1850 ; none of these town dwellers produced much, if any, food, and every one of them had to be fed by the labor of others. The Northeastern farmer of the olden type was of about the best human material that America has ever seen. He lived an almost ideal political and social democratic existence. With a change in agricultural conditions that the use of machinery brought in, with the establishment of manufacturing, and the coming of immi- grants of other stocks, an abandonment of the old life was
1830] MIGRATION 55
necessary, for a part of the family, at any rate.1 Some of the children became prosperous farmers in Illinois or other Western States, others of them entered business or manu- facturing life in the towns of the Eastern States, and after a generation or two became prosperous manufacturers or commercial men or bank presidents or entered one or another of the learned professions. Some of the western wanderers were attracted to Transappalachia by ideals of freedom or the probability of economic independence offered by a farm in the new country. But many men sought speculative opportunities there; not a few, who had read law, per- ceived a chance to acquire wealth in the endless litigation that was sure to arise over western lands ; and others sought political preferment in new communities where positions were not already held by well known men. In the earlier years, the emigrant moved by short stages from one State to another ; but after 1840 steamboat navigation on the Lakes made it almost as easy to go from Buffalo or Cleveland to Milwaukee or Chicago as it was to go to Toledo or Detroit. The story of a few families will illustrate the points made in the preceding paragraph. Of New Englanders, perhaps, the Fairbanks family is the most interesting : the immigrant Jonathan Fairebanke came from England to Massachusetts in the 1630's and at Dedham built a house which is still standing and was occupied by members of the family for eight generations. Descendants of the original settler to the number of a thousand or more have lived in thirty-four States of the Union : at Monroe and at Leon in New York ; at Madelia in Minnesota ; at Waupun in Wisconsin, at Berkeley, California, and elsewhere. The first Fairbanks
'See Charles F. Emerick's "Anal- tory of Daniel Webster admirably il-
ysis of Agricultural Discontent in the lustrates the motive of migration from
United States" in Political Science the "old farm" to city or prairie. Quarterly, xi, 436, 437; the early his-
56 THE WESTWARD MARCH [Cn. II
were farmers, but the later ones, or some of them, have entered many occupations. Among them were Thaddeus Fairbanks of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, who invented the standard scales that bear his name ; Nathaniel Kellogg Fairbank, who began as an apprentice to a bricklayer in Sodus, Wayne County, New York, and ended his life in Chicago as a princely manufacturer; and Charles Warren Fairbanks of Indianapolis, who was Vice-President of the United States.1 There are many other families with similar histories, as that of Henry Kingsbury who came to Massa- chusetts from England in the Talbot in 1630. Since then nearly two thousand of his descendants have lived in thirty States or territories of the Union.2 One might go on for page after page giving repeated references and mentioning family after family, but it would be a mere fortifying of a story that is beyond dispute. Indeed, of the seven Pres- byterian ministers commemorated in Hotchkin's "Western New York," five came from Connecticut and of the three hundred and sixty-eight original settlers of Chautauqua County, nearly one-half were New Englanders.3 New York stood in the relation of foster parent to thousands of families who paused there a generation or two on the way from New England to Ohio and the States farther west, even to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. On the other hand, it is notice-
1 See Lorenzo S. Fairbanks's Gen- L. Doty's Livingston County, New
ealogy of the Fairbanks Family in York (Geneseo, 1876) ; Andrew W.
America, 1633-1897. Young's Chautauqua County, New York
» F. J. Kingsbury and M. K. Tal- (New York, 1848) ; O. Turner's Pioneer
cott's Genealogy of the Descendants Settlement of Phelps and Gorham's
of Henry Kingsbury of Ipswich and Purchase (Rochester, 1870) ; and an
Haverhill, Mass. Of the nine uncles almost endless number of biographies,
of a lady from Maine of my acquaint- local histories, and publications of
ance six went to California, made some historical societies. A tabulation of
money, and then abandoned the five volumes of The Mayflower De-
Golden West. Four of them re- scendant shows that descendants of the
turned to New England ; the other two Pilgrims have lived or are living in al-
settled in Georgia and Kentucky. most every part of the United States
8 Besides Hotchkin, see Lockwood and outlying possessions.
1830] COURSE OF MIGRATION 57
able that the families of the original Dutch settlers of New Netherland, to an even greater extent than the Pennsylvania Germans, stayed in their first homes.
Thousands of family stories present certain elements of similarity. There is the closing of the old home, the packing of household goods and children, sometimes the mother and grandmother, into a wagon drawn by two, four, or six horses or oxen and sometimes by a mixed team. Often the elder children and the mother walked with the father, an uncle or two, and possibly a hired man. There were always troubles with the road whether one went south or north or through the Middle States. There were rivers to be forded, mountains to be crossed, and swamps to be passed. Following the southern and middle routes, one went directly from one's former home to the newer place of living. In the North, the first part of the journey was sometimes made wholly or partly by canal boat, from the Hudson westward to Buffalo. There the travelling family with its paraphernalia and animals embarked on a steamboat to go by water to a port in Michigan, or Wisconsin, or Illinois and then to take up the landward march. These journeys were not mere matters of days or weeks, but often consumed a month or more. The desires of the emigrant were often aroused to join the westward movement by letters received from a brother who had gone before l or by alluring circulars from land speculators who were able to acquire large tracts on credit under the act of 1800. Later the transporta- tion companies became active and touted for business.2
1 Dr. Solon J. Buck in the "Intro- Guide through the United States (1838). duction" to the "Letters of Gershom Insets give detailed information as to Flagg" states that five of Flagg's roads, etc., in the vicinity of the lead- brothers and sisters followed him to ing cities. Illinois. * John T. Blois in his Gazetteer
For roads, distances, steamboats, of the State of Michigan (Detroit, 1838,
and canal routes, see the map accom- p. 160) says that in Michigan in 1837
panying S. A. Mitchell's Traveller's & farm of 80 acres of government land
58 THE WESTWARD MARCH [Cn. II
Arrived at the new home or the place that was to be a new home for five or ten years, the family either moved into a frontier hut that had been erected on a half cleared farm, or, if the emigrant took up land that had not been touched it would be necessary to build a shelter and then construct a log house. Everything was of the rudest type, necessarily so in the existing conditions of trans- portation. Then followed the work of clearing the land or of continuing the clearing operations of an earlier occupier. Throughout large portions of the western country fevers and agues and stomachic troubles beset the settlers. They generally attributed these disorders to the turning up of large areas of sod or decaying humus in the forested tracts. Probably they were malarial infections and were unavoid- able in the existing condition of hygienic science. They certainly were not diminished by the sudden change in the condition of the soil covering. As to remedies, the pioneers had vigorous constitutions, otherwise they could hardly have survived the combination of disease and "cure" ; and under the circumstances there was likely to be resort to alcohol either in the form of a beverage or in the more insidious guise of a medicine. When one had cleared his land and got his fields in fair producing order, there was usually no market for whatever surplus grain or live-stock the farm might produce and, therefore, there was no money with which manufactured commodities could be purchased. The early farms were perforce self-sustaining in that the women made the clothes from the wool, the flax, or the skin, the men of the family helping in the heavier work, as boot-making. One of the most interesting accounts of early western life
cost $100.00, or a farm of 640 acres quality of land." By migration, he
cost $800.00; therefore a "father would better his own condition and
may sell his small farm in the East that of each member of his family, who
for a sum that will purchase a dozen would soon become independent, large ones in the West, of the best
1830] FRONTIER LIFE 59
was written by Gershom Flagg, an early New England settler in southern Illinois. He raised corn and wheat by the hundred bushels and could do nothing with it. In 1820 corn was selling at from twelve and one-half cents to twenty cents a bushel at Edwardsville in Illinois.1 A settler in the earlier days was almost immobile. Public conveyances ran infrequently, if they ran at all, the fares were very high and the distances to be travelled long. About the only way, therefore, to get a change of scene was to migrate to some other part of the country. If one lived within a day's journey of a navigable river, the case was perhaps a little better, but even the teaming of farm produce to a steamboat landing for twenty or thirty miles was extremely difficult and expensive. It was under these circumstances that the farming population of the newer country, territory, or State, welcomed any kind of suggested improvement in transportation, whether road, canal, or steam railroad, and cheerfully consented to the incorporation of banks and to the incurring of debt on the part of the State or town for the purpose of encouraging the opening of lines of transportation.
Religion, idealism, or economic causes often led the mi- gration to assume a group form. There are examples of concerted movement from the old Puritan settlements, of the transplanting of Southern Quaker "Meetings," and of the removal from Europe to America of particularistic groups whose religious views or social doctrines were displeasing to some European ruler. The migration from Granville, Massachusetts, to Granville, Ohio, in 1805, is probably the
'Gershom Flagg's "Letters" in prices are for St. Louis and Edwards- Illinois State Historical Society's Trans- ville, Illinois, which was within easy actions for 1910, p. 167. Corn had teaming distance of the Mississippi, been selling at 33 to 50 cents in 1819 ; Farther inland the prices of farm in 1818 and again in 1825 it was as produce must have been very much high as 75 cents a bushel. These less.
60 THE WESTWARD MARCH [Cn. II
most perfect example of the continuance of the old Puritan system of group migration.1 In this case, a "church" of the old New England type had previously been organized and a constitutional agreement drawn up and signed in the old Granville and land acquired in the new. In the first migration one hundred and seventy-six persons participated, fifty-two of them being heads of families ; in most cases the weaker members were left behind to follow on later. They laid out their town on the New England model, with a public square in the centre where they erected a log house that in the earlier years served for religion, business, and education. In 1831, the people of Bergen in New York, incited by reli- gious zeal, determined to become a church in the wilderness as the Pilgrims had before them. Five years later, just before starting on their westward way, they covenanted "with God and with one another" to found such a church. In 1836 and in 1837, about fifty persons, included in seven or eight families, left Bergen and journeyed to Illinois, across Canada, southern Michigan, and northern Indiana. They occupied nine weeks on the journey and founded the settlement of Geneseo2 near a similar colony called Princeton,
1 See Henry Bushnell's History of Pacific Stales and long resident in San
Granville, Licking County, Ohio (Co- Francisco, was born in Granville,
lumbus, Ohio, 1889) and The Granville Ohio ; his ancestors having lived in
Jubilee, celebrated at Granville, Mass., Granville and West Springfield, Massa-
August 27 and 28, 1846 (Springfield, chusetts, the first of them landing at
1845). Lynn in 1632.
Ordinarily, little reliance can be 2 Memorial Address . . . of the
placed on names of towns and townships Settlement of Geneseo, Illinois. Other
in deducing institutional relation- instances of group migration from New
ships. In 1816 Gershom Flagg states England are those from Vermont to
that there were then in Ohio 3 Con- Vermontville in Michigan (Michi-
cords, 6 Fairfields, 11 Madisons, 7 gan Pioneer and Historical Society's
Salems, and 8 Springfields. See Flagg's Collections, xxviii, pp. 197-265) and
"Letters," p. 143, and note and Mrs. from Durham in Connecticut to Dur-
Martin's "Origin of Ohio Place Names" ham in New York (William C. Fowler's
in Ohio Archaeological and Historical History of Durham, 209, 214, and
Publications, xiv, 272. It is interest- Lois K. Mathews' Expansion of New
ing to note that Hubert Howe Ban- England, 228-230). oroft, the maker of the History of the
1830] GROUP MIGRATION 61
which had been established in 1831 by people of Northamp- ton, Massachusetts.
Most of the early settlers of Ohio and Indiana and south- ern Illinois were from the Southern States and Pennsylvania, sometimes directly and sometimes by way of Kentucky. Many of them were attracted to Ohio by the cheapness of the land as well as by the fertility of the soil. Large tracts had been assigned to Virginia at the time of the cession and a great deal of this land had been turned over to Virginia's Revolutionary soldiers to satisfy their claims under the bounty laws of that State,1 and, besides, Virginia had made many private grants in the Ohio region before the cession. Many of the soldiers and other grantees sold their warrants for what they would bring to speculators, who in turn sold them below the government rate to actual settlers. It has often been asserted that many of the early Ohio colonists left their Southern homes because they disliked the slave system and that others had been driven out of the South by the increasing competition of slave labor. This was true in some cases, but probably the aversion to slavery on the part of the Southern settlers in Ohio has been overem- phasized. It certainly strongly influenced the migration of Quakers from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia to the free country north of the Ohio River. This movement continued throughout the first thirty years of the century. In some cases the clearance of the Quakers from their old homes to the interior resulted in the transference of their meetings as a whole. In other cases, some members re- mained behind, but most of these or their children probably joined the earlier emigrants in the years of deepening slavery and secession feeling in the Southern States. An idea of the
1 Payaon J. Treat's National Land general and from 100 to 300 acres to a System, 1785-1820, p. 329. Virginia private, according to the length of laws promised 15,000 acres to a major service.
62 THE WESTWARD MARCH [Cn. II
size of this Quaker migration may be gathered from the fact that letters transferring the membership of nearly two thousand persons from meetings in the Southern States to the Miami Meeting were received in the four years from 1803 to 1807 ; and the minute books of Cedar Creek Meeting and South River Meeting in Virginia contained more than one hundred letters of dismissal to Ohio, — which probably meant the migration of four times as many persons. The Friends went to Cincinnati, to Miami County, to Fairfield, to Plainfield, and to other places in Ohio.1 Their aver- sion to slavery grew rather than weakened as the years went by and this, combined with their industrious and law- abiding habits, made them an exceedingly important element in the State.
Whatever may have been the case with the Southern settlers of Ohio, the Southern colonists of Indiana and Illinois were not impelled by any religious or idealistic motives, but crossed the Ohio River, either because of the love of adventure or because on the northern side they hoped to make a living more easily than they could in western Virginia or Kentucky. Until 1840, Indiana and southern Illinois were distinctively Southern in thought and institutions. The Black Swamp protected Indiana from invasion from the north and the distance of the inhabited parts of Illinois from the southern end of Lake Michigan made against migration by way of the Great Lakes.2 The
1 Harlow Lindley's "The Quakers * S. J. Buck's "The New England
in the Old Northwest" in Proceedings Element in Illinois Politics before
of the Mississippi Valley Historical 1833" (Mississippi Valley Historical
Association, v, 60-72 ; Stephen B. Association's Proceedings, vi, 49) brings
Weeks's "Southern Quakers and Sla- together with abundant citations many
very" in Johns Hopkins University interesting and not easily get-at-able
Studies, extra volume xv, ch. x ; the facts as to early Illinois population ;
Annals of Newberry by J. B. O'Neall and the map accompanying S. A.
and J. A. Chapman (Newberry, S. C., Mitchell's Illinois in 1837 provides
1892) specially Part ii, § i ; and Our tangible information as to county
Quaker Friends of Ye Olden Time lines, canals, towns, etc. (Lynchburg, Va., 1905).
1830) RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES 63
settlers of southern Indiana and Illinois had none of the anti- slavery sentiments of the Southern settlers of Ohio. Indeed, they would gladly have introduced slavery into their new homes and came very near doing so.1
Apart from the Northern and Southern groups that have just been mentioned, one of the first religious communities to appear in the Western country after 1800 2 was led by George Rapp, a Wiirtemberger, who had lost faith in Lutheranism, had denounced its vices and corruptions, and had found it desirable to abandon the land of his birth. With his followers he migrated to Pennsylvania and later sought the Wabash Valley in Indiana. There they established a home in the wilderness which they named Harmony ; but the spot was unhealthy. In 1825 they sold out their farms and vil- lage to Robert Owen and, returning to Pennsylvania, estab- lished the town of Economy on the Ohio River about eigh- teen miles from Pittsburg. The Rappists were celibates and communists and believed that the second coming of Christ and the end of the world were so near that they themselves would see them. Another German religious body to come to Pennsylvania was that composed of the followers of Joseph Bimeler or Baumeler. He also was a Wurtemberger and either he or one of his comrades had warned Napoleon of his danger, owing to the multitude of souls he was hurrying into eternity. Bimeler and his
1 See T. C. Pease's The Frontier books there cited ; and also J. I. Mom-
State (Centennial History of Illinois, bert's Lancaster County, 354-362 ; and
ii) ch. iv; N. D. Harris's History of Hinds's American Communities (2nd
Negro Servitude in Illinois, chs. iii and ed.), 16-26. For the Rappists, see
iv; E. B. Washburne's Sketch of Ed- ibid., 69-98, and the books cited on the
ward Coles, 61-198; and William H. latter page; and especially J. H.
Brown's "Historical Sketch of the Bailsman's Beaver County, Pennsyl-
Early Movement in Illinois for the vania, ii, 1004-1030; and also G. B.
Legalization of Slavery" (Fergus His- Lockwood's The New Harmony Moie-
torical Series, No. 4). merit, 7-42.
* For the earlier German com- A list of books on American com- munities in Pennsylvania, see the munities is in note to ch. zv, below, present work, vol. ii, 411, and the
64 THE WESTWARD MARCH [Cn. II
people landed at Philadelphia in 1817. They soon moved to Ohio, calling the place of their settlement Zoar. As was the case with the Rappists, communism had been no part of the original scheme of Joseph Bimeler ; but the struggle with the wilderness convinced the Zoarites that in no other way could they succeed in keeping body and soul together. For a time, too, celibacy was the rule, but later on marriage was permitted.
Another communal experiment of this early time is that which is associated with the name of Robert Owen. He was a native of Wales who had some very pronounced theories as to property and modes of living.1 He had been a mill manager in Scotland and had greatly contributed to the success of the establishment in his charge by reducing the hours of labor, increasing the wages of the operatives, and providing for the happiness of the working people. At one time he had hit upon the belief that the way to cure most of the evils of society was for men to associate together, to eliminate the distributing middleman, but otherwise to be free to work out their own salvations. In 1820, the idea came to him that reason indicated the grouping of human beings into villages of about a thousand souls apiece. Each person in one of these settlements should be allotted an acre of land or possibly two ; families should live separately in contiguous houses, the members taking their meals in a common dining-room.2 Individualism would disappear and each and every one would work for the benefit of all. Owen thought that his plan to be successful should be tried on a
'Duke Bernard of Saxe Weimar, of Robert Owen (London, 1871), p. 4.
on the occasion of Owen's death, wrote R. Owen at New Lanark; . . . By
that his wish had been "to renovate One formerly a Teacher at New Lan-
the world, to extirpate all evil, to ban- ark contains many illustrative anec-
ish all punishments, to create like dotes of Owen's early life, views and like wants, and to guard 2 Owen's Report to the County of
against all conflicts and hostilities"; Lanark (ed. 1821), pp. 24-26. G. J. Holyoake's Life and Last Dayt
1825] NEW HARMONY 65
great scale, but not raising the necessary funds, he decided to try it on a small scale. He bought out the Rappist improvements in Indiana, and in 1825 he led his colonists thither, and renamed the settlement New Harmony. The course of life there ran anything but smoothly after the first few months. There was incessant debating and con- stitution making, but very little labor. In 1827, the experiment as a community came to an end, but most of the Owenites remained in Indiana, although Robert Owen, himself, eventually returned to England.1
The story of the founding and early days of any one of the newer States is merely a replica of that of western New York, western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, or Tennessee. When New Englanders and New Yorkers moved to the newer country, they carried with them their churches, their schools, and their ideas of corporate responsibility.2 The Southerners in their migration likewise carried to their new homes their strong individualism and their peculiar labor institutions. In Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, the two sets of ideas began to jostle one another as these States received more Northern immigrants. For a time, there was a good deal of friction, but finally a conglomerate in- stitutional fabric was worked out under which Southerner, Pennsylvanian, and Northerner lived together side by side in reasonable harmony. After 1850, when the rapidly grow- ing network of railroads opened the "Middle West" to Northern influences and Northern markets, the old North-
1 For Robert Owen and his experi- ment and the books mentioned on p.
ments, see his Life (1 vol., London, 381.
1857) by himself and a Supplementary 2 John T. Blois (Gazetteer of the State Appendix (London, 1858) ; W. L. of Michigan, 157, 158) says that of the Sargent's Robert Owen (London, 1860) ; white population in Michigan in 1837, New Views of Mr. Owen of Lanark the greater portion, estimated at (London, 1819) ; Owen's New View of nearly two-thirds, is from New Eng- Society (3rd ed., London, 1817) ; and land or western New York, or is corn- George B. Lockwood's New Harmony posed of "New Englanders or their Communities and New Harmony Morse- descendants, and mostly of the latter." VOL. V. F
66 THE WESTWARD MARCH
west rapidly changed its political and social alignment. Michigan and Wisconsin had no Southern elements in their populations, but both of them in the 40's and 50's were to be powerfully influenced by bands of immigrants from Germany and Scandinavia.
The perusal of diaries, journals, and letters written by these early settlers of Transappalachia convinces one of the attachment of these pioneers to the homes of their youth, and to the ideals of the communities whence they came. The direct contact with nature and the hardness of frontier life brought back to the race those qualities that easier existence seemed to have softened. As the Reverend J. D. Butler of Madison, Wisconsin, phrased it in 1870 : " Through a change of base men secure a vantage-ground for a new start after failure, they gain a fair field for new experiments, they plunge into that necessity which is the mother of invention, — they cast off in their long march valueless heirlooms, mental no less than material, — they are roused to the utmost endeavors by new hopes, new havings, new potentialities of progress." 1
1 C. K. Williams's Centennial Cele- these new conditions, for the Ameri-
bration of the Settlement of Rutland, can people is now and has been for
Vt., 51. It is remarkable how ev- some years among the most conserva-
anescent has been the influence of tive of the nations of the earth.
NOTES 67
NOTES
I. Bibliography. — Professor Frederick Jackson Turner's The
Frontier in American History (New York, 1920) is by far the best book on the subject and, besides, itself is an embodiment of the pioneer spirit. Detailed citations are given in the footnotes of this book and also in Turner's List of References on the History of the West, published by the Harvard University Press, and in the later sections of Channing, Hart, and Turner's Guide to the Study and Reading of American History. When he was at the University of Wisconsin, Professor Turner broke away from the ordinary path of American historical endeavor and with his students organized the study of " the West " on a new basis. In a series of articles in the Atlantic Monthly and in other publications,1 he set forth his ideas. His students, in the volume of " Turner Essays " 2 and in separate con- tributions, have reinforced their master's theories. J. W. Monette's History of the Discovery and Settlement of the Valley of the Mississippi was published in 1846 ;3 it contains a mass of information and reflects the thoughts of an early inhabitant of that part of the country. James Hall's four books 4 well set forth the condition of the West at about the same date. Lois K. Mathews's Expansion of New England treats the Northern stream of migration and Ulrich B. Phillips in his " Origin and Growth of the Southern Black Belts " in American Historical Review, xi, 798, in his chapters in The South in the Building of the Nation, and in his History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt has done excellent work for the Southern
1 Among them may be mentioned l Essays in American History dedi-
"The Significance of the Frontier" cated to Frederick Jackson Turner
in American Historical Association's (New York, 1910). Report for 1893 (reprinted with some * Two articles by Monette, one on
changes in Wisconsin Historical So- "The Progress of Navigation and
ciety's Proceedings for December, 1893 ; Commerce on the . . . Mississippi
and also as chapter ii of C. J. Bui- River and the Great Lakes," the
lock's Selected Readings in Economics); other on "The Mississippi Floods,"
"The Significance of the Mississippi are printed in the Publications of the
Valley in American History" (Mis- Mississippi Historical Society, vol. vii. sissippi Valley Historical Association's 4 Sketches of History, Life, and
Proceedings for 1909); "The Middle Manners, in the West (2 vols., Phila-
West" (International Monthly, iv) ; delphia, 1835) ; Statistics of the West
and "The Colonization of the West, (Cincinnati, 1836); Notes on the We»t-
1820-1830" (American Historical Re- ern States (Philadelphia, 1838); and
view, xi, 303-327) and with some The West: its Commerce and Naviga-
changes as chapter v of his Rise of the lion (Cincinnati, 1848). New West.
68 THE WESTWARD MARCH
part of the movement. Possibly McMaster's chapters in the fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes of his History of the People of the United States taken together form the best bit of writing on the subject that has been done. Among the isolated monographic works the best are Solon J. Buck's Illinois in 1818 (Springfield, 111., 1917); George N. Fuller's Economic and Social Beginnings of Michigan (Michigan Historical Publications, University Series, vol. i) ; Frederick Merk's Economic History of Wisconsin during the Civil War Decade (Wis- consin Historical Society's Publications, " Studies," vol. i) and the second part of Reuben Gold Thwaites' Wisconsin in the " American Commonwealth " series.1 Almost innumerable works of travel, exploration, and trade were printed or, at all events, written about the country between the Mississippi and the Rockies before 1846. A mass of these narratives has been gathered by Thwaites in his Early Western Travels (32 vols.) and by H. M. Chittenden in The American Fur Trade of the Far West (3 vols.).2 Besides, there are books without number: county histories, family histories, town histories, remi- niscences, and diaries.8 Each state has its historical society and the Mississippi Valley Historical Association has gathered into its Proceed- ings and into the Review, that is published under its auspices, material that is necessary for the student of this portion of American history. II. Indian Treaties. — The treaties made with the Indians relat- ing to cessions and compensations were numbered by the hundreds, most of them since 1815. They are calendared and the geographical extent of the cessions noted in the 18th Report of the Bureau of Ameri- can Ethnology, Pt. ii. The treaties themselves were printed in 1826 in a volume entitled Indian Treaties, and Laws and Regulations relating to Indian Affairs, again in 1837 in Treaties between the United States of America and the several Indian Tribes, from 1778 to 1837, a third
1 W. V. Pooley's "Settlement of 'One of the best contemporary Illinois from 1830 to 1850" (Bulletin descriptions of Western life is Bay- of the University of Wisconsin, No. nard R. Hall's The New Purchase : 220) and B. H. Hibbard's "History or, Seven and a Half Years in the Far of Agriculture in Dane County" in West. By Robert Carlton, Esq. (2 ibid., Economic Series, i, are of greater vols., New York, 1843). Substan- value and wider application than their tially the same material was pub- titles indicate. lished in one volume at New Albany,
'Solon J. Buck's bibliography of Indiana, in 1855. In 1916, an "In-
Travel and Description, 1765-1865, diana Centennial Edition" edited by
forming vol. ix of the Collections of the J. A. Woodburn was published at
Illinois State Historical Library, is Princeton, N. J. excellent within the years treated.
INDIAN TREATIES
69
time in volume vii of the Public Statutes at Large of the United States and in 1904, in Indian A/airs. Laws and Treaties, edited by Charles J. Kappler, vol. ii (Senate Document, No. 319, 58th Cong., 2nd Sess.). There are differences in the text of the treaties as printed in these several publications, and some treaties are in one and not in any of the others. The whole subject of Indian relations and of the United States Indian factory system needs careful and extended treatment. Up to the present time, Cyrus Thomas's " Introduction " to the Bureau of Ethnology's volume above cited, and the " Table of Contents " to the volume of 1837 of Indian treaties already mentioned are the best official statements of the Indian relations, but chapters xiii and xv in M. M. Quaife's Chicago and the Old Northwest gives one, perhaps, the best insight into the matter that can be had. The official story down to 1826 as told in documents is in the two volumes of American State Papers, Indian Affairs.
CHAPTER III
THE URBAN MIGRATION
THE westward movement forms a distinct picture in our annals. No less distinct, but much less known, is the rise of manufacturing and commercial cities and towns, princi- pally in the Northeast, and the development therein of classes and of an industrial social system. The more venturesome of the sons and daughters of the settled popu- lation of the seaboard sought the fertile farming lands of the West ; others, of a mechanical turn of mind, or ambitious of gain, or addicted to books, found employment in the factories, countinghouses, and shops in the cities and towns that came into being as part of the new industrial movement or that grew out of some demand connected with the dis- tribution of agricultural or mechanical products. The settlement of the West was a dispersion of families over a great space of territory ; the building up of the cities of the Northeast was the concentration of men and women in limited areas.1 As the latter development progressed the
1 New England towns grew or de- volume. Samuel Forbes of Canaan,
clined in most astonishing fashion. Litchfield County, Connecticut, was
Oftentimes the territorial extent of an admirable example of a New Eng-
a town would diminish, but the popu- lander of diversified modes of bread
lation would increase owing to the winning. He was one of the earliest
establishment of some industry. An- iron masters in the United States,
other town might lose almost all its kept a flourishing general store, and
inhabitants owing to some sudden loaned money to his neighbors. Dr.
migration of industry and workers. Percy W. Bidwell's essay on " Rural
About all that can be said is that, Economy in New England in 1800"
in general, agriculture declined and (Transactions of the Connecticut
manufacturing increased in the older Academy of Arts and Sciences, xx,
settled parts of the Northeastern 241-399) gives an admirable picture
States in the years covered in this of the conditions of life in that sec-
70
THE TOWNS 71
demand for clerks and shop hands in the commercial service, for operatives in the factories, and for domestic help in the household became stronger and stronger.1 This in- crease of the farming area and this building up of centres of commerce and manufacture depended upon the develop- ment of transportation and this in turn created a demand for labor; but the steamboat and the railroad made it possible to feed, house, and warm large groups of people in contracted spaces. At the same time the constantly broadening market for manufactured goods and the in- creasing area from which the manufacturer could draw his supply of raw material rapidly led to manufacturing in larger units and thereby separated the owner and manager from the working men and women. The growing ease of move- ment also tended to make labor mobile : on the one hand, the worker could go from place to place ; on the other hand, any particular body of workers became liable to an inun- dation from outside of those who were as skilled as them- selves or could become so after short periods of instruction. The revival of immigration from Europe also provided the manufacturers with operatives who oftentimes were more skilful than the native American and were accustomed to work for smaller compensation. Not infrequently groups of these workers were imported from Great Britain to aid in the establishment of some new manufacturing industry, or to provide a supply of cheaper labor, — and these also brought to their new homes the social prejudices and theories of their old places of habitation.
tion at the beginning of the new era. Morgan's Connecticut as a Colony and
A more definite picture of the old life as a State, iii, bring the facts together
can be obtained from a perusal of the in a convenient form,
opening pages of W. H. Francis's l The Columbian Centinel of Boston
History of the Hatting Trade in Dan- for July 29, 1809, has an advertise-
bury. Conn. (1860), which practically ment of an "Intelligence Office" at
is repeated in Bailey's History of Dan- number 10 State Street. bury, ch. xxxi. Three chapters in P.
72 THE URBAN MIGRATION [Ca. Ill
According to the above analysis, the rise of manufacturing in the United States depended upon mechanical inventions that were common to Western Europe and the United States and to the development of transportation facilities in America and throughout the world. In those days, government protection through the tariff was regarded as an important element in the successful operation of American mills and of other manufacturing establishments where handworkers were employed in great numbers in proportion to the total product.1 Imposts had been laid upon foreign manufactures ever since the formation of the government under the Constitution; but they had not amounted to much in the way of protection. The embargo of 1808, the commercial war that followed it,2 and the armed conflict that succeeded had provided a very efficient stimulus to the establishment of industries. After the close of the war, Congress sought to limit the influx of goods from out- side by the passage of the Tariff Act of 1816. This law was followed by others in 1824, 1828, 1832, and 1833. This last act provided that the duties then levied by law should be gradually reduced during a period of ten years. In 1842, however, the condition of the treasury made more revenue necessary and the tariff was again increased to be lessened
1 By 1816, even Jefferson had begun James Monroe (Philadelphia, 1818), p.
to believe that some encouragement 61.
was necessary to build up the maim- A good protective argument is J. S.
factures of the United States : — Young's Address to Congress on the Pro-
" Experience has taught me," he wrote, lection of American Labor (Portsmouth,
"that manufactures are now as neces- N. H., 1849).
sary to our independence as to our The "Tariff Acts" are printed at
comfort." Jefferson's Writings (Me- length in Senate Report No. 2130, 51st
morial ed.), xiv, 392; also quoted in Cong., 2nd Sess. and in House Docu-
The Soundness of the Policy of Pro- ment No. 562, 55th Cong., 2nd Sess.
tecting Domestic Manufactures, issued For a modern statement of the facts see
by the Philadelphia Society for the Frank W. Taussig's Tariff History of
Promotion of American Manufactures, the United States (6th ed., New York
in 1817. See also Jefferson's letter and London, 1914). to D. Lynch, Jr., of June 26, 1817, 2 See the present work, vol. iv,
in A Narrative of a Tour . . . by ch. xiv.
1824] THE TARIFF 73
in 1846. Some manufacturers and some students main- tained in those days and have ever since, that special duties were necessary to equalize the cost of high-priced American operatives and the "pauper labor" of Europe. Others have argued that this end would be more certainly gained by stimulating American invention and efficiency of operation by the exposure of American industry to active competition from outside. Fortunately, it is no part of the historian's duty to determine which of these two views is correct, or how much or how little of truth there was — and is — in either of them, because down to 1850 there was not enough fixity to tariff legislation to do much in the way of building up manufacturing industry. Moreover, there were many other factors that exercised an unquestionable influence on manufacturing. One of these was the abundance or the lack of loanable capital in America and Europe that accom- panied eras of prosperity or rising prices, or eras of depression or falling prices, — for industry on a large scale can be carried on only by the use of borrowed funds. With much of the ups and downs in the demand for manufactured goods and abundance or dearth of capital, conditions in America and the precise percentage of "protection" had next to nothing to do. Iron and textiles were the most im- portant manufacturing industries at that time. The development of the iron industry grew out of the new and urgent demands that were created by the new methods of transportation and by the introduction of machinery actuated by water or steam power in the new mills and factories. It is much more difficult to account for the enormous growth of the textile industry because the yardage of manufactured cloth increased out of proportion to the growth of population, — and the amount of cotton cloth exported was only a small fraction of the total production.
74 THE URBAN MIGRATION [CH. Ill
It would seem probable in this instance as in many others that the supply of cheap and attractive fabrics created a demand. The same thing is true as to innumerable small articles of utility, convenience, or ornament, — their pro- duction on a large scale and at low cost created a demand that had hitherto been lacking or dormant. Bearing in mind all these considerations, it is difficult to see what effect, if any, was produced by an ever-changing protective policy.
The impulse to manufacturing was general throughout the country, — Southerners and Westerners were as anxious to partake of the benefits of the new movement as were the Northeasterners. In the South, factories were estab- lished at Richmond, Spartansburg, Columbia, Atlanta, Natchez, and at many other places. The extent and development of manufacturing in that section, apart from bare statements like the above, are -impossible to discover and describe owing to the absence of printed records and reports and to the destruction of quantities of manuscript material in the course of the War for Southern Independence. In itself there would seem to be no reason why manufactur- ing should not have flourished there in slavery days as it undoubtedly has prospered in the years of freedom. It has often been said that slavery and manufacturing could not live together, but there does not seem to be any good reason for this opinion. In the States where slavery existed in a non-intensive form, it was no uncommon thing for the poorer planters, or farmers, owning only a few slaves to work with them in the field. Possibly free whites and black slaves could not work together in a textile factory, but surely the slaves might have done the hard labor while the whites tended the machinery, — the two sets of workers being in separate parts of a building or in different buildings.
1830] SOUTHERN MANUFACTURING 75
[n iron manufacturing, negro slaves certainly were used. The payroll of the Tredegar Iron Works at Richmond indi- cates the employment of several hundred negroes ; l and the negroes belonging to the Nesbitt Manufacturing Com- pany 2 of South Carolina brought seventy-five thousand dollars at a sale of the company's assets. Probably it was not the existence of slave labor that interfered with the prosperity of Southern manufacturing ; it was the fact that there was more than ample employment for all Southern capital in the cultivation of the cotton plant.
Iron had been worked up in Virginia from an early time and in 1800, there were several furnaces and forges in opera- tion in the Old Dominion. Coal was also mined near Rich- mond. It was not until the establishment of the Tredegar works at that place that iron manufacturing beyond the rougher stages was carried on on a commercial scale. Those works went on prospering through the decades and in the War proved to be of great utility to the Confederacy. The Nesbitt Company was a South Carolina corporation that numbered among its stockholders some of the most prom- inent men of that State. It owned valuable beds of iron, scattered over some eight thousand acres of land ; and also possessed water power, limestone, and forested tracts. The company procured machinery and workmen from New York and arranged to borrow one hundred thousand dollars from the Bank of South Carolina, but it seems never to have had the use of the full amount, owing to the financing of the Louisville, Cincinnati, and Charleston Railroad Company of South Carolina by the State through the bank. Owing to various difficulties, among which were trans-
1 Miss Kathleen E. Bruce very * A Compilation of Att the Actt
kindly placed at my disposal the notes ... in Relation to the Bank of the State
of her research on the Iron Manu- of South Carolina, 297. lacture in Virginia.
76 THE URBAN MIGRATION [On. Ill
portation troubles and the impossibility of securing skilled workmen, the company could not repay the money that it had received and mortgaged its lands, buildings, and one hundred of its most valuable slaves through the bank, and later all its property was put up at auction and bid in for one hundred and twenty-four thousand dollars, three-fifths of the assets being scheduled as negroes. It appears in this case as in the case of other Southern manufacturing and transportation corporations, subscribers to the capital stock oftentimes paid in the form of slaves,1 and it may be that the fact that three-fifths of the capital stock of the company was invested in labor may have had something to do with its lack of success. After the sale a new corporation was formed which agreed to pay seven per cent on the loan an- nually for five years, and thereafter to pay one-fifth of the debt yearly until the entire amount was paid ; but what happened to the Nesbitt Company after that is unknown.2 Very little has been written about early Southern cotton mills. Half a dozen or so were in operation in 1825 and at one time there had been a good deal of enthusiasm created over the establishment of cotton mills near the cotton fields. There was abundant labor of the same class of poor whites that formed the mainstay of the later mills in their earlier years. It is said that no mill that was founded in the South before 1826 was financially successful and after 1830,3 the advocacy of manufacturing in the Cotton States was looked upon locally as more or less treasonable in that it implied some slight belief in tariff and the rightfulness of protection.
1 From the "Elmore Manuscripts" in Relation to the Bank of the State of
it appears that shareholders con- South Carolina, 541-544, 643. tributed negro slaves to the Nesbitt 3 See Victor S. Clark's History of
Company instead of money to the Manufactures in the United States,
total amount of $34,000, — forgemen 1607-1860; August Kohn's Cotton
being valued at $2500 and blacksmiths Mitts of South Carolina (Columbia,
at $2000. S. C., 1907); Robert Mills's Statistics
1 A Compilation of all the Act* ... of South Carolina.
1830] WESTERN MANUFACTURING 77
In the Northwest, in the country beyond the Pennsylvania boundary line, manufacturing had been begun in the towns on the Ohio River and its affluents. The cost of transpor- tation to and from the Eastern commercial cities was well nigh prohibitive : Cincinnati people paid about double Philadelphia prices for manufactured goods and were obliged to sell their flour and pork for about one-half the amount those commodities would bring at Philadelphia and Baltimore, owing to the high freights by way of the New Orleans route.1 The saying was that it required four bushels of corn to buy at Cincinnati what one bushel would purchase at Philadelphia. It was under these circumstances that saw mills were erected for fashioning the material for frame houses, grist mills for grinding wheat and corn grown in the neighborhood, and mills for spinning wool and weav- ing cloth. There were also some factories for working up iron, many breweries, and a few distilleries. In 1810, the prospect of disseminated manufacturing in the Western country was very good ; but road, canal, steamboat, and locomotive brought the high-priced labor of the newly settled country into competition with the lower-priced labor of the Northeast with the result that the budding manu- factures of the Western country either died or experienced a very slow development.
Manufacturing began in the Northeast at the very earliest time and progressed through the colonial and Revolutionary periods, practically without a break. After the Revolution, when reports of the new English manufacturing processes began to reach the country, efforts were made to reproduce them in America and make the United States independent of the Old World. Hamilton and Duer were at the head of
1 These statements are taken from a (xii, 768). He cites two local papers, valuable article by F. P. Goodwin Liberty Hatt and the Western Spy, &e in the American Historical Review his authorities.
78 THE URBAN MIGRATION [Cn. Ill
what was to be a great manufacturing enterprise in New Jersey ; on the Hudson there were active iron factories and in Pennsylvania and Connecticut there were many others. Woollen mills and cotton mills were in operation in all of these States and also in Rhode Island. There were many obstacles in the way of the successful prosecution of these designs. There was lack of capital, lack of accurate knowl- edge of modern machinery, very little skilled labor, and great difficulty in procuring raw material. It appears in the case of a Hartford mill that the cost of the cleaning and prep- aration of the wool for the spinning machines frequently de- stroyed the profits. Indeed, one manufacturing enterprise after another was established, only to fall a victim to one or more of these adverse factors. The founding of the modern textile business was due to Samuel Slater,1 an Eng- lishman, and Francis Cabot Lowell, an American. They practically reinvented the machinery with which Slater had been familiar in the old country and which Lowell had ex- amined there, while on a visit. The Jeffersonian commercial policy and Madison's War of 1812 gave American spinners and weavers their first great opportunity, but it was not until the 1820's that the American textile industry really began its successful career. Thereafter, there were many serious setbacks due in great measure to financial dis- turbances throughout the world, but taking year in and year out there was a constant development. The "Census" of 1840 gives a rough idea of the progress of manufacturing in the United States ; according to this there were nearly eight hundred thousand people employed in it and they produced about two hundred and forty million dollars' worth of commodities in one year.2 It is noteworthy that New
1 George S. White's Memoir of ' George Tucker's Progress of the
Samuel Slater, 71-78 ; and see the United States in Population and Wealth present work, vol. iii, 423 and fol. (1st ed., pp. 137, 195).
1830] WESTERN CITIES 79
England and the Middle States had about two-thirds of the total number of persons engaged in manufacturing and pro- duced nearly four-fifths of the total value of commodities made in the United States. Furthermore, it is signifi- cant that of the rest of the country, the Northwestern section produced more than the Southern and Southwestern sec- tions put together.
The growth of commercial and manufacturing cities and towns was phenomenal in these years. In the Mississippi Valley, there were New Orleans, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Pittsburg, to which might be added Mobile although that town is not within the limits of the Mississippi watershed. The introduction of steam navi- gation on the Mississippi and its affluents built up the busi- ness of New Orleans, which became a distributing centre for imports, as well as a place of concentration for up-river products designed for exportation. New Orleans also shared with Mobile in forwarding the cotton grown on the rich lands of Mississippi and Louisiana and it handled great quantities of tobacco from Kentucky and of sugar from Louisiana. To New Orleans also came immigrants from Europe bound for Texas, or for points up the Mississippi. St. Louis was the centre of the mid-Mississippi commerce and of the fur trade of the western country except that which found an outlet through Canada. It also was the shipping point for the products of the lead mines of the upper river and was the centre of the steamboat traffic engaged in collecting the grain and hog products from the shipping ports of the Mississippi and its navigable affluents. Cin- cinnati and Louisville performed similar functions for the Ohio. The importance of these four centres of river steam- boat traffic in the thirty years before 1850 can hardly be overstated, for in those years practically all the commerce
80 THE URBAN MIGRATION [Cn. Ill
of the Mississippi Valley gained access to the outer world by way of New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. Mobile was almost entirely dependent upon cotton for its commercial life and its period of great prosperity did not begin until the opening of the Indian lands in Alabama and Mississippi provided fields of great richness for the cotton planter.
Pittsburg has a most astounding history.1 Politically, it belongs to Pennsylvania and the East, but geographically it is in the Mississippi Valley, standing at the edge of the mountains that separate the Atlantic seaboard from the interior basin. The National Road reached the Ohio River at Wheeling in western Virginia, but the steamboat traffic of the river still made its headquarters at Pittsburg. The Portage Railway connected it with Philadelphia and other routes gave it access to the Genesee Valley and the Erie Canal. It was inevitable that manufacturing should begin at an early date in such a centre of human effort, and grist mills, wood-working establishments, and distilleries were founded there or in the vicinity at an early time. Pittsburg stands in a region rich almost beyond comparison in coal and iron. In 1803 Zadok Cramer stated that upwards of $350,000 worth of manufactured articles were made at Pittsburg in one year. Of this amount $56,000 represented manufactures of iron ranging from axes to cowbells; an- other $13,000 was given as the value of manufactured glass, some of which was said to be equal to any cut in the states of Europe. Then there were nine hundred barrels of beer and porter, five thousand pairs of shoes, "segars, snuff, and pig tail tobacco" to the amount of $3000, five thousand yards of striped cotton and ninety dozen chip
1 See J. N. Boucher's A Century of a Tour, ch. xxxvii. I. Harris's
and a Half of Pittsburg, i, chs. xxi and Pittsburgh Business Directory, for the
fol., and the books cited therein, es- Year 1837 gives a complete picture of
pecially Fortescue Cuming's Sketches the town at that time.
1830] PITTSBURG 81
hats.1 Even in 1807 the Pittsburg atmosphere was de- scribed as filled with soot. Anne Royall, that notorious, early, strong-minded female, visited Pittsburg in 1828 and gave a most interesting account of the town and its people.2 She was greatly impressed with "the polite, chaste and gentlemanly deportment of her [Pittsburg] workmen and mechanics . . . they, as a body, are the only gentlemen in the city." She devotes thirty-eight pages to describing Pittsburg factories, including those in what were then the suburbs of Birmingham and Manchester. She spent two weeks wandering around them. It is quite evident that the growth since 1803 had been very great, although it is im- possible to state any comparative figures from her descrip- tion. It appears, however, that the value of the castings made by the Pittsburg Foundry in 1828 was approximately as much as the value of all similar products turned out in the city in 1803. In 1850 Samuel Fahnestock estimated the total business of Pittsburg, — manufacturing and for- warding—to "not fall short of $50,000,000 annually."3 There were then thirteen rolling mills, thirty large foundries, five cotton factories, eight glass factories besides countless other establishments of one sort or another, — and yet Pittsburg was only at the threshold of her career.
Of cities of the Atlantic Coast — and of the country as
1 G. H. Thurston's Pittsburgh As Royall are : The Black Book ; Southern
It Is [1857], p. 81, quoting Cramer's Tour, or Second Series of the Black
Almanack for 1804. An enumeration Book giving descriptions of Wash-
of the manufactures in 1810 is in ington society in the Jacksonian time ;
Cramer's Navigator (9th ed.), P- 53 Letters from Alabama; and Sketches
and fol. A table of manufactures in of History, Life, and Manners, in the
1818 is in Fearon's Sketches, 205. United States. S. H. Porter's Life
Charles W. Dahlinger's Pittsburgh and Times of Anne Royall giveo a not
. . . Its Early Social Life (New York, uninteresting sketch of this woman,
1916) is a readable account of the who was greatly and justly feared by
early development of the town with her contemporaries, matter quoted from newspapers. * N. B. Craig's History of Pitts-
1 Mrs. Royall' s Pennsylvania, or burgh, 311. See also J. N. Boucher's
Travels Continued in the United States, Century and a Half of Pittsburg and
i, 48-132. Other works by Mrs. her People, i, ch. rtv.
VOL. v. — a
82
THE URBAN MIGRATION
[On. Ill
a whole — New York stood foremost in 1850. The Revolu- tion left it in distinctly a second place, being inferior to Philadelphia in population and in business. At once its period of phenomenal growth began.1 It grew faster than Boston or Philadelphia and soon outstripped them in population and commerce and, later, it exceeded Philadelphia in manufacturing. Then came the Erie Canal, tremendously accentuating New York's commercial business. By 1830 it had acquired the incontestable primacy in population and wealth, and had grown from a small town on the southern end of Manhattan Island to occupy about one- fifth of its present area. As the century advanced New York absorbed more and more of the distributing business of the Northeast. It became an American counterpart of Liverpool as a collecting and forwarding commercial centre. It is inevitable that when a town gains a certain commercial position, it absorbs to itself business that had formerly belonged to its rivals, at first those near by and then slowly those farther and farther off. Commerce is attracted to such a port by the certainties of securing conveyance to the destination ; vessels, railroads, and steamboats likewise seek it because of the certainty of freight money both ways. Finally, such a centre of commerce, manufacturing, and
JThe Census of 1850 (p. lii) shows the growth of leading cities : —
|
CITIES |
1790 |
1800 |
1810 |
1820 |
1830 |
1840 |
1860 |
|
Boston . |
18,038 |
24,937 |
33,250 |
43,298 |
61,392 |
93,383 |
136,881 |
|
New York |
33,131 |
60,489 |
96,373 |
123,706 |
202,589 |
312,710 |
515,547 |
|
Philadelphia |
42,520 |
69,403 |
91,874 |
112,772 |
161,410 |
220,423 |
340,045 |
|
Baltimore |
13,503 |
26,114 |
35,583 |
62,738 |
80,625 |
102,313 |
169,054 |
|
Charleston |
16,359 |
20,473 |
24,711 |
24,780 |
30,289 |
29,261 |
42,985 |
|
Mobile . |
1,500 |
3,194 |
12,672 |
20,515 |
|||
|
New Orleans |
17,242 |
27,176 |
46,310 |
102,193 |
116,375 |
For other estimates, see Tucker's Progress, 128, and Census of 1880, vol. ii, "Manufactures," p. xxii, and below, p. 411 n.
1830] NEW YORK 83
distribution becomes naturally a centre of finance, and New York from about 1840 distinctly assumes the position in America which before that time had been held by Phil- adelphia. The accumulated wealth of New York had be- come very great compared with Philadelphia and Boston and the other cities on the seaboard. But when one speaks of it as the financial centre of the country, one means that the business of collecting funds — money and credit — and exchanging them for commodities and labor all over the United States centred at that point. Philadelphia and Baltimore grew steadily. Each of them made great efforts to retain the business that had once been theirs. In a measure they succeeded in extending their influence into that part of the western country that was not distinctly tributary to the Great Lakes, the Erie Canal, and New York City; but it was not until after 1850, when railroad connection was made between those seaports and the Middle West, that they were able to divert much of the western trade from New York and New Orleans to their own wharves and warehouses. Boston found itself seriously menaced by the commercial augmentation of New York and the utmost that it could do only deferred the loss of ocean-borne com- merce. The New Englanders, thereupon, turned their abundant capital and energy into other directions. They built up great manufacturing enterprises and handled most of the commerce dependent on them; but as the years went by the tendency grew more and more to concentrate the commission and forwarding business of New England at New York.
The story of the old colonial towns of the South is a melancholy one. Williamsburg almost disappeared, but Richmond, owing to its nearness to coal and iron, not only kept its place, but slowly developed although the project
84 THE URBAN MIGRATION [Cn. Ill
of making it accessible to sea-going vessels was defeated. With the growing years, Charleston and Savannah slipped backwards ; Charleston absolutely, and Savannah relatively to the other shipping ports. The new cotton country except a part of western Georgia was tributary to the Gulf ; trans- Atlantic vessels no longer sought the Southeastern harbors because they could be assured of freight both ways by going to New York. Charleston became hardly more than a port of call for coastwise commerce, and its population actually declined. Had Robert Y. Hayne's project of a great railroad line connecting Charleston with the mid- Ohio Valley not been defeated,1 owing partly at least to the efforts of Calhoun, it is quite possible that a large part of the business of the Middle West might have gone to Charleston, instead of to Baltimore and Philadel- phia, — and thereby might have altered the course of American history.
In the ways described in the preceding paragraphs there grew up great centres of human activity in different parts of the country. In some places, owing to advantageous positions on lines of commerce, to nearness to iron and coal, or to proximity to abundant water power, commercial cities and manufacturing villages and towns came into existence. On the Great Lakes there were Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Chicago ; in Pennsylvania, Lancaster and Wilkesbarre ; in New Jersey, Paterson and Newark ; Rochester and Geneva in New York ; Meriden and Willimantic in Connec- ticut ; Providence and Pawtucket in Rhode Island ; Lynn, Lowell, and Fall River in Massachusetts ; and innumerable others scattered throughout the Middle States and New
1 See T. D. Jervey's Robert Y. Fourth Convention . . . Held in Charles- Hayne and His Times and his The ton, S. C., April 15, 1839, for the Pro- Railroad the Conqueror (Columbia, motion of the Direct Trade, especially S. C., 1913) and the authorities therein p. 24. cited; and see also Proceedings of the
1830] MANUFACTURING TOWNS 85
England. Some of them were old towns revived to new uses; others, perhaps most of them, owed their existence to new manufacturing enterprises. In great commercial centres like New York and Philadelphia there were always large numbers of workers who were not connected directly with the commercial business of the place. And the larger the city the greater was the supply of non-commercial labor. It was natural, therefore, that manufacturing enterprises should develop there, especially those forms of manufacture that required comparatively large amounts of hand work, as was the case with the making of shoes and clothes before the days of the development of mechanical sewing. On the other hand, enterprises that utilized water-power neces- sarily grew up from the beginning near the rapids or falls of some river.
Of all the towns that have been mentioned in the pre- ceding paragraphs, none have more interesting beginnings than the cotton mill cities of Lowell and Fall River. The former owes its origin to the half dozen men who had made a successful beginning of cotton spinning and weaving at Waltham in Massachusetts.1 Francis Cabot Lowell was the master spirit of this enterprise. Being in England in 1811 and possessing a mathematical and mechanical turn of mind, he studied with great care all the cotton machinery he could see and gathered information as to that which he could not see. Returning home in 1813, he duplicated from his memory and notes of conversations the power loom which he had not seen in England or in Scotland, and he and his as-
1 Nathan Appleton's Introduction contains a great deal of interesting in-
of the Power Loom and Origin of Lowell formation and Samuel Batchelder's
is the basis of all accounts of the es- Introduction and Early Progress of the
tablishment of the city of Lowell. Cotton Manufacture in the United
Of the later books James B. Francis's States has some definite information
Lowell Hydraulic Experiments (Bos- by a contemporary, ton, 1855, 2nd ed., New York, 1868)
86 THE URBAN MIGRATION [Cn. Ill
sociates worked out readjustments and improvements in the other machines used in the making of cotton cloth and per- formed all the processes in one establishment. At first there was a prejudice against American machine-woven cotton cloth and it was difficult to dispose of the early products of the Waltham mill. Within half a dozen years the enterprise outgrew the space and water-power at Waltham. It was suggested that the associates should buy the Pawtucket Canal Company, which had constructed a canal around Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimac River, not far above the entrance of the Concord. This enterprise had never paid and the Wal- tham people were able, therefore, to buy up the stock at a low figure. They also secured practically all the land on the river front below the falls for what might well be termed a nominal sum. They also purchased the " rights necessary to control" the outlet of Lake Winnepesaukee, a large lake in central New Hampshire, which furnished most of the water to the Merrimac River. They formed the Merrimac Manufacturing Company, deepened and widened the canal, erected the necessary buildings and machinery and, in an astonishingly small space of time, the first Merrimac mill was turning out cotton cloth. The associates then esta.b- lished a separate corporation for the management of the water-power and disposal of factory sites in their new town, which they named Lowell in honor of the founder of the Waltham enterprise, who was no longer living. They disposed of their surplus water-power to others at extremely reasonable rates. The first steps in acquiring the stock of the old Pawtucket Company were taken in 1821. By 1839, there were twelve distinct manufacturing corporations at Lowell with a combined capital of twelve million dollars, and the town which had only a few hundred inhabitants in 1820 had over twenty thousand in 1840, and over thirty-
1830] LOWELL 87
three thousand in 1850.1 One thing that had greatly con- tributed to the growth of manufacturing at Lowell was the introduction of cloth printing by machinery and soon " Merri- mac prints" had a country- wide reputation. The first cotton cloth made at Waltham was thirty-seven inches wide and was sold for thirty cents a yard ; in 1843 the price had gone down to six and a half cents a yard. In the be- ginning the old style breast water-wheel was employed ; later the French turbine, greatly improved, was introduced, thereby raising the percentage of power utilized from sixty or seventy-five per cent with the old wheels to eighty-eight per cent with the improved turbine. The establishment of manufacturing at Lowell is the best example of the diver- sion of commercial capital and experience from navigation and trade to an entirely new venture. Fall River had a much more normal origin and development, although the circumstances of its existence were in themselves quite out of the ordinary run.
For a hundred years, more or less, Massachusetts and Rhode Island had contended for lands on the northeastern side of Narragansett Bay. When an agreement was finally reached, most of these lands were given to Rhode Island, but a bit of territory known as Freetown and bounded by the Fall River was assigned to Massachusetts. This river, as it is called, is really a natural canal two miles long with a granite bottom. It drained a succession of small lakes or ponds and had a total fall of more than one hundred and thirty-two feet in less than half a mile. So narrow was the channel that it was possible to construct mills across the stream, the wheels being placed in the current of the river. The first cotton mill was erected to utilize this water-power
1 See Census of 1850, p. Hi. For David Stevenson's Sketch of the Civil statistics of Lowell mills in 1837, see Engineering of North America, 319.
88 THE URBAN MIGRATION [Cs. Ill
in 1813 ; but it was not until 1821 that the rapid develop- ment of manufacturing began with the establishment of the Iron Works Company which played a part in Fall River something like that of the Canal Company at Lowell. In 1820, there were about five hundred people living at Fall River and in 1840 nearly seven thousand.1
Before 1820 the growth of cities and towns that has just been described was retarded by the difficulty of housing, feeding, and caring for large numbers of human beings in restricted areas. By that year new transportation systems had become sufficiently developed to bring food and fuel to designated places with some degree of certainty and despatch. In those days, people had no idea of hygiene and sanitation and no laws curbed the money-making desires of landlords. Moreover, the construction of dwelling houses was primarily for the single family. Occasionally there was much overcrowding with resultant loss of vitality and earning power. Bacilli and bacteria were unknown and the mode of treatment of acute disorders was such that they frequently ran into chronic stages. Under existing condi- tions it was dangerous to gather people within a limited space, but it was impossible to disseminate them over a large tract of ground as there was no system of public urban trans- portation that would enable the working man, the clerk, or the professional man to get from his dwelling to his place of employment, if it were more than three to six miles away. Moreover, those were the days of riotousness and boisterous conduct; there was a spirit of intolerance of individual opinions ; and there was a continuous drinking of distilled liquor, morning, afternoon, and evening.
By the close of the first quarter of the century, improved roads, canals, and steamboats had all contributed to bring
»Oriu Fowler's History of Fall River (ed. 1841), 28, 29.
1830] URBAN TRANSPORTATION 89
food and household supplies from distances of twenty or thirty miles to centres of population. Sometime before 1828 Asa Hall established an omnibus line running from Wall Street in New York City to the neighborhood of the State Prison in Greenwich Village. In 1828, the service was improved by the addition of more stages, the fare at that time being twelve and a half cents. By 1850, there were four distinct lines of omnibuses and the fare had been cut in half. Most of the early omnibuses had been drawn by two horses, but on some of the busier routes larger vehicles with four horses and a boy collector of fares in addition to the driver were employed. It took something over one hour to run three miles through the crowded parts of the city.1 The first omnibus appeared in Philadelphia2 in 1831 but other towns waited some years before the establish- ment of public urban stage-coach lines.
Philadelphia was the first city to supply any large pro- portion of its inhabitants with water from outside the city limits. As early as 1791 or 1792, the introduction of Schuyl- kill River water into the city for household purposes was advocated, but it was not until 1799 that the matter was taken up in earnest. Steam pumping engines were then installed and water was raised from the river to a reservoir and thence distributed through log pipes to a limited portion of the city. In 1819, the project was taken up again and by 1822 the Fairmount Water Works were opened.3 In this system the water was taken from the Schuylkill about a mile and a half from what was then the
1 These details are drawn from gineering Societies for December, 1884,
Charles H. Haswell's Reminiscence* and George G. Crocker's From the
of New York, 229, 231, 538. Stage Coach to ... the Street Car.
* Scharf and Westcott's History ' See Annual Report of the Watering
of Philadelphia, iii, 2199. See also Committee . . . 1836 . . . of Philadel-
George L. Vose's "Notes on Early phia: to which are prefixed the Report
Transportation in Massachusetts" in /or ... 1822 and . . . 1823, pp. 1, 6,
the Journal of the Association of En- 10, etc.
90 THE URBAN MIGRATION [On. Ill
occupied part of the city. It was raised by the surplus water-power of the river and was distributed through nearly forty thousand feet of iron pipes, most of which had been made in America. In New York the house pump and cistern were the main reliance until the nineteenth century was advanced. The Manhattan Company, that much berated corporation which was mainly devoted to banking, raised a large amount of water by a pumping engine from a well within the city limits and distributed it through log pipes buried in the streets. This water supply was plainly inadequate and various projects were put forward to supply the rapidly growing city.1 As early as 1798, it was suggested that water might be obtained from the Bronx River, but nothing was done. In 1833, it was proposed that Croton River water 2 should be brought into the city through an aqueduct. The actual work of construction was begun in 1837 and in 1842 the works were so far completed that water could be turned into the city mains for the use of the inhabitants, which was done with nearly as much ceremony as when the waters of Lake Erie had been united with those of the Atlantic Ocean. By that time all the larger cities were supplied with water by artificial means.3
Until after the close of the War of 1812, lard and whale oil lamps and candles were the only means of lighting houses and streets after sundown. Hydrogen gas or some other chemically produced illuminant had been used in experiments and in pyro-technics. In April, 1816, Charles Willson
1 See Charles H. Haswell's Rem- by the Common Council of the Citj
iniscences of New York by an Octo- of New York in 1847. genarian using index under "water," 'An interesting account of Ameri-
" Manhattan Company," and "Cro- can water works in 1837 is in David
ton." Stevenson's Sketch of the Civil Engineer-
1 Charles King's Memoir of the . . . ing of North America, ch. x. The
Croton Aqueduct, 90, 125, 140, 144, " Introduction " to the Manual of Ameri-
225. The important reports and offi- can Water-Works contains details of
cial documents were brought together water systems in all parta of the country.
1830] CITY WATER 91
Peale advertised that his museum,1 a renowned institution of Philadelphia, would be lighted by "lamps burning without wick or oil" and using "carbonated hydrogen gas"; and the Chestnut Street theatre was illuminated in a similar manner in the following November. New York seems to have been the first city to undertake the public lighting of the streets by gas. By 1830 the use of some form of illu- minating gas was common in the larger cities, not without serious disasters in its train.
In the preceding pages the enormous social changes wrought by the westward movement and by the migration into urban areas have been suggested rather than described. In the new western homes, conditions were not essentially unlike those of the parental estate except that after toilsome beginnings, it was possible to produce much more generously on the rich soils of Transappalachia than could be done on the gravelly farms and worn-out plantations of the Original Thirteen States. The case was very different with those who sought the mill town or the commercial city. There the farmer boys and girls found themselves surrounded by entirely new conditions of life and thought. This produced an awakening that was as remarkable as that engendered by the long journey to the farms of Ohio, Indiana, and the other Western and Southwestern States. It is interesting to consider for the moment the relation of literary and scientific activity to density of population. This has been worked out by several investigators with somewhat different results as to details, but in general
1 Scharf and Westcott's History of Illuminant (Easton, Pa., 1912), pp.
Philadelphia, i, 514, 583, especially 12-14; and Victor S. Clark's His-
586, 643-646 ; William Dunlap's His- tory of Manufactures in the United
tory . . . of the Arts of Design (ed. States, 494 and footnotes. Thomas
1918), ii, 189; Lecture delivered at the Cooper published at Philadelphia in
Centenary Celebration of the First Com- 1816, Some Information concerning
mercial Gas Company to sell Gas as an Gas Lights.
92
THE URBAN MIGRATION
the agreement is remarkable.1 From one of these estimates it appears that of 978 Americans born before 1851 who achieved distinction in letters, no fewer than 803 were born in the Middle States and New England. Also, it may be remarked how persistently men of literary and scientific attainments reside in the largest cities, and the same thing is observable of business men and of the foremost lights of the learned professions. Many of these are reared on the farm or in the small town, but they seek the great centres of industry and commerce because there they find the greatest chance for the exercise of their talents. All this concen- tration of industry, commerce, and business within the limits of a comparatively small number of cities and towns gave rise to new problems that the people living in the thirty- five years from 1815 to 1850 strove most vigorously and conscientiously to solve.
1 Edwin L. Clarke's "American Men of Letters; their Nature and Nurture," 57, in Columbia Univer- sity's Studies in History, vol. Ixxii; George R. Davies' "Statistical Study in the Influence of Environment" in Quarterly Journal of the University of North Dakota, iv, 232 ; James McKeen Cattell's "Statistical Study of Ameri- can Men of Science" originally printed in Science, New Series, xxiv, and re- printed as Appendix to the 2nd ed. of his American Men of Science, a Bio- graphical Dictionary (New York, 1910), pp. 537-596. Clarke summarizes his work in chapter iv by saying that
while social environment appeared to be one of the most potent influences; geographic environment was very important, and a disproportionate number of Literati had been born in large cities. The majority had been college trained. Economic se- curity and early religious surround- ings also exercised an influence. He concludes that Galton's proposition that nature is much more powerful than nurture may well be questioned, and that his third proposition that dif- ferences in the achievement of nations due to the difference of natural ability does not hold good.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
93
NOTE
Industrial Conditions. — Professor F. W. Taussig in the first two chapters of his Tariff History of the United States has given a succinct view of industry in the first thirty years of the century.1 The student who wishes to go further will find a mass of instructive and useful information in the " Reports of Committees " to the General Convention of the Friends of Domestic Industry that assem- bled at New York in October, 1831. Especially interesting are the reports on the manufactures of cotton, iron, and steel. Of course the members of the convention were distinctly influenced by their protective views, but the figures that they brought together are not easily duplicated elsewhere. Earlier statistics are to be found in Gallatin's Report . . . on the Subject of American Manufactures of April 17, 1810, and in Tench Coxe's Statement of the Arts and Manu- factures of the United States . . . for the year 1810 which was printed at Philadelphia in 1814. This is provided with elaborate tables of statistics which were gathered from official sources. The later period is illustrated in George Tucker's Progress of the United States ... to 1840; the edition of 1855 carries the story down to 1850. Much larger, but not more useful for the first half of the century, is Eighty Years' Progress of the United States 2 which was published at New York in 1861, and reprinted in 1864. The first edition of this work contains a useful set of illustrations showing the progress of industry and transportation at the time of publication. Professor Holla M. Tryon's Household Manufactures in the United States, 1640-1860 contains interesting material gathered from all kinds of sources and illustrated with helpful tables laboriously compiled. Chapters vi and vii describe the process of household manufacturing and the transition to the factory system.
1 All accounts of this earlier time are based largely on J. L. Bishop's History of American Manufactures from 1608 to I860, vol. ii. Recently, Victor S. Clark has gone over much of the same ground from a different standpoint and using more material in his History of Manufactures in the United States. The Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury from 1790 to 1849 were printed at Washington in seven volumes in the years 1828-1851,
and contain a mass of information on the material side of our development that has as yet been only partially worked up. Much of this material for the earlier years is also given in American State Papers in the volumes on "Finance."
2 Midway in point of time is R. S. Fisher's Progress of the United States, published by Colton at New York in 1854.
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT
IN colonial days outside of the distinctly Slave States there were no classes in the producing part of the community. In the Middle States and in New England, ministers, lawyers, doctors, and a few men of means had lived somewhat apart from the rest of the people ; but otherwise there had been a marked homogeneity in the population. Markets were very restricted, but there was a good deal of household manufacturing, commodities being made in limited quan- tities by the family, the hired help, and indentured servants. These goods were mainly sold in the neighborhood except such as were carried by sea to other colonies or to other parts of the world. In each town there were a few mechanics who worked for wages and in the seaports there were ship carpenters who built and repaired vessels. In some places, shoes, instead of being made on the farm as a home industry, were manufactured in shops, the employer and his operatives working side by side. This condition of affairs was true also as to a few other trades, but everywhere the master worked with his men and apprentices, and those of his employees who were not married boarded with him. Roughly speaking there was no wage system, labor being performed by apprentices and indentured servants and hired help who were compensated on a yearly basis. With the quickening of business life that followed the establishment of the government under the Constitution, with the widening
94
APPRENTICES 95
of markets that was brought about by the breaking down of local financial systems and by the development of trans- portation, these conditions changed. For one thing, in- dentured service disappears as an institution in the first quarter of the century l except as to apprentices and the number of these constantly and rapidly diminished. There are countless instances of apprentices who did not serve out their time ; they ran away from their masters and worked for other employers, — half-journeymen, they were some- times called. If the apprentices, after a few years of service, were desirous of leaving their masters, the masters seemed to be equally desirous of getting rid of their apprentices. The laws of most States held the master responsible for the pecuniary obligations of an apprentice, unless he gave notice that an apprentice was no longer in his employ. This the masters frequently did by advertising in the newspapers. There was, for example, James Van Valkinburgh, Jr., of Canaan, New York. He offered "one old shoe" and no charges paid for the return of "Annonias Gillet," an ap- prentice boy.2 A Baltimore paper of the same year, 1808, announced a reward of five cents and ten lashes to any one bringing home a runaway apprentice girl named Catharine Fowler.3 Probably the servants and apprentices
1 Apparently the latest advertise- see the present work, vol. ii, 367-376.
ment of the sale of indentured servants * The Republican Crisis (Albany;,
was in 1817 in a Philadelphia paper September 16, 1808.
and two months later, these men or * American (Baltimore), August 24,
some of them were still unsold. In 1808. Other instances are as follows :
the same year a reward of thirty dol- The Western Star of June 26, 1797, a
lars was offered for the return of a Massachusetts paper, offered "Two
redemptioner. This is the latest date Pence Reward!" for the return of an
of an advertisement offering a real indentured apprentice of eighteen ; the
reward for the return of an indentured Aurora of January 17, 1800, offered
servant. Albert Matthews noted an "Six Cents Reward" for the return
instance of the purchase of indentured of an apprentice, and the same paper
servants "as late as 1817," presumably for May 16, 1800, offered two cents
in Philadelphia, in his paper on " Hired reward for the return of a "young
Man and Help" in Colonial Society's bound white girl," — most of the ad-
Publicationa, v, 232, note. For "in- vertisements adding "no charges paid."
dentured" service in the earlier times, Contrast these with the reward of $100
96 THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT [Cn. IV
yearned to escape from their bonds and thought they could make more as free workers, although with the low wages then prevailing, one would have supposed they would have been better off in their masters' families; and the anxiety of the masters to escape the performance of all the obligations of care in sickness and in health of the apprentice system and, instead, to pay wages points in the same direction. By 1815, in all the States north of Maryland, slavery as an effective producing institution had disappeared. There were slaves in New York and Pennsylvania, but the system of gradual emancipation was rapidly putting an end to the institution in all the old Northern States where it stili had a legal existence. By 1820, it may be said that in the Middle States and in New England the wage system was established.
Wages in those days were low when measured in dollars and cents, the hours of labor were long, and the conditions under which the operatives worked were unsanitary and arduous. In 1800, eighty cents had been the ordinary daily wage for partly skilled labor in rural New England and a few cents less had been paid in the Middle States. This amount had increased to an even dollar or thereabouts in a decade and by 1830 to one dollar and a half. The ordinary laborer received a few cents less and in 1820 his wage may be set down at an even dollar, with possibly twenty-five cents more on government work.1 In 1815, there was printed in "Niles's Register," which was published at Baltimore, a rather elaborate series of calculations intended to show that the laborer was much better off in America
offered for the return of a negro boy These later figures are taken from
(The Mirror, July 14, 1808, a Ken- various sources as the "Wendell
tucky paper) and $20 for the return Manuscripts" which were kindly placed
of a dark brown horse and roan mare at my disposal by Professor Barrett
(Western Star, June 26, 1797). Wendell. 1 See the present work, iv, 10-14.
1830] WAGES 97
than he was in England. In this article the daily wage of the laborer in America is given at eighty cents with the quali- fication that most city laborers received from one dollar and a quarter to one dollar and a half. The price of wheat was stated at one dollar and a half for a bushel of sixty pounds and beef was priced at six cents a pound. From this and other calculations it appears that from eight to twelve cents a day would purchase food for one adult and one day's labor would provide food for three days for a family of father, mother, and four children.1 Running through the decades, it would not be uninteresting to observe how the "real reward" of bone and muscle in terms of daily food has remained singularly constant, notwithstanding the fluctuations in both wages and commodity prices. The rise in real reward has accompanied the change from mere bone and fibre expenditure to the training of muscle and to the use of the mind. In other words the increase in the "real reward" of the operative classes has come about by the constant advance in skill and in the utilization of mind and nerve for the operation of machinery, and not from any marked rise in the real reward of any one class in the labor- ing community. As to the skilled workman in the olden time : in 1806 it was testified in court that a Philadelphia cord- wainer could earn six or seven dollars a week on piece work and a very good and rapid worker as high as ten or even twelve dollars.2
As to hours and condition of employment, these were taken directly from the custom of the farm, where men and women, and children too, worked from sun to sun — from sunrise to sunset. Those engaged on piece work as shoe- makers and tailors oftentimes labored for twelve, thirteen,
1 Niles'a Weekly Register, ix, 230. * John R. Commons's American In-
dustrial Society, iii, 83, 106.
VOL. V. — H
98 THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT [Cn. IV
or fourteen hours a day, much of it by the light of a candle, or a whale oil, or lard oil, lamp. When mills and factories were established and the working man went from his own home or bench to a place in his employer's shop, or a girl came from the parental farm to a factory in a mill town, the accustomed hours of labor were naturally kept up. As to the conditions of employment, no one in those days knew anything to speak of about hygiene, or the effects of poor ventilation on the human body and mind. In point of fact a closed and hot room was regarded as rather in the nature of a luxury, in the winter time, at any rate. In those days, also, very little attention was given to the purity of drinking water, and the minor human ailments, that are now recog- nized as a breeding ground for germs of serious disorders, were not cared for at all. The light that was provided in factory and shop was scanty and harmful to the working people. Furthermore many of those employed in mills were children, — as they worked on the farm, why should they not labor in the factory? In 1801, Josiah Quincy, on the beginning of a trip through southeastern New England, visited Pawtucket and gained admittance to the "cotton works." All the processes of cleaning, carding, spinning, and winding the cotton fibre were performed by machinery actuated by water wheels and "assisted only by children from four to Ten years old, and one superintendent." There were more than one hundred children employed in the factory and they were paid from twelve to twenty-five cents a day. Quincy pitied those "little creatures, plying in a contracted room, among flyers and coggs, at an age when nature requires for them air, space, and sports. There was a dull dejection in the countenances of all of them," 1 —
1 Massachusetts Historical So- Memories, 15. In 1853, the Report of ciety's Proceedings, Second Series, iv, the Commissioner, appointed to as- 124. See also Robert Collyer's Some certain the truth as to child labor
1830] CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT 99
their condition must have resembled that of Robert Collyer as he describes his boyhood in England.
As population became dense in the commercial cities and towns and in the factory villages, working people came together in larger and larger groups. Associating in shop and boarding house they began to compare notes as to their wages and as to the wages paid in other shops and other trades and in other towns, for, as transportation facilities increased, there was more and more migration of the work- ing people from one town to another in the same State or in separate States. Moreover, as factories were established it became necessary to import workmen from abroad, especially from England and Scotland, to operate machinery that was sometimes imported or, at all events, was strange to the people of the neighborhood in which the new factory was established, and these people brought ideas as to trade societies that had been worked out in their old homes. Three trades, — the cordwainers or shoemakers, the tailors, and the printers — were the first to become conscious of class distinctions for in them first of all the employer left his bench by the side of his workman and sat apart in an office busy with the affairs of money, of buying materials, of selling his goods, of getting payments, of enlarging his market. As the number of working men increased one of them was appointed to overlook the rest and became a foreman or a forewoman. A group system of employment in these trades first appeared in Philadelphia and New York and it is in those cities that one finds what appears to be the beginning of the movement of organized labor to se-
in Rhode Island, provided some facts relaxation that great numbers of
for contemplation : — in some mills mill children enjoyed was due to the
work began in the winter at 5.30 A.M., occasional stopping of the mills on
making more than thirteen hours' labor account of low water or for repairs to
in the shortest days, and the only the machinery.
100 THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT [Cn. IV
cure more wages, shorter hours, and better conditions of working.
There may have been a few strikes of shoemakers in colonial days, but the evidence for them is very vague, and it is possible that the printers in one office in Philadelphia "turned out" in the 1780's, but the evidence for this is even more indistinct.1 The Philadelphia cordwainers formed a society in 1794 and "turned out" in 1798 and again in 1799, but the strike of 1805 is the first of which we have ample evidence and this is owing to the fact that in 1806 the leaders in the movement were indicted for criminal conspiracy and the trial in the Mayor's Court, at which were present the mayor, three aldermen, and the recorder, was fully reported.2 It appears that a working man, a journeyman cordwainer, Job Harrison by name, who worked for Mr. Bedford, had been making shoes or dress shoes at nine shillings a pair, side lining them with silk. In 1805, the cordwainers struck to secure larger wages for the making of boots. Harrison refused to turn out with the rest, partly because he had a sick wife and several children to support and needed all the wages he could get and partly because he could not understand why he, who was satisfied with the price he was getting for the making of shoes, should strike to enable the boot makers to get more for their work. He was still a member of the Cordwainers' Society, but he turned "scab" and continued to work. A committee of the working men
1 In 1791, the Philadelphia car- Commons and others, vol. iii, 59-250.
penters struck for better conditions of • This latter publication contains much
labor ; but the accounts of this strike matter of great value, — without the
are dim and little is known of the material thus made accessible, the
organization. present chapter could not have been
* Thomas Lloyd's The Trial of the written. Earlier, Professor Commons
Boot & Shoemakers of Philadelphia:, used the evidence given in this trial as
pp. 3, 5, 6, 13, 91, 141, 142, 147, 149. the basis around which to build an
This pamphlet, which was published article on "American Shoemakers"
at Philadelphia in 1806, is reprinted in the Quarterly Journal of Economics,
in A Documentary History of American zziv, 39-81. Industrial Society, edited by John R.
1805] AN EARLY STRIKE 101
called on Mr. Bedford and demanded the discharge of Harrison. Upon Bedford's refusal, the other journeymen, fifteen to twenty in number, walking out, "scabbed" Bedford's shop, leaving only Harrison and three or four other men at work. The strikers refused to board at the same house with any of Bedford's employees, and appointed a "tramping committee" to watch his shop. In an interrup- tion in the court proceedings a person in the room was heard to say that "a scab is a shelter for lice," whereupon he was fined ten dollars "for this contempt of court in interrupting a witness." The strike, or turn out, or stand out was against all the employers in town who had not acceded to the higher wage list for boot making. The evidence is minute in many particulars, showing that every journeyman who came to Philadelphia was expected to join the society. If he did not the shop in which he might find work was scabbed until he was discharged or until he joined the society, after paying a fine. Money was given by the society to needy members out of work. Scabs were called upon by two or three of the strikers and were evidently frightened, although in 1805, it does not appear that actual violence was used. Bedford, the employer, testified that the strikers would come by his house and abuse him and that they broke his windows by throwing through them potatoes which had pieces of broken shoemakers' tacks in them, but violence was not the policy of the society. He said that he had lost four thousand dollars in business by the strike. Another employer stated that the strike had cost him two thousand dollars in the export business alone.
The lawyers made their addresses on both sides and then Moses Levy, the recorder or judge, made his charge to the jury. He stated the law which he said was "the will of the whole community . . . and the most imperious duty
102 THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT [Ca. IV
demands our submission to it." It was of no importance whether the journeymen or the masters were the prose- cutors, whether the defendants were poor, or rich, or their numbers small or great, or whether their motives were to resist the supposed oppression of their masters, or to insist upon extravagant compensation, the question is whether the defendants are guilty of the offences charged against them. " If they are guilty and were possessed of nine-tenths of the soil of the whole United States, and the patronage of the union, it is the bounden duty of the jury to declare their guilt." The indictment charged the defendants with having combined unlawfully to increase the prices usually paid and that they did unlawfully assemble and " corruptly conspire, combine, confederate, and agree together that none of them . . . would work for any master or person whatever, who should employ" any workman who broke any " of the said unlawful rules, orders or bye laws, and that they would by threats and menaces and other injuries" prevent any other workmen from working for such master. Recorder Levy said that a combination of workmen to raise their wages might be either to benefit themselves or to injure those who do not join their Society. The contemporaneous report made by Thomas Lloyd states that the recorder declared all such combinations to be unlawful. One of his successors who presided at the trial of the Journeymen Tailors in 1827, stated that Recorder Levy declared that "a combination to resist oppression, not only supposed but real, would be perfectly innocent ; where the act to be done, and the means to accomplish [it] are lawful, and the object to be attained meritorious, combination is not conspiracy." l Levy closed his charge by telling the jurymen that if they
1 M. T. C. Gould's Trial of Twenty- Commons's American Industrial So- four Journeymen Tailors (Philadelphia, ciety. 1827), p. 160; reprinted in vol. iv of
1805] AN EARLY STRIKE 103
could reconcile it with their consciences to find the defendants not guilty, they would do so, otherwise they must bring in a verdict of guilty. The defendants were convicted and fined eight dollars apiece and costs of the suit.
In the following years there were labor contests in New York, Baltimore, and elsewhere and these brought about prosecutions which usually turned upon the question of conspiracy. In 1842, .in the case of the Commonwealth against Hunt and Others, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of Massachusetts ruled that it was a criminal offence for two or more persons to confederate to do that which is unlawful or criminal. This rule, he said, was in equal force in England and in Massachusetts ; but it depended upon the local law of each country to determine whether the purposes sought to be accomplished by the combination or the means used by the confederates were unlawful or criminal in the respective countries. He defined a conspiracy as concerted action to accomplish some criminal purpose or by the use of criminal and unlawful means to accomplish something that was not in itself criminal. He went on to say that the inducing all those engaged in the same occupation to become members of an association is not unlawful unless the avowed object of the association is criminal. Even the purpose of an association that had a tendency to impoverish another person might not be criminal and unlawful ; but, on the other hand, might be "highly meritorious and public spirited. The legality of such an association will therefore depend upon the means to be used for its accomplishment." l In this case as in many others, Chief Justice Shaw furnished the precedent that was followed, not only by the courts in Massachusetts, but in other States as well.
1 Theron Metcalf's Reports of Cases Massachusetts, iv, 121-137, especially - , . in the Supreme Judicial Court of 134.
104 THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT [Cn. IV
From 1805 to 1820 there were labor contests in different parts of the country but the times were against agitation for higher wages or improved conditions. Beginning with 1820 and more particularly after 1825, a new chapter opened. The regeneration of the second United States Bank following the transfer of the control from Langdon Cheves to Nicholas Biddle marked a new era of prosperity and growth which was reflected in great activity in building roads and canals and in general business. All this created a demand for labor and gave laboring men their chance to coerce their employers. At first the great point at issue was the shorten- ing of the old hours of labor, from sun to sun, to ten hours a day. The march of democracy had placed the franchise in many States within the reach of considerable numbers of working men and in other States where the property quali- fication had been merely nominal, as in Pennsylvania, arrangements had been made to make political action easier. The working men argued that they should have more time for educational purposes, that they should have leisure to study and to consult about political matters which they could not do at the end of a thirteen-hour day. Of course in winter in many trades, where work was performed out of doors, working men had ample leisure in the long evenings to study and to contemplate; but with the cheapening of artificial illumination, with the introduction of gas into Philadelphia and New York and with the more common use of whale oil as an illuminant everywhere, the hours of indoor labor had become more constant throughout the year. As long as the hours of labor had been short in the winter months and indeed in the early spring and late autumn it had seemed not unreasonable to even up matters by utilizing to the full measure the long hours of daylight of the other five or six months of the year ; but, now, when labor was pro-
1830] THE TEN-HOUR DAY 105
longed throughout the year, it seemed reasonable to recover the average yearly time by reducing the length of the work day as a whole. In June, 1827, several hundred Philadelphia journeymen carpenters "struck out" or "stood out" for the ten-hour day.1 The movement spread to other trades and to other cities, but was not widely successful at that time, and, indeed, it was not until the oncoming of the War for Southern Independence that ten hours became the standard of a day's labor in the mechanic trades throughout the country.
The ten-hour movement appealed more strongly to work- ing men as a whole than the earlier contest for wages. The mere fact that all working men — except agricultural laborers and other distinctly unskilled outdoor laborers — were now fighting for some one thing undoubtedly had a good deal to do with the extended character of this movement. At all events all kinds of trades established organizations and, as all were struggling for the same end, the different trade organizations naturally came together to concert measures of coercion. This led to the entrance of labor into the political field, to the establishment of working men's parties in Pennsylvania and New York, and elsewhere. For several years the Working Men placed candidates in the field ; but they were no match for the professional politicians and succeeded only as they were able to combine with one or another of the political parties. In New York, the leaders of Tammany Hall promptly adopted the cause of the "workies." But after a period of moderate success, the labor movement divorced itself from politics.
These were years of reformations. New York City seems to have vied with Brook Farm in the presence of radi-
1 John R. Commons' Documentary History of American Industrial Society, v, 75, 80-84.
106
THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT
[Cfl. IV
calism.1 Among the New York reformers was Thomas Skidmore, who had an idea that every citizen should enjoy in society the rights that belonged to him in a state of nature, although possibly in order to create any society some portion of man's natural rights had to be abandoned. He argued for true equality among men and advocated the taking away of all property from individuals and its pro- rata division among all adults. Another radical New York reformer was George Henry Evans, who, like so many of the would-be remodellers of the American social organization, was an immigrant from England. He had somewhat defi- nite ideas as to the best mode to parcel out property among the people. The prominence of these reformers, combined with the machinations of the Tammany Hall politicians, killed the political labor movement in New York, as it gave the more conservative elements in the com- munity the chance to stigmatize the Working Men's Party as contaminated by association with the irreligious and the levellers and with those of anarchical disposition.
The financial measures of 1830 and the next few years
1 At a labor convention held in Lowell, Massachusetts, March, 1845, Mr. Ryckman of Brook Farm intro- duced the following resolution which was most enthusiastically received and secured him an election to the presidency of the New England Work- ingmen's Association : — " Resolved, that this Convention recommend to the N. E. Association to organize as promptly as possible, a permanent In- dustrial Revolutionary Government ... to direct the legal political action of the workingmen so as to destroy the hostile relations that at present pre- vail between capital and labor, and to secure to all the citizens without ex- ception the full and complete de- velopment of their faculties." Ameri- can Industrial Society, viii, 104.
Eli Moore, the labor Representa- tive in Congress from New York, speak-
ing in the House on April 29, 1836, declared that the laboring classes were "friends of freedom, in favor of equality of political franchise . . . and op- posed to monopolies of all kinds. . . . The history of the aristocracy, through all ages of the world, was a continued series of rapine, plunder, villany, and perfidy, without a single ray of honor, virtue, or patriotism." See the Con- gressional Globe, under date.
Seth Luther, an itinerant labor agitator who lectured in the New England mill towns in 1832, declared that "while music floats from quiver- ing strings through perfumed and adorned apartments ... of the rich ; the nerves of the poor woman and child, in the cotton mill, are quiver- ing with almost dying agony, from excessive labor to support this splen- dor."
1830] LABOR SOCIETIES 107
brought on a period of terrific speculation. Everything went up in price — houses, lands, food, and clothing — and the working men felt that they, too, must get more money for the only commodity they had to sell, the labor of their hands and bodies. For a time the ten-hour move- ment gave way to demands for increased wages.1 In this era of "prosperity," as it was called, trades unions, or labor societies, were organized and reorganized by the tens and twenties. No less than one hundred and fifty trade societies 2 appeared in the four cities of New York, Balti- more, Philadelphia, and Boston, in the four years from 1833 to 1837 ; and in 1834, at the beginning of the movement, there were twenty-five thousand trade unionists in those cities.3 In the same years in the country as a whole there were one hundred and sixty-eight strikes.4 Of these one hundred and three were for higher wages and twenty-six for a ten-hour day. All kinds of trades struck, the car- penters, bricklayers, masons, plasterers, and painters — those engaged in the building trades — to the number of thirty-four times ; the shoemakers or cordwainers twenty- four times, and the rest scattered among all kinds of employ- ment, tailors, hatters, bakers, sailors, rope makers, printers, mechanics, and so on. Among the unions of especial interest were those of the seamstresses, female factory hands, female book binders, shoe binders, and umbrella makers. These had unions of their own or formed branches of a union,
1 An interesting article on this New York and Brooklyn 11,500
period is Evans Woollen's "Labor Philadelphia 6,000
Troubles between 1834 and 1837" in Boston 4,000
Yale Review for May, 1892. Baltimore 3,500
1 See list prepared by Edward B. 25,000
Mittelman in Commons and As- American Industrial Society, vi, 191.
soeiates' History of Labour, i, 472. gee also The South in the Building of
* They were distributed as follows : i he Nation, v, 145.
4 Commons and Associates' His- tory of Labour, i, 478-484.
108 THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT [Cn. IV
but where there were only a few women employed in some one trade in one locality, both men and women joined in one union. Another interesting item is that the factory operatives had begun to strike, the carpet weavers at Thompsonville, Connecticut, for higher wages, the cotton factory hands at Paterson, New Jersey, for an eleven-hour day, and the operatives at Lowell, Massachusetts, against a reduction in wages. A few of these strikes were against the use of apprentices, and one, that of the Boston printers, was against the employment of girls. The last of these strikes was in November, 1837. Then financial panic and hardness of the times resulting in lack of employment, put an end to all sorts of striking and also caused the disruption and disintegration of the trades unions.
Among all these strikes, the one that took place at Phil- adelphia in the summer of 1835 is particularly interesting. Seventeen trades took part in this movement, the house builders and shoemakers being joined by the leather dressers, plumbers, carters, saddlers, cigar makers, printers, and bakers. The movement was almost entirely for the ten- hour day, or for higher wages in connection with the ten- hour day. The bakers did not ask for a ten-hour day but demanded the discontinuance of baking on Sundays. This time the "workies" had the sympathy of the professional classes, — lawyers, physicians, and politicians joining them in their meetings. The politicians were so much impressed with the power of the workers that they provided that city employees should work only from six to six in the summer, allowing one hour for breakfast and one for dinner. There was no particular disorder at Philadelphia, but in some other places there was more intimidation and physical coercion than had been the case in previous years. The employers, too, were better organized and in some places and in some
1833] THE THOMPSONVILLE WEAVERS 109
trades made use of the black list. The strike of the weavers at Thompsonville in Connecticut, in 1833, had one or two features out of the ordinary run. The carpet mills at that place had been recently started, operatives had been imported from Britain to work the new machinery and the owners of the mill had established a schedule of wages that, according to their own account, proved to be more than was paid for similar work in other establishments. When they tried to rectify this matter, the workmen struck, refusing even to finish the carpets that were in the looms. The leading operatives then wrote to friends in other places and to the keeper of the Blue Bonnet Tavern at New York, which seems to have been the rallying point of British operatives in this country. These letters simply stated that the opera- tives at Thompsonville had turned out and asked their correspondents to use all their influence to keep others from coming to Thompsonville until the strikers' object had been attained, and also to give them support in their undertaking. Certainly influence was used to keep men from going to Thompsonville and those that did get there were urged by the strikers not to work at the mill. The operatives in other factories also sent money to the strikers.1 The most interesting case of these years — 1833 to 1837 — was that of the Geneva shoemakers, for the ruling of the Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court in that case was the prece- dent followed by the New York courts for some years.
The trouble at Geneva originated in the attempt of the bootmakers and shoemakers to compel one of the employers to discharge a workman who was willing to labor for less than the price demanded by the society. The leaders of the society were thereupon indicted for a conspiracy in
1 For an account of the Thompsonville weavers, see American Industrial Society, vol. iv, Supplement.
110 THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT [Cn. IV
obstructing the business of boot and shoemaking to the injury of the trade of New York. A clause defining con- spiracy as combining to commit an act injurious to public morals or trade had been included in a recent codification of the laws of New York. The case was carried from the lower court to the State Supreme Court where the Chief Justice laid down the law as required by the clause in the Code of 1829. If, he declared, the working people of Geneva demand so high wages that Geneva-made boots and shoes cannot be sold in competition with those made elsewhere, it was an act injurious to trade. Moreover, while one man might refuse to work for any particular wage, he had no right to say that others should not work for that amount of money and if one man did not possess such a right a number of men could not possess it. This case was decided in 1835.1 In that year also the tailors of the City of New York, having already formed a society, increased the rate of wages demanded for its members and in 1836 the masters also formed a society. The journeyman society had com- pelled an increase in prices given for its work; but the organized masters, when the dull season came on, reduced the wages and the employees struck. The evidence in this case is quite as voluminous as was that of the Philadelphia cordwainers, thirty years before. There was now black- listing, picketing, and coercion. The leaders of the striking tailors were indicted for conspiracy. The jury found them guilty and the judge, after a week's intermission, sentenced them to pay heavy fines or go to jail. In his charge and again in sentencing the convicted journeymen, the judge declared that the law governing the case was an act of the State legislature which not only had reenacted the provision
1 Commons and Associates' History of Labour in the United States, vol. i, 405-408.
1835] THE GENEVA CASE 111
of the Common Law but had added to it a provision that an act must be performed by one or more members of the combination to bring the combination within the scope of the law. Every individual was master of his own act, the judge said, but he could not encroach upon the rights of others. He might work or not as he pleased, but he "shall not enter into a confederacy with a view of controlling others, and take measures to carry it into effect." l
The Panic of 1837, in relation to the amount of business of the country, was the severest that we have ever ex- perienced, especially as one wave of depression followed another for eight or ten years. Masters and working men were both affected. In such circumstances the struggle became one for existence, rather than for higher profits and greater wages. There was great misery in many parts of the country and this aroused the attention of the humani- tarians and social panaceists. The decade beginning with 1840 was replete with plans for the making over of society to secure justice for all.2 Association, cooperation, agrarian- ism followed one another and merged into each other. Horace Greeley led in the attempt to reconstruct society, giving space in his paper, the "New- York Tribune," lending money to what seemed to be promising ventures, and using his personal influence for their establishment. The story of the attempt to transplant Fourierism and Icarianism from the Old World to the New is briefly told in another chapter.3 Here it need only be said that American working men, whether native born or foreigners, who had been in the country for several years, did not take kindly to any of these experiments in socialism or communism. What
1 J. R. Commons's American In- America, Albany and New York,
dustrial Society, iv, 319-333. 1843.
* See for example E. G. Squier's * See below, oh. xv.
Lecture on the . . . Laboring Class of
112 THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT [Cn. IV
they wanted was more wages for a given amount of labor. What these people offered them was no wages and living under social conditions that did not in the least appeal to them. It is easy to see why all the schemes of association failed : some men will work as hard without supervision as they will under direction, but these soon become masters ; other men will do as little work as possible for "a living wage." Moreover, the early community experiments were not carried on on a sufficiently large scale for one thing and came into direct competition with more effectively managed private business enterprises for another. Exactly the same thing happened as to cooperation. This was of two gen- eral types, productive cooperation and distributive coop- eration.1 It would seem, at first glance at any rate, that one hundred workmen joining together and subscribing from their savings or borrowing from Horace Greeley or some other friend of labor enough money to purchase or hire a factory and procure the necessary materials could utilize their skill and knowledge so advantageously as to be able to under- sell a competing work carried on in the usual way with comparatively large overhead expenses. In other words the elimination of the employer with the consequent elim- ination of the profit required by him would enable the work- ing men's factory to pay good wages and live. On trial, however, it proved to be quite otherwise, for what is every man's business is no man's business and where the com- bining and overseeing faculty is absent, things are not done that should be done, or in the way they should be done, or at the time that they should be done. In distributive coop- eration, there seemed to be much greater hope. The idea was that numbers of persons should each subscribe a small
1 The constitutions and laws of half aociative Manual; Part I (New York, a dozen cooperative bodies were 1861). printed by Charles Sully in his At-
1840] COOPERATION 113
amount of money which should be used to procure a few goods that would be sold to members for the actual cost of purchase plus their share of the actual cost of distribution and, possibly, plus a moderate amount that might be used for enlarging the business. The plan seemed to offer great possibilities and one could point any doubter to the famous Rochdale system that had been worked out in England. Undoubtedly cooperative buying and selling had and has great advantages for the consumer; but these advantages are often overestimated and are more often very difficult to secure. These attempts, with the exception of a very few that were either peculiarly fortunate or were much more efficiently managed than the rest, and also always excepting a few of the community settlements, all came to early and untimely ends. One of the points that attracts attention in the distributive cooperative organizations of the 1840's was the difficulty that was experienced in appor- tioning the increased price that should be charged for store management. In one plan, it was provided that the person in charge should add to each article sold the exact amount of time consumed by him in the distribution of that particular purchase, — quite forgetful of the possibility that the amount of time consumed in the marketing of a yard of tape might well have been longer than that required in the disposal of a pair of back-strap boots.
A variant of the cooperative community plan was devised by Josiah Warren, who had been a foremost follower of Robert Owen, but had relapsed into excessive individualism. He devised a scheme by which every one would be spurred on to labor, but there would be no money and no wages.1 In his plan there would be no laws or regulations, no one would have any power over another, and all intercourse
1 Josiah Warren's Equitable Commerce (2nd Ed., Utopia, Ohio. 1849).
VOL. V. — 5
114 THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT (CH. IV
between human beings would be voluntary. In the trans- action of business, everything would be done upon "the principle of an Equal Exchange estimated by the Time employed on the service." This was to be done by ascertain- ing the average amount of time required to produce various staple articles. These estimates when completed were to be hung up where every one could see them. Any man or woman producing any commodity and bringing it to the common store would be given a "Labour Note" for the number of hours required to produce the commodity. This note could be exchanged at the store or "magazine" for any goods requiring the same amount of time to produce. This plan was tried more or less completely in several places, but seems never to have produced satisfactory results.
The founders of some of the first factory towns, recog- nizing that the establishment of spinning and weaving machinery actuated by water-power would deprive the women of the farms of their chance to labor at the distaff and the hand loom, sought to make the life in the new mill town attractive to the operatives that would be drawn to them from the countryside. At Waltham, and later at Lowell,1 wages were offered that attracted young women and the life was so guarded that the young women and their parents had every confidence in their change from the farm
1 Harriet H. Robinson's Loom and on Manufactures presented to Parlia-
Spindle, or Life Among the Early Mitt ment in 1833, p. 121, where an Eng-
Girls and her "Early Factory Labor lish banker stated that the founders
in New England" in Massachusetts of the American factory system thought
Bureau of Statistics of Labor's Four- that great care must be taken of the
teenth Annual Report; Henry A. Miles's young women who worked in their
Lowell, As It Was, and As It Is; and mills in order that such employment
William Scoresby's American Fac- might be considered more respectable
tories and their Female Operatives than ordinary housework. See also
(Boston, 1845). The superiority of the evidence of James Kempton in
the Lowell labor system is adverted ibid., p. 147. to in the evidence given in the Report
1830] THE LOWELL MILL GIRLS 115
house to the factory village. Boarding houses were estab- lished near the mills which were kept by respectable women, who were generally widows with children, and they were subsidized by the mill corporations to the extent of twenty- five cents per week for each man and half as much for each woman operative. The board and lodging charged the workers was $1.75 per week for a man and fifty cents less for a girl.1 At Lowell -in 1848, the men operatives averaged $6.05 a week, the women $3.45. The agent of the Lawrence Manufacturing Company estimated that after paying for board and clothing, the latter costing fifty-two dollars a year, the male operative would have a weekly profit of $3.30, and the woman of $1.52.2
The hours of labor at Lowell and in the other manufac- turing towns were long. The operatives reported for duty at five in the morning and worked until seven at night with time off for breakfast and for dinner. In the early days the work was not intense. The children who took the full bobbins off the frames and replaced them with empty ones worked only about fifteen minutes in every hour. They occupied the rest of the time in study or play and sometimes went home and helped their mothers in these intervals.
1 John Aiken's Labor and Wages, of the woman worker at Lowell was
At Home and Abroad (Lowell, 1849), $2.00 a week "clear of board" ; that of
p. 13. On p. 29, he remarks that men .80 per day also "clear of board."
since 1800 men's wages had increased There were then 6085 females and 1827
50 per cent and women's from 200 to males employed in these factories.
300 per cent. In 1832, the New York Sketch of the Civil Engineering of North
Convention of the Friends of Do- America, 319, 320.
mestic Industry gave the weekly wages 2 The Lawrence Manufacturing Com-
of Massachusetts factory hands at pany at Lowell had ordinarily paid
$2.25 besides board and lodging, Com- on the average about eight per cent
mons and Associates' History of Labour, in dividends. In 1848, there were three
i, 422. There is much information in hundred and ten shareholders, one hun-
the "Minutes of Evidence taken be- dred and fifty- three of them having
fore the Committee on Manufac- only one or two shares apiece, the value
tures" in December, 1827, and January, of the share being one thousand dol-
1828 (House Report, No. 115, 20th lars, and the largest stockholder having
Cong., 1st Sess.). In 1837, Steven- seventy-five shares. Aiken's Labor
son estimated that the average wage and Wages, At Home and Abroad.
116 THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT [Cn. IV
The speed of the machinery was slow, although it was faster than in England and the number of machines tended by any one operative was not large. Certain it is that notwithstanding the long hours, the Lowell factory girls of the thirties and the forties had time, strength, and in- clination for intellectual improvement. Books were abun- dant and girls came to Lowell and worked in the mills because there they also had opportunity to read. In 1840 an "Improvement Circle" was organized and, later in the same year the publication of a magazine — " The Lowell Offering" — was begun.1 The articles were written by the women operatives, although a man's name was given as editor for the first couple of years so as not to arouse the hostility of the public. "The Offering" was issued for five years or so and we have Charles Dickens's authority for the statement that it would "compare advantageously with a great many English annuals." Of its contributors Lucy Larcom,2 alone, attained more than local fame. Lowell, indeed, in these early days seems to have been a species of money-making Brook Farm.3
About 1850 a new chapter opened in the history of Lowell and of other New England manufacturing enterprises, as it did in many of those in New York, New Jersey, and Penn- sylvania. The founders of these manufacturing establish-
1The Lowell Offering; a Repository elements of community life that never
of Original Articles, written exclusively existed at Lowell ; and lacked en-
by Females Actively Employed in the tirely the literary stimulus of Lowell
Mitts (Lowell, 1841-1845). For an and Brook Farm. It was a religious,
account of this magazine, see Harriet social, and economic experiment. It
H. Robinson's Loom and Spindle, ch. was ultra-idealistic. J. H. Benton
vi and fol- calls these Hopedale dwellers "relig-
1 Lucy Larcom's account of her ious visionaries" who "claimed all
life is contained in her New England the benefits of citizenship, while they
Girlhood and her poem, An Idyl of refused to perform any of its duties."
Work. See also Daniel D. Addison's See "Argument" of J. H. Benton,
Lucy Larcom, Life, Letters, and Diary. Jun. in Draper Corporations against
3 The Hopedale experiment dif- the People of Milford, 3. fered from either of these; it had
1850] CHANGED CONDITIONS 117
ments were no longer living or had withdrawn from active business. Instead of being in the hands of a few men of established fortune, the mills were now owned by numerous stockholders and were managed solely for purposes of gain.1 The first type of operative also no longer entered their gates. Lowell had been an educational force in fitting women for clerical work ; now the farmers' girls stayed at home or went directly to the counting-rooms of the cities and their places in the mills were taken by immigrants. The looms were speeded up, more machines were allotted to each operative, wages were reduced, and so also were the hours of labor. The work became harder and more intense as the decades went by, labor agitators at length obtained a hearing there, and Lowell ceased to be unlike other centres of manufacturing industry.
By 1850, business had picked up again; the trade so- cieties that had gone out of existence or those that had led a lingering life were resuscitated or reorganized and a new contest between labor and capital began. T$y this time the railroads had influenced production and distribution, both of which were carried on in larger units by men possessed of greater means or banded together in corporations with con- siderable capital. The earlier unions had been usually temporary societies, largely governed by idealism as the desire for greater educational opportunities, or the shortening of the hours of labor for hygienic reasons ; the new unions were devoted purely and simply to the task of getting higher wages and they were much more effectively organized and fell under the direction of abler men who made the manage- ment of the union their sole occupation. Then the unions in several cities combined to form a central representative
1 The agitation for a ten-hour law Laws and their Enforcement vrith Special in Massachusetts is traced by Charles Reference to Massachusetts, ch. i. E. Persons in S. M. Kingsbury's Labor
118
THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT
body and in some cases the separate trades unions through- out the country became more or less closely combined into national organizations. Strikes again became the order of the day ; but while there was vigor displayed, there were no new methods employed. Then came the Panic of 1857 and before it had run its course, the firing on Fort Sumter brought to the front new problems and new conditions. In the sixty years since 1800, labor had won many distinct triumphs ; it had secured the ten-hour day and the right of organization with the power to compel attention to its behests, and it had secured a constantly rising rate of wages. How far this increase in compensation corresponded to the ever improving conditions of American life is quite another question and may well be reserved for later volumes. It may also be a question for debate as to whether it is correct to say that the right of organization was admitted, but it certainly is correct to assert that it was viewed with much greater tolerance by the law-makers and by those whose business it was to enforce the laws than it had been in the earlier time.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 119
NOTE
Bibliography. — Professor Richard T. Ely of the University of Wisconsin became interested in the labor movement in America when he was Associate in Political Economy at Johns Hopkins Uni- versity. In 1886, he published a book entitled The Labor Movement in America which broke the ground for all future discussions on the subject. Of course, as a first attempt in a difficult and unexplored field, this book has been very largely superseded, but Professor Ely brought together materials and students and thus laid the foundation for future studies of the subject. In 1887, George E. McNeill, himself a labor leader, published a book entitled The Labor Movement: the Problem of To-day. In this undertaking he had the aid of many other persons, as Terence V. Powderly, Edmund J. James, Henry George, and leading men in the movement. This book is very useful for the later time. It was not until the publication of A Documentary History of American Industrial Society in 1910 (10 vols. with a " Supplement " to vol. iv) that it became possible to study the history of labor in the years covered in the present volume without going through the same amount of work that was performed by Professor John R. Commons and his associate editors and researchers. The " General Introduction " to volume i of this publication was written by Professor J. B. Clark of Columbia University ; it is a luminous exposition of the evolution of industrialism that might well be read by every student of American history. The History of Labour in the United States in two volumes by Professor Commons and Associates (New York, 1918) points the way through a maze of happenings and theorizings of the period. Frank T. Carlton's Organized Labor in American History (New York, 1920) contains in brief compass and in readable form the leading facts of this earlier labor movement.1
McMaster, in the volumes of his History covering this period, has printed a mass of useful information on the labor movement, see the indexes to the separate volumes — a consolidated index to the whole work would add greatly to its value.
1 Other compendious works dealing Economic History. Appendix A to with the labor problem are Arthur W. the latter deals with "Child Labor in Calhoun's Social History of the Ameri- America before 1870," which is re- con Family, ii ; Edith Abbott's Women printed from the American Journal of in Industry, a Study in American Sociology for July, 1908.
CHAPTER V
THE PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM
THE humanitarian impulse that has just been described in relation to the new labor problem of the North also found expression as to the new labor problem that had grown up in the South. We have always been accustomed to think of slavery as slavery, as practically the same thing throughout the course of American history ; l in reality, there was a great change in the slave system in the first forty years of the nineteenth century, — a change entirely analogous to that which has just been described as to the industrial system of the North. In the South, in the Revolutionary epoch, slavery was distinctly on the wane. The great Virginians — Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Madison, Mon- roe, and John Randolph of Roanoke — all condemned it. Patrick Henry stigmatized it as an "abominable practice" and declared it to be a "species of violence and tyranny" that was repugnant to humanity, was inconsistent with religion, and was destructive of liberty.2 Washington and Randolph provided by will for the emancipation of their slaves, and Jefferson to the end of his life argued for the adoption of a system of gradual emancipation combined
1 For slavery in the pre-Revolu- Henry, 346, from "Bancroft, ed. 1869,
tionary days, see the present work, vi, 416—417." See also on the gen-
vol. ii. 376-398, 512-515. eral subject George Livennore's "His-
* The Commercial Register (Norfolk, torical Research respecting the Opin-
Va.) August 30, 1802 ; reprinted ions of the Founders ... on Negroes
from " a Philadelphia Magazine." The as Slaves" in Massachusetts Histori-
same passages — somewhat differ- cal Society's Proceedings for August,
ently worded — are printed in Tyler's 1862.
12P
COTTON PRODUCTION 121
with deportation. The South Carolinians on every occasion defended most vigorously their rights to their property, but for years a South Carolina law prohibited the im- portation of slaves into that State. This act was repealed in 1803 and for a few years until the federal law of 1807 went into effect there was a vigorous importation of fresh negroes from Africa into Charleston.1
The persistent and ever increasing demand for cotton fibre, the improvement of the cotton-gin, and the discovery that the short staple, green seed cotton plant throve marvel- lously in the uplands of South Carolina and Georgia and in the black belt to the westward, changed the whole course of economic and social existence in the South and, indeed, governed the course of history of the United States down to the year 1865. In so far as Eli Whitney's perfection of the cotton-gin contributed to the cultivation of the upland cotton plant on a great scale it was a curse to the South, to the United States, and to humanity. In the earlier time by far the greater number of Southern slaveholders pos- sessed only a few slaves each. In the families of professional men living in the towns, there would be one or two to do the household work. In the rural districts, the smaller farmers likewise owned one or two slaves, or a slave family or two, and the whites and blacks worked together in the fields, the farmer or his grown-up son often setting the pace for the negroes. Not infrequently, the remnants of a once well-to-do family owned a few slaves who were "hired out" to a neighboring planter, their wages providing the old ladies with food and clothing for the last years of their lives.
l'McCbrd's Statutes of South Caro- negroes from the West Indies and of
Una, vii, 449. By this law former adult negroes from the "sister States"
acts prohibiting the importation of was forbidden. See also the present
slaves from Africa and other places work, vol. iv, 432 n. were repealed; but the importation of
122 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Cn. V
Next in the order of evolution from the old Southern slave system to the plantation system of the cotton era was the production of cotton or tobacco in larger units. The larger planter possessed from ten to one hundred slaves. With these he conducted a plantation, growing tobacco or cotton for sale and sufficient foodstuffs and animals to maintain his family and his slaves, — clothing, tools, and luxuries being procured from outside with the proceeds of the staple crops. In 1790 there were twenty thousand families in the country owning one slave apiece, somewhat more than fifteen thousand owning from five to nine slaves each, and only two hundred and forty-three families possess- ing more than one hundred slaves each, and of these families only thirty-three lived outside South Carolina and Virginia.1
As the production of cotton became more and more prof- itable plantations increased in size, the number of slaves on each estate increasing accordingly, and the "gang sys- tem" replaced the older and less organized modes of pro- duction. On the great plantations, the slave was not in any sense a member of his owner's family, he was simply a pro- ducing unit in a larger agricultural machine. Even South- erners recognized this. Henry A. Wise, who passed his boyhood on a small plantation of the old type in eastern Virginia, on visiting friends who operated a large plantation in the southwestern part of the State noted how different
were the lives of master and slave and the attitude of the one i •
1 Century of Population Growth, tion country, and the decline or sta-
136. See Phillips's article on the tionary status of slaveholdings in the
"Origin and Growth of the Southern older cotton region and especially in
Black Belts" in American Historical the tobacco States. A table showing
Review, xi, 798-816. In the last the distribution of the negro popu-
pages of this essay Professor Phillips lation, 1810-1860, is in The South in
makes an interesting study of typical the Building of the Nation, v, 111 note,
counties in the cotton States and in The volume on "Agriculture" of the
Virginia and Maryland, showing the eighth Census contains the number of
growth of slaveholdings in the cotton slaveholders and slaves by counties, region, especially in the newer plants-
18301 PLANTATION LIFE 123
to the other in the two regions. As was the case with the development of the factory system of the North, so with the growth of the plantation system of the South, the employers and masters no longer worked side by side with their laborers and slaves, but lived their lives apart and developed new ways of thought and of action. Quantity production either in factory or plantation could perhaps be carried on in no other way at that time, but it is in this new social order or disorder, that one sees much of the cause of labor discontent in the North and of the rise of a demand there for the imme- diate and total extinction of the slave system throughout the country.
The life on one of these great plantations must have been monotonous in the extreme. It was one ceaseless round of looking after the slaves, keeping them in health, seeing that they did not steal or run away, and super- intending the superintendents or overseers. The slaves had to be adequately fed and clothed or they would lose their bodily vigor and become unprofitable, but at the same time there were great opportunities for waste and peculation of both food and clothing and the details of purchase and distribution had to be most carefully and continuously looked into. The negroes, especially in the newly cleared country, were liable to disease and in the first half of the nineteenth century there were epidemics of small-pox and of fevers that were more especially prevalent in the Missis- sippi Valley.1 On some occasions one-third of the slaves on a plantation were carried off by one of these epidemics within a few weeks, and in other parts of the country slaves had to be moved every year from the low lands to the high lands to keep their health from deterioration.2 Then there
'See Account of the Epidemic Yel- * For instance the "Stock and Crop
low Fever ... in New Orleans, . . . Book" of Silver Bluff Plantation in 18SS by Dr. Edward H. Barton. South Carolina states that in 1833 a
124 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [On. V
was the question of discipline. It was very necessary to maintain good order and strictness, for the planter, his wife, and his children were often living miles away from any other white family and surrounded by hundreds of blacks with only two or three white overseers to aid them in case of trouble. On the one hand, discipline must be severe enough to impress the necessity of obedience and regularity on the minds of the slaves and yet not be so severe as to limit bodily strength or in any way to lower their work- ing capacity, — for a non-working slave was an actual burden upon the plantation finances. Finally, there was the ques- tion of overseers and this seems to have been the most troublesome problem of all for the owner of a great plan- tation. They were difficult to procure and more difficult to keep, for if an overseer had the faculty of raising a good crop and keeping the slaves healthy and contented, he was in great demand and if he lacked either of these qualities, he was of little use as an overseer. On the great plantations, elaborate rules were laid down for the guidance of overseers ; they were often distinctly limited in the* amount of labor which they could exact and in the amount of punishment they could inflict. One planter, to get away from the harassments of slavery, employed a gang of Irish and German immigrants to work on one of his plantations ; they struck in the midst of the picking season and the experiment cost that planter ten thousand dollars.1 All in all, the troubles and vexations of plantation life must have detracted im- mensely from the pleasures of existence and to this must be added the burden of debt that often hung over the owner of
"fresh" ruined part of the corn on the mond Papers" in Library of Congress,
plantation so that there was barely * Charles Lyell's Second Visit to the
enough left for the needs of the United States, ii, 126, quoted by Phillips
year and in the same twelve months, in American Industrial Society, ii, 183.
fourteen slaves died from illness and Lyell's visit was made in 1846. there were only five births. "Ham-
1830] RUNAWAY SLAVES 125
thousands of acres and hundreds of slaves. In fact, the great planter of the Cotton Belt had all the business cares of the prosperous Northern manufacturer or man of com- merce with a multitude of petty human details thrown in. It is by no means improbable, as one Southern writer has intimated, that the slaves were often happier than their masters.
A constant cause "of anxiety on the part of the slave owner was the propensity of the negroes to run away. This was oftentimes due to excessive severity and sometimes it was the result of an inborn desire for freedom, especially on the part of those slaves who had a large admixture of white blood in their veins. In other cases, it was due to the desire of a slave to rejoin a wife or child who had been sold away from the plantation. There had been runaways in colonial days, when slavery existed by law in every colony, and a clause in the New England Articles of Confederation of 1643 had provided for the return of fugitives escaping from one of the confederated colonies to another. At the time of the Revolution, there were many free negroes living in Philadelphia and other parts of Pennsylvania and also in New York, but how far these were fugitives from the South, or their children, is impossible of determination. At all events there was a strong feeling in the distinctively Slave States that runaways should be returned as a matter of interstate comity. This led to the insertion in the Constitution of a clause providing that a person held to service in one State,1 escaping into another "shall be de- livered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due." In 1793 Congress passed a law to carry out this constitutional provision, but the machinery provided in the act was so vague that it was difficult for
1 Article iv, § 2, third paragraph.
126 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Cn. V
masters to secure the return of their runaways.1 As point- ing to the difficulty of securing runaways under this law an incident that comes out in the "Jefferson Manuscripts" is interesting. It appears that a mulatto slave named Joe, who had worked for ten years at the blacksmith trade at Monticello and had never received a blow or had a word of difference with any one had run away and gone toward Washington. Jefferson, writing from Monticello to his manager at the President's House in Washington, directed him to use all possible diligence in searching for the run- away and to have aid to take him for he was strong and resolute. Jefferson's surmises were correct and his direc- tions were followed to the letter, for four days later the fugitive was seen in the President's "yard," was appre- hended, and the next day was on his way back to Monti- cello.2 This instance has been given at length partly be- cause it shows Jefferson's administrative power, but more especially because it is a bit of presumptive proof against the efficacy of the Act of 1793 and exhibits Jefferson's attitude toward his own slaves.
There was undoubtedly a small but steady stream of flee- ing slaves from the South, but the losses from this cause in the Cotton Belt were much more than made good by the constant inflow of slaves from the Border States.3 This traffic was looked down upon by many people in the South
1 See W. H. Smith's "The First Commonwealth vs. Aves, and the slave's
Fugitive Slave Case" in Report of name was Med. See also B. R. Curtis's
American Historical Association for Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis,
1893, p. 93. See also ibid., 1895, p. LL.D., i, 85 and fol. For Somerset's
393, and W. H. Siebert's Underground case, see the present work, vol. iii, 555.
Railroad (New York, 1898). * "Jefferson Manuscripts" in the
Until 1836 visiting slave owners Cabinet of the Massachusetts Histori-
brought their body servants into Massa- cal Society under date of August 3,
chusetts, held them there in bondage, 1806.
and carried them away. In that year 3 The South in the Building of the
Chief Justice Shaw set free such a slave Nation, iv, 217-226 ; W. H. Collins's
practically on the ground of Somerset's The Domestic Slave Trade of the South-
case. See Frederic H. Chase's Lemuel ern States. Shaw. 164 ; the case was that of the
1830] INTERSTATE SLAVE TRADE 127
and its conductors were outside the pale.1 The history of it, therefore, is indistinct. On the one hand, it is neces- sary to discount largely the stories told by abolitionists and travellers ; on the other hand, it is equally necessary to place slight reliance upon the disclaimers of Southern writers. The mortality of the negroes on the rice planta- tions and in the newly cleared cotton lands of Alabama and Mississippi was very great, owing in part to the severity of the labor and in part to the adverse climatic conditions. The birth-rate was very high, but the death-rate seems to have counterbalanced it in those sections as the mortality, especially among children, was very great. In the northern tier of the Slave States the conditions of climate and of living were distinctly favorable to the negro, and there was a constant surplus of servile black laborers for sale to the Cotton Belt. Marital relations between the blacks were very flexible, even in Virginia and Kentucky. Undoubtedly, too, miscegenation was by no means rare.2 From time to time it is not unusual for men to argue that the white race and the black race are different and that they are incapable of amalgamation. This may all be true as to the ultimate merging of the two races,3 but miscegenation was common in
1 The attitude of a typical Vir- tempt to reSnact it in 1822 failed,
ginia planter of the olden time is seen Jervey's The Railroad the Conqueror,
in a letter from J. F. Mercer to James p. 6.
Madison informing him that he " must * Rhodes's United States, i, 334 and
notwithstanding the repugnance you fol. See also Arthur W. Calhoun's
will suppose, sell a parcel of human Social History of the American Family
beings who have been born and bred (vol. ii, Cleveland, 1918). in the family and on the soil which they * See John Bachman's Doctrine of
will leave with the greatest reluctance." the Unity of the Human Race (Charles-
" Madison Manuscripts" in the Library ton, 1850); Jervey's The Railroad
of Congress, under date of November the Conqueror, p. 13 ; Robert B.
