The American People Their Civilization And Character

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This American people

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The American People

THE

AMERICAN PEOPLE

THEIR CIVILIZATION
AND CHARACTER

Henry Earn ford Parkes

BA.(Oxon.), PhJX(Michigan), Associate
Professor of History at New York University

London

EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE

This book y first published in Great Britain in 1949, **
produced in full conformity with the Authorized Economy
Standards and is printed for Eyre &f Spottiswoode
(Publishers), Ltd., 15 Bedford Street* London, W.C.I by
Lowe & Brydone Printers Ltd., Victoria Road, North
Acton, London, N.fF.io.

FOR AdL

W I F 15

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

/ should like to express my gratitude to the numerous people
with whom I have discussed the ideas presented in this book
and whose criticisms have assisted me in clarifying them:
particularly to the students in my seminar on American Civ-
ilization in the Graduate School of New York University dur-
ing the years 1944-7; to HERBERT WEINSTOCK and ROGER
SHUGG of the firm of Alfred A. Knopf; to MARGARET SLOSS,
CORINNE MARSH, EUNICE JESSUP, JOSEPH FRANK, and
FRANCIS FERGUSSON; and above all to my wife.

a B. p.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

xi

CHAPTER

I

The New Man

3

II

The Founding of the Colonies

14

III

Colonial Society

40

IV

American Religion

61

V

The Revolution

86

VI

The Constitution

106

VII

Capitalism and Agrarianism

133

VIII

The Conquest of the West

166

IX

The Agrarian Mind

183

X

The Civil War

206

XI

The Growth of Industrialism

229

XII

The Industrial Mind

255

XIII

The Agrarian Counterattack

286

XIV

The United States in World Af airs

3i3

XV

Conclusion

334

Index follows pas

SC343

INTRODUCTION

f I \HE purpose of this book is to present an interpreta-

Ition of the character and civilization of the American
people. Although it deals mainly with the American
past, it is not a history of the United States. There are a num-
ber of excellent surveys of American history, and. I have not
wished to add another to the list. This book is not a chrono-
logical narrative of historical events. My primary object has
been, not to tell the story of the American past, but to discuss
its meaning and to derive from it a deeper understanding of
the problems of the American present.

What does it mean to be an American? What are the special
characteristics of American civilization, and in what ways does
it differ from the civilization of other nations? In order to
answer these questions it is necessary to turn to American
history. For the character of a nation, like that of an indi
vidual, is the product of its past experience and is revealed
best in its actions. In this book I have attempted to explain
the historical forces that molded the American character and
. to show how that character has been exhibited at different
periods both in thought and in behavior. This purpose has
determined my selection of subject matter* I have included
enough factual material to make the book intelligible to read-
ers who know little about American history; but I have tried
to include only those facts that are necessary for an under-
standing of American civilization or that illustrate different
aspects of it. Since I did not propose to write a history of the
United States, I have said relatively little about the details of
political and economic development.- On the other hand, I
have occasionally discussed movements that have had little
effect on the course of events, but that illustrate important
tendencies of the American mindj and I have given consider-
able attention to political ideals, to religion and philosophy,
and to literature.

I have written this book in the belief that American civiliza-
tion has certain unique features that differentiate it from that

xii Introduction

of any European country. The culture of the United States
has been the product of two main factors: of the impulses and
aspirations that caused men and women to leave their Euro-
pean homes and cross the Atlantic $ and of the influences of
the American natural environment. As a result of these factors
the Americans have acquired, not only certain characteristic
political ideals and beliefs, but also a distinctive view of life
and code of values. This view of life and code of values guide
the behavior of individual Americans and are reflected in
American philosophy and in American literature and art. I
believe that these distinctive qualities of American culture
have not been sufficiently appreciated, and that American in-
tellectuals and political theorists have frequently been too
much influenced by European concepts that have little rele-
vance to American realities. Throughout this book I have
tried to define and emphasize those qualities that are charac-
teristically American. This emphasis explains the omission of
much of the material which appears in formal histories.

I believe that once these essential tendencies of American
culture have been defined, then the political and economic de-
velopment of the American people, their religion and philoso-
phy, and their literature and art can all be regarded as reflec-
tions of the same basic attitudes. The history of America can
thus be interpreted as the working out of certain basic cultural
drives that are exhibited both in American thought and in
American action. And the problems of present-day America
are due largely to certain contradictions that were always in-
herent in the American cultural pattern but that did not be-
come acute until the twentieth century. These contradictions
cannot be resolved unless they are understood j and they can
best be understood through a study of their origin and devel-
opment in the American past.

In dealing with the political and economic development of
America, I have emphasized chiefly the drive toward an
agrarian democracy: toward a society, in other words, in which
almost all men would be independent property owners. The
product partly of the desire for independence that caused the
Atlantic migration and partly of the abundance of cheap land
in the American continent, the agrarian ideal took shape dur-

Introduction xiii

ing the colonial period, was asserted during the Revolution,
and remained a dominating factor in American politics down
to the Civil War. And in spite of the growth of industrial
capitalism, it has continued to have a most important influence
on the attitudes of the American people down to the present
day. I believe that one cannot appreciate the special qualities
of American civilization unless one understands the agrarian
tradition (which cannot be duplicated in the history of any
important European country)} yet as a result of European
preconceptions (both capitalistic and Marxist), the true mean-
ing and importance of this tradition have not been sufficiently
recognized. In this book I have interpreted American political
and economic history mainly in terms of the rise and decline .
of agrarianism, of the contradictions and limitations of the
agrarian attitude, and of the conflict between American agrar-i
ianism and European doctrines of capitalism and socialism.,
Although the agrarian economy of eighteenth-century Amer-,
ica has now disappeared, I believe it is only by understanding
and redefining their agrarian tradition and adapting it to an
industrial economy that twentieth-century Americans can cre-
ate the kind of society that will fulfill their national ideals.
Those American qualities that were expressed, on the po-'
litical level, by such spokesmen of agrarian democracy as
Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln, can be traced also in the de-
velopment of American religion, in the philosophy of such
men as William James, and in the literature both of the pre-
Civil War period and of the twentieth century. The intel-
lectual and aesthetic manifestations of the American mind
exhibit the same aspirations and the same inner contradictions
as its political theory. In discussing these subjects I have tried
to show what they have in common with each other and to
present all of them as different manifestations of the same
basic cultural tendencies. I do not believe that such a task has
been attempted before. As long as the works of different
American writers and thinkers are approached on the super-
ficial level of the ideas they consciously inculcate, and are
judged by their political beliefs (as in the three volumes of
Plarrington), they appear to be very diverse and no common
pattern can be discovered. It seems to me that when they are

xiv Introduction

explored more deeply and are examined for their unconscious
assumptions, then even those intellectual creations that appear
to run counter to the main stream of American development
can be interpreted as significant expressions of the American
spirit. In this book I have tried to show that even the theol-
ogy of Jonathan Edwards and the writings of such men as
Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Henry James were pro-
foundly American in the attitudes they reveal.

H. B. P.

The American People

CHAPTER I [3

The New Man

THE central theme in the history of the Americas
can be stated very simply. During the four and a
half centuries that have elapsed since the first voy-
age of Columbus, a stream of migration has been
flowing from Europe westward across the Atlantic and into
the two American continents. Relatively small during the
first three hundred years, it increased during the nineteenth
century and did not reach its peak until shortly before the
First World War. In all, between fifty and sixty million
persons left their European homes and established them-
selves in the New World* During the same period another
five or ten millions were brought to the Americas by force
from Africa. This is by far the largest movement of peoples
in all history. There was no comparable process at any earlier
epoch, and nothing like it is likely to happen again in the
future. Whether one judges it by the number of individuals
involved in it or by its results and implications, it is the most
important single factor in the recent history of the human
race.

This Atlantic migration was. not the first invasion of the
American hemisphere. Some twenty thousand years earlier,
peoples of a different ethnic group, originating in north-
eastern Asia, had crossed into America by way of the Bering
Strait. But it was only in Mexico and along the plateaus of
the Andes that these "Indian" races succeeded in creating
well-integrated societies that did not dissolve before the onset
of the Europeans. In these two areas, which were among the
first to pass under white control, the Indian masses, though
subjugated and exploited by the newcomers, have retained
their racial identity and many of their traditional character-
istics. But elsewhere the hemisphere has become the undis-
puted property of the white man or of the Negro whom he
brought with him.

4 The American People

In the southern continent the main lines of European
settlement were marked out within fifty years of the first
voyages of discovery. This rapid initial attack was followed
by a long period of quiescence, during which there was rela-
tively little new exploration or settlement. In the late nine-
teenth century, with a revival of energy and a new flow of
migration into South America from Europe, the process was
resumed. In the north the advance of the Europeans was
more gradual but more consistent. Beginning more than a
hundred years later than in the south, it covered only a few
hundred miles from the Atlantic seacoast during the first
century and a half, but gathered momentum quickly during
the century that followed. The progress of white colonization
reached its climax in the two continents almost simultaneously.
The peoples of Argentina and Chile were imposing white rule
over the hitherto unconquered Indians of the far south during
the same two or three decades in which the people of the
United States subjugated the Indians of the great plains and
completed the settlement of the West.

That this movement of the European races into the New
World should be regarded as the essential substance of Ameri-
can history is not difficult to understand. The explorer, the
conquistador, the pioneer, and the liberator are the primary
symbols of the American cultures. But the full implications,
political and psychological, of this migration are not so easy
to define. Establishing himself in the New World, the Ameri-
can repudiated a part of his European inheritance. In certain
respects, though not in all, he ceased to be a European and
became a new subspecies of humanity. It is only by under-
standing the qualities of this new man, the American, that
we can interpret? much that may otherwise seem puzzling or
disturbing in his achievements and his behavior. We must,
above all, avoid the error of regarding the civilization of
America as a mere" extension, without essential changes, of
that of Europe. The differences between them should, in fact,
be emphasized, since otherwise the American peoples will be
unable either to form a sound evaluation of their own institu-
tions or to avoid misunderstandings with those European
nations with whom they must be associated.

The New Man 5

This volume is concerned with the evolution of civilization
in the United States, and here the divergence from European
traditions was sharper than in the Spanish-speaking countries.
Both the North and the South Americans have displayed cer-
tain common American characteristics, but these developed
more fully in the north. The imprint of European institu-
tions, of monarchy, aristocracy, and clericalism, and of the
view of life and habits of thought associated with them, .was
much deeper and more lasting in the southern countries than
it was in the United States. This was owing partly to the
authoritarian policies of Spanish imperialism and partly to
the presence of large Indian populations who could be re-
duced to a servitude resembling that of the peasants of feudal
Europe. To a large degree Latin America became an exten-
sion of Latin Europe. The migration to the United States,
on the other hand, created a new way of life that quickly
acquired certain unique qualities.

The impulse of migration may be described, negatively, as
an impulse of escape. The American fled from a Europe
where he could find no satisfying fulfillment of his energies
and was confronted by conflicts and dilemmas that had no
easy solution. The groups who came to all parts of the New
World were, in general, those who were most acutely discon-
tented with their status in European society and who had the
least hope of being able to improve it. The Hispanic colonies
were settled mainly by impoverished members of the lower
nobility and by adventurers from the lower classes. Unable to
achieve aristocratic status at home, they hoped to win riches,
land, and glory for themselves in America. Most of the early
immigrants to the United States came from the petty bour-
geoisie in the English cities or from the yeoman fanners 5 a
few were motivated primarily by the desire to put into prac-
tice novel religious or political ideas, but the majority ex-
pected to improve their economic condition. The kter migra-
tion from the other European countries into both North and
South America was similar in character, including some re-
ligious and political refugees, but consisting mainly of ambi-
tious younger sons of the bourgeoisie and of oppressed and
land-hungry peasants from Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia,

6 The American People

Italy, and the Austrian and Russian empires. All sought in
the New World an environment where they could act more
freely, without being restricted by traditional forms of au-
thority and discipline or by a scarcity of land and natural re-
sources.

Of the various factors that caused men to come to America,
the economic was no doubt the most important. Throughout
the period of the migrations, there was no free land in Eu-
rope j natural resources were limited j and the population was
always in danger of increasing faster than the means of sub-
sistence. Migration always occurred chiefly from areas of
Europe where agriculture was still the chief occupation and
where (owing to the growth of big estates or to genuine over-
crowding) the demand for land was in excess of the supply.
This was true of Spain in the sixteenth century, of England
in the early seventeenth, and of Ireland, Germany, Scandi-
navia, Italy, and the Slavic countries of the east in the nine-
teenth.

An almost equally influential stimulus to migration was
the European class system. This was, in fact, perhaps the
chief cause of European economic privation, since the big
estates of the aristocracy diminished the supply of land avail-
able for the peasants. Before the discovery of America, Euro-
pean society had been molded by feudalism into a tightly knit
organic structure in which every individual, from the king at
the top to the humblest peasant at the bottom, was expected
to know his place and to perform the duties appropriate to it.
These class differences had originated with the barbarian in-
vasions during the fall of -the Roman Empire, or even earlier,
and for a thousand years they had been a deeply rooted part
of the European consciousness. Ambitious and enterprising
members of the middle and lower classes could sometimes
improve their position, either individually or in groups, but
the Battle against aristocratic privilege was always difficult,
and never reached a conclusion. For such persons the opening
of the New World beyond the Atlantic promised an easier
escape from frustration and the sense of inferiority.

Privation and inequality weighed upon all underprivileged
persons in Europe, but did not cause all of them to come to

The New Man j

America. Human behavior is conditioned by economic and
social factors in the sense that these establish the problems to
be solved, but it is not determined by them: how particular
individuals choose to act in a given situation depends upon
deeper, more intangible, and more mysterious forces. Con-
fronted by the same difficulties, some individuals preferred to
submit to them or to continue struggling with them, while
others, generally the more restless and adventurous, decided
to come to the New World. Thus the settlement of America
was a selective process that attracted those members of the
European middle and lower classes who had the appropriate
bent and disposition it appealed not necessarily to the ablest
or the strongest, but usually to the most enterprising. In a
sense it may be said that America was from the beginning a
state of mind and not merely a place.

In the New World, at least during the earlier period of
colonization, this selective process continued. Those who had
the requisite energy, adaptability, and capacity for endurance
survived and prospered 5 others died of starvation or in battle
with the Indians. In the course of centuries certain qualities
became established as suitable to the new environment and
as characteristically American. Men born in the New World
were disposed, both by inheritance and by conditioning, to
develop them, and kter immigrant groups found it necessary
to acquire them. Thus the civilizations of the New World
promoted certain special psychic configurations that differen-
tiated the American from the European.

In the Hispanic countries the presence of Indian labor and
the importation of Negro slaves enabled m^ny of the early
immigrants to achieve the aristocratic status to which they
aspired. But in the United States there were no Indian peoples
who could be made to work for white overlordsj and though
the institution of Negib slavery was adopted during the
colonial period, its influence was restricted to one section of
the country. There were in the United States, on the other
hand, enormous stretches of fertile land and vast mineral
resources of 'all kinds. Immigrants could find, in this unde-
veloped and almost empty country, opportunities for self-
advancement that have never been equaled in the whole of

8 The American People

human history. The individual had to display industry, cour-
age, and resourcefulness; but if he possessed these qualities,
then security, independence, and prosperity were within his
reach. This unexampled abundance of land and resources was
the cardinal factor in the development of American civiliza-
tion. It molded the character of the American people, and
was the chief reason for the unique qualities of their way of
life. It facilitated the growth of individual freedom and
social equality, and it promoted attitudes of optimism and
self-assurance.

The society that developed under these conditions differed
from that of Europe not only in its political and economic
characteristics but also in its animating beliefs and view of
life. The American acquired new attitudes and learned to see
the world in a new way. And the nationality he created be-
came a vast experiment in new social principles and new
modes of living.

The European mind had been dominated by a hierarchical
sense of order. This sense was embodied most completely in
the philosophical and political theory of the Middle Ages 5
but even after the breakdown of feudalism and the repudia-
tion of the scholastic philosophy, it continued, in one form or
another, to permeate the consciousness of most Europeans.
Human society was regarded as the reflection of an ideal
order derived from the will of God and fully embodied in
the cosmos. And 'the life of the individual acquired meaning
and value insofar as he conformed with the order of the
society to which he belonged. Yet the Europeans believed
also that the attempt to realize this ideal order in concrete
forms must always be incomplete. Evil was an inherent ele-
ment ip. human experience, and both in nature and in the
human spirit there were anarchical and rebellious forces that
conflicted with the ideal order and that could never be wholly
controlled. This belief in the reality of evil led to the Euro-
pean doctrine of original sin and was the basis of the Euro-
pean sense of tragedy.

The first immigrants to America brought with them this
sense of order, but in the American world it gradually grew
weaker j it did not remain a permanent part of the American

The New Man 9

consciousness. Coming to a country where there was no
elaborate social organization, and where the individual must
constantly do battle with the forces of nature, the American
came to see life not as an attempt to realize an ideal order,
but as a struggle between the human will and the environ-
ment. And he believed that if men were victorious in this
struggle, they could hope that evil might gradually be con-
quered and eliminated. What appeared as evil was not a
fundamental and permanent element in the nature of things,
but should be regarded merely as a problem to which the
correct solution would one day be discovered. The American
was therefore a voluntarist and an optimist. He did not be-
lieve in the devil, nor did he accept the dogma of original sin.
The most obvious result of this American attitude was the
fostering of an extraordinary energy and confidence of will.
The American came to believe that nothing was beyond his
power to accomplish, provided that he could muster the
necessary moral and material resources, and that any obstacle
could be mastered by means of the appropriate methods and
technology. A failure was the result either of weakness or of
an incorrect technique. By contrast with the European, the
American was more extroverted, quicker and more spontane-
ous in action, more self-confident, and psychologically sim-
pler. His character was molded not by the complex moral and
social obligations of an ordered hierarchical system, but by
the struggle to achieve victory over nature.
.^-Rejecting both the belief in a fixed social order and the
belief in the depravity of human beings, the American cre-
ated a society whose special characteristic was the freedom
enjoyed by its individual members. Respect for the freedom
of every individual and confidence that he would use his free-
dom wisely and constructively became the formative princi-
ples of the new American nationality. By crossing the Atlantic,
the American had asserted a demand to be himself 5 he had
repudiated the disciplines of the class hierarchy, of long-
established tradition, and of authoritarian religion. And in
the society that took shape in the New World it was by his
natural and inherent quality that the individual was measured,
rather than by rank or status or conformity to convention. To

io The American People

a much greater degree than elsewhere, society in America
was based on the natural man rather than on man as molded
by social rituals and restraints. The mores of America were
less rigid and less formalized than those of any earlier com-
munity, and the individual was less inhibited. The American
did not believe that men needed to be coerced, intimidated,
or indoctrinated into good behavior.

By European standards this American attitude often seemed
unrealistic, Utopian, and naive. The American appeared to
be deficient in the recognition of evil and in the sense of
tragedy. Yet as long as he was engaged primarily in the con-
quest of the wilderness, he had good reasons for his optimism.
His naivete was, in fact, an expression of a genuine innocence.
He was simpler than the European because his life was freer,
more spontaneous, and less frustrated. In Europe, with its
economic privation, its hierarchy of classes, and its traditional
disciplines and rituals, emotional drives were more inhibited 5
and it is when aggressive energies are thrown back upon them-
selves and can find no satisfying outlet in action that they
become evil. The European was psychologically much more
complex than the American, and therefore capable of deeper
and more subtle insights and of profounder spiritual and
aesthetic achievements^ but he was also more corrupt, with a
greater propensity toward the negative emotions of fear and
avarice and hatred. He believed in the depravity of human
nature because he knew it in his own experience.

In social organization and in practical activity the American
confidence in human nature was abundantly .justified by- its
results. The tone of American society was more generous and
hospitable, more warmhearted and more genuinely kindly,
than that of other peoples. And by encouraging individuals to
develop latent talents and to prefer versatility and adaptabil-
ity to professional specialization, it promoted an astonishing
activity and ingenuity. The genius of American life lay in its
unprecedented capacity to release for constructive purposes
the energies and abilities of common men and women. In
consequence, the material achievements of the Americans were
stupendous. And though they hated the authoritarian dis-
cipline of warfare, they displayed when they went to war an

The New Man 1 1

inventiveness and a resourcefulness that no other people
could equal.

Yet though the civilization of the Americans had remark-
able virtues, it also had grave deficiencies* The conditions that
produced their material achievements did not result in any
corresponding intellectual efflorescence. Their bent was to-
ward the conquest of nature rather than toward metaphysical
speculation or aesthetic creation. And though their suspicion
of professional pretensions and their trust in the abilities of
the common man had astonishing results in politics, tech-
nology, and warfare, the effect upon intellectual life was less
desirable 5 for the common man has usually valued material
progress above the difficult and apparently useless disciplines
of abstract thought. In consequence, the more formal intel-
lectual activities of the Americans often appeared to be timid,
conventional, and derivative. They frequently used ideas that
had been borrowed from Europe, and that had little relevance
or vital connection with their own society. Their practice was .
usually bolder and more original than their theory. Outside
the fields of practical activity, America developed no living
system of general ideas and no continuing intellectual tradi-
tion, so that each generation of writers and thinkers had a
tendency to start afresh, with little guidance or encourage-
ment from the past.

Whether the American civilization was capable not only
of rapid material growth but also of stability was, moreover,
open to question. For the conditions under which it had ac-
quired its unique qualities were transitory and not permanent.
The land and the natural resources of the New World were
not inexhaustible. Before the end of the nineteenth century
every part of the United States had been settled 5 and most
of its resources had become the private property of individ-
uals. There was no longer an open frontier inviting the rest-
less, the dissatisfied, and the ambitious. And though an ex-
panding capitalism continued to offer. opportunities for the
exercise of initiative, it was only the exceptionally enterprising
and the exceptionally lucky, not the average American citizen,
who could take advantage of them. Under such circumstances,
certain contradictions that had always been inherent in the

1 2 The American People

American view of life became more manifest and more dan-
gerous. For while the Americans had believed in a universal
freedom and equality, they had also encouraged and ap-
plauded the competitive drive of individuals toward wealth
and power. And in a complex industrial society this drive was
directed less against nature and more against other human
beings. Those individuals who succeeded in acquiring eco-
nomic privileges did so by restricting the freedom of others 3
and the competitive struggle for power and prestige. threat-
ened to destroy the human warmth and openheartedness that
Jjad hitherto teen the special virtues of American society.

.How far and by what methods could the qualities of the
American way of life be preserved after the conditions under
which they first developed had disappeared? These questions
began to confront the American people in the twentieth cen-
tury. As long as they had been engaged in conquering and
settling an empty continent, material conditions had in them-
selves promoted freedom, equality, and a spirit of co-opera-
tion. But after this process had been completed, the Ameri-
cans could remain a democratic people only by conscious
choice and deliberate effort. If they wished to remain Ameri-
can, they must now acquire a more critical understanding of
their way of life, of the historical experience by which it had
been shaped, and of the contradictions within it which must
be eliminated or transcended. They had to establish a cultural
and intellectual tradition matching their material achieve-
ments and growing but of the American experience instead of
being borrowed from Europe. Otherwise the American ex-
perimeiit in democracy could have no happy outcome.
- And upon the results of this American experiment de-
pended, in large measure, the future not only of the Ameri-
cans themselves but. of the whole human race. For the move-
ment toward individual liberation and towards the mastery
of nature, which was represented in its purest and completest
form in the United States, was of world-wide extent, so that
the whole world seemed to be gradually becoming Ameri-
canized. During the entire period from the voyage of Colum-
bus to the present day, while some persons sought a greater
freedom by crossing the Atlantic, others fought for it at

The New Man 13

home 5 the same forces of social protest that caused the At-
lantic migration brought about profound changes in the so-
ciety, first of Europe, and afterwards of the Orient 5 and the
rise, first of the bourgeoisie, and afterwards of the proletariat,
caused a slow disintegration of traditional concepts of social
hierarchy. During the nineteenth century the rapid expan-
sion of capitalism in Europe and Asia created opportunities
comparable to those existing in America, while the achieve-
ments of American democracy exerted a magnetic influence
and attraction upon the peoples of other countries. Thus the
civilizations of the Old World were moving in the same di-
rection as the new civilization of America. There was no com-
plete transformation of European society, and still less of
the society of the Orient. Europe never forgpt the feudal em-
phasis on rank, status, and authority or the belief in individual
subordination to the order of the whole^ nor did the Euro-
pean acquire the simplicity and the optimism characteristic of
the American. In Europe the struggle between the princi-
ples of freedom and those of authority was unending and
reached no decisive conclusion. Yet the problem that coi>
fronted the Americans the problem of reconciling the free-
dom of individuals with the welfare and stability of society
had universal implications. Would the achievements of Amer-
ican civilization continue to attract the peoples of other coun-
tries? Or would the Americans themselves end by abandoning
American principles and reverting to European traditions of
authority and social hierarchy?

For these reasons the history of America, considered as a
state of mind and not merely as a place, presented a series of
problems of immense spiritual and practical importance.

H J CnAptER II

The Founding of the
Colonies

IN a symbolic sense Columbus can appropriately be re-
garded as the first American. Here was a man of obscure
birth, without influential family connections or financial
resources, who had the audacity to plan an enterprise
without precedent in recorded history. He was a skillful sea-
man, and his project was supported by the best geographical
learning of his timej yet it was not primarily by his ability or
his knowledge of navigation that he earned his immortality,
but by the quality of his will. To discover America required
the courage to sail westward across the ocean for as long as
might be necessary, not knowing where one was going or
whether one would ever return. Other men had believed that
there might be land on the other side of the Atlantic 5 but
nobody else" had dared to put this hypothesis to a conclusive
test. This kind of enterprise and audacity, and this energy
and confidence of the will, were to be the primary character-
istics of the settlers and builders of America as well as of its
first discoverer*

A similarly American quality was displayed by the Spanish
conquistadors. After Columbus had discovered the West In-
dies, enterprising young men from the lesser nobility and
from the lower classes in Spain began to dross the Atlantic in
search of gold and glory in the New World. Small groups of
free-knee adventurers, with little official assistance, explored
and conquened first the islands and the Isthmus of Panama,
then the mainland of Mexico, and afterwards all of the
southern continent except Brazil and the plains of the far
south. Within two generations after the first voyage of
Columbus, the conquistadors had established Spanish author-

The Founding of the Colonies 1 5

ity over an immense territory extending northwards to Cali-
fornia and Florida and south as far as Chile and La Plata.

But in Hispanic America this outburst of individual energy
and self-confidence lasted only during the period of discovery
and conquest. After a territory had been taken by the con-
quistadors, it was quickJy transferred to royal authority, and
royal officials from the Spanish peninsula were sent to govern
it. The peoples of Mexico and South America became ac-
customed to despotic rule, to an authoritarian church, and to
an aristocratic social structure. It was not until 1810 that they
began to throw off the yoke of Europe, or that there was any
revival of the exuberant enterprise and audacity that had
been dispkyed by the conquistadors.

The early English colonization in America was much less
dramatic, and did not promise any such easy road to fame and
fortune. It did not begin until long after the Spaniards had
conquered and settled their part of America j Mexico and
Peru contained flourishing cities, with all the institutions of
a developed civilization, at a time when the territories north
of Florida were still covered with immense forests and in-
habited only by a few tribes of Indians. This region had been
ignored by Spain because it did not offer any easy acquisition
of wealth, and it was occupied by the English only because
more attractive areas of America were closed to them. The
handful of struggling colonies, beginning with Virginia in
1607, Plymouth in 1620, and Massachusetts in 1630, which
.were planted by the English along the Atlantic coastline in
the course of the seventeenth century, seemed for a long time
to be humble and unpretentious enterprises when contrasted
with the achievements of Spanish imperialism. But since the
English colonies were not governed despotically, and were
allowed freedom to develop their own way of life, they had
much greater potentialities for growth.

With few exceptions, the English colonies were originally
founded by men of the aristocratic and ikpper bourgeois classes
who acquired ownership of American fands from the King of
England and then set about peopling them and developing
them. In most instances, however, they derived few profits

1 6 The American People

from their colonizing enterprises and did not retain per-
manent control. Most of the colonies eventually passed under
the direct authority of the crown. Some colonies (such as
Maryland and the Carolinas) were planned as feudal princi-
palities, the proprietors of which would receive rents and en-
joy the prestige associated with landownership. Others (such
as Virginia) were established by companies of merchants who
were willing to invest money in colonization in the hope of
earning commercial profits. In the New England colonies,
pecuniary motives were of secondary importance, and the
main purpose of the founders' was to establish a society in
which Puritan religious ideals could be put into practice.
A similar religious idealism led, later in the century, to
the colonization of Pennsylvania under the leadership of
the Quaker William Penn. But most of the founders of the
colonies did not settle permanently in America themselves.
The men and women who actually crossed the Atlantic be-
longed predominantly to the poorer classes, both rural and
urban. Although the early migrations brought a few Eng-
lish gentlemen to America, the vast majority of the settlers
were small farmers, city craftsmen and traders, and servants.
Accepting the inducements offered them by the founders of
the ccilonies, they came to the New World in quest of oppor-
tunities for advancement that they could not find at home.

The early history of America was largely the story of how
these English colonists were gradually transformed into
Americans. This process began when they made the Atlantic
crossing and started to make new lives for themselves in the
New World. In order to understand it, it is necessary to know
what English institutions and ways of thinking they brought
with them across the Atlantic. The first Americans were also
Englishmen, and when they reached America their initial
tendency was to reproduce, in its essential features, the Eng-
lish social organization to which they were accustomed. In
the American environment some elements of this English in-
heritance afterwards disappeared or underwent a slow modi-
fication, while others persisted and were ultimately incor-
porated into the new civilization of the United States.

The English society of the seventeenth century, like that

The founding of the Colonies 1 7

of all European countries, was pervaded by the consciousness
of class distinctions. In fact, the sense of class, which judges
the individual by his role and status in the social organism
rather than by his intrinsic quality as a human being, was
perhaps more deeply ingrained among the English than
among other European peoples. There was more social mo-
bility in England than elsewhere, so that it was possible for
the peasant to become a bourgeois and for the bourgeois to
climb into the ranks of the aristocracy, but the class lines them-
selves were always clearly defined. This class sense was the
cultural reflection of wide economic inequalities. The English
ruling class consisted of the great landowning families, many
of whom were originally of bourgeois descent, but who had
adopted the aristocratic attitudes of their feudal predecessors.
With their palatial country houses and broad estates, they
dominated the small farmers who composed the bulk of the
rural population; and since landlordship meant both prestige
and. leisure, they were the political leaders of the whole coun-
try. Meanwhile, similar class divisions were developing in
the cities among the growing bourgeoisie. There were wide
economic and social differences between the wealthy mer-
chants and financiers, who aspired to aristocratic status and
who could often obtain special privileges from the crown,
and the small shopkeepers and artisans.

This English class structure was transmitted to the Ameri-
can colonies. Although most of the early settlers wished to
escape from a society in which they had little social and eco-
nomic opportunity, they had no conscious desire to create an
egalitarian society in the New World. They still took it for
granted that leadership belonged to a ruling class of the rich
and wellborn. The English gentlemen who came to America
brought with them their rights to political leadership and
social privilege, thus laying the foundations of an embryo
American aristocracy. When colonial families acquired wealth,
they assumed that they should also enjoy social prestige and
political power$ and poorer and more humble citizens were
usually willing to allow decisions to be made by those who
were qualified for responsibility by birth, wealth, and edu-
cation.

1 8 The American People

Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas remained almost
wholly agricultural^ adopting tobacco and rice as their chief
commercial crops 5 and their social organization soon became
a reflection of that of rural England. Some of the early set-
tiers, though mostly of middle-class and yeoman-farmer de-
scent, acquired ownership of large plantations and began to
develop the attitudes of a landed aristocracy. Through the
seventeenth century the laborers on the plantations consisted
chiefly of indentured servants shipped out from England.
Under the terms of their contracts the servants were set free
after from four to seven years, and could then become inde-
pendent landholders, beginning as small farmers and occa-
sionally ending their lives as wealthy planters. The planters
claimed the powers of a ruling class in the Southern colonies
in the same way that the big landowners governed rural
England} they usually worked in co-operation with the Brit-
ish governors and with the state-supported Anglican Church.

In the New England colonies, on the other hand, land was
distributed in small lots^ and no landowning aristocracy
emerged. Most of the settlers became small farmers, but the
soil was stony and Hot very fertile, so the more enterprising
quickly turned to the sea for livelihood by the development
first of fishing and afterwards of foreign commerce. Trade
and shipping became the chief avenues to wealth and pres-
tige, and Boston and other seaport towns grew into important
mercantile centers. A dass of wealthy merchants soon rose to
leadership, modeling themselves on the merchants of the
English cities. The bourgeois character of the New England
colonies was confirmed by their Puritan theology and system
of church government.

< In the long run, however, the English class structure could
not be maintained in the New World. Aristocratic principles
were incompatible with the conditions of American lifej and
as the colonies expanded and European attitudes began to
recede into the background, the masses of the people, who
had acquired independence and self-assurance by struggling
with the wilderness, became increasingly unwilling to accept
tlie domination of a new American ruling class. Conflict be-
tween the principles of ari$tocracy and those of democracy

The Founding of th& Colonies 1 9

was perhaps the main theme in the early political history of
the United States. Eventually the English class feeling van-
ished from the political consciousness or America. The United
States became a country without a ruling aristocracy $ wealth
no longer entitled its owners, with the assent of the masses, to
political leadership and social domination. It was in this re-
spect that the civilization of the United States diverged most
sharply from that of England.

Other elements in the English inheritance, however, proved
to be suited to American conditions. The first colonists brought
with them not only hierarchical social attitudes, but also well-
established political habits and ways of thinking that became,
with few important modifications, a permanent part of Ameri-
can civilization*

Although the English were not a democratic people, they
prided themselves on being a free people, and had acquired
a deep-rooted hostility toward any form of arbitrary power.
Long before the colonization of America they had become
accustomed to the election of a legislative body that limited
the powers of the monarchy, and they believed that every in-
dividual had certain rights and immunities which should be
maintained by written laws and by an independent judiciary.
The typical Englishman was an individualist jealous of any
restriction upon his right to do and say as he pleased; and
while he accepted his status in the social organism and the
duties and obligations that belonged to it, he believed also
that certain areas of life were his own private concern and
should be protected against political and social interference.

Yet the individualism of the English was not incompatible
with political co-operation. Certain other characteristics of
English culture made it possible for them to reconcile free-
dom with order and gradually to develop a system of govern^
ment in which executive authority Was responsible to the will
of the people. The English displayed little of that propensity
toward intolerance and fanaticism which makes political dif
ferences irreconcilable $ they were usually willing to recog-
nize that all points of view might contain some aspects of tfte
truth and to believe that conflicts should be settled by mutual
concessions and adjustments rather than by violence or coer-

2O The American People

cion* The Englishman did not believe too firmly that his own
ideas were right and that the ideas of his opponents were
wrong. This spirit of tolerance and compromise was con-
nected with the empirical tendencies of English philosophy
and English ways of thinking. The English distrusted long-
range plans and elaborate intellectual systems; they were in
the habit of judging ideas and institutions in pragmatic terms
and of being guided by practical expediency rather than by
logical coherence and consistency. They were inclined to re-
gard reality itself as disorderly, many-sided, illogical, and un-
predictable, and for this reason they did not take any system
of ideas too seriously. It was this mental attitude that made
it possible for the English and their American descendants to
work out a system of government in which the majority had
the right to rule, while the minority had the right to criticize.
For it is only when conflicts are concerned with questions of
immediate practical expediency that men are willing to ac-
cept compromises, and, if defeated in an election, to obey the
dedsions of their victorious opponents. Conflicts between op-
posing intellectual systems are always irreconcilable, and can
be settled only by civil war. 1

These English political and intellectual habits were brought
to the American colonies. Although the first colonists were
willing to accept aristocratic leadership, they also believed
that government should not be arbitrary. Attempts by some
of the founders of the colonies to retain absolute power in
their own hands quickly provoked complaints of tyranny.
Both the founders and the British government were com-

1 The Latin peoples (presumably because of the influence of the Catho-
lic Church, with its elaborate structure of dogmas) have been particu-
larly prone to see political conflicts in terms not of concrete practical
differences but of irreconcilable intellectual systems. Since 1789 there
have been two Frances: the royalist and authoritarian France of the old
regime, and the democratic and secular France of the Revolution. The
same kind of division, in an even more intensified form, has existed in
Spain and throughout most of Spanish America. This has been one of
the main impediments to the development of peaceful constitutional gov-
ernment in the Latin countries. In recent years the maintenance of con-
stitutional government in other countries also has been threatened by the
growth of a new intellectual system incapable of compromise: revolu-
tionary Marxism.

The Founding of the Colonies 2 1

pelled to agree that, in crossing the Atlantic, the colonists had
not forfeited any of the rights and immunities they had en-
joyed in England. The commercial company that settled Vir-
ginia found it advisable to establish a legislature as early afc
1619. The group of merchants, ministers, and country gentle-
men who founded Massachusetts tried at first to set up an
authoritarian government that would interpret and enforce
the will of God and the principles of their Puritan religion^
but after 1634 they were compelled to share their power with
an elected assembly, though the restriction of voting to church
members maintained the Puritan character of the colony.
That every colony had a right to a legislature that would
check the authority of the governor and the council was soon
generally admitted, though, as in England, the franchise was
everywhere limited by property and religious qualifications.
And in every colony the rights of individuals were guaranteed
by written codes of laws, by an independent judiciary, and
by such institutions as trial by jury. Throughout the colonial
period the British government continued to regard the col-
onies as subordinate to the mother country and to supervise
their economic development in order that American trade
might provide profits for British merchants} but it made few
attempts to restrict their political liberties.

Transplanted into the American world, the political and -
legal institutions that had been brought from England gradu-
ally diverged from those of the mother countryj but the
Americans retained, with some modifications, the essential po-
litical habits and attitudes of their English ancestors. They
became a more gregarious people than die English, but they
were equally insistent on their right to individual freedom
and independence, and they were even more inclined towards
pragmatic and empirical ways of thinking. Retaining the Eng-
lish capacity for tolerance and for compromise, they were
able to work out a system of representative government that
differed in detail from that of England but was based pn the
same 'fundamental principles. Unlike "the Hispanic Ameri-
cans, \*rho were compelled when they became independent of
Spain to adopt alien institutions to which they could not
quickly become habituated, the people of the United States

2 2 The American People

were able to build their own form of government on Euro-
pean foundations and to work out their own political practices
by a slow and mainly peaceful evolution,

In spite of the strength and persistence of this English in-
heritance, the men and women who crossed the Atlantic
quickly became differentiated from those who had remained
at home. From the very foundation of the colonies they be-
gan to acquire new characteristics that were distinctively
American. In order to appreciate this transformation, we
must visualize the colonizing process in concrete terms. What
sort of people made the Atlantic crossing, what experiences
did they undergo, and how were they affected by them? His-
tory is abput human beings, not merely about general trends;
and if we concentrate on economic pressures and political
ideologies, and forget the living individuals who responded
to them, its ultimate meaning may elude us. It is easy to
elaborate economic interpretations of the beginning of the
United States: to ascribe it to scarcity of land and overpopu-
lation in England and to the emergence of a capitalist econ-
omy in which merchants owned fluid capital and wanted
profitable investments. But such factors are not the only de-
terminants of historical processe$. The course of events is af-
fected also by the character of individuals, by their anxieties
and aspirations, and by their capacity for courage, intelligence,
and self-sacrifice.

Most of the early colonists were very ordinary men and
women in no way outstanding in ability or moral quality and
with no special training or aptitude for discovery and col-
onization. Probably most of them had never previously trav-
eled more than g, few miles from their homes. The America
to which they came consisted mostly of an immense forest,
stretching inland from the seacoast for hundreds of miles,
inhabited only by savage Indians and filled with unknown
dangers of all kinds. After being confined for two months or
more in the tiny vessels that carried them across the Atlantic,
they found themselves alone in this wilderness where they

The Founding of the Colonies 2 3

must build themselves houses and set about clearing farm-
land and raising crops. Most of the early colonies, being
poorly planned and inadequately financed, endured "starving
times" during the first winters; the settlers were decimated
by famine and disease, and only the strongest and most
tenacious survived- Some groups of settlers perished miser-
ably or fled back to the security of Europe. The colonies that
survived did so because a sufficient number of their members
had the elemental qualities of courage, resourcefulness, and
co-operativeness. The United States was founded on the
moral fiber of these very ordinary people.

If the plantings of the first colonies were isolated episodes,
there would be no need to insist on these facts. But the whole
of the United States was settled in a similar manner- The
experiences of the first Virginians and the first New Eng-
landers were repeated again and again, with minor variations,
in the expansion of the United States across the continent to
the Pacific Coast j and down to the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury this western expansion was the primary element in the
development of the American people. The character of the
Americans was molded more by the conquest of the continent
than by any other factor in their history. The story of this
expansion is essentially an epicj but unlike other epics, written
or enacted, it had as its protagonists not heroes or demigods
but plain average citizens.

Obviously the colonizing process brought ^bout certain psy-
chological changes in those who participated in it 5 and some
of these changes were important. Picture a group of Englishr
men from a petty bourgeois or yeoman-farmer background,
accustomed to a settled and traditional way of life, who, usu-
ally without any real foreknowledge of what confronted
them, found themselves suddenly ejected upon the desolate
shores of the New World. In America they were thrown
wholly upon their own resources 5 in order to survive they
had to find within themselves a moral strength thtf they hgd
previously had little occasion to develop. Under such cir-
cumstances physical strength; tenacity, adaptability, and re-
sourcefulness assumed a new importance, whereas talents and
capacities of no immediate practical utility, however valuable

24 The American People

in an advanced civilization., became positive encumbrances.
Human nature in America became elemental and lost its
sophistication. This emphasis on the physical and the practical
did not mean any loosening of moral ties. On the contrary, it
was only by willing co-operation that any colony could hope
to survive 5 the wilderness enforced neighborliness and mu-
tual aid, and men had to rely on each other as well as on*
themselves. But in proportion as they succeeded in overcom-
ing their environment they discovered their own powers and
learned a new self-confidence and spirit of independence. The
class distinctions they had brought from Europe began to
weaken: leadership had to justify itself by superior capacity
and moral quality j men could not claim, superiority by virtue
of rank and birth alone. Nor were colonists who had discov-
ered by their own efforts the secret of survival likely to ac-
cept meekly the domination of entrepreneurs and officials on
the oth'er side of the Atlantic. Proud of their own achieve-
ments, they felt little sense of obligation to men who, having
taken no part in the actual labors and dangers of colonization,
were expecting to share in the profits.

Strength of will, self-reliance, adaptability, neighborliness,
respect for talents with practical value, disregard for artificial
distinctions, the drive towards independence these traits,
which were stimulated first at Jamestown and Plymouth and
Boston, were reinforced again and again as the tide of migra-
tion moved westwards. The qualities that made it possible for
men to survive in the wilderness, and that eventually enabled
them to win prosperity, became, in fact, the most important
aspects of the new American personality. In America it was
chiefly by these that the value of a man was measured. And
though the new man did not fully assert himself until the
nineteenth century, he began his existence when the first boat-
load of immigrants landed on the shores of Virginia.

As a concrete example, let us consider the story of the
Pilgrim Fathers who founded Plymouth. In itself the Plym-
outh colony was of small importance, but as a specimen of
the American spirit it deserves some detailed consideration.
In spite of its insignificance, twentieth-century Americans like

The Pounding of the Colonies 2 5

to remember Plymouth with special affection} more than any
other of the early colonies it has become a part of the na-
tional mythology* This preference has a reason that should
not be overlooked. Plymouth was the most American of the
early colonies because it was founded, not by an English
proprietor or commercial company, but by a very humble
group of actual colonists. It was the creation of plain citizens
who lacked both experience and resources, but who had the
audacity to believe that they could survive in America on
their own. Inevitably they made almost every possible mis-
take and suffered almost every possible misfortune; yet the
enterprise succeeded.

The story began at Leyden in Holland, where a group of
English people of the lower middle class, who belonged to
an obscure and despised religious sect, had taken refuge from
intolerance. Since they found it difficult to support them-
selves at Leyden, it occurred to some of them that they might
make a better livelihood by migrating to Virginia. This sug-
gestion provoked long debates. It was pointed out that they
had no financial resources, that the voyage across the ocean
was long and perilous, that if they ever reached the New
World they would probably die of famine and disease, and
that if they survived these dangers they might be captured by
savage Indians who delighted not only in killing their vic-
tims but also in torturing them. All these statements were
undeniably true. Nevertheless, thirty-five persons decided to
make the attempt*

Having obtained permission to settle in Virginia, they
started negotiations with a group of London merchants who
wished to invest money in a colonizing enterprise. Two mem-
bers of the group went to London, accepted the terms put
forward by the merchants, and began buying supplies in a
very reckless and indiscriminate fashion and making prepara-
tions for the voyage. The remainder of the party used part of
their scanty resources to buy a ship, the Speedwell, and then
crossed from Holland to the English seaport of Southampton.
Here the Mayflower, which had been chartered for the
Atlantic crossing, was awaiting them; and they were joined

26 The American People

by a number of other colonists servants, craftsmen, and
others who had been gathered by the merchants and who
did not belong to the same religious persuasion.

It was at Southampton that their troubles began. The
merchants had insisted that for seven years the colonists
should work as a community, devoting all their time, beyond
what was needed for keeping themselves alive, to the produc-
tion of commercial commodities for shipment to England.
Since the merchants were making a heavy investment in the
hope of profits, this was no doubt a justifiable demand 5 but
the Pilgrims had counted on being free for part of their time
to work on their own houses and farms, and when they heard
the terms of the contract, they were so disgusted that they
refused to sign it. Unfortunately, their money was all spent 5
and since they could get no further advance from the mer-
chants, they had, in order to meet immediate expenses, to sell
sixty pounds' worth of the precious supplies that had been
bought for the voyage. Thus they found themselves about to
embark for America without a number of the articles con-
sidered essential for colonization, "scarce having any butter,
or oil, not a sole to mend a shoe, not every man a sword to his
side, wanting many muskets, much armor, etc." (according to
their own historian, William Bradford). Under the circum-
stances they could only "trust to the good providence of
God." 2

For the next few months the story of the Pilgrims, as
might have been predicted, was chiefly a catalogue of dis-
asters. They set sail from Southampton on August 5, 1620, in
their two vessels, the Speedwell, which they had bought for
permanent use in America, and the Mayflower, which had
been chartered for this voyage only. Presumably they were
still proposing to go to Virginia, and were expecting to arrive
there before the end of the summer. After a few days at sea,
the Speedwell developed a leak, so they turned back to Dart-
mouth to have her repaired. They sailed a second time, and
had gone more than three hundred miles into the Atlantic
when the Speedwell again began leaking, and again both

2 William Bradford: History of Plymouth Plantation (printed 1923),
p. 82.

The Founding of the Colonies 27

vessels had to return to England. It was decided finally that
the Speedwell must be abandoned, and that the Mayflower,
with those members of the party who were still willing to
proceed, should make the crossing alone. The Mayflower
left England for the third and last time on September 6.
Measuring not more than one hundred feet in length and
about twenty at her greatest width, she was carrying exactly
one hundred passengers, of whom twenty-eight were children*
Two more children were born during the voyage.

The Atlantic crossing took nine weeks. The voyage was
stormy, and at one period, with the vessel leaking and one of
the masts bending dangerously under the wind, there were
consultations about the advisability of returning to England.
But the Pilgrims decided to proceed, and on November to
they reached land, not Virginia, as had originally been
planned, but the desolate shores of Cape Cod. For half a day
they turned southwards, hoping to reach the Hudson River j
but after encountering heavy breakers and adverse winds,
they returned to Cape Cod and anchored there. According to
Bradford, the crew of the Mayflower was impatient to return
home and threatened to deposit them and their goods on
shore and abandon them 5 so the colonists had to find a loca-
tion for their permanent settlement in the immediate neigh-
borhood as quickly as possible.

The situation in which the Pilgrims now found themselves
was gloomy and desperate in the extreme. They had reached
their promised land, but as a result of all the delays they
had arrived at the worst possible time of year. And instead of
landing in Virginia, where they might have turned to other
colonists for assistance, they were in a bleak, desolate-, and
almost unknown country where they must be dependent en-
tirely upon their own scanty supplies for protection against
the winter and the Indians. Whether they would receive any
help from England was doubtful; their friends at Leyden
had no resources 5 and after their refusal to sign the contract,
they could not count on further assistance from the merchants.

Under such circumstances the chief need was to maintain
the unity of the party and prevent demoralization. It must be
remembered that only a minority had belonged to the Leyden

2 8 The American People

congregation, the remainder having been strangers to them
prior to their meeting on shipboard* Now that they had
arrived at a place where there was no settled authority, some
of the strangers servants and others began to say that
< when they came ashore, they would use their own liberty, .
for none had power to command them." In order to put a
stop to the "discontents and murmurings amongst some, and
mutinous speeches and carriages in others/ 3 it was necessary
to improvise a government, and such a government could
only be based on the principle of majority rule. It was to meet
this crisis that the famous Mayflower Compact was drawn up.
The Leyden group induced most of the party to sign an
agreement by which they combined into a "civil body politic"
with power to make laws and elect officials whom everybody
must obey. 8

They 'chose Plymouth as the best site for a permanent
settlement, and landed there on December 16, just as the
most severe period of the winter was beginning. The horrors
of the next three months were almost beyond human endur-
ance. They were already weakened by scurvy, lack of food,
and the long confinement on shipboard, and now they had to
take shelter from the cold in a few hastily constructed huts.
Almost the whole party fell ill. No less than fifty of them
died, and only six or seven remained uninf ected. This was the
period of crisis, during which the 'conventions of civilized
society could no longer protect them and the essential quality
of every individual was fully revealed. Alone in an unknown
wilderness, during a winter longer and colder than any of
them had known before, with savages lurking in the woods
outside, and famine and pestilence among themselves, they
could rely only upon their own courage and their willingness
to help each other.

They earned their place in history by the manner in which
they came through this ordeal. The party did not disintegrate
or give up hope. Through the winter those who were well
continued to help the sick, doing "all the homely and neces-
sary offices for them Ivhich dainty and queasy stomachs can-

8 IbicL, pp. 106-7.

. The Founding of the Colonies ; 2 9

not endure to hear named, and all this willingly and cheer-
fully, without any grudging in the least,"* When spring
came, the epidemic ended; and the survivors, weak as they
were, could feel that the worst was over*

Their first piece of good fortune was to find a friendly
Indian willing to show them how to plant corn (kernels of
which they had found in an abandoned Indian settlement)
and catch fish. Without his assistance they would probably
have died of starvation. These artisans and craftsmen were
accustomed to urban life and had little knowledge of farming
or of hunting and fishing; and the seeds they had brought
from England, and which they planted when they were able,
"came not to good, either by the badness of the seed, or late-
ness of the season, or both, or some other def ect." 6 But with
help from the Indians, they were able to support themselves
through the summer of 1621 chiefly on fish, and in the au-
tumn they could catch deer and turkeys.

Their troubles were by no means ended. It was several
years before they were able to raise harvests large enough so
that they were no longer hungry. They had to support several
parties of new colonists, some of them friends and relatives
of the original group, who "when they saw their low and poor
condition ashore, were much daunted and dismayed," 6 and
others sent by the London merchants. Thirty-five came in the
autumn of 1621, sixty-seven in the following year, and an-
other large party in 1623. These had to be fed, and each time
a fresh contingent arrived the whole colony had to go on half
rations until the next harvest. In the summer of 1622 several
members of the colony were publicly whipped because, driven
by hunger, they had taken and eaten corn before it was ripe.

Their relations with the London merchants, moreover,
continued to be difficult The ship that brought the new
colonists in 1621 brought also an angry letter, complaining
because the May-fUmer had been sent back to England empty,
and suggesting that the Pilgrims must have spent their time

4 Ibid*, p. 108.

5 Ibid, p. 1 16.
5 Ibid, p. 156*

jo The American People

"discoursing, arguing and consulting" instead of gathering
a cargo. 7 Required to change their minds and sign the con-
tract they had rejected the previous year, if they wished
for any further help from England, the Pilgrims decided to
give way. Yet in spite of this surrender they received only
more complaints and more new mouths to feed, and no effec-
tive help. The merchants seemed to be incapable of appreciat-
ing the difficulties of life in the American wilderness. Finally
the Pilgrims decided to take matters into their own hands.
One of the Leyden party was sent back to England to negoti-
ate a new contract under which they were to be their own
masters \ nearly three quarters of the original investment of
the merchants was canceled, and the remainder (amounting
to eighteen hundred pounds) was to be paid off at the rate of
two hundred pounds a year. They then borrowed money
from other London financiers (at rates varying from thirty
to seventy per cent) in order to buy the supplies that they
needed. The Pilgrims continued to have financial troubles
for a number of years, as a result either of dishonesty or of
extreme incompetence on the part of the representative whom
they had sent to London j but by trading in beaver skins with
the Indians, they were able eventually to free themselves
from debt. Thenceforth they were legally free from external
control, as they had been in actuality from the time of their
landing. Entirely by their own labors, they had discovered
how to -survive.

This story 'contains, in embryo, much of the early history
of the United States. In the traditional versions, however, its
full significance is not always made clear. Too much emphasis,
for example, has been given to the influence of religion. But
only a minority of the Plymouth colonists had belonged to
the Leyden congregation (though it is true that these sup-
plied most of the leadership); and even the Leyden group
(according to their own historian, William Bradford) came
to America primarily in the hope of making a better liveli-
hood. Essentially the Pilgrims were moved by the same hopes
that had moved all the other men and women who have made
the Atlantic crossing. They differed from the other early

7 Ibid., p. 122.

The Pounding of the Colonies 3 1

colonists chiefly in that they had no wealthy proprietor or
commercial company to guide and assist them. And this inde-
pendence of Europe made Plymouth a better example of the
American spirit. Here was a group of plain citizens who set
out on an extremely rash adventure for which they were very
badly prepared, but who came through to ultimate success.

Their lack of any special distinction is, in fact, the most
significant feature of the Mayflower passengers. It is true that
the Leyden party belonged to a heretical religious congrega-
tion, as a result of which they had suffered from persecution,
and that their moral standards were relatively high. But in
other respects they were in no way unusual, either in ability
or in character. Their preparations for founding a colony were
altogether inadequate, and from start to finish they misman-
aged their financial affairs in a most extraordinary way. In
their dealings with the Indians and with certain rival groups
of colonists who attempted to settle in New England a few
years later, they showed themselves suspicious, self-righteous,
and capable on occasion of acting with real cruelty. As Brad-
ford's narrative shows, they believed that everybody who had
any dealings with them was trying to take advantage of them.
They felt particularly resentful, for example, toward the
London merchants who had financed them. Perhaps one
could hardly expect the men who starved at Plymouth to
appreciate the viewpoint of entrepreneurs who stayed in the
security of their London countinghouses, venturing only their
money and not their lives. Yet in reality the demands of the
merchants, who had invested money in a very risky enter-
prise, and who did actually lose most of their investment,
were by no means unfair or exorbitant.

It is only by recognizing the very human weaknesses of the
men of the Mayflower that one can properly evaluate their
achievement. By displaying the elemental qualities of courage,
industry, and co-operativeness they succeeded in conquering
the wilderness in which they had chosen to settle. And as a
result of the process of colonization they began to become
Americanized. Almost their first action after reaching the
New World was to adopt the essential institutions of democ-
racy, not only because some of them believed in popular gov-

3 2 The American People

ernment but also and chiefly because otherwise they could
not hope to maintain order and unity among themselves.
They had to improvise a government, and under pioneer con-
ditions no other kind of government could win assent. By
adapting themselves to new conditions, moreover, and win-
ning prosperity for themselves, they discovered their own
latent powers and acquired a new self-confidence. Bradford's
history is a significant document for the study of the American
spirit, not only because of the admirable honesty and simplic-
ity with which it is written, but also because it illustrates a
process of psychological growth. The self-assured statesmen,
merchants, and farmers of Plymouth Plantation were very
different from the humble and poverty-stricken artisans and
shopkeepers who had set out from Southampton. The history
of Plymouth exemplified that confidence in the essential ca-
pacity and integrity of the average citizen which became the
basic principle of American civilization.

3

Once the first colonies had been established, the flow of
population across the Atlantic continued with a slowly in-
creasing momentum. More men and women came to America
in the eighteenth century than in the seventeenth j more came
in the nineteenth than in the eighteenth. There are no exact
statistics of colonial immigration, but it is probable that the
total population amounted to about a quarter of a million by
1690, and that by 1775 it approached two million and a half.

Throughout the colonial period many immigrants came of
their own volition, drawn to America by the magnet of cheap
and abundant land $ others were transported as a punishment
for minor crimes or were enticed to make the crossing by sea
captains engaged in the business of shipping servants to the
colonies. But a considerable proportion even of the voluntary
immigrants had to sell themselves into service in order to
obtain passage across the Atlantic. The immigrant ships were
packed with the most precious of the commodities needed in
America human labor in the form of indentured servants
who would work for colonial planters or merchants. For two

The Pounding of the Colonies 3 3

months or more they were imprisoned on shipboard, in danger
of pestilence and starvation; when they reached the promised
land, they had to work out their period of service in a status
little better than chattel slavery. But the survivors finally be-
came free n^en, with the right to acquire land for themselves*
Many prosperous and dignified families were founded fay
men and women who first reached America in this humble
capacity.

Although England was the chief source of the migration,
the racial composition of the colonies was never wholly Eng-
lish. News of the land of opportunity across the Atlantic soon
began to spread to oppressed groups in other parts of Europe.
The Dutch had been the first settlers in parts of New York
and New Jersey. Before the end of the seventeenth century,
French Huguenots had established themselves in several of
the seaboard cities. In the early eighteenth century came a
mass migration of German farmers from the Rhineland, fol-
lowed by an even larger movement of Scotch-Irish . from
Ulster. Representatives of a dozen other races came to the
colonies in smaller numbers. The America of the eighteenth
century was already Scotch, Welsh, Irish, French, Dutch,
German, Swedish, Italian, and Jewish, as well as English j
and the process of intermingling and intermarriage had be-
gun. Before the Revolution, the French writer Crevecoeur,
who spent fifteen years in the colonies, commented on "that
strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no .other
country." "Here," he declared, "individuals of all natidna
are melted into a new race of men. . . * I could point out to
you a family v nose grandfather was an Englishman, whose
wife was Dutch, whose sdn married a French wife, and whose
present four sons have now four wives of different nations." 8
In 1776, Pajneusoidd-^rtt^^ Europe, and

not England alone, was the real "parent country 53 of Amer-

ica. 9

In the American environment, all these different racial
groups multiplied with astonishing rapidity. Under pioneer

8 J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur: 'Letters from an American 'Former^
HI (Everyman's Library edition, p. 43).

9 Writings of Thomas Paine (i894),,VoL I, p. 87.

34 The American People

conditions, where land was abundant and labor was scarce,
children were economic assetsj and once the hardships of the
initial settlement had been overcome, food was plentiful and
there was no danger of famine. Many colonial parents had a
child every two years with almost mathematical regularity.
Families of ten were frequent 5 families of fifteen or twenty
were by no means unusual. Even without new immigration
the population of the colonies appears to have been capable of
doubling itself within thirty years. There have been few
comparable examples in all history of such a capacity for rapid
multiplication.

As the population increased, the areas of white settlement
slowly grew larger. There was little planning or participation
by any political authority. Governments normally intervened
only in order to negotiate or wage war with Indian tribes
and to grant titles of landownership. There were no outstand-
ing leaders, like the conquistadors who carried Spanish civi-
lization into the mountains and jungles of South America or
the great French explorers of the St. Lawrence and the Mis-
sissippi. The expansion of the colonies was a spontaneous
movement of private citizens^ generation after generation,
they were drawn farther into the West by some impulse of
restlessness or adventure, and by the hope of a better liveli-
hood and greater independence. Like all democratic processes,
this appears undramatic when it is viewed only in its main
outlines j it must be visualized in detail, in terms of those
who participated in it, if its meaning is to be appreciated.
But since the average American generally lacked the capacity
for self-expression and the inclination to dramatize and reflect
upon his own activities, we cannot often watch the movement
in operation.

From their initial settlements near the seacoast the Ameri-
cans pushed up the rivers which led into the interior of the
continent, establishing themselves along the banks of the Con-
necticut, the Hudson, the Delaware, the Susquehanna, the
Potomac, the James, and the Savannah. Almost everywhere
they found immense forests, which had to be cleared and
transformed into open farmland 5 almost everywhere they
encountered wandering tribes of Indians, with whom they

The Founding of the Colonies 35

fought an unceasing warfare. But the forests were gradually
explored, as hunters, fur trappers, and prospectors made their
way along thfc Indian trails between one river ami the ntttj
and the areas of cultivated farmland slowly expanded Some-
times an individual family moved a few miles farther into
the wilderness and carved a farm out of the forest Sometimes
a group of families, having agreed with each other to migrate
and decided upon a destination, packed their goods into
wagons and set out together on a march into the west. The
advance guard of the white invasion usually consisted of
rough frontiersmen who were peculiarly restless or shiftless,
and who brought with them few of the habits of civilization;
but within ten years or a generation after they had opened tip
a new territory, they were usually followed by groups of
more respectable and industrious citizens who established the
institutions of a settled society.

The conquest of the wilderness Was always an arduous and
perilous process that required the utmost adaptability and
capacity for endurance} but its promises were proportionately
tempting. To immigrants from Europe, with its overcrowded
Villages, its big private estates, and its limited natural re-
sources that imposed a constant prudence and economy, the
riches of America seemed to be infinite. Here were forests
abounding in all kinds of birds and animals, rivers filled with
fish, strange trees and plants, and in many places a topsoil so
deep that the fanner could scarcely reach the bottom of it
Once a company of pioneers had succeeded in taking posses-
sion of a new area, they had farmlands much broader and
more fertile than any their ancestors had ever knownj they
could produce what they needed in a profusion and a variety
sufficient not merely for subsistence but for luxury j and in all
essential respects they were their own masters. It is not sur-
prising that a lavish generosity and a reckless consumption of
natural resources became characteristic of the American, and
that his farming techniques were more wasteful and less effi-
cient than those of his European ancestors. In a continent
whose wealth seemed so inexhaustible, why should one stint
oneself for the sake of future generations?

In this manner the frontier line, which divided the settled

36 The American People

area from the wilderness, moved slowly westwards until,
by the middle of the eighteenth century, it ran down the
main ranges of the Appalachians^ most of the coastal plain
from New England to the Carolinas having been brought
under white control. In a century and a half, the Americans
effectively colonized an area of about two hundred thousand
square miles, more than twice as large as the whole of Great
Britain,

In New England the first areas of colonization were along
the seacoast and in the valley of the Connecticut River. Most
of southern New England was settled during the first hun-
dred years 5 and the movement then turned northward into
the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont and west-
ward towards the Berkshire Hills and the Hudson River.
This westerly migration was eventually to make large areas
of the Mississippi Valley and the Far West into extensions of
Massachusetts and Connecticut. Relatively few immigrants
came to New England after 16405 and its expansion was
more orderly and less individualistic than that of other sec-
tions. Caravans of New England farmers marched together
into the wilderness to found new townships, often under the
leadership of a minister who gave them religious guidance
and encouragement. Wherever they settled, they brought
with them their characteristic religious institutions, their puri-
tan morality, and their democratic practice of dividing the
land into small farms*

New York was the least American in its institutions of any
of the colonies, since the Dutch had divided the land into big
feudal estates, and this practice was continued by the early
British governors. Most of the land became the property of
a few big families who collected rents from dependent tenant
farmers. Expansion was checked both by the property system
and by the powerful Iroquois Indians in the western part of
the colony. In Pennsylvania, on the other hand, where there
were liberal institutions and no religious discrimination, the
flow of migration was particularly rapid. After English
Quakers under the leadership of William Penn had founded
Philadelphia and settled the southeastern part of the colony,
there came many thousands of Germans, who took possession

The Founding of the Colonies 37

of the fertile lands along the Delaware, SchuylHll, and Le-
high rivers. Continuing to speak their own language and to
preserve their own religious institutions, the German com-
munities remained for generations almost isolated from the
American life around them. After the Germans came the
Scotch-Irish, a most vigorous, aggressive, and disputatious
race of Calvinists. Through the middle decades of the eight-
eenth century a stream of Scotch-Irish caravans was flowing
westward across the first mountain ranges into the valleys of
central Pennsylvania. Here many of them swung their wagons
and pack horses southward, and began to move down the val-
leys into the back country of Virginia and the Carolinas, so
that finally almost the whole of the southern frontier line
was held "by families of Scotch-Irish descent. Settling where
they chose, without regard either for the claims of the Indians
or for legal titles of landownership, and submitting to no
authority except that of their Calvinist Jehovah, they be-
came the dominant breed in vast areas of western America*

In the Southern colonies, the "tidewater" lands close to
the seacoast were the first to be settled. In these regions,
particularly in Virginia and South Carolina, a small number
of families gradually acquired ownership of most of the land,
and created large plantations for the production of tobacco
and rice. Former servants and new immigrants moved up-
country or into North Carolina, establishing small farms in
areas not yet dominated by the plantation system* Thus two
different economies prevailed throughout the South: that of
the planter in the rich seacoast and valley lands, raising com-
mercial crops for shipment to Europe, and that of the self-
sufficient small farmer in the forests and hill country of the
interior. Before the middle of the eighteenth century, the
rising tide of westerly migration had reached the first moun-
tain ranges and was beginning to mingle with the movement
of the Scotch-Irish coming south from Pennsylvania.

The whole process was not merely a geographical expan-
sion \ it was also a psychological development by which Eu-
ropeans were transformed into Americans. In the American
world the individual was the master of his own destiny. He
could succeed by his own efforts j and if he failed, he had only

38 The American People

' himself to blame. This was the lesson taught by innumerable
examples and remembered in countless families. According
to Crevecoeur, whose Letters from cm American Farmer (in
spite of idyllic exaggerations) offers perhaps the most pene-
trating interpretation of colonial life, it was the growth of this
sense of freedom and opportunity that made the American.
"An European, when he first arrives, seems limited in his
intentions, as well as in his views 5 but he very suddenly alters
his scale. . . . He no sooner breathes our air than he forms
new schemes, and embarks in designs he never would have
thought of in his own country. . . . He begins to feel the
effects of a sort of resurrection j hitherto he had n'ot lived,
but simply vegetated 3 he now feels himself a man, because he
is treated as such. . . . Judge what an alteration there must
arise in the mind and thoughts of this man $ he begins to for-
get his former servitude and dependence, his heart involun-
tarily swells and glows j this first swell inspires him with those
new thoughts which constitute an American. . . The Amer-
ican is a new man, who ac$s upon new principles j he must
therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions. From
involuntary idleness, servile dependency, penury, and useless
labor, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, re-
warded by ample subsistence." 10

Imagine a typical case history. Picture some young man,
born to a family of yeomen or artisans in an English village,
growing up in a small traditional community in which the
poor were expected to know their place and the will of the
local squire was law, impelled by some misfortune or some
offense against the local laws or mores to seek his fortune
elsewhere, wandering to a seaport city, enticed by a sea
captain to sign up for transportation to the colonies, set ashore
at Philadelphia or Baltimore, sold into service as a domestic
servant or a laborer on a Southern plantation, and free finally
to find his own livelihood and follow the bent of his nature
in the wilderness. If he preferred to be lazy and improvident,
he might become one of that lawless and nomadic breed, more
savage than the Indians around them, which inhabited the

10 Letters from an American Farmer, HI (Everyman's Library edition,
PP-44, 58, 59)-

The Founding of the Colonies 3 9

outermost limits of the frontier} or he might spend his
mature years scraping a meager living in some forest clearing
on the fringes of a white settlement, shooting birds and
squirrels and drinking corn liquor and enjoying his leisure
while supported mainly by the labor of a wife and children.
But if he had physical vigor and the wiH to succeed, he could
end his life as the owner of a substantial farm and the patri-
arch of a rapidly growing tribe of descendants, somewhere
perhaps on the badcs of the Susquehanna or in the Great
Valley of Virginia. Such a transformation, repeated many
thousands of times, was the essential substance of colonial
history. And the moral of the story was always the same: the
capacity and adaptability of the common man, provided he
was free from traditional social restrictions and had the neces-
sary initiative, energy, and determination.

40 ] CHAPTER III

Colonial Society

A THE colonies expanded, American society began
to assume a definite configuration. By the middle
of the eighteenth century it was becoming evident
both to European observers and to the more dis-
cerning and widely experienced of the Americans themselves
that the emerging civilization of the thirteen colonies could
not be regarded as a mere extension of that of Great Britain,
or even of Europe. It had certain unique qualities that could
not be paralleled in any other country at that period, and
perhaps not even in history.

The primary characteristic of American society was its
"freedom from extreme economic inequalities. Its egalitarian-
ism was by no means absolute. There were considerable eco-
nomic differences between the ambitious merchants and land-
owners of the seaboard and the small farmers. There were
sectional differences between East and West, due largely to
the tendency of seaboard speculators to acquire ownership
of Western lands and to collect rents from the farmers who
settled on them, Yet though some families were rich and
some were poor, the gulf between them was smaller than
anywhere else in the worldj and the vast majority of the
white population occupied a middle position in which they
enjoyed economic security and independence and were neither
exploiters of other men's labor nor themselves the victims of
exploitation. In no other country did the common man have
such opportunities 5 in no other country were the masses of
the people so free from poverty and oppression. This was the
verdict both of sympathetic Europeans, such as Paine and
Crevecceur, and of those Americans who had the best oppor-
tunities of contrasting America with Europe. In America, said
Benjamin Franklin, there were "few people so miserable as
the poor of Europe," and "very few that in Europe could be

Colonial Society 41

called rich. . . . It is "rather a general happy mediocrity that
prevails." *

The two most widely cultured and talented Americans of*
the eighteenth century were Franklin and Jefferson. Each of
them knew European socifety intimately by personal experi-
ence j and each of them had a strong appreciation of all that
Europe could offer in the way of intellectual, scientific, and
aesthetic achievement. Yet for both of them the difference be-
tween America and Europe was almost a difference between
heaven and hell. "Had I never been in the American colo
nies," said Franklin in 1770, after a tour of the British Isles,
"but was to form my judgment of civil society by what I
have lately seen, I should never advise a nation of savages to
admit of civilization j for I assure you that in the possession
and enjoyment of the various comforts of life, compared to
these people every Indian is a gentleman; and the effect of
this kind of civil society seems only to be the depressing
multitudes below the savage state that a few may be raised
abcrc^.it^ 2 Jefferson, 'writiirg from Franee some years later,
was even more emphatic. "Of twenty millions of people sup-
posed to be in France," he declared, "I am of opinion there
are nineteen millions more wretched, more accursed in every
circumstance of human existence than the most conspicuously
wretched individual of the whole United States. . . . The
truth pf^y01taht*S~6l^rva^

erelry man here must be either the hammer or the anvil. ItiS
a true picture of that country to which they say we shall pass
hereafter, and where we are to see God and his angels iu
sptettdor attl xrasKsk of the damned trampled u^de^-tHeir
feet." 3 '" --,.,^-^

The representative citizen of eighteenth-century America
was the farmer. At the time of the Revolution, at least nine
tenths of the white population made their living from the
land, and in all the colonies from New Hampshire down to
Georgia the vast majority of them were independent small

1 Information to those who would remove to America (1782).

2 Carl Van Dorcn: Benjamin Franklin (1938), p. 393-

3 Letter to Mrs. Trist, Aug. 18, 1785. Letter to Charles Bellini, Sept. 30,
1785-

42 The American People

proprietors. There was one other class that also exemplified
the "general happy mediocrity" characteristic of American
society: namely, the artisans and mechanics who performed
whatever manufacturing was done in colonial America. Since
industry had not yet been mechanized, they were skilled
craftsmen and not factory workers j and though some of them
were journeymen working for wages, there was no sharp class
distinction between employer and employee. In accordance
with the old guild tradition, most journeymen expected
sooner or later to become economically independent $ and as
Franklin and others argued, no krge or ill-paid working class
could develop as long as there was vacant land in the West
and men were free to go there. But it was the small farmer
who especially typified the emergent American society and
who embodied its unique qualities. Many of the enduring
characteristics of the American creed and the American na-
tional character originated in the way of life of the colonial
farmer. And many of the internal stresses that appeared in
American society at later periods were due to the incompati-
bility of eighteenth<entury agrarian attitudes with a nine-
teenth-century industrial environment.

If tfte colonial farmer was prudent and industrious, he
xxwld hope to enjoy an economic independence of a kind that
it is difficult for the men of the twentieth century even to
visualize. Eighteenth-century farming was primarily for sub-
sistence, not for the market. A farm family produced almost
all its own food, ks own clothing, and its own tools and uten-
sils. The farmer needed to sell a small surplus only in order
to earn money for the payment of taxes and the purchase of
salt, gunpowder, metal, and a few luxuries. As long as "here
was an open West, he could raise a large family to assist him,
in the confidence that when his sons were of age they could
provide for themselves by migrating to unsettled country.
This degree of independence was not always achieved: a
number of eighteenth-century farmers had to borrow money
in order to establish themselves, and as a result of improvi-
dence or bad luck never succeeded in paying it off. But as long
as the farmer avoided debt and could meet his small expenses

Colonial Society 43

by selling his surplus products, he need be afraid of nothing
except some major natural catastrophe or act of God.

The price of independence was constant labor by every
member of the family, from the small children up 5 the
farmer had always to be hard-working, versatile, and adapt-
able 5 but the rewards, material as well as psychological, were
substantial. "I know no condition happier than that of a
Virginia farmer might be . . ." declared Jefferson, after he
had seen Europe. "His estate supplies a good table, clothes
himself and his family with their ordinary apparel, furnishes
a small surplus to buy salt, sugar and coffee, and a little finery
for his wife and daughters, enables him to receive and visit
his friends, and furnishes him with pleasing and healthy oc--
cupation."* The prosperous farmer of New England or
Pennsylvania or the Shenandoah Valley was no European
peasant. And there was plenty of gaiety, even among the
dour New Englanders and Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish. There
were religious and family festivals, where the tables groaned
under an immense variety of foods, and the flow of whisky
or rum was unlimited^ the communal songs and dances that
had been brought across from Europe 5 "frolicks" and enter-
tainments to celebrate a harvest or the raising of a new bam
or the clearing of a stretch of forest.

Such a life was remarkably free from serious psychological
stresses and frustrations. As long as the farmer remained his
own master he was not likely to feel that he was the victim of
unjust social forces. This was not because he was exempt from
a normal human competitiveness. His drive towards greater
physical comfort and higher social status was, in fact, fre-
quently sharpened by memories of poverty and oppression in
Europe. Some farmers acquired greater wealth and prestige
than their neighbors, and when a new territory was settled,
there was likely to be a scramble to pre-empt the most desir-
able lands, sometimes by dishonest methods. Most farmers
probably regarded wealth and prestige as desirable goals, and
had no desire to see competition limited or equality institu-
tionalized. But in colonial America, where land and resources
4 Letter to James Currie, Aug. 4, 1787.

