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A NEW HISTORY
OF THE
UNITED STATES
By William Miller
GEORGE BRAZILLER, INC.
NEW YORK 1958
William Miller 1958
All rights in this book are reserved. For information
address the publisher, George Braziller, Inc.,
215 Fourth Avenue, New York 3, New York.
The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to use selections
from the following books and poems:
The quotations on page 3 19 from "The White-Man's Burden" by Rudyard
Kipling in The Five Nations by Rudyard Kipling, published by Doubleday &
Company, Inc., in the United States, by the Macmillan Co. of Canada Ltd.
in Canada, and by Methuen & Co. Ltd. in the British Commonwealth and
Empire other than Canada. With the permission of Mrs. George Bambridge
and the publishers.
The quotations on pages 368-369 from "The Dispossessed," reprinted by
special permission from the February 1940 issue of Fortune Magazine;
Copyright 1940 by Time Inc.
The quotations on pages 189-190 from The Mind of the South by W. J.
Cash, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., with the permission of Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc.
The quotations on page 287 from "Unguarded Gates," by Thomas Bailey
Aldrich in American Issues by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, published by J. B.
Lippincott Company.
The quotations on page 348 from "The Hill" by Edgar Lee Masters in
Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, published by The Macmillan
Company. With the permission of Mrs. Edgar Lee Masters.
The quotation on page 393 from The Growth of the American Republic,
Volume 2, by S. E. Morison and H. S. Commager, published by the Oxford
University Press, Inc., and with the permission of the publisher.
The quotations on pages 250-251 from The Cowboy by P. A. Rollins, pp.
253-255, published by Charles Scribner's Sons, and with the permission of
the publisher.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 58-11479
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For VIRGINIA, GREG and, PAT
Contents
Introduction xi
1. The Four Worlds of the Fifteenth Century 3
2. El Dorado and a Place to Hide 23
3. The Contest for North America 57
4. These United States 93
5. An Agrarian Republic in a Revolutionary Epoch 127
6. The American Way of Life 153
7. The Victorious North 184
8. The Defeated South 211
9. The Wild West 238
10. Tooth and Claw in the World of Business 259
11. "Morganization" and the Middle Class 285
12. The Messianic Impulse 319
13. Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades 347
14. The One World of the Twentieth Century 388
Books for Further Reading 439
Index 451
Maps
Prepared especially for this book by Theodore R. Miller
Expansion of European Cultures:
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 9
European Claims in North America: 1750 91
Territorial Expansion of Continental United States 196
Per Capita Income, 1949, by Nations 430
Acknowledgments
In writing this New History of the United States I have had counsel
from my scholarly friends. I especially wish to acknowledge the
enlightening criticism I received from Professors Frank Freidel of
Harvard, Richard Hofstadter of Columbia, Robert R. Palmer of
Princeton, and Frank Thistlethwaite of St. John's College, Cam-
bridge (England), all of whom were generous enough to read much
of this work in manuscript; and Professors Fred H. Harrington of
Wisconsin and William E. Leuchtenburg of Columbia, who read the
work in galleys. None, of course, is responsible for any errors that
may remain or for interpretations in which I have persisted.
I also wish to express my appreciation to Howard Warrington and
Prentice-Hall, Inc., for permission to adapt, especially in chapters
five and nine of the present work, certain material I wrote originally
for their publication, The United States: The History of a Republic,
of which they own the copyright.
It is a pleasure for me to acknowledge the talented and willing
service of my typist, Mrs. Christine G. Loring.
WILLIAM MILLER
Ridgefield, Conn.
April 1958
Introduction
Amid the continuing flow of writings on American his-
tory, this is one of the few notable books to address itself to the
mature general reader. Those who would like to explore the fascinat-
ing "why" of American history, cutting loose from much irrelevant
detail and soaring beyond textbook accounts, will find William
Miller's A New History of the United States exciting and enlighten-
ing. They will learn what I should think adults would like to know
about their nation's development.
Far too many Americans by the time they leave school have
learned and re-learned certain aspects of United States history to
a point of bored indifference. In elementary grades they were ex-
posed to the early explorers and the Founding Fathers; later they
memorized lists of elections, tariffs, and treaties. At worst, they
acquired a factual knowledge of the bare bones of history which
enabled them to answer true-false examinations, and prepared them
better to participate in quiz shows than to understand their nation's
past. They studied not enough of the "why" and too much of the
"what."
Some fortunate others have retained their excitement about
American history because they took some of the truly excellent
history courses in which they learned not only relevant facts but
also their meaning. They became familiar with the flesh and sinew
as well as the bones of history, and it had some value for them be-
sides that of obtaining a passing grade. Even this happy minority
will profit from Miller's reappraisal because it will direct their
minds, now older and more sophisticated, in new directions.
The reading of good history is a continuing quest for those
meaningful parts*of our distinctive past that can help us understand
xii Introduction
the patterns of the present and the directions of the future. Each age
in consequence has developed its own syntheses of American
history.
The historians and chroniclers among the early settlers saw
divine manifestations in many natural phenomena, and the shaping
of American destiny through a wonder-working providence. Most
of the generation of the Founding Fathers and their immediate suc-
cessors turned to history and biography as eulogistic patriotic exer-
cises to build fervid support for the young republic and its leaders.
The founders became noble, veracious, and infallible in every way
Olympian.
Still later generations after the Civil War, seeking to be more
scientific than their forebears, discarded the myth of the cherry
tree, but continued to look with awe upon the gallery of national
heroes from Washington through Abraham Lincoln and Robert E.
Lee, as being almost superhuman in their perfection. The emphasis
continued to be upon political and constitutional development or
in more scholarly works, on the origins and growth of governmental
institutions. For the most part history seemed to reinforce reverence
for existing institutions, to be a handmaiden of the defenders of
the status quo. Its task was more to support than to explain the
America of the Gilded Age.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, as the forces of re-
form which precipitated the Progressive era began to gather
strength, a search for new themes and a new iconoclasm wrought a
revolution in historical writing. In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner,
speaking at the Chicago World's Fair, argued that the main influ-
ence on American history was not the development of political
institutions from obscure Roman or Germanic origins, but the im-
pact of the frontier upon American society. As historians explored
and exaggerated Turner's thesis, they wrote a new and even more
nationalistic America saga hailing western settlement, development
of transportation and communication, and the exploits of the heroic,
democratic frontiersman. Other Progressives, critical of the mal-
functioning of some governmental institutions which had become
sacred with time, began to challenge the Olympian position of the
Founding Fathers. Charles A. Beard created an uproar in 1913
Introduction xiii
by suggesting that in part economic motives had led them to frame
the Constitution.
As Turner introduced western expansion as a theme in American
history, so Beard established economic factors. In the 1920s, social
history received a new emphasis as Arthur M. Schlesinger and
Dixon Ryan Fox began editing the History of American Life series.
In 1927, Vernon L. Parrington published the first two volumes of
Main Currents in American Thought, which in ardently Jeffer-
sonian terms appraised American intellectual history. Out of this
broadening of the horizons of the historians came new general
studies of American history which did far more than any of their
predecessors to explain the past and throw light on the present.
Outstanding among these general works was The Rise of American
Civilization by Charles and Mary Beard, published in 1927.
Not all of the new history was as wise and mellow as it might
have been. Just as some of the most ardent of Turner's followers
made all history revolve around the West, some who followed in
Beard's footsteps saw it wholly in economic determinist terms or
forced it into a crude Marxist mold. Others, fascinated by the ideas
of Freud, tried to fit biography into a rigidly psychoanalytic pattern
thus trying to explain a spectacular political career in terms of
a painful sibling relationship. Still others, caught up in the icono-
clastic spirit of the twenties, tore from Washington and other heroes
not only their pedestals, but most of their dignity, and all of their
meaning.
William Miller's A New History of the United States succeeds in
escaping entirely the pitfalls of the painfully modern "interpreta-
tions." At the same time it offers the reader a view of American
history illuminated by the best modern work in the different fields
of social thought.
In A New History of the United States, the reader will find a judi-
cious interweaving in bright hues of many of the themes of American
history. To Miller, the warp is not political development or a syn-
thesis of Presidents, but the explosion out of Europe onto American
soil of vigorous, ambitious people, bringing with them long-estab-
lished institutions which underwent rapid modification in the New
World. The central thread is economic not of a doctrinaire deter-
xiv Introduction
minist sort, but complex and everchanging, interacting with social,
intellectual, and political forces. The emphasis is upon people and
events, and out of these grows the synthesis.
The viewpoint is necessarily different from that of earlier surveys
of American history. William Miller has written from the vantage
point of the middle of the twentieth century, in an age of growing
organization of men and machines at home, and of frantic quest to
maintain a precarious "balance of terror" in a thermonuclear world.
He has stressed those factors which help explain how we have
arrived at this era, and has sketched the traditions and institutions
which are helping to shape our future. This is peculiarly American
history for today.
FRANK FREIDEL
A New History of the United States
Chapter One
The Four Worlds of the
Fifteenth Century
The very first map to show the New World was that
drawn in 1500 by Juan de la Cosa, the best cartographer of the
day, who had shipped with Columbus on his voyages of discovery
in 1492 and 1493. Like his rivals, Cosa dressed up his map with
ships, castles, Madonnas, kings, and other talismans and trumpery.
But most conspicuous among his renderings, and most meaningful,
was one of huge St. Christopher bearing Christ on his back through
"that river without a bridge which can only be crossed at great
peril of drowning." "Do thou who art so tall and strong," a holy
hermit is said to have advised the pagan giant seeking Christ, "take
up thine abode by the hither bank, and assist poor travelers to
cross; that will be very agreeable to Our Lord, and mayhap He will
show Himself to thee." Christopher did the hermit's bidding and
one night a small Child cried out for help. He taxed the incredulous
giant with the weight of "the whole world and Him Who created it,"
yet was deposited safely on the other side. Christopher means
"bearer of Christ"; as Cosa knew, it was more than a name to
Columbus.
Christopher Columbus, whose own unusual height and shock
of red hair lent him greater distinction than his origins, was born
in 1451 in the declining city of Genoa to an artisan's family that
had seen its best days. In his boyhood, everyone was familiar with
the legends of the Saints, not least with that of Columbus's Patron.
In the troubled times of the waning Middle Ages faith itself had
come to rest largely on the belief in saintly intercession, and the
superstition had become common that "it sufficed to have looked
3
4 The Four Worlds of the Fifteenth Century
at a St. Christopher, painted or carved, to be protected for the
rest of the day from a fatal end." This superstition Columbus may
well have shared. In later years of bedevilment and frowning for-
tune, in any case, his Saint's connection with it helped sustain
Columbus's faith in his own ever weightier project.
Mysticism and materialism were well mixed in the obsesseid and
ambitious discoverer. In the opening paragraphs of the journal of
his first voyage, he laid out this program for his venture, his life,
and his eternal reward:
"By the route of the Occident," the route "by which no one to
this day knows for sure that anyone has gone," he would sail to the
world of the Great Khan of the Indies, incidentally making "a new
chart of navigation" as he went. On arrival he would seek out "the
manner in which may be undertaken the conversion to our Holy
Faith" of the "princes and peoples" there. This accomplished, he
would enlist the converts in Christendom's life and death struggle
with the world of Islam from which Spain herself, after seven hun-
dred years, had only just won her freedom. And for all this, the
King and Queen of Spain would provide "that henceforth I might
call myself by a noble title and be Admiral-in-Chief of the Ocean
Sea and Viceroy and Perpetual Governor of all the islands and
mainlands that I should discover . . . and that my eldest son should
succeed me, and thus from rank to rank for ever."
THE TROUBLED WORLD OF CHRISTENDOM
No age unless it be our own needed a "New World" more than
the age of Columbus. During the century before his birth the
whole of Christendom had been staggered by visitations that drove
most men to the edge of sanity and many thousands mad. In the
1340s and 1350s epidemics of bubonic plague, of which the Black
Death of 1348 was only the most severe, wiped out a third of the
people of western Europe. A hundred years of almost continuous
warfare then cut down the flower of the surviving families. The de-
struction of property and the breakdown of production became
such that the land could no longer support even the remaining
population, and starvation added hideously to the epoch's toll.
This was not all. The enduring calamity in feudal agriculture
The Troubled World of Christendom 5
was matched by a century of faltering trade. Commodities of
every sort became so scarce in Christendom that prices rose
continually, mocking even the wealth of kings. Land-poor nobles
struggling to keep face at court, to maintain soldiers in the field, and
to offer respectable hospitality at home, faced an ever-worsening
predicament. The boldest of them set up as robber barons and
waylaid defenseless travelers for the gold they carried. Others, in
place of the customary feudal services, increasingly demanded
money rents and other money payments of their impoverished
serfs. For some serfs this marked the beginning of freedom of
contract and a step toward citizenship. But it only ground down
most of those who clung to the old ways on the stricken soil, and
transformed many of those who fled into beggars, scavengers,
thieves, and convicts.
In the half-deserted villages and the stagnant commercial towns,
the loss of opportunity and the loss of hope, as a fourteenth-
century chronicler says, turned men of all classes into "brutes de-
void of sense and reason." Insurrections against the rural aristocracy
and against town businessmen who fiercely hugged their old
commercial and industrial monopolies became commonplace. And
eventually the popular uprisings grew so morbidly so aimlessly
bloodthirsty that "men became disgusted with life."
Nor could they find solace in religion. In the thirteenth century
the Roman Catholic Church had attained its greatest power.
Economically, it owned the most land and had the largest income in
Europe; spiritually, it engaged the profound allegiance of the
people; politically, it dominated their worldly lords. But the
Church, like society, had fallen upon evil days. The very Crusades,
by which in the twelfth century it temporarily recaptured and held
the Holy Land from the infidel, had tempted its soldiers and
pilgrims with the vast and beguiling riches and the pagan learning
of the East. This helped to secularize the faithful. As feudalism
declined, moreover, national kings grew in power and pretense and
a run of venal popes began to cater to them. Gradually this
tarnished the spiritual charm of the Church, weakened its political
grip, and reduced its wealth.
Corruption then fed upon itself. To maintain Church income,
6 The Four Worlds of the Fifteenth Century
Church offices, not excepting the Papacy, were with growing
frequency auctioned off. To reimburse the purchasers and assuage
their cravings, sins were ever more often remitted for a price, and
business in relics boomed. The superstitious remained in awe and
terror of the Church. But in the fifteenth century more and more
cynics came to see it simply as a gilded engine of extortion, while
the pure in heart and humble in spirit quaked before its offenses
to Christ.
Strong-minded evangelists or puritans, as they came to be
called from time to time had sought to reform the Church and
rediscover the Saviour. They were abetted after 1450 by the
circulation of the first printed Bibles, many editions of which were
promptly translated from dead Latin into the common tongues of
the day. These opened the message of Christ to the individual and
at the same time sapped the authority of the shameless clergy. But
the Popes responded to the alleged heresies that resulted by making
the Inquisition all the more indiscriminate and heartless, while
they themselves sank deeper into Babylonian plots and pleasures.
The same churchmen who patronized the masterful artists, scien-
tists, poets, and philosophers of the early Renaissance also openly
sired families, maintained harems in the Vatican, and kidnaped and
murdered for ransom.
There were half-decades of peace in Christendom in the fifteenth
century which interrupted the downward tendency of trade, and
islands of security and learning where men preserved the knowledge
of the world that trade brought. Yet for most of the time and most
of the people Europe remained an afflicted place. In it, as the poet
Langland wrote as early as the 1370s, men "more or less mad
according as the moon sits," walk "witless but with good will in
many wide countries." Thereafter even this blank "good will"
faded. Catholics deliriously embracing ghostly skeletons began
performing the Dance of Death in cemeteries, while the Black
Mass became as common as the Holy one, its furtive ceremonies
parodying ritual in shocking ways to appease the Devil. Until this
demented epoch, the execution of persons accused as witches had
been deemed murder by the Church; but this did not save tens of
thousands from zealots who tortured them into confessions anyway
The Encroaching World of Islam 7
and burned them alive. After 1485 the Church openly sanctioned
this means of dispatching the Devil's alleged collaborators and the
toll of witches soared.
THE ENCROACHING WORLD OF ISLAM
But these evidences of mass hysteria did not persist simply because
of the state of society and the sins of the Church. For ominously
confronting the unhinged world of Christendom in the fifteenth
century, and indeed conspiring within its gates, was the newly
aggressive world of Islam, itself the brutally degenerate heir to a
wealthier and more brilliant culture than most of Europe had yet
seen. It is customary to think of the warm Mediterranean as the
very womb and haven of western culture. But as late as 1492, even
the rock of Gibraltar remained an Islamic or Moslem strong-
hold, while on every shore, except in Italy, France, and part of
Spain, the mother sea laved only Mohammedan lands.
Mohammed of Mecca, the founder of Islam, had been anything
but a "weaponless prophet." By waylaying Arab merchant caravans
to feed his first few impoverished followers early in the seventh
century, he proved his mettle to the warlike Bedouins of the desert.
In the next hundred years, newly inspired by one God, Allah, these
fighters overran much of Asia, Africa, and southwestern Europe.
Most of the peoples of these lands they converted to the easy
brotherhood of Islam. Those they failed to convert they usually
tolerated for a price in tribute. Often they also enlisted their
captives' assistance in governing and in acquiring the urban
amenities of life. Thus from Persians, Jews, Hindus, Moors,
Egyptians, Greeks, and others, Moslem culture in succeeding
centuries absorbed the legends, lore, and learning of the world.
Within the borders of Islam at the start of the Crusades late in
the eleventh century lay most of the great cities known to man:
Cairo and Alexandria, Bagdad, Antioch, and Damascus, Tabriz
and Samarkand, and of course Jerusalem. To such cities (known
collectively as the Levant, or the land of the rising sun) the luxuries
of the fabled and still farther East found their way, to be dis-
tributed more deeply into Islam and into poorer Christendom.
Everything valued by the upper classes was available in the Levant.
8 The Four Worlds of the Fifteenth Century
Spices and herbs that turned pabulum into delicacies for the im-
proving European palate; brilliant dyes for domestic cloth; delicate
silks and cottons; artful tapestries; exquisite glassware; splendid
rugs and robes; and above all precious metals wrought into breath-
taking forms and figures, and precious stones of unheard-of size
and brilliance all these, their intrinsic wonders in no way dimin-
ished by the mysterious remoteness of their origins, were to be
had there for a price.
Italian traders were visiting Levantine cities for such goods long
before the first Crusade in 1095. It was in the following two
hundred and fifty years, however, that merchants of Venice, Genoa,
and Pisa, much enriched by carrying millions of European pilgrims
to the Holy Land, established and enlarged their own Levantine
headquarters. Often these were on land that Christians captured
from Arabs while allegedly in quest of the Holy Sepulcher. As the
Italians' trade grew, middlemen in the rest of Christendom also
flourished, and this in turn gave an impetus to Europe's own in-
dustry, finance, and internal commerce. The resulting general pros-
perity lent a sheen of justification to Church exactions and a
simulacrum of peace to Christian life.
But even in the expansive years of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries peace bred confidence and confidence aggression. The
initial victories of the first Crusade prompted Christendom's gen-
eral offensive against Islam. Islam's own victories transformed the
Mediterranean into a virtual Mohammedan lake and sent Christian
missionaries and explorers seeking aid and allies in the Orient.
Islam itself, however, had been victimized before her conquests
in Christendom were won. Early in the thirteenth century the
Mongols of deepest Asia, under the incredible Ghengis Khan,
crashed the great wall of China, and after securing for themselves
the immense wealth of Cathay, started to expand westward. This
drive eventually pressed upon other peoples, among them the
terrifying Turks. These particular infidels (an epithet they felt free
to lavish upon Christians later) had come together as the well-
mounted remnants of a once imposing Seljuk empire to the north
and east of Allah's outposts in Asia. The Mongol hordes forced the
Turks into Islam itself; whence about 1300 under the wary leader-
3
I
CO
10 The Four Worlds of the Fifteenth Century
ship of their chief Othman (hence the designation, Ottoman Turks),
they began nibbling on the exposed Asiatic holdings of the supine
Greek Catholic regime centered in Constantinople. Fired by easy
successes here, Othman's heirs next eyed the richer Moslem lands
around them, and by 1350 not only had subdued much Moham-
medan territory in Asia Minor but had themselves succumbed to
its religion.
By then warring Christian princes had long engaged in the
practice of inviting Moslem troops to assist them in their feudal and
imperial wars. In 1345, when the succession to the throne of the
Greek Catholic Empire was in doubt, one of the aspirants again
turned to Islam for aid. This fateful move brought the barbaric
Turks, headlong ambition riding with them, into Europe for the
first time. At the very juncture, indeed, when western Christendom
was sent reeling by its own internal catastrophes, the Turks were
on hand to take over the defense and indeed the renewed onslaught
of Islam.
The Turks rode as well as any Comanche Indian ever did, and
ahorse in the heat of battle brandished their scimitars with con-
summate and conclusive art. On entering Europe, their leaders
augmented this irresistible cavalry with the most fanatical infantry
corps Christendom had yet encountered. These were the renowned
Janissaries, recruited, barbarously enough, from among the strong-
est and most intelligent boys of Christian families in captured lands.
The Turks took these boys at the age of ten or twelve, forcibly
converted them to Islam, isolated them for military training, and
schooled them for six years to carry out only the more zealously
the dying admonition of old Othman himself: "Rejoice my departed
sdul with a beautiful series of victories, and when thou art be-
come conqueror of the world, propagate religion by thy arms." In
the hundred years culminating in the sack of Constantinople in
1453, this professional army of Janissaries was the scourge of
Europe. In the following half-century it not only reached the gates
of Vienna and threatened dissolute and shivering Rome itself, but
afeo moved outward in Asia and Africa.
Long before this the empire of the great Mongol Khans had
started to fall apart and its own internal wars had disrupted the
The Fantasy World of the Orient 1 1
movement of far Eastern goods to Islam and injured the Arab and
Italian trade. The Turks, who had no sense of Arabic culture and
only contempt for commerce, next had made things much worse by
preying upon Christian establishments in the Levant. The with-
drawal of credit and the demand of payment in gold ruined many
old Italian firms. Those allowed to continue were deprived of their
privileges and exorbitantly taxed. The pressure thus placed upon
Venice, Genoa, and Pisa even before the end of the fourteenth
century drove them into suicidal warfare among themselves.
Gradually the faltering trickle of goods from the Orient, especially
the spices which had become virtual necessities in Europe, sought
longer, costlier, but supposedly safer routes. Trade revived, but
hazards to trade multiplied and hemmed it in.
THE FANTASY WORLD OF THE ORIENT
How deeply into Africa and Asia did Mohammedan lands extend?
What peoples lived beyond their limits? How could encroaching
Islam be outflanked and succor and sustenance brought to Christen-
dom from the outside from distant lands, real or hungrily
imagined, to whose existence legend, hearsay, rumor, and inven-
tion testified? Such questions tugged at the hearts of certain Chris-
tian princes throughout the fifteenth century. For answers they
gathered around them all the learned men they could find and all
the books. "You who wish to learn of the coasts of countries,"
Henry VII of England was told, "must learn . . . what Strabo,
Ptolemy, Pliny, and Isidore taught." But practical ends required
more practical means than these promptings of the medieval spirit;
action required better guides than the contradictions of ancient
pundits, hope greater optimism than the crabbed cackling of the
monasteries. "No man sailing south of [Africa's] Cape Bajodar
returns alive," said one medieval monk. "God willed not that men
should be able to sail over the whole world," advised another. But
on what authority? The rising princes and sailors of the fifteenth
century decided they had better find these things out for themselves.
The guiding geniuses among them were Prince Dom Enrique of
Portugal, better known as Henry the Navigator, and Christopher
Columbus.
12 The Four Worlds of the Fifteenth Century
Somewhere in the distant East or was it the distant South?
lay the land of Prester (that is, "Presbyter" or "Priest") John, a
Christian potentate grown incredibly strong in the defense and
propagation of the faith in a heathen world or so rumor said.
No reliable reports of him were to be had. Was not he the one to
come to the aid of God's children in Europe? Dom Enrique meant
to find him and inquire.
Somewhere more distant still lay the yet richer "lands of India,
and ... a prince who is called 'Grand Khan' which is to say . . ,
'King of Kings.' I have given Your Highnesses full information,"
Columbus wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella, "how many times he
and his ancestors had sent to Rome to seek doctors in our Holy
Faith to instruct him therein, and that never had the Holy Father
provided them, and thus were lost so many people through lapsing
into idolatries and receiving doctrines of perdition." May he not yet
be converted to the faith of Christ and conscripted in its defense
against "the abominable sect of Mahomet?"
What did it matter that Prester John was to prove to be nothing
more than an Abyssinian native chieftain, and that the entire
dynasty of "Grand Khans" had collapsed back in 1368? No one in
Europe was aware of this and Christendom's need was great.
Other motives also wove themselves into the Oriental pattern.
Like many Italians, Giovanni Caboto, for example, had visited
Mecca in the spice trade, and "when he asked those who brought
them what was the place of origin of these spices, they answered
that they did not know, but that other caravans came with this
merchandise to their homes from distant countries, and these again
said that the goods had been brought to them from other remote
regions. He therefore reasons that if the easterners declare to the
southerners that these things come from places far away from them
and so on from one to the other . . . presupposing the rotundity of
the earth ... it follows as a matter of course that the last of all
must take them in the north towards the west." Caboto arrived in
England in the late 1480s aflame with this idea, and, as John Cabot,
m 1496 got the backing of Henry VII to seek their mutual fortunes
by testing its validity.
The overwhelming depression in fifteenth-century Christendom
The Fantasy World of the Orient 13
ruined many of the great families that had survived plague and
famine and war; slowly new men of resolution and talent like
Columbus and Cabot appeared who found paths to the mighty
open, and opportunity ultimately to be had. To such men religion
and its forms as often served to justify as to inspire action, and
usually they did not scruple to decide which. If myth and legend and
ancient saws religious and pagan both terrified or paralyzed
most, a few found in them the hint, the goad, the lure, the massive
compulsion to seek God and truth and gold all at once. In the
fifteenth century the weakening of the faith helped to dissipate the
prestige of its healers; the catastrophes at home to dissipate fear of
venturing abroad; the scale of the reward to dissipate anxieties
about dark and unknown risks. Indeed, little could be lost; the
whole world might be won for God; and in it nobodies might rise
and set up gilded dynasties of their own.
Not everyone looked at life this way; like the Galileos, Darwins,
and Freuds of the future who would add whole worlds to the uni-
verse of knowledge, Henry the Navigator until "Gold made a re-
cantation of former Murmurings" had to endure "what every
barking tongue could allege against a Service so unserviceable and
needless." Yet for the few determined to act there were plenty of
exhilarating clues, and intriguing if shadowy suggestions. Here and
there were also kindred souls working to improve ships, instruments,
and knowledge of navigation; and yet others, desperate or forlorn
or simply eager, with neither science nor faith to sustain them but
ready to man the ships and let the Devil do his worst. To such men
a knowledge of coasts, as had been dangled before Henry VII, was
all very well for a start; but gradually they ventured ever deeper on
mare tenebrosum, "the green sea of gloom," as the Moslems called
the forbidding Atlantic, ever farther out of sight of dear, familiar
shores, until they circumnavigated the globe.
Portugal, at land's end, led the way. By 1250 Portugal had be-
come the first European nation occupied by Islam to throw off its
yoke. Trade treaties with Venice and England followed and led to
the development of her fleet, her sailors, and her knowledge of At-
lantic navigation. After recovering from the Black Death she was
14 The Four Worlds of the Fifteenth Century
eager to carry the fight against the Moslems right to Africa. And
after spectacular successes in north Africa in 1415, Henry the
Navigator, a prince of the ruling family, set up his famous Naval
Arsenal at Sagres, "where two seas, the Mediterranean and the
Great Ocean, fight together." From here he would explore the
whole coast of Africa to discover the southern limits of Islam and
a water route around them to Eastern allies.
Until his death in 1460 Dom Enrique sent expedition after ex-
pedition ever farther down the western coast of Africa and had his
extraordinary staff of experts study every bit of information they
brought back. He never did find the tip of Africa or the land of
Prester John, but his accomplishments were significant. His men
discovered the African gold and ivory coasts and opened new
^ wealth to Christendom. Between 1439 and 1453 they found and
jsettled the nine islands of the Azores, the farthest of which was but
a thousand sea miles from Newfoundland; and sent many expedi-
tions to seek out additional Atlantic lands. In carrying out these
projects, they developed the small and handy caravel, a ship rugged
enough to face up to the winds and waves of the turbulent ocean
and yet maneuverable enough to "claw off" its most hazardous
shore. This was but one of their contributions to scientific naviga-
tion and exploration; more important, their work proved the old
authorities wrong on so many points that others leaped into the
great game of discovery.
The works of Ptolemy, the imaginative philosopher of the second
century, had been recovered by the Arabs in 1410 and had become
the chief of the ancient authorities. The tropics, Ptolemy held, were
"uninhabitable because of the great heat." "And we found quite the
contrary!" exclaimed one of Dom Enrique's men. "The illustrious
Ptolemy who wrote so well on many things, was quite mistaken
here!"
Columbus had sailed as a youth in the service of the Dom's suc-
cessors in caravels similar to his own Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria
of the future. As early as 1477 he began dickering for his own ven-
ture to reach the East by sailing west, but his questionable argu-
ments and exorbitant demands put the Portuguese rulers off. In
1485 he went to Spain, but there Ferdinand and Isabella were still
The Fantasy World of the Orient 15
wholly engaged in ridding their own lands of the Moslems. Back
in Portugal in 1488, Columbus was present when the great news
came that the year before Bartholomew Dias had at last found
the southernmost tip of Africa and had sailed around the Cape of
Good Hope.
Dias proved that there was a southern and eastern all-water route
to the Orient, and Portgual soon profited immensely from this dis-
covery. But Dias's accomplishment cost Columbus whatever inter-
est Portugal's rulers might have entertained for his own more daring
theories. Columbus then tried the kings of England and France and
finally the rulers of Spain once more. By January, 1492, Ferdinand
and Isabella had eliminated the remnants of Moslem resistance in
Granada, and were ready at last to listen to a project for the gospel,
for glory, and for gold. Vasco da Gamma had not yet sailed for
the rulers of Portugal over Dias's route all the way to India and re- c
turned with immense wealth, which he did in 1499. But in any case
Columbus promised a shorter route to the riches and regiments of
the Grand Khan.
To Columbus and his fellow explorers there was never any doubt
that the earth was round, though their faith in this ancient and well-
established principle was sometimes shaken. On his third voyage in
1498, for example, the Admiral himself, desperate after two failures
to reach the East, recorded in his journal: "I have come to another
conclusion respecting the earth, namely that it is not round as they
describe, but of the form of a pear . . . upon one part of which
is a prominence like a woman's nipple ... I believe it is impossible
to ascend thither, because I am convinced that it is the spot of the
terrestrial paradise, whither no one can go but by God's per-
mission."
But such thoughts were only feverish maunderings; the real issue
was the breadth of the Ocean Sea. How far and how long could
ships sail without basic reconditioning, and men without new pro-
visioning and the security of near-by harbors? How long would it
take to get to friendly Oriental ports? In his zeal to get on with
his destiny, to bear Christ to the "other bank," and to be well re-
warded for it, Columbus underestimated the breadth of the ocean
75 per cent by modern reckonings, and 25 per cent on the basis of
16 The Four Worlds of the Fifteenth Century
the most optimistic estimates of his own day; in the process, he per-
sisted in calculating a degree at a smaller distance than anyone
else. Perhaps by such means he sustained his own keen faith; in
any case, his optimistic reckonings did not hurt him in seeking the
support of his monarchs and the service of his crew.
Even so, on his first voyage Columbus dared to doctor the log to
keep his men from forcing his return. On October 10, 1492, after
they had been out thirty days and doubled all known records for
ocean sailing, he was forced to quell a mutiny on his flagship,
Santa Maria, before he could proceed. Then, in two more days,
what did he find? Primitive San Salvador in the steaming Bahamas!
The otherwise naked natives wore enough fool's gold trinkets to
feed a fanatic's conviction that the great cities of the East must be
near by; and when Columbus asked where the Grand Khan was to
be found, they assured him that indeed he was not very far off a
discomfiting native way of getting rid of intruders, as all later ex-
plorers found.
For all his effort, Columbus, with worn men and worn ships, dared
not linger long. He named one island Hispaniola (modern Haiti and
the Dominican Republic) and left a few men to hold the claim.
After two months of exploration, he himself hastened back to Spain
to announce his success, collect his reward for himself and all
future generations of Columbuses, and organize a massive second
voyage. On this voyage he carried 1,500 settlers to "the Indies"
to begin the real development of his Oriental island in the Ocean
Sea.
These settlers arrived late in 1493, and soon after some of them
found gold in Hispaniola streams. Columbus himself brought back
this heady news to Spain in 1496; and while he could not yet claim
that he had found the Grand Khan, his sponsors began to take suf-
ficient interest in the intrinsic value of what he did discover to ap-
point a more able administrator than the Admiral had proved to be.
Columbus and the other explorers, meanwhile, persisted in their
search for the greater prize.
Marco Polo had traveled over much of China in the thirteenth
century and served the Grand Khan of the Mongol dynasty for
nearly thirty years. In 1298 after his return to Venice, he wrote
The New World Barrier 17
the famous account of his experiences only to be laughed at by his
contemporaries for the wonders he reported "Marco's Millions,"
the Venetians jeered. It was from Marco Polo that the vague rumors
of Prester John had begun to circulate in stricken Europe in the four-
teenth century; and it was from him that Christendom had learned
of Kublai Khan, the grandest of the Mongols, and his interest in
missionaries from the Pope. Polo reserved his most inflammatory
language for the vast riches of the islands of Zipangu (Japan),
where he had not in fact visited himself.
Copies of Marco Polo's work had been virtually out of circula-
tion for a century and a half when it was printed for the first time
in 1477. Then the aspiring navigators devoured it, Columbus most
eagerly of all. Modern scholarship has proved the accuracy and
acumen of Marco Polo's observations and insights; Columbus was
among the few to accept them in his own day. On his later voyages
he made four in all it was very hard to convince Columbus that
Cuba (after he had satisfied himself at last that it was not the main-
land but an island) was not in fact Zipangu and that South America
could be anything but the mainland of Asia.
Neither Columbus nor his immediate successors could locate the
marvelous port of Canton, of which the great Polo had written:
"The quantity of pepper imported there is so considerable, that
what is carried to Alexandria, to supply the demand of the western
parts of the world, is trifling in comparison, perhaps not more than
the hundreth part." Nor did they find Kublai's capital, Hangchow,
"a name that signifies The Celestial City,' which it merits from its
pre-eminence to all others in the world, in point of grandeur and
beauty, as well as from its abundant delights, which might lead an
inhabitant to imagine himself in paradise." These places remained
fantasies to a Christian world needing to believe in them.
THE NEW WORLD BARRIER
Though Portugal and Spain had driven the old Arabic Moslems from
western Europe by the end of the fifteenth century, the Turks only
redoubled their onslaughts on Christendom from the East, con-
tinuing their encroachments and their terror for another hundred
and fifty years. From the Orient no help came; but Portugal estab-
18 The Four Worlds of the Fifteenth Century
lished an immensely lucrative empire in India and used it as a base
for further expeditions in search of Prester John. Once India was
opened, others fought for footholds there; but since Portugal man-
aged to control the waterway of Dias and da Gama, the others, sail-
ing west, kept encountering the barrier of the New World. The
search for a passage through this barrier, for a free, short route to
the East, occupied Europeans until the eighteenth century; but it
also led to the exploration and settlement of the New World Colum-
bus had found.
The discovery of America was no accident. Ancient prophecies
had suggested its existence; perhaps the most remarkable of them
was that of the Alexandrian, Eratosthenes, in the third century
B.C.: "If the extent of the Atlantic were not an obstacle, we might
easily sail from Iberia to India, on the same parallel ... it is quite
possible that within the same temperate zone there may be two or
even more inhabited earths." In the tenth and eleventh centuries
the Northmen had confirmed this possibility by their efforts to
colonize Vinland, somewhere on the North American coast between
Cape Cod and Labrador. Moreover, until 1418, when Europe's
own mounting catastrophes choked off commerce and thwarted
learning, Scandinavia had maintained a steady trade with Green-
land and Iceland; and there is every likelihood that the Greenland
and Labrador currents carried some storm-tossed Vikings to the
Canadian shore.
This record had dwindled to vague rumor and fuzzy legend in
Columbus's time, but modern scholarship has confirmed it. No one
knows how many other voyages may have been made, talked about,
and forgotten. Before the spread of printed books, even the greatest
scientists and scholars often failed to publish their findings No
more striking instance of this can be found than the amazing
Leonardo da Vinci, Columbus's exact contemporary, who had the
ear of the rich and great of his day and recorded his marvelous
scientific insights and experiments only in a shorthand notebook
which was not deciphered and published until our own time. It is
to to suppose that America, huge as it is, could hardly have failed
of discovery often before Columbus, even by some seeking the East
by sailing west; note that Columbus himself says of this route only
that no one to this day knows for sure that anyone" had tried it
The New World Barrier 19
If America had not been discovered earlier, it would only have
escaped discovery in Columbus's time by the grossest accident. As
Columbus wrote, "That art [of navigation] inclines him who fol-
lows it to want to know the secrets of the world." Columbus was
far from being the only one who considered the westward route; in
1493, four months after he had sailed under Spanish colors, a pro-
posal virtually identical with his but made in ignorance of his de-
parture, was presented to the King of Portugal on behalf of the
German cartographer, Martin Behain. The East was most ener-
getically sought for in this age in which for the first time the im-
placably inquiring spirt of modern science was added to other
impulses. Columbus is the first known to us to have sailed westward
to reach the East. But no one else taking this route and persisting
on it could possibly have missed the New World. As has been said,
three hundred years were spent later in trying to get around it.
This motive, in fact, spurred on the numerous expeditions fol-
lowing the Discoverer's epic find. In 1494, a papal bull had divided
the heathen lands of the world between Portugal and Spain, with
the latter's share mainly in the western hemisphere. This division
did not prevent John Cabot, in 1497, from establishing England's
claim to Labrador and any surrounding territory she could make
her own; nor John Cabral, finding himself on the coast of Brazil in
1500, from claiming it for Portugal, his native land; nor French
fishermen, after 1504, from taking an annual catch of cod off New-
foundland and drying it on those shores. Yet Spain did lead the way.
Under Spanish colors, Amerigo Vespucci in 1497 explored
Puerto Rico, the coasts of Central America and Mexico, and later
on much of the South American coast as well. He earned the fame
his name acquired when in 1507 a German writer, "the fourth part
of the world having been discovered by Americus," first called the
New World after him. In 1508 Alonso de Ojeda began Spanish
settlement of the New World mainland at Panama; and in 1513
Vasco Nunez de Balboa, "a man of action rather than judgment,"
hacked his way across Panama's forty-five mile isthmus and sighted
the Pacific. In the same year Ponce de Leon, who had subdued"
Puerto Rico in 1508, began exploring the Florida coast and the
shores of the Gulf of Mexico the first Spanish expedition to North
America. And in 1524-25 Estevan G6mes, a Portuguese in thet
20 The Four Worlds of the Fifteenth Century
employ of Spain, made a comprehensive survey of the Atlantic
coast from the Grand Banks off Newfoundland all the way to
Florida "to search," as he reported, "whether amongst the multi-
tudes of windings and the vast diversities of our ocean any passage
can be found leading to the Kingdom of him we commonly call
the Grand Khan."
G6mes's work completed the earliest phase of exploration. For
by then two events had taken place which put the New World in
an exciting new perspective. In August 1519, the Portuguese Ferdi-
nand Magellan, fresh from seven years in the Orient in the service
of his now smug native land, sailed under Spanish colors to try his
hand at finding the elusive westward route to the wealth he had seen
with his own eyes. Fourteen dreary months later, having survived
mutiny and shipwreck, he discovered those murderous straits at
the tip of South America now named for him. Proceeding at last
into the Pacific, Magellan found the Philippines, which he claimed
for Spain. There, of all places, a Moslem chieftain, feigning con-
version to Christ, won his assistance in a local war which cost
Magellan his life. Preferring to return the way they had come but
forced by the prevailing winds to venture ever farther on unknown
seas, the last half -dead eighteen of Magellan's 239 men, in the last
of his five foul ships, limped home to Spain in 1522. Despite them-
selves they had completed the first circumnavigation of the globe.
And now the truth was known about how desperately long indeed
was Columbus's favorite westward passage to the East at least in
the southern latitudes.
If this seemed a calamity, however, events in the southern lati-
tudes of the New World itself softened the blow. For there in 1519,
Hernando Cortes, risen like almost all his fellow adventurers from
obscurity, in his case a meager clerkship, began his conquest of
Aztec Mexico.
"Do you know, gentlemen," the stout conquistador addressed his
men after a particularly vicious battle on the way to the heart of
Montezuma's empire, "it seems to me that Hie Indians are terrified
at the horses and may think they and the cannon make war on them
by themselves." Cortes could not only make such imaginative cal-
culations, but could act daringly upon them. Deception to take ad-
The New World Barrier 21
vantage of his miraculous equipment made it easier for his fanatical
corps of a few hundred to overwhelm professional armies a hundred
times as large. News of his awesome victories he then systematically
sent ahead of his marches. As Cortes neared Mexico City itself,
Montezuma tried bribery to head him off, and when this policy
failed, he feigned submission to the white conquistador. But Cortes
was interested in nothing short of total victory, and in the end his
self-made reputation virtually hypnotized Montezuma into guiding
the Spaniard into his palace stronghold and there becoming Cortes's
prisoner and slave.
"We were amazed," one of Cortes's men recorded of their first
sight of the civilization of the Aztecs, "and said that it was like the
enchantments they tell of in the legend of Amadis on account of
the great towers and temples and buildings rising from the water,
and all built of masonry. And some of our soldiers even asked
whether the things that we saw were not a dream. . . . We did not
know what to say, or whether what appeared before us was real
... in front of us stood the great city of Mexico, and we did not
even number four hundred soldiers."
Cort<s had been sent to Mexico from Cuba by the energetic
governor there to trade with the mainland Indians, whose great
wealth rumor naggingly reported and earlier tentative expeditions
tended to confirm. But opportunity never had a sharper lookout.
To trade for the governor of Cuba was picayune; tribute from Mon-
tezuma would be infinitely more lavish, but not enough. Cortes de-
cided very early to make a Christian province of his incredible
conquest and to notify his King direct, not failing to send with his
message breathtaking evidence of Aztec wealth.
Actually, Cort6s's conquest of Montezuma was to be his easiest.
The Aztecs were themselves conquerors and oppressors of many
peoples who believed in a great white god, Quetzalcoatl. Born, like
Christ, of a virgin, he had ruled these peoples' ancestors in their
golden day. Once Quetzalcoatl's satanic brother made him drunk,
caused him to lose his chastity, and defeated him in battle. Quet-
zalcoatl slunk away, yet promised to return to rescue his peoples in
the first year of one of the fifty-two-year cycles of the Mexican
calendar. As Cortes's star would have it, 1519 was just such a year.
His marvelous horses and cannon thus but furthered a welcome
22 The Four Worlds of the Fifteenth Century
illusion. And this he nurtured by his inquisitory zeal in urging
Christ on the people, liquidating the obdurate, and wrecking Aztec
images and temples to cleanse the country of the blood of countless
thousands of cannibalistic sacrifices.
When Cortes first confronted old Montezuma himself who had
been as great a voluptuary as any of the fifteenth-century rulers in
Christendom the full meaning of this coincidence was brought
home to the Indian. "We have known for a long time," said the hope-
less monarch, "that neither I, nor those who inhabit this country,
are the descendants from the aborigines of it. ... And we have
always held that those who descended from . , . their lord . . .
would come to subjugate this country and us; ... and according
to the direction from which you say you come, which is where the
sun rises, and from what you tell us of your great lord, or king, who
sent you here, we believe and hold for certain, that he is our rightful
sovereign, especially as you tell us that since many days he had no
news of us."
Though Montezuma thus consigned himself to the questionable
mercies of his conqueror, the Aztec war lords stonily withstood
Cortes's wiles and stubbornly fought his ever more expansive plans.
In Cuba, moreover, his insubordination and his success both
aroused hostility, and the governor's forces swarmed in to level
Cortes's ambitions. With his usual genius, Cortes eventually sub-
dued his enemies and his new land, but not before many years went
by. In the meantime, the flow to Spain of New World gold had com-
menced, to further at once the development of modern capitalism
and the secular art and learning it supported.
If the white man's coming worked on the imagination of the de-
pressed denizens of the New World, the New World itself thus
began to work on the imaginations of the depressed denizens of
the Old. Years before Cortes, indeed, Thomas More had placed
his Utopia in America. A little later Luther himself allowed his
dreams to sail to the New World as a Christian haven. Poets and
philosophers like Ariosto and Montaigne began to speculate on its
wonders and the popular consciousness to be drawn to it. Never-
theless, much time passed before large numbers were ready to brave
the New World's difficulties.
Chapter Two
El Dorado and a Place to Hide
"The Lorde hath admonished, threatened, corrected, &
astonished us," wrote Puritan lawyer John Winthrop, of the English
people, in the fateful spring of 1629, "yet we grow worse and
worse. ... He hath smitten all other Churches before our eyes. . . .
We sawe this, & humbled not ourselves; . . . therefore he is turninge
the Cuppe toward us also, & because we are the last, our portion
must be, to drinke the verye dreggs which remaine: . . . but be of
good comfort . . . my dear wife," the troubled man went on, "the
hardest that can come shall . . . bring us into nearer comunion with
our Lord Jesus Christ, & more assurance of his kingdom. If the
Lord seeth it wilbe good for us, he will provide a shelter & a
hidinge place ... as a Zoar for Lott."
The following March, under Winthrop's direction, began that
Great Migration from the tyranny of Charles I "to inhabit and con-
tinue in New England." In ten years 25,000 persons sailed for
Massachusetts Bay and secured the permanent settlement of the
more northerly latitudes of the New World.
The Pilgrims of Plymouth, "well weaned," as they said, "from
the delicate milk of our mother land," had preceded the Saints of
the Bay Colony by a decade; while thirteen years before the Pil-
grims, in 1607, Captain John Smith had landed an almost hopeless
medley of Englishmen at swampy and feverish James Towne. In
1608, moreover, Samuel de Champlain had set up the French in
Quebec, and In 1624 the Dutch had established themselves in Al-
bany. But as late as 1630 there was no assurance that these slender
North American "plantations" would not go the way of numerous
still earlier ones their "mayne end," according to Winthrop,
"Carnall & not Religious" that had either quit or mysteriously dis-
23
24 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
appeared. And in the meantime, Spain held the vast new world prac-
tically to herself. True, the Portuguese had opened Brazil; but their
interest in America was secondary to their new hegemony in India
and Africa, and in any case, Portugal and all her possessions had
fallen to Spain in 1580, not to be freed before 1640.
THE SPANISH MAIN
Portuguese historians sometimes claim that da Gama's conquests
and those of his countrymen in the Orient, "having revealed two-
thirds of this world to the remaining third," dwarf Cortes's achieve-
ment in the Mexican highlands. Yet countries like India had been
invaded before and tribute levied from strategic footholds on the
whole of their production and wealth; indeed, the Portuguese in
effect simply supplanted the Turks in control of the waters around
the Indian Ocean and in a short time were supplanted themselves.
In the new world, the country was raw, wild, noxious, and alarm-
ingly strange; yet the "all-devouring Spaniard" subdued much of it
in the span of one man's life and held it for centuries. Cortes said
he "wished in everything to copy Alexander of Macedon." He
didn't, quite; but the conquistadores he turned loose accomplished
more, and with a rapidity and permanence almost unknown to
history.
Spanish serfs were bound to the land at home: Cortes's followers
were chiefly landless hidalgos (disaffected hijos de algo, "sons of a
somebody") who had spent their lives in many strange parts of the
world in mortal combat with the infidel. With them came their re-
tainers, retinues, and hangers-on, and desperate gamblers and ad-
venturers from city docks and jails. Such men brought to the new
world as among their headiest possessions all the gilded legends of
the Middle Ages. In the new world itself the myth-ridden natives
proved eager to confirm any and all of the white man's hopeful
suggestions as to the whereabouts of gold and embroider them with
lavish tales of their own.
"The Indians who went with them conducted them to a very
lofty mountain, and thence showing them the country all around,
as far as the eye could reach, told them there was gold in every
part." So Columbus's men had reported to him (and he, on their
The Spanish Main 25
say-so, reported home) about "Veragua, which was five-and-twenty
leagues distant from the place where we then were." But exactly
where were they? Columbus did not know except that it was the
magic "mainland." Veragua, Cibala, Apaleche, the "seven caves"
and the "seven cities" each danced before the conquistadores'
eyes. Above all loomed the lands and lake of the Gilded Man
El Dorado which "for the greatness, for the richness, for the ex-
cellent seate, ... far ex-ceedeth any . . . Citie ... of the world,
at least so much of the world as is known to the Spanish nation." To
find and take these treasured territories, to reign in them like kings
or return home like princes, Cortes and his masterful company
(priests and crown placemen sticking close for their share) ex-
plored and established an empire.
In the twenty-five years following Montezuma's fall, Cortes him-
self ranged as far south as Honduras; his second in command,
Pedro de Alvarado, made a personal satrapy of Guatemala, the
very fount of Mayan wealth and culture; while the bloody Montejos,
Elder and Younger, subdued the Mayan stronghold of Yucatan.
Meanwhile, ever since Balboa's epic push across Panama, rumors
had wafted all the way to Europe of an empire to the south and
west richer by far even than Aztec Mexico. Between 1520 and
1530 by land and sea from the new world and the old, adventurers
with the covetous blessings of kings and rising capitalists, raced to
find it. The victor, in 1528, was Francisco Pizarro, one-time sub-
ordinate in the new world to Ojeda and Balboa himself. The very
soul of persistence, Pizarro had prowled the western shores of
South America for three years before making his strike. Seven
savage years later he at last subjugated the Incan rulers of the sun-
worshipers of Peru and established his Spanish capital at Lima. By
then the conquest of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador was also
under way; while down the coast Chile had come under siege,
whence incredible explorers later scaled the Andes to help annex
Argentina.
In these years other and far more luckless Spaniards were wan-
dering about the future United States all the way from Cape Hat-
teras to New Mexico and "from the land of the cactus on the south
to the ranges of the buffalo on the north." Starting west from Flor-
26 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
ida, Hernando de Soto discovered the Mississippi in 1541 and
finding no gold beyond it returned to the river he had cursed as
an obstacle and died there of fever. In 1541 and 1542, Francisco
de Coronado, in search of fabled Quivira and Arache, explored west
Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico before despairing of any future
for the "limitless plains." Only the work of seventeenth-century
Franciscan missionaries brought this vast northern domain under
a semblance of Spanish rule. But by then the main struggle for the
new world was no longer the uneven one between arabesques and
arrows, armored white men and naked red; but one between crown
and crown, Christian and Christian.
There was no question of the Spanish crown, like all others char-
acteristically in debt, promoting the ventures of its empire builders.
On the contrary, the conquistadores usually took the initiative them-
selves, arranged their own financing, and with their private backers
managed their own affairs. Through their capitulaciones with the
crown they agreed to supply it with the "royal fifth" of their treas-
ure, the crown assuring itself of a fair share or better by monopoliz-
ing the assay office. Some years passed before this treasure
amounted to much on a regular basis. The conquistadores got rich
on the hoards they captured, but otherwise were too busy fighting
nature, Indians, and themselves to organize the systematic produc-
tion of gold and silver. What they did produce, moreover, the free-
lance mariners of jealous powers (whose rulers often shared in the
proceeds) pirated ever more boldly on the high seas. Injury and
insult finally impelled the Spanish government, grown suspicious of
the lording of its distant vassals, to take over the administration
and defense of the "Indies." Since it also assigned its fighting fleet
to convoy its treasure galleons, open piracy soon turned into open
war.
By the 1540s the reign of the conquistadores was virtually over.
In the next decade the great silver mines of Mexico and Peru began
to add thirty million dollars a year to the currency of world com-
merce. But staple agriculture already challenged mining as the
major Spanish-American occupation. Five million aborigines, un-
like those of the later British colonies, had survived conquistador
Focus of Envy, Focus of Hate 27
violence and taken the conquistadores' God; these aborigines made
up the labor force, with much smaller numbers of Negro slaves,
many of them smuggled in from Portuguese Africa by French,
British, and Dutch freebooters. The Spanish elite, meanwhile,
quickly imposed its cultural institutions on the natives. In 1544 the
first new-world printing press, in Mexico City, produced its initial
work, a Compendium of Christian Doctrine, "en lengua Mexicana
y Castellana" In 1551 the first new-world universities were opened
in Mexico City and Lima. Soon imposing new cathedrals dominated
the landscape of the coastal ports, while all over the country hun-
dreds of monasteries plied their business of saving souls. In time the
established Church owned half the property and collected most of
the income of the Spanish empire.
With the official and temporary exception of a few German cred-
itors of the crown and the everlasting unofficial exception of smug-
glers, this empire's ports, ships, and business life were restricted
not only to Spanish Catholics but to a few favorite monopolists
among them. The latter's freedom of action, in turn, was short-
tethered by the red tape of the court and its overweening bureauc-
racy. Liberty was unheard of; and gradually the dead hand of re-
pression brutalized both the administration and its victims. Spain
established her American empire a hundred years before the British
and kept all of it almost twice as long as England could hold her
own first colonies. Yet the development of New Spain never again
attained the momentum of the conquistadores' unflagging half-
century. Their exploits made the Spanish Main Europe's "focus of
envy." Spain's decline set in soon after the conquistadores' own,
when she herself became Europe's "focus of hate."
FOCUS OF ENVY, FOCUS OF HATE
In the middle of the sixteenth century Spain had scarcely six million
people at home; but her rulers held temporal sway over many mil-
lions more in Europe alone and sought to control the high road to
Eternity for everyone. Precious new-world metals both stimulated
and supported their aspirations. Yet in the old world a new spirit
was itself developing that would tap Spanish wealth near its source
and use it to pave an independent road to God.
28 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
For a century before the organization of the Spanish (and Portu-
guese) empires, coin-starved European monarchs, by systemat-
ically debasing their currency, had been unsuspectingly reducing
the exchange value of money and forcing up commodity prices. The
flow of new-world gold and silver in the sixteenth century gave an
irreversible impetus to this epic inflation. Men with aristocratic
tastes and inelastic incomes suffered, as did the poor in town and
country who were taxed ever more harshly to support their betters.
Yet as prices rose, the prospect of buying cheap and selling dear
opened the eyes of calculating merchants in many Atlantic lands.
Some of them, to fill the needs of Europe's expanding population,
ventured everything they owned and pledged their children's futures
in financing the reorganization and expansion of domestic industry.
Others, their hearts softened toward loans at 15 to 30 per cent or
more secured by Mexican silver, turned merchant bankers and cau-
tiously opened new long-term lines of credit to responsible business-
men.
Medieval ideas of profit, usury, and the "just price," were by
now disappearing from the market place. The new entrepreneurs,
more often than not supported by their capricious kings, proceeded
to trample the surviving industrial and mercantile restrictions of
the old medieval towns. Late in the sixteenth century, when the
lesson had been dearly learned that "private purses are cold com-
forts to adventurers," corporations chartered by the crown and
sometimes enjoying its participation in the shares, began to succeed
individuals in the larger undertakings. Typical were the Dutch West
India Company of 1621 which settled New Amsterdam, the series of
Royal African Companies which exploited the Guinea slave marts,
and the British East India Company of 1600 which much later lost
a cargo in the Boston Tea Party. Such corporations were commonly
given monopolies, as against their own countrymen, of certain lines
and certain regions of trade. Like the old guilds, they also built up
systems of restrictions which later provoked violent political as well
as business uprisings. But their initial role was to complete the an-
nihilation of the ancient bonds and bounds of trade.
The new capitalists and companies naturally had their enemies
at home and abroad. But from redress through manorial or munic-
Focus of Envy, Focus of Hate 29
ipal justice, they were protected by the enforcement and rising
popularity of the common or the crown law. As commerce grad-
ually girdled the globe, the first slender shoots of international law
and diplomacy also appeared. But these flowered only later. Com-
merce has often been the handmaiden of peace. No doubt Spanish
and Portuguese commerce, when those nations claimed by papal
decree to share the whole heathen world, would have thrived on
peace. But Dutch, French, British, and Scandinavian commerce
had to fight for territorial footholds on hostile shores and for cargoes
of goods and treasure on hostile seas. Corporations engaged in dis-
tant trading (in Spain and Portgual the government controlled this
itself) thus were encouraged to plant their national flags, build
forts, enlist private soldiers, and arm their ships. They were com-
monly required, moreover, to win the local heathen to their cause
by converting him to their national church.
Modern capitalism had roots deeper in European history than
the sixteenth century. The new world itself was one of its discov-
eries. Yet it was on the anvil of sixteenth-century Spanish wealth
and Spanish (and Portuguese) overseas empires that the new busi-
iness spirit in Europe was lastingly hammered out. To all appear-
ances, Spain had an irretrievable head start in shaping the new
epoch. Seven hundred years under the whip of infidel invaders,
however, had warped Spain's point of view.
Earlier than in any other European country a zealous national
spirit and towering national ambitions burned in Spain of which,
alas, the discoveries of Columbus and the conquest of the new world
proved but incidental and undigested fruits. The apparent political
unity imposed on the country by the marriage in 1469 of King
Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella, the future Queen of Castile, was
itself directed toward the major goal: a last grand mobilization of
the people against Islam. Defensibly enough, the new monarchs'
policy included a campaign against Catholic "heretics" in their
midst and questionable converses of other faiths. To root them out,
the Crown opened the fateful Inquisition in 1478, with Torque-
mada, Isabella's own confessor, as Inquisitor-General.
Ferdinand and Isabella's centralization of power was resented by
30 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
the Catalans whose very language was foreign to Castile, and for-
cibly resisted in sometimes-French Navarre and elsewhere on the
Spanish peninsula. It was not long, therefore, before the hand of
the Holy Office with its panoply of denouncers, informers, tale-
bearers, and torturers; its morbid parades of victims and spectacular
sacrificial pyres was extended to political as well as religious dis-
sidence. The final expulsion of the Moslems from Granada in
1492, far from satiating the Spanish soul, only fired the populace
and the clergy to their own final craving: the utter antiseptic cleans-
ing of their reclaimed land of every vestige of non-Catholic life.
With Torquemada himself the zealots' firebrand, the wavering
Crown saw little choice but to yield to its Frankenstein. Least mercy
was shown those who had financed and administered the whole long
crusade against Islam but whose wealth was now coveted and who
could themselves be spared. In the very age of Columbus and the
conquistador es, Spain's inquisitors would burn or banish her most
business-minded Moors and Jews, Moriscos and Maranos. Her new
bureaucrats would then garrote what survived of Spain's commer-
cial life, while her tax collectors proceeded to bankrupt her remain-
ing manufacturers whom her untaxed crusading knights despised.
Thus under the lash of the Cross was black-robed, black-visaged,
quixotic Spain driven to dissolve in blood and misery the sources
of her wealth and power at home.
Her American golden hoard, in turn, Spain would consume on
her Catholic mission elsewhere in Europe, where her reach grew
as long as it was merciless. Isabella died in 1504 and Ferdinand in
1516, when their grandson, Charles, ascended the Spanish throne.
Charles's other grandparents were Archduchess Mary, daughter of
Charles the Rash of Burgundy; and Maximilian, the Hapsburg
Archduke of Austria, who was also Holy Roman Emperor. From
Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles inherited, besides their rising new-
world empire, most of Spain itself and the holdings of the Arazons
m southern Italy. In 1519, the year in which Cortes began his con-
quest of Mexico and Magellan the voyage that would annex the
FMippines, Maximilian died; and from him Charles inherited di-
rectly all of Austria, and Milan in northern Italy. Through his
grandmother he also inherited the Duchy of Burgundy in eastern
Focus of Envy, Focus of Hate 3 1
France, and the Netherlands, comprising present Belgium and
Holland, to the north.
Hapsburg Charles reigned in Spain and his immense possessions
in two worlds as Charles I. After paving the way with money bor-
rowed from the German banker, Jacob Fugger, he also succeeded
Maximilian as Holy Roman Emperor, and as Charles V reigned
over all the German states as well. In 1526, when the Turks killed
the Hungarian king and threatened all central Europe, the princes
of Hungary and Bohemia wooed Hapsburg aid by electing as their
monarch Charles's brother, Ferdinand. Meanwhile, until her un-
savory divorce from Henry VIII which hung fire from 1529 to
1533, and which started England's revolt against Catholicism,
Charles's aunt, Catherine of Aragon, had been Queen of England.
To make up for England's defection Charles in 1530 was named
King of Italy by Pope Clement VII. Territorially this title was as
empty as Charles's purse; but, along with that of Holy Roman Em-
peror, it tied him all the more securely to the interests of the Popes
when they most needed a defender.
In 1517 on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Martin
Luther had posted the ninety-five theses in which he asserted that
men were saved by faith alone and that the Pope and the clergy
could be dispensed with. Luther's act set the Catholic world afire
only because it had for so long been ready for the torch. In 1521,
after Pope Leo X had excommunicated Luther, Charles swore that
he would not spare his "dominions, friends, body, blood, life, and
soul" in crushing the monk, his heresy, and his followers. Toward
this end in 1522 the Spanish Inquisition was exported to Charles's
non-Spanish lands, and was later supplemented by Rome's own
Inquisition in lands which Charles did not rule. In 1534, Charles
sanctioned the establishment by the Spanish monk, Ignatius Loyola,
of the Society of Jesus, to whose work the Pope gave his sanction in
1541. Superbly equipped in character and training to cajole the elite
into retaining or returning to the ancient faith, the Jesuits also
undertook its propagation among the masses in the shattered old
world and the savage new. Beyond this, Charles fought endless and
expensive wars against heretical princes of the Empire and, inci-
dentally, against other enemies of the Hapsburgs.
And yet Charles failed. He was still Emperor and King when
32 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
in 1555 he was forced by the Peace of Augsburg to recognize the
right of each German prince to decide whether he and his people
(the latter themselves were not consulted) would be Lutheran or
Catholic. By then half of Germany had defected to Lutheranism as
had all the neighboring Scandinavian countries, while England in
her own way had renounced the Pope and his religion. Elsewhere,
especially among Charles's Dutch subjects, heretics were getting
rich supplying Spain herself with the goods and commercial serv-
ices she had forfeited by the Inquisition, and by making light of
her paper domination of America.
In 1556, wearied of the thankless struggle, Charles divided his
empire between his brother Ferdinand, who also became Holy
Roman Emperor, and his son who as Philip II ruled most of the
Hapsburg lands. Charles himself retired to a monastery.
Two years earlier Philip had married the daughter of Henry VIII
and Catherine of Aragon, Mary Tudor, who was Queen of England
until her death in 1558. He himself took the title King of Eng-
land, and on Mary's death sought to marry Elizabeth, Mary's step-
sister and successor, and thereby retain Spain's hold on the island.
Mary had restored Catholicism to England, earning notoriety,
under Philip's prompting, as "Bloody Mary" by burning some
three hundred Protestants. After Elizabeth rejected Philip she made
herself supreme head of the Anglican Church. Henceforth she was
baited by Catholics as illegitimate; and Spain and England spoiled
for war. But by then a new religious agitation had begun which
was to divide the English more brutally even than the Catholic issue
and which made for Philip himself warmer enemies outside England
than Luther ever earned from Charles. The new religious agitation
sprang from the work of John Calvin.
Luther early had made his peace with the German princes and
near-by kings who established his Church as their own, collected
taxes for its support, and persecuted nonconformists. Calvin, who
had presented his ideas to the world in 1536 in his Institutes of the
Christian Religion, written in Latin for the learned, yielded to no
lay rulers whatever. Like Luther he believed that men were saved
by the inner light of faith alone, kept steady and bright by daily
Focus of Envy, Focus of Hate 33
study and contemplation of the Bible. Confessions, intercessions,
mortifications, and reformations in themselves he held mere super-
stitious acts. But Calvin stressed much more than Luther the idea
that if what a man did on earth could not save him, then, if men
were actually saved, their eternal reward must be predestined.
Calvin was more radical still: the slough of immorality in which
men obviously wallowed on every side must mean that only a few
choice spirits were preordained by God to participate in the "Cov-
enant of Grace" a few choice spirits, that is, and their children;
for by the "Covenant of Baptism," a kind of inheritance by sacra-
ment, they alone might grow into the "elect," the illuminated
countenances, the vessels of Christ.
Calvin was as deep a believer in the divine right to rule as the
Hapsburgs themselves, and no less intolerant than their Inquisition.
In the old world and in the new his followers burned at the stake
Baptists, Quakers, and heretics of more familiar stripe who might
deny the Trinity, or indulge the carnal passions, or defy the rule of
the self-appointed "Saints." Calvin's alone was the "true religion."
Let Calvinists, then, direct Church and State. Let them rule life.
And let the corrupt fail to profit from the example of the "elect"
and the "elect" from the example of their elders at their peril.
Calvin did much more than write and preach. Harried from his
native France to Switzerland in 1535, a year before he issued the
powerful Institutes, he soon supplanted a hireling bishop of the
Duke of Savoy as ruler of turbulent Geneva. There he promptly
established a stern theocracy over which he presided without com-
promise. The spreading fame of his regime and his book brought
reformers to Calvin from England, Scotland, France, Germany, the
Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, even Spain. From him they returned
uplifted and inspired, with a revolutionary mission and a revolu-
tionary model threats, unlike Luther's more docile converts, to
monarchy and popery both. The failure of the Peace of Augsburg
to give them the recognition shared by Lutherans and Catholics
only heightened the Calvinists' intransigence and independence. In-
tolerant themselves, they found intolerance unbearable. Since, in
fact, they often were among the elect in talent and energy as well as
spirit, they had the means to make themselves heard.
34 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
As non-New Englanders in America later grew fond of pointing
out, the "Saints" were prone to hypocrisy, cant, bigotry, and cun-
ning; the elect could do no wrong. But they were also required to
wear a mask of faith, probity, dignity, and honor that more often
than among other groups of their time proved to be the outward
sign of inward conscience, simplicity* and devotion. Their numbers
everywhere included members of the landed classes: "a nobleman,
a gentleman, a yeoman that is a good interest," boasted Oliver
Cromwell of his own heritage and allegiance; while in France the
first Bourbon king himself, the redoubtable Henry IV, took up (to
renounce later) the Genevan persuasion. Nevertheless, the Calvin-
ists were more likely to be men of commerce and money capital,
men of free cities and free trade, self-governing and ungovernable,
practical and proud, taciturn in accounting for their silver, their
slaving, and their souls. Calvinism confirmed and enlarged their
character; it did not create it. Like them international in outlook
and action, the new faith brought a mutuality of sympathy and
respect to a mutuality of interest.
Outside of Scotland where John Knox by the 1560s had secured
his "Congregation of the Lord," Calvinism waxed strongest among
Philip's own seafaring Dutch subjects and among the Flemish cap-
italists in the great ports of modern Belgium. Scarcely a hundred
sea miles from Belgium lay the maritime towns of East Anglia, and
a little farther on, the Channel ports of the west country of England,
where Philip ached to be King. Here, too, were centers of capitalism
and Calvinism, Just across the Channel, meanwhile, in Bourbon
France whose borders Hapsburg rulers had long menaced on three
sides and whose own ambitions traditionally menaced the Haps-
burgs, lay the inviting Gulf of St. Malo, overlooked by the austere
port city of the same name. Here and in other French ports the
populace generally held to the old Church, but the local capitalists
and the neighboring nobles with capitalist aspirations turned Cal-
vinist, or "Huguenot" as they were called, meaning "confederates"
with the Swiss. To many of these cities had fled Jews and Moriscos
banished from Spain, bringing their experience, talents, taste, and
memories. Over these cities, should they fall afoul of Philip's might
or the Pope's vengeance, hung the dread shadow of the Inquisition,
The Partition of North America 35
Philip II was the perfect enemy of Calvinism. Severe in dress,
dour in demeanor, studious to a fault, busy always at his kingly
"calling," he too was the "true believer." If the word of God were
one, his followers and the hated Calvinists must clash. When they
did, following the close of the Council of Trent in 1564, recognition
of the spirit of Satan in one another set men on both sides slaying
and pillaging without mercy.
The Council of Trent had been called by the chief Catholic
monarchs of Europe in 1545 to plan the reformation and revitaliza-
tion of their own Church and the reconquest of its lost lands. Until
his death in 1598, Philip was the Council's chief executioner. His
own strength, as the Protestants well knew, lay in his American
treasure. But therein lay his 'fatal weakness too. "Money," Francis
Bacon advised Queen Elizabeth, "is the principal part of the great-
ness of Spain; for by that they maintain their veteran army. But"
it is also "the ticklish and brittle state of the greatness of Spain.
Their greatness consisteth in their treasure, their treasure in the
Indies, and their Indies (if it be well weighed) are indeed but an
accession to such as are masters of the sea."
For decades Spain's maritime vassals, free neighbors, and seem-
ing friends had probed and pirated her American treasure and laid
the foundations of their own wealth. Covetousness had fed their
capitalist spirit, envy their enterprise. Henceforth, hate and the
company of Heaven would lend pride to piracy, passion to politics.
"Almighty God," cried John Hawkins, the first of the great Eliza-
bethan "sea dogges," when he survived a bit of trouble off the
Spanish Main, "would not suffer His elect to perish."
THE PARTITION OF NORTH AMERICA
Actually the French were the first to tweak the Spaniard's nose in
the new world. In 1523 Jean Fleury, a corsair in the employ of the
merchant-pirate Jean D'Ango of Dieppe, caught some of Cortes's
first treasure ships off the Azores and carried Montezuma's hoard
home to his King, Francis I. When Charles V learned of Fleury's
adventure, he protested mightily. Francis disdainfully replied,
"Show me the clause in Adam's will by which he divided the world
between my brothers of Spain and Portugal."
Considering that he had made his case, Francis the next year sent
36 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
Giovanni de Verrazano to explore the coast of North America for
the elusive northwest passage to the Indies. Verrazano searched
from Newfoundland to North Carolina, a region Dutch map makers
henceforth popularized as "New France," to vent their own derision
on Spain's comprehensive claims. Ten years after Verrazano, in
1534, Jacques Cartier of St. Malo began the series of voyages on
which he explored the Gulf and River of St. Lawrence, southwest
to what we still call the Lachine (that is, China) Rapids. His work
strengthened French claims to the sites of Quebec and Montreal
and the neighboring northern country.
Thereafter until 1603, when Henry IV sponsored the capitalists
who employed the great Champlain, France bled with brothers 7
blood in the wars between Calvinist and Catholic, and official
French exploration ceased. Free-lance Frenchmen, most of them
Huguenots, nevertheless kept the pressure on Spain. It was French
corsairs who forced Spain after 1543 to assign more and more war-
ships to convoy her treasure fleets. In 1565, as a base of operations
against French marauders, Spain established St. Augustine, the
first permanent settlement on territory to become the United States.
Far to the north, meanwhile, French fishermen continued to visit
forbidden Newfoundland, where they eventually established the real
foundations of French power and wealth in the new world.
From their first visits in 1504, these fishermen found that the
Indians craved any old pieces of metal with which to improve their
stone weapons and lord it over old-fashioned tribes. In exchange
for metal, the Indians offered generous packs of fur. Europe's own
supply of fur had long been running thin, and since Europeans
valued the skins both as a means of warmth and a mark of worth,
the fur trade with the Indians flourished. The less domesticated of
the fishermen, indeed, forsook their ships to set up temporary new
world trading posts. Their experiences eventually formed the basis
of Champlain's calculations for a permanent colony, and work like
theirs assured its ultimate success.
Champlain was as avid an explorer as Columbus. When he felt
from time to time that he had secured a monopoly of the fur trade
of the north, he would send expeditions from his base in Quebec in
quest of the elusive northwest route to China. Before his death in
The Partition of North America 37
1635, Champlain's expeditions took his devoted young followers
to territory beyond the "inland sea" we know as the Great Lakes.
His Huron Indian allies, meanwhile, trapped the country ever
farther west. In 1628, Cardinal Richelieu placed Canada under
control of the Company of New France, and Jesuit missionaries
became the chief instruments of French expansion. Most famous of
the Jesuits was Pere Jacques Marquette who, with Louis Joliet,
paddled down the Mississippi in 1673. On learning that the river
emptied into the Spanish Gulf of Mexico and not the Oriental sea,
Marquette and Joliet turned back before reaching the Mississippi's
mouth.
More enterprising even than Jesuit missionaries were the fabulous
coureurs de bois, the first American backwoodsmen. Often well-
born, these French youths came to America for adventure and
quickly took on the Indians' nomadic habits, their women, and
their work. "We weare Cesars, being nobody to contradict us,"
wrote Pierre Esprit Raddison. Actually the coureurs de bois more
than paid their way by organizing the ever more distant Indian
trading into an efficient operation. Raddison and his brother-in-law,
Medard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, explored the Hudson Bay
country in the 1660s. When the autocratic Governor of New France
punished them for this unauthorized venture, they promptly made
a deal with England. In 1670 English capitalists chartered the
Hudson's Bay Company to exploit and administer the region.
Coureurs de bois were also among the ablest lieutenants of that
most imaginative of Frenchmen, Robert Cavelier de La Salle. In
1682, as a mere preliminary to his grandiose scheme for a compre-
hensive commercial system on the waters of the West, La Salle com-
pleted the exploration of the Mississippi to the Gulf and claimed
for France "possession of that river, of all the rivers that enter it
and of all the country watered by them." In 1718, like a thorn in
the flesh of dying Spain, the French "planted" New Orleans to
anchor this claim.
Louis XIV ruled France from 1643 to 1715 and hungered for
colonies to glorify his reign. Yet even Louis preferred to concen-
trate more on his massive army and its employment in furthering
his ambitions in Europe than on outposts in New France. French
38 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
sea power in later years seldom attained the scope and spirit of
the mid-sixteenth century, and the French settlements were en-
feebled by this weakness. Thus it was left first to the Dutch and
ultimately to the British, staunch seafaring Protestant nations both,
to give lie coup de grace to Catholic Spain's pretensions to ex-
clusive control of the old world, the new world, and the next world.
As the sixteenth century wore on and trade moved steadily from
the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and neighboring northern waters,
the urban Dutch, strategically situated and endowed with excellent
harbors, became the equivalents of the fourteenth-century Italians.
Their coasts and their ships dominated the North Sea, which itself
commanded communication between booming Scandinavia, the
newest source of lumber and naval stores, and ambitious England,
France, and Spain. Dutch enterprise, moreover, improved on na-
ture. By arranging early to meet Portuguese ships at sea, Dutch
merchants became the distributors to the continent of the marvelous
goods of the Orient. To these goods the Dutch merchants added,
without noticeable scrupling, the booty landed by the notorious
Dutch "water beggars," whose pirate keels furrowed every sea.
Dutch manufactures, meanwhile, flourished under the guidance of
religious refugees; while Dutch herring fisheries supplied the latter's
Catholic persecutors abroad with their ritual food. And all the
while the Dutch Calvinists grew more restive under Spanish taxa-
tion, corruption, and contempt.
When Philip II, after the Council of Trent, became the militant
arm of the Counter-Reformation, his Dutch subjects faced double
jeopardy. First, Philip wanted their wealth. After 1560 he greatly
increased their taxes, and worse, sent his detested minions to insure
collection. Having thus aroused the burghers to the defense of their
precious purses, Philip next undertook their religious regeneration.
It was only natural that he should try to get his own house in order
before proceeding to reclaim the rest of Europe for Catholicism.
And all the more so since, if he were to succeed with the Dutch, he
would have the wherewithal for aggression elsewhere.
But Philip, like his father before him, failed. In 1566, the Dutch
rebelled against Spain and succeeded in setting up an independent
The Partition of North America 39
Dutch Republic for which they won general recognition in 1609.
Seven years earlier, having been deprived of their Portuguese con-
nection when Spain took over Portugal and the Portuguese empire
in 1580, Dutch capitalists had established their own East India
Company to recapture the Oriental trade for themselves. Their suc-
cess was immediate and immense. In their operations they not only
discovered Australia and New Zealand, but developed an Oriental
empire centered in modern Indonesia, which they retained until
1949. When the war with Spain was resumed in 1621 after a
twelve-year truce, the Dutch chartered a West India Company to
harass the Spanish Main. The fury of its attack so shattered Span-
ish power in the Caribbean that, along with the Dutch, English,
French, and Scandinavian adventurers swarmed in. Virtually un-
molested, except by one another, the newcomers occupied the
Lesser Antilles and began the large-scale exploitation with slave
labor of West Indian sugar and tobacco.
In 1609 the Dutch East India Company sent out the Half Moon,
commanded by the Englishman, Henry Hudson, to make yet an-
other attempt to find the Northwest Passage to the Orient. Nat-
urally, neither the river nor the bay to which Hudson gave his name
afforded him any more success than his many predecessors enjoyed.
But certain of the mariners with Hudson grasped the possibilities in
trading for fur with the Iroquois, and returned in 1614 to set up an
armed fur-trading post near Albany. This venture failed; but the
Indians were so impressed with the white man's weapons that, when
the latter returned to stay in 1624, the Iroquois swore lasting friend-
ship in exchange for a monopoly of firearms. This friendship the
English inherited later on.
By 1624 the Dutch West India Company also became interested
in the fur trade, and two years later, as a base of operations, pur-
chased Manhattan Island from the local braves. At Manhattan's
southernmost point the armed trading post of Fort Amsterdam had
already been set up. The West India Company extended its claim
to the Connecticut River with a fort near Hartford, and to the
Delaware near Camden. In 1629, in an effort to stimulate settle-
ment, the Dutch made their first lavish grants of land to the
patroons who were expected to bring in permanent tenants. Ten
40 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
years later, when Scandinavians sought to get into the colonial
swim, the Dutch winked at a Swedish company occupying Dela-
ware. These Swedes introduced the log cabin to America.
But the Dutch had spread themselves far too thin for their own
tiny population. New Amsterdam, open after 1638 to ships of all
comers, throve as a trading center. Otherwise the Dutch colonial
venture languished. By 1664 the Dutch administration under chol-
eric Peter Stuyvesant and similar second-raters had grown so harsh
that even the Netherlanders, by then but a minority of the mixed
population, welcomed the English conquest.
Long before they became enemies of the Dutch, the English had
assisted them materially against Philip. England and Spain had
started as friends. By the 1520s such an active trade had grown up
between the two countries that numerous English commercial fam-
ilies settled permanently in Spanish ports. During the 1530s, the
English sea captain, William Hawkins, father of the great Sir John
and Mayor of Plymouth, established a regular transatlantic packet
service with the conquistador es. In the 1560s John Hawkins him-
self engaged most actively in the illicit but locally welcomed business
of supplying Spanish-America with African slaves. But by then the
rift that had opened decades earlier, when Henry VIII divorced
Catherine of Aragon, had widened and soon a chasm of hate
divided the two nations.
After "Bloody Mary" and Philip, Elizabeth committed England
not only to Protestantism at home but to aiding Protestants abroad.
For this Pope Pius V excommunicated her in 1570. Thereafter, half
of England being Catholic, Philip's English friends plotted un-
ceasingly against Elizabeth's life. In the 1560s many English sailors
caught in Spanish home ports were "questioned" and burned by the
Inquisition. Those who escaped fled home to shout its terror through
the island. In 1571 the Spanish Holy Office was extended to the
new world where English ships as well as English sinners were
numbered among its victims.
The division among her own people compelled Elizabeth to avoid
open war. But she could urge on and honor her loyal subjects and
would-be swains who, in the cause of Protestantism and property,
The Partition of North America 41
hijacked Spanish treasure and humbled the Spanish flag. In this
work John Hawkins and his cousin Francis Drake became heroes
to their countrymen and their Queen. Their own heroes were the
irrepressible Dutch "water beggars" and the Huguenot corsairs, all
of whom proceeded now to work together to run the Spaniard down.
Their crowning exploit was Drake's voyage around the world in
the Golden Hind. Drake went out in 1577. After raiding Spanish
shipping and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of New Spain's lands,
he returned in 1580 with 1,500,000 in Spanish silver and gold,
equal to a profit of 4,700 per cent on the initial investment in which
Elizabeth had a share. To Philip's consternation, Elizabeth publicly
knighted the raider.
While British sailors became the scourge of the seas, British
soldiers dreamed their own dreams of adventure and wealth and
the hand of their Queen. The greatest of them was Walter Raleigh,
impecunious courtier, philosopher, lyricist, and lover, who while
awaiting the day his own ship would come in, journeyed to distant
battlefields in France, Ireland, and the Netherlands to strike blows
against Philip. But Raleigh's consuming passion was the conquest
of the new world itself, of which he cried later, after many failures
there: "I shall yet live to see it an Inglishe nation."
Though he did not scruple to talk of precious metals to gain
backers for his projects and though later in life he made a desperate
search for El Dorado to restore his personal fortune at the expense
of Spain, Raleigh was no gold bug. While still in his twenties he
won Elizabeth's favor and in 1577 got permission to send out his
half-brother Humphrey Gilbert "to inhabit and possess all remote
and Heathen lands not in the possession of any Christian prince."
Raleigh's idea was to build up the economy of his plantation so
that the "shipping, victual, munition, and transporting of five or
six thousand soldiers may be defrayed." With these, he hoped, he
would march from a grand New England to conquer New Spain.
Between 1577 and 1587 Raleigh engineered the departure of at
least six expeditions, one of which gave the name Virginia, for
the Virgin Queen, to the region now so known. That proved to be
Raleigh's only lasting monument in the new world, though all later
English settlement profited from his work.
42 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
By land and by sea "Merrie England" had taken the lead in af-
fronting Spain. The final insult came in 1587 when Elizabeth
ordered the execution of her Catholic cousin and heir apparent,
Mary, Queen of Scots. Twenty years before, Mary had fled from
John Knox to Westminster. She repaid Elizabeth's own calculated
hospitality by conspiring constantly with Philip's treasonous friends
to grasp the English crown. For this Elizabeth was forced by her
ministers, her Parliament and most of her people to cut off Mary's
head. In 1588, his patience with England gone, Philip sent up the
English Channel the grand Armada with which he hoped to de-
molish Britain, proceed to victory over the stubborn Dutch beyond
the Straits of Dover, and aid the Catholic party in France to crush
the Huguenots. England worried; but Drake and Hawkins rejoiced,
While England's little tubs cannonaded the giant Spanish gal-
leons, the Dutch also swept down for the fray. But most decisive
was the work of the good Lord Himself. "He blew and they were
scattered," held the Lord's elect when a storm blew up in the North
Sea to complete the Spanish rout. The Dutch Republic was saved;
the Huguenots proceeded, if only for a decade, to hold the crown
of France, and for a century more to enjoy tolerance under the
Edict of Nantes; even the distant German Calvinists took heart.
Soon after, England, the Netherlands, and France chartered East
India companies to raid Spain's Oriental empire and planned to
renew active exploration and settlement in suddenly wide-open
America.
A. PLACE TO HIDE
But England herself moved in a moment from this glorious peak
of triumph onto the road toward civil war.
"Since the English had overthrown the Spanish Navy in the
year 1588," a Roman Cardinal acknowledged a few years after
the annihilation of the famous Armada, "there was no small hope of
reducing England to Papistry." That menace removed, what, asked
the English Calvinists who had led the fight on Spain, stood in
the way of "completing" England's religious Reformation? To the
English Calvinists Henry Vffl's break with the Pope had been at
best a political if not a personal act which Elizabeth's own "settle-
A Place to Hide 43
ment" hardly did more than confirm. Attacking the Anglican clergy,
in Milton's later words, as shepherds whose "Hungry sheep look up
and are not fed," the Calvinists urged the end of compromise in the
liturgy and creed of the English Church. Surviving Roman "works"
could assure no one of Heaven, nor were "ignorant and unpreach-
ing" ministers useful substitutes for practical piety in a troubled
world. The surviving Roman hierarchy of archbishops, bishops, and
priests only perpetuated a privileged and not a holy caste. Subordi-
nation of the Church to the power of the State was above all an
affront to God and to the "privileges and immunities" of His elect.
Since she had become supreme head of the Church of England,
Elizabeth took these attacks on the Anglican establishment as
treason against the Crown itself. As early as 1583 Elizabeth had
shown her claws by sending to the gallows three Separatists or
Congregationalists who seemed to threaten to divide her kingdom
by agitating for the establishment of Calvinist churches independent
of the Anglican bishops. Two years after the defeat of the Armada,
Elizabeth turned her attention to the more orthodox Calvinists of
the Presbyterian persuasion who sought not to leave but to capture
and purify the Anglican Church. In 1590 she opened a regular
"Romish Inquisition" which hanged three Puritan "martyrs" and
imprisoned others. Elizabeth's example stirred the populace in East
Anglia in particular, where Puritanism had become most deeply
seated, to take it upon themselves to burn several Saints for "diverse
detestable heresies."
Nursing their wounds and nurturing their memories, the Puritans
waited patiently for the aging Queen's death and the crowning of
her heir, James Stuart of Scotland, who had been raised a Presby-
terian in the school of John Knox. But when James became king in
1603 he showed how little this training meant to royalty. "If you
aim at a Scottish presbytery," he told confident Puritans seeking a
church council to "complete" the Reformation, "it agreeth as well
with monarchy as God with the devil." Far from conceding any-
thing to the agitators, James cried, "I shall make them conform
themselves, or I shall harry them out of the land." It was with the
hope that they would indeed go that he agreed in 1606 to charter
two commercial companies to develop "that part of America! com-
44 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
monly called Virginia." And it was their depression over prospects
at home that in 1609 sent the Pilgrims from their mother land
to the hospitable Dutch as the first step on their hegira to New
England.
James's political evil genius was George Villiers, "Britaine's . . .
foe, Spaine's agent, Holland's bane, Rome's friend," whom he
made Duke of Buckingham. Between them they sank the navy to
so low a state that Turkish pirates enslaved English seamen in the
Channel itself, while the Dutch captured London's trade and the
French returned to the sea. Under Charles I, who became King in
1625, Buckingham engineered military and maritime adventures
to regain mercantile support. But these proved such costly fiascoes
that die Crown itself was brought into growing disrepute and Parlia-
ment into growing rebellion. Both Stuart kings sold peerages and
trade monopolies for revenue, and this practice heightened the
Puritans' contempt for the King's faction and their concern over
competition from the King's commercial favorites. The Parlia-
mentary Puritans' own refusal to vote funds for further adventures
brought Charles, at the last, to the policy of "forced loans," refusal
of which meant imprisonment without trial, and to the billeting of
rough and ready soldiers in private homes and inns. "If this be law,"
cried Puritan leaders, "why do we talk of our liberties?"
In 1628 the Puritan party in Parliament, led by Sir John Eliot,
demanded that the King sign the Petition of Right denying the
divinity of his office and acknowledging that billeting, arbitrary
taxation, and arbitrary imprisonment for refusal to pay were illegal.
For small favors Charles signed, but he proceeded to ignore the
Petition's restraints. A compliant clergy had attempted to aid
Charles by declaring refusal of taxes a sin. This reminder of papal
corruption completed the mortification of the Puritans who had
already become alarmed by the alteration of the Anglican creed
from an acceptance of Calvinist predestination to Arminian grace
for "good works." In 1629, therefore, in one of his famous "Three
Resolutions," Eliot demanded that the King declare "as a capital
enemy to this kingdom and commonwealth," not only him who
levies and him who pays taxes "not being granted by Parliament,"
but him who "shall bring in innovation in religion." Charles refused
A Place to Hide 45
to do Eliot's bidding. When Parliament voted Eliot's resolutions
anyway, Charles dissolved the body and did not recall it until 1640.
In 1628 Charles named William Laud, a leading Arminian and
Buckingham's confessor, as Bishop of London. That year John
Felton, a Puritan, assassinated the hated Duke. London rejoiced.
Live ever Felton, thou hast turned to dust
Treason, ambition, murther, pride, and lust.
But Laud needed no such extraneous motivation to shut Puritan
chapels, close Puritan mouths, shrivel Puritan loyalty, and anguish
Puritan consciences. Between him and Charles, after 1629 Puritans
and Parliament were both driven into hiding, and the cause of
Calvinists and Commons became one. That year, though the
Puritan revolt itself was still more than a decade off, lawyer John
Winthrop decided reluctantly that "he cannot live in the same place
and calling (as before) and so, if he should refuse this opportunity
[to go to the new world] that talent which God hath bestowed upon
him for publick service were like to be buried." He then began
serious preparations for the settlement of Massachusetts Bay.
The first of the two companies chartered by James I in 1606 to
settle Virginia (the second never amounted to anything) , drew its
support mainly from London capitalists and was called the London
Company. In December 1606, it was ready to embark its first 120
colonists in three ships, all in command of Captain Christopher
Newport. Before the day in April 1607, that found the poorly led
expedition accidentally washed up on the very shore it sought, six-
teen had died. By 1625, when the Company's disastrous lack of
progress moved Charles I to revoke its charter and make Virginia
a royal colony, 5,500 persons had been sent out to the settlement, of
whom 4,000 had perished on the voyage or in the new world. About
three hundred had the good sense to return home. A mere 1,200
were yet to be found in America.
The first English settlers hoped in everything to emulate if not
to outdo the Spanish. During the second spring in Virginia, when
crops of corn should have been planted if settlers were to eat that
winter, Captain John Smith complained that there was "no talke,
46 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
no hope, no worke, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, loade gold."
Captain Newport himself had been commanded by the Company
"not to return without a lumpe of gold [or] a certaintie of the
South Sea."
There was no gold in Virginia, but neither was there any in-
centive to leave off seeking it. Until 1617 all property in the
colony was held communally, and officers of the Company doled
out the land's scant produce as needed. Virginia's charter con-
tained the famous clause that all Englishmen in the colonies and
their children born there "shall have and enjoy all liberties,
franchises, and immunities ... as if they had been abiding and
born, within this our realm of England." But not before 1618 did
the Company permit the introduction of English common law
and the establishment of a local parliament, known henceforth as
the House of Burgesses. That year, also, the land was distributed to
individuals as private property and ownership of land became the
basis for the franchise. To augment the population, the system of
"head rights" was introduced, by which a settler got 50 acres for
himself and 50 more for each "head" he settled on the land, in-
cluding, under later regulations, members of his family as well as
workers and tenants.
Abuse of the "head rights" system by false entries and other
dodges laid the foundation for many of the large plantations in
Virginia and neighboring colonies. Such plantations became de-
voted to the cultivation of tobacco, and their initial expansion was
made possible by the labor of white indentured servants (see p. 70).
Negroes were first landed in Virginia in 1619, but not until almost
fifty years later were they reduced from the legal status of servants
to slaves. Slavery fastened the institution of the great plantation on
Virginia. It was not long before the plantation gentry became
entrenched in the Anglican vestries which ran parish politics; in the
House of Burgesses, which ran provincial politics; and in the militia,
which kept the peace and had first claim on Indian lands. Yet for
decades the colony retained its general aspect of small and success-
fid independent homesteads producing a variety of crops, and even
in the eighteenth century an independent Virginia yeomanry with-
stood the competition and moral corruption of the slave system.
A Place to Hide 47
When Virginia was made a royal colony in 1625, the King
repossessed all lands not in private hands. Later in the 1620s he
made Sir George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore and one of the
old stockholders of the London Company, "proprietor" of a huge
domain which Calvert called Maryland. This domain was cut from
the northerly part of Virginia and extended westward from
Chesapeake Bay. Maryland's first settlers came in 1634. The
proximity and experience of Virginia saved them many of the
usual hardships of pioneering.
Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, had sought his grant as a refuge
for his persecuted coreligionists. But the Catholics, when they fled,
seemed to prefer the continent of Europe. The few who did come
to the new world, though given as a rule large tracts of their own,
were soon outnumbered by Puritans and other Protestants allowed
to enter by the proprietor. Indeed, in 1649 the intolerance of these
newcomers, heightened as it was by the Puritan success in England,
impelled Lord Baltimore to ask the local legislature to enact a
measure for religious freedom to protect the Catholics and all others
who believed in the Holy Trinity. The legislature complied, and
though the famous Toleration Act of 1649 was rescinded a few
years later and the Anglican Church itself established in 1692,
Maryland enjoyed more religious variety than most of the colonies.
In other respects, though its origins were altogether different from
Virginia's, Maryland developed along its neighbor's lines. Tobacco
became king, but at first king of small farmers using indentured
servants, not great ones using Negro slaves.
The first settlers of New England had neither friends nor the
hope of wealth to sustain them. They had something stronger: their
determination to make the country their home and their altar, come
what may. Even in Holland things were getting on the Pilgrims'
nerves. "We lived here," one wrote, "but as men in exile and in a
poor condition." In 1621, moreover, "the twelve years of truce
[between the Dutch and the Spanish] would run out and there was
nothing but beating of drums and preparing for war. . . . The
Spaniard might prove as cruel as the savages of America, and the
famine and pestilence as sore here as there, and thek liberty less to
48 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
look out for remedy." It was thus that the Pilgrims undertook to
find a way to come to the new world. "The dangers," they granted,
"were great, but not desperate. The difficulties were many, but not
invincible." They "knew they were pilgrims . . . but lift up their eyes
to the heavens, their dearest country. . . ."
Through Sir Edwin Sandys, one of the officers of the London
Company who was not a Separatist himself but admired the group,
the Pilgrims negotiated for a grant in Virginia and made an ar-
rangement with London capitalists under which the latter would
finance the voyage and the settlement by advancing -7,000 against
anticipated profits. In return, expecting by then to have paid off the
advance with interest, the Pilgrims agreed to work seven years as
servants of the company, all produce during that time to go into a
common warehouse and fund.
Dickering and other difficulties delayed the Pilgrims' start until
November 11, 1620, when but one ship, the little Mayflower, set
sail. Her one hundred passengers included some of the Holland
group and others who were not part of the Separatist community.
Atlantic storms drove the Pilgrims far from Virginia, and on
December 21, 1620, they landed at Plymouth. Aware that they were
out of the jurisdiction of the government of Virginia and the terri-
tory of the London Company, they drew up their own "Compact"
of government, elected John Carver their governor, and agreed to
abide by the will of a majority of the community. Deciding to
remain where God had led them, and where the first cruel winter
killed half their number, the Pilgrims arranged for an independent
if ill-defined grant of land. In 1628 they gave to each survivor
private ownership of twenty acres, though it was not until 1641
that they paid off the colony's debts to the London merchants and
their heirs. Until 1691, when they were absorbed into Massachu-
setts Bay, the Pilgrims led an austere but independent existence,
sustained chiefly by trade in fish and fur.
"Let it not be grievous to you," the Pilgrims' friends had written
to them from England, that "you have been but the instruments
to break the ice for others; the honor shall be yours till the world's
end." Other Puritans, as thek troubles mounted at home, watched
A Place to Hide 49
the efforts of the Pilgrims in the new world. The Pilgrims' survival
hastened the development of the others' plans to leave.
The second company James chartered in 1609 with an extensive
grant north of Virginia was reorganized in 1620 as the New England
Council. It was from this Council that the Pilgrims eventually got
title to their own territory. In 1628 a number of Puritan merchants
and others bought from the New England Council the land between
the Charles and the Merrimac Rivers, and in 1629 they organized
the Company for Massachusetts Bay. Their charter from the king
permitted them to exploit the fisheries and other resources. Most
important for the future, the charter allowed the establishment of
a Company government.
Early in 1629 the Company for Massachusetts Bay was ap-
proached by a number of well-to-do Puritans in England who were
more interested in their souls than in fish and fur, and who were
able to afford the preference. These Puritans induced the Company
to sell them its land and yield its charter. In October 1629, the
new group elected John Winthrop governor of the Company, and
before the end of 1630 a thousand picked settlers, most of them
East Anglians, had been carried to Massachusetts. There they
promptly laid out the town of Boston and seven other towns to
receive the "Great Migration" to follow.
By 1640 about 25,000 persons had journeyed to the colony,
though many returned home after their initial harsh experience
with the climate, the soil, and their neighbors. Thereafter, as the
Puritans themselves ruled England, migration ceased; and though it
was resumed after 1660, the number of newcomers remained small.
Quakers and members of other independent sects had been ex-
cluded as diligently as possible. Catholics were quarantined and
deported. By 1689 New England was characterized as a place of
"a very home-bred people . . . exceeding wedded to their own
way." To which the founders would have been pleased to say,
"Amen."
Massachusetts Bay did not escape the usual cruel first years of
colonization in the new world. Soon, however, the experience and
character of its settlers told, and Winthrop's fears that we should
"fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnall
50 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
intentions," seemed about to be realized almost from the start. The
settlers quickly established trade with England, exchanging native
fish, fur, lumber and potash for necessities and amenities to be had
in the mother country. Local industry also r ' irted early to produce
the materials for shelter, food, and clothing, and to build ships for
commerce. Churches, of course, the Saints erected practically on
arrival, and in 1636 they organized their first college to train the
"learned clergy" of the future. In 1638 John Harvard bequeathed
to the new school his library and half his estate and since then it has
borne his name.
In 1642 the Saints adopted legislation seeking to further public
education below the college level. This legislation proved ineffec-
tive, and five years later, after noting that "one chief point of that
old deluder, Satan [was] to keep men from a knowledge of the
Scriptures ... by keeping them in an unknown tongue," the
Massachusetts legislature required that each town of fifty house-
holders "should at once appoint a teacher of reading and writing,
and provide for his wages;" and that each town of one hundred
householders "must provide a [Latin] grammar school to fit youths
for the university, under a penalty of ,5 for failure to do so."
Since everyone in early Massachusetts was required to live within
a half mile of the town church, these acts covered the education of
all the young people in the colony. Moreover, they were copied by
the other New England settlements, except Rhode Island.
These Massachusetts laws established a principle of compulsory
public education new to the English-speaking world, and one on
which American education theory has since built. But the results
in the seventeenth century fell far short of the law's intent. School
terms commonly were limited to a few winter weeks when boys
were not needed on the farms. Teachers were ill-trained and often
dissolute; discipline took as much time as any other activity.
The Massachusetts Bay charter established a Company, not a
commonwealth, and Winthrop and his board of directors carefully
concealed from Charles I their intention of creating an independent
state where (as Cotton Mather later explained), "we would have
our posterity settled under the pure and full dispensation of the
gospel; defended by rulers who should be ourselves." Certain in-
A Place to Hide 51
fluential Englishmen, however, soon took pains to enlighten their
monarch on what was afoot. Among them were Sir Fernando
Gorges and the papist, John Mason, both of whom had claims to
land in the new world'' Avhich conflicted with the Puritans' planta-
tion. Charles was far too occupied trying to save his head from
Puritans and Parliament in England (he failed, of course) to pay
heed to New England's enemies, and Winthrop and his colleagues
were left free to proceed as they wished. Yet the questionable char-
ter hung like a cloud over the wilderness Zion not least because
all local land titles existed only under its authority and malcon-
tents in Massachusetts itself periodically threatened the "elect" with
appeals to the English crown to preserve "English liberties" in
America.
As the precious charter prescribed, Winthrop and his board soon
set up a commonwealth government with a deputy governor, eigh-
teen administrative "assistants," and a general "Courte or as-
semblie" to legislate for the community at monthly or more fre-
quent meetings. All the assistants were supposed to be freemen
i.e., shareholders in the Company and all freemen were to sit in
the General Court. The charter provision requiring eighteen as-
sistants immediately proved embarrassing, for there were not that
many shareholders in the whole first group of settlers. Thus some
who were not freemen were named assistants, and this tight little
group alone manned the General Court. Since the charter gave
only the Court the right to induct others into the ranks of freemen,
the self-perpetuating nature of the oligarchy was obvious from the
start.
Too obvious. In the very first year a hundred votaries of mam-
mon, in their own opinion as "visible elect" as their rulers, de-
manded to be made freemen with an appropriate voice in the
government. Torn between the fear of losing an industrious group
of settlers and allowing them to share in Saintly power, Winthrop's
oligarchy tried to eat its cake and have it too. The petitioners were
granted the coveted title of freemen; but the meetings of the free-
men's General Court were restricted to one a year and its functions
solely to electing the governor and assistants. The oligarchy would
then proceed, unchecked, to exercise all the prerogatives of govern-
52 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
ment, including the assessment and taxation of property. This
"compromise" was made in 1630. The next year the assistants ruled
that thereafter no one could become a freeman who was not a
member of an approved Puritan church.* Three years later, they
ruled that no new church could be established without their consent.
This was piety overreaching itself, as the petitioners suspected,
and in 1634 they demanded to see the charter which Winthrop had
kept locked up. Again the oligarchy squirmed. Winthrop permitted
the petitioners to read the charter and acknowledged the powers
of the General Court under it. But instead of permitting all freemen
to sit in the Court where they would rule by force of numbers, the
oligarchy transformed it into a representative body made up of
the assistants and two or three deputies elected by the freemen
of each of the towns. When, by 1644, the number of deputies
threatened to become too large for the assistants to control pro-
ceedings, the oligarchy divided the Court into two houses, a court
of deputies and a court of assistants, and gave each a veto on the
acts of the other, a power the deputies already had over the as-
sistants in the single-house Court.
By an act of 1635, the oligarchy gave unprecedented freedom
in local government to the freemen of the separate towns. There-
after, the general town meeting became characteristic of New
England; and to this day in many small communities the entire vot-
ing population participates directly in decisions on such important
subjects as schools, land use, roads, water supply, and police. Yet
this "concession" early in the seventeenth century was made, after
all, only to Puritan Church members (which by the law of 1631
all freemen had to be). In effect it extended the sway of the
oligarchy over local affairs, and did not allay in the least the con-
flict for control of the Bible Commonwealth itself between the
unanointed visibly successful and the self-anointed "visible elect."
* For all their insistence on church attendance, the Puritans were most
reluctant to admit members into their church. Their aim indeed was to keep
out all but the "visible elect." Admission, as Curtis Nettels writes, "entailed
a threefold scrutiny of the applicant's religious experience: first by the
pastor (who might reject the applicant), then by the church officers, and
finally by the congregation." This was an ordeal not to be undertaken lightly,
especially given the social penalties that would accompany failure in a com-
munity such as Massachusetts Bay.
A Place to Hide 53
One of the most vigorous blows of the "elect" in this conflict
was the promulgation of the Cambridge Platform in 1648. Presby-
terians not Separatists in principle, in the new world the Saints had
become Separatists or Congregationalists in fact. The elders of
each Puritan congregation, like the freemen of each New England
town, came to rule their own church, subject to the arbitration of
disputes by a synod a general court of clergymen, which the
General Court of the Commonwealth could call. In 1648, after
learning that Cromwell had admitted Baptists, Quakers, and mem-
bers of other "radical" sects into his "New Model" army, the
General Court called a synod in Cambridge, Massachusetts, ex-
pressly to sever their lingering ties with Presbyterianism in England.
Toleration of the sects by Cromwell had confirmed the New Eng-
landers in their belief that in the entire world they alone were now
the true Calvinists and Christians, and that Massachusetts Bay had
become the "hidinge place" indeed, not only from the tyranny of
Charles I but also from the Protector's "pernicious errors." Lest
the sects gain a foothold in Massachusetts Bay, the synod went
on to confirm the unity of Church and State in the Commonwealth
and to make the civil government directly responsible for the en-
forcement of the religious and other decrees of the Congregational
clergy. The "dictatorship of the visible elect" that resulted (to use
Perry Miller's characterization) came to be called the "New
England Way."
Yet as Professor Miller says, under the Cambridge Platform
"New England was no longer a reformation, it was an administra-
tion." The basic aim of "completing" the reformation of the
Anglican Church in England became subordinated to buttressing
the rule of the Congregational Church in New England; at the same
time, the "visible" saintliness of the Congregational Church itself
became blurred by the appeal of its "elect" to force. As the agents
of God grew hidebound, the agents of materialism grew ambitious.
At the last, the Restoration of the Stuarts to the throne of England
in 1660 and the re-establishment of the Anglican Church immedi-
ately thereafter insured the victory of worldly wealth in the Bible
Commonwealth. In 1662, fearful of an English investigation of their
"tyranny" (after Massachusetts merchants like Samuel Maverick
54 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
had filled Charles IPs counselors with the horrors of the "New
England Way"), the Massachusetts General Court accepted the
"Half- Way Covenant," by which nonmembers of the Congrega-
tional Church once more were permitted to become freemen and
participate in civic affairs and to have their children baptized into
the Covenant of Grace.
Concession had come hard and late to Massachusetts Bay. In
its early days it had other ways of bringing to book what Winthrop
once characterized as "the mutinous contentions of discontented
persons, ... the seditious and undermineing practices of hereticall
false brethren." Among the first of the "false" was Roger Williams.
Almost from his arrival in 1631 Williams rebelled against the idea
of the government punishing men for their opinions and beliefs.
His persistence in this liberal position led the General Court to
expel him from the Commonwealth in 1635. The rulers planned
to ship him back to England. But in midwinter Williams fled to
his friends among the Narragansett Indians. The following spring,
on land purchased from them, he established the settlement that
grew into Providence, Rhode Island.
Three years after the Williams episode, deciding at her trial that
"two so opposite parties could not contain in the same body with-
out hazard of ruin to the whole," the General Court expelled the
"heretical" Anne Hutchinson. In 1638 she and her followers
established Portsmouth, Rhode Island. In the next five years two
other separatists had set up communities near Providence and
Portsmouth, and in 1644 Roger Williams got a "patent" from
Parliament under which they all might combine under one govern-
ment. Ten years later, Williams wrote of Rhode Island, "We have
long drunk of the cup of as great liberties as any people we can
hear of under the whole heaven. We have not only been long free . . .
from the iron yoke of wolfish bishops, and their popish ceremonies.
. . . We have not felt the new chains of Presbyterian tyrants, nor in
this colony have we been consumed with the over-zealous fire of
(so-called) godly Christian magistrates." In 1663 Rhode Island re-
ceived a formal charter by which it could elect its own governor
and which barred no one from political life on religious grounds.
In the mid-1 63 Os other groups, seeking better lands as well as
broader tolerance, moved from Massachusetts Bay to land claimed
A Place to Hide 55
by the Dutch in the Connecticut Valley. The Dutch never were able
to enforce their claim and in 1639 the towns settled from Mas-
sachusetts drew up the "Fundamental Orders of Connecticut" to
unite their government. This is held to be the first written con-
stitution in American history. Like Rhode Island's "patent," Con-
necticut's "Fundamental Orders" were modeled on Massachusetts^
government, though the autocratic power of the Governor was
curtailed in both new settlements. In 1637 an independent com-
munity, centered in New Haven but including other towns as well,
was established along Long Island Sound. In 1662, Charles II
united this with the older Connecticut settlements to form one
colony. Its domestic government became as clerical and oligarchic
as Massachusetts's own; but as far as relationships with England
went, its charter was as liberal as Rhode Island's. Other Mas-
sachusetts men moved north in this period to future Maine and
New Hampshire, but they remained under Massachusetts jurisdic-
tion.
The conflict with the Dutch in Connecticut was only one of many
experienced by New Englanders. The French to the north actually
claimed the whole eastern coast to North Carolina, and persistently
molested the Protestants. Most menacing of all were the Indians,
who had been given sufficient cause. In 1643 four New England
settlements, Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New
Haven organized the New England Confederation, which lasted
until 1684. Rhode Island was conspicuously omitted, one of the
Confederation's objectives being the nurturing and defense of
religion. But a military defense league was foremost in the federa-
tors' minds. The Confederation's sternest test came in King PhUip's
War (named for the defeated Indian chief) in 1675, when it
virtually wiped out the Narragansett tribe and permanently ended
the menace of Indians to southern New England. This war, in
which at least a thousand Indians perished, also cost New England
about five hundred dead. More than forty towns were either utterly
destroyed or so thoroughly burned and pillaged that they re-
mained impoverished for years. The surviving Indians, moreover,
moved north, allied themselves with the French in Canada, and
helped the French check New England's efforts to expand.
While thus establishing governments and carrying on wars, the
56 El Dorado and a Place to Hide
early colonists were also rethinking their relations with England.
In 1651 Massachusetts let it be known that "Our allegiance binds
us not to the laws of England any longer than while we live in
England, for the laws of the Parliament of England reach no
further." This statement, repeated in other colonies, was recalled
by many spokesmen at the time of the Revolution. But well before
then, the independence of spirit it manifested was to stand England
herself in good stead in her coming conflicts with Spain, the
Netherlands, and above all with France, for control of the new
world.
Chapter Three
The Contest for
North America
Sixteenth-century ships were small, slow and dirty.
They could make only one round trip a year between Europe and
the Orient, no more than three between Europe and the new world.
Most of them were owned by private merchants and great trading
companies, but ruling princes and monarchs also maintained ships
of their own. In times of peace, businessmen often leased these
ships for commercial voyages or operated them on commission
while trading on the ruler's account. In time of war, the prince or
monarch might requisition the merchant fleet at a substantial price
and combine it with his fleet in battle. In the sixteenth century,
merchantmen and men-of-war, merchant captains and naval
captains were interchangeable and commerce and war were one.
In the seventeenth century the Dutch led all other Atlantic powers
in improving the quarters and especially the diet of crews which
characteristically were depleted by scurvy on long ocean voyages.
With an eye to greater tonnage, maneuverability, and fire power, the
Dutch and others also advanced the design of hulls. Simplicity in
rigging was still another objective, the attainment of which cut the
size and cost of crews and added flexibility to their assignments. By
the eighteenth century, commercial rivalry among Atlantic powers
led to such constant fighting that they neglected the development of
professional navies only at great peril. At the same time progress in
the development of distinctive commercial vessels and commercial
services continued. By 1750 the westward voyage between England
and America, for example, had been reduced to a month, the
frequency of sailings raised to one or more a day, and safety im-
57
58 The Contest for North America
proved to the point where ship insurance was at once an insignificant
cost and a highly remunerative business.
In earlier times, in countries of self-sufficient manors and peas-
antries with few wants, trade had been an occupation largely of
ambitious city entrepreneurs; and merchants might prosper or fail
with little consequence to the prospects or pride of their fellow
men. In the eighteenth century, this innocent conception of trade
still hobbled policy-making in the rival Atlantic states. Yet, as com-
mercial competition grew, the heart and sinew of entire nations
gradually became involved. Such stirring English songs as "Rule
Britannia" and "God Save the King" date from the mid-eighteenth
century. Commercial privateers continued to account for most of a
nation's naval strength; but specialized fighting squadrons, flying
their own ensigns, gradually extended their control over the organi-
zation and outcome of hostilities.
In the eighteenth century dynastic rivalries still caused and
colored wars, while religious differences, as of old, added bitterness
and savagery to campaigns. Yet as wars grew in number and
mercenaries were hired to fight them, costs mounted and funds
to keep mercenaries in the field became decisive. Since such funds
flowed increasingly from the new world and the Oriental trade, the
ultimate prize proved to be not Alsace, or Burgundy, or Sicily, or
the Spanish, Austrian, or Polish thrones, but India and America and
control of the seven seas which tied their wealth to Europe. By the
middle of the eighteenth century the ultimate contestants were
England and France; the ultimate arbiters not their redcoats or
regulars, but their navies, their commerce, and their colonies.
ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES
The contest for the outposts and oceans of the world did not reach
its showdown stage until 1756. Mobilization for this contest, on the
other hand, had begun under Raleigh and his contemporary, Cham-
plain, even before Britain or France had staked out a permanent
position in the new world. By 1620, though "Navigation Acts" to
promote maritime strength already had a long and futile history
in England, Parliament was enacting measures to force Virginia to
ship all her tobacco home, and exclusively in English bottoms.
England and Her Colonies 59
After the Dutch took advantage of England's civil strife in the
1640s to strengthen their hold on English trade, Cromwell's parlia-
ment voted in 1651 to exclude alien ships from English ports and
alien goods from English settlements. Cromwell also revived the
fighting navy under the redoubtable Robert Blake and in 1652
opened the wars on the Dutch which ultimately cost them New
Amsterdam. In pursuing his "Western Designe," he also warred
on Spain in the West Indies where Jamaica fell to the English in
1655.
The Navigation Acts of 1620 and 1651 were adopted when the
English navy either was in decay or occupied on more mortal
missions than port patrol. That these acts would be honored by the
colonists or the continental powers without strict enforcement was
but a pious hope. After the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660, how-
ever, Parliament enacted new and comprehensive navigation
measures, which, with later extensions, regulated the economy of
the colonies until the Revolutionary epoch.
The basic Acts were passed between 1660 and 1663. They
restricted all trade between England and her colonies to ships built
in either place and owned and manned by English subjects. With
the exception of perishable fruits and wines, all non-English goods
destined for the colonies had first to be "laid on the shores of
England," where a duty would be collected. On re-export to
America in English or colonial vessels, part of the duty might or
might not be refunded. Finally, whatever their ultimate market,
certain "enumerated" colonial staples including initially only to-
bacco, which had been controlled since 1620, West Indian sugar,
and a few minor items could be shipped nowhere but to England
whose home merchants would set the purchase price and gain the
re-export trade. Not until 1673 were limits put on intercolonial
trade itself, nor until 1733 on trade between the colonies and non-
English islands in the Caribbean. Before 1660, enforcement of
the navigation acts had been left largely to indecisive parliamentary
committees. To enforce the stricter Stuart measures, responsible
royal officers were appointed.
The new "civil list," however, soon proved far from effective.
Many appointees were mere court favorites placed by Charles II
60 The Contest for North America
and James II in positions to recoup or enlarge their fortunes at
the colonials' expense. Others were royalist zealots who interfered
intolerably with colonial liberties and England's own. Thus it was
not long before the rising merchants (and the upper aristocracy of
great Whig landholders allied with them) tired of this costly ad-
ministration and, for many other reasons, of James II himself.