14, 1799. Virginia slaves were ad- Bean's "Some Racial Peculiarities of
vertised for sale at New Orleans in the Negro Brain" in American Journal
1808, Courrier de la Louisiana, De- of Anatomy, v, 353 ; and an article on
cember 12, 1808. South Carolina " Present British Opinion on the Negro
by law restricted the importation of Problem" in LitteWs Lining Age for
slaves from other States in 1816 ; the August 2, 1919. act was repealed in 1818 and an at-
128 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [CH. V
the Slave States before 1861, although it may be going too far to assert that it was a distinct menace to the integrity of the white race. Certain it is that black children and mulatto children were born in great numbers in the Border States and multiplied so greatly that the land under the existing modes of cultivation could not support them. To the masters the only way of escape from bankruptcy was to sell off a portion of their human chattels and there was an eager market for them in the Cotton Belt.1
The external slave trade ostensibly came to an end in 1808,2 but there are many indications of the importation of foreign negroes into the United States for years after that time. Opinions differ as to the extent of this traffic. It had to be carried on in a very clandestine manner, especially after European nations had combined to put an end to the exportation of slaves from Africa and the United States haoSdeclared the slave trade to be piracy and had joined with Great Britain in maintaining a fleet on the African coast to capture slave-running vessels. The profits were so great, however, that the traffic was going on in one way or another, directly or indirectly, through all these years.3 Taking the external slave trade at the very greatest estimate of those who have argued for its existence, it could have
1 Professor Dew had "no hesitation it would appear that the number of in saying, that upwards of 6000 are slaves illegally imported by way of yearly exported to other States. Vir- Texas has been greatly exaggerated, ginia is, in fact, a negro raising State On the other hand, the fact that an for other States ; she produces enough agent to receive all slaves brought into for her own supply, and six thousand the State of Alabama in violation of for sale." The Pro-Slavery Argument, the federal laws prohibiting the slave 359. trade was authorized by the legis-
2 See W. E. B. Du Bois's Suppres- lature would seem to point to the fact aion of the African Slave-Trade (Har- of large and constant infractions of vard Historical Studies, i) with a lengthy those laws. Digest of the Laws of bibliography of books printed up to ... Alabama (1823), p. 643.
1904. From Eugene C. Barker's arti- 3 See House Report No. 59, 16th
cle on "The African Slave Trade in Cong., 2nd Sess., and House Report
Texas" (The Quarterly of the Texas No. 348, 21st Cong., 1st Sesa. State Historical Association, vi, 145)
1830] THE SLAVE TRADE 129
supplied but a very small part of the new negroes required in the rapidly developing production of cotton and sugar. The rest of them must have come from the natural increase in the negro population of the Cotton Belt and Louisiana and from importation from the Border States.
The probability of a large exportation of slaves from Vir- ginia comes out in the average valuation set upon "prime field hands" by the State authorities in conformity with laws that provided for the compensation of all masters whose slaves were executed for crime.1 In 1802, the value was set at $400 and reached the first high point of $800 in 1818. In the hard times that followed the crisis of 1819, the value went back to $400 ; but in 1837, it was fixed at $1000. In 1843, it went down to $500 and then gradually rose until 1860 when it was fixed at $1200, — the highest point it ever reached. These extreme prices must have been a powerful spur to the owner of surplus slaves to dispose of them to the interstate dealers. Indeed, the mere fact that this rise and fall in the price of negro slaves in Virginia synchronizes so closely with the prosperity and dulness of cotton growing in the South is in itself suggestive of the close connec- tion between slave breeding in the Old Dominion and the development of plantations in the Cotton Belt. Of course Virginia tobacco culture had its ups and downs with the general prosperity of the country and of the world; but owing to the competition of Kentucky and North Carolina in the production of tobacco it is impossible to conceive of there being any such keen demand for field hands in the Old Dominion as the highest of these figures indicates.
1 American Historical Review, xix, April price of Upland cotton at Bos-
813, xx, 340 ; The South in the Build- ton was as follows : — 1802, 25 cts. per
ing of the Nation, v, 127 ; and American Ib. ; 1818, 32 cts. ; 1819, 25 cts. ; 1837,
State Papers, Foreign Relations, vi, 17£ cts. ; 1843, 9 cts. 339. In the years noted in text the
VOL. V. — K
130 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Cn. V
Side by side with the slaves in the South and with the free white workers in the North, but not of them, were the free blacks. These were most numerous, comparatively speak- ing, in Charleston, South Carolina, and in Richmond and Norfolk, Virginia, in the Slave States, and in Philadelphia and New York, in the free States. In the North, the free blacks were largely the offspring of legislative emancipation,1 but some of them were refugees from the South and still others were Southern negroes who had been emancipated by their masters or had purchased their freedom by working extra hours and had been obliged to leave the State of their birth. Many of them, of course, had been born free in the North, — the children of those who were themselves free. However they had become free, they were looked upon with suspicion by the white laborer of the North and with dread by the slave owners of the South. Northern farmers did not want them on their farms and Southern planters would not permit them to live near their plantations if they possibly could help it. One of the most interesting stories of the hardships of the free blacks is that of the slaves emancipated under the will of John Randolph of Roanoke. The freed- men could not remain in Virginia, as the laws of that State required every emancipated slave to leave the State within twelve months or be sold for the benefit of the "literary fund." 2 The executors of Randolph's will, therefore,
1 A very helpful list of the State N. Y., as late as August 9, 1808, ac-
emancipation laws is in E. R. Turner's cording to the Farmers' Register of that
Slavery in Pennsylvania, 80 and note. date.
Slavery was done away with in Massa- J See H. N. Sherwood's "Settlement
chusetts by the judicial interpre- of the John Randolph Slaves in Ohio"
tation of the Bill of Rights (see the in Proceedings of the Mississippi Val-
present work, vol. iii, 559) and also ley Historical Association, v, 39-
in New Hampshire by judicial inter- 59 ; Revised Code of . . . Virginia
pretation. The history of the gradual (1819) i, 421-444, §§ 53, 61, 65; and
abolition of slavery in Pennsylvania "Was John Randolph a Lunatic" in
is well told in E. R. Turner's The The South Atlantic Quarterly for Jan-
Negro in Pennsylvania, 78 and fol. uary, 1913. Slaves were bought and sold at Troy,
1830] FREE BLACKS 131
procured land in central Ohio and transported the freed blacks thither. But when they reached their destination by boat, the white settlers of the neighborhood refused to permit them to land. As no free negro could be brought into Virginia under the penalty of $333.33 for each negro, the executors were in a quandary. In the end the freedmen found employment in various places in Ohio and some of them were even permitted to settle on the lands that had been purchased for their benefit.
The laws of Virginia as to free blacks were very strict. Those who were free in 1819 were permitted to remain in the State, but all who were freed after that date were obliged to leave within twelve months under penalty of being sold into slavery.1 Every free negro who was permitted to live in Virginia must be registered under penalty of going to jail and must always have his registration paper with him, which must be renewed every three years. If a registered free negro permitted a slave to use his paper, he could be imprisoned for from one to ten years, and any one harboring an unregistered negro was liable to a fine of five dollars. Moreover, free blacks were to pay an annual tax under penalty of being hired out at a very low rate until the amount of the tax was earned. Otherwise, they were subjected to the laws governing slaves. They could not carry a weapon without a license, administer medicine to a white person, have any commercial dealings with any one, or assemble with the slaves of the neighborhood.
The District of Columbia, as the meeting point of the routes of transportation from north to south and as the place of abode for Southerners, was necessarily occupied more or less permanently by a considerable free black popu- lation. Some of these people were actual residents of the
i Revised Code of Virginia (1819), i, 436.
132 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Ga. V
District, their status being governed by the laws of Virginia, if they lived in the portion of the District that lay south of the Potomac, or by the laws of Maryland, if they resided in Washington City or Georgetown. Then there were free blacks who came to the District on their own account, either for some business purpose or to search for a lost relation, and there were persons claiming to be free in the bands con- stantly passing through the District under the guidance of slave dealers from Delaware and Maryland to the slave markets of the South.1 As might be expected, there was much confusion and undoubtedly a good deal of injustice and Congress seems to have been singularly remiss in not providing clear and definite rules for the guidance of the law officers of the District. The best known case, as pointing to the possibilities of injustice to the free blacks, was that of Gilbert Horton. He was a free negro from New York who came to Washington on business in 1826 and was arrested and confined as a runaway until he could obtain evidence of his freedom from New York and, as this was slow in coming, he was advertised to be sold in payment of the jail fees. It was this case that aroused the interest of Wil- liam Jay of New York and led him in a somewhat dramatic manner to stir the governor of that State to write to the President on the subject. The case aroused so much com-
1 In the Slave States the presump- of this is found in Charles Ball's Sta- tion of law, one might say, was in very in the United States: A Narrative favor of a person of color being a (1836) ; but how much reliance can slave, — the burden was upon him be placed on this and other narratives or her to prove his or her free status. supposed to have come from the pens No doubt many free blacks were sold of persons of color may well be doubted, into slavery for jail fees or because The best evidence as to the existence they could not prove their freedom. of the practice is to be found in the It is also undoubtedly true that the laws of the Border States prohibiting high price set on a slave tempted un- it, as, for example, the laws of Virginia principled slave dealers to kidnap and Kentucky, which provided a jail free persons of color in the Border sentence of from one to ten years for States and conduct them to Southern selling a free person as a slave, slave markets. The stock example
1826] FREE BLACKS 133
ment that a congressional committee was appointed to in- quire into it. It appears from the report of this committee that the negro, being seen wandering about the wharves without any evidence on his person of his being a free man, was arrested and committed as a runaway by a justice of the peace. The officers immediately wrote to the persons in New York mentioned by Horton and it appearing that he was a free black, he was set at liberty without being sub- jected to any charge or expense. About two months later, he was again arrested as a runaway, but was at once dis- charged, and apparently continued to live unmolested l in Washington.
In the Northeastern States, in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, there was the same jealousy and dread of the free black population that there was in the Southern States. The " Census " of 1800 gives the free black popula- tion of Massachusetts at over six thousand. Many of these were old and helpless and the town authorities were dis- mayed at the prospect before them. The free negroes com- mitted crimes out of all proportion to their numbers 2 and insanity was not at all uncommon.3 They also con- gregated in the towns and aroused the fears of their neigh- bors. In 1788, the Massachusetts legislature provided by
1 See Mary Tremain's "Slavery 'Boston Prison Discipline Society's
in the District of Columbia" in the Annual Reports, i, 23, 24; ii, 45. On
Seminary Papers of the University of p. 86 of An Account of the State Prison
Nebraska, No. 2, p. 42 ; B. Tucker- ... in the City of New York it is
man's William Jay, 29; and Niles's stated that the "blacks constitute
Register, xxxi, 345. In default of less than one twenty-eighth part of the
federal law for Washington City the whole population of the State, yet
laws of Maryland applied there; in they form nearly one-third of the whole
1806 the Maryland Assembly enacted number of convicts." that no free negro or mulatto should 3 See Edward Jarvis's "Insanity
come into the State to settle under among the Coloured Population of
penalty of a fine of ten dollars for each the Free States" in the American
week that he remained in the State — Journal of the Medical Sciences for
after the first two and should be sold for January, 1844 — also printed sepa-
time sufficient to pay costs and fines. rately. Maxcy's Laws of Maryland, iii, 293.
134 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Ca. V
law that no African or negro, other than a citizen of some one of the United States and bringing with him a certificate from the Secretary of that State, should tarry within the limits of the Commonwealth longer than two months under penalty of being "whipped not exceeding ten stripes" and this law was still in force in 1823.1 There were more negroes in Philadelphia than in any Massachusetts town and the jealousy and the dislike of them on the part of the whites was very marked. Between 1790 and 1800, the black population of Philadelphia county increased from 2489 to 6880 and there were at the last of these two dates, no less than eleven thousand free blacks in eastern Pennsylva- nia.2 Those in Philadelphia herded together in one part of the city. In 1804, there were riots in which groups of negroes marched through the streets, knocked down one or more white men, and declared they would " show them San Domingo."3 In 1834, a white mob drove hundreds of free blacks out of Philadelphia, across the Delaware River to New Jersey, where their presence at once aroused appre- hensions on the part of the white inhabitants.4
In South Carolina, the most intense slave State of the older time, the free blacks, curiously enough, were in places exceedingly numerous. As they became emancipated, for one reason or another, they gravitated to Charleston where they were able to find employment about the wharves or in mechanic trades. In 1820, there were over three thou- sand of them in the city in comparison with 1680 in 1810, — the increase being about eighty-five per cent in ten years in comparison with an increase of the white population of
1 Laws of . . . Massachusetts (1801), p. 17, and the Census of 1800, page a. i, 413 ; General Laws of Massachusetts * The Freeman's Journal, and PhUa-
(1823), i, 324. delphia Daily Advertiser for July 9,
*W. E. B. Du Bois's The Phila- 1804.
delphia Negro in the Publications * American Industrial Society, ii,
of the University of Pennsylvania, 159.
1822] FREE BLACKS IN CHARLESTON 135
only fourteen per cent.1 Already in 1806 the Charleston city council had endeavored to limit the congregation of free blacks in the city. They evidently thought that the practice of slave owners in hiring out their mechanically expert slaves to city employers was the cause of the con- stantly increasing numbers of free blacks, as these hired-out slaves when they had accumulated enough money bought their freedom. They provided, therefore, that no slave should occupy a house in the city without a ticket from his owner; they were not to assemble together to more than the number of seven unless some white person was present ; they were not to exercise any mechanic employment, own any boat, or carry on any trade without a license, — all under penalty of whippings and fines.2 By 1819, their numbers had so increased that the city council again under- took their regulation. In 1822, the Denmark Vesey attempt at insurrection in Charleston3 again aroused the apprehensions of the whites. Vesey was an exceedingly intelligent colored man from the West Indies who had so devised his attempt that success might well have attended it, for the moment, at any rate, had not a faithful slave disclosed it to his master. Leading men of Charleston drew up a memorial 4 reprehending severely the habit of slave- holders of hiring out their slaves or permitting them to hire
'"Memorial of the Citizens of Negro Plot. An Account of the Late
Charleston" to the South Carolina Intended Insurrection . . . Published
legislature in American Industrial by the Authority of the Corporation of
Society, ii, 103-116. The United States Charleston (Boston, 1822) ; T. W.
Census for 1810 (p. 79) and for 1820 Higginson's Travellers and Outlaws (Bos-
(p. 26) give quite different figures for ton, 1889), p. 215, and bibliography
the free colored population of Charles- on p. 332; and A. H. Grimke's " Right
ton. on the Scaffold or the Martyrs of
* Digest of the Ordinances of Charles- 1822" in the American Negro Acad-
ton (1818), p. 178, and "Appendix," emy's Occasional Papers, No. 7. p. 32. * American Industrial Society, ii,
'On the Denmark Vesey plot, 103-116. While this statement is
see L. H. Kennedy and T. Parker's one-sided, it shows the reality of the
Official Report of the Trials of Sundry fears of the whites. Negroes (Charleston, S. C., 1822);
136 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [On. V
themselves out, or allowing them to work overtime for wages which were sometimes paid by the owner or more often by a neighbor. These "hired-out" slaves were ordinarily mechanics. They had a good deal of spare time, lived under no supervision except when actually at work, competed with white mechanics and tradesmen, and were a menace to the institution of slavery in many ways. For these reasons, the memorialists thought the practice should be absolutely forbidden by law. This memorial and the excitement attendant upon the Vesey plot induced the Charleston city council to provide a municipal guard of one hundred and fifty men to protect the roads leading into Charleston and the water front by day and by night, when- ever necessity should seem to require it. To defray the expenses of this guard an annual tax of ten dollars was levied on all houses inhabited by persons of color within the city and a further tax of ten dollars upon all free male persons of color exercising any mechanic trade within the patrol limits.1 A few years later, the council provided that every ticket giving permission to a person of color, whether slave or free, to go about after dark should designate the name of the street, of the owner of the premises from which such person had permission to go, the place of destination, and the per- mission to return, if return were contemplated. Any person of color apprehended without a ticket, after the guard was set, should be dealt with according to law. The State legislature also took up the matter, and passed law after law 2 designed to limit what seemed to them to be a
1 A Collection of the Ordinances of tern of South Carolina . . . A Digest
Charleston (1823), p. 48; see also T. D. of Acts (Charleston, 1835); Digest of
Condy'a Digest of the Laws of . . . the Ordinances of . . . Charleston (1818) ,
South-Carolina . . . relating to the and Collection of the Ordinances of . . .
Militia; with an Appendix, contain- Charleston (1832).
ing the Patrol Laws ; The Laws for the * Cooper's Statutes . . . of South
Government of Slaves and Free Persons Carolina, vii, 461-474. of Colour (1830); The Militia Sys-
1830] FREE BLACKS IN CHARLESTON 137
grave menace to the white people of the State and to the institution of slavery. By these laws free blacks were forbidden entrance to the State by sea and by land, were made liable to several taxes, and were forbidden to carry arms. Moreover, a "guardian" might be appointed for a free black l on very slight pretext and the patrol laws for the State as a whole were extended and invigorated. Notwithstanding all these attempts at restriction, the free blacks in the State and in Charleston steadily increased in numbers. In 1859, three hundred and fifty-five "free persons of color" living within the city limits paid a tax of $12,342.02 on two hundred and seventy-seven slaves, worth about fifty-five thousand dollars, and on other prop- erty, almost wholly real estate, valued at $778,423.00. These two hundred and seventy-seven slaves were owned by one hundred and eight "free persons of color." 2
Throughout the country, in the North and in the South, the presence of free persons of color was regarded as un- desirable. In looking about for a method of escape, the idea of deportation occurred to many people and the Amer- ican Colonization Society was founded in 1817. The plan was to purchase a piece of land on the western coast of Africa, or to get a part of a West Indian Island, and to deport
1 According to a South Carolina the "free persons of color," paid $675.63 act of 1822, every free male negro to the city of Charleston in 1859 on above the age of fifteen was com- $41,575 worth of real estate, 14 slaves pelled to have a guardian, a white and one horse ; while Richard E. De- freeholder, and by a law of 1823 no reef, another free black, paid a tax free person of color could come into the of $431.00 on $25,000 worth of real State in any manner, not even as a estate, 12 slaves, one horse and $400.00 cook on board a vessel. Cooper and worth of "commissions." The tax McCord's Statutes of South Carolina, on real estate was 1J% and the tax vii, 462, 463. on slaves was three dollars each : List
1 List of the Tax Payers of the City of the Tax Payers of the City of Charles-
of Charleston for 1859 (Charleston, ton for 1859, pp. 403, 387, 407. The
1860), pp. 383-405. For a somewhat Census of . . . Charleston . . .For the
different statement, see The South in Year 1861, p. 9, places the total free
the Building of a Nation, ii, 49. Maria colored population at 3785, taking it
Weston, the largest tax payer among from the United States Census of 1860.
138 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [On. V
thence such free blacks as were willing to go without any expense to them.1 To the Northerners, this seemed to be a feasible mode to get rid of the constantly increasing free black population in the cities and towns. To the South- erners, the additional argument presented itself that the deportation of free persons of color would stimulate eman- cipation, especially in the Border States, but there were people in the Far South who were anxious to emancipate their slaves and were only kept from doing so by the in- advisability of adding to the free black population. Among the founders of the Colonization Society were many of the leading men of the country and Bushrod Washington was its first president.2 As a class, Robert Goodloe Harper said the free blacks 3 were "a burden and a nuisance" ; but in a proper situation might become a virtuous and happy people. The idea appealed to philanthropically minded persons throughout the country. State auxiliary societies were founded and county and city societies were established to aid them in collecting funds. State legislatures and Con- gress also fell in with the idea and appropriated public money to further the scheme. The British already had established the negro state of Sierra Leone on the African coast and the American Colonization Society procured a
1 Jefferson had advocated coloniza- p. 11. R. C. F. Maugham's The Ra- tion as early as 1776 and had elaborated public of Liberia (London, 1920) gives a plan in his Notes on Virginia (ed. the first adequate account of the Afri- 1782, p. 251). In 1811, he returned can settlement, to it (American Colonization Society's * He was an associate justice of the Reports, i, 6) and the idea formed an Supreme Court and a nephew of Gen- integral part of his latest plan of eral Washington. See Niles's Weekly gradual emancipation. John H. T. Register, xi, 296. A good repository McPherson's "History of Liberia," of the more important documents chs. ii, iii, in Johns Hopkins Studies, relating to the Colonization Society ix, 487-539, has a good and concise is the "Appendix" to House .Re- account of the colonization movement. ports, 21st Cong., 1st Sess., No. 348. With this should be read William Among the vice-presidents were Craw- Jay's Inquiry into the Character and ford, Clay, and Andrew Jackson. Tendency of the American Colonization, * American Colonization Society's and American Anti-Slavery Societies, Reports, i, 16.
1817] COLONIZATION SOCIETY 139
tract of land farther south and separated from the British settlement by no great distance. Up to this point, all went well, but then difficulties gathered in the path of the colo- nizationists.1 The amounts of money collected, while seem- ingly large, were totally inadequate to so great a venture. The bit of country procured, named Liberia, proved to be exceedingly unhealthy, not only to the white people who conducted parties of negroes thither, but also to the blacks themselves, for in the course of generations on a different soil they had lost much of the acquired immunity of the negro race to African diseases. Moreover, the American negroes did not want to leave the United States and a large section of Northern philanthropists felt that the blacks had gained the right to residence in the United States, and that immediate emancipation of the whole negro population and not the deportation of a small portion of it was the only way to deal with the problem. Finally, the Southerners themselves came to look down upon the scheme and were able to point to the fact, as were the Northern abolitionists, that in fifteen years of effort, the Colonization Society had deported from America only as many negroes as were born into slavery in five days and a half.2 In 1862, President Lin- coln addressing a delegation of men of color, whom he had invited to confer with him, stated that Congress had placed
1 American Colonization Society's number of slaves annually smuggled Reports, xi, 94. See also H. N. Sher- into the South was "seven times as wood's "Paul Cuffe and his contribu- great as that which the Colonization tion to the American Colonization Society has transported in fifteen Society" in Mississippi Valley His- years" in his Thoughts on African Col- torical Association's Proceedings, vi onization (Boston, 1832), p. 160.
and the works cited therein ; and his For later statistics see American
"Movement in Ohio to Deport the Colonization Society's Reports, xxxiv,
Negro" in Ohio Historical and Philo- pp. 82-84. The last emigrants were
sophical Society's Quarterly Publica- sent out in 1907 : these were Edward A.
tions, viii, No. 1 : and Minutes of the Caesar, his wife Louise Caesar, and
State Conventions of the colored citi- their daughter, Mary Emma Caesar,
zens of Ohio, 1850-1860. aged two. Even now, 1920, sub-
2 William Jay's Inquiry, 78. See scriptions are being solicited in aid also Garrison's statement that the of the settlement in Liberia.
140 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [On. V
at his disposal a sum of money for the purpose of aiding the colonization of people of African descent, outside the limits of the United States, and had made it his duty, as it had for a long time been his inclination, to favor that mode of action. This he did because "You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. . . . Your race suffer very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence." 1 Therefore, the two races he thought should be separated.
By 1830 the profits that were coming in from one cotton crop after another were driving all thoughts of emancipation from the Southern mind ; and the planters of the Border States, who could not then produce cotton, were finding an eager market for their surplus slaves in the far South. In 1834, a case was argued in a North Carolina court that shows something as to the condition of the Border State mind at about the beginning of the period of aggressive abolitionism. It appears that a slave named Will,2 being pursued by the overseer of his master's plantation and having been shot at, drew a knife and stabbed wildly about him, inflicting fatal wounds upon the overseer. At the trial, Bartholomew Figures Moore, Will's counsel, asserted that fear of death so far justified the slave in resistance as to take away all presumption of malice or premeditation and therefore converted murder into manslaughter. In other words a slave, circumstanced as Will had been, might resist seizure without fear of the hangman. The argument so affected the court and jury that the accused was con- victed of manslaughter only.
1 Nicolay and Hay's Works of groes" in Journal of Negro History,
Abraham Lincoln, viii, 2. See also iv, 7.
Charles H. Wesley's "Lincoln's Plan * Historical Papers of Trinity Col-
for Colonizing the Emancipated No- lege, of Durham, N. C., Series ii, 12-20.
1830] FUGITIVE SLAVES 141
Meantime, in the fifteen years before 1830, there had certainly arisen in the South a distinct feeling against the action of Northerners in promoting the flight of slaves from the plantations to the free States and in placing obstacles in the way of capturing fugitives under the provisions of the Constitution and the law of 1793. Many of the earlier settlers of Ohio and Indiana were Southern people who had left their homes to get away from contact with slavery. In Ohio, they joined anti-slavery societies and welcomed fugitives from across the Ohio River and passed them along on their journey toward Canada. Some Ohio men even went into Kentucky and incited slaves to leave their masters. In those earlier days, however, Pennsylvania was the most hospitable of all the States to fugitive slaves. Its proximity to Maryland and Virginia made it easy for them to reach free soil and Philadelphia, because of its size, afforded fairly secure hiding-places not only for those who came overland from the neighboring States, but also for those who came by water from the Carolinas. The federal fugitive slave law of 1793 was indistinct as to the agencies for its enforce- ment and relied on State officials and State facilities for the capture and detention of the alleged fugitives. This led to jealousies between Maryland and Pennsylvania. Maryland commissioners visited Pennsylvania to try to secure aid from the legislature of that State. The result was the passage )f a law l in 1826 that appeared to make it easier for slave )wners to capture alleged fugitives. In reality, under the
use of preventing kidnapping, the new law made it more lifiicult to recover fugitives. In 1842, the Supreme Court )f the United States apparently gave some kind of standing
the idea that State officials could not be required to aid
1 G. M. Stroud's Sketch of the Laws relating to Slavery in the Several States of United States, 173.
142 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [CH. V
in the enforcement of federal laws.1 By this decision, the Pennsylvania act was annulled, but a dictum gave legis- lators of many States some justification for passing laws practically nullifying the federal act of 1793. In this same period North Carolina expressed the growing uneasiness of the Southern States by making it felony to steal a slave for the purpose of sending him out of the State or to aid a slave to escape.8
The last notable Southern attempt to do away with slavery occurred in Virginia in 1832. A few years earlier, in the State constitutional convention of 1829-30, a debate sprang up as to representation and taxation, — whether these should continue to favor the eastern portion of the State or not. The question of slavery and emancipation inevitably found its way into the arguments of the principal speakers, among whom were James Monroe and Benjamin W. Leigh, who a few years later was Virginia's commissioner to the South Carolina nullifiers.3 Nothing came of this discussion and not much of the convention ; but in 1832 a most important and significant debate was held in the Virginia Assembly. In the preceding year a negro slave, Nat Turner by name, had
1 Marion G. McDougall's Fugitive Slaves (1619-1 86 'ff) forming Fay House Monograph, No. 3, pp. 24, 28, 107, 108, and Annals of Congress, 17th Cong., 1st Sess., vol. i, 553. Be- cause of the inefficiency of the old law, the Border States took the matter largely into their own hands. In 1822, an act was still in force in Ken- tucky that had been passed in 1798. It provided that any person might ap- prehend a runaway servant or slave, take him to a justice of the peace, and receive ten shillings reward and one shilling for every mile of his jour- ney with the runaway ; Digest of the Statute Law of Kentucky (1822), ii, 1105. It further provided that no ferryman or other person shall put over the Ohio River, any slave with-
out the owner's consent on the pen- alty of a fine of two hundred dollars.
* J. S. Bassett's "Slavery in North Carolina" in Johns Hopkins Studies, xvii, 331.
3 Charles H. Ambler's Sectional- ism in Virginia, ch. v ; Carter G. Wood- son's doctoral thesis on "The Dis- ruption of Virginia," ch. vii (unpub- lished) ; and Proceedings and Debates of the Virginia State Convention of 1829-1830. For somewhat similar movements, see Ivan E. McDougle's "Slavery in Kentucky" in Journal of Negro History, iii, 211 ; Asa E. Mar- tin's "Anti-Slavery Movement in Ken- tucky prior to 1850" being No. 29 of the Filson Club's Publications; Oliver P. Temple's East Tennessee and tht Civil War, chs. v and vi.
1830] SOUTHERN ANTI-SLAVERY FEELING 143
organized and led a series of attacks on the whites in South- ampton County,1 riding from house to house until fifty or sixty white people were killed. Had not Governor Floyd acted promptly the movement might well have assumed wide proportions. At the next session of the Assembly a committee was appointed to inquire into the policy of in- troducing anti-slavery legislation at that moment. The committee, to avoid debate, reported that it was "in- expedient"; but at once a member moved to substitute the word "expedient," and still another moved as a sub- stitute that provision should be made for the immediate removal from the State of all negroes, then free, or who should thereafter become free, and this substitute was adopted by the House of Delegates by a vote of 65 to 58. Following this, a plan for the deportation of the free blacks was passed by the House, but it was defeated in the Senate.2 It was in the course of this discussion that one member referred to slavery as "the heaviest calamity which has ever befallen any portion of the human race," and another declared that slavery was "a curse upon him who inflicts as upon him who suffers it." 3 On January 21, 1832, before the matter had been finally disposed of, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, grandson of the writer of the great Declaration, brought forward his grandfather's plan of gradual emancipation in a concrete form.4 He proposed
1 See S. B. Weeks in Magazine of significant entries from which it ap- American History, xxv, 448, and pears that the interest in the matter William S. Drewry's Southampton Mas- was mainly sectional and that the slave sacre (Washington, 1900). A bibliog- owners who lived to the eastward of raphy is on p. 198. John W. Crom- the Blue Ridge did not wish to give well's "Aftermath of Nat Turner's up their slaves and that it was the Insurrection" in the Journal of Negro westerners, who had no slaves, who History contains some new statements favored abolition.
mainly from "the recollections of 3 See the "Debate on Emancipation,
old men." in the Virginia Legislature, in 1832"
2 B. B. Munford's Virginia's Atti- in Goodloe's Southern Platform, 43, 47. hide toward Slavery and Secession, 47. 4 Speech of Thomas J. Randolph Governor John Floyd's Diary (Dec. (of Albemarle) ... on the Abolition oj 26, 1832-Jan. 25, 1832) has some Slavery: . . . Jan. «/, 1832, p. 5.
144 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Cn. V
that no slaves born after the year 1840 should be permitted to live within the Commonwealth after reaching maturity. If the master had not removed them by that time, the State should remove them, "the expenses ... to be remunerated out of the property itself." In the next year Madison,1 writing to President Dew of William and Mary, stated his belief that the extinguishment of slavery would be easy and cheap by a combination of deportation with eman- cipation and, especially, if the State were to purchase all female children at their birth and deport them as soon as they had earned the charge of their rearing and deportation. The idea underlying the deportation plans was that it would encourage private emancipation. Whether the scheme would have worked out as its promoters believed it would can only be a matter of surmise, but one excellent observer, Charles Bruce of Charlotte County,2 Virginia, expressed his opinion and that of many other Virginians that had the Colonization Bill of 1831 not been defeated, as it was by a small vote, the fire that lurked in the slavery question would have been drawn off by redoubled exertion on the part of the Virginia anti-slavery men and that, if this had
At the end are two letters from Jeffer- son, one written in 1814, the other in 1824 advocating some such plan as that proposed by his grandson. See also The Speech of John A. Chandler . . . of Virginia with respect to Her Slave Population; Speech of Charles Jos. Faulkner; Speech of James M'- Dowell, Jr. ; The Letter of Appomattox to the People of Virginia: exhibiting a connected View of the Recent Pro- ceedings in the House of Delegates (Rich- mond, 1832) ; and Jesse Burton Harri- son's Review of the Slave Question . . . Based on the Speech of Th: Mar- shall. The last was first printed in the American Quarterly Review for Decem- ber, 1832, was reprinted separately at Richmond in 1833, and is included in The Harrisons of Skimino, 337-440.
•Madison's Writings (Hunt ed.), ix, 498.
2 In reaching an understanding of this contest I am greatly indebted to William Cabell Bruce, Esq. of Balti- more, whose little book — Below the James — first drew my attention to the importance of this debate. See also Munford's Virginia's Attitude toward Slavery and Secession, p. 46, and "Anti-Slavery Sentiment in Virginia" in South Atlantic Quarterly, i, 107. The opinion of one of the best of Vir- ginians on what he regarded as "one of the heaviest calamities" is to be seen in the Right Rev. William Meade's Pastoral Letter. Religious Instruction of Servants, delivered in 1834 and printed at Richmond in 1853.
1816] NORTHERN ABOLITIONISM 145
so fallen out, Virginia would not have seceded in 1861. Confirmatory of this general view is the opinion of D. R. Goodloe that had the abolition plan carried in Virginia, it would have been repeated in North Carolina. If that had been done, the sectional balance in the federal Senate would have been broken and "secession would have been blighted ere it had sprouted." l As it was, the failure of the anti-slavery movement in Virginia in 1832 heartened the extreme slave advocates in that State,2 enflamed the aboli- tionists at the North, and pushed the two portions of the country farther apart.
Until about 1830, the anti-slavery people generally had favored gradual emancipation in one way or another,3 usually in connection with some form of deportation and colonization. In 1816, George Bourne published "The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable." 4 In this he argued for the immediate abolition of slavery throughout the country regardless of compensation of any kind whatsoever to the slave owners. This plan was sometimes called "imme- diatism." The scheme of immediatism was later combined with gradual abolitionism, proposing that this should be immediately put into practice, — this was called "imme- diate gradualism." All these schemes were distinctly
1 Quoted by J. S. Bassett in "Sla- 14 and 11). The later abolitionists
very in North Carolina" in Johns thought that the Missouri Compro-
Hopkins University Studies, xvii, 325. mise was largely responsible for the
* Two years later — 1834 — "pro- "paralysis" that fell on the anti-
spective abolition" was seriously con- slavery sentiment of the country,
sidered in the Tennessee constitu- Garrisons' Garrison, i, 89, 90 note.
tional convention of that year ; see 4 Other publications by or attrib-
Journal of the Convention, 85, 87, 98, uted to George Bourne are Pictures
223, etc., and W. L. Imes in Journal of Slavery in the United States of America
of Negro History, iv, 262. (Boston, 1838) ; A Condensed Anti-
1 For sundry plans of emancipa- Slavery Bible Argument ; By A Citi-
tion, see Alice D. Adams's Neglected zen of Virginia (New York, 1845) ;
Period of Anti-Slavery, using index. Slavery Illustrated in its Effects upon
For the earlier time, see Mary S. Woman and Domestic Society (Boston,
Locke's Anti-Slavery . . . [before] 1808 1837). (Raddiffti College Monographs, Nos.
VOL. V. — L
146 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [On. V
passive. They were advocated warmly, sometimes, but not in any savagely aggressive or militant spirit.1 One of the earliest of the new type of abolitionist was David Walker, a free person of color who was living in Boston. The title of his book was an "Appeal in Four Articles . . . to the Colored Citizens of the World." It was issued at that place in 1829. The language was sometimes rude and was often inflammable, as was natural considering that he was a colored man writing to his own people. He could hardly "move" his pen, so deeply was he affected by the miseries of his race. The whites have always been "an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and bloodthirsty set of beings," he wrote. He expected they would try to put him to death "to strike terror into others and to obliterate from their minds the notion of freedom." The whites wanted slaves and they wanted the blacks for slaves, "but some of them will curse the day they ever saw us. As true as the Sun ever shone in its meridian splendour, my colour will root some of them out of the very face of the earth." It was this book that aroused the Southerners to a full sense of the insecurity of their social fabric and, appearing not very long before the Southampton massacre, they naturally put the two together, and began to look with abhorrence upon all anti-slavery propaganda.
One might fill a volume with quotations and abstracts from books and articles that were written by the emanci- pationists before 1830,2 but enough has been said to show
'Another early anti-slavery tract at the "Indiana Register" office at
was published at Philadelphia in 1819. Vevay, Indiana, in 1824, and John
It was entitled Free Remarks . . . Re- Rankin's Letters on American Slavery
specting the Exclusion of Slavery from which were printed at about the same
the Territories and New States . . . time and reprinted again and again
By a Philadelphian. after 1833. Two earlier books should
2 To Bourne's and Walker's books also be mentioned : these are Thomas
should be added two tracts printed Branagan's Avenia: or a Tragical
in Transappalachia : James Duncan's Poem on the Oppression of the Human
Treatise on Slavery which was printed Species which was published at Phil»-
1830] NORTHERN ABOLITIONISM 147
that many persons in different parts of the country disliked and disapproved the slave system and that some persons held very strong ideas on the subject. One of these deserves mention here because of his later public labors. This is John Quincy Adams. In 1820, at the time of the Missouri Compromise, he made several entries in his diary on the subject. The first of these recorded a conversation with President Monroe, who had declared that the slavery ques- tion would be "winked away by a compromise." Adams thought, on the contrary, that it was destined "to survive his [Monroe's] political and individual life and mine." A month later, Adams had a conversation with Calhoun on the subject and, after stating his disagreement with the Secretary of War, he wrote that if the dissolution of the Union should result from the slave question, it would shortly afterwards be followed by universal emancipation. And again, toward the close of the year, he made another entry to the same effect that secession "for the cause of slavery" would be combined with a war between the two portions of the Union and that "its result must be the extirpation of slavery from this whole continent." 1
With the establishment of "The Liberator" by William Lloyd Garrison in 1831, the anti-slavery agitation took on a new form, passing from the mere advocacy of emancipation to demands for immediate abolition. Garrison on some occasions quoted Bourne and other early writers and on other occasions he paraphrased their sentences. He seldom exceeded Bourne and Walker in vigor of language or strength
delphia in 1805 and The Penitential representing a kneeling and praying
Tyrant; or, Slave Trader Reformed negro with manacled hands and the
(2nd ed., New York, 1807). Branagan legend "Am I not a Man, and a
was an Irishman, born in Dublin, Brother?" may have suggested a
who had "crossed the ocean and ex- similar cut to the later abolitionists, perienced the Christian religion." The l J. Q. Adams's Memoirs, iv, 503,
cut on the title page of the latter book 531 ; v, 210.
VOL. V. — L
148 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Ca. V
of advocacy. Now, however, the constant and prolonged agitation was greatly assisted by the formation of societies and by the activity of the abolitionists on the lecture plat- form. "The Liberator" found readers in every part of the Northern States and kept alive the movement whenever it seemed to be slackening. William Lloyd Garrison 1 was the son of parents who came from the Maritime Provinces to Newburyport some months before his birth. His for- bears were English or Irish, only one branch having ever lived within the limits of the United States. On all sides his ancestors were strong, determined people, as one might expect from Garrison's own career. Moreover, with the improvements in transportation that came so rapidly after 1825, Garrison was able to organize the new movement on a much larger and more permanent basis than had been possible in the earlier time. The New England Anti-Slavery Society was formed in 1832. In December, 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society was organized and by October, 1835, there were three hundred anti-slavery societies with one hundred thousand members, more or less, in a more or less active existence. The constitution of the general society declared that slaveholding was "a heinous crime in the sight of God" and should be abandoned immediately. The " Declaration of Sentiments," that was adopted at the same time as the constitution, maintained 2 that the cause for which the emancipationists were striving was vastly greater
1 Lindsay Swift's William Lloyd scribing Garrison's ancestry and boy- Garrison in the American Crisis Biog- hood first appeared in The Century raphies is a perspicuous study of the Magazine for August, 1885. The joint career of the abolitionist leader and authors were Wendell P. Garrison and has a bibliography at the end, and F. J. Garrison. They placed at the Oliver Johnson's William Lloyd Garri- head of the title-page Garrison's own son and His Times affords a lifelike sentiment: — "My country is the glimpse of the man and the move- world : my countrymen are all man- ment. For the family account see kind."
William Lloyd Garrison, 1805—1879 : 2 See Platform of the American
The Story of his Life told by his Chil- Anti-Slavery Society and its Auxil-
dren (4 vols.). The chapters de- iaries published by the society at New
1833J
ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETIES
149
than that for which the Revolutionary fathers had fought, for they "were never slaves — never bought and sold like cattle." The slaves enjoyed no constitutional or legal protection ; for the crime of having the dark complexion they suffered hunger and brutal servitude. The anti- slavery people maintained that no man had a right to "en- slave or imbrute his. brother/' that it was as great a sin to enslave an American negro as an African, and that every A.merican citizen who retained a human being in "involun- tary bondage" was a man-stealer. This being so all persons of color are entitled to the same rights as others, and no compensation should be given to the planters on emanci- pating their slaves, because they were not the "just pro- prietors of what they claim" and that freeing the slaves is not depriving them of property, but restoring it to the rightful owners ; that if any compensation was to be given to any- body, it should be given to the outraged and guiltless slaves ; and that any scheme of expatriation was delusive, cruel, and dangerous.
The influence of Garrison and of "The Liberator" may perhaps best be gathered by some quotations from the actual text. Many abolitionists having objected to the harshness of his writings, Garrison addressed them in the first number, saying that there was cause for severity and that on this subject he did not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. "Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm ; . . . tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire . . . ; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.
York in 1855. The best that can be said for the abolitionists as a body is in John F. Hume's The Abolitionists, together with personal memories of the Struggle for Human Rights, 1880-1864; but so far as it is reminiscent it par-
takes of the disadvantages of recol- lections of old men as a source of his- tory, — and a great deal of other matter about the abolition struggle is of that character.
150 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [On. V
I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD." And whatever one may think of Garrison, or of his methods, or of immediatism, one must admit that he lived up to his asseverations. In one of the early numbers of the paper, he printed a group of advertisements taken from other journals of slaves wanted and for sale and asked, "Is this the occupation of the inhabitants of the world of wo — and this their punishment, to prey upon each other, with the inconceivable ferocity of demons, throughout eternity ? . . . 0 no ! ... They are — hear, 0 earth ! and be astonished, 0 heaven ! — American men — American women ! . . . Blush for your country, and pity the poor slaves !" In the opening remarks in the first number of the second volume of "The Liberator," which was issued on January 7, 1832, Garrison declared that "We are a nation of blind, un- relenting, haughty, cruel, heaven-daring oppressors." He stated that sixty to one hundred thousand infants were born to slave mothers in each year and asked whether it was not "as atrocious a crime to kidnap these, as to kidnap a similar number on the coast of Africa?" Indeed, "negro thief," "negro stealer, " and "negro driver" were the mildest epithets employed by him. In the seventeenth number of the paper the plain heading was replaced by a wood-cut depicting a horse sale and a slave auction in combination with the federal capitol with a liberty pole in the background and a slave being flogged at the stake. Later, other in- flammatory illustrations appeared as the headings of de- partments : throwing a slave over the side of a ship, selling negro children, and a half-naked black woman on her knees with manacled hands upraised and the legend "Am I not a Woman and a Sister?" The Southerners declared "The Liberator" to be an incendiary publication inciting
1832] "THE LIBERATOR" 151
their laborers to rebellion, and it must be said that if the slaves could not read the text, they certainly could under- stand the lesson taught by these illustrations, — if they should see them.
The New Yorkers were not far behind the Garrisonians of Boston. They, too, established a paper called "The Emancipator" that competed with "The Liberator" in the vigor of its verbal appeal. On March 23, 1833, for example, it reprinted from another paper "A Negro's Soliloquy on the Ten Commandments." In this a slave is represented as commenting on the commandment "Honor thy father and thy mother." The negro asks who "dey be? ... suppose him see driver flog his fader, what can he do ? — suppose him see driver throw down his moder, flog her, lick her ; — she cry — she bleed ; — negro say one word, he too be throw down ; . . . Oh Lord, tell his massa, let poor negro alone, to honor his fader and moder ; — Oh Lord my God, what land gave dou me? gave all land to massa; — he live long, — me die soon." And in the same number there was the following from a sermon to ministers who held slaves : " 1. Colored people are not accounted as human beings. 2. They are treated in all respects as if they were an inferior order of cattle. ... 3. It is con- sidered the greatest insult in the world ... to take any notice of a gentleman's killing a Negro." 1 Indeed, one reading the abolitionist literature of this and succeeding decades would come to the conclusion that the people of the South were all man-stealers and kidnappers, and that the swish of the lash was constantly heard south of Mason and Dixon's line from the beginning of the year to the end thereof. Many good people, thousands of them, hundreds
1 Stated in slightly different Ian- Illustrated in its Effects upon Woman, guage in George Bourne's Slavery 41.
152 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Cn. V
of thousands of them, believed this word picture to be true. No wonder, then, when the editor of "The Emancipator" saw in a Southern paper a query as to whether the aboli- tionists preferred "a perpetuity of slavery, or a dissolution of the Union?" he unhesitatingly answered "The latter, we say, by all odds." l Garrison, as was his wont, assumed a more aggressive attitude and some years afterward went so far as to declare that the Constitution of the United States was "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell."
The mass of the people of the North did not in the least agree with the aggressive abolitionists. They loved the Union ; slavery was afar-off, it had come down from colonial time, it was an evil, perhaps, but no more so than drinking intoxicating beverages, gambling with cards, or with dice, or through the medium of lotteries. Many of them, espe- cially the working people, believed the slaves to be better off than themselves. The Southerners, too, were very good customers and the "business interests" of the North were distinctly opposed to anything that would interrupt Southern prosperity and, therefore, trade. Southern gentlemen and gentlewomen habitually visited Northern summer resorts, bringing some of their personal slaves with them ; they did not in any way resemble the monsters of iniquity that were described in "The Emancipator" and "The Liberator" and by Garrison and Thompson and other anti-slavery orators on the platform. Nor did the slaves seem unhappy or show marks of the lash or of blows. In short, labor, business, and society were opposed to aggressive aboli- tionism.2 At Philadelphia, a mob attacked the anti-
1 Selections from the Letters and abolitionists frequently stigmatized the
Speeches of the Hon. James H. Ham- Garrisonians as "amalgamators" or
mond, 24. persons who favored the amalgamation
1 The slaveholders and the anti- of the whites and the blacks. This
1880] NORTHERN ANTI-ABOLITIONISTS 153
slavery people and drove free negroes out of the city; at New York, mobs broke up meetings and attacked anti- slavery agitators. An especial object of wrath was George Thompson, an English anti-slavery propagandist, who came to the United States to correct the morals of the American people and build up a better social state in this country, — and he was only one of many British visitors who saw much to blame in the American republic. In 1835, the announcement that Thompson was to address the Mas- sachusetts Female Anti-Slavery Society at Boston appeared to the anti-Garrisonians to be a good opportunity to settle matters, once for all. Warned in time, Thompson did not attend the meeting, but the advance guard of the rioters discovered Garrison there. The mayor of the city appeared in the hall and advised Garrison to leave and suggested that the ladies should also depart.1 The latter were permitted to march safely away, but the news that Garrison was accessible inflamed the mob. He had withdrawn at first to his office and then had found shelter in a near-by car- penter's shop, being concealed by the carpenter under a bench behind a pile of boards. He was found there by the vanguard of the rioters, taken to the window, and slid down to the ground on a board, a rope having been made fast
charge was fiercely resented by the l The family account of this episode
anti-slavery advocates, especially by is in Garrisons' Garrison, ii, 1-72.
those living in Pennsylvania and Mayor Lyman's statement of his own
New York. Some of the Massachu- doings that day is in Papers Relating
etts abolitionists seem to have felt to the Garrison Mob, edited by Theo-
ifferently on this subject as they were dore Lyman, 3rd. There is other
instantly agitating for the repeal of matter in C. F. Adams's "Memoir
"tyrannical section" of the act of of Theodore Lyman" in the Proceed-
Massachusetts legislature of June ings of the Massachusetts Historical
I, 1786, which provided a fine of fifty Society for March, 1906, p. 169. Years
aunds for any one celebrating a mar- later, Ellis Ames wrote out an elaborate
riage between a white person and a series of "Reminiscences" on the
negro, Indian, or mulatto. See The episode which moved Edward L.
Liberator for Feb. 5, 1831, and Jan. Pierce to deliver a paper on "Recol-
21, 1832, etc.; and the Garrisons' lections as a Source of History" (ibid.,
~ Lloyd Garrison, i, 254, 255. for February, 1881, and March, 1896).
154 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Cn. V
around his body, presumably to prevent too rapid a descent. He was rescued by the mayor and committed to the jail for safe keeping.
In the Western country the aggressive anti-slavery move- ment lagged for a time. Large portions of the States of the Old Northwest were settled by Southerners who did not be- lieve in destroying the property rights of their cousins in the old home and who knew that a great deal that was proclaimed by the abolitionists did not represent the actual existing fact. It is instructive to notice how slowly the movement made its way into the religious organizations that were strongest on the frontier. For years the Methodists refused to join in the movement and the fact that a candidate for the ministry was an abolitionist was good cause for his rejection.1 Notwithstanding, the New England Methodists formed anti-slavery societies, the New Yorkers followed, and then the whole church became rent in twain into the Methodist Church and the Methodist Church South. Under these circumstances the formation of anti-slavery societies in the Old Northwest was slow and difficult and was made to the accompaniment of mobs and assaults of all kinds. As was natural, the conflict was especially severe in Kentucky and Missouri and anti-slavery men, driven from those States, found refuge in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois where some of them continued to carry on their missionary labors by means of newspapers and tracts. The refugees were not welcomed by the dwellers on the Northern side of the Ohio and the eastern bank of the Mississippi. In 1837, Elijah P. Lovejoy, a clergyman who
1 William W. Sweet's Circuit-Rider Days in Indiana, 86, 87, and index under "slavery"; see further his Methodist Episcopal Church and the Civil War, 15-46. For the official
action of the Presbyterians in the early years see A Digest; Compiled from the Records of the General As- sembly (Philadelphia, 1820, pp. 338- 357).
1837] THE ALTON RIOT 155
had edited an anti-slavery paper in St. Louis, was obliged to leave that city and essayed to carry on his work from the town of Alton in Illinois. The people there destroyed one printing press after another, and finally, when Lovejoy and his friends undertook to defend his property by arms, they killed him and another man and wounded several more.1 On December 8, 1837, an assemblage gathered in Faneuil Hall in Boston to take action on the Lovejoy murder. The attorney- general of the Commonwealth spoke advising the people to be calm, for the mob of Alton had done nothing more than pre-Revolutionary rioters at Boston had done. It was then that Wendell Phillips, a young man and unknown, made his way to the platform, and, with voice and manner that for forty years charmed and aroused his countrymen, said that when he heard the words of the attorney-general placing the Alton murderers side by side with Hancock and Adams, he thought 2 "those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, — the slanderer of the dead."
Another form that Northern dislike of the abolition move- ment assumed was violent opposition to the education of colored children of the free blacks. In Canterbury, Connect-
1 A letter from W. S. Oilman, a Narrative of Riots at Alton was written
participant, dated the day after the by a man who had some part in the
event is printed in The Mississippi earlier stages of the trouble and it was
Valley Historical Review, iv, 492. printed at Alton in 1838. Possibly
Contemporary accounts of the Alton the best brief connected account is
riots are Joseph C. and Owen Love- contained in chs. x and xi of Harvey
joy's Memoir of the Rev. Elijah P. Reid's Biographical Sketch of Enoch
Lovejoy and William S. Lincoln's Long (Chicago Historical Society's
Alton Trials; both of these books were Collections, ii). The best extended
printed at New York in 1838. Henry modern account is N. D. Harris's
Tanner's Martyrdom of Lovejoy . . . History of Negro Servitiide in Illinois,
By an Eye-witness and his brief paper chs. vi, vii. A contemporaneous anti-
on the History of the Rise and Progress abolition account is in Henry Brown's
of the Alton Riots (Buffalo, 1878) were History of Illinois, 459. both written by one who took part in 2 Wendell Phillips's Speeches, Lec-
the defence of Lovejoy's printing tures, and Letters (Boston, 1863), p. 3,
press, but long after the event which and Carlos Martyn's Wendell Phil-
they describe. Edward Beecher's lips: the Agitator, 96.
156 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Cn. V
icut, Prudence Crandall, a Quakeress, undertook to con- vert a private school that she had recently opened for white girls into a mixed school for both whites and blacks. The white parents at once removed their children and she then essayed to carry on the school for blacks exclusively. From the beginning, the townspeople objected to Miss Crandall's project of teaching colored people; the neighbors visited her and remonstrated ; the selectmen came and remon- strated ; and the Canterburyites held a town meeting. All was in vain, for urged on by Garrison and other abolitionists, although perhaps she did not need any urging, Miss Crandall persisted. In the spring of 1833 the school opened with " a dozen or so quiet little colored girls" and Miss Crandall immediately found herself the object of legal proceedings. In the interval, the Canterbury townsmen and other free- men of Connecticut had petitioned the legislature for pro- tection and the legislature had replied by enacting a law that no person should set up any institution for the instruction of "colored persons who are not inhabitants of this state" nor teach in any school, or board any colored person who is not an inhabitant of "any town in this state" without con- sent in writing previously obtained of magistrates and selectmen.1 Miss Crandall was haled into court and the lawyers talked on both sides : whether a free colored person was a citizen of the United States, whether the act was con- stitutional or unconstitutional ; and they went from one court to another until they came to a court of appeals, when the judges ruled that the "information" under which the trials were held was insufficient, and therefore reversed the decision of the court below and put an end to the legal contest. The townspeople of Canterbury then intervened in their own manner. Already they had visited the Crandall
i Public Statute Laws of the State of Connecticut (Hartford, 1835), p. 321.
1833] NORTHERN ANTI-ABOLITIONISM 157
premises ; now they smashed in the windows of the house. Before this time, a month or so, Prudence Crandall had married the Reverend Calvin Philleo, a Baptist clergyman of Ithaca, New York, and this fact may have made the closing of the school less painful, pending Mrs. Philleo's removal to her new home.1
The Prudence Crandall school affair is the best known exhibition of Northern dislike of providing educational facilities for the free colored people, probably because of the notice given to it by Garrison, May, and other literary abolitionists. There were many others, however, before and after 1833. Two years earlier, great excitement had been aroused at New Haven. The Reverend Simeon S. Jocelyn, a clergyman in that town, and Arthur Tappan had conceived the plan of establishing there, alongside of Yale College, a seminary of learning for colored people which was also to give them instruction in the mechanical arts and was, in short, to be something like a modern manual training school.2 Subscription papers were opened and the approval of the anti-slavery people was obtained when the townsmen and freemen of New Haven met and condemned the project in no measured tones by the vote of some seven hundred against and the Reverend Mr. Jocelyn and three others in
'See Bernard C. Steiner's "His- jury and the report of the committee tory of Slavery in Connecticut" (Johns of the General Assembly on which Hopkins University Studies, xi, 415— the act of 1833 was founded ; and 422). From the abolitionist point of Samuel J. May's Letters to Andrew T. view, the best account is in Garri- Judson, Esq. . . . Relative to Miss eons' Garrison, i, ch. x. Much the Crandall and her School for Colored Fe- same is in Ellen D. Lamed' s Wind- males (Brooklyn, 1833). ham County, Connecticut, ii, 490-502. * See Niles's Register, October 1, See also Report of the Trial of Miss 1831, p. 88, from the New Haven Pal- Prudence Crandall, . . . August Term, ladium and Paulson's American Daily 1833 ; Report of the Arguments of Coun- Advertiser; Clarence W. Bowen's sd in the Case of Prudence Crandall Arthur and Lewis Tappan; and Garri- . . . July, 1834 i Andrew T. Judson's sons' Garrison, i, 259, 260. Jocelyn'a Remarks to the Jury . . . Superior own account is in a pamphlet entitled Court, Oct. Term, 1833, which also College for Colored Youth that was contains the judge's charge to the printed at New York in 1831.
158 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Cn. V
favor. In New Hampshire, too, in Canaan, in Grafton County, the sturdy farmers met and with sundry yokes of oxen hauled a small building designed for a school house for colored children into a neighboring swamp.1 In Boston, after the Revolution, colored children — some of them — attended the town schools with the other children. In 1800, some colored people petitioned for the establishment of a separate school for their children. This petition was refused, but a separate school was organized by the blacks and their white sympathizers, and was partly supported by the public authorities after 1806. In 1835, a separate school building was erected near by and there the school was kept in successful operation for years. In 1846, an agitation began for the abolition of the separate school for colored children and their transference to the common schools. This question was given to a committee to examine and the majority reported decidedly against it, and in favor of continuing the existing arrangement of separate schools. But there was a minority report which argued, with some interesting evidence from other Massachusetts towns, for the inclusion of the colored children in the regular educational system. The principle of perfect equality was stated to be the vital principle of the common school system and negro children were lawfully entitled to the benefits of the free schools. The minority seem to have thought that exclusion from the white schools was akin to the expulsion of the negroes " from the cabins to the fore- decks of steam-boats, from the first class to the jim crow cars" 2 and from churches, theatres, and other places.
1 Albert Bushnell Hart's Slavery Primary School Board on The Caste and Abolition, 245, citing the Boston Schools (Boston, 1846) ; Thomas P. Morning Post for August 18, 1835. Smith's Address in Opposition to the
2 See Report to the Primary School Abolition of Colored Schools, December Committee, June 15, 1846 (Boston City 24, 1849 (Boston, 1850) ; and the major- Documents, 1846, No. 23) ; Report of ity and minority reports on the same the Minority of the Committee of the subject in 1849.
1850] NORTHERN ANTI-ABOLITIONISM 159
Nevertheless, it was some years before the colored race attained an equality with the whites in the public schools of that city. These instances of Northern opposition to the abolitionists might be largely extended ; but enough has been said to show how prevalent it was. Unquestionably, the mass of the people of the North — before 1850 — did not regard the negro as "a man and a brother." On the con- trary,1 very many of them thought that he belonged to a distinct race and that the racial distinctions were not at all agreeable.
The Southern slaveholders in the earlier part of the century had grave doubts, to say the least, as to the advisability of the slave system. This opinion continued in the northern tier of the Slave States until 1830, but the profits to be de- rived from slave-grown cotton were so great in the south- ern group of the planting States that the people there before 1830 had come to regard slavery as the very basis of their prosperity, arguing that great crops of cotton could not be produced by white labor and that slavery could not be eradicated without doing great injury to the whites. To all the slaveholders in both tiers of States, the call of the "imme- diate abolitionists" came as a challenge and a reproach. They resented being stigmatized as man-stealers. Their peculiar institution had come down to them from "the fathers" ; it had come to them from colonial days when it was universal throughout the colonies that formed them- jlves into the Thirteen Original States. It had become jonomically unsound in the Northern States and had either died out there or was dying out. But the South- erners could not understand why their prosperity should be attacked, because slavery was no longer profitable in the
1 See for example Richard H. Col- and Moral Proofs of the Natural In- fax's Evidence against the Views of the feriority of the Negroet (New York, Ibolitionista, Consisting of Physical 1833).
160 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Ca. V
North, when it was not only profitable in the South, but was necessary for the well-being of a large portion of the Southern whites. The language of the Garrisonians alarmed them and aroused all their fighting instincts. Moreover, South Carolina had come triumphantly out of the nulli- fication contest. The other Southern States had not joined her at that time, but the arguments which justified nulli- fication justified resistance to any Northern attack upon their institutions. Furthermore, the means adopted by the abolitionists to propagate their ideas — their papers and their printed illustrated posters — seemed to the planters to be distinctly dangerous, and they were being disseminated far and wide throughout the South.
In the year 1835 a wave of indignation rolled through the Southern States. At a meeting at Charleston resolutions were passed condemning abolitionism in the severest terms and demanding the exclusion of incendiary publications from the mail. Then the people proceeded to destroy by fire the abolition papers that were in the post-office and they also closed the schools for the free colored population of the city.1 J. H. Hammond expressed the thought of very many Southerners in a letter to Mordecai M. Noah, a New York newspaper editor: the "Northern Fanaticks," he wrote, must not expect to find in South Carolinians the unrepresented subjects of an arrogant monarchy ; they were freemen, they knew their rights and strength, and intended to stand upon them. The abolitionist leaders could be "silenced in but one way — Terror-death." 2 The non-slaveholding States must give up Garrison and the rest, and this alone could save the Union. Another South Carolinian — a Mr. Bellinger —
1 See Proceedings of the Citizens States (Charleston, 1835). of Charleston, on the Incendiary Mach- * Letter of August 19, 1835, in " Ham-
inations. Now in Progress against mond Papers" in Library of Con-
the Peace and Welfare of the Southern gress.
1835]
SOUTHERN INDIGNATION
161
addressed a public meeting of the citizens of Barnwell District on the subject of slavery. He declared that slavery was " a blessing to both master and Slave/' that the South- erners were living within their rights, and the Northerners would better keep their hands off.1 In Alabama, the people took official action when the grand jury of Tuscaloosa County returned a true bill against the editor of "The Emancipator" of New York, for circulating papers of a seditious and incendiary character tending by gross mis- representations and illicit appeals to excite the slaves of Alabama to insurrection and murder. The Governor of Alabama transmitted the indictment to the Governor of New York and demanded that the obnoxious editor be arrested and confined until he could "dispatch an Agent to conduct him to Alabama" ; for, although the offender was not in the State when the crime was committed, he had "evaded the justice of our laws" 2 and therefore should be delivered up for trial within the State as a fugitive from justice.
Already the Southerners were beginning to feel the re- proach cast upon them by public opinion outside of the United States, and the emancipation of the slaves in the British West Indies in 1833 had excited their apprehensions of interference from outside. They, themselves, constantly referred to the lamentable condition of the laborers of Eng- land ; but they did not at all relish having English anti- slavery people advocate abolitionism in the United States. Daniel O'Connell had referred to the deplorable condition
1 Edmund Bellinger's Speech on the Subject of Slavery (Charleston, 1835). The tone of the meeting may be gathered from the resolutions that were unanimously adopted. The second reads "That we view with abhor -ence and detestation the attempt to deluge
VOL. V. — M
our State with Incendiary publica- tions ; and that we consider the authors of such attempts no more entitled to the protection of the Laws than the ferocious monster or venomous reptile." 2 Gulf States Historical Magazine, ii, 26.
162 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Cn. V
of the Southern laboring class and had stigmatized the masters as "felons of the human race" doomed to extir- pation by the avengers of African wrongs. This aroused "The Charleston Mercury" to protest against the Irish agitator's attitude.1 In closing the writer asked, why will the South fight phantoms at such a time? "Why sleeps her patriotism, her instinct of self-preservation? Let her rally her sons under one banner — ' Southern rights and Southern safety ' — and defy ' A World in arms. ' '
The Southerners were by no means content to stand on the defensive. On the contrary they assumed an aggressive anti-abolitionist attitude. They declared that slavery came from God, that it was the ideal social condition, and was for the benefit of the blacks and of the whites. Some- what later, Rabbi Morris J. Raphall stated the biblical argument in favor of slavery in its baldest form. There, in the Ten Commandments given on Mt. Sinai, he wrote, "There where His finger scorched, the tablet shone." The fourth commandment brought rest to all including "Thy male slave and thy female slave" and the Lord for- bade a man to covet his neighbor's house or "his male slave, or his female slave, or his ox, or his ass." And Abraham and Isaac, who themselves talked with God, were slave- holders. Why then invent a new sin not known to the Bible, and thus exasperate thousands of God-fearing, law- abiding citizens of the South? In 1919, a former slave of one of the best-known South Carolina families was "laid to rest" in "the God's Acre" on the old plantation2 and his former mistress gave a third of a column of a local paper to his obituary, telling how in a time of lawlessness "this wise
1 The Charleston Mercury of July * The Charleston News and Courier
31, 1835. This was copied for me by for March 28, 1919. Mr. D. Huger Bacot of Charleston.
1832] DEFENCE OP SLAVERY 163
and faithful man" had kept his sense of affection for those who had previously done everything for him ; and to the end gave faithful service to the family to whom he and his ancestors had belonged. It was an echo from the past.
Thomas Roderick Dew, Professor of History, Metaphysics, and Political Law in William and Mary College in Virginia, and later its president, came forward in 1832 as the opponent of the Virginia anti-slavery men. He declared that it was wild to think of doing away with slavery in Virginia by any process of gradual emancipation as that advocated by Thomas Jefferson and his grandson. Besides, slavery was good for the blacks and for the whites. It was a benign institution to be encouraged and not destroyed. In 1836, Professor Dew delivered an address "On the Influence of the Federative Republican System of Government upon Liter- ature and the Development of Character." 1 In an ordinary condition of society, he said, the dependent classes will be driven forward by their employers or, becoming discon- tented, will look with eyes of cupidity upon the fortunes of the rich and plunder them by legislative action. In a slaveholding country, political power is removed from the hands of those who might abuse it and the moral effects of the system are striking. In the South, the relation between capital and labor is kinder than anywhere else on earth. The slave is happy, except when "the very demons of Pandemonium" come and destroy his happiness. The negro slave compares himself with his own race ; he does not covet the wealth of the rich, but identifies his interests with those of his master. He is free from care and from that constant feeling of insecurity that haunts the poor men of other countries. There are no riots in the South, no
1 Southern Literary Messenger, ii, 261-282.
164 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Ca. V
breaking of machinery, no scowl of discontent, no midnight murders.1 The master is attached to his slaves by interests and by sympathy ; he does not work them sixteen hours a day and turn them adrift without money upon a cold and inhospitable world when their labor will not support them. To the oft repeated argument that slavery was not only wrong, but was uneconomical, was wasteful in com- parison with the wage system, another Virginian — George Fitzhugh — replied that that could only be because the employer of the free laborer secured a larger part of the produce of the wage earner than the master did of his slave. Free laborers, he declared, had not a thousandth part of the rights and liberties of negro slaves. By 1845, the Southerner had come to look upon himself as a superior being ; and this was not confined to the slave owner, but was held by the Southern non-slave owners, and one might almost say that the slaves were actually superior to white wage earners because when dangerous and excessively laborious work was to be undertaken, Southern plantation owners sometimes employed white wage earners in order that the lives, the health, and the strength of their negro slaves might be conserved. Indeed, according to Fitzhugh,2 the plantation system was a "beautiful example of communism, where each one receives not according to his labor, but according to his wants."
Before many years had passed away, the Southern planters began to think of themselves as an aristocracy. According to Gideon Welles, they read Sir Walter Scott's romances and in their "diseased imaginations" fancied themselves
1 This speech was delivered four years after the Nat Turner insur- rection.
2 George Fitzhugh's Sociology for The South, or the Failure of Free So- ciety (Richmond, 1854), p. 29. See
also his Cannibals Att! or, Slaves without Masters (Richmond, 1857) ; and Toombs's defence of slavery in 1853 in Phillips' s Robert Toombs, 162; and Jeremiah Smith's Is Slavery Sin- ful f (Indianapolis, 1863).
1850] SOUTHERN CAVALIERS 165
"Cavaliers," l or the descendants of the Cavaliers of England of the seventeenth century in evident contra- distinction to the offspring of the Puritans!2 Governor J. H. Hammond of South Carolina, whose words have frequently been drawn upon, declared that "God created negroes for no other purpose than to be the subordinate ' hewers of wood and drawers of water ' — that is, to be the slaves of the white race." He wished to see negro slaves on every spot of the earth's surface where their labor would be beneficial to the whites.3 Southern slaves were much better off than thousands and thousands of operatives in English factories and mines. There was no wretchedness on Southern plantations comparable with that of English peasant life, where workers lived in filthy hovels with their pigs or in cellars with a family in each corner and where children of four years of age worked below ground. It was true that slaves were flogged, but so were the sailors and soldiers of England ; 4 and if an English laborer stole a lamb, he might be transported for life. As to the abolition of the slave trade, Hammond thought that was an impossibility. Before its ending had been decreed in 1787, forty-five thou-
1 Diary of Gideon Welles (Boston, * Flogging of American naval sea-
1911), ii, 277, 312. A similar idea men was not abolished until 1850.
was expressed by Professor William E. The rules of Silver Bluff Plantation
Dodd in his stimulating article on provided that the negroes must be
"The Social Philosophy of the Old flogged as seldom as possible and never
South" in the American Journal of kicked or struck, except in self-de-
Sociology for July, 1917, p. 742. fence, and "the highest punishment
* See the present work, volume i, must not exceed fifty lashes in one day." 145 note. For the rules as to slaves in typical
* Selections from the Letters and States, see H. Toulmin's Digest of the Speeches of the Hon. James H. Ham- Laws of . . . Alabama (1823) using mond, of South Carolina, p. 338. The index under "slaves," "negroes," etc.; quotation is from the speech which he the Revised Code of the Laws of Fir- delivered at Barnwell Court House on ginia (2 vols., 1819) ; Littell and October 29, 1858. It is interesting to Swigert's Digest of the Statute Law of observe that the tenth rule for the Kentucky (2 vols., 1822) ; and the guidance of Governor Hammond's Civil Code of . . . Louisiana (1825). overseer at his Silver Bluff Plantation For a comparison with earlier condi- commanded that "the sick must be tions, see the present work, vol. ii, treated with great tenderness." 376-394.
166 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM ICn. V
sand Africans were carried in each year across the Atlantic with the loss of only five or ten in every hundred ; but in 1840, if Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton's figures were right, the number of Africans annually transported across the sea had increased to one hundred and fifty thousand and the mortal- ity had risen to twenty-five or thirty in each hundred.1 The Southerners now carried the fight into Congress and demanded the passage of a law excluding incendiary publications from the mails and the silencing of the abolition appeals to Congress for the stoppage of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, which the extremists of the North were constantly demanding of Congress. A bill was introduced to carry out the first demand, but it met with many diffi- culties and was defeated. In fact it was not necessary, because Amos Kendall, the postmaster general, aided and abetted his subordinates in taking the necessary action themselves. He had no power to prescribe rules for the exclusion of matter from the mails or to direct the non- delivery of any mail matter, he wrote ; but if he were a local postmaster, he should act on his own responsibility. It really made very little difference whether such a law was passed or whether Amos Kendall wrote or did not write to his subordinates, for the Southern whites were determined that the flow of inflammatory papers, posters, and books to their plantations and people should cease. If the local postmasters did not do their duty, as the Southerners saw it, they themselves took possession of the mails 2 and destroyed whatever they listed.
1 Hammond's Two Letters on Sla- very in the United States (Columbia, 1845), p. 4.
* Proceedings of the Citizens of Charleston on the Incendiary Machina- tions now in Progress against the Peace and Welfare of the Southern States (Charleston, 1835). The seventh reso-
lution declared that the citizens of Charleston were "united as one man in the fixed and unalterable determina- tion to maintain our rights, and de- fend our property against all attacks, — be the consequences what they may." And the City Council, on its part, resolved that the Committee of
1836) ANTI-SLAVERY PETITIONS 167
By 1836 the flood of anti-slavery petitions to Congress had reached a very high point. Ordinarily, the number of such petitions would have been very small ; but the mere fact that the Southerners seemed to dread their coming incited the abolitionists to great exertions. Daniel Webster in the Senate and John Quincy Adams in the House were the members through whom chiefly these papers proceeded. They both presented them by the fifties and the hundreds, — on one occasion Adams put in as many as 511 at one time. Some of these petitions were signed by thousands, very many of the signers being women. Calhoun was deeply affected by this manifestation of Northern feeling for he had now come to be the champion of the plantation system in the Senate. Many Northern Democrats saw the danger of limiting the right of petition and Buchanan warned the Southerners that if it were once understood that the right of petition and the abolition of slavery must rise and fall to- gether the consequences might be fatal. It was in the House, however, that the most dramatic scene occurred for there was John Quincy Adams, the venerable ex-President. All his earlier life, with the exception of a short time in the national Senate, had been passed in the diplomatic service or in administrative positions. He speedily learned the art of debating and soon gained a knowledge of parliamentary practice that with his fearlessness, vast learning, and mental alertness, even in these later years, made him one of the most dangerous opponents that the House of Rep- resentatives has ever known. It was practically impossible to stop him when he once got started and it was practically impossible to prevent his getting possession of the floor. If one attempt was blocked, he made another. In May,
Citizens appointed at this meeting be of mails and see that they are in- instructed to attend the arrivals spected.
168 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Cn. V
1836, the House adopted a rule that all petitions and papers relating in any way to the subject of slavery should, with- out being printed or being referred to committees, be laid on the table and no further action be taken thereon. When his name was called for his vote, Adams refused to vote saying that he held "the resolution to be in direct violation of the constitution of the United States, of the rules of this House, and of the rights of my constituents." l It was in the course of one of these debates that Adams informed the House (May 25, 1836) that the instant the slaveholding states be- come the theatre of war, civil, servile, or foreign, from that "instant the war powers of Congress extend to interference with the institution of slavery in every way," — to sustain it, or to abolish it, or even to the cession of a Slave State to a foreign power.2 The irritation became so great that the House adopted a further rule that petitions relating to slavery should not be received at all. In February, 1837, Adams presented a petition purporting to come from twenty-two slaves and asked the Speaker if it could be received. The Southerners stormed with fury. They demanded that he should be censured and expelled. After two days of vitu- peration, Adams gained the floor and stated that he doubted the genuineness of the document ; and whether it was fraudulent or not, the petitioners asked that the Northerners should cease offering emancipation petitions and that the members who persisted in presenting them should be expelled.3
1 Journal of the House of Represen- and Adams's Diary under date of
tatives, 24th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 889; December 2, 1839.
Register of Debates, xii, Pt. iv, 4062 ; 2 The best description of J. Q. and Adams's Memoirs, ix, 287. As Adams's opinions on the effect of mar- showing Adams's place in the esteem tial law on slavery is in the Proceed- of his fellow members, in 1839 for eleven ings of the Massachusetts Historical days at the beginning of the session Society for January, 1902, p. 440. he presided over the House without ' Letters from John Quincy Adams any other authority than the good will to his Constituents of the Twelfth Con- of his fellow representatives. See gressional District in Massachusetts J. T. Morae, Jr.'s /. Q. Adams, 291, (Boston, 1837), pp. 6, 7, 10-14 ; Journal
1836) JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 169
In December, 1844, Mr. Adams had the satisfaction of having the "gag rule" rescinded on his motion.1 Other- wise, up to this time, the abolitionists had accomplished nothing, except to arouse the fiercest resentment of the cotton planters of the South and to make them fear for the contin- uance of their prosperity and their peculiar form of society.
of the House of Representatives, 24th of the House of Representatives, 28th
Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 350 and fol. ; and Cong., 2nd Seas., p. 10 (Dec. 3,
Register of .Debates, xiii, Pt. ii, col. 1844) ; and Congressional Globe, xiv,
1586 and fol. p. 7.
1 Adams's Memoirs, zii, 115 ; Journal •
170 PLANTATION SYSTEM AND ABOLITIONISM [Cn. V
NOTES
I. Bibliography. — The papers printed in the first two volumes of the Documentary History of American Industrial Society are valuable for an insight into the slave system. The Introduction to this material by Professor Ulrich B. Phillips, the editor, is the best brief survey of the system that has been written.1 A longer account is Phillips's American Negro Slavery (New York, 1918). The secondary title of this book is " A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime," which well describes the contents ; but it also deals briefly with town slaves and free blacks. It is based on much more material than that which is printed in the Documentary History. Of the older books, R. F. W. Allston's Essay on Sea Coast Crops; F. L. Olmsted's Journey in the Seaboard Slave States; Charles Lyell's Second Visit to the United States; Frances Kemble's Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plan- tation in 1838-1839; J. D. B. DeBow's Industrial Resources . . . of the Southern and Western States and the successive volumes of his Review are all instructive. Of the more recent books, the first volume of James Ford Rhodes 's History of the United States since the Com- promise of 1850 and Albert Bushnell Hart's Slavery and Abolition, 1831-1841 in the "American Nation " series present the results of pro- longed studies by Northern men. There is a brief bibliography of secondary works on slavery in the Documentary History, i, 105, and a more extended list at the end of Professor Hart's volume. The subject may be easily followed in the footnotes to Phillips's Negro Slavery and to Rhodes's chapters.
n. The Moderates. — William Jay of New York and William Ellery Channing, the Unitarian minister of Boston, trod the middle path that satisfies no one, but sometimes is the path of wisdom. Jay was an early member of the American Anti-Slavery Society ; but he resigned from it when it advocated and encouraged measures that
1 A list of Professor Phillips's writ- Some of the most significant matter
ings on slavery follows this introduc- in the documents in the American
tion ; of these the articles on " Southern Industrial History first appeared in
Black Belts" in American Histori- the form of footnotes to these articles
col Review, xi, 798-816, and "The and Professor Phillips's contribu-
Economic Cost of Slaveholding " in tions to The South in the Building of
the Political Science Quarterly for the Nation give his ideas in somewhat
June, 1905, are the most suggestive. different form.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 171
were directly against the Constitution of the United States.1 Chan- ning, in a tract entitled " Slavery," that was published at Boston in 1835, aroused the resentment of the Garrisonians by condemning the system of agitation adopted by them which had alarmed the con- siderate, had alienated multitudes, and had stirred up bitter passions. The abolitionists proposed to convert the slaveholders by exhausting on them the vocabulary of abuse, " and he has reaped as he sowed." Defences of slavery have been sent forth in the spirit of the dark ages and " something has been lost to the cause of freedom and humanity." Channing had lived on a Virginia plantation as a tutor in his early life and he resented the abusive tone of the abolitionist papers which gave the impression that the slave's abode was " per- petually resounding with the lash, and ringing with shrieks of agony." He thought that it was of the highest importance that emancipation should be followed by friendly relations between the whites and the blacks and that there was no power in the United States to remove slavery but the slaveholding States themselves.
1 See Bayard Tuckerman's William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the Abolition of Slavery.
CHAPTER VI
SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE CENTURY
UNTIL the War of 1812 the people of the United States were occupied — apart from the necessary bread winning — with the resettlement of the political fabric after the separa- tion from the British Empire. There had been reformers and philanthropists before 1783, but their voices had been those of individual men and women crying in the wilderness.1 Of these the most interesting were Anthony Benezet and Benjamin Rush, both of Philadelphia. The former, under the sobriquet of "A Lover of Mankind," published a book in 1774 with the descriptive title of "The Mighty Destroyer Displayed, In some Account of the Dreadful HAVOCK made by the mistaken USE as well as ABUSE of DISTILLED SPIR- ITOUS LIQUORS." Benezet declared that the excessive and increasing use of liquors in America must be highly dis- pleasing to the Creator who must see "his favourite creature man thus debased, disgraced, and destroyed both in body and soul." The curiously wrought human frame had been abused and disordered, so Benezet wrote, by irregularities of many kinds, "but never before to the enormous degree that it has of late years arrived at by the excessive abuse of these fermented, distilled spirituous liquors, which, by their mischievous effects, seem to claim Satan himself for their
1 Mr. T. F. Currier, Assistant Li- pamphlets in the Harvard Library, brarian of Harvard College, has greatly For drinking habits and lotteries
assisted me in collecting material for in earlier times, see the present work,
this chapter by searching through and vol. iv, 16 and 24. sorting out by topics the unplaced
172
BENEZET AND RUSH 173
author." Dr. Rush was Physician General to the Military Hospitals of the United States in the early years of the Revolutionary War.1 In the performance of his functions, he drew up "Directions for Preserving the Health of Sol- diers." This tract was published first in the "Pennsylvania Packet" in 1777, and republished as a small pamphlet by direction of the Board of War. Thirty-one years later in 1808 it was reprinted in Cutbush's "Observations on the Means of Preserving the Health of Soldiers and Sailors" and a century later was reproduced in facsimile. Another of Dr. Rush's temperance publications was entitled "An Inquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors on the Human Body." 2 This was even more popular than the earlier essay and was still being reprinted in 1823. Rush thought that rum, instead of abating the effect of heat and cold, increased them and left the body languid and more liable to be affected by heat and cold afterwards. Horses, he affirmed, per- formed their labors with no other liquor than cold water and the soldiers of ancient Rome carried vinegar in their canteens instead of spirits. One of the most effective and revolting pictures of drunkenness to be found in the tem- perance literature is in Rush's "Inquiry." He declared
1 The first third of Harry G. Good's mometer" appears either at the end or Benjamin Rush and his Services to the beginning of the "Inquiry." It American Education (Berne, Indiana, met with such favor that it was re- 1918) is in reality a sketch of Dr. Rush's produced widely in temperance publi- career. cations. It is noteworthy that Rush
2 This was written in 1784, but the held that "small beer" led to serenity earliest edition that I have seen was of mind, reputation, long life, and printed at Boston in 1790. The quo- happiness, and that cider, wine, and tations in the text are taken from the beer, when taken in small quantities 8th edition, which was printed at Bos- and at meals conduced to cheerfulness, ton in 1823 with the following title, — strength, and nourishment. Punch and An Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent drams were all below zero and led to Spirits upon the Human Body and the debtor's prison or to the gallows. Mind. Either in whole or in part Attempts were also made to express this essay was repeated again and the dangers of intemperance by cartog- again in temperance publications of raphy, as in the "Temperance Map" one sort or another. by C. Wiltberger, Jr.
"A Moral and Physical Ther-
174 SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS [CH. VI
that the drunkard resembled a calf in folly, an ass in stupid- ity, a tiger in cruelty, a skunk in fetor, and a hog in filthiness. The drunkard's houses were gradually stripped of their furniture, their windows shattered, their barns had leaky roofs, and "their children [were] filthy and half clad, without manners, principles, and morals." The good doctor's idea that opium and water would be a good cure for the rum habit is rather appalling to twentieth-century practice.1
With the close of the Second War with England, the American conscience seemed to awaken to the evils of every- day social practices and this awakening process went on with redoubled vigor every decade down to 1860. It does not by any means follow that there was any looser sense of moral obligations in 1820 than there had been in 1800 or in 1770. The concentration of the population in commer- cial cities and industrial towns brought poverty, crime, and intemperance to the notice of the people, for one drunkard apiece in ten towns of one thousand inhabitants each would arouse little thought, whereas ten drunkards in the public square of one town of ten thousand inhabitants would excite animadversions. The rapid fluctuations in the means of existence that were concomitant with embargo, war, and financial panic possibly increased poverty and riches at the extremities of the social scale. There may have been more drinking in these classes and there certainly was a development of crime in some directions, as in counterfeiting ; but this was the result of the tremendous in- crease in paper money. The recent improvements in trans- portation brought people together and made possible asso- ciation for carrying on this or that social readjustment.
1 In December, 1790, the physi- restrict the use of spirits as beverages
cians of Philadelphia — presumably by imposing heavy duties upon them,
at Dr. Rush's instigation — me- See American State Papers, Miscel-
morialized the federal government to laneoua, i, 20.
1820] DRINKING HABITS 175
Societies were organized, committees appointed, and reports made as to social matters in much the same way that earlier local political affairs had been reformed. The net result of all this inquiry, consultation, and agitation was a con- viction on the part of large numbers of very good and earnest persons that the modes of treating misfortune and crime that had come from England by way of the colonies required most thorough reformation, and that the labor system of the North and the South needed radical readjustment.
Whether the considerations contained in the preceding paragraph are true or false there can be no question what- ever that the first half century under the Constitution saw a most appalling consumption of alcoholic stimulants throughout the country and among all classes of people,1 clergymen, women, and even children, on occasion joining the mass of mankind in this custom. Lyman Beecher, in his "Autobiography," describes the scene at a Connecticut ordination : how the sideboard was set with decanters, glasses, sugar bowls, and lemons. The ministers stepped up again and again to get a drink, and as the day wore on the sideboard "with the spillings of water, and sugar, and liquor, looked and smelled like the bar of a very active grog-shop." 2 Liquor was served at funerals, to the mourn-
1 Hamilton in his report on the quarter of the century is in P. S. White "Public Credit" of January 9, 1790 and E. S. Ely's Vindication of the Order (American State Papers, Finance, of the Sons of Temperance (New York, i, 22) states that the consumption of 1848). Beecher in 1812 asserted that ardent spirits, partly because of their five gallons of distilled spirits per capita cheapness, "is carried to an extreme was the ordinary yearly consumption, which is truly to be regretted, as well By 1840, it appears that the per capita in regard to the health and morals, consumption had fallen to about one- as to the economy of the community." half of that of 1810. See Beecher Should the increase of duties that he on the Reformation of Morals, 9 ; suggested tend to a decrease in the Tench Coxe's Statement of the Arts and consumption of spirits, the effect would Manufactures of the United States, . . . be desirable in every way. 1810, Tabular Statement, Pt. i, 22 ;
2 Lyman Beecher's Autobiography Permanent Temperance Documents, i, (New York, 1864), i, 245. A readable 493; American Temperance So- and probably exaggerated account of ciety's Second Annual Report, 48; the drinking habits of the second Cyclopaedia of Temperance and Pro-
176 SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS [Cn. VI
ers, sometimes repeatedly. In some of the prisons, as in Massachusetts, beer was served to the inmates. The idea prevailed that no strenuous labor could safely be performed without alcoholic stimulation. It was the custom, therefore, to provide large quantities of crude liquor for the workers in the haying fields and on the wharves. At house raisings, where the friends and neighbors gathered to assist, spirits were consumed so freely that it was desirable to have a doctor in attendance to set the limbs of any one who should fall from plate, rafter, or ridgepole. In those days it was customary in some places to "vend" the poor to the highest bidder, that is to the man who would pay most for the services of those able to work and charge least for the care of the aged and impotent ; in some towns this practice was made still worse by the custom of furnishing rum and other spirits free to the bidders.1 In some parts of the country, whiskey took the place of money and ministers and teachers received their compensation in the form of gallons of spirits ; and there were cases where clergymen dealt in alcoholic beverages.2 There were towns where the "settled" minister was entitled to a free dram before he began the Sunday ser- vices.3 Drinking was not by any means confined to the
hibition, 129 ; Tucker's Progress of the 2 In 1816 the General Conference
United States, 163 ; and J. D. B. De of the Methodist Episcopal Church
Bow's Statistical View, 182. For an- resolved "That no stationed or local
other estimate see Circular Addressed preacher shall retail spirituous or
to the Members of the Massachusetts malt liquors without forfeiting his
Society for Suppressing Intemperance ministerial character among us."
(Boston, 1814). Daniel Dorchester's Liquor Problem
1 Levi W. Leonard's History of Dub- in All Ages, 193 ; and Journals of the
lin, N. H., 26, 269. It is worthy of re- General Conference of the Methodist
mark that in 1842 a Washingtonian Episcopal Church . . . 17 96-1 836, i,
Society was formed at Dublin and in 168. See also Sweet's Circuit-Rider
1844 the town went "no license" and Days in Indiana, 69, and Ohio Church
since then no liquor has been legally History Society's Papers, vi, p. 8.
sold within its limits. The practice 3 See T. S. Griffiths' History of Bap-
of vending the paupers and of supply- tists in New Jersey, 513; on the other
ing the bidders with drink, was common hand the Baptist church at Borden-
in those days as in the neighboring town resolved in 1832 to admit only
town of Peterborough: see its His- total abstainers, ibid., 511.
tory by Albert Smith, p. 179. Before coffee and tea came into
1820] DRINKING HABITS 177
northern part of the country, for Moncure D. Conway re lates that in Falmouth, Virginia, there was a "rough corner'1 where whiskey was abundant ; on Saturday nights many of the country folk depended on the sobriety of horse or mule to get them safely home.1 In short, in the dearth of recreations — of athletics and of the motion picture — the people drank rum in New England and whiskey in the South and in the West, — and alcoholic stimulants were so cheap that it was said " a man could get drunk twice in America for six- pence."
The growing poverty of large portions of the people led men and women, some of them gathered into societies and others working independently, to scan closely the causes of pauperism and crime. In Philadelphia and in New York, they came to the conclusion that intemperance and in- discriminate charity were the chief causes of distress and wrong-doing. Societies made reports and the churches took action. In the West and in the South, the Methodist Church became a temperance society 2 and in New England the Congregational Associations took up the matter. In Connecticut, where the temperance movement was vigorous, the Association recommended that church members should exercise vigilance,3 should cease to use ardent spirits ordi- narily in the family, and should substitute palatable and nutritious drinks for liquors for their employees, giving them
common use as a matutinal stimulant, of this early crusade against the use of
it was the general practice in Eng- alcoholic beverages, land as well as in America to take a ! On the attitude of the Metho-
" morning draught." See, for example, dists toward temperance see W. W.
the numerous entries to this effect in Sweet's Circuit-Rider Days in Indiana,
the diary of Samuel Pepys. 69, 147 ; E. J. Pilcher's Protestantism
1 Moncure D. Conway's Autobiog- in Michigan, 130; A. H. Bedford's
raphy. Memories and Experiences, i, Western Cavaliers, 83 ; and innumer-
14; Arethusa Hall's Life and Char- able other books of the same general
acter of Sylvester Judd, 315. White character.
and Ely's Vindication of . . . the Sons s See Intemperance. An Address,
of Temperance (New York, 1848) to the Churches and Congregations
contains an excellent ex parte account (Hartford, 1813).
VOL. V. — N
178 SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS [Cn. VI
additional compensation, if necessary, instead of the cus- tomary dram.1 Like all earnest persons, temperance reformers saw only one side and described in trenchant phrases what they saw or what they thought they saw. To read some of their descriptions of American life in the first thirty years of the century, one would suppose that the country was on the edge of dissolution instead of actually girding up its loins for the work that "Destiny" had pro- vided for it. An article in "The Clergyman's Almanack" for 1812 after dealing with the evils of intemperance sums up the whole matter in an answer to the inquiry as to " Who hath wo"? and who in the morning of life has an impaired memory, a bloated face, and a broken constitution by saying that it is " they who greedily swallow liquid fire, and are ' never satisfied."1 Falsehood, fraud, theft, and profanity are the result of the "cup of intemperance." In 1826, Lyman Beecher of Litchfield, Connecticut, preached "Six Sermons" which inaugurated the new temperance movement that culminated in the legislation of the middle of the century.2 He had been impressed with the evils of intemperance in his earlier residence as pastor of a Long Island parish and things that he had seen after his return to Connecticut had in no way softened the impression. Daily drinking, he declared in one of his "Six Sermons," generated a host of bodily infirmities and diseases; "loss of appetite — nausea
1 The reform found favor with the the Secretary of the Navy, all persons owners of merchant vessels for it did in the naval service might commute away with a distinct item of expense, their spirit ration for money pay- as Dana noted in his Two Years Be- ment; Writings of Levi Woodbury, fore the Mast, which describes a voyage i%454.
made in the years 1834-1836. The 2 Beecher relates the circumstances
serving of grog to crews of naval ves- of the writing of these sermons in his
sels lasted much longer and was not Autobiography, ii, ch. v. They were
finally done away with until 1862. first printed in 1827 and reprinted over
See Allen's "Introduction" to the and over again in the following years.
Papers of . . . Dallas (Publications of The full title is Six Sermons on the
the Naval History Society, viii), p. Nature, Occasions, Signs, Evils, and
xxiii. In 1831, however, by order of Remedy of Intemperance.
1826] BEECHER'S SIX SERMONS 179
at the stomach — disordered bile — obstructions of the liver — jaundice — dropsy — hoarseness of voice — coughs — consumptions — rheumatic pains — epilepsy — gout — colic — palsy — apoplexy — insanity," — these were the results of moderate tippling according to this clerical diagnostician. Looking about him, Beecher was dismayed at the difficulty of the minority's enforcing laws in the teeth of the opposition of the majority ; he asserted that the magistrates could not put a stop to the drinking of ardent spirits amid a population who are in favor of free indulgence. Even associations to support the authorities were ineffectual because the efforts required to keep up their energy never had been and never would be made. The only efficacious course to pursue was to associate for the special purpose of superintending the reformations of the people's habits. In this Beecher was no doubt mistaken, for it seems certain that a nation's habits can be markedly changed by legis- lation which, in the course of years, sets up a new standard in men's minds and consciences. The license system aroused the indignation of the temperance people because it seemed to give the sanction of the community to the selling of liquor and gave the holder of a license a feeling that he had some vested rights which could not be interfered with. An- other mode of dealing with the problem was to place so heavy a tax upon the distillation and sale of spirits that only the rell-to-do could use them, and a third method had much the same idea at bottom. This was to prohibit the importa- tion or sale of rum, whiskey, or brandy in smaller quantities than fifteen gallons or twenty gallons or ninety gallons.1 Of course all expedients of high taxes and limited sales bore heavily upon the common people, while leaving the rich un-
1 See the interesting Argument of mittee of the Massachusetts legis- Peleg Sprague, Esq. before a com- lature, February, 1839.
180 SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS [On. VI
touched. None of these plans found favor with the new tem- perance reformers. Limited drinking, license systems, fifteen gallon laws, were about as bad to their minds as absolute free- dom. What they wanted was prohibition, pure and simple.
Societies were formed in several States and an educational propaganda was carried on by means of the press and of the lecture platform. Mason L. Weems's "Drunkard's Looking Glass" was published in 1812 and recited vividly the evils of excessive drinking as did Peter Parley's "Five Letters" and Sargent's "Temperance Tales." 1 In 1833, the National Convention of Temperance Workers was held at Phila- delphia. Four hundred and forty delegates attended from the local societies and adopted resolutions to the effect that it was the duty of all men to abstain from the use of ardent spirits as morally wrong and that pure water was the only substitute. Within twenty years seven Presidents or ex- Presidents of the United States acceded to a declaration that the drinking of ardent spirits was not only needless, but hurtful and that its discontinuance would be for the good of the country and the world.2 The man who by indomitable
1 Among Sargent's twenty-one Tern- fied in Poetry and Prose with Engrav-
perance Tales in seven volumes may be ings that was published at Boston in
mentioned "Kitty Grafton," "The 1829. For some years a Temperance
Stage Coach," and "Margaret's Almanac was published by the Massa-
Bridal." G. B. Cheever's True His- chusetts Temperance Union ; the num-
tory of Deacon Giles' Distillery and bers for 1841 and 1842 have some
The Dream: or The True History of striking illustrations and the number
Deacon Giles's Distillery, and Deacon for 1843 has an article by Nathaniel
Jones's Brewery, also by Cheever, were Hawthorne entitled "A Rill from the
landmarks of the movement, but of- Town Pump." Among the most ef-
fended the supposed Deacon Giles and fective short pieces were Thomas
led to a trial for libel and to A De- Herttell's Expose of the Causes of In-
fence in Abatement of Judgment by temperate Drinking and the Means by
Cheever. These seem rather forced which it may be Obviated which was
nowadays as also do Peter Parley's first published at New York, in 1819
Five Letters to my Neighbor Smith, and Professor Edward Hitchcock's
touching the Fifteen Gallon Jug, and Essay on Temperance, addressed partic-
The Cracked Jug, or Five Answers to ularly to Students and printed at Am-
My Neighbor Parley's Five Letters herst in 1830.
. . . by "Neighbor Smith." In lighter 'See "Thirteenth Annual Report,"
vein and not so effective was p. 37, in Permanent Temptranct Docu-
The Evils of Intemperance, Exempli- ments, iii.
1833] TEMPERANCE CONVENTION 181
will and strong physique made possible the passage of actual prohibitory legislation was Neal Dow of Portland, Maine. He had been led to interest himself in the matter by the misfortunes of a neighboring family which were due to the intemperance of the father. Total abstinence to him seemed to be the only goal to gain. At first he tried to reach it by persuasion, by inducing those around him to become total abstainers. He travelled up and down the State speaking everywhere with great effect and supported by a band of lecturers and by literary propaganda. The Washingtonian movement also came to his aid. This was started by a group of half a dozen steady drinkers at Baltimore, who had them- selves been greatly stirred by a temperance lecturer, Matthew Hale Smith, by name. They pledged themselves not to drink any spirituous or malt liquors, wine, or cider. These reformed drunkards immediately began making converts at home; soon they travelled over the country securing attention by reason of their past histories, more, perhaps, than by their eloquence. But there were temperance lecturers outside of the Washingtonians who possessed power to attract and convert their fellow men and women, as John B. Gough, although he gained his end rather by the vigor of his utterance than by the use of his mind. In 1849, Father Mathew, the Irish Catholic temperance re- former, landed in New York and received a great ova- tion.1
In 1846, Neal Dow induced the Maine legislature to pass the first law in our history designed to absolutely prohibit the sale of liquor as a beverage. It proved to be difficult to enforce this law. In 1851, Dow drew up a measure which he thought would be effective and would not arouse the extreme opposition that the earlier act had excited. He
1 See J. F. Maguire's Father Mathew, 460-518.
182 SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS [Ca. VI
took this bill with him to the State capital and by his own efforts prevailed upon the legislature to pass it.1 This was the famous "Maine Liquor Law" which became the model for all similar legislation. By it the sale of intoxicating liquors and the manufacture of them were prohibited, ex- cept for medicinal and mechanical purposes, under reasonable but increasing penalties. At first these were fines, but for the third offence a jail sentence of from three to six months was provided in addition to the fine and in every case the seized liquors were to be destroyed. Dow, himself, was mayor of the city of Portland. Proceeding home he gave the liquor dealers a limited time in which to transport their goods out of the State and then he seized and destroyed whatever remained. The passage of this law marked the beginning of the incoming tide of temperance legislation. Some years before, in 1839, the Ohio legislature had provided for partial prohibition ; in 1850 it prohibited all retail trade in spirits for beverage purposes and in 1851 an amend- ment of the State constitution forbade the establishment of any system licensing the sale of liquors within the State. In 1851, the Illinois legislature by law prohibited the sale of spirituous liquors to be drunk on the premises. By the end of 1856, indeed, thirteen of the existing States had more or less thoroughly abolished the sale of spirituous beverages.2 In all these States, however, cider made from apples grown within the State limits was permitted and from the ex-parte accounts of the reformers, there was about as much drunken- ness in the "cider-growing States" as there was before the passage of the prohibitory legislation. In running over the list of the States, one is impressed with the fact that not
1 Reminiscences of Neal Dow, ch. xiv. lected statutes of Maine and separately. The act was entitled "An Act for the * For a convenient summary of this
Suppression of Drinking Houses & Tip- legislation, see Woolley and John-
pling Shops" and is printed in the col- son's Temperance Progress, 138-141.
1851] MAINE LIQUOR LAW 183
one of them below Mason and Dixon's line prohibited the sale of liquor by State law and that only two of those north of that line, one east and one west of the Appalachians, did not enact prohibition. Maine, New Hampshire, and Ver- mont have continued prohibition from 1860 down to the present day ; but the other States by positive enactment or by judicial action restored freedom or local option in the matter of making and selling alcoholic beverages. In 1868, the Massachusetts prohibition law was repealed largely in consequence of the efforts of John A. Andrew, the "War Governor" of that State, who held that no govern- ment had the right to restrain a man's rational liberty to regulate his private conduct and affairs l or "to punish one man in advance for the possible fault of another." Prohibi- tion was reenacted in 1869, but in 1870, the sale of fermented liquors was allowed. In 1875, a local option law by which the voters of each town decided each year whether they would have license or prohibition was enacted. In the same year Michigan repealed her prohibitory law and Connecticut had already restored the license system. Indeed, at the close of that year only three States were constant to the temper- ance ideals of 1860. In all the discussions of these laws, the difficulty of enforcing them was constantly brought forward and the impolicy of having laws on the statute book that could not be carried out was reiterated.
The philanthropists and reformers were united in regard- ing intemperance in the use of alcoholic beverages as the predisposing cause of poverty and crime. This they were all agreed on, but nowadays students would attribute much of the excess in pauperism and wickedness to the social unrest that is the concomitant and follower of periods of war. However this may be, it is certain that in whatever direction
1 The Errors of Prohibition by John A. Andrew.
184 SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS [On. VI
the American investigator turned his eyes — and the same thing was true of the European reformer — he was appalled at the conditions of the prisons and of the prisoners. In the olden time the American colonists had simply reproduced the penology of their English forbears.1 That had been brutal, as it was contemporaneously in the continental countries of Europe. Death met the convicted perpetrator of every serious crime, and the rest were treated with pitiless publicity combined with bodily pain, — flogging, mutilation, branding, and exposure to the taunts and missiles of the populace. The non-payment of a debt in "those good old days" was looked upon as practically equivalent to theft. In the course of long exposure to new conditions, there had been some changes in the old rules for dealing with crime and some of those that had not been changed by legislation had been seldom if ever actually used in practice in the colonies. With the Revolution began a new outlook, al- though it must be said that such amelioration as there was was slow and sporadic. The number of capital crimes was greatly diminished and the punishment of those that did not bring death was changed from pain and humiliation to im- prisonment.2 Before this time, the prison had been looked upon as a place of detention for those owing money and for persons accused of crime while awaiting trial ; when convicted of felony or misdemeanor the punishment was not another period of detention in prison, but some form of summary punishment or execution.
With the changed ideas, the prison became the instru- ment of punishment and of hoped-for reformation, but the early prisons were far from filling either of these require-
1 See the present work, volume i, were then twelve capital offences in
index under "crime"; ii, 392-394; Massachusetts to one in Pennsylvania.
iii, 570-572. In the Southern States death was
* In 1829, the Boston Prison Dis- provided for numerous offences on the
cipline Society reported that there part of a slave (pp. 31-54).
1820] THE PRISONS 185
ments.1 In them the prisoners were confined in large rooms, there being ten, twenty, thirty inmates in each.2 These were indiscriminately assigned to whichever room was then filling up — poor debtors, murderers awaiting execution, accused persons awaiting trial — all placed together — men, women, children, white and black, sane and insane. These early prisons were sinks of iniquity and schools of corruption and crime.3 There was no attempt made to warm them, or ventilate them, or keep them clean ; the inmates slept on the floor or on mattresses if they had money to procure them, and in some cases hammocks were used when the floor was filled. Attempts were occasionally made at classification, placing the poor debtors by themselves and relegating the in- sane to the cellar ; but in these early days women were regarded as equals of men and treated accordingly without any favors. In some cases, as with the poor debtors, the inhabitants of the early prisons were permitted to labor in the daytime, but by sundown were locked up in the night rooms. The Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers were the
1 For a summary of prison condi- they proved to be undesirable and the
tions up to 1828 or 1829, see Boston mines, in later years, were used only as
Prison Discipline Society's Fourth An- sleeping rooms for the prisoners who
nual Report (2nd ed.), PP- 265-288; were employed in a building on the
especially pp. 285-288. Gamaliel Brad- surface in the daytime. See Noah
ford's State Prisons and the Peniten- A. Phelps's History of Simsbury,
tiary System Vindicated (Charlestown, Granby and Canton (Hartford, 1845),
1821) is an illuminating essay from ch. x; and an illustrated article in the
several points of view. See also Harry Magazine of American History, xv, 321.
E. Barnes's History of the Penal ... E. A. Kendall visited Simsbury in 1807
Institutions of . . . New Jersey (Tren- and described the prison in his Travels,
ton, 1908). New York City Docu- i, ch. xxi, which is repeated in Barber's
ment No. 29 contains a survey of the Connecticut Historical Collections, 95. old penal institutions with recom- 2 Boston Prison Discipline Society's
mendations for their betterment. Reports, i, 38, 39.
The old copper mine prison at Sims- * Counterfeiting was very prev-
bury, Connecticut, has received alto- alent in those days. The Second Re-
gether undeserved notoriety owing, port of the Boston Prison Discipline
probably in part, to Waiter Bates's Society (1827, p. 40) enumerates
The Mysterious Stranger; or Memoirs "237 different kinds of counterfeit
of . . . WHliam Newman (New Haven, bills on the banks of 18 different States
1817). The copper mines were used and Canada." It is said that the art
for a time as prisons and Tories were was regularly taught in some prisons
confined there for a few months, but — also lock-picking and pocket-picking
186 SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS [Cn. VI
first to try to inaugurate a better state of affairs. As the existing prisons were seminaries of sin where experts in crime taught counterfeiting, lock-picking, and other evil things to attentive audiences, one way out seemed to be to compel solitude, which would have the further advantage of providing time for contemplation and possibly for self- reformation. Another plan was to secure all the advantages of solitude by confinement in single cells at night and a gang system of labor during the day in absolute silence. These came to be known as the Pennsylvania and the Auburn sys- tems of prison management, or sometimes as the solitary and congregate systems.1 The solitary system was seen at its best in the Eastern Pennsylvania Penitentiary at Philadel- phia.2 There each convict occupied a single cell of good size, communicating with an exercise yard into which he was permitted to go for an hour or so a day. At first it was not intended that the prisoners should engage in labor, but should spend their whole time in solitary contemplation. These cells were lighted from above, provided with water and drainage, and were heated. In this system no attempt whatever was made to punish or reform by bodily torments or deprivations. Everything was to be accomplished by solitude, by enforced and absolute solitude. Before the prison was opened, a change was made in the plan by which labor in the cells was provided. This change had been brought about by an experiment that had been made on eighty selected convicts at Auburn, New York, by direction of the State legislature in 1821. In this case cells were constructed of moderate size, the convicts were placed in their cells and there remained under constant observation
1 See Note II at the end of chapter. A Vindication of the Separate System
* See Description of the Eastern of Prison Discipline from the Misrep-
Penitentiary published by C. G. Childs, resentations of the North American
Engraver at Philadelphia, in 1829 and Review, July, 1839 (Philadelphia, 1839).
1830] SOLITARY IMPRISONMENT 187
without work and not allowed to speak or, during the day- time, to lie down. The consequence was that in less than three years' time, they had so declined in health, had died from consumption, or had become insane that the governor pardoned the survivors.1 In the Eastern Penn- sylvania Penitentiary labor was combined with solitude, the prisoners making shoes or textiles, each in his own cell. As years went by the austerity of the system was relaxed, instruction was introduced to a degree, more books were permitted, visitors became more frequent, and the convicts were permitted to raise flowers in their little yards.
The Auburn system was developed by Captain Elam Lynds. The central idea was solitude gained by solitary confinement at night in small cells, only a little longer and wider than the cot on which the prisoner slept, and hard labor during the day. At daybreak, the wardens unlocked the doors, the prisoners, each with his pail and mush-kid, "locked marched" to the shop, depositing his utensils on the way. At the appointed hour they locked marched to the eating room where they breakfasted sitting back to back, then again to the shop and, later, to dinner and then back to the shops. At night, after labor hours, they locked marched to the water supply where they got their pails, to the kitchen where they received their kids of mush and molasses, and then to the cell, where they were locked in for the night. At nine the bugle announced the time of retirement and all went to bed. Discipline was enforced, partly by corporal punishment at once on the slightest infractions of the rules or, in serious cases, by flogging in the presence of the higher officers. More especially, however, it was enforced by the remarkable power of Elam Lynds,
1 G. Powers' Brief Account of the . . . New-York State Prison at Auburn, 32-36.
188 SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS [On. VI
who is said to have gone among the convicts absolutely un- armed. It was a system of terrorism, but the actual amount of bodily punishment inflicted per convict was very small. Moreover, the labor of the convicts was so profitable that several prisons conducted on the Auburn plan actually brought in money to the State.1 The success of the Auburn system depended in great measure upon the construction of the prison. The cells were built in five tiers back to back in the centre of a building eighteen to twenty feet wider than the combined length of two cells. A platform three feet wide ran around each tier, leaving five or six feet next to the side of the building unoccupied from floor to ceiling.2 Escape was prac- tically impossible and the slightest noise was at once heard.3 The building was warmed by stoves on the ground floor and there was a ventilation pipe in the back of each cell. Com- mendable efforts were made to keep the cells clean. At Auburn, the atmosphere seems to have been fair, but at Sing Sing and at other prisons which were constructed on the same plan as Auburn, the dampness of the surrounding country, or some other cause, made the conditions of the night cells unfavorable to health.4
The two systems of prison discipline had scarcely got into working order when disputations began between the advo-
1 See Beaumont and De Tocque- tion of the prison compelled the con-
ville's Penitentiary System in the finement of two prisoners in one of these
United States, 279-285; Boston Prison pits- Boston Prison Discipline So-
Discipline Society's Second Annual ciety's Second Report (Boston, 1827),
Report (1827) , p. 97, and Fourth Annual pp. 81-83.
Report (1829), p. 94. 'See Report ofGershom Powers, Agent
* In the State Prison, at Thomas- and Keeper of the State Prison at Auburn
ton, Maine, the night rooms were (1828) and Letter of Gershom Powers . . .
cellars or pits, entered by ladders in relation to the Auburn State Prison
through trap doors in the ceiling as one (1829).
entered a ship's hold through a hatch- 4 The difficulty of heating a prison
way. This arrangement had been de- of this type is brought out in the
signed for solitary perpetual confine- Minutes of the Testimony . . . [on]
ment but was never used for that the Condition of Connecticut State
purpose; it proved unwieldy in the Prison (Hartford, 1834), pp. 4, 10,
hard labor, solitary night system and 68, etc. especially so when the crowded condi-
1830] CONGREGATE SYSTEMS 189
cates of one or the other of them. Societies for the study and improvement of prison conditions were founded in Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts. Of these the Massachusetts society was active in printing and most of its officers were ardent advocates of the Auburn plan. It will be seen, therefore, that easily available statistics usually point to the success of that system and the failure of the Pennsylvania plan. In reality, the statistics are so con- structed that it is impossible to reach any valid conclusion from a study of those that can be found, and the arguments of those who wrote on the one side or the other appear to be extremely prejudiced. It would seem to be clear that almost any plan of prison administration and treatment of convicts works well in the beginning, — as long as the buildings are new and the administrators enthusiastic. In time the buildings become overcrowded and insanitary, inferior persons are employed as underkeepers, and the psychological glamour of the earlier years is replaced by a general peni- tentiary gloom. Where once there was health there now is disease ; where once there was more or less cheerful acquies- cence there now is friction. In the history of all experiments of the continuous solitary system, consumption, dementia, and insanity supervened and so shocked the community that modifications had to be made. The Auburn system at first was carried on by fear : the new-comer was completely "curbed," to use Captain Lynds's expressive word; a wink or a whisper brought a blow from the keeper and " stripes, " which was a politer word than flogging, awaited any further resistance. Corporal punishment by the cowskin whip or the cat o' nine tails was going out of fashion as the middle of the century approached,1 and as soon as the nature
1 In the latter part of the eighteenth lashes on the bare back (Esarey's century, petty larceny was punished Indiana, i, 148). Massachusetts did in Indiana by not exceeding fifteen away with whipping as a punishment
190
SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS
[Cn. VI
of the method by which discipline was enforced in prisons of the congregate system became public by some distressing example, it was inevitable that opinion would turn against it as it had earlier turned against the solitary system. Both plans, therefore, were modified. The inmates of solitary prisons were given more human companionship and more opportunities for relaxation, and the inmates of congregate prisons, like the Massachusetts State prison, were permitted to talk while at work, so that the difference between the two became simply one of laboring alone or in company.1 The keepers of the prisons of that time seem to be fairly united in doubts as to the reforming of any con- siderable number of convicts. The solitary plan was believed to give abundant opportunity for introspection and for the making of good resolutions ; but the number of reconvictions under this system seems to have been suffi- ciently large to cast doubts on its efficacy in this respect. On the other hand, the Auburn system in its pristine vigor was not supposed to reform, but to habituate a man to obedience and labor; it is certain, however, that either of them was preferable to the old plan of promiscuous herding in idleness. When the prisoner's term of service was over or upon his pardon, he was given a new suit and three or
for crime in 1813 (Public and General IMWS of . . . Massachusetts, Boston, 1816, iv, 341). The Harrison County whipping post in western Virginia was hewed down in 1810 according to Mr. E. C. Smith of Clarksburg, West Virginia. In 1831, Levi Woodbury, who was then Secretary of the Navy, informed the commanding officers that the President and the Department wished them to substitute fines, badges of disgrace, and "other mild correc- tions" for whipping, whenever the laws permitted (Writings of Levi Woodbury, i, 454). Owing to the persistent en- deavors of Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire, flogging in the navy
was abolished in 1850 by act of Con- gress (Statutes at Large, ix, 515). As a rule the reformers of those days were more solicitous of the backs of convicts and slaves than they were of the backs of free American citizens. On the general subject, see An Essay on Flogging in the Navy, reprinted from the Democratic Review for 1849, and Gardner W. Allen's "Introduction" to The Papers of . . . Dallas (Naval History Society's Publications, viii), p. xxiii.
1 For an account of this prison see Gamaliel Bradford's Description and Historical Sketch of the Massachusetti State Prison (Charlestown, 1816).
1830) RECONVICTIONS 191
five dollars in money. Some keepers added good advice and in some places there were societies for the aid of dis- charged prisoners. The number of reconvictions was dis- heartening, taking the country through, although it should be said that those who had experienced the Auburn system in its first days preferred to commit the next crime outside the limits of New Yo'rk State.
In the preceding paragraphs the treatment of persons convicted of crime has alone been considered ; but there were four or five poor debtors to one regular criminal in the pris- ons of the Northern and Middle States. In a period of eight months and eighteen days from June, 1829, to February, 1830, 817 persons were imprisoned for debt in the city of Philadelphia alone. Of these 30 owed less than one dollar each and 233 between one dollar and five dollars. Nearly six hundred of the total number owed less than twenty dollars and only 98 over one hundred dollars. In Rochester, New York, in the year 1830, 24 persons were imprisoned in the county jail for debts of less than one dollar, ranging from six cents to ninety cents apiece.1 Imprisonment for debt takes us back to the England of Fielding and Smollett and Daniel Defoe. The Fleet Prison, with its great halls filled with helpless, hopeless human beings had its replica in Philadelphia, New York, and other American cities and towns. The theory underlying imprisonment for debt was that the unlawful conversion of another man's property to one's own use was criminal. It was also held that one way to secure the payment of the debt was to imprison the debtor and thereby arouse the active interest of his family and of all those who were likely to be called upon to
1 See Boston Prison Discipline So- in 1818 under the title of A Disquiai-
ciety's Reports, v, 38, 50, and vi, 57. lion on Imprisonment for Debt as the
A powerful indictment of the existing Practice exists in the State of New York.
system was published at New York By Howard.
192 SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS [On. VI
take any part in his support to bring about his release and, thereby, enable him again to take up the business of family bread winning. Many of the imprisonments for small amounts are said to have borne the character of spite persecu- tions ; but it is difficult to understand how a man would take forethought and loan a proposed victim twenty-five cents for the purpose of afterwards imprisoning him. There is no question, however, as to the multitude of imprisonments for less than twenty dollars, and the position of these small debtors was peculiarly hard, because in most of the States they could not claim a hearing before a regular judge, but could be imprisoned upon an execution obtained from an exiguous magistrate. From such statistics as one can pro- cure and such other indications as there are, it would seem that the first third of the nineteenth century was the heyday of prosecutions for debt. There may have been more poor debtors, more poverty stricken persons in those times of rapid financial changes, or it may be that in the recurrent financial crises, creditors found it more necessary to secure the moneys that were due them. The prisons were over- flowing with poor debtors and the scandalous conditions attending their incarceration aroused the attention of philanthropists and legislators. Alread}^ the poor debtor's oath had been devised by which a confessed bankrupt, on giving up all his property, with certain trifling exceptions,1 and swearing that he had none concealed, could be released from all obligations to his creditors. As time went on, the amount that the person taking the poor debtor's oath could retain was constantly increased. The labor societies also added to the protection of the laboring classes by secur- ing the passage of laws giving mechanics a lien on the prod- ucts of their labor and thereby made the path of the dis-
1 See the present work, ii, 416-420.
1830] POOR DEBTORS 193
honest employer more difficult.1 In the early days of the poor debtor law administration, the debtor was obliged to maintain himself in prison, but it was customary to grant him considerable enlargement, sometimes even permitting him to live and work anywhere within reach of the jail. As the years of the nineteenth century went by, the ten- dency was to restrict him more and more to the prison walls and to compel the creditor to contribute to his support. In some States, the authorities maintained the debtor for a specified time; when this expired, he would be dis- charged unless the creditor came forward and assumed the burden. As the years went by also, there is observable a general tendency throughout the States to limit the amount of debt under which a person could be imprisoned to twenty dollars and this did away with much of the petty persecution. With the development of the credit system throughout the country, with the rapidly changing conditions of buying and selling, and with the rise of cities and towns, tremendous changes occurred in the modes of carrying on business. There were recurrent panics and demi-panics and the legis- lators of State and nation were obliged to act to enable the business of the country to go on. In the olden time, bank- ruptcy had been a matter of special legislation for each in- dividual or for a group of cases. One of the earliest American bankruptcy laws was that of Maryland, under which James Greenleaf had obtained a discharge from prosecution by his creditors in 1798. In 1800, Congress passed a federal bank- ruptcy act by virtue of which Robert Morris obtained his freedom.2 These and other similar laws related to persons who were engaged in trade or business ; they did not relieve ordinary individuals from the penalties of statutes relating
1 American Industrial Society, v, Congress, 6th Cong., 1452; see also the 28, 29, 121, 160, 161. present work, iv, 111-113.
* Statutes at Large, ii, 19 ; Annals of VOL. v. — 1»
194 SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS [Cu. VI
to debt. Even with these limitations, they do not seem to have worked well, and the federal act and some of the others were repealed. The Panic of 1837, and the widespread commercial distress that followed it, again brought the question before the country. In 1841, Congress passed another general bankruptcy law,1 but this like the earlier one proved to be unsatisfactory in many respects and was repealed not long afterward and no more general legisla- tion was attempted until after the close of the War for Southern Independence.
Of all the unfortunate and incapacitated persons who come down to us in the pages of history, none so arouse our sympathies as those who were afflicted with some form of insanity ; but in the older time they aroused no sympathy whatever. In America, as in England, demented persons were regarded as guilty of having done something wrong, although what it was that they had done no one could tell. In colonial days deranged and crazy persons were cared for by their families and neighbors in isolated rooms in the house or, if dangerously violent, they were confined, some- times in chains, in an outhouse or in a cellar. Poor and lonely insane persons who "came on the town" were treated in a similar manner, confined by themselves in the alms- houses or otherwise secured. At the beginning of the prison era, they were handed over to the keepers of the prisons and jails, who often were extremely unwilling to accept them, but could not help themselves. Occasionally a committee from a philanthropic society or a legislative body would visit a prison or two and describe a most distressing condition of affairs ; but no one thought of doing anything, probably because no one had any idea of what could be done. In December, 1837, the directors of the Ohio Lunatic Asylum
1 Statutes at Large, v, 440, 614.
1830] THE INSANE 195
quoted from a report * that a committee of the New Hamp- shire legislature had drawn up with a view to explain the rea- son for there being so many more lunatics in that State than had been expected. It appears from this report that many persons "laboring under an inoffensive hallucination of mind" had been found wandering about the country the sport of unthinking boys and unprincipled men. Others had been found in close confinement, some were in cages made for the purpose, others in outbuildings or garrets or cellars in private houses ; and still others had been found in the county jails, incarcerated with felons; and a few had been discovered in the cellars of almshouses that were "never warmed by fire, or lighted by the rays of the sun." In one prison in Massachusetts,2 an investigator found a man confined in a dark room in a cellar where he had lived for seventeen years ; he had protected himself against the cold by stuffing hay into the cracks of the door, his food being passed to him through a wicket.
The Pennsylvanians appear to have been the first to try to alleviate the lot of the insane, for as early as 1751, some provision was made for them in the hospital at Phil- adelphia. But the first public institution that was devoted exclusively to the care of the insane was the Eastern Lunatic Asylum that was opened at Williamsburg in Virginia in 1773.3 In 1801, the commissioners of the poor of Charleston,
1 Directors of the Ohio Lunatic as to Massachusetts institutions, see
Asylum's Third Report (December, A Memorial to the Legislature of Massa-
1837), p. 4. chusetts signed by the "Overseers of
* For innumerable instances of harsh the Poor" of Danvers and dated Febru-
and negligent treatment of insane ary 10, 1843. One of Miss Dix's
persons, see Dorothea L. Dix's Me- most remarkable reports was a Re-
morial to the Legislature of Massachu- view of the Present Condition of the
setts which is dated January, 1843, State Penitentiary of Kentucky which
and subsequent memorials to the was printed at Frankfort in 1845. legislatures of Kentucky, Tennessee, 3 See the present work, vol. iii,
Pennsylvania, and other States. For 571. denials of many of her statements
196
SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS
[Ca. VI
South Carolina, were given the care of "all lunatics, or persons disordered in their senses" who might be confined in the poor house.1 Little more seems to have been done for the care of the mentally unbalanced until the era of the War of 1812. In 1813, members of the Society of Friends in Philadelphia associated for the purpose of estab- lishing an asylum for the relief of persons deprived of the use of their reason.2 In 1814, Dr. George Parkman of Boston issued a pamphlet entitled "Proposals for Establish- ing a Retreat for the Insane" and followed this in 1817 with another on the " Management of Lunatics with Illustrations of Insanity" and in 1818 with "Remarks on Insanity."3 Mainly as a result of the interest in the treatment of the insane that is indicated in these and other writings the McLean Asylum for the Insane was founded in 1818 by private benefaction and placed under the charge of the management of the Massachusetts General Hospital, a privately supported institution at Boston.4 State legis- latures slowly recognized the obligations of the community to provide proper care and surroundings for the insane poor, and several State institutions were established in the third
1 Ordinances of the City Council of Charleston (1802), p. 229. This or- dinance was amended in 1819 by authorizing the wardens of the city to commit to the "Asylum for Lunatics" attached to the city poor house "per- sons laboring under insanity" brought to the guard house or found stroll- ing in the streets or otherwise incom- moding the citizens; see A Collection of the Ordinances of the City Council of Charleston (1823), p. 7. South Carolina established a State lunatic asylum in 1822, R. Mills's Statistics of South Carolina, 213.