44 The American People

were abundant and labor was scarce, competitiveness could
never become acute or inequality excessive. The aggressive
energies of the American farmer were directed primarily
against nature, not against other human beings 3 and the ful-
fillment of his ambitions was to be sought not by struggling
with complex social forces but by mastering the wilderness.
And if he was exempt from natural catastrophes, his success
depended, in a most unusual degree, oij his own physical and
moral qualities. In the agrarian society of colonial America
(except insofar as sharp practices were ^employed in pre-empt-
ing Western lands) industry, honesty, and sobriety were
normally rewarded, and poverty was normally the result of
idleness and improvidence. There was therefore a clear cor-
relation between material success and those qualities which
Americans had been taught to regard as virtuous. This
harmony between the material and the moral standards of the
community (which never exists to the same degree in any
complex or sophisticated sodal system) was of immense im-
portance in promoting the American qualities of optimism,
self-assurance, and confidence in human nature. The Ameri-
can farmer lived in a rational world in which he could plan
for the future and could assume that his rewards would not be
seriously out of proportion to his merits.
x~ In such a society men felt little need for any organized
government. The repressive power of the state must be in-
voked most often where there is scarcity and the haves must
be protected from the indignation of the have-nots j but colo-
nial America was a land of plenty, and (except on the South-
ern plantations) there was no class of have-nots. Agrarian
communities could deal, extralegally, with their own offend-
ers, and not infrequently did so by rough but effective meth-
ods: troublemakers might be beaten, stripped naked, dragged
on rails, tarred and feathered, or ridden out of town. Deliber-
ate crime was rare, since there was little motive for it. Along
the Western frontiers, to which the more lawless and im-
provident individuals were likely to gravitate, there was more
disorder^ but most frontiersmen were accustomed to defend
themselves by rough-and-tumble fighting, and sometimes by
shooting, and preferred to dispense with the forces of

Colonial Society 45

organized law and order. Many parts of America resembled
the back country of North Carolina as described by Colonel
William Byrd. "The government there is so loose," he
dared, "and the

^
the neighborhood 'of Sydon formerly, every

whgt^eems good in his own eyes. . . . Besides, there mighf
"Kave been some danger, perhaps, in venturing to be so rigor-
ous, for fear of undergoing the fate of an honest justice in
Corotuck Precinct. This bold magistrate, it seems, taking
upon to order a fellow to the stocks, for being disorderly i$r
his drink, was, for his intemperate zeal, carried thithp^Hm-
self, and narrowly escaped being whipped by tl^& rabble into
the bargain." 5 ^, ,- - ' ^

particularly those in'

the West, the state was distinctly an alien institution. It col-,,
lected taxes from them, but it gave them little service or
protection in return. The settlement of the West was mainly
a movement of individuals, with little government planning
or support. Located on the seacoast and dominated by sea-
board interests, the colonial governments frequently failed
to assist the Westerners even when assistance was most needed
and might most reasonably have been expected: when there
were Indian raids. And insofar as the seaboard families used
their political power to acquire legal title to unsettled West-
ern lands, the state was actually the enemy of the Western
farmer. Settlers did not wish to be coerced into paying rents
to some absentee owner. The American fanner was, in fact,
a natural anarchist who saw no reason why he should obey
laws that he disliked, and who felt instinctively that the best
government was the government that governed least. And
since his chief desire was to be free from interference, he did
not arrive easily at the idea that he might himself aspire to
political power and use it for his own advantage. When he
found himself in difficulties, he occasionally resorted to politi-
cal action, but his general tendency was to think of the state
as always an instrument of oppression, and at best a necessary
evil.

5 Quoted by V. L. Panington: Main Currents in American Thought
(1927), VoLI, p. 140.

46 The American People

Under such conditions some English characteristics per-
sisted or grew stronger, while others disappeared or under-
went a slow transmutation. At the time of the Revolution, a
majority of all white Americans were still of English descent,
and the immigrants from other European countries had not
essentially modified the American character or American in-
stitutions. They made some incidental contributions to the
American way of life (non-English influences can be traced
Occasionally in architecture, in speech and vocabulary, in do-
mestic manners and customs), but they did not affect it funda-
mentally. After reaching America the non-English immi-
grants Were educated and conditioned into a culture that had
first been established by colonists of English descent and
afterwards changed by the American environment.

Most American farmers displayed an empirical and prag-
matic cast of mind similar to that of the English. This Eng-
lish characteristic was, in fact, developed further among the
Americans. The conditions of American life imposed a se-
verely practical and utilitarian attitude. Since the farmers who
composed the bulk of the population had to earn their own
living by their own labor, and since there was no well-estab-
lished leisure class, every activity was likely to be judged by
its consequences in promoting human welfare. Purely intel-
lectual and aesthetic pursuits were not generally esteemed or
encouraged \ and as Franklin remarked, in a paper written in
the year 1782, a the natural geniuses that have arisen in
America with such talents have uniformly quitted that country
for Europe, where they can be more suitably rewarded." e

The English sense of class, on the other hand, gradually
grew weaker. -Through the colonial period, merchants and
planters continued to regard themselves as a ruling class, and
for a long time their claims to leadership were accepted by
the farmers. But the general tendency of American agrarian
life was to cause meiil to regard inherent quality rather than
family inheritance as the only criterion for judging one man
to be superior to another. Under pioneer conditions it was
easy to reach the conclusion that all men had been born equal.
Franklin warned any European "who has ho other quality to

6 Information to those who would remove to America*

Colonial Society 47

recommend him but his birth" not to go tb America. "In
Europe it has indeed its value j but it is a commodity that
cannot be carried to a worse market than that of America,
where people do not inquire concerning a stranger: What is
he? but: What can he do? If he has any useful art, he is
welcome 5 and if he exercises it, and behaves well, he will be
respected by all who know himj but a mere man of quality,
who on that account wants to live upon the public, by some
office or salary, will be despised and disregarded. The hus-
bandman is in honor there, and even the mechanic, because
their employments are useful. The people have a saying that
God Almighty is himself a mechanic, the greatest in the
universe 5 and he is respected and admired more for the
variety, ingenuity, and utility of his handiwork than for the
antiquity of his family /> 7

Meanwhile the individualism of the English was consid-
erably modified. The American farmer liked to do as he
pleased j he was, in fact, bolder and quicker in action than his
English ancestor, and more ready to resort to violence and to
defy the forces of organized government in defense of what
he regarded as his individual rights. But in the open spaces
of America, where everybody had elbowroom, privacy was no
longer a closely guarded possession. Pioneer conditions made
men gregarious. In every farming community it was custom-
ary for neighbors to assist each other in clearing land or build-
ing a new house 5 and a generous and unsuspicious hospitality
to friend and stranger alike became a part of the mores of the
new society. The individualism of the farmer was never rug-
ged. This growth of the co-operative impulses was not an
unmixed advantage, however, since it was inevitably accom-
panied by a greater pressure toward social conformity. While
the American was less eager to protect his own privacy than
was his English ancestor, he was also more prone to interfere
with that of others. He could welcome strangers with an open-
hearted warmth without first inquiring into their antecedents
and family histories, but he expected a similar gregariousness
in return. The society of agrarian America was a society of
average men and women. They were not always willing to

T Ibi<L

48 The American People

tolerate neighbors who might be guilty of eccentricity, non-
conformity, or heresy.

s~

'- Yet though democratic principles were inherent both in the
pioneering activity itself and in the conditions of colonial
agrarian society, their full realization was a slow process re-
quiring both a development of explicitly democratic ideals
among the farmers and mechanics and a struggle with those
mercantile and landowning groups who were opposed to de-
mocracy. The first settlers brought with them European ideas
of class privilege and theocratic discipline, and colonial society
had initially been organized among class lines. Families that
had enjoyed a higher status in England before the migration
continued to claim social distinction and political leadership
in America, and the hereditary differences between the gentle-
man and the plain citizen did not quickly disappear.
" This class system was at first generally accepted by most of
the rank and file of the colonists. They were seeking to escape
from oppressive social restrictions, and to find greater inde-
pendence and wider economic opportunities j but they were
not capable of visualizing a new kind of society in which
equality had been institutionalized. Ambitious colonists aimed
not at destroying aristocratic institutions but at becoming
aristocrats themselves. Men's ways of thinking always change
more slowly than the material conditions of their existence 5
and immigrants continued to think as Europeans even after
they had begun to act as Americans. Their conscious attitudes
were still conditioned by the European ideas they had acquired
-during their formative early years. Throughout the colonial
period the English class system continued to exercise a mag-
netic influence on American society. The "happy mediocrity"
of America was caused not by deliberate planning but by the
abundance of land and resources and the scarcity of labor j it
came about not because of, but in spite of, the conscious ideas
of most early Americans.

:~ For these reasons every colony quickly acquired an embryo
aristocracy, which modeled itself on that of England. This
consisted partly of families whose claims to superiority ante-

Colonial Society 49

dated the migration, and partly of other families of more
humble origin, who were able to work their way to the top
of the social ladder by industry, shrewdness, and good fortune
after their arrival in America. In general, these embryo arifr-
tocracies were most strongly entrenched along the Atlantic
seaboard, in the regions that had been settled earliest. Regions
geographically more distant from Europe were also further
removed in their political attitudes; in the West few families
made aristocratic claims and even fewer were willing to as-
sent to them. Throughout the colonial period there was a
growing spirit of revolt against the aristocratic principle,
marked by occasional outbreaks of violence j but it was not un-
til the Revolution that it was generally challenged and not
until the nineteenth century that it was overthrown.

: x^The colonies were not governed democratically. In most
of them a large proportion of the inhabitants were excluded
from the franchise, usually by property qualifications, and the
distribution of seats in the legislature favored the more aristo-
cratic seaboard localities. Even more important than these
legal discriminations was the continued prevalence of class
attitudes of mind, both among the ruling families and among
the farmers and mechanics. It was assumed that political af-
fairs should be handled only by those who were specially
qualified by birth, wealth, and education, and that small farm-
ers, artisans, tradesmen, and servants should not presume
to meddle with them. Many rural communities, both in New
England and in the South, were in the habit of following
the leadership of some individual of superior wealth and
family distinction, accepting him as their permanent repre-
sentative in the legislature, the colonel of the local regiment
of militia, and the judge of the local court of justice, and
allowing him the prerogatives and sometimes the title of
squire.

*==~The tradition of class rule was accompanied by a belief in
ecclesiastical establishments. Underlying both these attitudes
was the assumption that the natural man was weak, fallible,
and sinful, and must submit to external discipline and author-
ity, to be exercised by men with the appropriate training and
qualifications. A privileged clergy, supported and protected

50 The American People

by the state, must therefore give religious and moral guidance.
The Congregational ist Church in Massachusetts and Con-
necticut and the Anglican Church in parts of New York and
in the South were authoritarian tax-supported institutions,
claiming a monopoly of religious truth and usually working
in co-operation with the secular ruling classes. Only in Rhode
Island and in the Quaker colonies was there religious freedom.
Elsewhere it was assumed that religious discipline and con-
formity were necessary for social order j if individuals pre-
sumed to think for themselves in religious matters, the result
would be moral and political anarchy.

r Like all ruling classes, the aristocratic groups had a tend-
ency to identify their own welfare with that of the whole
community j and without being consciously grasping or self-
interested, they Were inclined to use their power for economic
ends. Two expressions of this propensity were of special im-
portance. In almost all the colonies the wealthier families
sought titles of ownership to Western lands by buying them at
low prices from royal officials or from colonial legislatures j
this caused conflicts with farmers who wished to settle on those
linds and who saw no good reason why they should pay rents
for them. And in those, colonies where political power be-
longed to mercantile oligarchies interested in lending rather
than in borrowing money, there were disputes about the cur-
rency. The creditor groups wished to maintain a stable cur-
rency, whereas debtor interests, consisting of some of the
farmers and some of the more enterprising of the merchants,
advocated some form of inflation. Both in their attempts to
enforce payment of rents from Western lands and in their
fight to prevent inflation the colonial aristocracies were sup-
ported by the royal governors and by the British Parliment.
The struggle for American democracy had therefore to be-
come also a struggle for American self-go vernmentj the aris-
tocratic principle couJd not be overthrown as long as the
British authorities had a right to interfere with American
affairs.

During the seventeenth century, Massachusetts and Con-
necticut were governed by a combination of Puritan clergymen
and secular ruling families, who claimed that they alone could

Colonial Society 51

interpret the will of God. Any who ventured to doubt that
religious truth was knowft to the ruling oligarchy, or who
asserted that there was some alternative access to the divine
will, Were condemned as heretics and punished or expelled.
This leadership was accepted, however, by the large majority
of the rank and file of the colonists, nor did the members of
the oligarchy abuse their powers for personal advantage. Dis-
playing the virtues as well as the vices of the Puritan tem-
perament, they were hard-working, sober, conscientious, and
public-spirited. By modern standards their rate was stern
(though it was decidedly more enlightened and humane than
that of any European government at the same period), but
it was not arbitrary or consciously unjust.

In the eighteenth century there was a change of character
in the Massachusetts ruling class, and to a smaller degree in
that of Connecticut. The government became more secular
and fess severe. In Massachusetts, political leadership was
assumed by mercantile and shipowning families who had made
fortunes out of trade with Great Britain and the West Indies.
The Congregationalist clergy lost most of their political in-
fluence in spite of the efforts of such men as Increase and
Cotton Mather to maintain the old theocratic nJgimc. As a
result of intervention by the British goverriment, wealth
rather than church membership became the basis of the fran-
chise qualifications, and a limited degree of religious tolera-
tion was establishecLThe new ruling class continued to display
a Puritan industry and sobriety, but few of them retained any
vital belief in the religious doctrines of their ancestors. With
increasing wealth and self-assurance they acquired instead the
eighteenth-century creed of reason, respectability, and deco-
rum. They built themselves substantial houses on Beacon
Hill in Boston or on the outskirts of Salem or Newburyport,
equipped them with furnishings imported from England,
lived in style of dignified luxury, and sometimes took an
interest in learning and scholarship. Frequently working in
close co-operation with the royal governors and monopolizing
the higher administrative and judicial positions in the Massa-
chusetts government, the mercantile families provided a lead-
ership that was able and generally honest, but decidedly

5 2 The American People

, conservative and undemocratic. They- assumed that govern-
ment belonged to "gentlemen of principle and property" and
to "the wise, the rich and the well-born," and that a transfer
of political power to the farmers of the back country or to the
mechanics of the cities would mean anarchy and barbarism.

Similar mercantile oligarchies dominated the cities of New
York and Philadelphia j but elsewhere the aristocratic prin-
ciple was associated with the ownership of knd rather with
trade. As in Europe, the big landowning families hoped to
perpetuate their authority through the generations to come
by means of the feudal principles of entail and primogeniture.

The colony of New York was controlled by a few big fami-
lies Van Rensselaers, Livingstons, Van Cortlandts, Beefc-
mans, Schuylers, Morrises, and others who owned princely
estates and competed with each other for political power and
office. But it was in the Southern colonies, and particularly in
Virginia, that the influence of the English class tradition was
most conspicuous. The Virginia planter of the tobacco country,
with his large plantation house, his broad acres, his horde of
dependent slaves, and his assumptions of political privilege
and leadership, consciously modeled his way of life on that of
the great lords wjio ruled rural England.

The Virginian was much closer to the soil than was his
English exemplar j less of a privileged aristocrat and more
of a business man, he was more vitally concerned with the
material basis of his existence. His wealth came not from the
collection of rents from tenant farmers, but from the manage-
ment of slaves and the production and marketing of tobacco.
He also had more of a middle-class ambition to enlarge his
estate and to increase his fortune by land speculation. And
since he was usually in debt to the London merchants to whom
his tobacco was sold, his economic status was often decidedly
precarious. Yet by the late eighteenth century, after Virginia
plantation society had had time to become stabilized, it had
acquired much of the grace and leisureliness and the sense of
noblesse oblige that are the characteristic virtues of aristocracy,
while at the same time its system of privilege was tempered
by the essentially democratic environment in which it had
grown up. It had developed a code of values and an accepted

Colonial Society 53

style of living in which there was a place for the pleasures of
physical activity and social intercourse, for the cultivation of
the mind, and for disinterested political activity. The Virginia
planter, was addicted to a wide and generous hospitality, and
he enjoyed hunting, horse racing, dancing, drinking, and mak-
ing love. Not infrequently he also gathered a library, engaged
in political and philosophical speculation, planned his house
and gardens with a view to aesthetic effect, attended seriously
to his duties as a legislator, and was capable of liberal and
humanitarian ideals. The society that produced Washington
and Jefferson had a charm, a sanity and sense of balance, and
a broad humaneness that have not been equaled elsewhere in
Anglo-Saxon America. Being based on the aristocratic prin-
ciple, it could not endure 5 its continued existence could not
be reconciled with the main trends of American development.
Yet life in America was impoverished by its inevitable dis-,
appearance.

The greatest blemish of the plantation system was the in-
stitution of Negro slavery. Although the first cargo of Negroes
had been brought to Virginia by a Dutch ship as early as 1619,
the labor supply on the Southern plantations continued to be
mainly white for several generations. But near the end of the
seventeenth century, merchants in Great Britain and New *
England began to discover the profitable potentialities of the
slave trade. During the next half-century the seaports of the
Southern colonies were flooded with shipments of Negroes
kidnapped and transported from the western coastline of Af-
rica 5 and slaves replaced white indentured servants in the
whole plantation region from Maryland down to Georgia.
In 1700 there were only about twenty thousand Negroes in
the colonies 5 but by 1775 the number had risen to more than
half a million, so that Negroes comprised one-fifth of the total
population, the vast majority of them being laborers on South-
ern tobacco, and rice plantations. Slavery existed in every
American colony, but it was only in the South that it became
an integral part of the economic system and exercised a per-
vasive influence upon the whole social structure.

Liberal-minded Americans, both Northern and Southern,
deplored the slave trade, and some of them felt that it was a

54 The American People

crime for which a bloody reparation might be exacted from
posterity. But the profits to be made out of slave labor, and
the social prestige to be acquired from the ownership of slaves,
were arguments that could not be resisted by the planter class
or by those who aspired to belong to it. And even those Ameri-
cans who regarded the eventual abolition of slavery as just
and necessary could not accept with equanimity the idea that
white and black might one day live alongside each other and
mingle with each other on terms of complete equality. The
strange and sinister phenomenon of race prejudice had al-
ready established deep roots in American society for reasons
which are somewhat obscure. It never became important in
Brazil, where Negro slavery was established over a longer
period than in* the United States j and even among the English
colonists it does not appear to have shown itself immediately.
In early Virginia there was not at first any dear differentia-
tion between the Negro slave and the white indentured serv-
ant. But by the eighteenth century most white Americans
had learned to regard all Negroes, no matter what their per-
sonal qualities might be, as belonging to a race that must
forever remain inferior. American democracy was to be limited
by a color line. This was to be one of its greatest failures, and
was to cause conflicts and maladjustments that had a lasting
and far-reaching effect on American political and social life,

3

_ The conflict between the aristocratic principle and the ris-
ing spirit of democracy may be considered as the main theme
in the early political history of the Americans. Yet it should
not be forgotten that even before the Revolution, American
society was less deeply divided than that of any other country,
and that by European standards it was already democratic in
spirit. Merchants and landowners might speak of the dangers
of mob rule in tones of the greatest alarm, and farmers might
be very ready to get down their guns in order to drive rent
collectors away. Yet by contrast with Europe the division be-
tween rich and poor was relatively narrow, and the vast ma-
jority of the population were neither one nor the other, but

Colonial Society 55

were independent property owners. The richer families, in
spite of their fondness for European aristocratic pretensions
and ways of thinking, were not really comparable to the
leisured landowning nobility of England and France; even
the Southern planters were essentially middle class. And the
farmers and mechanics who championed democracy were very
different from the degraded proletariat of the European
cities.

Nor were there any deep ideological divisions in America,,
All Americans of all classes had similar ambitions for economic
advancement and similar social ideals; and all of them were
in agreement about certain basic principles, disagreeing only
in the deductions to be drawn from them. The internal con-
flicts in American society were rarely fought on any clear-cut
lines either of class or of ideological difference. They were
conflicts between those who had acquired special privileges,
either political or economic, and those who had not. In such
conflicts the more enterprising of the merchants and land-
owners were often to be found on the progressive side. The
achievement of democracy, with its slogan of equal rights for
all and special privileges for none, was a by-product of these
struggles.

The most fundamental of political divisions is between,
those who' regard individuals as existing for the sake of the,
state and those who believe that the state exists for the sake of
individuals. The former viewpoint has constituted the philo-
sophical basis of European conservatism, and has served to
justify the preservation of traditional forms of class rule and
the regimentation of opinion. But neither in the eighteenth
century nor at any later period did this attitude win any sup-
port among Americans. The methods by which America had
been settled and the freedom and fluidity of American life
made it obvious that the state had no reality apart from the
individuals of which it was composed and that it should be re-
garded as an instrument for the service of its citizens and not
as an end in itself. Almost all Americans regarded it as self-
evident that individuals had rights with which the state could
not legitimately interfere. In this sense almost all Americans,
whether rich or poor, aristocratic or democratic, were liberals.

56 The American People

There has never been any conservative tradition, in the Euro-
pean sense, in American political thinking.
The American belief in individual rights was initially de-
rived from the liberal tradition of England, and was strength-
ened by the colonizing and pioneering experience 5 but its more
specific formulation was provided by European theorists of
the social-contract school, and particularly by John Locke.
That men were endowed by nature with rights to life, liberty,
and private property 5 that the state was based on a contract
freely entered into by its citizens; that the only true function
of government was to protect the rights of the citizens; and
that a government might be changed or overthrown whenever
it ceased to maintain these rights these doctrines were in
harmony with American attitudes and were corroborated to a
remarkable degree by actual American experience. Before the
Revolution almost every literate American had learned the vo-
cabulary of the natural-rights philosophy, and almost every
American accepted its truth as self-evident. Although it had
originated in Europe, the Americans assimilated it so thor-
oughly that they made it their own. It became the American
creed and the formative principle of the new American nation-
ality.

Judged by European standards, this new American society
had obvious deficiencies. If it surpassed Europe in the oppor-
tunities it offered to the common man, it was inferior in in-
tellectual and aesthetic achievements. In a society where most
men supported themselves by their own labor, and where there
was no leisure class interested in patronizing the arts, there
was no room for an intelligentsia. The only class of men who
could devote themselves primarily to intellectual pursuits
was the clergy. In consequence colonial America produced no
important speculative thinking (except in theology) and no
great works of art. In these respects it was inferior not only
to Europe, but also to the Spanish colonies of Mexico and
Peru. The highest creations of the human mind are neces-
sarily the work of professionals, and professionalism was both
incompatible with the conditions of American life and contrary
to the American spirit. The American was distinguished for
breadth and versatility rather than for intensive concentration;

Colonial Society 57

he was inclined to try his hand at a dozen different occupations
and to indulge a great variety o different interests.

Yet though culture in America was thinner than in Europe,
it was also spread more widely. The proportion of the popu-
lation, "especially in New England, who could be considered
literate, and who had some knowledge of the classics and of
the more important contemporary European writers, was prob-
ably krger than in any other country. Jefferson once remarked
that the modern wagon wheel, with the circumference made
from a single piece of wood, had been invented by a New
Jersey farmer who had found it described in Homer. Ameri-
can farmers, he added, were the only fanners who could read
Homer. It would be an exaggeration to maintain that many
Americans could read Greek, or that a majority of them read
books at all. But the fanner with serious intellectual interests
was not an infrequent figure*

And though colonial America had no room for an art that
did not serve utilitarian purposes, it could produce useful ob-
jects that were also beautiful. American craftsmen did not
usually concern themselves consciously with aesthetic consider-
ationsj and when they did so the results were likely to be un-
fortunate, taking the form of an artificial imitation of some-
thing European. But when they were guided by functional
rather than by aesthetic requirements, they could display an
admirable strength, simplicity, and directness* The architec-
ture of meetinghouses and farmhouses in the Northern and
Middle colonies, and of some of the plantation buildings in
Virginia, and the silver and pewter ware of New England,
displayed a natural good taste the good taste of men who
concentrate upon achieving some definite purpose rather than
upon attracting attention by the virtuosity with which they
handle their medium of expression.

The same quality was to be found in the New England
school of portrait-painting. Colonial painting was strictly func-
tional $ its purpose was to record a likeness, not to achieve some
aesthetic effect. But those painters who mastered their medium
could achieve a realistic fidelity to fact and convey a sense of
life and of individual personality that a too self-conscious
artistry might have destroyed. This, in fact, is precisely what

58 The American People

happened in the case of the most gifted of the colonial paint-
ers, John Singleton Copley- During the first twenty years of
his career, Copley remained in Boston and painted portraits
that have never been equaled by any kter American. During
this period his work was not only of the highest quality; in
its capacity to portray men and women as individuals, and not
merely as specimens of social types and classes, it was also
profoundly true to the spirit of American society. Unfortu-
nately, Copley was not content to be merely a hired crafts-
man} he aspired to be an artist j and at the age of thirty-seven
he left for Europe in order to learn how great works of art
were created. But the elaborate battle pieces and historical
episodes to which he devoted the forty years he spent in
London were inferior to his Boston portraits. He lost the
qualities of an honest craftsmanship without acquiring those
of the creative imagination.

The merits of the colonial way of life were most fully
exemplified in its representative man, Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin was one of those men who achieve distinction by
embodying completely the spirit of the society in which they
live, rather than by deviating from it or going beyond it. He
was the ideal common man of the American world, bold
enough to try his hand at everything and unintimidated by
professional pretensions of any kind, whether in politics or in
science and literature. A human being with certain obvious
limitations, having little sense of poetry and no taste for
mysticism, endowed with a cool, uncomplicated, and some-
what calculating temperament, he cannot be accounted great
by virtue of his concrete achievements in any field 5 he did not
belong to the first rank as a writer or as a scientist or as a
statesman. But he applied himself to an astonishing variety
of different occupations$ and to everything he brought the
same refreshing qualities of sanity, realism, tolerance, re-
sourcefulness, and human understanding. He was a great
man because of what he was in himself rather than because
of any specific accomplishment. This kind of greatness was
possible in colonial America not only because of its demo-
cratic spirit but also because of the consistency of its intel-
lectual and moral attitudes with its economic and social or-

Colonial Society 59

ganization. The individual was able to achieve an integrated
personality because he lived in a harmonious society. In his
Poor Richard aphorisms Franklin could formulate the folk
morality of his society without criticism or cynicism 5 his ap-
proval of those bourgeois virtues which brought economic
success was only one aspect of his many-sided character, but
it was hot out of keeping with his other qualities. And it was
because Franklin was so completely an American that he
could represent America so successfully over a period of more
than twenty-five years in European countries. Enjoying
European society, and valuing all its qualities of charm and
intellectual attainment, Franklin never lost contact with his
American background or ceased to appreciate its unique vir-
tues. As a result of his deep-rooted Americanism, this Phila-
delphia printer and son of a Boston tallow-chandler was able
'to mingle with European aristocracies and to defend Ameri-
can interests at the British and French courts with a complete
self-assurance and sense of equality. He was neither intimi-
dated by Europe nor impelled to depreciate it and attack it

Many-sided humanity rather than specific accomplishment
was, in fact, what characterized the eighteenth-century Amer-
ican in general. The leading figures -of America were inferior
to Europeans as artists or scientists or philosophers; but they
were more successful as human beings. The men who made
the Revolution were by no means geniuses, and they did
little original thinking* But with few exceptions they had the
sanity, the integrity, and the self-confidence that are the fruits
of a well-balanced way of life and a healthy social organiza-
tion.

The impact of this new American man upon Europe was of
the greatest importance. What impressed liberal-minded
Europeans was not merely the political maturity of the Amer-
icans: their respect for individual freedom, their ability to
govern themselves, the high intellectual level of their politi-
cal debates. It was the advent of a society in which almost all
men were property owners, and in which there were no
parasitical aristocracy, no privileged bureaucracy, no prole-
tariat, and no beggars. Here for the first time in history was
a society that (except in the one great matter of slavery) ap-

60 The American People

peared to have organized itself on principles of reason, jus-
tice, and humanity. Such a spectacle was in harmony with the
main tendencies of eighteenth-century European thought,
which looked for salvation from a corrupt social system in
the simplicity of a more natural existence. A figure like Frank-
lin was a living confirmation of the dreams of the Enlighten-
ment. If eighteenth-century America borrowed its political
theories from Europe, it more than repaid the debt by the
encouragement that it offered, by its mere existence, to Euro-
pean liberalism.

In the course of time, American society lost its idyllic qual-
ities. It lost them primarily because of forces that had been
inherent in the American character from the beginning. With
their drive toward the domination of nature and toward
social and economic success, the Americans could not be con-
tent with an agrarian way of life. They preferred both the
rewards and the hazards of industrial capitalism, and in doing
so they sacrificed most of those features of eighteenth-century
life which had appeared so admirable. Those political leaders
who wished to keep America a country of small property
owners fought a losing battle, not merely because they were
defeated by the moneyed interests, but for the more basic
reason that their static social ideals were inconsistent with
that dynamic quality of the will which characterized Ameri-
can civilization in general. Yet though Americans abandoned
the way of life that had developed during the colonial period,
they retained many of the attitudes that had been associated
with it. Long after the essential features of eighteenth-century
society had disappeared, most Americans continued to think
in the terms that had been appropriate to the formative early
period of their civilization.

CHAPTER IV [61

American Religion

i

^O TURN from the politics of eighteenth-century
Americans to their religious beliefs seems at first
like entering an utterly different world. Men like
Franklin and Jefferson believed that if human be-
ings were free from unjust social conditions they could be
trusted to behave wisely and virtuously. But according to
Jonathan Edwards, who was born only three years earlier
than Franklin in the same part of America, all men were fay
nature utterly sinful and worthy of eternal damnation, and
the sole object worthy of pursuit was the salvation of one's
soul, not in this life but in the next.

Yet many of the same men who accepted the political ideals
of Jefferson also believed in the theology of Edwards, and
were able to do so without any sense of inconsistency. The
rationalistic deism professed by the more intellectual Ameri-
cans was not shared by -the mass of their fellow citizens. A
large proportion of eighteenth-century Americans were ad-
herents of one or another of the evangelical Protestant denom-
inations, and were staunch Calvinists in their general view of
life. Calvinism was one of the most vital factors in the shap-
ing of American civilization.

And when one examines the religious development of the
Americans, one can discover reflected in it the same psychic
tendencies that are so apparent in their political evolution.
Projected into theological symbolisms are to be found the
same repudiation of external authority, the same confidence
in the average man, the same exaltation of the will, and the
same belief that evil can be overcome. Franklin and Edwards,
in spite of the irreconcilable differences in the beliefs they
consciously held and explicitly taught, were representatives
of the same basic American character. And it can be argued
that that character was reflected more completely and more

62 The American People

truly in theology than it was in political and economic theory.
In their political ideals, men give expression to what they
wish to believe j but in their religion (so long as it remains a
vital social force covering every aspect of human life) they
show what they really are. A theology is, in fact, a kind of
collective poem or work of art that records the secret emo-
tional history of a community. And that drive of the Ameri-
can will, which was the ultimate reason for the failure of
the social ideals of eighteenth-century liberalism, was very
manifest in the evolution of American religion.

The European mind had been dominated by the sense of
a cosmic and social order to which the nature of the individual
must be adjusted j and its central religious experience had
been a feeling of inner disharmony, of man at war with him-
self, that resulted in a turning to God for deliverance and
salvation. The individual, even when wholly moral and law-
abiding in his overt behavior, felt a deep anxiety on account
of his own forbidden natural impulses, and became convinced
of his own worthlessness and sinfulness. He believed that he
deserved punishitient and was worthy only of eternal rejec-
tion and damnation. But Christianity taught him that if he
trusted in God rather than in his own merits he could be
released from his anxiety and could achieve salvation in spite
of his evil nature. Salvation was the free gift of God to those
who had been chosen for redemption j it was acquired by
faith, and was not dependent on merit. The penalty for the
sins of the redeemed had already been paid through the cruci-
fixion of Jesus Christ. This sense of worthlessness and fear
of rejection, which twentieth-century naturalism prefers to
describe in the vocabulary of psychiatry, was the very essence
of the Christian experience as it was recorded by St. Paul and
St. Augustine in the early Christian era, by Luther in the
sixteenth century, and by Kierkegaard and Karl Barth in
more recent times 5 and from it were deduced the theological
doctrines of original sin, divine grace, salvation by faith and
not by works, the atonement of the cross, and heaven and hell
in the hereafter.

These Christian doctrines, in the formulation that had been
given them by Calvin, were brought to America, by many of

American Religion 63

the early settlers j and until the nineteenth century they com-
posed the official creed of the American evangelical churches.
But in the American environment they were interpreted in a
different spirit and made to reflect a different form of experi-
ence. The sense of inner conflict and the deep pervasive anx-
iety that had produced the European conviction of man's
basic sinfulness and need for divine deliverance grew less
vivid. American Christianity had no vital belief in a cosmic
order to which the individual must submit 5 instead, it saw
life in terms of a battle between the human will and the
natural world, and had confidence that, with divine aid, the
battle would end victoriously.

The beginnings of this religious evolution antedated the
settlement of America. For the Calvinist creed, though de-
rived from the European religious tradition, was already par-
ticularly well adapted to a race of individualistic pioneers.
More than any other form of Christianity, it promoted mili-
tancy and self-assurance, and encouraged action in preference
to contemplation. It was no accident that so many areas of
America were first colonized by members of the Calvinist
churches. The Calvinist immigrant was already half an
American.

The anxieties and aspirations that are projected in religious
beliefs are originally the products of social discipline $ and the
theology of any community can often be interpreted as a re-
flection of its experiences in daily living. Calvinism developed
chiefly among sections of the European middle class who
were already predisposed to an attitude of militant activity.
They did more than merely accept those basic institutions
which have been common to all European communities: mo-
nogamous marriage, the family system, the subordination of
women, the disciplining of children, sexual taboos. (Such in-
stitutions always involve a considerable repression of natural
impulses, and may therefore provoke those feelings of anx-
iety which appear in theology as a sense of sin). To these
institutions the middle class added others appropriate to their
social and economic status. They believed in hard work, thrift,
and the avoidance of expensive or time-consuming pleasures.
They resented the social superiority of the aristocracy and its

64 The American People

addiction to luxury and dissipation ; and long before the
Reformation they were becoming hostile to the Catholic
clergy. They could not approve of a Church that charged
high prices for salvation, had little respect for the economic
virtues, and regarded the contemplative life as superior to a
life devoted to business activity.

To men and women of this kind, the system of thought
that was worked out by John Calvin during the Reformation
had a special appeal. Calvin's morality, though professedly
derived wholly from the Bible, was essentially a bourgeois
morality. It regarded hard work at one's regular occupation
as a religious duty, and had no place for monastidsm or any
other form of the contemplative life; it prohibited expensive
pleasures and encouraged thrift 5 it approved of economic
success, provided that it was not obtained by unjust methods;
and by abolishing the Catholic hierarchy, it made salvation
cheap.

Calvinism, moreover, promoted an attitude of extreme
militancy and aggressiveness. It divided mankind into two
groups, the elect and the damned. Those who had faith in
God, who sincerely endeavored to obey the moral rules that
God had established, and who were accepted into the Calvin-
ist Church, might feel assured of their own election, and
could rely upon God for guidance and protection. The rest of
mankind were among the damned. It was the duty of the
elect to impose their way of life upon the rest of the human
race, if necessary by force, and to see to it that the will of
God was obeyed. Calvinism thus led to civil war and revolu-
tion, and was the spearhead of the advance of the middle
class to political power, in several European countries.

Modern man, imbued with naturalistic modes of thought,
finds it difficult to understand how Calvinism could ever have
exercised such influence. Here was a system of beliefs that
declared that all men were utterly wicked, that a small minor-
ity had been chosen by God for salvation, and that redemp-
tion depended not on man's free will but on divine election
. and predestination. Why were the adherents of such a re-
ligion conspicuous not, as one might expect, for a fatalistic
acquiescence, but rather for an astonishing energy and force

American Religion 65

of will? In actuality, the doctrines of complete depravity and
of divine election were among the chief reasons for the
strength of the Calvinist creed. In common with all other
forms of evangelical Christianity, Calvinism declared that
man obtained salvation not by good works but by faith, and
that the power to achieve a saving faith was the free gift of
God to those whom he had elected* When this doctrine is
interpreted in terms of the emotional experience it reflected,
its power immediately becomes apparent. To the individual
who feels any anxiety or emotional insecurity nothing is so
paralyzing as the belief that he can win approval, either from
his neighbors or from God, only by the quality of his works.
But Calvinism taught its adherents that their works were al-
ways worthless and that they were right in feeling no confi-
dence in them, but that if they felt a trust in Christ and a
willingness to obey him, they could nevertheless be assured
of salvation not because of their works, but in spite of them.
Those persons who accepted this doctrine and applied it to
themselves had an astonishing sense of liberation, as though
a burden had suddenly fallen from their shoulders: they
were immediately freed from doubt, insecurity, and anxiety.
This instantaneous experience of conversion was, indeed, a
kind of rebirth,

Calvinism contained, in embryo or by implication, a num-
ber of the qualities that became characteristically American.
In certain directions, for example, it encouraged individuals
to repudiate external authority and to have confidence in their
own judgments and intuitions. The true believer, who had
received the gift of saving faith, and who therefore, had the
Holy Spirit within him, could no longer recognize any merely
earthly authority as endowed with superior wisdom. At the
same time, however, he must obey the will of God as it had
been revealed in the Bible, and must accept the authorized
interpretations of that will by the Calvinist Church. Nor was
the individual encouraged to theorize and speculate about di-
vine thingsj the will of God and his purposes in choosing
some men for election and the rest for damnation were in-
scrutable mysteries that man must not presume to investigate.
From the beginning, the Calvinist doctrine of saving faith

66 The American People

led some persons to maintain that their own spiritual in-
tuitions superseded the written words of the Bible and the
decisions of the Church; but such liberalizing tendencies were
always repressed with great severity. God could not contra-
dict himself, and the decisions of the Church were more likely
to be valid than those of the individual. In general, it was
the church members as a group, and not the ministers alone,
who decided upon the divine will, though the division of
authority was never clearly defined, and conflicts between
minister and congregation were not infrequent. Thus the
right of the individual to repudiate external authority, though
implicit in Calvinism, was in practice narrowly circumscribed.

Calvinism, moreover, viewed life in terms of a battle be-
tween good and evil 5 it encouraged those who were fighting
on the side of good to act with great energy and self-assur-
ancej and it offered the hope that evil might eventually be
wholly overcome. An omnipotent God was the leader of the
forces of good 5 and he had promised that the earth would
someday be the scene of the millennium, during which he
would visibly reign over his followers and evil would be
obliterated. Many Calvinists studied the prophecies in the
Book of Revelation with great care, and believed that the
millennium was tor be expected in the near future. This Cal-
vinist cosnv 1 to</ was formulated in extremely simple terms,
with the convincing and deceptive clarity of a mathematical
theorem. Goodness meant faith in God and obedience to his
will$ every impulse of nature was evil. Calvinism had no
interest in any of the subtleties and complexities of human
psychology, and left little room for any process of emotional
development or sublimation. Conversion was an instantaneous
experience rather than a progress toward a better life. The
good Calvinist was stern, conscientious, self-disciplined, self-
assured, narrow-minded, energetic, and generally extro-
verted j he ascribed little value to intellectual speculation, to
aesthetic experience, or to other contemplative occupations.
Such a man was likely to excel in the activities of business,
politics, war, and pioneering.

Yet at the same time it must not be forgotten that the basic
concepts of Calvinism had been derived from the Christian

American Religion 67

tradition of Europe, even though Calvin had reformulated
them with an excessive narrowness, simplicity, and logic, and
had adapted them so as to sanctify the acquisitiveness and the
social ambitions of the rising bourgeoisie. The core of Calvin-
ism, as of all forms of evangelical Christianity, was man's
sense of his own sinfulness and his consequent anxiety and
fear of divine anger. The sincere Calvinist believed in human
depravity because he felt that he himself was depraved, and
he believed in hell because he felt that he himself deserved
damnation. There were many unhappy souls in sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century Europe who turned to Calvinism not
because it sanctified their acquisitiveness and promised them
participation in the millennium, but because, more simply and
more emphatically than any other branch of Christianity, it
declared that the man who trusted in the grace of God and
the atonement made by Jesus on the cross need no longer feel
any anxiety on account of his sinfulness.

Such was the creed that many different groups of immi-
grants brought with them to America and that inspired, in
particular, the early settlers of Massachusetts and Connecti-
cut in their struggle with the wilderness. Seeing life in terms
of a battle between good and evil, these Calvinist colonists
identified evil with that American world which they were en-
gaged in subduing, and believed themselves to be crusaders
preparing the way for the millennium.

This attitude of militancy is very evident in the early re-
ligious history of New England* The Puritan colonists re-
garded themselves, as one of them declared, as the forlorn
hope of Christ's invincible army, led into battle by Christ
himself. Their task was to create in New Engknd a kind of
installment of the millennium. New England was "the place
where the Lord will create a new Heaven and a new Earth" j
it was to be "a specimen of what shall be over all the earth
in the glorious times which are expected." And in order to
carry out the will of the Lord, the Puritans must constantly
do battle with the devil and his agents* According to Cotton

68 The American People

f r , - "*-- -

Mather, they TOCC-% people of God settled in
were , once "the devil's territories. . * . There was not a
greater uproar among the Ephesians when the gospel was
first brought among them than there was among the powers
of the air . . .- when first the silver trumpets of the gospel
here made the joyful sounds. ... I believe that never were
more satanical devices used for the unsettling of any people'
under the sun, than what have been employed for the extirpa-
tion of the vine which God has here planted." *

One incidental coixseqiien^jQf ,sueh~stn attitude was that
the aboriginal inhabitants of America were regarded as the
devil's peculiar servants according to some opinions, even as
his children j and when they resisted the Puritan advance,
many New Englanders advocated exterminating them. One
of the ..paost -saintly of the New England ministers, Thomatf
. Shfepard, described how, during the Pequod War, "the Provi-
dence of God" guided three or four hundred of the Indians
to a place convenient for "the divine slaughter by the hand
of the English." Some were put to the sword and some were
burned to death when their wigwams were set on fire," until
the Lord had utterly consumed the whole company except
four or five girls they took prisoners" and kept as slaves. 3
^..tjnder such circumstances there was a tendency for the con-
cept of evil to become externalized. Emphasis on man's own
evil nature decreased, while there was a correspondingly in-
creased concentration upon the external nature which man
must subdue. To some extent, perhaps, these two forms of
nature became identified3 the American wilderness and the
repressed elements in the human personality were both of
them abodes of the devil, and both of them must be brought
under stern religious cpntrol. Thus Puritanism stimulated the
drive of the will toward the domination of all forms of na-
ture, both internal and external, and identified this drive of
the will with positive good. To tolerate such carnal sins as

1 Edward Johnson: Wander-Working Providence of Stons Savior m
New England (reprinted 1910), Book I, Chap. I; Increase Mather: Icabod
(1729), p. 74; Cotton Mather: Wonders of the Iiwisible World (re-
printed 1862), p. 13.

2 Alexander Young: Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay (1846), pp. 549, 550.

American Re/igion 69

drunkenness and fornication would pnovofee the anger of God
and would also weaken the community in its struggle to estab-
lish material prosperity. In dealing with nature,- both internal
and external, man must obey God; and as long as he obeyed
God he might expect divine assistance* Disobedience and imr
morality, on the other hand, would be followed by catastro-
phe, since God would withdraw his support and allow the
Puritans to be overcome by their enemies. Throughout the
seventeenth century, the main theme of the sermons and of-
ficial pronouncements of the New England clergy was that
obedience to God was the only way to secure worldly pros-
perityj immorality would be punished by floods, droughts,
thunderstorms, earthquakes, shipwrecks, fires, epidemics of
deadly diseases, and Indian wars. In the Puritan world noth-
ing was trivial or accidental, and every happening was to be
interpreted in terms of the cosmic battle between God and the
devil. All material events were signs and symbols of super-
natural realities, and should be regarded as rewards for. the
righteous, as warnings to the wicked, or as omens and tokens
of divine purposes,

This view of life had a certain grandeur in spite of its nar-
rowness and the fantastic superstitions which it encouraged^
it gave a transcendental significance to every aspect of human
behavior. But it inevitably led to self-righteousness and to in-
tolerance. The Puritans were convinced that they knew the
will of God and that it was their duty to carry it into effect, if
necessary by the use of coercion. One should not exaggerate,
however, the severity of the Puritan conscience. They relied
upon the Bible as the authoritative word of God, and the
Bible does not inculcate any excessive asceticism. The New
England legal code prescribed penalties for nonattendance at
church, sabbath-breaking, idleness, drunkenness, and fornica-
tion, and any unrestrained merriment was regarded with dis-
approval j but a sober and moderate enjoyment of those pleas-
ures which God had provided for the benefit of mankind was
encouraged. The Puritans declared that, unlike the Catholics,
they did not burden the individual conscience with unneces-
sary scruples or excessive restrictions.

The psychological evolution of New England may be

jo The American People

traced in terms of the weakening of the sense of sin. If virtue
would be rewarded with prosperity, then it presumably fol-
lowed that prosperity was a proof of virtue. As the New Eng-
landers advanced in material security and well-being, they
were less inclined to regard themselves as creatures of com-
plete depravity who could be saved only by supernatural
grace. The prosperous merchant of eighteenth-century Boston
might be still inclined to divide mankind into the saved and
the damned, but he had little doubt that he himself was
among the saved and that he owed his salvation not to the
grace of God but to his own merits. In the American environ-
ment, moreover, men had increasingly great opportunities for
the expression of aggressive energies and the pursuit of ambi-
tion, and (in spite of the Puritan disapproval of certain forms
of pleasure) were less restricted by social disciplines than in
Europe. And it is when men are inhibited from any overt
display of aggression, and their impulses are driven back
upon themselves, that they are likely to suffer most acutely
from that inner anxiety which theologians know as the sense
of sin. In America the individual's chief source of anxiety was
the natural environment rather than his own repressed de-
sires y and by battling successfully with the environment he
could win security and self-esteem.

The leading ministers of the generation that had colonized
New England had themselves known that inner anxiety and
sense of divine deliverance on which their theology had been
founded. There is a note of genuine personal experience in
th* autobiographical narrative of Thomas Shepard and in the
sermons of John Cotton. There is less of it in the writings of
Increase Mather, of the second generation. And although
Cotton Mather, of the third generation, laboriously recorded
his religious experiences in his diary, and endeavored to re-
produce the emotions he regarded as appropriate to a devout
Calvinist, it is impossible for the modern reader to take his
protestations seriously. He called himself the chief of sinners,
but he was much too self-righteous to feel any genuine sense
of sin, fear of divine anger, or need for divine grace. Among
the ministers of the early eighteenth century, if one can judge

American Religion J i

from the surviving diaries and autobiographies, the sense of
sin almost disappeared.

The result was a steady softening of the Calvinist theology.
There was less emphasis on man's depravity and on God's
righteous anger, more emphasis on man's ability to save him-
self and on God's benevolence. Religion began to be identi-
fied with reason, respectability, and decorum. But this trend
toward religious liberalism was decidedly illiberal in its po-
litical and social implications. As the clergy lost their political
influence, they began to claim wider powers over their con-
gregations in religious matters and to ally themselves with
the wealthy merchants and other conservative elements. As
the sense of a direct- relationship between the Holy Spirit
and the soul of the individual believer became less vivid, the
churches became less democratic. If true religion meant re-
spectability and not inner experience, then its chief exemplars
were the Boston merchants. Benjamin Colman, for example,
who succeeded Cotton Mather as the acknowledged leader of
the New England clergy, was both more liberal in his theol-
ogy and more authoritarian in his views of church govern-
ment. This growth of a religion of respectability led finally
to Unitarianism, which became a recognized and distinct de-
nomination early in the nineteenth century and which was
the favored church of the "gentlemen of principle and prop-
erty" in eastern Massachusetts.

Meanwhile Calvinist churches had been established in many
other parts of America. The Dutch churches in New York
had little vitality, and Anglicanism became the predominant
creed in that colony. But the French Huguenot communities
that settled in several "seacoast towns had more religious
fervor. Industrious, talented, and strictly disciplined, many
of the French families quickly became rich and respectable,
and passed through a religious evolution similar to that of
the Bostonians. In the eighteenth century came the Scotch-
Irish Presbyterians, who turned to agriculture rather than to
trade, and became the most vigorous pioneering group along
the frontier from Pennsylvania southward. In the courage
and the aggressiveness witfi which they did battle against the

72 The American People

Western forests and against the Indians, they strongly re-
sembled the New Englanders of a century earlier. Another
Calvinist Church, that of the Baptists, which was more dem-
ocratic than the Congregationalism of New England, had
been propagated in a number of areas by immigrant preachers
from Great Britain. During the . Revolutionary epoch came
the Methodists, who rejected part of the theology of Calvin-
ism, but preached a generally similar view of life. All these
organizations had much more vigor than the tepid and
formalists Anglican Church, to which the rich and respectable
belonged in New York and in the South, or than the Quaker-
ism of eastern Pennsylvania.

3

The appearance of a distinctively American form of Chris-
tianity may be dated from the religious revivals of the 1730*3
and i74O's, generally known as the Great Awakening. The
theology of the Awakening was pure old-fashioned Calvin-
ism, but its social implications were decidedly democratic and
individualistic^ the tendency to repudiate all external au-
thority, which had always been latent in Calvinism, now be-
came much more explicit* The Awakening swept across farming
communities in almost every part of the colonies, espe-
cially along the frontier, and only the aristocratic elements
were left wholly unaffected by it.

What precipitated the Great Awakening it is impossible to
say. Those who took part in it could see it only as the direct
handiwork of God and as a probable indication that the long-
expected millennium was now close at hand. There were sug-
gestions that America was to be the place where Christ would
be born a second time and where sin and evil would be finally
destroyed. During the 1730*8, religious revivals started inde-
pendently of each other in several different places, most nota-
bly among the Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania, among the Dutch
Reformed churches in New Jersey, and among the Congre-
gationalist churches in western Massachusetts. In the years
1739 and 1740 the English itinerant evangelist, George
Whitefield, toured the colonies from New Hampshire to
Georgia, preaching and provoking revivals everywhere. The

American Re/igion 73

work was then carried forward by the ministers of the different
Calvinist churches.

The most effectual revivalist oratory was hell-fire preach-
ing of the crudest and most lurid kind. Congregations were
told that every unconverted person would infallibly go to
hell and spend eternity in the most horrible torments. Preach-
ing of this kind could easily throw unsophisticated audiences
into a state of utter panic, during which men, women, and
children wept, screamed, jerked their arms and legs, fainted,
and had convulsive fits. Once an individual had been thor-
oughly infected with this mob hysteria and reduced to a state
of abject terror, he usually passed successfully through the
crisis of conversion; he resolved to trust in God rather than in
his own merits for salvation, and to obey God's wilL Hence-
forth he could regard himself as one of the elect-
Probably there was nothing very profound or complex in
the emotional experience of the average convert. The people
most susceptible to revivalism were the poorer and less edu-
cated farmers and city mechanics, boys and girls (including
small children), and Negroes. The available evidence sug-
gests that revivalism brought about a marked improvement
in their moral standards. Its most conspicuous and important
result, however, was to stimulate the movement toward de-
mocracy. Once a plain farmer or mechanic had undergone the
experience of conversion, he believed that he was filled with
the Holy Spirit and that in the eyes of God he was su-
perior to those merchants, landowners, planters, and royal
officials who were still among the damned. And in spite of his
lack of education he felt that his own judgments and in-
tuitions, enlightened by the Spirit, were wiser than the opin-
ions of the gentlemen of principle and property. Revivafism
was an expression of the American repudiation of authority
and assertion of freedom for the average man.

In the colonies from Pennsylvania southward the revivals
swept across the Scotch-Irish settlements along the frontier.
Presbyterian and Baptist evangelists then -began to attack
farming communities that had hitherto been nominally Angli-
can or wholly irreligious. Only the planter class remained
uninfected, and eventually most of the South outside the sea-

74 The American People

coast regions became almost as permeated with evangelical
Protestantism as New England had ever been. The new
evangelical denominations soon began to denounce the privi-
leged position of the Anglican Church and other aspects of
the aristocratic principle. Patrick Henry first became a popu-
lar figure in Virginia, shortly before he won wider fame by
his speech against the Stamp Act, by voicing the resentment
of the Presbyterians and the Baptists against the taxes for the
support of the Anglican clergy.

In New England the effects of the Awakening were even
more cataclysmic. Most of the Congregational clergy took
part in it during its earlier stages, but their authoritarian and
conservative attitudes aroused increasing resentment j and the
movement soon passed beyond clerical control. All over New
England many thousands of farmers and mechanics left the
established churches and formed new "Separatist" congrega-
tions of their own, in which every member, however humble
or illiterate, was free to preach or pray as the Spirit moved
him. The writings and exhortations of the Separatists were
filled with denunciations of the rich and respectable classes
and of the privileged and college-trained clerical hierarchy.
The plain citizen, they declared, if enlightened by the Spirit,
needed no professional guidance. The oligarchy, both in Mas-
sachusetts and Connecticut, retaliated by declaring the meet-
ings of the Separatists to be illegal, by continuing to tax them
for the support of the regular clergy and to send them to
prison when they refused to pay, and by predicting that this
spirit of "enthusiasm^ would destroy all moral, social, and
political order. This religious persecution lasted until the War
of Independence, and caused a large number of Separatists to
take refuge in northern New England and New York,
making these areas special centers of religious "enthusiasm."
Both the doctrines of the Separatists and the alarm that they
provoked among the regular clergy and the richer classes
were obvious reflections of the contemporary political con-
flicts. The revival swept across Massachusetts during the same
period that the struggle between debtor and creditor interests
about inflation was most acute. When the Revolution came,
all the revivalist groups were militant champions of American

American Religion 75

rights, while many (though not all) of the opponents of re-
vivalism were inclined towards Toryism*

Most of the Separatist congregations eventually joined
forces with the Baptists, though a few remained independent
until the nineteenth century. But once the principle of com-
plete private judgment in religious matters had been stimu-
lated in this fashion, it could not be checked at any point.
From the time of the Great Awakening there was a constant
splintering of religious congregations into new sectarian
groups, which differed from each other on minor points of
theology or religious practice. As long as New Englanders
retained a vital belief in religion, the demand of the plain
citizen to think for himself continued to produce a prolifera-
tion of novel and often eccentric theologies. At the end of the
eighteenth century there was one small Massachusetts town
that contained six different and mutually hostile Baptist con-
gregations.* In the year 1805 the regular Congregationalist
minister of Salem gloomily reported that the different sects
in that town were "as thick as the gulls upon our sand-bar, as
hungry and as useless." In a lesser degree the same tendency
showed itself among the Calvinist churches in Pennsylvania
and the South.

It is easy to laugh at the sects, but their significance as re-
flections of the American spirit should not be overlooked.
Most of them claimed to be based on the Bible, and did not
deviate far from its traditional interpretations. But there were
a few that were bold enough to make a deeper exploration of
the possible implications of the Calvinist experience. If God
communicated his Spirit directly to the soul of the believer,
he might have new revelations going beyond the doctrines of
the Bible and of tradition. And if the true believer was gen-
uinely liberated from the burden of his sins, perhaps he might
be free to follow his own deepest intuitions without being
restricted by any external rules* Such doctrines had been
propagated by a few heretical leaders during the European
Reformation, and had been preached in early Massachusetts
by Mrs. Hutchinson, for which reason she had been banished
from the colony in 1638. They began to reappear after the
This was Rehobodi.

7 6 The American People

Great Awakening, and were usually accompanied by sugges-
tions that the millennium was close at hand or had already
arrived, and that it was now possible for men to live wholly
without sin. It was a perilous attitude, since almost any im-
pulse might be attributed to divine inspiration and withdrawn
from rational investigation and control 3 and it could encour-
age charlatanry and imposture and end in downright lunacy.
Most of the self-appointed prophets who appeared in such
profusion in New England and the Middle West during the
period between the Revolution and the Civil War were con-
spicuous chiefly for their sexual promiscuity and for their
messianic claims. But the complete repudiation of earthly au-
thority and tradition and the belief in the possibility of a sin-
less existence both of which were characteristically American
attitudes could also lead to a bold exploration of new forms
of human relationship.

The most interesting of the sects were the Shakers and the
Perfectionists, though neither of them was destined to achieve
such success as Mormonism or Christian Science. The founder
of the Shakers was Ann. Lee, an immigrant from England
who came to America in 1774 in the belief that this was the
place appointed for the realization of the millennium. She
was an uneducated woman from a working-class background,
who appears to have had a genuine piety and spiritual insight.
Ann Lee was regarded by her followers as the feminine coun-
terpart of Jesus Christ j God" was both male and female, and
had therefore to be revealed twice in human form. Since the
revelation was now complete, men could live without sin,
which meant complete chastity and the abolition of private
property knd of any vise of force or coercion. Ann Lee gath-
ered a number of followers in New York and New England,
chiefly among former Separatists and Baptists, and established
communities where they lived strictly disciplined monastic
lives and devoted themselves to farming and to handicrafts.
They became known as Shakers because they were accustomed
to dance and shake their bodies during their religious services
in order to expel evil influences. When the Holy Spirit was
inactive, the dances consisted merely of a rhythmic shuffle,
but at times of religious excitement they whirled around like

American Religion * 77

dervishes and fell on the floor in fits. Shafcerism continued to
increase until the middle of the nineteenth century, by which
time there were twenty-seven different Shaker communities,
mostly in New England and in the West. In spite of the pe-
culiarity of its religious rituals, Shaker life had an impressive
dignity and serenity.

Perfectionism developed at a later period, although it
sprang from the same kind of religious background. Its
founder, John Humphrey Noyes, a native of Vermont, passed
through the experience of conversion in the year 1831, and
subsequently decided, after a study of the biblical prophecies,
that the millennium was close at hand and that a sinless
existence was possible. A life without sin meant a life of love,
and the chief obstacles to love were conflict^ and jealousies
about property and about sex. Noyes therefore concluded
that private property and private marriage should both be
abolished^ in the kingdom of God all property should be held
in common, and every man should be the husband of every
woman. ^Ecclusiveness, jealousy, quarreling have no place at
the marriage supper of the Lord. - . . In the Kingdom of
Grace marriage does not exist. On the other hand there is no
proof in the Bible nor in reason that the distinction of sex
will ever be abolished. ... In the Kingdom of God the inti-
mate union that in the world is limited to the married pair
extends through the whole body of communicants. ... It is
incompatible with the perfected freedom, towards which
Paul's gospel of 'grace without law* leads, that a person
should be allowed to love in all directions, and yet be for-
bidden to express love except in one direction." *

Noyes gathered a group of disciples, and in 1848 they
established a perfectionist community at Oneida, New York.
Here they maintained their peculiar institutions until 1880,
when pressure from the state legislature compelled them to
abandon the practice of group marriage* Their thorough-
going communism involved considerable discipline and regi-
mentationj they did not find it easy to love each other
equally, without jealousy or exduaveness. Probably the col-

*G. W. Noys: John Humphrey Noyet, The Putney Community
d93i), pp. 3, xrt, "7-

78 The American People

ony could not have survived at all if Noyes had not continued
to exercise a benevolent dictatorship. Noyes appears, however,
to have been a man of complete integrity and quite remark-
able psychological insight. Beginning as a religious prophet
and mystic, he gradually evolved into a communist sociol-
ogist, a student of socialist experiments of all kinds, and a
pioneer in the study of methods of contraception and of
eugenics. He was one of the boldest thinkers and most inter-
esting characters in nineteenth-century America.

Noyes illustrates in his own person the psychological con-
tinuity between the religious utopianism that developed out
of Calvinism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and
the scientific or materialistic utopianism characteristic of radi-
cal movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The
dream of a millennial existence, free from sin and evil, has
continued to inspire radicals, whether they follow the teach-
ings of John Calvin or those of Karl Marx. And from the
time of the Puritans, who hoped to achieve "a new heaven
and a new earth" in Massachusetts, down to the present day,
this dream has been particularly associated with the Ameri-
can continent. The belief that America has a peculiar mission
to establish a new and higher way of life has, in fact, become
a part of the American character, even though few Americans
have been prepared to interpret it in any very radical fashion.
It was not religious mystics or radical agitators but sober po-
litical leaders who placed on the Great Seal of the United
States the words "Novus Ordo Seclorum"

Meanwhile the Great Awakening had stimulated a reinter-
pretation of Calvinist theology 5 this attracted little attention
at the time, but became the dominant influence in American
Protestantism throughout the period between the Revolu-
tion and the Civil War. This was primarily the work of
Jonathan Edwards. As minister of the Congregationalist
church at Northampton, in western Massachusetts, Edwards
took part in the revivals. Subsequently he spent some years
as an Indian missionary at Stockbridge, and was then ap-

American Religion 79

pointed to the presidency of Princeton, where he died in
1758* His purpose was to formulate a system of divinity that
would avoid, on the one hand, the drift toward Unharianism
in eastern Massachusetts and, on the other hand, the disorder-
liness and eccentricity of the Separatists. On the surface, Ed-
wards's divinity was a mere restatement of the traditional
Calvinist dogmas. Actually it was a new system reflecting cer-
tain of the basic preconceptions of the American spirit. Ed-
wards made use of European formulas, but in attempting to
adapt Calvinism to life as he himself and his neighbors knew
it, he unconsciously Americanized it.

The evangelical Christianity of Europe had been founded
on man's sense of inner conflict and disharmony and on his
consequent conviction of sin and need for divine deliverance.
But this did not correspond to Edwards's personal experience.
He was not drawn to God by an internal division of this kind.
Before his own conversion he had no genuine sense of sin; it
was not until afterwards, when he adopted the Calvinist
formulas, that he learned to speak of himself as wicked, and
then only with an exaggerated emphasis that betrays his lack
of genuine conviction. The emotional struggles that preceded
his conversion were caused by a reluctance to accept the doc-
trine of God's absolute sovereignty and to surrender his own
Will to that of God. He appears to have become convinced of
the need for divine salvation not because he felt himself to
be filled with sinful desires that he could not control, but
because he knew himself to be weak and powerless, and be-
cause he saw evil in the external world in the epidemics of
diphtheria that killed infant children, for example, "like the
children that were offered up to Moloch . . . who were tor-
mented to death in burning brass." * In the Edwardean sys-
tem, the human will pitted against the environment, not the
will at war with itself, was the underlying reality. And man
turned to God not so much to be healed of an inner dis-
harmony as to be assured of omnipotence*

This is evident from Edwards's Personal Narrative. The
crisis that he came to regard as his conversion occurred while

5 The Greet Christian Doctrine of Original Sm Defended, Part I,
Chap. 2.

8o The American People

he was a student at Yale, and it consisted in a complete sur-
render of his own will to that of God. It was not preceded by
any deep anxiety or conviction of sin, so that it did not con-
form to orthodox Protestant experience. As late as five years
afterwards, Edwards himself was still puzzled because his
conversion did not seem to contain "those particular steps
wherein the people of New England, and anciently the dis-
senters of Old England, used to experience it." * What reli-
gion meant to Edwards was identity with God, so that by
merging his own will in that of God even, as he said, to the
extent of being willing to be damned if that would promote
God's glory he could share in God's omnipotence. The suf-
ferings of mankind proved that God was angry with them;
but by submitting to God's will the elect individual could par-
ticipate vicariously in the expression of God's anger and of
God's vengeance upon the unregenerate. Power was a quality
that Edwards particularly liked to ascribe to God. In his Per-
sonal Narrative he recorded his special delight in watching it
manifested in thunderstorms.

This lack of any genuine sense of sin is very manifest in
Edwards's famous treatise on The Freedom of the Will. Fol-
lowing the European theologians, Edwards set out to prove
that man could not save himself. But whereas the Europeans
had believed in the necessity of divine grace because they felt
that man's will toward good had been corrupted and frus-
trated by his carnal impulses, Edwards made no distinction
between will and impulse. The will, he declared, always
obeyed the strongest motive. The reason why man could not
save himself was simply that all his actions were predeter-
mined, in the last resort by God. Edwards did not see unre-
generate human nature as a battleground between conflicting
drives toward good and evilj neither did he regard re-
generation as a gradual progress toward psychological har-
mony. Man was a simple creature, without inner conflicts,
who was wholly evil unless God chose to save him. But when
God communicated the knowledge of himself, then man was
irresistibly drawn to love him and submit to him. It is ob-
vious that Edwards had no real comprehension of the Euip-

*S. . Dwight: Memoir of President Edwards (1829), p. 93.

American Religion 8 1

pean doctrine of salvation by grace. The Freedom of the Will
is an exercise in logic rather than a record of vital personal
experience.

Historically, the most important aspect of Edwards's theol-
ogy was his redefinition of the meaning of conversion. Re-
ligion meant the love of God, and was therefore an emotional
experience, and its validity might be judged by its effects on
conduct. It was derived from "a spiritual and divine light,
immediately imparted to the soul by God." And since the
true believer knew God directly, he could trust his own con-
science instead of relying on external authority. "When a
holy and aimable action is suggested to the thoughts of a holy
soul, that soul, if in the lively exercise of its spiritual taste, at
once sees a beauty in it, and so inclines to it, and closes with
it." This was a doctrine with strongly literal implications,
particularly since Edwards abandoned completely the earlier
Puritan belief in a union of church and state and the imposi-
tion of morality by force. True Christian virtue, moreover,
meant a love not only for God but also for the other human
beings whom God had made, from which later theologians
deduced that it would manifest itself in philanthropic and
humanitarian activities. This side of the Edwardean 'divinity
was decidedly progressive and individualistic. It meant the
emancipation of American Protestant ethics from an exclusive
reliance upon the moral niles laid down in the Bible and a
recognition of the possibilities of spiritual evoltrtioft. "We
cannot suppose," said Edwards, "that the Church of God is
already possessed of all that light . . . which God intends
to give it." 7

Yet ^fliile Edwards ?tdvocateil trbstin tte,owi3penoe of the
individual believer and an ethics of active love, he also be-
lieved in an omnipresent God who was c< where every devil *
is, and where every damned soul is," * and wh<x iad delib-
erately chosen to consign a majority tif Ms creatures to eternal
torment in hell. Edwards was driven to accept this belief be-

T Sermon entitled A Divine and Spiritual Light; A Treatise Concerning
Religious Affections, Part III, Section IV; Preface by Edwards to Joseph
Bellamy: True Religion Delineated (1750).

6 Sermon endded Tbe End of the Wicked Contemplated by the
eous.

82 The American People

cause otherwise God would not be omnipotent. And with an
extraordinary boldness he set out to rationalize the whole
Calvinist system, instead of recognizing, as Calvin had done,
that certain questions were better left in mystery $ he believed
that by the exercise of logic and intuition he could tear out
the ultimate secrets of the universe. He believed that God,
like an artist, had created the cosmos for the expression of his
own attributes, and had deliberately composed it out of con-
trasts, light being balanced against darkness, good against
evil, and happiness against suffering. This meant that God
was responsible for hell 5 and since the elect in the next life
would share in God's omnipotence, they would join him in
enjoying the spectacle of the damned in torment. The mystical
meditations on the beauty of God and of God's universe that
fill Edwards's writings have an extraordinary charm and in-
tensity of feeling, but the sermons in which he brought home
the reality of hell to his Northampton congregation are like
the nightmares of a diseased soul. What is so peculiarly hor-
rible about them is that Edwards always seems to be identify-
ing himself with God, not, like Dante in the Inferno, with
the sinner. He is never the divided soul, convinced that he
himself deserves divine condemnation 5 he is pure will seek-
ing omnipotence and finding it in fantasies of an inhuman
cruelty. For the modern reader it is difficult to understand
how a man who preached an ethics of love could believe in a
God of cruelty. Yet Edwards himself showed no sign of
being disturbed by the apparent discrepancy, npr did his
gloomy theology have any shadowing effect on his person-
ality. Throughout his life he showed himself cheerful, patient,
hard-working, and most genuinely saintly.

The most significant aspect of the Edwardean divinity is
that its inner inconsistencies mirror with remarkable clarity
the conflicting tendencies that run through the history of the
American spirit. On the one hand it inculcates an American
trust in the individual and an American humanitarianism; on
the other hand, it gives expression in theological symbols to
the drive of the American will towards domination. In the
twentieth century, when Edwards's theology is no longer re-
garded as literally true, it is possible to interpret it as a sym-

American Religion 83

bolic expression of the deep psychic forces that pervaded the
culture that produced it: to consider it, in other words, not as
theology but as poetry. His cosmology has, in fact, a kind of
morbid and sinister beauty, resembling that to be found in
some of the short stories of Poe and in certain surrealist paint-
ings. As a poet, Edwards foreshadowed the two major themes
that occupied the great American writers of the following
century. On the one hand his doctrine of "a spiritual and
divine light immediately imparted to the soul" pointed to-
ward Emerson and Whitman. On the other hand his intoxica-
tion with the idea of omnipotence, the cruelty that it implied,
and the overweening pride of logic with which he set out to
explain the entire universe, represented tendencies that per-
vaded the writings of Poe and of Melville. If Edwards is
judged as an American poet, then only Melville can be said
to have surpassed him in depth and intensity of spiritual ex-
perience. Indeed, in their basic preoccupations the two men
had much in common. That drive of the will, both American
and Calvinist, which is so conspicuous in Edwards, had its
most complete aesthetic embodiment in Melville's Captain
Ahab.

But for hundreds of thousands of Americans, during sev-
eral generations, the theology of Edwards was not poetry, but
literal and scientific truth, and the hell he described had a
reality surpassing that of material existence. He had JUttle in-
fluence in his own lifetime, but his doctrines were propagated
and developed further by his friends and disciples until Amer-
ican Calvinism was permeated with them. By the end of the
eighteenth century, New England Congregationalism had be-
come almost wholly Edwardeanj the Presbyterianism of the
middle and Southern states had been deeply affected j and
Edwardean influences had spread more indirectly to the
Baptists and the Methodists. After the clergy had been con-
verted to the "new divinity," it was carried to the laity by
revivalistic methods. The period from the 1790*8 to the 1 850*8
was the great period of American evangelism, during which
general revivals, at frequent intervals, swept across all of
New England except eastern Massachusetts and vast areas of
then newly settled areas west of the Appalachians.

84 The American People

The puritanism that resulted from the great revivals was
in many ways different from the puritanism of the founders
of New England. It was more individualistic and more hu-
manitarian, while at the same time it inculcated a stricter and
narrower morality. It accepted religious toleration and the
separation of church and state, basing its religion on the pri-
vate conscience, and it insisted that religion should show it-
self in practical benevolence rather than in mere obedience
to a moral code. Of the many activities that developed out of
Edwardean Christianity, unquestionably the most important
was the abolitionist movement. Not all the abolitionists were
Edwardeans, but the movement derived its strongest im-
petus from the evangelical churches. Edwards's closest pupil,
Samuel Hopkins, was one of the first men to denounce Negro
slavery; and his example was followed by Charles G. Finney,
the New York evangelist, who founded Oberlin College as
an abolitionist center, by the Beecher family, and by other
Edwardean revivalists. All the activities of the Edwardeans
were marred, however, by their tendency towards fanaticism
and self-righteousness. They saw life always in terms of an
absolute good in conflict with absolute evil; and they ex-
tended their conception of evil to a degree that would have
horrified the original Puritans. They were the first opponents
of drinking (an idea that originated npt with Edwards but
with Samuel Hopkins, and of which Lyman Beecher was the
first militant exponent), and they denounced smoking, danc-
ing, and most other pleasurable activities. The Edwardean
theory that the true believer should show his complete devo-
tion to God by his behavior, and that he should be guided
by his conscience rather than by tradition, was essentially
progressive; but its concrete results depended upon how it
was interpreted. As developed by the later Edwardeans, it
was one of the factors that made the American nineteenth
century decidedly gloomier and more puritanical than the
tolerant and easy-going eighteenth.

Meanwhile the Edwardean theology slowly disintegrated.
The conception of a God who had deliberately condemned a
majority of his creatures to eternal torment began to seem
incredible. The later Edwardeans preferred to emphasize

American Religion 85

God's benevolence rather than his righteousness, and they
transmuted the belief in complete determinism into a belief
in complete free will, the doctrines of grace and divine elec-
tion being lost in the process. A few conservatives remained
faithful to the Calvinist dogmas down to the twentieth cen-
tury, but as early as the Civil War a man like Henry Ward
Beecher, in spite of his Edwardean background, was preach-
ing a God of love who wished all mankind to be saved, And
with this growth of optimism and of confidence in man's ca-
pacity to save himself, the Protestant churches ceased to exert
any really vital influence on American cultural development.
A majority of the Americans continued to give a nominal ad-
herence to the evangelical denominations, and the churches
continued to play an active part in certain political and social
movements, particularly in the crusade for the prohibition of
liquor. But after the Civil War, Protestantism tended to be-
come, in krge measure, a mere reflection of American life
rather than a positive and independent force working for the
transformation of human nature.

86] CHAPTER V

The Revolution

DURING the colonial period, which occupies nearly
half the entire course of American history from
the founding of Jamestown down to the present
day, American attitudes and American institutions
were slowly taking shape. It was inevitable that, sooner or
later, this process should lead to an open assertion of Ameri-
can nationality and of American independence from Euro-
pean control. The immediate cause of the Revolution was
American indignation against specific acts of oppression on
the part of the British government. But when viewed in more
fundamental terms, the war between America and Great
Britain was a clash of principles and ideologies j it was a con-
flict between European ideas of class rule and authoritarian
government and the driv,e of the common man in America
for political equality and economic opportunity. Even if the
British government had done nothing to provoke it, some
sort of conflict could scarcely have been avoided.

The Revolution, as John Adams remarked, was a psycho-
logical process before it became a political one* 1 Long before
1763, liberal-minded Americans were coming to believe that
their way of life was not only different from that of Europe,
but also superior to it. It was superior in the opportunities it
offered to the common man and in its higher standards of
personal and political morality. Americans who knew any-
thing about the British government were horrified by the
habits of class privilege and by the corruption with which it
was pervaded 5 and many others were made conscious of
these things by contact with British officials and British mili-

1 "The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change
in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations." "Who, then
was the author, inventor, discoverer of independence? The only true
answer must be the first emigrants." Works of John Adams (1856), Vol.
,X, pp. 282, 359.

The Revolution 87

tary and naval units stationed in the colonies* Franklin ex-
pressed a widespread attitude when he suggested that Amer-
ica might be corrupted by too close a union with Great Britain*
"When I consider the extreme corruption prevalent among
all orders of men in this old rotten state," he wrote from
London in 1774, "and the glorious public virtue so predom-
inant in our rising country, I cannot but apprehend more
mischief than benefit from a closer union. * . . Here num-
berless and needless places, enormous salaries, pensions, per-
quisites, bribes, groundless quarrels, foolish expenditures,
false accounts or no accounts, contracts and jobs devour all
revenue and produce continual necessity in the midst of nat-
ural plenty. I apprehend, therefore, that to unite us intimately
will only be to corrupt and poison us also. 31 2

Holding such opinions, the Americans protested immedi-
ately against British measures that reflected the traditional as-
sumption that colonies should be subordinate to the mother-
country. They did not wish to break the British connection.
Some of them, particularly Franklin before he had become
disillusioned, had dreamed of a perpetual partnership of the
English-speaking peoples, in which leadership might eventu-
ally pass to the western side of the Atlantic. But the Ameri-
cans felt that they were entitled to equality with the British
and to full self-government. And until the final stages of the
controversy they did not recognize that such a claim was con-
trary to the whole traditional theory of imperialism, and
could never be accepted by the British government. Instead
of recognizing that they were asserting a revolutionary doc-
trine, they conducted the argument in legalistic terms, at-
tempting to prove that taxation without representation was
contrary to natural kw, to the British constitution, and to the
colonial charters. They acted with remarkable boldness and
political maturity, but they were overanxious to justify their
actions in accordance with traditional conceptions of legality.
In consequence, they were compelled to exaggerate the mis-
deeds of the British government and to represent as an in-
tolerable tyranny regulations that appeared to the British to be
wholly legitimate and necessary. It was not until 1776, when
2 Carl Van Doren: Benjamin Franklin (1938), p. 517-

88 The American People

the English immigrant Tom Paine published Common Sense^
that the American case was presented in its true colors, as a
bold assertion of new principles of government.

