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ABRAHAM UNCOLN 

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'*He was one of the most remarkable men of any ag:e or 
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To thoughts of peace on earth, good wiU towards men. " 

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RIDPATH'S 

History of the World 



BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS IN THE CAREER 

OF THE HUMAN RACE FROM THE BEGINNINGS OF 

CIVILIZATION TO THE PRESENT TIME 

COMPRISING 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 

AND 

THE STORY OF ALL -NATIONS 

From Recent and authentic Sources 



COMPLETE IN NINE VOLUMES 



By JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LLD. 

Author op a *' CvcLOPiCoiA of Universal History." Etc. 



VOLUME VII 



PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED WITH COLORED PLATES, RACE MAPS AND CHARTS. 

TYPE PICTURES, SKETCHES AND DIAGRAMS 



The Jones Brothers Publishing Company, 

Cincinnati, O. 
1910 




Cop^g^t 1894 

^PS^^d^i 1896 « 

4oppi0$< 1897 
€op]^vid$t 1899 
Copi{vid$t 1900 

Cop5Wfl5< '90' 

. CopjHfiSt 1907 

Copi^vid^t 1910 

S9« 5on«0 lBvd($ev0 ^uftfbttng Compans 
Ctncinnafi, ®$io 



5(9Z.Z? ^K SUBSCRIPTION ONL K. 



Preface to Volumes VII and VIII. 




OD 
X 

r 



HAVE now brought to 
conclusion and put into 
its final form the work on 
General History, the out- 
lines of which were dimlj 
conceived many years ago. 
It would be impracticable, 
and perhaps of little profit, to trace the slow 
development of such a work from its first con- 
ception to the final stroke with which at length 
it is finished and delivered to the public. To 
the author such a retrospect of processes and 
combinations must be of much personal in- 
terest, but the reader will be concerned rather 
with the aggregate and final result than with 
the tedious evolution. 

At first view it will appear to the student 
of history that the Ancient and the Modern 
World are, in their historical records, of about 
equal duration and importance. The begin- 
nings of Ancient History are set, in a general 
way, about as far beyond the Christian Era 
as our own times are placed thereafter. To 
Ancient History belong the Classical Ages — 
an epoch of achievement and glory which may 
well challenge the most brilliant periods of the 
recent era. But a closer judgment of the rel- 
ative importance of Ancient and Modern His- 
tory will show the great preponderance of the 
latter. This is one of the more important 
fiicts which have impressed themselves upon 
the writer's mind in the preparation of these 
Volumes. He has come to believe in the great 
preeminence of the Modem Era over the most 
brilliant epochs of Antiquity. This is said of 
the aggregate and total achievements of mod- 
em times as compared with the aggregate and 
total achievements of any given period in the 
history of the Ancient World. 

It is from considerations such as these that 
Modern History has, under the writer's hand 
and treatment, expanded to a considerable ex- 
tent beyond the limits originally proposed, 
litis principle has be^n the foundation of the 



present Four- Volume Edition of the work. A 
single volume of the four, with the first third 
of the second, will be found appropriated to 
the History of Ancient States and Nations; 
while all the remaining volumes are devoted 
to the History of the Middle Ages, the Period 
of Renaissance, the Revolutionary Epoch, and 
the Nineteenth Century. 

It is in the last-named division that the 
largest increment and modifications of the 
present edition will be discovered. To the 
History of Antiquity the Book on the Parthian 
Empire has been added in Volume I. As to 
the history of Greece and Rome, only inci- 
dental emendations and extensions of the nar- 
rative will be found. But in the history of 
our own century the whole work has been 
done anew, and on a larger scale. 

Another important element in the growth 
of the present issue of this History relates to 
the part allotted to the most recent annals of 
our times. By thb is meant the narrative of 
affairs in the different nations during the 
eighth and ninth decades of our century. 
When the work was first projected. History 
seemed to have reached a pause with the con- 
clusion of the Civil War in the United States 
and the establishment of the German Empire 
in Europe. The period which the writer 
was thus obliged to make at the beginning 
of the eighth decade is at length ended, 
and he is now able to pursue his course 
with tolerable certainty for a full score of 
years. Nor have the course and tendency of 
affairs during this period been devoid of inter- 
est from a historical point of view. To this 
period belong the demonstration of Italian 
unity ; the definitive establishment of a German 
Empire under the auspices of the House of 
HohenzoUern ; the progressive — ^but somewhat 
broken — march of English Liberalism towards 
the establishment of an Imperial federation for 
the whole British Empire; the vindication of 
the right to exist on the part of the Third 



K' 



PREFACE TO VOLUMES VII AND VI IL 



ilepublic of France; and particularly the 
toration of a complete national autonomy in 
the United States. 

It is not needed in this connection to dwell 
in exteruo on the minor modifications which 
have suggested themselves in the composition 
of these volumes. It may be thought that all 
Biich departures from the original sketch for 
the production of a literary work are but so 
many evidences of the imperfection of the 
plan, and that references thereto are in the 
nature of communications at the confessional. 
This vieWy however, is at once superficial and 
incorrect. It proceeds upon the assumption 
that a literary production has the character of 
a mechanical contrivance rather than of an or> 
ganism. Such a view runs to the efiect that 
literature and its products are the results of a 
sort of infallibie calculus rather than the 
phenomena of growth and life. As a matter 
of fact, every true product in the world of 
letters has the analogy of the tree which pro- 
ceeds from germination by way of expansion, 
leafage, and blossom, to final completeness of 
height and form and the bearing of fruit 
The fable of the birth of Minerva is not re- 
peated in literary production. Even the poem, 
most imaginative and immediate of all our 
mental products, does not spring full-winged 
from the flames of imagination. No work of 
art is conceived in its completeness by a single 
eflbrt of the mind. How much less should we 
expect a literary work, extending through 
thousands of pages, and covering in its subject 
matter the vast panorama of human affairs 
from the primitive shadows of the heroic ages 
to the broad revelation of the present hour, to 
be produced in all its entirety and amplitude 
in the first concept of the outlinp I 

From these considerations, I have been 
willing that this History of the World should 
be improved according to the laws of growth 
and development, until it has at length reached 
its present form and substance. It only re- 
mains to add a single remark relative to the 
difficulties of composing a true history of recent 
events. Contrary to what would seem to be 
the manifest principles of historical narrative, 
it is the recent event and not the remote 
which 19 most difficult of just treatment. In 

Obbxncabtlb, April 6, 1890. 



the first place, the evidences of the real na- 
ture of current afiairs are all stained and 
swollen like rivulets under the disturbance of 
last night's rain. The waters are muddy and 
perturbed. Their course is difficult tc tliscover. 
Channels have been produced by the tem* 
porary deluge, which will pass with the fort* 
night and leave no further trace. The true 
volume of present affairs is difficult to estimate^ 
The senses are confused by portents in th» 
earth and heavens, which nothing signify. 

In still another particular the production 
of current history is greatly embamuned and 
distracted. This is the necessity of the writer 
to constitute a part of that vast society, the 
movement of which he is expected to describe. 
He is himself borne along with the current 
He must needs feel its fluctuations. Anon he 
finds himself in the middle of the stream, or 
borne at intervals into the whirling eddy near 
the shore, from which point of view universal 
nature seems to revolve around him. He is 
expected to share the sympathies, the beliefs, 
the passions of the current age. He is ex- 
pected to be swayed by the dominant preju- 
dice, to think as his party thinks, to do as the 
majority do, to dream the prevailing dreams, 
to see the anticipated vision. He is expected 
to wear the form and fashion of the times; 
to be pleased with the current pleasure; 
to smile, to sigh, to weep, to sleep and wake, 
to go and come, to live and to die, even as do 
those with whom he is associated in the desti- 
nies of life. This setting of the writer among 
the very facts, the tendency of which he is 
expected to discover and describe, is the most 
serious of all drawbacks to the accuracy and 
fidelity of his work. I can not hope that 
what I have written in this Fourth Volume, 
closely involved as it is with the movements 
of the current age, shall be wholly free from 
the coloring of prejudice and the mistakes 
arising from the personal equation. Doubt- 
less there is in the following pages much chro- 
matic and spherical aberration ; but I cherish 
the hope that the reader will find much to have 
been faithfully delineated and lifted somewhat 
above the level of the political and partisan 
distortion which is unfortunately the prevail- 
ing vice of our times. 

J.C.& 



Contents of Volumes VII and VIII. 



PREFACE, , 1-3 

C50NTENTS, 3-22 

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, 23-27 

introduction, 29-80 



BOOK TWENTY-KIRST.— THE) UNITED STATES. 



Chapter CXXII. — American Middle Ages. 

General Historical Outlook after Waterloo. — 
Transformation of Society. — Aspect of the Nine- 
teenth Century. — Progress of the United States in 
Particular.— Sketch of James Monroe. — Policy of 
the New Administration. — Haytian Complica- 
tion. — Difficulties with the North-western In- 
dians. — Manner of Settlement. — Admission of 
Mississippi. — West Indian Piracy.— Question of 
Internal Improvements.— Nationd Road and Erie 
Canal. — First Passage of the Seminole War. — 
Jackson's Part Therein. — Cession of Florida to 
the United States. — First Commercial Crisis. — 
Admission of Dlinois and Alahama. — Missouri 
Imbroglio. — ^The Compromise. — Reelection of Mon- 
loe. — ^The West Indian Piracy Again.— Question 
of the South American Republics. — Visit of La- 
layette.— Presidential Election of 1824. — Sketch 
of John Quincy Adams. — Revival of Partisan- 
■hip.— Difficulties with the Creeks. — Deaths of 
Jefferson and Adams. — Disappearance of Mor- 
gan. — Rise of the Tariff Issue. — Character of the 
Epoch. — Election of Jackson to the Presidency. — 
Sketch of the New Executive.— The Political 
Revolution. — Question of rechartering the Bank. — 
Whig and Democrat. — ^Tariff Agitation renewed. — 
Webster and Hayne.— Nullification. — Black Hawk 
War. — ^The Cherokees. — Continuance of the Sem- 
inole War.— Story of Osceola.— End of the Bank 
of the United l^tes. — Distribution of Funds. — 
Reelection of Jackson. — Foreign Complications. — 
Necrology of the Fourth Decade. — Disasters. — 
Admission of Arkansas and Michigan.— Farewell 
of Jackson. — Sketch of Van Buren.— Subjugation 
of the Seminoles. — Second Fuiancial Crisis. — 
Independent Treasury Bill. — The Canadian Re- 
bellion. — Character of Van Buren's Administra- 
tion. — Election of Harrison to the Presidency. — 
Statistics and Growth.— Sketch of Harrison. — 
His Death.— Notice pf Tyler.— His Break with 
the Whig Party. North-eastern Boundary Ques- 
tion Settled.— Disturbance in Rhode Island.— 



Completion of Bunker Hill Monument. — Land 
Troubles in New York. — Rise o^ the Mormons. — 
Their Exodus to Utah, 37-68 

Chafrbr CXXIII. — Mexican War and 

Sixth Decade. 

The Texas Agitation.— Rebellion and liide* 
pendence of the Province. — Question of Annexa- 
tion.— Election of Polk to the Presidency.— The 
First Telegraph. — Texas admitted into the 
Union.— Also Florida and Iowa. — Sketch of Polk. — 
Anger of Mexico. — Question of Boundaries.-* 
American Army on the Rio Grande. — Outbreak 
of the War. — Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. — 
War Spirit in the United States.— Plan of the 
Campaigns. — Capture of Monterey. — Expedition 
of Kearney. — Fremont in the Rockies. — Revolu« 
tion in California.— Scott Commander-in-Chief.— 
Battle of Buena Vista.— Capture of Vera Cruz.^ 
Invasion of Mexico. — Battle of Cerro Gordo.— 
Conflicts about the Capital. — Capture of Mexico.-* 
End of the War.— Terms of the Treaty. — Oregon 
Boundary Question. — Settlement of the Interna* 
tional Line. — Discovery of Gold in California. — 
Rush for the Mines. — Founding of Smithsonian 
Institution. — Its Organization and Work.— Ne* 
crology of Fifth Decade. — Admission of Wiscon- 
sin. — The New Cabinet Offices. — Presidential 
Election of 1848. — Questions Involved.— Sketch 
of Taylor.— Proposition to admit California.— 
Nature of the Issue.— New Mexico organized. — 
Passage of the Omnibus Bill. — Death of the Pres- 
ident. — Sketch of Fillmore. — Retirement of Henry 
Clay.— Political Sentiment of the Times.— The 
Cuban Imbroglio. — Failure of Lopez. — Policy of 
Fillmore. — The Newfoundland Fishery Ques- 
tion. — Visit of Kossuth to- the United States. — 
Arctic Voyages of Franklin and Kane. — Deaths 
of Calhoun, Clay, and Webster. — Cuba and the 
Tripartite Treaty. — Presidential Election of 1862.— 
Position of Parties.— Sketch of President Pierce.— 
Question of the Pacific Railroad agitated.— 

3 



CON^TEN^TS OF VOLUMES VII AND VIII 



Soath'Westem Bonndaiy determined.— Opening 
of Intercourse with Japan.— World's Fair at New 
York. — Walker invades Central America. — Is 
dethroned and executed. — Story of the Martin 
Kofizta Affair.— Project to purchase Cuba.— The 
Ostend Manifesto.— New Western Territoriea.— 
Repeal of the Missouri Compromise. — ^Theories 
of Douglas. — £ff cts of the Kansas-Nebraska 
Bill.— Civil and Social Turmoil in Kansas.— The 
Border War.— Slavery Question in Full Force. — 
Position of Parties in 1856.— Troubles of the 
Democracy. — Buchanan elected' to the Presi- 
dency.— Sketch of his Life,— The Dred Scott 
Decision. — Theories of the Supreme Court on 
Slavery.-- Outbreak of Trouble with the Mormons 
in Utah.— War in the Territory.— End of the 
Difficulty. — Attack on American Vessel in South 
America. — Laying of First Atlantic Cable. — 
Failure of the Enterprise. — Admission of Minne- 
sota and Oregon. — Sketch of Sam Houston.^ 
Notice of Irving and his Works, ..... 68-100 

Chapteb CXXrV.— Disunion and Civil 

War. 

Renewal of Slavery Agitation. — Personal 
Liberty Bills. — John Brown's Insurrection. — Ex- 
ecution of the Insurgents.— The Kansan War. — 
Growing Hostility to Slavery.— Political Conven- 
tions of 186G.— Disruption of the Democratic 
Ptoty.— Result of the Contest— The Secession 
Scheme.— Drama of 'Disunion. — Withdrawal of 
Southern Representatives and Senators from 
Congress. — Sentiment in the Secession Conven- 
tions. — Attitude of Stephens.— Setting up of the 
Provincial Confederate Government. — Peace Con- 
ference.— Last Days of the Old Administration.— 
Movements in Charleston Harbor.— Episode of 
the iSXar 0/ tht TlVitf.— Sketch of Lincoln's Life 
and Character. — His Inaugural Address.— The 
New Cabinet,— Fall of Sumter.— Kindling of the 
War Spirit — First Call for Volunteers.- Blood in 
Baltimore. — Second Call for Soldiers.— Richmond 
made the Confederate Capital. — Causes of the 
Civil War.— Federal and Confederate Theories of 
the Constitution. — Nationality and State Sov- 
ereignty.— Sectionalism of the Parties. — Northern 
and Southern Systems of Labor. — Cotton and 
Cotton Gin. — Slavery Deep-rooted in Southern 
Society. — The Missouri Agitation and Com- 
promise. — Nullification Theory. — Annexation of 
Texas and its Consequences. — Kansas- Nebraska 
Bill. — Want of Intercourse between the Northern 
and Southern States. — Influence of Sectional 
Literature. — Evil Work of Demagogues.— Hostility 
to Slavery Itself — Opening of the Conflict. — 
McClellan and Morris in West Virginia — Inde- 
dsive Engagements in thnt Region.— Concentra- 
tion of Armies at Manassas Junction. — Battle of 
Bull Run.— Humiliation of the North. — The Con- 
federate Government at Richmond. — Sketch of 



Davis.— The War in Missouri.— Battles of Boone- 
ville and Wilson Creek.— Capture of Lexington.— 
Fremont and Halleck.— Forces in Kentucky and 
"^ on the Mississippi.— Apparition of Grant — Bel- 
mont — Alarm at Washington. — ^McClellan Com- 
mander-in-Chief.— Creation of the Army of the 
Potomac.— Ball's Blufl*.— Operations along the 
Coast.— Firet Effects of the War in England.— 
Mason and Slidell sent Abroad.— Aflair of the 
Treni and San ./acinto.— Questions Involved.— 
Declarations of Seward.— Marahall Expelled from 
Kentucky.— Fort Henry taken.— Siege and Cap- 
ture of Donelson.— Battle of Pittsburg Landing. — 
Taking of Island Number Ten.— Battle of Pea 
Ridge.— The Merrimae in Hampton Roads. — 
Beaten by the Monitor. — Capture of Roanoke 
Island.— New Berne, Beaufort, and Fort Pulaski. — 
New Orleans taken by the Federal Fleet and 
Army.— Forts Jackson and St. Philip. — Kirby 
Smith and Bragg Invade Kentucky.— Battles of 
Richmond and Perry ville. — luka. — Corinth.— 
First Movements against Vicksburg.— Chickasaw 
Bayou.— Battle of Murfreesborough.— Losses and 
Results.— Movements of the Eastern Armies.—' 
Banks on the Shenandoah. — Front Royal and 
Port Republic. — Advance of the Army of the Po 
tomac— McClel1an*s Plans. — Yoiktown taken.— r 
WooPs Expedition against Norfolk. — Battle ol 
Fair Oaks.— Accession of Lee to Confederate 
Command.— Battle of Oak Grove.— Merhanics- 
ville. — Gaines's Mill. — White Oak Swamp.— 
Frazier's Farm.— Malvern Hill.— Failure of the 
Peninsular Campaign. — Advance of I^ee on Wash- 
ington.— Battles of Bull Run, Centerville, and 
Chantilly.— Jackson Captures Harper's Ferry.— 
Battle of Antietam. — Lee retires into Virginia. — 
McClellan superseded by Burnside. — ^Battle of 
Frederii'ksburg.— Losses. — Discouraging Outlook 
of the Union Cause.— Calls for Recruits.— Issuing 
the Emancipation Proclamation. — Character of 
the Act.— Capture of A rkansas Post. — ^Movement 
of Grant against Vicksbui^. — Projects and Fail* 
ure&— Running the Batteries. — Battle of Fori 
Gibson. — Raymond.— Capture of Jackson. — Pern* 
berton besieged.- Unsuccessful Assaults.— The 
Siege and Capture.— Fall of Port Hudson. — Con- 
federate and Union Cavalry Raids of 1862-63.— 
New Methods of Destruction. — Capture of 
Streight— Battle of Chickamauga. — Extent of 
Union Disaster. — Grant in Command — Revival 
of the Union Cause. — Lookout Mountain and 
Missionary Ridge. — Losses and Results. — Siege of 
Knoxville. — ^The War in Arkansas. — ^Raid of John 
Morgan.— Loss of Galveston. — Federal Failure at 
Charleston.— Hooker supersedes Burnside. — Bat- 
tle of Chancelloreville. — Extent of the Union 
Disaster. — Stoneman's Raid. — Lee invades Penn* 
sylvania. — Meflde Commands the Army of the 
Potomac. — Battle of Gettysburg. — Grand Repulse 
of the Confederate Army.— Troubles of the Go?' 



CON-TENTS OF VOL UMES VII AND VI IL 



ernmeDt— Conscription Act and Draft Riot.— 
Suspension of Habeas Corpus.— Lessons and Re- 
sults of the Draft— Sherman's Work between 
Corinth and Mobile.— Forest's Raid.— Fort Pil- 
low.— The Red. River Expedition.— Battles of 
Mansfield and Pleasant Hill. — Damming the 
River.— Ascendency of Grant— He is promoted 
to Ueutenant-Generalcy.— Extent of the Union 
Army.— Plan of the Campaign of 18d4.— Sher- 
man's Progress from Chattanooga to Atlanta.— 
Battles before that City.— Death of McPherson.— 
Hood supersedes Johnston.— Siege of Atlanta.— 
The Capture.— Hood's Invasion of Tennessee- 
Battles of Franklin and Nashville.— Ruin of the 
Confederate Army.— Sherman's March to the 
Sea.— Capture of Savannah. — Advance against 
Columbia.— Fighting en route.- Capture of Charles- 
ton.— Fayette ville.— Hampton and Kilpatrick.— 
Johnston restored to Command. — Averasborough 
and BentonviWe.— Capture of Raleigh.- Negotia- 
tions of Sherman with Johnston.— Stoneman's 
Raid.— Results of the Expedition.— Farragut cap- 
tures Mobile.— Fort Fisher taken.— Exploit of 
Cushing.- Work of the Confederate Cruisers.— 
The Savannah.— ThQ Sumter. —The Na9hvilU.^The 
Florida.— Other Privateer Craft.— Story of the 
Alabama.— Her Destruction by the Keanca^.-^ 
Movements of the Army of the Potomac.— The 
Confederacy on the Defensive. — Lull in the 
East.- Counter-movements of Meade and Lee. — 
Grant at the Head of the Armies.— Beginning of 
the Advance.— Battles of the AVilderness.— Sheri- 
dan's Cavalry Raid.— Cold Harbor.— Losses of the 
Campaign.— Grant's Movement by the Flank.— 
Investment of Petersburg.— Sigel on the Shenan- 
doah.— He is superseded by Hunter.— Piedmont- 
Early crosses the Blue Ridge.- Battle of Monoc- 
•cy.— Defeat of Wright at Winchester.— Sheridan 
given Command.— Defeats Eariy.— Fisher's Hill.— 
Union Disaster at Winchester.- Rally and Vic- 
tory of Sheridan.— Destruction in the Shenan- 
doah Valley.— Continuance of Siege of Peters- 
burg.— Spring Hill.- Battle of Five Forks.— 
Capture of Petersburg and Richmond by the 
Voion Army.— Retreat of Lee.— Confederate Sur- 
render at Appomattox.— Terms of Capitulation.— 
Surrender of Johnston.— Collapse of the Confed- 
eracy.— Capture and Imprisonment of Davis.— 
Reelection of Lincoln.— Admission of Nevada.— 
Question of Finance.— Coin and Paper Money.— 
Chase's Work in the Treasury. — System of 
Revenue.— Greenback Currency.— United States 
Bonds.— National Banks and Currency.- Mer- 
chandise in Silver and Gold.— Lincoln's Second 
Inaugural.— He is assassinated.— Murderous As- 
■aults on the Government— Fate of the Conspir- 
ators.— Character of Lincoln. — His Funeral.— 
Johnson in the Presidency.— Amnesty Proclama- 
tion. — Subsidence of the Armies.— The War 
Debt— Attitude of Foreign Powers toward the 



United States.— Mexican Fiasco of Napoleon III.— 
Dea^h of Maximilian.— Success of the Atlantic 
Cable.— Money Order System established in ttie 
United States.— Oiganizat ion oi Western Terri- 
tories.— Purchase of Alaska, 100-174 

Chapter CXXV.— Epoch op Recon- 
struction. 

Difficulty between the President and Con- 
gress.— Nature of the Issue.— Reconstruction Proc- 
lamat ion.— Congress pursues its Own Course.— 
Civil Rights Bill.— Johnson's Denuncittttons.— 
Philadelphia Convention.— The President makes 
a Tour of the Country.— His Speeches.— Mutual 
Recriminations.— Reconstruci ion Plan of Con- 
gress.— Fourteenth Amendment— Vetoe8.—Plan 
Civil and Plan MiliUry.— Read mission of the Ten" 
Seceded States. — Affair of the Attorney-Gen* 
eral.— Dismissal of Stanton.— The Impeachment 
Trial.— Grant nominated and elected President- 
Sketch of the New Executive.— The New Cabi- 
net.— Completion of the Pacific Railway.— The 
Fifteenth Amendment.— Story of Black Friday.— 
Completion of Reconstruction.— Ninth Census ol 
the United States.— Project to annex Santo Do- 
mingo.— Day of Settlement with Great Britain.— 
History of Alabama Claims. — The Geneva 
Aw^rd.— Great Railway Development— Burning 
of Chicago.— Setllement of North-western Bound- 
ary Question:— Militery Methods in the Govern- 
ment. — Grant's Southern Policy. — Ku-Klus 
Epoch.- Reelection of Grant— Overthrow and 
Death of Greeley.— fireat Fire in Boston.— His- 
tory of the Modoc War.- Their Treachery.— Re- 
duction and Imprisonment of the Savages.— Con- 
tinued Troubles in the South.— The Louisiana 
Imbroglio.— Credit Mobilier Scandal and luv'esti- 
gation.— Financial Panic of 1873.— Construction 
of the Northern Pacific Railway.— The Texas and 
Pacific Line.— Admission of Colorado.— NecroU 
ogy.— Coming of the Centennial Year.— The Com- 
mission. — Buildings of the great Exposition in 
Philadelphia.— Sketch of the Centennial Exhibi- 
tion and Ceremonies.— Results of the Anniver- 
sary.— Disposition of the Buildings.- War with 
the Sioux.— Destruction of Custer and his Forces 
on the Big Horn.— Overthrow of the Sioux Nat 
tion.— Capture of the Chiefs. — Twenty-third 
Presidential Election. — Political Questions of 
1876.— The Disputed Presidency.— Appointment 
of the Joint High Commission.— Decision in Favor 
of Hayes and Wheeler, 174-198 

Chapter CXXVL— Latest Period. 

Sketch of President Hayes.— The Inaugural 
Address.— The New Cabinet.— Railroad Strike of 
1877.— Riot and Destruction of Property.— Scenes 
in Pittsburg, Chicago, and San Francisco.— Net 
Perce War.— Question of Remonetisation of Sil< 



CON'TEN'TS OF VOLUMES VII AND VIII, 



▼er.— History of the Standard Unit.— Deetraction 
of the Monetary Chaiacter of Silver. — Nevada 
Silver-mines.— Nature of the Resumption Act. — 
Afi^tation for the Restoration of the Silver Dollar. — 
Success of the Measure. — ^The Yellow Fever Epi- 
demic of 1878. — Question of the Fisheries. — Hali- 
fax Award against the United State8.~EstahIish- 
ment of the Chinese Emhassy at Washington. — 
Institution of the Life-saving Service. — Nature of 
the Work. — ^The Resumption Act — Approxima- 
tion of Gold and Paper Money. — General Charac- 
ter of the Administration. — National Conventions 
of 1880. — Platforms and Candidates. — Claims of 
the Third Party. — Election of Garfield and Ar- 
thur. — Measures of the Forty-sixth Congress. — 
Refunding the Public Debt.— World Tour of 
General Grant. — Census of 1880. — Lessons and 
Deductions therefrom. — Necrology of the Quad- 
rennlum. — Sketch of President Garfield.— His 
Inaugural Address. — The New Cabinet — Question 
of Civil Service Reform. — Nature of the Issue. — 
Break in the Republican Party. — ^Affair of Conk- 
ling and Piatt — Shooting of the President— Story 
of his Decline and Death. — ^The Funeral. — Ques- 
tions involved in the Case of Guiteau. — Sketch of 
Arthur. — Cabinet Changes. — ^The Star Route Con- 
spiracy. — The Trial and Results. — Progress in 
Physical Science. — Epoch of great Inventions. — 
Story of the Telephone. — Contributions thereto 
of Bell, Gray, and Edison. — ^The Phonograph. — 
Nature of the Instrument. — ^Possible Uses. — rhe 
Electric Light — ^Evolution of the Invention. — 
Work of Edison. — Results of Electric Lighting. — 
Great Structures of the Times. — Building of the 
Brooklyn Bridge. — Other Structures of like Char- 
acter. — Washington Bridge in particular. — Sub- 
sidence of real Political Questions. — ^The Tariff 
Issue.— Considered in ExUmo, — Exposition of the 
Doctrine of Free Trade. — Theory of Incidental 
Protection elucidated. — Principles and Doctrines 
of Limited Protection. — ^High Protection.— Prohib- 
itory Tariffs; — Recurrence of the Issue in Ameri- 
can Politics. — Position of the Parties. — Difficulty 
of Political Alignment on the Issue. — Presidential 
Aspirants of 1884. — The Nominations. — Election 
•f Cleveland and Hendricks.^Political Sequels of 



the Election.— Retirement of Oenenl Shmrnuoi 

froi** Command of the Army. — General Sheridan 
succeeds Him. — Completion and Pedication of the 
Washington Monument — Sketch of President 
Cleveland.— The New Cabinet.— Question of Offi- 
cial Patronage. — Revival of Civil War Memories. — 
Epoch of Military Memoirs. — Sickness and Death 
of General Grant- Of General McClellan.~Of 
General Hancock. — Of General Logan. — Of Vice- 
President Hendricks. — Of Horatio Seymour.— 
Of Samuel J. Tilden.— Of Henry Ward Beecher.— 
Of Chief- Justice Waite. — Outline of the History 
of the Supreme Court — Sketch of Chief-Justice 
Waite. — Appointment of Judge Lamar to the 
Supreme Bench.— Judge Fuller appointed Chief- 
Justice. — Death of Roscoe Conkling. — Sketch of 
his Character and Career. — Labor Agitations of 
the Period.— Causes of the Disturbance.— Strikes 
of 1886. — Hay market Tragedy in Chicago. — 
Charleston Earthquake. — Nature of such Convul* 
sions. — Work of the Forty-ninth Congress. — Pen- 
sion Legislation. — Interstate Commerce BilL— 
Bad Features of the Measure.— Party Politics. — 
Factitious Issues.— Question of Protection and 
Reform of the Revenue. — ^The President's Por- 
tion. — Renomi nation of Cleveland. — Candidates 
and Platforms of 1888.— Election of General Har- 
rison.— Admission into the Union of South and 
North Dakota, Montana, and Washington.— Es- 
tablishment of the Department of Agriculture. — 
Sketch of Harrison. — His Inauguration. — The 
New Cabinet— Centennial of the American Re- 
public. — ^The Celebration at New York.— Outline 
of Ceremonies.— Review of Constitutional His- 
tory. — Philosophy of the Event — Oiganisation of 
the Enterprise in New York City.— The Anni- 
versary Proper.- The Exercises in Wall Street — 
The Great Parade.— The Banquet— Holiday in the 
City. — Special Parade of May-day. — Historical 
Allegories. — ^Easy Movement of the Multitudes. — 
The Samoan Complication. — Condition of the 
Islands.— Difficulties of the Americans and Ger- 
mans. — Destruction of the War-fleets. — Settle- 
ment of the Trouble.— Story of the Johnstown 
Flood.— The Pan-American Congress. — ^The Inter- 
national Maritime Congress. — Corclosion, 193-24$ 



BOOK Tna^enxy-secone).— Great Britain. 



Chapter CXXVII.— Last Two Hano- 
verians. 