*The "Annual Reports" (1813- 1848) of this institution give an ex- cellent idea of the progress of the treatment of insanity in the earlier days.
»Dr. J. L. Hildreth's Public Care of the Insane in Massachusetts (Cam- bridge, 1897) is a brief and readable essay.
4 See R. C. Waterston's Condi- tion of the Insane in Massachusetts (Boston, 1843) ; Morrill Wyman's Early History of the McLean Asylum for the Insane. For an account of John McLean's bequest, see N. I. Bowditch's History of the Massachu- setts General Hospital (Boston, 1872), pp. 64—67. Reports of the McLean Asylum are contained in the Massa- chusetts General Hospital's Annual Reports. For a hostile view of the McLean Asylum, see An Account of the Imprisonment and Sufferings of Robert Fuller, of Cambridge.
1850] THE INSANE 197
decade of the century.1 The Ohio Lunatic Asylum was opened in 1839 and proved to be a very creditable establish- ment for that time, because the managers had taken advan- tage of all the earlier experiments, the failures as well as the successes.2 The Massachusetts State Asylum at Worcester, which was opened in 1833, was regarded by contemporaries with a good deal of admiration, partly because it was built within the appropriation, which seems to have been an unusual occurrence even in those days. The advocates of better methods for the treatment of insane persons had argued that many cases of insanity were curable. In the early years, however, the number of "cures" was not large because, so it was said, the early groupings of lunatics comprised the most deplorable cases to be found. More than one-half of those who were taken to Worcester in the first year came from jails and almshouses and the majority of them had already been confined for more than ten years.3 When the incoming flow of patients represented the normal amount of insanity, a considerable portion would be cured, so it was expected, but up to 1850 or 1860, these expectations had not been fulfilled.4
The philanthropists and reformers had traced much of the crime and distress that was to be found around them to the habit, that was quite widespread in those days, of pur-
1 See The North American Review, ' Reports and Other Documents re-
xliv, pp. 91—121 ; Edward Jarvis's Sating to the State Lunatic Hospital
Insanity and Insane Asylums; John at Worcester, Mass. (Boston, 1837),
M. Gait's Essays on Asylums for Per- especially p. 37 and fol. Part of this
sons of Unsound Mind (Richmond, report is in Boston Prison Discipline
1850) and "Second Series" (Rich- Society's Reports, ix, 299. mond, 1853) ; and George L. Ham- 4 Beginning with 1840, the federal
son's Legislation on Insanity . . . Lu- censuses contain information on the
nacy Laws . . . of the United States defective and dependent classes; see
to . . . 188S. E. C. Lunt's Key to the . . . Census,
1 See Directors of the Ohio Lunatic § K. George Tucker's Progress of the
Asylum's Reports, iii (December, 1837) ; United States (New York, 1855), ch.
Directors and Superintendent of the ix, and "Appendix," ch. vi, has useful
Ohio Lunatic Asylum's Reports, iii information on the subject compiled
(December, 1841). from the censuses.
198
SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS
[Cn. VI
chasing shares in lotteries.1 Ill success had driven men to drink, had induced them to steal, and had even deranged their intellects. Success, however, did not reward the readj usters so soon in this matter as it had in others. In- deed, until the multiplication of stocks and bonds provided an outlet for speculative desire, lotteries maintained their place despite reformers, legislatures, and courts of law. The truth of the matter seems to be that legislators in those days hesitated to use the taxing power and preferred to raise funds for schools and colleges and internal improve- ments by means of lotteries,2 for, whatever might be said against them, it was certain that money raised in this way was always " cheerfully paid." It was an expensive process, for, generally speaking, for every hundred thousand dollars paid by the public for lottery tickets, about one-half went to the managers of the enterprise and to the ticket brokers and sellers and of the other half about one-third went to the beneficiary and the other two-thirds to the buyers of tickets in the form of prizes. No tax ever brought in so small a net percentage as a lottery.
Moreover, the practice of "insuring" or betting that a number would be lucky or unlucky encouraged gam- bling to a greater extent than any other device that ever claimed respectability. And there were very serious charges
1 In 1830, the Grand Jury of the City of New York "presented" the great and growing evils of lotteries. They found that from August 12 to November 10, fourteen lotteries had been drawn in the city, comprising five hundred thousand tickets that were sold for nearly two and one-half million dollars or at a yearly rate of nearly ten million dollars. See G. W. Gordon's Lecture before the Boston Young Men's Society on the Subject of Lotteries (Boston, 1833), Appendix, Note 11.
2 Job R. Tyson on page 29 of his Brief Survey of the . . . Lottery Sy»- tem (Philadelphia, 1833) states that there were about four hundred lot- tery schemes then going on in nine States, the yearly amount of prizes in them being something over fifty- three million dollars. There were then two hundred lottery offices in Phila- delphia, alone. Thomas Doyle's Five Years in a Lottery Office (Boston, 1841) contains much curious information.
1830] LOTTERIES 199
made of fraud, although in many cases the preparing the numbers and the drawing them from the wheel was all done in the presence of some high official as a Secretary of State, a mayor, a governor, and the public. The two decades following the crisis of 1819 that saw so great an ad- vance in manners and customs of the people in one way or another also witnessed the greatest development of lotteries in our history. They were no longer confined to the construction of churches, to the aid of privately endowed colleges, or to helping corporations to dig canals. Now, they often formed part of the regular financial system of the State, as the Literature Fund of New York and the so-called national lottery for the building of a court house, a penitentiary, schoolhouses and other public buildings in the District of Columbia.1 Between the close of the war and 1820 several States passed acts forbidding the sale of "foreign" lottery tickets within the State limits, prohibiting private lotteries, and licensing the sellers of legal lottery tickets.2 The machinery for enforcing these laws seems to have been very ineffective as a rule, but one case, that of Philip J. and Men- dez Cohen against the State of Virginia, worked its way into the Supreme Court and secured immortality through a decision made by Chief Justice Marshall. By 1835 lotteries had been forbidden in most of the Old Thirteen States, but the selling of tickets in lotteries outside of these States went on, apparently, as merrily as ever, and it was not until half the century was passed that any real impression had
1 W. Bogart Bryan's History of the land" in Rider's Rhode Island Historic
National Capital, ii, 38, 81. col Tracts, Second Series, No. 3, and in
* A. R. Spofford collected much in- A. F. Ross's History of Lotteries in New
teresting information in his "Lot- York. The evidence presented in the
teries in American History" in Ameri- Report of the Trial of Charles N. Bald-
can Historical Association's Report win (New York, 1818) will repay
for 1892, pp. 171-195. More informa- perusal by any one who wishes to get
tion can be found in John H. Stiness's an actual insight into an institution of
"Century of Lotteries in Rhode Is- a by-gone age.
200
SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS
been made on this most demoralizing institution. With this exception, however, the first fifty years of the nine- teenth century saw more progress in the reconstruction of American morals than all the years that had preceded since the first settlement at Jamestown in Virginia.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 201
NOTES
I. The Temperance Movement. — Chapter xxxvii of the fourth volume of McMaster's History is by far the best collected account of the social readjustments of the first part of the century ; but the author's love of the picturesque sometimes leads a reader to get an overdrawn impression.
The nine Annual Reports of the American Temperance Society from 1827 to 1836, were printed at Boston and were followed after 1838 by the Reports of the Executive Committee of the American Temperance Union. The fourth to the sixteenth Reports of the Society were printed in three volumes at New York in 1852 and 1853 under the title of Permanent Temperance Documents. This last publication taken by itself gives the best generally accessible account of this early temperance movement. In addition there were State societies and local societies. Some of these printed reports and others did not. The Panoplist, from 1810 to 1820, contains much material on the earlier time. Besides Beecher's Autobiography may be men- tioned John B. Gough's Autobiography, Neal Dow's Reminiscences, L. A. Biddle's Memorial . . . of Dr. Benjamin Rush, and John Marsh's Temperance Recollections which were jotted down in his old age and published at New York in 1867. A digest of State laws is in The Cyclopaedia of Temperance and Prohibition, 275-360. Of the compendious books, Daniel Dorchester's Liquor Problem in All Ages is, perhaps, the most useful, but Woolley and Johnson's Temper- ance Progress of the Century is usable and accurate. George F. Clark's History of the Temperance Reform in Massachusetts is clear and concise and of wider interest than the title implies.
n. Prison Discipline. — The First Annual Report of the Boston Prison Discipline Society was published in 1826, and for some years thereafter succeeding reports came regularly from the press. The early reports attracted so much attention and were so valuable that they were reprinted several times, partly at public expense. The first report contains a summary of the actual conditions of the old style prisons,1 the second report contains details of the new prisons
1 An earlier account is C. G. Haines's York (1822). A later account of the
Report on the Penitentiary System in Auburn system is Crime and Punish-
the United States, Prepared under a ment by Blanchard Fosgate, at one
Resolution of the Society for the Pre- time physician at that prison. wniion of Pauperism, in the City of New
202
SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS
that were then in process of building with diagrams showing the arrangements. In later reports the question of imprisonment for debt is taken up at length. The news of these experiments in America spread to Europe and attracted four sets of explorers into the doings of the trans-Atlantic people. Two of these visitors, De Beaumont and De Tocqueville, wrote a remarkable report which was translated by Francis Lieber — with considerable annotation — and was published at Philadelphia in 1833.1 In the " Appendix " to this book (p. 187) is a series of notes on conversations with prisoners in the Eastern Pennsylvania Penitentiary and on page 199 notes of a striking con- versation with Captain Lynds to which may be added a note on him printed on page 156. These researchers were attracted by the Auburn system, partly perhaps on account of its cheapness. Another in- vestigator, also of power and eminence, Miss Dorothea L. Dix, published in 1845 Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline in the United States, which might almost be described as a report on the condition of affairs in that year. She favored the Pennsylvania system as it had been worked out, mainly because of her dislike of the terrorism that was required by the congregate system, if it were really to amount to anything.2 Of publications that came directly from the prisons is A Brief Account of the Construction, Management, & Discipline, etc., etc., of the New York State Prison at Auburn. This was written by Judge Gershom Powers, agent and keeper of the prison and a remarkable man. The " General Pvegulations and Discipline " are printed on pages 1 to 21. Chapter viii of Frederick H. Wines's Punishment and Reformation 3 contains the only compendious account
1 The title is On the Penitentiary System in the United States, and its Application in France by G. De Beau- mont and A. De Tocqueville, trans- lated by Francis Lieber.
1 For a favorable view of the un- mitigated solitude plan, see George W. Smith's Defence of the System of Solitary Confinement of Prisoners adopted by the State of Pennsylvania. This was first published in 1829 and was republished in 1833 by the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons. The pros and cons were summed up in Dr. S. G. Howe's An Essay on Separate and Congregate Systems of Prison Discipline
(Boston, 1846), Francis C. Gray's tract on Prison Discipline in America (Boston, 1847), F. A. Packard's In- quiry into the Alleged Tendency of the Separation of Convicts, . . . to pro- duce Disease and Derangement. By a Citizen of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia. 1849), and in George Combe's Re- marks on ... Criminal Legislation, and . . . Prison Discipline (London, 1854).
3 The full title is Punishment and Reformation. An Historical Sketch of the Rise of the Penitentiary System. The first edition was published in 1895. The book was revised by the author in 1910 and "a new edition
BIBLIOGRAPHY
203
of this phase of penological adjustment by an expert on the general subject.
revised and enlarged " by Winthrop D. Lane was printed with an abbre- viated title in 1919. In both of these later editions ch. viii on "The
Pennsylvania and Auburn Systems" was left as in the original edition and so was the bibliographical paragraph at the end of the original preface.
CHAPTER VII
i er'iT'Tvnr!
THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE
IN colonial days Church and State had been more or less intimately connected, no matter whether the religious body was termed "established" or simply recognized by the rulers as the dominant religious organization.1 With the separation from England hierarchical control disappeared for the moment : Roman Catholic laymen enjoyed some of the privileges of Congregationalism and the Episcopalians also managed their own affairs. Then, too, the contest for the political rights of man temporarily overshadowed the neces- sity of providing for the spiritual care of the soul and the intense idealism of the day gave other means of satisfying the desire for a future life. Religious systems seemed to have broken down. This opinion may reflect only the feelings of the older clergy that people no longer listened to their ministrations but went off in search of strange gods, — gods that to us, nowadays, appear to be quite as regular as the old ones. Thomas Jefferson represented as well as any one this radicalism of belief. In 1820, he wrote to a friend thai he hoped the "genuine and simple religion of Jesus" might be restored, for it had become so "muffled up in mysteries" that it was concealed from the vulgar eye. He wished thai now men would use "the talent of reason" that God hac confided to them.2 In the preceding year William Ellei
1 See the present work, vols. i, ii, 2 Buffalo Historical Society's Pi
and iii, using the index under "re- Kcations, vii, 28. ligion" and the several sects.
204
THE UNITARIANS 205
Channing in a sermon at Baltimore had expressed some- what similar ideas. That sermon was in the nature of a declaration of independence on the part of the Unitarians and an exposition of their beliefs.1 The Scriptures, he said, were "the records of God's successive revelations to mankind, and particularly of the last and most perfect revelation of His will by Jesus Christ" who is the only "master of Christians"; and whatever He taught "we," meaning Unitarians, "regard as of divine authority." Forty years later, on the eve of the War for Southern Inde- pendence, Theodore Parker, the foremost Unitarian minister of that time, stated that the New Testament contained four doctrines2 that had been "taught even by Jesus of Naz- areth" and that he, Theodore Parker, took "neither him nor the New Testament" for his master. What was good in both he used and he tried to lift up men whom he saw "bowed down before the superstition of the Protestants." On the other hand, Dr. Lyman Beecher and his daughter, Harriet Beecher Stowe, held vigorous opinions of Uni- tarianism, even of the earlier type. The latter declared that the Unitarian denomination was "a whole generation in the process of reaction," while her father regarded it as "the deadly foe of human happiness, " for its direct tendency was to prevent true conviction, stop revivals, and leave men
1 This sermon may most easily be Reservoir. He can pour out what he found in The Works of William E. has reed, but he has no permanent Channing issued by the American sources of Ideas; and he writes for Unitarian Association in 1875, p. 367. popularity." "Hammond Papers" in It has also been printed in many other Library of Congress, forms. Dr. Fenn's article on Uni- 2 Theodore Parker to Mrs. S. B. tarianism in The Religious History of White, May 22, 1858; Manuscript New England: King's Chapel Lee- in the Massachusetts Historical So- tures, pp. 77-133, is distinctly inter- ciety. The four doctrines enumerated esting. Thomas Cooper, writing to by Parker are "(1) total depravity, J. A. Hammond in 1836, said, "Chan- (2) a wrathful God; (3) the Salva- ging is not an original writer — his tion of a few by the merits of Jesus, language is good, and his religious & (4) the eternal damnation of the great opinions liberal, but he has no ideas of Mass of Mankind." hie own. He is not a Spring, but a
206
THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE [Cn. VII
bound hand and foot under the power of the adversary.1 In 1825 he prophesied that at no distant day Unitarianism would "cease to darken and pollute the land," but even Lyman Beecher's life was not to cease without charges that he himself had weakened somewhat on one of the cardinal beliefs of the old New England Calvinists.2 Moreover, the fact that Channing's sermon was preached at Baltimore, the first city of Maryland, is in itself significant of the reli- gious change, for it was Maryland that had provided in the "good old colonial days" boring of the tongue, branding of the forehead, and death on the scaffold for him who announced his disbelief in the Holy Trinity.3
As the century advanced change succeeded change ; new doctrines, new disciplines, new modes of procedure are everywhere to be discerned.4 To a twentieth century historical onlooker it is oftentimes difficult to comprehend what some of these differences really were and even more difficult to understand how men were willing to sacrifice themselves and their families for what seem to have been distinctly doubtful matters or matters of small moment. But so it was, and however much difficulty one may have in understanding, there is no question whatsoever that the earnestness of purpose and tenacity of belief of the holders of any one of these hundred or more religious divisions deserve the most earnest and respectful consideration.5
1 Lyman Beecher's Autobiography, ii, 66, 110.
* Trial of Lyman Beecher, D.D. be- fore the Presbytery of Cincinnati, on the Charge of Heresy (New York, 1835).
* See the present work, vol. ii, 430 and note.
4 Chapter x, Part Second of Chap- man and O'Neal's Annals of Newberry, South Carolina, contains a detailed account of religion in that one county
that was representative of a type of settlement.
6 Census Bureau's Special Reports, Religious Bodies : 1906, Pt. i, espe- cially pages 99 and fol. , which give the date of organization. In the "In- troduction " there is a comparative analysis of the Censuses of 1850 and I860- John Hayward's Religion Creeds and Statistics (Boston, 1836) gives details of the existing denominations of the earlier time.
1830] THE SECTS
Among the Baptists there were a dozen different bodies : there were the regular Baptists, the Seventh-day Baptists, the Free Baptists, the Free-will Baptists, the General Six Principle Baptists, and the Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists and there were three colored Baptist bodies. There were also a dozen or so Methodist bodies : the Methodist Episcopal Church was the regular organ- ization and then there were the Methodist Protestant Church, the Congregational Methodist Church, the New Congre- gational Methodist Church, and the Independent Methodist Church. The regular Methodist organization was divided on the slavery and anti-slavery question into the "Church" and the "Church South" and the colored Methodists worshipped by themselves and formed their own church bodies, as the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Union Methodist Protestant Church, the Union American Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Meth- odist Episcopal Zion Church, and the Reformed Zion Union Apostolic Church, and as many more. The Presbyterians were not so thoroughly subdivided, but there were half a dozen kinds of them, as the Presbyterian Church in the United States, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, and the United Presbyterian Church of North America. Then there was the Welsh Calvinist Methodist Church which was a Presbyterian body. Some of the Presbyterian Churches were divided by the line between freedom and slavery, and there were also colored Presbyterian Churches. Besides these numerically strong Protestant organizations, there were isolated sects as the Adventists, who were grouped under half a dozen names : the Shakers or United Society of Believers as they termed themselves, the Rappists, the Dunkers or German Baptist Brethren in four forms, the Quakers in four forms, the Latter-
208
THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE [Cn. VII
Day Saints, or Mormons as they are usually termed, in three forms, a dozen kinds of Mennonites, among them the Amish and the Old Amish, the Moravians in two forms, and the Schwenkfelders, the Campbellites, and the Millerites. Indeed, with the coming of the German and Scandinavian immigrants in the middle of the century, there was a further addition to the minor sects ; but if the Reverend James W. Alexander was right in his assessment of them, nine- tenths of the German Protestants 1 in New York City were infidels and radicals, and the German Reformed Church itself was mad after a "delusive transcendentalism" ; but very likely he was ill informed and generalized on insuffi- cient premises.
The multiplicity of sects did not imply a lack of religious fervor among large portions of the people.2 Alexander's own career in New York showed that there was opportunity for evangelical preaching and teaching. After a preliminary settlement of some years, he left New York for a time, but was recalled by the same congregation. For his second administration a great church was built and the sale of pews in it before the edifice was completed brought in enough money to pay the cost of the building and of the land on which it was situated. To provide more room the organ was moved from its usual place to the wall behind the pulpit and the additional pews were sold before they were finished. Alexander seems to have been appalled at the size of his audiences. He always wished to try the experiment of a free church and he had endeavored to secure a number of free pews in the new building. To satisfy his longings his people erected a mission chapel for him where he preached once a week to all those who came to him. And Alexander
1 Familiar Letters of James W- Alexander, ii, 173, 176.
*See, however, "Plain Truth," pub-
lished at Canandaigua, N. Y., in 1822 and 1823, Ohio Church History So- ciety's Papers, vi, 1-22.
1830]
CHURCH ACTIVITIES
209
was only one of many strong, eloquent, and earnest preachers who gave joy and hope to hundreds of thousands of men and women.
As the years went by, the activities of the churches wi- dened. The religious people began to look after the affairs of the body and before long devoted so much time, strength, and resources to the founding and maintaining of schools, hospitals, and recreative organizations that the modern observer sometimes finds it difficult to discriminate between those that may well be looked upon as religious and those that are mainly concerned with physical and mental wel- fare. The Quakers had always supervised the worldly doings of their members and so had the early New England Congregationalists ; but neither of these bodies had gone outside of their own denomination. Now, the churches became seized with a missionary spirit to send devout men and women into the hidden recesses of the great cities and into the wildest regions of America, Africa, and Asia,1 to >reach the word of God and to teach the proper care of the dnd and body to those of other ways of thinking on religion ind possessing different ideas as to the duty of man to imself and to his neighbor. Alexander envied the Epis- copalian, Dr. Mtihlenberg, because he had only a free church ; but he also records, possibly not with entire appro- >ation, that Mtihlenberg had on his staff an apothecary who
1 The history of the American aard of Commissioners for Foreign Missions may be easily traced in Rufus Anderson's Memorial Volume of the First Fifty Years that was issued by the Board in 1861. The first two Annual Reports of the American Joard give the details of its organiza- tion. This association represented slaveholders as well as other persons. Those who favored missionary enter- and abhorred slavery formed
VOL. V. — P
other societies which united in 1846 in the American Missionary Associa- tion. See Lewis Tappan's History of the American Missionary Association (New York, 1855). The missionary spirit is vividly shown in the Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel J. Mills by Gardiner Spring (New York, 1820) and in the lives of Adoniram Judson by his son, Edward Judson, and by Francis Way- land.
210 THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE [CH. VII
administered to all free of charge and four Sisters of Mercy who in one year had cared for twelve thousand persons. Had Alexander's life been prolonged, it would have been interesting to read his comments on the Episcopal sisterhood and St. Luke's Hospital founded by Miihlenberg. How it all appeared to the Reverend James Dixon, an English Method- ist, who visited Boston in 1848, is interesting. He noted that the Sabbath there was strictly observed, but it was a painful reflection to him — nevertheless — that the churches should be " occupied by a race who preach a diluted kind of Socinianism" and that the bold, broad, deep faith of the original settlers1 should be replaced by "the meagre and flimsy philosophy now announced in their pulpits."
Territorially there was a somewhat free distribution of religious bodies. Louisiana — the old Louisiana — was peculiarly the abode of the Roman Catholics as was natural from its early history ; but they were strong in the homes of the Irish immigrants, — in New England, New York, and Philadelphia, — and there was the old Catholic population of Maryland.2 Among the Evangelical sects the Presbyterians were strong in the old Northeastern States, but there the Methodists and Baptists were competing vigorously with them. Transappalachia, however, was the harvesting place for the Methodists and the Baptists, for their beliefs and modes of procedure were peculiarly fitting to the wilderness and to the pioneer. This mingling of religious sects was made possible by the breaking down of the old barriers and requirements.3 New York had had a constitutional require- ment that made it impossible for the Roman Catholic immi-
1 James Dixon's Personal Narra- both real and personal, to be held for tine . . . with notices of the History the benefit of the Roman Catholic and Institutions of Methodism in Church : Digest of the Laws of Mary- America (New York, 1849), p. 23. land (1799), p. 466.
2 In 1792, the Maryland Assembly 3 See the present work, vol. iii, 560- passed a law permitting property, 566.
1830] RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 211
grant to acquire citizenship or to hold office, but this was done away with in 182 1.1 North Carolina retained the word "Protestant" in her constitution until 1835 and then only extended the limits of office-holding2 to "Christians." In Massachusetts, in Connecticut, and in New Hampshire 3 the general rule had been that every one must worship the Creator and that all tax payers must contribute to the support of the public Protestant "teacher of piety" in his town. Those who did not attend or support the regular organization were obliged to secure a certificate from the town clerk and then their contributions would go to their own parson or priest and they themselves could worship in their own church, provided they were Christians. Office- holding, however, was confined to Protestants. Under this scheme a Quaker or a Roman Catholic might worship in his own way and hold office — except in New Hampshire, where Roman Catholics were debarred ; but, unless there was a society of the tax payers' own kind in their own town, their religious taxes went to the support of the regular public minister. Oftentimes, also, there was a good deal of trouble experienced in securing certificates and in applying their share of the taxes to their own minister, when there was one, — in one case it is said that it cost one hundred dollars to collect four dollars from a town treasurer for the use of a Baptist clergyman. Moreover, owing to the pecul- iarities of the Methodist organization, its ministers were not "settled" and, therefore, could not secure for their own use any of the town tax money paid by their own communi- cants. In 1811, "voluntary societies" of Protestants were
1 See the present work, vol. iii, 564 ; J North Carolina Booklet, viii, 105.
Journal of the Convention of the State of 3 For the general condition of
New-York . . . 1821, pp. 314-332, 462- religion in New England in this period,
4fi4 ; L. H. Clarke's Report of the . . . see Paul E. Lauer's Church and State
Convention . . . of August, 1821, p. 70, etc. ; in New England, ch. v. and Poore's Constitutions, Pt. ii, 1346.
212
THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE [Cn. VII
recognized by law in Massachusetts. This relieved the situation for the less closely organized Protestant societies, but did not in any way help the Roman Catholics. These had to wait until the constitution was amended in 1833 before they were freed from the obligation of contributing to the support of the regular Protestant minister as well as of their own priest ; l but after 1821 Roman Catholics might hold office in Massachusetts.2 The requirement that the Gov- ernor and State legislators should be Protestants was not removed in New Hampshire until 1877, and the require- ment that the "teacher of religion" supported by public contributions must be a Protestant was also omitted at the same time. In Massachusetts what might be called local option in religion had been established by a decision of the State supreme court in 1820.3 Under the State constitution and laws, the voters of a town had the ultimate right of choosing the town minister. In the old days the more devout of the townspeople had formed the "church" and had selected the minister, but the confirmation of the appointment and arrangement as to compensation belonged to the voters in town meeting. In 1818, the voters of the town of Dedham decided to choose a minister of the Uni- tarian persuasion, notwithstanding the fact that all but two or three members of the regular town religious or- ganization were Orthodox Trinitarian Congregationalists. These seceded, demanded the town ecclesiastical property and, being denied it by the town authorities, sued them
1 In 1819 the old colonial system was done away with in New Hamp- shire by a law that was known popu- larly as the "Toleration Act." At least one man felt called upon to protest against any person being re- quired to support public worship in a pamphlet entitled Some Remarks on the "Toleration Act" of 1819 . . . By a Friend to the "Public Worship
of the Deity" (Exeter, N. H., 1823).
2 See oath of governor and mem- bers of the legislature in Constitutions of the United States, and of the Com- monwealth of Massachusetts.
1 The Constitution of New Hampshire as amended by the Constitutional Con- vention . . . 1876 (Concord, 1877), pp. 2, 9, 11, 15.
1820] THE DEDHAM CASE 213
for it. The court decided that the property and goods of the town religious organization belonged to the town — or to the parish which was the town or a part of the town in its ecclesiastical form. It made no difference how many of the church members seceded, the religious edifice and all the religious property, even the communion service, belonged to the town l and not to the old "church." In a few years the eastern part of the State was about equally divided between the Orthodox and Unitarian Congregationalists 2 and it was this revolution in religion that led to the de- struction of the old Massachusetts ecclesiastical system by the amendment to the constitution that was adopted in 1853. The establishment of religious toleration and religious freedom is best seen in the growth of the Roman Catholic Church within the limits of the Old Thirteen States. In common with the two other hierarchically controlled reli- gious organizations, the Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Roman Catholics had been seriously affected by the severance from the British Empire. In the case of these and especially of the Episcopal Church, it could hardly be expected that the revolutionists, whether Catholic or Protestant,3 would recognize or tolerate the English connection. Indeed, the Revolution had been undertaken in part to limit the exercise of power by the Episcopal authorities. The Roman Catholics had no
1 Edward Buck's Massachusetts EC- in this volume there were about 130 clesiastical Law, chs. ii-v. There is a Unitarian congregations in Massa- list of cases following the index. This chusetts as a whole and more than decision was made by Chief Justice 250 Orthodox churches. George Bur- Parker, who had recently presided over gess's Pages from the Ecclesiastical the deliberations of the constitutional History of New England, 121. convention of 1820 that had refused to * See John Gilmary Shea's Life alter the religious laws, see Journal and Times of the Most Rev. John Car- of the Debates of the Convention of roll (New York, 1888) forming vol. 1820-1821, using index under "Dec- ii of Shea's History of the Catholic laration of Rights." Church within the Limits of the United
* At the close of the period covered States.
214
THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE
[CH. VII
connection with the English government, but the control of the church in English America had been exercised through persons domiciled in Great Britain. At once the Roman Catholic laymen in Maryland and Pennsylvania took possession of the church property and established a system of trustees in whom the title of the property was legally vested.1 Bishop Carroll felt himself obliged to assent to the establishment of this system, and in the time of his imme- diate successors, the Roman Catholic laymen even under- took to exercise some option as to the choice of their priests. The liberality and quasi-independence of the Church in America at this time attracted to it many members of the old colonial families in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. In Massachusetts, the Catholics rejoiced in the presence of two remarkable men, Francis A. Matignon and John Lefebvre Cheverus. Like so many of the Roman Catholic priests of that time in America, they were Frenchmen born and were men of culture.2 Under their administrations, Roman Catholics in Boston, who had numbered about one hundred in the first year of the century and about seven hundred in 1808, increased to over two thousand in 1820.3 In New York the opposition to the Roman Catholics in the early decades of the century was very marked. They belonged to the church of the old French invaders and the memories of Dutch contests with Spanish Catholics in the Netherlands was still a matter of vigorous tradition. But with the accession to power of Bishop Hughes a period of rapid development set in. In the years after Bishop
1 Thomas O'Gorman's History of the Roman Catholic Church, 269.
2 There are some interesting notes on the beginnings of Roman Catholicism in New England and references to other books in American Catholic Historical Researches for 1887, pp. 12-18. See also James Fitton's Sketches of the
Establishment of the Church in New England (Boston, 1872) and Hamon'a Life of Cardinal Cheverus translated by E. Stewart.
* For other estimates see American Catholic Historical Researches for 1887, p. 18.
1830]
THE ROMAN CATHOLICS
215
Carroll's death in 1815 the Catholic churches in Philadelphia and New York had become almost congregational societies. In Philadelphia, Father Hogan, of St. Mary's parish, even celebrated mass contrary to orders from Rome, for which he was excommunicated by the church authorities.1 In the end the trustees aixd congregations in Philadelphia and New York and elsewhere were obliged to give way and ultimately, throughout the country, the local Catholic authority, or the bishop of the diocese, has come to be recognized as the legal holder of the church property. In the early part of the nineteenth century an interesting case came up for settlement in New York as to the respon- sibility of a priest for the revelation of knowledge that had come to him in the confessional. Father Anthony Kohlman, who was then administering the diocese, being questioned on the witness stand, refused to reveal anything that had been said to him in the confessional. He was ready to do his duty as a private citizen, he said, but as a priest his con- science and his duty would prevent him from stating what had learned in the discharge of his clerical functions.2 \) do otherwise would make him a traitor to his church, his linistry, and his God. It would render him "guilty of eternal damnation" and he would go to prison or to instanta- leous death before endangering his soul. The court through its president, De Witt Clinton, thereupon decided that a >riest could not be compelled to testify as to what had come him only through the confessional.
111 Documents Relating to the Case Rev. William Hogan, and the Schism St. Mary's Church, Philadelphia" in Works of the Right Rev. John England (Baltimore, 1849), v, 109- 213. A copy of the excommunication of Father Hogan is on page 485 of W. Oland Bourne's History of the Public Society of the City of New York ;
see also p. 495 for an earlier form of excommunication .
2 Thomas O'Gorman's History of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, 313, 314, and J. G. Shea's History of the Catholic Church, iii, 165-167. The trial is printed in The Catholic Question in America re- ported byW. Sampson (New York, 1813).
216
[Cn. VII
The first great accession of Roman Catholics came with the purchase of Louisiana which brought into the religious population of the country about one hundred thousand communicants of that faith. With them came also a contest that had been raging for some years between the regular church authorities of Louisiana and the Capuchins. The latter maintained that they had had certain proprietary rights in the province in the Franco-Spanish days. Ulti- mately they were obliged to yield, but not until the dispute had greatly hindered the prosperity of the Catholic Church in the Mississippi Valley. With the annexation of Cali- fornia and New Mexico in the course of the Mexican War, other historic bodies of Roman Catholics came into the American commonwealth ; but the great accessions to the northeastern part of the United States were Irish immigrants from the old country across the Atlantic. These began coming in large numbers in the 1840's. They settled in the commercial cities of the seaboard for the most part. Soon English and continental clerics gave place to Irish priests and the church rapidly drifted away from the old population of the country. It became an immigrant church and its rapidly growing strength alarmed many persons. Moreover, as it increased in size its rulers became more and more insistent upon acquiescence in their demands and especially in freedom to carry out the established features of their faith. In New York, Bishop Hughes conducted a manful fight to bring about a diversion of a part of the public school fund for the support of Roman Catholic schools. Objections were raised to the books used in the schools that were then under the care of the Public School Society. This was a private corporation that had been established by benevolent persons to provide better in- struction for the poor children of the city. Originally, most
1840]
THE ROMAN CATHOLICS
217
of its members had belonged to the Society of Friends, but by 1840 it included members of many evangelical faiths. This society had built up a great organization that was prob- ably one of the best bits of pedagogical enterprise in the country. When the Roman Catholics objected to the books used in their schools the society met them with a friendly spirit and blotted out passages that were objectionable as one in Maltebrun's "Geography" animadverting on the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy in Italy ; but it soon appeared that concessions of this kind were not at all what were wanted. In 1841, the Roman Catholics cast enough votes in the New York City election for members of the State Assembly to attract the attention of the politicians and to bring from Governor Seward an earnest message. The result was the passage of the School Law of 1842 which established a public Board of Education for that city and diverted the public money to it from the School Society. For some years two sets of schools were maintained ; but this was a condition of things that could not last and in 1853 the School Society turned over its property to the public authorities and went out of existence.1
As the century advanced and the Roman Catholic num- bers increased, fear of them became acute. They had estab- lished convents and houses of refuge for men and women in different parts of the country, and around them all kinds of stories gathered. These finally became associated in the minds of many people with the so-called confessions of Maria Monk, who was supposed to have been an inmate of a Catholic institution at Montreal. Escaping from this )lace, according to her story, she fell into the hands of persons who realized what an effective use might be made
1 W. Oland Bourne's History of the Public School Society of the City of New York. The greater part of this volume
is occupied with this contest, giving long extracts from documents on both sides.
218
THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE [Cn. VII
of her. Soon the "Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk" appeared.1 They created a tremendous stir and led to further confessions by herself and by others.2 Later a thoroughly competent historical student went over the Canadian convent, book in hand, and proved the whole story to be false.3 The tale, however, had served its pur- pose by adding to the suspicion and dread of the Roman Catholic conventual houses held by very many Protestants. In 1844, there were several riots in Philadelphia directed against the Irish and the Roman Catholics. In a few days buildings were burned in that city and neighborhood, the militia and public officials standing idly by.4 The most spectacular of these aggressions on the Roman Catholics was the burning of the Ursuline Convent at Somerville near Boston by a band of people from that city in August, 1834. A former occupant of that institution, Rebecca T. Reed, had related stories about it greatly to its prejudice.6 In 1834, one of the nuns living there had a nervous breakdown and wandered away. The next day she was brought back by the Catholic bishop of the diocese, for the convent was the best place for her. Everything was on a perfectly friendly footing and she was at entire liberty to leave at any time that she wished. The story, however, assumed the form of an account of an imprisonment of a woman and a Boston mob set out to rescue her.6 She met her would-be
1 First printed at New York and reprinted at Philadelphia, San Fran- cisco, and elsewhere. See also the Works of the Right Rev. John England (Baltimore, 1849), v, 347-418.
* See Confessions of a French Cath- olic Priest edited by S. F. B. Morse (New York, 1837).
* See William L. Stone's A aria Monk and the Nunnery of the Hotel Dieu (New York, 1836).
4 McMaster's People of the United States, vii, 375-383; Address of the
Catholic Lay Citizens of . . . Phila- delphia ... in Regard to the Causes of the Late Riots; and the tracts listed in the note to p. 383 of McMaster.
* Later these were collected into a book and printed as Six Months in a Convent (Boston, 1835). For a Roman Catholic view see An Answer to Six Months in a Convent by the Lady Su- perior (Boston, 1835) and the Works oj the Right Rev. John England, v, 232-347.
6 See Report of the Committee, re- lating to the Destruction of the. Ursu-
1850]
RELIGIOUS STATISTICS
219
liberators at the door of the convent ; but nothing she could do or say could convince them that she was safe within its walls. They compelled all the inmates of the building to leave, although some of them were ill. They searched the house thoroughly, plundered it effectively, and set it on fire. The religious and racial jealousies that had been aroused by the occurrences that have just been noted assumed a political form with the rise of the Native Ameri- can Party.
Statistics of the churches are more vague and untrust- worthy than those of population and industry, — which is saying a good deal ; but if we make large allowances and do not draw too fixed conclusions from them the figures are worth putting together and setting down. The popula- tion of the United States in 1850 was a little over twenty- three millions and there were something over fourteen million "aggregate accommodations" in all churches, accord- ing to the " Census " of that year, by which must be under- stood seating capacity.1 Of this total, nearly seven hundred thousand was set down by the census takers of 1850 as belonging to the Roman Catholics and fifteen thousand to the Jews,2 leaving the rest to the Protestants. It has been often claimed and is no doubt true that it is difficult to put
Convent (Boston, 1834) ; Massa- lusetts Historical Society's Proceed- gs, 2nd Series, iii, 216 ; An Account the Conflagration of the Ursuline Convent (Boston, 1834) ; Trial of John Buzzell . . . for Arson and Burg- in the Ursuline Convent (Bos- , 1834) ; The Trial of the Persons rged loith Burning the Convent (Bos- Dn, 1834). For other titles, see James ?. Hunnewell's Bibliography of Charles- i,58.
1 These figures are taken from the
Census of 1850, pp. ix, Ivii and fol.,
1016 and fol. The figures of "ac-
ammodations " in this census are re-
peated in the Compendium of the Ninth Census, 516, 517.
*In 1818, Mordecai M. Noah esti- mated the number of Jews in the United States at 3000 ; in 1848, there were 50,000 according to M. A. Berk; see United States Census, Special Re- ports, Religious Bodies; 1906, Pt. ii, 320. Up to 1919 the Jews have pub- lished little valuable historical ma- terial for the Publications of the Ameri- can Jewish Historical Society are largely argumentative. Ezekiel and Lichtenstein's History of the Jews of Richmond gives promise of better things.
220
THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE [Cn. VII
the Roman Catholic figures side by side with the Protestant, because in the Catholic Church several persons may use one accommodation on one or every Sunday of the year ; whereas, in the Protestant churches, in the old settled regions, one sitting per church attendant would be the rule, but in the newer settled country and in the church of some popular city preacher the number of attendants greatly exceeds the number of sittings and far exceeds the number of com- municants. Probably it would not be far out of the way to set down three-quarters of the inhabitants of the United States as belonging to some Christian organization in 1850, or at all events, as considering themselves within the Chris- tian fold.
Proceeding now to an endeavor to trace the growth of some of the Christian bodies, the total number of Roman Catholics in the United States in 1800, before the purchase of Louisiana and the accession of Mexican territory, is generally given as one hundred thousand in round numbers,1 and the number of Roman Catholics in 1850, after these accessions and the first wave of Irish immigration, is set down as one and one-half millions, — each Roman Catholic sitting ac- counting for two or three communicants. Sorting out, adding, and multiplying the numbers of "accommodations" as given in the " Census " of 1850, it would appear, therefore, that not far from three hundred thousand Roman Catholics were added to the population of the United States by reason of the acquisitions of the first half of the nineteenth century. Making every allowance for the increase of the native Cath- olic population since 1800, it would appear that the great mass of the Roman Catholic communicants in 1850 were im- migrants, mainly from Ireland, and their children. Most of
Orleans Territory
JO'Gonnan in his History of the Roman Catholic Church, p. 293, gives the number of Catholics in the United
States outside of at 70,000.
1850] RELIGIOUS STATISTICS 221
the remainder were of Spanish or French origin ; in other words the great mass of the Roman Catholics in the United States had not grown up in the midst of American political institutions.
Apart from the Roman Catholic exotic growth and from the increase in the isolated faiths — Unitarians, Univer- salists, and others — the interest in religious development centred about the Baptists, the Presbyterians, and the Methodists ; for these were the three great frontier religious organizations that grew with the growth of Transappalachia. From the best figures attainable, the Presbyterians increased in the fifty years from forty thousand to one-half a million, the Baptists from one hundred thousand to eight hundred thousand, and the Methodist Episcopal Church in all its branches from sixty-five thousand to over one and one- quarter millions.1 Of course some of this growth occurred in the "Old Thirteen" and there it represented a withdrawal from the two religious bodies that might well be called established, the English Episcopalian or Anglican Church and the Congregational connection.
Conditions on the frontier — in the mountainous regions of the older States and in the newly settled regions of the Mississippi Valley — were favorable to the peculiar in- fluences and modes of procedure of the Baptists and the Methodists and to a less degree, of the Presbyterians. All these represented religious proceedings in which every one could take part and the manifestations of faith had some- thing tangible in them and emotional. Among "historical sources" of the nineteenth century few are better worth reading than the reminiscences, letters, and journals of
1 These figures as to the strength of Evangelical faiths. Dr. Dorchester religious organizations are taken from put a great deal of labor into this corn- Daniel Dorchester's Christianity in pilation and under each entry gives a the United States, p. 615 ror the Roman definite citation to his authority. Catholics, and pp. 733-735 for the
222
THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE [On. VII
Asbury and his followers and of the Baptist l and Pres- byterian ministers. The activities and accomplishments of the itinerants are startling. It is estimated that Asbury, the Methodist Bishop, preached more than sixteen thousand sermons, ordained more than four thousand preachers, and travelled on horseback or in carriages nearly three hundred thousand miles at a period when travelling was difficult and oftentimes dangerous.2 His salary was sixty-four dollars a year and the conditions of his life were such that he could not think of marriage. He might well be described as the greatest of the circuit riders, although he never rode what was technically called a circuit ; but the careers of the actual circuit riders were full of human interest, and besides carry- ing the religious impulse to the uttermost parts of the land, they bore with them the elements of education.
The astonishing growth of the Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian sects in the newer part of the country dates back to the Great Revival of 1800 in eastern Kentucky. The people living there were of the primitive type, working and sleeping in the midst of danger and lacking everything but the bare necessities of existence. Moreover, they belonged to the Scotch Irish race, which, for the most part, was singularly impressionable. James McGready appears to have been the first moving force, but it was not until the coming of the brothers McGee, William and John, one a Methodist and the other a Presbyterian, that the movement assumed the proportions of a religious revolution. Twenty
1 The hardships and the spirit of the life of a Baptist minister are well illustrated in the Memoir of Elder John Peak, written by himself (Boston, 1832) and P. Donan's Memoir of Jacob Creath, Jr. (Cincinnati, 1872).
1 This computation is from J. M. Buckley's History of Methodists in the United States, 345. See for details of a journey or two W. P. Strickland's
Pioneer Bishop : or. The Life and Times of Francis Asbury, chs. vi, ix. An idea of the extent and variety of Asbury's labors may be had from The Heart of Asbury's Journal, edited by E. S. Tipple in 1904 or from H. M. Du Bose's Francis Asbury, A Biographical Study (Nashville, Tenn., 1916).
1800] THE GREAT REVIVAL 223
years later, the latter set down his recollections of the revival in a letter 1 that has been widely reprinted. The two went to the Red River settlement in Kentucky in 1799, drawn thither by curiosity to witness McGready's methods of exhortation, about which they had heard a great deal. After he and two other ministers had preached and the day was drawing to a close and the other ministers had left, the McGees remained with most of the people. William sat down on the floor of the pulpit, but the power of God was upon John. He told the people that he was appointed to preach ; he exhorted them to let the Lord God reign in their hearts and their souls should live. A woman suddenly broke silence and "shouted tremendously." McGee left the pulpit to go to her, but hesitated for a moment. Then "the power of God was strong upon me," so he asserted twenty years later. He turned again, and, losing sight of the fear of man, went through the house "shouting and exhorting with all possible ecstasy and energy." The floor was soon covered with "the slain"; their screams for mercy pierced the heavens and mercy came down.2 Soon afterward, the McGee brothers were instrumental in instituting the first great camp meeting, where thousands of people came together from "far and near" to enjoy their ministrations.
1 A. H. Redford's History of Meth- wright, the Backwoods Preacher and
odism in Kentucky, i, 267-272, citing Richard M'Nemar's The Kentucky
the Methodist Magazine, iv, 189- Revival; or a Short History of the Late
191. Extraordinary Outpouring of the Spirit
* D. L. Leonard's "Kentucky Re- of God in the Western States of America vival of 1799-1805" is a very life- are most widely used by writers, like and not sympathetic account of M'Nemar's book was printed origi- this event (Papers of the Ohio Church nally in 1807 and therefore has the History Society, v, 44-71). A much merit of contemporaneousness. Rob- longer account is Catharine C. Cleve- ert Davidson's History of the Presby- land's The Great Revival in the West, terian Church in Kentucky contains 1797-1805. A fairly complete bibliog- criticisms of the doings of the re- raphy is at the end of the second of vivalists which are vigorously an- these books, but Leonard gives a brief swered in the last half of F. R. Cos- list of available works. W. P. Strick- sitt's Life and Times of Rev. Finit land's Autobiography of Peter Cart- Swing.
224 THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE [Cn. VII
At one time, night came on and the task was not finished, so they made what shelter they could and remained — whole families, day after day and night after night — until their food was exhausted and they had to leave. One can imagine the scene as darkness fell, with the camp-fires blazing and the sound of song rising and falling and the preachers, often of different faiths, two or three of them exhorting at one time. The people "fell" by the hundreds, and those who continued prostrate were conveyed to the neighboring meeting house or to a tent and there laid away until they came to. Many of them had the "jerks," which were involuntary hysterical movements, by which the head swayed from side to side and sometimes the body bounded over the ground. At one great camp meeting, one in six of those present were numbered among the "slain." Possibly the best description of the "working of the Lord" in one of these gatherings was written by a New Yorker who went to a Methodist camp meeting in Maryland some years later. For some time he himself had been wrestling with the spirit. On this occasion "the Holy Ghost as a mighty rushing wind" came into his soul. He rose from his seat, gave "two or three jumps" and fell upon the ground. Then the preacher leaped from the^ stand "as a giant exhil- arated with wine and went through the congregation shout- ing and exhorting, and the holy fire seemed to run amongst the stubble with a perfect blaze." 1 Revivals were not by any means confined to the frontier or to the Southern and Middle States, they were also a regular part of the Congre- gational and Presbyterian religious system in New England. Lyman Beecher led strenuous revivals in Litchfield, Con- necticut, and later in Boston. They brought many converts
1 Incidents in the Life of George W. Henry (Utica, 1846), pp. 200- 203.
1830] THE METHODISTS 225
to the church, but they lacked the picturesqueness and the hysteria of the frontier.1
In the three-cornered contest for converts between the Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists, the last-named sect was most successful, although all three added greatly to their numbers in the first forty years of the century. The success of the Methodists was due to their doctrinal liberality in comparison with the Presbyterians and to their wonderful mechanical organization as a sect in comparison with the Baptists. There are, indeed, not many volumes of proceedings of religious bodies that offer more interest to the student of institutions than do those of the Methodist conferences. Asbury and a few missionaries came to America before the Revolution under authorization from Wesley, himself. They made converts, perhaps not as many as they expected to make; but when the Declaration of Independence was signed most of them returned to England. Asbury, himself, and one or two others, remained. After the Revolution, the connection with England was only slowly and haltingly resumed. Wesley recognized Asbury, but sent Dr. Coke to act with Asbury as joint superintendent of the church Jn the United States. Asbury maintained his actual hold on the organization and Coke's position was finally recognized both by himself and by the conference as untenable.2 Within the church Asbury was equally success- ful in maintaining the right of the bishop to rule. The clergy in their conferences would gladly have arranged the appointments, but Asbury was firm on this point and
1 Calvin Colton in his History and Comas's The Psychology of Religious Character of American Revivals of Sects, chs. viii-xi and Frederick M. Religion (London, 1832) defends re- Davenport's Primitive Traits in .Re- vivals as a regular part of religious ligious Revivals.
exercise and declares that the evil 2 See Samuel Drew's Life of the Rev.
things connected with them are no Thomas Coke, LL.D., New York,
worse than what happens out of them. 1837, pp. 71-147. See on this general subject H. C. Mc-
VOL. V. Q
226 THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE [Ca. VII
won. In the early years the Methodist minister was an itinerant unless ill health incapacitated him from movement, in which case he was given a superannuated charge or was "located." Remaining stationary, however, was a mark of feebleness and removed one from the possibility of doing great service to the church in making converts. The appointments were made at the close of the yearly conference after all the business was done ; the horses were ready for their riders when the bishop announced, one at a time, the appoint- ment of each circuit for the coming, year. There was no appeal, the only thing to do was to accept the appointment and do the best that one could. At every conference the " characters " of the members were passed in review. Every year a man's doings were canvassed by his fellows, and failure met its speedy reward as did success, — the latter leading to ever greater tasks and greater opportunities. As long as this militant discipline was maintained, the church grew under the most adverse circumstances that one can well imagine.
As the century advanced, the sects became more closely organized and supplemented their personal efforts by a strong printed propaganda. Each of them had its publish- ing arrangements, sometimes independent of all other printing establishments, but sometimes two or three of them united for some special purpose or some particular line of action. Of these, possibly the most active was the American Tract Society which was the successor of the New England Religious Tract Society that had been founded in 1814. In 1825, the different tract societies were merged into a national organization which lasted until 1859. It issued leaflets and books of from four to sixteen pages each, which were gathered into twelve volumes. It was a child or a replica of the Religious Tract Society that had been insti-
1830] RELIGIOUS PUBLICATIONS 227
tuted at London in 1799. It repeated many of the English tracts, using the same illustrations, but oftentimes employed an English cut for a purpose unlike that of its original use. In 1826, the directors of the society stated that they had already issued more than two and one-half million tracts, and their efforts had only begun.1 The Bible societies, denominational, State, and national, worked together and at one time were merged into one organization. The ambi- tion of the leaders in this enterprise was to see to it that every family in the United States possessed a Bible. They also supplied hotels and prisons so that in the United States from 1830 to 1860, the Bible was everywhere accessible in the settled parts of the country. Several of the sects possessed their own publishing houses. Of these the earliest and best known was the Methodist Book Concern that may be said to have gone back to 1788.
One of the most interesting contests in the denominational history of the first half of the nineteenth century was over slavery and abolition. The Methodists were very strong throughout the South, as were the Baptists and the Pres- byterians. Life in that part of the country was dependent upon the slave system. Farming and housekeeping, except on the humblest scale, demanded the ownership of one or more negro slaves, because they were the only farm and domestic labor to be had. Oftentimes, also, slaves would come to a clergyman through inheritance of himself or his wife, for in many Southern States it was practically im- possible to emancipate a slave. In the first decades, these churches were either silent as to slavery or were pro-slavery. The Methodists omitted from their discipline Wesley's prohibition of the ownership of man and for a long time the
1 Instances of wonderful effects of of the American Tract Society, pp. tracts are in Eighth Annual Report 60-67.
228 THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE [Cn. VII
opposition to slaveholding on the part of clergy and laity was confined to New England and to New York.1 Indeed, the language of other conferences was hostile to "the mad- running Garrisonian abolitionists." By 1840, one begins to be conscious of a great change in the Northern conferences. The matter came to a head over the case of Bishop James 0. Andrew of Georgia, who had inherited a slave and had married a woman who was a slaveholder and^ in both cases it was impossible to free them owing to the laws and to the conditions under which they had been inherited. In 1844, however, the General Conference voted that Bishop Andrew must either get rid of his slaves or cease to exercise the func- tions of a Methodist bishop. The adoption of this vote was the signal for the withdrawal of the Southern conferences and in 1845 they set up for themselves as the Methodist Episcopal Church South.2 They sent representatives to the General Conference the next year, but these were not admitted within the bar. For the next few years there was a vigorous contest between the two Methodist church bodies for the possession of the Border States. In the course of this struggle the people often took the law of God and man into their own hands and abused and even, occasionally, tarred and feathered cleric and layman, who were not sympathetic on the slave question.
The Sunday School or Sabbath School system,3 as it has
1 W. W. Sweet's Methodist Episcopal York, 1901) and the works mentioned Church and the Civil War, 15-18 ; chap- in her footnotes and in a bibliography ter x of this book contains an excellent on pp. 246-257 ; C. S. Lewis's Work bibliography on the "Slavery Struggle of the [Episcopalian] Church in the in the Church." Rev. John Wesley's Sunday School; and Lewis G. Fray's "Thoughts upon Slavery" are added History of Sunday Schools and of Re- to Rev. O. Scott's Grounds of Seces- ligious Education (Boston, 1847), chs. sion from the M. E. Church (New xxi, xxii. A. D. Matthews's " Memory York, 1851), pp. 193-229. Sketch of Early Sunday-School Work
2 See H. B. Bascom's Methodism in Brooklyn, New York" in the Ap- and Slavery (Frankfort, Ky., 1845). pendix to E. C. Matthews's A. D.
1 See Marianna C. Brown's Sun- Matthews' Autobiography has the in- day-School Movements in America (New terest of personal recollection.
1840] THE METHODISTS AND SLAVERY 229
been worked out in the Protestant religious organizations in the United States, has a two-fold origin. On the one side it is a duplication of the effort made in England to provide some kind of education for the children who worked during the week, or most of it, in the factories and in the mines.1 This was the well-known Raikes system as it was called from its founder. Otherwise, it grew out of the necessity of providing religious instruction for children in a country where Church and State are absolutely separated. In the Roman Catholic system religious instruction is as much the duty of society as secular education, and, indeed, more so, and is given on week days and supplemented by the catechism on Sunday. In the United States the Roman Catholics necessarily were forced to provide the religious instruction themselves and where they wished to combine it with secular education, as in European countries, to establish and maintain schools of their own where all instruction should be under the direction of the priests. On the other hand, they insisted that all religious teaching should be taken out of the schools sup- ported by taxation and that the Bible should not be read there. In these ways the Protestant churches were forced themselves to provide religious instruction and this they did by the establishment of the Sunday School. These began a vigorous existence in the 1820's and became organized and systematized as the years went by. More- over, as to these there seems to have been a tendency towards common effort on the part of the sects, as was
1 In 1781, Robert Raikes of Glouces- See William B. Tappan's Sunday School,
ter, England, gathered the very poor 22. A school on this model was es-
children together twice on Sunday tablished by Samuel Slater in 1793
for two hours to instruct them in read- for poor children who worked in his
ing and learning the catechism and to factory in Pawtucket, Rhode Island,
lead them to the church. His plan See W. R. Bagnall's Textile Industries
does not seem to have been strictly of the United States, i, 161, 162, and
religious, but these destitute children George S. White's Memoir of Samuel
worked during the week and on the Slater. 117. Sabbath were idle and mischievous.
.
230 THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE [Cn. VII
shown by the joining of the Congregationalists and Baptists and other of the evangelical sects into school unions like the Massachusetts Sunday School Union, which was an auxiliary of the American Sunday School Union. In a table giving a summary of Sunday Schools in 1829—1830, the total num- ber of "scholars" in the whole world is given as one and a half million, no less than one-third of them being in the United States.1 These figures are another attestation of the fact that has already been noticed that the splitting up into groups of religious believers, which is so marked in the first third of the century, did not in any way mean a lessen- ing of religious desire. Another indication of the same trend is in the stiffening of the Sunday laws that one associates with these years.
The early strictness of Sunday observance in New England is familiar to every one, largely on account of the publication of the bogus Blue Laws of Connecticut. Throughout New England — except in Rhode Island — no one was permitted to labor or transact business of any kind or to travel or be present at any public diversion on the Lord's Day. On the contrary, every one must apply himself, publicly and privately, to the duties of religion and piety and not disturb public worship under severe penalties. There was a differ- ence of opinion as to the length of the Lord's Day, as to its beginning and its ending. In Massachusetts, in 1823, it legally extended from the midnight preceding to the follow- ing setting of the sun, but no one should be present at any music or dancing or be entertained at a tavern on the even- ing preceding or succeeding the Lord's Day, or should travel except when engaged in a work of necessity or charity.2
1 This table was compiled by Daniel 2 General Laws of Massachusetts
Dorchester, partly from the American (1823), i, 407; Public Statute Lawt oj Quarterly Register for 1829-30 and partly . . . Connecticut (1821), p. 385. from official sources and printed in hia Christianity in the United States, 428.
1830] SUNDAY OBSERVANCES 231
Moreover, at a little earlier time, no vessel should unneces- sarily depart from any of the harbors of the State of Connect- icut and no vessel, anchored in the Connecticut River within two miles of a place of public worship, should weigh anchor between morning light and setting sun on that day, unless to get nearer to the place of public worship.1 These laws and laws like them have generally been regarded as peculiar to New England and to Congregationalism, but in 1822 the laws of the State of Georgia were approximately the same. There was to be no working or selling of goods on the Sabbath in that State and no sports as bear-baiting, foot- ball playing, and horse racing, and the public houses were to be closed, except to those actually living within them. In Alabama, in 1823, no worldly business, shooting, sporting, or gaming was to be practised on Sunday, no store to be open, no wagoner to ply his trade. Similar laws — but a little milder — were to be found in Kentucky and in the States northwest of the Ohio River,2 where the influences of the various bands of immigrants combined to bring about a cessation of worldly employments on the Lord's Day. Of course, it is doubtful how much vitality any one or all of these laws had at any one time or at any one place, or in the country as a whole. There are evidences, however, that the tendency was toward a greater strictness of the observance of the Sabbath as we find petition after petition presented to Congress, or at any rate drawn up, praying for the cessation of work by federal law, as for example the carriage of the mails, within those hallowed hours. In 1828, a union was formed to promote the observance of the Sabbath, and
1 Statute Laws of . . . Connecti- the Statute Law of Kentucky (1822),
cut, Book I (1808), p. 579. ii, 997; Acts of a General Nature . . .
1 Digest of the Laws of . . . Georgia of Ohio (1824), xxii, 196; Revised Lawt
(1822), 510, 511; Digest of the Laws of of Indiana (1831), 194. . . . Alabama (1823), 216; Digest of
232 THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE [Cn. VII
in 1844, a convention was held a,t Baltimore for that purpose which was presided over by John Quincy Adams.1 The progress that was made may be judged from a report to the effect that in 1850 forty railroad companies had stopped the running of their cars on the Sabbath on about four thousand miles of road. Another evidence of the religious earnestness of the time is to be found in the establishment of educational institutions by the different sects at their own cost throughout the country.
It seems to be agreed that a college education was a posi- tive disadvantage to the camp meeting converter or the circuit rider. In one case that came before the Indiana conference where two men, one a college graduate, the other not, rode the same circuit, the non-college man "shouted" louder than his companion, sympathized with the women, and received nearly all the gifts, which he generously divided with his rival. The situation reminds one of the New Englander who said that one of the elders in his church never prayed without breaking all the rules of syntax, but that he would rather have him pray "than any of the best preachers in New York." Readiness in repartee and earnestness in conviction and in demeanor were of more importance to the missionary type of preacher, whether in the city or in the forest, than polished manners or a college training, — and religion was in the missionary stage in America in these early years of the nineteenth century. It was recognized, however, that other things being equal, a knowledge of commentators on the Scriptures and of Bible history was not amiss, especially in debate with one who was a peer in argu- ment, but did not possess book learning. Then, too, it appeared that the laity was being debarred from temporal
1 See An Account of Memorials Dorchester's Christianity in the United presented to Congress (New York, 1829) ; States, 476-477. 3. Q. Adams's Memoirs, xii, 110-114;
1840] RELIGIOUS SEMINARIES 233
education, because people of one faith did not like to send their sons to colleges where they would not be under suitable denominational influences and enjoy the ministrations of their own clergymen. The State universities that came into being in these years did not supply the need for either minister or layman, — a non-sectarian institution was not what was wanted, but one that would be under the un- disputed control of Methodist, or Congregationalist, or Roman Catholic. Seminaries came into existence in num- bers and colleges for the education of one kind of religious youth and of others, if they wanted to attend, also were founded. Many of these institutions led most painful existences and many of them, in the fulness of time, dis- appeared altogether, but their establishment is a witness to the genuineness of the beliefs of their founders and to their desire that the coming generations should have better facilities for gaining knowledge than they themselves had enjoyed. And some of these colleges and universities are today among the strongest spiritual and educational in- fluences in the country.
The intense, long-continued introspection, so charac- teristic of the old type of Congregationalist and of those who were near to him, as the Baptists and the Presbyterians, and the protracted communing with the invisible power, together with the strictness of daily life, led to tremendous reactions when public religious control was slackened or removed. These manifested themselves in reformations of all kinds, from redeeming one's neighbor from the rum habit to rescuing Southern society from the curse of negro slavery ; and they led to the greatest literary efflorescence in our history, and to most extraordinary religious seekings. Of the religious readjusters, Alexander Campbell, Joseph Smith, and William Miller are the most interesting. The last two
234 THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE [Cn. VII
sprang originally from the New England soil, but did not bear fruit until after transplantation to New York and even to the Western Reserve in northern Ohio.1 Alexander Campbell was not a New Englander, but the son of a Scottish immigrant. He had grown up in Presbyterianism, but had broken away from it and had adopted " the primitive Christian faith." 2 He seems to have been a born religious controversialist and the result of his religious debating was the conversion of a very large portion of the Baptist popu- lation of the Western Reserve. They abandoned their covenants and beliefs and followed Alexander Campbell. William Miller began his labors in New York and Vermont. He studied the Bible persistently and took it literally from one cover to the other. After making the most elaborate cal- culations, which can be followed in a chart appended to his "Evidence ... of the Second Coming of Christ, about the Year 1843," 3 Miller prophesied the ending of the world within the twelve months after March, 1843. The number of his followers was extraordinary — more than extraordinary — because any one who sincerely followed him must be prepared on a certain moment of time to abandon all earthly things and with the others of the faithful commune in the ether with the Lord at his second coming. Some of them closed their business well in advance and sat down awaiting the second advent. Others kept on, because the Lord had commanded them to "occupy" until his coming.
1 Mrs. L. A. M. Bosworth's "A Campbell, Leader of the Great Reforma-
Stonny Epoch, 1825—1850" in Papers tion of the Nineteenth Century (St.
of the Ohio Church History Society, Louis, 1897) states the main facts in
vi, 1-22 is a brief, well written account brief compass and in readable form,
of the religious life of the Western Campbell's method can be gathered
Reserve in the Campbellite-Mil- from a perusal of a section of his
lerite-Mormon period. The re- Debate on Christian Baptism, between
ligious spirit of the time and place is The Rev. W. L. Maccalla . . . and
well seen in J. A. Williams's Life of Alexander Campbell (Buffaloe, 1824).
Elder John Smith (Cincinnati, 1870). 'Miller's Evidence was printed at
* Thomas W. Grafton'a Alexander Trov. N. Y., in 1838.
1843] THE MILLERITES 235
When nothing in particular happened in 1843, it was found that errors had been made in the calculation, which could hardly have failed to be the case considering the intricacies of the computations and combinations.1 When nothing happened on the later appointed time, believers began to fall away.
The Church of Christ of the Latter-day Saints or the Mormon Church, as it is usually called, had its rise in the imaginings and business capacity of a very remarkable man, Joseph Smith. He came of a family that had been long on the New England soil. He, himself, was born in Vermont and when ten or eleven, removed to New York State. His early life was unsuccessful from the usual point of view. In the autumn of 1823, when not quite eighteen years of age and living at Manchester, Wayne County, New York, he received a visit from a "Messenger of God" who warned him that the preparatory work for the second coming of the Messiah was about to begin and that he had been chosen as an instrument in the hands of the Lord to bring about some of the purposes of this dispensation. In 1827 the "Angel of the Lord" delivered to him certain plates that had the appearance of gold. The plates were seven inches wide by eight inches long and the package was nearly six inches through — each plate being about the thickness of tin. "With the records was found a curious
1 James White's Sketches of the that shows more clearly than the lec-
Christian Life and Public Labors of tures the results of Miller's study and
William Miller (Battle Creek, Mich., cogitation. Those who wish to go
1875) and William Miller's Evidence farther can read in the "Second Ad-
. . . of the Second Coming of Christ vent Library" in eight volumes and in
about the Year 1843 (also in the "Ad- Advent Tracts, especially No. 2 in
vent Library") taken together will vol. ii entitled "First Principles."
exhibit to the ordinary reader the The "Appendix" to Ellen G. White's
thoughts and theories of the great Great Controversy between Christ and
Adventist preacher. At the end of Satan is a clear statement of Miller's
the 1841 edition of the Evidence is a views as to the time of the second
"Chronological Chart of the World" advent.
236 THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE [Cn. VII
instrument, called by the ancients the Urim and Thummim, which consisted of two transparent stones, clear as crystal, set in two rims of a bow"; with these was a breastplate and a sword. The plates were covered with marks. These "by the gift and power of God" and by the use of "Urim and Thummim" Joseph Smith translated and dictated to a scribe, — and in this way the Book of Mormon was written down and the plates were then borne away by the "Angel of the Lord." "The Book of Mormon" was first printed in 1830.1 It describes the coming of a colony to America from the Tower of Babel and its history in the New World. The language closely follows that of the Old Testament in the King James version and the story told in it is a variant of the Old Testament narrative. As originally printed there were many errors of grammar, some New York pro- vincialisms, and some paraphrases of the New Testament. Critics, then and since, have marvelled that the Lord should have used such phrases in the "Golden Book of Cumorah," that chroniclers before the Christian era should have been familiar with the New Testament, and should have re- peated the phrasings of the King James Bible. To this it has been answered that "the highest interpretation" was a reflex of the Prophet's mind and that Joseph Smith, therefore, in dictating, repeated phrases with which he was familiar. It has also been argued that the "Book of Mor- mon" is an adaptation from a manuscript written by: Solomon Spaulding. He was a graduate of Dartmouth, had once been a clergyman, had later failed in business, and had solaced his declining years by writing a supposititious history of the American Indians in Biblical language. The Spauld- ing manuscript has never been produced, but it is averred that somehow it came into the hands of Joseph Smith and
1 For a bibliography of Mormonism, aee Note IV at end of chapter.
1840] THE MORMONS 237
by him was used as the basis for the " Golden Bible " or "Book of Mormon."
At first, as is always the case in religious movements, the gathering of disciples proceeded slowly. It was not until Smith removed to Kirtland in Ohio, some twenty miles to the eastward of Cleveland and in the centre of the Camp- bellite country, that converts flocked to the new dispen- sation. Smith introduced into the new life an element of communism by which the Latter-day Saints lived very much by themselves and conducted their own business operations apart from those of the outer world. This won for them the hostility of the neighbors who used the first legal means that came within reach to eject Smith from their midst. He and his followers removed to Missouri where they increased in numbers, but again aroused the ill will of those around them. They were most inhumanly driven out of the State and settled in Illinois at Nauvoo, just above the Des Moines rapids on the Mississippi River. There they again increased in numbers, again aroused the enmity of the neighbors, and again fled, but not until after Smith himself had been murdered and his place taken by another remarkable man, also of New England stock, Brigham Young. From this time on Mormonism lost some of its missionary character and became partly, at any rate, a community experiment and a very successful one in the heart of the Rocky Mountain region. Today (1920) it is supposed that the Church of the Latter-day Saints numbers more than half a million adherents in the regular church in Utah and its mission establishments throughout the country and in the dissenting Mormon faiths, as the "Reorganized Church" of Joseph Smith, Jr., which is established again at Kirtland on the property of the original church.
In this brief survey of the changing religious scene, it has
238
THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE
not been possible to follow the stories of the Episcopalians, the Baptists, the Univeralists, and others among the sects. Enough has been said, however, to show that seldom in his- tory have men and women developed a more widespread and active religious life than they did in the United States in the years that followed the great wars of the French Revolution and of Napoleon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 239
NOTES
I. General Works. — Daniel Dorchester's Christianity in the United States (New York, 1889) traces religious activities from the
earliest time to 1887. It is the result of long research and is dis- tinctly usable. Containing such a mass of details it is necessarily unreadable and should be used as a cyclopaedia of religion. There is no bibliography but the footnotes point the way to the best au- thorities. The American Church History Series contains denomina- tional histories published under the auspices of the American Society of Church History. The thirteenth volume is Leonard W. Bacon's History of American Christianity. It is a literary survey rather than a cyclopaedia and distinctly reflects the author's religious views. Robert Baird's Religion in America (New York, 1844) was written to exhibit the condition of Christianity in the United States to people of the countries of continental Europe, who found it difficult to under- stand how a " Church " could live without a close connection with the temporal power. It is even today the best brief statement of the religious condition of the American people in the first forty years of the century.
II. The Roman Catholics. — The best brief book is the History of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States by Thomas O'Gorman, Professor of Church History in the Catholic University at Washington, which forms volume ix of The American Church History Series. The bibliography prefixed to this work, while brief and incomplete, is useful. John Gilmary Shea's History of the Catholic Church within the Limits of the United States in four large volumes is a work of scholarly research. Volume i relates to colonial times ; volume ii bears the sub-title of Life and Times of the Most Rev. John Carroll and brings the story down to 1815. Volumes iii and iv carry it on to 1866. This work is abundantly supplied with footnotes, but has no formal bibliography. Thomas Hughes's History of the Society of Jesus in North America contains a mass of documentary material that throws most interesting lights here and there. The American Catholic Historical Researches, the Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, and the American Catholic Quarterly Review contain much important historical material ; but most of the articles in the last named are argumentative rather than historical.
240 THE CHANGING RELIGIOUS SCENE
HI. The Methodists. — The Journal of the Rev. Francis Asbury . . . from August 7, 1771, to December 7, 1816 (3 vols., New York, 1821) is necessarily the foundation on which all extended accounts of the rise of American Methodism are based. W. P. Strickland's Life and Times of Francis Asbury follows it closely. J. M. Buckley's Methodists in the American Church History Series has a useful bibliography and is a good book in itself. The best way, however, to gain an insight is to read in the journals of tthe conferences as, for instance, the Journals of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church; the first volume brings the story down to 1836. Of the separate conferences, the " Minutes of the Indiana Conference, 1832-1844 " forming part ii of W. W. Sweet's Circuit-Rider Days in Indiana is most useful in throwing light on the early Methodist spirit, and part i, which is an historical summary, is very helpful.1 It may be supplemented by the volume on the North Indiana Con- ference by Professor Sweet and H. N. Herrick that relates the history of the Methodist church in northern Indiana down to the present century. An earlier book, J. C. Smith's Reminiscences of Early Methodism in Indiana, contains biographical sketches of members of this conference and there are also separate and more detailed bi- ographies of many of them. A. H. Redford's History of Methodism in Kentucky in three volumes is serviceable, bringing the story down to 1832. An extremely hostile examination of Methodism is J. R. Graves's The Great Iron Wheel; or, Republicanism Backwards and Christianity Reversed, to which a reply was made by W. G. Brownlow, the " Fighting Parson," in The Great Iron Wheel, Examined, and by Francis Hodgson, in The Great Iron Wheel Reviewed (Philadelphia, 1848). The cut showing " Methodism Mechanically Illustrated " facing p. 160 of the first of these books is a forcible illustration of the discipline of the Methodist church.
IV. The Latter-day Saints. — There is no adequate bibliography of Mormonism. The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon . . , By Joseph Smith, Junior, Author and Pro- prietor was published at Palmyra, N. Y., in 1830. The second edition
1 Greenough White's An Apostle are Rev. Charles Elliott's South-Western
of the Western Church is an interesting Methodism and Rev. A. M. Chreitz-
account of religion in the Western berg's Early Methodism in the Caro-
States woven around the life of Bishop linos. Jackson Kemper. Other useful books
BIBLIOGRAPHY 241
— the one now in use — was published at Kirtland, Ohio, in 1837. This is conveniently found in the volume issued by the Mormon Church in 1907 which also contains The Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price, a Selection from the Revelations, Trans- lations, and Narrations of Joseph Smith. Nowadays, the Church seems to rely for spiritual guidance more on the last two than it does on The Book of Mormon. The " Articles of Faith " are printed at the end of The Pearl of Great Price. C. W. Penrose's " Mormon " Doctrine, Plain and Simple published by the Missions of the Church (3rd ed., 1917) is a brief plain statement of its doctrines at the turn of the century.1 George Q. Cannon's Life of Joseph Smith, theProphet (Salt Lake City, 1888) states the case for Mormonism as does B. H. Roberts's Defense of the Faith and the Saints that was printed in 1907- 1912. The other side is set forth by Charles A. Shook in The True Origin of The Book of Mormon and Cumorah Revisited. Neither of these volumes has a bibliography, but the citations at the foot of the pages will take the student as far as he wishes to go.2 An ex- tremely hostile contemporaneous account by an inhabitant of Palmyra or its vicinity is in O. Turner's History of . . . Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, 212-217. Possibly the best way to get at the spirit of Mormonism is to read a volume or two of their serial publications8 in combination with fifty pages or so of The Pearl of Great Price.
1 The official account of the origin Reserve Historical Society's Tracts,
of the sect is the History of the Church iii, 187).
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in * From 1832 to the present day the six volumes. It was published at Salt Mormon Church has used the serial Lake City in 1902-1912. The portion publication as a vehicle : — Evening covering the story to 1844 is said to and Morning Star (Independence, Mo., have been written by Joseph Smith, and Kirtland, Ohio, 1832-1834) ; Latter the Prophet. A series with the same Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate title was issued by the "Reorganized (Kirtland, 1834-1836); Elders' Journal Church" at Lamoni, Iowa, in four (Kirtland and Far West, Mo., 1837- volumes in 1897-1908. The first two 1838) ; Times and Seasons (Corn- volumes contain the history of the merce and Nauvoo, 111., 1839-1846). Church to 1844 ; the last two the later The Latter-Day Saints Millennial Star history of the " Reorganized Church." has been printed in England by the
1 This matter was re-examined by missionaries there from 1841 to the
Jamea H. Fairchild in 1886 (Western present time.
VOL. V. — B
CHAPTER VIII
EDUCATION
THE first third of the nineteenth century is usually re- garded as the most barren in the educational history of English America ; l yet that was the precise time when the reading habit was the most widespread among our people, when the writing of verse and prose was most common, and when our greatest writers were doing their best work or securing their mental stimulus. It is true that there were few public secondary schools outside of the largest towns ; but their places were taken for a portion of the population by the academies. These were day schools or boarding schools or mixed day and boarding schools that were sup- ported in part by public endowments which were largely supplemented by private gifts and fees. Oftentimes, too, pupils worked for their board and sometimes for their board and tuition. Besides the academies, there were private schools supported entirely by payments of the pupils. In the Southern States, academies and private boarding schools were not at all infrequent 2 and many of the richer families employed private tutors to teach their sons and the sons of their friends. Oftentimes, everywhere in the coun-
1 For accounts of earlier times, see These were numerous and active in the present work, vol. ii, ch. xvi and the South. See Mrs. I. M. E. Blan- iii, 566-570. din's History of Higher Education of
2 Many of the academies admitted Women in the South Prior to 1860 girls and there were many academies (New York, 1909) and the memoirs and schools that admitted girls only. of Southern men and women.
242
SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES 243
try, a cultivated maiden aunt exercised a distinct influence over the children of a family. Moreover, the colleges of those days were hardly more than secondary schools, boys habit- ually entering them at from thirteen to fifteen years of age. If the object of education is to produce scholars, the educa- tional system of that time was singularly successful. But its influence was not widespread. The mass of the people had very slight educational opportunities and most of them, indeed, had no educational opportunities beyond the un- graded schools. These were small institutions, having one teacher and from a dozen to thirty pupils, and they were open only from three to five months in the year. To them came children and young men and women from five to seventeen years of age. They brought with them whatever text-books their homes afforded and proceeded to study whatever they could under these circumstances. Given a born teacher, one can hardly conceive of a more fruitful field for the display of pedagogical talents. Undoubtedly in many a town and district there was such a teacher and the young people who came under his or her influence must have been mentally stimulated and educated in the truest sense of the word, — far beyond what they can gain in the ex- cellent graded schools and with the admirable text-books of our own time.
In the closing years of the eighteenth century some colleges had been founded and schools established and im- portant legislative measures had been enacted that were to bear fruit eventually ; but the unrest of those years gave an excuse to the handlers of public money to divert what- ever funds they could get hold of to other uses. In 1789, the Massachusetts State legislature seriously impaired the old colonial school system by providing that the towns, which had formerly been obliged to establish secondary
244 EDUCATION [Cn. VIII
schools whenever the number of families within the town limits reached the one hundred mark, should in the future be obliged to provide those facilities only when the number of families had increased * to two hundred. In New York, Pennsylvania, and other States many laws were passed between 1790 and 1820 dealing with general education ; but very little public money was provided for education in any of these States. In the Southern States, or in some of them, "Literary Funds" were established. These generally were based upon lotteries or on some peculiar financial source. For example, in Delaware, in 1796, the legislature provided that the money that came into the State treasury in the next ten years from marriage and tavern licenses should be devoted to the establishment of local schools where children should be taught English and arithmetic free of cost, but none of this money should be used for acad- emies or colleges. This generosity to education continued for only a year when the legislature provided that the money arising from these sources should be devoted first of all to paying the salaries of the judges and then what was left over should be given to the cause of free education.2 In some of the States, especially in the newer ones, money arising from the public lands was devoted to the education of the people, either by the voluntary action of the State, as in the case of Connecticut, or by reason of the conditions of the grant as in the States organized on the public domain.3 In Virginia the money derived from the sale of the Church
1 Laws of . . . Massachusetts (1807) , History of the Surplus Revenue of 18S7,
i, 469-473 ; see also, the present work, p. 52. vol. i, 432-434; vol. iii, 566-570. * See Clement L. Martzolff's "Land
*Laws of . . . Delaware (1797), ii, Grants for Education in the Ohio
1296-1298, 1352-1354. Delaware in- Valley States" in Ohio Archaeological
vested her share of the surplus de- and Historical Quarterly, xxv, 59;
posits of 1837 in bank stock and in Frank W. Blackmar's "Federal and
railroad bonds; the income she de- State Aid to Higher Education" in
voted to her schools, and was still Bureau of Education's Circular of
doing it in 1880. E. G. Bourne's Information, No. 1, 1890.
1820] LITERARY FUNDS 245
lands and from some other sources was to be paid into the "Literary Fund." l This was to be used for the education of the poor and for such other purposes as the legislatures might direct. In Kentucky a similar fund was established from the profits of the Bank of the Commonwealth.2 Elab- orate provisions were made in the laws in some of these States for education, but many of them did not amount to very much. In 1796, the Virginia Assembly provided that all free children, male and female, should receive tuition free for three years and after that as much longer "at their private expense" as "their parents, guardians, or friends, shall think proper." The electors in each county were to choose three of their best men to be termed "aldermen" to divide the county into sections, provide school houses, and pay the teachers ; 3 but not a single county had carried the plan into effect by 1801. 4 Of the States west of the Appa- lachians, Alabama is in some ways the most interesting. Her land grant was well managed and provided an appre- ciable revenue for education. The income was to be used for the support of the University and academies, and township schools were to be established, so that each school district should contain between thirty and forty pupils.5 It is a most interesting paper educational project; but the speedy conversion of Alabama into a cotton-producing State and the consequent dispersal of the white population made impossible the carrying out of any such plan. The acade- mies, however, grew and flourished and the University for
1 Revised Code of . . . Virginia * Governor James Monroe to the
(1819), i, 89. Virginia Assembly in his Writings,
1 Digest of . . . Law of Ken- iii, 309.
tucky (1822, vol. ii, p. 871). North 6 These laws were enacted in the
Carolina also had a "Literary Fund," years 1818-23, see Digest of the Laws
see South Atlantic Quarterly, xiii, 270, . . . of Alabama (1823), 643, 647,
361. 552, 670, etc.
* Collection of Acts of the General As- sembly of Virginia (1803, p. 354, 355).
246 EDUCATION [Ca. VIII
some years was remarkably successful, ranking number thirty-nine in the list of collegiate institutions in 1850, out of a total of one hundred and twenty-one.
Of the States organized on the territory northwest of the Ohio River, Ohio and Indiana made the most progress toward a free school system of any of the newer States in the first half of the century.1 Professor Calvin E. Stowe of Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, who married Harriet Beecher, seems to have given the direct stimulus to the establishment of common schools in Ohio. His attention had been attracted to the German system of education. In 1831, Victor Cousin had been sent by the French Minister of Public Instruction to report upon the educational machin- ery of Germany.2 His report was printed at Paris in 1833 and in English at New York in 1835. It aroused great interest in America as well as in France. Cousin declared that in 1831 there was not a single human being in Prussia who did not receive an education "sufficient for the moral and intellectual wants of the laborious classes." Moreover, secondary education was well attended to there, normal schools for teaching the teachers were abundant, and over all was the university, — the whole establishment from bottom to top, or from top to bottom, being under the control of the central governing authority. In 1836 Professor Stowe delivered an address on the "Prussian System of Public Education and its Applicability to the United States." He then sailed for Europe to buy books for Lane Seminary and to investigate the school systems there for the State. On
1 President Butler (Monographs on * M. V. Cousin's Rapport sur L'Etat
Education in the United States, i, p. de L' Instruction Publique dans Quel-
vii) tells us that land greater in area ques Pays de L'Allemagne, et Partic-
than New England, New York, New ulierement en Prusse (new ed., Paris,
Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware all 1833) and translated into English by
put together has been set apart at one S. T. Austin as Report on the State o)
time or another for educational pur- Public Instruction in Prussia (New
poses. York, 1835).
1830] WESTERN SCHOOLS 247
his return he delivered a report 1 to the Legislature that was most favorable to the German system and was adopted as the basis of the educational fabric of Ohio. The legislature at once established a fund for the purpose of free education and decreed that profits to be derived from the canal system and bonuses that might be received from the State Bank should be paid into it.2 It was under these circumstances that the free common school system of Ohio was established in 1837.3 Indiana managed her public lands with a thrift that was not usual. By laws passed in 1824 and 1831, a complete system of education was provided, including a university or two, primary schools, academies, and free common schools. Funds came in slowly, however, and succeeding legislatures were lax in passing laws for which there was no urgent demand on the part of the voter. It happened, therefore, that there was really no system of free schools above those of the district grade before 1850 and, owing to the strength of the religious sects in the State, the public university did not get the support that it deserved.4
1 Calvin E. Stowe's Common Schools O. Randall and Daniel J. Ryan's
and Teachers' Seminaries (Boston, History of Ohio, iii, 367-396 : and Caleb
1839), pp. 5-64. His "Report on Atwater's History of the State of Ohio
Elementary Public Instruction in (2nd ed.) , 298.
Europe" waa made to the 36th Gen- * According to the first Annual
eral Assembly of Ohio, on December Report of Samuel Lewis, Superintendent
19, 1837. of the Ohio Common Schools issued in
1 Two acts were passed for the sup- January, 1838, there were 468,812
port of common schools in 1831. children in Ohio between the ages of
These were altered and extended in four and twenty-one years (242,518
1833, 1834, and later years and in males; 226,294 females). Of these
1838 a State superintendent of public only 146,440 attended school in the
schools was appointed. See Acts of a preceding year and of them 84,296
General Nature . . . of the State of attended for less than four months.
Ohio (Columbus, 1831) , vol. xxix, pp. 4 See Revised Laws of Indiana (Cory-
414, 423. For the later laws see ibid., don, 1824), p. 379, Act of January
vol. xxx, p. 4; vol. xxxi, p. 24; vol. 31, 1824, and Revised Laws of Indiana
xxxii, p. 35, etc.; Statutes of . . . Ohio (Indianapolis, 1831), p. 463, Act of
(1841), 819-845, etc.; A. D. Mayo's February 10, 1831. For a good, brief
"Development of the Common School summary of early education in Indiana,
in the Western States from 1830 to see A. D. Mayo's "Development of the
1865" forming chapter viii of Report Common School," 373—380, in United
of the United States Commissioner States Commissioner of Education's
of Education for 1898-99, vol. i; E. Report, 1898-1899, vol. i.
248 EDUCATION [Cn. VIII
In fact these paper educational systems, based on federal land grants and on adventitious financial sources as tavern licenses, do not seem to have had much life in the early days and it was not until the people began to pay for them as tax payers — direct or indirect — that they began to take an effective interest in them. The best example of the deaden- ing effect of education without cost to the voters is seen in the case of Connecticut, where the funds derived from the sale of lands in the Western Reserve obviated the necessity of public grants by the State and local units. As far as this money went,1 the school system was well provided for, but as the population grew and systems increased in cost, Connecticut lagged behind her two great neighbors.
The schools, such as they were, were "free" in the sense only that no white person was excluded from them by reason of poverty or position in the social scale. Ordinarily, the local school unit was authorized to levy a moderate tax upon the inhabitants of the school area for educational purposes. This was usually inadequate for the payment of the teacher's wages, small though they were. The balance was made up by the teacher's "boarding round" — • staying in each family so many days, according to the number of children that came from that house to the school. Fuel was provided by the families according to the number of pupils in each household. Whatever money had to be raised by the district to pay the teacher's wages and to repair the school house was divided among the families, also, according to the children of school age. This was called the rate bill, and in many States the assessors were authorized
to excuse from the payment of the school rate those persons
.
1 See an act of the General As- share of this fund for religious pur-
eembly, dated May, 1795, which poses, they may do so ; Acts and Laws
provides that if two-thirds of the legal of . . . Connecticut (1796), p. 31. voters in any town wish to use their
1830] THE MIDDLE STATES 249
who were unable to pay it. Their children could go to school, but they were referred to officially as "pauper pupils" or "charity pupils."
A good example of the working of the charity school system is to be found in Pennsylvania. The constitution of that State of 1790 directed the legislative body to provide education for the poor gratis, as soon as convenient.1 Naturally, nothing was done for some years. In 1812, however, provision was made for the free education of poor children, but it was done in such a way as to put a stigma upon the child, as the recipient's name was entered upon a special list as a poor person. The working people looked askance at the system : they wanted their children to be educated, but were not able to pay for it, or thought they were not, and felt that the tax-paying part of the community ought to provide for the education of the children of the "workies" in common with their own.2 In answer, the Pennsylvania legislature established a permissive system of common schools at public expense so far as the different portions of the State wished to have them. Not very much was accomplished under this law, partly because of the racial distinctions that prevailed in the different parts of the State.3 In 1801, the legislature of New York authorized
1 Constitutions of Pennsylvania ments relating to this subject are printed
(Harrisburg, 1916), p. 194, article vii, in American Industrial Society, vol. v. sec. 1. The second section provides * Proceedings and Debates of the
that "The arts and sciences shall be Convention of the Commonwealth of
promoted in one or more seminaries Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, 1838), v,
of learning." These two provisions 183. For further debates on educa-
were repeated verbatim in the con- tion, see ibid., vols. xi, xii, and xiv,
Btitution of 1838. It was not until using the indexes, and pp. 297-305
the constitution of 1873 (article x, of Isaac Sharpless' Two Centuries of
sec. 1) that a direct provision was Pennsylvania, History. In 1837, the
made in the fundamental law of the Secretary of State reported that the
State for the maintenance of a system "public cost of education" amounted to
of public schools (see ibid., p. 67). $585,000 for primary instruction, acad-
1 See Commons and Associates' emies had received $106,900 and land
History of Labour in the United States, worth $135,000, and colleges had
using index under "education," es- been paid in money and land $260,000.
pecially vol. i, 223-230. Many docu- Moreover, a school house fund of nearly
250 EDUCATION [Cn. VIII
the raising of one hundred thousand dollars by four successive lotteries for the promotion of literature. A part of this money was to be given to institutions of a higher grade,1 but a part was to be paid over to those who were actually educating the children in the common schools of the State and there, as in Philadelphia, the work was being done by private societies. And there, as in Philadelphia, the working people thought that their children should be educated by the public without any expense to the parents.
The leaders in this movement for free public schools in the two great industrial States were Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright. Owen had been a pupil of Fellenberg's at Hofwyl in Switzerland. Their plan was worked out in the "Sketch of a System of National Education" by Frances Wright.2 According to this plan the State should be or- ganized into districts. All the children within each district from two to sixteen years of age should be gathered into public schools in three groups, the middle group comprising those from six to twelve years. The parents were to be allowed to visit the children at stated times, but were not to interfere in any way with them. The pupils were to be instructed in every branch of knowledge, intellectual and operative, or vocational. The produce of the labor of the older pupils would in time exceed the cost of their own training and the surplus could be devoted to the maintenance of the others. For the rest, the parents were to pay some- thing in money, labor, produce, or domestic manufactures, and whatever other expense there was should be met by a progressively increasing tax on property. From the age of
half a million had been expended, Pro- * Popular Tracts, No. 3 (New York,
ceedings and Debates of the Convention 1830). For a substantial account of
. . . of Pennsylvania (1837), iii, pp. 6, 7. her, see G. B. Lockwood's New Har-
1 Laws of . . . New York passed many, 186 and fol. ... in the year 1801 (Albany, 1887), v, 299.
18371 HORACE MANN 251
two years, the children would be under the care of the State. No inequality of any kind would be allowed, they would be clothed in a common garb, "uniting neatness with simplicity and convenience" and would eat at a common table and exercise common duties. This nationalization of children did not commend itself to any large number of persons at that time, 1830 ; but something similar to it was tried in more than one of the "communities" which were so frequent in the first part of the century.1
Resulting partly from the work of semi-professional agitators and partly from the widespread reformatory spirit of the time, legislatures and those interested in educa- tion pushed forward the establishment of common schools. These were schools above the primary grade that were free to all and entirely supported by public money, and in which the studies taught were modernized by the dropping of Greek and Latin and better facilities were provided for the comfort of pupils and teachers.2 The person who had most to do with the practical bringing to pass of the changes in the school system was Horace Mann of Massachusetts. Largely owing to his efforts, a State Board of Education was established in Massachusetts, in 1837, thus introducing the Prussian system of educational organization.3 Mann became secretary of this board. He travelled all over the State examining schools and drew up reports that put an end forever to the old idea of local control of educational
1 See below, ch. xv. the area of Virginia "it is unques-
1 See "Report" of the Committee tionable that she has more influence
on Education of the Massachusetts in our confederacy than any other State
House of Representatives, presented in it. Whence this ascendancy ? From
January 29, 1827, Massachusetts House her attention to education, unques-
Reports, 1826-27, Nos. 29 and 34. tionably. There can be no stronger
1 Jefferson, in 1820, speaking of the proof that knowledge is power, and that
influence of the old Massachusetts ignorance is weakness." Early History
school system, said that although of the University of Virginia, . . .
that State was the twenty-first State in the Letters of Thomas Jefferson and
in point of size and only one-tenth Joseph C. Cabell, 193.
252 EDUCATION [Cn. VIII
institutions. New standards were set up and the schools, not only of Massachusetts but of other States, felt it neces- sary to come up to them or to approach them at any rate. Horace Mann also brought about the establishment of a few normal schools for the training of teachers.1 This meant the formation of a class of professional pedagogues, — for up to that time teachers, apart from the keepers of "dame schools," had been college students in the seven weeks winter vacation or students of law, physic, or theol- ogy.2 There was great opposition to these changes by the old timers and their influence was so strong with the legis- lature that Horace Mann, although a public official, was at one time obliged to rely upon the contributions of rich men to keep the new system alive. In 1847, he resigned his office to become a member of Congress, but in ten years he had directed the tide of interest in educational matters towards improved, free, secondary schools of an unsectarian character.3 In time free high schools were superadded to this system which in its perfected form was intended to provide free instruction of the old collegiate grade for every child in the State. As a part of the general movement, state-aid was taken away from academies and the old
1 See Putnam's Primary and Sec- defence of them will be found in Re-
ondary Education in Michigan, 136. marks on the Seventh Annual Report
* In 1804, commencement was usu- of the Hon. Horace Mann (Boston, ally at the end of August, the winter 1844); his Reply to the "Remarks" vacation seven weeks from the third (Boston, 1844) ; Leonard Withing- or fourth Wednesday in December, ton's Penitential Tears; or a Cry from and two weeks in May and four weeks the Dust, by " The Thirty-One," Pros- after commencement, Columbian Al- trated and Pulverized by the Hand of manack for 1804, p. 43. Horace Mann, Secretary, &c. (Boston,
* Mrs. Mary Peabody Mann's 1845) ; and George B. Emerson's 06- Life and Works of Horace Mann (3 servations on a Pamphlet entitled " Re- vols., Boston, 1865-68). His edu- marks." Much interesting informa- cational papers are included in these tion is to be found in the reports of the volumes, which were later enlarged "Visiting Committees" of the Boston and reprinted by his son, Horace schools as that for 1845 forming "City Mann, in 5 volumes in 1891. A strong Document" No. 26 for that year, criticism of Mann's methods and his
1840] PUBLIC SCHOOLS 253
colleges, which in the future had to rely on private bene- factions and tuition fees for support.
The tax payers and the well-to-do generally were against any scheme of the kind such as Horace Mann and his fellow laborers wished to see established. They paid for the education of their own children and failed to see why they should also pay for the education of the children of their neighbors. As the century advanced and an industrial class came into being and as the number of immigrants in- creased an entirely new outlook was presented. It was then easy to argue that with the extension of the franchise and the establishment of a laboring class, education would be a species of insurance against attacks on property, pauperism, and crimes of violence. Jefferson, with his keen insight, asserted that the establishment of a free public educational system at the cost of the tax payers would be a direct benefit to the rich man. It would people his neighbor- hood with " honest, useful, and enlightened citizens, under- standing their own rights, and firm in their perpetuation." Moreover, within three generations, the rich man's descend- ants would themselves be poor and would benefit by the free public school system that had been established by their grandfathers' money.
It is truly remarkable how slight America's contribution had been to the practice and organization of teaching. Our school system comes from Prussia, our pedagogics down to 1860 at any rate from Switzerland, from Pestalozzi, Emanuel Fellenberg, and Louis Agassiz. The ideas seem to have been those of Pestalozzi, but their first practical exemplification was by Fellenberg, his disciple or follower. L.ccording to this idea instruction, instead of being a matter )f memory and of acquisition, should be the result of thought
id of analysis. Children should be employed in all kinds
254
EDUCATION
[CH. VIII
of work and play and these should be frequently changed so as not to become wearisome ; they should study languages and mathematics under competent direction, engage in games under supervision, and cultivate the soil under proper guidance. Fellenberg's "Institutions" were at Hofwyl in Switzerland. They provided for the children of both the rich and the poor. These did not live together, but the surplus fees of the rich were used to augment the instruc- tion of the poor who were taught scientific farming by actual practice. It is difficult to arrive at any exact con- clusion as to the success of the Hofwyl experiment.1 Most of the information that we have about it is controversial and comes from sympathizers, but one thing is certain that, owing in part at least to the conditions of the times, no long life attended Fellenberg's Institutions.
In the establishment of free education, whether by private societies or by public means, the question of ex- pense always came forward. One way of economizing that enjoyed great prosperity for a while was to have the older pupils teach the younger. This system was devised by
1 According to Fellenberg, educa- tion should "develop all the faculties of our nature, physical, intellectual, and moral, and to endeavor to train and unite them into one harmonious system, which shall form the most perfect character of which the indi- vidual is susceptible; and thus pre- pare him for every period, and every sphere of action to which he may be called." As an example of his method in teaching mineralogy, he called upon the pupil to use his own senses to de- scribe the color and form of the mineral presented, to observe its weight, and to test its hardness, and to compare it with other objects and other minerals, and then he is given the name. The best description of the Hofwyl In- stitutions is in the Letters written by William C. Woodbridge and printed
in the American Annals of Education in 1831 and 1832, and also as the Ap- pendix to Letters from Hofwyl by a Parent (London, 1842), pp. 225 and fol. For a brief account of Hofwyl see Edinburgh Review for December. 1818 and Educational Institutions of Emanuel de Fellenberg by his son, Wilhelm de Fellenberg (London, 1859). See also Lettre de M. Ch. Pictet, published at Paris in 1812 ; and other worka of Pictet have other matter relating to Hofwyl. An interesting engraving showing the Hofwyl Institutions is in J. K. Bellweger's Die Schweizerischen Armenschulen nach Fellenberg' schen Grundsaken (Trogen, 1845). There is a lifelike glimpse of Hofwyl in Robert Dale Owen's Threading My Way, 146 and fol.
1830]
LANCASTERIAN SYSTEM
255
Andrew Bell or by Joseph Lancaster * or by both of them. The idea is said to have come to Bell in India by observing the children of a Malabar school writing with their fingers on the sand. As the system was worked out, the children sat at tables covered with fine sand on which they wrote with rattan styluses. An older pupil, or monitor, wrote a letter or a syllable on a blackboard and pronounced it ; the pupils copied it on their sand tables and then repeated the sound in unison. The method at once found favor in Eng- land and even greater favor in America. Primary education in New York 2 and Philadelphia was then in the hands of private societies which were maintained largely by the Quakers. These naturally adopted Lancaster's system because that was supported by the English dissenters while Bell's plans had been adopted by the Established Church people. With the advancing decades the system became more and more elaborate, until the teachers were really more than older pupils, being paid and partly trained. As far as numbers went, the Lancasterian schools were very successful. They spread from New York and Philadelphia as far west and south as Detroit and Cincinnati, Louis- ville and Baltimore, and there was a "monitorial school" in Boston in 1823.3 This was conducted on the " united plans of Lancaster and Pestalozzi " ; there were seventy- five pupils, their ages ranging from five years to eighteen.
1 See Note II at end of chapter.
lSee "Sketch of the New- York Free School" prefixed to the Ameri- can edition of Lancaster's Improve- ments in Education (New York, 1807) ; J. F. Reigart's "Lancasterian System of Instruction in the Schools of New York City" (Columbia University Con- tributions to Education, No. 81) ; and C. C. Ellis's Lancasterian Schools in Phila- delphia. This and the preceding essay contain helpful bibliographies.
Wm. Oland Bourne on pages 14-24 of his History of the Public School Society of the City of New York prints De Witt Clinton's address of 1809, which is one of the very best brief ac- counts of the introduction of the moni- torial system in America.
SW. B. Fowle's First Biennial Re- port of the Trustees and Instructer of the Monitorial School, Boston (Bos- ton, 1826).
256 EDUCATION [Cn. VIII
So well thought of were the Lancasterian schools that in 1819 the Massachusetts Peace Society declared the aboli- tion of war would provide, among other things, for the establishment of such schools "over the globe," in which all the children of the world could be constantly taught ! On the other hand, one of the enemies of the system, referring to the fact that neither paper nor slate was necessary, be- cause the characters were written by a rattan stylus in sand sprinkled on a table — declared that the Lancasterian system "was cheap, very cheap! Sand and rattan were its chief outlay, and . . . sand and rattan were its chief returns."
The colleges in point of numbers and in scholastic quality were poorer off in 1800 than they had been in 1750 ; but they began to arouse themselves in the early years of the century. The governing boards of Harvard College provided that the conditions of admission must be higher than heretofore. Besides both Greek and Latin transla^ tion and grammar and the turning of English into Latin, students in the future were to be examined in addition and subtraction and other branches of arithmetic and in some approved "Compendium of Geography."1 Within a few years the instruction in the college itself was considerably modified and in the 1830's, it looked for a time as if the German influence would bring about an extension of the curriculum, or even the establishment of something approach- ing an elective system. A similar tendency toward change and experimentation was shown in the reorganization of the governing board. Until 1800 Harvard was practically a State university and was so recognized in the constitution of 1780. Its governing board included the principal State officials and certain Congregational ministers. In 1810,
1 Boston Independent Chronicle for February 6, 1804.
1830] THE COLLEGES 257
provision was made for the election of fifteen Congregational ministers and fifteen laymen by the existing Board of Over- seers in addition to the principal political officers of the State. In 1812, this arrangement was overturned and the old colonial organization restored. But two years later in 1814, the act of 1810 was restored with the addition that the members of the State Senate should be added to the Board of Overseers. In 1834, the requirement that the clergymen should be Congregationalists disappeared, and in 1851 the requirement that any of its members should be ministers was abandoned. In 1865, State officials ceased to sit on the Board and the election of Overseers was given to the alumni. In the early days the colony had provided a large part of the funds for the support of the college. Its financial interest in the institution declined, however, and after the Revolution practically ceased.1 Tuition fees and salaries were diminutive in the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1828 fifty-five dollars and forty cents were paid for board, tuition, and breakage for a boy at Harvard for a term. This amount was excessive in comparison with M. M. Strong's quarter bill at Middlebury College in the pre- ceding year, which was only nine dollars and eighty-eight cents for tuition, lodging, and the use of the college library, and thirty-eight cents for repairs.2 Scholastic desire, how- ever, was in the air and boys of fourteen read wide and deeply, far beyond the requirements of their teachers and became the scholars of the century.
The list of studies in those days included no science or technical subjects. Professor John Winthrop had given
1 General Laws of Massachusetts to that institution.
(ed. 1823), ii, 251, 312, 347, 405, etc.; * Strong Mss. in the library of the
Massachusetts House of Representatives Wisconsin Historical Society. On the
Reports for 1827, No. 28. The annual other hand he paid six dollars for a
Catalogue of Harvard University re- copy of "Jones's Lexicon." prints the official documents relating
VOL. V. — 8
258 EDUCATION [Ca. VIII
some lectures on astronomy and scientific matters in the preceding century but he seems to have had no immediate successor. In 1788, the Harvard Corporation authorized Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, who had been lecturing on natural history at Providence for a year or two, to deliver annually a course of lectures on this subject "to such stu- dents as shall obtain permission, under the hands of their Parents or Guardians" at one guinea for each hearer. Waterhouse lectured for years,1 drawing his information from the best writers of the time and stimulating many persons to the study and endowment of science.
Philadelphia was the first seat of American science, partly no doubt because it had for years sheltered Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse. As far back as 1728, Franklin had instituted a scientific society that in 1769 was refounded as the American Philosophical Society 2 with himself as president. The University of Pennsylvania had recognized the desirability of scientific instruction and in 1800 possessed a professor of chemistry,3 mineralogy, and physics. His name was James Woodhouse and his lectures served to pass on the scientific learning of one generation to the next. More important in every way was Robert Hare.4 He was the son of a brewer and watch-
1 In 1803, Waterhouse began the School, 178S-1902 edited by Dr. Harold
publication of articles on botany and C. Ernst and published at Boston in
other scientific themes in the Monthly 1906, pp. 15-20.
Anthology and Boston Review. These * For the early history of this or-
articles greatly enlarged were gathered ganization see Laws and Regulations
into a book entitled The Botanist. of the American Philosophical Society
Being the botanical part of a course (Philadelphia, 1833) , pp. 27, 28.
of lectures (Boston, 1811). He also 'John Penington's Chemical and
dabbled in literature, writing a ro- Economical Essays published at Phila-
mance entitled A Journal, of a delphia in 1790 was the first book to be
Young Man of Massachusetts, ... on printed in America devoted entirely
Board An American Privateer and to chemistry.
printed a substantial volume on Junius * See Edgar F. Smith's Life of Robert
and his Letters (Boston, 1831). There Hare, an American Chemist (Phila-
is a sketch of the life of Dr. Waterhouse delphia, 1917) and his Chemistry in
in a book entitled The Harvard Medical America (New York, 1914), ch. viii.
1800] SCIENCE 259
ing the processes of brewing may have incited him to in- quiry. While still a mere lad, he made the first workable oxy-hydrogen blow-pipe, although possibly he cannot be regarded as the discoverer of it. His development had been influenced greatly by Priestley and later as a professor in the University, he devoted himself mainly to electricity. The popularization of science, however, is connected with Yale College and with the names of Timothy Dwight and Benjamin Silliman. The former was a Congregational clergyman of stupendous industry, wide range of learning, and remarkable judgment. He published many /books and his posthumous "Travels in New-England and New- York" l can be read with profit, even now. At the age of forty-three and in the year 1795, Dwight became president of Yale College. He redirected the course of that institu- tion into the orthodox path, but, besides, was happily inspired with the thought that the students might well be somewhat weaned from the classics and theology and given a taste of science. There was no one in America who could do what he wished and he hesitated to import a foreigner. Looking about him, he selected Tutor Silliman for the job. This young man was then twenty-one years of age, was teach- ing the ancient languages and studying law, and was as innocent of science as any man in Connecticut. Dwight's plan was that a "chair" of chemistry and natural history should be established, that Silliman should be appointed to fill it, and should then study the subject at the expense of the college. After some hesitation Silliman agreed to the plan, the trustees ratified the scheme, and the new pro- fessor departed for New York and Philadelphia. He got little help at the first-named place, but in the latter he
1 This was published in four volumes at New Haven in 1821-22. An edition appeared in London in 1823.
260 EDUCATION ICH. Vlft
listened to Woodhouse, conversed with Priestley, and worked with Hare. Returning to New Haven, he lectured on science with illustrative experiments and won an audience at once. His apparatus was crude and, according to his own account, his lectures were less scientific than his experiments.1 The college authorities were so well satisfied with him that they sent him to England to buy apparatus for his laboratory and books for the college library, — paying him his salary and giving him a percentage on the money expended for appara- tus and books. At London and Edinburgh, Silliman made good use of his opportunities for scientific study. Return- ing to New Haven, he renewed his college lecturing and sought wider opportunities of service. In 1818, he estab- lished "The American Journal of Science and Arts" and edited it so well that in a few years it became self-supporting. He also lectured to the people of New Haven and neighbor- ing towns and gradually sought larger centres until he be- came a well-known figure on the platform. As a student, and as an inciter to the acquisition of knowledge by others, Benjamin Silliman's life was one of the most striking in our annals.
Apart from the awakening of the older collegiate institu- tions in response to the intellectual movement of the age of Emerson, the foundation of the Universities of New York and of Virginia and the opening of the Southern and West- ern State Universities are points of interest. The origin of the New York University is confused.2 Some people
1 See George P. Fisher's Life of Ben- University of the State of New York, jamin Silliman. especially vol. i, chs. Origin, History and Present Organiza- iii and iv and Edgar F. Smith's Chem- tion forming Regents' Bulletin, No. 11, istry in America, ch. ix. January, 1893 or "Appendix 3" of the
2 For accounts of the University 106th Annual Report of the Regents. of the State of New York, see Frank- The statutory condition of education lin B. Hough's Historical and Statis- in New York, both primary and higher, tical Record of the University of the may most easily be seen in the Revised State of New York . . . 1784 to 1884 Statutes of the State of New-York (1829), (Albany, 1885) and Sidney Sherwood's chap. xv.
1818] SILLIMAN'S JOURNAL 261
have argued that the intention was to found something like an English University composed of a group of semi- independent colleges under one management, the difference being that the colleges instead of being within the limits of one town as in England would be within the limits of one State of the American union. The other theory is that the New York legislature was influenced by French ideas, by the thought of combining all education within the State limits under one governing board. In 1784, the State legislature established the Regents of the University of the State of New York. They had the right of visitation of all incor- porated institutions of learning in the State and such second- ary schools as they should take into their care. They were authorized to hold property to the amount of an annual in- come equal to the value of forty thousand bushels of wheat and were to apportion whatever funds came to them from the State among the institutions under their charge according to rules of scholastic efficiency to be laid down by them. At first the history of the new university was hardly more than the story of a contest between the State authorities and King's College, which changed its name to Columbia.1 The law establishing the Regents of the University has been modified from time to time and the control of primary and secondary education has been entrusted to a separate board ; but, when all has been said, it is still true that this institu- tion has played a very great part in the history of the de- velopment of education in New York and in the United States.
The University of Virginia was peculiarly the child of Thomas Jefferson and still lives 2 with many of the dis-
1 Laws of the State of New York "Appendix."
(Albany, 1886) , i, 686 ; Van Amringe * The best account of the founding
(editor), Historical Sketch of Columbia of the University of Virginia is in the
College . . . 1754-1876, especially the Early History of the University of Vir-
262
EDUCATION
[On. VIII
tinctive features that he looked upon as of great importance, and in the first thirty or forty years of its existence it pro- duced a most remarkable set of men. In 1817, Jefferson drew up a plan for the division of Virginia into districts, in each of which there should be a free public school pro- viding primary and secondary instruction. Grouping these districts together into nine collegiate divisions, he proposed to provide a college for each, so that no house in the State should be more than a day's ride from a college. Above them all, at some central point, there should be a university at which every branch of learning should be taught. He and his friends found their way beset with difficulties. The genius of Virginia society was opposed to any such scheme of primary and secondary education. Moreover, the religious bodies were unfalteringly hostile to the estab- lishment of non-sectarian collegiate institutions and a State university, especially by the expenditure of public money, while they themselves were struggling hard to keep their own colleges alive. When Jefferson had once put his hands to the plough, it was difficult to make him turn back, al- though he might seem to be diverted from his purpose. In
ginia, as contained in the Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Ca- bell (Richmond, 1856). Cabell was Jefferson's right hand man and, in- deed, deserves to be called the co- founder of the University. This volume, in a series of Appendices, contains nearly all the original matter relating to the subject. A brief ac- count largely founded on this book is J. S. Patton's Jefferson, Cabell, and the University of Virginia (New York, 1906). The "Memorial Association's" edition of Jefferson's Writings con- tains practically all the Jefferson ma- terial. Herbert B. Adams's Thomas Jefferson and the University of Vir- ginia (U. S. Bureau of Education's Circular of Information, No. 1, 1888) is an elaborate account of the founding
and later history of the institution. Possibly the most interesting thing that has been written on the subject is P. A. Bruce's "Background of Poe's University Life" in The South Atlantic Quarterly, x, 212, and the first part of D. M. R. Culbreth's University of Virginia (New York, 1908) is a read- able account of the early time. There are some interesting glimpses of the institution in its earliest days in Ed- ward Warren's A Doctor's Experiences in Three Continents, pp. 92, 100, 115. In May, 1810, Jefferson had outlined a part of his ideas as to a university in a letter to Hugh L. White, in which he refused to sell lottery tickets for the benefit of East Tennessee College ; — • American Historical Magazine, i, 296.
1825] UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 263
this case no opportunity escaped him to forward his plan, although for a time his interest appeared to be torpid. He turned an inchoate Albemarle Academy into what he called Central College and then, in 1819, secured an appro- priation from the Virginia legislature for the conversion of that college into his long-hoped-for non-sectarian Univer- sity of the State of Virginia. Already, he had provided elaborate plans for university buildings. These would cost a great deal of money, but would constantly instil culture into those who lived in them and used them. A rotunda, one-half the size of the Pantheon, would serve as a library and a centre. Stretching from it was a range of pavilions and cloisters. The pavilions were to be occupied by professors who were expected to be bachelors at appoint- ment and to remain so, and the cloisters and the cells opening on them were for the students. As the buildings pro- gressed and the demands for money became an annual feature, public opinion turned against the project. Then Jefferson struck his last blow. Virginia was sending her sons to Princeton and to Harvard, he wrote, where they were learning anti-Missourian principles and were imbibing ideas absolutely opposed to those held by the people of the State in which they were born and in which they must pass their lives ! l Why not provide an institution within the State that would give them a better education, or at any rate as good a one? The university was opened in 1825 and im- mediately overflowed with students.2 The sectarians were more alarmed than ever, for Jefferson had made no pro- vision for a professor of theology and some of the professors that he had drawn from abroad were free thinkers. In reply, he suggested that each religious sect should appoint
1 Early History of the University of * See Enactments relating to the Con-
Virginia . . . Letters of . . . Jeffer- stitution and Government of the Uni- ton and . . . Cabell, 201. versity of Virginia (Philadelphia, 1838).
264 EDUCATION [On. VIII
and maintain a professor of its own kind or establish a college on the outskirts of the university. With his liberality as to administration, he provided that the students should govern themselves, most of them being of the mature years of from thirteen to sixteen.1 It is sad to think that the last year of his life and of his career as Rector of the University was troubled by the ill behavior of a few of the first set of students to whom scholastic freedom, such as Jefferson prescribed, was not comprehensible.
Of the collegiate institutions in the country west of the mountains, Transylvania University at Lexington in Ken- tucky had possibly the most interesting history in the early time.2 It was originally in the hands of the Presbyterians, but in 1818 Dr. Horace Holley, then pastor of the Hollis Street Church at Boston and a Unitarian, became presi- dent. The next few years saw a most astonishing growth in the medical as well as in the academic departments. Holley was soon driven out on the ground that he was a Socinian and taught "morality and the beauty of nature and not Christ crucified"; his enemies declaring that the gospel was "of more value to the western country than all the science upon the earth." The attendance soon fell off, there being only two hundred and seventeen students in the academic department in 1842. Numbers, of course, mean very little ordinarily in assessing the value of educa- tional effort ; but in this case they certainly seem to show that there was an urgent demand for good non-sectarian
1 Massachusetts Historical So- Genius and Character of the Rev. Hor- ciety's Collections, 7th Series, i, 356- ace Holley (Boston, 1828) containing 360. an "Appendix" by "several pens."
2 See Robert and Johanna Peter's Jefferson Davis attended Transyl- Transylvania University (Filson Club vania in 1821-1824 and W. L. Flem- Publications, No. 11). This and all ing's "Early Life of Jefferson Davis" other books on the history of the Uni- in the Mississippi Valley Historical versity down to 1828 are largely based Review for April, 1917, has a few pages on Charles Caldwell's Discourse on the on the institution and a bibliography.
1854J BARNARD'S REPORT 265
instruction in Transappalachia at that time. In fact, after 1840, the educational impulse in the Southwestern country distinctly diminished. In 1854, the trustees of the University of Alabama directed the faculty of that institution to draw up a plan for the establishment of the system of the University of Virginia at Tuscaloosa. This led to the presentation of a remarkable report by Professors
F. A. P. Barnard and John W. Pratt. This is in some ways the best survey of higher education in the United States in 1850 to be found in print. The comparative numbers of students in the universities of Virginia and Alabama con- vinced them that there was no demand among the people of the latter State for an institution of the Virginia type. The demand was really for the opportunity to study any- thing that one chose. It was impossible for the University to provide instruction in any branch that any Alabama boy or man, regardless of his previous training, might desire, and it was absurd to turn the University into a sort of un- graded higher institution of learning. The real underlying objection of the people to the University seems to have been that they wished for vocational training, while it thought only of disciplining the mind. Barnard and his colleague 1 closed the discussion by stating that after leaving college one might forget his Greek and Latin and retain the mental discipline that he had derived from the study of the classics which he could apply to the prosecution of any business in which he might happen to engage, — to the practice of the law, or of medicine, or of theology, or to the prosecution of any technical work, or to the pursuit of any career.
In 1800, there were no technical schools in the country
1 See Professor Barnard's Report on States Bureau of Education's Circu-
Collegiate Education (New York, lar of Information No. 3, 1889, and
1854). On the general subject of also Dr. Alva Woods' Literary and
education in Alabama, see Willis Theological Addresses (Providence, 1868),
G. Clark's monograph forming United p. 64.
266 EDUCATION [Cn. VIII
and few schools for training in the learned professions. There were medical schools in Philadelphia and in New York. The Harvard Medical School was already estab- lished at Cambridge 1 and within a few years the College of Medicine opened its doors at Baltimore. Jefferson pro- vided for law and medicine in his University and there were schools of law and medicine attached to Transylvania. In fact, by 1830, the study of medicine was generally prosecuted in some special school. With law, the case was different. The lawyer's office maintained its position as the best place for legal training although Judge Gould's Law School at Litchfield, Connecticut, was flourishing in the first quarter of the century. The charge for tuition at this school was high, being one hundred dollars for the first year and sixty for the second.2 In most of the universities there were lectures given on law, or constitutional law, or "natural law," or on the Common Law.3 But this instruction was intended to be additional to the more important work in the lawyer's office. Theology, alone, of the learned pro- fessions was well taken care of. Each one of the leading sects had one or more seminaries that were well attended and vigorous institutions.
Near the close of the eighteenth century several associa-
1 Thomas F. Harrington's Harvard Gazetteer of . . . Connecticut and
Medical School in three volumes (New Rhode-Island, 233 ; and Life of Hor-
York, 1905) is almost a history of ace Mann, By His Wife, 30. medicine in the United States in the * The Harvard Law School was
earlier time. Some Account of the founded in 1817. Its early years
Medical School in Boston that was were feeble, but in 1829 with the ac-
printed in 1824 gives one a glimpse cession of Joseph Story to its staff,
of those days of small things, but of it at once assumed the foremost place
high aspirations. An extremely use- that it has since held. For a dozen
ful publication is The Harvard Medi- years, from 1833 to 1845, it had only
col School 1782-1906 issued in 1906. two professors, Story and Simon Green-
* For accounts of this school, see leaf, but those two gave to it a distinc-
the reprint of 1900 of The Litchfield tion that few Law Schools have had
Law School which contains a catalogue before or since. See The Centennial
of the pupils from 1798 to 1833; the History of the Harvard Law School,
"Moses M. Strong Manuscripts" in 1817-1917. Madison, Wis. ; Pease and Nilea's
1839] THE LOWELL INSTITUTE 267
tions of men of learning were founded ; the oldest was the American Philosophical Society that was instituted in Philadelphia 1 in 1769. The next was the American Acad- emy of Arts and Sciences which was founded at Boston in 1780, and thereafter associations of the kind were estab- lished in different parts of the country.2 West Point Military Academy and the United States Coast Survey bred a remarkable succession of men for technical service in civil life. No technical schools of the modern type were established until after 1820. The earliest were the Rens- selaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, the Sheffield Scientific School at New Haven, and the Lawrence Scientific School at Cambridge. Otherwise, engineers and men of science got their training in Europe or were Europeans by birth, or were taught in the school of experience in America. One thing that took the place of professional and techni- education — to a very limited degree, however — was the lecture platform. This was the epoch of lecturing when the foremost men in letters, and art, and science in the country sought to enlighten and stimulate their fellow citizens by the spoken word. Courses of lectures were promoted by professional organizers and institutes were endowed by philanthropists for the enlightenment of their countrymen. Of them all the most remarkable was the Lowell Institute. It was in 1835 that John Lowell, Jr., amidst the ruins of Thebes, completed the happy idea of establishing by bequest an Institute in Boston for the dis- semination of knowledge among the people of his native
1 G. Brown Goode printed a most * The Massachusetts Historical So- serviceable essay on the origin of the ciety was founded at Boston in 1790. "National Scientific and Educational At first it collected and studied both Institutions" in the Papers of the human and natural history, but after American Historical Association for a time the natural history collections April, 1890. For the organization of were transferred to another society; these national technical schools, see pp. and since then it has devoted ite atten- 109, 110, 130-135. tion entirely to human history.
268 EDUCATION [Cn. VIII
town and State. Some of the provisions of his bequest are peculiar and deserve notice : — none of the money was to be put into bricks and mortar for the Institute's purposes, although it might be invested in productive real estate or mortgages ; the care of the property and the con- duct of the Institute were confided to a single trustee whose first business was to nominate his successor, if possible, from those who bore the name of the donor.1 Furthermore, no more than the equivalent of two bushels of wheat could ever be charged for the privilege of attending any one course of lectures or instruction. Mr. Lowell's idea was to give prac- tically free instruction in technical subjects to mechanics and other persons whose labors prevented attendance at the usual schools and institutions; and to provide lectures by leading men for the instruction of the serious minded in the best thought and practice of the day. The Institute was opened in 1839. One of the first persons to whom the trustee turned was Benjamin Silliman, who in four succes- sive years gave a series of twelve lectures, repeating the course for those who could not get seats for the original lectures. For years the Lowell Institute has performed a service that is almost without parallel in alluring by high payments the foremost men of the world to stimulate the minds of the people of New England. In its success, its practical freedom from tuition fees, and its absence of "plant," the Lowell Institute stands alone as a tribute to its founder and to those who have managed its interests. The early connection between portrait painting, inven- tion, and the study of natural history was very marked. Fulton was an artist before he studied the application of steam to navigation ; Morse supported himself and his
1 Harrietts K. Smith's History of the Edward Everett's Memoir of Mi Lowell Institute (Boston, 1898) and John Lowell, Jun.