Catholic James, who as Duke of York had secretly housed Jesuit
congregations and later publicly proclaimed his conversion to
Rome, had taken the throne in 1685, the very year in which his
cousin and mentor, Louis XIV, revoked the Edict of Nantes and
resumed persecution of French Protestants. After crushing the
Puritan revolt under the Duke of Monmouth in the year of his
accession, James's "bloody assizes," administered by the maniacal
Judge Jeffreys, suppressed English Dissenters with such venom that
many Anglicans themselves took fright. James also flouted the Test
Act of 1673, which forbade all but Anglicans to hold public office
in England, and placed Catholics in positions of influence and
power. They and he together then appropriated much of the
property of the Anglican Church. These acts alienated even royalist
Tories who believed in the divine right of kings. When in 1688
James fathered a son and the chill menace of a Catholic succession
was felt throughout the land, Tories and Whigs together harried
James out of the Kingdom.
In James's place the Whig Parliament brought in James's
daughter Mary and her Dutch Protestant husband, the ambitious
William of Orange, who ruled England as William III. Thus was
asserted, at least for English constitutional theory, the superiority
of the elected representatives of the "people" over their own
"elected" King.* As elaborated by "the great Mr. Locke," this
* Actually, the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 was more in the tradition of
ancient Magna Carta in asserting the privileges of the great landed barons
as against the pretensions of the "people's" king. Henceforth, Parliament
declared (fixing a growing custom into law), members of the House of
Commons shall receive no stipend, thus making it difficult for any but the
very rich to sit. To insure this result, Parliament ruled in 1710 that no one
could be a member of the Commons who did not have a yearly income from
the /and equal to about $15,000 today, a lordly sum for the times. No won-
der, as Daniel Defoe observed, there was a sudden rage among city business-
men to become landed aristocrats. "I dare oblige myself," he wrote in 1728
England and Her Colonies 61
theory became one of the pillars of the colonists' own position that
since they did not participate in the election of parliamentary repre-
sentatives in England, their allegiance could be only to their own
local "parliaments" and the king these parliaments "elected."
In 1689 Parliament enacted the famous "Bill of Rights," by
which the practice of their religion by Dissenters became "tolerated"
under law; but Parliament at the same time revitalized the Test Act
of 1673 excluding Dissenters from public life. In 1701 Parliament
also decreed that henceforth no Catholic could be King. While
accepting this second measure, the colonists promptly rejected the
application of the Test Act to America. "Toleration," they said,
was included in Locke's trilogy of "life, liberty, and property,"
as a subject to be pursued by them in their own way. But King
William promptly undertook to show them how wrong they were
on the constitutional issue and proceeded to give British administra-
tion of colonial life, liberty, and property its nearly final form.
In place of the Stuarts' ill-defined group of administrators,
William set up a permanent Board of Trade and Plantations which,
in conjunction with the Privy Council, henceforth conducted
American affairs. To strengthen the Board's hand, Parliament in
1696 created a system of admiralty courts in America, manned and
managed by the home country, before which colonial merchants
might be tried without a jury when caught evading the rules of trade.
These rules themselves were made stricter in William's time and
his successsors', mainly by adding items to the "enumerated" list.
Conspicuous among the additions were naval stores and ship masts
which were enumerated in 1706. Parliament, on the other hand,
"to name five hundred great estates, within one hundred miles of London,
which . . . were the possessions of antient English gentry, which are now
... in the possession of citizens and tradesmen, purchased ... by money
raised in trade; some by merchandising, some by shopkeeping, and some
by meer manufacturing; such as clothing in particular."
The Catholic South of Ireland gave sanctuary to James II after the Revolu-
tion and Louis XIV continued to use it as a springboard for harassment of
England. In the North of Ireland, in turn, the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians
who had been settled there eighty years earlier to keep the Catholics down,
were proving far too competitive as businessmen. When, for the benefit of
absentee English landlords and their mercantile and manufacturing allies,
Ireland's economy was crushed soon after the "Glorious Revolution," the
stage was set for one of the great migrations to America.
62 The Contest for North America
banned the exportation to England of colonial staples, notably
wheat, flour, and fish, which competed with England's own.
Under William and Mary and their successors, other restraints
were placed on the colonies, allegedly to strengthen the empire.
The Stuarts, as early as 1660, had banned the migration to America
of England's skilled artisans. Starting with the Woolen Act of
1699 (applied to Ireland as well as America), colonial artisans
themselves were forbidden first to export and later even to make
many manufactured commodities. In 1684 the coinage of much
needed currency was forbidden in America; thereafter restrictions
on money, banking, and credit also grew harsher. In 1705, in an
effort to direct colonial capital and energy toward the production
of certain scarce materials required in shipbuilding, bounties and
other inducements were offered. These promoted hemp growing in
North Carolina and other poorer parts of the South; and the
extraction of pitch, the making of tar, and the cutting of ship timber
in New England forests and elsewhere. But in general, it might
be noted, cajolery worked no better than confinement, and England
continued to have to look outside the empire for much of her
supply of these materials; just as the colonists, when so moved,
looked away from England for markets.
THE NEW WORLD THEATER
While England strove to keep her rivals out of colonial waters
(and the colonists out of theirs), she also maneuvered to keep
them off colonial territory.
In 1660 England's holdings in the new world were menaced on
the north and west by Catholic France, and on the south and west
by Catholic Spain, each with her Indian aUies; while England's
chief maritime rivals, the Dutch in New Amsterdam, split her
colonial domains in two. As early as 1653, Virginia had permitted
some of her more intractable settlers to move south and establish
independent outposts as buffers against the Spanish and the Indians
on Albemarle Sound. Ten years later these outposts were included
in the huge grant made by Charles II to eight aristocratic promoters
who had been helpful in restoring him to the throne. Reaching from
Virginia's southern boundary to the borders of Spanish Florida and
The New World Theater 63
westward to the as yet unplaced "South Sea," the new grant was
called by its grateful proprietors Carolina.
The owners of Carolina, the leaders among whom had made
their fortunes in Barbados, promptly made elaborate plans for
peopling their territory with tenant farmers squeezed out of the
West Indies by the great sugar plantations. On the rents from these
farmers they expected to live comfortably in England. Not before
1670, however, did the proprietors succeed in landing the first con-
tingent of settlers. After a quarter of a century as a fur-trading
outpost, Charleston in the late 1690s became the center of a
flourishing rice-growing region. In the next thirty years a mixed
population of Englishmen, French Huguenots, Portuguese Jews, and
African Negroes gave the town the cosmopolitan character it was
to enjoy for another century and a half.
The Carolina proprietors had no more success in controlling the
turbulent Albemarle settlers than Virginia had had. By 1729 these
settlers had grown much more numerous than the population of
distant Charleston and its vicinity, but poorer soil and a poorer
port limited the Albemarle group's prosperity. In 1729 a com-
bination of troubles prompted the proprietors to sell Carolina back
to the Crown. As the proprietors had long since given the Albe-
marle settlers a separate governor and assembly, George II, now
King, proceeded to make two royal colonies of the region, one
called South Carolina, the other North Carolina. Three years later,
in 1732, George infuriated Spain by granting territory below South
Carolina to a philanthropic "trusteeship" headed by James Ogle-
thorpe, a man "driven by strong benevolence of soul," to help
those imprisoned for debt in England make a fresh start in America.
Oglethorpe named his grant Georgia. The Spanish never conceded
Georgia's alienation, and not until the United States purchased
Florida from Spain in 1819 was the incendiary southern border of
the "convict colony" defined.
While English settlements encroached on Spain to the south,
other English ventures took care of the Dutch in what became the
Middle States. Even before the Dutch surrendered New Amsterdam
in 1664, Charles II, with Parliament's consent, made a grant of
their territory between the Connecticut and the Delaware rivers
64 The Contest for North America
to his brother, the future James II, as yet Duke of York. At the
same time Charles added enough other territory to extend James's
holdings from Maryland to Maine. In 1673 the Dutch recaptured
New York, as James had renamed the place, but returned it the
next year.
In 1688, James, now King, joined New York to New England,
the more strictly to govern both. But neither James nor that
arrangement lasted out the year. Under William and Mary, New
York became a regular royal colony with a royal governor and a
council appointed by the King, and an elected assembly. New
York's repressive history, however, continued to discourage new-
comers. The merchants of New York City and Albany controlled
taxation and enterprise, while the old patroons, to whose number
James had added favorites of his own, remained undisturbed in
the enjoyment of their rents from majestic Hudson Valley estates.
Three other colonies were carved from James's unparalleled
grant. In 1664, to two of his artistocratic friends who had been
among the promoters of Carolina, James sold the territory between
the Hudson and the Delaware, which they named New Jersey. In
1702 New Jersey became a royal colony. In 1704 Delaware, here-
tofore merely the three "Lower Counties" of William Perm's
domains, also got an independent charter. The third colony was
Penn's own.
Born in 1644, the son of an admiral who had been close to
James I, William Perm was converted to the Quaker faith at the
age of twenty-three. By then the Restoration bishops had caused
the imprisonment of thousands of Friends while three of their
missionaries to Boston had been hanged by the Saints. In accord-
ance with their belief, the Quakers simply turned the other cheek.
Such evidence of pure faith and practical Christianity held oS
if it did not humble their persecutors, and by the 1680's the sect
had come upon better days. Indeed, Penn himself wished for much
more than "a place to hide" for his coreligionists. Dedicated to the
idea that man's "native goodness was equally his honor and his
happiness," as he wrote in his Frame of Government, Penn had
moved far ahead of his times in believing in most men's capacity
for politics and all men's right to make their own peace with their
The New World Theater 65
Creator. For a grand "Holy Experiment" in republicanism and
religious freedom he sought an ample grant in the new world.
Perm's quest was satisfied in 1681 when, as compensation for a
debt of 16,000 owed to his father, the Admiral, the Duke of
York gave his young friend that part of his territory reaching west
from die Delaware River between the borders of Maryland and
New York. It was after a half-century of litigation over Pennsyl-
vania's southern border that the Mason-Dixon line was drawn in
1767.
Penn's "Holy Experiment" was an immediate success. Offering
some of the best land in the world on the best terms in America,
the Quaker matched his known humanity as a leader with manifest
liberality as a proprietor. He served as his own first governor as-
sisted by a council of landowners "of the best repute for wisdom,
virtue and ability," elected by the taxpayers. On his arrival in
America in 1682, Penn found about a thousand Swedes and Dutch
settled on his domain. He generously permitted them to keep their
land without charge. By then he had also found takers for more than
300,000 of his new acres, mainly among persecuted German sects
whose members had had small chance to recover from the carnage
of the recently ended century of religious wars. But enough
Englishmen, Friends and others, came from abroad or from
Quaker settlements in older colonies to give Pennsylvania and espe-
cially its seaport, Philadelphia, a permanent English cast. Though
a royal colony for a few years under William and Mary, Pennsyl-
vania was soon restored to its founder. Penn's own fortunes sank
so low in later years in England that he went for a time to debtor's
prison. But his American venture prospered.
While the Spanish thus were pushed back in the south and the
Dutch pushed out in the middle, the French in the north and west
also felt the surge of England's expansion. The settlement of
Pennsylvania itself was viewed by the French as a threat to their
claims to the Ohio Valley, and their Indian allies constantly
bedeviled the pacific Quakers. In the North, in 1679, New Hamp-
shire was strengthened as an English outpost by being separated
from Massachusetts and given a royal charter of its own. Ten years
66 The Contest for North America
later the first of the series of wars began which ultimately eliminated
the French from the North American continent.
Louis XIV had never become reconciled to the removal of his
faithful Stuarts from the English throne in 1688 in favor of "Dutch
William," and championed the cause of the "Pretender," whom
he called James III. William therefore had a powerful personal
motive for making war on France. More important, William's con-
tinental obligations always outweighed his concern for England.
Thus when Louis threatened to overrun the Netherlands in 1689,
William led a European "grand alliance" against him. Waged in
Europe among princes as the War for the League of Augsburg,
this conflict was fought for fur in America as King William's War.
At its conclusion in 1697, France had strengthened her claim to
the fur-rich Hudson Bay territory. Its sequel, however, began her
long decline.
This sequel was the War of the Spanish Succession, or Queen
Anne's War, which opened in 1702 (the year Anne succeeded
William on the throne) and was terminated in 1713 by the mo-
mentous Peace of Utrecht. By one of the provisions of this peace
the Bourbons were confirmed in their occupation of the Spanish
throne, which they had grasped in 1700 and would hold until 1931.
But in the new world, England reclaimed title to the Hudson Bay
country, quieted whatever claims France had to Newfoundland, and
took Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and St. Christopher in the West
Indies from her. The peace treaty, moreover, recognized the
Iroquois as British subjects and thereby gave England grounds to
claim all their lands, including French territory in the Mississippi
Valley as well as the valley of the Ohio.
France's commercial loss was also great, for by the terms of the
Peace she surrendered the asiento to England. This was the ex-
clusive privilege, once the prize of the Dutch, of selling African
slaves to Spanish America. Besides this most profitable trade,
Spain also permitted one English ship a year to visit Panama. This
was like offering a bunch of golden grapes and inviting the English
to take but one. Good manners could not withstand temptation,
and with Jamaica and St. Christopher as convenient bases, the
English swarmed into Spanish mainland ports. By this time, too,
the rest of the British West Indies and Bermuda had all become
British America 67
jewels in the grand crown of empire; while from Bombay, acquired
in 1661 as part of the dowry of Charles IFs Portuguese Queen,
Catherine of Braganza, British power continued to spread over
India.
BRITISH AMERICA
The Peace of Utrecht was a magnificent victory for English arms
and English diplomacy, one all the sweeter because it marked the
humbling of Louis XIV, the paragon of absolutism, by the par-
liamentary "nation of shop-keepers" he despised. Indeed, the peace
terms, while not conclusive enough to subordinate France forever,
were too good to last. England's gains were Europe's goad; Eng-
land's victory made England vulnerable.
The coalition which William led into the war against Louis in
1702 had come together, as one of its own treaties said, "especially
in order that the French shall never come into possession of the
Spanish Indies nor be permitted ... to navigate there for the
purpose of carrying on trade." English domination in America as a
result of this war suited the continental rulers no better than French
or Spanish. For almost two hundred years after Charles V in 1519
added the throne of the Holy Roman Empire to that of Spain, rival
monarchs had joined one another in a bewildering series of alliances
whose common objective was to maintain what came to be called
the balance of power in Europe. After 1588 Spain had been slowly
put in her place. Next, Louis the XIV's France loomed as the com-
mon enemy, the year 1700 marking the zenith of French power.
Now it became England's turn. Her victory in 1713, as spelled out
in the Peace of Utrecht, began her towering ascent toward Victoria's
empire on which the sun never set. But it also made clear that
a permanent corollary to the balance of power principle was wanted
one that brought the new world within the principle's orbit.
The first bitter fruit of this enlargement of the balance of power
was England's loss of thirteen of her American "plantations," to
the success of whose revolt in 1775 many European powers besides
France were to contribute materially. Before the American Revolu-
tion, moreover, France herself was to try more than once to regain
her old-world mastery and, with others to contain England's expan-
sion overseas.
68 The Contest for North America
Yet for a generation after 1713 internal problems occupied both
France and England, and they were content to avoid open war,
In 1715 Louis XIV died, leaving his bankrupt and starving country-
men to recover as best they could under his five-year-old grandson,
Louis XV. Actually, under Louis's Regent, the Duke of Orleans,
and for a time under Louis himself, France did well. Her aristocrats
reclaimed many of the rights they had surrendered to the absolute
"Sun King"; and young nobles like the Baron de Montesquieu
joined commoners like Voltaire in learning to admire if not to ape
British political institutions. French trade and industry also flour-
ished, to such a degree indeed that the political frustrations of the
prosperous but powerless Third Estate help explain the ferocity of
the Revolution which so shocked the world in 1789.
A year before Louis XIV's death, Queen Anne died in England.
Her successor was George I, Elector of Hanover, the closest Stuart
"cousin" who was not a Catholic. Many English tories preferred the
"pretender," James III, and in 1715 (and again in 1745 when
"Bonnie Prince Charlie" had succeeded to James's role) they re-
belled against the new royal family. George I and George II, neither
of whom learned English, spent little time away from their Hanover
estates. The Whigs, however, were committed to the succession.
While the "Whig Oligarchy" thus was kept busy quieting rebellion,
it was also left free to develop those institutions of Parliamentary
(aristocratic) supremacy which the French philosophes liked so
much but which George III and his American colonists both were
to challenge fiercely.
In British America this post-Utrecht period of relative peace, and
especially the years 1721-42 during which the great Whig, Robert
Walpole, virtually governed England, is usually called the era of
"salutary neglect." The same conditions which prompted the
mother country to forgo war with her rivals also bade her leave her
colonies to their own devices. Under this regime, colonial life
flowered. To be sure, America was breeding native social and
political tensions, largely geographic or sectional in character; but
these only grew out of the general prosperity which swelled the
pride and the purses of the colonists until the empire could no
longer contain them, internal tensions and all.
The Labor Force 69
THE LABOR FORCE
Visions of quick fortunes from local El Dorados and from unob-
structed short routes to China drew European adventurers to the
new world even as late as the eighteenth century; and until well
past the middle of the nineteenth century drew Americans them-
selves ever westward across the continent. Long before this, how-
ever, a more substantial economy had developed in North America
which supported a pleasant style of life in newer towns like Charles-
ton and Philadelphia as well as in Boston, Newport, and New York,
and gave a manorial veneer to the large tobacco, rice, and (toward
the end of the era) indigo plantations of the rural South.
Through most of the colonial period, of course, at least ninety
per cent of the white settlers in the English mainland colonies con-
tinued to live in huts, lean-tos, or one- or two-room log cabins on
half-cleared family farms scattered through the sunless forest from
Maine to Carolina. As settlement moved inward from the coast and
from the choice river bottom lands, the migrants gradually lost con-
tact with the civilization of the major ports and the exchange centers
on the navigable streams. Yet the majority of farmers, at least in
New England and the Middle Colonies, managed to save them-
selves and their families from barbarism and to stake out a col-
lectible claim on the future.
In the towns themselves the majority also worked with their
hands for long hours at occupations as carpenters, bricklayers,
bakers, weavers, coopers, chandlers, sawyers, sadlers, locksmiths,
and the like which had engaged their forebears and themselves in
the old world. Families frequently ran to ten or more children; and
their quarters on narrow, noxious streets were likely to be cramped
and cold in winter, tumultuous and hot in summer. After the first
two or three decades of settlement firewood became scarce and ex-
pensive. Pigs and cattle had the run of public thoroughfares, and
while towns very early passed laws against littering the streets with
refuse, even in the eighteenth century observance and enforcement
often were lax. Sickness was frequent, epidemics common, fire a
constant hazard.
Nevertheless, eighteenth-century townspeople endured nothing
70 The Contest for North America
like the sodden segregation of the great cities of later periods. Prox-
imity to the country opened hunting and fishing and other rural
recreations to practically all town dwellers. In the towns themselves
everything was within walking distance of everything else, the com-
mon architecture was engaging, the water front open and attractive,
market places lively, taverns frequent, ale and rum abundant and
cheap. City laborers' wages ran four or five times those in London
and elsewhere, while independent artisans and shopkeepers com-
manded high enough prices for the frugal early in life to ac-
cumulate capital with which to improve their condition and their
children's chances.
Many, of course, failed to make good in the American environ-
ment and in American terms, and throughout the colonial period
(as well as later in American history) the disheartened or disen-
chanted sailed back to the troubled lands they had fled. But im-
migration, over and above the growing number of Negro slaves
forcibly brought in, far outstripped emigration. The newcomers
included British government officials and representatives of Lon-
don and Bristol merchants, who were to form the nucleus of the
higher circles in the colonies. Numerous middle-class artisans,
mechanics, and shopkeepers also came over. But most of the im-
migrants were from lower levels of society and found work as farm
laborers, especially in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Pre-
ponderant among these poor were Scotch and Scotch-Irish Presby-
terians and South of Ireland Catholics, victims of Anglicanism and
mercantilism in Great Britain; and pietistic Palatine Germans, vic-
tims of the Catholicism and expansionism of France.
Probably half the immigrants each year, and virtually all the non-
English ones before the 1730s, entered under some form of "white
servitude" into which they had sold themselves to ship captains and
"soul brokers" in exchange for their ocean passage. The voyage
itself was viler even than on slave ships and on the average a third
of the "servants" died. The conditions of servitude in America
usually were set forth in an "indenture," or contract, which was
auctioned off to employers or their agents on arrival in colonial
ports. The term of servitude ranged from four to seven years and
sometimes longer. "Very often," according to one expert, servants
Export Staples and the Speculative Urge 71
bound themselves for a second term, and sometimes even for life.
During the term employers had the legal right to resell the "in-
denture" in effect, the person himself at any time, and in many
other respects to treat the "servant" as a slave.
Many of the contract laborers did not wait for their terms to
end before striking out for themselves. Runaways were frequent,
and most of those who succumbed to the lure of the forest and the
wild life of the frontier went unapprehended. Some who did work
out thek terms were granted fifty or more acres of land, as their
contracts often stipulated, but the available evidence suggests that
this provision was frequently unobserved or that the freed servant
sold off his grant for a ready pittance. Even in an exclusively agri-
cultural colony like Maryland fewer than 10 per cent of the servants
appear to have settled down as free farmers. In Georgia, the
Trustees once came to the cynical conclusion that "many of the
poor who had been useless in England were inclined to be useless
likewise in Georgia." The more northerly colonies also had their
rural derelicts, while the towns from the 1650s on faced the prob-
lem of pauperism arising from servants "sett att Liberty," who
"either through Idleness or sickness become unable to help them-
selves."
The institution of white servitude survived the Revolution.
George Washington was ordering the purchase of servants for his
Virginia plantation in 1784; while in Pennsylvania as late as 1793
it was held that tampering with the indenture system would bring
severe social and economic dislocations.
EXPORT STAPLES AND THE SPECULATIVE URGE
While most colonial Americans cultivated the soil, the main sources
of the gentry's wealth in all the mainland colonies in the eighteenth
century had become ocean commerce and land speculation. Even
in the overwhelmingly rural tobacco country of Virginia and Mary-
land tobacco planting was profitable because ocean-going ships
visited each season at the great planters' private wharves along the
many navigable rivers. In South Carolina and Georgia the rivers
were less hospitable to deep-sea vessels, but they called at Charles-
ton and Savannah where the rice was collected for export. When
72 The Contest for North America
tobacco profits failed, and rice culture exhausted the limited regions
suitable to it, land speculation rescued those among the gentry who
managed not to succumb to debt.
The Navigation Acts enumerating tobacco afforded the Virginia
and Maryland planters a secure market, which became all the more
inviting late in the seventeenth century when the West Indies gave
up tobacco culture to concentrate wholly on sugar. Yet the tobacco
trade had certain drawbacks that were not long in making them-
selves felt. From the time of James I, who considered tobacco "a
corrupter of men's bodies and manners," use of the leaf was peri-
odically discouraged in England by heavy sumptuary duties, and by
the 1750s the continent was taking 80 per cent of the tobacco first
landed in British ports. Even for this tobacco American planters
had no choice but to accept the prices offered by British tobacco
merchants. These prices, in turn, often reflected severe depressions
hi the tobacco trade brought about by continental wars, political
manipulation of taxes, and the ordinary ups and downs of business
life. In order to maintain their aggregate incomes at such times,
planters would devote more and more acreage and slaves to the
leaf. But when the market was weak, overproduction only de-
pressed prices further. At the same time, the merchants continued
to charge planters exorbitantly for carrying the staple in their ships
and for insurance, credit, and local haulage.
When the planters, moreover, ordered foreign wines, silks, books,
and other rare or manufactured commodities, the English tobacco
merchants served as purchasing agents. Outraged eighteenth-cen-
tury Virginians estimated the merchants' commissions for this
service at 100 per cent. Though scrupulous merchants might be
found, Robert Walpole himself noted in the 1730s that the planters
were reduced "to a state of despair by the many frauds that have
been committed in [the tobacco] trade."
Speculation in land was a natural hedge against the uncertainties
of overseas conditions. One of its special charms was that princely
land grants sometimes running to tens of thousands of acres
often could be acquired with little or no cash through political
favoritism or chicanery, and illegal private deals with Indian tribes,
Indeed colonial assemblies offered bounties and other inducements
Export Staples and the Speculative Urge 73
such as free surveying to gentlemen who would further the security
of the established settlements by undertaking to populate the wilder-
ness on the Indian, French, and Spanish frontiers.
The rising demand for timber for use as fuel and potash, and in
shipbuilding, house building, and cooperage often made land
speculation profitable from the start. Hunger for tobacco land
among the established gentry themselves, aggravated by the com-
mon belief that it was cheaper to mine plantation after plantation
than to maintain the fertility of the land first cleared, also helped
push up the price of virgin acreage. Most important was the market
provided by the tens of thousands of free imm.igra.nts (and runaway
servants) who came down the Shenandoah Valley after 1730.
Many of them simply "squatted" on God's country, claiming a
"natural right" to it, and held off the more or less legal owners at
gun point. But large numbers, either singly or in groups, had
brought some capital and were eager to buy or rent land.
Had the great tobacco planters kept adequate books of account,
nevertheless, they might have discovered that even land speculation
did not insure their solvency. The extraordinarily long and cumula-
tive credit allowed them by English merchants, usually with the
next year's crop pledged as security, also helped to keep the
planters' true financial condition from them. A third factor, no
doubt, was the expansiveness of plantation life itself, which could
not be constrained by debt, however hopeless. "Such amazing prop-
erty," observed Philip Fithian, tutor to the Virginia Carters, "no
matter how deeply it is involved, blows up the owners to an imagi-
nation, which is visible in all." They "live up to their own sup-
positions," a Londoner commented, "without providing against
Calamities and accidents."
Between 1734 and 1756 rising tobacco prices also put a premium
on land, and the tobacco gentry enjoyed their "golden age." In that
generation, writes Samuel Eliot Morison in his essay on "The
Young George Washington," "the traditional Virginia of Thackeray
and Vachel Lindsay 'Land of the gauntlet and the glove' came
into being."
Virginia society, to be sure, remained almost exclusively agricul-
tural and those aspects of culture that flourish in populous commu-
74 The Contest for North America
nities failed to flower here. "Few Men of Fortune," wrote the
Reverend James Murray in 1762, "will expend on their Son's Edu-
cation the Sums requisite to carry them thro' a regular Course of
Studies. . . ." William and Mary College (the first colonial college
after Harvard) had been opened at Wttliamsburg in 1693 and was
well endowed by the established Anglican Church; but few students
spent more than a year there, and that year was usually one of
indolence and sport. Sons of great planters sometimes were sent
to England for study; but many of them remained there perma-
nently. The Scotch-Presbyterian invasion of the Virginia back coun-
try brought to that region a taste of Calvinist enthusiasm for reading
and writing and the catechism; but even this soon lost its heartiness
in the wilderness and failed to seed the more settled regions.
Religion itself, moreover, though enriched by periodic "revivals,"
tended to wane. In 1739 the English evangelist, George White-
field, visited Virginia during the most spectacular of his many
American tours to exhort sinners to repent. Whitefield, like Jona-
than Edwards in New England and Theodore Freylinghuysen in
New Jersey, other leading revivalists, preached that all Christian
believers could enjoy a "new birth" if they would genuinely yield
their souls to Christ. Unlike Edwards, Whitefield spoke more of
God's love than Hell's terrors; but his very voice carried like the
trumpets of jubilee to sinners gathered by the thousands to hear that
the Day of Judgment was near at hand.
Whitefield embellished his exhorting with wild laughter, flights
of song, and violent gestures and gyrations that soon had his
listeners shrieking, dancing, and writhing on the ground to mani-
fest that the spirit of the Lord had entered them. The number of
"conversions" mounted wherever Whitefield went; yet the "Great
Awakening," as this first vast revival is called, soon passed. His-
torians have attributed much importance to it. There can be no
doubt that it gave a strong impetus to the growth of the Baptist
Church, Methodism, and other nonintellectual sects, especially in
tie back country. It also set a precedent for later revivals, all of
which lent a characteristic emotional tinge to American religious
observance. Yet between revivals, "converts" in Virginia often
lapsed back to the more secular concerns of the frontier and made
later revivals as much worldly as worshipful meetings.
Export Staples and the Speculative Urge 75
The established Anglican Church made the most of the *Vild
and savage" revivals to stress its own "moderately cultivated" de-
meanor. Few enjoyed the universal upperclass preoccupation with
the horse more than the ministers of the Established Church
places reserved largely for the sporting "younger sons" of the gen-
try. So profound was this preoccupation that Professor Morison
undertakes to explain George Washington's personal discipline in
terms of his youthful experience with young steeds. Everybody
rode for exercise. Horse races, and the gambling that inevitably ac-
companied them, became daily events. Above all, the hunt, riding
to hounds, became the sport of bluebloods, admission to the hunt
club the accolade.
Yet few indeed could afford for long this gamy life and its
attendant expenditures for clothes, equipages and body slaves, man-
sions, parks, and wine. Eventually, the Virginians' debts for hono-
rific imports grew so calamitously that Governor Francis Farquier
was moved to remark in 1766 that their "Blood ... is soured by
their private distresses." His regretful observation was elicited in
part by the first great legislative scandal in American history. In
1766 John Robinson, for twenty-eight years the esteemed Speaker
of the Virginia House of Burgesses, was convicted posthumously of
having issued "100,000 of retired currency to insolvent planters"
in what is judged to have been "a desperate attempt to save the
Virginia aristocracy from economic ruin."
Many were not saved by Robinson's largesse. But even among
those who crashed, perhaps especially among them, the vast West
beckoned more beguilingly than ever, and Virginians' visions of
landed wealth grew feverish enough, as Washington's and Jeffer-
son's did, to encompass the entire continent and indeed the entire
hemisphere.
The rice planters of South Carolina worked their soil and their
slaves far harder than the Virginians did and to far better pur-
pose. Like tobacco, the principal markets for rice were on the
European continent, and English merchants had hoped to service
these markets through the re-export trade. To insure their monop-
oly, rice was enumerated in 1704, but was found to be subject to
spoilage from the long storage and excessive handling necessitated
76 The Contest for North America
by re-export. Rice was made virtually free once more in 1729 and
prices soared. When Georgia assumed the frontier role of buffer
against the Spanish in 1732, the rice planters of South Carolina
could settle down to business. Suddenly rice became the bonanza
crop, the gold and oil of the mid-eighteenth century, and fortunes
were made in a season. By the 1750s the planters had extended
their fields to Georgia itself and in the next decade proceeded to
make that colony a virtual captive of its neighbor.
By the 1750s, moreover, encouraged by a Parliamentary bounty,
many rice planters had turned to the production of indigo, which
was urgently in demand as a dye by the flourishing English cloth
manufacturers. Indigo fortunes soon reinforced rice fortunes, and
the port of Charleston, its pastel mansions glistening in the re-
flected sunlight of the harbor, hummed with trade.
As late as the 1760s the rice and indigo gentry numbered no
more than 2,000 families. "Nevertheless," observes Carl Briden-
baugh, the author of southern Myths and Realities, "the Carolina
Society took its pattern from this gentry exclusively." Many gentry
families were West Indian in origin and together they reproduced
the culture of a tropical imperial island. On the mainland Negroes
outnumbered whites only in South Carolina, and here the ratio was
an overwhelming three to one. In Charleston itself, the mid-century
population of about 10,000 was equally divided by color, and a
sizable proportion of the Negroes were household and body serv-
ants. Numerous names among the gentry persisted: Laurens, Izard,
Huger, Rutledge, Gadsden, Manigault. Yet it was hardly a static
group. "Their whole lives," commented an observer of Charleston
at its colonial peak:
are one continued Race: in which everyone is endeavoring to dis-
tance all behind him; and to overtake or pass by, all before hijn;
everyone is flying from his inferiors in Pursuit of his Superiors, who
fly from him with equal Alacrity. . . . Every Tradesman is a Mer-
chant, every Merchant is a Gentleman, and every Gentleman one of
the Noblesse. We are a Country of Gentry. ... We have no such
Thing as a common people among us: Between Vanity and Fashion,
the Species is utterly destroyed.
In Carolina, as distinct from Virginia and Maryland, debt was
not endemic. "The planters are full of money," noted Henry
Export Staples and the Speculative Urge 77
Laurens in 1750. Money, in turn, naturally flowed to land; and
even by mid-century, prospective settlers in Carolina complained
that "the valuable land is chiefly engrossed by the wealthy." Twenty
years later a skeptical visitor from New England wrote that "the
rise in value of lands seems romantic, but I was assured they were
fact."
The Carolina nabobs had been in no hurry to unload their wilder-
ness estates. Much of the land they preserved in its pristine forest
grandeur. The sections they cleared were less for farming or for
sale than for the timber trade and for the exploitation of the fabu-
lous red pine whose products pitch, tar, turpentine, and resin a
Carolinian boasted, "administer more to the necessities and com-
forts of mankind than any other trees whatever." Thus the new-
comers who overflowed into South Carolina after 1750 from
already well-filled Pennsylvania and Virginia, were usually forced
to the "cutting edge" of the frontier. Here, in the "cowpens" and
beyond, many fell to the nomadic life of herdsmen of wild swine
and cattle (not infrequently stolen from the Indians) from which
civilization had striven for centuries to raise mankind. Some found
this life so congenial that they made their fortunes out of meat and
skins and tallow; a veritable back country gentry arose in South
Carolina on the foundation of the most extensive cattle ranges in
the colonies. But most of the settlers continued to slide on the social
scale, becoming primitive huntsmen on the prowl for elusive game,
including Indians.
Illiteracy was higher in South Carolina than anywhere else in
England's mainland colonies, and her foreign-born "Back Parts"
had few defenses against the "mixt Multitude" of "white-collar"
people carried inland on the stream of settlers like camp-following
women. The "Back Parts" complained frequently of white-collar
venality to the reigning grandees of Charleston, where all South
Carolina government was centered, but to so little consequence that
"Finding . . . they were only amus'd and trifled with, all Confidence
of the Poor in the Great is destroy'd and . . . will never exist again."
When violence broke out in the South Carolina back country in
the 1760s, it was directed (as in North Carolina too) against the
" 'mercenary tricking Attornies, Clerks, and other little Officers'
who were almost exclusively native-born adventurers of English
78 The Contest for North America
descent." In the Revolution, when the Carolina planters fought
England, the non-English "Back Parts," Anglophobe though they
were to the marrow and to the man, chose to fight the planters.
Charleston grandees survived both conflicts and, by measures simi-
lar to those of the Virginians, pushed the speculative frontier right
through Spanish Florida itself.
THE SEAFARING NORTH
In the North, ocean commerce played the dynamic role that the
export staples tobacco, rice, and indigo played in the South. The
Saints of Massachusetts Bay were first on the waters, but the slavers
and smugglers of Rhode Island and the Quakers and Yorkers down
the coast gave them a mighty run for their money.
With characteristic Saintly good fortune, Cromwell's wars with
the Dutch occupied the world's two major commercial powers just
when the ambitious men of Massachusetts were prepared to forsake
their stubborn soil and "farm the sea." Yankee fur and fish were
welcome in cold and Catholic ports; Yankee clapboard, planks,
staves, meal, and grain were needed in the West Indies where con-
centration on the production of sugar grew so intense that virtually
every requirement of settlers and slaves had to be imported. Yankee
trade spurred Yankee shipbuilding, and new-world vessels flying
many different flags became common sights at every old-world
wharf. But the Saints themselves did most to spread their fame.
"It is the great care of the Massachusetts merchants," wrote the
"unfriendly but accurate" Englishman, Edward Randolph, as early
as 1676, "to keep their ships in constant employ, which makes them
trye all ports to force a trade."
Yankee prosperity became especially marked after 1713 when
prices obtained in the West Indies began a long upward trend. In
1713, also, England acquired Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and
control of the teeming fisheries in their waters. Along with the
fisheries, came the development of offshore and distant whaling.
Soon Nantucket whalers were ranging from Brazilian shores to the
Arctic Ocean. Fishing and whaling together further spurred ship-
building and related industries like rope and sail making and
drew welcome artisans and mechanics to New England towns from
The Seafaring North 79
abroad. Town requirements promoted Yankee agriculture, which
was further benefited by improvements in country roads.
As in the South, prosperity fathered indulgence. It is true that
Calvin had admonished all believers "perpetually and resolutely
[to] exert themselves to retrench all superfluities and to restrain
luxury." But by the eighteenth century many Saintly merchants
had moved over to the more engaging Anglican communion. King's
Chapel, the first Anglican Church in Boston, had been opened in
1688 and promptly became the resort of the rich. For those who
would not move so far there was the liberal Brattle Street Church,
opened in 1698. "Give an account of thy stewardship," Calvin
had commanded the "elect." But those who joined the liberal con-
gregation were specifically exempt from "a public relation of their
experiences." They, not God, it seemed, had become the creators of
their wealth. They demanded that they be excused from discussing
it, if not displaying it, in public.
In the eighteenth century Boston's "codfish aristocracy," and its
imitators in the lesser ports, began to affect swords, satins, and solid
English broadcloths. Grand brick mansions appeared in the vicinity
of Beacon Hill furnished in the best English tradition. In the coun-
try, comfortable "colonial" homes supplanted the rude structures of
pioneer days, and their owners dressed and drank in conformity
with their rise in substance and status. The old requirement that all
residences must be within half a mile of the town church had long
since broken down, and with its passing went the solidarity of
religious observance, the strength of the public school plan. But
to the optimists of the day these fallings-off appeared only as tem-
porary costs of growth and prosperity.
Fortunately, indulgence gave the greatest impetus to trade. New
England's few staples, notably her catches of cod, competed with
England's own. Fish and other staples could be shipped elsewhere,
even within the navigation system. But no region that wanted them
could supply New England with the luxurious English manufac-
tures the Yankee gentry craved. New England's escape from this
predicament took ingenious and illicit forms, including outright
piracy of gold. When the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 deprived young
Yankee privateers of legal enemies to plunder, peaceful merchant-
80 The Contest for North America
men of all registries became their prey. New York, in fact, was the
open haven of the leading pirate chiefs, the favorite haunt of their
crews. But Yankee merchants readily accepted pirate booty to
soften the arteries of trade.
New England's major commercial voyages took the form of a
triangle, with England usually at one of the points. Most lucrative,
and least respectable, was the slave triangle, to which staple agri-
culture outside New England gave such an impetus. Slaves usually
were brought to the American mainland colonies in English ships
or those of Charleston and other southern registries. Rhode Is-
landers were by far the most active northerners in this branch
of the slave traffic. The characteristic Boston slaving voyage found
the Yankees carrying rum to Africa to pay for or otherwise obtain
their human cargo. They carried the Africans to the British West
Indies, a passage the horrors of which defy exaggeration, and in
exchange took on coin, and molasses from which to distill more
rum and repeat the program.
Early in the eighteenth century, when British West Indian sugar
production began to fall off, Yankee captains took to visiting
"closed" French and Spanish West Indies to fill out their molasses
cargoes. France and Spain complained to England about this con-
traband trade. Nagged by her own West Indian capitalists, England
also complained to New England, but, under Walpole, halfheart-
edly. Finally, in 1733, Parliament yielded to the importunities of
the British investors in West Indian plantations who, until the
Revolution itself, always carried most weight in American affairs
and passed the Molasses Act forbidding the mainland colonies to
trade with foreign islands. This Act was a blow at the Yankees
which they well knew how to parry. Smuggling became at once a
common and a fine art. England's tightening of the enforcement of
the Molasses Act after 1764 was one of the principal goads to rev-
olution in New England.
Commerce and kinship have always walked hand in hand. Just as
English mercantile families in the days of Henry VIII and Elizabeth
sent their relatives to settle in Spain when the Spanish trade be-
came active, so the New Englanders sent their brothers, sons, and
The Seafaring North 81
in-laws to the West Indies. As often as possible they also engaged
as agents in England members of their families who had resisted the
lures of the new world. Failing family connections, religious con-
freres were sought out; failing these, at least fellow countrymen
were preferred to the Dutch or Spanish or Portuguese. Character-
istically, family business was enlarged and family ties multiplied by
intermarriage among mercantile families.
In no group was the principle of blood being thicker than water
more carefully observed than among the Quakers. The Friends'
religious beliefs even more strongly than the Puritans' own pro-
moted success in business. Persecution by the dominant sects in
Europe and America, in turn, dispersed the Friends' business
leaders over the towns of the western world. "There were Quakers,"
writes Frederick B. Tolles, the historian of colonial Quaker enter-
prise, "in most of the ports with which Philadelphia had commercial
relations. A number of them, like the Hills in Madeira, the Lloyds
in London, the Callenders in Barbados, the Wantons in Newport,
and the Franklins in New York, were related by marriage to the
leading Quaker families of Philadelphia. . . . The intelligence which
they received through their correspondence and from itinerant 'pub-
lic Friends' . . . from Nova Scotia to Curasao and from Hamburg
to Lisbon . . . was chiefly concerned with prices current and the
prosperity of Truth." No wonder that Philadelphia, which did not
exist until a half century after the founding of Boston, had become
by 1755 the leading city in the new world, and "Quaker grandees"
Philadelphia's leading men.
Philadelphia's Quaker merchants, of course, also had significant
local advantages to build on, in particular an extensive back coun-
try populated with industrious farmers. Pennsylvania grain quickly
became available for export in large quantities and the farmers
themselves offered a thriving market for the imports. The scale of
back-country business boosted Philadelphia itself and made Phila-
delphians all the abler to indulge in English manufactures and other
exotic wares.
Quakers might use "plain talk" like thou because "the pronoun
you in the seventeenth century connoted social superiority"; and
"keep to Plainness in Apparel As becomes the Truth." Yet, as
82 The Contest for North America
eighteenth-century travelers noted, while Quakers above "the ranks
of Inferior People . . . pretend not to have their clothes made after
the latest fashion . , . and be dressed as gaily as others . . . they
strangely enough have their garments made of the finest and cost-
liest materials that can be produced." Behind the simple facade of
their rows of brick houses, moreover, were to be found the most
elegant furniture, paintings, rugs, portraits, and paneling in Amer-
ica; while their "plantations," as they called their country estates,
came to have elaborate English gardens and other signs of grace.
As early as the 1690s rich Quaker merchants began moving to
the Anglican Church to escape the public surveillance of their
"stewardship" by the Meeting. Others who simply fell off in their
observance became differentiated from tiresome true believers by
the epithet, "wet Quakers," of uncertain origin. Still others, influ-
enced perhaps by the Quaker attachment to "Laborious Handi-
crafts," as against the Puritan stress on the intellect, were drawn to
Newtonian science and experimentation. Such men often became
Deists, for whom God was little more than the "Heavenly Engineer"
who set the world going. Eighteenth-century Deism, far from un-
known in Virginia and New England, flourished in Philadelphia. Its
apostle was Benjamin Franklin, who said Americans admired their
God "more for the Variety, Ingenuity, and Utility of his Handy-
works than for the Antiquity of his Family."
Among the more interesting imports of rich Philadelphia mer-
chants were the instruments, materials, and books of the science of
their day. To "make their remittances" for these and more decora-
tive worldly goods, the Quakers faced the same problem as the
Puritans. Their grain found no kindlier reception in England than
Yankee grain; their other staples, no greater English outlets than
Yankee fish and wood. Thus they were forced to send their goods
and ships to many parts of the world for coin and products that
England wanted. In all the trading areas then known, in ships built
in their own competent yards, the Friends offered the Puritans stiff
competition and often came off with the richer prize.
Nature endowed New York City with the finest harbor in the
Atlantic world. Yet as late as 1770 New York ranked fourth among
Investment and Empire 83
American ports behind Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston. The
slow development of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys was largely
responsible for the city's backwardness, but the pirate taint con-
tributed. New York merchants liked pirate wares, which were cheap
and profitable; and pirate crews, who were free spenders. About
1700 Captain Kidd and his "men of desperate fortunes" made New
York their rendezvous. Soon after, the governor of the colony
pressed the Admiralty in London for a vessel swift enough to "de-
stroye these vermin who have hitherto made New York their nest of
safety." But nothing happened for almost a quarter of a century,
and conventional trade and traders naturally kept to more orderly
Boston and staid "Quaker Town."
Yet New York did grow. By the 1670s flour had outstripped fur
as the port's leading export. In 1678, foreshadowing the kind of
business sense that was to insure New York's nineteenth-century
greatness, the town passed an ordinance insuring by practical meth-
ods of inspection the uniform quality of its product. New York
flour gradually won a reputation that made Philadelphia look to its
own lax laws. After 1720 the pirates were run out of New York
waters, and the port became a more active competitor with those of
New England and Pennsylvania, whose problem of remittances to
England it shared. By then Dutch had virtually disappeared as a
common language in New York, though the city retained the brash
worldliness and cosmopolitan character with which the Dutch had
endowed it when they welcomed ships of all nations to the harbor.
INVESTMENT AND EMPIRE
Though the limitations imposed on colonial manufacturing by the
Navigation Acts were observed in America no more than was con-
venient, manufacturing drew little of the profits of trade. Aside from
shipbuilding, only two colonial industries attained importance. One
was the distilling of rum for export, chiefly by the merchants of New
England. The second was iron manufacture, concentrated largely in
Pennsylvania, New York, and Virginia. Stimulated by Parliamen-
tary legislation in 1750, the American output of pig and bar iron
was pushed to levels beyond England's. In defiance of the legislation
which was aimed at developing colonial raw materials for use by
84 The Contest for North America
English fabricators of iron ware, the colonists, especially the Penn-
sylvania Quakers, built up their own iron fabricating works too. By
the time of the Revolution these had become the largest and most
efficient in the world.
Colonial manufactures were profitable, few more so than the
Pennsylvania iron industry. Yet as a Quaker wrote in 1768, "It is
almost a proverb in [Philadelphia] that every great fortune made
here within these 50 years has been by land." Northern capitalists,
Franklin conspicuous among them, invested heavily in city lots and
buildings which appreciated gratifyingly throughout the eighteenth
century. More significant were northern speculative investments in
the wilderness, which rivaled the southern planters' own. After
1750 Yankee merchants monopolized much of the virgin forest of
New Hampshire and Maine; while the holdings of Philadelphians,
with Franklin again in the lead, encroached on and sometimes il-
legally went beyond the borders of Maryland and Virginia.
Unlike manufacturing, colonial land speculation had England's
blessing. In the enduring struggle with the French it was the par-
simonious Walpole's policy to employ the British navy to keep the
enemy away from America and to encourage the Americans to oc-
cupy all the land they could before the French already there took it
as their own. After Walpole's fall, British and colonial speculators
fought for primacy in exploiting the American west, and the conflict
between them became one of the principal sources of imperial dis-
harmony. The conflicting land claims of American speculators, in
turn, aggravated as they were by vague colonial charters and over-
lapping boundaries, turned colony against colony in feuds that
helped drag out the Revolutionary War and continued long after
independence. Within each colony itself, the land problem set sec-
tion against section, tidewater against "Back Parts," East against
West. The growth of litigation over land rapidly raised the income
and status of American lawyers. Gradually they supplanted the
clergy as the chief spokesmen for their commonwealths, and for
each commonwealth's ruling group.
THE CORE OF SECULAR POWER
Colonial society like English society on which it was modeled (with
significant exceptions, such as Negro slaves in the place of tenants
The Core of Secular Power 85
on the "manors") was stratified virtually from the beginning of
settlement. And contrary to common belief, status distinctions be-
came sharper as time passed. Between 1700 and 1760 the popula-
tion of the mainland colonies grew from about 250,000 to more
than 1,500,000, an advance unprecedented in the history of the
world and startling to observers abroad. Yet even more striking
was the early emergence of a few thousand leading families a few
hundred in each of the colonies and their aggrandizement in
wealth and power and more subtle claims to primacy.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in the structure and tend-
ency of colonial politics. Nominally at the head of the government
in each colony was the Governor. In Rhode Island and Connecticut
he was elected by the legislature. In Pennsylvania and Maryland
he was appointed by the absentee proprietor. Elsewhere (including
Georgia after 1752) he was appointed by the King. Assisting the
Governor and appointed by him was the Council, or upper house
of the legislature. The lower house, usually called the Assembly,
was made up of representatives elected by those qualified for the
franchise and troubling to exercise the privilege. Local government
was organized differently in the different colonies; but even in Vir-
ginia, where the Governor appointed the local justices of the peace,
the most important local officers, he was likely to be a captive of his
appointees who resisted interference once they had their commis-
sions.
The Governor's strength lay in his power to veto legislation.
When he was a man of ability and acumen, of course, he could pro-
mote legislation in the direction of the King's policy, or forestall or
constrain Assembly action before a veto became necessary. But
the mutual confidence on which such management must be based
dwindled in the eighteenth century. The Assembly's strength lay in
its control of appropriations, including those for the Governor's
salary and the enforcement of Parliament's as well as its own de-
crees. In the eighteenth century virtually all colonial assemblies
(like Parliament in England) used their control of the purse to
usurp control of the entke government. A few families, in turn, used
their wealth and status to control colonial assemblies for genera-
tions.
The perpetuation of oligarchic control rested on two objective
86 The Contest for North America
conditions. One was the limitation of the franchise in practically all
the colonies to those with considerable property, preferably in land.
Religious qualifications for voting were frequent, but with the ex-
ception of the almost universal disfranchisement of Catholics and
Jews, they were enforced less and less strictly where property quali-
fications could be met. In Virginia and elsewhere, voters who met
the property qualification in each of two or more counties, could
vote two or more times, and many were the rugged rides taken by
the gentry to exercise this privilege of plural voting (made easier by
the spreading of election dates) when contests promised to be close.
The second condition was the withholding of representation in
the Assembly from new inland settlements, either by refusing to
establish counties and towns in thickly populated areas or by keep-
ing down the number of representatives from such areas. In South
Carolina throughout the colonial period the inland settlements had
no representation whatever, nor even local courts.
Yet the objective conditions for oligarchic rule tended to be
sustained by more subtle sanctions arising from the popular recog-
nition of merit based on family and fortune. Locke's conception of
property, on which oligarchic pretensions rested, went well beyond
the crassness of mere ownership, exploitation, and accumulation.
Property was the foundation of personal liberty, liberty the founda-
tion of moral independence, morality the foundation of welfare.
Property carried obligation as well as power; great property carried
the obligation of great power exercised for the common good. This
idea of aristocracy was scarcely challenged in the eighteenth cen-
tury until near its end. The idea of democracy did not gain much
impetus even in America, until the nineteenth century.
Colonial history is dotted with local rebellions against the ruling
oligarchies. The issues between the general population and the gen-
try were many. One of the most persistent had to do with the
supply of money. The chief single need for currency among the
general farming population was for taxes, which in their estimation
(and usually they were right) were not only too high but unfairly
apportioned. In addition, the population generally was in the same
relation to the speculators and importing merchants as the planters
were to the merchants abroad. That is, they were in debt for land
The Core of Secular Power 87
and goods. Like all debtors, they clamored for a plentiful supply of
currency with which to meet their obligations. Often enough their
clamor was heeded; but since paper money had a tendency to be
overissued and to decline in value on that account, the gentry grew
increasingly conservative about meeting the debtors' demands.
Thus taxes went unpaid, mortgages unserviced, loans unredeemed.
Collectors, meanwhile, were tarred and feathered and run out of
the debtors' vicinity at gun point. Organized efforts at collection
or foreclosure often were met by organized armed resistance.
Conflicts over the money supply and taxation were not neces-
sarily sectional in character, though they tended to be most acute
where the back country felt the overbearing weight of tidewater
and town tycoons. Other political conflicts were largely sectional in
origin. One of the most persistent complaints of new settlers on the
moving frontier was the failure of the provincial government to pro-
tect them from the Indians, the French, and the Spanish. A second
was the failure of the government to provide passable roads to
markets. A third was the failure of the easterners to establish local
courts in the back country and save the settlers days of travel and
neglect of crops and cattle to have even minor disputes adjudicated.
A fourth was the levying of tithes for the benefit of the established
churches, few of whose members and none of whose ministers
were to be found in the wilderness. The failure to extend representa-
tion and the franchise to the back country grew into a major griev-
ance largely because of the aristocrats' reluctance to allay the back
country's other grievances.
Yet the claims of the aristocracy to political place and power were
themselves rarely challenged. Probably a fourth or more of the
entire white population of the colonies was illiterate; probably a
fifth even of the literate knew little or no English, while many more
used it only awkwardly. Of the remainder, most of the rustics could
imagine no greater peril than having to address constituents in pub-
lic or to assume effective places in legislative councils. City me-
chanics and artisans must have had similar misgivings, As late as
1788, in seeking their support, no less, for the Constitution just
framed, Hamilton wrote of them: "They are sensible that their
habits in life have not been such as to give them those acquired
88 The Contest for North America
endowments without which, in a deliberative assembly, the greatest
natural abilities are for the most part useless." He urged the Con-
stitution upon them because it attached the interest of the merchant,
"their natural patron and friend," to the interest of the nation.
The common run of voters were as yet proud to be represented
by the great men of their colony. Thus they returned generations
of Byrds, Carters, Harrisons, and Washingtons to high office in
Virginia; of Van Rensselaers, Schuylers, and Livingstons in New
York; of Logans, Norrises, Pembertons, and Dickinsons in Pennsyl-
vania. In Massachusetts, where the franchise was liberally bestowed
and where the middle class of artisans, shopkeepers, shipwrights,
and small farmers probably were better educated than elsewhere,
Hutchinsons, Hancocks, Olivers, Bowdoins, and Brattles all clung
to high office generation after generation. Elections often were
hotly contested, but the candidates almost invariably were to the
manor born. A popular political genius like Sam Adams, the first
great rabble-rouser in American history, developed a "machine"
of his own which functioned in the Revolution as the famous
"Caucus Club." But even an Adams made little headway against
the oligarchs until they needed him to help meet the British chal-
lenge.
THE CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCE
For all its trappings of wealth and power, the colonial "aristocracy"
was distinguished (not demeaned) by the fact that its members
worked. Only in South Carolina, where the planters claimed an in-
ability to withstand the heat of the rice fields and where they could
afford to lounge in Charleston, was there to be found an American
leisured class. Elsewhere, the responsibilities of management on
plantation, ship, or mining estate, in city shop, distillery, or office
devolved upon the head of the house. No greater contrast could
be found with New France. French settlers, of course, worked hard,
ranged far, traded shrewdly, and fought with skill but chiefly for
the aggrandizement of the Crown at Versailles and the enrichment
of its noble sycophants.
French new-world enterprises were directed largely from Quebec.
These were almost exclusively of two kinds: the fisheries, which
The Conquest of New France 89
brought Frenchmen into constant and violent conflict with New
Englanders; and the fur trade, in which Frenchmen and their Indian
allies menaced the frontiers of English settlements from Georgia to
Maine. The English colonies, though they carefully nursed their
dislike of one another, had grown by 1750 into a veritable nation
of nearly a million and a half persons who were feeling increasingly
hemmed in and harassed by the maritime activity, the territorial
claims, and the border violence of New France. New France itself
had scarcely 60,000 persons, many of whom, no doubt, lived for
the day of their return to the home country, and most of whose
leaders felt this day being hastened by the outward thrusts of their
vigorous English neighbors.
Other factors fed this mutual rivalry and suspicion, of which dif-
ferences in religion were most divisive. Hatred and fear of Catholics
was scarcely lessened in New England when French-incited Indian
raids, following King Philip's War of 1675, periodically leveled ex-
posed Yankee towns. In 1690, after political problems involving
the legality of Massachusetts' charter and the security of her Estab-
lished Church came to a head in England partly through French-
Catholic meddling, Cotton Mather said, "It was Canada that was
the chief source of New England's miseries. There was the main
strength of the French. . . . Canada must be reduced.' 9 Two years
later, when these miseries culminated in the notorious Salem witch
hunts, the distracted accusers' principal charges against John Alden,
one of their principal victims, was that "He sells powder and shot to
the Indians and the French and lies with Indian squaws and has
Indian papooses."
Catholic France was on the minds of eighteenth-century English-
men and English colonists the way Germany was on the minds
of twentieth-century Frenchmen. The dynastic and imperial wars
of the eighteenth century helped keep the English and colonial
mind inflamed. These wars were renewed in 1739 when hostilities
broke out between England and Bourbon Spain.
When illicit English traders swarmed over the Spanish Main after
the Peace of Utrecht, the Spanish created a special Caribbean coast
guard and manned it with the roughest pirates they could find. An
90 The Contest for North America
influential "war party" soon arose in Parliament, which Walpole
could not restrain. In 1739, to impress Parliamentary leaders, the
"war party" decided to make an example of a certain Captain Jen-
kins. On testifying before the House of Commons, Jenkins "com-
mended his soul to God and his cause to his country," and swore
that the ear he carried in a little box was his memento of a brush
with Spain's defenders. Parliament promptly voted to fight the
"War of Jenkins' Ear." "They are ringing bells now," commented
Walpole. "They will soon be wringing their hands."
Ambitious naval onslaughts on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of
Spanish America between 1740 and 1744 brought the British noth-
ing but disaster. By the time they counted their dead, moreover,
the little War of Jenkins' Ear had led to a renewal of the big war
for the world. In 1740 Maria Theresa came to the throne of
Austria. In the same year Frederick the Great came to the throne
of Prussia and promptly attacked a part of Maria Theresa's do-
mains. Bourbon Spain and France soon joined him, and the British
and the Dutch moved to assist the Austrians. Frederick and France
proved invincible on land in this war, called in Europe the War of
the Austrian Succession. But when Spanish and French new-world
funds were choked off by the revived English fleet in the American
phase of the conflict known as King George's War, a stalemate
loomed. By 1748 both sides were ready to admit that the struggle
was deadlocked and they signed the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle re-
storing the status quo ante bellum.
The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was a truce, not a settlement; and
even before it was signed both sides had begun to prepare for a
showdown. In 1747, with the formation of the Ohio Company of
Virginia, England had encouraged colonial land speculators to stake
out huge tracts in the Ohio Valley "inasmuch as nothing can more
effectively tend to defeat the dangerous designs of the French." In
1749 the governor of Canada dispatched his own man, de Bienville,
to occupy the valley, and in the next few years other Frenchmen
were sent there to build forts. In 1753 Governor Dinwiddie of Vir-
ginia ordered young George Washington west to protest against
French activity. Such peaceful tactics got nowhere and the next year
Washington, now a lieutenant colonel of the Virginia militia, took
91
92 The Contest for North America
a small force to halt French progress. This mission also failed.
Hoping to settle all issues with France in the new world, the British
in 1754 sent over General Braddock with two regiments and all the
power he needed to seize and hold the valley. But the following
year the French and their Indian allies killed the General and routed
his men within a few miles of their objective. Only quick action by
the colonial rangers led by Washington saved the entire British
force from massacre.
The years between 1748 and 1755 thus were marked by frequent
fighting, though war between the British and the French was not
officially renewed until 1756. By then France had allied herself
to Austria to check the ambitions of Frederick and Prussia, while
Britain had joined Frederick the better to keep down France. The
war started with a series of great Franco-Austrian land victories in
Europe. But William Pitt, on becoming chief Minister of England
in June 1757, so heavily subsidized Frederick that he was soon able
to reverse his early defeats. At the same time Pitt himself directed
affairs in the decisive theater in America. Here strength at sea was
the critical factor in the mobilization of forces. In 1759, at the cost
of his life, General Wolfe took Quebec from Montcalm and the
French in the decisive battle of the war. In 1760 George III came
to the throne in England. He soon tired of Pitt's predominance and
pretensions, dismissed him in 1762, and made peace in 1763. The
Peace of Paris that year marked the end of the Seven Years War
and the end of the French in North America.
Chapter Four
These United States
In the three-quarters of a century between the Glorious
Revolution of 1688 and the glorious Peace of Paris which con-
cluded the Seven Years War, England's rivals on the continent had
failed to free their peoples from the autocracy of the Crown, the
exactions of the nobles, and the dogmas of the Church. In the same
period, the fortunately situated island of England had developed
those liberties of movement, thought, and enterprise that would
soon win even greater victories than those of the recent great war by
means of the Industrial Revolution. Even before the advent of the
factory system late in the eighteenth century, machinery had begun
to give England such advantages in the manufacture of basic com-
modities that she could afford to lead the world away from miserly
mercantilist ideas to expansive liberalism and laissez faire. The
world henceforth would be won by cheap goods instead of costly
wars, by open markets instead of forced monopolies, by workshops
instead of warships.
The English triumph of 1763 marked the end, not the glorious
beginning of an era. Yet the "Great Commoner," William Pitt, and
his American friend, Franklin, were among the few aware of the
rising new forces around them. After all, it was not until 1776 that
Adam Smith publishd his revolutionary Inquiry into the Nature
and Causes of the Wealth of Nations f which systematized and pop-
ularized the new politico-economic ideas. And another generation
or two were to pass before Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill
built into new philosophical systems the ideas of representative
government and personal liberty emerging from an industrial and
urban society.
In 1762, Horace Walpole wrote: "I am a bad Englishman be-
93
94 These United States
cause I think the advantages of commerce are dearly bought for
some by the lives of many more. . . . But . . . every age has some
ostentatious system to excuse the havoc it commits. Conquest,
honor, chivalry, religion, balance of power, commerce, no matter
what, mankind must bleed, and take a term for reason." In England
for more than two hundred years men had fought and bled for
mercantilist trade. They could hardly be expected to surrender its
glittering rewards at the moment of their greatest triumph in its
name.
Congratulating themselves on Pitt's crushing of French estab-
lishments everywhere, English merchants now looked forward
eagerly to encompassing the whole world, including the new world,
in a trading and speculating monopoly. Congratulating themselves
on Pitt's elimination of the French and Spanish menace in America,
influential colonials began eyeing their own continental destiny.
Pitt might have reconciled these conflicting British and American
aspirations; but with him infirm and out of favor, lesser men only
hastened the clash.
As late as 1775, Pitt advised Parliament concerning America:
"We shall be forced ultimately to retreat; let us retreat while we
can, not when we must." Two years later, "risen from my bed to
stand up in the cause of my country," he cried: "You may ravage
you cannot conquer; it is impossible; you cannot conquer the
Americans; I might as well talk of driving them before me with
this crutch."
FREEBORN ENGLISHMEN
After 1763 the English middle classes became the creators of Eng-
land's industrial might, the makers of her policy, the guarantors of
her greatness. Yet for a generation the nation was embroiled in
political crises brought about by the efforts of the great Whig mer-
chants and landlords to cling to their aristocratic supremacy in the
House of Commons and to maintain the Commons' supremacy in
the country and empire. Until the 1760s the great Whig families
had acted as though there were no king and no populace; in this
they were abetted by George I and George II whose major pre-
occupation was their estates in Germany. In consequence Walpole
Free born Englishman 95
and his Whig successors ran the country. George III, on taking the
throne in 1760, proved far less docile. So did his people, who were
tiring of Whig corruption. But the Whigs only stiffened their re-
sistance.
George III greatly respected the English Constitution, and espe-
cially the role of Parliament in English government. His unswerving
support of Parliament, indeed, is what got him into so much trouble
with the Americans who had no representation in England and (as
they insisted) had parliaments of their own at home. The Parlia-
ment George cherished, however, was not the Parliament of the
Whig families. To break their hold on the "popular" Commons,
George began subsidizing certain members who became notorious
as the "King's Friends." But this was a game the Duke of New-
castle, Walpole's heir in command of the Whigs, could play out of
far greater experience than the young monarch. The competition
between the Crown and the "Government" for Commons votes
made it difficult for anyone to remain untarnished. As a contem-
porary slogan went, the mood was "Everyone for himself, and the
Exchequer for us all."*
Yet even in the slough of the late Georgian era, Shakespeare's
"other Eden, demi-paradise" remained by far the freest country in
the old world. The spirit of individualism, the sense of ownership,
the eagerness to participate in political decisions that property
was giving to growing numbers of Englishmen, lay dormant on the
continent. There the ranks of the educated were closed, debates
* Tradition holds that George III was seeking to subvert party, not to say
popular, government in England and restore the "tyranny" of the Crown.
But "popular" government was far in the future; while "party" government
implies modern "party responsibility," which itself implies an organized
and active "opposition party" seeking to dislodge the party in power. Such
an opposition party did not exist in England until after the. American
Revolution. The terms "Whig" and 'Tory" were seventeenth-century desig-
nations for "Low Church" people on the one hand, and "High Church"
people on the other. Connection with the Jacobite uprisings in 1715 (see
p. 68) tainted the Tories with "treason" in the same way that connection
with the American Civil War in 1861 tainted the Democrats. The English
Whigs used this taint as zealously as the American Republicans were to do
later, with the result that there was no effective party opposition to them.
Political conflicts took place almost exclusively within Whig ranks and
political aspirants even the great Pitt himself had to find Whig favor.
96 These United States
went on in salons, political decisions often ignored the debates, and
resistance was treated as sedition. In England the ranks were open,
the debates public, the decisions subject to remonstrance. Nowhere
was the press so militant, public discussion so general, public opin-
ion so influential as in the island kingdom. After England con-
quered the world with her ships and freemen, English constitution-
alism, English industrialism, English liberalism captured the
imagination and energies of the world.
After 1763 a few men led England toward revolution at home by
agitating through all the channels of public opinion to extend office-
holding privileges and the franchise to nonlandowners, and to ex-
tend representation to the rapidly growing but politically powerless
commercial and industrial cities. Among this radical program's
sponsors some of them as unstable and opportunistic as frustra-
tion could make them American independence found its few
friends in the mother country. But for liberal relations short of
independence, the colonists claimed many more sympathizers, in-
cluding Edmund Burke with his "fertile, disordered, and malignant
imagination," the redoubtable Charles James Fox, the perceptive
Adam Smith, Pitt, and even, had he been able to yield a little less
to his pathological stubbornness once he had embarked on a policy,
George III himself. Unfortunately, most other Englishmen, not
least those embroiled in the power game, gave the "American
problem" only passing thought.
"One free people cannot govern another free people," wrote the
English historian, James Anthony Froude. This was all the more
true of England and America, since Englishmen nowhere were so
free as in the new-world colonies. "What do we mean by the rev-
olution?" old John Adams asked reminiscently at eighty. "The
war with Britain? That was no part of the revolution; it was only
the effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds
and hearts of the people . . . before a drop of blood was shed at
Lexington."
When in 1750 England passed the Iron Act prohibiting the
manufacture of most iron ware in America, Franklin warned: "A
wise and good mother will not do it." In 1751 he wrote a pamphlet
to prove that in the not too distant future more English subjects
Independence 97
would be living in the new world than in the old. This grand growth
in numbers, he said, will create a market far beyond England's
capacity to supply. Restraint on colonial manufactures will only
push up prices and invite foreign competition and costly wars in
which the colonies, "kept too low," would be "unable to assist her
and add to her strength." Give Americans room and incentive to
grow, America's philosopher-statesman advised. Then, he ex-
claimed, "What an accession of power to the British empire by
sea as well as by land! What increase of trade and navigation!"
Franklin went unheeded in London. But London went heedless
of the logic of world events. The triumphant Seven Years War
which so puffed up the British also capped the prosperity the col-
onies had been enjoying since the days of Walpole's "salutary
neglect." "You cannot well imagine," a visitor wrote from Boston
in 1760, "what a land of health, plenty, and contentment this is
among all the ranks, vastly improved within these ten years. The
war on this Continent has been equally a blessing to the English
subjects and a Calamity to the French." Such reports made the
English, when the colonists resisted taxation to help pay for the
war, feel American cries of poverty to be only the Puritan cant
one might have expected. At the same time the prosperity thus re-
ported gave Americans, as Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts
said later, a "higher sense of the grandeur and importance of the
colonies." It moved them, in Sam Adams's words, to demand to be
made "co-equal in dignity and freedom with Britons."
INDEPENDENCE
To be effective a rise in status must be accepted as well as asserted.
Even during the war, however, colonial disenchantment had set in.
Supercilious English army officers, largely Anglican, looked down
their noses at all colonials as declassed Dissenters, and young
Colonel Washington himself quarreled bitterly with them over
recognition of his superior rank. Even worse were the surly Scots
who improved their time on duty studying speculation in American
lands with their mercantile and official countrymen long here.
Other wartime experiences were just as offensive to the colonials
and more serious. Much of Massachusetts' wartime prosperity
98 These United States
had resulted from her supplying enemy forces and conducting
business as usual with enemy islands. In 1758 the British had stuck
their noses into this unseemly commerce and visited upon Massa-
chusetts that "terrible menacing monster the writs of assistance."
These writs authorized customs officers to avail themselves of con-
stabulary aid when searching private warehouses and dwellings for
contraband. They were issued for the life of the monarch plus six
months, and when George II died in 1760, British officials sought
renewals in 1761.
Massachusetts' remonstrance against this interference fore-
shadowed the Americans' later difficulties with one another. Rhode
Island smugglers had been omitted from attack by the writs. "We
want nothing," said the Boston merchants, "but to be free as others
are, or that others should be restrained as well as we." But certain
lawyers took the higher ground that American "natural rights" had
been invaded. Their leader was James Otis, Jr., who "first broke
down the Barriers of Government to let in the Hydra of Rebellion."
Sam Adams became Otis's able second, and together they worked
up such a "Rage for Patriotism," that in a couple of years "scarce
a cobler or porter but has turn'd a mountebank in politicks."
American land speculators also got a glimpse of the future in
1761. In anticipation of difficult administrative problems arising
from the magnificence of her conquests, England that year in-
structed colonial governors to forbid further land sales in the
West. Pontiac's Conspiracy in 1763 brought the bleak future a
little closer. The defeat of France had left her Indian allies at the
mercy of the colonists who took full advantage of the removal of
the French menace from their borders. Early in 1763 the Ottawa
chieftain, Pontiac, organized the remnants of his followers for one
last blow at France's ancient enemy. Many settlers were mas-
sacred; but no colony, for all their recently vaunted prowess as
Indian fighters, voted aid to Britain. British forces quelled the up-
rising, and to forestall any more of the kind, the King issued the
inflammatory Royal Proclamation of October 1763. In this Proc-
lamation George III closed to "any purchases or settlements"
by "our loving subjects," the vast region between the Alleghenies
and the Mississippi from Florida to Quebec.
Independence 99
In five years, nevertheless, thirty thousand white settlers crossed
the mountains; and eminent Americans of the future such as Wash-
ington, Franklin, and Patrick Henry, organized or reorganized land
companies to sell to those who would not "squat." In 1773 even
Governor Dunmore of Virginia invested in Washington's land
company and in 1774, with an eye on the land bonuses his poor
recruits would soon yield up for a song in cash, led a foray of
frontiersmen against the Indians in "Lord Dunmore's War."
Along with Indian land his men seized a parcel of Pennsylvania
territory which Virginia clung to until the end of the Revolution.
Indeed it took the Revolution to confirm it to either commonwealth,
for in June 1774, Parliament responded to conduct of this sort with
the Quebec Act. By this measure the entire territory north of the
Ohio River was annexed to the old province of Quebec, thereby
voiding the claims of four different colonies to it. Massachusetts was
not among them but received a shock as well. For the Quebec Act
granted religious liberty to England's newly acquired French
Canadian Catholic subjects on Massachusetts' northern border and
restored their Roman political and legal institutions. By 1774
Massachusetts was primed to view such a generous measure with
dread and suspicion.
By the time of the Quebec Act relations between the colonists
and their English cousins had sunk so low that Virginia had al-
ready issued the call to the First Continental Congress. This body
of representatives from twelve colonies (Georgia alone stayed away)
convened in Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia, September 5, 1774.
What brought them together at last was, if not the spirit of rebellion,
at least the love of liberty which they and their forebears had nur-
tured for a century and a half and upon which, in the past decade,
England had presumed so carelessly.
The Seven Years War had almost doubled England's national
debt and the cost of administering and protecting the vast new
American empire won by the war had quadrupled. To help pay the
interest on the debt and the cost of administration and protection,
Parliament taxed the income of English landowners 20 per cent.
The reasonableness of asking the prosperous Americans at least to
100 These United States
share the cost of their own protection attracted the landowners'
sympathizers, not the less so after Pontiac's Conspiracy showed that
the colonists would not defend one another and that the cost of de-
fending them all would not soon decline. As sympathetic as any to
the landowners' plight was George Grgnville, who became head of
the Kin^
Grenville's vision was as limited as his administrative zeal was
fierce. To defend the American empire, Lord Amherst, in com-
mand in the colonies, wanted 5,000 men. Policy-makers in England,
perhaps more fearful than Amherst of the quick revival of the
French menace and perhaps more sordid in their search for jobs,
preferred 10,000 men and Grenville pushed two ill-conceived acts
to raise the money for them. The first, the Sugar Act of 1764, re-
newed the 1733 prohibition on colonial imports of molasses from
the French and Spanish West Indies, even though Yankee distillers
relied increasingly on these superior if illicit sources. At the same
time the Act cut the duty on British West Indian molasses and
proposed to make up the difference by new duties on other com-
modities and vigorous prosecution of smugglers. Despite the ex-
ample of Walpole and Pitt, who had carefully eschewed stamp taxes,
Grenville's second measure proposed the sale of stamps to be
affixed to every sort of document, license, bond, or publication in
daily use by all who were articulate, in trouble, or in trade. Worse,
the stamps had to be paid for in specie. Worse still, this require-
ment came on the heels of the Currency Act of 1764. Passed by
Parliament at the urgent behest of English merchants, this Act ex-
cused them from accepting depreciated Virginia legal tender notes
in payment of debts; it alsQ outlawed any IffSSj^ J!^_^_P a ^ er
antTSGfusmade specie SK to
Merchant demands for measures like the Currency Act might
have reminded Grenville and his increasingly inept successors that
it was the mercantilist system they were defending, and that, in
Pitt's estimate, British merchants made profits of at least < 2,000,-
000 a year on colonial commerce. Such profits appeared to Pitt and
the colonists to be "tax" enough. The colonists, moreover, had
accumulated a war debt of their own of 2,500,000, which
Independence 101
domestic taxes would have to underwrite. In the past the colonists
had submitted to Parliamentary taxation which they judged, in
retrospect, to have been required in the management of a mercantil-
ist empire. The inconvenience and effrontery of the Sugar Act
may have been what prompted them to search out broad grounds
for its rejection; in any case, they discovered this Act's fatal flaw in
its own preamble, which stated as the Act's purpose, "improving
the revenue of this Kingdom." After a century of conflict with
overweening royal governors, for the colonists to admit the English
Parliament's right to tax them for revenue was death. Only their
duly elected parliaments" might exercise the power of the purse:
"Taxation without representation is tyranny." The' colonists scoffed
atlErTJnl^^ industrial cities) were
"virtually represented" in Parliament by strangers they never heard
of; Pitt joined them in denouncing "virtual representation" as "the
most contemptible" idea "that ever entered into the head of man."
"One single act of Parliament," said Otis about the Sugar Act,
"has set the people a-thinking in six months, more than they had
done in their whole lives before." That was in New England. The
fatal flaw of the Stamp Act was that it set people talking everywhere.
More than talking!
-* ky which they ulti-
mately separated from England and set up their own official and in-
dependent governments.
In June 1765, Massachusetts issued a call for a Stamp Act
Here. Christopher
^ajUdenofSouth ^CarQlig^announced that "there ought to be no
^ 1 TIP New Yorker, kpq^iin-lhq continent buL.
^' ^ n * ts res l u ti ns th Congress deSaSceHthat
"no taxes . . . can be constitutionally imposed on [the colonies]
except by their respective legislatures." Outside Congress, mean-
while, even more significant work was afoot. To resist the Stamp
Act's drainage of specie, the most respectable ^lgJchantsJom^
S^^^^^ n ^ beyond that combined with the
^ to see that the agreements
The Sons i of Li^^ themselves went further,
102 These United States
destroying the stamps where they could find them, tarring and
feathering luckless stamp agents, and under cover of the idea that
men of property could be presumed to be favorites of the royal
governors, sacking the homes and warehouses of the rich in general.
The noiui^ortation agreements so efifectiy^ly cjipgjed
themseTveS forced the repeal of the Stamp
Act jnj.766. But Parliament at the same time joined in the contest
"over its rights by asserting in a Declaxatory^c^its^owerJ^to bind
the colonies in all cases whatsoeverTTEenext year, with "Cham-
pSIpSrT!^^ Minister, Parliament showed
it meant business by imposing new revenue duties in the colonies,
on lead, paper, and tea, and permitting snooping customs agents to
employ the hated writs of assistance to insure collection. EaifoK
ment also acknowledged its intention to use the revenue thus
g^jtfaier&d to create a "cM"Kst:^TM^ gm^iors
and mdgs of Haftenr^trscnpeal to recalcitrant coloniaT^asseSSIies
UfJH***' *'*cif t/ tJ v ,,,1^ 4*v i' : , f ^^SWUi-HSTS^HSv^^* )*> *jjs*m H "V-VV" -astaaeWW.!
fp^Jtheir salaries and for funds with whichto^^^^rCTowms
tef|s. ^ucii^aii attack off ffie^IoniSr^parliaments'' was ominous,
and unfortunately it coincided with Townshend's dissolution of
the New York Assembly for failing to enforce the act for quartering
British troops in private homes and inns.
The Townshend ActJbpJ^4H^ and
for its protests against them that colony's General Court was dis-
solved in 1768. Violence broke out soon after when a mob attacked
customs agents trying to collect Townshend duties from John
Hancock's sloop, Liberty. This prompted the governor to ask for
troops. Redcoats in Boston were sufficient provocation to riot, and
it is remarkable that eighteen months went by before there was real
trouble. On March 5, 1770, a snowball attack on some of the
soldiers brought the unfortunate order to fire, and after the melee
four Bostonians were lying dead.
New England seethed over the "Boston Massacre"; but when
the new l^dNo^ministry quickly repealed all duties, but that
jaa^ a j q5e^^ violence
of the Sons of Liberty had ofiended many colonial gentlemen of
property, and the repeal of the Stamp Act had satisfied most of
the other respectable elements in America. When Sam Adams
sought outside cooperation for Massachusetts in defiance of the
Independence 103
Townshend Acts, he got the cold shoulder. England's quick con-
ciliatory response to the "Boston Massacre" again took the wind
out of the agitators' sails. It had to be admitted, however, that
the English had so far failed in their efforts to force the colonists
into yielding regular revenue; at the same time the colonists them-
selves had failed to win their point on the unconstitutionality of the
English attempts.
J&adic^Jik^^ numerous occasions to agitate
in the lew years after 1770. In 1772 he set up in Massachusetts
a network of local "comm^^^f correspondence" to keep the
^^*^^^^l on aliveT*^milar C cS3^eesw^ organized in
Virginia by Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, and in many
other colonies as well. Still, rebellion languished until December 16,
1773, the date of the Boston Tea Party. To save the East India
Company, Parliament had just given it a monopoly of the tea trade
of America, in complete disregard of other merchants including
those of Boston. Parliament also permitted the Company to use its
own local sales agents, so that there weren't even commissions for
the established American tea dealers. Once more, therefore, Boston
merchants joined forces with the mob and together they dumped
the Company's tea.
Men of property elsewhere again were appalled at this resort to
violence in Massachusetts, but when Lord North's ministry got
Parliament early in 1774 to retaliate with the J^oerciye Acts,"
cqlonial resentment became jgeneral. Known in Amenca "aiTtfie
of the port
ers toEjjgJgg^for trial The Qugbec^^Ac^^a^se
otheis^
1774, George m^was
writing to certain Americans, "the die is now cast, the Colonies
must either submit or triumph . . . there must always be one tax to
keep up the right."
The First Continental Congress was elected by special local
conventions. Because the conservative elements abhorred extralegal
activity and tended to stay away, radicals gained control. Naturally
104 These United States
they sent numerous extremists to Philadelphia, but their respect
for their betters was shown by the presence there of many mild
conservatives as well. Jhis Congress agreed to comprel^ngvgjaog^
noncgnsumtion action directed
against British goods. Its revolutionary step was the creation of the
official "QDntinental Association" to S1 ^ r visj5j|^^^
l&gsejjg^ The Association
was given power to publish the names of recalcitrant merchants
and to confiscate any British goods they held. After sending a peti-
tion to the King for recognition of their rights and redress of their
grievances, the Congress agreed to reconvene in a year.
Events brought it back sooner. The country's defiance of the
Intolerable Acts prompted the British to appoint General Gage
as the new Governor of Massachusetts and to quarter his troops in
Boston. The Massachusetts Assembly responded by reconstituting
itself into a provincial Congress with a committee of safety led by
John Hancock to organize resistance. The committee quickly
established munition dumps outside of Boston. On learning of one
at Concord, Q&jqaijS^ ESJSL
R^verejM^^ reached
to Gps & A^lSJU^^hey found in
line to meet them tfTe^2!!Bainutemen ?> Revere had roused. Eight
minutemen were killed and tne Bntisff continued on to Concord
where the "embattled fanners . . . fired the shot heard round the
world." The British accomplished their mission, but on the way
back to Boston they were harassed by sharpshooters and suffered
247 casualties.
the
June
23 Congress appointed Colonel George Washington commander-
in-chief of the American forces. By then
^ , Fort
Benedict Arnold had begun preparations for the
disastrous assault on Quebec designed to bring Canada in as the
fourteenth colony; and the battle of Bunker Hill had been fought
and lost.
As yet the country had not faced the issue of independence
Independence 105
squarely. The resort to arms in different sections of the country,
however, forced hundreds of thousands to discover that their
loyalty to the King and to the Church of which he was the supreme
head was stronger than their loyalty to their neighbors; and their
number might have been much larger had not the Sons of Liberty
and other radical groups intimidated the indecisive. By the end of
the Revolution some 70,000 loyalists had fled the country, mainly
for Canada; but the total number opposed to independence was
probably ten times as great. The rest of the Americans were
virtually pushed into independence when Parliament, on December
22, 1775, forbade all future intercourse with the colonies. The
exigencies of armed conflict and especially the need for allies
hastened the American decision. After the publication of THjgaap
Eiffi^**^^ no turning
back. "There is something absurd," wrote Paine, "in supposing a
Continent to be perpetually governed by an island. . . . England
[belongs] to Europe, America to itself." More than 150,000 copies
of Paine's pamphlet were quickly sold everywhere in America.
By May 10, 1776, Pennsylvania and other colonies had set up
new independent state governments, and on that day Congress
advised the rest to do tie same. A month earlier Congress had
declared the ports of America open to the commerce of the entire
world, and soon commissioned hundreds of privateers to prey on
the commerce of England. On July 2, a majority of the delegates
carried the motion of Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, "that these
United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent
States." On July 4, the Declaration of Independence was adopted
"setting forth the causes which impelled us to this mighty resolu-
tion." The words were largely those of Jefferson, but the spirit, as
he himself acknowledged, was everywhere in the air. "I did not
consider it as any part of my charge," said Jefferson later, "to
invent new ideas altogether or to offer no sentiment which had
ever been expressed before." JBjJaUtl^
family" of &^ Many of the ac-
cusations against him were polemical, and only partially true. The
pregnant message of the Declaration, which enlisted it in the coming
106 These United States
general onslaught on monarchy and the divinity of kings, is set
forth in the section which begins:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happi-
ness That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among
Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and
to institute new Government . . .
For all the brilliance and bitterness of the conflict between the
colonies and the government at home in the decade before the
Revolutionary War began, the actual hostilities dragged them-
selves out for seven dreary years. These years were marked by
extraordinary bravery, as in the stand of the untrained colonials be-
fore British fire at Bunker Hill in 1775; by extraordinarily brilliant
maneuvers, such as Washington's on the freezingX2^ili^sjigl|J: of
17J4jtoUKU^ ^
Delaware and surprised the British at Trenton; by extraordinary
suffering, as endured by the ragged, half starved Continental Army
at Valley Forge in the desolate winter of 1777-78; by extraordinary
brutality, such as that which characterized the warfare between
Carolina frontiersmen and Carolina loyalists which culminated in
the great American victory at King's Mountain in October, 1780;
and by transparent treason, as in Benedict Arnold's attempt to sell
out West Point to the invaders just a month earlier. Yet the greater
struggle seemed always to be going on in both governments which
barely succeeded in keeping representative forces in the field.
In England enlistments for the "civil war" were so poor that
had to be hired to fight across the
sea. Many Parliamentary leaders hoped a colonial victory would
so discredit King George Ill's "personal government" that they
aroused no enthusiasm for the distant conflict. In America virtually
all of Washington's energies were given to keeping a token army
together. <^ngre^ it could
not force reluctant states to yield either. By December 1776, the
16,000 troops Washington had taken charge of a year and a half
Independence 107
earlier had shrunk to 2,400 bitter-enders. On the 20th of that
month the Commander-in-Chief wrote to Congress, "Ten more days
will put an end to the existence of our Army." A low point was
reached in the spring of 1780 when the British seemed near victory
for want of opposition and the Americans near disintegration for
want of pay. A congressional delegation then set out for Washing-
ton's camp in Morristown, New Jersey, empowered to offer him,
as they said, "a kind of dictatorship in order to afford satisfaction
to the Army." The sojourners got an interesting reception from
General Nathanael Greene and other officers who had similar plans
of their own, but sensibly were steered away from the Commander-
in-Chief. "He has strange notions about the cause," said Greene,
"and the obligation there is for people to sacrifice fortune and
reputation in support thereof. ... I shall not combat his opinions;
but leave time and future events to effect what reason will have no
influence upon."
So acrimonious were the relations among the independent
American commonwealths after 1776 that "time and future events"
might indeed have effected a British victory. As it was, the British
strategy quite properly was to divide and conquer. British forces
occupied New York City in 1776 and Philadelphia in 1777, thus
virtually for the duration of the conflict separating New England
from the South. In 1777 "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne and his un-
enthusiastic redcoats marched down from Canada to gain control
of the Hudson. But the wilderness terrain and militant frontier re-
sistance checked him at the great battle of Saratoga, where he sur-
rendered on October 17. This victory convinced the French that
the American side might be the winning one. Until then they had
unofficially aided the colonials with men, money, munitions, and
ships. In 1778 they made a formal treaty of mutual assistance and
greatly increased their contributions. Spain also declared war now
on her ancient foe, while other nations of the continent harassed
English commerce.
Like Burgoyne in the North, the more able Lord Cornwallis
began an assault in the South in 1780. After moving through the
Carolinas he reached Yorktown, Virginia, where he expected aid
from the British fleet. The French fleet, however, succeeded in
108 These United States
bottling him up while at the same time chasing off the approaching
British ships, and on October 19, 1781, Cornwallis capitulated.
His troops went through the ceremony of stacking their arms to
the tune of "The World Turned Upside Down." By then George
Rogers Clark, fighting for Virginia and not for the Continental
Congress, had secured the Mississippi Valley for the new nation.
Comwallis's defeat brought about the downfall of Lord North's
ministry and in its place the disillusioned George III named many
friends of the colonies. This helped the American peace negotiators
Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay turn the treaty ending the
war into a more brilliant triumph than any won on the battlefield.
By the terms of the settlement, which was finally certified in 1783,
American independence was recognized. The boundaries of the
new nation were to reach south from the Great Lakes and west to
the Mississippi. On this great river American citizens were to have
equal rights of navigation with British subjects. Beyond these
generous though as yet ill-defined borders, Americans were to
enjoy their old fishing privileges off Newfoundland and in the Gulf
of the St. Lawrence. Two other provisions promptly disclosed the
weakness of the American government. First, British creditors were
to be permitted to sue Americans for debts owed before the war;
second, loyalist property was to be restored. The trouble was that
Congress had no jurisdiction over such matters and could only
recommend compliance to uncompliant states.
THE NEW NATION
During the Revolution almost everyone agreed that it was the war,
not Congress, that had kept the states united, and that something
stronger than Congress would be needed after the war to keep them
from going their separate ways. Many newly risen "gentlemen of
principle and property," who had enjoyed a taste of power during
the war and had done well while it lasted, were determined that
there should be no separation, that enterprise, opportunity, and
progress be nationwide. Many others, "whose personal consequence
in the control of state politics," as Washington pointed out, "will
be annihilated" by a strong central government, joined the majority
of the "people" in their determination that separation should not be
prevented by a "tyranny" such as they had recently overthrown.
The New Nation 109
Of the 3,250,000 people in the United States at the close of the
Revolution (excluding Indians who were much in evidence but un-
enumerated) about one third remained unfree. Approximately
600,000 of these were Negro slaves. During the war, Congress had
prohibited the importation of Negroes from Africa and within
a decade of the peace every state but Georgia enacted similar
legislation. Enforcement, however, was hardly such as to check the
activities of slave smugglers. In the same decade New Jersey and
the states to the north (all of which had slaves) provided for
gradual emancipation. But this only worked well in New England
where Negroes were least significant in the labor force. Filling out
the ranks of the unfree were some 300,000 indentured servants;
some 50,000 convicts who despite state laws against their entry,
continued to be landed surreptitiously; American debtors and al-
leged vagrants sold into involuntary labor by court order; and
many thousands of youthful apprentices often let out by their
parents to journeymen or master workers for as long as twenty
years.
More than a million persons in the new nation thus had neither
bodily freedom nor political voice. Another million or so, women
who were neither slaves nor servants, had limited legal standing.
In the few cities of the day, fashionable ladies often added to the
gaiety of life and sometimes to its great decisions. If married, how-
ever, they could neither hold property nor will it. Women could
neither sue nor sit on juries. Public education and public employ-
ment normally were denied them. Inadvertently given the vote in
many early state constitutions, women gradually had it taken from
them.
In the mid 1780s, no more than 400,000 free adult men could
be found in the entire United States. Had more of them been settled,
literate, alive to great issues, they might be said to have made up
the political community. Tens of thousands, however, typically were
on the move to distant and isolated places, to the northern frontiers
of Vermont and Maine, to the Mohawk Valley of New York, the
Monongahela Valley of Pennsylvania, the wilds of Kentucky and
Tennessee. "The Americans . . . acquire no attachment to Place,"
noted Governor Dunmore of Virginia in the 1770s. "But wandering
about seems engrafted in their Nature; and it is a weakness incident
110 These United States
to it, that they should ever imagine the Lands farther off, are Still
better than those upon which they are already Settled." Of many
such people, Hector St. John de Crevecoeur wrote in his famous
Letters of an American Farmer, in 1782:
By living in or near the woods, their actions are regulated by the wild-
ness of the neighborhood. . . . The chase renders them ferocious,
gloomy, and unsociable; a hunter wants no neighbors; he hates them,
because he dreads their competition. In a little time their success in
the woods makes them neglect the tillage; ... to make up for the
deficiency, they go oftener to the woods. . . . Their wives and
children live in sloth and inactivity; and . . . [all] grow up a mongrel
breed, half civilized, half savage.
Large numbers of more settled American farmers were hardly
less isolated than such frontiersmen. Even in New England, towns
were distant from one another and accessible only with the greatest
difficulty. Outside of New England and parts of Pennsylvania
where German sects had settled in communities of their own, there
were few towns at all. Often families lived miles apart. Most of
them were too poor to own slaves or servants or to hire help.
Given the usual state of what few roads there were, even men with
ample time and money could rarely meet on political or other
matters. Nor could they readily correspond. In Virginia in the
1780s, when John Marshall was a young lawyer, scarcely a third
of those who made deeds or served on juries knew how to sign their
names, and such men were a cut above the general run.
All told, at the close of the Revolution, perhaps 120,000 Ameri-
cans could meet the property, religious, or other qualifications to
vote, though this number rose steadily thereafter through liberaliza-
tion of the suffrage and growth of population. Fewer still could hold
office. Characteristic of this segment of the population were the
yeomen of the older sections of the country. Yeoman life in a
fairly comfortable Massachusetts family about 1790 is well de-
scribed in the following account:
At my grandfather Little's, three daughters . . . and three sons still
remained under the paternal roof; there were also three young men,
apprentices, learning the trade of shoemaker. Grandsir at that time
The New Nation 111
carried on a brisk business, as business was reckoned in those days,
in a shop near the dwelling this, and the care of a good sized farm,
kept every one busy. Family worship and breakfast over, the "men
folks" went to their labor, and grandmam' and the girls began the
day's routine. The two youngest girls assisting alternately week by
week in the housework and spinning. The weaving was usually put
out to some neighboring woman. ... At dark my work was laid
aside. ... At nine o'clock grandsir and the young men came. Grand-
sir would set himself in his armchair, before the fire . . . the nuts,
corn, and apples passed around, and sometimes a mug of flip was
made. After all had become warmed and refreshed, the Bible was
laid on the stand, a fresh candle lighted, and the old gentleman rever-
ently read a chapter, then a lengthy prayer was offered, through
which we all stood with heads bowed reverently.
Such farmers often were ambitious enough to enlarge their hold-
ings for their sons, confident enough to go into debt for good land,
responsible enough to trade some produce for cash to meet interest
and taxes. When they could afford amenities, they gave the town
merchant or itinerant peddlers their business. In this and other
ways their produce entered the channels of trade. Many of them,
though without enthusiasm for independence, had served in the
Revolutionary Army. Though this experience impelled some of
them to seek new land in the West, most of them returned home
as soon as possible and stayed there. These men knew their rights
and hugged their liberties, but with Jefferson they believed that
government best which governed least. They took politics seriously
only when they were in trouble or when lawyers like Patrick Henry
or professional politicians like Sam Adams stirred them up.
According to the "gentlemen of principle and property," these
husbandmen were "turbulent and changing." According to the
rising Jeffersonians, it was very hard to awaken them to their
rightful power. Eager to assist in stirring them up were thousands
of city "mechanics" and city poor, who had found their political
voice during the Revolution. Owning little property and on that
account usually deprived of the vote, such urban agitators never-
theless joined a zest for politics with leisure for meetings, a love
of resolves, a taste for oratory, and a palate for toasts. The yeomen,
enfranchised but not political-minded; the "rabble," intensely politi-
cal but seldom enfranchised these constituted the "people" in the
political lexicon of the "rich and well-born." Some of the latter
thought the people must be protected from themselves. Most of
them thought they must be protected from the people.
While most of the people in America in the mid 1780s continued
to live in the country at discouraging distances from one another,
most of the "gentlemen of principle and property" either resided
permanently in the cities or habitually frequented them. Before the
Revolution, English officials had set the urban social tone. In their
places now were lawyers, merchants, planters and speculators, many
of whom were in fact not as far removed from the people as they
pretended. Not all of them engaged in politics or held political
opinions. Those who did felt privileged by right and by God to
rule, and generally speaking, the people continued to acknowledge
thek pretensions.
Philadelphia, with a population of 40,000, remained the nation's
metropolis in the 1780s. Of all the important cities, it had been
hurt least by British occupation and by the defection of leaders
from the patriot cause. Thomas Willing, a loyalist merchant who
stayed on and later became president of the first Bank of the
United States, was one who did well during the war. His success
was abetted by his partner, the "financier of the Revolution,"
Robert Morris, and by his son-in-law, William Bingham, privateers-
man, land speculator, merchant, and banker. Notable among the
newcomers was the Frenchman, Stephen Girard, who settled in
Philadelphia in 1776. When the British left two years later, he
began accumulating the trading fortune that soon made him the
richest man in the country. Benjamin Franklin returned to Phila-
delphia from abroad in 1785, and with David Rittenhouse and
Benjamin Rush, leading scientists of the day, revivified the Ameri-
can Philosophical Society which he had founded in 1744.
Postwar New York, with about 30,000 people, had become
Philadelphia's nearest rival. Between 1785 and 1790 it served as
the capital of the nation. The British occupied New York for seven
years; by the time they left in 1783, about half of the city's loyalist
The New Nation 113
Chamber of Commerce had also departed. Here, as in Philadelphia,
however, numbers of loyalists remained, and eventually lent leader-
ship and capital to the city's growth. Newcomers such as John
Jacob Astor, who arrived from Germany in 1783, and William
Duer, who came down from Albany the same year after making
a fortune in the war, also pushed the city's business forward. At
the same time, brilliant young lawyers appeared. Among them were
Aaron Burr, a grandson of Jonathan Edwards; and Alexander
Hamilton, an illegitimate West Indian of English descent who in
1780 married a daughter of General Philip Schuyler and thus
gained the backing of the old Dutch aristocracy. Both Burr and
Hamilton had made reputations as Revolutionary officers. Many
New Englanders seeking livelier opportunities also came to New
York, foreshadowing a larger migration later. Among these Yankee
newcomers were seafarers like Samuel Shaw. As supercargo on the
New York ship, Empress of China, Shaw was mainly responsible
for the success of the voyage that opened the China trade in 1784.
Boston, now the nation's third city, had lost heavily during the
Revolution through the departure of loyalist capitalists to England
and neighboring Canada. After the war Boston's recovery was
retarded by the defection to New York of young men of talent.
Young merchants like the Cabots, Lowells, Gerrys, and Higginsons
the forebears of the "Proper Bostonians" came down from the
upstate ports of Salem, Marblehead, and Gloucester to make their
mark in the Massachusetts metropolis. But their progress was
slowed by Boston's loss of the West Indian trade which the British
kept closed to American ships until 1830.
Just behind Boston ranked Charleston, South Carolina, still the
chief city of the South and according to travelers, the "most aristo-
cratic city in the Union." Between Charleston and Philadelphia
lay a few more or less ambitious Southern ports, of which Baltimore
alone fulfilled its early promise. Busier were the new state capitals
Augusta, Georgia; Columbia, South Carolina; Richmond, Vir-
ginia their inland location reflecting the "land office business"
brought about by the wearing out of tidewater soil and the push
of new settlers to the West.
In an age when colleges were rare and nonclerical students rarer,
ii<Hh JLfiese united
many of the new leaders were college graduates. When most
American adults could scarcely read, they, typically, satisfied a
taste for world history and world literature. Often they met to
discuss both. Travel, though never easy, was least difficult for
gentlemen with good servants, good horses, and ample time. The
prospect of whist, wine, and philosophy at their destination fre-
quently sped the journey. More often these men corresponded. It
was "as if the war not only required, but created talents" wrote the
contemporary historian, David Ramsay. Men whose minds were
"weaned with the love of liberty, and whose abilities were im-
proved by daily exercise . . . spoke, wrote, and acted, with an
energy far surpassing all expectations which could be reasonably
founded on their previous acquirements."
Since some of these leaders did not side with Jefferson on the
perfectibility of man, all at least joined with John Adams in
acknowledging the "improvability" of the conditions of his ex-
istence. This, they believed, would be brought about by the opera-
tion not of divine but of natural Newtonian law. Natural law
may have been made by the Creator of the universe, but as one of
the favorite authors of these men, the Scot philosopher Adam
Ferguson, said, it could be grasped only by "the mind of man left
to itself without the aid of foreign intervention." Revealed religion
and its mysteries Washington considered the expendable heritage
of "a gloomy age of ignorance and superstition." John Adams
once said, "An ounce of mother wit is worth a pound of clergy."
"It will never be pretended," he said later, "that any persons
employed ... in the formation of the American governments . . .
had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the
inspiration of Heaven."
If these men rejected revelation and the authority of scriptures,
they had to find out about things for themselves. But their practi-
cality was even more purposeful than that. The Revolution had set
them free; now they felt obliged to produce rules for the safe ex-
ercise of freedom. "Researches of the human mind after social
happiness," wrote Washington in 1783, "have been carried to a
great extent; the treasures of knowledge acquired by the labours of
philosophers, sages, and legislators, thro' a long succession of years,
"A Rope of Sand" 115
are laid open for use, and their collected wisdom may be happily
applied in the establishment of our forms of government." As if to
follow out this line of thought, Madison, the same year, wrote to
Jefferson who was in Europe, asking for "whatever may throw
light on the general constitution and droit public of the several
confederacies which have existed. I observe in Boinaud's catalogue
several pieces on the Dutch, the German, and Helvetic. The opera-
tions of our own must render all such lights of consequence. Books
on the Law of Nature fall within a similar remark."
When in most Americans the notion of a central government
called up only Tom Paine's image of George III, "the royal brute
of England," these men and their friends could think of and use
more palatable examples from man's long past. When most Ameri-
cans knew only the reign of forest and field, these men and their
friends had a classic and firm idea of the State. Some of them,
like Robert Morris and James Wilson were, with Hamilton, in the
vanguard of the long and bitter fight for a strong national govern-
ment. Others, Washington and Madison among them, grew agree-
able to it as a necessary evil. Still others, including Franklin and
Jefferson, learned only to tolerate it. Sam Adams and Patrick Henry
who, of all these leaders, remained closest to the "people," accepted
it only grudgingly and under pressure.
Though the last of the new state constitutions, that of Mas-
sachusetts, was adopted by 1780, not until the next year did the
first official central government actually begin to function in the
United States under the Articles of Confederation. Such Articles
had been talked of almost from the opening of the Second Con-
tinental Congress in May 1775. In June 1776, even before the
Declaration of Independence, a committee, headed by John
Dickinson of Pennsylvania, was named to draw them up. Dickin-
son's draft reserved for the states much of their newly asserted
power, but was deliberately careless in hedging the sovereignty of
Congress. This caused such dissension that a year and a half
passed before new Articles, revised and weakened, were gingerly
dispatched by the delegates to their respective commonwealths.
116 These United States
Four more years passed before the latter ratified them unani-
mously, as required by the cautious Congress. The delay was
caused mainly by speculators influential in a few states which could
claim no lands beyond the mountains. Their aim was to force such
landed states as Virginia and Massachusetts to yield their holdings
to Congress which would then open them to all comers.
Dickinson's draft had given a sovereign national government
traditional sovereign power: the power to tax its people, to regulate
currency and trade, to raise, equip, and field an army. The ap-
proved draft left the nation at .the mercy of the states. State
legislatures appointed and paid the delegates who were subject
to recall at any time. These delegates did not vote as individuals but
only for their commonwealths, each of these having one vote in
Congress regardless of population or wealth. When Congress re-
cessed, the "executive," consisting of one member from each state
and appropriately called "A Committee of the States," could act
only when nine members agreed. Congress could ask the states for
money, but not collect it; requisition troops, but not enlist them;
recommend tariffs, but not enact them. Congress could make
treaties, borrow money, issue currency, and deal with Indians out-
side state borders. But it had no courts or armed corps of its own
to enforce its engagements or enactments.
Even before the Articles had been approved, men were working
to discredit them. Extremists such as Gouverneur Morris even
proposed prolonging the Revolution so that "that great friend to
sovereign authority, a foreign war," as he said in 1781, might
speed the day when the existing "government would acquire force."
Congressional efforts after the end of the fighting to deal with
problems arising from the treaty and independence neither raised
the standing of the government nor quieted demands for change.
As requked by the treaty, Congress made "earnest recommenda-
tions" to the states to speed the loyalists' recovery of their property
and the payment of prewar debts to other British subjects. But in
some states loyalist lands were confiscated even after the end of
the war, and state governments winked at the tarring and feathering
of "traitors" who interfered. As for the debts, certain Virginians
asked, "If we are to pay the debts due to British merchants, what
have we been fighting for all this time?"
"A Rope oj Sand" 111
Such evidence of the contempt in which it was held by its own
people seemed only to justify the flouting of Congress by others.
England aroused Americans in the old Northwest by finding excuse
after excuse for delaying the evacuation of its armed fur-trading
posts in new American territory along the Canadian border. Spain
at the same time aroused the Southwest by inciting the Indians of
Florida against American frontiersmen. Spain also claimed that
Britain had no right to grant Americans free use of the Mississippi
and the port of New Orleans. While Congress looked on helplessly,
Spain played upon southern and western dissatisfaction by offering
this privilege only to those who would defect from the United States.
Congressional efforts to negotiate other commercial matters with
Spain also failed. When John Adams, in turn, tried to get England
to grant prewar preferences to the new nation, he was laughed out
of court. His mortification was compounded by the pitiful efforts of
Americans to retaliate against British restrictions with some of
their own. When New York put up tariffs, New Jersey and Con-
necticut jumped at the chance to profit; when Massachusetts stood
the British off, Rhode Island rolled out a welcoming rug.
If Congress could make no headway as a sovereign party to a
treaty, it was partly because it failed to gain any strength from
independence. Indeed, until Washington prevailed upon the troops
to disband in June 1783, Congress was harried from place to^place
by its own army which impatiently awaited payment. More formal
creditors, meanwhile, pressed futilely for $2,000,000 in arrears of
interest on the public debt, not to speak of the $40,000,000
principal.
Still other Americans looked to Congress in vain. Though Ethan
and Levi Allen in the independent state of Vermont swore that
"at all risks , . .Congress shall not have the parcelling of [Vermont]
lands," most of the 60,000 settlers there wanted only a nod from
the central government to join the Union, but they were ignored.
When in 1784 North Carolina ceded her Watauga country to the
central government she also passed along responsibility for protect-
ing the 10,000 settlers against the Indians. Congressional futility
encouraged separatists there in 1784 to form a distinct state of their
own, which they called Franklin. Not until 1788 did they return
to the Union. In Kentucky country in the 1780s, those resisting the
118 These United States
blandishments of Spain held ten different conventions seeking state-
hood. Three of these even had the blessing of Virginia which still
claimed the territory. But Congress did no more here than in
Vermont. Private interests, even if often selfish ones, saved both
the northeastern and southwestern frontiers for the new nation.
If Congress had any genuine authority it was over the "Old
Northwest" the territory between the Appalachians and the Mis-
sissippi, north of the Ohio River, which it had acquired from the
states on the ratification of the Articles. Here, as elsewhere, develop-
ment and settlement were left largely to private interests, but Con-
gress at least wrote the rules in creative fashion. A preliminary
ordinance for the government of this area was enacted in 1784,
but it was held in abeyance until people moved in. To encourage
settlement, Congress passed a Land Ordinance in 1785 which
provided for surveying the territory into townships and sections.
Each section was to consist of 640 acres, and nothing smaller than
a whole section was to be sold at auction. The minimum auction
price was to be one dollar an acre. Congress hoped to refurbish the
treasury by land sales in this region, but the requirement of $640
in cash eliminated most buyers. With sales lagging, Congress
yielded to speculative interests which offered but a small fraction of
the "minimum" price for huge acreage. When the speculators began
to people the region, Congress proceeded to enact a new measure
for its government. This was the famous Northwest Ordinance of
1787.
The Northwest Ordinance stipulated that no more than five states
be made from the Northwest Territory, tentatively defined the
boundaries of each state, and outlined a system of transition govern-
ments. When 60,000 free inhabitants had settled within such states
they would be admitted to the Union "on an equal footing with
the original states in all respects whatever." This Ordinance
established the procedure by which almost all future states were
brought into the Union. In the Northwest Territory itself, the new
states compacted with the older ones to guarantee civil rights,
provide for "religion, morality, and knowledge," proscribe entail
and primogeniture, and prohibit slavery.
Before settlement could proceed, however, more than laws
were needed. Most important, the Indians in the West had to be
"A Rope of Sand' 9 119
quieted or removed, and here Congress fatted. By 1787, moreover,
events elsewhere in the country had given the strong central-govern-
ment men so many additional occasions to belabor Congress that
they felt safe in moving seriously to supplant it. Most of these events
grew out of the suddenly declining fortunes of the yeoman fanners.
Until 1785 these farmers had enjoyed a long wartime boom. After
that date the foreign troops their grain had fed had left for home
and the American Army had been disbanded. As trade fell off,
worried creditors began to press the farmers for back payments.
At the same time the states, under pressure from the holders of their
wartime securities, raised taxes on the land and demanded their
payment in specie. In 1785 in Massachusetts, a third of the farmer's
cash income was going to the government, to be paid out in turn
to the state bondholders.
This sudden and seemingly unfair reversal of conditions
prompted the farmers themselves to seek redress. Some states made
concessions. In New England the ruling oligarchies only made
things worse. In 1786 the Massachusetts legislature actually raised
taxes on land. This goaded the farmers to resist collection with
violence. In the most famous farmers' uprising, Captain Daniel
Shays, a veteran of Bunker Hill, led 1,200 men to the court house in
Springfield. Governor Bowdoin's militia easily handled matters;
but in the next election the farmers voted him out in favor of the
aging patriot, John Hancock.
Starting in 1780, numerous conventions for revising the Articles
had been proposed by the strong-government men. In 1782 the
New York legislature and in 1785 the Massachusetts legislature had
taken the lead, but nothing happened. In 1785 Maryland and
Virginia differed on the matter of navigation of the Potomac River
and Chesapeake Bay, in which Washington himself was interested.
A meeting on the question led naturally to general discussion of
commerce and the wish for other states to join in. The upshot was a
call by the Virginia legislature for a meeting of all the states at
Annapolis in September 1786, By then Shay's "rebellion" had
turned the "rich and well born" from considerations of mere com-
mercial promotions to an avowed concern for the protection of
their very lives and property.
Only five states sent delegates to Annapolis, but among them
120 These United States
was New York, and among its representatives was Washington's
ex-aide, the indefatigable and brilliant Hamilton. The convention
formally was to deal with commerce only; but the opportunity was
too good to miss. Strategy suggested prompt adjournment and a
ringing call for a new convention to amend the Articles thoroughly.
Hamilton wrote the report carrying out this decision; and soon all
the states but Rhode Island were preparing to send delegates to the
Great Convention in Philadelphia in May 1787.
"A MORE PERFECT UNION"
"No motley or feeble measure can answer the end or will finally
receive the public support," Hamilton in New York wrote to
Washington in Philadelphia during the Convention. The "public" he
talked to worried that the Convention "from a fear of shocking
popular opinion, will not go far enough." How far he himself would
go he indicated earlier by his proposals to the delegates: A "Gover-
nor" of the United States should be elected for life by a method at
least two steps removed from the original voters. The Governor of
each state, in turn, with an absolute veto on state laws, would be
appointed by the Governor of the United States. This was national-
ism with a vengeance, and the members of the Convention, many
more learned and more lenient than Hamilton, rejected it. "The
gentleman from New York," it was said, "has been praised by
everybody, he has been supported by none."
Though Jefferson and John Adams were in Europe during the
Convention and other personages were absent for various reasons,
the meeting was one of great men and great minds. The rather
symbolic attendance of Washington and the aged Franklin lent
strength and stature to the sessions. In all, seventy-three men had
been named, but only fifty-five ever appeared. A mere eight had
been signers of the Declaration. On the whole the members were
young men, educated, urbane, practical.
The Convention opened on May 25 and unanimously elected
Washington presiding officer. Uneasy about the populace and the
press, it next voted to keep its sessions secret. The delegates had
been sent to Philadelphia to "amend" the Articles. Some held to
the letter of their instructions. Others, lest they "let slip the golden
A More Perfect Union 121
opportunity," as Hamilton said, took a freer view. When Edmund
Randolph of Virginia announced that he was not "scrupulous on
the point of power," Hamilton seconded him and the Convention
proceeded to supplant, not amend, the Articles.
The delegates took as their point of departure the so-called
"Virginia Plan," sketched out in an address by Randolph on May
29. Virginia proposed a bicameral legislature, membership in both
houses to be apportioned among the states according to their free
population. Members of the "second house" of this "National
Legislature" would be elected by the members of the first, who
themselves would be elected by the voters. The "National Legisla-
ture" as a whole would elect the "National Executive" and the
"National Judiciary."
The flaw in this scheme was its failure to give the national govern-
ment direct power over the people. But the biggest argument took
place over the basis of representation. The small states feared being
overwhelmed by the populous ones. Accordingly they offered a
counterproposal of a one-house legislature in which the states
would continue to vote as units. The "New Jersey Plan," as it was
called, had no chance in this Convention. It did, however, contain
the clause which survived as one of the pillars of the federal system:
"Acts of the United States in Congress . . . shall be the supreme law
of the respective States ... or their citizens . . . and the Judiciary
of the several States shall be bound thereby in their decisions."
Argument over the representation clause of the Virginia Plan
grew so hot in the Philadelphia summer that at one point the small-
state men threatened to pack up and go home. Eventually a special
committee under Franklin saved the Convention by devising the
"Great Compromise." To please the large states, membership in
the lower house would be by population; to please the small ones,
membership in the upper house would be the same for all.
In apportioning representation in the lower house, the free states
wanted slaves given less weight than whites. The South would agree
to this only for "direct taxes," which were also to be apportioned
by population. The so-called "three-fifths" compromise broke this
deadlock. In apportioning both representation and direct taxes, five
slaves were to be counted as equivalent to three whites.
122 These United States
Still a third compromise had to be effected before the com-
mercial interests won their point that only a straight majority be
required for the enactment of measures regulating commerce. The
South, fearful of taxes on exports and interference with the slave
trade, wanted a two-thirds majority. For yielding on this, the
South got taxes on exports prohibited forever, interference with the
slave trade prohibited for twenty years. It also won the point that
treaties, commercial or other, to take effect, must be approved by
a two-to-one majority in the Senate.
Much has been made of these compromises; but they are con-
spicuous chiefly because on most other matters the delegates saw
eye to eye. Long discussion preceded the decision to make the
term of office of representatives two years, senators six years, the
president four years, and judges life. But the principle involved
provoked little argument: the new government must be protected
from popular fancy which might turn out an entire administration
at once. Similar fears dictated the indirect election of senators (since
made direct by the Seventeenth Amendment) and the president,
and the appointment of judges by the president with senatorial ap-
proval. The "people" had their directly elected House; beyond that
their participation in the government was to be remote.
The Constitution, the framers hoped, would quickly reverse the
allegedly desperate tendencies of the times; but, as Madison said,
they also self-consciously "built for the ages." In place of the "half-
starved, limping government" of the Confederation (Washington's
own description), the Constitution established a legislature with
unequivocal power to tax the people, to "raise and support Armies,"
and to "provide and maintain a Navy." It alone could declare war,
regulate commerce, coin money, provide for the "general welfare,"
and "make all laws necessary and proper" to the exercise of such
powers. For the enforcement of the laws the Constitution provided
for a single, responsible executive, the president. He would be
elected independently of Congress and empowered to appoint (and
remove, it was later decided) his own aides, checked, to be sure,
by the frequent requirement of Senate consent. With the same
check, he alone could make treaties. He was also commander-in-
chief of the army and navy. Finally, the Constitution created an
A More Perfect Union 123
independent national judiciary headed by a Supreme Court. This
court was given original jurisdiction in many matters; most im-
portant, it was given appellate jurisdiction over all cases involving
the Constitution, federal laws or treaties, even if such cases origi-
nated in state courts.