Europe after Waterloo. — Great Britain least 
diaken. — ^Napoleon's Dread of England. — Her 
Policy in the Age of Revolution. — Madame Krfi- 
dener and the Holy Alliance. — Parties thereto. — 
Principles of the^ Compact. — Period of its Con- 
tinnance. — Position of Great Britain relative to 



the Alliance. — The Hanover-Brunswick I>f» 
nasty.— George HI. and th^ Prince of Wales.— 
The Regency. — Accession of George IV. — Sketch 
of his Life and Character. — His Douhle Dealing. — 
Liverpool and Castlereagh.— General Conditions 
of the Period. — Revival of Revolutionary Spirit. — 
Revolt against Ferdinand VII. — ^He is Supported 
by the Holy Alliance. — Interest of Great Britain 
in Greek Revolution. — Independence of Greece.— 



CONTENTii OF VOLUMES VII AND VIIL 



Peel reforms British Criminal Code. — Savag3ry of 
tho Former Jurisprudence. — Work of Sir 6amuel 
KomJly. — Sir James Mackintosh.— The Acs of 
1826. — Incompleteness of English Reforms. — 
Canning Ministry.—Death of the Duke of York.— 
Wellington Prime Minister. — Repeal of Test 
Act.— Rise of the Catholic Question.--Outbreak 
of the Burmese War. — Invasion of Burmah. — 
Siege of Ava. — Subjugation of the Burmese. — The 
Treaty. — Apparition of Daniel O'Connell. — First 
Measures of Catholic Reform. — ^Removal of Dis- 
abilities. — Retreat of the Ministry before the 
Catholic Party.— Passage of Relief Bill.— Humili- 
ation and Death of George IV.— Note of his Char- 
acter and Reign.— The Duke of Clarence Heir 
to the Crown. — Note on Queen Caroline. — Sketch 
of William IV.— Premonitions of Parliamentary 
Reform. — Existing State of Representation.— 
Growth and Evolution of the House of Lords 
and House of Commons. — Character of the Com- 
mons. — Jealousy of Royalty thereto. — Historical 
Vicissitudes of the Lower House. — ^Vices in the 
System of Parliamentary Election. — Evils of the 
British Land System. — Development of Great 
Cities. — ^Pocket and Rotten Boroughs. — Attitude 
of Toryism towards Reform. — Effects of French 
Revolution of 1830 in Great Britain. — Opposition 
fo the Reform of Parliament— Fall of the Well- 
ington Ministry. — Russell and the Reform Bill. — 
Agitation of the Country. — The Landed Aristoc- 
racy in Opposition to Reform. — Political Crisis 
of 1830-31.— Deadlock between the Houses.— How 
to put down Tory Opposition. — Retreat of the 
Lords. — ^Passage of the Reform Bill. — Unpopu- 
larity of Wellington. — Salutary Effects of the 
Reform. — Equalization of Representation. — Re- 
maining Restrictions. — Reformed Parliament 
of 1833. — Wilberforce Agitates the Abolition 
of Slavery. — Passage of the Emancipation Bill. — 
Character of the Measure. — Second Agitation 
by O'ConnelL — Irish Question Emergent. — 
The Irish Establishment. — Religious Conditions 
in the Island. — O'Connell proposes Disestab- 
lishment — Opposition to the Measure. — Irish 
Insurrection. — Coercion Bill. — Fall of the Grey 
Ministry. — Accession of Melbourne. — Abolition 
of Irish Bishoprics. — Ascendency of O'Connell.— 
His Character and Powers. — Question of the Poor 
Laws.- New Statute on Pauperism. — Passage of 
the Municipal Act — ^The Tithe Commutation 
lAct— Relations of Great Britain to Belgic Revolu- 
tion. — General Policy of England in the matter 
of European Disturbance. — Character of the Mel- 
bourne Ministry.— Death of William IV., 253-274 

Chapter (JXXVIIL — Epoch of CHAETisif. 

Vicissitudes of the Royal Houses. — ^The En- 
glish Dyn^ty. — Descent of the Crown to Vic- 
toria. — Her Age and Character at the Accession. — 
The Ceremonies. — Separation of Hanover from 



England.— The Yoong Queen with the Torisd.-- 
Lord Brougham.— Lyndhurst — Other Notables of 
Pad lament. — Continuance of Reformatory Ten* 
dencies. — Durham's Career in Canada. — Great 
Extension of the Applied Sciences. — Discoveriei 
and Inventions.— Genesis of Steam Navigation. — 
First Voyage Across the Atlantic. — Applications 
of Electricity. — Wheatstone's Work. — Railroad 
Evolution. — Project of the Penny Post. — Sir Row* 
land Hill.— The Post Debate in Parliament- 
Passage of the Post Bill. — Premonitions of Chart- 
ism.— Origin of the Charter and its Provisions.— 
Opposition of the Poor and Middle Classet 
thereto. — Practical Failure of the Reform BiU of 
1832.— The Real English People.— They clamor 
for the Charter.*-Causes of Disaffection in Eng* 
land. — Career of Thorn. — Heroes of Chartism.— 
Henry Vincent in Particular. — Popularity of the 
Cause. — Agitation of the Masses. — Work of the 
Orators. — Monster Meetings. — Conflict with. the 
Authorities. — Banishment of the Leaders. — ^Ebb 
and Flow of the Movement. — Troubles in Ja- 
maica. — The Issue in the Home Government- 
Overthrow of the Melbourne Ministry. — Question 
of the Bed-chamber. — Absu^^dity of the Crisis.- 
Return of Melbourne. — Disruption of the Whig8.^> 
Accession of Peel to Power. — Probable Extinction 
of the English Guelphs.— Relation of Victoria to 
the Dynasty. — The Marriage Project. — Choice of 
Prince Albert — His Relation to the Queen and 
the Throne. — His Part in Public and Domestie 
Affairs. — His Character. — His Career.— Project of 
Arbitration for Military Quarrels. — Outbreak o| 
the Opium War. — Antecedents of the Conflict- 
Rights of the Chinese. — Bad Faith of Great Brit- 
ain respecting the Opium Trade. — Conduct of the 
Traders. — Policy of the Government after the 
Beginning of Hostillt^'^s. — Demand of the Chinese 
Authorites. — Destr* ^cion of Opium in Canton.- 
Sending out of the Fleet — ^Victory of the En* 
glish. — Helplessness of the Chinese Government — . 
Concessions of the Treaty. — ^Th^ Indemnity.— « 
Melbourne Ministry weakens. — Beginnings ot 
Public Education in Great Britain. — First Grants 
of Public Money. — The Educational Societies.— r 
An Annual Appropriation conceded. — Founda- 
tions of the Modern System laid. — Position of 
Statesmen on the Project — Other Important 
Measures of the Late Ministry. — The Affair of 
Stockdale. — Sunday Opening of the British Mu- 
seum. — Hume defends the Measure. — Affairs in 
the East. — Rise of Mehemet AH. — Condition of 
the Turkish Government. — Conquests of Mehe- 
met and Ibrahim. — Interference of the Western, 
Powers. — English Fleet in Eastern Mediterra*- 
nean. — Mehemet obliged to yield. — ^The Treaty.— 
Attitude of France. — Guizot Prime Minister. — 
Quietus of the Melbourne Ministry. — Peel Prime 
Minister. — First News from Cabul. — Philosophy 
of the Cabul Situation.— Interest of Great Britain 



8 



COITTENTS OF VOLUMES VII AND VIII. 



in A^hanistan.— Shah Soojah and Boot Moham- 
med. — Pofiition of Rnflfiia. — Story of Alexander 
Bumes. --Alliance of England with Dost Moham- 
med. — Sir W. Macnaghten at Cabul.— Herat the 
Key of India. — Macnaghten's Expedition. — Re* 
BiAtance of the Afghans. —Taking of Jelalabad.^- 
Surrender of Doet. — Insurrection of Cabul. — 
Akbar Khan. — Massacre of the English.—Sur- 
render of Elphinstone. — Horrors of the Sequel. — 
Retreat of the Fugitives. — The Women given 
up.— Total Destruction of the English. — Doctor 
Brydon.— Recovery of the English.— Recapture of 
Cabul. — Rescue of the English Women. — Total 
of Losses. — O'Connell in Parliament. — His At- 
titude towards Parties.— The Agitation for Re- 
peal of the Union.— Sketch of the Relations of 
Ireland with England.— The Act of Union.— Dis- 
proportion of Irish Representation.— Subordina- 
tion of Irish Interests.— -Sentiments of the Irish. — 
Plan of 0'Ck>nneIl. — His Powt r over his Country- 
men. — Hatred of the Conservatives. — ^The Monster 
Meetings.— Upheaval of the Population. — Ascend- 
ency of O'Connell over the Irish.— Question 
of Physical Force.— O'Connell appeals to His- 
toric Memories. — Interference of the British Gov- 
ernment. — Suppression of the Clontarf Meeting. — 
Dissensions of the Irish.— Prosecution of O'Con- 
nell. — Waning of His Influence.— His Death. — 
Condition of the English Miners.— Parliamentary 
Investigation.— Passage of Lord Ashley's Bill.— 
The Factories Act.— Eflbrt to establish ScMCular Uni- 
versities.— The Toll-roads Question.—" Daughters 
of Rebecca." — ^The Mazzint Imbroglio in Lon- 
don. — Otaheite.and Queen Pomare. — Question of 
Protection and Free Trade. — Nature of Industrial 
Conditions in the British Islands. — ^Lagging of 
Agricultural Pursuits.— Corn Law of 1670. — Pro- 
tective Policy of the Elght«^enth Century. — Great 
Britain compared with the v'^^ited States.— Con- 
trariety of the two Countries.— Lagging of Manu- 
factures in America. — Protective System here 
Reversed. — Growth of English Manufacturing 
Towns. — Reenactment of the Com Law.— Its 
Effects. — Agreement of Whigs and Tories on the 
Ihrotective System. — Relation of that System to 
the House of Lords. — ^That Body a Landed Aris- 
tocracy.— Opening of the Struggle of 1846. — Anti- 
corn Law League. — Richard Cobden.— Crisis and 
Distress in Lancashire. — Union of Cobden and 
Bright. — Villiers and O'Connell. — Apparent Hope- 
lessness of the Cause. — ^The Argument of Starva- 
tion.— Plague of the Potato Rot in Ireland. — 
Dependency of the Irish on the Potato.— Spread 
of Terror. — The Cry heard in England. — The Free 
Traders seize the Condition. — The Corn-law Tan- 
talus. — Appeal to the Understanding of the En- 
glish People. — ^The Issue forces its Way.— Emer- 
gency of the Government. — Famine compels Peel 
to Capitulate.— The Ancient System overthrown.— 
Apparition of Disraelis — His Rise to the Leader- 



ship of the Aristocracy. — ^Provistons of the Re* 
form Bill of 1846.— Deeper «te Condition of In* 
land.— Coercion Bill proposed.- Position of Parties 
thereon. — Defeat of the Ministry. — Interest of 
Great Britain in the Arctic Regions. — Expedition 
of Sir John Franklin. — Uncertainty of His Fate. — 
Efforts at Recovery. — The Spanish Marriage 
Project. — Nature of the Issue. — Views and Pref- 
erences of France. — ^The Trick of the Marriage. — 
Great Britain beaten.— Futility of the French 
Scheme. — Its Ridiculous Outcome. — Last Act of 
Chartism. — European Revolutions of 1848. — Op- 
posite Conditions in Great Britain. — Genesis of 
English Liberty. — Solidity of the British Consti- 
tution.— Hopes of the Chartists.- Their Policy. — 
The Monster Petition. — ^The Proposed Prooeft- 
sion. — Shall we Fight? — Alarm in London. — 
Preparations for Defense. — ^The Procession for- 
bidden. — Weak Ending of the Enterprise. — Sur- 
vival of Chartist Principles.— Their Foothold in 
the British Constitution. — Parallel in American 
History. — Divisions of the Irish Patriots. — ^Riae 
of Young Ireland. — O'Brien and Meagher. — 
Other Leaders.— Rally of the Irish Students. — 
Mitchel and His Party. — Rebellion advocated.— 
Effects of the French Revolution of 1848 in Ire- 
land. — ^Tone of The United Irishman. — The Emei^ 
gency in Parliament. — Mitchel arrested and 
transported. — Effects of the Act.— The Insuireo- 
tion. — Arrest and Condemnation of the Leaders. — 
Commutation of the Sentences. — Consequences 
of the Disturi>ance. — Discoumgement of the 
Irish.— Subsequent Career of the Revolutionists. — 
Irish Exodus to America. — Problem of Ireland in 
the United States.— Mutual Gifts of the Two 
Peoples. — Story of the Affair of Don Pacifico. — 
Palmerston forces a Settlement. — Death of Sir 
Robert Peel. — ^Tendency to Formalism in the 
Church of England.— &incto Ecdesia Rediviva, — 
Project of Pius IX.— Opening of the Flamlnian 
Gate.— Wrath of the English People.— Russell's 
Letter. — Parties in Parliament. — Rome Aided by 
PoIiticAl Divisions. — Passage of the Ecclesiastical 
Titles Bill 274-323 

Chapter CXXIX. — From Hyde Park to 

bosphorus. 

The Prince Consort advises First International 
Exhibition. — Albert's Place in English Society. — 
His Mental Characteristics. — He speaks at the 
Mayor's Banquet. — Antagonism wakened. — ^Phi- 
losophy of the British Opposition. — Nature of 
English Progress. — Objections to the World's 
Fair. — The Royal Commission. — Hyde Park 
chosen. — Paxton and his Crystal Palace. — Change 
in Public Opinion. — Formal Opening of the Ex- 
po"ition. — Queen's Account of the Day and the 
Event. — Duration of the Fair. — ^Results of the 
Enterprise. — Subsequent Expositions.— ^Their Real 
Significance.— Apparition of Lord Pftlmerston.-* 



J 



CONTENTS OF VOL UMES VII AND VIII 



Sketch of His Career.— His Sympathy with Na- 
poleon and the ikup d^Etat, — Favors Hungarian 
Reyolation. — ^The Qaeen and Prince offended. — 
Lord Palmerston dismissed.— The Coup d^Etat 
makes Uneasiness in England. — Organization of 
the Militia. — ^Tennyson's Verses. — Dread of Bona- 
parte.— The Militia Bill.— Formation of the Derby 
Ministry. — Parliamentary Career of Macaulay. — 
Death of the Duke of Wellington.— Ode of the 
Laureate. — Disloyalty in the Government. — Glad- 
stone's First Victory. — Formation of the Coalition 
Cabinet — Rise of the Eastern Question. — Its Na- 
ture. — Place of Turkey in Europe. — Position of 
Constantinople.— The City falls under the Domin- 
ion of Islam. — Original Character of the Turks. — 
Their Attitude towards the Best of Europe.— The 
Ottoman Sickens. — Condition of the Subject 
Peoples in Turkey. — Position of the Russian Em- 
pire. — ^Plans and Mistakes of Czar Peter. — Possible 
Outlets of Russia to the Sea. — ^The South-east and 
the South-west Passage. — Pressure of Russia. — 
The Ottoman Power. — Error in the Founding of 
6t Petersburg.- Projects and Dreams of Catha- 
rine. — Growth and Aggressiveness of Russia. — 
Apprehensions of the Western States. — Condition 
€kf Affairs during the Reign of Nicholas. — Dec- 
adence of Turkey. — Czar Nicholas visits Great 
Briuun. — ^He uncovers his Purposes.— England 
draws back. — Why Great Britain desired the 
Maintenance of the Ottoman Power.— Syria and 
Jerusalem a Factor in the Problem. — Antipathy 
of France and Russia. — ^Napoleon must make 
War.— The Religious Question in Turkey.— The 
Gur makes Overtures to Great Britain.— He dis- 
covers the Sick Man. — England will not share 
the Estate.— Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardi^ —Posi- 
tion of Lord Russell. — Russell's Construction of 
the Treaty.— Mentschikoff's Demands. — Confer- 
ence at Vienna.— The Porte will fight — ^Useless 
Negotiations. — Napoleon's Correspondence with 
the Czar. — Beginning of War.— Western Fleets 
and Annies in the East— The Black Sea.— De- 
struction of Turkish Fleet — Declarations of 
War.— Attitude of Lord Palmerston.— The War 
Spirit in Great Britain. — ^Palmerston resigns. — 
His Recall. — ^His Conduct as Home Secretary. — 
Episode of the Cholera in England.— Palmer- 
■ton's Reply to the Presbytery of Edinburgh. — 
The Hcket-oMeave System adopted for the Penal 
Colonies.— Effects of the Measure. — Statute 
against Smoke and Soot— Concerning Church 
Burial, , 324-343 

Chapter CXXX. — Sepot Rebellion. 

General View of India.— The Indie Race.— 
First Impact of Europeans on the East— Sketch 
of the Indian Empire.— Appearance of the East 
India Company.— Character of British Organiza- 
tion in India.*^Bela;tions of the Colonial Govem- 
■lent and the Xatlve Kings.- BosinesB of Great 



Britain in the East— The Hindus as Soldiers.- 
Position of the Bengalese Army. — Indian Caste 
and its Results.— Hauteur of the Brahmins. — 
Mohammedanism as a Factor. — Sepoys reduced in 
Rank. — Exclusiveness of the Sepoy Element — 
Difficulty of Discipline in the Army. — Clive and 
Dalhousie. — Reforms and Projects of the Latter.--- 
Physical Improvements in India. — Shock to 
Hindu Prejudices. — Change in the Sepoy Armies. — 
Story of the Greased Cartridges. — Outbreak of the 
Rebellion at Meerut — Spread of the Mutiny. — 
First Conflicts with the English Forces.— Setting 
up of the Obsolete King of Delhi. — Contagion of 
the Revolt. — Alarm of the English. — Affairs at 
Calcutta.— The News in England. — ^Measures of 
Lord Canning to suppress the Insurrection. — 
Bringing of the English Armament from China. — 
Outram ordered from Persia. — Saving of the Pun* 
jaub from Insurrection. — Stratagem of Montgom- 
ery. — ^The Revolt in Oudh.— Crisis at Lucknow.— 
Death of Lawrence. — Beginning of the Siege. — 
Cawnpore. — Inefficiency of Sir Hugh Wheeler.— 
Terrible Character of the Insurrection. — Appari- 
tion of Nana Sahib. — Story of Amisulah Khan.— 
The Nana called to the Assistance of the En- 
glish. — Horrors of the Siege. — ^The Capitulation.— 
Destruction of the Prisons. — Tale of the Prison- 
house of Cawnpore. — Murder of the Women and 
Children. — Fate of Nana Sahib.—Revival of the 
English Cause.— Efforts to head the Rebellion. — 
Capture of Delhi by the Sepoys. — Retaking of the 
City. — End of the Indian Emperor. — Sufferings of 
the English Garrison in Lucknow. — Breaking of 
the Storm. — Defense of the English Garrison.— 
Approach of Havelock. — ^The Relief. — Continu- 
ance of the Siege. — Horrible Condition of the 
English.— Expedition of Colin Campbell. — ^His 
March to Lucknow. — ^Battles Around the City.— 
''Dinna ye hear it?"— Raising of the Siege.— 
Withdrawal of the Garrison. — Death of Have- 
lock. — Final Suppression of the Rebellion. — ^Luck- 
now recaptured. — Death of Peel and Hodson.- 
ReSstablishment of Civil Authority in India.— 
Honors for the Conquerors Living and Dead.— 
Condition of Affairs after the Mutiny. — How to 
deal with the Insurgents. — Measures adopted by 
the Government. — Reorganization of the Com- 
pany.— Confiscation of the Lands. — Policy of 
Canning. — Opposition thereto in England. — The 
Hindus accept the Situation.— Sketch of the East 
India Company. — Its Charters, Rights and Re- 
newals. — Nature of the Company Grovemment — 
Extension of its Authority. — Administration of 
Hastings. — Pitt revolutionizes the Company. — 
Its Al^olition in 1834. — The Government at the 
Time of the Mutiny. — Transfer of the Company's 
Authority to the Crown. — Office of Governor- 
General.— The Councils.— The Queen proclaimed 
Sovereign. — ^New Era in India. — Orsini attemptii 
Napoleon's Life.— Effects of the Event in Eng- 



10 



CONTEN'TS OF VOLUMES VII AND VIII. 



land.— Opinion and Policy of Palmerston.— The 
Conspiittcy-io-marder Bill.— Nature of the Meas- 
ure.— Its Analogy in American History.— Differ- 
ence between plotting Crime and a Felony. — 
Last Days of the Palmerston Ministry. — ^The War 
in China. — ^Reasons of England and France for 
Hostilities against the Chinese.— Bombardment 
of Canton.— China compelled to submit. — Pal- 
merston announces Success. — Darwin and The 
Origin of Species, 344-372 

Chapter CXXXI. — Suffrage Beform and 
American Complication. 

The Derby Ministry. — ^The Jewish Question in 
Parliament. — Prejudice against the Race. — Exclu- 
sion of Jews from Office. — Policy of Gradual 
Emancipation. — Election of Rothschild and Salo- 
mons to Parliament. — Nature of the Parliament- 
ary Oath.—" On the True Faith of a Christian."— 
Second Election of the Jews. — Their Admission 
to the House.— Condition of the British Poor. — 
Landed Property and Political Rights.— Obstruc- 
tions to English Reform.— Slow Progress in Re- 
formatory Movements. — Beating the Law. — ^Polit- 
ical Hypocrisy. — ^Method of Indirection. — Loan- 
ing Land for Political Uses.— Removal of the 
Landed Qualification for Membership in Parlia- 
ment.— Colonization of British Columbia.— Ques- 
tion of the Ionian Islands. — British Protectorate. — 
Gladstone's Mission.— Greek Revolution of 1862.— 
Shall English Workingmen be enfranchised? — 
General Condition of British Society.— Cry of the 
Common Man. — Conservative Leadership of Dis- 
raeli. — Ascendency of Napoleon III. — Cry of Re- 
form in England. — Shall the Conservatives lead 
the Movement?— Disraeli proposes a Franchise 
Act. — ^Which does not enfranchise. — Debate on 
the Measure.— Rivalry of Palmerston and Rus- 
sell.— The Former becomes Premier.— The New 
Cabinet.— Cobden's Mot. — Death of Macaulay. — 
Sketch of His Career and His Writings. — Strained 
Relations of England with Foreign Powers. — 
English Views of Napoleon III. — British Dis- 
trust of the Emperor. — Commercial Treaty with 
France.— Influence of Cobden. — Abrogation of 
Duties. — Effects of the Wine-trade in England. — 
Question of the Paper Duty. — ^The Argument. — 
The Duty abolished — Palmerston inherits the 
Question of Suffrage Reform. — The Liberal Bill 
of 1860. — Nature of its Provisions. — ^The Measure 
withdrawn.— Outbreak of Troubles with China. — 
Shall British Ambassadora be admitted to Pekin?— 
Lord Elgin destroys the Summer Palace. — Civil 
War in Syria. — Quarrel of the Druses and Maron- 
ites.— Murdera and Insurrections. — England and 
France interfere. — European Protectorate estab- 
lished in Syria. — Palmerston Ministry and Amer- 
ican Civil War. — ^Relations of the Two Countries. — 
America looks to Great Britain for Sympathy. — 
And gets a Sneer. — British Antipathy to Slavery. — 



Logic of the Situation. — Attitude of Great Britain 
toward the Southern Confederacy. — Declaration 
of Neutrality. — Sarcasm of Palmerston. — ^Epoch of 
Falsehood and Injustice.— Effects thereof in the 
United States. — What Excuse might England give 
for her Conduct? — Question of the Cotton Sup- 
ply.— Blockade of the Southern Ports.— Strained 
Logic of the American Government. — Sympathies 
of the English Workingmen. — The Mason and 
Slidell Episode. — Unlawful Act of the San Ja- 
cinto.— Precipitate Action of the British Govern- 
ment. — Antipathy to the American Republic. — 
English Theory of Society contradicted by the 
United States.— Great Britain becomes the Naval 
Base of the Confederacy. — Fitting out of the Pri- 
vateera. — Their Work of Destruction. — American 
Protests.— Adams at St. James. — ** This Is War.** — 
Sequel to the Cruise of the Alabama. — Organisa- 
tion of the Geneva Tribunal— The "Three 
Rules'* for Neutral Nations. — Decision in Favor 
of the United States. — Position of British States- 
men towards our National Government. — Lessons 
and Reflections. — Danish Complication of 1863. — 
Alexandra of Denmark becomes Princess of 
Wales.— Napoleon refuses to aid Great Britain. — 
Last Parliamentary Battle of Palmerston. — 
His Victory and Death. — Domestic Life of the 
Royal Family.— The Saxe-Coburg Princes and 
Princesses. — Death of the Prince Consort— The 
Queen's Widowhood. — Russell Ministry.— Out- 
break of the Jamaica Insurrection. — Antecedents 
of the Revolt.— Fighting at Morant Bay. — Sup- 
pression of the Insurgents — Atrocities in the 
Name of Law. — Removal of Eyre. — Reformation 
of the Jamaican Government 373-394 

Chapter CXXXII. — ^Fenianism and Disbb- 

tabli8hment. 

Ministry of Lord Russell.— Cattle Plague and 
Cholera. — Discontent of the Masses. — Position of 
Gladstone and Bright— Proposition for extending 
the Franchise. — Ministry between two Fires. — 
The Adullamites. — The Derby Ministry. — Policy 
of Disraeli.- Agitation in the Kingdom. — Work 
of the Reform League. — ^The Hyde Park Riot. — 
Disraeli would take the Wind from the Liberal 
Sails — ^The Queen's Speech. — ^The Conservative 
Reform Bill. — The Measure outdoes the Liberal 
Scheme. — Passage of the Franchise Act. — Its Ef- 
fect on the Political Society of Great Britain. — 
The Measure extended to Scotland and Ireland. — 
Condition of Affairs in the Latter Country.— 
Origin and Rise of the Fenian Brotherhood.— 
Spread of the Society into the United States. — 
Leaders of the Organization. — The Movement 
checked by the American Civil War. — Heart of 
the Question — Hopes of the Irish Americans.— 
Relations of Canada to the Fenian Project. — ^Pur- 
poses and Plans of the Brotherhood. — ^The Rising 
in Ireland. — Ends in Smoke. — Work of the 



CONTENTS OF VOL UME8 VII AND VIII. 



11 



Fenians in Manchester. — ^The Movement runs its 
Coarse in America.— The Canadian Fiasco of 
1866. — Rise of Trades Unions. — Philosophy of the 
Question. — Growth of such Organizations in En- 
glish Manufacturing Towns. — Terrorism as an Ar- 
gument.— The Trades Unions given the Right of 
Existence. — Tendency towards Cooperation. — 
Ahyssinia. — King Theodore.— Religious Condition 
of the Country. — Nature of the Government. — 
Theodore would wed Victoria. — His Capital 
City.— The King's Liking for^the English Offi- 
cers. — ^He breaks with Cameron. — Arrests British 
Subjects. — Seizes a British Embassy.— The Crom- 
wellian Rule. — Expedition against Abyssinia.— 
Capture of Magdala and Suicide of Theodore.— 
Revival of the Irish Question. — Religious Status 
of the Island. — Protestantism in Ireland. — British 
Politics affected by the Issue. — Scandal and 
Anomaly of the Irish State Church. — Necessity of 
Reform. — Project of Disestablishment. — Over- 
throw of the Conservative Ministry. — Leadership 
of Gladstone. — Nature of the Bill proposed.— De- 
bate on thtt Project.— Triumph of the Liberals. — 
Passage of the Disestablishment Act. — Other Im- 
portant Measures of the Liberal Party. — Question 
of Irish Land Tenure. — Abuses and Outrages of 
Landlordism. — ^Project of Land Reform. — Begin- 
ning of the Great Battle. — Question of Land- 
ownership. — Historical Antecedents of the Situa- 
tion. — Effect of Irish Rebellions. — Home Love 
and I^nd Love of the Irish People. — Paucity of 
Irish Cities. — Dominance of the Agricultural 
Life. — ^The System without Alleviation. — Hope- 
lessness of the Irish Tenants.- Autocracy of En- 
glish Landlordism.— Practice of Eviction. — The 
Soil cursed by Tenantry. — Discouragement of In- 
dustry.— More Work, More Taxes.— The Land- 
lords Absentees. — Control of Opinion by the 
Upper Man.— Favorable Condition of Ulster.— 
Gladstone presents His Irish Land Bill.— Its 
Theory. — Irish Rules Relative to Improvements. — 
Passage of the Bill, 395-411 

Chapter CXXXIII. — Reforms of the 
Eighth Decade. 

Question of Higher Education. — Absence of 
Educational System in England. — Forster's Edu- 
cation Bill.— Its Provisions.— Note on Dickens. — 
Nature of the Opposition to Forster*s Measure. — 
Attitude of the Non-conformists. — The Bill 
adopted. — Continuance of the Educational Re- 
form.— Conservatism of Universities.— Condition 
of Affairs at Oxford and Cambridge.— The Reform 
instituted.— Project for Reforming the Ballot.— 
Advantages and Disadvantages of Voting Vha 
Foc^.— The Chartist Principle.— Passage of Fors- 
ter's Ballot Bill.— Proposed Reformation of the 
British Army.— Gladstone's Ctwip.- Nemesis pur- 
sues Great Britain with the Alabama Claims.— 
Effecto of French Revolution of 1870 in Great 



Britain.— The Irish University Bill— Dublin Uni- 
versity in Particular. — Queen's University.— 
Catholic Institutions. — Difficulties in the Way of 
Reform. — Nature of the Gladstonian Measure. — 
The Debates. — Sentiments of the Country. — De- 
feat of the University Bill. — ^The Government em- 
barrassed. — Conservative Reaction. — Disraeli 
Prime Minister.— New Cabinet. — Retirement of 
Gladstone. — Question of Ritualism. — Canterbury's 
Bill.— Plimsoll's Bill for the Protection of Sea- 
men. — Rise of Imperialism. — Outlying British 
Empire. — Dreams of Disraeli. — Victoria made 
Empress of India. — Her Admiration for the Prime 
Minister. — Disraeli becomes Earl of Beacons- 
field.— Nature of the Change in His Relations. — 
Beaconsfield at Congress of Berlin. — ^The Home 
Rule Question. — The Home Rule League. — Spread 
of the Sentiment in Ireland. — Hunger Reinforces 
the Argument. — Emergency of the Liberal 
Party.— Gladstone defies the Ministry. — Parlia- 
ment dissolved. — Rout of the Conservatives. — 
Chagrin of the Queen. — Gladstone's Ascend- 
ency. — Ashantee War breaks out. — Condition of 
Ashantee Land. — Relations with the Fantees. — 
British Invasion of the Country. — Story of the 
War.— Sir Garnet Wolseley on the Gold Coast. — 
Defeat of the Natives. — Coomassie destroyed. — 
Submission of the Ashantees.— Trouble with the 
Zulus.— Cete way o. — The Boers.— Difficulty about 
the Transvaal Republic. — Cetewayo takes up 
Arms.— Zulus repressed. — End of the Prince Im- 
perial. — Consequences of His Death. — Difficulty 
with Afghanistan. — Pressure of Russia in that 
Direction. — Exposure of Great Britain on the Af- 
ghan Border.— Project of an English Embassy at 
Cabul. — Shere Ali. — The English Expedition. — 
New Treaty with the Afghans. — Insurrection in 
Cabul.— Disposition of Yakoob Khan. — Afghan 
Question.— Treatment of the Liberals, . . 411-430 

Chapter CXXXIV. — Battle for Home 

Rule. 

The Home Rule Party in Parliament— Pamell 
its Apostle.— Other Leaders.— Attitude towards 
the Ministry.— Beginning of Crime under Suffer- 
ing.— A Coercion Bill proposed.— Nature of its 
Provisions.— The New Land Bill.— Home Rulers 
adopt the Policy of Obstruction.— Parliamentary 
Usages.— Strength of Home Rule Party.— Final 
Expedient of the Ministry.— Expulsion and Im- 
prisonment of Home Rule Leaders. — Position of 
the Liberal Party.— Inclination of Gladstone.— 
Passage of the Land Bill.— Effects in Ireland.— 
Epoch of Outrages.— The Arms Bill.— Pressure 
of the Land League.— The Gladstone-Parnell 
Treaty.— Filling of the Irish Jails.— Impossible to 
hold the Crisis.— Sending out of Cavendish as 
Chief Secretary.— His Murder in Phoenix Park.— 
Effects of the Crime in England.— Straits of the 
Home Rule Party. — * Denunciations in Parlia- 



12 



CONTEHTTS OF VOLUMES VII AND VIII 



ment.-— Pamell's Beply.— Shock to the Irish 
Party.— Lessons of Irish Elections.— Attitude of 
the Parties.— Advantage of the Conservatives.- 
Attention of the Government withdrawn to 
Egypt.— Partial Suppression of Irish Disorders. — 
Opposition of the Orangeman.— Passage of the 
Franchise Bill.— Troubles and Complications in 
the East.— The War in Egypt— The Queen's 
Speech. — Defeat of the Liberal Budget.— Signifi- 
cance of the Vote. — Downfall of the Gladstone 
Ministry. — Relations of the two Parties to Hon:.e 
and Foreign Administration. — Marquis of Salis- 
bury called by the Queen.— Position of Home 
Rulers in the Crisis. — Hesitation of Salisbury. — 
Appeal to the Country. — ^Triumph of the Con- 
servatives.- Policy of the new Ministry. — Salis- 
bury Overthrown. — Recall of Gladstone.— The 
New Cabinet. — Gladstone espouses the Home- Rule 
Cause. — He proposes a Bill for Government of 
Ireland. — ^The Prime Minister's Speech. — Break 
in the Liberal Ranks. — Liberal Ministry over- 
thrown. — Unsettlement of the Question. — Celebra- 
tion of Her Majesty's Jubilee. — Relations of 
Great Britain to the Government of Egypt. — Po- 
etical Conditions in that Country.— British In- 
terest in the Egyptian Debt.— Principles govern- 
ing National Indebtedness. — Concern of France 
in the Egyptian Question.— The Financial Con- 



trol.— Civil and Religious Condition of Egypt — 
Tendency to Independence.— Reforms proposed 
by Mehemet Ali. — Western Interference compels 
Egypt to be Dependent on the Porte. — Ibrahim 
Pasha. — l^is Successors. — Egyptian View of the 
Foreign Domination. — The People demand Re- 
form. — Rise of El Arabi. — Efforts to reach Auton- 
omy. — European Fleet at Alexandria.— Promulga- 
tion of the New Constitution.— England supports 
the Khedive.— Success of Arabi. — Demands of 
Great Britain.— Riot in Alexandria. — The British 
Ultimatum. — Bombardment of the City. — ^Tewfik 
under the Protection of England. — Defeat of 
Arabi.— His Banishment.— Governmental Scheme 
of Dufferin.— Conditions of Settlement — Appari- 
tion of the Mabdi. — Who he was.— Conditions in 
the Soudan. — Baker's Explorations. — He leaves 
Gordon in the South.— Withdrawal of the Foreign 
Control. — Gordon in Khartoum. — His Character 
and Policy.— Is besieged by the Mahdi.— Gordon's 
Surrender and Death. — Effects of the news in 
England.— The Event aids the Conservatives. — 
British Explorations in Central Africa.— Work of 
Livingstone.— He is found by Stanley.— Story of 
Emin Pasha.— Sending out of the Relief Expedi- 
tion. — Stanley succeeds in his Work.— Revelations 
in Central Africa.— Conclusion of Narrative. — 
Promise of the Victorian Age, ..••.• 430-452 



BOOK Twe^nty-Third.— France, 



Chapter CXXXV. — Bourbon Restora- 
tion. 