1830] NATURAL HISTORY 269
family by portrait painting while he was putting together the various parts of the telegraph ; and Audubon pro- vided whatever sustenance he did provide for his family by the same means. The three earliest students of natural history in the field devoted themselves mainly to the study of birds and they were all foreigners by birth ; but they may well be regarded as American by reason of long habita- tion within the United States. These were Alexander Wilson, Charles Lucian Bonaparte, and John James Audubon. Wilson was a Scot and had been apprenticed to a weaver. He came to America in 1794, travelled the country over, especially the Southwestern part of it, and published at Philadelphia, in the years 1808-1814, nine volumes entitled "American Ornithology." 1 He had been aided on the botanical side of his research by William Bartram, and Bonaparte added four volumes to Wilson's nine as a sort of appendix. Considering the infancy of the country and the difficulties of book making, this work must be re- garded as supremely creditable, but it was so superseded by Audubon's " Birds " that few persons out of the ornithological
alks have ever heard of Wilson.
John James Audubon was born in Haiti, April 26, 1785. His father was a French sea officer and his mother a Creole of San Domingo. Audubon's own youth was passed in France.2 Coming to America, like most men of genius he
1 American Ornithology; or, the Charles Lucian Bonaparte supple-
NatuTdl History of the Birds of the mented this work by printing an Ameri-
United States. Illustrated with Plates can Ornithology; . . . of Birds In-
(9 vols., Philadelphia, 1808-1814). habiting the United States, not given by
Unfortunately Wilson died before the Wilson (4 vols., Philadelphia, 1825-
8th volume was printed and his friend 1833) ; thus making fourteen volumes
George Ord edited the last two vol- in all.
umes, prefixing a brief sketch of the * For accounts of Audubon, see
life of Wilson to the 9th vol. In Lucy Bakewell Audubon's Life oj
1825, Ord printed a Supplement to the John James Audubon (New York,
9th volume containing a much en- 1869) and Maria R. Audubon's Audu-
larged account of Wilson's life and birds bon and his Journals with . . . Notet
which were omitted from volume ix. by Elliott Coues (2 vols., New York,
W£
270
EDUCATION
[Ca. VIII
thwarted the paternal plans and failed in business. He lived for long periods in the wilderness, and painted birds and plants in colors wonderfully like the originals. In 1826, he went to England, made friends there and secured enough subscribers to permit the beginning of the actual work of making the engravings from his own portraits of birds in their natural surroundings. The plates were engraved at first in Scotland at Edinburgh and afterwards at London, the coloring being done by hand and the execution of the work was spread over a number of years.1 Naturally, therefore, there is great difference in the plates and in the colorings ; but the work still stands apart as a masterful expression of the verities of nature.
In 1840, the census takers, for the first time, inquired into the scholastic condition of the people and into the ma- chinery that had been provided for their enlightenment. From the resulting tables, it appears that there were 173 colleges and universities in the whole country, more than 3000 academies and grammar schools, and over 47,000 primary schools. As to pupils there were 16,000 in the colleges, 164,000 in the secondary schools, and about 2,000,- 000 in the primary schools. In other words, over eight- tenths of the people had no schooling beyond the primary grade.2 In 1840, also, there were half a million white per- sons over twenty years of age who could neither read nor
1897). These and all other works are now superseded by Francis H. Herrick's Audubon the Naturalist (2 vols., New York, 1917).
1 The Birds of America; from Original Drawings by John James Audubon (London, 1827-1838). It was originally published in double ele- phant folio, measuring 39 ^ by 29 J inches untrimmed, and issued in 87 parts at 2 guineas a part, costing more than $100,000 to produce (see F. H. Herrick's Audubon, i, 358 and
fol.). A copy was recently sold in Philadelphia at over $4000. An edi- tion in royal octavo in seven volumes was published at New York and Philadelphia in 1840-1844, entitle The Birds of America, from Drawir* made in the United States and Territories.
2 See Tucker's Progress of the Unite States (New York, 1855), pp. 144 and 145. His figures are taken from the Census of 1840 (p. 475) but differ from it slightly in one or two cases. The
1840] SCHOOL ATTENDANCE 271
write. These figures were bad enough; but the "Census" of 1850 shows a very slight lengthening of the school period and the number of white illiterates had nearly doubled in ten years owing to the great increase in foreign immigration. Up to that time, therefore, it would seem that the educa- tional movement of the first half of the century had pro- duced very little result. There were more colleges and more secondary schools in proportion to the total popula- tion than there were in 1800 or in 1820, but so far they do not seem to have greatly affected the average intelligence of the American people, and it was the education of democ- racy and not the breeding of scholars that underlay the whole educational movement of that time. Indeed, by 1860, the golden age of American scholarship was passed.
table on p. 145 deals entirely with white pupils and shows the percentage of pupils in each class of schools :
College students 0.8 per cent
Scholars in grammar schools 8.1 per cent
Scholars in primary schools 91.1 per cent
100. per cent
See also the Census of 1850, p. bri ; the white illiterates formed about -fa of the total population of the United States in 1840, and ^ in 1850.
272 EDUCATION
NOTES
I. Bibliography. — The successive Reports of the United States Commissioner of Education, which began in 1868 with Henry Barnard's survey of the field, contain masses of historical detail. In 1887 the Bureau began the publication of a series of " Contributions to American Educational History " under the editorship of Herbert B. Adams that opened new fields of historical investigation. Similar reports of the State commissioners, especially those of Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts, are store-houses of facts. Beginning with the publication of the American Journal of Education l at Boston in 1826, there have been almost continuous serial educational publications which reflect the changing educational ideals of successive decades. Of bibliographies, the Columbia University Library Bulletin, No. 2, " Books on Education " is useful although divided into small groups. Elmer E. Brown's Making of Our Middle Schools, Edwin G. Dexter's History of Education in the United States, and G. H. Martin's Evolu- tion of the Massachusetts Public School System bring together within small compass the results of prolonged study.
McMaster's statements as to the paucity of Southern educational facilities in the first volume of his History aroused interest on the subject in the South and led to the publication of numerous articles. Of these General McCrady's " Education in South Carolina " was first in point of time and is still interesting. Stephen B. Weeks has a very useful article on " The Beginnings of the Common School System in the South " in the Report of the United States Commissioner of Education for 1896-97, ch. xxix.
n. Bell and Lancaster. — Dr. Andrew Bell's principal writings are : An Analysis of the Experiment in Education, made at Egmore, near Madras (3rd ed., London, 1807) ; Instructions for Conducting a School Through the Agency of the Scholars themselves (4th ed., London, 1813) ; and Mutual Tuition ... or Manual of Instructions for conducting Schools through the Agency of the Scholars themselves (7th
1 This was followed by the Ameri- Barnard, which began in 1856 and
can Annals of Education and Instruc- continued under various editors and
tion (Boston, 1831-1834) ; the Quar- various forms to the present day.
terly Register and Journal of the Ameri- The Introductory Discourse & Lectures
can Education Society that was pub- . . . assembled to form the American
lished from 1829 to 1846 with slightly Institute of Instruction has continued
varying titles: and the American with somewhat different titles from
Journal of Education edited by Henry 1830 into the twentieth century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 273
ed., London, 1823). The second volume of the Southeys* Life of the Rev. Andrew Bett (London, 1844) relates to the Indian portion of his career. A shorter and more usable work is J. M. D. Meikle- john's An Old Educational Reformer, Dr. Andrew Bett (Edinburgh, 1881).
The Epitome of Some of the Chief Events . . . in the Life of Joseph Lancaster . . . Written, by himself (New Haven, 1833) is perhaps the best account of Lancaster's career ; but the shorter account by David Salmon (London, 1904) is sufficient for most students. The best known of Lancaster's pedagogical writings is Improvements in Edu- cation as it respects the Industrious Classes of the Community (1st ed., London, 1803). There are some interesting pictures showing this system in Reigart's Lancasterian System and in the Manual of the System of Primary Instruction, pursued in the Model Schools of the British and Foreign School Society (London, 1844).
VOL. v. •
CHAPTER IX
LITERATURE
GREAT as were the changes in the outlook of the people of the United States that have been noted in the preceding chapters, it is in the domain of literature that the renaissance of the American mind is most noticeable. Before the Revo- lution there was no literature or very little that can be so accounted and the Revolutionary epoch itself was taken up from the literary side with the production of a series of most remarkable political papers that reach their highest point in "The Federalist." With the turn of the century the production of works of fiction, poems, and essays pro- ceeded on an ever increasing scale, both as to quantity and as to quality until it culminated in the literary efflorescence that is associated with the names of Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and the others of the New England group. Fifty thousand separate books, pamphlets, and periodicals, and probably more, were printed in the United States in the thirty years after 1800, and some of them went through several editions.1 Included in this list are works on law and politics, reprints of foreign books, and translations of French and German romances.2 Considering the comparative
1 For this estimate I am greatly into German. Dr. S. A. Green in his indebted to Mr. Charles Evans of Journal kept by Count William de Chicago, whose American Bibliography Deux-Ponts, 1780-81, p. xi note, points has already facilitated the work of out that during "the American Revo- the literary historian. lution, it was not uncommon for books
2 On the other hand, the works of published in Paris to bear the imprint many American writers, Irving, Cooper, of Boston or Philadelphia." Paulding, and others were translated
274
LIBRARIES 275
smallness of the population, these figures seem to show that the demand for works of literature and for technical books was great. There were a few proprietary libraries at Charleston, South Carolina; Newport, Rhode Island, and Philadelphia and New York. Then, too, the booksellers loaned copies from their stock upon the payment of a small rental or subscription ; but the circulating library, as it exists today in England, never gained any large measure of popularity in America, owing probably to the open- ing of public libraries, supported by taxation and free to every one. In 1827 there was a project for the estab- lishment of libraries of valuable books in each State which was to be financed by means of a lottery.1 Whether this scheme ever amounted to anything is not known. It is certain, however, that the second third of the century saw the founding of a multitude of subscription and free public libraries, and libraries open to particular classes of people.2 It may well be that the presence of these collections of books easily attainable by the people led to a great change in the reading habit, and that books by 1860 ceased to be regarded as prizes to be acquired by effort and privation and preserved as heirlooms in the family.
Whatever truth there may be in this surmise that the establishment of public libraries put an end to the private accumulation of books, it seems certain that book buying was much more general and on a much larger scale in those
1 Letter from "Sam Brown" to convenient list of books relating to Andrew Jackson, dated Philadelphia, American libraries is appended to C. Nov. 23, 1827. In it he refers to the K. Bolton's "Proprietary and Sub- generous support that Jackson had scription Libraries" in the Manual "already given to the cause of litera- of Library Economy, ch. v (Chicago, ture in aiding the University Lottery." 1912). Of the books mentioned by
1 In 1876 the Bureau of Education Bolton, Lindsay Swift's " Proprietary
issued a large report written by several Libraries and Public Libraries" in the
hands entitled Public Libraries in the Library Journal for 1906 is the most
United States of America, their His- useful. torjj, Condition, and Management. A
276 LITERATURE (Cn. IX
days than now. The "Columbian Centinel" for March 7, 1810, contains a list of over five hundred books for sale at "The Sign of Franklin's Head," Court Street, Boston. Among them were Cruden's "Concordance," Anderson's "History of Commerce," Fourcroy's "Philosophy of Chem- istry," and Ossian's "Poems," besides the books that one would ordinarily associate with New England in those days as Knox's "Sermons." Another list of books is appended to Bason's "Country Almanack" for 1821, which was published at Charleston, South Carolina. This list includes seven hundred title;. Among them are "Abe- lard and Eloisa," "The Arabian Nights" in four volumes, and "The Abbot, a New Novel by the Author of Waverley." There was also Clarkson's "Slave Trade" in two volumes. The "Western Spectator," published at Marietta, Ohio, in October, 1811, contains an advertisement of two hundred and forty books for sale. Among them were the "Art of Contentment," "Beddoes on Consumption," LempriSre's "Classical Dictionary," and Weems's "Washington."1 In 1816, the editor of an almanac estimated that about twelve hundred tons of paper were made and consumed annually in the United States, six hundred tons of it being used for newspapers and the rest for books ; and the com- pilers of these statistics averred that twenty-two million newspapers were annually printed in the country. With
1 Other interesting lists are in the Milton's Paradise Lost, Cook's Voy-
Kentucky Gazette, published at Lex- ages, Adventures of Baron Trenck, Life
ington, on February 28, 1807. Be- of Belisarius, and Duncan's Cicero. sides a lot of law books, this list con- The five thousand and fifty-seven
tains "Edwards on Redemption," titles enumerated in the Catalogue of
"Hunter on the Blood," and Hume's the Charleston Library Society that
History of England. In July, 1798, was printed in 1826 give a very good
the Political Focus, published at Leom- idea of the scholarly taste of that
inster, a small inland village of Massa- time, and may be supplemented by
chusetts, contained a list of 72 books the titles in the Catalogue of the John
offered for sale; among these was the Adams Library issued by the Boston
usual assortment of sermons and other Public Library in 1917. books of an entirely different cast, as
1830] BOOK-BUYING 277
the high cost of postage that prevailed in the earlier years of the century, it was an expensive matter to send books and papers from one part of the country to another. The num- ber of small presses scattered throughout the country was very large and one constantly comes across books printed in most unexpected places. Looking at the matter from another point of view, it appears that Franklin H. Elmore of South Carolina in the year 1836 bought among other books "Humphrey Clinker," "Lives of the Necro- mancers/' Hill's "Reports," Earle's "Medical Companion," and "Paulding on Slavery." John Quincy Adams had five thousand books in his library in 1809 and Jefferson's library contained 6488 volumes ; among them were 222 on moral philosophy, 304 on religion, 210 on zoology, and 208 on poetry. In 1829, two hundred and thirty-eight books from Timothy Pickering's library were offered for sale ; the list included Sterne's " Sentimental Journey," Anson's " Voyage," Scott's "Napoleon," and many of his novels, Boswell's "Life of Johnson," and editions of Virgil and Horace.1 Certainly the reading habit was widespread in those days.
The fifty thousand separate works that were printed hi the first thirty years of the century were published widely )ver the country and were often written near the place of mblication. Some of them belonged to the great men of lerican literature as Irving and Cooper, but most of these >ooks were the work of writers whose names are unknown low and have been for half a century. They chose morbid lemes, — death and destruction, unrequited love and ship- reck ; 2 but some of them have distinct historical merit.
1 "Pickering Manuscripts," vol. 55, duodecimo was begun at Salem, Massa-
. 290, in the cabinet of the Massa- chusetts, in September, 1828. It was
lusetts Historical Society. The list named The Hive and was as full of
f Jefferson's books is on the back of death, tragedy, and gloom as the
alio 94 of the same volume. magazines and books designed for the
1 A child's weekly of four pages older folk.
278 LITERATURE [Cn. IX
There was the Reverend Jonathan Fan's "Sunday School Teacher's Funeral," which was published at Boston in 1835. At first sight it seems to be painfully lacking in every quality that gives life to most literature ; but it is one of the most effective bits of writing in the English language and whoever reads the opening page will be reasonably certain to go on to the end. Captain M'Clintock's "John Beedle's Sleigh Ride, Courtship, and Marriage," which was published at New York in 1841, deals with love to be sure, but the manner of treatment is amusing rather than tragical. George Tucker's "Voyage to the Moon" is in an entirely different vein and is, even now, somewhat readable in parts.1 John Peck's poem entitled "The Spirit of Methodism" is really a political screed and contains more- over a good stroke at the Presbyterians. William C. Foster's "Poetry on Different Subjects" that was published at Salem in New York in 1805 is of the time : in one hundred and twenty-eight pages there are seven poems on death, five on love, and five on Washington ; but the rest are in lighter vein as "The Bachelor and Cat," and "The Washing Day." Of these second class writers, Mason L. Weems probably stands first. He created the Washington of tradi- tion and gave us Francis Marion. He attempted to do the same thing by Franklin but the latter's fragmentary auto- biography has rescued him forever from the pen of the Maryland romancer. Weems also wrote many reforma- tory tracts exhorting drunkards, gamblers, and celibates to mend their ways. Well over a million copies of his books have appeared. An edition of his "Washington" was printed in 1918 and ranks with "The Federalist" and
»The full title is A Voyage to the terly (New York, 1827). The plan of
Moon : with some Account of the Man- the book is directly borrowed ; but
ners and Customs, Science and Phi- there are some pleasing suggestions
losophy, of the People of Morosofia, scattered through it. and other Lunarians. By Joseph At-
1830] SOUTHERN AUTHORS 279
Franklin's "Autobiography" as possessing the longest life of any American book. As a "Maker" of history, Mason L. Weems vies with the household poets.1
The geographical distribution of writers, readers, and students shows that all sections of the country were in- terested in literature, using that word in its widest meaning. In the South, the whites, whom it must be remembered formed but a portion of the total population, were divided between farmers and those interested in the government of the country. These devoted to public work talents that in the North were more often directed to what is some- times called polite literature ; but the state papers that they produced were of a high order of nferit. Moreover, there were few men in the country who had a greater knowledge of the literature of the past than John Randolph of Roanoke. From the youth of South Carolina and Georgia, the famous Waddell school turned out many brilliant scholars. Of these John C. Calhoun easily stands first and his "Dis- quisition on Government" is one of the most memorable books on politics that this country has yet produced. There were poets without number in the South, nearly all of them LOW forgotten, and many writers of prose fiction.2 Of these William Gilmore Simms alone stands in recollection today, but he resided for a large part of his working life in ie North. Simms is not in the first rank, but his "Yemas- i" and his "Partisan" and one or two others of his books ire still readable.
1 See William S. Baker's Biblio- cans than any of these. See also the
Washinatoniana, 31. The Wash- present work, vol. iv, p. 57. n of Weems undoubtedly comes J Many of these Southern literary
near to historic fact as large portions productions have been gathered into the
if Bancroft's United Stales, the Mylea Library of Southern Literature in six-
indish of Longfellow, or the Bar- teen volumes, with a collective index
ra Frietchie of Whittier ; and the in volume xvi and with sketches of the
ik has had equal or greater influence lives of nearly two hundred and fifty
succeeding generations of Ameri- Southern authors.
280 LITERATURE [On. IX
The earliest school of literature was localized in Con- necticut and is known as the "Hartford Wits." The most attractive of this group, which included Trumbull and Dwight, was Joel Barlow.1 On leaving Yale College, he set out to be a poet ; but his lack of means and love for a lady impelled him to other exertions. He served as a chap- lain in the Revolutionary Army, was admitted to the bar as a practising lawyer, and was sent abroad by Duer and Craigie in the capacity of land agent. While serving as chaplain, he had married the lady of his choice without the consent of her father. At Paris his land activities were somewhat unfortunate, — to those who bought of him ; but his own foolhardy or fortunate investments in French securities — before the rise of Napoleon — made Barlow a rich man for the rest of his life and enabled him to indulge his poetical fancies. He had an idea that the history of America was as deserving of verse as the siege of Troy or the settlement of Rome, and he carried his idea into effect in a most sumptuous volume, entitled "The Columbiad." It appeared in 1807 in a quarto of four hundred and forty- eight pages with a dozen engravings at the cost of twenty dollars a copy. In the last "vision," Columbus sees a general congress of nations settling their affairs by arbitra- tion, and inaugurating perpetual peace, till at last they grasp fraternal hands in union o'er the world ! More worthy of remembrance is the mock heroic and pastoral poem singing the praises of hasty pudding, for which Barlow had searched in vain in Paris "that corrupted town" and in London "lost in smoke and steep'd in tea." It begins
" Ye Alps audacious, thro' the Heavens that rise,
I sing not you " 1 See Charles B. Todd's Life and Letters of Joel Barlow, LL.D.
1830] AMERICAN EPICS 281
but the charms of hasty pudding which he had unexpectedly come across in Savoy. Barlow was not the only one to praise food in rhyme for an anonymous poem entitled "The Buckwheat Cake" in some ways is not left far behind by Barlow's masterpiece. The American epic was not an un- common form of poetic expression in those days. It was in 1827 that Dr. Richard Emmons of Philadelphia and Great Crossing, Kentucky, delivered himself of four volumes en- titled "The Fredoniad : or Independence Preserved," which, strangely enough, went through three editions as did Barlow's "Columbiad." In 1833, Thomas H. Genin published "The Napolead" at St. Clairsville, Ohio, in three hundred and forty-two duodecimo pages. "The Nosiad ; or the Man of Type and the Major Domo" by Icabod Satiricus gives an idea of the heavy humor of 1829, which may also be seen in Miss Mary Elizabeth Talbot's "Rurality," which is a collection of "desultory tales" that also deals with the common subjects of the day, as ship- wrecks and duels.
From the mass of third and fourth rate authors, there step out, as one runs them over in recollection, four Aliens. There was Benjamin, first of all, who signed himself "Osander" and again "Juba" and wrote "The Death of Abdallah"; Benjamin, Jr., who printed "Urania ... a Poem"; Mrs. Brasseya Allen, who published "Pastorals, Eligies, and Odes" at Abingdon in Maryland in 1806; and Miss Elizabeth Allen, who affixed her name to a singularly mis-entitled book of poems, "The Silent Harp," at Burling- ton, Vermont, in 1832. The poem on "Soliloquy" in this volume is the most stilted bit of writing except possibly Harrison Gray Otis's "Eulogy on Alexander Hamilton."
The possibilities of printed political propaganda seem to have first been realized by those who were intent upon push-
282
LITERATURE
[Cn. IX
ing the fortunes of Andrew Jackson. As early as 1817, books appeared reciting the events of his life up to the date of publication, so far as these would appeal to the favorable prejudices of the voters and those who influenced them. Within ten years there were eight or ten books of the type. The most interesting of them is the "Civil and Military History" of Jackson by an "American Officer." It was published at New York in 1825 and the account of the "Day of Thanksgiving and Praise" for the victory obtained by the "Hero of New Orleans" has seldom been surpassed in our campaign literature.1 In 1829, Jackson appeared in the Gift Books, — "The Jackson Wreath, or National Souvenir." This is a good example of a book of the kind. It contained a well-written memoir, a dirge to the memory of Mrs. Jackson, a bit of music entitled "Jackson's Grand March & Quick Step," some excellent engravings, and a map of the United States of high historical value at the present day.
The newspaper literature of the South was fully as vig- orous and as influential as that of the North, and of as great value to the historical student. The " Richmond Enquirer," published and edited by Thomas Ritchie, was as influential in moulding political opinion in the Old Dominion for nearly half a century as any paper that has ever been pub- lished in the United States. The magazines which were so plentiful at the North in those days were not so largely duplicated in the South. In 1834, the first number of "The Southern Literary Messenger" appeared at Richmond. It was noteworthy as having for a short time been edited by
1 The following extract from the opening paragraph of chapter xvii of this book will show the style of the time: — "The attention of the reader is now to be called from scenes of car- nage, wounds, death, defeat, and vic-
tory . . . from those appalling scenes, which, if tears are permitted to soil the purity of heaven must make the angels weep, to one which must make them re- joice."
1830] MAGAZINES 283
Edgar Allan Poe and as having lived for a considerable period. It was originated as a protest against "vassalage to our Northern neighbors" ; but its contents were mainly an echo of the magazines that were printed at Philadelphia and New York. In 1845, Simms published at Charleston "The Southern and Western Monthly Magazine and Re- view" which was to release the South from the Northern literary yoke. Twelve numbers satisfied him and the sub- scribers and the periodical was merged in "The Southern Literary Messenger." All in all, the Southerners were eager for books and for the exercise of literary expression, but so many of them were engaged in growing cotton and governing the country that the few who were left with leisure and learning produced little of actual literary work before the era of the War for Southern Independence.
The case was very different with the Middle States, for Philadelphia and New York were the literary capitals of the country for a generation. The close connection be- tween commercial prosperity and literary outlook has been oftentimes adverted to, but is still difficult of explanation, for it would seem that the pursuit of gain would be un- congenial to the effort of the literary mind. It has been said, however, that the leisure provided by the business success of a community or a family has enabled the fortunate idlers to produce works of literature. It is true that many examples can be found, as those of James Fenimore Cooper and William Hickling Prescott, where absence of necessity has led to literary expression. But, on the other side, one finds men of poverty, as Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, winning the foremost places in the works of the mind. Possibly, a market for literature is a necessity of its pro- duction and this is provided by the dense population of a commercial community. Whatever the reason for their
284 LITERATURE [Ca. IX
prominence, it is certain that the two great commercial cities of the Middle Atlantic States occupied the first place in our literary history for many years. Authors and would- be authors flocked to them from the East and the West and the South. Of those from across the Appalachians, Alice and Phoebe Gary alone won extended fame before I860.1 The magazines naturally made their homes in the largest cities, for in those days of high postage rates periodi- cal publications necessarily found their subscribers within reasonable distances from the printing office. For years Hezekiah Niles's "Weekly Register," published at Balti- more, Mathew Carey's "American Museum" and Dennie's "Portfolio," both published at Philadelphia, occupied the first place among American magazines and deservedly ; 2 but the "North American Review" after 1820 began to fill in part the field once held by these publications and to add an element of scholarly criticism that one had formerly asso- ciated with the British quarterlies. These serials are filled with original poems and tales and also with serious articles partly of an historical and scientific character. In 1830, the New York newspapers began to occupy a prominent place. The names of the early editors, Bryant, Greeley, George Ripley, Henry J. Raymond, and Mordecai M. Noah, are familiar in the political history and literature of the second third of the century.
1 W. H. Venable's Beginnings of takes one into the very heart of the Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley pioneer's home. The Western Lit- (Cincinnati, 1891). The other West- erary Magazine, and Journal of Edu- ern names that are associated in one's cation. Science, Arts, and Morals was recollection with this period are Tim- published at Columbus, Ohio, in 1853 othy Flint and James Hall. Flint's and well represents the community of Arthur denning, published at Phila- artistic and literary desires of the delphia, has some of the character- people living on both sides of the Ap- istics of the modern novel ; Hall's palachian Mountains, works are a mine of facts and tradi- ! Algernon Tassin's The Magazine tions of his adopted country; and in America (New York, 1916) is a use- Alice Gary's Clovernook or Recollec- ful and gossipy book; chs. ii-viii re- tions of Our Neighborhood in The West late to the earlier time.
1830] IRVING AND COOPER 285
The Philadelphia and New York authors of that day en- joyed great reputations among their contemporaries. Of these, Charles Brockden Brown serves as a sort of standard for writers on American literature, partly because he was the first to devote himself professionally to the literary art. Irving and Cooper easily stand first of this group. Washington Irving was born of British parents in New York. In 1809, he put forth anonymously "A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World ... by Diedrich Knickerbocker." It may be regarded as the earliest American work of imaginative literature. After an interval, he published the "Sketch Book" in which foreign folk- lore is adapted to the scenery of the Catskills. From this point, Irving fell more and more under foreign influences. His "Columbus" and his "Conquest of Granada" might as well have been written by an Englishman, born and bred. The middle period of his life, Irving passed in England and Spain, engaged in business and diplomacy and in gathering materials and impressions for his books. After his return to the United States and in his last years, he wrote the histor- ical work that best gives him his place, the "Life of George Washington," the fifth volume of which was published only a short time before Irving's death in 1859 at the age of seventy-six. Cooper came of old colonial ancestry and was born in New Jersey. His father moved to a wilderness section of New York when Fenimore was a child. The future author grew up therefore on the frontier and in his truly great " Leatherstocking Tales" repeats his boyhood impressions of scenery and of men. Being dismissed from Yale College, Cooper followed the sea for a few years and thus gained the knowledge of ships and of seamanship that made him easily first of marine romancists. He also ven- tured on history and wrote on the "Navy of the United
286
LITERATURE
[Cn. IX
States" with so much vigor and honesty that he speedily became embroiled with some of those whose deeds or mis- deeds he had described. Like Irving, Cooper spent a large portion of his middle life in Europe and like Irving, also, reserved his historical labor for his later life. Irving and Cooper took so prominent a place among the writers of the Middle States and occupied it for so long a time that they may fairly be said to have eclipsed their contemporaries. In the second rank were J. K. Paulding and Herman Mel- ville. In the third rank, there was a crowd of competitors. The selection is dangerous, but John Lofland's "Harp of Delaware; or, the Miscellaneous Poems of the Milford Bard" remains in memory as an example of the ordinary versification of the Middle States of America in 1828. The poem to "The Mother" is expressive of deep feeling, that on "Fame" evinces the horror of war that was even then deep in the heart, and his lines on the 19th of April, 1775,
" In Lexington the sons of Freedom form On the green square, and wait the coming storm "
reveal the quiet courage of that gallant band.
Typical books of that day were "Queechy" and "The Wide, Wide World" by Elizabeth Wetherell, who really was Susan Warner. The latter is a long-drawn-out tale of petty female persecution and love mingled with religion. It was first printed in 1849, saw a fourth edition in 1851, was reprinted in England, and again and again in America, as late indeed, as 1895. If a permanence of half a century entitles any novelist to glory, it certainly does Susan Warner. Moreover, it represents the type of book that men and women of that time were eager to read, but now seems intolerable. Is it that our taste has become blunted and can be satisfied only with intense, blood-curdling novels?
1830J GIFT BOOKS AND ANNUALS 287
Is modern life, itself, so strenuous that the account of quiet humdrum existence of a village no longer satisfies ? Is life so rapid, nowadays, that one can no longer read books like "The Wide, Wide World " ? Possibly it is that we require double the action for every thousand words that our fathers did.
The Middle Staces were the homes of magazines and "Gift Books" and Annuals. Of the first none enjoyed long life or great reputation. "The Knickerbocker," which was published at New York, was perhaps the most popular and the most permanent. These serials contained the first attempts at the American short story, which were really nothing more than replicas of English tales with an American dressing and like the poems of that early time dealt with love, disease, and death, mainly with the last. By 1850 the public mind was beginning to tire of this form of en- tertainment, if the publishers of "Wright's Casket" had good business sense in beginning publication of a monthly paper that should contain "no silly love tales, or other deleterious matter." The publication of magazines was still widespread and the smaller towns produced them as well as the great commercial cities. An example of these, and a very good one, is "The Rural Repository" that was published at Hudson, New York, for several years beginning with 1824 ; about one-eighth of the contents was poetry, most of it original, but a good deal of the prose matter was taken from other publications as the "American Monthly Magazine," "The Emporium," and "The New-York States- man" and some of it was translated from the French.
The Gift Books begin in 1824, but are most numerous in the late 40's and early 50's.1 Their popularity may be
1 F. W. Faxon in his Literary An- books as having been published in nuals and Gift-Books has listed one America. He has prefaced his list thousand and twenty-two separate with an interesting article on the books
288
LITERATURE
ICa. IX
seen from the fact that in one year no less than sixty separate works of the kind were published in America. They ranged from duodecimo to quarto and were bound in ornately decorated cloth or leather with heavily gilded edges. Many of America's best-known men and women of letters found their way to public notice through the pages of these books, or, having achieved reputation, acquired money by contribut- ing to them. Some of these books were beautifully illus- trated by the best engravers who have flourished in America, as John Cheney, A. B. Durand, and the elder Sartain. It is these engravings, as Sartain's "The Mother" in "The Diadem" for 1847, or Cheney's "Viola" in "The Gift" for 1844, or Durand's representation of "The Duchess and Sancho" in "The Atlantic Souvenir" for 1832 that give the Annuals and Gift Books their greatest attraction. The last named engraving was an illustration of Miss Leslie's poem with the same title. One verse of this has interest even now :
" The wreath of the warrior has faded and gone, While the laurel of genius is green in the land ; And the fight of Lepanto will only be known, As the fight where Cervantes was maim'd of his hand."
The demand for good literature and fine illustrations that was shown by the continuing publication of these very expensive books is one of the most interesting indications of the condition of the American mind of this time, more especially in the Middle States.
A genius who has no geographic bounds was Edgar Allan Poe. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and pub- lished his first book there,1 but his father was a Marylander
themselves ; he shows, among other things, that many of these titles were repetitions and where that was not the case, old articles and old plates were
used in different combinations.
1 This work was entitled Tamer- lane and Other Poems and waa pub- lished in 1827.
1830] EDGAR ALLAN POE 289
and his mother an English actress who happened to be per- forming in the Puritan capital at the time of his birth. They soon migrated to Richmond where John Allan, a Scotch merchant of the Richmond tobacco exporting firm of Ellis and Allan, took the child into his family.1 Poe's early youth was passed in Virginia and in England and he spent a brief space at the University at Charlottesville, when gambling and drink forced his removal. Later he edited "The South- ern Literary Messenger" at Richmond for a time, but his working years were mainly passed at New York as a literary critic and writer of prose, none of which is read now except by professors of English and their pupils. It is upon the three poems "The Raven," "The Bells," and "Annabel Lee" that Poe's reputation rests 2 and makes the world forget the insanity and debauchery that were so closely associated with his life.
Philadelphia and New York were the centres of the ex- pression of the dramatic art, whether by writing or by acting. The production of dramas was widespread, almost as much so as the writing of poetry, both being in those days a com- mon form of expression and not confined to a more or less professional class. The plays, like the poems, dealt with the tragic side of love and with death. The actors on the stage, the principal actors I mean, were almost entirely from England, although a few Americans like Edgar Allan Poe's father had drifted into the theatrical profession. There were stock companies at Philadelphia and at New York and these, after a "season," travelled into New England and
1 Poe'a undated letter to "Mr. Poe's life. "Appendix C" at the end
Wm. Poe" giveS details as to his family of vol. ii of Woodberry's Life of Edgar
history (Gulf States Historical Maga- Allan Poe is a bibliography with notes.
zine, i, 281). Susan A. Weiss' Home Life of Poe
1"The Raven" appeared in 1845, (New York, 1907) contains the Rich-
"The Bells" in 1849, and "Annabel mond traditions set down by a lady
Lee " in the same year, — they are~~all in her old age, who had known the
associated with the closing period of Allans in Poe's childhood.
VOL. V. — U
290 LITERATURE [Cn. IX
southward to Richmond and even to Charleston. After 1825, New York may be regarded as the centre of the theat- rical profession, having by that time outstripped Philadelphia in that respect, as in literature and in commerce. In 1820, there seems to have been only one theatre in New York, but play-houses multiplied after that time.1 The "pit" was still the pit, not having yet become the parquet, and a restaurant and a bar were usually included within the theatre walls. In the later theatres, these features disap- peared. Another form of amusement was connected with what were called "gardens" as Niblo's Garden. This establishment included a hotel, a theatre, and a garden, the last being provided with walks, flower-beds, and summer- houses. But before long it became a theatre, pure and simple. Outside of New York there was horse-racing, bull-baiting, and cock-fighting and in New York there were exhibitions of curiosities. In 1825, an Italian opera com- pany appeared in "The Barber of Seville" which seems to have been the first professional operatic performance in the United States. In the next year Mme. Malibran re- ceived six hundred dollars for each appearance in opera; but it was not until twenty-six years later that the first " long run " took place when Edwin Forrest played " Damon " for sixty-nine consecutive nights. A French danseuse appeared at the Bowery Theatre in February, 1827, and from that time on dancing was a favorite form of entertain- ment, Mile. Celeste, Madame Vestris, and a child, Emma Wheatly, six years of age, all appearing within two years ; and this culminated in 1840 with the appearance of Fanny
1 See Charles H. Haswell's Rem- William Dunlap's History of the Ameri-
iniscences of New York, using index. can Theatre is a contemporary view
This is an invaluable book for the down to about 1830. There is a good
tracing of social history, as it is for the bibliography of "The Early Drama"
coming and development of public in The Cambridge History of American
utilities and manners and customs. Literature, i, 490-507.
1830] THE DRAMA 291
Elssler before an enormous audience in "La Cracovienne." Of the famous actors of those days, besides those that have been mentioned, there were James H. Hackett, Charles Kean, Charles Kemble and his daughter, Fanny, Tyrone Power, and Junius Brutus Booth, to mention no others. Theatres were not numerous, perhaps, taking the country through and the performances were not numerous, but judging by the effect produced upon the audiences and the permanence of their fame, the actors then must have been of a very superior order. Literature, common and polite, does not owe as much to foreigners as did the theatre, but its debt is very great, nevertheless. The first newspapers of political moment after 1789 were edited by recent immigrants, and law, theol- ogy, and science owed a great deal to outside stimulus. Of the early newspapers, those edited by Callender, Chee- tham, Duane, and John Binns achieved remarkable noto- riety and had enough influence to arouse the wrath of the rulers. Of the fugitives from England, Joseph Priestley and Thomas Cooper, his devoted friend, had the most influence in scholarly directions. The latter was a lawyer by train- ing, but had dabbled in politics and the natural sciences. His radicalism compelled his departure from England and brought him within the scope of the Sedition Act in America. Jefferson recognized his scholarly qualities and secured for him an appointment as professor of chemistry and law in the newly established University of Virginia.1 Objections being raised to his religious radicalism, he never entered
1 He resigned before the University History of the University of South Caro-
was open for students. See Early Una, 34-55, 332-343; and Edgar F.
History of the University of Virginia Smith's Chemistry in America, 128-
. . . Letters of Thomas Jefferson and 146. Cooper wrote to J. A. Ham-
Joseph C. Cabell, 88, 164-172, 234 n. ; mond in 1836 that the "Idea of these
Herbert B. Adams's Thomas Jeffer- New England theologians, that their
son and the University of Virginia, notions of religious duty are to super-
106-109 ; Colyer Meriwether's His- cede all law, is quite inconsistent with
tory of Higher Education in South the well being of civil Society & it
Carolina, 143-156 ; Edwin L. Green's elevates every ignorant fanatic into an
292 LITERATURE [Ca. IX
upon the discharge of his duties there. Shortly afterwards he became the head of the University of South Carolina and rendered a great service to that State by collecting its laws into one series of printed volumes. In his last years he became one of the most ardent advocates of States'-rights to be found anywhere, and did a great deal towards building up public sentiment in favor of Southern nationalism lead- ing up to the nullification episode. Priestley was a clergyman by profession, but was by nature a man of science. His radicalism also compelled him to leave England. In America he joined in the distrust of Washington and Adams, who cordially distrusted him. He corresponded with men in different parts of the country, promoted the scientific activities of Robert Hare and James Woodhouse, and pub- lished scientific articles.1 Among the productions of his later years was "A Comparison of the Institutions of Moses with those of the Hindoos and Other Ancient Nations" and "The Doctrine of Phlogiston established; with Observa- tions on the Conversion of Iron into Steel." William Thornton, who was a West Indian by birth, won the Magel- lanic Gold Medal of the American Philosophical Society in 1793 for a most stimulating scientific paper entitled " Cad- mus : or, a Treatise on the Elements of Written Language." He proposed to simplify the alphabet and thus lay the foundation for an American language that would be as
irresponsible dictator," — a dictum With a Continuation . . . By his Son
which unfortunately he did not apply (2 vols., London, 1805) ; John Carry's
to himself. The "Hammond Papers" Life of Joseph Priestley (Birmingham,
in the Library of Congress. 1804); "Memoir" by Dr. Aikin in
The Case of Thomas Cooper, M. D. Lucy Aikin's Memoir of John Aikin,
(Columbia, S. C., 1831); Letter of a 460. Self-revealing letters of Priest-
Layman to Any Member of Congress ; ley to George Thacher are in the Massa-
and Reply to Censor give an idea of chusetts Historical Society's Proceed-
Cooper's methods and of the condi- ings, 2nd Series, iii, pp. 13-40. Edgar
tion of thought in South Carolina at F. Smith's Chemistry in America (New
the time. York, 1914), ch. v describes his in-
1 See Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley fluence upon science in Pennsylvania. to the Year 1795, written by himself:
1830] FOREIGN INFLUENCE 293
distinct from the languages of Europe as government in America was free from "the dangerous doctrines of Euro- pean powers." As a part of this work he wrote an essay upon the proper method to teach the deaf and dumb to speak. These should be induced to imitate the efforts of a hearing child to speak, studying the motions of one's own vocal organs in a looking glass and noting in a book the proper arrangement of those organs for any given word.1 The great buildings at Washington were the work of for- eigners, Thornton, Latrobe, and Hoban, and the plan of the city came from the mind of another foreigner, LJ Enfant.2 There was no technical skill whatever among native Ameri- cans and for every public work engineers had to be im- ported until native born Americans could become trained, or train themselves in the school of experience. Among the foreigners was Clodius Crozet, who had served in the armies of Napoleon, had taught engineering at West Point, had written a "Treatise on Descriptive Geometry," and had then become the State engineer of Virginia. While thus acknowledging our indebtedness to those who came to our aid from outside, it must ever be kept in mind that it was the grandeur of the imagination of Washington and Jefferson and other Americans that made possible the construction of such great works as the City of Washington, the Erie Canal, and the Portage Railway system.
JThe actual education of deaf comes from Europe. In America ita
mutes in America is associated with beginning is associated with the name of
the name of Thomas H. Gallaudet, Samuel G- Howe, who for years was
who visited Europe to study the at the head of the Perkins Institution
methods in use there. The benefi- for the Blind at Boston. See the Ad-
cence of Amos Kendall led to the es- dress of the Trustees of the New-Eng-
tablishment of the national institu- land Institution for the Education of
tion at Washington. See Edward the Blind (Boston, 1833) and the An-
A. Fay's Histories of American Schools nual Reports of the Institution which
for the Deaf (3 vols., Washington, 1893) became the Perkins Institution in
and E. M. Gallaudet's Life of Thomas 1840. Hopkins Gallaudet (New York, 1888). * See the present work, vol. iv,
The education of the blind likewise 106-108, 112.
294 LITERATURE [CH. IX
The school books used in America in the Revolutionary epoch were of European authorship, although many of them were printed in the United States. To provide books more suitable to American needs attracted the attention of three remarkable men of Connecticut : Noah Webster, Jedidiah Morse, and Samuel Griswold Goodrich, who is much better known under his pen name of "Peter Parley." Noah Webster 1 was given a Continental note for eight dollars by his father in 1778 and sent out into the world to fight for himself. He became a school master and, impressed with the poverty of the existing books for the teaching of English, set out to make better ones. The book that afterwards became known as "The American Speller" was published at Hartford in 1783 as Part I of "A Gram- matical Institute of the English Language." A few years later, Morse's "American Geography"2 found its way to the printer, delayed, as was Webster's work, by the struggle to obtain recognition by law for the production of a man's brains.3 The almost instant popularity of these books shows how great was the need for them and how well their authors had judged the necessities of American peda- gogics at that period. In all fifty million copies of the "Speller" are said to have been printed and sold. To it more than to any other one thing is due the uniformity of the spoken and written English language throughout the United States, — but whether this is an indication of strength or of weakness may well be questioned.
1This account is largely drawn author of A Compendious and Com-
from Ford and Skeel's Notes on the plete System of Modern Geography
Life of Noah Webster (2 vols., New (Boston, 1814) and of smaller works
York, 1912). and of innumerable revised editions
* Hia American Geography was first of the above. See W. B. Sprague's
printed at Elizabeth Town, N. J., in Life of Jedidiah Morse, ch. iv. 1789 ; his American Universal Geog- ' See Copyright Enactments, 1788-
raphy at Boston in 1793 ; and his 1900 (Library of Congress, Copy-
Gazcttcer in 1797. He was also the right Office, Bulletin No. 3).
4828] WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY 295
For a time Webster edited a paper in New York City and gained considerable credit as a political writer. Ultimately the profits from the sale of his school books enabled him to devote his whole time to the carrying out of a long- cherished plan of making a dictionary of the English lan- guage.1 For ten years he resided at Amherst in Massachu- setts, but his life is mainly associated with New Haven. He sought the aid of others, even going to Europe to gain it. He met with little success in this endeavor and was forced to rely upon himself. The picture of this solitary scholar perambulating the periphery of a table made in the form of a hollow circle and covered with dictionaries in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and all the known languages, working steadfastly for twenty-eight years at one object and succeeding in his self-imposed task, is one of the most inspiring in the annals of American literary endeavor. The "Dictionary" was originally published in 1828 in two quarto volumes of more than one thousand pages each. It contained twelve thou- sand words and thirty thousand definitions that had never before been in any dictionary of the English language. Since that time it has passed through innumerable editions and printings and editings until today the dictionary based on Webster's work is the standard among all English speakers, the world over. Like all reformers and men of positive ideas, Noah Webster had some crotchets that have given comfort to carping critics in his own day and since. Noting that many English spellings of the early Middle Ages were no longer used by any one, he thought it would be well to omit letters that no longer had any significance in pronunciation as the u in honour, or the final e in fugitive. Moreover, it was a matter of the greatest difficulty to decide
1 See Ford and Skeel's Notes on the letter to Judge Dawes on p. 65. Vol- Life of Noah Webster, ii, 116; his con- ume ii of this work deals mainly with •eptions of his task are given in a the Dictionary.
296 LITERATURE [CH. DC
on the proper pronunciation of words and on the proper spelling of them. Webster desired help in deciding these questions, but was denied it, and he had to make up his own mind as between the pronunciations of different sections of the United States and of different strata of English society. The permanence of the greater part of his work and the enormous influence that it has had and now possesses is proof of the general catholicity of Webster's judgment and of the certainty and sweep of his scholarship. Goodrich belonged to the next generation. Although born in Connecticut, he passed his working life mainly at Boston, where, for fourteen or fifteen years he edited "The Token," one of the most successful and creditable of the annual Gift Books. In 1827, he published the first "Peter Parley" book under the title of "The Tales of Peter Parley about America." A later book, "Peter Parley's Method of Telling about Geography," in its various forms had enor- mous popularity, two million copies having been sold. In all Goodrich estimated that seven million copies of his books were sold in the thirty years after 1827. Unfor- tunately, he had parted with all right,' to the "Geography" at the time of its publication.1 He died in poverty, leaving behind him " Recollections of a Lifetime" that has permanent value. The "Peter Parley" books were not literary master- pieces, nor were they works of deep scholarship, but they were precisely adapted to the needs of the schools that were becoming common throughout nearly all parts of the
1 Goodrich or "Peter Parley" was Goodrich, see his Recollection* of a the author or editor of "about one Lifetime (2 vols., New York, 1856) hundred and seventy volumes — one and the "Appendix" to vol. ii for a hundred and sixteen bearing the name complete list of his publications. Na- of Peter Parley." At least twenty thaniel Hawthorne collaborated with other American productions were falsely Goodrich for a time and, indeed, wrote attributed to him, and no less than Peter Parley's Universal History on the twenty-eight English ones. For an basis of Geography. For the use of Fowl- interesting account of Samuel G. tiiet (Boston, 1837).
1830] PETER PARLEY 297
country and they rank with Webster's "Speller" as an edu- cational force in the nation.1 Another native of Connect- icut greatly to influence the education of American youth was Emma Willard. She was a believer in the education of women. In 1819, she appeared before the New York legislature in advocacy of "A Plan for Improving Female Education." She argued that the improvement of the education of the daughters of the enlightened citizens of America was a worthy object in itself and that the raising of "the female character . . . must inevitably raise that of the other sex." So far female education had been left to "the mercy of private adventurers." "Feminine delicacy" required that girls should be taught by their own sex. The best way to do this was in boarding schools where the pupils should be properly classed and provided with libraries and philosophical apparatus, all of which, so far as Mrs. Willard was concerned, she hoped would be subsidized by the State of New York.2 As in the case of Webster, Mrs. Willard was impressed with the poverty of American text-books, which were entirely unsuited to her methods of teaching. She set to work, therefore, to provide better books in history and geography. Her first "History of the United States" was printed at Hartford in 1828 and reprinted in different forms again and again, and translated into "pure Castilian" to answer the call for it from Spanish America. Her other books 3 were connections between history and geography, as her "Guide to the Temple of Time."
1 Two brothers, Jacob and John Mary Lyon, followed in 1837. For
S. C. Abbott, performed a somewhat the higher education of women in the
similar service in the production of early time, see ch. i of Sarah D. Stow's
The Franconia Stories, The Rollo Books, History of Mount Holyoke Seminary. and The History of Napoleon. * Ancient Geography as connected
* Mrs. Willard was not successful with Chronology (Hartford, 1822, form- in this, but in 1821 she opened the ing a volume of W. C. Woodbridge's Troy Female Seminary, as a private Universal Geography) and Geography enterprise. Mt. Holyoke College, for Beginners: or the Instmcter's As- which is associated with the name of sistant, in giving First Lessons from
298
LITERATURE
[Ca. IX
Literary men of that day owed much to the protracted study of the great writers of England of the preceding cen- tury. English books also had a great circulation in the United States,1 largely in copies printed in America. In the teaching of the history of England, an abridgment of Oliver Goldsmith's "History of England ... to the Close of the Reign of George II" was printed in a dozen editions, at Philadelphia, New York, and also at Alexandria, Virginia, and Hallowell, Maine. Young's "Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality" was even more widely used for instruction in the English language. Two dozen editions were printed in America, at Troy in New York, Exeter in New Hampshire, Brookfield in Massachusetts, and else- where. Possibly as better showing the universal acknowl- edgment of English leadership was the reprinting — with adaptations — of Thomas Cook's "Universal Letter Writer" at Baltimore, in 1819.
Perhaps in no way was the influence of England and of Europe more marked on the working out of American ambi- tion than in building up a school of painting. John Singleton Copley,2 Gilbert Stuart,3 Edward Greene Malbone,4 Ben- jamin West, John Trumbull, Washington Allston, and John Vanderlyn were none of them of the first rank, or possibly
Maps in the style of Familiar Con- versation (Hartford, 1826). See John Lord's Life of Emma Willard (New York, 1873) and the memoir pre- fixed to Emma Willard and her Pupils which was published by Mrs. Russell Sage at New York in 1898. It should be added that Mrs. Willard's Series of Maps, which was prepared to ac- company her History of the United States, would do credit to a modern historical cartographer.
1 One of the early protesters against this literary vassalage was J. W. Simmons. America stood to Europe, he thought, in much the same way
that Rome stood to Greece, which was a misfortune, — to his mind. See his "Observations on American Literature" in a volume entitled The Maniac's Confession (Philadelphia, 1821, pp. 105-164).
1 Martha B. Amory's Domestic and Artistic Life of John Singleton Copley, R. A. and A. T. Perkins's Sketch of the Life . . . of John Singleton Copley.
* George C. Mason's Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart.
4 For an account of Malbone, see William Dunlap's History of the . . . Arts of Design in the United States (New York, 1834), ii, 14-29.
1830] THE ARTISTS 299
of the second ; but it would be difficult to duplicate so good a group of artists in any other country at any one time.1 Of them all, Benjamin West stands first in point of worldly success and influence on his brethren, — he was an artistic Franklin whose wilderness beginnings commended him to London "society."2 West was of English-Pennsylvania- Quaker stock, but he was not born a Quaker and never became one. He passed most of his life in England painting a few noteworthy pictures — and many others — and trainr ing a school of American artists. His first important work was a representation in color of "The Death of Wolfe" on the Plains of Abraham. Instead of depicting the dying general in classic robes, as was then the custom, he clothed him in the uniform of a British general and defended this barbaric innovation by saying that historic painting, no less than historic writing, should be true to the facts. This statement may possibly be in itself quite unhistorical, but the picture represents what West believed to be the fact. His other important large paintings were "Penn's Treaty with the Indians," "Christ Healing the Sick," and "Death on the Pale Horse." "Penn's Treaty" and the "Wolfe" have done more to form pseudo-historical tradition than almost anything of the kind, but West's other two large pictures had, if possible, greater popularity. They were copied time and time again and exhibited all over the United States. West found favor also with the British nobility and with George III and became president of the
1 Samuel Isham's History of Amen- 2 Charles H. Hart's Benjamin West's
can Painting (New York, 1905) ; there Family . . . Not a Quaker (Phila-
is a general bibliography on p. 565 and delphia, 1908). For the old time tra-
fol. See also Dunlap's Arts of De- ditional view of West and his place
sign and Henry T. Tuckerman's Artist- in the history of art, see John Gait's
Life: or Sketches of American Painters Life, Studies, and Works of Benjamin
(New York, 1847). On Trumbull. West, Esq. (London, 1820). The "Ap-
see John F. Weir's John Trumbull, A pendix" gives a list of four hundred
Brief Sketch of His Life. and ten of West's pictures.
300 LITERATURE [Cn. IX
Royal Academy, — a career that has seldom been surpassed. Most of the artistic work of that time was in portraiture. Artists travelled from town to town in America, reproducing with more or less faithfulness the lineaments of almost countless men and women. Oftentimes they charged small prices for their services and spent little time at the work ; but they perpetuated for us the faces and forms of their generation of American men and women. The silhouettists and the fabricators of wax portraits also helped to preserve the features of our ancestors. From 1810 to 1840 was the period in which the silhouette makers flourished.1 The most remarkable of them was Auguste Edouart, who came to America from France by way of London. He and some of the others delineated family groups and some of these are among the most striking representations of the figures of the past.
Ordinarily, having procured a little money by portrait painting, an artist sought the other side of the Atlantic and almost inevitably found himself in West's studio in London. Returning to the home land, he painted more portraits of greater artistic merit, though perhaps of not greater historic truth, and then yielded place to younger men. Of them all, the career of Washington Allston possesses the greatest attraction as showing the progress of the American mind. Allston2 was born in South Carolina in 1779, passed his boy- hood in Rhode Island, which even then was sought by "the most fashionable influential Characters from Maryland to Georgia,"3 and entered Harvard College in 1796. There, the coloring of Symbert's copy of Vandyke's portrait of
1 Charles Henry Hart in The Out- Nevill Jackson's History of Silhouettes
look for October 6, 1900, has an in- (London, 1911).
teresting article on "The Last of the 2Jared B. Flagg's Life and Letters of
Silhouettists." The best work is Ethel Washington Allston (New York, 1892). S. Bolton's Wax Portraits and Sil- *G. L. Rives's Correspondence of
houettes (Boston, 1915). See also E. Thomas Barclay, 144.
1830] WASHINGTON ALLSTON 301
Cardinal Bentivoglio attracted him and did much to turn his attention to art. He studied with West at London, spent four years at Rome, and at one time or another passed seven years in England. Finally returning to America, he devoted his last years to the remaking of a large picture of " Bel- shazzar's Feast " and died before the work was done. Allston delivered a series of lectures on art which were the first of their kind in America and even now are interesting. He protested against " faithful transcripts." Art should be characterized by originality, by poetic truth, by imagi- nation, and by unity. The difference between nature and art is that one is " the work of the Creator, and the other of the creature." Washington Allston also printed a volume of poems and a rather striking work of fiction entitled " Mo- naldi," which is worth reading even now. And five lines of his poetry linger in the memory :
" ' Tis sad to think, of all the crowded Past, How small a remnant in the memory lives I A shadowy mass of shapes at random cast Wide on a broken sea the image gives Of most that we recall."
The earliest chronicler of the painters and the actors was William Dunlap, himself an artist, a theatrical manager, and a dramatist, besides being the writer of two distinctly useful books, a " History of the American Theatre " and a " History ,of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States." The latter was published in New York in 1834 when many of those who are memorialized in its pages were still alive and able to contribute to the work. Dunlap quoted largely, but he rejected many of the stock anecdotes that came to him from Gait's biography of Benjamin West. Dunlap painted partly from memory and partly from
302 LITERATURE [CH. IX
sketches1 replicas of West's large pictures. These, with some of his own productions, he exhibited all over the country, in Transappalachia as well as in the Old Thirteen States, and his series of exhibitions was only one of many. Doubtless the artistic merit of many of the pictures and of other objects, as Hiram Powers's " Greek Slave " in marble, was not great, but the fact that thousands of people wished to see them and were willing to pay for the privilege is an indication of a quickened artistic sense. Powers's " Greek Slave " and Greenough's " Washington " pall on the modern taste.2 The latter was designed for the interior of the Capitol and in its half-clothed condition out of doors the figure of the seated Washington strikes modern observers as somewhat bizarre. There have been critics who have been rude enough to suggest that the fame of the Greek Slave was largely due to its being the first unclad life-size female figure to be exhibited in America ; but the further assertion that it was simply a copy of a second-rate antique and not the result of a frontier genius is unjust to Powers, who lived for years in Cincinnati, although he was born and nurtured in Vermont, and did most of his work in Italy.
Whence come genius and talent ? Do they arise from the soil, come from one's parents, from one's early environ- ment, or from the circumstances of one's working career? In the preceding pages care has been taken to note all four of these points, partly with a view to illustrating this very matter. Recently, attention has been drawn to the com-, parative influence of " nature and nurture " in forming men's lives, partly as a test of Galton's famous thesis. Edwin L. Clarke has tabulated the birth-places 3 of four
»See Oral S. Coad's William Dun- American Sculpture (New York, 19l3)i
lap, A Study of his Life and Dunlap's Pt. i.
own account in his Arts of Design, i, 'Edwin L. Clarke's American Men
243-311. of Letters; their Nature and Nurture,
2 See Lorado Taft's History of 80.
18301 NATURE AND NURTURE 303
hundred and sixty American Literati born before 1851. Of these 218 were born in New England, 140 in the Middle States, 48 in the South Atlantic States, 44 in all the rest of the United States, and 8 in Canada. At first sight it would appear that there was some peculiar quality inherent in the rocks and sands of New England, so that people born there were influenced by the geographic character of the place, by its soil and its climate. Looking a little farther Clarke placed these 460 literary persons according to the religious surroundings of their families. It appears that 119 were " trained " as Congregationalists, 73 as Presby- terians, 49 as Unitarians, 7 as Universalists, and 20 as Quakers, or 268 in all belonging to the religious faiths that had been prominent in early New England. When one considers the relative size of the population served by these religious faiths, the picture is startling ; but when one goes beneath the surface a bit and looks into the circum- stances of the careers of these men, or of the most famous group of them, one finds that it was not so much their religious training as it was a revolt from the ideas of their fathers and grandfathers that influenced them. The great- est of them produced their most effective works in New England in the second third of the century.1 It was the time when Church and State were separated, when the old ideas suffered a most severe shock. Emerson tells us
'The following dates are associated ley's New York Tribune begins ; 1848, with the names of the foremost mem- Lowell's Fable for Critics and the here of the New England group: Biglow Papers; 1849, Thoreau's Week 1821, Bryant's Poems; 1830, Holmes's on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, "Old Ironsides," 1858, Autocrat of the and 1854, Walden. Of the historians, Breakfast Table; 1831, Whittier's Leg- the first volume of Bancroft's United ends of New England, 1841, Voices of States appeared in 1834 ; Prescott's Freedom; 1836, Emerson's Nature, 1838, Ferdinand and Isabella in 1837 ; Park- The American Scholar; 1837, Haw- man's Conspiracy of Pontiac in 1851 ; thorne's Twice-Told Tales, 1850, The and Motley's Rise of the Dutch Re- Scarlet Letter; 1839, Longfellow's Hy- public in 1856. perion, 1847, Evangeline; 1841, Gree
304 LITERATURE [Cn. IX
to think for ourselves ; Thoreau to see for ourselves ; Chan- ning to interpret the Bible for ourselves ; and Hawthorne gives a picture of the older time that makes one's flesh creep even now. Longfellow and Whittier objurgated the preceding generations in verse, and Holmes gently chided his ancestors and their companions as the New England Brahminical class. All of them threw precedents to the winds and in their mental revolt they broke away from the old social order and inaugurated a period of freethinking. It was not the New England soil and climate, it was not any physical or mental peculiarity of the old New England stock, it was not any particular schooling that bred these men, it was the reaction of the period and the place from the old conditions and the bounding forth into a new and freer life that produced them. Moreover, the idea that family scholasticism was an essential element in the production of the New England literary school does not seem to be borne out by the facts of these men's nurture. Emerson and Holmes were sons of Congregational ministers, but Thoreau and Whittier were farmer boys, and Hawthorne's father was a merchant, and whenever one approaches this particular theme, the career of Abraham Lincoln at once comes to mind as controverting all theories on nature and nurture. It may well be that the simplicity of existence in that time gave men and women opportunity to turn from bread and luxury winning to affairs of the imagination.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was the clearest thinker that America has yet produced and one of the clearest thinkers that the world has ever seen, and his English is of the kind that is eternal. Thoreau in his lifetime was not at all appreciated, but as the years have gone by and people have come to know him better, especially through the pub- lication of his "Journal," it is clear that, in some respects,
1830] THE HISTORIANS 305
he has had no equal in this country and few anywhere. Hawthorne, curiously enough, had little fame in his lifetime compared with that which has since visited him. It is interesting to think of these men as Americans who drew their inspirations from America, who in their formative years never went far from their boyhood homes. Besides the poets and essayists who have been enumerated in the preceding paragraphs, New England produced a quartette of historians who enjoyed great vogue in their lives and whose fame is not yet dead. Of these, George Bancroft was the earliest in point of time and represents for America the doctrinaire historical writer, and it is as a protest against the theory of the aristocratic march of American history that his work can still be used. Prescott and Motley had none of the usual equipment of the successful historical student : they were not poor, they were not teachers, they had no scientific training. They were subject to the English historical method and sought by literary expertness to make historic scenes and events appeal to their readers, — and they succeeded. The fourth in the list, Francis Parkman, combined careful scientific historical investigation with great literary charm. No historian can hope to live as can a poet or an essayist, because new facts will constantly arise to invalidate his most careful conclusions ; but these four men have enjoyed a life beyond that generally awarded to his- torians. In short, this half-century in the United States in poetry, in fiction, and in history stands apart, — it is without an equal since the days of Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, and John Milton.
VOL.V. — X
306
LITERATURE
NOTE
General Bibliography. — The bibliographies at the ends of the first two volumes of the Cambridge History of American Literature are of great value to the student and include, not only works of " pure " or " polite " literature, but also sections on travels, newspapers, and orators.1 Histories of American literature have been written by Barrett Wendell, Bliss Perry, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, William P. Trent, and George E. Woodberry ; 2 but they are all mainly con- cerned with " the Augustan Period of American Literature " or the " Renaissance of American Letters," meaning thereby the period of New England literary flowering.3 Earl L. Bradsher's Mathew Carey, Editor, Author, and Publisher (New York, 1912) is one of the few essays to give a view of the American non-classical literature.
1 A comprehensive list of the writ- ings of Southerners is at the end of vol. xvi of the Library of Southern Litera- ture.
* A Literary History of America by Barrett Wendell ; History of Litera- ture in America by Wendell and C. N. Greenough; The American Mind by Bliss Perry; A Reader's History of American Literature by T. W. Higgin- son and H. W. Boynton ; The Cam- bridge History of American Literature edited by W. P. Trent and others;
America in Literature by G. E. Wood- berry; C. F. Richardson's American Literature (2 vols., New York, 1887); D. D. Addison's Clergy in American Life and Letters.
* William B. Cairns's essay "On the Development of American Literature from 1815 to 1833" (Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, Literature Series, i, No. 1) is almost the only at- tempt to give an adequate place to the literary activity of this early time.
CHAPTER X
THE PRESIDENCY OP JAMES MONROE
POLITICALLY and superficially the ten years from 1815 to 1825 were years of calm within the boundaries of the federal government. They have often been termed the Era of Good Feeling and are usually regarded as having no interest and as being of little importance. In reality they were a formative period in our political history and in our inter- national history of the greatest interest and of the highest importance. It was in that time that forces were taking shape that were to determine the history of the United States down to the year 1865. The Southerners consolidated their grip upon the government of the country and developed the solidarity of society to the southward of Mason and Dixon's line that was to become apparent to every one in 1850. John Quincy Adams noted the general high ability of the Southern congressmen and government officials in comparison with that of the Northerners with whom he had to do in Wash- ington. A leisured class had developed in the South ; its members were only slightly interested in "reforms" or in literature, but they were absorbed in politics. This was not confined to the very rich men, because many well-to-do planters, who were actively engaged in the management of their plantations, were able to leave their fields and slaves to the care of overseers and managers and attend the meet- ings of the State legislatures and of the federal Congress. In the North the members of the leisured classes were either
307
308
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [Cn. X
engaged in reforming the abuses that had come down from colonial times, or were devoted to literature; and the strong men of affairs were so immersed in business that they could not enter public life ; and, in the newer country of the Northwest, the farmers were obliged to stick to their ploughs. There were exceptions to this rule as to any other, — John Quincy Adams, himself, was a most marked exception ; but, generally speaking, political matters in the North were left to the professionals whose horizons were bounded by petty offices and personal advancements. One could enumerate twenty-five or fifty men in the South in this period whose abilities could not be matched by more than a dozen North- ern politicians. It is true that, with its rapidly growing population, the North was steadily outstripping the South in Congress — notwithstanding the working of the federal ratio, but so far the Southerners by combining with the democratic elements in the Northern population had been able to keep their grip on the federal government. In 1816, James Monroe,1 a Virginia planter like Jefferson and Madison, had been elected President by 183 electoral votes to only 34 for his Federalist opponent, Rufus King of New York. In 1820, there was no Federalist candidate at all and Monroe was reflected President, receiving all but one of the electoral votes. That single vote was given by William Plumer of New Hampshire to John Quincy Adams, because he thought that Monroe had shown "a want of foresight and economy." 2
One department alone had resisted the triumph of th(
1 The Writings of James Monroe were edited by S. M. Hamilton and published in seven volumes in New York in 1903. These volumes re- produce the most important part of the papers purchased from Monroe's heirs in 1849. These manuscripts are in the Library of Congress and
have been listed by W. C. Ford in volume entitled Papers of James Mo roe.
2 William Plumer to William Plumer, Jr., January 8, 1821, in the "Plumer Mss. " in the Library of Congress, and in the American Historical Review, xxi, 318.
1803) CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN MARSHALL 309
Republicans, the federal judiciary as represented by the Supreme Court of the United States. It is true that by 1820, all but two of the judges were Republicans and the Chief Justice himself was a Southerner. But that Chief Justice, John Marshall, was a Virginian of the George Washington type. In point of fact, in some respects he strongly resembled that great man. Like him he was not deeply versed in the minutiae of learning, but like him he had steadfastness of purpose and the power of commanding the learning of those who worked with him. Decades came and decades went ; for thirty-five years Marshall remained at the head of the national judiciary, and for thirty-five years he remained a Federalist. Moreover, as one of the old Federalist justices after another died and his place was filled by a Republican appointed by one of the Virginia Republican Presidents, he fell immediately under the over- whelming influence of the Chief Justice. In seven leading cases spread over the twenty-one years from 1803 to 1824 Marshall and his colleagues announced the supremacy of the federal government over the States of the Union so far as powers had been delegated to it by the sovereign people through the medium of the Constitution.1 In Marbury vs. Madison, the earliest decision in point of time, the supremacy of the Supreme Court over the federal legislature was enun-
JThe cases are as follows: Mar- and the "Letters" of Marshall to Judge bury vs. Madison, 1803; Fletcher vs. Story, printed in the Proceedings Peck, 1810 ; Martin vs. Hunter's of the Massachusetts Historical So- Lessee, 1816 ; M'Culloch vs. Mary- ciety for November, 1900, throw a land, 1819 ; Cohens vs. Virginia, 1821 ; flood of light on the personal and Osborn vs. Bank of the United States, mental characteristics of the great 1824 ; Gibbons vs. Ogden, 1824. These Chief Justice and his ablest sup- cases may be most convienently con- porter.
suited in J. B. Thayer's Cases on Con- Monroe — when governor of Vir-
stilutional Law, in The Writings of ginia — wrote to Jefferson in 1801 :
John Marshall, and in the "Reports" "Each govt. [federal and State] is in
of the Supreme Court. Albert J. its sphere sovereign, so far as the
Beveridge's John Marshall, in four term is applicable in a country where
volumes, is one of the most illuminat- the people alone are so." Works,
ing of American biographical works iii, 282.
310 THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [Cn. X
ciated. In the last of them, Gibbons vs. Ogden, in 1824, the supremacy of the Constitution over State constitutions and laws was set forth in a decision that navigation, so far as it could be included within the phrase "regulate com- merce" between the States, was within federal control. In the case of Cohens vs. Virginia in 1821 and in Martin vs. Hunter's Lessee in 1816, the Supreme Court actually had the temerity to issue orders to Virginia State courts. In M'Culloch vs. Maryland and in Osborn vs. the Bank, the power of the United States government to regulate the finan- cial concerns of the several States and practically of every individual within the United States was laid down with un- deniable distinctness. It is true that the persons and powers directly affected by some of these decisions paid little attention to the orders of the federal Supreme Court ; but the orders and the principles and the reasoning upon which these decisions were based remained and remain to this day practically the supreme law of the land. In death, indeed, the Federalist party triumphed.
One of the most distinctive features of the Hamiltonian policy had been the concentration of the control of the finances of all the people of the United States within the grasp of a great financial institution that had been in- corporated by act of Congress in 1791 and had been more thoroughly hated than any other creation of the Federalists. In 1811, the charter of the Bank of the United States had expired by its limitation. For several years one attempt after another had been made to prolong its life by a new charter embodying some peculiarly favorable features so far as the central government was concerned.1 All had
1 See Report of the Secretary of the siderations on the Currency and Bank- Treasury on the Subject of a National ing System of the United States (Phila- Bank (March 2, 1809). Gallatin's delphia, 1831). A vigorous and viru- later ideas are to be found in his Con- lent attack on the Bank was made by
1816]
BANK OF THE UNITED STATES
311
been in vain. The Jeffersonians had aroused the jealousies of the people against centralized financial power, the Jeffersonian government had sold bank stock belonging to the United States to English capitalists through the Barings of London,1 and Albert Gallatin, who was still Secretary of the Treasury, had aroused the anger and distrust of politi- cians and local financiers partly by his insistence on things that were good in themselves and partly by an ignorance of the ordinary methods of business transactions,2 — and be- sides he was of foreign birth. His enemies combined with those Congressmen who naturally distrusted banks and with the anti-British people to defeat every attempt to renew its existence. When the war came, the difficulty of collect- ing government funds and paying them out was greatly in- creased by the lack of a central financial institution, and from time to time it became almost impossible to provide the
loney to purchase supplies in distant parts of the country.
rold and silver disappeared from circulation, except in New England. This was mainly due to the vicious banking systems of other parts of the country, but it was helped on by the exportation of seven million dollars in specie to pay the foreign holders of the stock of the first United States Bank at the precise moment that gold and silver were most needed in the United States.3 Moreover, the demise of the old bank had been followed by the chartering of in-
Jesse Atwater in Considerations on the Approaching Dissolution of the United States Bank (New Haven, 1810).
'See "Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury" dated January 23, 1811, in which he says that three- fourths of the shares of the Bank of the United States were held by for- eigners.
2 See the present work, vol. iv, 403.
* Henry Clay's speech against the rechartering of the old Bank in 1811 (Annals of Congress, llth Cong., 3rd
Sess., 219) shows in a graphic way the feeling of a large part of the Ameri- can public against the Bank. In view of this it is rather curious to reflect that Clay's salary, as one of the Com- missioners at Ghent, and the salaries of the other diplomatic representa- tives abroad were paid through the Barings of London — in time of war between the United States and Great Britain. See American Historical As- sociation's Report for 1913 (ii, 210 and note).
312 THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [Cn. X
numerable State banks which had been created without any restrictions on their doings. These had naturally issued paper money, practically without stint, and loaned funds oftentimes on very slight security. At the time of the rati- fication of the Treaty of Ghent, the financial condition of the United States was desperate.
Alexander J. Dallas l was Secretary of the Treasury in 1815. He thought that the establishment of a national bank was the best method to adopt to rehabilitate the federal finances, restore the currency, and revive public and private credit by controlling the excesses of the local State banks. There was a great deal of opposition to the plan, but in April, 1816, the second Bank of the United States was incorporated by act of Congress.2 In many ways, it resembled the old Hamiltonian institution. The govern- ment was to subscribe to a portion of the capital stock and was to appoint five of the twenty-five directors. The government funds were to be deposited in the Bank unless the Secretary of the Treasury should think it was inadvisable so to do ; but if he did not so deposit them, he was to state his reasons to Congress as soon as possible. The Bank was to transfer the public funds from one part of the country to another without any expense to the government, but it was not to pay interest on the public money. The capital stock of the Bank might be largely composed of government securities, the institution was to perform certain functions in the handling of government loans, and the Bank was to pay a bonus to the government of one and a half million dollars in three payments within four years
1 Like Morris, Hamilton, and Gal- Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., 1st
latin, Dallas was born outside the Sess., col. 1812 ; American State Papers,
limits of the United States, — on the Finance, ii, 892 ; and in Appendix i
island of Jamaica. to R. C. H. Catterall's Second Bank
* The charter is printed in full in of the United States.
1816] THE SECOND BANK 313
after its organization. The Bank might establish branches in different parts of the country and it could issue circu- lating notes which must be signed by the president and cashier of the Bank. In opposing the adoption of the charter John Randolph of Roanoke prophesied that the Bank would become "an engine of irresistible power in the hands of any administration" and an instrument by which the federal executive could hurl the whole nation to destruction.1 His financial ineptitude was as glaring as that of any man in the country ; but he forecasted future events with painful accur- acy, in this case, at least. Other financial legislation that was passed at about the same time looked to the resumption of specie payment within twelve months.2 The subscription to the stock of the new national Bank proceeded slowly, but at length it opened its doors. For the first four or five years, it was badly managed. Numerous branches were established, especially in the South and the West where there were many State banks and where paper money had been issued in the greatest abundance. Undoubtedly the attempt to bring about deflation in so short a time and by means of a national financial institution was most unwise and accounted for the great unpopularity of the Second Bank in large portions of the country ; and also did something at least to bring about the hard times of the next few years. In 1820, William H. Crawford was Secretary of the Treasury. He declared that the demands for gold and silver coin that were constantly made by the United States Bank and its branches led people to ascribe to it all the evils that had been suffered from the rapid contraction of the currency ; but in bringing this about the Bank had really been only a passive agent in the hands of the government.3
1 Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., Congress, 14th Cong., 1st Sess., 1919. 1st Sess., 1110. 3 American State Papers, Finance,
2 Act of April 30, 1816; Annals of iii, 508. These sentences are at the
314
THE PRESIDENCY OP JAMES MONROE [Ca. X
What would have happened to the country without this financial legislation cannot be stated. The Bank did a great deal towards stabilizing business and Dallas's master- ful policy aided powerfully the reestablishment of sound financial methods. But the times and seasons and con- ditions throughout the world were most unusual in this period of reaction after the European struggle against the domination of Napoleon and of France. Harvests were bad in England and on the Continent and riots and outrages were common. In America, the condition of affairs was even more attended with danger than in Europe. One season of bad harvest succeeded another. Year after year there were droughts, hot spring weather, cold summer weather, and crop-devouring insects.1 From 1816 to 1819 and to 1821, farmers were unable to buy goods, or to pay for goods that had already been purchased. With the re- opening of the ocean routes and of the ports of the United States, European commodities were sent from the eastern side of the Atlantic and sold for what they would bring. Factories were closed, employment reduced, and wages lowered, so that the purchasing power of the working people was everywhere diminished. Letters and diaries of promi- nent men of that time are filled with statements showing how impossible it was to meet the ordinary financial obliga-
end of the report, but the whole docu- ment, which begins on p. 494, and Crawford's later report on "Banks of Deposite" on pp. 718-782 deserve thoughtful reading.
'In August, 1818, Charles Ellis, writing from Richmond to John Allan, who was then in London, noted many failures in Virginia and that property would only bring as many hundreds as it would have commanded thou- sands eighteen months earlier. East- ern banks, he said, were calling loans and Western banks were closing their
doors. In February, 1819, there were more failures, and in the following March a "general curtail" took place. Negroes were unsalable and the hard times continued in parts of the country as late as 1825, when Vincent Nolte's firm failed at New Orleans. See Nolte's Fifty Years in Both Hemi- spheres, p. 329. It is also worth noting that the cashier of the New York Branch foretold failures in New York Philadelphia, and Baltimore, as far back as October, 1818.
1816] TARIFF ACT 315
tions of everyday life, and year by year the Bank incessantly called for payment of debts that were due to it, and its example was necessarily followed by the State banks so that men found it difficult to look ahead from one season to another — whether they were mill owners, or farmers, or retailers of merchandise. The manufacturers appealed to Congress for aid and in 1816 a tariff act was passed with the direct intention of giving them assistance.1 By this act moderate duties were laid on the principal commodities that were or could be made in the United States, and "a minimum duty" was provided on cotton cloth 2 by enacting that all imported cottons should be valued at twenty-five cents per square yard at the lowest, for the purpose of cal- culating the import duty. This impost was twenty-five per cent ad valorem until 1819 and twenty per cent there- after. It may well be questioned whether this law pro- vided any efficient "protection" for the languishing manu- factures ; but it assuredly was the beginning of the new pro- tective period and of the "minimum" principle. About both of these many fierce political battles were to be waged in the coming years, — and about them there was to be
1 Annals of Congresi, 14th Cong., created a new demand for their cotton ;
1st Sess., 1870. they argued, on the contrary, that the
* This part of the law was aimed greatly increased price of cotton against the importation of low-priced cloth, which was due to this legis- India cottons. Some of these cost lation, was equivalent to compelling as little as six cents a square yard, at them to pay a duty of seventy-five which price American manufacturers per cent on the cloth they purchased could not hope to compete. By ap- for their slaves. Moreover, the price praising these cheap cloths at twenty- of cotton was fixed at Liverpool and five cents a yard and levying a duty depended upon the prosperity of of one-quarter or one-fifth on this English manufacturers of hardware, appraised value, the price of these etc. Anything, the American tariff imported Indian cottons was raised to for instance, that interfered with this a figure at which American manu- prosperity lowered the price of cotton facturers could compete and thus at Liverpool and on every plantation provided a market for Southern grown in America. See Governor Ham- cotton. The Southerners seem to mond's "Message of November 26, have been entirely unaffected by the 1844." argument that this arrangement
316
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [Ca. X
much argument as to who paid the tariff duty and who re- ceived the benefits from it, and whether they lived in the South, or the North, or the West.
The improvement of the transportation facilities of the country, or of portions of it, at the general expense or at the expense of one or two colonies or States was undertaken even in colonial times when a passable route from Portsmouth in New Hampshire southward to Baltimore was opened.1 With the establishment of the government under the Con- stitution, it was generally recognized that the defence of the country as a whole and the building up of the economic and social welfare of the people would be greatly facilitated by better means of transportation overland and by water through the sounds and bays and up and down the rivers that separated and at the same time connected different parts of the country. During the Federalist regime, Con- gress and the administration had been so busily occupied with matters of primary organization that they had no time to devote to schemes of internal improvement. And, be- sides, if Martin Van Buren can be trusted, Hamilton thought an amendment of the Constitution would be necessary to authorize the general government to open canals through the territory of two or more States.2 Gallatin thought otherwise and on his advice Congress included in the act admitting Ohio to the Union as a State a provision that one- twentieth part of the net proceeds of the sale of the public lands within the limits of the new State "shall be applied to the laying out and making public roads" from the sea-
1 The economical and social aspects of internal improvements have been treated in ch. i.
2 In the "Van Buren Papers" at Washington is a paper given by Hamil- ton to Senator Drayton advocating such an amendment, partly because
the making of these improvements by the federal government would be "a useful source of influence"; but how this paper, if it is genuine, came into Van Buren's possession is not stated in the endorsement upon it.
1807] INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 317
board into and through the State of Ohio, " such roads to be laid out under the authority of Congress with the consent of the several states through which the road shall pass." l The act containing this clause was approved by President Jefferson, — such was the origin of the Cumberland Road. In 1807, the matter of internal improvements again arrested Gallatin's attention. He caused a friendly Senator to call for a report from him on the general subject of internal improvement and replied with the report of April 4, 1808, which has been already mentioned.2 About a year earlier, February 10, 1807, a bill authorizing the survey of the coast had been passed by Congress and approved by Jefferson, although no organization was effected until 1816.3 Thus the policy of internal improvements by federal action, in- cluding the surveying and protecting of the coasts, the deepening and betterment of rivers and harbors, and the making of national roads belongs in its first phase distinctly to Gallatin and to Jefferson.
Although Jefferson fell in with Gallatin's desires as to physical improvements by the national government, he thought an amendment to the Constitution would be necessary to legalize such proceedings, — thus agreeing in this with Hamilton. In his Annual Message to Congress in December, 1806, Jefferson states that there will soon be surplus revenues.4 He asks, shall the government avoid collecting more money than it needs for current expenses
1 Statutes at Large, ii, 173. See also had looked upon any kind of internal Adams's Gallatin, 350 and the Writ- improvement as "a source of bound- ings of Albert Gallatin, i, 78. less patronage to the executive, job-
2 See above, p. 9. bing to members of Congress & their
3 See Laws of 1807, 1882, and 1843, friends, and a bottomless abyss of relating to the Survey of the Coast of the public money. ... It will be a scene United States ; Statutes at Large, ii, of eternal scramble among the mem- 413 ; and in the Centennial Celebration bers, who can get the most money of the Coast Survey, p. 175." wasted in their State ; and they will
4 Annals of Congress, 9th Cong., always get most who are meanest." 2nd Sess., 14. It is interesting to Writings (Ford ed.), vii, 63.
note that ten years earlier, Jefferson
318 THE PRESIDENCY OP JAMES MONROE |CH. X
and the discharge of the public debt by Suppressing the imposts and giving just so much "advantage to foreign over domestic manufactures," or shall it apply the surplus to "public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to add to the Constitutional enumeration of federal powers " ? Although Jefferson doubted the constitutionality of internal improvements without an amendment to the Constitution, he signed the bills for the survey of the Cum- berland Road and the rivers and harbors on the coast.1 The early Presidents seem to have discerned some con- stitutional difference between spending money on surveys and on construction that is not now comprehensible. The embargo and the War of 1812 interfered with the prosecution of these designs as it did with so many others ; and it was not until 1816, when the prospect of receiving some ready money from the new Bank of the United States awakened fresh interest in the subject. On the 16th day of December in that year John C. Calhoun of South Carolina declared that the auspicious circumstances under which the sub- scription to the stock of the National Bank had begun made it desirable to consider whether the course of internal improvement was a proper direction to give to the national profits to be derived from that institution. He moved for the appointment of a committee to inquire into the expe- diency of setting apart these profits as a permanent fund for internal improvements.2 The committee was appointed and, as its chairman on December 23, 1816, Calhoun intro- duced a bill, "to set apart and pledge, as a permanent fund for internal improvements" the profits received from the Bank. In the debate that followed John Randolph of
1 Statutes at Large, ii, 357, 375, 2 Annals of Congress, 14th Cong.,
413. 2nd Sess.. 296, 361.
18161 INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 319
Roanoke declared that the old States ought to have a share in the "sunshine of government" and that the navigation of the Roanoke, the Catawba, and the Yadkin rivers ought to be improved, as well as that of the Tombigbee. The bill passed and went to the President and on March 3, 1817, on the last day of his public career, James Madison vetoed it, being "constrained," he wrote, "by the insuperable difficulty" of reconciling the bill with the Constitution of the United States. Having thus killed the measure, Madi- son stated that he fully realized the great importance of roads and canals and improved navigation, but that no power to provide for internal improvements was given by the Constitution to the National Legislature or could be deduced from any part of it without "an inadmissible latitude of construction." He hinted that an amendment might well be made authorizing such expenditures. Monroe in his first message declared that he, likewise, was convinced that Con- gress did not possess the right to construct roads and canals and he also suggested that an amendment should be adopted to make it possible.
It was at this point that Henry Clay stepped into the arena and made the subject of internal improvements a cardinal point in his policy for the next dozen years. Clay believed that Congress had ample power to do what he desired and that no amendment to the Constitution was necessary. Before long the question of internal improve- ments at the expense of the nation became commingled with the maintenance of a protective tariff, — the com- bination being termed the "American System." With his marvellous powers of speech and boldness of purpose, Clay took the leading part in the formulation of this programme ; but, as is not infrequently the case, the statement of the scheme was made in a more usable form by persons of talents
320 THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE iCn. X
distinctly inferior to his. One of these was Andrew Stewart, a member of Congress from Pennsylvania, who was very well regarded by many people of that time. The true American policy, according to him,1 was to cherish national industry so as to secure at home an abundant amount of food, clothing, housing, and articles of defence. The articles of luxury consumed by the rich should be taxed for revenue purposes, but the necessaries of life that were consumed by the poor and all articles that could not be produced in the United States should be free from all taxation. Whatever surplus revenue might accrue should be used for national improvements, — those of a local character being left to the care of the States. Economy should be pursued in public expenditure that financial burdens might be light- ened and the rewards of labor increased. To this general outline of the American System should be added the con- tribution to the internal improvement fund of the money received from the sales of the public lands. In its most optimistic form this system, so it was said, would render the United States independent of the world, would promote the manufacturing interests of the Northeast and the agricultural interests of Transappalachia, and would bind together by arteries of commerce and by ties of mutual bene- fit the different parts of the country. It certainly was a grand conception. Unfortunately, the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution had not then been interpreted, not even by John Marshall, to authorize the federal govern- ment to do whatever it wished, so long as its wish stepped over a State line. Monroe vetoed every bill that came before him that involved federal construction in a State; but, in 1822, he sent a very long dissertation2 to Congress on the
his American System, 322-343. ternal Improvements" in Mess 2 See "Views of the President of the and Papers of the Presidents, ii, 144, United States on the Subject of In- and "Annual Message," pp. 185-195.
1830] INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 321
subject of internal improvements and, later, he again rec- ommended the adoption of an amendment to the Con- stitution authorizing the national government to make internal improvements at the national expense. The Cumberland Road, or the National Road, was built to the Ohio River and further on the western side of that stream according to the earlier laws ; but every effort that was made to repair that highway or to improve it was sternly resisted although Monroe signed his name to an act for surveying the extension of the road to the Mississippi.1
Curiously enough although the repair of the National Road was regarded by many persons as beyond the con- stitutional power of the federal government, river and harbor improvements in the earlier days did not strike the same constitutional snags,2 although there were not wanting signs of doubt in the executive mind as to whether these were within the purview of the fundamental law. Thus matters stood when Monroe laid down the reins of office and John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay came into power as President and Secretary of State and proceeded to do whatever they could to push on the American System, but without much success. Years after, James K. Polk, when President, could see no difference between harbor and river improve- ments and canal digging and road making by the federal government. Whenever such a measure came before him, he vetoed it and explained to the members of Congress that a thing that is convenient is not always "necessary and proper" and therefore constitutional. Like Jefferson, Madi-
The "Views" may be found also in of Congress, 18th Cong., 1st Sess., vol.
Monroe's Writings, vi, 216-284. ii, 3227. Jackson, who was then in
1 Statutes at Large, iii, 604 ; Act the Senate, voted for this bill as he
of May 15, 1820. did for the Survey Bill of the same
2 On May 24, 1824, Monroe signed year: Sioussat's "Memphis as a Gate-
the act to improve the navigation of way to the West" in Tennessee Histori-
the Ohio and Mississippi rivers : Annals rai Magazine, March, 1917.
VOL. v. — y
322 THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [Cn. X
son, and Monroe, President Polk recognized somewhat grudgingly the need of providing "aids to navigation" that were immediately connected with foreign commerce and were for the protection and security of American naval vessels. He thought that when one advanced a step beyond this point, it was extremely difficult to know where to stop. As long as he was President, no river or harbor or part of a river or harbor above a port of entry or delivery had any chance of improvement. Polk even anticipated the possible passage of such a measure by writing out a veto message in advance, so as to have it in readiness in case Congress should pass a river and harbor bill in the very last hours of the ses- sion.1 He thought that if Congress had power to improve a harbor, it had power to deepen inlets and to make harbors where there were none ; and in the scramble for the contents of the Treasury the true interests of the country would be lost sight of and the most artful and industrious persons would be the most successful.2 It will be interesting, before dropping this subject, to see how Jefferson felt toward public ownership and management in general. He thought that the only way to secure good and safe government was to divide and subdivide the administration until every one managed his own affairs. "The generalizing and concen- trating all cares and powers into one body" has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government that had ever existed. This was written in 1816. In 1825 he actually drew up a "solemn Declaration and Protest of the commonwealth of Virginia" against the internal improve- ment policy, but it was not approved of by his two presiden-
1 The idea that a President had ten 2 See Diary of James K. Polk during
days after the close of a session of Con- his Presidency (4 vols., Chicago, 1910)
gress to consider measures passed by using index under "Harbor, " "Internal
both Houses had not then been in- Improvements," and "Message, veto." vented.
1820] MISSOURI COMPROMISE 323
tial friends and was never acted upon.1 It is worth noting, however, as having been drawn up by Thomas Jefferson in the next to the last year of his life.
It was in 1803 that the United States had come into possession of the French-Spanish province of Louisiana. The southern part of this province was erected into the Territory of Orleans and later was admitted to the Union as the State of Louisiana ; the northern part was for a time fastened to the Territory of Indiana forming a district, which came to be known as the District of Louisiana and later as the Territory of Missouri. Negro slavery had existed in Louisiana as a French Province and as a Spanish Province. The Louisiana Purchase Treaty had distinctly provided that the inhabitants of the ceded province should be protected in their liberty, property, and religion. How many slaves there were in Upper Louisiana in 1804 is not precisely known ; 2 but there were presumably somewhere near a thousand of them within the limits of the settled part of what are now the States of Missouri and Arkan- sas. Soon after the delivery of the province, Captain Amos Stoddard, an officer of the United States army and first Civil Commandant at St. Louis, was approached by a com- mittee of the leading citizens of that place. They were anxious, so they said, as to the conduct of their slaves in the altered condition of affairs. Stoddard replied that he
1 Early History of the University of Review, xv, 36-52). According to
Virginia, pp. 54, 55 ; Jefferson's Writ- Professor Viles (ibid., v, No. 4) the
ings (Ford ed.), x, 349-352. total slave population of the Mis-
1 In 1799, there were 883 slaves souri settlements in 1803-1804 was 1349
in Upper Louisiana (American State or a few more. Trexler (Slavery in
Papers, Miscellaneous, i, 383) ; in 1810, Missouri, 1804-1865, p. 9) makes the
there were 3011 (Aggregate Amount number of slaves in 1803 to be be-
of . . . Persons unthin the United States, tween two and three thousand. Viles's
. . . in the year 1810, p. 84) ; in 1820, figures are based largely on Amos
there were 10,222 (Census for 1820, Stoddard's Sketches of Louisiana, 211,
under Missouri, and Viles's "Mis- 214,217,221,224. souri in 1820" in Missouri Historical
324 THE PRESIDENCY OP JAMES MONROE [CH. X
would enforce such rules as " appear necessary to restrain the . . . slaves and to keep them more steadily to their duty." Rules were drawn up and submitted to Stoddard, were accepted by him, and were promulgated over all Upper Louisiana.1 Captain Stoddard's actions were never directly disavowed by the authorities at Washington, and therefore it would seem that slavery was recognized by the national government as an institution in that part of the Louisiana Purchase. In all of the fundamental laws establishing the territorial and district governments in Upper Louisiana that have just been enumerated, there is no mention what- ever of slavery, and in 1818 there must have been between two and three thousand slaves in that country. Neverthe- less, in 1818, when the people of Missouri applied to Con- gress for admission to the Union as a State and the question of the passage of an enabling act came up for debate in Congress, General James Tallmadge of New York, then serving his one term in the national House of Represent- atives, moved to amend the bill by prohibiting the further introduction of slaves into Missouri and by providing that all children of slaves born after the admission of Missouri as a State should become free at the age of twenty-five years.2 The precise meaning of the Tallmadge amendment was not clear then and is not now, because as it was never adopted
1 Houck's History of Missouri, ii, but may be held to service until the 375. age of twenty-five years. "
2 The words of the Tallmadge In the Annals of Congress (15th amendment as printed in the Journal Cong., 2nd Sess., i, 1170-1214) the of the House of Representatives, 15th last phrase is altered to read "shall be Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 272, are as fol- free at the age of twenty-five years," lows: and the words "of slaves" after "chil-
"And provided also, That the dren" are omitted. Greeley's Text- further introduction of slavery or invol- Book of 1860, p. 55, gives the words untary servitude be prohibited, except of the amendment correctly. The for the punishment of crimes, whereof Speech of the Hon. James Tallmadge, the party shall be duly convicted ; and ... on Slavery [on his amendment] that all children of slaves, born within was printed as a "separate" at Bos- the said state, after the admission ton in 1849 ; it does not contain the thereof into the Union, shall be free words of the amendment.
1820] MISSOURI COMPROMISE 325
it has never received any interpretation except at the hands of political debaters. It has been stated that the amend- ment did not propose " to interfere with the rights of prop- erty in that Territory." l Probably those who used this argument were thinking of Rufus King's contention that the wording of the Louisiana Treaty was " the common formula of treaties , . . to secure such inhabitants the permanent or temporary enjoyment of their former liberties, property, and religion ; leaving to the new sovereign full power to make such regulations respecting the same, as may be thought expedient, provided these regulations be not incompatible with the stipulated security." Senator King2 argued that the term property in its common meaning does not include slaves and, therefore, if the makers of the treaty had in- tended to include slaves in the word " property " they would have said so. Of course, these niceties of interpretation were confined to lawyers and other professional arguers. The plain people of the North seem to have thought that as slavery had been prohibited in the territory covered by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, in some way this prohibition had projected itself or had been extended across the Mis- sissippi River and that admitting Missouri to the Union as a Slave State meant the enlargement of slave territory ; but as a matter of fact slavery had existed in the trans-Mississippi region ever since its settlement by Europeans, and to any Southerner, as to Monroe, one of the negotiators of the treaty of 1803, the word " property " plainly included slaves, — indeed, they formed the bulk of the movable property of the richer people in the South. At all events, to them the Tallmadge amendment seemed to be a blow directed at their peculiar institution, and they attacked the aggressors with
1 American Historical Association's ... on the Subject of the Missouri Report for 1893, p. 256. Bill. By the Hon. Rufus King (New
• See Substance of two Speeches York, 1819), pp. 16, 24.
326 THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [Cn. X
all the vigor and fury that they were capable of.1 In 1847 David Wilmot asserted, without reservation of any kind, that the Missouri controversy was " a struggle ... to abrogate the law of slavery." 2
The Missouri question has been treated in the preceding paragraph from the social point of view ; it also had a political significance, and many people at the time and since have regarded its political significance as outweighing its social. At the time of the making of the Constitution, the North and the South had been political equals. Since that time the industrial advance of the North and the move- ment of settlers into the Old Northwest had so increased the population and power of the North — of the free North — that it had gained a majority in the federal House of Representatives. The only way that the South could pro- tect itself from attack on the slave system was to possess a majority in the Senate and, therefore, possess a veto on federal legislation. In 1818, the free States outnumbered the slave by one, but Alabama and Missouri were asking admission and the admission of Alabama as a Slave State was inevitable. The further admission of Missouri as a Slave State would give the South a majority in the Senate. It happened that in 1819 the people of the northeastern part of Massachusetts applied for admission to the Union with
1 Jefferson's letter to John Holmes, tion "was got up by a few designing Representative from Massachusetts, politicians in order to extend their in- dated Monticello, April 22, 1820, con- fluence and power ; and that the tains the well-known fire bell state- tendency of the question was of the most ment and also a keen prophecy : — mischievous character, being such as "A geographical line, coinciding with was well calculated to alienate the a marked principle moral & political affections of the people of one section once conceived and held up to the from the other. . . . The North con- angry passions of men, will never be sidered it as a single question involv- obliterated." Writings of Jefferson ing only the extension of slavery." (Ford), x, 157 and in many other places. The Gulf States Historical Magazine, In 1821, Calhoun, writing to Charles i, 103.
Tait, a Virginian then living in Ala- 2 Proceedings of the Herkimer Mass
bama, stated that the Missouri ques- Convention of Oct. 26, 1847, p. 13.
1820] MISSOURI COMPROMISE 327
the consent of that State as a separate and free State. Under these circumstances the question of the admission of Missouri as a Slave State lost some of its political significance, for coming in with Maine the equality of power would be preserved in the Senate,1 and the North would continue to have the greater number of the members of the House of Representatives, notwithstanding the tremendous extension of cotton growing in the Southwest. No doubt there was an apprehension on one side and a feeling of hopefulness on the other that the development of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana with the help of the federal ratio and the slowing down of industry in the North — which was plainly visible — might give the Slave States a majority of the members of the House of Representatives. It was to this that Rufus King alluded when he asserted that Congress possessed complete power over slavery in purchased territory and objected to the further extension of slave territory while the federal ratio operated to give slaveholders representation in the national House and in the electoral college in pro- portion to the number of slaves they owned "so that five free persons in Virginia have as much power in the choice of representatives in congress, and in the appointment of presidential electors, as seven free persons in any of the states in which slavery does not exist." Finally, as Rep- resentative Timothy Fuller of Massachusetts asserted,
1 Some inhabitants of Maine ob- in Massachusetts Historical Society's
jected to her being "a mere pack-horse Proceedings for 1878, p. 180. In the
to transport the odious, anti-republi- preceding October, Francis Corbin
can principle of slavery into the new of Virginia had written to Madison
State of Missouri, against reason and that this "Union must snap short
the fundamental grounds of the great at last where Liberty ends, and Sla-
fabric of American liberty." This very begins. The Missouri Question is
sentence from a letter of George bringing on the Crisis." Ibid., vol.
Thacher of Biddeford, Maine, to John 43, p. 261. There is an article on
Holmes and dated January 16, 1820, "The Separation of Maine from
undoubtedly expressed the belief of Massachusetts" in ibid., June, 1907. many Northern men. It is printed
328
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [Ca. X
Congress had made conditions in 1812 at the time of the admission of Louisiana to the Union and might make con- ditions now.
Eventually the Missouri-Maine matter took on the form of the admission of both States to the Union without con- ditions ; but slavery should be forever prohibited in all the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase north of the parallel of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes of north latitude, which was, as a matter of fact, the southern boundary of Missouri for the greater part of its length. It was in this way that Missouri and Maine entered the Union.1 This settlement is always spoken of as the Missouri Compromise and it is generally supposed to have put off the " irrepressible conflict" for a generation and therefore to have been justifiable from the anti-slavery point of view. There is another way of looking at it. This attempt of the Northern politicians and Northern abolitionists, or both, to limit the power of the South by destroying the institution of slavery in Upper Louisiana aroused the whole slaveholding popu-
1 When the Missouri bill came be- fore Monroe, he asked the opinions of his constitutional advisers in writ- ing. These were given after a con- siderable discussion had been had and they were filed away in the archives of the State Department. See Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, v, 6-14, and Hart's American History Told by Contem- poraries, iii, 452.
When the proposed constitution of Missouri came before Congress and the question came up of counting the electoral vote of Missouri in the presi- dential election of 1820, there was renewed excitement, for the consti- tution provided that the State Legis- lature should pass a law "to prevent free negroes and mulattoes" from coming into the State. This was clearly contrary to the clause of the Constitution of the United States guaranteeing the rights of "citizens," but the makers of the Missouri consti-
tution presumably did not regard colored persons as coming within the purview of citizenship. The lan- guage used by members on both sides and the threats that were bandied forward and backward were beyond anything that Congress had known up to that time. Finally, the matter was "compromised" by admitting Missouri and counting her electoral vote provided that the clause in ques- tion should never be construed to authorize the passage of any law Curiously enough in making this de- mand and in all the subsequent his- tory of the matter the wrong part of the section of the Missouri constitu- tion was referred to ; but no attempt was ever made to pass any such law. See the books on the Missouri Com- promise and the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, for February, 1900, p. 448.
1820] MISSOURI COMPROMISE 329
lation of the South to defend their rights, — as they saw them. At the moment the South and the Southern leaders acquiesced in the settlement from a sense of the value of the Union and from a sentimental attachment to it.1 But from that moment may be dated the beginning of Southern section-nationalism. It developed slowly at first, but by 1825 it threw off disguise in South Carolina and by 1830 had acquired considerable solidarity, although not enough to bring the other slaveholding States to the side of South Carolina. In reality, therefore, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 marked the ending of one epoch in our history and the beginning of another.
Following on the Peace of Ghent and the overturn at Waterloo, the world passed through a series of years of revolution and unrest and of coercion, either singly by the authorized rulers of this country or that, or by the league of nations that in those days went by the name of the Holy Alliance. In these years, the position of the United States was full of danger. She stood alone without a friend in the world and with debts to collect and matters to settle with the leading military powers of Europe. Fortunately, at the head of her affairs were several remarkable men and these were guided in great measure by the two Virginia ex- Presidents, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. James Monroe, who succeeded Madison in 1817 as chief executive and remained in office for eight years, until 1825, was not a great man. Nobody would have called him so, except possibly himself and a few devoted friends and relatives, but he was a man of experience in the management of public affairs and in the paths of diplomacy, — and this experience had been gathered in pain and humiliation and, therefore,
1 For example J. W. Barbour wrote "a lesser evil than dividing the Union, to J. C. Crittenden in February, 1820, or throwing it into confusion." Cole- that the proposed compromise was man's Crittenden, i, 41.
330 THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [Cn. X
was all the more valuable. Monroe's Secretary of State for the whole time of his administration — except the first few months — was John Quincy Adams. Adams was not a lovable man nor a companionable man and he had eccen- tricities of temper and awkwardnesses of action that con- cealed his real capacities and aroused enmities where none need have existed. But very few men have ever controlled the foreign affairs of a great country in an exceedingly critical time who possessed the power of the younger Adams to appraise a difficult situation and especially to deal with it with a courage and a tenacity almost unsurpassed. In friendly union with Monroe's cautiousness and the almost childlike acumen of the venerable Jefferson and Madison, the United States was carried triumphantly through.
In Great Britain starvation and rioting were not infre- quent in these years and her own poverty and critical con- dition induced or even compelled those who guided her destinies to stand up for what they conceived to be her best interests and to endeavor to bring into British coffers every penny of profit that could be garnered. Moreover, George Canning was still prominent and toward the close of this period again occupied the British Foreign Office, — and no more ill-omened secretary ever occupied it, not even Palmerston, so far as the United States was concerned. Stated in brief, and to state it in any other way would take one too far afield, the British policy towards the United States was to close the British West Indies and the British Maritime Provinces to our shipping, to absorb as much as possible of the oceanic trade to and from the United States, and to secure every possible relaxation of American laws restricting the entry of British goods into the American republic. On our part, of course, we wished to do just the opposite. We wished to have free trade with Great Britain,
1818] BRITISH TREATY 331
with the British West Indies, and with the Maritime Prov- inces, to exclude British ships absolutely from our coast- ing trade, and to shut our ports to the introduction of every manufactured commodity that we could make in our own factories. Then, too, there were questions as to boundaries : the northeastern boundary, the northern boun- dary of New York, the northern boundary west of the Lake of the Woods, the possession of Oregon, and the question of the policing of the Great Lakes. All these questions were full of unpleasant possibilities, and the attempt to coerce Great Britain in any one direction was so certain to bring reprisals in another that it was very difficult to know which way to turn or what to do. And possibly the only way to accomplish anything was to let the whole matter alone until time and circumstance should so increase the economic and military powers of the United States that even the authorities at Downing Street would think twice before they aroused the resentment of the American people. The story of the trade relations is so intricate and so little came out of it that it is hardly worth while to more than mention the few things that were settled before the end of Monroe's term, in March, 1825. In 1818, a treaty was signed and promptly ratified that made the forty-ninth parallel from the Lake of the Woods to the crest of the Rocky or Stony Mountains, the dividing line between the United States and British America.1 It seems to be a little bit incongruous to appor- tion a vast wilderness between two nations by an imaginary line ; but in this particular case the settlement proved to be
1 On August 26, 1719, the British Latitude" to the southward of which
Board of Trade instructed its repre- the French should not pass. Professor
sentatives at Paris that from a cer- O. M. Dickerson copied this entry
tain point "where the said Line shall for me from the "Board of Trade
cut the 49th Degree of northern Lati- Journal," xxix, 135. Apparently it
tude, another Line shall begin, & be is the first mention of the 49th parallel
extended westward from the said Lake as a boundary line, upon the 49th Degree of Northern
332 THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [Cn. X
very happy. As to the country to the westward of the mountains, as no agreement could be reached it was arranged that it should be "open for the term of ten years ... to the vessels, citizens, and subjects of the two Powers"; but this " joint occupation," as it has generally been termed, was not to be construed to the prejudice of any claim of either of the two parties or of any other power or state.1 In 1817, an arrangement had already been entered into by which the British and American governments agreed to limit the naval forces on Lake Champlain and the Great Lakes to one vessel each on Lake Champlain and on Lake Ontario and two on the Upper Lakes, none of the vessels to exceed one hundred tons burden or to carry more than one eighteen pound gun.2 In this time, too, one question after another was submitted to arbiters for settlement or to joint commissions for investigation or report ; 3 but all these attempts met with delays and when reports or decisions were rendered they were evaded or not accepted by one or both countries concerned. In all there were half a dozen treaties negotiated with Great Britain in the eight years of Monroe's presidency,4 but with the exception of the northern boundary treaty they made slight impression on our develop- ment as a nation — the greatest disappointment of all being, possibly, that no other arrangement could be made as to commerce except a mere renewal of the Treaty of 1815. With France the case was no better, for the condition of affairs in that country, and in Europe, was so critical that no government could agree to make any payment of money
1 See Treaties and Conventions (ed. sociation's Report for 1895, pp. 367-392. 1873), p. 351. This whole subject » The first part of vol. i of J. B. is admirably treated by J. C. B. Davis Moore's International Arbitrations con- in "Notes" appended to this volume, tains the official papers on these arbi- p. 1022. trations and commissions.
2 See J. M. Callahan's "Agreement 4 Treaties and Conventions (ed. 1873), of 1817" in American Historical As- pp. 348-362.
1817] POLICING THE LAKES 333
for spoliations by the rulers of France before 1815, — and hope to live. It is with Spain that the main interest lies in these years, for the fate of her American colonies was inextricably commingled with that of the United States.
Ever since the occupation of the Iberian Peninsula by Napoleon and the French, Spanish America had been restless and one revolution had succeeded another. Most of these insurrections were successful, for succeeding governments in Spain could not maintain themselves, much less reconquer distant colonies. The declining power of Spain and Portugal in America and the constantly increasing strength of the insurgents opened the way for great irregularities on the sea and on the adjacent shores. Piratical bands seized Spanish territory that was contiguous to the United States, and established there a so-called republic with which President Madison had had to deal. This he had done by seizing Amelia Island, driving off the pirates or insurgents, and returning it to the jurisdiction of Spain. Amelia Island is scarcely more than an anchorage within the mouth of the St. Mary's River. Its position made it a favorite spot for illicit traders. There they could anchor in Spanish waters and at the same time be within a few cables' lengths of the American boundary and could covertly slip in goods by the boatload, without paying duties, or tonnage dues, or in any way complying with the commercial laws of the United States. Every now and then, a French, or a Spanish, or a Portuguese, vessel would be seized by irritated and zealous United States officials, with the result of compelling Adams to hold many conversations with foreign representatives in this country and to write many letters to them and also to our own diplomatic officers abroad ; but without accomplish- ing very much, except to keep things as they were. Pri- vateers, commissioned by Spanish American revolutionists,
334 THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [On. X
appeared upon the ocean and entered American ports for the purpose of fitting or re-fitting their hulls and armaments and getting needful supplies.1 These vessels carried crews of several nationalities and could appear as American vessels or as South American, or French, or Spanish, as the occasion might demand. Many people at Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Norfolk and also at Charleston found profit in equipping these vessels and doubtless sympathized with the warfare that they carried on against other than American seafarers. Attempts of United States officials to put down this practice and the difficulty of dealing with these seagoers in any lawful manner added greatly to the labors of the adminis- tration and also to its embarrassments. At length the Portuguese minister, the Abbe" Correa de Serra, worn out with age and worry, informed Adams that United States judges were not doing their duty ; but, on being pressed for names and specifications, he took his departure for Rio de Janeiro,2 — the only time that an official animadversion had been made against the national judiciary up to 1820. There were also numerous trials of American citizens on charges of piracy and not a few executions, much against the will of the President.
Even more serious was the inattention of the Spanish au- thorities in Florida to their obligations under the treaty of 1795.3 By this Spain had bound herself to be a good neighbor to the United States and not to permit her lands and her
1 As early as 1798-1799, American Americanism and in ch. vii of Fuller's vessels were in the River Plate. See Purchase of Florida.
documents collected and edited by C. 8 Treaties and Conventions (ed. 1873),
L. Chandler in American Historical p. 776. On the Floridas, see John L.
Review, xxiii 816-826. Williams's View of West Florida (Phila-
2 Writings, of John Quincy Adams, delphia, 1827) and his Territory of vii, 68, 73 and footnotes. There are Florida (New York, 1837). Official many entries relating to the general papers are printed in connection with subject in his Diary, and much useful the President's "Messages" of Feb. and out-of-the-way matter has been 22, 1817, March 14, 1818, and Nov. brought together in Lockey's Pan- 17, 1818.
1819] THE FLORIDA TREATY 335
ports to be made use of by the enemies of the American republic. Spain's position was one of great difficulty. Every soldier that she could transport across the Atlantic was needed in the attempt to preserve her colonies. As Florida was one of the few that did not rebel, it was denuded of troops and the Spanish officials were helpless, — they could not perform the plain requirements of the treaty. Moreover, its northern borders became the place of refuge for runaway Southern slaves and hostile Indians from the United States. These frequently recrossed the boundary and stole and murdered where they could. To put a stop to these outrages General Gaines was directed to pursue hostile bands across the boundary to the limits of the Spanish posts. As he accomplished nothing the task was handed over to Andrew Jackson, the original orders to Gaines being repeated to him. Jackson pursued the Indians across the border, followed them into the Spanish towns of Pensacola and St. Mark, and took possession of those posts in April, 1818. When Monroe learned of these doings and of the execution of two British subjects — Alexander Arbuthnot and Robert C. Ambrister — in the course of the campaign, he was greatly disturbed. The orders had not been perfectly clear and the President felt that Jackson must have acted on facts that were unknown to the administration. When the matter came before the Cabinet, Adams was the only member who justified Jackson's doings as being compatible with the dictates of international law. Of the other mem- bers, Calhoun, who was then Secretary of War, thought that Jackson's " conduct " ought to be " the subject of investi- gation before a military tribunal"1 and Crawford agreed
'See Correspondence of John C. this same subject is in this volume.
Calhoun, p. 285, forming vol. ii of the See also Monroe's Writings, vi, 54—61 ;
American Historical Association's Re- vii, 209-213, 225-230; J. Q. Adams's
port for 1899. Much other matter on Memoirs, iv, 107-119, and his Writ-
336 THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [Ca. X
with him that the general should be sternly dealt with. Monroe handled the matter in his own way. He wrote to Jackson * that he had acted on facts unknown at Wash- ington, but that the Constitution gave the power to declare war to Congress and not to the Executive. It followed, therefore, that the posts must be handed back to Spain ; but as the ill-faith of the Spanish authorities had made his actions necessary, it was for the Spanish government to punish its own officials and also to perform its treaty obligations. Reviewing the evidence given in the trials of Arbuthnot and Ambrister and having in mind the facts stated by Adams in his correspondence with our ministers at London and at Madrid,2 one cannot help coming to the conclusion that Jackson's doings in Florida were amply justified. The politicians in Congress thought differently. They moved resolutions and made speeches, but after an acrid debate nothing was accomplished, except to arouse the fierce anger of Andrew Jackson.
Meantime, Adams had been engaged in a long and trying negotiation with Don Luis de Onis,3 the Spanish minister at Washington, and in the Spaniard's periods of ill-health with Hyde de Neuville, the French minister, who acted the part of friend to both the United States and Spain. Beside
ings, vi, 474-502. Professor Bassett, ' The final section of Don Luis de
in his Life of Andrew Jackson, i, 266 Ofiis's Memoria sobre las Negocia-
and fol., gives an excellent account of ciones entre Espana y Los Estados-
the whole affair with citations to Unidos de America (Madrid, 1820)
original material. relates to the actual negotiations of 1795
On July 20, 1818, Calhoun wrote and 1819 and is followed by an ex-
to Judge Charles Tait that the "tak- ceedingly valuable "Appendix" of
ing of Pensacola . . . was unauthor- documents including the text of the
ized." Gulf States Historical Maga- treaties of the retrocession of Louis-
zine, i, 93. iana, etc. ; but only this single docu-
1 See Note II at end of chapter. ment is repeated in the translation by
2 Ford prints Adams's letter of Nov. Tobias Watkins of this memoir that 28, 1818, to G. W. Erving, our Min- was printed at Baltimore in 1821, — ister to Spain, in the Writings of J. Q. which also lacks the extremely inter- Adams, vi, 474-502, with citations to esting map that accompanies the American State Paper*- original.
1819]
THE FLORIDA TREATY
337
the Floridian troubles, there were old claims against Spain for spoliations that had been more or less connected with her in the period of the French Wars,1 and there was a conflict over the boundaries of Louisiana. Adams asserted that that province, as the United States had acquired it, extended to the Rio Grande del Norte, or the Rio Bravo, as it was often called in those days.2 The Spaniards maintained, on the contrary, that the western boundary of Louisiana was the Mississippi as far north as the Red River. As to Florida, the United States, for one reason or another, had seized it as far east as the Perdido River,3 which it claimed was included in the old Louisiana. Finally, to the west of the Mississippi and north of the Red River, the United States had "taken possession" of the country as far west as the Stony Mountains, and, indeed, had exercised some sort of control or jurisdiction even farther west to the shores of the
1 Yrujo secured the opinions of five leading lawyers against the validity of these claims ; American State Papers Foreign Relations, ii, 604. Madison's opinion of this proceeding is in ibid., ii, 615, and is worth reading. These citations were given to me by Mr. J. P. Harley of Los Angeles, California.
*On April 20, 1818, Adams wrote to G. W. Erving, then American minister at Madrid, "of our unques- tionable right to the Rio Bravo as the western boundary." Again in June, in thanking Joseph Hopkinson for calling his attention to Moll's Atlas of 1720 giving the Rio Bravo as the western limit of Louisiana, Adams stated that he had "so thoroughly convinced" himself of the justice of that boundary that with his good will no further offer should be made to Spain of any other western boundary. See Writings of J. Q. Adams, vi, 307, 345 ; and the present work, volume iv, 320 n., 332.
* According to the American view, the United States had acquired by the Louisiana Purchase Treaty of 1803
VOL. V. — Z
a complete title to all of the old French Louisiana as far east as the Perdido River and, in one way or another, it had taken possession of that territory. The Spaniards maintained, however, that the Louisiana of the retrocession was bounded on the east by the old western boundary of West Florida, or included only the island on which New Orleans stands. On the whole matter, see H. B. Fuller's Purchase of Florida; P. J. Hamilton's Colonial Mobile; and the present work, volume ii, 596, iii, 20, and iv, 304, 348, 415.
For the St. Mary's River as the boundary between British East Florida and Georgia, see Lawrence Shaw Mayo's The St. Mary's River. A Boundary.
Extracts from the official docu- ments are brought together in Ameri- can History Leaflets, No. 5, from Martens and Cussy's Recueil des Traites, i, 30; The Annual Register for 1763, pp. 208-213; Bioren and Duane's Laws of the United States, i, 450-452; and Treaties and Conventions between the United States and Other Powers, 316.
338 THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [Cn. X
Pacific Ocean. The rightfulness of this occupation had been in some measure recognized by the British when they "restored" to the United States the fur-trading post of Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River in conformity with the provision of the Treaty of Ghent that all places taken during the war should be restored by both parties. The propositions that underlay the negotiations of 1818 were that the Spaniards should give up all claims to territory on the North American continent east of the Mississippi River and also to the territory on the Northwest Coast north of California.1 In exchange the United States would give up all claims to Texas or to the country between the Rio Grande and one of the Texan Rivers, — the Colorado, the Sabine, or some other — and in addition pay five million dollars to its own citizens to extinguish claims that they were supposed to have against the Spanish government for spoliations committed on American commerce during the French wars. Jefferson had some objections to any bargain that would restrict the western extent of the United States. Monroe answered him that the boundary in that wilderness could be easily arranged with whatever new government might be formed in Mexico, — which seemed to be on the point of
1 On March 12, 1818, John Quincy European nation makes a discovery
Adams, writing to Don Luis de Ofiis and takes possession of any portion of
laid down three rules for the regula- this continent, and another after-
tion of land titles in America which he wards does the same at some distance
said were "sanctioned alike by im- from it, where the boundary between
mutable justice and the general practice them is not determined by the prin-
of the European nations" interested ciple above mentioned, the middle
in the American colonization : distance becomes such of course.'
"First. 'That when any European "Thirdly. 'That whenever any
nation takes possession of any extent European nation has thus acquired a
of seacoast, that possession is under- right to any portion of territory on
stood as extending into the interior this continent, that right can never
country to the sources of the rivers be diminished or affected by any
emptying within that coast, to all other Power, by virtue of purchases
their branches, and the country they made, by grants or conquests of the
cover, and to give it a right in ex- natives within the limits thereof.'"
elusion of all other nations to the same.' American State Papers, Foreign Rela-
" Secondly. 'That whenever one tiona, iv, 470.
1819] THE FLORIDA TREATY 339
seceding from Spain. He maintained, moreover, that the immediate settlement of our western boundary was necessary for the internal peace of the country.1 The negotiations dragged on and on, until Adams was thoroughly tired. His general proposition was to take Florida and give up all territory west of the Texan Colorado and south of the forty-first parallel ; De Onis, on his part, proposed the Sabine River and the forty-third parallel. Finally, some- what against his will, but in conformity with the wish of the President, Adams compromised on the Sabine and the forty-second parallel. The treaty was signed on February
22, 1819, the American ratifications were handed over and the documents were sent to Spain.2
Adams had scarcely written a joyful sentence or two in his diary over the completion of the Florida negotiations when doubt arose as to the completeness of the settlement. The treaty had provided that all grants of land made by the Spanish authorities before January 24, 1818, should be regarded as valid ; it now appeared that some very large grants which the negotiators had in mind in selecting this date were, as a matter of fact, actually dated January
23, and therefore had been validated by the provision of this treaty which had purposely been drawn to exclude them.
1 See Jefferson's letter of May 14, time. At first he had been in charge
1820, in Writings (Ford ed.), x, 158, of the negotiations, which had been
and Monroe's reply in Writings, vi, transferred to Washington, retransferred
119. to Madrid, and transferred back again
1 Treaties and Conventions (ed. 1873), to Washington. In the course of this p. 785. At the moment the acquisi- correspondence Erving stated that if he tion of Florida was very dear to the had been let alone, he could have se- Southern heart. Monroe had practi- cured the Colorado limit, and this as- cally forced the treaty on Adams and sertion was gleefully laid hold of by Andrew Jackson heartily approved it. Adams's enemies. See J. L. M. Curry's Later, it became the Southern fashion "Acquisition of Florida" in Magazine to reprobate Adams for his weak con- of American History, xix, 286 ; doc- cessions to Spain. In the course of the uments in the Proceedings of the Mas- discussion, use was made of a letter sachusetts Historical Society for Octo- written by George W. Erving, who ber, 1889 ; Adams's Memoirs, xii, using had been our minister to Spain at the index under "Erving."
340 THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [Cn. X
Adams at once addressed De Onis. The Spaniard appeared to be shocked and signed a statement that the validity of these land grants was not recognized in the treaty.1 Before many months passed away, further mortification appeared in the shape of the refusal of the Spanish government to ratify the treaty at all. Possibly, some one in authority at Madrid wished to barter ratification for a recognition of these land grants; but it is more likely that the Spanish government hoped that by withholding ratification it could postpone the recognition of the Spanish American republics, perhaps indefinitely.2 The six months provided for the exchange of ratifications passed away and then came a revolution in Spain that made the king a constitutional monarch and deprived him of the power to alienate Spanish territory. As the probability of the ratification of the treaty faded away, its value became more manifest to American eyes. Monroe and Jefferson and Adams were one in con- demning the actions of the Spaniards. It was even sug- gested that the United States might be justified in taking possession of Florida without any ratification ; but before anything was done, the Spanish Cortes and the king decided to ratify and the transaction was completed at Washington on February 22, 1821, two years to a day3 after the actual signing of the instrument by Adams and DeOnis.