To reinforce the national government was insufficient. The
country must also be protected, in Madison's words, from "the
mutability of the laws of the states." Most significant, the states
were forbidden to make "anything but gold and silver coin a tender
in payment of debts," and to pass any laws "impairing the obliga-
tion of contracts." If the states retained "residual powers," the
national government was supreme in the exercise of those "dele-
gated" to it. From this, two implications may be drawn: (1) Acts
of Congress beyond the scope of its delegated powers must be
unconstitutional. (2) State acts impinging on Congressional areas
of supremacy must also be unconstitutional. In keeping with the
theory of checks and balances, moreover, the courts (though
Washington once claimed this for the executive) held the power to
void unconstitutional legislative acts signed by the president. This
is the basis of "judicial review," as Hamilton explained it in Num-
ber 78 of The Federalist. For a long time, with but one exception,
only state acts were adversely "reviewed."
On these "remedies.," then, there was general agreement in the
Convention. The same is true of those provisions which have
preserved the Constitution for almost two centuries. Chief among
these from the framers' point of view were the built-in checks and
balances. No executive could get free enough to become a man on
a white horse; on the other hand, no transient upsurge of popular
feeling could lawfully unseat the president or overturn the courts.
A second source of the Constitution's longevity is the amending
process, closely hedged and sparingly used though it has been. The
futility of trying to amend the Articles by the required unanimous
consent of the states hastened the Confederation's demise. The
promise of the first ten amendments (to serve as a Bill of Rights),
on the other hand, assured the Constitution's ultimate ratification;
the prompt fulfillment of the promise speeded it to a long life. "I
will be a peaceable citizen," said the Constitution's opponent,
124 These United States
Patrick Henry. "My head, my hand, and my heart shall be at liberty
to retrieve the loss of liberty, and remove the defects of that system
in a constitutional way."
Perhaps the success of the Constitution is to be accounted for
mainly by a paradox. Statesmanship prompted the framers to
leave many powers to the jealous states. On the other hand, they
wrote the document with such generality no accident, but a
significant result of their universal way of thinking that these
powers could be retrieved by the national government when changes
in national life made it imperative that they be exercised on a
national level. A constitution to be a success, Napoleon said,
should be "short and obscure." Most likely he had the American
Constitution in mind. Many features of American government and
politics which the framers did not clearly foresee have also con-
tributed much to the perpetuation of the form of government they
set up. Among these may be noted the two-party system, the en-
largement of the role of the Cabinet, the committee system in the
House and Senate, the bureaucratic civil service.
The Constitutional Convention, for all its practical conservatism,
created a radical government, a free nation among aristocratic ones,
a republic among skeptical monarchies. For all its limitations on
direct democratic action, moreover, the Constitution did not omit
a "democratical branch," prescribed by John Adams as essential to
all free governments. Under the Constitution, said John Marshall
who rose to prominence during the ratification controversy in
Virginia, "it is the people that give power, and can take it back.
What shall restrain them? They are the masters who give it, and
of whom their servants hold it."
The "people," none the less, proved not as willing to give power
as Marshall hoped; and he himself had to acknowledge that "in
some of the adopting states, a majority . . . were in the opposition."
The secrecy of the Convention did not help matters; the knowledge,
moreover, that only thirty-nine of the fifty-five delegates signed the
final document heightened suspicion.
The Articles required that "amendments" first be approved by
Congress and then by state legislatures. Congress, however, dis-
A More Perfect Union 125
pensed with voting on the document and passed the issue directly to
the states. The Convention, in turn, stipulated that ratification in
the states be by special conventions to which the Constitution
milkers could be elected, and not by the state legislatures. It
stipulated further that when nine of the thirteen states acted favor-
ably, the new law of the land would be declared in effect. It was
not, in fact, until a month after the Constitution had been declared
in operation that North Carolina ratified it. Rhode Island held out
until May 1790, when threats of commercial pressure forced its
hand.
Delaware, on December 7, 1787, was the first state to ratify.
Five days later Pennsylvania voted for the Constitution, but only
after a series of Federalist stratagems deeply alienated the losers.
New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut next came quietly into line.
When the Massachusetts Convention met on January 9, 1788, a
majority was definitely opposed. The promise of later amendments
dissolved some opposition; more disappeared when the sponsors
played successfully upon the ambitions of opposition leaders. Even
so it was only by a vote of 187 to 168 that ratification won after
a month of hard work. Maryland and South Carolina soon made
eight ratifiers. While hot contests went on in the key states of
Virginia and New York, a second convention in New Hampshire
(the sponsors had not dared to allow the first one to come to a
vote) made it the ninth state. Presented with this situation and
mollified when Washington consented to run for president, Virginia
yielded on June 25 after a brilliant debate on both sides. The
vote was close, 89 to 79.
In New York, Hamilton led the sponsors' fight. Aware of the
strength of the opposition, Hamilton began writing in support of
the Constitution as early as October 1787. John Jay soon joined
him., and also James Madison of Virginia. Their joint efforts have
since been known as The Federalist. The articles first appeared in
the New York press and were copied in many papers elsewhere.
They had little effect on the contest, however. In New York's con-
vention in June 1788, the opposition held a two-to-one majority.
News of the sponsors' belated victory in Virginia implied that the
new Union would be formed without New York. But even this
126 These United States
failed for weeks to dissipate the opposition. Hamilton and the pro-
Constitution forces nevertheless succeeded in postponing a negative
vote; and their promise late in July to fight for amendments which
would constitute a bill of rights at last won enough votes for the
Constitution to squeeze through, 30 to 27.
In September 1788, Congress called for the election of the first
president in February 1789, the first inauguration the following
March. New York City was named the first capital.
"I am not much attached to the majesty of the multitude,"
Hamilton once said, and "waive all pretensions to their counte-
nance." On another occasion he stated that the "people . . .
seldom judge or determine right." On the issue of the Constitution
he was correct. A great English Prime Minister once called the
Constitution "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given
tune by the brain and purpose of man." But the American people
had been slow to see it that way.
Chapter Five
An Agrarian Republic in a
Revolutionary Epoch
The old Congress had set March 4, 1789, as the date
for the convening of the new one in New York City. But it was
April 6 before a quorum of Representatives and Senators com-
pleted the rough journey to the capital, and April 30 before
President Washington, "accompanied," as he said, "by feelings
not unlike those of a culprit, who is going to the place of his execu-
tion," was inaugurated. To Fisher Ames of Boston, the conservative
who had defeated Sam Adams for Congress, the "languor of the
old Confederation" seemed to persist. "The people will forget the
new government before it is born," moaned Ames. "The resurrec-
tion of the infant will come before its birth."
Conscious of their role as republicans in a skeptical monarchical
world, the leaders of the first Congress were determined not only
to make good but to make a good impression. Vice-President John
Adams in particular, fresh from years of attendance at the courts
of Europe, was so insistent upon dignified titles and procedures in
the Senate that he was promptly dubbed "His Rotundity." "When
the President comes into the Senate," the President of the Senate
asked his colleagues, "what shall I be? I cannot be President then.
I wish gentlemen to think of what I shall be." William Maclay, the
irreverent Senator from Pennsylvania, found "the profane muscles
of his face in tune for laughter" over the discussion that followed.
But need for getting down to more serious business soon over-
came any pompous preoccupation with decorum. The Constitution
may have been barren of guides to punctilio, but it was clear as to
objectives; and if it hadn't been, the times were making their own
127
128 An Agrarian Republic in a Revolutionary Epoch
disquieting demands. The Constitution gave the legislature power
to raise much-needed money; now the actual business of levying
and collecting taxes had to be faced. The Constitution established
a national judiciary consisting of a Supreme Court and "such in-
ferior courts as Congress may from time to time ordain and estab-
lish." Now this provision had to be implemented. The Constitution
created a strong executive; now this department had to be organ-
ized and manned. Though New York was a gay town whose pros-
perity added to the diversions everywhere at hand, it remained
the capital of a weak nation, one beset by foreign and domestic
debts, surrounded by foreign enemies, harassed on its borders by
hostile and aroused Indians, on the sea by bold pirates, in alien
ports and waters by unfriendly navies. Nor was there to be unity
at home.
GIVING MUSCLE TO THE GOVERNMENT
For all its dilatoriness, Congress dealt with each of its Constitu-
tional injunctions during its very first session. Its earliest substan-
tive act, however, was to pass and submit to the states the first ten
amendments constituting the Bill of Rights. These were ratified by
December 1791.
This promise fulfilled, the new government faced its most urgent
initial problem money for day to day expenses. For this purpose
Madison had a tariff bill before the House even before Washing-
ton's inauguration. Hoping to get it passed in time to tax the heavy
spring imports already on the high seas, he wrote the measure to
touch "such articles . . . only as are likely to occasion the least
difficulty." The very proposal, however, found merchants adding
the anticipated tax to their prices; they gave its passage no en-
couragement. At the same time, with lobbying and log-rolling
tactics that became notorious later, manufacturers combined to
delay matters until each got special protection for his own prod-
ucts. Shipowners also got favorable consideration. Imports arriving
in American bottoms were to be taxed at a rate 10 per cent below
that on goods brought in by foreign carriers. Debate put off the
passage of Madison's bill until July 4. Collection itself could not
begin until inspectors, weighers, and other port officers the ad-
Giving Muscle to the Government 129
vance guard of political appointees who later underpinned the party
system were inducted. Henceforth, for more than a hundred
years, the customs would yield more in federal revenue than any
other single source, and customhouse jobs would be the staple of
federal patronage.
While the House was occupied with strengthening the federal
treasury, the Senate was working on the structure of federal law
enforcement. On September 24, 1789, it passed the first federal
Judiciary Act. This measure made explicit the procedure by which
federal courts could review and, if need be, annul state laws and
state-court decisions involving powers and duties delegated by the
Constitution to the Federal Government. It also specified the
make-up of the Supreme Court and the system of lower federal
tribunals: the circuit and district courts. Attached to each district
court were United States attorneys and their deputies to serve as
federal prosecutors, and United States marshals and their deputies
to serve as federal police. This Judiciary Act created the office of
Attorney-General, but the Department of Justice itself was not set
up until 1870.
While Congressmen and Senators labored over such basic meas-
ures, the President considered appointments to carry them out and
to man other positions, major and minor, that must be created.
Caution was Washington's watchword. An excellent administrator,
he proposed to surround himself only with the best men available.
Yet expediency dictated that appointments be spread geograph-
ically and that the dignitaries of the different states be appeased.
Washington was profoundly aware of the tenuous attachment of
many state leaders to the new central government. "A single disgust
excited in a particular state" on the matter of patronage, he wrote,
"might perhaps raise a flame of opposition that could not easily,
if ever, be extinguished. . . . Perfectly convinced I am, that if
injudicious or unpopular measures should be taken by the execu-
tive . . . with regard to appointments, the government itself would
be in the utmost danger of being utterly subverted. . . ."
Though the Executive had been the weakest branch of the old
Confederation, its three executive departments established in 1781
Foreign Affairs, Treasury, and War continued to function for a
130 An Agrarian Republic in a Revolutionary Epoch
time unchanged by the new government. Not before July 1789,
did Congress establish a new Department of State; new War and
Treasury departments followed by September. As Secretary of War,
Washington nominated his old comrade in arms, General Henry
Knox of Massachusetts. As Attorney-General he named his fellow
Virginian, Edmund Randolph. John Jay of New York continued
in charge of foreign affairs until 1790, when he became first Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court. At that time, Washington's fateful
choice, his neighbor, Thomas Jefferson, took over as Secretary of
State. Equally fateful was Washington's appointment of his war-
time aide, the ardent Alexander Hamilton, as Secretary of the
Treasury.
Many years later Jefferson told a story that illuminates the
character of Washington's two chief advisors. "At a dinner I gave
in 1791 ... the room being hung around with a collection of the
portraits of remarkable men, among them . . . Bacon, Newton,
and Locke, Hamilton asked me who they were. I told him they
were my trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever pro-
duced, naming them. He paused for some time: The greatest man,'
said he, 'that ever lived was Julius Caesar.' "
More English than the English in his devotion to constitutional
monarchy, Hamilton became more zealous than most Americans
in his championship of the centralization of power in the executive
of his adopted land. He convinced himself that the "people" recog-
nized their natural leaders in his own favorite moneyed class. If he
could but bind that class to the "people's" government, the entire
nation would be firmly united, the better to face the enemies at hand
and realize its mighty future. Hamilton's fight to supplant the
Articles had had this as its objective.
Hamilton's first report to Congress on the public debt was ready
in January 1790. In it he urged three new bond issues: one to
refund the foreign debt, another to call in the bewildering agglom-
eration of wartime securities issued by the old Congress, the third
to refund unpaid state debts which, according to his plan, the new
central government would assume. His proposal on the foreign debt
passed with scant opposition. Included among the issues to be
called in at face value under his second proposal were the certif-
Giving Muscle to the Government ,131
icates, passing in the market at no more than twenty-five cents on
the dollar, with which the Army had been paid and which the sol-
diers had carried to many parts of the hinterland. Even before he
made his report, certain of Hamilton's friends learned of this pro-
vision and sent fast boats and fast stages loaded with cash to beat
the good news to the back country. Madison led the opposition in
crying corruption; but their hastily drawn alternative bill was de-
feated by the House, and Hamilton's plan won.
This victory was acclaimed by those in the cities who felt rich
enough to share Hamilton's political philosophy or at least had
enough ready money to share its fruits. The opposition came mainly
from the South where cash for speculation in securities was scarce.
The sectional rift was widened when Hamilton's third proposal,
assumption of state debts, came up in April. The South, through the
sale of its state lands, had succeeded in paying off most of its war-
time obligations. Now it defeated the Secretary's proposal that it
help the central government bail out its prodigal sister states to the
north. Hamilton, however, was nothing if not resourceful. Ulti-
mately he got Jefferson's backing by offering the South the new cap-
ital. In June 1790, "assumption" passed. The other part of the
deal gave Philadelphia the capital for ten years, with the perma-
nent site on the Potomac to be ready in 1800.
It is "a fundamental maxim in the system of public credit of the
United States," Hamilton said, "that the creation of debt should
always be accompanied with the means of its extinguishment." He
hardly cared, however, to extinguish the securities the interest on
which supplied income to the moneyed families and, more im-
portant, served them as collateral for further speculation on credit.
In practice, Hamilton undertook only to service, not pay, the debt.
Even this took $2,000,000 a year. Since the tariff yielded much
less than was needed, Hamilton made two more proposals, both
adopted, but not without further sectional strife.
The first of these proposals urged the creation of a national
bank, modeled on the Bank of England, which would serve the
government for short-term borrowing. Its other features were de-
signed mainly to increase the currency and credit available to the
expanding business community. "The fanners, the yeomanry, will
132 An Agrarian Republic in a Revolutionary Epoch
derive no advantage from it," complained Representative James
Jackson of Georgia, during debate on the measure. Madison took
higher ground, declaring that the Constitutional Convention had
specifically intended to deny Congress the power to charter com-
panies, and that the bank proposal, therefore, was unconstitutional.
The bank bill was approved early in 1791 by a House vote of 39
to 20, all but one of the opposing votes coming from the South.
Before the measure received Washington's signature, however, the
President questioned Jefferson and Hamilton on its validity. Jefier-
son, making what henceforth became known as the "strict inter-
pretation" of the Constitution, upheld Madison's argument
Hamilton argued, on the contrary, that the constitutional power to
regulate the currency carried with it the "implied power" to estab-
lish monetary agencies like the bank. Washington accepted Hamil-
ton's "broad interpretation," and signed the bill in February 1791,
chartering the First Bank of the United States for twenty years. In
December, the main office of the Bank opened in Philadelphia and
in the following years eight branches were established in port cities
from Boston to New Orleans.
Hamilton's second proposal, also enacted in 1791, placed excise
taxes on various commodities, among them, provocatively enough,
distilled spirits. The South thought spirits essential to work in its
climate. Among back country farmers who seldom saw coin, whisky
had also long served as a medium of exchange. Attempts to collect
a tax on western "money" for the benefit of eastern speculators led
to violence in 1794. This centered in western Pennsylvania where
disgust with the tactics by which the Constitution was ratified in
that state had been most acute. To show the world's capitalists, who
had invested heavily in the new bank's shares and other United
States securities, that a republican government could coerce its citi-
zens in money matters, Hamilton prevailed on the President to call
out 15,000 militia against the "Whisky Rebellion." The Secretary
of the Treasury naturally rode along. Unfortunately for the demon-
stration the "whisky rebels" decided to remain indoors when the
soldiers arrived. A military farce, this adventure also proved a
political fiasco for Hamilton.
Perhaps the apex of his whole program was his Report on
Giving Muscle to the Government 133
Manufactures, which went to Congress in December 1791. In it
he argued brilliantly for protective tariffs, subsidies, and similar
aids to infant industries which ultimately would supply the sinew of
a great nation. But American merchants were to remain cool to
industrial enterprise for another quarter century, and for longer
than that were to oppose protective tariffs as a plague on trade.
Congress received the Report coldly.
As the country's currency became increasingly tied up in spec-
ulation in Hamilton's new government securities, moreover, the
more sober merchants became increasingly suspicious of Hamil-
ton's intentions. When the Secretary's bosom friend, William Duer,
"the prince of the tribe of speculators," as Madison called him, went
to a debtor's cell in the spring of 1792, the merchants' worst fears
were realized. Excellent harvests in Europe had already reduced
both the demand and the prices for American exports. Duer's col-
lapse, which carried down many other plungers, turned business un-
certainty into catastrophe. Hamilton himself had always been the
soul of circumspection in avoiding personal gain from public power.
But he never succeeded in cleansing his reputation of the mud
spattered on him by his opportunistic friends. "I have experienced,"
he wrote in answer to one of Duer's last requests for aid, "all the
bitterness of soul on your account which a warm attachment can
inspire."
Additional troubles, meanwhile, were overflowing the Federalists'
cup of gloom. The Federalists had pleased many on the northern
frontier by admitting Vermont as a state in 1791, and many in
the Southwest by admitting Kentucky in 1792. In the Southwest,
however, Spain continued to contest the Florida border as defined
in the Treaty of Paris, and kept pressure on Washington's admin-
istration by refusing to open the Mississippi at New Orleans to
western shipping. In the Northwest, England continued to hold
military posts and to use them to aid Canadian fur trappers against
American entrepreneurs. Spain and England, moreover, if they did
nothing to egg them on against the encroaching American frontiers-
men, also did nothing to hold the Indians in check. Washington's
own efforts to deal with the Indians also failed miserably.
134 An Agrarian Republic in a Revolutionary Epoch
REPUBLICANISM AT HOME AND ABROAD
Hamilton had a vision of the future of the United States that was
at once too innocent for his mercenary fellow Federalists and too
sophisticated for the "new American" verging on the vast and won-
derful frontier. Hamilton was concerned with money only as a
medium for national, not personal aggrandizement; capital was the
heart, the lungs, the bloodstream of power; capitalists the instru-
ments of progress; the state the directing force. But Federalist cap-
italists thought, as a rule, on a lower plane, and nursed their sub-
stance carefully in the familiar lines of investment.
Yet Hamilton shared with his fellow Federalists their contempt
for small farmers, their view of frontiersmen as little better than
Indians and, if anything, more troublesome. He knew, as he often
stressed, that the "genius of the people" was a central element in
the development of national wealth. But his model always remained
the English, not the American people, the rising factory hand not
the fanning and the frontier breed. The instruments of American
progress for almost a century were to be rough and crude frontier
warriors, huntsmen, prospectors, and land speculators, not manip-
ulators of securities; self-sufficient husbandmen pushing west from
clearing to clearing, farm to farm, not cogs in urban industrial com-
plexes. Such men would explore and open to settlement Jefferson's
"empire of liberty" that stretched as far as the farthest western
horizon and was meant to nurture a society unlike any that the
English or the Secretary of the Treasury imagined. Hamilton's
program and that of the Federalists had a short life, and without
the allegiance of Washington, Federalist rule would have been
shorter still. The famous General of the Revolution served the same
shielding function for the minority party of his day that Grant was
to serve after the Civil War and Eisenhower after World War II.
No date marks the beginnings of political parties in the United
States. The country, however, had been clearly divided on the Con-
stitution, and the first years of the new government saw opposing
teaders attempt to strengthen the opinions and mobilize the votes of
their followers. The Federalists at first had great advantages. Above
all, they had a strong, clear program, and in Hamilton an imagina-
tive and uncompromising leader. He showed, too, that besides the
Republicanism at Home and Abroad 135
press and the pulpit the Federalists had the Army and the will to
use it. On the local level, a ready-made network of chambers of
commerce, units of the Society of Cincinnati, and other going Fed-
eralist organizations was quickly supplemented by a grass-roots
patronage system affording sinecures to Federalist party workers.
The opposition suffered from the taint of having, in general,
fought the Constitution of the very government they aspired to con-
trol. Moreover, as their first name, "anti-Federalists," suggests, they
had no positive program of their own. Even on the issue of the
Constitution, however, the "antis" had had a majority of the voters,
and few were lost to the new government. By 1791, Jefferson was
writing to Washington of his conviction that the Federalists' "cor-
rupt squadron" menaced the country. To Madison he was writing of
his plans to give the majority its voice. Jefferson cherished stability
and dignity in government as much as Hamilton. But he insisted
that men "habituated to think for themselves" American "yeo-
men" were much more easily governed than those "debased by
ignorance, indigence, and oppression" in short, the natural spawn
of great cities. On the yeomen he would build.
Among Jefferson's first steps was his enlistment of the poet of
the Revolution, Philip Freneau, to edit a new anti-Federalist paper
in Philadelphia, the National Gazette. During the winter of 1791-92,
Madison wrote a series of articles developing the position of "the
Republican Party, as it may be termed."* After the Gazette's initial
issue in October 1791, sympathetic papers elsewhere began picking
up Freneau's thrusts. Jefferson next sought allies, local lieutenants,
grass roots clubs, and candidates who could afford the time and
money to run for and hold office. Madison, of course, was Jeffer-
son's closest collaborator. Others included Governor George Clin-
ton of New York, who, in opposition to General Schuyler,
Hamilton's rich father-in-law, controlled the upstate vote; and
Aaron Burr (Clinton had recently helped him defeat Schuyler for
the Senate) whose Sons of St. Tammany already were hungering
for patronage in New York City.
During Washington's first administration party lines had been
clearly drawn by financial and frontier issues. In his second ad-
* This party became the Democratic Party of our own time. The Republi-
can Party of today was not organized until 1854 (see pp. 181, 193).
136 An Agrarian Republic in a Revolutionary Epoch
ministration, after his unanimous re-election in 1792, foreign pol-
icy gave parties "their demarcations, their watchwords, and their
bitterness." Some foreign policy problems lingered from the war
with England. But the French Revolution, which began a few
weeks after Washington first took office in 1789, was the source
of most of them, just as the United States was, in important ways,
one of the sources of the French Revolution.
The American Declaration of Independence, a monument to
the authority of natural rather than Biblical law, was read with
enormous enthusiasm abroad. American success in winning free-
dom from George III heightened French enthusiasm in particular,
When Louis XVI, in financial straits because of his expenditures
to aid the Americans in their fight against King George, had to call
the Estates General for new funds in 1789, the French stage was
suddenly set. Such a call had not been issued for 175 years and was
a revolutionary step in itself. In a climate heady with constitutional
theorizing, it was a dangerous step as well.
At first the French Revolution was welcomed everywhere in
America; when Lafayette late in 1789 sent the key of the Bastille
to Washington, the President received it as "a token gained for
liberty." In January 1793, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were
executed and the Jacobin "Reign of Terror" began. Shortly after,
England and Spain joined the other continental monarchs who had
declared war on France to crush the threat of republicanism to
themselves. Westerly gales kept this news from crossing the ocean
for weeks. In April the evil tidings all flooded in at once. The Fed-
eralists, their misgivings over French violence and French leveling
having grown steadily, felt confirmed in their detestation of the
Revolution. The Republicans held to their detestation of monarchs
and monarchy, to their confidence in the aspiring populace of
France as against the aristocrats of Britain.
Besides heightening the conflict of American opinion, the news
of regicide and war in France opened the conflict over policy. The
old French treaty of 1778 obliged the United States to assist France
now; to see that she did, the Jacobins sent over "Citizen" Edmond
Gent GenSt had other instructions as well, including the organ-
ization of Jacobin Clubs in America to further the cause of Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity. Just at this time Jefferson himself had
Republicanism at Home and Abroad 137
begun to sponsor political clubs, called Democratic Societies. By
offering the occasion to welcome a true representative of the Rev-
olution, Genet's visit gave a fillip to the Jeffersonian cause of which
the Democratic Societies made the most. So time consuming in-
deed were the receptions for the visitor after his arrival at the pro-
French port of Charleston, that by the time Genet reached
Philadelphia Washington had been prevailed upon to issue the Neu-
trality Proclamation of April 1793. His mission a failure, and his
faction overturned at home, Genet married a daughter of Governor
Clinton and settled down in New York.
The Federalist argument against honoring the French treaty, an
argument that hardly bore examination, was that the agreement had
been made only with the executed French king. Jefferson (and inter-
national law) held that the treaty was with the French nation, but
he and his party acknowledged the usefulness of the Proclamation.
When the British started capturing American ships suddenly en-
joying the windfall business of neutral carriers, Republican sym-
pathy for France was warmed by active hostility toward England.
As if to water green American memories, the British in Canada
chose this moment openly to incite the Indians to raid the Ohio
country where thousands of Americans were newly settling. Re-
calling the effectiveness of commercial retaliation in the great days
of the Revolution, the Republicans now demanded similar reprisals
against the hated mother country.
Federalist merchants, on the other hand, were making large
profits despite the British and wanted at least to leave well enough
alone. To forestall the Republicans they had the President send
John Jay as special envoy to Great Britain in April 1794, and to
conciliate the West he was instructed to insist that the British give
up their border posts. Recalling Jay's abortive negotiations with
Spain ten years before when he proved ready to sell out free access
to the Mississippi for some miserly commercial concessions, west-
erners looked with deepest suspicion on his appointment. Jay got
the British to consent to evacuate the western posts, which they did
by 1796. But this was hedged by so many other privileges left to*
the British in American territory that the West felt it had gained
nothing.
In all other respects but one Jay's mission proved worse than a
138 An Agrarian Republic in a Revolutionary Epoch
failure. The sight of Jay making gestures of peace with Britain
moved Spain, which had withdrawn from the coalition against
France in 1795, to try to woo the United States to her side. Her
tactic was to offer to open the Mississippi to American traffic for
three years, subject to renewal. This was confirmed in the Pinckney
Treaty that year. Otherwise, the most important consequence of
Jay's negotiation was to incite the French themselves to join the
British in attacks on American shipping. By March 1797, France
had captured almost 3,000 American ships she said must have been
bound for hostile British ports.
By then the issue no longer rested with the neutral Washington.
Long dismayed by the "baneful effects of the spirit of party," the
General had seriously considered retirement in 1792. In 1796 there
was no dissuading him and early that year he asked Hamilton (who
had resigned from the Cabinet a few months earlier) to draft a
"Farewell Address." On September 7, 1796, Washington published
his version in the newspapers.
Washington expressed his keen satisfaction with many aspects
of his two terms. The country had been immensely strengthened by
the Constitution, and his administration had set it on a strong
national course. Business again was good. On the frontiers (if only
for the time being) the Indians had been quieted and western
settlement encouraged. Above all, in a war-torn world the United
States remained at peace, however precariously. Washington had
hoped to top off his accomplishments with the establishment of a
national university, a project widely endorsed but not sufficiently so
to impress Congress. Only toward the end of his Address did the
President discuss foreign affairs. "Taking care always to keep our-
selves ... on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust
to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies." Nowhere
did he admonish against all "entangling alliances," a phrase that is
Jefferson's, not Washington's. His deepest concern was domestic:
the peculiarity of party strife in the United States which had al-
ready taken on the sectional character that was to culminate in
civil war.
The party battle was in fact near its peak when Washington re-
Republicanism at Home and Abroad 139
tired, and his decision intensified it by opening the highest office to
the rising political machines. In the electoral college the voting was
still by men rather than parties. While the Federalist, John Adams,
squeezed by with seventy-one votes in the election of 1796, the Re-
publicans on their first try won the vice-presidency. Their candi-
date, Thomas Jefferson, received sixty-eight votes.
No one in America had written more or more confidently about
the nature of man than John Adams. Jefferson had shrewdly ob-
served, however, that in practice Adams was "a bad calculator" of
"the motives of men." His first mistake was to retain in his Cabinet
the second-rate Hamiltonians who had surrounded Washington
toward the end, and who, with their retked leader's priming, almost
pushed the General as well as his successor into war with France.
Adams's second mistake compounded his first. Without querying
the French Government, he dispatched a three-man mission to try
to get French sea raiding stopped. Talleyrand, foreign minister of
the Directory that was then running France, refused even to see the
Americans until they handed over to his agents a bribe of $250,000.
This was but the first of a series of calculated insults to the Amer-
icans. The mission itself was ridden with disharmony which Talley-
rand's delaying tactics only aggravated. Ultimately the Americans
returned home fuming.
In their correspondence, Adams's envoys had referred to Talley-
rand's agents simply as X, Y, and Z. When the "X.Y.Z. dispatches"
were made public, both parties created a deafening uproar in which
one slogan was heard: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for
tribute." Congress late in 1798 set up a Navy Department. During
the next two years the Navy's new warships and hundreds of
privateers carried on an undeclared naval war with France. Money
was also voted for an army, but to the chagrin of Hamilton who
was aching to take the field of glory once more, this military force
was unaccountably slow in materializing and never did enter the
unofficial war.
At the time of Adams's election, Madison had written Jefferson:
"You know the temper of Mr. A. better than I do, but I have always
conceived it to be rather a ticklish one." One thing Adams soon
became most ticklish about was the Republican taunt that he was
140 An Agrarian Republic in a Revolutionary Epoch
"president by three votes." Other partisan attacks aroused him in
the summer of 1798 to hit out at his detractors. Chief among the
latter was the Swiss, Albert Gallatin, who had become Republican
leader in Congress on Madison's retirement in 1797. Adams also
found offensive immigrant French intellectuals who were suspected
(rightly, in certain cases) of engaging in espionage, and a group of
Irishmen, defeated in their fight for freedom at home, who carried
their hatred of Britain to America. Nor could the President ignore
such home-grown Republican journalists as Franklin's grandson,
Benjamin Bache, called "Lightning-rod Junior."
Adams might easily have overcome his pique; but when for their
own purposes, the most violent men of his party pushed the noto-
rious Alien and Sedition Acts through Congress in June and July,
1798, Adams grasped the weapons presented. These Acts em-
powered the President at his own discretion to expel or jail dis-
tasteful foreigners, and exposed to fines and imprisonment Amer-
ican citizens acting openly "with intent to defame ... or bring into
contempt or disrepute" the President or other parts of the govern-
ment. Though no arrests were made under the Alien Act it did
scare hundreds of foreigners into leaving the country. Under the
Sedition Act about twenty-five persons, practically all of them Re-
publican editors, were haled before federal courts, jailed, and fined
Many Republican papers were effectively put out of commission.
Madison called the Sedition Act "a monster that must forever
disgrace its parents." He and Jefferson viewed it as a naked cam-
paign weapon that must be answered. Their response took the form
of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, voted by the legislatures
of those states in November and December, 1798. Both sets of
Resolutions attacked the Hamiltonian "broad interpretation" of
the Constitution and developed the solid state-rights position that
later was used to justify nullification and secession. The govern-
ment, they held, is but "a compact to which the states are parties."
The states alone, therefore, and not Federalist-dominated courts,
had the right to declare what measures went beyond their "com-
pact" and were unconstitutional. Jefferson, who wrote the Ken-
tucky Resolutions, went farthest: he held that the legislature of
each individual state had this right "within its own territory."
Jeffersonian Democracy 141
Looking to the presidential elections of 1800, the Republicans
used these Resolutions to open their campaign against the "Fed-
eralist reign of terror." Apparently they were effective against an
opposition itself torn between peaceful Adamsites, and Hamilton-
ians yearning to make an occasion for their master to play Caesar.
In the elections of 1800, the Republican ticket of Jefferson and
Burr won 73 electoral votes; the Federalists, Adams and C. C.
Pinckney, won 65 and 64 votes respectively. But who was to be
President? According to the Constitution, the House, with one vote
per state, had to decide between the tied Republicans. Burr had
ambitions of his own and knew well how to promote them. Only
after thirty-six ballots, bitterness rising with each one, was Jeffer-
son safely in. The next Congress put an end to this kind of problem
by the Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804. This Amendment
provided that, henceforth, "The electors . . . shall name in their
ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the
person voted for as Vice-President"
The Republicans won not only the presidency but control of both
the House and Senate. They did not quite make a complete sweep,
however. The lame-duck Federalist Congress, before adjourning
in March 1801, passed a new judiciary act which created a whole
new group of circuit court judges, and increased the number of
district court judges. Adams packed these lifetime judicial posi-
tions with Federalist sympathizers. Most important, he named John
Marshall Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY
"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against
every form of tyranny over the mind of man," Jefferson said in
1800. To his followers, persons counted more than wealth, debate
more than dictation, consensus more than conformity. Jeffersonian
democracy was not an enthronement of the people, but simply of
leaders with profound respect for them. "Of course there can be
but two parties in a country," said the Federalists, "the friends of
order and its foes." Republicans preferred liberty and opportunity
to "order." "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve
this Union or to change its republican form," said the first Repub-
142 An Agrarian Republic in a Revolutionary Epoch
lican President in his first inaugural, "let them stand undisturbed
as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be
tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
It is fitting that Jefferson should have been the first president to
begin his rule in the rude capital on the Potomac. On many details
he himself had advised the French engineer, Pierre Charles L'En-
fant, who planned the city of Washington. As it happened the
White House was also designed by a foreigner, the Irishman, James
Hoban, while an Englishman, B. H. Latrobe (with the American,
William Thornton) designed the Capitol. The Alien Act offered
poor hospitality to such men. Jefferson, once he had named his ad-
visors (Madison became Secretary of State and Gallatin Secretary
of the Treasury), began by allowing this "libel on legislation" to
lapse. He welcomed foreign talent anew. Next he freed all who had
been jailed under the Sedition Act and had Congress return their
fines. Having thus quickly righted matters of the spirit, Jefferson
turned to matters of the purse. He admonished Gallatin to keep the
finances so simple "that every member of Congress and every man
of any mind in the Union should be able to comprehend them." He
undertook to help in this by restoring conspicuous simplicity to
the government. He dismembered the diplomatic corps, halted ex-
pansion of the navy, actually reduced the army.
Another economy move, entirely unlocked for by commercial
New Englanders and others who deemed the President the least
dependable repository of national honor, was Jefferson's war on
the Barbary pirates. England, while paying tribute herself, con-
nived with the pirates to keep other nations from encroaching on
British trade, and when the United States became independent her
shipping proved a particularly appetizing target. Washington and
Adams had sweetened pirate treasuries with $2,000,000. Jefferson
thought it would be cheaper to put a stop to the racket. His econ-
omy navy ultimately proved unequal to the task, but Jefferson at
least won a significant reduction in tribute although it continued
to be paid until 1815.
Jefferson was doubly fortunate in that he took office while Amer-
ican prosperity due to the European wars was at its crest and yet
while talks leading to the European peace of 1802 were soon to
begin. He was also optimistic enough to believe that prosperity and
Jeffersonian Democracy 143
the looming peace might walk hand in hand, and a year later he
had reason to feel that his optimism had been justified.
Especially gratifying evidence was the growth of American pop-
ulation and its movement west. In 1800 under Adams, Congress
had passed a generous land act permitting a settler to stake out a
320-acre homestead for an initial cash payment of $160. Under
Jefferson, a new act in 1804 reduced the minimum required pur-
chase to 160 acres, and the minimum cash payment to $80. Ohio,
admitted to the Union in 1803, was the first state to the growth of
which these measures contributed. In the following six years In-
diana, Michigan, and Illinois attained territorial status.
The Act admitting Ohio established two precedents of national
importance. The Land Ordinance of 1785 had stipulated that the
federal government was to grant to each township in the states made
from the Northwest Territory 640 acres of land (one section) , the
proceeds from the sale of which were to be used to support schools
in the state. The first such grants of federal land were made in
Ohio and established the precedent of federal aid to education. At
the same time Congress provided that 3 per cent of the proceeds
from the sale of other federal land in the state should be granted
to the state for use in the development of roads. This legislation
set the precedent for federal aid to transportation.
Jefferson also tried to promote settlement in the southwest. His
main effort here was addressed to the resolution of conflicting spec-
ulator claims to the Yazoo River region held by Georgia. John
Randolph of Virginia accused the President of forfeiting the sov-
ereign rights of Georgia for the benefit of corrupt businessmen.
Around Randolph gathered the die-hard state-rights Republicans
whose philosophy Jefferson himself had buttressed with the Ken-
tucky Resolutions of 1798. Jefferson, however, as he was to make
abundantly clear in the purchase of Louisiana, was no stickler for
state-rights or a narrow interpretation of the Constitution where
America's "manifest destiny" was concerned, and he had his own
bold followers. Yet only in 1814, when Randolph was temporarily
out of Congress, could the Jeffersonians vote the funds needed to
settle the Yazoo issue. Within the next five years, Alabama and
Mississippi became states in the contested territory.
The growth of the American West was not enough to satisfy Jef-
144 An Agrarian Republic in a Revolutionary Epoch
ferson. He was impatient to encompass the entire new world in the
United States. "However our present interests may restrain us
within our limits," he wrote in 1801, "it is impossible not to look
forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will . . .
cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent." Early in
1803 he finally got Congress secretly to finance an expedition across
the continent by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Setting out
from near St. Louis in July 1803, these explorers returned east in
1806, having traced the Columbia River to its mouth and estab-
lished an American claim to Oregon country.
By then Louisiana, or New Orleans as the whole western country
was often called, had come into American possession. In 1800,
secretly plotting to revive France's new world empire. Napoleon
had reclaimed Louisiana from Spain. The latter, feeble and pacific,
as Jefferson said on learning of the deal, "might have retained it
quietly for years. . . . France, placing herself in that door, assumes
to us the attitude of defiance." Soon he had negotiators in France
trying to buy the port of New Orleans, "the possessor of which is
our natural and habitual enemy." By 1803 Napoleon's new world
ambitions were tempered by enemies of his own in Europe, and he
jolted the American envoys by offering them the entire territory be-
tween the Mississippi and the Rockies for $15,000,000. On April
30, 1803, the momentous sale was closed. Louisiana had been con-
veyed with the boundaries "that it now has in the hands of Spain."
If this was vague, Talleyrand, now Napoleon's agent, told the trou-
bled Americans, "I suppose you will make the most of it."
Since Spain had not yielded Florida to France, it was not included
in the deal. But Jefferson kept his hopes up. "If we push them
strongly with one hand, holding out a price in the other," he said,
"we shall certainly obtain the Floridas, and all in good time."
The Louisiana Purchase troubled the Randolph Republicans;
but the strongest response came from New England Federalists who
saw in the addition of this vast territory the further weakening of
their political power in the nation. So distraught were some that
they conspired to leave the Union, and so desperate that they turned
to Vice-President Burr for help. The latter was to run for governor
of New York and, on winning, was to take that great state into a
Jeffersonian Democracy 145
new northern confederation. Hamilton gave this Yankee scheme
away. Sickened by this and other offenses, real and imaginary, Burr
challenged Hamilton to the duel in which Hamilton was killed. The
tragedy occurred on July 11, 1804. Burr, like so many other dis-
credited characters of the day, fled to the West where he ineffectu-
ally schemed to divest the United States of New Orleans.
The treason of the "Essex Junto," as Burr's Yankee conspirators
were called, almost ruined the Federalist Party even in New Eng-
land, and in the elections in November, Jefferson carried every state
but Connecticut. By then, however, the Napoleonic wars had been
resumed. Neutral commerce became increasingly subject to attack
by both belligerents and the pacific President found his enthusiasm
for office ebbing. By 1806 he was "panting for retirement."
Jefferson was especially jealous of the surplus Gallatin had built
up in the Treasury, though he hated to admit that it had come
mainly from tariffs on European trade. If America needed a costly
navy to protect her commerce from the onslaughts and affronts of
warring powers, better have no commerce and no navy. But was not
the best defense in fact America's own internal development?
America's continental destiny would supply the needed land. An
"American, system" of tariffs and other aids to home manufactures
would supply the needed industrial complement. This Jeffersonian
vision the President disclosed in his message to Congress in De-
cember 1806:
The question now comes forward to what . . . objects shall these sur-
pluses be appropriated . . . when the purposes of war shall not call
for them? Shall we suppress the impost and give that advantage to
foreign over domestic manufactures? . . . Patriotism would certainly
prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the
public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such . . . objects of public
improvement. ... By these . . . the lines of separation . . . between
the states . . . will disappear . . . and their union , . . will be ...
cemented by indissoluble ties.
Neither Jefferson nor Hamilton had a doctrinaire attachment to
"private enterprise"; both were clear as to national objectives and
were ready to use the instrumentalities at hand to reach them. Pri-
vate business was hardly more important than government in na-
146 An Agrarian Republic in a Revolutionary Epoch
tional development. Hamilton was consumed with ambitions for
national glory, to the attainment of which individual aspirations
were subservient. Jefferson was consumed with ambitions for the
glory of the individual; his "American System" would make the
state subserve the flowering of the human rather than the national
spirit. It was his vision rather than Hamilton's that was to color
American continental development and American isolationism for
a hundred years not least in the expansive, industrial epoch after
the Civil War.
THE SECOND WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
Secretary of State James Madison was Jefferson's hand-picked suc-
cessor in the presidency. No one shared the Jeffersonian vision of
America's destiny more fully. But before Madison could attempt
to bring that vision closer to reality, indeed before he could relieve
Jefferson of his presidential burdens, both men had to face up to
the more immediate realities of the Napoleonic struggle for power
in the old world.
By 1805 Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz had given France con-
trol of much of the land mass of Europe, while Nelson's victory
at Trafalgar had given Britain control of the seas. This apparent
stalemate led only to an uncompromising war of attrition, in which
Britain stepped up her attacks on commerce bound for ports other
than her own and Napoleon responded with indiscriminate seizures
of ships not clearly serving him. Between 1804 and 1807, the
United States lost more than 1,000 merchantmen to the British,
and about 500 to the French. More aggravating was the British
practice of impressment. For her own safety Britain had greatly to
expand her navy in which life had become so harsh that sailors
deserted at every port. Desperately in need of men, Britain claimed
the right to search neutral ships and impress back into service de-
serters found on them. Often she took aliens as well. Between 1804
and 1807, 6,000 men were taken from American ships. The British
sometimes sailed right into American ports for the purpose. In
June 1807, an impressment attempt led to fighting between the
British warship Leopard, and the new and unprepared United States
frigate Chesapeake, which cost twenty American lives.
The Second War of American Independence 147
To almost everyone but Jefferson, it seemed, this final affront
meant war. The President dusted off his own favorite policy which
he now called "peaceful coercion." By depriving the belligerents of
American goods and American carriers, he would force them to
respect neutral, American rights. In December 1807, Jefferson got
Congress to vote an Embargo Act forbidding all ships to clear
American harbors, and proscribing all exports even over land. Far
from mining Britain or France, this measure ruined only New Eng-
land and American ports to the south. On March 1, 1809, three
days before his retirement in favor of Madison, Jefferson suffered
the ignominy of having to sign an act terminating his apparently
naive efforts. He had, however, preserved peace for fourteen
months; and time soon showed that his policy might have preserved
it until Napoleon's final collapse.
Driven from commerce, American capitalists took some hesitant
steps toward manufacturing after 1807. To nip this new develop-
ment in the bud and keep the American market for themselves,
many in Britain (as Jefferson had hoped) began demanding con-
cessions to American shipping. Unfortunately, the British Govern-
ment took these demands seriously enough only to send emissaries,
to the United States with the idea of quieting discontent at home.
These emissaries so exasperated Madison's administration that the
President had them recalled. At the same time he withdrew the
American representative in London. By 1810 no formal channels of
diplomatic communication remained to the two nations, while a
nonintercourse act proscribed trade between them. Bonaparte and
the ubiquitous Talleyrand, meanwhile, played their own game with
Madison and Congress, thereby accelerating the deterioration of
the American economy and aggravating the discomfiture of the
American public.
Popular disgust with the international situation was recorded in
the by-elections of 1810 and 1811, which saw more than half of
the impotent Tenth Congress thrown out. Included among the re-
placements were brilliant and bristling frontiersmen like Henry
Clay of Kentucky, Felix Grundy of Tennessee, and John C. Cal-
houii of upland South Carolina. Most of them were young enough
never to have been British subjects; all of them thksted for a Jeffer-
sonian American empire of their own. The war in Europe gave
148 An Agrarian Republic in a Revolutionary Epoch
them their excuse, European mismanagement in the new world
their opportunity.
By 1810 most of the inhabitants of Spanish West Florida were
Americans. Bemoaning Spain's inability to protect them from the
Indians, they revolted and asked for annexation to the United
States. Madison, as unscrupulous as Jefferson in acquiring new ter-
ritory, had connived with the rebels, and agreed to their request,
East Florida was attacked next, but when Spain threatened war and
New England threatened secession if war came, Madison recalled
the troops. This "treachery" set the southerners impatiently mark-
ing time.
To the north there was more trouble with Indians. All along the
frontier the tribes had been tricked into making grant after grant
to white men in treaties they little understood, until, in 1811, the
great Shawnee, Tecumseh, decided a stand must be made. But Gov-
ernor William Henry Harrison of Indiana Territory, one of the
harshest American negotiators, anticipated him. While Tecumseh
was away mobilizing his forces, Harrison and his troops attacked
the leaderless tribe at Tippecanoe Creek. Finding the ruins of his
settlement on his return, Tecumseh swore the survivors to eternal
war. Frontiersmen long believed that the British in Canada were
supplying Tecumseh with arms and egging on his braves. The cry
thus grew loud for the conquest of all Canada (for how else could
the British be eliminated from "Our Continent"), and for the con-
quest of all Florida, lest Spain be used as a catspaw for Britain's re-
entry.
The handful of frontiersmen who brought this borderland cry to
the halls of Congress in November 1811, easterners promptly
branded "War Hawks." Taking advantage of the mutual enmity of
older members, the War Hawks quickly elected their leader, Clay,
Speaker of the House; he in turn used the Speaker's prerogative to
name his partisans chairmen of the major committees. Soon the
War Hawks had bills before the House for strengthening the armed
services, and were telling the world, in Clay's words, that "we could
fight France too, if necessary, in a good cause the cause of honor
and independence." Later events helped keep the pressure on the
hesitant President who on June 1, 1812, reluctantly sent his mes-
sage to Congress asking for war on Great Britain.
The Second War of American Independence 149
In his war message, Madison said nothing of Canada and Florida
but stressed the accumulation of intolerable British offenses against
American citizens, ports, ships, and commerce. A few days later
Secretary of State James Monroe was already preparing an armistice
offer, while the British, ignorant of Madison's war message, were
actually taking steps to meet most of Monroe's terms. But by
demanding an end to impressment, Monroe was demanding too
much; while the British, yielding only on other maritime matters,
were conceding too little. "We are going to fight," wrote frontiers-
man Andrew Jackson as early as the previous March, "for the re-
establishment of our national character ... to seek some indemnity
for past injuries, some security against future aggression, by the con-
quest of all the British dominions upon the continent of North
America."
Confusion in American minds as to the actual objectives of the
war muddied strategy from the outset. Canada, it was universally
agreed, was the only "tangible" place to engage England. Yet New
England, a natural path to the heart of Canada, obstructed the con-
duct of the war in every way. The South, in turn, fearful that the
acquisition of Canada would threaten its political future as the
acquisition of Louisiana had hurt New England's, much preferred
to have Yankee ships fight the war at sea. The West agreed with
Jefferson that "the cession of Canada . . . must be a sine qua non
at a treaty of peace"; but it was soon shown that the swaggering
frontier could not stomach withdrawal of the local garrisons guard-
ing it against the Indians simply to send them skylarking to distant
Montreal. Taking Canada, Jefferson had boasted, "will be a mere
matter of marching." But it was only after Captain Oliver Hazard
Perry had shattered a British flotilla on Lake Erie in September
1813, that Canada could even be successfully approached by land.
"We have met the enemy and they are ours," Perry reported,
thereby giving the signal for an American force, with naval support
on Lake Ontario, to invade York (present Toronto) and burn the
Canadian parliament houses. Nothing more substantial came of this
expedition, and it gave the British a precedent for burning the
White House and the Capitol when they invaded Washington in
August 1814.
150 An Agrarian Republic in a Revolutionary Epoch
The conduct of the war on the high seas was adequate. American
naval gunners consistently outshot the British, while American
privateers captured 1,300 British merchantmen valued, with their
cargoes, at $40,000,000. The course of the war on land was no
better than the available officers might have led one to expect.
"The old officers," commented the rising Winfield Scott at the
outset of the war, "had very generally slunk into either sloth, igno-
rance, or habits of intemperate drinking." Most of the new ones he
thought "coarse and ignorant men," with a sprinkling of educated
"swaggerers, dependents, decayed gentlemen, and others unfit for
anything else." By 1814, however, some vigorous new commanders
had been uncovered, among them Scott himself, his superior, Gen-
eral Jacob Brown, and the violent southwestern free lance, Andrew
Jackson. The British also greatly improved their performance.
By 1814 Napoleon had abdicated and veterans of Wellington's
campaigns against the French Emperor were now free to be sent
to America.
The caliber of the fighting thus was raised in all theaters. Since
the end of the Napoleonic wars in Europe left little excuse for their
American phase to continue, however, the objective of both sides
was simply to gain better bargaining positions at the impending
peace conference. On learning of England's receptivity to negotia-
tions, Madison early in 1814 sent five peace commissioners to meet
with the British at Ghent in Belgium. On December 24, 1814, the
Treaty of Ghent was signed. Fifteen days later, before the news had
reached America, Andrew Jackson won his memorable victory over
the British at New Orleans. The war was indeed over; but Jackson's
theatrical career had just begun.
America's peace commissioners at Ghent among them the
poker-playing Clay, the puritanical John Quincy Adams, and the
sophisticated Gallatin were no clearer about their mission than
Madison's administration had been about the war. The British
opened by demanding western territory to give Canada access to the
Mississippi. They seemed determined also to concede nothing on
impressmmt and other maritime matters, including the New Eng-
landers' privilege (granted in 1783 but withdrawn in 1812) to fish
in Newfoundland and Labrador waters and dry their catch on local
The Second War of American Independence 151
shores. Clay was perfectly willing to trade away New England's
fishing privileges to win Canada and other expansive demands of
his own. Adams was adamant about the reopening of the fisheries
even if he must sacrifice wilderness land.* When the military stale-
mate left both missions high and dry, they at last agreed simply to
disagree. Clay called the Treaty of Ghent a "damned bad treaty."
Its terms returned matters to their prewar status and left to later
commissions the settlement of boundaries, fisheries, and commer-
cial intercourse.
Before these commissions got far along, the irrepressible Jack-
son almost brought about a renewal of hostilities. During the war
Jackson had defeated and taken a great deal of land from Britain's
allies, the Creek Indians, in the Southwest. In 1817, two British ad-
venturers, Arbuthnot and Ambrister, convinced the Creeks they
had been robbed. Scalpings followed. Ordered to punish the In-
dians, Jackson routed their forces, hanged their chiefs, court-
martialed and executed Arbuthnot and Ambrister, and marched on
Pensacola. There he ejected the Spanish governor who had given
the redmen a haven, and claimed the territory for the United States.
England, Spain, and Congress were all up in arms, but peace was
kept. This adventure gave Spain just "the push" Jefferson thought
she needed to make her realize that she had better sell Florida to the
United States before the latter's uncontrollable citizens simply took
it. In 1819 the United States, "holding out a price in the other
hand," as Jefferson had suggested, closed the deal for $5,000,000.
The backwoodsman had become a new force and had begun to
make policy in the United States.
The Florida purchase settled the southern boundary perma-
nently, though there were American expansionists even in New
England who remained far from satisfied. The absorption of all
North America by the United States, said John Quincy Adams in
1819, was "as much a law of nature ... as that the Mississippi
should flow to the sea." Revolts against Spain by the last Spanish
colonies in the new world whetted the appetites of "large America"
enthusiasts at this time.
* Adams, and the New England position generally, were at a disadvantage
because of New England's secession movement which culminated in the
Hartford Convention during the war. See the discussion of the Convention
and its sequel in Chapter Six.
152 An Agrarian Republic in a Revolutionary Epoch
When these revolts proved almost universally successful by 1823,
the United States, with the blessings of Great Britain, took the op-
portunity "for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and
interests of the United States are involved, that the American con-
tinents, by the free and independent condition which they have
assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as sub-
jects for future colonization by any European powers." This pro-
nouncement was one phase of what we know as the Monroe Doc-
trine. The second phase of the Doctrine declared that the United
States would consider any interference with the sovereignty and ter-
ritorial integrity of the new Latin American republics by European
powers "manifestation of an unfriendly disposition." Europe thus
was explicitly warned off adventures in Central and South America.
Many in the United States continued to feel that these southern
lands would eventually come under American ownership.
By 1819 the commissions set up by the Treaty of Ghent had also
made progress in settling the northern boundary of the United
States. Eventually the work of these commissions insured the per-
manent demilitarization of the Canadian-United States border.
Their work also fostered lasting peace between England and the
late rebels. For years, however, this peace remained a wary one.
"That man must be blind to the indications of the future," said
Clay in 1816, "who cannot see that we are destined to have war
after war with Great Britain." Congress heeded his appeal that year
by voting large appropriations for the Army and Navy even though
the nation was faced with a huge war debt and a barren treasury.
The large Irish immigration to the United States after the war gave
a practical political purpose to keeping anti-British feeling warm.
On their side, many Englishmen never forgave the crude colo-
nials for declaring war on them when England alone seemed to hold
the fortress of civilization against the barbarism of Napoleon. Num-
bers of Englishmen visited America after the war to return to write
scathing accounts of their hosts. It was in this period that the
Edinburgh Review asked the famous question: "In the four quarters
of the globe, who reads an American book? Or goes to an American
play? Or looks at an American picture or statue?"
Chapter Six
The American Way of Life
"An age is needed to expound an age," said the first
great Unitarian divine, William EUery Charming. By the time James
Monroe, the last of the "cocked hats," retired from the presidency
in 1825, the age of the founding fathers had been clearly and, as
almost always happens in history, ironically "expounded." The
Constitution itself, secretly contrived, anxiously promulgated, and
reluctantly ratified, had by 1825 survived almost forty years of
faction, separatism, sedition, insurrection, war, and expansion. De-
signed to instill national feeling, to centralize power, to preserve
seaboard property, privilege, and caste, the Constitution failed to
accomplish any of these things. Yet it was deemed a great success
at home, a model for romantic reformers abroad.
To Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians alike, the Constitutional Re-
public had been a questionable experiment for a nation as large and
populous even as the original thirteen struggling commonwealths.
Yet this Republic by the mid 1820s had grown to twenty-four
states, had more than doubled its area, more than tripled its popu-
lation, and almost quadrupled its wealth. The eighteenth-century
"gentlemen of principle and property" who had set the young Re-
public on its way distrusted human nature, especially when it was
not firmly leashed to a disciplined and informed mind. Insignificant
in numbers themselves, they built into their framework of govern-
ment imposing obstacles to what they considered the inevitable
license of the "tyrannical mob." By the 1820s the "people of no
importance," their ranks augmented by the continuing immigration
of Irish, Scots, and Germans, but principally by an extraordinarily
high birth rate, had simply flanked these obstacles and inundated
their creators.
153
154 The American Way of Life
New York State, her rich back country newly accessible by
river and canal, had grown by 1830 as populous as all New Eng-
land, whence many of her western settlers had come. Pennsylvania,
similarly endowed, lagged little behind New York. Virginians,
meanwhile, continued to move into Kentucky and Tennessee in
numbers sufficient to push their combined population higher than
the "Old Dominion's." Virginians also helped settle southern Ohio,
Indiana, and Illinois. The northern parts of these states, at the same
time, were filling up with Yankees. By 1830, Ohio had become far
more populous than Massachusetts, Indiana than Connecticut. To
the south, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana were challenging
the Carolinas.
Meanwhile, for the first time in American history, cities were
growing faster than the farming country. Much the greatest city in
the West was New Orleans, the capital of the entire Mississippi
valley. Much the greatest city in the country was New York. Eke-
where by 1830, Lowell on the Merrimack, Rochester on the Erie
Canal, Buffalo and Cleveland on Lake Erie, Pittsburgh and Cin-
cinnati on the Ohio, and St. Louis on the Father of Waters all had
their future teeming growth clearly foreshadowed. Many other
sites, less lucky politically and geographically, as yet yielded to none
in pride, hope, and tall talk.
"Society is full of excitement," Daniel Webster said in 1823.
"Competition comes in place of monopoly; and intelligence and
industry ask only for fair play and an open field." In the older
states, immigrants, debtors, renters, and recusants were acquiring
the franchise and the privilege to hold office. In most of the new
ones they wrote the constitutions and manned the governments. Yet
the wide open politics only reflected a wide open society. Men were
starting out young, marrying early, assuming major responsibilities
in their teens. Along with the farms, they were forsaking the mental
furniture of their fathers. Threadbare abstractions be they about
God, mammon, government, fate, steam power, or forest fever
were being put to the pragmatic test. Once again men were trying
their powers, not simply taking their places.
"The same man," the young French visitor to the United States,
Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote home in 1831, "has given his name to
"The Era of Good Feelings" 155
a wilderness that none before him had traversed, has seen the first
forest tree fall and the first planter's house rise in the solitude, where
a community came to group itself, a village grew, and today a vast
city stretches. ... In his youth he lived among nations which no
longer exist, except in history. In his lifetime rivers have changed
their courses or diminished their flow, the very climate is other than
he knew it, and all that is to him but the first step in a limitless
career."
Enlightened scholars in their libraries might continue to pore
over the chastening past. Man in the open air cared only for the
romantic future. History, the lugubrious handmaiden of eighteenth-
century politics, was beginning afresh in nineteenth-century United
States. And American life, if not American "books, plays, and
statues," was becoming the inspiration and guide (and occasional
caution, as in Tocqueville's famous report on America to the France
of Louis Philippe) for fresh starts across the sea.
"THE ERA OF GOOD FEELINGS"
The years to which historians have given the name "the era of good
feelings" were in fact but a sorry interlude between the end of the
Second War of Independence and the launching of the American
Way. These years were sorriest in New England which gave the
era's name its currency.
The War of 1812 had brought great prosperity and a great moral
crisis to New England. Until near the war's end, the British block-
ade left the friendly ports of Massachusetts and Rhode Island alone,
and through them funneled the imported iron and other wares for
which Yankee merchants made the rest of the country pay through
the nose. Yankee farmers and manufacturers at the same time grew
rich selling supplies to the Quartermaster of the Army their sons
refused to serve. The specie New Englanders thereby drained from
the other sections they either hoarded or invested in British rather
than American bonds. Mainly on this account, but also because
the national administration had allowed the charter of its own Bank
of the United States to lapse in 1811, American bonds fetched but
40 per cent in specie value and the government had to suspend
specie payments on its debt.
156 The American Way of Life
The Hartford Convention of December 1814, "this mad project
of national suicide," as John Quincy Adams called it, marked the
climax of New England's wartime sedition. Half of New England
felt accursed by the profiteers in their midst. The profiteers felt
accursed by Mr. Madison's War "against the nation from which we
are descended." Reminded by their clergy of "Israel's woes in
Egypt," where the Jews "had been the most opulent section," they
resolved, like the followers of Moses, "to dissolve . . . their union."
Enough moderates infiltrated the Convention which met at Hart-
ford in December to dissuade it from effecting the "opulent sec-
tion's" purpose. Secession was postponed. Even the demands of the
"moderates" on Congress, however, exposed the working of the
sectional virus that sped southern secession later. One of their de-
mands would deprive the slavocracy of representation in Congress
based on the Negro population. By such action they hoped to stem
New England's precipitate fall into minority status in the national
government. A second demand would proscribe the election of suc-
cessive presidents from the same state, i.e., Virginia. Members of
the Hartford Convention threatened to meet again for sterner meas-
ures if Congress rejected the moderates' demands, but they were
saved from themselves when the end of Mr. Madison's War fol-
lowed closely on the end of the meeting.
Federalist faithlessness like Federalist finance had failed to de-
liver the country to its foreign foes. Federalist defeat in the pres-
idential election of 1816 preserved the country from its foes at
home. This election is especially significant for the fight Madison
had to make against the Randolph state-rights contingent in the
Republican Congressional Caucus to effect the nomination of his
Secretary of State, James Monroe. Heretofore, the Caucus had
been tightly knit and ruled the party with an iron hand. The rift
between the state-righters and the nationalists foreshadowed Jack-
son's fight on "King Caucus" and the ultimate establishment in its
place of the convention system of making party nominations. In
1816 the Federalists made one last effort to appear as a national
rather than a New England party by nominating Rufus King of
New York. Monroe's easy victory buried the Federalist Party for-
ever. Defeat, nevertheless, found New England not yet without
stratagems.
"The Era of Good Feeling?' 157
Shortly before Monroe's inauguration in March 1817, the editor
of the North American Review, a Boston magazine so hostile to the
war that it had often been called the North Unamerican, wrote to
the President-elect congratulating him on his "feeling of sover-
eignty," and inviting him to extend it once again to New England by
showing his gracious presence there. Monroe accepted. His jour-
ney from Washington proved a triumphal one, but his reception
in Boston topped everything he had met on the way.
Having captured the President, as they thought, the New England
secessionists proceeded to try to capture his administration. On
July 10, 1817, George Sullivan, one of the adornments of the
Boston bar and a recent secessionist leader, wrote the President sug-
gesting as Attorney-General in the new Cabinet Daniel Webster, "a
rock on which your administration might rest secure against the
violence of almost any faction." Otherwise, wrote the comforting
Mr. Sullivan, "your administration will be overthrown; because
your Cabinet is weak & discordant." Webster, a congressman from
New Hampshire at the time, had not attended the Hartford Con-
vention; but as his biographer Richard N. Current writes, he had
done "his best to destroy" Madison's "administration and all its
works and in particular to sabotage" Madison's War. Without this
"rock," in fact, Monroe won an even more sweeping victory in
1820 than in 1816.
It was during the progress of these maneuvers, on July 12, 1817,
that Boston's Columbian Sentinel, as "Unamerican" in the past
as the North American itself, wrote: "We recur with pleasure to
all the circumstances . . . during the late Presidential Jubilee . . .
which attended the demonstrations of good feelings." It entitled
the article, "ERA OF GOOD FEELINGS." By then New England
had been humbled economically as well as politically; but the rest
of the country was enjoying a short-lived boom that prompted it
to take up the slogan.
New England's deepening economic difficulties derived mainly
from old England. With the war's end early in 1815, Americans
rushed to replenish their supplies of European mainly English
finery and other goods. Imports soared to a record $110,000,000
even at bargain prices. "It was well worth while," Henry Brougham
158 The American Way of Life
told Parliament the following year, "to incur a loss on the first
exportation in order, by the glut, to stifle in the cradle those rising
manufactures in the United States, which the war had forced into
existence." In 1816, undiminished by the "protective" tariff enacted
that year, American imports exceeded $150,000,000. Wreck and
ruin among New England's little factories was widespread. England
persisted, moreover, in keeping American ships out of their pre-
Revolutionary haunts in the West Indies. When New Englanders
sought to revive their carrying trade elsewhere, they met England's
own merchantmen and Americans from the recently blockaded
ports to the south swarming back into business. The commercial
blight spread quickly to Yankee shipbuilding and lumbering.
A generation later New England would flower once more as the
nation's leader in philosophy as well as finance. But until then,
from her sour spirit and her stony soil a new "Great Migration"
went forward. Worse, the holier-than-thou Federalist oligarchy
offered thanks that "in the vast raw wilderness," the "forester class"
it despised found a "retreat sufficiently alluring to draw them from
the land of their nativity."
In the meantime the rest of the country prospered. Back in 1793
the Yankee, Eli Whitney, having gone to Georgia to teach school,
invented the cotton "gin" (patois for "engine") which made it
practical to grow there the hardy but heretofore hard to clean short
staple cotton plant. When the resumption of the European wars in
1803 simultaneously cost the South its continental markets for
other crops and made England and eventually New England hunger
for cotton cloth, cotton planting boomed. Once the wars ended and
New England's little factories died, England herself demanded
large cotton crops for her own tireless machines. The continental
market for American tobacco also revived. Poor European harvests
in 1816 and 1817 added to the demand, too, for American pork,
beef, and wheat. The debt incurred by the record American imports
of manufactures on the heels of the peace added an element favoring
export of American agricultural staples by which American mer-
chants balanced their accounts.
This bhie^sky combination of factors drew thousands to the
West and Southwest. As always in American history, a boom in
"The Era of Good Feelings" 159
agriculture brought a boom in land speculation. "I ain't greedy
about land. I only want what jines mine," westerners explained. The
three hundred or more state and private banks promoted in the
years of "financial liberty" after 1811 spurred on the boom. By
1817 such banks had issued $100,000,000 in paper money, much
of it unnegotiable even in near-by communities. These "facility
notes," as they were called, helped newcomers get started and
oldsters enlarge their holdings. But the notes also created obliga-
tions on which the "bankers" could foreclose new and old settlers
alike simply by withholding further "facilities" at their pleasure.
By 1817 the Second Bank of the United States, chartered the
year before, was ready for business. Influential local bankers, fore-
seeing competition, had written into some western state constitutions
provisions against "foreign banks" doing business within their
borders. Hi-managed from the first in places where it could do
business, the new national bank proceeded to justify local fears by
outdoing even the state banks in the lavishness of its loans. These
loans, moreover, were made in notes more negotiable than those
of the state banks. In retaliation the injured local financiers got
their states to try to tax out of existence both the branches and the
notes of "the monster." But the legal battles over such measures
took time, and with the "monster's" blessing the boom continued.
By midsummer of 1818, the Bank of the United States was at
last ready to take deflationary measures. But by then the land
boom was already showing signs of petering out, and the national
bank's tight-money policy proved as ill-timed as its earlier infla-
tionary lending had been. The financial collapse of 1819 was world-
wide. The revival of European harvests and a constricted market
after the postwar textile boom combined to create a universal glut
both of grain and of cotton. But the depression was most severe in
the United States and most sickening in the West.
The crisis of 1819 prompted a number of states to abolish the
useless and degrading punishment of imprisonment for debt. States
also passed liberal bankruptcy laws, and laws easing the settle-
ment of contracts. Congress, in turn, came to the aid of the West
with a new land act in 1820 making it possible for a settler to buy
an eighty-acre homestead for as little as $100 in cash. The next
160 The American Way of Life
year Congress passed a Relief Act to assist those whom earlier
credit provisions had got into trouble.
Such was the condition and temper of the country when the
Supreme Court met in February 1819. In the next few weeks John
Marshall delivered three resounding decisions, each limiting the
power of state governments, and hence state business interests de-
pendent upon state aid. In the old case of Marbury v. Madison back
in 1803, Marshall had set the precedent by which the Supreme
Court has since held the power to declare a federal statute uncon-
stitutional. In 1810 in Fletcher v. Peck, he had held a state law
unconstitutional which attempted to terminate a contract between
an individual and a state. Now in Sturges v. Crowninshield he held
a New York Bankruptcy Act unconstitutional simply because it
altered the obligations under a contract between man and man
without cither's consent. Next in Dartmouth College v. Woodward,
Marshall put corporation charters into the same category as con-
tracts and ruled that they could not be changed by unilateral action
on the part of the incorporating state. Finally in McCulloch v.
Maryland, a case arising out of state measures designed to tax out
of existence the Maryland branch of the Bank of the United States,
the Supreme Court placed federal agencies beyond the reach of
state law. Far from being "an act of sovereign and independent
states," as Maryland contended, Marshall held that the Constitution
was an act of the whole people. "The power to tax," he said, "in-
volves the power to destroy. The states," he added, "have no power
by taxation or otherwise ... in any manner [to] control, the opera-
tions of the constitutional laws," or "the means . . . plainly adapted"
to their "end."
"A deadly blow has been struck at the sovereignty of the states"
cried the Baltimore journalist Hezekiah Niles, "and from a quarter
so far removed from the people to be hardly accessible to public
opinion." Actually, most Americans didn't care. In the older states,
subsistence farming remained the rule, agriculture a sacred calling.
At the other end of the rainbow^ traders, trappers, hunters, and
mountain men, "with all the freedom of the lonely wind . . . started
from frontiers at which more cautious pioneers were glad to stop
The Western Prize 161
... and wandered through the reaches of the outer West." The
"more cautious pioneers" themselves were on the move again across
the Mississippi, where the fight between free soilers and slavers for
Missouri, "like a fire-bell in the night," to use Jefferson's chilling
phrase, awakened men and filled them "with terror." In the nearer
West, in yet-wild Ohio and Indiana, pietistic Germans, having fled
from renewed persecution at home, tried to sustain one another
in wilderness communities. While all around them fierce Scotch-
Irish isolates who had lost their God, bred from the native terror
of storm and flood and fever, of marsh and swamp, turkey buzzard
and lurking brave, "a certain jollity of mind, pickled in a scorn of
fortune." Business crashes and courts of law affected and impressed
them little.
THE WESTERN PRIZE
Englishmen, opined "the Contentious Man," William Cobbett,
just before the crash of 1819, would be mad to try and could never
survive the life of the western pioneer. "The rugged roads, the
dirty hovels, the fire in the woods to sleep by, the pathless ways
through the wilderness, the dangerous crossings of the rivers" all,
for what? "To boil their pot in gypsy-fashion, to have a mere board
to eat on, to drink whiskey or pure water, to sit and sleep under
a shed far inferior to English cowpens, to have a mill at twenty miles
distance, an apothecary's shop at a hundred, and a doctor nowhere."
Yet as Jefferson had said, Americans found it "cheaper to clear a
new acre than to manure an old one," and for that and many less
fathomable reasons, almost half of "Yankeedoodledum" (Walt
Whitman's word) kept on the move toward the setting sun.
The Lincolns were a typical case. "Virginia John," the raft
splitter's distant forebear of Massachusetts extraction and a man of
means, had come south from western Pennsylvania before the
Revolution. In the rich valley of the Shenandoah in 1778, "Thomas
the unstable," the future president's father, was born. Four years
later found the family in Kentucky, where Thomas grew up "a
wandering laboring boy." In 1$06, a Methodist parson is said to
have married him to illiterate, illegitimate Nancy Hanks, after which
Hankses and Lincolns domiciled together and buried their dead all
162 The American Way of Life
over the state. Abe was born in 1809 in one of their better log
huts. By 1816, the whole tribe had "packed through" to Indiana
where, young Lincoln recalled:
The panther's scream filled the night with fear
And bears preyed on the swine.
There they lived for ten years before heading toward Illinois,
"squatting" the first year in a three-sided shelter, that "darne little
half-face camp." "We lived the same as the Indians," some
Lincoln relatives said later, " 'ceptin' we took an interest in politics
and religion."
The Revolution had vouchsafed Americans a nation of their own,
and with it, "slick as a snake out of a black skin," had materialized
the image of "Sam Slick, the Yankee Peddler" (like a nation, larger
than life) all rigged out in his "long tail'd blue," "lank as a leafless
elm," but lusty, "in everything a meddler." About the time of the
War of 1812 ("Yankee" having become a sore reproach), "Nimrod
Wildfire/' "a mighty hunter but a poor farmer," Davy Crockett in
the large, had nudged over Uncle Sam.
We raised a bank to hide our breasts, not that we thought
of dying
But that we always liked to rest unless the game is flying.
By 1820 nearly four million likely Nimrods had crossed over
Lincoln country, most of them on foot, gun in hand, their few
possessions on their backs or saddled on occasional cows. For all
the excitement of 1818-19, speculators and their gulls were few
among them. The Lincolns' backsliding life remained the common
lot of the West, where Methodist circuit riders fought the Demon
drink in the forests, and exhorters wrestled with the Devil himself
at "camp-meetings, class-meetings, prayer-meetings and love
leasts," to get the Lord's sinners to repent, repent.
Come hungry, come thirsty, come ragged, come bare,
Come filthy, come lousy, come just as you are
Yet business organization and enterprise were not to leave the
West to hunters, sinners, and soul-savers for long. In 1823 Harrison
The Western Prize 163
Gray Otis noted that in New England, "there has been a curious
'revival' in the spirit of men . . . which is quite remarkable. . . .
It is amazing to see what is done by the puff on one hand and the
panic on the other." New England capital would soon look west for
investment opportunities. In the West itself "woods, woods, woods,
as far as the world extends" were being leveled, and the character
of the country was being transformed. By the 1820s, writes Con-
stance Rourke, the brilliant analyst of American Humor, "the
backwoodsman became Yankee," but "the Yankee of the legend
also absorbed the character of the backwoodsman." No longer just
of New England, and no longer a reproach, the Yankee took on the
"inflation" of the West: "I am Sam Slick the Yankee peddler I
can ride on a flash of lightning and catch a thunderbolt in my fist."
"We Yankees," the new Slick told an English audience, "don't do
things like you Britishers; we are born in a hurry, educated at full
speed, our spirit is as high as our pressure, and our life resembles
a shooting star, till death surprises us like an electric shock."
The fusing, firing elements were cotton, steamboats, and canals;
and the impetus they gave to slavery, a bit later, carried into the
consciousness of the nation a third member of America's soul-
saving "comic trio," the Negro slave of raw southwestern planta-
tions.
Wheel about, turn about
Do jis so,
An' ebery time I wheel about
I jump Jim Crow.
In New England and elsewhere in the world early in the 1820s
wheels and looms and factory belts began to turn again, and cotton
suddenly was in urgent demand. Earlier, the cotton planters of South
Carolina and Georgia (like the eighteenth-century tobacco planters
of Virginia and Maryland) had been forced from the depleted
tidewater soil to the piedmont. From there they had pushed many
small slaveless farmers beyond the mountains. By 1820 the pied-
mont itself had become, as a visitor noted, "dreary and uncultivated
wastes," and the planter harried the farmers into the hills. In Ala-
164 The American Way of Life
bama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, farm after
small farm was bought up and combined into great plantations and
new bottom land cleared for cotton.
Hand in hand with the spread of cotton went the need for slaves.
An able-bodied male field hand cost $350 to $500 in 1800. By
1820 the price had doubled and thereafter continued to rise. After
1808 when the Constitutional prohibition of slave imports took
effect, until 1860, 5,000 slaves were smuggled annually into the
country, chiefly through Gulf ports. But this hardly met the de-
mand. "It is a practice, and an increasing practice in parts of
Virginia," Thomas Jefferson Randolph told the State Legislature
in 1832, "to rear slaves" for the Cotton Kingdom. "The exporta-
tion [from Virginia] has averaged 8,500 for the last twenty years."
Maryland's deliveries in the same period approached those of her
neighbor. Henceforth, writes a southern historian, "the sale of
slaves became the source of the largest profit of nearly all the slave-
holders of the upper South," where manumission sentiment had
once been keenest.
Cotton had captured the conscience as well as the capital of the
South. Even in worn-out South Carolina where, as a traveler noted
in 1826, there remains "finer grazing country [than] any in the
world . . . every other object gives place to cotton." Here its
cultivation, especially in competition with the Southwest, made no
sense. In the Southwest, at the same time, the cultivation of any-
thing else (but sugar on special land) seemed senseless. "Corn,
sweet potatoes, melons, and all northern fruit, with the exception of
apples, flourish here," wrote a Connecticut missionary in Louisiana
in 1825, "though the planters calculate to supply themselves with
provisions almost entirely from the upper country."
It was the Cotton Kingdom's growing requirements in food and
work animals that first gave to the slack and swaggering West just
the impulse it needed to lay down the reel and rod and gun and get
serious about farming. Since the siren, speculation, naturally danced
along, credit flowed faster and on a much larger scale than earlier. It
was not long, therefore, before debt forced the westerner to con-
centrate almost as single-mindedly as the planter on cash crops.
Southern specialization in cotton spurred Western specialization in
The Western Prize 165
grain and meat and mules. The marvelous Mississippi River system
conveniently tied the two sections together, and for the time being
the steamboat tightened the knot.
In 1811, four years after his success with the Clermont on the
Hudson, Robert Fulton built the first western steamboat, the New
Orleans, and as in New York, sought a monopoly of western
business. In 1824, in Gibbons v. Ogden, John Marshall dealt the
final blow to all monopolies on interstate waters, and by 1830
nearly two hundred steamboats were churning up western rivers
and generating a velocity of exchange unimagined a decade earlier.
From newly thriving up-river ports such as Pittsburgh and Cincin-
nati everything from the interior came by steamboat to the levees
of New Orleans for distribution to the rest of the South and South-
west or for shipment overseas. And everything from abroad or from
the East destined for the South and West paid toll at the great Gulf
port.
By 1830, however, changes in transportation had begun to isolate
the South. Much earlier many easterners had taken to wondering
how best to direct the flow of western produce to their own active
ports. One enterprise with this objective was the great "National
Highway," authorized during Jefferson's administration in 1806.
By 1818 it provided excellent access from Cumberland, Maryland,
to Wheeling on the Ohio, and was supplemented by thousands of
miles of privately built turnpikes which served as feeders, mainly
from the north. But one road, however good, does not make a
system; and in any case the turnpikes themselves charged such high
tolls that producers of heavy agricultural commodities were dis-
couraged from using them. By 1830 many turnpike companies had
become bankrupt and abandoned their roads.
In 1810 the New York State legislature set up a committee to
study a canal to the West, but nothing came of it. In 1816, however,
when De Witt Clinton again raised the issue, engineering qualms
and political quarrels had dissolved in the current prosperity.
"Clinton's Big Ditch" was to run an incredible 364 miles (the
longest existing canal ran thirty miles) and connect the Hudson
with Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the Erie Canal in the next
166 The American Way of Life
nine years paid off the state's entire cost (with interest) of $8,500,-
000. Two figures explain its success: it cut freight rates between
Buffalo and Albany from $100 to $15 a ton, travel time from
twenty to eight days. The land boom it started along its path would
alone have justified the enterprise.
New York City's success agitated its competitors. But while many
Atlantic ports thrust longing little ventures toward the mountains
before the panic of 1837, only Philadelphia succeeded in getting
its state to complete a western connection. Between 1826 and 1834
Pennsylvania built a complicated $10,000,000 system of waterways
and inclined railways to Pittsburgh. Yet some of the failures were
even more interesting than the successes. When Maryland refused to
dig a canal between Baltimore and the Ohio River, Baltimore busi-
nessmen in 1827 organized a private corporation to build a new-
fangled steam railroad across the mountains. This railroad's first
fourteen miles (the earliest in the United States) were opened in
1828. Not until the 1850s, however, did the B. & O. reach the Ohio
River. In 1830 Bostonians also turned to the railroad and pro-
ceeded to build local lines. In the South in the early 1830s Charles-
ton, Savannah, and Richmond all started railroads with the idea
(fruitless, as it proved) of diverting to themselves some of the
business of New Orleans.
While the ambitious East eyed the suddenly enterprising West,,
westerners themselves were finding many reasons to turn away from
the South. For one thing, by 1830 the West was producing more
wheat, corn, and hogs than the slavocracy and Europe together
could consume. For another, as river business grew, river hazards
multiplied. All the improvements in western steamboat design,
moreover, failed to make low-water sailing safe at any time. This
tended to bunch traffic in the flood tide seasons of spring and fall,
and the sudden artificial abundance depressed prices. Warehousing
at New Orleans in anticipation of better returns was costly and the
kranidity gradually spoiled crops.
Such considerations tempted westerners after 1820 to embrace
day's "American System," so named in contrast to the de-
pendence on European markets where failures had intensified the
domestic cash of 1819. Clay would have the West support high
The Western Prize 167
tariffs in order to encourage eastern manufacturers whose success
would insure farmers a growing "home market" for their surplus.
At the same time, western support for "internal improvements," by
working to reduce the oppressive transportation charges east and
west, would give farmers both higher prices for their produce and
cheaper factory goods. Though the West soured on Clay because
of his restrictive land policy and abandoned him when he cham-
pioned the Bank of the United States, it backed the rest of his
program in Washington and embarked on ambitious state canal and
railroad programs. By 1840, 3,326 miles of canals had been con-
structed in the United States, mainly in the North and West, at a
cost of $125,000,000. Most of the money had been supplied by the
states, much of the rest by British investors in state bonds. In the
middle 1830s western states also turned to railroads, but had little
to show for this effort by 1837 other than an excessive debt.
Travel over turnpikes was slow and costly. Canals were much
cheaper, but four months in the year the northern routes were
frozen. The railroad was to free industry and trade from the weather
and the medieval pace of oxen and tow horses. In the western trade,
however, canals remained the major carriers for decades. The South
continued a valuable customer of the West, and the Mississippi
River system supported New Orleans and upriver towns. But by
1840 the East had taken the bulk of the western and especially the
northwestern trade. "Samson Hardhead," Yankee and backwoods-
man, had triumphed over the planter caste.
In the East, New York City ultimately overshadowed its own
thriving competitors and bound both West and South in vassalage
to its commercial institutions. The Erie Canal, of course, boosted
New York tremendously. But long before the Canal was opened,
New York merchants had taken two bold measures. Auctions,
which assured rapid turnover of goods for cash, were common in
all American ports where ships were anxious to get away. Else-
where, if bids were unsatisfactory, goods could be withdrawn. In
New York City after 1817 purchasers were assured that the highest
bid would get delivery. Buyers naturally congregated there; and
where buyers congregated, sellers flocked. New York's second in-
novation, in January 1818, was the establishment of Atlantic
168 The American Way of Life
packets to run on regular schedules to Europe, "full or not full."
Elsewhere exporters remained at the mercy of the weather and the
whims of captains.
New York's progress henceforth fed upon itself. But typically
her merchants extended a helping hand. New York supplied the
entire country with the manufactures and luxuries of the world.
To settle their accounts for merchandise from abroad, her mer-
chants boldly sent their ships to New Orleans and other cotton
ports and ran the cargo collected there to England and the con-
tinent. By 1830 about forty cents of every dollar paid for cotton
went north almost without exception to New York for freight
bills, insurance, commissions, and interest.
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
In 1810 Henry Clay told Congress: "A judicious American farmer,
in his household way manufactures whatever is requisite for his
family. ... He presents in epitome what the nation ought to be in
extenso" But in the next ten years changes in the country's situa-
tion drove Clay to change his mind. During and after the War of
1812 problems of national defense and security brought about a
reassessment of the place of the factory in the American scheme of
things. Later on, specialization in cotton in the South and the
burst of enterprise in the West transformed both sections into
enticing markets for machine-made goods. The fact that American
canal and railroad building was financed so largely abroad left
Americans free to employ their own scant savings in industrial
enterprises which improved transportation inspired. Ultimately the
profits from manufacturing, enhanced for a generation after 1816
by protective tariffs, proved both a major impetus and the greatest
single source of capital for industrial expansion.
At the start of the eighteenth century production of many com-
mon goods had hardly advanced anywhere in the world over the
eighth century or earlier. Since then, industrialization has remade
man's universe and all his social relations. The publication of
Newton's Principia in 1687, it has been said, caused young men to
fall "in love with that Studie," mathematics, and made "experi-
The Industrial Revolution 169
menting" the popular diversion of gentlemen. The practical begin-
ning may be placed in the year 1733 when the Englishman, John
Kay, invented the "flying shuttle" to lighten the domestic weaver's
work and multiply his output. Thirty-five years passed before such
men as James Hargreaves, Richard Arkwright, and Samuel
Crompton made successive improvements in the spinning of cotton
to meet the weavers' insistent calls for more, stronger, and finer
yarn. When in 1769 the illiterate Arkwright, "the bag-cheeked,
pot-bellied barber," as Carlyle ferociously described him, patented
a machine to spin yarn by water power, the age of the factory with
its heavy and ever more costly installations was at hand.
Once the early factory machines became available the next major
step was the use of steam power to run them. The steam engine
had been invented in England in 1702 by Thomas Newcomen, but
seventy-five years went by before James Watt, Matthew Boulton,
and John Wilkinson worked out the improvements in design that
made the contraption useful for more demanding tasks than pump-
ing out shallow coal pits. As important as advances in machine
design were improvements in metal-working tools used to produce
parts meeting the precise specifications of the new engines. Boulton
and Watt built the first practical factory steam engine in 1777 for
Wilkinson's iron works. Thereafter, in many countries, including
the United States, lonely mechanics toyed with its application to
every kind of power problem including the propulsion of boats and
carriages. Arkwright began using steam power for spinning in the
1780s. In the early 1800s steam power looms were invented for
weaving cloth in factories. These developments multiplied the
productivity of individual textile workers more than a hundred
times.
Factories are one thing; industrialism is another. Eli Whitney's
role in forwarding the whole concept and application of industrial-
ism is even more significant than his invention of the famous gin.
The early factories made their great progress and profits by mech-
anizing hand operations. Whitney, a solitary genius in America, was
one among a number elsewhere in the western world who ration-
alized factory production into something new under the sun. The
key to Whitney's work was the development of the principle of
170 The American Way of Life
interchangeable parts, each made in massive quantities to strict
specifications by special-purpose machines, and then assembled
into the final product. This was mass, as against simply machine,
production. It involved Whitney in continuous experimentation
aimed at adapting the operations in industrial production to the
unique possibilities of machine work, and designing new machines
to produce perhaps odd but ever more readily assembled parts.
Whitney kept continuous and cumulative records of the per-
formance of men, machines, and materials. Correlations of these,
and operational corrections based upon them, he made integral
parts of the whole production process. In the twentieth century this
aspect of mass production has been given the name scientific man-
agement. Only in the twentieth century, indeed, has knowledge of
chemistry, metallurgy, and psychology itself grown sufficiently to
make scientific management feasible on a broad scale. In principle,
however, few advances have been made over Whitney's comprehen-
sive concept. This concept he applied in the manufacture of his
first twenty cotton gins. He developed it fully in the production of
arms for the government. His first contract for 10,000 muskets was
granted on the eve of the undeclared naval war with France in
1798. Alas, he was ten years late in making his final deliveries. But
those were years of innovation and progress along a path only
vaguely indicated by his predecessors anywhere and understood
by but a handful of his contemporaries in the United States.
One reason for Whitney's isolation was British secrecy. In 1765
Parliament revived in much stricter form the old Stuart prohibition
on the emigration of skilled operatives. In 1774 it took the further
step of forbidding the exportation of mechanical models and plans
and of machinery itself. After the Revolution these measures were
made more comprehensive and enforced more vigilantly.
Yet the most compelling reason for Whitney's isolation was the
preoccupation of Americans themselves with nonindustrial activi-
ties. "During the general lassitude of mechanical exertion which
succeeded the American Revolution," complained the leading
engineer in the country, B. H. Latrobe, in 1803, "the utility of
steam-engines appears to have been forgotten." In this epoch
The Industrial Revolution 111
American steamboat inventors such as James Rumsey and John
Fitch died impoverished and unsung. Fulton himself had to bear
the public's jibes at "Fulton's Folly." As early as 1815 John Stevens
had made a practical demonstration of the steam raikoad but his
projects got no encouragement. Oliver Evans, the Philadelphian
who indeed anticipated some of Whitney's industrial and mechanical
ideas, met only resistance and contempt. Even Whitney himself,
when he began to make money after 1810, "remained," as his biog-
raphers say, "rooted in the practices and attitudes of the community.
. . . His own hard-earned money went into . . . the purchase of
stocks of banks, insurance companies, turnpike companies"; into
land speculation and a scheme to sell ice in China. "Whitney's
money was put out for profit on a particular venture, not for
interest in industry."
The first successful American factory, that set up by Samuel
Slater in 1791 to spin cotton for the Providence merchants, Almy
& Brown, was a tiny affair. Slater had skipped England, as he said,
after having had "an oversight of Sir Richard Arkwright's works
. . . upward of eight years." His American works had seventy-two
spindles, tended by nine children under full-time supervision. Their
wages ranged from 12 to 25 cents a day. Slater's yarn was sent to
weavers who made cotton cloth on looms at home, though as Almy
& Brown complained in 1809, "a hundred looms in families will not
weave so much cloth as ten . . . under the immediate supervision
of a workman."
By the time of the War of 1812 hundreds of factories like Slater's
were at work. Most of them were in New England and were
operated by men Slater had trained. These men knew little of
keeping accounts, managing labor, developing markets. The banks
would have nothing to do with them, and the postwar crash wiped
out a great many of them. The American cotton textile industry
itself, however, survived and flourished under the leadership of the
"new model" factories to which the War's destruction of com-
merce had turned erstwhile shipping magnates.
The first "new model" factory was opened in Waltham, Mas-
sachusetts, in 1816 by the Boston Manufacturing Company which
had been incorporated three years earlier by Francis Cabot Lowell,
172 The American Way of Life
Patrick Tracy Jackson, Nathan Appleton, and others of their
caliber. These men had long since proven their ability to manage
hazardous, large-scale enterprises. Taking the long view, they built
the first wholly integrated cotton manufacturing plant in the world,
with all operations under one roof. The economies of large-scale
and integrated production they enhanced by the use of "many
technological innovations the development of which was made part
of the production routine. They integrated their business further
by setting up their own selling agencies in place of independent local
jobbers.
An original scheme for acquiring and holding labor completed
the major innovations of the "new model." The family labor of the
older mills was hopelessly inefficient. On the other hand, genera-
tions passed before American men were broken to the discipline of
factory work. The Boston Manufacturing Company turned to young
women, eighteen to twenty-two years of age. These it offered to
shelter and feed and to educate after hours in fresh new company
dormitories in its own company town. Management expected in
this way to attract an upright and ambitious group, the sisters of
the Yankee youths who were moving into Ohio and farther west.
Its expectations were justified. After the crash of 1837, cheap,
docile, immigrant male labor replaced the spirited girls. But until
then absenteeism was much lower than in the older plants and
productivity much higher.
The Boston Manufacturing Company began operations in one
of the very worst of the postwar years for textile companies, but it
was an instantaneous success. Annual dividends were so high that
by 1822 stockholders had got back more than their initial invest-
ment. In the 1820s and 1830s large numbers of new textile corpora-
tions began operation. Among these were nine chartered by the
group, now known as the "Boston Associates," who had started
the Boston Manufacturing Company. This group also chartered
insurance companies and banks to keep up and concentrate the
supply of capital, real estate companies to take over the best factory
sites, and water power companies to monopolize entire rivers by
controlling dams and dam sites.
Just as Whitney had rationalized industrialism as a production
The Speculative Spiral 173
jrocess, so the "Boston Associates," the Morgans and Rockefellers
)f their day, had begun to rationalize it as a social force. It was not
ong before their power was such that their competitors paid toll
;o them for the use of water, patents, and business services, while
they themselves sought new and distant worlds to conquer. "If you
are troubled with the belief that I am growing too rich" one of them
wrote to a competitor, "there is one thing you may as well under-
stand: I know how to make money, and you cannot prevent it."
When Ralph Waldo Emerson observed in 1834, "In a former age
men of might were men of will, now they are men of wealth,"
he had the "Boston Associates" in mind.
THE SPECULATIVE SPIRAL
The cotton textile industry was the first mature American industry,
one paced not by the individual craftsman but by machines, housed
not in the artisan's dwelling or workshop but in segregated factory
towns or industrial slums, and supervised not by the owner but
by hired professional managers financially accountable to profes-
sional capitalists. Other industries showed similar accelerating and
centralizing tendencies. But sheer expansion of population and the
sheer expanse of land were to keep American business relatively free
and open for generations. And the spirit of science, basic and
applied, was to keep the frontier of opportunity moving ahead even
after the land itself became filled.
Filling up the land, indeed, even in this burgeoning epoch of the
industrial revolution, remained America's most significant occupa-
tion. Between 1820 and 1837 investment in American industry is
said to have risen from $50 to $250 million, most of it representing
profits plowed back into new plant and machinery. By 1837 bank
notes and discounts reached the stratospheric total of $675 million,
most of it representing advances in the price of land forced up-
ward by the surge of settlement, the progress and promise of trans-
portation, and the speculative fever such factors fed. Chicago
furnishes as good an illustration as any. Between 1830 and 1840
the population of the United States grew by a third. That of Illinois
trebled. That of Chicago multiplied eight times, from 500 to 4,000.
In the previous decade, Chicago lands, like most of the unoccupied
174 The American Way of Life
public domain, brought $1.25 an acre. By 1832 the price had risen
to $100; by 1834 to $3,500. In 1836 the state legislature approved
a canal to link the city with the Mississippi and began selling mil-
lions of dollars' worth of bonds for its construction. In that year a
single lot along the proposed route brought $21,400.
As always in such periods debt rose faster than ability to pay;
and as always there came a day of reckoning. The crash of June
1837, grew by 1839 into a world-wide depression, and as in 1819,
the West suffered most. In 1840 Senator Thomas Hart Benton
of Missouri described the situation in his section:
The goods are worn out, the paper money has returned to the place
whence it came; the operation is over, and nothing remains to the
transactions but the 170 millions in debt, its devouring interest, and
the banks, canals and roads which represent it. The whole of these
banks have failed once, and most of them twice, in two years; the
greater part of the roads and canals are unfinished, and of those
finished, several are unproductive.
In the succeeding years, most of the western states and some in
the older sections repudiated their bonds, and American credit
abroad sank to zero. In 1842 the Rothschilds of Paris said to an
envoy of the Federal Government seeking a loan: "You may tell
your government that you have seen the man who is at the head of
the finances of Europe and that he has told you that they cannot
borrow a dollar, not a dollar."
Yet the depression did not halt western development. In the
1830s tens of millions of acres in the Southwest were opened to
speculators by the violent removal of the Indian tribes. Millions
more became available when Sam Houston and other Americans
helped Texas win her independence from Mexico in 1836. As a
result of the Black Hawk War which began in Wisconsin country in
1831,. moreover, the northwest tribes were relieved of more than a
tandred million choice acres.
Settlers, of course, had been moving westward throughout the
t8:30s,,In 1836 Arkansas, and in 1837 Michigan had become states.
But the depression gave a strong impetus to migration to the newly
opened laads. 4< Fly, scatter through the country," cried Horace
The Speculative Spiral 175
Greeley to New York's poor in 1841, "go to the Great West, any-
thing rather than remain here." Many thousands of easterners took
Ms advice and their number was swelled by the record flow of im-
migrants from abroad. Between 1839 and 1844 nearly 80,000
newcomers a year entered the United States.
Middle-class Germans took passage at Le Havre or Bremen in
cotton ships bound for New Orleans, whence they made their way
up-river to engage in trade in St. Louis or Cincinnati and to "make"
farms in nonslave territory. Some took up ranching in Texas,
English, Welsh, and Scottish artisans and Irish Catholic laborers
came principally in ships that had delivered grain to relieve Europe's
recurrent famines, and usually landed in New York or Baltimore.
Many Irish also debarked at Montreal and Quebec, and from there
infiltrated New England. The Irish, the most impoverished and
numerous of the new arrivals, multiplied the poor of the port towns;
the others more often joined Americans on the trek west.
A pre-emption act passed by Congress in 1841 hastened actual
settlement on new lands. By this act Congress at last removed the
stigma of lawbreaking from those staking out western claims in
advance of government surveys. The act gave "squatters" first
chance to buy in their claims at the minimum price when the
government survey reached them. In the 1830s and 1840s the
riches beneath the rich land of the West also drew the foot-loose and
free. Even before 1830 a small army of lead and zinc miners had
made Galena, Illinois, appropriately situated at the head of naviga-
tion of the Fever River, the prototype of all later Wild West towns.
In the early 1840s "copper fever" ran through Michigan, while ad-
jacent areas yielded their centuries-old hoards of coal. Only shortly
thereafter thousands from the Midwest joined the rush to prospect
for gold in California. At the same time, prospectors for souls were
leading the way across the Oregon trail to the country for which it
was named, while the Mormons moved on from Illinois to their
permanent abode in Utah.
The tremendous pioneering activity of the depression years
brought about the admission of Florida and Texas in 1845, Iowa in
1846, and Wisconsin in 1848. Politics more than lack of popula-
tion postponed the entry of California, Oregon, and Minnesota
176 The American Way of Life
until the 1850s and of other trans-Mississippi states until the out-
break of the Civil War.
The crash of 1837 spoiled the appetite of the older West for
internal improvements, and in the early 1840s (temporarily, as it
proved) many states forbade the use of public money to build
public transportation. Some of the newer states, peopled by
victims from the older ones, did likewise. Since the Federal Govern-
ment had also long since gone out of the internal improvements
business, it was left for private corporations (aided by frequent
and lavish public assistance) to project and construct the western
railroads of the next generation. Since their own financing had been
so conservative, their own banks so cautious, and their own profits
so high, the "Boston Associates" and related Yankees were to find
new business worlds to conquer in western railroad schemes.
This was a new departure for these Yankees. Heretofore, fearful
of not being able to reach markets beyond the mountains with
the goods imported in their ships, they had simply discouraged the
rapid settlement of the West. When they shifted from commerce
to manufacturing, their anti-western attitude grew even stronger
for now they feared the loss of their labor supply as well. By 1830,
however, the construction of canals and the growth of cities had
had a reassuring effect. The old Yankee attitude was well reflected
in the resolution introduced in the Senate in December 1829, by
Samuel A. Foot of Connecticut, who urged that new western lands
be kept off the market until even the poorest land already up for
sale had been disposed of. In an effort to strengthen southern
relations with the West, the brilliant Robert Y. Hayne of South
Carolina denounced Foot's measure. Crying, "Liberty first and
Union afterwards," he invited the frontiersmen to join the
slavocracy in its recently promulgated doctrine of "nullification."
Daniel Webster, now the lion of Massachusetts, leaped to his feet
to reply. In a grand effort to wash away the memory of New
England's treason during the western-sponsored War of 1812, a
memory kept well watered by opposition like Foot's to western
growth, Webster thrilled the nation with his purple paean to the
Union. Hayne's was the path of "delusion and folly." Cried
Jacksonian Democracy 111
Webster, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and in-
separable."
By 1833 Webster's business backers had yielded sufficiently to
the warmth of the new spirit to listen patiently when their Con-
gressman and future Governor, Edward Everett, expounded the
advantages they might reap if they supported western schools.
"The learning, religion, and living ministry," he said, "bestowed
on the great West by these Colleges, unite in special benefit to
mercantile morality. . . . They ask you to contribute to give security
to your own property, by diffusing the means of light and truth
throughout the region, where so much of the power to preserve or
shake it resides." By 1836 Everett's listeners were prepared to
unbend a little in practice as well as in spirit. "We shall be pleased,"
allowed Amos Lawrence, the Boston manufacturer, that year, "to
see the best buyers of the large places west and southwest at old
Boston to buy our domestic fabrics. ... At present we do not
want to see any but the first class buyer; a year or two hence, we
shall be glad to see the second class as we can fix the price to cor-
respond to the risks."
Soon the thaw would be complete: "America begins with the
Alleghenies," cried the Brahmins of the 1840's. Ours, said Emerson,
once the depression had run its course, "is a country of beginnings,
of projects, of vast designs and expectations. It has no past; all
has an onward and prospective look."
JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY
On the eve of the elections of 1824, Webster acknowledged that
"General Jackson's manners are more presidential than those of
any of the candidates." But Jackson had acquired manners only
late in life. In the North Carolina town where in 1784 the seventeen-
year-old orphan son of a Scotch-Irish immigrant had come to read
law, he was long remembered as "the most roaring, rollicking,
game-cocking, horse-racing, card-playing mischievous fellow, that
ever lived in Salisbury ... the head of the rowdies hereabouts." In
the War of 1812 his soldiers nicknamed Jackson "Old Hickory"
after "the toughest thing they could think of." Years later when an
opponent expressed doubt over a Jackson threat, one of the Gen-
178 The American Way of Life
eral's friends remarked, "I tell you . . . when Jackson begins to talk
about hanging, they can begin to look for the ropes." In 1821 "Old
Hickory" himself said: "I have an opinion of my own on all sub-
jects, and when that opinion is formed I persue it publickly regard-
less of who goes with me." One of his opinions, when it was sug-
gested that he was "by no means safe from the presidency in 1824,"
he expressed this way: "No sir, I know what I am fit for. I can com-
mand a body of men in a rough way: but I am not fit to be Presi-
dent"
Others had their own opinion, among them future members of
the famous "Kitchen Cabinet," who entered the General in the
presidential sweepstakes as early as 1822 with this characteristic
announcement:
GREAT RACING!!! . . . The prize to be run for is the Presidential Chair.
. . . There have already four states sent their nags in. Why not Ten-
nessee put in her stud? and if so, let it be called Old Hickory. . . .
And in 1824 Old Hickory won! And lost! With the collapse of the
Congressional Caucus method of making nominations, five dif-
ferent candidates had crowded onto the presidential track. With the
death of Federalism, all ran under the colors of the Republican
Party. Jackson got the most votes. But he failed to get the required
majority in the electoral college. In the House of Representatives,
where the decision rested, the Speaker Henry Clay, an also-ran in
the election, threw his support to John Quincy Adams who became
President.
When Adams promptly named Clay his Secretary of State and
hence (as was suggested by the experience of every previous
Secretary of State but one) his heir apparent, the Jackson managers
cried, "Corrupt bargain." For the next four years they never let
the country forget the "chicanery" of the painfully honest Adams as
they prepared to defeat him and day next time. Jackson him-
self gradually warmed to the idea that the presidency had been
stolen from the people and in the next election between
John Quincy Adams, who can write,
And Andrew Jackson* who can fight
Old Hickory sallied forth in the people's cause.
Jacksonian Democracy 179
In 1824 only 356,000 persons voted. Four years later, aroused
by the first modern politick campaign in support of the first popular
hero since Washington, four times as many enthusiasts went to the
polls. Fifty-six per cent voted for the General.
In February 1829, while all Washington anxiously awaited the
arrival of the "hero of New Orleans," once more victorious,
Wehster wrote from the capital: "Nobody knows what he will do.
. . . My opinion is that when he comes he will bring a breeze with
him. Which way it will blow I cannot tell." For all his having "an
opinion of my own on all subjects," the new President really was
no wiser.
If there was anything Andrew Jackson had a lower opinion of
than Indians, it was speculators. Yet from the first, his violent
Indian policy supplied the land on which the speculators of the
1830s fed. Other Jacksonian measures inevitably if inadvertently
helped run up the price of land. In 1830 for example, fearful that
it would cause "a torrent of reckless legislation" by Congress, Jack-
son vetoed the so-called Maysville Bill by which the Federal
Government would have participated in the financing of a turnpike
across Kentucky. The veto left "internal improvements" to the
states alone where reckless projects found smoother sailing and
reckless promises provided speculators with great talking points.
Jackson's fiscal policies, though motivated by the deepest con-
servatism, made the financing of speculative state projects easy.
These policies had as a principal objective the elimination of the
national debt, but they involved the President in long conflicts over
the tariff, land policy, and the life of the Second Bank of the United
States. Early in his career Jackson had incurred personal debts,
which he attributed to the lures of easy money. Most of his business
life he devoted to paying these debts off. Jackson looked upon the
national debt as though, like his personal obligations, it were a debt
of honor or of shame. Though his principal political enemies were
eastern high tariff men, Jackson was willing to have the tariff raised
to unprecedented highs in order to get the money to reduce the
national debt. When his followers in South Carolina declared the
tariff of 1832 "inconsistent with [their] longer continuance ... in
the Union," Jackson promised to shoot anyone who seceded, and
180 The American Way of Life
asked Congress for a "force act" to give Mm the privilege. On the
other hand, Jackson's political friends were westerners dedicated
to low-priced and even free public land; but he managed to keep
his temper when Congress persistently rejected western proposals
for pre-emption and graduation (the policy of reducing the price of
public land until ultimately the land for which there were no buyers
would be given away) .
The high tariffs and the high price of public lands made it pos-
sible for Jackson's administration to pay off the public debt in 1835.
But by then Jackson's banking policies had made this the most
speculative act imaginable. The Second Bank of the United States
had become the embodiment of evil to Jackson's followers since it
dealt so alluringly in paper money and yet crushed the man who
reached for the vision or started a local bank to compete. If the
Bank of the United States made strategic loans to politicians, espe-
cially near election time, this only confirmed its opponents' belief
in the Bank's total depravity.
Yet to the Jacksonians local banks could do no wrong. If their
politicking was unspeakable, it was also unmentionable. If they
yielded to the temptation of paper money, it was only to encourage
the man whom the "monster" would ignore or strangle. In 1832
Jackson vetoed a bill for the extension of the Second Bank's charter,
which expired in 1836. In 1833 he began removing the govern-
ment's deposits from the Back to his "pet banks" in the states. Once
the national debt had been paid off, a national surplus mounted
madly, and so did the Treasury's deposits in the "pet banks." These
deposits the reckless banks simply loaned out to speculators whose
activities pushed the price of public land itself far higher than the
levels which had contributed so handsomely to the surplus in the
first place.
By the spring of 1836, the Treasury surplus had risen to $41,-
000,000 more than a fourth of the entire circulating medium of
the country. Its haphazard dispersal by "pet banks" made some
regions drunk with speculative currency, but left others panting for
cash even for the most urgent business transactions. Something had
to be done. Congress met the crisis by passing an act in July 1836,
authorizing the President to distribute the Treasury surplus to the
Jacksonian Democracy 181
states proportionately to their electoral vote. Jackson began the
distribution in January 1837. The transfer of the Treasury's de-
posits to the states, however, only made the currency situation all
the more chaotic; those states with "pet banks," moreover, simply
redeposited their shares in these questionable financial institutions.
The speculative upsurge that followed the removal of the de-
posits from the Second Bank had been checked in July 1836, by
another Jackson measure, the famous "Specie Circular." This re-
quired that payment for government land henceforth must be in
gold or silver. Typically, Jackson hoped that this measure would
force the hated eastern speculators to buy land with specie which
would be sent west to buttress the shaky "pet banks." Its effect,
however, was simply to confirm the view that the notes of these
banks were unsound. This conviction itself did check speculation,
but the distribution of the surplus in 1837 started it up again in the
western states. New projects began once more to jostle one another
for authorization and publicity, and land prices resumed their sky-
ward course until the crash of values in the middle of the year.
Martin Van Buren, not Jackson, reaped the harvest of Jack-
sonian policies. In the elections of 1832 Jackson's opponents had
raised the issue of the Second Bank's charter with the hope that a
Jacksonian veto of a bill renewing the charter would be unpopular
in the country. "The Bank," Old Hickory growled to Van Buren,
his Secretary of State and heir-apparent, "is trying to kill me, but
I will kill it. 9 ' Jackson's veto of the bank bill apparently cost him
no support. In any case he won an easy victory. By the elections of
1836, the prevailing prosperity only heightened Jackson's pop-
ularity and he had no trouble putting "Little Van" across.
The Jackson men, who had earlier used the name "Democratic
Republicans," became known simply as Democrats in 1836. Their
opponents distinguished themselves as "National Republicans" until
1832 when they draped themselves in the heroic mantle of the
Whigs in opposition to the "tyranny" of "King Andrew I," the
cruel slayer of the Second Bank. That their name failed to take in
the General's followers this doggerel of the time suggests:
Yankee Doodle, smoke 'em out,
The proud, the banking faction.
182 The American Way of Life
None but such as Hartford Feds
Oppose the poor and Jackson.
When Van Buren took office in March 1837, the speculators
besieged the new President to withdraw the "Specie Circular." But
the retired Jackson admonished his protege: "Its continuance [is]
imperious now for the safety of the revenue. ... I have done my
duty to my country and my god [and] have given [you] my opinion
freely. . . . / say, lay on, temporise not, it is always injurious." The
country, however, thought otherwise; and while the Democrats re-
luctantly renominated "Little Van" for the presidency in 1840, the
Whigs swept the elections with a disinterred war hero of their own,
William Henry Harrison. Borrowing freely from the Democrats'
campaign book, they harped on the alleged "log cabin" origins of
their candidate, and carried the day with the slogan, "Tippecanoe
and Tyler too!"
If Andrew Jackson's politics consisted in doing battle with the
dragons of great wealth, his political opponents sought only to fight
Jackson. Democrats and Whigs, nevertheless, had more serious
differences. The Whigs became the party of the "neebobs," as Old
Hickory called them, who had made their fortunes, and the Demo-
crats the party of those still on the make. If the army of Jack-
sonians was largely agrarian, it was probably because land was the
most ubiquitous of commodities and business in it the most popular
of occupations. If the Democrats gained the support of artisans and
operatives in the nascent unions that appeared in the commercial
and industrial cities in the 1830s, it was probably because their
members were aspiring to business opportunities themselves. If the
Democrats gained the support of religious revivalists and the evan-
gelical sects that spread through the West in particular after 1820,
it was probably because such enthusiasts were championing the
virtues of respectability in a wild country. If the Democrats gained
the support of the reformers associated with the religious revival
temperance men, popular educationists, fighters for women's rights,
aboMonists it was because the do-gooders were broadening the
paths of progress or removing obstacles from them.
Yet this support itself would have been politically useless had
not the Jacksonian epoch been marked by great changes hi politics
Jacksonian Democracy 183
itself. These changes derived of course, from the spread of the
franchise in the 1820s and 1830s everywhere but in the South. But
the franchise itself was only a means to other ends. Above all, the
Jacksonians held, only simple men could legislate wisely for the
simple multitude. This led to lowering the bars to office as well as to
the vote. Other innovations hi this period were the direct election
of presidential electors who heretofore had been elected by the state
legislatures; the popular election of minor judges; the development
of the convention system by which popularly elected delegates
"fresh from the people" supplanted the legislative caucus for the
nomination of party candidates; the development of popular oratory
and new methods of campaigning, including stumping the country;
the emergence of new types of candidates, showmen or heroes for
the multitude, and professional managers to handle then: campaigns;
the elaboration of the "spoils system" by which the minions of the
political managers might be rewarded from the public purse. Most
significant, perhaps, was the manufacturing of "issues" with which
to engage the interest of the uncommitted voters and to draw them
to the polls. Most of these issues were ephemeral and empty; one
of them was "abolition," and it sundered the nation.
Chapter Seven
The Victorious North
On learning of Robert E. Lee's surrender to U. S. Grant
in April 1865, Emerson wrote in the privacy of Ms Journal: " 'Tis
for the best that the rebels have been pounded instead of negociated
into a peace. They must remember it, and their inveterate brag will
be humbled, if not cured." Three years before, in a public address
which Lincoln himself attended, Emerson had been less brutal but
no less sure. "Why cannot the best civilization," he asked, "be ex-
tended over the whole country, since the disorder of the less civil-
ized portion menaces the existence of the country?"
The American Civil War may almost be said to have begun
where the English Civil War had ended two hundred years before.
Anglicans and Puritans had settled in America a thousand miles
apart and nursed and enlarged their jealousies and hates. Brought
face to face by the exigencies of the Revolution, their meeting only
confirmed their differences. It was at the Continental Congress in
1774 that John Adams first saw in the flesh well-horsed, saber-
rattling, extravagant planters with their flamboyant body slaves. The
experience, writes his biographer Gilbert Chinard, "caused Adams
more anxiety than he had ever suffered in all his lifetime." Adams
himself hastened to report home from Philadelphia how he dreaded
"the consequences of this dissimilitude of character," and added:
"Without the utmost caution on both sides, and the most con-
siderate forbearance with one another . . . they will certainly be
fatal."
Slaver and slave trader, exporter and carrier, cotton planter and
cotton spinner: southerner and northerner after the Revolution
had ample grounds for mutual understanding. But the interests
that drew them together only fanned into flame the forces that
184
The Victorious North 185
drove them apart. Even in their contest for the West they shared a
common aim. The planter fearful of the West's voting power, the
manufacturer fearful of its drain on his labor supply, both hoped
to slow the West's development. Ultimately each was frustrated by a
greater need,fthe planter for land, the manufacturer for markets.
Each thus pushed the development of the West in disregard of the
other, while the West itself fed well on the needs and the sons of
both//
After 1820, indeed, the West became the proving ground for the
contending societies of the older sections. Here the vigor and ex-
pansive force of free northern capitalism and evangelism con-
fronted the "peculiar institution" and the ideologies and anxieties
of the "Cotton Kingdom." Nothing wounded the South more than
the defection of her own vigorous sons and daughters to the free
West itself, where they often met and sometimes married evan-
gelizing Yankees and "formed little islands of abolitionism at an
early date." Their going, the historian Dwight L. Dumond writes,
"jSeprived the South of men and women whose combined intelli-
gence, moral courage, and Christian benevolence would have gone
far toward modifying the harsher features of slavery . . . and toward
keeping alive . . . free discussion" of it. "Having been born and
reared in the South," he continues, "many of them as slaveholders,
and having made great personal sacrifices by migrating to the free
states, they spoke with authority and were given a respectful hear-
ing by the conservative and wealthy class in the North."
Until the expansion of the Cotton Kingdom after 1793, eman-
cipation and manumission had had a long and progressive history
in the South. Thereafter, until about 1830, state laws made manu-
mission more difficult and the free Negro himself more susceptible
to enslavement even for petty crimes, but the section continued to
recognize slavery as evil. After 1830 slavery became unarguable
and untouchable, and the free Negro an outcast whose desperate
plight was used to illustrate alleged biological deficiences in com-
petence and character of the entire race. Nowhere was the slave
system harsher than in the new Gulf states of the Southwest where
rough adventurers, battening on the blood of Indians, occupied the
best cotton lands or served as overseers for Charleston and Savan-
186 The Victorious North
aah nabobs who might visit their wilderness plantations twice in a
iecade.