Napoleon after Waterloo. — What might have 
been. — What Was. — Louis XVIII. regains the 
Throne.— Brings back the Past.— Difficulties in 
His Way. — How he was regarded. — He thanks the 
Prince Regent. — Humiliation of France. — Pressure 
of the Emigrant Nobles. — Royal ism Rampant. — 
Curtailment of French Territory.— The Foreign 
Occupation. — Reaction against the Government. — 
Richelieu leads the Chamber. — Marquis Des- 
Boles. — Struggle of Liberalism. — Censorship of the 
Press removed. — Right, Left, and Center. — ^Treatj 
of Vienna does not apply. — Congress of Aiz-la- 
Chapelle. — Holy Alliance reaffirmed. — The Gov- 
ernment joins in suppression of Slave-trade. — 
Sinking Fund created.— Character of Richelieu. — 
His Middle Course.- Count Vill^le.- Attention 
of France drawn to Spain,— Restoration of Fer- 
dinand VII.— Abrogation of the Constitution of 
1812.— Revival of the Past.— Reign of the Bad.— 
Secret Societies. —Insurrection of 1820.— Relations 
of Liberalism to the Cities.— Will the Holy Alli- 
ance interfere?— It interferes.— Congress of Ve- 
rona.— Great Britain protests.— France agrees to 
put down the Spanish Revolution.— Invasion of 



the Peninsula.— Bourbonism Teinstated.--GoiiBe- 
quences in France.— The Royalists will be All or 
Nothing.— "After Us the Deluge!' —Death of 
Louis. — Lateral Descent of the Crown. — Accession 
of Charles X. — His Previous Career. — ^Expecta- 
tions of the Dynasty.— Death of the Duke of 
Berry.— Birth of the Duke of Bordeaux.— Royal- 
ism would outdo Itself.— Question of the Estateo 
of the Nobles.— They demand the Earth. — Diffi- 
culties of the Situation.— Bill for the Relief of the 
Emigrants.— Plan of Compensation and Settle- 
ment.— The Jesuits restored.— Rise of Journal- 
ism. — The Censorship revived. — Making Men 
Great by Patent.— Opposition in the Chamber. — 
The Liberals carry the Election. — Polignac Min- 
istry. — Relations of France to the Turco- Hellenic 
Imbroglio — Acme of Royalism. — Opposition to 
Polignac. — Perier President of the Deputies. — 
Charles Weakens. — Story of the African War. — 
Algiere invaded by Bourmont. — Success of the 
Expedition.— Glorification of the Royalists. — ^We 
will now do as we please.— The Five Ordinances 
of July.— Apparition of Thiers. — The Press breaks 
its Manacles.— Rattling of Insurrection.— Paris on 
Fire.— The Tri-color on High.— Fright of the 
Ministry.- Revolution in Earnest. — ^The Foldiera 
with the Insurgents.— The New Chamber of Dep- 



CONTENTS OF VOL UME8 VII AND VIII 



IS 



utieB.— Barricade of the StreetB.— The Sanscu- 
lottes Emergent — Sacred Right of Insurrection.— 
The Government swept out— Charles throws 
Tuba behind him.— Lafayette Commandant — 
Success of the Days of July.— Wreck of Elder 
Bourbonism. — Future Destinies of the House. — 
Progress of the Hevolution.— Equality Philip 
called to the Throne.— Final Flight of Charles 
from France, 457-480 

Chapter CXXXVL— The Citizen King. 

Accession of the House of Orleans.— Popu- 
larity of Louis Philippe. — His Previous Career. — 
He accepts the Crown and becomes Citizen 
King.— Continuance of the Algerian War.— Battle 
of Isly and Capture of A bd-el-Kader.— Middle 
Glass Predominant in French Government — ^The 
Under Man not recognized. — ^Hevolution of 1830 
limits the Reaction.— Pretensions of the Past 
made Ludicrous.— Sympathy with the Revolution 
in Belgium. — Question of the Defenses of France. — 
Building of Fortifications at Paris. — ^The Citizen 
King would ally Himself with the Spanish 
House. — ^Isabella and the Princess Maria may be 
married. — In that Event Many Things might be. — 
Balance of Power must be preserved. — Financial 
Crisis and Insurrection. — Serious Revolt in Ly- 
ons.— Duchess of Berry in La Vend^.— Late 
Birth of Political Reason in France. — Factions in 
the Government— Popularity and Unpopularity 
of the Reign.— First Rivalry of Thiera and Gui- 
■ot.— The Soult Ministry.- Changes in the Cab- 
inet — Republican Attitude towards the Govern- 
ment — Fieschi attempts the Life of the King. — 
Punishment of the Conspirators. — Symptoms of 
Reviving Imperialism.— Condition of the Napo- 
leonic Dynasty. — Louis Napoleon Bonaparte 
makes His Bow.— The Charmed Name.— The Impe- 
rial Fiasco at Strasburg. — Imprisonment of Louis 
Napoleon. — ^Principles of Guizot and Thiers. — 
The Government Conservative. — Mol^ Ministry 
overthrown. — Relations of France with Great 
Britain. — G uizot cal umniated. — Louis Ph ilippe 
and Victoria. — Jealousies about the Throne of 
Spain. — Sorrows of Louis Philippe's Household. — 
Rivalry of France and England in the East. — As- 
cendency of the Latter. — Body of Napoleon the 
Great brought Home from St Helena. — Growth of 
Bonapartism. — ^Louis Napoleon as an Author and 
Adventurer. — The Government completes the 
French Fortifications. — The King grows Old, and 
looks backward. — The System an Aristocracy. — 
Fatal Flaw in the Monarchy. — Cry oi Reform. — 
Failure of the Crops. — Publication of New His- 
tories.— The, Reform Banquet of 1848.— Revolt of 
Paris. — ^The Soldiers mutiny. — ^Louis Philippe also 
casts Hia Tubs. — Abdication Necessary. — The 
Republic proclaimed. — Louis becomes William 
Smith. — All is over.— Exit House of Orleans. — 
The FugiUves, 480-498 



Chapter CXXXVU. — ^Republio usd Coup 

d'Etat. 

The Unheroic Revolution. — Provisional Goy- 
emment established. — France reaches her Start- 
ing-point. — A New Constitution. — Municipal 
Character of the Revolution.— Insui^gent Paris.— 
The Sphinx appears. — Sketch of Louis Napoleon. — 
His Relations to the Dynasty. — His Adventures 
in Foreign Lands. — His Political Writings. — He is 
elected to the Constituent Assembly. — Is hardly 
treated by the Republicans. — Silence is Golden. — 
Presidential Election of 1848. — ^Louis Napoleon is 
chosen President. — Is regarded with Distrust. — 
His Ministry. — He interferes in the Afiairs of 
Italy.— Seeks Favor with Rome.— The French 
Army suppresses Roman Republicanism.— Ques 
tion of Universal Suffrage. — Popularity of the 
President — Analysis of the Political Situation. — 
Napoleon the Man of Order.— Shall we stand for 
Reelection? — ^The Opposition will have it so.- 
Political Measures of the President — He fortifies 
his Administration.— Issue between Him and the 
Assembly. — Conception of the Ooup d^BUU, — Ar- 
rest of the Deputies. — Proclamation of the Presi- 
dent. — ^The Chamber would stem the Tide.— Sup- 
pression of Insurrection. — Napoleon elected Pres- 
ident for Ten Years.— New Constitution promul- 
gated. — Shall the Empire rise? — Vive VEmpereur I — 
Restoration of the Napoleonic Dynasty, . 499-506 

Chapter CXXXVIII.— The Second Em- 
pire. 

Philosophy of the French Situation in 1852.^ 
Napoleon III. a Legitimate Sovereign.— Absolute 
Rights of the French Nation. — Restoration of 
Order. — The Emperor concerned about the 
Succession. — He talces Eugenie in Marriage.-^ 
"The Empire is Peace."— Political and Social 
Consequences of the Imperial Marriage. — France 
becomes a Party in the Crimean War. — Mo- 
tives of the Emperor. — Success of the French 
Arms. — Birth of the Prince Imperial. — Paris 
glorified. — The Emperor seeks the Good- will 
of England.— Projects of Assassination. — Oraini's 
Bombs explode. — Punishment of the Crimi- 
nals. — ^Popularity of the Emperor.— 0«fi< Fotf 
cier and Credit Mohilier. — Abdul-Aziz visits Us. — 
Rising Antipathy to Germany. — ^The Opening 
Game must be played in Italy.— Cavour and Na- 
poleon at One. — Outbreak of the Franco- Austrian 
War.— Success of the French Invasion.— Treaty 
of Yillafranca. — Terms of Settlement — Efiects 
thereof Abroad. — The Emperor's Influencf 
waxes. — He joins Great Britain in a War on 
China. — Eugenie inspires the Mexican Invasion. — 
Napoleon at Enmity with the United States. — Mis- 
judges the Situation. — Folly of Mexican Scheme. — 
Monroe Doctrine forbids. — Maximilian's Hard 
Fate. — Reaction against the Empire.— Lessons from 



14 



CON'TENTS OF VOLUMES VII AND VIII. 



the French ElectioiiB.— Paris and the Empire. — 
The Emperor adorns the Capital. — Enterprises 
abroad. — The Suez Canal in Particular.— Place of 
that Isthmus in the History of Civilization. — 
Land-routes and Water-routes between Asia and 
the West. — ^The Shifting Tides of Commerce. — 
'History of Projects for joining the Mediterranean 
and Red Sea. — Fail urea and Successes of the Enter- 
prise.— The Western Powers become interested in 
the Canal. — De Lesseps appears on the Scene. — 
Company organized.— Sketch of the Work. — Final 
Success of the Canal. — ^Rivalry of Great Britain 
and France for its Ownership. — Extent of Com- 
merce through the Channel. — French Universal 
Exposition of 1867. — Circumstances distressing to 
the Empire. — Outline of Events in Schleswig- 
Holstein. — Contest for the Danish Crown.— Napo- 
leon no Longer Arbiter of Europe. — Germany 
gains Control of the Disputed Provinces. — Bis- 
marck visits Napoleon —Sketch of the Seven 
Weeks' War. — Revival of. Republicanism in 
France. — Public Opinion against the Govern- 
ernment. — Increase of the Army. — Strength of the 
Opposition Vote. — Qambetta appears. — Steadiness 
of the Emperor*s Conduct. — Government sus- 
tained by a Popular Vote. — Plebiacite and Senatut- 
comultum. — Work of the Radical Orators.— Neces- 
sity of a Foreign War. — Expulsion of Queen Isa- 
bella from Spain.— Question of her Successor. — 
Candidature of Leopold. — ^France is offended. — 
Interference with the HohenzoUern Project. — ^The 
Nature of the French Demand.— Napoleon would 
and would not, 507-523 

Chapter CXXXTX. — Franco-Prussian 

War. 

Anger of the French. — ^No German Prince 
■hall be King of Bpain. — "Be Rough with the 
King." — War Inevitable. — Opposition of the 
French Republicans. — Declaration of France. — 
Spirit with which the Struggle began.— Delusions 
of the French Statesmen. — Rising of Germany. — 
Plans of the French Emperor. — His Misinforma- 
tion. — Vigor of the German Movement.— Organi- 
zation of the King's Armies.— Germany in the 
Field.— Affair of Saarbruck.— Baptism of Fire 
and Other Nonsense.— The Scene changes. — Ger- 
many becomes the Aggressor. — Vehemence of Her 
Attack.— Crown Prince in Alsace.— France on the 
Defensive. — The Emperor outgeneraled. — Stras- 
burg besieged.— Battle of Courcelles.— General 
^Position of the Opposing Forces.— Battle of 
Mars-la-Tour.— Peril of Bazaine.— Battle of Grave- 
lotte.— Bazaine cooped up in Metz.— Fury of the 
Parisians.— French Republicans fling Themselves 
into the Conflict— Plan of MacMahon.— He is 
overruled.— Falls back to Sedan.— Battle, Crisis, 
and Capitulation.— "My Good Brother."— Napo- 
leon a Prisoner.— Bismarck whistles a Tune. — 



French Theory of Bazaine and Mets.— Position 
of the Empress. — Upheaving and Downrushing at 
Paris. — Flight of the Empress. — Imperial Family 
in England. — Proclamation of the Third Repub- 
lic— "Not a Foot of Soil, not a Stone of a For- 
tress." — Radicalism Triumphant.— Frenzy of the 
New Republic. — Advance of th) Germans on 
Paris. — Great Capitulations of September. — Ba- 
zaine becomes a Scapegoat — Ruin of France. — 
Heroism of Gambetta.— The German Anaconda 
tightens. — Battles around Paris. — Defeat of Bonr- 
baki. — ^Uproar in the French Capital.— Thiers 
elected President. — ^The New Ministry. — Govern- 
ment at Bordeaux.— rPreliminary Treaty. — Formal 
Deposition of the Emperor. — Armi»tice. — Negotia- 
tions and Treaty. — Severe Terms of Settlement — 
Evacuation by the Germans. — Vive la Cam' 
»ittii«/— Nature of the Crisis.— Sketch of the Com- 
munal Movement — Composition of the Com- 
munists. — The National Guard. — Affair of Pare 
Wagram. — Embarrassment of the Government — 
The Regulars join the Insurrection. — S^J&'ead of 
the Revolt. — Paris in the Power of the Insur- 
gents. — Government at Versailles.— Emissaries of 
the Commune Abroad. — Insurrections in Other 
Cities.— Revolutionary Government oigiOiized. — 
Revival of 1792.— First Battle with the Govern- 
ment. — National Assembly organizes an Army.^^ 
Battle of Mont Valerien.— Reign of Violence be- 
gun. — Fighting around the City.— Proclamation of 
the Government. — Progress of the Siege. — Passion 
and Fury. — Starvation and Burning. — Taking of 
the City Gates. — Public Buildings fired. — Slaugh- 
ter of Prisoners and the Suspected. — End of the 
Revolt.— Dreadful Scenes in the City. — Disposal 
of the Communists. — Political Questions to be 
Settled. — Prerogatives pf the Assembly. — Forma- 
tion of New Constitution. — Difficulty of unifying 
Political Sentiment — Reaction against the Com- 
mune. — ^Treaty of Peace with Germany. — Liberal 
Measures of the Government — ^Amnesty for the 
Bourbons. — Republicans carry the Election. — 
Thiers chosen President. — Opposition Elements 
constitute a Majority. — Policy of the Factions. — 
Payment of War Indemnity.— Dangers to the Re- 
public—Death of Napoleon III.— Questions of 
the Executive Office.- End of the Indemnity and 
Withdrawal of the Germans.- Secret of the Suc- 
cess of French Finance. — Sympathy with Impe- 
rialism.— Proscription of the Bonapartes. — Peril- 
ous Condition of the Government — Accession of 
MacMahon to the Presidency.— His Political 
Standing.— Influence of the Imperial Party. — 
Probable Restoration of Monarchy. — Imperial and 
Monarchical Factions.- Fixing of the Presidential 
Term and Definitive Establishment of the Re- 
public—Condemnation of Bazaine. — De Cissey 
Ministry.— Gains of the Republicana.— Philoso- 
phy of the Situation. — Dissolution of the Aseem- 
bly.— Rise of the Opportunists. — Party of Order.— 



CON'TENTS OF VOL UMES VII AND VIII 



16 



Aaeendency of Grevy and Gambetta.'-I>eath of 
" The Liberator of the Territory," . . . .523-556 

Chapteb CXL. — ^Third Republic. 

Grevy eU'cted Preeiident of the Chamber. — Be- 
pnblican Cabinet. — Republican Gains in the Sen- 
ate. — Grevy in the Presidency.— Attitude of the 
Extreme Left — Impracticality of the Radicals. — 
Ministry of De Freycinet. — ^Power behind the 
Throne. — Question of the Religious Orders. — 
Catholic Principles of Action. — ^Abolition of the 
Jesuitical Establishments. — '* Our Enemy is Cler- 
icism." — Establishment of New Educational Sys- 
tem.— Resistance of the Jesuits. — Distraction of 
the Imperialists — Note on Cassagnac. — Ascend- 
ency of Gambetta. — Rochefort and his Journals. — 
A Communist Platform.^Gambetta's Power in 
the Government. — Prince Napoleon. — Decline of 
the Monarchic Cause. — Decadence of Com- 
munism.— Effort to reform the Election Laws. — 
Nature of the Measures Proposed.— Project to 
abolish Life-tenure in the Senate.— The Gambetta 
Ministry. — Calling of International Monetary 
Conference. — American Interest in the Move- 
ment. — Question of Silver and Legal Tender.-^ 
Propositions before the Conference. — Attitude 
of Great Britain.— Monometallic and Bimetallic 
Theories.— Meagre Results of the Conferencei.— 
Revival of France from the German War.— End 
of Proscription.— Change in the Relations of Patis 
to France.— Break between the Capital and the 
Country. — Injury done by the Commune.— The 
Third Republic Representative of France.— Death 
of Gambetta.— Revival of Distrust against the 
Monarchists. — ^Prince Napoleon would be Bona- 
parte. — Expulsion of Imperial Representatives. — 
Respectability of the Orleanists.— Counts of Paris 
and Chambord. — The Former represents the 
Dynasty.— Episode of the Morton Ball.— Elections 
of 18M.-^ain8 ol the Socialists.— French War in 



the East.— Question of Marriage lind Divorce.—- 
The Roman Catholic Theory.— Bad Working of 
the System. — Statutes to Stimulate Marriage. — 
Proposition to Revise tbe Constitution. — Objec- 
tionable Features. — Crisis of 1885. — Disaster to 
the French Arms in China. — Overthrow of the 
Ferry Ministry.— The Briesbn Cabinet. — Profound 
Vice in the Governmental System.— Question of 
Patronage. — Corruption of the Public Service. — 
Defeat of Civil Service Reform.— Plan of Gam- 
betta.— Question of the Appointive Offices.— 
Analogies of France and the United States. — So- 
cialist Manifesto of 1885.— Great Vote in its 
Favor. — Republicans retained in Power, — Re- 
election of Grevy to the Presidency. — Difference 
between the French and American Constitu- 
tions. —The Right refuses to Vote. — ^Monarchisti 
encouraged by the Election.— Conduct of the 
Princes.- Decree of Expulsion passed.— Proclar 
mation of the Count of Paris.— Boulanger ap- 
pears and fights a Duel — Due d' Aumale puts Fire 
on the Head of the Republic. — Chantilly given to 
the French Nation. — A German Toy becomes a 
Political Issue. — Instability of the French Cab- 
inets. — Badness of Party Discipline. — Attempt to 
abolish the Sub-prefecture. — Freycinet Ministry 
overthrown.— The Goblet Ministry.— Question of 
rectifying the Boundary of France. — Revenge as 
a Motto. — Boulanger and Rouvier.— The Former 
becomes an Issue. — Appeals to the People.— Is 
made the Impersonation of Hatred against Ger- 
many.— Great Scandal in the War Office.— Dis- 
grace of Grevy's Son-in-law. — The President 
obliged to resign. — Boulanger stands for Insur- 
rection.— Sadi-Carnot elected President — Bou- 
langer's Star goes down.— An Absurd Duel pricks 
the Bubble. — ^The Attention of the French called 
to the Centennial of the Republic. — Preparations 
for 1889.— Notice of the Great Exposition. — Con- 
clusion, 556-580 



BPOK TWEJNTY-KOURTH.— GKRMANY. 



CSbaphsr CXLI. — Nadir of the Father- 
land. 

Effects of Waterloo in Germany.— Contagion 
of the French Revolution.— Gain of the Father- 
land from the New ^ife West of the Rhine.— The 
Prussian Monarch would profit by Victory.— 
Satisfaction of Madame Krudener. — Revival of 
the Middle Ages. — Territorial Work of the Con- 
gress of Vienna.— Project of Nationality.— Can 
We restore the Empire?— Plan of Mettemi.ch. — 
Reforms promised by the Diet.— Establishment 
of Zollverein. — Old Abuses revived. — Composition 
€^* the German Diet. — Disappointment of the Ger- 



mans. — Spread of New Ideas.- Bund of Wart 
burg. — Censorship of Press and Lecture-room. — 
Real and Apparent Consequences of the French 
Invasions. — ^The Period of Reaction.— Understrug- 
gle of the People.— The German Rulers admin- 
ister Husks. — Frederick William hugs the Arm 
of the Czar. — Prussia breaks from Austria. —Ori- 
gin of the Zollverein. — Recuperation of Ger- 
many. — Revolutionary Movements of 1830. — 
Unanimity of the German People. — Perfidy of 
Ernest August and Louis I.— German Genius in 
Disgrace.— Outbreak of Belgian Revolution. — 
Causes of the Revolt.— Insurrection in Brussels. — 
Barricade and Battle.— Provincial Government 



16 



CONTENTS OF VOLUMES VII AND VIII 



Cfltabliflhed. — Belgium achieves Independence. — 
Comparison of Conditions in Prussia and Aus- 
tria.— Austrian Crown goes to Ferdinand I., 583-590 

Chapter CXLIL— Frederick William IV. 

Accession of Frederick William IV.— Physical 
Improvements in Pnusia. — Auspicious Beginning 
of the Reign. — laberal Expectations and Gains. — 
The King and the Scholars. — Rouge's Manifesto. — 
Shallowness of the King's Pretensions. — He ceases 
to Profess. — ^The Censorship restored. — Similar 
Conditions throughout Germany. — Jesuitism, in 
Austria.— Pressure of the Prussian Government. — 
Project of a National Diet— Deadlock of the Mon- 
archy and Liberalism.— Political Sympathy be- 
tween the French and the Germans.— Effect of 
' the News of the Revolution of 1848.— Faith of the 
Germans in Reform.— Convention of Manheim. — 
The Liberal Charter.— Louis of Bavaria resigns. — 
Austria shaken. — Peril of the Prussian Govern- 
ment—Insurrection in Berlin.— The King con- 
cedes and swears.— Project of Unity. — Liberalism 
in the Diet. — Committee ad Interim, — New Na- 
tional Assembly.— Hecker as a Leader.— Repre- 
sentatives chosen.— Experience Wanting.— Great 
Abilities of the Frankfort Parliament.— Dangers 
of Theorizing.— Insurrection in Black Forest — 
Parallel of National Pariiamentand French States- 
General.— New Scheme of Government.— Repub- 
lican and Monarchist. — Paper System of Imperial- 
ism.— Difficulties in Schleswig-Holstein.- Issue of 
the Armistice.- Tumult in Frankfort.— Evil Con- 
sequences of Violence.— Rebellions in Neighbor- 
ing States. — Insurrection in Vienna. — Kossuth in 
the Field. — Outbreak of Hungarian Revolution. — 
Austria invades the Country.— Ferdinand appeals 
to the Czar. — ^Rising of the Hungarian People.— 
Surrender of Gorgey and Failure of the Cause.— 
Kossuth visits England and America.— Austrian 
Invasion of Italy.— Rising of the Sardinians. — 
Battle of Novara. — Charles Albert resigns to Vic- 
tor Emanuel. — Venice reconquered. — Reaction in 
Austria.- Accession of Francis Joseph. — Rivalry 
of Prussia and Austria. — The One or the Other 
must lead Germany. — Nature of Government. — 
The Diet would make Frederick Emperor.— He • 
declines. — Disappointment of the People.— Noth- 
ing Good out of Hapsburg. — Insurrections the Or- 
der of the Day. — End of the Parliament.— Diffusion 
therefrom of Progressive Ideas.— The College of 
Princes at Berlin.— Austria follows Her Own 
Policy. — Zollverein dissolved. — Dismal Character 
of the Sixth Decade.— Attitude of German States 
in the Crimean War. — Irritation of the Prussian 
People. — Effects of the Coup (TElat in Germany. — 
German Election of 1855. — Attitude of the Rulers 
towards Liberalism. — Ability of Human Nature to 
revive from Depression. — Personal Influences in 
History. — General Causes Predominant,— Paral- 
yais of the King. — Accession of William I. — 



Politics of Crown Princes.~War of Italian Inde- 
pendence. — Prussia antagonises France.— ^The 
Italians carry on the Movement for Nationality. — 
Progress of Liberalism in Austria and Prussia. — 
William and His People in Accord. — Effects of Ital- 
ian Nationality in Germany.— Rivalry of the Two 
Leading Sutes.— Policy of King William, 500-604 

ChAPTEB CXLIII. — ASCEKDEKCT OF HOHEN- 

ZOLLERN. 

Military Policy of King William.— Apparition 
of Bismarck. — Sketch of his Career. — His Viewa 
Political. — His Genius and Ambition. — A Re* 
former of the Tyrannic Order. — Austria seeks to 
regain her Leadership. — Bismarck laughs. — Ha 
is heard Afar.— Bismarckian View of Treaties. — 
Outbreak of the Danish War. — Success of the 
German Invasion.— Denmark crowded to the 
Wall.— Division of the Spoils. — Shall Frederick of 
Augustenburg be recognized?— Grounds of Quar- 
rel between Austria and Prussia. — Conference of 
Gastein.— Terms of Settlement.— Two Powers can 
not be First in Germany. — Desire of Prasua for 
Battle.— Austria thinks it a Passing Storm. — 
What shall be done with the Duchies?— Francis 
Joseph appeals to the Smaller States.— Bismarck 
is Cordially Hated. — He puts out His Hand into 
Italy.— The Prusso- Italian Alliance.— The Diet is 
with Austria.— Prussia declares War.— Frederick 
the Great Redevivus.— Opening of the Drama. — 
Flight of George of Hanover.— Clearing of the 
Field.— Battles and Victories.— The Crisis breaks 
at Koniggratz.— The Great Triumph of Prussia.— 
Venetia given to France.— Francis Joseph cries 
out.— End of the Seven Weeks' War.— The Hand 
of Bismarck in the Smoke. — Germany shall be 
Unified.— Formation of North-German Union. — 
Prescience of Bismarck. — Work of Transforma- 
tion.— Party of the National Liberals. — Dissatis- 
faction of Napoleon ill.— Nothing He gains. — 
Luxemburg Project.— Treaty of North and South 
Germany.— Attitude of Bavaria.— Antagonism of 
the Mother Church. — Consequences of Sadowa in 
Austria.— The Past on its Knees. — Downward 
Trend of the French Empire.— Collapse of the 
Mexican Project. — Napoleon mated by Bismarck. — 
France and Prussia await the Opportunity. — The 
Occasion comes out of Spain.— Isabella and Eu- 
genie.— Alleged Candidature of Prince Leopold. — 
Importance of the Crisis.- Question of the Re- 
vival of the Latin Race.— The Proposed Prusso- 
Spanish Arch.— Climax of the French Empire. — 
The Dynasty must be Upheld.— The Nephew and 
his Uncle.— Grammont raises the War-cry. — 
Well-enough tends to Bad-enough. — King Will- 
iam says Something to Benedetti.— France is in- 
sulted. — Le Bceuf says she is ready. — Affair of 
Saarbriick.— German Armies and Leaders. — ^The 
Invasion Irresistible.— Breakmg up of Fallacies.— 
Italy and Austria stand Aloof.— The Ruin of th# 



CONTEN^TS OF VOLUMES VII Al^D VJTL 



17 



French Armies. — Napoleon becomes a Specter. — 
Sedan ends the Trage<iy. — Wreck of the Em- 
pire. — Germany as an Avenger. — Paris under 
Foot — ^The Armistice and Treaty. — Enormous In- 
demnity enacted. — Triumph and Pride of Prus- 
sia.— Extent of the French Losses.— Events tend 
to the Establishment of a German Empire. — 
King William proclaimed Emperor. — The Place 
and the Occasion.— Tragedy of the Commune. — 
Return of Emperor William to Berlin, . . 604-624 

Chapter CXLIV. — ^The New Empire. 

True Origin of Prussian Greatness. — Germany 
•8 a Unit. — The New Constitution. — Adaptation 
of the System to the People.— What the Latter 
ezpecrt — Contrast with English-speaking Peo- 
ples. — Struggle of State and Church in Prussia. — 
Opposition of Bismarck to Papal Pretensions. — 
Expulsion of the Jesuits— The Falk Laws. — Dep- 
osition and Banishment of the Ecclestiastics. — 
Premonitions of Socialism. — History of the Move- 
ment. — Outline of the Socialist Theory. — Marx 
and Lassalle. — Results of Their Teachings. — Oppo- 
sition to the Chancellor. — The Latter encourages 
the Socialists. — Mistaken Deductions of the Ger- 
mans.— Incubus of the Military System. — As- 
sumptions of the Government. — Menace of 
France. — Hardships of German Labor. — Dream of 
Emancipation.- Dlflerence of German and British 
Theories of Government.— Sympathy of the Im- 
perial System with Socialism. — Violence of the 
Times. — Attempt to kill the Emperor.— Reaction 
ensues.— Project to suppress the Socialists.— Fail- 
are of the Measure. — Government succeeds by 
Intrigue.— Discernment of Bismarck. — State So- 
cialism proposed. — ^Nature of the Measure.— Suc- 
cess of the Scheme for unifying Germany.— Phi- 
losophy of the Contest between Feudalism 
and Nationality. — Salutary Imperial Measures. — 
Where shall the Reichsgericht be established? — 
Revival of Hatred against the Jews.— Sorrows of 
that Race. — Hebrew Complication of 1880.— Anti- 
Jewish Ebullition of the German Press. — 
Treitschke*s Agitation. — Reply of the Jews. — 
Extent and Character of the Controversy.— Ques- 
tion of increasmg the German Army.— Era of 
Monstrous Military Establishments. — Extent of 
the Various National Armies. — But We are All 
Peaceable.— Question of the Stamp Duty.— Anom- 
alous Position of Bismarck.— Do It, or We will 



resign.- Arbi trary Character of the GoTemment— 
Patriotism the Motive. — Bismnrck's Explanatory 
Speech. — Startling Assumptions of Power. — Re- 
vival of the Catholic Question. — Necessity of 
Conciliation. — Meeting of the Three Emperors. — 
Motives Ostensible and Real of the Conference. — 
Liberal Gains in the Election of 1880. — Bismarck 
unmoved by the Result. — Majority against the 
Government. — The Administration stands Fast.— 
The Empire would make Peace with Mother 
Church. — Pliability of Bismarck's Principles. — 
Overwhelming Generosity as a Policy.— Trick of 
the Clericals. — We are never defeated. — Attempt 
to abolish the Marriage Laws. — Course of the 
Pope to the German Goverment — One Manner 
for Germany and Another for Russia. — Imbroglio 
about the Importation of American Pork.— Fur- 
ther demands of the Papacy. — Revival of Ani- 
mosity between France and Prussia. — Thunder- 
ing of the North-German QazeiU, — Episode of the 
Crown Prince in Spain. — Affair of the Lasker 
Resolutions. — Bismarck's Declaration on the Sub- 
ject. — Resignation of Minister Sargent. — Action of 
the German Liberals Concerning the Lasker 
Business. — Westward March of Cholera. — Ger- 
many meets the Plague with Science. — Scheme 
for Foreign Colonization. — Backwardness of Ger- 
many in This Regard. — Africa the Field of Opera- 
tions. — Success of the Colonial Enterprise.— Cui 
Bono? — Age of Colonization passed; — German 
Greatness a Thing of Germany.— Affair of the 
Caroline Islands. — Threatened War with Spain. — 
German Passion for Emigration.— Motives for 
going Abroad. — Vastness of the Movement. — 
Rigors of the German Military System. — Expatri- 
ation the Remedy. — America the Chosen Field. — 
Peculiarities of the German Increment in Amer- 
ican Society. — ^Election of 1887.— Political Argu- 
ments of the Day. — Triumph of the Govern- 
ment. — Influence of the Emperor.— His Venerable 
Character. —Other German Veterans. — What of 
the Future? — Character and Place of the Crown 
Prince.— His Political Views. — Anxiety about the 
Succession. — Announcement about the Prince*! 
Disease. — A Race for Life.— Agony in the Imperial 
Household.— Death of Emperor William and Ac- 
cession of Frederick III. — The New Crown 
Prince. — His Character and Principles. — Decline 
and Death of the Emperor. — Sorrows of the 
Empress. — Accession of William II.— Conclu- 
sion, 625-664 



BOOK TWKNXY-KIKTH.— IXAI^Y. 