The ratification of the treaty did not put an end to the
1 J. Q. Adams's Memoirs using Mexico by a treaty concluded in
index under "Spain"; his Writings, January, 1828, and ratified in 1832.
vi, 535, 537 ; and American State In 1836, Webster, Livingston, and
Papers, Foreign Relations, iv, 650 and Joseph M. White declared in so many
fol. legal opinions that one of the grants
2 For information on the general mentioned above was legal notwith- subject see Frederic L. Paxson's In- standing the fact that in the Spanish dependence of the South American ratification of the treaty it had been Republics. expressly stated that the grants were
3 By this time Mexico had become invalid ; see Legal Opinions of the free from Spain, but the limits of Honorable Joseph M. White, etc. (New Texas laid down in the Florida Treaty York, 1836) and Treaties and Con- were ratified by the United States and ventions (ed. 1873), p. 794.
1821] JACKSON IN FLORIDA 341
friction between American officials and the Spaniards. The treaty obliged the latter to hand over the province within six months after the exchange of ratifications and to deliver up the forts and the archives. The archives had been re- moved to Havana, for Florida had been under the adminis- tration of the governor general of Cuba. An American officer was sent to Havana, but after many delays he came away without the papers. Then, too, questions arose as to whether forts included artillery and whether the obligation of the United States to transport Spanish officials and em- ployees and their families from Florida to Cuba included feeding them on the voyage. Adams declared that a fort included artillery and the Spaniards insisted that trans- portation included provisions. Monroe sent Andrew Jack- son to take possession of the ceded province and govern it, until other arrangements should be made. Congress had al- ready provided that for a limited time the officers appointed by the President to take possession of Florida should have all the powers that the Spanish authorities had exercised ; and, as they had exercised practically all powers, Jackson's authority was unlimited by law or usage.1 Jackson pro- ceeded to Pensacola, " took possession," issued decrees and orders, and then, in the somewhat naive language of his biographers, was waited upon by a daughter of a deceased Spanish official. She declared that the Spaniards, who had not yet gone, were taking with them papers that were neces- sary to prove her title to land and property in Florida. Jackson at once sent an officer to demand the papers and upon these being refused, he directed them to be seized and also that Colonel Callava, the recalcitrant official, should be brought before him. This was done and, after some debate, Jackson sent him to prison (1821). It was at this
> Annals of Congress, 16th Cong., 2nd Seas., 1809.
342 THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [Ca. X
point that Eligius Fromentin, whom Monroe had appointed judge in Florida, ordered Callava to be produced bodily in his court, which led to Fromentin's being summoned into Jackson's presence. From this point, the matter dif- fused into letter writing and Jackson soon after resigned his appointment and retired to his Tennessee plantation.
The other important diplomatic occurrence of the adminis- tration of James Monroe and the occupation of the office of Secretary of State by John Quincy Adams was the enuncia- tion of what was known then and has been known ever since as the Monroe Doctrine. The relations of the United States to the rebellious Spanish colonies was one of the most delicate questions that ever came before the rulers of the United States : too early recognition meant war with Spain and her European friends; too late recognition meant the hostility of the new republics. The question as to when and how these should be recognized was one on which the responsible officials and members of Congress might easily take sides : Monroe and Adams were obliged to walk warily no matter what their sympathies were ; while Clay and other eloquent members of both Houses could express their sympathies openly without any fear that the government would carry their wishes into execution at the cost of war to the country. It is interesting to read Adams's official correspondence with different foreign ministers at this time and his remarks upon the subject in his diary. The question was not entirely one of sympathy with the oppressed, for the plain dictates of international duty played some part in the management of the affair. Had there not been so many causes of friction between the United States and Great Britain, the two powers whose interests and sym- pathies in these matters were very close might have marched hand in hand ; but before 1822, there were so many causes
1823] THE MONROE DOCTRINE 343
of irritation between them that this was quite impossible. By that year, however, three-quarters of the causes of dis- pute had been done away with and both countries were in a frame of mind to approach with some degree of cordiality, or cooperation, the menacing attitude of continental Euro- pean governments. In August, 1822, George Canning suc- ceeded Castlereagh at the foreign office. For a few weeks, he was friendship itself. He fairly startled Richard Rush, our minister at London, by suggesting that Great Britain and the United States should sail abreast in their dealings with Spanish-American revolutionists, declaring that if they did so, nobody else would have much of anything to say and it would not make much difference what they said or did.1 At the moment, Canning was disturbed by the pro- posed action of the Holy Alliance, which had given a mandate to France to set the Spanish monarch on his throne again, and there was some probability of Continental intermed- dling with Spanish- American affairs. Under ordinary circum- stances, Canning suspected American republics and espe- cially any league of them under the guidance or guardianship of the United States, but possibly it would be worse to have France interfering in American affairs than to have the United States asserting its foremost position in the Western
*W. C. Ford's "Genesis of the Residence at the Court of London . . . Monroe Doctrine " in Massachusetts from 1819 to 1825. Including Negotia- Historical Society's Proceedings, 2nd tions on the Oregon Question is practically Series, xv, 373—436 ; Richard Rush's a continuation of the earlier volume. Memoranda of a Residence at the Court In 1873, at London, Benjamin Rush of London (ed. 1845), 414-423, 429- published a new edition of his father's 443. The bibliography of Rush's later work under the title The Court of works is somewhat confused. The London from 1819 to 1825; with Sub- fast edition of the Memoranda was sequent Occasional Productions, now printed at Philadelphia in 1833 ; a first published in Europe ; the last second edition, revised and enlarged, sixty pages of this work contain four was issued at the same place in the same chapters from another book of Rich- year, but by a different publisher and ard Rush's entitled Occasional Pro- a different printer. Another volume, ductions, Political, Diplomatic, and published at Philadelphia in 1845, Miscellaneous (Philadelphia, 1860). with a similar title, Memoranda of a
344
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [On. X
World. Rush had no instructions on this precise point and all that he could reply was that he would lay the matter before his government. After a few more conversations between the two, Canning visibly lost interest,1 probably because he had used such assertions as Rush had felt himself willing to make on the general theme of French interference in America to coerce the French govern- ment into holding its hands or, at all events, into not doing anything.
Side by side with these important conversations and sug- gestions were equally important suggestions and conver- sations from and with Russian representatives. The authority of the Czar in the preceding half century had gradually extended eastwardly across Siberia to Bering Strait and Sea and to America and to the exploitation of the fur trade on the Northwest Coast.2 The Russians had established posts at Bodega Bay to the northward of the Golden Gate, and on the Farallones at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. Not much was known of these endeavors at Washington until Baron Poletica, in February, 1822, trans-
1 Canning's own account of this episode is contained in a letter dated January 22, 1824, to Charles Bagot, formerly British minister to the United States, but now ambassador at St. Petersburg (Josceline Bagot's George Canning and his Friends, London, 1909, vol. ii, p. 215) ; and see also pp, 222, 232, and 274; and Augustus G. Stapleton's The Political Life of George Canning, ii, ch. viii. In the idea ex- pressed in his famous phrase of call- ing in the "New World to redress the . balance of the Old," Canning had reference to trade and not to politics, except as these reflect economic condi- tions. James Workman writing in 1797 seems to have anticipated him in this when he suggested that an equiva- lent for the lost trade of the Nether- lands might be found in Louisiana,
La Plata, Mexico, and Peru. See Workman's Political Essays (Alex- andria, 1801), p. 138 and Rush's Oc- casional Productions, 188.
2 See F. A. Golder's Russian Ex- pansion on the Pacific, 1641-1850; Irving B. Richman's California under Spain and Mexico, using index under "Russia"; Greenhow's Oregon and California, and the . . . North-west Coast; Joseph Schafer's History of the Pacific Northwest; and the Alaska volume of H. H. Bancroft's Pacific States. The main facts from Adams's "Diary" and the State Department Archives are brought together in John C. Hildt's "Early Diplomatic Negotia- tions of the United States with Russia " (Johns Hopkins Kfudies, xxiv, Nos. 5,6).
1823] THE MONROE DOCTRINE 345
mitted to Adams an ukase 1 of his imperial master. It was dated September 4, 1821, and ordered all non-Russian vessels, including American, to keep away from the coast of Russian America to the distance of one hundred Italian miles. Later, Baron Tuyll, Poletica's successor, informed Adams that he had been instructed to announce to the American government that the Russian Czar would never receive a diplomatic representative from the revolutionized Spanish-American provinces.2 Then followed most interest- ing letters between Monroe and the two ex-Presidents and be- tween Richard Rush, Baron Tuyll, and John Quincy Adams. As these have come to light the whole genesis of the Monroe Doctrine has slowly found its way to the printed page. Adams thought that the British advances should be de- clined, because he believed that Canning wished to separate the United States from the Spanish-American republics and that, at any rate, the United States would better sail alone than be a cock-boat 3 in the wake of the British man- of-war. As to his former friend, the Czar Alexander, he proposed to read him a lesson in the principles of govern- ment and to suggest that his doings did not comport with the Christian spirit of the Holy Alliance. Finally Adams declared that the time had come to suggest that the Ameri- can continents were no longer open to new European colo- nizers. Monroe hesitated, but in the end he outstripped his masterful Secretary of State and together they elabo- rated the paragraphs in the presidential message of Decem- ber 2, 1823, that announced in well-known phrases that the
1 American State Papers, Foreign * Writings of James Monroe, vi, Relations, iv, 857-864. The Writ- 343, the letter itself is on p. 390 ; Mem- ings of J. Q. Adams, vii, 212, 214 oirs of J. Q. Adams, vi, 201 ; Massa- also prints Adams's letters. See also chusetts Historical Society's Proceed- American Historical Review, rviii, 309- ings (January, 1902), p. 378. 345 and Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, vi, * Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, vi, 179. 157.
346
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE [On. X
American continents were closed to future colonization by Europeans, that the United States did not propose to interfere with European affairs/ and that any interference with the independence of the Spanish-American republics would be regarded as "the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States."
Russia was the first to see the meaning of the plain speak- ing of the American President. She had contended that the Russian territory on the Northwest coast extended as far south as the fifty-first parallel. When Adams and Tuyll took up the debate, Adams restricted the Russian claim to latitude fifty-five.2 After a short negotiation, the
1 The exact words are as follows : "... The occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle . . . that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers." As to inter- vention Monroe said : "... The citizens of the United States cherish sentiments the most friendly in favor of the liberty and happiness of their fellow-men on that side of the Atlantic. In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparation for our defense. With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The po- litical system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This differ- ence proceeds from that which exists in their respective Governments ; and to the defense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citizens, and under which we have en-
joyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted. We owe it, there- fore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dan- gerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have de- clared their independence and main- tained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controll- ing in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States."
This text is taken from Monroe's Writings (Hamilton ed.), vi, 328, 339, 340. Other copies of the message, differing slightly in spelling, capitaliza- tion, and punctuation, are Message from the President of the United States . . . December 2, 1823 (Washington, 1823) and Annals of Congress, 18th Cong., 1st Sess., vol. i, 14, 22, 23.
* Adams to Middleton, July 22, 1823, in American State Papers, For- eign Relations, v, 436.
1824] RUSSIAN TREATY 347
two came together by agreeing that latitude 54° 40' should be the southern boundary of Russian America. This instru- ment was signed in April, 1824 ; l on the 4th of the following March, 1825, John Quincy Adams took the oath of office as the sixth President of the United States.
1 Treaties and Contentions (Washington, 1873) , 733.
348 THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE
NOTES
I. The Missouri Compromise. — The best works on the Missouri Compromise are Floyd C. Shoemaker's Missouri's Struggle for State- hood, 1804-1821; James A. Woodburn's "Historical Significance of the Missouri Compromise " in American Historical Association's Reports for 1893, pp. 251-297 ; Frank H. Hodder's " Side Lights on the Missouri Compromises " in ibid, for 1909, pp. 153-161 ; Harrison A. Trexler's Slavery in Missouri, 1804-1865 (Johns Hopkins Studies, xxxii, No. 2) ; Louis Houck's History of Missouri, iii, ch. xxix ; Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 1st Sess., vol. i, 591 and the six following volumes, using the indexes ; and Niles's Weekly Register, vol. xiii, p. 176 and following volumes through vol. xx, p. 388, using indexes. Some interesting entries on this subject are to be found at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth volumes of the Memoirs of J. Q. Adams. Free Remarks . . . Respecting the Exclusion of Slavery From the Territories and New States . . . By a Philadelphian (Phila- delphia, 1819) which is attributed to Robert Walsh, is a well-sustained argument from the Northern point of view.
The True History of the Missouri Compromise and its Repeal by Susan B. Dixon, the widow of Senator Dixon (Cincinnati, 1899) and James C. Welling's article entitled " Slavery in the Territories Historically Considered " in the Magazine of American History, xxvii, throw some new light on the general question.1
n. Jackson and the Seminole War. — Jackson's doings in Florida in the campaign against the Seminoles and the executions of Arbuthnot and Ambrister led to such important results for Jackson and other participants in the affair, that much material is to be found in the books without shedding very much light upon the matter. The official papers are printed in the Congressional documents ; 2 Monroe's
'The Missouri question produced "The High and Mighty, the Bur-
eeveral fictional productions. Madi- gesses of the Royal State of Virginia"
eon took up his pen and in Jona- (copyrighted in Connecticut). than Bull & Mary Butt drew a parallel 2 Message from the President . . .
between a family conflict and this transmitting Information in Relation
political struggle (Hunt's Writings to the War with the Seminoles (March
of Madwon, ix, 77 and also sepa- 25, 1818) in State Papers, 15 Cong.,
rately). Two other publications of 1st Sess., No. 173; House Executive
larger size were Fragments of the His- Documents, 15 Cong., 2nd Sess., No. 14,
tory of Bawlfredonia . . . by Herman forming also No. 35 of papers printed
Thwackus (copyrighted in Maryland) by order of the Senate, 15 Cong., 2nd
and Pocahontas; A Proclamation by Sess. Many of these documents are
BIBLIOGRAPHY 349
Writings, vi, 54, 74, 75 ; Writings of J. Q. Adams, vi, 386, 409, 434, 474, 511, 545; Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, iv, 31-248, 274. What is known as Jackson's " Exposition " is printed in Benton's Thirty Years' View, i, 169-180. The supposed letter to Monroe of January 6, 1818, is there printed and has been reprinted in Parton's Jackson, ii, 433 and J. S. Bassett's Life of Andrew Jackson, i, 245 and elsewhere. This letter led to what is known as the Rhea affair. The last original document in the story is in Monroe's Writings, vii, 234, a " Denunciation " of Rhea's story made by Monroe on his death bed and witnessed by two attendants. Summations of the affair have been made by Professor Bassett in his Jackson, i, 245-250, especially the note on page 249 and by James Schouler in The Magazine of American History, xii, 308-322.
in. The Monroe Doctrine. — The standard account of the genesis of the Monroe Doctrine is by Worthington C. Ford in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for January, 1902. This may well be supplemented by H. W. V. Temperley's paper on " The Later American Policy of George Canning " in American Historical Review, xi, 779-796. A succinct and useful summary is in Hart's Monroe Doctrine, 20-68. The leading documents are brought to- gether in Ford's article ; but most of them may be found in the pub- lished writings of Monroe, Adams, and Jefferson and in the American State Papers, Foreign Relations and the British and Foreign State Papers. The careful student will wish to read the " Correspondence of the Russian Ministers in Washington, 1818-1825 '' in American Historical Review, xviii, 309-345, 537-562; "The Papers of Sir Charles Vaughan " — the British minister at Washington, 1826-1833 — in ibid., vii, 304-328, 500-533 ; and " Protocols of Conferences of Representatives of the Allied Powers respecting Spanish America,
also printed in the Annals of Congress, sadly need correlation. See also The
15 Cong., 2nd Sess., vol. ii, 1629, 2136; Trials of A. Arbuthnot & R. C. Am-
and a few of them are collected in the brister (London, 1819) and John D.
Correspondence between Gen. Andrew Lawson's American State Trials, ii,
Jackson and John C. Calhoun, . . . 862, 891, and Memoirs of General
in the Seminole War, printed by Duff Andrew Jackson, together with the Letter
Green (Washington, 1831). In con- of Mr. Secretary Adams, in vindication
nection with the President's mes- of the execution of Arbuthnot and Am-
sages of November 16, 1818 (usually brister, and the other Public Acts of Gen.
cited as of November 17, the day of Jackson, in Florida (Bridgeton, N. J.,
reception) and of February 22, 1819, 1824). Many of these documents are
see American State Papers, Military printed in NUes's Register, xv. Affairs, i, 681-769. These papers
350 THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES MONROE
1824-1825" in ibid., xxii, 595-616. See also W. S. Robertson's article on " The United States and Spain in 1822 " in ibid., xx, 781-800. Even now — 1920 — it would be well if some one would correlate and analyze this material more carefully than has hitherto been done.1
'A. F. Pollard's article on the iii the British relations with South Monroe Doctrine in History, The America. Herbert Kraus's Die Man- Quarterly Journal of the [English] roedoktrin in ihren Beziehungen zur Historical Association for April, 1919, amerikanischen Diplomatic und turn is a penetrating analysis of the general Volkerrecht (Berlin, 1913), is pre- situation in 1823 from the point of view ceded by a useful bibliography. W. of an English student of European F. Reddaway, in a small volume en- history; Frederic L. Paxson's The titled The Monroe Doctrine that was Independence of the South American published by the Cambridge Press in Republics (Philadelphia, 1903), chap- 1898, states the English idea of the ter ii, describes the South Ameri- matter in a brief compass, can policy of the United States and
CHAPTER XI
POLITICAL SEETHINGS, 1824-1828
EVER since his early days John Quincy Adams had been in the service of his country. In 1778, at the age of eleven, he accompanied John Adams, his father, to France. Soon after his arrival there he resolved to keep a diary and in- formed his "Honoured Mamma" that although the journal of a lad of eleven could not "be expected to contain much of Science, Litterature, arts, wisdom, or wit, yet it may serve to perpetuate many observations that I may make." He began the actual diary some months later and continued it, at times spasmodically, and sometimes with regrettable breaks to within a few months of his death. The journal certainly perpetuated many of John Quincy Adams's obser- vations to the dismay of the descendants of some of his contemporaries, and oftentimes to the confusion of kings, Congressmen, and Presidents. In 1794, when not quite twenty-seven years of age, he was appointed by President Washington, minister to the Hague, and three years later was transferred to Berlin. In 1801, he returned to Massa- chusetts and the next year was elected a member of the Senate of that State. In 1803, he took his seat in the Sen- ate of the United States and, espousing the side of Jeffer- son, voted for the embargo. Being defeated for reelection, he was appointed minister to Russia and was one of the Commissioners at Ghent. As John Adams was the first minister of the United States to Great Britain after the
351
352 POLITICAL SBETHINGS, 1824-1828 [Cn. XI
Revolution, so his son was the first American minister at the Court of St. James after the War of 1812, and it may be added that his son, Charles Francis Adams, was our representative there during the extremely critical years of the War for Southern Independence. In 1817, John Quincy Adams returned to his native land to take up the office of Secretary of State, and was performing the duties of that high station when he was elected President. After his four years in the White House, he returned to Quincy, his birthplace, to pass his declining years in seclusion. It was not so to be, for a year later, some of the voters of his congressional district waited upon him and inquired if he thought it would be beneath the dignity of one who had exercised the presidential office to serve in the national House of Representatives. Adams replied that he thought it would be entirely proper for him to serve in any office to which he might be chosen by the voters,1 even that of a selectman of a town. Accordingly, he took his seat in Congress in 1831 and for seventeen years thereafter upheld the rights of his countrymen and fought for liberty, until he fell senseless from his chair to the floor of the House in 1848.2 Hardly anything in the twelve printed volumes of his "Diary," not even the characterizations of his con- temporaries, so impresses the reader as the reiterated ex- pressions of his gratitude for the confidence that his country- men, from humble voter to President Washington, had given him in this long series of years. He never stood higher in public esteem than he did on the day of his death, and his funeral was a pageant without example up to that time in the City of Washington.
1 Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, in which he was held by his enemies
viii, 238-240. is to read one of his speeches, as the one
J Possibly the best way to gain an delivered in June and July, 1838, on the
insight into Adams's method and an annexation of Texas, understanding of the fear and respect
1824] MONROE'S CABINET 353
In Monroe's Cabinet were four of the dozen most eminent men then in active life : Adams, John C. Calhoun, William H. Crawford, and William Wirt. The last named, who occupied the office of Attorney General, was wedded to the law ; l but the others had immediate presidential aspira- tions. Crawford had been a candidate against Monroe in 1816, when they had both been members of Madison's official family ; but he had consented to continue to hold the office of Secretary of the Treasury in the administra- tion of his successful rival and eight years later sought to succeed him in the White House. William H. Crawford enjoyed great reputation in Georgia, his native State, and Southern writers always speak of him in eulogistic terms; but it is difficult to understand wherein his greatness con- sisted.2 Apparently, in those days, Georgia and South Carolina were overflowing with "distinguished and cele- brated lawyers" and among them, such as they were, Crawford attained high place. As Secretary of the Treas- ury, he made no great mark. Indeed, the principal thing associated with him was the passage by Congress of an act providing that the greater number of presidential appointees to office should hold their places for four years only and should be removable at pleasure.3 This has always been regarded as an electioneering device on Crawford's part to secure subserviency to himself among the treasury officials throughout the country; but it is not unlikely that he
1 Wirt occupied the Attorney Gen- State Papers, and in the correspondence
eral's office for twelve years until of Adams, Clay, Calhoun, and others,
Adams's exit in 1829, but two years including an interesting letter from
later Wirt, himself, was nominated for Nathaniel Macon in James Sprunt
the presidency by the Anti-Masons. Historical Monographs, No. 2, p. 67.
*J. E. D. Shipp's Giant Days; or 'Act of May 15, 1820, Statutes at
'he Life and Time.s of William H. Craw- Large, iii, 582 ; Annals of Congress,
jord (Americus, Georgia, 1909). There 16th Cong., 1st Sess., vol. ii, 2597.
is much to be read about Crawford It affected district attorneys, collectors
and there are many of his letters to be and surveyors of the customs, receivers
found in the Annals of Congress, in the of public money, paymasters, etc.
354 POLITICAL SEETHINGS, 1824-1828 [Cn. XI
pushed it forward to make it possible to rid the service of inefficient employees without hurting their feelings and arousing resentments among the voters.1 For the last year or two he had been ill and by 1824 he had been "bled to the verge of death, defitalised into fits, and ptyalized to infantine helplessness." 2 With this chronic ill health upon him, Crawford made a good fight for the presidency ; and, had he been well, would probably have been elected. Another member of Monroe's Cabinet, John C. Calhoun, also desired to be his successor in the White House. Cal- houn was one of the most remarkable men of his day. He stands second only to Franklin in power of analysis ; many of his papers are models of reasoning and expression. Never- theless he was not a man of extensive learning.3 Entering Congress, he at once took a prominent place and he showed administrative ability in the office of Secretary of War. In the course of his long career, Calhoun made many enemies, and his life was not free from contradictions. It is easy to attribute his change of attitude as to internal improvements and nationalism to ambition, but Southern leaders generally shifted at the same time, and it might well be that they were convinced, in common with many other Southerners, that the action of Northern political leaders and of North- ern manufacturers was impoverishing the South and espe- cially South Carolina. The most difficult thing in Calhoun's
1 See Carl Russell Fish's "The to considerable advantage. See Charles
Crime of W. H. Crawford" in Ameri- T. Jackson's and William P. Blake's
can Historical Review, xxi, 545. "Reports" in the volume entitled
'"Van Bufen Mss." in Library The Gold Placers of the Vicinity of
of Congress. Gales and Seaton to M. Dahlonega, Georgia (Boston, 1859)
Van Buren, September 15, 1824. and Yeates's report of 1896 forming
* At one time Calhoun was inter- Bulletin No. 4-A. of the Geological
ested in a Georgia gold mine in the Survey of Georgia. The discovery of
Dahlonega district near a little vil- gold was made in 1829 and by 1879
lage which was named at his sugges- fourteen million dollars' worth had been
tion Auraria. From time to time, produced by the Georgia mines, these gold deposits have been exploited
1824J PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES 355
career to reconcile with his personal honor is his permitting Andrew Jackson for years to look upon him as having been his defender in the Cabinet at the time of the Seminole War ; l but possibly it is not necessaiy for a politician to go out of his way to make enemies. The other Cabinet member who aspired to the presidential succession was John Quincy Adams. Reading his "Diary," one would come to the conclusion that Crawford and Calhoun were persistent presidency seekers, while he, Adams, was simply and solely "in the hands of his friends." There can be no doubt that the two first were more active in their efforts to secure the coveted honor. They dallied with newspapers and possibly appointed to office some persons who might be politically useful to them. It is certain that Adams refused to purchase newspaper support and he had very few offices at his disposal for any purpose ; but if he had had them, there is no reason whatever to believe that he would have used them for his own personal advancement.
Outside of the Cabinet, there were two formidable aspi- rants for the presidency, — Henry Clay 2 and Andrew Jackson. Like Calhoun and Crawford, Clay had been long in political life. He was a Virginian by birth, but had moved to Kentucky when a young man and since that time technically had resided there. Clay had been one of the Commissioners at Ghent, but his career had been identified with the national House of Representatives over which he had presided with brief interruptions for fourteen years. He had borne a foremost part in bringing on the War of 1812 and, more recently, had been the leading advocate of
1 See the present volume, pp. 334- Sargent's Life and Public Services of
336. Henry Clay, p. 322 to the end of the
* For an informing account of Clay, volume is Greeley's own account and
see Carl Schurz's Life of Henry Clay, deals with the years after 1848. 2 vola. ; Greeley's edition of Epes
356 POLITICAL SEETHINGS, 1824-1828 [Cn. XI
internal improvements. But he and his fellow-workers were far ahead of their time, for any such scheme demands a community spirit on the part of the people of the several sections of the country and all the signs at that moment were pointing to an era of sectionalism and of the upbuild- ing of the community spirit in the South apart from the rest of the Union. Andrew Jackson, the fifth figure in this group of presidency seekers, was a Carolinian by birth,1 but a Tennesseean by reason of residence and land owner- ship. His military career is most familiar to us, but he had served in the national Senate for parts of two terms and in the House for part of a term.2 He had had no civil adminis- trative experience, but conducting the business of an army had brought out very strong executive qualities in him.
Of the five candidates for the presidency, Adams was the only one from the North. It was reasonably certain that he would carry New England and might carry New York, — these together would give him seventy-three electoral votes. The eighty-eight Southern votes would be divided somewhat among the four Southern candidates. Consider- ing this fact, it seemed fairly certain that the election would turn on the twenty-eight votes of Pennsylvania and the twenty-four votes of the Northwestern States.3 In some manner that is not at all explicable from accessible books and manuscripts, Jackson appealed to the democracy of
1 In The North Carolina Booklet, 1823 through 1825. Annala of Con-
ix, 232, Bruce Craven argues that the gresa, 4th Cong., 2nd Sess., 1589;
McKemey cabin in which Jackson 5th Cong., vol. i, 470; 18th Cong.,
first saw the light of day was in Meek- 1st Sess., vol. i, 24 ; Register of De-
lenburg County, North Carolina, and bates, 18th Cong., 2nd Sess., Appendix,
not on the South Carolina side of the p. 1.
line, as Jackson himself thought, but 3 A convenient table showing the
a man has slight personal knowledge of apportionment of representation ac-
his birth-place. cording to the Cemrus of 1790 through
z Jackson served in the House the Census of 1840 is in Tucker's Prog~
from 1796 to 1797, and in the Senate ress, 123. from 1797 tp 1798 and again from
1824J PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 357
Pennsylvania and his adherents in that State were much better led than were the partisans of any other candidate. As the election of 1824 drew nearer, it became increasingly evident that Calhoun had no chance whatever, for there appeared to be little doubt that the vote of New York would be divided between Adams and Crawford and that Jackson would get the better part of the twenty-eight Pennsylvania votes. Calhoun, therefore, accepted a practi- cally unopposed election to the vice-presidency. After the withdrawal of Calhoun, Crawford would naturally have absorbed most of the strength of the South, but long con- tinuance in office and long-continued intriguing for the presidency had greatly diminished his hold upon workers and voters. As it was, he received the twenty-four votes of Virginia and the nine of Georgia. Besides he had five from New York and three others or forty-one in all. Clay received the fourteen votes of his own State, Kentucky ; the sixteen of Ohio, four of New York and three of Missouri, making thirty-seven in all. Adams received the fifty-one votes of New England, twenty-six of the thirty-six cast by New York and seven scattering, or eighty-four electoral votes in all. Jackson stood at the head of the list with ninety-nine votes, receiving twenty-eight from Pennsyl- vania, all of the Carolinas and all of Tennessee and Mis- sissippi, Alabama and Indiana and some others.1 As no candidate had received a majority of the electoral vote as demanded by the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment, the actual choice of the President for the next four years lay with the House of Representatives, voting by States and confined to the three highest on the list.2
1 Journal of the Senate, 18th Cong., * This election led to renewed in-
2nd Sess., p. 149. See also Niles's terest in the proposition to elect the
Register for February 12, 1825, p. President directly by districts and to
382. The vote for the President in take away the election from Congress,
the House immediately follows. See H. V. Ames's Proposed Amend-
358 POLITICAL SBETHINGS, 1824-1828 [On. XI
As soon as the way in which the members of the electoral college would cast their votes become known at Washington, rumor and scandal became rife in the capital. Clay was out of the running, being a low fourth. He had polled the votes of Kentucky, Ohio, and Missouri. Adding these States to the seven that were almost certain to vote for Adams would give him the votes of ten States and as he needed only thirteen, it would probably mean his election. Under these circumstances, the friends of the several candidates busied themselves and rumors flew rapidly through the corridors of the capitol and around the rooms of the mess- houses.1 If Jackson were chosen would he make Clay his Secretary of State? Or, if Adams were elected, would he likewise offer this position to Clay? No conjectures of the kind were made as to Crawford, because his relations with Clay were not at all cordial and his health was such that it was difficult to approach him. The three candidates were in Washington, Jackson being a Senator from Tennessee. A coalition between Jackson and Clay was entirely out of the question, for Clay had openly attacked Jackson and no one who had done that had ever been forgiven. On the other hand, it was entirely natural for Adams and Clay to coalesce : they both believed in the American System, they both distrusted Crawford, and neither of them had much faith in Jackson's administrative capacities. It
merits to the Constitution of the United cations, x, 61) that the practical States, 89, and the speeches of Me- equality of votes in Illinois enabled Duffie, Everett, Polk, and others de- Daniel P. Cooke to vote for Adams al- livered in the course of a six weeks' de- though he had agreed to vote with his bate in the House of Representatives State and two of her three electoral in 1826. votes had been given to Jackson and 1 As showing the spirit of the time only one to Adams. Duff Green, and also the difficulty of reaching a writing in old age but doubtless re- conclusion at the present day it is in- peating the stories of his early years, teresting to note that Willie P. Mangum gives some interesting gossip (Facts wrote to Bartlett Yancey in December, and Suggestions, New York, 1866, p. 1824 (James Sprunt Historical Publi- 25 and fol.)
1824] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 359
happened, therefore, that Adams was chosen on the first ballot. Adams and Jackson had been on very good terms owing to Adams's defence of the General's Florida deeds in 1818,1 and it is said that on meeting Adams soon after the vote in the House, Jackson congratulated him and declared that he was better fitted for the place than himself. Some of the far-seeing manipulators, however, determined to arouse Jackson's enmity. At the moment, it was supposed that if the General were elected, he would serve for only one term and therefore that the office of Secretary of State would be as good as a nomination for the presidency in 1828. In January, 1825, an "unsigned letter" appeared in the newspapers, stating that Clay and Adams had made a bargain by which Adams was to be elected and was then to appoint Clay his Secretary of State. Shortly afterward, George Kremer, an insignificant Representative from Pennsylvania, acknowledged the authorship of this letter. Thereupon Clay took the floor of the House and called for an inquiry, but Kremer refused to appear either as accuser or as a witness.2 Two years later Jackson, himself, reiter-
1 " We thenceforth heard the praises Clay, to the Public; containing Cer-
of Mr. Adams sounded throughout tain Testimony in Refutation of the
the military camp." Jesse Benton's Charges against him, made by Gen.
Address to the People of the United Andrew Jackson. This was printed by
States (Nashville, 1824). This is a Peter Force at Washington in 1827. good — and readable — example of the The Buchanan side of the case is
political pamphlets of the times. stated in Curtis's Life of Buchanan,
1 See the Condensed Speech of Hon. i, 49-56 and Works of James Buchanan, Linn Boyd, of Kentucky . . . April SO, i, 260-271, viii, 444. The episode is 1844: Colton's Life of Henry Clay, also treated at length in Bassett's chs. xiv-xviii; and Clay's "Address Andrew Jackson, i, 356-368 and to his Constituents, March 26, 1825" Schurz's Clay, i, 241. The Jacksonian in Colton, Reed, and McKinley's side of the controversy was set forth Works of Henry Clay, v, 299. This at length in the "Reply by the Jack- address was originally printed at son Corresponding Committee of the Washington in 1825 with the title "To District of Columbia" which was The People of the Congressional printed in the United States Telegraph, District composed of the Counties vol. i, Nos. 10-12; and see also "Cal- of Fayette, Woodford, and Clarke, in endar of Jackson-Lewis Letters" in Kentucky." The most interesting of Bulletin of the New York Public Li- these papers is An Address of Henry brary, iv, 292.
360 POLITICAL SEETHINGS, 1824-1828 [Cn. XI
ated the charge and then upon investigation it appeared that the velvet hands of James Buchanan of Pennsylvania had pushed Jackson forward, but that the latter had mis- understood his astute manager in the Keystone State. Altogether it was a discreditable piece of business for all concerned, but it exercised none the less a baleful influence on the lives of two good men, for unfortunately Adams, looking upon Clay as the ablest man for the secretaryship of state, offered the place to him and Clay felt obliged to accept it so as not to give color to the charge.1 Possibly the reason for the lack of the highest success in political warfare on the part of these two men may be seen in this incident.
Whatever his failings, John Quincy Adams possessed honesty of mind and of purpose. Replying to the com- mittee that notified him of his election, he said that as one of the other candidates had had "a larger minority of the primary electoral suffrages" than he had, he should not have hesitated to decline the presidential office, could his refusal have given "an immediate opportunity to the people" to express again their wishes. As it was he necessarily accepted the result of the election by the House of Representatives. The greatest part of Adams's Inaugural Address was devoted to the achievements of the American Republic 2 up to that time ; but he made some suggestions as to the future. The prosecution of internal improvements, he thought, would bring down upon the heads of those who made them the blessings of " unborn millions of our
1 In 1850, according to Henry S. self in a false position before the coun-
Foote (Casket of Reminiscences, 27) try, and often have I painfully felt that
Clay declared that if he were to live I had seriously impaired my own ca-
his life over again he would not ac- pacity for public usefulness." cept from Mr. Adams the Secretary- * Richardson's Messages and Paper*
ship of State. "By doing so I injured of the Presidents, ii, 292-299. both )»*•»» and myself; I placed my-
1825] ADAMS'S INAUGURAL 361
posterity." As to the constitutional objections that had been raised to the prosecution of this design, he thought these might be obviated by friendly deliberations; but no consideration should induce Congress "to assume the exercise of powers not granted ... by the people." In his first message to Congress, he reiterated this desire for internal improvements and coupled other subjects with it, as the founding of a national university.1 Congress was deaf to all appeals of the kind and paid no attention to them.
In the Inaugural, Adams had also stated that the new Spanish-American republics had invited the United States to send representatives to a meeting of Congress to be held at Panama for consultation and action as to objects of com- mon interest.- He had accepted the' invitation and com- missioners would be sent to take part in the conference so far "as may be compatible with that neutrality" from which the United States does not intend to depart. On the 26th of December, 1825, he sent a message to the Senate repeating the invitation from the Spanish-American republics. He added that although the acceptance of this invitation "was deemed to be within the constitutional competency of the Executive" he had not taken any step in it and wished to ascertain whether his opinion of its expediency would be agreed to by both Houses of Congress. With the message there were documents and also nominations of commis- sioners.2 This Panama Congress had been summoned by Bolivar and both the United States and England had been invited to it. In respect to foreign policy, the administra- tion of John Quincy Adams was hardly more than a continu-
*" Message from the President of * Executive Proceedings of the Sen-
the United States . . . December 6, ate . . . Congress at Panama (19th
1825": House Documents, 19th Cong., Cong., 1st Sess., No. 68); also printed
1st Sess., vol. i, No. 1, pp. 6, 15. separately at Washington in 1826.
362 POLITICAL SEETHINGS, 1824-1828 [Cn. XI
ation of that of Monroe, and the Panama Congress was expected to be a capstone to the Spanish-American revolu- tions. Had everything gone well, it is conceivable that a league of American nations — North, South, and Central — might have been formed then that would have power- fully affected the progress of the world. The United States would naturally have taken the lead and this would have been most distressing to George Canning who was then at the head of the British government, for he had determined to prevent the United States assuming such a position and also to prevent the absorption of Cuba and Porto Rico by France or by the United States. Moreover, he wished to bring the great American Republic within the scope of European politics.1 Adams was equally determined to keep his country out of the European entanglements, to facilitate the voluntary incorporation of Cuba and Texas with the United States, and to have all the American powers adopt the principles of that republic as to the freedom of the seas. The sources of political opposition to the partici- pation of the United States in the Panama Congress are not easy to fathom. Possibly the Jacksonian partisans may have looked upon its defeat as a blow dealt at Jackson's rivals. Possibly, also, they may have thought opposition to it would place their candidate distinctly at the head of the Southern party. Some of the subjects that would necessarily come up for debate at Panama would have to do with negro slavery and with the future of the colored races in America. At all events a most factious opposi- tion to Adams's plan appeared in the Senate. It must be confessed that Adams's action was weak and ill con- sidered ; he had accepted the invitation and then had asked
1 Temperley's "Later American can Historical Review, xi, 779 and Policy of George Canning" in Ameri- fol. ; and his Life of Canning, ch. z.
1826] PANAMA CONGRESS 363
the Senate if the United States should be represented. He had declared that the appointment of commissioners was within the power of the Executive and had then asked the consent of the two Houses to such appointments. The Senate committee, to whom the subject was referred, doubted the constitutional authority of the government to negotiate with foreign nations for the purpose of settling and pro- mulgating principles of internal polity or abstract proposi- tions. By strict observance of their old course of policy, the United States had grown up in happiness, so the com- mittee asserted. Were they now to embark upon an un- known ocean, directed by little experience and with no certain destiny, and especially since in such a voyage the dissimilarities of language, religion, customs, and laws would generate discords ? It was true that the Senate might reject any agreements that were entered into ; but long experience had shown that it was difficult and sometimes impossible to escape from the embarrassment of the mere act of entering into the negotiations. The Senate con- firmed the nominations, nevertheless, and the House voted the necessary funds. One of the United States delegates died and the other did not go to Panama. There was an English diplomatic representative there and possibly two or three other Europeans. Probably nothing would have come of the enterprise had the United States been repre- sented at Panama and it may have been for the best that no such league of American nations was formed. The one thing that strikes the observer in reading the available documents is that both Canning and Bolivar succeeded in their policy l in so far as they prevented the United States
1 See H. W. V. Temperley's "The ton's Some Official Correspondence of
Later American Policy of George George Canning, i, using the table of
Canning" and his Life of Canning contents. (London, 1905) ; and also E. J. Staple- For Bolivar's views on the Con-
364 POLITICAL SEETHINGS, 1824-1828 [CH. XI
from taking the position of leadership that should have belonged to it. Bolivar failed, however, in his plan of estab- lishing a Spanish-American league in close agreement with Great Britain. But had Adams and Clay been given hearty support by their own countrymen, the United States might even then have taken the foremost position in a League of Nations of the American continents.
Another critical and disappointing episode of these years had to do with the partly civilized Indians of western Georgia and the neighboring counties of Alabama. These were the Cherokees. In 1791, President Washington had entered into a treaty with them by which they were assured that they would never be driven from their lands.1 In 1802, Gallatin, on behalf of the federal government and as a part of the Yazoo land settlement, had agreed to put Georgia in possession of the Indian lands within her limits.2 Chris- tian missionaries also had sought out the Cherokees, had converted some of them to Christianity, and had taught them something of the arts of civilization.3 Administra- tion followed administration and the Georgians who needed more lands for cultivation of the cotton plant were kept out of the acres that they regarded as rightfully theirs. In
gress of Panama, I am indebted to Bee also the present work, volume iv,
Professor Julius Klein, who kindly 290 note. The later documents are
placed at my disposal some printed printed in House Reports, No. 98,
notes from an unpublished manu- 19th Cong., 2nd Sess. script in the archives at Caracas that * On the general subject of the
were presented at the second Pan- removal of the Indians see Miss Annie
American Scientific Congress that H. Abel's "Indian Consolidation West
was held at Washington in 1916. of the Mississippi" in American His-
For a somewhat different view see torical Association's Annual Report
W. R. Shepherd's "Bolivar and the for 1906, i, 233 with an extensive
United States" in Hispanic American bibliography on pp. 413-438. Joseph
Historical Review, i, 270. Hodgson's Cradle of the Confederacy
1 American State Papers, Indian (ch. viii) and G. L. Sioussat's "Ten- Affairs, i, 124, art. 7; "The United nessee and the Removal of the In- States solemnly guaranty to the Chero- dians" in the Sewanee Review for kee nation, all their lands not hereby July, 1908, have been especially use- ceded." ful.
* Ibid., Public Lands, i, 126, art. 4 ;
1828] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 365
Monroe's administration, matters were greatly compli- cated by personal and political hostilities between Governor Troup of Georgia and the federal Indian Agent which were not at all allayed by the bad feeling on the part of the gov- ernor toward the missionaries and between the missionaries themselves, for they were of different sects.1 Troup ad- dressed communications to the heads of the federal depart- ments in the language of a sovereign commanding his servants ; but he gained nothing at the moment. Adams's weak administration seemed to the Georgians to be the appointed time, and they marched into the coveted lands, notwithstanding the utmost opposition that the Washington government could make. It was one of the most un- fortunate episodes in the history of the presidency.
The election of 1828 marked the breaking down of the old system and the coming into power of the democracy of the next thirty years that was ushered in by the trium- phant election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency. There is something peculiarly interesting about Jackson and his political and presidential career, fully as interesting in its way as the story of his earlier military performances. He seems to have had slight desire in the beginning for high executive place and in 1825 to have welcomed Adams, and, indeed, they had been on friendly terms. He was put forward for the presidency by a group of active and aspiring politi- cians, of whom William B. Lewis and Amos Kendall were the ablest. Lewis was a neighbor of Jackson's and for some years had acted as a literary friend, putting the General's roughly written communications into the forms in which we possess them.2 How early Jackson's friends be-
1 Report of the Select Committee of J S. G. Heiskell in his Andrew Jack-
the House of Representatives, March son and Early Tennessee History
S, 1827 (19th Cong., 2nd Sess., H. of (Nashville, 1918) has a few interesting
R. No. 98) ; E. J. Harden's Life of paragraphs on Lewis, pp. 441-446. George M. Troup, chs. ix-xii.
366 POLITICAL SEETHINQS, 1824-1828 (Cn. XI
gan to put him forward as a public character is not quite clear, but they conducted a skilful propaganda, certainly as far back as 1817, when John Henry Eaton completed a biography that really was a campaign document.1 By 1826, it was evident that Crawford was out of the presidential race. Thereupon Calhoun was led to believe, or came to believe, that continuing in the vice-presidency through Jackson's term, provided the General were elected to the chief magistracy, would make him, Calhoun, the Jack- sonian candidate for the first place in 1832. It is impossible to prove that any definite proposition of the kind was made to Calhoun, or that any categorical statement of Jackson's determination to serve only one term was ever made. But it is evident that for some reason best known to themselves, Calhoun and his friends thought that it would be wise for him to continue in the second place. Crawford and Calhoun being thus removed from the presidential race, the only other Southern competitor was Henry Clay, and systematic efforts were at once begun to blast his reputation and make his candidacy impossible.
Rumors of bargain and corruption had been rife in 1824 and John Randolph of Roanoke had given them a place in popular imagination by stigmatizing the cooperation of Adams and Clay as the " coalition of Blifil and Black George, — the combination, unheard of till then, of the Puritan with the blackleg/'3 and by fighting a duel, a bloodless one, with Clay. The story was brought up again in 1827 and led to letters and pamphlets. From them it appears that Jackson thought or was made to say that he thought that,
1 The Life of Andrew Jackson . . . dren of John Reid." Reprinted with
Commenced by John Reid, . . . Com- Eaton's name alone on the title-page
pleted by John Henry Eaton. It was at Philadelphia in 1824 and later, published by Carey at Philadelphia * Schurz'a Clay, i, 273 ; Garland's
in 1817 "For the Benefit of the Chil- Randolph, ii, 254.
1828] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 367
in 1824, he had been approached and been told that if he would not appoint Adams Secretary of State the presi- dential contest would at once be decided in his favor. Upon demanding the name of the person who had made this offer, Jackson replied that it was James Buchanan ; but Buchanan declared that what he said was if Jackson would agree not to continue Adams in the Secretary of State office, the Clay men would vote for him, Jackson, and thus decide the contest. Buchanan said he had no idea that he could have been mistaken for a representative of Clay and, if one can believe him, he appears to have undertaken the mission out of a simple desire to bring about Jackson's election and without having any authority whatever from Clay. The latter now secured written testimony from his adherents in the House of Representatives in 1824 and published it with private letters of his own, written at the time, with a view to making it clear that he and his friends had voted against Jackson and for Adams from the highest motives of duty. Nothing was of any avail. The more Clay pro- tested, the more firmly his countrymen disbelieved him, and he was definitely put out of the presidential running for the time being. The Southern vote was, therefore, secure for Jackson and probably the twenty-four votes of the Old Northwest would also be given to him. These would not be enough and it would therefore be necessary to gain elec- toral votes in Pennsylvania and New York to make the result certain.
In 1824, Jackson had had only a small following in New York, for the politicians of that State and their followers supported Crawford, and the other voters generally stood behind Adams. The two principal leaders in New York at that time were William L. Marcy and Martin Van Buren. The former was a politician of that time and place, but Van
368 POLITICAL SEBTHINGS, 1824-1828 [Cn. XI
Buren cannot be so easily dismissed, partly because he him- self achieved the presidential office, but more especially because he was unjustly dealt with by his contemporaries and has been even more so by historical writers since. He grew up a poor boy at Kinderhook, New York. He made his own way in the world, standing up for the humble and downtrodden, and gained influence by reason of his clear- ness of thought and cogency of utterance. He was a wire- puller, like nearly every one else in public life and, being one of the ablest men of the day, he was one of the ablest wire- pullers of New York and Washington. Van Buren and Marcy and others of inferior abilities formed the Albany Regency, as the ruling body of a portion of the old Republi- can Party of the State was called. Among the minor New York politicians was Churchill C. Cambreleng, who might be described as Van Buren's lieutenant. Together they travelled through the South, visiting Crawford in Georgia and other politicians along the route. It was at this time that Van Buren probably entered into some kind of alliance with the Jackson forces because Jackson's name, as a candidate for the presidency, appears in the Van Buren papers for the first time in October, 1826. Writing to Thomas Ritchie in January, 1827, Van Buren advo- cated a political combination between the planters of the South and "the plain Republicans of the North," and not long afterwards he practically took charge of the Jackson campaign in New York. In 1827, the Jackson Republi- cans secured most of the assemblymen from the city of New York, which greatly encouraged them not only within the State but also without ; and the sudden death of Governor De Witt Clinton in February, 1828, removed from the political field the anti-Jacksonian whom Van Buren most * feared. In the end, with exceeding craft
1828] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 369
and cunning * he secured for Jackson twenty of the thirty- six votes 2 of the Empire State and the governor's office for himself.
From Revolutionary days western Pennsylvania and Philadelphia had been the homes of the most advanced American democrats. They had troubled Washington, and Jefferson had not fully appreciated them. Now, for the first time, they could exercise political power com- mensurate with their numbers because the electoral system of the State had been so changed that it was possible for the country voter to record his vote without undue expendi- ture of time and strength. Henry Clay had had a strong following in Pennsylvania because of his championship of the tariff and Adams also had had many friends in the State, especially among the Germans, or "Pennsylvania Dutch." To break down the hold of Clay and Adams on the Pennsylvania people all kinds of stories were put into circulation : — the election of Adams in 1824 had defeated the "will of the people";3 Adams and Clay had been
1 Two letters from Van Buren to brief. The political history of New
Jackson in the Library of Congress York must be studied by any one who
throw light upon the relations of the wishes to understand this period, but
two men as early as September, 1827, it is most difficult to comprehend,
and also give some information as to Jabez D. Hammond's History of Po-
election methods. In the first, Van litical Parties in New York in 2 vols.
Buren assures Jackson that he will and D. S. Alexander's Political His-
have "a very decided majority" of tory of New York in 3 vols. pave the
the votes of New York, if nothing way ; and the perusal of R. H. Gillet's
turns up to change the present aspect Life and Times of Silas Wright will
of things. Pennsylvania, also, looks fill in a portion of the picture,
more hopeful, as of the fifty Republi- * Journal of the Senate, 20th Cong.,
can papers in that State, all but three 2nd Sess., p. 120.
have come out for Jackson. "All that is * The Twelfth Amendment to the
necessary to rout the enemy is that he Constitution provided that the per-
[Van Buren J be left alone" and that son having the greatest number of
Jackson make no statements or ex- electoral votes for President shall be
planations. Again, about six weeks the President, if such number were a
later, Van Buren urges "quiet." majority of the whole number of
There is no fitting life of Van Buren. electors ; but if no person had such a
Edward M. Shepard's book in the majority the House of Representa-
American Statesmen series is very tives voting by States shall choose
good for its size, but is necessarily immediately by ballot the President
VOL. V. — 2fi
370
POLITICAL SEETHINGS, 1824-1828
[Ca. XI
guilty of bargaining and fraud ; and the Adams adminis- tration was corrupt. More especially, to shock the eco- nomical sense of the German farmers, Adams was accused of having received enormous sums of public money, — the amount being calculated by adding together all the salaries and money for expenses that had been paid to him in the thirty years of his political career. Finally, the moral sense of the Presbyterians was assailed by charging Adams with having bought a billiard table with public money and having installed it in the President's Palace.1 It was of no use to point out that Adams, by faithful and prolonged service, had earned all the money that had been paid to him, or to demonstrate that of the twenty-five thousand dollars that Congress had voted for the rejuvenation of the White House, only six thousand had been spent,2 or that the billiard table had been purchased with the President's own money. Almost never in our history have reputations been so un- warrantedly attacked and so successfully as were those of Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams in this campaign.3
"from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President." In voting the representation of each State should have one vote, two- thirds of the States should constitute a quorum, but "a majority of all the States shall be necessary to a choice." From this it is clear that the Repre- sentatives were entitled to pick the President from the three highest on the list without defeating the will of the people or doing anything of the sort; otherwise the amendment makers and ratifiers would have provided that the person receiving the highest num- ber of electoral votes without any re- gard to its being a majority should be President.
1 S. G. Heiskell, the Tennesseean biographer of Andrew Jackson (p. 306) states that Jackson was devoted to the game of billiards.
* An "Inventory of Furniture in
the President's House, taken the 24th day of March, 1825" (House Docu- ments, 19th Cong., 1st Sess., No. 2).
* One of the most interesting charges levelled against an opponent was that he had been a Federalist at some anterior time, particularly in 1808. Theodore Lyman, Junior, having in- advertently said something of the kind as to Daniel Webster, was charged with criminal libel. See A Notable Libel Case, by Josiah H. Benton, Jr. (Bos- ton, 1904). It is interesting to read in a letter from a well-known politi- cian to Van Buren, dated June 18, 1827, to the effect that in 1824, Web- ster had come to him and had said if Adams were not chosen on the first ballot, he had a letter to show him stating that Adams could not do justice to the old Federalists by ad- mitting them "to a proper share in the influence of his administration."
1828] TARIFF OF ABOMINATIONS 371
Moreover, it must be admitted that the anti-Jackson cam- paign was very poorly conducted. It had been suggested that Adams should attend a large meeting of the Pennsyl- vania Germans and address them in their own language, but this he refused to do on the ground that it was not be- coming the holder of the chief magistracy to harangue on his own behalf.1 He also refused to do anything to prevent holders of federal offices from taking part in the election and attacking him in unmeasured terms. And, indeed, it would seem that Adams's ultra-sensitive attitude as to the offices, however right it may have been, harmed him greatly because his managers could hold out no hope to any one who took his part in the campaign of securing any pecuniary advantage whatever. Finally, Jackson's interests in Penn- sylvania were most ably managed by James Buchanan and his lieutenants.
One of the most difficult feats that was performed by the Jacksonians was to appear to disapprove of a protective tariff in the eyes of the Southern supporters and at the same time to appear to further the wishes of the Pennsyl- vania protectionists ; but the Jacksonians accomplished the apparently impossible by bringing about the passage of the abominable tariff of 1828. As it was certain that the New Englanders would vote for Adams, in any event, and equally certain that the Pennsylvanians would desert any man who destroyed the protection of iron, the policy of the Jackson men was fairly clear. The tariff must appear to be the work of the Northeasterners and then be amended in such a way that all protection should be taken from the textile manufactures. It was expected that this would cause the New Englanders to vote against the bill and
1 In 1843 Calhoun refused to take spectacle, or considered an elec- the stump in his own behalf because tioneerer." Jameson's Correspondence he was "adverse to being made a of Calhoun, 541.
372 POLITICAL SEETHINGS, 1824-1828 [Cn. XI
thereby defeat it, make the Pennsylvanians hostile to Adams and favorable to Jackson, and preserve the good will of the Southerners.1 This scheme is generally attributed to Martin Van Buren, but there is little evidence to con- nect him with it, and Van Buren was not the man to show his hand to contemporaries or to posterity. At all events the plan succeeded too well, which is another reason for supposing it was not the work of Van Buren. The New Englanders voted for it, because they were certain that before long they could secure changes favorable to themselves, — and, meanwhile, the bill prolonged the life of the protective system. It passed and Adams approved it. The Penn- sylvanians voted for Jackson and the Southerners neces- sarily voted for him, too ; but there was added hatred in their hearts toward the federal government that persisted in taxing them for the benefit of others, — according to their mode of thinking.
It must not be supposed from what has been said in the preceding paragraphs that the Adams men were free from reproach in their campaign. Adams, himself, was above blame. To every doubtful suggestion, he invariably said "No!" He declared that he had never sought public office and was not going to begin to seek it at his time of life. His adherents, however, were bound by no such scruples. There is a curious collection of letters that passed between Edward Everett and John McLean whom Adams had retained in office, although it was fairly certain that
1 John Bailey, writing to J. B. chusetts Historical Society's Proceed-
Davis from Washington, May 10, ings for February, 1916, p. 212. The
1828, stated that the tariff bill "was ideas of the time as to the relation of
engendered between the avowed anti- manufacturing and farming and the
tariff men of the South, and the pro- justification of the tariff question may
fessed tariff Jackson men of the middle be seen in George Tibbits's Essay on
states, and framed most pointedly so the Expediency and Practicability of
as to bear heavily and injuriously on Improving or Creating Home Markets
New England, in the hope that it for the Sale of Agricultural Produc-
vould thus be defeated." Masse- tions (Philadelphia, 1827).
1828] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 373
McLean favored Jackson and was even working in his interests. Everett criticised severely the giving of a con- tract to carry the mail to Isaac Hill, a New Hampshire newspaper man and Jacksonian politician, for it was a condition of the contract — as of other contracts to carry the mail — that the contractor could transport his own products free. This enabled Hill to carry on an intense printed propaganda against Adams among the farmers of New Hampshire. McLean insisted that a contract must be awarded to the lowest bidder, and that no discrimination as to terms could be made. Also replying to Everett he declared l that Adams could not have made changes in the offices because the hostile Senate would not have confirmed his new appointments. Adams refused to give money or place to secure newspaper support, but some newspaper editors supported him, nevertheless. One of these was John Binns, an Englishman who had successfully conducted a paper in Pennsylvania in opposition to the Duane Repub- licans. Binns had hit upon the scheme of pictorial prop- aganda and had prepared posters depicting the most dis- tressing incidents in Jackson's career, some of them resting on mere rumor. One of the things that it was thought would excite hostility against Jackson was the shooting of militiamen to preserve discipline. The Revolutionary device of coffins at the head of a handbill containing the printed particulars of the deed that was denounced was again brought into requisition.2 Binns also printed posters
1 Massachusetts Historical So- braries. The two copies of the original ciety's Proceedings for February, 1908, posters in the Library of Congress p. 391. There is an interesting letter vary in important details. See also from Isaac Hill to Henry Lee, dated Official Record from the War Depart- " Concord, N. H., Sept. 16, 1828" in ment and the Orders of General Jack- ibid., for October, 1909. son for Shooting The Six Militia Men
1 The handbills were entitled "Some . . . showing that these American Citi-
Account of some of the Bloody Deeds zens were Inhumanly and Illegally Ma»-
of GEN. JACKSON." Facsimiles sacred (Concord, 1828). are not uncommon in the larger li-
374 POLITICAL SEETHINQS, 1824-1S2S [On. XI
and handbills after the manner of tombstones, reciting in "Monumental Inscriptions" the misdeeds of General Jack- son, and reprinted them as a pamphlet; but the "Binns Coffin Hand Bills," as these were called, do not seem to have stirred the Pennsylvania farmers as they were ex- pected to.
The Adams men established a political paper, "Truth's Advocate and Monthly Anti-Jackson Expositor." 1 It was published at Cincinnati and charged Jackson with specu- lating in western public lands and also printed the old tales of his pre-marital relations with Mrs. Jackson. The land speculations were indignantly denied and there is no proof whatever that Jackson had "speculated" in western lands before 1828 ; but while he was President he tried to buy lands in Mississippi and failed to do so owing to the high prices at which they were held, — of course this was before the issuing of the "specie circular." The fact that he tried to buy lands and failed does not of course prove that he specu- lated in lands at an earlier period, but it would seem to indi- cate no great feeling of delicacy on his part. Finally, some of the Jackson leaders thought — whether justly or not is unknown — that the Adams men had in mind a scheme to report Jackson as dead just before the election, to prevent people voting for him, as had been done in the case of Governor Snyder of Pennsylvania twenty years earlier.2
1 A good way to get an idea of the October 18, 1808, is a despatch from spirit of the presidential election of Philadelphia announcing the murder this year is to read consecutively of Simon Snyder with a circumstantial Truth's Advocate, pp. 4-20, 117-119; account of finding the corpse. An and twenty or thirty pages in the editorial comment says that this is Jacksonian paper, The United States impossible as no mention was made Telegraph . . . Extra published at of the fact in Philadelphia papers of a Washington by Green and Jarvis. later date, — and Snvder was elected
2 William B. Lewis to Martin Van Governor soon after. For a still Buren, September 27, 1828, in the earlier instance of the same manreuvre, "Van Buren Manuscripts" in the see the Richmond and Manchester Library of Congress. Advertiser of November 8, 1796.
In the Petersburg Intelligencer for
1828] JACKSON ELECTED 375
All together the story of the presidential campaign ending in 1828 is one of the most woful in our annals.
When the votes were counted, it appeared that one hundred and seventy-eight electoral votes had been cast for Andrew Jackson of Tennessee and only eighty-three for John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts.1 This was hailed by the Jackson men as a great popular triumph and it did mark the beginning of a new era in our history. None the less, it is worth while to analyze the figures a bit before acceding to this or any other assertion. Jackson received the electoral votes of every State south of Mary- land and of the three Northwestern States. He also re- ceived the twenty-eight votes of Pennsylvania, and twenty of the thirty-six votes of New York. The one hundred and five Southern presidential electors who had voted for Jack- son received two hundred and four thousand votes, while John Quincy Adams received over three hundred and fifty thousand popular votes. The four and three quarters mil- lions of free people in the North in 1828 had one hundred and thirty-seven votes in the electoral college, while the two and one-half million Southern whites possessed one hundred and five electoral votes, each Southern presidential elector representing twenty-five thousand free people, while each Northern presidential elector represented not far from thirty- five thousand free persons.2 This was due to the working of the federal ratio.3 Indeed, Jackson was really chosen to
1 The electoral vote of 1828 is in white population of 700,745. By the Journal of the Senate, 20th Cong., 2nd working of the federal ratio Virginia Sess., p. 120. and Georgia had thirty-three votes
2 Taking a definite case, New Hamp- in the national Senate and House shire and South Carolina each had of Representatives to Massachusetts' 244,000 free inhabitants according to twenty-two votes. At the same time the Census of 1820. But New Hamp- Massachusetts was paying into the shire had only 8 presidential electors federal revenue $2,774,226.34 while the to 11 for South Carolina. Again : two Southern States together were in 1810 Virginia and Georgia together paying $596,428.26.
had a total white population of 729,319 » See Census for 1820 (Washington,
while Massachusetts, alone, had a 1821). The tables of population are,
376
POLITICAL SEETHINGS, 1824-1828
the presidency by the solid South, as was quite proper as he was a Southern man, a slaveholder, and a cotton grower. At the same time, he could not have received a majority of the electoral votes, even adding the twenty-four electoral votes of the Western States to his Southern votes, without the aid of Pennsylvania and New York, for if we subtract the forty-eight votes received in those States from Jackson's one hundred and seventy-eight and add them to Adams's eighty-three, Jackson would have received one less electoral vote than Adams. Finally, the twenty-four votes of the Northwestern States in this election, as things were, practi- cally counted for nothing because if they had all been given to Adams, and the Pennsylvania and the New York votes had remained as they were, Adams would have had only one hundred and seven electoral votes to 148 for Jackson.1 Indeed, however one manipulates the figures, it would seem that Jackson was raised to the presidency by the over-rep- resentation of the South combined with the employment of most unjustifiable methods by his partisans in Penn- sylvania and in New York. On the whole, possibly it was more honorable to have been defeated in 1828 than to have been elected.
summarized at the beginning. Practi- cally the same figures are given in Edwin Williams'a New-York Annual Register /or ... 1830, p. 335.
Williams' s Politician's Manual (New- York, October, 1832) contains the vote for presidential electors in 1828 and for the nearest local election, making it useful for purposes of com- parison with the above. Ibid., for 1834 gives additional local figures. McMaster (History of the . . . United States, v, 518) gives slightly different figures, but does not state his au- thority. The figures given in Wil- liams's Annual Register for . . . 1832 (p. 387) seem to be most carefully
compiled and are repeated in the Politician's Manual (p. 4) ; they are somewhat different from those in the Annual Register for . . . 1830 (p. 344).
1 Nevertheless, Professor Paxson in the Mississippi Historical Review (ii, 3) states that "the political revolu- tion of 1828 opened a period of twelve years in which the Mississippi Valley • • • controlled the destinies of the United States" and Professor Mc- Laughlin has told us that with the en- trance of Jackson to the White House "the West took the whip hand" in driving forward the United States.
DEMOCRACY 377
NOTE
Democracy, Historically Considered. — In its ordinary definition, " democracy " implies the direct rule of the people ; but the term people is susceptible of many definitions.1 As it was used by ancient philosophers and by the " Fathers " it denoted the aggregation of persons who shared in the rule of the community, city, or state that was under discussion. In its widest meaning, it would include every man, woman, and child from birth to death — the babe, the senile man and woman, the criminal, the pauper, the hard-working laborer, and the long-houred brain worker. Obviously, all these cannot take part in the direct rule of the state. There must be some limitations* but the approximation to direct rule marks the steps toward the realization of democracy. In Washington's time the franchise was limited by law and even more limited by the geographical difficulty of exercising it. Government was on a republican basis. The voters represented the community and deputed some of themselves to represent them and those whom they, in turn, represented.2 The development from this republican form of government to that of an absolute democracy, where every one takes a direct share in the government, is marked by the enlargement of the franchise, the pro- viding greater facilities for exercising it, and the remodelling of the apportionment to do away with advantages of wealth or of political and financial corporations.
1 Professor W. S. Ferguson of Har- beings in the period of limited suffrage, vard University has given me the * In the Virginia Convention of following definition of "democracy" 1829-1830, Mr. Leigh of Chesterfield in ancient days: "Democracy asked the members to observe "how among the Greeks meant the rule of generally the introduction of Univer- the demos. The demos in a strictly sal Suffrage has been followed by the technical sense was the legally con- caucus system of nomination . . . stituted citizen body whether it in- or convention to make a regular nomi- cluded a few only or the many. In nation of candidates, to discipline popular usage it meant the supremacy parties, to whip in all who hope [to in this legally organized body of the gain] a share of the loaves and fishes middle and lower classes. Democ- in their turn, and to whip out all who racy always implied the settlement of show a disposition to rebel against all important political questions by the 'regular nomination.' . . . The elec- citizens met in a general assembly." tive body, in fact, is the caucus. . . Moreover, the demos did not include The freeholders of Virginia . . . want women, children, slaves, or ineffectives, no ballot-box to hide their votes from so that the demos itself represented their neighbours, and to screen them human kind within the geographical from the indignation of others." Pro- limits of the state, — in much the ceedings and Debates of the Virginia same way that "the voters" rep- State Convention of 1829-30 (Richmond, resented the whole mass of human 1830) p. 406.
CHAPTER XII
PRESIDENT JACKSON
ANDREW JACKSON of Tennessee was inaugurated President of the United States on March 4, 1829. Fifteen or twenty thousand persons listened to his address which, according to one favorable hearer, was "excellent, chaste, patriotic, sententious, and dignified." To others who were not so favorably inclined to the new President, it appeared to have nothing in it. This variety of opinion was more than usually marked as to Jackson. George Livermore,1 a Massachusetts man who later became a strong abolitionist, described Jack- son as "gentle and affable in private conversation." On the other hand, Jefferson refused to appoint Jackson to office in 1804, declared him to be "rude, malignant, and muddy headed" in 1809, and warned Monroe years afterward not to send the "Hero of New Orleans" to Russia, for if he did Jackson would get the United States into trouble within one month. To the American people at large Jackson seemed to be a radical and was acclaimed as such by some and dreaded by others. In reality, at this period of his life, whatever he may have been at other times, Andrew Jackson was distinctly a conservative and used the powers of his high office to restrain rather than to excite.
The older writers, who were mostly from the North, and James Parton, an Englishman by birth, have usually de-
1 Massachusetts Historical Society's Proceedings for 1867-1869, p. 420.
378
PRESIDENT JACKSON 379
scribed Jackson as a man of small mentality, slight knowledge of books, unversed in affairs, and having a frontiersman's illiterate roughness. All these statements have some truth in them, but the general expression of this truth is greatly exaggerated. It is true that Jackson was in the habit of having his letters copied for him and of using state papers prepared by others, but so was Washington, our first President, and no one would assert that he was unversed in affairs or illiterate. In the "Jackson Papers" at Wash- ington there are many letters in Jackson's unmistakable handwriting. In them there are errors in spelling and in punctuation, but not more than one finds in the productions of high school graduates and many college undergraduates of the present day, none of whom can be spoken of as "illiterate." In point of fact, Jackson's spelling belonged to the generation before Noah Webster placed such things in the cast iron jackets that Jefferson refused to respect and that many good people of our own time have tried to modify under the guise of "simplified spelling." For vigor of expression and cogency of reasoning, Jackson's rough drafts are distinctly creditable. In the New Orleans cam- paign and in the crises of his presidential career his judgment was rapid and extraordinarily certain. It is true that he had slight knowledge of books, but he had read the Bible or had stored in his memory what he had heard others read of that great example, and he sometimes used Shakespearian expressions. He was no scholar or man of books, but he probably had read a few of them and had pondered somewhat those that he had read. He came into office at the moment when the Hamiltonian republican form of government was changing to the more democratic institution of the middle of the nineteenth century. Jackson was placed by circum- stances at the head of this movement, and being there, he
380
PRESIDENT JACKSON
[CH. XII
fought for it as intelligently and as strongly as he had fought for his country at New Orleans. Moreover, he was not only the representative of the rising democracy of Pennsylvania and New York and of frontier radicalism, he was more particularly the representative of the cotton planters. To harmonize Southern agricultural and Northern democratic interests was no mean task and, whether we like Jackson and his policies or detest him and them, it must be con- ceded that from his own point of view he performed the task that came to his hand exceedingly well.
Jackson's administrations form so interesting an epoch in our history that it will be well to look for a moment at the statistical and industrial condition of the people of the United States in those years. In 1830 the total population of the country was between twelve and thirteen millions. These figures 1 include not only the whites but the free colored persons and slaves. Of the thirteen millions nearly two of them lived in New England, three and one-half in the Middle States, and three and one-quarter in the Old South. West of the mountains and south of the Ohio River there were two millions more and in Missouri one hundred and forty thousand. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois numbered nearly one and a half millions and in the Territories and the Dis-
1 The exact figures of the popula- tion in 1830 are hard to get at, as the tables in the official Census of 1830 are somewhat crude in arrangement. The numbers in the text have been reached by combining and by add- ing and subtracting the figures given in this volume (pp. 162, 163) and the figures given in S. N. D. North's Cen- tury of Population Growth and George Tucker's Progress of the United States in Population and Wealth in Fifty Years. The first edition of this valu- able work was published at New York in 1843 ; an edition that was printed at the same place in 1855 has an "Ap-
pendix" that carries the story through the Census of 1850. The figures are as follows :
POPULATION IN 1830
New England 1,954,717
Middle States 3,664,412
Old South 3,251,282
The Southwest 2,031,498
Missouri 140,455
Old Northwest 1,438,379
Territories (Michigan, Ar- kansas, Florida) . . . 96,757 District of Columbia . . . 39,834 12,617,334
Scale of Population 600,000 1.000,000
1.800,000
Maine
N.H.
AUA — 66,000 aq. miles
R.I.
Conn.
I Mich.
Scale of Population SOO.OOO 1.000.000
1.500.000
(The lowest line in each, group represent! the population by th* census of ISWl tht next lint above, the population by tht census of 1830 and to on.)
From Tucker's Progress, p. 126. 381
382 PRESIDENT JACKSON [Cn. XII
trict of Columbia there were one hundred and thirty-six thousand. Grouping the figures somewhat differently, we find that there were nine millions in the States on the sea- board and three and a half millions in Transappalachia. If we draw the line a third way, putting the free soil on one side and the slave soil on the other, it appears that in the former there were over seven million people and in the latter five and one-half millions including the slaves. Some thirty- five hundred of the population of the free States were re- turned as slaves, for the gradual emancipation plans had not yet borne their full fruit ; in the Slave States and Terri- tories there were over two million slaves to over three and a half million free whites and free blacks. There were then three hundred and nineteen thousand free colored persons in the United States as a whole, of whom one hun- dred and seventy-eight thousand were in the Slave States ; of these more than one-half were in Maryland and Virginia and the District of Columbia. Looking forward to 1840, it is noticeable that in this decade, notwithstanding the tre- mendous abolition agitation, the total free colored population had increased only sixty-seven thousand or about twenty per cent, which is certainly much less than one would have expected.
Studying the figures of these two censuses, one is im- pressed with the growing importance of the urban population of the North. New York had already hopelessly outstripped Philadelphia and Boston, and had become a great manu- facturing centre and point of distribution for products of all kinds and from nearly all parts of the country. South of the Potomac and the Ohio, there were no large cities in 1830, — New Orleans with forty-six thousand inhabitants was the only city that could compete in size with Northern commer- cial ports. In the next ten years, owing to the prosperity
1830]
POPULATION
383
of the cotton and sugar plantations that were tributary to the Mississippi River, the population of New Orleans in- creased one hundred and twenty-one per cent. It had out- stripped Boston and was very nearly as large as Baltimore. The " Censuses" of 1820 and 1840 contain figures as to the number of persons engaged in agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing, and the " Census " of 1840 gives the value of the year's products in dollars. The science of statistics was then quite rude and probably these figures are not exact in any respect, but they afford an interesting glimpse of what the people were doing, — which is sufficient for the present study. In 1820, two and a third million persons were returned as engaged in industry in the whole United States ; and of them over two million (83.4%) were employed in agriculture, three hundred and forty-nine thousand (13.7%) in manufactures, and over seventy-two thousand (2.9%) in commerce. In 1840 the number of agriculturists had increased to nearly three and three-quarters millions (80.4%) but the percentage had declined. On the other hand the number engaged in manufacturing had increased to over three-quarters of a million, while the proportion of those engaged in commerce remained almost stationary. Looking at the matter now from the point of value of prod- ucts, it appears from the "Census" of 1840 as interpreted by Professor Tucker 1 of the University of Virginia, that the value of the total annual production of the United States was^ one billion sixty-three million dollars. Of this six hundred and fifty millions were agricultural products, two
1 See his Progress of the United States, pp. 135rl42, 150-201, especially the table on p. 195. The Census of 1840 gives no values of annual productions of manufactures and commerce, but Tucker deduced his figures by estimat- ing the annual products as the equiv- alent oi twenty-five per cent of the
capital employed. He thought that the inaccuracies and inconsistencies would correct one another. His fig- ures may be used, however, in the rough way in which they are in the text of the present volume without any pretence to exactness.
384 PRESIDENT JACKSON [CH. xn
hundred and thirty-nine millions manufactures, and only seventy-nine millions commerce. The distribution by geo- graphical sections is particularly instructive. It appears that the free-soil North produced three hundred and forty-two million dollars' worth of agricultural products to only three hundred and twelve million dollars' worth for the Slave States as a whole, including in this latter designation, Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia. As to manufacturing, New England and the other States north of Mason and Dixon line and the Ohio River, not including Missouri, produced manufactures to the annual value of nearly two hundred millions, while the whole South is credited by Tucker with the production of only forty-two millions. His figures as to commerce include in that designation the marketing of commodities at home as well as external commerce and navigation. He credits the North with a commerce of sixty-one millions and the South with a commerce of thirty-five millions, and he gives the annual product of the "Fisheries" at nearly twelve million dollars, and of this nine and one-half millions are allotted to New England and over one and a quarter millions of the remain- der to New York.
Governmental institutions were still on the Jeffersonian model in 1830 and remained so substantially for some years thereafter. Jefferson's idea, as has already been stated, was that the less government there was the better, that the qualities of each individual should be developed to the utmost, and that as little as possible should be taken from the people by taxation, reasoning that all such exactions ultimately fell upon the working man in the form of increased rents and increased prices for commodities — the clothing and food and fuel for himself and family. This had been the good old New England idea, although never so for-
1829] JACKSON'S INAUGURAL 385
mulated. In the South, too, each great plantation formed a little community by itself, and the functions that were left for the State governments were distinctly limited. Apart from the transportation of the mails, the federal government did not engage in any social function. State ownership and operation of some public utilities, as canals, and also the attempt to absorb some of the profits derived by capital through the partnership in State banks, was marked at this time, but a few years demonstrated to the voters all over the country that the State governments and the federal government were not then equipped to carry on such enter- prises. The army and the navy were both very small, and the year 1840 may be regarded, perhaps, as the acme of inefficiency of both these branches before 1860. The task, therefore, to which Jackson set himself was something so un- like that to which Presidents after 1860 were obliged to address themselves that it is rather difficult to realize his point of view and his reasons for action.
Jackson came to Washington armed with a "Rough Draft" of an inaugural address written in his own hand.1 It deserves close attention, although for reasons of political expediency it was thoroughly made over before delivery. The rough draft is Jackson's own. In it he says that he has been called to administer the affairs of a government "whose vital principle is the right of the people to controul its measures." Among the important duties of the pres- idency is the filling of the offices with "individuals uniting as far as possible the qualifications of the head & heart,"
1 A convenient collection of the 430. In the first form of this paper
Messages of Gen. Andrew Jackson Jackson had written "protection high
was published at Concord, New Hamp- enough to insure," but in the copy
shire, in 1837. The "Rough Draft" taken to Washington he had changed
IB among the "Jackson Papers" in the the phrase to read "Judicious Tariff
Library of Congress and is printed imposing duties high enough to in-
in Bassett's Andrew Jackson, ii, 425- sure."
VOL. V. — 2c
386 PRESIDENT JACKSON [On. XII
for the demand for moral qualities should be superior to that of talents, as in a republic fidelity and honest devotion must be the first qualification. The general safety must be provided for, which implies the provision of "those internal supplies which constitute the means of war." A "Judicious Tariff" insuring against the lack of these supplies will meet with his cooperation ; but beyond this point laws affecting "the natural relation of the labour of the States are irreconcilable to the objects of the Union, and threaten- ing to its peace and tranquility." The national revenue should be applied to the payment first of the national debt and for the support of the government and for the safety of the Union. The necessity of conforming to this principle "is illustrated by the dissatisfaction which the expenditures for the purposes of improvement has already created in several of the States." No line can be drawn between the powers granted to the general government and those reserved to the States and to the people, and the settlement of such a line must be governed by the good sense of the nation in a spirit of compromise. In the last paragraph Jackson states some of the topics intimately connected with the prosperity of the country, as the liquidation of the national debt, the observance of the strictest economy, a judicious tariff, " combined with a fostering care of commerce & agriculture," just respect for States'-rights as the best check to the tendencies to consolidation and the distribution of the sur- plus revenue amongst the States for purposes of education and internal improvement. It will be interesting to observe how closely Jackson's career as President followed the pre- scription of the inaugural. It is noteworthy also that the only things not mentioned that were to arouse great con- troversy in the next eight years, were the Bank and the currency.
1829] THE CABINET 387
Jackson's first task was to select his official advisers, and in the performance of this duty he was not fortunate. As a military man, he naturally wanted persons about him who would be efficient in the administration of their own depart- ments, would not be officious in giving advice, and would be men in whom he had every confidence. As it turned out, he abandoned the sage politicians of the old school, either because he was in a condition of tutelage or because he dis- trusted their motives. Instead he appointed personal friends and politicians whose fortunes were closely bound up with his own.1 One of them was Major Eaton, who was almost a member of his family. To him he gave the office of Secretary of War. The one good appointment was that of Martin Van Buren to be Secretary of State ; for, however much confidence Jackson felt in his own ability to manage home affairs, he wanted a strong man to stand between him and foreign powers. Van Buren was not a great man, but he had principles, and at this time his principles were in harmony with those of Jackson, although later his anti- slavery attitude was not at all pleasing to the Southern cotton growers, among whom Jackson must always be reckoned. Native ability combined with long experience in dealing with men and situations, not always in a wire- pulling sense, had made Van Buren an expert politician, and he soon acquired a very strong influence with the new President. In treating of Jackson's administrations, one always writes of "the Kitchen Cabinet," which was a name given by his enemies to a group of confidential advisers who had served Jackson long and faithfully and were men of
1 Charles H. Ambler's Life and pointment to some high office. The
Diary of John Floyd, 97 and 123. Floyd Diary runs from March, 1831, to Feb-
had done everything possible to pro- ruary, 1834, and in its vigor and
mote Jackson's election and was keenly vituperation of Jackson and hie minions
disappointed at not receiving an ap- rivals that of J. Q. Adams.
388 PRESIDENT JACKSON [CH. XII
peculiar abilities as William B. Lewis and Amos Kendall. These were given minor offices and Jackson sought their advice, as he had in the case of Lewis for some years and of Kendall for a shorter time, and they essayed to direct the presidential steps in the ways that seemed best to them. The whole proceeding was unusual, but has received undue opprobrium. The phrase "Kitchen Cabinet" conveys an entirely wrong impression, as its inventors, who hated Jackson, doubtless meant it should. It is pleasing to look upon another picture of his life in the "Palace," as the White House was often called, even as late as 1830. We can picture him sitting with his nephew's family, with the children playing about. It was in one of the larger parlors with an open fire and Jackson was smoking, a habit which was not nearly so common among men in those days as it was later, for then most male tobacco users, especially in the South, chewed rather than smoked, and probably it was for this reason that Jackson's smoking attracted attention. We may imagine Van Buren, Lewis, or Kendall as being announced, and when the visitor appeared, he and Jackson would sit together in front of the fire or, if there was anything very private to be considered, would retire to a corner of the room or perhaps to an adjoining apartment, and there consult together. At this stage of his career, Jackson was distinctly a gentleman and, when undisturbed, an agreeable companion. A most unfortunate situation arose in connection with Major Eaton. In January, 1829, he had married a rather too well-known Washington woman. Almost at once, a furious feud arose between the wives of the other Cabinet officers and Mrs. Eaton, who was ener- getically upheld by the President.1 Stories had circulated
' Bassett's Jackson, ch. xxii. Governor John Floyd constantly recurs to this subject in his Diary.
1829] THE EATON AFFAIR 389
about his and Mrs. Jackson's premarital relations. He insisted that there was just as little truth in the Eaton scan- dal as there had been in the earlier Jackson scandal, and that was none at all. The principal person to profit by this situation was Martin Van Buren, who was a widower and therefore able to recognize Mrs. Eaton without a household insurrection, while Calhoun, the Vice-President, on the other hand, was absolutely incapable of doing anything to placate Jackson. It was a condition that could not con- tinue, and was terminated by the disruption of the Cabinet 1 and the appointment of new heads of departments who were greatly superior to the first. Van Buren went to London as minister, and some time later Eaton went to Madrid as American representative there, taking his wife with him — and the first doubts had been planted in President Jackson's mind as to the uprightness of Calhoun's character.
Apart from the Eaton Affair, the first noticeable incident in the Jacksonian administration was the removal of a large number of office-holders and the appointment of good "Jackson men" to their places. As Andrew Jackson had been the choice of the "solid South," there were naturally very few changes among the officers in that section, for they were all Jackson men 2 ; by far the greater part of the
•William T. Barry, the Postmaster- and in Lucy M. Salmon's "Appoint-
General, was retained — although he ing Power of the President" in Ameri-
offered his resignation. There are can Historical Association's Papers,
some interesting and inconsequential i, 347. In his "Removal of Officials
letters from him to his daughter in the by the Presidents" in American His-
American Historical Review, xvi, 327- torical Association's Reports for 1899,
336. i, 74, Fish gives a list of presidential
1 On March 24, 1830, Postmaster- offices vacated at this time. He sug-
General Barry reported the number of gests that the figures in this latter
deputy postmasters removed between table mean very little because only
March 4, 1829 and March 22, 1830 heads of departments are included,
at 491, of whom 63 were in the South. but the change of one of these officers
See Senate Documents, 21st Cong., might mean the discharge of many old
1st Sess., No. 106. This table is re- employees and the appointment of
peated in Niles's Weekly Register, other persons. It is impossible to do
xxxviii, 105. It is given also in Fish's better, because the "Executive Jour-
Civil Service and the Patronage, 126, nala of the Senate" for the first three
390 PRESIDENT JACKSON [Ca. XII
removals were in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington City, where the offices were largely occupied by Adams men. Up to Jackson's accession in 1829, public office-holding had been looked upon as one of the more aristocratic modes of bread-winning and the offices had been filled with people from the so-called "upper walks of life." Moreover, office-holding had been looked upon as a per- manent occupation, — a man, once in a custom-house job or a post-office place, expected to continue in it as long as he lived, or, at all events, as long as he could work or make a pretence of so doing, and the chances were good that he would pass on the office to his son or his son-in-law, or a nephew, perhaps. In 1829, there were in the departments officials whose appointments bore the signature of President Washington. The office-holders at the capital and through- out the country had acquired house property and lived on a scale commensurate to their salaries, expecting that these would continue. They looked upon government jobs as the holders of business places regarded their positions in those days, — the duties of the place were to be discharged faith- fully and to the best of a man's abilities, and that being done the position would be his as long as he could carry on the work. In Pennsylvania and in New York, more especially perhaps in the latter, a system had grown up of distributing the local State offices among the members of the party in power. The system was based upon the idea that the offices belonged to the victors. This development was partly due to the extraordinary pre-Revolutionary conditions that had prevailed in Pennsylvania, where practically all power had been centred in a very small portion of the people living in one geographical unit. The rest of the
years of Jackson's administration are peculiarly irritating in the vagueness of the information therein given.
1829] THE SPOILS SYSTEM 391
people of Pennsylvania had had no share in the management of the affairs of the province. They were divided geo- graphically and racially, and the subsequent political con- tests became very bitter. It was quite natural that the Pennsylvania common people when they gained control of affairs should look upon salaries paid by the State as part of that control, and when they in turn became divided into two parties it was likewise perfectly natural that whichever party was successful should regard the offices as belonging to itself. In New York, the case was somewhat different — somewhat worse, if possible. The first constitution of that State had given the appointment of State officers to the governor and four senators sitting as a Council of Appoint- ment. Any political party that could capture this Council and a legislative majority had the whole political patronage of New York at its disposal, and, under the circumstances, the easiest way to keep in power was to use the public offices as a fund with which to reward or punish one's political friends or political enemies. "To the victors belong the spoils of victory/' which was attributed to Governor Marcy of New York, simply stated the truth as to that State. It was natural and inevitable that the New Yorkers and Penn- sylvanians and the people of the Transappalachian North- west — who agreed with them in political methods — should carry those methods into national politics, and this they now proceeded to do.
For more than a quarter of a century one political party had occupied the national offices, for Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were all of one political family and John Quincy Adams regarded himself as their natural political successor. There had been no political changes in the offices for twenty- eight years, and it is remarkable how well the government had been administered in that generation. Methods that
392 PRESIDENT JACKSON [Cn. XII
had come down from colonial times and had been imported originally from England had been gradually changed to adapt themselves to early nineteenth century conditions. There were still great vagaries in accounting and the Third Auditor of the Treasury and after him the Comptroller reported the unpaid balances year after year. Some of these statements are worth a moment's notice. For years an unpaid balance was reported due from John Adams, even as late as 1837, eleven years after his death, of over twelve thousand dollars of an appropriation that had been made for the "accommodation of his household" at the time of the removal to Washington, because the Auditor of the Treasury and the President's steward had not agreed as to the form of voucher.1 Another case was that of Benjamin Austin, also of Massachusetts, who was for years returned with an unpaid balance against him of over two thousand dollars, which appears to have arisen out of a conflict between the federal and State governments as to whose business it was to sup- port the incapacitated soldiers of the War of 1812. In 1818, Nicholas J. Roosevelt was debited with thirty thou- sand dollars on a contract for manufacturing copper. Roosevelt and one of his sureties had been imprisoned and had been released by order of a former Secretary of the Treasury, presumably for good reasons, — but the unpaid balance was carried on the books. The clerks of the House of Representatives as custodians of the contingent fund fared ill because of differences of opinion with successive auditors ; in 1819, John Beckley's executors were charged with over five thousand dollars for which a judgment had been obtained. Charles Pinckney was charged with an unpaid balance of over twelve thousand, as minister to
1 The following details are taken Comptroller of the Treasury . . . Feb- from the "List of Balances" trans- ruary 16, 1820," House Document*, mitted with the "Letter from the 16th Cong., 1st Sess., No. 80.
1829] THE SPOILS SYSTEM 393
Spain years before, but he alleged that the United States owed him a great deal more than that. It seems to be cer- tain that Edmund Randolph still owed fourteen thousand of the original forty-nine thousand for which judgment had been entered against him for money unaccounted for on his resignation from the office of Secretary of State in 1794. It is evident that any one adding up all these figures and taking as proven every statement made by a treasury official could make out a very bad case against the administrations from Washington to J. Q. Adams, and that detailed analyses of them, showing that pretty much everything could be explained, would have no effect upon the popular mind. At all events, the holders of public office in 1829 were looked upon as "rascals" by those who wanted to be their suc- cessors. The few cases of actual fraud that were found were treated with a ferocity that showed how difficult it was to justify the actual division of the spoils of victory among the victors.
The Jackson men thronged to Washington and demanded jobs. One man asked for anything that would yield any- where from three hundred to three thousand dollars a year, except a clerkship. Upon being pressed for his reasons for the exception, he acknowledged that he could not write. Some of the friends of the new government advised that all the applicants should be sent to their homes. This would give the excitement a chance to subside and the whole subject could be taken up in the coming autumn. But it was not so to be, and the proceedings of the next few months as to the offices turned out to be one of the greatest scandals in our history, although probably the enemies of the new regime greatly exaggerated the hardships of the displaced officials and the number of them. One man, who wanted a scientific berth in an exploring expedition, repaired to the
394
PRESIDENT JACKSON
[Ca. XII
capital. He wrote that when the office-seekers had long faces he began to conceive hopes of the "General" because the new President might have done as he pleased, if he had "kicked his pretended jackals to the devil, but it seems that every Jackson dog and cat, born and unborn, is to be pro- vided for." * Like all great soldiers, Jackson had unbounded faith in himself and every confidence in his friends, — and appointed them to office without any regard to their capac- ities and experience. One of these men was Samuel Swart- wout, who had attracted Jackson's attention at the time of the Burr trials in Richmond by the courage and pertinacity with which he maintained himself. Swartwout went to Washington to get anything that he could pick up "in the general scramble for plunder." Somewhat to his surprise, he was given the most profitable job in the whole range of the federal offices, the collectorship of customs at New York. In a few years time he was a defaulter to the extent of one and one quarter million dollars and a fugitive in a foreign country ; but it is not unlikely that he was the victim of the bad conduct of those under him2 and of his own
1 Letter of William Oakes dated March 17, 1829, in the possession of Mr. Walter Deane of Cambridge. Oakes was a distinguished early New England botanist.
An example of the thoroughness of the Pennsylvania politicians is the Findlay or Finley family; of them, five members of one generation were in office in 1830; "Torrence Papers" in Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society's Quarterly, i, 80 note, and there is a good deal of other similar illustrative matter in the same num- ber.
It is noticeable that in August, 1828, John McLean wrote to Edward Everett that it was impossible to be- lieve that Jackson would "lend him- self and the powers of his office, to the miserable caterers for office, who look upon the Treasury of the Union as
spoil won by their efforts." On the contrary, McLean thought that the General would exhibit evidences of magnanimity which would "flush the cheek of his bitterest enemies." It is worth noting that McLean, refusing to dismiss postmasters, was made a judge of the Supreme Court. Massachu- setts Historical Society's Proceedings, 3rd Series, i, 386.
2 Walter Barrett's Old Merchants of New York City, third series, 255. Fish (Civil Service and the Patronage, ch. vi) has brought together a mass of in- formation as to the defalcations of this period. He is very severe on Swart- wout and writes that he "passed the evening of his days abroad." Ac- cording to Barrett he died peacefully in New York City in 1856, which would seem to confirm the statement that the government ultimately lost nothing
1829] THE SPOILS SYSTEM^ 395
inability to distinguish between good men and bad. The number of actual removals from office and the proportion of the removals to the total number seems to have been greatly exaggerated in the minds of historical writers. Of some six hundred and twelve presidential officers, only two hundred and fifty-two were removed, and the highest estimate of the number of deputy postmasters removed was six hundred, and there were then about eight thousand deputy postmasters in the country.1
Apart from the reconstruction of the public service, where Jackson's ideas closely followed Northern radicalism, he showed himself to be distinctly conservative. As to the tariff, he had to tread very warily, because his supporters in the different parts of the country had very different ideas on protection, and they came near splitting the Union over their differences. As to internal improvements, however, Jackson felt himself strong enough to put an end to that part of the American System ; and, if the tariff had to be continued and produced a surplus revenue, he suggested that after the debt was all paid, the surplus should be dis- tributed among the States according to the federal ratio and be by them expended in internal improvements2 or otherwise as each State might determine for itself. While in the Senate, Jackson had voted for the Survey Bill of
by Swartwout. The latter with his John P. Timberlake, the former hus- father had for a long time been en- band of Mrs. Eaton, was indebted gaged in reclaiming low-lying lands in to the treasury to the amount of over the vicinity of New York City, and these fourteen thousand dollars, and that were turned over to the government no suit had been entered against her (see "Annual Report of the Solicitor father's estate as a surety because the of the Treasury," November, 1843, district attorney had "inferred" that in House of Representatives Documents, he had died insolvent. See for a some- 28th Cong., 1st Sess., No. 35, p. 63). what different account the Diary of Samuel Swartwout's wife was the niece John Floyd, 215-220. of Cadwallader D. Golden. This re- l Fish's Civil Service and the Pat- port of the solicitor of the treasury ronage, 125.
deserves careful analysis. From an- 2 Richardson's Messages and Papers,
other entry it appears that the late ii, 452.
396 PRESIDENT JACKSON [Cn. XII
1824 and also for the bill to improve the navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers,1 the first river and harbor bill in our history ; and his ideas on the subject seem to have been as confused as those of President Monroe who had accepted the principle that Congress could vote money for an internal improvement, but could not undertake the actual construc- tion of such an improvement.
The test came suddenly over a bill that passed both Houses of Congress to authorize the federal government to sub- scribe to the stock of the "Maysville, Washington, Paris, and Lexington Turnpike Road Company." Great systems of internal improvements had been brought forward.2 Among these was the establishment of a line of communi- cation from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. One idea was to open a road from Buffalo to Washington City ; thence to follow the Cumberland Road to Ohio and so on in a general southwestwardly direction to New Orleans. Another project called for a road through the western parts of New York and Pennsylvania to the National Road and thence across the Ohio River to the Gulf. It was planned that either of these lines would cross the Ohio River at
•See St. George L. Sioussat's Orleans. On March 18, 1828, a "Re-
" Memphis as a Gateway to the West" port of the Reconnoissance of A Route
(Tennessee Historical Magazine, March for a National Road from Zanesville,
and June, 1917). This paper has a Ohio to Florence, Alabama" was
much broader interest than the title transmitted to Congress (House Docu-
indicates. ments, 20th Cong., 1st Sess., No. 209).
* There is a good deal of uncorre- This was followed on December 21. lated information on internal im- 1830, by "A Statement of Disburse- provements, both from the economic ments'' made since 1789 for fortifica- and political aspects in the printed tions, light-houses, pensions, and in- public documents and, doubtless, ternal improvements (House Docu- much more in manuscript. Among the ments, 21st Cong., 2nd Sess., No. 11). printed reports are a "Letter from the From this it appears that $5,310,930.11 the Post-Master General" dated had been spent for internal improve- November 28, 1803, giving details ments, rivers, and harbors. In the as to unprofitable post roads. An- same period over thirteen million dol- other report dated March 21, 1806, lars had been spent for fortifications, gives an estimate of the probable three millions for light-houses, twenty expense of opening a "Horse Road" millions for pensions, and one hundred between Athens, Georgia, and New and eighty millions for the public debt.
1830] THE MAYSVILLE VETO 397
Ma3'sville and thence run to Lexington, Kentucky. From that point the road would proceed by one of several routes through Tennessee. The bill was abruptly brought for- ward and passed without adequate discussion. What the anti-Jackson men had in their minds can only be surmised ; but, knowing Jackson and Jackson's power as we now do, it seems almost inconceivable that even so maladroit politicians as Henry Clay and his followers should have selected an internal improvement confined to the State of Kentucky to test Jackson's sincerity and power. Possibly the fact that the next portion of the road would be through Tennessee suggested to them that it might meet with his favor. Martin Van Buren was one with his chief on this subject. He saw with glee the chance that the bill gave him. He at once told the President what was going forward. They were riding out together on the Tenallytown Road. Jackson listened intently and asked his friend to put his ideas into writing. Thereupon Van Buren pulled a written document from his pocket and handed it to the President. Jackson took it home with him and said nothing about it for several days. The friends of the measure, not liking the delay, visited the President to persuade him to approve the bill ; but Jack- son remained firm, and on May 27, 1830, sent in his first veto message,1 and thus he put an end for a generation to the build- ing up of a land transportation system at federal expense.
1 Richardson's Messages and Papers ing scenes in my endeavors to prevent
of the Presidents, ii, 483 ; Bassett's him from avowing his intentions be-
Andrew Jackson, ii, 475-496. fore the bill passed the two houses.
On January 30, 1854, Van Buren My apprehension being, that if Mr.
wrote to F. P. Blair. Clay could be made to believe it
"You & I can never forget the possible that the Genl would dare to
ardor with which Genl Jackson pur- veto an Int Imp Bill in the then, state
sued such objects & the world knows of public opinion, he would change ita
the success which crowned its ef- character from a local to a general
forts. I think I have pointed out to object."
you the spot in the vicinity of Wash- For this quotation and many valu-
ington, where the Maysville veto was able citations, I am indebted to Mr.
decided upon, & I had the most amus- B. M. Hulley of De Land, Florida.
398 PRESIDENT JACKSON [Cu. XII
Other most interesting achievements of Jackson's time were the securing access to the British West Indies and the wrenching payment for spoliations from France. At first sight it would seem remarkable that Jackson, Van Buren, and Edward Livingston should have been able to achieve what experienced diplomatists like James Monroe and John Quincy Adams had failed to accomplish. Jack- sonian historians have attributed it to the might of their hero coupled with the suppleness of Van Buren; but in reality these remarkable successes in the field of inter- national politics were due to the march of events rather than to any skill on the part of the Jacksonians. The question of commercial relations with Great Britain is so full of turnings and twistings that one can read diplomatic papers by the hundreds of pages and fail to gain any clear under- standing of it. American trade was confined mainly to trans-oceanic commerce — the greater part of which went to Britain, — to supplying the West Indians with food — taking their produce in exchange, — and to the coastwise trade of the United States itself. The New Englanders wished to reestablish their commerce with the British West Indies, with the Maritime Provinces, and with Newfound- land. On the other hand it had become a cardinal principle of American policy to exclude all foreign vessels from the coastwise trade. The British, on their part, were perfectly willing to admit American shipping to the trans-oceanic trade, but they very much desired to build up the industries and commerce of the Maritime Provinces, Newfoundland, and Canada by giving them a monopoly of provisioning the British West Indies.1 At the same time the British
1 The official papers relating to the may be mentioned the following:
long-drawn-out contest as to trade House Documents, 19th Cong., 2nd
between the United States and the Sess., No. 2 (Colonial Trade) ; ibid.,
British colonies are buried in the No. 45 (British Statutes and Acts of
governmental documents. Of these Congress on Trade with the West
1830] INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 399
wished to retain the carriage of their West Indian products to Europe to their own vessels. This commerce in several of its branches, at any rate, would be greatly facilitated by allowing British vessels to take part in the coastwise com- merce of the United States. We may suppose a British ship, sailing from London to Halifax, there leaving one cargo, taking on board another, and going to New York. Perhaps a cargo might be obtained at that port for Jamaica ; but undoubtedly it would often add greatly to the profits of the voyage if a part of a cargo, at any rate, could be taken from the Northern port of call to Charleston or Savannah, where more cargo might be obtained for Jamaica. Any such traffic between ports of the United States was prohibited by the provisions of the navigation laws. On the other hand, Americans were practically debarred from direct commerce with the Maritime Provinces and with the British West Indies. During a large part of this time, British-American international relations were largely in the hands of George Canning, Britain's foreign minister; and Stratford Canning, his cousin, the British representative at Washington. The persistent hostility of the first of these to the United States has already been sufficiently adverted to in the present work. Stratford Canning was a conscientious Englishman, who possessed rather more temper than did John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, — which is saying a good deal. It must not be supposed for one instant that either of these gentlemen had anything but the best interests of his own country at heart ; but they did not get on well together and Stratford Canning left Washington for another post. In 1827, George Canning died, and in 1829, Lord Aberdeen,
Indies) ; ibid.. No. 144 (Exports to British and Foreign State Papers, vols-
and Imports from British American iv, v, xiv, xvii, xviii; Edward Smith's
Colonies) ; House Documents, 21st England and America after Indepen-
Cong., 2nd Sess., No. 22 (Papers re- dence, ch. xvi, and Bassett's Andrew
lating to the settlement of 1830) ; Jackson, ii, 656-663.
400 PRESIDENT JACKSON [Cn. XII
always conciliatory, was at the head of the British foreign office. Van Buren instructed McLane, our representative at London, to pursue an extremely conciliatory attitude toward Great Britain on the ground that the United States had too long and too tenaciously resisted the right of Great Britain to impose protecting duties in her colonies and in other ways. The British government on its part laid hold of the words of Jackson's first Annual Message to Congress that we might " look forward to years of peaceful, honorable, and elevated competition" with Great Britain and "pre- serve the most cordial relations" with her. Moreover, Con- gress had authorized the Executive to dispense with some of the requirements that had stood in the way of friendly commercial relations. Under these circumstances it is not to be wondered at that negotiations which for fifteen years had been hopeless were now rapidly carried to a conclusion by which both countries drew back somewhat from their extreme pretensions and agreed to modify their commercial regulations.1 In the outcome, possibly the most interesting feature of the whole matter was that when Van Buren was appointed minister to England after his retirement from the Cabinet, this nomination failed of confirmation by the Senate because of what seemed, to many members of that body, the pusillanimous attitude displayed in the instructions to McLane. In the upshot, he became the Jacksonian can- didate for the vice-presidency, and being elected enjoyed the satisfaction, such as it was, of presiding over the body that had refused to confirm his nomination.
'The papers relating to this nego- Intercourse, 1783-1872 (Westminster,
tiation are in House Executive Docu- 1900) gives a connected view of
menta, 21st Cong., 2nd Sess., No. 22; the relations between the two coun-
British and Foreign State Papers, tries from the British standpoint.
1830-1831, pp. 1181-1212. Edward The Jacksonian case is stated at
Smith's England and America after length in Bassett's Andrew Jackson.
Independence , . . Their International ii.
1830] INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 401
The other triumph of Jacksonian diplomacy was in secur- ing payment from France for certain depredations that had been committed years before in the course of the Napoleonic strivings for world power, when the ordinary rules of inter- national intercourse had been widely departed from. Mon- roe and Adams had tried their hands at the solution of this problem, also, but the question of its settlement had always been connected by the French government with the granting of favors to French commerce, and this had been out of the question. In 1830, a new revolution placed on the French throne the younger branch of the old ruling family in the person of Louis Philippe. Toward France, Jackson adopted a rather menacing attitude. Edward Livingston, who had been Secretary of State, went to Paris as American repre- sentative. The French government agreed to pay five million dollars in satisfaction of these old claims,1 but before the legislative branch acted, knowledge of Jackson's aggres- sive language became known at Paris. Thereupon, the French Chambers refused to vote any money to carry out the agreement. In the end, they drew back, but not until the American minister had left France and all diplomatic intercourse between the two countries had been suspended. Ultimately the French, seeing in the President's later utter- ances something which they could regard as "an explana- tion," voted the money, and relations between the two countries were resumed and a long-standing cause of griev- ance against France was removed.
In all these matters, even as to re-allotting federal offices, dealing a master blow at Clay's American System, and bringing to an end foreign complications that had long threatened the continuance of profitable intercourse with America's two best customers, Jackson's administration
1 Bassett's Andrew Jackson, ii, 663-673. VOL. V. — 2D
402 PRESIDENT JACKSON
was successful beyond dispute. It may be said that the introduction of the "spoils system" should not be regarded as a cause of satisfaction, and it should not ; but the change from the old colonial system of permanent official tenure to the more democratic mode of political rotation in the public offices was inevitable, and Jackson may fairly be said to have minimized the blow. The real interest of his administration lies in the relation between the federal government and the growing power of Southern sectionalism, as shown in the nullification episode and the rising spirit of capitalistic industrialism in the North as exemplified in the bank struggle and in the contest over national ownership and operation of public utilities. In the upshot, Southern ideas triumphed, although nullification and secession were laid at rest for a generation. It is curious to note in passing that it has been left for a later Democratic administration to go back behind the gospels of Jacksonism and reincarnate the system of national ownership and operation of public utilities that was so dear to the hearts of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay
BIBLIOGRAPHY 403
NOTE
Bibliography. — A very valuable " List of Publications " as to Jackson, his times, and contemporaries is prefixed to James Parton's Life of Andrew Jackson (3 vols., New York, 1860). The " list " was practically made by William Gowans, the best-known second-hand book dealer of that day. Bassett provides no formal bibliography in his Andrew Jackson (2 vols., New York, 1911), but his footnotes with Parton's " List " open wide the door to the researcher. Parton's " Life " was a remarkable book at the time of its publication, but so much material has been made accessible since that it is now superseded by Bassett's two-volume work. W. G. Sumner's Andrew Jackson as a Public Man in the " Statesmen " series deals especially with the financial side, and William G. Brown's Andrew Jackson in the " River- side Biographical " series gives an admirable personal setting. J. Q. Adams's Report on Manufactures that was presented to the House of Representatives on February 28, 1833, is a most illuminating and caustic review of Jacksonism.
CHAPTER XIII
SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION
IN the early time, in the years following the Revolutionary War, there had been slight thought of the people of the Thir- teen States forming a "Nation." Noah Webster, in 1783, in the introduction to the first edition of his "Spelling Book," unconsciously expressed this idea 1 when he wrote that the object of his book was to promote the prosperity of "the confederated republics of America." The makers of the Constitution refrained from using the word "nation" in that instrument, although the aim of some of them was to establish a consolidated government. One of the earliest changes in the Constitution was to take away from the federal Supreme Court the power to adjudicate disputes between a State and citizens of another State. In 1798 the States had been almost on the point of flying at each other's throats 2 ; in 1803 and again in 1808 disunion had been rife in New England and in New York ; and the hostile attitude toward the government at Washington by the New Englanders in the most perilous years of the War of 1812 had been almost heartrending. With the coming of peace in 1815, a distinct tendency toward greater unity set in. But there was not then and there is not now (1920) in the United States a true nationalism. The American people comprises many races and, while the English language has
1 Skeel's Noah Webster, i, 61. gives a connected account of most of the
* E. P. Powell in his Nullification early separatist movements. and Secession in the United States
404
EARLY SOUTHERN UNIONISM 405
been predominant throughout the country as a whole, other languages have held their places persistently. Nationalism in the United States means unity of aspiration and accom- plishment, or, possibly, unity of social and political senti- ments. In the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the national spirit was stronger in the South than in any other part of the country. In 1808, at the time of the Federalist secession movement in New England, the Vir- ginia presidential electors who had voted for Madison dined together at Richmond with Spencer Roane at the head of the table, and drank to the toast, " The Union of the States: The majority must govern. It is treason to secede." l In 1819 forty-six gentlemen of Charleston came together and founded the New England Society in memory of their common origin, and in the next year Calhoun and other Southern Congressmen voted for the Missouri Compromise rather than endanger the existence of the Union. Indeed, as late as 1824, the South Carolina House of Representatives voted that no power had been given to a State legislature to impugn the motives of the federal Congress 2 ; but the next year the succeeding House passed resolutions of directly opposite tenor.
The Missouri Compromise marked the end of the first chapter in the history of nationalism. From that time for forty years, the whole spirit of our development was towards dualism, — for the Missouri Compromise practically marked the division of the country into two groups, having distinctly different economic interests. The first note of the new sectionalism was sounded in Virginia by Spencer Roane
1 Secession-Letters of Amos Kendatt effect that the Federal Convention did
(Washington, 1861), p. 20. not regard "the State Governments
1 Ames's State Documents, iv, 6. as sentinels upon the watch-towers of
In a note he gives an extract from a freedom." speech of George McDuffie to the
406
SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION [Cn. XIII
and John Taylor of Caroline.1 The last named had been for separation in 1799 and very likely had never given over the idea that Virginia would be better off without any alliance with the States north of the Potomac or of Mason and Dixon's line. He now took to the writing of essays, — "Construc- tion Construed" (1820) and "Tyranny Unmasked" (1822).2 He was especially excited by Marshall's opinions in the cases of Martin and Hunter's Lessee and Cohens against Virginia. In both of these the Supreme Court of the United States had taken to itself cases that had been adjudicated in the Virginia courts and had even issued commands to them. Roane wrote one series of communications after another. These were printed in the "Richmond Enquirer" that had been founded by him and was edited by his brother-in-law, Thomas Ritchie.3 The most famous of the series was signed "Algernon Sydney " and was reprinted separately.4 In these writings Roane sought to combat the pretensions of the federal Supreme Court by denying its supremacy and by exalting the constitutional rights of the State courts and through them the rights of the States. Possibly Marshall went too far when he wrote to Judge Story that Roane was "the champion of dismemberment" and not of States'- rights. However this may be, it would seem certain that
1 Phillips' s chapter on "The Eco- nomic and Political Essays of the Ante- Bellum South," in The South in the Building of the Nation, vii, ch. viii, brings together the main facts in brief compass and in an interesting way.
* Taylor also wrote An Inquiry into the . . . Government of the United States (1814) and New Views on the Con- stitution of the United States (1823). Taylor's writings had great influence among certain groups of Southerners ; now they seem extraordinarily dull and quite commonplace. There is a long article on his life in John P. Branch Historical Papers, ii.
' See C. H. Ambler's Thomas Ritchie. In the Richmond Times-Dispatch of Dec. 1, 1913, President Lyon G. Tyler points out that Dr. Ambler is not a Virginian by birth and training and is out of sympathy with the east- ern section of the State from which his forbears came. There is a mass of Ritchie's letters in the Branch Papers, iii, iv.
4 The two sets of letters to the Richmond Enquirer signed "Hamp- den" and "Algernon Sydney" are reprinted in the Branch Papers, i, 357 and ii, 78.
1830] COTTON 407
to Roane belongs whatever honor or dishonor there may be in being the original Southern secessionist,1 for one can trace the movement directly from him to Fort Sumter.
The administrations of John Adams and of John Quincy Adams, his son, fell within the closing years of distinct epochs in the history of the United States. The election of Jefferson in 1800 marked the ending of the Revolutionary epoch, and the election of Jackson in 1828 witnessed the assured dominance of cotton raising in the South and the rise of a spirit of unity there that was distinctly bounded by geographical lines. The modern history of cotton remains to be written. Few things in this world have so greatly influenced modern life as the fibre of the upland cotton plant. The development of the demand for cotton goods throughout the world is one of the extraordinary phenomena of the nineteenth century. People left off wearing garments that had been handed down by elder brothers and sisters, and from fathers and mothers, and clad themselves in clothing made of cheap and unen during cotton fibre instead of the more expensive and longer wearing flax and wool. Families laid aside their linen sheets for those of cotton, and the sailing ships of the world — with the exception of men- of-war — ceased the use of linen duck in favor of cotton sail- cloth. And whole races of mankind and womankind, who before had been innocent of clothing, now attired themselves in yard upon yard of cotton cloth. This almost fabulous increase in the demand for cotton fabrics synchronizes with the development of machinery driven by water power or by steam for the spinning and weaving of these fibres into the cloth of everyday use. But he would be a courageous man who would say that the demand led to the invention, or
1 Professor William E. Dodd has a readable article on Roane in the American Historical Review, xii, 776.
408 SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION [Cn. XIIi
that the presence of cheap cotton cloth created the demand. In 1791 the United States produced about two million pounds of pure cotton, and in 1834 four hundred and fifty- seven million pounds. By 1830 cotton produced within the limits of the Un ted States had driven all other cotton fibres from the British mills, because, although labor was cheaper in India and Brazil whence cotton had formerly come, it was so inefficient that cotton could not be grown in those countries — in ordinary years — in competition with the slave-driven production of the Southern States, which was also more uniform in quality and of better color. Un-. fortunately, as the production of cotton increased, the price constantly declined, for the supply was overtaking the demand. In 1801, cotton brought at New York from thirty to forty-four cents a pound1 for "middling uplands," and by 1832 had declined to seven cents. It is impossible to ascer-- tain accurately what the planter received for his crop, but it was probably not far from one-half of the average yearly price at New York.
The tremendous increase in the size of the cotton crops that has been noted in the preceding paragraph was accom- panied by a great change in the methods of cultivation, or new methods of cultivation led to a great increase in the total production. New plantations were opened in western Georgia and in the country to the westward as far as the Mississippi River and, decade by decade, the size of the cotton-producing unit increased. Soon the planters on the old uplands of Carolina and Georgia found themselves at a serious disadvantage in comparison with the planters on
1 Jamea L. Watkins's "Production only figures available for the early
and Price of Cotton for One Hundred time are the prices paid at New York
Years" (Department of Agriculture and Liverpool, and these were often
publications, Miscellaneous Series, highly speculative. Bulletin, No. 9, pp. 7, 9, 10). The
1830] COTTON CULTURE 409
the newer lands. The result was a constant movement of planters and slaves from the seaboard to the Black Belt.1 The amount of fibre grown in the old seaboard States reached its highest point in 1826, when the price paid at New York was at the lowest point in the first third of the century. The increase in the amount of cotton produced in the Black Belt was startling. In 1801 only one million pounds were grown in the western country, — all of it in Tennessee ; in 1826 no less than one hundred and fifty million pounds were grown there and in 1833 two hundred and forty million pounds.2 By 1828 the Southwest had outstripped the Southeast. Moreover, the conditions of transportation3 were such that the crops of the new country were exported from New Orleans, Mobile, and other Gulf ports and not from Charleston and Savannah. There is no means of proving it conclusively, but there seems every reason to believe that the Western planters were making money out of cotton, while those on the Atlantic seaboard, taking them together, were losing money every year, although the con- ditions were so peculiar that this fact was not known to many of those who were running into insolvency.4
1 In this connection it is noticeable 2 For more detailed figures, see that the emigration from the old States Note at end of chapter, north of the Potomac River was about a U. B. Phillips in his History of replaced by the coming in of people Transportation in the Eastern Cotton from other States or from European Belt to 1860 shows not only how ear- countries. In the three States south nestly the two eastern cotton States of the Potomac precisely the opposite were striving to secure for themselves was the case. In 1850 there were as much of the traffic of the new cotton 388,059 persons born in Virginia liv- States as they could, but also how ing in other States and only 76,210 futile these efforts were, especially persons were living in that State who as to Charleston.
were born outside of it whether in 4 See U. B. Phillips's "Economic
America or in Europe. The case was Cost of Slaveholding in the Cotton
even worse as to South Carolina, for Belt" in Political Science Quarterly,
there were only 21,363 outsiders liv- xx, 257-275.
ing in that State as against 186,479 Some extracts from the "Stock and South Carolinians living in other Crop Book of Silver Bluff Plantation" parts of the Union. In these figures in South Carolina, kept by J. H. Ham- can be seen a cause of unrest in the Old mond and now in the Library of .Dominion and in the Palmetto State. Congress, will be to the point. It ap-
410 SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION [Cn. XIII
Contemporaneously with the slipping backward of the agriculture of the Southern seaboard there was a distinct loss of trade at Charleston and other South Carolina ports that was patent to every one. New York had become the commercial metropolis of the Atlantic seaboard. This was due in part to the amount of business that was brought to her wharves by the Erie Canal route. It was also owing to the fact that that city had become the greatest manu- facturing centre of the country and also because her mer- chants were absorbing the distribution of the products of mills in New England and New Jersey, and also the agricul- tural products of the whole Atlantic seaboard to the south- ward of the Chesapeake. A vessel sailing across the Atlantic from Liverpool and elsewhere and returning to some Euro- pean port was reasonably certain to have full cargoes both ways, if she went to New York. If she sailed to Charleston her hold would be scantily filled with European manu- factured goods on the westward trip. She might have a full cargo on the return voyage ; * but the total freight money earned on a voyage, let us say, from Liverpool to Charleston
pears that there were in the 30's from as the annual net income from an in-
80 to 147 slaves on the plantation. vestment of $92,000, plus increase in
The average expenses were worked slaves and minus decreasing fertility
out as $3,696.98; the average sales at of soil. A few other items are worth
$11,491.86. The expenses consisted noting. It appears that cotton in
in the salary of an overseer, which is those years brought from 12 to 16 cents
given as about $500 a year, taxes on a pound to the planter, which shows
lands and on negroes, cost of negro that the product of the Hammond
cloths and shoes, salt, bagging, and plantation was of superior quality,
rope used on the plantation and the The average profit per slave was $75
wear and tear of tools and work ani- a year.
mals. The family, overseer, slaves, * S. S. Huebner, in The South in the
and animals were subsisted from the Building of the Nation, v, 407, states
plantation, except that the family that the tariffs of 1816 and on, by
purchased coffee, tea, etc., through the preventing the importation of slave
agent. The estimate includes no cloths from England, led to a change
'overhead" except the overseer's $500 in southern commercial currents. He
and only a small amount for depre- attributes the unrest in the Old Cotton
ciation. Putting the master's and States to that cause, in combination
mistress" superintending care at $5000 with the decline in the profits from cot-
a year, leaves less than $3000 a year ton growing.
1830]
CHARLESTON
411
and back was certain to be much less than that gained on a similar voyage from Liverpool to New York. Under these circumstances the cotton of the seaboard States found its way to European markets through New York, and the commerce of Charleston and Savannah was con- fined almost entirely to coastwise voyages. The tariff undoubtedly had something to do with building up the trade of New York and with the decline of Southern importations from England ; but the combined movement was the result of much more vital factors than any or all of the tariff acts that were passed before 1828, — and that were enacted after that time. In 1830 there were one-quarter of a mil- lion human beings living on Manhattan Island, and twenty years later — in 1850 — the population of New York City was greater than that of the whole State of South Carolina.1 These were surface conditions, but the delver into figures could easily find that while three million dollars worth of foreign merchandise had been imported directly into South Carolina ports in 1821, less than one-half of that amount had passed through the custom houses there in 1831, al-
1 The following population figures, taken from the Census of 1910, "Popu- lation," vol. i, pp. 31, 80, 86, and
from De Bow's Statistical View of the United States (1854), p. 192, give an interesting comparison :
|
1800 |
1820 |
1830 |
1850 |
|
|
New York City .... |
79,216 |
152,056 |
242,278 9,207 |
696,115 36,403 |
|
6,474 |
33.383 |
|||
|
Charleston, S. C. ... |
20,473 |
24,780 |
30,289 |
42,985 |
|
South Carolina .... Virginia |
345,591 880,200 |
502,741 1,065,366 |
581,185 1,211,405 |
668,507 1,421,661 |
In 1833 the Charlestonians, led by Joel R. Poinsett, issued a Statement of the Comparative Advantages of Charles- ton over the ports to the northward which completely evaded the real
point in issue — the land connec- tions of the several seaports. See also the Proceedings of the Fourth Con- vention of Merchants and Others (Charles- ton, 1839).
412 SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION [Ca. XIII
though the total value of the goods imported into the United States in 1831 was nearly double what it had been ten years earlier. Moreover, in that decade the registered tonnage of South Carolina had been cut nearly in halves, declining from thirty thousand tons in 1821 to a little over fifteen thousand in 1831, although the total registered tonnage of the entire country had nearly doubled in those ten years.1 This decline in the commerce of the city that once had been the foremost mart of the South was perfectly clear to the importer and even to the simple city dweller in Charleston. The planter oftentimes was not aware of the seriousness of his own position or that of his neighbors. He kept looking forward to the next season when the climate and the rainfall would be more favorable to the development of the cotton plant, or his slaves would be in better health, or the new overseer would get more out of the worn acres and the slow moving negroes. Some South- erners attributed the recession of prosperity in the Old South to the deadening effects of the slave system ; others thought that it was due to the persistent devotion to a single crop.2 In reality it was the inevitable result of the competition of the old East with the new West. In the North the farmers of New England no longer tried to compete with those of the Northwest ; instead they turned to trade and manu- facturing on a large scale. The planters of the Old South, on the contrary, persisted in trying to compete with the planters of the richer lands to the westward, and they were continuously and insensibly consuming their capital.3
1 Watterson and Van Zandt's Tabu- 'William Gilmore Simms (The lar Statistical Views (1828), pp. 104- Southern and Western Monthly Maga- 113, and their Continuation (1833), zine, i, 142) wrote that "the devo- pp. 152-155, 168-172. tion of our planters to the culture of
2 There is an interesting letter from cotton only, until they fail of food and Macon to Bartlett Yancey on these clothing, is precisely that of the Vir- general themes in James Sprunt His- ginians in their devotion to tobacco," torical Monographs, No. 2, p. 76. and the policy of the North toward the
1S30] MANUFACTURING 413
In the earlier years of the century, the South Carolinians had established many manufacturing plants. Some of these were successful for a time, but then were either shut up or went into bankruptcy. It was said that the reason why the Southern textile mills could not compete with those of the North was that each mill sought to produce many varieties of cloth, instead of being devoted to one staple article. Others declared that it was owing to the presence of slavery that manufacturing was not successfully carried on in the Cotton States.1 Possibly a better explanation than either of these is to be found in the great profits that were derived from cotton raising in extraordinary years, — so great were they, indeed, that planters withdrew their slaves from all outside employments, such as grading rail- roads, and even sought to restrict the production of food- stuffs on the plantations, so as to put every available ounce of labor to the production of cotton. Whatever the cause of the decline of manufacturing may have been, it not only had declined, but, so keen had become the popular distaste, that to be a favorer of even local manufacturing and thereby to share in the federal protection of industry was anathema and was sufficient to ruin or retard a South Carolinian's political career. In one case, indeed, the fact that the brother of a candidate for office was interested in manu- facturing was used by his opponents as a political asset.2
South is like that of James I and Kohn's Cotton Mills of South Carolina
Charles II toward Virginia in the republished from the Charleston News
seventeenth century. and Courier and issued by the South
1 C. S. Boucher's " Ante-Bellum Carolina Department of Agriculture,
Attitude of South Carolina towards Commerce, and Immigration in 1907
Manufacturing and Agriculture" in is by far the best essay on the subject.