And these new principles of government included more
than the claim that the inhabitants of a colony should have
the same rights as those of the mother country. The American
Revolution was a movement toward democracy as well as
toward independence, and for this reason it caused internal
divisions both in Great Britain and in the colonies. The Brit-
ish people were by no means unanimous j British radicals sup-
ported the Americans in the belief that an American victory
would advance the cause of freedom everywhere. And the
Americans themselves were very deeply divided. Most of
the planters and many of the merchants finally accepted in-
dependence, but throughout the entire controversy, from
1763 until 1776, the most militant champions 'of American
rights were those Western farmers and urban mechanics who
wanted political changes within America. Those Americans,
on the other hand, who clung to European principles of gov-
enunent^ and who were afraid of the advance of democracy,
continued to support British rule. Probably as much as a third
of the whole Ainerican population was inclined towards Loy-
alism, and an appreciable number were willing to fight for it.
The Loyalists included many of the aristocratic elements in
New England, New York, and Pennsylvania, and many of
the more recent immigrants in the middle colonies and in the
Carolinas.

Before the Revolution, the Western farmers had shown
increasing resentment against the domination of the seaboard
aristocracies, while in the larger towns especially in Boston
mechanics, small tradesmen, and journeymen had begun to
join political organizations that challenged the control exer-
cised by the mercantile oligarchies. Such men welcomed the
Revolution as an opportunity to establish a more democratic
form of government and to overthrow economic privilege.
Representing the ideal of an agrarian democracy, these Amer-
ican radicals wished the "general happy mediocrity" of Amer-
ican society to be protected and more fully developed. How
far the radical leaders were conscious of their objectives it is

The Revolution 89

not easy to determine j but their eagerness in seizing eveiy
opportunity to stir up hostility against Great Britain and their
unwillingness to accept any compromise settlement suggest
that they were motivated by more than a dislike of British
taxation. They were opposed to British rule not only because
it violated American rights, but also because of the support
Great Britain gave to the aristocratic principle in America.
This is particularly true of Samuel Adams and his radical
associates in Boston, In all his public pronouncements, Adams
represented himself as merely defending the liberties of
Americans against the attempts of wifked British officials to
enslave them. But the pertinacity with which he sought to
carry the controversy through to the point of crisis cannot be
explained unless we assume that his major objective was to
bring about a more democratic form of government in Massa-
chusetts and that he recognized this to be impossible unless
Massachusetts became fully self-governing. When independ-
ence was finally consummated, it was the spokesmen of agrar-
ian democracy who assumed control in most of the states, and
their radical ideals were embodied in the new state constitu-
tions.

Prior to 1763 it had been generally admitted that the col-
onies were under British sovereignty. This sovereignty had
originally been exercised by the king, and had then been
assumed by Parliament. Parliament had legislated for the
colonies, and its general power to do so, though not clearly
defined, had been taken for granted- Except under the later
Stuart kings there had been little interference with the co-
lonial legislatures in political matters, but the economic activi-
ties of the Americans had been elaborately supervised. Ameri-
cans were, in general, forbidden to start manufactures that
might compete with those of the mother country, and most o
their foreign trade had to pass through Great Britain. The
general effect of the regulations was to drain money out of
the colonies and to cause American merchants and planters to
fell into debt to merchants in London. This mercantilist sys-
tem was an example of one of the general tendencies of all
advanced civilizations, both ancient and modern: the tendency
of urban business areas to exploit the areas that produce raw

po The American People

materials. On the other hand, the Americans derived from
the British connection certain positive benefits in the form of
protected markets, bounties for the production of some raw
materials, and military and naval protection^ and many of
the regulations were loosely enforced.

The trade regulations provoked few complaints before
1763, and were not usually listed among the major American
grievances after that date. Down to the outbreak of the war,
the Americans, while resisting the claim of parliament to tax
them, professed themselves willing to accept parliamentary
regulation of trade. From the commercial point of view, in
fact, many of the American merchants might have preferred
to remain inside the British Empire. They opposed many of
the British regulations, and felt themselves to be exploited
by the British merchants j but in an age of dosed mercantilist
empires they could expect difficulty in finding new markets to
replace those they would lose if they broke the British con-
nection. The major factor in carrying the controversy as far
as independence was not commercial interest, but the drive
toward democracy. The assumption of some historians that
the American Revolution must have been primarily a bour-
geois movement instigated by the merchants is an illustration
of the tendency to read American history in European terms.
The agrarian democracy of eighteenth-century America was
brought into existence by the unique conditions of American
life, and cannot be paralleled in the history of thie leading
European nations. /ictS &-% C$P, U. W>U"^
( The change in British policy after 1763 was a sequel to the
French and Indian Wai^ which had been fought during the
previous ten years for the control of the West. From the
British point of view, this began as an American war, caused
by the expansion of the colonies westward across the Appa-
lachians and their conflict with the French officials and fur
traders who were hoping to establish French control over the
Mississippi region. The war started in 1753 with an attempt
by the government of Virginia to expel the French from the
Ohio valley, and the first shots were fired by Virginia militia-
men under the command of young George Washington.
The struggle gradually developed into th Seven Years'

The Revolution 91

War, in which Great Britain and France fought each other
for imperial supremacy in Asia as well as in the western
hemisphere, and which ended in the expulsion of France both
from most of India and from the North American main-
land. Great Britain was left victorious, but with a heavy in-
ternal debt and increased responsibilities,
jj JiR PIC war by no means promoted good feeling between
the Americans and the British. The Americans, who had
taxed themselves heavily to carry on the struggle, were pro-
voked by the many military blunders committed by the British
during the earlier period of the war, and resented the arrogant
behavior of the British professional officers* They felt that
the British had fought the war in America not for their bene-
fit, but for that of the British fur traders, who expected to
replace the French in the West. They were beginning to feel
that they were capable of attending to their own defenses and
to resent their involvement in the power politics of Europe.
Why should the road into the Western wilderness run
through London and Paris? Why should the ambitions of
European kings cause American frontier communities to be
massacred by Indians? As Franklin told the British House of
Commons in 1766, "the war, as it commenced for the defence
of territories of the crown the property of no American, and
for the defence of a trade purely British, was really a British
t war y and yet the people of America made no scruple of con-
tributing their utmost towards carrying it on and bringing it
to a happy conclusion." 3 This view of the war eventually led
some Americans to form an opinion, which was afterwards to
have a determining influence on the foreign policy of the
United States, that the affairs of North America ought to be
permanently disentangled from those of Europe.

Left with increased expenses and half a continent to ad-
minister as a result of the war with France, British officials
set out to make such regulations as seemed most likely to
promote the welfare of the empire as a whole. They tightened
the enforcement of the trade regulations (which had been
notably violated during the war), prohibited migration into
the West until the claims of the Indians could be adjusted,

'Ibid, (1938), p. 348.

92 The American People

posted troops in America to guard against Indian attacks, and
began to impose upon the colonies taxes that would meet part
of the costs of imperial defense. All these measures were legal
if it was assumed that the British Parliament was the supreme
imperial authority and that the colonies were to remain sub-
ordinate. The English political leaders were lacking in wis-
dom and insight j none of them not even Burke or Chatham
had the vision and the far-ranging imperial imagination of
the greatest of the Americans 5 but they were not devoid of
good intentions or of the narrower kind of intelligence- But
the Americans, as a result both of traditions inherited from
British history during the Stuart period and of their own colo-
nial experience, had learned to regard the principle of no
taxation without representation as fundamental. This attitude
was owing not merely to an understandable dislike of taxes
in general a dislike particularly strong in a country where
currency was scarce but to a farsighted realization that the .
power to tax^coafcl too easily be abused.

Almost everybody in America would suffer as a result of
these British measures, and almost everybody wished to
protest against them. But the violence of the opposition was
wholly unexpected. The mass riots and demonstrations against
the Stamp Act, conducted mainly by the urban mechanics
under the leadership of such spokesmen of democracy as
Samuel Adams, were an indication that new political forces
were emerging. These "Sons of Liberty/ 1 as they began to
call themselves, became the spearhead of the movement to-
ward democracy and full self-government. Their activities are
inexplicable unless it is remembered that the internal political
conflicts in the colonies were already becoming acute 5 the
actions of the British government should not be regarded as
the sole original cause of the convulsion, but rather as the
provocation that brought it to the point of crisis. Thenceforth
the wealthier classes in America were caught between two
fires. Threatened with financial losses by the British measures,
the bolder and more enterprising supported the Sons of
libertyj fearful of democracy, the more timid dung to
British authority. Except in Virginia, where the planters were
deeply in debt to British merchants, and where there were no

The Revolution 93

cities and hence no urban mechanics to conduct riotous demon-
strations, most of the aristocratic elements continued o hope
for reconciliation rather than for independence.

The Stamp Act was repealed, but the Townshend duties
followed, and there were numerous other indications that the
successive British governments had no intention of surrender-
ing the principle of British supremacy. The point at issue
whether the colonies were subordinate to the mother country
or its equals was, in fact, irreconcilable. And as invariably
happens during a period of prolonged controversy, each side
became increasingly exasperated and began to attribute to the
other a deliberate malevolence that it did not really possess.
The British officials felt that the Americans were a most un-
reasonable people who would not assume any of their appro-
priate obligations for the maintenance of the empire that had
protected them against the French. Many of the Americans,
on the other hand, came to believe that the British govern-
ment had worked out a long-range plan to deprive them of
all their rights of self-government and reduce them to slav-
ery. When two parties reach this degree of mutual suspicion,
reconciliation usually becomes impossible^ _. .^.r ^ s

In 1770 a new British governmfnTrepealed most or the
taxes, retaining only a small duty on tea as an assertion of
the principle of British supremacy. Even this tax was not
successfully collected, since some of the American merchants
were able to evade it by smuggling. This was followed by
three years of peace. During this period, the leaders of the
Sons of Liberty did their best to keep the controversy alive
and to stimulate hostility to Great Britain; and they began
to create a new kind of political organization. A network of
radical "Committees of Correspondence" was organized,
headed mainly by lawyers, merchants, and planters who, for
one reason or another, desired political changes, but supported
chiefly by the fanners and mechanics. They were guided by
political organizers like Samuel Adams in Boston, Isaac
Sears, John Lamb, and Alexander JMcDougall in New York,
Charles Thomson in Philadelphia, Samuel Chase in Balti-
more, and Christopher Gadsden in Charleston. These organi-
zations were prepared to push the controversy through to the

94 The American People

point of crisis on the next occasion when the British govern-
ment exercised its claim to supremacy.

The final phase of the controversy started in 1773, when
the British East India Company was given the right to ship
tea direct to America. This meant that the Americans (in spite
of the tax) could buy tea more cheaply than ever before, but
it also meant that American tea merchants, both those who
had paid the duty and those who had engaged in smuggling,
would lose theirbusiness. Supported by many of the mer-
chants, the radicals represented this measure as a device for
bribing the Americans into accepting the principle of parlia-
mentary taxation. The Boston radicals organized the famous
Tea Party, after which the British government, thoroughly
provoked, retaliated with the Coercive Acts. These showed
very clearly that, in the opinion of the British ministers, the
colonies had no rights not subject to revocation at the pleasure
of the British Parliament. At the same time, by the Quebec
Act, the Western territories, where Americans had been hop-
ing to settle ever since the French and Indian War, were
annexed to Canada.

In the opinion of the radicals, America now had to choose
between resistance and 'submission. The conservatives con-
tinued to hope for reconciliation, and in the Continental
Congress, which met at Philadelphia in September 1774 in
order to work out a common American policy towards the
Coercive Acts, one of their leaders, Joseph Galloway, put
forward a plan for establishing an American legislature that
would share authority with the British Parliament. But the
radicals neither wanted reconciliation nor regarded it as pos-
sible $ by a small majority they were able to stop discussion of
the plan and to prevent any knowledge of it from reaching
the general public. The Congress voted in favor of resisting
the Coercive Acts and adopted a stringent economic boycott
of Great Britain, the enforcement of which was entrusted to
radical committees. These committees, which were now to
police the activities of the merchants and prevent them from
violating the boycott, began to assume some of the functions
of 3. revolutionary government.

When British troops arrived in Boston to enforce the Coer-

The Revolution 95

cive Acts, war became inevitable, though the Americans were
careful to wait for the British to commit the first overt act.
The shooting started in April 1775, when a detachment of
British troops marched out to destroy military supplies that
were being accumulated at Concord, and was met by American
militiamen at Lexington. The subsequent controversy as to
which side actually fired the first shot was of significance only
as -an illustration of the Americans* desire to justify their ac-
tions in legalistic terms. But whether they realized it or not
the radicals had not really been acting merely in self-defense:
they had been working toward a fundamentally new political
system, which involved new conceptions of legality and indi-
vidual rights, and which the British could not accept so long
as they clung to traditional ideas of imperialism. The Ameri-
can Revolution, in other words, was a genuine revolution, and
not merely a war for independence. This view of the situation
was written into the Declaration of Independence of 1776,
which justified the American cause not on narrow grounds of
legality but on the natural right of all men to freedom, equal-
ity, and self-government.^

After Lexington and Concord, the remnants of British
authority were destroyed 5 executive power in most of the
colonies was assumed by committees of safety; and the Conti-
nental Congress assumed responsibility for the conduct of the
war. In this fashion a group of lawyers, merchants, planters,
and politicians, most of whom were young men without exeo*-
tive or military experience, undertook to determine the destiny
of half a continent and to challenge the trained armies and
navies of the world's strongest power. If they failed, they
could presumably expect to be hanged as traitors.

For several years after the outbreak of the war there was
little legal government in America and little regular enforce-
ment of law and order. The Continental Congress acquired
no legal authority to act as a central government until the
ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781. A ma-
jority of the states were controlled by extralegal committees

96 The American People

of safety and provincial congresses j subordinate committees
assumed control of smaller areas. In some regions the kw
courts ceased to function, and there was a period of what
seemed to conservatives to be outright mob rule. The men in
power had not only to raise and equip an army to fight the
British; they had also to meet the threat of civil war with
the Loyalistsa danger that, as in all such situations, could be
met only by terroristic methods. This phase of American
history is essentially analogous to the Jacobin reign of terror
in the French Revolution and to the Civil War in the Russian
Revolution. That the parallel has not been generally recog-
nized is a tribute to the moderation with which the American
radicals used their power. Although the Loyalists were made
to suffer acutely, and though there was some petty persecu-
tion and paying off of personal grudges, there were very
few executions, and none without real justification. And in
spite of the obvious need for strong government, the Ameri-
cans did not set up a dictatorship. Both the leaders of the
Revolution and the mass of the people viewed political power
with the greatest suspicion, and were not willing to allow any
surrender of the rights of individual freedom. Living in an
agrarian economy of small property owners, the average
American of that epoch had acquired a habit of acting inde-
pendently and a hostility to coercion and regimentation that
made any kind of authoritarian regime impossible.

The war was in some measure a class conflict, but the divi-
sion of opinion among the Americans did not wholly corre-
spond with class lines. A majority of the poorer classes sup-
ported independence. The urban mechanics had been the
most vigorous opponents of British control ever since the
Stamp Actj and after the war started most of the fighting
was done by the farmers, particularly by men from the West-
ern frontier communities. On the other hand there were
farming areas in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and
eastern Pennsylvania, and in the back country of Georgia
and the CaroHnas, where, as a result of economic interest,
local political conflicts, inertia, or recent immigration, the
bulk of the population remained Loyalist. Among the wealth-
ier classes, the Southern planters were predominantly in favor

The Revolution 97

of independence j they had little fear of democracy, and re-
sented British economic control. Any doubts they may have
felt were removed in the autumn of 1775, when the royal
governor of Virginia called for a slave rebellion. In the North
the upper class of landowners and merchants was divided.
Probably a majority were Loyalist, particularly in New York
and Pennsylvania; but a strong minority, including the bolder
and more enterprising of the merchants, were for independ-
ence. But the most active leaders of the Revolution in the
North were men who had previously been excluded from
political power because of their lack of wealth and family
prestige.

The only crime committed by most of the Loyalists was
that they held political opinions different from those adopted
by a majority of the Americans; but they were potentially
dangerous, and it was necessary to deal with them. At the
outset of the war the radical committees visited persons who
were suspected of being actively Loyalist and deprived them
of their weapons. The more dangerous were arbitrarily ar-
rested and placed in prison, while a few underwent the painful
and humiliating experience of being publicly tarred and
feathered or ridden on rails, while their houses were ran-
sacked by bands of patriots. The spectacle of some wealthy,
dignified, and class-conscious merchant or landowner being
treated in this unceremonious fashion by a group of farmers
or mechanics directed by a radical committeeman convinced
many conservatives that all their fears of democracy were
thoroughly justified. A new type of man was achieving
power in America; and for lovers of the old regime it meant
the end of civilization. 4 In the later stages of the war, when
thousands of Loyalists were serving in the British army and

4 Crevecceur was one of those who disliked the political changes
brought about by the Revolution. Speaking of the radical politicians who
were assuming power in rural areas, he declared: "The hypocrisy, sly-
ness, cupidity, inhumanity and abuse of power in these petty country
despots are evident and manifest. . . . Ambition, we well know, an ex-
orbitant love of power and thirst of riches, a certain impatience of gov-
ernment, dad under the garb of patriotism and even of constitutional
reason, have been the secret but true foundations of this, as well as of
many other revolutions." Sketches of Eighteenth Century America
(printed 1925), pp. 251, 254.

98 The American People

others were giving the British information and supplies, the
state governments adopted the most stringent anti-Loyalist
legislation. Their property was confiscated; and they were
completely deprived of all political and legal rights. Probably
about eighty thousand Loyalists went into exile during the war.
A very much larger number of Americans sympathized with
Loyalism but did not commit themselves so openly as to make
it necessary for them to become refugees. The ruthless treat-
ment of the Loyalists was a revolutionary procedure that can-
not be justified by anything except stringent necessity. Its
effect was to weaken that element in America which supported
aristocratic principles of government.

The chief achievements of the Revolution, apart from the
winning of independence from Great Britain, were to be
found in the new state constitutions adopted during the war.
The general trend was toward agrarian democracy, though
this went much farther in some states than in others. In
general, the franchise was widely extended, so that most
farmers acquired the right to votej and the Western regions
were given fair representation in the legislatures. The trans-
fer of power from the seaboard aristocracies to the small
farmers was symbolized by the movement inland of a number
of the state capitals/ The democratic groups believed in a
system of outright and direct majority rule, in which almost
all powers should be given to a unicameral legislature subject
to reelection at frequent intervals. Their ideas were realized
most completely in the new constitution of Pennsylvania,
drafted by a convention in which Franklin was the presiding
office^ and bitterly opposed not only by Loyalists but also by
merchants, such as Robert Morris, who supported independ-
ence. At the other extreme were the constitutions of Massa-
chusettSjL Virginia, and South Carolina, in which the wealthy
classes were able to retain a considerable measure of control.
After the adoption of these new constitutions, men of a new
type were elected to political office even in those states which

5 State capitals were moved inland daring the revolutionary period in
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, and soon after-
wards in New York and Pennsylvania. Attempts to move the capitals of
Massachusetts and Maryland were unsuccessful.

The Revolution 99

had remained most conservative. Rural lawyers with small-
farmer affiliations, like Patrick Henry in Virginia and George
Clinton in New York, sat in the chairs from which the royal
governors of Great Britain had been expelled.

Equally important were the economic reforms of the Revo-
lution. The state legislatures came into possession both of the
estates of the big Loyalist landowning families and of the
public lands that had formerly belonged to the crown. These
were broken into small farms and either sold or distributed in
the form of bounties to soldiers. Unfortunately, speculators
were able to take advantage of this legislation, but the intenr
tion was to democratize more fully the ownership of property.
The same objective was sought by the abolition in almost all
the states of the laws of primogeniture and entail; the pur-
pose was to- hasten the rapid subdivision of those big estates
which remained and to make it impossible for any landed
aristocracy to perpetuate itself in America, Such measures
indicated a conscious intention of extending the "general
happy mediocrity" of American society. At the same time
another European survival the privileged position of the
Anglican Church was abolished j except in New England,
church and state were separated and religious freedom estab-
lished.

All this was revolution in the complete meaning of the
word. It was an assertion of the new American principles of
freedom and equality, and an application of them to the
economic system and the distribution of property as well as to
political institutions. It was a repudiation of the European
principles of class hierarchy and authoritarian government
But meanwhile the War of Independence had to be won.
There were several periods between 1775 and 1782 when it
seemed possible that the revolutionary cause could not main-
tain itself, and that the mass of the people, weary of the war
and despairing of victory, would swing back to an acceptance
of British rule. History is not kind to lost causes, and if this
had happened, the fathers of the American republic would
presumably have been remembered as a discredited group of
radical adventurers, while Loyalist leaders like Hutchinson
of Massachusetts, De Lancey of New York, and Galloway of

i oo The American People

Pennsylvania would have figured as the real heroes of the
conflict.

That a democratic people should be able to fight a success-
ful war appears, at first sight, to be paradoxical. By its nature,
war necessitates an exercise of authority and coercion that is
a negation of democratic ideals. Military discipline is incom-
patible with a democratic equality and freedom, A democracy
that proposes to wage war efficiently must take the risk of
temporarily becoming authoritarian. Yet on the other hand
those qualities which bring success in war the qualities of
initiative, inventiveness, and moral conviction develop more
fully in a democracy than under a system that is always organ-
ized for war. A democracy that temporarily adopts military
discipline will always fight a war more successfully (other
things being equal) than a society in which military discipline
is permanent. And the citizen-soldier, once he has learned the
techniques of warfare, will usually defeat the professional as
a result of his greater capacity for initiative and his superior
morale. The American people excel all others in warfare pre-
cisely because they are the least military of all peoples during
peacetime.

The military ability of the American was fully demon-
strated in the War of Independence. The young men who led
the American armies had previously been planters, lawyers,
merchants, storekeepers, or farmers, and most of them had
had no experience whatever of any kind of warfare j yet these
men showed more enterprise and initiative, and in the long run
made fewer serious mistakes, than the professional generals of
Great Britain. The American private soldier had at first no no-
tion of discipline j he was inclined to disobey orders and to de-
sert in periods of difficulty $ and in some of the earlier battles he
showed a disconcerting tendency to run away. But he could
always shoot better than the British, and with proper training
and firm leadership he learned finally how to fight better.
The stupidity and the lack of enterprise displayed by the
British generals in America have always puzzled historians,
who have been driven to suggest that perhaps some of them
did not really want to win the war at all. But by eighteenth-
century professional standards Generals Howe, Burgoyne,

The Revolution 101

Clinton, and Cornwallis were competent officers who did well
in campaigns against other European powers. It is by con-
trast with the Americans that they appear mediocre or worse.
The same difference between the inertia of the professional
and the energy and imagination of the citizen-soldier showed
itself in the wars of the French Revolution two decades later.

But though the Americans were superior as soldiers, they
were unable during the War of Independence to make their
superiority effective because of their refusal to submit to any
authoritarian government, even as a temporary expedient.
Neither the Continental Congress nor the state governments
had sufficient power to conscript troops, money, and supplies.
The Congress paid its expenses by issuing paper, which de-
preciated in value and eventually became completely worth-
less. The inflation and the general disorder enabled clever and
unscrupulous business men to make fortunes and to live in
the greatest luxury. Government contracts, privateering, and
speculation in land and currency created a ttotweau. riche plur
tocracy who emerged from the war with the pretensions of a
new ruling class, more enterprising than the Loyalist aristoc-
racy whom they aspired to succeed, but less cultured and
public-spirited. Meanwhile, in a country with nearly two mil-
lion white inhabitants, it proved to be impossible to keep to-
gether an army of sufficient size to win decisive victories. At
one time or another, more than one hundred thousand Ameri-
cans were recruited into the Continental Army, but relatively
few of them were willing to serve for more than a few months
at a time. At no period were there more than twenty thousand
men available for active service at one time, and during a
large part of the war the number dropped to about five thou-
sand, whereas the troops at the disposition of the British
generals varied between twenty and forty thousand.

Even an army of five thousand could not be adequately
fed and clothed. The American soldiers rarely had enough to
eat, and could often live at all only by raiding the farms in
their neighborhood. The nearest approach to a uniform was
the grey linen hunting shirt worn by regiments from the
Southern frontier; most soldiers had to wear their own clothes
until they were torn to shreds. There were periods when a

IO2 The American People

considerable part of the army was unable to take the field be-
cause the men quite literally had nothing to cover themselves
with, not even breeches. Men served through winters without
blankets and made forced marches on frozen ground without
shoes. When the Continental Army shifted its headquarters,
it usually left behind a trail of blood from the feet of its sol-
diers. When one considers the hardships endured by the
private soldier under Washington, the lack of any commen-
surate rewards, and the relative comfort -of civilian life, it is
astonishing that even five thousand men were willing to con-
tinue fighting for the independence of America.

But for Washington's strength of will and powers of com-
mand, the army might have evaporated completely, so that
the British would have won the war by default. This taciturn,
reserved, and diffident Virginia wheat-farmer, whom Conr
gress, on the motion of John Adams, had appointed to com-
mand the army, never revealed himself to his contemporaries,
and is still no easy man to understand. Unlike most of the
political leaders of the Revolution, he was not an intellectual
and had little interest in general ideas or theories of govern-
ment. And he was lacking in the quickness and self-assurance
that have characterized so many American men of action. He
reached conclusions slowly, and always listened to advice be-
fore making a decision. But he had that elemental personal
force and power, the possessor of which always dominates
whatever company he enters j and this basic energy, which
might easily have been turned to violent and sinister purposes,
was bridled by an equally vigorous moral integrity and sense
of moral principle. Incapable of real personal intimacy, he
did not give the appearance of being a happy man 5 and he
was more interested in material things than in human beings.
Primarily, he liked to express his will creatively in some con-
crete and visible form. He was the most efficient and the most
experimental farmer of his time, and he dreamed of clearing
forests, building canals, and founding colonies in the West.
In this enthusiasm for material development he was perhaps
a better representative of the American future than any of his
contemporaries. He brought the same constructive energy to
his task of holding together the soldiers whom Congress had

The Revolution 103

put under his command and transforming them into a genuine
army.

Washington's most essential achievement was to keep an
army in the field through the seven years of the war. As long
as he could do this, the Americans were not defeated 5 but it
is doubtful if they would ever have been victorious if they
had not finally received effective military, naval, and financial
assistance from France. What enabled them to win their in-
dependence was the transformation of the war into a world-
wide conflict between British and French imperialism. Hoping
to break up the British Empire and to regain colonies they
had lost in previous wars, the French aided the Americans
from the beginning, and became full belligerents in 1778.
Thenceforth the British had to fight in Europe and the West
Indies as well as in North America. And though French
military and naval assistance to the Americans was at first
disappointing, it proved to be decisive in the final stages of
the war.

The British could have won the war if they could have in-
duced the bulk of the American people to abandon the hope
of independence, and they probably came closest to it in 1779
and 1780. During the earlier campaigns in 1776 and 1777,
General Howe won most of the battles, but the Americans
did not lose their self-confidence. In 1776, after the loss of
New York and the disastrous retreat across New Jersey,
Washington was able to strike back at Trenton and Princeton j
and in 1777, Washington's defeats in front of Philadelphia
were counterbalanced by the victory of Gates and Arnold
over Burgoyne at Saratoga. But in the later phases of the war
the main British army, now under the command of Sir Henry
Clinton, with headquarters at New York, settled down to a
war of attrition, raiding and laying waste American territories.
Washington's troops, established farther up the Hudson,
could do little to check these activities. At the same time an-
other British army under Cornwallis was winning control
over Georgia and the Carolinas, with the assistance of a large

o * o

number of Loyalists. In these southern states there was a
most ferocious civil war between the partisans of British rule
and those of independence. Both Loyalists and Patriots

1 04 The American People

formed guerrilla bands that plundered, murdered, and dev-
astated the countryside with very little compunction or dis-
crimination. Meanwhile the Congress no longer had either
authority or prestige, and was on the verge of total bankrupcy.
Sections of the army mutinied because they were not being
paid, and the whole of Washington's forces seemed fre-
quently on the verge of dissolution. This was probably the
blackest period of the war for the Americans.

The real turning point came in the autumn of 1780, when
frontiersmen from the Carolina back country destroyed a
Loyalist army at King's Mountain. This was followed by
American victories over the British forces in the South, won
by the leadership of a Quaker ironmaster from Rhode Island,
Nathaniel Greene, and of a farmer and wagoner from the
Virginia frontier, Daniel Morgan. Cornwallis was compelled
to take refuge on the seacoast at Yorktown, where, in October
1781, he was attacked by Washington and compelled to sur-
render. This final victory was made possible only by effective
co-operation from the French: a French fleet blockaded York-
town by sea, and nearly half of the land forces under Wash-
ington's command were French. After the surrender of
Yorktown, the British still held New York and several sea-
ports in the South, but they preferred to make peace with the
Americans rather than run the risk of losing India and other
parts of their empire to the French by a prolongation of the
war. In 1782, a treaty was signed by which Great Britain
conceded American independence and accepted American sov-
ereignty over the Western territories as far as the Mississippi.

In spite of their final victory, the Americans found the war
a disillusioning experience. They had won their independence,
but they could no longer believe so firmly in the principles of
individual freedom and equality that they had asserted with
such confidence at the beginning of the conflict. The war had
been prolonged through seven dreary years chiefly because of
the lack of any strong government capable of enforcing dis-
cipline, and obedience and of conscripting men and supplies.
The effect was to cause a reaction back to the European prin-
ciples of authority and the leadership of an elite. This reaction
was most conspicuous among the army officers, who had had

The Revolution 105

the most vivid experience of the evils of weak government
It is not surprising that at the end of the war some of them
should have wanted Washington to overthrow Congress by
a military coup tfetaty and that almost all of them should
have become advocates of a central government with real
coercive power. This change of attitude can be traced in the
writings of such a man as Alexander Hamilton, who in 1775
was one of the most ardent exponents of American rights and
principles, but who, after seven years' experience as an army
officer, wished America to adopt a government modeled as
closely as possible on that of Great Britain. It had become
plain to many Americans that the loose, undisciplined, and
easygoing ways of an agrarian democracy, however much
they might promote the individual pursuit of happiness, did
not lead to national wealth and power. This widespread
change of attitude was one of the most significant consequences
of the War of Independence. It was to result, a few years
later, in the formation of the federal constitution.

106] CHAPTER VI

The Constitution

WITH the destruction of British rule the 'rival
forces in American society came more directly
into conflict with each other. The aristocratic
principle had gained new strength as a result of
the disillusioning experiences of the War of Independence;
and it was now represented not only by those wealthy fami-
lies who had supported the Revolution and had not been ex-
pelled for Loyalism, but also by a new group of speculators
and merchants who had grown rich during the war. The
conflict between the European ruling-class concept of govern-
ment and the American doctrine of equality continued for the
next half-century. It was not until the Jacksonian era that
the evolution toward political democracy was completed.
^ The most conspicuous results of this conflict were political,
but the main issues were at all times economic. Eighteenth-
century Americans were not in the habit of divorcing politics
from economics; on the contrary, they generally viewed po-
litical conflicts in economic terms and regarded political power
as a means for securing economic privilege. The economic
basis of politics was more apparent to Americans than it was
to Europeans, perhaps because it had been demonstrated more
clearly in American experience. To a large extent the Ameri-
can aristocratic groups, particularly the big landowners, had
initially obtained their economic privileges by the use of po-
litical influence. The processes by which they had obtained
their property were not hidden in the distant past, as in the
case of the feudal aristocracy of Europe.

The Americans were a nation of property owners, and tlieir
economy was dynamic and expansionist. The typical Ameri-
can was a man who wished not only to retain the property he
had, but also to improve it and enlarge it. As De Tocqueville
remarked, every poor American hoped to become rich, and

The Constitution 107

every rich American was afraid of becoming poor. 1 All Amer-
icans, rich and poor, believed that the state should protect
property rights and that it should promote economic oppor-
tunity and free enterprise. Locke's doctrine of natural rights
was not disputed by any American, whether aristocratic or
democratic. But though the Americans wej-e in essential agree-
ment on this basic principle, they differed as to its application.
In particular, they differed as to which kind of property most
needed protection. This difference was perhaps the main di-
viding line in American politics*

Locke's explanation of the origin of property rights was
as follows: "Every man has a 'property' in his own person;
this nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his
body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.
Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath
provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with it, and
joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it
his property. It being by him removed from the common
state nature placed it in, it hath by this labor something an-
nexed to it that excludes the common right of other men . . .
at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common
for others. 7 ' 2

Such an explanation of how property became private might
have been written with the American pioneer in mind. The
pioneer went into the wilderness while it was "in the state
that nature hath provided and left it in"} he carved out a
piece of farmland and "mixed his labor with it^j and thereby
he made it his own private property. This was the kind of
property right that the American fanner understood and be-
lieved in, and which he felt that the state ought to protect.

But mixing their labor with the wilderness was not the only
way in which Americans acquired property. If they belonged

1 "The desire of acquiring the comforts of the world haunts die imagi-
nation of the poor, and the dread of losing them that of the rich. . . .
I never met in America any citizen so poor as not to cast a glance of
hope and envy on the enjoyments of the rich or whose imagination did
Dot possess itself by anticipation of those good things that fate still ob-
stinately withheld from him.** A. de Tocqueville: Democracy m America,
VoL II, Second Book, Chap. X.

3 John Locke: Of Civil Government, Book II, Chap. 5.

1 08 The American People

to the privileged classes, they might also obtain it as a result
of political influence or by commercial and financial methods.
They could secure grants of Western land from the govern-
ment, with the right to collect rents from the farmers who
were "mixing their labor" with it 5 they could acquire farm
mortgages by lending money to farmers, and could deprive
the farmers of their land if the debts were not repaid j and
they could obtain from state legislatures charters by which
they were authorized to establish certain forms of business
enterprise and were sometimes given virtually monopolistic
rights for example, in the construction of a road or a bridge
or in the establishment of a bank. Property rights of this kind
came under the general heading of contracts. When the richer
classes spoke of the protection of property rights as one of the
chief functions of government, what they meant was that the
government must maintain the sanctity of contracts and must
see to it that the obligations of contracts were enforced.

The difference between the property that had originated
in the mixing of human labor with the wilderness and the
property that had been acquired by means of a contract was
never sharply defined. It was, in fact, impossible to draw any
clear line of demarcation between these two forms of property.
Yet this difference is the clue to much of the political con-
troversy of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America.
x ~The moneyed classes whose property was derived from
contracts were a small minority of the total population; and
they believed that their rights would be endangered by any
democratic system of government based on outright majority
rule. Their chief political objective, as Madison expressed it
in 1787, was therefore "to protect the minority of the opulent
against the majority." 3 Distrusting the mass of the people,
and believing in the rule of the "gentlemen of principle and
property" and of "the wise, the rich and the well-born," they
wanted a system of government under which the sanctity of
contracts would be legally guaranteed against democratic in-
terference. At the same time they also wanted a government
with broad positive powers to regulate economic develop-

3 Max Farrand: Records of the Federal Constitution of 1787 (1937)*
Vol. I, p. 431-

The Constitution 109

ment, in order that men with political influence could con-
tinue to obtain land titles, monopolies, and other forms of
economic privilege. The greatest exponents of this point of
view were Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall.

This conception of government promised not only to pro-v
tect the property of the rich, but also to encourage business
enterprise and hasten the growth of American wealth and
power. It was, in fact, the chief link between the aristocracy
of the eighteenth century and the capitalism that succeeded it
and developed out of it. But its distrust of the people and its
belief in the leadership of an elite were derived from Euro-
pean traditions, and if it was allowed to prevail, it would
transform America into another Europe. It would gradually
destroy that "general happy mediocrity" which was the most
remarkable feature of eighteenth-century American society.
There were other Americans who approved neither of aristoc-
racy nor of capitalism, and who regarded this "general happy
mediocrity" as America's greatest blessing. Such men began
to work out a theory of government appropriate to those
classes, comprising the vast majority of the population, who
had acquired property not through contracts but by labor in
other words, to the farmers, the mechanics, and those planters
who were interested solely in agriculture and not also in land
speculation. The resultant philosophy of agrarian democracy,
which first began to take shape during the revolutionary
period in the writings and political programs of men like
Franklin and Jefferson, which was systematized a generation
later by John Taylor, and which was carried further by the
Jacksonians and in the early judicial decisions of Roger
Taney, was profoundly American, in spite of its indebtedness
to European thinkers. It borrowed some of its concepts from
Locke, from' the French physiocrats, and from Adam Smith 5 4

*Adam Smith is widely regarded as a spokesman of early capitalism.
Actually his viewpoint was similar to that of the American agrarians.
The main purpose of The Wealth of NattOTjs was to oppose government
intervention in economic matters on the ground that it resulted in mo-
nopolies and special privileges for the business classes. He advocated
competition as die best method of ensuring that businessmen would genu-
inely serve the public interest, and assumed that in a regime of free
competition property would be widely distributed. In Smith's opinion the
interests of the landed and laboring classes were generally identical with

no The American People

but essentially it was a formulation of American ideals and a
reflection of American experience, and its purpose was to
perpetuate those features of colonial society which had made
America so markedly different from Europe*
* In the opinion of the agrarians the reason for the evils of
European society was not merely the lack of political freedom
or the perpetuation of hereditary distinctions j it was the use
of political power by a ruling class in order to secure economic
advantages. "Kings, nobles and priests," Jefferson declared,
had formed "an abandoned conspiracy against the happiness
of the mass of the people" and had acquired the privilege of
living in idleness at their expense. "Still further to constrain
the brute force of the people, they deem it necessary to keep
them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take
from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that
unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient sur-
plus barely to sustain a scanty and miserable life. And these
earnings they apply to maintain the privileged orders in
splendor and idleness, to fascinate the eyes of the people, and
exdte in them a humble adoration and submission, as to an
order of superior beings." In such a society "every man must
be either pike or gudgeon, hammer or anvil" j and the gov-
ernment was a rule of <c wolves over sheep," of "kites over
pigeons." 5

How different was the society that had developed in Amer-
ica, in which the vast majority of the people were independent
fanners and were neither exploiters nor the victims of ex-
ploitation! Both Franklin and Jefferson followed the French
physiocrats in arguing that agriculture was the only honest
way of life because it was the only occupation that actually
created new wealth j all other methods of making a living

those of the community as a whole; the special interests of the business
classes were contrary to those of the community- (since they usually
wished to restrict production and to keep prices high). Competition was
usually disliked by businessmen, and was a necessary measure of disci-
pline. The American agrarians generally spoke of Smith with strong ap-
proval, while the exponents of business enterprise (such as Hamilton)
criticized him.

5 Letter to Wythe, Aug. 13, 1786; Letter to William Johnson, June iz,
18x3; Letter to Rutledge, Aug. 6, 1787.

The Constitution in

were parasitical. "There seem to be but three ways for a na-
tion to acquire wealth," said Franklin. "The first is by war,
as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors.
This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally
cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way,
wherein one receives a real increase of the seed thrown into
the ground, in a kind of continual miracle." The great virtue
of American society was that it was composed mainly of pro-
ducers of this "real increase/' This happy condition might
not endure indefinitely j the supply of vacant land, even in
America, was limited, and when it was exhausted Americans
might lose their economic freedom. Franklin predicted that
America would lose its unique features when "the lands are
all taken up and cultivated, and the excess of people who
cannot get land" would be thrown out of employment
"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Eu-
rope," declared Jefferson with greater emphasis, "we shall be-
come corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as
they do there." But with a vast empty continent before them
the Americans need not expect such a fate for centuries.*

From this economic analysis the agrarians deduced thdof
political philosophy. Their primary objectives were to main-
tain a genuine equality of economic opportunity and to make
it impossible for men to acquire wealth by any methods ex-
cept their own industry and talent. They believed in a de-
mocracy of small property owners, and by democracy they
meant outright majority rule; the government should be as
close to the people, and as responsive to the people, as it was
possible to make it. Jefferson agreed that democracy might
be dangerous in Europe, where the mass of the people had
suffered for so long from poverty, ignorance, and exploita-
tion; but among the American farmers, "enjoying in ease and
security the full fruits of their own industry, enlisted by all
their interests on the side of law and order, habituated to
think for themselves, and to follow their reason as their
guide," it was the only just form of government. 7 While the

*Carl Van Doren: op, ch, pp. 372, 705; Thomas Jefferson, Letter to
James Madison, Dec. 20, 1787.
T Letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823.

1 1 2 The American People

moneyed interests wished to limit majority rule in order to
protect "the minority of the opulent," the agrarians saw no
such necessity j in America, where the masses of the people
were property owners, and not a degraded proletariat as in
Europe, the majority could be trusted.
"Yet while the agrarians believed that government should
represent the will of the majority, they also believed that its
functions should be mainly negative rather than positive.
They regarded any form of power, no matter who exercised
It, as potentially dangerous j this was the strongest of their
convictions, and the one that shows most clearly their political
wisdom. "Mankind," said Jefferson,' "soon learn to make in-
terested uses of every right and power which they possess.
. . , The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and
government to gain ground," * The true function of govern-
ment was to maintain order. "A wise and frugal government,
which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which
shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits
of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the
mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This," he said in his
First Inaugural) "is the sum of good government." Govern-
ment should not only be prohibited from interfering with the
rights of individuals and from creating a large bureaucratic
class who could live at public expense 5 it should also be pre-
vented from intervening in economic matters, since the effect
of any such intervention was always to transfer property and
to establish some form of economic privilege. The greatest of
all dangers to democratic freedom and equality was the use of
political power by an aristocracy, a bureaucracy, a mercantile
oligarchy, a pressure group, or any other minority interest in
order to increase their wealth or to obtain the privilege of
living parasitically on other men's labor.

^/ Holding such opinions, the agrarians did not look with
favor on those forms of property which were acquired by

^contract and not by labor. They believed with Jefferson that

"the earth is given as a common stock for men to labor and

live on," and that the only natural right of property was "the

fundamental right to labor the earth. . . . Stable ownership

6 Notes an Vtrghiia, Query XIII; Letter to Carrington, May 27, 1788.

The Constitution 113

is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of
society." And since contractual property rights were created
by society and not by nature, it followed that society could
alter them. "Whenever there are in any country uncultivated
lands and unemployed poor," said Jefferson, "it is clear that
the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate
natural right." Society could, for example, change the kws
of inheritance in order to enforce the subdivision of proper-
ties. And since, as Jefferson declared, "the earth belongs in
usufi^ict to the living" and "the dead have neither powers
nor rights over it/ 3 it followed that debts and other con-
tractual obligations need not, if society so decided, be handed
down from one generation to the next. In general, society
had the right to break the dead hand of the past in order to
prevent the perpetuation of economic inequalities and eco-
nomic privileges. This did not mean that the state should
Intervene directly in economic affairs in order to transfer
property 5 but since the general laws regulating the transmis-
sion of property were made by the state, they could also be
altered by the state in order to preserve "the fundamental
right of all men to kbor the earth" and to enjoy the fruits of
their own kbor. 9

This agrarian philosophy of government was optimistic,-
idealistic, and humanitarian j it was based on a realistic analy-
sis of society j and it reflected, or appeared to reflect, the
wishes and interests of the vast majority of eighteenth-century
Americans. Even today the ideal of a property owners' de-
mocracy probably has a stronger appeal to most Americans than
either of the rival ideologies of big-business capitalism and of
socialism. Yet it cannot be maintained that American society
has developed in conformity with agrarian principles or that
it is still characterized by any "general happy mediocrity."
Americans have always liked the economic individualism and
independence, the freedom from coercion, regimentation, and
exploitation, that the agrarians offered them; but they have
never been willing to pay the price that agrarianism would
have required.

* Letter to Rev. James Madison, Oct. 28, 1785; Letter to James Madison,
Sept, d, 1789.

American People

At the heart of the agrarian philosophy was a confidence
in human nature. The agrarians rejected all authoritarian and
aristocratic doctrines in the belief that men were good by
nature and not merely as a result of social discipline or in-
doctrination. When men lost their economic independence
and became degraded by poverty and exploitation (as in the
cities of Europe), their moral intuitions might become per-
verted and destroyed j but in America men could be trusted
to behave virtuously. Man, declared Jefferson, had an innate
"sense of right and wrong," which was <c as much a part of his
nature as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling." 10 To make
men good it was necessary only to make them free. This con-
fidence in human nature is one of the essential foundations of
the American democratic faith j for if the moral sense is not
innate, then it follows that men need authoritarian guidance
and indoctrination. But in insisting on the innate virtue of
individuals, the spokesmen of agrarian democracy did not
sufficiently recognize the extent to which individual behavior
is shaped and conditioned by prevalent social values and atti-
tudes and by institutions. The preservation of the agrarian
ideal required more than individual freedom j it required also
the support of appropriate institutions and of a general view
of life. And neither the American view of life nor American
institutions tended to encourage the kind of behavior that
was needed for the preservation of the agrarian economy.
""> In a country governed in accordance with agrarian ideals,
s manufacturing could have developed only very slowly, since
there would have been no large accumulations of capital and
no supplies of cheap labor* But a people like the Americans,
with their drive towards the conquest and exploitation of
nature, could not be persuaded to reject the promise of wealth
and power through rapid industrial development and to con-
tent themselves with a relatively static economy. Nor were
the Americans, as individuals, ever willing to forego the hope
of making money through speculation and through the use
of political influence. A nation in which every poor man
hoped to become rich and every rich man was afraid of be-
coming poor could not conduct its affairs with the austerity

^Letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787.

The Constitution 115

and self-restraint that agrarianism would have required.
Americans were never prepared to reject any way of making
a fortune that was not positively illegal, in the eighteenth
century as in the twentieth* Indeed, almost every prominent
figure in eighteenth-century America, including a number
whose political alignments were with the agrarians, engaged
in land speculation j and many of them were interested in a
bewildering variety of different business enterprises, which
often involved political manipulation. With the vast resources
of an empty continent to pre-empt and exploit, very few in-
dividuals were ever prepared to live by agrarian principles.
One must not, in fact, look for much consistency among
American political leaders and thinkers. Although two op-
posite and clearly articulated philosophies of government can
clearly be traced in all the political controversies of the post-
Revolutionary period, they were never fully embodied in
individuals. In practice, men frequently changed sides and
advocated different ideas with bewildering rapidity.

It is significant that the most consistent exponents of
agrarianism came from Virginia. The Virginia society of this
period was more static than that of any other part of the
United States 5 it lacked the restlessness and the dynamism
that were generally characteristic of Americans. And while it
would be unfair to emphasize the incongruity between the
liberal principles of the agrarians and their ownership of
slaves, it must be admitted that it was easier for a slaveowning
planter than it was for the average small farmer to glorify
the agrarian way of life and to denounce quick ways of mak-
ing money. In Virginia, in fact, agrarian principles eventually
crystallized into dogmas of the kind which cause political
fanaticism and make peaceful compromise impossible. Jeffer-
son and John Taylor were the intellectual fathers of Calhoun
and the Southern secessionists.

Of the two rival philosophies of agrarian democracy and
aristocratic capitalism, the former was closer to the conscious
ideals of Americans, but their actions were more frequently
in conformity with the latter. The final result was therefore
somewhat paradoxical. In the political sphere the democratic
forces were triumphantly successful. In the nineteenth cen-

1 1 6 The American People

tury, all remnants of class rule were swept away, and the
right of the plain people to control the government became
an American article of faith. This evolution was virtually
completed by the 1830*5, and there has been no essential
change in the American political system since that date. In
the economic sphere, on the other hand, the agrarians lost
their battle to preserve the democracy of the small producers.
America became capitalistic instead of agrarian, and in doing
so it retained economic doctrines that had originally been as-
sociated with the aristocratic principle. American capitalism
was built on the sanctity of contracts and on the use of po-
litical power or influence to secure economic advantages. This
practice, which the agrarians had regarded as the most vicious
aspect of aristocracy, became, in fact, a normal feature of
American political life; originally developed by the moneyed
interests, it was eventually adopted also by the farmers and
by organized labor.

A political system based on equal rights for all and an
economic system characterized by the maintenance of special
privileges for a few were essentially incompatible with each
other. But they could be combined as long as there was an
open frontier and a rapidly expanding economy. Poor Ameri-
cans hoped to become privileged, and the number of those
who succeeded was enough to encourage the rest. Ultimately,
"however, Americans would have to make a choice. Between
Hamilton and Jefferson there could be no permanent recon-
ciliation.

The struggle between agrarian and capitalistic principles
lasted through the nineteenth century. Yet it can be argued
that the decisive engagement occurred at the very outset, and
that the agrarians were defeated when they had scarcely be-
gun to fight. For the American Constitution, drafted by the
Philadelphia Convention of 1787, was based on aristocratic
*and capitalistic principles. The importance of this convention
in determining the future development of America can
scarcely be overestimated. By accepting the Constitution, the

The Constitution 117

people of the United States were virtually deciding that they
should not remain a nation of small property owners, but that
they should become a capitalistic people, possessed of the
greatest wealth and power and of a high standard of living,
but divided by the most extreme economic inequalities.

In 1776 new principles of government, reflecting the pe-
culiar conditions of American society, had been asserted and
partially put into effect. The political groups then dominant
in a number of the states had believed that government
should be based on majority rule and should be as close to
the people as possible. Distrusting political power, they had
felt that the best government was the government that gov-
erned least, and had preferred a local government, which the
people might more easily control, to any form of centralized
authority. And they had wished to subdivide Kg estates and
to make it possible for every man to become a property
owner. These principles had reflected the vigorous and self-
confident individualism, verging on anarchy, of the American
fanners and mechanics. In 1787, on the other hand, fiftynfive
men, almost all of whom were wealthy merchants, lawyers
or landowners, met behind closed doors at Philadelphia in
order to draft the charter of a new central government for
the thirteen states. Most of them were agreed (according to
Edmund Randolph) that "the evils under which the United
States labpred" were due to "the turbulence and follies of
democracy," and that "some check therefore was to be sought
for against this tendency of our governments," Believing (as
Madison, Rutledge, and Gouverneur Morris explained) that
the chief objects of government were "the security of prop-
erty and public safety," they wished (in Madison's words)
"to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority."
And they hoped to accomplish these objectives by setting up
a central government with broad powers, based (as Madison
suggested) on "the policy of refining the popular appoint-
ments by successive filtrations," and by depriving the state
legislatures of any power to impair the obligations of con-

tracts.

u Max Ferrand: op. ck^ Vol. I, pp. 50, 51* 147-

1 1 8 The American People

That the Constitution was the product of a distrust of de-
mocracy is evident both from the speeches made at the Phila-
delphia Convention and from the debates of the state con-
ventions that ratified it. Why then did its framers believe
that a sufficient majority of the American people would be
willing to accept their proposals?

The best argument in favor of the Constitution was the
need for defense against foreign encroachments on American
rights. The United States was a nation in a world of nations,
and the western hemisphere was by no means isolated, either
politically or economically. Lacking a strong government, the
Americans had almost lost the War of Independence, and
after peace had been made, their welfare continued to be en-
dangered by the policies of other nations. The British, estab-
lished in Canada, had failed to withdraw their troops from
the Western territories, as provided in the peace treaty. The
Spaniards held Louisiana, and were interfering with Ameri-
can trade on the Mississippi and plotting to win 'control of
Kentucky and Tennessee. Meanwhile American merchants
were suffering from the exclusionist commercial policies of
all the European powers. Strong government is always a po-
^Jjential threat to the freedom of individuals; but as long as
the human race is divided into separate nations, whose rela-
tions with each other are determined mainly by force, it is
always necessary.

Another valid argument was the need to maintain unity
among the thirteen states. Different states were erecting cus-
toms barriers against each other, and were coming into con-
flict about boundaries and about claims to Western lands. On"
several occasions these conflicts resulted in a use of force and
seemed likely to lead to open warfare.
-"" But these were not the arguments that had the greatest
weight with the makers of the Constitution. Their strongest
motive was the defense of property against "the excess of
democracy." According to Madison they were influenced
chiefly by "the necessity of providing more effectually for the
security of private rights "and the steady dispensation of
justice. Interferences with these were evils which had, more

The Constitution > 119

perhaps than anything else, produced this convention." tt
The economic disturbances resulting from the War of lit-
dependence had sharpened the conflict between debtor and
creditor interests^ and in a number of the states, debtor in-
terests had succeeded in passing legislation acutely displeasing
to creditors. "Stay" laws were enacted, suspending the right
of creditors to foreclose on mortgages in default j and during
1785 and 1786 there was a widespread resort to inflation-
This tendency was finally brought under control, but creditor
groups were profoundly disturbed by it. Even more alarming
to the moneyed interests was what happened in Massachusetts.
In this state the merchants had continued to enjoy legal sup-
port in collecting their debtsj and in the autumn of 1786 the
fanners of the Connecticut Valley region, under the some-
what unwilling leadership of Daniel Shays, attempted to save
their farms by resorting to armed rebellion. The rebellion
was easily suppressed, but meanwhile the moneyed groups in
the state had been thrown into a state of panic They regaixled
the rebels, who were merely trying to save their own property
from confiscation, as the enemies of all property rights and
as the most dangerous revolutionaries.

The extraordinary fears of the aristocratic elements are
displayed most vividly in a letter written to George Wash-
ington from Boston by General Knox. Knox declared in hor-
ror that the creed of the farmers was "that the property of
the United States has been protected from the confiscation of
Britain by the joint exertions of all, and therefore ought to
be the common property of alL . . . This dreadful situation,
for which our government has made no adequate provision,
has alarmed every man of principle and property in New
England. They start as from a dream, and ask what can have
been the cause of this delusion? What is to give us security
against the violence of lawless men? Our government must
be braced, changed, or altered to secure our lives and prop-
erty. We imagined that the mildness of our government and
the wishes of the people were so correspondent that we were
not as other nations, requiring brutal force to support the
12 Ibid, VoU I, p. 154*

I2O The American People

laws. But we find we are men actual men, possessing all the
turbulent passions belonging to that animal, and that we must
have a government proper and adequate for him." "

The stay laws, the inflation, and the rebellion in Massa-
chusetts caused the aristocratic and business groups in all the
states to draw together. Composed partly of those elements in
the colonial aristocracies which had survived the Revolution,
and partly of merchants who had grown rich during the war,
these groups wished chiefly to set up a government that would
maintain the sanctity of contracts. Debts must be paid, a
sound currency must be maintained, and business enterprise
must have political protection and assistance. And as a result
of the debtor-class legislation and the inflationary excesses of
1785 and 1786, this point of view now won considerable sup-
.port among those middle-class citizens, neither creditor nor
debtor, who composed the majority of the population. Want-
ing economic tranquillity, many average Americans were
now somewhat disillusioned with democracy, and willing to
support a reversion to aristocratic leadership. It was this situ-
ation that made possible the calling of the Philadelphia Con-
vention. 1 *

The proceedings of this convention should not be inter-
preted in twentieth-century terms. That its members wished
**to protect the minority of the opulent" against the majority

"Quoted by V. L. Parrington: Main Currents m American Thought,
Vol. I, p, 277.

14 R. H. Lee summarized the situation as follows: "One party is com-
posed of littie insurgents, men in debt, who want no law, and who want a
share of die property of others; these are called Levellers, Shaysites, etc.
The other party is composed of a few, but more dangerous men, with
their servile dependents; these avariciously grasp at all power and prop-
erty; you may discover in all the actions of these men, an evident dislike
to free and equal government, and they go systematically to work to
change, essentially, the forms of government in this country; these are
called aristocrats, m ites, etc. Between these two parties is the weight of
the community: the men of middling property, men not in debt on the
one hand, and men, on the other, content with republican governments,
and not aiming at immense fortunes, offices and power. . . . These two
parties ... are really insignificant, compared with the solid, free, and in-
dependent part of the community.'* Quoted by V, L. Parrington: op. ck n
Vol. I, p. 291. According to Lee the aristocratic party was making use of
the alarm caused by the "littde insurgents" in order to win the support
of the "men of middling property "

The Constitution 1 2 1

did not mean that they wished to set up any authoritarian
system of government. In common with all other Americans,
they believed in individual freedom, in the maintenance of
civil liberty, and in republican principles of government. Nor
were they consciously motivated by personal arfebition or
crude self-interest. What determined their decisions was not
their own economic interests, but the political attitudes and
ideals into which they had been educated. That they were
capable of a noble humanitarianism is proved by the abhor-
rence of slavery expressed several times during their debates,
even by the extremely conservative Philadelphia merchant
Gouverneur Morris. There were no protests against the dec-
laration of Madison, representing the Southern state of Vir-
ginia, that "a mere distinction of color" had become the basis
of "the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over
man." u But these men belonged to the eighteenth century,
when democracy was still a new, alarming, and untested idea.
Differing from the agrarians in their conceptions of freedom
and property rights, they regarded it as almost self-evident
that the direct rule of the ignorant masses was dangerous,
and that the country should be guided by an elite of "gentle-
men of principle and property."

Such an attitude is understandable, yet it had little bads in
reality. The masses of whom they were afraid were not the
oppressed proletariat and peasantry of Europe, but the free
and independent property-owning farmers of America. And
perhaps the most striking characteristic of these eighteenth-
century merchants and planters was that they still thought
largely in European terms. The American society of that
epoch was unique j but there was as yet no developed theory
of government, even among the agrarians, that took account
of its unique features. So both for warnings of what to avoid
and for models to be imitated, the members of the convention
turned to the history of European countries, ancient and con-
temporary, quoting extensive precedents from the experience
of Greece, Rome, Holland, Germany, Poland, and Great
Britain. When they shuddered at the dangers of mob rule,
they were thinking of ancient city-states and of the mobs of

15 Max Farrand: op. cit., VoL I, p. 135.

122 The American People

London and Paris, not of the independent proprietors who
composed the chief democratic element in America. And when
they were horrified by Shays's Rebellion, they were identify-
ing it with European class struggles 5 they did not sufficiently
recognize that the farmers responsible for the rebellion were
fighting not for the destruction of all property rights, but for
the right to keep property of their own. The agrarian democ-
racy of the American states had a number of weaknesses,
which needed remedying; but the fear of the merchants was
derived from European, not from American, experience.
There was much truth in words written a number of years
later by Thomas Jefferson. "It must be agreed," he declared,
"that our governments have much less of republicanism than
ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people
have less regular .control over their agents, than their rights
and their interests require. And this I ascribe, not to any want
of republican dispositions in those who formed these Consti-
tutions, but to a submission of true principles to European
authorities, to speculators on government, whose fears of the
people have been inspired by the populace of their own great
cities, and were unjustly entertained against the independent,
the happy, and therefore orderly citizens of the United
States." 1 *

That the convention was legislating for Europeans and not
for Americans was pointed out by one of its members, Charles
Pinckney of South Carolina. In a long and carefully prepared
speech Pinckney insisted that **we cannot draw any useful
lessons from the example of any of the European states or
kingdoms," and that "the people of this country are not only
very different from the inhabitants of any state we are ac-
quainted with in the modern world ; but I assert that their
situation is distinct from either the people of Greece and
Rome, or of any state we are acquainted with among the
ancients." The essential characteristic which made the United
States unique was that "there is more equality of rank and
fortune in America than in any other country under the sun;
and this is likely to continue as long as the unappropriated
western lands remain unsettled. . . . Where," asked Pinck-
M Letter to John Taylor, May 28, 1816.

The Constitution 123

ney, "are the riches and wealth whose representation and pro-
tection is the peculiar province of this present body? Are they
in the hands of the few who may be called rich; in the
possession of less than a hundred citizens? Certainly not.
They are in the general body of the people, among whom
there are no men of wealth, and very few of real poverty."
And "this equality is likely to continue, because in a new
country, possessing immense tracts of uncultivated lands,
where every temptation is offered to emigration and where
industry must be rewarded with competency, there will be
few poor, and few dependent. . . . We have unwisely con-
sidered ourselves," he declared, "as the inhajritants of an old
instead of a new country.** 1T

This was the wisest speech delivered at the convention, but
does not appear to have exercised any influence on its pro-
ceedings. Nor did the convention pay much attention to the
suggestions of Benjamin Franklin, who was now old and
feeble, and whose recommendations, though heard with the
respect due to his reputation, were almost invariably ignored.
Most of the members remained convinced that the rights of
property would be genuinely endangered by majority rule,
in America as in Europe j and insofar as what they meant fay
property was not the ownership of a farm or a plantation but
the sanctity of commercial contracts, their distnist of democ-
racy was not without justification.

3

The Constitution drafted at Philadelphia may be viewed
from several different angles. It may be considered as a solu-
tion to the problem of federalism, as a method for protecting
"the minority of the opulent," and as a mechanism of legisla-
tion and administration. These different functions have been
performed with varying degrees of success.

The members of the convention showed themselves most
realistic and most farsighted in their handling of the federal
problem. Their task was to create a government strong
enough to protect the common interests of Americans, but not

1T Max Farrand: op. ck, Vol. I, pp. 397-4Q4-

124 Tfo American People

so strong that it would obliterate the sovereignty of the states*
This was substantially the problem that has presented itself,
in a much more difficult form, to the nations of the world in
the twentieth century. The clarity with which the convention
understood it is shown by their realization that the central
government must be more than a mere confederation of states 5
it must have direct sovereign power over individuals. As
Madison pointed out, the federal authority could not success-
fully coerce a state. "The use of force against a state would
look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of pun-
ishment, 3 ' and would destroy all the purposes of the union. 18
The government must therefore be able to use force directly
against any individual who broke its laws or failed to perform
the duties it prescribed. In this respect the makers of the
American Constitution showed a clear-sighted intelligence
that was lacking in their twentieth-century successors. Madi-
son would have known that the League of Nations would
prove unworkable.

But though the federal government must be sovereign, it
did not follow that it must be the sole repository of sover-
eignty. The convention solved its chief dilemma by the device
of dividing sovereign power 5 some forms of authority over
individuals were given to the new federal government, while
others remained with the states. Political logicians would have
regarded this as impossible 5 sovereignty was supposed to be
indivisible. But the members of the convention were realistic
enough to understand that what was impossible according to
the rules of logic might be wholly practical in reality.

For a period the convention was deadlocked by the demand
of the smaller states for equality with the larger states. Dela-
ware and New Jersey were alarmed by the superior size and
power of the big states, and convinced that if their rights
were not fully guaranteed they might be exploited, dom-
inated, and even conquered. This dispute shows very clearly
how far the members of the convention were thinking in
European and not in American terms. Such anxieties would
have been relevant if they had been planning a federation for
Europe, where men were divided by racial and linguistic dif-

The Constitution i ^ 5

ferencesj but in America, where nothing but geography dis-
tinguished a native of Delaware from a Pennsylvanian, there
was not the slightest reason for the insistence of the small
states on retaining an equality of sovereignty. The dispute
was settled permanently by the compromise under which the
states were to be represented equally in the Senate, while the
membership of the House of Representatives would be based
on population.

In attempting to protect the "minority of the opulent"
against majority interference, the members of the convention
were faced with a more difficult problem. One of their fa-
vorite ideas was that somehow wealth and numbers should
be balanced against one another j for example, the House of
Representatives might represent the people, while the Senate
might be based on the aristocratic principle. But they did not
dare to adopt property qualifications for admission to the
Senate or to give its members tenure for life, and the system
of election by the state legislatures was no guarantee of con-
servatism. The democratic trend in American society was, in
fact, so strong that the convention could not reverse it 5 after
British authority had been overthrown and the reforms of the
Revolutionary period had been enacted, there was no founda-
tion anywhere in America upon which any kind of permanent
aristocracy could be erected. It was suggested by Madison
that the formation of a large federal union would, of itself,
serve to protect minorities. In the states single economic
groups might achieve complete control 5 but in a large repub-
lic, in which there was a great diversity of interests and occu-
pations, the different groups would constantly check each
other, so that no compact majority could win power. Madi-
son's analysis, with its suggestion of the value of competition
between different pressure groups, proved to be a substan-
tially accurate prediction of how the American federal system
would develop; but as the Southern states were to discover,
both before and after the Civil War, minority interests were
not always secure against exploitation.

In general, the convention tried to limit democracy by
"refining" the popular will through a system of indirect elec-
tions for the Senate and the Presidency. At that period it was

126 The American People

assumed by all Americans that remote government meant un-
democratic government. When representatives were removed
from their constituents, either geographically or by indirect
election, they were more likely to act independently, and
more likely also to respond to pressure from aristocratic and
moneyed interests. By its very nature, therefore, the federal
government might be expected to be less responsive to popu-
lar sentiment than the local governments. In the outcome,
however, these attempts to check majority rule proved to be
unsuccessful. Indirect elections were no barrier to the growth
of democracy. And while the federal government has often
been influenced by moneyed interests, it cannot be maintained
that it has been less democratic than the state governments.
But though the convention failed in its attempt to limit ma-
jority control over the legislature, it accomplished its main
objective by other methods. Certain guarantees of property
rights were written into the constitution j in particular, state
governments were forbidden to issue paper money or to im-
pair the obligations of contracts. And the defense of the Con-
stitution was entrusted to a judiciary, which was independent
of popular control. Although the Supreme Court was not
explicitly given the power to invalidate state and federal
laws, there can be little doubt that it was expected to exercise
it. The statement about contracts was probably the most im-
portant single clause in the whole Constitution.

The Constitution is most open to criticism when it is con-
sidered as a mechanism of government. On the one hand, the
members of the convention wanted a government with broad
powers, which would protect and promote different economic
interests. On the other hand they believed that political
power was always dangerous. Citing numerous warnings from
European history, ancient and modern, different speakers
suggested that either the President or the majority of the
legislature might assume dictatorial authority, or that they
might become the hired agents of some foreign country. For
this dilemma they could find no satisfactory solution. Adopt-
ing the theory of separation of powers, with which they were
familiar both from American experience and from the writ-
ings of European theorists, they divided the executive from

The Constitution 127

the legislature, and made rigid rules providing for elections
at two- and four-year intervals- Such an arrangement estab-
lished guarantees against abuses of power by government of-
ficials j as long as the Constitution remained in force, neither
President nor Congress could arrogate dictatorial authority.
Unfortunately it also meant that responsibility was divided,
slowness and inefficiency were encouraged, and paralysing
conflicts between different branches of the government were
inevitable. In practice it is impossible to make any dear dis-
tinction between executive and legislative functions, and effi-
ciency is impossible unless (as under the parliamentary sys-
tem) the men who make the laws and those who supervise
their enforcement are in agreement with each other. But the
American Constitution did not make provision for ensuring
any such agreement* Even when the President and the ma-
jority of the Congress were of the same political opinions,
conflicts between them were likely to occur, and responsibility
for errors was difficult to 6x5 and when they were in opposi-
tion to each other it became difficult for any action whatever
to be taken. And as a result of the election rules and the
general lack of flexibility in constitutional procedure, con-
flicts could riot be settled by means of an appeal to the verdict
of the people. It was necessary to wait until the time ap-
pointed for the next Presidential or Congressional election*
In the course of time the Constitution acquired the qualities
of a mythological symboL Every nation needs some unifying
focus of loyalty to which the emotions of its citizens can be
attached} and among the Americans, who lacked a hereditary
monarchy, a long history, and a common blood and ancestry,
the Constitution performed this function. Just as in Great
Britain the King could do no wrong, so in the United States
the Constitution could do no wrong. According to popular
legend as developed during the nineteenth century, the
makers of the Constitution had been endowed with an almost
supernatural wisdom and foresight and had made provision
for almost every possible contingency. But the fact that the
Constitution actually worked, and has continued to work for
more than a century and a half, does not prove that it had any
extraordinary merits. The primary reason for the success of

128 The American People

the American form of government was not the wisdom of
the Philadelphia convention but the character and traditions
of the American people. Eighteenth-century Americans could
have made almost any constitution work.

Any form of government is essentially a complex of habits j
and since men change their habits slowly and only with re-
luctance and alarm, new institutions cannot be adopted if they
involve too sharp a break with previous custom. The most
perfect constitution will fail if it is suddenly imposed upon a
people unaccustomed to self-government. But as a result of
many generations of experience, not only in the colonies but
also in the England of the Stuarts and the medieval kings,
the American had become habituated to the election of repre-
sentatives, the acceptance of their decisions, the settlement of
disputes by legal procedure, and the judicial protection of
individual rights. They were willing to accept compromises,
and they were not torn apart by irreconcilable political ideol-
ogies. The Constitution was, in certain respects, an extremely
clumsy mechanism of government} It was successful because
of the political maturity of the nation that adopted it.

In the course of time, moreover, the Americans worked out
new political mechanisms, which were not incorporated into
the Constitution or foreseen by the men who made it, but
which were essential to its success. The chief of these was the
party system, which originated in the 1790*3 but which as-
sumed a new and permanent form, uniquely American, half
a century later. By means of the party system, the different
sectional and class interests acquired organization and coher-
ence, and the executive and the legislature were brought into
closer contact with each other. After the establishment of po-
litical democracy in the 1830*8, it was this system, and the
habits and conventions associated with it, which actually con-
trolled the political evolution of America. The Constitution
established the framework within which parties operated j but
insofar as the spirit was more important than the letter, the
party system was more important than the Constitution.

After the convention had finished its work, the Constitution
was submitted for ratification to specially elected conventions
in the different states^ The aristocratic and moneyed groups

The Constitution 129

were almost unanimously in favor of it; the agrarian elements
were preponderantly against it. Agrarian spokesmen com-
plained that too much authority was being concentrated in
the new federal government, and that civil liberty and demo-
cratic control were not sufficiently assured- R. H. Lee of
Virginia, for example, criticized the "strong tendency to aris-
tocracy now discernible in every part of the plan," and de-
clared that "every man of reflection must see that the change
now proposed, is a transfer of power from the many to the
few. 771 * But the agrarian opposition was disorganized and
lacking in outstanding leaders, and had no alternative pro-
gram of its own. After elections in which only about one third
ol the electorate appears to have voted, every state was per-
suaded to ratify. In a number of the states the majorities in
favor of the Constitution were narrow, and in several of
them the popular vote (though not the final vote of the state
conventions) was opposed to ratification. It is probable that
the Constitution would not have been ratified at all if it had
not been generally assumed that Washington would be the
first President, In order to remove the fears of the opposition,
it was agreed that the Constitution should be amended by the
addition of a Bill of Rights guaranteeing the essential liberties
of individuals against federal interference. These limitations
upon the power of the state have generally been regarded as
the most praiseworthy feature of the American form of gov-
ernment. It should be remembered that they were the work
not of the moneyed interests (who wanted a strong govern-
ment, provided that they could control it) but of the agrarian
and democratic elements who stood for the principle of
majority rule.

But once the verdict of the people had been fairly given
and the Constitution had been ratified, all groups loyally
accepted it and set out to make it work successfully. This
complete abandoning of opposition was followed by a curious
reversal of the original position of the two parties. The sup-
porters of ratification, known as Federalists, continued to be-
lieve in a strong federal government that would give positive
aid to business expansion, and began to extend federal power

** Quoted by V. L. Parrington: op. cic^ Vol. I, p. 290,

The American People

beyond the written words of the Constitution. The agrarian
elements (including a few persons who had supported the
Constitution, but consisting preponderantly of those who had
opposed it) now claimed that the Constitution itself was an
ideal form of government, provided that it was interpreted
narrowly and literally. Assuming the name of Republicans,
they accused the Federalists of violating it and of trying to
remodel it along European lines. Thus the original opponents
of the Constitution were transformed into its most enthusi-
astic champions.

Yet there can be little doubt that it was the Federalists who
were more faithful to the spirit of the Philadelphia Conven-
tion, if not always to the letter. And after the elections of
1800, when they lost control of the executive and the legisla-
ture, they continued to control the judiciary, from which their
spokesman, Jphn Marshall, handed down decisions protecting
the property rights of moneyed interests. These were de-
nounced by the Republicans as unconstitutional, but were ac-
tually in full accord with the initial purposes of the Constitu-
tion. In the long run, Marshall's verdicts maintaining the
sanctity of contracts had a greater influence on the develop-
ment of American society than all the electoral victories of
the agrarians. They created a legal structure within which
capitalism could develop, free from interference by agrarian
legislatures.

Obviously men must have a reasonable assurance that con-
tracts will generally be fulfilled} otherwise all economic ac-
tivity will be seriously impeded* On the other hand, when
f contracts are clearly contrary to justice or to the public inter-
est, they should be subject to revision. To consider all con-
tracts, of whatever nature, as sacred means that future
generations will be perpetually in subjection to the dead hand
of privilege and vested interest established in the past. But it
was this doctrine that all contracts, however acquired and
of whatever nature, were sacred which was preached by the
Federalists and upheld by John Marshall, and which became
the chief link between the aristocracy of the eighteenth cen-
tury and the capitalism of the nineteenth.

Marshall's classic assertion of the sanctity of contracts was

The Constitution 131

made in the Dartmouth College case* Dartmouth College
was a corporation that had acquired a charter in the year 1769.
When the state of New Hampshire tried to alter the charter
in order to transform the college into a state university, the
trustees of the college appealed to the law courts* Marshall
declared, in a verdict given in the year 1819, that a corpora-
tion charter should be regarded as a contract, and hence that
Dartmouth College was immune from political interference.
In this particular case (though not in the implications to be
drawn from it) Marshall's decision was probably in accord
with the public interest. The full meaning of the doctrine, as
interpreted by conservative judges, can be seen more vividly
in two more extreme examples: Fletcher versus Peck, and the
Charles River Bridge case,

Fletcher versus Peck resulted from the famous Yazoo lands
fraud. A corrupt Georgia legislature sold thirty-five million
acres of public land to companies interested in speculation at
a price of less than one and one-half cents an acre. The people
of Georgia were infuriated by the fraud, and the next legisla-
ture rescinded the sale. The matter eventually reached the
Supreme Court, which decided that the original sale was
legally a contract and therefore protected by the Constitution.
Actually the companies did not regain possession of the land,
but (in spite of violent protests by the extreme agrarians)
were paid compensation by the federal government.

The Charles River Bridge case was not decided by the
Supreme Court until 1 837, by which time Marshall was dead
and the agrarian Roger Taney was Chief Justice. In 1786
the State of Massachusetts had granted a charter to a cor-
poration for the purpose of building a bridge across the
Charles River and collecting tolls from all persons who used
it. Forty years later the corporation was still collecting tolls,
and its profits had amounted to thirty times its original in-
vestment, while the value of its stock had risen by two thou-
sand per cent. The Massachusetts legislature then voted that
a second bridge should be built, upon which no tolls should
be charged at the end of six years. The owners of the first
bridge claimed that this was a violation of their contract (even
though they had never been explicitly given monopolistic

j 3 2 The American People

rights). Taney, in accordance with his agrarian convictions,
supported the legislature, declaring that the public interest
was more important than the alleged property rights of the
bridge corporation. To the admirers of John Marshall such
a ruling was horrifying. They felt that the doctrine of the
sanctity of contracts had been repudiated, that all property
rights had become unsafe, and that the American government
no longer gave protection to the "minority of the opulent"
and had been perverted into a system of outright majority
rule. Marshall's friend Justice Story declared that "a case of
grosser injustice, or more oppressive legislation, never ex-
isted," while Chancellor Kent, the most famous legal scholar
in the country, asserted that the decision C undermines the
foundations of morality, confidence and truth. . . What
destruction of rights under a contract can be more complete?"
he asked. "We can scarcely avoid being reduced nearly to a
state of despair of the Commonwealth." **

^Quoted by A. M. Schlesinger, Jr.: The Age of Jackson (1945), p.
327-

CHAPTER VII [133

Capitalism and Agrarianism

1

most important problems confronting the new
federal government were in the sphere of foreign
policy. Most of the western hemisphere was con-
trolled by European empires, which would limit the
expansion and threaten the security of the United States, and
which were hostile to the republican principles that she repre-
sented. It was in dealing with this situation that the Americans
showed their political maturity most clearly.* Washington and
his immediate successors laid down the foundations of an
American foreign policy with a remarkable good judgment,
far-sightedness, and certainty of touch. By taking advantage
of European conflicts they achieved their main purposes so
successfully that for several generations thereafter Americans
were able to forget about international power politics.