In the North by 1830 slavery had been universally legislated out
3f existence. The free Negro, however, was little better off than in
the South, while Abolitionists, though far from silenced, were
scarcely loved. "Depend upon it," advised the confident editor of
the Richmond Whig, "the Northern people will never sacrifice their
lucrative trade with the South so long as the hanging of a few thou-
sand will prevent it." As the Abolitionists' campaign gathered force
after 1831, when William Lloyd Garrison began publication of the
Liberator, their meetings were mobbed, their houses gutted, and
their presses wrecked. Their most famous martyr before John
Brown was the Reverend Elijah Lovejoy of Alton, Illinois, who was
lolled in 1837 while defending his printing plant from marauders.
"It is as much as all the patriotism in our country can do," com-
plained James G. Birney two years earlier, "to keep alive the spirit
of liberty in the free states."
>In the North, nevertheless, the Abolitionists won a growing num-
ber of MendSjj Attacks like those on Lovejoy brought into their
camp thousands who agreed with Birney that "the contest had be-
come one, not alone of freedom for the black, but of freedom for
the white.' 9 More numerous and more welcome were the recruits
who promoted the Abolitionist ddctrine as well as their rights.
At the very time that Professors Thomas R. Dew, George Fitz-
hugh, and William Harper were propagating the South's "Pro-
Slavery Argument" with appropriate evidence from science and the
Bible, and others such as John C. Calhoun were adding the evi-
dence of classical history, the greatest of "Revivals" began in the
North and especially in the Northwest, under the leadership of the
champion of evangelists, Charles Grandison Finney. The "Great
Revival" not only sanctioned Abolitionism, it fed on it. For the
glory of man and God its converts led the Holy War against drink,
debt, and debauchery, against the condition of the jails and the
schools, against the infringement of women's rights, against monop-
olists in general and the Bank in particular. But no grosser sins
could Ussy find in Christendom than pride of pigment, property in
men, the enslavement of one Christian brother by another.
The Militant South 187
Evangelical religion also spread rapidly over the Cotton King-
dom at this time and Christianizing of the slave himself became
popular among masters who had their own consolation and salva-
tion to think of. But as growing numbers of southern ministers and
missionaries added to their sin of slave apologetics the sin of actual
slave ownership, their nc^hern colleagues bgpame all the more
certain of the depravity oWne "institution/'^^ early as 1838 the
Presbyterians split into an Old School or Southern proslavery
branch and a New School or Northern antislavery one. When in
1844 Northern Baptists and MetKodists refused any longer to work
with missionaries who carried slaves with them, the latter seceded
from their national churches and set up independent Southern Bap-
tist and Methodist constituencies. But like political secession in
1860, such intransigence only spurred on the North.^
"TKolitionism and evangelism both had their ups and downs be-
fore the Civil War, but together, as surely as canals and railroads,
manufactures and markets, they turned the West from the South
and made the entire North a section. Always expansive, the South
in the 1840s became militantly so. Yet cotton, besides being a cor-
rupting thing was a confining one. The North had greater freedom
and greater space for its own expansive urge. Many northerners
agreed with Lincoln when he advised in 1856: vLet us draw a
cordon . . . around the slave states, and the hateful institution, like
a reptile poisoning itself, will perish by its own inf amy.'TOie South
also agreed that it had to expand to survive; and since it could not
expand beyond the geographical limits of cotton culture, it had
Reason for desperation and rebellion both./
\ '^
THE MILITANT SOUTH
If the South was right about slavery in the middle of the nineteenth
century the whole world was wrong. Great Britain prohibited the
slave trade in 1807. In 1833 she abolished slavery throughout the
Empire. In 1848 France abolished slavery in her colonies. Before
1850 all the Spanish American republics had done away with the
"peculiar institution." In the next decade the Hapsburgs and the
Romanovs freed the serfs of central and eastern Europe. Through-
out this period all the maritime nations of the world except the:
188 The Victorious North
United States permitted the British Navy to stop and search their
ships for slaves, the carriers of whom even the United States had
formally agreed to condemn as pirates. Many slave ships escaped
search and seizure simply by running up the Stars and Stripes when
interception threatened. That the land of liberty should condone
such license was an irony few outsidj^he South enjoyed. In the
South it was but one more stone in th^wall of moral isolation that
made the defense of its necessities so urgent.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident," says the Declaration
of Independence, "that all men are created equal; that they are en-
dowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." A "decent re-
spect to the opinions of mankind," say its authors, prompted them
to "declare the causes" of their separation from England. After
1830 Southern spokesmen derided the Declaration and strove to
prove it "God's law that fetters on black skins don't chafe." The
"very spirit of the age [was] against them," writes Lincoln's biog-
rapher, Albert J. Beveridge. All the fiercer, then, the challenge. We
must, cried William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama, the very archi-
tect of secession, "abandon the law of compromise and . . . adopt
the law of the constitution." Yet all the more absolute was the
response: We must, cried the gathering voice of the North, tran-
scend the Constitution and follow the "higher law" of the Declara-
tion and the Christian world.
The movement for personal freedom which swept the western
world in the first half of the nineteenth century, and nowhere more
thoroughly than in the northern American states, the South itself
condemned as part of the "radicalism" of the industrial revolution.
Southern spokesmen grew ever fonder of comparing the affectionate
paternalism of the master toward his "hands" the word "slave"
gradually fell into disuse among respectable planters of the Cotton
Kingdom with the harsh insecurity, the depression breadlines and
seasonal unemployment of "free" factory workers. This comparison
helped greatly to sweeten for all its denizens alike the image of the
"Old South" as the last grand realm of chivalry. In this realm land-
less shopkeepers, slave traders, artisans, clerks were beneath con-
sideration. But among squire, yeomen, poor white, "nigger," only
The Militant South 189
the harsh test of a lost war would disclose the chinks in the aristo-
cratic hierarchy.
"In the absolute, certainly," writes W. J. Cash, the author of
The Mind of the South, "there was much of privation and down-
right misery in the lot of the poor white, and often in that of the
yeoman farmer as well. But these people did not contemplate ab-
solutes. They continued always to reckon their estate in terms estab-
lished on the frontier. As they themselves would have phrased it
from the depths of a great complacency, they found it 'tol'able,
thankee, tol'able.' ... In every rank," Cash notes, "men lolled
much on their verandas or under their oaks, sat much on fences,
dreaming. In every rank they exhibited a striking tendency to build
up legends about themselves and to translate these legends into
explosive action to perform with a histrionic flourish, and to strive
for celebrity as the dashing blade. In every rank they were much
concerned with seeing the ponies run, with hearing the band, with
making love, with, dancing, with extravagant play." If the great
planter had the fastest horses, the finest music, the courtliest ladies,
the most beauteous black wenches, the grandest entertainments,
the most extravagant play of all well, was he not chivalry's cham-
pion, the proof as much as the pride of the system? "Negro entered
into white man as profoundly as white man entered into Negro
subtly influencing every gesture, every word, every emotion and
idea, every attitude." As long as the slave submitted (no wonder
the Abolitionist was anti-Christ incarnate), all white men on the
land would be lofty steal, scrape, beg and borrow though one
might from his neighboring cavalier.
And yet, as Cash writes, always men's "thoughts were with the
piper and his fee." The image of the "Old South" was so perfect,
so pure that men need not wonder why nothing like it could be
found elsewhere under the sun. Change could but mar, alteration
blemish its beguiling symmetry. But the physical world itself often
monitored the nodding mind. "If the dominant mood is one of
sultry reverie, the land is capable of other and more sombre moods.
. . . There are days when the booming of the wind in the pines
is like the audible rushing of time when the sad knowledge of the
grave stirs in the subconsciousness and bends the spirit to melan-
190 The Victorious North
choly. . . . And there are other days . . . when the nerves wilt under
the terrific impact of sun and humidity, and even the soundest grow
a bit neurotic. . . . And there are other days, too, when . . . hurri-
canes break forth with semi-tropical fury; days when this land
which, in its dominant mood, wraps its children in soft illusion,
strips them naked before terror.
"Nor was it only the physical world. His leisure left the South-
erner free to brood as well as to dream to exaggerate his fears as
well as his hopes. And if for practical purposes it is true that he
was likely to be complacently content with his lot, and even though
it was the lot of white-trash, it is yet not perfectly true. Vaguely,
the loneliness of the country, the ennui of long, burning empty days,
a hundred half-perceived miseries, ate into him and filled him with
nebulous discontent and obscure longing. Like all men everywhere,
he hungered cloudily after a better and a happier world."
A more concrete ambition also rippled the pool in the southern
looking-glass. The Cotton Kingdom was not spread in a single
generation from South Carolina to Texas by men content to doze
and dream at home. Accosted one day on a steamboat by a repre-
sentative of the Education Society peddling a "Bible Defence of
Slavery," a typical Red River planter shouted: "Now you go to
hell! I've told you three times I didn't want your book. If you bring
it here again I'll throw it overboard. I own niggers; and I calculate
to own more of 'em, if I can get 'em, but I don't want any damn'd
preachin' about it." Such men were unusual enough. As late as
1860 hardly 350,000 Southerners owned any slaves at all. Fewer
than 8,000 owned as many as 50 slaves. But these men, heading less
than 1 per cent of southern families, probably owned a fourth of all
hands. Their purchases were chiefly responsible for pushing the
slave population from 1,500,000 in 1820 to nearly 4,000,000 in
1860, despite a death rate that claimed every second Negro infant.
It was they who were chiefly responsible for pushing cotton pro-
duction from 335,000 bales in 1820, virtually all of it in South
Carolina and Georgia, to a record 5,387,000 bales in 1859, two
thirds of it in the rich Gulf states.
As late as 1840 most of the leading southwestern planters lived
in log cabins and were as rough-hewn as their surroundings. But it
was the rare adventurer among them who did not have his eye on
The Militant South 191
the fine site on the hill where eventually he would build his por-
ticoed mansion and entertain, when at home, like a prince.
Often enough, in later times, he was away. "Must have ice for their
wine, you see, or they'd die," the notable northern traveler, Fred-
erick Law Olmsted, was informed of Mississippi planters of the
1850s. "So they have to live in Natchez or New Orleans."
" 'And in summer they go up into Kentucky, do they not? . . .'
" 'No, sir. They go North. To New York, and Newport, and
Saratoga, and Cape May, and Seneca Lake. Somewhere that they
can display themselves. . . . Kentucky is no place for that. . . .'
"I asked," Olmsted reports, "how rich the sort of men were of
whom he spoke."
" 'Why, sir, from a hundred thousand to ten million.'
" 'Do you mean that between here and Natchez there are none
worth less than a hundred thousand?'
" 'No, sir. ... Why, any sort of a plantation is worth a hundred
thousand dollars. The niggers would sell for that.'
" 'How many Negroes are these on these plantations?'
" 'From fifty to a hundred.'
" 'Never over one hundred?'
" 'No; when they've increased to a hundred they always divide
them; stock another plantation. There are sometimes three or four
plantations adjoining one another, with an overseer for each, be-
longing to the same man. But that isn't general. In general, they,
have to strike off for new land. . . . Old land, after a while, isn't
worth bothering with/
" 'Do most of these large planters who live so freely, anticipate
their crops as the sugar planters are said to spend the money, I
mean, before the crop is sold?'
" 'Yes, sir, and three or four crops ahead generally.'
" 'Are most of them the sons of rich men? . . .'
" 'No, sir; lots of them were overseers once.'
" 'Do the grandsons of wealthy planters often become poor men?'
" 'Generally the sons do. Almost always their sons are fools, and
soon go through with it ... if they don't kill themselves before
their fathers die. . . . They drink hard and gamble, and of course
that brings them into fights.' "
"Next morning," writes Olmsted, "I noticed a set of stocks,
192 The Victorious North
having holes for the head as well as the ankles; they stood un-
sheltered and unshaded in the open road. I asked an old Negro
what it was. 'Dat ting, massa?' grinning; 'well, sah, we calls dat a
ting to put black people, niggers, in, when dey misbehaves bad, and
to put runaways in, sah. Heaps o' runaways, dis country, sah. Yes,
sah, heaps on 'em round here.' "
But if the ambition to own Negroes and land was concrete, it
was also coarse and common, almost Yankee in its crude material-
ism, and doomed to crash on the rock of nature. Cotton, like to-
bacco, ate up the land. By 1850 there were more abandoned farms
in the South than in New England. Soon there would be no new
land for plantations. Cotton, moreover, with its requirement of
continuous cultivation and its monotonous round of simple tasks,
was suited to slave labor working in gangs under the lash of drivers.
But what would one do with one's "hands" when the land gave
out? The law forbade setting them free. Society frowned on selling
them off, and in any case that was only the most brutal evidence of
failure. Cotton drew the great planters of the South to invest their
capital in unnegotiable labor; their "hands" forced them to con-
tinue growing cotton ultimately on the least rewarding land.
This vicious circle of the southern economy spun out the chal-
lenge to southern politics. The Cotton Kingdom must, it must ex-
pand Indians, Spaniards, Mexicans, Cubans must be driven before
it. Texas must be annexed, New Mexico purchased, California con-
quered, Cuba grasped, Kansas and Nebraska occupied for the boll
and the black. That was the South's "right." The Bible made slavery
Christian; the Constitution protected property of every sort; the
rule of law had its very justification in its guarantees to minorities,
its restraints on the mass.
Here was a field for ambition that transcended cotton, that
escaped the stigma of self-interest and even, if handled as brilliantly
as by Calhoun, that of sectionalism; a field that offered opulent
occasions for the oratory which the South adored; for politics,
which was its passion; and for power which was its goal. "You
slaveholders," cried a disenchanted daughter, of South Carolina
aristocrats to her own sister in 1860, "have lived so long on your
The Militant South 193
plantations with no one to gainsay you and the negroes only look
up and worship you that you expect to govern everybody & have it
aU your own way I can see it in Father in brother John in
Brother Patrick and in you."
American politics between the end of the War of 1812 and the
beginning of the War with Mexico in 1846 had been dominated by
three issues: the Tariff, Internal Improvements, and the Bank. Over
each of them the conflict had been sectional but indecisive. There-
after, though immense efforts were made to bury it as an issue and
ingenious compromises sought to suck out its poison, Negro slavery
became the touchstone of party alignments, the divider of the na-
tion; since emancipation the memory of Negro slavery has been the
demon of the reconstructed land. As early as 1844 the slavery issue
prompted the Democrats to drop the Declaration of Independence
from their articles of faith; in 1846 it split their opponents into
"Cotton" and "Conscience" Whigs; in 1848 it united the latter and
eastern Jacksonians under the banner of "Free Soil, Free Speech,
Free Labor, and Free Men"; and ultimately in 1854, it made this
"Free Soil" Party the major constituent of the new party of the
free farmers of the West who, in the cause of liberty, reclaimed
Jefferson's old party name, Republican.
The problem of Texas brought the slavery issue into the open
again a generation after the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Since
Texas had won its independence from Mexico in 1836, the South
and the Texans themselves hankered for its annexation to the
United States. Jackson and Van Buren, fearful of upsetting the bal-
ance of free states and slave, shied away from the issue. When the
Virginian, John Tyler, became President in 1841 on the death of
William Henry Harrison, the South took new heart, and when Web-
ster resigned in 1843 as Secretary of State, Tyler began to take
steps. In 1844 Calhoun became Secretary of State and promptly
worked out a treaty of annexation. When the Senate failed to ratify,
Texas became the main issue of the campaign. On this issue the
Democrat, James K. Polk of Tennessee, won the presidency and,
even before his inauguration in March 1845, Tyler had accepted
the mandate and rushed annexation through Congress. He accom-
plished this by a joint resolution requiring only a majority vote in
194 The Victorious North
both houses instead of by a treaty which two thirds of the Senate
would have had to approve.
Mexico immediately withdrew its representative in Washington.
Polk was more aggressive. The southern boundary of Texas had
been in dispute and he ordered "Old Rough and Ready," General
Zachary Taylor, to occupy the contested area. He also sent John
Slidell to Mexico to settle other long-standing issues and to offer to
buy New Mexico and California. Slidell was sent home empty
handed. Mexico, meanwhile, had dispatched its own troops to con-
front Taylor's. Eager as he was to win by conquest what Slidell
failed to gain by purchase, Folk's war message to Congress came
after the actual outbreak of hostilities in the disputed area.
The Mexican War began in April 1846, with fighting in Texas
and California. It ended in February 1848, with the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo after a brilliant invasion of Mexico itself by
"Old Fuss and Feathers," General Winfield Scott. By this treaty,
fytexico acknowledged the annexation of Texas and for a small
sum ceded the disputed Texas territory, all of New Mexico country,
and California. If the South anticipated any joy from this triumph,
however, it was disillusioned even before victory was won. Soon
after the war began, David Wilmot of Pennsylvania proposed in
Congress that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever
exist in any part" of the territory acquired from Mexico. As a pro-
viso to an appropriation bill, this proposal passed the House but
was defeated in the Senate. The country debated it for two years;
and when California grew to the proportions of a state following
the gold rush of 1849, the issue had to be faced in a more serious
form. "In the presence of the living God," cried Robert Toombs
of Georgia, "if by your legislation you seek to drive us from the
territories of California and New Mexico, I am for disunion." In-
deed, in 1850 disunion was only averted by the compromise which
did in fact admit California as a free state. In return the South got
the assurance that in the rest of the Mexican cession "popular sov-
ereignty" would decide whether slavery should be permitted. More
important to the South was another provision of the compromise
promising a stricter and more vigilantly enforced fugitive slave law.
Although it had achieved its war with Mexico and had won it so
The Militant South 195
brilliantly, the South nevertheless had less new territory than the
North to show for it, and fewer new senators and representatives.
Having also attained a new fugitive slave law, the South soon
learned that it was more effective in making Abolitionists than in
reclaiming runaway Negroes, Free men simply would not hunt out
other men to return them to bondage.
The South's hopes were buffeted by still other events. A trans-
continental railroad had been talked of in the country for a decade
before the California gold rush made it seem a practical under-
taking. In 1853, to make certain that such a road would follow a
southern route, the friendly administration of Democrat Franklin
Pierce sent James Gadsden to Mexico to purchase part of the
needed right of way west of Texas. This purchase Gadsden made
for $10,000,000. The next year, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois
tried to win southern support for a more northerly route favored by
capitalists associated with him, by introducing in Congress the so-
called Kansas-Nebraska Bill. This measure would organize that part
of the Louisiana Purchase beyond Missouri into two territories. In
them the Missouri Compromise line marking the northern limits of
slavery would be repealed and the decision on the issue left to
"squatter sovereignty." Douglas's bill passed, and in the territorial
elections in Kansas in 1855 thousands of slave-owning "border ruf-
fians" from Missouri crossed over to vote for slavery. By 1856 an
army of northern abolitionists, John Brown among them, had ar-
rived in Kansas to contest the fraudulent vote, and soon there was
civil war in "bleeding Kansas." The pro-slavery territorial govern-
ment remained in control but the South gained nothing from it. In
the meantime, the railroad project was shunted aside as slavery
itself held the interest of the country.
Cuba, like Mexico, had so long been the apple of the South's eye
that in 1854, after an effort to purchase the island from Spain
failed, the American envoy joined the American ministers in Eng-
land and France in issuing the remarkable "Ostend Manifesto."
This declared that Cuba was geographically part of the United
States and that if it were not obtainable by peaceful means, "by
every law, human and divine," the United States had the right to
take it by force. The South envisioned Cuba divided into two new
The Militant South 197
slave states. The nation, however, expected nothing but trouble,
and Pierce's administration had to repudiate the Manifesto.
After James Buchanan became President in 1857, southern
filibustering expeditions designed to conquer northern Mexico and
Central America received official sanction. The leading filibusterer
was the Tennessean, William Walker, who mad himself dictator of
Nicaragua in 1855 only to be driven out soon after. In 1858 Bu-
chanan made the formal prediction that in time the drift of events
would make Central America part of the United States a hope
entertained hi the North as well, where sentiment for a canal across
this narrow territory had been percolating. Walker had tried to
seize northern Mexico in 1853; in 1858 Buchanan made an offer
to buy it; and in 1859 he asked Congress to permit him to send the
Army down to restore order and collect debts due American
citizens.
By then such foreign adventures had become the last resort of
a desperate people. At the time of the Compromise of 1850 the
great majority of Americans had hoped, as one headline said, that
this was "The Closing of the Drama." Actually it was hardly the
closing of the first act, as many other events aside from the expan-
sionist efforts of the South attest. In 1852, after earlier magazine
serialization, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin,
Her picture of slave life stirred the wrath of Abolitionists and
planters alike. In 1856 on the Senate floor, Preston ("Bully")
Brooks of South Carolina tried to kill the eloquent Charles Sumner
of Massachusetts for personal remarks during an antislavery speech,
while southern sympathizers stood idly by. In 1857 in the case of
the Negro, Dred Scott, the Supreme Court not only reversed lower
courts which had upheld his free status because he had been
brought to a free state; it went on to add that Congress could not
deprive persons of any kind of property anywhere in the United
States, that the old Missouri Compromise itself, which had set
boundaries to slavery, had been unconstitutional all along. Five of
the nine Supreme Court Justices at this time were southerners. That
was enough, said Horace Greely, to give the decision as much
"moral weight" as it would have if it had been "the judgment of a
majority ... in any Washington bar-room."
198 The Victorious North
The year 1858 saw the epic debate between Lincoln and Douglas
in the campaign for senator from Illinois. That same year Lincoln
made his "house divided" speech. To the South this was a warning
that they could never accept Lincoln in the presidency. In 1859
lohn Brown led the raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, where the
small Abolitionist band seized the government arsenal with the idea
of arming the slaves and leading them in insurrection. Colonel Rob-
ert E. Lee and a detachment of United States marines captured
Brown, who was hanged on December 2, 1859.
Three days after Brown's execution the thirty-sixth Congress as-
sembled, and it was obvious that the events of the last fateful fifteen
years had utterly dissipated the "caution and . . . considerate for-
bearance" to which John Adams had once looked for the preserva-
tion of the Union. "The members on both sides," wrote Senator
Grimes of Iowa, "are mostly armed with deadly weapons, and it is
said that the friends of each are armed in the galleries." Hate and
distrust poisoned the atmosphere, challenges to duels rang through
the air, fights on the floor of both houses were frequent. Almost a
decade earlier, nearing the end of his own frustrated life, Calhoun
had said it was "difficult to see how two people so different and
hostile can exist together in one common Union."
THE LAND OF THE FREE
"We moved into a house of our own, had a farm of our own, and
owed no one," boasted a typical northern farmer who had settled
on the free soil of Michigan in the early 1830's. Such people and
their predecessors for two centuries had left the old country not
so much for business opportunity as for economic freedom and
personal dignity. It was not their idea to make the nation great; they
simply wished a chance to measure up to their private Christian
capacities untrammeled by the traditions, ties, and periodic terror
of Europe and the curse and competition of slavery in the Amer-
ican South. The forebears of Henry Ford came from Ireland in
1832 "with the desire and determination," a descendant wrote later,
"to establish homes in which the fullest sense of freedom and in-
dependence could be had to the utmost." If many such newcomers
promptly sought out their fellow nationals and fellow sectarians,
The Land of the Free 199
that was but a natural irony in a strange land. Inescapably they
also brought with them considerable mental and moral freight which
encumbered them in the wilderness and which they would gladly
have left behind. But not so the prevailing spirit of thrift, frugality,
and hard work in which they "made" their farms, and which they
urgently passed on to their offspring.
The generations growing up in the North after 1830, however,
were hard to keep down on tie farm. In Jackson's time the gates
had been cast wide open to the temple of the "bitch Goddess, Suc-
cess"; henceforth, especially in American cities, social inequalities
grew too evident to be blinked at, and ambition and aspiration were
molded by them. In Boston, not Webster but the "Boston Asso-
ciates," in whose pay he was, became the models of ambitious Yan-
kee youths. In Philadelphia about 1840, young Jay Cooke, the
future financier of the Civil War, was writing home to the folks in
Ohio, "Through all the grades I see the same all-pervading, all-
engrossing anxiety to grow rich. This is the only thing for which
men live here." And of his own future: "I shall ... go into business
myself," and live in "palaces and castles which kings might own."
From New York in the next decade the fame of the first millionaires,
of the Astors, Vanderbilts, and A. T. Stewart, spread not only
across the country but across the sea.
Vanderbilt, the London Daily News acknowledged in an editorial
celebrating the Commodore's visit to England in 1853, is the "legit-
imate product" of his country. Comparing Vanderbilt and America
to the Medicis and Florence, the News went on: "America was not
known four centuries ago; yet she turns out her Vanderbilts, small
and large, every year. America ... is the great arena in which the
individual energies of man, uncramped by oppressive social insti-
tutions, or absurd social traditions, have full play, and arrive at
gigantic development. ... It is time that the millionaire should
cease to be ashamed of having made his fortune. It is time that
parvenu should be looked upon as a word of honor."
The massive increase in population in the ante-bellum decades
was most important in opening up magnificent markets for Amer-
icans on the make. Of the 31,500,000 persons in America in I860,
14,500,000 represented the increase in the previous twenty years.
200 The Victorious North
Of these, ten million lived in the free states of the North and West,
and almost half of them had come from abroad. In 1854 alone al-
most 430,000 immigrants entered the United States, a figure to be
reached but once again before 1880. Most of the newcomers settled
on farms in the West, but millions swelled the population of the
cities, few of which were to be found in the Cotton Kingdom. By
1860, one fifth of all Americans lived in places of 2,500 or more;
and of these about half lived in the sixteen cities with a population
of more than 50,000. New York by 1860 had passed the million
mark, and was followed more or less distantly by Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and Boston. New Orleans remained the predominant
city of the South, but its western reign was challenged by St. Louis
and Cincinnati, each of which could boast more than 160,000 per-
sons on the eve of the Civil War, and by Chicago which had grown
to 110,000.
Since the barbarian invasions of Rome, commented the Demo-
cratic Review in 1852, "no migration has occurred in the world at
all similar to that which is now pouring itself upon the shores of
the United States. ... In a single week we have again and again
received into the bosom of our society, numbers as great as a
Gothic army." These people, like the millions growing up in Amer-
ica itself, had to be transported, clothed, fed, housed, and furnished.
This was especially true of the landless millions of the cities. Urban
requirements, indeed, led to a revolution in eastern agriculture. As
the virgin West came under cultivation, the old land of the East no
longer could compete in the world markets for the great export
staples, wheat, corn, and hogs. But as cities grew, eastern farmers
began producing perishable milk, butter, and cheese, eggs and poul-
try, fruits and nuts for adjacent urban markets.
Eastern farmers, like the planters of the South, themselves often
supplied a market for the western staples. Most of the wheat, corn,
and hogs, however, like the southern staples among which cotton,
of course, was predominant, went abroad hi eastern ships to pay for
imports of foreign capital and foreign manufactures. The 1850s
were the golden age of the American merchant marine. The mag-
nificent clipper ships gave this age appropriate grace and glamour,
but the conventional square riggers were more important econom-
The Land of the Free 201
ically. Flying the American flag, they carried much of the com-
merce of the entire world. The millions of immigrants landed on
American shores depended on these ships for passage. Their most
important inert cargo was English railroad iron which eventually
and ironically helped turn America away from the ocean to the
bustle and big business of her domestic expansion while England
extended her rule of the sea.
In the 1840s and 1850s and indeed in every decade for half a
century thereafter, railroad progress held the key to American
prosperity. By 1860 a billion and a half dollars had been invested in
American railroads, more than 25 per cent of the total active cap-
ital in the country. As early as 1840, when the United States had
about 3,000 miles of track, it was the world's railroad leader. In the
next decade about 5,500 miles were added. Of these the Cotton
Kingdom built its appropriate share calculated on a per capita basis;
but its lines were scattered, and their track was as shaky as their
finances. Most of the new mileage laid before 1850 went to serve
the increasingly interdependent economies of the leading eastern
ports. In the 1850s Americans built an astonishing 21,000 miles of
railroads, most of them tying the East to the distant West. As
late as 1850 not a single railroad entered Chicago. In the next five
years at least eleven reached there from the East, the South, and
the West. By 1857 twelve railroads had crossed the Mississippi,
nine of them running from Chicago to prairie towns. By 1860 the
railroad reached the Missouri River at St. Joseph.
"While we in St. Louis have been fighting the slavery question,"
wailed a local paper in 1856, "Iowa and Illinois were industriously
occupied in constructing roads through both states, in order to
secure the trade of Iowa to Chicago." The slavocracy did see the
possibility of obtaining a portion of the Chicago trade by way of a
north-south road which eventually became the Illinois Central. But
the South actually lost trade to the only section of this road laid
before the Civil War.
The Illinois Central's own prewar importance arose from other
considerations. The project akeady had a questionable history
when Representative Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois interested him-
self in it in the 1840s. He had a grandiose plan involving all the
202 The Victorious North
states of the Mississippi Valley, slave and free. His idea was to
finance construction with the aid of huge federal land grants to each
state traversed (except Kentucky and Tennessee where the Federal
government owned no land). These grants eventually were to be
distributed to the companies that actually laid the road. Costly
lobbying in Washington got 3,736,000 acres from Congress in
1850; by perhaps still costlier lobbying in Springfield, a Boston
group headed by John Murray Forbes beat Douglas's local backers
to the charter for the railroad company which would build the
Illinois portion of the road. Before the Civil War, with the Illinois
Central grant as the precedent, Congress bestowed about 18,000,-
000 additional acres of the national domain to forty-five different
railroads. Once the South seceded, the transcontinental traversing
northern routes received far more lavish stakes from Congress.
The railroad tied the North and West into one massive free
economy. It did much more. It tied business to politics and both
to the life of the individual in a way unknown in America before.
The railroad corporation tapped the savings of many thousands
along its routes as well as in the money centers of the world; it held
the sentence of death over communities reluctant to yield to its
demands in exchange for a terminal or track; it could give favors in
exchange for favors, withhold service as a threat to a community's
integrity, withdraw it as punishment for local political and social
independence. No business in the world had played for such large
stakes before; none, therefore, had so stimulated the bare use of
power.
The growth of cities, heightened regional specialization in agri-
culture, expansion of the transportation network, and the relation
of all these to everyday politics and life lent a vigor and unity to
the northern spirit probably unmatched in this epoch anywhere on
earth. One consequence of this expansiveness was the hunger for
wealth at any price and a deterioration, even outside of the rail-
roads, of business morality. Or so contemporaries complained. In
1857 the New York Tribune, in one of many blasts, said that most
people never knew how corrupt business commonly was. "From the
groceries we daily consume," said this paper, "to the medicines
which we consume more rarely; from the apparel with which we
The Land of the Free 203
cover our bodies to the paint with, which we cover our homes, we
are constantly embroiled in a network of frauds, such that our whole
commercial experience is very little else than a series of imposi-
tions."
This spirit of enterprise was to lead to unmatched corruption
during the oncoming war. On the other hand, large profits, illicit
or otherwise, certainly stimulated the northern economy which
eventually overwhelmed the secessionists. In the 1840s and 1850s,
besides the growth of the railroads and related industries and sig-
nificant increases in their efficiency, northern business saw the
development of the sewing machine, successful vulcanization of
rubber, discovery of the Bessemer process for making inexpensive
steel, commercial exploitation of petroleum, perfection of the tele-
graph, the start of work on Atlantic cables. Actually, few of these
innovations used any significant amount of capital or labor before
the Civil War. Older industries, however, had become by 1860
almost as highly capitalized as the railroads themselves. In these
industries textiles, shoes, food processing, lumbering, metalwork
many of the new departures of the previous decades became
rationalized: integration became more common and more thorough-
going; improvements in machine tools, and especially in the accu-
racy of gauges, greatly increased the precision of metalwork and
the efficiency of production by interchangeable parts; the principle
of the assembly line imposed itself on the flow of materials of all
kinds.
Once the province of small groups in New England and scattered
entrepreneurs elsewhere, industry in the 1850's had grasped the
imagination of the entire country. In that decade, appropriately,
the Middle West became the world's leader in the manufacture of
agricultural machinery. The performance of American-built thresh-
ers and reapers, moreover, was unmatched by any foreign make.
For the display of machinery, international fairs had become
common in the 1850s. At the Paris Fair of 1854, six men with
hand tools competed with four different threshers for half an hour,
with these results:
The six men with flails threshed 60 liters of wheat
A Belgian threshing machine 150 " " "
204 The Victorious North
A French threshing machine 250 " " "
An English threshing machine 410 " " "
The American threshing machine 740 " " "
If practical progress went hand hi hand with profound corruption
in American life in the 1850s, together they inspired broad move-
ments of social reform and amelioration. One field for reform was
labor conditions. During the prosperity of the 'fifties, factory labor
worked twelve to sixteen hours a day. At the same time the flood of
immigrants to the plants kept wage levels down; while ignorance,
illiteracy, and inexperience kept the wage earners from organizing
to better their condition. As bad as the factories were, home condi-
tions usually were so much worse that men may have preferred
to remain on the job. "Many families," the Board of Health of j
Holyoke, Massachusetts, a typical factory town, reported in 1856,
"were huddled in low, damp, and filthy cellars, and others in attics
which were but little if any better, with scarcely a particle of what
might be called air to sustain life. And it is only a wonder (to say
nothing of health) that life can dwell in such apartments." When
the railroad boom burst in 1857 and a new depression visited the
northern economy, simple starvation was commonly added to other
curses of the laboring life. Simple and often very spasmodic charity
was all the laboring class received. At the same time the South's
export markets held up. "The wealth of the South," chortled the
section's leading economist, "is permanent and rich; that of the
North is fugitive and fictitious."
Yet, so their Christian brothers of the North believed, the four
million slaves of the benighted South were far worse off than the
poorest unemployed free men in factory towns, who could, it
seemed, call their souls their own. The poor of the cities might break
one's heart and draw one's compassion. Slavery tried men's souls to
the utmost. The Abolitionist crusade enlisted those with the greatest
power of selfless dedication. The majority found a softer approach
more in keeping with their own prospects and personalities. In the
North, despite the rush of industry and urbanism, most people con-
tinued to live off the land, independently, face to face with their
neighbors and their God. The views they came to hold on slavery
Abe Lincoln expressed as early as 1845, when he wrote:
The Land of the Free 205
I hold it a paramount duty of us in the free States, due to the Union
of the States, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may
seem), to let the slavery of the other states alone; while on the other
hand, I hold it to be equally clear that we should never knowingly
lend ourselves ... to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death
to find new places for it to live in, when it cannot longer exist in
the old.
Fearful of secession, disunion, and disorder, the "smart" busi-
nessmen in the North preferred conciliation and compromise, de-
spite the South's successful opposition to the protective tariff,
transcontinental northern railroads, and opening of the public
domain to speculators. "What business have all the religious luna-
tics of the free states," cried James Gordon Bennett of New York's
conservative Herald, on the eve of an antislavery meeting, "to
gather in this commercial city for purposes which, if carried into
effect, would ruin and destroy its prosperity? . . . Public opinion
.should be regulated." But the men on the land were dedicated to
nonextension of slavery to the territories, and to fighting if necessary
to keep them free. Again Lincoln spoke for the majority when he
gaid in Peoria in 1854:
\The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these
Territories. We want them for homes of free white people. This they
cannot be ... if slavery shall be planted within them. Slave states
are places for poor white people to remove from, not to remove to.
New free States are the places for poor people to go to, and better
their condition. For this use the nation needs these Territories.
"Free society!" a southern editorial said in 1856. "We sicken of
the name! What is it but a conglomeration of greasy merchants,
filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers and moon-struck theorists?
. . . The prevailing class one meets is that of mechanics struggling
to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery; and
yet are hardly fit for association with a southern gentleman's body
servant." Lincoln expressed the grander spirit of free men when
he said after the war had begun: "I consider the central idea per-
vading this struggle is the necessity of proving that popular govern-
ment is not an absurdity. ... If we fail, it will go far to prove the
incapability of the people to govern themselves." This view was not
206 The Victorious North
as humane as the official Abolitionist position; it had nothing to do
with being one's brother's keeper, especially if his skin was black;
it even permitted one to dally, as Lincoln did, with the idea of the
Negro's congenital inferiority. Yet it added a spiritual cubit to the
slogan, "Vote yourself a farm," which helped Lincoln and the Re-
publicans sweep the election of 1860, and sweep the South into
secession even before the inauguration of March 1861.
CIVIL WAR
In its first presidential campaign in 1856 the Republican Party was
such an anathema to the South that it did not even appear on the
ballot in eleven slave states. At the same time the promise of gen-
uine popular sovereignly in the territories won Buchanan and the
Democrats the vote of Indiana, Illinois, and three other free states
as well as the solid South with the exception of Maryland. The
Democrats won the election, but the Dred Scott decision two days
after his inauguration in 1857 gave Buchanan the excuse he needed
to allow Kansas in particular to remain in proslavery hands. As
the relations between the sections deteriorated thereafter, it was
clear that no proslavery Democrat could win the presidency in
1860 and that no "free soil" Republican could conciliate the South.
The planters nevertheless insisted on a Democratic proslavery
candidate in 1860, and to get one they split their own party. This
made it all the easier for the Republicans to win the election even
though they again failed to be named on the ballots of ten southern
states. The Republican victory sundered the Union. Lincoln re-
ceived only 39 per cent of the popular vote, the lowest ever for a
victorious candidate; but he carried every state in the populous
North and won a clear majority of the electoral college. Within a
month and a half of the election, South Carolina adopted its ordi-
nance of secession and by February 1861, was followed out of the
Union by Georgia and five Gulf states: Mississippi, Florida, Ala-
bama, Louisiana, and Texas. That month delegates met at Mont-
gomery* Alabama, established the Confederate States of America,
adopted a constitution, and named Jefferson Davis of Mississippi,
provisional president, and Alexander Stephens of Georgia, provi-
Civil War 207
sional vice-president. President Buchanan simply prayed for their
eternal souls.
Many in the cotton states had grave misgivings over the precip-
itate action of their leaders, and indeed nursed these misgivings
throughout the coming war. Many of them were ex-Whigs who as-
sumed the Democratic label for convenience after the breakup of
their own party. They included Louisiana sugar growers and Ken-
tucky hemp growers, who had sought high tariff protection, as well
as southern railroad promoters interested in federal aid for internal
improvements. Even some of the richest parvenu cotton planters in
the black belt of Alabama subscribed to what they considered the
"broadcloth party" to show that they were men of substance and
no longer Jacksonian climbers.
After the Civil War these southerners with Whig traditions were
to play important roles in building the kind of "road to reunion"
they preferred. But as yet they had to yield to the fire-eating Dem-
ocrats of their section who had nursed dreams of glory for a long
time. In 1855 one of the fire-eaters, Senator James H. Hammond
of South Carolina, boasted: "Without the firing of a gun, without
drawing a sword, should [the Northerners] make war upon us, we
could bring the whole world to our feet. . . . No, you dare not
make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war on it.
Cotton is King." In 1861 others of his ilk looked forward to the
time when Cuba would fall into southern hands and Central Amer-
ica and Mexico would be occupied, while northern poltroons
quaked at the thought of violence and warfare. These fantasies did
not materialize, and indeed South Carolina was chagrined to find
eight of the more northerly slave states, including Virginia, quite
undecided on whether to affiliate with the Confederacy or not.
South Carolina's view of the north seemed justified however. Lin-
coln acknowledged in his inaugural address that "the government
will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being your-
selves the aggressors."
Secessionists did not know Lincoln was scheming to place the
Confederacy in the unfavorable aggressive position. When the
Confederacy was organized, it grasped control of Federal property
within its borders, but two key forts remained in the hands of loyal
208 The Victorious North
garrisons, Fort Pickens off Florida, and Fort Sumter off South
Carolina. These forts soon needed their periodic provisioning and
replacement of arms. Some advisers warned Lincoln that Union
vessels in Confederate waters would lead to the charge of provoca-
tion, a charge that might cost the Union the wavering border states.
Lincoln decided to send Sumter "provisions only" and to inform
the governor of South Carolina that no arms would be landed un-
less resistance was encountered. The Confederacy thus had the un-
enviable choice of permitting the world to see how hollow were its
claims of sovereignty or of firing the first shots.
On April 12, 1861, before the "provisions" arrived, Major
Anderson in command of Fort Sumter refused the last Confederate
demand to evacuate, and General Beauregard opened fire on him.
In two days Sumter fell. Lincoln replied by calling for 75,000
volunteers to enforce the laws of the land and by ordering Con-
federate ports blockaded. Soon after, Maryland, Delaware,
Kentucky and Missouri chose to remain loyal to the Union, while
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas allied them-
selves with the rebel cause. Thus did the Civil War open.
Neither the North nor the South boasted an army, the machinery
for raising one, or the instrumentalities to finance military opera-
tions. The North had railroads, factories, money, men. But it took
two years to organize them into a war machine. The South by
comparison, had nothing except generals and the awareness that
the war must be fought on its own soil. The South's best chance of
victory lay in a quick attack while it had unity and peak strength.
Yet its object was independence, not conquest, and it began the war
on the defensive. The North's best chance lay in delay until it could
mobilize its overwhelmingly greater resources. Yet delay looked
like acquiescence, while a quick victory would bring around many
disaffected elements within the Union. Thus the North attacked
before it was ready, and then, chastened, hesitated to move again
in time.
When Virginia joined the Confederacy, the rebel capital was
moved from Montgomery to Richmond. The first fighting after
Sumter took place in July 1861, when Union forces under General
McDowell attempted to invade Virginia and were repulsed at
Civil War 209
Bull Run by Beauregard and Joseph Johnson. The decisive factor
was the firmness of the brigade led by Thomas J. Jackson, before
which Union forces broke and ran. Henceforth the Confederate
commander was known as "Stonewall."
Lincoln attributed defeat to the rawness of the northern recruits.
He promptly replaced McDowell with George B. McClellan whom
he named General-in-Chief and ordered to organize, equip, and
train an effective fighting force. McClellan's product was the superb
Army of the Potomac; but he seemed to love it too much ever to
risk it in battle. While McClellan hovered around Washington in
the early spring of 1862 offending everyone with his arrogance and
procrastination, George H. Thomas and Ulysses Simpson Grant
were gaining control of the Mississippi above Vicksburg, while
Admiral David Glasgow Farragut captured New Orleans at the
river's mouth. The next year, on July 4, 1863, after months of
tough campaigning, Grant took Vicksburg and split- the Con-
federacy in two.
In the Eastern theater, McClellan at last made a move in April
1862, when he took the Army of the Potomac to Virginia with
Richmond once again the Union objective. On June 26 he was met
by Lee who had just taken command of all Confederate forces, and
in the Seven Days' Battle was driven off toward the seacoast.
McClellan had not been defeated, but the administration was dis-
couraged and Lincoln removed him. Lee, however, soon took the
offensive, marching north to sever the Union's east-west railroad
lines. He so badly defeated McClellan's successors that McClellan
was reinstated. On September 17 he met Lee at Antietam, Mary-
land, and inflicted casualties severe enough to send Lee back to
Virginia to recuperate. When McClellan failed to pursue, however,
he was once again removed from command.
On September 22, 1862, just after Antietam, Lincoln issued his
Proclamation emancipating the slaves, as of January 1, 1863, in
all areas then in rebellion against the United States. Besides in-
ducing many Negroes to take up arms for the North, this measure
won Europe's moral support for the Union cause. Heretofore the
Confederacy had held the favor of the ruling groups in England
and the continent even though the Union blockade had effectively
210 The Victorious North
deprived the rebels of much material benefit from the anti-
democratic foreign sources. The Union, on the other hand, had
held the interest of the middle classes abroad and the moral weight
of emancipation gave their voices more weight in European
councils. Foreign anticipation of Confederate success reached its
nadir in July 1863, when to Grant's triumph at Vicksburg was
added Meade's conquest of Lee at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
After Vicksburg and Gettysburg the Confederacy was hemmed
in from the west and the north by Union arms, and on the east
and the south by Union ships. By then southern reserves were spent,
famine spread over many rebel states, and ruin faced the proud
slavocracy. Much bitter and brilliant fighting took place, however,
before the rebels recognized their doom. After pinning the Con-
federacy down in Chattanooga in November 1863, Grant was given
command of all Union forces in March 1864. His successor in the
West was William T. Sherman who soon fought his way from
Chattanooga to Atlanta and in September 1864, began the march
through Georgia. "I propose," Sherman announced, "to demon-
strate the vulnerability of the South and make its inhabitants feel
that war and individual ruin are synonymous terms." At the same
time Philip Sheridan was despoiling the Shenandoah Valley of
Virginia up which Jubal Early had led Confederate forces the
previous July and almost captured Washington. By September
Grant had already been engaged more than four months on the
bloody campaign that ended lie war, the campaign to take Rich-
mond, so magnificently defended by Lee.
On April 2, 1865, Lee evacuated his battered capital, seeking
more tenable ground in the mountains. But Sheridan cut him ofi
and on April 9 at Appomattox Lee surrendered to Grant. The
rebels had indeed been "pounded instead of negotiated into a
peace." The men in blue, said one Southerner late in 1865,
"destroyed everything which the most infernal Yankee ingenuity
could devise means to destroy; hands, hearts, fire, gunpowder, anc
behind everything the spirit of hell, were the agencies which the]
used." And Emerson's "best civilization" was about to be "ex-
tended over the whole country" with a vengeance.
Chapter Eight
The Defeated South
In August 1883, an unknown farmer "chosen," accord-
ing to Henry Grady's Atlanta Constitution, "from the rank and file,"
stood up to speak before the Georgia State Agricultural Society.
"We must get rich!" he cried to a responsive audience. "Let the
young south arise in their might and compete with [the Yankees]
in everything but their religion and morals. Don't mind old fogies
like myself and others of the same age who are sulking in their
tents. We have the cotton and can make cheaper goods than they
can. We have the wool and will have sense enough to use it. We
can make iron at less cost than they can. . . . Get Rich! Sell every-
thing marketable and live on the culls. . . . Get Rich! If you have
to be mean. The world respects a rich scoundrel more than it does
an honest man. Poverty may do to go to heaven with. But in this
modern times. . . . Get Rich! and emigrants will pour in; capitalists
will invest."
In the 1880s the whole dead Confederacy seemed to have fallen
in love with Henry Grady's vision of an industrial "New South"
which itself "had fallen hi love with work." Indeed more. As
people everywhere began lifting themselves from the slough of the
depression of the 1870s, the "New South" became the hope of the
entire nation and Grady was its prophet. Fifty years after he had
first seen Henry Grady, Josephus Daniels recalled, "What a radiant
and charming and accomplished man he was!" The Atlanta Con-
stitution under Grady's editorship grew into one of the largest and
most influential newspapers in the country, North and South. When
Grady personally brought the message of southern opportunity to
Chicago, or Pittsburgh, or to abolitionist New England itself, he
was welcomed with an enthusiasm that matched his own and glowed
211
212 The Defeated South
long after his departure. "We have wiped out the place where
Mason and Dixon's line used to be," Grady told the capitalists of
the New England Club in New York, "and hung out a latchstring
to you and yours." Then, as if to prove the reality of the new fellow-
ship, he went on: "We are ready to lay odds on the Georgia Yankee
as he manufactures relics of the battle field in a one-story shanty
and squeezes pure olive oil out of his cotton-seed, against any
down easterner that ever swapped wooden nutmegs for flannel
sausages in the valleys of Vermont."
An army of northern publicists followed Grady home to the
South in this period and returned eager to back his play. A. K.
McClure, a leading Pennsylvania newspaper publisher and Re-
publican leader, discovered that Atlanta was "the legitimate ofi-
spring of Chicago" with "not a vestige of the old Southern ways
about it." "Effete pride" was gone; among "the more intelligent
young men of from twenty to thirty years," he found numerous
"potent civilizers." Congressman William D. ("Pig Iron") Kelley,
Representative of the Pennsylvania steel kings, announced that the
New South was "the coming El Dorado of American adventure."
The popular after-dinner speaker and railroad lawyer, Chauncey M.
Depew, told the Yale alumni that "The South is the Bonanza of the
future. We have developed all the great and sudden opportunities
for wealth ... in the Northwest States and on the Pacific Slope."
In the South lay "vast forests untouched; with enormous veins of
coal and iron. . . . Go South, Young Man." Grady himself thus
was soon able to report: "Every train brings manufacturers from
the East and West seeking to establish themselves or their sons near
the raw material in this growing market." Then with arms flung
wide in welcome, he exclaimed, "Let the fullness of the tide roll in."
Northern capital had reasons of its own for rushing South in the
1880s, reasons the South dared not inspect too closely. "The South,"
young Henry Watterson of the Louisville Courier-Journal told the
world in 1887, "having had its bellyful of blood, has gotten a taste
of money, and is too busy trying to make more of it to quarrel
with anybody." Unfortunately the facts had already begun to quar-
rel with the South. The very year in which Watterson wrote, "Pig
Iron" Kelley himself had to acknowledge that "apart from the
The Wrath of War 213
New South, by which I mean the country around ... the rapidly
developing iron industries ... the same wretched poverty prevails
among the Southern people now, twenty-two years after the close of
the war." If the South was "making money," who was getting it?
Where was it going? "Mr. Grady in his great Dallas speech," young
Tom Watson wrote in his Journal in 1888, "thinks that 'Plenty rides
on the springing harvests!' It rides on Grady's springing imagina-
tion. Where is this prosperity?" And Watson continued with notes
for a speech of his own that Grady's Constitution would fail to
print: " 'New South' idea. If it means apology, abject submission
sycophancy to success perish the thought. . . . Shame to Southern
men who go to Northern Banquets & glory in our defeat. . . . Un-
paternal, parricidal."
Like Grady's desperate old "rank and file" farmer, many in the
defeated section felt that if they were to cling to life they must
cleave to the victors, that they must "out-Yankee the Yankees,"
as Watterson advised. Their grief they would anesthetize in work
and dreams, their guilt in "that 'hardness ever of hardiness [the]
mother.' " Yet other southerners their ranks mushroomed in the
depression of the 'nineties were coming around to see, as Watson
noted, that "In Grady's farm life there are no poor cows . . . lands
all 'Rich Richer Richest.' Snowy cotton, rustling corn. In reality
barren wastes, gullied slopes ruined lowlands . . . Gin house
on crutches. Diving down in the grass for cotton." The New South
was one more Northern trick; the New South's failure one more
Southern defeat. "The Past!" cried Watson. "There lie our brightest
and purest hopes, our best endeavors, our loved and lost. . . .
Come back to us once more oh dream of the old time South!"
THE WRATH OF WAR
"A foreigner studying our current literature," complained the
carpetbagger novelist Albion W. Tourgee in 1888, "without knowl-
edge of our history, and judging our civilization by our fiction,
would undoubtedly conclude that the South was the seat of in-
tellectual empire in America, and the African the chief romantic
element of our population." But literature recovered much more
readily than life.
214 The Defeated South
There are no accurate figures on the cost of the Civil War to
either side, even where figures might be meaningful. Union deaths
may be put at 360,000, Confederate at 260,000. Numerically,
Confederate losses were near enough to those of the Union, but
actually they were overwhelmingly greater, representing a fifth of
the productive part of the Confederacy's white male population.
Thousands more in the South died of exposure, epidemics, and
sheer starvation after the war, while many survivors, aside from the
sick and the maimed, bore the scars of wartime and postwar malnu-
trition and exhaustion all the rest of their lives.
Lincoln's government spent almost four billion dollars on the
war. Much of this served to give a fillip to northern industry. Con-
federate expenditures were only about one half those of the Union,
but these were an utter loss in an utterly lost cause and only the
beginning of the drain on the South. In the North a few unfortunate
exceptions marred the general wartime boom. For example, the
cotton textile industry broke down. In the South the exceptions were
the rare successes in an environment of desolation. Rebels who ran
the northern blockade, Confederate privateers who had preyed on
Yankee shipping, southern merchants who had been canny enough
to demand gold or goods for food and clothing, or who had catered
to the invading soldiers, all faced the postwar years with some
capital. But the South as a whole was impoverished. At the end of
the war, the boys in blue went home at government expense with
about $235 apiece in their pockets. The boys in gray found the
South's hand tragically empty. Some of Lee's soldiers, the historian
Dixon Wecter writes, "had to ask for handouts on the road home,
with nothing to exchange for bread save the unwelcome news of
Appomattox."
Military destruction in the Confederacy was thorough. Yet the
war was not fought everywhere, and the South lost most in indirect
damage. Land, buildings, and equipment, especially of slaveless
white farmers who had gone to "hev a squint at the fighting," lay
in ruins. Factories, halted for repairs, remained broken down or
were simply forsaken. The one billion dollars of Southern banking
capital in 1860 was wiped out, and with it the credit system on
which the section was peculiarly dependent. Worst of all as far
The Wrath of War 215
as the future was concerned, the labor system was utterly dis-
organized.
In the disruption of southern life few suffered more than the
ex-slaves. Free and footloose Negroes became a problem to Union
officers in captured Confederate territory early in the war, and
eventually large numbers were gathered in so-called "contraband
camps" where deaths from the elements, epidemics, and crime ran
as high as 25 per cent in a few months. The Emancipation Procla-
mation magnified the problem, but it took Congress more than two
years to cope with the crisis. In March 1865, Congress at last
created the "bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands,"
known since as the Freedmen's Bureau. Abetted by private northern
philanthropy, the Bureau did nobly at the start, but after Appomat-
tox it was swamped as were other resources. More "contraband
camps" were opened and their population multiplied. During the
first two years after the war, a third of the Negroes died in some
of the camps.
Poor white and planter often were left little better off than the
ex-slave. As early as 1862 famine forced all Confederate common-
wealths to set up statewide systems of relief, but by 1865 these
had collapsed in the general ruin. The harvest of 1865, moreover,
proved almost a complete failure so that, as one Freedmen's Bureau
official reported, it was "an every-day sight . . . that of women and
children, most of whom were formerly in good circumstances,
begging for bread from door to door." In the four years after the
war the Freedmen's Bureau issued about twenty-one million rations,
fifteen million to Negroes and as many as six million to whites.
The moral cost of war and defeat and ultimately of Reconstruc-
tion added its poison to the sapping brew.
Furl that Banner, softly, slowly! . . .
For its people's hopes are dead!
Rebel losses in youth and talent were proportionately much greater
than the devastating total of human losses itself. The weakening of
purpose, morale, and aspiration among the survivors was depressing
enough to make many envy the dead. In Georgia in 1865, a re-
porter noted that "aimless young men in gray, ragged and filthy,
216 The Defeated South
seemed, with the downfall of the rebellion ... to have lost their
object in life." In Mississippi alone it was estimated that there
were ten thousand orphans.
The war destroyed the instrumentalities of social control in
many parts of the South. Churches, schools, courts, functioned
poorly if at all. At the same time heartless bands roamed the
countryside, led by ex-Confederate guerrillas like Jesse and Frank
James who never gave up the fight, against the victors and their
society. War inflamed the spirit of riot in such men; defeat banked
the spirit of reconstruction in the vast majority. "These faces, these
faces," cried a northern observer on a visit to New Orleans in 1873.
"One sees them everywhere; on the street, at the theater, in the
salon, in the cars; and pauses for a moment struck with the expres-
sion of entire despair."
THE POLITICS OF FREEDOM
To many in the North the end of hostilities, for all the devastation
of the land and life of the vanquished, did not mark the end of their
mission, and by 1873 the wrath of "Reconstruction" had been
added to the terrible war.
"Reconstruction" of the Union, not reconstruction of the South,
had been the official purpose of the war. Lincoln was sympathetic
to this purpose, and when by December 1863, four rebel states had
succumbed to Union arms, he was ready with a full-scale program
to restore them to their "proper and practical relation" with the
loyal commonwealths. "Finding themselves safely at home,"
Lincoln said, "it would be utterly immaterial whether they had
ever been abroad."
As President, just as when he was a candidate, Lincoln held the
Union to be indestructible. Citizens might rebel, but states could
not break away. Rebels, in turn, could be restored to full citizenship
by presidential pardon. Lincoln was ready to pardon all but the
highest Confederate officials if the former rebels would swear al-
legiance to the United States and agree to comply with United States
laws and proclamations, including the Emancipation Proclamation.
By 1864 a sufficient number of people (Lincoln specified at least
10 per cent of a state's 1860 electorate) in Tennessee, Arkansas,
The Politics of Freedom 217
Louisiana, and the new commonwealth of West Virginia, had met
the President's conciliatory conditions and proceeded to form new
state governments. They also signified their return to the Union by
once again electing men to Congress.
But these men never were seated. Under the whip of Senator
Charles Sumner, the Massachusetts orator, and Congressman Thad-
deus Stevens, the Pennsylvania irreconcilable, Congress had worked
up its own "Radical" reconstruction program. In many instances,
with "boldness and consistency," as his home town paper in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, put it, Stevens had flouted segregation
conventions and laws. Stevens was determined that his ideas of
social equality, advanced even for the North, be forced upon the
"conquered provinces." "The whole fabric of southern society,"
he declared, "must be changed . . . though it drive her nobility into
exile. If they go, all the better." Sumner said, "If all whites vote,
then must all blacks. . . . Their votes are as necessary as their
muskets; of this I am satisfied. . . . The nation is now bound by self-
interest ay, self-defense to be thoroughly just. . . . Mr. Lincoln
is slow in accepting truths."
In the presidential election of November 1864, the Stevens-
Sumner cabal tried to gain control of the Republican machine and
carry their own man to the White House. In this they failed. The
new Union Party, made up of "conservative" Republicans and
"reconstructed" Democrats such as Andrew Johnson of Tennessee,
captured the Republican machine. On the Union ticket Lincoln and
Johnson won. Many Radicals had come around to supporting this
ticket during the campaign because they did not want to alienate
local Republican bosses and otherwise damage the machine they
hoped soon to control. But in the lame-duck Congress that opened
after the election, in December 1864, they promptly resumed their
war on the President's conciliatory policy.
One of the Radicals' first measures was the Thirteenth Amend-
ment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . shall exist
within the United States." This amendment was ratified before the
end of 1865. For strategic purposes it was milder than many
Radicals would have liked. A second Radical measure established
the Freedmen's Bureau. By seeing to it that the Bureau was manned
218 The Defeated South
in the South by their own nominees, the Radicals planned to
assure themselves control of the Negro vote. A third Radical move
was the rejection of all the men elected to Congress by Lincoln's
reconstructed states. In March, the Radicals went home more
determined than ever to save the South from a return to slavery
and their party from the President. "There's ample public opinion
to sustain your course," Wendell Phillips, the Abolitionist, advised
Sumner, "it only needs a reputable leader to make this evident
So when the Senate closes . . . sound one bugle note . . . and set
the tone for the summer. We have six months to work in ... & if
you'll begin an agitation we will see that it reaches the Senate
room."
The Radicals' determination did not turn Lincoln from his deeply
considered, compassionate course. It was in his second inaugural,
on March 4, 1865, after the departure of Congress, that he spoke
the famous words: "With malice toward none, and charity for
all ... let us ... bind up the nation's wounds . . . care for him who
shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, . . .
do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace."
Lincoln called it "providential" that Congress was out of session
when Lee surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. "If we
were wise and discreet," the still hopeful President told his Cabinet
on April 14, "we should ... get ... the Union reestablished before
Congress came together in December."
But Providence seems to have looked aside. That same evening
the Great Emancipator, at long last the hero of the victorious
Union and, ironically, the last, lorn hope of the South, was as-
sassinated at Ford's Theater in Washington by the mad John Wilkes
Booth.
"While everybody was shocked at [Lincoln's] murder," said the
Indiana Radical, George W. Julian, "the feeling was nearly uni-
versal that the accession of Johnson would prove a godsend to the
country." Universal, that is, among the Radicals. "Johnson, we
have faith in you," cried jubilant Ben Wade of Ohio. "By the
gods there will be no trouble now in running this government."
A self-taught tailor, Andrew Johnson had been as outspoken an
The Politics of Freedom 219
enemy of the nobby planters as Stevens himself. More than once
during the war he referred to them simply as "traitors." Since then
some suspected that he had become tainted with Lincolnism. But as
a Democrat from a rebel state he had few claims on the people
and none on the Republican Party, and the Radicals felt certain
they could discount the power of his office if he chose to use it
against them.
Use it Johnson did. Early in May 1865 he recognized Lincoln's
governments in the four presidential-reconstructed states. Later
that month he offered amnesty to most of the citizens in the seven
states Lincoln had not organized, and ordered this "white-washed"
electorate to write new constitutions which would repudiate the
state's war debt and abolish slavery. Under the new constitutions
the voters would then elect new state governments. To the con-
sternation of the Radicals, the President permitted each state to
determine its own suffrage. When Congress met in December 1865,
all the rebel states but Texas had reconstructed themselves on
Johnson's terms.
The President, of course, expected trouble. The South had played
blindly into Radical hands by its frighteningly quick adoption of
the "Black Codes." Enacted in 1865 and 1866 in every Con-
federate state but Tennessee, these Codes regulated the Freedmen's
life with varying degrees of severity. Often they gave him the right
to sue, to give evidence, to go to school, to marry. Most states
limited his property rights and forbade his working as artisan or
mechanic. Nowhere could he hold public office, vote, serve on
juries, or bear arms. Worst of all were provisions, such as that in
Georgia, which warned that "all persons strolling about in idleness"
would be put in chain gangs and contracted out to employers.
Stevens was quick to make political capital of the South's ill-con-
sidered haste in voting the "Black Codes." As early as September
1865, he announced, "Let all who approve of [our] principles
tarry with us. Let all others go with copperheads and rebels."
By such tactics the Radicals fragmented the Congressional op-
position and dominated the session that opened in December 1865.
Their first move was once more to exclude men elected in the rebel
states. The Radicals then pushed through a bill extending the life
220 The Defeated South
of the Freedmen's Bureau, but they failed to override Johnson's
veto in the Senate. In March 1866, they succeeded in enacting over
Johnson's veto a Civil Rights Act forbidding states to discriminate
among their citizens as they had done in the "Codes."
The great test came on the Fourteenth Amendment. Doubtful
themselves of the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act, and
fearful that a later Congress might repeal it, Radical leaders decided
on an amendment to insure its legality and long life. The first
section of the Amendment in effect declared Negroes citizens and
then prescribed that: "No state shall . . . abridge the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process
of law; nor deny to any person, within its jurisdiction, the equal
protection of the laws." The second section did not give the Negro
the vote, but penalized a state for withholding the privilege by
reducing its representation in Congress. The third section effectively
disqualified from office all rebels who before the war had taken
the Federal oath of office. Finally, the Amendment held the Con-
federate war debt, the debts of the rebel states, and all claims for
compensation for loss of slaves "illegal and void." In June 1866,
this omnibus measure, perhaps the most far-reaching of any added
to the basic law of the land, passed both houses by large majorities.
In July a new Freedmen's Bureau Act was passed over a second
Johnson veto.
The Radicals demanded that the southern states ratify the
Fourteenth Amendment as a condition for representation in Con-
gress. Johnson thought the Amendment itself unconstitutional and
advised the states to reject it. Tennessee alone failed to follow his
advice and re-entered the Union. When the last of the rejections
arrived, Congressman James A. Garfield of Ohio declared; "The
last one of the sinful ten has . . . with contempt and scorn flung
back into our teeth the magnanimous offer of a generous nation. It is
now our turn to act." Harping on actual and alleged race riots in
southern cities, the Radicals swept the by-elections of 1866. One
of the features of the campaign that year was the first appearance
of the Grand Army of the Republic, the redoubtable G.A.R., as a
political force. The Radicals also unveiled the tactic of "waving
The Politics of Freedom 221
the bloody shirt," the shirt of Union men who had fallen in the
war brought about by the Democratic Party's alleged treason. The
soldier vote helped give the Radicals such a large margin of control
in Congress that they no longer needed to fear presidential vetoes.
Their victory the Radicals took as a mandate.
Their first step in an attempt to revolutionize the government was
to degrade the Supreme Court. In 1866 that tribunal had decided
that "martial rule can never exist where the courts are open."
Nevertheless, in March 1867, over Johnson's veto, the Radical
Congress threw out the governments of all Confederate states but
Tennessee, and cast the rest of the South into five military districts,
each under a Congress-appointed general empowered at his own
discretion to declare martial law. At the same time Congress voted
that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction in these matters and
forced it to abandon a case testing the validity of this so-called
First Reconstruction Act.
The main task of each general under the First Reconstruction
Act was to arrange for new constitutional conventions in the states
in their districts, delegates to which would be elected by universal
adult male suffrage, Negro and white. Such conventions would
create state governments under which Negroes could vote and hold
office. As soon as these governments convened they were to ratify
the Fourteenth Amendment as a condition for their return to the
Union and the return of their representatives to Congress. All but
three states Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia complied in time
to participate in the presidential elections of 1868. The three
laggard states were readmitted in 1870. In many states armies of
occupation protected the new governments until 1876 and 1877.
Having brushed aside the Court, the Radicals next tried to sub-
ordinate the Executive. Two measures of March 1867, had this as
their objective. The first, the Tenure of Office Act, deprived the
President of the power to remove federal officers without the
Senate's consent. The second, the Command of the Army Act,
forbade the President to give the army orders except through
General Grant. These measures left the President at the mercy of
Radical officeholders and divested him of his constitutional role as
Commander-in-Chief. But the Radicals wanted more. When in
222 The Defeated South
defiance of the Tenure of Office Act Johnson tried to remove
Secretary of War Stanton, he was impeached in the House and,
between March and May 1868, tried in the Senate. At the end,
thirty-five Senators voted to throw Johnson out, one vote short of
the two thirds needed for conviction.
Johnson was through anyway. In the election of 1868 the
Democrats preferred to run Horatio Seymour of New York. The
Radicals got the Republicans to run Grant, but even so they were
lucky to win. Indeed, for all the great hero's as yet untarnished
fame, he might have lost had it not been for the Union League.
Union League Clubs had been organized in the North in 1862 to
spread Union propaganda. After the war, it was said, they existed
"for no other purpose than to carry the elections." The League,
one Negro said, is the "place where we learn the law." "I can't
read, and I can't write," said another. "We go by [League] in-
structions." Grant won by 305,000 votes. Seven hundred thousand
Negroes and 625,000 whites had been made eligible to vote in the
seven hastily reconstructed states. In five, at least, the Negroes voted
heavily for Grant.
The Negro's role in winning the election made the Radicals all
the more resentful of the acts by which former rebels, in Louisiana
and Georgia in particular, barred ex-slaves from the polls. The
Radicals decided that the Fourteenth Amendment's penalties for
disfranchising the Negro were inadequate. Thus when Congress re-
convened early in 1869 it lost little time in passing the Fifteenth
Amendment: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged ... on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude." This amendment was declared
ratified in March 1870, and helped sustain "black reconstruction"
during which the freedman enjoyed an illuminating taste of power.
The new state constitutions written by the mixed, so-called
"black and tan," conventions of 1868 and 1870 were liberal in
social as well as political provisions. Above all, most of them
prescribed free public education for Negroes and whites an in-
novation for both races in most of the South and one more honored
in the observance there than in many northern commonwealths with
The Politics of Freedom 223
similar laws. By 1877, 600,000 Negroes were enrolled in southern
elementary and secondary schools, and Fisk, Howard and other
Negro colleges had got their start. "The great ambition of the older
people," said Booker T. Washington, "was to try to learn to read
the Bible before they died." For them hundreds of night schools
were opened. Carpetbaggers from the North, some of whom used
the schools simply to dispense Radical doctrine, helped man the
new institutions. They may have taught the whites that "schooling
ruins the Negro"; but they also taught the ex-slave to read and
write.
In politics as in education, carpetbaggers swarmed down for
plums and propaganda. But the South also sent thirteen Negroes to
the House of Representatives and two to the Senate. Other Negroes
gained federal administrative posts and acquitted themselves well.
In South Carolina in 1868, Negro state legislators outnumbered
whites eighty-eight to sixty-seven. Elsewhere they constituted sizable
minorities. Even in South Carolina, leadership in the legislature
remained with northern newcomers and their southern "scalawag"
collaborators, but the Negroes' role had much symbolic significance
for both races.
The South under "black reconstruction" is almost universally
depicted as a howling Babylon of corruption. Stealing, to be sure,
was widespread, though the most conspicuous stealing (the fine
furniture, carriages, jewels, and golden trinkets purchased at public
expense for private enjoyment) was likely to be the least costly.
Conventional political swag passed openly over the counter; build-
ing contracts, road work, printing jobs, the outfitting of public
edifices, all went for sums shockingly above value received.
Similarly, millions in state bonds were sold to aid politically
sponsored railroad enterprises that never laid a mile of track, or
to assist other business corporations whose officers merely pocketed
what they received.
For all this and more, between 1868 and 1874 the eleven Con-
federate states piled up debts of nearly $125,000,000. To service
the new obligations and for many other often obscure purposes
these states levied taxes that were probably the highest in the
country, the overwhelming burden of which fell on the old planter
224 The Defeated South
caste. Yet a considerable part of the crushing total of debts and
taxes can be explained by the highly inflated currency in which it is
usually evaluated. Northern bankers, moreover, sold southern
state bonds at discounts as high as 75 per cent, so that a sizable
portion of the borrowed money never reached the South. Many
of the genuine social reforms of the "black reconstruction" legisla-
tures, moreover, did cost money and were worth what they cost.
Millions of dollars were also spent to relieve suffering among the
starving and homeless of both races.
Many whites and Negroes of the new ruling class could not even
sign their names. As might have been expected from the riffraff of
conquerors and conquered alike and from even the best of the
recent slaves who looked elsewhere in vain for sympathy and status,
large numbers of legislators and administrators disported themselves
in gross and bizarre fashion. For all the corruption, it appears to
have been such conduct on the part of invaders from the North
and their ex-slave friends which did most to complete the moral
rout of the planter class and its hangers on. Desperate to regain
power, many southern leaders in the late 1860s joined the Ku Klux
Klan and similar secret organizations dedicated to "white su-
premacy." By violence and terror they sought to destroy the Negro's
voting power and with it carpetbag misrule.
After 1869 many of these white organizations engaged in such
random pillage and murder that respectable elements in the South
abandoned them in horror. But the organizations themselves per-
sisted. At the same time the Radicals in Washington renewed their
own offensive. In 1870 Congress enacted the so-called Force Act,
Besides imposing harsh penalties for infringement of the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Amendments, this Act gave original jurisdiction in
all cases arising under the Amendments to Radical-controlled
federal courts rather than to questionable southern state courts.
When in the elections of 1870 white southern Democrats neverthe-
less recaptured the governments of Tennessee, Virginia, North
Carolina, and Georgia and made notable gains elsewhere, the Radi-
cals proceeded to enact the Ku Klux Klan Act. This gave federal
courts original jurisdiction in all cases involving conspiracies or
violence against the freedmen and also empowered the President to
The Politics of Freedom 225
suspend habeas corpus and to declare martial law in any terrorized
community.
These acts marked the high point of the Radicals' fight to insure
the Republican Party the Negro vote. Both failed. Grant promptly
used the Ku Klux Klan Act to send troops to South Carolina to
protect the federal courts from "white supremacy" vigilantes. But
subsequent, requests by beleaguered carpetbaggers for military
assistance were denied. A congressional commission seeking to
justify military interference made a public report instead, which
helped to justify the white South's discontent. This report became
very popular among northerners who were repelled by Radical
corruption in their own section and who had grown fatigued, as
Grant put it later, by the "annual autumnal outbreaks in the South"
brought about by carpetbagger aggressions. To conciliate this grow-
ing "liberal Republican" group before the presidential elections of
1872, Congress passed an Amnesty Act restoring to good political
standing all southerners except about five hundred of the topmost
Confederate leaders. Congress also permitted the Freedmen's
Bureau to expire.
With the South out of the Union during the Civil War the
Federal Government had lost little time enacting measures that the
ante-bellum southern opposition had persistently helped to defeat.
These included high tariffs on manufactures, free homesteads for
free farmers, and lavish land grants for transcontinental railroads
across northern routes. Though most of the Radicals had been long-
standing leaders of the antislavery agitation, and many of them
Abolitionists dedicated to Negro freedom and equality, one of their
significant motives in insisting on the Negro's right to vote was the
protection of these material fruits of victory from the return of
southern Democrats to Congress and the presidency. In this the
Radical "Stalwarts" had been most successful. Indeed, by 1872
they had not only protected but had gilded the fruits of victory.
"The House of Representatives," said ex-Congressman Stevenson
of Ohio in 1873, "was like an auction room where more valuable
considerations were disposed of under the speaker's hammer than
in any other place on earth." Naturally, the politicos there and in
the Senate got their share.
226 The Defeated South
By the elections of 1872, however, many northern businessmen
were ready to join with political reformers in "throwing the rascals
out*" Prominent among these businessmen were import merchants
who traditionally were free traders and who, in addition, were being
mulcted by the tariff collectors in New York and other ports for
the benefit of the Radical political machine. Commercial bankers
who financed the import merchants' operations also were ready
to protest. So were many lawyers, who were alienated by the cor-
ruption of the courts and the low caliber of politically appointed
judges. Opposition to the Radicals also drew some northern
Democrats who had been outraged by the corruption of their own
local party bosses, of whom Boss Tweed of New York City was the
most notorious. Such bosses usually shared the "boodle" with
their Radical opposite numbers.
Representatives of all these discontented elements convened in
Cincinnati on May 1, 1872, formally organized the Liberal Re-
publican Party, and nominated Horace Greeley for the presidency.
The futility of the reformers became obvious at this first meeting.
So many different "causes" were represented in the Liberal Republi-
can movement that internal dissension disrupted it almost before it
began. Unfortunately, its candidate, Greeley, underscored the
movement's weakness. For thirty years, as editor of the New York
Tribune, Greeley had supported with unflagging enthusiasm about
as many contradictory programs as the "Liberals" represented.
The Liberal Republican movement not only failed to develop
political momentum, it also dissipated the momentum of the re-
viving national Democratic Party. The Democrats' only chance in
the election of 1872 was to join up with Grant's opponents. Since
most of these were absorbed in Liberal Republicanism, the Demo-
crats had little choice but to endorse the Liberal candidate. Greeley
had once referred to northern Democrats as "the treasonous section
of Northern politics." But the Democrats of 1872 closed their eyes
to the past and gave Greeley the noniination. Greeley's campaign
quickly became a pathetic farce. The Stalwarts, who had again
nominated Grant, swept to an easy victory.
The elections of 1876, however, proved another story. After the
Amnesty Act of 1872, white southern leaders went about reclaim-
The Politics of Freedom 227
ing their hold on southern state governments. Their tactics included
typical Klan violence against the Negro, and economic reprisals
against those who voted. But many Negroes had grown tired of the
carpetbaggers and scalawags and often needed little persuasion to
stay away from the polls. The Panic of 1873 weakened the Re-
publican hold on the white electorate, and in 1874 the Democrats,
augmented by victorious white supremacists from the South, gained
control of the House of Representatives. Even during the campaign
of 1872 there had been reports of vast scandals in Grant's first ad-
ministration. After their congressional victory in 1874, the Demo-
crats, through Congressional investigations, revealed just how deep
these scandals ran. By 1876 the Republican national administra-
tion stood revealed as the most corrupt in American history. By
then only three southern states, Florida, South Carolina, and
Louisiana, remained in Republican hands.
To save what they could of their tainted machine, (he Radical
politicos decided to conciliate the honest core of the business com-
munity by running as their presidential candidate the impeccable
Republican reform Governor of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes. The
Democrats countered with a reformer of their own, Governor
Samuel J. Tilden of New York, an outstanding corporation lawyer
who had recently sent Boss Tweed himself to jail. With the votes of
four states missing, Tilden held a popular majority of 300,000 and
an electoral plurality just one vote short of victory.
Given the candidates involved, it seemed as though the reform
elements could not lose the election; given Tilden's vote, it seemed
as though the Republicans could not win it. But Tilden never got
the one electoral vote he needed and the reformers themselves were
fairly soon sold out. Three of the missing states were Louisiana,
Florida and South Carolina, and the delay in each was caused by
a conflict between the Radicals and the resurgent Democrats over
the legitimacy of (heir respective ballot counts. The Radicals, who
were still protected by the military, saw to it that the questionable
Republican ballots were sent to Congress to be tallied; in Congress
other Radicals saw to it that these Republican ballots were ac-
cepted. By these means Hayes won what was certainly the most
tainted victory of his life.
228 The Defeated South
So tainted indeed was Hayes's election that by February 1877,
a Democratic movement to thwart his inauguration had grown
strong enough to frighten experienced observers with the thought
that "the terrors of civil war were again to be renewed." Taking
the lead in forestalling violence was a key group of new southern
political leaders. Democrats in name only, they had been Whigs al-
most without exception before the war. Their sympathy was with
commerce and transportation as much as with agriculture. These
southerners aimed to combine with regular Republicans to win
federal aid for southern railroad development and to draw northern
investment capital to southern industry. Their goal was a "New
South" rather than restoration of the "Old South." Hayes, not
Tilden, became their man. Enough Democratic votes were thus
available to the Republicans in Congress to effect a settlement of
the election dispute and allow Hayes's inauguration in March.
To insure the new southern leaders' continuance in power and to
reassure the entire country, Hayes in 1877 recalled the last of the
federal troops from the South. "Black Reconstruction" was ended
forever. The Negroes themselves retained their legal political and
social rights until these so-called New South Democrats were over-
thrown within fifteen years of their ascent. But these Democrats
themselves scarcely gave the Negroes the opportunity to exercise
their rights.
THE ECONOMIC UNDERTOW
While many in the North had been trying to reconstruct the Union
by extending to the South the familiar political privileges of free-
dom, many Southerners had sought to reconstruct their section by
restoring the familiar economic disabilities of slavery. This re-
actionary tendency was intensified after the failure of the industrial
"New South" had become apparent in the late 1880s. But the fact
remains that industrialism had been tried only because of the prior
failure of the old castes to restore their "Old South" to reality, and
the inability of northern capitalists to make money in the agrarian
South themselves.
In September 1865, Union General Francis C, Barlow, "an able
man without many illusions," who had seen service in the South,
The Economic Undertow 229
advised some Boston investors: "Making money [in Georgia] is
simply a question of being able to make the darkies work." That
alone, however, was to prove far from a simple question even for
planters experienced with slaves if not with free Negroes. Yet ex-
abolitionist carpetbaggers with little business experience flocked
to the South after the war to educate the defeated in northern enter-
prise and energy; for them it proved impossible to solve the "simple
question" of how to profit from former slaves. General Barlow's
proteges invested $65,000 in an excellent Georgia plantation of
about 6,000 acres. At the end of a year one of them exclaimed of
"these imperturbable blacks": "The more I see of them, the more
inscrutable do they become, and the less do I like them." At the
end of the second year, frustrated by the climate, the caterpillars,
and the falling price of cotton, as well as by the liberated Negro's
personality, they were ready to slink away. "We sold the plantation
for $5,000 and were glad to be rid of it," they wrote in 1867.
"What a d d piece of business the whole thing is."
By 1865 northern enterprise and energy had defeated secession.
For a long time thereafter they failed to conquer the South. For an
equally long time the South failed to conquer itself. When John
Watson, Tom Watson's father, returned from the war to his decayed
Georgia acres, the first thing he did was to tell his hands they were
free and then invite them to continue on as before. The next day,
"not a negro remained on the place . , . every house in the 'quarter'
was empty." John Watson nevertheless went right ahead to mort-
gage a future crop and build a grand new mansion. After the new
house was foreclosed in 1868, "my father," reports young Tom,
"used to be virtually paralyzed for weeks by what he called 'the
blues. 3 "
Unlike Watson's Negroes, most of the ex-slaves, though given to
unpredictable flights to exercise their liberty, retained "a definite
attachment to the place" where they had worked. They continued
to look to "the 'well-raised' gentlemen"; unfortunately, the latter
characteristically looked to the past. For months after Appomattox,
some extremists even succeeded in concealing from their slaves that
they were free, and clung to the "peculiar institution" to the bitter
end.
230 The Defeated South
One of the first economic needs of the South was a restoration
of trade and transportation. Aware of this, the Federal Government
removed all restrictions on the exchange of commodities between
North and South and between the South and Europe by July 1865.
Soon after, it returned all rebel railroads, many of them in better
condition than before the war. River and road, however, remained
the South's main domestic carriers, and twenty years of solid Re-
publican rule were to pass before the South received a fair share of
the river and harbor improvement pork barrel. In that period many
navigable southern streams remained unusable for commerce. As
for wagon roads, the South was left to its own traditional devices.
Typically, the best road near New Orleans was rebuilt with an eye
more to horse racing than hauling.
The South required capital even more urgently than markets and
the means to reach them. Federal postwar policy, however, only
ate up what capital had escaped the wrath of war. Ordered imme-
diately after the war to confiscate Confederate government property
(which amounted to 150,000 bales of cotton and little else) Union
agents, their zeal stimulated by commissions of 25 per cent,
swarmed over private as well as public warehouses. Most of their
loot they sold off on their own accounts. On what it received, the
Federal Government realized about $34,000,000, much of which
it eventually returned to some 40,000 persistent southern claimants.
But this was only a small fraction of the total loss and in any case
came far too late. What such physical confiscation began, confisca-
tory taxes completed. In but three years after 1865 a so-called rev-
enue tax on cotton, one of many federal levies, took $68,000,000
from the South far more than the total expenditure on a dozen
years of relief and reconstruction by all public and private northern
agencies combined.
Confiscation and confiscatory taxation, terroristic in themselves,
hastened the onset of a much more frightful economic disease which
in any case would probably have brought "apathy stealing over the
energies of the people," to use Tom Watson's phrase. This was
"sharecropping" and its corollary, "the crop lien."
Before the war most southern plantations had been heavily
mortgaged. When pressure for service on the debts was resumed
The Economic Undertow 231
after the war by creditors with their own backs to the wall, the fear
of imminent foreclosure stirred many planters to an unwonted show
of activity. The federal raids and levies nipped this in the bud.
Forced sales had already become regular monthly features at nearly
every Southern courthouse; now the door was opened wider to the
carpetbaggers who snatched up the land only to fail in their ill-
considered endeavors. Some planters fended off the day of judg-
ment by selling part of their land in order to finance cultivation of
the rest; others leased out acreage for a monthly rent. But
scarcity of money had put the planters in straits in the first place.
Naturally it also limited the number of cash transactions. The up-
shot was the system by which the planter "could obtain labor with-
out paying wages and [the] landless farmer could get land without
paying rent." For his services in the process of production each was
to take, instead, a share of the forthcoming crop.
The rub was that to get this crop into the ground both parties to
the agreement had to borrow, and since they had no other security
they had to borrow on what they hoped to produce. Only against
this forthcoming collateral would the supply merchant advance the
required seed, fertilizer, food, clothing, tools, and fencing. Risks
under this system were so great that northerners who supplied the
supply merchant charged exorbitant prices for goods and very high
interest for credit. These exactions and oppressive charges for trans-
portation, insurance, and other commercial functions, the merchant
passed on to the southern landlord and cropper. The merchant also
added his own high profit and interest and on occasion a generous
tithe to reward himself for his literacy at the expense of borrowers
who could not read his books. Under this regime the South, instead
of being aided by northern capital, became more firmly enchained
to northern creditors while the sharecropper was enslaved to the
merchant.
The South fell into the catastrophic sharecrop and crop-lien sys-
tems largely because of capital starvation. These nails were driven
more deeply into the coffin of the southern economy because they
offered a kind of solution to the labor problem as well.
Both Negroes and whites were unfamiliar with a free-labor mar-
232 The Defeated South
ket, but many planters undertook at first to hold on to their workers
by offering keep and cash. To protect the Negro from being packed
off as soon as the crops were in, Freedmen's Bureau officials in-
sisted that such arrangements be confirmed by written contracts.
These usually provided for a wage of$10to$12a month, less the
cost, determined by the planter, of "quarters, fuel . . . and sub-
stantial rations." In exchange the freedman agreed "to labor faith-
fully ... six days during the week, in a manner customary on a
plantation." In the hope that the Negro would stay at least until the
harvest was over, the planter was usually willing to sign. The Black
Codes, in turn, made it hazardous for the ex-slave to wander.
Far from strengthening the free-labor market, however, the
Black Codes went far toward destroying it. The pay for "convict
labor" created by enforcement of the Codes went to the state not
the worker, and when a state was in want of cash, state police
simply rounded up "vagrants" and hired them out. Since convict
pay was so much below the prevailing wage, there was always a
ready market for the "vagrant" Negroes. "Employers of convicts
pay so little," an Alabama paper complained as late as 1889, "that
it makes it next to impossible for those who give work to free labor
to compete with them. ... As a result, the price paid for labor is
based upon the price paid for convicts." The system had another
attraction. In the 1870s the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad
Company began paying a regular annual rental of $101,000 for the
state's convicts. "One of the chief reasons which first induced the
company to take up the system," the Company's general counsel ex-
plained, "was the great chance which it seemed to present for over-
coming strikes/'
But the wage system failed on plantations for other reasons.
Often there simply was no money for it. When there was, the planter
usually found good prior uses for the cash. "The freedmen have
universally been treated with bad faith," wrote General W. E.
Strong from Texas in 1866, "and very few have ever received any
compensation for work performed." The conduct of the freedman,
however, often did not help matters. Emancipated, the Negro
quickly learned to resent working "in a manner customary on a
plantation." In protest he would leave.
The Economic Undertow 233
Sharecropping ultimately stabilized labor relations. The surviving
old planters were quickly liquidated in the postwar South. Through
sharecropping, the plantation with little of its ameliorating pater-
nalism was preserved. Southern land was divided into large
numbers of small "holdings" which gave the illusion of small inde-
pendent farms. Actually, many "holdings" formed parts of single
plantations which, through foreclosures, gradually fell under the
control of supply merchants or their creditors.
These businessmen were quite aware of the legend and the dream
of the Old South. In aspiring to the political and social eminence of
the old planter caste they yearned above all else to become large
landowners. The weak credit system made the tendency toward
monopolization of land strong. Dictation by the supply merchant
made concentration on a single cash crop even stronger. Lest the
crop fail, moreover, the merchant assumed a degree of control over
the entire life of the cropper and his family that an oldtime overseer
would hardly have thought worth the effort. For the cropper him-
self, as "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman of South Carolina put it, the whole
system kept men on a "lazy 'descent into hell' " "like victims of
some horrid nightmare," added the more imaginative Tom Watson,
"powerless oppressed shackled."
The end of the slave system had left the Negroes most numerous
on the fattest land of the old "black belt." Most of them found it
easier than, the old slaveless yeoman farmers to adjust to the in-
ertia and interference of the new system. This lingering servility, in
turn, recommended the Negro to the landowner and the merchant.
White croppers were likely to be "ornery." When times failed to
improve, the rub of poverty gave a higher luster to the white
farmers' dream of the "Old Time South." Led by men like Tom
Watson, Ben Tillman, James K. Vardaman of Mississippi, and
Hoke Smith of Georgia, they looked down upon the new business
"planters" as something worse by far than their Damyankee
models, as parvenus, usurpers, betrayers of the Lost Cause. All the
greater, then, the parvenu's hunger for black "help" to authenticate
the new plantation life. "White labor," said an Alabama planter of
1888, "is totally unsuited to our methods, our manners, and our
234 The Defeated South
accommodations." "Give me the nigger every time," said another
in Mississippi. "He will live on less and do more hard work, when
properly managed, than any other class, or race of people. . . ,
'We can boss him' and that is what we southern folk like."
The fact that the white farmer on poorer soil outproduced the
Negro cropper on the rich black-belt land hardly helped the situa-
tion. "The Negro skins the land," went a southern saying, "and
the planter skins the Negro." But the poor white was his own "bot-
tom rail," and when debt caught up with him, as it inevitably did
after crop prices began their own descent into hell in the 1880s, he
was simply turned off the land. As cropping took an ever "blacker"
hue, the dispossessed white farmer turned sour, until, like Grady's
carefully chosen rank and filer, he grew "willing for almost anything
to turn up which gives promise or possibility of change." Even the
white man's factory was better than the black man's kind of farm.
Poor white degradation was deepened by yet another heritage
which postwar chaos exacerbated, the absence of public schools.
"In 1876," wrote an old southerner years later, "I stood in Fayette-
ville, North Carolina, and saw white youth after white youth turned
away from the polls because they could not read and write, while
my horse-boy and other Negroes taught by Northern teachers, were
consistently admitted to the ballot. And I swore an oath that so long
as my head was hot, I should never cease from fighting for schools
until every white child born in the State had at least the surety of
a common school education and a chance to go as much further
as he liked."
"The factory and the school, then!" writes W. J. Cash. These
alone offered the poor white the hope of salvation. Yet fifty years
after the end of Reconstruction the South had much the highest
white illiteracy rate in the country, and not until World War n
would the factory make an impression on the prevailing poverty.
A vigorous cotton manufacturing industry did arise in the South
after the Civil War. Yet as Francis B. Simkins, a historian of the
section, says, "if all ... spindles of the Southern textile industry
had been concentrated in one state in 1880, that commonwealth
would have ranked only seventh among the cotton manufacturing
states of the country." After 1880, the building of factories in the
The Economic Undertow 235
South became a civic mission to which white doctors, preachers,
lawyers, professors, and a veritable army of old generals and colo-
nels lent their capital, their energy, their names and reputations.
Textiles continued to grow fastest. In the depression of the
mid-1880's southern iron began to compete successfully with Pitts-
burgh's. At about the same time, the North Carolina tobacco manu-
facturing industry responded hopefully to the country-wide fad of
cigarette smoking. A bit later the cottonseed oil manufacture
spurted upward. As late as 1900, the vaunted New South neverthe-
less accounted for a smaller proportion of American manufactures
than did the Old South in 1860.
The South raised itself industrially by its own bootstraps. But
more significant than southern enthusiasm in the long run was
northern capital, though it never did flow in with the rush that
Grady's oratory seemed to inspire. After the violence that marked
the labor disputes in the "free" North during the depression of the
1870s, the labor appeal of the South acquired importance. "Money
invested here," wrote a North Carolina paper in 1887, "is as safe
from the rude hand of mob violence as it is in the best United States
bond." Shortly after, the Southern Manufacturers' Record promised
that "long hours of labor and moderate wages will continue to be
the rule for many years to come." An Alabama publicist in 1886
offered this additional security: "The white laboring classes here
are separated from the Negroes ... by an innate consciousness of
race superiority. This sentiment dignifies the character of white
labor. It excites a sentiment of sympathy and equality on their part
with the classes above them, and in this way becomes a wholesome
social leaven."
That was what the New South campaign aimed to bring
about. Unfortunately for its promoters, as late as 1900 fewer than
4 per cent of the people in the important textile state of South Caro-
lina were as yet engaged in manufacturing, while 70 per cent re-
mained occupied with agriculture. The ratios in the rest of the South
were little different. And what did the southern white industrial
family gain? "Their power," writes a southern historian about the
section's factory owners, "was peculiarly Southern. Unconsciously
copying the planters, they established their workers in villages
236 The Defeated South
which resembled the slave quarters of old. In return for this 'benev-
olence' they received a feudal obedience."
After the business crash of 1893 conditions grew worse. In 1894
J. P. Morgan fostered a new flow of northern capital into the re-
organization and consolidation of southern railroads, coal, iron,
steel, and other industries. The discovery of oil at Spindletop,
Texas, in 1901 opened gigantic new areas for investment and devel-
opment. Henceforth not only were southern mill hands and other
industrial workers held in bondage, but the entire section lived in
peonage to the North. Even federal emergency relief funds for vic-
tims of flood, drought, and famine long discriminated against the
late rebels. Differentials in tariff, transportation, trust, and banking
policies bore the South down, while its own desperate capital needs
only added burdens. "We must induce capital for manufactures to
come here," intoned one unoriginal southerner as late as 1897, "by
offering cheaper money, cheaper taxation, cheaper labor, cheaper
coal, and cheaper power, and much more public spirit." And the
cost of these fine inducements fall on whom, asked the forgotten
poor white farmers? On them "out of all proportion to the value of
their property or their ability to pay."
While the shifting currents of freedom lifted the Negro from
slave to sharecropper, the economic undertow in the South drew
the white farmer and white worker alike to the brink of slavery. As
the South gradually became inured to industry, the life of its factory
hands grew harsher until in the 1930s they began to look out for
themselves in their own unions. Much earlier, in the Agrarian
Crusade of the late 1870s and 1880s, and the Populist Revolt of
the 1890s, the southern farmer was to unite once more with the
western agrarian in striving through the intercession of the national
government to win a more favorable place in the national scheme of
things. In fact, he gained little from either movement except a
degree of local power. Since this power proved inadequate to lift
the "white trash" from the economic slough, the white man used it
largely to shove Jim Crow into the social ghetto.
A series of Supreme Court decisions, beginning with that in
United States v. Reese in 1875 and ending with the Civil Rights
The Economic Undertow 237
Cases of 1883, made discrimination against Jim Crow easy. In
these cases the Court ruled that while the Federal Government
might continue to protect Negro citizens from discrimination by
state acts, it could not protect them from the acts of private indi-
viduals even if the latter were organized. This was practically an
invitation to lynch law. Even state acts, moreover, could discrimi-
nate on grounds other than race or color in protecting civil rights;
and could discriminate on grounds of race and color themselves in
protecting social rights. Thus did the Court sanction the literacy
tests and other restraints on the Negro's civil rights, and the flood of
Jim Crow segregation measures curtailing his social rights. Until the
late 1880s there was little love lost between the races. After that the
white southern farmer became the avenging spirit of the "Old Time
South"; he in particular made freedom a nightmare for the descend-
ants of the old-tune slave.
Chapter Nine
The WHd West
The persistent southern preference for cheap money,
low tariffs, commodity banks, and railroad regulation drove the
New York Tribune to lament in 1879 that "the South is not yet
ready for the new civilization." During the next decade Henry
Grady made it his mission to correct this condition. In self-pro-
tection, the agrarian South began once again to reach out for its
own "most valuable ally," the agrarian West. "United politically,"
a Mississippian argued in 1878, the South and West "are invincible.
They can defy the world, the flesh, and the devil."
The West that was to respond like "a regular Baptist camp meet-
ing chorus" to the southern agrarian appeal after 1880 was far dif-
ferent from that which had temporarily joined with the slavocracy
fifty years before. With its iron ore, coal, steel mills, lake steamers,
and railroad grid, the old West was well on its way to becoming the
very heart of the Mark Hanna-McKinley country. Eventually the
new West would also prove a natural habitat for the civilization of
big business and finance whereupon it too would desert the South.
For some time, however, the "Wad West" remained politically and
economically as far from "ready for the new civilization" as the
Georgia pine barrens or the clay hills of Mississippi.
THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE
As late as 1860 not a single state had been organized on the great
plains beyond the Mississippi valley except for Texas. In the awe-
some country of the Rockies and the Sierras and in the forbidding
Great Basin between these ranges, political organization had
scarcely begun. Even news of the slavery controversy and the Civil
War often failed to reach or interest men in this distant wilderness
who had ancient and more absorbing interests of their own.
238
The Wild West 239
In despair their prototype, the Spaniard Coronado, first described
the dizzying plains of the West as the "North American desert,"
and for more than three hundred years his epithet stuck. This un-
charted expanse, extending well into Mexico and Canada, seemed
as boundless and inhospitable as the ocean. More depressing was
its almost complete lack of timber for fuel, houses, fences, barns.
Fructifying rainfall scarcely ever watered any part of this country.
Instead, violent hailstorms and crushing fails of snow as dry as
sand periodically assaulted it, driven by constant, howling winds
that often surged to gale velocity. Sucked dry in their passage over
the lofty mountain barriers, themselves crowned with snow the year
round, these winds brought extremes of heat and cold to the plains
that alternately froze the infrequent rivers in their courses and
parched their beds.
For white men, whose technology, tradition, imagery, and out-
look had long been conditioned by the forests, streams, regular
rainfall, and rolling hills of western Europe and eastern America,
here was a country to be shunned. Before the opening of the first
transcontinental railroad in 1869, most of the people journeying
to the salubrious woodlands and watercourses of Oregon and Cali-
fornia went by ship around the Horn. This was the favorite route
of the clippers, which could make the long voyage from Boston or
New York to California in a hundred days and sometimes less. Few
undertook to cross the "desert" by wagon train, and so strewn with
wrecks and carcasses were the plains that they merited their chilling
fame. Of one particular region around Nevada, Mark Twain ex-
claimed, "The desert was one prodigious graveyard."
Yet, like the high mountain ridges and clear mountain streams
that the western trappers plied so successfully, the arid, treeless
plains teemed with life. The native grass and livestock of the plains.,
said William Gilpin, the first territorial governor of Colorado, are
"spontaneously supported by nature as is the fish of the sea." Hun-
dreds of trillions of herbivorous jack rabbits and prairie dogs fed
on the prevalent grass; tens of millions of carnivorous wolves and
coyotes fed on the rabbits and the dogs. Most important and most
picturesque were the overwhelming buffalo herds. The Plains In-
dians lived off the buffalo. His flesh was their food, his skin their
clothing, his hide the sheltering cover of their tepees. Their daily
240 The Wild West
round of life revolved around the buffalo hunt, and their ritual and
worship were dedicated to its success.
For countless centuries, the Plains Indians had stalked the
buffalo on foot and lived precariously or starved while the herds
multiplied. Then sixteenth-century Spaniards brought the horse to
the new world. The horse greatly extended the Plains Indian's hunt-
ing range, carrying him as a trespasser to tribal lands not his own
and intensifying tribal warfare. As the Indians' ability in the hunt
grew, the buffalo herds diminished and tribal wars for the precious
beast grew more frequent and bloody. To survive, the Indians be^
came ever more nomadic, more violent, more hostile to trespassers
of any kind and better riders and fighters.
George Catlin, who spent most of his mature life painting Plains
Indians, said the Comanches were "the most extraordinary horse-
men that I have seen yet in all my travels, and I doubt very much
whether any people in the world can surpass them." The neighbor-
ing Sioux, Cheyenne, Blackfeet, and Crows could not afford to be
much less efficient than the Comanches. A little to the south, the
Osage, Pawnee, and related tribes also took well to the horse, the
hunt, and the warpath. To the southwest, on the more authentic
desert of Arizona and New Mexico, rode the formidable Navajos
and Apaches.
These Indians, said Catlin, "all ride for their enemies, and also
for their game." Besides a magnificent horse, the red man's equip-
ment included the murderous short bow, no more than two and a
half or three feet across and superbly adapted to horseback, and
a quiver of a hundred barbed arrows. But more important than his
gear was the Indian himself and his relation to his mount. "We were
surprised, incredulous, almost offended/' said visitors to Kansas in
1854, "when a young officer . . . deliberately asserted that our
mounted men, though armed with revolvers, were in general not a
match in close combat, for the mounted Indians, with their bows
and arrows." But it was soon proved that Indian tactics would carry
the day.
Riding outside rather than atop his horse, with both hands free,
one to feed the bow and the other to release it, and shooting under
the neck or belly of his mount while remaining virtually invisible
Removing the Indian Barrier 241
himself, the Indian would circle madly, frighten ill-trained army
horses with his blood-curdling yells, and render "any certain aim
with the revolver impossible, while his arrows are discharged at
horse and man more rapidly than even a revolver can be fired."
Not until after the Civil War, when the repeating revolver and the
breech-loading rifle became regular army equipment, were the
Plains Indians at a disadvantage.
In 1860 about 250,000 redmen, not all as violent as the fighting
tribes, held the "desert" and the mountain country. Approximately
175,000 whites, 90 per cent of them male, were also scattered over
the vast area. Their number soon was augmented by deserters from
both armies in the distant war. Except for the 25,000 Mormons
settled in Utah, these whites, like the Indians, were almost always
on the move. They prospected, hunted, trapped, drove cattle and
sheep, guided and sometimes misguided emigrant trains bound for
California and Oregon, scouted for the army, hauled the overland
freight, carried the overland mail, gambled, drank, and wenched
when occasion offered, and traded and fought with the redmen.
Some of them, like Kit Carson and Jim Bridger, were as free on a
horse and as sharp on a trail as any native.
While inhabitants of the older sections were making the United
States a powerful member of the concert of nations and keeping the
country abreast of developments in science, philosophy, literature,
and the arts, the Wild West was living an extraordinary life of its
own that entered most profoundly into the American spirit and
mythology. Even before the Civil War was over, the culture of
cowboys, rustlers and roundups, of six-shooters and branding irons,
warpath and council fire, wide-open mining towns, posses and
sheriffs, had imposed itself on the Great American Desert. After
the war, it implanted itself so resoundingly in the American con-
sciousness that its echoes are heard to this day.
REMOVING THE INDIAN BARRIER
The fate of the "Digger" Indians of California following the Gold
Rush of 1849 foreshadowed later events in the nineteenth century
that almost cleared the redmen from the Wild West. In a decade the
ferocity of California prospectors, miners, outlaws, and adventurers
242 The Wild West
had reduced the Digger population from 150,000 to 30,000. From
the very beginning of white settlement in North America, the pagan-
ism of the natives had served as a justification for Christian vio-
lence. In the nineteenth century United States government policy
only confirmed the Indians' growing conviction of "the fatal tend-
ency of their new environment."
In 1851 Congress formally terminated the policy of "One Big
Reservation" on the whole expanse of the "desert" and forced
treaties upon the Plains Indians corralling them onto limited reser-
vations. This deprived them of their traditional hunting grounds, and
worse, crowded them onto the lands of other tribes which offered
them no welcome. In the meantime administration of Indian affairs,
heretofore a function solely of the army, was given in part to the
new Bureau of the Interior, created in 1849. The army deeply re-
sented this shift of responsibility, and the open corruption of the
new department brought the Indians to open rebellion against the
reservation policy. At the mercy now of rapacious officials as well
as touchy soldiers, the Indians were either starved on the reserva-
tions or killed in open country. In the 1850s a Western settler
wrote: "It was customary to speak of the Indian man as a Buck;
of the woman as a squaw. ... By a very natural and easy transition,
from being spoken of as brutes, they came to be thought of as game
to be shot, or as vermin to be destroyed."
The treaties of 1851 and later had been made only with nominal
Indian leaders and rump groups. Thus it became one thing to set
aside Indian reservations and another to force most of the redmen
onto them and to keep them there incarcerated by the army. Trou-
ble was constantly brewing, and in 1862 when regular army units
were recalled from the plains for Civil War service and replaced by
inexperienced recruits, the earliest of the so-called Indian wars of
the plains broke out. The next five years saw scores of futile battles,
which ultimately convinced a parsimonious Congress that the cost
of subduing Indians was too great and subjugation itself too slow.
In 1868 new treaties assigning new reservations were made with
the war-weary Indians. "All who cling to their old hunting
grounds," warned General Sherman, "are hostile and will remain
so till killed off. We will have a sort of predatory war for years but
the country is so large, and the advantage of the Indians so great,
Removing the Indian Barrier 243
that we cannot make a single war end it." As Sherman anticipated,
between 1869 and 1876 over two hundred pitched battles were
waged between the army and the Indians. It was during a conflict
with the Sioux in the latter year that General Custer made his "last
stand" against Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull in the battle of Little
Big Horn.
Extermination of the buffalo demolished the remains of Indian
society and Indian hopes. A buffalo stampede was perfectly capable
of overturning a train and as western railroad building progressed,
buffalo hunting became a regular feature of it. "Buffalo Bill" Cody
got his reputation by killing some 4,000 buffalo in eighteen months
as a hunter for the Kansas Pacific line. Buffalo shooting next be-
came a popular and devastating western "sport," and then in 1871
changed to a still more devastating business. A Pennsylvania tan-
nery had found that it could work the hides into commercial leather,
and skins, heretofore hardly worth retrieving, suddenly were valued
at $1 to $3 apiece. Between 1872 and 1874, the annual carnage was
3,000,000 bison. By 1878 the southern herd had vanished, while
a tiny remnant of the northern herd had fled to the Canadian woods.
The final act of violence against the Indian was in a way the sum-
mation of his history. When Columbus discovered North America
probably a million aborigines occupied the area now comprising
the United States. Grouped in 600 distinct nations, few of which
numbered as many as 2,000 persons, their entire existence was
arranged and ordered by the tribe. With the coming of the horse,
small groups of Plains Indians broke off to hunt independently and
only once a year in the summer did they reunite for tribal festivities
which eventually grew into "a frightful conglomeration of rites and
customs" known, inaccurately, as the Sun Dance. This sacred ritual
lasted for days. It reaffirmed happy tribal unity, and was replete
with offerings to the buffalo. In 1884 the United States Government
prohibited the Sun Dance and other Indian religious practices. In
1890 while a Dance was nevertheless in progress on the Sioux
reservation, troops appeared and the Indians ran. The troops fol-
lowed, and in the battle of Wounded Knee they massacred the half-
starved survivors of the once-fierce tribe. By then there were hardly
200,000 Indians left in the United States.
Three years before Wounded Knee, Congress had passed the
244 The Wild West
Dawes Act which defined our basic Indian policy until 1934. This
Act broke up tribal autonomy even on the reservations and gave
each Indian head of a family 160 acres as his own to cultivate. After
a probation period of twenty-five years, he was to have full owner-
ship and full American citizenship. By 1924 all Indians had been
granted full citizenship.
The Dawes Act dramatically reversed Indian policy as a result of
widespread humanitarian opposition to the old extermination pol-
icies. Its consequences, however, were disastrous. The division of
the land left the Indians with far less than they had heretofore held,
even on the reservations. Moreover, the poorest land was chosen
for them; the best sold off to white settlers. Worse, even where
they had good land, their inexperience with property left them vul-
nerable individually to the same kind of sharp practices that had
cost them so dearly as tribes. They had neither the tradition nor
the incentive to cultivate what lands they retained. Pauperization
grew like a weed.
It took those responsible almost as long to learn something of
the Indian's history and traditions as to exterminate him. The In-,
dian Reorganization Act of 1934 again reversed Indian policy in
the light of greater knowledge, and under men like John Collier the
Office of Indian Affairs succeeded in restoring tribal unity and tribal
incentive on a wide scale. For the first time in at least three centuries
the Indian population began to grow again, and by 1955 the once
"vanishing Americans" numbered 400,000.
MINING COUNTRY
The thirty years after the outbreak of the Civil War were to disclose
the mineral wealth and organic treasure concealed by the "desert."
The earth's most productive wheat lands, once the secret of their
cultivation was learned, covered the Dakotas and eastern Mon-
tana. In the farther reaches of these states, and in future states to
the south and west, spread seemingly boundless grazing lands soon
to become the source of most of the world's beef, mutton, hides, and
wool. Other plains and mountain regions held some of the world's
largest and purest veins of copper and iron ore, some of its most
extensive deposits of lead and zinc, and valuable seams of coal.
Mining Country 245
Beneath the lands of Texas (and elsewhere in the West, as time
proved), lay incredibly large fields of petroleum and natural gas.
For generations, the forest-oriented nation which claimed the
territory had even less use for its resources than the Indians who
roamed it. Americans had plenty of land elsewhere. American needs
in fuel and structural parts, the major uses of coal and iron, re-
mained well supplied by the wood that still covered much of the
older areas. Copper was almost useless to a nation with little de-
mand for electric wire. Pennsylvania petroleum, burned almost ex-
clusively as an illuminant rather than a fuel remained more than
adequate to the pre-automobile age. In America's mid-nineteenth-
century economy, conventional investments continued to reward
capital adequately; men of means thus were content to leave to
prospectors with little standing and less credit the searching out of
new opportunities for wealth. Such prospectors hardly concerned
themselves with the future requirements of organized society; they
followed unflaggingly only the most ancient of lures the precious
metals, gold and silver.
The first prospectors in California had a fine code and fine cama-
raderie. "Honesty was the ruling passion of '48," wrote one of them.
In a year, however, the California crowds thickened, and "murders,
thefts, and heavy robberies soon became the order of the day. 5 *
Conditions grew steadily worse during the 1850s as even the
fabulous discoveries at Sutter's Mill and elsewhere began to run
thin.
In July 1858, the first claim was staked out in Colorado and in
six months 100,000 "yondersiders" from California and "green-
horns" from Kansas, their wagons blazoned "Pike's Peak or Bust,'*
swarmed into the region around present-day Denver. They found
gold, but very little of it; many swarmed right out again, their
wagons now proclaiming "Pike's Peak and Busted." Some remained
to strike it rich in other sections of Colorado; some, as in California,
turned to fanning, shopkeeping and other activities which devel-
oped Colorado's varied economy and aspirations to statehood.
Thousands joined the army of prospectors, among them George
Pullman who is said to have got the idea for his "sleepers" from
miners' double-decked bunks.
246 The Wild West
For those infected anew with gold fever, failure in Colorado only
magnified the rumors of the 'fifties about Nevada. Numerous small
Nevada strikes kept up the prospectors' confidence. Then in the
spring of 1859, the Comstock Lode bonanza on Davidson Moun-
tain was struck (though it was ten years before its full value was
known), and in a few months 20,000 men with their horses, mules,
picks, shovels, and pans, their whisky, cards, and camp-following
women, had congregated in the wild country around. There they
threw up "the wondrous city of Virginia," which looked "as if the
clouds had suddenly burst overhead and rained down the dregs of
all the flimsy, rickety, filthy little hovels and rubbish of merchan-
dise that had ever undergone the process of evaporation from the
earth since the days of Noah."
The Comstock Lode was richer in silver than gold, and as an
old Spanish proverb says, "it takes a gold mine to develop a silver
mine." In 1868 four men with the equivalent of the required gold
mine at last began operations on Davidson Mountain: the miner,
John W. Mackay, whose "business is mining legitimate mining,"
as he said; the top-flight mine superintendent, James G. Fair, much
envied for his "fine nose for ore"; and their two speculating partners
from California, James C. Flood and William S. O'Brien. As late as
1867 ancient Mexican methods for reducing "pay dirt" to precious
metal had hardly been improved upon. By such methods it cost $50
to get $200 in silver out of a ton of high-grade ore, and even then
the yield was but 65 per cent. In the next ten years, new methods
cut costs to $10 a ton and upped yields to 85 per cent. Early in the
game Mackay and his partners set up their own modern reducing
mills. By transforming mining into a big business, they were able to
take $150,000,000 from Davidson Mountain. Before it petered out
in 1880, the Comstock Lode had yielded a cool $306,000,000.
The foundations of Idaho were laid in 1860 when the cry of
gold brought some 15,000 prospectors to the Nez Perce Indian
reservation in the Boise district. In 1864 a strike at Last Chance
Gulch, modern Helena, brought some 20,000 miners and camp-
followers into wild Montana. In 1867 Wyoming provided a short-
lived scene of action. In the southwest by 1863 notorious Tomb-
stone had become the center of mining operations in Arizona and
Mining Country 247
New Mexico. The era of the prospectors' West was drawing to a
close when in 1874 gold was discovered on the reservation of the
Sioux Indians in their sacred Black Hills of South Dakota. Here,
Deadwood grew to rival Tombstone in vice, violence, and lasting
fame.
At the start of the next decade the first copper seam was dis-
covered in "the richest hill on earth," conventionally known as
Butte, Montana. By 1890 annual copper production, reflecting the
spread of electricity, exceeded that of gold in dollar value; by 1900
copper production approached that of gold and silver combined.
At this time, aided by the demand for storage batteries, the annual
production of lead was nearing that of silver in value. Missouri
remained the principal source of lead; but after 1880 sizable quan-
tities came from Colorado and Idaho. In 1901, in time for the com-
mercialization of the automobile, "Black Gold" poured onto the
western scene from the unprecedented oil gusher at Spindletop,
Texas.
Large amounts of capital were needed to exploit these new metals
and minerals. Soon financiers like Henry H. Rogers and the Rocke-
fellers of New York, the Guggenheims of Philadelphia, and the
Mellons of Pittsburgh were controlling the policies and profits of
the "desert." East and West had again been bound together.
Even before mining became big business, western railroad mag-
nates had taken control of the long-distance hauling of miners and
their equipment. As in mining itself, however, this businesslike cen-
tralization of function grew only gradually, and before It matured
transport and communications enjoyed their own exciting history.
Agitation for rapid cross-country mail deliveries began in 1850,
but sectional disputes delayed a decision on the route until 1857.
That year, shrewdly choosing the long "oxbow route" to satisfy
southern congressmen, James Butterfield and William G. Fargo got
the first transcontinental mail contract. Service in their sturdy Con-
cord coaches along the 2,795-mile route west from St. Louis began
in September 1858. Passengers were carried on the three-week trip
for $200.
By 1858 the firm of Russell, Majors, and WaddeU, which had
248 The Wild West
been organized in 1855 without subsidy, was operating 3,000
"prairie schooners" carrying freight to the West. William H. Rus-
sell, one of the partners, was an enthusiast for the central as against
the oxbow route to California, and to prove its superiority he organ-
ized the "Pony Express." By April 1860, Russell had set up 190
stations between St. Joseph, Missouri, and San Francisco. At each
station the mail pouches were switched to a fresh pony and whisked
away. At its peak the Pony Express had eighty riders always in the
saddle, forty racing west and forty returning. They made the run
from the Mississippi to San Francisco in the fantastic time of ten
days.
Russell had proved a geographical point, but the costs of the
Pony Express made it a business catastrophe. After only a year and
a half, moreover, modern technology killed any chance the venture
might have had. For in October 1861, the transcontinental tele-
graph was opened. The Russell firm, meanwhile, suffered setbacks
and in 1862 sold out to tough Ben Holladay. In 1866, Holladay
sold out to Wells Fargo, which had previously bought out Butter-
field. There was no room for competition in this costly business,
and Wells Fargo itself survived as a local carrier only by working
in conjunction with the railroads.
Though the mining country was wide open and offered a haven
to every kind of refugee from society, it early developed its own
legal code covering personal crime and property relations. This code
was honored more in the breach than in the observance; but not
until 1866 did Congress .extend its own justice to the West, and
then only by declaring that the mining country was free to all, "sub-
ject to local customs or rules of miners." This declaration put a
premium on vigilantism, but the gradual settlement of the Wild
West and the extension to it of transportation and communication
facilities eventually strengthened more formal government.