Washington University Studies, iii, Pt. "Article ii." pp. 6-16, relates to the
ii, No. 2. Victor S. Clark has given period before 1840. H. T. Cook's
some attention to the material side Life . . . of David Rogerson Williams
of the problem in his History of Manu- has a few pages on manufacturing in
factures in the United States and has South Carolina.
two pages on early South Carolina * Washington University's Studies,
factories in The South in the Building ii, Pt. ii, 243. of the Nation, v, 320, 321. August
414 SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION [On. XIII
In 1822 the extreme view as to the harmfulness of manu- facturing was expressed by John Taylor of Caroline in his 'Tyranny Unmasked." Manufacturing was an offering to avarice, he wrote, and "the people" — presumably those of the United States as a whole — are "worked" out of sixty million dollars a year by the protective system and banking. Governor Troup of Georgia stated the general view of his section when he wrote that no evil is more to be dreaded in the general government than the regulation of industry. The example he gave was the duty of five cents per yard on cotton bagging. This, he said, was levied to enable the people of the Western States to supply it on their own terms, but the proceeds would be used for internal improvements in the North.1 In 1826 a bill was brought into Congress by the friends of the American Colonization Society for the appropriation of a sum of money in aid of that enterprise.2 Originally the colonization scheme had been favored in the Slave States. By this time, however, in South Carolina the project had come to be regarded as an attempt to facili- tate emancipation and thereby reduce the mass of available slave labor. The " Charleston Mercury " of April 24, 1830,3 contained a fiery letter by Henry L. Pinckney. He asked will Congress "violate the Constitution by legislating on a subject with which it is expressly forbidden to interfere"? Will it tax the people of the South for schemes leading to their destruction and do this at the "imminent hazard of rending the Union to atoms"? Men might remonstrate about internal improvements "by which one section of the country is drained and fleeced for the enrichment of
1 Harden's Troup, 511. apprehended from the successful carry-
1 House Reports, 21st Cong., 1st ing out of the project. Sess., No. 348. This contains in an 3 Mr. D. Huger Bacot of Charles-
" Appendix" a mass of material on ton kindly called my attention to this
Liberia and on the slave trade that ap- letter and copied a portion of it for
parently attracted the attention of the me. cotton planters to the dangers to be
1826 THOMAS COOPER 415
others" ; but the proposed act would be so monstrous and the consequences so awful that the Southern States would "burst their bonds and, at all hazards, cast off a govern- ment" which could thus meditate their destruction. These are only a few examples that might be largely continued 1 to show the restlessness of the Carolinians under what they regarded as intolerable burdens and oppressions.
Of all the fomenters of discord, Thomas Cooper, an Englishman by birth and then connected with the University of South Carolina, might well be regarded as first in ability and in influence. In 1826 he published his " Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy." In this book he de- clared that no government had ever interfered to regulate trade without doing mischief. Government was instituted to protect and not to direct, and every individual must judge for himself in these matters. In 1827, Cooper wrote
1 See, for example, Robert J. Turn- By Hamilton. First Published in the
bull's The Crisis : or, Essays on the Charleston Courier (Charleston, 1828) ;
Usurpations of the Federal Govern- The Crisis: A Solemn Appeal to the
ment. By Brutus (Charleston, 1827) , President . . . on the destructive tendency
p. 53: — "What is it to us whether of the present policy of this country on
the great Cumberland Road be kept its agriculture, manufacture, commerce,
in repair or not? . . . Has the Gov- and finance (Philadelphia, 1823); the
ernment subscribed to our Santee "Colleton Address of R. Barnwell
Canal Company? . . . We are not Smith (Rhett) " in the Charleston Mer-
yet sufficiently fleeced. The GREAT cury of June 18, 1828; a "Letter" de-
SOUTHERN GOOSE will yet bear more scribing the feelings of the people of
Plucking." And p. 112: — "As for the interior of the State over the tariff
myself, I cannot conceive a measure in ibid., for July 8, 1828; and Jame-
more fraught with permanent mis- son's Correspondence ofCalhoun, 403. chiel and ruin to the Plantation States, * Cooper's Lectures, 138, 139 and
than the Tariff. It is not simply to note, 142, 196. These Lectures and
tax us to support our Northern brethren, Cooper's Manual of Political Economy
but it is also to destroy all our means together with Thomas R. Dew's Lee
to acquire the ability to pay those tures on the Restrictive System shaped
taxes." He admits that the Northern Southern sentiment on the tariff and
manufacturers now furnished "some in general on the working of economic
coarse fabrics cheaper than the Eng- laws so far as they applied to the
lish dealer," but he is protected by South. See also "Letters of Dr.
duties, — but the whole pamphlet Thomas Cooper" in the American
should be read to understand one bun- Historical Review, vi, 725. H. M.
dredth part of the South Carolina mind Ellis has brought together the leading
of that epoch. facts of Cooper's life in The South At-
See also the Review of a Late Pam- lantic Quarterly for 1920. phlet, under the Signature of "Brutus."
416 SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION [Cn. XIII
to Martin Van Buren that if the tariff bill, which was then being debated in Congress, should be carried, the South Carolina legislature would be ripe for a motion to recall the South Carolinians from Congress. And if the American System were persisted in, the State would separate and declare Charleston a free port, because the South could not exist under a system that transfers her money into Northern pockets without an equivalent.1 Other writers elaborated this thesis and declared that imposts are in the nature of a bounty upon manufactures. Upon the "staple growing states" fell almost the entire burden of supporting the federal government, they asserted, but only one-twentieth of the revenue raised by the tariff was expended in that section.2 A Southerner, indeed, was in contact with the "emblems of oppression," namely, tariff-stimulated Northern manu- factures, from the time he went to bed at night until the close of the next day.3 His sheets were from Northern mills and so was his clothing, and "the very light of heaven" came to him through "Boston window glass" that was heavily charged with "tributary taxation." One Georgia planter declared that he would rather sit in the dark than pay tribute to the Massachusetts manufacturers. With
1 " Van Buren Manuscripts " in the vention of Merchants and Others at
Library of Congress under dates of Charleston, April 15, 1839.
July 5, and 31, 1827. Governor Floyd of Virginia in his
* See an article reprinted from the Diary under date of April 30, 1832,
"Southern Review" in The Free Trade writes that the Northerners claim that
Advocate, i, 147. The "Cooper line Congress had the right to lay protec-
of argument" was set forth with great tive taxes upon importations. "Hence
clarity in a Memorial of the [Charles- all the states to the South of the
ton] Chamber of Commerce presented to Potomac became dependent upon the
Congress in 1827. On p. 9 it is stated Northern States for a supply of what-
that "the present duty on woollens ever thing they might want, and in this
is equal to an assessment of three way the South was compelled to sell
sixteenths per cent" on Southern capi- its products low and buy from the
tal and formed "an annual tax of be- North all articles it needed, from
tween 60 and 70 thousand dollars" twenty-five to one hundred and twenty-
on slave cloths. Another clear state- five per cent higher than from France
ment of the theory is in "The Report or England."
of the Committee of Twenty-one" » The Free Trade Advocate, i, 133,
in the Proceedings of the Fourth Con- 134.
1830] SOUTHERN IDEAS
these ideas in their minds, the proposition that a surplus revenue should be raised by means of tariff imposts to pay for internal improvements mostly in the North seemed to Southerners to be outrageous in the highest degree.1 This attitude was best expressed by Langdon Cheves some years later when he wrote that resistance to the insufferable and insulting oppression of the North was justifiable. He believed that the threat of separation would bring the North to terms ; for without the agriculture of the South and the Southwest, the grass would grow in the streets of the Northern cities.2
The South Carolinians and Georgians had no objection to government ownership and operation of public utilities in themselves, but the only large schemes that aroused much interest in the country had to do almost entirely with the North and, according to their view, would be paid for by the Southerners through increased prices for the clothing and other necessary goods for their slaves and themselves.
The Southerners had no hostility to banks and banking, and two of the most successful State-owned banks were in Virginia and South Carolina. The opposition that arose in that section to the Bank of the United States grew out of the
1 The following figures have been cember 20, 1830 (House Documents, compiled from the "Letter from the 21st Cong., 2nd Sess., No. 11) : — Secretary of the Treasury" of De-
DlSBURSEMENTS FOR INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS FROM 1789 TO 1830
Old North (including Md. & Del.) I 567,543.65
Old South 37,434.68
Old Northwest & Mich. Terr 671,056.37
New South (including Ark. & Mo.) 224,704.40
Florida 102,955-16
Cumberland Road 2,443,420.20
Federal Subscriptions to canals 1,083,500-00
Improving Miss. & Ohio rivers 180.315.65
Total $5,310,930.11
* Letter of Langdon Cheves in an interesting article on Cheves in the Southern State Rights, Anti-Tariff <fe Papers of the American Historical As- Anti-Abolition Tract No. 1. There is sociation for 1896, p. 363.
VOL. v. — 2E
418 SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION [Cn. XIII
erratic conduct of that institution. Under its early pres- idents, it had loaned freely, but after the change of manage- ment in the early twenties one curtailment succeeded another. As the mobile capital of the country was mainly in the North, the Southerners soon found themselves owing large sums of money to creditors on the other side of the Potomac. It is probable also that in this respect, as in others, it was a change in business methods that especially annoyed the South Carolinians. Formerly, their staples had gone directly to Liverpool from their own ports ; now they went through New York, and their business instead of being financed from England was largely arranged from New York; and the credits allowed by American bankers were much shorter than those that had been allowed by the Englishmen. For all these reasons it was not at all unnatural that Southern planters should look with hostile eyes upon Northern capi- talists and oppose whatever schemes were brought into the federal Congress for the building up of Northern industry and navigation.
It happened most unfortunately that the hard times that began in 1818 and lasted over into the twenties impelled the Northern manufacturers to appeal to Congress again for assistance in the shape of increased protection to their industries. This movement resulted in the Tariff Act of 1824. It was not a high tariff in any way, but it was the first truly protective tariff in our history. The attitude of the Southerners may be gathered from the fact that of the fifty-six or fifty-eight members of the House of Represent- atives from Virginia and North Carolina and the five Cotton States to the southward, only one — Johnson of Virginia, from the Monongahela District — voted for it.1 In 1827, a
1 Journal of the House of Represen- Calhoun, i, 274 ; and Ames's Stale tatives, 18th Cong., 1st Sess., 428, Documents, iv, 12. 429; W. M. Meigs's John CaldweU
1830] SOUTHERN IDEAS 419
convention of the Friends of Domestic Industry met at Harrisburg in Pennsylvania and called for more protection. This in turn excited the South Carolinians to renewed agitation, and the State legislature adopted a report and resolutions declaring that the Constitution of the United States was "a compact between the people of the different States with each other, as separate, independent sovereign- ties, " and the view that the Constitution emanated from the people as a whole was a dangerous doctrine. Georgia and North Carolina also protested against the protective system. The actual passage of the Tariff of Abominations in 1828 gave the signal for more radical demonstrations. Governor Taylor of South Carolina, in a message to the legis- lature, advised that the act should be declared unconstitu- tional and that adequate measures should be taken to enforce the action of the State.
John C. Calhoun now comes to the front. In earlier years he had advocated internal improvements and pro- tection to industry and had sponsored the act chartering the second Bank of the United States.1 Apparently during Monroe's administration, he had seen nothing wrong in these policies ; but now he took charge of the rhetorical campaign and used his great powers of analysis and of literary expression to put the best face possible upon the proposition that a State could refuse obedience to an act of Congress and at the same time not be in a condition of rebellion. Calhoun's change of front has naturally caused much trouble to his biographers and to students of the
1 Calhoun's actions and early opin- written by a Southerner. "Calhoun as
ions on these matters are admirably Seen by his Political Friends, 1831-
set forth in Measures, Not Men. II- 1848," in the Publications of the South-
lustraled by Some Remarks upon . . . ern History Association, vii, 159, 353,
John C. Calhoun. By a Citizen of New 419, is an interesting series of minutes
York. This was published in 1823 of unpublished letters from Duff Green,
and judging by the subject matter was D. H. Lewis, and R. K. Cralle.
420 SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION [Ca. XIII
nullification episode. Houston gives one the impression that he looks upon it as an instance of Calhoun's time serv- ing and restoration of his political fences ; Von Hoist seems to regard it as the natural action of a slaveholder. It would seem that Houston was nearer right and that political con- siderations and not convictions caused Calhoun to assume leadership. After all, the dearest wish of his life was the attainment of the President's Palace. Seldom has a man succeeded in reaching that goal who has not had his State be- hind him, or, at all events, has not had the indorsement of his own political party in his own State. Calhoun wrote the report of the committee of the State legislature on Governor Taylor's message which was adopted in December, 1828, and made public early in 1829. 1 For a time, his authorship was kept secret, probably because it might have seemed ill-fitting for the Vice-President to affix his name to a document justifying the annulment of an act of Congress. Jefferson, in writing the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, had done precisely this thing, but he, too, had carefully cov- ered up the traces of his participation. The nullification doctrine, as one finds it in the "Exposition" of 1828 and in Calhoun's speech on the Force Bill in 1833,2 rests on the assumption that the people of each State was sovereign at
1 The "Exposition" and "Report" of them." American Historical .Re- are printed in Cralle's Works of Cal- view, xiii, 311. Probably Crallfe's text houn, vi. According to the "Preface" best represents the thoughts of Cal- these are copied "from the originals houn. Sundry resolutions that were in the handwriting of the author. introduced into the legislature are The first varies somewhat from the printed in the Southern History As- printed copy." The " Exposition " sociation's Publications, iii, 212. and " Report " are in Niles's Register ' The 1833 speech may most conven- and in the official publications of iently be found in Calhoun's Works, Congress and of South Carolina (Ames's ii, 197. Possibly the case is more State Documents, iv, 20). R. Barn- clearly stated in Chancellor William well Rhett, writing in 1854, stated Harper's address that was delivered that the "Exposition" was "greatly at Columbia on September 20, 1830, altered by the Committee. . . . Mr. and printed in 1832 under the title of Calhoun had nothing to do with these The Remedy by State Interposition, corrections and I know disapproved Nullification; explained and advocated.
18281 CALHOUN'S EXPOSITION 421
the time of the ratification of the Constitution and, in ratify- ing that instrument, acted in its separate and sovereign capacity. The Constitution, therefore, was a compact to which each State was a party and each one of them had a right to judge of its infractions and to interpose to main- tain the rights of the people of the State within its limits. The general government is only "the joint agent of two distinct sovereignties" and the Union is "a union of States as communities, and not a union of individuals" and there is no immediate connection between individuals and the general government. It followed, therefore, that the people of a State in its sovereign capacity could declare an act of the federal government null and void and not binding on it, and could by legislative action protect the citizens of that State against the federal government. The scene of action now shifts to Washington and centres about the person of Daniel Webster.
The history of Webster's famous series of speeches which have come to be known collectively as the " Reply to Hayne" has never been written, although they were probably the most famous speeches ever delivered in the national Senate.1 The usual story is that Senator Foote of Connecticut moved the adoption of a resolution which seemed to the Westerners to be part and parcel of a scheme to curb migration to that region. The Westerners objecting, the Southerners thought they saw the opportunity to separate the two groups of
1 On Webster see Edward Everett's of the Constitution (New York, 1905) ;
Works of Daniel Webster (6 vols., Bos- and Lodge's Webster in the American
ton, 1851) ; Fletcher Webster's Private Statesmen series. Wheeler's book con-
Correspondence of Daniel Webster (2 tains a good deal of legal information
vols., Boston, 1857) ; The Writings and in an understandable form ; but Lodge's
Speeches of Daniel Webster (National Webster will satisfy the needs of nearly
Edition, 18 vols., Boston, 1903) ; every one. Peter Harvey's Reminis-
Van Tyne's Letters of Daniel Webster cences and Anecdotes of Daniel Web-
from Documents (New York, 1902) ; ster (Boston, 1877) ia the tribute of
G. T. Curtis's Life of Daniel Webster an old friend; but oftentimes lacks
(2 vols., New York, 1870); E. P. vitality. Wheeler's Daniel Webster, the Expounder
422 SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION [Cn. XIII
Northerners by joining forces with the West. In his first speech, Senator Hayne,1 whose voice was described as like "morning's music on the air," confined himself to justify- ing the aggrieved feelings of the Westerners. It was then that Webster gently drew him away from that theme into setting forth the South Carolina doctrine of the sovereignty of the people of the States. Having achieved this, Webster fell upon him with pll the might of his power of mind and of speech in sentences that have long thrilled the American heart and might well be repeated every Fourth of July after the reading of the immortal Declaration. He was really replying to Calhoun and the South Carolinians, and it may well be that the whole thing was a shrewdly devised scheme to provide a proper setting for the enunciation of the Union doctrine. The Constitution, Webster declared, was "the people's Constitution." The government was the people's government ; " made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. . . . The general government and the State governments derived their author- ity from the same source." In cases of conflict a method of relief had been provided in the Federal Judiciary, in frequent elections, and in the power of amendment. It cannot be overthrown by direct assault and will not be "evaded, undermined, nullified" if the representatives of the people conscientiously discharge the public trust com- mitted to them.
Andrew Jackson held to the full the Southern ideas as to the undesirability of internal improvements at federal expense. He thought there was no justification to raise a surplus revenue by taxation of goods imported into the
1 Theodore D. Jervey's Robert Y. ton, 1878) give one a certain amount
Hayne and his Times (New York, of knowledge of South Carolina hopes
1909) and Paul H. Hayne's Lives of and fears, but Hayne deserves even
. . . Hayne and . . • Legate (Charles- more extended commemoration.
1830) JACKSON AND STATES'-RIGHTS 423
country. He distrusted banks and bankers and espe- cially doubted the wisdom and good faith of many officials of the United States Bank. In all these matters, he agreed with the South Carolinians and with the other cotton planters. But there he stopped. He had saved the Union at New Orleans and he would brook no interference with it. To him the Union was sacred. He was a States'-rights man, like most other Southerners, but that dogma should never be used to justify action derogatory to the continu- ance of the Union. It is rather singular that the South Carolina leaders should not have realized what Jackson's real feelings on the matter were ; but most of them had no conception of the strength of his affection for the Union or realized the length to which he would go in the perform- ance of what he looked upon as his duty. The "Tariff of Abominations" had been a distinctly Jacksonian election- eering device, but the leaders of Charleston and Columbia refused to see in it anything but a Northern attempt still further to tax them for the benefit of the people on the other side of the Potomac. The election of Jackson was so prob- able, however, that they postponed action until he should be in the presidential mansion, when they could act with a freer hand.1 For two years afterwards, there was a strange calm in South Carolina which was ended by the passage of the Adams Tariff of 1832. Meantime Jackson's feelings had been aroused against the chief of the nullifiers, or the person who seemed to be the chief of the nullifiers, John C. Calhoun, then Vice-President of the United States.
In 1818, at the time of Jackson's raid into Florida and
1 In resolutions that were submitted just, moderate and impartial ad- to the South Carolina legislature in ministration of public affairs" ; South- December, 1828, the "happy election" ern History Association's Publica- of Jackson is adverted to as holding lions, iii, 216. it "a well-founded hope of a more
424 SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION [Cn. XIII
the execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, Calhoun, who was then Secretary of War, had proposed in Cabinet meeting, that the over energetic general should be placed under an arrest and brought before a military court of inquiry. President Monroe and the other members of the Cabinet, except the Secretary of State, had felt much the same way as had Calhoun, and it was John Quincy Adams who single- handed had defended Jackson against his chief and all the other members of the Cabinet, and had gained his point. It fell to Calhoun, however, to communicate the decision of the government to Jackson and the latter had concluded that it was Calhoun who had defended him. For years Jack- son and Calhoun maintained the friendliest relations. Cal- houn wrote to Jackson in 1826 that his name"would be found in the future, "as it always has been on the side of liberty and your country," and Jackson, on his part, had toasted Calhoun as "An honest man — the noblest work of God." Some time after 1824, but exactly when cannot be stated, and, indeed, is immaterial, those around Jackson began to hear suggestions that it was Calhoun who had been Jack- son's enemy in 1818. The first authentic information of this came to William B. Lewis indirectly from Crawford, and. although it was indirect, it was evidently worthy of credence. Lewis kept this knowledge to himself for a year or so until it seemed that the time had come to excite President Jackson's feelings against the Vice-President. Then it was done so craftily that the General could not fail to notice it, but at the same time was not in any way aroused to take Calhoun's part. The first information had come in a letter from John Forsyth, who merely reported what Crawford had said to him. Jackson declared that he could take no notice of the matter until information came directly from Crawford. Thereupon, he was written to and he replied in almost the
1830] JACKSON AND CALHOUN 425
exact language of the letter to Forsyth. Jackson forwarded Crawford's letter to Calhoun with a request for an explana- tion and received one or more 1 which, however, could not explain what was unexplainable. Jackson now was fully convinced of "the duplicity & insincerity of the man, . . . the entire want of those high, dignified, & honorable feelings which I once thought he possessed" and left him to "the gnawings of a guilty conscience." And it would seem on the surface that there was some reason for Jackson's stigma, for when John C. Hamilton, who had Forsyth's letter in his custody, asked Calhoun whether any motion had been made in the Cabinet meeting at the time of the Seminole affair to bring Jackson before a military court, Calhoun had answered 2 that " no such motion had been made." This was literally true, as Calhoun had only pro- posed or suggested that Jackson's conduct should be in- quired into. One thing was certain, that Calhoun's hopes of succession to the presidency or, indeed, to any leading part in the Democratic organization, were entirely at an end, until time should remove Andrew Jackson from his hold on the party What effect the rupture with Calhoun had on Jackson's treatment of nullification is by no means clear. It is natural to suppose that the irritation he certainly felt toward Calhoun may have influenced him ; but on the other hand, it is absolutely clear, clear as anything is in history, that Andrew Jackson would have done his duty as he saw it, and long before this time his devotion to the
1 See Correspondence between Gen. Hamilton's account which is printed Andrew Jackson and John C. Col- on the preceding page differs somewhat houn. President and Vice-President in the phraseology, Calhoun denying of the U. States (Washington, 1831) ; that the propriety of arresting Gen- reprinted in the "Appendix" to Crallc's eral Jackson was "discussed." The Works of John C. Calhoun, vol. vi. episode is treated at length in Meigs's
2 NUes's Weekly Register, xl, p. 42. Calhoun, i, 401. Bassett in his An- This is Calhoun's own statement of drew Jackson (ii, 502-512) gives by the conversation with Hamilton. far the best account of this intrigue.
426 SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION [CH. XIII
Union had been clearly expressed. Jackson's diction and grammar are not often those of the schoolmaster, but when his mind was excited, he could express himself so plainly that few persons could misunderstand him, notwithstanding faults of punctuation, spelling, and grammar. It was in a letter to his wife's nephew and his old comrade in arms, General John Coffee, that he wrote it was absurd to hold that "a state has a right to secede & destroy this union . . . or nullify the laws of the union. . . . The people are the sovereigns, they can altar & amend . . . but the moral obligations is binding upon all to fulfill the obligations. . . . Therefore, when a faction in a state attempts to nullify a constitutional law of congress . . . the ballance of the people composing this union have a perfect right to coerce them to obedience." l He had a passionate love for the Union, "The union must be preserved ... I will die with the union." That his own people could have misunder- stood him seems almost incredible ; but Jackson had a sphinx-like capacity for concealing his thoughts until the time came to exhibit them. As he wrote to a friend in the midst of the bank contest, a military man keeps his army in reserve until the time comes to use it. Partly to discover his thoughts and partly to pledge him to them- selves, the Southerners got up a banquet on the anniversary of Jefferson's birth and invited Jackson to be the guest of honor. He took his place at the table and when the time came stood up, and, to the dismay of his hearers, proposed a toast "Our federal union, — it must be preserved!" How any one could have misinterpreted his sentiment after that is a mystery, but they tried to explain his words to mean much the same as their own.2 On May 1, 1833, Jack-
1 American Historical Magazine, iv, ii, 569, 570.
236, 237. Given in part with some * Henry Barnard, writing in hia
changes in Bassett's Andrew Jackson, journal at Beaufort, South Carolina,
1832] TARIFF ACT 427
son wrote to an humble relative who had not got the precise office he had wished and having explained that, went on to say something about nullification, for its "actors and exciters" will be execrated by the people and "Hainan's gallows ought to be the fate of all such ambitious men, who would involve their country in civil wars . . . that they might reign and ride on its whirlwinds and direct the storm." It was in this letter, too, that Jackson wrote that the tariff was only the pretext for nullification, which had disunion and a Southern confederacy as its real object; the "next pretext will be the negro, or slavery, question." 1 For a couple of years the nullifiers kept quiet until in 1832 the passage of the new tariff law seemed to give them a chance to renew the agitation. The act of 1832 was prob- ably the most equitable tariff law that had been passed for twenty years ; but owing to the necessity of securing major- ity votes in Congress its provisions were not such as would commend themselves to any one political party or group.2 In other words, it was a compromise and, as a matter of fact, had not gone far enough to satisfy those who dreaded a surplus because of its effect on the morals of politicians. Nor had it at all satisfied those who held what J. Q. Adams was pleased to call the "Mulatto doctrine of political econ- omy," 3 which was that two-thirds of the federal revenue
April 30, 1833, states that the "leading traders can be best seen in An Exposi- men of this State had the surest tion of the Unequal, Unjiist and Op- pledges that Jackson was with them pressive Operation of the present tariff in their views of the Constitution. system in relation to Iron, Wool, Hemp, . . . Their hatred of him amounts to Paper . . . by a Select Committee op- madness." Maryland Historical Maga- pointed by the Free Trade Convention zine, xiii, 361. (Philadelphia, 1832).
1 Massachusetts Historical So- * American Historical Review, xi,
ciety's Proceedings, viii, 172, and 2nd 340. The phrase "Mulatto doctrine"
Series, vol. xiv, 371. refers to the "forty bale theory" of
1 See Massachusetts Historical So- McDuffie of South Carolina: — "If
ciety's Proceedings for December, 1905, the duties upon imports were levied
and Brooks Adams's Introduction in kind, and the planters made their
to The Degradation of the Democratic own exchanges with the foreign manu-
Idea. The ideas of the Northern free facturers, without the intervention
428
SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION [Cn. XIII
being derived from a tax on imported goods, some of which were used in the Southern States, was really "a tax upon the export of Cotton!" It makes no difference whatever whether the law was harmful to Southern interests or not, a majority of the ruling class in South Carolina believed that it was injurious. When the legislature met, it was clear that the majority was distinctly on the side of State interposition.1 With some difficulty, two-thirds of the legislature voted to call a State convention for the purpose of considering the condition of affairs and taking such action in the name of the sovereign people of South Carolina as seemed best in the circumstances. As the election of members of the convention was conducted on the same rules that prevailed as to the election of members of the legisla- ture, it represented precisely the same mass of opinion. The Union men or anti-nullifiers took a lukewarm part in the election because the case seemed to be pre-judged. The nullifiers had a great majority and were able to carry their desires into action without very much discussion and
either of money or commercial agents, the most unreflecting would perceive that the import duties were direct taxes upon the productions of the planters. If, for example, forty bales of cotton were taken out of every hun- dred when it passed the customhouse, going abroad, it would be impossible for them to obtain any larger quantity of goods for the remaining sixty, in consequence of this levy ; because the agents of the Government would carry the other forty into the foreign market, and, of course, the supply would be undiminished " (House Re- ports, 22nd Cong., 1st Sess., No. 279). An interesting critique of this report is the speech of Nathan Appleton of Massachusetts of May 30, 1832, in Gales & Seaton's Register of Debates, viii, Pt. iii, 3188; also printed sepa- rately. The extreme South Caro- lina view is succinctly set forth in The
Prospect Before Us; or Strictures on the Late Message of the President of the United States . . . By Aristides (Charleston, 1832). McDufEe's re- port should be read by every student who wishes to understand the South- ern point of view and may be regn- forced by a passage in one of Calhoun's letters in American Historical As- sociation's Report for 1899, vol. ii, pp. 401-404.
1 Various details — mostly of little historical value — can be found in Henry D. Capers' Life and Times of C. G. Memminger (Richmond, 1893, pp. 37 and fol.) ; W. J. Grayson's James Louis Petigru. A Biographi- cal Sketch (New York, 1866); and "George McDuffie" in J. H. Car- lisle, Jr.'s Addresses of J. H. Car- lisle (Columbia, S. C., 1910) p. 208 and fol.
1832] NULLIFICATION 429
without any delay. The convention met November 19, 1832, and passed a Nullification Ordinance declaring the federal tariff act of 1832 to be null and void. They also called upon the State legislature to pass the necessary laws to protect the people in their disobedience to the federal law and to prevent the United States authorities from enforcing it. The legislature at once responded and passed a series of laws that were most comprehensive and well designed to produce the results that were aimed at. It authorized the raising of a volunteer military force and appropriated money for the purchase of arms. The legis- lature also adopted resolutions declaring it to be expedient "that a Convention of the States be called" to consider questions that had arisen "between the States of the con- federacy and the General Government" ; but this plan met with slight favor.
Senator Hayne now became governor of South Carolina and exchanged speech-making for the administration of the State in one of the three most critical times in its history. He took the necessary steps to enroll and train a military force, a portion of which consisted of mounted minute patrolmen. How effective this force was, or would have been had it ever been properly supplied with arms and trained, we cannot say.1 We have definite information as to it, but as to the opposing forces provided by the Union- ists, possibly in a more inchoate condition, we have no tangible information, except that the Union men were feared by the nullifiers. How much this was due to the fact that the Union men had the confidence of President Jackson is not perfectly clear. Jackson was in secret corre- spondence with Poinsett and some other leading Unionist
'"Letters on the Nullification 1834," in American Historical Review, Movement in South Carolina, 1830- vi, 736-765, vii, 92-119.
430 SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION [Cn. XIII
men in the State. He made provision for the assembling of large forces and for providing them with arms, but also insisted that these should be kept from sight until the time came to act. He sent a few hundred soldiers to Charles- ton, an extra revenue cutter or two, a ship of war, and, much more important than any of these, General Win- field Scott, who certainly performed a very useful task in heartening the anti-nullifiers, making plans for military movements, and in keeping the iron hand very well con- cealed within the military glove, — although the presence of the military glove was quite evident. Nathaniel Jarvis, a Massachusetts man, happened to arrive off Charleston harbor in the Spanish brig Hermosa from Havana on the first day of February, 1833. When within three miles of the port, the United States revenue cutter Alert ran along- side and ordered the captain to drop anchor until he could give bonds to secure the duties on his cargo or pay the prob- able amount in dollars. Jarvis describes the condition of affairs at Charleston after his landing as "nigh rebellion as one could well be without having made any overt acts." l The other Cotton States showed slight sympathy with South Carolina and no intention of following her into nulli- fication. In Virginia the planters of the old tide-water region seemed to agree with the nullifiers, but they were held in check by the members of the legislature from the western counties, and all that they could do was to secure the appointment of a "commissioner" to go to South Carolina and ask her to take more time. North Carolina was opposed to both her neighbors, one of her leading men, William Gaston, declaring that it would be better for her to "personate the drowsy hero of Washington Irving, than
1 Journal kept by Nathaniel Jarvia J. Stille's Life and Service of Joel R. of a trip to Havana and return by Poinaeti. way of Charleston. See also Charles
1832] JACKSON'S PROCLAMATION 431
excite the mingled horror and ridicule of mankind by repre- senting the combined characters of Captain Bobadil and Cataline." l In January, 1833, Jackson asked for the pas- sage of an act giving him powers adequate to meet the crisis, and he had already issued a proclamation, December 10, 1832, informing the people of his "native State," as he always regarded South Carolina, that "Disunion by armed force is treason. Are you really ready to incur its guilt? . . . On your unhappy State will inevitably fall all the evils of the conflict you force upon the Government of your country. It can not accede to the mad project of disunion, of which you would be the first victims. Its First Magistrate can not, if he would, avoid the performance of his duty." 2 He also suggested a modification of the tariff system. In point of fact very many good people at the time were convinced that protection had been carried too far and should be abated. This opinion had been growing regardless of South Carolina nullification, which, however, brought tariff revision within the range of practical politics at that precise moment. For once, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster acted together; the first named to save what he could of the American System, the second to rescue his fellow nullifiers from the edge of Jackson's wrath, and the third to preserve the Union. The result was that the Force Bill and Clay's Compromise Tariff were passed at the same time and approved by President Jackson.3 And this was the end,
1 Records of the American Catholic "Compromise Tariff" provided for a
Historical Society of Philadelphia, vi, gradual reduction of duties spread over
236. ten years, one-tenth of the existing
•These exact ideas in different Ian- duties above "twenty per centum on
guage may be found in Lincoln's First the value thereof" to be taken off
Inaugural; see Richardson's Mes- every other year until 1841, when one-
sages and Papers, vi, p. 11. half of the residue should be removed,
* F. L. Nussbaum has brought the and in 1842, the other half, bringing
leading facts together within reason- the tariff down to the horizontal rate
able compass in The South Atlantic of twenty per cent. See Statutes at
rly for October, 1912. The Large, iv, 629. The other law was
432
SOUTH CAROLINA AND NULLIFICATION [Ca. XIII
for the South Carolina nullifiers, having achieved a part of their desire in securing an important modification of the tariff, held a somewhat informal meeting of the Con- vention, advised the executive officers not to enforce the nullifying ordinance, and substituted for it an ordinance nullifying the Force Act.1 They undoubtedly agreed with Henry L. Pinckney that "the Genius of Carolina" had planted itself firmly upon the federal Constitution and with the Kentucky Resolutions in one hand and the palmetto banner in the other, had proclaimed resistance to the Wash- ington government. "Yes, Volunteers, you have saved the State. Your firmness and constancy have given us the victory. The doctrine of Nullification, once the theme of ridicule, is now the theme of praise. The State of South Carolina, lately so fettered and degraded, is now honoured and respected, and, in saving her, you have saved the Con- stitution and the Union." 2 In the future, as another orator declared, South Carolina would come before Congress "not as a suppliant, but as an equal."
entitled "An Act further to provide for the Collection of Duties on Im- ports" (ibid., iv, 632). It was com- monly called the "Force Bill" and, like the preceding act, was approved on March 2, 1833. It gave great dis- cretionary power to the President as to the details of collection and author- ized him to use the forces of the United States practically in any way he saw fit to enforce the federal laws "until the end of the next session of Con- gress, and no longer."
1 The most important of the Nullifi- cation documents were published in 1834 by the State of Massachusetts under the title, — State Papers of Nulli- fication. The " Journal of the Conven- tion " is on pp- 295-375 ; the " Report " or " Exposition " on p. 1 ; and the body of the book contains the answering reso- lutions of Maine and the other States, etc.
1 Oration ... on the Jfh of July, 1833 (Charleston, 1833), pp. 21, 64.
COTTON STATISTICS
433
NOTE
Cotton. — The figures of production in the following table are drawn from Levi Woodbury's report l and the prices from Watkins's paper.2
COTTON CROP OF THE UNITED STATES IN MILLIONS OF POUNDS
|
STA.TE |
1791 |
1801 |
1811 |
1821 |
1826 |
1833 |
1834 |
|
Va |
5 |
8 |
12 |
25 |
13 |
10 |
|
|
N. C s. c Ga |
li i |
4 20 10 |
7 4Q 20 |
10 50 45 |
18 70 75 |
10 73 88 |
9J 65i 75 |
|
Total . . . |
2 |
39 |
75 |
117 |
188 |
184 |
160 |
|
Ala |
20 |
45 |
65 |
85 |
|||
|
Tenn Miss La |
1 |
3 2 |
20 10 10 |
45 30 38 |
50 70 55 |
45 85 62 |
|
|
Total .... |
1 |
5 |
60 |
158 |
240 |
277 |
|
|
Fla |
2 |
15 |
20 |
||||
|
Ark |
i |
1 |
* |
||||
|
Total . . . |
2* |
15J |
20* |
||||
|
Grand Total . . |
2 |
40 |
80 |
177 |
348J |
439 J |
457 £ |
|
Price per lb. at New York . |
26 |
44 |
15.50 |
14.32 |
12.19 |
12.32 |
12.90 |
In 1848 the total production of cotton in the United States was over one billion pounds and in 1860 was over two billions-
See also diagram in Harry Hammond's South Carolina, 13.
1 It is entitled "Cotton, Cultiva- tion, Manufacture, and Foreign Trade of" and forms No. 146 of the House Executive Documents (24th Cong., 1st Sess.,) and is most easily used in the Writings of Levi Woodbury, iii, 248. Matthew B. Hammond's "The Cotton Industry" in the Publications of the American Economic Associa- tion (New Series, No. 1) is the result
of great labor and is extremely useful. * James L. Watkins's "Production and Price of Cotton for One Hun- dred Years" is in the publications of the Department of Agriculture, Mis- cellaneous Series, Bulletin No. 9. Very useful condensed tables showing both production and prices are in The South in the Building of the Nation, v, 211, 431-434.
CHAPTER XIV
THE BANK AND THE PANIC OP 1837
APART from the offices and the struggle with the milliners, the main interest in Jackson's administrations has to do with financial matters. It was inevitable that this should be the case because, by 1829, the country had recovered from the long period of depression that began with the embargo, and in every year of his term of office business activity was greater than in any preceding twelve months. A reaction from this period of agricultural and industrial expansion was inevitable, but it must be said that both the going up and the coming down were greatly hastened by the actions of the President. Jackson, himself, had never had anything that could be remotely termed a business education. He had a plantation and slaves, but his income for the most part had been derived from offices that he had held and especially in the later years from his position in the army. As a frontiersman, he regarded credit and banks as something provided by nature and the government for the benefit of the converter of new lands to the uses of civiliza- tion. There is something fascinating in the ingenuousness of the frontiersman in these matters.1 He has no objection whatever to the establishment of banks by the State or by individuals and at once proceeds to borrow money, giving a mortgage on his crops and lands in return. As the people
1 In the following analysis I have statement in these paragraphs must
greatly profited by conversations with be charged to me and not to Professor
Professor E. E. Dale of Oklahoma Dale. University; but all errors of fact or
434
FRONTIERSMEN AND CREDIT 435
come from the East, as the forest is cleared away and the ground brought under cultivation, his property will double, treble, or quadruple in value. To him it is worth not what he paid for it or what he could sell it for at the moment, but what he can obtain for it in eight or ten years' time, if every- thing goes well. To him time is no object : in the spring he plows and plants and through the summer and into the early autumn watches the forces of nature bringing the crops to fruition with a little hoeing or cultivating, now and then ; and in the autumn he collects the reward of his labor and of nature's work. As he joyfully ponders the affairs of his farm or plantation, it appears certain that if he can clear more land and employ more labor he will gain ever increasing returns. It is at this point that he goes to a banker to borrow money and finds the man of the counter possessed of a "horror of land," 1 for it is difficult to handle if taken on execution. Moreover the banker is ill appre- ciative of future land values. He will loan money only on a portion of the actual selling value of the land at the mo- ment. And then the banker will sharply limit the duration of his loan to three months or possibly to six. Farm im- provements mature slowly, and when the time for payment comes the frontiersman sees no reason for haste. The land is constantly improving in value, and the bank, there- fore, is perfectly secure. The interest will go on, corn or cotton will be much higher in thirty days or in two or three months ; why not postpone the payment, therefore, espe- cially as money is a little scarce at the moment, the demand for labor on the farm urgent, and travelling difficult? To the banker, the aspect of things is very different ; his obliga- tions must be met on the moment and, therefore, if the debtor cannot or does not pay what he has promised, the only
1 This is Riddle's phrase in a letter dated December 23, 1833.
436 THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 [Cu. XIV
thing to do is to take the property that was mortgaged as security and sell it for what it will bring. There was thus a wide gulf between the ideas of the farm and of the bank. Furthermore there was little capital in newly settled regions that was not already invested in land ; the capital for new enterprises necessarily came from the older settled parts of the country. It seemed, therefore, as if a few capitalists, living afar off, were consuming the fruits of the farmers' labors. Jackson sets forth the frontier view in his letters. He declared that banks are capitalistic institutions whose sole function is to make money, and capitalists united in corporations are devoid of ideals. In short, according to him a bank is not a charitable institution as it should be, but one where profit is the sole object even at the cost of oppression to the people. Somewhat similar ideas as to banks and bankers were held by most people throughout the country, even in the Old Thirteen. To them there was some- thing obscure in the workings of financial concerns and the word "credit" possessed little meaning. A banker or a bank opened an office, issued notes in exchange for mort- gages or other collateral security, and demanded interest oftentimes at a high rate, from twelve to twenty-five per cent a year. The borrower took the notes and immediately paid them out to the government for more land or to a trader for more stock or slaves. It seemed as if nothing had been transmuted into something, lands, cattle, or labor ; and the only person to profit immediately was the banker, and thus he who had contributed nothing tangible was the first person to be rewarded. It is true that the banker was required by law to have on hand a certain amount of gold and silver and oftentimes he was obliged to redeem in specie all of his notes that were presented to him ; but he issued notes seemingly out of all proportion to the amount of specie
1830] BANKS 437
in his possession, six or eight times as much and frequently more. The way for a frontier community to deal with this problem was for itself to establish a bank, preferably one that should be regulated by local law and would be respon- sible to local opinion. There were three general types of banks : (l) private banks that lived solely on the credit of the bankers, (2) local banks that were established under some "free banking law" that involved some kind of super- vision by the State government and, in some cases, were more or less closely connected with the loan system of the State by requiring State bonds as a basis of the bank note circulation, and (3) a State bank that was sometimes a part of the treasury organization and in other cases was closely connected with the State fiscal system.1 The State banks often had branches in different parts of the State and thus brought the benefits of banking to every one.
Of the banks described above, the first were the famous "wildcat banks" which consisted of little more than a banker or two, a valise or trunk filled with printed bank notes of their own issue, and an office with the smallest amount of furniture.2 When one of these banks or insti- tutions had achieved a moderate amount of success, it turned into a more settled form of bank, and when it failed, the
1 State ownership of banks north 17, 1913. Gershom Flagg has some- of Mason and Dixon's line and east of thing to say on the subject in Illinois the mountains was confined to the State Historical Society's Transac- years 1789-1812; in the Old South tions, for 1910, p. 32. For Ohio, see it continued until 1861 ; in the North- C. C. Huntington's article in the Ohio west the greatest activity was be- Archceological and Historical Quarterly tween 1820 and 1857, and in the for July, 1915. R. Hildreth's Banks, Southwest from 1824 to 1840. Banking, and Paper Currencies (Bos-
2 See Logan Esarey's "State Bank- ton, 1840) ' is a contemporaneous ing in Indiana" in Indiana University account, and the sixth chapter of Sum- Studies, No. 15, — the "Bibliography" ner's Andrew Jackson is a lucid and at the end will point the way to a study unsympathetic account of banking of state banking in general ; and G. in Kentucky and Tennessee. The W. Dowrie's "Development of Bank- statement in S. Dean's History of Bank* ing in Illinois, 1817-1863" in Uni- ing, 159 178, is clear and brief. versity of Illinois Bulletin, November
438 THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 [Cn. XIV
whole establishment disappeared. Of the banks that were more or less under State control some, as in Massachusetts, joined to put pressure upon any banks that were dilatory in redeeming their paper issues ; 1 or, as in New York, they contributed specie to a safety fund that was administered by the State for the redemption of the notes of any New York bank that failed to redeem its paper ;2 or their circula- tion was founded on State bonds and administered more or less by a State functionary, as was the case in Indiana under the Bank Act of 1852. There was little to choose between these systems as systems, for their success depended upon the efficient administration of them by some officer or officers. The State banks, so called, were really parts of the State financial administration : they received the taxes and other public moneys, kept them, and paid them out on order of the proper official. Their capital was based on State loans besides the public funds, and in some cases they were to lend money on mortgage to land owners, generally in proportion to the political strength of the various parts of the State. The Bank of South Carolina had been founded to preserve the land owners of that State from ruin and had accomplished that design. From the beginning, it had as a rule been well managed, and, as was the case with the State bank of Virginia, remained an efficient institution down to 1861. One reason for the regstablishment of these public banks was a feeling that the State as a political entity should reap some of the harvest to be gained from the use of credit facilities. This view left out of account entirely the fact that any
1Tbis was called the "Suffolk graphs as to the Suffolk Bank Sys-
Bank System" from the name of the tern are reprinted in Gouge's Journal
bank that acted as agent. See Nathan of Banking, 34.
Appleton's Remarks on Currency and * D. R. Dewey's Financial Hia-
Banking (Boston, 1841). The para- tory of the United States, § 69.
1830] SECOND BANK OF THE UNITED STATES 439
proper use of credit is simply the employment of the strength of a community for its good. The banker is simply a distributive agent for the community in securing the best employment of its faculties.
As one period of business inflation and of hard times suc- ceeded another, the number of .banks went up and down. The demise of the old Bank of the United States in 1811 led to the establishment of many local banks. The govern- ment was obliged to make use of these to carry on its finan- cial business and in the extremely difficult years of 1814 and 1815 suffered heavy losses. It was to obviate these that the Second Bank of the United States was founded in 1816. l The federal government was to own stock in this in- stitution, deposit in it all its receipts, and give over to the Bank the management of its loans and pensions. Be- sides managing these, the Bank was to keep the government moneys and pay them out on drafts from the proper officials and transfer the public funds from one part of the country to the other, — all without charge ; but, on the other hand, it was to pay no interest on government deposits, — the cost of carrying on these government duties being regarded as approximately equal to the sum that might be gained from the use of that portion of the federal funds that was not held in the vaults for the purpose of honoring any calls made by the government. One of the principal motives for the establishment of the new Bank was to bring about a more reliable and more uniform currency. The notes of the State banks of one sort or another usually depreciated in proportion to the distance from the counter of the bank of issue. The United States Bank at once went into the business of transferring funds, public and private, from one
» For the act, see Annals of Con- Of the United States (ed. 1903), pp. 21, areas, 14th Cong., 1st Sess., Col. 1812, 479-488. and R. C. H. Catterall's Second Bank
440
THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 [Ca. XIV
part of the country to the other ; to do this, it established branch banks in important commercial centers. With the command of more funds than any other banking institu- tion and with these antennae branch banks, scattered all over the country, it was able to put pressure upon almost any State bank by collecting a bunch of the notes of that bank, presenting them for payment and refusing to take anything in exchange except specie.1 In its first years, the Bank exhibited as many faults as the State banks and exhibited them on an extended scale owing to its large re- sources. When the hard times came in 1819, it was obliged to curtail and to change its management. The Bank carried out the process of deflation with an iron hand. Under the circumstances, doubtless, this was necessary for the safety of the Bank and of the country ; but it was coincident with a period of falling prices and bankruptcies of banks and bankers, of farmers, merchants, traders, and planters.2 Of course this was the inevitable result — as things were — of the preceding inflation and of the crude state of knowledge of the laws of finance; but, not unnaturally, the people laid it to the unwarrantable actions of the "monster bank" at Philadelphia which with its branches seemed to them to resemble a gigantic octopus, sucking the blood from the arteries of the toilers on the farm and in the shop.3
All the local banking institutions were regarded by the
1 Ebenezer S. Thomas states that in 1816 he paid 28% premium for specie at Baltimore and that in two years' time the premium had dis- appeared. Reminiscences of the Last Sixty-five Years, ii, 84.
1 As showing the severity of the crisis, it may be noted that in 1819 a pamphlet of 170 pages of double column was published at Albany containing a list of lands to be sold for arrears of taxes.
*On the other hand the "great bank" exercised a modifying in- fluence on the tendency of the New York banks to combine and monop- olize financial business. In 1825 it was stated that the City Bank of New York by means of interlocking di- rectorates controlled twelve or four- teen "monied institutions" with a capital of six millions. See I. Law- rence to Biddle, June 9, 1825, in "Biddle Papere."
1830] THE BRANCH DRAFTS 441
State legislatures as so many business establishments that could be taxed like any other business establishments, and they were ordinarily so taxed. When the Bank of the United States began to establish branches in the several States it did so without entering into any kind of negotia- tions with the State authorities or securing permission of any sort from them. When established, the branches at once competed vigorously with the local banks for the local business and took a large proportion of it away from the local banks. Then, too, the notes of the Bank of the United States came into general circulation and, being equally good in all parts of the country, supplanted the local issues, except in the commercial centers. For some reason a clause had been inserted in the charter, requiring all the notes of the bank to be signed by the president and cashier. Whether the object of this clause was to limit the circula- tion of the notes of the great Bank or was for some other reason, it certainly soon became evident that it operated to defend the local note circulation against a tremendously increasing United States Bank note circulation and Con- gress, therefore, absolutely refused to grant any modifica- tion. The Bank authorities then hit upon the expedient of branch drafts. These were drawn at any one branch on the parent Bank at Philadelphia, signed by. the cashier of the branch, and drawn to the order of an employee. He endorsed the draft and it became, in effect, a circulating note which would be paid at any branch of the United States Bank and was really as good currency as there was in the country ; but the device worked still further to lessen the profits of the local banks so far as they were derived from note circulation. As local business enterprises the State banks were subject to taxation as every other business concern, and the branches of the great Bank were likewise
442 THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 [On. XIV
taxed by the State authorities. It was at this point that the federal Supreme Court interfered and decided that a State could not tax a corporation chartered by the United States, and thereby gave the Bank of the United States and its branches still another chance to compete successfully with the local banks.1 Putting all these things together, the great curtailment of credit in the early twenties, the competition of the notes of the United States Bank with the local note issues, and the freedom it enjoyed from local taxation, it is easy to see why jealousies arose against the "monster institution."
In 1823 Nicholas Biddle of Philadelphia succeeded to the presidency of the Bank of the United States. He owed his appointment primarily to James Monroe, who had be- come acquainted with him during his European diplomatic residence. Biddle had had no business training, but he was a man of strong administrative capacity. He was not a good judge of men, he possessed the fatal gift of literary fluency, and, in his attitude toward men and things, he reflected the views of Philadelphia society and not at all those of the "men of the street." Biddle and banking circles watched with apprehension the rise of Andrew Jack- son to the presidency and Biddle somewhat childishly sought to ingratiate himself with the "Hero of New Orleans." He might well feel apprehensive because Jackson had ex- perienced to the full many of the evils of banks and of the sordid character of many monied men. Tennessee and Kentucky in his lifetime had gone through severe financial struggles. Banks had come up and failed and relief meas-
1 See E. L. Bogart's "Taxation of of the Bank in Ohio had threatened a
the Second Bank of the United States State official with ruin if he did not
by Ohio" in American Historical Re- 'secure the repeal of the hostile legis-
view, xvii, 312-331. In 1826 Biddle lation was "nonsense." wrote that the story that the agent
1830] JACKSON AND THE BANK 443
ures of most questionable character had been adopted. Jackson, himself, had had an unpleasant experience with one of the branch banks which had refused to honor a draft of his except at a discount. In his First Annual Message 1 he called the attention of Congress to the approaching termi- nation of the bank charter and suggested that the question of the continuance of its life should be taken up at an early day. It would seem that the question of recharter or demise was one to be worked out between the bank author- ities and the government; but for some inconceivable reason Henry Clay thought that he saw in the question elements of political popularity, and took possession of it for the anti-Jacksonians. Of course this acted as a chal- lenge to Jackson, which was about the worst possible thing that could happen. Biddle certainly did not manage this part of the business with discretion. He permitted himself to be drawn into a somewhat acrimonious correspondence with the Secretary of the Treasury in which he assumed an unjustifiable attitude of independence, and when he realized this, he had to retreat as well as he might ; but a man of discretion and experience would never have permitted him- self to be placed in so humiliating a situation. For a time, it seemed as if he would overcome Jackson's prejudices. He apparently was willing to accept a good part at least of Jackson's plan for a national bank of some kind provided the prolongation of the life of the existing institution was assured.2 It was at this point that the politicians inter- fered and almost compelled Biddle to apply for a recharter in order that the Whigs might have some reason for political existence. This was in 1832 when the election was coming on. More than once Biddle wished to take the other tack
1 Richardson's Messages and Papers, Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle, ii, 462. 142 and fol., and Catterall's Second
> See the letters in McGrane's Bank. 224-228.
444 THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 [Ca. XIV
and bring it about that the administration itself should pass a rechartering bill that Jackson would sign. But it was all in vain, and the reports of an investigating committee which was known from its chairman's name as the Clayton Com- mittee,1 while clearing the Bank of financial bad manage- ment, brought many things to light that were decidedly disadvantageous to the renewal of the life of that institu- tion. Moreover, it distinctly appears that the resources of the Bank had already been used in ways that must have influenced political opinion, although it is by no means certain that in authorizing these transactions, Biddle had anything of the kind in contemplation. For example, there r/as a loan of twenty thousand dollars to General Duff Green,2 the editor of the "Washington Telegraph," whose daughter had married a son of John C. Calhoun. This loan had been made originally, when Duff Green was a Jackson man, to enable him to undertake the public print- ing, for many preparations and much work had to be done before any payment would be received from the government. The matter was brought before the Bank authorities by Mr. Hemphill, a South Carolina congressman, who stated that the making of the loan would bring about no change in the political opinions expressed by Green's paper. To this Biddle replied that the loan was a mere matter of business and that no change in the newspaper's political attitude was desired. With Calhoun's fall from Jacksonian grace, the paper had turned and it is possible that it was Jackson's finding Duff Green's name among those to whom the Bank
1 See Clayton's "Report on Be- by Clayton and one by McDuffie (p. half of the Majority of the Com- 297) for the minority, and a third by mittee Appointed ... to Examine into John Quincy Adams (p. 369) on be- the Proceedings of the Bank of the half of himself contain a mass of ma- United States" (Reports of the Com- terial which any one who wishes to mittees of the House of Representatives, understand the bank business must 22nd Cong., 1st Sess., No. 460). The read, three reports of this committee, that * Ibid., No. 460, p. 109.
1830] BANK LOANS' 445
had loaned money that finally determined him to veto the recharter bill,1 for was it not evident that the Bank besides being dangerous in itself was a Calhoun institution ? Among the "Biddle Papers" in Washington are letters showing that the Bank had loaned forty-three thousand dollars to President Monroe 2 and on March 1, 1825, three days before his exit from the White House, had refused to lend him any more. It also appears that McDuffie, the South Carolina Repre- sentative who had signed a report distinctly favorable to the Bank, had secured a loan for Mr. Hampton, another South Carolinian who offered his land as security. Biddle at once replied that the Bank did not habitually lend on mortgage and that the threat to withdraw the public de- posits had induced it to confine its loan to terms of not over ninety days. Nevertheless in this case the loan would be made and authority be given to the cashier to renew the notes as they became due.3 Another example of the close connection between the Bank and the politicians was the case of Daniel Webster, who was Senator from Massa- chusetts, for three years a director of the Bank, and also acted as its counsel. Webster was indebted to the Bank as principal or endorser to the amount of seventeen thousand dollars, and he asked for a renewal of his retainer as counsel : but Biddle thought that the time was not opportune for such "refreshment" and refused.4 Another loan that has
1 This was the rumor current at New large part of it having been taken up Orleans. See Vincent Nolte's Fifty by the sale of Monroe's Virginia Years, 236, 237. There is a good property.
notice of Duff Green in Southern His- * Biddle's letter to McDuffie is
tory Association's Publications, vii, dated August 29, 1833.
160. 4 Biddle's letter is dated December
2 The exact amount was $43,605.97 25, 1834 ; but the practice to which minus $2500.00. Monroe was to have it alluded was evidently of long stand- reduced this total by the payment of ing. As Biddle thought the Wash- 81000.00 a month, but had not done ington post-office "faithless" he had so. In Biddle's memorandum of 1837 his letter addressed by another hand. (Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle, Incidentally, he remarked, that he p. 358) the loan is stated at $10,596, a always burned what he was requested
446
THE BANK AND THE PANIC OP 1837 [On. XIV
certain elements of interest in it was one made to Asbury Dickins, Chief Clerk of the Treasury Department. It seems that in 1828 he owed the Bank twenty-five hundred dollars which he could not pay. The cashier of the Wash- ington branch suggested that the demand for payment be not pressed and, indeed, that another twenty-five hun- dred dollars be loaned to Dickins to enable him to pay off his other debts. The printed correspondence does not say what happened, but the loan was probably made, as Dickins, who had "the management of the Bank accounts" for the Treasury Department, remained most amicably disposed toward the Bank.1 All these loans, of course, may have been perfectly justifiable, as also may have been absolutely right those to Clay, Crawford, Calhoun, Livingston, Amos Kendall, W. B. Lewis, and J. H. Eaton ; but it was inevitable in 1832 and still is that another construction would be placed upon the practice of attaching so many persons in high places to the interests of the institution.2
It is difficult to fathom the motives that led Henry Clay and his political companions to stake their success at the polls in the election of 1832 on the question of rechartering the Bank. The struggle between the Bank and the anti- bank men was really a part in the never ending contest between localism and nationalism; the question was as to whether the local banking system should flourish or should be destroyed by the institution which had been chartered by the federal Congress. Moreover, the sympathies of the
to burn. Curtis, in his Life of Webster, i, 493-500, devotes several pages to trying to clear Webster's reputation in this regard.
1 R. C. McGrane's Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle, 53.
2 The names of borrowers are noted in the reports of the Clayton com- mittee and at the end of the Corre- spondence of Nicholas Biddle is a list
of the members of Congress, news- paper editors, and officers of the gen- eral government "who have been or are responsible to the Bank as drawers or endorsers of notes during the last few years " As this was drawn up in 1837, the amounts and even the names do not always agree with the reports of 1832; but the lessons to be drawn from the different lists of figures are identical.
1832] JACKSON RE-ELECTED 447
average man were distinctly opposed to the money lender, dignify him as you please. The combination between the localists and the ordinary voter proved to be irresistible. Jackson received 707,217 votes to 328,561 given to Clay1 and two hundred and nineteen electoral votes to forty- nine for Clay and eighteen for other candidates. As it was, it was one of the completest victories in the history of the presidency and impelled Jackson forward to the prosecution of his design to put an end to the monster Bank at Philadelphia and all its branches. The campaign for justice to the Bank had about as much chance of success as a campaign for "Justice to the Profiteers" of the present day would have. The fact that they could save a little on their loans and have a better currency with the Bank than without it meant nothing to the localists ; what they wanted was that they and their neighbors should enjoy whatever profits were to be secured from lending money or loaning credit, and not contribute to the money-bags of far-off capitalists at Philadelphia and New York.
The election over, Jackson turned his attention to the next step in the warfare on the Bank ; its demise as a national institution being certain in 1836, by the provisions of the charter, he seems to have come to the conclusion that its death agonies would better be prolonged as much as pos- sible in order that the shock to business might be lessened. He expected to accomplish this by reducing its loanable funds at once, by not placing any more government money in the Bank. Moreover, it is not at all unlikely that Jack- son, after reading all the evidence that is now accessible and pondering other facts that were known to him, but are now inaccessible, should have come to the conclusion
1 Edwin Williams's Politician's litical Text-Book (p. 239) are somewhat Manual (New York, 1834), p. 35. different; — 687,502 for Jackson and The figures given in Greeley's Po- 530,189 for Clay.
448 THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 [Cn. XIV
that the public funds were not safe in the control of Biddle and the Bank men.1 He proposed, therefore, to stop de- positing the government moneys with the Bank and to withdraw in the ordinary course of business the funds that were already there. This turned out to be not so easy as one might have supposed it would be. Ever since the be- ginning of the government, the Secretary of the Treasury has occupied a peculiar position toward the President and toward Congress. He is nominated by the President, con- firmed or rejected by the Senate and, except for the period of the tenure of office act, has been removable by the Presi- dent. Unlike all other executive officials, however, the Secretary of the Treasury reports directly to Congress at the opening of each session, and his independence of the Chief Magistrate and dependence upon Congress were further accentuated in the charter of the Second Bank by prescribing that he should direct the bestowal of the gov- ernment funds and, if these were not deposited in the Bank, to state the reasons to Congress.2 Louis McLane was then Secretary of the Treasury. He was friendly to the Bank, could see no reason to question the solvency of the institu- tion, and apparently thought that in the existing condition of affairs the public money would be much safer in the Bank than anywhere else. As he was a man of very considerable influence, Jackson evidently thought that it was better not to dismiss him. He appointed him Secretary of State in place of Edward Livingston, who went to France as our representative at Paris. McLane's place was given in 1833 to William J. Duane, who knew nothing of finance
1 Jackson is reported as saying to a — see the large amount of the funds
committee that went from Pitts- of the government applied to corrupt
burgh to Washington to protest against the press." B. A. Konkle's Life and
the removal of the deposits that he Speeches of Thomas Williams, \, 59.
would never "return the deposits . . . 2 Catterall's Second Bank of the
I will protect the morals of the people United States, Appendix I, § 16.
1833] REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS 449
or of the conduct of public business, but was the son of the editor of the "Aurora," whose influence was still supposed to be important in Pennsylvania. Apparently, Duane was not informed as to what he was to do when he was appointed. When he found out that he was expected to "remove the deposits" and thereby kill the Bank at the bidding of the President, he refused to obey.1 He also re- fused to resign and made it necessary for Jackson to re- move him. Jackson then transferred the Attorney General to the Treasury Department, this time there being full understanding as to what should be done. This man was Roger B. Taney, a former Maryland Federalist who had renounced his earlier political faith and was now a zealous Jacksonian. Taney was one of the ablest lawyers in the country, from whose advice Jackson had already profited. He made no trouble and signed the order directing his subordinates to cease depositing money with the United States Bank or its branches on September 26, 1833. 2 He also signed several drafts on the Bank for considerable sums, sending them to Baltimore and Philadelphia to be used in case the Bank should prove to be fractious. One of these drafts for five hundred thousand dollars was sent to the president of a Baltimore bank in which Taney himself was a director. This particular draft was cashed at an early day and the money used by the president of the Baltimore bank for speculative purposes. The United States Bank was naturally compelled to restrict its discounts, as the withdrawal, gradual though it was, of nine millions of government deposits could hardly fail to make such action
1 See W. J. Duane's Narrative and Life and Times of Henry Clay (2nd Correspondence concerning the Removal ed.), ii, chs. iii, iv. Taney's report of the Deposites (Philadelphia, 1838). of December 3, 1833 as to the removal
2 Samuel Tyler's Memoir of Roger of the deposits forms House Docu- Brooke Taney, 206. For the other ment. No. 2, 23rd Cong., 1st Sesa. side of the story, see Calvin Colton's
450 THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 [Cn. XIV
necessary ; but Jackson viewed this proceeding as quite unnecessary and as directed against himself.1
The later history of the Bank and its president is not pleasant reading. Biddle secured a State charter calling the new institution the Bank of the United States of Pennsyl- vania. It seems reasonably certain that this charter was secured by underhand means.2 As the president of a State bank, Biddle threw caution to the wind and used the funds of the institution for speculative purposes. Had times remained good, these speculations might have succeeded. As it was, in the perilous years from 1837 to 1843, the Bank of the United States of Pennsylvania closed its doors again and again until the latter year, when it closed them forever. Nicholas Biddle, himself, died in 1844, while still in middle life, a broken man.
Whatever its shortcomings, the Second Bank of the United States had performed a very useful work in taking care of the public funds and in transferring the government money to points where it was needed in the transaction of business. The question as to what should be done with the public moneys when there no longer was a monster Bank with its branches all over the country proved to be a difficult matter to adjust. The government itself had no vaults for the storage of bullion or paper money. The only thing to do was to utilize the State banks> and this proved to be a matter of difficulty and of danger. The general idea of politicians was that banks should be of political service
1 On the other hand, in September, Attempt to Corrupt the Integrity and 1833, Biddle described the Jack- Influence the Vote of Jacob Krebs sonians as "the gang of bankrupt (Harrisburg, 1836) ; Record of the gamblers who now wield the executive Testimony, Proceedings ... o/ an Al- power and who are aiming to throw the leged Attempt . . . Corruptly to In- country into disorder in hopes of plun- fluence and Bribe the Vote of Jacob dering during the confusion." Krebs, Esq. (Harrisburg, 1836) ; and
* See Proceedings of the Senate of Report of the Joint Committee of In-
Pennsylvania, together with the Record vestigation (Harrisburg, 1842). of the Testimony . . . of the Atteged
1833] THE "PET BANKS" 451
and likewise that successful party men should be of service to the banks which favored them. In the Northeastern States there were fairly sound State banks that were officered and capitalized by Democrats that could be expected to weather storms of ordinary violence. In the South and West, however, most of the banks were organized on perilous foundations and were already transacting business in a hazardous manner. The government prescribed stringent conditions as the price of receiving public deposits, but the selection of the favored banks was distinctly a matter of politics, like the appointment of treasury officials in Wash- ington and financial officers elsewhere. And it was by no means an easy task to differentiate between Democratic banks. The banks selected were as good as could be found, complying with the requirements of "sound politics" and willingness to assume the responsibilities attached to the holding of government funds ; but it was inevitable that these "pet banks," as they came to be called, should make many bad loans and should loan money with a free hand to their friends.1
The years of Jackson's second administration witnessed the wildest speculation that had taken place in the United States up to that time. Everybody was making money and putting it into lands, banks, roads, canals, railroads, buildings, factories, and cotton. The speculative activity was not peculiar to any one part of the country ; it obtained in New England and New York, as well as in Wisconsin, Tennessee, and Alabama. In New England the money went into factories ; in New York into farms, factories, and
1 The reports of Levi Woodbury, of this report without the accompany-
Secretary of the Treasury, of 1837 ing documents is printed in his Wrti-
and 1841 have much information ings, i, 425. The report of 1841 is
about State banking and public de- printed in full in ibid., i, 432, with the
posits. See House Documents, 25th documents in the " Appendix." Cong.. 1st Sess., No. 2. A portion
452 THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 [Ca. XIV
commerce ; in Wisconsin into developing lands and mines ; in Tennessee and Alabama into lands and slaves for the most part to increase the area of cotton cultivation. Rates for money advanced until in 1836 two and even four per cent a month was not unusual. In such circumstances un- scrupulous men always come to the fore, and this time was no exception. "Paper towns" in Wisconsin were sold in New York l and Georgia gold mines were capitalized and put on the markets at one hundred or two hundred per cent above their value. New banks were organized and went into wild competition with their neighbors. There was not nearly enough capital in the country to finance these operations. The high interest rates prevailing in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Charleston, and other commercial centers attracted capital from abroad, especially from Eng- land, so that by 1836 the country was heavily indebted to Europe. The reckless speculation in frontier lands aroused Jackson's attention and apprehension. He, himself, had caught something of the fever and had dispatched Alfred Moore to the Southwest to seek out and buy lands adapted to the growing of cotton. On March 6, 1836, Moore re- ported that the good unimproved lands in Alabama and Mississippi were in the hands of speculators and that the im- proved lands were held at prices at which it would be ruinous to purchase. For these reasons he had done nothing.2 The increase of banking capital and loans in this period is star- tling. In 1830, the banking capital of the country was one
1 On October 13, 1836, J. R. Dorr date of April 22, 1836, there is a letter
wrote from Detroit about the sale from Henry Clay introducing his
in New York of lots in the "City of brother Porter Clay of Jacksonville,
Lafontain" and adds "our Banks will Illinois, to Biddle with a statement
not discount a Dollar." See " M. L. that he had formed "an association
Martin Manuscripts" in the cabinet ... to make investments, as agents
of the Wisconsin Historical Society. for others, in the purchase of public
* See Moore's letter in the "Jack- lands." This was only one of multi- son Papers" in the Library of Con- tudinous agencies that were operating iwess. In the "Biddle Papers" under in the Western country.
1836]
THE "SPECIE CIRCULAR"
453
hundred and ten millions, in 1837, two hundred and twenty- five millions.1 Whichever way one looks, one comes upon similar facts all pointing to the increasing strain on credit. Good observers thought that the crash would come in the spring or early summer of 1836 ; but, although there were great difficulties in that year, they were obviated for the moment.
Jackson and the treasury officials did what they could to stem the tide of inflation which they had partly set in motion by providing the "pet banks" with loanable funds. In April, 1835, the Secretary of the Treasury ordered his subordinates to receive no bank notes of denominations under five dollars. In July, 1836, he issued the "Specie Cir- cular." 2 In this he directed government agents to accept only gold or silver or Virginia script in payment for public lands, except that until December 15 of that year actual settlers buying three hundred and twenty acres or less might pay for them as formerly. This circular stated that it had been issued in consequence of complaints that had been made of frauds, speculations, and monopolies which had been aided by excessive bank credits.
The last act in the Jacksonian financial drama was the distribution of the surplus government revenues to the States. Whether a national debt is a national blessing or not may be doubtful, but it is perfectly certain that a national surplus is a curse. One of Jackson's firmest con- victions, in which he followed his great predecessor, Thomas
'Benjamin R. Curtis in The North American Review, Iviii, p. 113.
* Senate Documents, 24th Cong., 2nd Sess., No. 15. The last para- graph states that the object of the measure was "to repress alleged frauds, and to withhold any countenance or facilities in the power of the Govern- ment from the monopoly of the public
lands in the hands of speculators and capitalists, to the injury of the actual settlers in the new States, and of emi- grants in search of new homes, as well as to discourage the ruinous exten- sion of bank issues, and bank credits." The "Specie Circular" is also printed in Richardson's Messages and Papers x, 104.
454 THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 [Cn. XIV
Jefferson, was that the national debt must be paid off at the earliest possible moment. Under ordinary circum- stances, when this had been accomplished the government revenues could be reduced. But under the Compromise Tariff Act of 1833 the duties collected on imported goods could be reduced only by the amounts provided in the act.1 The government paid off the final instalment of its debt in 1835, but until the year 1842 could not reduce its revenues to meet the demands of current expenses only. There was likely to be a large surplus in 1837, and what should be done with it was a difficult question. In other times it might have been used to pay for the completion of the Great National Road, or the construction of a line of canals along the coast ; but Jackson's veto of the Maysville Bill made any such disposition of the surplus revenues impossible The only thing that could be done was to deposit it with the pet banks or to distribute it to the States. No one seems to have advocated pouring any more money into the government banks, and there were grave doubts as to whether the Constitution authorized the federal government to collect money to pay over to the States. In the end this particular objection was euphemistically evaded by loaning the money to the States or depositing it with them, — every one being agreed that they would never be asked to pay it back. Another difficult question was how the money should be apportioned, whether it should be by population or by the federal ratio.2 In the act as passed the latter method was chosen. The surplus funds were to be deposited in quarterly instalments ; but when three of these had been made, the Panic of 1837 put an end to im-
1 See ante, p. 431 and n. pursued into wearisome lengths in the 1 Statutes at Large, v, 55. The ac- biographies of Clay and other states- count in McMaster's History (vi, 319 men of that time and in the works on and fol.) is detailed, and the subject is economic and financial history.
1837] DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS 455
portation and to the surplus. Probably it is not going too far to say that three-quarters of the money paid over to the States in this way was wasted.1 It does not seem, how- ever, that the "distribution" contributed to bring on the crash of 1837, but it has often been so regarded. One observer, who was not unfriendly to Jackson in the main, declared that the increase of loanable funds due to the Jack- sonian financial policy led to the panic and inflicted untold injuries upon the poorer classes — upon those who were least able to bear hardships and who had benefited very little by the inflation of the currency.2
The causes of the Panic of 1837 are by no means so simple of ascertainment as our historians have usually held. Jack- son's financial misdeeds could not have had much effect in bringing on the crisis, because it was world wide. No doubt the tremendous inflation that had taken place in the United States did contribute materially to make the crisis more severe and more prolonged in America and in Europe. The word " speculation" is a hateful term and is easily used to discredit whatever one does not like. It connotes failure or cessation of development. Investments in lands, build- ings, and industry, if they succeed, are included in the phrase "good business judgment" ; if they fail, they are stigmatized as speculation. The primal cause of the crash of 1837 was outside of the United States. The high interest
1 Edward G. Bourne's History of the loaned to corporations and to indi-
Surplus Revenue of 1837 (New York, viduals at seven per cent interest.
1885) is a very useful compilation from Sometimes these loans were secured
the more accessible sources. The "Re- by mortgage; at other times by
port of the Auditor of the State of "other adequate security" or "per-
Ohio, relative to the Surplus Revenue, sonal security." Some of it was used
February 3, 1837" forms Document to buy bank stock, some was loaned to
No. 40 of Documents, including Mes- transportation companies, and some
sages . . . made to the Thirty-Sixth was loaned to towns to use in erecting
General Assembly of . . . Ohio (Co- public buildings.
lumbus, 1837). By this it appears 2 See Henry Lee's Letters to the
that the Ohio money was paid out to the Cotton Manufacturers of Massachusetts,
several counties and by them was 128. -
456 THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 [Ca. XIV
rates paid for the use of capital in America had attracted large loans from England. English capital, moreover, had been freely used to develop manufacturing enterprises at home, and English capitalists in order to finance these opera- tions in Britain and America had drawn upon Europe for support. The earliest demand for the return of funds came from Europe. This impelled the great English banking houses to call upon their debtors for the repayment of funds advanced to them and to refuse to make further loans. This had fallen with heaviest weight on English bankers who were intimately connected with America, and had com- pelled them to take similar action at New York, Charles- ton, New Orleans, and other financial centers in America. The pressure from England came at the precise moment when there was already a great strain in America owing to the speculations in western lands and in the enlargement of the area of cotton production. Also a disastrous fire in New York in 1835 had destroyed a large amount of property and created a demand for funds with which to reconstruct. The Specie Circular no doubt drew gold and silver away from the Atlantic financial centers at the moment when British bankers were demanding the return of funds that had been loaned in America. On the other hand, the dis- tribution of the surplus, that came after the crash, may have minimized its effects by providing the banks with loanable funds that would otherwise have been held inactive by the government.
The primal cause of financial disturbances which have followed each other with some degree of regularity may possibly be found in the workings of the forces of nature.1
1 See for varying views, W. S. Jev- H. L. Moore's Economic Cycles : Their
ons's Investigations in Currency and Law and Cause (New York, 1914) ;
Finance, ch. vi; H. S. Jevons in the E. D. Jones's Economic Crises; Her-
Contemporary Review for August, 1909 ; bert Foster's Trade Cycles. The Pe*
1837] THE PANIC 457
Before everything else, human activities depend upon the production of food stuffs.1 A succession of bad harvests reacts upon industry and upon finance. It is an interesting fact that the crises of 1837 and 1857 synchronized with a maxima of sun spots. Going back to Benjamin Franklin and reading his letters to Cadwallader Golden of 1751 and 1752 and his papers on electricity 2 one is struck with the resemblance between his ideas and the modern theory of electron. It is not impossible that a diminution of solar activity influences agricultural production and thus affects all human activities. At all events the Panic of 1837 was of world wide extent and the causes underlying it were so widespread that one can attribute only a very small portion of it to the financial vagaries of the Jacksonian Democracy. In these discussions, students seem to have failed to dif- ferentiate between accumulated capital and credit. The amount of accumulated capital at any one time in the world is only a small proportion of the total amount of capital used in production. Anything that impairs credit puts a brake on the forces of productivity ; but the amount of accu- mulated capital remains practically the same. If this view is correct, the amount of credit involved in all the enter- prises that were going on in the United States in 1836 would have sufficed to sustain those enterprises, if something had not impaired its vitality. If these enterprises could have sustained themselves for a few years, the country would have caught up with them. And then, instead of condemna-
riodic Rise and Fatt in Prices, Wages: Quarterly Journal of Economics, xx,
and C. Juglar's DCS Crises Commer- 323-351.
dales et de leur Retour Periodigue * Franklin's Works (Bigelow ed.)
(2nd ed., Paris, 1889). Jones's book ii, 251, and Franklin's Works (Sparkp
has a good bibliography down to 1900, ed.), v. See on Franklin's electrica.
and later titles may be found in Moore's theories John Trowbridge's " Frank-
Cycles. lin as a Scientist" in the Publications
1 A.. P. Andrew's "Influence of of the Colonial Society of Massachu*
Crops on Business in America" in setts, rviii, p. 1.
458
THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 [Ca. XIV
tion of speculation and of Jackson, historian after historian would have marvelled at the sagacity of the Democratic administration and at the shrewdness of the business men and cotton growers of that day.
Martin Van Buren1 had acquired the confidence of Andrew Jackson in 1828 and years of association had in nowise diminished it. He was the administration candidate for President and no other Democrat had the slightest chance of being nominated or elected in face of the opposition of "the General." The Whigs, as the anti-democratic party had come to call itself, put forward as their candidate General William Henry Harrison of Ohio, a Virginian by birth, and descendant, so it is said, of the Puritan Major General Harrison, "the Fifth Monarchy Man" of Oliver Cromwell's time.2 They did this in the hope that another military hero might overwhelm the cool-blooded lawyer of Kinderhook, as General Jackson had defeated John Quincy Adams, eight years before. The time was not yet ripe and Van Buren was elected by good majorities.3
In the election of 1836 many new elements came to the surface of political life. Some of these had been in existence for years, but Jackson's popularity had then obscured every-
1 There is no adequate account of Van Buren's life and services. His Jacksonian affiliations prejudiced him with the Northern literary group and his later anti-slavery convictions de- prived him of the favor of the South- erners. Edward M. Shepard's Martin Van Buren in the American Statesmen series is the best book that has yet appeared, but it is very brief. W. M. Holland's Life and Political Opinions of Martin Van Buren that was pub- lished at Hartford in 1835 is better than most campaign biographies, and its "authenticity" was admitted by Van Buren himself. In later life the ex-President prepared an autobiog- raphy which was published in 1920 by
the American Historical Association under the editorship of John C. Fitz- patricks. In 1910 the Library of Con- gress published a Calendar of lf,e Papers of Martin Van Buren which are in that institution.
2 See F. A. Inderwick's Side-Lights on the Stuarts (London, 1891), p. 289.
* Van Buren received 170 or lf>7 electoral votes — as one included or excluded Michigan — to 73 for Harri- son. The popular vote was 761,549 for Van Buren to 736,656 for all others- Journal of tlie House of Repre- sentatives, 24th Cong., 2nd Sess., pp. 357-360, and Greeley and Cleveland's Political Text-Book for I860, p. 239..
1836] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 459
thing else. Of these the Anti-Masonic faction or party, as it later became,1 was the most extraordinary and the most im- portant. It grew out of the excitement over the disappear- ance of William Morgan, who was on the point of betraying Masonic secrets or had betrayed them. There is much doubt as to the story, but the exactness or inexactness of this detail or that is of slight consequence. The important fact was the discovery that in New York — and in some other States as well — practically all the State office-holders, including the judges, were Masons. So powerful was the order that it seemed to be impossible to ascertain the truth as to anything where a Mason was involved, or to bring any of them to justice. No doubt there was a great deal of exaggeration. As one man expressed it, anti-masonry was "a moral and political cholera." Nevertheless, the hue and cry against masonry gave a rallying point for discontented Democrats and Whigs. Another group of the politically restless was composed of radical reformers who suddenly came into prominence in 1836 and flourished so luxuriantly in some localities for short spaces of time that they caused dismay to regular party leaders. These f eople were called Loco-focos.2 Then there were the labor candi- dates, but these were not formidable. The Loco-focos aiid the Anti-Masons were strong in New York and the per- turbations and hopes of the politicians of that State were correspondingly strong. Van Buren was himself a good deal of a radical, but the Democratic party was distinctly conserv-
1 See Note at end of chapter. Jefferaonian, a paper that was edited
2 See William Trimble's " Diverg- by Horace Greeley and published at ing Tendencies in New York Democ- Albany in 1838. The Loco-focos at- racy " in American Historical Review, tained this name through having xxiv, 396-421, and the books therein provided themselves with loco-foco cited, especially F. Byrdsall's History or self-igniting matches and also with of the Loco-Foco or Equal Rights Party. candles to foil a plot by the regulars to The disreputable political scandal of destroy their meeting by turning out the the day has been preserved in The lights.
460 THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 [Ca.
ative. In the upshot, and largely because of his promise to follow in the footsteps of President Jackson, Van Buren was elected in 1836, but it was inevitable that the forces of unrest should gather around the opposition party in the next four years.
Van Buren was scarcely comfortably installed in the White House, when the panic swept over the country : everywhere the banks closed their doors,1 the imports fell off, and with them the customs revenues and the dwin- dling receipts from the land offices stopped altogether. When three of the four instalments of the distribution had been made, the treasury was wholly empty and the govern- ment was unable to pay the salaries of the clerks in the departments. The Specie Circular had greatly diminished the demand for the notes of the "pet banks" and had also greatly lessened their business. The deposit of the surplus revenue had been badly managed. It would have been possible for the States to enter into some arrangement by which the federal money which they received could have been slowly transferred from the "pet banks" to the institutions that were used by the States or to the State treasuries. As it was, the depository banks were obliged to curtail credits and hold funds inactive in their vaults when they would have been usefully employed outside. The question at once came up for decision at Washington as to what could be done with the funds that were slowly dribbling in. They could not be deposited in the "pet banks," for many of them had closed their doors and most of the rest were preparing to do likewise and, of course, the successor of Jackson could not direct the deposit of
1 F. H. Elmore, writing from Charles- awful and every hour adds to the spread
ton on April 13, 1837, describes second of ruin." "Elmore Papers" in Library
hand "the crashing of the merchants of Congress. [at New York]. The accounts are
1837] THE INDEPENDENT TREASURY 461
federal money in the Biddle Bank at Philadelphia or in the undemocratic banks of the Northeast. The only thing that could be done at the moment was to direct the receivers of public funds to care for them as well as they could. When Congress met in the autumn in special session, Van Buren greeted it with a message advocating the establishment of a treasury system entirely independent of the business of the country.1 In the future, according to this plan, all moneys, as they came in, should be deposited in the treasury at Washington, in the vaults of the mints at Philadelphia, New Orleans, or Dahlonega, or in subsidiary treasuries in the principal importing cities where vaults would be built. The Whigs fought the scheme with all their strength, but in 1840 there was a sufficient administration majority in Congress to pass the acts necessary to establish the In- dependent Treasury system. There were several weak points in the plan. While the necessary vaults were being constructed, it would have been perfectly feasible to deposit the federal monies in the vaults of existing banks where they could be held and drawn upon by the government without being in any way made the basis of loans. The act forbade the treasury officials to make any use whatever of the existing banking institutions. They could not receive the notes of any of them or receive payment in the form of drafts on them. In 1837 the government asked for authority to issue treasury notes to tide itself over the period until customs revenues should again begin to come in. This authority was granted and the country saw a government
1 Message of September 4, 1837 for payment at any particular place (Richardson's Messages and Papers, which, in a well-conducted govern- iii, 324). It is interesting to read that ment, ought to have as much credit Jefferson on December 13, 1803, had as any private draft, or bank note, or already suggested that the government bill, and would give us the same fa- should hold its own funds — "letting cili ties which we derive from the banks." the treasurer give his draft or note Writings (Memorial ed.), x, 439.
462 THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 [Cn. XIV
that had recently been depositing millions with the States incurring new debts to pay its everyday expenses.
As one year succeeded another, the financial condition of the country did not improve, except, of course, in some localities and then only for brief periods. Some of the banks, especially in the Northeastern States, resumed specie payments after a few months, but most of them were again compelled to suspend. This process of alternately paying and not paying went on until many banks closed their doors forever. In this time of stress, people naturally laid the cause of their troubles upon the existing administration. It was the Whigs' opportunity ; but instead of selecting their real leader, Henry Clay, to lead them to victory when vic- tory was fairly certain, they again brought forward the "Hero of Tippecanoe," General William Henry Harrison. Undoubtedly there was a certain glamour surrounding a successful military personage and, possibly, the discontented would not have ranged themselves behind the banner of Henry Clay. For the candidate for the vice-presidency, the Whigs turned to John Tyler of Virginia, one of the few anti-Jackson Democrats to be found in the country.1 The campaign began sluggishly until a Harrisburg politician chanced upon an ill-natured jibe of a Baltimore editor to the effect that if Harrison were given two thousand dollars a year, a log cabin, and a barrel of cider he would be perfectly happy for the rest of his life. The Harrisburger went at once to a sign painter and had him paint a log cabin and the accessories and paraded it before the ratification meeting that was held at that place.2 The suggestion aroused en-
1 Among the innumerable publi- hold the principles of Jefferson : the
cations of the campaign may be men- first numbers were dignified in tone, but
tioned The Northern Man with South- as the campaign progressed the tone
ern Principles and The Rough-Hewer. became scurrilous.
The latter was published at Albany * Richard S. Elliott's Notes taken
from February 20, 1840, to December in Sixty Years (St. Louis, 1883), p
24 of that year. It purported to up- 120.
1840] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 463
thusiasm and thereupon began a campaign of " Hurrah ! " and unreason that has never been paralleled in the United States. Log-cabins with a table and a jug of cider, with a coon skin nailed on the door, and a representation of the General sitting by and drinking out of a gourd, were dragged through the streets by thousands of men wearing "wide- awake" or soft broad-brimmed hats instead of the more for- mal stiff top hats that were now fitting only for Democratic aristocrats like Van Buren, who sat in a stuffed chair in the President's Palace and used a gold spoon wherewith to take his food. As the marching men proceeded, they burst into song,1 the favorite being "Tippecanoe, and Tyler, too" to the tune of "The Little Pig's Tail" :
Tippecanoe and Tyler too,
Tippecanoe and Tyler too ! And with them we'll beat little Van, Van, Van,
And with them we'll beat little Van — Oh ! Van is a used-up man !
When the votes were counted, it was found that Harrison and Tyler, too, had been elected by large majorities in the popular vote and in the electoral vote.2
On March 4, 1841, President Harrison delivered his inaug- ural and took up his residence in the White House. Thou- sands had come to Washington to ereet him and to secure
1 Elliott's Notes, 125. A good ac- roast beef." E. S. Martin's Choate,
count of the choral aspects of the cam- i, 52.
paign is C. B. Galbreath's "Song * Harrison received 234 electoral
Writers of Ohio" in Ohio Archaeological votes to 60 for Van Buren. The
and Historical Quarterly, xiv, 62. popular vote was 1,275,011 for Harri-
Among the effective means of arous- son to 1,122,912 for Van Buren. It is
ing enthusiasm was the propulsion worth noting that in addition James
of a gigantic ball by the campaigners G. Birney, the abolitionist candidate,
from town to town and from State to received 7059 votes. Journal of the
State, accompanied by song- "Hail House of Representatives, 26th Cong.,
to the ball which in grandeur ad- 2nd Sess., pp. 251-254 and Greeley
vances." According to Joseph H. and Cleveland's Political Text-Book
Choate, the winning campaign cry was for 1860, p. 239. Harrison and "Two dollars a day and
464 THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837 [Cn. XIV
offices, for the "rascals" were to be turned out and good men and true, who had voted the Whig ticket, given the jobs. The office-seekers filled the boarding houses and over- flowed into the public spaces and some of them even slept in the doorways of the President's Palace. One of these office-seekers, who had played an important part in the election, went to Washington to see what he could get. He was well known and well recommended. Making little headway in his quest, he, too, sought out the President, was received graciously by him, and invited to dinner. The opportunity seemed to have come, but the President managed the conversation so skilfully that no mention of office was made during the whole time. However, this particular applicant ultimately procured an Indian agency from which there seemed to be hope of gain and departed with a somewhat different idea of the simple-minded old general than that with which he had entered the capital city.
In a month President Harrison was dead and, for the first time in our history, a Vice-President succeeded to the chief magistracy. The precise place that John Tyler ought to hold in our annals is very difficult to determine.1 He certainly had the courage of his convictions, having opposed Jackson when such opposition meant apparently the loss of political position. He made so many enemies and we know so little of his inner life that one cannot say whether he was a high-minded man of principle or a weak-minded Virginian who broke his word for the hope of election to the presidency in 1844. The story, so far as it is known, is a simple one. Clay and the Whigs carried through Congress a bill to
1 The family view is given in Monument in 1915 presents the Vir-
Lyon G. Tyler's Letters and Times of ginian estimate in brief and readable
the Tylers. Armistead C. Gordon's form. Address at the dedication of the Tyler
1841]
JOHN TYLER
465
charter a new national bank which lacked some of the objectionable features of the older ones, but when the bill was presented to Tyler he vetoed it. Then another bill was prepared, this time embodying what it was understood Tyler would approve ; but it too was vetoed. Probably the exact truth in the matter has never been stated and possibly it never can be,1 for subterranean negotiations are very difficult to trace and also many documents perished in the four years of the War for Southern Independence. The "Whigs broke with the President, and the extraordinary spectacle was to be seen of a President without a party and an overwhelmingly victorious party without any control of the Executive which it and misfortune had placed in the chief magistracy. For the next few years the treasury got on as well as it could without any formally organized system of holding the national funds. In 1846, in the time of President Polk, the independent treasury system was re- established and continued for over sixty years in vigorous operation, — until it was replaced in part by the Federal Reserve scheme of tying the whole banking organization of the country to the government at Washington.
1 The anti-Tyler side comes out strongly in the "Diary of Thomas
Ewing" in American Historical Re- view, xviii, 97-112.
VOL. V — 2H
466 THE BANK AND THE PANIC OF 1837
NOTE
Anti-Masonry. — Henry Gassett prefixed an elaborate arraign- ment of Masonry to his Catalogue of B oks on the Masonic Institution in Public Libraries of Twenty-eigh1 States of the Union (Boston, 1852). The two sides of the controversy may be best seen in William L. Stone's Letters on Masonry and Anti-Masonry (New York, 1832) and John Quincy Adams's Letters on the Masonic Institution (Boston, 1847). Stone's book is really an answer to letters that Adams had written in 1831 which are collected and printed in the second of these volumes. William Morgan's Illustrations of Masonry published by David C. Miller in 1827 is sometimes attributed to Morgan. The second edition is a good deal fuller than the earlier one. Henry Brown's Narrative of the Anti-Masonick Excitement that was published at Batavia, New York, in 1829, and the Narrative of the . . . Kidnapping and Pre- sumed Murder of William Morgan that was printed at Brookfield in 1827 give that contact with the actualities of the day that is so interesting to the historical student. Charles McCarthy's " The Antimasonic Party " in American Historical Association's Report for 1902, vol. i, 365-574, brings together modern information on the subject and has an excellent bibliography.
CHAPTER XV
WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS AFTER 1840
IN 1840 the population of Transappalachia was nearly seven millions ; by 1850 this had increased to over ten and one-half millions and by 1860 to more than fifteen millions. Before 1840 the immigration from abroad had been small in comparison with the total population of the United States at that time or with the immigration of the next twenty years.1 In the decade ending with September, 1829, only 128,502 foreign immigrants were noted by the officials ; in the ten years ending June 1, 1840, over one-half million of them arrived in the United States. In the next decade the number rose to over one and one-half millions, and in the ten years ending in 1860 the number had risen to nearly three millions. In 1840 there could not have been many over three-quarters of a million persons of foreign birth in the country,2 but by 1860 this number had risen to over four
1 The figures in the text are taken 1872 Dr. Jarvis, using European emi-
from William J. Bromwell's History gration reports and estimating the
of Immigration to the United States number of natives of the British prov-
(New York, 1856), p. 175; the Census inces who had come into the country
of 1860, i, pp. xix, xxix ; and Edward by land, determined the number of
Jarvis's History of the Progress of immigrants arriving in the United
Population of the United States, p. 9. States in the ten years ending in 1830
Similar figures may be deduced from as 200,000, instead of 143,439 as given
the Statistical View . . . A Com- by Bromwell and repeated in the
pendium of the Seventh Census, p. 122. Census of 1860 (p. xix).
Jesse Chickering (Immigration into 2 In 1869, Friedrich Kapp estimated
the United States, Boston, 1848) gives that in 1850 the descendants of the
tables of the foreign passengers arriv- white and free colored population of
ing according to the custom house the country in 1790 would have
returns. There can be little ques- amounted by natural reproduction to
tion but that all the estimates based 7,355,423. The population of the
on these returns are defective and United States then, exclusive of slaves,
much under the actual numbers. In was 19,987,563. From this it would
467
468 WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS [On. XV
millions. Of the immigrants who came in the years before 1850 about one-half of them had remained in or near the port of debarkation. A few of the new-comers sought the Far South, but the great mass of those who did not stay on the Northern seaboard could be found in the Old Northwest and in the country just across the Mississippi.1 In the decade after 1850, the immigrants came in different pro- portions from different countries, but, after their arrival in the United States, they went the same ways.
Of the groups of foreigners who came to the United Sta.tes,2 the Scandinavians left their northern homes mainly because of economic pressure, but religious beliefs had some- thing to do with the migration of many of them. It was in the year 1825 that the sloop Restaurationen sailed from Stavanger for New York and in just under one hundred days entered the latter port. She left Norway with fifty- two passengers on board and reached New York with fifty- three, for a child had been born on the voyage. These first Norwegian pilgrims settled at Kendall in New York State and cultivated their farms there for the rest of their lives ;
appear that foreign immigrants since 1,952,332. Of these no less than
1790 and their descendants numbered 1,451,905 were in the Old Northwest,
in 1850, 12,632,140. Probably Kapp Wisconsin, Iowa, California, and Ne-
underestimated the proportion of chil- vada ; there being no fewer than 146,528
dren born in new communities (see foreigners in California in that year, his "Immigration" in Journal of Various means were tried to re-
Social Science for 1870). strain immigrants from going to
1 The information on these sub- Transappalachia ; among them was the
jects in the Censuses of 1830, 1850, issuing of a pamphlet entitled To
and 1860, and in the several com- Persons Inclining to Emigrate to
pendiums compiled from them, is America which showed the advan-
somewhat vague and not at all easy tages of western Pennsylvania in
to handle; but the following figures comparison with "the dangers of the
have been compiled and are printed middle West."
here for what they are worth. In Caroline E. MacGill has an inter- 1830 the total foreign population of esting study of foreign immigration to Transappalachia was 10,313. Of this the Southern States in The South in 8005 were in the Old Northwest ; in the Building of the Nation, v, 595, with 1850 the total number had risen to a list of books at the end. 800,742, of whom 566,310 were in the 2 Rasmus B. Anderson's First Chap- Old Northwest and Wisconsin and ter of Norwegian Immigration, 54- lowa. In 1860 the total number was 131.
1830] THE SCANDINAVIANS 469
but their descendants are scattered widely over the country, although few of them can be found south of Mason and Dixon's line. The letters that the "sloop" party wrote to their friends and former neighbors in the old land were copied and passed from house to house, being read by hun- dreds of persons. It was some time before the settlers in New York had much to write about their new homes, but by 1836 Norwegians and Swedes by the hundreds and thou- sands sailed across the Atlantic, passed through New York and over the Lakes to Illinois and Wisconsin. Some of them and many of their descendants went farther west, even to the Pacific. This later movement was greatly accelerated by the publication of Ole Rynning's "True Account of America for the Information and Help of Peasant and Commoner." l Rynning had come to America in 1837 and had settled with his party at Beaver Creek to the south- ward of Chicago, in Illinois. They suffered greatly from malaria, and most of those who survived removed to other parts of the State. Rynning's little book was written when he had been in America only eight months, but it was the work of a keen observer. The United States, so he wrote, was more than twenty times the size of Norway and con- tained all kinds of lands. It was so extensive that there was no danger of immediate over-population and the Americans welcomed industrious and moral people. Land could be easily obtained and, when paid for, belonged absolutely to the purchaser. There were many speculators who were accustomed to lie in wait for the stranger and cheat him. There is no king in the United States ; but there is a man called "president," who "exercises just about as much
X
1 This was printed at Christiania, 4, pp. 221-269. See also R. B. Ander-
in 1838, and is translated in full with a son's First Chapter of Norwegian 1m-
valuable introduction by T. C. Blegen migration, 202-218. in Minnesota History Bulletin, ii, No.
470 WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS [Ca. XV
authority as a king." There are laws and government and authorities in America, but everyone is free to engage in any honorable occupation and to go wherever he wishes without a passport. The author declared that he knew several bach- elors, each of whom had saved two hundred dollars clear by ordinary labor in one year's time. Rynning's book and other accounts in writing and in print led to a greatly in- creased migration from Scandinavian lands after 1840.
The Norwegians and the Swedes came in groups composed of families that had lived as neighbors in the old land. At first the members of each group lived together; but their descendants scattered far and wide over the country north of the State of Arkansas. In later years more of them have remained in the Eastern States, especially in New York and in Massachusetts.1 Of all the groups or colonies that came out from Sweden, none has attracted more attention than the community which followed Eric Janson to the New World and named their settlement Bishop Hill from Bishop- skulla, his birthplace. Like some other religious enthu- siasts, Janson believed that he represented Christ and that the glory of his work would "far exceed that . . . accom- plished by Jesus and his Apostles." 2 In Sweden the Jan- sonist or Devotionalist movement at first attracted little attention. As its followers increased in numbers, perse- cution began and waxed stronger and stronger until they determined to migrate to America. To do this they were obliged to combine their worldly goods to provide for the emigration of the poorer families, but communism was not
1 Kendric C. Babcock's Scandi- ing the growth and distribution of the
navian Element in the United States Scandinavians.
(University of Illinois, Bulletin, xii, 2 Michael A. Mikkelsen's "The
'No. 7). • There is a valuable bibliog- Bishop Hill Colony" in Johns Hop-
raphy at the end of this essay. G. kins Studies, x, No. 1 , p. 25. At the
T. Flora's History of Norwegian Immi- end is a list of books on this settle-
gration to the United States has some ment. See also W. A. Hinds's Ameri-
interesting tables in Appendix I, show- can Communities (ed. 1908), 340-360.
1846] THE DEVOTIONALISTS
a part of Janson's religious plan. The Devotionalists began to arrive at New York in 1846. They slowly and painfully made their way thence to Henry County, Illi- nois, — some of them going on foot the greater part of the way. A part of Janson's plan was to convert all mankind to the blessings of the new dispensation. At once some of the younger men, filled with missionary zeal, set to work to learn English and soon departed from Bishop Hill to spread the new faith. After the Devotionalists had been in the country two or three years and were beginning to see some prosperity ahead of them, Janson was murdered by an American convert who had married a cousin of the prophet and later wished to abandon the faith and take his wife with him. She declined. Janson supported her in her refusal and the husband killed him. For a time the affairs of the colony prospered ; but then misfortunes came upon the community and eventually the Bishop Hill colony went into the hands of a receiver.
The German migration to our country began in colonial days.1 There were the Palatines, the Mennonites, and others who settled in Pennsylvania and Virginia and else- where. They and their children fought on the American side in the Revolution while their cousinry from Hesse Cassel and other German states fought for their British employers. After the Revolution, the Germans began coming again, but the history of the movement is indistinct before 1830. The statisticians assert that in the preceding ten years 6761 Germans and Prussians arrived in the United States by sea ; but this number is too small. It probably does not include those who came by way of Quebec, or those who landed in Texas before annexation to the United States.2
1 For books on the German migra- ! See Moritz Tiling's German Ela-
tion, see Note I at end of the chapter. ment in Texas, 125.
472 WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS [Cn. XV
After 1830, the German migration greatly increased, and in the five years beginning with 1850 no fewer than 654,251 immigrants from German lands disembarked at United States ports.1
Individual Germans and some families had come to Texas before 1830. The first movement of any size began after the revolutionary activities in France, which filled many Germans with radical ideas, and it was stimulated by the publication in 1829 of Gottfried Duden's "Reise nach den westlichen Staaten Nordamerika's." 2 Princes, dukes, and other German potentates arrested and imprisoned the radi- cals in their principalities and dukedoms, and those who escaped found it desirable to emigrate. Thereupon they hit upon the idea of founding a "German State" in the United States. It would have to be a member of the Union, but its existence would "assure the continuance of German customs, German language and create a genuine free and popular life ... in order that a German republic, a rejuve- nated Germany may arise in North America." Others had larger ideas and suggested founding several States which would be predominantly German in character and in lan- guage; and, if this were found to be impossible, would secede.3 Emigration societies were formed in Germany and colonies were sent out to the newer parts of the United States and thousands of individuals came with their wives and children on their own resources. The societies died after a few years, and the settlers, while living together in towns or communities to a very great extent, gave up all expectation
1 See Bromwell's Immigration to the do. An interesting account of the
United States, 177. Germans, themselves, is in F. L. Olm-
* K. F. W. Wander's Auswande- sted's Journey Through Texas (New
rungs-Katechismus . . . fur Auswan- York, 1857) ch. iii. derer . . . nach Nordamerika that was * See Moritz Tiling's German Ele
published at Glogau in 1852 gives ment in Texas, 15, and books cited
one an idea of what a German emi- therein, grant of that time was expected to
1830] THE GERMANS 473
of founding a distinctively German State. Probably Wis- consin came near to answering their expectation.1 The climate there was suited to them and the conditions of agriculture were not unlike those of the Fatherland. In the period treated in this volume, the German immigrants were farmers for the most part; but in later times they gathered into certain cities until some of them, as Mil- waukee, became practically German communities. Many of the Germans took an active part in local politics and some of them rose to eminence in the national government. In 1848 there was another revolutionary epoch in Europe. Again the movement was unsuccessful in Germany and led to a renewed migration, this time on a very large scale. Although the Germans never achieved the early ideal of founding a distinctively German State, they preserved their language and national customs by the formation of societies for social and cultural purposes, many of which have had long and vigorous lives.
Of all the German societies that were formed for the pur- pose of encouraging emigration to America, none was more interesting than the "League of the Nobility" or the "Main- zer Adelsverein." It was founded in 1842. The Duke of Nassau was honorary president, and among its twenty-one noble members were the Prince of Leiningen, Prince Frederic William of Prussia, the Prince of Solms-Braunfels, and Count Carl von Castell. Two members of the society came to Texas on a prospecting tour in 1842 and having secured a grant of land returned to Germany. The princely pro- moters then fell into the hands of unscrupulous speculators who sold them temporary rights of preemption that were
1 Kate A. Everest (afterwards Mrs. papers : in Transactions of the Wia-
Levi) has studied the German immi- consin Academy, vii, 289 ; Wisconsin
gration to Wisconsin with great care State Historical Society's Collections,
and embodied the results in three xii, 299 and xiv, 341.
474 WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS [Cn. XV
bought by the Germans on the supposition that they were grants in fee simple. In 1844 three vessels brought from four hundred to seven hundred Germans to Texas with their household goods. Prince Solms had preceded them and had made the unpleasant discovery that their land grant was already forfeited by reason of not having been used within the specified time. There was plenty of unoccupied land in Texas, however, and the authorities were eager for hard-working colonists. Slowly and painfully, the Germans made their way from Galveston to the interior. And in the next few years they were joined by at least six thousand more new-comers from the Fatherland. They had under- stood that the Adelsverein would provide for them until they could shift for themselves, but they were left practically to their own resources. Then came the Mexican War, which necessarily disturbed the ordinary course of coloniza- tion in Texas, and epidemics due to climatic changes and the turning up of the virgin soil also attacked the colonists. One thousand of them are said to have died in one year, and the Adelsverein went into bankruptcy and dissolved. A beginning had been made, and the Texas settlements continued to attract thousands of other Germans, and in 1850 they and their children are said to have formed one- fifth of the total white population of that State.1
In 1850 there were more than two million foreigners in the United States and in 1860 almost double that number.2 In both years the immigrants from the British Empire greatly outnumbered those from the rest of the world ; but in each year the Germans greatly outnumbered those from the non-British countries. Of the new-comers from the
1 German writers give this proper- the figures of the Census of 1850,
tion: see Moritz Tiling's German Ele- which gives the total German "born"
ment in Texas, 125, and Gilbert G. in Texas as 8191.
Benjamin's Germans in Texas, 59. * Census of 1860, "Population,"
It is difficult to reconcile this with p. xxviii.
1850]
STATISTICS OF IMMIGRATION
475
British Empire, numbering nearly a million and a half in 1850, not quite one million had come from Ireland. Of the non-British immigrants and non-Irish immigrants, more than half a million were listed as of German birth in 1850 and more than one million and a quarter in 1860. It is easy to see from these figures that Irish and German immigrants formed the great mass of the foreign-born population of the United States in this period.1 It will not be out of the way to note, perhaps, that in 1850 there were 758 persons
1 SELECTED FOREIGN NATIONALITIES IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1850
|
GREAT BRITAIN |
SCANDINAVIAN |
|||
|
SECTIONS |
(ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, |
IRELAND |
GERMANY |
LANDS (NOR- WAY, SWEDEN, |
|
WALES) |
DENMARK) |
|||
|
Atlantic seaboard north |
||||
|
of Potomac .... |
230,942 |
745,605 |
241,830 |
2,731 |
|
Atlantic seaboard so. of |
||||
|
Potomac incl. District |
||||
|
of Columbia . . . |
9,509 |
22,714 |
10,693 |
234 |
|
Transappalachia, north |
||||
|
of Ohio R- and east |
||||
|
of Miss. R |
107,568 |
126,608 |
222,590 |
12,825 |
|
Transappalachia, south |
||||
|
of Ohio R. and east |
||||
|
of Miss. R |
7,221 |
17,673 |
16,907 |
179 |
|
Transappalachia, west |
||||
|
of Miss. R., north of |
||||
|
Arkansas to 109th |
||||
|
11,578 |
19,890 |
51,645 |
870 |
|
|
Transappalachia, west |
||||
|
of Miss- R. and south |
||||
|
of Missouri to 109th |
||||
|
meridian |
6,425 |
26,475 |
26,429 |
818 |
|
Pacific Slope west of the |
||||
|
109th meridian V . |
5,850 |
2,754 |
3,131 |
418 |
|
Totals |
379,093 |
961,719 |
573,225 |
18,047 |
Besides the above enumerated im- migrants from the British Empire, there were 147,711 from British America, most of whom probably were born within the dominions of the British king. The total number of all foreigners in the United States, including those enumer-
ated above, in 1850 was 2,210,839. Of these 1,690,699 were in the States north of the Potomac and Ohio rivera and east of the Mississippi, and 85,130 south of the Potomac and Ohio rivera and east of the Mississippi River.
476 WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS [Ca. XV
of Chinese birth in the country and that this number had risen to 35,567 in 1860.
The English, the Scots, and the Welsh were impelled to migration by economic distress, with the exception of those who followed Mormon missionaries to the New World and those who belonged to the Shakers or to some other of the sects. They spread all over the country. Some of them went to the South. Many of them went to Wisconsin and other Northwestern States, but possibly one-quarter of the whole number remained within the limits of the State of disembarkation. They were drawn to Wisconsin by the opportunities for farming there and by the mineral wealth of the southwestern part of the State. It is said that no less than seven thousand Cornish people settled around Mineral Point before 1850. 1 Of the farmers there was one named Samuel Skewes who came from the southern part of Eng- land. He sailed from Falmouth to Quebec, paying three pounds passage money for each member of his family. Arrived at Quebec, he left for Montreal on the steamboat and thence to Toronto and Lewestown. From that place he went by "rail carrs" to Buffalo and there took another steamer to Racine. The total time consumed on the jour- ney from England to Wisconsin was two months and seven days. The Canadian route by Quebec was much frequented in those years in the months when the St. Lawrence was free from ice. Skewes had friends in Racine and in the neigh- boring town of Yorkville. He appears to have been a man of some means, as he at once acquired improved land and bought more unimproved land from the government. He prospered from the start and soon became a substantial
1 T. S. Allen's Directory of the City eminent of an early settlement in Wis-
of Mineral Point for the Year 1859 consin may be understood by reading
contains an interesting historical the Act of Incorporation . . . of Mineral
sketch and some illustrative statistics Point which was printed at that place
and advertisements. The form of gov- in 1855.
1850] THE ENGLISH 477
citizen of his new home. Samuel Skewes must have been typical of the English farming class, but there are very few diaries that have been preserved that give us so interesting a picture as does his.1
A group of English settlers, who also came to Wisconsin, offers another study, fully as interesting, but very different. This enterprise was set on foot by the "British Temperance Emigration Society" which was organized at Liverpool, England. Apparently it was a money-making venture with philanthropic aspirations. There was stock which was subscribed for and the emigrants expected to pay rent for their lands in America as people paid rent for their farms in England. The Society, or some of its leading men, seem to have tried to cultivate the soil of the New World while they themselves lived in England. This colony was located at Mazomanie in Dane County, to the northwestward of Madison and not far from it. The first settlers came out in 1843, each one having eighty acres allotted to him. In the next eight years, about six hundred persons came to the settlement from twelve English counties, from Wales, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. They at once began to find fault with the scheme of rent paying, for no one around them paid rent. There was litigation between the company's agents and the farmers, and the later history of the enter- prise is uncertain ; but the Temperance Society was still in existence in 1851. 2
There were many Irish men and women in America before the Revolution and they played their parts in that move-
»" Diary of Samuel Skewes, 1839 * Manuscripts of the British Tem-
to 1870" (Mss.) in the cabinet of the perance Society are in the Library of
Wisconsin Historical Society. the Wisconsin Historical Society. See
An interesting and much more elabo- also William Kittle's History of the
rate account of a migration is to be found Township ano\ Village of Mazomanie
in "The Letters of Edwin Bottomlcy, (Madison, 1900). 1842--1850 ' (Wisconsin State Historical Society's Collections, xxv).
478 WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS [Cn. XV
ment ; but the great Irish migration began in the 1840's and continued as prosperity or adversity visited the land of their birth or the country to which they came. The famine in Ireland in 1847 l and the following years has been ascribed to various causes, as the Union of 1800 and an excess of rain- fall. Local sources of relief were speedily exhausted and England could do little for the sufferers because she also was in distress. As the months went by, beggars crept through the streets and lanes of the Irish towns ; the starv- ing and penniless lay half naked in their fireless and foodless cabins, counting the days to the inevitable death ; and in no long time the dead became so numerous that they were laid away between two boards wound about with ropes of straw. There was nothing for the survivors to do but to leave the land of their birth and those who could did so. In 1841 the population of Ireland was a little over eight millions ; in ten years time it had dropped to six and a half millions.2 In 1840 there came to the United States 40,642 persons from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Ten years later in 1850 there were living in the United States 961,719 immigrants of Irish birth.3 Unlike the English, the Germans, and the Swedes, the Irish came as individuals and families ; there was no occasion for them to form themselves into colonies and communities, because their race and religion bound them together indissolubly. Some Irishmen took up farming lands in the West ; 4 others
1 See Asenath Nicholson's Annalt America, 241. See also Spencer Wal- of the Famine in Ireland, in 1847, 1848, pole's History of England (ed. 1890), and 1849 (New York, 1851). v, 209 note, and "The Irish Crisis"
2 J. D. B. DeBow's Compendium in The Edinburgh Review for Jan. of the Seventh Census, 124, and Census 1848.
of 1850, p. xxxvii. P. H. Bagenal * Cardinal Gibbons has an inter-
(American Irish, 28) gives 58,043 esting and brief study of the numbers
Irish arriving in the United States in of Irish immigrants in his Retrospect
1846; 111,984 in 1847; dwindling to of Fifty Years, i, 268 and fol. 56,328 in 1855. But it is not clear 4 See O'Hanlon's Life and Scenery in
whence the figures came. See also Missouri (Dublin, 1890), ch. xxiv. Edward Young's Labor in Europe and
1850] THE IRISH 479
settled on vacant acres in the older States ; but the great mass of them remained in or near New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. They had no technical skill to speak of or special mental aptitudes, but they had strength of body and fche will to work. There was abundant labor for them ; but their living together in cities and towns and their strong racial and religious feelings kept them for fifty years or so in the same places and positions that they were in in the first ten years of their coming. In church and politics, only, did the first generation or two shine conspicuously. The Irish have always demanded priests of their own race and everywhere have secured political position and power.
Some of the Germans and Scandinavians came through England, but for the most part they sailed the Atlantic in vessels of German or Scandinavian management and owner- ship. There were many heartrending stories of mis- adventure, especially in connection with the navigation of the western Gulf on the way to Texas. For the most part, however, their sufferings were as nothing compared with those of the Irish in the first years of the great migration. The movement caught English ship-owners and English authorities unprepared. Suddenly, tens of thousands of Irish men, women, and children crossed to Liverpool and demanded passage to America. They had no knowledge of the sea and very little money and were accompanied by old people, for their family ties were very strong. They were packed away on shipboard with very slight attention to health and even less to comfort. In the pressing demand for shipping of any kind, unfit vessels were made over for the emigrants and sent out ill-manned and ill-found. The passengers were supposed to provide themselves with food and other necessities, but a great many of them went to sea with very little in the way of food and very poorly supplied
480
WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS [Cu. XV
with bedding. Some of the vessels were obliged to return to port after weeks of buffeting the westerly gales of the Atlantic. Their cargoes of emigrants were transferred to the first ships that could take the seas, and it was on these that the greatest suffering occurred, for these emigrants were worn down with sickness and want before they started pn their final voyage, and it was on these vessels that the "ship fever" found its largest numbers of victims. These con- ditions led to the passage of laws by the United States and by Great Britain for the regulation of the emigrant trade, and these laws were constantly improved in the next few years.1 The amounts of deck space and air space were regulated and ship owners were obliged to provide enough food and water to insure the passengers against famine. After 1851 there was much less suffering than there had been and the situation was greatly improved when steamers began to be fitted for the carriage of steerage passengers across the Atlantic Ocean.
From 1825 to 1840 there was a distinct lull in the found- ing of new communities ; but with the beginning of the fifth decade there was a renewed movement. The earlier communities had been primarily religious. With the publication in 1840 of Albert Brisbane's "Social Destiny of Man : or, Association and Reorganization of Industry," the founding of the Hopedale community, and the Brook Farm experiment, an era of gropings for an ideal future of mankind dawned upon the minds of many persons. Brook Farm embodied the aspirations of a band of idealists who
1 Friedrich Kapp in his Immigra- tion, and the Commissioners of Emi- gration (New York, 1870) has set forth with great distinctness the hard- ships of the voyage and of the first few days in the New World in the 1840's and '50's, as well as later.
The early important laws regulat-
ing the transportation of emigrants across the Atlantic were 15 & 16 Vic- toria, c. 44 (June 30, 1852), and 18 A 19 Victoria, c. 119 (August 14, 1855; Statutes of the United Kingdom, xxi, 61; xxii, 796), and the act of March 3, 1855 (Statutes at Large of the United States, x, 715).
COMMUNITIES 481
expected to regenerate the world by establishing a coop- erative farm. They were high-minded men and women and some of them possessed great intellectual capacities. They had slight knowledge of agriculture and its adjoining pur- suits and their lands were worn out and unfertile.1 After a few years of spectacular existence, the Brook Farmers became Fourierites and speedily dissolved, owing partly to a conflagration that destroyed their new phalanstery. An- other enterprise on somewhat similar lines was Bronson Alcott's little brotherhood at Fruitlands, also in Massa- chusetts. His theories were akin to those of the "English Christians" who thought it wrong to slaughter animals and eat their carcasses, to drink milk from cows or goats, or to devour the eggs of hens. They hoped that it might not be necessary to employ animals to draw the plough. They set out to do all the work of the farm themselves with spade and hoe, and found competition with near-by farmers, who had no objection to urging forward the laboring ox, a difficult matter. Nevertheless, it is pleasant to think of Alcott and his friends sitting at eve after a toilsome day refreshed with "chaste supplies for the bodily needs" looking across the pleasant valley to the barren hills beyond.2
Brisbane drew his ideas from Charles Fourier, a French- man, and placed his master's thoughts in a form that men of usual understanding could comprehend. Fourier fore- saw with prophet's eye many things that have happened since his death in 1837 : cooperation in buying, cooperation
1 John T. Codman's Brook Farm, harvard, 275-284 ; Alcott's reminis- Historic and Personal Memoirs; Lind- cences of Fruitlands thirty years say Swift's Brook Farm, Its Mem- later in Sanborn and Harris's A. Bron- bers, Scholars, and Visitors; a list of son Alcott, ii, 385, 386; and Louisa books is on p. 283. Hawthorne in his M. Alcott's "Transcendental Wild Blithedale Romance figures his ex- Oats" in Silver Pitchers and in Clara perience at Brook Farm. E. Sears' Bronson Alcott's Fruitlands,
2 For accounts of Fruitlands, see which contains much new matter on H. S. Nourse's History of the Town of this curious experiment.
VOL. V — 2 1
482 WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS [Cn. XV
in production through stockholding in corporations and trusts or otherwise named groups. He clothed his ideas in fantastic phrase and elaborated his illustrations to tiresome and phantasmal extreme. He was regarded as a semblant lunatic — harmless or vicious, according to one's point of view. His followers in America sought to do in 1840 what possibly may be practicable in 1940. Their failure showed their lack of sense and not the insanity of the master or the absurdity of his ideas. Had he written in smooth, didactic phrase with less confidence in his own infallibility, he would have died unhonored and unknown. As it was, he attracted the unprofitable and inefficient, and failure followed every conscious effort to carry out his ideas. He thought that the society of his day was out of joint — man and his environment were out of harmony. As God made man and man made the environment, the way to bring God and man into harmonious association and to use all the forces that God had given man was to change the environment. This he proposed to do by bringing men, women, and children into harmonious action, avoiding waste, and utilizing human desires to bring about greatly increased production with greatly lessened effort. Everywhere, advantage and in- equality were to be found in man and beast, but man alone had no joy in the struggle for existence, no love of labor for its own sake. Fourier proposed to substitute the passions of humanity for wages, for as all passions were given to man by God they must be good ; at any rate they could not be got rid of. By having every one do the work that was most pleasing to him, and by combining workers in one branch of industry in groups laboring side by side, the spirit of rivalry would be utilized to increase production. By changing em- ployment after an hour or two, the desire for variety would make labor pleasant. By cooperation in housekeeping
18401 FOURIERISM 483
great economies of woman's time and of the community's stores would be effected, and there would be one place in the world where woman's work would come to a definite diurnal ending. He wished to eliminate hirelings and middlemen and the ordinary standards of value. Capital would be employed and rewarded in inverse proportion to the amount invested by an individual ; the holder of one share getting, perchance, twenty per cent, while the holder of two hundred shares would have to content himself with three or four per cent. Every adult, whether man or woman, possessed the vote in the Fourier state, but the government was represent- ative. Each industrial group selected its chief and the "serie," that was composed of groups, chose a representative to the general governing body ; thus the Fourier state was not a democracy. In 1842, 1843, and 1844 more than thirty Fourierite communities were established in America, including the made-over Brook Farm.1 There were seven of them in New York, six in Ohio, six in Pennsylvania, and others scattered over the land. The largest was the Clarkson Industrial Association of New York, which had four hundred and twenty members and lived for six months ; one of the smallest was the Marlboro Association of Ohio which had twenty-four members and lived for four years. The most successful was the Wisconsin Phalanx at Ceresco,2 but the one that we know most about was the North Amer- ican Phalanx which was founded by New Yorkers in New Jersey.
Fourier had designed to have his experiment tried by a large number of persons with a capital of hundreds of thou- sands of dollars. When the North American Phalanx
1 Commons and Associates (His- quit's History of Socialism in the United
tory of Labour, i, 505) speak of "at States (ed. 1910), ch. iii. least forty" Fourierite organizations 2 See Wisconsin in Three Centuries,
and Hinds gives a list of thirty (Ameri- iii, ch. vii. can Communities, 250). See also Hill-
484 WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS [CH. XV
issued its call for recruits and money, few persons came forward and little money was subscribed; dissatisfied laborers saw little relation between " association " and the adjustment of their grievances, and capitalists saw more profitable use for their money elsewhere. In 1843 the North American Phalanx began the great experiment with only half a dozen families and with less than seven thousand dollars,1 of which they were obliged to pay five thousand dollars down on account of the purchase of seven hundred acres of land near Red Bank, New Jersey. At the end of three months, the members nearly came to blows over the conduct of their business affairs. At first they were obliged to hire a few working men, but after that they de- pended entirely on their own exertions. Each year the standard price of the ordinary day's labor was fixed by vote, but those skilled in administration were rated some- what higher. Easy and attractive work was appraised at the lowest rate and each group assessed the performance of its members, there being no discrimination for sex or age. Every day each person set down on a public card the number of hours he or she had worked. These accounts were footed up monthly, the amount produced by each group was stated and the workers credited on the books of the asso- ciation with the number of computed hours of labor. They were debited with the cost of lodging and of board and with goods procured at the general store. Before long the me- chanics became dissatisfied with the system and declared that the workers of the neighborhood were receiving higher wages, and some of them removed from the Phalanx. Reli- gious troubles also assailed the association. The members were of many sects, and those of their faiths outside, fearing
1 Charles Sears' The North Ameri- W. A. Hinds' American Communities, can Phalanx, An Historical and De- 266-275 ; and Commons' History oj tcriptive Sketch (Prescott, Wis., 1886) ; Labour, ii, 204.