The most vital American interest was security against any
possible attack. The expulsion or neutralization of the Euro-
pean imperialisms in the North American continent was there-
fore the principal American objective. If this was accom-
plished, then the Americans could settle the empty Western
territories and develop a peaceful way of life in complete
safety, instead of maintaining large armed forces, which
would be an economic burden and would inevitably stimulate
militaristic, authoritarian, and antirepublican attitudes: In the
eighteenth century the two oceans could be regarded as a
sufficient protection against threats from outside the western
hemisphere.

The second American interest was access to foreign markets,
and this had no hemispheric limits. American merchants
traded with Europe and with the Far East. American govern-
ments opposed commercial barriers, wished to see the destruc-
tion of closed mercantilist empires, and advocated an open-
door policy, seeking trading rights on equal terms with all
other nations rather than monopolistic privileges. And during

1 34 The American People

periods of European warfare, when neutral commerce was
restricted by blockades, they asserted the doctrine of the
freedom of the seas.

In addition to these vital material needs, Americans had an
interest in the extension of free institutions. The conflict be-
tween republicanism and autocracy, in the eighteenth century
as in the twentieth, necessarily affected international relations.
And while aristocratic Americans were inclined to support
aristocratic forces elsewhere, the democratic elements, who
believed that the United States represented new and beneficent
principles of government, wished to see these privileges ex-
tended to the whole human race. Such an attitude caused
them not only to support republican movements in other
countries but also to advocate the territorial enlargement of
the United States herself* This could easily degenerate into
a self-righteous imperialism, as occurred later in the nine-
teenth century when the slogan of "Manifest Destiny" be-
came popular $ yet it was not without justification. As long as
American practices were in conformity with American princi-
ples and did not involve racial discrimination or economic
exploitation, the extension of the United States did mean the
extension of freedom. In consequence the most democratic of
Americans, from Jefferson down to Whitman, were often the
most expansionist. When men have genuine faith in a political
creed they always wish to universalize it, although (if their
creed is a liberal one) they do not always regard territorial
annexation as a justifiable method of doing so.

When Washington became President the immediate neces-
sity was to ensure the survival of American institutions rather
than to extend them. Washington had little of a crusading
spirit, although even he believed that the success of the
American experiment was of vital concern to humanity. His
main preoccupation was to assert an independent American
policy, free from colonial attitudes and based on genuine
American interests. Americans should therefore refuse to be
drawn into European contentions that did not concern them.
How far such a doctrine (a it was stated in the Farewell
Address) should be construed as isolationist depends upon
how American interests are interpreted. The most lasting;

Capitalism and Agrariamsm 135

significance of the Farewell Address lies in its warning to
Americans to think in American terms and to abandon "per-
manent inveterate antipathies against particular nations and
passionate attachments for others." In a nation of immigrants
divided into different racial groups who have maintained
traditional antipathies and attachments for different European
nations, this advice has often been violated (particularly by
politicians seeking the votes of hyphenated Americans) and
has constantly needed reaffirmation.

The French Revolution began a few weeks after Washing-
ton's inauguration, opening a period of general European
warfare that lasted until 1815. Lacking a strong navy, the
United States was unable to maintain her doctrine of freedom
of the seas, and her attempts to do so caused an undeclared
naval war with France in 1798 and a series of controversies
with the British that culminated in the War of 1812. On the
other hand, the Americans could win from the warring powers
concessions that were of much more vital importance to their
future security. Washington stopped British and Spanish en-
croachments on the American territories in the Westj Jeffer-
son purchased Louisiana, extending the boundaries of the
United States as far as the Rockies; Madison began the acqui-
sition of Florida; and Monroe finished the annexation of
Florida and induced the Russians to relinquish their claims
to the Oregon Territory. This remarkable growth made the
United States virtually immune from possible attack, although
the Americans had hoped to complete the process by the ac-
quisition of Cuba and of Canada. But as long as Cuba re-
mained Spanish and was not transferred to some more vigor-
ous power, there could be no danger from that direction- And
after the War of 1812 (which the United States had fought
not only to^ protect her commerce but also in the hope of
expelling the British from North America) Great Britain
agreed to complete disarmament along the Canadian border,
thereby ensuring American security on the north*

Meanwhile the remainder of the American continent had
revolted against European control. The peoples of Mexico
and South America, stimulated by the example of the United
States, began to fight for their independence in 1810 and had

j 36 The American People

gained it everywhere by 1825. Although the United States
viewed their struggles sympathetically, she actually did little
to help them, and they turned chiefly to British merchants
for supplies and to British seapower for protection. But in
1823, when there were rumors of intervention by European
monarchies, the American government made an extraordinar-
ily bold and farsighted statement of its attitude. In the Mon-
roe Doctrine were reflected all three of the basic preoccupa-
tions of American foreign policy: the desire for territorial
security against European imperialism, the desire for open
markets and the destruction of closed mercantilist empires,
and the desire for the extension of republican institutions. It
had little influence at the time it was issued j the Latin Ameri-
cans owed their independence primarily to themselves and
secondly to the British navy. But it was of immense impor-
tance in its foreshadowing of a future program of Pan-
Americanism.

After 1823 Americans were no longer required to think
seriously about foreign affairs until the twentieth cenniry.
The United States was safe from any possible aggression. The
general world trend towards freer trade and the dissolution
of colonial empires gave Americans access to markets. Liberal
institutions were gaining ground everywhere. This long
period of security was brought about chiefly by the course of
events in Europe, but it was due also to the good judgment
of early American 'diplomacy. And in the twentieth century,
when the rise of Germany and Japan altered the balance of
world forces, the diplomacy of the United States continued
to be guided by the same preoccupations as in the period of
Washington and Jefferson, although on a larger geographical
scale. American security now required the destruction of ag-
gressive imperialisms not only in North America, but also in
western Europe and in eastern Asia.

For the first twelve years after the adoption of the Con-
stitution American internal development was controlled
mainly by the Federalists. Composed of the merchants and

Capitalism and Agrarianism 13?

other moneyed elements, of the more theocratic of the clergy,
and of those Southern planters who regarded landowning as a
business rather than as a way of life, they believed in the
leadership of "the wise, the rich and the well-born." Their
ability, their patriotism, and their devotion to republican
principles were unquestionable j but what they meant by
republicanism was the protection of the minority of the opu-
lent and not the rule of the majority. Thinking in European
rather than in American terms, they had a wholly irrational
fear of the mass of their fellow citizens.

The desire to reshape America in accordance with Euro-
pean attitudes was, in fact, the keynote of the Federalist
period. It was shown not only in its politics and in the pre-
tentiousness of its social life, but also in its art. The favorite
Federalist painter was the Europeanized Gilbert Stuart, who
presented men and women as conventionalized examples of
aristocracy, not with that honest and unflattering portrayal of
individuality that had distinguished the early work of Copley.
In architecture the period was marked by the beginning of
the Greek revival, which dominated American building for
the next two generations* The Greek revival was not an espe-
cially aristocratic movement j it represented an attempt to
find a style that would be appropriate to a republic j one of its
chief early exponents was Thomas Jefferson. But marking a
sharp break with the tradition that had been developing
during the colonial period (as shown, for example, in Inde-
pendence Hall, Philadelphia), it reflected a lack of confidence
in the possibilities of an indigenous culture. And although the
imitations of Greek temples that it produced often had con-
siderable dignity and grace, they were not wholly suited
either to their functions, to their environment, or to their
material. The best American architecture, like the best Amer-
ican painting, preceded the Revolution.

Washington and Adams were both of them sympathetic to
the Federalist attitude, although both of them governed as
Presidents of all the people. But the leader of the Federalists
was Alexander Hamilton. Of all the great men who have
contributed to the development of the United States, Hamil-
ton was the least American. Born in the West Indies, he had

138 The American People

come to New York at the age of eighteen to seek his fortune;
and after serving as an officer through the War of Independ-
ence, had married into one of the surviving aristocratic fam-
ilies of the Hudson Valley, and become a lawyer in New
York City. He was vain, arrogant, and ambitious j but he had
a superb courage, frankness, and self -assurance 5 and he was
undeviatingly honest and sincerely devoted to the public
interest as he saw it. Jefferson's conviction that Hamilton was
plotting to destroy the liberties of Americans by establishing
a monarchy was as unjustified as Hamilton's belief that Jeffer-
son was "a contemptible hypocrite" 1 whose policies must
lead to general anarchy and ultimately to dictatorship. Within
somewhat narrow limits Hamilton's intelligence worked with
an extraordinary clarity and inventive power; but he had no
breadth of sympathy and little imagination. In particular, he
lacked the capacity to understand the country to whose service
he had devoted himself. His vision was restricted by the be-
liefs of eighteenth-century Europe. He assumed that the
masses must always be governed by an elite, working through
a strong and paternalistic state, and that the only alternative
was a mob rule, which meant anarchy or tyranny or both.
The whole purpose of his political career was to establish in
America those institutions that had maintained strength and
stability in European countries, particularly in Great Britain.
The special qualities of America particularly of the new
America of Western farmers and frontiersmen, with their
independence of spirit and their confidence in themselves
were beyond his comprehension. He despised the slipshod
and undisciplined agrarian way of life, in which a man was
free to work or be idle as he pleased. Taxes, he declared, were
positively beneficial, since they compelled men to be industri-
ous. The career of such a man, in such a country, could only
end unhappily, since he was struggling to dominate forces
which he never understood. Before he was killed by Aaron
Burr, Hamilton was convinced that his career had been a
failure. "This American world," he said, "was not made for

me." 2

1 Letter to J. A. Bayard, Jan. 16, 1801.

2 Letter to Gouveroeur Morris, Feb. 27, 1802.

Capitalism and Agrarlanism 139

Although Hamilton's political ideas went down quickly
to defeat, his economic program had a lasting influence on
American development. Believing in government by and for
the rich, he favored close collaboration between the federal
government and the moneyed classes. And wanting the United
States to become a strong and wealthy nation, he hoped for
a rapid development of manufacturing and believed that this
could be promoted by appropriate federal policies. He was
therefore an advocate of government intervention in economic
affairs and of certain forms of national planning, and a critic
of the laissez-faire theories of Adam Smith. He was a rigid
believer in private enterprise 5 but he argued that it should be
guided and assisted by the government. This became the
permanent attitude of American business. In later generations
business leaders sometimes declared that they disliked govern-
ment intervention and spoke the language of laissez faire. But
in reality they were opposed only to those kinds of interven-
tion that were intended to police business practices or to give
direct protection to other elements in the community, such as
agriculture and labor. Like Hamilton, they believed in private
enterprise and in the sanctity of contracts} and like Hamilton,
they believed also that it was the function of the federal
government to give them positive assistance.

The financial program that Hamilton put forward while
he was Secretary of the Treasury in Washington's administra-
tion meant, in general, the use of political power to give
economic privileges to the moneyed classes. By funding the
government debt at its face value (in order, as he explained,
to maintain the sanctity of contracts) he enriched a small
group of speculators, who had bought up a large part of the
debt at a small fraction of its nominal value. By chartering a
bank and giving it authority to issue notes (while the govern-
ment restricted itself to the coinage of gold and silver, issuing
no paper money), he transferred to private citizens virtual
control over the nation's currency and the power of make
profits from it And in his Refort an Man&jactwres (which
had little influence on legislation until the next generation)
he advocated protective tariffs and the payment of bounties
and subsidies for the encouragement and enrichment of manu-

140 The American People

facturers. He and his associates also looked with favor on the
acquisition of Western lands by moneyed groups for specula-
tive purposes, and on the granting of privileges to business
corporations chartered by state governments. All this was
admittedly legislation for the benefit of the rich; but while
the agrarians denounced it as undemocratic, Hamilton was
quite honest and consistent in believing that by consolidating
the power of the upper classes and providing them with
capital for investment he was making America into an orderly,
disciplined, hard-working, and wealthy nation.

The Republican Party originated in 1791, when a group of
Southern opponents of Hamilton, headed by Jefferson, began
to form alliances with anti-Federalist groups in the North.
For the next decade there was bitter conflict between the two
parties. The Federalists were aided by the greater prestige of
their leaders and by the continued influence of aristocratic and
theocratic prindples of government among a considerable
body of the people. But the democratic spirit was now recover-
ing from the disillusionment following the War of Independ-
ence. Fanners and urban mechanics began to form democratic
clubs similar to the Sons of Liberty a quarter of a century
earlier.

What finally ruined the Federalists was fear fear of mob
rule at home, and fear of the French Revolution abroad* The
political influence of irrational emotions of this kind is often
underestimated. Historians are too inclined to assume that
human behavior can always be explained in rational terms,
and in the case of the Federalists they have sometimes
argued that their policies were based on deliberate calculation.
Yet one cannot read the speeches and private letters of the
leading Federalists without concluding that their panic was
genuine, and that it drove them to courses that could end only
in their political destruction.

The Federalist majority in Congress did not share Wash-
ington's coolness of judgment about the war in Europe. As a
result of their political convictions, they had a permanent
attachment to Great Britain and an antipathy to Revolution-
ary France j and they became convinced that the French were

Capitalism and Agrarlanum 141

plotting to attack the United States from outside, and were at
the same time trying to undermine her institutions by propa-
ganda from within. During the Adams administration they
made preparations for war j and believing that radical propa-
ganda was a genuine menace to American society, they passed
the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which in violation of the
Bill of Rights (and contrary to the wishes both of Hamilton
and of President Adams) drastically limited freedom of
speech and press. The Sedition Act was then enforced with
excessive severity by a Federalized judiciary. But as became
evident a year later, the French government had no serious
designs against America, Disgusted by the war policies of the
Federalists, American public opinion swung over to the
Republicans.

In the election of 1800 the aristocratic principle made its
last open stand in American political history. Federalist ora-
tors and clergymen suggested that civilization was in danger
and that the election of Jefferson to the Presidency would
mean a mob rule similar to what was supposed to have oc-
curred in France under the Jacobins. It was alleged that there
was an international conspiracy for the overthrow of culture
and tradition, that the Republicans would establish a dictator-
ship and a reign of terror, and that they would abolish reli-
gion, marriage, and the family. The outcome was a decisive
victory for Jefferson. It may be stated, to the credit of the
American people, that whenever a political party in America
has abandoned rational argument and succumbed to panic, it
has committed a suicidal error. Unfortunately this is one of
those lessons that men never learn from the past, and that
have to be repeated in almost every generation.

In Jefferson's opinion the election of 1800 was the equiva-
lent of a revolution. It meant the overthrow of men who had
been attempting to build in America a class society copied
from Europe and a reaffirmation of those principles of gov-
ernment that had been asserted in 1776. The agrarian democ-

142 The American People

racy of the mass of the people had achieved political power,
and the government of the United States had become Ameri-
canized*

The spokesmen of agrarian democracy had hitherto ex-
pressed themselves more boldly in practice than in theory.
American political theory had been borrowed from Europe,
and European writers had no conception of the unique kind of
society that had developed in America. The concrete legisla-
tion of the Revolutionary epoch had been more significant
than the appeals to natural rights with which it had been
justified. Men had spoken of freedom in vague and general
terms, but what they had chiefly meant was the right of every
individual to economic independence. During the struggle
with Hamiltonianism, however, the agrarians had begun to
work out their political principles in more specific detail. It is
possible that if agrarianism had acquired a body of political
doctrine a generation earlier, before instead of after the draft-
ing of the Constitution, the subsequent history of the United
States might have been decidedly different.

Jefferson was the most gifted of the agrarians 5 but he never
expounded his beliefs in any systematic form. For a detailed
statement of agrarian principles one must turn to another
Virginia planter, John Taylor of Caroline. Taylor is now
remembered only by historians. His writings are rambling,
repetitious, badly organized, and sometimes ungrammatical.
After the triumph of industrialism, moreover, American
history was rewritten in conformity with the capitalist view-
point, and it became inconvenient to recall a thinker whose
protests against the dominance of the moneyed classes had
been so outspoken and so unambiguous. But the reader who
has enough perseverance to cope with Taylor's forbidding
style can discover in his writings a singularly penetrating inter-
pretation of American society. Unlike many of his more
famous contemporaries, Taylor understood what America
meant; he deduced his principles from American experience
and not from irrelevant European speculations. In his own
day his attitude was in no way novel 5 he put on paper the
doctrines in which all the agrarians believed. But in the twen-
tieth century, when the true meaning of the American agrar-

Capitalism and Agrari&msm 1 43

ian tradition has been largely forgotten, he seems not only
profound but also remarkably original.

Taylor was primarily an enemy of aristocracy, and he
interpreted aristcxracy wholly in economic terms. He defined
it as "an accumulation of wealth by law without industry,**
The basic principle of a just society was that the individual
should be able to acquire property only by the exercise of his
own industry and talenL Property that was "fairly gained fay
talents and industry 5 * was based on natural right, and no
government could justly interfere with it In an aristocratic
society, on the other hand, a ruling class used its political
power to acquire property that had been created by the labor
of other people. Any law that had the effect of transferring
wealth from those who actually produced it by their own
labor was inherently unjust Such interferences with the
natural rights of property were as tyrannical as restrictions on
political freedom.*

In the past the aristocratic principle had been represented
by clericalism and feudalism. These had now been replaced
by a new kind of aristocracy, a capitalist aristocracy of "pa-
tronage and paper," which operated fay more subtle and in-
direct methods. Instead of exploiting the mass of the people
directly and openly, like their feudal predecessors, the aristoc-
racy of patronage and paper created a complicated legal and
financial system by which they were able to acquire wealth
that they had not actually earned. The wealth that was cre-
ated by the labor of the mass of the people was transferred to
the moneyed class by such devices as the payment of high
rates of interest on the national debt, the issuance of paper
money by the banks, the tariff (which enabled manufacturers
to charge higher prices), the granting of monopolistic privi-
leges in corporation charters, and speculation in stocks and
real estate.

On the one side were the "agricultural and mechanical
classes," who could earn property only by honest labor 5 on
the other side were bankers, factory owners, government
creditors, and other moneyed groups, whose claims to prop-

* John Tayior: Inquiry into the PrmdpUs *nd PoKcy of the Govern-
ment of the United States (1814), pp. H3 275.

144 TAe American People

erty were derived from their political influence and from
legalistic construction and were not based on natural right and
justice. Taylor insisted that these two kinds of property must
be carefully distinguished, and pointed out that the aristocracy
of patronage and paper was in the habit of confusing the
public mind by trying to identify them and by representing
agrarianism as an attack on all forms of property. "The gross-
est abuses artfully ally themselves with real and honest prop-
erty," he said, "and endeavor to excite its apprehension, when
attempts are made to correct them, by exclaiming against the
invasion of property and against levelism." The wealth the
businessman gained by speculation or through political influ-
ence was essentially different from the property the farmer ac-
quired by mixing his labor with the wilderness j yet by claim-
ing that both were forms of the natural right of property the
businessman would mislead the farmer and secure his political
support. Taylor also denounced the Federalist doctrine of the
sanctity of contracts. He recognized that this doctrine, when
applied to contracts that had been fraudulently obtained or that
had the effect of enriching moneyed groups at public expense,
would perpetuate inequalities, privileges, and vested interests.
"Whenever the public good and a contract with an individual
come in conflict," he pointed out, with obvious reference to
such cases as Fletcher versus Peck y "public faith is made to
decide that the contract shall prevail." Such a doctrine "be-
comes the protector .of political fraud; it compels a nation to
be an accomplice in its own ruin 5 it takes from it the right of
self-preservation 5 and it becomes the modern subterfuge of
the modern aristocracy." *

The use of political power to transfer property was re-
garded by Taylor as the basis of the class societies of Europe.
"A sovereignty over private property," he said, "is the Euro-
pean principle of government, to which I ascribe most of the
European oppressions'." The purpose of the American Revo-
lution had been to destroy this principle and thereby to create
a regime of economic freedom and justice. The mass of the
American people, according to Taylor^ had wanted a society

4 John Taylor: Tyranny Unmasked (1822), p. 308; Inqmry^ pp. 70, 112.

Capitalism and Agrarianism 145

based on the natural right of property; each individual would
have been free to acquire property by his own industry and
talent j and the government would have been prohibited from
making laws transferring property from those who had actu-
ally earned it. This was the American ideal, and its realization
would have made America a unique example of freedom and
equality. But unfortunately the Americans had failed to re-
main true to their own principles. The Federalist Party, trick-
ing the American people by representing themselves as the
defenders of property rights, had reintroduced the European
system of government and had thus "revolutionized the revo-
lution." 6

The government, under Hamilton's guidance, had claimed
a sovereignty over the natural right of property and "a power
for creating pecuniary inequalities." It had enriched specula-
tors at the expense of the mass of the people by its public debt
policy. It had given to bankers "an irresponsible, uncon-
trolled, unpunishable, unelected power over the national
purse," instead of recognizing that "currency and credit are
social rights" that should be controlled by the elected agents
of the people alone. It had assumed the power to enrich
manufacturers by the tariff, to grant privileges to corporations
by charters that, even when "given corruptly by government,
are said, like the oracles, to be sacred," to bestotf pensions and
other grants on favored individuals, and to create a large
bureaucracy supported by taxation. Unless the agricultural
and mechanical classes could abolish these "property-trans-
ferring" laws, keep the powers of the federal government
within narrow limits, and regain the economic freedom for
which they had fought in the Revolution, then the whole
country would eventually fall under the control of "a vast
pecuniary aristocracy." And "if our system of government
produces these bitter fruits naturally, it is substantially Euro-
pean 5 and the world, after having contemplated with intense
interest and eager solicitude the experiment of the United
States, will be surprised to find, that no experiment at all has

5 John Taylor: Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated
(1820), p. 268; Inquiry, p. 253,

146 The American People

been made, and that it still remains to be discovered, whether
a political system preferable to the British be within the scope
of human capacity." 6 "

Although Taylor regarded farming as the ideal way of life,
his doctrines were not intrinsically hostile to commerce and
manufacturing. Believing in a regime of genuine laissez faire
he favored the free exchange of goods between one country
and another. And while he deplored the new industrial sys-
tem that was beginning to develop in New England, declar-
ing that "the profits earned by factory laborers go to an
owner," he attributed its evils to the political power of the
factory owners. If the farmers were prosperous, instead of
being plundered by the moneyed classes, and if the Western
lands were kept open for settlers, then employers could get
labor only by paying high wages. Thus* the farmers and
the urban workers had a common interest in preventing the
establishment of economic privilege and in keeping America
primarily a country of free individual small producers. 7

The enforcement of these agrarian principles was perhaps
the only method by which the Americans, could have kept
their economic freedom. But even if the American people had
been willing to display the necessary austerity and self-re-
straint, it was probably too late to undo the work of the
Federalists. Nor were Jefferson and the other Republican
leaders the men to attempt it. The result was that within
twenty years both the federal and the state governments,
although still under the control of the same political party,
were outdoing Hamilton himself in the enactment of "pro?"
erty-transferring" laws and the bestowal of economic privi-
leges on bankers, manufacturers, and speculators. The alleged
revolution of 1 800 proved in the long run to be no revolution
at all.

Jefferson was the most widely talented American of his
generation 5 but he was too intellectual to be an effective man
of action and too complex to become the embodiment of a
program. Resembling Franklin both in the' variety of his

6 Inquiry, p. 364, 375, Tyranny Unmasked, p. 207, Construction Con-
strued, pp. 2, u, 186.

7 John Taylor: Tyranny Unmasked, p. 207.

Capitalism and Agrarianhm 147

interests and in the coolness of his emotional temperament,
he was a naturalist, an inventor, an agriculturalist, an architect,
a musician, a philosopher, and a connoisseur of wine and cook-
ery as well as a politician j and he could use words more
effectively than any other figure in American history. But
although he could voice democratic aspirations and hatred of
class rule with a stirring and unrhetorical eloquence, he was
not a fighter j and his actions were usually milder and more
devious than his phrases, tie lacked, moreover, the common
touch and had the personal tastes and habits of an aristocrat.
He believed in government for the people 5 but how far he
also believed in government by the people seemed occasion-
ally to be ambiguous. Much of the complexity of Jefferson's
character was suggested in the house he built and designed
for himself at Monticello. With its excessive elaboration, its
echoes of European models, and its somewhat chilly magnifi-
cence, it lacked both the charm and the comfort of the more
simple and less self-conscious buildings of earlier periods,
such as TVashington's Mount Vernon. Unlike Washington^
Jefferson never quite succeeded in being himself.

There were similar ambiguities in the Republican Party
that Jefferson organized and led. As the agrarians were never
tired of pointing out, individuals possessed of political power
are likely to develop different interests from their constitur
entsj and this was as true of the Republicans themselves as of
any other group of politicians. In particular, many of the
Northerners in the party were decidedly more interested in
patronage than in principle. The New York Republicans, for
example, were led by George Clinton, who had risen to power
during the Revolution as the representative of agrarian
democracy but who was now chiefly interested in keeping
control of the state and in distributing offices among his
numerous friends and relatives, and by Aaron Burr, a gifted,
likable, and profligate adventurer of a type very rare in the
United States but frequent in some European countries, par-
ticularly in the eighteenth century. Thus the Republicans
combined a genuine idealism with a practical politics that was
sometimes tricky and dishonest.

Actually the Jeffersonian period was singularly barren in

148 The American People

positive achievements. Having adopted the position of strict
construction, the Republicans were precluded by their own
theory from recognizing that the Constitution should be
amended if agrarian interests were to be safeguarded. They
did nothing to develop more effectively democratic mecha-
nisms of government. Although they reduced taxes, they did
not dare to make any general revision of Hamilton's funding
and banking system. And although they attacked the Supreme
Court, causing it so much alarm that it retreated from the
extremely partisan attitude it had displayed hitherto (in its
enforcement of the Sedition Act, for example), they failed
to make any fundamental change in its principles and person-
nel. Jefferson's timid policies eventually caused Taylor and
other consistent agrarians to go into opposition, while former
Federalists who were disgusted with the suicidal behavior of
their own party such as John Quincy Adams found it pos-
sible to turn Republican without any real change of principle.
The final abandonment of agrarian principles was caused
by the conflict with Great Britain. This was another example
of that fatal dilemma which, as long as force remains the only
arbiter in international affairs, must always ruin every attempt
to create a genuinely free society. During Jefferson's second
term he attempted to retaliate for British and French attacks
on American commerce by ordering all American ships to
remain in port. In view of the popular indignation in the
United States it is probable that he could not have remained
passive; but the enforcement of this embargo necessitated an
increase in federal power and an interference with individual
liberty much more drastic than anything ever attempted by'
Hamilton. In Taylor's opinion it would have been better to
let American merchants look out for themselves. After the
election of Madison to the Presidency the country slowly
drifted into the War of 1812, for which British seizures of
American ships and British impressment of American seamen
were the chief provocation. And like the previous struggle
with Great Britain a generation earlier, the war was a disillu-
sioning experience. The government displayed the greatest
inefficiency, and only Andrew Jackson's victory at New Or-
leans saved the Americans from a sense of general humilia-

Capitalism and Agrarianism 1 49

tion. The most important result was a growth of nationalistic
sentiment j the United States must be built into a strong and
rich country, guided by a paternalistic government This con-
viction swept away what remained of agrarian principles
among the Republicans in Congress.

What actually happened after the war was that Hamil-
tonian economics began to be democratized. The new factory
system, which had originated in England in the eighteenth
century, was introduced into the Northern part of the United
States 5 and there was a rapid growth of industry. At the same
time a vast movement of people westward into the Mississippi
Valley was under way, enabling shrewd individuals to make
big profits from land speculation. The federal government
assisted these processes by adopting a protective tariff and by
subsidizing corporations engaged in building roads and other
internal improvements j while the state governments char-
tered vast numbers of banks and allowed them to issue notes
almost indiscriminately, thereby causing inflationary condi-
tions that stimulated still further the passion for speculation.
Many Americans were no richer than before 5 and the crafts-
men and mechanics were decidedly less prosperous, since they
were losing their economic independence and undergoing a
gradual transformation into wage earners, and their early
attempts to form trade unions were declared illegal by the
judiciary. But it was becoming easier for those who were
cleverer or more fortunate than their neighbors to make
money 5 and plenty of Americans who belonged to neither of
these categories never stopped dreaming of it. The benefits of
Hamiltonian economics were no longer restricted to an elite
of the wise, the rich, and the well-born. Under such conditions
the austere principles of the agrarians no longer had much
popular appeal. The typical spokesman of the new era was
Henry Clay, who called himself a disciple of Jefferson but
whose "American System" was a democratic version of Hamil-
tonianism. With great personal charm, stirring eloquence,
and a complete lack of any genuine sense of principle, Cky
popularized the vision of an America made rich and strong by
federal subsidies and distributions of privilege. As early as
1822 John Taylor felt that the battle for economic independ-

150 The American People

ence was already lost. In a long diatribe against the protective
tariff he declared that, as a result of the property-transferring
program of the federal government, the whole country was
being "turned into one great factory," and its citizens were
"under a necessity of yielding up the profits of their labors to
a combination of legal capitalists." 8

In the long run Taylor's predictions proved to be substan-
tially correct. But the struggle was by no means ended. On
the contrary, the election of Andrew Jackson to the Presi-
dency in 1828 was followed by a return to agrarian principles.
'Jackson and his followers fought for these principles with a
much greater courage and consistency than had been displayed
by Jeffersonj and as long as Jackson himself remained in
office his personal popularity with' the mass of the people
made it possible to carry through a program that offended
every privileged group in the country.

Jackson's election was due initially to political rather than
to economic factors. He reached the Presidency as the repre-
sentative of the plain people. After generations of controversy
public opinion had now accepted the doctrine of equal political
rights for all, and the final victory of democracy came about so
quietly that it has sometimes been overlooked. For like most
political reforms it did not wholly fulfill either the hopes of
its supporters or the even more extravagant fears of its oppo-
nents.

The new Western states that came into the Union after
1800 adopted universal manhood suffrage from the begin-
ning. Starting with Maryland in 1810, the older states grad-
ually followed suit, abolishing the property qualifications that
had been established during the Revolution. During the
i82O's there was a vast increase in the number of voters,
caused not only by the extension of the franchise but also by
the growth of popular interest in politics. The members of
the electoral college began to be chosen by direct popular vote
in each state and no longer by the state legislatures, as hith-

8 Ibid., p. 207.

Capitalism and Agrarianism 151

erto. And the choice of candidates for office, instead of being
made by the members of Congress and of the state legislatures
assembled in the party caucuses, was now assumed by popular
conventions in which the rank and file of the party supporters
were more adequately represented. More important than
these technical changes was the growth of a new spirit. The
plain people had come to believe that the mysteries of govern-
ment should no longer be left to the richer and better-
educated classes, and that any man from any social background
might aspire to political leadership. They wanted an increase
in the number of elective positions, rotation in office for
public officials, and a new kind of man in control of the
government.

Astute politicians who understood what was happening set
out to manipulate and direct this popular sentimentj and in
their search for a national leader they turned to Andrew
Jackson. In the presidential elections of 1824. and 1828 there
were few specific issues. The Federalist Party was now dead;
all the candidates were Republicans, and all advocated similar
programs. But the underlying question was whether the
average citizens of America were qualified not only to vote
but also to hold office. Jackson was defeated by John Quincy
Adams in 1824, chiefly because popular election of the elec-
toral college had not yet spread to a sufficient number of
states. But he was triumphantly elected in 1828 as the em-
bodiment of the new doctrine of political equality.

The surviving believers in the aristocratic principle no
longer dared to denounce the principle of popular govern-
ment, except in private^ but they made amends by vilifying
its exponents, with such success that even today it is not always
easy to appraise them fairly. American history has never
wholly lost a certain Federalist bias. Until recently it was
customary to attribute all Jackson's policies to personal quar-
rels and antipathies and to political ambition, not to any
coherent principles. Yet in accepting him as the symbol of
their aspirations the plain people of America were following
a sound instinct

With little education and no intellectual interests, Jackson
had in superlative degree those moral qualities of courage,

152 The American People

tenacity, self-confidence, and personal loyalty that Americans
have always most admired. His whole life was one long
battle, on an epic stale, against obstacles that might have
driven weaker men to suicide. Born on the borders of North
and South Carolina of immigrant Scotch-Irish parents, he had
fought and nearly died in the War of Independence while a
boy of only thirteen. Before his fifteenth birthday all his
immediate relatives were dead, and he was left, without re-
sources, to make his own way in the world. Working as
schoolteacher, saddler's apprentice, and lawyer's clerk, he was
able to scrape together enough money to become a qualified
lawyer, and then migrated to the frontier country of Tennes-
see. In this wild and kwless environment where a man could
not survive unless he was quick with a gun, he soon rose to
prominence. Tennessee's first Congressman and- afterwards a
Senator and a judge, he engaged in duels, could defend him-
self in rough-and-tumble fighting, and played for a few years
the role of an ambitious landowner, trader, and land specula-
tor. Meanwhile he had married a wife to whom he was most
devotedly faithful for the rest 'of his life but who through
a legal misunderstanding was still technically the wife of
another man at the time Jackson married her* Henceforth
this unlucky complication was publicized by Jackson's oppo-
nents, with scandalous embellishments, whenever he ran for
office. Soon after the turn of the century he relinquished his
ambitions and settled down to the life of a cotton planter,
partly in order to spare his wife's feelings, partly because his
speculations had turned out unfortunately as the result of the
failure of a business firm and he was heavily in debt. From
this time on he was rarely solvent, although he operated his
plantation efficiently and industriously, and was saved from
total ruin only by breeding a race horse that earned twenty
thousand dollars in prize money. In 1812 he emerged from
his retirement, first to lead the Tennessee militia against the
Indians ancj, afterwards to defend New Orleans against a
British invasion. He had no training for military command;
but unlike most other militia officers, he could make himself
o&eyed and could inspire his men with his own indefatigable
determination and capacity for endurance. In the Battle of

Capitalism and Agrarianim 153

New Orleans he won a crushingly decisive victory over some
of the most experienced troops in the British army. Physically,
he never recovered from his exertions during these campaigns.
His digestion was permanently ruined j he had chronic head-
aches j he suffered from dropsy; and he developed tuberculo-
sis, which ate away one lung. But he was now the most popular
man in America. And his amazing courage and strength of
will enabled him not merely to stay alive, but to serve for
eight years as President and to reach the ripe old age of
seventy-eight.

Taking office in his sixty-second year, at a time when he was
suffering not only from his physical maladies but also from
the recent death of his wife, he was not expected to be a
vigorous President. Nor had his previous statements indicated
that he would follow any particular line of policy. Yet al-
though Jackson had never formulated his political convictions
in intellectual terms, he felt and acted as an agrarian. His
own experiences had taught him the perils of speculation;
and it had taught him also that in a society dominated by the
moneyed interests it was difficult for honest men engaged in
productive labor to pay their way. As he declared in his
farewell address, he believed that the government should be
administered for the benefit of "the planter, the farmer, the
mechanic and the laborer" who "form the great body of the
people of the United States," These classes "all know that
their success depends upon their own industry and economy,
and that they must not expect to become suddenly rich by
the fruits of their toil." Yet "they are in constant danger of
losing their fair influence in the Government" as a result of
"the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper
currency, which they are able to control, [and] from the
multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges which they
have succeeded in obtaining in the different states." 9 The
main purpose of Jacksonianism, and of the Democratic Party
which took shape under Jackson's leadership, was to put an
end to the exclusive privileges of the moneyed interest. The
Jacksonian radicals believed in the maintenance of effective

9 J. D. Richardson: Messages and Papers of tfx Presidents, VoL IV, p.
1524-

154 The American People

competition, and argued that the growth of monopoly was
due to grants of special privilege by the government and not
to genuinely economic processes.

Jackson's ftiost effective support came not from the agricul-
tural sections but from the cities of the Northeast. Here the
growth of the factory system and the increase of manufactur-
ing, banking, and internal-improvement corporations, often
endowed by state charters with monopolistic privileges, were
causing wide resentment. In this section the American ideal of
a property owners' democracy was already disappearing. A
few intellectuals began to play with the idea of a socialist
Utopia; but the mass of the people were not willing to aban-
don the hope of economic independence. They wanted more
effective realization of the ideal of equal rights for all, by
means of such reforms as free universal education, abolition
of imprisonment for debt, and prohibition of special privileges
for corporations. In such cities as New York there was an
extraordinary proliferation of radical programs and political
movements. In 1835, when conservatives tried to break up
a radical meeting by turning off the lights and the radicals
were able to proceed by striking matches, then known as
"locofocos," a new wor5 was added to American political
terminology. Henceforth the radical of the Jaeksonian era
was known as a Locofoco. Locof ocoism represented the strug-
gle of the unprivileged to maintain the "general happy medi-
ocrity" of agrarianism in a society increasingly dominated by
moneyed and speculative interests* The principal spokesman
of Locofocoism was the New York journalist, William Leg-
gett. A disciple of Adam Smith and of John Taylor, Leggett
ascribed the growth of inequality to interferences with the
natural right of property by federal and state authorities, and
declared that democracy could be maintained by narrowly
limiting the powers of the government, by maintaining a
regime of strict laissez faire, and by keeping the Western
lands open for settlers and preventing them from becoming
the property of wealthy speculators. 10

Jackson was aided by such fellow agrarians as Senator

10 For an analysis of Lcggett*s political principles, I am indebted to an
unpublished thesis by Lester Rifkin.

Capitalism and Agrari&nim 155

Benton of Missouri and Roger Taney of Maryland, and by a
small group of personal advisors, mostly newspapermen, who
became known as the "kitchen cabinet"; but his closest asso-
ciate and chosen successor was Martin Van Buren of New
York. Van Buren's political dexterity, his lad: of frankness
and preference for devious and diplomatic methods, and the
sophisticated elegance of his personal tastes and way of living
convinced most of his contemporaries that he must be thor-
oughly insincere. Americans have never found it easy to
understand complex characters of this kind Yet it was not
merely by his gift for diplomacy that Van Burai won Jack-
son's affection. Judged not by his words but by his record, he
was a consistently democratic statesman from his early at-
tempts to abolish imprisonment for debt down to his last
political action when he headed the antislavery Free Soil
ticket in the election of 1848,

Viewed in broad terms, the economic program of the Jack-
sonians (which was never fully put into effect) was an attempt
to maintain the ideal of a property owners* democracy, in
general accord with the doctnnes of John Taylor, Its guiding
principle was that political power must not be used for the
creation of economic privilege. On the one hand, the govern-
ment must no longer give assistance to favored business
corporations; on the other hand, the power to form a corpora-
tion, instead of being treated as a privilege with monopolistic
implications (as in the case of the Charles River Bridge),
should become a right equally available for all Beginning
with the Maysville veto of 1830, Jackson put a stop to the
voting of federal money to internal improvement corpora-
tions j while his followers in the Northern states worked for
the enactment of "free banking" and general incorporation
laws, by which the formation of a bank or any other cor-
poration would no longer require a special grant from the
legislature. These laws would make it impossible for state
governments to give favored business groups immunity from
effective competition.

The major political battles of the Jadcsonian era were
fought about banking and the currency. Unlike their prede-
cessors of the Revolutionary epoch, the Jacksonians believed

156 The American People

that the producing classes, even when in debt, were not
genuinely benefited by inflation, which raised prices and
encouraged speculation j and they believed that control over
the currency should T)elong to the government rather than to
private banking interests. They wished to restrict the cur-
rency to gold and silver, to deprive the bankers o their power
to issue notes that circulated as money, and to abolish the
privileges that had been granted by federal charter to the
Bank of the United States. The chief support for this program
came from the urban workers, who were hard hit by rising
prices, rather than from the Western farmersj but it had the
full support of Jackson himself, who had fought against in-
flation in the state of Tennessee before he became President
at a time when most of the farmers were clamoring for more
bank paper. Jackson was an agrarian by conviction, not for
political expediency*

During Jackson's second term he fought a long and bitter
struggle with the Bank of the United States and with its
president, Nicholas Biddle. From the capitalistic viewpoint
the bank was a soundly managed institution that had dis-
couraged inflation; but its policies benefited the business
rather than the producing classes, while its power over the
national economy and its corrupt connections with politicians
and newspapers made it a threat to democratic government.
Jackson succeeded in destroying the bankj but the govern-
ment money that it had held was at first transferred to the state
banks, which were less soundly managed and more inclined to
resort to inflation, and this resulted in an increase in the cir-
culation of paper. Jackson then attempted to drive bank
paper out of circulation by issuing the Specie Circular of 1 836,
which declared that henceforth the government would receive
only gold and silver, not bank notes, in payment for public
land. During Van Buren's administration the divorce between
the federal government and private banking was completed
by the establishment of the Independent Treasury.

These measures were a heroic attempt to check the rising
tide of capitalism and force the country back to an agrarian
way of life. There could be little business expansion and few
speculative profits without an expanding paper currency. But

Capitalism and Agrarianism 1 5 7

capitalism had already advanced too far to be overthrown,
and the Specie Circular was followed by a sudden price defla-
tion and a widespread business depression* Jackson had been
able to force through his program solely because of his per-
sonal popularity. By normal standards such measures as the
Maysville veto and the Spede Circular would have meant his
political suicide j he was fighting for economic democracy, but
he was also frustrating the hope of speculative profits and the
propensity for seeking government favors, with which a large
part of the American people had already become infected. But
while all the moneyed interests denounced him as a tyrant
and an economic ignoramus, nothing could impair his hold
over the mass of the electorate. American voters respected
courage and integrity. But Van Buren, who succeeded Jackson
in 1837, did not inherit Jackson's popularity j and when he
resolutely adhered to agrarian principles through the depres-
sion and refused to give business any assistance, the ordinary
voter began to turn against him.

Meanwhile the American party system was assuming a new
form. While Jackson's supporters called themselves Demo-
crats, his opponents organized themselves into the Whig
Party. The Whigs, inheriting the Hamiltonian tradition,
were for the most part the representatives of special privilege j
they consisted of Northern moneyed interests, of some of the
richer Southern planters, and of middle-class citizens who
were not yet privileged but hoped to become so. Such Whig
leaders as Daniel Webster preserved much of the old Federal-
ist belief in a ruling class. But to the more clear-sighted. Whig
politicians it had now become obvious that no party that
openly supported aristocratic principles could hope to win an
election. New situations required new techniques 5 and candi-
dates for public office must henceforth preach democracy even
when they did not intend to practice it. The economics of
Jacksonianism must be defeated by the adoption of its politics.
This change of attitude was of great importance in the evolu-
tion of the American form of government.

The most astute of the Whig leaders was Thurlow Weed
of New York. Since Weed always moved behind the scenes
and never cared to hold any office himself, he has been almost

158 The American People

forgotten by posterity; yet he was one of the key figures in
American political history. The first fully developed speci-
men of the political boss, he taught the moneyed interests to
use the techniques of democracy. By profession a newspaper
editor, first at Rochester and afterwards at Albany, he de-
voted his life primarily to the arts of party management.
Although he believed in Hamiltonian policies, his first con-
cern was always the winning of elections 5 and when a policy
failed to appeal to the voters, he preferred to repudiate it.
He built a powerful political machine in New York, based on
a skillful use of patronage and distribution of favors, which
captured the state from the Jacksonians in 1838* And in 1840
he was largely responsible for the strategy that enabled the
Whigs to win the Presidential election.

For this election the Whig politicians refused to nominate
any of the outstanding party leaders. Instead they picked a
relatively obscure individual, General Harrison by name,
who was in no way qualified for the Presidency but who could
be presented to the voters as a Whig variant of Andrew Jack-
son. Harrison had won a battle over Indians twenty-nine
years earlier, and was as far as anybody knew a man of
simple and unassuming habits. The strategy of the Whigs was
to ignore every important issue, and to argue that Harrison
was more democratic and closer to the plain people than was
Van Buren. They organized uproarious mass rallies and
demonstrations at which thousands of persons sang songs
praising the homely virtues attributed to General Harrison
and ridiculing Van Buren's aristocratic tastes. These methods
swept Harrison into the Presidency by an overwhelming
majority.

The election was of little immediate importance. Harrison
died a month after taking office^ and his successor, John
Tyler of Virginia, whom the Whigs had nominated for the
Vice-Presidency in order to attract Southern votes, reverted
to agrarian principles. Although Weed and his fellow techni-
cians of the Whig Party repeated their 1840 victory in 1848,
when they organized the nomination and election of General
Zachary Taylor, the agrarian control over the federal govern-
ment was not finally broken until 1861. Through the forties

Capitalism and Agrarianism 159

and fifties the moneyed interests gained some political ad-
vantages, but they won no decisive victory-
Yet in retrospect the campaign of 1840 appears as a land-
mark in American political history. In the first place, Weed
and his associates had discovered that the best way to win an
election was to nominate an obscure figure who could be rec-
ommended on the ground not of his talents, but of his identifi-
cation with the plain people. Henceforth this technique was
frequently employed by both parties, the result being a
marked decline in the standards of the Presidency j after 1 840,
men of great ability became Presidents only by accident. And
in the second place, the 1840 election meant that both parties
had fully accepted democracy and were competing with each
other for the votes of the plain people. In the future there
were no obvious class differences between them, nor were
there any clearly defined differences of principle* In the com-
petition for votes the original lines of distinction became
blurred, and each party acquired an almost unlimited flexi-
bility. There were radical Whigs, like Horace Greeley, ami
Whigs who admired Thomas Jefferson, like Abraham Lin-
coln. Stephen Douglas, who was the real heir of Henry Cky
in the advocacy of government aid for business, called him-
, self a Democrat, and so did a number of the most aristocratic
Southern planters. It was at this period that the American
party system acquired that independence of economic and class
divisions that all Europeans and many Americans have always
found so anomalous and bewildering.

The economic results of Jacksonianism were transitory- The
ultimate - defeat of agrarianism was inevitable because not
enough nineteenth-century Americans were genuinely willing
to live by agrarian principles. The purpose of those principles
was to maintain a society of freedom and democracy; but al-
though the Americans believed in freedom and democracy as
ideals, the austerity and self-discipline that agrarianism re-
quired were wholly contrary to the character of a pioneering
people. In a country where the drive toward material sue-

1 60 The American People

cess was so widespread and where every poor man hoped to
become rich, it was impossible to maintain an economic pro-
gram designed to prevent the making of speculative profits
and the use of political influence to secure economic advan-
tages. Men who were agrarians by conviction and not for
expediency were rare, and those groups who denounced most
loudly the special privileges of other people frequently aban-
doned agrarian principles when they saw an opportunity to
win privileges for themselves. Congress would usually vote
for Hamiltonian measures, such as a tariff or an internal-
improvement bill, if a sufficiently large proportion of the
electorate were included in the distribution of favors. In con-
sequence the use of political power to secure economic advan-
tages gradually revived during the forties and fifties, and
became an established American practice after 1861.

The political developments of the Jacksonian' era, on the
other hand, had a lasting influence. Since 1840, in fact, there
has. been no fundamental change in American poEtical me-
chanics. Ajnd as a result of the victory of democratic principles,
and of the acceptance of that victory by the politicians of both
parties, the American political system acquired certain unique
characteristics, which have persisted down to the present day.

The chief feature of the American system has been the
separation of the political parties from the economic and class
interests that they represent. This is a phenomenon that can-
not be clearly paralleled in any other country in the world.
Among the European and Latin American peoples, parties
have normally been the direct political embodiments of social
classes. In England, for example, political conflicts since the
first Reform Bill have been based first on the opposition be-
tween the landowning and the manufacturing interests and
afterwards on the opposition between capital and labor, and
most of the political spokesmen of these groups have been
themselves economically identified with them. The average
conservative politician of today is himself a company director j
the average labor politician is a trade-union leaden In Amer-
ica there was a similar affiliation between politics and
economics during the conflict between Federalism and Republi-
canism y Hamilton founded an industrial corporation, and

Capitalism and Agrarianism 161

Jefferson was a tobacco planter* But after the transformation
of the Whig Pfcrty, tinder the guidance of men like Thurlow
Weed, the parties began to develop into independent entities
that no longer reflected class differences. It is true that some
economic groups retained permanent party allegiances; after
the Civil War, for example, the cotton planters were always
Democratic while heavy industry was always Republican. But
the parties themselves grew into organizations of professional
politicians who lived by patronage and whose primary concern
was not to serve some particular economic interest bat to be
elected into office.

Political theory, even in America, has always been domi-
nated by European conceptions; and doctrinaires of all schools
have always been baffled by the American party system. In-
sofar as it fails to conform to European standards, it has been
regarded as a puzzling and reprehensible aberration. Parties, it
is declared, ought to represent hostile principles and economic
interests, and politicians ought to be motivated by higher
considerations than a desire to support themselves by office-
holding. Yet the American system was the product of a natural
evolution j it came into existence because of the growth of
democracy, and it acquired its special characteristics because
they were appropriate to the needs and desires of the Ameri-
can people. In reality the American party system is an admi-
rable mechanism of self-government. The greatest defects of
the American form of government, if it is considered as an
instrument of democracy, are to be found not in the party sys-
tem but in the Constitution, with its division of responsibility
and its complicated machinery of checks and balances.

For more than a hundred years Americans have been in
the habit of denouncing their politicians as greedy, unprin-
cipled, and dishonest. Insofar as this practice serves to maintain
a proper spirit of humility among the elected representa-
tives of the sovereign people and prevents them from usurping
dictatorial authority, it is not to be deplored. Yet many of
the attacks on the American politician are due to a misunder-
standing of his true function. The Constitution makers, dis-
trusting democracy, tried to establish the rule of an elite j but
America became democratic in spite of the Constitution. And

1 6 2 The American -People

in a democracy the ultimate decisions are made by the people.
The duty of the politician in a democracy is not to guide and
direct popular sentiment or to legislate In accordance with
some program of his own but to interpret the will of his
constituents and to carry it into effect. As the instrument of
the electorate he must be a specialist in understanding pop-
ular sentiment, in weighing the relative strength of divergent
opinions, and in working out compromises that will satisfy
as many different groups as possible, always with the knowl-
edge that the penalty for failure may be defeat at the next
election. Such a task requires a flexibility and a bargaining
capacity which are incompatible with rigid principles and
convictions ; but nobody who genuinely believes that men in
the mass are capable of self-government can regard it as
ignoble. It is undeniable that the American politician fre-
quently develops certain occupational weaknesses: that he
responds too readily to pressure from organized minorities
and that he is too often inclined to appeal for votes by dem-
agogic slogans and appeals to mass prejudice. But judged
by his fidelity to his constituents, he has not performed so
badly as his detractors have insisted. When errors have been
made it is usually the electorate that is responsible, although
the politician, as the whipping boy of the sovereign people,
must usually take the blame.

Two rival parties are essential to good democratic govern-
ment. Government under a one-party system is always in-
efficient and always undemocratic. But when both parties are
competing for the votes of the same body of citizens, it is
unnecessary that they represent hostile principles of govern-
ment or rival economic interests. One of the great merits of
the American system is the flexibility with which each party
can change its principles in accordance with changes in the
sentiments of the electorate. In this manner government
always represents the wishes of the majority; political con-
flicts never become irreconcilable; and since a minority party
can always hope to win a majority if it interprets the popular
will more accurately than its rivals, the rule of the people is
maintained by constant and effective competition. And to the
extent that the party system loses this necessary flexibility, it

Capitalism and Agrarianhm 163

ceases to ensure effective government. The politician who
sticks to the same set of dogmas in defiance of his constituents
and the voter who always votes for the same party ticket
without regard for the qualifications of the party nominees
are violating the spirit of American democracy. This kind of
rigidity is encouraged by the tendency to interpret the Ameri-
can form of government in European terms instead of recog-
nizing it as a unique creation serving the needs of a democratic
people.

The special features of the American system are exemplified
most fully in the office of the Presidency* This is a unique
position which should not be identified with that of a European
prime minister, who is chiefly the leader of a party. Perhaps
the closest historic parallel to the American Presidency is to
be found in popular monarchy as it was exemplified by the
English Tudors or by Henry of Navarre. Since the election
of 1840 there have been few great Presidents; but the quali-
ties required in a democratic President are so unusual that it
is doubtful whether any alternative method of selection
would have produced better results. The President is primarily
the representative of all the people 5 he needs above every-
thing to be skilled in interpreting popular sentiment and ex-
perienced in the ways of politics and to have an infinite
flexibility. A man of the greatest ability who larks the political
sense or whose principles are too rigid will certainly be an
unsuccessful President. To be great a President needs also
to have imagination and courage; but how far any particular
individual will develop these qualities can rarely be predicted
in advance. The greatest of the Presidents was an obscure
Illinois politician who had had no previous executive experi-
ence and had never previously shown any unusual ability.
But being himself one of the plain people, Lincoln understood
what they wanted j and when he became President he set
out single-mindedly to make himself their servant. When he
believed that the people wished him to take action, he showed
imagination in translating their wishes into a specific program
and courage in fighting for it 5 but he never regarded himself
as wiser than his constituents. Denounced as a dictator by some
and as dilatory, compromising, and unprincipled by others,

164 The American People

he was guided at all times by his mystical self-identification
with the average citizens of America and his belief that as
President of all the people he was not an independent agent
but merely the instrument of the general will. Without this
kind of humility no President can achieve greatness.

Critics of the American form of government, botfy con-
servative and radical, are usually motivated by a desire to
put into effect some particular program which they believe to
be beneficial to the mass of the people but which may be con-
trary to their wishes. They denounce the typical politician,
who regards himself as the delegate of his constituents, and
call him timid and dishonesty but they are really betraying a
lack of confidence in democracy. For tinder the American
form of government it is usually the people and not the poli-
ticians who are responsible for major errors. When the govern-
ment is so responsive to mass sentiment, there can be no
substitute for popular vigilance and enlightenment. The worst
feature of American politics has been the power of organized
minorities, particularly when supported by money, to secure
legislation contrary to the public interest. But what enables a
minority to get what it wants is the apathy of the average
voter and his habit of voting blindly for the nominees of the
party to which he chooses to belong. A Congressman cannot
always be expected to resist the pressure of a minority group
capable of deciding an election if he cannot count on the sup-
port of the majority of the voters irrespective of party labels.

The American government has now been democratic for
more than a hundred years 5 yet democracy must still be con-
sidered as an experiment. Have the mass of the people suffi-
cient wisdom to govern themselves without the guidance of
an elite? In a society without an established church, without an
aristocracy, and without any privileged caste of scholars or
administrators, will the average citizen display the necessary
political intelligence and the necessary moral capacity for
self-sacrifice, and will he understand and remain loyal to those
fundamental social principles upon which civilization is based?
For a hundred years the critics of democracy, both conserva-
tive and radical, have been shuddering at the dangers of
popular rulej and it is still too early to say confidently that

Capitalism and Agrarianism 1 65

they are wrong. For the most part the American people have
decided correctly on major issues, and they have rarely erred
in appraising the relative qualifications of the presidential
candidates presented for their choice; and although they have
also committed gross errors, they have usually tried aftor^
wards to .rectify them. But so long as they had an open fron-
tier, an expanding economy, and no international problems,
they did not require any remarkable wisdom in order to con-
duct their affairs successfully. The crucial, and still undecided,
test of the American democratic principle did not begin until
the twentieth century.

1 66] CHAPTER VIII

The Conquest of the West

MEANWHILE the migration into the West,
which was the main substance of American his-
tory for nearly three centuries, had continued
with a growing momentum. At the time of the
Revolution the frontier line ran down the Appalachians, and
only a few hunters and fur trappers had penetrated into the
rich forest country on the farther side of the mountain ranges.
The Americans had spent a century and a half in settling the
coastal plain along the Atlantic. But after independence had
been won, the conquest of the West began. During the next
two generations the Americans moved into the basin of the
Mississippi from the Great Lakes down to the Gulf of Mexico.
By 1840 they had occupied an area of nearly seven hundred
thousand square miles west of the mountains. Its population
already amounted to nearly six and a half million.

From its source in Lake Itasca in Minnesota the Mississippi
flows for twenty-five hundred miles before it reaches the Gulf,
gathering tributaries from a region as large as half of Europe.
Before the coining of the Americans much of this vast terri-
tory was unbroken forest, although in the West where the
land began to slope upwards toward the Rockies there was
open grassland. The French had been the first white people
to explore the country, and a few French settlements had
been founded during the eighteenth century. But mainly it
had remained unconquered wilderness, inhabited only by a
few tribes of nomadic Indians. With its rich soil, its varied
mineral resources, and its broad waterways, it -presented the
Americans with opportunities unequaled in the whole of re-
corded history.

During the period of the Revolution a few pioneer families
established themselves in the forests of Kentucky, fighting
prolonged and bloody wars with the Indians. The great mi-

The Conquest of the West 1 67

gration began after the War of Independence. During the
1780*8 men and women were driving pack horses and Cones-
toga wagons across the mountain ranges of Pennsylvania and
through the Cumberland Gap in Virginia until they reached
one of the tributaries of the Mississippi, where they built
themselves boats and floated downstream into the Western
wilderness. Others moved up into the Appalachian plateau
itself an isolated region where they quickly lost contact with
the American life around them, so that social development
became immobilized at the point at which it had first been
settled 5 in the twentieth century its inhabitants were still
living and thinking like the frontiersmen of a hundred years
before. In this fashion Kentucky and Tennessee were settled.
Ohio became safe for colonization after the Indians had been
defeated in 1794, and the frontier line was then pushed
steadily westward across Indiana and Illinois, provoking a
second Indian war in 181 1 and a third in 1832. In this region
two streams of migration met and mingled, one from Massa-
chusetts and Connecticut and the other from Virginia* To the
south of Tennessee, in the regions along the Gulf, the Indians
were crushed by Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812,
This hot and fertile country was settled by farmers from
Georgia and the Carolinas, some of whom brought with them
Negro slaves and established plantations for the growing of
cotton. By the 1 830*5 the Mississippi had become a busy artery
of commerce; every year thousands of flatfaoats loaded with
Western flour and Southern cotton were floated downstream
to the seaport of New Orleans, whence the boatmen returned
up the river by steamship. The pioneer line had long since
crossed the river into the prairies of Iowa and Missouri and
the hill country of Arkansas.

Throughout this epic of expansion the ax and the rifle of
the pioneer, by which the white man imposed his will upon
the wilderness, were the symbols of civilization. A vast process
of destruction was needed in order that the country might
become habitable. The frontiersmen, with thetr extraordinary
skill of hand and eye and their almost claustrophobic hatred
of the ways of settled society, made their way through the
forest in order to kill animals for food and fur. Some of them,

1 68 The American People

like Daniel Boone of Kentucky, earned a permanent place in
the memory of Americans. The first settlers, who were usually
men of a shiftless and barbaric breed, burned away trees in
order to make clearings where they could grow corn. Less
restless and more purposeful citizens following in their foot-
steps expanded the clearings into farms and built hotises in-
stead of log cabins. As the population grew, the forest steadily
receded; its wild life was massacred j and the Indians suc-
cumbed to the white man's liquor and diseases, or were ruth-
lessly pushed westward across the prairie Riverside settle-
ments, where men congregated for trade, grew into towns with
churches and courthouses and central squares modeled on
those of Massachusetts or Virginia- And with the advent of
the aggressive merchant, lawyer and speculator and in the
South of the slaveowning cotton planter, the pristine equality
of the frontier began to disappear, and a more complex social
organization gradually took shape*

The flow of migration was always largest after a period of
business depression in the East. Yet it was something more
positive than sheer economic need that drove the Americans
into the West. Economic opportunities for the average man
were diminishing in the Atlantic states^ but there was little
acute poverty, nor did the migrants belong, in general, to the
wage-earning class. Young men and women turned to the
West because it promised an escape from social discipline, be-
cause by growing up with a new country they could find wider
opportunities and more easily achieve wealth and leadership,
or simply in order to prove their strength and give significance
to their lives. With the opening of the West the restlessness
that had brought the first Americans across the Atlantic be-
came a stronger and more widespread national characteristic.
Pioneer families often moved every few years, becoming
habitually rootless and nomadic as they followed the frontier
line from Kentucky into Indiana and thence across the prairies
of Illinois and Iowa. And it was by no means only the poorer
and more ignorant of the Americans who responded to the
magnetic attraction of the frontier. Travelers in Western
forests would sometimes meet with literate and cultivated

The Conqu$t of tAe Wtst 1 69

New England or Virginia families who were living In log
cabins, raising their own food, and rearing children without
benefit of civilization.

Although the federal government exercised a general super-
vision over the settlement of the West, the migration was
a spontaneous movement of individuals j and they did not
forfeit any of their political rights by leaving the seaboard
regions* This was colonization on the ancient Greek model
rather than on that of the European empires in that the colo-
nists were not held in subordination by the states from which
they had come. It had been decided during the period of the
Confederation that the West should be gradually organized
into new self-governing states which would be admitted into
the Union on an equality with the original thirteen. The
federal government controlled the sale of public land, requir-
ing settlers to pay for legal titles of ownership (although
there were always large numbers of squatters, who felt that
access to unoccupied land was their natural right and saw no
reason why they should pay for it). It regulated the govern-
ment of a territory as long as it was too thinly inhabited to
qualify for statehood. And it assumed responsibility for deal-
ing with the Indians. But in spite of the fears of Eastern coa*
servatives, who felt that the Westerners had become ignorant
barbarians and could not be trusted with political power, it
never attempted to hold the West in political subjection.

During the first settlement of a new area there was indeed
a descent into barbarism, but this rarely lasted for more than a
few years. The movement into the West was not merely a
migration of individuals; it was also a migration of institu-
tions. Almost all the pioneers were natives of America, since
there was little immigration from Europe between 1776 and
1840; and they brought with them the political habits that
prevailed in the seaboard states. As soon as possible they
would set up those institutions of self-government with which
they were familiar, and would begin building schools and
founding newspapers. The transplanting of the essential ele-
ments of American civilization into the Mississippi Valley
region was often astonishingly rapid.

170 The American People

Yet the Mississippi Valley never became identical with the
East. The Westerners were changed by their crossing of the
Appalachians in somewhat the same fashion that their an-
cestors had been changed by the Atlantic passage. Spiritually,
as well as geographically, they had come further from E/urope.
They had a stronger belief iij political democracy and in equal-
ity of opportunity. They were also more individualistic and
more self-assertive. They had less respect for established
principles and traditions and for polished manners and cul-
tural interests that served no obvious purpose, and were more
inclined to judge everything in pragmatic terms. Vehemently
nationalistic and owing allegiance to the Union as a whole
rather than to any particular section, they loved to proclaim
the greatness and the uniqueness of the United States. And
although their patriotic boasting often seemed blatant and
offensive, they had sound reasons for it. For the special virtues
of the American way of life were more fully realized in the
Mississippi Valley, particularly in the small towns of the
Middle Western region where Negro slavery never pene-
trated, than in any other part of the country. Living among an
abundance of natural resources and organizing their society
on a basis of genuine democracy, the people of this region
developed a neighborly kindliness, generosity, and sense of
human equality that were peculiarly American. Middle West-
ern society was organized for the benefit of the average manj
and those with unusual talents and sensitivities sometimes
found it oppressive. But the majority of its inhabitants had
good reason for believing that the United States represented
an attempt to create a new and higher mode of civilization.

During the period of the migrations, however, the most
obvious characteristics of Mississippi Valley society were its
exuberant animal vitality and its pride in its own growth. The
plain citizens who crossed the Appalachians were engaged in
one of the biggest enterprises in human history; they were
conquering an empire and settling it with a rapidity that daz-
zled the imagination* The transformation, within two gener-
ations, of millions of acres of forest into farms, plantations,
and cities was so unprecedented that it produced a kind of

The Conquest of the West 1 7 1

permanent spiritual intoxication. It is not surprising that the
Westerner should have become uninhibited, ixjuacious, fond
of magniloquent oratory, and accustomed to thinking in terms
of the immense.

The Westerners loved to tell stories, and their wonder at
their own achievements led them to create a new folklore in
which the physical prowess of the frontiersman was celebrated
and humorously exaggerated until it became mythical. The
hero of the Western tall tale, like Mike Fink the Mississippi
boatman, or David Crockett of Tennessee, was "half-horse,
half-alligator, and a little touched with the snapping-turtle"}
and he could perform the most extraordinary feats of strength
and skill, often with an element of callousness or even of wan-
ton cruelty in them. As his legend expanded he was gradually
elevated into the role of a demigod and attributed with super-
natural powers. Mike Fink could "out-run, out-jump, out-
shoot, out-brag, out-drink, an' out-fight, roughs-tumble, no
holts barred, any man on both sides the river from Pittsburgh
to New Orleans an' back ag'in to St. Louiee." l In later stories
of Fink, Crockett, and other Western heroes, they could
swallow thunderbolts and ride on streaks of lightning. This
Western humor of overstatement, beginning in oral story-
telling and developing into journalism, became an American
tradition. Out of it developed a prose style, with colloquial
rhythms and vocabulary and a fidelity to American emotions
and concrete American experience, that deviated sharply from
English models and that was afterward (as in the speeches of
Abraham Lincoln and the novels of Mark Twain) refined
into literature. <

During the middle decades of the nineteenth century the
Mississippi was indeed an amazing spectacle. The steamboats
that ran for two thousand miles from New Orleans to St.
Louis and up into the prairie country of Iowa and Illinois
carried a great variety of human types; and what was common
to all of them was their exuberant self-confidence and tneir
freedom from external restraints. Their manners were crude,
and their appetites were frequently grossj they included an
iB. A. Bodm: A Treasury of Amencm foWare dw4>, P- 57-

172 The American People

abnormally large proportion of gamblers, swindlers, and
charlatans j but they rarely lost their gusto for living or their
sense of humon Ambitious business entrepreneurs and land
speculators, loud-voiced political orators, itinerant troupes of
actors and vaudeville performers, Methodist and Baptist
evangelists threatening sinners with the pains of hell, preach-
ers of strange new religions, medicine vendors promising
miraculous cures, fraudulent real-estate promoters, profes-
sional pickpockets and confidence men, along with travelers
from Europe taking notes on the strange ways of American
democracy all these passed up and down the great river,
mingling with the farmers of the prairies, the planters and
their Negroes from the cotton states, and the French-speaking
merchants of New Orleans. Western life often horrified
European observers by its lack of discipline and social refine-
mentj but it had an epic quality although it never found its
Homer.

Yet this Western exuberance, reckless and extravagant as
it so often appeared, was never wholly unchecked \ and as
society became more settled the restraints upon it grew
stronger. From the beginning the principal restraining influ-
ence appears to have been that of the women. One of the most
conspicuous characteristics of American life noted by all for-
eign observers was that women were becoming more inde-
pendent and more influential than in any other country in the
world. Sharing equally in all the labors and dangers of pio-
neering, in addition to breeding the enormous families that
had become customary in all parts of America, and frequently
living in communities where their value was enhanced by
scarcity, they no longer had the protected, sheltered, and
subordinate status of their European cousins. They were able
to develop their own potentialities for initiative and leader-
ship. And it is the consensus of opinion that they used then-
power to impose discipline, standards of refinement, and a
strict morality, and to curb the more lawless and unruly
proclivities of the male, Europeans frequently praised them
highly. Be Tocqueville marveled at their competence and
their self-assurance, and declared that the prosperity and
strength of American civilization were due primarily to the

The Conquest oj the West 173

superiority of its women. 1 The American male, on the other
hand, while submitting to the standards of order that the
women imposed and accepting them as right and necessary,
was inclined at the same time to resent these restrictions upon
his masculine freedom. He could sympathize with Mark
Twain's Huckleberry Finn when he decided "to light out for
the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going
to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it, I been there
before. 7 ' A novelist of a later generation, in revolt against a
civilization dominated by Aunt Sally's, declared that they
"had broken the moral back of a race and made a nursery out
of a continent." 3

To the influence of women was added that of the Protes-
tant churches. The original irreligion of the frontier did not
endure. Evangelists soon went to work in the Mississippi
Valley and made it the most religious part of America. The
inhabitants of the Valley responded quickly to the more emo-
tional forms of religious appeal, of the type that had orig-
inated with the Great Awakening and been systematized by
Jonathan Edwards, and the power of the churches was estab-
lished through a series of violent and hysterical revivals.
Western religion was similar to that of the New England
Puritans and the Southern Scotch-Irish, but there was less in-
terest in doctrine and in the higher forms of spiritual experi-
ence and more emphasis on practical results. It was essentially
an instrument for imposing social order and discipline. The
churches in this region were, for example, always in the fore-
front of the movement for prohibiting the consumption of
alcohol.

As civilization developed, moreover, a more complex social
structure took shape, ana the West became less free and less
egalitarian. As everywhere in America, the sentiment of
equality was the product of frontier conditions and of an
abundance of natural resources^ it was never fully safeguarded
by institutions. And while frontier life was neighborly and
co-operative, it was also individualistic* The man of strong

2 A. De Tocquerifte, Democracy m America, VoL n, Third Boot
Chapter XIL
3 F. Scott Fitzgerald: Tender is the Night, Pfcrt n. Chap* 13-

1 74 The American People

will and driving ambition could attain power and transmit
social prestige to his children 5 the weak, the improvident, and
the unlucky suffered defeat. Men's fortunes depended pri-
marily on their natural qualities, not on inheritance j and as
long as the country was not fully settled and the frontier re-
mained open, opportunities were abundant. But there was al-
ways a trend toward the growth of social distinctions, based
mainly on monetary standards 5 and this grew stronger after
the Civil War when the simple agrarian life of the early
West began to give place to industrialism. A kind of natural
aristocracy soon came into existence, composed mainly of
those who deserved to take the lead by virtue of superior
energy and practical intelligence, although it also included
shrewd men of business who made fortunes, sometimes
fraudulently, by moneylending, "land speculation, or pre-
emption of natural resources. At the bottom of the social scale
in many Valley communities were squatter families, fre-
quently suffering from malaria or some deficiency disease,
who continued to live like animals in tiny cabins and to culti-
vate plots of ground to which they had no legal title. Class
lines always remained fairly fluid and never destroyed that
basic sense of the dignity of every individual .that was the
spiritual foundation of American democracy} but as time went
on, social distinctions became more noticeable. An individual's
ancestry, his occupation, his church, his social affiliations, his
political opinions, and the location of his home all became in-
dexes for defining his status in the community.

With the growth of social and economic complexity the
political attitudes of the Mississippi Valley gradually turned
away from their original agrarianism and became more Ham-
iltonian. In the 1830'$ the West was permeated with the
doctrines of Jacksonian democracy. As an agricultural and a
debtor section it wished to protect the property rights of the
farmer and to restrict those property rights derived from con-
tractual obligations. Western states passed laws making the
farmer's homestead immune from seizure oh account of debt
claims; they endeavored to protect the actual occupants of
the land, even when they were squatters, in preference to
wealthy land speculators, and to change the public-land sys-

The Conquest of the West 1 75

tern in order to safeguard squatters 7 rights; and after unfortu-
nate experiences with paper money they limited the right to
establish banks or prohibited banks altogether* Yet the West
never accepted the doctrines of Virginia agrarianism com-
pletely 5 its attitude was always pragmatic and not based on
consistent principle. Needing access to markets, it wanted a
strong federal government that would subsidize the building
of roads, canals, and other internal improvements, and was
never concerned about the dangers inherent in such a use of
political power to bestow economic privilege. As the section
grew more prosperous and the influence of wealthy business
men became stronger, it became more willing to support other
Hamiltonian measures. In the 1850*3 the slavery issue
changed the political allegiance of the upper Mississippi Val-
ley, which became henceforth a stronghold of the Republican
Party. It continued to believe in democracy and in the ideal of
a society of property owners; but its typical spokesmen (like
Abraham Lincoln) saw no incompatibility between such an
ideal and a program of government protection for the obliga-
tions of contracts and government aid for business expansion*

To the west of the valley of the Mississippi the land sloped
upward into the region of the Great Plains, beyond which lay
the Rocky Mountains. Almost all this country suffered from
a scarcity of water, and as late as the 1830^ much of it was
known as the Great American Desert and regarded as unfit for
white settlement Men believed that in Iowa and Missouri the
frontier had come close to its appropriate limits, and that the
Far West should be left in perpetuity for the buffalo and the
Indian. Yet during the next decade the insatiable restlessness
and land hunger of the American brought about new con-
quests, and the pioneer caravans headed for the Pacific coast*

The mountains of the West were first explored by fur
trappers working for commercial companies with headquarters
in Missouri. During the 1820*8 and 1830*8 men like Jim
Bridger, Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson, and John Colter were
wandering to and fro across the deserts and over the Rockies,

1 76 The American People

opening trails and often spending months in complete soli-
tude. These "mountain men" served as guides for the mili-
tary expeditions, sent out by the federal government and
headed by men like John C Fremont, that mapped the coun-
try and reported on its economic resources. Meanwhile traders
opened a caravan route across the plains from Missouri to
Santa Fe, New Mexico. The explorations ended the belief
that the West was uninhabitable. Much of it was not yet
United States territory. The Southwest officially belonged to
Mexico, and the far Northwest was under joint American and
British control. But the nationalistic Americans of the Missis-
sippi Valley began to speak of the "manifest destiny" of the
United States to control the entire continent and to dream
of expansion to the western ocean.

It was in the 1 840*8 that the drive of the pioneers reached
its zenith. Several years of economic depression were followed
by an even more insistent revival of the urge to migrate. For
Americans Utopia has always lain a little beyond the horizon,
and men who had not found it in the Mississippi Valley, and
whose optimism was still unconquered, turned again toward
the setting sun. But now they were no longer content merely
to move on into the next belt of unoccupied territory. Instead
of settling the Great Plains, they set out to cross the two thou-
sand miles of mountain and desert to the coast of the Pacific.

Every spring through the 1840*8 the pioneer caravans
gathered at Independence, Missouri, for the march into the
West. Like all the American migrations, this was a move-
ment of plain citizens, many of them mature men and women
accompanied by children j and since the equipment and sup-
plies for the journey cost up to a thousand dollars, they
were by no means of the poorest class. They usually traveled
in covered wagons singularly graceful vehicles, shaped like
ships on wheels, roofed with white canvas for protection
against the weather, and drawn by oxen. At Independence
they organized themselves into parties and elected leaders.
And through the summer and autumn they were driving
their ox teams up into the Qreat Plains, over the passes of the
Rockies, across the alkali deserts of Wyoming and Utah, and
through the Pacific ranges. For six months and two thousand

The Conquest of the West 1 77

miles they were dependent entirely on their own resources.