Chapter CXLV. — Dawn of Nationality. 

Italy, Ancient and Modem. — Close of the Na- 
poleonic Era. — Period of Incubation. — Career ol 
liimt. — Congress of Vienna dismembers the 



Country.— Distribution of the Parts. — Beneficent 
Results of the Revolutionary Age. — ^The Rights 
of Man not Extinct. — Restoration does not re- 
store.- Beginning of Insurrections. — Congress of 
Lavbach. — Austria must subordinate Italy. — 



18 



CONTEN'TS OF VOLUMES VII AND VI IL 



Bevolt in Piedmont — Charles Albert becomes Re- 
gent — Chsrles Felix restored. — Punishment of 
the Republicans.— Stifling of liberty.— Age of 
Secret Societies. — ^The Carbonari in Particular. — 
Principles and Ritual of the Order. — Relations of 
the Society to Civil Government. — ^It becomes a 
Revolutionary Center. — Mazzini and Young 
Italy. — Object of the Society. — Accession of 
Charles Albert. — His Liberalism extinguished. — 
Insurrection of Young Italy.— Republican Di- 
visions. — Influence of Mazzini. — Proposition of 
Gioberti. — Manzoni. — Coming of Cavour. — 
Changes in the Papal Government. — Policy of 
Gregory XVI. — Acce sion of Pius IX. — Liberal 
Hopes of the Church. Revolts of 1848. — Repub- 
lican Successes. — Hungarian Revolution aids 
Italyi — Invasion of the French. — Defeat of Charles 
Albert — Battle of Novara. — Accession of Victor 
Emanuel. — His Liberal Principles. — Material Im- 
provements in Italy, '. . . . 655-662 

Chapter CXLVI. — Victor Emanuel. 

Condition of Aflairs in 1849.— Parallel of Ger- 
man and Italian History. — Character of the Kcw 
Sovereign. — Opposition of the Extreme Repub- 
licans. — ShaU the Sardinian Kingdom lead 
Italy? — ^The House of Savoy can not retreat. — 
Legislation against the Church. — Ascendency of 
Count Cavour. — His Genius and Policy. — Diffi- 
culties in his Way.— Possible Franco-Italian Al- 
liance. — Alarm of Austria.— She must make War. — 
Chido di Dolore, — Strained Relations between Aus- 
tria and France. — Conference of Plombieres. — 
France declares War.— Beginning of French In- 
vasion of Italy.— Montebello, Palestro, and Ma- 
genta. — Success of the Allies. — Italian Insurrec- 
tions. — Milan taken. — Battle of Solferino. -* 
Change of Napoleon's Plans.— Treaty of Villa- 
franca. — Disappointment of the Italians.— Cession 
of Nice and Savoy to France. — General Gain to 
Italy. — Continuance of the Revolution. — Gari- 
baldi and Cavour. — Difficult Position of the Lat- 
ter. — He holds back the Republican Movement. — 
"We are Italy." — Sardinia giins the Two Sici- 
lies. — Victor Emanuel becomes King. — Triumph 
of the National Cause.— Last Work of Cavour. — 
His Death. — ^The King and Government at Tu- 
rin. — Shall Rome become the Capital ? — Florence 
the Intermediate Stage. — Victor Emanuel and 
the Church. — Schleswig-Holstein Complication 
again.— War of 1866.— Italy gains Venetia. — 
Epoch of Agitation. — Defeat of Garibaldi.— With- 
drawal of French Army demanded.— Bad Success 
of the Italians in the Field:— Italy triumphs with 
Prussii. — ^The French Army withdrawn. — Char- 
acter of the Government — Condition of the Pa- 
pacy. — Garibaldi makes a Rush for Rome. — Is 
obliged to surrender. — Return of the French 
Army. — ^Story of Prince Leopold. — End of the 
IVench Empire.— Abrogation of the Temporal 



Sovereignty of the Pope. — ^Rome becomes the 
Capital of Italy.— The King enters the City.— In- 
dignation of the Pontiff.— Ecumenical Council.— 
Are We Infallible ?— We are, under Certain Cir- 
cumstances. — Financial Embarrassment of the 
Government. — Measures of upholding the Na- 
tional Credit. — Rage of the Pope. — Completion of 
the ^lont Cenis Tunnel. — Institution of the New 
Political Order.— Flood in Po Valley.— The Church 
would regain her Footing. — Expulsion of the 
Jesuits. — Liberation of Thought and Industry. — 
First Scientific Congress. — The Pope makes Him- 
self a Prisoner. — Emergence of Italy into Nation- 
ality. — Quarter Centennial of the King's Reign. — 
Marriages in the Royal Family. — Victor Eman- 
uel's Death.— Outline of His Character.— Pius IX. 
surpasses the Years of Peter. — Celebration of his 
Jubilee. — Death of the Pontiff. — Pecci becomes 
Leo XIII.— His Policy 662-680 

Chapter CXLVII. — Humbert I. 

Accession of Humbert I.— His Coronation Ad- 
dress. — Beginning of Social Agitations. — Attempt 
to assassinate the King. — Overthrow of the Min- 
istry.— The Depretis Cabinet— Political Parallels 
with Germany and France.— Want of Party Soli- 
darity.- Elections of 1880.— Weakness of Political 
Discipline. — Radicalism revived. — Also Cleri- 
cism.— Change in the Papal Policy.— The Pope 
calls for Pecuniary Aid. — His Representations.-^ 
His Theory of the Imprisonment. — Pilgrimages to 
Rome. — ^The Pope's Address. — Affair of the Lega 
della Democrazia, — Question of extending the 
Suffrage. — Difficulty of obtaining a Popular Vote. — 
Reasoning of the Electors. — Proposition for Uni- 
versal Suffrage. — Hazard of the Experiment — 
Shall the Vatican obey the Law of the State?— 
Improvement of the National Finances. — Parallel 
with the History of the United States.— Credit of 
the Government rises to Par. — ^Resumption. — 
Prusso- Italian Sympathies. — The Ischia Earth- 
quake. — International Jealousy about Contribu- 
tions.— Rochefort charges Corruption. — Applica- 
tion of the New Law of Suffrage.— Failure of the 
Masses to vote.-^Question of Transit in Modem 
Nations. — Age of the Railway.— Great Change in 
Social and Industrial Conditions. — ^How shall the 
Railwnys be owned, managed, and controlled 7 — 
Different Decisions in Different States. — Railway 
Law in America. — ^The Problem in Italy. — State 
Control, but not State Management. — Cholera 
Visitation of 1884.— The Plague in Naples.— How 
shall the Disaster be averted ? — King's Plan and 
Pope's Plan. — Changing Views of Leo XIII. — 
Possibility of Papal Removal to the United States. — 
Decline in the Volume of Peter's Pence. — Previ- 
ous Experiences of the Pope. — His Attitude 
towards Mankind softens. — Disappointment of 
the Friends of Universal Suffrage. — Elections ol 



CONTENTS OF VOL UMES VII AND VIII. 



19 



1886.— Earthquake in the Riyiera. — International 
bonds of Italy and Germany.— The Bund of 
1887.— Jubilee of the Pope.— Irreconcilable Dis- 
pute between the Papacy and the Government. — 
Logic of the Papal Position. — Impossibility of Re- 



cession.— The Kingdom ^ Italy a Bleesiiig.-^ 
Parallel of Fifteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. — 
Age of Centralization. — General Tendencies of 
Old World and New,— Dangers of Over-organi- 
sation, 680^002 



BOOK T\?vENTY-SixxH.— Eastern Europe. 



Chapter CXLVIII. — Alexander I. and 

Nicholas. 

Revelation of the Cossack. — Alexander wit- 
nesses the Humiliation of France. — Influence of 
Madame Krudener. — Doctrine of the Holy Alli- 
ance. — Real Significance of the Compact. — Prin- 
ciple of Interference applied. — Congress of Aix- 
la-Chapelle.— Troppau, Lay bach, and Verona. — 
Predominance of Russian Influence. — Internal 
Improvements of Russia.-^Character of Alexan- 
der. — Ascendency of Metternich in Europe. — The 
Czar becomes despotic. — Constantine the Heir 
Apparent. — Nicholas takes the Crown.— Deka- 
brist Insurrection. — Outbreak of the Persian 
War. — Gain of New Territories. — ^The Porte pur- 
chases Peace.— Aflairs in Poland. — Conspiracy of 
1830. — Battles of the Following Year.— Suppres- 
sion of the Insurrection. — Suflerings of the Coun- 
try. — Pressure of Russia on Turkey. — Relations of 
Russia and France. — Break of the Franco-Rus- 
sian Arch.— Egyptian Complication. — Western 
Tours of the Czars.- Plans and Policy of Nicho- 
las. — He discovers a Sick Man. — War in the Cau- 
casus. — Shamyl overthrown. — The Czar makes 
Demands of the Sultan.— Outbreak of the Cri- 
mean War.— Theater of the Conflict, . -. . 697-704 

Chapter CXLIX. — Crimean War. 

Essence of the Eastern Question.— The Conflict 
on the Danube. — Destruction of Turkish Fleet at 
Sinope — Western Armies on the Black Sea.— 
Turkish Successes.- Position of the Russians. — 
Battle of Alma. — Sebastopol the Key of the Situ- 
ation.— Beginning of the Siege. — Battle of Balak- 
lava. — Episode of the Light Brigade. — Struggle at 
Inkerman.— Suflerings of the Allied Army. — Cap- 
ture of the Malakhoff and Redan. — Battle of 
Tchemaya.— Russians abandon Sebastopol.- The 
Czar brought to Bay.— Treaty of Peace.— Terms 
and Conditions of Settlement.— General Provisions 
of the Treaty. — Salutary Influences of the Event. — 
Attitude of the United States on Privateer- 
ing, 705-714 

Chapter CL. — ^Last Two Alexanders. 

V Accession of Alexander II. — ^Reforms in the 
Goyemmental System. — Emancipation of the 
Baasian Serfs. — ^Polish Insurrection of 1863. — Mis- 
fertones of the Czar's Situation. — Distrust of the 



People.— Alexis makes a Tour of the West — Phi- 
losophy of Political Conditions in Russia. — Im 
possibility of Liberalism at the Head of an 
Autocracy. — Discontent of the Under Man in 
Russia. — Rise of the Nihilists. — Policy of Repres- 
sion Adopted. — Assassination of the Czar. — Arrest 
and Execution of the Assassins. — Terror the Or- 
der of the Day. — Severity of the Czar and Cour- 
age of the Nihilists. — They propose an Accommo- 
dation with the Government, — The Imperial 
Proclamation. — The Czar makes a Tour to Mos- 
cow.— Dangerous Conditions of the Journey. — 
Climax and Decadence of the Nihilist Move- 
ment. — Persecution of the Jews. — The Act of 
Grace.— Astounding Character of the Manifesto. — 
Tenderness for Ordinary Criminals. — Friendly Re- 
lations of the Czar and the German Emperor. — 
Final Destruction of Poland. — Epoch of Spies and 
Police.— Difficulty of the Western Mind to under- 
stand the Condition of Russia.— Meeting of the 
Three Emperors. — Work of the Tribunal of 
Odessa. — Court of Schliisselhurg. — Oppressiveness 
of the Imperial System. — Discouragement of the 
People. — Question of the Zulfikar Pass. — The 
Trans-Caspian Railway. — Restoration of Absolut- 
ism. — Tendencies of the Russian Empire, 714-722 

Chapter CLI. — Sick Man of the East. 

Breaking up of the Janizaries. — Albanian In- 
surrection.— Other Revolts. — Beginning of Greek 
Revolution. — Leaders of the Cause. — Massacre of 
Scio. — ^The Phil Hellenes. — The Crisis breaks at 
Kavarino. — Establishment of a New Government 
for Greece. — Reign of Otho.— Constitution of 
3844.— War of the Porte with Egypt,— The West- 
em Powers will preserve the Ottoman Empire. — 
Druses and Maronites. — Rou mania constituted. — 
Cretan Insurrection. — Weakening of the Turkish 
Hold on Europe. —Russia becomes Aggressive- 
Loss of Interest in the Eastern Question. — Mos- 
lem Outrages against the Christians.- The Czar 
demands Redress.— The London Protocol. — Rus- 
sia will go to War. — Plans of Invasion.— Russians 
on the Danube.— Battle of Tundja Brook.— Re- 
pulse of the Russians from Plevna.— Check of the 
Invasion.— Defense of Shipka Pass. — Second As- 
sault on Plevna. — The Place besieged. — Capitula- 
tion of Osman.— Campaign of Grand Duke Mi- 
chael in Asia.— Kara taken by the Russianuk— * 



20 



COIfTENTS OF VOL UMES VII AND VII L 



Progress of the Invasion.— Stormiog of Shenovo. — 
Breaking of the Turkish Power.— Armistice. — 
Settlement enforced by Russia.— The Great Pow- 
ers interfere.— Treaty of San Stefano and Con- 
gress of Berlin. — Final Conditions of Settlement — 
Eastern Roumelia o^-ganized. — Hopes of the Ref- 
ormation of Turkey.— Impoesibility of Reform.— 
Changes in the Succession.— End of Abdul- 
Asiz. — Judicial Inquiry into the Manner of his 
Death.— Accession of Mniad V. — ^AbdulHamid 
XL— Question of the Payment of the War Indem- 



nity. — Embarrassment of Great Britain relative 
Thereto. — Rebellion of Arabi Pasha.— What shall 
be his Punishment?— Questions submitted by 
the Court— Woi-k of Lew Wallace at Constan- 
tinople. — ^The Servian Railway Complication.— 
Relapse of the Turkish Government— The Bul- 
garian Question. — Alexander of Battenburg raised 
to the Throne. — He is abducted and restored. — 
Menace of Turkish Dismemberment — Conference 
of Constantinople.— Grenend View of the Eastern 
SituaUon, 722-740 



BOOK T^VENXY-SEVENXH.— NIINOR A.ME^RICA.N 



Chapter GLII. — ^DoMmiON of Canada. 

Geographical Position of Canada. — Provinces 
Included. — Early Establishment of Feudalism in 
America. — Unfitness of the System. — Its Aboli- 
tion.— Shall Canada be French or English 7— 
Earthquake of 1663.— Political Divisions of the 
Country.— Leadership of Quebec. — Invasion of 
1690. — Epoch of La Salle. — ^Restrictions of French 
Possessions in America. — Causes and Issue of the 
French and Indian War.— Attitude of Canada 
during American Revolution. — French Influence 
still Predominant — Governmental Changes. — 
Canada used as a Base by the British. — Reforms 
of 1791. — Church-of -England Question. — Slow 
Growth of Canada. — Relations with the United 
States.— Rebellion of 1837.— Affair of the Caro- 
line, — Diversity of Interest among the Cana- 
dians.— Separation of the Provinces. — Political 
Quarrels and their Origin. — Career of Sir Francis 
Head. — Coming of Lord Durham. — His Radical 
Methods. — A Virtual Revolution proposed. — Dur- 
ham resigns under Pressure.— The Sequel fn His 
Favor. — ^True Founder of the Dominion. — Rise of 
the Popular Assembly. — Administration of Lord 
Elgin. — ^The Act of Union. — Question of a Seat of 
Government.— Ottawa chosen. — Project of uniting 
all the Provinces. — Growth of Public Sentiment 
in Favor of Union. — Story of the Fenian Inva- 
sion. — End of the Fiasco. — Government on an 
.^larged Scale.— Act of 1867.— Analysis of the 
Governmental System. — Analogies with the 
United States.— Provision for the Admission of 
New Provinces. — Outline of the Canadian Terri- 
tories. — Hudson Bay Company. — ^Political Devel- 
opment of Canada. — Organization of North-west 
Territories.- Population, Industries, and Pro- 
gress. — Loyalty of Canada to Great Britain. — 
Problem in the Relations of the Dominion and 
the United States. — Affair of Letellier.— Conces- 
sion from the Home Government. — Question of 
the Future Status of Canada in the British Em- 
pire.— Views of Bourinot— Discussion of Imperial 
Federation.— Difficulties of the System pro- 



posed.— Administrations of Duflferin and Lome. — 
Division of Political Parties.— The MacDonald 
Ministry.— Internal Development of the Domin- 
ion. — ^Institutions and Features of Quebec. — Mon- 
treal and her Public Structures.— Sketch of Mon- 
treal and her Industries.— Ottawa.— Franchise 
Bill of 1885. — Indians raised to Citisenship. — 
Story of the Riel Rebellion.— Execution of the 
Leader.— Sketch of his Life. — Resume of the 
Fishery Question between Canada and the United 
States. — ^Temptation to Smuggling and Contra- 
band Trade.— Growth of Reciprocity, . . 745-764 

Chapter CLIII. — Mexico. 

Different Conditions of Civilization beyond the 
Rio Grande. — Planting of European GovemmenI 
in Mexico. — Administration of Mendoza. — ^Rnle 
of the Viceroys. — Internal Improvements of the 
Country.— Social Divisions of the People. — Policy 
of Spain with Respect to her American Prov- 
inoe.— Effect of the Napoleonic Wars.— Sugges- 
tion of Independence.— Influence and Work of 
Hidalgo and Morelos.— Overthrow of the Na- 
tionals.— Restoration of Spanish Authority.— 
Mexican Revolution and War of Independence.— 
Project of Empire.— Santa Anna appears.— Itnr- 
bide in Exile.— New Constitution of 1824.— Begin- 
ning of Political Revolutions.— Spanish Attempt 
at Reconquest.- Santa Anna takes the Presi- 
dency.— The Secpnd Constitution.— Hostility of 
Texas.— Texan War and Independence.— Santa 
Anna again in Power.— Texas annexed to the 
United States.— Mexican War ensues.— Terms ex- 
acted by the American Government.— New Boun- 
daries between the Two Nations.— Santa Anna 
and Alvarez.— Confiscation of Church Lands.- 
Proposed Repudiation.- Administration of Zulo- 
aga.— Coming of Juarez.— His Reformatory Pol- 
icy.— Opposition of the Clericals.— Threatened 
European Invasion.— Great Britain satisfied.^ 

France makes War.— Animas of the French Em* 
peror.— Capture of Puebla by the Invaders- 
Monarchy established.— Story of 



CONTENTS OF VOL UMES VII AND VIII 



21 



Joaies restored to Aotbority. — Final Banishment 
of Santa Anna. — Reelection of Juarez.— His 
Death. — His Influence in Mexican Affairs. — Ad- 
ministration of Lerdo.— Hof>tility of the Church.— 
Insurrection of 1875.— Diaz Leader of the Insur- 
^unts. — Concession of the Goyemment. — Period 
of Quietude. — DifScalties on the Rio' Grande. — 
Gonzales elected President. — He is succeeded by 
Diaz. — Growing Sympathies between Mexico and 
the United States, 704-779 

Chapter CLIV. — South America. 

Spain is supplanted by England in the New 
World.— Geographical Position of the Spanish- 
American Possessions.— Slow Growth of Civiliza- 
tion in South America.— The United States of 
Colombia.— Union wilh Quito aud Venezuela. — 
Independence of Granada. — Republican Govern- 
ment established.- Revolutionary Period. — ^Treaty 
with the United States.— Progress of the Last 
Decade.— Primitive History of Venezuela. — Dec. 
kuration of Independence.— Epoch of the Civil 
Wars.— Politic4il Revolutions.— First Notice of 
Ecuador.— Spanish Yoke thrown off.— Foreign 
Wars and Domestic Insurrections.- Instability 
of Political Structure.— Peru.—Story of Pizarro.- 
Great Extent of the Country.— Loyalty of the 
Peruvians. — Bolivia becomes Independent— Com- 
mon Aspect of South American History.— Affair 
of the American Ships.- Castilla and San Ra- 
mon. — Adoption of Constitution. — Age of Polit- 
ical Violence. — Brazil. — Early Discoveries on the 
Coast.— Primitive Commerce — Colony of Rio de 
Janeiro. — ^Portuguese Colonies fall to Spain. — 
Evil Consequences in Brazil. — ^The Dutch in 
South America. — Brazil goes back to Portugal— 



Transfer of Seat of Government.— Brazil receives 
the Fugitive Brangan^as.- The Constitution modi- 
fied. — Final Separation of Brazil from Portugal. — 
The Former Country an Empire.— Dom Pedro I. — 
War with the Argentine Republic— Political 
Troubles of the Emperor. — Accession of Dom Pe- 
dro II.— Epoch of Insurrections. — Alliance of 
Three States against Paraguay.— Death of Lo» 
pez. — Success of the Administration. — Liberal 
Spirit and Accomplishments of the Emperor. — 
He visits the United States and Europe.— Rail- 
way Development. — Establishment of Steamship 
Lines with North America.— Famine of 1878.— 
Struggle with Slavery.— Brazilian Plan of Emand- 
pation. — Legislation against the Roman Church. — 
Establishment of Civil Marriage.— Cataclysm of 
1889. — The Empire overthrown.— Banishment of 
Dom Pedro and his Family.— Proclamation of the 
Brazilian Republic. — Place and Importance of Ar- 
gentina.— First Notices of the Country.— Vice- 
royalty established.— War with Great Britain.— 
Revolution of 1812. — Administration of San Mar- 
tin. — Transfer of the Capital.— Las Heras Pvsi- 
dent — Independence guaranteed by Foreign 
Powers. — Ascendency of Rosas. -^His Theory of 
Government. — His Downfall. — Civil Commo- 
tions. — Course of Affairs in the Seventh Decade. — 
Greatness of the Argentine Territory. — Recent 
Political Changes.— Parallel between the English 
and Spanish Peoples. — Epoch of Railway Devel- 
opment-Election of 1880. — Settlement of the 
Chilian Boundary.— Area and Statistics. — Educa- 
tional Progress.— Geographical Position of Chili.— 
Her Extent and Physical Character. — Primitive 
History.— Outline of Events to the Present Time.-^ 
Promise of the Republic, 779-708 



BOOK TWKNTY-EIQHXH.— ORIENTAI^ NATIONS. 



Chapter CLV. — China. 

Obscurity of Eastern History.— False Historical 
fitandards.-'Our Earliest View of the Chinese 
Empire and People.— Yu the Great— Dynasty of 
Chow.— Dynasty of Tsin.— Chinese Wall.— House 
of Han.— First Contact of the Western Nations 
with China. — Tartar Inroads. — Christianity intro- 
duced.— Genghis and Kublai Khan. — Great Fam- 
ine of Fourteenth Century. — House of Ming. — 
Invasions of Mantchu Tartars.— Tartar Dynasty 
established. — ^Interest of the West in Chinese A{- 
Isin. — British Embassy at Pekin. — Napier at- 
tempts to open Communioatjon with Chinese 
Coasts.— The Opium-trade and the Sequel.— De- 
struction of the Opium at Canton. — Declaration of 
War. — Canton bombarded. — Further Conquests. — 
Chinese purchase Peace. — Opening of the Ports. — 
Treaty negotiated with the United States. — Ex- 



tension of Foreign Intercourse. — Renewal of Dif 
ficulties with Great Britain.— Local War at Hong 
Kong.— Sending out of British Squadron.— Canton 
bombarded. — Question of conferring with the 
Emperor.— New Treaties wilh Foreign Powera. — 
Continuation of the Troubles. — Lord Elgin in- 
vades the Country.— Battle of Pa-li-kao.— De- 
struction of the Summer Palace.— Chinese Re- 
gency. — Burlingame in China. — His Great Work 
with the Government. He goes Abroad as Chi- 
nese Ambassador. — Tientsin Massacre. — Story of 
the Anglo-French War. — Career of Gordon. — 
Rebellion in Yun-Nan. — The Dowager Em- 
presses-Break in the Mantchu-Tartar Line.— As- 
cendency of Li Hung Chang. — Establishment of 
Chinese Embassy at Washington. — Formalities of 
the Occasion.— Question of Chinese Immigra- 
tion.— Nature of 'the Conditions on the Pacific 
Coast.— Political and Social Aspect of the Issue. — 



22 



CONTENTS OF VOLUMES VII AND VIII 



Prejudice as an Argument.— The Angell Treaty.— 
Summary of Conditiona and Prospects, . . 803-818 

Chapter CLVI.— Japan, 

TJrwlkeness of the Chinese and Japanese Peo- 
ples.— Incipiency of Japanese History. — Tradi- 
tions of the Creation.— Mythical Epoch.— Char- 
acter of the First Populations.— Jimmu Tenno. — 
Buddhism introduced.- Beginning of Letters.— 
Customs and Discoveries. — ^Rise of the Princely 
Families.— Struggle of the Japanese Princes. — 
Power of the Vassals. — Establishment of the 
Shogunate. — Invasions of Kublai Khan. — Heroes 
of the Sixteenth Century. — Wars with China.— 
Yedo becomes the Capital. — Relations of the Mi- 
kado and the Shogun.— First Connection of West- 
em Nations with Japan;— Era of Persecutions.- 
Divisions of Japanese Society. — Espionage and 
Tyranny.— Social Condition of Japan at Begin- 
ning of Present Century.— Wonderful Progress in 
Recent Times. — ^Treaties with Foreign Nations. — 
Civil War of 1863.— triumph of Nationality.— 
Exoellence of Japanese Display at American 
Centennial.— I^se of the Nation.— Formation of 
the New Imperial Constitution. — Conditions an- 
tecedent to the Event.— Awakening of States- 
manship.— State of the Japanese Mind at Middle 
of Present Century.— Quickness of the People to 
Assimilate.— Stimulus of Foreign Intercourse. — 
Abolition of Feudalism.— Ascendency of Young 
Men.— Imperial Project of the New Frame of 
Government.- Establishment of the Genro-in, — 
Imperial Proclamation.— The Unseen Revolu- 
tion.— Educational and Industrial Conditions.— 
Analysis of the Constitution.- The Emperor and 
his Place in the State.— RighU and Duties of 
Subjects.- The Imperial Diet.— Parallel with 
Magna Charta.— Powers of the Two Houses. — 
Duties of Ministry and Council —Courts of Law 
and Judicial Processes.- Law of Expenditure.— 
Supplementary Provisions. — Excellence of the 
Constitution.— Promise of Japan, . . . 819-832 

Chapter CLVII. — Australia. 

Late Development of Australia.— A Trans- 
planted Civilization.— Advantages possessed by 
such States.— Sympathy between Australia and 
America.— Australian Display at Centennial Ex- 
poeition.— Island or Continent?— Area of the 
Country.— General Character.— The Parts better 
known.— Principal Mountains. — Australian Riv- 
ers. — Number and Character of the Lakes. — 
Climatic Conditions.- Variations of Temperature 
and Rainfall —Animals of Australia.— Marsupials 
in Particular.— Australian Birds —Richness and 
Variety of Vegetable Life.— Grains and Fruits.— 



Dialribiitioa of Gold.— Character of the Mines.— 
The Indigenous Race — ^Personal Characteristics 
ol the Natives.— Manners and Customs.— Rude- 
DMi of the Aborigines.— Their Pacific Disposi- 
tion.— Marriage Customs.- First European Knowl- 
edge of Australia. — ^Explomtions of Haitog and 
Dampier.— Colony of Botany Bay. — Work of Van- 
couver.— Colonization of Queensland, West Aus- 
tralia, and New Zealand. — Continuance of Expjo- 
rations.— Conflict between Free Colonists and 
Penal Settlements.— Opposition to Penal Col- 
onization. — Abolition of the System. — Sketch 
of the Establishments —Early Civil Administra- 
;tions.— Increase of the People.— Beginning of the 
Sheep Industry. — Parallel between Australian 
Conditions and those of California.— Administra- 
tion of Bourke — ^Explorations of Mitchell.— Be- 
ginning of the Australian Cities.— Character of 
the Coast.— Nature of the Industries — Discovery 
of Gold.— Great Rush of Miners.- Withdrawal 
from Other Enterprises.— Rapid Increase of Pop- 
ulation. — Reliction towards Grazing and Agricul- 
ture. — Political Development of the Colonies. — 
Divisions of Provinces. — Epoch of Explorations.— 
Coast Countries first explored. — Difficulty of pen- 
etrating the Interior.— Journeys of Cunningham 
and Sturt. — Work of Leichardt and Eyre.— 
Tracing of the Australian Rivers. — Explorations 
of Stuart.— Enterprise of Burke and Wills.— The 
Expedition Organized.— Progress into the Inte- 
rior.— Death of the Leaders.— Revelation of the 
Continent. — Expedition of Warbarton and 
Gosse.— Sketch of New South Wales.- Its His- 
torical Development— Outline of the History of 
Victoria.— Climaie and , Products —Civil Govern- 
ment—Political Phenomena of the Country.— 
Imbroglio of 1863.— Question of Free Trade. — 
Sketch of Queensland.— Product of Gold.— Out- 
line of Civil Government.— Extent of South 
A ustralia —Character and Conditions of the Coun- 
try — Remaining Provinces of Australia.— Institu- 
tions and Structures of Melbourne.— Sketch of 
Sydney.— The University.— Adelaide.— Its Build- 
ings and Enterprises.— Tasmania.— General Con- 
dition of the Australian Provinces.— Relations of 
Colonial and Home Government— Question of 
Federation —Derivation of the People.— Paucity 
of the Population.— Industrial Energy of the 
Australians —Extent of the Commerce.— Yield of 
Gold —Product of Wool —General Industrial De- 
velopment—Conflict with the Asiatics.^Question 
of Cheap Labor.— Laws relating to Chinese Immi- 
gration.— Trouble wilh the Home Government.— 
Outlook for Australian Nationality, . . 83S-86J 



List of Illustrations, 



Volumes VII and VIII. 



PAGB. 

PoBTSAiT OP Lincoln, FhrntigpUce, 

Hkad-Piick for Unitkd States, 37 

Jambs Monrob, 38 

Front Vjbw of thr Capital at Washington, 40 

The White House, Washington City, .... 43 

JbanLapitts, 44 

Marquis De Lafayette, 45 

John Quincy Adams, 47 

Andrew Jackson, 49 

pANiEL Webster, 50 

Black Hawk, 51 

Osceola, 53 

The New Patent ^Office, Washington, ... 55 

Martin Van Buren, 56 

Sterglades of Florida — ^Land of the 8em- 

INOLES, .57 

William Henry Harrison, 64 

John Tyler, * 65 

Bunker Hill Monument, 66 

Mormon Emigrants is the Desert, 67 

Fall of the Alamo, 69 

Samuel F. B. Morse, 70 

James K. Polk, 71 

Capture of Mexican Batteries by Captain 

May, 73 

Fremont in thb Rocky Mountains, 75 

General Taylor Commanding at Buena 

Vista, • . . 76 

Bombardment of San Juan D*Ulloa, .... 77 

WiNFiELD Scott, 78 

Miners of Forty-nine, 82 

Adventurers en route Overland to Cali- 
fornia, 83 

Smithsonian Institution, 84 

Zachary Taylor, 85 

Henry Clay, 86 

Millard Fillmorb, 87 

Kane and bis Companions in the Arctic Re- 
gions, '. • . 89 

John C. Calhoun, 90 

Franklin Pierce, 91 

San Francisco and Bay, 92 

Walker befobe his Execution, 93 

Stephen A. Douglas, 95 

James Buchanan, 96 

Salt Lake City, . 97 

Landing of thb Atlantic Cable, 98 

Sam Houston, 99 

Washington Ibvino, 99 



PAOR. 