1840] FOURIERISM 485
for their souls, visited the community and meeting with a cold reception held it up to scorn in their papers. In 1855 the enterprise came to a sudden ending with the burning of the grist mill which was stored with grain that had not been paid for. When the question of what could be done was discussed in general meeting it was voted to dissolve. Brook Farm had broken up in a similar way and the Wis- consin Phalanx at a later time went to pieces almost as rapidly. In all three cases it was probably discontent with the life that led to dissolution. For a time ordinary people can live on enthusiasm and the pursuit of an ideal ; but it is only extraordinary men and women who can keep up the search for any length of time when others in "The World" about them are tasting of forbidden fruits or drinks, are accumulating capital, and are living in leisured luxury. Besides, a too sheltered existence is irksome to many people, especially in their early years. They like to contend with the forces of nature and with their fellow men and women, — the humdrum life of a community, where one has no thought for his food or his shelter or his clothing, has slight attrac- tions for such as these. If the world were thoroughly fourierized there would be no forbidden drinks, no capi- talists, no leisured class, — all would be on a dead level, or within appreciable distance of it. It is interesting to look about the world in which one lives and note how far the law of association has come to be the measure of human effectiveness, how far, indeed, we have progressed toward Fourier's seventh state of civilization.
The community of the Inspirationists at Amana, Iowa,1
1 See Bertha M. H. Shambaugh's Monographs, No. I) is briefer and has
Amana, The Community of True In- a bibliography. Charles F. Noe's
spiral-ion (Iowa City, 1908); W. R. " Brief History of the Amana Society "
Perkins and B. L. Wick's "History of is the work of a member of the so-
the Amana Society" in the Univer- ciety (Iowa Journal of History ant
rity of Iowa Publications (Historical Politics for April, 1904).
486 WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS [Cn. XV
and the surrounding villages has possessed the longest life of any American society, except the Shakers. The In- spirationists had their rise in eighteenth century Ger- many and were descended from the Pietists of the century before. They had their own ideas as to religion, were pacifists, and had peculiar beliefs as to education. They found Germany a difficult place to live in and many of them in 1842 removed to New York. Originally they had no communal ideas, but, in order to provide for the emigration of the poorer families among them, the richer were obliged to invest their property in the enterprise. They first settled in the vicinity of Buffalo, but in 1855, having outgrown their quarters there, removed to Iowa, taking ten years to wind up the affairs of one settlement and get the other into prosperous working condition. In 1900 there were seven- teen hundred or more Inspirationists in their settlement. They employed a couple of hundred hireling laborers and did a good deal of mechanical work as well as cultivating their lands. They lived in families, although marriage was rather frowned upon, but they ate in common kitchen- houses. Unlike most of the communities, whether religious or not, there were no restrictions on the use of tobacco or alcoholic beverages and women did not hold office.
Another community that has had a long life, although a somewhat checkered one, is the Iowa settlement of the Icarians, as the followers of Etienne Cabet are usually called.1 Like Fourier, Cabet was a Frenchman, but unlike Fourier, he was an extreme radical. The French Revolution of 1830 did not satisfy him and he was obliged to seek safety in England. In 1840, his "Voyage en Icarie" was published. It describes an Utopia where advantage and class injustice were no more. Before long groups of Icarians
1 For a bibliography, see Note III at end of chapter.
1849] THE ICARIANS 487
appeared in France, Switzerland, and Germany, and estab- lished little communistic societies entirely against the wishes of those in power. Persecutions followed and it was determined to establish a colony in the New World. Cabet's desires were illimitable, — hundreds of thousands of people and large sums of money. Thousands of emigrants joined the movement and there was a substantial amount of capital. At first they thought of trying their experiment in Texas, but after many vicissitudes, in 1849, they pitched upon the deserted Mormon city of Nauvoo as a place of habitation. There the Icarians passed some years of communistic happiness, apparently being guided and governed by Cabet, himself. He then turned the community over to its members and two parties were immediately formed. The minority refused to work and was thereupon deprived of food by the majority. Cabet, himself, was expelled from his own society and died not long after in 1856. For nearly fifty years, bands of Icarians of one party or the other lived in communal settlements in Missouri, Iowa, and California, — for Nauvoo had to be abandoned. Sooner or later all of these settlements became individualized.
The Mormon movement to Utah in some respects was like other religio-communistic enterprises ; but in size, success, and permanence, it far outstripped them.1 Also it deserves
1 The books on the Mormon mi- son's The Mormons, or, Latter-Day
gration are innumerable. A list of Saints in the Valley of the Great Salt
them preceeds H. H. Bancroft's Utah Lake. This was published in 1852
that was printed in 1889. Bancroft and went through several editions,
in this volume aimed to be fair to both Jules Remy's Voyage au Pays dea
sid», generally putting one side in the Mormons was published in two vol-
text and the other in the foot-note. umes at Paris in 1860 and appeared in
He arid Mrs. Bancroft went to Salt an English dress in the following year.
Lake City and personally interviewed It is a singularly faithful account,
some of the leading survivors of the From the Mormon point of view B. H.
early days and their wives. Never- Roberts's The Missouri Persecutions
theless the work, so far as it is based and his Rise and Fall of Nauvoo and
on these reminiscences, partakes of all James A. Little's From Kirtland to Salt
the imperfections of such books. An Lake City may be mentioned. Of
earlier book is Lieutenant J. W. Gunni- the anti-Mormon books Thomas B.
188 WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS [Ca. XV
treatment by itself as a leading factor in the acquisition of California, for the routes from the High Plains to the Sacramento Valley led through the Utah Basin, and Salt Lake City became a place of succor for successive bands of gold-seekers and pioneers. The Mormons at first settled at Kirtland in Ohio, about twenty miles from Cleveland. Thence they went westwardly to the frontiers of Missouri, where they established several thriving settlements. They aroused the hostility of their neighbors and were driven out in the middle of winter to Iowa. They then recrossed the Mississippi River to Illinois and built a flourishing town, which they named Nauvoo.1 At that place they enjoyed a brief season of peace and prosperity before their neighbors turned upon them.2 By this time some of the leading men practiced polygamy, although whether this was known to outsiders is not clear. The Mormons had their own min- isters, settled their disputes among themselves without going to courts of law, and healed their sick by their own methods, — and thereby aroused the jealousies of ministers, lawyers, doctors, and politicians. They were a "queer" people and the ordinary everyday American has always distrusted queerness in others. It is probable, also, that the power of the Mormons to accumulate property aroused ill-feeling among the people round about them. In 1844, Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and his brother Hyrum were
H. Stenhouse's The Rocky Mountain * One of the most interesting of the
Saints and Mrs. Stenhouse's " Tell It Mormon off-shoots was the colony
All": the Story of a Life's Experience that gathered around James Strang
and Judge R. N. Baskin's Reminis- on Beaver Island in the Straits 01
cences of Early Utah will suffice for the Mackinac. Edwin O. Woods' His-
needs of most persons. toric Mackinac, i, ch. xviii ; H. E.
1 An interesting contemporaneous Legler's A Moses of the Mormons,
account of Nauvoo is in Henry Brown's Strong's City of Refuge and Island
History of Illinois (New York, 1844), Kingdom; and Wisconsin in Three
pp. 395-403, 487-492. See also, Pooley's Centuries, iii, 125-136. "Settlement of Illinois," ch. zii, and the books cited by him.
18461 THE MORMONS 489
murdered by a mob at Carthage, Illinois. Then followed months of distressing conflict which compelled the Mormons to undertake another pilgrimage.
On the death of Joseph Smith and his brother, Brigham Young seized the reins of authority and until his death led the Mormon host successfully in peace and in war. As a " captain of industry " he ranks with the best of them Some- what earlier, foreseeing the trend of events, Joseph Smith had prophesied that the "Saints would be driven to the Rocky Mountains and would become a mighty people." 1 He had even organized an expedition to explore that region, but nothing further had been done before his death.2 Brig- ham Young appears to have investigated carefully the routes leading westward and to have counselled with those who had already been in the mountains. In the early spring of 1846, the bulk of the Mormons left Nauvoo and began their west- ward way, at first over the ice and snow, and then halted until the growing grass provided food for the cattle, when the march was resumed. On reaching the Missouri River, a permanent camp was established not far from the present Omaha. It was known as Winter Quarters and for some years was the rallying point for successive Mormon expedi- tions. Seven hundred log cabins were erected, the lands were cleared, and food crops raised. Before the end of the year they were all settled there, but their sufferings in the following winter were keen, as the roofs of their cabins leaked and they had .insufficient fuel. Often the women's clothes were frozen stiff and remained so day after day and one "could hear them rattle as they struck against anything." 3 While at this place the Mormons entered into
'John Taylor's Ms. "Reminis- 'Mrs. Richards in her "Reminis- cences," p. 13. cences" relates that the log huts at
* Wilford Woodruff's Ms. "Rem- Winter Quarters were just large enough
oiiscences," p. 3. to hold two beds and two chairs, and
490 WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS [Cn. XV
an arrangement with the federal government by which some five hundred of them enlisted in the "Mormon Battalion"1 and followed Colonel Kearny to California by way of Santa F6 and thence after a year or so made their way eastwardly through the mountains to the Utah Valley.
In the winter of 1846 and 1847 about twelve thousand people, men, women, and children, old and young, well and sick, were gathered at Winter Quarters and vicinity. In April, 1847, Brigham Young led an advance party westward to find a place of settlement. They went through the South Pass to Fort Bridger and thence through the moun- tains until they looked down upon the valley of the Great Salt Lake. "This is the place," said Young. At once they picked out a site for their town, staked off the land, and began a system of irrigation.2 On September 19, 1847, the van of the main expedition with five hundred and eighty wagons and over two thousand oxen besides other animals arrived, and at the end of the year there were four thousand settlers in the valley. The Utah Valley had been visited by trappers twenty-five years and more before, and there were a few settlers living there when the Mormons came. These bought out their rights and at once spread out over the land, taking stations at the mouths of the canons, thus controlling the water supply of the whole region. Within the next few years the greater part of the fugitives from Nauvoo joined the original settlers in the Utah Valley. From the very beginning of their life as a distinct sect, the Mormons were active in missionary enterprises. They sent their young men and some of their leaders to different parts of
the roof was made of logs covered with Utah (Baltimore, 1898) and Hamil-
marsh flags with the earth spread over ton Gardner's "Cooperation among the
them. Mormons" in the Quarterly Journal of
1 See below (p. 586) for books on the Economics, xxxi, 461. A list of books
Mormon Battalion. on the subject is in Brough's paper,
1 See C. H. Brough's Irrigation in p. xiii.
1846] THE MORMONS 491
the United States and to European countries. They made converts in great numbers and it was difficult to bring them from the western settlements to the Utah Valley. In 1856 there were so many of them that the leaders hit upon the scheme of having the new-comers walk the whole way, drawing their supplies in handcarts. There were five companies in all. The first three fared well enough, but the last two, starting late in the year, did not reach the mountains until the snows began to fall. Many of them perished and the others were rescued by expeditions sent from Salt Lake City. One of the rescuers wrote that when they came upon them they saw "aged men and women, with children of both sexes pulling and pushing their hand- carts through the snow with their clothing wet to their knees." * Nearly two hundred and fifty of these two last handcart parties perished on the way. Otherwise, the conduct of the Utah migration was so successful that nature and man appeared to work for them in a way that they deemed miraculous. In 1849, the rush to California began and thousands of gold-seekers passed through the Utah Valley on the way to the Coast. They were generally short of food, but had many things that the Salt Lake people needed, and this gave to the Mormons a profitable market for their surplus grain and meat. From the beginning, Brigham Young set his face most sternly against his people engaging in mining enterprises, for he felt that agriculture was the only sound basis of permanent settlement. When- ever any of his people showed a desire to go to the mines, he told them they were free to go, but could never return. He also declared that it \\ as better to feed the Indians than to
1 H. H. Cluff's "Overland in material in that library, I am greatly
Winter," p. 7; Ms. in the Bancroft indebted to the kindness of Professor
Library at the University of Cali- Herbert E. Bolton and his able as-
fornia. For the use of this and other sistants.
492 WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS [Cn. XV
fight them, and the Mormons were always singularly free from the usual excitements of frontier life.
The Mormon state was a combination of almost unlimited democracy with an unlimited autocracy. It would appear as if the two elements were incapable of combination in one community, but they certainly seem to have been combined in Mormon Utah. As Prophet, Brigham Young was the direct representative of God to his people, combining in his own person supreme authority in Church and State. The working of the system was well described by the editor of the "Millennial Star" at a later period in 1867. According to him the utmost freedom of speech was permitted in the legislature; "but any measure that cannot be unanimously decided on, is submitted to the President of the Church, who by the wisdom of God decides the matter." * As the representative of the Almighty in ecclesiastical and tem- poral affairs, a man of the business capacity of Brigham Young exercised authority almost unknown in any modern state. The Prophet was assisted by two councillors, and these three with others formed the First Presidency, which was the chief legislative, executive, and judicial body in the community as well as the chief religious body.
At the other end of the line from the Prophet and the First Presidency were the "Bishop" and the "Ward." In early times the latter was the civic and ecclesiastical unit. Most Utah towns comprised one ward, but Salt Lake City had thirteen of them and more. The record book of the Thirteenth Ward has been preserved and deserves careful
1 The Latter-Day Saints' Millennial placing at my disposal an unpub-
Star, November 23, 1867. I am fished paper of his on "Separatism
indebted to Professor Franklin D. in Utah." It is one of the first at-
Daines of the Utah State Agricultural tempts to study the history of the
College for calling my attention to Mormon enterprise apart from re-
this passage, and for much help in my ligious bias. study of Mormon institutions, in
1850] THE MORMONS 493
perusal by students of institutions.1 The Bishop presided at the ward meetings, which were opened with singing and prayer. In the year 1854 there were twelve ward meetings. To these came all the male inhabitants of the ward, and they determined by majority vote such business questions as repairing streets, opening ditches, setting out shade trees, fencing the school house lot, and appointing water masters, practically as a New England town in colonial days had managed its affairs. One of the ward meetings in 1854 was a "Blessing Meeting" at which converts and children were blessed on their entrance into the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints. There were inspectors in each ward who visited each house within its limits and reported to the ward meeting all those who did not have family prayers or who did not take proper care of their children and house. Generally, the report was sufficient to bring compliance with religious and civil rule ; but in obstinate cases the ward meeting voted to separate the culprit from the Church. This seems to have been the highest penalty inflicted in Mormon Utah ; in the early days it was equivalent to death by starvation. The Bishop held court at his own house with two counsellors. At one of these Bishop's Courts one man prosecuted another for assault. Each party stated his side of the case. The Bishop and his counsellors then conferred together and ordered the defendant to pay twenty- five dollars to the plaintiff for having treated him with violence. There were no lawyers, no rules of evidence, and no speeches of any kind. In other cases, there were wit- nesses and some attempts at explanation that might fairly be termed speech making, but ordinarily the proceedings
1 Professor Levi Edgar Young of City and has greatly helped me in the
the University of Utah most kindly elucidation of many points of Mormon
placed at my disposal "Book B" of history, the Thirteenth Ward of Salt Lake
494 WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS
were simple and rapid. Bishop Woolley of the Thirteenth Ward was a little overbearing at times and was criticized in general ward meeting. He asked for a vote of confidence from the meeting, which was given him.
In the records of the "Blessing Meetings" the names of the persons blessed are given with their birthplaces. There were rather more than one thousand blessed in the record book under examination. Of these no fewer than four hundred and seventy-one came from the dominions of the British king, about four-fifths being natives of England. One hundred and forty more came from outside the United States ; of these ninety-six were from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and the converts were from places as far apart as Iceland and the Cape of Good Hope. Of the natives of the United States, one hundred and fourteen were born in Utah and Winter Quarters, belonging therefore to the second Mormon generation. Of the rest one hundred came from New England, another hundred from the Middle States, and seventy-six from the Old Northwest. The Thirteenth Ward may not have been typical of the rest of Salt Lake City and the other Mormon settlements; but these figures, such as they are, testify to the remarkable success of Mormon missionary labors and to the large number of children born in the first years after the migra- tion. A list of the original band of pioneers, one hundred and forty-eight in number, has been preserved.1 Nearly two-thirds of these were born in the United States. More- over, they had little of the ordinary pioneer spirit of restless- ness, as only thirty-three of them died outside of Utah.
1 For this list of the "Original Band of Pioneers," I am indebted to Professor L. E. Young.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 495
NOTES
I. The German Migration. — The first volume of Albert B. Faust's The German Element in the United States (Boston, 1909) gives a con- tinuous historical outline of the German immigrations from the earliest time to 1900 in 591 pages and has an exhaustive bibliography at the end of the second volume.1 The histories of the States, counties, cities, and towns in which the Germans congregated necessarily form isolated treatments of the movement. As is the case with the other nationali- ties, there is great need of correlation and literary treatment. Until this is done the Germans cannot hope to gain the place in United States history that their quality and numbers and services to the country entitle them to. Two serial publications have historical matter on this subject: Deutsch-Amerikanische Geschichtsbldtter and the German American Annals Continuation of the Quarterly Americana Germanica. The former contains Ernest Bruncken's " German Political Refugees in the United States . . . 1815-1860 " (vols. 3 and 4) ; the latter contains G. G. Benjamin's " Germans in Texas " with a bibliography (new series, vols. vi, vii). Both of these articles are reprinted separately. Moritz Tiling's History of the German Element in Texas brings together in convenient form current knowledge of this part of the German migration and gives a brief bibliography on p. 183. Of biographies, the first volume of the Works of Charles Follen contains a memoir by his widow, Eliza L. Follen, and Carl Schurz's Reminiscences give an insight into the lives of two Germans of eminence in very different walks of life who came to America about a quarter of a century apart and exerted influences for good in their respective walks.
II. The Irish. — Several books have been published relating more or less to the Irish immigration to America; but none of them is satisfactory for this period, partly because of the lack of definite statistics. Possibly the best account of this early immigration is Edward E. Bale's Letters on Irish Emigration (Boston, 1852) Chapter iii of Philip H. Bagenal's The American Irish and theii Influence on Irixh Politics (Boston, 1882) contains some interesting but unauthenticated statistics. Hamilton A. Hill's paper on " Im-
1 Gustav Korner's Das deutsche 1880) , presents the story of the earlier Element in den Vereinigten Staaten von German migration in a compendious Nordamerika, 1818-1848 (Cincinnati, form.
496
WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS
migration," read before the May, 1875, meeting of the American Social Science Association, has some interesting statements on this subject, but most of Hill's paper relates to a later time. The same thing may be said of Rev. Stephen Byrne's Irish Emigration to the United States (New York, 1874). All these authors refer to Edward Young's Labor in Europe and America (Philadelphia, 1875) which has been freely drawn on in several chapters of the present work. A list of " Books relating to the American Irish " is appended to H. J. Desmond's " Century of Irish Immigration " in American Catholic Quarterly Review, xxv, 528.
III. The Communities. — Part I of Morris Hillquit's History of Socialism in the United States (New York, 1903) is devoted to a clear and brief account of these forerunners of what is now termed "Socialism." Charles Nordhoff visited such communities as were still in existence in or about the year 1870 and described his observa- tions in a readable book entitled The Communistic Societies of the United States (New York, 1875). It has a few illustrations somewhat after the manner of Lossing's Field-Books that really tell one a great deal, so far as they go. William Alfred Hinds, himself interested in com- munism, published a small volume at Oneida, N. Y., in 1878, entitled American Communities: Brief Sketches of Economy, Zoar, . . . and The Brotherhood of the New Life. A first revision of this work greatly enlarged was printed at Chicago in 1902, which was followed by a second revision, still larger, in 1908. This last has been of great use in preparing several paragraphs of the present volume. At the close of most of the sections of Hinds's second revision is a brief list of the books relating to the particular community treated in that section. This edition has an index and is continued practically down to date. An older book, but one still of service, is John H. Noyes's History of American Socialisms (Philadelphia, 1870) .* Selections from the Works of Fourier with an Introduction by Charles Gide translated by Julia Franklin forms a number of the Social Science 2 series published
1 There are a few pages on "Fourier and Association" in Commons and Associates' History of Labour, i, 496, and considerable extracts from official documents, etc., in American Indus- trial Society, vii.
* A list of Fourier's writings is on p. 44 of Gide's Introduction. What purported to be the (Euvres Com-
pletes de Ch. Fourier was published at Paris in 1841-1845 in six volumes (3rd ed., Paris, 1846-1848). Charles Pellarin's Vie de Charles Fourier was translated into English by Francis G. Shaw (New York, 1848), and C. T. Wood compiled from the French of Madame Gatti de Gamond a small work entitled Fourier and his System
BIBLIOGRAPHY 497
at London in 1901. The Introduction in forty-five pages gives a clear survey of Fourier's theories and the selections are admirably made and translated. Any one reading this book will readily under- stand the influence exercised by Fourier upon the intellectuals of the idealistic age. Albert Brisbane's publications in book form and in the newspapers of the day greatly influenced the people of the 1840's. Hinds likens his Social Destiny : in importance to Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. The most useful, as unfolding in consecutive and in- telligible form the ideas of the master, is Brisbane's summation in English of Fourier's Theory of Universal Unity, but his Concise Exposition of the Doctrine of Association, or Plan for a Re-Organization of Society . . . (based on Fourier's Theory of Domestic and Industrial Association), the eighth edition of wliich was published at New York in 1844, is possibly more instructive. Gide's little Introduction, however, will serve the purposes of all but the most energetic student. See also M. Ferraz's chapter on " Charles Fourier et L' Attraction Passionnelle " in his Etude sur la Philosophic en France au xixe Siecle (Paris, 1877), ch. ii. Frederick A. Bushee in his useful article, " Com- munistic Societies in the United States " (Political Science Quarterly, vol. xx, No. 4) , has a helpful list of these societies at the end.
Cabet and Icaria attracted attention only second to that of the Mormons, their predecessors at Nauvoo ; but the literature concern- ing them is not great. Albert Shaw's Icaria, A Chapter in the History of Communism (New York, 1884) is extremely laudatory and has usually been drawn upon for descriptions of the Icarians. Lifelike details of the Nauvoo enterprise can be obtained from successive leaflets issued by the Icarians in Paris in the years 1856-1858. They were compiled by J. P. Beluze ; of them possibly Compte-Rendu de la Situation Morale et Materielle de la Colonie Icarienne is the most useful and the Mori du Fondateur D'Icarie is the most truly Icarian. Jules Prudhommeaux, in his Icarie et son Fondateur Etienne Cabet (Paris, 1907), has given a prolonged and satisfying account of this experiment and has illustrated it with some interesting photographs of Nauvoo as it appeared in the Mormon and Cabetian epochs and in 1900. The paragraphs in the text are based very largely upon
with a brief biography extracted from C. M'Laren's Boa Constrictor, or Fourier
the London Phalanx (London, 1842). Association Self-Exposed (Rochester,
1 A keen criticism of Fourierism as 1844). interpreted by Brisbane is Donald
VOL. V. — 2K
498
WESTERN LANDS AND SETTLEMENTS
a perusal of Cabet's Colony, or Republic of Icaria in the United States of America; its History, that was printed at the Icarian printing office, Nauvoo (Illinois), 1852.
IV. The Black Hawk War. —This Indian conflict played an important part in the opening of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin to settlers. In the forces opposing the natives were Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and Winfield Scott, and the war, therefore, always finds a place in biographies, books of reminiscences, etc. Black Hawk, moreover, produced an autobiography or something that passes as such.1 Finally, the conflict between the soldiers of the regular army and the cholera is one of the dramatic bits of our military history. For these reasons the literature of the Black Hawk War is large. Reuben G. Thwaites has two brief articles on this subject with abundant citations in the Magazine of Western History, v, 32, 181, and in Wisconsin Historical Collections, xii, 217-265. An intelligible map by Mr. Thwaites precedes the latter article. Chapters xxxvi-xl of C. R. Tuttle's History of the Border Wars of Two Centuries (Madison, Wis., 1876) give a not uninteresting view of this conflict. The real reason for the conflict and other Indian wars comes out in Milo M. Quaife's chapter on " The Vanishing of the Red Man " at the end of his Chicago and the Old Northwest, and the preceding pages give some heartrending incidents of the struggle of Scott and his soldiers with the cholera.
lIAfe of . . . Black Hawk (Bos- ton, 1834). There are numerous edi- tions, the most useful being that edited by Dr. Quaife (The Lakeside Classics, Chicago, 1916). A contem- porary* account by an Illinois settler who took part in the war is John A. Wakefield's History of the War be- tween the United States and the Sac
and Fox Nations (Jacksonville, 111., 1834). Frank E. Stevens's Black Hawk War published at Chicago in 1903 is a detailed account of the conflict and its genesis, but has no bibliography. The papers of General John R. Wil- liams, edited by C. M. Burton, are in the Collections of the Michigan Pioneer Society, xxi, 313-471.
TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON
IN the thirty-five years after 1815 the United States ac- quired all the continent south of the forty-ninth parallel and north of the Rio Grande from the western limit of Louisiana and the line of the Florida Treaty to the Pacific Ocean. It is now (1920) included in the territory of a little over nine States with a total population of nearly twelve million human beings. It is a country of marvellous agri- cultural and mineral capacities, possessing rich forests and enjoying climates surpassing those of the most favored regions of the earth in either Eastern or Western hemis- pheres. The Spaniards had looked upon this farthest west- ern country as their own,1 but they had made little use of it because their eyes had been fixed on the greater immediate possibilities of Mexico and South America. All the people and strength of Spain had not sufficed for the utilization of the resources of those countries, but the Spaniards were as jealous of the possessions that they did not use 2 as they were of those that they did use. This farthest western country was divided geographically, politically, and internationally into four blocks : Texas, New Mexico, California, and
1 The early history of this part of the Columbia. Her appearance in the
United States is succinctly set forth in Pacific drew forth orders for her ex-
Bolton and Marshall's Colonization of elusion that reached their destination
North America, 1492-1783 (New York, about one year after that famous ship
1920) especially ch. xxi. had passed by. See Robertson's un-
* An example of the inefficiency of published essay entitled "From Al-
Spanish colonial administration oc- calde to Mayor," p. 36. curred as to the first voyage of the
499
TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON (From Map at end of Luis De Onis's Memoria)
500
1850] THE FAR WEST 501
Oregon. Eastwardly from California 1 and Oregon and northwardly from Texas and New Mexico there was a stretch of mountainous country that comprised the headwaters of the rivers flowing eastwardly into the Mississippi, west- wardly into the Pacific, and southwardly into the Gulf of California or into the Gulf of Mexico. This land might be regarded as pertinent to the Mississippi Valley and the United States or to the regions claimed by Spain. Texas, as a geographical phrase, included the lands between Louisi- ana and the Rio Grande, and New Mexico was the country to the westward as far as California. The northward limit of Texas and New Mexico was indistinct, but those geo- graphical units included certainly the watersheds of the Rio Grande and Colorado rivers. California was the coastal land from Mexico to the forty-second parallel, and Oregon was the region stretching northwardly from that parallel for an indefinite extent. These names and boundaries are used here in what might be called the ordinary geo- graphical sense and not as accurately descriptive of political countries at any one time.
Originally, that is to say, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this whole extent of land had belonged to Spain or had been claimed by her, so far as it had belonged to or had been claimed by any one. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, British and American fur traders had anchored in the harbors along the coast and had established a profitable commerce with the Indians.2 The Russians, crossing Bering's Strait, had likewise entered into the fur
1 As to the origin of the name Cali- satisfy the needs of most readers, fornia, see Ruth Putnam and H. I. G. C. Davidson's North West Com- Priestley's article in the Publications pany (University of California Pub- of the University of California, for lications in History, vii) sets forth in December, 1917, pp. 293-365. great detail certain aspects of the
2 Professor Joseph Schafer's His- history of the Northwest with abun- tory of the Pacific Northwest in its dant citations.
revised form (New York, 1918) will
502
TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Cn. XVI
trade of the Northwest and had founded stations at various places on the American shore.1 In 1790, by the Nootka Sound Treaty,2 Spain abandoned some of her pretensions to the northern part of the region in favor of Great Britain ; but the precise terms of the treaty are of no service for the present purpose, because no two persons of different national- ities have ever interpreted them alike. Whatever they meant, they certainly clouded the Spanish title to the northernmost part of the coast and gave Great Britain vague rights of trade and possibly something more. In their voyages along the coast, whether on exploring expeditions or on trips to and from the Philippines, Spanish navigators had noticed breakers at a certain place south of the Strait of Juan de Fuca ; but it was reserved for Captain Gray of the Boston trading ship Columbia to sail through this swirl of waters and enter the actual mouth of the river that still bears his vessel's name. This was in May, 1792.3 Captain Gray was not in the service of the United States government, his ship was a private trading vessel, and the voyage had no official standing whatever ; but in this instance these factors were overlooked. At the time that Gray was on the coast Captain Vancouver of the British navy was also there in command of an exploring expedition. He had recently passed by the mouth of the river without entering it ; but, on being apprised of its existence by Captain Gray, he sent
1 F. A. Golder's Russian Expan- sion on the Pacific, 1641-1850 has a wider interest than the title indicates and is provided with an excellent bib- liography. His Bering's Voyages in 2 vols. (1921) brings the story to Ameri- can shores.
* See the present work, vol. iv, 118-123, and E. S. Meany's Van- couver's Discovery of Puget Sound, ch. iii.
* House Reports, 25th Cong., 3rd
No. 101 ; Appendix F gives an extract from the log-book of the Co- lumbia. See a following "Supple- mental Report" also numbered 101. The log-book extract is repeated in Robert Greenhow's History of Oregon and California, 434 ; see also ch. xi of the latter book ; Schafer's History oj the Pacific Northwest (ed. 1918), p. 22; and H. H. Bancroft's Northwest Coast, i, 250, 258-260.
1792] THE COLUMBIA RIVER 503
a boat party to verify the discovery. This expedition ascended the river sixty miles or more above the point where the Columbia had anchored.1 In 1803, the United States acquired Louisiana and thereby may have gained some rights as to the region to the westward of the headwaters of the affluents of the Mississippi. It has been said that the French bishopric of Louisiana extended westwardly to the Pacific Ocean ; but, if such a claim was ever made by the French, no official action of any importance was ever taken to make good such pretensions. On the other hand, French fur traders and trappers seem to have been ubiqui- tous. Mentions of their activities are constantly turning up, and no one would be bold enough to assert that any par- ticular trapper was the first to carry his pack to the head- waters of any particular river in this western country or was the first to penetrate the secrets of any particular mountain pass.2 It may well be, therefore, that the territory which can fairly be regarded as tributary to the St. Louis fur market covered a much greater extent than has formerly been supposed. Whatever claims these fur trading expedi- tions gave to France or to Spain, her successor in the owner- ship of Louisiana, passed to the United States in 1803. They were still in existence in 1840, except as they were limited by the Florida Treaty of 1819 and by subsequent agreements with Russia and with Great Britain.
In the winter of 1805-1806, Lewis and Clark, on their memorable exploring trip, had wintered in a camp not far
1 A Voyage of Discovery to the North * Harlow Lindley's "Western Travel,
Pacific Ocean . . . under . . . Captain 1800-1820" in the Mississippi Valley
George Vancouver (3 vols., London, Historical Review, vi, 167-191, is very
1798) i, 422 ii, ch. iii. Professor useful in placing the early expeditions,
Schafer has set forth the facts, with and see also Bolton's "French Intru-
abundant citations, in the Bulletin sions into New Mexico" in The Pacific
of the University of Oregon, vi. The Ocean in History, 389-407. first volumes of H. S. Lyman's His- tory of Oregon cover the period treated in this chapter.
504
TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [On. XVI
from the mouth of the Columbia River. In the spring of 1811, John Jacob Astor, a New York merchant who was greatly interested in the fur trade, had established a post at the mouth of the Columbia River and had named it Astoria.1 This post had been sold to the North West Fur Company before its seizure by the British on December 12, 1813.2 Nevertheless in 1818 it was restored to the United States under the terms of the Treaty of Ghent, but the North West Company was not disturbed in its trade.3 In 1819, by the Florida Treaty, the Spaniards handed ove. to the United States all their existing rights to the North- west Coast, north of the forty-second parallel.4 Five years later, in 1824, another treaty was made, this time between the United States and Russia, by which the latter agreed to retire from the Pacific coast of America, south of 54° 40' N. L.5 In this way the United States and Great Britain became the only two countries to have interests in the region which was called Oregon. As neither of them could make any effective settlement there for the time being, they agreed in 1818 to occupy the country jointly for ten years.6 This agreement was renewed in 1827 to last until one or the other party to it gave notice a year in advance of the termination of this joint occupation.7 At the moment, the British were apparently in the better position to utilize whatever rights might accrue under these treaties, as in 1821 the Hudson's Bay Company by the absorption of the
1 Gabriel Franchere's Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast, ch. xv; H. M. Chittenden's American Fur Trade of the Far West, i, 223; Alex- ander Ross' Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River, 259 ; Bancroft's Northwest Coast, i, 331,339.
* The bill of sale was signed Octo- ber 16, 1813, "at entrance of Columbia River North West Coast of America,"
see G. C. Davidson's The North Wesi Company, 138, 139, 293, forming vol. vii of the University of California Publications in History.
'Ibid., 164.
4 Treaties and Conventions (ed. 1873) p. 785.
«/&id., p. 733.
« Ibid., 350.
7 Ibid., 365.
1818] OREGON 505
North West Company l had combined all British and Canadian fur trading interests under one extremely efficient management — and were carrying on a remarkably profit- able business in the Columbia River region. As the years went by, however, they found themselves more and more hampered by the coming of American fur traders, settlers, and missionaries.
As early as 1796, when the United States took over the Northwestern posts from the British, attempts had been made to attach the Indians to American interests by estab- lishing government trading stations, but little had been accomplished. In January, 1803, Jefferson took up the subject of western lands and Indian management with his usual mixture of altruism and advantage.2 The tribes, he said, were becoming uneasy at the constant diminution of their hunting grounds. To counteract this restlessness they should be encouraged to apply themselves to agricul- ture, stock raising, and domestic manufacture. Govern- ment trading houses should be established among them to lead them to civilization and to sell them articles that they needed and that were good for them at lower rates than private traders could sell them, thus winning the good will of the Indians and disposing of the traders at the same time. This public commerce among the Indians might even be extended to the Missouri River, and a party of ten or a dozen men led by an intelligent officer might explore even as far as the "Western Ocean." A few surveying instruments, their muskets, "and light and cheap presents for the Indians would be all the apparatus they could carry."
1 See G. C. Davidson's North West be well to lead the Indians into debt
Company, 176 and fol. (University of under the pressure of which they might
California Publications in History, vii). be more willing to part with their lands.
* See the Message in Annals of Writings of Jefferson (Congress ed.) iv.
Congress, 7th Cong., 2nd Sess., 24-26. 472; ix, 460. Jefferson also suggested that it might
506
TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Cn. XVI
As to the Spaniards, they would not interfere, although Missouri still belonged to them, as they would regard the expedition as a literary pursuit.1 Jefferson asked for an appropriation of twenty-five hundred dollars, "for the purpose of extending the external commerce of the United States." He counselled secrecy to "prevent the obstruc- tions which interested individuals might otherwise pre- viously prepare in its way." At the moment Jefferson had no thought of purchasing this part of Louisiana and the proposition simply was to open up the trade of a large part of Spanish America to United States merchants without the knowledge or consent of the Spaniards. Congress assented and Jefferson placed Meriwether Lewis and William Clark at the head of the expedition. He instructed them 2 to discover if possible a "practicable water-communica- tion across the continent, for the purposes of commerce."
Starting in May, 1804, Lewis and Clark slowly ascended the Missouri River. They passed the winter in the country of the Mandan Indians not far from the present town of Bismark in North Dakota. The next spring, 1805, they pushed on and by mid-summer had gained the headwaters of that river. They supported themselves by hunting and had few excitements except an occasional encounter with grizzly bears, but the mosquitoes and "blowing" flies troubled them greatly. Arrived at the mountains they most fortunately happened on a band of Indians of the same tribe as the Indian wife of a Frenchman they had taken with them as a guide. In the mountains they made friends
1 The geographical knowledge of the time is well portrayed in a map which is reproduced by photography in connection with an article by Miss A. H. Abel in the Geographical Re- view, i, 329-345. Frederick J. Teg- p;art's "Notes Supplementary to any
Edition of Lewis and Clark" (Ameri- can Historical Association's Reports, 1908, vol. i, 185) contain an astonish- ing amount of information in a small compass.
8 For the instructions, see Writings of Jefferson (Ford ed.), viii, 194 note.
1805] LEWIS AND CLARK 507
with one Indian tribe after another, procured horses without great difficulty, but were often straitened for food. At length they came to one of the upper streams of the Co- lumbia system that could be navigated. At this point they constructed canoes by digging or burning out the hearts of giant trees and in them floated down the streams, often- times encountering perils that seem incredible even in the reading. On November 7, 1805, Captain Clark wrote that they came "in view of the Ocian . . . the roreing or noise made by the waves brakeing on the rockey Shores" was heard from a great distance. The following winter, which they passed in rude huts near the sea, was most disagree- able. In July, 1806, they repassed the mountains and on September 21 regained St. Louis.1
In 1805, while Lewis and Clark were toiling through the Stoney Mountains, as the Rockies were usually termed in those days, Zebulon Montgomery Pike was laboriously ascending the Mississippi River to ascertain its sources and to discover the condition of trade in its upper valley. In April, 1806, he was back in St. Louis and in the following July started on an exploring expedition to the westward
1 Nicholas Biddle of Philadelphia of Lewis and a succinct account of the undertook to compile an account of purchase of Louisiana by Professor this expedition from the journals of McMaster. In 1904-1905, there was Lewis and Clark and their comrades issued a definitive edition of the Lewis and such other matter as was ob- and Clark journals under the editor- tainable. He did an admirable bit of ship of Reuben Gold Thwaites giving work, but the book, which was pub- the different accounts, word for word, lished in 1814 as History of the Ex- with ruthless and exhausting accu- pedition under the command of Cap- racy. In 1916, his successor, M. M. tains Lewis and Clark has on its title- Quaife, printed in the Wisconsin His- page the name of its final editor, torical Society's Collections (vol. xxii) Paul Allen. In 1893, Elliott Coues Journals of Captain Meriwether Lewis published an edition of this work with and Sergeant John Ordway. C. D. an immense amount of annotation. Wheeler's The Trail of Lewis and The most convenient reprint is that in Clark (2 vols., New York, 1904) con- The Trail Makers series. This is in tains a mass of useful local information three small volumes without foot- mingled with extraordinary state- notes ; but each volume has a few pages ments as to the international history of geographical identifications and the of the United States, whole is preceded by Jefferson's memoir
508
TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [On. XVI
but far to the south of the route followed by Lewis and Clark. He seems to have been despatched on this quest by General James Wilkinson, but the precise genesis of the expedition is still obscure.1 His instructions were exceedingly vague. They directed him to go from one Indian nation to another when he would probably find himself on the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red rivers — " approximated to the settlements of New Mexico." He was ordered to be very careful to cultivate harmonious intercourse with the Span- iards. It is a curious fact that Aaron Burr began his journey at almost the same time, but whether there was any con- nection between the two, otherwise than indistinct relations with Wilkinson, is unknown. Before long, Pike came across the trail of a large Spanish expedition that had been operat- ing on ground that was clearly included within the limits of the ceded province of Louisiana. On November 15, 1806, he thought he saw a mountain in the distance which appearedlike a small blue cloud and was in reality the peak that bears his name, which rises eight thousand feet from the plains and fourteen thousand from the level of the sea. After wandering about in the cold of winter, climbing moun- tains, and going over passes, Pike built a stockaded fort on the banks of the Rio Grande at some distance above Santa Fe.2 At this point, Dr. Robinson, a volunteer, left the expedition and alone went to Santa F6, ostensibly to arrange some financial matters but really to apprise the Spaniards of Pike's whereabouts. Within a few days they appeared in force and invited the American to come to the Spanish
1 As to the origin of this expedition see Professor I. J. Cox's informing "Introduction to "Papers of Zebulon M. Pike" in American Historical Re- view, xiii, 798.
8 Professor H. E. Bolton throws a great deal of light on the doings of the
Spaniards in the country north and east of the Rio Grande in the earlier time in the introduction to his Atha- nase de Mezieres and the Louisiana- Texas Frontier, 1768-1780 (Cleve- land, 1914;.
1805] PIKE'S EXPEDITION 509
town. Arrived there, Pike exhibited surprise at finding himself on the Rio Grande instead of the Red River, but^he convinced the Spanish commander of his official character and was conducted to El Paso and finally to the American posts on the Louisiana line,1 — thus completing an ex- tremely interesting round of international geographic exploration.
Another official exploring expedition that belongs to the same series was that of William Dunbar to the Hot Springs of Arkansas. It was begun in the autumn of 1804. Com- pared with the journeys of Lewis and Clark, and Pike, this expedition was mere child's play from the point of distance covered and dangers encountered. Its interest is in the scientific data gathered by the explorers and in the specu- lations which they aroused. They found something that looked like coal and many salt licks that might possibly develop into commercially profitable salt wells. The Hot Springs themselves were interesting and gave rise to many remarks.2 The Spaniards told Pike of Dunbar's expedition and were evidently disposed to limit the territory acquired by the United States from France to a mere strip of land along the lower Mississippi. It was only the convulsions in Europe and in Spain that induced them to withdraw their opposition to our occupation of any portion of the western basin below the Missouri or below the Arkansas. These
1 Pike prepared An Account of Ex- brought out a two-volume edition of peditions to the Sources of the Mis- the original with an amazing amount 'issippi, and through the Western of annotation under the title of The Parts of Louisiana. This was first Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike. printed in 1810. An English edition - Documents relating to The Purchase with the title Exploratory Travels & Exploration of Louisiana, containing through the Western Territories of I. "The Limits and Bounds of Louisi- North America was brought out with ana" by Thomas Jefferson; II. "The some attempt at literary revision in Exploration of the Red, the Black, and 1811 and from this the work was the Washita Rivers" by William Dun- translated into French and Dutch in bar. It was printed from the original 1811 and 1812. The English edition manuscripts in the library of the Ameri- was reproduced, word for word, at Den- can Philosophical Society (Boston and ver in 1889. Dr. Elliott Coues in 1895 New York, 1904).
510
TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Cn. XVI
were all the official expeditions for the exploration of western Louisiana, but before many years the fur traders were roam- ing everywhere through that country.1
Of the hosts of accounts 2 of the earlier fur traders and adventurers on the western plains, in the mountains, and on the Pacific slope, that of Captain Bonneville stands out as possessing interest because of the many hairbreadth adven- tures of the raconteur. These were due in part to his own lack of experience, to the bad character of his employees, and, in great measure, to the literary charm which Washing- ton Irving threw about the narrative. Bonneville was an officer in the United States army who thought he saw a chance for fortune in the fur trade of the mountains. He obtained leave of absence and proceeded northwestwardly from St. Louis bent on adventure and gain. He left Fort Osage, on the Missouri, on May 1, 1832, and returned three years later having outstayed his leave and probably poorer in purse than he was at the outset. In the interval he had traversed mountains, voyaged down and up rivers, and en- countered many Indian tribes. On one occasion he had received hospitality at the Hudson Bay Company's post at Walla Walla, near the present boundary line between Wash-
1 John C. Luttig's Journal of a Fur- Trading Expedition on the Upper Missouri, 1812-1813, issued by the Missouri Historical Society in 1920, is a very lifelike picture and the "Ap- pendix" and "Bibliography" at the end of the volume are excellent.
2 These are summarized, for the most part, in Chittenden's Fur Trade. Of other accounts, T. M. Marshall's "St. Vrain's Expedition to the Gila in 1826" (Southwestern Historical Quar- terly, xix, 251) and Elliott Coues' Journal of Jacob Fowler and his On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer have been found useful as giving historical color. H. C. Dale's The Ashley-Smith Explorations . . . 1 822-1889 goes over
some of the same ground from a very different angle.
For the more important works of Father De Smet, S. J., see Letters and Sketches: with a Narrative of a Year's Residence among the Indian Tribes of the Rocky Mountains (Philadelphia, 1843) and Oregon Missions and Travels oner the Rocky Mountains, in 1845-4& (New- York, 1847), the latter being re- printed in French in 1848 at Ghent in Belgium. All his works are col- lected into four volumes by H. M. Chittenden and A. T. Richardson as Life, Letters and Travels of Father Pierre- Jean De Smet, S. J., 1801- 1873 (New York, 1905) ; volume i. 144 gives an ample bibliography.
1830] TRAPPERS AND TRADERS 511
ington and Oregon ; but the commandant of the post re- fused to give him any supplies, although he and his party were in a starving condition, for he felt that his duty to the Company forbade the sale of food and ammunition to its rivals. One portion of Bonneville's expedition, proceeding sbuthwestwardly from the general rendezvous, passed through the Salt Lake Valley and the mountains to Mon- terey, in California, on the Pacific.1 At different times Bonneville fell in with Nathaniel Wyeth. He was a Massa- chusetts man who had conceived the idea of establishing a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River which would be a convenient point of supply and exchange for traders from overland and from oversea and would lead to the American occupation of the country. Wyeth had great capacity for adventure, but his means were not commen- surate with his desires.2 After sufferings and disappoint- ments the project of the trading post was finally abandoned. Some of Wyeth's men, or of Bonneville's, or of other un- mentioned expeditions may have remained in the Columbia Valley and established themselves there as farmers, as some of the Hudson Bay Company's employees did. The first organized band of American settlers came overland under the lead of Methodist missionaries to Oregon in 1834, and in 1836 another band led by Presbyterian or Congregational missionaries also came overland.3 These proved to be the precursors of numberless migrations; in 1843 no less than
1 The Rocky Mountains: . . . from During the Years 18S8 . . . 184S (v,
the Journal of Captain B. L. E. Bonne- ch. vi).
ville (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1837) by » Bancroft's Oregon, i, chs. iii and v,
Washington Irving. This has been and James W. Bashford's Oregon
reprinted in many forms in his col- Missions. The Story of How the Line
lected works and in special editions. was Run between Canada and the
1 " Correspondence and Journals of United States (New York, 1918). The
Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth, 1831- earlier books on the Columbia Valley
6" (Sources of the History of Oregon, are enumerated at the beginning of
i) ; Charles Wilkes's Narrative of the Bancroft's Oregon. For a somewhat
United State* Exploring Expedition. different view see Sir George Simp-
512 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Cn. XVI
one thousand persons crossed the plains and mountains to the fertile valleys of Oregon. Towards the close of the first half-century, the white population west of the moun- tains,1 north of the forty-second parallel and south of 54° 40' was between ten and twenty thousand souls.
Entirely unlike the history of Oregon was the early development of Texas, New Mexico, and California : 2 the first proceeded on the lines of Anglo-Saxon commercial colonization, the last three developed or failed to develop in the politico-ecclesiastical direction that seemed to be the guiding post of Spanish-American policy. From the point of view of commerce and colonization, Spain had no need of northern Mexican provinces ; but from the political and ecclesiastical view-points, their acquisition and maintenance were important to Spain and to Mexico, or seemed to be. Frenchmen and later Americans were constantly intruding themselves into Texas and New Mexico, and British and, later, Americans were active on the California coast. The easiest and perhaps the only method by which Spain could secure any kind of possession of these regions was to con- son's Narrative of a Journey Round liographical notes which will serve the World, i, ch. vi; "Letters of Sir to carry the student far toward his George Simpson, 1841-1843" (Ameri- goal. Dealing more especially with can Historical Review, xiv, 70-94) ; Texas, Herbert E. Bolton's Texas in and "John McLoughlin's Last Letter" the Middle Eighteenth Century gives (ibid., xxi, 104-134). one a picture of Spanish administra-
1 Bancroft (Oregon, i, 251 note) tion in any part of the world, and in a estimates the population in 1841 at brief article in the American Histori- 500 souls, and nearly ten years later, cal Review, xxiii, 42-61, Professor at about 20,000 (ibid.,ii, 251). Bolton has set forth vividly the char-
2 The books on Spanish California acter and history of the "Mission as in the early time are really histories a Frontier Institution." An excellent of the Spanish occupation of the detailed description of the Spanish trans-Mississippi country. Of these system is Herbert I. Priestley's Jose Charles E. Chapman's Founding of de Gdlvez, Visitor-General of New Spanish California, the Northwestward Spain in the Publications of the Uni- Expansion of New Spain, 1687-1783 versity of California, v. An older and Irving B. Richman's California book, but giving a very good brief ac- under Spain and Mexico, 1535-1847 count of the history and institutions, contain much interesting information is George P. Garrison's Texas; a Con- and are supplied with excellent bib- test of Civilizations (Boston, 1903).
1800] THE MISSION SYSTEM 513
vert the Indians to the true faith, redeem them from their wandering life, settle them around mission stations and colonize, in the vicinity, bodies of soldiers who seem to have belonged largely to the convict class, and who prob- ably were most of them of mixed Spanish and aboriginal Mexican blood. This policy harmonized with the wish of the Church to convert the heathen and to redeem their souls from torment everlasting. Moreover, a country of missions and presidios, or military stations, would be an admirable barrier to foreign aggression from the North. Missions were established at convenient points in Texas and later in New Mexico and California. Indians were gathered around the first mission station; soldiers were established near by in a presidio, partly to protect the mis- sionaries from Indian attack, but more especially to round up the Indians for the Fathers' ministrations and bring back such of them as wandered away from the mission. With the help of Indians already tamed, the missionaries taught the wild natives the truths of the Christian faith and habits of industry. They made good Catholics of whole Indian tribes, reclaimed them from a wandering existence, and tied them down to definite areas and to agriculture. In ten years or so lands were allotted to the natives in severalty and the mission became a parish. The missionaries with a body of tame Indians and a few soldiers then moved away to the wilderness to found a new mission, convert and civilize a new tribe of natives, and move the frontier just so far into new territory. After the missionaries and soldiers, came white men and women, and men and women of mixed blood who built a town or pueblo near by or around the mission station. The process of amalgamation and dispossession then proceeded until the natives lost their lands and their racial identity, or died out, or ran away.
VOL. V. — 2lt
514 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Cn. XVI
In all our history there is hardly a more attractive story than that of the Texas and California missions. This is partly due to the equableness of the climate, partly to the high character of the missionaries themselves, and partly to the sad fate that overtook the converted Red Men. The system had worked well in Mexico, for there the Indians were more susceptible to the teachings of the missionaries. There also the white colonists were more under the eye of the government and were obliged to treat the natives, converted or otherwise, with some degree of humanity. In the north- ern provinces the Indians were wilder and more stubborn, becoming wilder and stubborner as one went farther north. In Texas, and especially in California, the whites were far removed from civil control. This irresponsibility was greatly increased by the breaking away from the Spanish empire and by the subsequent round of revolutions in Mexico and rebellions in California. The story of the devotion of Father Junipero Serra and the rest belongs to the heroic age of colonization.1 Their ideals were high, their lives were filled with perilous services, with no hope of reward on earth, except in the satisfaction of a worthy task worthily accomplished. Their daily round of work is attractive as it appears in their accounts. There were many disappoint- ments, but there was much joy in the doing of what they thought was good, and the little glimpses of human frailties that appear, especially among the neophytes and the soldiers, connect them with other lands, and other peoples. The time for the secularization of the California missions had arrived before Mexico split off from Spain, and the order for this had been given but had not been carried out at the time of the achievement of Mexican independence. In
1 Those who wish to secure an in- go to FT. Zephyrin Engelhardt's The timate knowledge of the mission sys- Missions and Missionaries of Cali- tem from one of the missionaries, should fornia in four volumes.
1830] THE MISSIONS 515
due course thereafter secularization proceeded.1 There was nothing else to be done. The missions were not self-sup- porting, the Mexicans had no funds for their maintenance, and the California colonists had eyes eagerly fixed on the orchards and improved lands around the missions. Sec- ularization was ordered ; the Indians, as opportunity served, took to the hills, and the whites possessed themselves of their lands, herds,2 and orchards. Meantime, cultivation and tame cattle had driven away the wild game and, within a few years, the occupation of the foothills by the whites deprived the natives of their supply of acorns. The herds of the whites were the Indians' only hope — both cattle and horses, for the natives relished one as well as the other. As the Indians could not secure these by purchase or barter, they stole them, and war between the Californians and the runaway Indians began. Diseases, as the measles, small- pox, scurvy, and pneumonia, attacked the natives and swept them off in large numbers. Doubtless these disorders, or some of them, had not been uncommon in the Indian villages around the missions ; but when the natives were under the missionaries' care they had better food and medical aid than they could get in the mountains. In 1849 there were from sixty to one hundred thousand Indians within the limits of the present State of California ; 3 in 1900 there were not
'See "Provisional regulations for * C. Hart Memam's " Indian Popu-
the secularization of the missions of lation of California" (American An-
Upper California promulgated by Gov- thropolagist) vii, 594. For this cita-
ernor Jose Figueroa on the 9th of tion and much valuable information
August, 1834" in Senate Documents, on the California Indians, I am in-
Rep. Com. No. 18, 31st Cong., 1st debted to Mr. W. H. Ellison of Santa
Sess., p. 150. Barbara. Merriam (p. 598) writes
* Walter Colton (Three Years in that in 1834 "the total Indian popu-
California, 441, 443, 444, 449) gives lation of California . . . could hardly
figures as to the numbers of cattle and have been less than 210,000." On
horses and sheep at different missions; p. 600 he estimates it at 100,000 in
— at Santa Clara, for instance, in 1823, 1849. there were 22,400 calves, 74,280 cattle, 82,540 sheep, and 6125 horses.
516 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Cn. XVI
five thousand persons of tolerably pure Indian blood in that State, although there are many whites and negroes with Indian blood in their veins in California today.
The secularization of the missions and the reversion of the natives to savagery occurred during the Mexican rule, a dozen years or so before the American conquest. In 1835, when Richard H. Dana was on the coast, the missions were already dilapidated and half deserted.1 At that time and for years thereafter, there were bands of Indians on many of the ranches or cattle farms. John A. Sutter, a German-Swiss immigrant,2 had established a fort and trad- ing station on the site of the modern city of Sacramento. He had collected and trained a body of Indians to take care of the cattle and to chase away any marauders who attempted to run off his cows and horses. These copper-colored re- tainers seemed to have lost whatever civilization they may once have had and fed like pigs from a trough.3 After the discovery of gold in 1848, the natives were used by the miners, especially by the Californians and the Mexicans, to do the hard work. As the gold-bearing slopes and canons were occupied by the white miners, the wild Indians were driven farther and farther into the mountains where food was scarcer than it was in the foothills. It was then that the natives began to steal and even to attack isolated parties of whites ; and the miners and settlers retaliated by shooting an Indian on sight, until finally the survivors were confined on reservations.
Texas and New Mexico, as outlying parts of New Spain,
1 See his Two Years Before the Mast. fornia (London, 1839) ; and Edwin
This remarkable book was first printed Bryant's What I Saw in California
at New York in 1840, and was at once . . . in the Years 1846, 1847 (New
reprinted in America and in England. York, 1848).
Other books of this time are A. Robin- 2 Sutter's "Personal Reminiscences"
son's Life in California . . . by An is in the Bancroft Library. American (New York, 1846; reprinted 3" Diary" of Col. James Clyman,
in 1891); Alexander Forbes' Cali- p. 122 (Ms.), in the Bancroft Library.
1820] TEXAS 517
were hardly more than geographical expressions with a few missions and trading posts thrown in. El Paso and Santa Fe" were the only two towns of any importance in New Mexico and, with the exception of some cultivators and some Indian traders, about all the white inhabitants lived in those two towns. Texas had interested the Spanish authorities mainly as a buffer against possible French en- croachments, and when Spain acquired Louisiana, this cause of interest disappeared. The garrisons of eastern Texas were withdrawn, the missions were starved, and there was a general backward tendency. In 1820, Moses Austin, then living in Missouri, espoused the cause of Texas col- onization from the United States. At the moment, the Florida Treaty by which the United States surrendered its claims to Texas beyond the Sabine River1 was still un- ratified in the hands of the Spanish government. In 1821, when Spain consented to it, Mexico or New Spain was practically independent. It was at such a moment that Austin visited Texas and applied to the representative of the dying Spanish government for a grant of land. After some demur, this was given to him in the form of permis- sion to bring in a certain number of families. This was the last act of Moses Austin's remarkable career, as he died soon after his return to the United States. His plans were then taken up by his son, Stephen Fuller Austin.2 When he arrived in Texas to secure a confirmation of his father's grant he found the Mexican revolutionists triumphant. He went to the City of Mexico and there secured a new grant
1 On the boundaries of Texas, see and Louisiana they talked of moving
Bolton's Texas in the Eighteenth Cen- the western boundary of Louisiana
tury, p. 1, and T. M. Marshall's His- westwardly to the Sabine River, but
tory of the Western Boundary of the nothing was done at that time. Louisiana Purchase. The first two * A good, brief account of Stephen
paragraphs of Bolton's text state the F. Austin is L. A. Wight's Life . . .
matter admirably. It appears that of Stephen F. Austin in Austin College
vhen the Spaniards owned both Texas Bulletin for October, 1910.
518 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Cn. XVI
from the new government. Spanish authority once over- thrown, change after change, revolutions, as they are termed, followed in Mexico. At first there was a revolutionary emperor, but in 1824 a federal republic was established, somewhat on the model of the United States. As there were not enough white inhabitants in Texas to form a separate state, it was joined with its next southern neighbor as the State of Coahuila and Texas, the capital being in the southern part. The younger Austin, thereupon, secured renewed concessions. The land system of New Spain, of the Mexican Republic, and of Coahuila and Texas was entirely unlike that of the United States.1 Land was not granted to Austin or other leaders of colonization in fee simple ; they were given the right to bring in a certain number of families and settle them within rather ill-defined boundaries, taking up specified quantities of land on account of each family. Austin and the others were termed empre- sarios or contractors. The financial arrangements made by Austin are impossible to unravel.2 He undoubtedly ex- pected to make something out of the venture, either by retaining portions of the lands or by securing contributions from his colonists. He was a man of remarkable skill in certain directions and somehow contrived to maintain himself and receive the good will of those who settled under his auspices. These colonists came from the United States, mainly from the South,3 but there were some from New
1 The Laws and Decrees of the State in Southern History Association's Pub-
of Coahuila and Texas published at lications for April, 1899. Houston in 1839 by order of the * Professor James E. Winston has
Texan Secretary of State contains brought forward many facts concern-
an amazing amount of useful infor- ing the Texan colonists in The South-
mation. A very much briefer pub- western Historical Quarterly for July,
lication entitled Texas Lands con- 1912; January, 1913; July, 1917;
tains most of the important docu- etc. ments. The following four titles have been
'See Lester G. Bugbee's "Some selected from a mass of more or less con- Difficulties of a Texas Empresario" temporary material on this part of
TEXAS IN 1835 (Redrawn from A Visit to Texas, 1834. The inset shows settled areas in 1835.)
619
520
TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Ca. XVI
York and New England and other parts of the North. Un- doubtedly, many of them were adventurers whose absence from the United States was welcome; but the letters, diaries, and reminiscences that have come down to us give the impression that most of the colonists were hard-working, God-fearing men and women of the very best type for so arduous an enterprise. The success of Austin attracted other men of vision and also those of speculative proclivities. These obtained large grants or contracts, and colonies were formed at various places under their auspices. Looking at a map of Texas of 1830 with these "grants" marked in different colored inks, one gathers the impression of a settled area which was very far from the truth. Estimates differ widely as to the number of white inhabitants of Texas,1 but in 1830 there were enough of them there to have a feeling of racial solidarity and of political consciousness.2
Meantime, one revolutionary government had succeeded another in Mexico, — this revolutionary leader and that "pronouncing" against whomsoever happened to be in power and generally attracting enough followers by the hope
Texan history, simply because they seem to shed light to the present writer's eyes : A Visit to Texas : being the Journal of a Traveller (New York, 1834); Texas in 1840, or the Emi- grant's Guide (New York, 1840); Prairiedom : Rambles and Scrambles in Texas . . . By A- Suthron (New York, 1845); and W. B. Dewees's Letters from an Early Settler of Texas (Louisville, Ky., 1854.)
1 The population of Texas in these early years has been variously esti- mated. The first census was taken in 1847. From that it has been de- duced that Texas in 1840 had in all about 55,000 white inhabitants ; in 1836 anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000; see George L. Rives's United States and Mexico, i, 391, 464. Yoakum states that in 1831 the "American popula- tion of Texas . . . now numbered
about twenty thousand"; History of Texas, i, 274 (reprinted in Wooten's Comprehensive History of Texas, i, 134). The largest estimate was made by F. C. Sheridan, a British official at the Barbados in 1840. He says that the population may be estimated at 150,000 souls (Texas State Histori- cal Association's Quarterly, xv, 220). The editors of the Quarterly state that this is an excessive estimate and as latft as 1847, the white population was "but a little more than a hundred thousand." See also Garrison's Texas, 270.
* W. L. McCalla's Adventures in Texas chiefly in . . . 1840 (Phila- delphia, 1841) gives a glimpse of the conditions of life in the republic in the interval between San Jacinto and annexation.
18301 THE MEXICAN REPUBLIC
of public plunder to oust the existing tenant. Of these leaders, the most remarkable was Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Opinions have widely differed as to his motives and his capacities and appraisal of them is extraordinarily difficult, because only a person deeply versed in Spanish- Mexican character can hope to understand them. It seems evident that he was a man of remarkable power of arousing enthusiasm among his own people and of making, perhaps not the best, but something approaching it of the people with whom he had to work. The ups and downs of his career, his military successes and defeats, and the charm of his personality certainly compel admiration and his blood-thirstiness, his craftiness, and his instability belong to his people, place, and time. It was natural that a political and military leader of this type should feel restive under the federal organization of the Mexican Republic which may or may not have been a good form of government for that country at that time.1 It was certainly much easier for a successful revolutionist to rule the whole republic from Mexico City, than to have to consult the susceptibilities of the political leaders of vu score of states. At all events, Santa Anna became the head of the Centralists and his accession to power in 1834 meant the overthrow of the federalist system. This movement was especially dis- liked by the people of California, New Mexico, and Texas. These were so far away from the capital, not only in miles but in modes of communication, and, so far as Texas was concerned, so alien in political desire, that they were restive
1 Of the innumerable books about la Barca's Life in Mexico (Boston,
Mexico, the following have been use- 1843) ; Brantz Mayer's Mexico . . .
ful to the present writer : H. G. Historical Sketch of the Late War
Ward's Mexico (2nd ed., London, (Hartford, Conn., 1852) ; and C. R.
1829) ; W. Bullock's Six Months Enock's Mexico, Its Ancient and
Residence ... in Mexico (2nd ed., Modern Civilisation (London, 1912). London, 1825) ; Mme. Calderon de
522 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Ce. XVI
under domination of whatever political leader happened to make himself supreme at the capital. In Texas, also, there were other causes of dissatisfaction. The Mexican government tried to collect duties on all goods imported into Texas. This could only be done by stationing soldiers, who seem to have been generally of a very low type, in the few towns through which goods were admitted from the outside world and this greatly increased the cost of the few commodities that were brought in.1 Under the circum- stances, smuggling was inevitable and the Mexican enforce- ment of its laws was so spasmodic and arbitrary that added irritation was aroused. Another thing which occasioned trouble was the presence of negro slaves in Texas. In 1829, slavery was abolished throughout the Mexican Republic. So far as the Mexican portions of Mexico were concerned this did not mean very much, because the system of peonage, by which the Indians and the poorer of the mixed class were held in perpetual bondage, took the place of slavery so-called. In Texas the case was very different, for the Southern immi- grants or some of them had brought their slaves with them from their old homes to their new, and not only did they desire to preserve their "property," but they dreaded above all things, the presence of free negroes. Their remonstrances were so loud that the matter was compromised and the law as to slavery was not enforced among them. Among the conditions in all these land contracts, or grants, was one requiring the colonists introduced by an empresario to be Roman Catholics. Some attention seems to have been paid to this requirement, but a rigid enforcement of it might at any time destroy many land titles in Texas so far as the new-comers were concerned. It is easy to see, bearing
1 See Eugene C. Barker's " Diffi- Texas Historical Association for Janu- culties of a Mexican Revenue Officer ary, 1901. in Texas" in the Quarterly of the
1832] TEXAS AND MEXICO 523
in mind the difference in race, religion, and political methods, that the Texans would become very restive whenever the authorities at Mexico City should endeavor to carry out the plain, legal requirements of their residence there.
In 1832 matters came to a crisis.1 The Texans held a convention or consultation. They resolved to separate from Coahuila and to stand by the constitution of 1824. Stephen F. Austin proceeded to Mexico City to present an address to this effect to the successful revolutionary Centralist authorities at the capital. He was at once put hi prison and measures were taken to compel the recalci- trant Texans to recognize the existing government of the Republic. After eight months' incarceration, Austin was released. He returned to Texas and advised acquiescence in the demands of the constituted authorities, at least for the time being.
As the year 1834 progressed, the strained relations be- tween the Texans and the Mexicans increased. In Octo- ber, 1835, parties of irrepressible and irresponsible Texans took the field and captured the towns of Goliad and San Antonio de Bexar. In November, the American settlers in Texas held a consultation, as they called it, because the Mexicans seemed to dislike the word convention. At this meeting, they appointed a provisional government to look after their affairs as a separate state of the Mexican Republic. In taking this action they were partly conservative as up- holding the federative constitution of 1824. Otherwise, their doings were distinctly revolutionary, for they pro- posed to carry out their wishes as to existence apart from
1 See Eugene C. Barker's "Or- ing article on the attitude of the
ganization of the Texas Revolution " United States newspapers toward Texan
and illustrative documents in the independence in the Proceedings of the
Publications of the Southern History Mississippi Valley Historical Associa-
Association, v, 451 and vi, 33. Pro- tion, viii, 160. fessor J. E. Winston has an interest-
524 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [CH. XVI
Coahuila and refused to recognize the existing government at Mexico City. Santa Anna was compelled to act. At this time, Mexico is supposed to have contained about seven million inhabitants and Texas from thirty to fifty thousand people. The numerical discrepancy was certainly great, but in reality the two opponents were not so unequally matched as the figures would indicate. Mexican people were sharply divided into classes and masses. The classes com- prised those with European blood in their veins — more or less of it. These were the clericals, the politicians, the mili- tary officers, the civil officers, and professional and business men, together with the large land owners of the country. The masses comprised all the rest, those with a smaller amount of European blood in their veins and a good many of combined negro and Indian blood, — and there were, of course, some fairly pure-blooded Indians and pure-blooded negroes. The classes as a rule were more concerned with the perpetuation of their privileges than they were with the future of their country. Patriotism, indeed, in the present-day sense of the word was lacking and was replaced by a sentimental belief in themselves and a contempt for the outer world. Having thrown off the yoke of Spain without any preliminary training in self government, the Mexicans proved to be hopelessly inept. Revolution succeeded revolution ; few presidents ever served out their terms of office, and the Army and the Church threw their weight first one way and then another, as their interests for the moment seemed to dictate. Under these circum- stances, it may well be believed that the national finances were always in a hopeless condition. This meant that it was well-nigh impossible to maintain any military force in the field or any naval force on the water. We read of armies of ten thousand, of twenty thousand, of twenty-five thousand.
1835,' TEXAS AND MEXICO 525
For the most part these were little more than collections of half-breeds and Indians commanded by a disproportionate number of officers who spent very little of their time in drilling their men. There was no commissariat and no quartermasters' department. Whenever there was any money, some of it was given to the soldiers and they pro- cured their own food, — at other times they seized it, or went without. Whatever was taken on a campaign was carried on the backs of the soldiers. These possessed aston- ishing marching powers ; twenty or even thirty miles a day with equipment and baggage seem to have been attained by them. But when the fighting began, for the most part they were helpless. They fired from the hip without aim and bayonet practice seems to have been unknown. The rapidity with which an army of this character disap- peared while on the march and after a battle is almost beyond belief, but the figures cannot all of them lie, — de- sertion was the one hope of salvation.
While Texas, New Mexico, and California had been more or less integral parts of New Spain and were states of the Mexican Republic, in reality they were separated geo- graphically from the populous portion of Mexico. From the Nueces to the Rio Grande was a desert tract that was supposed to be valuable on account of the possibility ol obtaining salt there. South of the Rio Grande for hundreds of miles there was little cultivation and few towns even as far as Tampico and San Luis Potosi. Westward, the route through Chihuahua to New Mexico and through Sonora to California was even longer and more devoid of towns and cultivated acres. In short, Texas, New Mexico, and California belonged economically to the United States and not to Mexico. The easiest approach to Texas was by water from Vera Cruz and to California by water from
526 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Ca. XVI
Mazatlan; but the Mexicans were no water men and, indeed, their coastal commerce was mainly carried on in American and British vessels. Constant political up- heavals, continuing lack of money, and the want of any real patriotic impulse made it exceedingly difficult for any person, who happened to be momentarily in power in Mexico City, to lead an expedition of any size to any great distance from the capital, — and to send a rival in command of such a military force was merely to invite a new revolution. Nevertheless, Santa Anna, with his abounding energy and tremendous optimism, possibly spurred on by the necessity of doing something to save his position, levied an army and marched to the subjugation of Texas.
Texas accepted the challenge. In March, 1836, a conven- tion adopted a constitution on the American model, the chief executive bearing the title of president. Military forces were called out to meet the threatened Mexican attack. The ordinary pioneer possessed courage and capacity for conflict, but he was not easily amenable to guidance, much less to discipline. Each Texan soldier was in reality a commander. The titular commander simply carried out the wishes of the majority of his men and quite likely some of the minority marched off in another direction. The result of these various factors of Mexican and Texan national and military traits might easily be foretold. Mexicans appeared in greatly superior numbers and marched from one town to another, but the Texans defended themselves with an ardor and courageous perti- nacity that made one victory or two, or the capture of one town or two a matter of small moment in the final outcome. In a Mexican revolution, one set of soldiers had pointed guns at another set, and possibly had done some random shooting. Then an agreement had been reached by which
1836] THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 527
a few leading men had been executed and victory had been proclaimed for one side or the other. Now, matters went very differently. The Texan defenders of San Antonio de Bexar, as their numbers dwindled, shut themselves up in an old mission building, called the Alamo, and there they fought until th* last man was dead or dying, — one hundred and eighty Texans held off three thousand Mexicans for seven or eight days and then perished to a man. "Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat — the Alamo had none," said General Edward Burleson 1 when the news of the glorious tragedy reached him at Gonzales.
By the middle of April, 1836, the Mexicans had over- run the Texo-American settlements as far as Galveston Bay. In the course of their progress, they had captured the town of Goliad with its defenders under the command of Colonel Fannin. Resistance being hopeless, the Texans had surrendered as prisoners of war. Regardless of this, the Mexicans looked upon them as fellow rebels. After a few days they marched them out onto the prairie and shot them down in cold blood, a few managing to escape by rapid flight. The Alamo, the Goliad massacre, and other bloody deeds by the Mexicans drove the Texans away from their farms and towns ; they burned their build- ings, destroyed their stores, and fled toward the American frontier. Santa Anna believed the rebellion was crushed and even thought of returning to Mexico to reckon with his political enemies. Then, as is so often the case in war, an accident occurred that changed the whole course of Texan history and, indeed, that of the United States and of Mexico.
The commander-in-chief of the Texan military forces, if such a phrase can be used, was Sam Houston, — once a member
1 Texas State Historical Associa- exist as to the authorship of those tion's Quarterly, vii, 328. Some doubts words; see ibid., vi, 309.
528 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Cn. XVI
of the United States Congress and governor of Tennessee, later a chief of the Cherokee Indians, and now the leader of frontiersmen.1 "Marital troubles" had led to his flight from Tennessee and a happy marriage in Texas at a later day gave him renewed status among his countrymen. The story of his life for this middle period is extremely uncertain. To one set of seekers he represents the highest form of states- manship and diplomacy, playing off the United States and Great Britain, one against the other; to another, he is a mere opportunist whom chance had thrown at the head of affairs. The story of the next few weeks in the military history of Texas and of Sam Houston is equally vague. To one set of writers he is the military commander par excel- lence, advising and executing by his own power of mind and will. To the other set he is hardly more than the obedient executor of the commands of his own soldiers, — they and not he determining on the campaign and enforcing their own decisions. A few things seem to stand out from the general uncertainty. After the Alamo and Goliad, Houston saw that the only salvation for Texas and Texans was to stop the panic, gather the fighting men together, and strike a blow. He and his men then acted in a fortunate and skil- ful manner. They concentrated, with a good measure of secrecy, while the Mexicans dispersed into four bands, Santa Anna being at the head of one detachment. The movements of the hostile groups are very puzzling to trace on a map and correlate as to point of time ; but it really is not necessary. Santa Anna, with perhaps eight hundred men, advanced eastwardly to the vicinity of Galveston
1 There is no life of Houston at all his doings as commander of the Texan
commensurate with the possibilities army in a speech delivered in the
of the subject. Henry Bruce's little Senate on February 28, 1859 ; but it
book in the Makers of America series is not very convincing, has literary merit. Houston defended
1836] SAN JACINTO 529
Bay and pitched his camp on the western bank of the San Jacinto River, not far from its entrance into the bay. There he was joined by another detachment bringing the number up to eleven or twelve hundred. For some days, the con- solidated Texan force having somehow slipped in between the Mexican detachments, had been following Santa Anna and his men. On the 20th of April they came upon them in a sort of entrenched camp, the river and swamp being back of the Mexican position and the front being protected by pack saddles and other impedimenta of the expedition. Santa Anna had selected this place because the river and swamp protected his rear and flank; but the Texans, dis- daining strategic operations, after some prolonged prelimi- nary skirmishings, suddenly, on the afternoon of April 21, 1836, at about half-past three, yelling at the top of their lungs, "Remember the Alamo!" "Remember Goliad!" dashed over the obstructions and clubbing their muskets, for they had no bayonets, beat the Mexicans from their camp-fires and tents, killed them as they ran, and shot to death those who tried to escape through the marsh or over the river.1 At the moment Santa Anna was enjoying his siesta. Two days later, some soldiers scouting for prisoners in the open prairie, saw a figure of a man in the grass. Re- ceiving no reply from him, one of them kicked him and told him to get up. He complied and, speaking to them in Spanish, declared that he was a private soldier. As the party entered the camp, the Mexican prisoners saluted the captive as "El Presidente." It was, indeed, Santa Anna, and Houston had all that he could do to preserve the life of
1 See G. L. Rives's United States has gathered together nearly all avail-
and Mexico, i, ch. xiv. This account able information in the Texas State
of the battle of San Jacinto, as well as Historical Association's Quarterly
all others, is mainly based on H. for April, 1901, with a convenient
Yoakum's History of Texas (ed. 1856) "list of books" at the end. ii, ch. v. Professor Eugene C. Barker
VOL. V. 2M
530 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Cn. XVI
the man responsible for the Alamo and Goliad. It would have been well, perhaps, for Mexico, Texas, and the United States had some accident removed Santa Anna from politics and war. As it was he was all compliance and ordered his subordinates to retire from Texas beyond the Rio Grande. In the battle or massacre of San Jacinto, the Texan loss was two killed and twenty-three wounded against a Mexican loss of hundreds killed and wounded, and as many more taken prisoners.1
The annals of Texas for the next eight years after San Jacinto are as difficult to unravel as is the story of that cam- paign. There were three possible courses open for Texas, or three possible positions that might be achieved. She might come to terms with Mexico and remain a part of that Republic with a good measure of home rule. She might become a part of the United States. Remaining independent, she might become the nucleus of another great North American republic, embracing all the present area of the United States to the west and south of the line of 1819 with a considerable portion of Northern Mexico in addition. Thus the new nation would include the greater part of the present State of Colorado, all of Utah, Nevada, and California on the north and extend southwardly across the Rio Grande to include the greater part of Coahuila, Chihuahua, and Sonora, — besides Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. It was an imperial domain, equivalent in area to about one-third of the United States. As leaders of an independent republic, great careers awaited the heroes of the Texan Revolution, Houston, Anson Jones, Ashbel Smith, David G. Burnet, and the rest. Texas alone could even- tually produce more cotton than all the Southern States of
1 As to the exact figures of Mexi- United States and Mexico, i, 350 and can losses, see Yoakum's History of note. Texas, ii, 146, 501 and G. L. Rives'e
1836] THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS 531
the American Union, at least, so it was asserted. Moreover, Texas being outside of the American Union and the Mexican Republic, could arrange her tariff system to suit her own needs and not those of Pennsylvania or New England, or of the politicians of Mexico City. It was surely an alluring prospect, and had the leaders of Texas been men of larger calibre, it might have been carried through triumphantly. As to the first alternative, coming to some arrangement with Mexico as to more or less complete autonomy, that proved to be out of the range of possibilities. The Mexicans, while unable to compel Texas to do their bidding, were so affected by sentimental nationalism that no government could have stood a month that had come out openly for the recognition of Texan independence in any form. Iso- lated in their valley stronghold, the ruling classes in Mexican politics believed themselves secure from all attack. The Spaniards had tried it and been repelled, the French had tried it, and had not advanced beyond Vera Cruz. How could it be possible that the Texans, even with the aid of the United States, could ever maintain their independence ? The American Army was less in size than that of Mexico and composed of German, Irish, and British renegades, of men who fought for money and not like the Mexican soldiers, for love of country ! For eight years one revolutionary government after another in Mexico turned a deaf ear to all suggestions of recognition. The United States, Great Britain, France, and other countries of the world recognized Texas as an independent power; but Mexico would not. In 1843, for a moment, there appeared what looked like a change of heart. James W. Robinson, at one time high in place in Texas and now a prisoner in the fortress of Perote in Mexico, suggested to Santa Anna, who was then at the head of affairs in Mexico, that an arrangement might
532 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Cn. XVI
be made whereby Texas should acknowledge the sovereignty of Mexico and Mexico should recognize Texas as an "inde- pendent department" of the Mexican Republic. It seemed as if something might come of this project. Texas even pro- claimed an armistice ; but then political conditions compelled a change in Mexico's policy. Again, in 1844, this time under the guidance of the British representative in Texas, Captain Charles Elliot, Mexico listened favorably to a somewhat similar proposition, but her action was then taken too late to fend off annexation to the United States.
The third possibility was union with the United States. As far back as 1825, and again in 1827 John Quincy Adams l and Henry Clay had put forward propositions for the pur- chase of Texas from Mexico. Adams had opposed — alone in Monroe's cabinet — the giving up of Texas in 1819. He now took the first opportunity to try to retrieve what he regarded as Monroe's error, but the Mexicans would not listen. Jackson renewed the proposition in a somewhat different guise, as a rectification of the boundary,2 for al- though he had approved of the Florida Treaty at the time, he had come since to regard it as a blunder. But, again, there was no response and the matter was so badly handled that added resentment was aroused on the part of the Mexicans. Then came San Jacinto and, not long thereafter, a proposition from Texas for recognition as an independent State and annexation to the American Republic. Now, Jackson, who had been eager for the acquisition of Texas by purchase and had later advocated the recognition of the new republic as an independent power, stood firmly on the obligations of the United States to Mexico. The Texans
1 American State Papers, Foreign Revolution" in American Historical Relations, vi, 578-581 ; and J. Q. Review for July, 1907, and W. R. Man- Adams's Memoirs, vii, 239, 240. ning's Early Diplomatic Relations be-
* See Professor E. C. Barker's tween the United States and Mexico
"President Jackson and the Texas (Baltimore, 1916).
X837] THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS 533
were disappointed but Jackson was immovable. Congress then authorized the President to appoint a diplomatic agent whenever he should feel satisfied as to the indepen- dence of the new republic. He at once acted by nominating a Charge d' Affaires to the Republic of Texas on March 3, 1837. *
Great Britain, on her part, pursued a fairly steady policy of advocating Texan independence and recognition thereof by Mexico.2 Her statesmen preferred to see Texas an in- dependent power, because that would have broken the cotton monopoly of the United States. The one great objection to it was that many of the supporters of the Peel government that came into power in 1841 were abo- litionists and an independent Texas, or a Texas annexed to the United States, meant the perpetuation of slavery.
In 1842, Charles Elliot appeared in Texas as representative of Great Britain. He was a naval officer of good family who had bungled matters at the time of the opium contro- versy with China. Presumably, he was sent to Texas be- cause there was no better place for him. He had been there scarcely three months when he wrote a letter advo- cating the reconstruction of Texan society by the aboli- tion of slavery and the restriction of the franchise to persons of education and wealth ! His letters give one the impres- sion that he was intimate with Houston. It is very possible that the Texan revolutionist used him to draw an offer from the British government that would be of service in negotiations with the United States ; but this theory pre- supposes a degree of foresightedness in Houston and also a desire for annexation to the United States which he may
1 J. H. Smith's Annexation of Adams's British Interests and Actin-
Texas, 52-62. ties in Texas, 1838-1846; J. S. Reeves's
* See Justin H. Smith's "The Mexi- American Diplomacy under Tyler and
can Recognition of Texas" in Ameri- Polk; and G. L. Rives's United States
can Historical Review, xvi, 36; his and Mexico, i, chs. xv, xvi. Annexation of Texas; Ephraim D.
534
TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [On. XVI
not have had. It is certain that the British government desired Texas to be independent, without slavery if possible, but with slavery, if necessary.1 It was not willing to go to war with anybody on this issue. As Mexico would not recognize Texan independence unless compelled to do so, and as an open abolition propaganda seemed likely to lead to trouble with the United States, Aberdeen drew back. In this he was impelled partly by the suggestion from the British minister at Washington that his relations with the Texan representative at London and with the abolitionists were aiding the election of the pro-annexation Democratic candidate for the presidency.
In 1841, at the accession of Peel and Aberdeen to power, the relations between the United States and Great Britain were so grave that war seemed to be imminent. There were the long-standing controversies as to the Northeastern boundary and as to the division of Oregon.2 Besides, the destruction of an American vessel by a party of Canadians
1 Aberdeen's famous declaration is in a letter of Ashbel Smith to Anson Jones, dated Paris, July 31, 1843, in Garrison's Diplomatic Correspon- dence of . . . Texas, pp. 1116, 1117 in the American Historical Associa- tion's Report for 1908, vol. ii and is as follows :
" His Lordship replied, in effect, that it is the well-known policy and wish of the British Government to abolish slavery every where: that its abolition in Texas is deemed very de- sirable and he spoke to this point at some little length, as connected with British policy and British interests and in reference to the United States. He added, there was no disposition on the part of the British Govt to interfere improperly on this subject, and that they would not give the Texian Govt any cause to complain : ' he was not prepared to say whether the British Government would consent hereafter to make such compensation to Texas as would enable the Slaveholders to
abolish slavery, the object is deemed so important perhaps they might, though he could not say certainly.' 1 here remarked to his Lordship, that any compensation received by Texas from a foreign power for the abolition of slavery would be derogatory to our national honor and degrade and dis- grace us in the eyes of the world. He observed such things can be so done as not to be offensive, etc., but I be- lieve his Lordship was of my opin- ion.
" Lord Aberdeen also stated that despatches had been recently sent to Mr. Doyle, the British Charge d' Affaires at Mexico, instructing him to renew the tender of British Mediation based on the abolition of slavery in Texas, and declaring that abolition would be a great moral triumph for Mexico. Your Department will not fail to re- mark that this despatch to Mr. Doyle appears to introduce a new and im- portant condition into 'mediation.'"
2 See Note II at end of chapter.
1842] THE NORTHEASTERN BOUNDARY 535
within American territorial waters had aroused great resent- ment in New York.1 At the other end of the line, the active British propaganda for the suppression of the African slave trade angered the Southerners and their feelings were not at all appeased by the release of negroes, who had cap- tured a coasting vessel — the Creole — while on a voyage from Norfolk to New Orleans, by the British authorities at Nassau in the Bahamas.2 These controversies interested the people of the North, the West, and the South. At the moment the weak government of Tyler was in office, with Daniel Webster holding on to the Secretaryship of State after all his original colleagues had resigned. Most for- tunately, economic considerations, according to the financial authorities, made it practically impossible for Great Britain at this precise time to go to war with the United States. No doubt Aberdeen, the new Foreign Secretary, in succession to Palmerston was desirous of doing what was right, but in the actual condition of affairs, it would have been very difficult to have maintained the old Canning-Palmerston attitude toward the United States. It was in these cir- cumstances that Alexander Baring, Lord Ashburton,3 was sent on a special mission to Washington to settle as many of these questions as he could. The instructions given him were very broad and he was a man of such posi- tion and of such firmness of character that he was willing to take upon himself responsibilities that very few diplomatists had ever been willing to incur. The Oregon question proved to be insoluble at the moment and was set aside.
1 See O. E. Tiffany's "Relations of 2J. B. Moore's Digest of Interna-
the United States to the Canadian tional Law, ii, 358-361. Rebellion of 1837-1838" in the Pub- 3 For many years Baring had been
lications of the Buffalo Historical intimately connected with American
Society, viii, 1-147. There are ample financial affairs and had married a
footnotes to this article and there is a Philadelphian who had inherited large
bibliography on p. 115. A more com- tracts of land in the State of Maine,
plete list is in ibid., v, 427. See the present work, vol. iv, 110.
536
TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Cn. XVI
The Northeastern boundary controversy takes one back to the Treaty of 1783. * The language of that instrument was certainly capable of more than one interpretation and it was found impossible to harmonize some of the geo- graphical expressions in it with the actual topography. Commissions were appointed, but little progress was made except to ascertain the identity of the St. Croix River. This stream was small in itself, but it was of great importance in this boundary controversy, because it was from the source of this river that the boundary line between Maine and New Brunswick proceeded due north to the "angle" which was formed by its junction with the highlands that separate the rivers that flow into the St. Lawrence from those that empty themselves into "the sea" or into the Atlantic Ocean. In the War of 1812 the British had found great difficulty in reinforcing their troops in Canada and supplying them with provisions and munitions, for the St. Lawrence is navigable for only a portion of each year. It seemed to be necessary for the future of the British Empire that the Northeastern boundary should be so arranged that sufficient territory would be obtained for a military road wholly in British control from the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec to Halifax.2 It also appeared that American settlers had
1 See the present work, volume iii, ch. xii. The most recent treatments of this boundary dispute are H. S. Burrage's Maine in the Northeastern Boundary Controversy and J. F. Sprague's chapter in Hatch's Maine, A History, i, 247-281. Of the official documents Gallatin's Right of the United States of America to the North-Eastern Boundary (New York, 1840) is the most helpful. See also The Message from the President . . . December 7, 1842 (House Document, No. 2, 27th Cong., 3rd Sess. and the Report of the Committee on the North-Eastern Boundary that was printed by order of the Maine Senate in 1841. A letter from Wil-
liam Pitt Preble dated at The Hague, 25th Jan., 1831, and addressed to Louis McLane, American minister at London, in the Appendix to The Decision of the King of the Netherlands considered in reference to the rights of the United States and of the State of Maine (Portland, 1831) gives the American side of the case most clearly. An excellent topographical treatment of the question is William F. Ganong's "Evolution of the Boundaries of the Province of New Brunswick" in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 2nd Series, vol. vii, Section ii. * In his letter to Ashburton of March 31, 1842, Aberdeen informs him that
'B3
70
"THE KINO'S MAP"
CAn extract, redrawn from the colored facsimile in Col. Dudley A. Mills's article in the United Empire, vol. ii, No. 10.)
637
538
TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Ca. XVI
seated themselves on territory that was clearly British at the head of the Connecticut River and at the northern end of Lake Champlain. Under these circumstances it would have been well had the British said in effect to the United States that "we want territory that clearly belongs to you, and some of your people are living within our limits. Can we not make some arrangement that will be mutually satisfactory?" Instead of doing this, successive British governments attacked the soundness of the American title. At length, in 1827, the Adams administration agreed to sub- mit the controversy to the king of the Netherlands as arbiter, although, as Adams must have known, he was under considerable obligations to Great Britain. Instead of de- ciding for one party or the other, this royal arbiter undertook to divide the disputed territory between the two countries.1 The decision was made in 1831. In 1832, President Jackson asked the Senate whether it would "advise a submission to the opinion delivered by the sovereign arbiter, and con- sent to its execution." On June 23 of that year, the Senators voted that they "do not advise . . . and do not consent" to the award.2 Seven years later, in 1839, hostilities be- tween Maine frontiersmen and British settlers in the Aroos- took country had been averted only by the patriotic and skilful conduct of General Winfield Scott and Governor Harvey of New Brunswick.3
although a conventional line may be agreed upon " there is a limit, beyond which a regard for the safety of these Provinces must forbid us to recede " ; but the whole letter should be read by any one interested in this subject. American Historical Review, xvii, 768.
It is worth noticing that in 1839, when there was a possibility that Webster might represent the United States at London, he had thought that ''a conventional line" would better
be agreed to. Van Tyne's Letters of Daniel Webster, 217.
1 J. B. Moore's History . . . of the International Arbitrations to which the United States has been a Party, i, pp. 1-161.
2 See Senate Journal, 22nd Cong., 1st Sess., "Appendix," pp. 516-531.
3 The seriousness of the affair comes out in the " Roster of Commissioned Officers and Enlisted Men" who were called into service in 1839 by the State
1763-1783.
Great Britain was in full possession of the whole country. The proclamation of 1763 fixed the southern boundary of Quebec at the watershed of the St. Lawrence. Successive commissions to Governors of Nova Scotia fixed the western boundary of Nova Scotia at the River St. Croix, and a line drawn due north from its source to the southern boundary of Quebec.
1783-1831.
The Treaty of 1783 by which Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States, defined its north-eastern boundary ae follows : —
"From the North-west angle of Nova Scotia, viz., that angle which is formed by a line drawn due North from the source of St. Croix River to the Highlands; along the said Highlands which divide those Rivers that empty themselves into the River St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean, to the North-westernmost head of Con- necticut River ; . . . East by a line to be drawn along the middle of the River St. Croix from its mouth in the Bay of Fundy to its source, and from its source directly North to the aforesaid Highlands, which divide the Rivers that fall into the Atlantic Ocean from those which fall into the River St. Lawrence ; "
1842.
The Ashburton Treaty settled the boundary. The area in square miles, according to the figures accepted tradi- tionally both in Canada and the United States, was —
GREAT BRITAIN . • •
UNITED STATES . . .
By the proposal of the King of Holland
4,119
7,908
By the
Ashburton Treaty
5,012
7,015
Total disputed area 12,027
THE NORTHEASTERN BOUNDARY
(Reproduced by permission from Col. Dudley A. Mills's article in the United Empire, vol. ii,
No. 10.) 539
540 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Cn. XVI
The people of Maine thought that their State had a good title to the disputed lands and were very unwilling to do anything to lessen their rights. It happened that Jared Sparks had found a map in Paris on which there was a red line that justified the British claim.1 For some unknown rea- son he had made up his mind that this was the map upon which Franklin had drawn a line showing the extent of the United States under the Treaty of Independence. Un- doubtedly Franklin drew a line on a map which he presented to Vergennes; but there is no reason whatever to suppose that it was this map. It served Webster's purpose, how- ever, because on Sparks exhibiting it to the Maine legis- lators, they consented to the appointment of commissioners to go to Washington to advise Webster in the negotiation. He also used it to secure the consent of the Senate to the treaty that he and Ashburton drew up ; but he did not show it to Ashburton until after the treaty was signed. Earlier, in 1839, Sir Anthony Panizzi, the Director of the British Museum, had called Palmerston's attention to a map in that institution that had on it a red line marked "boundary as described by Mr. Oswald." This is known as "The King's Map." It bore out the American conten- tion as to the line in its entirety. Palmerston at once
of Maine; see pamphlet entitled, with J. D. Graham's "Map of the
Aroostook War, published at Augusta, Boundary Lines between the United
Maine, in 1904. States and the Adjacent British Prov-
1 For the red-line map, see Life mces" that was issued in March, 1843.
and Writings of Jared Sparks, ii, ch. Colonel Mills most kindly placed his
xxvii ; and Winsor's Narrative and Ms. notes at my disposal, and Pro-
Critical History, vii, 180. Colonel fessor Ephraim D. Adams's essay in
Dudley A. Mills, R.E., has printed the American Historical Review (xvii,
a full-sized facsimile of the Oswald 764) has been of great service. There
map in the United Empire Magazine is a list of books in the 7th volume of
for October, 1911. This may be Winsor's Narrative and Critical His-
compared with an extract from "Mr. tory, and A. R. Hasse's "References"
Jay's Map" that is prefixed to Galla- in the Bulletin of the New York Public
tin's Memoir on the North-Eastern Library for December, 1900, is most
Boundary that was printed for the New useful. York Historical Society in 1843, and
1842] THE ASHBURTON TREATY 541
impounded it in the recesses of the Foreign Office and it was unknown to Aberdeen and to Ashburton until after the latter's return to England in 1843, and it was not known to students until 1896. The negotiators proceeded upon the principle that it was desirable to "draw a conventional line" that wojuld give England the territory she wanted and would permit the Americans to stay on the lands they had occupied within British territory at the head of the Connec- ticut River and at the northern end of Lake Champlain. They also managed to come to an agreement as to the other disputed matters in a way, however, that was not pleasing to any one and, therefore, may have been a fair compromise. This arrangement was included in the treaty that was ratified by the Senate in 1842.
In 1843, Texan annexation became a distinct issue in American politics. John Tyler of Virginia, now President by the accidental death of William Henry Harrison, was an ardent annexationist and always had been. He believed that the United States should own not only Texas, but California as well, and with them, of course, the intervening province of New Mexico. The trouble with Tyler was that he had no party behind him and while he could block by his veto legislation proposed by the Whigs, he could not by Democratic strength get any positive measures passed c-hrough Congress. In 1843, Webster retired from the State Department, where his presence had made annexation by treaty impossible. Houston was again President of Texas and, while favoring annexation by treaty, he seemed deter- mined to make certain beforehand of adequate protection by the United States against the wrath of the Mexican Republic before beginning active negotiations.1 It was difficult for an executive officer at Washington to give any
1 J. H. Smith's Annexation of Texas, 164, 166.
542 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Cn. XVI
such assurance or to station soldiers and ships for the defence of Texas because the Constitution confided to Congress the power to declare war. Webster's successor in the State Department was Abel P. Upshur, a Virginian and a favorer of Tyler's plan. The treaty for the annex- ation of Texas as a "territory" was practically completed when the explosion of a gun on the American warship Princeton killed Upshur, February 28, 1844. He was succeeded by John C. Calhoun and the treaty was signed and sent to the Senate.1 Up to this time, the prospect of the ratification of the treaty was bright.2 It happened that Calhoun found on Upshur's desk a letter from Aberdeen to Pakenham which the latter had laid before the American Secretary of State. It was dated December 26, 1843, and was intended to allay excitement by denying that Great Britain had any "occult design" upon Mexico or upon Texas. Aberdeen avowed that he, himself, wished to see slavery abolished throughout the world, but only open and un- disguised means would be adopted by Great Britain to secure "this humane and virtuous purpose." Calhoun at once undertook to answer this letter. He may have hoped to end forever the abolition propaganda; he may have expected to rally anti-abolition opinion to his side ; or he may have designed to split his own country into two sec- tions and to consolidate the national spirit of the South. In this letter, Calhoun restated the Southern view that slavery was a beneficent institution, blessed alike to the
1 The letters and other papers that It was widely printed and was the oc-
passed during the negotiations are casion of many replies. Among them
printed in Senate Documents, No. may be mentioned Sidney's Letters to
341, 28th Cong., 1st Sess. William E. Channing . . . First Pub-
1 One finds articles opposing the lished in the " Charleston Courier."
annexation of Texas in the New Eng- Of the later remonstrances are The
land papers as early as September, Legion of Liberty published in 1843 ;
1829. In August, 1837, the Reverend The Texan Revolution by "Probus."
William Ellery Channing addressed 1843 and The Taking of Naboth't
& letter to Henry Clay on this subject. Vineyard, printed in 1845.
i843] CALHOUN'S LETTER 54E
slave and to the owner.1 The avowal of Britain's desire for universal abolition necessitated the absorption of Texas into the United States to obviate so great a calamity to the world. This letter was the supreme example of Southern provincialism. For no one who had known the North or Europe and wished for Texas annexation could have written it. It aroused the anti-slavery men of the North and made abolitionists of them. It converted many a waverer on the question of Texas annexation to the theory that that movement was a conspiracy on the part of slaveholders to increase their power for evil. What had seemed to be questionable was regarded now as positively injurious. It became impossible to procure the two-thirds vote necessary in the Senate for the ratification of the treaty and it was defeated.2 President Tyler thereupon asked Congress to provide for the annexation of Texas by joint resolution, which only required a majority vote in the two Houses. The annex- ation of Texas now became a distinct political issue and the presidential campaign of 1844 was fought to bring it about. Political conditions were exceedingly peculiar at that time. Tyler, naturally enough, wished to be elected President; but his joining with the Whigs had lost him Democratic support and his refusal to approve Whig measures had made him unpopular with Clay and his fol- lowers. Enough office-holders and personal friends came together to nominate Tyler for the presidency, but his candidacy had no vitality. Clay was the inevitable can- didate of the Whigs and Van Buren looked upon himself as the rightful standard bearer of the Democrats. When the Democratic convention was held, the Calhoun men, while not strong enough to nominate the South Carolinian, were
1 Senate Document, No. 341, pp. 48, * Journal of the Senate, 28th Cong.,
60, 28th Cong., 1st Sess. 1st Sesa., "Appendix," pp. 421^38.
544 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON {Cn. XVI
strong enough to make Van Buren's nomination impossible by carrying through the convention the rule that required a two-thirds vote for the nomination. For a time it seemed as if the nomination of any one was impossible. Suddenly, it occurred to George Bancroft, a member of the Massachu- setts delegation who combined politics with history, that the nomination of Governor Polk of Tennessee would satisfy all factions. Bancroft suggested this to Gideon J. Pillow, who had formerly been Folk's law partner and in the Balti- more convention was hoping to secure for Polk the nomi- nation to the vice-presidency. He eagerly fell in with Bancroft's plan. The fatigued and baffled delegates re- ceived it rejoicingly and voted unanimously for Polk, who thus became the first "dark horse" in the history of the presidency.1
As soon as the nomination of Polk was made, John Tyler withdrew from the contest. His own chances were hopeless, and by remaining in the race he would divide the Democratic vote. He was assured that his own friends would be taken care of by Polk and thereby was enabled to retire grace- fully, for Polk was also heartily in favor of the annexation of Texas. Henry Clay seemed to have no settled opinion on the subject. In April, 1844, he opposed it.2 At the moment he probably believed Southern opinion to be doubtful. The legal status of slavery was still undeter- mined in Texas and, in any event, that country was certain to be a strong competitor with the existing States in the production of cotton fibre. Clay mistook his own feelings
•On the nomination of Polk see Cave Johnson in the years 1833-1844
"Letters of ... Pillow to ... Polk, (Tennessee Historical Magazine, Sep-
1844" in American Historical Review, tember, 1915).
xi, 832. For the Bancroft side of the 'See the well-known "Raleigh
matter, see American Antiquarian So- Letter," dated April 17, 1844, in Cal-
ciety's Proceedings for April, 1891, vin Colton's Life of Henry Clay (New
p. 244. Folk's capacity as a politician York, 1857), iii, 25. comes out in the letters he wrote to
1844] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 545
for those of Southern people in general and misinterpreted political sentiment in this case as he had in many others. In reality the annexation of Texas would almost certainly add to the existing slave territory, would open new lands for colonization to the planters of the Cotton Belt, and would provide a new market for slaves to the slaveholders of the Border States. As months went by, it became more and more evident that Clay had taken the wrong side ; but his friends implored him to be silent and to write no letters, for then the Texas issue might be minimized. He could not do this and wrote other letters shifting his ground and thereby offended the abolitionists without gaining any important strength in the South. As it was, the election was very close * and was determined by the action of the abolitionists in New York State. After much cogitation and with many misgivings, the anti-slavery men there deter- mined to vote for James G. Birney for the presidency. There was no possibility of his election and the anti-slavery men by voting with the Whigs would have given the Texas annexation scheme a heavy blow; but they would not cooperate with any one who did not believe the slavery issue itself to be the most important thing at stake.2 Birney drew enough votes away from the Whig electors in New York to give the electoral vote of that State to Polk and thereby made him President.3 When Congress met in December,
'An idea of the vigor with which feU Detector, or the Leaders of "The
this campaign was waged may be party" Exposed.
gained by a perusal of a series of ten * Possibly the best exposition of the
papers published by a committee of abolitionist view of the wickedness of
the Democratic members of Congress, slave-expansion is Loring Moody's
especially numbers 7 and 8, giving History of the Mexican War, or Facts
fifty reasons why Polk should be for the People, showing the relation of
elected and Clay defeated. The means the United States Government to Slavery
used by politicians to accomplish their (Boston, 1848).
purposes in those days were fully as * In the New York popular vote,
tortuous as they were in the election Polk had 237,588; Clay had 232,482;
of 1828. See, for example, The Counter- and Birney had 15,812. Adding the
546 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON [Cn. XVI
Tyler urged on his scheme of annexation by resolution and in February, 1845, the two Houses passed a joint resolution for the annexation of Texas and its admission into the Union as one State.
"Who is James K. Polk?" was frequently asked and the only answer that could be given by most persons was "He is the President of the United States." That was about all that was known of him, although he had been Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives and governor of Tennessee. It was not until the publication of his "Diary" in 1910 that it was possible to make a much better appraisal, except, of course, one could rehearse the principal events of the four years of his inhabitancy of thf White House. In reality Polk 1 has suffered severely at the hands of contemporaries and historians. He had no glamour of popularity about him. He shut himself up in the presi- dential mansion and worked sixteen hours a day, including the keeping of his "Diary." Much of his time was taken up with office hunters. Polk was a partisan and saw no virtue in Whigs ; but he was thoroughly disgusted with the carrying out of this part of his duties. For the rest he gives the impression of a man who saw his duty clearly and was determined to do it. Undoubtedly, he was not of
Birney votes to the Clay votes — sup- of Texas. The above figures are taken
posing all the anti-slavery men had from Greeley's Political Text-Book,
voted for Clay — he would have had p. 239 and Journal of the House of
248,294 votes. As the presidential Representatives, 28th Cong., 2nd Sess.,
electors in New York were voted for p. 372.
on a general ticket in that year, the * Milo M. Quaife's "Biographical
36 electoral votes of New York would Sketch" prefixed to volume i of the
have been cast for Clay instead of Diary is possibly the best assessment
for Polk. Subtracting these 36 elec- of Polk. The Diary of James K.
toral votes from Folk's 170 would have Polk during his Presidency (4 vels.,
left him with 134; and adding them to Chicago, 1910) is the best memorial
Clay's 105 electoral votes would have of him. In the American Historical
given Clay 141 and made him Presi- Magazine for April, 1896, p. 154, M. W.
dent. Nevertheless, it was held by Garrett states that President Polk
the Democrats that the people in the was descended from "a great noble"
election had approved the annexation named "Fulbert the Saxon."
1846] TEXAS ANNEXED 547
great mental calibre nor of much education ; but he possessed a strong will and an inflexible determination to do the right rhing as he saw it. In a Cabinet council composed of Buchanan of Pennsylvania, Walker of Mississippi, Marcy of New York, Mason of Virginia, and Bancroft of Massa- chusetts, Polk was certainly the master spirit, and in every crisis of his administration, it was his hand that guided events. He at once proceeded to carry out "the will of the people" as expressed in his own election by pushing on the annexation of Texas.1 The president of that country at the moment was Anson Jones. He did not favor annexation, but the voice of the Texan people was too strong for him and he was obliged to take the necessary steps to ascertain the popular wish. On July 4, 1845, a convention at San Felipe de Austin determined, with a few dissentient votes, to accept the proposal of the United States ; but the later steps of actually admitting Texas to the Union were not completed until the end of that year.
lSee the Diary of J. K. Polk, i, 17, 121 and H. B. Learned's " Cabinet Meet-
etc., and some interesting letters in ings under President Polk" in Ameri-
Massachusetts Historical Society's Pro- can Historical Association's Report
ceedings for November, 1909, pp. 110- for 1914, vol. i, pp. 231-242.
548 TEXAS, CALIFORNIA, AND OREGON
NOTES
I. Texas Bibliography. — Our knowledge of early Texas has been derived mainly, until recent years, from the work of H. Yoakum which was published in 1856 in two volumes with the title of History of Texas ... to its Annexation to the United States in 1846. This forms the basis of D. G. Wooten's Comprehensive History of Texas. William Kennedy's Texas in two volumes was published at London in 1841. He was an Englishman who had travelled extensively in America and occupied a diplomatic post in Texas under Charles Elliot, the British consul general. It is a serious painstaking work and undoubtedly represents contemporary opinion in Texas. Frank W. Johnson, who participated in the Texas Revolution, wrote out his recollections in later life and fortified them with abundant documents. Professor Eugene C. Barker edited this narrative, adding other documents. This forms volume i of A History of Texas and Texans, edited by Eugene C. Barker with the assistance of Ernest W. Winkler ; the second volume of this work contains much instructive local in- formation. The last three volumes are of the usual type of sub- scription State histories, of biographies of persons who are willing to provide material and illustrations. It differs from most of these works, however, in having an exceedingly good editor and presenting an original contemporaneous account of th> origin of one of our States. Less useful books are Henry S. Fcote's Texas and the Texans; or, Advance of the Anglo-Americans to th<- South-west (2 vols., Phila- delphia, 1841) and J. H. Brown' History of Texas (2 vols., St. Louis, 1892). George P. Garrison's Texas in the American Commonwealth series has the merit of brevity, but it lacks all bibliographical apparatus. Herbert E. Bolton of the University of California and Eugene C. Barker of the University of Texas have established new schools of research in promoting the intensive study of episodes of the early history of the Pacific Slope and the Southwest. They and their students and co-workers have explored the archives of Mexico, California, and Texas and brought to light much valuable material. They have published many studies and much original matter in the publications of the Universities of California and Texas, in The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, and in the Pub- lications of the Southern History Association. Specific references have been given to many of these articles in the preceding footnotes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 549
The American Historical Association has undertaken the publication of the Stephen F. Austin papers under the editorship of Professor Barker and has already printed a great mass of diplomatic papers under the editorship of the late Professor Garrison.1
n. The Whitman Story. — In the 1860's a story was started to the effect that Webster had been on the point of giving up Oregon in exchange for the cod fisheries, when he was compelled to desist by representations made by a missionary named Whitman, and this idea became almost an article of faith among certain good people. William I. Marshall, a Chicago school-teacher, in 1882 learned that there was no evidence to support this story and spent the rest of his life in gathering the facts and putting them together to prove the negative. See his " Marcus Whitman : a Discussion of Professor Bourne's Paper " in Report of the American Historical Association for 1900, pp. 221-236; in 1904 Marshall published three essays entitled History vs. The Whitman Saved Oregon Story and after his death the material that he had collected with so much labor was printed at the expense of " a number of citizens of the States of Oregon and Washington " under the title of Acquisition of Oregon and the Long Suppressed Evidence about Marcus Whitman (2 vols., Seattle, 1911). Not knowing of Marshall's studies, Professor Edward G. Bourne attacked the same problem and set forth the results of his research in a paper which he read at the meeting of the American Historical Association in December, 1900. This was printed in the American Historical Review for January, 1901, and the same matter considerably expanded is printed under the title of " The Legend of Marcus Whitman " in Bourne's Essays in Historical Criticism, 3-109. In this paper he acknowledges his indebtedness to Marshall and gives abundant citations.
It would seem that the fact that Whitman reached Washington City months after the ratification of the Treaty of 1842 and the departure of Ashburton for England would have caused historical students to question the accuracy of the story in other respects.
1 American Historical Association's Report for 1907.
CHAPTER XVII
THE YEAR 1846
THE year 1846 is one of the most memorable in our his- tory ; it witnessed the settlement of the dispute of decades over Oregon, the occupation of California, the march of the Mormons to Utah, and the opening campaigns of the Mexi- can War. It was the destiny of the United States to extend to the Pacific and as far south as the arid portions of Mexico. California, New Mexico, Texas, and Oregon in its old geographical sense were all practically unutilized by man in 1835. Of course, it cannot be said that the people of the United States had any moral right to take over lands that had been practically unused by another people ; but it must be said that the moral argument for the retention of these splendid lands by a people who did not and could not convert them to the benefit of humanity raises a strong presumption in favor of their acquisition by those who could make, and, as a matter of fact, have made, a good use of them.1 The United States was ready to pay Mexico an adequate sum for their transfer. For years, there had been a continual diplomatic wrangling over the refusal of the Mexicans to treat American merchants with fairness. They encouraged them to start enterprises on Mexican soil
1 Matias Romero's Mexico and the Mexico and her resources. Charles
United States and his Geographical H. Owen gives an American view of
and Statistical Notes on Mexico, both Mexican psychology and deeds in
published at New York in 1898, con- The Justice of the Mexican War (New
tain the best modern description of York, 1908).
550
CLAIMS AGAINST MEXICO 551
and then refused them all facilities for so doing. In this way and in other ways, pecuniary claims by American citizens against Mexico arose. Allowance must be made for the disorganized political condition of the Mexican people. Their governments lacked stability and any con- cession to an outside power was the signal for a new revolu- tion. Mexican politicians, therefore, were afraid to comply with the plain dictates of justice. Recognizing their weakness and helplessness, the United States yielded to the verge of ignominy. At length, in 1839, a treaty was signed providing for the arbitration l of the American claims. After long delays, Mexico was adjudged to pay certain sums of money and as her coffers were in the usual depleted condition, time was given for making these payments by instalments. Mexico paid one or two of them and then paid no more and further negotiations were entered into. Then, also, American citizens, who had no call to go into Mexican territory, except for the pursuit of gain, mere curiosity, or love of adventure, found themselves in Mexican prisons. Some of them were inhumanly treated. The United States protested, but received scant consideration at the hands of the Mexican authorities. The fact was that the ruling classes of Mexico had a feeling of contempt for the people of the United States, and those of them who had lived outside of Mexico and who could judge of the relative strength of the two republics either had little power in Mexico or saw that their personal advantage would not admit of their doing the right thing. This was the case, not only with the United States, but also with France and Great Britain. They, too, had claims and they also nego- tiated. In 1838, France lost patience and collected her claims at the cannon's mouth. British commercial interests
1 Treaties and Conventions (ed. 1873), pp. 557, 560.
552 THE YEAR 1846 [Cn. XVII
in Mexico were so large that for years that country forebore to collect what was due to her people. The annexation of Texas by the United States brought on a crisis, for the occupation of any part of it was an act of spoliation of Mexican territory, — according to Mexican belief.
In the summer of 1845, General Zachary Taylor was ordered to the Texan boundary. He was instructed to occupy a position "on or near the Rio Grande" as soon as the Texans had voted for annexation. Orders were also sent to Commodore Sloat, commanding the American naval force in the Pacific, to seize California in case of a declaration of war. In view of the probability of Mexican attack on Texas while the consideration of the annexation plan was proceeding, the strengthening of the American army in Louisiana was perfectly justifiable, if the annexation of Texas was. As the independence of the Texan Republic had been recognized by Great Britain, France, and the United States for eight years or more, and as the Texans had been governing themselves all that time without any adequate attempt on the part of Mexico to reconquer her lost province, the rightfulness of annexation would seem to be beyond the line of argument. As to California and New Mexico, which lay between that province and Texas, if Mexico made war on the United States on account of this perfectly justifiable annexation, then those provinces might be considered in the light of an 'indemnity for the expendi- ture which Mexico would force upon the United States, and in that point of view the seizure of California and New Mexico would be right and proper.
As soon as it became certain that the Texans were going to vote for annexation to the United States, Taylor made preparation for the military occupation of the new State and, by the end of July, 1845, found himself with regulars,
1845] TAYLOR IN TEXAS 553
infantry and artillery, in camp at Corpus Christi on the southwestern side of the estuary of the Nueces River, and soon afterward he was joined by a cavalry force. In October, he suggested to the government at Washington that an advance to the bank of the Rio Grande would be advisable for military reasons.1 The Mexicans viewed with astonishment this invasion of their territory by the military forces of the United States, — for the moment Taylor crossed the Sabine, he was within Mexican territory accord- ing to Mexican belief. They determined to resist, and to attack the invader. To do this, money was appropriated by the revolutionary government then in power and soldiers were sent to Matamoros, a town on the western bank of the Rio Grande, and not far from its mouth. And so matters were in the autumn of 1845.
The winter of 1845-1846 saw two most extraordinary diplomatic or quasi-diplomatic transactions. The adminis- tration wanted Texas and California, but it did not want war, for it was quite uncertain what position the people would take on the matter, and the influence of military victories or defeats upon the fortunes of the Democratic party were exceedingly dubious. Polk determined to make one more effort to secure a peaceable settlement. At the moment there was no American representative in Mexico, but an assurance was given by the authorities there that an American minister would be received by the govern- ment. John Slidell, a New Yorker living in New Orleans, was appointed envoy to Mexico to settle all the disputes with that country or as many of them as he could. When he got there the existing government was tottering. It was unable even to appear to yield to American pressure. It tried to get out of the dilemma by asserting that it had agreed to
» Hou*e Document No. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 107.
554 THE YEAR 1846 [Ca. XVII
receive a commissioner to negotiate on the Texas question and an envoy had been sent to settle everything,1 Slidell and the Washington government exhibited a great deal of patience, but without reward, for a new Mexican regime refused to receive any diplomatic representative from the United States, no matter what he was called.
At this time Santa Anna was living in exile at Havana. In February, 1846, A. J. Atocha appeared at Washington and sought the President. Polk received him and was led to believe that Santa Anna, if he could again find himself in Mexico, would do what he could to bring about friendly relations with the United States. It is by no means clear that Atocha had any right to act in any way as the rep- resentative of the former President of the Mexican Republic, but Polk fell into the trap, — if it were a trap. He sent Alexander Slidell Mackenzie to Havana to find out the facts. Mackenzie was a naval officer of mark. He was well re- ceived by Santa Anna and given some extraordinary advice as to the best mode of attacking Mexico. Meantime, in January, 1846, at the beginning of this intrigue, a report came from Slidell that the Mexican government refused to receive him or even to listen to him. Thereupon, it was decided to reinforce diplomacy by arms. Taylor was ordered 2 (January 13, 1846) to the Rio Grande. Commo- dore Conner was directed to take his fleet to Vera Cruz,3 — and later was instructed to permit Santa Anna to pass
1 Smith's War with Mexico, i. 95 official correspondence to April 22,
and fol., 436 and fol. ; and George 1846. The papers from that date
L. Rives's "Mexican Diplomacy on to December 29, 1846, are on pages
the Eve of War with the United States " 274-515: and the following pages to
in American Historical Review, xviii, 769 relate the attempts to outfit the
275-294. The papers are printed in expedition, — a melancholy story. House Document, No. 60, 30th Cong., ' See P. S. P. Conner's articles on
1st Sess., pp. 11-79. Commodore Conner in The United
* House Document, No. 60, 30th Service magazine for 1894, 1895, 1896,
Cong., 1st Sess., p. 90. Pages 79- 1897, and see also The Knickerbocker
148 of this document contain the for 1847.
1846] TAYLOR ON THE RIO GRANDE 555
through the blockading squadron, — but he could not have prevented the entrance of that redoubtable personage into Mexico, if he had tried. The march of Taylor and the appearance of warships off Vera Cruz produced no effect upon the Mexican rulers. The Rio Grande was a long way off and the Castle of San Juan de Ultia in front of Vera Cruz was believed to be impregnable, for it had been greatly strengthened since the French battered it eight years before. Finally, it was inconceivable to the Mexican mind that the British would permit the Americans to work their will in Texas and in California, and the Mexicans did not believe that the Americans would fight.
In March, 1846, Taylor with his troops reached the Rio Grande opposite Matamoros and began the construction of a fort. As to Taylor 1 and his doings in Texas and Mexico great contrariety of opinion has developed. Many persons have believed that his victories were won by the display of high military qualities in spite of the lukewarm support of the administration at Washington and the removal of his best troops to carry on the Vera Cruz-Mexico City cam- paign. It was this belief, coupled with a certain rugged charm, that made Zachary Taylor President of the United States. At a later day, historical students have insisted that Taylor was devoid of any knowledge of warfare on any scale beyond campaigns against the Indians. They assert that he took no steps to find out what the enemy was doing and issued practically no orders.2 Undoubtedly, Taylor surprised his contemporaries. Charles Elliot, the British
1 A discriminating memoir by Wil- 9, 1846, that during the Battle of Palo Ham H. Samson is prefixed to the Alto he was "at the side of General Letters of Zachary Taylor from the Taylor, and communicating his orders." Battle-Fields of the Mexican War In a later letter, he stated that Tay- (from the Bixby Collection, Rochester, lor did not make the use of the en- 1908). gineers and other members of his staff
2 General Meade, who was then a that he might have done. See Life lieutenant, wrote to his wife on May and Letters of G. G. Meade, i, 80, 101.
556 THE YEAR 1846 [Cn. XVII
representative in Texas, declared that Taylor had too few soldiers to do anything, that too few of those he had were cavalry, and that his artillery was out of all proportion to his needs and could not be effectively used in the Texan climate. It has been said that although Taylor was a veteran of the War of 1812 he had passed the best years of his life in army posts on the frontier, superintending the petty details of his command and failing to improve him- self in military science. It must be confessed that Taylor was deficient in book learning and had never exercised thousands of soldiers together. It seems true, also, that he undervalued foreknowledge of the enemies' numbers and movements. On the other side, every one admits that he was a man of unsurpassed courage and had the invaluable quality of inspiring his troops with confidence in themselves and in him. He had no brilliant staff about him, and his vigorous language attracted attention at the time and has been repeated often since. It seems safe to say that where a military commander exhibits a fairly long line of victories achieved under perilous circumstances, there must have been something in him of the soldier, that he must have issued orders, and have known what he was about. Any modern student of the campaigns of 1846 to 1848 must constantly bear in mind that, while so near to our own time, they were conducted as to transportation and intelligence with about the same facilities as General Washington had in the Revolutionary War. Moreover, the distances in Mexico and in Texas were greater than they seem to be on a map, and the Mexicans, whatever their fighting qualities may have been, possessed a mobility that could hardly have been expected by any one who had not experienced
1 There is an interesting letter, dated Mrs. Chapman Coleman'a Life of John September 15, 1846, from Taylor in J. CriUenden, i, 251.
1846] GENERAL TAYLOR 557
it. One trouble in assessing Taylor's deeds arises from the fact that his reports were written by Major Bliss, his able adjutant, and later his son-in-law, who resembled so closely in some ways the modern publicity agent that students have not regarded them as stating the actual facts.
Taylor's base after he reached the Rio Grande was Point Isabel, which was the port of Matamoros, because the navigation of the lower reaches of the river was very un- certain.1 Taylor blockaded the Rio Grande because the Mexican commander refused him facilities to gather supplies. There was a curious hesitation on both sides to bring matters to a decision, but finally General Arista, the Mexican com- mander at Matamoros, was spurred to activity by the authorities at Mexico City. An officer of the American army was murdered, reconnoitering parties were attacked, and one of these, commanded by Captain Thornton, was captured by the Mexicans after several soldiers had been killed. This was on April 25, 1846. The report of the encounter reached Washington on May 9. Two days later, President Polk informed Congress that war exists and that American blood had been shed on American soil by the Mexicans.2 On May 13, Congress authorized the President to accept volunteers for the prosecution of the war which exists between Mexico and the United States by the act of the Republic of Mexico, and thus recognized a status of war.3 Meantime, on the 8th and 9th of that month, Taylor had won two battles.