Some parties met with utter disaster, like the Donner party
in 1846 that failed to complete the crossing before the winter
snows made the California mountains impassable- Caught by
winter on the wrong side of the ranges, the majority of the
party acquitted themselves as nobly as had the Plymouth
Pilgrims in their similar plight two hundred and twenty^six
years earlier; a few, on the other hand, lost every vestige of
humanity and sank into cannabalism. Almost every party
reached the Pacific hungry and ragged, leaving behind them
across the prairies and the deserts a long trail of graves and
ox-bones and abandoned wagons and possessions. Yet in spite
of every catastrophe the Americans continued coming to the
Pacific every year in larger numbers.

Most of the emigrants wanted to settle in the fertile coastal
regions of California and Oregon. But there was one group
that was looking for seclusion the Church of the Latter-day
Saints, popularly known as the Mormons- Mormonisrn was
in many ways a characteristic expression of Mississippi Valley
psychology during the pioneering period. With astonishing
self-assurance Joseph Smith had found a profession for him-
self as an inspired prophet and had proceeded to invent a
new religion in the same way that other plain citizens were
starting new industrial enterprises or settling new territories.
Extroverted, agile, and spiritually shallow, he was totally
lacking in any genuine emotional insight and integrity 5 he
was neither a mystic like Ann Lee nor a serious thinker like
John Humphrey Noyes. But he had an infectious gaiety and
zest for living. His religion was pieced together out of frag-
ments of Puritan theology, which he reshaped to suit the
optimistic and practical spirit of the time, made more colorful
by the addition of a theatrical ritualism, and spiced at least
for the inner circle of male apostles with sexual license. It
was a creed for plain people, containing nothing beyond their
comprehension and promising them, if they had industry and
courage, Utopia in this world as well as heaven in the next.
And it was remarkably well adapted to the ideas and aspira-
tions of the unsophisticated Western Americans of the period.
To the men of the Mississippi Valley it was by no means in-

j 7 8 The American People

credible that an ordinary contemporary American should be
receiving new revelations from God, like the prophets of the
Bible. Thousands of them were willing to suffer poverty,
hunger, persecution, and possible death rather than abandon
the faith that Smith had given them. But wherever the Mor-
mons settled, whether in Ohio or in Missouri or in Illinois,
they came into conflict with their Christian neighbors. In
1 844 Smith was lynched, and his followers decided to go to
a. new country. Brigham Young became their new leader, and
in 1847 k e kd them across the mountains to the shores of
the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Here, in territory that earlier
explorers had pronounced to be an uninhabitable desert in
which no crop would ever grow, they began to build their
Utopia. Disciplined by a sense of religious vocation and
guided by a skillful and self-assured leader, the Mormons
gradually won prosperity. Hard labor and artificial irrigation
caused the desert to blossom astonishingly.

The migration into the Western territories made it in-
crvifcable that they should become United States property,
whether by negotiation or by war. It was easy to establish
American sovereignty over Oregon by peaceful agreement
with Great Britain* But the republic of Mexico, as the heir
of the Spanish Empire, was the legal owner of California and
of much of the Rocky Mountain region, although she had
no effective control over them. Lacking the aggressiveness
and acquisitiveness of the Americans and torn apart by in-
ternal social conflicts, the Mexicans had not colonized their
northern territories and were unlikely ever to do so, but they
were not willing to abandon their sovereignty over them.
Americans had already moved into Texas, which also be-
longed to Mexico, and in 1836, disgusted by Mexican mis-
government, had successfully rebelled and declared them-
selves an independent republic In 1845 Texas, at its own
request, was admitted into the United States, after which
Mexico broke off diplomatic relations in protest against what
she regarded as an act of aggression. This was followed by a
series of disputes and, in the following year, by war. Presi-
dent Polk found what he regarded as sufficient legal reasons
for going to warj but his real motive was a desire to annex

The Conquest of the West 179

California, A native of Tennessee, he was a spokesman of
Mississippi Valley nationalism and expansionism. American
armies invaded Mexico and fought their way into its capital
city, and in 1848 they dictated terms of peace. Mexico lost
more than half of her total territory a deprivation which
she has never forgotten and the United States acquired title
to California and the other regions of the Southwest

It is impossible to approve of the seizure of California. Yet
it must be recognized as inevitable that the more vigorous
and aggressive of the two races should take possession of it,
and it is improbable that the Mexicans would ever have sur-
rendered it voluntarily. The Americans cannot be called im-
perialistic since they had no desire to conquer and enslave a
foreign race* They wtre merely assuming, in accordance with
long-established frontier attitudes, that they had a right to
occupy an empty and fertile territory, with or without legal
title.

With the annexation of California the drive into the West,
which had started at Jamestown and Plymouth more than
two hundred years earlier, had reached its limits. Some Amer-
icans were already looking still farther into the west and were
dreaming of an American hegemony over the Pacific Ocean*
New England merchants had traded with China since the
1790*5. Regular diplomatic relations were established during
the 1840*5, and a decade later Perry forced the Japanese to
take cognizance of the Western world. Through the middle
years of the nineteenth century, whalers, traders, and mission-
aries were visiting the Pacific islands and preparing the way
for American domination over the entire ocean. The two
expansionist movements from Europe, which had carried
some groups eastwards around Africa to India and the Fast
Indies and others westwards into the continent of America,
were now beginning to meet each other. But this American
conquest of the Pacific, whenever it should occur, would be
different in character from the conquest of the continent, It
would be accomplished by military, diplomatic, and commer-
cial methods, and not by the spontaneous migrations of indi-
viduals*

Meanwhile there were still vast empty spaces in America to

i8o The American People

be occupied, and the process of expansion was not completed
for another half-century. Hitherto men had come West in
search of land for agriculture* But in 1 848 the pioneers found
a new motive. Gold was discovered in California. The result
was a sudden mad rush of adventurers from all over the
country, which increased the population of the state by more
than three hundred thousand in ten years. Covered wagons
rolled over the trails across the Rockies by tens of thousands,
while other gold seekers took ship around Cape Horn or came
by way of Panama, Very few of them emerged any richer
than when they started j the profits from the gold rush went
chiefly to the storekeepers and the owners of saloons and
gambling houses in San Francisco and in the mining camps.
As so often in America, adventurers and dreamers opened up
the country 5 but it was the cautious and hardheaded business-
men who eventually became the masters of it. Yet once the
hope of sudden wealth had been stimulated, it was not easily
abandoned. For several decades after the first rush to Cali-
fornia optimistic prospectors were wandering over the West-
ern mountains in quest of gold and silver, and there was a
whole series of similar movements when precious metals were
discovered successively in Colorado, in Nevada, in Arizona,
in Idaho, and in Dakota.

The miners were too migratory to establish a settled society.
When gold or silver was discovered, a mining town would
grow within a few months, fully equipped with stores, the-
aters, saloons, and brothels; and a few years later when the
mines were becoming less productive most of the population
would move elsewhere. With its extravagant hopes and un-
restrained individualism and its lack of any established habits
of law and order, the mining town during a boom period
represented the most extreme expression of one aspect of
American development. But the miners were the first men to
open up large areas of the mountain country. And some of
the mines, after being taken over by business corporations
capable of installing proper equipment, became permanent
sources of profit.

A similar individualism and exuberance characterized the
life of the cattlemen, who were the first to take possession of

The Conquest oj the West 1 81

another region of the West The Great Plains, on the eastern
side of the Rockies, provided excellent grazing, and during
the 1860*$ the raising of cattle became a profitable occupation*
The two decades following the Gvil War were the period of
the open range when vast herds of cattle could move freely
over an immense area stretching across the breadth of the
United States. The Chisholm Trail, along which hundreds of
thousands of cattle were driven in a year, ran from Texas into
Montana, The cowboys who accompanied them acquired their
costume and their way of life from the wqi&ros of northern
Mexico; and like the Gauchos of Argentina of an earlier
generation, they left behind them the memory of a peculiar
gallantry and virility, and of a talent for melody and folk
foliar^ which made them one of the most romantic elements
in the American tradition. But the cattlemen's frontier lasted
for a mere twenty years. In the 1880*5 the herds were
decimated by severe winters; and the Great Plains began to
be transformed into private ranches and farm properties
guarded from encroaching animals by barbed wire.

Meanwhile the railroad had come to the West. The first
transcontinental line was completed in 1 869, and four others
were in operation before the end of the century. And with the
railroads came hundreds of thousands of fanners who settled
wherever the land seemed fertile, in addition to ploughing
up, in the Great Plains and elsewhere, large areas that should
have been left to grass. Immigrants from Europe were now-
pouring into the United States, and much of the farm land
both in the Middle West and in the areas west of the Mis-
sissippi was occupied by Germans and Scandinavians. As al-
ways, the establishment of civilization was accompanied by
a vast process of destruction. After several decades of bitter
and bloody warfare the surviving Indians of the West were
gathered into reservations and compelled to submit to white
control. And the immense herds of buffaloes, originally num-
bering millions, were slaughtered so wantonly and so per-
sistently that the animal soon became almost extinct.

Thus the free and adventurous life of the early West con-
tinued only for a few decades. Before the end of the nine-
teenth century almost every part of the country had been

1 82 The American People

settled, and the frontier line had ceased to exist. Law and
order and all the institutions of a settled society had been
established over the whole area of the United States. And
although Western life retained much of the sense of spacious-
ness and of unlimited opportunity it had acquired during the
process of settlement, the economic pattern imposed upon it
was not that of eighteenth-century agrarianism but that of the
new big business society tnat had developed in the Northeast.
The completion of the conquest of the continent marked
the end of an epoch in American history. There was still
vacant land in the West; and there was still a tendency for
the population to move westwards. But agriculture was no
longer a profitable or attractive occupation. The glamor and
the big rewards were now to be found elsewhere. The men
of strong will and driving ambition were now imposing their
mastery not merely upon the wilderness but also upon other
human beings; and the ambitious and the discontented were
drawn not to the frontier but to the cities. Henceforth the
children of the pioneers must face new tasks of a different
nature and a much greater complexity.

CHAPTER IX [ 183

The Agrarian Mind

DURING the twenty-five years preceding the Gvil
War all the tendencies implicit in American civili-
zation came to a kind of culmination. Political
democracy had triumphed 5 and in sfrite of the
advance of capitalism, a "general equality of condition** was
still (as De TocqueviUe declared in 1835) the "primary fact*
about the Americans. Men in America, he declared, were "on
a greater equality in point of fortune and intellect, or, in other
words, more equal in their strength, than in any other coun-
try in the world, or in any age of which history has preserved
the remembrance." * The pioneering energy that conquered
the West was at its zenith. The growing sectional conflict had
not yet reached the point of crisis. Everywhere there was an
extraordinary sense of exhilaration; in the American world
the wildest ambitions and the most impossible ideals seemed
capable of fulfillment. The country abounded in Utopian
experiments, in new religions, and new social philosophies
promising the millennium. Some of the manifestations of
America's self-confidence were crude and unlovely j as foreign
visitors discovered, there was too much nationalistic boasting
and too much insistence on the backwardness of Europe. But
faith in the American experiment could also stimulate men of
finer grain. This was a period of vital and profoundly Ameri-
can literature.

The civilization of the United States has never been very
friendly to purely aesthetic activity. Emphasizing quantity
rather than quality, and measuring achievement too often in
commercial terms, it has attributed little value to those
subtle intellectual creations beyond the grasp of the average
man. Moreover, the spirit of the countty has always encour-

A. De TocqaeriQe: Dcmocrmcy m America, Vol. I, Introduction and

1 84 The American People

aged a versatility and an adaptability which are Incompatible
with the highest professional attainments. De Tocqueville
pointed out that "if the American be less perfect in each craft
than the European, at least there Is scarcely any trade with
which he is utterly unacquainted. His capacity is more gen-
eral, and the circle of his intelligence is enlaced." a In spite
of these impediments great writers have appeared in America,
although they have failed to find the encouragement and the
critical understanding needed for the full development of
their powers, so that none of them has ever grown into that
happy and productive maturity that has been possible for the
greatest of the Europeans,

Yet although the American writers of the 1 840*3 and 1 856*3
found themselves In an unsympathetic environment, they
were themselves a part of that environment 5 unlike some of
their successors, they did not attempt to repudiate it. They
shared the general confidence in the unlimited potentialities
of democracy. They used American imagery, adopted Ameri-
can themes, and thought in American terms. More deeply,
they explored and Interpreted the hidden psychic tendencies
pervading the society that had produced them. Their ability
to objectify these tendencies in symbolic terms is what makes
them perennially significant.

The greatest art is always symbolic in that its imagery is
a reflection of profound emotions that cannot be wholly com-
prehended by means of intellectual formulas. Symbolism Is
very different from allegory, which is a deliberate and con-
scious manipulation of images in order to illustrate some in-
tellectual doctrine or idea. The symbolic artist explores, and
gives expression to, deep psychic forces within himself, em-
bodying them in images that are their objective correlatives.
And insofar as he is a representative product of a particular
society and is sensitive to Its psychic tendencies and attitudes,
his work will enlarge our understanding of that society. The
writer who devotes himself wholly to the symbolic expression
of his emotions and ignores society may, in fact, give us a
much more significant revelation of social forces, on a much
deeper psychic level, than is provided by those realistic
*Ibt> Vol. I, Chap. XVIL

The Agrarian Mind 1 85

writers who deliberately set out to describe and interpret the
society of their time. The important American writers of the
pre-Civil War period, particularly Melville, wrote symbol-
ically and not realistically, without conscious awareness of the
social implications of their work. But since they were deeply
American, in the quality of their emotional experience as weft
as in their conscious beliefs, their work had a profound social
significance* They gave expression to attitudes that were true
not only of themselves but of all Americans.

By liberating men from social restraints and encouraging
them to seek the fulfillment of their desires and ideals
through the conquest of the wilderness, the civilization of
America had produced contradictory tendencies. The hope
that had gradually taken shape in America was that of a so-
ciety characterized by a universal freedom and equality in
which all men could live without frustration and without fear.
But this hope could not be realized unless it permeated men's
mtmfo and guided their actions with the compulsive power of
a religion. Americans must not only talk democracy; they
must feel and act as democrats. But meanwhile individual
Americans had acquired an energy and confidence of the will
that too often resulted in an unrestrained drive towards dom-
ination and exploitation, in spiritual as well as in material
things. And in proportion as they acquired power and privi-
lege, they were inclined to repudiate American ideals and to
turn bock to the European doctrines of order, authority, and
rlagg hierarchy. If the democratic hope was to be realized,
then the Americans, as individuals, must feel a spontaneous
loyalty toward it and must be willing to act freely in harmony
with it. But how was this loyalty to be developed? Did men
become more willing to recognize the rights of others and
more devoted to ideal values in proportion as they achieved
moral freedom and a fuller self-realization, or was it always
necessary to maintain some kind of external moral authority?
Were men, in other words, good by nature or only as a result
of social discipline? This was the fundamental dilemma of
American civilization and the central theme of its literature.

What was lacking in America was any deeply felt sense of
a social order to which the individual regarded himself as

1 86 ,The American People

subordinate and through which he could achieve
tion. Europeans had always believed in some kind of ideal
harmony, implicit in society and realized In the cosmos, which
gave meaning and significance to the lives of individuals and
upon which moral values and standards depended. This no-
tion of an organic social order has assumed very different
manifestations, reactionary, liberal, and revolutionary; but it
has always been an element in the European mind. It appears
in the conservative belief in social hierarchy, in the liberal
doctrine of natural law, and in the Marxist philosophy of a
dialectical progress towards a kingdom of freedom. But the
Americans had no such sense. The struggle between man and
his environment, rather than the interrelationship of man
and the social order, was the primary American situation. And
as long as the necessity of struggle was the paramount factor,
men were inclined to think in terms of personal failure or
success j and the individual, lacking the sense of belonging to
an order larger than himself, was likely to feel isolated and
alone* Loneliness has been one of the most frequently recur-
rent themes of American literature. It has been expressed not
only in direct autobiographical statement but also in the pe-
culiarly American tradition of the metaphysical horror story.
The essence of the American sense of horror is the feeling
that the individual is not protected by any forces of cosmic or
social order and that he may have enemies whose malevolence
is wholly limitless and unconfined.

Sooner or later, if the American world was to fulfill its
promise, Americans must regain the sense of a social order,
but in terms appropriate to the democratic ideal and not
borrowed from Europe 3 and they must develop a deeper
emotional allegiance to democratic values and standards of
behavior. The necessity did not become urgent until the con-
quest of the continent had been completed, although John
Taylor and the Virginia agrarians had attempted it prema-
turely on the relatively superficial level of political and eco-
nomic theory at the beginning of the nineteenth century. On
a deeper spiritual level the same problem was faced by the
American writers of the forties and fifties, And being con-
cerned not with the analysis of a society, but with the most

The Agrarian Mind 187

elemental problems of man's plate in the universe, some of
them went more deeply into the human situation than any
of their . European contemporaries except the Russians, in
spite of their lack of breadth and variety. As D. H. Lawrence
said, they reached a verge.

The writing of imaginative literature began to be regarded
as a serious profession, for the first time in the history of the
United States, by certain natives of New York early in the
nineteenth century. But the best of the New Yorkers were not
more than tellers of stories, although Washington Irving told
them gracefully and Fenimore Cooper with a brood sweep
and a masculine verve and vigor. The more important Ameri-
can literature originated a generation later, and all of it (ex-
cept the work of Poe) was directly or indirectly a product of
New England. In spite of the emotional inhibitions and rigid
self-control it encouraged, the Puritan tradition could stimu-
late the imagination, although creativity could not have free
play as long as the Calvinist dogmas were accepted as literally
true. Puritanism had established among the New Englanders
a respect for intellectual labor and a concern for spiritual
problems such as were absent elsewhere in America. It had
also given them the habit of regarding material things as
signs and tokens filled with religious meanings; and it had
inculcated a complex of attitudes that were not merely in
harmony with the American spirit but were, in a sense, the
quintessence of it, and by means of which the varied impulses
and aspirations of the American world could be brought to a
focus. When the New England mind turned to literature,
therefore, its products were likely to be serious, symbolistic,
and deeply American.

The so-called flowering of New England was restricted to
the area in eastern Massachusetts that had adopted Unitarian-
ism. But although Unitarianism had destroyed the authority
of Calvinist dogma, it was itself an arid and illiberal creed.
The poetic and radical idealism of its greatest leaders, Wil-
liam Ellery Chaining and Theodore Parker, was by no means
shared by their contemporaries. More typical of the Unitarian

1 88 The American People

spirit were such men as Andrews Norton, who clung to the
authority of the Bible, regarded any kind of spiritual emotion
with suspicion, and considered obedience to a moral code to
be the essence of religion. Unitarianism was the religion of
the rich and respectable; it offered little encouragement to
men of inquiring temperament.

The initial impetus toward bolder ways of thinking came
from outside. During the iSitfs and i82O*s New Englanders
with intellectual inclinations began to visit Europe and to
discover the European writers of the romanticist period. Some
of them studied the German philosophers and their English
interpreters, such as Coleridge and Carlyle; and from these
sources they 4erived ideas thaf encouraged them to revolt
against the pale negations of the Unitarian creed. They
learned in particular that man could apprehend religious and
moral truths directly and intuitively and did not need to be
guided by any external authority. This doctrine became the
main principle of the tnmflcgndcnta I? sj* movement, which be-
gan during the 1830% and of which Emerson was the leading

But although the ig*TH j yfetf | c stimulus tfotf led to transcen-
dentalism was European, that philosophy itself was essentially
a revival of certain elements in the Puritan tradition that had
been suppressed by Unitarianism. The early Puritans had
believed that man could know truth by direct revelation, al-
though they had also believed *hat this revelation was the gift
of God and that it was confined to the elect Jonathan Ed-
wards had spoken of "a divine and supernatural light imme-
diately imparted to the soul." And Puritan heretics, such as
Mrs, Hutchinson in the 1630*5 and the radical sects after the
Great Awakening, had declared that when men were en-
lightened by God, they need not obey authority. The transcen-
denfalists inherited this Puritan attitude, and added to it a
confidence in human nature and a denial of original sin which
they derived from the democratic and optimistic spirit of
nineteenth-century America. Emersonianism was Calvinism
modified by the democratic belief in man's natural good-
css.

Emerson left the Unitarian pulpit in 1832 and settled for

The Agrari&n Mind 1 89

the remainder of his life at Concord as a kind of lay preacher
to the universe. Since childhood he bad lived a consecrated
life; and he devoted himself to the tasks of intellectual ex*
ploration and leadership with the wholehearted seriousness
and integrity with which his clerical ancestors had served
their Calvinist God. He was a shrewd observer and an acute
critic j he was capable of profound psychological insights; and
he had a talent for phrasemaking that has rarely been equaled
in English literature. His insistence that the individual should
act in accordance, with his own nature and should obey his
own deepest intuitions has an enduring value and signifi-
cance. But the discipline of his New England upbringing
and the purity of his own nature prevented him from explor-
ing the more ambiguous and sinister aspects of the human
psyche and from facing all the possible implications of a
doctrine of moral freedom. In consequence he did not suffi-
ciently come to grips with the real problems of American life.
His writings were important largely in that they reflected and
crystallized the main intellectual tendencies of the American
civilization of his time* Presenting in concentrated form the
spiritual results of two centuries of development, they demon-
strated both what had been accomplished and what was lack-
ing. It was this that made, them such a valuable point of
departure for men of a younger generation* Emerson was a
stimulating mflnrnns chiefly because he left his disciples dis-
satisfied*

The main burden of all Emerson's writings was confidence
in the spiritual potentialities of human nature. "In all my
lectures," he declared, a l have taught one doctrine, namely
the infinitude of the private man.' 7 This was Calvinism with-
out the belief in divine election; and it was also a mystical
reinterpnetation of the American faith in freedom and equal-
ity. Emerson believed that every individual had the truth
within himself; and that in proportion as men learned a
genuine self-reliance, then any restrictions upon their freedom
would become unnecessary. "As the traveller who has lost
his way throws his reins on his horse's neck and trusts to the
instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with
the divine animal who carries us through the world.* 7 He ap-

The American People

plauded the "gradual casting-off of material aids, and the
growing trust in the private self-supplied powers of the indi-
vidual," and looked forward to a society of free men in which
order would be "maintained without artificial restraints as
well as the solar system." "The appearance of character," he
declared, "makes the state unnecessary. . . . He, who has
the law-giver, may with safety not only neglect, but even
contravene every written commandment." *

Such doctrines were a justification of the gradual dissolu-
tion of the European concepts of order, authority, and social
hierarchy that had occurred in America* Emerson was urging
his fellow citizens to assert the spiritual, as well as the politi-
cal, independence of America, and to accept the full implica-
tions of the American faith. He was a liberating influence in
that he stimulated men to abandon dogmas that had lost their
meaning, and gave them courage to rely on themselves* "I
unsettle all things," was his own boast "No facts are to roe
sacred, none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless
seeker with no Past at my bade" 4

But if all men relied on their own "self-supplied" powers
without the guidance of dogmas or institutions, was there any
guarantee that they would co-operate with each other in a
democratic way of life? Would Emerson's self-reliant Ameri-
can display a necessary moral restraint, or would he be preda-
t&ry and acquisitive? Emerson could denounce the commer-
cialism and the materialistic ambitions of his contemporaries
with a Hebraic severity. But although the difference between
the self-reliance that was moral and spiritual and that which
was predatory and acquisitive was clear enough in his own
mind, he did not succeed in making it sufficiently clear in his
philosophy^ and with his deep-rooted American confidence
in the individual and suspicion of authority, he was not will-
ing to recognize that the individual cannot realize all his
moral and spiritual potentialities unless he is aided by appro-

*]<ntrnd$ (1909-14), VoL V, p. 380. Essays (reprinted in Riverside
Ubxanr, 1929), VoL II, pp. 31, 206, 210. Complete Works (1888-1893),
VoL I, p. 33&

, VoL I, p, 297.

The Agrarian Mind 191

prate social institutions. He had a tendency to evade these
problems by retreating into a mystical religiosity that had
little rd ation to the real world* He displayed at times a naive
optimism Its characteristic of the America of his time as was
his democratic idealism.

God, he declared, was everywhere, and evil was an allusion
that had no reality. To be truly self-reliant was to be "inspired
by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men" 5 and the
Divine Soul would not contradict itself. And since the uni-
verse was an expression of God, and God was moral, it fol-
lowed that all things worked together for good. "An eternal
beneficent necessity," he said, **is always bringing thing*
right* . . . The league between virtue and nature engages all
things to assume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws
and substances of the world persecute and whip the traitor*
He finds that all things are arranged for truth and benefit"
For Emerson, as for his Puritan ancestors, this meant not
only that virtue would be rewarded with success but also that
success was a proof of virtue. "Success, 17 he said, "consists in
dose appliance to the laws of the world and since these laws
are intellectual and moral, an intellectual and moral obe-
dience* . . . Money . . . is, in its effects and laws, as beauti-
ful as roses. Property keeps the accounts of the world and is
always moraL The property will be found where the labor, the
wisdom and the virtue have been in nations, in classes, and
(the whole- lifetime considered, with the compensations) in
the individual also."*

In the agrarian America in which Emerson grew up such
ideas had some plausibility. But self-reliant individuals were
already building a new kind of America in which money was
no longer as beautiful as roses. Emerson lived to see the cor-
ruption and the unrestrained acquisitiveness that followed the
Civil War; and the spectacle profoundly disturbed him, al-
though he was unable to recognize that the attitudes exempli-
fied in his writings had helped to bring it about. "I see move-
ments, I hear aspirations/* he said in 1867, "but I see not

* Ibid, VoL I, p. 1 1 1; VoL H, p. 221. Compete Works, VoL VI, p. 100;
VoL X, p. 189.

192 The American People

how the great God prepares to satisfy the heart in the new
order of things. No church, no state emerges; and when we
have extricated ourselves from all the embarrassments of the
social problem, the oracle does not yet emit any light on the
mode of individual life. A thousand negatives it utters, dear
and strong, on all sides; but the sacred affirmative it hides in
the deepest abyss. , . . The gracious motions of the soul
piety, adoration I do not find." Now that the old religions
were dead, "we are alarmed in our solitude; we would gladly
recall the life that so offended us. , * . Frightful is the soli-
tude of the soul which is without GkxL" In these words there
was a note of despair, and Emerson's remedies did little to
dispel it. "Heroic resolutions," he said were needed "A new
crop of geniuses 73 might be born who with "happy heart and
a bias for theism" would "bring asceticism and duty and mag-
nanimity into vogue again." God's communications with man-
kind were as yet intermittent, but later there might be "a
broad and steady altar-flame." *

Emerson's most notable disciples were Thoreau and Whit-
man. Each of them, in different ways, devoted his life to the
problem Emerson had left unsolved: the problem of finding
a harmony between individual self-reliance and the ideal of
democracy. AM each of them assumed, in accordance with
their American faith, that such a harmony could be found if
men were willing to cany their spiritual explorations to a
fnyffioCTt depth.

Thoreau found an answer for himself, but his solution was
too radical and required too heroic an austerity to become a
model for others. Similar to Emerson in his general view of
life, but spiritually of tougher grain with a more uncom-
promising conscience, he was determined to prove his self-
reliance by living it Completely unacqirisitive, he believed
that the most genuinely satisfying experiences were to be
found in contemplation and in direct contact with the realities
of nature; and he set out to discover a mode of existence that
could give him what he most valued and that he could justify
to his own conscience. He solved his problem by the drastic

'Ibid, Vol. X, pp. 208, 218, 220, 221.

The Agrarian Mind 193

procedure of reducing his economic needs to an irreducible
minimum and fulfilling them by the labor of his hands. De-
spising the new industrial society and regarding all govern-
ment as intrinsically evil, he was a one-man secessionist from
the American state. And this secession was genuine, as he
proved when he helped fugitive skves to escape and went to
jail rather than pay a tax during the war with Mexico. In a
sense he was the perfect agrarian, the most complete embodi-
ment of the ideal American of the Virginians, cherishing his
own moral and economic independence and refusing to ex-
ploit others. But although he found the best way of life for
himself, as is demonstrated by the sustained note of mystical
ecstasy that pervades his books and journals, he was not likely
to be imitated by other Americans.

Whitman approached the problem from the other end,
not by searching for an ideal way of life for the American in-
dividual and using it as a standard for the judgment of
society, but by recreating in his imagination the ideal Ameri-
can society and then reshaping himself into a model specimen
of an American citizen. His early interests were chiefly politi-
cal. As a young journalist he shared the radical enthusiasms of
Jadcsonianisin and of the New York Locof ocas, and acquired
the agrarian belief in a property-owners' democracy. He de-
clared in Democratic Vistas that "the true gravitation-hold of
liberalism in the United States will be a more universal own*
erShip of property,* 7 and that the stability of the country
depended on "the safety and endurance of the aggregate of
its middling property owners." But he felt that America re-
quired more than a democratic politics and economics* Unless
democracy "goes deeper, gets at least as firm and as warm a
hold in men's hearts, emotions and beliefs as, in their days,
feudalism or ecclesiasticism, and inaugurates its own peren-
nial sources, welling from the centre forever, its strength will
be defective, its growth doubtful, and its main charm want-
ing, 7 * Americans must become democratic in spirit as well as
in the external organization of their society. The influence of
New England transcendentalism inspired him to set about
creating an appropriate form of literature for democracy. u l

194 TAe American People

was simmering and simmering," he declared 5 "it was Emer-
son brought me to boiL" T

With his defective taste, his crudities of language, and his
love for windy and pretentious rhetoric, Whitman was not a
great poet, or even a poet at all, except in snatches. He was
only a first rough sketch of an American writer certainly not
a finished portrait* Vet the critical opinion that places him at
the center of American literary history is not unjustified. By
attempting to make himself an embodiment, almost a mythi-
cal symbol, of the democratic way of life, he did succeed in
uncovering some of the fundamental problems confronting
American society. The fact that Whitman himself, as a private
person, was not really so virile and carefree as his public role
required him to be, does not invalidate his conclusions.

Whitman declared in Democratic Vistas that the material
achievements of the Americans had not been matched by any
corresponding spiritual growth. "I say that our New World
democracy, however great a success in uplifting the masses
oat of their sloughs, in materialistic development, products,
and in a certain highly-deceptive superficial popular intel-
lectuality, is, so far, an almost complete failure in its so-
cial aspects, and in really grand religious, moral, literary,
and esthetic results. In vain do we march with unprecedented
strides to empire so colossal, outvying the antique, beyond
Alexander's, beyond the proudest sway of Rome. ... It is
as if we were somehow being endowed with a vast and more
and more thoroughly-appointed body, and then left with little
or no souL" And this lack of a native American "religious and
moral character beneath the political and productive and in-
tellectual bases of the States," and the consequent reliance
upon European standards and beliefs, would have the most
sinister consequences. The Americans could not remain a
great people unless they lived by the moral values of their
democracy and had a vital faith in them. "The United States
are destined either to surmount the gorgeous history of
feudalism^ or else prove the most tremendous failure of

iQam&cte Poetry and Selected Prose, edited by E. Holloway (1938),
pp. 663, 679* V. L. Parrington: Main Currents m American Thought-
VoL HI, p. 78.

The Agrarian Mind 195

time-" Democracy must acquire the emotional power of a
religion. According to Whitman, it should be the function of
American art to give it this power by creating symbolical and
mythological embodiments of it that would capture the imagi-
nation-*

For Whitman, democracy included both equality and free-
dom; it meant "the leveler, the unyielding principle of the
average/* and at the same time it mean "individuality, the
pride and centripetal isolation of a human being by himself."
These two principles, "confronting and ever modifying the
other, often clashing, paradoxical, yet neither of highest avail
without the other," could be harmonized only by means of
love not merely "amative love" but also the "loving com-
radeship" for which Whitman used the word "adhesiveness."
Only through the growth of "adhesiveness" could American
democracy be spiritualized and its materialism and vulgarity
overcome. To glorify "the manly love of comrades" was the
central purpose both of Whitman's poetry and of his personal
life/

But although Whitman himself succeeded in living by
these democratic values, he was able to do so only because he
was by no means a typical American. This is the most im-
portant conclusion that emerges from his life and writings.
He had none of that aggressive and acquisitive energy Ameri-
cans brought first to the conquest of the continent aiid after-
wards to the building of an industrial society. Nor did he
have that corresponding inner energy of the Calvinist con-
science that led to the suppression of sensuous impulses and
the drying up of the springs of emotion. He was a man of
relaxed will. He did not wish to dominate nature, either in
the external world or within himself, but to contemplate it
and enjoy it. The deeper meaning of Whitman's poetry is
not only that democracy requires the sense of human soli-
darity, but also that this sense is possible only through a re-
laxation of moral tension. But this was a lesson Americans
were not likely to appreciate. For as the more imaginative
writers of the period dearly reveal, the strongest trait of the

8 Complete Poetry taid Selected Prose, pp. 659, 661, 666.
Ibid, pp. 686,710.

The American People

American character was the drive of its will 5 and insofar as
the will was competitive and acquisitive, either in material or
in spiritual things, it would destroy "the manly love of
comrades. 7 *

3

While Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman were concerned
with what America ought to be, Poe, Hawthorne, and Mel-
ville indicated what America actually was. These three
writers, so different from each other in ail their personal qual-
ities, were alike in their basic preoccupations. Each of them
saw life in terms of a battle between the will of man and his
environment j for each of them there was nothing higher than
the individual will, so that man, instead of subordinating him-
self to some ideal order or harmony, must strive for omnip-
otencej and each of them expressed his view of life, not in
the superficial terms of realistic description, but by means of
symbols which had a deep emotional meaning. All three, in
other words, were profoundly American; and by setting their
works beside those of European writers, it is possible to
formulate certain conclusions about the American tempera-
ment and view of life. European writers, with their deep
sense of social order and discipline, have usually presented
men and women as torn between conflicting loyalties or be-
tween impulse and moral obligation. But the American con-
flict is between the will and nature. The characters in Ameri-
can fiction (like the sinner as envisaged in the Edwardean
theology) have usually been relatively simple creatures with
little inner complexity who have embodied some aspect of
human will or appetite. There are no Hamlets in American
literature,

Poe is the least important of the three writers since all of his
work had the morbid and febrile qualities' of his unbalanced
temperament. He was the victim of neurotic compulsions
in IMS writing as well as in his personal life. He is significant
chiefly because his neuroticism assumed a characteristically
American form. This becomes plain when he is contrasted
with some European writer with comparable talents and
similar emotional insecurity: for example, Coleridge. The

The Agr&rian Mind 197

European writer takes his bearings from the social order, and
he may either rebel against it (like Coleridge in his youth) or
idealize it and submit to it (like Coleridge in his old age).
But Poe found himself in a void and could seek to make him-
self secure only by means of a fantastic exaggeration of the
drive to power. He became pure will seeking omnipotence.
In this respect he is comparable to Jonathan Edwards. In the
poet, as in the theologian, the craving for omnipotence re-
sulted both in a presumptuous attempt to explain the entire
universe by logic (as in Eureka) and in fantasies of inhuman
cruelty.

Both Foe's failures and his achievements were due to his
striving for omnipotence. He was not a great poet because he
tried to capture the citadel of poetry by $torm. As he ex-
plained in his critical writings, he regarded the writing of
poetry as an intellectual exercise the purpose of which was to
evoke in its readers "a pleasurable elevation or excitement of
the souL" 1 * He attempted to ennoble this theory fay indulg-
ing in some pseudomystical speculation about Beauty; but
what it really meant was that a poet should experiment with
emotional effects in order to oonooct verbal drugs or stim-
ulants that would display his power over his audience* Poe*s
own poems were in conformity with this aesthetic theory;
they were literary cocktails, valuable solely for their capacity
to produce a "pleasurable" but transitory "elevation or excite-
ment." But in a number of his short stories he gave expression
to his will to power more sincerely and directly, and with
more interesting results. He had two favorite themes, each of
which had a symbolic significance- His most powerful stories
dealt either with sadistic fantasies of torture and murder (as
in Hop-Frog and The Cask of Amontillado), or with the
fantasy that if the will of man were sufficiently strong, it
could conquer even death itself (as in Ligeia and The Case of
M. Valdemer). He also delighted in exhibitions of extraordi-
nary intellectual power, and this fascination with the idea of
omniscience led him to invent the detective story. The most
significant sentence in all Poe's writings is the quotation from
Joseph Glanvil he used as an epigraph for Ligeia: "And the

"The Pbetic Principle." Works (1895), VoL VI, p. 15.

The American People

will therein lieth, which dicth not. Who knoweth the mys-
teries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will
pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth
not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save
only through the weakness of his feeble will."

Hawthorne, on the other hand, was a man of low emotional
pressure who adopted throughout his life the role of an ob-
server. Remaining always aloof from the world around him,
he was able to record what he felt with a remarkable balance
and detachment. Since he had no strong need within himself
to dominate his environment, he could portray fairly and
dispassionately the consequences of such a need in others.
But since he lacked the compulsive drive of the writer who is
himself the victim of conflict and must find a way of salva-
tion, his work lacked force and energy. Carefully and deli-
cately constructed, it was devoid of color and drama and al-
most passionless.

Hawthorne's obsessing personal problem was his sense of
isolation. He came to regard isolation as almost the root of
all evil, and made it the theme of many of his stories. This is
the aspect of his work that has usually been emphasized by
critics. But Hawthorne's treatment of the subject was always
too conscious and deliberate} he expressed it allegorically and
not in symbols; and consequently he was unable to say any-
thing about it that enlarges our understanding either of hu-
man nature or of the' society in which Hawthorne lived. The
real significance of Hawthorne's work is to be found through
a study of a favorite image recurring in all his major works,
of the meaning of which Hawthorne himself was obviously
not fully aware but which provides the clue to his general
view of life.

Hawthorne was descended from one of the judges in early
Massachusetts who had convicted the Salem witches. This
episode in his family history made a deep impression on him,
which was reinforced by prolonged reading of the works of
Cotton Mather and other colonial chroniclers. The image of
the judge condemning the witch appears, dither explicitly or
by implication, in each of Ms novels. T6 a large degree, in
fact, all of them are organized around it so that they present

The Agrarian Mind 199

different renderings of the same central theme. And because
of the symbolic meaning of this theme Hawthorne^ novels
are a significant commentary on the American character, more
particularly in its Puritan manifestations.

The Puritan sought to dominate nature, both within him-
self and in the external world; and these two forms of nature
had a tendency to become identified. This identity could be
symbolized in the figure of the witch. The witch represented
the prohibited elements in man's own evil nature, particularly
the sexual elements j she also represented the rial forces in
the American wilderness, which, as the Puritans believed, had
formerly been the devil's own territory* Thus the judge
condemning the witch could stand for the whole drive of the
American will toward the conquest of nature and the elimina-
tion of evil. What is most remarkable about Hawthorne's
treatment of this theme is the scrupulous detachment with
which he presents both sides of the conflict and refuses to
identify himself with either. If the four novels are considered
together, then it appears that the judge has been guilty of a
selfish lust for power that will eventually cause his destruc-
tion ("God hath given him blood to drink" is the curse upon
the judge in The House of the Seven Gables). At the same
time, the witch is the victim of sinister forces that are equally
destructive. Nor does Hawthorne show any real conviction
that this conflict can be resolved in terms of some higher
unity and harmony. His conscious attempts to find a resolu-
tion are feeble and unconvincing. At bottom he felt that the
struggle between the will and nature was "ultimate.

Hawthorne's masterpiece is The Scarlet Letter. This has
usually been regarded as a study of sin and repentancej but
although Hester Prynne's act of adultery is called a sin, the
readers of the novel are not made to feel that it is sinful, nor
is Hester presented as undergoing any process of repentance.
And although Dimmesdale suffers, it is not because of his
sin, but because he conceals it and therefore becomes weak and
isolated* The sense of sin is not an American experience. The
beauty of The Scarlet Letter is derived not from any psycho-
analysis but from its emotional overtones. On the one
is the little Puritan settlement at Boston, with its right-

200 The American People

cote, domineering, intolerant, and acquisitive citizens; on the
other side is the vast unconquered forest, in which Hester is
condemned to live after her sin, and which is the home of the
devil and the meeting place of witches and the source of all
that is wild, chaotic, and uncontrolled. Such a setting inspired
Hawthorne to do his best work because he was writing, not
merely about Hester Prynne, but about the whole American
experience.

In the other three novels Hawthorne did not succeed in
extracting as much emotional resonance and reverberation
from his theme. The House of the Seven Gables deals ex-
plicitly with the judge and the witch, the image being ex-
tended into the nineteenth century by the device of identi-
fying witchcraft partly with mesmerism and partly with a
general spirit of rebellion. But the issues of the conflict are
presented with little force, and the transformation of the
witch from a woman into a man (in the person of Holgrave)
deprives the symbol of most of its power- The marriage be-
tween the descendant of the judge and the descendant of his
victim is perhaps intended as an allegory of ultimate recon-
ciliation j but since these two commonplace and good-natured
characters have not inherited the violent and sinister qualities
of their ancestors, their marriage has no genuine symbolic
value. The EUthedaLe Romance, on the other hand, has more
emotional force although less clarity. The self-righteous and
domineering Hollingsworth is the magistrate j while Zenobia
and her husband, the mesmerist, represent witchcraft. In
Zenobia, with her sexual allure, Hawthorne for the first time
succeeds in giving the witch, image its full meaning. But al-
though Zenobia is duly condemned and driven to her death
by Hollingsworth, the implications of the story are clouded
by too many meaningless complications. Finally, in The Mar-
ble Faun, the weakest and most confused of the four novels,
there is no figure who dearly stands for the magistrate, and
the witch (Miriam), after being wrapped in a sinister at-
mosphere of diabolism that Hawthorne does not succeed in
making convincing, is left to find her own way to perdition-
Melville's central theme was essentially the same as Haw-
thorne's, although it was expressed through very different

The Agrarian Mind 20 i

symbolisms and with a violence and passion that gave his
novels an incomparably greater vitality. While Hawthorne
surveyed the American scene by candlelight, Melville started
a conflagration in which he was himself almost consumed;
but it was the same landscape the two men were illuminating.
Melville had none of Hawthorne's cool objectivity; he was
himself a victim as well as a recorder, and he had to work his
way through to some kind of personal salvation. His unique
distinction is that he succeeded in finding it. He is the one
American writer of whom it may be said that he mastered the
American experience and then went beyond it

Melville wrote three books of major importance: Moby
Dicky Pierre, and Silly Bndd+ Moby Dick and Pierre, appear-
ing in 1851 and 1852 respectively, both dealt with the pxt&-
lem of the American will- Billy Bvdd, written in 1891 and
not published until 1924, may be described as a resolution of
the problem* The rest of Melville's works wtre less am-
bitious, although all of them had unusual qualities, and at
least one of his shorter stories, Eemto Cermo> was a master*
piece.

Moby Dick is not only the greatest book written by an
American^ it is also the greatest American book. In choosing
to write a story about a monomaniacal sea captain chasing a
whale, Melville hit upon a symbol that brought all his emo-
tional resources and attitudes into pky and that since his ap-
proach to life was profoundly American became a revelation
of the whole American character. He said himself that he did
not fully understand the meaning of what he was writing*
On the surface he was telling a story about a whale, and
Moby Dick can be read and enjoyed on this leveL But it also
has symbolic meanings sufficiently indicated in the course of
the narrative. For Captain Ahab and the crew of the Pequod
the white whale was "the gliding great demon of the seas of
life 7 '} and their determination to kill the whale was a de-
termination that evil could be conquered and destroyed. And
for Melville's Ahab, as for all Calvinists, evil was both ex-
ternal and internal. The sea was the universe, and Moby Dick
stood for the untamed forces of nature with which man must
do battle. But the sea was also "the viable image of that deep,

2O2 The American People

blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature, 77 and
Moby Dick was the "incarnation of all those malicious agen-
cies which some deep men feel eating in them. 7 * He was "that
intangible malignity which has been from the beginning 5 to
whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-
half of the world. . . * All that most maddens and torments j
all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it;
all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle
dcmonisms of life and thought;- all evil, to crazy Ahab, were
visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby
Dick""

In Melville's Ahab the drive of the American will is car-
ried to its furthermost limits. For him, as for Poe, there is
nothing higher than the will, yet the will must go down to
ultimate defeat Man cannot conquer nature, nor can he de-
stroy evil, either without or within, "Though in many of its
aspects the visible world seems formed in love, the invisible
spheres were formed in fright. 77 But Melville, unlike Haw-
thorne, does not attribute this defeat to any petty or ignoble
nemesis j it becomes altogether heroic, cosmic, and transcen-
dental. "The intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open inde-
pendence of her sea 77 is better than to hug "the treacherous,
slavish shore, 77 even though man does not know where he is
going and must finally be submerged. The Peyuod, and Mel-
ville with it, is "not so much bound to any haven ahead as
rushing from all havens astern. 77 Ahab is crazy, and the in-
evitable ending of his impossible quest is that the Pequod is
destroyed by Moby Dicky and "the great shroud of the sea
rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago. 77 But Ahab is
in no way comparable to a hero of European tragedy who
(like CEdipus or Macbeth) is destroyed by sinning against
some higher law or against the cosmic order. In the gloomy
and anarchical universe of Moby Dick no such order exists. 11

Pierre can best be read as a commentary on Moby Dick.
As a novel it is a total failurej its style is stilted and un-
natural; its characterizations are implausible; and its plot is

Dick, Chap. 35, 41 (Modem Library edition, pp. 157, 183,
186)*
BwL, Chap. 23, 4*, 9<S, i35, pp- 105, 194, 421, 5*5-

The Agrarian Mind 203

fantastic But it has the same thcine as Moby Dick tine at-
tempt of man to conquer evil, and his inevitable failure and
it suggests reasons for that failure that could not be presented
in a novel about whaling* Pierre is a young idealist who is
determined to make no compromises with his environment*
At the beginning of the novel he possesses all the advantages
of wealth and social position, and is about to be married. But
when he discovers that he has an illegitimate aster who has
been brought up in obscurity, he determines that the wrong
done to her must be rectified. He takes her under his protec-
tion; and in order to prevent scandal, he pretends that he has
married her. This act of idealism is followed by a series of
catastrophes; and finally Pierre goes down to total defeat,
destroying not only himself but also both the two women he
loves. His defeat is due, not only to the power of evil in his
environment, but also to ambiguous tendencies within him-
self that he scarcely understands and cannot control. In sacri-
ficing himself in order to make amends for the sin committed
by his father, Pierre is not merely displaying a noble idealism;
he is also acting under the influence, without realizing it, of
an incestuous desire. Yet in spite of Pierre's failure it is not
suggested that he ought to have acted differently. For Pierre,
as for Ahab and for Melville himself, man has a choice only
between conquest and defeat. The argument for compromise
is stated in the novel by the philosopher Plotinus Plinlimmon,
who is represented as a thoroughly ignoble character 5 it is
stated and rejected again, in symbolic terms, in Pierre's vision
of Enceladus* Man must struggle to impose his moral will
upon his own desires and upon his environment, even though
he cannot hope to do so successfully.

Even though it is an aesthetic failure, Pierre goes more
deeply into human psychology than any other writing of the
period. It carries the doctrines of optimistic individualism and
Emersonian self-reliance to their ultimate conclusions, and
suggests that they may end in nihilism and despair. And
since Melville was himself a self-reliant individualist and
was projecting his own attitudes into Ahab and Pierre, he
himself shared in their defeat.

In 1866 Melville abandoned the struggle to support him-

2O4 The American People

self and his family by -writing, and buried himself for twenty
years in the New York Customs House. Henceforth his
silence was broken only by the publication of some mediocre
poetry. Meanwhile the development of American society dur-
ing these years was a testimony to the essential truth of his
portrayal of the American spirit. This was an age of men of
strong will, who acknowledged no higher law than their own
purposes, who recognized no allegiance to an ideal of social
order, and who sought only conquest and domination. Rocke-
feller and Morgan were in the materialistic world of eco-
nomics what Ahab was in the transcendental world of the
spirit. But Melville was not yet finished. During the last
three years of his life he worked on a story that was found
among his manuscripts after his death and not published un-
til 1924, and which is utterly different from his own earlier
writings and from any other work in American literature. A
parable rather than a novel, Billy Budd is by no means a
literary masterpiece^ but as an indication of Melville's spir-
itual development it is of the greatest interest. It is infused
with a spirit of reconciliation to life and of religious accept-
ance that make, it comparable to the final works of the great
Europeans. Billy Budd is Melville's Tempest and his Wm~

The central figure in the story is a sailor in the English
navy during the period of the French Revolution. Falscdy
accused of misconduct by an officer, Billy Budd responds by
striking his slanderer, and accidentally trills him. The legal
penalty for killing a superior officer is death, and the captain
of the ship, although recognizing Billy's innocence, decides
(in view of recent mutinies) that the law must be enforced.
He argues that the maintenance of the order of society is
paramount, and that the individual, even when unjustly
treated, should submit to it. Man must accept the mystery of
evil, which is an inextricable part of human lifej he must
iwognize that innocent men may suffer, and that evildoers
may flourish, and that to attempt to impose a Utopian per-
fection upon the world can lead only to anarchy. Billy Budd
accepts the reasoning of the captain and goes to his death, not
willingly, but gladly, in the conviction that he is

The Agrarian Mind 205

serving a higher purpose. In the description of his death
Melville introduces symbolisms that suggest a parallel to the
crucifixion j Billy Budd is dying so that the order of society
may be maintained, as Jesus died, according to some interpre-
tations of the atonement, to % ? indicate the sanctity of divine
law.

The meaning of the fable is summarized in a saying of the
captain. "With mankind," he would say, "forms, measured
forms, are everything; and that is the import couched in the
story of Orpheus, with his lyre, spell-binding the wild den-
izens of the woods." ** This profoundly un-American state-
ment is the last word of the greatest of American writers*
Having carried the drive of the individual will to its further-
most limits, Melville had found that it ended in the sinking
of the Pequod and in the death of Pierre; but in his old age
he passed beyond individualism and beyond its inevitable de-
feat. Billy Budd t unlike any other work by a major American
writer, is based on the belief in an underlying social order
and harmony that gives meaning to the lives of those who
participate in it and that transcends the struggle between the
will and the environment.

** Shorter Novels of Herman Melville (1928), page 323*

206 ] CHAPTER X

The Civil War

1

Gvil War was the first major Interruption in
that process of material and social construction with
which the Americans had been occupied since the
founding of the first colonies. For the first time
they had to turn aside from the task of building a new civ-
ilization and to deal with human problems of a more complex
nature and on a profounder spiritual leveL The main cause of
the war was that North and South had developed deeply
divergent social idealsj this divergency was too basic to be
settled fay the usual Anglo-Saxon methods of argument, com-
promise, and peaceful adjustment. Both Northerners and
Southerners believed themselves to be justified in their own
eyes and were unable to give way on doctrines they regarded
as fundamental. Such a conflict of ideals was essentially tragic.
It could be understood only in terms of the tragic imagina-
tion, and was so understood at the end of his life by one of the
chief participants, President Lincoln, as he showed in his
Second Inaugural* But it could not be accounted for and di-
gested in terms of the usual American categories of thought,
which visualized life as a battle between the will and the
environment or between good and evil. The Civil War was
not a conflict between good and evil but between rival con-
ceptions of good. In consequence it was an experience the
American mind was unable successfully to assimilate. For
this reason it was not followed, like many wars in European
countries, by an intellectual efflorescence 5 its results, in the
victorious North as well as the conquered South, were cyni-
cism, corruption, and a sense of defeat. In some respects, in
fact, American society never fully recovered from it. The
Civil War abruptly cut .short the cultural development of
the i84O's and 1850*8, and the intellectual activities of later
periods had very little connection with what had gone before.

The Civil fPar 207

The divergencies between North and South dated bade to
the foundation of the earliest colonies* Massachusetts and Vir-
ginia had always represented different social and economic
principles and different modes of living. In the nineteenth
century these divergencies were carried over into the Mis-
sissippi Valley; Illinois and Ohio tended to imitate Massa-
chusetts, while Alabama and Mississippi borrowed their social
ideals from Virginia. The North was more dynamic, more
progressive, more interested in commercial and industrial de-
velopment and in schemes of social reform. The South was
more static and more leisurely, and preferred to concentrate
on agriculture and to preserve the way of life that landowner-
ship made possible. The drive of the American will, both
externally in the conquest of nature and internally in the
suppression of what was regarded as moral evil, was more
conspicuous in the North, while the desire for individual eco-
nomic independence was more fully exemplified in the South.
Yet there is no good reason for supposing that the conflict of
ideals would ever have ended in open warfare if the two
sections had not also been divided by Negro slavery. An insti-
tution the North was learning to abhor had come to be
regarded by the South as the very foundation of its social
order. It was slavery, and slavery alone, that finally madr k
impossible for the two sections to remain peaceably within
the same federal union.

The problem of slavery created for American democratic
idealists an insurmountable dilemma. For while slavery itself
was utterly contrary to the principles of American democracy,
yet in some other respects those principles were more ef-
fectively safeguarded in the agrarian society of the South
than in the new industrial society beginning to dominate the
North. The heirs of the Jeffersonian tradition and the sur-
viving followers of Jackson were compelled to work for the
victory of the North in order that slavery might be abolished 5
yet in the final outcome that victory meant the triumph of
Hamiltonian economics and, in large measure, the destruction
of the agrarian way of life upon which American democracy
had been founded. Only a man who saw life in terms of re-
ligion rather than of the Utopian optimism so characteristic

208 The American People

of the Americans could accept the full tragic meaning of such
a situation. Abraham Lincoln believed that Negro slavery
was an offense against the absolute laws of justice and hu-
manity. But although he condemned slavery he did not con-
demn the slaveowner. He believed (as he implied in his
Second Inaugural) that since both North and South had par-
ticipated in the enslavement of the Negro, so from both
North and South a terrible recompense had to be exacted.
But Lincoln did not live to see the full consequences of the
Civil War. The price the Americans paid for their denial of
the rights of humanity to the Negro race was not only the
death of half a million men in the greatest civil war in his-
tory j it was also the frustration and debasement of the Ameri-
can ideal of a property owners' democracy that would main-
tain both freedom and equality.

During the Revolutionary period it was generally assumed
that slavery would be abolished peacefully, although it was
also assumed by most Southerners that white and black could
not live side by side as equals and that the liberation of the
Negroes must be accompanied by their removal to Africa or
to some other part of America. Emancipation was accom-
plished in all the Northern states, and was favored by in-
creasingly laige minorities in Maryland and Virginia. The
Constitution provided that the slave trade (by which many
Northern merchants had profited) should be ended in the
year 1808. Even in the lower South there was little disposi-
tion at this time to defend slavery or to do more than apolo-
gize for it as a temporary necessity. Unfortunately at this
crucial point the cotton gin was invented, and as a result of
the new need for labor the whole Southern attitude began to
change. The Negro, must remain, . and the South believed
that he could remain only as a slave. The cotton gin cheap-
ened the cost of cotton production, for which slave labor was
well adapted, and thereby made it a very remunerative oc-
cupation. This occurred in the year 1793 and was the work
of Eli Whitney, a mechanical genius from Connecticut who
was spending a few months with friends in Georgia. Whitney
subsequently returned to Connecticut and began to manu-
facture firearms fay a new method, making them from inter-

The Civil War 209

changeable parts. This became one of the basic principles of
American mass production. Whitney thus helped both to
cause the Civil War and to ensure that the North would
win it.

English manufacturers were willing to buy all the cotton
the South could produce, and from 1793 to the Civil War the
cotton crop continued to double every ten or fifteen years, ex-
ceeding two billion pounds in the year i86a For half a cen-
tury it was not difficult for cotton growers to make a great
deal of money, and the Kg plantation, manned by scores of
Negro slaves, quickly became the dominant institution
throughout large areas of the Deep South. Cotton production
spread first through Georgia (which was still largely frontier
country) and South Carolina. After the War of 1812 came
the mass migration across the mountains into the Ipprer Mis-
sissippi Valley, and many thousands of Negro slaves were
transported into the West. Cotton spread through Alabama
and Mississippi, and thence into Louisiana, Texas, and Ar-
kansas. Meanwhile the older seaboard regions, particularly in
Virginia and South Carolina, were suffering from soil erosion
and from falling land values and a decreasing population.
The new cotton kingdom, stretching for a thousand miles
across the Deep South from Georgia into Texas and guided
by a nourveau riche planter plutocracy, assumed the leadership
of the entire South. By the 1840*5 and 1856*5 the most im-
portant part of the cotton kingdom, both economically and
politically, was not the Atlantic seaboard but the newly set-
tled region along the Gulf of Mexico.

Popular impressions of plantation life, both sentimental
and hostile, still betray a tendency to confuse Alabama and
Mississippi with colonial Virginia. Most of the cotton king-
dom was a part of the Mississippi Valley and shared the
general characteristics of that region. A few of the planters
came from seaboard aristocratic families, but a large majority
had begun their lives as small fanners; they had been able to
acquire more land, buy more slaves, and build more im-
pressive houses than their neighbors because of supenor en-
ergy, shrewdness, and force of wilL During the same period
and by the same qualities, similar men in Ohio and Illinois

2 1 a The American People

were achieving wealth through speculation or business enter-
prise. The cotton kingdom was too short-Eved to produce a
genuine aristocracy. Down to the Civil War it remained, in
many ways, frontier country, and many of those character-
istics that so shocked New Englanders should be attributed
to the influence of the frontier rather than of slavery. Its
white inhabitants, like frontiersmen elsewhere, were aggres-
sively individualistic, accustomed to violence, fond of cele-
brating their own achievements, addicted to a narrow and
emotional Protestantism, and frequently illiterate. The Civil
War was largely a conflict for the control of the Mississippi
Valley, fought between the northern and the southern ends
of it. It was appropriate that the two Civil War Presidents
should have been born of similar small-farmer stock in similar
log cabins within a few miles of each other in Kentucky. The
lincolns had subsequently gone north into Illinois, and the
Davises south into Mississippi.

And although the South accepted the political and sodal
leadership of the planters, it always retained much of the
frontier spirit of democracy. The typical Southern citizen
was not the planter but the small fanner. In 1860, out of a
total white population of over eight millions among whom
perhaps a million and a half were heads of families, less than
fifty thousand persons owned more than twenty slaves apiece,
and less than four hundred thousand persons owned slaves at
all. Three quarters of the white population did not belong to
the slaveowning classes, and a majority even of the slave-
owners were small farmers rather than planters and were
accustomed to work in the fields alongside their Negroes. No
part of the South, not even the rich black belt in Alabama and
Mississippi, became wholly plantation country. Born from
the same racial stocks and often closely related to each other,
the planter and the farmer lived side by side in the same
areas. The gulf between them, economically and socially, was
no greater than that between the lawyer or business man and
the small farmer in Ohio; it was decidedly less than that
dividing the capitalist of New England from his factory op-
eratives* In some degree the small farmers of the South suf-
fered from competition with the planters, who were able to

The Chil War 2 1 1

buy up the more fertile lands; but they had plenty of vigor
and independence. Although they lived with little comfort or
refinement and often without benefit of education, they were
very different from the "poor whites 19 whose numbers ajid
significance were so exaggerated by antislavery propagandists.
There was no lack of strength and virility among the men
who served as private soldiers under Lee and Jackson, Genu-
ine "poor whites, 77 degraded by poverty and devitalized by
hookworm or pellagra, existed only in a few areas and were
probably not much more numerous than their counterparts
in the cities and rural regions of the North.

Yet although the society of the Mississippi Valley, whether
along the Gulf of Mexico or beside the Great Lakes, was
built by men of the same type in response to similar drives,
sharp differences in direction and ultimate objective quickly
asserted themselves. Several factors combined to create a dis-
tinctively Southern attitude in the states from Kentucky
southward. The Southerner lived alongside an alien and
servile race, towards whom all white men could feel superior.
He lived in a hot climate, discouraging to any sustained activ-
ity, and was accustomed to storms of a tropic violence. And his
view of life was molded by an aristocratic social ideal derived
from the planters of tidewater Virginia, and indirectly from
the great landowners of rural England. The plantation South,
unlike other sections of the United States, retained the sense
of a fixed social order to which individuals should conform.
Unfortunately the social ideal of the South was of European
origin 5 and insofar as it was based on slavery, it was hierarchi-
cal, undemocratic, and un-American.

An agrarian by temperament and preference as well as
from necessity, the Southern farmer valued his leisure and
his freedom, and did not care for a higher standard of living
if it meant a loss of economic independence. If he was ambi-
tious, he aspired to own slaves and a plantation and then to
use his profits in lavish and generous living rather than to
save them and reinvest them. He was usually unreflective,
quick to take action and to resort to violence, guided mainly
by prejudice and emotion rather than fay calculation, fond of
physical pleasures, hospitable and gregarious, and incurably

212 The American People

loquacious. The Southerner contributed less than the North-
erner to the advance of science, learning, and the artsj but he
was also less likely to lose sight of the ends of human life by
too exclusive a concentration upon the means.

Judged by all those standards that can be expressed statis-
tically, the South appeared backward when contrasted with
the North. But the more important aspects of human life
elude statistical analysis. The Northerner built more indus-
tries and more schools, published more books and more news-
papers, and made more money and enjoyed more comforts
than the Southerner 5 but it is not certain that his life was
richer or more satisfying. Nor was the backwardness of the
South due merely to slavery as the North maintained. It is
true that slavery was an inefficient labor system since the
skves lacked sufficient incentives and needed constant super-
vision; and the fact that the planter had to 'buy his labor
supply, as well as his land and his raw materials, impeded
economic mobility and flexibility. But the main reason for the
backwardness of the South was that it was an agricultural
section with few cities and little industry.

There seems to have been no sound economic reason why
industry could not have developed more widely in the South.
There was no lack of raw material or labor (even slave labor
was occasionally used in Southern factories with good results).
For forty years Southern leaders were proclaiming that the
South ought to build its own factories and develop its own
shipping instead of relying on Great Britain and the North.
Yet their speeches and resolutions fell on, deaf ears. The only
sound conclusion is that the Southern population did not want
to become urbanized and industrialized 5 it preferred to retain
its agrarian independence, even at the cost of a low standard
of living, a high rate of illiteracy, and a cultural inferiority
to the rich urban areas in Massachusetts and New York. The
South had a way of life that was valued by the farmer as well
as by the planter 5 and although its growing population and
the declining fertility of its soil caused it to become expansion-
ist, its economic ideals were essentially static rather than
dynamic and progressive. In their defense all classes of South-
erners were willing, in the last resort, to fight.

The Civil War 213

But tragically .all the virtues of the Southern way of
life wane counteracted by the primal evil of Negro slavery.
Of the twelve and a quarter millions of human beings who
lived in the South at the outbreak of the Gvil War, about
four millions were bondsmen who, in the words of Chief
Justice Taney in the Bred Scott decision, had a no rights
which the white man was bound to respect/' Slavery was not
primarily an economic question. It was the sense of racial
difference,, and all the deep and complex fears and anxieties
associated with it, rather than a mere desire for money, that
prevented the South from emancipating the Negro. Not more
than a quarter of the Southern white population shared in
the profits of slavery; and it is probable that those profits
would have been larger if the Negro had become a wage
laborer and been given the incentives and the hope for Ad-
vancement of the free citizen. Yet almost all Southerners, of
whatever class, were agreed that he was congenitally inferior
and must forever remain so* There is no good reason for sup-
posing that the South, whether as a part of the Union or as an
independent confederacy, would ever have abolished slavery
voluntarily, except under the influence of some new and un-
predictable factor, or that the North could ever have imposed
abolition by any method except war.

For more than a hundred years Northerners and South-
erners have been disputing with each other about the treat-
ment of the Negro under slavery, one side insisting that
cruelty was normal, and the other maintaining that the typkal
slaveowner was humane and paternalistic. Since it is possible
to continue citing specific instances indefinitely in defense of
either contention, the evidence is inconclusive. It is also ir-
relevant to the real issue.

There is no doubt that the dependent position of the Negro
invited cruelty, and that there were slaveowners who took
advantage of iL There is also no doubt that there were some
Negroes who rebelled and many who attempted to run away.
But the balance of the evidence supports the Southern belief
that the majority of the slaveowners accepted responsibility
for the welfare of their dependents and that the majority of
the slaves submitted to servitude without conscious resent-

214 The American People

ment The South, unlike any other part of America, was
evolving a pattern of social orderj and this pattern, in spite
of its reactionary tendencies, did actually work. The planter,
as the heir of the aristocratic tradition, was expected to live by
a code of behavior that inculcated self-restraint, paternalism,
and a sense of noblesse oblige. The code was not always
obeyed, particularly among the noweau riche cotton growers
of the Mississippi Valley 5 but violations of it met with social
condemnation. The Negro was required to know his place
and could be expected to be rewarded and protected in return
for faithful service.

But the fact that this social pattern worked with little
serious friction is no proof that it was good or that it deserved
to survive. It was wholly contrary to the basic principles and
ideals of American society and to the main trends of Western
civilization. For this reason it could not be preserved except
by violence. More important, it refused to take account of
certain bask elements in human nature that sooner or later
were bound to assert themselves. Four million human beings,
possessed of all the normal human drives and aspirations and
endowed with natural talents and capacities equal to those of
the men and women of any other race, were denied the most
elementary human rights and condemned to perpetual inferi-
ority merely because of the color of their skins. During the
period in which slavery existed most of the Negroes accepted
this role of inferiority. Denied any hope of advancement or
outlet for ambition, they remained lazy and irresponsible;
and these qualities, which were the necessary results of social
conditions, were then declared by their owners to be congenital
and used as a justification for the social system that had caused
them. But since the Negro was human, it was inevitable that
sooner or later he would begin to assert his humanity and to
demand his rights to the fulfillment of his mental and emo-
tional potentialities. In the last resort Negro servitude could
be maintained only Sy the most brutal force and by the prosti-
tution of truth and the suppression of free inquiry.

One should not blame the white men of the South too
severely for their refusal to recognize their common bonds of
humanity with the Negro, All branches of Anglo-Saxon sod-

The Civil War 215

cty, even that of abolitionist New England, have been notori-
ous for their inability to overcome differences of race and
color. Destiny required of the South a wisdom and a genen-
ity far in excess of the normal capacity of human beings. But
because the white men of the South refused to recognize this
requirement, their civilization was doomed to destruction.

The sectional conflict first showed itself in 1820 when the
North objected to the admission of Missouri into the Union
as a slave state and insisted that the spread of slavery into the
Western territories should henceforth be limited by federal
kw. It began to dominate American politics in the 1840'$.

Much of the conflict was caused by purely economic factors
and had no connection with the rights and wrongs of slavery.
Like most agricultural communities since the dawn of civiliza-
tion the cotton kingdom was exploited by the centers of urban
commerce and finance, and these happened to be located in the
North* Southern planters paid tribute to Northern bankers,.
Northern merchants, Northern shipowners and Northern
manufacturers. A large percentage of the profits of cotton
production remained in the North. Making the mistake of
interpreting the situation as a sectional rather than a class
conflict, and at the same time failing to develop any consider-
able commerce or finance of its own, the South complained
that its just rights under the federal Union were being vio-
lated and blamed the policies of the federal government for
what was happening* Southern -spokesmen compiled statistics
showing that most of the federal revenues were collected in
the South (through the tariff) and that most of the proceeds
were spent in the North (on internal improvements). They
appealed to the economic philosophy of Thomas Jefferson
and John Taylor of Caroline in defense of their complaints*
Yet insofar as they thought in sectional rather than class
terms, they no longer adhered to strict agrarian principles j
and this abandonment of principle weakened their political
position, and deprived them of possible Northern allies. The
political leader of the cotton kingdom, John C. Calhoun, was

2 1 6 The American People

no pure agrarian; he did not object to federal spending and
federal distributions of economic privilege when it seemed
likely that the South would benefit. Meanwhile the spokes-
men of the North wanted measures, such as a higher tariff
and more generous subsidies for internal improvements,
which were blocked fay Southern opposition, and were com-
plaining of planter control over the federal government.

But this economic conflict between agriculture and business
would never have split the Union. What caused the South
to secede was Northern hostility to slavery^ and here the
propaganda of the abolitionists was of decisive importance. It
is impossible to attribute any economic motive to these men.
Northerners had economic reasons for wishing to keep the
South a minority section and hence for preventing slavery
from spreading^ but they had none for wishing to revolu-
tionize the South itself. Abolitionism was essentially a reli-
gious movement 5 it developed out of the Protestant churches,
particularly in the Middle West, and it retained all the cru-
sading fervor, the narrowness of vision, and the mixture of
idealism and Intolerance that have always characterized Amer-
ican Christianity. Like their ultimate progenitors John Calvin
and Jonathan Edwards, the abolitionists saw life in very
simple terms, as a battle between moral good and moral evil.
Most of them were fanatics on a number of other matters
besides slavery, particularly on the consumption of alcohol.
Perceiving that slavery was wrong and that it ought to be
abolished, they deduced that the slaveowners must be evil
men who deserved no consideration. According to abolitionist
propaganda the typical Southern plantation was a combina-
tion of torture chamber and brothel, and the planters were an
arrogant and depraved aristocracy who domineered over a
degraded mass of "poor white" farmers and spent most of
their time beating their male slaves and begetting mulatto
offspring on their female slaves. The propaganda of these
righteous and violent men, continuing through the 1830%
184x^8, and 1 850*8, did not convert more than a small fraction
of the Northern population to outright abolitionism, but it
gradually changed the climate of opinion. Northerners came
to recognize that slavery was a wrong that ought some day to

ThcCrmlWar 217

be rectified, although they still believed that it should remain
primarily a Southern problem. In one matter, however, they
were willing to take positive action. As a result of the growing
sympathy with skves who succeeded in escaping into the
North, many of the Northern states enacted personal liberty
laws making it difficult for their owners to recapture them.
The personal liberty laws represented a violation of the
mutual obligations that all the states had assumed under the
federal Constitution. Under the influence of the slaveiy issue
the Northern states were beginning to break their ties with
the South.

To the lurid and immoderate propaganda of the abolition-
ists the South reacted with an equally violent defense of their
peculiar institution. The younger generation of Southerners
those born after 1800 no longer apologized for slavery. In-
stead they declared that it was a positive good; it was in
accord with the laws of God and nature, and was both more
stable and more humane than the system of wage labor in
Northern factories. Terrified lest abolitionist ideas should
reach the Negroes and lead to slave rebellions, they attempted
to suppress all discussion of the question. After 1830, South-
ern opponents of slavery found it necessary either to remain
quiet or to leave the South. Thus having denied justice to
tie Negro and resolved to keep him in servitude, the South
was inexorably led to an abandonment of the democratic proc-
ess itself, which is based on the maintenance of free discussion.
And although the South based its main political defense on
the theory of states rights, claiming that the federal system
provided for local sdf-govermnent ami sectional diversity and
for the protection of sectional minorities, it did not always
concede to the North the rights it claimed for itself. It would
have liked to suppress free speech on the slavery issue in the
North also 5 it insisted on federal action to compel the North
to restore fugitive slavesj and in the 1850*5 it began to main-
tain that slavery should be permitted in all the Western ter-
ritories, whether the inhabitants wished it or not- Thus
slavery became a problem that could no longer be settled by
the methods of constitutional democracy. Men cannot live
together under the same government, even if it is based

2 1 8 The American People

on the federal principle and allows for sectional diversity,
unless they are in agreement about first principles. But on
the fundamental question whether all men, or only all white
men, were endowed with rights North and South were no
longer in agreement.

The conflict about slavery could not be settled by any kind
of compromise* And because of this deep underlying conflict
more superficial questions, which had Bttle intrinsic impor-
tance, aroused the most tatter antagonisms. The immediate
issue that occupied American politics during the twelve years
before the Civil War was whether slavery should be legally
permitted in the Western territories. Yet as the wiser men on
both sides realized, this issue was essentially unreal. The
limits of slavery were fixed by soil and climatej no matter
what the federal government might do, the Great Plains and
the Rocky Mountain regions could never accommodate slave
plantations. It was therefore unnecessary for the North to
insist on the legal prohibition of slavery in the West and use-
less for the South to protest. Nevertheless, politicians in both
Sooth and North stirred up violent emotions by inflating this
issue into a real conflict.

Southern leaders played into the hand of the North by
declaring that they had a legal right to take slaves into any
territory} to deny this right was an insult to the South and to
her peculiar institutions. Northerners replied that the South
was planning to spread slave plantations through the entire
West, in the hope of creating a majority of slave states and
then imposing slavery upon the whole country. In order to
check this aggressive and expansionist slave power, they de-
clared, the free states must prohibit slavery in all the terri-
tories. This proposal appealed to many Northern citizens who
wished to take some kind of action against slavery but who
were not yet willing to support abolitionism. It also appealed
to the economic interests of the North* Eastern Business
groups did not wish to interfere with slavery, but they were
disturbed by the suggestion that the South might achieve
political preponderance 5 and Western farmers were alarmed
fay the possibility that they might have to compete with slave
plantations* The proposal to limit the spread of slavery by

The Civil War 219

law thus appealed to all classes in the North} in particular, it
made possible an alliance between Eastern capitalism and
Western agriculture, in spite of the fact that these element*
had been opposed to each other, and were still opposed to each
other, on almost every other question. The suggestion that
unless action was taken the whole West might become slave
soil was, in fact, so cleverly designed to unite the North and
to deprive the South of its Northern allies among the farmer*
and urban workers, and was at the same time so essentially
untrue, that it is difficult to acquit the antislavery leaders who
propounded it of deliberate dishonesty* Men who are most
convinced of their own rectitude of purpose are often the
most unscrupulous in their choice of means.

Yet although the coming of the Civil War was hastened
by these political maneuvering^ it docs not follow that wiser
and more forebearing statesmanship could have done more
than postpone it. The North (apart from the abolitionists)
was not yet willing to admit that it wished to interfeate with
slavery where it already existed; but such an intention was
implicit in its political development. And whenever it became
manifest, the South would fight

The issue of slavery in the territories was settled tempo-
rarily by the Compromise of 1850. It was raised again by
the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854- And the dispute as to
whether slavery should be permitted in Kansas resulted in the
formation of the new Republican Party, a fusion of Whigs
and Jacksonian Democrats, dedicated to the prohibition of
slavery in all territories. Representing both Eastern business
interests and Western fanning interests and led by politicians
who were building careers on the slavery issue, this was the
first purely sectional political party.

Meanwhile an increasing number of Southerners, recogniz-
ing that under no circumstances could they win control of
the West, and foreseeing that Northern predominance would
inevitably mean both increased exploitation of Southern agri-
culture and an attack on the Soutfa's peculiar institution, were
thinking of secession. This idea had been advocated for a
number of years by a small group of Southern radicals,
headed by Rhett of South Carolina and Yancey of Alabama.

2 2 o The American People

The radicals believed that if the South formed a separate
confederacy, she would be able to build an empire in the
Caribbean, where land suitable for cotton was abundant 5 and
some of them were beginning to talk of reopening the slave
trade. These ideas appealed especially to those smaller plant-
ers and fanners who wanted more land and more slaves. It
appears to have been this struggling and ambitious middle
group, and not the richer planters, who responded to the
radical program of the secessionists and carried the South out
of the Union* It was not the Southern aristocrats, as the
North believed, but men of a lower economic stratum, who
were responsible for the Confederacy.

In 1860 Lincoln, as Republican candidate, was elected to
the Presidency, and the secessionist group were then able to
win over a majority of the Southern population. Before Lin-
coln took office in March 1861, seven of the cotton states had
voted to secede and had joined each other in the Confederacy.
In April, when it became obvious that the North was going
to fight a war in order to prevent secession, four more slave
states followed them out of the Union.

3

The reasons that caused the South to secede are not difficult
to understand. But the reasons that caused the North to fight
a Civil War in order to prevent secession are more intangible
and Jess easily defined.