Alexander H. Stephens, lOS 

Inauguration of Jefferson Davis at Mont- 
gomery, 103 

Abraham Lincoln, 106 

Removal of Troops from Fort Moultrie to 

Fort Sumter, , 106 

Flag of the Confederate States, 107 

Fortress Monroe, . « . Ill 

Jefferson Davis, . ' 112 

Guarding Bridge over the Potomac, .... 114 
The San Jacinto stopping the Trent, . . .116 

William H. Seward, 117 

Battle of Fort Donelson, 118 

surrbnder of fort do nelson, '. . 119 

Battle of Monitor and Merrimac, t . . . . 1!90 

Stonewall Jackson, 122 

George B. McClellan, 12ft 

Robert Edward Lee, 124 

Battle of Malvern Hill, .... ^ ... • 125 

Stonewall Jackson in Battle, 127 

Struggle at the Bridge at Antietam, . . . 128 

AmSROSE E. BURNSIDE, 12t) 

Federal Gun-boats Passing Vickssurg, . . . 131 
Grant and Pemrerton — Capitulation of 

Vicksburg, 183 

Tearing up a Railway, 134 

George H. Thomas, 136 

Battle of Lookout Mountain, 136 

Attack on Fort Sumter, ...>.. 138 

Joseph Hooker, 139 

Battle of Chancellorsville, 140 

George G. Meade, 141 

Battle of Gettybbprg, 142 

Pickett's Charge at Gbttysrurg, 144 

Bailey's Dam on Red River, 146 

Grant writing Orders to Sherman for thb 

Grand Advance, 147 

James B. McPherson 148 

Sherman's March to the Sea 149 

Meeting op Sherman and Johnston, .... 151 

David G. Farbaout, 152 

Destruction of the Alremarle, 15i 

''Thr Man ON Horserace," 16ft 

Battle of Spottsylvania Court-houib, . . . 156 

Death of General Stuart, 157 

Philip H. Sheridan, 158 

Sheridan's Arrival at Cedar Crebk, .... 159 
Explosion of the Mine before Pbtbbsbubg, . 160 * 

SURRENDEB OF GbNBBAL LbB, ........ 162 

28 



24 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, VOLUMES VII AND VIII. 



PAGK. 
GbVBRAL LbB taking LEAYB of HI8 SOLDIKRB, 164 

Salmon P. Chasb 165 

a8ba88ination op president lincoln, .... 167 

Last Hour of Booth, 168 

Tomb of Lincoln, Sprinofibld, 169 

Andrew Johnson, 170 

Review of the Union Army at Washington, 171 

Down the Yukon, Alaska, 173 

Ulysses 8. Grant, 177 

Central Pacific Railway, Sierra Nevada, . 178 
The Joint High Coif mission in Session, ... 181 

Burning of Chicago, 182 

Horace Greeley, 184 

Attack on Peace Commissioners by Modocs, 185 

Charles Sumner, 187 

Main Building, Centennial Exposition, . . 188 

Independence Hall, 189 

Memorial Hall, Centennial Exposition, . . 190 
Battle of the Big Horn— Custer's Death, . 191 

Rutherford B. Hayes, 194 

Pittsburg Riot, 195 

Launching a Lifb-boat, 199 

James A. Garfieu>> 203 

James G. Blaine, 205 

Assassination of President Garfield, . . . 206 

Chester A. Arthur, 207 

Robert T. Lincoln, 208 

Thomas A. Edison, 211 

East River Bridge, 214 

General William T. Sherman 220 

Lieutenant-Gbnbral Philip H. Sheridan, . . 221 

Orover Cleveland 222 

Winfield S. Hancock, 224 

John A. Logan, 225 

Thomas A. Hendricks, 226 

Samuel J. Tilden 226 

Henry Ward Bebcher, 227 

Morrison R. Waite, 229 

RoscoE Conkling, 230 

Earthquake at Charleston, 232 

Benjamin Harrison 237 

Views in the City of New York, 240 

Old Federal Hall 242 

Sub-Treasury Building, Wall Street, . . . 243 

Tail-piece, 248 

Head- PIECE for Great Britain, 253 

Windsor Castle 255 

Geokge IV., 256 

Battle of Navarino, 259 

George Canning, 262 

Cathedral of York, 265 

William IV., 266 

Lord John Russell, 269 

Daniel O'Connell, 272 

Victoria, 276 

View of Jamaica, 283 

Prince Albert, 285 

Mehemet Ali Pasha, 290 

Palacb of Mehemet Ali, 291 



paob. 

Dost Mohammed Khan, 294 

Akbar Khan, 294 

Sir Robert and Lady Sale, 295 

Arrival of Dr. Brydon at Jelalabad, . . . 296 

The Khybbr Pass, .... 297 

Reunion of the Captives of Cabul, 299 

Sir Robert Peel, 302 

Isle of Otaheite, 304 

Richard Cobden, 307 

The Irish Famine — Scene at thb Gate of a 

Work-house, 909 

Lord George Bbntinck, 312 

Erebus and Terror Outward Bound, .... 313 

Elisha Kent Kane 314 

William Smith 0*Brien, 317 

Crystal Palace of 1851, 325 

Duke of Wellington, 330 

View of the Bosphorus, 332 

Church of the Holy Sepulcbeb, 337 

Lord Palmerston, 342 

Tick ET-OF- Leave, 343 

Diamond Harbor, Hooghly, 345 

Native Officers of the Bombay Army, . . . 346 

Brahmins of Bengal 347 

Port of Calcutta, 349 

Throne-room, Palace of Delhi, 851 

Benares 352 

Sir John Lawrence, 353 

View of Lahore— The English Church^ . . 354 

British Residency at Lucknow, 355 

Grand Mosque at Delhi, 359 

Relief of Lucknow, 361 

Attack on the Alambaoh, 362 

Sib Henry Havblock, 863 

Outram, Campbell, and Havblock, 365 

HoDsoN Seizing the King of Delhi, .... 366 

Memorial of Cawnpore, 367 

Charles Robert Darwin, 371 

Geneva, Switzerland, 387 

Geneva Tribunal, 388 

Prince of Wales, 392 

Jamaica Insurrection, 304 

Lord Derby, 396 

Emperor Theodore giving an Audience, . . 404 

William E. Gladstone, 407 

William £L Forster, 412 

Charles Dickens 413 

Empress of India, 418 

Earl of Beaconsfield, 419 

Liberal Ministry of 1880, 422 

coomassie, 423 

Sir Garnet Wolselby, 424 

Pontoon Bridge over the Prah, 425 

Cetawayo, in Engl:8H Garb, 426 

Hindoo Kush Mountains, 427 

Shere Ali, 428 

Hazarah, from Northern Highlands — Af- 
ghan Warrior, 429 

Yakoob Khan, 430 



LIST OF ILLUSTEATIOirS, V0LVME8 VII AND VIII. 



28 



PAGB. 

Chablbb Stxwart PabnslEi^ 431 

Mabquis ov Salisbury, 436 

GLAD8T0NK, 438 

Alfbsd Tennyson 440 

Palack op thb Khkdivb, 443 

Ahmkd Arabi Pasha, 444 

MODBRN LiGHT-BOUSB AT AlBXANDRIA, .... 445 
Ch ABQB OFTHB HlOHLANDBRS ATTbL-BL-EbBBB, 446 

On the Wbitb Nilb, 447 

Wabriobs op tbe Mahdi in Battlb with thb 

Khedive's Forces, 449 

DaTID LlVINGSTONB, 450 

Hbnby M. Stanley, 451 

Tail-pibcb, Holyrood and Arthcr's Sbat, . 452 

Hbad-piece for France, 457 

Field op Waterloo, 458 

Louis XVIII, 459 

Joseph Bonaparte, 462 

Cbateuabriand, 464 

Thb Escurial, 465 

Charles X., 466 

Coronation of Charles X., 467 

Chables Ferdinand, Duze of Bebby, .... 468 

Casimib Pbrier, 471 

Aloiebb 476 

Mabquis de LAFAYBTTEy 478 

Louis Philippe, 479 

Abbiyal of Louis Philippe in Pabis^ .... 481 

Louis Philippe takes the Oath, 482 

Battle of Isly, 483 

Captube of Abd-el-Kadeb, 484 

Genebal View of Lyons, 486 

Insubbbction in Lyons, 487 

Marie Caroline, Duchess of Berry, 488 

Marshal Soult, 489 

FiESCHi*8 Attempt to assassinatb Louis 

Philippb, 490 

Guillaumb Guizot, 491 

DuKB OF Orleans, 494 

DoHB OF THE Invalidbs, 495 

Lamartine, 496' 

Paris Insurrection of 1848, 497 

Adelaide, Princess of Orleans, 498 

Proclaimino the Republic of 1848, 500 

Genebal Cavaionac, 502 

Arrest of thb Deputies, 504 

VicTOB Hugo, 505 

Napoleon ^I., 507 

Empbbss Eugenie, . 508 

Attempt of Obsini to assassinate Napoleon 

III., 610 

Suez Canal, 517 

Henbi Rochefobt, 519 

Isabella II., of Spain, 520 

View of Madrid, 521 

Prince Leopold of Hohensollxbv, 522 

Babon Lb B<euf, 524 

Marshal Bazaine, 526 

Battle of Mabs-la-Toubs, 527 



FA«S. 

Metz, 528 

Bismarck accompanying the Cabbiaqb of 

Napoleon III. to the Castlb of Wil* 

helm8h5he, 629 

Camden Palace, Chisblhurst, 530 

Cathedral op Strasburg, 531 

French Soldiers burning their Flags after 

THE Surrender of Metz, 532 

Entrance of the Germans into Orleans, . . 532 
Burning op St. Cloud by the Pbussians, . . 533 

Gambetta Starting for Tours, 534 

Overthrow of Bourbaki, 635 

Battle of St. Quentin, 536 

Jules Favrb, 537 

Sitting of the Delegatb Govebnment at 

bobdeauz, 538 

Insurgent Communists Seizing thb Guns, . . 540 
Babricade of the Pobt St. Denis, dubino 

the Commune, 541 

Barricade, Hotel de Ville, 542 

Bombardment of St. Denis, 544 

Scene Dubing the Bombardment of Paris, . 546 

Fall op the Vendomb Column, 549 

Supplying the Hungby dubino thb Com- 
mune, 547 

A Petboleuse, 548 

Death of the Abchbishop of Pabis, 549 

Last Sobtie from Paris, 560 

Transport of Communist Prisoners in Brevt 

Harbor, 552 

Marshal MacMahon, 553 

Leon Gambetta, 554 

Louis Adolphe Thiers, 555 

La Kepubliqub Fbancaisb, 557 

Leon Say, 558 

Gambetta in the Tribune, 562 

Prince Napoleon, 565 

CoMTE DE Chambord, 567 

President Jules Grevy, 571 

Prince de Joinvillb, 572 

Due d'Aumale, 573 

Versailles Palace and Gardens, 575 

Harbor of Marseilles, 578 

Eiffel Tower, 579 

Tail-piece, The Angelus, 580 

The Surrender at Sedan (Etching), .... 582 

Head-piece for Germany, 583 

Frederick William III., 586 

Battle at the Barricades in Brussels.— 

After the painting by Wappers, 587 

Leopold, Kino of the Belgians.— After the 

painting by Winne 588 

Alexander Von Humboldt, 591 

Princb Mettebnich, 593 

Berlin Insurrectioh of 1848, 594 

Hungarian Volunteebs. — After the painting 

by A. Von Pettenkofen, 597 

Arthur GSrgey, 598 

Louis Kossuth, 599 



26 



LIST OF ILLUaTRATIOJTS, VOLUMES VII AND VIII. 



PA«B. 
FKAMCI8 JottiPH, 601 

Otto Von Bisicaiick, 606 

Stokminq thi Dannkwkrk, 607 

Prince Fsxdkrick of AuoumNBUBOy .... 609 
Austrian-Prussian Cavalry Chaboe, 1866. — 

Drawn by W. Camphaasen, 610 

Battls op 8Aix>wA.-^After the painting by W. 

Campbaasen, 612 

Kino William and bis Gbnerals. — After the 

painting by W. Camphausen, 615 

Von Moltkb, 616 

pRiNCB Frbdbrick Charlbs, 617 

ViBw OP WilbblmsbShb, . . 618 

Intbbvibw of Jules Favbb with Bismarck, . 619 

Tbb Ublans in Paris •. ... 620 

Pboclamation op Kino William as Emperor 
OP Germany. — ^After the painting by An- 
ton Von Werner, 621 

Germans evacuating Pabis, 623 

Empbboe William be%ntebino Bbbun, .... 624 

Emperor Wiluam I., . . . 630 

Views in Beblin, * * 635 

Pbincb Bismarck, 639 

The Cbown Prince, «... 645 

Count Von Moltke, 650 

Edward Von Manteufpel, 651 

Emperor Frederick III., 652 

DowAOBB Empress Victoria op Gebmany, . . 653 

Tail-piece — Germania, 654 

Head-piece fob Italy, 655 

Guibeppe Mazzini, 659 

AlBSSANDRO MANZONIt 660 

M6r JoKAi, 661 

Entrance of the French Troops into Turin, 

1848, 662 

Guiseppb Gabibaldi,'! 663 

Camillo Benso Di Cavoub, 664 

Battle op Montebello, 666 

Conflict op the Bridge op the Buppalora, . 666 

Battle op Solfebino, 667 

Landing op Gabibaldi at Marsala. — Drawn 

byG. Broling, 669 

Flobbncb 671 

Ducal Palace, Venice, 672 

8t. Peteb's Rome, 674 

Ecumenical Council, 676 

Victor Emanuel, 677 

Expulsion of Jesuits from tbbib College in 

Rome, 678 

Pius IX., 679 

Leo XIII 681 

Bbidge of 8ant' Angelo, Rome, 683 

A Street in Naples, 688 

Stairway op the Senatobial Palace, Rome, . 689 
Tail-piece, Winged Lion of St. Mabk, . . .692 

Head-piece fob Eastbbn Europe, 697 

Alexandeb I., 698 

Column OP Alexander I., 699 

Nicholas I., 700 



PASS. 

Equebtbian Statue or PnmB thh Gmbat, . . 70f 

SHAMY^ 704 

Sebastopol, 705 

Destruction op Tubeish Fleet at Sinope, . . 706 

LoBD Raglan, 707 

Battle of the Alma, 708 

Battle op Balaklava, 708 

Inkebman, 709 

Battle op Inkebman, 710 

Stobming op the Redan, 711 

Stobming of the Malaedoff, Sbptembeb 8, 

1855.— Drawn by Richard Knoetel, .... 712 

CoNGBBSs OP Pabis, 1856, 713 

Alexandeb II., . 715 

Alexander III., 717 

St. Petebsbubg, Nevski Pbospect, • 719 

Genbbal Gubko, 720 

Constantinople, 722 

Ali Pasha, op Janina, 723 

The Acbopous— Abch op Hadbian xm the 

Fobeoround (Modem View), . . . ^ . . 723 

The Pibjcus (Modem View), * . 724 

Lobd Bybon, » /26 

Queen Amalia.— After E. Ronjat, 726 

Fountain of the Sebaglio, 727 

Pbincb Gobtchakopf, 7211 

Constantinople fbom Scutabi, 729 

Suleiman Pasha, . . « 730 

Defense of Shipea Pass, 730 

Repulse op the G band Assault at Plevna, . 731 

Genbbal Todleben, 782 

Omab Pasha, 732 

Adbianople, 733 

Congbbss OP Beblin, 1878, 734 

Views in Athens, 735 

Abdul-Aziz, « 736 

Sultan's Palace and the Bosphobub, .... 739 

Tail-piece, 740 

Head-pibcb fob Minob Ambbican Statm, . . 745 

NiAGABA Falls, 749 

Eabl op Dubham, 750 

Lobd Elgin, * * 751 

Fenians Invading Canada, 753 

Mabqujs op Lobne, 755 

Lobd Duffbbin, 758 

Sib John Alexandeb Macdonald, 759 

Citadel and Rampabts op Quebec, 760 

XInivebsity of Tobonto, .761 

Pabliament House op Ottawa, 762 

Fountain and Aqueduct, City or Mexico,. 769 

Mestizo Maiden, 770 

Fbbdinand VIL, 771 

City of Mexico, 772 

Entbance to Cathbdbal, City op Mexico,. . 773 

General PbiM; 774 

Empbrob Maximilian, . 775 

Stobming of Pubbla by the Fbench, . . . 776 
Entbance op thb Fbench in the City of 

Mexico, 776 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, VOLUMES VII AND VIII. 



21 



PAGB. 

EzBcunoN OP Maxdcillian and Gsnkraub 

Mejia and Mibamon, . 777 

FiBST Stbamkr on ths Orikoco, 785 

Gathxsimo Pbbuvian Bark, 786 

BsLut OF Pbru, 787 

Lima, 788 

IrLK OF SlEBPBNTBy BaT OF RiO DR JaNRZRO, . * 790 

DOM PSDRO I^ 791 

8HKLTKR FOR TrAYKLRRS IN THE AnDSS 797 

Tail-pibcb— Cliffs of Caps Horn, 798 

hxad-pjbcb for oriental nations, 803 

CHnviSB Types.— Drawn by E. Ronjat, .... 804 

Chimbsb Wall, 805 

PsKiM, THE Tartar Citt, 806 

A Stbket in Canton, 807 

Pobcxlain Tower, Nankin, 808 

Chinese Opidm-smokers, 809 

Bombardment of Canton by the British, . . 810 

Battle of Pa-u-kao, 811 

One of the Gates of Pbkin oitbn up to the 

Allies, 812 

View of Pekin^ 813 

Bblioious Ceremony in Chinese Temple, . . 814 

PftKiM Tragedians, 817 

CBmnMAifDABiMf •••••• 81$ 



Shinto Shrine near Yokohama, 819 

Kato Kiyomasa, 820 

Battle' of Kublai Khan with the Jap- 
anese.— Drawn by F. Liz, 822 

Japanese Wabriobs in Ancient Armor, . . . 823 

Japanese Wrestlers, . 825 

View from the Bridge of Niphon, Tokio, . . 826 

Japanese School, 830 

Munemitsu Mutsu, 832 

Austrauan Natives at Abobiginal Statiom, 841 

Captain Cook, 842 

Australian Gold Rush, 1851, 845 

Mines of Sandhurst, .846 

Cradling and Panning — Australian Mines, 647 
Departure of the Burke and Wills £zf>- 

dition from mslboubne, 860 

MusTEBiNG Sheep — Austbalian Ranch, . . . 852 

Lord Melboubne, 854 

Public Libbaby, National Gallebt, ahd 

Museum, 866 

Collins Stbeet, Melbourne, 856 

The Univebsity, Melboubne, 857 

Bbisbane fbom Bowen Tebrace, 858 

View of Hobabt fbom Kanoaboo Pooit, • . . 850 
TAU/*PUCBy % 864 



Introduction to Volumes VII and VIII. 




|F we examine the history 
of the times most recent 
we shall find it strongly 
discriminated from that 
of the ages more remote. 
I' The historical phenomena 
of the Nineteenth Cen- 
TUHT are separated by a wide remove from 
the aspects of the eighteenth, and still 
more widely from those of the centuries pre- 
ceding. Human events have become vastly 
complex and interdependent. States and na- 
tions are interlocked and cross-woven in their 
relations, and the various peoples of the world 
seem floating in a common current towards a 
common destiny. Here and there the surface 
is dotted with vortexes of agitation, and it is 
sometimes difficult to discern in which direc- 
tion the tide is flowing; but the historian 
knows that all irregularity and disturbance 
are but seeming, and that the whirls in the 

river 

" Are eddies in the mighty stream 
That rolls to its appointed end.'' 

The science of history is beset with the 
same kind of difficulty which confronts geol- 
ogy in considering the latest aspects of the 
physical world. The drift is more difficult to 
underetand than the azoic rocks. Both the 
historian and the geologist are confused on 
account of the nearness and multiplicity of 
the things demanding attention and classifica- 
tion. But the puzzle to the historical student 
is greater than that which meets the student 
of world-formation. For to the nearness and 
multiplicity of the facts in the geology of the 
pleistocene. History must add a certain aggra- 
vation of complexity which comes of human 
relations and dependencies. The growing 
sympathies and community of interests which 
have become so conspicuous since the opening 
of the century have interlaced the selvages 
of the nations, until the general aspect is that 



of one great fiict confused with a mass of be- 
wildering particulars. 

At the time of the battle of Waterloo there 
was not an ocean steamer, a railway car, or a tel- 
egraph in the world. How, then, could the 
nations fraternize ? Isolation is a result of non- 
intercourse. In proportion as the means of com- 
munication are multiplied the common and mu- 
tual interests of mankind are developed, apathy 
and suspicion are abated, and the temperature 
of humanity rises to the glow of enthusiasm. 

. It b surprising to note how in recent times 
the intellectual freedom and moral compass 
of men have widened in the triumph over 
the obstacles of environment It is impossi- 
ble that thought and action should ever go 
back again to the old standards and criteria. 
The mo^rement of civilization is like that of 
certain kinds of enginery that can go only in 
one direction — like that of the power-loom or 
thresher, the reversal of which is unthinkable, 
except by crash and ruin. The threads of 
common sympathies carried by the shutties of 
intercourse from nation to nation, from shore 
to shore, have bound all civilized peoples in a 
common fate; but this infinite union of things 
before distinct and separate, while it has in- 
spired the pen of History, has greatly con- 
fused and perplexed the problems with which 
she has had to deal. 

But internationality has not yet arrived — 
perhaps may never arrive. From the past the 
peoples of to-day have inherited repellant in- 
stitutions and the instincts of segregation 
The spirit of locality reasserts itself in th< 
midst of commercial agitation, and the lasso 
of ancient custom holds back the flying ad* 
vance, even in the era of the cosmopolite. 
Thus it happens that modern society, like the 
.physical world, is balanced between two forces, 
the radical impulses bom of intercourse and 
democracy, and the checks of old-time custOM 
and race heredity. 



ao 



INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES VII AND VIII. 



And 80, after the cataclysm of revolutionary 
France in 1815, a system of things somewhat 
resembling the ancient order — but not the 
ancient order — was resumed in Europe. On 
the American side of the Atlantic the prom- 
ising political experiment of our fathers stood 
fast, and the structure of government by the 
people rose into strength and shapeliness. For 
about thirty years there followed in the gen- 
eral domain of History what may be called 
an epoch of suspense, and then the changed 
order of the political and social world declared 
itself in full force* In the next year after 
Waterloo the Atlantic was traversed by a 
■teamer. With 1828-30 came the railway, 
and with 1845 human intelligence, perched 
on the lightning's wing, began to carry the 
messages of men from city to city, from coun- 
try-place to throbbing metropolis. 

What, then, shall the writer or student of 
History say of the .present aspect and move- 
ment of the nations? That Organized Power 
18 losing its hold, and that Man is coming to the 
fore. The historian still notes the separate and 
variable progress of States and kingdoms; but 
he notes with greater interest the emergence 
of individuality and freedom from the low 
grounds of ignorance and slavery. He notes — 
even with pride — that Nature has been ad- 
mitted into the confederation of Humanity, 
and that Generosity is filling his cornucopia 
to the brim. 

In the Books comprising the present Vol- 



ume it shall be the aim to give, in brief out- 
line, a narrative of the course of affiurs from 
the Treaty of Vienna to the leading events of 
the current decade. The story will begin 
with the progress and development of the 
United States, and proceed to the historical 
movements of those nations with which our 
own is most intimately associated — Great 
Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Northern 
and Eastern Europe, the Minor American 
States, and finally the Oriental Empires and 
Australia. It will be necessary to summarize 
the causes, course, and results of the several 
terrible conflicts which have consumed such 
an ominous part of the substance of the cen« 
tury — the Civil War in the United States, 
the Crimean War, and the Franco-Austrian, 
Franco-Prussian, and Turco-Russian struggles 
in Europe; but as much as possible of the 
space of the volume will be reserved for the 
more cheerful record of those events in which 
the virtues of peace and the triumphs of 
knowledge are exemplified. Let the hope be 
cherished that the hand of him who* shall in 
course of time take up the ever-unfinished 
work and carry forward the story of human 
achievement and aspiration into the splendors 
of the twentieth century, may be guided by a 
clearer vision — ^though hardly by a sincerer 
trust and purpose — than have moved and su»- 
tained the present effort to supply, in fair pro- 
portion and truthfulness of matter, the history 
of the principal hopes and sorrows of our noe. 



RIDPATH^S 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY 



VOLUME VII. 



BOOK XXL —THE UNITED STATES 



BOOK XXE-GREAT BRITAIN 



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The United States. 



CHAPTER CXX 1 1.— AMERICAN MIDDLE AGES. 



HOULD the observer take 
his Bland in any cooapic- 
uoua atation in Weatem 
Europe and view the 
hietorical landscape, in 
I summer of 1815, he 
would behold arouod the 
horizon the eubeidence 
of a storm which had prevailed for more than 
a quarter of a century. A period of forty 
years had elapsed'eince .the outbreak of the 
American Revolution, and of twenty-eix years 
■ince the assembly of the States General in 
France. Through this very cooaiderable ex- 
tent of time the elemental war&re had in- 
creased in violence to the close. The battle 
of Waterloo may be regarded as the laat burst 
of the tempest, the last tremendous effort of 
the human storm. After this event the 
douds rolled heavily back, and the light of 
peace, which had already illumined for some 
time the shores of the New World, began to 
shine fitfully along the coasts of Europe. 

There was an immediate and great change 

in the condition of both the Old World and 

the New. The treaties of Vienna and Ghent 

marked the close of a historical epoch. There 

N.— Vol. 4—3 



was, at least for the present, an end of oom< 
motion and the incoming of political quietude. 
A sort of calm, half-ominous in its character, 
supervened, as if the nations would seek rest 
from the tempests to which they had been ex- 
posed. The date to which we have just re< 
ferred may be properly used as the beginning 
of another era in the movement of modern 
civilization. It is here that we take our 
stand, id order to consider, in the current 
Volume, the evolution of the new order of so- 
ciety, under the general head of the NnJB- 
TEENTH Century. 

In the present Volume it will be our pur- 
pose to note the course of events, first in the 
United Stat«s, and afterwards in the Euro- 
pean nations, from the overthrow of Napo- 
leon Bonaparte to the current annals of our 
own day. The reader will, perhaps, from 
the first be struck with what may be called 
the un heroic character of the narrative- 
Tragedy may be said to disappear for a time 
from history, and, though comedy does not 
take its place, we shall look in viun for the 
repetition, even incidentally, of the exciting 
acts which characterized the great drama of 
the Revolutionary era. None the less, th« 
(37) 



VmVERaAL HISTORY.— TSE MODERN WORLD. 



Bge upOD which we are now to enter, will be 
found replete with iDtereat. It will be found 
pervaded with a new, and we may hope a 
more humane, epirit The nineteeath cen- 
tury may be said to have yielded itself some- 
what to the guidance of a more benign 
geniuB than that which dominated the close 
of the eighteenth ; so that the reader may 
discover in every page of recent annals some 
sources of inspiration, and perhaps some 
'ountains of prophecy. Let us, therefore, 



enter upon the history of our own country 
from the date of the treaty of Ghent, and 
note the success of the fathers in planting 
and developing s new nationality on this side 
of the sea. 

Oreat and rapid was the progress of the 
United States of North America, conudered as 
an in&nt republic. The scheme of government 
contrived by the Revolutionary patriots and 
statesmen was succeasful in the highest degree. 
He work of building up a great nationality 
in the West, in ^ving an aspect of physical 



grandeur to the civilization planted on this 
side of the sea, in the vindication of free po- 
litical institutions as the best form of human 
government, has ii^the present century and 
in our own land far outstripped any previous 
achievement of like kind in the history of the 
human race. In the present chapter we shall 
give asketch in outline of the prodigious growth 
and promise of our country. It will be remem- 
bered that in the preceding Book the history 
of the United States was extended to Uie 
close of the War of 1812 and 
the establishment of peace by the 
treaty of Ghent We shall in 
this place resume the narrative 
with the administration of Mon- 
roe, the fifth President of the 
Republic. 

James Monroe was a Virgin- 
ian, being the fourth and last of 
the Bo-called Virginia Dynasty 
of Presidents. All the chief mag- 
istrates thus &r, with the ex- 
ception of the elder Adams, had 
been taken from the Old Do- 
minion. Monroe was bom on 
the 28th of April, 1758. His 
education was obtained chiefly 
at William and Maiy College, 
from which institution he went 
out, in 1776, to become a soldier 
of the Revolution. He was in the 
battle of Trenton, and received 
a British ball in his shoulder. 
He took part, under Lord Stir- 
ling, in the campaigns of 1777 
and 1778, being in the battles 
of Brandy wine, Germantown, and 
Monmouth. In course of lime he 
studied law with ThomasJeffersott, 
governor of Virginia. He served in the Vir> 
ginia Assembly, and at the age of twenty- 
three was a member of the Executive CounciL 
In 1783 he was sent to Congress, and while 
in his service as delegate he became convinced 
of the inutility of the Articles of Confederai- 
tion as a form of government for the Col- 
onies. He was one of the earliest, though 
among the youngest, of those patriots who 
exerted themselves in behalf of a better Con- 
stitution for the United States. 

Monroe was a member of the OonstitutioDal 



THE UNITED STATES.— AMERICAN MIDDLE AGES. 



89 



Convention, and in 1790 was elected Senator 
of the United States. In 1794 he was sent 
as plenipotentiary to France, and was one of 
those who negotiated with the French Gov- 
ernment the purchase of Louisiana. After- 
wards he was sent as minister plenipotentiary 
to the court of St. James. In course of time 
his views underwent some change from the 
Federal towards the Democratic type, and he 
is generally ranked in the same category of 
•tatesmen with Jefferson and Madison. In 
1811 he was elected governor of Virginia, and 
when Madison acceded to the Presidency was 
appointed Secretary of State. His election to 
the Presidency has already been sketched in 
the previous chapter. The electoral vote in 
bis favor was 188, out of a total of 217. His 
Cabinet was composed as follows: John 
Qnincy Adams, Secretary of State ; WUliam 
H. Crawford, Secjretary of the Treasury; John 
C. Calhoun, Secretary of War; Benjamin W. 
Crowninshield, Secretary of the Navy; Will- 
iam Wirt, Attorney-General. 

In its principles and methods the new Ad- 
ministration was Democratic. In general, the 
policy ot Madison was adopted and continued 
by his successor; but the stormy times which 
Madison had experienced in the vicissitudes 
•f the war gave place to years of unbroken 
peace. The animosities and party strifes 
which had prevailed since the accession of 
John Adams seemed for a season to subside. 
The statesmen who were in the lead in Congress 
and the nation devoted themselves assiduously 
to the payment of the national debt The 
young Bepublic found herself burdened, after 
the treaty of Ghent, with the accumulated ex- 
penses of the war, and the task of liquidating 
the debt was of herculean proportions. But 
commerce soon revived. The Government was 
economically administered. Population rap- 
idly increased. At length wealth began to 
flow in, and in a few years the debt was fully 
and honestiy discharged. 

In the summer of 1817 a complication of 
■ome importance arose between the United 
States and the littie kingdom of Hayti, in the 
northern part of San Domingo. There were 
gionnds to suspect that Louis XVIIL, the 
newly restored Bourbon king of France, would 
endeavor to obtain the sovereignty of the 
iBbuid, and perhaps proclaim its annexation to 



the French Kingdom. Under the Napoleonio 
ascendency Hayti had, as we have seen, been 
for a time under the dominion of France, and 
there was an attempt to maintain, under the 
restoration, what had been won by the sword 
of Bonaparte. 

In this state of affairs, Ghristophe, the sov- 
ereign of Hayti, became anxious to secure 
from the United States a recognition of the 
independence of his government. The Presi- 
dent met the overtures of the Haytian king 
with favor. An agent was sent out in th^ 
frigate Congrew to conclude a treatyof amity 
and commerce with the kingdom. The Prei^i- 
dent had taken pains, however, that the agent 
so sent should not rank with plenipotentiaries. 
On this score the Haytian authorities were of- 
fended, and would not negotiate with an 
American agent who was not properly ac- 
credited to their government. For this reason 
the mission resulted in failure and disappoint* 
ment 

The attempt, in the same year, to form a 
treaty with the Indian nations of the Terri- 
tory North-west of the River Ohio was at- 
tended with better success. The important 
tribes inhabiting this region, and concerned in 
the new compact, were the Wyandots, ther 
Delawares, the Senecas, and the Shawnees. 
Other prominent Indian nations, including the 
Chippewas, the Otto was, and the Pottawatta^ 
mies, were also interested in the treaty and in 
some degree parties thereto. The subject mat- 
ter of the new compact had relation to the 
Indian lands lying north of the Ohio River, 
mostly in what was afterwards the State of 
Ohio. It was at this time that the Indian 
titie to the valley of the Maumee was ob* 
tained. The cession and purchase of about 
four millions of acres in all were accent 
plished in the treaty, and it may well surprise^ 
in the light of subsequent values, to know 
that the purchase sum paid for this vast and 
fertile tract did not exceed fourteen thousand 
dollars. In addition to the purchase money, 
however, the Delawares were to receive an 
annuity of five hundred dollars, while the 
Wyandots, the Senecas, the Shawnees, and the 
Ottowas were guaranteed ten thousand doUan 
annually, in perpetuity. The Chippewas and 
Pottawattamies were given an annuity of three 
thousand three hundred dollars, for fifteea 



«) 



OmVERSAL HiSTOHY.—TSE MODERN WORLD. 



foKTB. Certcun tracts were also reeerved by 
the Red men, amountiag iq the aggregate to 
about three hundred thousand acres. The 
theory of the GoTernoient was that in course 
of time the lodiatis, living od their reserva- 
tions and Hurrounded by vast and progressive 
settlements of White men, vuuld be assimi- 
lated to civilized life, and gradually absorbed 
as a part of the nation. It was not long, 
however, until it was discovered that the 
Indians had little sympathy with American 
forma and villages and American methods of 
life. The habits of barbarism were too strongly 



Illinois to the Gulf, brought nnder the sway 
of the Bepublic. 