1 On the geographical relations of agents of the United States. In this these places see J. A. Stevens's Valley they are informed that Mexico has of the Rio Grande, 1-8. "mistaken our forbearance for pusil-
2 Richardson's Messages and Papers, lanimity. Encouraged, probably, by iv, 437. this misapprehension, her army has
3 Statutes at Large, ix, 9. On May at length passed the Del Norte, — has 14, 1846, a printed "Confidential invaded the territory of our country, — Circular" was signed by James Bu- and has shed American blood upon the chanan and sent to the diplomatic American soil. ... In conversing on
568 THE YEAK 1846 (Cn. XVII
Throughout the campaign, Taylor's anxieties were mainly concerned with transportation and supplies. He was at Fort Brown with his little army and his supplies were at Point Isabel, twenty-seven miles away. Possibly in view of a threatened Mexican crossing of the Rio Grande, Taylor took by far the greater part of his force to Point Isabel for the purpose of escorting these supplies across the country to Fort Brown. It was at this point of time that Arista passed the river and, finding Taylor gone, pursued him. At the moment, Taylor was on his way back with the supply train. The two forces came together on the 8th of May at Palo Alto. The combat was a most surprising one. The Mexicans relied upon the cavalry and the lance. When they advanced to the charge, they were met by an artillery fire of an intensity that they had never dreamed of. Their ranks stood fast, men being shot down at what seemed to be a safe distance from the enemy. On the other hand, the Mexican cannon balls were propelled by such poor powder that they fell early to the earth and proceeded by leaps and bounds to the American ranks, their progress being so slow that, for the most part, it was easy to avoid them. A prairie fire, which disconcerted the Mexican plans, and a flank attack completed the affair. Night fell, and when morning dawned the Mexicans were not in their positions. Taylor, thereupon, resumed his march and some miles farther on came across the Mexicans near a ravine known as Resaca de la Palma. Here, again, the same story was repeated.1 The American soldier as a fighter was so superior to the Mexican, that the resistance of the
the objects and purposes of the war, Collection) p. 1. In the "Appendix"
you will be guided by the sentiments to this volume is a letter from Tay-
expressed in the President's message lor to Buchanan, defending his cam-
and this dispatch." Larkin Mss. in paigns, — but very likely it was written
the Bancroft Library. by his future son-in-law. 1 Letters of Zachary Taylor (Bixby
1846] PALO ALTO 559
latter broke down and ended in flight to the Rio Grande and across it. In these two engagements Taylor had about 2000 men and the Mexicans numbered at least twice as many. The losses were out of all proportion, Taylor reporting 170, of whom only 38 were killed, and Arista having lost according to his own accounts 800 killed, wounded, and missing, and according to Taylor probably twice as many at least.1
One thing that had induced the Mexicans to attack the American soldiers had been the strong probability of war between the United States and Great Britain and a hoped- for armed intervention by the latter power between Mexico and the United States. British travellers and writers for years had lost few opportunities of saying unpleasant things about "the people of the States," 2 and the governments at Washington and London exhibited determination to main- tain their respective positions as to the Oregon country. Beginning in Adams's time,3 successive American govern- ments had proposed to divide Oregon by extending the forty- ninth parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. This line had been adopted in 1818 as the boundary between Canada and the United States from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains. On the face of it, the proposition to extend this line westward to the Pacific
1 Smith's War with Mexico, i, 169, The Domestic Manners of the Ameri- 176, 466. Meade writing to his wife cans that was published at Glasgow on May 9, reported somewhat differ- in 1836 . and Charles Dickens's Ameri- ent figures. On May 15, he stated can Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit that the American force at 2000 and the came out in the 1840's added to the Mexican at between 6000 and 7000 ' flame of indignation. A rather clumsy Meade's Life and Letters, i, 81, 83. attempt at retaliation was The Slave-
2 Justin H. Smith sets forth the atti- holder Abroad; or Billy Buck's Visit, tude of the British in these years in with his Master, to England (Phila- the Proceedings of the Massachusetts delphia, 1860) detailing in the form of Historical Society for June, 1914, and letters from "Dr. Jones of Georgia" at greater length in his War with Mexico, murders and other crimes that were ch. xxxv. found in a file of contemporary Eng-
Excerpts from the writhigs of Mrs. lish newspapers.
Trollope, Captain Basil Hall, and other * See Clay's letter to Gallatin of
British visitors may conveniently be June 19, 1826, in House Document,
found in a sixty-page booklet entitled No. 199, 20th Cong., 1st Sess.
560 THE YEAR 1846 [[Cn. XVII
seemed reasonable. When one looked into it closely, however, it was found to deprive the British of all partici- pation in the trade of the Columbia River basin, of the navigation of Puget Sound, and to deprive them of any control of the strait of Juan de Fuca. The British refused again and again to accept this proposition. At one time Tyler and Webster seemed willing to yield so far as to give the British the northern part of the Columbia basin on consideration of their not opposing the acquisition of San Francisco Bay and northern California by the Americans. Nothing came of this and the American government returned to its old position. In his Inaugural Message, Polk de- clared that we had a good title to all of Oregon. As the British had refused all offers of compromise, he withdrew them and in December, 1845, suggested the ending of the joint occupation. In April, 1846, the notice was given and the United States and Great Britain stood face to face on the Oregon question.1 Buchanan feared that this action would bring on war between the two countries. Polk stood firm. He declared that the way to deal with John Bull was to look him straight in the eye. It cannot be said that Bu- chanan was reassured, but the event justified Folk's position. The English government could not involve that country in war with the United States because the voters would not have stood behind it. At first Aberdeen suggested arbi- tration, but no one in America exhibiting any interest in that plan, he recurred to a hint that Edward Everett, the American minister at London, had let fall some time before and directed the British representative at Washington to
related aspects of the Oregon pee's "Federal Relations of Oregon"
matter are treated in Schafer's "The in the Quarterly of the Oregon Histori-
British Attitude toward the Oregon cal Society, xix, 89, 189, 283. Both
Question" in American Historical Re- articles are abundantly supplied with
view, xvi, 273-299, and in L. B. Ship- citations.
1846] THE OREGON TREATY 561
suggest that the dividing line should be the forty-ninth parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the middle of the channel between the continent and Vancouver's Island and through that channel to the Pacific Ocean. He also laid down the condition that the Hudson Bay Company should enjoy the free navigation of the Columbia River. Polk at once saw the bearing of this new attitude of the British government on the Mexican War.1 Moreover, he had become convinced that the British by making actual settlements in the country north of the forty-ninth parallel had acquired rights by settlement in that region,2 similar to those that the United States had acquired south of that parallel. After what he had said in his Inaugural, he could hardly give way on his own part. He therefore laid the whole matter before the Senate and asked its advice as to whether he should negotiate on the terms proposed. After two days' debate the Senate advised him to do so. Three days later, on June 15, 1846, the treaty was signed and was promptly ratified.3 Two weeks after this, but of course before the news of the actual settlement reached England, Aberdeen addressed a note to Bankhead, the British minister in Mexico, declining to interfere between Mexico and the United States. He had repeatedly warned the Mexican nation of the danger and it was in consequence of "wilful
1 See Folk's Message of June 10, contemplated in the treaty. In 1871,
1846, in Richardson's Messages and the question was referred to the Ger-
Papers, iv, 449, and Folk's Diary, i, man Emperor as arbiter (Treaties and
62-66,244-253,467. For the executive Conventions, 426). He decided in favor
proceedings see Journal of the Senate, of the United States in 1872. The
"Appendix," pp. 547, 551. documents relating to this controversy
J Folk's Diary, i, p. 70. were brought together in 1873 and
3 Senate Documents, Nos. 476, 489 printed by order of Parliament under
(29th Cong., 1st Sess.) ; Treaties and the general title of North-West Ameri-
Conventions (ed. 1873), p. 375. The can Water Boundary (A.-G.). For
Polk end of the story is in his Diary, an English view of the question, see
(index under " Oregon "). Viscount Milton's History of the San
It proved to be a difficult matter to Juan Water Boundary Question (Lon-
decide precisely what was the " channel " don, 1869).
VOL. V. — 2o
562 THE YEAR 1846 [Cn. XVII
contempt of that warning" that it had plunged headlong down the precipice. If Great Britain intervened, it would mean war with the United States. He directed Bankhead to make this decision known in "explicit but courteous terms" to the Mexican government. Bankhead was also directed to assure it that Great Britain by "friendly interposition" would be willing to save Mexico as far as might yet be possi- ble from the fatal consequences of the policy that successive Mexican governments had pursued toward Texas and the United States.
Relying on the intrigue with Santa Anna and anxious to avoid war, President Polk made one more effort for a peace- able settlement. Early in August, 1846, he asked Congress to give him money to purchase territory from Mexico.1 When this matter was before the House of Representatives, David Wilmot of Pennsylvania moved to amend the res- olution by providing "as an express and fundamental con- dition to the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico" that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part" of the territory so acquired. Wilmot was not the author of this proviso ; he was a regular Democrat, and it is not clear why he took it upon himself to introduce it. A vigorous debate at once took place. Finally, the House passed the resolution with the proviso. Possibly it would have passed the Senate also had not a Massachusetts Senator prolonged the debate until the moment set for the termination of the session. Historical students have generally condemned his action. It may well be that his motive was to block any attempt to acquire territory from Mexico with or without slavery.2 For the moment, the
1 Folk's Diary, ii, 59-73. The Presi- * The history of the Wilmot Pro- dent euphemistically asked for the viso is even now practically unknown, money "to facilitate negotiations with Besides the general histories and the Mexico"! biographies, see C. E. Persinger on
1840] CALIFORNIA 563
project was dead ; but the Wilmot Proviso was moved again and again, whenever the question of the acquisition of territory from Mexico came up. On August 16 Santa Anna appeared off Vera Cruz and was allowed to pass through the blockading squadron.
Meantime, California had been occupied by American naval forces, although this was not known at Washington until September. The settlements of the whites in Cali- fornia were few in number and of small extent in area and population. There were a few houses at San Diego, a pueblo or village at Los Angeles, another at Santa Barbara, and a small town at Monterey, which was supposed to be the seat of government. At San Francisco, farther north, there was a dilapidated mission and at Sonoma a small collection of houses around the seat of General Vallejo, who was the richest and most respectable Hispano-Mexican-Californian in the whole country. Sutter's Fort near the confluence of the American Fork with the main stream of the Sacra- mento River was at the strategic point of the overland route from the United States by the way of Nevada and Utah. Two thousand would probably have included every human being possessing an appreciable amount of Caucasian blood l in all Alta California, or California, as we always term it. In the valleys between the ranges of mountains that roughly parallel the coast there were ranches of huge extent, pas- turing thousands of cattle and horses and large flocks of
"The Origin of the Wilmot Proviso" Correspondence," Pt. ii, Des. 66, p.
in American Historical Association's 95, gives the population of California
Report for 1911, vol. i, 189-195. The in 1846 at 15,000 and 1000 foreigners,
views of a Southern Whig can be Dr. Marsh in a letter to Lewis Cass,
found in Select' o^ a from the Speeches written in 1846, estimates it at 7700,
and Writings of Hon. Thomas L. Cling- Elliott's Illustrations of Contra Costa
man, 197. Folk's view is given in his County, p. 5, 6. Possibly the differ-
Diary, ii, 75, etc. ence in figures reflects the effort to
'Mary Floyd Williams's "Intro- separate the pure-blooded whites from
duction" to her Vigilance Committee the Indian and mixed population. of 1851. Larkin in his Ms. "Official
564 THE YEAR 1846 [CH. XVII
sheep. The inaccessibility of California by land from Mexico and the tremendous distances in California itself made administration so difficult that it was practically independent of Mexico and, as a matter of fact, was itself subdivided into three quasi-independent areas. The revenue was derived from duties on imports which were so high that the inducement to smuggling was great. There was a governor in California who was generally some broken-down Mexican politician who came with a small band of soldiers whom the local writers generally stigmatized as convicts. The military commander in California was usually at swords' points with the governor, although the two ordinarily lived so far apart that there was not much actual collision between them. When one realizes the tremendous difficulty of getting from one part of the country to another before the days of railroads one has gone far toward realizing the facts of early California history. Furthermore, in three months of the year there is oftentimes so much rain that the streams became swollen and the roadways impassable. The people of each settlement and each ranch lived their own lives as much cut off from one another and from the world as if they were inhabitants of separate islands.
When Dana was on the coast in 1835-1836, there were few Americans in California, although there were some at each of the four towns or villages from Monterey southward. There were also some British subjects, a few Frenchmen, and fewer Germans, but put all together, the foreigners offered no occasion for jealousy to the native Calif ornians. The dislike of outsiders appears in 1840 for almost the first time in what is known as the Graham Affair. It seems that Isaac Graham, an American, had espoused the cause of the wrong political leader. He and certain others, among them some Englishmen, were seized by the governor and sent by
1840] CALIFORNIA 565
sea to Mexico, but were released through the intercession of the American and British representatives in Mexico and some of them returned to California, with more or less promise of compensation for their sufferings and losses.1 The Graham Affair was of no great consequence in itself, but the memory of it gave point to American suspicion of Californian good faith in the next half dozen years. In 1832, Thomas 0. Larkin opened a store at Monterey. He was a Massachusetts man who had failed in business in South Carolina, but had somewhere acquired facility in intercourse with men of varying nationalities and opinions. He speedily secured the friendship of the leaders of the different cliques in California, standing well with the American traders, the Commandante of the Californians, the Governor General, and the native ranchers. He sup- plied them all with goods on credit and talked politics with them.2 In 1844, he was appointed American consul at Monterey, and this official position enabled him to extend his trade and his influence.
After 1840, American trappers, traders, and settlers appeared in ever increasing numbers. One party of trappers came over the San Bernardino pass. They had been taking fur-bearing animals in the mountains of New Mexico and having exhausted their supplies came down to the coast. While there they caught sea otters without a license or
1 See T. H. Hittell's History of Cali- held under grants from the Mexican
fornia, ii, 272, and Rives's United States or Californian authorities. For sev-
and Mexico, ii, 32, 36, 37. eral entries to this effect, I am in-
* In 1844 it appears, from a state- debted to Mr. Owen C. Coy of the
ment in the "Larkin Manuscripts" California Historical Survey. A bio-
that he had loaned to the governor and graphical sketch of Larkin forms
commandante of "this department" "Appendix 1" to R. W. Kelsey's
no less than $3700, some of it at 12 "The United States Consulate in Cali-
per cent interest. It is also fairly fornia" in the Publications of the
certain from entries in his papers and Academy of Pacific Coast History, i,
in the California local records that No. 5. An account of the "Larkin
Larkin was largely interested in lands Papers" is in ibid., i, p. 104.
566 THE YEAR 1846 [CH. XVII
permission of any kind from any Mexican authority. They were arrested, but after some detention they were released. The story is expressive of the attitude of the American fron- tiersman toward the Californian. The first large American party reached the San Joaquin Valley in 1843. It came overland and was composed for the most part of persons who had originally migrated from New England and New York to the Northwest, and then had determined for no apparent reason to go to the Pacific Coast. Some of them found employment , on the ranches or in the towns, and others "squatted" on lands in the vicinity of Sutter's Fort and in the country to the northward. In the next two years, 1844 and 1845, other bands arrived in California. Apparently there was no concert of action between them and they had no other motive for migration than the difficulty of making a living in the United States in the years of financial stress that followed the panic of 1837. By the beginning of 1846 there were at least five hundred Americans in California, including in that number all who had come from the United States, whether they were natives or immigrants from abroad. Their numbers were not large, but, bearing in mind the small numerical strength of the native Californians and their wide dispersal along five hundred miles from Sonoma to San Diego, the presence of even so few Americans settled within one hundred miles of Sutter's Fort was likely to arouse apprehension among the rulers of the land.
For years the Californians had been practically indepen- dent, and about the only bond they had with the Mexicans was their racial affinity. Representatives of the United States, Great Britain, and France had been throwing out suggestions of the advisability of independence from Mexico and of cooperation with the country of the speaker. James
1844] UNREST IN CALIFORNIA 567
Alexander Forbes, the British agent in California, was appealed to by a body of influential Californians who asked him whether their country could be "received under the protection of Great Britain?" He replied that he was unauthorized to enter into any such affair. He reported the matter to his superiors who, in turn, reported to Aber- deen. On December 31, 1844, the British foreign secretary replied l that Her Majesty's government could have nothing to do with any insurrectionary movement in California ; nor did they desire their agents there to encourage such movements, for that would be contrary to good faith on the part of England. If California threw off the Mexican yoke, it would be of importance to Great Britain that that coun- try should not assume any tie "which might prove inimical to British interests." He wrote, however, that the Cali- fornians might be informed that "Great Britain would view with much dissatisfaction the establishment of a protectoral power over California by any other foreign state." This letter reached Forbes in May, 1845, and must have been very discouraging. Sir George Seymour then commanded the British naval forces on the western American coast. He took very little interest in California before 1845. At the time the French were active among the islands of the Pacific. Seymour's principal task seems to have been to watch them and also to oppose any Russian intrigues look- ing to settlement below 54"* 40'. 2 In December, 1845, Seymour was at Valparaiso with his vessels after a visit to
1 E. D. Adams's British Interests * When the Russians withdrew from
and Activities in Texas, 247. A year the Oregon country after the treaties
and a half later, on May 14, 1846, of 1824 and 1825, they had retained a
Abel Stearns wrote to Larkin from post on Bodega Bay, some sixty or
"Angeles" that he was "certain" seventy miles to the northward of the
that overtures had been made by Golden Gate. This station had been
British agents to the government of the cause of constant expense to the
California to declare its independence Russians and they had gladly disposed
and place itself under the protection of it to Captain Sutter. '
of Great Britain. "Larkin Msa."
568 THE YEAR 1846 [Cn. XVII
Honolulu and the Friendly Islands. From that place he addressed a letter (March, 1846) to the Admiralty asking for an increased force. He thought that war with the United States was possible, and he may have been led to write this letter by the recent increase of the American naval force in the Pacific. In June, 1846, the matter was taken up in London. The Admiralty refused to grant any increase unless the government would guarantee a larger naval appropriation. The Foreign Office was appealed to and replied that no material change in the Pacific squadron was necessary because there was no probability of war with the United States.1 In the spring of 1846 Seymour had no greater strength and no instructions as to California or Oregon. In May, 1846, at about the time of Palo Alto, he left the American fleet lying at anchor off Mazatlan and steered southward one hundred miles or so to San Bias.2 He was there on June 8 when the American squadron under Commodore Sloat left Mazatlan for Monterey in Alta California. The story of French activities in Cali- fornia is even more vague. It is said that Duflot de Mofras, an attache" of the French legation at Mexico, made some kind of an offer of "French protection" in case the Calif ornians set up for themselves. He was in California in the years 1840-1842 and wrote two volumes 3 on his travels, — but the whole matter is exceedingly uncertain.
In October, 1845, Larkin had been appointed confidential agent by President Polk, and had been instructed to stir up disaffection among the Californians against Mexico and to
1 E. D. Adams's British Interests on Seizure of California" in The Cen-
... in Texas, 255. tury Magazine, for August, 1890, p.
* Justin H. Smith suggests that 792.
Seymour went to San Bias "to wait 3 Eugene Duflot de Mofras' Ex-
for orders" (War with Mexico, i, 531). ploration du Territoire de I'Oregon,
Josiah Royce shows conclusively that des Californies et de la Mer Vermeille,
no1 "race for California" or anything . . . 1840, 1841 et 1842 (2 vols., Paris,
approaching it occurred, in "Light 1844, with an Atlas).
1845] LARKIN'S INTRIGUES 569
induce them to seek annexation with the United States or to establish their independence under American protection. By this time Larkin had acquired great influence with the Californians, and he seems to have been possessed of power of charm and animadversion. He had been intriguing with the Californians for some time and thought that he had made such an impression upon them that by the middle of the century, at most, they would of their own accord ask union with the Americans in one form or another.1 He had been interfered with hi his plans of conciliation and dis- affection by two American officers, Commodore Ap Catesby Jones of the navy and Lieutenant John Charles Fremont of the army. Jones was on the coast in 1842 with a small naval force. He was greatly stirred by the news that came to him of exceedingly disrespectful proceedings on the part of the Mexicans toward the United States and of unusual activity on the part of the British fleet. He made up his mind ihat the British were on the point of seizing Cali- fornia and determined to forestall them, feeling certain that the United States had by this time resented the Mexican insults by war. He sailed to Monterey, landed a force, took possession of the fort and public buildings, and hoisted the American flag. After he had done all this Larkin showed him the most recent newspapers, which proved that relations between the United States and Mexico were still outwardly friendly and there was no appearance of any aggressive action on the part of the British. Indeed, as we know now, the British commodore was concerned only with Russian and French movements and had no thought whatever of seizing California. Under the circumstances the only thing that Ap Catesby Jones could do was to haul down the flag,
1See R. G. Cleland's "Early Sen- fornia" in The Southwestern Historical timent for the Annexation of Cali- Quarterly, rviii.
570
THE YEAR 1846
[Cn. XVII
ree"mbark his men, apologize to the Mexican authorities,1 and try to explain matters to his own government.
Fremont was a more enigmatical person and a more suc- cessful one. He was a South Carolinian of mixed parentage, his father being a Frenchman and his mother a Virginian, and he first saw the light of day at Savannah in Georgia.2 He married the daughter of Senator Benton and thereby gained powerful backing for future advancement. In 1842, he was placed at the head of a western exploring expedition and in the following years led two more expeditions to the Rocky Mountains. His reports were well written and instructive.3 They introduced the western country to the American people and thereby gained for Fremont the title of "the Patftfinder," - but the paths that he described had been familiar to trappers and to traders before he ever set eyes on them. In 1845, he was sent on his third expedition to seek the best route to the Pacific coast south of Oregon. He was then an officer in the United States army and he had with him paid employees of the United States, some thirty in number. The expedition running out of supplies, Fre"- mont in January, 1846, visited Monterey and asked per- mission of Commandante-General Castro to secure the necessary supplies and equipment for his return to the
1 Jesse S. Reeves in his American Diplomacy under Tyler and Polk, 105, says that had Jones "been right in his conjecture he might have been a precursor of Dewey; the conqueror of California and a hero in our naval history."
s Fremont's career either attracted or repelled literary men as it did every one else. There is no adequate memoir of him. Of the campaign lives, John Bigelow's is by far the best. The first volume of the Memoirs of My Life by John Charles Fremont gives his own account, somewhat dressed up by his wife, and illustrated with re- markable steel engravings. It brines
his life down to 1847, and no further volumes were ever published.
* Fremont's reports of the ex- peditions of 1842 and 1843 were printed by order of the Senate in 1845 (Senate Document, No. 174, 28th Cong., 2nd Sess.) and also in the same year by order of the House (Document No. 166). They were widely reprinted in 1846 and in 1849. His Notes of Travel in California often cited as Geographical Memoir upon Upper Cali- fornia was dated June, 1848. The Fremont narratives were reprinted with Emory's Overland Journey in one convenient double columned volume at New York in 1849.
1846] FRfiMONT IN CALIFORNIA 571
United States. Larkin acted as intermediary, but there seems to have been a misunderstanding. At all events, a few weeks later Fremont reappeared in the vicinity of Monterey with his whole expedition. The Californians were alarmed ; Castro ordered Fremont away and got together what men he could to drive him off. On the other hand, Fremont, notwithstanding the advice of Larkin to retire peacefully, hoisted the American flag over his camp on Gavilan Mountain, declared himself ready to repel force by force, and then marched off to the north.
Fremont had proceeded on his northward march as far as the shores of Klamath Lake, when he was overtaken by Lieutenant Gillespie of the American navy with des- patches and letters. Fremont at once retraced his steps to the vicinity of Sutter's Fort. Gillespie had made a remarkable journey from Washington. Leaving the capital early in November, 1845, he had crossed Mexico, actually outrunning the beginning of hostilities. He probably brought orders to Sloat and certainly gave a communication to Larkin from Buchanan,1 instructing him as to his duties as confidential agent of the President in California. After he had done this, Gillespie pursued Fremont and it was after their meeting that Fremont turned back from the northward journey. It was at this time that Castro em- bodied an armed expedition. As no warlike movement could be performed in California without horses, he sent a party across the Sacramento River to secure them and bring them to Monterey. It is certain that what Castro had in mind was a conference, more or less preceded by warlike demonstrations with Governor Pio Pico at Los Angeles or
1 The despatch of October 17, 1845, California " (Publication of the Academy
is printed from the copy sent by ship of Pacific Coast History, i. No. 5, p.
around Cape Horn in R. W. Kelsey's 100). "The United States Consulate in
572
THE YEAR 1846
[CH. XVII
somewhere between that place and Monterey. The Amer- ican settlers in the Sacramento Valley suspected that his design was to drive them from their farms and prevent the coming in of any more immigrants from the United States.1 They had some ground for their apprehension, for the Mexican government had issued stringent orders that new settlers should not be allowed to come in and that those already there should be ejected.2 The American settlers had no legal rights to the lands they occupied, and the Graham Affair was still fresh in memory, and its details un- doubtedly lost nothing in passing from man to man, espe- cially in this time of excitement. Some of the settlers dashed down upon Castro's men as they were proceeding southward (June 10, 1846). They took the horses from them, but permitted the officer and his men to proceed to Monterey.3 Four days later (June 14, 1846) a party of American settlers, twenty-five to forty in number, rode into Sonoma at break of day, captured General Vallejo, his brother, his son-in-law, who was an American named Jacob Leese, and some others and sent them under a guard to Sutter's Fort. There they were strictly confined. The rest of the party retained possession of the Californian village.
1 As early as February 15, 1846, Dr. Marsh wrote to Larkin that the rumors of mighty events had induced him to leave his farm. "It appears that the present year will bring great changes over the face of California."
J On December 2, 1845, the Min- ister of Exterior Relations at Mexico City wrote to the Governor of the Department of California that, al- though "strangers" had established themselves on the Sacramento River, he hoped the Governor would "re- double his precautions to avoid the introduction of those strangers." The Monterey Californian of August 29, 1846, has a long account of the Baar Flag War which is useful as giving the
local knowledge of that time. Re- ferring to the affair of the preceding June it asserts that "An Indian" stated that two hundred or three hundred armed men on horseback were advancing up the Sacramento Valley to attack Fremont. There- upon the Americans rushed from every direction to assist him. Fur- thermore, it was believed that Castro intended to build a fort near the Bear River Pass "for the purpose of pre- venting the ingress of the expected emigration from the United States."
'"New Helvetia Diary, June 10, 1846," and the Monterey Californian, August 29, 1846.
1846] THE "BEAR FLAG" 573
One of them — William B. Ide — indited a proclamation somewhat after the Mexican manner declaring the indepen- dence of the American settlements. As a sign of their new status they painted a bear and a star on a piece of white cotton cloth and hoisted this "Bear Flag" on a staff in the plaza at Sonoma.1 Following, there were some small engage- ments with Californians from the southern side of San Francisco Bay, but the Americans remained in control of Sonoma and of their prisoners. Exactly what the settlers had in mind when they rode into Sonoma is unknown, possibly nothing more than to secure hostages against the vengeance of the Californians for the attack of June 10. Nor is it known exactly how far Fremont himself was impli- cated. It seems certain that he was consulted, and when the Americans were endangered, he undoubtedly took their part. At the moment it would appear that Fre'mont was intending to return to the United States and that the events of June and those of July diverted him from this purpose. It has been supposed that Fremont was acting under orders from President Polk or Senator Benton, and again that he set on foot the Bear Flag revolt to revenge himself of Castro's insult. It may well be, however, that he was really what he seemed to be, an officer of the American engineers in charge of an exploring party who had proceeded somewhat beyond his legitimate sphere of action for the purpose of getting supplies and information in a friendly country ; that his turning back from his northward march was due to the
1 The Monterey Californian for Sep- by rumors and suspicions excited by the
tember 5, 1846. The Sonoma affair actions of the Spanyards." And see
was prompted by a desire to put an also William B. Ide's "Bear Flag
end to "the oppression which they War, "p. 18, in the Bancroft Library,
[the American settlers] had felt weigh- An excellent reminiscent pioneer ac-
ing heavily upon them — they wanted count of these transactions is in the
equal rights and equal laws." Wil- History of San Mateo County, CoW-
Ham Baldridge, writing years later, fornia (San Francisco, 1883) . states that the settlers were "aroused
574 THE YEAR 1846 iCn. XVII
difficulties of the route, including the hostilities of the Indians, and that his final determination to remain in California was governed by what seemed to be the critical condition of his fellow countrymen at the moment.1 The later unfortunate career of Fremont, his financial vagaries, the mystery which has enshrouded his doings, and the ex- traordinary claims that were put forward in his behalf have angered historical writers and induced them to attribute to him qualities which he did not possess and to deny to him qualities that he certainly had. Whatever his looseness as to law and money may have been, he carried through exceedingly difficult operations and bore his responsibility with a courage that deserves commendation. Moreover, he won the good opinion of large numbers of his fellow countrymen who sent him to Congress as one of the first Senators from California and put him forward as candidate of the Republican Party for the presidency in 1856.
Commodore John D. Sloat, commander of the American naval force on the Pacific coast, was a veteran of the War of 1812. He was in poor health, and was hampered by some- what contradictory instructions.2 One set directed him to seize Californian ports when Mexico should have declared war ; but he should be careful otherwise not to do anything that could be construed as an act of aggression. A later set directed him to carry out these instructions "in the event of actual hostilities." On May 17, 1846, he heard of the disaster to the Thornton party, and on the last day of the month of the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la
'From a letter from Gillespie to Cong., 2nd Seas., pp. 74-111, and
Larkin, dated June 7, 1846 ("Lar- ibid., No. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Sees.,
kin Mss." in the Bancroft Library) it pp. 230-271. Edwin A. Sherman's
appears that at that moment Fremont Life of the Late Pear- Admiral John
intended to return to the United Drake Sloat (Oakland, Cal., 1902)
States as soon as he could. has much interesting information,
* The important papers are printed largely of a pro-Sloat character. in House Document, No. 19, 29th
1846] SEIZURE OP MONTEREY 575
Palma. Probably regarding these as border affairs and not as "actual hostilities" or proof of a Mexican declaration of war, he held fast to his moorings at Mazatlan. On June 7, he learned that Conner was actually blockading Vera Cruz. The next day, he weighed anchor and sailed for Monterey, which he reached on July 2. There he and Larkin had long and intimate discussions. It must be remembered that the latter had been appointed confidential agent of the President in California and that he was in possession of instructions which ordered him to conciliate the Cali- f ornians and to " arouse in their bosoms that love of liberty and independence so natural to the American Continent." He was not to awaken the jealousy of the English and French agents and was to act in harmony with Lieutenant Gillespie. One can well understand the feelings of Commodore Sloat when conferring with Larkin, who had every confidence that the Californians, if left to themselves, would declare their independence from Mexico and presumably join the United States. California was a large country, Sloat had a small force at his disposal, and the example of Ap Catesby Jones was before his eyes. After five days' consideration, on July 7, in the morning he sent a party on shore, hoisted the American flag, and proclaimed possession of California for the United States. It has been supposed that Sloat acted in consequence of receiving information as to Fremont's doings. This may have been so, but he certainly had no official statement at the time he sent his men on shore.1 On July 16, Seymour in the British ship Collingwood and with other vessels, greatly outnumbering the American force, anchored at Monterey. He viewed Sloat's proceedings with
1 The actual facts are set forth at History, i, pp. 78-80. See also Edwin
length in the text and foot-notes of A. Sherman's Life of . . . Rear-Ad-
R. W. Kelsey's article in the Publica- miral John Drake Sloat. tions of the Academy of Pacific Coast
576 THE YEAR 1846 [Cn. XVII
great calmness.1 Indeed, the American occupation seems to have aroused no comment on the flagship and after a week's visit there Seymour sailed away.
It was at this time that Commodore Stockton, in the frigate Congress, arrived from the United States after a leisurely voyage around Cape Horn. He had been directed to take over the command from Sloat, who had asked to be relieved. For a time after Stockton's arrival, Sloat seems to have hesitated about striking his flag, but by the end of the month, Stockton was in command. The appearance of a regular American force and the taking possession of Monterey had ended the Bear Flag Republic. Fremont gathered together some of the frontiersmen and with them and some of his own men rode south to Monterey and offered his services to Stockton. The other ports and Los Angeles were occupied without trouble, and there the matter should have rested. Unfortunately, however, what with Stockton's bombast and Gillespie's arbitrary action at Los Angeles, the Californians became discontented and took up arms.2 Gillespie was forced out of the town and other places were also occupied by the "rebels." It was difficult to deal with them because Los Angeles being twenty-three miles from the sea could not be easily attacked by a naval force. In the emergency, Stockton did what he could. He landed seamen at San Diego and marched with them for the town, hauling a few guns by hand. Meantime, General Kearny of the United States army had seized Santa Fe" (August 18,
1 Clements R. Markham, President oner in the hands of the Californians,
of the Royal Geographical Society, Larkin said that Captain Gillespie
was then a midshipman on Seymour's "punished, fined, and imprisoned who
flagship. His diary kept at the time and when he pleased without any
shows no sign of excitement on the hearing." He thought that had any
Collingwood when she anchored at "proper or prudent person" been in
Monterey with the American flag command at Los Angeles "all this
floating over the town. "Ms." in the disturbance would not have happened."
Bancroft Library. "Larkin Mss." under date of December
* Writing to his wife, while a pris- 14, 1846.
1846] THE CONQUEST COMPLETED 577
1846) and ridden westward with several hundred mounted men. Unfortunately he was met (October 6, 1846) on the way by a messenger bearing the news of the complete suc- cess of the Americans in California, which was true at the time the dispatch was written. Kearny, therefore, sent back the greater part of his troopers and with only a hundred and fifty or so rode on toward San Diego. About thirty- nine miles from that place he came upon a body of armed Californians in battle array. A conflict ensued in which Kearny's men lost severely, but they maintained their posi- tion. This gave Stockton opportunity to enter Los Angeles, and liberal terms being given to the Californians they de- sisted from their enterprise and the conquest was completed. The history of California in the next few years is a dis- tressing tale of American ineptitude. Besides Kearny's small force, the Mormon Battalion, painfully reduced in numbers, reached the coast, a regiment recruited in New York came around Cape Horn, and a ship-load of artillery and munitions with some artillerymen arrived by the same route.1 After the summer of 1847, the troubles of the Americans were not of a military kind, but were of a political and personal nature. Kearny brought with him orders constituting him commander-in-chief and military governor. Stockton had already given Fremont the title of major and some kind of political commission. Fremont refused to obey Kearny's orders and Stockton and Kearny did not get on well together. This conflict of authority was ended by the appearance of Colonel Riley with orders to assume military control and the departure of Stockton, Kearny, and Fremont overland for Washington.2
1 It is noticeable that the orders 2 Fremont's conduct was inquired for these preparations for war in Cali- into by a court, and he resigned from fornia had been issued in June, 1846, the service in consequence of its find- within a few weeks of the declaration ing, and Senator Benton stopped of war by Congress. visiting the White House, because VOL. V. — 2?
578 THE YEAR 1846 [Cn. XVII
The troubles of the Americans and the Californians, all of whom after 1846 seem to have been anxious to do the best they could for their country — and for themselves — were owing mainly to the inability of Americans to compre- hend Californian institutions and susceptibilities and to an equal lack of knowledge of American institutions and modes of procedure on the part of the Californians.1 The con- querors naturally wished to gain lands and herds, but Mexi- can titles were very indistinct, so that when a man had paid good money for an estate, he found it very difficult to discover what lands he had really bought. The leading Spanish official in the old days had been the alcalde, for governor and general had been hardly more than high- sounding appellations. Stockton appointed his chaplain, Walter Colton, alcalde of Monterey,2 and later when affairs had settled down somewhat an election was held and Colton was chosen to that office by the combined votes of Cali- fornians and Americans. He has left an exceedingly in- teresting account of the difficulties and satisfactions of his office. He had, as chief magistrate, to look after both civil
Polk did not intervene. All the docu- de Alcaldes y Juecea de Paz (Mexico
ments and evidence are given in Senate City, 1845).
Documents, No. 33, 30th Cong., 1st In the earliest days naval officers
Sess. The Kearny side of the contro- were obliged to administer justice,
versy is succinctly set forth by Valen- In the archives of the county clerk at
tine M. Porter in the Annual Publica- Santa Rosa, there is an illuminating
tions of the Historical Society of entry. The case was one of larceny,
Southern California, viii. and the court ordered "that there be
1 Miss Mary F. Williams in the inflicted without delay fifteen lashes
"Introduction" to her Vigilance Com- by hard switches'' on the culprit's
mittee, writes that "the American al- bare back. "The foregoing sentence
caldes inherited not only the tradi- is approved and Lieut. Sears is di-
tional institutions of the Spanish rected to have it carried into execu-
colonial system, but also the confusion tion forthwith. J. W. Revere, Lt.
and abuses resulting from years of U. S. Navy commanding at Sonoma."
turmoil in Mexico and the Depart- This was communicated to me by
ment of California." Mr. Coy of the California Historical
! Walter Colton's Three Years in Survey. It was not until December,
California. The duties of an alcalde 1848, that local and territorial govern-
are set forth in Juan W. Barquera's ments were organized on the Ameri-
A Los Sefiores Alcaldes (Mexico City, can system. 1826) and in Luis de Ezeta's Manual
1847] AFTER THE CONQUEST 579
and criminal affairs, arrange the marital disputes of husband and wife, and arbitrate land difficulties of neighboring ranch- men — for his jurisdiction extended for some miles inland. Unfortunately not all the alcaldes were as forceful and wise as Colton, and as Americans became more numerous, a reversion to methods more closely appealing to American ideas was necessary. Colton, himself, established jury trial, having an equal number of Americans and Calif ornians on the jury. But any such expedients were necessarily nothing more than palliatives. Immediately after the American occupation, San Francisco, which at the time comprised only a few stores and houses, rose into importance as the best place of distribution of goods from sea-going vessels to the American settlements around the bay and on the rivers leading into it. There the difficulties of adminis- tration were most keenly felt. Affairs were in some such train as this when J. W. Marshall picked up some bits of gold in the mill-race of the saw-mill that he was constructing at Coloma about thirty miles from the fort of Colonel Sutter, his employer.
General Stephen W. Kearny's ride from Independence, Missouri, to Monterey, California, is one of the half-dozen most extraordinary episodes of the Mexican War. At the outset, the government had recognized the necessity of securing the southern overland route to California, and that meant the conquest of New Mexico and possibly of Chihua- hua, the next Mexican state to the southward. Kearny was detailed for this service with some three hundred dragoons, a Missouri volunteer regiment, and other troops including the Mormon Battalion. He acted with astonishing vigor, and the people of the trans-Mississippi settlements seconded him most remarkably. He set out from Inde- pendence, a few miles from the modern Kansas City in
580 THE YEAR 1846 [Cn. XVII
Missouri, and proceeded along the Santa F6 trail. After a painful beginning, the foot soldiers acquired powers of marching superior to those of the horsemen and, indeed, led the advance. Going for hundreds of miles through an uninhabited country and across large waterless spaces, it was necessary to carry provisions and sometimes water in a transport train. Everything was admirably managed and the command gained the vicinity of Santa Fe after great hardships, but without opposition. The people at that place had long been engaged in more or less illicit traffic with the Americans from St. Louis, and they also had been as thor- oughly misgoverned by the representatives of Mexican politicians as any people in that Republic. The governor issued proclamations and informed his superiors at Mexico City that he was making every preparation for a glorious defence ; but when Kearny actually arrived within com- municating distance, he departed secretly for the South. The people welcomed the conquerors, who in turn, it must be said, in some cases behaved very badly. Later. in the year, Colonel Doniphan, with a body of exceedingly irregular but hardy pioneers, left Santa F6. On one of the last days of December, 1846, Doniphan and his men entered El Paso, practically without resistance. After a respite, they again took up the march and rode southward over mountains and across deserts to the city of Chihuahua. As they approached that place, they met sterner resistance, but their movements were so rapid and so unusual that the defenders fled into the town and for the most part surrendered at discretion, March 1, 1847. Before long it appeared that the military and territorial importance of Chihuahua had been mis- judged. Doniphan, therefore, again took up the line of march and after more hardships and perils, joined Taylor's forces at Saltillo in the following May. Probably, no better
1846] KEARNY AND DONIPHAN 581
example of the evil effects of the combination of a soft climate and continuing misgovernment can be found in our annals than the slight resistance offered to Kearny and Doniphan. The narrative left General Taylor with his small but effec- tive fighting force at the mouth of the Rio Grande after the successful encounters at Palo Alto and the Resaca in May, 1846. He occupied Matamoros on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande without much trouble, and then month after month through the summer remained practically stationary. Taylor had a totally inadequate force to hold any large extent of country and at the same time encounter hostile armies in the field. He asked for more soldiers and was given volunteers commanded by politicians. President Polk seems to have thought that it was only necessary to clothe a man more or less completely in uniform, give him a musket, and he would do the rest. Polk even said on one occasion that officers were not necessary. It may be that had the soldiers gone forward, they would have found the Mexicans in quite as moblike condition as themselves and have settled the matter in a few months. As it was, what with the summer heats, lack of transportation and supplies, this was impossible ; the forces of nature as well as man had to be reckoned with. Moreover, Taylor had the prej- udices of a trained soldier. Few men have shown more courage than he, but he hesitated to advance into a very difficult country, poorly supplied with food, and often over- supplied with water, without having provisions and muni- tions with him or a line of communication with stores of food and supplies of all kinds. At length, having received some of the essentials of warfare, Taylor advanced up the river and then to Monterey on the edge of the Sierra Madre mountains in the Mexican State of Nuevo Leon. Mon- terey was naturally a good military position ; it had been
582 THE YEAR 1846 [Cn. XVII
fortified by the Mexicans and was strongly garrisoned. Taylor had with him very little siege apparatus and his troops had not acquired that military cohesion that comes only with long drilling or arduous campaigning. He attacked the town from two opposite sides at once. The courage shown by the American soldiers was admirable and the skill and tenacity of their officers remarkable, but there was lack of correlation between the two attacks, and be- tween the units of each attacking force. It would seem that such misadventures are almost inevitable in the beginning of campaigns, and we must always remember the cir- cumstances of the days before telegraph, telephone, wireless, and air-craft, when the horseback rider was almost the sole instrument of communication between parts of armies in the field. As it was the Americans penetrated into the town and placed it in so great jeopardy that the Mexican commander asked for a truce.1 After some parleying, it was arranged that the Mexicans should retire without giving their paroles and that hostilities should be suspended for eight weeks or until the instructions of the respective governments could be received. It was a long way from Monterey to Washington and no orders for a resumption of hostilities could be received until Taylor got his men into fighting trim again. The President was indignant at Tay- lor's weakness and directed him to put an end to the armis- tice and renew hostilities. Now, opinion seems to be that Taylor was amply justified by the condition of his troops and of his supplies in giving the terms that he did.
Meantime, General John E. Wool, another veteran officer
1 The Monterey campaign is quite teer (chs. iv-x). General O. O. Howard
fully treated in The Life and Letters of in his General Taylor (chs. xi-xiv) gives
George Gordon Meade (New York, an excellent account of this part of the
1913), i, 105-150, and in John R. campaign. Kenly's Memoirs of a Maryland Volun-
1846] TAYLOR'S CAMPAIGN 583
of the regular army, but not a Whig, had been put in com- mand of volunteer regiments assembling at San Antonio in the central part of the settled region of Texas. From there he was to advance to Chihuahua, apparently either to co- operate with Doniphan or to rescue him. Wool found his task rather confusing, but in time he crossed the Rio Grande and advanced to Monclova, reaching that place on October 29, 1846. While there he received orders to join Taylor, and by the end of November he was within reach of the main army. In the interval, Tampico, an important seaport about midway between the mouth of the Rio Grande and Vera Cruz, had been occupied by American naval forces. At the end of 1846, soldiers and sailors of the United States were in pos- session of the most important places in northern Mexico from the shores of the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico ; but the recognition of American possession of this vast region or of any part of it by the government of the Mexican Re- public seemed to be as far off as it ever had been.
584 THE YEAR 1846
NOTES
I. California Bibliography. — In the Bancroft Library at Berkeley, California, there is a mass of material on the early history of that State, but the matter relating to the American occupation is dis- appointing. The manuscripts of Thomas O. Larkin, comprising his account-books, and letter-books, are interesting. Most of the other material consists of reminiscences of pioneers written thirty years and more after the event. The volumes on the history of California in the " Bancroft History of the Pacific States " appear to have been written by Henry L. Oak,1 Mr. Bancroft's first assistant, and to have been printed substantially as written by him. The quotations in these volumes are very accurate, so far as they have been compared with the original manuscripts ; but Mr. Oak, while painstaking and diligent, did not differentiate between matter written at the time and the recollections of old men. It is impossible to disentangle them in the notes or bibliographies of his volumes. Furthermore, as he was required to turn out ten pages of completed manuscript per diem, there was much haste and imperfect correlation. Otherwise, these volumes stand as a monument to their author.
Josiah Royce's California in the " American Commonwealth " series is devoted mainly to the period of the conquest. Professor Royce was born in California and grew up there. While proceeding with his work, he became intensely interested in the Fremont episode and spent much time and thought in trying to unravel it. He had access to the papers in the Bancroft Collection so far as they were then arranged, and Mr. Oak, who was then engaged in the writing of the volumes, gave him much assistance. There is no better state- ment of the case against Fremont than Royce's volume. T. H. Hittell's History of California in four volumes presents all the im- portant facts, so far as they were known in 1885 ; but the book is sparsely supplied with citations. The nineteenth volume (new series) of The Century Magazine contains a remarkable series of articles on California. Among them may be mentioned Guadalupe Vallejo's " Ranch and Mission Days in Alta California," John Bid- well's " First Emigrant Train," and Josiah Royce's " Montgomery and Fremont." 2
'See Henry L. Oak's "Literary 2 J. M. Cutts's Conquest of Cali-
Industries" in a New Light (San fornia and New Mexico (Philadelphia, Francisco, 1893, pp. 42, 81). 1847) contains a good contemporary
BIBLIOGRAPHY 585
The bibliography of California and the Northwest Coast is ex- tensive, as may be gathered by looking over the list of books prefixed to the volumes in the " Bancroft History." In 1914, R. E. Cowan published A Bibliography of the History of California and the Pacific West, 1510-1906. This includes " about 1000 titles." A list that will satisfy most students is in " Appendix 5 " to Kelsey's article in the Publications of the Academy of Pacific Coast History, i.
Most of the important documents relating to the Mexican War in its widest aspect were printed in House Document, No. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., and in House Document, No. 17, 31st Cong., 1st Sess. Other material may be found by consulting the index to the Executive Documents of this session that is printed therewith. Citations to other official volumes are given in the preceding foot-notes of this chapter. A great deal of information can be gathered from the pages of evi- dence taken in the innumerable lawsuits over lands that occupied the California courts for many years, — as those connected with the names of Jose Y. Limantour, the New Almaden Mine, and the opinions of Judge Hoffman in the Larkin cases.
n. The Kearny-Doniphan Expeditions. — These have attracted great attention, partly by reason of their intrinsic importance, but more especially, perhaps, because of the adventures and the hard- ships encountered. Probably the best account of the march from Missouri to San Diego is W. H. Emory's Notes of a Military Reconnaissance.1 Most of the documents are printed in connection with the President's Message of December 22, 1846 ( House Document, No. 19, 29th Con., 2nd Sess., pp. 1-73, and in ibid.,No. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 149-229). R. S. Elliott participated in the Chihuahua end of the campaign and wrote most entertainingly of it in his Notes taken in Sixty Years, pp. 217-255. Other accounts by participants were written by John T. Hughes of the First Missouri Cavalry2
account, abundantly documented. What 1848. The first two are almost iden-
/ Saw in California . . . by Edwin tical, but the second of them con-
Bryant, late Alcalde of St. Francisco tains some supplementary reports.
(New York, 1848, chs. xxiii-xxxi) * Doniphan's Expedition; contain-
contains an excellent and generally ing An Account of the Conquest of New
contemporaneous account of the con- Mexico. This was first printed in
quest. 1847 at Cincinnati and was reprinted
1 This exists in three forms : with a map at the same place in 1848,
Senate Document, No. 7, 30th Cong., and it forms the basis of W. E. Con-
1st Sess. ; Executive Document, No. nelley's Doniphan's Expedition (To-
41, 30th Cong., 1st Sess.; and re- peka, Kansas, 1907). published for the trade by Harpers in
586
THE YEAR 1846
and by F. S. Edwards, " A Volunteer." * The former has some re- markable pictures that have been reproduced again and again and the latter is provided with a really usable map. R. E. Twitchell sets out at length the facts concerning the first part of the expedition in his History of the Military Occupation of the Territory of New Mexico (Denver, 1909).
D. Tyler's Concise History of the Mormon Battalion and B. H. Robert's Mormon Battalion, Its . . . Achievements (Salt Lake City, 1919) bring together the leading incidents of this famous march. The " Report of Lieut. Col. P. St. George Cooke (Commander of the Battalion) of his March from Santa Fe", New Mexico, to San Diego, Upper California " is sometimes printed in connection with Emory's Notes. In April, 1907, the Tempe Normal Student, published at Tempe, Arizona, printed the " Journal " kept by Captain Henry Standage of the Battalion during the march. This gives an excellent idea of the hardships and achievements of this part of the expedition. For other books on the Kearny-Doniphan expeditions, see the list prefixed to H. H. Bancroft's Arizona and New Mexico.
1 A Campaign in New Mexico with Colonel Doniphan (Philadelphia, 1847).
THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY
BY October, 1846, the occupation of California, the seizure of Santa F6, and the armistice following the capture of Monterey were all known at Washington. The question at once arose as to the future. All clearly available territory for American colonization was occupied, but the Mexicans would not recognize the hopelessness of the situation and confirm these territories and Texas to the United States. More coercion was clearly necessary to "conquer a peace," and the sole question was how that coercion could best be applied. Taylor suggested that the capture of Mexico City would be necessary and that this could be best accom- plished by the way of Vera Cruz. The road south from Saltillo through San Luis Potosi was long and for the first part of the way devoid of supplies ; for long distances it lacked even water. Moreover, so extended a line of com- munication would mean the utilization of large numbers of soldiers for guard post duties. This line might be shortened by using Tampico as a base; but there were several good objections to that route also. Before Taylor's letter reached Washington, Winfield Scott, the commanding general of the army, drew up a memorial as to the future operations and presented it to Marcy, the Secretary of War. Scott thought that Vera Cruz should be occupied. Probably that would bring the Mexicans to terms, as it would mean the practical isolation of the Republic. If the Mexicans did
587
588 THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY [Cn. XVIII
not submit, then an advance on Mexico City should at once be undertaken. Although Taylor gained the presidency, Scott was really the outstanding figure of the war.1 In the War of 1812, while still under thirty, he had won renown at Lundy's Lane and Chippewa. He and Taylor were both Virginians by birth, but there all resemblance between them ceases, except that both were good soldiers and both were Whigs. Scott was a man of education and was a master figure wherever he happened to be. He was widely read in military lore and had travelled extensively. He had lived long in Washington and distrusted politicians of the Demo- cratic faith. In the dearth of Democratic generals, Polk had naturally turned to the commanding officer of the army. When the two came together, the President estimated Scott as a man of scientific mind, rather than a practical soldier. In 1846, Scott wrote three letters that worked injury to him for the rest of his life. In one of them he informed a Senator that he would make no suggestions as to officers, for they were certain to be disregarded by the administration. The second letter was directed to the Secretary of War. In it he declared that unless he could have the cordial support of the administration he would prefer to have the command given to some one else, as " a fire upon my rear from Washing- ton," of all things, was the most perilous. Marcy carried the letters to the President, who promptly withdrew his offer of active employment.2 The news of this rebuff came to Scott as he was taking " a hasty plate of soup," to use his own words. The publication of these phrases caught the people's eye. Scott behaved very well under the provocation, keeping his mouth shut and his pen still. In the autumn, the Whigs
1 Scott wrote his Memoirs in 1863. pilations. The best life of Scott is
The book was published at New York that by Marcus J. Wright in the
in 1864 (2 vols.) and at once achieved Great Commanders series,
popularity. It is interesting, but has * Folk's Diary, i, 413, 420, and Smith's
all the defects of reminiscent com- War with Mexico, i, 199, 477.
1846] GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT 589
began to talk of nominating Taylor for the presidency. This, with Folk's dislike of the armistice after Monterey, turned the attention of the administration back to Scott, and the thought of changing the commanding general in the field was further strengthened by some plain writing by Taylor as to the insufficiency of the means given him to do the work he was ordered to do. The President sent for Scott and there was an affecting scene in the course of which the General wept/ — according to Polk. In November, 1846, Scott presented two memoranda as to the disposal of troops and a plan of operations for the coming year that gave the needed impulse to the administration.
Meantime the President had an interesting conversation with Senator Benton of Missouri, who suggested that the Vera Cruz-Mexico City campaign would be decisive of the war. Senator Benton stated that he would like to be placed in command of all the armies in the field. Polk offered to appoint him a major general ; l but, as this would make him inferior to Scott and Taylor, a plan was hit, upon to resurrect the grade of lieutenant-general. The President could then appoint Benton to this place and thus give him command over Scott and Taylor. Congress rejected this scheme ; but when Scott in Mexico learned of it, his indignation knew few bounds, and he must have recurred to his statement as to the dangers of a "fire" in the rear. .Scott's position and the President's and that of the Secretary of War were all natural enough. We were a peace-loving people with an ingrained dislike of regular soldiers and an utter ignorance of what war properly conducted really meant. Scott asked for more than twenty thousand men, abundant supplies of food and muni- tions, and also for things essential to getting an army on
1 Polk'a Diary, ii, 221 and fol., using index, and Smith's War with Mexico, ii, 75, 364.
590 THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY [Cn. XVIII
shore in front of Vera Cruz. These numbers could not be supplied except by raising new regiments and stripping Taylor of his best soldiers. There seems to have been no objection on the part of the government to taking men away from Taylor. When that general found himself actually second in command in the field and relegated to a distinctly subordinate position, he felt aggrieved and stated his griev- ances to Scott, 1 who answered him most kindly, but insisted on having the men. There was nothing approaching a general staff in those days, and the burden placed upon the commissaries and quartermasters at Washington was too great for them. There was also a good deal of ignorance on the part of many officers, who should have known better, as to the necessities of the case, and as to the best method of going to work. When Scott finally set out from the capital, he was given instructions which practically placed all responsibility upon him.2 Recognizing the great danger from disease at yellow fever-cursed Vera Cruz, Scott was anxious to begin his campaign in time to capture that city and gain the high lands of the interior before "yellow Jack" made his annual appearance. Delays and insubordinations on the part of political officers who felt sure of support at Washington tried Scott severely, but he proceeded with a courage and vigor that have seldom been equalled and almost never surpassed. Instead of the twenty thousand men that he desired, he never had more than ten thousand effectives at any one time during the campaign. Moreover, he was forced for months to live off the country and to fight battles in great measure with ammunition captured from the enemy.
1 Letters of Zachary Taylor (Bixby criticism of this attitude is contained Collection), p. 87-97. in The Evolution of Myth as Exempli-
2 The soldiers' dislike of Polk and fied in General Grant's History . . . Marcy comes out in Grant's Personal by Senex (Washington, 1890). Memoirs, i, 119-122. A trenchant
1847] VERA CRUZ 591
Vera Cruz is protected from the Gulf by a series of coral reefs. Upon these the Spaniards had constructed a castle — San Juan de Ultia • — which had been strengthened from time to time and very greatly improved since the French attack in 1838. The naval men thought it was out of the question to capture it from the sea ; the alternative was to land on the beach, seize Vera Cruz, itself, and assail the castle on the harbor side. On March 9, 1847, the disembarkation took place on the beach' to the southward of the city. Not a Mexican was in sight and the men once ashore marched over the sand hills, through the semi-tropical undergrowth of the low places, and in an almost incredibly short time had en- circled the town. Storms, rain, and insects interfered with the work, but heavy guns were landed, batteries were erected, and fire opened upon the city. Eighteen days from the time that the first man leaped out of the first boat that touched the beach, Vera Cruz surrendered and with it the castle, March 27, 1847.1
The feeble defence of Vera Cruz by the Mexicans and the lack of any serious attempt to relieve the pressure upon the city by an attack from the interior was not what Scott had expected and is not entirely easy to understand. Santa Anna, after his return from Havana — by the grace of President Polk — had at first found himself in a difficult position. With his unexampled optimism, political audacity, and great organizing ability, he had speedily regained his position and was now again the first man in Mexico. Realiz- ing fully the character of the coming blow, Santa Anna had
1 The American loss in this opera- An Artillery Officer in the Mexican
tion was less than 100 killed and War (New York, 1911; ; and in The
wounded. The Mexican loss was so Mexican War Diary of George B- Mc-
indefinite that the only thing to do is Clellan, 53-73. The account of the
to refer to Smith's Mexico, ii, 26-33, 341. work of the naval battery in W. E.
Interesting accounts of this part of the Griffis's Matthew Calbraith Perry, ch.
campaign are in Robert Anderson's xxiii, is graphic and authentic.
592 THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY [Cn. XVIII
two or three modes of resistance. He might retire to the Mexican plateau and fight the foe at the mountain passes; he might defend Vera Cruz so stubbornly that its capture would be very costly, if not impossible ; or he might attack and destroy isolated American forces in the north. Any one of these courses or a combination of them was open to him. What he did was to levy a strong army, as armies went in those days, practically abandon Vera Cruz, and march to the north. Santa Anna holds a low place in the writings of American historians, but this would seem to be somewhat undeserved. Stable political administration was impossible in the Mexico of that day, and he treated Texan rebels precisely as he would have treated rebels of his own race. As to the disaster at San Jacinto, even a Mexican president and general is obliged to leave something to his subordinates, and neither Texan nor Mexican would have been justified in counting upon the sudden and violent return to the offensive on the part of Sam Houston and the men with him. Santa Anna had a few good officers and he had a few good soldiers, but the great mass of the human material that he had to work with was helplessly inefficient and hopelessly corrupt. Making what preparations he could, he advanced at the head of a large body of troops to San Luis Potosi. There he was about midway between Taylor at Saltillo and Vera Cruz, where Scott might be expected at some time in the future. It is perfectly possible that Santa Anna, having given all the orders he could and all the money that he could for the defence of Vera Cruz, intended to himself march with his men to the relief of that place whenever it should be strongly attacked. Of course, a general should anticipate every possible movement on the part of the enemy, and Santa Anna should have realized that Scott would waste no time in fruitless and costly assaults
1847] SANTA ANNA 593
on San Juan de Uliia ; but every one before him had done exactly that thing. In reality, whatever were Santa Anna's plans, his hands were forced by an attack upon him by his political enemies which practically compelled him to put an end to preparings at San Luis and strike the enemy. The only enemy that could be struck at that moment was Taylor ; and so with fifteen or sixteen thousand men Santa Anna took the northward road from San Luis Potosi for Buena Vista, Saltillo, and Monterey.
The expectation at Washington had been that Taylor would withdraw from his advanced positions and retire to Monterey. Instead, he held on at Saltillo, and kept his main forces to the southward of that place even as far as the northward edge of a waterless tract, at Agua Nueva. l There seems to have been great remissness in reconnoitering and guarding posts and camps. The Mexicans captured two parties of Americans and almost seized a supply depot before it could be destroyed. Taylor and his generals and his soldiers appear to have thought the Mexicans' power for the offensive had been destroyed and that whatever bodies of men might be reported from various directions were predatory bands. At length it became certain that there was a strong force of the enemy advancing from the south. Taylor at the moment was at Saltillo, and General Wool posted the soldiers to good advantage where one defender equalled three or four assailants owing to the narrowness of any possible front of attack. The scene of combat was peculiar.2 It was in a valley about two miles wide at the
1 The documents relating to Tay- article on Buena Vista in Papers of lor's 1847 campaign are printed in the Military Historical Society, xiii, House Document, No. 60, 30th Cong., 543-558. Francis Baylies's Narrative 1st Sess., pp. 1092-1215, and in of Major General Wool's Campaign in Senate Document, No. 1, 30th Cong., Mexico (Albany, 1851) is an interest- 1st Sess., pp. 97 and fol. ing contemporaneous account of the
2 Smith's War with Mexico, i, ch. xx. Monclova campaign and the battle of General W. B. Franklin has a succinct Buena Vista. The account of Buena
VOL. V. — 2Q
594 THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY [Cn. XVIII
ranch of Buena Vista. The road followed the bottom of the valley beside a small stream. At right angles to this little valley and the road were ten or a dozen ravines on one side and a series of gullies on the other. The only practicable way up and down the valley for horses and cannon was by the road or by the foot hills at the head of the ravines and gullies. Wool placed a battery at the narrowest point between the ravines and gullies, at a place called La Angos- tura. In the early afternoon of February 22, 1847, the Mexicans, having made a forced march almost without food and water, attacked along the road and were at once brought to a stop by cannon fire. The remainder of that day and all of the next, they essayed to turn one flank or the other of the American army by moving around the heads of the ravines and gullies. They succeeded in gaining positions on the slopes that made the American defence very doubtful. It was when affairs seemed most critical that Taylor, taking an advanced position on his white horse, sat there immovable, literally turning defeat into victory. Regiments that had given way returned to the battlefield and every one fought with greater vigor. At one time the Mexicans actually gained the rear of the American position, but the peculiar disposal of ravines and flat lands enabled the American artillery to be moved from one place to another. When the sun went down, the line had been restored. That night was a fearful one for the Americans. They had little food, no shelter, and disaster threatened at dawn. The sentries, as they paced their beats, watched the Mexican camp- fires. When the sun came up on the morning of the 24th,
Vista in Gen. S. G. French's Two Battle of Buena Vista" in Old and
Wars: an Autobiography (Nashville, New for June and July, 1871, also ap-
1901), pp. 73-84, was apparently written pears to represent something more than
from notes ; it certainly is clear and reminiscence. Captain T. W. Gibson's
interesting. "An Engineer Officer's Letter of March 6, 1847, dated Agua
Recollections of Mexico and the Nueva, is graphic.
impmimiimniiii iiiniiiiiiiiiiiiii """"" !
nmmnmmiimiiiiim MM
Aqua Nueva
BATTLE OP BUENA VISTA (Prom Gibson's Letter, 1847. " D.R." shows the Mexican flanking movement.)
595
596 THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY [Cn. XVIII
astonished, they saw the backs of the retiring Mexican rear guard.1 The preceding nightfall, Santa Anna had given the order for retreat, as further attacks seemed hopeless. Leaving a guard to keep up the fires, the Mexican army had moved away and, by dawn, the advance had reached Agua Nueva. There some food was found. After a day or two, the retreat was taken up again. Every mile of the way across the waterless desert to San Luis Potosl, the men fell out by the tens and hundreds. Of the fifteen to twenty thousand men that Santa Anna had with him before he set out for the North, he was able to place in the campaign for the defence of the capital only five or six thousand. Never- theless, having captured three American guns and a stand- ard, he announced himself the victor and was hailed as such by his countrymen.
One of the most interesting and most heartrending lessons that one draws from a study of the Mexican War is the fierce and mutual distrust of regulars and volunteers for one another.2 This is a good place to examine the whole ques- tion because the battle of Buena Vista was won by volunteers, there not being more than six hundred soldiers of the regular army on the field. The administration at Washington
1 The numbers are unusually vague. * The best way to comprehend this
It would seem that Taylor had less than feeling is to read considerable por-
6000 troops on the battle-field, first tions in the diaries and memoirs of the
and last, and lost 673 killed and regular and volunteer officers, as J. R.
wounded, besides 1500 or 1800 who Kenly's Memoirs of a Maryland
"quit the field." Smith's Mexico, i, Volunteer; J. J. Oswandel's Notes of
374, 396, and 561. the Mexican War; and Luther Gid-
Of Santa Anna's 15,000 or 16,000 dings's Sketches of the Campaign in
men who left San Luis Potosl for the Northern Mexico of the volunteers:
north, it is unknown how many reached the Diary of McClellan and Letters of
the actual battle-field. Smith (ibid., Meade, George A. McCall's Letters
i, 397) thinks that not less than 1800 from the Frontiers, and W. S. Henry's
Mexicans were killed and wounded Campaign Sketches of the regulars,
at the battle and Santa Anna reported To these may well be added Raphael
more than 4000 "had left him during Semmes's Service Afloat and Ashore
the battle"; and probably (ibid., i, during the Mexican War. 399) "not less than 3000 men" were lost on the road back to San Luis.
1847] REGULARS AND VOLUNTEERS 597
seems to have had the idea that the only thing necessary to be done was to raise a large body of volunteers, officers and men, and send them to the front.1 The diaries of many of- ficers of the regular army who later gained distinction in the War for Southern Independence contain passage after pas- sage referring to the lack of discipline of the volunteers, to their ignorance of military hygiene, and to their brutal treat- ment of the Mexicans. Scott, himself, stated that a regiment of regulars within an hour after pitching camp would be well secured and in order for any night attack, and at their comfortable supper, "merry as crickets." The volunteers, on the other hand, would eat their meat raw, lie down wet, and leave their arms and ammunition exposed to rain. He declared that "the want of the touch of the elbow . . . the want of the sure step . . . the want of military confidence in each other, and, above all, the want of reciprocal con- fidence between officers and men"2 caused frightful losses in battle. There can be no doubt, whatever, that the per- sistent employment of volunteers in this war occasioned far greater loss in human lives and cost much more in the way of money spent than would have been the case had the new regiments received a few months' training and been com- manded by officers of the regular army, assisted by such of
1 Col. G. T M. Davis in his Auto- H. Claiborne's John A. Quilman, i,
biography, pp. 96 and 110, relates that 301-307.
in forwarding the commission to Gen- * Scott to Marcy, January 16,
eral Shields, as Brigadier-General of 1847 ; printed in Smith's War with
Volunteers, Polk accompanied it with Mexico, ii, 512.
a statement that the appointment was An idea of the conditions prevail-
a personal act and that their official ing in some volunteer regiments can be
relations would be of "a strictly con- gathered from the evidence printed in
fidential nature." It may be added House Document, No. 78, 30th Cong.,
that General Gideon J. Pillow had 1st Sess. The student will also go to
been Polk's law partner and John A. Davis's Autobiography, to Meade's
Quitman a prominent Mississippi poli- Letters and to the "Letters of Cap-
tician. None of the three had seen any tain E. Kirby Smith to his Wife"
military service. The intriguing of published under the title To Mexico
these generals against one another and with Scott. The first half of the last
against their commander was most book relates to Taylor's campaign, distressing. See, for example, J. F.
598 THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY [Cn. XVIII
the volunteers as showed marked ability during the drilling period. Thousands of soldiers were sent to Taylor inade- quately supplied with the impedimenta of war. They had no stretchers for the wounded and no proper equipment of medical supplies.1 On one occasion, a volunteer officer deployed his men in such a way as to bring them directly under the enfilading fire of the enemy. And so one might go on. But the volunteers won the battle of Buena Vista and contributed most materially to the winning that of Cerro Gordo. Their losses from disease were frightful, and it must be said that the ill conduct of some of them toward the native Mexicans changed in a measure the character of the conflict, especially along the Rio Grande.
One reason why the Mexicans did not fear the military power of the United States was the fact that from one- quarter to one-third of the soldiers of the regular army were aliens — Irishmen, Englishmen, Scotsmen, and Germans. A similar condition of affairs prevailed in the navy.2 The discipline was very severe and, as a rule, the soldiers had no love for the service. They enlisted to save themselves from starvation. Under these circumstances, desertion was by no means uncommon. Indeed, the San Patricio battalion in the Mexican service was composed of deserters from the American forces. Many of these were captured at Churu- busco and elsewhere and were hanged or were flogged and branded.3 When all has been said that can be said in their dispraise, it remains true that the gallantry, endurance, and
JOn August 24, 1846, General the Navy." This is signed "Harry
Quitman wrote from Camargo that Bluff," which is supposed to have been
"the twelve-months troops are armed the pen name of Lieut. M. F. Maury.
with refuse muskets, and their knap- It was dated "October, 1840." See
sacks, canteens, haversacks, and car- also S. R. Franklin's Memories of a
tridge-boxes are unfit for service." Rear- Admiral, chs. i-viii. Claiborne's Quitman, i, 242. * See Autobiography of Col. G. T.
* See "Our Navy, Extracts from The M. Davis, 203, 205, 223-229. Lucky Bag, on the Reorganization of
1847) FINANCES 599
general good faith of the American volunteers and regulars in these campaigns were remarkable and worthy of remem- brance.
The employment of so great a proportion of volunteers had been due partly to the supposition that they were much cheaper than the regular soldiers. The armies, also, had been poorly supplied with the necessities of warfare because money was not plentiful at Washington. Folk's adminis- tration came at the end of the period of business depressions that followed the crash of 1837. The Democrats were pledged to restore the sub-treasury system and to replace the protective tariff of 1842 with a purely revenue measure.1 The Secretary of the Treasury was Robert J. Walker, a Northern man who had gone to Mississippi and had fully identified himself with the pernicious financial system that had brought that State to repudiation. Few men in America at that time had any idea of the cost of warfare and especially of conducting campaigns at a distance from the home country. Nevertheless, the Democrats carried out their system to the letter. The sub-treasury was restored and with it the refusal of the government to accept any- thing except specie in payment of dues. The tariff was changed to a non-protective basis and the duties were all made ad valorem. The year 1846 saw a remarkable suc- cession of ups and downs in business and in credit. It happened, however, that famine in Europe, especially in the British Islands, created a demand for wheat on a scale that had never been known before, and that was the real beginning of the exportation of foodstuffs in great quantities to Europe. In return, importations from Europe increased and with them the duties collected at New York and other
1 The report of the Secretary of the kinds of goods were imported and Treasury and other documents setting produced were printed as Senate Doc- forth the conditions under which all ument. No. 444, 29th Cong., 1st Sess.
600 THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY [On. XVIII
important centres grew and the foodstuffs that were not paid for by the exportation of commodities from Europe were paid for by exportation of specie. It happened, therefore, at the precise moment when the financial task of the administration should have been exceedingly difficult, the government was able to borrow money at six per cent interest, — and this at the very time when the money-lending part of the country was lukewarm towards the war. As to the cost of the con- flict, that seems to be impossible of ascertainment, but the best estimate in round numbers gives it at one hundred millions, , including the amount paid to Mexico as the price of the treaty. Taking everything into consideration, this must be regarded as a small sum to pay for the acquisition of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and California.
Vera Cruz in Scott's power, he pushed on in every possible way the preparations for the advance to the interior.1 Santa Anna had arrived from Buena Vista and taken personal charge of the defence of the National Road leading from Vera Cruz to Mexico City. About fifty-five miles from Vera Cruz the road suddenly rises into the mountains at Cerro Gordo, the name of a height that dominated the pass. Ten days after the triumphant entry into Vera Cruz, on the twenty-ninth of March, 1847, the head of the American army marched out from its camps and took its way into the interior. At first the road was hardly more than a sandy track, and the fatigue was great for the troops who, up to that time, had had very little marching since landing almost a month before. By the llth of April, they had reached the National Bridge and on the 13th came to the fortified Mexican positions. The leading regiments necessarily waited until other men and the general-in-chief came up.
1 The correspondence between Scott is printed in House Document. No. and the War Department from No- 60, 30th Cong., 1st Seas., pp. 833- vember 19, 1846 to February 9, 1848, 1WO. 1216-1277.
1847]
CERRO GORDO
601
Scott was most fortunate in having with him on his staff as officers and engineers, Robert E. Lee, P. G. T. Beauregard, George B. McClellan, George G. Meade, Zealous B. Tower, and Isaac I. Stevens. No danger was too great to be en- countered by these men, and sounder advice than they gave to their commander has seldom been given by staff officers to their chief. Reconnoitering, Lee discovered that a rough way, available for artillery, could be made through the
ROUTB FROM VBRA CBUZ TO MEXICO CITY
woods to a point on the road in the rear of Cerro Gordo. Scott's plan was at once formed : to send a strong force by this road when constructed and to menace the main posi- tion in front. Unfortunately lack of obedience and lack of professional knowledge on the part of his division com- manders prevented the carrying out of the scheme in the precise mode that had been devised. The commanding officer on the right, seeing a good opportunity to attack before he reached the road, made it possible for a large part of the Mexicans to escape and entailed some loss of life. On the left, lack of military knowledge precipitated the
602 THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY [Cn. XVIII
assault at that point, also with unnecessary loss. Other- wise the movement succeeded beyond all reasonable antici- pation. The Mexicans abandoned their positions, leaving their guns behind them, and fled in confusion, April 18, 1847, — Santa Anna himself on a mule, sliding down into a ravine.1 After the battle, forgetting all jealousies and fore- going all recriminations, Scott and his army proceeded to Jalapa, the first large town in the interior, and then marched on by the castle or prison of Perote to the large city of Puebla, which was reached on May 15, almost exactly a month after Cerro Gordo.
At Puebla a new crisis confronted Scott. Notwithstand- ing the delays and disappointments, he had carried through triumphantly the first part of his task ; he had captured Vera Cruz, had outrun the yellow fever, and was estab- lished in the second city of Mexico. There, however, he found himself at the head of only ten thousand troops, one-half the size of the force he had asked for. None of the new volunteers had come forward and many of the old volunteer regiments had enlisted for short terms that would be completed within a month or two. His supplies were entirely inadequate, his soldiers were badly clothed, and money was lacking. Moreover, the roads from Puebla to Vera Cruz ran through a country peculiarly favorable to guerilla warfare, and Scott's whole force might easily have been employed in guarding his communications with the coast. Finally, the exposure to a new climate and un- accustomed food and drink had brought about a great deal of sickness. A thousand of his men were in the hospitals or were unable to do duty. The government had expected that many of the volunteers would reenlist, but this they
1 Smith (Mexico, ii, 44, 50, 58, 59, total loss at. from 1000 to 1200. He 347) gives the total Mexican force at gives Scott's force at 8500 and hia from 10,000 to 15,000 men and the loss at 64 killed and 353 wounded.
1847] AT PUEBLA 003
did not do to any extent. Scott, feeling that it would be very unfair to send them to Vera Cruz in the sickly season, decided to start them for the coast at once, while they still had four or six weeks to serve. The government had ex- pected him to seize food and other supplies, but Scott, think- ing that it would be a great deal wiser to act with abundant fairness to the Mexican people, had paid for whatever he took. He now obtained money by cashing drafts on the United States through British firms doing business in Mexico. Calling up the garrisons he had left on the road and severing his communications with Vera Cruz, he was able to gather a force of 10,738 men, rank and file. Leaving the sick and convalescents at Puebla with a guard of four hundred sound men all under Colonel Childs, Scott set out for Mexico City and the final conquest of seven millions of people. Some reinforcements were on the way ; 2000 of them had already arrived at Vera Cruz and others were on shipboard between that port and New Orleans. The time of the arrival of these troops at the front in the heart of the Mexican Republic, and whether they would ever arrive, being vol- unteers fresh from civil life led by political officers, was questionable. It turned out to be even more questionable than Scott could have foreseen. Nevertheless, he set out and passed the mountainous rim of the Mexican plateau in safety with Popocatepetl rising 18,000 feet above the sea on the left, and the beautiful lakes of the Mexican Valley in front. Not an attempt was made to stop him in the rocky defiles throusrh which the army necessarily passed.
In the face of impending danger, Santa Anna had once again found himself in his element. He issued appeals to the people to come forward for the defence of their city ; he compelled the clergy — who seem to have been quite un-
604 THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY [Cn. XVIII
willing to unite with him — to preach resistance. With care and a good deal of skill, he fortified Penon Mountain on the main road leading toward the city. Scott reached Ayotla in the Valley on August 11 and investigated the task before him. The engineers reported that Penon could be successfully attacked only with great loss of life ; but a road led round the southern side of Chalco Lake and ap- proached the city from the south instead of from the east. Taking that route, Scott found his advance stopped by fortifications thrown across the road at San Antonio.1 These extended from Lake Chalco to a large field of lava, a pedregal as the Mexicans called it. On the other side of this, another road led to Churubusco where the road by San Antonio joined it. The indefatigable engineers again exercised their abilities. They discovered a way through the lava bed to the road in the rear of Contreras, where a strong Mexican force had gathered to stop any advance on that side of the pedregal. By the time that a few Americans had struggled through the lava to the high ground, Santa Anna with a strong body of men appeared on the other side of a ravine, for he had come to the succor of the threat- ened post. Night was falling and he with his men re- turned to a neighboring village for shelter. More Ameri- cans joined the advance and they spent a miserable night in the cold and wet, — without fires. At three o'clock in the morning, without an alarm, they made their way through a rough ravine led by an engineer and, as day broke, advanced to the attack while the main body assailed the position in front. The Mexicans, those of them who could not get away, surrendered, and with their guns were found two of the three that Taylor had lost at Buena Vista.
1 General George H. Gordon has a tary Historical Society of Massachu- very good article on this part of the setts, xiii, No. xiv. campaign in Proceedings of the Mili-
1847] IN THE MEXICAN VALLEY 605
Without careful reconnoitring, Scott sent his men down the Churubusco road, and the San Antonio line also being abandoned the main body passed on there. The defences of Churubusco were far stronger than any one had antici- pated. Another encircling march cleared it of the enemy. The night of August 20 found the way open to Chapultepec and the Gates of Mexico City at the cost of one thousand killed and wounded since leaving Puebla.1 Santa Anna asked for an armistice and Scott granted the request.2
Meanwhile, at Washington the administration had been filled with a desire for peace. Politically, the situation was very serious in the United States, for the war was unpopular in the North and was likely to be more unpopular as taxes grew and demands for men became more insistent. There is always danger in war, and Polk had slight confidence in Scott or Taylor. Besides, if either one of them covered himself with glory, he would be a formidable Whig candidate for the presidency in 1848. The United States had been the traditional friend of Mexico, and having secured all the territory that the administration wished to have, it was time to make peace. Undoubtedly, there were leaders in Mexico, Santa Anna himself among them, who would gladly have made peace with the United States and resumed faction fighting among themselves. But after describing his defeats as
1 Besides the authorities cited by be that both these remarkable men.
Smith (War with Mexico, ii, 377) one conscious of the seriousness of the
can get a lifelike glimpse of this part problem they had to face and of
of the campaign in a letter from Silas the imperfection of the weapon that
Casey to Dr. L. Goodale dated "St. was in their hands to solve it, may
Angels . . . Aug. 24, 1847" and have taken a more serious view of the
printed in Correspondence of the Late matter and a more accurate one than the
James Kilbourne, 86. administration and the historians.
z Taylor and Scott, both notable Probably it was the ineptitude of the
soldiers, entered into armistices with Mexicans for war that made the solu-
the enemy. These were generally con- tion less difficult than any soldier would
demned by politicians at that time have been justified iu thinking that
and by historians since. It may well it would be.
506 THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY [Ca. XVIII
victories, it was difficult for Santa Anna to place himself openly at the head of any such movement and, indeed, he was more fitted to stir up strife than to allay it. It was rumored also that he had come to some kind of an agreement with the United States. Besides those Mexicans who did not want to make peace for what might be called patriotic motives, there were a great many who desired the war to continue because they were better off as they were than when ruling themselves. Both Taylor and Scott and the soldiers under them — with of course some exceptions — had treated the Mexicans in the occupied towns better than any army had ever treated them before. Not realiz- ing all the obstacles in the way of negotiation, Polk deter- mined to send a diplomatic agent, with the provisions of a treaty in his portfolio, to accompany Scott on his march and take advantage of any opening for a negotiation that might occur. The person picked out for this extremely delicate and difficult task was the Chief Clerk of the State Depart- ment, Nicholas P. Trist by name. He was selected because he could be easily disavowed or recalled, as the Secretary of State or a minister plenipotentiary could not be. Trist was a Virginian by birth, the grandson-in-law of Thomas Jefferson, and for a short time had been private secretary to President Jackson — facts which he could never forget. He had been long a minor office holder, and as consul at Havana had been implicated in some doubtful proceedings.1 Trist had an idea of his own importance which oftentimes goes with contact in a small way with great men and trans- actions.2
In April, 1847, Buchanan provided Trist with elaborate
1 See House Report, No. 707, 26th is written from the point of view of
Cong., 1st Sess. Folk's diary. It may advanta-
1 J.S. Reeves's article on "The Treaty geousiy be read with the accounts in
of Guadalupe-Hidalgo " in the Ameri- Smith's War wiih Mexico, uaing index
can Historical Review, x, 309-324 under "Trist."
1847] NEGOTIATIONS 607
and well-devised instructions telling him exactly what he was to do — what terms he was to offer to the Mexicans and how much money he could offer them. It was un- doubtedly supposed at Washington that he would act in harmony with Scott, who at the moment was advancing to the battle of Cerro Gordo. Arrived at Vera Cruz, Trist sent to Scott despatches, which he asked him to place in the hands of the Mexican commander; and Scott read in Marcy's explanatory letter to him that Trist was authorized to enter into arrangements for the suspension of hostilities. He at once jumped to the conclusion that his prerogative as commander in the field had been infringed. He refused to forward the papers, and he and Trist, both of them inordi- nate letter writers, engaged in a voluminous and acrid corre- spondence.1 The Chief Clerk landed at Vera Cruz, May 6, 1847. He at once became ill and it was some time before he was able to get to Puebla. When he reached that city, Scott, who possessed the instincts of a true gentleman, personally looked after Trist's quarters and subsistence. This appealed to the latter, and in a very short time from being hostile to one another the two Virginians became fast friends, a condition of affairs that pleased Polk less than did the other. At this time the English merchants and diplomatists in Mexico City were extremely desirous of putting an end to hostilities that interfered with trade and were decidedly against the best interests of Mexico. Edward Thornton, an attache1 of the British legation at Mexico City — and years later British minister at Washington — visited Trist at Puebla, on June 11, and again on the 24th of that month. Santa Anna was undoubtedly desirous of ending hostilities, and the expenditure of money among Mexican politicians was not an unusual method of bring-
1 See House Document, No. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Sesa., pp. 812-831.
608 THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY [Cn. XVIII
ing about results. Somehow or other, Santa Anna, or per- haps it would be better to say Mexican circumstances, out- witted Scott and Trist, and procured the armistice and a small supply of money. But then the scene shifted. Santa Anna probably could not fulfil his engagements, or what seemed to be his engagements, and the Mexicans not adhering strictly to the conditions of the armistice, Scott put an end to it, September 6, 1847, and advanced to the attack on Mexico City itself.
The City of Mexico stood in the midst of a marsh that once had been a lake and was approached from different directions by causeways built of stone. Any advance across them was certain to be dangerous, and the choice of the point of attack was really a matter of chance. In some way, Scott's attention had been called to a group of factory buildings, the royal mill — el Molino del Rey 1 — at which the manufacture of war materials was said to be pro- gressing. He thought it would be easy to seize the estab- lishment and destroy it by night attack, but yielded to the suggestion that it would better be done by daylight and by a larger force of men than he had expected would be necessary. The attack was made on September 8 and succeeded, but at the cost of seven hundred and six killed and wounded. The loss was trifling as modern casualties go, but was a serious diminution of Scott's small force of some eight thousand in round numbers. Dominating the end of the two most available causeways was the hill of Chapultepec, upon which stood the buildings of a military college. The height and sharpness of the ascent made it appear easier to defend than it really was and more difficult
1 General George H. Gordon has No. xv. Smith's account of these battles
an interesting and valuable article and of the entrance to the City of
on Molino del Rey and Chapultepec Mexico is much more detailed and
in the Proceedings of the Military His- based on much more material (Wat
torical Society of Massachusetts, xiii, with Mexico, ii, ch. zxviii.)
1847] IN MEXICO CITY 609
to attack. Its occupation appeared to be necessary before an advance could be made into the city from that particular quarter and Scott ordered its capture. A number of small misadventures marred the general brilliancy of the opera- tion, but in the end it was captured at a total loss of 450 men. In all, in these two minor operations at Molino del Rey and Chapultepec, Scott lost for the time being more than one thousand men, one-fifth of whom and probably one-quarter would never see the ranks again. This left him with less than seven thousand men to seize and hold the greatest city of Mexico, until reinforcements could arrive from the coast. Nevertheless, the troops pressed on. Advancing by two causeways, they distracted the enemy's attention, and aqueducts carried in the air by arches resting on the causeways enabled the assailants to stalk the enemy something after the mode of the Red Man of jumping from tree to tree. Reaching the fortifications at the gateways or garitas, the assailants burrowed through the walls. By nightfall (September 13) both columns were within the city walls. The next day, Scott in person took possession of the city. Then followed a period of serious disorder. The retiring Mexicans had opened the prisons, the criminals had secured arms, and attacked the invaders from the housetops and other points of vantage. Scott adopted stern measures of repression, and after a few days of cannon firing in the streets and summary shootings, the city be- came quiet and remained so throughout the American occupation.
When Scott had moved out from Puebla, he had left Colonel Childs there with four hundred able-bodied men to protect the sick men who were in the hospitals or were con- valescent and to provide a resting-place for the volunteer regiments that would come up from the coast. Childs
VOL. V. — 2R
610 THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY [Cn. XVIII
was an exceedingly good man, but his task was difficult, for the irregular bands of the country between Mexico City and Puebla concentrated their efforts upon the latter. Childs held them off by exceedingly good management, but the situation was perilous, especially after the fall of Mexico. Then Santa Anna, disdaining quiet, embodied a force of men, or took some of the organized units that were left, and marched to Puebla. But nothing came of this. He then continued his way toward his plantations near the coast and sought to waylay the regiments of volunteers on their march up country from Vera Cruz. Before leaving government headquarters he had resigned the presidency, and now the new government ordered him to lay down his command, return to headquarters and justify his military conduct. This Santa Anna refused to do and, instead, he proceeded to one of his plantations more or less under guard of American soldiers and soon after left the country, return- ing in later years again to become president in less troubled times.
Success and comparative quiet after the last strenuous weeks brought no peace to Scott, nor to his division com- manders. They turned fiercely upon one another and Scott put three of them under arrest. The story is an un- pleasant one of an attempt to substitute political aspira- tions for military obedience. General Worth, for whom Scott had done everything, turned against him, and General Pillow, formerly President Folk's law partner, ably seconded Worth in his efforts to bring into disgrace the commander-in- chief. Instead of mutual felicitations, court-martials be- came the order of the day. Scott, himself, was displaced by order of the President and directed to report at Wash- ington. It was a pitiful ending of a glorious adventure and recalls to mind the measure of gratitude meted out to
1847] NEGOTIATIONS 611
Scott's illustrious predecessor, Hernan Cortez. But great in disgrace as he had been in victory, he outlived the malice of his foes and was again commander-in-chief of the Ameri- can army when James Buchanan laid down the presidential office, March 4, 1861.
As was inevitable in Mexico and especially in such a crisis as that following the occupation of the capital city and the dismissal of Santa Anna, governmental affairs were in a chaotic condition. There seemed to be no settled adminis- tration that was capable of prosecuting the war or making peace. It was suggested, indeed, that the United States would be obliged to set up a government to negotiate a treaty and maintain it in power for an indefinite time to make certain that the provisions of that instrument were executed.1 Happily this was made unnecessary by a sudden change of feeling on the part of the ruling Mexican classes. After Trist's offers had been turned down more than once and he had received his orders to return home, the Mexican Congress voted for peace and com muni cation was once more opened with Trist. This time again the British diplo- matic representatives and probably the merchants of that nation in Mexico exerted a powerful pressure on the existing government by demonstrating the necessity of peace and stating unreservedly that Great Britain would not intervene. Trist's position was extraordinary: he had been recalled and had sent a notification of his recall to the Mexican gov- ernment. He felt that the putting an end to the negotia- tions with which he had been intrusted was done at Washing-
1The documents relating to the ne- port, No. 261, 41st Cone., 2nd Sew.),
gotiation are printed in Senate Docu- Smith has an extended account in eh.
••eat, No. 52. 30th Cong., 1st Seas. xxxii of his War with Mexico and at-
Senator Sumner. in 1870, included a tendant notes. Julius Klein printed a
brief history of the negotiations in his long article on the subject in Uni-
report on a bill to compensate Trist for versity of California's Chronicle for
hn services as negotiator (Senate Be- July. 1905 (vol. vti. No. 4).
612 THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY (Cn. XVIII
ton under an entire misapprehension of the existing condi- tion of affairs in Mexico. Acting on the suggestion that, as negotiations had already begun, his recall would not apply to them, and there being no means of getting away from Mexico City, he decided to go on with the parleys. As Justin H. Smith says, "it was a truly noble act," for the immediate consequences to him must be very unpleasant. This was on December 4, 1847. The terms that Trist could offer were set forth clearly in his instructions and, under the circumstances, he could not vary them. He seems to have conducted himself in an entirely dignified and considerate manner. After some weeks of conferring, the negotiations came to a deadlock, and on January 29 Trist declared them at an end. Now, again, the British intervened and arranged that one more communication should be received and also informed the government that the Americans would pro- tect it, should the treaty be signed. Four days later, on February 2, 1848, the treaty was signed at Guadalupe Hidalgo.
President Folk's feelings may be imagined when a message was brought to him that Trist had arrived in the United States and that the treaty negotiated by him was on the way to Washington. He wrote down some severe strictures on his former Chief Clerk of the State Department. When the treaty arrived on February 19, 1848, however, it was found to be exactly what Trist had been ordered to negotiate. At first Polk did not know what to do, but finally determined to send it to the Senate and place the responsibility for peace or the continuance of the war on that body. Two- thirds of the Senators and more were distinctly of the opinion that it should be ratified with a few changes of no great im- portance. On March 10, 1848, they so voted, and on May 30, the amended treaty was ratified.
1848] GUADALUPE HIDALGO 613
According to the treaty,1 upon ratification the United States troops would be withdrawn from the occupied areas as far north as the Rio Grande del Norte. The new bound- ary between the two republics should follow that river from its mouth to the southern boundary of New Mexico "north of the town called Paso" and thence somewhat irregularly to the Gila River and down that stream to the Colorado and thence following the southern boundary of Upper California to the Pacific Ocean. The southern and western limits of New Mexico were defined as these were laid down in Disturnell's "Map of the United Mexican States" that was published at New York in 1847. "In consideration of the extension acquired by the boundaries of the United States" in the present treaty, the "Government of the United States" engages to pay the sum of fifteen million dollars to the Mexican Republic. Three millions were to be paid down and the other twelve in annual instalments of three million dollars each with six per cent interest. The United States also assumed the payments of the claims of American citizens against the Mexican Republic. There were many other provisions in the treaty and in the amendments made by the United States Senate; but they need not concern us here.
The boundary by the Treaty of 1848 proved to be im- possible of delineation on the ground. The map was in- accurately drawn — necessarily so in the existing condition of geographical knowledge. Moreover, it soon came to the knowledge of the authorities at Washington that the best route from Texas to California followed the path or road taken by the Mormon Battalion. This proved to be south of the Gila River. This country, which was inaccurately included under the name of Mesilla Valley, was south of the
1 Treaties and Conventions (ed. 1873), p. 662.
614 THE CAMPAIGN FOR MEXICO CITY
boundary line by any possible interpretation of the boundary of New Mexico as laid down on Disturnell's map.1 In 1853 therefore, James Gadsden, acting for the United States. negotiated a treaty with the Mexicans by which for the sum of ten million dollars they ceded a roughly rectangular shaped tract that included the coveted route and mines and something more. And the line as thus drawn remains today the southwestern boundary of the United States.
In the third of the century described in the preceding pages, the American people threw off the social conditions of colonial days. They kept their old forms of govern- ment, but altered the spirit of administering them in the direction of democracy. They crossed the Appalachians in great numbers into the valley of the Mississippi and over that river into the lands that they had acquired from France. "Manifest destiny" urged them on to the acquisition of Florida, to the regaining of Texas on the South, and to the possession of the lands westward from the crest of the Rockies to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. It remained for the future to show what would be the effect of these great changes in society and these immense accessions of territory. Would the Republic remain one united country, or would it be divided according to the social and economic desires of the inhabitants of the several sections into which it was geographically divided ?
•The reports of the different *ur- 468-473, 491-494. The two most
veying parties of the boundary be- interesting reports are J. R. Bartlett's
tween the United States and Mexico Personal Narrative of Explorations and
are enumerated in G. K. Warren's Incidents (2 vols., New York, 1854)
"Memoir of Explorations and Sur- and W. H. Emory's Report on the
veys" forming Appendix F to vol. i United States and Mexican Boundary
of G. M. Wheeler's Report Upon . . . Survey (3 vols., Washington, 1857-
Geographical Surveys West of the One 1859). This forms House Document,
Hundredth Meridian (p. 584) . Another No. 135, 34th Cong., 1st Sesa. and is
enumeration is in the foot-notes to illustrated, as is Bartlett's. Bancroft's Arizona and New Mexico,
BIBLIOGRAPHY 615
NOTE
Bibliography. — For guidance in the writing of the preceding three chapters, I have relied on Justin H. Smith's remarkable history of The War with Mexico (2 vols., New York, 1919). It is the result of prolonged and widely extended researches. Oftentimes the most val- uable information is to be found in the " Remarks " that are buried with other matter in the " Notes " at the ends of both volumes. Smith's research was so profound and his judgment generally so just that one can place peculiar reliance on his statements. At the same time, like all historical students, he has his prejudices. George L. Rives's The United States and Mexico, 1821-1848 (2 vols., New York, 1913) is readable, but is based on insufficient evidence. Grant's account of the Mexican War in his Personal Memoirs (vol. i, chs. v-xiii) may almost be regarded as an historical sketch of the war and must have been based upon a considerable collection of documents.
Of the older books, one may mention Isaac I. Stevens's Campaigns of the Rio Grande and of Mexico (New-York, 1851) ; x and N. C. Brooks's Complete History of the Mexican War (Philadelphia, 1849). Cadmus M. Wilcox's History of the Mexican War (Washington, 1892) can hardly be described as readable, but it was written by a military officer who had done a great deal of preparatory research.2 The important documents are in House Document, No. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., and Senate Document, No. 1, 30th Cong., 1st Sess.
1 This was written in reply to R. S. with Mexico is very useful.
Ripley's War with Mexico (2 vols.. In closing this volume, the author
New York, 1849). Ripley's book was wishes to thank numerous friends and
prepared, apparently, to promote the many students, past and present, who
fortunes of General Pillow. Were it have aided him in countless different
not for its one-sidedness, it would still ways. The names of some of them
be a valuable work. Hazard Stevens's are included in the foot-notes. Espe-
Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens (Boston, cially he wishes again to record his
1900) contains an excellent account of obligations to his friend George Parker
Scott's campaign. Winship for reading the proofs and to
1 Smith gives abundant citations in his secretary, Miss Eva G. Moore, to
his "Notes." H. E. Haferkorn's "Se- whom the accuracy of citation and
lect Bibliography" entitled The War statement is very largely due.
INDEX
Aberdeen, Lord, British Foreign Secre- tary, 534 ; and slavery, 534 n.
Abolitionists, the aggressive, 145-155; George Bourne, 145 ; David Walker, 146 ; W. L. Garrison, 147-151 ; see also Emancipation.
Adams, J. Q., and emancipation, 147; and petitions, 167-169 ; Secretary of State, 330-347; his Three Rules as to territory, 338 n. ; account of, 351, 352; elected President, 1824, 357- 359; his presidency, 360-365; and Texas, 532.
Alamo, the, 527.
Alcoholic beverages, 178-183 ; on ships, 178 n.
Allston, Washington, 300.
Alton, anti-slavery riot, 155 and n.
Anti-abolitionism, in the North, 152- 159.
Anti-Masonry, see Masons.
Anti-slavery Societies, 148.
Apprentices, 95.
Arbuthnot and Ambrister, execution of, 335.
Art, early American, 298-302.
Asbury, Francis, Methodist Bishop, 222 and n., 225.
Ashburton Treaty, the, 534-541.
Astoria, restored, 338, 504.
Audubon, J. J., his Birds of America, 269.
Austin, Moses, 517.
Austin, S. F., and Texans, 517-520, 523.
Authors, Southern, 279, 282 ; Northern, 280, 285, 289.
Bank of the U. S., the second, 310-313, 434-451 ; and deflation, 439 ; and local taxation, 440-442 ; the " branch drafts," 441.
Bankruptcy laws, 193.
Banks, State, 437-439.
Baptists, the, 221.
Barker, Eugene C., 548.
Barlow, Joel, 280.
Bear Flag War, the, 571-573.
Beaumont, De, and De Tocqueville, report on prison discipline, 188 n., 202.
Beecher, Lyman, and the temperance movement, 175, 178.
Bell, Andrew, 254, 272.
Benezet, A., his Mighty Destroyer Dis- played, 172.
Benton, Senator Thomas H., and the Mexican War, 589.
Bibliographies, the telegraph, 28 n. ; transportation, 35 ; Transappalachia, 67-69; F. J. Turner, 67; U. B. Phillips, 67, 170 and n. ; manufac- turing, 93 ; labor, 119; slavery, 170; temperance, 175 n., 201 ; prison dis- cipline, 185 n., 201-203 ; the insane, 196 n., 197 n. ; religion, 239 ; Roman Catholics, 239; Methodists, 240; Mormons, 240, 487 n. ; education, 247 n., 254 n., 255 n., 272; University of Virginia, 261 n. ; literature, 303 n., 306; Florida, 334 n., 335 n., 337 n., 348 ; Andrew Jackson, 335 n., 336 n., 403; Monroe Doctrine, 343 n., 344 n., 349 ; Northwest Coast, 344 n., 501- 504 notes ; Missouri Compromise, 348 ; Daniel Webster, 421 n. ; panics, 456 n. ; Martin Van Buren, 458 n. ; Anti-Masonry, 466 ; Germans, 495 ; Irish, 495 ; communities, 496 ; Lewis and Clark, 507 n. ; Spanish missions, 512 n. ; Texas, 517-520 notes, 548; Northeastern boundary, 536-540 notes ; J. C. Fremont, 570 n. ; Cali- fornia, 584 ; Kearny-Doniphan, 585 ; war with Mexico, 615.
Biddle, Nicholas, 442-450.
Black Belt, the, 39.
Black Hawk War, 498.
Bolton, Herbert E., 548.
Books, widespread purchase of, 275-277.
Boston, Mass., colored schools in, 158.
Boundaries of U. S., northern, 331 Louisiana Purchase, 337 and n. Northeastern, 534-541 ; bibl., 536 n. Oregon, 559-561.
Buchanan, James, intrigues against Clay, 359 n. ; Secretary of State, 547.
Buena Vista, battle of, 593-596.
Cabet, Etieuue, 486 ; bibl., 497.
617
618
INDEX
Calhoun, John C., advocates internal improvements, 318 ; on Jackson in Florida, 335 ; candidate for the presidency, 1824, 353, 354; Vice- President, 357; and nullification, 419-421; and Jackson, 423-425; his letter on s'avery, 542.
California, 499 and fol. ; seized by United States, 563-579 ; population of, 563 and n. ; Americans in, 564- 566; British Intrigue, 566-570; Fremont in, 570, 573 ; bibl., 584.
Camp meetings, 224.
Campbellites, the, 233.
Canals, 8-19 ; early project, 8, 9 ; Erie, 11-14; Portage Railway system, 15; Ohio Canal, 17 ; mileage of, in 1830, 19.
Canning, and Monroe Doctrine, 343.
Carroll, Bishop, 214.
Case of Med., 126 n.
Cerro Gordo, battle of, 600.
Channing, W. E., and slavery, 170; on the Scriptures, 204.
Charleston, S. C., 84 ; free blacks in, 134-137 ; decline of, 410.
Charleston and Hamburg Railway, 26.
Cheverus, J. L., Roman Catholic Bishop, 214.
Child labor, 98 and n.
Cities, growth of, 79-84 ; statistics of, 82 n., 411 n. ; life in, 88-91.
Clay, Henry, and the American System, 319-321 ; candidate for the presi- dency, 355 ; intrigue against, 358- 360, 366; and the Bank, 443-447; and Texas, 532, 543-545.
Coast Survey, origin, 317 and n.
Colleges and Universities, 256-265; denominational, 232.
Colonization of free blacks, the Amer- ican Society for, 137-140; Lincoln on, 139.
Colonization Society, the American, 137-140.
Columbia River, discovered, 502. -
Commons, J. R., his Documentary His- tory, 100 n., 119; his History of Labour, 119.
Communities, Harmony, 63 ; Zoar, 63 ; Owenites at New Harmony, 64 ; ex- periments in the 1840's, 111 ; Brook Farm, 480; Fruitlands, 481; the Fourierite, 481-485; the Inspira- tionists, 485; the Icarians, 486, Mormons, 487-494 ; bibl., 496-498.
Conner, Commodore, blockades Vera Cru», 564.
Conspiracy in labor movements, 101- 109.
Cooper, J. Fenimore, 285.
Cooper, Thomas, 291, 415.
Cooperation, 112.
Cotton, early cultivation of, 39 and n. ; in 1830, 407-409; manufacturing, 76, 78, 85-88 ; statistics of, 433.
Crandall, Prudence, and negro educa- tion, 155-157 and n.
Crawford, William H., 313; candidate for the presidency, 353.
Crime, treatment of, 183-191.
Cumberland Road, 6, 317, 321
Dallas, Alexander J., 312.
Debtors, poor, 191-193.
Dedham case, 212.
Denominational colleges, 232.
Dew, T. R., defends slavery, 163.
Doniphan, Col. A. W., his expedition,
580 ; bibl., 585.
Dow, Neal, and prohibition, 181. Drama, 289-291. Drinking habits, in early nineteenth
century, 175-177.
Dunbar, William, expedition of, 509 Dunlap, William, 301.
Eaton, Major J. H., 366; Secretary of War, 387 ; the " Eaton affair," 388.
Education, 242-273; literary funds, 244 ; German influence, 246 ; Calvin E. Stowe on, 246 ; common schools, 244-253 ; bibl., 247 n., 254 n., 255 n., 272; charity schools, 248-250; Frances Wright's system, 250 ; Horace Mann, 251-253 ; Pestalozzi's system, 253 ; Fellenberg's system, 253 ; Lancasterian method, 254-256 ; scientific, 257-260; colleges, 260- 265 ; statistics, 270.
Elections, presidential, of 1824, 353- 357; of 1828, 365-376; of 1832, 446 ; of 1836, 458 ; of 1840, 462 ; of 1844, 543-545.
Emancipation, plan for gradual, in Virginia in 1832, 142-145; see also Abolition.
Emancipator, The, 151.
Emigration, from the Old South, 49- 52 , from New England and New York, 53 ; from farm to town, 70 ; of Southern Quakers to Northwest, 59, 61, 62.
English, the, immigration of, 476.
Erie Canal, 11-14 ; effect of, 36, 54.
INDEX
619
Fall River. 87.
Families, migrant. 44, 52, 55-57. Fellenberg, E., and his Hofwyl experi- ment, 253- bibl., 254 n. Flogging, in American Navy, 165 n.,
189 n. Florida, 333-336 bibl., 334 n., 335 n.,
337 n., 348; acquired by U. S.,
336-342.
Forty bale theory, 427 n. Fourier, Charles, 481-485 : bibl., 496. France, relations with, in Jackson's
time, 401.
Free blacks, see Negroes, free. Fr6mont, John C., in California, 570,
573.
Frontiersmen, 43. Fugitive slaves, 125-127 : Act of 1793,
125 • in 1815-1830, 141. Fulton, R., on canals, 10. Fur traders, the, 510.
Gadsden Purchase, the, 613.
Gag-rule, the, 167-169.
Gallatin, Albert, and the National
Road, 6; Report (1808), 9-11, 316. Garrison, W. L., and abolition, 147-
151 ; books on, 148 n. Garrison mob, the, 153 and n. Georgia and the Cherokee Indians, 364. Germans, the, immigration of, 471-474 ;
bibl., 495.
Gift Books and Annuals, 287. Gillespie despatch, the, 571-573. Goliad, massacre of, 527. Goodrich, S. G., 296. Great Britain, relations with, 1815-
1818, 330-333; in Jackson's time,
398-400; and Texas, 533; and
Mexico, 561 ; and California, 566-
570.
Great Lakes, steamboats on, 23. Guadalupe Hidalgo, treaty of, 612.
Hamilton, Alexander, on internal im- provements, 317.
Hare, Robert, 258.
Harrison, W. H., defeated for presi- dency in 1836, 458 ; elected in 1840, 462 ; death of, 464.
Hofwyl Institutions, see Fellenberg.
Houston, Sam, 527.
Hughes, Bishop, of New York, 214.
Immigration, statistics of, 467 and n., 474—475 and n. ; Scandinavian, 468- 471 ; German, 471-474; bibl., 495
English, 476: Irish. 477-480; bibl.. 495.
Indentured servants, 95.
Indian treaties, 68.
Indians, Calif ornian, 515, 516.
Insane, treatment of the, 194-197.
Internal improvements by U. S. Gov't., 6, 9, 316-323, 395-397; disburse- ments for, 417 n.
Irish, the, immigration of, 477-480; bibl., 495.
Irving, Washington, 285.
Jackson, Andrew, in Florida, 334-336, 341,423-425; bibl., 348; candidate for the presidency, 356 ; elected Presi- dent, 365-376; his presidency, 378 and fol. ; character, 378-380; his Inaugural, 385 ; his cabinet, 387- 389; the spoils system, 389-395; and internal improvements, 395- 397 ; and foreign affairs, 398-401 ; bibl., 403; and States'-rights, 422; and Calhoun, 423-425; and the Union, 436 ; his action on nulli- fication, 429-431 ; and the Bank, 434-451 ; and the Specie Circular, 451-453 ; and distribution of the surplus, 453-455 ; and Texas, 532.
Jefferson, Thomas, on manufacturing, 72 n. ; and runaway slaves, 126 ; on religion, 204 • on Massachusetts schools, 251 n. and the University of Virginia, 261—264 ; and internal improvements, 317, 322 ; on Missouri Compromise, 326 n.
Jones, Commodore A. C., seises Mon- terey, 569.
Kearny, Gen. Stephen W., in New Mexico and California, 576, 579 ; bibl., 585
" Kitchen Cabinet," the, 387.
Labor, early conditions of, 94 ; appren- tices and indentured servants, 95 ; wage system, 96-98 ; unions, 99-111 ; conditions at Lowell, 114-117.
Labor movement, first, 94-119; bibl., 119.
Lancaster, Joseph, 254, 272.
Land system, national, 40-43.
Larkin, Thomas O., American consul 565 ; confidential agent, 568-571.
Latrobe, B. H., on railroads, 10.
Latter-day Saints, see Mormons.
Law schools, 266.
620
INDEX
Learned societies, 266.
Lewis and Clark, expedition of, 503, 505-507 and n.
Liberator, The, 147-151.
Liberia, 139.
Libraries, 275.
Lighting, early, in houses, 90.
Lincoln, Abraham, family of, 52 and n. ; on colonization of free blacks, 139.
Literary funds, the, 244.
Literature, 274-306 ; early output, 274 ; reading habits, 274-277; character of, 277-279 ; Southern authors, 279, 282; Northern authors, 280, 285, 289 ; nature and nurture of literary men, 302-304 ; bibl., 303 n., 306.
Loco-focos, the, 459.
Lotteries, 197-200.
Louisiana Purchase, boundary of, 337 and n.
Lovejoy murder, 155 and n.
Lowell, F. C., 78.
Lowell, Mass., 85-87; conditions of labor at, 114-117.
Lowell Institute, the, 267.
Lynds, Elam, 187.
McAdam, J. L., 5.
Madison, James, and internal improve- ments, 319.
Maine Liquor Law, 181.
Mann, Horace, 251-253.
Manufacturing, rise of, 72-88 ; Jefferson on, 72 n. ; in the South, 75, 413 ; in the Northwest, 77 ; in the Northeast, 77-88 ; bibl., 93.
Marshall, John, his decisions, 309, 310.
Marshall, W. I., on the Whitman story, 549.
Masons, the, opposition to, 459 ; bibl., 466.
Maysville Veto, 395-397.
Medical schools, 265.
Methodist Church South, 154, 228.
Methodists, the, 221, 225, 227; and anti-slavery, 154, 227 ; bibl., 240.
Mexico, 520 and fol. ; claims against, 550 and fol. ; British advice to, 561.
Mexico, War with, causes of, 550-557 ; begins, 557 ; Vera Cruz-Mexico City campaign, 587-611 ; the U. S. army, 596-599; battles in the Mexican Valley, 602-605, 608 ; peace negotia- tions, 605-608, 611; Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 612 ; bibl., 615.
Migration, from Old South, 49-52,
409 n. ; conditions of, 57-59 ; group,
60-65.
Millerites, the, 233-235 and n. Mission system, the Spanish, 512—516 .
bibl., 512 n. Mississippi Valley, steamboat traffic in,
21-23 ; routes to, 40. Missouri Compromise, 323-329 ; bibl.,
348.
Mobile, 79. Mobs or riots, against Abolitionists at
Philadelphia, 152 ; at New York and
at Boston, 153 ; at Alton, 165 ,
against Roman Catholics, 217-219. Monitorial schools, 254-256; bibl.,
272. Monroe, James, presidency of, 307-
350 ; on internal improvements, 319,
321. Monroe Doctrine, the, 342-346 and n. ;
bibl., 349.
Mormon Battalion, the, 490, 579, 586. Mormons, the, or Latter-day Saints,
235-237; bibl., 240, 487 n. ; as a
community, 487—494. Morse, S. F. B., 27 ; and the telegraph,
28 and n.
National land system, 40-43.
Natural History, 269.
Nature and nurture, 302-304.
Navy, the, discipline in, 165 n., 189 n.
Negroes, free, in Virginia, 130 ; in Dis- trict of Columbia, 131-133 ; case of Gilbert Horton, 132; in the North- east, 133; in South Carolina, 134- 137 ; owning slaves, 137 and n. ; colonization of, 137—140 ; proposed seminary at New Haven, 157 ; Boston schools for, 158.
New England, emigration from, 53.
New England literary group, 303-305 ; dates of leading works, 303 n.
New Haven, proposed negro seminary at, 157.
New Mexico, 499 and fol.
New Orleans, 79.
New York City, 82.
New York State, western, emigration from, 53.
Newspapers and magazines, 282-284, 287, 291.
Nootka Sound Treaty, 502.
Northeastern boundary, 534— 541 ; bibl., 536-540 notes.
Northwest, the Old, Southern Quakers in, 59, 61, 62.
INDEX
621
Northwest Coast, 344, 501-504 ; bibl.,
344 n., 501-504 notes. Nullification, in South Carolina, 404-
433.
Ohio Canal, 17.
Oregon, 499 and fol. ; claims to, 501-
507 ; joint occupation, 504, 560 ;
American settlers in, 511 ; Treaty of
1846, 559-561. Owen, Robert, and his community
ideas, 64, 65 and notes.
Palo Alto, battle of, 558.
Panama Congress, 361-364!
Panics, of 1819, 314 ; of 1837, 455-458 ; cause of, 456 ; bibl., 456 n.
Parker, Theodore, 205.
Pestalozzi, influence on education, 253.
" Peter Parley " books, 296.
Petitions, anti-slavery, to Congress, 167-169.
Phillips, Ulrich B., bibl., 67, 170 and n.
Phillips, Wendell, 155.
Pike, Z. M., his explorations, 507-509 and n.
Pioneers, the, 43.
Pittsburg, 80.
Poe, E. A., 288.
Polk, James K., on internal improve- ments, 321 ; elected President, 544- 546 ; his presidency, 546 and fol. ; his character, 546.
Poor debtors, see Debtors.
Population, statistics, U. S. in 1790, 1820, 1850, and by sections, 45-49; in 1830, 380-382 ; in 1840-1860, 467 ; of cities, 82 n. ; of selected nationali- ties, 475 n.; of Texas, 520 n. ; of California, 515, 516, 563 and n.
Portage Railway, 15.
Powers, Hiram, 302.
Prairies, 38.
Presbyterians, the, 221, 222, 225, 227.
Priestley, Joseph, 259, 260, 291.
Prison discipline, in 1800, 184-186; Pennsylvania system of, 186, 188 ; Auburn system of, 187-191 ; bibl., 201-203.
Prohibition, laws, 1856, 182 ; repealed, 183 ; see also Temperance.
Quakers, Southern, in the Old North- west, 59, 61, 62.
Railroads, 23-30; early, 10; Portage, 15, 16; locomotives on, 23, 25, 27;
early American, 24-30 ; running time, 1826, 1833, 1844, 29; as public utilities, 30; mileage, 1840, 1850, 32.
Randolph, John, of Roanoke, frees his slaves, 130 ; and Bank of U. S., 313 ; and Adams and Clay, 366.
Religion, 204-241 ; division over slavery, 154, 227 ; Jefferson on, 204 ; W. E. Channing on, 204 ; Unitarian- ism, 205, 212 ; the sects, 207 ; their numbers and distribution, 210, 219- 221 ; missionaries, 209 and n. ; dis- qualification, 211 ; the Roman Catho- lics, 213-219; statistics, 219-221; on the frontier, 221-227; the Bap- tists, 221 ; the Presbyterians, 221, 222, 225, 227; publications, 226; Sunday Schools, 228-230; Sunday observance, 230-232 ; denomina- tional colleges, 232 ; bibl., 239.
Removal of the deposits, 447-450.
Resaca de la Palma, battle of, 558.
Revivals, 222-225.
Richmond, 83.
Rio Grande, the, as a boundary, 337- 339.
Roads, macadamized, 5 ; Cumberland or National Road, 6, 7.
Roane, Spencer, 405.
Roman Catholics, the, 213-219; dis- tribution of, 216 ; riots against, 217- 219; bibl., 239.
Rush, Dr. Benjamin, his temperance publications, 173.
Russia, and the Northwest Coast, 344, 501 ; treaty with, 1824, 346.
Sabine River, the, as a boundary, 338, 339.
St. Louis, 79.
San Jacinto, battle of, 528.
San Juan boundary, 561 n.
Santa Anna, A. L. de, 521 ; captured, 529 ; intrigue with, 554 ; president and commander of the Mexican forces, 591 and fol.
Scandinavians, the, immigration of, 468-4^1.
Schools, the common, 244-253 ; the charity, 248-250.
Scott, Gen. Winfield, plans Vera Cruz- Mexico City campaign, 687 ; hia character, 588.
Seymour, British Admiral, 567.
Silliman, Benjamin, 259.
Simms, W. G., 279, 283.
622
INDEX
Slater, Samuel, 78.
Slave insurrections, Denmark Vesey, 135 ; Nat Turner, 142.
Slave trade, internal, 126-129; ex- ternal, 128, 165.
Slaveholders, the, and abolitionism, 159-166 ; and incendiary publica- tions, 160, 166; believe themselves cavaliers, 164.
Slavery, opinions of the " Fathers " on, 120; in early times, 121; on the great plantations, 123 ; in the churches, 154, 227 ; defence of, 162- 164; bibl., 170; in Texas, 522; Lord Aberdeen on, 534 n. ; Calhoun on, 542.
Slaves, fugitive, 125-127, 141.
Slidell, John, his mission to Mexico, 553.
Sloat, J. D., American Commodore, 568, 574 and n. ; seizes California, 574-576.
Smith, Justin H., his War with Mexico, 615.
Societies and strikes, 99-111.
South, the Old, migration from, 49-52.
South American Republics, recognition of, 342-344.
South Carolina, 404—133; nullifies Tariff Act of 1832, 428.
Spain, relations with, 333-342.
Specie Circular, the, 453.
Spoils system, 389-395.
Steamboats, 20-23; on Atlantic sea- coast, 20 ; in Mississippi Valley, 21- 23 ; on the Great Lakes, 23.
Stevens, J., on railroads, 10 n.
Stockton, Commodore, in California, 676.
Stowe, Calvin E., his report on educa- tion, 246.
Strikes, Philadelphia cordwainers, 1805, 100-103; 1833-1837, 107-109; Ge- neva shoemakers, 109.
Sunday observance, 230-232.
Sundav Schools, 228-230.
Supreme Court, the Federal, 308-310.
Surplus, distribution of the, 453-455 and n.
Sutter, J. A., in California, 516.
Swartwout, Samuel, 394 and n.
Taney, Roger B., 449.
Tariff acts, of 1816, 315; effect of,
410 n.; of Abominations, 1828, 371,
419; of 1824, 418; of 1832, 427;
nullified by South Carolina, 428;
Compromise of 1833, 431 and n.
Taylor, John, of Caroline, 406, 414.
Taylor, Zachary, in Texas, 552 ; char- acter of, 555-557 ; on the Rio Grande, 557 ; the Monterey campaign, 581 ; at Buena Vista, 593-596.
Telegraph, Morse and the, 28 and n.
Temperance, early movement for, 172- 183 ; Washingtonian, 181 ; laws, 182 ; bibl., 201.
Texas, 499 and fol. ; given up by U. S., 338; Americans in, 516-534; bibl., 517-520 notes, 548 ; as a Mexican state, 518 ; population, 520 n. ; slavery in, 522 ; revolution in, 523- 530; battle of San Jacinto, 528; independence of, 531 ; annexation of, 541-547.
Thompson, George, English abolition agitator, 153.
Thornton, William, 292.
Transappalachia, settlement of, 37; bibl., 67-69.
Transportation, in 1815, 4 ; roads, 5-7 ; canals, 8-19 ; effects of Erie Canal on, 13-15, 36; steamboats, 20-23; railroads, 23-30; bibl., 35; urban, 89.
Transylvania University, 264.
Travel, in 1796, 1836, 1845, 31, 32.
Treasury, the Independent, 460.
Treaties, Indian, 68; British, 1818, 331 ; Florida, 336-342 ; Russian, 1824, 346; Nootka Sound, 502; Ashburton, 534-541; Oregon, 1846, 559-561 ; Guadalupe Hidalgo, 612.
Trist, Nicholas P., U. S. commissioner, 606-608, 611.
Turner, F. J., 45 n. ; writings of, 4 n., 67 and n.
Turnpikes, 5.
Tyler, John, elected Vice-President, 462 ; succeeds Harrison, 464 ; and Texas, 541-546.
Union and disunion, to 1825, 404.
Unitarianism, 205, 212.
United States, population in 1790, 1820, 1850, 45-49; in 1830, 380-382; re- lations with Great Britain, 1815- 1818, 330-333 ; in Jackson's time, 398-400 ; boundaries, 331 ; ac- quires Florida, 336-342 ; purchases Louisiana, 337 and n. ; statistics of production, 383 ; and France, 401 ; Jackson on the Union, 436; im- migration, 467-480, 495 ; and Texas. 516-534 ; 541-547 ; and Mexico, 520
INDEX
623
and fol., 550 and fol. ; seizes Cali- fornia, 563-579; army in Mexican War, 596-599 ; finances, 599 ; Gads- den Purchase, 613.
University of Virginia, 261-264 ; bibl., 261 n.
Urban life, effect of, 91.
Van Buren, Martin, and Jackson cam- paign in New York, 367-369 and n. : Secretary of State, 387 ; and the Maysville veto, 397 ; Vice-President, 400; elected President, 458; his presidency, 460-464 ; defeated in 1840, 462 ; in 1844, 543,
Vera Cruz, capture of, 591.
Virginia, and gradual emancipation, 142-145.
Virginia, University of, founding of, 261 and n.-264.
Wages and conditions of labor, 96-98. Washing to nian movement, 181.
Water, beginning of city supplies, 89,
90.
Waterhouse, Dr. Benjamin, 258 and n. Webster, Daniel, reply to Hayne, 421 ;
bibl., 421 n.; and the Bank, 445 ;
and Treaty of 1842, 535-541. Webster, Noah, and his Dictionary,
294-296.
Weems, M. L., 180, 278. West, Benjamin, 299. West, the, see Transappalachia. Westward March, 37-69 ; character of,
37, 44 ; size of, 45-49 ; migration
from Old South, 49-52 ; conditions
of, 57-59.
Whitman story, the, 549. Whitney's cotton-gin, effect of, 121. Willard, Emma, 297. Wilmot Proviso, 562. Wilson, A., his Ornithology, 269. Wool, Gen. John E., 582. Wright, Frances, her school system, 250 Wyeth, N.. 511.
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