These facilities themselves, nevertheless, offered the desperadoes
of the country their last glowing opportunity. Express and mafl
holdups became daily affairs, while practically with the first railroad
western news seemed incomplete if it did not report a "Great Train
Robbery" somewhere. Yet the year 1881 saw an end even to this
phase of western life and lore. That year the railway and express
The Cattle Kingdom 249
companies joined with the Governor of Missouri to place such a
high price on the head of Jesse and Frank James that one of his
own men shot Jesse in the back for the reward.
THE CATTLE KINGDOM
While the violence and brutality of the mitring camps and mining
towns kept more staid Americans out of the mountain country, the
violence and bestiality of the trail, the range, and the cow town kept
them off the plains. Tombstone, Arizona, and Deadwood, South
Dakota, had nothing on Dodge City, Kansas, the "Cowboy's Cap-
ital," where twenty-five men are said to have been killed in the
town's first year. Nor were Abilene, Kansas, or Laramie, Wyoming,
anything like agricultural market towns. The rancher and the cow-
boy, like the prospector and the miner, nevertheless, helped claim
the WUd West from the Indian and furthered the ultimate settle-
ment of the last frontier.
With the annexation of Texas in 1845, ranching and cow punch-
ing came into American life full grown. The bit, bridle, saddle, and
spurs, the lariat, chaps, and five-gallon hat of the traditional Amer-
ican cowboy, are all Mexican in origin. Mexicans often did not
bother to brand their beasts; thus when Americans from Missis-
sippi, Alabama, and Tennessee began trickling into Texas in the
1820s, many of them simply put their own brands on what they
took to be wild herds and set themselves up as "cattle kings." Other
Americans, drifting desultorily into Kansas and Nebraska as trap-
pers, traders, soldiers, or sheer adventurers, also gathered up spir-
ited horses and herds of "wild" cattle that had wandered north,
and began the range cattle industry in that region. But compared to
those of Texas, the northern herds were insignificant.
In the 'fifties some of the more enterprising Texas ranchers tried
to drive their cattle to market, westward all the way to Colorado
and California and northward to Illinois. But redmen everywhere
harassed herds and herders; the few steers that got through arrived
so lame, thin, and tough they couldn't command a price even ap-
proaching the cost of the venture. While cattlemen awaited more
accessible and attractive markets, their herds grew. During the Civil
War, Union control of the Mississippi River and its tributaries
250 The Wild West
where stock might water, halted all Texas drives even of a local
character, and by 1865 as many as 5,000,000 longhorns crowded
the almost limitless Texas range.
Fear of cattle rustlers and horse thieves set the ranchers again
looking for markets once the war was over. When they learned that
$3 or $4 Texas steers might bring $40 a head in the upper Mis-
sissippi Valley where wartime demand had decimated the herds,
they decided to try the drive north again. The drives of the 'fifties
had been attempted all the way to the abattoirs. Late in 1865, the
Missouri Pacific was opened to Sedalia, Missouri, and when the
grass turned green on the plains early the following spring, the first
of the "long drives" to a railhead town began.
Hi-chosen trails, molestation by Indians and by farmers who had
followed the railroad west, and poor facilities at Sedalia all con-
tributed to the failure of these early postwar drives. Then in 1868,
seeing a fortune for himself if he could control the place where
northern buyers and Texas and western breeders could get to-
gether, Joseph M. McCoy, an enterprising Illinois meat dealer, took
the first real steps to organize the cattle business. Turned down by
the Missouri Pacific when he asked for special rates on bulk ship-
ments of cattle east, McCoy got good terms from the Kansas
Pacific to Kansas City and from the Hannibal & St. Jo on to Chi-
cago. Next, after much looking, he picked Abilene on the Kansas
Pacific as his first "long drive" terminal. There he built a hotel for
the cowboys, and barns, stables, pens, and loading chutes for the
cattle. In 1868 Abilene received 75,000 steers. Three years later it
handled 700,000, a record that was to stand for a long time. As the
Kansas Pacific was extended westward, new towns took the cattle
leadership. Ellsworth, Kansas, succeeded Abilene in 1872; Dodge
City succeeded Ellsworth three years later. Farther north in Wyo-
ming the Union Pacific also moved into the business first at Chey-
enne and then at Laramie.
The "long drive" to the successive railhead cow towns grew into
romantic fable. In fact, as one veteran writes, "it was tiresome grimy
business." For two months of hazardous travel five or six cowboys,
each with pony, lasso, and six-shooter, had to keep under control
a thousand head of hungry, thirsty, touchy steers. "The caravan
The Cattle Kingdom 251
started forth each morning at 'sun-up.' . , . The animals throughout
their daylong march, nipped at the grass . . . but at the evening
halt they set themselves to a solid meal. . . . Two hours after dark
the cattle one by one sank down to sleep, to rise again at midnight
and to browse until . . . two o'clock, when all vitality ebbs and the
Death Angel frequently calls dying men. . , .
"All through the darkness men of the 'night herd' . . . rode about
the animals and constantly serenaded the beasts. . . . This . . . was
done partly to hold the cattle under the compelling spell of the
human voice, and partly to disabuse from the mind of any fear-
some member of the herd suspicion that either a puncher's silhouette
against the sky-line or else the noise of his moving pony might rep-
resent a snooping dragon. The rider, when 'singing to the cattle,'
as his vocal efforts were styled, disgorged all the words he knew
set to all the tunes he could remember or invent, but omitted any
sound or inflection which might startle. Sacred airs were usual . . .
but the words . . . well might have surprised the clergy. . . . Ac-
counts of horse-races, unflattering opinions of the cattle, strings of
profanity, the voluminous text on the labels of coffee cans, mere
humming sounds . . . were poured on many a night into the appre-
ciative ears of an audience of cloven hoofs. . . . But man and horse
were ready to wake like a shot and to act the instant that a steer
started to 'roll his tail, 5 an infallible sign of confident expectation
to disregard both distance and time."
The "long drive" even to railhead towns did grown steers as little
good as it did the cow punchers. In the 1870s, therefore, when the
buffalo were wiped off the plains and with them the Indians,
changes followed in the cattle business. Only year-old baby steers
were driven to the now open range which extended from western
Kansas all the way to Montana. These were then sold to northern
"feeders." At little cost the latter would graze the steers on the lush
grass for three or four years when they would be prime for the
market.
Only after 1878, when the return of prosperity following the
crash of 1873 raised beef prices, did the "open-range" cattle in-
dustry come into its own. In the next seven or eight years millions
of steers and thousands of cattlemen swarmed on the "limitless
252 The Wild West
plains." With water so crucial, "range rights" along a stream be-
came the most precious part of the cattle ranch, and often enough
had to be defended with rifles. Even where grazers might respect
one another's territory, the cattle didn't; and here again rules had
to be established for the recording of brands and the disposal of
mavericks. Where ranches, as a rule, covered as many as forty
square miles and could not be adequately policed, rustling, of
course, became common. To impose law and order was one of the
objectives of the numerous stock-growers associations which were
organized in the 1870s and which eventually became the hidden
governments of the states cut from the range. An important business
objective of the associations was to reduce competition by making
it difficult for newcomers to become members and dangerous for
them to operate without joining up.
Association men were aware of the rapidity with which the range,
endless though it seemed, could become overstocked to the peril of
all growers. This justified their objectives if not their methods. But
nothing could stifle the news of the profits to be made. After four
years of virtually free grazing, $5 steers commanded $45 to $60 a
head. Prospective ranchers flocked in like prospectors to the mines,
and cattle company stocks boomed in America and abroad. Hun-
dreds of Englishmen and Scots came to the range, usually to wind
up needing money from home and hence to become the celebrated
"remittance men" of western pulp fiction. Between 1879 and 1886
thirty-six "American" cattle companies with a combined capital
of $34,000,000 were floated in Great Britain alone. Then the
"cattle bubble" burst. By 1885 the open range did in fact become
overcrowded, and a series of natural disasters followed. The winter
of 1885-86 was one of the most severe in history; the next summer
was a veritable furnace. Together this winter and summer destroyed
most of the feed and many of the cattle, while the surviving steers
proved of such poor quality that, despite the biting world shortage
of beef, prices crashed.
Long-term developments at the same time conspired to ruin the
range. In the 1880s ever larger numbers of sheep were herded across
the plains, making the atmosphere noxious to "cows" and cowboys
alike and consuming the roots as well as the precious grass itself.
The "Nester" on the Plains 253
Farmers, moreover, began homesteading the plains and fencing in
the cattle range. They kept their own cattle herds, bred them care-
fully, regulated their feed, and thus produced a much finer quality
of beef than the open range could supply. By 1887 the cowboy had
begun to sing,
I little dreamed what would happen
Some twenty summers hence
When the nester came with his wife and kids
His dogs and his barbed-wire fence.
Fencing in the open range closed out the last frontier.
THE "NESTER" ON THE
"These fellows from Ohio, Indiana, and other northern and western
states," an old trail driver complained in the 'seventies, " the 'bone
and sinew of the country,' as politicians call them have made
farms, enclosed pastures, and fenced in water holes until you can't
rest; and I say D - n such bone and sinew!" Impending changes
in western agriculture threatened to end the cattle boom. Perhaps
the most important of these changes was the mass production of
barbed wire fencing, patented by three different inventors in 1874.
One cattleman expressed the feelings of all when he wished that the
"man who invented barbed wire had it all around him in a ball
and the ball rolled into hell."
The Homestead Act of 1862 had opened the prairies and the
plains to free settlement under liberal conditions, but much of the
best land was appropriated before homesteaders could get to it.
Other circumstances further limited the Homestead Acf s useful-
ness. The quarter-section (160 acres) offered free by the Act was
suitable to successful Mississippi Valley farming and would have
been lavish in New England. On the arid, treeless plains, a quarter-
section was at once too large and too small. The independent settler
could not afford the cost of breaking enough of the 160 acres to
grow a paying crop, plus the cost of irrigation, buildings, equip-
ment, taxes, and hired help. In 1871 the Department of Agriculture
estimated that wood fencing alone for a quarter-section farm cost
$1,000 in the treeless West. The large farmer or farming corpora-
254 The Wild West
tion, on the other hand, which could afford to buy costly machinery
so useful for cultivating the level expanse of the plains, found that
a mere quarter-section hardly justified a fraction of the required
investment.
Recognition of these problems prompted the passage of the Tim-
ber Culture Act of 1873, while two other measures, ostensibly for
similar purposes, were lobbied through later by special interests.
These were the Desert Land Act of 1877 and the Timber and Stone
Act of 1878. On the theory that trees brought rain, the Timber Cul-
ture Act offered an additional quarter-section to the settler who
would put at least 40 acres of it into timber. This act proved a farce
and was repealed in 1891. The Desert Land Act offered occupancy
of a full 640-acre section at twenty-five cents an acre, with the priv-
ilege of getting clear title to it in three years at an additional one
dollar an acre, provided the holder could prove he had irrigated the
plot. Thousands of farmers took the bait but gave up trying to
irrigate long before the three years expired.
The Desert Land Act in effect was the cattlemen's ruse for get-
ting private title to the public grazing range. Cattlemen registered
thousands of dummy entries in the names of cowhands and then
got the latter to testify that they "had seen water on the claim." The
Timber and Stone Act was legislation that lumbermen borrowed
from the cattlemen's book. Applying to land "unfit for cultivation,"
this Act offered a maximum of 160 acres of rich timber land in
California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington at $2.50 an acre
"about the price of one good log," as a historian has commented.
Since aliens who had simply filed their first citizenship papers were
eligible for these grants, a land office business in them was done
right in eastern waterfront courthouses. There for from $10 to $50
apiece, thousands of alien seamen were induced to register claims
and then sign them over to lumber company agents.
Between 1862 and 1900, 80,000,000 acres appear to have been
registered by homesteaders, though even this figure is inflated with
dummy registrations by which speculators built up large holdings.
In the same period railroads, land companies, and the states which
had received grants of federal land for educational purposes sold
more than 520,000,000 acres to settlers. For these lands they
The "Nester" on the Plains 255
charged from $2 to $10 an acre, fair prices for these sites which
were more likely than free homesteads to be near transportation
and markets. The purchasers, moreover, often got credit for equip-
ment as well as land from companies eager to sell.
After 1868 when the Union Pacific neared completion, the rail-
road placarded Kansas and other states on the edge of the frontier
with advertisements calling their lands "Better than a Homestead."
In the next decade, this road and the Burlington each spent over a
million dollars to advertise their lands abroad. Like all other landed
railroads, land companies, and western states, they also sent agents
scouring the continent for settlers. Steamship companies engaged
in carrying foreigners to the new world abetted the promoters.
Though the first settlers in a new region on the moving frontier
always came from adjacent states, a few figures indicate the success
of overseas advertising campaigns. The census of 1880 reported 73
per cent of Wisconsin's population to be of foreign parentage, 71
per cent of Minnesota's, 66 per cent of the Dakotas', 44 per cent
of Nebraska's. In the next decade, a record 5,250,000 immigrants
landed in the United States. Many remained in the teeming ports
of entry and others got no farther west than the -mills of Pittsburgh
and Cleveland. Millions, however, found their way to the farmlands
of the plains. Between 1860 and 1900 the land held by American
farmers more than doubled from 407,000,000 to 841,000,000
acres, while the proportion of land actually under cultivation rose
from 40 to almost 50 per cent. The plains and their immigrant
settlers contributed markedly to these figures.
But before the plains could be brought under cultivation,
obstacles never met before had to be overcome. Not even rude log
cabins could be raised on the treeless plains; the first shelters were
dank, dark sod huts. For fuel, in a region which covered some of
the coldest parts of the country, the first settlers used dried buffalo
dung and hay in special stoves designed to burn slowly. An acre
of sunflower plants, it was claimed in the 1870s, would yield enough
stalks for a year's supply of fuel, and the plant became widely
grown. Mechanical well-digging equipment was not made practical
until the 1880s, and water for domestic purposes presented another
problem to those at any distance from the infrequent rivers. The
256 The Wild West
prevailing aridity posed even greater difficulties for actual farming.
Even when wells could be dug the required 200 or 300 feet, there
remained the problem of getting the water to the surface. Windmills
to harness the power of the strong prevailing breezes caused much
talk in the 1870s, but were a long time becoming cheap enough
for the average farmer. The ultimate solution, to this day satisfactory
neither from the point of view of dependability or cost, was "dry
farming." After each precious rainfall, the fields must be harrowed
to form a mulch of mud over the deeper moisture on which roots
might continue to feed.
The growing crop needed water. But there would have been only
a poor crop to nourish had not other innovations been made first.
The sod of the plains resisted the old-fashioned plow. In 1868
James Oliver of Indiana began improving the chilled-iron plow
but ten years passed before it became an efficient tool. In the same
period the mechanical tractor was foreshadowed by the practice of
mounting numerous plowshares on a sulky and cutting many
furrows at once. After 1874 mechanical grain drills also speeded up
planting. In a region battered without warning by hailstorms, wind
storms, and flash frosts, however, the fanner's welfare depended
less on how much he could plant than on how quickly he could
harvest Only after 1880 did the "cord binder" offer practical
assistance. The old time eastern farmer dared not plant more than
eight acres of wheat in a season; by 1890 the cord binder and
related equipment permitted a single western farmer to count on
harvesting 135 acres.
But it took a revolution in wheat culture as well as in mining
to make such a harvest worth while. Eastern farmers grew soft-
kernel winter wheat which traditionally was milled by grinding
the husks between two millstones. These farmers usually planted
their crop in September or October and harvested it in June or
July. Even the first farmers of Wisconsin and Minnesota, however,
had found that the early winters killed the seed before it could
sprout. On the plains the winters proved even more severe, and here,
in addition, the moisture required by soft winter wheat was lacking.
Spring wheat, planted in May and harvested before the first frosts,
was known to farmers before 1860. But the known varieties lacked
The "Nester" on the Plains 257
hardiness, and their tough husks could not be milled economically.
In the 1860s, after a long passage from Poland, via Scotland and
Canada, a hardy new type of spring wheat appeared on the plains,
and by the end of that decade a new milling process suitable to it
had been brought over from Hungary. This process employed a
series of revolving rollers instead of the old millstones. In 1872 or
1873 Mennonite settlers from the Crimea also introduced into
Kansas a hard winter wheat known as "Turkey Red." This too be-
came commercially feasible through the new mining process.
Both of these hard wheats soon proved most profitable to the
millers and most in demand by bakers. The new mining process,
perfected by the development of chilled steel corrugated rollers
in 1879, permitted a much higher yield of good flour, and the high
gluten content of this product allowed more bread to be made than
from like amounts of soft-wheat flour. By 1879 Illinois had led the
wheat states for twenty years; by 1899 it had fallen out of the first
ten. The leaders then were the hard-wheat states of Minnesota, the
Dakotas, Kansas, California, and Nebraska. Oklahoma and north-
ern Texas also were developing rapidly as wheat states.
The epochal improvements in wheat growing and milling natu-
rally put increasing pressure on the cattle range. During the 1870s
the farmers more and more loudly demanded that the ranchers fence
in their cattle. Ranchers, when not urging the "nesters" to move,
demanded that farmers bear the cost of fencing the cattle out. The
farmer invasion of the range and the cattle invasion of the farms
often brought gun battles to the plains.
Joseph Glidden, one of the three independent holders of the
patent, set up the fiist barbed wire factory in DeKalb, Illinois, in
November 1874. The next year Glidden's eastern supplier of
ordinary wire bought a half interest in the firm and in 1876 began
mass production. That year 3,000,000 pounds of barbed wire were
sold at about $20 per hundred pounds; by 1890 the price per
hundred was down to $4, and virtually all the arable land of the
plains had been fenced in.
Wheat has always been a favorite frontier crop. It pays off on
extensive cultivation where land is cheap; it requires much less labor
than most other crops; it grows in a tough concentrated form mak-
258 The Wild West
ing it eminently "storable, haulable, and saleable." Wheat, more-
over, thrives on newly broken soil where humus content is high.
Though the settler on the plains produced other commodities such
as cattle and sheep, wheat was his staple from the start. Even if
nature did not encourage him to grow wheat, the new farm machine
technology would have stimulated its extensive cultivation; and all
other motivations failing, the farmer's creditors would have pushed
him into his most obvious cash crop.
A disastrous series of grasshopper invasions literally ate out the
American West early in the 1870s. But soon after, everything
seemed to conspire to make the new wheat country take on the
characteristics of the El Dorado that the railroad advertisements
pictured. Starting in 1875, Europe suffered one harvest failure
after another. In 1877-78 the Russo-Turkish War closed Russia's
wheat ports and left the rest of the continent more dependent than
before on American grain. On the continent as in the United States
itself, industrialism was drawing millions from farms to cities where
they had to be fed by imports from America. To this may be added
the chance factor that for eight years prior to 1886 the plains
enjoyed such plentiful rainfall that geologists were predicting the
permanent moistening of the region.
The market for wheat in the 1880s was so strong that as Ameri-
can production grew, the prices American farmers received kept
rising. One dollar wheat had become a golden reality and its con-
tinuance seemed a reasonable expectation. Such prices and pros-
pects encouraged farmers to mortgage their land to the limit to raise
cash for expansion. The banks themselves, sharing the current
optimism, interpreted the limit liberally.
Wise heads knew the West was riding for a fall. By the mid-
18 80s, India and Australia had entered the wheat market and
Russian production had revived. Tariff barriers were rising in
Europe. Overproduction in the United States itself was another ill
omen. But as buffalo had drawn the Indian to the virgin West, as
gold had drawn the prospector, and grass the rancher, so wheat
had drawn the farmer. Prosperity might disappear, but the wheat
grower had come to stay, to face the age-old problems of nature
as well as an engulfing industrial civilization.
Chapter Ten
Tooth and Claw in the
World of Business
Domination of the New South with its pretensions to
aristocracy and the New West with its pretensions to self-reliance
was only one phase of a revolution in the victorious North that had
begun long before the Civil War and has not ended yet.
For half a century before I860, northern industry had been
altering the course of American life. Canals and steam railroads had
begun to draw the outlying countryside into the orbits of growing
cities. The rise of corporations and of markets for their securities
upset old-fashioned ideas of property and its control. The increasing
mobilization of machinery in factories revolutionized the terms and
conditions of labor. At every stage politically entrenched planters
and their commercial allies had sought to obstruct these epochal
changes. After 1860 northern captains of industry at last were set
free; after the victory of 1865, which they claimed as largely their
own, they felt justified in prescribing their objectives and philosophy
for the entire nation.
THE CAPITALIST IMPULSE
"The people had desired money before his day," said Mark Twain
of Jay Gould, "but he taught them to fall down and worship it."
After the Civil War, the vogue of Herbert Spencer gave pseudo-
scientific sanction to this materialist philosophy. Through analogies
with Darwinian biology, which took the world by storm in 1859,
Spencer undertook to demonstrate that just as nature worked
automatically in "selecting" her elite, so society neared perfection
to the degree that it allowed its elite free play. "There cannot be
259
260 Tooth and Claw in the World of Business
more good done/' he wrote, "than that of letting social progress go
on unhindered; and immensity of mischief may be done in ... the
artificial preservation of those least able to care for themselves."
Cupidity Spencer defended as part of the universal struggle for
existence; wealth he hallowed as the sign of the "fittest." This was
Calvinism conveniently bereft of conscience, a philosophy of suc-
cess without the saving grace of stewardship.
Most prominent among Spencer's disciples was Andrew Carnegie.
The young Scotch Presbyterian had early lost his Christian faith
and failed for a long time to discover a substitute justification for
his secular calling. "Man must have an idol," he noted in 1868 for
his own guidance. "This amassing of wealth is one of the worst
species of idolatry no idol more debasing than the worship of
money ... To continue much longer overwhelmed by business
cares and with most of my thoughts wholly upon the way to make
more money in the shortest time, must degrade me beyond hope
of permanent recovery." Carnegie, nevertheless, was impelled to
acknowledge that "I was determined to make a fortune," and
"nothing could be allowed to interfere for a moment with my
business career." It was on encountering Spencer, he reports in his
Autobiography, "that light came as in a flood and all was clear.
Not only had I got rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had
found the truth of evolution. 'All is well since all grows better,'
became my motto, my true source of comfort."
"The progress of evolution from President Washington to
President Grant," Henry Adams observed, "was alone evidence
enough to upset Darwin." But no one listened to the skeptical New
Englander. "I perceive clearly," wrote the more sympathetic Walt
Whitman, "that the extreme business energy, and this almost
maniacal appetite for wealth prevalent in the United States, are
parts of amelioration and progress, indispensably needed to pre-
pare the very results I demand. My theory includes riches, and the
getting of riches." So confident, indeed, did American businessmen
become in the inevitability and benevolence of this theory, that
they felt the urge to give its operation an unphilosophical boost.
Spencer forbade restrictive, "meddling" legislation; if trusts and
combinations proved to be the natural results of free competition,
The Capitalist Impulse 261
worshipers of competition could not logically prohibit them. But
certainly there could be no objection to legislation that furthered
the objectives of business success. Unrestricted competition might
be the life of trade, but once the "fittest" had proved themselves in
such competition, what could be wrong with helping them with
government patents, subsidies, tariffs, loans?
After the Civil War, businessmen themselves became more
numerous in Congress than at any other time in American history.
Until the agricultural depression of the mid-1 880s, they and their
party colleagues had little trouble voting high tariffs and hard
money, which served to heighten the profits and thus the spirit of
enterprise. After that, through the rigging of the rules of procedure,
little effective regulatory legislation was permitted to reach the
floor of Congress. "Czar" Thomas B. Reed, Speaker of the House
after 1889, raised the manipulation of these rules to a fine art.
After 1903, Speaker "Uncle Joe" Cannon, showed only a shade less
virtuosity until he was overthrown in 1910. The Senate, mean-
while, came under the spell of Nelson W. Aldrich, who first
appeared there in 1881. Though openly contemptuous of "the pur-
chasables," as Aldrich called the voters and their local party bosses,
he was re-elected to four more six-year terms.
Aldrich believed that geographical representation in the govern-
ment had become anachronistic; he hoped to see the upper chamber,
at least, manned officially by senators from each of the great busi-
ness "constituencies" steel, coal, copper, railroads, banks, textiles,
and the like. In fact if not in theory this millennium had indeed
been realized, and from Senator George Hearst, father of William
Randolph, it had received its appropriate accolade: "I do not know
much about books; I have not read very much," acknowledged the
Senator to his colleagues in 1886, "but I have traveled a good deal
and observed men and things and I have made up my mind after
all my experience that the members of the Senate are the survivors
of the fittest."
The Supreme Court also had its Spencerians, though it took some
time for them to be heard. All the justices of the Court in 1865 had
been born before 1820, when industrialism had scarcely made an
impression on American life. Two of them had been born during
262 Tooth and Claw in the World of Business
Jefferson's first administration, no less than three as long ago as
the eighteenth century. It was this archaic court that had interpreted
the Fourteenth Amendment so narrowly that the reconstructed
states had had no difficulty in curtailing the privileges and im-
munities of freedmen. At the same time, however, it also permitted
the states to regulate business. The only dissenting voice was usually
that of Stephen J, Field, at sixty, one of the younger justices.
Field was the first to bring business corporations under the
rubric, "persons," in interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment. He
also took the next logical step: to declare that no corporate "per-
son" could be deprived of property by a state without "due process
of law." Since legislative (or commission) limitations on railroad
rates or other business decisions might reduce a corporation's profit
or the value of its plant, such limitations, Field held, were uncon-
stitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. By 1882, the makeup
of the Court finally had caught up with the spirit of Field and of
much of the country. That year Horace Gray of the industrial state
of Massachusetts, a firm believer in progress through Spencerian
freedom, was appointed to the Court and for the next twenty years
dominated its proceedings. In that period many of the earlier regula-
tory decisions were overturned.
In 1902, ironically enough, Gray was succeeded by Oliver
Wendell Holmes, one of whose more famous observations, made in
a dissenting opinion in 1905, was that "The Fourteenth Amendment
does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics." Before that,
however, and for some years thereafter as well, the Court acted
as if the Amendment had. Between 1890 and 1910 only nineteen
Supreme Court decisions based on the Fourteenth Amendment in-
volved Negroes, while 289 dealt with corporations. Most of these
helped sustain capitalist impulse after the Civil War.
THE WARTIME SEEDBED
At the outset of the war in 1861, northern business had been
depressed, and on the whole it remained so for another year and
a half. By the end of 1862, however, a general boom had begun
which weathered the end of hostilities and continued for almost an-
other decade. Writing from Pittsburgh in 1863, Judge Thomas
The Wartime Seedbed 263
Mellon, the founder of the aluminum fortune, declared that "such
opportunities for making money had never existed before in all my
former experience." When, that year, his elder son James, then a
young lawyer in Milwaukee, asked parental permission to enlist, the
judge ordered, "Don't do it. It is only greenhorns who enlist. Those
who are able to pay for substitutes do so, and no discredit attaches."
And he added, "It is not so much the danger as disease and
idleness and vicious habits. ... I had hoped my boy was going to
make a smart, intelligent businessman and was not such a goose as
to be seduced from his duty by the declamations of buncombed
speeches." The judge carried the day, and indeed he himself re-
signed from the bench in 1870 to resume business life.
In the same period, Armour and Morris laid the foundations for
their great meat fortunes, Pillsbury for his in flour, Rockefeller
for his in oil. It was army demand that first stimulated the mass
production of machine-made shoes and men's ready-to-wear clothes.
The wartime depletion of farm manpower pushed the demand for
reapers far above the productivity of the farm machinery factories.
One of the greatest gainers from the wartime boom was the tele-
graph industry. At the war's end, Western Union was operating
50,000 miles of telegraph line, and a merger in 1866 brought this
figure up to 75,000.
The war boom in the North gave a stimulus to extravagance
which set the tone for the "gilded age" to follow. More significant
from a business standpoint was the stimulus windfall gains gave to
speculation, and speculation to the availability of capital for in-
vestment in new enterprises. During the war, a writer in Harpefs
Monthly wrote of the New York Stock Exchange:
The city exchanges and their approaches are already crowded with a
mass so frenzied by the general passion for gain that almost all regard
for personal safety and respect for personal propriety seems lost. . . .
The number of brokers has more than quadrupled in a few months,
such has been the enormous increase of stock-jobbing. Their aggre-
gate business, in the city of New York alone, has arisen from twenty-
five to -more than a hundred millions a day.
At about the same time, the Independent reported that in New York
alone there were "several hundred men worth $1,000,000 and
264 Tooth and Claw in the World of Business
some worth $20,000,000 while twenty years back there had not
been five men in the whole United States worth as much as
$5,000,000 and not twenty worth over $1,000,000."
The year after the war ended, the Commercial and Financial
Chronicle summarized the lasting consequences of the war boom:
"There is an increasing tendency in our capital to move in larger
masses than formerly. Small business firms compete at more dis-
advantage with richer houses, and are gradually being absorbed into
them."
If the end of the war found the older North with bigger ideas than
ever and more complex institutions for carrying them out, it also
found the new West teeming with grandiose opportunities and men
equal to them. Of Leland Stanford, one of the builders of the Central
Pacific Railroad who had gone to California from New York in
the 1850s, an enemy once said: "No she-lion defending her whelps
or a bear her cubs, will make a more savage fight than will Mr.
Stanford in defense of his material interests." The country was
now full of fighting men like Stanford.
THE GREAT RAILROAD BOOM
More than any other kind of business activity, railroad building
and railroad operation dominated the boom after the Civil War.
Actual construction employed more capital and more men than
any other industry; it also created a vast market for steel rails
and for other iron and steel products such as machinery, tools,
car trucks, and wheels. The demand for railroad ties and wood for
rolling stock revolutionized the lumber industry. The need for
provisions, clothing, and blankets for the army of construction
workers simply extended the markets that the great meat packers,
shoe manufacturers, and textile factories had found among the war-
time army of soldiers. Even the transportation of Irish "paddies"
and Chinese "coolies" from overseas to work on the railroad notice-
ably stimulated ocean commerce.
Though railroad construction was held back during the Civil
War, about 4,000 miles of lines were built. Between 1865 and the
crash of 1873, 30,000 miles of new track were opened. Most of
these were in the East and the Old Northwest where trunk lines
The Great Railroad Boom 265
As important as railroad building in the older areas was railroad
consolidation. By putting together a string of independent roads
Commodore Vanderbilt extended the New York Central to Buffalo
in 1869. The next year he added the Lake Shore and Michigan
Southern and completed the coveted link with Chicago. The Com-
modore, a notable system builder, probably was also the ablest rail-
road manager of the period. In 1871 he opened the first Grand
Central Depot in New York from which passenger trains made the
965-mile run to Chicago in the then incredible time of twenty-four
hours. By 1870 the Pennsylvania Railroad also reached Chicago,
and in 1871 it leased a connection from its old terminus in Phil-
adelphia to the key city of New York.
The Erie and Baltimore & Ohio, the other two trunk lines, suf-
fered in the growing competition. The Erie became a stock-manip-
ulator's football, kicked around by successive managements under
Daniel Drew, Jim Fisk and Jay Gould. The Baltimore & Ohio had
excellent and aggressive management under president John W.
Garrett, but it failed to reach New York. In the South and Middle
West consolidation also was the rule. Cincinnati became the major
link between the two sections.
More spectacular than railroad construction and consolidation
in the older areas were the transcontinentals. After a decade of
surveys, debates, discussions, and sectional threats, in 1862 Con-
gress chartered the Union Pacific to build westward across
title continent from Omaha, Nebraska. Soon after it granted to the
Central Pacific, a California corporation chartered in 1861, the
privilege of building eastward from Sacramento. To both com-
panies Congress made land grants of unprecedented generosity. The
companies were also to receive lavish loans for each mile of track
actually laid. In return these roads, like others that received govern-
ment assistance, were required to carry the mail at low rates and to
be on call for the movement of troops.
266 Tooth and Claw in the World of Business
Despite government guarantees both companies had great dif-
ficulty in raising money to begin construction. Between December
1862, and February 1863, the Central Pacific, which was financed
largely in the Far West, maintained a stock-selling office in San
Francisco and in that period could sell only twelve or fifteen $1,000
shares. Charles Crocker, of the Central Pacific's "Big Four" then
went to Virginia City, Nevada, the mining El Dorado, to sell stock.
This is what he reported: "They wanted to know what I expected
the road would earn. I said I did not know, though it would earn
good interest on the money invested, especially to those who went
in at bed rock. 'Well,' they said, 'do you think it will make 2 per
cent a month?' 'No,' said I, 'I do not.' 'Well,' they answered, 'we
can get 2 per cent a month for our money here,' and they would
not think of going into a speculation that would not promise that
at once." The Union Pacific, promoted mainly by eastern capitalists,
had little better luck in New York, Boston, or elsewhere.
Both companies managed to begin construction on a shoe string
in 1863, and the next year they faced failure. Only a new law in
1864 saved them. This measure doubled each road's land grant.
More important, Congress agreed to accept a second mortgage as
security for the promised loans, thus allowing the roads to offer the
private money market new first mortgage bonds with their lands as
collateral. The new bonds sold better than the old in Europe as well
as at home. Even so, large amounts of Union and Central Pacific
securities and those of other roads in the distant West had to be
disposed of to the towns, cities and states along the route. Some
ambitious local governments gladly bought the bonds; others bought
them under pressure of blackmail and bribery. About $500,000,-
000 in railroad securities were disposed of to public bodies. Land
grants aggregating the size of Texas also were made by local govern-
ments to favored lines.
The new law of 1864 was eased through Congress by the distribu-
tion to influential members of stock in Credit Mobilier, the con-
struction company which was to build the Union Pacific. The
California Big Four, made up of Crocker, Stanford, Collis P.
Huntington, and Mark Hopkins, organized a similar construction
company to build the Central Pacific. Construction companies had
The Great Railroad Boom 267
been used earlier in the building of canals, but the stakes this time
were much higher and the procedure more questionable. By means
of such companies, a Congressional investigation later reported,
"the persons who under the guise of a corporation that was to
take the contract to build the road held complete control of the
corporation for which the road was to be built." This investigation
disclosed that Credit Mobilier was paid $73,000,000 by the Union
Pacific for an estimated $50,000,000 worth of work, the difference
going to the identical directors of both companies. The Big Four's
construction company was paid $121,000,000 for work evaluated
at $58,000,000.
The chance to make such fortunes, shady though they were,
before any track was open to traffic was what impelled the
promoters to push the construction of the roads. By the spring of
1869, when the Union Pacific had laid 1,086 miles of track, and
Central Pacific 689 miles, the roads met at Ogden, Utah. Although
both roads had to be virtually rebuilt some years later, the feat of
crossing the wild plains and the enormous mountain ranges remains
one of the great engineering accomplishments of history.
Before the crash of 1873 three other transcontinentals had been
chartered and given land by the federal government. Of these only
the Northern Pacific was ever completed to the coast, and its arrival
in Oregon was delayed until 1881. In 1885 the Boston-financed
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe completed its route to California.
The last of the great transcontinentals, built largely without govern-
ment aid, was James J. Hill's Great Northern. Hill had come to
St. Paul from Canada in 1856 and at the end of twenty years had
become a transportation agent for Mississippi traffic between the
United States and Canada. The crash of 1873 had hurt the small
St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, and in 1878 Hill got the help of
Canadian financiers to acquire the line. By 1890 he and his as-
sociates had pushed 2,775 miles west through North Dakota and
Montana, and in 1893 the Great Northern reached Puget Sound.
By then, the United States had the immense total of 170,000
miles of railroad capitalized at almost $10,000,000,000. In 1867
the railroads did a total of $330,000,000 worth of business; by
1893 this figure was $1,200,000,000. Along with the growth in
268 Tooth and Claw in the World of Business
mileage, investment, and volume, came many improvements in
service and safety. In 1864 George M. Pullman built the first sleep-
ing car. Four years later, George Westinghouse introduced the air
brake. By 1875 the refrigerator car had been developed, especially
for carrying meat. Succeeding years saw the acceptance of the
standard gauge throughout the country, the shift from wood-burn-
ing to coal-burning engines, from iron to heavy steel rails.
As the railroads improved their speed, service, and safety, other
transportation systems declined. The competitive practices of rail-
road managers furthered their success. Where water rivals were
present, as on the Mississippi, the Lakes, canals, and the ocean
coastal routes, the railroads regularly cut their own rates even below
cost to get the available traffic. Whatever losses were incurred at
such places the railroads recouped by charging exorbitant rates at
noncompetitive inland stations.
THE INDUSTRIAL NATION
Railroading was but the first factor among many that made the
United States industrial leader of the world. Though less dramatic,
the widespread use of the corporate form in business, which facili-
tated the amassing of capital from domestic and foreign sources for
single industrial objectives, significantly aided American economic
growth. By limiting the liability of capitalists to their actual in-
vestments and keeping their personal fortunes safe in the event of
misfortunes to their companies, the corporation encouraged risk-
taking and the development of resources which might otherwise
have remained dormant.
The corporate form had many questionable attributes. It enabled
unscrupulous plungers to employ other people's money in nefarious
schemes. By making it easy to separate the ownership of a com-
pany from its management, it encouraged both to evade social
responsibility. The corporation put the impersonal stockholder
where the resident owner-manager used to be; it put the statistical
profit and the statistical dividend ahead of the welfare of the worker
and the community. Moreover, since corporate charters themselves
were often political grants with special favors and since corporate
business was often large enough to impinge on politics in other
The Industrial Nation 269
rays, business graft paid out by corporations grew to much greater
)roportions than would have been possible under a regime of
;mall, personally owned enterprises. But these conditions were the
lefects of a system which, while it was extraordinarily wasteful of
30th natural and human resources, nevertheless added immensely
to both natural and human wealth and eventually to social welfare.
The development of industrial corporations led, in turn, to the
rapid expansion of the activities of the stock market after the Civil
War, and was, in return, stimulated by this expansion. Until 1929
the stock market was the pulse of industry. It created a vast and
ready money market for new enterprises and for the expansion or
consolidation of old firms. When the stock market and the as-
sociated money market was vigorous and healthy, business was
likely to be humming. The confidence a lively market inspired
helped to keep business strong. When that confidence was mis-
placed, the market felt it first and thus served as a barometer of
storms ahead. Without the stock market, for all its faults, American
industry could not have grown with the speed and resiliency it has
displayed.
While the daring, deviltry, and defiance of leading entrepreneurs
and speculators promoted the huge expansion of American industry
after the Civil War, engineers and production men contributed
their share. These men often were in conflict with the business
leaders for whom they worked; where they wanted to build the best
plant and make the best product, the businessman often wanted
to make only the quickest profit, and not infrequently the two
objectives met head on. Nevertheless it was in this postwar epic that
some of the greatest technological gains were made, and that new
productive uses were found for inventions of earlier periods. In-
vented in 1846, Elias Howe's sewing machine waited until the
Civil War to be adapted to factory production of ready-to-wear
clothes and shoes. Electricity was known in the eighteenth century,
but it was not harnessed to industry until the 1870s. The Bessemer
process for making steel was invented in America by William Kelly
in 1847, nine years before the Englishman, Henry Bessemer, sought
United States patents for a similar process and the "converter" in
which to employ it. But not until 1866 did Bessemer steel find
270 Tooth and Claw in the World of Business
general commercial use. Thirty-six thousand patents had been
granted to American inventors between the opening of the Patent
Office in 1790 and 1860. In the 1870s alone, 140,000 patents were
granted, and in the 1890s the figure rose above 300,000.
Nowhere was the spirit of innovation, enterprise, and growth
more evident than in the newest industry of all, the production
and refining of oil. This industry also produced John D. Rockefeller,
the toughest competitor in the country with the clearest grasp of
the idea that the natural end of competition is monopoly. "This
movement," Rockefeller himself said somewhat later:
was the origin of the whole system of modern economic adminis-
tration. It has revolutionized the way of doing business all over the
world. The time was ripe for it. It had to come, though all we saw
at the moment was the need to save ourselves from wasteful condi-
tions. . . . The day of combination is here to stay. Individualism has
gone, never to return.
Born in 1839, Rockefeller, at twenty, had entered into partner-
ship with an Englishman, Maurice B. Clark, as wholesalers of grain,
hay, and meat in Cleveland. The business flourished during the
Civil War, by the end of which Rockefeller had a fortune of ap-
proximately $50,000. The partnership had ventured in oil as early
as 1862. In 1865 Rockefeller and Clark dissolved their business,
and Rockefeller went into the oil business with Samuel Andrews
who knew something of refining.
By then the knowledge that "rock oil" had a bright industrial
future was more than ten years old. Seepages of oil had been noted
in many parts of the world for centuries. Gradually it gained a
mystical reputation as a medicine. In the United States early in the
1850s Samuel M. Kier, in Venango County, Pennsylvania, success-
fully marketed the local seepages as a cure-all. But Kier had also
begun to refine some of the surface oil into kerosene. He also
designed lamps to burn it conveniently, and he advertised kerosene
widely enough to prepare the market for the new lamp fuel. Whales
had grown scarce and whale oil, the world's major illuminant,
threatened to soar to $5 a gallon.
The Industrial Nation 271
Kiel did not know how to find supplies of oil sufficiently large to
meet a demand which could become tremendous. The first practical
steps toward this accomplishment were taken by a young Dartmouth
graduate, George H. Bissell, who sent "Colonel" E. L. Drake to
the Pennsylvania oil region to begin the first deliberate drilling in
1857. Such a novel enterprise encountered scorn and difficulties,
but in August 1859, "Drake's Folly" near TitusviHe, Pennsylvania,
at last gushed in.
Oil is quite appropriately known as "black gold," not only for
the fortunes it made but also because of its lure for the prospector.
By 1864 wildcatters, as oil prospectors were called, had so covered
the district around Titusville with oil derricks that annual produc-
tion exceeded 2,000,000 barrels. Eight years later the oil regions
covered 2,000 square miles in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and
Ohio, and annual production had soared to 40,000,000 barrels.
Organized in Cleveland with a capital of a million dollars in 1870,
Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company was refining a fifth of the total
output.
Where many of the early producers and refiners were taking
100 per cent profits and living high, as wildcatters and prospectors
often do, Rockefeller was satisfied with dividends of 15 to 30 per
cent. The rest of the profits he reinvested in the business. In its
first two years Standard Oil's capitalization rose 150 per cent. Un-
challenged in Cleveland, the company controlled about 20 per
cent of the refining facilities of the entire country. In 1872 Rocke-
feller helped organize the South Improvement Company with the
objective of capturing the other 80 per cent. His method was
simple. In addition to rebates on his own shipments, he demanded
that the railroads, in exchange for his own voluminous business,
pay him as well a portion of the rates collected from the other
refiners. Word of this proposal leaked out and the South Improve-
ment scheme had to be abandoned. The business panic the next
year, however, so weakened refiners already overextended in trying
to compete with Rockefeller that in succeeding years he was able
to buy up their plants at favorable prices. By 1879 Rockefeller had
quietly completed his arrangements with the railroads and the
new pipe-line systems, and controlled about 90 per cent of the re-
272 Tooth and Claw in ike World of Business
fining capacity of the country and most of the world market for
his products.
Similar tendencies were observable in other basic American
industries after the war, though their development was much
slower than Rockefeller's. Not until 1867 did steel produced by
the Bessemer process challenge the better grades of iron in the
American market, and not until 1870, under protection of new high
tariffs, did American steel rails challenge England's. Early in the
1870s the rich iron ranges of the Lake Superior region were opened.
The steel industry's greatest surge, however, came only after
Andrew Carnegie dedicated himself to it.
After a successful railroad career, Carnegie entered the steel
business in 1872, but held off from the Bessemer process. "Pioneer-
ing doesn't pay a new concern," he said; "we must wait until the
process develops." A trip to England the next year convinced him
of the soundness of Bessemer's method, and on his return he could
talk of nothing else. He promptly organized a new firm, Carnegie,
McCandless & Company, and built the J. Edgar Thomson Steel
Works near Pittsburgh, shrewdly named after the president of the
Pennsylvania Railroad. On terms of complete intimacy with
Vanderbilt, Huntington, Gould, and other railroad men, including
Tom Scott of the Pennsylvania for whom he had worked for many
years, Carnegie ignored the depression and "went out," as he said,
"and persuaded them to give us orders."
Carnegie opined at one time that "the man who has money
during a panic is a wise and valuable citizen." Speaking of the de-
pression after 1873, he added, "so many of my Mends needed
money, that they begged me to repay them [for their stock]. I did so
and bought out five or six of them. That was what gave me my
leading interest in this steel business." A British Iron Trade Com-
mission reported some time later on Carnegie's further achieve-
, ments: "Modern iron making . . . became firmly established [in
America] when Andrew Carnegie . . . recognized ... the necessity
for the successful iron producer to control his own material, and it
gained international importance when this wonderful man joined to
plants and mines the possession of railroads and ships."
The Industrial Discipline 273
By 1890 Carnegie was described as being in "almost absolute
control of the steel-rail business in the Pittsburgh district." By then
three other steel giants, the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company in
the South, the Illinois Steel Company in the Middle West, and the
Colorado Fuel and Iron Company in the mountain region, had
grown up as if in readiness for the colossal merger of 1901 which
created the United States Steel Corporation.
THE INDUSTRIAL DISCIPLINE
The business epoch that closed with the panic of 1873 was the
most productive the world had yet seen. When prosperity returned
after 1878 the new giant firms that had been created during the
depression put the unprecedented productivity of the earlier decade
altogether to shame. In virtually all industries, moreover, pro-
ductivity increased more than investment and much more than
employment. There were two major reasons for this. The first was
the steady improvement in power supply and in the application of
science to production. Not only was invention given renewed
impetus, but whole new realms of science, such as chemistry, were
yielding their treasures to industry.
The second major reason for the leap in productivity lay in the
reorganization of the manufacturing process itself. We have already
noted the development of "manufacture by interchangeable parts
and assembly-line techniques. Now specialization of processes and
machines was carried forward. The degree to which this was pushed
is clear from the manufacture of shoes. Once one man made the
entire shoe. In the 1880s, ranging alphabetically from "binders,
blockers, boot-liners, and beaters-out" to "taggers, tipmakers,
turners, and vampers," shoe-making involved about sixty-five dis-
tinct factory tasks.
Such intensive specialization made it possible to reduce the cost
of production greatly but only when plants were operated at or
near their maximum capacity. And operation at this level fre-
quently was suicidal. The opening of a new railroad line, a boom in
immigration, a burst of exports, a rise in the protective tariff, any
promise of a new market led to expansion and mechanization. But
each new market was soon exploited, and left in its wake more
274 Tooth and Claw in the World of Business
costly plant and equipment (usually purchased with borrowed
money on which interest continually had to be paid) available for
work but with no work to do. Thus the Bulletin of the American
Iron and Steel Association said in 1884, "Indeed it might almost
be rated the exception for half the works in condition to make iron
to be in operation simultaneously." The National Association of
Stove Manufacturers reported in 1888: "It is a chronic case of too
many stoves and not enough people to buy them."
This was a constant hazard of American business life. One con-
sequence was the closing of many independent plants. In 1880, the
country had almost 2,000 woolen mills; by 1890, only 1,300. In
1880 there were 1,900 manufacturers of agricultural implements; in
1890, only 900. A second consequence was the movement toward
pools, trusts, and holding companies by which a few firms could
control output, prices, and market areas of entire industries so that
a satisfactory level of profits would be assured to the survivors of
the competitive struggle.
Pools usually were created in emergencies, and collapsed when
the emergency passed. They allowed independent entrepreneurs to
retain a semblance of their precious individuality and to express it
if need be. This was both their attraction and their flaw. When pools
failed, they were supplanted, typically, by trusts, of which the first
in this epoch was that organized by Rockefeller in 1879 and re-
organized in 1882. By the trust device the stock of many competing
companies is turned over to a mutually agreed upon group of trus-
tees in exchange for trustee certificates. Ownership of the stock re-
mains in the original hands, but management of the enterprises
represented by it is concentrated in the hands of a single board of
trustees. The decade after the founding of the Standard Oil trust
saw the formation of the Cottonseed Oil trust, the Salt trust, the
Sugar trust, the Leather trust, the Cordage trust, and many others.
Not all were strictly trust arrangements, but this became the char-
acteristic epithet for any large combination whose objective was to
restrain cutthroat competition.
Of the so-called Sugar trust, Judge Barrett of the Supreme Court
of New York once said: "It can close every refinery at will, close
some and open others, limit the purchases of raw material, artifi-
The Industrial Discipline 275
dally limit the production of refined sugar, enhance the price to
enrich themselves and their associates at the public expense, and
depress the price when necessary to crush out and impoverish a
foolhardy rival." Many other evils were attributed to the trusts, not
the least being the political power implicit in such huge and over-
bearing organizations. In time, moreover, many persons came to
question whether the trusts actually achieved the economies of
large-scale operation that their organizers claimed would benefit
the public. Yet the trust supplied a viable business answer to the
problems of brutally competitive companies. Similar situations
faced business in the rising industrial nations abroad and similar
solutions were tried. In Europe such arrangements usually had the
overt sanction of the state. In the United States where free competi-
tion had become the accepted path to progress, the government was
forced to give tacit sanction to consolidation while at the same time
new legislation seemed to impose restraints on the monopolistic
tendencies of business combinations.
The American trusts of the 1880s and early 1890s were insig-
nificant compared to those organized after the crash of 1893. Still
the new centralized enterprises presented unusual problems of con-
trol. Among these were the sheer mechanics of transmitting direc-
tions and results between a central board of directors and scattered
plants. More significant were problems of financing the greatly en-
larged operations. In time mechanical problems were solved by the
invention or improvement of office machines and methods. New
specialists in the money markets, mainly the growing insurance
companies and the investment bankers, met the enlarged financial
requirements of big business.
Among the new office devices were the typewriter, which first ap-
peared in 1867, and the office adding machine, made practical in
1888. More fundamental were the expansion of telegraph facilities
and development of the telephone. By 1878 Western Union oper-
ated 195,000 miles of telegraph lines and had control of 80 per
cent of the telegraph business. In 1881, at a cost of nearly $25,000,-
000, the company bought out its two main competitors and their
200,000 miles of wires. This accomplished, President Norvin Green
276 Tooth and Claw in the World of Business
told Ms stockholders that Western Union "has attained such mag-
nitude and strength that it is no longer necessary to buy off any
opposition. Competition may be a popular demand, and it may be
good policy on the part of your Company to indulge competing lines
between the principal points. This would not materially interfere
with remunerative dividends." How wrong he was became clear in
two years when John W. Mackay, the Comstock Lode millionaire,
organized the Commercial Cable Company and in 1884 laid two
new transatlantic cables. These competed for overseas business with
Western Union. Soon after, Mackay set up the Postal Telegraph
Company to compete for overland business. A disastrous rate war
forced the two wire services to agree to end effective competition
in 1887.
A strike in 1883 which shut down telegraph wires called the at-
tention of the country to the fact that the telegraph, as Harper's
Weekly .said at the time, had "come to be as ... important as the
. . . mail." So central had it become, indeed, that by 1900 seventy-
five bills demanding the establishment of a competing government
system had been introduced in Congress. Such bills never passed;
one reason was the friendly relations between the company and gov-
ernment officials. "A liberal use of the franking privilege," a gov-
ernment committee reported in 1900, "gives the corporation power
in legislation."
In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. The
next year Western Union, which first scorned Bell's invention as
an "electrical toy," decided it had better enter the telephone busi-
ness. Backing a rival patent by Elisha Gray, Western Union organ-
ized the American Speaking Telephone Company. It proceeded to
use all its political influence to block franchises the Bell Company
was trying to obtain from localities, and it succeeded in keeping
the new system out of the railroads altogether. Under the direction
of Theodore N. Vail, the Bell Company was not awed by these
activities and proceeded to sue Western Union for infringement of
patents. Its case was so good that the telegraph company settled out
of court in 1879. By then Western Union had hastily set up some
56,000 telephones in fifty-five cities, and for the equipment and
franchises in these cities Bell paid handsomely.
The Limits of Labor Organization 277
In the next ten years the Bell Company was beset by com-
petitors, some legitimate, some simply blackmailers. To buy them
out cost the Bell system about $225,000,000. At the same time im-
provements in the telephone instrument and in the wires patented
by the Bell Company kept it invulnerable to competition. One of
the major innovations was the development of long-distance tele-
phone service after 1884. To expand this business, the Bell directors
set up a new corporation, the American Telephone and Telegraph
Company. In 1900 this became the overall holding company of the
entire Bell system, with a capitalization of $250,000,000. At that
time 1,350,000 Bell telephones were in use in the United States.
Service still cost New Yorkers as much as $240 a year. At such
rates, A. T. & T.'s profits were the envy of all the industries it
served.
THE LIMITS OF LABOR ORGANIZATION
In order to accumulate the immense capital required for the ex-
ploitation or importation of coal, iron, and other basic raw mate-
rials, and for the construction of railroads, factories, and power
machinery, great social sacrifices have to be made. These naturally
fall most heavily on farmers and workers since such groups consti-
tute the overwhelming mass of the population. Even in free coun-
tries these groups have traditionally borne their burdens with little
protest. Often enough, silence among industrial workers has re-
sulted from poverty itself, from poor nourishment, ill health, over-
work, and a pervasive lack of energy and aspiration, and from the
formidable political, legal, economic, and social forces arrayed
against them.
Nevertheless the history of industrialism is also the history of
labor organization. In the early days of the factory system in the
United States the goals of the few and scattered labor xmions were
more political and social than economic. Their objectives were not
so much to improve working conditions as to enlarge opportunities
so that their members would soon be able to work for themselves,
not for others. They demanded abolition of imprisonment for debt,
of chartered "monopolies," and of compulsory militia service. But
the "first and most important . . . object for which they were con-
278 Tooth and Claw in the World of Business
tending," as one group said in 1829, was free public education for
all. By this means their children would be enabled to take their
independent places in society. The panic of 1837 destroyed the
early labor movement, and the rapid territorial and agricultural ex-
pansion of the country in the following twenty years offered few
opportunities to rebuild it before the panic of 1857.
Unions flourish, normally, during prosperity when labor is
acutely in demand. The Civil War boom in the North (enhanced, as
far as labor was concerned, by the recruitment of many workers
into the armed forces) thus spurred labor organization, and in the
postwar prosperity union membership reached a peak. Three of
the four Railroad Brotherhoods were organized in this period. The
earliest national labor organization in the United States was the
National Labor Union, formed in Baltimore in 1866 under the lead-
ership of W. H. Sylvis. At its height in 1872 this organization
represented about 650,000 workers. But there were no workers
among its leadership and its objectives political action, monetary
reform, social welfare legislation were farfetched.
The crash of 1873 put the National Labor Union and virtually all
other labor organizations out of business. The trough of the de-
pression was not reached until 1877. In that year, following a series
of earlier pay cuts, unorganized railroad workers across the coun-
try struck spontaneously against new wage slashes. Violence flared
from New York to St. Louis, and when local militia in many areas
fraternized with the workers and refused to fire on them, federal
troops were called out. More than a hundred persons were killed in
the strike, but after two weeks the workers capitulated. The Rail-
road Brotherhoods played an insignificant role in the uprising. The
repression of union activities following it was so severe that by
1878 fewer than 50,000 American workers were organized.
A second national labor organization had been created in 1869
in Philadelphia under the leadership of Uriah S. Stephens, a tailor.
This was the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, a secret, fra-
ternal society whose major aim, again, was not to fight for better
working conditions in the factories but to organize the entire coun-
try into a chain of co-operatives owned and operated by the
workers. Everyone was welcome to the Knights, Negro and white,
The Limits of Labor Organization 279
immigrant and native, skilled and unskilled. But it made only halt-
ing progress until the energetic machinist, Terence V. Powderly,
became Grand Master in 1878, on the eve of the return of pros-
perity. Powderly ended the Knights* secrecy, made its stand known
on political issues of the day, and set up as many as thirty co-
operatives in manufacturing, mining, and distribution.
Powderly would not stand for strikes and other labor violence.
But many of the unions affiliated with the Knights thought other-
wise. When in 1885 a number of such unions struck Jay Gould's
railroads and forced the hated speculator to recall a wage cut and
rehire union men he had fired, the Knights' fame spread like wild-
fire. Within a year, despite himself, Powderly found his organization
grown from 100,000 to more than 700,000 men. The collapse of
the Knights, however, was not far off. On May 3, 1886, during a
strike at the McCormick Harvester Company in Chicago, anarchists
were holding a public meeting at Haymarket Square in the vicinity.
Someone it has never been established that he was an anarchist
threw a bomb that killed a policeman. In the riot that followed,
seven more policemen and four civilians were killed. The Knights
had nothing to do with the riot, but the organization had become
associated in the public mind and in the minds of many of its mem-
bers with labor agitation to which the riot was attributed. The
public rebelled, many members quit, and dissension in the organ-
ization hastened its end. Powderly's co-operatives, meanwhile,
floundered.
One factor that speeded the Knights' disintegration was the
existence of a competing organization to which many of its dis-
affected members could turn. This was the American Federation of
Labor, founded in 1881 by the London-born, New York cigar-
maker, Samuel Gompers. The Federation was a union of craft
unions, the way the United States was a union of states. It had no
interest in the Negro, the unskilled, the ordinary immigrant. Mem-
ber unions had to adhere to a rigorous code: they must employ full-
time professional organizers to enlarge and discipline their member-
ships; and dues (a share of which went to support the parent A. F.
of L.) must be collected regularly to finance ordinary operations
and strikes.
280 Tooth and Claw in the World of Business
The Federation, in its early days, dallied with political programs
and sheltered some socialist thinkers. But Gompers quickly set the
tone of business unionism. The welfare of labor, he believed, was
inextricably connected with the welfare of capital; the goal of the
A. F. of L. under his leadership and after was to employ the major
weapons of labor the strike, the boycott, picketing, and so forth
to gain concrete goals without overthrowing or reforming the
system. These goals included shorter hours, higher wages, im-
proved working conditions, above all, recognition by industrial
corporations of the union, collective bargaining, and the "closed
shop" for the affiliated crafts. By 1900 considerable progress had
been made. Membership had been pushed to 550,000. Even the
Carnegie Steel Company had recognized the union in 1890 (though
the A. F. of L. was thrown out in 1892 after a bloody strike at
the Company's Homestead plant). Elsewhere many craft union
members had gained the eight-hour day and higher wages as welL
Homestead was not the only brutal strike in which the A. F. of L.
became embroiled. After the panic of 1893 workers all over the
country fought violently against loss of jobs, pay cuts, the stretch-
ing out of hours, and other business practices. One of the worst of
the thousands of strikes of the depression years occurred at the
company town of Pullman, near Chicago, where the builder of rail-
road sleeping cars owned the stores, the power plant, the workers'
houses and everything else. Here wages were average, rents high,
store prices exorbitant. In 1894 Pullman fired a third of his labor
force, cut the wages of most of the rest by 40 per cent, but failed
to reduce house rents or any other workers' costs. The Pullman
workers walked out, encouraged by Eugene V. Debs' American
Railway Union. In sympathy Debs men refused to move any Pull-
man cars on the railroads. Violence quickly developed and Pres-
ident Cleveland sent federal troops nominally to protect the mails in
the Chicago area, but actually to break the strike. The Pullman
workers, Debs, and affiliated A. F. of L. crafts lost the strike; more-
over, the attendant violence cost them the support of the public, and
made it easier for corporations to use their own traditional weapons
against striking unions: the blacklist, the lockout, the employment
of armed strikebreakers, factory espionage, court injunctions.
The Political Weapon 281
"When bad men combine," Powderly said in 1878, quoting
Edmund Burke, "the good must associate, else they will fall, one
by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." In the
next two decades the "bad men 5 ' of business had combined in huge
and growing corporations which each year employed a growing
proportion of the industrial labor force. But despite the A. F. of L.
or possibly because of its limited nature and aspirations the
"good men" of labor clung to traditional individualism and suffered
for it. By 1898 more than 17,000,000 persons worked in American
factories. Of this number, a mere 500,000 were members of labor
unions. Every phase of common and statute law continued to dis-
courage labor organization and the use of labor's weapons in in-
dustrial conflict. But labor itself had scarcely awakened to its
opportunities.
THE POLITICAL WEAPON
The severe conditions for survival in the brutally competitive busi-
ness world of the 1870s and 1880s go far toward explaining many
of the social evils that flowed from the extraordinary economic ex-
pansion of those decades. Explanation, however, was lost on many
who felt that the new industrial community conspired to grind them
down. Staple farmers in the South and West felt especially injured
after their incomes began to fall steadily in the late 1880s despite
their own unprecedented productivity. It did little good to tell them
that the railroads were cutting each other's throats in highly com-
petitive areas, when the farmers themselves happened to be in re-
gions where monopolistic conditions permitted the railroads to
recoup their losses. Nor were such farmers likely to be convinced
that rough industrial rivalry forced businessmen to combine in
trusts for self-preservation when the upshot for the man on the land
was simply higher prices. The protective tariff, in turn, might have
been essential to the success of many American industries in their
early stages, but to the unhappy husbandmen protection seemed but
a vicious device. Although the farmer sold at low prices in a free
world market, he was forced to purchase his manufactured goods
at prices artificially kept up at home.
Perhaps worst of all was the apparent manipulation of the na-
282 Tooth and Claw in the World of Business
tional monetary system. With commitments made for years in ad-
vance, business insisted on a stable currency. But in a country like
the United States, with populations growing explosively and pro-
ductivity per man rising even faster, a stable currency was certain to
be deflationary. As money became relatively scarce, its value rose;
as the value of money rose prices fell. This indeed was one of the
factors that drove businessmen toward consolidation. But individ-
ual farmers could hardly organize as efficiently as industrialists
especially since the farmers were at the mercy of world conditions
while industry could do much to regulate the environment in which
it lived at home.
In the 1870s and 1880s business politics sought to keep the pro-
tective tariff as high as the public would tolerate and to maintain
the flow of public largesse to the railroads. Gradually, however,
business came under political attack from the frustrated farmers of
the West and South. First organized in the Granger movement in
1869, and then in the Alliance movement of the 1880s, the farmers
succeeded in forcing the states to enact laws regulating railroad
rates and outlawing trusts. They also forced state legal departments
to initiate suits to break up monopolistic combinations.
At the same time farmers organized co-operatives of their own
to market and finance their crops independently of railroad-domi-
nated elevators, warehouses, and financial institutions. Most of the
farm co-operatives quickly failed for lack of managerial ability.
Business, moreover, subjected them to the most severe competitive
tactics. In turn, much of the regulatory state legislation was soon
repealed by local politicians upon whom business lavished money.
The surviving legislation, moreover, was either ignored with im-
punity by railroads and trusts, or was eventually declared uncon-
stitutional by the Supreme Court.
The farmers' efforts to fight the tariff and currency issues in fed-
eral politics suffered as disastrous a fate as their fight on the rail-
roads and trusts in the states. Indeed no significant tariff or currency
reforms were won until Woodrow Wilson's first administration.
Long before that merchants and other groups dependent on the
railroads had joined with the farmers to carry the fight from state
to federal politics. Between 1874 and 1885 some thirty measures
The Political Weapon 283
for federal regulation of interstate railroads had been introduced
in the House. A few were permitted to pass, only to be killed in the
Senate. Then in 1886, the Supreme Court declared that aU state
efforts to regulate "fares and charges" on interstate railroads were
unconstitutional To fill the void created by this decision, Congress
passed the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887.
The jubilation in rural areas occasioned by the Act soon proved
premature. The Act established an Interstate Commerce Com-
mission which, in some cases, could issue "cease and desist" orders
to the railroads, but the Commission had to go to the courts for
enforcement. In the courts the railroads proved masters of obstruc-
tionism, procrastination, and delay while they continued to practice
the very abuses which the Commission tried to end. Between 1887
and 1905, sixteen cases under the Interstate Commerce Act even-
tually did find their way to the Supreme Court. In fifteen the Court
decided in favor of the railroads.
The fanners and their small business backers in the older sections
had just as little success in controlling the trusts. By the late 1880s
agitation for federal regulation in this field grew as strong as that
for intervention against the railroads. The result was the Sherman
Anti-Trust Act of 1890. Senator Aldrich himself had acknowledged
that the Interstate Commerce Act was "a delusion and a sham . . .
an empty menace to great interests, made to answer the clamor of
the ignorant and the unreasoning." Of the enactment of the Sher-
man Anti-Trust Act one of its leading architects, Senator Orville
Platt of Connecticut, said: "The conduct of the Senate . . . has not
been in the line of honest preparation of a bill to prohibit and pun-
ish trusts. It has been in the line of getting some bill with that title
that we might go to the country with." "What looks like a stonewall
to a layman," commented Finley Peter Dunne, the leading humorist
of the age, "is a triumphal arch to a corporation lawyer."
Business-minded Republicans and Democrats in Congress had
combined forces to protect the railroads and trusts from effective
regulation. By 1890 farmers and merchants in the South and West
and in older sections of the North had formed a new party of their
own. This they called the People's Party. By then industrial labor,
which had enjoyed rising real wages during the epoch of falling
284 Tooth and Claw in the World of Business
prices in the 1870s and 1880s, was also on the verge of worsening
conditions. The Populists sought to enlist labor in the People's
Party. In the elections of 1892 the Populists ran General James B.
Weaver for President on a platform that comprehensively stated
the complaints of American minorities against the two major
parties. When Weaver polled over a million popular votes and car-
ried twenty-two votes in the electoral college, the old parties took
genuine notice of the uprising. The next elections followed the busi-
ness crash of 1893, and depression aroused the protest of bitter
need. So eager were the Populists for victory that they allowed
themselves to be maneuvered into supporting the popular panacea
of "free silver" as their major campaign slogan. When the Demo-
crats nominated the westerner, William Jennings Bryan on a "free
silver" platform, enough Populists deserted the People's Party for
the Democratic Party to kill the immediate political chances of the
reform movement.
Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, had held the presidency during
the depression. In 1896 the Republicans were able to hold the
Democrats up to the nation as the cause of the business debacle.
William McKinley of Ohio was the hand-picked candidate of his
friend Mark Hanna, boss of the Republican machine. No one could
match Hanna's success in raising and spending money for a cam-
paign. With the Democrats won over to the "wild schemes" of the
Populists, business had never felt more willing to give. McKinley
swept the election. Business seemed to have weathered the political
storm with no more than token acquiescence to the popular will.
If there was any doubt, McKinley's administration proceeded with
high tariffs and deflationary currency legislation to prove that
business had again prevailed. All efforts to strengthen the Inter-
state Commerce Act and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act were easily
put off.
Chapter Eleven
"Morganization" and the
Middle Class
"The nation is made its mode of action is determined,"
said Professor Woodrow Wilson of Princeton in 1897. Then the
Professor asked, "Where do we go from here? What we want to
know is what is the nation going to do with its life, its material
resources, and its spiritual strength? . . . How is the nation to get
definite leadership and form steady effective parties? . . . How shall
we settle questions of economic policy? Who is going to reconcile
our interests?"
Some years later, risen now to Governor of New Jersey, Wilson
thought he had found a part of the answer. In an address before the
American Bar Association in 1910, he said: "Most men are in-
dividuals no longer as far as their business, its activities, or its
moralities is concerned. They are not units but fractions; with their
individuality and independence of choice in matters of business they
have lost their individual choice within the field of morals. They
must do what they are told to do, or lose their connection with
modern affairs. . . . They cannot get at the men who ordered it
have no access to them. They have no voice of council or protest.
They are mere cogs in a machine which has men for its parts.
"And yet there are men," Wilson went on, "with whom the whole
choice lies. There are men who control the machine . . . and . . ,
who use it with an imperial freedom of design. . . . There is more
individual power than ever, but those who exercise it axe few and
formidable, and the mass of men are mere pawns in the game."
When Wilson spoke in 1897, hardly a dozen American corpora-
tions, other than railroads, were capitalized at more than $10,000,-
285
286 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
000. In the next five or six years the number of such corporations
rose to three hundred. Approximately fifty of these were capitalized
at more than $50,000,000, seventeen at more than $100,000,000,
and one, the United States Steel Corporation, at almost $1,500,-
000,000. Despite the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, consolidation played
a much larger part than growth in this dramatic concentration of
industry. Among the railroads, where consolidation had begun
earlier than in manufacturing, more than a thousand once inde-
pendent lines had been merged by 1904 into six huge combinations
with capital of almost $10,000,000,000. The basic policies of large
corporations were now made by a handful of bankers and financiers.
Towering over these "Lords of Creation," especially in times of
financial crisis, loomed the isolated, imperious figure of John
Pierpont Morgan.
lie railroader, James J. Hill, complained that corporations were
consolidated to manufacture nothing but "sheaves of printed secu-
rities" for the benefit of the promoters. The promoters themselves
claimed more serious objectives. "With a man like Mr. Morgan at
the head of a great industry," his friend John B. Claflin told a group
of bankers assembled to honor the financier in 1901, "as against
the old plan of many diverse interests in it, production would be-
come more regular, labor would be more steadily employed at better
wages, and panics caused by over-production would become a thing
of the past." Economic instability arising from the vagaries of pol-
itics would also be guarded against. "As the business of the country
has learned the secret of combination," said the Bankers' Magazine
in 1901, "it is gradually subverting the power of the politician and
rendering him subservient to its purposes. . . . That [government is
not] entirely controlled by these interests is due to the fact that busi-
ness organization has not reached full perfection."
In the next ten years, "Morganization" was to reach if not per-
fection at least a "harmony of interests" that approached it. By
1912, there was still room at the top in American business and so-
ciety, but never in the history of the United States was it so carefully
reserved for the congenial clubmates, churchmates, and cliques of
the ruling oligarchy. A plunger like John W. "Bet-a-million" Gates,
whom Morgan had used as a negotiator from time to time, was
"Morganization" and the Middle Class 287
driven out of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company in 1907 for
threatening to upset the "harmony" in steel. The next year, the up-
start Irishman, Thomas Fortune Ryan, was compelled by Morgan
to sell his controlling interest in the Equitable Life Assurance So-
ciety to keep "hands that might prove injurious," as Morgan said,
from manipulating the Society's funds.
The Genteel Tradition in power as in poetry reached its apex in
this prewar epoch. Its defenders were drawn all the more closely
together by the new stirrings among Negroes for recognition and
respect as workers and voters, and by the flood tide of the "new im-
migration" to the land of opportunity and the dignity of man. As
early as 1895, in his Unguarded Gates, Thomas Bailey Aldrich,
the genteel poet incarnate, reviewed the tradition and the threat.
Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
Named of the four winds, North, South, East, and West;
Portals that lead to an enchanted land
Of cities, forests, fields of living gold, . . .
A later Eden planted in the wilds,
With not an inch of earth within its bound
But if a slave's foot press it sets him free*
Here, it is written, Toil shall have its wage,
And Honor honor, and the humblest man
Stand level with the highest in the law. . . .
Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
And through them passes a wild motley throng
Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes,
Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho,
Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav,
Flying the Old World's poverty and scorn;
These bringing with them unknown gods and rites,
Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws.
In street and alley what strange tongues are loud,
Accents of menace alien to our air,
Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!
Liberty, white Goddess! is it well
To leave the gates unguarded? . . .
288 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
Between leaders of finance increasingly conscious of their exalted
estate and submerged masses of foreign and Negro labor increas-
ingly aware of the relative permanence of their low condition, the
fringes of a new urban middle class became clearer. This class
feared both plutocratic tyranny and proletarian anarchism and
socialism. The contrast of these extremes with the American tra-
dition of individualism and democracy afforded middle-class spokes-
men a simple yet striking theme and they made the most of it. The
development of new national magazines financed mainly by the
advertisers of middle-class commodities gave these spokesmen a
powerful forum; but the churches, women's clubs, and other organ-
izations helped keep the ball of tradition and reform rolling.
Tens of thousands of small businessmen, crushed or cornered by
consolidated giants or merely conscious of their loss of business
primacy, constituted the rank and file of the urban middle class.
Wilson was to become their political hero. But ministers, professors,
journalists, artists, professional men, and thousands of prosperous
and newly leisured women gave the characteristic tone to the
middle-class revolt. "Ladies, you have chosen me your leader," suf-
fragette Sarah P. Decker told the ladies of the General Federation
of Women's Clubs at her inauguration as president in 1904. "Well,
I have an important piece of news for you. Dante is dead. He has
been dead for several centuries, and I think it is time that we
dropped the study of his inferno and turned attention to our own."
With no profits at stake in sweat shops, tenements, slums,
saloons, unsafe factories, or in precious contacts with politicos who
disposed of franchises, licenses, and other privileges, "Progressives"
like Mrs. Decker could attack the political and social as well as the
economic sins of plutocracy. The political leader these reformers
took closest to their hearts was Theodore Roosevelt, who shocked
gentility by entertaining Booker T. Washington, a Negro, at the
White House; by appointing Oscar Straus, a Jew, to his Cabinet;
and by inviting Mrs. Decker herself to an otherwise stag conference
of governors in Washington in 1908. As early as 1899 the young
"Rough Rider" was already talking of "heading some great out-
burst of the emotional classes which should at least temporarily
crush Economic Man."
Science and Scarcity 289
SCIENCE AND SCARCITY
It was the business collapse of 1893 that gave the banters thek
opportunity to Morganize the American economy. Their watch-
words were scarcity and stability, the one buttressing the other.
Growth there would still be; the home market for capital, like the
home market for goods (the sanctity of the protective tariff was
one of the shibboleths of the age) remained, in thek opinion, the
best in the world. But the dynamo of American expansion was
henceforth to be operated cautiously, and only on the say-so of the
"Money Trust."
Yet one of the underlying causes of the 1893 collapse (one far
more significant than Morgan's idea of the irresponsibility of the
average businessman) had been the continuing rise in productivity
in manufacturing and communications brought about by the sys-
tematic harnessing of science to industry. The power implicit in
this relationship was scarcely understood by men whose whole
orientation was to finance. They might sit immovably on the na-
tion's money boxes, or spread themselves across the channels of
credit. Yet new worlds of industry and trade, unconceived by them,
would swim into view. "The deeper insight we obtain into the
mysterious workings of Nature's forces," observed the great German
inventor, Werner Siemens, just before the crash of 1893, "the
more we are convinced that we are still standing only in the vestibule
of science, that an immeasurable field still lies before us. ..." In
the recovery years after 1897 r the relations of science and industry
grew closer, and even in Morganized industries productivity soared
once again. But science's main role then and since has been to
create entkely new industries and new products which the bank-
ers, typically, refused for years to underwrite.
In the period before the first World War, ideas for many of the
new applications of science to industry continued to come from
mechanics actually employed in factories. But increasingly, the
country's scientific schools made thek impact felt. As Siemens
noted, "theoretical" science and scientists were claiming the at-
tention of alert businessmen in venturing onto the "immeasurable
field." As early as 1850 Harvard University had established the
290 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
Lawrence Scientific School. The next year Yale's Sheffield Scientific
School began instruction. Ten years later, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology opened its doors, soon to be followed by the Colum-
bia University School of Mines. Later on in the century, under pro-
visions of the Morrill Act of 1862 providing federal land grants to
support higher education in "agriculture and mechanic arts," engi-
neering schools were established in most land-grant states. In the
meantime, West Point, for almost half a century the only American
source of trained engineers, continued its work; while old Rens-
selaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, expanded its cur-
riculum, to join the others in the development of applied science
and the preparation of men to use it in business.
Business management itself, meanwhile, was feeling the impact of
scientific ideas. Before 1881 not a single book on management by
an American could be found in the Technology Division of the
New York Public Library. By 1900 there were twenty-seven; by
1910, two hundred and forty. Perhaps the first management school
in the country was the Wharton School of Finance at the University
of Pennsylvania which received its initial endowment in 188L The
Babson Statistical Service for management was started in 1900.
In 1908 came the momentous founding of the Graduate School of
Business Administration at Harvard where men were to be trained
to study the science of management systematically as well as to
function as managers in industry.
An even more significant event took place in 1911, when Fred-
erick W. Taylor published his book, Scientific Management. As
early as 1882, as a steel foreman, Taylor had been struck with the
inefficient operations of his men. It was then that he began his first
minute analyses of individual industrial jobs and the assignment of
precise costs to each operation. To control costs scientifically, and
thereby to cut them, he urged greater mechanization, the standard-
ization of fractions of operations, and piecework incentive-wage
payments. Taylor had a hard time selling his ideas during business
prosperity; but during the economic doldrums after the panic of
1907, "scientific management" grew in fame and application.
Of these developments in management, Louis D. Brandeis said
in his Commencement Day address at Brown University in 1912,
significantly titled Business a Profession:
Science and Scarcity 291
The once meager list of the learned professions is being constantly
enlarged. Engineering in its many branches already takes rank beside
law, medicine and theology. Forestry and scientific agriculture are
securing places of honor. The new professions of manufacturing, of
merchandising, of transportation and finance must soon gain recog-
nition. The establishment of business schools in our universities is a
manifestation of the modern conception of business.
The most important application of the new findings of science
was in the field of electricity. The economy of wood, iron, coal, and
steam still dominated American and world industry in the 1890s,
but it was proving increasingly wasteful and unwieldy. Factories re-
mained awkwardly tied to the coal mines. Factory operations still
were slowed down by overheated machines, the rapid dulling of
cutting edges, the multiplicity of steps required to shift from one
phase of production to another. But electricity had begun to change
all this.
Electricity was first widely used in communication; and until the
1880s its role in telegraphy and the telephone remained its main
commercial function. After Edison perfected a reasonably priced
incandescent bulb in October 1879, electricity became widely used
in illumination. Edison believed most strongly in direct current, but
this could be transmitted great distances only at great cost. Alter-
nating current made long-distance transmission of electric power
practical. George Westinghouse (the inventor of the railroad air
brake) and William Stanley developed the first alternating current
generators and transformers; their work became applicable to a
great range of uses after 1888 when Nikola Tesla, an immigrant
from Serbia, devised the first inexpensive motor employing alternat-
ing electric current. Westinghouse soon bought Tesla's patent. In
1893 Westinghouse dramatized the progress of electric illumination
by lighting up the Chicago World's Fair.
The third practical application of electricity was in urban trans-
portation. In 1880 the 18,000 urban street cars in the United States
were hauled by 100,000 horses and mules at about six miles an
hour, a pace that severely limited the expansion of cities. As pres-
sure for speed grew, steam transport was tried on elevated railroads
in New York City, starting in the 1870s. Success here led to the
construction of the first "el" in Chicago in 1893. But urban steam
292 "M organization" and the Middle Class
railroads could not be extended indefinitely. As trains became
longer, heavier locomotives were needed to pull them. Heavier
locomotives, in turn, required sturdier elevated structures whose
cost became prohibitive. Widespread enmity against the "els" and
the steam engine also was aroused by their cutting off of light and
air, their noise, their smoke, and the fires caused by their flying
sparks. The urban steam engine's successor was the electric trolley
car. The trolley systems were far more flexible than the steam rail-
roads. Cars were powered individually, eliminating the use of loco-
motives altogether. They could be run singly or in trains, and
switched from track to track with ease. Single track lines on the
streets thus supplanted the unsightly elevated structures.
The foremost name in electric traction is Frank Julian Sprague
who made the first practical demonstration of citywide trolley
service in Richmond, Virginia, in 1888. In getting this system
going, Sprague had to solve innumerable engineering problems. He
invented the first satisfactory electric car motors, the first depend-
able trolley poles and wires. Equally important, he worked out
systems of traffic control which kept the trolley cars moving. Per-
haps most difficult for Sprague was the problem of overcoming the
hostility of capitalists who had large investments in the steam ele-
vated lines and who fought franchises and other privileges for the
new system. But as it became obvious that the trolley was here to
stay, the financiers gradually relented. After 1900 Sprague's system
began to be used on new urban subways as well as on surface lines,
and by 1912 there were 40,000 miles of electric railway and trolley
track in the United States, representing an investment of $5,000,-
000,000. The bankers at last had begun to look to urban electric
traction to re-enact the dynamic role of the old interurban steam
railroads as a profitable user of investment capital. But, typically,
the new-fangled automobile was about to end the trolley car's
growth just when the bankers had accepted it.
Of all the applications of electricity, perhaps the most far-reach-
ing was its use in industry, and especially in the automobile in-
dustry. By 1914 about 30 per cent of American factory capacity
had become electrified. Electricity freed the factory from the river
valley and the coal field. Factories could now be set up near raw
Science and Scarcity 293
materials, markets, or ports. Inside the plant, electricity made the
"straight line" system of production all the more efficient, smoothed
out conveyor belt and assembly line procedure. It also put a pre-
mium upon plant specialization, upon standardization of jobs and
products, and hence upon scientific management. It made possible
such a simplification of operations that unskilled and illiterate
workers could be employed on jobs for which the machine, so to
speak, did much of the thinking. The new technology thus permit-
ted the employment in industry of the masses of new immigrants
who poured into America after 1900 and of the Negroes who
flocked north for work. For the automobile age the new technology
and the new sources of labor became crucial.
Americans had long been prepared for the production of auto-
mobiles. From the nation's earliest days carriage manufacture had
trained skilled artisans in the fabrication of bodies, wheels, and
springs. Since Eli Whitney's time the assembly of interchangeable
parts had become an established technique in various lines. Since
the 1850s, the manufacture of farm and factory machinery and rail-
road locomotives had promoted familiarity with the problems of
engines. In the 1880s and 1890s, bicycle manufacturers had shown
the practicality of pneumatic tires. By then petroleum refining had
become a science which could deliver good gasoline on demand. But
it was electricity's contribution to mass production that made the
automobile commercially feasible just when America needed a new
means of rapid transportation.
Like all new industries, the automobile industry had a hard time
getting financed. The insurance companies abhorred it as a field of
investment and also refused to cover its product. In 1904, Charles
Platt, president of the Insurance Company of North America, ex-
claimed, "I'll never insure a gasoline can on wheels, the noisy stink-
ing things!" A bit later, when he was trying to induce the House of
Morgan to back the prospective General Motors, the promoter
William C. Durant boasted that 500,000 automobiles would soon
be sold each year. "If he [Durant] has any sense," said Morgan's
partner, George W. Perkins, "he'll keep such notions to himself if
he ever tries to borrow money." A few years later, after he had
succeeded in setting up General Motors and invested heavily in
294 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
plant expansion, Durant again had to borrow money. Again Mor-
gan turned him down, as did most of the other bankers. Durant was
so hard pressed that he finally capitulated to a combination of Lee,
Higginson & Company of Boston and J. & W. Seligman & Company
of New York. Included in their terms was the requirement that
Durant surrender the management of the company to the bankers'
trustees for the duration of the loan.
General Motors was an effort to control competition in the auto-
mobile industry in which by 1910 over sixty firms were producing
cars for the market. What kept General Motors in trouble was its
failure to include Ford. By 1908 Henry Ford had become one of
the automotive leaders. The next year he produced his first Model T
and soon was in a class by himself. The first Model Ts sold for $950,
not much lower than competing brands. By 1913, Ford had cut
the price of Model Ts to $550 and in 1914 he got them out for less
than $500. Between 1909 and 1913, Ford production leaped from
10,000 to 168,000 cars, the latter figure one third of the entire
industry's output. In 1914 Ford produced 248,000 cars, almost one
half of all the automobiles made. His profits that year were more
than $30,000,000, 20 per cent above the record of the year before.
The shoestring phase of the automobile industry obviously was
over. In 1915, the wholesale value of all automobiles produced in
the United States was $700,000,000, a figure greater than the gross
passenger revenue of all American railroads that year. After World
War I, automotive busses and trucks added to the competitive pres-
sure on the older carriers. In early automobile days, the lack of
paved roads retarded the growth of the automotive industry; but
between 1915 and 1925 annual public expenditures on roads and
highways rose from nearly $300,000,000 to over a billion dollars,
and represented a highly salutary subsidy to the automobile makers.
The manufacture of automobiles had not become a commercial
activity until 1897. After the introduction of Model T twelve years
later, the industry led other fields of manufacturing into the routine
application of science and technology. Automobile manufacturers
spurred on constant advances in the production of glass, rubber,
and steel alloys, from which body and engine parts and tires were
made. They also promoted the application of chemistry in the petro-
Science and Scarcity 295
Jeum industry, seeking not only improved fuels but also improved
lubricants both for the automobile engine and the automotive fac-
tory's machinery. Ultimately the automobile manufacturers be-
came the largest users of each of the commodities that went into
the automobile. The leader in automotive progress continued to be
Henry Ford, who distrusted big city bankers as heartily as the
bankers distrusted Detroit.
In the decades around the start of the twentieth century electricity
thus was transforming American life. Besides the automobile in-
dustry, it made possible the development of phonographs and
moving pictures, and the experiments that led to radio and tele-
vision. It also was responsible for basic improvements in photog-
raphy and high-speed composition and printing, all of them essential
to the success of national consumer magazines like the Ladies'
Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post. Both magazines
passed the million mark in circulation during the first decade of
the twentieth century. Yet to the bankers, these new areas of eco-
nomic life, like automobiles, remained speculative and unstable
and thus questionable fields for investment. Capital failed to be
drawn to them, even though the older key industries, such as rail-
roads and steel, flour mining, meat packing and farm machinery,
and oil and sugar refining, no longer required most of the new
savings of the nation.
After the return of prosperity in the late 'nineties, these savings
grew tremendously in banks, trust companies, and insurance com-
panies. If continuing advances in productivity (even in banker-
controlled industries) were not to result in ever higher unemploy-
ment among a growing population, new outlets for both capital
and goods had to be found. These might be sought abroad, a dis-
quieting prospect to "America for Americans" bankers accustomed
to importing capital, not exporting it to exotic lands. Or they might
be sought at home, by raising the purchasing power of the mass of
the population an equally disquieting prospect to those who be-
lieved that the wages of labor must be calculated like the cost of
raw materials and held to the lowest possible levels.
It is true that outlets for capital and goods were sought abroad
296 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
more actively than at any earlier time. In the twelve years between
1900 and 1912 American foreign investments tripled. Yet at the
end of that period these investments were about equal to the
capitalization of a single American company, the United States
Steel Corporation. In the same twelve years, exports of American
manufactured commodities (other than foodstuffs) approximately
doubled, but the ratio of such exports to total exports remained
fixed at about one third. In an article in Scribner's Magazine in
1902, called "The American 'Commercial Invasion* of Europe,"
Frank A. Vanderlip, then Vice-President of the National City Bank
of New York, boasted: "We have been successfully meeting com-
petition everywhere. America has sent coals to Newcastle, cotton
goods to Manchester, cutlery to Sheffield, potatoes to Ireland,
champagnes to France, watches to Switzerland, and 'Rhine wine'
to Germany." Yet the total of such exports, like the exports of
capital, failed to become imposing, or even adequate enough to
sustain the expansion of American industry.
As for the expansion of the home market,, if high not low wages
had to become the goal of industry, spending not saving had to be-
come the goal of the population. Yet hard work, frugality, and thrift
remained the sacred commandments of American morality (ap-
propriate ones in a society once painfully short of capital and
labor) ; and it was difficult to divest people of such drives. Spend-
ing, conspicuous consumption, and active leisure involving the pur-
chase of goods and services had become essential to a society
suddenly short of markets and effective purchasing power. Yet even
in the 1950s the guilt implicit in indulgence remained an important
point of attack of the advertising industry.
Advertising tried hard to develop the home market. In the early
1890s Cyrus H. Curtis, publisher of the Ladies' Home Journal,
asked a convention of pioneer advertising men, "Do you know why
we publish the Ladies' Home Journal?" And he answered his own
question: "The editor thinks it is for the benefit of the American
women. That is an illusion that is a very proper one for him to have.
But I will tell you; the real reason, the publisher's reason, is to give
you people who manufacture things that American women want
and buy a chance to tell them about your products." By the 'nineties
Science and Scarcity 297
business especially the new lines had become keenly aware of
the consuming public. An index of manufacturers' efforts to im-
press their goods upon the new buyers is the number of widely
publicized trade-marks. From a skimpy 170 or so in 1870, their
number had grown to many thousands by 1910.
As early as 1876, the poet Bret Harte commented on a particular
trade-marked product:
One Sabbath morn, as heavenward
White Mountain tourists slowly spurred,
On every rock, to their dismay,
They read the legend all the way
SAPOLIO.
The manufacturers of Sapolio soap spent about $15,000 for
advertising in 1871. Twenty-five years later they were spending
more than $400,000 annually. By then, Ivory Soap ("It Floats"),
Kodak cameras ("You press the button; we do the rest"), and
Schlitz ("The Beer that Made Milwaukee Famous") had all be-
come part of the permanent baggage of the public consciousness.
By 1899, "Uneeda Biscuit" was a common phrase in every maga-
zine and every household. By 1903 Cadillac was making a big
splash with its "smartest of runabouts . . . speed range four to thirty
miles an hour." Well over a hundred million dollars a year was
being spent by then for newspaper advertising alone; while as much
as 72 per cent of the space of magazines was taken up with product
promotion.
Yet it is a commonplace that while advertising can make goods
known and even create wants, it cannot supply the wherewithal for
buying. In the period before World War I industry showed some
awareness of the need to spread purchasing power in the new era
of rising productivity. Higher wages were granted to skilled workers,
and the first tentative steps toward so-called "welfare capitalism"
were taken. Corporations sought to reduce the number and severity
of industrial accidents and to maintain injured workers' purchas-
ing power through insurance programs compensating those forced
off the job.
But only a few employers acted from an appreciation of the new
298 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
conditions, and even these usually went only half way. When pro-
gressive management paid higher wages, it dissipated the social
benefit with the speed-up, the stretch-out, and other devices to
raise production proportionately higher than before. Though labor
unions tended to stabilize employment and insure a steady rise in
mass purchasing power, management also spent millions financing
union-busting organizations. TTie unions themselves, moreover, in-
creasingly took on the character of closure groups whose aim was
to monopolize the benefits of unionization for a rising "aristocracy"
of skilled workers.
Engineers and young entrepreneurs with little capital of their own
to lose might look to new industries to engage the energies, imagi-
nation, and savings of the nation. Publishers, advertisers, and rising
distributors of consumer goods might look to new methods to stim-
ulate sales (and production) in a rich and growing market. Fin-
anciers naturally looked to financiering to occupy and reward the
accumulating funds of the middle and upper classes. In the 1870s
and 1880s, as we have seen, mergers (involving the creation of
new security issues) were made in American industry mainly to
check cutthroat competition among highly mechanized firms. The
depression of the 'nineties greatly intensified such competition
among the surviving companies, each of which hoped to keep its
costly machinery fully occupied despite the weakness of the mar-
ket. It was to bring such competition under control that Morgan led
the depression drive for consolidation and combination. The return
of prosperity after 1897 made it all the easier for the bankers to
float the large issues of new securities of consolidated firms, and
mergers began to be actively sought simply for the profits involved
in marketing stocks and bonds. Between 1898 and 1903 the num-
ber of consolidations reached a peak not to be approached again
until similar circumstances brought about similar activity in the
late 1920s, and the number of persons owning corporate stock
doubled.
As a justification for large-scale stock promotions the ideal of
sheer "bigness" itself became attractive. The supposed economies of
large-scale operations were magnified; at the same time the oppo-
Science and Scarcity 299
sition of family-owned firms to selling out to consolidated corpora-
tions (whose competition they increasingly feared) was dissipated.
The failure of the federal government to enforce the antitrust acts
seemed to give great mergers legislative and judicial sanction.
Though many states also had antitrust statutes and though some
states tried to enforce them more strictly than the federal govern-
ment, their work was nullified by the many states with no antitrust
laws. In competing for corporate business, the lax states reduced
restrictions in corporation charters to the disappearing point. They
permitted interlocking directorates, nonvoting stock, holding com-
panies, and other devices broadening the gulf between ownership
and management and promoting the centralization of control. New
Jersey was the worst offender. So attractive did its corporation laws
become after 1889 that each of the seven largest trusts, as of 1904,
with an aggregate capital of $2,500,000,000, and with control of
approximately 1,528 plants in every section of the land, had a New
Jersey charter.
As the investment bankers enlarged their control over the econ-
omy, the ruling oligarchy naturally became smaller and smaller.
Topped by Morgan and Rockefeller, it included in the end almost
no one but their associates and allies. A climactic struggle between
the Morgan and Rockefeller camps began in 1901. Allied with
Morgan were George Fisher Baker's First National Bank of New
York, the New York and the Mutual Life Insurance Companies,
such Morgan-created combinations as the International Harvester
Company and United States Steel, and the Hill railroad empire.
The major strength of the opposing camp, of course, came from
Rockefeller's Standard Oil millions. But this camp had other gigan-
tic resources as well. Most of these were supplied by the investment
banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Company, headed by Jacob H.
Schiff. This was the only American firm that could compete with
Morgan in the capital markets of Europe. Other Rockefeller finan-
cial institutions in New York included the National City Bank and
the Hanover National Bank. Also associated with Rockefeller were
the Harriman railroads.
The struggle between the two titans was joined in 1901 when
Harriman and Hill, backed, of course, by the full strength of their
300 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
associates, both sought to acquire control of the Burlington Rail-
road which owned the best connection with Chicago from the West.
The contest took place in Wall Street, and the first round was won
by Hill and Morgan who captured a controlling interest in the Burl-
ington. But Harriman and Schiff replied by buying up a majority of
the shares in Hill's key railroad, the Northern Pacific. Both sides
recognized that the struggle was deadlocked when it was discovered
that the Rockefeller group virtually owned the Northern Pacific
while the Morgan group had managed to retain a majority of the
voting stock. Neither group wanted a fight to the finish. Indeed the
justification of banker management lay precisely in the avoidance
of such fights. The alternative was perfectly clear. Together the erst-
while opponents set up the Northern Securities Company in which
their railroad interests were combined.
The WaU Street fight for control of the Northern Pacific had
brought a tremendous boom in that company's shares, which carried
the rest of the market to new highs. When the fight ended, not
only Northern Pacific but the whole market suddenly collapsed and
thousands were ruined. The entire operation was a spectacular one
that had caught the imagination of the country. Most impressed,
perhaps, was President Roosevelt, who found in the Morgan-
Rockefeller war just the right occasion to blast the characteristic
irresponsibility of the topmost business leaders. He also found in
the Northern Securities Company just the right consolidation to
attack under the Sherman Act. In a decision as spectacular as the
creation of Northern Securities itself, the Supreme Court dissolved
the company in 1904. But this hardly deterred the bankers and their
allies from cementing by other means, such as stock ownership in
each other's companies, their joint control over the money market,
the major industries, and the transportation services of the country.
Olympian in their economic power and their contempt for gov-
ernment and politics, the great financiers also moved a few steps
forward in society. By the turn of the century a number of them
had been admitted to the august Union Club, the oldest in New
York. Others had entered the even more exclusive Knickerbocker
Club, which had been founded in 1871 by young aristocrats im-
patient at once with the growing membership of the Union and its
Science and Scarcity 301
long waiting period. For those who couldn't quite make this grade,
Morgan himself, in 1891, had founded the magnificent Metropol-
itan Club. This, in its way, was as exclusive as the others, fortune
more than forebears supplying the key to its portals. While club
life was lending a gentlemanly sheen to their own day-to-day rou-
tine, the giants of American finance were also giving a monarchic
gloss to their families by marrying their daughters to the impover-
ished nobility of Europe. Those who didn't marry counts married
cousins and kept wealth and the control of wealth at home.
Family life itself, moreover, had taken on a roseate, not to say
a golden tinge. Describing the Morgans on the eve of the twentieth
century and on the eve of his own marriage to the banker's daugh-
ter, Louisa, Herbert Satterlee writes:
Mr. Morgan's house was just where he wanted it to be and it suited
his mode of life. Mrs. Morgan was well and they had their unmarried
daughters, Louisa and Anne living at home. . . . He himself was in
good health. His friends were nearby. The people in his social world
were of his own kind, and the bankers and business men with whom
he came into contact had, for the most part, the same standard of
ethics and point of view that he himself had. New York was still a
friendly, neighborly city and was a pleasant place in which to live. . . .
At midnight, when the bells and horns proclaimed the beginning of
the New Year, he was looking forward with the eagerness of a much
younger man to the great possibilities of the century that was about
to begin.
Mr. Morgan himself saw the New Year in while sitting isolated,
as usual, playing solitaire. A few months later he was to build a
temporary ballroom to accommodate 2,400 persons for Louisa's
wedding. Most of the year he spent in Europe where, in the exas-
perated opinion of Roger Fry, curator of paintings at the Morgan-
dominated Metropolitan Museum, he "behaved like a crowned
head," going about buying the "gilt-edged securities" of continental
art. The decades around the turn of the century, the golden age
of millionaire collectors of companies and counts, were also the
golden age of millionaire collectors of masterpieces. Private and
public museums bulged with the sure things of Europe's past and
fraudulent reproductions of them, while domestic artists, like do-
mestic swains, languished in obscurity.
302 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
THE CRACKS IN THE WALL
While Mr. Morgan played solitaire on New Year's Eve, 1899, The
New York Times studied its crystal ball. "The year 1899," said
the Times' leading New Year's Day editorial, "was a year of won-
ders, a veritable annus mirabilis in business and production. . . .
It would be easy to speak of the twelve months just passed as the
banner year were we not already confident that the distinction of
highest records must presently pass to the year 1900. . . . The
outlook on the threshold of the new year is extremely bright."
The Times' expectations were not to be denied for almost four
years. Ripples of dissatisfaction with Morganization, however, were
already becoming apparent in 1901 when barely suppressed alarm
greeted the revelations of the amount of "water" in the financing
of the billion-dollar steel company. Alarm turned to consternation
with the revelations in 1903 of fraud in connection with the flotation
of the "Shipbuilding Trust"; and consternation turned to panic
when thirty-seven other new combinations went bankrupt that year
at a cost of $600,000,000 to investors. A dozen other trusts, cap-
italized at an additional half-billion dollars had to acknowledge
financial difficulties. From 1904 to 1906, moreover, Morgan's own
special pet, the vaunted United States Steel, failed to pay common-
stock dividends.
A spectacular investigation of New York insurance companies in
1905 by a legislative committee counseled by the brilliant lawyer,
Charles Evans Hughes, disclosed incredible irregularities in the
financiers' handling of insurance funds and sent many of the lesser
financial fry to jail. The Morgans and Rockefellers, both deeply in-
volved in the revelations, escaped punishment by the law, but fell
a few more notches in public esteem. The Panic of 1907 marked a
kind of culmination of their decline. As a result of the collapse of
security prices during this panic, Morgan was able to secure control
of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company for less than half its real
value. The Rockefellers, in turn, bought up large holdings in copper
and other areas. It was widely supposed, indeed, that the Panic had
been induced by the great bankers simply for the purpose of acquir-
ing key and competitive properties cheaply. But the fact that the
The Cracks in the Wall 303
economy in general failed to recover from the crash until war orders
began pouring in from Europe in 1915 indicated that business had
been in a fundamentally unsound condition. Morgan himself earned
the plaudits of the financial community during the panic by his
success in mobilizing funds to shore up shaky banks of his choos-
ing. But the revelation of his power in this connection only spurred
the drive for a reorganization of the country's entire banking sys-
tem giving government administrators responsible to the voters the
power that "Morgan the Peerless" exercised as he alone saw fit.
As middle-class opinion turned against the bankers, they them-
selves insisted, quite accurately, that they had not seized power in
response to any social crusade. Thus they disclaimed responsibility
for social welfare. For the welfare of their own companies, how-
ever, they had publicly assumed obligations, and on the credit of
such obligations they had mobilized billions of dollars of the pub-
lic's money. For their failure to maintain the integrity of such in-
vestments they could not escape blame. A hairline crack of distrust,
moreover, prompted the envious or suspicious to try to broaden the
fault, and eventually an attack was made on the bankers' entire
structure.
Even the objectives which the bankers themselves saw as em-
bodying their greatest virtues were turned against them. Economic
stability throttled opportunity and depressed real wages for a rapidly
expanding population. Business "harmony," in turn, only dulled
initiative and enterprise. "It is a well known fact," the Investors'
Guild wrote in a Memorial to President Taft in 1911, "that modern
trade combinations tend strongly toward a constancy of process
and products, and by their very nature are opposed to new processes
and new products originated by independent inventors." More tell-
ing was the testimony of the Engineering News at about the same
time:
We are today something like five years behind Germany in iron and
steel metallurgy, and such innovations as are being introduced by our
iron and steel manufacturers are most of them merely following the
lead set by foreigners years ago.
We do not believe this is because American engineers are any less
ingenious or original than those in Europe, though they may indeed
304 "M organization" and the Middle Class
be deficient in train ing and scientific education compared with those
of Germany. We believe the main cause is the wholesale consolidation
which has taken place in American industry. A huge organization is
too clumsy to take up the development of an original idea. With the
market closely controlled and profits certain by following standard
methods, those who control our trusts do not want the bother of
developing anything new.
We instance metallurgy only by way of illustration. There are
plenty of other fields of industry where exactly the same condition
exists. . . .
If the engineers needed specific evidence, they had only to point
to Morgan's refusal to finance General Motors, and the failure of
General Motors after Lee, Higginson & Company did advance
funds to keep pace with Ford and other independent companies.
In the plants and on the railroads which the bankers did operate,
moreover, the accident rate reached its peak between 1903 and
1907. Industrial deaths numbered tens of thousands, injuries hun-
dreds of thousands a year. On the railroads, as in the factories, ab-
sentee managements concerned first and almost exclusively with
financial expediency, stinted gravely on the installation of available
safety devices and spent little or nothing on developing new ones.
But safety was only one of the problems of industrial employment.
Child labor, deathly long hours, filthy surroundings, brutal foremen,
and other evils all added to the needless toll. Incredibly noxious
conditions in what the workers called "home" only aggravated the
social cost of stability.
Though Mr. Morgan found New York at the turn of the century
a "neighborly city," it must have been that with a vengeance for
the 30,000 persons crowded into a single New York East Side dis-
trict of five or six blocks. This notorious "District A," one of many
such, had a greater density of population than any similar area any-
where hi the world, even in teeming India or China or the densest
slums of Europe. But much more depressing than New York were
the conditions in absentee ownership towns which the bankers
never saw.
In many such towns, as in the slums of New York, the majority
of the population had come to be made up of the "new" immigrants,
The Progressive Movement 305
the "uprooted," who had been drawn from Europe by the glittering
promises and grimmer devices of agents of American industry, land-
grant railroads, and steamship companies. The so-called "old" im-
migration from Britain and western Europe had reached its peak
of almost 640,000 in 1882. Thereafter, immigration fell off steadily
to a twenty-year low of 229,000 in 1898. When it revived again,
with the revival of prosperity in the United States, most of the new-
comers were drawn from the impoverished countries of central and
southeastern Europe. By 1910 such immigrants, along with Negroes
migrating from the South, made up about two thirds of the total
labor force in twenty predominant American industries. On the
whole ignorant of English and unable to read or write their own
language, these immigrants tended to associate with their own
countrymen in the port cities in which they landed or in the factory
towns to which they were herded by corporate representatives on
arrival All the circumstances of their life conspired to make them
hostile to American institutions, which in fact offered them no pro-
tection from exploitation and no alternative to it. This hostility be-
came increasingly reciprocated by Americans over whom the alien
tide swept.
Genteel American spokesmen, segregated from immigrant slums
in the great cities or distant from cities that were almost nothing but
industrial slums, denounced assertions that there was poverty in
the United States. "No facts to bear out these assertions are
offered," said William Graham Sumner, Yale's notable Spencerian
sociologist. In 1904, Robert Hunter, in his volume Poverty, offered
this comment after a most careful investigation: "I have not the
slightest doubt that there are in the United States ten million per-
sons in precisely these conditions of poverty, but I am largely guess-
ing and there may be as many as fifteen or twenty million!" And
then he asked the brutal question, "But ought we not to know?" and
added, "To neglect even to inquire into our national distress is to
be guilty of the grossest moral insensitiveness."
THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT
While the Morgans and the Rockefellers disclaimed responsibility
for social welfare and the stockholders in their companies as well
306 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
as corporation law itself countenanced their disclaimer, public
sentiment increasingly held them to account. Their financial empires
had become the dominant power in the country; the callous dis-
regard of these empires for democratic traditions and for human
life itself aroused Theodore Roosevelt's "emotional classes" in par-
ticular to invoke the "higher law" of Christian humanity in defense
of the "general welfare" against the "malefactors of great wealth."
One of the first needs of this defense was concrete information
about what was really happening in the new America. In the first
decade of the twentieth century, this information was supplied in
startling fashion by the "muckrake" magazines. The foremost of
these was McClure's, named for its brilliant publisher, S. S. Mc-
Clure, whose galaxy of writers included Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Stef-
fens, Ray Stannard Baker, and William Allen White. Cosmopolitan,
edited by John Brisben Walker; Everybody's, edited by E. J. Ridge-
way; Arena, edited by B. O. Flower; and Hampton's, edited by Ben
Hampton, all offered similar platforms to writers like David Graham
Phillips, Charles Edward Russell, and Thomas W. Lawson. The
name "muckraker" was first pinned on these journalists in 1906 by
President Roosevelt. In a fit of pique, he contemptuously compared
them to John Bunyan's "Man with the Muck-Rake," who when
offered "the celestial crown . . . could look no way but downward"
and continue "to rake the filth on the floor." Some of the writers
disavowed this appellation; but most of them wore it as a badge of
honor.
The first muckraking articles probably were those by Ida Tarbell
on the Standard Oil Company, and Lincoln Steffens on "The
Shame of the Cities," both published in McClure's in 1902. Other
notable performances included Baker's three articles on "The
Right to Work," beginning in McClure's in January 1903, which
examined in detail the relations of labor, capital, and government;
Lawson's "Frenzied Finance," which began in Everybody's in July
1904; and Phillips's series on "The Treason of the Senate," start-
ing in Cosmopolitan in March 1906. These journalists, a later
critic has written, "traced the intricate relationship of the police,
the underworld, the local political bosses, the secret connections
between the new corporations . . . and the legislature and the
The Progressive Movement 307
courts. In doing this, they drew a cast of characters for the drama
of American society: bosses, professional politicians, reformers,
racketeers, captains of industry. Everybody recognized these native
types; . . . but they had not been characterized before; their
social functions had not been analyzed."
The muckrake magazines reached immense audiences for the
times. Between 1903 and 1906, the circulation of Hampton's rose
from 13,000 to 440,000; in the same few years Everybody's was
transformed from a store sheet of John Wanamaker's to a national
magazine with a circulation of 735,000. Between 1900 and 1906,
McClure's circulation jumped from 370,000 to more than 750,000.
These figures lagged behind those of conservative consumer maga-
zines like the Ladies' Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post,
but the muckrake magazines outstripped the old journals of opinion,
such as Harper's, Scribnefs and Century, each of which had leveled
off at about 150,000 subscribers.
The muckrakers' research was supplemented by that of other
groups, notably national and state legislative committees. As early
as 1898 Congress had set up the Industrial Commission to study
the relation of the new trusts to immigration, agriculture, labor>
technology and other subjects. Its report, in nineteen thick volumes*
remains a mine of information; around the turn of the century it
supplied much of the basic data for the work of social critics like
John R. Commons and Thorstein Veblen. The most thoroughgoing
use of the legislatures' investigative function was made in the state-
of Wisconsin during the governorship of Robert M. La Follette
from 1901 to 1906. Other reform governors copied La Toilette's,
employment of the faculty of the state university as a "brains
trust," and imitated what became famous as the "Wisconsin way."
The muckrakers' work in publicizing their findings was also
supplemented by vigorous special groups whose leaders appealed to
specialized audiences. Most important among these were the
clerical preachers of the "Social Gospel," whose "muscular Chris-
tianity" included all phases of reform; and their women parishioners,
who were especially adept at organizing reform committees to see
"Progressive" action through. The Social Gospel movement went
back to the 1870s, but its leaders, such as Washington Gladden and
308 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
Walter Rauschenbusch, continued to have great influence. Among
their most enthusiastic converts were Tom L. Johnson, the mil-
lionaire traction magnate, who became the "best mayor of the best
governed city in the United States" (in the opinion of Lincoln
StefEens), during his reign in Cleveland from 1901 to 1909;
and Samuel M. ("Golden Rule") Jones, an early oil millionaire
who virtually emulated Johnson in Toledo from 1897 until his
death in 1904. Jones's successor was Brand Whitlock, who carried
on Jones's reforms for eight more years. Johnson, Jones and
Whitlock all took on national importance because of their over-
whelming success in routing the corrupt machine politicians in
Mark Hanna's own state.
The spearhead of the middle-class women's activity was the
General Federation of Women's Clubs, which had been organized
in 1889; and the main plank in the women's program was women's
suffrage. By 1910, however, more than eight million women and
nearly two million children (under sixteen) had entered the labor
force (which totaled about thirty-eight million), and factory and
general working conditions occupied much of the Progressive
women's attention.
Though they were fighting the evils of consolidated monopolies of
enterprise and opportunity, the Progressives were forced to ac-
knowledge that only in union was there strength. Their first field
of attack was child labor, and the first "child labor committee"
was organized in 1901 by the Rev. Edgar G. Murphy of Mont-
gomery, Alabama. In 1904 a National Child Labor Committee was
formed, and by 1910 twenty-five state and local committees were
affiliated with it. Other Progressive organizations joined in the fight,
among them the National Consumers' League and the General
Federation of Women's Clubs. As a result of this combined assault
forty-three states adopted child-labor laws between 1902 and 1909.
Old laws going as far back as 1813 had dealt perfunctorily with
child labor in the factories; the new ones were much more com-
prehensive, and not only covered hours and conditions of labor in
numerous kinds of business but also set minimum ages for leaving
school.
Women's working conditions next occupied the Progressive re-
The Progressive Movement 309
formers. Under the slogan "let us be our sisters' keepers," the state
and national federations of women's clubs assumed leadership in
this field. Until 1908, the courts, while permitting regulation of child
labor as part of the police power, frowned on controls over
women's working conditions as interference with the freedom of
contract. Then, in the case of Mutter v. Oregon, the Supreme Court
reversed its negative position and virtually all the states enacted
new laws in this field. Other areas of Progressive legislation in-
cluded laws for workmen's accident compensation, laws for the
regulation of tenement and factory construction, laws setting
standards of public health, and local minimum-wage laws.
But by 1910 the Progressives had ample reason for skepticism
about legislation. Effective enforcement commissions did not be-
come common until after the first World War. Until then, legislation
may have meant something to politicians needing public support
and to agitators needing concrete objectives. Among working
women and children, slum dwellers, the maimed and the diseased,
little improvement in conditions was noted before the 1920s and
1930s.
One of the products of organized reform is organized resistance,
especially on the part of those made to foot the bill. Factory legisla-
tion was promptly fought by organized businessmen, chambers of
commerce, and similar militant associations whose members would
have borne the burden of taxation and other costs as well as bureau-
cratic interference with their freedom to conduct their enterprises
as they alone saw fit. Business resistance to reform was strengthened
by business connections with the traditional patronage- and
privilege-dispensing politicos in the cities and the states. A growing
awareness of the political road block turned the Progressives to a
concerted attack on traditional political practices.
The Progressives' chief target was the monopoly the regular party
machines had over naming candidates for office; the chief reform
they offered was the direct primary, by which, presumably, the
registered rank and file of each party would elect the party
candidates. By 1916 direct primary legislation had been enacted
in forty-fiJBhates the holdouts being Rhode Island, Connecticut,
and New^Pxico. Other Progressive political reforms included the
310 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
"initiative," by which the voters themselves could propose legisla-
tion; the "referendum," by which the public would have the
privilege of accepting or rejecting laws already passed by the
legislature; and the "recall," by which the voters could fire undesir-
able public officials before the end of their terms.
Though these reforms were adopted in numerous states, they
did not lastingly improve state or local government. The direct
primary, in particular, served largely to screen out of possible
candidacy for office those who could not afford to campaign with-
out the resources of their party's war chest. On the other hand, the
Progressive movement did draw able men and women into politics
for a few years and also served to remind the entrenched party
hacks that the voters, on whom they ultimately depended, were in
a rebellious mood and that greater attention might henceforth be
given to satisfying them on candidates and conduct in office^
The kingpins of the party machines in the states were the
United States senators who were elected by the state legislatures.
On the national scene, one of the major Progressive demands was
for the direct election of United States senators by the people. An
amendment to this effect (the Seventeenth Amendment to the Con-
stitution) was pushed through Congress in May 1912, and ratified
one year later. This Amendment was a signal Progressive victory,
but its effect on the Senate and the state machines remains ambigu-
ous. The drive for women's suffrage also resulted in an amendment,
the Nineteenth, after local campaigns for the enfranchisement of
women by the states showed little progress. By 1914 only eleven
states had granted women the right to vote. The campaign for a
national amendment took on greater force after World War I,
during which American women had made many sacrifices, and
Congress finally yielded in June 1919. Ratification came in 1920,
in time for women to participate in the presidential election.
Women, organized in the Women's Christian Temperance Union,
had a leading role in the enactment of a third Progressive amend-
ment, the Eighteenth, or Prohibition Amendment, which went into
effect in January 1920, after almost a century of agitation.
Business opposition to' Progressive social legislation in the cities
The Progressive Movement 311
and the states was led mainly by "small business"; in an atmosphere
of growing public antagonism to reorganization, the giant corpora-
tions preferred that local interests carry the ball rather than appear
themselves in overt opposition to social welfare. But when the
Progressives in the national theater began agitating for the tighten-
ing up of control over railroads, for the demolition of trusts, and
reductions in the tariffs, big business took notice. When President
McKinley was assassinated in 1901 and Theodore Roosevelt be-
came President, many of the bankers and their satellites expected
the worst. Throughout his career, the Rough Rider had chastised
"big financiers" and mocked their "glorified pawnbrokers' souls."
He had been nominated for the vice-presidency in the campaign
of 1900 (when McKinley was re-elected) mainly as a move by the
professional politicians to immobilize him in an empty if honorific
position. Suddenly he had become the chief of state at a time when
the "emotional classes" looked for just such a leader as he.