During this same year the Government 
was obliged to give attention to a nest of 
buccaneers, who had eatabliahed themselves on 
Amelia Island, off the north-easteru coast of 
Florida. The piratical establishment had its 
origin in the revolutionary movements which 
had been going on in New Grenada and Vene- 
zuela. A certfun Gregor McGregor, who held 
a commisuon from the insurrectionary au> 
thoriUes of New Grenada, had gathered up a 
band of freebooters, recruiting his forces, for 



FRONT VIEW OF THB CAPITAL AT WASHINGTON. 



fixed, through ages of heredity, and no apti- 
tude for the anticipated change was seen on 
the part of the sequestered aborigines. 

The admirable working of the American 
system, by which new States could be added 
to the Republic, was again shown in 1817. 
At the close of that year the western portion 
of what had been the MisMSsippi Territory 
was organized as the State of Mississippi, and 
foiinally admitted. The new commonwealth 
oontwned an area of forty-seven thousand square 
miles, and had acquired a population of sixty- 
five thousand. Thus was the whole eastern bank 
•f the MisBisaippi, from the junction of the 



the most part, from Charleston and Savannah 
With these he had fortified Amelia Island, aD4 
made it a rendezvous for slave-traders am^ 
South American privateers. 

It was perhaps dimly believed by the au~ 
dacious rascals that the well-known sympathy 
of the United States for republics, and par- 
ticularly for the republican tendencies showD 
in South America, would save them from dis- 
turbance. Since the buccaneers seemed to act 
in the cause of South American liberty, they 
hoped to escape attack from the Government 
of the United States. They accordingly pro- 
ceeded to blockade the fort of St Augustine, 



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CONFEDERATE UNlFORfllS- CIVIL WAR- 18611865 



THE UNITED STATES.— AMERICAN MIDDLE AOES. 



41 



and to demean themselves as if there were no 
civilization and no retribution which they had 
cause to fear. The Federal Government, how- 
ever, took the matter under advisement A 
fleet was sent against the pirates, and t|ie 
lawless establishment was broken up. A simi- 
lar assemblage of freebooters on the island of 
Galveston, off the coast of Texas, was sup- 
pressed in like manner. 

It was at the beginning of the Monroe Ad- 
ministration that the question of the internal 
improvement of the country first presented 
itself as a practical issue to the American 
mind. ' The population of the Republic had 
now taken its western course, and was pouring 
through the passes of the AUeghenies, rapidly 
filling up the country as fiur as the Father of 
Waters. The necessity for thoroughfares and 
for other physical means of intercourse and 
commerce was upon the people. The terri- 
torial vastness of the country brought with it 
the necessity of devising suitable means of 
communication. Without thoroughfares and 
canals it was evident that the products of the 
vast interior, which civilization was about to 
open up, could never reach a market. It was 
also evident that in a country where no capital 
had as yet accumulated the necessary improve- 
ments could not be effected by private enter- 
prise. But had Congress, under the Bepub- 
fican Constitution, the right to vote money 
for the needed improvements? 

The Democratic party had from the first 
been a party of strict construction. It was 
Claimed that what was not positively conceded 
and expressed in the Constitution had no ex- 
istence in the American system. The Feder- 
alists, on the other hand, had claimed that the 
Constitution of the United States was preg- 
nant with implied powers, which might be 
evoked under the necessities of the situation 
and directed to the accomplishment of desired 
results. Jefferson and I^^ison had held to 
the doctrine of strict construction, and had 
opposed internal improvements under the na- 
tional patronage. Monroe held similar views, 
and the propositions in Congress to make ap- 
propriations for the internal improvement of 
the country were either voted down or vetoed. 

Only in a single instance at this epoch did 
the opposite principle prevail. A bill was 
passed appropriating the necessary means for 



f the construction of a National Boad across 
the AUeghenies, from Cumberland to Wheeling. 
This was the great thoroughfare which had 
already been extended from Peninsular Vir- 
ginia to Cumberland, and which was after- 
wards carried, though without completion, 
from Wheeling westward through Ohio, In- 
diana, and Illinois to St. Louis. This done, 
the question of internal improvements was re- 
ferred to the several States, as a concession to 
their rights. Under this reference. New York 
took the lead by constructing a magnificent 
canal from Buffalo to Albany, a distance of 
three hundred and sixty-three miles. The cost 
of this important work was more than seven 
and a-half million dollars, and the whole period 
of Monroe's administration was occupied in 
completing it. 

Another important event of the year 1817 
was the outbreak of the Seminole war. The 
Indians known as Seminoles occupied the 
frontiers of Georgia and Alabama. It has 
frequently been difficult, in the history of our 
country, to ascertain the exact causes of Indian 
hostUities. It might not be £eu- from truth to 
allege that the hereditary instincts of war on 
the part of the savage races sought expression 
at intervals in bloody and devastating scenes; 
but the land question may, on the whole, be 
ascribed as the cause of the larger part of In- 
dian hostilities. In the case of the Seminole 
outbreak some considerable bodies of half* 
savage negroes, and also of Creek Indians, 
joined in the depredations of their country- 
men. General Gates, commandant of the 
post on Flint River, was ordered by the Gov- 
ernment into the Seminole country, and made 
some headway against them; but afler de- 
stroying a few villages, his forces were found 
inadequate to suppress the savages. General 
Jackson, of Tennessee, was thereupon ordered 
to collect from his own and adjacent States a 
sufficient army to reduce the Seminoles to 
submission. The General, however, paid but 
little attention to his instructions, but pro- 
ceeded to gather up out of West Tennessee a 
band of about a thousand riflemen, with whom 
he marched against the Seminoles, and in 
the following spring overran the hostile coun- 
try, with little opposition. It was at thb 
time that General Jackson was given the so- 
briquet of Big Kn^e by the Indians, among 



«2 



UNIVEBSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



whom his aame and &ine had inspired a 
wholesome dread. t 

. Important consequences followed upon this 
episode of the Seminole war. General Jack- 
son, while engaged in his expedition against 
the Indians, had entered Florida and taken 
possession of a Spanish poet at St. Marks. He 
gave as an excuse for so doing that the place 
was necessary as a hase of operations against 
the savages. The Spanish garrison which had 
occupied St. Marks was removed to Pensacola. 
At the time of tne capture of the place two 
Englishmen, named Arbuthnot and Ambrister, 
were found in St. Marks, and charges were 
preferred against them of having incited the 
Seminoles to insurrection. 

Nor is it improbable that the charges were 
founded in fact The Englishmen were tried, 
under Jackson's direction, were convicted of 
treacherous acts^in connection with the war, 
were condemned and executed. Jackson then 
proceeded against Pensacola, took the town, 
besieged the fortress of Barrancas, at the en- 
trance of the bay, and compelled the Spanish 
authorities to take ship for Havana. These 
were the events which first excited the ani- 
mosity of many of the peace-loving people of 
the United States against General Jackson, , 
and he was subjected by his enemies to un- 
measured condemnation. The President and 
Congress, however, justified him in his some- 
what reckless proceedings, and his reputation 
was increased ntther than diminished by his 
arbitrary conduct. A resolution of censure 
which was introduced into the House of Rep- 
resentatives was suppressed by a large vote. 

When the news from Florida was borne to 
Spain, the king entered complaints against 
Jackson, but his remonstrance was unheeded. 
Such were the circumstances which induced 
the Spanish monarch to give up the hope of 
maintaining his provinces in the New World. 
He perceived that the defense of Florida was 
likely to cost him more than the country was 
worth. He accordingly proposed to cede the 
country to the United States. For this pur» 
pose negotiations were opened at Washington 
City, and on the twentynBCCond of February, 
1819, a treaty was concluded, by which both 
the Floridas and the outlying islands were sur- 
rendered to tne United States. In considera- 
tion of the cession, the American Government 



agreed to relinquish all dums to the territory 
of Texas, and to pay American citizens for 
depredations committed by Spanish vessels a 
sum not exceeding five million dollars. By 
the same treaty the boundary-line between 
Mexico and the United States was fixed at the 
River Sabine. 

The year 1819 may be cited as the date of 
the first great financial crisis in the United 
States. The American Republic had been 
poor, and the people, as a rule, small prop- 
erty-holders, to whom capital, as that term is 
understood in more recent times, was a 
stranger. At length, however, wealth in- 
creased to a certain extent, and financial in« 
stitutions grew into such importance as to 
make possible a crisis in monetary and com- 
mercial affairs. In 1817 the Bank of the 
United States had been reorganized. With 
that event improved facilities for credit were 
obtained, and consequent upon the facilities 
for credit came the spirit and the fact of 
speculation. With the entering in of specu- 
lation, dishonesty and fraud followed, and the 
circle of finance ran its usual course, until the 
strain was broken in a crisis. The control of 
the important Branch Bank of the United 
States at Baltimore was obtained by a band 
of unscrupulous speculators, who secured the 
connivance of the officers in their schemes. 
About two millions of dollars were withdrawn 
from the institution over and above its secu- 
rities. President Cheves, however, who be- 
longed to the Superior Board of Directors, 
adopted a policy by which the prevailing ras- 
cality of the concern was exposed. An end 
was thus put to the system of unlimited 
credits, and in course of time the business of 
the country swung back into its accustomed 
channels. But for a season the financial af- 
fairs of the United States were thrown into 
great confusion, and the parent Bank itself 
was barely saved from suspension and bank* 
ruptcy. 

The admission of Mississippi into the Union 
has already been mentioned. Other States 
rapidly followed. In 1818 Illinois, the twenty- 
first in number, was organized and admitted. 
The new commonwealth embraced an area of 
over 65,000 square miles. The population at 
the time of admission had reached 47,000. In 
December, 1819, Alabama was added to the 



THE UNITED STATES.— AMERICAN MIDDLE AGES. 



43 



Union, The new State came with a popula- 
latioD of 120,000, and an area of nearly 
61,000 square miles. About the same time 
the Territory of Missouri was divided, and the 
southern part was organized into Arkansas 
Territory. In 1820 the province of Maine, 
which had been under the jurisdiction of Mas- 
Mcbusetta since 1652, was separated from that 
Government and admitted into the Union as 
an independent State. The population of 
Maine at the time of admission reached 298,- 
000, and its territory embraced nearly 32,000 
square miles. In August, 1621, the great 
State of Missouri, with aa area of 67,000 
square miles, and a population of 74,000, was 
admitted, as the twenty-fourth member of the 
Union. But this ad> 
ditioD to the Republic 
was attended with a 
political agitation so 
violent OB to threaten 
the peace of the Union, 
and to foretoken a long 
series of events, the 
effects of which have 
not yet disappeared 
from the current his- 
tory of onr country. 

The difficulty in 
qoestioD was the pres- 
ence of slavery in 
Missouri. In Febnt. 
ary,- 1819, the .bill to 

oi^nize the Territory t; 

was brought up in 

Congress. Meanwhile, slaveholders had gone 
into Missouri, carrying th^r human chattels 
widi them. The issue was at once rused 
in Congress wheUier a new State should 
be admitted with the system of slave-labiir 
prevalent therein ; or whether, by Congres- 
sional action, slaveholding should be prohibited. 
A motion in amendment of the Territorial Bill 
was introduced by James Tallmadge, of New 
York, forbidding any further introducUoo of 
slaves into Missouri, and granting freedom to 
all slave children on reaching the i^ of 
twenty-five. 

Hie bill as thus amended became the or^ 
ganic law of the Territory. A few days aft- 
erwards, when Arkansas was presented for 
tarritorial organization, John W. Taylor, of 



New York, moved the insertion of a clause 
similar to that in the Missouri Bill. A heated 
debate thereupon ensued, and the proposed 
amendment was struck out. Taylor then 
made a motion that hereafter in the organizap 
tion of Territories out of that part of the 
national domain which had come with the 
Louisiana purchase, slavery should be inter- 
dicted in all those portions north of parallel 
36° 30'. This proposition was also loet, after 
a heated discussion. Meanwhile, Tallmadge's 
amendment to the Missouri Bill was taken to 
the Senate, and defeated. As a consequence, 
the new Territories were organized wWiout re- 
ttrUtions in the matter of slavery. 

When the Enabling Act was passed, tha 



people of Missouri adopted their State Con 
stitutiou in conformity therewith, and in Jan- 
uary, 1620, the format admission of the Ter- 
ritory as a State was brought up in Congress. 
The proposition to admit was opposed by the _ 
large and growing party of those who favored 
the exclusion of slavery from the public do- 
main. At that time, however, the new free 
State of Maine was presented for admisuon 
into the Union, This gave the pn>elavery 
party the advantage; for they might opposa 
the admission of Maine as a free Stete until 
the admission of Missouri as a slave Stete 
should be agreed to. An angry debate en- 
sued, lasting until the 16tb of February, when 
a bill coupling the two new Stetes together, 
one with and the other without slavery, was 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



poBBed. Thereupon Senator Thomas, of Uli- 
noifl, made a tnodoD that henceforth and for- 
ever alarery should be excluded from all that 
part of the Louisiana ceasion — Misaouri ex- 
cepted — lying north of the parallel of thirty- 
nz degrees and thirty minutes. Such nas the 
celebrated Missouri CoMPRoinsB, one of the 
most important acts of American legislaUon — 
» measure chiefly supported by the genius, 
and earned through Congress by the persistent 
efibrts of Henry Clay. 

The principal conditions of tTie plan were 



ing the effects of the ravages of the War of 
1812 were measurably obliterated. The great 
resources and possibilities of the country be^n 
to appear. Peace and plenty did their be- 
neficent work in the rapid development of tlie 
nation, llie first term of Monroe in the 
Presidency was an epoch so prosperous that 
the Administration grew into high Iftvor with 
the people. In the fall of 1B20 he was re- 
elected with great unanimity. Mr. Tompkins, 
the Vice-President, was also chosen for a 
second term. Perh^ia at no other time in the 
history of our countiy 
has the bitterness of par- 
tisanship so nearly ex- 
pired as in the year and 
with the event here men- 



Aese: Fir^, the admission of Missouri as a 
daveholdiog State; lecondiy, the division of 
the rest of the Ix>uisiana purchase by the 
parallel of thirty-sis degrees and thirty min- 
utes; thirdly, the admissioa of new States, to 
be formed out of the territory south of that 
Ene, with or without slavery, as the people 
might determine ; /ourfA^, the prohibition of 
slavery in all the new States to be organized 
out of territory north of the dividing-Kne. 
By this compromise the slavery agitation was 
allayed until 1849. 

By the time of which we are here speak- 



The excitement ova 
the admission of Mis- 
souri into the Union had 
scarcely subsided when 
tbe attention of the Gov- 
ernment was called to an 
alarming syBt«m of pi- 
racy, which sprang op in 
the early years of the 
present century in tiie 
West Indies. Commerce 
became so unsafe in all 
those regions into whidi 
the piratical craft oould 
make their way that an 
armament was sent out 
for protection. Early in 
1822 the frigate Omj^rest, 
with eight smaller vessels, 
suled for the West In< 
dies, and during that yeai 
more than twenty pirate ships were run dowB 
and captured. In the following summer Com- 
modore Porter was dispatched with a stJU 
larger fleet to cruise about Cuba and the 
neighboring islands. In course of time the 
retreats of the sea-robbers, who had for their 
chieftain the great buccaneer Jean I^fitte, 
were all discovered, and their piratical establish- 
ments completely broken up. Kot a bucca- 
neer was left afloat to disturb the peaceful 
commerce of the seas. 

At this period in our national history tb* 
Oovernment of the United States was flnl 



THE UNITED STATES.— AMERICAN MIDDLE AQES. 



40 



brought into relation with the conotries of 
South America. The so-called Bepublican 
States in our neighboring continent were dis- 
tracted with contiDuous revolnlions. From 
the days of Kzarro (he States io question bad 
been, for the most part, dependencies of Eu- 
ropean monarchies; but the ties which bound 
them were broken, ctot and anon, with decla- 
rations of independence and patriotic struggles 
fi)r liberty. The ntuation was so similar to 
that which had existed between the United 
StatM aud Great Britain in the time of the 
Bevolution that the Amer- 
ican Republic fell into 
natural and inevitable sym- 
pathy with the patriots of 
the Southern Continent 
Many of the leading states- 
men of the time found ex- 
ercise for their faculties and 
aentimentB in speaking and 
writing in behalf of the 
struggling Jlepublics be- 
yond the Isthmus of Darien. 
Among these Mr. Clay 
was especially prominent. 
He carried his views into 
Congress, and succeeded in 
committing that body to 
the principles which he 
advocated. In March of 
1822 a bill was passed, rec- 
ognizing the new States 
of South America, which 
had dedxed, and virtually 
achieved,* their independ- 
ence. The President hira- 
aelf sympathized with these 
movements, and in the 
following year took up the 
question in his annual message. He finally 
reduced the principle by which hia Adminis- 
tration should be governed to the following 
declaration; That for the future the American 
ConUnents were not to be considered as sub- 
jects for colonization by any European power. 
The declaration tlius made became famous at 
the time, and has ever since been known in 
the politics and diplomacy of the United States 
as the MoNBOE Doothinb, a doctrine by which 
the entire Western Hemisphere may be said to 
be theorelicallv consecrated to fne institutions. 



A social incident in the summer of 1824 
gave great joy to the American people, and 
afforded them on opportunity to revive and 
express their gratitude to France for her 
sympathy and aid in the Bevolution. Toe 
venerable Marquis de Lafayette, now aged 
and gray, returned once more to visit the laud 
for whose freedom be had given the energies 
of his youth, and had indeed shed bis blobd. 
Many of the honored patriots with whom be 
had fought side by side come forth to greet 
him, and the younger heroes, sous of the Bev. 



olution, crowded around him. In every city 
and on every battle-field which he visited he 
was surrounded by a throng of shouting free- 
men. His journey from place V> place was 
a continuous triumph. One of the chief ob- 
jects of his coming was to visit the tomb of 
Washington. Over the dust of the Father 
of his Country the patriot of France paid tbe 
homage of his tears. He remained in the 
country until September of 1825, when he 
bade a final adieu to the American people, 
who had made him their guest, and suled 



46 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



back for his native land. At his dej^arture 
, the frigate Brandymne — a Dame significant for 
him — was prepared to bear him away. While 
liberty remains to cheer the West, the name 
of Lafayette will be hallowed with patriotic 
recollections.* 

Before the sailing away of the illustrious 
Frenchman, another Presidential election had 
been held. Political excitement had reap- 
peared in the country, and there was a strong 
division of sentiment. Unfortunately, too, 
the division appeared to be largely sectional 
in its character. Strong pei^sonalities likewise 
appeared in the contest. For the first time 
the names of South and East and West were 
heard, and the patriotic eye might discern the 
symptoms of danger in the political phraseol- 
ogy of the day. John Quincy Adams was 
put forward as the candidate of the East; 
William H. Crawford, of Georgia, as the 
choice of the South ; and Henry Clay and 
Andrew Jackson as the favorites of the West. 
The election was held, but neither candidate 
received a majority of the electoral votes. 
Thus, for the second time in the history of the 
country, the choice of President was, according 
to a Constitutional provision, referred to the 
House of Representatives. By that body Mr. 
Adams, though not the foremost candidate, 
was duly elected. For Vice-President, John 
C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, had been 
chosen by the Electoral College. Thus came 
to a conclusion the eight years of the Presi- 
dency of James Monroe. 

It is probable that in talents- and accom- 
plishments the new chief magistrate was the 
superior of any man who had occupied the 
Presidential chair before or after him. It is 
not meant that in force of character or ability 
to meet great emergencies he was the equal 
of Washington or Lincoln or Orant; but he 
had genius, scholarship, great attainments. 
From his boyhood he had been educated to 
the career of a statesman. At the age of 
eleven he accompanied his father, John Adams, 

^The Centennial year called out again the 
memory of the greatest of those French patriots 
who gave their aid in the War for Independence; 
and the fine bronze statue of Lafayette, standing 
on the south side of Union Square, in New York 
City, was reared to express the affection of the 
people for the brave youth who came to us in the 
iark days of the Hevolution. 



to Europe. At Paris, Amsterdam, and St. 
Petersburg, the sou continued his studies, and 
thus became acquainted with the manners and 
politics of the Old World. The vast oppor* 
tunities of his youth were improved to the 
fullest extent. He was destined to a public 
career. He served his country as ambassador 
to the Netherlands, to Portugal, to Prussia, 
to Russia, and to England. Even in early 
life his abilities were such as to draw from 
Washington the extraordinary praise of being 
the ablest minister of which America could 
boast. From 1774 to 1817 his life was de- 
voted almost wholly to diplomatic services at 
the various European Capitals. 

At this time the relations of the United 
States were critical in the extreme. Indeed, 
the new Republic had hardly yet been fully 
established as a separate power among the 
nations. The genius of John Quincy Adama 
secured the adoption of treaty after treaty. 
Such was his acumen and patriotism, that in 
every treaty the rights and dignity of the 
United States were fully asserted and main- 
tained. In 1806 Adams was honored with the 
professorship of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres in 
Harvard College, of which he-was an alum- 
nus. He also held the ofiice of United States 
Senator from Massachusetts. On the acces- 
sion of Monroe to the Presidency, he was ap- 
pointed Secretary of State. All the antece- 
dents of his life were such as to produce in 
him the rarest qualifications for the Presi- 
dency, to which he was now called. 

In one respect the administration of Adams 
was less successful than that of his predecessor. 
The revival of partisanship, the animosity of 
great party leaders, conspired to distract the 
country, to keep the public mind from the 
calm pursuits of peace, or at least to mar the 
harmony of the nation. From this time forth 
politics began to become, what it has ever since 
been, a despicable trade, in which the interests 
of the people of the United States have been 
hawked and torn, bartered and sold, at the 
dictation of unscrupulous ambition and for 
mere personal ends. 

The adherents of General Jackson and Mr. 
Crawford united in opposition to the policy of 
President Adams, and thare was a want of 
unanimity between the difiTerent departments 
of the Government The supporters of the 



THE UNITED STATES.— AMERICAN MIDDLE AGES. 



47 



AdmiDistratioQ were in a minority in the Sen- 
ate, and their majority in the Loner House 
waa overthrown at the cloee of the 6rst eeaaion 
of Congreaa. The President favored the policy 
of ioternal improTement^, and recommended 
the same in his inaugural address. But that 
system of policy was antagonized hy the fol< 
lowers of Jackson, Crawford, and Calhoun, 
and their principles obtained an ascendency 
in the House of Representatives. As a con- 
eequence, Hie recommendations of the Presi- 
dent were neglected or condemhed in Congress ; 
and the system of internal improvements, to 
the advocacy of which Mr. Clay gave 
the full resources of bis genius, was 
checked. 

Up to this time the native Indians held 
jonsiderable portions of territory east of 
the Mississippi. In Georgia they had a 
wide domain. Here dwelt the Creeks, 
with whom the White men had had rela- 
tions since the founding of- the first col- 
aniee. In 1802 Geor^a had relinquished 
her claim to the Mississippi territory, and 
the Gteneral Oovemment agreed to pur- 
chase and to surrender tA the State all 
the Creek lands lying within her borders; 
but this pledge bad never been fulfilled. 
Georgia became seriously dissatisfied at 
(he neglect of the Govemmeot to carry 
out the compact. The difficulty became 
alarmiag, and the Government was thus 
constrained to enter into a nen treaty with 
the Creek chiefs, by which a cession of 
their lands in G^eoi^ia was finally obtained. 
At the same Ume, the Creeks entered into 
an impreement to remove from their ancient 
baunta to new settlements beyond the 
AnasiasipiH. In all these difficulties the same 
principle was involved. The Indians have 
been, as a rule, unwilling to recognize the va- 
lidity of pledgee made by their ancestors rel- 
ative to their national lands. Such a thing as 
ownership in fee simple was unknown orig- 
inally among the native races. They recog- 
nized the right of quit-claim, by which those 
now occupying the lands could alienate their 
own title, but not alienate the title o^ their de- 
leendatalt. For this reason the extinction of 
laod-titlea by the Government for the demons 
purchased from the Indians has always ^en 
difficult 



An incident of the summer of 1826 is 
worthy of special mention. This was the 
deaths, on the fourth of July of that year, of 
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both Ex- 
Presidents of the United States. It might 
well impress the American mind that just fiity 
years to a day from the adoption of the Dec- 
laration of Independence the great author of 
that famous document and its principal pro- 
moter in Congress should have passed away 
at nearly the same hour. They were the two 
most conspicuous patriots of the Bevolutionary 
epoch. They, more, than perhaps any other 



two men, bad agitated the question of inde- 
pendence, and promoted its adoption as a 
policy for the united Colonies. Both had lifted 
their voices for freedom in the earliest and most 
perilous days of the Revolutionary era. Both 
had lived to see their country's independence 
achieved." Both had served that country ia 
its highest oflicial station. Both had reached 
extreme old age; Adams was ninety; Jefier- 
Bon, eighty-two. Though opposed to each other 
as it respected many political principles, both 
were as one in patriotism and loyalty to the 
Republic. While the cannon were booming 
for the fiftieth anniv»*sary of the nation, the 



48 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



gray and honored patriots passed from among 
the living, but their influence and work re- 
mained permanently imbedded in the consti- 
tutional structure and principles of the Ameri- 
can Republic. 

In September of the same year a serious 
social disturbance occurred in the State of 
New York. William Morgan, a resident of 
the western portion of that commonwealth, 
having threatened to publish the secrets of 
the fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons, 
of which order he was a member, suddenly 
disappeared and was never heard of after- 
wards. Though many rumors of his where- 
abouts were heard, none could ever be traced 
to an authentic source, and the belief was 
common that either his life had been taken 
outright or that he had been privately and 
permanently exiled into the obscurity of some 
foreign country. The Masons fell under the 
suspicion of having abducted him, and a great 
clamor was raised against them in New York, 
extending into other parts of the country. 
The issue between the Masons and their ene- 
mies became a political one, and many promi- 
nent men were embroiled in the controversy. 
For several years the Antimasonic party ex- 
ercised a considerable influence in the elections 
of the country. DeWitt Clinton, one of the 
most prominent and valuable statesmen of New 
York, had to suffer much in loss of reputation 
from his membership in the Masonic order. 
His last days were clouded with the odium 
which for the time being attached to the name 
of the fraternity. 

' Now it was that in the Congressional de- 
bates the question of the tariff was raised and 
constantly debated. The discussions began 
with the year 1828. By a tariff* is understood 
a duty levied on imported goods. The object 
of the same is twofold : first, to produce a reve- 
nue for the Government; secondly, to raise 
the price of the article on which the duty 
is laid, in order that the domestic manufacturer 
of the thing taxed may be able to compete 
with the foreign producer. In a subsequent 
part of the present Work* a full discussion of 
this question will be presented. For the pres- 
ent, it is sufficient to note that when a cus- 
toms-duty is levied for the purpose of raising 



»Seepp, flR-2?o 



the price of the article on which the duty is 
laid, it is called a protective tariffl 

Whether it is sound policy for a nation 
thus to protect its industries is an issue which 
has been much agitated in nearly all of the 
civilized countries. As a rule, in the earlier 
parts of a nation's history protective tariffs are 
employed, even to the extent of preventing 
all foreign competition; but with the lapse of 
time and the accumulation of capital in the 
given country the tendency is in the opposite 
direction. The mature peoples, as a rule, have 
inclined to the principle of free trade and open 
competition among all nations. In the Con- 
gressional debates of 1828 the friends of Mr. 
Adams decided in favor of the tariff*, and in 
that year a schedule of customs was prepared, 
by which the duties on fabrics made of wool, 
cotton, linen, and silk, and those on articles 
manufactured of iron, lead, etc., were much 
increased. This was done, not so much with 
a view of augmenting the revenues of the 
United States, as of stimulating the manu- 
facturing interests of the country. The ques- 
tion of the tariff* has always in our country 
assumed a somewhat sectional aspect. At the 
first the people of the Eastern and Middle 
States, where factories abounded, were favorable 
to protective duties, while in the agricultural re- 
gions of the South and West such duties were 
opposed. 

The Administration of John Quincy Adams 
may be cited as the time when the influences 
of the Revolution subsided and the sentiments 
of a new era began to prevail. It was the 
beginning of the second epoch in the history 
of the United States, considered as a nation. 
The Revolutionary sages had fallen out of the 
ranks of leadership, and a new class of states- 
men, bom after the era of Independence, be- 
gan to attract the attention of the people and 
direct the course of the Government. Even 
the War of 1812, with its bitter party an- 
tagonisms, its defeats and victories, and its 
absurd ending, was fading from the memories 
of men. New dispositions and new tastes ap 
peared among the people. New issues con- 
fronted the public. New methods prevailed 
in the halls of legislation. The old party 
lines could no longer be traced with clearness, 
and old party names were reduced to a jargon. 
Already the United States had surpassed in 



TEE UNITED STATES.— AMERICAN MIDDLE AOES. 

grawth and development the most eaDguine " 
expectations of the fathers. But with the ex- 
tension of territory, the incoming of new 
States, the Bpringiug up of new questions of 
national policy, coDfiicting opinions and inter- 
ests divided the people into parties ; and the 
stormy debates in Congress announced the 
presence of that danger in the American sys- 
tem which the Father of his Country had 
foreseen, and agunst which he uttered bis most 
solemn warnings. 

President Adams did not succeed in secur- 
ing a second term. The national election in 
the fkll of 1828 was especially exciting. 
Adams, supported by Clay, who was then Sec- 
letary of 6tat«, was put forward for reelection. 
During the whole of the current Administra- 
tion the mind of the Oppodtion, or Demo- 
umtic party — for the distinction between Whig 
and Democrat begau now to be clearly drawn — 
was turned to Andrew Jackson as the stand- 
ard-bearer in the contest In the previous 
election Jackson had received a larger elect- 
oral vote than Adams ; but the House of Rep- 
resentatives, disregarding the popular prefer- 
ence, had chosen Adams. Now, however, the 
people were determioed to have thdr way. 
Jackson was triumphantly elected, receiving 
one hundred and seventy ^ht electoral votes, 
against eighty-three for his opponent. As soon 
as the election was over, the excitement which 
had attended the campaign subsided, and the 
thoughts of the people were turned to other 



Andrew Ja9kB0n was a native of North 
Carolina. He was bom on the Wazhaw, 
March 16, 1767. Even in his boyhood the 
evidences of a belligerent and stormy nature 
were apparent. His mother's plan of devot- 
ing him to the ministry was hopelessly de- 
feated by his conduct. At the age of thirteen 
be took up arms, and was present at Sumter's 
defeat, at Hanging Bock. Soon afterwards 
he was captured by the British, was maltreated 
by them — ^left to die of small-pox. But bb 
mother secured his release ftt>m prison, and 
his lile was saved. After the Revolution, hav- 
ing acquired the meagre mdiraents of an eda- 
cation, he b^an the study of law, and at the 
age of twenty-one removed to Nashville. In 
1796 he was chosen to the National House of 
BepresentatJves from the State of Tennessee. 



50 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TBE MODERN WORLD. 



been meo of accomplishmenta. They had 
been gentlemen, educated and experienced id 
public affairs. They had been promoted from 
grade to grade of reBponeibility, not only in 
ciril service, but in military affairs as welL 
Coarsenem and vulgarity had been unknown 
in Government circles during the first five 
Preeideucies. With the rise of Jackson, hon- 
ever, the under side of American life rose to 
the surface. The debonair and stylish de- 
meanor which had marked the former Admin- 
istrations disappeared from the Presidential 
mansion, and in some measure from the other 
departmenta of the Govern men t. Jackson 
Bade DO pretenmons to culture or refinement, 



dnd many of the coarse and ferocious elements 
of his former life obtruded themselves in the 
very seat of political power. It would be er- 
roneous to say that all dignity was wanting 
in his manners and administration. On the 
contrary, there was much that was respectable, 
dignified, severe, in his methods and proced- 
nres. But his accession to the Presidency was, 
on the whole, derogatory to the refinement 
and cnll.ure and propriety which had pre- 
viously previuled about the PreeddentiBl 
mansion. 

The re-chartering of the Bank of the 
United States was the first isaufl which con- 
fronted the new Administration. The Preu- 



dent took strong grounds against isBiung a 
new charter to that institution. Believing the 
Bank to be both iiiexpe«lient and unconstitu- 
tional, he recommended that its charter be al- 
lowed to expire, by limitation, in 1836. But 
it could not be expected that a concern so 
strong and far-reaching in its influence would 
yield without a struggle. In 1832 a bill was 
brought forward in Congress to re-cbarter th« 
Bank, and the measure was passed. The 
Preddent, however, vetoed the bill; and since 
a two-thirds' majority could not be secured in 
its favor, the proposition for a new charter 
fiuled, and the Bank ceased to exist. 