It is true that Southern secession would have meant eco-
nomic losses for Northern merchants, shipowners and manu-
facturers; from which it can be argued that the war was
fought in order to establish the domination of industrial
capitalism* But it cannot be proved that this economic motive
had any determining influence on Northern opinion. The
strongest champions of the Union were not the Northeastern
business groups but the nationalistic farmers of the upper
Mississippi Valley, whose attitude cannot be adequately ex-
plained except in terms of sentiments and ideas. These
Middle Westerners had learned to identify the federal Union
with freedom and democracy; they befieved that, by contrast

ThtCruilW&r 221

with all other governments in the world, it represented a
new and higher way of life. They believed secession to be
illegal $ and they believed that if a minority group, when
defeated in an election, were allowed to violate constitutional
procedure by seceding, then the American experiment in
democracy would be proved a failure*

As Lincoln told Congress, the Civil War was "a struggle
for maintaining in the world that form and substance of
government whose leading object is to elevate the condition
of man* . . . Our popular government has often been called
an experiment Two points in it our people have already
settled the successful establishing and the successful adminis-
tering of it. One still remains its successful maintenance
against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is
now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can
fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion j that
ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and
that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided,
there can be no successful appeal bade to bullets."

This attitude was undoubtedly correct Whether or not
secession was legally permissible a question on which there
were legitimate differences of opinion it was certainly true
that the democratic and peaceful American way of life could
not have been preserved if the Union had been split into two
mutually hostile sections. In recognizing that secession was a
threat to all that America stood for, the,M5ddle Westerners
showed the same kind of intuitive wisdom that Americans
displayed in 1917 and again in 194,1.

Lincoln gave expression to these sentiments with a consum-
mate clarity and sincerity. This Illinois politician had come to
the Presidency with very little preparation for the tasks he
had to assume. His previous speeches, although marked by a
definite conviction that slavery was wrong, had been often
fumbling and confused and not always candid. But once in
office, he gradually rose to a moral stature unequaled by any
other American before or since. Humble but courageous and
deeply honest, he provided a perfect example of what leader-
ship should mean in a democratic society. He regarded him-
self always as the instrument of the popular will, and con-

222 The American People

sistently refused to take action unless he was convinced that
the people desired it. But once he had decided that action was
wanted, he could assume responsibility boldly and decisively,
in defiance of the advice of all the men around him. At the
outset of the war, for example, he refused to make slavery an
issue in the conflict (in spite of his personal desire to see it
abolished); but eighteen months later, when he felt that
public opinion was ready for such a measure, he decreed the
emancipation of all slaves in the Confederacy by his own
authority. During the war years Lincoln acquired a sense of
the tragic mystery and complexity of human life, to a degree
that has been rare among Americans, He knew that slavery
was an evil thing, and that evil breeds further evil until a
full recompense has been madej but that did not lead him to
regard the slaveowners as evil men who deserved no consid-
eration or who were fundamentally different from other white
men who did not happen to live in the South. And he knew
that the course of events can never wholly be determined by
human planning or design, and that men must learn submis-
sion and resignation. His Second Inaugural, delivered on
March 4, 1865, when the war was almost concluded, exhibits
a profounder understanding of human affairs than any other
American utterance, spoken or written.

While Lincoln embodied the finest elements of the demo-
cratic ideal, the generals who won the war for the North were
equally typical, in another fashion, of the American character.
By materialistic standards the victory of the North may be
considered as inevitable because of its superior manpower and
economic resources j but this strength had to be mobilized
and used. The North had to discover generals with a will to
victory. After a number of failures it found them, in the
American manner, among plain citizens with no social backing
and little military experience. After the Northern army had
been organized by a former railroad executive, McClellan,
it found appropriate commanders in two Middle Westerners,
Grant and Sherman. Both these men had been in civilian life
at the outset of the warj both of them had previously ap-
peared to be frustrated characters with a penchant for failurej
and both of them emerged to leadership because they believed

ThcCimlWar

in taking the offensive and in concentrating all the force at
their disposal, without mercy and without restraint, on the
angle object of crushing the South. By contrast, the Southern
generals, most of whom were trained professionals and be-
longed to the planter class, were superb tacticians; but al-
though they were able to win battles, they had too many
professional and aristocratic inhibitions to nuke full and
uncompromising use of their advantages.

Having the better army at the outset of the war, the South
might have won its independence immediately if its leaden
had been willing to take the offensive. Instead, they waited
while the North mobilized its resources and was ready to
strike. During 1862 and 1863, while spectacular but indecisive
campaigns were occurring in the East, Grant and Sherman
won complete control of the Mississippi Valley, thereby split-
ting the Confederacy in two. In 1864 Grant was transferred
to the Fast and began to fight his way southward into Vir-
ginia, while Sherman crossed the Appalachians from the west
and marched through Georgia, deliberately laying waste the
country in order to destroy the Southern will to resist By the
spring of 1865 the South knew that the war was lost, and the
Southern generals refused to continue fighting.

Meanwhile Northern industrial and financial interests had
taken advantage of the secession of the South to establish a
firm hold over the federal Congress. Although Northern
business men had not caused the war, their aggrandizement
was certainly the most conspicuous of its results. A- high pro-
tective tariff, lavish grants of money and public land to the
railroads, the right to import contract labor from Europe,
banking legislation and a treasury policy advantageous to
creditor interests, and large-scale and generous government
contracts (accompanied by gross corruption) all these helped
to transform the United States from an agrarian into an in-
dustrial nation. Even the one measure intended primarily for
the benefit of the farmers the Homestead Act providing for
the free distribution of public land was taken advantage of
by business groups, who were able (through lax administra-
tion of the act) to acquire ownership of the most valuable
natural resources in the West and of land that promised spec-

2 24 The American People

ulative profits. There were many Northern leaders (like Lin-
coln) who disliked much of this legislation, or who did not
understand its implications? but they were powerless to pre-
vent the triumph of the moneyed interests. By attempting to
leave the Union in order to maintain Negro slavery, the
South had brought about'the final and irreparable defeat of
agrarianism.

And just as the race issue had enabled the moneyed interests
to win control of the government, so it made it possible for
them to consolidate their power after the war ended. Those
Northerners, such as Lincoln, who regarded the war as pri-
marily a struggle to maintain American democracy had pro-
posed to restore constitutional rights to the Southern states
as quickly as possible, asking them only to pledge allegiance
to the Union and to accept the abolition of slavery. After the
assassination of Lincoln in April 1865, this policy was put
into effect by his successor, Andrew Johnson, a native of
Tennessee and an exponent of old-fashioned Jacksonian de-
mocracy. Thus the agrarian South, chastened by defeat but
by no means purged of its agrarianism, would regain its
influence in Congressj and as Northern business men were
quid: to realize, the tariff, the railroad subsidies, and the pay-
ment of interest to government bondholders would be en-
dangered. Such a prospect was intolerable both to the moneyed
interests and to those Republican politicians who had used the
sectional conflict as a device for achieving power. They de-
cided that the South must be treated not as part of the Union
but as conquered territory, and they were able to win the
support of the most idealistic elements in the North for such
a program by means of the race question. White Southerners
had accepted the abolition of slavery, but it was obvious that
they still proposed to keep the Negro in a subordinate posi-
tion with no political and few civil rights. In 1 867 the Repub-
licans in Congress brushed aside Johnson's reconstruction
progiam, imposed military rule on the South, decreed that
the Negro should be enfranchised, deprived many of the
Southern whites of political rights, and ordered the election
of new Southern governments based on Negro suffrage. In
this manner the predominance in the federal government of

The Civil War 225

the Republican Party, and of the economic interests it repre-
sented, would be perpetuated. The leaders chiefly responsible
for these measures, men such as Thad Stevens and Charles
Sumner, were idcaJistically devoted to the cause of human
equality; but their idealism had that bitter, fanatical, and
self-righteous quality that is often a cloak for self-interest and
greed for power. They were motivated more by a hatred for
the Southern whites than by a love for the Southern Negroes.

If this radical reconstruction program could have sue*
ceeded, a major American problem would have been solved.
Unfortunately deep-rooted human altitudes could not be
changed in a few years by legislative action, particularly when
the underlying motives for the action were so cynical Thanks
to the greed of Northern businessmen and the ambition of
Northern politicians, the Southern Negro was given an ojy
portunityj but the obstacles to effective use of it wene over-
whelming. Recently emancipated slaves, mostly illiterate,
surrounded by a hostile white population, and guided by a
small group of white Republican politicians who had moved
into the South to supervise the program, were suddenly en-
trusted with political power. Reconstruction could have suc-
ceeded only if the Southern whites had been willing to adjust
themselves to the idea of race equality, and this they were
determined never to do. Actually the reconstruction govern-
ments put into effect much good legislation, especially in
respect to public education, some of which has never been
repealed 5 and some of their ablest and most honest leaders
were men of Negro descent But they failed to solve the
economic problems of the Negroes by providing them with
landj and they were guilty of much extravagance and cor-
ruption*

The faults of the reconstruction governments were loudly
and persistently publicized by the Southern whites and were
explained in terms of race- Yet in reality they proved nothing
about the political capacity of the Negroes. If the Southern
ex-slaves had been white and not Negro, they would have
committed the same errors j political capacity and integrity
cannot be acquired overnight. Nor is it certain that the Negro
legislatures were actually worse than certain white legislatures

2 2 6 The American People

in other parts of the country during the same period. None
of the reconstruction governments indulged in as much steal-
ing as the Tweed ring in New York or the whisky ring in
Washington j and even in the South the worst offenders were
white carpetbaggers and not Negroes. But where a white
politician living in luxury at the expense of his constituents
aroused only a cynical amusement, a Negro politician behav-
ing in precisely the same manner was regarded as a symbol
of the utmost infamy and degradation.

The Southern whites gradually regained control of their
governments by intimidating the Negroes in order to prevent
them from voting, and the Northern politicians gradually lost
interest in the question. With the expansion of big business
and the admission of new Western states, the Republican
Party no longer needed votes from the South in order to win
elections. In 1877 the last federal troops were withdrawn
from the South, and white supremacy was restored every-
where. The Negro was no longer a slave, but he still had
few "rights which the white man was bound to respect."

But although the North no longer attempted to change the
Southern pattern of racial relationships, the other results of
the Civil War were more enduring. Henceforth the South
was unable to protect herself from exploitation by Northern
banking and business corporations or to maintain her agrarian
way of life. Compelled to remain as a subordinate section in a
Union which was now controlled by urban capitalism, the
next generation of Southerners could see no solution to their
problems except to imitate the North by adopting an indus-
trial economy. A new South of textile factories and steel mills
began to emerge, dominated by a new moneyed class of mer-
chants, bankers, and landlords. Claiming that the South could
not otherwise compete successfully, with the North, this
"Bourbon" ruling class insisted on the necessity of low wages
and long hours, and became the most uncompromising op-
ponents of trade unions and of social welfare legislation. In
the 1890*8 the poorer classes in the South began to rebel
against Bourbon control 5 but their leaders were usually
demagogues and rabble-rousers who displayed little construc-
tive leadership, and their resentment was easily diverted into

The Chit War 227

the issue of white supremacy. The small white fanner of the
South found that to denounce his Negro competitors and
demand that they be kept in subjection was easier and more
satisfying than to deal with the complex economic mechanisms
that were the real causes of his poverty. As long as the South
remained obsessed with the race question, any thoroughgoing
solution to its economic and social problems seemed to be
impossible. Through the twentieth century most Southern
leaders were either Bourbons or demagogues, and an enlight-
ened liberalism was rare.

If the South could have maintained and revitalized her
traditional attitudes her preference for human over material
values and her belief in a code of manners and a concept of
social order and could have given them a meaningful rela-
tionship to twentieth-century conditions, she could have made
a unique contribution to the emergent civilization of America.
But to disentangle what was permanently valuable in the
Southern way of life from the wreckage of the slave society
destroyed in the Civil War seemed to be too difficult a task.
The intellectual spokesmen of the South either regretted the
defeat of the Confederacy or else accepted the values of the
North and looked forward to the liquidation of whatever was
distinctive in the entire Southern heritage.

Meanwhile the majority of the Negroes had subsided into
a position of subordination to white landowners, although
usually as tenant farmers rather than as wage laborers. The
more restless and ambitious began to move from the country
into the cities and from the South into the North, adopting
those manual occupations not already pre-empted by members
of the white race. But both in the South and in the North
race discrimination continued to be an apparently indissoluble
element in the American pattern of behavior. Any man with
Negro blood was classified not by his personal qualities but
by his race, all white men being automatically superior to him.
Any white man who associated on equal terms with Negroes
could expect to lose the esteem of other white men a penalty
few persons were sufficiently idealistic and sufficiently secure,
economically and emotionally, to be willing to incur. In the
South, insofar as the Negroes were willing to "know their

2 2 8 The American People

place," the old pattern of racial relationships actually worked j
in return for subordination, the Negro could expect some
measure of protection. To this extent the South handled the
problem more successfully than the North where there was
no accepted pattern and where the Negro had more freedom
but less protection and more isolation. But in the course of
time an increasing number of Negroes became unwilling to
"know their place" and began to demand the same rights as
other human beings. In the twentieth century, with the
growth of a Negro buaness and professional class serving the
Negro urban population, Negro militancy and Negro resent-
ment against their manifold economic, cultural, and social
disabilities steadily increased. Yet beyond appealing to the
white conscience and to such laws as white officials might be
willing to enforce, the Negro could do little to improve his
position. As long as white Americans continued to think in
racial and not in human terms, he could find no solution to
hb problems 5 and there appeared to be no prospect of such
a solution within any visible period of time.

In twentieth-century world affairs the United States claimed
to stand for democracy, for freedom, and for the equality
of man. But at home more than twelve million Ameri-
can citizens were exposed to continuous insult and discrimi-
nation solely because of the color of their skins. The harm-
ful effects of race prejudice on the internal development of
America were deep and lasting. And in a world approach-
ing unification, in which the colored races far outnumbered
the white race, the international results of color prejudice
were likely to be even more far-reaching and more damaging
to the nation guilty of it.

CHAPTER XI [ 229

The Growth of Industrialism

T "\HE most important result of the Civil War was to

remove all obstacles to industrial expansion and to

the growth of big business corporations. During the
-*- next two or three generations the United States be-
came the richest and most powerful country in the world
At the same time she was transformed from a country in
which the average citizen was an independent property owner
to one in which there were extreme economic inequalities and
most citizens were dependent for their livelihood on big cor-
porations owned and controlled by a small minority of the
population.

Whether industrial growth could have been harmonized
with the agrarian ideals of freedom and equality is a debatable
question* The Americans might have adopted a policy of state
ownership of railroads and public utilities (such as was ad-
vocated by Senator Benton and other agrarian spokesmen),
and they might have built their industries through coopera-
tive rather than individual enterprise. But such methods ran
counter to the national traditions of economic individualism
and suspicion of government power that the agrarians them-
selves had helped to establish* And in an individualistic
society there could be no industrial growth without inequal-
ityj industry required, on the one hand, large aggregations
of capital and, on the other hand, a large class willing to work
in factories. The American people, therefore, accepted ine-
quality as necessary for economic progress. They allowed
their industry to be organized by a small capitalist class, who
acquired ownership of land, natural resources, and money,
and whose property claims were protected by the state. And
at the same time an industrial proletariat developed, com-
posed mainly of new immigrant groups from Europe, who
acquired no economic rights in America except the right to

2 jo The American People

work for whatever wages the employing class chose to offer
them.

The ideology of big business enterprise was essentially
Hamiltonian. Its exponents believed in government aid for
economic expansion; they believed (although they did not
always say so in public) in the leadership of an elite j and they
regarded the sanctity of contracts as the very foundation of
civilization. They argued that if able and energetic individuals
were encouraged to develop the country's resources and were
permitted to enrich themselves in the process, then the whole
of society would benefit. The unchecked drive of the will of
ruthless men toward wealth and power was presented as a
civilizing force. Attempts to interfere with them were attrib-
uted to die envy of the lazy and the inefficient, who deserved
no protection or consideration. Yet the business classes also
appropriated for their own purposes certain doctrines origi-
nally associated with agrarianism. When there were threats,
not of government aid for business, but of government regula-
tion of business, they could speak eloquently of the merits of
private property, free enterprise, and individual liberty,
thereby inviting the support of the farmer and the small
owner. They could preach laissez fairs as vigorously as Adam
Smith (whose main argument had been that all government
aid for business should be abolished, since it created special
privileges and caused monopolies) ; and they could denounce
die growth of government power as bitterly as Thomas
Jefferson-

This ideology of business enterprise, originally justified
partly by Calvinist theology and partly by the doctrine of
natural rights, acquired added support from the Darwinian
theory of evolution- According to Darwin's disciple Herbert
Spencer, who acquired an enormous influence in America,
progress came about through the competitive struggle of indk
viduals. Such a struggle was represented as natural (and
therefore good), whereas social action tending to limit it was
denounced as artificial (and therefore bad)." Yet in reality
(as the agrarians had always insisted) there was nothing in
die least natural about nineteenth-century American capital*
ism. It was an artificial man-made creation that had been

The Growth of Industrialism z 3 1

brought into existence by government polkxes, by lawi for
the protection of contracts and corporate property rights, and
by financial mechanisms tending to increase the wealth of
creditor groups. It had, in fact, been deliberately and care-
fully planned, on models derived from Europe, by the
makers of the Constitution and by such men as Alexander
Hamilton and John Marshall.

After the Civil War this philosophy of business enterprise
acquired for a period an almost complete domination over
the American mind. It was taught in schools and colleges; it
was propagated by the most reputable writers; it was accepted
by the respectable and educated classes* Even those individuals
who deplored the greed of business magnates and the degra-
dation of the wage-earning class had no alternative social
philosophy to propound. And until the twentieth century it
determined both the policies of the federal government and
the decisions of the federal judiciary.

The government aided business directly through a high
tariff, through subsidies and grants of public land and natural
resources, through patent laws that had the effect of pro-
tecting big corporations against competition, and through a
financial policy designed to benefit creditors. The judiciary,
abandoning the agrariamsm of Taney and returning to the
Federalism of John Marshall, maintained the sanctity of
contracts and protected wealthy corporations both against
state regulation and against trade-union activities. In particu-
lar, the Fourteenth Amendment, which had originally been
adopted with the avowed purpose of protecting Negroes and
which prohibited states from depriving persons of life, liberty
or property exigept by due process of kw, was gradually
transformed into the Magna Carta of Ing business. In the
latter part of the nineteenth century the Supreme Court
adopted a new interpretation of the right of property- Prop-
erty rights no longer referred merely to the ownership of
tangible possessions (as in the agrarian eighteenth century) ;
they now included the right to make money from one's
possessions by selling them- And in accordance with this new
definition the processes of capitalistic business were declared
to be irfimune from government regulation. When a state

232 The American People

attempted to limit the rates a railroad or a public utility
might charge, the court declared that it was depriving cor-
porations of their property. When a state attempted to protect
workers by adopting a maximum-hour law, the court declared
that it was depriving the worker of his right to work for as
long as he might wish to contract for.

The masses of the American people accepted this process,
partly because they had become enthralled by the hope of
rapid industrial progress and of wealth for all, and partly
because they were unable to see any relevant difference be-
tween the freedom and property rights of the small owner
and those of the big corporation. As John Taylor had pointed
out, "the grossest abuses" had been able to "artfully ally
themselves with real and honest property." The post-Civil
War generation ignored the warning of the agrarians against
the use of political power to secure economic privilege; and
they did not understand the agrarian distinction between the
property of the farmer or mechanic and that of the banker or
speculator. Discredited by its association with slavery and by
the Civil War, and obliterated by the propaganda of the busi-
ness classes, agrarian theory was almost completely forgotten.
There was thus a curious lack of continuity in American
political thinking. When opposition to big business revived
near the end of the nineteenth century, it borrowed little
from the American past. The economic doctrines of Franklin,
of Jefferson and Taylor, and of the Jacksonians did not be-
come a permanent part of the American intellectual tradition.

Yet throughout the entire period it is probable that most
Americans still believed in a property owners' democracy,
although they were not willing to take the kind of action
needed to maintain it The agrarian ideal was still the core
of the American view of life. That ideal had, in fact, been
restated at the beginning of the Civil War by the leader of
the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln. In a message to
Congress in 1861 Lincoln had described America as a country
where the large majority of the people were neither em-
ployers nor employees, and where the hired laborer was not
^fixed to that condition for life. . . . Men with their fam-
ilies wives, sons and daughters work for themselves, on

The Growth of Industrialism 233

their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the
whole product to themselves, and asking no favor* of capital
on the one hand, nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other.
, . . The prudent, penniless beginner in the world labor? for
wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land
for himself, then labors on his own account smother while,
and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This
is the just and generous and prosperous system which opens
the way to all gives hope to all, and consequent energy aad
progress and improvement of condition to all. 7 *

Even in the twentieth century most Americans wished for
this kind of society j many of them, in fact, continued to insist,
in defiance of all the evidence to the contrary, that America
still was such a society/ But they were not prepared to act by
agrarian principles. Attracted by the mirage of progress, and
confused and misled fay the exponents of business enterprise,
they continued to hope that the growth of big industry would
somehow prove to be not incompatible with economic democ-
racy and opportunity for all. In consequence, a kind of patho-
logical schism, a lack of adaptation to realities, developed
within the American mind.

And whatever the sacrifices may have been, the industrial
achievement of America was, in fact, so remarkable that the
optimism and the national pride it engendered were not sur-
prising. When the national wealth was increasing so rapidly,
it was easy to believe that in the long run all elements ia the
population would somehow benefit by it.

As a river may be traced back to its source in a tiny moun-
tain spring, so the industrial revolution in America is usually
traced back to a spinning machine constructed by an immi-
grant from Great Britain, Samuel Slater by name, at Paw-
tucket, Rhode Island, in the year 1791. This humble contriv-
ance was housed in a shed and operated by the labor of a few
small children. But a more significant landmark in the
evolution of American industry was the formation of the

1 This is illustrated by die extraordinary popularity o the Readers?
Digest. The Readers' Digest owes its circulation to the fact that its edi-
torial point of view is identical with that of a vast number of middle-
class Americans. It depicts America in early nineteenth-century terms, as
a neighborly country filled with opportunities for small property owners.

2 34 2^* American People

Boston Manufacturing G>mpany in 1813. Founded by a
group of wealthy Boston merchants who had decided that
more money was to be made from industry than from ship-
ping, and who planned to establish a spinning and weaving
factory on the most upto-date English models at Waltham,
Massachusetts, this was the first big business corporation in
America. From this date the manufacturing of textiles by
machinery increased rapidly, and the older handicraft methods
were gradually eliminated.

During the next half-century mechanization spread to some
other industries; occupations still carried on by the manual
labor of skilled craftsmen passed under capitalistic control;
coal and iron mining developed; a network of railroads
covered the Eastern states; and Western fanners steadily
increased their production of commercial crops for sale to the
growing factory towns of the Northeast. By the outbreak of
the Civil War thirty thousand miles of railroads were in
operation; one million, three hundred thousand persons were
employed in factories, and were turning out products worth
close to two billion dollars a year; and nearly one fifth of the
population were living in towns and cities. This industrial
growth, however, was almost restricted to New England and
to the Middle Atlantic states.

The generation following the Civil War was the great age
of railroad building, during which the Eastern lines were
improved and extended and the Kg transcontinental lines
were built. By 1900 nearly two hundred thousand miles had.
been completed. Stimulated by the needs of the railroads, the
mining of coal and the manufacturing of steel increased to
enormous proportions. Meanwhile oil and other mineral
resources were being exploited; mechanical methods were
extended to the making or processing of most consumption
goods; and agricultural production was expanded by the
adoption of machinery. This rapid growth was facilitated by
the import of European capital, in return for which the
Americans exported foodstuffs, and by the immigration of
millions of Irish, Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, and Slavs.
Between 1840 and 1900 more than sixteen million immigrants
entered the country, a number almost as laige as the total

The Growth of Industrialism 235

population of the United States in the former year. By 1900
the total number of wage earners was about seventeen million-
Four and a half million of them were employed in manufac-
turing, and the value of their products exceeded thirteen
billion dollars a year. By this time forty per cent of the
population were living in towns and cities.

Meanwhile, the use of electricity for power and light had
been developed; new chemical industries were appearing; and
such inventions as the telephone, the automobile, and the
airplane were being made. In the twentieth century the
American industrial system continued to grow, the greatest
expansion occurring in the making of durable consumption
goods, particularly the automobile. Oil and electricity begin
to replace steam as the principal sources of power; light
metals and plastics began to replace iron and steel. Mean-
while, with the growth of technology, the rate of increase of
factory workers became slower, but there was an enormous
growth of new white-collar occupations. Between 1900 and
1930 no less than eighteen and a half million immigrants
entered the country. By 1929 thirty-six million Americans
were wage- or salary-earners, nearly eight and a half million
of them being employed in factories; and industrial products
were valued at seventy billion dollars- By this time the Amer-
ican people had become predominantly urban, fifty-six pa-
cent of them living in towns and dties.

Industrialization was a world-wide process. The factory
system and the use of machinery instead of hand labor, after
being initiated in Great Britain in the eighteenth century,
were gradually adopted, with varying degrees of enthusiasm
or reluctance, voluntary choice or compulsion, by almost all
other countries* But nowhere else (except in the Soviet Union
in the 1 930*5) was their advance so rapid and so triumphant
as in the United States. By 1929 the United States had
achieved an industrial pre-eminence and supremacy over other
countries that seemed scarcely credible. Since the American
productive system never operated at anywhere near its full
capacity (except in wartime), its astonishing potentialities
were not fully realized until the Second World War. In the
year 1944, with fourteen million of the most abWbodied

236 The American People

citizens withdrawn from production into military service, the
Americans turned out eighty-six billion dollars' worth of war
materials in addition to producing ninety-seven billion dollars*
worth of goods for civilian use. While fighting the greatest
war in history and supplying their allies as well as themselves
with war materials, they were actually able to increase civilian
consumption and to raise the average civilian standard of
living.

The industrial supremacy achieved by the Americans was
due partly to material factors: to their natural resources and
to the political unification of so wide an area and the lack of
internal trade barriers. But material factors alone would not
have produced such a result if the Americans had not de-
veloped the appropriate character and view of life. Rapid
expansion was possible because the matrix out of which Amer-
ican industrialism developed was a democratic, pioneering,
and agrarian society, and not a feudal society as in most other
countries. From their pioneering and Calvinist past the
Americans had acquired a special bent toward the domination
of nature; they believed in conquest, self-control, and thrift,
not in contemplation, enjoyment, or luxurious spending.
They had always been an inventive people, and had always
attached the greatest importance to pursuits of practical
utility* Because of their freedom from class distinctions,
their faith in the average man, and their belief in the duty
of self-advancement, men of executive and technical ability
from any social background were encouraged to assert them-
selves. Moreover, the American preference for mobility and
versatility rather than for the development .of specialized
professional skills was in harmony with the new techniques of
mass production developed by American engineers. In the
new mechanized industries, which emphasized quantity rather
than quality, the worker could often acquire a sufficient degree
of skill in a few weeks, so that he need not bind himself for
life to any particular occupation*

In pure science, which requires long professional training
and disinterested intellectual curiosity and contemplation, the
Americans lagged far behind the Europeans. But they were
superior in technical inventiveness, as Franklin showed in the

The Growth of Industrialism 237

eighteenth century and Edison in the nineteenth. Of all the
American technological triumphs the most significant, sym-
bolically as well as actually, was the invention of flying* It
was appropriate that a people who believed above all things
in the domination of nature by the will should have been the
first to achieve this most dramatic and spectacular of all
human accomplishments an accomplishment of which men
had dreamed for thousands of years. And it was true to the
spirit of American civilization that the men responsible for
it should have been two obscure and unpretentious Middle
Western bicycle mechanics who dared to set about it without
professional or academic training and without official patron-
age or financial backing.

Thus the American genius for industrialization, like the
American guiius for war, was due to the feet that the Amer-
icans were a free, undisciplined, and unregimented people.
Just as the Americans excelled in warfare because they were
essentially a nonmilitary people, so they excelled in industry
because they had originally been an agrarian people* Yet the
tendency of industrial growth, of the kind that occurred after
the Civil War, was to make the Americans lea? free, more
disciplined, and more regimented, and thereby to weaken
those qualities that had been responsible for that growth*
The transformation of the average American from an inde-
pendent property owner into the hired employee of a big
corporation necessarily reduced his sense of responsibility and
his capacity for initiative, while the growth of economic in-
equality made it more difficult for talent to assert itself.

The big corporations were built by entrepreneurs who were
formerly known as captains of industry but whom a more
irreverent age prefers to describe as robber barons. Some
of the more important of them were Vanderbilt, Hill, and
Harriman in railroads, Rockefeller in oil, Carnegie in steel,
Duke in tobacco, Havemeyer in sugar, McCormick in agri-
cultural machinery, and Morgan in investment banking. As
Thorstein Veblen pointed out, these men should not be given
credit for the achievements of American technology. It was
the engineer and the mechanic, not the entrepreneur, who
actually built American industry. And since most entrepre-

238 The American People

neurs were primarily motivated, not by a desire to contribute
to human progress, but by a drive to make as much money
and acquire as much power as possible, they sometimes pre-
ferred to sabotage technology, suppressing inventions that
might reduce their earnings, making agreements with each
other to limit production in order to keep prices high, and
closing down factories when profits were too small. Yet in
bringing together aggregates of capital and masses of workers
and creating the administrative machinery for setting them in
motion, the robber barons were performing a function that the
society of their time considered to be. desirable. What they
had was executive ability, by which is meant the ability to
assume responsibility and to give orders to other people.

It would be unjust to condemn them too harshly. A few
of them, such as Jay Gould, had no constructive impulses and
were interested solely in making millions by any means what-
ever. But the majority genuinely believed that in organizing
industry into large units that could more efficiently exploit
the natural resources of America, they were doing God's
work and promoting civilization. Yet one cannot acquit the
robber barons without condemning the society that had pro-
duced them; for almost all of them were hard, ruthless,
narrow, and uncivilized men. The ability to make a great
deal of money is a specialized talent rarely accompanied by
any broad understanding of social forces or by any cultural
awareness. Unfortunately in the new industrial civilization
money meant power. These men were not likely to use their
power in any humane or disinterested fashion.

When the robber barons had finished their work, almost all
the manufacturing and transportation of America was con-
trolled by big corporations. A majority of the Americans
worked for corporations, and the destinies of all of them were
deeply affected by corporation practices. The twentieth cen-
tury in America was the age of the corporation, as the twelfth
in Europe had been the age of feudalism. And although
corporations varied considerably in size, it was the two or
three hundred largest, headed by vast billion-dollar monsters
such as United States Steel and American Telephone and

The Growth of Indu$trtali$m ^ 59

Telegraph, whose economic policies were of decisive impor-
tance.

By 1929 four fifths of all the profits of manufacturing were
going to only 1,349 corporations, and the two hundred largest
nonfinandal corporations had acquired ownership of nearly
half of all corporate wealth and of twenty-two per cent of the
total national wealth. As a result of this concentration of
ownership and control the big corporations were largely able
to evade the economic laws of supply and demand and to fiat
their own prices. Some branches of economic activity wore
dominated by angle corporations j others were controlled by
a small number of corporations which were able to make price
agreements with each other. Big business was ceasing to be
competitive., at least in the essential matter of prices, and wis
able to exploit the rest of the community by charging whatever
the traffic would bear. And this growth of monopoly appeared
to be, in large measure, the result of an inevitable economic
development. In the Jacksonian period monopolies had been
created by means of special privileges granted through state
charters j and the Jacksonian remedy had been to enact general
incorporation kws making competition possible. But in the
twentieth century, when most forms of manufacturing re-
quired vast capital investments, corporations were able to
establish monopolistic positions by acquiring ownership of so
much capital and capital equipment that newcomers could not
hope to compete with them. The result was that a relatively
small group of men, controlling the leading industrial and
financial corporations and to a large extent working in collab-
oration with each other by means of interlocking directorates
and common association with the same New York firms of
investment bankers, were able to dominate the American econ-
omy and to acquire the major share of the profits of industrial
enterprise.

Meanwhile the farmer and the small businessman were still
operating in a competitive market 5 and while the prices they
paid were largely fixed by big business, the prices they re-
ceived were dependent on supply and demand. Even in the
age of the big corporation there continued to be a great num-

240 The American People

ber of small businesses in America 5 in 1929 the total number
of corporations actively engaged in business amounted to no
less than 456,000. But the vast majority of them earned small
profits, even in periods of prosperity, and were always close
to bankruptcy. In an economy dominated by big corporations,
it was extremely difficult for newcomers to establish them-
selves. As far as the vast majority of the population was con-
cerned, the American creed of private enterprise and initiative
had become a myth.

Legally, the big corporation had the same rights, although
not the same obligations, as a person;, and it had inherited
all the immunities the American constitution had given to
individual property owners. It could not be deprived of its
property except by due process of law; and for a long period
its wage, hour, and price policies were almost exempt from
any kind of social control. The managers of a corporation were
not answerable to the community for the use they made of
the property under their control, although their actions might
have social repercussions unknown in the eighteenth century.
The corporation was, in fact, a kind of imperium in imferio
rTattning an economic sovereignty analogous to the political
sovereignty of an independent state. Meanwhile, its employees
had no legally enforceable rights in the institution upon which
they depended for their livelihood, and could be dismissed at
the pleasure of the management. When the employees of a
corporation went on strike because their wages were too low,
their behavior was generally regarded by the business classes
as reprehensible. But when a corporation itself went on strike,
closing down its factories and dismissing its men because its
profits were too low, its behavior was believed to be sound and
necessary business practice.

During the twentieth century few of the larger corpo-
rations remained under the ownership of one man or group
of men. Ownership had a tendency to become more widely
diffused among a large number of stockholders, who retained
the right to be paid dividends but who ceased to exercise any
of the powers and obligations traditionally associated with
property. But this did not mean that any large proportion
of the American people were sharing in the profits of owner-

TAe Growth of Industrialism 241

ship. In 1929 the total number of stockholders was probably
about three or four million, and three fifths of all corpora-
tion dividends was paid to only 150,000 individuals. Mean-
while, effective control was being assumed by salaried
executives, who were theoretically the agents of the stock-
holders but who appeared in practice to be almost independent
o them. This divorce of ownership from control and develop
ment of a separate managerial class were regarded by some
observers as developments of immense sooal importance,
constituting a minor revolution. Actually, however, the cor-
poration executives usually worked in close cooperation with
investment bankers, who became the general custodians of
stockholders' interests; and their main function was to produce
profits. There was no good reason for expecting that their
policies would be more humanitarian and broad-minded than
those of the older owner-managers, whose main desire had
been to make as much money as possible. At the same time,
the growth of vast corporation bureaucracies, with scores of
vice-presidents and minor executives hoping to work their
way up by winning the favor of the men at the top, began to
produce the evils traditionally associated with political bu-
reaucracy : conservatism, timidity, and fear of initiative.

Meanwhile, the buying and selling of corporation stocks,
by which purchasers acquired the right to share in the profits
of ownership without incurring any corresponding responsi-
bilities, became a major American occupation; and speculation
in stock prices began to replace land speculation as the likeliest
method of getting something for nothing. The manipulation
of these claims to profits assumed the most intricate and fan-
tastic forms, which no longer had any intelligible connection
with the economic realities upon which they depended. Per-
sons who were adept at this art of manipulation were able to
extract millions of dollars' worth of real and tangible goods
from the producing classes without having any direct contact
themselves with any of the forces and techniques of production
and without making any contribution of any kind to the wel-
fare of the community. In an age in which genuine economic
opportunities were restricted, but in which social prestige still
depended upon financial success, stock speculation became the

242 The American People

favorite activity of ambitious individuals who hoped to become
rich quickly.

2

The growth of the big industrial and financial corporations
was accompanied by most radical changes in the structure of
American society. The "general happy mediocrity" of the
eighteenth century disappeared. Gross economic inequalities
developed and were followed by a marked sharpening of class
differences. At the beginning of the twentieth century the
Americans were less equal, socially and culturally as well as
economically, than they had been at the beginning of the nine-
teenth century. And with the growth of the wage-earning
class and the commeraalization of agriculture, a smaller
proportion of the Americans could regard themselves as eco-
nomically secure and independent. Insofar as the average
worker or farmer was dependent for his livelihood on the
workings of a complex economic system, he was no longer
free to determine his own destiny.

The most rapid growth of inequality occurred in the period
after the Civil War, during which a small number of individ-
uals were making fortunes from the new industries. It con-
tinued to increase during the first thirty years of the twentieth
century. By the year 1929 there were six hundred and thirty-
one thousand families who were receiving incomes of above
ten thousand dollars a year j their combined income amounted
to more than twenty-one billion dollars, constituting twenty-
eight per cent of the total national income. At the same period
more than sixteen million families, nearly sixty per cent of
the total number of families, were earning less than two thou-
sand dollars a year, and their combined income amounted to
about eighteen billion dollars, constituting less than twenty-
four per cent of the total national income* Thus the sixteen
million poorest families were receiving a total income sub-
stantially smaller than that of the six hundred thousand rich-
est families. Between these two extreme groups were ranged
the remaining ten and a half million families receiving be-
tween two and ten thousand dollars a year, whose combined
income amounted to thirty-seven billion dollars, forty-seven

The GrowtA of Industrialism 243

per cent of the total. At this period fifteen per cent of the
working population belonged to the business and professional
classes, and sixteen per cent were farmery while the remain-
ing sixty-nine per cent were wage earners of one kind or an-
other.

It had formerly been an American theory that wealth did
not remain permanently in the same families, but this ceased
to be true after the Civil War. The enormous fortunes ac-
quired by the robber barons were transmitted to their descend-
ants, who became a hereditary leisure class. But unlike most
European leisure classes they had no social function or sense
of responsibility* Few of them remained active in business;
and American society, having been organized on democratic
and not on feudal principles, did not expect or permit them
to assume political leadership. They became, for the most part f
a parasitical class of absentee owners, living on dividends and
spending their money as conspicuously as possible, building
themselves enormous houses modeled on Gothic castles or
Renaissance palaces, aping the manners and attitudes of Euro-
pean aristocracies and frequently intermarrying with them,
and introducing aristocratic customs into America.

The one social obligation expected of the millionaire fami-
lies was that they give away a part of their money for philan-
thropic or cultural purposes. Some of them, such as the Rocke-
fellers, showed genuine munificence and intelligence in their
donations 5 but the philanthropic foundations that advertised
the generosity of rich men or helped them to reduce their
income taxes, were often of dubious value. Some robber-baron
money promoted public health or popular education. And
some of it went to universities, usually for the erection of ex-
pensive and ostentatious mock-Gothic buildings, although
in a few instances a little of it helped to encourage learning
and research. Little money, on the other hand, went to the
arts. One of the most useful functions of a leisure class in-
telligent patronage of writers, artists, and musicians was be-
yond the capacity of most of the American rich. Some of them
became collectors, thereby finding a new channel for the ex-
pression of their predatory and acquisitive drives, and in the
course of time their collections enriched museums^ but the

244 TAe American People

presence of Italian primitives in American galleries did little
to stimulate American culture. With a few notable exceptions,
the millionaire class did more to debase than to encourage the
growth of a living contemporary art.

Below the leisure class in the social structure of industrial
America were the business, professional, and salaried classes.
Insofar as America had now become a business civilization,
these classes set the tone for its political and social thinking
and determined its cultural standards. When one thought
of a typical American, one thought of a businessman. Ameri-
can society did not wholly lose its mobility j and even in the
1940*5 an appreciable number of the business class, including
some of the most successful, were men who had been born
Into the working class and worked their way upward. But al-
though the line' dividing the business class from the working
class could be crossed, it was clearly defined. And within the
business class itself a number of intricate and subtle distinc-
tions developed, based chiefly on pecuniary standards, al-
though ancestry and race were also of importance. Ability to
spend money conspicuously (on an expensive house or a su-
perior make of automobile) and success in securing admission
to the more exclusive clubs and social milieus were indexes
for determining an individual's status in any urban commu-
nity. Yet since these social differentiations were copied from
Europe and ran counter to the official American ideals, it
was not often explicitly recognized that an embryo caste
system was developing^ in theory the Americans still believed
in equality.

The mass of the urban population belonged to the working
class, and this was composed predominantly of the more re-
cent immigrant groups. Except in the South, most of the
industrial workers were Irish, German, Italian, Slavic, and
Jewish and not Anglo-Saxon, so that the basic class division
of American urban society was also, in large measure, a race
division.

The mass migration of Europeans across the Atlantic dur-
ing the period of American industrial growth was the largest
such movement in all history. Yet although it radically
altered the racial composition of the American people so that

The Gr&vctk of Industrialism 245

by 1920 only about forty per cent of them wen; of Anglo-
Saxon descent, it had remarkably little effect on their culture
and mores- Regarding the United States as a higher civili-
zation, the immigrants were anxious to become Americanized
and assimilated as rapidly as possible. Their children spoke
the American language and endeavored to live by American
standards. Second- and third-generation Americans quickly
became indistinguishable from Americans with pre-Revolu*
tionary ancestors. This vast process of assimilation, by which
many millions of individuals learnt to repudiate the traditions
of their blood and ancestry and to assume for themselves
the memories of the Meyjtowr and the Declaration of In-
dependence, was carried through chiefly by the public schools.
The welding of so many different groups into a national unity,
and not the maintenance of high intellectual standards, was,
in fact, the primary social function of the America/i educa-
tional system.

This capacity for successful assimilation was a remarkable
proof of the vitality of the American tradition. Never before
in history had a nation incorporated into itself, without under-
going any essential change, such a vast body of aliens. Yet
insofar as the process of assimilation was successfully com-
pleted, to that extent would social unrest be stimulated. Work-
ers who had themselves migrated from Europe usually ac-
cepted inequality and exploitation with considerable docility.
They were accustomed to class privilege j they were afraid to
assert themselves in an alien environment 5 and their earn-
ings, low as they were^ were usually higher than in Europe.
As new immigrants arrived, moreover, earlier groups (such
as the Irish) moved upward in the social scale. In consequence
the building of the American industrial system was accom-
panied by relatively few labor disturbances. But since the
immigrant groups were admitted to America not as second-
class citizens but as full participants in the formative ideals of
the American nation, with their promise of universal freedom
and equality, they could be expected eventually to ask that
those ideals should be fulfilled. The docility with which the
American working <*1g accepted the decrease of freedom and
the growth of inequality would not continue indefinitely. It

246 The American People

was possible for the robber barons to depart from the Jeffer-
sonian tradition because the workers they exploited did not
know what that tradition meant j but their children and their
grandchildren learned to make that tradition their own.

For the peasants from Italy and Austria and Poland who
manned the American steel plants and automobile factories,
as for the indentured servants of the colonial period, Amer-
ica was still the land of opportunity, although they had to
make homes for themselves in the tenements of enormous
cities instead of in the solitude of the forest and had to do
battle with a complex society rather than with the wilderness.
America promised riches and independence, if not for the
immigrants themselves, then at least for their descendants. A
man might work for wages throughout his life, but he could
hope that his children (in Lincoln's words) would not be
permanently "fixed to that condition" but could rise to the
status of independent property owners, free to make their
own decisions and determine their own destinies. Unfortu-
nately the city was less friendly than the forest 5 its rewards
were far more dazzlingj but they were reserved for the pecu-
liarly gifted and the peculiarly lucky, and the struggle to at-
tain them exacerbated every aggressive and acquisitive im-
pulse. In the new America of the big industrial cities, men
fought each other instead of assisting each other against the
Indians and the wilderness.

Even in periods of economic expansion the spirit of the
new America was violently competitive. But there were also
periods of economic contraction when the whole process of
increasing wealth, rising land and stock values, and upward
social mobility went into reverse, and opportunities disap-
peared. Because of the unequal distribution of the national
income there was a chronic tendency for the richer classes to
accumulate savings they did not spend and could not profit-
ably invest, and the result was that production was liable to
eireed effective purchasing power. This gap between produc-
tion and purchasing power was increased by the high price
levels maintained by the big corporations. Since consumption
thus lagged behind production, at fairly regular intervals the
balance between had to be violently re-established* This was

The Growth of Industrialism 247

the underlying reason for the periodic crises that attacked the
economic system. But while the farmer and the small pro-
ducer had to maintain production and lowtr their prices dur-
ing a time of crisis, thus making possible an increase in con-
sumption, the managers of the big corporation were able to
adopt other measures. Industrial production was sharply re-
duced, factories closed their doors, millions of wage-earners
found themselves without employment, and the whole eco-
nomic system sank into depression. Such a procedure was in
accordance with the ideology of capitalism j since the wage
earner was merely the hired employee of the corporation ami
had no legal rights, it was considered proper to dismiss him
whenever it was no longer profitable to employ him* The
primary function of the corporation manager was to maintain
profits.

The docility with which industrial America accepted these
depressions, as though they were acts of God and not due to
the faulty workings of a man-made system, was extraordinary.
It was considered preferable that millions of families should
be condemned to starvation in the midst of plenty rather than
that corporations should be held legally accountable for the
welfare of their workers. Industrial America was incompara-
bly richer and more powerful than the agrarian America of
the eighteenth century; but whereas the average citizen of
agrarian America, owning the means of his own livelihood,
had independence and a considerable measure of security, the
average citizen of industrial America enjoyed neither*

3

As industrialism expanded, there was a growing discrepancy
between the habits and beliefs of the American people and the
realities of their social environment. The character of a peo-
ple always changes more slowly than their institutions, and
the Americans carried over into the more static and regi-
mented society of the big corporations the attitudes they had
acquired while they were still pioneers with all the vast re-
sources of an empty wilderness to conquer and exploit. They
continued to insist that freedom and equality were actually

248 The American People

realized in their society, and to think and act on this as-
sumption in the conduct of their daily lives. This cultural lag
produced a schism between idea and reality that may be
described as a national neunosis. To use such a word in this
context is by no means merely metaphorical. The neurotic in-
dividual is the individual who has failed to adjust himself to
realities; and when a whole culture exhibits such a failure of
adjustment, the result is a growth of neurotic tendencies
among the men and women who have been conditioned by it.
The Americans believed that they were a free people. But
the wage earner was no longer his own master during the
most important part of his daily life his working hours; he
was free only insofar as he could do and say what he liked
during his leisure time, and (with considerable limitations)
could choose his own form of employment. Unable to par-
ticipate in making the decisions upon which his livelihood
iiepended, he had become the .victim of forces over which he
had no control The Americans believed in equality of op-
portunity. But the system of property and inheritance laws
was creating class divisions as acute as those existing in the
Europe from which they had come. Above all, the Americans
believed that the individual should struggle to improve his
condition and conquer his environment, that if he had energy,
courage, and initiative he would surely succeed, and that if
Be failed it was because of some deficiency within himself.
Yet in the new industrial system it was wholly impossible for
more than a small minority of the total population to achieve
what society regarded as success. The average wage earner
must be "fixed to that condition for life." Even among the
highly paid and responsible business men and salaried exeoir
tives only a small fraction were actually able to reach the top.
Thus insofar as the American people were committed to the
American ideology of personal success, they were attempting
to accomplish something that for most of them was impos-
sible. Judged by the prevalent standards of American so-
ciety, most Americans were compelled to regard themselves
as having failed and to attribute their failure to some short-
coming within themselves. This attitude persisted even during
periods of economic depression, when millions of men,

The Growth of Industrialism 249

through no fault of their own, found themselves unemployed.
Instead of rebelling against a system that had denied them
opportunity, most of the unemployed accepted their fate with
a masochistic submisdveness.

Since the big corporations never achieved a total domina-
tion over the American economy, this disharmony between
idea and reality was by no means universal. Rural and small-
town America retained much of the leisurelinesa and neigh-
borliness of the agrarian past. There was still room for the
exercise of initiative, and the Americans continued to be
capable of an inventiveness and an adventurou^ness beyond
any other nation. But in the big cities life became competitive,
fast-moving, febrile, and neurotic 5 and to an increasing extent
the cities tended to dictate fashions and beliefs and to deter-
mine the cultural tone for the rest of the country.

With the transformation of the pioneer into the business-
man, money became the principal symbol of success and the
main object of ambition* In the strict sense of the word, the
Americans were not a materialistic people* They were less
concerned with the mere accumulation of material possessions
and less careful in their use than were most Europeans. They
continued to be the most generous people in the world, and to
be extravagantly lavish and wasteful in the spending of their
resources. But the business classes sought to prove their
strength by the conquest of money, as their ancestors had
done by the conquest of the wilderness; and they judged each
other in monetary terms. To believe that there might be
forms of personal achievement not susceptible to pecuniary
measurement was to be slightly eccentric. In the twentieth
century, with the growth of the durable csonsumption-goods
industries and the colossal expansion of advertising, the be*
lief that all success was monetary was emphasized and pkyed
upon by almost every newspaper, magazine, motion picture,
and radio program. The man who could not afford to buy a
new car, a new refrigerator, and the raost up-to-date plumbing
was lacking in virility and had not done his duty by his wife
and children.

Such an attitude was incompatible with strict standards of
personal and political honesty. In the pursuit of money it was

250 The American People

a mistake to be too scrupulous; and laws could usually be
circumvented. The Americans had never been a law-abiding
people. On the frontier individuals had always defended
themselves without relying on any organized enforcement of
justice. Outlaws, desperadoes, claim jumpers, cattle rustlers,
and other "bad men 1 * had played prominent roles in the
legend of the early West. With so individualistic and ex-
uberant a past, it was not to be expected that the Americans
would suddenly change their habits when their society be-
came more settled, although the social effects of lawlessness
and chicanery were now much more deleterious. Most people
kept their financial activities within the letter of the law, but
they felt no compunction about twisting its spirit to suit then-
own convenience. Speculation in stocks and real estate in order
to get something for nothing was a national pastime, and was
not regarded as in any way reprehensible, in spite of its
demonstrably harmful effects upon the economic system. And
while a large proportion of the business class hoped to make
fortunes by methods that might be unethical but were not il-
legal, an appreciable element among the poorer classes pursued
the same goal by a more direct route. The "bad men" of the
frontier and the early West were succeeded, in industrial
America, by the big-city gangsters. Skillful criminals some-
times made fortunes, and the disapproval of their more cau-
tious fellow citizens was not always unmixed with envy.

For the aggressive and ambitious individual who felt con-
fident of his power to compete, the life of the big cities had
an extraordinary glamor and intoxication. But the plain citi-
zen, insofar as he accepted the standards of his society and
regarded monetary success as the main gauge of individual
merit, inevitably suffered from a sense of defeat. In this com-
petitive world he could have little feeling of belonging to
any social order that was more significant and more enduring
than its individual members, and that gave meaning to their
lives; such a conception had always been lacking among the
Americans. And since he could not conquer his environment,
he had to regard himself as its victim, as a man to whom
things happened. Whereas the frontier had created culture
heroes like Daniel Boone and Mike Fink who stood for

The Growth $f Industrialism 2 5 1

physical prowess and mastery, industrial America developed
a humor of a new kind, the humor of the little man who al-
ways expects dcfeat-^an attitude most perfectly embodied in
Charlie Chaplin.* Such conditions inevitably undermined ielf-
esteem, dignity, and masculinity, and stimulated ncurotki&m.
What proportion of urban Americans actually suffered from
emotional disorders, nervous breakdowns, or outright insan-
ity, it is impossible to sayj but any investigation of the sub-
ject, such as that undertaken in the case of men of military age
during the Second World War, produced startling results.*
Even before industrialism had conquered the nation De Toc-
queville had commented on the high proportion of nervous
disorders among the Americans, and had attributed it to the
competitiveness of American life.*

Growth into psychological maturity requires a healthy self-
assurance and self-esteem; and when self-esteem depends
upon a competitive success difficult to achieve and always on*
certain, then it becomes more difficult for individuals to as-
sume the full emotional responsibilities of adulthood. They
may prefer to remain permanently on an adolescent levcL
Such a prolongation of adolescence became a frequent char-
acteristic of twentieth-century urban Americans, particularly
among those business and professional classes who were most
involved in the competitive struggle. Their perpetual boyish-
Bess was sometimes attributed to the fact that America was
a young country in which an adolescent exuberance was some-
how appropriate, yet it had by no means been characteristic of
the men of the eighteenth century, who had lived at a time
when America was even younger; it was a twentieth-century

2 According to James West, Americans Bring in an old-fashioned agrar-
ian community do not find Charlie Chaplin funny. Dr. Kardiner com-
ments: u Mosc Pbinviilers apparently consider Chaplin just silly. This
observation is of considerable knporanoe. Ir means that the unconscious
appeal of Chaplin's bum is less powerful to Pbinviilers dun to city f oiks,
and that the tensions which this strange vagabond purports to ease are
less intense with Piainvillers. This would mean that the Plainvflkr is more
secure and less troubled by the porsak of goals approved in urban cen-
ters." Abram Kardiner: The Psychological Frontiers of Society, p. 360,

During the Second Wcdd War psychonearoric disorders were
sponsible for 1,825,000 draft rejections and for 600,000 discharges,
4 Democracy m America, VoL H, Second Rook, Chap. XIIL

252 The American People

phenomenon* And the emotional immaturity of so many
American men led to a further increase in the relative influ-
ence of American women. The frontier had already made
women more powerful in America than in Europe 5 and in-
dustrial society intensified this tendency. European observers
sometimes declared that American society was essentially
matriarchal and that women had become the superior rl^ss.
This development was hastened by the increase in the amount
of property held by women and by the gradual abolition dur-
ing the twentieth century of legal, political, and economic
inequalities between the sexes; but its more fundamental
causes were emotional. The man of the industrial age was
apt to have a neurotic dependence, first upon his mother and
afterwards upon his wife, owing to his own insecurity and
lack of masculine self-assurance.

On the surface it seemed that this change in the relation-
ship between the sexes could be described eulogistically in
terms of feminine emancipation j women, it was often de-
clared, were being liberated from their agelong subordination
and were acquiring their own rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. There were plenty of indications, how-
ever, that neither the American man nor the American woman
was deriving full emotional satisfaction from the new order.
For the first time in history, sex began to be regarded as a
problem, not only in its social and theological implications,
but also biologically 5 there was a rapid increase in the number
of divorces j and there was an equally rapid decrease, at least
in the dries, in the birth fate. Rural America continued to
produce a surplus of children; among the farm population
(according to the census of 1930) every ten adults had an
average of fourteen children. But in cities with more than
one hundred thousand inhabitants every ten adults had an
average of only seven children, and among the professional
classes, who presumably included the most gifted members
of society, the deficit of children amounted to no less than
forty per cent. This situation was due to various economic and
social as well as emotional factors; but whatever its causes
might be, it was an indication of serious maladjustments. A

Tht Grvtzth tf tndustriaihm 253

society that was failing to reproduce itself and :n which the
most talented stocks were steadily becoming extinct, could
not be regarded as healthy.

And when sensitive Americans of the twentieth century
contrasted their society with that of Europe, they could no
longer feel assured that it represented any new and higher
principles of social organization. The confidence in America
which had been so characteristic of the great men of the eight-
eenth century had become less plausible. Jefferson's predic-
tion that "when we get piled upon one another as in Europe,
we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one
another as they do there" appeared to have been fulfilled,
and with much grater rapidity than Jefferson had eicpected.
This loss of faith in America was by no means characteristic
of the nation as a whole. The average twentieth-century citi-
zen continued to believe that men in America were more free
and more nearly equal than in Europe, and to take pride in
the material achievements of his civilization; and the average
citizen did, in fact, continue to have wider opportunities and
a higher standard of living in America than anywhere else in
the world. But it was no longer possible to define with any
clarity what American civilization stood for$ liberal idealists
in other countries were now inclined to sec America, no longer
as an inspiring example of freedom and equality, but as a
horrifying specimen of capitalist domination* And among the
Americans themselves the intellectual classes were increas-
ingly inclined to feel that the hopes of the eighteenth century
had somehow been frustrated, that the wealth and power of
the industrial age had been purchased at too high a price, and
that possibly American dvilization from the beginning had
been marred by some fatal flaw that would make it per-
manently inferior to the dvilization of Europe.

In the eighteenth century the most gifted and widely cul-
tured of the Americans had been the most convinced of the
superiority of American sodetyj but their twentieth-century
successors felt no such certainty. The optimism of a Franklin
and a Jefferson might be contrasted with the disillusionment
of a Henry Adams, who was inclined to regard all Western

254 The American People

history since the Middle Ages as a process of steady degenera-
tion, with the tendency of so many American intellectuals to
become expatriates, and with the sense of loneliness, of cyni-
cism, and of defeat that pervaded so much of the American
literature of the twentieth century.

CHAPTER XII [255

The Industrial Mind

I

Civil War and the triumph of industrial capi-
talism were followed by a cultural collapse from
which America did not begin to recover until near
the end of the century. The surviving intellectual
leaders of the 1840'$ and 1850'$ retreated into a baffled si-
lence j and for a generation no social critics of comparable
importance took their places. The postwar period, which
Mark Twain christened the "Gilded Age w and Parrington
described as the "Age of the Great Barbecue," marked a kind
of hiatus in the history of the American mind*

The cultural collapse was not due merely to the victory of
forces inimical to social idealism and to disinterested intel-
lectual activity. It is true that America had passed under the
rule of barbarians who judged everything in predatory and
acquisitive terms. But if the Intellectuals of the period had
inherited a sufficiently profound and well-integrated social
philosophy, they would have been better capable of resisting
the robber barons and their political henchmen. The real
reason for their failure was their own lack of sound and
relevant standards of judgment. For the task the men of the
forties and fifties had undertaken the formulation of an
American and democratic view of life had" not been success-
fully completed. American thinking (except among the Vir-
ginians) had always been too naive, too timid, and too deriva-
tive 5 the Americans had not acquired any coherent social and
philosophical theory that matched their amazing achieve-
ments in practical activity. And as a result of this intellectual
backwardness, the economics of capitalism and the politics of
Republicanism appeared, not as a denial of American ideals,
but as their logical fulfillment. When Emerson and his associ-
ates had preached self-reliance, they had not intended to
justify the activities of a Rockefeller or a Morgan; but they

2 5 <$ The American People

had not defined standards by which the self-reliance of the
robber baron could be distinguished from that of the ideal
American democrat* And when they had encouraged the abo-
litionists, they had not intended that an abhorrence of slavery
should be used by the Republican Party as a device for per-
petuating its own control over the federal Union j but they
had been too Utopian and too unsophisticated to appreciate
the tragic complexity the mingling of good and evil in
all human affairs. In consequence their successors during the
seventies and eighties found themselves adrift among forces
they did not understand. They could not easily approve of the
trend of affairs during the Gilded Agej yet at the same time
they found it equally difficult to condemn it.

Unable to resolve this dilemma, the official exponents of
culture and intelligence, particularly in New England, began
to turn away altogether from American democratic aspira-
tions and to lean for guidance and reassurance upon the Brit-
ish class tradition. They interpreted American history in con-
servative terms, glorifying Puritanism, the Constitution, and
the Federalists, vilifying Jefferson and the agrarians, and
denying the radical elements in the American pastj and they
preached social and aesthetic standards of gentility and de-
corum that had' no relevance to the American scene. This re-
vival of Federalism became known as the "Genteel Tradi-
tion*" It was exemplified most completely in the writings of
certain Bostonians, such as Barrett Wendell, Charles Eliot
Norton, and James Russell Lowell, who inherited the atti-
tude from Federalist and Unitarian forebears 5 but the trend
was by no means restricted to New England. Both in the uni-
versities and among writers, editors, and publishers through-
out the entire period from the Civil War to the First World
War there was a tendency to propagate attitudes and ideas
that were borrowed from Great Britain, and that had no vital
relationship with life in America and could not fruitfully be
applied there. American theory was in danger of becoming
wholly an ivory-tower affair, divorced from American prac-
tice. These generalizations are true, in greater or less degree,
of political writers like E. L* Godkin and G. W. Curtis, of
economists like W. G. Sumner and John Bates Clark, and of

The Industrial Mind 257

litterateurs like Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Richard Waftion

Gilder, and Hamilton Wright Mabie

In economics, the most prominent scholars of the period
adopted the ideology of the English classical school, which
had been evolved to suit the speoad features of English capi-
talism and which provided no adequate interpretation of the
American development from agrarian democracy to big-busi-
ness monopoly. In politics, they were inclined to regard the
English party system and the English ruling-class tradition
as norms and to treat the peculiarities of the American form
of government as reprehensible aberrations. And in literary
criticism, they applauded pale imitations of Victorian poetry
and fiction, and deplored anything too realistic, too original,
or too native to America, They believed themselves to be
good Americans 5 but their conception of America was care-
fully edited to conform with their borrowed standards of
gentility and correct taste. In Barrett Wendell's History of
American Literature, for example (in which Melville is dis-
missed in one sentence with the comment that his early books
had been praised by Robert Louis Stevenson), Whitman's
view of life and style of writing are condemned as un-Ameri-
can and more suited to the decadent tastes of the French.

In some degree, this sterile academicism can be regarded as
the characteristic viewpoint of rentier groups who shared in
the profits of big business but not in the processes by which
tfiey were acquired* And it is true that the men of the Genteel
Tradition were profoundly conservative in their views on
property j like their Federalist predecessors, they regarded
the sanctity of contracts as the foundation of civilization, ele-
vated property rights above human rights, denounced agrar-
ian attacks on business corporations as criminal and anarchistic,
and declared that individual self-restraint, rather than social
reform, was the main remedy for injustice. This revived Fed-
eralism was particularly marked in two of the latest and most
belligerent representatives of this mode of thought Irving
Babbitt and Paul Elmer More, who prolonged the genteel
tradition into the 1920*8. Yet the intellectual leaders of the
post-Civil War period were by no means apologists for big
business, although they were inclined to blame the politicians,

10

258 The American People

and not the robber barons, for the degradation of American
life. But their practical proposals were conceived in European
rather than in American terms. Almost all of them, for ex-
ample, denounced the tariff, but their arguments against it
were derived from English economists and not from Ameri-
can agrarians. And their favorite social panacea was civil
service reform. This proposal, which pointed towards the
growth of a professional and privileged bureaucracy along
European lines, had potentially authoritarian implications
and was not in harmony with the spirit of American life. The
spoils system, as it operated during the Gilded Age, was not
a pretty spectacle; but the principle upon which it had been
based rotation in office was an essential element of de-
mocracy.

Meanwhile, the millionaire families who were becoming
the new owners of America were also turning toward Europe,
although in the manner of barbarian conquerors seeking ag-
grandizement rather than of intellectuals looking for shelter*
"With the growth of capitalism American society was losing
its unique characteristics and was developing class inequalities
similar to those that had always prevailed in Europe} and it
was to be expected that the novveau riche capitalists, like their
predecessors in the age of Alexander Hamilton, should seek
to adopt a way of life modeled on that of European aristocra-
cies- Social snobbery and the most wasteful and tasteless forms
of conspicuous consumption were deliberately cultivated by
millionaire society under the leadership of people like Mrs.
Astor and ^ard McAllister 5 and a similar barbaric ostenta-
tion characterized the artistic preferences of the American
rich, who had none of the good taste occasionally developed
by mercantile oligarchies of earlier periods. Architecture is
the most socially significant of the arts; and American archi-
tecture after the Civil War was a vivid reflection of the
changes in American society. With the decay of craft tradi-
tions, most American houses and factories were constructed
without any artistic sense whatever. Meanwhile, the palaces
of the rich and the homes of the business and professional
classes were copied from different European styles, often
mingling classical, medieval, and Renaissance motifs in an

The Industrial Mmd 2 59

extraordinary confusion and emphasizing the most flamboyant
ornamentation and display. Churches and university build-
ings, in keeping with their lade of any vital contact with the
realities of American life, were frequently modeled on me*
dieval Gothic. This vulgar eclecticism was most prominent
during the 1870*3 and iSStfs, although the vogue of the
mock-Gothic and the mock-dassical was not fully broken un-
til after the First World War.

In view of the general degradation of standards, artistic
integrity and originality were not likely to be encouraged;
and much of the best writing and painting done in America
during the forty years following the Civil War was the work
of lonely individuals living in obscurity, whose importance
was not recognized until the twentieth century.- This was true,
for example, of the poetry of Emily Dickinson, of the paint-
ing of Thomas Eakins and Albert Pinkham Ryder, and of a
handful of novels that foreshadowed the realism of a later
generation. On the other hand, two men Mark Twain and
Henry James had enough vitality to become major writers,
although the former was seriously handicapped by the lack
of a discriminating audience and the latter became an ex*
patriate.

Mark Twain summarized in his own person a century of
American development. He grew up in the agrarian society
of Missouri while it was still frontier country; he spent sev-
eral years in the Far West during the pioneering period; and
he settled finally in the industrial East, whore he lived in
dose association with a number of big business magnates. His
reactions to this varied experience were remarkably typical of
the America of his time; being himself almost an embodi-
ment of the American norm, he can be cited as a case study
of how the agrarian American submitted to capitalism. He
had all the characteristic virtues of his agrarian background;
a natural democrat, with the fundamental American respect
for the rights of all human beings, he despised pretense and
sham, and hated injustice and exploitation. At the same time,
he had no coherent social philosophy; his political affirma-
tions were instinctual rather than reasoned. He had no ca-
pacity for abstract thought and little respect for intellectual

z6o The American People

speculation, and his opinions, in spite of his homely and re-
alistic common sense, were often remarkably naive. More-
over, he was personally as eager as most other Americans to
achieve material success and to discover sopie easy way of
making a fortune. Transplanted from the frontier to the
East, he could neither accept nor repudiate this new environ-
ment He saw the dishonesty and the exploitation that accom-
panied the rise of capitalism; but he had no alternative soda!
doctrine to propound, and he was too honest merely to con-
demn the robber barons without recognizing that they were
doing what other Americans would have liked to do if they
had had the opportunity- Human nature, and not the eco-
nomic system, was to blame. Unable to formulate any coher-
ent attitude towards the transformation of American life, he
relieved his feelings in books denouncing feudal Europe,
where the conflict between class privilege and the rights of
man could be more dearly defined. Iq later life he succumbed
to the blackest pessimism. Meanwhile, he allowed himself to
be intimidated by the standards of gentility and decorum;
Eastern society imposed upon him, resenting them yet at the
same time lacking sufficient self-assurance to reject them.

Mark Twain's one great book was Huckleberry Finn. This
epic story of the Mississippi is written with an unlabored ease
and spontaneity and a warmth of feeling which show that, for
the first and last time, its author had found a release for his
own deeper emotional drives. In the symbol of a little boy who
* ran away from home because he did not want to be civilized,
Mark Twain was expressing his own dislike of social con-
formity. It is significant that he could give expression to his
rebellion only through the medium of a child. All the sym-
pathies of die author are with Huckleberry Finn, who can
perceive right and wrong much more accurately than can
any of the adults whom he meets j civilization, it appears,
tends to corrupt man's natural sense of morality. Yet the
whole framework of the book implies that civilization, with
ail its restraints and its hypocrisies, is an inevitable process,
to which the individual must finally conform; to assert one-
self against it is impossible, and to attempt to run away from
it is infantile. And although the chief motivation of the book

The Industrial Mind 26 1

is Mark Twain's resentment against standards of gentility, it
should also be remembered that it was written it a time when
the old uninhibited freedom of the frontier was rapidly dis-
appearing and agrarian Americans in general were submitting
to a new kind of discipline. In its hidden implications Huckle-
berry Fh#* is a profoundly melancholy book that marks the
point at whkh American individualism began to succumb to
defeat. It represents the transition between the folk hero of
agrarian and frontier America, who believes in self-reliance
and seeks to assert his will against his environment, and the
folk hero of industrial America, who is the victim of social
forces he cannot hope to control* Mike Fink is in process of
being transformed into Charlie Chaplin,

In the development of American literature, however, Mark
Twain has a different and more positive significance. He was
the first American author of the first rank to write in Ameri-
can and not in English. Spoken American had long since di-
verged from the parent language j but American writers had
not evolved a. literary style in harmony with it Lacking a
style of their own, their writing had frequently become la-
bored and unnatural weaknesses that are particularly evi-
dent in Melville. It was in the frontier humor of the Mis-
sissippi Valley, first oral and afterwards journalistic, that an
American style began to develop^ and it was in Mark Twain,
who was an oral storyteller and a newspaperman before he
became a writer of books, that this style entered literature.
Writing a prose that was always easy and quick-moving, filled
with concrete American imagery, and close to the colloquial
and living language, he set a pattern that had an immensely
beneficial influence on the American novelists of the twentieth
century.

While Mark Twain was, in a sense, broken by capitalist
America, his great contemporary Henry James saved himself
by looking for his subject matter, not at home, but in Europe.
James's expatriation has been the theme of a prolonged and
bitter controversy 5 and hostile critics have persistently al-
leged that he was motivated by social snobbery. Yet it is im-
possible to read his books with any discernment without recog-
nizing that throughout his life he remained an American

262 The American People

much more profoundly American than the Anglophiles of the
Genteel Tradition who remained on the other side of the
Atlantic There have been some American expatriates who
have repudiated their native heritage and endeavored to re-
shape themselves into Europeans j but James was not one of
them. He preferred to live in Europe because, as he himself
explained, European society provided him with the kind of
material best suited to his special talents. He was a novelist of
manners, and he needed an established social order, with a
code of social conventions, as a milieu for his characters. He
felt himself unequipped to deal with the turbulent and
chaotic America of the Gilded Age 5 as he told Charles Eliot
Norton, the American scene would "yield its secrets only to
a really gr&sping imagination," 1 But his approach to the
European social order was always from outside. His subject
was the difference between the Ajnerican and the European
as significant and fruitful a subject as any novelist has ever
chosen and if he can be accused of partiality, it is because
his sympathies were too often weighted on the side of the
American.

James's great deficiency was his lack of sensuous awareness
and participation. His viewpoint was always that of a passive
and meditative spectator. He preferred to develop an emo-
tional nuance into an elaborate metaphorical structure rather
than to present a scene in its concrete immediacy; and he was
incapable of dealing directly with physical passion. His habit
of looking at his more positive characters from outside, as
though he did not know what they were doing, has often
exasperated his readers, and has sometimes been attributed to
his expatriation 5 if he had remained in his own country, it
has been suggested, he would have written as a participant
and not as a puzzled spectator. It is more probable, however,
that this deficiency was the result of certain peculiarities in
James's own psychophysical constitution. He never married,
and there are indications that he was physically incapable of
a marital relationship.

Most of James's books deal with the impact of the Euro-
pean social order upon the American visitor. The European

1 Letters of Henry James (1920), Vol. I, p. 30.

The Industrial Mind 263

character is presented as more complex, more sophisticated,
more worldly-wise, and at the same time more corrupt, with a
much greater potentiality for evil. The American is narrower
and more naive, but more honest and virtuous. Sometimes
(as in The Ambassador*) the American is intellectually and
emotionally enriched by his contact with European sophistica-
tion* More often (as in The American, The Portr&it c} *
Lady, The Wings of the Dave, and The Golden Box!), he
(or she) must fight for self-preservation against European
corruption. On the surface James appears to be presenting his
Europeans admiringly j yet he rarely credits them with any
honesty or capacity for self-sacrifice, and their motives are
usually coarsely materialistic. Although James was fascinated
by European aristocracy, his real attitude to it (as revealed in
his private letters as well as in his novels) was decidedly
hostile. Looking at it from outside, he was well aware of its
essential selfishness and of the crudely economic basis beneath
its idealistic pretenses. He saw in it, he said, the "accommoda-
tion of the theory of a noble indifference to the practise of a
deep avidity*" * A large number of his upper-class European
characters are motivated solely by the desire to acquire money
(usually by marrying an American) in order thai they may
be able to maintain their positions in society. Like Madison
and other American political theorists of the eighteenth cen-
tury, James could see the economic foundations of social order
with much more clarity than could most Europeans.

James's Americans are not always plausible, if one con-
siders the background from which they are alleged to have
emerged. It is incredible that Christopher Newman of The
American and Adam Verver of The Golden Bowl could have
made fortunes in the Gilded Age and at the same time re-
mained so innocent and so benevolent. But that James grasped
the essential psychological differences between the American
and the European cannot be deniedj he was really dealing
with typical and average middle-class Americans, not with
robber barons, although for the purposes of plot he found it
necessary to endow them with a great deal of money. And if
his presentation can be criticized, it is because he frequently

2 Preface to Tbe American (edition of 1907), fx xx.

264 The American People

exaggerates both the virtue of his Americans and the wicked-
ness of his Europeans a favorite propensity of American com-
mentators from the eighteenth century down to the present
day. At times, in fact, he seems to be unaware of all the im-
plications of the behavior of his American characters. In The
Golden Bowl, for example, his admiration for his two Ameri-
can protagonists, Adam Verver and his daughter Magg?e r
prevents him from recognizing that their attitude to^rar^s
the Italian prince whom Maggie has married is essentially ac-
quisitive and possessive; they have bought him as though he
were a work of art, and they mean to keep him, Another
aspect of American psychology which James introduces into
his books without full awareness of its importance is that his
women are usually stronger than his men} in the typical
Jamesian plot the women pulls the strings and the man is a
puppet (although, like Strether in The Ambassadors and
Densher in The Wings of the Dove> he may finally assert his
independence)- This view of the relationship between the
sexes (which James extends to his European characters) is
more true of America than of Europe, and rarely appears in
novels by European writers.

James was an American, moreover, in a deeper sense not
only in his attitude towards his characters but also in his gen-
eral view of life. He was primarily concerned with moral
questions, and what he regarded as ultimately valuable was
the attainment of moral awareness and enlightenment such
enlightenment as' Strether acquires at the end of The Am-
bassadors, Densher at the end of The Wings of the Dove, and
Maggie at the end of The Golden Bowl. The Jamesian moral
sense is npt associated with any particular notion "of social
order, and does not necessarily lead to any particular mode of
activity; it is presented as one of the fundamental elements
in human experience, and its importance is, intrinsic. This pro-
foundly individualistic conception of morality is not exclu-
sively American; but it is easier for an American, than for a
European, to arrive 'at it. When the individual is regarded as
subordinate to a hierarchical social order, in accordance with
the European tradition, his morality is determined by society
and consists in doing the duties appropriate to his station. For

The Industrial Mind z 6 J

the European, mora! attitudes usually have some soda! refer-
ence, But for James, who had been born into the American
world that lacked the concept of social order, morality was a
kind of isolated and disembodied essence* For this reason the
permanent place of James in American literary history will
probably depend upon the development of American civiliza-
tion. For if the Americans abandon the attempt to create a
free society and adopt some authoritarian doctrine of order,
they will find James's concern with moral essences incompre-
hensible. If on the other hand they finally succeed in recon-
ciling freedom and order, achieving a view of life in which
the free dex*elcpment of the individual is seen as harmonious
with the welfare of the whole, then James's emphasis on
moral awareness and enlightenment will seem increasingly
significant.

At the end of the nineteenth century what Americans
most obviously needed was a more honest appreciation of the
divorce between their principles and their practice. At this
period their intellectual and aesthetic attitudes, some of them
inherited from the agrarian culture of the eighteenth century
and others borrowed from Great Britain, had very little rel-
evance to contemporary conditions. As Van Wyck Brooks, a
generation later, declared of the average American, <c the theo-
retical atmosphere in which he has lived bears no relation to
society, the practical atmosphere in which he has lived bears
no relation to ideals. . . . Human nature itself exists in
America on two irreconcilable planes, the plane of stark theory
and the plane of stark business," *

Most Americans, especially those of the most educated
class, continued to profess a belief in economic individualism,
independence, and self-reliance, in spite of the growth of
monopolistic corporations. They interpreted the industrial
economy in terms of laissez faire, free competition, and the
rights of private property, ignoring the fact that it had been
built up so largely by state intervention. They upheld the
sanctity of certain ethical laws and insisted that sin was always

8 Van Wyck Brooks: Ameriats Coming off Age (1915), pp. *4 *7-

266 The American People

followed by retribution, although the country was filled with
flourishing evildoers. They liked to believe that progress was
inevitable and that America was a prime example of it,
evading the truth of Henry Adams's suggestion that the
change from President Washington to President Grant
seemed more like a degeneration. And they preferred a gen-
teel and sentimentalized literature and art that would shield
them from a recognition of unpleasant realities.