Roosevelt's reign lasted until 1909, and proved Elihu Root cor-
rect when he surmised that the Rough Rider's "bark is worse than
his bite." By limiting his role largely to sloganeering, Roosevelt
effectively took the wind from the sails of men like Robert La
Follette who became a United States Senator in 1906 and tried to
accomplish on a national scale what he had achieved in Wisconsin.
Characteristic of T.R/s work was the Pure Food and Drugs Act
of 1906. This Act was a sop to consumer groups. It was worse than
useless for insuring sanitation in food processing and purity and
honest labeling in drugs, since it prescribed no effective means of
enforcement and yet blocked the early enactment of more stringent
regulation in its field.
But even the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act, such as it
was, over the political minions massed against any extension of
federal power, represented a kind of triumph for Roosevelt. Unlike
most of the more thorough reformers, T.R. was a professional
politician of considerable experience. He had served three terms
in the sordid Assembly of the New York State Legislature; he had
been a member of the federal Civil Service Commission for six
years under Presidents Harrison and Cleveland, and was also
McKMey's Assistant Secretary of the Navy until he quit to organize
312 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
the Rough Riders to fight the Spanish in Cuba in 1898 (see Chapter
Twelve). On his return from the war, he won the governorship of
New York. Roosevelt's experience reinforced his native political
savvy. Rarely did he plump for the whole loaf or nothing (as Wilson
was to do later) ; when he saw that he could wheedle half a loaf
only, he grasped it with such shouting that his followers were
willing to believe that he had slain the dragon of privilege even
when he had merely begun its domestication.
In the period between the election of Grant and the re-election
of McKinley the two-party system of American politics had de-
generated into a quadrennial contest for control of political jobs.
Business not politics had assumed the dynamic role in American
development, and both parties prostrated themselves before their
masters. T.R.'s role, and that of the Progressives in general, was
to recall the political genius of the American people from its long
slumber. The real invigoration of the role of the state in fulfilling
its constitutional obligation to "promote the general welfare" was
not to come until the depression of the 1930s. But Roosevelt
and the Progressives reminded the nation and the nation's business
leaders that that obligation had not been permanently suspended.
Two dramatic actions of Roosevelt's during his first administra-
tion, fairly insubstantial in themselves, had great symbolic force in
this connection. In the first he ordered his Attorney-General to
attack the Morgan-Rockefeller Northern Securities combine in
1902. This had the startling effect of bringing the imperial J. P.
Morgan himself on a hasty visit to the White House to find out just
how far the power of the nation was going to be employed against
the heretofore fairly unmolested business community. When, in
1904, the Supreme Court by a mere 5 to 4 vote dissolved the
Northern Securities Company, Roosevelt thundered for all to hear,
that "The most powerful men in this country were held to ac-
countability before the law."
T.R.'s second dramatic performance also came in 1902. By
October of that year the mine workers in the anthracite pits, most
of which had become "captive mines" of the Morgan-dominated
Reading Railroad, had been on strike for months. Conditions in the
mines and mining towns had been atrocious in the 1870s when the
The Progressive Movement 313
bankers first took control, and they had gone from bad to worse.
Led by the able John Mitchell, guiding genius of the United Mine
Workers, the miners demanded improvements all along the line. The
operators, headed by George F. Baer, Morgan-appointed head of
the Reading road, were immovable in their unwillingness even to
recognize the existence of the union; negotiation with it was out
of the question. At one stage in the strike, Baer made the sancti-
monious statement that "The rights and interests of the laboring
man will be cared for, not by the labor agitators, but by the
Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given con-
trol of the property interests of the country."
This was sound Morgan doctrine and was underscored by the
great financier himself when he returned from one of his trips to
Europe in August. By then the deadlock in the mines had existed
for four months. Winter was imminent and the nation's anthracite
coalbins were empty. By October "coal riots" had broken out in
various northern cities. Roosevelt demanded that the strike be
arbitrated; the operators would yield on nothing until the workers
went back to the pits. The workers themselves, "having in mind
our experience with the coal operators in the past," as Mitchell put
it, remained just as adamant as Morgan and company. At last, on
October 13, Morgan made a second trip to the nation's capital,
which unaccountably seemed to have returned to Washington from
Wall Street. He and Roosevelt finally were able to agree on an
arbitration commission which ultimately awarded the workers a
10 per cent wage increase and other concessions. The Rough Rider
had triumphed again, and a grateful people could look forward to
their winter's heat.
Ever since childhood Roosevelt had been a lover of the great
outdoors, epecially the American West. Conservation of American
forest, mineral, and water resources was a subject very close to his
heart and from the day of his taking the presidency he had worked
to enlarge the areas to be preserved from wasteful exploitation by
big business. During his first administration, Roosevelt also set up a
Bureau of Corporations, a kind of forerunner of the Federal Trade
Commission, to do continuing research into the affairs of the titans
of the business world, and to make its findings public. He also estab-
314 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
lished the Anti-Trust division of the Department of Justice and
created a new Department of Commerce and Labor, with a pro-
labor Secretary of cabinet rank.
The middle class obviously enjoyed Roosevelt's reaffirmation
of federal power against the plutocrats, especially as he seemed also
to quiet the clamor for Socialism among the workers and radical
intellectuals. Even big business recognized the merit of Roosevelt's
work in this latter connection; at any rate, leading millionaires con-
tributed handsomely to his 1904 campaign fund. In the election
that year, Roosevelt defeated the Democratic candidate, Judge
Alton B. Parker of New York, by more than two and a half million
votes, polling an unprecedented 56.4 per cent of the ballots cast.
The major legislation of T.R.'s second term included, besides
the opening-wedge Pure Food and Drugs Act, the Hepburn Act
of 1906, and the Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1908. The first of these
gave the Interstate Commerce Commission power to set maximum
railroad rates; but such rates remained subject to court review. The
Hepburn Act also extended the Commission's regulatory domain
to railroad terminal facilities, refrigeration cars, and warehouses.
The Aldrich-Vreeland Act, a forerunner of the Federal Reserve act
of 1913, was enacted as a consequence of the Panic of 1907. Its
main objective was to broaden the base for the issuance of bank
currency in times of financial stringency. It permitted banks to
issue currency against reserves not only of federal bonds, as in the
past, but against state and local securities and commercial paper.
More adequate financial legislation had to wait a few years.
Roosevelt would have given much for a national crisis that might
have permitted him, like his cousin later, to seek a third term. The
best he could do was to hand-pick his successor, his friend and
Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, of Ohio. In the elections
of 1908 Taft won easily over the perennial candidate, William
Jennings Bryan, to whom the Democrats had returned after the
demolition of the conservative Parker four years earlier. Roosevelt
himself, finding that his personal estate had shrunk to the point
where he had better go to work, made numerous journalistic con-
nections and then, in 1909, set out to hunt big game in Africa. Taft's
allegiance to Progressivism was soon shown to be thin indeed. The
The Progressive Movement 315
political news annoyed T.R., and letters from such Progressives as
his son-in-law Nicholas Longworth and his friend Henry Cabot
Lodge complaining of social coldness at the White House made
things worse. After Roosevelt's return in 1910 his split with Taft
widened rapidly. At heart Taft was a conservative jurist. An im-
mense figure physically, he was not as jovial as he looked. As a
symbol of Progressivism he was an uncomfortable and compromis-
ing pigmy.
Taft had the misfortune of permitting the Republican old guard to
pass a new high tariff act (the Payne-Aldrich Act of 1909) just
when the whole country was complaining of the high cost of living
which the bankers 3 "stabilized" economy helped to bring about.
This act contemptuously ignored the Republican Party's platform
pledge of tariff revision. So incensed were certain western agrarian
Progressives over Taft's betrayal notably La Follette, Beveridge
of Indiana, Bristow of Kansas, and Dolliver and Cummins of Iowa
that they fought their own party leaders in one of the most
brilliant debates ever to occur in the Senate. The "insurgents" lost
to Aldrich and his company of "regulars," who had Taft's (and the
lobbies') encouragement; but the impact of their rebellion shook
the Senate old guard to its foundations. When Taft then announced
to the public that the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act, the highest yet, was
the best ever enacted, he shocked the Republican rank and file as
well. -
The year after the tariff fight in the Senate, insurgent House
Progressives, chiefly insurgent Republicans, tried to unseat Re-
publican Speaker "Uncle Joe" Cannon, who ruled the chamber
with an iron hand largely through his chairmanship of the Rules
Committee. This Committee had absolute control over what legisla-
tion would be brought to the floor of the House. The Speaker also
had the power to name the members of all other committees, and
of refusing to recognize any member who wished to address the
House. Taft gave the House insurgents no more aid or sympathy
than he had given those in the Senate, and Cannon managed to
save his speakership; but in March 1910, the insurgents succeeded
in stripping the Speaker of much of his absolute power. Taft's role
316 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
in this melee cost him most of the Progressive support he had
managed to retain after the tariff fiasco.
The final rupture between Taft and the Progressives occurred
when Interior Secretary Ballinger, more or less on a technicality,
reopened to private exploitation certain of Roosevelt's "conserved"
coal lands in Alaska in which Morgan and the Guggenheims were
interested. Such open perversions of Progressive policies made Taft
seem the embodiment of reaction. But Progressives in the Cabinet
and in Congress during Taft's administration managed to extend
regulatory and reform legislation beyond Roosevelt's own limits.
Where T.R.'s attorneys-general had brought forty-four suits
against the trusts in seven years, Taft's brought ninety suits in
four years, and these attacked much bigger game and brought much
heavier fines. Under Taft, Congress in 1910 also passed the Mann-
Elkins Act which at long last gave the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission the power to suspend railroad rates it found objectionable,
and to do so without first going to the courts. This made government
regulation effective for the first time. Despite the cry of "socialism,"
Taft's administration provided the country with parcel post and
postal savings banks. It also took steps greatly to improve safety
on the railroads and working conditions in the mines. It established
a separate Department of Labor (and of Commerce), and a Chil-
dren's Bureau to set child-labor standards and to oversee child-
labor conditions on a national scale. Above all, in exchange for
votes on the high tariff of 1909, Taft's congressional contingent
yielded on the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution insuring
the legality of the income tax. This amendment, also passed in 1909,
was ratified in 1913.
By then Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey had become President,
and Progressive legislation in the national theater was on the
verge of becoming stronger than ever. Progressive legislation had
not been the aim of those who groomed Wilson for the White
House. But Wilson, a transplanted Virginian who once said that,
"The only place in the world where nothing has to be explained to
me is the South," was capable of discerning which way the winds
of political power blew and of acting accordingly. The idea of a
strong executive appealed to Wilson as much as it did to Theodore
The Progressive Movement 317
Roosevelt; but strength in office implied that the leader's voice be
"lifted upon the chorus and that it [be] only the crown of the
common theme." Despite Taft, the "common theme" was still
Progressive in tone and Wilson had long since adopted it.
The most exciting candidate for the presidency as the elections
of 1912 loomed had been Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin, the
most successful Progressive of them all as Governor of Wisconsin
and the most militant as United States Senator. La Follette hoped
to get the Republican nomination. The party leaders were certain
they could stop him, but far less certain that he would not then run
on a third party ticket. Their fears were aroused by the fact that as
early as January 1911, La Follette's supporters had formed the
National Progressive Republican League to force his nomination
as the 'logical candidate." The Progressives were determined either
to capture the Republican Party nomination or to run an inde-
pendent candidate of their own, preferably the man from Wisconsin.
Unfortunately for the Progressives, the Republican Party refused
to be captured. Far worse, some slick party leaders prevailed upon
Roosevelt himself "to head off La Follette" by entering the con-
test for the "third party" nomination against him. Roosevelt
cogitated this move for a long time, then suddenly announced that
his hat was in the ring. La Follette support suddenly melted away.
Roosevelt, after all, was far more the public incarnation of Pro-
gressivism than was the Senator. Above all, T.R. was unmatched as
a campaigner. He was especially eager to campaign in 1912 be-
cause the old guard who had retained control of the Republican
Party renominated Taft. Roosevelt had come to consider his old
friend little better than a Judas.
The Democrats had their own "La Follette" in William Jennings
Bryan, thek own "Taft" in the arch-conservative Champ Clark.
A deadlock between these stalwarts opened the way for "Dr.
Wilson." And the split in Republican ranks insured Wilson's victory.
In the election Wilson polled almost a million and a half fewer votes
than Roosevelt and Taft together. His percentage of all votes cast
was no more than 41.8. But he had none of Lincoln's concern
over being a minority president. "This is not a day of triumph," he
said at the conclusion of his inaugural address. "It is a day of
318 "Morganization" and the Middle Class
dedication. Here muster," he added in good Progressive language,
"not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. ... I summon
all honest men, all patriotic men, to my side. God helping me, I
will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me."
Had the Republican Party stalwarts had their way, Taft would
have won the election. That he didn't was a measure of the con-
cessions the Progressive spirit had forced upon the rulers of the
country. The middle class had found the flaws in "Morganization"
and had applied political remedies to them. In Wilson's first admin-
istration these remedies were made all the more stringent. Wilson's
three major accomplishments were the Underwood Tariff of 1913,
the first since the Civil War to lower the tariff appreciably against
foreign competition with American manufacturers; the Clayton
Anti-Trust Act of 1914, which explicitly outlawed monopolistic
business practices and established a Federal Trade Commission
to see that they remained inoperative; and the Owen-Glass Act of
1913, which created the Federal Reserve System to give the whole
nation, under government supervision, a flexible currency adapted
to the seasonal needs of the farmers as well as the long-term needs
of the business world.
Before these vigorous measures could be properly tested, the first
World War began hi Europe. Many of the leading Progressives were
isolationist to the core and in this they reflected the popular spirit
of the country. To some of them, however, such as T.R. himself,
the Progressive movement at home had had its counterpart in the
Messianic impulse abroad. To them the American way of life was
the obvious model for the less happy universe and the war was a
heaven-sent opportunity for America to reorder the world in her
own image. In its way this spirit was as much a part of the American
tradition as its isolationist antithesis.
Chapter Twelve
The Messianic Impulse
Take up the White Man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons in exile
To serve your captive's need:
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
So Rudyard Kipling addressed the American people in February
1899. Kipling himself had neither love nor sympathy for the "new-
caught sullen peoples" of the world.
Take up the White Man's burden. . . .
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
It was to save and strengthen their own souls that he urged the
White Men of the West to shoulder their obligation.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers. . . .
Take up the White Man's Burden
Ye dare not stoop to less
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
320 The Messianic Impulse
In February 1899, the United States had just humiliated Spain
in what Theodore Roosevelt was to caE "the most absolutely right-
eous foreign war" of the nineteenth century, and the Senate was
debating the acquisition of the Philippines as part of the spoils of
victory. Few in America, least of all the expansionists themselves,
thought of making the distant islands a territory and ultimately a
state, or of making the "little brown brothers" out there citizens.
But could a democratic republic become an empire and rule a sub-
ject people? This question agitated Americans from President
McKialey down. Kipling's poem, urging the White Men of America
to "have done with childish days," helped to justify, indeed to
impel an affimative answer.
Appropriately enough, "The White Man's Burden" first appeared
in McClure's magazine, the leading organ of the "muckrakers" who
were soon to pick up the "White Man's Burden" at home. Roosevelt
sent advance copies to Henry Cabot Lodge, remarking that it was
"rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansionist stand-
point." Lodge himself thought more highly of the poetry and the
sense. "I like it," he wrote back. On publication, American news-
papers gave Kipling's poem first-page play: and from the United
States it "circled the earth in a day and by repetition became
hackneyed within a week."
THE WORLD AND THE UNITED STATES
From the time of the Crusades in the eleventh and twelfth centuries
until the spread of Communism in our day, the history of Western
Christendom had been the history of expansion. To account for
this is to explain the whole nature of the "White Man" of the
Western World. He would spread "civilization," but also fly from
it. Duty drove him as much as daring, faith as much as science,
power as strongly as trade, pride as relentlessly as profit. In the
pulse-quickening history that this complex of motives brought
about, the discovery of America itself had been but one incident.
After the discovery of America, the rivalry of the western powers
spread to other parts of the world and gradually brought about
the enslavement or exploitation of the colored peoples of the
southern climes. Britain's triumph over Napoleon in 1815 at last
The World and the United States 321
knocked the French out of the old contest for empire; while the
triumph of the industrial revolution in Britain assured her world
supremacy for a century.
Yet, like the other institutions of western civilization, the in-
dustrial revolution itself gradually spread across Europe, and after
the fall of prices following the panic of 1873, competition for world
markets grew especially intense. Besides markets, all industrial
nations began to look for colonial sources of raw materials and
colonial outlets for investment capital. To protect far-flung empires
they also enlarged their navies. And, lest their ships, as Admiral
A. T. Mahan put it, "be like land birds, unable to fly far from thek
own shores," they sought additional colonies for naval coaling sta-
tions and repair bases. Soon Oceania, the coastal lands of the
eastern Pacific, the interiors of Africa and China, Latin America,
indeed all the world, once more became the stage of the imperial
drama.
The upsurge of colonialism and navalism heightened international
suspicions, and all the great countries of Europe began to expand
and modernize their armies. Between 1870 and 1890 British
military expenditures rose 300 per cent; French, 250 per cent;
Russian, 400 per cent; Austro-Hungarian, 450 per cent; German,
1,000 per cent. The same period saw seething diplomatic activity
which brought about a constant reshuffling of alliances in considera-
tion of the new international realities.
In an environment of world-wide competition, nationalism
seemed to thrive; and explorers, missionaries, travelers, doctors,
artists, poets,- and scientists all leveled thek own country's version of
Christian culture at the colored peoples of the appropriated lands.
Britain's "White Man's Burden" was matched by France's mission
civilisatrice, and Bismarckian Germany's Kultur. Soon Italy and
Russia joined the great adventure for "a place in the sun." And by
the 1880s the United States was being readied, as an American
missionary said, to join "the Christian nations" who "are subduing
the world, in order to make mankind free."
As recently as the 1850s, the Americans, Commodore Perry and
Townsend Harris, had opened Japanese ports to the trade of the
western world. From a mere market for western goods, Japan
322 The Messianic Impulse
quickly became an apt mimic of western industrialism. Even before
the 1880s she had shown the transparency of white claims to divine
appointment to civilize the colored peoples of the world by herself
joining the imperial fray.
Russia established her Pacific outpost of Vladivostok in 1860.
After selling Alaska to the United States in 1867, Russia turned
her hungry eyes in earnest toward the crumbling Chinese Empire,
and especially to the province of Manchuria, which thrust itself into
Russian Siberia like a thumb in the eye. At almost the same time,
Japan too turned to nibble at the Manchu colossus, where England
and France had enjoyed special privileges for decades. In 1876,
Japan recognized Korea's independence from China and hoped to
make the new nation a sphere of interest of her own. Ten years
later Britain annexed Burma; and soon after, France completed the
organization of French Indo-China.
These white incursions did not deter the Japanese from declaring
war on China in 1894, as a result of which she grasped much new
territory. Defeat in this war marked the beginning of the Chinese
people's revolt against the futile Manchu dynasty and against the
foreigners who took such overbearing advantage of it Startled by
the speed and decisiveness of Japan's victory, Russia, in concert
with Germany and France, forced the Nipponese to disgorge some
of their new acquisitions; but when ten years later Japan decisively
defeated the Russians themselves, she established her ascendancy
in the Far East.
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 had tremendous con-
sequences. Defeat in the East turned Russia back toward ex-
pansionism in Europe, and opened the chain of events in the
Balkans that eventually led to the first World War. This defeat also
weakened the Russian Czardom and the allegiance of the Russian
people to it, and set the stage for the Russian Revolutions of 1905
and 1917. The Russo-Japanese War marked the first conquest in
modern times of a western nation by a "backward" eastern one, of
a white people by a colored one. Japan's rapid industrialization
became a model for colored nations all over the world; Japan's
victory exposed the vulnerability of the white imperialists.
The Russo-Japanese War was terminated, strikingly enough, by
The "Large America" Idea 323
the Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire). The peacemaker was
President Roosevelt. His justification for entering into the far-off
conflict was American concern for the security of her new Philip-
pine possessions. Of all the aspects of the war, this is perhaps the
most intriguing. "In terms of world history," writes Hajo Holborn,
the author of The Political Collapse of Europe, "the greatest
significance of the events of 1905 was the first emergence of a
system of world politics. Never before had European, American,
and Asiatic policies interacted as they did in this fateful year. . . .
The world received in 1905 a first glimpse of the future global age."
THE "LARGE AMERICA" IDEA
In 1868 Secretary of State Seward, having just seen the Alaska
Purchase barely skin through the Senate and the appropriation for
completing it barely pass the House, complained that "the public
mind" refused "to entertain the higher but more remote questions
of national extension and aggrandizement." In succeeding decades
the main role of the United States in world affairs was as an ex-
porter of grain and beef to feed the rising industrial population of
Europe; as a refuge for the excess of this population brought about
by the rising standard of living attendant upon industrialization; and
as an importer of speculative capital for title completion of its vast
railroad network, the exploitation of its fabulous mineral deposits,
the organization of its cattle kingdom. After 1865 the American
merchant marine itself, once the king of the seas and the pride of
the nation, was permitted virtually to disappear. And with no trade
to protect, the navy languished. The American navy in the 1880s
ranked no higher than twelfth in the world, behind Chile.
Yet "national extension and aggrandizement" had already had
an overpowering history in the United States in the agrarian age,
complete with "White Man's Burden" mythology; and as a rising
industrial nation, the United States was soon to find its avid ex-
pansionists, its imperial theorists and actors, its latter-day carriers
of the Messianic impulse. In 1870, albeit unsuccessfully, President
Grant argued for Senate approval of the acquisition of Santo
Domingo in these terms: "The people of San Domingo are not
capable of maintaining themselves in their present condition. . . .
324 The Messianic Impulse
They yearn for the protection of our free institutions ... our
progress and civilization. Shall we refuse them?" Santo Domingo
had to wait thirty-five years before becoming a "protectorate" of
the United States. But elsewhere in the Caribbean region and in the
Pacific the United States had already begun its noncontiguous
expansion.
In the 1850s, after Perry and Harris had promoted our trans-
Pacific interests in Japan, a guano craze swept over American
agriculture (guano is a rich fertilizer made from the excrement of
sea fowl), and in 1856 the government permitted naval officers to
raise the flag on Pacific islands where guano was to be found. By
1880 about fifty islands had thus become "appurtenances" of the
United States, some of which became exceedingly valuable in the
age of air transportation. By 1880 American businessmen like
Minor Keith and Daniel Guggenheim had also laid the foundations
of private American empires in Latin America. Keith built railroads
in Costa Rica and then, in typical imperialist fashion, turned the
heretofore self-sufficient economy of the little country to the in-
tensive production of bananas to supply his railroads with freight.
In this way he started what was to become the vast domain of the
United Fruit Company. The Guggenheims began operating copper
and silver mines in Mexico and South America, thus starting that
family's foreign activities.
In two areas such early imperialist adventures involved the
American Government in disputes with other nations. One of these
was Samoa, in the southern Pacific; the other, Hawaii in the north-
ern Pacific. Events in Cuba in the 1860s and 1870s also interested
American officials, but little was to be done about that island for
another twenty-five years.
Like many Pacific islands, Samoa offered a haven for ship-
wrecked mariners and a refuge to more fortunate vessels caught in
Pacific storms. As early as the 1830s ships of many nations had
begun to deposit missionaries there. After the completion of the
first transcontinental railroad in 1869, Grant sent an emissary to
the Islands to help develop the excellent harbor of Pago Pago into
a way station for American trans-Pacific commerce. British and
German interests on the island, however, soon effected the Ameri-
The "Large America" Idea 325
can emissary's deportation, and henceforth relations among the
United States, the United Kingdom and Germany grew more bel-
ligerent. After the Spanish War in 1899 the United States finally
acquired Pago Pago harbor. Germany got most of the remainder of
Samoa and the British were compensated elsewhere in the Pacific
and Africa at Germany's expense.
Samoa presented an early occasion for the display of American
ambitions as a world power. It also exposed the problems such
ambitions brought. As Cleveland's Secretary of State Gresham said,
this venture was "the first departure from our traditional and well
established policy of avoiding entangling alliances with foreign
powers in relation to objects remote from this hemisphere."
The Hawaiian islands are more considerable than Samoa, and
nearer to the American west coast. Missionaries from New England
had settled there as early as 1820, by which time the islands had
already become a pleasant rendezvous for ships in the China trade.
Between 1840 and 1860 about four hundred American whaling
vessels visited the islands each year, and many among the crews
jumped ship and remained in Hawaii. Many Hawaiians, voluntarily
or otherwise, signed on American vessels and eventually settled in
California. For this and other reasons the native population rapidly
declined. French and British mariners had also frequented the
islands, and the governments of their countries began early in the
nineteenth century to show an interest in acquiring them. In 1842
Daniel Webster, then Tyler's Secretary of State, effectively termi-
nated these designs by assuring the islanders that while the United
States would not annex them, political meddling there by any other
nation would "dissatisfy" us.
By the 1850s it had been discovered that sugar could be grown
successfully in Hawaii and after 1876 the new staple was admitted
free of duty to American ports. The treaty by which this was
arranged reiterated the American position that no third nation
would be permitted to meddle in the islands. Relations between
the two lands grew closer in 1884 when this treaty was renewed,
though ratification was withheld by the United States Senate until
1887 when Hawaii agreed as part of the treaty to yield Pearl
Harbor and to permit the United States to build a naval base there.
326 The Messianic Impulse
Between 1875 and 1890, Hawaiian sugar exports to the United
States came to represent 99 per cent of all Hawaiian exports. The
danger of this concentration on a single staple for a single market
was made abundantly clear in 1890 when Louisiana sugar growers
prevailed upon Congress to give them special advantages. These
were incorporated in the McKinley Tariff which removed the duty
on other foreign sugar, thus allowing it to compete with Hawaii's,
and at the same time gave the American growers a bounty of two
cents a pound. The McKinley Tariff disrupted the Hawaiian econ-
omy and heightened anti-American sentiment among the surviving
Hawaiian population. This sentiment had been fed earlier by
descendants of the American missionaries who by 1890 had come
to control three fourths of Hawaii's arable land. They had also
introduced Oriental contract laborers to work in the sugar fields.
Worst of all, they had extracted a constitution from King Kalakaua
by which they virtually controlled the government.
King Kalakaua died in 1891 when the sugar depression had
brought anti-American feeling to a peak. When his successor,
Queen Liliuokalani, persisted in the idea that Hawaii should be
governed by Hawaiians, the American business community re-
sponded in 1893 by forming a Committee of Safety headed by San-
ford B. Dole. The Committee's main objective was annexation by
the United States. With the connivance of J. L. Stevens, the Amer-
ican Minister, and the protection of the United States Marines,
Dole's Committee overthrew "Queen Lil" and rushed a commission
to Washington where a treaty of annexation was written. When
President Cleveland refused to submit this treaty to the Senate,
Dole's provisional government proclaimed the Hawaiian Republic
in 1894 and named Dole president. The Republic was annexed in
July 1898, during the imperialist upsurge following the outbreak
of the Spanish-American War. On April 30, 1900, Hawaii was
granted full territorial status. By 1958 the agitation for statehood
(along with Alaska) had made considerable headway.
The United States' early ventures into noncontiguous expansion
scarcely engaged the emotions or sympathy of the American people.
Yet a few American officials had joined with the independent busi-
ness expansionists to prod a reluctant government into enterprises
The "Large America" Idea 327
involving distant lands. The leading official imperialist after
Seward's time was James G. Blaine, a worshiper of Henry Clay
and one of the founders of the Republican Party. Though often a
candidate for the nomination, and once, in 1884, the party's stand-
ard bearer, Blaine, like Clay, never won the presidency. But he
used his lower offices to forward American foreign interests, espe-
cially in Latin America.
Elaine's interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine was character-
istically aggressive. Keeping Europe out of Latin America was not
good enough for him; United States goods and ideas must be forced
in. Latin America was selling to the United States twice as much
as it was buying, and well over 85 per cent of Latin American goods
were entering duty free. Blaine wanted at least equal treatment for
United States exports. As Harrison's Secretary of State in 1889,
Blaine brought representatives of eighteen Latin American nations
to Washington in the first Pan-American Conference. When the
delegates failed to make trade concessions, he threatened to place
tariffs on Latin American goods. His threat was fulfilled by the so-
called "reciprocity" provisions of the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890.
This Act implied that the United States would reciprocate for good
treatment abroad; in fact it meant that we would reciprocate for
bad. Few Latin American countries, however, increased either their
trade with or their tenderness for the United States.
In support of his "Large America" policy, Blaine became one
of the earliest advocates of a new and powerful navy. On his urging,
Congress established the Naval Advisory Board in 1881 and the
Naval War College at Newport in 1884. The Board and the College
both served admirably to spread "big navy" propaganda. Captain
(later Admiral) A. T. Mahan became President of the College in
1889. Three years before he had established himself as the world's
leading philosopher of navalism and imperialism by a series of lec-
tures at the College which were published in 1890 as The Influence
of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783. Such was the state of
American opinion at the time, this classic-to-be went three years
before finding a publisher.
In the 1880s Congress authorized the construction of nine new
cruisers and the first modern American battleship, Maine. To calm
328 The Messianic Impulse
foreign anxieties over American intentions, the new navy was
described officially as one of "seagoing coastline battleships." In the
epochal Naval Act of 1890 this fiction was put aside and the con-
cept of a "navy second to none" appeared. By 1898 only Britain
and France outranked the United States in naval power. With the
Ocean Mail Subsidy Act of 1891 Congress also took the first step
since the Civil War to rebuild the merchant marine. When the panic
of 1893 suggested to American business leaders that the American
market for goods might not be growing as rapidly as heretofore,
some of them also turned their eyes abroad for customers. By 1897
the Annual Report of the State Department's Bureau of Foreign
Commerce stated that "what may be termed an American invasion
of the markets of the world" had begun.
THE SPANISH WAR
While the United States prepared her navy and her factories to im-
plement Elaine's expansionist policy, a series of international in-
cidents threatened to take the country beyond expansion into war.
These incidents served to ready the American mind for violence
when war came.
Two incidents arose over the Canadian fisheries. A treaty de-
fining American rights in eastern Canadian waters (and Canadian
rights in neighboring American waters) had been approved in
1871; but finding the terms irksome, the United States told Canada
in 1883 that we were terminating the treaty as of July 1, 1885.
Canada retaliated promptly by taking American fishing vessels
found in her waters after that date. HI feeling over this issue was
aggravated a few years later when American sealers in the Bering
Sea, contending that Canadian seal-fishing methods were extermi-
nating the herds, got American government cutters to remove
Canadian schooners from the area.
At the time of the first incident Henry Cabot Lodge, then a young
Congressman from Massachusetts, declaimed: "Wherever the
American flag on an American fishing smack is touched by a for-
eigner the great American heart is touched." The Detroit News was
more explicit. In February 1887, it said:
The Spanish War 329
We do not want to fight,
But, by jingo, if we do,
We'll scoop in all the fishing grounds
And the whole Dominion too.
Fortunately cooler heads prevailed in both matters, the first of
which was settled by a working arrangement in 1888 and the second
by an arbitration treaty in 1892.
Two South American episodes proved more inflammatory. Dur-
ing a revolution in Chile in 1891, the United States detained a rebel
steamer that had come to California to buy arms. The rebels won
out anyway and hostility toward the United States was rife. In
October 1891, the captain of the U.S.S. Baltimore, then in Val-
paraiso, carelessly allowed his crew of over a hundred to go ashore,
and to go unarmed. A riot broke out between the American sailors
and some Chileans, and two Americans sailors were killed. News
of the fray found many in the United States eager to take up the
cudgels. Among them was Theodore Roosevelt, whose intimates
taunted him thereafter as "the Chilean volunteer." Just in time a
full apology came from Chile.
More serious were the consequences of an old boundary dispute
between British Guiana and neighboring Venezuela. The dispute
flared anew in the 1880s when gold was discovered in the contested
region. In 1887 Britain and Venezuela broke off diplomatic rela-
tions, and United States' efforts to restore harmony only made
things worse, p July 1895, Richard Olney, Cleveland's Secretary
of State, reminded Lord Salisbury, the British Foreign Minister, of
the "noncolonization" clauses of the Monroe Doctrine. The United
States, Olney said, considered Britain's presence in South America
"unnatural and inexpedient." He continued: "Today the United,
States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law.
When Salisbury replied in unconciliatory language, Cleveland got
Congress to appropriate money for a commission to settle the
boundary and advised the British that efforts to grasp territory not
allotted to Guiana would be considered by the United States "as a
wilful aggression upon its rights and interests."
Twenty-six governors promptly pledged the President their back-
330 The Messianic Impulse
ing. "WAR IF NECESSARY," cried the New York Sun. If war
came, said Theodore Roosevelt, he hoped he might "have a hand
in it myself." "The bankers, brokers, and anglomaniacs generally,"
he wrote to Lodge, seemed to favor "peace at any price. . . . Per-
sonally I rather hope the fight will come soon. The clamor of the
peace faction has convinced me that this country needs a war."
Britain's growing concern over the rise and rivalry of Germany,
and her desire on that account to court the United States, helped
avert armed conflict over this issue. But young American inflam-
mables like Roosevelt and Lodge soon found a new situation ready
to their hand. This was the latest Cuban insurrection against Spain,
which had begun in 1895. An earlier Cuban revolt in 1868 had
found Americans looking on with considerable indifference. By
1895, however, the world, the United States, and Cuba itself had
all greatly changed. The aggressive imperialism of Britain, France,
and Germany, highlighted in this connection by France's efforts to
build a canal across Panama in the 1880s, made the likelihood of
Cuba's control by a vigorous power much greater than before. In
the United States, active and dedicated groups were themselves
pushing expansion, navalism, and imperialism, which called for
coaling stations, strategic harbors, and protected bases. Our own
interests in a Caribbean canal also had matured. In Cuba, finally,
American-financed sugar growing had become as depressed as in
Hawaii. In 1884 Cuban raw sugar commanded a price of eight
cents a pound. In 1895 it brought two cents and the Cuban popu-
lace suffered.
Rebel tactics in 1895 included deliberate attacks on American
property with the objective of forcing the United States to inter-
vene to restore the order that Spain was too weak to maintain.
Spain herself played into rebel hands early in 1896 by sending over
the notorious General Weyler whose brutal strategy earned him
the name "Butcher." American indignation over Weyler's inhuman-
ity was itself inflamed by a Cuban junta in New York, made up of
exiles from the earlier insurrection, who were agitating for Cuban
autonomy. Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and William
Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal also chose this occasion
to sjige a rough contest for circulation. The main tactic of each
The Spanish War 331
lournalist was to outdo the other in stories of Spanish fiendishness.
Others in America, among them Roosevelt and Lodge, were spoil-
ing for a fight.
President Cleveland had said in 1896 that he "feared there were
some outrages upon both sides, if the truth were known," and he
refused to be manipulated by the zealots. In March 1897, how-
ever, McKinley became president on a platform that called for
Cuban independence. When Spain recalled "Butcher" Weyler and
offered other reforms, McKinley seemed ready to reverse his posi-
tion, but a series of events played into the hands of the war party.
Most important was the blowing up of the Maine in Cuban waters
on February 15, 1898, with the loss of two officers and 258 crew
members. Immediately after the disaster Captain Sigsbee of the
Maine wired that "Public opinion should be suspended until further
report," and a prompt inquiry failed to blame Spain. Even before
the inquiry was completed, however, Congress appropriated $50,-
000,000 for national defense and the cry, "Remember the Maine''
whipped up the country. On February 25 Roosevelt, now Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, in consultation with Lodge, now Senator,
cabled Commodore Dewey in command of the Pacific fleet: "Keep
full of coal. In the event of war Spain, your duty will be to see
that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and
then offensive operations in Philippine Islands."
Many old guard Republicans in the Cabinet, in Congress, and in
Wall Street urged McKinley to continue negotiations with Spain.
But the President yielded to the war press and the jingoes, and on
April 11 delivered a militant message to Congress. He was obliged
to refer to Spain's capitulation on the matter of Cuban reforms, of
which he had been aware for two days. But he buried this in his
address. This made it easier for Congress to interpret the message
as a demand for a declaration of war. The formal declaration came
on April 25, two days after the duly warned Commodore Dewey
had set sail for Manila Bay.
Dewey's fleet arrived May 1 and on that morning, after giving
the famous order, "You may fire when ready, Gridley," the Com-
modore blasted the futile Spanish fleet he found there. The next
step in the campaign, "offensive operations in Philippine Islands,"
332 The Messianic Impulse
had to wait until enough men had been mobilized. By July 25 about
10,000 American troops had at last reached the Philippines, under
the command of General Wesley Merritt. Supported by Filipino
insurrectionists under Emilio Aguinaldo, whom Dewey had helped
arm, Merritt took Manila on August 13.
By then the "splendid little war," as John Hay called it, had al-
ready come to a close in the West Indies. In May the Spanish fleet
there, under Admiral Cervera, had been bottled up in Santiago
harbor by Admiral Sampson. Sampson, however, could do no
damage until a military expedition took the city and forced Cervera
out under the American fleet's guns. Overcoming incredible in-
adequacies in arms, shelter, clothing, and provisions, 16,000 men
under General W. T. Shatter finally left Tampa, Florida, on June
14, and arrived in Cuba June 22.
Typical of this army was the First Volunteer Cavalry Regiment,
the "Rough Riders," who had no horses. The rest of the Americans
were a motley crew under energetic officers who knew little or
nothing of war. After the wild melee on San Juan Hill on July 1,
Roosevelt wrote home to Lodge, "We are within measurable dis-
tance of a terrible military disaster." The defending Spaniards, how-
ever, were even more spent than the Americans, and on July 3
Cervera thought it the better part of wisdom to escape if he could.
American guns destroyed Cervera's wooden-decked ships. Two
weeks later the Spanish army in Cuba capitulated, and on July 25
Puerto Rico fell.
Spain already had begun to seek a peace treaty, and on August
12 hostilities were declared over. The four months' war cost the
United States almost 7,000 men, 90 per cent of whom died of
disease. Spain's losses in the fighting were much higher. In addition,
according to the terms of the peace treaty signed in Paris December
10, she surrendered the remnants of her once imposing new world
empire. But ratification of the treaty by the United States Senate
was long delayed.
A WORLD POWER
Every justification has been offered for America's going to war with
Spain because no clear justification can be found. It was, different
A World Power 333
people said, America's duty to liberate Cuba, America's destiny to
grasp new markets and new lands, America's obligation to bring
western culture to the dark places of the earth, America's provi-
dence to Christianize the heathen. But why in 1898? "When we
Yankees have once set our souls upon a thing," an expansionist of
the 1850s once said, "we always have it." Throughout the 'nineties
Americans seem to have set their souls upon having a war. Per-
haps an editorial in the Washington Post just before the start of the
war with Spain gave the clearest explanation: "A new conscious-
ness seems to have come upon us the consciousness of strength
and with it a new appetite, the yearning to show our strength. . . .
The taste of Empire is in the mouth of the people even as the taste
of blood in the jungle." Finley Peter Dunne, America's leading polit-
ical wit, put it this way;
'We're a gr-reat people," said Mr. Hennessy earnestly.
"We ar-re," said Mr. Dooley. "We ar-re that. An* th' best iv it is,
we know we ar-re."
The resolution by which Congress formalized its declaration of
war on Spain included the Teller Amendment which pledged the
United States to leave Cuba to the Cubans. Soon after, McKinley
said: "By our code of morality," annexation of territory "would be
criminal aggression." By July, however, he was singing a different
tune. Early that month the joint resolution annexing the Hawaiian
Republic was signed, and two weeks later McKinley demanded
Puerto Rico and Guam as part of the conditions for an armistice in
the war. Next, the "city, bay, and harbor of Manila" were added
to the President's demands. Ultimately he refused to consider any
peace terms that did not include the cession of all the Philippine
Islands. Spain finally yielded, for an indemnity of $20,000,000.
"There was nothing left for us to do," McKinley told a gathering
of Methodist ministers later, "but to take them all, and to educate
the Filipinos, and to uplift and civilize them, and by God's grace
do the very best we could by them as our fellow men for whom
Christ also died."
"The question of the Philippines," writes Richard Hofstadter,
334 The Messianic Impulse
the author of Social Darwinism in American Thought, "was some-
times pictured as the watershed of American destiny." He proceeds
to quote John Barrett, former Minister to Siam, who wrote during
the great debate on the issue:
Now is the critical time when the United States should strain every
nerve and bend all her energies to keep well in front in the mighty
struggle that has begun for the supremacy of the Pacific Seas. . . . The
rule of the survival of the fittest applies to nations as well as to the
animal kingdom. It is cruel, relentless principle being exercised in a
cruel, relentless competition of mighty forces; and these will trample
over us without sympathy or remorse unless we are trained to endure
and strong enough to stand the pace.
To fight this position anti-imperialist groups formed the Anti-
Imperialist League in November 1898. One of the League's leading
spokesmen was William Jennings Bryan, who in December told the
press: "This nation cannot endure half republic and half colony
half free and half vassal. Our form of government, our traditions,
our present interests and our future welfare, all forbid our entering
upon a career of conquest." On February 22, 1899, Bryan said
again: "The forcible annexation of the Philippine Islands is not
necessary to make the United States a world-power. For over ten
decades our nation has been a world-power. During its brief exist-
ence it has exerted upon the human race an influence more potent
than all the other nations of the earth combined, and it has exerted
that influence without the use of sword or Gatling gun."
By then the issue was past arguing. The Senate had debated the
treaty hotly for three months. In the midst of the debate, on Decem-
ber 21, 1898, McKinley had ordered the War Department to extend
the military occupation of Manila to the entire Philippine archipel-
ago. The Filipinos, led by Aguinaldo, resisted this move, and their
armed defense quickly took the lives of American soldiers. News
of the Filipino "insurrection" swayed enough senators for the an-
nexation treaty to pass by a mere two votes on February 6, 1899.
It took the army three years to make the annexation good against
Aguinaldo's forces; and suppression of his resistance cost more in
men and money than the war with Spain itself.
A World Power 335
Until May 20, 1902, moreover, Cuba itself remained under the
dictatorial rule of General Leonard Wood who efficiently rebuilt
the island's economy and enlarged its social services far beyond
their range under Spanish control. His denial of self-rule to the
Cubans, however, was suspect from the start; and suspicions were
confirmed by the Platt Amendment to an appropriation act in Con-
gress, This Amendment limited Cuba's autonomy in relation to the
ordinary powers of a sovereign government, and permitted the
United States to intervene in the island's affairs when it pleased "for
the protection of life, property, and individual liberty." Congress
required Cuba to incorporate the Platt Amendment in any constitu-
tion it drew up and also to accept a treaty with the United States
reiterating the Amendment's terms.
The presidential elections of 1900 pitted the imperialist followers
of McKinley against Bryan, the anti-imperialist Democratic candi-
date. The "large America" versus "small America" issue was clear
cut; and the overwhelming victory of McKinley and the Repub-
licans was interpreted as a mandate for imperialism. When Mc-
Kinley was assassinated a few months after his inauguration in 1901
and Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt became President, the im-
perialist camp was overjoyed. That year, in the so-called Insular
Cases, the Supreme Court added its sanction to that of the executive
and the people. In these cases the Court held, essentially, that the
Constitution did not follow the flag. In particular the Court decided
that Puerto Rico was "territory appurtenant but not a part of
the United States," and that Congress could determine afresh the
"civil rights and political status" of the "native inhabitants." The
Court also decided, in a case arising out of the denial of trial by
jury to Hawaiian natives, that there were two kinds of rights, "fun-
damental" and "procedural." In its effort to "follow the election
returns," the Court included trial by jury among "procedural
rights," which Congress could withhold or abridge.
These cases indicated that the United States had unwittingly ac-
quired a new class of subject people in an empire that extended half-
way around the globe. In the next decade American power was to
make itself felt in many independent countries whose internal pol-
icies suddenly impinged on American imperial necessities.
336 The Messianic Impulse
The principal necessities, now that America had vast interests in
both oceans, were the elimination of foreign participation in any
canal that might be built across Central America, and the urgent
construction of such a canal by the United States. Back in 1850 the
United States and Britain had agreed that neither would construct
an isthmian canal independently of the other. In 1900 and 1901,
in two treaties, England agreed to free the United States to build
a canal alone and fortify it. Congress and President Roosevelt pre-
ferred a route across Nicaragua. The French, however, had tried
for twenty years without success to build a canal across Panama
in the state of Colombia and were now eager to sell their rights to
the Panama route, all the more so since these rights under the
French contract would soon revert to the Colombian government.
American lawyers for the French company succeeded in altering
America's preference as to the route; and the United States itself, by
conniving in a revolution which separated Panama from Colombia,
succeeded in forestalling the latter's claims to payment for the rights
it long had expected to retrieve. Colombia was outraged by Amer-
ican high-handedness. Roosevelt declared that nation to be "entitled
to precisely the amount of sympathy we extend to other inefficient
bandits." After Roosevelt's death in 1919, the United States paid
an indemnity of $25,000,000 to Colombia. But long before that
the Panama Canal was completed at a cost of $375,000,000. It was
open to the ships of the world in August 1914.
To protect the great new waterway, United States policy was di-
rected more than ever toward making the Caribbean an American
sea. This took considerable doing since other nations had enlarged
their interests in Caribbean lands. In such lands, typically, govern-
ments came and went by revolution. The victors usually ignored the
debts incurred by their predecessors and thus invited the inter-
ference of the creditor nations of Europe. One such situation in
Santo Domingo in 1904 prompted Roosevelt to announce a corol-
lary to the Monroe Doctrine. Interference by other states in Latin
America could not be condoned by the United States, he said, but
we also would see to it that Latin American debts were paid and
that interference would not become necessary. This position obliged
the United States itself on a number of occasions to take over the
A World Power 337
customhouses and administer the taxes of Latin American countries.
During T. R.'s administration, American participation in affairs
in Europe and the Far East also reached a peak. After her humili-
ation by Japan in 1895, China had embarked on a spree of western-
ization. In exchange for huge loans from European nations she
surrendered control of her customs collections to her new creditors.
China's aspirations ran so high, however, that these creditors them-
selves began to fear for their own spheres of interest. The best way
to protect their privileges seemed to be to expand them; and by
1898 a fierce scramble was on among Britain, France, Germany,
and Russia that threatened to dismember the whole vast Empire.
Japan, which had just been forced by these very nations to disgorge
some of her conquests in China, seethed with resentment. The
United States, in turn, saw its own century-old China trade threat-
ened. Americans also had religious and cultural ties with China,
growing out of missionary and medical work there, and hoped to
preserve the Empire's territorial integrity.
While Japan girded herself for future wars, the United States, in
1899, promulgated the "Open Door" policy which sought agree-
ment among the nations involved in China to restore China's control
of her customs (under which the United States had most-favored-
nation treatment), and not to discriminate against the trade of
outsiders (like the United States) in their own spheres of interest.
Britain, fearful of the favorable position of Japan and Russia for
large-scale military invasion of China, sympathized with the Open
Door idea. Yet neither she nor the other powers would subscribe
to the American program.
The recalcitrance of the imperialists was soon heightened by the
Boxer Rebellion, which broke out in China only a few months after
the Open Door failure. Many Chinese had grown restive over the
headlong European invasion of their land and had organized into
secret anti-foreign societies. One of these, formally named the Order
of Literary Patriotic Harmonious Fists hence the satiric western
appellation "Boxers" began in 1899 to tear up railroad lines, to
destroy Christian churches, to attack foreign legations, and to mur-
der foreigners themselves. Before they were suppressed by a com-
bined international military force, to which the United States con-
338 The Messianic Impulse
tributed 2,500 men, the Boxers had destroyed millions of dollars'
worth of property and killed about three hundred persons.
The imperialists were now ready to tear China completely apart.
The United States, on the other hand, enlarged the Open Door
policy to include her interest in preserving the "territorial and ad-
ministrative entity" of China, and John Hay, who had become Mc-
Kinley's Secretary of State in 1898, succeeded in getting the im-
perialists to accept a financial indemnity from China in lieu of more
territory. This served at least as a temporary check on them. The
United States shared in this indemnity to the extent of $24,000,000;
and the excess over the small damages we suffered in China was
returned to that country. The Chinese gesture of using the money to
educate Chinese students in the United States strengthened Sino-
American relations.
Hay stayed on as Secretary of State during Roosevelt's first ad-
ministration and he and the President continued to pursue the Open
Door policy in China. At the same time, Japan's imperial interests
were encouraged, with England's support, in order to counter-
balance Russia's expansion across Asia. In serving as peacemaker
after the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, Roosevelt had hoped to
cement our good relations with the Nipponese, who, like the Amer-
icans, had just burst into global politics. Japan won much in the
war; but Roosevelt forced her to forgo an immense financial in-
demnity from Russia to which the Japanese people had looked for
tax relief, and many in Japan felt they had cause to regret American
meddling.
Relations between the two countries deteriorated further when
Japan learned of the action of the San Francisco Board of Educa-
tion in October 1906, segregating almost a hundred Japanese chil-
dren in a separate school. Roosevelt blasted this act as "worse than
criminal stupidity," and forced the Board to rescind it. But he also
was impelled to negotiate a "gentleman's agreement" with Japan
by which, after 1908, the latter would permit no more Japanese
workers to emigrate to the United States. This temporarily quieted
concern over the "yellow peril" on the West Coast and elsewhere in
the United States; but it only heightened the yellow peril in the
international world of global politics.
A World Power 339
Oddly enough, Japan was mollified when Roosevelt, in ordering
the American fleet on a practice cruise around the world, arranged
for it to visit Japanese ports. The fleet left in December 1907, ready
for a "feast, a frolic, or a fight," as its commander put it Its recep-
tion by the Nipponese was extravagant. And the good will thus
restored was improved by the Root-Takahira Agreement, which
both countries signed on November 30, 1908. This agreement
simply stressed the virtue of maintaining the status quo in China
and the Far Eastern islands. Since it was signed without deference
to China herself, however, it left the Manchu Empire miffed.
Roosevelt's diplomacy was aggressive but often justifiable before
world opinion. When he was succeeded by Taft in 1909, American
policy in the Caribbean and the Orient became more meddlesome
and more disliked. "Dollar diplomacy" is the name that has stuck
to the efforts of this administration to force other nations to accept
American investments and then to employ the navy and the marines
to protect American capital. The harvest was one of immense ill
will, and Wilson's administration, for all its good intentions, did
little to improve matters. Wilson and his Secretary of State, Bryan,
tried to impose their characteristic idealism on international rela-
tions. Efforts to cajole the nations of the world into signing arbitra-
tion treaties as an alternative to war, however, only got the Wilson
administration into trouble with the United States Senate which felt
that its own treaty-making powers were being nibbled away. In the
Orient, Wilson and Bryan had to face up to Japan's expansive pro-
gram. Almost continuous negotiations were carried on by the two
countries, but their relations remained dangerously ambiguous. In
effect, the United States agreed to recognize Japan's special interests
and importance in the East; while Japan gave lip service to Amer-
ica's Open Door policy.
It was in Latin America that Wilson's and Bryan's objectives
were most laudable and, in the end, most open to condemnation.
Wilson's handling of the complex situation out of which grew the
war between the United States and Mexico in 1916 was especially
open to challenge. In 1911 the long dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz
had been overthrown by the constitutionalist, Francisco Maderoj
but in two years Madero himself was overthrown by a new dictator,
340 The Messianic Impulse
Victoriano Huerta. Most of the nations of the world recognized
Huerta's government; but Wilson preferred to support the forces of
a new constitutionalist, Venustiano Carranza, who had organized a
counter-revolution as soon as Huerta had grasped control.
Ultimately Carranza managed to unseat Huerta. But no sooner
had he done so than his own best general, tough Francisco "Pancho"
Villa, decided to seek power himself. In October 1915, after Car-
ranza had seemingly crushed Villa's forces, the United States recog-
nized the new government. But Villa broke loose once more, in-
vaded American territory, and killed American citizens. On the
assumption that Carranza could not control his country, Wilson
sent a "punitive expedition" across the border, under General John
J. Pershing. Fearful that the great power to the north was seeking to
detach northern Mexico, Carranza replied by mobilizing his forces.
A border clash soon broadened into larger hostilities, but peace was
restored in January 1917, before a genuine war got under way.
Wilson had saved Mexico from the dictatorship of Huerta and his
ilk; but his method was the worst possible for the establishment of
constitutional government. Carranza's rule was preserved; but
Mexicans have not forgiven the United States for the invasion of
their territory.
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
The Mexican affair developed so slowly and ended so promptly
largely because of the World War which had begun in Europe in
August 1914. Our concern over that war made us hesitate about
plunging into a Mexican adventure and made us withdraw from it as
quickly as possible once we were drawn in.
In his address on Flag Day, June 14, 1917, a few weeks after
America's entry into the World War, President Wilson said: "This
is the People's War, a war for freedom and justice and self-govern-
ment amongst all the nations of the world, a war to make the world
safe for the peoples who live upon it ... the German peoples them-
selves included." Wilson made a convenient distinction between the
"military masters of Germany" and their subjects, and explained
that we entered the war against the former "not as a partisan," but
as everybody's friend. Our objective was nothing less than that
The First World War 341
which by 1914 had brought about a quarter century of American
expansionism and imperialism, "the redemption of the affairs of
mankind."
Almost three years of doubt and indecision had preceded this
brave stand. At the beginning of the war the United States became
involved in difficulties only with her future allies and almost ex-
clusively with Great Britain. These difficulties arose out of the
problems of neutral shipping in wartime and America's effort to
maintain the traditional freedom of the seas. Very early in the war
the British declared a naval blockade of the Central Powers and
mined the waters adjacent to their shores. In addition she seized
all neutral ships, American included, bound for mainland neutral
ports, even if such ships carried goods that were not contraband
of war.
Wilson found these affronts to the American flag intolerable, but
was persuaded to acquiesce in them. The result was the same as
though the United States itself had deliberately boycotted Germany
and her friends. In 1914 the United States had done business worth
almost $170,000,000 with the Central Powers. By 1916 this busi-
ness had virtually disappeared. In the same period, American trade
with the Allies multiplied four times, reaching $3,250,000,000 in
1916. At the start of the war Wilson's administration banned all
loans, public and private, to any belligerent. By the end of 1916,
however, a softening of this policy resulted in loans to the Allies of
almost $2,500,000,000, which financed the bulk of their wartime
American purchases.
While the United States thus supplied the Allies with munitions
and equipment, her relations with Germany and the Central Powers
steadily worsened. When Germany overran neutral Belgium in
1914, many Americans had been ready to believe the worst about
German aspirations to control the world. Their belief was assisted
by the flow of British "atrocity" stories about the "Hun's" treat-
ment of civilians and prisoners of war. Our willingness to yield to
the British blockade even of neutral trade showed our latent hostil-
ity to the German side. When, early in 1915, the Germans an-
nounced their policy of unrestricted submarine warfare even against
neutral shipping, they seemed to be offering proof of their brutality.
342 The Messianic Impulse
Like the British sea mines, the German submarines were novelties
to international law. When the Germans began sinking neutral ships
without warning and without providing succor for their civilian
passengers, they seemed to be making a mockery even of the
possibility of law among nations.
On May 7, 1915, a German submarine torpedoed the British
liner, Lusitania, with the death of 1,200 passengers, 128 of them
Americans. Any likelihood that the United States might be taunted
into entering the war against the Allies now seemed to have gone
aglimmering. But the likelihood that the United States would enter
the war at all was still small. "There is such a thing as a man being
too proud to fight," said Wilson three days after the Lusitania dis-
aster, and the nation cheered him. Thereafter, relations with both
belligerents declined alarmingly; but in the presidential elections of
1916 Wilson campaigned on the slogan, "He Kept Us out of War,"
and won. By then American physical preparedness had begun to
outstrip American psychological preparedness. Despite vigorous op-
position, during 1916 Congress passed legislation doubling the
regular army, incorporating the local National Guards with it, pro-
viding for a big three-year naval building program, and authorizing
the creation of a Shipping Board to expand, regulate, and requisi-
tion the merchant fleet. As significant as anything, as far as the
future was concerned, was the decision to pay for much of the new
armament by means of the graduated income tax.
By 1916 Allied and German military forces seemed to have
reached a stalemate, which greatly intensified the belligerents' efforts
to starve out one another. The British extended and tightened their
blockade of neutral and German waters, while the Germans stepped
up their submarine attacks on unprotected ocean shipping. Between
them, the opposing governments made life at sea intolerable for
neutrals; and Wilson soon came to the conclusion that the only way
to keep the neutral United States at peace was to make a great
effort to end the conflict.
Neither side, however, was prepared to accept his proposal for
"peace without victory," and ^February 1917, the war at sea had
grown more tense and more inhuman. American losses in ships,
cargoes, crews, and passengers mounted steadily, mainly victims
The First World War 343
of German submarines. Late in February, the American State De-
partment learned of a German offer to Mexico to join the Central
Powers in the event of a United States-German war, the bait being
the restoration to her of "the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico
and Arizona." News of this added many to the prowar camp in the
United States. "The Russian Revolution in March, which made
many Americans surrender their distaste for an alliance with the
anti-Semitic, autocratic czar, added still others to the militant op-
ponents of Prussian militarism. On February 3, 1917, Wilson had
broken off diplomatic relations with Germany. By April 2 he was
ready to ask Congress for permission to lead the American people
into "the most terrible and disastrous of wars." On April 4 the
House, and on April 6 the Senate, adopted war resolutions.
When the United States entered the war, England and France
were in much worse shape than most Americans, including the
President, realized. But the United States, for all the growing spirit
of "preparedness," was in even worse shape to help. On June 5,
1917, almost ten million Americans between the ages of twenty-one
and thirty-one registered for the recently enacted draft; but almost a
year passed before any sizable numbers of trained American troops
were available to their commanding General, John J. Pershing. It
took even longer for the United States to equip its forces with any-
thing besides hand arms, and in fact most of the artillery used by
them was of British and French manufacture. American tanks and
planes also were late in coming and not as numerous as had been
hoped. In the meantime the Germans were chewing up French and
British manpower and shipping, and these nations were verging on
collapse. The fiercest blow of all was the November Revolution
in Russia which saw the Bolsheviks overthrow the moderate Keren-
sky government and make a separate peace with the Germans. This
released German troops from the Eastern front and permitted the
Central Powers to build up their forces for their great assault in
the West in the spring of 1918.
During most of this period General Pershing had resisted Allied
demands for the use of American troops to bolster French and Brit-
ish lines. His policy was to build up, train, and equip a huge Amer-
344 The Messianic Impulse
ican Army which, independently, would "draw the best German
divisions to our front and . . . consume them." Before this Army
was ready, thousands of American troops were made available to
Marshal Foch, who was in command of all Allied military activities.
The American Second Division, starting on May 31, 1918, con-
tributed greatly to halting the Germans at Chateau-Thierry on the
Marne, just fifty miles from Paris. This Division then helped clear
the enemy out of Belleau Wood. In July 85,000 Americans helped
the British and French blunt the German offensive in the Rheims-
Soissons theater; and in August they took part in the Allied counter-
offensive which continued right to the end of the war in November.
On August 10 the American First Army, 550,000 strong, took
the offensive and wiped the Germans from St. Mihiel. In September
Pershing's entire force of over a million played the major role in
the Meuse-Argonne offensive which two months later crumbled the
last of German resistance on land. By then the American Navy
and Merchant Marine, employing the new technique of convoying,
had begun to check the German U-boat offensive. Coming as it did
so soon after the Russian defection, American aid to the Allied
forces in the actual fighting clinched the victory over the Germans.
But it is well to remember that America was a late entry and that
her war dead numbered slightly more than 100,000. The allied
Russians, French, and English had lost four million men.
One of Wilson's wartime innovations was the establishment in
1917 of the Committee on Public Information under the leadership
of George Creel. This Committee was charged with "selling" the
war to the American people, and the theme it stressed most fre-
quently was that this war would make the world safe for democracy;
that it was a war to end war. By the time the United States entered
the fighting, Wilson himself had a well-developed peace plan which
he hoped would implement the theme of his propaganda office.
The Allied powers, however, had long since made secret treaties
looking toward the dismemberment of Germany, the exaction of
heavy indemnities from her, the dismantling of her overseas empire
and her navy. Russia was a party to these treaties, and after assum-
ing power in November 1917, the Bolsheviks threatened to make
a mockery of Allied claims to be fighting for "civilization" against
The First World War 345
the barbaric "Hun," and especially of American claims to be fight-
ing for justice and humanity, by publishing the terms of the secret
treaties. Wilson determined to forestall them. When England and
France refused to co-operate, Wilson moved independently on
January 5, 1918, to announce before a joint session of Congress
the famous "Fourteen Points" in which he defined his war aims.
Among these were demands for open diplomacy, freedom of the
seas, the removal of trade barriers, and the adjustment of inter-
national boundaries on the principle of self-determination by the
peoples involved. In point fourteen Wilson made his plea for a
League of Nations "affording mutual guarantees of political in-
dependence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike."
Wilson's determination to prevent the utter destruction of Ger-
many appealed to her war-weary people, and as their military
fortunes declined in 1918, the Germans' morale fell even faster. By
October 20, Germany acknowledged a readiness to accept Wilson's
surrender terms; on November 8 her delegates capitulated to Mar-
shal Foch; and three days later the war ended.
Already the discord which was to mar the peace conference had
become apparent among the Allied powers. They were also aware
of the likelihood of American rejection of the projected conference's
work. In elections in England and France in 1918, vindictiveness
against Germany paid great political dividends; hardly a word dared
be spoken for a humane peace. In the American Congressional
elections that year, the Republicans gained control of Congress.
Wilson's partisanship during the campaign virtually insured that no
"Democratic" peace could win approval in the Senate; his failure
to include senators of either party among his associates at the
peace conference itself only sealed the doom of that conference's
work as far as American confirmation was concerned.
The peace conference at Versailles began officially on January
18, 1919. By late March little had been accomplished and on March
24 Wilson, Clemenceau of France, Lloyd George of England, and
Orlando of Italy the famous "Big Four" took matters in hand.
By the end of April they were ready to present Germany with their
peace terms, and these were formally accepted by the new German
346 The Messianic Impulse
Republic the Kaiser having abdicated the previous November
on June 23.
The Versailles Treaty did include much of Wilson's program
for redrawing the map of Europe and imposing democratic forms
of government on the new nations. In achieving this much Wilson
made many damaging concessions as far as self-determination of
nationality was concerned. His major concession, however, was
most disastrous. This was his acquiescence in imposing on the new
German state the crushing financial reparations demanded by the
Allied European powers. If Wilson understood the hatred repara-
tions would evoke in the German people who had known little but
starvation for years, he also planned to forestall any violent expres-
sion of it by creating the League of Nations, the keystone of his
entire program.
Ultimately, the Versailles Treaty did create a League of Nations,
but one with no independent force of its own and dependent for
effectiveness on United States participation. The rejection of the
League and the entire Versailles Treaty by the vindictive United
States Senate in 1920 literally killed the Messianic president and
the whole justification for his adventure into the political and
military maelstrom of Europe. The overwhelming victory of a
nonentity like the Republican Warren G. Harding in the presidential
elections of 1920 disclosed the country's fatigue with foreign in-
volvements. Harding promised the people little but a return to
"normalcy." Whatever they understood by that, the people em-
braced it.
Chapter Thirteen
Bolshevism, Babbitt, and
the Barricades
Late one evening in Paris during the peace negotiations
of 1919, Harold Nicolson of the British delegation came across
Marcel Proust. How did the Conference work, the inquisitive
French author wanted to know from the British diplomat. "Well,"
Nicolson began, "we generally meet at ten. There are secretaries
behind . . ."
"Mais non, mats non," the voracious Proust interrupted. This
was much too general, much too gentle. "Precisez, mon cher,
precisez"; the melancholy anatomist of western civilization must
have the unhinged, the hurting, the telltale minutiae. "So I tell him
everything," Nicolson reports. "The sham cordiality of it all: the
handshakes, the maps, the rustle of papers: the tea in the next
room: the macaroons. He listens enthralled."
THE CRISIS IN WESTERN CULTURE
To all appearances, western society had been at its peak in 1914,.
though even superficial observers noted how the rise of the Kaiser's.
Germany in the heart of Europe and of the United States and Japan
at Europe's flanks menaced the century-old balance of international
power and the pax Britannica it had preserved. Within nations, and
not least in Great Britain herself, revolutionary political movements,
had also been near their peak in 1914. They were nurtured by the
business doldrums that had persisted inexplicably in the United
States and the rest of the western world for seven lean years before
the outbreak of the war.
But it was in literature and the arts that the breakdown of the
347
348 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
old order was first and most profoundly foreshadowed. Proust began
making notes in 1890 for Remembrance of Things Past, a phe-
nomenon of dissection that could only be performed on the cadaver
of the ruling class. In 1902 the youthful German, Thomas Mann,
published Buddenbrooks, a penetrating account of the crackup of
the bourgeois family. Twelve years later the French novelist, Jules
Remains, disclosed in The Death of a Nobody the bleak, broad
gulf between the individualist tradition of western life and the every-
day, aimless existence of its proletarian "replaceable parts." Years
before Remains, the expatriate Irishman, James Joyce, had already
embarked on his transcendent studies of the compensations the
fantasies, dreams, and nightmares of expropriated souls. By 1914
Joyce had published Dubliners, completed Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man, and begun Ulysses. In the United States, meanwhile,
the naturalist Theodore Dreiser had been writing for decades the
anguished details of the defeated in the struggle for survival; while
Edgar Lee Masters memorialized in the stony blank verse of Spoon
River Anthology (published in 1914) the dead who hadn't even
tried:
Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom, and Charley
The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer,
the fighter?
All, all are sleeping on the hill.
One passed in fever,
One was burned in a mine,
One was killed in a brawl,
One died in jail,
One fell from a bridge, toiling for children and wife
All, all are sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Before the first World War, Futurism and other nonobjective
yogues in painting, dissonance and jazz in music, Freudianism in
psychology, the "economic interpretation" in history, all shocked
the devotees of the genteel tradition in the United States. After the
war, the mordant pessimism foreshadowed in the poetry of such
early American expatriates as Ezra Pound (he left Crawfordsville,
The Crisis in Western Culture 349
Indiana, for Italy in 1908) and T. S. Eliot (he left Boston for
London in 1914) became characteristic of American expression.
Perhaps the foremost American writer of the 1920s was Eugene
O'Neill. His characteristic milieu was the Golden Swan, known
to habitues as the "Hell Hole," and described by Malcolm Cowley
from personal experience in O'NeilPs time as the "grubbiest drink-
ing parlor west of the Bowery the No Chance Saloon, Bedrock
Bar, the End of the Line Cafe, the Bottom of the Sea Rathskeller."
In 1919, during his tour to save the League of Nations, President
Wilson reminded the American people that the eagle not the
ostrich was the symbol of American aspiration: "I mean," he said,
"leaving the mists that lie close to the ground, getting upon strong
wing into those upper spaces of the air where you can see with a
clear eye the affairs of mankind, see how the affairs of America are
linked with the affairs of men everywhere, see how the whole world
turns with outstretched hands to this blessed country of ours and
says, 'If you will lead, we will follow.' " But Wilson was born in
1856; he was older even than the skeptical generation that had
matured in America and elsewhere just before the war; to the
oncoming "lost generation," he and his message were veritably
antique.
America refused to lead; even if she had led, Europe would not
have followed. In December 1918, on the eve of the peace confer-
ence, Wilson's military adviser, General Tasker H. Bliss, remarked,
"We are going to vote the proxies of millions of dead men who have
died in the belief that what we do now will make it impossible for
the same awful sacrifice to be demanded of their children." Six
months later General Bliss wrote from France, "What a wretched
mess it all is: If the rest of the world will let us alone, I think
we better stay on our side of the water and keep alive the spark of
civilization to relight the torch after it is extinguished over here.
If I ever had any illusions, they are all dispelled."
By the end of 1922 the last thousand American troops had been
called home from Europe; all but the last few American ships had
been recalled from Asian waters. Seemingly snug again in their
"isolated" hemisphere, Americans faced the future with growing
350 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
cynicism and self-indulgence. "I think Mr. Ford is wrong," observed
Will Rogers in 1922, the year of Ford's first venture into auto-
biography, "when he said that 90 per cent of the people in this
country are satisfied. Ninety per cent of the people in this country
are not satisfied. It's just got so 90 per cent of the people in
this country didn't give a damn." In Europe, meanwhile, among
victors and vanquished alike, the war had demolished the swaying
scaffold of life. Friendship dissolved into suspicion; universal
poverty forbade Christian forbearance. Nations, like men, turned
inward, the victors to lick their wounds for comfort, the vanquished
to nurse their hatreds for revenge.
The Great Depression of the 1930s heightened the estrangement
of the nations of the world. As they found less and less of a con-
structive nature to say to one another, diplomacy itself sank into
the limbo of a lost art. More than ever, indiscriminate foreign
wars offered panaceas for intransigent domestic troubles. In such
wars, surprise attacks and sneak invasions, covered where practi-
cable by pious negotiations, became the highest order of strategy.
The Japanese descent on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was
but the last of a long series of such maneuvers that had already
brought that people into China, the Fascists into Ethiopia, Civil
War to Spain, and Nazis into eastern Europe and eventually into
France.
ONLY YESTERDAY
In 1931 Frederick Lewis Allen published his first book, Only
Yesterday. Its subtitle was "An Informal History of the Nineteen-
Twenties," and from the perspective of the early years of the de-
pression, with the first World War and its immediate aftermath well
forgotten, it made even the most recent decade seem quaintly dis-
tant, innocently iconoclastic, and rather marvelous. By the mid-
1950s the focus had perhaps shifted again. Many not-so-marvelous
aspects of the 'twenties, blotted from memory by the more pro-
found social turmoil of the 'thirties and irrelevant to the embattled
'forties, appeared in the 'fifties to have regained a familiar ring.
Not least among them were the "Red Scares," the vigilantism, and
the businesslike brass-tack fundamentalism of "100 per cent Ameri-
can" thinking.
Only Yesterday 351
The Bolshevik revolution in Russia had spawned a number of
new Communist parties in many other countries of the world; one
of these, the American Communist Party, was founded in 1919.
Throughout the 'twenties its funds were small and its members few;
but its mere existence gave a tinge of reality to the "Great Red
Scare" of the immediate postwar years, and its lurid propaganda
a tinge of plausibility to the indiscriminate use of the epithet,
"Bolshevist," for violent and radical acts,
Of the latter there were plenty right after the armistice, when
wartime unity and wartime prosperity both promptly ended. Red
and anti-Red riots became common, newspaper offices were in-
vaded, public figures and public places attacked. In 1919 and
1920 a bomb scare terrorized the country. The worst bomb dis-
aster occurred on September 16, 1920, when a terrific explosion
at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets, opposite the House of
Morgan, killed thirty persons, injured hundreds, and damaged con-
siderable property. Painstaking investigations over a period of years
failed to disclose the perpetrators, though a coal operator who was
in Morgan's offices at the time "promptly declared that there was no
question in his mind that it was the work of the Bolshevists."
Similar inconclusiveness still characterizes the investigations into
the murder of the South Braintree, Massachusetts, factory pay-
master and guard for which Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested in
1920 and convicted in 1921. The flimsiness of the evidence against
these Italian-born anarchists and the open bias of the judge made
this case even more one of a "generation on trial" than the case of
Alger Hiss in 1949. Persistent efforts to save the two men from
the vindictiveness of the times could not avert their execution in
1927.
Long before World War I, American businessmen had developed
the practice of associating labor unionism with "radicalism." During
the war the ranks of union labor grew with unprecedented rapidity
and union leaders like Samuel Gompers had been invited to sit
on the war councils in Washington. Nevertheless, after the Russian
Revolution of 1917, business propaganda systematically associated
unionism with "Bolshevism." A large number of violent strikes
right after the war thus contributed their mite to the "Red Scare."
The most famous strike was that of the Boston police in Septem-
352 Bolshevism, Babbitt , and the Barricades
ber 1919. Its suppression by Governor Calvin Coolidge of Mas-
sachusetts first brought the future president nation-wide renown.
The most important strikes were those against the United States
Steel Corporation that same fall, and against the coal operators
(who were closely allied with the steel company) that winter. Both
the Corporation and the coal operators were among the worst
employers in the country; labor exploitation was made easier by
their policy of hiring illiterate southern European immigrants as
the bulk of their working force. These immigrants were driven by
foremen who were themselves under the constant surveillance of
undercover company agents.
"There is no good American reason for the strike," said the
Steel Corporation. The strikers, explained its sanctimonious chair-
man, E. H. Gary, "sought the closed shop, Soviets, and the forcible
distribution of property." None of this was true. The strike was
thoroughly investigated by a Commission of Inquiry of the Inter-
church World Movement under the chairmanship of Bishop Francis
J. McConnell of the Methodist Episcopal Church. This Commission
listed as among the leading causes for the defeat of the strike the
steel company's "effective mobilization of public opinion against
the strikers through the charges of radicalism, bolshevism, and the
closed shop, none of which were justified by the facts." The steel
and coal strikers sought only union recognition, higher wages, and
a reduction in the twelve-hour day. The intervention of federal
troops on behalf of the Corporation and the coal operators forced
the workers back to their jobs with no gains to show for their
efforts. "All the conditions that caused the steel strike," said the
Commission of Inquiry, "continue to exist. ... In the measure that
workingmen become intelligent and Americanized, will they refuse
to labor under such conditions."
Mobilization of public opinion against the steel and coal strikers
and those in other industries was made easier by labor's support of
the extension of the principle of nationalization, as applied to the
railroads during the war. Late in 1917, under the authority of the
Army Appropriation Act of the year before, the federal government
had taken over the operation of the railroads and given railroad
labor a voice in their management. In 1919, the otherwise docile
Only Yesterday 353
railroad workers strongly advocated the Plumb Plan, by which the
government would continue to run the roads and railroad unions
would continue to participate in their direction. At the same time,
steel workers began agitating for the nationalization of steel, and
coal miners for the nationalization of the pits. The effect of this
agitation was simply to frighten businessmen everywhere in the
country and to speed up the return of the railroads to private con-
trol. This was done in 1920. The temper of the times is evident from
Vice-President Thomas R. Marshall's denunciation of women's col-
leges following the determination of Radcliffe debaters to uphold
the affirmative of the proposition, "Resolved, that the recognition of
labor unions by employers is essential to successful collective bar-
gaining."
It was such manifestations of "foreign ideologies" that set the
"Fighting Quaker," Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer, on his
famous "Red hunt," beginning New Year's Day, 1920. "Like a
prairie fire," Palmer explained later, "the blaze of revolution was
sweeping over every American institution of law and order. ... It
was eating its way into the homes of the American workman, its
sharp tongues of revolutionary heat were licking the altars of the
churches, leaping into the belfry of the school bell, crawling into
the sacred corners of American homes, seeking to replace marriage
vows with libertine laws, burning up the foundations of society."
To put out the fire he had ordered simultaneous raids on every
alleged Bolshevik cell in the country. In about a week, more than
6,000 men and women had been arrested, their property seized and
confiscated, their friends who visited them in jail locked up on
the grounds of solicitude for revolutionaries. Though supposedly
armed to the teeth, the captives yielded the imposing total of three
pistols and no explosives.
"The Palmer raids," as they were called, were a farce; but the
nation did not view them that way. President Wilson had warned
the Attorney-General, "Palmer, do not let this country see red."
But Palmer, who in Josephus Daniels's words "was seeing red
behind every bush and every demand for an increase of wages,"
failed to heed the admonition. As Wilson anticipated, vigilantism,
touched off by the Attorney-General's example, spread across the
354 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
land, victimizing students, professors, editors, writers, actors, and
any others suspected of harboring "subversive" ideas or engaging
in "un-American" activities. Wilson himself, perhaps because he
-was preoccupied with the League of Nations issue, did nothing to
check the orgy.
The most direct attack on "foreign ideologies" took the form of
excluding foreigners themselves, though opposition to the free entry
of immigrants, of course, had other motivations as well. Highly
focused opposition came from labor leaders who claimed that labor
markets were being flooded and wages depressed by immigrants who
responded poorly to union organizing campaigns. American workers
themselves shared with much of the rest of the community a more
generalized xenophobia which made the United States less a melting
pot of racial and religious differences than a pit of racial and reli-
gious antagonisms.
On the exalted rim of the pit sat the 100 per cent Americans.
Disillusioned by the "Great Red Scare" of ever making "good
citizens" of foreigners, they were strengthened by the same con-
coction in their belief in "Anglo-Saxon" racial superiority and in
their determination to restore the United States to racial "Anglo-
Saxon" purity. As early as February, 1920, Emerson Hough, the
exceedingly popular writer of cowboy lore, said in the Saturday
Evening Post, "The whole theory of Americanization is one which
J. J. Rousseau and T. Jefferson would call perfectly lovely if they
were alive. It goes in well with a lot of these mentally subjective
theories about altruism and democracy, which in my belief have
pretty much brought America to ruin."
"Thus, while the movement for the redemption of the alien ebbed
in 1920," writes John Higham, the author of Strangers in the
Land, "the old drive for the rejection of the immigrant passed all
previous bounds." In 1917, over the last of a number of Wilson
vetoes, Congress imposed a literacy test on those seeking to settle
in the United States. That this test was scarcely a barrier was shown
in 1920 when almost a million newcomers entered the country. In
May 1921, after Wilson had previously vetoed an immigration bill
discriminating among persons of different national origins, President
Warren G. Harding signed a measure restricting entry to the United
Only Yesterday 355
States on these grounds. This Act limited a country's annual quota
to 3 per cent of its nationals living in the United States in 1910. But
1910 was far too late a date to satisfy the racial purists; and in
1924 quotas were lowered to 2 per cent of a country's nationals in
the United States in 1890. In 1931, under a more complex system
of calculation, quotas were lowered and purified even further.
These measures were so drastic that in 1932 fewer people entered
the United States than departed from it. For the entire decade of the
1930s, net immigration was under 70,000. After the second World
War the quota system was slightly relaxed; and after the Soviet
suppression of the Hungarian revolt in 1956, additional exemptions
were made. But rigid exclusion remained the dominant aim of
American immigration policy.
While barriers against the entry of racial and religious "minori-
ties" were being erected, the "minorities" in the United States also
came under attack. In the early 1920s violence frequently flared
up among mixed racial groups huddled together in seething in-
dustrial towns and metropolitan ghettos. These incidents sometimes
involved "native Americans" who decried the "crime waves"
brought to the United States by mysterious organizations like the
Maffia and the Black Hand. But the most concerted violence was
perpetrated by a domestic not a foreign band the notorious Ku
Klux Klan.
Efforts to organize the Klan had failed in 1915, but by 1920 the
national climate became more favorable and by 1924 about 4,500,-
000 "white male persons, native-born Gentile citizens of the United
States of America," had joined the hooded group. Like most other
"hate organizations" modeled on it, the Klan proved a "good thing"
for its leaders. A new member was required to pay ten dollars, of
which four dollars went to the Klansman who signed him up and
six dollars to the Imperial Wizard in Atlanta, Georgia.
In 1924, while continuing to lynch and flog Negroes, the Klan
began to terrorize other groups. In a pamphlet, The Klan of To-
morrow, Imperial Wizard Hiram W. Evans explained: "The Negro
is not a menace to Americanism in the sense that the Jew or Roman
Catholic is a menace. He is not actually hostile to it. He is simply
racially incapable of understanding, sharing, or contributing to
356 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
Americanism." Thereafter, Jews and Catholics bore the brunt of
Klan violence, at least in the North. The strength of the Klan was
shown in the Democratic National Convention of 1924 when a res-
olution denouncing its activities was defeated by the delegates.
Thereafter, the diffuseness of the Klan's attacks and the disclosure
of scandal in its own affairs greatly weakened the organization.
While the Klan would not accept as Americans any but native-
born, white Protestants, and was more than willing to kill or maim
those outside the pale, within Protestantism itself a still narrower
fundamentalism further divided the sectarians. The focus of the
fundamentalist attack was science, especially Darwinian biology,
which seemed to deny divine creation of mankind as set forth in
the Bible. The muscular evangelist, Billy Sunday, had begun before
the war to fight "sinners, science, and liberals." After the war, under
crude evangelist pressure, many states enacted laws forbidding the
teaching of Darwinian theories. The fundamentalist campaign was
most successful in Tennessee where, to test the state anti-evolution
statute, a high school teacher named John Thomas Scopes allowed
himself to be arrested in 1925. William Jennings Bryan promptly
let it be known as his opinion that "this is a matter for the nation,"
and joined the state's prosecuting attorneys in the famous "Monkey
Trial." Scopes, defended by a galaxy of lawyers led by Clarence
Darrow, was found guilty by the state court; but he was only techni-
cally punished. In reality Darrow and company had won a signal
victory by making fundamentalism henceforth the butt of ridicule.
It was in the business community that the "100 per cent Ameri-
can" spirit of the 1920s perhaps paid its greatest dividends. Most
of these were earned by the so-called "American Plan," the major
objective of which was to brand collective bargaining and the closed
shop as "un-American." "The war taught us the power of prop-
aganda," said Roger Babson, business's leading forecaster, in 1921.
"Now when we have anything to sell to the American people, we
know how to sell it. We have the school, the pulpit, and the press."
As early as 1920 there were forty-six "American Plan" associations
in Illinois "selling" the open shop, and there was at least one such
association in every state in the Union. The National Grange, the
American Bankers Association, and the National Association of
Only Yesterday 357
Manufacturers all contributed funds and other assistance to the
campaign. Years later a Committee on Education and Labor of the
United States Senate said that when the N.A.M. "achieved the
retardation of labor organizations [by 1926], the hectic effort to
allay what had seemed to them an impending radical revolution be-
came unnecessary, and the association settled back to the quiet
enjoyment of the fruits of their efforts during the years of pros-
perity."
Much the most spectacular interference with the freedom of the
American people in the 1920s was Prohibition, in the enactment of
which Progressivism, religious fundamentalism, and business practi-
cality had joined hands. Drinking had been an American pastime
since the beginning of settlement. By 1850 many states had pro-
hibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages and many
drinkers had "taken the pledge," but like most other social reforms,
the campaign against "demon rum" foundered after the Civil War.
In the same period the liquor business grew so fast as to seem to
imperil both the families and the factories of the working popula-
tion. To combat the evil the Women's Christian Temperance Union
had been founded in 1874, Twenty years later the prohibition cam-
paign was broadened by the formation of the Anti-Saloon League.
By 1917 three fourths of the American people lived in states
which had Prohibition legislation. Wartime hostility to German
brewers, and the wartime policy of conserving grain for food rather
than releasing it to distillers, now played into the hands of the
organized "drys." A series of local victories was capped by the
national Prohibition amendment, passed by Congress in December
1917. This amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and trans-
portation of alcoholic beverages in the United States. It was ratified
by January 1919, and in October that year Congress passed the
Volstead Act to implement it.
Though Congress had been forced by wartime public pressure
to play ball with the "drys" in principle, it never voted enough
money for more than token enforcement. There were rarely more
than 2,000 Prohibition agents to police the entire country; while the
Capone mob alone had a private army in Chicago of a thousand
well-armed gangsters. Capone's and hundreds of other gangs quickly
358 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
gained control of the undercover liquor business bootlegging, rum-
running, and speakeasy operation. Gangs had existed in American
cities before Prohibition, and often enough they were on intimate if
not controlling terms with local government. National Prohibition
made liquor the main source of gang income, raised that income to
sybaritic levels, and enlarged gang domination of local police and
local politics. At its peak, the Capone gang took in $60,000,000 a
year, of which Capone himself took $20,000,000.
For all its violence, repression, bigotry, and backsliding, the
decade of the 'twenties did witness a frenetic iconoclasm. The enfant
terrible of the decade was H. L. Mencken, sometimes known as
"the Bad Boy of Baltimore." Mencken, in the opinion of Walter
Lippmann in 1927, was "the most powerful personal influence on
this whole generation of educated people." All the icons of the
genteel tradition were ground to powder by his ridicule and the
powder itself blown to the winds by the bellows of his mirthless
laughter.
In the 'twenties, and especially after 1923 when he began to
publish his magazine, the American Mercury, Mencken was the
anti of antis. He was, as he said, "against all theologians, profes-
sors, editorial-writers, right thinkers, and reformers." He was
against patriotism, democracy, marriage, and the family. "He pelted
his enemies," writes Frederick Lewis Allen, "with words and
phrases like mountebank, charlatan, swindler, numskull, swine,
witch-burner, homo boobiens, and imbecile; he said ... of Bryan
that *he was born with a roaring voice and it had a trick of in-
flaming half-wits.' " One of Mencken's favorite targets was the
"American Husbandman": "No more grasping, selfish, and dis-
honest Mammal, indeed, is known to students of Anthropoidea."
Another target was the 100 per center, the American racist, at
whom he leveled broadsides such as this:
The Anglo-Saxon of the great herd is, in many important respects,
the least civilized of men and the least capable of true civilization.
His political ideas are crude and shallow. He is almost wholly devoid
of aesthetic feeling; he does not even make folklore or walk in the
Only Yesterday 359
woods. The most elementary facts about the visible universe alarm
him, and incite him to put them down.
But Mencken reserved his transcending scorn for the "ordinary
Class I Babbitt," the flower the weed, rather of the American
"booboisie."
Yet Mencken was not all cudgel and hot air. Before the war he
had already become Dreiser's champion, Nietzsche's translator,
Shaw's apostle to the new world. Perhaps he recognized in the
'twenties how deep-seated American fundamentalism was, how
broad were the acres of American provincialism, how incessant, in-
deed how monotonous the blasting at localism and traditionalism
must be. Perhaps he failed to recognize how he himself had be-
come trapped by his adversary, his environment.
To Mencken's own muscular esthetic (which he used like a
veritable Cotton Mather to browbeat genteel writers) all poetry
was sentiment, all sentiment "bilge." "An adult poet," Mencken
wrote in one of his own most fundamentalist moods, "is simply an
individual in a state of arrested development in brief, a sort of
moron." Provincialism he defined as "original sin." In one of his
Prejudices, Mencken asked himself, "If you find so much that is
unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live
here?" His answer was another question, "Why do men go to zoos?"
The trouble with Mencken was that to him everyone had become a
"gaping primate"; Mencken alone was the keeper. It was a trouble
that Americans on the make intellectually well understood. As
Alfred Kazin says, "By prodigious skill [Mencken] managed to
insult everyone except his readers. . . . His ferocious attacks on
Babbittry implied that Ms readers were all Superior Citizens. . . .
Every Babbitt read him gleefully and pronounced his neighbor a
Babbitt."
Mencken's significant virtue was that he conducted his rebellion
against the genteel tradition in the open, with bugles, trumpets, and
drums. By his very excesses he served the cause of free men in the
'twenties. If his laughter was more like a belch than a breeze, at
least it served to change the air after the dogmas of Victorianism had
grown unbearably stale. If he paraded his atheism, he also paraded
360 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
his anti-authoritarianism. If he was for free love, he was also for
free speech.
Along with the hip flask and the raccoon coat, Mencken's
American Mercury became part of the authentic paraphernalia of
the "sad young men" on the country's campuses. The Mercury
welcomed the "new" writers of the 'twenties, the Sinclak Lewises,
F. Scott Fitzgeralds, Hemingways and O'Neills with hosannas, and
forced reactionary critics like Stuart Sherman to acknowledge their
work as the voice of America. The Mercury needled such old genteel
journals as the Atlantic and Harper's into deepening their criticism
of life in the United States. Mencken prepared the audience for
the early New Yorker, which began publication in 1925 with the
motto, "Not for the old lady in Dubuque," a motto that rather
quickly had to be dusted off once a year as a reminder of the
original intent. Mencken also helped sustain the atmosphere in
which such journals of opinion as the New Republic and the Nation
might prosper. All of these journals confronted the bigots, the
racists, the super-patriots, the 100 per centers with the more
humane side of the American tradition.
Yet for all the stir Mencken made among the intellectuals, the
'twenties became the golden age of hero-worship, of "ballyhoo."
Many of the heroes had authentic talent; but many others were
manufactured by promoters who had the advantage, in their manip-
ulation of the mass mind, of nationwide communication facilities
and a population generally approaching a high-school level of read-
ing ability. In the 'twenties, Boosterism and Babbittry became ever
more closely wedded. The main thing was to avoid rocking the
boat.
Nothing showed the lasting temper of the people, the futility of
the Mencken onslaught, the triumph of the old lady in Dubuque
better than the elections of 1928. Harding's administration had been
little more than one long betrayal of the President by the "Ohio
gang" he had brought to Washington in 1921. The Veterans Bureau
under Charles R. Forbes had been milked of nearly $250,000,000
for the benefit of compliant contractors and suppliers; the office
of the Alien Property Custodian under Colonel Thomas W. Miller
Only Yesterday 361
had been used to distribute for far less than their known value in-
dustrial patents captured during the war; the Department of Justice
under Harry Daugherty had issued liquor permits and pardons to
criminals for fancy prices; above all, the Interior Department under
the notorious Albert B. Fall had secretly leased to a few oil men
for their private exploitation some of the richest naval oil reserves,
notably those at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California.
The dawning realization of how his friends had used him speeded
Harding's death in August 1923. Vice-President "Silent Cal"
Coolidge on becoming President quickly cleaned house. Forbes,
Miller, and Fall went to jail; Daugherty escaped only because the
suicide of his chief accomplice, Jesse Smith, deprived the courts of
sufficient evidence to convict him.
Coolidge easily won the Republican nomination in 1924 and
easily defeated the Democratic candidate, the Wall Street lawyer,
John W. Davis. During the Coolidge Prosperity that followed the
election, the business community, the main support of the Re-
publican Party, was the party's principal beneficiary. The farm
depression following the vast expansion of agricultural production
during the war was permitted to continue through the 'twenties.
This insured low prices for agricultural raw materials used in
industry and low wages for industrial workers because of low food
prices. Tariffs on foreign manufactured goods were kept at record
levels; taxes were repeatedly slashed; public power development
was obstructed; labor organization was impeded by the courts,
while industrial organization into trusts and holding companies was
encouraged.
When the time came for the selection of candidates for the 1928
election, business seemed to have merited all its political benefits.
Consequently, Coolidge appeared to be the natural nominee of his
party. But early in 1928 "Silent Cal" for once had let some words
slip out. "I do not choose to run," he said; which certainly did not
preclude his being drafted. The Republican leaders nevertheless
took him at his word and turned to Herbert Hoover, the famed
"great humanitarian" of the immediate postwar years and Coolidge's
Secretary of Commerce.
The Democrats nominated Governor Al Smith, the "Happy
362 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
Warrior" of New York. Smith was not only wet; he was liberal in
labor matters, believed in public ownership of hydro-electric power,
state and federal regulation of business enterprise, the expansion of
state welfare activities, and the protection and enlargement of civil
liberties. Moreover, he was an Irishman, a Catholic, a New Yorker
in short, the incarnation of everything hated by the 100 per cent
Americans. Their fight against his nomination in 1928 widened the
split in the already divided Democratic Party; their fight against his
election broke the "solid South" for the first time since the end of
Reconstruction.
Prohibition became the popular issue in the campaign. The drys
gave Hoover their enthusiastic support. But largely as a result of
the whispering campaign against Smith, the Republican candidate
polled 58.2 per cent of the popular vote, a proportion higher than
Eisenhower's in 1956 and exceeded in history only by Harding in
1920 and Roosevelt in 1936. Rarely had third parties done so
poorly, moreover.
During the campaign Hoover had promised to look into the
"noble experiment," and in 1929 named a Commission under
former Attorney-General George W. Wickersham to investigate en-
forcement of the Volstead Act. The Commission's report in 1931
fully disclosed the connection between gangsterism and Prohibition;
yet a majority of the Commission voted for continuing the "ex-
periment." Repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment had to wait for
the return of the Democrats to power in 1933.
BOOM AND BUST
The business boom that began about the time Coolidge became
president in 1924 and continued with only slight interruptions to
the fall of 1929, made it easy for Americans to ignore the straitening
of opinion, the social conflicts, and the political corruption follow-
ing the war. This boom was one of the longest in American history;
and it fed a fond belief that the United States had found a perpetual-
motion prosperity machine. The fact that the stock market magni-
fied even the real progress of the American economy, especially
during the later phases of the boom, (and precipitated it to un-
plumbed depths once the bubble burst) has caused the emphasis
Boom and Bust 363
to be placed on the speculative side of business during the 'twenties.
This is as it should be; though no longer unchallenged as the ruler
of the economy, Wall Street remained more closely related to its
functioning in the 1920s than since. Yet this emphasis tends to
obscure some of the genuine economic gains of the decade and
how they were made.
As late as 1927 an unhappy director of General Motors com-
plained that "bankers regard research as most dangerous and a
thing that makes banking hazardous, due to the rapid changes it
brings about in industry." The craft unions that made up the
American Federation of Labor subscribed enthusiastically to the
bankers' sentiments. By 1927, however, considerable scientific
progress had been made in American industry, to which the war
itself had contributed much.
For one thing, the war had loosened the bankers' grip on the
economy. Wartime profits were so high in key industries that they
were less dependent upon the open money market for financing.
Even when such corporations needed money, they found they could
borrow outside of Wall Street channels or sell stock without
knuckling under to the financial oligarchs of the Morgan era. One
reason for this was the way the vast Liberty and Victory Bond
campaigns had accustomed millions of Americans to invest in
securities for the first time. These campaigns so widened financial
channels that a few investment bankers no longer could dominate
the security market.
Wartime tax policies added their influence to that of the wartime
financial policies in furthering the application of science to industry.
In particular, wartime excess-profits taxes encouraged corporations
to plow back their heavy earnings into modernized, electrified, low-
production-cost plants and equipment. Wartime labor shortages,
in turn, often made such technological advances mandatory.
Many new industries created by the war or matured by its de-
mands also were based on scientific concepts and methods. The
boom period, for example, saw the coming of age of commercial
aviation, the possibilities of which first were underscored by the
successful use of airplanes in the recent hostilities. After Congress
voted mail subsidies and other assistance to the airlines in 1926,
364 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
commercial flying became big business almost overnight. Further
stimulation came the next year from Charles A. Lindbergh's mag-
nificent nonstop solo flight from New York to Paris. By 1930, one
hundred and twenty-two American airlines employing about ten
thousand pilots carried almost half a million passengers over fifty
thousand miles of air routes.
The war gave the American chemical industry an even greater
boost than it gave flying. Before the war American chemical com-
panies had concentrated on the production of relatively simple
heavy acids and alkalies used in basic industrial processes. During
the war large numbers of explosives plants were built and their use
after the war was encouraged by two government measures. The
first was the confiscation of German coal-tar patents and their as-
signment to American chemical companies. The second (furthered
by demands for chemical self-sufficiency in case of a new war)
was the placing of prohibitively high tariffs on European chemical
products. By 1929 the beneficiaries of these measures, such as
DuPont, Allied Chemicals, and Union Carbide, had grown far
bigger than any similar firms or groups of firms in Europe.
In combination with electricity, chemicals also continued to
revolutionize other industries. Signal improvements in the produc-
tion of electricity itself furthered this development. Between 1920
and 1929 technological advances in the production of electricity
were such that a 25 per cent increase in the coal used resulted in a
100 per cent increase in the kilowatt hours generated. These ad-
vances so cheapened electric power that by 1929, 70 per cent of
American factory machinery was electrified. The most spectacular
gains from electrochemical processes wfcre made in the petroleum
industry. Between 1913 and 1928, for example, electrochemical
processes had tripled the amount of gasoline obtainable from a
gallon of crude oil. Such processes also forwarded improvements
in the manufacture of electrical appliances, like floor and table
lamps, phonographs, radios, refrigerators, washing machines, and
vacuum cleaners, all of which grew in importance in the American
economy and the American home.
Wartime experiences in Europe made many thousands of Ameri-
cans aware for the first time of the poverty of the outside world,
Boom and Bust 365
but this only fostered their appreciation of their own good fortune.
"If you wish to make a democracy conservative," Lord Randolph
Churchill had said in the 1880s, "you must give it something to
conserve." By 1927 the Frenchman, Andre Siegfried noted that
"what Americans have to conserve is their standard of living, and
a sacred acquisition it is in which they will allow no reduction, and
which they will defend to the uttermost against the competition and
surreptitious invasion of other continents." During the boom of the
1920s, "keeping up with the Joneses," once the motivation for con-
spicious consumption only among the leisure class, became the
great American aspiration.
The growth of the movie industry and of national distribution of
family-type magazines filled with advertising heightened the stand-
ardization of American taste. During the decade, radio broadcasting
also became a billion-dollar entertainment and advertising medium.
Above all, the advance of the automobile industry broke down
American localism and in many other ways revolutionized Ameri-
can life.
In the first decade of the twentieth century the automobile had
remained the rich man's plaything. "Nothing," said Woodrow
Wilson in 1906, "has spread socialistic thinking in this country
more than the automobile ... a picture of arrogance and wealth."
By the 1920s, however, it became possible to say that nothing had
allayed the spread of "socialistic thinking" as much as the spread
of the automobile. In 1920 about nine million automobiles were
registered in the United States. By 1930 registrations had risen to
nearly thirty million. "We'd rather do without clothes than give up
the car," said a "Middletown" housewife in the mid-1920s. "I'll
go without food before I'll see us give up the car," said another.
In our own day of "drive-in" movies, roadside shopping centers
with acres of parking space, grandiose motels, the movement of
factories and families to the suburbs, weekend traffic problems,
choking congestion in every great city, and six- and eight-lane
freeways, thruways, and parkways, it hardly seems necessary to
elaborate the continuing social effects of the automobile. Certainly
one of its most significant attributes is the power it places at the
command of the individual at the wheel. From the start, the exercise
366 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
of this power became a kind of freedom to kill. In 1930, 32,000
Americans died in auto accidents. Since then, although automobile
registrations have more than doubled and mileage driven has grown
proportionately even greater, this figure, miraculously, has been
held steady. This achievement is one to arouse the feeling of pride
until the size of the figure itself is recalled.
The automobile has been "murder" in another way. "Our high-
way engineers," Lewis Mumford wrote in 1957, "are butchering
good urban land as recklessly as the railroad builders did in laying
out their terminals and . . . yards." Nevertheless highway construc-
tion quite early became an important factor in sustaining the vigor
of the economy. As late as 1921 not a highway in America was
numbered. "Chains on all four wheels," and "a shovel with a col-
lapsible handle," were recommended equipment for automobile
tours. In the next ten years, government expenditures for new street
and highway construction exceeded the capital outlay of any single
line of private enterprise. This was a hidden subsidy to the auto-
mobile industry, and indeed to the entire economy. Viewed in this
way it also disclosed the hidden weakness in the business boom. Just
as in the war boom preceding the 1920s and in the war and postwar
booms of the 1940s and 1950s, government outlays shored up
private enterprises. When private investment in most industries
slowed down in the late 'twenties, and government outlays even
for highways failed to compensate for the decline, the crash and
the depression loomed.
The application of chemistry and electricity in industry in the
1920s greatly increased the productivity of the labor force. "Real"
wages rose markedly for those employed in modern industries; but
there was also a steady if slow growth of technological unemploy-
ment. Older industries such as coal mining and textile manufactur-
ing remained depressed during most of the decade, while farm in-
come never approached the historic highs of the war period nor
even the average levels of the decade before the war.
The business community tried to compensate for these soft spots
in the economy in various ways. Advertising became a favorite
panacea. But its benefits, after all, were limited by the purchasing
power of the public. Purchasing power was stretched by the extraor-
Boom and Bust 367
dinary development of installment buying and "personal credit"
institutions. But these also had their limits, which were reached
when it was found that people were paying more for interest than
for goods.
In the 'twenties certain American businessmen again turned their
eyes abroad for opportunities that seemed to be disappearing at
home. Yet isolationism within the business community was at least
as marked after 1920 as it had been before. Total American direct
investment abroad between 1912 and 1929 rose from one and three
quarters to nearly seven and a half billion dollars. But even the
seemingly astronomical 1929 total was surpassed by the net profits
of American corporations in that one year.
These profits themselves had risen spectacularly, even embar-
rassingly. Yet efforts to spread corporate income by other means
than large wage increases failed to sustain the economy. "Welfare
capitalism," including employee stock-ownership and profit-sharing,
though much publicized and much enlarged during the decade, was
really operated as a union-busting rather than a wealth-spreading
technique. Efforts to expand business research and experimentation
and business support of science and education never amounted to
much financially, and only helped raise efficiency and profits. As a
result business companies came to use their accumulating funds in
stock-market speculation, and to draw the public's savings, piled up
in banks and insurance companies, into securities manufactured by
mergers and reorganizations.
Never before in history were corporate structures "pyramided" to
such heights. Ingenious manipulators like the Van Sweringen
brothers and Sidney Z. Mitchell used every known Wall Street
device to manufacture securities for the hungry speculators and yet
to retain control of their empires. The key to their paper edifices
was the holding company, a corporation which usually owned noth-
ing but the securities of other corporations, some of which were
also holding companies. The most fantastic pyramid of all was
Samuel InsulTs public utilities empire which was so complex that
even Owen D. Young, the expert corporation lawyer and board
chairman of General Electric, despaired of understanding its rami-
fications. "It is impossible," Young said, "for any man to grasp the
368 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
situation of that vast structure ... it was so set up that you could
not possibly get an accounting system which would not mislead
even the officers themselves."
Accompanying and often intensifying the stock-market boom was
a real-estate boom. In the past land speculation had been a standard
feature of American boom periods. In the 1920s real-estate specula-
tion was centered very largely in the cities. Here many great banks
erected skyscrapers at fabulous land and construction costs. These
skyscrapers they hoped to fill with brokers' offices where the stock-
market boom would be kept humming. Paper profits from the soar-
ing stock market, in turn, were hypothecated for new real-estate
plunges.
When the stock market collapsed in October 1929, the whole
paper structure came tumbling down. President Hoover warned the
country not to panic. Business, he advised, was "fundamentally
sound," and prosperity was "just around the corner." The inability
of the United States to sell goods abroad was pounced upon by
Hoover as an appropriate "foreign" scapegoat for the American
catastrophe. But the fundamental shortcomings of the home econ-
omy soon became apparent. By 1933 the economic outlook in
America was darker than at any time in history. In that year Frank-
lin D. Roosevelt took office after defeating Hoover in the presiden-
tial elections of 1932. Roosevelt had promised to chase the money
changers from the temple. Actually, as early as November 1931,
according to the disgusted testimony of Hoover himself, they had
already fled. "After a few weeks of enterprising courage," the
President had said that month, "the bankers' National Credit Asso-
ciation became ultraconservative, then fearful, and finally died. It
had not exerted anything like its full possible strength. Its members
and the business world threw up their hands and asked for
governmental action."
A "NEW DEAL"
"October 1939, tenth anniversary of the Wall Street crash," wrote
Fortune Magazine in the brilliant issue of February 1940, celebrat-
ing its own first decade, "marked the end of a ten-year industrial
depression in the U.S." There remained, however, "some nine mil-
A "New Deal" 369
lion American citizens who were, as the term is, 'unemployed.' And
there may be more today." With their dependents these "members
of the dispossessed . . . total about thirty millions."
"There are two main reasons," the magazine went on, "why em-
ployment has failed to keep pace with production. One is the tech-
nological reason"; new machines had greatly increased the produc-
tivity of those actually at work. "The other reason is anything but
technological, and is much more important. At least six million of
the nine million 'unemployed' were neither tractored off the farm
nor rationalized out of the roundhouse nor spray-gunned off the
scaffold nor mechanized out of the mine nor even eroded onto the
highways. Six million, as a strictly statistical matter, have never had
jobs at all. They are the net increase in the working population. By
simply growing up during the last ten years the members of this idle
horde silently inform the nation that to achieve in 1939 the produc-
tion levels of 1929 is no achievement at all. Such, in simplified
form," Fortune concluded, "is the problem that like the ghost of
his guilt freezes the tongue of any honest American who is otherwise
proud of his economic system. . . . For nearly one-fourth of the
population there is no economic system and from the rest there
is no answer."
When, toward the end of his campaign in 1932, President Hoover
told the country, "had it not been for the immediate and unprece-
dented actions of our government things would be infinitely worse
today," the "men on the sidewalks" just pressed their lips a little
tighter and went on "clapping their hands in a queer way," as an
observer noted, "obviously just to be doing something." Had it
occurred to F.D.R. to take such a negative stance toward the end of
1939, he would, in fact, have had a good deal more to point to. "A
meager and infrequent market," Fortune said of the dispossessed,
"they would be no market at all were it not for public largesse,
which since the beginning of the New Deal totalled no less than
$19,000,000,000 in Federal, state and local expenditure to keep
them alive. ... As animals they are sick twice as often as their
neighbors. As souls they seem considerably more hopeful than they
have reason to be."
The farther the critics of the New Deal and its "chief architect"
370 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
get from 1932, the more comprehensive they become. One of the
latest of these critics, the historian Edgar Eugene Robinson, wrote
in 1955 in his book, The Roosevelt Leadership, "when [Roosevelt]
ceased to lead, the effect of his years in power was manifested in a
weakened constitutional system, in imperiled national security, in
diminished national morale, in deteriorated political morality, and
in an overburdened economy." This typical neo-Hooverite goes on:
"The deepest wound that had been given the American practice of
self-government had been given by its friends. Every argument,
every program, every success on behalf of the American people
made them less able to perform the function of a self-supporting
people."
None of this is true. The idea of a "self-supporting people,"
whatever meaning may be read into that epithet, had itself become
increasingly anachronistic in the United States once the eastern
railroads had been joined into great trunk lines and the western
transcontinental had been built. Following the industrial consolida-
tions of the Civil War period and the depression of the 1870s, self-
reliant agriculture and self-reliant small business had become in-
creasingly characteristic only of the byways of American life, the
founts neither of its modern corporate character nor its modern
corporate wealth. What the railroads and the trusts left unfinished,
the automobile and the highways completed.
In politics, moreover, no one did more than Hoover himself,
with his promotion of the idea of "co-operative competition" while
Secretary of Commerce under Harding and Coolidge, to subvert the
notion of a "self-supporting people." "One may say," Mark Sulli-
van writes, "that Hoover regarded our entire business structure as
a single factory, conceiving himself, as it were, consulting engineer
for the whole enterprise." And as for the morality of it, before his
political ambitions made him circumspect in his avowals, the "Great
Engineer" once waved aside the misappropriation of investors'
funds by corporate officials, averring in an English mining journal
that capital is "often invested" by insiders "to more reproductive
purpose than if it had remained in the hands of the idiots who
parted with it."
Traditions often are the hardiest of social phenomena, outlasting
A "New Dear 371
buildings, bridges, monuments, laws. Americans either as individ-
uals or as a nation have not been a "self-supporting people" for
generations. Fortunately, in politics in the 'thirties they continued
to act as if they were. In an unprecedented crisis in which their
self-appointed leaders had thrown up their hands in fear and panic,
it is to be wondered what the neo-Hooverites might deem the "func-
tion of a self-supporting people" if not to vote in, by orderly and
constitutional means, new leaders of their own choosing. In four
New York City hospitals in 1931 ninety-five persons died of starva-
tion. In Akron in the year 1929, the Family Service Society dealt
with 257 needy cases; in the next two years it collapsed under a load
of 5,000 cases a month. "If the time should ever come that the
voluntary agencies of this country are unable to find resources with
which to prevent hunger and suffering," President Hoover said in
1931, "I will ask the aid of every resource of the federal govern-
ment." The time had come; but the Great Humanitarian turned
away in horror.
"The government should assist and encourage . . . movements
of collective self-help by itself co-operating with them"; anything
more, Hoover held in 1917, in 1926, and in 1931, would find the
people "Prussianized." "A whole generation has gone mad on that
word co-operation," Roosevelt exclaimed. If any President had a
mandate from a politically "self-supporting people" to confront, as
he said in his first inaugural, "the dark realities of the moment"
with measures appropriate to them it was Franklin D. Roosevelt
in 1932 and 1936. The "self-supporting people" had elected for
deeds in place of threadbare dogma; they had saved, not weakened,
their "constitutional system"; they had restored their rotting "na-
tional morale"; they had strengthened their "political morality" by
confronting it at long last with the facts of life; and they had not
in fact "burdened" their economy enough.
As for "national security," at a minimum Roosevelt may be said
to have kept faith with the electorate while at the same time yearn-
ing to take the lead in defense of values which alone made "national
security" worth defending. Those who claim that Roosevelt "im-
periled" national security have even shorter memories of the Nazis
astride Europe and the North Atlantic in 1941 than of the famine,
fear, and futility astride the prostrate United States in 1931.
372 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
F.D.R. was the spoiled only child of a doting mother and a rich
aristocrat old enough to be his grandfather. It is fashionable for
historians to laugh at Roosevelt's business career in the 'twenties,
which included an unsuccessful flier in a company organized to sell
commodities by automatic vending machines. But this experiment
appears much less farfetched in the 1950s, and only shows how far
ahead of his times Roosevelt was likely to be. In politics, in his first
electoral campaign for the state legislature in 1910, Roosevelt can-
vassed votes, unprecedentedly, by automobile. Ten years later, as
Democratic candidate for vice-president, he said of the League of
Nations, "it may not end wars, but the nations demand the experi-
ment." As Governor of New York early in the depression he had
become one of the sponsors of business plans for "stabilization of
employment," which became famous in the 1950s as the "guaran-
teed annual wage." On his nomination for the presidency in 1932,
he broke all precedents by flying to the convention, and by accept-
ing the nomination in person. As early as May 1932, Roosevelt had
called for "bold, persistent experimentation. If it fails," he said,
"admit it frankly and try" something else. "But above all try some-
thing. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently for-
ever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach."
"I happen to know," Roosevelt said in a radio talk soon after his
inauguration in March 1933, "that professional economists have
changed their definition of economic laws every five or ten years for
a long time." That perhaps was the extent of Roosevelt's knowledge
of economics; but given the economists' knowledge of society, it
is hardly a fault not to have studied them more carefully. Professor
Irving Fisher of Yale, the dean of the economics guild, had declared
late in 1928 that the stock market had reached "what looks like a
permanently high plateau." The day after the great crash of Octo-
ber 29, 1929, Fisher remarked, "Yesterday's break was a shaking
out of the lunatic fringe that attempts to speculate on margin." The
following summer distracted Americans, writes Quincy Howe,
"spent a million dollars a day playing miniature golf on thirty-five
thousand courses that represented an investment of one hundred
and thirty-five million dollars. Still crazier than the addicts ... or
the proprietors of the courses were the economists who seriously
A "New Dear 373
hailed it as the remedy for the depression. The fad collapsed in
1931 ... having provided a brief and inexpensive diversion for the
new poor who soon found other uses for their vanishing reserves of
hard cash."
Not until 1936 did John Maynard Keynes publish his epochal
General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, which is
sometimes said to have become the bible of the New Deal. In De-
cember 1933, Keynes had written in an open letter to Roosevelt:
"You have made yourself the trustee for those in every country who
seek to mend the evils of our conditions by reasoned experiment
within the framework of the existing social system. If you fail, ra-
tional change will be gravely prejudiced throughout the world,
leaving orthodoxy and revolution to fight it out."
Actually, Roosevelt's first steps as President did not go far be-
yond belated ones taken by Hoover himself, though F.D.R.'s were
accompanied by braver words. When Hoover saw the bankers aban-
don their role as bellwethers of the economy, he got Congress to
create the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in January 1932. In
the next twelve months this agency loaned a billion and a half dol-
lars to five thousand banks, insurance companies, other credit
agencies, and railroads. In July 1932, Congress passed the Federal
Home Loan Act which enabled financial institutions holding home
mortgages to obtain cash for current needs without foreclosing pri-
vate dwellings. Later that month Hoover signed a bill permitting
the RFC to lend nearly two billion dollars to state and local govern-
ments to strengthen their finances and to undertake self-liquidating
public works. But Hoover had already estranged millions by vetoing
bills for federal relief of the unemployed and indigent, and a meas-
ure providing for the immediate payment of the deferred bonus
promised to veterans of the first World War. Hoover's other meas-
ures failed to restore either the economy itself or confidence in the
future.
When Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, thousands of
American banks verged on insolvency. Runs on them by frightened
depositors had drained them of their reserves. To protect the banks
most of the states had already declared "bank holidays"; and on
374 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
March 6, Roosevelt made the "holiday" countrywide for four days.
Emergency legislation then empowered both the Federal Reserve
System and the RFC to assist essentially sound banks with new
currency. When Roosevelt reported these acts to the country on
March 12, confidence was restored sufficiently for people to re-
deposit their money. Additional legislation in the next few months
further stabilized lie financial life of the country and set the pat-
tern for reform legislation later. Still more or less in the Hoover
pattern was an Act of June 1933, setting up the Home Owners
Loan Corporation. This agency eventually was empowered to bor-
row as much as $4,750,000,000 and to make this money available
to home owners for refinancing their mortgages. A year later Con-
gress created the Federal Housing Administration which insured
mortgages extended by banks to home owners for home construc-
tion or repair.
The stock market crash and the collapse of the commercial bank-
ing system had disclosed glaring abuses in the practices of the
country's financial institutions. The first reform measures of the
New Deal were directed toward improving the country's financial
structure. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 required the complete
separation of commercial banks from their investment-banking
affiliates with the objective of protecting the deposits of the former
from speculative uses by the latter a practice which had helped
precipitate the 1929 crash. A new Banking Act in 1935 revised the
Federal Reserve System and gave its board of governors broad con-
trol over the activities of commercial banks.
By then the Truth-in-Securities Act of 1933, supplemented the
next year by the Securities Exchange Act, had established the Secu-
rities and Exchange Commission. Henceforth most large corporate
security issues had to be sanctioned by the SEC, and the marketing
practices of security brokers and the stock exchanges themselves
came under the Commission's jurisdiction. One of the worst of-
fenders in issuing tricky securities and otherwise manipulating the
investment market was the electric power industry. In 1935 Con-
gress passed the Public Utility Holding Company Act forbidding
the pyramiding of utility holding companies and placing the activ-
ities of legal holding companies under the scrutiny and control of
the SEC.