It was at the time of Jackson's first Fred- 
dential term that the partiean elements of the 
TToited States resolved tbemselves into the 
form which they were destined to hold for 
more than a quarter of a centjiry. The peo- 
ple became divided into the two great factions 
of Whig and Demoent. The old Federal 
party, under whose direction the Government 
had been organized, had lost control of na- 
tional afiairs with the retiracy of John Adama. 
The party, however, continued to be an or- 
ganized force until afl«r the War of 1812, 
when the odium arising from its connection 
with the Hartford Convention gave it a final 
quietus. Adherents of the ancient party still 
asserted themselves as late as the slavery de- 
bates of 1820. 

We have already seen how, during Monroe'i 
second term, an " Era of Good Feeling," as it 
was called, came about, during which par- 
tisanship seemed ready to expire. Meanwhile, 
the old A Dti federalists had been metamor^ 
phoeed, first into Rrpvbiieiau, a name given Id 
the time of John Adams to the American 
champions of France as against Great Britain, 
But this name was soon exchanged for that 
of i)emocra/« ; and under this title the party 
came into power with Jefferson. Then followed 
the Administrations of Madison, Monroe, and 
John Quincy Adams, under the same political 
banner. Under Adams, however, the new po- 
litical forces were already at work. When 
Jackson became President, his arbitrary mea» 
ures alarmed the country, and drove aQ the 
elements of the oppoation Into a phalanx, 
under the leadeiship of Clay and Webster. 
To this new party organization the name Wlug 
was given, a name taken from the old Bootidi 



TEE UNITED STATES.— AMERICAN MIDDLE AGES. 



Cpveiuuiten of the seventeenth century, voni 
by the patriots of the American BevolutioD 
to diBtinguish Uiem fium Tories, and finally 
adopted aa the permanent tjtle of the oppo- 
Benta of Jefiersonian Democracy- 

With the banning of Jaokson's term of 
the Preadency the tariff qiiestloa was re- 
opened, and produced great excitement In 
the eeadon of 1831-32, additional duties were 
levied upon manufactured goods imported 
from abroad. By this measure the manufac- 
turing districts were again favored, at the ex- 
pense of the agricultural States. South Caro- 
lina was specially offended. The excitement 
culminated in a convention of her people, and 
it was resolved that the tanff law of Congress 
was unconstitutional, and therefore null and 
void. Open resistance was threatened in case 
there should be an attempt to collect the rev- 
enues in the harbor of Charleston. One 
divirion of the Democratic statesmen took a 
firm stand in support of South Carolina. 

The doctrine of nullification, and even of 
secession, was boldly advanced in the United 
States Senate. On that issue occurred -the 
&mouB debate between the eloquent Colonel 
Hayne, Senator from South Carolina, aad 
Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts, perhaps the 
greatest master of Americas oratory. The 
former appeared as the champion of the doc- 
trine of State rights; the latter as the advt^ 
cate of Constitutional supremacy ovet all the 
Union. 

The question, however, was not decided by 
debate. The President took the matter in 
band, and issued a proclamation denying the 
right of any State to nullify the laws of Con- 
gress. But Mr. CalhouD, the Vice-President, 
rerigned bis office, to accept a seat in the Sen- 
ate, where he might better advocate the doc- 
trine and purpose of his Slate. The President 
first warned the people of Bouth Carolina 
against the consequences of pushing fiirther 
the doctrine of nuUificatJon. He then ordered 
a body of troops, nnder General Scott, to pro- 
ceed to Charleston, and sent thither a man-of- 
war. At this disj^y of force the leaders of 
the Dallifying party quuled, and receded from 
thor position. Bloodshed was happily avoided, 
and in the foUowiog spring the excitement 
was allayed by a compromise. Mr. Clay 
hroogbt fimrard. and secnred the passage of, 



a bill providing for the gradual reduction of 
the duties complained of, until, at the end of 
ten years, they should reach a standard which 
would be aatisiactory to the South. 

While these measures were occupying the 
attention of Congress an Indian war broke out 
on the Western frontier. The Sacs, Foxes, 
and Winnebagos, of Wisconsin Territory, be> 
came hostile and took up arms. They were 
incited and led by their famous chief. Black 
Hawk. Like Tecumtha, and many other 
sachems who had preceded hira, he believed 
in the possibility of uniting all the Indian aa^ 



tioDS in a confederacy against the Whites, 
The lands of the Sacs and the Foxes, lying in 
the Rock River country of Illinois, had been 
purchased by the Government twenty-five 
years previously, but the Indians had not re- 
moved from the ceded territory. At length, 
however, the white settlements approached, 
and the Indians were required to give poeses- 
eion. But a new race of warriors had now 
arisen, wbo did not feel the force of a com- 
pact made by their fathers. They accordingly 
refused to give up thdr lands, and becams 
hostile. The Government inristed on tbe ful- 
fillment of the treaty, and war broke out 



62 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



The governor of Illinois c^ed out the militia. 
General Scott was sent, with nine companies 
of artillery, to the site of Chicago. His force 
was overtaken with the cholera, which had 
made its appearance in the country, and Scott 
was unable to cooperate with General Atkin- 
son. The latter, however, carried on a vigor- 
ous campaign against the Indians, defeated 
them in several actions, and made Black 
Hawk prisoner. The captured chieftain was 
taken to Washington and other great cities 
of the East, where his understanding was 
opened as to the power of the nation against 
which he had been foolish enough to lift hb 
hatchet. He was then liberated. Betuming 
to hiB own country, he advised hb people of 
the uselessnesR of making war on the United 
States. The Indians soon abandoned the dis- 
puted lands, and removed into Iowa. 

Difficulties next arose with the Cherokees, 
of Georgia. These people had reached a tol- 
erable degree of civilization, and were certunly 
the most humane of all the Indian tribes. 
To a considerable extent they had adopted the 
manners and customs of the whites. They 
had opened farms, built towns, established 
schools, set up printing-presses, and formulated 
a code of laws. As previously stated, the 
Government had promised the State of Geor- 
gia to extinguish the title of the Indian lands 
within her borders* in compensation for her ces- 
sion to the General Government of the territory 
of Mississippi. This pledge, however, had not 
been fulfilled ; and the Legislature of Georgia, 
growing tired of the delay in the removal of the 
Indians, passed a statute abrogating the In- 
dian governments within the borders of the 
State, and extending the laws of the Common- 
wealth over all the Indian domain. 

It was also enacted that the Cherokees 
and Creeks should not have the privilege of 
using the State courts in the attempt to main- 
tain their rights. The Supreme Court of the 
United States, however, declared the latter 
act unconstitutional. The Indians made an 
appeal to the President, but he refused to in- 
terfere. On the contrary, he recommended 
the removal of the Cherokees to the lands be- 
yond the Mississippi. Such were the circum- 
stances which led, in the year 1834, to the 
organization of the Indian Terrtfory, as a sort 
of national reservation for the broken tribes, i 



It was with great reluctance that the Chero- 
kees yielded to necessity. Though they had 
been paid more than five million dollars for 
their homes, they still clung to the land of 
their fathers. It was only when General 
Scott was ordered to remove them by force 
that they yielded to the inevitable, and took 
up their march for their new homes in the 
West 

The conflict with the Seminoles of Florida 
was still more serious. In this case also the 
difiSculty arose from the attempt of the Gov- 
ernment to remove the nation to a domain 
beyond the Mississippi. Hostilities broke out 
in 1835, and continued, with little interruption, 
for four years. The chief of the Seminoles 
was Osceola, a half-breed of great talents and 
audacity. Acting under the old Indian theory, 
he and Micanopy, another chieftain of the 
nation, declared that the Seminole treaty, by 
which the lands of the people had been ceded 
to the General Government, was invalid ; that 
the fathers could only quit-claim their own 
rights, and could not alienate the rights of 
their descendants. So haughty was the bear^ 
ing of Osceola that General Thompson, the 
agent of the Government, ordered his arrest, 
and put him in irons. Osceola dissembled his 
purpose, gave his assent to the old treaty, and 
was set free. But, as might have been fore- 
seen, he immediately entered into a con* 
spiracy to slaughter the Whites and devastate 
the country. 

In the meantime. General Clinch had made 
his way into the interior of Florida, and fixed 
his head-quarters at Fort Drane, seventy-five 
miles south-west of St. Augustine. The In- 
dians gathered in such numbers as to threaten 
this post, and Major Dade, with a hundred 
and seventeen men, was sent out from Fort 
Brooke, at the head of Tampa Bay, to succor 
General Clinch. After marching about half 
the distance, the division of Dade fell into an 
ambuscade, and all were slaughtered except 
one man. On the same day Osceola, with 
another band of warriors, prowling around 
Fort King, on the Ocklawaha, surrounded a 
storehouse, where General Thompson was din- 
ing with a company of friends. The Indians 
poured in a murderous fire, and rushed for- 
ward and scalped the dead, before the garri- 
son, only two hundred and Sftj yards awaj. 



THE UNITED STATES.— AMERICAN MIDDLE AGES 



53 



eonld bring itipporL Greneral Thompson's 
bod^ WM pierced by fiAeen balls, and four of 
his nine companions were killed. Oeoeral 
Qincli now marched out from Fort Drane, 



ing from the west with a force of a thousand 
men, fur the relief of Clinch. While on the 
march he wa« attacked by the Seminoles, near 
the battle-field where Cliach bad fought. The 



vai OD the 31st of December fought a hard Itidiaos made a furious assault, but were »• 



battle with the Indians on the banks of the | pulsed with s 
Withlacoochie. The savages were repulsed, 1 the Htrugglinj 



bnt Clinch fell back to Fort Draa6 

Id the following Febriury, General Scott 
took command) of till tfae forces in Florida. 
In Uie ineaDtime, General Gunes was advanc- 
,^Vol. 4-4 



losses. Two months later. 
Creeks, who still remdned in 



the country, began hostilities, but they i 
easily subdued, and cumpelled to seek their 
reservatJOD beyond the Mississippi. The Send- 
noles, however, held their own in the interior, 



H 



UNIVERSAL HiaTORY.—THE MODERN WORLD. 



and in October of 1836 Governor Gall, of 
Florida, marched against them, with an army 
of two thousand men. He overtook the In« 
dians in the Wahoo swamp, a short distance 
from the scene of Dade's massacre. Here a 
battle was fought, and the Indians were de- 
feated with heavy losses. They were obliged 
to seek refuge in the Everglades, but soon 
afterwards sallied forth, and fought another 
battle on nearly the same ground. A second 
time they were defeated, though not deci- 
sively, and the war continued into the follow- 
ing Administration. 

Turning to civil afiairs, we find that the 
animosity of the President against the United 
States Bank had given a quietus to that in- 
stitution. His veto of the re-charter of the 
Bank has already been mentioned. Not sat- 
isfied with this, he determined that the surplus 
funds which had accumulated in its vaults 
ihould be distributed among the States. He 
had no warrant of law for such a course, but 
believing himself to be in the right, he did 
Bot hesitate to take the responsibility. In 
October, 1833, he gave orders that the ac- 
cumulated funds of the. great Bank, amount- 
ing to fully ten million dollars, should be dis- 
tributed among certain State Banks which he 
designated. The measure was high-handed in 
the last degree, and evoked the most violent 
opposition. The Whigs denounced the meas- 
ure as of incalculable mischief, unwarranted, 
arbitrary, dangerous. A coalition was formed 
In the Senate, under the leadership of Cal- 
houn, Clay, and Webster, and the President's 
distributing officers were rejected. A measure 
of censure was also passed against him, but 
the proposition failed in the House of Repre- 
sentatives. Such was the outcry throughout 
the country that the Administration appeared 
for a season to be almost ingulfed. But the 
President waa as fearless as he was self-willed 
and stubborn. He held on his course un- 
moved by the clamor. The resolution of cen- 
sure stood on the journals of the Senate for four 
years, and was then expunged from the record 
through the influence of Senator Thomas H. 
Benton, of Missouri. 

The distribution of the surplus funds to 
ihe various State Banks was followed, in 
1886-37, by a financial panic, the most seri- 
sus which had yet occurred in the history of 



the country. Whether the removal of the 
funds and the panic stood to each other in the 
relation of cause and eflfect was one of the 
political questions of the day. While the 
Whigs charged that the arbitrary measures of 
the President, by disturbing the finances of 
the country, had precipitated the crisis, the 
Democrats answered that the Bank of the 
United States, with its multiform abuses, was 
itself the cause of the financial distress. It 
was claimed by the latter party that such an 
institution was too powerful and despotic to 
exist in a free Government. The President 
himself was but little concerned with the 
wrangling over this question. He had but re- 
cently been re-elected for a second term, with 
Martin Van Buren for Vice-President, instead 
of Mr. Calhoun. 

Before the end of his first term in the 
Presidency, the strong will of Jackson was 
exhibited in full force in a complication with 
France. During the Napoleonic wars the 
commerce of the United States had suffered 
in several instances, through the recklessness 
of French commanders, and certain claims 
were thus held by the American Grovernment 
against the French Kingdom. The question 
of a settlement had been agitated many times, 
and in 1831 the king of France had agreed 
to pay five million dollars for the alleged in- 
juries; but the authorities of the kingdom 
were dilatory in making payment. The mat- 
ter was postponed and neglected until the 
wrath of the American President broke out, 
and he sent a recommendation to Congress to 
make reprisals on the French commerce. He 
also directed the American minister at Paris 
to demand his passports and come home. 
These measures had the desired efiect, and the 
indemnity was promptly paid. About the 
same time the Government of Portugal was 
brought to terms in a similar manner. 

We may here pause to note some of the 
calamities with which the country was afflicted 
in the decade extending from 1830 to 1840. 
Several of those statesmen and leaders who 
remained from the Revolutionary epoch fell, 
in these years, under the hand of death. On 
the fourth of July, 1831, Ex-President Monroe 
passed away. He, like Adams and Jefierson« 
died amid the rejoicings of the national anni- 
versary. In the following year Charles Ga]> 



ThE UNITED STATES.— AMERICAN MIDDLE AOES. 



58 



loll, of Carrollton, the last iurviring aigoer of 
the Declaration of Independeoce, died, at the 
age of Dinety-six. A short time afterwards 
Philip Freoeau, the poet of the ReTolution, d» 
parted from the land of the living. Tbebardiiad 
reached the age of eighty. Ou the tweDty- 
fourth of June, 1833, John Randolph of 
Boanoke died in Philadelphia. He was a 
man admired for his talents, dreaded ibr his 
vit and sarcasm, and respected for his integ- 
rity. In 1835, Chief-Justice Marshall breathed 
his last, at the age of fourscore years, and in 



valuable buildings more uobk and imposing 
stractures — which are likely to outlast the 
centuiy — were soon erected. 

During, this decade two additional States 
came into the Union. In June, 1836, At- 
kaosas, with its fifty-two thousand square 
miles and population of seventy thousand, was 
admitted. In the following January, Michi* 
gan Territory was organized as a State, and 
added to the Union. The new commonwealth 
brought a population of one hundred and 
fifty-seven thousand, and an area of fifty-six 



THB NEW PATENT OFFICE. WA8HINGT0M. 



die next year Ex-President Madison, worn 
with the toils of eighty-five years, passed away. 
To theee losses of life must be added two great 
disasters to property. On the nxteenth of 
December, 1835, a fire broke out in the lower 
part of New Tork City, and laid in ashes 
thirty acres of buildings. Five hundred and 
twenty-nine houses, and property valued at 
eighteen million dollars, were consumed. Just 
one year afterward, the Patent-office and Poet- 
affice at Washington were destroyed in the 
mme manner. But upon the ruins of these 



thousand square miles. It was already the 
close of the Administration. Jackson followed 
the example of Washington in issuing a tare- 
well address. The document was character- 
ized by that stem patriotism which had marked 
the man in his Administration. The dangers 
of discord and sectionalism among the States 
were set forth with all the masculine energy 
of the Jacksonian dialect The people of 
the United States were again solemnly warned, 
as they had been by the Father of his Coun- 
try, against the baneful influence of dema> 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



gogues. The horron of disuoiou were por- 
trayed in the strongefit colon, and the people 
of eT»7 rank and section were exhorted to 
maiotaia and defend the American Union as 
they would the last fortress of human liberty. 
Such was the last public paper contributed by 
Andrew Jackson to the political literature of 
the age. Meanwhile, in the preceding au- 
tumn, Martin Van Buren had been elected 
President The opposing candidate was Gen- 
eral William H. Harrison, of Ohio, who re> 



e^ved the support of the new Wbig party. 
As to the Vice-presidency, no oue secured a 
majority in the Electoral College, and tbe 
choice devolved on the Senate. By that body 
Colonel Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, 
was duly elected. 

Martin Van Buren was bom at Kinder- 
hook, New York, on the 5th of December, 
1762. His education was limited. He studied 
law and became a politician. In his thirtieth 
year he was elected to the Senate of his na- 



tive State, and nz years afterwards, by sap^ 
planting DeWitt Clinton, became the recog* 
nized leader of tiie Democracy ib New York. 
In 1821, and again in 1827, be was chosen 
United States Senator ; but in the first year 
of his second term he resigned the office to 
accept the goTernorship of his native State. 
Under Jackson he became Secretary of State, 
but soon re«gned that place to become Min- 
ister Plenipotentiary to England. When bis 
appointment to the latter position came before 
the Senate, Yice-Preddent 
Calhoun, assisted by the 
Whig leaders Clay and 
Webeter, succeeded in re- 
jecting the appointment. 
Van Buren returned from 
his unfulfilled mission, be- 
came the candidate for the 
Vice-Presidency in 1632, 
and was elected. Four 
years later he led the power- 
ful party to which he b» 
longed, and succeeded Gen- 
eral Jackson in the highest 
office of the nation. 

The Semiuolea of Florida 
had not yet been subdued. 
The command of the army 
in that region was trans- 
ferred, in 1837, from Gen- 
eral Scott to G^eneral Jessup. 
In the &11 of that year Os- 
ceola came to the American 
camp under a flag of truce; 
but, being suspected of 
treachery, was seized by the 
authorities and sent to Fort 
Moultrie as a prisoner. 
Here he languished for a 
year and died. The Sem- 
inoles were greaUy disheartened by the loss 
of their chieftain, but continued the war. 
In December, 1838, Colonel Zachary Taylor, 
with a force of over a thousand men, peno- 
trated the Everglades of Florida, and routed 
the savages from their lairs. After unparal- 
leled sufferings, he overtook the main body, 
on Christmas day, near Lake Okeechobee. 
Here a hard battle was fought, and the In- 
dians were defeated, but not until a hundred 
and thirty-nine of the Whites had &Uen. Fot 



THE UNITED STATIC.— AMERICAN MIDDLE AQE8. 



57 



more than a year, Taylor oontioued bis cam- 
paign in the awampa. The spirit of the Red 
men was finallj broken, and in 1839 the 
chiefe sent in their submisdon. They signed 
an additional treaty; but, after all, thdr re- 
moval to the West was made wiUi much re- 
luctance and delay. 

Hie first year of the new Administration 
was marked by another financial crisis in the 
oonntry. Tbere had been a brief interim of 



issues of irredeemable paper were issued to 
increase the opportunities for fraud. 

It was a time when the new lands were 
rapidly taken up. The paper money of the 
banks was receivable at the various land-offices, 
and speculators made a rush, with a plentiful 
supply of bills, to secure the best lands. Gen- 
eral Jackson, still Fresideot, seeiug that an 
unsound currency received in exchange for 
the national domain was likely to defraud the 



EVERGLADES OF FLORIDA— LAND OP THE EEUINOLES. 



great prosperity. The national debt had been 
entirely liquidated. A surplus of nearly forty 
million dollars had accumulated in the treasury 
of the United States. We have already seen 
how this surplus was distributed by the Gov- 
ernment among the several States. Money 
became suddenly abundant, and speculations 
of all sorts grew rife. The credit system 
■prang up and prevailed in every department 
<^ business. The banks of the country were 
multiplied to nearly seven hundred, and vast 



Government out of millions of dollars, issued 
his so-called Specie Circular, by which the 
land agents were directed to receive nothiug 
but coin in payment for the lands. The ef- 
fects of this measure fell upon the country in 
the first year of Van Buren's Administration. 
The iuteresls of the Government had been 
secured, but the busiuess of the country was 
prostrated by the shuck. The banks at once 
suspended specie payment. Mercantile houses 
tottered and fell. The disaster swept through 



58 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



every avenue of trade. In March and April 
of 1837 the failures in Lew York and New 
Orleans amounted to nearly one hundred and 
fifty million dollars. A committee of the 
business men of the former ci^ besought the 
President to rescind the specie circular and 
call a special session of Congress. The former 
request was refused and the latter complied 
with, but not until the disasters of the coun* 
try, rather than the clamor of the committee^ 
had appealed to the Executive. 

When .Congress convened, in the following 
September, many measures of relief were 
brought forward. A bill authorizing the issue 
of treasury notes, not to exceed an aggregate 
of ten million dollars, was passed, as a tem- 
porary expedient. The President proposed, 
and had presented to Congress, his plan, under 
the title of the Independent Tbeaburt Bill. 
By the provisions of this remarkable project, 
the public funds of the nation were to be kept 
on deposit in a treasury to be established for 
that special purpose. It was argued by Mr. 
Van Buren and bis friends that the surplus 
money of the country would drift into the 
Independent Treasury and lodge there; that 
by this expedient the speculative mania would 
be effectually checked. It was thought that 
extensive speculations could not be carried on 
without a superfluous currency. The philo- 
sophical basis of the President's plan was a 
separation between the business of the Gov- 
ernment and the general business of the 
country. 

The Independent Treasury Bill, however, 
though it passed the Senate, was defeated in 
the House of Representatives. But in the 
following regular session of Congress the bill 
was a second time presented, and passed. In 
the meantime, however, the business of the 
country had in a measure revived. During 
the year 1838 a majority of the banks resumed 
specie payments. Commercial affairs assumed 
their wonted aspect. But trade was still par- 
alyzed. Enterprises of all kinds languished, 
and merchants and traders were discouraged 
from all manner of ventures. Discontent pre- 
vailed among the people, and the Administra- 
tion was blamed with everything. 

The well-known policy of Washington, to 
have no entanglements with foreign States, 
was carefully adhered to during the first half* 



century of our national existence. In 1837 a 
slight disturbance occurred which involved to 
a certain extent the relations between the 
United States and Canada. A portion of the 
people of that Province had become dissatisfied 
with British rule, and a revolt was organized, 
with a view of the possible establishment of 
independence. The movement exdted the 
sympathy, and even the aid, of many of the 
American people. In New York some special 
encouragement was given to the insurgents. 
From that State a party of seven hundred 
men, having taken up arms, seized and forti- 
fied Navy Island, in the Niagara Biver. The 
Loyalists of Canada attempted to capture the 
place, but failed. They succeeded, however, 
in setting on fire the Carotinep the supply-ship 
of the adventurers. Her moorings were cut, 
and the burning vessel was sent over Niagara 
Falls, a spectacle to men. The event created 
much excitement, and the peaceful relations 
of the United States and Oreat Britain were 
somewhat endangered. The President, how- 
ever, issued a proclamation of neutrality, dis* 
avowing the action of those who had given aid 
to the Canadian rebels, and forbidding inteiw 
ference with the affairs of Canada. Oeneral 
Wool was sent to the Niagara frontier, with a 
sufficient force to quell the disturbance in that 
quarter, and to punish the disturbers. The 
New York insui^nts on Navy Island were 
obliged to surrender, and order was presently 
restored. 

The event just mentioned was one of the 
most exciting of Van Buren's Administration. 
For the rest, the period was commonplace. 
The political parties were left to supply the 
materials of popular agitation. The question 
as to Van Buren's successor in the Presidency 
was raised at an early date. The canvass of 
candidates was waged in a bitter spirit. The 
measures of the Administration had been of a 
chararacter to provoke the sharpest political 
antagonisms. The Whigs were now animated 
wi^h the hope of victory, and made haste, 
nei rly a year before the election, to nominate 
General Harrison for the Presidency. On 
the Democratic side Martin Van Buren had 
no competitor; but the unanimity of his party 
70uld hardly compensate for the blunders and 
unpopularity, not to say misfortunes, of his 
Administration* 



^ 



CHRONOLOGICAL CHART No. IX. ".V'BiSK'iS'Wi' 



THE UNITED STATES.— AMERICAN MIDDLE A0E8. 



63 



The campaign of 1840 was the most ex« 
dtiDg which had yet occnrred in the history 
of the United States. Van Buren was blamed 
with everything. The financial distresses were 
laid at his door. Extravagance, bribery, cor* 
ruption— everything bad was charged upon 
bim. Men of business advertised to pay six 
dollars a barrel for flour if Harrison should 
be elected, three dollars a barrel if Van 
Buren should be successful. The Whig ora- 
tors tossed about the luckless Administration 
through all the figures and forms of speech, 
and the President himself was shot at with 
every sort of dart that partisan wit and malice 
oould invent. The enthusiasm in the ranks of 
Ihe opposition rose higher and higher, and 
Yan Buren was overwhelmingly defeated. 
He received only sixty electoral votes, against 
two hundred and thirty-^our for General Har- 
rison. After coDtrolling the destinies of the 
Government for nearly forty years, the Dem- 
ocratic party was thus temporarily routed. 
For Vice-President, John Tyler, of Virginia, 
was the successful candidate. 

In the last year of Van Buren's Adminis- 
tration was completed the sixth census of the 
United States. The tables were, as usual, re- 
plete with the evidences of growth and pro- 
gress. The national revenues for the year 
1840 amounted to nearly twenty millions of 
dollars. At this time that important statis- 
tical information, for which the subsequent re- 
ports have been noted, began to appear in its 
full value. The center of population had in 
the last ten years moved westward along the 
ihirty-ninth parallel of latitude from the south 
fork of the Potomac to Clarksburg, in the 
present State of West Virginia, a distance of 
fifty-five miles. The inhabited area of the 
United States now amounted to eight hundred 
and seven thousand ^square miles, being an in- 
crease for the decade of twenty-seven and six- 
tenths per cent. The frontier line circum- 
scribing the population passed through Michi- 
gan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the western borders 
of Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana, a dis-' 
tance of three thousand three hundred miles. 
The population had reached an aggregate of 
seventeen million souls, being an increase, 
since 1830, of more than six millions. It was 
found from the tables that eleven-twelfths of 
the people lived outside of the larger cities and 



towns, showing a strong preponderance of the 
agricultural over the manufacturing and com* 
mercial interests. One of the most cheering 
lessons of the census was found in the &ct 
that the wonderful growth of the United 
States was in extent and area, and not in oe- 
ettmidation — in the tpread of civilization rather 
.than in an increase of incendty. For since 
1830 the average of the population of the 
country had not increased by so much as <m$ 
penon to the square mile! 

The common judgment has been that the 
Administration of Van Buren was weak and 
inglorious. Doubtless it was characterized by 
few important episodes, and was controlled by 
principles some of which were bad; but he 
and his times were unfortunate rather than 
vicious. He was the victim of th^ evils which 
followed hard upon the relaxation of the Jack- 
sonian methods of government He had 
neither the will nor the disposition to rule aa 
his predecessor had done. Nor were the peo- 
ple and their representatives any longer in the 
humor to suffer that sort of government! 
The period was unheroic ; it was the ebb-tide 
between the belligerent excitements of 1832 
and the War with Mexico. The financial 
panic added opprobiura to the popular esti- 
mate of imbecility in the Government. ** The 
Administration of Van Buren,** said a bitter 
satirist, 'Ms like a parenthesis; it may be read . 
in a low tone of voice or altogether omitted 
wUhoid injuring ihe eemel^ But the satire 
lacked one essential — truth. 

William Henry Harrison was by birth a 
Virginian. He was the son of Benjamin 
Harrison, signer of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence ; the adopted son of Robert Morris, 
financier of the Bevolution. He was a grad- 
uate of Hampden-Sidney College, and after- 
wards a student of medicine. -Attracted by 
the military life, he entered the army under 
St. Clair; was rapidly promoted; became 
Lieutenant-Governor, and then Oovemor of In- 
diana Territory, which office he filled with great 
ability. His military career in the North-wes^ 
has been already narrated. He was inaugu- 
rated President on the 4th of March, 1841, 
and began his duties by issuing a call for a 
special session of Congress, to consider "sun- 
dry important matters connected with the 
finances of the country.'' An able Cabinet 



64 



UNIVERSAL HI8T0RY.~THE MODERN WORLD. 



was organized, at the head of which was Dan- 
iel Webster as Secretary of State. 

Everything promised well for the new 
Whig Administratioa ; but before Congresa 
oould convene, the venerable Preeident, bend- 
ing under the weight of aixty-eight years, 
fell sick and died, just oue month after his 
inauguration. It was the first time that such 
an event had occurred in American history. 
Profouod and univrirsal grief was manifested 
at the sad event. 

On the 6th of April, 1841, John Tyler 
took the oath of office and became President 



of the United States. He was a statesman of 
oonuderable distiDcli<in, a native of Virginia, 
a graduate of William and Mary College. At 
an early i^ he left the profession of law to 
enter upon a public career. He was chosen a 
member of Congress, and in 1825 was elected 
Governor of Virginia. From that position he 
was sent to the Senate of the United States; 
and now, at the age of fifty-one, was called to 
the Presidency, He had been put upon the 
ticket with General Harrison through motives 
of expediency; for, although a Whig in moat 
of his political principles, he was known to be 
hostile to the United States Bank. And this 



hostility was soon to be manifested in a re- 
markable manner. 

On the convening of the special session of 
Congress the Whigs were in high spirits. One 
of the first measures proposed at the seeaon, 
which lasted from May to September, was the 
repeal of the Independent Treasury Bill. A 
general bankrupt law was also brought for- 
ward and passed, by which a great number of 
insolvent business men were released from the 
disabilities under which they had fallen in the 
recent financial crash. The next measure — a 
favorite scheme of the Whigs — was the re- 
chartering of the Bank of the United 
States. The old charter had expired in 
1836, but the bank had continued in 
operation, under a charter granted by 
the Slate of Pennsylvania. A bill to re- 
habilitate the institution in its national 
character was now brought forward and 
passed. The President interposed his 
veto. Again the bill was presented, in 
a modified form, and received the sanc- 
tion of both Houses, only to be rejected 
by the Executive. This action produced 
a fetal rupture between the President 
and the party which had elected him. 
The indignant Whigs, baffled by the want 
of a two-thirde^ majority in Congress, 
turned upon bim with storms of invec- 
tive. All the members of the Cabinet 
except Mr. Webster resigned their seals, 
and he retained his place only because of 
a pending difficulty with Great Britain. 

A contention had arisen relative to 
the north-eastern boundary of the United 
States. The territorial limit in that 
direction bad not been clearly defined 
in the treaty of 1783, and the commission' 
era at Ghent, in 1814, had contributed little 
to the solution of the difficulty. Like most 
of the other matters which were presented 
for the consideration of that polite and 
easily satisfied convention, the fixing of the 
boundary in question had been postponed 
rather than setded. It was agreed, however, 
at that time, to refer the establishment of the 
entire line between the United States and 
Canada to the decision of three commiaMona, 
which were tn be formed under the auspicet 
of the two Governments. The first of these 
bodies accompllBhed its work successfully, by 



TEE UNITED STATES.— AMERICAN MIDDLE AGES. 



65 



aw&rdiog the United States th« ialands in the 
bay of PRB§aiiiaquodcly. The third commit- 
■ion performed its duty by fixing the true 
boundary'lioe from the intersection of the 
forty-fiftb parallel of latitude with the river 
Bt. Lawrence to the western point of Lake 
Huron. To the second commiBaion was as- 
signed the more difficult task of settling the 
boundary from the Atlantio to the St. Law- 
rence; and thle work 
they &iled to aceom- 
pliah. 

Thus, for nearly 
twentj-fire years, the 
boundary of the 
Uiiited States oo the 
north-east remained 
indetermiDate. At 
times the difficulty 
became so serious as 
to endanger the peace 
of the two nations, 
finally the whole 
matter was referred 
lo Lord A^burton, 
acting OD the part of 
Great Britun, and 
Daniel Webster, the 
American Secretary 
<rf State. 