In order that these illusions might be exposed, theory and
practice must be brought into closer relationship with each
other; principles must be contrasted with actualities and tested
in terms of their practical efficacy. When American thinkers
and writers began to recover from their retreat from reality
during the Gilded Age, this was the task they undertook. The
result was the emergence of new tendencies in philosophy, in
social and economic theory, and in literature and the arts.
The merit of these intellectual and aesthetic movements was
that they served to expose illusions; their weakness was that
they failed to put forward new positive affirmations.

This was particularly true of the most important of the
new intellectual attitudes, the philosophy that William James
called pragmatism and that John Dewey preferred to describe
as instrumentalism, James, Dewey, and their disciples insisted
that the sole function of theory was to serve as a guide for
action, that the meaning of any theory consisted in its practi-
cal consequences, and that its truth should be judged by those
consequences. The universal validity of these propositions was
questionable. Both James and Dewey often spoke as though
they were denying the value of disinterested intellectual curi-
osity, and they did not always explain with sufficient care in
what sense the truth of a principle should be determined by
its results; insofar as this meant merely that any hypothesis
must bt tested by. experiment, "it was unexceptionable, but
some members of the school were inclined to argue that any
belief should be considered "true" if it had "good" effects on
the behavior of the believer* As a weapon for destroying prin-
ciples that: had lost their efficacy, however, the pragmatist-
instrumentalist philosophy was of the greatest value. Ap-
plied, for example, to legal theory (by such men as Justice

Tht Industrial Mind 267

Brandeis) and to the principles of ethics (in Dcwey's Hum**
Natitr* and Conduct ) y it suggested that the interests of true
justice and true virtue were not served by applying traditional
formulas without regard for consequences. On the other hand,
the adherents of such a philosophy could not explain with
sufficient clarity what kind of consequences should be regarded
as good or why, nor could they develop new standards of
social justice and personal virtue. The importance of the
movement was primarily destructive; it lacked positive ideals.

If this fact was not always apparent to the readers of James
and Dewey, it was because both men had positive beliefs,
which they derived, not from their epistemology, but from
the American democratic tradition. This was particularly true
of William James, whose view of life, like that of his brother
in a different field, seemed almost a quintessence of the whole
American attitude. No other thinker has been so deeply or so
characteristically American in his intellectual preconceptions
and habits of thought, or has reflected so dearly both the vir-
tues and the deficiencies of the American mind* And no other
thinker, it should be added, has been so honest and courageous
in his efforts to arrive at truth or so charming and unpre-
tentious as a human being.

It was from the American past that James acquired the
distrust of abstract theory that pervaded his pragmatist epis-
temology, deriving it partly from the suspicion of dogmas
and intellectual absolutes that had always been characteristic
of the Anglo-Saxon mentality, and partly from the added
emphasis on practical utility the Americans had acquired dur-
ing the pioneering experience* It was from the American past
that he acquired the faith in individualism and in freedom,
and the realization that every person and every event were
in some way unique and could never be wholly explained by
general laws, which were perhaps the most deeply ingrained
of his intellectual characteristics. Above all, it was from the
American past that he acquired his vision of the universe not
as a cosmic order in which everything had its appointed place
but as the scene of a battle between good and evil in which
nothing was predetermined and the future was always uncer-
tain* James was most deeply an American when he saw life as

2 68 The American People

an adventure in wjhich there was no ideal harmony and in
which struggle and insecurity were the ultimate realities.

When James was a young man he suffered for several years
from a paralyzing "sense of the insecurity of life." For a'long
period he was unable to go into the dark alone; he dreaded
to be left alone, and could not imagine "how other people
could live, how I myself had ever lived, so unconscious of
that pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life." According
to James's account of his experience it is apparent that both
his neurotic anxiety and the methods by which he finally
cured himself were in conformity with the American psycho-
logical pattern. His anxiety, as he described it, was due to a
feeling that he was too weak to struggle with an external
world he regarded as alien and hostile 5 he did not have that
sense of inner division and of conflict between universal moral
law and private impulse that has usually been the most im-
portant element in the spiritual experience of Europeans.
James succeeded in curing himself of his anxiety by learning
to assert his will and discovering that, in spite of his fears, he
could do so successfully. Where a European would have
sought salvation through submission to some conception of
cosmic or social order, James determined to "posit life (the
real, the good) in the self-governing resistance of the ego to
the world. . . * Hitherto, when I have felt like taking a free
initiative, like daring to act originally, without carefully wait-
ing for contemplation of the external world to determine all
for me, suicide seemed the most manly form to put my daring
intoj now, I will go a step further with my will, not only act
with it, but believe as wellj believe in my individual reality
and creative power." This mode of salvation proved to be
successful. James never afterwards suffered from any serious
emotional problem, and this assertion of his moral self became
his habitual method of reacting upon the world. Some years
later he told his wife that he felt "most deeply and intensely
active and alive" when he felt "an element of active tension,
of holding my own, as it were, and trusting outward things
to perform their part so as to make it a full harmony j but
without any guaranty that they will." On such occasions he
felt "a sort of deep enthusiastic bliss, of bitter willingness to

The Industrial Mind ^ 69

do and suffer anything which translates itself physically by a
kind cf stinging pain inside my breastbone.** *

James's cure was genuine because he learnt to accept, and
even to rejoice in, insecurity. Unlike some earlier Americans
he did not demand omnipotence* But his initial experience
was similar to that which had expressed itself in the Ed-
wardean theology and in the writings of Poe and Melville,
When he spoke of "the self-governing resistence of the ego to
the world'' he was defining not only his own conviction but
the whole American view of life.

It was because James was a vo'untarisi, believing that the
will was the center of the human personality, that he found
it so easy to regard theory as always a guide to action; his
pragmatism was closely associated with his belief in struggle
between the "ego" and the "world." And in later life he
went on to propound a whole voluntarist cosmology. He
castigated those European and Asiatic philosophers who had
believed in a universal and rational world order to which the
individual must submit, declaring that they were Simply
afraid, afraid of more experience, afraid of life." Instead, he
suggested that the whole universe was involved in a cosmic
Armageddon between good and evilj God was not omnipo-
tent, and his creation had "only a fighting chance of safety. 11
Men should participate in the battle for goodness in the be-
lief that it was "a real adventure, with real danger, yet it
may win through. 7 * *

Such a view of life was American both in its emphasis on
struggle and in its adolescent exuberance. And James's failure
to explain in any clear terms what he meant by goodness was
also American. Like his brother Henry, he had an individu-
alistic conception of morality j and like his brother, he be-
lieved that the moral sense was a primary and fundamental
element in human experience. "The feeling of the innate dig-
nity of certain spiritual attitudes and of the essential vulgarity
of others, 7 * he declared, "is quite inexplicable except by an
innate preference of the more ideal attitude for its own pure
sake. The nobler thing tastes better, and that is all that we

* Letters of Willim James (1920), Vol. I, pp. 146, H7 *5* 99-
5 William James: The Will to Believe (1897), pp. 178, 210.

270 The American People

can say. n$ This belief that moral feelings were innate
was, as Thomas Jefferson had recognized, one of the essential
foundations of American democracy; for if moral feelings
were not innate, then men needed indoctrination and dis-
cipline, and could not be trusted with freedom. But simply to
state the doctrine, with the comment that "that is all that we
can say," was not sufficient, as the whole American experience
had demonstrated. With other Americans, James believed in
struggle between the human will and its environment; and
with other Americans, he was inclined to equate the will with
positive good. Like Emerson, he assumed much too naively
that the will would respond to the moral sense; and he was
too ready to identify "the real, the good" with "the self-
governing resistance of the ego to the world." But it was
apparent from the whole development of America, with its
transition from agrarian democracy to a capitalism dominated
by power-hungry business magnates, that men could not al-
ways be trusted to respond to their moral feelings, that con-
ceptions of good and standards of value (even though they
might be innate) needed to be clarified, defined, and ration-
alized, and that the perpetual drive and tension of the Ameri-
can will would end in the destruction of ideals rather than
in their fulfillment And because James (who was himself a
man of great moral sensitivity) failed to recognize these facts,
his philosophy, in spite of its value as a destructive instru-
ment, must be considered primarily as a mere reflection, not
a clarification, of the weaknesses in the American view of life.
What America needed was, not only a dissolvent analysis of
principles th& had lost their relevance, but also an affirmation
of new positive standards (in terms appropriate to the demo-
cratic experience and not borrowed from the European class
system) and an assertion of the values of contemplation and
enjoyment and of relaxation of moral tension. But these needs
were not met by the pragmatist philosophy.

There was a similar deficiency in the other new intellectual
trends of the kte nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In
economics, for example, this period saw the growth of insti-
tutionalism. The institutionalists concentrated on describing

*Ibid, p. 187. Cf. Principles of Psychology (1890), VoL n, p. 672.

The Industrial Mind 271

conditions as they actually were, without inquiring into what
they ought to be. They collected statistics and made detailed
studies of specific trends, thereby demonstrating how far rhe
actual operations of the American economy failed to conform
with the laissez-faire theory of the English ciascacal school.
But the institutional^ were reluctant to put forward any al~
ternative general theories of their own* For synthetic interpre-
tations of economic processes, combining analyses of what
was with statements of what ought to be, American econ-
omists were still dependent upon the Europeans. American
conservatives continued to uphold the validity of English
classicism. Its opponents borrowed their theory from Karl
Marx or, at a later date, from J. M. Kcynes^

The most radical and the most original of the instltution-
alists was Thorstein Veblen. Veblen's distinction between in-
dustry and business was an important clue to the understand-
ing of the American economy. Industry made goods, while
business was a series of devices enabling financiers and other
absentee owners to make money by collecting tribute from
the "underlying population." Industry was an expression of
the creative ^instinct of workmanship," while business was
predatory and acquisitive. Analyzing the growth of business^
Veblen concluded that it would eventually become incom-
patible with the existing political and social structure. Either
the American people must expropriate the absentee owners,
or else they must pass under the rule of some kind of business
dictatorship. But although Veblen's faith in the "instinct of
workmanship" was affirmative, at least by implication, there
was little positive affirmation in his mordant and sardonic style
or in his gloomy analyses of the power of the business classes*
He appeared to have little hope in human nature or in the
American future.

Meanwhile the younger writers and artists were turning to
realism. The decade of the 2890^ saw the advent of the first
fully realistic novelists (Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and
Theodore Dreiser), the beginning of a more realistic painting
(in the work of Robert Henri, John Sloan, and the so-called
Philadelphia Group), and the growth of a more realistic
trend in poetry (exemplified by Edwin Arlington Robinson)*

272 The American People

Realism meant a concentration on social conditions as thtv
actually were, emphasizing their more sordid and gloomy
aspects and demonstrating, at least by implication, the inap-
plicability of the accepted economic, political, and moral dog-
mas- The trend towards literary realism had been initiated
earlier by William Dean Howells, a mediocre novelist a!
though an admirable human being, and by certain Middle
Westerners, such as Hamlin Garland, who had voiced the
grievances of the farmers against Eastern plutocracy. It had
also been stimulated by influences from continental Europe,
particularly by the examples of Tolstoi and Zola. But it was
not until the twentieth century that it began to dominate the
American literary scene. Like the other movements of the
time, it was essentially a protest against illusory beliefs. Con-
fessing themselves bewildered and defeated by industrial so-
ciety, the realists could make no positive affirmations, either
aesthetically or morally. Their duty, they believed, was to
tell the truth j and the truth, as they saw it, did not give much
encouragement to any faith in spiritual or ideal values.

The architectural equivalent of pragmatism and realism
was functionalism* First expounded by the Chicago architect,
Louis Sullivan, during the i88o ? s, functionalism was a de-
mand for architectural honesty. Instead of designing a public
library that looked like a Roman temple, a bank that imitated
a Byzantine church, and an office building that recalled the
Parthenon, the architect should consider first the purposes of
the building he was planning and the material out of which
it was to be constructed 5 the form and decoration of a build-
ing should develop out of its function and should be in har-
mony with it. Functionalism had a slow growth in the United
States 5 but it was adopted more quickly in certain European
countries, whence it eventually returned to the land of its
origin. The best functional buildings had an admirable grace
and simplicity j but it was not one of the great architectural
styles. Modes like the Gothic and the baroque had been the
expression of certain positive beliefs about the nature of the
universe and the destiny of man. Functionalism (except per-
haps in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose architectural
theories were combined with an Emersonian and Whit-

The Industrial Mind 273

manesque faith in Amen can democracy) made no spiritual af-
firmations, It WES the handmaid! <;f tt-chnclog), ar.d in the
best known \ although far fr jm the be&t ) of it* manifestations,
the New York skyscrapers, it expressed only the drive toward
wealth and power- To express that drive sincerely was better,,
both aesthetically and morally, than to disguise it and senti-
mentalize it by a barbaric plundering from the styles of the
past; but it was also a confession of spiritual poverty.

Much of American intellectual activity during the twen-
tieth century might be summarized as a conflict between a
traditionalism that lacked relevance to contemporary condi-
tions and a realism that put forward no pobitive standards.
On the one side were conservatives who preached moral, po-
litical, philosophical, and aesthetic beliefs that c&uld not fruit-
fully be applied to the exigencies of daily living and that
often, at least by implication, were undemocratic and un-
American. On the other side were radicals who emphasized
this discrepancy between belief and actuality, and who were
usually fond of professing their loyalty to democracy but had
no coherent system of principles. The task Emerson and Whit-
man had started the elaboration of the American demo-
cratic faith into a general view of life having the power of a
religion remained unfinished. And the underlying reason
for this failure was that, with the rise of industrialism, faith
in democracy had lost its economic and social foundations.
There was no longer harmony between the ideals most Amer-
icans professed and the manner in which most of them lived.

The principal storm center of the conflict was in the field
of education, particularly in the colleges. Early American
higher education had been predominantly classical and theo-
logical, and had never broken away from the influence of the
European humanistic tradition. In the latter part of the nine-
teenth century, under the leadership of such men as President
Eliot of Harvard, the colleges began to destroy the supremacy
of the classics by introducing a great variety of scientific, tech-
nological, and other modern courses, and by adopting the
elective system. Students were thus enabled to learn more
about the contemporary world, but, at the same time, they
no longer acquired any coherent view of life or any sufficient

2 74 The American People

grasp of their cultural heritage. Meanwhile, educators im-
bued with the pragmatist-instrumentalist philosophy under
the leadership of John Dewey were making similar changes
in the school system, bringing the curriculum into closer con-
tact with social realities, reducing the emphasis on discipline,
and encouraging free self-expression. Controversy between
the educational traditionalists and the progressives continued
through the twentieth century, becoming increasingly bitter
during the 1930*5 and 1940*5. Traditionalists (such as Presi-
dent Hutchins of Chicago) insisted that education ought to
provide a philosophy and a system of values and not merely
a mass of unrelated facts 5 progressives replied that the phi-
losophy and the values the traditionalists wished to inculcate
were potentially authoritarian and undemocratic There was
much justice in the contentions of both parties. What America
needed was a philosophy and a system of values, but of a kind
that would support, instead o weakening, democratic as-
pirations^

3

Meanwhile an increasing number of individuals were de-
voting themselves to the practice of the arts, and critical
standards were becoming more discerning, more sophisticated,
and less moralistic. The twentieth century, and particularly
the decade following the First World War, was unquestion-
ably the period when the higher culture of the Americans
lost any trace of colonialism or provincialism, and the nation
had its sesthetic coming-of-age. It can plausibly be argued that
a larger quantity of good work in literature, painting, and
music was done in the United States between 1919 and 1929
than in the whole of the previous three hundred years. Yet
although the work of this period was remarkable for its rich-
ness, variety, and vitality, most of it was imbued with a pro-
found sense of bewilderment and defeat. The product of a
society which was largely permeated with commercial and pe-
cuniary standards and no longer Had any clear grasp of spirit-
ual values, the American artist of the twentieth century felt
that he was lost in an alien world. In consequence, much of the
best work of the time had a tgrtured and neurotic quality, and

The Industrial Mind 275

lacked that note of serenity and spiritual certainty which had
been achieved by some of the pre-Civil War writers, The per-
sonal history of most of the leading artists of industrial
America was one of frustration and maladjustment; having
little sense of organic harmony with their environment, none
of them grew into that full maturity that produces the greatest
masterpieces.

This mood of disillusion did not fully show itself until
after the First World War, although it had been foreshad-
owed by the realists of the 1890'$, The first decade of the
twentieth century was a more hopeful period, during which
American intellectuals were appraising their national tradi-
tions in a critical spirit* They were also beginning to digest
new revolutionary ideas from continental Europe that ran
counter to the conventions of the Genteel Tradition, The
prevalent spirit of liberation was exemplified in the emer-
gence of certain creative personalities who combined an Amer-
ican optimism and Utopianism with a bold self-affirmation de-
rived from Emerson and Whitman: such were the dancer
Isadora Duncan, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and the
photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Meanwhile, most of the writ-
ers of the time devoted themselves, on a decidedly superficial
level, to the problems of politics* Two women, Edith Whar-
ton and Ellen Glasgow, were producing work of finer quai-
ityj but each of them dealt with a fragment of ordered so-
ciety, imbued with traditional standards of manners and
morals, in no way typical of the American scene. Mrs. Whar-
ton found her material among the old families of New York,
and Miss Glasgow, among those of Virginia. Their achieve-
ment, like that, of Henry James, was an object lesson in the
literary utility of fixed social reference points. But their ex-
ample could not be followed by novelists who proposed to
handle the central themes of American development.

The most prolific period in American aesthetic history be-
gan about 1912 or 1913. During the next few years an un-
usual number of new figures emerged, while older men, such
as Theodore Draser, began for the first time to win wide
recognition. Noncommercial "little" magazines for the publi-
cation of experimental writing began to appear in all parts of

276 The American People

the countryj and critical battles were fought between the
survivors of the Genteel Tradition arid the exponents of
aesthetic radicalism. Most of the younger men shared certain
common ideas expressed most clearly by a group of critics of
whom Van Wyck Brooks was probably the most influential*
According to this group, American society was both too ac-
quisitive and too puritanical, and had never had sufficient re-
spect for the spiritual development of the individual or for
aesthetic values. For a period an attitude of hostility to almost
every aspect of American life and an equally exaggerated ad-
miration for continental Europe became almost universal
among writers and artists. But although Brooks and his dis-
ciples could point out what was wrong with America with
considerable insight and acuteness, it was not easy to discover
what positive values they wished to assert* Beyond a vague
belief ia some kind of economic change, apparently in the di-
rection of socialism, they made few affirmative proposals.
And the hopefulness that animated their early work changed
to disillusion after the First World Wan

But it *as In the novel that the mind of industrial America
expressed itself most fully and achieved its highest level of
self-awareness. The novelists of the twenties and thirties de-
picted almost every aspect of national life with an extraordi-
nary vividness and fertility. And although they borrowed
ideas and techniques from the Europeans, particularly from
the exponents of sociological realism, their work was alto-
gether American both in style and in spirit. Like Mark Twain,
they wrote in American and not in English, with a colloquial
vigor and richness of sensuous impact; and like Poe and Mel-
ville, they saw life as a battle between the will and the en-
vironment. But this battle was now presented with a different
emphasis. The individual of industrial society was more help-
less and more quickly defeated than the individual of agrar-
ian society^ he was more frequently a puppet of forces he
could not control 5 and when he achieved success, it was often
by sacrificing his spiritual integrity. Unlike Ahab, whose des-
tiny had been tragic, he was likely to appear pathetic or ig-
noble, and could achieve dignity only by a stoical endurance
or by some act of defiance. Frustration and defeat were the

The Industrial Mind 277

normal experience of the twentieth-century American as ex-
hibited in fiction. For the novelists of the twentieth century,
as for those of the nineteenth, American society in general
lacked that sense of order in terms of which the life of the
individual, even when unsuccessful, can acquire value and
significance.

These generalizations can be applied, In one form or an-
other, to all the major novelists of the period: to the older
generation represented by Dreiser, Lewis, Anderson, and
Wilk Catherj and to the younger men who first appeared in
the twenties.

Dreiser's massive integrity, his sense of reality, and his re-
fusal to accept any easy or merely conventional solution to the
problems he encountered made him a leader in the revolt
against the Genteel Tradition; and his insistence on his right
to tell the truth as he saw it cleared the way for his successors.
The main theme of his books was the struggle of the indi-
vidual to achieve wealth, power, and social prestige. His
heroes were sometimes successful, like Cowperwood of The
Financier and The Tit&n> and sometimes defeated, like Clyde
Griffiths of An American Tragedy; but either way Dreiser
was too honest to pretend that he knew of any spiritual resolu-
tion of such a struggle. Seeing life as a product of chemical
and biological forces, he communicated a brooding sense of
pity for the endeavors of the human race, and frankly con-
fessed that its destiny bewildered and dismayed him,

Sinclair Lewis, whose special talent was for conveying the
surface manifestations of American middle-class life, pre-
sented similar social conditions, although in a mood of com-
edy rather than of tragedy. Whereas Dreiser's heroes were
either victorious or crushed, Lewis's Babbitt and Carol Ken-
nicott ended in surrender and acquiescence. But Lewis lacked
Dreiser's uncompromising integrity, and there was a basic
uncertainty and confusion in his judgments j it was never
clear how far he regarded this acceptance of the mores of
American middle-class society as defeat and how far as a be-
ginning of wisdom* In his later and weaker novels he evaded
the problem by retreating into sentimentality. Meanwhile,
Sherwood Anderson, turning away from acquisitive society,

278 The American People

was engaged in a search for some kind of personal salvation*
His heroes were lonely, maladjusted, and unhappy individ-
uals who could not find emotional fulfillment by the values of
middle-class America, and who were groping for a new way
of life. But what was presented in his novels and stories was
the pathos of the quest, rather than any conviction of discov-
ery. And while there was more affirmation, as well as a more
delicate and classic artistry, in the work of Willa Gather, it
was derived from the past of America rather than from its
present. Her favorite theme was an elegiac celebration of the
courage and nobility of the pioneerj but the pioneer had died,
and the land he had conquered had become the property of
men who lacked his magnanimity. Miss Gather's "Lost
Lady," who had once been the wife of the generous and
idealistic Captain Forrester but was afterwards possessed by
the coarsely acquisitive Ivy Peters, was presented as a symbol
of what had happened to America. 7

The writers of the twenties and thirties developed the same
themes with a greater technical skill, with even more bitter-
ness and intensity, and with a clearer awareness of their own
standards of judgment. The sociological realism of Dreiser
and Lewis was continued by John Dos Passos, who presented
a panoramic survey of the whole life of urban capitalist Amer-
ica, which he saw as dominated by acquisitive standards. In
Dos Passos*s novels any individual who had sensitive percep-
tions aniwas capable of integrity was either corrupted by the
life around him or else crushed by it. The search for personal
salvation reappeared in the writings of Thomas Wolfe, whose
four autobiographical novels were the record of a frenzied
and tormented pursuit of something he was never able to de-
fine. Wolfe died after affirming, in his last book, that al-

T **Nbw afl this vast territory they had won was to be at the mercy of
men like Ivy Peters, who had never dared anything, never risked any-
thing* They would drink up the mirage, dispel the morning freshness,
root oat the great brooding spirit of freedom, die generous, easy life of
the great landowners. The space, the colour, the princely carelessness of
the pioneer they would destroy and cut up into profitable bits, as the
match factory splinters the primeval forest. All the way from Missouri
to the mountains this generation of shrewd young men, trained to petty
economies by hard times, would do exactly what Ivy Peters had done,**
A Lost Lady (1913), p. 106.

The Industrial Mind 279

though the American was lost, he would one day succeed in
finding himself 5 but this was stated in hope rather than in
conviction. Meanwhile William Faulkner, like \Vil3a Cather,
turned to the American past; but although he found in earlier
generations a moral sense and a largeness of spirit that had
afterwards disappeared, he felt also that the seeds of cor-
ruption had been present from the beginning. His cjcle of
novels presented, in symbolic terms, the whole history of the
South: the building of the plantation society by men who re-
spected gallantry and generosity but who, in spite of their
virtues, were guilty of a lust for power, displayed both in
their ruthless exploitation of the land and in their enslave-
ment of the Negro, that eventually had to cause their de-
struction $ the disintegration of the Southern ideal of chivalry,
and the rise of a new money-minded ruling class with ail the
vices and none of the virtues of its predecessors; and the
eventual degeneration of the whole of Southern white society^
manifesting itself in murder, suicide, impotence, and insanity
and apparently leaving the Negro as the ultimate possessor of
the land.*

Essentially similar attitudes were presented by the writers
of this generation whose interests were more exclusively
aesthetic and who were less concerned with the social back-
ground of their characters. Ernest Hemingway was the mart
affirmative of the major novelists of the period j but he found
value primarily in ample physical pleasures and in the stoical
courage of men and women willing to confront inevitable de-
feat without cringing. Hemingway's heroes were usually or-
dinary men who were the victims of blind natural or social
forces against which there could be no defense. And although

8 Faulkner's interpretation of Southern history forms the background
of most of his novels. It is seated most explicitly in Absalom! Absdvml
Sutpen, the central figure in Absalom! AmaLotnl, having grown op as a
poor white in Virginia, comes to Mississippi with the "great deafta" of
building a plantation and founding a family, in imitation of the plainer*
of tidewater Virginia. When he fills in this "great design" (chiefly as a
result of the Civil War), he is convinced that he has made some mis-
take, but is unable to discover what k is. The structure of the novel
makes k evident that his real mistakes were his lost for power and hi*
attitude towards the Negroes. At the end of die book the only sorriviof
member of the family whkh Sutpen had hoped to found k a xnnktto.

280 The American People

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eke Hemingway, was interested mainly
in the individual, two of his novels gave perhaps the clearest
statement of the malaise of twentieth-century urban society.
Unlike most other writers, Fitzgerald knew from his own
experience the life of that leisured wealthy class which domi-
nated the new America of urban capitalism, setting its stand-
ards and making itself the focus of envy and ambition. He
had felt the glamor of great riches, and had learned how hol-
low and meretricious it was. All this was set forth in The
Great Gatsby, a novel that captured the essential spirit of the
1920'$. Gatsby had dreamed of becoming a rich man because
of his sentimental adoration of a girl from a rich family and
of the milieu to which she belonged 5 yet- when the wealth
which he had acquired by bootlegging admitted him to the
society of the very rich, he found that they were callous,
brutal, egotistic, and dishonest. Fitzgerald's other important
book, Tender Is the Night, may be regarded as the sequel
of The Great Gatsby , in the same sense that the great depres-
sion of the 1930*3 was the logical sequel of the false values
and the wild acquisitiveness of the 1920*5. Tender Is the
Night dealt with the psychic weakness of the American man
of the wealthy and well-educated class, with his liability to
apparently unmotivated defeat and collapse, and with the
domineering and devouring propensities of the American
upper-class woman. 9

All in all, the world depicted by the novelists of the 1920*3
was probably the most gloomy in the whole of literary his-
tory- American fiction had moved a long way from William
Dean Howells, who had once declared that "the more smiling
aspects of life" were the more American. More positive and
affirmative attitudes were to be found only in writers who
(like Elizabeth Madox Roberts) produced relatively little
and remained outside the main stream, or (like Thornton
Wilder) were synthetic and imitative rather than genuinely
creative. Nor did the writers of the next generation portray
American life in more optimistic terms. During the 1930*8

*Two other minor masterpieces of the period dealt with similar sub-
jects: Hemingway's The Short Hsppy Life of Fronds Macomber; and
John O*Hara*s Appointment m Samarra*

The Industrial Mind 2 8 1

and 1940*8 the universal domination of politics and the exten-
sion of political criteria to moral and aesthetic problems made
it impossible for the arts to flourish. Most of the jcunger writ-
ers were captured by the European ideology of Mar jcasm, and
set out to allegorize American experience in Marxist term*,
But insofar as their work passed beyond allegory and became
an honest rendering of experience' (as in Farrtll and CaJd-
well;, it presented only decay and degeneration; it did not
successfully communicate the positives of the Marxist creed.
The most vigorous and fertile novelist of this generation was
probably Robert Penn Warren, whose politics were agrarian
rather than Marxist The mood of Warren's novels was limi-
lar to that of the twenties, although he also displayed a
breadth of moral awareness and a sophisticated sense of the
complexity of good and evil that had few precedent* in Amer-
ican fiction and that might prove to be of considerable g-
nificance.

If one concentrated exclusively on the leading novelists of
this period, one would acquire an exaggerated impression of
unhappiness and decay. There was good work in* painting and
in poetry concerned simply with conveying signsficant aspects
of the American scene or of personal experience without auy
overtones of frustration. There were some writers and artisti,
of whom Robert Frost was a notable example, who remained
aloof from the urban capitalist world and who preserved a
classic serenity by maintaining contact with the virtues of the
agrarian past. Yet in all the arts the most conspicuous mood
was one of loneliness and maladjustment. On the. whole it
may be said that poetry had never been more complex, more
learned, more difficult, or less lyrical. While there were some
painters who were content to paint what they saw, there were
others who sought refuge from external reality in a world of
abstractions or who delved into the phantasmagoria of the
unconscious. And while the ablest critics of the period dis-
played an unprecedented scholarship, acuteness, and pro-
fundity, they excelled only in analysis, never in synthesis.
That something was deeply wrong seemed to be the verdict
of the most sensitive recorders of life in twentieth-century
America. And although urban capitalist society in all coun-

282 The American People

tries was exhibiting similar symptoms of decay, there was at
least one American, the most accomplished poet and critic of
his generation, who concluded that salvation might still be
found by turning back toward Europe. T. S. Eliot established
himself in England not, like Henry James, as an American
observer but in order to transform himself into an English-
man. What he was looking for was the concept of a tradi-
tional social order, giving values and significance to its indi-
vidual members, that had never prevailed in America but,
as he hoped, might still be preserved in modern England*

Meanwhile the advance of the machine age was accom-
panied by an extraordinary proliferation of the arts of enter-
tainmentthe arts of the motion picture, of the popular story
writer, of popular music, and of the comic strip. And in this
field also American culture exhibited, on the one hand, an
immense vitality and, on the other hand, a prevailing sense
of chaos and a lack of positive values. The larger part of the
popular art of the period was sentimental and escapist, and,
at the same time, deeply imbued with the competitive spirit,
a spirit that had been extended to all human and sexual rela-
tionships and was no longer restricted to economic activities.
But there was also much popular art that was genuinely
aesthetic; and insofar as it achieved significance as a reflection
of twentieth-century life, it was likely to be grotesque or
macabre, to seek novel effects by dissonance and incongruity,
or to play on that suppressed propensity toward violence t&at
was one of the most pervasive moods of urban capitalist so-
ciety. But it was in their humor that the American people ex-
pressed themselves most fullyj and while the humorists of
the machine age specialized in the portrayal of the little man
who was the victim of forces he could not hope to conquer, 10
they also indulged in fihtasies based on the theme of a total
revolt against all those social restrictions and responsibilities
men were compelled to obey in their real lives. This pecu-
liarly anarchical kind of screwball humor (best exemplified

10 This was particularly evident in the humor of the Second World
War, as exemplified in the "Sad Sack n and in the drawings of WHliain
Mauldin.

The Industrial Mind 283

by the Marx brothers) was perhaps the most effective ajid
the most characteristic aspect of twentieth-century American
popular culture.

That a people who had always prided themselves on their
optimism, and who had on the whole more substantial reasons
for optimism than the people of any other country, should
produce an art so largely concerned with frustration and
maladjustment, was a phenomenon that required explana-
tion. And plenty of commentators blamed the artists for it
and complained that they had become obsessed with the more
sordid aspects of American life and were deliberately ig-
noring its virtues. According to the surviving representatives
of the Genteel Tradition, such as Irving Babbitt and Paul
Elmer More, it was the duty of the artist to preach affirma-
tive beliefs and to inculcate a sound morality. Other critics
(such as Van Wycfc Brooks in his later period) thought that
writers, particularly in America, ought to be elevating and
inspiring, and that the Americans had been corrupted by
European decadence. Yet it remained an undeniable fact that
optimism and elevation were, with few exceptions, to be found
only among the mediocre and the imitative, and that the most
genuinely creative of the Americans were usually the most
tormented and the most pessimistic.

And although European society was much more corrupt
and much more deeply infected with the germs of decay than
was the society of the United States, European literature
never lost the capacity for spiritual affirmation. Milch of the
European writing of the twentieth century was concerned
with the same themes as the American with the loneliness
and the neuroticism of the little man who was the victim of
urban capitalism* But this mood did not dominate the litera-
ture of Europe as it did that of America. The greater Euro-
pean writers of the same period (like Thomas Mann and
even in spite of his morbid tendencies Marcel Proust) still
found it possible to regard the emotional and intellectual de-
velopment of the individual as inherently valuable, and to
convey a sense of man's essential dignity and significance j and
they were capable of achieving a wisdom and a serenity by

284 The American People

which evil was not evaded but was seen as merely one element
in the total pattern of human existence. Except in Melville's
Billy Budd, this kind of serenity was not presented in any
novel by any major American writer*

The pessimism of American literature was probably due
in some measure to the anomalous position of the artist in
American culture. American society, with its practical and
egalitarian propensities, had never shown sufficient friendli-
ness or respect for sesthetic activities j and the artist was likely
to feel a sense of isolation and a maladjustment that were, in
part, peculiar to himself. But there were also broader and
more significant reasons for this state of mind.

The Americans were a people who had believed that evil
could be overcome and that the method of overcoming it was
the assertion and tension of the will. America fipm the begin-
ning had been a Utopian and a Messianic nation. But after
the disintegration of agrarian society and the triumph of in-
dustrial capitalism, the disparity between the original ideal
and the .reality grew wider, and the possibility of a successful
assertion of the will diminished. Yet American culture of-
fered only the alternatives of success and failure. As a nation,
the Americans must achieve an ideal social order or (in Whit-
nun's words) "prove the most tremendous failure of time 5 * 5
as individuals, they must conquer their environment or be
conquered by it. For the American, there was no middle
ground, so that the acceptance of failure could lead only to
cynicism or despair, not to a profounder wisdom.

From one point of view, the sesthetic manifestations of the
industrial mind may be regarded as a necessary and salutory
reminder of the discrepancy between ideal and actuality 5 ur-
ban capitalism was not a fulfillment of the American dream.
And it should be remarked that although the twentieth-
century novelists found little to admire in the society of their
time,- their condemnation was usually derived, either directly
or by implication, from certain positive and American stand-
ards. They generally believed in the capacity of the ordinary
man and in his right to freedom and equality^ they respected
the virtues of courage, honesty, generosity, and idealism^ and
(most frequently and explicitly) they paid tribute to Veblen's

The Industrial Mind 285

"instinct of workmanship" and to the nonacquisitive craft-
manship of the scientist and the artist. 11

But on a deeper level, this mood of pessimism may also be
interpreted as an expression of a certain youthful innocence
and immaturity in the whole American view of life. That
good and evil were always inextricably intertwined, that the
dream of a sinless Utopia could never be fulfilled, and that
the life of the individual acquired significance not by "the
self-governing resistance of the ego to the world" but by par-
ticipation in the collective endeavor of mankind: these truths,
which Europe knew by tragic and disillusioning experience,
had not yet become a part of the American tradition*

11 The doctrine of salvation by craftsmanship is preached in Lewis's
Arrowsjnitb, in Willa Cather's stories about singers and other artists, and
in a number of die short biographies in Dos Passos's U. S. A. It pervades
the writings of Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway.

286] CHAPTER XIII

The Agrarian Counterattack

FOR two decades after the Civil War most Americans
acquiesced in the growth of Kg business, and politi-
cal controversies (except with reference to Southern
reconstruction) had little meaning or importance.
But as the banking and industrial corporations gained greater
control over the economic system, a growing number of
Americans began to realize that they constituted a threat to
democracy and that their powers must somehow be checked
and regulated through political action. The opposition to big
business found expression in a series of agrarian insurgent
movements during the later years of the nineteenth century
and in tw6 general movements of reform during the twen-
tieth century} the Progressive Movement that dominated
American politics from 1901 until the First World War, and
the New Deal beginning in 1933 and ending with the Second
World War.

The earliest and the most vociferous opponents of the big
corporations were the farmers, particularly in the newly
settled states west of the Mississippi. In the course of the
nineteenth century American farmers had largely abandoned
subsistence farming and concentrated on the production of
commercial crops, in the expectation of gaining more leisure
and a higher standard of living; but they found that they had
thereby lost their independence and become the victims of a
complicated economic system in which the controls were held
elsewhere. As small producers, unable to combine with each
other, they were subject to the mechanisms of supply and
demandj whereas the big corporations with whom they had to '
do business were able td determine their own price policies.
As usual, the section of the community that produced raw
materials was being exploited by the centers of industry and
finance.

The Agrarian Counterattack 287

Between 1860 and 1900 the acreage of American farms
more than doubled, while during the same period their pro-
ductivity was greatly improved by technological improve-
ments and by the introduction of machinery. The result was
a vast increase in total farm production. A large part of it
was exported, which meant that the American farmers were
competing, not only with each other, but also with those of
Europe and South America. The inevitable consequence was
a steady decrease in the prices the farmers received. This
process was intensified by the deflationary policies, beneficial
to bankers and creditors, that were being pursued by the fed-
eral government. But there was no corresponding decrease in
the prices the farmers paid. They continued to pay high rates
to the railroads that shipped their produce, to the elevator
owners who stored it, to the industrial corporations from
which they bought their equipment, and to the bankers from
whom they borrowed money. By 1900, thirty-one per cent of
all American farms carried mortgages, and thirty-five per
cent of all farm operators were tenants and not owners. By
1930 each of these figures had risen to about forty-two per
cent.

American statesmen continued to insist that the small inde-
pendent farm owner was the healthiest element in the nation
and therefore deserved special consideration. This was true,
not only insofar as the farmers had always been the chief
representatives of American ideals, but also because the Amer-
ican nation so largely depended on them for survival 3 "whereas
urban America failed to reproduce itself, agrarian America
continued to produce a surplus of children. But it was evident
that, without some fundamental change in public policy, the
farmers could not maintain their traditional place in the com-
munity. If the needs of the nation were judged solely in terms
of economics, then it followed that a considerable part of the
farm population was becoming superfluous. Improvements in
agricultural technique were making it possible for a relatively
small number of farmers to satisfy all domestic needs. And as
foreign nations began to buy American manufactured goods,
they could no longer buy American farm products also (ex-
cept during periods of world war and world starvation), so

288 The American People

that the farmers were losing their foreign markets. In the
twentieth century a relatively small number of efficient com-
mercial farmers located on good land were receiving most of
the total farm income, while the growing number of tenant
farmers, many of them migratory, incompetent, and miser-
ably poor, had become a national liability. In 1929 half of the
farm families were producing less than one thousand dollars*
worth of products a year each, while there were three-quarters
of a million families who produced less than four hundred
dollars' worth a year each.

This agricultural decline was hastened by the progress of
soil erosion. The Americans had always used their natural re-
sources with an incredible wastefulness, and in the twentieth
century they began to discover the extent of the damage. Be-
fore the coming of the white man there had been more than
six hundred million acres of fertile land in the area of the
United States, By 1934 no less than fifty million acres had
completely lost their topsoil as a result of careless farming;
another fifty million had been almost ruined; and another
t^ro hundred million had been seriously damaged. These facts
were dramatized by a series of catastrophic floods and dust
storms^ but the effect on the American farmer was even more
serious. In large areas of the country it was becoming impos-
sible for the farm population, however efficient and industri-
ous, to make an adequate living.

One twentieth-century economist concluded that the Amer-
ican farmer was doomed. But the farmers were by no means
willing to accept the fate for which (according to the rules 'of
capitalist economics) they were apparently destined. They
blamed the bankers and the big corporations for their diffi-
culties and demanded government assistance. From the 1 870*5
to the 1930*5 different farmers* organizations were asking for
government control of railroad and utility rates, for some
form of controlled inflation that would raise farm prices, for
easier credit facilities, and for government help in dealing
with farm surpluses.

Meanwhile, an organized labor movement was slowly
emerging. For a variety of reasons trade unions developed
much more slowly in the United States than in the European

The Agrarian Counterattack 289

countries. The constant immigration of new groups of workers
from Europe impeded the formation of permanent labor
organizations. The relative lack of class feeling in America
and the national ideology of individual enterprise and initia-
tive often prevented workers from regarding themselves as
permanent members of a special class the proletariat with
special interests to be protected 5 and it was, in fact, true that
the ablest and most ambitious of them could often climb into
the managerial class. Moreover, the employing class regarded
trade unionism as a violation of their American right to do
what they pleased with their private property, and fought it
^ith every weapon at their command, being assisted in doing
so by the law courts.

Nevertheless the workers in some industries did begin to
organize and to establish a right to collective bargaining about
wages, hours, and conditions of labor. During the seventies
and eighties there were a number of widespread and remark-
ably violent strikes, accompanied by outbreaks of fighting be-
tween workers and militia in which scores of lives were lost
and millions of dollars' worth of property was destroyed. The
first large trade-union organization was the Knights of Labor,
which reached its peak in 1886 with a membership of more
than seven hundred thousand. Incompetent leadership and
public opposition then caused it to disintegrate, but meanwhile
a rival and more soundly planned organization, the American
Federation of Labor, was slowly gaining strength. By 1914
the Federation had two million members. But most of them
belonged to skilled crafts^ and a large proportion of the
American working class, especially in the basic mass produc-
tion industries, remained unorganized until the 1930*8. In
some parts of the country, particularly in the mine fields of
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky, where the corpo-
rations controlled the local police forces and owned the homes
in which their employees lived and the stores at which they
were compelled to buy, any attempt to form unions was re-
pressed by violence, and the workers were little better than
feudal serfs.

There were a few left-wing labor organizations that be-
lieved in revolution, most notably the Industrial Workers of

ii

290 The American People

the World, which combined an American individualism and
an American disrespect for organized law and order with a
new kind of social idealism, and which had a stormy and
picturesque career through the decade before the First World
War. But the American labor movement as a whole, never
advocated any fundamental change in the economic system or
affiliated itself with any political organization. Most unions
concentrated on winning immediate benefits for their mem-
bers within the framework of capitalist society. Many of -them,
in fact, copied the methods of big business. By establishing the
dosed shop and by restricting the admission of new members,
they hoped to win monopolistic powers. Unions that had ac-
quired monopolies could often raise their wages far above the
national average, and sometimes sabotaged technological im-
provements that seemed to threaten their security. In the big
unions, moreover, as in the big corporations, there was a tend-
ency towards the concentration of power; the processes of
collective bargaining made it necessary for labor leaders to
assume semidictatorial authority, and the rank and file of the
membership often had little control over union policies or
finances* Such developments could be justified as measures of
defense against capitalist exploitation, but they could not be
regarded as beneficial to the community as a whole. In a
society where the working class had lost its economic rights,
unions were necessary; but they often seemed to be necessary
evils.

Organized labor did, however, ask for certain kinds of
government intervention. Establishing itself as a pressure
group, with a policy of supporting its friends and opposing its
enemies in both political parties, it worked for legal recogni-
tion of the right to organize and to bargain collectively, and
for legislation that would raise wages, reduce hours of labor,
and provide for accident and unemployment insurance. And
as the representative of that section of the community most
exposed* to economic insecurity, it was interested in any kind
of government action that would maintain full employment
and prevent depressions. Although it accepted the capitalist
system, it wanted the powers of big business magnates to be
limited and controlled by the state.

The Agrarian Counterattack 291

The farm organizations and the trade unions were the most
vigorous advocates of reform; but they were not the only
ones. Small businessmen and professional men throughout the
country were alarmed by the trend towards monopoly. And
the sectional issue was by no means unimportant. After the
Civil War ownership and control of most of the wealth in the
country had become concentrated in the Northeast. Factories,
mines, and railroads in all parts of America were the property
of corporations with -offices in downtown Manhattan. The
South and the West were becoming, in large measure, colonial
areas exploited for the benefit of wealthy stockholders in
New York and New England. There was, in consequence, a
very considerable disparity in the living standards of the dif-
ferent sections. In the South, in particular, which was handi-
capped by a vicious agricultural system and by its racial prob-
lems as well as by Northern economic domination, a large
part of the population suffered from a crushing poverty
comparable to that of the peasants of South America, or of
the Orient. Those Southerners and Westerners who thought
in sectional rather than in class terms wished to see a develop-
ment of locally owned industries, the profits from which
would stay where they were earned instead of flowing toward
New York. And they wanted government action in order to
break the Northeastern control of capital, transportation, and
natural resources. For this reason Southern landowners and
businessmen, in spite of their hostility to trade unionism and
their illiberal racial attitudes, frequently found themselves
politically allied with the farmer and labor organizations of
the North and Middle West.

Although these different movements against big business
were by no means fighting for identical objectives, almost all
of them professed allegiance to the traditional American ideals
of individual freedom and equality of opportunity. Few
Americans wished to abolish private property in the means of
production or regarded the growth of the power of the state
(although accepting its necessity) with full approval. Essen-
tially, the demand for reform represented an agrarian coun-
terattack against the big corporations. There can be no doubt
that a large proportion of the American people were still

292 The American People

predisposed towards agrarian principles, even though they
also wished to preserve the economic -benefits of large-scale
industry. The American ideal was still a society in which
most people owned property or could hope to acquire it and
in which individual initiative was not restricted either by
monopolistic corporations or fay an authoritarian state, how-
ever benevolent. Americans in the twentieth century, as in
the eighteenth, continued to dislike coercion and to fear
bureaucracy.

On account of this agrarian background the attack on capi-
talism in America assumed a form not paralleled in the krger
European countries. Most European reformers thought in
class terms and were accustomed to regard the state as the
embodiment of social order and as a positive force for social
betterment In consequence, most European opponents of
capitalism advocated some form of socialism, declaring that
political power must be transferred from the employing class
to the working class and that big corporations must become
the property of the state. But European socialist doctrines
never had any strong appeal to Americans (except among the
intelligentsia, who were professionally interested in ideas).
The United States was the only large capitalist country in
which there was never any strong socialist or communist
movement. The earliest (and at.all times, the favorite) Amer-
ican panacea for the abuses committed by the big corporations
was not socialism but the enforcement of competition. Big
business should not be transferred to state ownership 5 it should
instead be broken up into smaller units. The antitrust laws
were peculiarly American and were a product of the agrarian
tradition 5 they .had no parallel in Europe,

Unfortunately antitrust legislation proved to be an in-
sufficient remedy. If the ideals of agrarianism were to be
reconciled with the realities of large-scale production, then
there was need for a much more comprehensive political and
economic program. But no such program was formulated $
and in the course of the twentieth century an increasing num-
ber of Americans came to believe that such a project was
intrinsically impossible. Perhaps the European radicals were
right when they insisted that the evolution from big-business

The Agrarian Counterattack 293

capitalism to socialism was inevitable and that the struggle
to preserve the economic rights of small owners was retro-
grade and unrealistic. Perhaps (as the Hamiltonians had al-
ways believed) there was no essential difference between
America and Europe*

The one consistent attempt to apply American agrarian
principles to industrial society was made by Henry George,
whose chief work, Progress and Poverty > was published in
1879. Adopting the old Jeffersonian slogan of equal rights for
all and special privileges for none, and opposing any kind of
state interventionism (such as the tariff and the patent laws),
George argued that the primary reason for the growth of
inequality was the 'private monopoly, of real estate and of
natural resources. The speculative profits landlords could
acquire, without performing any service to the community in
return, represented a form of special privilege that must be-
come increasingly unjust as the population expanded and
which should be ended by political action. Ground rents
should be confiscated by the community through a "single
tax" on land, all other forms of taxation being abolished.
George believed that the "single tax" would bring about a
genuine economic freedom and would make unnecessary any
government interference with industrial development. But
although George's writings had a powerful indirect effect in
calling attention to the growth of inequality, he never won
any large body of disciples. The pre-emption of land and
natural resources by businessmen looking for speculative
profits, and the protection of their property rights by the law
courts, had always been an important cause of economic in-
justice in America, as the Virginia agrarians had recognized;
but after the growth of industrialism exploitation had assumed
new forms. The big corporations, who were able to charge
whatever the traffic would bear, acquired their monopolistic
powers by winning control, not of land and natural resources,
but of capital and capital equipment.

Since they lacked any long-term program and any compre-
hensive and coherent social philosophy, both the Progressives
of the early twentieth century and the New Dealers of the
proceeded by piecemeal methods, denouncing specific

294 The American People

kinds of injustice and calling for some kind of state action to
remedy each of them. The inevitable result of this pragmatic
approach was a steady drift toward government control of the
whole economic system, in spite of the fact that most Ameri-
cans, both rich and poor, continued to regard bureaucratic
regulation with vigorous dislike and alarm. In general, the
reformers attempted to establish direct state control over
natural monopolies (such as railroads and utilities) and to
enforce competition elsewhere j but they disagreed among
themselves in their attitude to state regulation, and it is not
easy to trace any consistent pattern in- their legislative activ-
ities. Their position was, in fact, inherently paradoxical. Inso-
far as they were the successors of Jefferson and Jackson, they
inherited a tradition of economic liberalism that regarded
government as, at best, a necessary evil and that condemned
any use of political power by any group in order to secure
economic advantages. But they were living in a society that
had been thrown out of balance because a small group of men
had been able to acquire privileges, and the balance could not
be redressed except by such a use of political power as would
bring economic benefits to those classes which had hitherto
been unprivileged. When big business sought economic favors
through political influence, the reformers opposed it 5 but
when the farmers and the workers organized themselves into
pressure groups to secure economic advantages, the reformers
were compelled to support them. Some of them (Justice
Brandds being a notable example) laid most of the emphasis
on the abolition of the privileges of big business and the
restoration of a regime of genuine economic freedom. There
were others, however, who made a complete break with the
whole agrarian tradition and who, like the Europeans, re-
garded the growth of a strong and positive state with full
approval. The most notable intellectual exponent of this latter
point of view was Herbert Croly, whose Promise of American
Life appeared in 1909. Croly praised Hamilton, condemned
Jefferson, and argued that the twentieth-century liberal
should aim, not at destroying special privilege, but at extend-
ing some form of privilege to every section of the community.
On the whole, most of the leaders of the agrarian counter-

The Agrarian Counterattack 295

attack preferred to speak In the manner of Brandeisj but their
actions, in their concrete effects, usually conformed more
closely with the program of Ooly. The political dynamics of
the situation, in fact, made such a result almost inevitable.
Twentieth-century Americans, like those of the ear|y- nine-
teenth century, were opposed to the special privileges of other
people} but they preferred to seek privileges for. themselves
rather than to see all forms of privilege abolished.

Politics in a democracy takes its direction from public
opinion 5 and during the period when the American people
were not yet sufficiently aroused to demand action against the
abuses of big business, their political representatives were not
disposed to anticipate them. The agrarian counterattack, al-
though slowly gathering strength during the three decades
after the Civil War, did not become the dominant force in
American politics until the twentieth century. Prior to the
Progressive Era politicians were usually willing to give Kg
business the legislation for which it asked, knowing that they
would not thereby lose the votes of the majority of the
electorate. Even during these years certain antibusiness meas-
ures were enacted. The Interstate Commerce Act for the
regulation of railroad rates and practices was passed in 1887,
and the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibiting combinations in
restraint of trade was passed in 1890, although enforcement
of both measures was ineffective until the Progressive Era.
But on such basic questions as the tariff and the currency, big
business could usually count on political support.

The general level of American political life has, in fact,
never been lower than during the period between the Civil
War and the end of the century. An uninspiring succession of
dull, dreary, and mediocre men occupied the Presidency; the.
issues in most of the electoral campaigns were unimportant or
fictitious y and corrupt party bosses and party machines as-
sumed control of many of the city and state governments. It
should always be remembered, however, that the function of
the American government is to reflect the will of the people}

The American People

and when the activities of politicians become trivial and dis-
honest, it is because they are no longer receiving any vital and
healthy impulse from the people whom they represent. The
American political leaders of the seventies and eighties were
reduced to shadowboxing because the American public mind
was not stirred by any vital issue. Some of them, such as
James G. Blaine and Roscoe Conkling, were probably equal
in ability and force of personality to the greatest of their
predecessors; but they had no adequate opportunity to prove
their quality. They were actors equipped for tragic roles who
were condemned to perform in vaudeville. And although
they usually responded to the wishe$ of big business, they
should not be regarded merely as the political agents of the
capitalist class. Business could get political protection because
it was the best organized and financed of pressure groups,
while the opposition was disorganized and often apathetic.
The corruption of post-Civil War politics, however deplor-
able, is, in fact, an indication that big business had no absolute
qpntrol over the American government. Businessmen were
frequently compelled to pay for legislative favors, particu-
larly in the city and state governments 5 and although this
process has often been interpreted as showing that they had
bought a decisive influence over the political organizations,
the businessmen themselyes never regarded it in this light.
They resented the independence of the politicians, and com-
plained of being blackmailed and held to ransom.

Meanwhile, a series of insurgent movements was sweeping
across the Western fanning regions, and the votes recorded
for candidates who attacked big business were increasing.
During the 1 870*8 and i88o's the grievances of the farmers
were voiced by the Granger and Greenbacker movements 5 in
the early nineties the People's Party had a rapid growth, win-
ning a popular vote of nearly a million and a half in the
election of 18945 and in 1896 the Democratic Party, repudiat-
ing the conservative leadership represented by Grover Cleve-
land, absorbed most of the People's Party and adopted a large
part of the agrarian program. William Jennings Bryan of
Nebraska, as Democratic candidate, was defeated by McKin-
ley in one of the bitterest of all American presidential cam-

The Agrarian Counterattack 297

paigns, but he won forty-seven per cent of the popular vote.

To these attacks on organized wealth and privilege, the
upper-class Easterners, including not merely the business
magnates but many who liked to regard themselves as liberals,
reformers, and spokesmen of culture, reacted in the same
manner as the Federalists a hundred years earlier. In the
same mood of unreasoning panic they drew parallels with
Robespierre and the French Revolution, spoke darkly of the
end of civilization, and predicted anarchy, mob rule, and
terror. It was, in fact, true that most of the farm leaders were
relatively uneducated men with no profound understanding
of economic forces. The American agrarian tradition had been
broken by the Civil War. The insurgents of the late nine-
teenth century were reacting against immediate grievances,
and the movement had no philosophical foundation and no
comprehensive program. Bryan was honest but, unlike Jeffer-
son and the Jacksonians, he was also naive, narrow-minded,
and provincial. Yet in spite of the intellectual deficiencies of
the insurgents, they were the genuine representatives of the
American democratic tradition; and although they failed to
win political power, they performed the essential service of
educating American public opinion.

By the turn of the century the American people were ready
for reform. An acceleration of the trend towards monopoly,
exemplified particularly in the formation of United States
Steel in 1901, strengthened the case of the agrarians, and
their arguments were confirmed by the exposes of fcig-business
practices and of its corrupt connections with politics, written
by the group of journalists who became known as the muck-
rakers. For the next dozen years Progressivism, which meant,
in general, control of big business in the interests of the aver-
age citizen and the revitalization of political democracy, was
in the ascendant.

The best work of Progressivism was done in local govern-
ment, and its ablest representatives were municipal leaders
like Tom Johnson of Cleveland and state leaders like Robert
La Follette of Wisconsin. Essentially a middle-class move-
ment with a strongly moralistic bias, it was too inclined to
crusade against symptoms rather than to remove causes.

298 The American People

Campaigning on behalf of virtue and against evil, the Pro-
gressives denounced corruption, and concentrated on ejecting
rascals and electing honest men to office} and their reform
programs frequently had a strongly puritanical flavor. Yet
although the evils they attacked frequently reappeared in
new forms, they did succeed in making government more
directly responsive to public sentiment, in limiting the powers
of public utilities and other business corporations, and in
raising the moral and intellectual standards of American
public life.

But any genuine reformation of the American economic
system could be accomplished only by the federal govern-
ment, and in federal politics the Progressives were frustrated
by half-hearted and insincere leadership. The first President
to speak the language of Progressivism was Theodore Roose-
velt, who entered the White House as a result of the death
of McKinley in 1901. Fundamentally a conservative and a
Hamiltonian, Roosevelt had no desire to change the existing
system of property relationships and little understanding of
economic questions. It is true that he was genuinely shocked
by the chicanery of certain business magnates and by their
belief that- they ought to be above the law 5 but in his economic
thinking he never went much beyond a naively moral distinc-
tion between good corporations and bad ones. At the same
time, he was sufficiently astute to recognize that the American
people were genuinely aroused against big business and eager
to see it attacked. Personally, Roosevelt seems to have suf-
fered from a neurotic sense of insecurity of a kind that made
it necessary for him always to insist on his own manliness.
Like most men who exalt the life of action above that of the
mind, he was actually a great user of words, having a talent
for coining memorable phrasesj and like most men who insist
on their own righteousness and integrity of purpose, he had
a useful capacity for self-deception. The result was that his
seven and a half years in office were considerably more fruit-
ful in speeches than in deeds. In showmanship the administra-
tion of the first Roosevelt has been surpassed only by that of
the second Rooseveltj and his pungent denunciations of the
"malefactors of great wealth" created the illusion of great

The Agrarian Counterattack 299

accomplishments. Meanwhile, he also conducted a vigorous
foreign policy, displaying a tendency to believe in the thera-
peutic value of war and in the moral nobility of imperialism,
which reflected his own weaknesses of character but which
could not be reconciled with his professions of liberalism. But
his achievements in domestic affairs were remarkably meager,
and the most publicized of his activities, his enforcement of
the Sherman Act against some of the big corporations, had
little concrete effect. In reality, his speeches served to protect
the capitalist economic structure in the same way that a light-
ning rod protects the building to which it is attached.

Retiring in 1909, Roosevelt bequeathed the Presidency to
Taft, an amiable and honest conservative who was willing to
support mild reforms. Actually, Taft accomplished more in
four years, although with considerably less publicity, than
Roosevelt in seven and a half 3 the Sherman Act was enforced
more frequently, the Interstate Commerce Commission was
for the first time given effective power over railroad rates,
and the Constitution was amended to allow the income tax
and the popular election of Senators j but none of these meas-
ures could be considered radical. Meanwhile the Republican
Party was splitting into conservative and Progressive wings,
and in 1912, when the conservatives nominated Taft for re-
election, the Progressives seceded from the party. But instead
of rallying about some genuine exponent of Progressive
ideals, such as La Follette, they allowed themselves to be
captured by Roosevelt, who wanted to run for the Presidency
again and whose speeches had become even more fiery and
more radical. Roosevelt was nominated for a third term by
a strangely assorted gathering of Western liberals who liked
his speeches, Eastern business men who liked his practices,
and political emotionalists who liked the glamor of his per-
sonality j after hearing him declare that "we stand at Arma-
geddon and we battle for the Lord," they concluded by sing-
ing Onward, Christian Soldiers. This division among the
Republicans resulted in the election of the Democratic candi-
date, Woodrow Wilson.

The last of the three Progressive Presidents had grown up
in the South and was more nearly an agrarian than any of his

300 The American People

predecessors since the Civil War period. The main theme of
his speeches was opposition to special privilege and protection
for the economic rights of the small property owner. But in
spite of these echoes of John Taylor, Wilson had spent most
of his adult life in the decidedly conservative atmosphere of
Princeton University, and until shortly before his -election
to the Presidency had shown little appreciation of the need
for economic reforms. The measures he sponsored, therefore,
although agrarian in tendency, were mild. They consisted of
a reduction of the tariff, of the establishment of the Federal
Trade Commission to police big business and check monopoly,
and of the creation of the Federal Reserve System with the
intention of providing a more elastic currency and preventing
the concentration of financial power by the New York bank-
ers. These reforms were adopted in 1913 and 1914. The out-
break of the First World War then brought the Progressive
Era to an end.

The most conspicuous result of the Progressive Era was an
increase in the responsibilities of government. Through the
Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Trade Com-
mission, and the Federal Reserve Board, officials of the fed-
eral government were entrusted with far-reaching powers
over the national economy. Numerous minor laws, both fed-
eral and state, provided for government regulation of business
practices and conditions of labor in different industries. But
how these powers would be used depended on the character
of the officials who exercised them- American liberals were
adopting the Hamiltonian doctrine of a strong state in the
hope that it could be used for Jeffersonian purposes 5 but they
could have no guarantee that the state would always be used
for such purposes. It was possible that the representatives of
special privilege would win control of the new administrative
machinery and use it to promote their own interests. The new
liberalism might lead towards social democracy 5 on the other
hand, it might also end in the dictatorship of big business.

Meanwhile, no essential change had -been made in the
existing system of property relations. Under the three Pro-
gressive Presidents the Sherman Act had been applied on two
hundred and twenty-six different occasions, and many of the

The Agrarian Counterattack 301

big corporations had been dissolved into smaller units. But it
was impossible to compel these smaller units to engage in any
genuine price competition with each other. Corporation direc-
tors were forbidden to make outright combinations with each
other, but they could achieve the same purpose by means of
unofficial price-fixing agreements beyond the reach of the law.
The control big business had acquired over the economy of
the nation remained unbroken. And although business mag-
nates were dismayed and alarmed by the popular denuncia-
tions to which they were subjected and by their temporary loss
of political influence, they soon adopted new techniques of
self-defense. No Iqnger able to depend on the protection
afforded by the Constitution and its judicial interpreters and
on their capacity to bribe politicians, they began to discover
that the attitudes of the American people themselves could
be swayed and manipulated by propaganda. This change in
business attitudes may conveniently be dated from 1914 when
the Rockefellers hired Ivy Lee as their "public relations
counsellor." Corporations began to spend large sums on win-
ning good will, public relations developed into a skilled pro-
fession, and deliberate efforts were made to control all the
instrumentalities that influenced public opinion. Business was
depicted as a form of "service, 77 and any movement that
threatened to limit its profits was depicted as an attack on
American freedom and the American way of life. This
growth of propaganda for special privilege was not the least
important, and certainly the most ironical, of the results of
the Progressive Era*

3

For a decade after the First World War the new tech-
niques of public relations were conspicuously successful. The
war itself, with its disillusioning aftermath, caused a general
deflation of ideals, and the American people were very will-
ing to believe that the pursuit of wealth was the only objective
that had any reality. They were easily convinced that the big
corporations were engaged in serving the community, that the
antisocial practices that had been denounced by the Progres-
sives had been genuinely reformed, and that if the business

302 The American People

magnates were free from political interference they would
establish a universal and an enduring prosperity. Through
most of the 1920'$ economic trends were, in fact, conducive to
optimism. Production increased rapidly, average wages (which
had risen sharply during the war) remained high, and it
seemed easy to make a great deal of money. And encouraged
by the propaganda of prosperity, a larger proportion of the
American people than ever before now engaged in specula-
tion. The national propensity to look for a quick and easy way
of acquiring a fortune, which had been stimulated ever since
the founding of the first colonies by rising land values and
which had been the main reason for the failure of the agrarian
ideal, was never more widely displayed than during the
1920*8. Millions of middle-class citizens used their savings
to buy real estate or stocks in the hope, not of finding sound
investments, but of being able to sell at some dizzy rate of
profit.

The Republicans regained control of the federal govern-
ment in the election of 1920, and its leaders no longer dis-
played any Progressive inclinations. The Progressive Party,
which had been launched with such enthusiasm in 1912, had
been killed by its leader Theodore Roosevelt a few years
later 5 and its members had been compelled to return to the
Republican fold and to submit to conservative control of the
party machinery. Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover
and their supporters in Congress believed that their chief
function was to assist business in earning profits, for which
reason they raised the tariff to unprecedented heights and
lowered income : tax rates, particularly in the upper brackets.
The mechanisms of government control that had been estab-
lished during the Progressive Era were not abolished, but
they were now used primarily to help the big corporations
rather than to police them.

The decade of the twenties was indeed an extraordinary
period, in- which the American people seemed to be engaged
in a collective effort to evade realities and return to the
golden illusions of infancy. During the latter part of the nine-
teenth century an epoch in American development had ended 5
the frontier had been closed, the big corporations had de-

The Agrarian Counterattack 303

stroyed the economic bases of agrarian democracy, and the
rise of aggressive imperialisms in Europe and Asia had ended
the possibility of isolation. But in their initial attempts to deal
with these new problems by the reforms of the Progressive
Era, and by participation in the First World War the Amer-
ican people had not succeeded in solving them. So for a
few delirious years they insisted that these problems did not
really exist and had been maliciously invented by the enemies
of the American way of life. Whatever happened in other
parts of the world, the United States need assume no inter-
national responsibilities and could safely remain isolated*
And in spite of the growth of the big corporations, the United
States was still the land of freedom, equality, and opportunity
for all. Anybody who denied these comforting assumptions
was cynical, un-American, subversive, and probably in the pay
of Moscow. The representative figure of the period was Presi-
dent Coolidge, who with complete sincerity voiced the
individualistic sentiments which he had acquired from his Yan-
kee ancestors and which would have been relevant to the social
conditions of the eighteenth century. Perhaps the most reveal-
ing expression of the national refusal to face realities was the
maintenance of the prohibition amendment. After generations
of campaigning and much decidedly unscrupulous pressure
politics, the enemies of alcohol had induced American legisla-
tors to vote against what they believed to be vice and to at-
tempt to make the nation virtuous by legislation. For thirteen
years, from 1920 until 1933, this grotesque violation of indi-
vidual rights and liberties remained a part of the American
constitution, although it was openly evaded by a large part
of the population and although its most obvious results were
to encourage disrespect for the law and to increase the power
and earnings of organized groups of criminals 5 and for thir-
teen years many politicians, businessmen, and other leaders of
opinion continued to patronize bootleggers in private, while
insisting in public that prohibition was an idealistic experi-
ment that deserved national support. It is not surprising that
most of the American writers and artists of the period, being
sensitive to those underlying realities that the American peo-
ple were trying to evade, felt a deep bitterness and sense o

304 The American People

frustration sharply in contrast with the complacency of the
popular mind.

Actually the prosperity of the twenties was far from uni-
versal and was not based on any secure foundation, although
scarcely anybody, even among professional economists and
sociologists, can claim to have foreseen the inevitable collapse.
Most of the profits of industry went to the big corporations,
and the mortality rate among small businesses continued to be
highj agriculture was suffering from a chronic depression j
and although average wages had risen, there were millions of
worikers who had not shared in the, increase. A country in
which (as in 1929) forty-two per cent of all families were
still earning less than fifteen hundred dollars a year could not
legitimately pride itself on having a high general standard of
living. And the result of such inequalities was that effective
purchasing power lagged behind productive capacity j the
American economy could produce more goods than it could
sell. That the crisis was averted until 1929 was due chiefly to
three compensating but temporary factors: to spending on
public works by states and municipalities at the rate of about
threp billion dollars a year, the money being raised largely
through borrowing^ to installment buying and the borrowing
of money by people who could not afford to pay f oi 1 what
they needed in cashj and to the investment of some thirteen
billion dollars of American capital in foreign countries, there-
by enabling those countries to increase their purchases of
American goods. Big business, in other words, enlarged the
market for its goods by lending to other people, at substantial
rates of interest, the money with which to buy them. Obvi-
ously this process could not continue indefinitely.

This era of illusion ended abruptly in October 1929. Stock
market prices, which had been pushed upward by a fantastic
orgy of speculation, suddenly collapsed, and by November
the American people were some thirty billion dollars poorer
in paper values than they had supposed themselves tc be in
September. The structure of prosperity was too fragile to
withstand such a shock. Businessmen stopped investing money
in industrial expansion 5 middle-class citizens curtailed their
purchases of all but articles of immediate necessity 5 the pro-

The Agrarian Counterattack 305

duction of capital goods and of durable consumption goods
therefore declined 5 factories began to close their doors; the
growth of unemployment led to further contraction^ of pur-
chasing power and further closings of factories; and for three
long years the American economy spiraled down into the
whirlpool of the great depression. By -1932 the national in-
come had dropped from eighty-two billion dollars a year to
forty billion 5 the total income of labor had decreased from
nearly eleven billions to about four and a half billions; total
farm incomes had decreased from twelve and a half billions, to
five and a half 5 and the total output of goods had decreased by
thirty-seven per cent. Between twelve and fifteen million
workers were unemployed and dependent mainly on charity.
Nearly two million of them had become homeless migrants,
and another million were living in huts they had built for
themselves out of refuse timber on vacant city lots. These ex-
traordinary events occurred in the richest country in the
world, and were not brought about by any natural catastrophe
or act of God or by any deliberate perversity of human be-
ings. They were due solely to the weaknesses of a man-made
economic system.

The American people, allowing the drive of the individual
will towards wealth and power to frustrate the democratic
ideals of freedom and equality and solidarity, had chosen the
way of capitalism rather than that of agrarianism; and capi-
talism had failed them* They had rejected the America of
Jefferson; and now the America of Hamilton had ended in
catastrophe. Their first reaction was one of total incredulity*
In his opening speech in the election campaign of 1928 Presi-
dent Hoover had declared that "we in America today are
nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in
the history of any land"; and it was not easy for a nation
which had believed this assurance to recognize how deeply it
had gone astray. During the first two years the administration
did little but make reassuring statements, in the belief that
all that was needed was a revival of confidence; and when it
finally took action, it adopted the Hamiltonian method of
lending money to business corporations in the hope of check-
ing bankruptcies and encouraging a revival of production.

306 The American People

President Hoover sternly refused to allow any spending of
federal money for the relief of the unemployed, declaring
that to do so < would have injured the spiritual responses of
the American people/' and insisted that the economic struc-
ture was essentially sound. Meanwhile, most of the unem-
ployed, faithful to the myth that America was the land of
opportunity and that individuals who failed to prosper had
only themselves to blame, accepted starvation with a remark-
able docility. Western farmers, believing like their eighteenth-
century ancestors that the property rights of the man who
had mixed his labor with the wilderness should have prece-
dence over the obligations of contracts, resorted to violence in
order to stop the foreclosure of mortgages. But in the cities
the victims of the depression displayed an amazing respect
for established law and order. They waited for the next elec-
tion and for the promised upturn of the business cycle.

Presumably the mechanisms of the economic system, if left
to themselves, would eventually have brought recovery, but
the price in human suffering and loss of self-respect would
have been incalculably great. The Democratic administration
of Franklin Roosevelt, elected in 1932, insisted that men were
not the helpless victims of a system they had themselves cre-
ated, and promised action 5 and during the next seven years,
until the outbreak of the Second World War, the agrarian
counterattack against the economy of big business was re-
sumed. Whatever may be the ultimate verdict on the measures
taken by the Roosevelt administration, one all-important
achievement must always be set to its credit: that it restored
the faith of the American people in their capacity to control
their own destiny, in their form of government, and in their
future.

The New Deal was essentially a continuation of the Pro-
gressive Movement, although on a broader scale and with
more intellectual sophistication. Like Progressivism it had no
coherent program or philosophy, but was based on the prag-
matic belief that wherever there was a maladjustment in the
economic system the government should intervene in order to
remedy it. The favorite idea of the New Dealers was the idea
of balance; they declared that the American economy had lost

The Agrarian Counterattack 307

its balance, chiefly because big business had acquired too much
power, and that the government must redress the balance,
chiefly by enlarging the earnings of agriculture and labor and
by expanding the total effective purchasing power of the
community. They believed in the virtues of private enterprise
and initiative, but argued that a free economy could no longer
be maintained without positive government intervention and
supervision. In the long run such an attitude probably created
as many problems as it solved. Yet it would be unfair to
blame only the New Dealers for its deficiencies. The govern-
ment had to act, and any action that tended to restore public
confidence was better than none. Unfortunately the American
people were neither intellectually nor psychologically pre-
pared for any long-range program of economic reconstruction.
No such program had, in fact, been formulated, except by
the socialists and communists; and most Americans continued
to dislike collectivism, believing that the maintenance of
freedom depended on the maintenance of private property
and on the decentralization of control.

Whatever may be said in criticism of the New Deal, it
should always be recognized that it drew into the service of
the government many men of unusual vision, idealism, and
broad social understanding, and that its leader was perhaps
better qualified to fulfill the peculiar requirements of the
presidential office than any of his predecessors. It must be
admitted that Franklin Roosevelt lacked the integrity of
Washington and the spiritual depth of Lincoln, and that he
sometimes let himself be carried into tricky and devious
courses by the boyish zest with which he pkyed the game of
politics. He was not the greatest of American Presidents. Yet
he was second to none in his capacity for understanding popu-
lar sentiment, responding to it, and giving it direction; he was
sufficiently bold, generous, and imaginative in mind and
heart to recognize that civilization was in crisis, and to meet
the challenge in appropriately large terms j he had a superla-
tive courage; and although he could be supple and opportun-
istic, often to excess, in his choice of means, his ultimate objec-
tive was always the preservation and fuller realization of
American ideals.

308 The American People

In general, what the New Deal set out to accomplish was
to counteract the privileges of big business by giving similar
privileges to other elements in the community. Through the
AAA the farmers were enabled to restrict agricultural pro-
duction and thereby to raise farm prices, while wage earners
acquired a legal right to form trade unions and to bargain
collectively, by which means they could raise their wages and
reduce their hours of labor. At first the New Dealers hoped
that the business classes, appreciating the need for increasing
purchasing power, would agree to this program 5 but a large
majority of American businessmen were unwilling to make
such concessions, and quickly began to denounce the admin-
istration as the enemy of free enterprise and the traditional
American way of life. Meanwhile the government directly
increased purchasing power by spending money on unemploy-
ment relief and on public works and by enlarging the Hoover
program of making loans to business j and it extended its
control over the currency and adopted various methods of
increasing the quantity of money in circulation. Accompany-
ing these major measures of reform was a great variety of
other legislative acts, affecting almost every aspect of national
life.

Whether because of the New Deal program or because of
the mechanisms of the business cycle, there was a considerable
economic recovery ; and by the summer of 1937 production
was not far below the level of 1929. Yet there were still seven
and a half million persons unemployed, most of whom were
now being supported by the government} and the recovery
was not sustained into 1938. It was obvious that the nation's
economic problems had not been solved. But in 1939 further
attempts to solve them were rendered unnecessary by the
outbreak of the European war. For the next few years the
nation's manpower and equipment were fully employed in
making war materials, and the search for a democratic econ-
omy could be postponed until after the defeat of Hitler.

When the war ended the American people faced their
domestic future with considerable confidence more, perhaps,
than the situation warranted. It seemed impossible that a
nation that had displayed such energy and resourcefulness in

The Agrarian Counterattack 309

fighting its foreign enemy could be defeated by its own
internal problems. Yet apart from large-scale government
borrowing and spending, the Americans had not yet dis-
covered any way of preventing depressions. The general drift
of all the twentieth<entury reforms had been not to abolish
big business but merely to compensate for its evils by erecting
an even bigger government to control it. In America, as in
all the European nations during the same period, there
seemed to be an ineluctable tendency towards the growth of
state power and of a ne*' ruling class of government officials.