A "New Deal" 375
Perhaps the greatest bugaboo of the power industry in the 1920s
was the growth of public power, and the industry had successfully
obstructed its development. One of the New Deal's first acts was the
establishment in April 1933, of the Tennessee Valley Authority, "a
corporation clothed with the power of Government but possessed of
the flexibility and initiative of a private enterprise." Ostensibly a
national flood control project, TVA was given control of the power
resources of a vast multi-state area covering 40,000 square miles.
The Tennessee Valley at this time was one of the most impoverished
and backward areas of the nation. Under TVA the valley blossomed
into a rich farming and industrial region. TVA itself became a yard-
stick for the performance of the private power industry.
The power companies have never ceased fighting both the prin-
ciple and the practices of TVA. Their long campaign seemed near
success when President Eisenhower himself in 1954 and 1955
sanctioned the so-called Dixon-Yates private power project to
dismantle TVA. But the industry's methods in promoting the
Dixon-Yates scheme became so unsavory that the President was
forced to withdraw his support, and TVA survived. The power in-
dustry also fought the Rural Electrification Administration, set up
by the New Deal in May 1935, and extended two years later. The
REA was designed to provide electric power in areas too thinly pop-
ulated to attract private investment. It did its job so well that it has
withstood constant private sniping.
From reform of institutions and practices that appeared to
have deepened the depression, the New Deal turned early to meas-
ures of relief for the depression's victims and the economy as a
whole. The first relief act was passed in April 1933. It set up the
Civilian Conservation Corps under the supervision of the War De-
partment. By 1940 CCC had given employment to 2,250,000
youths who worked on valuable reforestation, soil conservation, and
flood control projects. In May 1933, Congress appropriated an
initial $500,000,000 to help the states give direct relief to the
15,000,000 unemployed. The cost of this program eventually ran
into billions. The most dramatic relief measures were those pro-
viding a Public Works Administration with $3,300,000,000 for a
vast public building program. PWA was established under one pro-
376 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
vision of the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 which rep-
resented the New Deal's first major effort to reinvigorate American
industry. Designed as a massive pump-priming measure, PWA was
administered so cautiously that its impact on the economy was
scarcely felt.
The National Recovery Administration as a whole also failed.
Back in the 1920s Secretary of Commerce Hoover had begun to
encourage business to organize trade associations for the better
planning of industrial production and distribution, and he devel-
oped this program further as President. Under NRA the New Deal
proposed to use these trade associations to administer the codes by
which business henceforth would be conducted. Written by com-
mittees representing industry, labor, and the government, NRA
codes set up minimum wage and hour standards for hundreds of
different industries. They also recognized labor's right to organize,
in exchange for which business itself got the right to stabilize prices
and production without fear of anti-trust suits. As long as the NRA
codes were administered by business groups, business was happy
under them. By late 1934, however, two things had happened.
"Little business" found that the codes were rigged to benefit the
great firms in their industries, and the great firms found that gov-
ernment bureaucrats were gradually encroaching on their admin-
istrative prerogatives. NRA was beset with conflicts, when in May
1935, the Supreme Court declared the Recovery Act unconsti-
tutional.
NRA reflected the New Deal's acceptance of the "mature econ-
omy" theory which held that the country had passed its greatest
period of growth and that henceforth business must not be per-
mitted to overexpand. Thus the controls on hours of work and
free competition. The same theory was reflected in the Agricul-
tural Adjustment Act, passed in May 1933. The major objective
of AAA was to raise prices of farm staples to the point where the
farmer's purchasing power would equal that of the favorable period,
1900-14. These "parity prices" were to be achieved by reducing
the acreage sown, and this reduction was to be won by compen-
sating farmers in various ways for acreage left fallow. When the
crops of 1933 threatened to overwhelm the market the AAA took
the drastic step of plowing under a large portion of them. That
A "New Dear 377
fall it also established the Commodity Credit Corporation to lend
money to farmers who held their crops off the market in anticipa-
tion of higher prices later. These measures greatly improved farm-
ing conditions between 1933 and 1935. But AAA suffered the
same fate as NRA before the Supreme Court in January 1936.
Though the AAA had noticeably aided staple farmers, neither
it nor the NRA succeeded in shaking the economy loose from the
depression. By the time of the Congressional elections of 1934 five
dreary years had passed since the crash. The coalition of industry,
labor, farmers, and government which had marked the critical first
New Deal months was breaking under the strain. In August 1934,
business leaders in revolt against the NRA had organized the
American Liberty League to combat further New Deal encroach-
ments on business freedom, especially in the field of labor rela-
tions. The unemployed, on the other hand, had responded by the
millions to the share-the-wealth campaigns of such demagogues as
the radio priest, Father Coughlin; the author, Upton Sinclair; Dr.
Francis E. Townsend; and Louisiana's Senator Huey Long. Tenant
and subsistence farmers for whom the AAA had done nothing
joined the urban unemployed in backing these panacea-mongers.
The Liberty League gave the Republican Party's campaign a new
focus, but the Democrats swept the election. The social worker,
Harry Hopkins, had been influential in designing the Democratic
campaign strategy and tireless in working for the ticket. He now
rose near the top of the inner circle of Roosevelt's advisers.
The "Brains Trust" that Raymond Moley had organized for
Roosevelt even before the 1932 presidential election had been a
conservative group with limited objectives. Most of the members
had had training in economics. NRA was essentially their idea and
business was their instrument for reviving the economy. Hopkins,
on the contrary, was interested in the salvation of the unemployed,
the indigent, the sick, the aged. He was accustomed as a social
worker to direct action, not to theories of distribution of wealth
through market mechanisms. Under the whip of this new and more
imaginative leadership, the new Congress proceeded to enact what
came to be considered characteristic New Deal measures.
Since business apparently could not employ the millions still
378 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
abortively seeking work, Congress in 1935 set up a five-billion-
dollar Works Progress Administration. With WPA the government
instituted a remarkably comprehensive program of work relief.
At the same time the President himself established the National
Youth Administration which gave work to school-age people while
they continued to attend classes and thereby kept them off the
regular labor market. The President also set up in the Agricultural
Department, a Resettlement Administration to rehabilitate half a
million tenant farmers and others on the stricken soil.
In August 1935, Congress passed the first Social Security Act
which in two years covered 28,000,000 workers and has since
been extended to the point where virtually the entire working pop-
ulation is protected by old-age insurance.
At about the same time Congress enacted the National Labor
Relations Act, a Magna Carta for the beleaguered unions. This
Act provided for a National Labor Relations Board with power to
issue cease-and-desist orders to corporations engaged in unfair labor
practices, and to conduct elections by which workers could vote
freely and securely for their own bargaining agents in the making of
labor contracts.
The cost of these measures Congress proceeded to place upon
those best able to pay. This was accomplished by the Revenue Act
of August 1935, which significantly raised surtax levies on large
personal and corporate incomes. Congress also enacted measures
extending federal control over the coal industry, retailing, raikoads,
busses and trucks, the merchant marine and the airlines.
On this record, which earned the solid support of labor in par-
ticular, the Democrats and Roosevelt swept to an overwhelming
victory in the presidential elections of 1936. Alfred M. Landon, of
Kansas, the Republican candidate, carried the electoral votes only
of Vermont and Maine.
Often in the past the Supreme Court had proved the supreme
defender of the status quo. During 1934 and 1935, after business
had broken with the administration, it seemed that the history of
the Court would repeat itself. Invalidation of NRA and AAA were
but two instances of the Supreme Court's attack on the New Deal.
In other cases the Court rejected a Railroad Retirement Act which
A "New Deal" 379
had required contributions by the railroads themselves, and a
Farm Mortgage Act which forestalled normal foreclosure proceed-
ings. Both measures, the Court argued, deprived persons of prop-
erty without due process of law. In its railroad retirement decision
the Court added that federal control over interstate commerce did
not extend beyond control of goods in transit. By this reasoning
both the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act
were also vulnerable, and indeed in lower federal courts hundreds
of injunctions against the enforcement of the labor act had been
granted by the end of 1936. After his smashing victory in the
elections that year, the President decided the time had come to
end the Court's vendetta against the entire New Deal and the con-
cept of national welfare that underlay it.
To curb or correct the Court, Roosevelt submitted to Congress
on February 3, 1937, a Judiciary Reorganization bill which would
permit the President when any federal judge failed to retire at the
age of seventy, to appoint a new judge to assist him. Since six of
the Supreme Court justices were over seventy, this would have
given Roosevelt the power to expand the Court to fifteen judges, six
of whom he would have power to appoint immediately.
If this proposal came as a surprise to the country and even to
the leading politicians, the anger it aroused in both parties came
as a shock to the President. The Reorganization bill was defeated.
But Roosevelt had his victory none the less, for the proposal
startled the middle-of-the-roaders on the Court into a realization that
more radical reforms would be in the offing if the justices failed
promptly to give deeper consideration to the needs and the will of
the country. Their new attitude was confirmed in May 1937, when
the Court upheld the Social Security Act. The previous month, in
an epochal decision, it had upheld the National Labor Relations
Act.
By the time the Court had made its labor decision a virtual rev-
olution had taken place in union organization. For a long time a
group within the American Federation of Labor, led by John L.
Lewis of the United Mine Workers, had been trying to force the
Federation to organize the mass of industrial workers outside the
specific crafts. Of particular concern were the Negro workers who
380 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
had flocked to Detroit and other northern industrial cities since the
first World War but had gained no recognition by the union bosses.
In November 1935, Lewis led a rump group of A. F. of L. leaders
in the formation of a Committee for Industrial Organization to
bring the masses of labor into the union scheme. Ordered to dis-
band by the official A. F. of L. leadership, the Committee refused.
When ten of the co-operating unions were expelled from the A. F.
of L. in March 1937, they formed the independent C.I.O., known
after October of that year as the Congress of Industrial Organiza-
tions.
By then the Steel Workers under Philip Murray had already won
their historic victory in gaining recognition of their C.I.O. union
by the United States Steel Corporation. "Little Steel" proved much
tougher to organize, and here the C.I.O. campaign was met with
traditional gunfire and bloodshed. Only the intervention of the
newly validated National Labor Relations Board forced "Little
Steel" to concede recognition in 1941. In the meantime the C.I.O.
had organized large numbers of rubber, textile, clothing, and
electrical workers and others in smaller industries.
C.I.O. efforts to organize the automobile industry in 1936 and
1937 were marked by the revolutionary tactic of the "sit-down
strike," during which workers simply occupied the plants in an
effort to win recognition. The corporations naturally tried to dis-
lodge them by cajolery, law, and force. When Frank Murphy, the
Democratic Governor of Michigan, refused to use the National
Guard against the General Motors strikers, the corporation grudg-
ingly yielded to the C.I.O. faction of the A. F. of L. This was in
February 1937. Chrysler capitulated in September. At Ford the
union organizing campaign was inept. At the same time, Ford's
anti-union espionage and intimidation were the most highly per-
fected in the industry and his "goons" the most numerous and best
trained. The C.LO. had to fight until 1941 to bring Ford workers
into the fold.
In 1932, after a century or more of organization work, fewer
than 3,000,000 Americans were members of labor unions. By
1941 the C.I.O. had grown into a massive organization of 5,000,-
000 while the A. F. of L., forced to bestir itself, had also mush-
roomed to 4,500,000 members. A million other workers were
Domestic and Foreign Crises 381
enrolled in independent unions. When the C.I.O. and A. F. of L.
reunited in 1955, their joint membership had risen to 15,000,000
and the total unionized labor force to over 16,000,000. The im-
petus the New Deal gave to this development was one of its
most significant achievements.
DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN CRISES
Between 1933 and 1937 the combined efforts of government,
labor, and industry had reduced the number of unemployed from
about fifteen million to less than eight million. The rise in jobs
and the improvement in farm income helped revive the market for
goods. Indeed, between 1933 and 1937 business enjoyed a con-
tinuous if mild upswing. Soon after Roosevelt's second inaugura-
tion, however, business again went into a tailspin and 4,000,000
returned to the unemployment rolls. As usual the President was
ready with appropriate phrases. Lashing out at "economic royalists"
who were choking opportunity, he got Congress to establish a Tem-
porary National Economic Committee to disclose the monopolistic
structure of American business and to propose new legislation to
combat it. At the same time the Department of Justice initiated a
new series of antitrust suits. The TNEC published an enormous
amount of information about the business community but neither
it nor the activities of the Justice Department significantly affected
the business structure. The President also decried the fact that while
private enterprise nodded, one third of the population remained ill-
fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed.
In 1937 and 1938 Congress passed new legislation to help the
farmers, to provide funds for cheap public housing, and to con-
tinue WPA. But such measures no longer evoked confidence as
in the early New Deal days. On the contrary, they smacked of the
"recipe as before," and as Fortune suggested early in 1940, they
depressed rather than raised the country's spirit.
In the Congressional elections of 1938, for the first time in
nearly a decade, the Republicans made notable gains. But intra-
party strife over foreign policy, and especially over the war once
again brewing in Europe, cost them any chance of victory in the
presidential elections of 1940.
As long as no great crisis threatened world peace American
382 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
policy even under Republican administrations after the first World
War had not been strictly isolationist. In the 1920s the United
States took the lead in trying to control naval building among the
nations of the world and to allay unrest in such trouble zones as
China. The United States had also sought agreements, like the
Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928, to outlaw war as an instrument of
settling international disputes and had co-operated with the League
of Nations toward this end.
Under the New Deal, United States policy toward Latin Amer-
ica showed that our peaceful spirit was not simply verbal. There
we reversed the "big stick" policy of the past, withdrew from the
management of the internal affairs of some Latin American coun-
tries, and invited them to join with us as equals in defense of the
hemisphere against European encroachments. Firmly convinced
that trade barriers were the basic cause of war, Roosevelt's Secre-
tary of State, Cordell Hull, also tried continuously to work out
agreements with many nations for the mutual lowering of tariffs
and the removal of other impediments to the free flow of goods and
the easy exchange of currencies. American recognition of the
Soviet Union in 1933 was motivated in large part by the desire to
restore trade between the two countries.
None of these activities, however, seriously engaged the atten-
tion or sympathy of the American people. But when Hitler's ad-
vent early in the 1930s revived the menace of a new world war,
American isolationism flowered. Popular enthusiasm greeted the
"merchants of death" investigation of 1934, in which a Senate com-
mittee placed the onus for war on munitions makers. In 1935 Mus-
solini invaded Ethiopia while the United States and the members
of the League of Nations stood by. In 1936 Mussolini and Hitler
helped General Franco to establish his tyranny in Spain. Later
that year Germany and Japan completed the Berlin-Tokyo axis
to which Italy was admitted in 1937. The American response to
this lengthening chain of aggression was a series of Neutrality Acts
based on the Senate committee's findings. The culminating measure
was the Neutrality Act of May 1937, which forbade the lending
of money and the sale of munitions to belligerent nations and per-
mitted them to buy other commodities in the United States only
for cash and only if they carried them off in their own ships.
Domestic and Foreign Crises 383
In the summer of 1937 Japan resumed the attacks on China
which she had begun in 1931. Japan's aggression prompted Pres-
ident Roosevelt, in October 1937, to make an electrifying speech
in which he urged that aggressor nations be "quarantined." But
neither the American people nor our allies in Europe responded
favorably to the idea.
Confident that the American neutrality statutes would deter
England and France from offering resistance, Hitler early in 1938
seized Austria. Later that year he occupied most of Czechoslovakia.
But the western world's response was simply Neville Chamberlain's
"appeasement" visit to Munich in September 1938, when Hitler
cynically stated that he would remain satisfied with his gains so
far. In the spring of 1939, however, Hitler grabbed Prague and
the rest of free Czechoslovakia, and on August 23 he made the
notorious nonaggression pact with Stalin which freed him to attack
Poland without fear of Russian reprisals. The German invasion of
Poland began September 1, 1939. Their guarantees to Poland at
last forced England and France to declare wax on Germany. World
War II had begun.
"When peace has been broken anywhere," Roosevelt told the
American people over the radio on September 1, "peace of all
countries everywhere is in danger." On September 21 he called
Congress into special session; after six weeks of stern debate Con-
gress revised the neutrality laws to the extent of permitting bel-
ligerents to purchase munitions for cash provided they carried
their purchases in their own vessels. This was on November 4,
1939. By then Poland had succumbed to German arms, and, in
accordance with the "secret additional protocol" of their non-
aggression pact, Hitler and Stalin proceeded to carve her up.
Characteristically, Stalin enlarged his claims under the protocol to
include Lithuania as well as Estonia, Latvia, and Finland as Rus-
sian spoils, claiming later that the Baltic states were to provide a
buffer between the Soviets and the West. Hitler acquiesced in
order to direct his attentions westward. All but Finland had already
been conquered and late in November 1939, Stalin attacked her.
The Finns resisted magnificently, but on March 12, 1940, were
forced to surrender to overwhelmingly superior forces.
While Stalin was occupied with Finland, Hitler was conducting
384 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
the "phony war" in the West. During the winter of 1939, he let
Chamberlain's Britain bathe in a welcomed sense of security and
encouraged the French to complain bitterly over the costs of mobil-
ization for hostilities that never seemed to materialize. Morale fell
to new lows in both countries. The phony war came to a spectac-
ular end on April 9, 1940, when in a single day Hitler's blitzkrieg
overran Denmark and all the major North Sea and Atlantic ports
of Norway. Sweden, at the same time, was immobilized, her iron
ore and air bases Hitler's to command. The shock of this triumph
blew Chamberlain out of office on May 10, when he yielded the
premiership to Winston Churchill. On the same day, Hitler's forces
tore into the Netherlands and reduced them in ninety-six hours.
Belgium surrendered before the end of May; France before the
end of June.
One of Churchill's first tasks was to supervise the evacuation of
340,000 beleaguered British troops from Dunkirk on the French
Channel coast. On June 4, the day this incredible operation was
completed, Churchill addressed his people with words that kindled
the spirit of the free world:
We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight
on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in
the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never
surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this
Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our
Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet,
would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New
World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the
liberation of the old.
The next day Hitler attacked France in earnest and on June 17
France fell. On July 10 the Battle of Britain began.
Hitler's smashing conquest of France convinced most of the
American people of their own imminent danger. During the sum-
mer^ of 1940 Congress appropriated nearly sixteen billion dollars
for "defense," and a huge air force and a two-ocean navy were
in the making. In August the government initiated joint defense
planning with Canada, already a belligerent. In September Con-
Domestic and Foreign Crises 385
gress also ordered the first peacetime draft in history. At the same
time Congress acquiesced in Roosevelt's bold offer of fifty over-age
destroyers to Britain in exchange for the right for a period of
ninety-nine years to set up naval, air, and military bases in Brit-
ish possessions forming a protective screen from Newfoundland
to British Guiana. Churchill thought that "according to all the
standards of history," Roosevelt's daring move would "have justi-
fied the German Government in declaring war." But Hitler had no
desire to incite the United States while Britain remained uncon-
quered. This gave credence to the American isolationists' claim
that Hitler had no designs on the United States at all.
If Roosevelt wanted an excuse to run for an unprecedented
third term, the need for an experienced hand during the mounting
global crisis supplied it. Many Democratic politicians had tired of
F.D.R., but when he made himself available they could not oppose
him. The Republicans were even less united. Republicans had led
in forming the isolationist America First Committee and many sim-
ilar organizations which appeared during the summer and fall of
1940. All were solidly opposed to American involvement in for-
eign wars. They seemed to prefer, as Roosevelt himself pointed
out, to fight only on our own territory where our cities and homes
would be destroyed, and only after all our potential allies had been
wiped out. They described their own position somewhat differently.
They conceded Europe (including Britain) to Hitler and proposed
to do business with him. Many other Republicans, especially among
the younger party members, were more realistic. In the end they
carried the Republican convention and nominated Wendell Willkie,
a confirmed internationalist, for the presidency. Willkie put up a
real fight and while he failed to win, he cut F.D.R.'s 1936 margin
considerably. Strengthened by his victory, the President promptly
promised Britain all aid short of joining the shooting.
In a broadcast on December 29, 1940, Roosevelt proposed to
make the United States the "arsenal of democracy." A few days
later he enunciated as the goal of this policy the establishment of
the Four Freedoms throughout the world: freedom of speech and
of worship; freedom from want and from fear. By March Roose-
velt's program had materialized in the act of Congress establishing
386 Bolshevism, Babbitt, and the Barricades
"lend-lease." By this act the President was empowered to make
available to "the government of any country whose defense the
President deems vital to the defense of the United States" not
money in the form of repayable loans, but any service, any "de-
fense article," and any "defense information."
By the time the Lend-Lease Act was passed, American and Brit-
ish naval officers had already spent months in secret sessions work-
ing toward agreement that, even if Japan entered the war, Germany
would remain the number one object of attack, and preparing joint
attack plans. Soon after, two momentous military events occurred.
First in June 1941, British airplane production had caught up
with the Germans' and victory in the air Battle of Britain seemed
imminent. Second, Hitler seemed to sense defeat in the air battle
when, on June 22, he broke his nonaggression pact with Stalin and
turned the blitzkrieg on the Russians.
For all his misgivings about international Communism, Churchill
joyfully accepted the Russians as comrades-in-arms. In August
1941, he held his first wartime conference with Roosevelt in the
hope of further speeding the Nazis' end by enlarging American
contributions to the fighting. Simply by participating as a non-
belligerent in a conference with belligerent Britain, Roosevelt
showed how glad he was to do what he could.
The most striking result of this conference, which was held at
Argentia Bay, Newfoundland, was the promulgation of the Atlantic
Charter. Victory was far off, but Roosevelt strove to define the
glorious purposes for which Americans might join the "war for
survival." Churchill was willing to go along to help Roosevelt carry
the American people. The Charter reiterated many of Wilson's
Fourteen Points covering the right of peoples everywhere to
"choose the form of government under which they will live"; to
trade freely on free seas and have "access, on equal terms," to the
world's raw materials; and "pending the establishment of a wider
and permanent system of general security," to live at peace in a
disarmed world.
Among the more immediate objectives of the Argentia confer-
ence, as Churchill put it, were to "proclaim the ever closer asso-
ciation of the British and the United States," to "cause our enemies
Domestic and Foreign Crises 387
concern," to "make Japan ponder," and to "cheer our friends." If
Japan pondered, she was not deterred. The Japanese assault on
Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, only hastened the United
States' total involvement in what would become the deadliest war
in history.
Chapter Fourteen
The One World of the
Twentieth Century
In September 1957, the U.S.S.R. claimed to have
achieved the world's first successful flight of an intercontinental
ballistic missile capable of reaching American cities from Soviet
launching bases. At almost the same moment, the Ford Motor
Company announced for 1958 what it called the first entirely new
full line of automobiles in the United States since 1939. The most
revolutionary feature of the new car, a secret that was as well pro-
tected as the first atomic bomb, proved to be the vertical arrange-
ment of the chrome on its front grille. The Russians have the
ICBM, grumbled global-minded American commentators, and we
have the Edsel.
This remark was reminiscent of Hermann Goering's observation
on the eve of our entrance into the second World War: "The Amer-
icans can't build planes, only electric ice boxes and razor blades."
Many Americans themselves had then shared this defeatist view;
and some would not shed it for years to come. When President
Roosevelt mentioned 8,000 planes a year as a possible goal in
1938, almost everyone thought he was having dreams of grandeur.
When he called for 50,000 planes a year in June 1940, his expla-
nation of our and the free world's pressing need was denounced by
Charles A. Lindbergh and other isolationist experts as "hysterical
chatter." "Our dangers are internal," said Lindbergh. "Nobody
wishes to attack us, and nobody is in a position to do so." Even in
January 1942, when Roosevelt demanded 60,000 planes that year,
as well as 45,000 tanks and eight million tons of ocean shipping,
388
The One World of the Twentieth Century 389
Donald Nelson, the head of the new War Production Board, said,
"We thought these goals were out of the question."
In 1940 and 1942 (as in 1950 and 1957) the American people
were confronted with the choice, as the phrase goes, of guns or
butter. As often in the more distant past, they voted for butter
until the need for guns became unbearable. "We almost lost the
war before we got into it," a sobered Nelson wrote later. "At best
it was a hair-line verdict. Just a few more mistakes would have
turned the trick a little more unwillingness to look into the face
of reality, a little more shrinking from hard facts and figures . . .
a little more tremulous indecision."
Unfortunately, fantastic conceptions of national defense and of
national productive capacity in emergencies have frequently
prompted some of America's most influential leaders to advocate
limitations or delays in arming, and the dissipation, or destruction
of allies, almost to the point of national suicide. Until he was edu-
cated by General George C. Marshall, who became wartime Army
Chief of Staff, and by Roosevelt himself, Harry Hopkins, the Pres-
ident's closest wartime associate, believed (as Robert Sherwood
reports it) that "if an enemy fleet approached our shores, we would
merely line up our own Navy (which was always 'second to none')
like a football team defending its goal line in the days before the
invention of the forward pass; any hostile ships that might break
through the Navy would be handled by our coast defenses." Roose-
velt demolished this conception (which Hopkins shared with Nel-
son and others high in authority) once and for all in August 1940,
by taking Hopkins to a map and explaining that our Navy and our
coastal installations together "could defend less than one and one-
half per cent of our coastline." An enemy could land unmolested
in innumerable places; it was far better, said Roosevelt, if we or
our friends landed on him first, preferably with air power.
An even more dangerous conception was that advanced just
before the fall of France by Senator Robert A. Taft, certainly the
most influential political spokesman for the American industrial
community. "I do not know what the Germans may do," Taft said:
. . . until they are freed from the present war and have an opportunity
to show. When they do, we can adopt the same methods. We can
390 The One World of the Twentieth Century
take the same steps that may be necessary to meet the particular kind
of German "blitzkrieg," if there is such a blitzkrieg, at the time we
find out what it is.
Nothing attests more strongly to the peaceful intentions of the
American people than their preference for butter over guns, for
Edsels over ICBMs. Yet for all the vast dangers to our security
in overburdening our economy with hasty and excessive invest-
ments in armaments and allies, nothing could be more risky than
the dissipation of both. Weakness has always invited aggression.
In modern wars involving complex machines, the aggressor has had
tremendous and ever-increasing initial advantages. It takes years
to move the latest military equipment from designing board to
mass production; it takes almost as long to train military personnel
in the operation and maintenance of new equipment and tactics and
strategy relevant to it. To wait until an enemy's blitzkrieg is
mounted and rolling, as Chamberlain's government did in Britain
and as Taft and his followers advocated that we do here, was sim-
ply to invite annihilation. In atomic war, the aggressor's initial
advantages, once the deterrents of might and spirit falter, are
likely to be unanswerable.
In World War II, only Churchill's heroic rallying of his people
rescued Britain at the zero hour from a disaster more complete than
that of France. Only Roosevelt's urgent rallying of our productive
talents ("against the advice of some of this country's best minds,"
as Donald Nelson acknowledged) preserved the United States
and the free world.
PRODIGIES OF PRODUCTION
Of all the prodigies of production in World War II the most
momentous was the development of an atomic bomb that could
be manufactured in quantity by assembly line techniques. This
development, though among the last to attain success, was one of the
first to be undertaken. The Anglo-American decision in the spring
of 1941 to consider Germany target number one even if Japan
should enter the war on the side of her Axis partner was prompted
to a considerable extent by the agreed-upon need to destroy Hitler
before the Germans manufactured an atomic bomb themselves. To
Prodigies of Production 391
accomplish his destruction such a bomb of our own would be
useful.
Even before Munich, Nazi scientists, following an old Einstein
lead, had been the first in the world to release energy by splitting
the uranium atom. Thereafter, a way to employ this incredible
energy in a deliverable weapon was feverishly sought. Lindbergh,
who had recently returned to the United States after several years'
residence in Europe where he was attracted to Nazism, "scared the
living daylights" (the words are Robert Sherwood's) out of in-
fluential listeners at private meetings with stories of the incompa-
rability of Nazi science and the imminence of our atomic destruc-
tion.* But certain Americans did not easily "scare"; among them
was the knowledgeable Dr. Vannevar Bush, formerly Dean of
Engineering at M.I.T. and then President of the Carnegie Insti-
tution in Washington. Forewarned, for once, was to be forearmed.
Dr. Bush responded to Lindbergh's importing of Hitler's "strategy
of terror" not with paralysis of nerve, but with immediate action
to parry and improve on the threat.
As early as January 1939, certain American scientists had
learned from the eminent Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, the nature
of the German atomic experiments. Later that year Einstein, who
had fled Germany when Hitler took power, and two other foreign-
born scientists, Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, had managed to
convey to F.D.R. the full meaning of the approaching mastery of
atomic science by the "master race." Roosevelt promptly estab-
lished an advisory committee on uranium; but the "crash" program
on the production of an atomic bomb was not decided upon until
the spring of 1941, when the British, whose atomic research was
considerably ahead of our own, agreed to share their knowledge.
The whole program was placed under the supervision of the Office
of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) which Dr. Bush
had earlier organized (under another tide) to mobilize American
scientists and engineers for work on all scientific phases of the
defense effort.
The most fruitful subsequent work on the atom was done at the
* After the United States did go to war, Lindbergh put his knowledge of
German airplanes at the service of this government and contributed signifi-
cantly to the progress of our air arm.
392 The One World of the Twentieth Century
universities of California and Chicago and at Columbia. This work
demonstrated that a practical bomb could be made by using plu-
tonium as the "fissionable element." Plutonium was a new element
made by splitting the uranium atom in a cyclotron or atom smasher.
On May 1, 1943, the job of producing plutonium in large quan-
tities was given to the sacredly secret Manhattan District Project
established under General Leslie R. Groves at Oak Ridge, Ten-
nessee, where the immense water and electric power resources of
TVA were available. At approximately the same time, the respon-
sibility for building a practical bomb was placed upon Dr. J. Rob-
ert Oppenheimer and the brilliant team of British, American, and
European scientists he gathered at Los Alamos, New Mexico. On
July 12, 1945, final assembly of the first atomic bomb began. At
five-thirty in the morning four days later, at Alamogordo air base
in New Mexico, the terrible weapon was detonated.
By then V-E day was more than two months past. Hitler's
"thousand-year Reich" had come crashing down in flames and
suicides amid the woeful stench of concentration camps and gas
chambers on May 7, 1945. As early as 1942 Nazi scientists had
decided that an atomic bomb was not feasible. Their alternative
weapons failed to offset even the nonatomic achievements of the
scientists of the free world.
Next to the bomb, perhaps the most important of these achieve-
ments was "microwave-search radar." Radar-equipped patrol
planes and ships could determine the exact location of enemy sub-
marines (and other water and air craft) far beyond the range of
sight and "coach in" friendly craft "for the kill." Essentially a
British invention, radar was largely responsible for victory in the
air Battle of Britain and almost wholly responsible for ridding the
sea lanes of U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic. A third crucial
weapon, developed exclusively under the auspices of the OSRD
in 1942, was the proximity fuse. This fuse was in effect "a radio
set in the head of the shell that detonated it by proximity to the
target." Allied generals, fearful that an unexploded shell equipped
with the fuse might fall into enemy hands, forbade its use by ground
troops until December 1944, when it was employed with devas-
tating effect in beating back the German counteroffensive in Bel-
Prodigies of Production 393
gium. For years previously, the proximity fuse had done yeoman
work against enemy aircraft over Pacific and European waters.
During World War I the United States ferried two million men
across the Atlantic. Those who actually engaged in fighting used
English and French equipment from rifles and machine guns to
airplanes almost exclusively. In World War II the United States
sent four million fully equipped men virtually to every outpost of
the known world and outfitted more than that many in allied forces.
"American factories," write the historians Samuel Eliot Morison
and Henry Steele Commager:
equipped French and Chinese armies; built harbor works in the Per-
sian Gulf, India, and New Caledonia; provided millions of feet of
steel landing mats for hundreds of air fields scattered around the
earth; supplied locomotives to Iran, trucks to Russia, jeeps to Britain,
aircraft to China; built the Burma Road; completed the Alaska High-
way; constructed aluminum plants in Canada; laid oil pipe lines in
France, and performed a thousand similar tasks. To hard-pressed
Russia went almost 400,000 trucks, 52,000 jeeps, 7,000 tanks,
130,000 field telephones, 420,000 tons of aluminum, and enough
planes to equip two air forces the size of the United States Ninth
Tactical Air Force, which was the world's largest. Britain received
enough planes for four such air forces, over 100,000 trucks and
jeeps, six million tons of steel, one billion dollars worth of ordnance,
thousands of radar sets, and millions of feet of radar-interception
foil. One year after Pearl Harbor the United States was producing
more war material than all the Axis nations combined.
By the end of 1942 Roosevelt's demand for 60,000 planes had
been missed by only 12,000; the next year American factories pro-
duced 85,930 planes; by the end of the war nearly 300,000
most of them larger and faster and with greater fire power than any
dreamed of when the war began. By the end of 1942 Roosevelt's
demand for eight million tons of merchant shipping had been met
on the nose; the next year American yards produced 19,296,000
tons; by the end of the war more than 55,000,000 tons. This repre-
sented 5,425 ships, including mass-assembled Liberty ships and
Victory ships, and tankers wife record capacity, speed, and cruising
range. We also produced 71,000 naval vessels from the minutest
394 The One World of the Twentieth Century
auxiliaries to gigantic aircraft carriers like Essex, Bunker Hill, and
Independence. Many of the new vessels were ingeniously designed
for amphibian landings and innumerable other special purposes.
Armament and equipment were only a few of the end products
(others included hospitals, camps, roads, machinery, and med-
icines) of vast expansion in basic industries. For some of the most
strategic materials we had been entirely dependent upon imports
which were cut off by the war. The most critical of these was raw
rubber. One of the outstanding stories of the "battle of production"
was the creation from scratch of the synthetic rubber industry.
The United States is far better equipped for war today than at
the time of Pearl Harbor. But it was far better equipped then than
for World War I. This was partly due, of course, to Roosevelt's
foresight in beginning to make American industry the "arsenal of
democracy" in 1940 and to the expansion of arms production to
implement lend-lease after March 1941. Yet even more of the
credit goes to New Deal agencies like TVA, the source of power
for the Manhattan District Project. The much maligned WPA and
PWA, moreover, contributed immensely in such intangible ways
as maintaining the morale and loyalty of our citizenry during a
depression that might easily have alienated class from class as it
did in France and (fortunately to a lesser extent) in Britain.
But WPA and PWA also made important tangible contributions.
Most noteworthy, perhaps, was their role in developing public
power projects on the West Coast. Without depression-built Grand
Coulee and Bonneville Dams our wartime aluminum and hence
our wartime aircraft production would have fallen disastrously
short of requirements. WPA and PWA funds had also given con-
struction employment and experience to army engineers at a time
when isolationist Congresses were starving the armed forces and
military career men were too frightened to fight for funds. Warily,
but wisely, F.D.R. had used PWA funds to build aircraft carriers
Enterprise and Yorktown and to lay the keels of other naval vessels
before Hitler's invasion of Poland. He had also used WPA workers,
as the Army and Navy Register said in May 1942, "who saved
many Army posts and Naval stations from literal obsolescence . . .
in the years 1935 to 1939."
There were less salutary carry-overs from New Deal days. The
Prodigies of Production 395
"hate Roosevelt" attitude of big business was not an inconsiderable
element in the steel industry's delay in expanding capacity before
Pearl Harbor. Nor was this attitude absent from the automobile
industry's "business as usual" policy, reflected in its reluctance to
convert to armaments just when the boom created by our "arsenal
of democracy" and lend-lease programs was reviving the market
for cars. Fairly complete conversion ultimately was achieved; but
industry's old fear of excess plant capacity forced the government,
through the Defense Plants Corporation, to build virtually all the
new wartime factories and such transportation facilities as the
cross-country "Big Inch" and "Little Big Inch" pipe lines. Farmers,
in turn, played "politics as usual." They had enjoyed large sub-
sidies and other protection under the New Deal, and now they
used their political power to drive a hard bargain in the form of
a guarantee of high prices for the duration and high parity support
for at least two years after the war before yielding to the govern-
ment's demand for vast increases in production to meet wartime
needs.
Organized labor, another element that owed its strength to New
Deal policies and politics, was not so fortunate. In exchange for a
government promise to keep wartime prices down, the A. F. of L.
and the C.I.O. had made no-strike pledges after Pearl Harbor.
The Office of Price Administration, under Leon Henderson, did a
historic job of containing inflation throughout the war period. Yet
price rises did occur, sometimes steep ones. There were many
"wildcat strikes" for higher wages in 1943, after the most critical
days of the "battle for production" were past. The worst labor
troubles occurred in the coal mines where John L. Lewis kept up
his "war as usual" with the recalcitrant coal operators. The
President's seizure of the mines in May 1943, deterred neither
Lewis nor his men from striking on June 11. Later that month
an embattled Congress replied with the harsh Smith-Connally Act
authorizing the government to operate struck plants and making
strikes against federally run plants a criminal offense. "There are
no strikes in foxholes," was the type of slogan that slapped at
rebellious workers. But their response, "There are no profits either,"
seemed to meet the polemic requirements.
American resistance to total mobilization was perhaps hearten-
396 The One World of the Twentieth Century
ing evidence of the persistence of freedom even under war con-
ditions. Freedom was manifested in other ways, not least by the
constant clamoring for priorities and other privileges as the web
of Washington red tape reached out to every factory, farm, and
home in the land. Roosevelt himself added to the occasions for
confusion and complaint by his practice, carried over intact from
"politicking" New Deal days, of piling agency upon agency. New
"alphabet" administrations were given responsibilities and func-
tions of which old ones were not specifically relieved. This helped
make the central government a jungle where professional "influence
peddlers" thrived; while in many far corners of the land a sense of
unfairness and frustration curdled the cream if not the milk of
patriotism.
Yet no one forgot the "date which will live in infamy." Pearl
Harbor united the nation more firmly than any single event in
history. Naturally, in a country given to extremes, the single major
blot on wartime tolerance was one of the blackest ever. At the
outbreak of the war, 126,000 persons of Japanese origin lived in
the United States; two thirds of them were Nisei, or American-born
citizens. Right after Pearl Harbor, 112,000 of these persons were
herded from their homes by the War Department, shorn of their
property, and barricaded for the duration in prison camps. This
invasion of the rights of citizens of the United States by thek own
government was an act of sheer hysteria for which no evidence of
disloyalty had been provided previously nor discovered since.
This inexcusable occurrence aside, no earlier war period enjoyed
such freedom of expression, thought, and assembly as World War
n. Few earlier periods of war or peace, moreover, enjoyed such
prosperity and freedom of opportunity. All told, the war cost the
United States $350,000,000,000 (of which $50,000,000,000 went
for lend-lease. Against this we received nearly $8,000,000,000 in
"reverse lend-lease" from the British and others). Taxes covered
an unprecedented 40 per cent of American wartime expenditures.
Federal corporation and graduated personal income taxes reached
record highs, which brought a good deal of grumbling but few
criminal attempts at evasion. Yet corporation profits after taxes,
swollen by the standard "cost-plus" contracts, rose from $5,000,-
Prodigies of Production 397
000,000 in 1939 to nearly $10,000,000,000 five years later. Per-
sonal income rose even faster, and while new fortunes were made,
income also was more fairly distributed.
Before Pearl Harbor more than six million unemployed persons
had been restored to payrolls in defense industries and other in-
dustries prospering from the defense boom. In the following war
years, when fifteen million men and women were mobilized in the
armed services, three million women joined the labor force.
Hundreds of thousands of Negro men and women, heretofore
largely excluded from industrial employment by segregation prac-
tices of business and unions as well as by the depression, also
helped run the machines of war production.
Early in the war factories began to operate three shifts. Between
1939 and 1944 the average industrial work week rose from thirty-
eight to forty-five hours; the average industrial weekly paycheck,
including premiums for overtime, rose from $23.86 to $46.08.
Often there were two or three weekly paychecks in one working
family. Farm income also soared. Many farmers enjoyed special
exemption from the draft; but many also enlisted in the armed
forces or sought the livelier life of the new industrial boom towns.
Mechanization more than made up for these defections. By 1945
each farm worker was producing, on the average, twice as much as
his prototype of the golden age of 1910-14, and his income reflected
it. By the end of the war, the American people, deprived of many
familiar consumer goods, had amassed $140,000,000,000 in savings
and were aching to spend it.
Wartime prosperity sparked a social revolution in the United
States which continued with increasing momentum in the postwar
years. The New Deal promises of full employment and social
security at last were realized by those who survived the holocaust.
Racial, religious, and national minorities, obviously bearing the
costs of war as heroically and with as great good will as the white
Protestant population, and making at least equally significant con-
tributions to victory, took giant strides in and out of the armed
forces toward social equality. The poor, long impoverished for no
fault of their own, also felt a new surge of participation and con-
fidence.
398 The One World of the Twentieth Century
One of the striking features of the war boom was the baby boom.
Young men and women were marrying earlier than during the
depression and having the children wartime incomes made pos-
sible. Housing shortages became excruciating; after V-J day the
biggest housing boom in our history failed to keep up with the
mushrooming demand that came chiefly from newly created families
and from those able at last to abandon the doubling up in city apart-
ments for split-levels in suburbia.
The first quest of those enjoying an improved way of life was
broader educational opportunities. The wartime population burst
created a postwar schoolroom crisis even more acute than that in
housing. For the first time, this crisis was extended to the colleges.
In June 1944, a grateful Congress enacted the measure since known
as the "G.I. Bill of Rights." Besides providing billions of dollars
for veterans' medical care and for the support of the housing boom
through federally guaranteed veterans' mortgages, this Act made
a college education and professional training available to qualified
veterans almost wholly at government expense. More than a million
World War II veterans returned home to go to college, some of
them before the end of the war. During the war the government
had also cushioned the fall in college income and enrollment by
expenditures for< scientific research and the training of service
personnel. Thousands of young officers enjoyed their first taste of
campus life, most of them for short periods, many for full courses in
engineering and medicine. Like the other G.I.s, they were deter-
mined that their children have the advantages of higher education.
At no time did American mobilization become as "total" as that
of Germany, Britain, or Russia, nor were our ultimate losses in
men and fortune as great as those of our allies or enemies. World
War II was the harshest war in American experience, but, as one
commentator put it, "it was not all 'blood, sweat, and tears' by any
means." The recrudescence of American society, the rediscovery of
national purpose during the war indeed underlay the awesome per-
formance of our production machine. For all the publicity given to
strikes, scarcely more than one tenth of one per cent of industrial
man-hours were lost because of work stoppages, and they were
more than compensated for by innumerable feats of endurance. For
The War at Sea 399
all the publicity about the farmers' "grab," their bumper crops
kept industry supplied with agricultural raw materials and fed
allied forces and peoples around the globe. For all their complaints
of bureaucracy, businessmen often worked themselves to exhaustion
supplying the executive and technical leadership required by our
suddenly vastly expanded industrial plant. The originality of their
mass-production methods, the application of such methods for the
first time to former crafts like shipbuilding and airport construction,
the ingenuity of design in special-purpose automatic factory equip-
ment, the launching of entire new industries of vast scope all
were essential to victory and evidence of the vigor of free men
and free minds in pursuit of it.
THE WAR AT SEA
"Nothing succeeds like excess," Churchill once remarked in ad-
miration of American wartime productivity. But this glittering
performance need not blind us to the fact that during the first act
of the drama we were in the shadow of the arm that held the Nazi
gun, Until very near the end, moreover, much of our production
became disheartening waste. In 1940 and 1941, British, Allied, and
friendly neutral merchant marines lost eight and a half million
tons of shipping to marauding U-boats more than our entire out-
put of merchant vessels in 1942. Yet the war at sea in 1942 was
far more costly than in any earlier year; and not until July 1943,
did the Allies manage to turn the tide of U-boat "wolf-pack"
attacks. These attacks occurred within sight of vacationists at
Virginia Beach, off the mouth of the Mississippi and the entrance to
the Panama Canal. The glare of Broadway made sitting ducks of
merchant ships approaching the Ambrose Channel entrance to
New York Harbor; while "Miami and its luxurious suburbs," in
the words of Samuel Eliot Morison, "threw up six miles of neon-
light glow, against which the southbound shipping that hugged the
reefs to avoid the Gulf Stream were silhouetted. Ships were sunk
and seamen drowned in order that the citizenry might enjoy business
and pleasure as usual."
Of course, not only men and ships were lost. "The massacre
enjoyed by the U-boats along our Atlantic Coast in 1942," said a
400 The One World of the Twentieth Century
wartime Navy Training Manual, "was as much a national disaster
as if saboteurs had destroyed half a dozen of our biggest war plants.
... If a submarine sinks two 6000-ton ships and one 3000-ton
tanker ... in order to knock out the same amount of equipment
[as that carried in three such small ships] by air bombing, the enemy
would have to make three thousand successful bombing sorties."
North Atlantic sea lanes were essential for supplying Britain;
Arctic sea lanes from Iceland rendezvous to frigid Murmansk were
the main channels for lend-lease bound for Russia; Caribbean sea
lanes were the life lines by which South American oil was carried
to fuel our Pacific fleet. U-boats swarmed in these major waters
and elsewhere at sea throughout the war. British air attacks pum-
meled the yards where the raiders were built and mined the waters
of their home bases. But U-boat launchings reached a peak of
more than one a day in 1944, and most of the boats managed to
get out to fight. That year the Germans had ready for production
the electric-driven "Schnorkel" that was faster and could stay sub-
merged longer than any other sub. But by then Germany was too
beset with other problems to proceed with it, and radar and allied
antisubmarine tactics had much reduced the conventional U-boat
menace.
The United States had entered the Battle of the Atlantic at least
three months before Pearl Harbor. On September 4, 1941, the
U.S.S. Greer, unofficially part of an American convoy, was attacked
by a U-boat it was trailing south of Iceland. This incident gave
Roosevelt the opportunity to order the Navy to "shoot on sight"
any German vessel in western waters. In December 1943, Germany
acknowledged Allied victory in the war at sea. "For some months
past," Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitler's commander in the Atlantic
advised the Fuehrer at that time, "the enemy has rendered the U--
boat ineffective. He has achieved this object through his superiority
in the field of science; this finds its expression in the modern battle
weapon, detection. By this means he has torn our sole offensive
weapon from our hands."
The "Battle for Production" was the first Allied offensive victory
of the war. Victory in the Battle of the Atlantic alone made the
battle for production worth while. Both victories underlay all later
successes and the ultimate Allied triumph.
The Defeat of Germany and Japan 401
THE DEFEAT OF GERMANY AND JAPAN
Until December 1941, World War II had been confined to Europe
and North Africa, the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
Thereafter, as Japan surged through southeast Asia and the islands
of the Pacific, and Latin America mobilized on the Allied side, the
entke globe became embattled. In Europe only Portugal, Spain,
Eire, Switzerland, Sweden, and Turkey officially remained neutral,
and they were deviously used by opposing camps whose levies they
dared not refuse. All told about eighty million persons served in
the armed forces of their respective lands. Approximately fourteen
million of them were killed. Millions of civilians also perished in
air raids, in concentration camps, from famine and disease. Millions
more, whose homes and families were destroyed or who fled before
opposing armies, became "displaced persons" of a desperately
permanent sort.
Yet once the Allies gained the offensive, two points in all the
world loomed as their objectives Berlin and Tokyo. Berlin was
the heart of Hitler's Festung Europa, the vaunted "Fortress
Europe," whence the entire continent from Stalingrad to the
Pyrenees was sucked into his service. Tokyo was 5,437 discourag-
ing sea miles from San Francisco, 3,350 sea miles from Pearl
Harbor. "The way to victory is long," Admiral Ernest J. King,
Chief of Naval Operations, told Americans on Christmas Eve 1941.
"The going will be hard." Many important decisions were made
during the war on the supposition that success against the Axis
powers, if achieved at all, would be delayed seven to fifteen years.
The decision to "beat Hitler first" did not mean that the fine
Japanese Navy would have the run of the Pacific unmolested. The
United States Navy never got over the idea that the Pacific
theater, the scene of its nadir at Hawaii, had become the supreme
sector of the entire war. On April 18, 1942, Japan received a
startling foretaste of the future when American Army B-25s led by
Colonel James H. Doolittle took off from "Shangri La" and
dropped a load of bombs on Tokyo. "Shangri La," the name F.D.R.
jokingly gave to the B-25s' base, turned out to be a group of Ameri-
402 The One World of the Twentieth Century
can airplane carriers commanded by Vice-Admiral William F,
Halsey. All of the bombers were lost in China where their crews
had to bail out; and the sortie did little damage to the Japanese
capital. Nevertheless it had momentous consequences.
Doolittle's raid is credited with infecting the Japanese with what
one of their admirals called "victory disease." To regain face, the
Japanese war lords mounted a sudden new offensive even before
they had begun to digest the immense fruits of their initial thrust.
This offensive was aimed at nailing down a naval and air line of
defense from Attu, the westernmost of the Arctic Aleutians, to Port
Moresby, the best harbor in New Guinea on the far side of the
Equator. Anchor points were to be at Japanese-held Wake and
American-held Midway. Inside this line Japan expected to chew up
China at her pleasure and perhaps India as well. In May 1942, a
fresh Japanese fleet sailed for Port Moresby but was met in the
Coral Sea by a group of American and Australian fighting ships
dispatched by the American naval commander in the Pacific,
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. The Japanese soon broke off the en-
gagement and returned home. Coral Sea, in the words of Admiral
King, was "the first naval engagement in ... history in which
surface ships did not engage a single shot." Indeed, they never saw
one another. The entire battle (which set a pattern for most other
Pacific engagements) was fought by carrier-based planes beyond
their respective ships' horizons. One month after the check in
Coral Sea, a much larger Japanese fleet was caught off Midway
and devastated. The Battle of Midway, June 4-5, 1942, was Japan's
first major naval defeat. But Allied forces were not yet sufficiently
formidable to follow up their victory with a broad offensive.
One of the theories of modern warfare disproved by the atomic
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki held that an enemy could not
be knocked out by air attack. This theory had gained much credence
from London's survival in the Battle of Britain. It gained further
credence from Germany's withstanding severe British and American
bombing after the summer of 1942. The AAF, shielded by fighter
planes, flew at high altitudes during broad daylight for pinpoint
bombing on selected targets. The RAF buzzed in low under cover
The Defeat of Germany and Japan 403
of night for saturation raids on general areas. Together they
dropped more than two and a half million bombs, not always on
their objectives. German civilian morale was shaken but not broken.
German transportation was disrupted but not destroyed. The bombs
significantly diminished German refinery deliveries of aviation fuel.
Perhaps most important, they set back schedules for critical Nazi
items like the "Schnorkel" sub and the V-l and V-2 missiles.
These eerie monsters, with which the Germans resumed the air
Battle of Britain in June 1944, almost beat the A-bombs in dis-
proving the theory that air attack alone could not win a war. The
V-l was a pilotless airplane, loaded with explosives, whose mecha-
nism enabled it to hold a predetermined course until it blew up
with terrible force on contact with its target. The V-2 was a rocket
which descended from the immense height of its arc with such
speed that "the first warning of its coming was the explosion. Dur-
ing flight it could not be heard, seen, or intercepted." The first V-l
struck London on June 12, 1944, six days after D-Day. The first
V-2 arrived early in August.
"The effect of the new German weapons," General Eisenhower
writes in Crusade in Europe:
was very noticeable upon morale. Great Britain had withstood terrific
bombing experiences. But when in June the Allies landed success-
fully on the Normandy coast the citizens unquestionably experienced
a great sense of relief. . . . When the new weapons began to come
over London in considerable numbers their hopes were dashed.
Indeed, the depressing effect of the bombs was not confined to the
civilian population; soldiers at the front began again to worry about
friends and loved ones at home.
General Eisenhower continues:
It seemed likely that, if the German had succeeded in perfecting and
using these new weapons six months earlier than he did, our invasion
of Europe would have proved exceedingly difficult, perhaps impos-
sible. I feel sure that if he had succeeded in using these weapons over
a six-month period . . . Overlord might have been written off.
404 The One World of the Twentieth Century
The preliminaries to OVERLORD, the code name for the invasion
of western Europe, were exceedingly complex and opened disputes
which are still being carried on in the immense literature of World
War II. No conflict in history was so remorselessly recorded in
official documents, so eagerly refought in the analyses of national
protagonists, so avidly recounted by participants and their cham-
pions. The disputes took place not only among the Allied countries
but among the different services air, ground, and sea of each.
Yet it is foolhardy to forget that acrimony arose only against a
background of unprecedented unity of purpose and performance.
This was especially true in the United States where the conduct
of the war was placed largely in the hands of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff King for the Navy, Marshall for the Army, and General
Henry H. Arnold for the Air Force. Their major decision (one not
taken by the British to their misfortune) made for unity of com-
mand in each theater that is, the commander designated by the
JCS, whatever his particular service, had supreme jurisdiction over
all American forces engaged and could co-ordinate their roles in
any campaign and in the general strategy.
This kind of "combined operation" was carried over to relations
between the forces of the United States and the United Kingdom,
and its success was abetted by the extraordinary conference-diplo-
macy of Churchill and Roosevelt. At the first of their many meet-
ings after Pearl Harbor that at Washington in December 1941
and January 1942 the Prime Minister and the President cemented
the "Grand Alliance" which henceforth fought the war under the
direction of the "Combined Chiefs of Staff" of their two countries.
Economic as well as military efforts were co-ordinated by groups
of experts whose work was done mainly in Washington. Pooled with
British and American resources were those available to the Free
French (later, the Jugoslav Partisans as well) and the many govern-
ments-in-exile which had fled Hitler's fortress and set up shop in
London.
Relations between the western powers and the U.S.S.R. never
grew this close. Since the American engagement in the European
theater had to be in the West for obvious geographical reasons,
close co-operation with Soviet military plans was relatively in-
The Defeat of Germany and Japan 405
significant for the conduct of the war. In so far as co-operation was
required, as in the case of the Allied air strikes against eastern
German cities which required the bombers to land on Soviet bases,
the necessary arrangements were worked out. By far the most im-
portant reason for the lack of liaison which did occasionally plague
the Allied cause was the distrust Soviet leaders and those of the
West, especially Churchill, felt for one another. Little of this doubt
and fear was ever dispelled. Yet when the momentous merging of
effort among the western Allies was made known to the world on
New Year's Day 1942, by the "Declaration of the United Nations,"
Maxim Litvinov, Stalin's Foreign Minister, did subscribe on behalf
of the Soviet. The United States, Great Britain, and China also
subscribed that day, and the following day twenty-two more nations
signed.
The United Nations Organization was still some years in the
future. But the Declaration, by reiterating the aspirations of the
Atlantic Charter, at least gave the signatories more positive goals
than Churchill's "needless war" and Roosevelt's "war for survival"
suggested. Still, the "common struggle against the savage and brutal
forces seeking to subjugate the world" (as the Declaration stated it)
had first to be resolved.
Somehow, Festung Europa had to be leveled faster than bombs
gave hope of doing; somehow the Axis armies had to be pulverized,
Berlin itself occupied. From the moment Hitler's blitz had turned
eastward in June 1941, Stalin (and Communists in the United
States and elsewhere, who until then had been in league with Lind-
bergh, Taft, and company in obstructing preparation and interven-
tion) began calling for a second front in the West. Allied leaders
faced up early to the likelihood that this second front had to be
established in France itself. But they dared not contemplate a
cross-Channel assault (such as Hitler had funked against England
at the outset of the war) without absolute assurance of success.
Such assurance could only come from a massive buildup of ships,
planes, arms, and men in England herself; and indeed before D-day
the British Isles were transformed into one vast air and military
-base. But on New Year's day 1942, even this preliminary accom-
plishment lay two and a half years ahead (U-boat activity at the
406 The One World of the Twentieth Century
time made it seem far more distant still); and there was scant
expectation, even in Russia, that the U.S.SJR. could hold out that
long or at all against Hitler's hammering.
A plethora of reasons or excuses were advanced for the Allied
"'second front" in North Africa as an alternative to a premature
frontal assault on France. But the galvanizing impulse came from
the Nazis themselves. By April 1941, Hitler's armies had con-
quered Bulgaria, Jugoslavia, Greece, and Cyprus and had driven
the British from their Mediterranean island fortress of Crete west-
ward to tiny Malta. This left the defense of the Suez Canal, the
rich oil fields of Arab lands, and India almost entirely in the hands
of the British Army in Egypt. Since September 1940, Egypt had
been under constant harassment from numerous but inefficient
Italian forces which the British, led by General A. P. Wavell, had
handled well so well, that by May 1941, they had divested Mus-
solini of his entire East African Empire. To keep pressure on Egypt,
Hitler, early in 1941, dispatched General Erwin Rommel and a
formidable tank corps to Tripoli in Italian North Africa and greatly
strengthened Axis air power in Sicily across the way. Rommel
promptly set about making his reputation as the "Desert Fox,"
and only extraordinary generalship by Wavell and his successor,
General Sir C. J. Auchinleck, preserved Egypt.
But in June 1942, just when Russian cries for a second front
had become most importunate, Churchill and Roosevelt, again
meeting in Washington, learned that Rommel was to be reinforced.
Disaster faced the thin line of defenders of the Middle East, and this
predicament quickly settled all arguments over Churchill's eagerness
to strike Festung Europa first in the presumed "soft under-belly"
of the Balkans (chiefly to keep the Russians out) , and Eisenhower's
and Marshall's enthusiasm for a limited assault in France in antic-
ipation of the big attack to come. Plans were immediately laid for
Allied reinforcement of Egypt where Field Marshal Sir H.
Alexander was put in command of the British forces and the master-
ful Montgomery was placed at the head of the key Eighth Army.
The over-all operation was under General Eisenhower whom the
Combined Chiefs of Staff had just named Supreme Allied Com- -
mander in the Mediterranean theater.
The Defeat of Germany and Japan 407
Rommel had dug in at El Alamein, virtually on the Nile in Egypt,
and there, on October 23, 1942, the first great Allied land offensive
of the war began. In twelve days Montgomery's forces sent Rom-
mel's famed Africa Korps and its Italian contingents streaming back
toward Libya and Tripoli. "Up to Alamein," crowed Churchill, "we
survived. After Alamein we conquered."
Quickly broadening the conquest were the 185,000 Allied troops
under Eisenhower which had been landed at Algiers, Oran, and
Casablanca in French North Africa during the three weeks follow-
ing November 8. These landings had been as tricky politically as
tactically. The politics of Torch, the North African invasion's code
name, revolved around the touchy relations of the Allies with
leaders both of the collaborators and the devoted undergrounds
(often dominated by trained and disciplined Communists) in
Hitler's Europe.
The Allied aim in French North Africa was to land the troops
as expeditiously and safely as possible. But it was difficult to keep
Torch secret from the Germans and thereby gain all the advantages
of surprise while at the same time informing the French that
friendly forces were approaching. Moreover, most of the French
administrators and the French Navy in North Africa (largely out
of hatred for the British) had remained loyal to Vichy, so the in-
vaders were not necessarily friends. The landings at Algiers met
little resistance; those at Casablanca and Oran encountered heavy
fire and heavy fighting from the French fleet, parts of which were
sunk. French land forces, in turn, would have nothing to do with
General Henri Giraud, a hero of the fall of France who had
escaped from prison in Germany and was brought to North Africa
by Eisenhower. The troops proved more responsive to Admiral
Jean Darlan, chief of all Vichy forces, who was visiting a sick son
in Algiers (perhaps this was a pretext) and became impressed
with Eisenhower's strength. Darlan imposed a cease-fire on Vichy-
oriented French troops in North Africa on November 11.
Conveniently for the Allies, this political chameleon was assassi-
nated on Christmas Eve, 1942. A tussle for French African leader-
ship followed between Giraud and General Charles de Gaulle, the
408 The One World of the Twentieth Century
uncompromising foe of Vichy. De Gaulle won; ^nd while he per-
sonally became a thorn to the mutually congenial Churchill and
Roosevelt, his work and that of his Free French forces contributed
to victory and to the eventual resuscitation of France herself.
North Africa was completely liberated when Rommel surren-
dered his army of 350,000 men in Tunisia on May 13, 1943. Nazi
North African sub and air bases were wiped out. The threat of
Franco Spain's intervention on Hitler's behalf was dissipated. The
southern waters of the Mediterranean became available once again
at only normal wartime risk. Pressure on the Middle East was
eased.
The momentum of El Alamein had given hope and flak to Allied
planning as well as performance. Never in history had an American
President left the country in wartime. But, as Roger Butterfield
writes, "global strategy called for a globe-trotting Commander in
Chief." In January 1943, following a flight of 4,000 miles, Roose-
velt met Churchill at Casablanca to project strategy in all theaters
for the rest of the war. Their most controversial decision was to
demand "unconditional surrender" of the Axis countries when the
time came.* More important was their determination, at last, to
divert sufficient strength to the Far East to take the offensive there
and to establish a combined planning staff in London to prepare
for a real second front in France. In May 1943, in Washington,
Roosevelt and Churchill set the date for OVERLORD exactly one
* After the war, when he was looking helplessly for strong European allies
with whom to rebuild the balance of power on the continent, Churchill added
to the controversy over "unconditional surrender" by asserting that it had
made enemy resistance desperate and prolonged the slaughter of men and
property. But that is not what he thought at Casablanca where he reached for
credit for the idea.
Even more serious were Churchill's postwar strictures on the decision to
make "war criminals" of all Nazis who had "taken a consenting part in the
. v atrocities, massacres, and executions" of the regime. Such a policy, he
writes in the last volume of his history of the war, must "certainly stir" war
leaders to "fight to the bitter end ... no matter how many lives are need-
lessly sacrificed." Yet it was Churchill who first promulgated this policy,
promising at the time of the Foreign Ministers conference in Moscow in
October 1943, that "the recoiling Hitlerites and Huns . . . will be brought
back, regardless of expense, to the scene of their crimes and judged on the
spot by the peoples whom they have outraged."
The Defeat of Germany and Japan 409
year ahead. In August, at Quebec, the two "naval persons" made
this decision "firm" and elaborated the plan. In November, at
Cairo, they named Eisenhower OVERLORD'S supreme commander.
In December, at Teheran, they met with Stalin for the first time and
apprised him of OVERLORD'S details as of that date. In January
1944, Eisenhower flew to London and got down to the deadly work.
Unfortunately, OVERLORD was not the only project on the Allied
leaders' minds. The capture of Sicily had quickly followed the
North African triumph, and in September 1943, the Italian main-
land itself was invaded. Advance notice had been sent on July
25 by way of a 560-plane raid on Rome that had more explosive
consequences than expected. The bombing of Rome blew Mus-
solini out of office and into jail and in his place King Victor Em-
manuel named old Marshal Badoglio with instructions to probe for
peace. On September 3, Badoglio capitulated unconditionally, sur-
rendered Italy's fleet, and agreed to demobilize her army. The
momentous collapse of his Axis partner was kept secret from Hitler
until September 8, when Eisenhower, accompanying the Allied
liberators to Italy, broadcast the news of the Fascist fall to the world.
Churchill's cherished freeing of the Balkans would come next, and
perhaps even an assault on southern France!
Allied disillusionment was prompt and bitter. While Badoglio
bargained, Hitler had barricaded the peninsula. The Italian cam-
paign, in the words of British General Maitland Wilson, became a
"slow, painful advance through difficult terrain against a determined
and resourceful enemy." The Allies had taken Naples on September
28, 1943. Rome lay but a hundred miles north, but could not be
captured until June 5, 1944, the day before D-day in France. On
April 28, 1945, Italian partisans captured Mussolini, murdered
him, and mutilated his body. But the Nazis fought on in Italy until
May 2, only five days before the Reich itself collapsed.
Everything abetted OVERLORD except the weather. Victory in
the Battle of Britain had won the Allies command in the air. Victory
in the Battle of the Atlantic and in North Africa had secured com-
mand of the seas. The amphibious landings and the establishment
of beachheads at Casablanca ? Oran, Sicily, and Salerno had yielded
410 The One World of the Twentieth Century
invaluable experience. Even the awful, disappointing stalemate in
Italy which engaged needed Allied manpower, tied down enemy
troops and equipmenj that Hitler needed much more desperately
in France. Above all else, victory depended on success in the Battle
of Production, and in the very first weeks following D-day
American productivity met the severest test.
For four years Hitler had concentrated on making northern
France the most impregnable wall of his fortress. For six weeks
Allied air attacks pulverized this wall and the communication lines
leading to it. Then, on June 4, 1944, 2,876,000 men supported
by 2,500,000 tons of supplies, 11,000 airplanes, and a vast fleet of
ships stood straining in England for the takeoff. Tension mounted
unbearably when a storm over the Channel forced Eisenhower to
withhold the signal twenty-four hours. The next night's weather was
scarcely better, but OVERLORD was on. The first troop carriers with
176,000 men anchored off the Normandy beaches at 3 a.m., June
6. Two weeks later almost half a million Allied soldiers were fight-
ing in Normandy when a mighty hurricane ripped up the shore. The
havoc it left was terrifying, and only the prior success of the air arm
in sealing aff the ravaged zone from enemy reinforcements averted
a dreaded German counterattack. The ultimate effect, however, was
heartening:
There was no sight in the war [writes General Eisenhower] that so
impressed me with the industrial might of America as the wreckage
on the landing beaches. To any other nation the disaster would have
been almost decisive; but so great was America's productive capacity
that the great storm occasioned little more than a ripple in the devel-
opment of our build-up.
There were other checks in Normandy. The landings there as
against obviously more suitable places had caught the Nazis
completely by surprise; but so intensive had been their preparation,
they were able to mobilize strong resistance quickly. Then came
the worrisome V-ls and V-2s, whose rain of terror on London was
not stemmed until their very launching sites were captured. Never-
theless the build-up continued and OVERLORD progressed. By July
24, more than a million Allied troops had subdued 1,500 square
The Defeat of Germany and Japan 411
miles of Normandy and Brittainy. The next day, General George
S. Patton, Jr.'s magnificent Third Army swept after the Germans
and turned their retreat into a rout. On August 25, assisted by a
Free French division under General Leclerc, Patton liberated Paris,
where, two days later, de Gaulle installed himself as President of
a provisional government. Patton himself kept going, with Omar
Bradley's First Army moving more slowly on his left. Farther north
Montgomery, with Canadian and British forces, was hurtling
through Belgium, where they liberated the key port of Antwerp on
September 4.
The Germans, having lost half a million men and virtually all of
France, had decided to take refuge behind their long neglected West
Wall in the homeland across the Rhine. Patton hungered to burst
after them. At the same time, Montgomery was straining for per-
mission to make "one powerful and full-blooded thrust towards
Berlin." But the speedy Allied offensives had so stretched supply
lines that only one of the two could safely be turned loose. In one
of his most difficult decisions, Eisenhower leaned toward Mont-
gomery in whose path lay the Nazi access roads to Antwerp and the
bases of the V-weapons. Patton judged this "the most momentous
error of the war," and with Bradley's backing acted as though it
were not final. Eisenhower, whose over-all strategy had favored
blunting both Patton's and Montgomery's epic thrusts in order to
gain "the whole length of the Rhine before launching a final assault
on interior Germany," failed to resolve the conflict over priorities
of supply. Montgomery's momentum was dissipated; Patton's prog-
ress slowed.
Hitler used the lucky respite to rally his forces. On December
16, 1944, he startled the Allies with his breakout in the thinly
defended Ardennes forest in southern Belgium. In ten days his
armies advanced fifty miles until checked by the heroic American
stand at the cross roads towns of Bastogne. By mid-January 1945,
in the famous "Battle of the Bulge," the Germans had been pushed
back to their old line with the satisfaction, such as it was, of having
delayed Eisenhower's final grand push another month.
In the meantime, the Russians had taken every advantage of
Hitler's occupation with the second front. The apex of the Nazi in-
412 The One World of the Twentieth Century
vasion of the Soviet had been reached in the Crimea in the summer
of 1942 at the approaches to the industrial city of Stalingrad on the
River Volga. The battle for Stalingrad opened in July. In November
Marshal Zhukov grasped the initiative, and on January 31, 1943,
after one of the "dourest, bloodiest, and most prolonged" battles of
the war, the German armies capitulated.
Soviet reclamation of the Crimea began that spring and was com-
pleted when the signal for OVERLORD was given. Elimination of
Nazi forces in the Balkans started in the summer of 1944. Only
in Greece, where Churchill in October at last got in his Balkan licks
by dispatching troops to bend the civil war there to the conservative
side, were the Communists thwarted in establishing subservient re-
gimes. By February 1945, Finland also had yielded again to
Russian arms, Poland had been organized as a Communist state,
Hungary had fallen, Czechoslovakia had been penetrated, and
Vienna's collapse was imminent. At the time of the Yalta Con-
ference, February 4-11, 1945, Soviet armies stood only fifty miles
from Berlin. No people besides the Jews had suffered more from
Nazi atrocities; none of the Western Allies had sacrificed as much
as the Russians in the fighting itself. Soviet claims on the sympathy
and support of the free world were immense. Few foresaw, scarcely
any of them Americans, the use she would make of them.
Russia had begun compensating herself long before Yalta. Here
she made verbal concessions to the establishment of the United
Nations Organization in April 1945, and to "holding free and un-
fettered elections as soon as possible" in Poland and elsewhere
in exchange for promises of even greater territorial gains. Most of
these were to be at the expense of Japan, with whom Russia was
still at peace, so the promises were kept secret. The Soviet was also
given, along with reparations in goods, the privilege of the "use
of German labor" in her own reconstruction. Tentative decisions
were also made at Yalta (and more or less confirmed at the Pots-
dam Conference, July 17 to August 2, 1945) for the multiple ad-
ministration of Berlin and the partitioning of Germany, for the trial
of "war criminals," and the planning of a general peace conference
that (we know now) will never be held.
To Churchill the vagueness of the Yalta understandings was
The Defeat of Germany and Japan 413
ominous. By the time of the meeting he had learned to his fright
of America's determination to withdraw her entire force from
Europe within two years of V-E day. To offset the resulting pre-
ponderance of Soviet strength on the continent he insisted that
France be included among the "Great Powers" who would share
control of Germany and the emergent world organization. In
Roosevelt's eyes, Russian concessions on the prompt establishment
of the world organization, and Russian agreement to participate
in "liberating China from the Japanese yoke" in "two or three
months" after the European war ended, justified everything.
The European war ended soon, but not without more tough and
costly fighting. On March 7, 1945, the Allies at last plunged across
the Rhine over the railroad bridge at Remagen, the only bridge still
standing. On April 25 American and Russian troops made contact
at the Elbe. On May 1 Hitler committed suicide in Berlin. On
May 2 the flaming capital capitulated. On May 7 General Jodl,
Hitler's heir in authority, signed the unconditional surrender at
Eisenhower's general headquarters.
Two of the Axis partners had succumbed. Within a week half
the American air force in Europe was bound for the Pacific and
the demobilization of the massive American Army had begun.
"Meanwhile," Churchill asked in anguish on May 12, "what is to
happen about Russia? ... An iron curtain is drawn down upon their
front. We do not know what is going on behind."
Exactly one month earlier, on April 12 ? 1945, Roosevelt had
died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia.
At Teheran, at the end of 1943, he had presumably suffered a slight
stroke, but this became the second best kept secret of the war. In
his campaign against Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican candidate
in the elections of 1944, F.D.R. appeared to most people as the
"Old Champ." "Dr. New Deal" had retired, but "Dr. Win the War"
had taken over the familiar office. Few knew how badly he needed
a doctor himself or how little one could do for him. Not since the
assassination of Lincoln did the removal of a president so move the
American people. To many in both political parties and all classes
it was as though a pillar had fallen from the earth's foundations.
Men and women wept openly in the streets. Most appalled of all,
414 The One World of the Twentieth Century
perhaps, was FJD.R.'s modest successor, Harry S. Truman, who
even as Vice-President had been kept in ignorance of the war's
best kept secret, the imminent perfection of the atomic bomb.
Postwar Russia became his problem. But the problem of wartime
Japan required attention first.
Following their failure at Midway in June 1942, the Japanese
had consoled themselves by grasping the Aleutian islands of Attu
and Kiska from the United States. For the moment Alaska seemed
on the verge of doom and Seattle itself threatened by attack from
the North. Men and materials needed elsewhere were rushed to the
Territory; the "Alcan Highway" across Canada was begun; and
operations were planned which retrieved Attu in May and Kiska in
August 1943.
The Japanese had been even less successful in a second attack
(this one by land) on Port Moresby in southern New Guinea, the
proposed equatorial base of their defense perimeter across the
Pacific. To protect this attack, they had begun to clear an air strip
on Guadalcanal, one of the near-by (as South Pacific distances go)
Solomon Islands. The United States at the same time was eyeing
Guadalcanal for the starting point of its own first offensive on
Japan's more exposed bastions, especially the island fortress of
Rabaul off New Britain.
On August 7, 1942, the first combined American and Australian
landings on Guadalcanal were begun against sharp resistance. Two
days later a Japanese cruiser force swooped down on the half-un-
loaded Allied transports in the Solomons' Savo Sea and in "the
worst defeat ever suffered by the United States navy" (the words
are Admiral Morison's) sank virtually all the protective fighting
ships. The transports ran, and the Japanese force, its mission ac-
complished, moved off. For six months ill-equipped, half-starved
Marines clung to Guadalcanal's air strip at Henderson Field while
huge naval actions covering reinforcement attempts by both sides
raged in the surrounding waters. The turning point came in mid-
November, and in January the Japanese were ordered by Tokyo
to evacuate the island, which they did successfully on February 9,
1943.
The Defeat of Germany and Japan 415
Before the end of the year the Japanese had also been cleared out
of most of New Guinea. In addition, they had been forced to yield
enough of Bougainville, the northernmost of the Solomons, for the
Allies to maintain air operations on the island. Bougainville lay
only 235 miles from Rabaul near enough for Allied bombers to
neutralize that fortress's arms.
Guadalcanal was the Pacific theater's El Alamein. The Japanese
never succeeded in establishing the line behind which they could
exploit their "co-prosperity" sphere on the Asian mainland. After
Guadalcanal they became fully occupied with defending the Pacific
and mainland redoubts they did hold as a screen for their home
islands. This defense was fanatical. The Japanese Navy continued
strong and ably led. The Japanese Army and air force, much under-
rated by prewar commentators, was recruited from the impover-
ished peasantry and treated by the war lords like fatted calves. The
soldiers' devotion to their leaders and their cause was beyond
reason. Allied leaders like Douglas MacArthur, chief of Southwest
Pacific operations, learned this lesson early and built their strategy
upon it. The Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington became so im-
pressed with Japanese fortitude that even at the time of the Yalta
Conference, when the brilliance of Allied strategy had been well
demonstrated, they advised Roosevelt that the Pacific War had at
least two years to run with full Russian assistance and considerably
longer without.
Allied success in the South Pacific their establishment in the
Solomons, the neutralizing of Rabaul, the clearing of New Guinea
greatly augmented the security of Australia where MacArthur
was preparing for his dramatic return to the Philippines as the last
step but one to the taking of Tokyo. The prospect was tempting,
but the way bristled with snares. North and east of the Solomons
lay the Gilbert Islands; north of them, the Marshalls, and farther
north still, Wake. Together they marked the easternmost advance
of Japanese power; and even the barren atolls of each configuration
had been armed with air strip, artillery, and adamant men. To the
west of this arc, ranging once more from south to north, lay the
Palau Islands, the Carolines, Guam, and the Marianas, all, as befit
their greater proximity to Japan, even more intensely armed than
416 The One World of the Twentieth Century
the outermost line. Farther north and west lay formidable Iwo
Jima; and in the shadow of Honshu itself, Okinawa. This defense
in depth extending more than 3,000 miles, shielded Tokyo and ex-
posed invasion from the Philippines to murderous flanking fire.
To roll back this defense island by island, atoll by atoll, fanatic
by fanatic, would occupy a generation. MacArthur's command
devised the bold alternative of "island hopping," a strategy de-
signed to open quickly a path to the heart of Japan while leaving
to mobile air power the task of neutralizing the uncleared rear.
Even so, hundreds of unsung battles were waged by armies as
large as those that once decided the fate of nations for atolls where
there "had probably never been twenty white men assembled to-
gether at any one time." The burden of this offensive was placed in
the hands of Admiral Nimitz and his Central Pacific fleet. But every
assault involved unprecedented co-ordination of the forces of sea,
land, and air. None was easy. Tarawa established the Allied hold
on the Gilberts in November 1943, Kwajalein control of the Mar-
shalls in February 1944. In May, Wake was taken. On June 19-20,
in the immense naval Battle of the Philippine Sea, Admiral Ray-
mond Spruance thwarted a Japanese effort to reinforce the Mari-
anas, and by August 1 Saipan and Tinian there, as well as adjacent
Guam, all had succumbed. In September, after some of the most
costly hand-to-hand fighting for armed caves, Peleliu in the Palaus
was cleaned out.
Three heartening results were earned by this savage surge. First,
Truk in the Carolines, Japan's main Central Pacific naval station,
was made innocuous without costly frontal assault by the control
established over the surrounding island groups. Second, from
Saipan and the other Marianas giant Superfortresses could reach
Tokyo, and the capital and other home island cities henceforth
were systematically assaulted with fire bombs that consumed their
wooden buildings and decimated the civilian population. Third,
the path from New Guinea to the Philippines was opened. On
October 19, 1944, a grand armada carrying MacArthur and 250,-
000 men set out for the Philippine island of Leyte. Four days later
virtually the entire Japanese Navy converged on Allied transports
in Leyte Gulf, and from October 23 to 25 the greatest sea battle
The Defeat of Germany and Japan 417
in history was fought. At its end the United States emerged in
complete command of the Pacific. Manila fell to MacArthur's
forces on February 23, 1945, but not until July 5 were the rem-
nants of Japanese resistance rooted out.
By then, Iwo Jima and Okinawa had been taken at a sickening
cost of 70,000 men. Kamikaze attacks by Japanese suicide fliers
who plunged their bomb-laden planes into American fighting ships
accounted for many of the American casualties at Okinawa. Both
campaigns Iwo had been gained by March 16, 1945, and Oki-
nawa by June 21 wiped out any lingering doubt that the Jap-
anese would resist invaders to the last knife or bullet or breath.
Their power to resist by means of instruments of modern
warfare had by then been sorely depleted. The island-hopping cam-
paign had done for all but the remnants of their navy and their
air force. American submarines, the silent service, had sunk more
than half of their once proud merchant marine which kept them
supplied with the oil, rubber, tin, and grain of their mainland con-
quests. These conquests themselves, moreover, had been under
strong attack since the winter of 1943-44 by British and American
forces. The Allies struggled to get Chiang Kai-shek to fight harder
for China the British for the protection of India, the Americans
for the eviction of Japan but Chiang was nursing his arms for a
future showdown with the Communists who were gathering their
forces in the Chinese North. Most progress was made against the
Japanese in Burma where Rangoon, the principal port, was retaken
in May 1945. But Japan did not yield her other mainland territories
until her total collapse at home had been brought about by extraor-
dinary means.
On July 26, 1945, three weeks after the reconquest of the
Philippines, ten days after the first successful detonation of the
A-bomb, Allied leaders assembled at Potsdam sent an ultimatum
to the enemy: "The alternative to surrender is prompt and utter
destruction." No surrender came. On August 6 the first atomic
bomb to be used in warfare was dropped on Hiroshima. Still no
word from Japan, but Russia, intent on being in on the imminent
kill, declared war on August 8, the very deadline for her "two to
three months after V-E day" promise at Yalta, and overran the
418 The One World of the Twentieth Century
Japanese forces in Manchuria. On August 9 a second bomb was
dropped on Nagasaki. At last, on August 10, Toyko sued for
p eace but made a condition: that the Emperor Hirohito be per-
mitted to retain his throne. This condition was accepted by the
Allies and on September 2, 1945, formal surrender ceremonies
were conducted in Tokyo Bay on the battleship Missouri, with
General MacArthur accepting for the United States.
The most terrible war in history had ended in the most terrible
display of force. After the bombing of Nagasaki, President Tru-
man said, "We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scien-
tific gamble in history and won." A few days later he added,
"The atomic bomb is too dangerous to be let loose in a lawless
world. That is why Great Britain, Canada, and the United States,
who have the secret of its production, do not intend to reveal that
secret until means have been found to control the bomb." While
Russia had retired behind the "iron curtain," the West had retired
behind a kind of scientific Maginot Line.
THE UNITED NATIONS AND A WORLD AT BAY
Only a common fright had brought the western Allies to the point
of waging a common war on Germany after September 1939; and
only a common enemy had united them with the Communists
against the Axis two years later. Once the fright was dissipated
and the enemy reeling, the members of the "Grand Alliance"
quickly fell out. The U.S.S.R., of course, was the touchstone of
trouble. Communism divided Russia from the free nations of the
west; and these nations themselves split early and often on their
attitudes toward the Soviet.
All the grandeur of Churchill's style in his magnificent six-
volume history of The Second World War fails to hide the fact
that he had no prescription for the peace to come except a return
to balance of power diplomacy. Churchill was at least as aware as
anyone and infinitely more aware than most of the menace of a
victorious Stalin. What he consistently shut his eyes to was the fact
that with Germany prostrate, France embittered and unreliable,
and Britain bled white, Stalin and the U.S.S.R. must become the
mainstays and manipulators of any "balance of power in Europe"
The United Nations and a World at Bay 419
(the phrase really had become an empty box) that Churchill could
construct.
Roosevelt did not fall prey to Churchill's nostalgia. On March
1, 1945, on returning from Yalta, he said the conference there
"spells the end of the system of unilateral action and exclusive
alliances and spheres of influence and balances of power and all
the other expedients which had been tried for centuries and have
failed." His own vision nostalgic too was more Messianic. "We
propose to substitute for all these," he said, "a universal organiza-
tion in which all peace-loving nations will finally have a chance to
j i n "_including the U.S.S.R.!
Churchill's anguish over Roosevelt's concessions to Stalin at
Yalta in order to win grudging acquiescence in the establishment
of the world organization was hardly assuaged by the ascent of
Truman. "We can see now," Churchill writes in volume six of his
History, "the deadly hiatus which existed between the fading of
President Roosevelt's strength and the growth of President Tru-
man's grip on the vast world problem."
During this alleged "hiatus" at the very climax of the war, Amer-
ican armed service chiefs in the field were left with the major re-
sponsibility for American policy. Their training had stressed the
traditional American distinction between "military" and "political"
objectives, unfortunately to the detriment of the latter. As the
fighting drew toward a close they became obsessed with the idea
simply of "getting the boys back home." The State Department*
almost too clever in its suspicion of Churchill and his imperial
chestnuts and too engrossed in the coming world organization to
be sufficiently suspicious of Russia, ratified the generals' on-the-
spot program. Congress, bombarded by "Bring-Daddy-Back-
Home" clubs in the United States and "I wanna go home" troop
demonstrations in theaters overseas, backed the generals and the
diplomats.
By October 1945, Secretary of the Navy Forrestal was writing
that the country is "going to bed at a frightening rate, which is the
best way I know to be sure of the coming of World War III."
Churchill may have believed that Roosevelt could have stemmed
such action. But there is little evidence that this is not more wishful
420 The One World of the Twentieth Century
thinking. Indeed, F.D.R.'s single-minded concentration on the
U.N. was itself a hedge against American anti-militarism, not to say
American isolationism. Truman simply followed where Roosevelt
had led. Truman writes in his Memoirs: "General Marshall and I,
in discussing each military phase, agreed that if we were to win
the peace after winning the war, we had to have Russian help. I
was trying to get Churchill in a frame of mind to forget the old
power politics and get a United Nations organization to work."
Lest their world scheme get bruised like Wilson's by all the
bargaining in postwar settlements, Roosevelt and Secretary of
State Hull, the architects of the United Nations, sought, as we
have seen, to win the adherence of their future allies as early as
1941, when the United States still held most of the bargaining
cards. In the fall of 1943 the two world planners got overwhelming
Congressional support for the principle of a permanent world or-
ganization. This support was dramatically strengthened in January
1945, when the leading Republican member of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee and a leading isolationist, Arthur H. Vanden-
berg, announced his endorsement of the proposal that the President
be granted power to use American troops on a world organization's
behalf without first seeking Senate consent.
While progressing in the realm of principle, Roosevelt and Hull
had also moved forward in the realm of practicality. Well before
the United Nations Organization itself was formally created, many
ancillary bodies were set up and put to work. Among the most
important of these was the United Nations Relief and Rehabilita-
tion Administration (UNRRA), which was formed in November
1943. In July 1944, two more major agencies were created. One,
the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, was
to lend money for the purposes indicated by its name; the second,
the International Monetary Fund, would aim to stabilize national
currencies, thereby combating inflation and furthering the revival
of international commerce.
The establishment of such bodies showed that the nations in-
volved were willing to sacrifice national sovereignty in significant
areas. Work on the more crucial U.N. agencies found the partici-
The United Nations and a World at Bay 421
pants more sticky. After preliminary discussions at the wartime
conferences of the heads of state and elsewhere, secondary officials
of the United States, Great Britain, the U.S.S.R., and China con-
vened at Dumbarton Oaks in the District of Columbia in August
1944, to write a preliminary draft of the U.N. charter. Many dif-
ficulties arose between the Americans and the Russians (fore-
shadowing the mood and method of all subsequent negotiations)
which the British, at odds with the United States over the future
of Italy and Greece, did nothing to meliorate. On most of these
issues Stalin verbally yielded at Yalta in February 1945.
The final details of the United Nations Charter were arranged at
a general meeting in San Francisco in the spring of 1945. Forty-
six nations sent delegates. Absent, however, were Roosevelt, who
had recently died, Hull, who had retired because of ill health, and
Churchill who, though he scarcely credited the possibility, was on
the verge of being thrown out of power by a war-weary British
electorate. Stalin, in turn, had become suspicious of western mili-
tary maneuvering which looked to him like an effort, a few weeks
before V-E day, to make a separate peace with the Germans (some-
thing forbidden by the original U.N. Declaration of 1942). Only
at the last moment would he consent to Foreign Minister Molotov's
attendance.
The new Charter incorporated in the U.N. the going economic
and social agencies. It also established an International Court of
Justice but left its powers vague. The two most important bodies
were the Assembly and the Security Council. The entire structure
was to be administered by a Secretariat headed by a permanent
Secretary-General. The first meetings of the U.N. took place in
London in 1946, but soon the world organization was established
in its shimmering glass house in New York City.
The U.N. Assembly became a useful debating society in which
the voices of small nations could be heard around the world. The
Assembly's principal power lay in its right to place international
disputes on the Security Council's agenda. The Security Council
itself was the U.N.'s pre-eminent agency. Composed of five perma-
nent members the United States, Great Britain, the U.S.S.R.,
"Free" China, and France and six others chosen for two-year
422 The One World of the Twentieth Century
terms by the Assembly, the Council was empowered to investigate
international disputes and take steps to settle them. Its Achilles'
heel lay in the principle of unanimity requiring the consent of all
the permanent members for Council action; by a simple veto, any
permanent member could forestall distasteful moves. No nation
was to avail itself of this privilege more cynically than the con-
stantly outvoted Russians. Yet it was the Americans, still fearful of
isolationist opinion, who proposed it. Article 51 of the Charter,
moreover, specifically sanctioned the "inherent right" of any nation
or group of nations to "individual or collective self-defense." This
again was an American qualification.
The Charter optimistically provided for U.N. armed forces, with
the expectation that these would be supplied largely by the five
"Great Powers" of the Security Council. Four of these powers
agreed that their contributions be "comparable," with the ability of
each to supply men and materiel taken into account. The U.S.S.R.,
openly scornful of the "Great Power" status of some of her col-
leagues on the Council, demanded that contributions be "equal" or
nothing. "Equal" contributions would have resulted in merely token
forces; and the Russian proposal, as planned, drew the teeth from
the U.N. at its inception.
The ILN.'s subsequent failure to control atomic weapons under-
scored its fatal weakness. In 1946 the Assembly had created an
International Atomic Energy Commission whose American mem-
ber was Bernard Baruch. That year Baruch offered his plan for an
International Atomic Development Authority which would control
atomic energy in its military and peaceful applications. Violators
of the Authority's regulations were to be punished by it, and could
not escape by resort to the veto which this plan would abolish in
atomic matters. To this body the United States proposed gradually
to yield its atomic secrets and ultimately, when control proved
effective, it promised to destroy its stockpile of atomic bombs.
Quick to see how this would check their own atomic develop-
ment while leaving the United States atomically armed for an in-
definite period, the Communists countered with a different plan.
They would have the entire stockpile of bombs destroyed before
agreeing to international control and would retain such control in
The United Nations and a World at Bay 423
the hands of the Security Council where the veto against punish-
ment of violators would remain effective. This proposal was as un-
realistic to the Americans as their own was to the Russians, and
the hideous race for atomic armed supremacy began.
The U.N. quickly showed that its good intentions in other areas
were also supported by inadequate machinery. In three years from
1944 to 1947 UNRRA disbursed nearly four billion dollars to
the neediest countries of Europe, most of them on the edge of the
iron curtain. Virtually all of this money was sucked into the piteous
channels of "relief" for the naked, starving, and homeless. The
little that could be spared for "rehabilitation" of productive re-
sources and economic life had largely been dissipated by the "busi-
ness as usual" contingents in stricken lands. At the same time
other U.N. agencies, such as the International Bank and the Inter-
national Monetary Fund, though costly enough in their operations,
proved far too slow in getting going, far too conventional in their
approaches, far too cautious in their ultimate programs.
By 1947 the free European economy thus faced a crisis in which
local Communist parties, effectively directed from Moscow or by
Moscow-trained provocateurs, were the only gainers. Their propa-
ganda was all the more effective since the crisis seemed to have
begun with the abrupt termination of American lend-lease in Au-
gust 1945, and to have grown with the development of the so-called
"dollar gap" between Western Europe's requirements and her abil-
ity to finance them in the United States. Especially in France and
Italy, where social reforms were a century overdue, the Commu-
nists threatened to throw their country's lot in with the Russians;
but even in Britain the left wing of the Labor Party which had
unseated Churchill grew more bitter in its attacks and more poison-
ous in its suspicions of "Uncle Shylock."
At best the Communists have considered the United Nations a
western invention which they might join in self-defense, and as a
listening post for western intentions and a sounding board for pro-
jects of their own. At worst they have used it as an instrument for
aggravating discord among western nations. The U.N.'s weakness as
an international agency and western Europe's economic tribulations
424 The One World of the Twentieth Century
made the United States look all the more anxiously to the atomic
bomb as the "great deterrent" to world war and the bulwark of its
own defenses.
Yet this policy proved as much a curse as a cure-all. The tactical
inflexibility of the bomb tied our hands and terrified our allies.
Dependence on the secret of the bomb's manufacture, moreover,
raised our concern over atomic espionage to a veritable mania for
"loyalty" which soon poisoned the very freedom of the free world.
Beginning in 1947, all employees of the Federal Government
(and following this example, of most state and local governments
as well and of private companies engaged in "sensitive" work) were
required to take oaths of loyalty. Government loyalty procedures
were made much more stringent in 1950, after the conviction of
Alger Hiss, a high official of the State Department with an im-
peccably American background, for perjury arising out of alleged
espionage activities in the 1930s. At the same time the Commu-
nist Party and Communist-front organizations were required to
register their members with the Attorney-General; and foreigners
who had been Communists were denied admission to the country.
Once again the bandwagon virulence of the 1920s was repeated;
and teachers, actors, radio and television celebrities, writers, and
others likely to be influential in the making of opinion were at-
tacked for nonconformist views. Worse, leading scientists and civil
servants with foreign-sounding names were made the victims of
baseless suspicions and their services lost to the country.
The peak of the "loyalty" surge came after the Republican vic-
tory of 1952 placed Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin in a
powerful committee post. Earlier, following the Communist con-
quest of China and the "hot war" in Korea (see pp. 434-35),
McCarthy had used the Senate floor to smear with impunity the
reputations of hand-picked victims who were innocent almost with-
out exception, among them no less a figure than General Marshall.
Even worse were the "treason" label McCarthy pinned on the Dem-
ocratic Party for involving the country in World War II and his
almost total stultification of the State Department for its "disloyal"
postwar diplomacy. Until McCarthy was censured by his Senate
colleagues in 1954, he made the Eisenhower administration as well
The United Nations and a World at Bay 425
as the Truman administration the victims of right-wing Republican
"patriotism." That this was no attack by the lunatic fringe Senator
Taft's consistent endorsement of McCarthy's technique made clear.
"McCarthy should keep talking," Taft said in 1950, "and if one
case doesn't work out he should proceed with another." Mc-
Carthyism made it easier for the enemies of the United States to
equate American "totalitarianism" with the Soviet's, made it
harder for America's friends to raise the voice of liberty without
hypocrisy.
Our vaunted bomb, moreover, while lulling Americans into false
confidence, only spurred the Russians to produce bombs of their
own. In 1946, writes The New York Times, "Maj. Gen. Leslie
Groves, who had directed the American atomic bomb project, said
it would be five to twenty years before even 'the most powerful of
nations' could 'catch up' with the U.S. in atomic bomb develop-
ment. Russia exploded her first atomic bomb on September 22,
1949.
"The United States," the Times continues, "exploded its first
thermonuclear device in November, 1952. Some U.S. experts
thought it would be a long time before the Soviet Union reached
that stage of atomic development. But the Russians exploded their
first thermonuclear device in August, 1953. Later that year Secre-
tary of Defense Charles E. Wilson said he thought the Russians
were 'three or four years behind where we are' in developing an
H-bomb which could be dropped from a plane. The Russians
dropped their first H-bomb in November, 1955; the U.S. dropped
its first in May, 1956.
"On Aug. 26 [1957] Russia reported her 'successful tests of an
inter-continental ballistic missile.' And then [on October 4] she used
I.C.B.M. rocket engines to launch the first earth satellite." By then
Americans were calculating that it would take five years for them
to catch up with the Russians. But as Time suggested on October
14, even to catch up Americans would have to lift not only their
performance but their sights. The Russians, Dr. Edward Teller
told a Senate committee on November 25, have been willing "to
take greater gambles in their development program." The United
States, Dr. Vannevar Bush told the same committee, must arouse
426 The One World of the Twentieth Century
itself from "complacency and egotism. . . . We have continually
been telling ourselves how good we are. We have been taking the
easy way."
Truman's scientific Maginot Line of 1945 had proved as futile
as France's military Maginot Line of 1940. All the while the "cold
war" between capitalism and Communism continued within and
outside the United Nations.
"CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE IN UNITED STATES POLICY"
Communist theory has long held World War III to be unavoidable.
Stalin, for example, was fond of the following quotation from
Lenin, to which in his notes he appended, "Clear, one would
think":
The existence of the Soviet Republic side by side with the imperialist
states for a long time is unthinkable. In the end either one or the
other will conquer. And until that time comes, a series of the most
terrible collisions between the Soviet Republic and the bourgeois
states is inevitable.
In February 1946, Stalin himself said, "Under the present cap-
italist development of world economy," there could be no peace;
and he urged his people to prepare for "any eventuality." Soon
after, George F. Kennan, then Counselor of the American Embassy
in Moscow, analyzed Soviet-American relations for the State De-
partment "We have here," he said, "a political force committed
fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no perma-
nent modus vivendi, that it is desirable and necessary that the inter-
nal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life
be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if
Soviet power is to be secure."
< "The stress laid by Stalin on the importance of theory," Kennan
wrote in Foreign Affairs, January 1949, "is so foreign to American
habits of mind that we are prone to underestimate the influence
which theory plays in determining his action. Any such tendency
would lead us into especially grave error when we come to esti-
mating the importance of his theoretical conception of the nature
of revolution; for on this he has been amazingly consistent." Ken-
nan continues:
"Challenge and Response in United States Policy" 427
For the period of world revolution, Stalin's grand strategy is to use
the Soviet Union as a base linking the proletariat of the west with
the movements for national liberation from imperialism in the east
into "a single world front against the world front of imperialism." In
this way he harnesses two of the major contradictions of capitalism
to his chariot contradictions between proletariat and bourgeoisie,
and contradictions between capitalist and colonial countries. The
front thus formed is to be used to exploit the third contradiction of
capitalism that between capitalist countries, whose rivalries for
spheres of influence must lead periodically to war, the event most
propitious for revolution.
As late as October 1957, Nikita Khrushchev, most recent of
Stalin's successors as leader of the Russian state, made clear in a
series of interviews with James Reston of The New York Times
that neither he nor Communists generally have deviated from Stal-
inist theory. "Competitive co-existence" was how Khrushchev in-
nocently described the process by which the United States and the
non-Communist world were called upon "to recognize what has
historically taken place" in one Communist conquest after another,
until the whole world is swallowed up by Stalin's "single world
front." In November 1957, buttressed by the success of the Soviet
ICBM and the launching of the first space satellite, Khrushchev
warned that "the next war will be fought on the American con-
tinent, which can be reached by our rockets." Political and social
unrest then current in Soviet-dominated lands made the threat of
Soviet foreign adventures all the more ominous.
Leninist-Stalinist theory, of course, did not develop in Russia in
a vacuum. For almost a hundred years before World War II Ger-
many had been the strongest nation on the continent of Europe,
impelled by a fierce Drang nach Osten, "Urge to the East"; and for
almost fifty years Japan had eyed all of Asia. Between the two
stretched the vast and beckoning empire of the czars. To this
empire and to the traditional danger of attack from the militaristic
powers at its flanks, the U.S.S.R. had fallen heir. The utter collapse
of Japan in World War II left Asia, as one commentator put it,
"out of control." No one had a greater incentive or a greater op-
portunity to reduce it to "order" than the Communists. The virtual
annihilation of Germany, moreover, left western Europe, in Church-
428 The One World of the Twentieth Century
ill's darkly imaginative words, with a vision "of Soviet and Russian
imperialism rolling over helpless lands." Communist revolutionary
theory gave scope, resilience, drive, and continuity to Russia's
traditional policy of security by expansion.
At the same time, the situation, needs, and (in John Foster
Dulles's phrase) the "enduring national principles" of the United
States played into Russia's hands. For half a century before World
War I American borders were free of foreign menace, American
ships enjoyed freedom of the seas, the American continental ex-
panse provided all the food and almost all the industrial raw mate-
rials Americans required. United States "foreign policy" in that
century* consisted of little more than high tariffs to keep out for-
eign manufactures, and wide open gates welcoming foreign capital
and labor. America offered unlimited opportunity to all, or so it
seemed, for enterprise, ambition, ascent and safety, within secure
national borders.
Such political and geographical good fortune bred a profound
national pride which nourished the belief that America's peaceful,
industrious, and democratic "conduct and example" (Hamilton's
phrase from Federalist Number One) would, in Dulles's words,
"influence events throughout the world and promote the spread of
free institutions." Yet this pride itself bred a profound insularity
which Americans, despite their engagement in two world wars,
have been slow in shedding. "Americans have traditionally felt,"
Dulles wrote in Foreign Affairs, October 1957, in an article en-
titled "Challenge and Response in United States Policy," "that it
would be better for their Government to avoid involvement in
international issues." By the end of World War II, Dulles said, "it
had become obvious that the conduct and example of our people
no longer, alone, sufficed to prevent recurrent challenges to our
security and our way of life." Yet, "there still remains a nostalgia
for the 'good old days.' " **
This nostalgia stems in part from the record postwar prosperity
* With exceptions toward the century's end, of course. See Chapter Twelve
above.
** There is no evidence that "conduct and example . . . alone" ever did
offer Americans security. Dulles's statement reveals the lingering "nostalgia"
even of our most active international traveler.
"Challenge and Response in United States Policy" 429
of the United States, during which American economic require-
ments from the "outside world" actually became smaller, pro-
portionately, than ever. Between 1945 and 1957 the goods and
services available to the American people doubled. Yet near the
peak of the boom American foreign trade was scarcely seven per
cent, annual American foreign investment outside the Western
Hemisphere scarcely one-fourth of one per cent of gross national
product. Since World War I, moreover, there has been little foreign
capital seeking investment in the United States; and we have shut
our gates to foreign labor and kept them shut to foreign goods.
The postwar prosperity, Dulles boasted in 1954, offered Amer-
icans "a Paradise compared to most of the world." To be sure, a
persistent inflation which saw the value of the dollar slide danger-
ously fast, brought hardship to millions living on fixed incomes and
to such white-collar groups as teachers whose salaries lagged be-
hind the general rise in wages and profits. There were also occa-
sional legislative setbacks. The so-called Taft-Hartley Act of June
1947, for example, deprived organized labor of many privileges
won during New Deal days.* Other New Deal legislation, on the
other hand, such as measures for social security, minimum wages,
support of farm prices, and government participation in slum clear-
ance and housing finance, survived even the Republican victories of
1952 and 1956 and helped immensely to underpin the business
surge. Most significant among postwar legislation was the Max-
imum Employment Act of 1946, which committed the Federal
Government to the "Welfare State." This Act established the
Council of Economic Advisers to keep the President informed on
business trends and on federal measures requked to avert depres-
sions and otherwise implement federal responsibility for "maximum
employment."
* The Taft-Hartley Act outlawed the closed shop, gave employers the
privilege of suing unions for broken contracts and for damages brought
about by strikes, forbade unions to donate money to political campaigns.
Union leaders, moreover, were required to swear they were not Communists
before their organizations could make use of the services of the National
Labor Relations Board. Organized labor branded this measure a "slave bill,"
but union membership nevertheless rose from about 14.5 mllion hi 1947
to some 17 million in 1952, when it leveled off.
430
I
o
"Challenge and Response in United States Policy" 431
Yet it was the business system itself (abetted, to be sure, by
renewed expenditures for armaments and war after 1949) that was
principally responsible for bringing the level of employment at the
peak of the boom nearer seventy million than the sixty million
that had been considered illusory during the war; for lifting Negroes
and other minorities out of the slough of poverty to which segre-
gation in industry had earlier consigned them even in the North;
and for introducing the liberalizing forces of modern industrialism
to many parts of the rural, racist South.
The Supreme Court decision of May 1954, declaring that "sepa-
rate but equal" schools for Negroes were unconstitutional under
the Fourteenth Amendment, that segregation in education was
itself deprivation of equality under the law, was but the culmination
of many forward strides in income and status made since the war
by the seventeen million colored Americans whose services the
country sorely needed. The Civil Rights Act of 1957, which aimed
to insure Negroes the vote in segregated states, was a further step
toward their full participation in American life.
Such social and economic gains were made at the cost of im-
mense social friction; but that prosperity, which brought a steady
rise in the standard of living of most Americans, also brought net
social progress in other ways cannot be doubted. A rising standard
of living, like property in Locke's conception, is one of the founts
of the dignity of man, one of the props of his individuality.
"The American economy," wrote Life, in January 1954, "yields
the American a standard of living roughly three times as high as
the Englishman's, six times as high as the Italian's, 11 times as high
as the Turk's, 18 times as high as the Peruvian's, 40 times as high
as the Indonesian's. Most of the world's 2.5 billion people," Life
adds, "are crowded between the Peruvian and Indonesian points
on the scale." Why shouldn't Americans, then, whose standard of
living is so much the highest in the world, continue to enjoy their
pride in their "conduct and example," their insularity of mind?
One answer, of course, is the Communist challenge. Before the
ICBM touched the nerve of danger, Americans persistently sought
to evade this challenge by passing responsibility to a weak United
432 The One World of the Twentieth Century
Nations, by brandishing the almighty bomb and by diplomatic
bluffing.
There have, of course, been many decisive, generous, heroic
American actions in the cold war. When straitened circumstances
in 1947 forced Britain to terminate her support of Greece and
Turkey, which lay under the Soviet gun, the United States re-
sponded with the Truman Doctrine in which the President let it
be known to the world "that it must be the policy of the United
States to support free people who are resisting subjugation by
armed minorities or outside pressure." Between 1947 and 1950 the
United States appropriated about $660,000,000 for Greece and
Turkey and thereby helped to preserve their freedom and that of
the adjacent oil-rich Middle East. When the British terminated their
mandate over Palestine in 1948 and the Jews set up their inde-
pendent state of Israel in May that year, President Truman imme-
diately recognized the new nation, and thereby strengthened
another Middle Eastern outpost.
In June 1947, meanwhile, Truman's Secretary of State, General
George C. Marshall, facing up to the economic chaos in Europe,
had declared that: "Our policy is directed [toward] the revival of a
working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of
political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist."
Appropriations for carrying out the "Marshall Plan" were delayed
by resurgent isolationists in Congress until the whip of a Soviet
coup in Czechoslovakia where a Communist government was in-
stalled by force in February 1948, stung them into silence. Start-
ing that April, Congress during the next three years appropriated
$12,000,000,000 for European recovery. Communist countries
were declared eligible for Marshall Plan aid; but the Soviet Union
forbade their participation and also set up the Cominform to en-
large Communist propaganda and subversion in the West.
Marshall Plan administrators recognized that Germany was
the hub of the western European economy and early in 1948 pro-
ceeded with the full rehabilitation of the free zone. The Soviet
replied instantly with a blockade of all land approaches to Berlin,
with the object of forcing western officials from the capital and
undermining their prestige with the German people. The United
"Challenge and Response in United States Policy" 433
States and Britain met this challenge with "Operation Vittles."
From June 1948 until the Soviet raised the blockade in May 1949,
they kept Berlin supplied by air. In September 1949, the Bonn
Republic was recognized as a sovereign nation (subject to Amer-
ican, British, and French surveillance in certain matters) and later
became a major base for the "containment" of Communist expan-
sion.
After March 1947, in recognition of the toothlessness of the
United Nations in a tense world, western European countries had
signed numerous mutual defense treaties. In June 1948, a Senate
resolution authorized the United States to participate in regional
military alliances, and in July 1949, the Senate approved the agree-
ments by which we joined eleven other nations in the North At-
lantic Treaty Organization. NATO members agreed that an attack
on one would be considered an attack on all; and to repel such an
attack NATO forces were created under the initial direction of
General Eisenhower and supplied with arms, largely from the
United States.
In the meantime, Douglas MacArthur was pressing forward with
the reconstruction of the religion, society, and economy of Japan;
and that nation on Russia's Asiatic flank was restored to "full
sovereignty" in 1951, without Soviet assistance. By then a number
of newly independent countries in Asia and Africa, with an aggre-
gate population of nearly half a billion, had dramatically joined
the concert of nations after centuries of subjugation to European
rulers. Promptly they became battlefields for the contending forces
of Communism and capitalism. Most important among these coun-
tries were India and Indonesia. Others included Pakistan, Burma,
Ceylon, and Jordan. Korea was freed from Japanese rule after
the war; but, failing Soviet-Western agreement on her future, was
divided in 1948 into a Communist state north of the 38th parallel,
and a democratic state south of that line.
Most "colored" peoples of the world had experienced capitalism
in the form of repressive imperialism or corrupt upper-class self-
interest. Communism was something new. Its methods cost lives,
but no more, perhaps, than capitalist exploitation and capitalist
wars. They knew that Communist methods had liberated Russia
434 The One World of the Twentieth Century
from medieval poverty and in a single generation raised her to
world power. To offset Soviet "conduct and example" among such
peoples, President Truman announced his "Point Four" program
in his inaugural address in January 1949, after his surprising defeat
of Thomas E. Dewey in the 1948 elections. By 1954 nearly $400,-
000,000 had been expended under this program in an effort to
bring modern medicine and technology to underdeveloped areas,
frequently over opposition from stay-at-home elements in the
United States and elements in the recipient countries who feared a
new incursion of western imperialism.
Outside of Germany the stakes in the cold war were greatest in
China; and here the United States had lavished about $2,000,000,-
000 in civilian and military assistance on Chiang Kai-shek before
he was chased from the Chinese mainland to Formosa by Chinese
Communist forces in 1949. Few events in the "outside world"
shocked Americans more than the fall of the 450 million Chinese
to the Communist camp. Though the United States in 1946 had
made peace treaties with Bulgaria, Rumania, and Hungary, thereby
recognizing the Communist governments of those Soviet-dominated
countries, we persistently refused recognition to the Mao govern-
ment and permission for Chinese Communists to sit in the United
Nations. The involvement of Chinese Communist "volunteers" in
the Korean War, which started when North Korean forces invaded
South Korea on June 25, 1950, hardened the policy of non-
recognition. As it happened, the Soviet Union at the time had boy-
cotted the U.N. for its failure to seat Mao's men. With Russia's
veto power absent, the United States succeeded in rallying the
United Nations to support the militant American stand against
Communism's spread.
"The attack upon Korea," President Truman said on June 27,
1950, "makes it plain beyond all doubt that Communism has
passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent na-
tions and will now use armed invasion and war." The President
was more than eager to meet fire with fire and so were the Amer-
ican people until things went sour in Korea. After vigorous fighting
back and forth across the 38th parallel, which cost American forces
under General MacArthur more casualties than any war other
"Challenge and Response in United States Policy' 9 435
than the Civil War and World War II, the opposing armies settled
down to a miserable stalemate. Eager to enlarge the war into a full-
scale offensive against Communist China itself, MacArthur was
rebuffed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and recalled from his post
by the President in April 1951. After July 1951, the military stale-
mate was prolonged by a deadlock between Communist and west-
ern negotiators for an armistice.
"I believe other nations think we are crazy," observed the wife
of an American army officer in Korea in a book she wrote even
before the fight there had begun. As the military and diplomatic
stalemate dragged on, millions in the United States had come to
share her view. "Had enough?" was the Republicans' electioneering
question in the presidential campaign of 1952 in which General
Eisenhower won a landslide victory over Adlai Stevenson, the
Democrats' "egghead" candidate. This question referred to other
features of what the Republicans called "the mess in Washington"
as well as to "Truman's War," but the war was its principal target
and the leading issue in the election. During the campaign, Eisen-
hower dramatically announced that if elected he would fly to Korea
personally to see about a "cease-fire." He fulfilled the promise to
fly in December 1952; but the cease-fire was delayed another seven
months. The fighting ended at last in July 1953, when the status
quo ante bellum was resumed in the battle-scarred land.
The United States and the United Nations had made a deter-
mined and successful stand against the enlargement of Communist
domains. But as other distant and to Americans often unpro-
nounceable and previously unheard-of places came under Com-
munist attack, or Communist pressure, American indecisiveness
grew. "No one nation," Truman had told the country in January
1951, "can find protection in a selfish search for a safe haven from
the storm." But as prosperity waxed at home, American concern
with free-world problems and American alertness to Communist
adventures and Communist growth dissipated themselves. In 1956,
Eisenhower was again nominated by the Republicans, and though
he had suffered a "moderate" heart attack the year before and
a subsequent digestive failure which required surgery, the voters
carried him to another convincing victory over Stevenson. Great
436 The One World of the Twentieth Century
faith had been placed in the "great General," as though the symbol
of military might in the White House would charm away the un-
ceasing Communist challenge in the real world.
"It has now been twelve years since World War II ended," wrote
Senator Paul H. Douglas in August 1957, in an article in The New
York Times Magazine called "A New Isolationism Ripple or
Tide?" "One emergency has followed another and the American
public has risen to each . . . We have been forced to spend no less
than $60,000,000,000 on overseas aid of one form or another and
increase our own national budget to $70,000,000,000 a year. . . .
Probably no other nation in human history has ever exerted itself
so intelligently to preserve its own safety or to be helpful to others.
"But it is natural," Senator Douglas went on, "for even the most
tireless and far-sighted advocates of international cooperation to
grow weary as year follows year and no respite appears. . . . The
resistance to isolationism is therefore being greatly weakened by
this emotional and intellectual fatigue." At the same time, "opposi-
tion to further foreign aid, ... a return to protection, and support
[of] a less co-operative attitude on foreign affairs" are spreading.
"Unless a countervailing movement sets in," the Senator warned
six weeks before the launching of Sputnik I, "the foreign policy of
this country may therefore grow increasingly in the direction of
isolation."
The United States responded to the Russian space satellites with
revelations of its own military might, which was terrible enough
although increasingly obsolescent, and with promises of enlarged
expenditures and a deeper urgency to catch up and keep abreast
on missiles. At the same time that is the weakness of a "challenge
and response" policy as against policy based on initiative and
leadership the continuing challenge of Communism and Com-
munist theory in other areas was neglected. After the sputniks, the
strains in the alliances and friendships of the western nations deep-
ened, as Russians since Lenin had hoped they would. These strains
were aggravated by the "crisis of confidence" among NATO coun-
tries following the Soviet's demonstration of its ICBM; but more
divisive were the old colonial or excolonial problems in Egypt,
Algeria, Pakistan, and other "colored" lands where nationalism
The American Mission 437
was embraced as the only honorable escape from the degrading
past.
Worst of all, the peoples of former colonial countries, though
participating in the world-wide "revolution of rising expectations,"
were growing poorer all the time. "Poor people," wrote Kingsley
Davis, United States representative on the United Nations Popula-
tion Commission, in September 1957, "are more numerous today
than ever before, because population is skyrocketing in the poorer
countries. ... If the young cannot find employment," Professor
Davis continued, "they naturally seek remedies for their plight.
They are ready to follow any revolutionary leader who promises a
quick and preferably violent way out."
The knowledge of American "conduct and example" offered no
solace to such distressed people in their frustrating slide to "pro-
letarianization." Nor would American sputniks give them hope.
"What the vast majority of the world's people need and want,"
warned The New York Times in an editorial in November 1957,
"are not sputniks and rockets, but adequate food, clothing, hous-
ing and the other elements that make a decent standard of living."
They wanted more; they wanted respect, consideration, guidance,
leadership. This was much the greatest challenge to the United
States.
THE AMERICAN MISSION
"Since the founding of this nation," Dulles has written, "the Amer-
ican people have believed that it had a mission in the world."
Perhaps it was the atrophying of this sense of mission, even more
than the Communist challenge, that made Americans in the mid-
1950's dissatisfied even with their rising standard of living and
salutary social changes. "What is wrong with us?" queried Louis B.