The government was now intervening directly in the
economic system on an immense scale. It was the greatest
borrower and lender of money and the greatest employer of
labor, and it had assumed a great variety of coercive powers
over business. While the general intentions of government
intervention were good, it was no doubt true, as the business
classes insisted, that such a complicated system of regulations,
administered through so many different bureaucratic mecha-
nisms, restricted initiative and efficiency and impeded expan-
sion. And although through the New Deal period business-
men opposed these extensions of government power, feeling
that the state was their natural enemy, it should always be
remembered that the results of state intervention depend upon
the purposes with which it is exercised. If an administration
friendly ta big business were elected into office, then bureau-
cratic mechanisms would be used, as in the 1920*3, not to
police business practices, but to maximize business profits. It
should be recalled that both in Germany and Italy the prac-
tices of state control, used by Fascism for reactionary ends,
had originally been developed under liberal administrations.

The original slogan of American democracy had been
"equal rights for all, special privileges for none." This slogan
had been violated when the government, assuming the sover-
eignty over private property that John Taylor had declared
to be the cause of European corruption, had granted special
privileges to business. Unable to rescind these grants of spe-
cial privilege, which had now been sanctified by long acquies-
cence, the New Dealers had tried to counteract them by
granting privileges also to the farmers and to organized labor.

3 io The American People

In so doing they had violated the basic principles of their
agrarian predecessors; they had claimed for government an
even wider sovereignty over private property, and they had
encouraged all sections of the community to seek economic
advantages by the use of political power. To an increasing
extent the earnings of all classes were now being determined
by the policies of the government} the government controlled
farm prices, it decided what wages should be considered rea-
sonable, and indirectly it determined the rate of profit. Un-
fortunately there was no generally accepted standard of
economic justice by which government decisions could be
guided, and in consequence the earnings of each group were
coining to depend solely upon the strength of the political
pressure which it could exert. Economic conflicts were thus
transferred into the sphere of politics, and the different pres-
sure groups competed with each other in seeking legislation
that would enlarge their share of the national income.

Under such conditions it was obviously impossible for the
government to adopt any coherent plan for maintaining pros-
perity j yet its control over the national economy had become
so extensive that planning seemed to be essential. The next
step in the logic of events would be for the government to
elevate itself above all these conflicting pressure groups and,
as the representative of the national welfare, to assume the
right to enforce whatever plans its officials considered best
suited to the national interest. But such a government would
be authoritarian, if not totalitarian.

What was needed, if the average citizen was to regain his
freedom, was a wholly new pattern of economic organization.
In spite of the collapse of big business in the great depression
and the inability of big government under the New Deal to
maintain prosperity, there was still little realization that such
a pattern was necessary 5 and even those who felt that it was
desirable were often fatalistically inclined to conclude that it
was impossible. Yet the whole history of America was a
demonstration that nothing was impossible. Some Americans
during the thirties and forties were, in fact, beginning to ap-
proach social problems in new terms. The New Dealers had

The Agrarian Counterattack 3 1 1

failed to solve the main problems of the national economy,
but they had also, when given opportunity, struck out in new
directions with boldness and imagination. The peripheral
activities of the New Deal had been decidedly more interest-
ing than its central program. Among these activities the most
creative and the most significant was the TVA.

Insofar as the TVA was a publicly owned corporation, en-
gaged in the production and sale of electrical power with the
purpose of fordng down private utility rates, in the manu-
facture of fertilizers, in flood control, and in other activities
through the Tennessee Valley, it may be regarded as an ex-
periment in socialism. Yet it was a form of socialism wholly
free from dogmas and avoiding all the evils associated with
bureaucratic control. It exercised no coercive powers what-
ever, seeking voluntary public co-operation for all its activ-
ities; instead of regarding itself as the enemy of all private
enterprise, it assisted and stimulated private business expan-
sion throughout the region in which it operated; it aided the
small fanner in achieving a higher standard of living from
the property which he owned; it endeavored, wherever pos-
sible, to decentralize its activities, and to function as the instru-
ment of the people whom it served rather than of the govern-
ment in Washington; it never allowed its program to be
deflected by political considerations or by the demands of
party politicians; and its affairs were conducted on sound
financial principles, The TVA, moreover, represented a new
departure in its attitude to nature. A vast region of the United
States was treated as a unity, and it was recognized that men
could maintain an enduring civilization only by co-operating
with nature and conserving her resources, not by plundering
her until the knd had become a desert. "For the first time
since the trees fell before the settlers' axe," declared the chair-
man of the TVA, David Lilienthal, with some exaggeration
but with a pardonable enthusiasm, "America set out to com-
mand nature not by defying her, as in that wasteful past, but
by understanding and acting upon her first law the oneness
of men and natural resources." * In its philosophical meaning,
which marked a decisive break with the whole American back-

3 i 2 The American People

ground of conquest and exploitation and the coming to con-
sciousness of a new and more humane attitude, the TVA was
even more significant than inJts social implications.

How far the principles of the TVA could be extended was
uncertain. But here at least was something new: a way of
using the advantages of modern technology that did not re-
strict any legitimate form of individual freedom, political or
economic, and that was neither capitalism nor bureaucracy. It
seemed likely that for many years to come the American peo-
ple would tie torn between the conflicting programs of big
business and big government and unable to achieve freedom
and enduring prosperity under either. But in the TVA they
had an object lesson in the possibilities of a third alternative.

1 David E. Lflienthal, TVA: Democracy on the March (1944), p. 46.

CHAPTER XIV [313

The United States in World Affairs

EFFECTIVE American participation in world affairs
began during the 1890'$. For the previous three
quarters of a century the Americans had been in
the singularly fortunate position of not needing a
foreign policy. They had become the dominant power in the
western hemisphere, and for a variety of reasons they had
been in no danger of attack from either Europe or Asia- The
British navy had policed the seas, and no other power or group
of powers had threatened the British maritime hegemony.
Under such conditions the Americans had been able to main-
tain their peaceful way of life and their democratic institu-
tions, and had not required a strong army or navy or an
authoritarian government. Unfortunately this happy isolation
could not endure.

The abandonment of isolation was due in some measure to
internal factors. Before the end of the nineteenth century,
American industrialists were beginning to look for new foreign
markets, and to ask for political assistance in securing them*
Meanwhile American politicians (most notably Theodore
Roosevelt) were becoming infected with European imperialist
attitudes and acquiring an ambition to play power politics,
while American newspaper owners (like William Randolph
Hearst)- found it profitable to stir up nationalistic excitements
and propagate hatred of foreign countries. The internal ten-
sions caused by the maladjustments of the industrial economy
were becoming more acute, and opponents of reform pre-
ferred that they find an outlet in foreign war rather than in
class conflict. It was also important that the West was now
settled 5 with the closing of the frontier Americans began to
look to Latin America and across the Pacific for new worlds
to conquer.

For a few years the United States became interested in ac-

3 14 The American People

quiring colonial possessions and had a tendency to threaten the
independence of her smaller neighbors. Yet the American
people as a whole were never converted to imperialism and
were never willing to support an aggressive foreign policy.
The more important causes for their involvement in world
politics during the twentieth century were always external
and not internal. American security was now endangered by
the growth of imperialist rivalries in other parts of the world
and, in particular, by the rise of two strong and expansionist
powers, Germany and Japan, that threatened to put an end to
the British naval 'supremacy. This was the primary reason
why the Americans could no longer remain aloof from inter-
national affairs.

The underlying objectives of American foreign policy in
the twentieth century (as indicated, not in the public state-
ments of American statesmen, but in their actions) were
identical with those that had been pursued by Washington,
Jefferson, and Monroe. In the first place, the Americans
sought security against any possible aggression. They were not
afraid of bang conquered , but they knew that if they lost
their security they would be compelled to devote a large part
of their energies to defense instead of to the arts of peace,
and must abandon their democratic institutions and allow the
growth of a strong authoritarian government. But whereas
the statesmen of the early republic had been concerned only
with the North American continent, their twentieth-century
successors had to extend their interests to the further shores
of the two oceans. Technology had decreased the size of the
world ^ and British sea power was no longer invincible. The
first principle of American policy, therefore, was to prevent
any aggressive power from acquiring control either of the
eastern end of the Atlantic or of the western end of the
Pacific It was primarily in order to maintain this principle
that the United States participated in the two world wars.

In the second place, the Americans continued to seek access
to markets in other parts of the world, on terms of equality
with other countries. In spite of their tariff policies they be-
lieved, in general, in the Open Door, and did not resort
to state action in order to acquire exclusive control of foreign

The United States in World Affairs 3 1 5

or colonial markets. As in the early days of the republic, they
were hostile to closed monopolistic empires and systems of
autarchy, which they regarded as oppressive and conducive
to war.

In the third place, the Americans wished to see democratic
institutions extended throughout the world- They believed
that democratic governments were inherently more peaceful
and more law-abiding than were autocracies. They regarded
the conflict between the principles of freedom and those of
dictatorship as world-wide, transcending all national and con-
tinental boundaries. And since they felt their own institutions
to be superior to those of any other people, they were eager
that other nations should adopt them. When they engaged in
war they always declared that they were fighting to defend
democracy and to destroy autocracy or dictatorship.

These were admirable principles, which did not involve any
threat to the legitimate rights of other peoples and which
could be universalized into a new world order of peace and
freedom. The national interests and ideals of the United
States, unlike those of any other great power, in no way con-
flicted with the general interests of humanity. Unfortunately
the Americans were frequently slow, fumbling, and confused
in taking action in defense of their interests and ideals. Their
leaders no longer displayed the boldness and certainty of
touch which had characterized their eighteenth-century pred-
ecessors.

This was partly because the American government was
democratic. Despite all allegations to the contrary, the major
outlines of American policy were determined by public senti-
ment 5 and no decisive action could be taken in particular,
there could be no declaration of war or commitment that
might lead to such declaration unless it had the support of a
large majority of the electorate. But inevitably the electorate
was unable to decide upon such issues with any rapidity. A
democratic foreign policy necessarily seemed slow by contrast
with that of a dictatorship, since .fifty million voters could not
make up their minds as quickly as could one man. This is
one of the reasons why, under twentieth-century conditions,
democracy and dictatorship cannot permanently coexist side-

3 1 6 The American People

by-side in one world. And while all democratic nations were
handicapped by their inability to make decisions quickly, the
United States was likely to be even slower than were the
European democracies. For her population was more hetero-
geneous and less imbued with a spirit of national unity, and
it included large immigrant groups who (ignoring the advice
given in Washington's Farewell Address) retained hereditary
attachments to some European countries and equally strong
antipathies to others.

But it was not merely because the United States was demo-
cratic that her foreign policy often seemed ineffectual 5 it
was also because the American people lacked a sufficiently
clear understanding of the issues that confronted them. Un-
like the peoples of the European countries, they had not ac-
quired habits and! traditions which were relevant to the
situation in which they now found themselves. For three
quarters of a century, except during a few brief periods, they
had been able to forget about world affairs, and during this
long stretch, of time they had acquired a belief in the virtues
of isolation. Plenty of twentieth-century Americans continued
to insist that isolation was still possible, in spite of the changes
in world affairs^ and attributed its abandonment not to ex-
ternal dangers but to the ambitions or the weaknesses of
American leaders. And even those Americans who were most
convinced of the need for a vigorous foreign policy were
often unable to see the situation in realistic terms; instead of
recognizing that in a world of competing imperialisms the
United States must act to maintain her security and her peace-
ful way of life, they were always inclined in accordance with
the general preconceptions of the American character to
interpret international affairs in terms of a battle between
good and evil. Without such an interpretation the Americans
were, in fact, unable to resort to force in defense of their own
way of life and vital interests. For this reason, as so often in
the past, the actions of the Americans showed more boldness
and farsightedness than the public statements of their policy.
This was notably true of their intervention in the two world
wars. In each instance an intuitive sense of their own vital
interests caused them to abandon neutrality soon after the

The United States in World Ajjairs 3 1 7

outbreak of the conflict} but in each instance they were unable
to become full belligerents without insisting that they had
been the victims of an unprovoked attack. They could take
positive and necessary actions, but they always preferred to
believe that their actions had been forced upon them by others.

This lack of conscious understanding did not prevent the
Americans from defending their interests in warj but it made
it more difficult for them to deal realistically with the prob-
lems of peacemaking. Obviously it was to their interest, not
only to defeat aggressive imperialisms, but also to work for
the creation of some kind of world order in which no new
imperialism would be permitted to develop. After each of the
two world wars American statesmen took the lead in making
plans for such a world order. But having visualized the con-
flict in which they had recently been engaged as a battle
between white and black, the Americans were too inclined to
assume that virtue was now triumphant, and to see the new
world order in Utopian terms- Failing to take account of the
complexity of all human affairs, they were then startled to
discover that the allies who had shared their triumph were
not white but various shades of gray and were continuing,
after the war as before, to think chiefly of their own interests.
The resultant disillusionment of the Americans might lead,
as in 1919, to a retreat into a self-righteous isolationism.

These adolescent traits of the American character were most
conspicuous, in their dealings with Europe. In the Pacific,
which for generations had seemed destined for American
control, they atfted with more assurance; the Americans had
always felt happiest when they faced the west. But when
they turned bade towards the continent from which their
ancestors had come, they were inclined to feel bewildered and
to become suspicious and resentful. They displayed, in fact,
the attitudes that been explored in the novels of Henry James.
Like James's heroines they were genuinely more generous
and more idealistic than the Europeans, but had less worldly
wisdom. And like James himself they were disposed to ex-
aggerate both their own purity of motive and the corruption
of Europe. They visualized themselves in the role of a Milly
Theale, taken advantage of by European fortune hunters-

3 1 8 The American People

Their actual behavior more often resembled that of Maggie
Verver, who had a real purity and simplicity but who had
also a drive to impose her will upon her European husband.

In their diplomatic relations with Europe twentieth-century
Americans were therefore less successful than the men of the
eighteenth centuryj they could neither defend their own
interests and ideals nor appreciate the European point of view
with the adult self-confidence that had been so remarkably
displayed by Franklin and Washington and Jefferson. And
the reasons for this failure were not merely intellectual.
Twentieth-century America had less faith in itself. The men
of the eighteenth century had believed that the United States
represented a new and higher way of life 5 but the men of
the twentieth century could not feel the same certainty. They
still felt that their country stood for certain ideals that might
be of world-wide application and that ought to be the salvation
of humanity 5 but they no longer knew with sufficient clarity
what those ideals were or how they could be embodied in
institutions. The Americans were confused in their dealings
with the rest of the world because they were confused in the
handling of their own internal affairs. So when they were
called upon to draw a blueprint for a new world order, they
could enunciate principles but could not show how they could
be made effective. In their foreign policy, as in their social
organization and their intellectual life, ideal and practice
had become divorced from each other. This fundamental
moral weakness was apparent during the First World War,
when the American government formulated a general pro-
gram for world reconstruction that could not be translated
into concrete actualities. It was still more apparent after the
Second World War, when the United States was confronted
by a power whose leaders were the spokesmen of a new and
rival ideal for world order and who knew very clearly what
that ideal was and how it might be carried into effect.

The brief infection of the Americans with imperialist atti-
tudes showed itself most conspicuously in the Spanish-Ameri-

The United States in World Affairs 3 1 9

can War of 1898, as a result of which they annexed Puerto
Rico, the Philippines, and Guam and established a protectorate
over the newly liberated Cubans. In the same year they also
acquired, the Hawaiian Islands. There was no genuine neces-
sity for the war, but the American government was pushed
into it by popular excitement, in which a desire for nationalistic
aggrandizement and a crusading urge to assist the Cubans in
their struggle for independence were curiously mingled,
Throughout the whole decade the Americans were, in fact, in
a bellicose mood 5 they had already threatened to go to war
with the Chileans in 1891 (as a result of the killing of some
American sailors in a Chilean port) and with the British in
1895 (about the boundary line between Venezuela and British
Guiana). This was no doubt due chiefly to the exacerbation
of their internal political conflicts, although it may also have
been a reflection of some kind of psychological rhythm. It
can hardly have been accidental that each of the three minor
(and unnecessary) wars in which the Americans have been
engaged began a little more than thirty years after the ending
of the previous war. 1

After the war with Spain the Caribbean began to become
an American sphere of influence. This process seemed at first
to be a manifestation of outright imperialism. In 1903 Theo-
dore Roosevelt violated the legitimate claims of Colombia
in order to secure the right to build the Panama Canal ; and in
1905 he enunciated the Roosevelt Corollary, by which he
declared his intention of intervening in the internal affairs of
Latin American nations that failed to maintain order and
protect the rights of foreign citizens. Before the end of the
First World War, American armed forces had assumed
partial or complete control over Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican
Republic, and Nicaragua, and had also intervened in Mexico.
This extension of American political power was accompanied
by a considerable increase of American economic interests,

War of 1812 began thirty-one years after the Battle of York-
town. The War with Mexico began thirty-one years after the Battle of
New Orleans. The War with Spain began thirty-three years after Lee's
surrender at Appomattox. Each of these wars began as a result of Ameri-
can actions, and was not precipitated by die other nations involved.

320 The American People

such as the investment of capital, throughout the Caribbean
countries and in South America.

But in spite of the aggressive attitudes of certain American
statesmen, the most important underlying motive for Ameri-
can policy was at all times security and not the desire for
aggrandizement, either political -or economic. The Caribbean
was a part of the American defense system, particularly after
the building of the Panama Canal 5 and although Great Brit-
ain accepted American supremacy in this region at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century, other European powers, par-
ticularly Germany, seemed less amenable. It was primarily
in order to forestall the Europeans, and not in order to enrich
themselves, that the Americans moved into the Caribbean.
Provided that' their vital interests were safeguarded, they
were willing in using their power to show a restraint that
cannot be paralleled in the history of any of the European
imperialist powers. After the First World War the United
States gradually withdrew her armed forces from the countries
she had occupied and repudiated the Roosevelt Corollary. It
was assumed that the Caribbean and Central American peoples
would continue to follow United States leadership in foreign
affairs, but they were no longer disturbed in the conduct of
their internal affairs. This mutual recognition of what was
implied by a sphere of influence set a new and admirable
pattern in relations between a great power and its smaller
neighbors.

Meanwhile the stronger and more advanced Latin Ameri-
can countries further to the south were alarmed by this ex-
pansion of United States interests. Hitherto the two sections
of the American world had had very little contact with each
other. In the twentieth century the growth of trade and
capital investments and the new developments in world
politics began to draw them together j and it seemed to the
Latin Americans that this process was a threat to their inde-
pendence. Journalists like the Argentinian Ugarte insisted
that the United States was consciously planning to control
the entire hemisphere, ,while intellectuals like Rodo of Uru-
guay urged their fellow citizens to preserve their own way of
life, with its rich Catholic and Latin cultural traditions, and not

The United States in World A fairs 3 2 1

to be seduced by the more materialistic and utilitarian stand-
ards of the Yankees. For Rodo, the United States, in spite
of its technological achievements, was a country of barbarians
who were dominated by the drive towards power and material
success and who had no understanding of aesthetic and spir-
itual values. The Yankee differed from the Latin, he declared,
as Sparta differed from Athens. No doubt it was chiefly in
order to compensate for its material weakness that Latin
America was so insistent on its spiritual superiority; yet such
comparisons indicated also that the United States, as seen by
her southern neighbors, no longer represented any noble
ideal- The Latin Americans knew the United States as the
country, not of a democratic way of life, but of big business.
It was not until the administration of Franklin Roosevelt
that they began to see her in a more favorable light.

Meanwhile in the Open Door notes of 1899 & 1900 the
American government had laid the foundations of a Far
Eastern policy. In declaring that China must remain inde-
pendent, instead of being carved into colonies and spheres of
influence controlled by imperialist powers, the American
officials were initially motivated by a desire to keep Chinese
markets open for American traders and investors. It was
largely in order to secure a base for economic expansion in
the Far East that the Philippines had been annexed. But
Americans never developed any important economic connec-
tions with China; and the Open Door policy gradually lost
its expansionist implications and became a measure of defense.
China must be protected in order to check the growth of any
aggressive imperialism in the Far East. After the Russo-
Japanese War of 1904 it became evident that Japan was
potentially the most dangerous of the various powers with
Far Eastern interests; and henceforth the policy of the United
States was to oppose Japanese penetration into China. But
the American people were not yet willing to support a vig-
orous Far Eastern policy, and their government had to limit
itself to verbal protests and declarations of principle. As long
as the Japanese did not threaten" to seize the Philippines and
the East Indies and to acquire control of the whole of the
western Pacific, they did not constitute any obvious threat to

12

322 The American People

American security. While they contented themselves with
seizing pieces of China, the United States, although express-
ing strong disapproval of the process, did not resort to action.

The American intervention in the First World War and
the subsequent controversy about its causes provide an illu-
minating case study of the weaknesses in the American attitude
toward foreign affairs. The real reasons for the intervention
should be sufficiently plain. The American government and a
majority of the American people came to the conclusion that
Germany was a dangerously aggressive power and that Ger-
man control of the eastern Atlantic would be a threat to
American security. As Woodrow Wilson said in September
1914, a German victory would compel the United States to
"give up its present ideals and devote all its energies to
defense, which would mean the end of its present system of
government. . . . England," he declared, "is fighting our
fight." For this reason the Americans abandoned strict neu-
trality early in the war, giving diplomatic and economic
assistance to the British and French, and in 1917 they became
full belligerents. It is possible that they exaggerated the Ger-
man menace and that their entry into the war was therefore
unnecessary j but to take chances on a German victory seemed
foolhardy.

But the Americans were unable to interpret their own
behavior in these simple and rational terms. Instead, they
insisted that they had obeyed all the rules of neutrality} and
when they finally entered the war, they believed that they
had been the victims of an unprovoked attack. Actually, they
took of their own volition the steps that led up to full belliger-
ency} yet they insisted that they had been dragged into the
conflict by forces outside their control. It was this curious
reluctance to accept responsibility for their own behavior that
caused so many Americans during the 1920'$ and 1930'$ to
decide that they had somehow become involved in a conflict
with which they had no concern and that the United States

The United States in World Affairs 323

must therefore adopt legislation by which her neutrality in
any future conflict would be made inviolable.

According to the accepted doctrine of neutral rights in war-
time (in the formulation of which the United States had
played a leading part), the Americans had a right to trade
freely with the civilian populations of all the warring powers.
These rules were violated both by the British and by the Ger-
mans: the British by imposing a blockade of Germany and of
all northern Europe 5 the Germans by using their submarines
to sink British ships, some of which carried American goods or
passengers. Toward the British President Wilson and his
advisors confined themselves to purely verbal protests 5 and
when these protests brought no results, they never threatened
to resort to action. Toward the Germans, on the other hand,
their attitude was much more severe. They insisted, more-
over, on two points, neither of which had any sufficient basis
in international law. They declared, firstly, that American
citizens who chose to travel on British passenger ships should
be immune from danger and were still under the protection
of the American government j and, secondly, that British
merchant ships (in spite of the fact that they were armed with
offensive weapons, and should therefore be classified as war-
ships) might not be sunk without warning. After a long con-
troversy Wilson threatened to break off diplomatic relations
unless Germany gave way j and the Germans then agreed that
no more passenger ships should be attacked and that other
ships should not be sunk without warning. In compelling the
Germans to abandon unrestricted submarine warfare Wilson
had made a considerable contribution to Allied victory. The
British were dependent for their survival on the shipment of
food and munitions from abroad (largely from the United
States), and unrestricted use of the submarine might have
starved them into submission. Although the American govern-
ment claimed to be concerned only with American rights, it
was actually interpreting those rights in such a way as to give
diplomatic and economic assistance to Great Britain.

In the spring of 1917 the Germans revoked their previous
agreement and resumed their attempt to starve out the

324 The American People

British by sinking ships without warningj and they now began
to sink American as well as British ships. The United States
then became a full belligerent. Wilson's previous refusal to
tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare made a declaration
of war on Germany unavoidable. At the same time there can
be no question that a majority of the American people wanted
to ensure an Allied victory and welcomed the final decision j
German attacks on American ships provided them with a
pretext, rather than a reason, for taking an action they be-
lieved to be necessary for their own security. Their under-
lying motive was a fear of the possible consequences of a
German victory. And although they may have been in-
fluenced by the economic ties with Great Britain developed
during the first three years of the war, we need not assume
that economic motives were paramount $ if the Americans had
not been initially sympathetic to the British, they would not
have engaged in shipping them goods and lending them
money on such an extensive scale.

American military participation in the war was relatively
unimportant j Germany, surrendered before the Americans
were ready to undertake large-scale military operations. But
American economic aid to the Allies was of decisive effect.
And at the end of the war the United States was unquestion-
ably the strongest world power, and apparently in a position
to determine the nature of the peace settlement. In the con-
ferences that drafted the Treaty of Versailles America con-
fronted Europe in a conflict that had the quality of a tragic
drama and that illuminated all the divergencies in the spirit-
ual atmosphere of the two continents.

While Clemenceau, with his worldly wisdom and his dis-
trust of Utopianism, was an appropriate representative of
Europe, Woodrow Wilson was remarkably typical of Amer-
ica, Descended from a line of Presbyterian ministers, he saw
life as a battle between good and evil, in which the champion
of righteousness, although he might finally be broken by de-
feat, must never compromise or surrender* He dreamed of
creating a new world order in which war might be made for-
ever impossible 5 and he believed that it was the peculiar
mission of the United States to lead mankind towards this

The United States in World Affairs 325

new order. He succeeded in communicating this faith to the
masses of the people in war-torn Europe, who received him
during the early months after the German surrender as though
he were a semidivine savior and liberator. Yet although Wil-
son could enunciate the general principles of freedom and
justice with a moving eloquence and simplicity, he could not
show how they might be made effective- He had no practical
solution for the tangled problems of Europe, with its agelong
fears and hatreds. Neither the League of Nations nor the
other idealistic proposals in Wilson's Fourteen Points could
maintain peace unless ail the great powers were genuinely
willing to repudiate the past and abandon the use of force.
But as the European statesmen well knew, there was no such
willingness. In reality, as Clemenceau insisted, peace could
be maintained only by a settlement that would keep Germany
permanently weaker than her victorious opponents.

The result was a battle of wills between the two men, end-
ing in a treaty that fully satisfied neither of them and that was
neither genuinely idealistic nor effectively realistic. The peace
conference was a novel by Henry James, translated into ac-
tual life and weighted with tragic implications for the entire
human race. And while Wilson, when confronted by the
Europeans, displayed all the na'fve idealism and the moral
determination of a Jamesian heroine, he recalled also, in the
drive of his will, an earlier symbol of the American character.
He was Ahab doing battle with the white whale.

In the final outcome, what defeated Wilson (like Mel-
ville's Pierre as well as his Ahab) was his own lack of realism'
and his own spiritual pride. He had dramatized the American
participation in the war, not as a necessary measure of security
for the American way of life, but as a crusade for righteous-
ness on a world scale. When it became apparent that the
peace settlement had not created any new world order, the
American people rapidly succumbed to disillusion and re-
solved to forget about the apparently insoluble problems of
Europe. Yet in spite of the reaction to isolationism the Senate
might still have agreed to American membership in the
League of Nations if Wilson had been willing to accept
reservations safeguarding American sovereignty. It is un-

326 The American People

likely that such reservations would have weakened the
League, but Wilson stubbornly and self-righteously refused
to compromise. And after neither the Wilsonians nor the
reservationists had succeeded in obtaining the necessary ma-
jority in the Senate, the question was dropped and the United
States remained outside the League. For the next two decades
the Americans refused to recognize that what happened on
the other side of the Atlantic might vitally concern them and
that they should therefore use their influence to maintain the
settlement which their entry into the war had made possible.
Until 1940 they left European affairs to the Europeans.

During the twenty years between the two wars it was in-
creasingly apparent that the world was approaching unity,
that the destinies of the different nations were becoming in-
extricably entangled with each other, and that what happened
anywhere might alter the lives of all men everywhere. But
for a long time the Americans did not face the political im-
plications of these facts or assume responsibilities in keeping
with their power and their national idealism.

The United States government was officially against war,
in the same way that it was officially against sin 5 and in 1928
it sponsored the Kellogg Pact, by which all the nations of the
world solemnly pledged themselves to renounce war foreVer.
But the Americans would not commit themselves to take any
kind of action against warmakers. In the Far East, by the
Washington Treaties of 1921, Japan was induced to promise
that the status quo should be maintained 5 but when she vio-
lated her promises, first by seizing Manchukuo in 1931 and
afterwards by going to war with China in 1937, the United
States confined herself to verbal jprotests. In Europe condi-
tions remained relatively stable through the twenties, partly
because of the flow of American loans. When the stream of
American money ran dry and the American economy plunged
into the great depression, the political and economic structure
of Europe began to crumble 5 and during several depression
years the Nazis rose to power in Germany. The primary re-

The United States in World Affairs 327

sponsibility for failing to stop Hitler before Germany was
ready for war rested with the British and French; but the
American attitude was far from helpful. The initial American
reaction to the threat of another war was to pass a series of
neutrality acts designed to prevent America's natural allies
from receiving economic assistance. Only in Latin America,
where successive administrations, Republican and Democratic,
worked to remove suspicions and to transform the Monroe
Doctrine into a joint Pan American obligation, did the Ameri-
cans during these years adopt a constructive policy. Toward
Europe and the Far East they acted as though the United
States, instead of being incomparably the richest and strong-
est power in the world, were some second-rate country too
weak to influence the course of events.

During the thirties the powers who wished to overthrow
the status quo formed agreements with each other, and made
their plans for expansion. The ambitions of the Axis presented
a triple threat to the United States. German control of the
eastern Atlantic and Japanese control of the western Pacific
would destroy American security and compel the Americans
to devote most of their energies to defense, and might make
it necessary for the American government to assume dicta-
torial powers. The autarchical economic policies pursued by
both Germany and Japan would enable the German and
Japanese governments to dictate their own terms to American
traders and exclude them from foreign markets. Finally, by
taking advantage of all the internal weaknesses of the United
States, by propaganda, by fifth-column activities, and by the
example of their success, the Axis powers would undermine
American democracy from within. It was therefore impera-
tive that the United States should prevent Germany and
Japan from destroying their opponents in Europe and Asia.

After the outbreak of the Second World War the United
States gradually moved towards belligerency in the same
wavering fashion as in the previous war, but more quickly
and with more conscious awareness of what was at stake. After
the fall of France the American people engaged in a great
debate, and a large majority of them came to the conclusion
that Germany must not be allowed to win control of Europe.

328 The American People

The American government continued to insist that the first
purpose of its foreign policy was to keep the United States out
of war, apparently in order to reassure voters who were not
yet willing to face all the implications of American policy.
But it undertook to supply the British and their allies with
foodstuffs and munitions, and subsequently it began to assist
the British in guarding the convoys by which these goods
were carried to their destination. By the autumn of 1941 the
United States was engaged in an undeclared naval war with
German submarines in the North Atlantic, Meanwhile, no
action was taken against the Japanese as long as they re-
stricted their aggressions to Chinese territory; but when they
began to move southward, in preparation for the seizure of
the East Indies, the American government embargoed sales
of war material and adopted other measures of economic war-
fare. The Roosevelt cabinet was agreed that if Japan actually
attacked the East Indies, the United States must go to war.
How large a proportion of the American people would have
supported them is an interesting question 3 but fortunately for
American morale it was .unnecessary to answer it. Rather than
take her chances on the American decision, Japan decided to
cripple the United States Pacific fleet before proceeding with
her plans of expansion; and on December 7, 1941, the Pearl
Harbor raid put the Americans fully into' the war.

The American achievement in the Second World War, in
both its industrial and its military aspects, was of stupendous
proportions; and its full implications have not yet been di-
gested by public opinion, either within the United States or
elsewhere. The concentrated power the Americans are capable
of amassing transcends the limits of the human imagination;
and if it is intelligently employed, it can become the chief
determining factor in the future history of the human race.

During peacetime, as a result of internal conflicts and faulty
economic mechanisms, the Americans have never realized the
potentialities of their industrial system; and although they
produced goods on a vast scale during the First World War,
Germany surrendered before their strength became fully ef-
fective. But in the Second World War the national energies
over a period of three and a half years were co-ordinated to-

The United States in World Affairs 529

ward a single objective. Inevitably there were cases of error,
confusion, and fraud. One of the great virtues of a democracy,
by contrast with a dictatorship, is that mistakes are fully pub-
licized j and this often causes them to assume a magnified im-
portance. A blunder or an act of corruption is news, whereas
competence attracts little attention. But the shortcomings in
the American performance should not obscure its magnitude.
While they were fighting major wars both in Europe and in
the Pacific, and while they were employing fourteen millions
of their most able-bodied citizens in the armed forces, the
Americans produced war materials valued at nearly ninety
billion dollars a year, creating incomparably the strongest
navy and the strongest air force and one of the strongest
armies in human experience, and at the same time supplying
a large part of the needs of their allies. And during this same
period they actually raised their average civilian standard of
living and increased the volume of civilian consumption.

In the arts of warfare the Americans, as a democratic peo-
ple, have always shown the greatest ingenuity and capacity for
initiative. A large number of both the weapons and the tech-
niques of modern war were originally invented by Americans,
most of the remainder being the work of the British. 2 Peoples
(like the Germans and the Japanese) who haye never ac-
quired the habit of freedom rarely make innovations, even
in warfare,- although they may make themselves formidable
by adopting and organizing innovations that have been made

2 Americans Invented the submarine and die airplane, and have been
responsible for many of the improvements in small arms during the past
two hundred years (the machine gun, for example, was developed mainly
by two Americans, Catling and Maxim)* The British invented the tank
and were mainly responsible for the evolution of the battleship (with
some assistance from American experiments during the Civil War). The
first aircraft carrier was British, and the second was American. The
atomic bomb was a joint British and American product. The Americans
were the first to experiment with paratroopers. The technique of the
blitzkrieg was first worked out by die British General Fuller at the end
of the First World War. The Nazis declared that their methods of eco-
nomic mobilization were copied from American policies during 1917
and 1918, and that they learned both the importance and the specific
techniques of war propaganda partly from Lloyd George and partly
from Woodrow Wilson. Even the German rocket bomb was based on ex-
periments made by American inventors during the 1930*5.

12*

33 The American People

by others. In the Second World War the Americans showed
that their democratic qualities had not been seriously impaired
by the growth of their industrial society and their failure to
solve the problems it had created. The American war record,
considered in detail, was filled with extraordinary examples,
not only of courage and endurance, but also of more pecul-
iarly American traits 5 men accustomed to civilian life, when
exposed to the novel conditions of warfare and suddenly re-
quired to assume unexpected responsibilities, displayed the
same kind of adaptability and resourcefulness as their pioneer-
ing ancestors. Meanwhile, scientists and engineers evolved a
long series of new weapons and instruments of communica-
tion and transportation. Although the most formidable of the
new implements of warfare, the atomic bomb, was an inter-
national enterprise insofar as scientists from several different
countries co-operated in the research that made impossible, the
actual construction of the bomb was done in America and fi-
nanced by the American government, and it was the Ameri-
can air force which first employed it.

The industrial and technological achievements of the Amer-
icans and the quality of their fighting men were the chief
factors in their victories^ but they were effective because they
were directed by leaders who understood how to make full
use of them. Both in Europe a$d (after the disasters of the
first five months) in the Pacific the American high command
conducted the war with a remarkably clear comprehension of
the means at their disposal and the ends they proposed to
achieve. The American method of warfare was to plan an
offensive action, and then to accumulate such an overwhelm-
ing mass of weapons and supplies that victory was certain and
the expenditure of human lives was held to a minimum. War,
in other words, became a series of engineering problems, and
lost much of its uncertainty. The central importance of logis-
tics was inherent in the development of modern technological
warfare 5 but it had never been fully accepted by the military
leaders of most of the European countries, whose minds had
been formed by the professional traditions of the officer castes.
It was a German general who complained that it was impos-
sible to defeat General Eisenhower because he did not play

The United States in World A fairs 3 3 1

the game according to the rules 5 he took no chances, and
never moved until success was certain. Behind General Eisen-
hower were three hundred years of American history, during
which the Americans had acquired the habit of approaching
problems in a severely practical spirit, unimpeded by ir-
relevant notions of honor, glory, or adherence to traditional
rules and conventions.

Obviously the winning of the war was a co-operative enter-
prise, in which each of the leading United Nations played an
indispensable role; but it was American resources, American
ingenuity, and American elan that conquered the Pacific and
won the most spectacular and possibly the most important of
the victories in Europe. At the end of the war, with a navy
surpassing that of all other nations combined, with the world's
strongest air force, with one of its two strongest armies, and
with control of a secret weapon of unparalleled destructivity,
the United States had a global military supremacy that had
never been equaled by any other country in history. Such a
power necessarily carried with it equally extraordinary re-
sponsibilities. It was incumbent upon the United States to as-
sume a position of world leadership.

All the earlier history of the American people, at least
when superficially considered, seemed to have prepared them
for such a role. Whereas each of the nations of western
Europe was organized around a community of race and tradi-
tion from which other peoples were necessarily excluded, the
unifying principles of the American nationality were certain
common social ideals and hopes for the future that were ca-
pable of world-wide extension. The United States had always
been a Messianic nation, and its greatest leaders had always
seen it as an experiment in a new way of living and declared
that its destiny would affect the whole human race. According
to Washington the maintenance of liberty had been mainly, if
not solely, entrusted to American safekeeping, while Lincoln
had called the American republic "the last best hope of earth."
And in spite of certain fears of American imperialism, there
can be no doubt that during the Second World War a krge
proportion of the human race, not only in Europe, but also
in the East, were looking to the United States with hope and

332 The American People

confidence. The Americans, as Wendell Willkie discovered in
1942, had an extraordinary fund of good will throughout the
world.

Yet by 1946 much of this good will had been dissipated.
It would be unfair to conclude simply that the Americans did
not know how to use the power they had acquired* Part of
the decline of world confidence in the United States was due
to inevitable postwar disillusionment, part to the inherent dif-
ficulties of peacemaking. Actually, the United States during
the war years had taken the lead in the drafting of elaborate
plans both for the maintenance of international security and
for financial and economic co-operation with a view to lower-
ing trade barriers and raising world standards of living. It
must be realized, moreover, that the essential elements of
American civilization, its individual freedom and sense of
human equality, could not be imposed upon other peoples
by force. American democracy was a state of mind and not
merely a system of institutions 5 it could be acquired only by
imitation and example. Yet although the Americans could
not establish democracy by fiat, they could at least encourage
it, and they could themselves act by democratic principles.
Unfortunately the course of American postwar policy raised
doubts as to how far the Americans themselves understood
their national ideals and were in the habit of living by them.
When they supported reactionary regimes or did little to
promote democratic institutions in Europe and the Far East,
when they were more concerned with the interests of big
business than with the welfare of the mass of the people,
when they were reluctant to lend a part of their vast resources
for the reconstruction of other countries, or when they showed
that, in spite of their professed belief in equality, they were
infected with the viruses of color prejudice and of anti-
Semitism, then the Americans failed to live up to their historic
responsibilities.

In so doing they have also jeopardized their own security.
For it has gradually become evident that the postwar world
must be divided into two spheres, one dominated by the
United States and the other by the Soviet Union. Like the
United States, the Soviet Union also is a Messianic nation, with

The United States in World Affairs 333

a philosophy and a system of institutions which its leaders
expect to become world-wide; and, unlike the Americans, the
directors of Soviet policy have a complete faith in their creed
and a very clear understanding of all its practical implications*
A division of the world between the principles of democracy
and those of Communism does not make armed conflict neces-
sary; but competition between the two systems is inevitable.
In the last resort the destiny of the human race will depend
upon which of the two systems has more to offer to men and
women, not only in Europe and America but also in Ask and
Africa, which can inspire the greater devotion, and which can
release for constructive purposes the greater fund of human
energy, initiative, and resourcefulness*

The ultimate reason for the doubt and confusion with
which the Americans have faced their postwar responsibilities
is that, they have become doubtful and confused about their
own society. They cannot organize democracy abroad because
they have not yet discovered how to organize it at home. The
disillusioning course of American postwar policy recalls words
written a century and a quarter ago by John Taylor of Caro-
line: "If our system of government produces these bitter
fruits naturally, it is substantially European; and the world,
after having contemplated with intense interest an4 eager
solicitude the experiment of the United States, will be sur-
prised to find, that no experiment at all has been made."

334] CHAPTER XV

Conclusion

HE suicide of Europe has thrust upon the Ameri-
can people the unwelcome responsibilities of lead-

IT

ership in the Western World at a time when they

are also confronted by far-reaching internal read-
justments. During the same half-century the Americans have
been faced by three major new developments, each of which
has necessitated profound modifications in their traditional
mores and institutions. The conquest of the continent, which
absorbed so much of the national energy and determined so
much of the national view of life for nearly three hundred
years, has been completed. The growth of industrial capital-
ism has caused a widespread economic insecurity, which has

been followed by a vast expansion of the powers and responsi-
bilities of government, and has resulted also in a serious cur-
tailment of the personal liberty and equality of opportunity
that have hitherto been the chief characteristics of American
society. And the growth of international conflicts in a rapidly
shrinking world has put an end to the possibility of isolation
and threatens to destroy the whole heritage of Western civ-
ilization. These new problems can be met only by conscious
and deliberate effort, guided by an awareness of the ends to be
reached as well as by a consideration of the available means ,
they cannot be solved by allowing events to take their course.
. As long as there was an open frontier and an unsettled
West, material conditions in themselves promoted equality
and provided opportunity- What was chiefly required of the
government was that it should give men access to public land
without discrimination and should refrain from creating sys-
tems of privilege. In the age of Jefferson and Jackson, de-
mocracy was best served by a state that took as little positive
action as possible. But since the closing of the frontier and
the growth of the big corporations, material conditions have

Conclusion 335

no longer favored freedom and equality. Henceforth, some
kind of deliberate and constructive program must be worked
out. It has become necessary to plan for freedom.

Upon the ability of the American people to deal success-
fully with this situation depends not only their own destiny
but also, in large measure, that of the entire human race. For
the modern world is divided between two rival social systems
and two rival philosophies of life, one of which is based on
the ideal of personal freedom and the other on the ideal of
totalitarian collectivism* And while Western society values
personal freedom, it may finally choose collectivism if it
comes to the conclusion that the alternative is genuine free-
dom only for a few and economic insecurity and exploitation
for the majority. Men are waiting for a convincing demon-
stration of the possibility of maintaining a universally free
way of life in a mechanized economy. To provide such a dem-
onstration is the peculiar and inescapable responsibility of the
Americans. For if their attempt to maintain freedom results
only in chaos and degeneration, or if they finally surrender to
some form of totalitarianism, then it is improbable that lib-
eral ideals can be preserved by smaller and weaker nations
elsewhere.

The immediate problems are practical, but their implica-
tions are spiritual and philosophical j and without a full* aware-
ness of these implications they cannot be solved successfully.
To deal simply with obvious dilemmas as they arise, without
taking thought of ultimate objectives, means bring carried by
the current 5 and in the twentieth century the current of
events is leading toward the totalitarian state. What is needed
is not only a concrete program of economic reform, but also
a reasoned philosophy of freedom and an emotional and re-
ligious faith. Freedom cannot be preserved merely by a prag-
matic approach. As Whitman declared, the preservation of
American ideals depends on the growth of the appropriate
"religious and moral character beneath the political and pro-
ductive and intellectual bases of the States.'* Without this
"religious and moral character" no merely practical proposals
can be effective.

The animating principle of American nationality has been

336 The American People

the belief that the average man can be trusted with freedom
and responsibility, that he does not require the guidance of
an authoritarian Church or of a privileged aristocracy or
bureaucracy, and that whenever he finds adequate opportunity
for exercising initiative, hidden talents and energies will be
released for constructive purposes. This belief, derived from
the Christian faith in the infinite value of the individual soul,
and. brought for the first time to full fruition in the open
spaces of the American continent, has justified itself again
and again in American history from the first settlements in
Virginia and Massachusetts down to the Second World War.
It constitutes the greatest moral and spiritual resource of the
American people. And throughout the history of America it
has exercised a magnetic influence upon the development of
Europe. The revolutionary doctrine of equality, preached by
European radicals but most fully exemplified in the Ameri-
can world, has, in fact, been the chief provocation of Euro-
pean internal conflicts; and the inability of Europe to incor-
porate it into her own system and to adapt her own institur
tions to it has been the main underlying cause of the final
breakdown of the European social order and the resultant
growth of totalitarianism.

Yet although this faith has been the distinguishing feature
of American civilization, and although it has been affirmed by
all those statesmen and intellectuals who have been most
characteristically American, it has never been accepted by all
Americans, nor has it sufficiently permeated the American
mind or found expression in American systems of thought.
Much of American history has been a conflict between the
American ideal of democracy and the European attitudes of
class privilege and government by an elite. And when Amer-
ica has failed, it has usually been because it has not been true
to its own genius but has been too much influenced by doc-
trines and precedents derived from Europe. The most notable
example of this tendency was the Federalist and Hamiltonian
politico-economic system, which was deliberately copied from
European models and was based on a European belief in a
ruling class and distrust of democracy. It was this system,
embodied in American constitutional law, that made possible

Conclusion 337

the growth of capitalism with its attendant inequality and in-
security* In the twentieth century a similar example of Euro-
pean influence has been provided by those radical movements
that have borrowed their ideology from European collectiv-
ism. For while the collectivism of the left professes to believe
in democracy, in reality it is led by men who distrust the
capacity of the ordinary citizen and who argue that he is al-
ways swayed by propaganda and indoctrination; and its real
tendency is toward the formation of a new elite of radicals
who will assume responsibility for the guidance of the masses.
Americans have been too receptive to undemocratic doctrines
because they have not thought sufficiently in American terms;
their theory has always been less bold and mon$ imitative
than their practice. And for the same reason they have too
often been corrupted by racial prejudices and doctrines of
racial inequality wholly inconsistent with their national ideals.
But to assert simply that Americans do not have sufficient
confidence in their own ideals would be too superficial a diag-
nosis. A deeper analysis reveals certain unsolved contradic-
tions within those ideals themselves. For while the Americans
have believed in the right of all men to freedom and oppor-
tunity, they have also exalted the drive of the individual will
toward wealth and power; they have adopted a morality of
personal (and largely material) success; and as a result of
both their economic system and their Calvinist heritage, they
have exalted activity above contemplation and material ac-
cumulation above aesthetic^ intellectual, and spiritual develop-
ment. This emphasis on the will, on conquest, and on a kind
of materialistic asceticism was the natural and appropriate ac-
companiment of the pioneering process; and as long as there
was still empty land to be settled, it was possible to reconcile
it with the democratic ideal Yet there has always been con-
flict between the ideal of freedom for all and the drive of
power-hungry individuals for privilege and success. In fact,
it has always been groups seeking to acquire privileges, or
afraid of losing them, who have turned bade toward Europe
and borrowed European notions of class rule and distrust of
the people. The conflict between the European and the Amer-
ican has been, at bottom/a conflict between different aspects of

338 The American People

the American spirit. And since the settlement of the West and
the growth o capitalism, the continued emphasis on material
conquest has become a cultural lag that is no longer appropri-
ate to the social environment. It can no longer be reconciled
with the democratic ideal; and it is a main cause of that sense
of frustration and maladjustment that is so pervasive a char-
acteristic of the American mind in the twentieth century.

Can democracy be preserved without imposing some kind
of coercive restraint upon the will of individuals? Can men
learn voluntarily to respect the rights of their neighbors, or is
the ideal of freedom for all inherently self-contradictory?
This is the central American problem, and upon its solution
depends the future history of mankind.

In the last resort, as all the early spokesmen of American
democracy recognized, such questions can be answered only
in religious and philosophical terms. Confidence in the human
capacity for freedom depends, as Jefferson declared, on the
belief in an innate moral sense and, as Emerson proclaimed,
on the belief that man has the lawgiver within himself and
can trust his own deepest intuitions. And these are essentially
matters of faith, which are not susceptible of scientific proof
or disproof. Democracy, like every other human enterprise,
is an experiment that involves risks, and there can be no
guaranty of a happy outcome.

But while the history of America omfirms, on the whole,
this trust in human nature, it also suggests that confidence in
the individual is not enough. Man's moral sense and spir-
itual intuitions require the objective support of a general view
of life and of appropriate sooal institutions. Every individual
belongs to a society, and his standards of value are socially
conditioned. And the creation of a view of life and of social
institutions that will corroborate the American democratic
ideal is a task that has remained unfinished. Americans, said
Whitman, "were somehow being endow*d with a vast and
more and more thoroughly-appointed body, and then left
with little or no soul."

Every higludvilization is imbued with a sense of form,
style, and order. The individual feels himself to be a part of
a social unity and harmony, which is regarded as the embodi-

Conclusion 339

ment of universal and objective ideals and as a reflection of
an ultimate harmony in nature. He finds emotional security
and personal fulfillment, not through the assertion of his will
against the natural and social environment, but through par-
ticipation in the processes of nature and in the collective enter-
prise of society. Yet in subordinating himself to the social
order, he does not deify it or endow it with absolute and final
authority (as in the totalitarian states). He is loyal to it only
because, and insofar as, it is an attempt to realize ideals to
which he himself gives spontaneous allegiance and by which
he himself can achieve the full development of his own per-
sonality5 and he recognizes that evil is an inherent element
in human life, that concrete social institutions must always
fall short of ideals, and that the struggle to realize them more
fully is unending. It is only in these terms that the apparent
polarity of freedom and order can be transcended. The syn-
thesis of individual will and social discipline, without which
there can be no high civilization, is to be found, not in the in-
tellectual parts of human nature, but in the sentiment of
patriotism, in the moral sense, in religious idealism, and (as
Whitman declared) in "the manly love of comrades.**

American civilization has never sufficiently developed this
sense of form, order, and underlying harmony, as its litera-
ture, its philosophy, and its economic development abundantly
make manifest. Moreover, its animating standards have be-
come (in the twentieth century) predominantly acquisitive
and competitive, while the more important values of aesthetic,
intellectual, and spiritual development have received little
social sanction or encouragement. Without a deeper and more
comprehensive sense of order, the United States cannot be-
come a high and stable civilization, nor can the Americans as
individuals find emotional security and fulfillment. But this
sense cannot be borrowed from elsewhere (as American intel-
lectuals have sometimes been tempted to believe). Europe
was imbued with a sense of order during its periods of high
civilization 5 but the European order was always feudal and
hierarchical, and has never successfully adapted itself to the
principle of equality. As Whitman insisted, any American or-
der must be a native product, grounded in the concept of hu-

340 The American People

man equality and fostered by a deeper understanding of
American society and the needs and aspirations of the Ameri-
can man.

> And this development of a more vital sense of order is in-
dispensable if the Americans are to retain their freedom. The
United States was able to flourish without it for three hun-
dred years chiefly because of its unique situation its open
frontier and its rapidly expanding economy. But when its so-
ciety became less mobile and more static, both a greater re-
straint on individual ambition and a fuller individual partici-
pation in social enterprises became necessary. And if this prob-
lem is not solved through the growth of a genuine social
idealism, then it can be predicted that America will finally
Jjecome totalitarian./ For totalitarianism is a method of en-
forcing orcfer tJpeifa people who have lost any genuine sense
of unity. Either the Americans will achieve an organic order
based on the free participation of individuals, or they will
succumb to a mechanistic order imposed by an absolute state.
Ether they will give a free allegiance to their society as an
attempt to realize common rational values and liberal ideals,
or they will become merged on a subhuman level in a mass
movement of emotionalism and fanaticism.
^--The foundation of an American order can only be a respect
for the freedom of every individual, in the confidence that by
the fullest development of his own personality he can con-
tribute most fully to the welfare of society and that (since
man is a social being) a true individualism prefers to express
itself in co-operation rather than in conflict This trust in the
individual is the American faith, and like all the faiths by
which men live it transcends reason. Yet although one cannot
prove by intellectual argument that this faith is true, one can
demonstrate that it ns necessary. For a denial of it leads in-
exorably to the enforced order of the totalitarian state.
- The primary purpose of American social and economic in-
stitutions should therefore be to maintain the dignity of indi-
viduals, to extend their freedom, and to provide means for
the fullest and most harmonious development of the human
personality. But since the Civil War this purpose, although

Conclusion 341

still avowed in theory, has ceased to be the guiding principle
of the American economy, The first objective of capitalism
is to maximize production 5 and where the preservation of the
freedom and dignity of the individual personality appears to
be incompatible with greater productivity, capitalism prefers
the latter* But to live by the American faith means to uphold
personal freedom as the only ultimate standard for the judg-
ment of all social and economic development.

Personal freedom was the guiding principle of the agrariair
economy that prevailed in the United States during the eight-
eenth and early nineteenth centuries. The tradition of agrar-
ian democracy is the strongest and the most distinctive ele-
ment in the American inheritance; and the doctrines of its
spokesmen have a permanent validity as the intellectual
foundations of a free economy. If Americans are to regain
their freedom, they must adapt the agrarian system to largfr-
scale production. But this means that the principles of agrar-
ianisxn must be carefully distinguished from those of the cap-
italism that succeeded it and that so largely borrowed agrarian
slogans and used them in its own defense*

Agrarianism upheld the rights of private property, believ^
ing that without it there could be no personal freedom j but
what it defended was the property which was honestly gained
by the "mixing" of labor with nature, not that aojuired by
speculation, legal manipulation, or political influence. It
sought to create a social system in which all men owned prop-
erty, or could hope to acquire it, and in which there could be
none of the "accumulation of wealth by law without industry"
that John Taylor regarded as the essence of aristocracy. It
placed no limits on the property any individual could ac-
cumulate by his own industry, ability, and initiative; but it
opposed all forms of vested interest and special privilege, and
it argued that charters, contracts, and kws of inheritance were
made by society and could be changed when their effect was
to perpetuate unjust inequalities. It believed, moreover, that
given an equitable legal and financial system, which did not
protect monopolies or facilitate speculation, then the proper
regulator of the economy was the free market, and that the

342 The American People

real effect of any political interference with the market was
to create special privileges and to transfer property from those
who had rightfully earned it.

There can be no free economy without a free market, since
the only alternative to regulation by the market is a cen-
tralized planning authority, endowed with coercive powers
and independent of popular pressures. Obviously the activi-
ties of the government must be much broader and more
varied than in the time of Jefferson, but there is an important

Difference between regulation intended to make the market
work more smoothly and more equitably and that which has
the effect of changing a market economy into something else;
and it is only the former kind of regulation that can fairly be
described as "planning for freedom." A first step toward the
creation of a free economy would be the removal of all those
interferences with the free market, such as the tariff and
monopolistic price fixing, that have developed under cap-
italism. But since certain forms of economic enterprise are

.inherently monopolistic, it is necessary to transfer them from
$jivate to public ownership, in the manner exemplified in the
TVA. And since (as Taylor pointed out) "currency and credit
are social rights" and not manifestations of the natural right
of property, they should be under social control.

I_,But the* main objective of a free economy is the widest pos-
sible diffusion of ownership; and while this means the main-
tenance of independent private ownership where it still exists,
in fanning and in small business enterprise, it should involve
radical changes in the organization of large-scale production.
The position ojf the wage earner in the large corporation, hav-
ing no security of employment, no control over the conditions
under which he works, and no share of responsibility for

.. determining the policies upon which his livelihood depends,
is a negation of American ideals of individual freedom, and
initiative. He is not a free man but a "hireling" (in The Star-
Singled Stumer the hireling is classified with the slave).
Even when the wage earner has no specifically economic
grievances, he still suffers from a sense of alienation from the
full rights and responsibilities of manhood; and for this
reason economic adjustments alone are unlikely to prevent

Conclusion 343

conflicts between capital and labor. Whether by legal redefini-
tions of the meaning of property rights, by industrial states-
manship, or by trade union pressure, wage earners should be
able to acquire job security, a participation in management,
and a fair share both in the profits and in the risks of the
corporations for which they work. Such changes may be re-
sisted by many members of the capitalist class, "exclaiming**
(as in the time of John Taylor) "against the invasion of prop-
erty and against levelism," Yet their purpose would be to
maintain those principles in which American capitalism pro-
fesses to believe: individual freedom, private enterprise and
initiative, and the American way of life.

Caught between the conflicting programs of fcig-business
capitalism and big-government socialism, the American peo-
ple have not sufficiently explored the resources of their own
tradition. Yet that tradition, as defined in economics by Frank-
lin, Jefferson, Taylor, the Jacksonians, and Lincoln, and in
literature by Emerson and Whitman, suggests the possibility
of another alternative; and by adhering to it and developing
it the Americans, in the twentieth century as in the eighteenth,
may again liberate themselves by their own efforts and other
nations by their example. To the spiritual core of that tradi-
tion, the belief in human freedom and equality, most Ameri-
cans have remained instinctively loyal. What they lack is a
stronger faith in themselves, a fuller understanding of their
own principles, and a sense of direction.

INDEX

Abolitionbt movement, 84, 216,

217

Absalom! Absalom! 279
Adams, Henry, 253, 266
Adams, John, 86, 102, 137, 141
Adams, John Quincy, 1 48, 151
Adams, Samuel, 89, 92, 93
Agrarianisin, 98, 99, 109-16,
141-9, 150-7, 159, 1 60, 174,
193, 232, 233, 29*~5> 341-3
Agricultural Adjustment Act, 308
Aldrich, T. B., 257
Alien Act, 141
Ambassadors, The^ 263, 264
American^ The, 263
American Federation of Labor,

289

American Tragedy , An y 277
Anderson, Sherwood, 277, 285
Anglican Church, 18, 50, 71, 72,

74> 99

Appointment in Samarra, 280
Architecture, in America, 57, 137,

258, 259, 272
Aristocracy, 5, 6, 15, 17, 18, 46,

48-53* 106-9, "o, 136-41*

143, 151
Arizona, 180
Arkansas, 167, 209
Arnold, Benedict, 103
Arrowsmith, 285
Astor, Mrs., 258

Babbitt, Irving, 257, 283
Banking, 139, 149, 155, 175, 300

Baptist Church, 72, 73, 75, 76,

83

Beecher, Henry Ward, 85
Beecher, Lyman, 84
Benito Cercno^ 201
Benton, Thomas Hart, 155, 2*9
Biddle, Nicholas, 156
Billy Budd y 20 1, 204, 205, 84
Birth rate, 34, 252
Blaine, James G^ 296
Btithcdale Romance > The, 200
Boone, Daniel, 168, 250
Bostjon Manufacturing Company,

234

Botkin, B. A*, quoted, 171
Bradford, William, 26, 30, 31, 32
Brandeis, Louis D., 267, 294, 295
Brazil, 14, 54
Bridger, Jim, 175
Brooks, Van Wyck, 265, 276, 283
Biyan, William Jennings, 296,

297

Burr, Aaron, 138, 147
Byrd, William, quoted, 45

Caldwell, Erskine, 281
Calhoun, John C., 115, 215
California, 14, 177, 178, 179,

1 80
Calvinism, 37, 61-75, 78-85,

187, 188, 189, 230, 337
Canada, 94, 118, 135
Capitalism, n, 13, 21, 60, 109,

116, 139, 140, I4^> "3> "9-

32, 237-42, 246, 247. 334,
341

ii Index

Carnegie, Andrew, 237
Carson, Kit, 175
Case of M. Vatdemar, The, 197
Cask of Amontillado, The, 197
Cather, Wflla, 277, 278, 279, 285
dunning, W. E., 187
Chaplin, Charlie, 250, 261
Charles River Bridge case, 131
Chase, Samuel, 93
Chile, 4, 14, 319
China, 179, 321, 322, 326
Civil Service Reform, 258
Clark, John Bates, 256
Clay, Henry, 149* 159
Cleveland, Grover, 296
Clinton, George, 99, 147
Colman, Benjamin, 71
Colombia, 319
Colorado, 180
Colter, John, 175
Columbus, Christopher, 14
Committees of Correspondence,

93

Confederation, Articles of, 95
Congregationalist Church, 50, 51,

67-75

Connecticut, 36, 50, 51, 67, 74
Conkling, Roscoe, 296
Continental Congress, 94, 95, 101
Contracts, sanctity of,^io8, 1 20,

123, 126, 130-2, '139, 144,

230, 257

Coolidge, Calvin, 302, 303
Cooper, James Fenimore, 187
Copley, J. S., 58, 137
Cotton, John, 70
Crane, Stephen, 271
Crevecceur, J. Hector St. John de,

quoted, 33, 38,40,97
Crockett, David, 171
Croly, Herbert, 294, 295
Cuba, 135, 319
Curtis, G. W., 25-6

Dakota, 1 80

Dartmouth College case, 131

Darwinism, 230

De Lancey, James, 99

Delaware, 96, 124

Democratic Party, 153, 157, 296

Democratic Vistas ; 193, 194

Democracy, growth of, in Amer-
ica, 10, 12, 1 8, 19,46,48, 55,
73-5> 88-9, 90, 9*> 98, 99>
ISO, 151

Dewey, John, 266, 267, 274

Dickinson, Emily, 259

Dominican Republic, 319

Donner Party, 177

Dos Passes, John, 278, 285

Douglas, Stephen, 159

Dreiser, Theodore, 271, 275,
277, 278

Duke, James B., 237

Duncan, Isadora, 275

Dutch, in America, 33, 36, 71, 72

Dwight, S. E., quoted, 80

Eakins, Thomas, 259
Edison, Thomas A., 237
Education, 154, 245, 273
Edwards, Jonathan, 61, 7885,

173, 1 88, 196, 197, 216, 269
Eisenhower, Dwight, 330, 331
Eliot, C. W., 273
Eliot, T. S., 282
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 83, 1 88-

92, 194, 255, 338
England: see Great Britain
Entail, 52, 99
Eureka, 197

Fanners, 16, 18, 36, 37, 41-8,
55> 57> 74, 88, 96, 98, 109,

I4O, l8l, 210-12, 286-8,

196, 297, 306, 308

Index

Farrand, Max, quoted, 108, 1x7,

121, 123, 124

Farrell, James T., 281
Faulkner, William, 279
Federal Reserve Act, 300
Federal Trade Commission, 300
Federalist Party, 129, 136-41,

Financier, The y 277

Fink, Mike, 171, 250, 261

Finney, C. G., 84

Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 173, 280

Fletcher versus Peck, 131, 144

Florida, 14, 135

Fiance, 20, 41, 90, 103, 104,
135, 140, 148, 1 66, 322, 327

Franklin, Benjamin, 58-9, 60,
6l, 98, 109, 1 10, 123; quoUt
40, 41, 4*>4*, 87, 91, HI

Fremont, John (X, 176

Frost, Robert, 281

Gadsden, Christopher, 93
Galloway, Joseph, 94, 99
Garland, Hamlin, 272
Gates, Horatio, 103
George, Henry, 293
Georgia, 53, 72, 96, 131, 209
Germans, in America, 5, 33, 36,

181, 234, 244
Germany, 6, 136, 314, 320,

322-5, 326-8, 329
Gilder, R. W., 257
Glasgow, Ellen, 275
Godkin, E. L., 256
GoUen Botol, The> 263, 264, 318
Gould, Jay, 238
Granger movement, 296
Grant, IL S., 222, 223
Great Awakening, 72-5, 173, 188
Great Britain, 6, 15-21, 33,

46-8, 86-104, 1 1 8, 135, 136,

140, 148, 160, 178, 235, 313,

Great Britain

314, 319, 320, 322, 323,

327-8, 329

Great Gatsby, The, 280
Great Plains, 175, 176, 181
Greeley, Horace, 159
Greenbacker morcmcnt, 296
Greene, Nathaniel, 104
Guam, 319

Haiti, 319

Hamilton, Alexander, 205, 109,

1x6, 13741, 160, 231
Harding, Warren G., 302
Harriman, E. H., 237
Harrison, W^. H.> 158
Hawaiian Islands, 319
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 196, 198

200, 20 1

Hearst, William Randolph, 313
Hemingway, Ernest, 279, 285
Henri, Robert, 271
Henry, Patrick, 74, 99
Hifl, James J., 237
Hispanic America: see Latin

America
Hofloway, Emery, quoted, 194,

195

Homestead Act, 223
Hoover, Herbert, 302, 305, 306,

308

Hof-Frog, 197
Hopkins, Samuel, 84
House of the Seven Gables, The,

199, 200

Howells, W. D., 272, 280
HucUeberry Finn, 173, 260, 261
Huguenots, 33, 71
Human Nature and Conduct, 267
Hutchms, R. M., 274
Hutchinson, Mrs., 75, 188
Hntchinson, Thomas, 99

iv l?idex

Idaho, 1 80

Illinois, 167, 207

Immigration, 3-8, I5~39> 48,

181, 234, 235, 244-6
Indentured Servants, 18, 32, 54
Indiana, 167
Indians, 3, 4, 5, 7, 15, 21, 25, 28,

30, 34, 3 6 > 45 68 9 J > X 66,

167, 168, 181
Industrial Workers of the World,

289
Industrialism, 12, 60, 146, 149,

154, 174, 212, 223, 226,

233-7

Inflation, 50, 74, IOI, 119
Internal improvements, 149, 155,

*75> 215
Interstate Commerce Act, 295,

299,300
Iowa, 167, 175
Irish, in America, 5, 234, 244,

245

Irving, Washington, 187
Italians, in America, 6, 33, 234,

244

Jackson, Andrew, 148, 150-7,

167

James, Henry, 259, 261-5, 269,
. 275, 282, 317, 318, 325
James, William, 266-70
Japan, 136, 179, 314, 3**> 3">

326-8, 329
Jefferson, Thomas, 41, 43, 57, 61,

109-16, 122, 134, 135, 137,

138, 140, 141, 142, 146-8,

161, 270, 338
Johnson, Andrew, 224
Johnson, Edward, quoted, 68
Johnson, Tom, 297

Kardiner, Afaram, quoted, 251
Kellogg Pact, 326

Kent, Chancellor, 132
Kentucky, 118, 166, 167, 289
Knights of Labor, 289
Knox, Henry, 119

La Follette, Robert M., 297, 299

Lamb, John, 93

Landowners, 16, 18, 36, 45, 50,

52, 53, 106
Land speculation, 40, 45, 50, 1 1 5,

140, 149, 293
Latin America, 4, 5, 7, 14, 15,

20, 21, 135, 313, 319-21, 327
League of Nations, 124, 325, 326
Lee, Anne, 76
Lee, Ivy, 301
Lee, R. H., 1 20, 1 29
Leggett, William, 154
Lewis, Sinclair, 277, 278, 285
Ligeia, 197
Lilienthal, David, 311
Lincoln, Abraham, 159, 163, 171,

175, 2O6, 208, 220, 221, 222,

224, 232, 331

Literature, in America, 183-205,
256, 257, 259-64, 271, 272,
275-85

Locke, John, 56, 107, 109
Locofoco Movement, 154, 193
Lost Lady, The, 278
Louisiana, 118, 135, 209
Lowell, James Russell, 256
Loyalists, 75, 88, 96-8, 103, 104

Mabie, H. W., 257
Madison, James, 108, 117, 118,
121, 124, 125, 135, 148, 263
"Manifest destiny," 134, 176
Marble Faun, The, 200
Marshall, John, 109, 130-2, 231
Marx Brothers, 283
Marxism, 20, 78, 1 86, 271, 281

Index

Maryland, 16, 18, 53, 96, 150,

208
Massachusetts, 15, 21, 36, 50, 51,

67, 72, 74* 9*> l*9> 13 *> 2 <>7
Mather, Cotton, 51, 67, 70, 71,

198

Mather, Increase, 51, 70
Mauldin, William, 282
McAlister, Ward, 258
McClellan, G. B., 222
McCormick, C. H., 237
McDougaB, Alexander, 93
McKinley, William H., 296, 298
Mechanics, 42, 47, 55, 74, 88,

92, 96, 109, 140, 149
Melville, Herman, 83, 185, 196,

200-5, 257, 269, 276, 284,

325

Mercantilism, 21, 89, 90
Merchants, 16, 1 8, 21, 46, 50,

5*> 52, 55>7<>>7i>88, 90, 97,

120, 136

Methodist Church, 72, 83
Mexico, 3, 14, 15, 56, 135, 176,

178, 179, 319
Mississippi, 207, 209
Missouri, 167, 175, 215
Moby Dick y 83, 201-3, 325
Monopoly, 154, 239, 290, 294,

297, 300, 342
Monroe, James, 135
Monroe Doctrine, 136, 327
More, Paul Elmer, 257, 283
Morgan, Daniel, 104
Morgan, J. P., 237, 255
Mormon Church, 177
Morris, Gouverneur, 117, 121
Morris, Robert, 98
"Mountain men," 176
Mudcrakers, 297

Negroes, 3> 7, 52-4* 73>
224-8

Neutral rights, 134* 135, 323
Nevada, 180

New Deal, 286, 293, 306-12
New England, 16, 1 8, 36* 49>

57, 67-71, 74-83* 88, 99*

187, 1 88, 234, 256, 291
New Hampshire, 36, 72, 131
New Jersey, 33, 72, 96, 124
New York, 33, 36, 50, 5*> 7*>

j2, 74, 76, 77 88, 291
Nicaragua, 319
Norris, Frank, 271
North Carolina, 16, 18, 37, 45?

88, 96

Norton, Andrews, 1 88
Norton, C, E. 256, 262
Noyes, G. W,, quoted, 77
Noyes, John Humphrey, 77, 7$

O*Hara, John, 280

Ohio, 167, 207

Open Door policy, 133, 314, 321

Oregon, 135, 177, 178

Paine, Tom, 33, 40, 88
Painting, in America, 57, 58, 137,

259, 271, 281
Panama Canal, 319, 320
Parker, Theodore, 187
Parrington, V. Lu, quoted, 45,

120, 129, 194, 255

Pennsylvania, 16, 36, 37, 7 2 > 73

75, 88, 96, 98> 289
people's Party, 296
Perfectionism, 77
Philippines, 319, 321
Philosophy, in America, 26670
PUrre, 201, 202-3, 325
Pilgrims, 24-32
Pincfcney, Charles, 122
Planters, 18, 37, 46, 5 2 ~4> 55

88, 92, 96, 109, I37 209*14
Plymouth, 15, 24* 25, 28-32

VI

Poe, Edgar Allan, 83, 196-8, 269,

276

Polk, James K., 178
Portrait of a Lady, The, 26$
Pragmatism, 20, 266-70
Presbyterian Church, 71, 73, 83
Primogeniture, 52, 99
Progress and Poverty, 293
Prohibitionist movement,- 84, 173,

216, 303
Promise of American- Life, The,

294

Public land policies, 169, 174
Puerto Rico, 319
Puritanism, 16, 18, 21, 51, 67

71, 84, 187, 1 88, 199

Quakerism, 1 6, 36, 50, 72

Race prejudice, 54, 225-8, 332,

337
Railroads, 181, 223, 234, 294,

295

Randolph, Edmund, 117
Reader? Digest, 233
Reconstruction, Southern, 2246
Religion, 8, 9, 15, 16, 18, 30, 49>

50,51,61-85, 173,216
Republican Party (17911828),

130, 140-1, 146-51
Republican Party (1854- ),

175, 219, 302
Revivalism, 725, 83, 173
Rhett, R. B., 219 ""

Rhode Island, 50
Richardson, J. D., quoted, 153
Roberts, Elizabeth Madox, 280
Robinson, Edwin Arlington, 271
Rockefeller, John D., 237, 243,

255> 301

Rodo, J. E., 320, 321
Roosevelt, Franklin D. 306, 307,

321

Index

Roosevelt, Theodore, 2989, 302,

3*3> 319

Roosevelt Corollary, 319, 320
Russia, 6, 135, 235, 321, 332,

333
Ryder, A. P., 259

"Sad Sack/' 282
Scarlet Letter, The, 199
Schlesinger, A. M., Jrl, quoted,
IO2

Scotch-Irish, in America, 33, 37,

7ir7*> 73
Sca'rs, Isaac, 93
Sedition Act, 141, 148
Separatists, 74, 76, 79
Shakerism, 76, 77
Shays*s Rebellion, 119, 122
Shepard, Thomas, 68, 70
Sherman, W. T., 222, 223
Sherman Antitrust Act, 295, 299,

300
Short Hfff$y Life of Francis

Macomber, The, 280
Slater, Samuel, 233
Slave trade, 53, 208, 220
Slavery, 7, 52-4, 84, 97> HS>

121, 207-20, 224
Sloan, John, 271
Smith, Adam, 109, 139, 154, 230
Smith, Jedediah, 175
Smith, Joseph, 1778
Socialism, 154, 292, 311, 335,

^ 337

Sons of Liberty, 92, 93, 140
South Carolina, 16, 18, 37, 88,

96, 98, 209

Soviet Union, see Russia
South America, see Latin America
Spain, 5, 6, 14, 15, 20, 21, 118,

Spencer, Herbert, 230
Squatters, 169, 174

Index

VII

States rights, 124, 217

"Stay" laws, 119

Stieglitz, Alfred, 275

Stevens, Thad, 225

Story, Joseph, 132

Stuart, Gilbert, 137

Sullivan, Louis, 272

Sumner : Charles, 225

Sumner,W. G., 256

Supreme Court, 126, 130-2, 148,

231
Swedes, in America, 33

Taft, William H., 299

Taney, Roger B., 109, 131, I3 2

Tariff legislation, 139, H3> X 49>
215, 223, 231, 258, 293, 300,
302

Taylor, John, of Caroline, 109,
115, 142-6, 148, 149? !$<>>
154; quoted, 309, 333? 34*>
342

Taylor, Zachary, 158
Tender is the Night, 173, 280
Tennessee, 1 1 8, 152, 167
Tennessee Valley Authority, 311,

312* 34 2
Texas, 178, 209
Theology, 56, 62-71, 78-85
Thomson, Charles, 93
Thoreau, H. D., 192-3
Titan, The, 277
Tocqueville, Alexis de, quoted,

106, 172, 183, 184, 251
Tories, see Loyalists
Trade unionism, 149, 28890,

308

Transcendentalism, 1 88
Twain, Mark, 171, I73> 255,

259-61, 276
Tyler, John, 158

U. S. A,, 285

Ugartc, Manuel, 320

Unitarian Church, 71, 79 187,

188

United States Steel, 238, 291
Utah, 176, 178

Vanderbilt, Cornelras, 237

Van Buren, Martin, 155, 156,

157

Van Doren, Carl, quoted, 41, 87,

VcWen, Thomein, 237, 271, 284

Venezuela, 319

Vermont, 36, 77

Virginia, 15, 16, 18, 21, 24, 25,

37> 5 2 53, 74, 9 2 > 9*> "5
207, 208, 209

Wars: French and Indian, 90, 91 ;
of Independence, 95, 99-105;
of 1812, 135, 148, 3195 with
Mexico, 179, 319* Civil, 22 -
3; with Spain, 318, 319; first
World, 322-4; second World,

235? 3 2 7~3 l

Warren, Robert Perm, 281
Washington, George, 90, 102-5,

119, 129, 134* *35> *3:

140, 147.331
Webster, Daniel, 157
Weed, Thurlow, 157-9, Io1
Wendell, Barrett, 256, 257
West, James, quoted, 251
Wharton, Edith, 275
Whig Party, 157-9
Whitefield, George, 72
Whitman, Walt, 83, I34>
193-5, 257; quoted, 284, 335>

338 S 339
Whitney, Eli, 208

viii Index

Wilder, Thornton, 280 Women, 172, 173, 252, 280

Willkie, Wendell, 332 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 272, 275
Wilson, Woodrow, 299-300,

3226 Yancey, W. L., 219

Wings of the Dove, The y 263, Yafcoo Lands, 131

264, 317 Young, Alexander, quoted, 68

Wolfe, Thomas, 278 Young, Brigham, 178*