Seltzer, editor of the Cleveland Press, in an editorial that was
copied by scores of other papers across the country and made
Seltzer's life "a madhouse" for days afterwards keeping up with
the congratulatory messages and sympathetic queries:
"What is wrong with us? . . .
"It is in the air we breathe. The things we do. The things we
say. . . .
"We have everything. We abound with all the things that make us
438 The One World of the Twentieth Century
comfortable. We are, on the average, rich beyond the dreams of the
kings of old. . . . Yet . . . something is not there that should be
something we once had.
"Are we our own worst enemies? Should we fear what is happen-
ing among us more than what is happening elsewhere? . . .
"No one seems to know what to do to meet it. But everybody
worries. . . ."
A hundred years ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that
"Every nation believes that the Divine Providence has a sneaking
kindness for it." In the century that followed Americans had every
reason to wear this belief on their sleeves, indeed, on their coun-
tenances. In Emerson's time, democracy was a bright new idea in
the world, industrial capitalism the admiration of transcendentalist
philosophers seeking perfection on earth. Emerson also said, "We
think our civilization is near its meridian, but we are yet only at
the cockcrowing and the morning star." Historians of American
civilization still borrow this optimism from the simple past; like
American writers, who, it is said, never seem to grow up, the coun-
try itself often finds it hard to escape its pleasant childhood and
youth.
Yet there have been momentous signs of change. Americans
have no assurance today that democracy is any more stable than
monarchy was in the era of the American Revolution, that capital-
ism can survive an era of expanding socialism and Communism,
that individualism can flower in an age of bureaucracy, technology,
and science. Nevertheless we and our allies have met many of the
challenges of a new barbarism almost despite ourselves. Our values
remain humane; we cherish the preservation of the single life, the
individual spirit, voluntary unity. The preservation and extension
of American ideals is the task of our maturity.
Books for Further Reading
Titles marked by an asterisk* are available in paperbacks.
I. GENERAL WORKS
A. BASIC REFERENCE AND SOURCE BOOKS. The Harvard Guide to
American History (1954), edited by Oscar Handlin and others, is a
comprehensive index of the literature of American history and of bibli-
ographies on many special subjects. R. B. Morris and H. S. Commager,
eds., The Encyclopedia of American History (1955), supplies concise
and scholarly summaries of major events and lives of major personal-
ities. More elaborate are Dictionary of American Biography (21 vols.,
1928-44), edited by Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone; and Dictionary
of American History (6 vols., 1940), edited by J. T. Adams and R. V.
Coleman. H. S. Commager, ed., Documents of American History
(1949), is an excellent collection of official materials since 1492. Of
the many volumes of less formal contemporary materials, the following
two are among the more interesting: R. W. Leopold and A. S. Link,
eds., Problems in American History (1957); and W. Thorp, M. Curti,
and C. Baker, eds., American Issues: The Social Record (1955). Excel-
lent for contemporary foreign comment on the United States is Oscar
Handlin, ed., This Was America (1949). Historical Statistics of the
United States, 1789-1945 (1949), issued by the U. S. Department of
Commerce, is an invaluable storehouse of quantitative information in
tabular form. C. O. Paullin, Atlas of the Historical Geography of the
United States (1932), is the best collection of maps.
B. GENERAL HISTORIES. R. R. Palmer and J. Colton, A History of the
Modern World (1956), is a perceptive work which supplies the Euro-
pean background of American history and places events in the United
States in a world setting. Two large collaborative series offer interesting
books on most phases of American history: Allen Johnson, ed., Chron-
icles of America (50 vols., 1918-21; plus six supplementary volumes
edited by Allan Nevins in 1950-51) ; and A. M. Schlesinger and D. R.
Fox, eds., A History of American Life (13 vols., 1927-48). R. Hof-
stadter, W. Miller, and D. Aaron, The United States: The History of a
439
440 Books for Further Reading
Republic (1957), is the most up-to-date comprehensive one-volume
work. C. A. and M. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (2 vols.,
1933), is a rightfully famous general study. Roger Butterfield, The
American Past (1957), is the best history of the United States in pic-
tures, and contains illuminating writing as well. Max Lerner, America
as a Civilization (1957), is an intensive report on "Life and thought in
the United States today," with a sure grasp of historical perspective. Two
studies of the United States by foreign visitors are literary classics:
Alexis de Tocqueville, ^Democracy in America (2 vols., 1835); James
Bryce, The American Commonwealth (2 vols., 1888). An interesting re-
cent interpretation of American history by an English scholar is Frank
Thistlethwaite, The Great Experiment (1955).
C. COMPREHENSIVE WORKS ON SPECIAL FIELDS. W. E. Binkley, Amer-
ican Political Parties (1945), and C. R. Fish, The Civil Service and the
Patronage (1905), are standard on machine politics. More penetrating
is M. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Party System in the United States
(1910). R. Hofstadter, *The American Political Tradition (1948),
provides stimulating reading on the relations of political thought and
action. A. H. Kelly and W. A. Harbison, The American Constitution
(1948) ; and Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States His-
tory (2 vols., 1937), are scholarly accounts of constitutional and
judicial history. American foreign affairs are studied with stress on the
role of public opinion in T. A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the
American People (1955); and with stress on the functioning of diplo-
macy in J. W. Pratt, A History of United States Foreign Policy
(1955).
E. C. Kirkland, A History of American Economic Life (1951), is
a full-scale, readable account. T. C. Cochran and W. Miller, The Age
of Enterprise (1942), is a more opinionated study of the period since
1800. R. A. Billington, Westward Expansion (1949), is an admirably
organized work on all aspects of the history of the frontier. Useful on
American land policy is R. M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage (1942).
Roger Burlingame, March of the Iron Men (1938), and Engines of
Democracy (1940), are brilliant social histories of technological devel-
opment, the first, to 1865; the second, since 1865. W. Miller, ed.,
Men in Business (1952), contains scholarly essays on the whole range
of American business history. Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in
American Civilisation (3 vols., 1946-1949), is discursive yet penetrating.
J. R. Commons and others, History of Labor in the United States (4
Books for Further Reading 441
vols., 1918-35), is detailed on working conditions, unionism, and labor
legislation.
A satisfactory general account of immigration is Carl Wittke, *We
Who Built America (1940). Excellent on the "old" immigration is
M. L. Hansen, The Atlantic Migration 1607-1860 (1940). *The Up-
rooted (1951) by Oscar Handlin is a sympathetic study of the "new"
immigrants. Intensive studies of anti-immigration feeling are R. A.
Billington, The Protestant Crusade 1800-1860 (1938), and John
Higham, Strangers in the Land 1860-1925 (1955). A popular account
of the fight for women's rights is I. H. Irwin, Angels and Amazons
(1933). John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (1956), is a
first-rate history of the American Negro from earliest African days to
date. Two complementary books on the American Indian are J. C.
Collier, * Indians of the Americas (1947), and Paul Radin, The Story
of the American Indian (1927). The only book on its subject, fortu-
nately a satisfactory one, is A. W. Calhoun, A Social History of the
American Family (3 vols., 1917-19). A colorful yet scholarly record of
American high society is Dixon Wecter, The Saga of American Society
(1937).
V. L. Parrington, *Main Currents in American Thought (3 vols.,
1927-30), remains the most stimulating general study of the American
intellect. M. E. Curti, The Growth of American Thought (1951), is a
scholarly work of great scope. R. E. Spiller and others, Literary History
of the United States (3 vols., 1948), is more descriptive than critical.
Better reading is Van Wyck Brooks, Makers and Finders (5 vols., 1936-
52). An excellent short history is Marcus Cunliffe, *The Literature of
the United States (1954). Constance Rourke, * American Humors
(1931), is a brilliant study of national character. A lavishly illustrate^
introduction to American art is O. W. Larkin, Art and Life in America
(1949). W. W. Sweet, The Story of Religion in America OL950), is a
standard work. A brilliant study in religious history is H. R. Niebuhr,
*The Social Sources of Denominationalism (1929). Excellent on
American higher education and far less limited than its title suggests, is
R. Hofstadter and W. Metzger, The Development of Academic Free-
dom in the United States (1955). A first-rate text is E. P. Cubberley,
Public Education in the United States (1934). The history of American
newspapers is adequately told in F. L. Mott, American Journalism
(1950). The same author's History of American Magazines (4 vols.,
1930-57) , is the only scholarly work in its field.
442 Books for Further Reading
II, SELECTED WORKS ON SPECIAL TOPICS
A. DISCOVERY, EXPLORATION, SETTLEMENT. The most useful single
volume on early American history is C. P. Nettels, The Roots of Ameri-
can Civilization (1938). Henri Pirenne, A History of Europe, from the
Invasions to the XVI Century (1955), is unsurpassed on the "European
Crisis 1300-1450." A masterly work on the same subject is J. Huizinga,
*The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924). Two books by E. P. Cheyney
are excellent on the age of discovery: The European Background of
American History 1300-1600 (1904), and The Dawn of a New Era
1250-1453 (1936). E. Sanceau, The Land of Prester John (1944), is
an intriguing work by a Portuguese historian. S. E. Morison, Admiral
of the Ocean Sea (2 vols., 1942), is superb on Columbus and his times.
J. B. Brebner, *The Explorers of North America 1492-1806 (1933),
discusses all the great adventurers. L. D. Baldwin, The Story of the
Americas (1943), is a racy work with emphasis on Spanish settlement
and Latin American history. The brilliant studies of the French in the
New World in the many books by Francis Parkman have been reduced
to one tasteful volume, The Parkman Reader (1955), by S. E. Morison.
W. Notestein, The English People on the Eve of Colonization 1603-1630
(1954), is an illuminating study by an expert. J. R. Seeley, The Expan-
sion of England (1883), is a classic on the first and second British
Empires. Indispensable on New England's early history are two books
by Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century
(1939), and From Colony to Province (1953). Indispensable on the
South is Carl Bridenbaugh, Myths and Realities (1952). On the "car-
nail" side an excellent work is Bernard Bailyn, New England Merchants
in the Seventeenth Century (1955). Extraordinarily illuminating too is,
C. S. Sydnor, Gentlemen Freeholders, Political Practices in Washing-
ton's Virginia (1952). Excellent on Pennsylvania, the leading "middle
colony," are F. B. Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House (1948);
and C. Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin (1938).
B. TOWARD INDEPENDENCE. A standard work on the commercial rela-
tions of the colonies and the mother country is Volume IV of C. M,
Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History (4 vols., 1934-38)
A galaxy of scholarly articles on this subject and many related ones will
be found in R. B. Morris, ed., The Era of the American Revolution
(1939). The English political background is intensely studied in L. B
Books for Further Reading 443
Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution (1930). The
role of George III, as it appears to modern scholars, is analyzed by
Namier in three brilliant essays in his collection, Personalities and
Powers (1955). Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence (1922),
is much the best study of that document. Excellent short accounts of
the surge toward independence are: L. H. Gipson, The Coming of the
Revolution (1954), and E. S. Morgan, *The Birth of the Republic
(1956). Outstanding biographies include those on Washington by
D. S. Freeman (6 vols., 1948-54; a seventh volume by J. A. Carroll
and M. W. Ashworth, published in 1957 after Freeman's death, com-
pletes the "Life"); on Jefferson, by D. Malone (2 vols., 1948-51), and
by G. Chinard (1929); on Hamilton, by B. Mitchell (1957); on Sam
Adams, by J. C. Miller (1936) ; on John Adams, by G. Chinard (1933).
A popular account of the difficulties of the Continental Congress is
L. Montross, The Reluctant Rebels (1950).
C. THE YOUNG REPUBLIC. Historians still argue over how bad condi-
tions were under the Articles of Confederation. The classic account of
the "bad" side is John Fiske, The Critical Period of American History
(1888); of the "good" side, C. A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation
of the Constitution of the United States (1913). Beard's penetrating
analysis is elaborated in Merrill Jensen, The New Nation (1950) and
overzealously attacked by R. E. Brown, Charles Beard and the Constitu-
tion (1956). A straightforward work on the making of the Constitution is
C. Van Doren, The Great Rehearsal (1948). Perhaps the deepest insight
into the times will be found in Hamilton's, Madison's, and Jay's *The
Federalist, collected in innumerable editions from the newspapers of
1787 and 1788 in which these essays first appeared. Colorful accounts
of Washington's administrations are C. G. Bowers, Jefferson and Ham-
ilton (1925) , whose strong anti-federalist bias is more than corrected in
the highly federalist Life of John Marshall (4 vols., 1916-19) by A. J.
Beveridge. On the subsequent period, George Dangerfield, The Era of
Good Feelings (1952), is excellent. Allan Kevins, ed., The Diary of
John Quincy Adams (1951), is replete with the acute insights of the
sixth president.
F. J. Turner, The Frontier in American History (1920), established
the West as a field of study. An excellent work is B. W. Bond, Jr., The
Civilization of the Old Northwest 1788-1812 (1934). Interesting biog-
raphies of early western speculators include C. S. Driver, John Sevier
(1932); and W. H. Masterson, William Blount (1954). The role of the
444 Books for Further Reading
West in fomenting the War of 1812 is analyzed in J. W. Pratt, Expan-
sionists of 1812 (1925); but Pratt's argument is subjected to searching
analysis in A. L. Burt, The United States, Great Britain, and British
North America (1940). Marquis James, The Life of Andrew Jackson
(1938), is a stirring and scholarly biography. More contentious (and
contended against) is A. M. Schlesinger, Jr., *The Age of Jackson
(1945). A first-rate study of the entire Jacksonian epoch is Bray Ham-
mond, Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil
War (1957).
D. CIVIL WAR AND ITS LEGACY. The period from the middle 1840s
to 1860 is analyzed at length but always with insight and readability in
Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union (2 vols., 1947), and The Emergence
of Lincoln (2 vols., 1951). Two excellent works on the expansionist
drive in ante-bellum America are N. A. Graebner, Empire on the
Pacific (1955), and A. K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny (1935). On
the commercial and rising industrial spirit of the North the following
are selected from a rich literature: J. Mirsky and A. Nevins, The World
of Eli Whitney (1952); G. R. Taylor, The Transportation Revolution
(1951); Volume I of V. S. Clark, History of Manufactures in the
United States (3 vols., 1928); L. C. Hunter, Steamboats on the Western
Rivers (1949); R. G. Albion, The Rise of New York Port (1939);
W. J. Lane, Commodore Vanderbilt (1942); F. A. Cleveland and F. W.
Powell, Railroad Promotion and Capitalization (1909).
Clement Eaton, A History of the Old South (1949), is probably the
best general history of the slave states. More penetrating and brilliantly
written is W. J. Cash, *The Mind of the South (1941). An illuminating
contemporary account is F. L. Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom, issued
in an excellent modern edition in 1953. On slavery itself, U. B. Phillips,
American Negro Slavery (1918), should be contrasted with K. M.
Stampp, The Peculiar Institution (1956). Two challenging theses on
the coming of the Civil War are presented in D. L. Dumond, Anti-
Slavery Origins of the Civil War (1939), and R. F. Nichols, The Dis-
ruption of American Democracy (1948). A readable, recent one-
volume biography is B. P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952); but it
does not supplant C. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln, The Prairie Years
(2 vols., 1929) , and The War Years (4 vols., 1939) ; or A. J. Beveridge,
Abraham Lincoln 1809-1858 (2 vols., 1928).
The standard work on the Civil War is J. G. Randall, The Civil War
and Reconstruction (1937). A good concise account is F. Pratt, *A
Books for Further Reading 445
Short History of the Civil War (1952). The military history of the
Union side is described in B. Catton, This Hallowed Ground (1956).
The "rebel" side is told in C. Eaton, A History of the Southern Con-
federacy (1954) ; and in the excellent biography by D. S. Freeman, R.
E. Lee (4 vols., 1934-35). The works of Cash and Randall noted above
discuss Reconstruction in detail. Excellent also are two books by C.
V. Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (1938); and Origins of
the New South 1877-1913 (1951). P. Buck, Road to Reunion (1937),
stresses the factors reuniting the sections. The best study of Grant's
administrations is in A. Kevins, Hamilton Fish (1936) . A sound general
history of the South from settlement to date is F. B. Simkins, A History
of the South (1953).
E. THE INDUSTRIAL NATION. A. Kevins, The Emergence of Modern
American 1865-1878 (1927), supplies an excellent survey of the post-
war North and West. A. M. Schlesinger, The Rise of the City 1878-
1898 (1933), and L M. Tarbell, The Nationalizing of Business 1878-
1898 (1944) , continue the story in interesting fashion. Matthew Joseph-
son, The Politicos 1865-1896 (1938), is a detailed and penetrating
study. E. F. Goldman, ^Rendezvous with Destiny (1951), presents the
story of the "reform" attack on the practices Josephson analyzes. The
politics of the farm "revolt" against "big business" has an extensive
literature. A leading older work is J. D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt
(1931) . A newer and more penetrating book is R. Hofstadter, The Age
of Reform (1955).
Much the best account of the Wild West before its absorption in the
industrial nexus is W. P. Webb, The Great Plains (1931). Much in-
sight into the problems of the prairies and the plains is to be gained
from J. C. Malin, The Grassland of North America (1948). Mark
Twain, Roughing It (2 vols., 1872), is excellent on Nevada prospecting.
E. S. Osgood, *The Day of the Cattleman (1929), covers the history
of the range. F. A. Shannon, The Farmer's Last Frontier (1945), is
a tough-minded analysis of the problems of the western farmer in the
industrial age. The novels of O. E. Rolvaag, especially Giants in the
Earth (1929), and of Willa Gather, especially O Pioneers! (1913), and
My Antonia (1918), dramatically recreate early plains farm life.
I. M. Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company (2 vols.,
1904), is excellent on the spirit of the early oil men and the impact of
Rockefeller's drive toward monopoly. More sympathetic to Rockefeller
and to the institutional drives of modern capitalism is A. Nevins, John
446 Books for Further Reading
Z>. Rockefeller (2 vols., 1940; rev. ed., 1954). J. H. Bridge, The Inside
History of the Carnegie Steel Company (1903), contains much infor-
mation that will not be found hi the authorized biography by B. J.
Hendrick, The Life of Andrew Carnegie (2 vols., 1932), nor in Carne-
gie's Autobiography (1920). Two books by W. Z. Ripley offer the best
general accounts of railroad history: Railroads: Rates and Regulation
(1912), and Railroads: Finance and Organization (1915). T C. Coch-
ran, Railroad Leaders, 1845-1890 (1953), is a pioneering study of the
thinking of American business executives. A colorful account of the
transcontinental is Oscar Lewis, The Big Four (1938). Especially
good on the tooth-and-claw competition in nineteenth-century business
is D. A. Wells, Recent Economic Changes (1890). The literature on
the trust movement and attempts to control it by legislation is immense.
The most recent and comprehensive study is H. B. Thorelli, The Fed-
eral Antitrust Policy (1955) ; an illuminating and unusually well-written
critique is T. Arnold, The Folklore of Capitalism (1937). Samuel
Yellen, American Labor Struggles (1936), provides dramatic accounts
of the great strikes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Enlightening books by participants in the labor movement include T.
V. Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor (1889), and The Path I Trod
(1940); and Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor (2
vols. 1925).
F. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. A thorough history of the United States
since the 1890's is A. S. Link, American Epoch (1955). The period
around the turn of the century was one of soul-searching in the United
States and contemporary books as well as later studies reflect the pre-
vailing mood. A good biographical introduction to the questioning of
the times is D. Aaron, Men of Good Hope (1951). Robert Hunter,
Poverty (1904), and R. H. Bremner, The Discovery of Poverty in the
United States (1956), are revealing studies. Jacob Riis, How the Other
Half Lives (1890), and The Battle with the Slums (1902) are moving
accounts of conditions in New York's ghetto. The Pittsburgh Survey
(6 vols., 1910-14) reports a thorough investigation of life in the lead-
ing steel city by the Russell Sage Foundation. A good summary of the
social needs of the period is R. C. Dorr, What Eight Million Women
Want (1910), The whole issue of urbanism is discussed in numerous
books by Lewis Mumford, of which perhaps the most relevant is The
Culture of Cities (1938). A classic account of the changing spirit of
architecture is Louis Sullivan, *The Autobiography of an Idea (1922).
Books for Further Reading 447
W. A. Starrett, Skyscrapers (1928), is a useful study of the creation of
tall beehives to house the "interchangeable parts" of the modern busi-
ness office. An excellent account of urban transportation before the
automobile age (among other subjects) is H. C. Passer, The Electrical
Manufacturers 1875-1900 (1953).
The unconventional economic thinking of the age is reflected in
Thorstein Veblen, *The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), and The
Theory of Business Enterprise (1904); unconventional political think-
ing in H. Croly, The Promise of American Life (1909); W. Weyl, The
New Democracy (1912); and The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens
(2 vols., 1931). Ray Ginger, The Bending Cross (1949), is a useful
biography of Eugene V. Debs. Max Lerner, ed., The Mind and Faith of
Justice Holmes (1943), and A. T. Mason, Brandeis, A Free Man's Life
(1946), disclose the challenging judicial thinking of the two great dis-
senters. R. Hofstadter, ^Social Darwinism in American Thought (rev.
ed,, 1955), is the leading study of the vogue of the Spencerian philoso-
phy against most aspects of which the "Progressive Era" rebelled. L. D.
Brandeis, Other People's Money (1914); and F. L. Allen, The Lords
of Creation (1935), are good introductions to the Morgan era. On the
politics of Progressivism, one may read with profit H. F. Pringle,
* Theodore Roosevelt (1931); M. Josephson, The President Makers
1896-1919 (1940); A. S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive
Era, 1910-1917 (1954) ; and L Blum, Woodrow Wilson and the Politics
of Morality (1956). On Progressive militarism and imperialism, in
addition to Hofstadter on Social Darwinism (above), illuminating
works are W. Millis, The Martial Spirit (1931); L W. Pratt, Expan-
sionists of 1898 (1936); D. Perkins, The United States and the Carib-
bean (1947); A. W. Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United
States (1938). A suggestive introduction to twentieth-century foreign
policy is G. F. Kennan, * American Diplomacy 1900-1950 (1951).
American participation in World War I is discussed from the isolation-
ist attitude of the 'thirties in W. Millis, The Road to War (1935) ; and
C. C. Tansill, America Goes to War (1938). More generous to Wilson
is C. Seymour, American Diplomacy During the World War (1934).
A general account of the war and postwar periods will be found in P.
W. Slosson, The Great Crusade and After 1914-1928 (1930).
A lively introduction to the spirit of the 'twenties is F. L. Allen,
*0nly Yesterday (1931). On the literature of the period, see Alfred
Kazin, *0n Native Grounds (1942); on the politics, S. H. Adams, In-
credible Era (1939), and W. A. White, A Puritan in Babylon (1938);
448 Books for Further Reading
on the economics, W. E. Leuchtenburg, Perils of Prosperity 1914-1932
(1958), G. Soule, Prosperity Decade 1917-1929 (1947), and J, K.
Galbraith, The Big Crash (1955). Herbert Asbury, The Great Illusion
(1950), tells the tale of Prohibition.
T. C. Cochran, The American Business System, 1900-1955 (1957)
is an excellent introduction to the century's business life. Dixon Wecter,
The Age of the Great Depression (1948), and B. Mitchell, Depression
Decade 1929-1941 (1947), reveal the depths of the business collapse.
The failure of the Hoover administration is discussed in detail in A.
M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order (1957). Frank Frei-
del's definitive biography, Franklin D. Roosevelt (3 vols., 1952-56) has
carried F.D.R. only through the election of 1932. More complete is J.
M. Burns, Roosevelt, The Lion and the Fox (1956). Perhaps most
interesting, since it is the product of one of the leading participants in
the New Deal, is R. G. Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt: A Biog-
raphy of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1957). A penetrating account of early
New Deal thinking and early disillusionment with F.D.R. is R. Moley,
After Seven Years (1939).
The most thorough studies of American diplomacy on the eve of
World War II are those by W. L. Langer and S. E. Gleason, The Chal-
lenge to Isolation 1937-1940 (1952), and The Undeclared War 1940-
1941 (1953). The attack on Roosevelt's policies can be read in C. A.
Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War (1941), and
C. C. Tansill, Backdoor to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933-
1941 (1952). A spirited and sympathetic account of the Roosevelt
epoch in peace and war is R. E. Sherwood, ^Roosevelt and Hopkins
(1948). The best short accounts of the fighting in World War II are C.
Falls, The Second World War (1948), and F. Pratt, War for the World
(1951). But these, of course, cannot compare with Winston Churchill's
magnificent work, The Second World War (6 vols., 1948-53). D. D.
Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (1948), is authoritative on the Euro-
pean theater. On the Pacific theater, S. E. Morison, History of Naval
Operations in World War II (9 vols., 1947-54), overshadows all others.
Morison also covers the naval side of the war in the West. An excellent
study of the wartime conferences of the Allied leaders, much illumin-
ated by hindsight, is H. Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin (1957).
For Truman's administrations, see Memoirs, by Harry S. Truman
(2 vols., 1955-56). Nowhere does Truman mention the Hiss case, an
oversight which the reader can correct with A. Cooke, A Generation
on Trial: USA v. Alger Hiss (1951); W. Chambers, Witness (1952);
Books for Further Reading 449
and A. Hiss, In the Court of Public Opinion (1957). For Eisenhower's
administrations, see R. Rovere, Affairs of State, The Eisenhower Years
(1956), and R. J. Donovan, The Inside Story (1956). An interesting
account of the postwar boom is F. L. Allen, The Big Change (1952).
The boom's impact on economic thinking is well illustrated in J. K.
Galbraith's brilliantly written, The Affluent Society (1958). Outstanding
on a major domestic issue, segregation, is H. S. Ashmore, An Epitaph
for Dixie (1958). Two well- written narratives are concerned with details
of the decade, 1945-55: E. F. Goldman, The Crucial Decade (1956);
and H. Agar, The Unquiet Years (1957) . Never in history, it seems, has
a people so self-consciously investigated itself (spurred on by the use of
polls for almost anything) as the American people have in the postwar
years. Innumerable books have resulted, of which five of the more
penetrating are: S. Lubell, *The Future of American Politics (1951);
C. Wright Mills, *White Collar (1951), and The Power Elite (1956);
D. Riesman and others, *The Lonely Crowd (1950) ; and W. H. Whyte,
Jr., *The Organization Man (1956).
Index
AAA, see Agricultural Adjustment
Act
Abilene, Kansas: 249-250
Abolitionism: 182-188, 195-198, 204-
206, 218, 225
Absentee ownership: 85, 304
Acadia: 66
Adams, Henry: 260
Adams, John: 96, 108, 114, 117,
120, 124, 184, 198; Vice-Presi-
dent, 127; President, 139-143;
Cabinet, 139
Adams, John Quincy: 156; Treaty of
Ghent, 150-151; President, 178
Adams, Sam: 88, 97-98, 102-103,
110, 115, 127
Advertising: 255, 296-298; see Busi-
ness
Africa: 11-15, 24, 314, 321, 325,
401, 406-409, 433; coastal explora-
tion, 11-15, 24; conversion in, 7;
slave trade, 27-28, 40, 80, 109
Agrarian Crusade: 236
Agricultural Adjustment Act: 376-
378
Agricultural Machinery: 203-204,
256-257
Agriculture: 202, 228, 235, 253, 291,
307, 323-24, 361, 376-378; boom
in (1816-1817), 158-159; colonial,
26, 71, 73, 77-82; depression
(1930's), 376-378; feudal, 4;
western, 253-258; and New Deal,
376-378; and World War H, 393;
see Rice, Sugar, Tobacco, Wheat
Aguinaldo, Emilio: 332, 334
Aix-la-Chapelle, Peace of: 90
Alabama: 154, 163-164, 207, 232-
235, 249, 308; admission to Union,
143; secession, 206
Alaska: 316; "conserved" coal lands
in, 316; U.S. purchase of, 321,
323; agitation for statehood, 326;
and World War II, 402, 414
Albany, New York: 23, 39, 64, 113,
166
Albemarle Sound: 62-63
Alcan Highway: 393, 414
Alden, John: 89
Aldrich, Nelson W.: 261, 283, 315
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey: 287
Aldrich-Vreeland Act: 314
Alexander of Macedon: 24
Alexander, Field Marshal Sir H.:
406
Alien Act: 140, 142
Alien Property Custodian: 360
Allah: 7-8
Allen, Ethan: 104, 117
Allen, Frederick Lewis: 350, 358
Allen, Levi: 117
Alliance movement: 282
Almy & Brown: 171
Alvarado, Pedro de: 25
Ambrister, Robert C.: 151
Amendments, Constitutional: First
ten, "Bill of Rights," 123, 128;
Twelfth, 141; Thirteenth, 217-218;
Fourteenth, 220-224, 262, 431;
Fifteenth, 222, 224; Sixteenth,
316; Seventeenth, 122, 310; Eight-
eenth, 310, 357-358; Nineteenth,
310; repeal of Eighteenth, 362
America: discovery of, 16-19; early
exploration of, 20-22
America First Committee: 385
American Bankers Association: 356-
357
American Bar Association: 285
American Communist Party: 351,
405, 424, ftn 429
451
452 Index
American Federation of Labor: 279-
281, 363, 379-381, 395
American Humor: 163
American Iron and Steel Associa-
tion: 274
American Liberty League: 377
American Mercury: 358, 360
American Philosophical Society: 112
"American Plan": 356-357
American Railway Union: 280
American Revolution: 56, 59, 67,
71, 80, 84, 88, ftn 95, 97-116,
134-137, 161-162, 170, 184, 438
American Speaking Telephone Com-
pany: 276
"American System": 145, 166
American Telephone and Telegraph
Company: 277
Ames, Fisher: 127
Amherst, Lord: 100
Amnesty Act: 225-227
Amsterdam, Fort: 39
Anderson, Major Robert: 208
Andrews, Samuel: 277
Anglican Church, see Church of
England
Anne, Queen of England: 66, 68
Antietam: 209
Anti-Federalists: 135
Anti-Imperialist League: 334
Anti-Saloon League: 357
Apaches: 240
Appleton, Nathan: 173
Appliances, electrical: 388
Appomattox: 210, 213-214, 218, 229
Aragon: 29-32, 40
Arbuthnot, Alexander: 151
Arena: 306
Argentia Bay: 386
Ariosto: 22
Arkansas: 164, 174, 208, 216-217;
admission to Union, 174
Arkwright, Richard: 169, 171
Armada, Spanish: 42-43
Armour, Philip: 263
Army, U.S.: see Continental Army;
106-107, 122, 242, 419; under
Jefferson, 142; in War of 1812,
152, 155; in Civil War, 208-209;
in Spanish- American War, 288,
311-313, 330-334; in World War
I, 343-344; in World War II, 389,
393-394, 397, 401-411; in Korean
War, 434-435
Army and Navy Register: 394
Army Appropriation Act: 352
Arnold, Benedict: 104, 106
Arnold, General Henry H.: 404
Articles of Confederation: 115-116,
118-119, 121, 123-124, 130
Asiento: 66
Assemblies, colonial: 85
Astor, John Jacob: 113, 199
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
Railroad: 267
Atlanta, Georgia: 210, 212, 355
Atlanta Constitution: 211, 213
Atlantic Charter: 386
Atlantic Monthly, The: 360
Atomic bomb: 390-391, 402-403,
414, 417-418, 424-425
Atomic energy: 391, 414, 417, 422
Attorney-General: creation of office,
129
Auchinleck, General Sir C. J.: 406
Augsburg, League of: 32-33, 66
Augusta, Georgia: 113
Austerlitz: 146
Australia: 39, 258, 402, 414
Austria: 30, 90, 92, 321; seized by
Hitler, 383
Automobile industry: 292-296, 365-
366, 380, 388, 393, 395
Aviation: 364, 388, 391-393; Com-
mercial, 364
Azores: 14, 35
Aztecs: 20-22, 25
Babson, Roger: 356
Babson Statistical Service: 290
Bache, Benjamin: 140
Bacon, Francis: 35
Badoglio, Marshal Pietro: 409
Baer, George F.: 313
Bahamas: 16
Baker, George Fisher: 299
Baker, Ray Stannard: 306
Balboa, Vasco Nunez de: 19, 25
Balkans: 322, 406, 409, 412
Ballinger, Richard A.: 316
Baltimore (U.S.S.): 329
Baltimore, Lord: 47
Baltimore, Maryland: 113, 166, 175,
200, 277, 358
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad: 166,
265
Bank of England, 131
Bank of the United States: 160,
167; First, 112, 131-132, 155; Sec-
ond, 159, 179-181, 186, 193
Bankers' Magazine: 286
Banking Act (1935): 374
Baptists: 33, 53, 74, 187, 238
Barbary Pirates, 142; see Piracy
Barbed wire fencing: 253, 257
Barlow, General Francis C.: 228-229
Baruch, Bernard: 422
Beauregard, General Pierre: 208-
209
Behain, Martin: 19
Belgium: 34, 150, 341, 384, 392-
393, 411
Bell, Alexander Graham: 276-277
Belleau Wood: 344
Bennett, James Gordon: 205
Bentham, Jeremy: 93
Benton, Thomas Hart: 174
Bering Sea: sealers in the, 328
Berlin Blockade: 432-433
Berlin-Tokyo axis: 382, 401
Bermuda: 66
Bessemer process: 203, 269, 272
Beveridge, Senator Albert J.: 188,
315
Bible: 6, 33, 186, 190, 192, 223,
356
Bienville, Jean Baptiste, Sieur de: 90
Big Business: see Business
Bill of Rights, English, 61; U.S.,
123, 128; G. L, 398
Bingham, William: 112
Birney, James G.: 186
Bissell, George H.: 271
Black Codes: 219-220, 232
Black Death: 4, 13
Black Hand: 355
Black Hawk War: 174
Black Hills: 247
Blackfeet Indians: 240
Blaine, James G.: 327-328
Blake, Robert: 59
"Bleeding Kansas": 195
Bliss, General Tasker H.: 349
"Bloody assizes": 60
Bohr, Niels: 391
Bombay: 67
Bonaparte, Napoleon, see Napoleon
Bonneville Dam: 394
Booth, John Wilkes: 218
Boston, Massachusetts: 64-69, 79-
83, 97-104, 132, 157, 166, 172,
177, 199-202, 229, 239, 266, 294;
founding of, 49; in Revolutionary
War, 102; after Revolutionary
War, 113, 127; "Boston Associ-
ates," 172-173, 176, 199; "Bos-
ton Massacre," 102-103; "Boston
Tea Party," 28, 103
Boston Manufacturing Company:
172
Index 453
Bougainville: 415
Boulton, Matthew: 169
Bowdoin, Governor: 119
Boxer Rebellion: 337-338
Braddock, General Edward: 92
Bradley, General Omar: 411
Brains trust": 307, 377
Brandeis, Louis D.: 290-291
Brazil: 19, 24, 78
Bridenbaugh, Carl: 76
Bridger, Jim: 241
Bristow, Senator Joseph L.: 315
British East India Company: 28, 42,
British Guiana: 329, 385
Brooks, Preston ("Bully"): 197
Brougham, Henry: 157-158
Brown, General Jacob: 150
Brown, John: 186, 195, 197
Brown University: 290
Bryan, William Jennings: 284, 314,
317, 334-335, 339, 356; Secretary
of State, 339
Bubonic plague: 4
Buchanan, James: President, 197,
206-207
Buckingham, Duke of, see Villiers,
George
Buddenbrooks (Mann): 348
Buffalo: 239-240, 243, 255, 258
Buffalo, N. Y.: 154, 166, 265
Bull Run: 209
Bunker Hill: 104, 106, 119
Bunker Hill (aircraft carrier) : 394
Bunyan, John: 306
Burgesses, House of: 46, 75
Burgoyne, "Gentleman Johnny": 107
Burke, Edmund: 96, 281
Burlington Railroad: 255, 300
Burma: 322, 417, 433
Burma Road: 393
Burr, Aaron: 113, 135; Vice-Presi-
dent, 141, 144-145
Bush, Vannevar: 391, 425-426
Business: 28-29, 72, 83, 162-163,
168, 182, 205, 212, 226-228, 233
252, 255, 259-318, 324-330, 353,
356-370, 376-378, 381-395; Big,
201-203, 207, 238, 246-247; cor-
porate form of, 160, 172, 176, 202,
259-262; opposition to Progressive
social legislation, 309; boom in
1920's 362-368; in World War H,
424-428; in 1950's, 429-431
Butte, Mont.: 247
Butterfield, James: 247-248
Butterfield, Roger: 408
454 Index
Cabinet, Presidential: 124, 218, 316,
331; Washington's, 127, 138;
Adams', John, 139; Jefferson's,
142; Madison's, 149, 156; Hard-
ing's, 361
Cables, transatlantic: 276
Cabot, John: 12, 13, 19, 113
Cabral, John: 19
Caesar, Julius: 130, 141
Calhoun, John C.: 147, 186, 192,
198; Secretary of State, 193
California: 192-195, 239, 241, 245-
249, 254, 257, 264-267, 325, 329,
361, 392; gold in, 175, 194-195,
245; admission to the Union, 176
Calvert, Sir George: 47
Calvin, John: 32-33, 79, 260
Calvinists: 32-36, 38, 42-45, 53, 74
Cambridge Platform: 53
Canada: 36-37, 55, 89-90, 104-108,
113, 117, 133, 137, 148-149, 152,
239, 243, 257, 267, 328-329; fish-
eries, 36, 150-151; World War II,
385, 393, 411, 414, 418
Canals, see also names of canals:
163-168, 267-268, 330, 336, 406
Cannon, "Uncle Joe": 261, 315
Cape of Good Hope: 15
Capitalism: 28-29, 34-35, 134, 173,
195, 212, 228, 236, 245, 247, 259-
318, 426, 433; see also, Business
Capitol, U. S.: design for the, 142;
burned by British, 149
Capone, Al: 357-358
Caravels: 14
Carlyle, Thomas: 169
Carnegie, Andrew: 260, 272-273
Carnegie Institution: 391
Carnegie, McCandless & Company:
272
Carnegie Steel Company: 280
Carolina: 62-64, 69, 76-78, 106-107,
154
Carolines: 415
Carpetbaggers: 223, 225, 227, 229
Carranza, Vemistiano: 340
Carson, Kit: 241
Cartier, Jacques: 36
Carver, John: 48
Cash, W. J.: 189-190, 234
Catherine of Aragon: 31, 32, 40
Catherine of Braganza: 67
Catholics: 5-10, 27-38, 42-44, 47-49,
60-61, 67-70, 86, 89, 99, 355, 362
Catlin, George: 240
Cattle: 77, 241, 244, 249-255, 257-
258
"Caucus Club": 88
Central America, 19, 25, 66, 152,
197, 207, 327, 335, 336
Central Pacific Railroad: 264-267
Century (magazine): 307
Cervera, Admiral Pascual: 332
Ceylon: 433
Chamberlain, Neville: 383-384, 390
Champlain, Samuel de: 23, 36, 58
Charming, William Ellery: 153
Charles, Bonnie Prince, 68
Charles I, King of England: 23, 44-
45, 47, 50-53
Charles I, King of Spain, 3-32, see
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles II, King of England: 54-55,
59-64, 67
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor:
30-32, 35, 67
Charles the Rash of Burgundy: 30
Charleston, S. C.: 63, 69, 71, 76-80,
83, 88, 113, 137, 166, 186
Chateau Thierry: 344
Chattanooga, Term.: 210
Chemical industry: 364
Chesapeake (U. S. frigate): 146
Cheyenne, Wyoming: 250
Cheyenne Indians: 240
Chiang Kai-shek: 417, 434
Chicago, 111.: 173-174, 200-201, 211-
212, 250, 265, 279-280, 300, 392
Chicago World's Fair: 291
Child labor: 308, 316
Children's Bureau, U. S.: 316
Chile: 25
China: 8, 16, 68, 113, 171, 304, 321-
325, 337-339, 350, 383, 393, 402,
405, 413, 421, 434; Communist
conquest of, 424, 434, 435
Chinard, Gilbert: 184
Chouart, Medard: 37
Christendom: 186; in time of Colum-
bus, 3-8, 14, 17; offensive against
Islam, 4, 7, 10-13
Christopher, St.: 3-4
Chrysler Corporation: 380
Church of England: 32, 43, 44, 46,
47, 53, 60, 70, 75, 78, 82, 97, 105,
184; William and Mary College
endowed by, 74
Churchill, Winston: 384, 386, 390,
398, 404-413, 418-421, 423, 427-
428; Yalta Conference, 412-413
Cincinnati, Ohio: 154, 165
Civil Rights Act: 220, 431
Civil Rights Cases (1883): 207
Civil Service Commission: 311
Civil War: 134, 138, 146, 176, 184,
187, 199-203, 207-210, 225, 229-
230, 234, 238-242, 249, 259-264,
269, 278, 318, 328, 357, 370, 435;
losses in the, 214; cost of, 214
Civilian Conservation Corps: 375
Claflin, John B.: 286
Clark, Champ: 317
Clark, George Rogers, 108
Clark, Maurice B.: 270
Clark, William: 144
Clay, Henry: 147, 152, 168, 178,
327; leader of the War Hawks,
148; Treaty of Ghent, 150-151;
"American System," 166-167; Sec-
retary of State, 178
Clayton Anti-Trust Act: 318
Clemenceau, Georges: 345-346
Clement VII, Pope: 31
Clermont: 165
Cleveland, Grover: 280, 284, 311,
325-326, 329, 331
Cleveland, Ohio: 154, 255, 270-271,
308
Cleveland Press: 437-438
Clinton, De Witt: 165
Clinton, Governor George: 135, 137
Clipper ships: 200-201, 239
Closed shop: ftn 429; see Labor
Unions
Coal: 175, 236, 238, 244-245, 291-
292,296, 312-313, 352, 395
Cobbett, William: 161
Cody, "Buffalo Bill": 243
Coercive Acts: 103
Cold war: 426, 432, 434
Collective bargaining: see Labor
Unions
Collier, John: 244
Colombia: 25; Panama Canal issue,
336
Colonies, see also names of Colonies:
religion in the, 87, 89; relations
with England, 58-62; labor in the,
69-71; exports, 71-78; manufactur-
ing in the, 83; population growth
in, 89, 96-97; government in the,
85-87, 99; society in, 113; taxation
in the, 86-87, 99, 101
Colorado Fuel and Iron Company:
273
Columbia, S. C.: 113
Columbia River, 144
Columbia University: 290, 392
Columbus, Christopher: 3-4, 11-20,
24-25, 29-30, 36, 243
Comanches: 10, 240
Index 455
"Combined Chiefs of Staff": 406;
see Joint Chiefs of Staff
Commager, Henry Steele: 393
Command of the Army Act: 221-222
Commerce and Labor Department,
U. S.: 314, 316
Commerce Department, U. S. : estab-
lished as a separate department,
316
Commercial and Financial Chronicle:
264
Committee for Industrial Organiza-
tion: 380; see also Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations
Committee on Public Information:
344
Committees of correspondence: 103
Commodity Credit Corporation: 377
Common Sense (Paine) : 105
Commons, John R.: 307
Communism: 320, 405, 407, 412,
423, 431-438; in Russia: 351, 386,
418, 422-428; in China: 417; in
U. S.: 351, 405, 424, ftn 429
Company of New France: 37
Compromise of 1850: 197
Comstock Lode: 246, 276
Concord, Mass.: 104
Concord coaches: 247
Confederate States of America: 115-
124, 129-130, 206-211, 220-223
"Congregation of the Lord": 34
Congregationalists: 43, 53, 54
Congress of Industrial Organizations:
380-381, 395
Connecticut, 39, 55, 63, 85, 117, 125,
145, 154, 164, 176, 283, 309;
Fundamental Orders of, 55
Conquistadores: 24-27, 30, 40
Conservation: 245, 291, 313, 316,
375
Constitution, U.S.: 87-88, 122-129,
132-135, 138, 153, 188, 192; see
Amendments; see also Constitu-
tional Convention; checks and
balances, 132; interpretation of,
140-141, 143, 160, 335
Constitutional Convention, 120-125,
132
Continental Association: 104
Continental Congress: First: 90, 103-
104; Second: 104-109, 115-116
Cooke, Jay: 199
Coolidge, Calvin: 352; as President:
361-362, 370
Co-operatives: 278-279, 282
Coral Sea, Battle of: 402
456 Index
Cornwallis, Lord: 107-108
Coronado, Francisco de: 26, 239
Corporations, see Business
Corporations, Bureau of, 313
Cortes, Hernando, 20-25, 27, 30, 35,
40
Cosa, Juan de la: 3
Cosmopolitan (magazine) : 306
Costa Rica, 324
Cotton: 159, 163-164, 168-172, 184,
187, 192, 207, 211, 213, 229-230,
234; revenue tax on: 230; gins:
158, 169; Kingdom: 164, 185, 187-
192, 200-201, 207; textile industry:
159, 172-173, 177, 184, 203, 234-
235, 296, 380
Coughlin, Father: 377
Council of Economic Advisers: 429
Council of Trent: 35, 38
Coureurs de bois: 37
Cowboys: 249-253
Cowley, Malcolm: 349
Crazy Horse: 243
Credit Mobilier: 266-267
Creek Indians: 151
Creel, George: 344
Crevecoeur, Hector St. John de: 110
Crimea: 257, 412
Crisis, financial, see Depression
Crocker, Charles: 266
Crockett, Davy: 162
Crompton, Samuel: 169
Cromwell, Oliver: 34, 53, 59, 78
Crop-lien system: 230-233
Crow Indians: 240
Crusade in Europe (Eisenhower):
403
Crusades: 5, 7, 8, 30, 320
Cuba: 17, 21-22, 195-196, 207, 324;
insurrection against Spain, 330-
331; Spanish-American War, 195-
196, 311, 332-335; Platt Amend-
ment, 335
Cummins, Senator Albert B.: 315
Currency Act (1764): 100
Current, Richard N.: 157
Curtis, Cyrus H.: 296
Custer, General George A.: 243
Czechoslovakia: 412, 432; occupied
by Hitler, 383
D'Ango, Jean: 35
Daniels, Josephus: 211, 353
Dante: 288
Darlan, Admiral Jean: 407
Darrow, Clarence: 356
Dartmouth College v. Woodward-
160
Darwin, Charles: 13, 259-260, 356
Daugherty, Harry: 361
Davidson Mountain: 246
Davis, Jefferson: 206-207, 361
Davis, John W.: 361
Davis, Kingsley: 437
Dawes Act: 244
Deadwood, S. D.: 247, 249
Death of a Nobody, The (Remains) :
348
Debs, Eugene V.: 280
Decker, Sarah P.: 288
Declaration of Independence: 105-
106, 115, 120, 136, 188, 193
Declaration of the United Nations:
405, 421
Declaratory Act: 102
Defense Plants Corporation: 395
Defoe, Daniel: ftn. 60
Deism: 82
Delaware: 39-40, 63, 65, 106, 125,
208; charter granted to, 39
Democracy: Jeffersonian, 141-146;
Jacksonian, 177-183
Democratic Party: ftn 135, 137,
181-182, 193, 195, 206-207, 217,
219-228, 283-284, 314, 317, 335,
345, 356, 361-362, 372, 377-380,
385, 424, 435
Democratic Review: 200
Democratic Societies: 136-137
Denmark: 384
Depew, Chauncey M.: 212
Depression: of 1819, 159; of 1837,
172-175, 277; of 1857, 277; of
1873, 227, 272, 321; of mid 1880's,
235, 275; of 1893, 275, 280, 284;
of 1907, 290, 302-303; of the
1930>s, 350, 368-377, 394, 398,
328
Desert Land Act: 254
Detroit News: 328-329
Dew, Thomas R., 186
Dewey, Commodore George: 331-
332
Dewey, Thomas E.: 186, 413, 434
Dias, Bartholomew: 15, 18
Diaz, Porfirio: 339-340
Dickinson, John: 115-116
Dinwiddie, Governor Robert (Vir-
ginia) : 90
Direct primary: 309
Discrimination, racial, see also Seg-
regation: 338, 354, 397, 431
Dixon-Yates private power project:
375
Dodge City, Kan.: 249-250
Doenitz, Admiral Karl: 400
Dole, Sanford B.: 326
"Dollar diplomacy": 339
Dolliyer, Senator Jonathan P.: 315
Dominican Republic: 16
Doolittle, James H.: 401-402
Douglas, Senator Paul H.: 436
Douglas, Stephen A.: 195, 197, 201-
202
Drake, E. L.: 271
Drake, Francis: 41, 42
"Drake's Folly": 271
Dred Scott decision: 197, 206
Dreiser, Theodore: 348, 359
Drew, Daniel: 265
"Dry farming": 256
Dubliners (Joyce): 348
Duer, William: 113, 133
Dulles, John Foster: 428-429, 437
Dumbarton Oaks: 421
Dumond, Dwight L.: 185
Dunkirk: 384
Dunmore, Governor Lord (Vir-
ginia): 99, 109
Dunne, Finley Peter: 283, 333
Duponts: 364
Durant, William C.: 293-294
Dutch: 27, 29, 32, 34, 36-44,
55-59, 62-66, 78, 81, 83, 90, 113;
Albany settled by, 23
Dutch East India Company: 39, 42
Dutch West India Company: 28, 39
Early, General Jubal: 210
East India Company: see British,
and Dutch, and French East India
Company
Edict of Nantes: 42, 60
Edinburgh Review, 152
Edison, Thomas A.: 291
Education: 182, 190, 278, 357, 398,
431; in Massachusetts Bay Colony,
50, 79; federal aid to, 143; after
Revolution, 109, 114
Edwards, Jonathan: 74, 113
Egypt: 156, 406, 409, 436
Einstein, Albert: 391
Eisenhower, Dwight D.: 134, 424-
425, 433; President, 362, 375, 435;
Crusade in Europe, 403; World
War II, 134, 403, 406-413; Korean
War, 435; and NATO, 433
El Dorado: 25, 41, 68, 212, 258, 266
Elections: colonial, 195, 220
Index 457
Elections, Presidential: 139, 141,
156, 178-183, 193, 206, 217, 221-
222, 225-227, 284, 310, 314-317,
335, 342, 346, 361-362, 368, 371,
377, 381-382, 413-414, 426, 435
Electric power industry: 362, 364,
374, 380
Electrical appliances: 388
Electricity: 245, 291-295, 364
Electrochemical processes: 364
Eliot, Sir John: 44-45
Eliot, T. S.: 349
Elizabeth I, Queen of England: 32,
35, 40-43, 80
Elk Hills, California: 361
Ellsworth, Kansas: 250
Emancipation: gradual, 109, 185
Emancipation Proclamation: 209,
215-216
Embargo Act (1807): 147
Emerson, Ralph Waldo: 173, 177,
184, 210, 438
Empress of China (ship): 113
Engineering News: 303-304
England: 11-15, 23, 31-34, 38, 42-
45, 48, 50, 53, 60-63, 66, 68, 70,
72, 93, 95-96, 168, 184, 187-188,
195, 210, 252, 272-273, 320-327,
330, 336-337, 383, 421, 431-433;
Labrador claimed by, 19; in the
New World, 23, 27-29, 37-41,
45-49, 55-61, 65-68, 77-80, 83-
85, 94-108; relations with Spain,
32, 35, 40-42, 63, 90, 137, 151-
152; American Revolution, 67,
105-108, 113; after Revolution,
117, 133, 136, 170; relations with
colonies, 67, 74, 80, 89, 105-108;
during French Revolution, 137;
industrial revolution, 93-94, 170-
171, 173, 321; War of 1812, 146-
150, 155, 157-158; boundary
dispute between British Guiana
and Venezuela, 329; World War
I, 341-347; World War II, 384-418
England, Church of, see Church of
England
Enterprise (aircraft carrier) : 394
Equitable Life Assurance Society:
287
"Era of Good Feelings, The": 155-
161
Eratosthenes: 18
Erie Canal: 154, 165-167
Erie Railroad: 265
Essex (aircraft carrier): 394
''Essex Junto": 145
458 Index
Ethiopia: invaded by Mussolini, 350,
382
Evangelism: 182, 186-187, 356
Evans, Oliver: 171, 355
Everett, Edward: 176
Everybody's (magazine) : 306-307
Exploration: early, 11-19, 321
Exports: 296-304; in colonial days,
71-78
Factories: 171-172, 200-204, 208,
263-264, 277-281, 291-292, 304,
309; in the South, 213, 234-235;
electricity used in, 362-364; legis-
lation concerning, 308; during
World War II, 393-397; see also
Manufacturing
Fair, James G.: 246
Fall, Albert B.: 361
Fargo, William G.: 247-248
Farm Mortgage Act: 379
Farquier, Francis: 75
Farragut, Admiral David Glasgow:
209
Federal Home Loan Act (1932):
373
Federal Housing Administration: 374
Federal Reserve System: 314, 318,
374; created, 318
Federal Trade Commission: 313,
318
Federalist, The: 123, 125, 428
Federalists: 125, 133-141, 144-145,
156, 158, 178, 182
Felton, John: 45
Fencing, barbed wire: 253, 257
Ferdinand, Holy Roman Emperor:
32
Ferdinand, King of Hungary and
Bohemia, 31
Ferdinand V, King: 12-15, 29-30
Ferguson, Adam: 114
Feudalism: 4, 5, 10
Field, Stephen J.: 262
Finland: 383-384, 412
Finney, Charles Grandison: 186
First Continental Congress: 99, 103,
104
First National Bank of New York:
299
First Reconstruction Act: 221
Fisher, Irving: 372
Fishing: 19-20, 35-38, 48-50, 66,
78-79, 88-89, 108, 150-151, 328-
329
Fisk, Jim: 265
Fisk College: 223
Fitch, John: 171
Fithian, Philip: 73
Fitzhugh, George: 186
Fletcher v. Peck: 160
Fleury, Jean: 35
Flood, James C.: 246
Florida: 36, 62, 78, 98, 117, 149,
208, 227, 332; early exploration
of, 19, 26; purchased from Spain,
63, 133-4, 144, 148, 151; admis-
sion to the Union, 133-134, 175;
secession, 206
Flower, B. O.: 306
Foch, Marshal: 344-345
Foot, Samuel A.: 176
Forbes, Charles R.: 360-361
Forbes, John Murray: 202
Force Act: 224
Ford, Henry: 198, 294-295, 350
Ford Motor Company: 294-295, 304,
380, 388
Ford's Theater: 218
Foreign Affairs (magazine): 426,
428
Formosa: 434
Forrestal, James V.: 419
Forts, see names of forts
Fortune Magazine: 368-369, 381
Four Freedoms: 385-386
"Fourteen Points," Wilson's: 345,
386
Fox, Charles James: 96
Frame of Government (Penn) : 64
France: 15, 31, 33-34, 38, 41-44, 56,
60, 67-70, 90, 94, 100, 137-139,
148, 170, 187, 195, 321-322, 327,
330, 336-337, 350, 383, 423, 426,
433; in the New World: 23, 27-
29, 35-39, 55-58, 62, 65-66, 72,
80, 84, 87-92, 97-98, 140, 144;
aid to Colonies in Revolutionary
War: 107; World War I, 343-349;
World War II: 384, 389, 393-394,
404-413, 418
Francis I, King of France: 35
Franco, Francisco: 382, 408
Franklin, State of: 117
Franklin, Benjamin: 82, 84, 93, 96-
99, 108, 112, 115, 120-121, 140;
investments of: 84, 99; American
Philosophical Society founded by,
112
Frederick the Great: 90, 92
"Free Soil" Party: 161, 193, 206
Freedmen's Bureau: 215, 217-218,
220, 225, 232
Freedmen's Bureau Act: 220
Frelinghuysen, Theodore: 74
French East India Company: 42
French Indo-China: 322
French North Africa: 407-409
French Revolution: 68, 136-7
Freneau, Philip: 135
Freud, Sigmund: 13, 348
Friends, see Quakers
Froude, James Anthony; 96
Fry, Roger: 301
Fugger, Jacob: 31
Fugitive slave law: 194-195
Fulton, Robert: 165, 171
"Fulton's Folly": 171
"Fundamental Orders of Connecti-
cut": 55
Fur trade: 36-39, 48-50, 63, 66, 78,
83,89, 117, 133,241,249
G. I. Bill of Rights: 398
Gadsden, Christopher: 76, 101
Gadsden, James: 195
Gage, General Thomas: 104
Galena, Illinois: 175
Gallatin, Albert: 140, 149; Secretary
of the Treasury, 142, 145
Gama, Vasco da: 15, 18, 24
Garfield, James A.: 220
Garrett, John W.: 265
Garrison, William Lloyd: 186
Gary, E. H.: 352
Gates, John W. ("Bet-a-million") :
286-287
Gaulle, General Charles de: 407-
408, 411
General Electric Company: 367-368
General Federation of Women's
Clubs: 288, 308
General Motors Corp.: 293-294, 304,
363, 380
General Theory of Employment, In-
terest, and Money (Keynes) : 373
Genet, "Citizen" Edmond: 136
George I, King of England: 68, 94
George II, King of England: 63, 68,
94, 98
George III, King of England: 68, 92,
95, ftn 95, 96, 98, 103, 105-106,
108, 115, 136
Georgia: 71, 76, 85, 88, 99, 109,
125, 132, 158, 163, 190, 194, 210-
212, 215, 219, 222, 224, 228, 233,
238, 355, 413; founded, 63; Yazoo
River region held by, 143; seces-
sion, 206
Germany: 32-33, 84, 89-90, 113,
161, 303-304, 321-322, 330, 337,
Index 459
382-383, 386, 389-391, 398, 427,
432-434; Samoa, 324-325; World
War I, 340-347; World War II,
383-385, 400-412, 418
Gettysburg, Pa.: 209-210
Ghengis Khan: 4, 8, 10, 12, 15,
16, 20
Ghent, Treaty of: 150-152
Gibbons v. Ogden: 165
Gilbert, Humphrey: 41
Gilbert Islands: 415-416
Gilpin, William: 239
Girard, Stephen: 112
Giraud, General Henri: 407
Gladden, Washington: 307
Glass-Steagall Act (1933): 374
Glidden, Joseph: 257
"Glorious Revolution": 93
Goering, Hermann: 388
Gold: 5, 11, 14-16, 22, 24-30, 35,
41, 46, 68, 79, 113, 194-195, 241,
245-247, 258
Golden Hind, 41
G6mes, Estevan: 19, 20
Gompers, Samuel: 279-280, 351
Gorges, Fernando: 51
Gould, Jay: 259, 265, 272, 279
Grady, Henry: 211-213, 234-235,
238
"Grand Alliance": 404, 418
Grand Army of the Republic: 220
Grand Coulee Dam: 394
Granger movement, see National
Grange
Grant, Ulysses Simpson: 134, 184;
President, 209-210, 221-222, 225,
227, 312, 323-324; re-elected
President, 226
Gray, Elisha: 276
Gray, Horace: 262
Great Britain, see England
"Great Compromise": 121
"Great Migration": 158
Great Northern Railroad: 267
Greeley, Horace: 174-175, 197, 226
Green, Norvin: 275-276
Green Mountain Boys: 104
Greene, General Nathanael: 107
Greenland: 18
Greer, (U.S.S.): 400
Grenville, George: 100
Gresham, Walter Q.: 325
Grimes, Senator James W.: 198
Groves, General Leslie R.: 392, 425
Grundy, Felix: 147
Guadalcanal: 414-415
Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of: 194
460 Index
Guam: 333, 415-416
Guano: 323
Guggenheim, Daniel: 247, 316, 324
H-bomb: 425
Haiti: 16
Half Moon: 39
"Half -Way Covenant": 54
Halsey, Admiral William F.: 402
Hamilton, Alexander, 87, 113, 115,
140-141, 145-146, 153, 428; Con-
stitutional Convention, 120-121,
123; U. S. Constitution supported
by, 125, 126; Secretary of the
Treasury, 130-131, 132, 134-135,
138; Report on Manufactures, 133;
and Washington's "Farewell Ad-
dress," 138
Hammond, Senator James H.: 207
Hampton, Ben: 306
Hampton's (magazine): 306-307
Hancock, John: 102, 104, 119
Hanks, Nancy: 161-162
Hanna, Mark: 238, 284, 308
Hannibal & St. Jo Railroad: 250
Hanover National Bank: 299
Hapsburgs: 30-34, 187
Harding, Warren G.: 370; President,
346, 354-355, 360-361
Hargreaves, James: 169
Harper, William: 186
Harpers Ferry, Va.: 198
Harper's Monthly: 263, 307, 360
Harper's Weekly: 276
Harriman, Edward Henry: 299-300
Harris, Townsend: 321-324
Harrison, William Henry: 148, 182,
193, 311,327
Harte, Bret: 297
Hartford Convention: ftn 151, 156-
157
Harvard, John: 50
Harvard University: 50, 74, 289-
290
Hawaii, 324-326, 335, 401-402; and
imperialism, 324; agitation for
statehood, 326; annexation by
U.S., 326, 333
Hawkins, John: 35, 40-42
Hawkins, William: 40
Hay, John: 332; Secretary of State,
337
Hayes, Rutherford B.: 227; inaugu-
ration, 228; President, 227-228
Hayne, Robert Y.: 176-177
"Head rights" system: 46
Hearst, George: 261
Hearst, William Randolph: 261,
330-331
Hemingway, Ernest: 360
Henderson, Leon: 395
Henderson Field: 414
Henry, Patrick: 99, 103, 110, 115,
124
Henry IV, King of France: 34, 36
Henry VII, King of England: 11-13
Henry VIII, King of England: 31-
32, 40-42, 80
Henry the Navigator: 11-14
Hepburn Act: 314
Higham, John: 354
Hill, James L: 267, 286, 299-300
Hirohito, Emperor: 418
Hiroshima: Atomic bombing, 402-
403, 417
Hispaniola: 16
Hiss, Alger: 351, 424
Hitler, Adolph: 382-386, 391-394,
400-401, 404; suicide, 413
Hoban, James: 142
Hofstadter, Richard: 333-334
Holborn, Hajo: 323
Holding companies: 361, 374
Holladay, Ben: 248
Holmes, Oliver Wendell: 262
"Holy Experiment," Penn's: 65
Holyoke, Mass.: 204
Home Owners Loan Corporation:
374
Homestead Act: 253, 254
Hoover, Herbert: 361, 370-371, 374;
Secretary of Commerce, 361, 370,
376; President, 362, 368-373
Hopkins, Harry: 377, 389
Hopkins, Mark: 266
Hough, Emerson: 354
House of Burgesses: 46, 75
House Rules Committee: 315
Houston, Sam: 174
Howard College: 223
Howe, Elias: 269
Howe, Quincy: 372-373
Hudson, Henry: 39
Hudson's Bay Company: 37
Huerta, Victoriano: 340
Hughes, Charles Evans: 302
Huguenots: 34, 36, 41, 42, 63
Hull, Cordell: 382, 420-421
Hungary: 31, 33, 257, 321, 355,
412, 434
Hunter, Robert: 305
Huntington, Collis P.: 266, 272
Huron Indians: 37
Index 461
Hutchinson, Anne: 54
Hutchinson, Governor Thomas: 97
Iceland: 18, 400
Illinois Central Railroad: 201-202
Illinois Steel Company: 273
Immigration, see Migration
Imperialism, U. S.: 330-335, 337-
338, 341, 434; World, 321-323
Impressment, British practice of:
146, 149
Indentured servants: 46-47, 70-73,
109
Independence (aircraft carrier) : 394
Independent (magazine) : 263-264
India: 12, 15, 18, 24, 58, 67, 258,
304, 393, 402, 417, 433
Indian Reorganization Act (1934):
244
Indians, American: 10, 46, 62, 72,
77, 89, 92, 98, 99, 109, 151, 162,
192; see also names of tribes;
colonies menaced by 55, 65, 87;
trouble caused by, after American
Revolution, 116-117, 128, 133-
134, 137, 148-149; in the West,
118-119, 138, 174, 185-186, 240-
245, 249, 250, 258
Indigo: 69, 76, 78
Indonesia: 39, 43, 433
Industrial Commission: 307
Industrial Revolution: 93, 94, 170-
173, 321
Industry: 93, 94, 268-277, 363, 376,
379-380, 431; see also names of
industries: Northern, before the
Civil War, 203-204; after Civil
War, 268-273; in the South, 228-
237; "Morganization," 285-318;
specialization in, 173; science and,
170-173; concentration of, 286;
expansion of, 296; mergers, 298-
299; boom in 1920's, 362-368;
during World War II, 389-394,
398-399
Influence of Sea Power upon His-
tory, The (Mahan): 327
Initiative: 310
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes
of the Wealth of Nations (Smith) :
93
Inquisition, see Spanish Inquisition
Installment buying: 367
Institutes of the Christian Religion
(Calvin): 32-33
Insular Cases: 335
Insull, Samuel: 367
Insurance Company of North Amer-
ica: 293
Interchurch World Movement: 352
Intercontinental ballistic missiles:
388, 390, 425, 436
Interior, Bureau of the: 242
Interior Department, U. S.: 361
International Atomic Energy Com-
mission: 422
International Bank for Reconstruc-
tion and Development: 420, 423
International Court of Justice: 421
International Harvester Company:
299
International Monetary Fund: 420,
423
Interstate Commerce Act: 283
Interstate Commerce Commission:
283-284, 314, 316
Intolerable Acts: 103,104
Investments, foreign: 167, 200, 252,
295-296, 428-429
Investors' Guild: 303
Iowa: 197, 201, 315; admission to
the Union, 175
Ireland: 41, ftn 61, 62, 296, 401
Iron Act (1750): 96-97
Iron industry: 155, 201, 236, 238,
244-245, 272-274, 291, 303-304;
in colonial days, 83-84; see also
Steel
Iroquois Indians: 39, 66
Isabella, Queen: 12-15, 29-30
Isidore, Cardinal: 11
Islam: 4, 7-11, 13-14, 17, 20, 29-30
Isolationism: 318, 349-350, 382, 385,
388, 394, 405, 420, 422, 428,
431-432, 436
Israel: 432
Italy: 8, 10, 11, 17, 30, 31; World
War II, 406-407, 409
Iwo Jima: 416-417
Jackson, Andrew: 149-151, 156, 177-
183, 193, 199, 207; President,
Ufc 181: Indian policy, 179; fiscal
policies, 179-180; banking policies,
180; "Specie Circular," 181-182
Jackson, James: 132
Jackson, Patrick Tracy: 173
Jackson, Thomas J. ("Stonewall") :
209
Jacobins: 136
Jamaica: 59, 66
James, Frank: 216, 249
James, Jesse: 216, 249
462 Index
James I, King of England: 43, 44,
45, 49, 64, 72
James II, King of England: 60, ftn.
61,64
James HI, the "Pretender": 66, 68
Janissaries: 10
Japan: 17, 321-324, 337-339, 350,
382-383, 427, 433; World War
II, 386-387, 396, 401-426; after
World War II, 432-433
Jay, John: 108, 125, 130, 137-138
Jefferson, Thomas: 75, 103, 105-
106, 110, 114, 115, 120, 148-152,
161, 193, 262, 354; Secretary of
State, 130-138; Democratic So-
cieties sponsored by, ftn 135, 137;
Vice-President, 139, 140; Presi-
dent, 141-147, 165; Inaugural
Address, 141-142; "American Sys-
tem", 145-146; message to Con-
gress (1806), 145
Jeffreys, Judge: 60
Jenkins, Captain: 90
Jesuits: 31, 33, 37, 60
Jodl, General Alfred, 413
Johnson, Andrew: 217; President,
218-222
Johnson, Joseph: 209
Johnson, Tom L.: 308
Joint Chiefs of Staff: 404, 406, 415,
435
Joliet, Louis: 37
Jones, Samuel M. ("Golden Rule") :
308
Jordan: 433
Joyce, James: 348
Judiciary Act: (1789), 129; (1801),
141
Julian, George W.: 218
Justice Department, U. S.: 122-123,
361, 381; organized, 129; Anti-
Trust division created, 314, 381
Kalakaua, King: 326
Kamikaze attacks: 417
Kansas-Nebraska Bill: 195
Kansas Pacific Railroad: 243, 250
Kay, John: 169
Kazin, Alfred: 359
Keith, Minor: 324
Kelley, William D. ("Pig Iron"):
212-213
Kellogg-Briand pact: 382
Kelly, William: 269
Kennan, George F.: 426-427
Kentucky: 109, 117-118, 147, 154,
161, 179, 191, 201, 207-208; ad-
mission to the Union, 133
Kentucky Resolutions : 140-143
Kerensky, Alexander: 343
Keynes, John Maynard: 373
Khrushchev, Nikita: 427
Kidd, Captain William: 83
Kier, Samuel M.: 270-271
King, Admiral Ernest J.: 401-402,
404
King, Rufus: 156
"King Caucus": 156
King George's War: 90
King Philip's War: 55, 89
King William's War: 66
ICing's Mountain: 106
Kipling, Rudyard: 319-320
"Kitchen Cabinet": 178
Klan of Tomorrow, The (Evans):
355
Knickerbocker Club: 300
Knights of Labor: 278-279
Knox, Henry: 130
Knox, John: 34, 42, 43
Korean War: 322, 433-435
Ku Klux Klan: 224, 355-356
Ku Klux Klan Act: 224, 225, 227
Kublai Khan: 17
Kuhn, Loeb & Company: 299
Kwajalein: 416
Labor Department, U. S.: estab-
lished 316; as a separate depart-
ment, 316
Labor force: 69-71, 192-193, 231-
236, 264, 273, 276, 293, 304,
307-308, 312-316, 326, 351-354,
361, 366-378, 395; (see also Child
labor): colonial, 27; following
American Revolution, 109; fac-
tory, 171-172, 176, 182, 185;
organization of the, 182; in 1910,
303; women in the, 171-172, 308-
309, 397; in 1920s, 366-367
Labor Unions, see also names of
unions: 277-281, 298, 351-357,
361, 363, 378-380, 429; growth of,
380-381; during World War H,
395
Labrador: 18, 19, 150
Ladies' Home Journal: 295-297, 307
Lafayette, Marquis de: 136
La Follette, Robert M.: 307, 311,
315, 317
Lake Erie, Battle of: 149, 154, 165
Land Acts: 143, 159-160, 175-176,
179-181, 254, 290
Land Ordinance (1785): 118, 143
Land speculation: 72-73, 84, 86,
90, 97-99, 112-113, 116, 118, 134,
143, 159, 162, 164, 167, 171, 174,
180-182, 254-255, 368
Landon, Alfred M.: 378
Langland, William: 6
Laramie, Wyoming: 249-250
La Salle, Robert Cavelier de: 37
Last Chance Gulch: 246
Latin America: 152, 187, 321, 324,
327, 336-339, 382, 401; U. S. in-
terest in, 330, 336, 399
Latrobe, B. H.: 142, 170
Laud, William: 45
Laurens, Henry: 76-77
Lawrence, Amos: 177
Lawrence Scientific School: 290
jL^wson, Thomas W.: 306 "- -
y League^ ol Nations: 345-348, 354,*
3727382 _ . - - -
Lee, Higginson & Company: 294, 304
Lee, Richard Henry: 105
Lee, General Robert E.: 184, 197,
209-210, 213, 218
Lend-lease: 386, 423; reverse, 396
L'Enfant, Pierre Charles: 142
Lenin: 426-427, 436
Leo X, Pope: 31
Leopard (British warship) : 146
Levant: 7, 8, 11
Lewis, John L.: 379-380, 395
Lewis, Men wether: 144
Lewis, Sinclair, 360
Lexington: 96, 104
Leyte: 416-417
Liberal Republican Party: 226
Liberator: 186
Liberty (sloop): 102
Life (magazine): 431
Liliuokalani, Queen: 326
Lincoln, Abraham: 161-162, 208-
209, 214, 216-219, 317; debates
with Douglas, 198; "house divided"
speech, 198; views on slavery,
187-188, 198, 204-206; Inaugural
Address, 207; President: 161-317;
Emancipation Proclamation, 209,
215; re-elected President, 217;
second Inaugural Address, 218;
assassinated, 218, 413
Lincoln, Nancy: 161
Lincoln, Thomas: 161
Lincoln, "Virginia John": 161
Lindbergh, Charles A.: 364, 388,
391, 405
Lindsay, Vachel: 73
Index 463
Lippmann, Walter: 358
Little Big Horn, battle of: 243
Litvinov, Maxim: 405
Lloyd George, David: 345-346
Locke, John: 60-61, 86, 431
Lodge, Henry Cabot: 315, 320, 328,
330-332
London Company: 45-48, 51
London Daily News: 199
Long, Huey: 377
"Lord Dumnore's War": 99
Louis XIV, King of France: 37, 60,
ftn 61, 66, 67, 68
Louis XV, King of France: 68
Louis XVI, King of France: 136-137
Louis Philippe: 155
Louisiana: 154, 164, 207, 217, 222,
227; secession: 206
Louisiana Purchase, The: 143, 144,
149, 195
Louisville Courier-Journal: 212
Lovejoy, Reverend Elijah: 186
Lowell, Francis Cabot: 172-173
Lowell, Mass.: 154
Loyalists: 105, 106, 108, 112-113,
116
Loyalty oaths: 424
Loyola, Ignatius: 31
Lusitania: 342
Luther, Martin: 22, 31, 32, 33
Lutheranism: 32
MacArthur, Douglas: 415-418, 433-
435; Korean War, 434-435
Mackay, John W.: 246, 276
Maclay, William: 127
Madero, Francisco: 339-340
Madison, James: 114-115, 122-125,
131-133, 135, 139, 140, 149, 156;
Constitutional Convention, 122-
125, 132; tariff bill, 128-131; bank
bill approved by, 131-132; articles
written for the National Gazette,
135; anti-Federalist, 135; Secre-
tary of State, 142, 146-148; Presi-
dent, 149-150, 157
Mania: 355
Magazines: advertising media, 255,
296-298; see also magazines by
name; Muckrake
Magellan, Ferdinand: 20, 30
Mahan, A. T.: 321, 327
Maine (battleship): 327-328, 331
Manchu dynasty: 312, 339
Manchuria: 322
Manhattan District Project: 392,
394
464 Index
Manhattan Island: purchased from
Indians, 39
Mann, Thomas: 348
Mann-Elkins Act: 316
Manufacturing: 93, 145, 147, 155,
158, 168-177, 185, 200, 203-204,
225, 228, 234-235, 273, 286, 291-
297, 318, 361, 388-391, 395; in
colonies, 83-84, 97, 128, 133; see
also Industry, Business
Manumission: 164, 185
Mao Tze-tung: 434
Marbury v. Madison: 160
Maria Theresa: 90
Marianas: 415-416
Marie Antoinette: 136
Marines, U. S.: 197, 326, 339, 414
Marquette, Pere Jacques: 37
Marshall, George C.: 389, 404, 406,
420, 424, 432; Secretary of State,
432
Marshall, John: 110, 124; Chief
Justice, 141, 160, 165
Marshall, Thomas R.: 353
Marshall Islands: 415
Marshall Plan: 432
Mary, Queen of Scots: 42
Mary I, Queen of England: 32
Mary II, Queen of England: 60, 62,
64,65
Maryland: 47, 64, 65, 70, 71, 72, 76,
84, 85, 119, 125, 160, 163-166,
206, 208-209; settlement of, 47
Mason, John: 51
Mason-Dixon line: 65, 212
Mass production: 257, 398
Massachusetts, after Revolutionary
War: 115-117, 119, 125, 154-155,
161, 171-172, 176, 197, 217, 262,
328, 351-352; adoption of state
constitution, 115
Massachusetts Bay Colony: 23, 45,
48, 49, 50, 51, 52 ftn, 65, 78, 88,
89, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104,
110, 113, 116; education in, 50;
government of, 51-56
Massachusetts Institute of Technol-
ogy; 290, 391
Masters, Edgar Lee: 348
Mather, Cotton: 50, 89, 359
Maverick, Samuel: 53-54
Maximilian: 30, 31
Maximum Employment Act (1946) :
429
Mayans: 25
Mayflower: 48
Maysville Bill: 179
McCarthy, Joseph: 424-425
McCarthyism: 424-425
McClellan, General George B.: 209
McClure, A. K.: 212
McClure, S. S.: 306, 320
McClure's (magazine): 306-307,320
McConnell, Bishop Francis J.: 352
McCormick Harvester Company:
279
McCoy, Joseph M.: 250
McCulloch v. Maryland: 160
McDowell, General Irvin: 208-209
McKinley, William: 238; President,
284, 312, 320, 331, 333-335, 337;
assassinated, 311
McKinley Tariff: 311, 326
McKinley Tariff Act: 327
Meade, General George: 210
Mellon, James: 247, 263
Mellon, Thomas: 247, 263
Mencken, H. L.: 358-360 -
Merchant Marine: 393, 399; U.S.,
200, 328, 344; World War I, 344;
World War II, 393, 399-400
Mergers: 298-299, 300-302, 367
Merritt, General Wesley: 332
Messianic impulse: 318-346, 419
Methodists: 74, 161-162, 187, 333
Metropolitan Club: 301
Metropolitan Museum: 301
Mexican War: 193-194, 340
Mexico: 19-27, 30, 174, 193-197,
207, 209, 246, 249, 339-340, 343
Michigan: 175, 198, 265, 380;
admission to Union, 143, 174
Midway: 402, 414
Migration: "Great Migration," 158;
to America, 70, 73, 140, 152-153,
199-200, 255, 304-307, 354-355;
to the West, 69, 143, 158-159, 174-
175, 200-206, 255
Mill, John Stuart: 93
Miller, Perry: 53
Miller, Thomas W.: 360-361
Milton, John: 43
Mind of South, The (Cash) : 189
Mining: 26, 73, 175, 244-249, 266,
312-313,316, 324,391,395
Minnesota: 255-257, 267; admission
to Union, 175-176
Missionaries: 30, 175, 187, 321, 325-
326; Franciscan, 26; Jesuit, 37;
Quaker, 64-65
Mississippi: 154, 164, 191, 201, 209,
216, 221, 233-234, 238, 249-250,
253, 265, 267; admission to Union,
143; secession, 206
Mississippi River: 37, 66, 98, 108,
117-118, 133, 137-138, 144, 150-
151, 154, 161, 165, 167, 174, 201,
209, 248-250, 268, 399; discovered,
26; exploration of the, 37
Missouri (battleship): 418
Missouri Compromise: 193, 195, 197
Missouri Pacific Railroad: 250
Mitchell, John: 313
Mitchell, Sidney Z.: 367
Mohammed: 12
Mohammedanism, see Islam
Molasses Act: 80, 100
Moley, Raymond: 377
Molotov, Vyacheslav M.: 421
Mongols: 8, 10, 16
"Monkey Trial" : 356
Monroe, James: Secretary of State,
149, 156; President, 153, 156, 157
Monroe Doctrine: 152, 327, 329,
336
Montaigne: 22
Moncalm, Louis Joseph: 92
Montesquieu, Baron de: 68
Montezuma: 20, 21, 22, 25, 35
Montgomery, Bernard Law: 406-
407, 411
More, Thomas: 22
Morgan, Anne: 301
Morgan, John Pierpont: 173, 236,
286-318, 351, 363
Morgan, Mrs. John Pierpont: 301
Morgan, Louisa: 301
"Morganization" : 285-3 1 8
Morison, Samuel Eliot: 73, 75, 393,
399, 414
Mormons: 175
Morrill Act: 290
Morris, Gouverneur: 116
Morris, Nelson: 263
Morris, Robert: 112, 115
Morristown, N. J.: 107
Movie industry: 295, 365
Muckrake magazines: 306-308, 320
Muller v. Oregon: 309
Murphy, Edgar G.: 308
Murphy, Frank: 380
Murray, James: 74
Mussolini, Benito: 382, 406, 409;
murdered, 409
Mutual Life Insurance Company:
299
Nagasaki: atomic bombing, 402-
403, 418
Nantes, Edict of: 42, 60
Index 465
Napoleon: 124, 144, 146-147, 150,
152, 320-321
Napoleonic wars: 145-148, 150
Narragansett Indians: 54, 55
Nation (magazine): 360
National Association of Manufac-
turers: 356-357
National Association of Stove Man-
ufacturers: 274
National Child Labor Committee:
308
National City Bank of New York:
296, 299
National Consumers' League: 308
National Credit Association: 368
National Gazette: 135
National Grange: 282, 356-357
National Industrial Recovery Act:
375
National Labor Relations Act: 378-
379
National Labor Relations Board:
378-379, 380
National Labor Union: 278
National Progressive Republican
League: 317
National Recovery Administration:
376-377
National Youth Administration: 378
Nationalism, see also under coun-
tries: growth of, 321
Nationalization: 352-353
Navajos: 240
Naval Act (1890): 328
Naval Advisory Board: 327
Naval War College: 327
Navigation, early: 11-19
Navigation Acts: 58-59, 72, 83
Navy Department, U.S.: created,
139
Navy, U.S.: 122, 152, 311, 321, 323,
327-328, 339, 419; under Jefferson,
142, 145; in 1880s, 324; World
War I, 393; World War II, 389,
393-394, 399-417
Nazis: 350, 386, 391, 408-409, 411-
412
Negroes: 47, 63, 66, 70, 76, 84-85,
109, 156, 188, 191-197, 200-209,
262, 278-279, 287-288, 293, 305,
355, 379-380, 397, 431; see also
Slavery and Slave trade; landed
in Virginia (1619), 46; free, 185-
186, 229; status of, after Civil
War, 213-237
Nelson, Donald: 389, 390
466 Index
Nelson, Admiral Horatio: 146
Netherlands: 31, 33, 38, 41-42, 47-
48, 56, 66; see also Dutch
Nettels, Curtis: ftn 52
Neutrality Acts: 382-383
Neutrality Proclamation ( 1793 ) :
137
New Amsterdam: 28, 40, 59, 62-63
New Deal: 368-382, 394-397, 413,
429
New England: 47-55, 62, 64, 79-83,
89, 101-102, 107-110, 113, 142-
145, 147-151, 154-155, 163, 171,
175-176, 203, 211-212, 253, 260,
325; effects of War of 1812, 149,
156, 176; economic difficulties,
157-158, 171, 192
New England Confederation: 55
New England Council: 49
"New England Way": 49, 53-54
New France: 36-37, 88-92
New Guinea: 329, 402, 414-416
New Hampshire: 55, 65, 84, 125,
157, 323; royal charter given to,
65-66
New Haven: 55
New Jersey: 74, 107, 109, 117, 125;
becomes royal colony, 64; corpo-
ration laws: 299
New Jersey Plan: 121
New Mexico: 25-26, 194, 240, 247,
309, 343, 392
New Orleans: 37, 117, 132-133, 144-
145, 154, 165-168, 175, 191, 200,
209, 216, 230; founded by French,
37; victory over British, 150, 179
New Orleans (steamboat): 165
New Republic (magazine) : 360
New York: 64-65, 69, 80-83, 88,
101-102, 109, 112-113, 117-120,
125-128, 135, 144-145, 154-156,
165, 191, 199, 227, 264-266, 277,
290, 299, 302, 311-314, 330, 361,
372; becomes royal colony, 64;
growth of, 82-83; after Revolu-
tion, 112-113, 117, 119-120, 125-
128, 135
New York Bankruptcy Act: 160
New York Central Railroad: 265
New York City: 166-168, 212, 226,
239, 263-264, 277, 291, 294, 300,
304, 364, 371, 399, 421; growth
of, 82-83; occupied by the British,
107, 112; U.S. capital, 126-128;
slums, 304-305, 429
New York Herald: 205
New York Journal: 330-331
New York Life Insurance Comoanv*
299 ^y-
New York Stock Exchange- 263-
264, 300, 331, 362-363, 367-368,
372-374
New York Sun: 330
New York Times, The: 302 425
427, 436-437 '
New York Tribune: 202, 226 238
New York World: 330-331
New Yorker (magazine) : 360
Newcomen, Thomas: 169
Newfoundland: 14, 19-20, 35-36 66
78, 108, 150, 385, 386
Newport, Captain Christopher: 45-46
Newport, R. I.: 69, 81, 191
Newton, Isaac: 168
Nez Perc6 Indian reservation: 246-
247
Nicaragua: 197, 336
Nicolson, Harold: 347
Nietzsche: 359
Niles, Hezekiah: 160
Nimitz, Admiral Chester W.: 402,
416
Nina: 14
Nisei: 396
Normandy: 410-411
North, Lord: 102, 103, 108
North American Review: 157
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO): 433,436-437
North Carolina: 36, 55, 62, 77, 117,
125, 177, 208, 224, 234-235;
becomes royal colony, 63
Northern Pacific Railroad: 267, 300
Northern Securities Company: 300,
312
Northmen: 18
Northwest Ordinance (1787): 118
Northwest Passage, search for the:
36-39
Norway: 384
Nova Scotia: 66, 78, 81
Oak Ridge, Tennessee: 392
O'Brien, William S.: 246
Ocean Mail Subsidy Act (1891) : 328
Oceania: 321
Office of Indian Affairs: 244
Office of Price Administration: 395
Office of Scientific Research and De-
velopment (OSRD): 391
Ogden, Utah: 267
Oglethorpe, James: 63
Ohio: 154, 161, 166, 172, 199, 218,
220, 227, 253, 271, 314, 360, 371;
admission to the Union, 143
Ohio Company of Virginia: 90
Ohio Valley: 65, 66, 90, 99, 118,
137, 154, 165
Oil industry: 236, 245, 247, 263,
270-271, 293, 295, 361, 393, 395,
400, 432
Ojeda, Alonso de: 19, 25
Okinawa: 416-417
Oliver, James: 256
Olmsted, Frederick Law: 191
Olney, Richard: 329
O'Neill, Eugene: 349, 360
Only Yesterday (Allen): 350
"Open Door" policy: 337-339
Open shop: 356-357; see Labor
Unions
"Operation Vittles": 433
Oppenheimer, J. Robert: 392
Order of Literary Patriotic Har-
monious Fists: 337
Oregon: 144, 175, 239, 241, 254
266; admission to the Union, 175-
176
Orient: 339; early search for route
to, 8, 11, 15, 17, 20, 24
Orlando, Vittorio: 345-346
Osage Indians: 240
"Ostend Manifesto": 195-196
Othman: 10
Otis, Harrison Gray: 163
Otis, James, Jr.: 98, 101
Ottoman Turks: 10
Owen-Glass Act: 318
Oxbow route: 247
Pago Pago: 324-325
Paine, Thomas: 105, 115
Pakistan: 433, 436-437
Palau Island: 415-416
Palmer, A. Mitchell: 353-354
Panama Canal: 330, 336, 399
Pan-American conference: 327
Panic: see Depression
Parcel post: 316
Paris, Peace of: 92, 93, 133, 136-137,
332, 344
Parker, Alton B.: 314
Party machines: see names of Par-
ties; Elections
Patent Office: 270
Patton, General George S.: 410-411
Pawnee Indians: 240
Payne- Aldrich Tariff Act: 315
Index 467
Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle: 90
Peace of Augsburg: 32, 33
Peace of Paris: 92, 93, 133, 136-137,
332, 344
Peace of Utrecht: 66, 67, 68, 79, 89
Pearl Harbor: 325; Japanese attack,
350, 387, 393-397, 400-401, 404
Peleliu: 416
Penn, William, 64, 65
Pennsylvania: colony of, 64, 65, 77,
83, 84, 85, 88,99, 110, 115, 125,
127, 132; indenture system in, 71;
growth of, 70, 81, 153; waterways,
166
Pennsylvania, University of: 290
Pennsylvania Railroad: 265, 272
Pensacola, Fla.: 151
People's Party: 283-284
Perkins, George W.: 293-294
Perry, Commodore Matthew C.:
321, 324
Perry, Captain Oliver Hazard: 149
Pershing, General John J.: 340, 343-
344
Philadelphia, Pa.: 65, 69, 82, 83,
99, 104, 112-113, 120, 121, 131-
132, 137, 166, 171, 184, 199, 200,
247, 265, 277; Quakers, 81; oc-
cupied by British, 107, 112
Philippine Sea, Battle of the: 416
Philippines: claimed for Spain, 20,
30; U. S. acquisition of, 323, 333-
334; in Spanish- American War,
320, 331-332; World War II, 415-
417
Phillips, David Graham: 306
Phillips, Wendell: 218
Pickens, Fort: 208
Pierce, Franklin: 195-196
"Pike's Peak or Bust": 245
Pilgrims: 23, 44, 47, 48, 49
Pinckney, C. C.: 141
Pinckney Treaty: 138
Pinta: 14
Pipe lines: 393
Piracy: 79-80, 83, 89, 128, 142, 188
Pitt, William: 92, 93, 94, 96, 100,
101
Pittsburgh, Pa.: 154, 165-166, 211,
247, 255, 262, 272-273
Pius V, Pope: 40
Pizarro, Francisco: 25
Plains Indians: 240-244
Platt, Charles: 293
Platt, Orville: 283
Platt Amendment: 335
Pliny: 11
468 Index
Plumb Plan: 353
Plymouth, Mass: 23, 40, 48, 55
Poland: 33, 257; German invasion
of, 383, 394; organized as a Com-
munist state, 412
Political Collapse of Europe, The
(Holborn): 323
Political parties, see also Elections,
and names of parties: beginnings
of, 134
Politics: 154; southern, 192; after
Civil War, 216-228; business, 281-
284; Progressive movement and,
305-318
Polk, James K.: President, 193-194
Polo, Marco: 16, 17
Ponce de Leon, Juan: 19
Pontiac's Conspiracy: 98, 100
Pony Express: 248
Pools: 274
Populist Revolt: 236
Populists: 284
Port Moresby, New Guinea: 402,
414
Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man (Joyce): 348
Portsmouth, Treaty of: 323
Portsmouth, R. I.: 323; established,
54
Portugal: 24, 29, 38-39, 81, 401;
contributions to navigation and ex-
ploration, 11-19, 24, 29, 35
Postal savings bank: 316
Postal Telegraph Company: 276
Potsdam Conference: 412, 417
Pound, Ezra: 348-349
Poverty (Hunter): 305
Powderly, Terence V.: 279, 281
Power industry: 374-375, 394; water,
169, 172-173
"Prairie schooners": 248
Pre-emption act (1841): 175
Presbyterians: 43, 53, 54, ftn. 61,
70, 74, 187, 260
Prester John: 12, 14, 17, 18
Principia (Newton): 168
Printing press, first new-world: 27
Progressivism: 307-318, 357
Prohibition: 310, 357-358, 362
Proust, Marcel: 347-348
Providence, R. I.: 171; founded, 54
Proximity fuse: 392
Ptolemy: 11, 14
Public Utitlity Holding Company
Act: 374
Public Works Administration: 375-
376, 394
Puerto Rico: 19, 332-335
Pulitzer, Joseph: 330-331
Pullman, George M.: 245, 268, 280
Purchasing power: 297, 366-367
Pure Food and Drugs Act: 311, 314
Puritans: 6, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48-49
50, 51, 52, 53, 60, 81, 82, 97, 184
Quakers: 33, 49, 53, 64, 65, 78, 81
82, 84, 353
Quebec: 23, 36, 88, 92, 98-99, 175,
409; assault on, 104
Quebec Act: 99, 103
Queen Anne's War: 66
Quetzalcoatl, 21
Rabaul: 414-415
Radar: 392-393
Raddison, Pierre Esprit: 37
Radio broadcasting: 392
Railroad Brotherhoods: 278
Railroad Retirement Act: 378-379
Railroads, see also names of roads:
168, 171, 187, 201-208, 228, 230,
232, 236, 238, 254, 259, 264-273,
277, 280-286, 291-292, 295, 299,
304-305, 314, 352-353, 370, 378;
first in U.S., 166; western, 167,
176, 243, 250; transcontinental,
195, 201-205, 225, 248, 324; rates,
316; mergers, 298-299, 300-302;
in Costa Rica: 324; nationaliza-
tion of the, 352-353
Raleigh, Walter: 41, 58
Ramsay, David: 114
Randolph, Edmund: 121, 156; At-
torney-General, 130
Randolph, Edward: 78
Randolph, John: 143-144
Randolph, Thomas Jefferson: 164
Rangoon: 417
Rauschenbusch, Walter: 308
Reading Railroad: 312-313
Recall: 310
Reconstruction: 215-224, 228, 234,
362
Reconstruction Finance Corporation:
373-374
Reed, Thomas B.: 261
Referendum: 310
"Reign of Terror": 136
Relief Act (1821): 160
Religion: in the Colonies, 74, 75,
82, 86, 89; evangelical, 74, 75,
186-187, 356
Remembrance of Things Past
(Proust): 348
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: 290
Report on Manufactures (Hamil-
ton): 133
Republican Party: 139-144, 156, 178,
181, 193, 206, 212, 315, 317-318,
327, 331, 335, 339, 377-381, 385,
420, 424, 426, 435; see also Elec-
tions; Jeffersonian organized, 135-
137; modern organized, ftn 135;
presidential campaign (1856):
197, 206; Radicals control, after
Reconstruction, 217-230
Reston, James: 427
Revenue Act (1935): 378
Revere, Paul: 104
Rhode Island: 45-46, 50, 54, 55,
69, 80, 81, 85, 98, 117, 120, 125,
155, 309; charter granted to, 54
Rice: 63, 69, 71, 72, 75, 76, 78, 88
Richelieu, Cardinal: 37
Richmond, Va.: 113, 166, 208-210,
292
Richmond Whig: 186
Ridgeway, E. J.: 306
Rittenhouse, David: 112
Roads: 87, 165, 230
Robinson, Edgar Eugene, 370
Robinson, John: 75
Rochester, N. Y.: 154
Rockefeller, John D.: 173, 247, 263,
270-272, 274, 299-302, 305, 312
Rogers, Henry H.: 247
Rogers, Will: 350
Romains, Jules: 348
Romanovs: 187
Rommel, General Erwin: 406-407
Roosevelt, Franklin D.: 372; Presi-
dent, 368-420; "bank holiday,"
373-374; Supreme Court and, 378-
379; Yalta Conference, 412, 415-
419, 421; death, 413
Roosevelt, Theodore: 312, 315-318,
323, 336-339; Cabinet, 314; Presi-
dent, 288, 300, 306, 311-314, 335,
338; Chilean dispute, 329; bound-
ary dispute between British Guiana
and Venezuela, 329; Spanish-
American War, 311-312, 320, 331-
332; Assistant Secretary of the
Navy, 311, 331; Open Door pol-
icy, 337-338
Roosevelt Leadership, The (Robin-
son): 370
Root, Elihu: 311, 339
Root-Takahira Agreement: 339
Rough Riders: 288, 311-313, 332
Rourke, Constance: 162
Index 469
Rousseau, J. J.: 354
Royal African Companies: 28
Rum, distilling of: 80, 83, 100
Rumsey, James: 171
Rural Electrification Administration:
375
Rush, Benjamin: 112
Russell, Charles Edward: 306
Russell, Majors, and Waddell: 247-
248
Russell, William H.: 248
Russia: 258, 321-323, 337-338, 383,
344, 386; U. S. recognition of
(1933), 382; World War II, 355,
388, 393, 398, 400-401, 404-408,
411-418, 431-434, 436; after World
War II, 388, 414, 418-428, 433
Russian Revolution: 322, 343, 351
Russo-Japanese War (1904-05): 322-
323, 338
Russo-Turkish War: 258
Ryan, Thomas Fortune: 287
Sacco, Nicola: 351
St. Augustine, Fla.: 36
St. Christopher Island: 66
St. Joseph, Mo.: 201, 248
St. Louis, Mo.: 144, 154, 174, 200-
201, 247, 277
St. Mihiel: 344
St. Paul and Pacific Railroad: 267
Saipan: 416
Salisbury, Lord: 329
"Salutary neglect," era of: 68
Samoa: 324-325
Sampson, Admiral William T.: 332
Sandys, Sir Edwin: 48
San Francisco, Calif,: 248, 266, 338,
401, 421
San Juan Hill: 332
San Salvador: 16
Santa Maria: 14
Santo Domingo: 323-324, 336
Saratoga: 191; battle of, 107
Satellites: space, 425, 427, 436
Satterlee, Herbert: 301
Saturday Evening Post: 295, 307,
354
Scalawags: 223, 225, 227
Scandinavia: 18, 29, 32, 38, 39, 40
Schiff, Jacob H.: 299-300
Schuyler, General Philip: 113, 135 ^
Science: Leonardo da Vinci's Experi-
ments recorded, 18; industry and,
170-173, 273, 289-298, 363-364,
366
Scientific Management: 290
470 Index
Scopes, John Thomas: 356
Scott, Dred: 197
Scott, Tom: 272
Scott^ Winfield: 150, 194
Scribner's Magazine: 296, 307
Secession: ftn 151, 156-157, 180,
180, 188, 194, 202-207, 229
Second Continental Congress: 104,
105, 108, 109, 115, 116
Second World War, The (Churchill) :
408, 418
Securities Exchange Act: 374
Sedition Act: 140, 142
Segregation, racial: 231, 338, 397,
431
Seligman & Company: 294
Seltzer, Louis B.: 437-438
Separatists: 43, 48, 53, 54
Serfs: 187
Servants, indentured: 46-47, 70-73,
109
Seven Days' Battle: 209
Seven Years War: 92, 97, 99
Seward, William Henry: 323, 327
Sewing machine: 269
Seymour, Horatio: 222
Shatter, General W. T.: 332
Shakespeare, William: 95
Sharecropping: 230-231, 233-234,
236
Shaw, George Bernard: 359
Shays, Captain Daniel: 119; "rebel-
lion," 119
Sheffield Scientific School: 290
Shenandoah Valley: 73, 161, 210
Sheridan, General Philip: 210
Sherman, Stuart: 360
Sherman, General William T.: 210,
242-243
Sherman Anti-Trust Act: 283-284,
286, 300
Sherwood, Robert: 389, 391
Shipbuilding: 78, 83, 128, 158, 165,
200, 302, 342, 388-389, 393-394
Siegfried, Andre: 365
Siemens, Werner: 289
Sigsbee, Captain C. D.: 331
Simkins, Francis B.: 234
Sinclair, Upton: 377
Sioux Indians: 240, 243, 247
"Sit-down strike,": 380
Sitting Bull: 243
Slater, Samuel: 171
Slave trade: 27, 28, 40, 122, 164,
184, 188-190
Slavery: 27, 44, 46, 47, 66, 70, 72,
75, 76, 78, 80, 84-85, 109, 118,
121, 156, 161, 163, 166, 176, 184-
210, 217, 219, 236; see also In-
dentured servants; in Virginia, 46;
Thirteenth Amendment, 217-218 '
Slick, Sam: 162-163
Slidell, John: 194
Smith, Adam: 93, 96
Smith, Alfred E.: 361-362
Smith, Hoke: 233
Smith, Jesse: 361
Smith, Captain John: 23, 45, 46
Smith-Connally Act: 395
Smuggling: 27, 80, 98, 100, 109,
164, 358
Social Darwinism in American
Thought (Hofstadter) : 334
Social Gospel movement: 307-308
Social Security Act: 378-379
Socialism: 314, 316, 365
Society of Cincinnati: 135
Society of Jesus: 31, 33, 37, 60
Solomon Islands: 414-415
Sons of Liberty: 101-102, 104
Sons of St. Tammany: 135
Soto, Hernando de: 26
South: 149, 154-168, 183-186, 192,
195, 200-210, 273, 281-283, 305,
431; colonial, 154-157; militant,
187-213; after Civil War, 211-238,
259; see also Confederate States of
America
South Carolina: 147, 163-164, 176,
179, 190-193, 197, 206-208, 223,
225, 227, 233, 235; becomes royal
colony, 63; rice planters, 63, 71,
75-76, 88; colonial life in, 76-77,
86, 88, 101, 113, 125; secession,
206
South Improvement Company: 271
Southern Manufacturers' Record;
235
Spain: 4, 12, 14-19, 29-35, 39, 44,
47, 56, 67, 137, 330, 350, 382,
401, 408; in the New World: 20,
24-29, 41, 59, 62, 65, 67, 72, 76,
78, 80-81, 87, 117-118, 144, 151-
152, 195; gold from the New
World, 22, 26, 28, 30, 35-38, 41,
94, 100; relations with England,
32, 35, 40, 42, 56, 63, 66, 80, 89-
90, 107, 136-137; colonies aided
by, in Revolution: 107
Spanish- American War: 312, 320,
325-326, 328-334
Spanish Armada: 42-43
Spanish Inquisition: 6, 29-34, 40,
43
Spanish Main: 35, 39, 42, 43, 89
Specialization in industry: 173
"Specie Circular": 181-182
Speculation: land, 72-73, 84, 86, 90,
97-99, 112-113, 116, 118, 134,
143; corporate securities, 298-302,
366-368; government securities,
Spencer, Herbert: 259-262, 305
Spindletop, Tex.: 236, 247
"Spoils system": 183
Spoon River Anthology (Masters):
348
Sprague, Frank Julian: 292
Spruance, Admiral Raymond: 416
Sputniks: 436-437
"Squatters": 175, 195
Stalin, Joseph: 383, 386, 405, 409,
418-419, 421, 426-427
Stalingrad: 401, 412
Stamp Act: 100-102
Stamp Act Congress: 101
Standard Oil Company: 271, 274,
299, 306
Stanford, Leland: 264, 266
Stanley, William: 291
Stanton, Edwin M.: 222
State Department, U. S.: 328, 419,
424, 426; established, 130
Steam engine: 169
Steam power: 169, 171, 259, 292
Steamboats: 163, 165-166, 168, 171,
Ste 2 e^2 2 12!'236! 238, 269-274, 303-
304, 351-353, 380, 393
Steffens, Lincoln: 306, 308
Stephens, Alexander: 206-207
Stephens, Uriah S.: 278
Stevens, J. L.: 326
Stevens, John: 171
Stevens, Thaddeus: 217, 219
Stevenson, Adlai: 435
Stevenson, Job Evans: 225
Stewart, A. T.: 199
Stock market: see New York Stock
Exchange
Stowe, Harriet Beecher: 197
Strangers in the Land (Hignam):
354
Street cars: 291-292
Strikes: 380, 395, 398-399; see Labor
Unions ^^
Strong, General W. E.: 232
Sturges v. Crowninshield: 160
Stuyvesant, Peter: 40
Suez Canal: 406
Suffrage, women's: 109, 182, lo,
308, 310
Index 471
Sugar: 39, 59, 62, 72, 78, 80, 100,
207, 274-275, 295, 325-326, 330
Sugar Act (1764): 100-101
Sullivan, George: 157
Sullivan, Mark: 370
Sumner, Senator Charles: 197, 217-
218
Sumner, William Graham: 305
Sumter, Fort: 208
Sun Dance: 243
Supreme Court, U. S.: 128-9, 141,
160, 221, 261-262, 274, 282-283;
see also Cases by name; creation
of, 128-129; decisions, 160, 197,
206, 236-237, 300, 309; Northern
Securities Company dissolved by,
300, 312; Insular Cases, 335; NRA
declared unconstitutional, 376,
378; AAA declared unconstitu-
tional, 377-378; Railroad Retire-
ment Act rejected by, 378-379;
Farm Mortgage Act rejected by,
379; F. D. Roosevelt and the,
378-379; segregation ruling, 431
Sutler's Mill: 245
Sweden: 40, 65, 384, 401
Sylvis, W. H.: 278
Szilard, Leo: 391
Taft, Senator Robert A.: 389-390,
405, 425
Taft, William Howard: President,
303, 314-318, 339
Taft-Hartley Act: 429
TaUeyrand: 139, 144, 147
Tarawa: 416
Tarbell, Ida: 306
Tariff: 236, 238, 258, 261, 311, 316,
326, 361; Madison's bill, 128-129,
131 protective, 133, 145, 158,
167-168, 179, 180, 193, 205 207,
225, 273, 315-316, 428; of 1832,
179-180; Payne-Aldrich, 315; Un-
derwood, 318; McKinley, 311,
326-327; in 1920s, 282; and New
Deal, 382; after World War U,
429
Taxation: 99, 159-160, 230, 378; in
the colonies, 86, 87, 97, 100-103,
116, 119, 121, 122, 128 132;
Sixteenth Amendment, 316; war-
time policies, 363; excess-profits,
363; during World War H, 396-
397
Taylor, Frederick W.: 290
Taylor, General Zachary: 194
Teapot Dome, Wyoming: 361
Tecumseh: 148
472 Index
Telegraph: 203, 263, 275-276, 291
Telephone: 276, 291, 393
Teller, Edward: 425
Teller Amendment: 333
Temporary National Economic Com-
mittee: 381
Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad
Company: 232, 273, 286, 302
Tennessee Valley Authority: 375,
392, 394
Tenure of Office Act: 221-222
Tesla, Nikola: 291
Test Act (1673): 60, 61
Texas: 26, 175, 190, 193, 195, 213,
219, 221, 232, 238, 250, 257, 343;
independence won from Mexico,
174, 193; admission to the Union,
175, 192-194, 249; secession, 206;
oil in, 236, 245, 247
Thackeray, William: 73
Thomas, General George H.: 209
Thomson, J. Edgar: 272
Thornton, William: 142
Ticonderoga, Fort: 104
Tilden, Samuel J.: 227-228
Tillman, Ben: 233
Timber and Stone Act: 254
Timber Culture Act: 254
Time (magazine) : 425
Tinian: 416
"Tippecanoe and Tyler too!": 182
Tippecanoe Creek: 148
Titusville, Pennsylvania: 271
Tobacco: 39, 46, 47, 58, 59, 69, 71,
72, 73, 75, 78, 158, 163, 192, 235
Tocqueville, Alexis de: 154-155
Tokyo, Japan: 401-402, 414-417
Toledo, Ohio: 308
Toleration Act: 47
Tolles, Frederick B.: 81
Tombstone, Arizona: 246-247, 249
Toombs, Robert: 194
Tories, English: 60, ftn 95; Ameri-
can, 105-108, 112-113, 116; see
Loyalists
Torquemada: 29, 30
Tourgee, Albion W.: 213
Town meetings: 52
Townsend, Francis E.: 377
Townshend, "Champagne Charley":
102
Townshend Acts: 102, 103
Trade associations: 376
Transportation, see also Canals, Rail-
roads, Steamboats: 173, 176, 228,
230, 236, 290-293
Treasury Department, U. S.: estab-
lished, 129-130
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle: 90
Treaty of Ghent: 150-152
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: 194
Treaty of Portsmouth: 323
Trent, Council of: 35, 38
Trenton, battle of: 106
Trolleys, see Street cars
Truk: 416
Truman, Harry S.: 424-425; Presi-
dent, 414, 417-418, 420, 426;
"Point Four" program, 434; Ko-
rean War, 434-435; Truman Doc-
trine: 432
Trusts: 236, 274-275, 282-286, 300,
311, 316, 318, 361
Truth-in-Securities Act (1933): 374
Turks: 8, 10, 11, 17, 24, 31, 44, 40L
431-432
Turnpikes: 165, 167, 171, 179
Twain, Mark: 239, 259
Tweed, Boss: 226-227
Tyler, John: 193; President, 193, 325
U-boats: 341-344, 392, 399-400, 402,
405-406
Ulysses (Joyce): 348
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Stowe) : 197
Underwood Tariff : 318
Unemployment: 350, 368-377, 394
Unguarded Gates (Aldrich) : 287
Union Club: 300
Union League: 222
Union Pacific Railroad: 250, 255,
265-267
Union Party: 217
United Fruit Company: 324
United Mine Workers: 313, 379-380
United Nations: 405, 412, 418-426,
432-437; Charter, 421
United Nations Relief and Rehabil-
itation Administration (UNRRA) :
420, 423
United States v. Reese: 236-237
United States Steel Corporation:
273, 286, 296, 299, 302, 352, 380
U.S.S.R., See Russia
Utrecht, Peace of: 66, 67, 68, 79,
89
Vail, Theodore N.: 276
Valley Forge: 106
Van Buren, Martin: President, 181-
182, 193; Secretary of State, 181
Vandenberg, Senator Arthur H. : 420
Vanderbilt, Cornelius: 199, 265, 272
Vanderlip, Frank A.: 296
Van Sweringen brothers: 367
Vanzetti, Bartolomeo: 351
Vardaman, Senator James K.: 233
Veblen, Thorstein: 307
Venezuela: 25, 329
Vermont: 104, 109, 117-118, 211,
378; admission to the Union, 133
Verrazano, Giovanni de: 36
Versailles Treaty: 345-346
Vespucci, Amerigo: 19
Veterans Bureau: 360
Vicksburg: 209-210
Victor Emmanuel, King: 409
Victoria, Queen of England: 67
Vigilantism: 248, 350, 353-354
Vikings: 18
Villa, Francisco "Pancho": 340
Villiers, George: 44
Vinci, Leonardo da: 18, 173
Vinland: 18
Virginia: 154, 157, 164, 198, 209-
210, 221, 224, 292; founding and
settlement of, 41, 44, 45, 46, 47,
48, 58; tobacco plantations, 46,
71, 73, 163; colonial life in, 62,
63, 70, 71, 77, 78, 83, 84, 85, 88,
90, 99, 100, 102, 105-110, 113,
116-121, 124-125, 130, 143; co-
lonial society in, 73, 75, 76; re-
ligion in colonial, 74, 82, 86; joins
the Confederacy, 207-208
Virginia Plan: 121
Virginia Resolutions: 140, 141
Vladivostok: 322
Volstead Act: 357-358, 362
Voltaire: 68
Wade, Senator Ben: 218
Wake: 402, 415-416
Walker, John Brisben: 306
Walker, William: 197
Walpole, Robert: 68, 72, 84, 90,
94-95, 97, 100
Waltham, Mass.: 171-172
War Department, U. S.: 334, 375,
396; established, 129-130
War for the League of Augsburg:
32-33, 66
War Hawks: 148
War of 1812: 146-151, 155, 157,
168, 171, 193
"War of Jenkins' Ear": 90
War of the Austrian Succession: 90
War of the Spanish Succession: 66
War Production Board: 389
Washington, Booker T.: 223, 288
Index 473
Washington, D. C.: 131, 142, 157,
167, 194, 201, 209, 210, 224, 288,
313, 326-327, 351, 360, 391, 396,
404, 406, 408, 415, 435; invaded
by British, 149
Washington, George: 73, 97, 99,
114-115, 122, 179, 260; servants
purchased by, 71; interest in
horses, 75; attempt to halt French,
90-9 1 ; progress in the New World,
90-91; as Commander-in-chief,
104, 106, 107, 108, 117, 119, 120,
122; Constitutional Convention,
120-123; consents to run for presi-
dent, 125; President, 123, 127,
128-129, 132-135, 137-138, 142;
Cabinet, 127, 130; efforts to con-
trol Indians, 133; re-election as
President, 136; "Farewell Ad-
dress," 138-139
Washington Post: 333
Watson, John: 229
Watson, Tom: 213, 229, 230, 233
Watt, James: 169
Watterson, Henry: 212-213
Wavell, General A. P.: 406
Weaver, James B.: 284
Webster, Daniel: 154, 157, 176-177,
179, 199; Secretary of State, 193,
325
Wecter, Dixon: 214
Wellington, Duke of: 150
Wells Fargo: 248
West: 149, 159-164, 166-168, 182,
185, 193, 281-283; growth of the,
69, 75, 111, 137, 143-144, 174-
177, 187, 200-202, 238-265, 300,
313; wild, description of, 175, 182;
Indians of the, 240-244; mining
in, see Gold; cattle in the, 77, 241,
244, 249-258; see also Migration
West Point: 106, 290
Western Union: 203, 263, 275-276,
291
Westinghouse, George: 268, 291
Weyler, General Valeriano: 330-331
Whaling: 78, 270, 325
Wharton School of Finance: 290
Wheat: 158-159, 165-166, 200, 244,
256-258, 263
Whigs: 60, 68, 94-95, 181-182, 193,
207
"Whisky Rebellion": 132
White, William Allen: 306
White House: 217, 288, 312, 315-
316, 436; designed by Hoban, 142;
burned by British, 149
474 Index
"White Man's Burden": 319-320,
323
"White servitude," see Indentured
servants
Whitefield, George: 74
Whitlock, Brand: 308
Whitman, Walt: 161, 260
Whitney, Eli: 158, 169-173, 293
Wickersham, George W.: 362
Wigner, Eugene: 391
Wilkinson, General John: 169
William and Mary College: 74
William III, King of England: 60-67
Williams, Roger: 54
Williamsburg, Va.: 74
Willing, Thomas: 112
Willkie, Wendell: 385
Wilmot, David: 194
Wilson, Charles E.: 425
Wilson, James: 115
Wilson, General Maitland: 409
Wilson, Woodrow: 285, 288, 365,
386; Governor of New Jersey,
285; President, 282, 312,316-317,
339-342, 353-354; Inaugural Ad-
dress, 317-318; World War I and,
318, 340-346; Fourteen Points,
345, 386; League of Nations, 345,
349 420
Winthrop, John: 23, 24, 45, 49, 50,
51, 52, 54
Wisconsin: 174, 255-256, 263, 307,
311, 317, 424; admission to the
Union, 175
"Wisconsin way": 307
Witches: execution of, 89; Salem
witch hunts, 89
Wolfe, General James: 92
Women: 109, 182, 186, 308-310,
353; status of, at end of Ameri-
can Revolution, 109
Women's Christian Temperance Un-
ion: 310, 357
Women's suffrage: 109, 182, 186.
308, 310
Wood, General Leonard: 335
Woolen Act (1699): 62
Working conditions: 308, 309; see
Labor Unions
Works Progress Administration:
378, 381, 394
World War I: 289, 294, 297, 309-
310, 318, 340-346, 348, 350-351,
363-364, 373, 382, 393-394, 428-
429
World War II: 134, 234, 354, 387-
418,424,427-428,435-436
Wounded Knee, battle of: 243-244
Writs of assistance: 98, 102
"X.Y.Z. dispatches": 139
Yale University: 212, 290, 305, 372
Yalta Conference: 412, 415, 417-
419, 421
Yancey, William Lowndes: 188
Yazoo River: 143
Yeomen: 34, 110
Yorktom (aircraft carrier): 394
Young, Owen D.: 367-368
Zhukov, Marshal: 412
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