The discuanoQ be- 
tween the two diplo- 
matists was as able as 
the subject was intri- 
cate. Finally the 
boundary was def- 
initely established as 
follows : From the 
mou^ of the river 
St Groiz, asceading 
that stream to its west 
cm fountun ; from 
that fountain due 

north, to the St John's; fhence with that river 
to its source on the watershed between the At- 
lantic and the St. Lawrence; thence in a 
south-westerly direction, along the crest of the 
highlands, to the north-western source of the 
Connecticut; and thence down that stream to 
tnd along the forty-fifth parallel to the St 
lAwrence. By a second agreement of the 
commisrionen, the boundary was established 



from the western point of Lake Huron, through 
Lake Superior, to the north-western extremity 
of the Lake of the Woods; thence — confirm- 
ing the treaty of October, 1S18 — southward 
to the forty-ninth parallel of latitude; and 
thence with that parallel to the Rocky Mouat- 
uns. This important settlement, known as 
the Webbter-Ashbukton Treaty, was com- 
pleted on the 9th of August, 1642, and mm 



JOHN TYLEB. 

ratified by the Senate on the 20th of the sauM 
month. 

In the year 1843 a peculiar domestic trouble 
arose in the State of Rhode Island. For nearly 
two centuries the government of that Com- 
monwealth had rested upon the old charter 
granted by Charles IX. There had been ia 
Rhode Island, since the earlier Colonial times, 
a certain residue of loyalism unfavorable to 



VmVESSAL HISTORY.—TBE MODERN WORLD. 



republican mstitutioDB. Among other tbiogs 
■ cbuue in the ftncient obarter restricting the 
light of rafirage to property-holder* of a cer> 
tain grade bUII kept its place. With the de- 
velopment of free institutioiu under our na- 
tional Groremment the epirit of democracy 
gained the ascendency, and the proposition 
was mv'.e to abolish the restriction on the 
Buflrage in the Constitutiun of the State. 
The event Hhowed that the people were al- 
most unanimotis for the change. But in 
teepect to the inann«r of making the Hune 
there was a serious division. One faction, 
known as the Law and Order party, pro- 
ceeded, in accordance with the old Constitn- 
tioD, to choose Samuel W. King as Governor. 



Ue other faction, called the Suffrage party, 
acting in an irregular way, elected Thomas W. 
Dorr. 

In May of 1842 both parties met and or- 
ganized their rival governments. The Law 
and Order party und"Ttook to suppress the &o- 
tioD of Dorr.- The latter in turn made ao at 
t«mpt to capture the State arsenal. The 
militm under Governor King's officers, how- 
ever, drove (he assfulants away. About a 
month lat^r the adbereots of Dorr again took 
up arms; hut thiB time they were dispersed by 
a detachment of national troops, which bad 
come into the State. Dorr thereupon fled 
from Rhode Island, but soon afterwards re- 
tamed, when he was caught, tried for tiaasoti, 



convicted, and sentenced to imptisonment fbr 
life. He waa offered pardon on condition of 
taking the oath of allegiance to the eetablished 
authoritiea. This he stubbornly refused to do, 
and was kept in confinement untol June of 
1846, when he was liberated without cou' 
ditione. 

Id the year 1842 was completed the Bunker 
Hill Monument As might well be expected, 
the event called forth an unbounded enthu- 
siasm, not only in Boston and Massachusetts, 
but throughout the country. The foundatlpn 
of the great shaft had been laid on the ITtih 
of June, 1826; the comeTHstone being put in 
place by the venerable La&yette, who wai 
then visiting in the United States. Daniel 
Webster, at this time young in years and fame, 
delivered the oration, while two hundred Rev- 
oludonary veterans — forty of them survivors 
of the battle fought on that hill-crest just fifty 
years before — gathered witb the throng to hear 
him. But the work of erection went on 
slowly. More than a hundred and fifty thou- 
saod dollars were expended, and seventeen 
years elapsed, before the grand shaft commem- 
orative of the heroes living and dead was fin- 
ished. The column was of Quiacy granito, 
thirty.one feet square at the base, and two hun- 
red and twenty-one feet in height The dedi- ~ 
cation was postponed until the next succeed- 
ing anniversary of the battle. On the 17th 
of June, 1843, an immense multitude of pe(^ 
pie, including most of the survivors of the 
Revolutionary War, gathered from all part* 
of the Republic to participate in the cere- 
monies. Mr. Webeter, now full of years and 
honors, was again chosen to deliver the ad- 
dress. The dedicatory oration was one of the 
most able and eloquent ever pronounced in the 
United States. New luster was added to the 
fiime of the orator. The ezerdsee were con- 
cluded with a public dinner, given in Faneuil 
Hall, the cradle of American liberty. 

In the last years of Tyler's Administration 
the State of New York was the scene of a se- 
rious social disturbance, arising from certain 
disputed land-titles, and going back in its ori- 
gin to the Dutch occupation of New Nether- 
land. Until the year 1840, the descendants 
of Van Rensselaer, one of the old Dutch p^ 
troons, had held a claim on certun lands In 
the counties of Rensselaer, Columbia, and Det 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



Rware. In liquidation of thig claim, they bad 
continued to receive from the farmers owning 
the lands ctmain trifiing rents. But at length 
the formers were wearied with the paymeot, 
and rebelled. From 1840 to 1844 the ques- 
tion was much debated in the Legislature of 
New York. In the latter year the Anti-rent 
party became so bold as to attack those of 
their fellow-tenanta who made the paymenta. 
The paying renters were coated with tar and 
feathers, and driven from the settlententa. Of- 
ficers were sent to apprehend the rioters, and 
them they killed. Time and i^ain the author- 
ises of the State were invoked to quell the 
disturbances, and the excitements at length 
■ubsided. To the present time, however, there 
has never been any formal adjustment of tiie 
difficulty. 

To the same epoch of our history belongs 
the beginning *of the troubles with the Mor- 
mons, The latter, under the leadership of 
their prophet, Joseph Smith, made their firat 
important settlements in Jackson Cminty, Mie- 
•ouri. Here their unmbera increased to fifteen 
hundred. Elated with the success of their 
eolony, they began to say that the great West 
was to be their inheritance. The anti-Mormon 
people of the surrounding country became ex* 
dt^, and determined to rid themselves of 
their neighbors. The militia was at length 
called out, and the Mormons were obliged to 
leave the State. In the spring of 1839 they 
crossed the Mississippi into Illinois, and on a 
high plateau overlooking the river, lud out a 
new city, to which they gave the name of 
Nauvoo, meaning The Beax^ftd. 

Here they built a splendid temple. Again 



the numbers of the Saints increased by addi- 
tious from different pacts of the United States 
and from Europe. The settlement at length 
attained a population of ten thousand, llie 
rapid increase of the Mormons and their pecuU 
iar principles aroused the antagonism of the 
region round about, and the two parties be- 
came hostile. Some laws enacted by Smith's 
followers were contrary to the statute of Uli- 
Dois. The Mormons were charged with certain 
thefts and murders, and it was believed that 
the courts about Nauvoo were powerless to 
convict the crimtnsJs. 

With the rise of ^he excitement and the out- 
break of violence, Smith and his brother were 
arrested, taken to Carthage, and put in jail. 
On the 27th of June, 1844, a mob gathered, 
broke open the jail doors, and killed the pris- 
oners. Hostilities continued during the sum- 
mer. In the following year the charter of 
Nauvoo was annulled by the Legislature. Hie 
Mormons despaired of maintaining their foot- 
hold in niinois, and the great majority deter- 
mined to exile themselves beyond the limits of 
civilization. In 1846 they began their march 
to the far West. lu September, Nauvoo was 
cannonaded for three days, and the remnant 
of the Mormons who bad remained were driven 
forth to join their companions in exile. They 
came up with the main company at Council 
Bluflk, Iowa. Thenoe they dragged themselvei 
wearily westward, crossed the Rocky Mount 
ains, reached the basin of the Great Salt Lake, 
and founded Utah Territory. Such were the 
beginnings of a.complicatiou, which, afler the 
lapse of nearly fifty years, has not yet yielded 
to the force of logic, or the logic of force. 



CMAPTER CXXIII.— MEXICAN WAR AND SIXTH 
DECADE. 



■ N the meantime, a still ' Spain, and of Mexicoafterward8,tokeep Texas 



more serious agitation had 
sen in the United 
I States, relative to the Re- 
public of Texas. From 
1821 tol836, this imperial 
I country, lying between 
Lonisiana and Mexico, had been a province of 
dte latter republic. It had been the policy of 



uninliubitcd, with a view to interposing a 
passable country between the aggressive Amer- 
ican race and the Mexican borders. At length, 
however, a large land-grant was made to Moses 
Austin, of Connecticut, ou condition that he 
would settle three hundred American families 
within the limits of bis domain. The grant waa 
confirmed to his sod Stephen, with the privilege 



70 



UNIVERSAL SISTOBY.~THE MODERN WORLD. 



of cetabliahing five hundred additional &milies 
of immigrants. It was thua that the founda- 
tioDB of English civilization were laid within 
the borders of Texas. 

Owing to tbe oppressive policy of the Mex- 
ican Government, and perhaps to the inde- 
pendent spirit of the Texans themselves, the 
latter, in the year 1835, raised the standard of 
rebellion. War broke out between the parent 
State and the revolted province. Many ad- 
venturers and some heroes from the United 
Slates rushed to the scene of action, and es- 
poused the Texan cause. In the first battle, 
fought at Gonzales, a thousand Mexicans were 
defeated by a Texan furce of half the number. 



new State was acKnowledged by the United 
States, by Great Britain, and by France. 

From tbe first there was an ulterior object 
on the part of the Texans to gain admissioD into 
the American Union. No sooner had they 
become independent than they applied for a 
place as a State in our Republic. At fintt 
tbe propoeition was declined by President 
Van Buren, who feared a war with Mexico. 
In the last year of Tyler's Administratioii thi 
question of tbe annexation of Texas waf 
again agitated. The population of that Be- 
public had now increased to more thav two 
hundred thousand souls. The territory em- 
braced an area of two hundred and thirty- 
seven thousand square miles, a domain more 
than five times as great as the State of Penn- 
sylvania. It was like annexing an empire. 

The issue here presented became political 
in ita bearing. It was the great question on 
which tbepeople divided in tbe Freridential 
election of 1844. Nor will the thoughtful 
reader, nearing the close of the century, f^il 
to discern in this old question of annexation 
the profound problem of slavery. Freedom 
and the free States had found a vent in the 
North-west, looking even beyond the Rocky 
Mountains and to thej^acific; but slavery and- 
the slave States seemed to be hampered on tbe 
south-west. Would not Texas open to the 
"peculiar institution" a field as broad and 
promising as that possessed by the Northern 
States? Could not the equipoise between the 
two parts of the Union be thus mdntainedf 

In all this we may see the bottom reason 
why the people of the South as a rule favored 
the annexation, and why the propoaidon wai 
received with much coldness in the North. 
Again, the project was favored by the Demo- 
crats and opposed by tbe Whiga; so that here 
we have the beginning of that sectionalism in 
party politics which has not yet disappeared 
from the nation. At this time the two paiv 
ties were nearly equally matched in strength, 
and the contest of 1844 surpasud in exdte- 
meat anything which had hitherto been known 
in the country. James K. Polk, of Ten- 
nessee, was put forward as the DemocratJo 
candidate, while the Whigs chose their favor- 
ite leader, Henry Clay. Tbe former was 
elected, and the hope of tbe latter of reaching 
the Presidency was forever eclip^. For 



THE UNITED STATES.— MEXICAN WAS. 



71 



^^ce-Ptvrid«nt, George M, DaDas, of Peunayl- 
vaoia, wu cfaoeen. 

An incident of these days ia worthy of 
tpena^ mendon. On tEe 29th of May, 1844, 
the news of the nomination of Polk was sent 
to Washington City from Baltimore by the 
magnetic telegraph. It nas the first despatch 
ever so transmitted, and the event marks an 
era in the history of ciTilizatioD. The in- 
ventor of the telegraph, which has revolu- 
tionized the method of transmitting informa- 
tion and introduced a new epoch in history, 
was Profenor Samuel F. 6. Morse, of Masea- 
ebusetts. TTie magnetio prin<nple on 
which the invention depends had been 
known rinoe 1774, but Professor Morse 
was the first to apply that principle to 
the benefit of men. He began his ex- 
periments in ld32, and five years later 
succeeded in obtaining a patent on his 
invention. He had, in the meantime, to 
eontend with every species of prejudice 
and ignorance which the low grade of 
homaD intelligence could produce. After 
the issuance of the patent there was a long 
delay, and it was not until the last day 
ef Uie session of Congress in 1843 that 
be obtained an appropriation of thirty 
thousand dollars. With that appropria- 
tion was constructed, between Baltimore 
■nd Washington, the first telegraphic line 
ki the world. Perhaps no other single la- 
Tention has exerdsed a more beneficent 
influence on the welfare, advancement, 
aad happiness of mankind. 

With the convening of Congress in De- 
wmber, 1844, the proposition to admit 
Texas into the TTnion was formally brought 
forward. During the winter the question was 
eonstantly debated, and on the let of March the 
UU for annexation was passed. The President 
hnmediately gave his assent, and the Lone Star 
took its place in the constellation of American 
States. On the day before the inauguration 
<rf Polk, bills for the admission of Florida and 
I»wa were also rigned ; but the latter State, 
the twenty-ninth member of the Union, was 
not formally admitted undl the following year. 

James Knox Polk was a native of North 
Oardlna, bom November 2, 1795. • At the 
age of eleven he removed with his father to 
TWineaaee. In 1818 he was zraduated irom 



the TJnivendty of North Carolina. In tbs 
years of his earlier manhood he was the i^ro- 
Ugi of Andrew Jackson. His first public 
office was a membership in the Legislature of 
the State. He was afterwards elected to Con- 
gress, where he served as member and Speaker 
for fourteen years. In 1839 he was chosen 
governor of Tennessee, and from that poeitioD 
was called, at the early age of forty-nine, to 
the Presidential chair. At the head of the 
new Cabinet was placed James Buchanan, of 
Pennsylvauia. It was an office requiring high 
abilities; for the threatening question with 



Mexico came at once to a crisis. As soon aa 
the resolution to annex Texas was adopted by 
Congress, Almonte, the Mexican Minister at 
Washington, demanded his passports, and in- 
dignantly left the country. 

On the 4tb of July, 1845. the Act of An- 
nexation was ratified by the Legislature of 
Texas, and the union was an accomplished fact. 
But the Texan authorities knew well the 
course which the Government of Mexico would 
pursue. A deputation was sent at once to the 
President of the United States, requesting that 
au army be immediately despatched for the 
protection of the new State. It was m oo» 



72 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



dknce to this petition that General Zachary 
Taylor was ordered to march from Camp Jet- 
sup, in Western Louisiana, to occupy Texas. 

The real question at issue between that 
State and Mexico was one of boundaries. 
Perhaps the bare fact of the annexation of 
Texas to the United States would have been 
borne by the Mexican Republic, if she could 
have dictated the boundary-line between her 
own territories and those of Texas. The foun- 
dation of the quarrel had been laid as early as 
the Mexican Revolution of 1821. By that 
event Mexico had shaken off her dependence 
on Spain, and had rearranged her civil admin- 
istration to suit herself. In doing so she had 
united in one the two provinces of Coahuila 
and Texas. These were the frontier Mexican 
States east of the Rio Grande. .Over the 
nnited provinces she had established a common 
government, and this government was main- 
tiuned until the Texan Rebellion of 1836. 
Texas, being successful in that struggle with 
Mexico, naturally claimed that her own inde- 
pendence, so achieved, carried with it the in- 
dependence of Coahuila, and that therefore the 
territory of the latter province became, by the 
act of revolution, an integral part of the new 
Texan Republic. 

The same views were held by the people of 
Coahuila. The joint Legislature of that pro- 
vince and of Texas passed a statute, in De- 
cember of 1836, declaring the integrity of the 
two States, under the name of Texas. Mexico, 
however, insisted that Texas only, and not 
Coahuila, had revolted against her authority, 
and that therefore the latter State was still 
rightfully a part of the Mexican dominions. 

It thus happened that Texas, now a State 
in the American Union, claimed the Rio 
Grande as the western limit, while Mexico 
was determined to have the Nueces as the sep- 
arating line. The territory between the two 
rivers was in dispute. The Government of the 
United States made a proposal to have the 
difficulty settled by negotiation, but Mexico 
scornfully refused. The refusal was construed 
by the Americans as a virtual confession that 
the Mexican Government was in the wrong, 
and, upon this conviction, continued to claim 
the Rio Grande as the true boundary. In- 
structions were sent to General Taylor to ad- 
irance his army as near to that river as cii^ 



cumstances would warrant, and to hold it 
against aggression. Under these orders the 
American army was moved forward to Corpus 
Cbristi, at the mouth of the Nueces, where a 
camp was established; and there Taylor con- 
centrated his forces to the number of four 
thousand five hundred men. Such was the 
situation of affairs at the close of the year 1845- 

At the beginning of the following year a 
critical step was taken. General Taylor was 
ordered to move forward to the Rio Grande. 
It was known that the Mexican Government 
had resolved not to receive an American am- 
bassador sent thither to negotiate a settlement 
It was also learned that a Mexican army had 
been gathered in the northern part of the Re- 
public for the invasion of Texas, or, at any 
rate, to occupy the disputed territory between 
the two rivers. On the 8th of March the 
American array was thrown forward from 
Corpus Christ! to Point Isabel, on the Gulf 
of Mexico. At that place Taylor established 
a d^p6t of supplies, and thence (n-essed for- 
ward to the Rio Grande. He arrived at that 
river a short distance above the mouth, and 
took a station at the town of Matamoras, 
where he erected a fortress, named Fort 
Brown. 

On the 26th of April, General Arista, who 
had arrived at Matamoras on the day before 
Taylor^s approach, and had taken command 
of the Mexican forces on the frontier, notified 
the American commander that hostilities had 
begun. On that day a company of American 
dragoons, under command of Captain Thorn- 
ton, was attacked by a body of Mexicans who 
had crossed the Rio Grande into the disputed 
territory. The Americans lost sixteen men in 
killed and wounded, and were obliged to sur* 
render. 

Such was the outbreak of the war. While 
the troop of Mexicans just referred to crossed 
the river above the American camp, other 
bodies made a crossing below, and threatened 
Taylor^s communications. That (Jeneral, fear- 
ing for his supplies at Point Isabel, hastened 
to the place and strengthened the defenses. 
The fort opposite Matamoras was left under 
command of Major Brown, ¥rith a garrison of 
three hundred men. The Fetum of Taylor to 
Point Isabel was witnessed by the Mexicans 
across the river, who supposed the AmericaM 



THE UNITED STATES.— MEJJCAN WAS. 



78 



were retreating from the country. Great ju- 
bilatioD ensued. The RejnMiean Monitor, a 
Mexican newspaper of Matamoma, published 
a flaming editorial, declaring that the cow- 
ardly invaders of Mexico had fled, like a gang 
of poltrooDS, to the searooast, and were ueiog 
every exertion to get out of the country be- 
fore the thunderbolt of Mexioan vengeance 
should fall upon them. AriBta himself shared 
the common delusion, believing that the 
Americans had receded from the contest, and 
that it was only necessary for him to bombard 
Fort Brown in order to end the war. 

In the mean time Taylor had strengthened 
his mtuation at Point Isabel, and set out with 
trains and an army of tw« tbousand men to 
return to Fort 
Brown. The Mex- 
icans had now, to 
the number of six 
thousand, crossed 
the ^o Grande 
and taken poaeea- 
sion of Palo Alto. 
This place lay di- 
rectly in Taylor's 
route. At noon, 
on the 8th of May, 
the Americans 
came up, and the 
battle was opened. 
A severe engage- 
ment ensued, last 

ing five hours, in 

which the Mexi- 
cans were driven from the field, with the loss of 
a hundred men. The American artillery was 
q>ecially efficient It was observed from the first 
that the fighting of the Mexicans was clumsy 
and inefiectuaL Pour Americans were killed 
and forty wounded, among the former the 
gallant Major Knggold, of the artillery. 

The battle of Palo Alto was indecisive. 
On the following day General Taylor took up 
his march for Fort Brown, Within three 
miles of that place he again came upon the 
Mexicans, who had rallied in full force to dis- 
pute his advance. The place selected for 
their second battle was called Resaca de la 
Palma. Here an old river-bed, dry and over- 
grown with cactus, lay across the road along 
iridch tha Americans were advancing. The 



Mexican artillery was planted to command 
the approach, and for a while the American 
Imes were severely galled. A charge was or- 
dered, however, under Captain May, who 
commanded the dragoons. The Mexican bat- 
teries were captured, aud General La Vega 
Was taken at the guns. The Mexicans, aban-. 
doning their batteries, flung away their ao-' 
coutrements and fled. Nor did they pause 
until they had put the Rio Grande between 
themselves aud their pursuers. General Tay- 
lor again took up his march, and reached Fort 
Brown without further molestation. He found 
that that place had been constantly bombarded 
from Matamoras during his absence. A brave 
defense had been made, but Major Brown, tha 



commandant, had fallen. Such was the b»> 
ginning of the Mexican War, a stru^Ie des* 
tined to be replete with disasters to the Mex- 
icans and with victories to the American forces. 
The news of what was done on the Bio 
Grande carried wild excitement throughout 
the United States. The war spirit flamed 
high. Even party dissensions were for a 
while hushed, and Whigs and Democrats alike 
rushed forward to fill the ranks. The Presi- 
dent, in a mcBsege to Congrees, threw the 
onus of the confiict on the lawless soldiery of 
Mexico, alleging that they bad shed the blood 
of American soldiers on American soil. Con- 
gress promptly responded, and on the 11th of 
May, 1846, declared that "war already e» 
isted by the act of the Mexican Government/ 



74 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



Ten millions of dollars were promptly placed 
at the disposal of the President, and he was 
authorized to accept the services of fifty thou* 
sand volunteers. In all the States war meet- 
ings were held, and such was the zeal for 
the conflict that three hundred thousand men 
are said to have offered themselves for the 
service. 

A plan for the invasion of Mexico was 
made by General Scott, Commander-in-chief 
of the army. The American forces were or- 
ganized in three divisions: the Abmy of the 
West, under General Kearney, to cross the 
Rocky Mountains and conquer the northern 
Mexican provinces; the Abmt of the Gen* 
TSR, under General Scott himself, to march 
from the Gulf coast iuto the heart of the en- 
emy's country; and the Arict of Occupa- 
tion, commanded by General Taylor, to sub- 
due and hold the districts on the Rio Grande. 

To General Wool was assigned the duty of 
mustering in the volunteers. By midsummer 
he had succeeded in despatching to General 
Taylor a force of nine thousand men. He 
then established his head-quarters and camp at 
San Antonio, Texas, from which point he 
sent forward the various divisions of recruits 
to the field. Meanwhile active operations had 
been resumed on the Rio Grande. Ten days 
after the battle of Resaca de la Palma, Gen- 
eral Taylor crossed the river and captured 
Matamoras. He then began his march up the 
right bank of the river into the interior. The 
Mexicans had now felt the impact of Amer- 
ican metal, and grew wary of their antago- 
nists. They fell back to the old town of 
Monterey, which place they fortified, and 
against which Taylor now began to advance. 
The latter, however, was unable to leave the 
Rio Grande with the weak army under his 
command, and was obliged to tarry until 
August before his forces were sufficiently 
strong to justify the advance. At the latter 
date he found himself at the head of over six 
thousand men, and proceeded against Mon- 
terey. He reached the place on the 19th of 
September, and immediately began an in- 
vestment. 

Monterey was held by a Mexican army of 
ten thousand men, under General Ampudia, 
but the small American force besieged the 
place with great vigor. On the 2l8t of the 



month an assault was made, in which the 
Americans, led by General Worth, carried the 
heights in the rear of the town. Here was 
situated the Bishop's Palace, a strong building 
commanding the entrance to Monterey; but 
the place was carried on the 22d of September. 
On the morning of the 23d, Monterey was as- 
sailed in front by the divisions of Generals 
Quitman and 'Butler. The American storm' 
ing parties charged irresistibly into the streets, 
and reached the Grand Plaza, or public square. 
In a short time they hoisted the flag of the 
Union, and then routed the Mexican forces 
from the buildings in which they had taken 
refuge. They broke open doors, charged up 
dark stairways, traversed the flat roofs of the 
houses, and drove the enemy to an igno* 
minious surrender. Ampudia, however, was 
granted the honors of war, on condition that 
he vacate the city, which he did on the mon 
row. The news of this signal victory of Gen 
end Taylor and his army still fiirther aroused 
the enthusiasm and war spirit of the American 
people. 

After the taking of Monterey, news was 
carried by the Mexicans to Taylor that nego- 
tiations for peace were in progress at the cap* 
ital. He accordingly agreed to an armistice 
of eight weeks, during which hostilities should 
cease by both parties. But the matter was a 
mere ruse on the part of the en^my. They 
desired to gain time for warlike preparations. 
It was at this juncture that the celebrated 
General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was 
called home from Havana, where he had been 
living in exile. He was at once made Presi* 
dent of the country and Commander-in-chief 
of the Mexican armies. 

In the course of the autumn a force of 
twenty thousand Mexicans was raised and sent 
into the field. When the armistice had expired, 
General Taylor again moved forward. On the 
15th of November the town of Saltillo, seventy 
miles south-west from Monterey, was captured 
by the Americans under Greneral Worth. Soon 
afterwards, Victoria, a city of Tamaulipas, was 
taken by a division under General Robert 
Patterson. To that place General Butler 
pressed forward fmm Monterey, on a march 
against Tampico. The latter place had, how- 
ever, in the meantime, capitulated to Captaia 
Conner, commander of an American flotilhL 



TSE UNITED STATES.— MEXICAN WAK. 



7a 



Genend Wool now aet forward in person from 
Ban Antonio, Texas; entered Mexico, and took 
a position within supporting distance of Mon- 
terey. General 8cott arrived at this juncture, 
and aMumed the com maud -iD-chief of the 
American armies. 

In the meantime, the Army of the West, 
under General Kearney, had set out for the 
conquest of New Mexico and California. After 
a long, wearisome march, this division reached 
Santa F^, and on the 16th of August captured 



On that far coast stirring events bad mean- 
while happened. For four years Colonel John 
C Fremont had been exploring the region 
west of the Bocky Mountains. He had hoisted 
the American flag on tlie highest peak of that 
great range, and then set out for Bait Lake, 
and afterwards for Oregon. From the latlfiC, 
territory he turned southward into CalifomiOi 
where, on arriving, he received despatches in^ 
forming him of the impending war with Mexico. 
The great adventurer thereupon assumed all 



FREMONT IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 



and garrisoned the city, lliere was no further 
refdstance within the limits' of New Mexico. 
From Santa F£ as a base. General Kearney, 
with a body of four hundred dragoons, set out 
on bis march to the Pacific coast. After pro- 
ceeding three hundred miles, he was joined by 
the fomous Kit Oarson, who brought him in- 
telligence that California bad been already 
subdued. Kearney therenpon sent back the 
larger part of bis fbrces, and with only a bun- 
ired men, made his way to the Padfio 



responsibilities, and began to arouse the Amei^ 
ican residents of California to a rebellion 
against the authority of Mexico. In this work 
he was successful. The frontiersmen of the 
Sacramento Valley gathered around his stand- 
ard, and the campaign was undertaken against 
the Mexican authorities. In several minor 
engagementB the Americans were uniformly 
successful, and the authority of Fremont was 
rapidly extanded over the greater part of 
Upper and Central California. 



7« 



VmVEBSAL BI8T0RY.—TSE MODERN WORLD. 



WbQe Uwee events were happening in the 
North-wMt, ConuQodore Bloat, of the Amet^ 
icao Nary, had undertalcen a similar work in 
the South. Arriving at the town of Mou> 
terey, on the coast, about eighty miles sonth 
of San Francisco, he captured the place. At 
the extreme southern part of the State, Com- 
modore Stockton captured San Diego, and then 
■seumed command of the Pacific Squadron. 
It was the news of these events whicb inspired 
Fremont to exertions in the North and Center. 
He hoisted the American flag everywhere; 
joined Sloat and Stockton, and advanced 
against Los Angeles, which was taken with 
little oppodtJoD. 



Before the end of the summer, California 
was conquered. In November, General Kear- 
ney, with a hundred dragoons, arrived, and 
joined his forces with those of Fremont and 
Stockton. About a month later tbe Mexicans, 
seeing the meagreness of the forces by which 
they had been overawed, rose in rebellion, and 
the Americans were obliged to take the field. 
On the 8th of January, 1847, a decisive battle 
was fought at San Gabriel, in which the Mex- 
icans were completely defeated, and the author- 
ity of the United States established on a per^ 
manent basis. Thus was the imperial domain 
of California wrested from the Mexican Gov- 
ernment by a handful of courageous adven- 



turers, marching from place to place with theft 
lives in their hands. 

On leaving Mew Mexico, Kearney had left 
behind Colonel Doniphan in command of the 
American forces. He, too, became an adven- 
turer. With a body of seven hundred men, 
he marched across the enemy's country from 
Santa Fi m route to Saltillo, a dbtauce of 
more than, eight hundred miW. On arriving 
at the Rio Grande, he fought a battle with 
the Mexicans, en Christmas day, at Bracito. 
He then crossed the river, captured £1 Paso, 
and in two months pressed his way to within 
twenty miles of Chihuahua. On the banks of 
Sacramento Creek he met the Mexicans in 
overwhelming numbers, 
and on the 28th of No- 
vember, inflicted upoD 
tbem a disastrous defeat 
He then marched nn- 
. opposed into Chihuahua, 
I a city of more than forty 
ihuusand inhabitants, and 
I finally reached the di- 
vision of General Wool 
In safety. 

Meanrfhile General 
Scott, on bis arrival in 
Mexico, had drawn down 
the river a large part of 
the Army of Occupation, 
to join him on the Gulf, 
for the conquest of the 
Mexican capital. After 
tbe withdrawal of these 
mi. troops &om Taylor, and 

while tbe remainder were 
left in an exposed condition, Santa Anna, 
perceiving his advantage, immediately moved 
against Taylor with an army of twenty thou- 
sand men. The American General was able 
to oppose to this tremendous force not mora 
than six thousand men. After furnishing 
garrisons for Saltillo and Monterey, Taylor's 
efiective forces in the field amounted to but 
four thousand eight hundred men; but with 
this small and resolute army he marched out 
boldly to meet the Mexicans. A favorable 
battle-ground was chosen at Buena Vista, four 
miles south of Saltillo. Here Taylor posted 
his army, and awaited the onset 
On the 22d of February the Mexicans oame 



TSE UNITED STATE8.~MEXIGAN WAR. 



poaring tiirough the ^rges and over tho bills, 
irom the diiectioD of San Luis Potosi. On 
approachiDg, Santa Anna demanded a sur> 
render, but was met v'lih. defiance. The real 
battle began on the morning of the 23d. 
The Mexicans first attempted to outflank the 
American position, but the attempt was 
thwarted by the troops of Illinois. A heavy 
division was next thrown against the Amer- 
ican center, but this attempt was also repelled, 
ehiefly by the effectiveness of Captain Wash- 
ington's artillery. The Mexicans then &U with 



with volleys of grape-shot. A aucceesM 
charge was then made by the American cav- 
airy, in which the losses were severe. Against 
tremendous odds the battle was &irly won. 
On the following night the Mexicans, having 
lost nearly two thousand men, made a precip- 
itate retreat. The American loss amounted, in 
killed, wounded, and missing, to seven hun- 
dred and forty-six. This was, however, the 
last of General Taylor's battles. He soon 
after left the field and returned to the United 
States, whsie he was teoeived witli gteit e» 



OP SATT lUUt B'DLLOA. 



great force on tbe American left, where the' 
Second Regiment of Indiaoians, aciinj^ under 
a mistaken order, gave way, and the army 
was 'for a while in peril; but the troops of 
Kentucky and Mississippi were rallied to the 
breach; the men of Illinois and Indiana came 
bravely to the support, and the onset of the 
enemy was again hurled back. In the crisis 
of the stru^le the Mexicans made a furious 
chai^ upon the batteries of Captain Bragg; 
but the gunners stood to their work, aud the 
flolumns of Mexican lancers were scattered 



thusiflsm. He was indeed, in the popular es- 
timation, the hero nf the war. 

On the 9th of March. 1847, General Scott, 
having collected a compact array of twelve 
thousand men, landed to the south of Vera 
Cruz, and entered upon the last campaign of 
the war. In three days Vera Cruz was in- 
vested. Batteries were opened at a distance 
of eight hundred yards, and a cannonade was bfr 
gun. On the water side, Vera Cruz was defended 
by the celebrated castle of San Juan d'UIIoa, 
which had been erected by Spain in the early 



UNIVERSAL mSTOHY.^THE MODERN WORLD. 



nooDdaj evety poBition of the Mexicans wm 
aucceeefullj stormed. They were hurled from 
their fortifications and driven into a precip- 
itate rout. Nearly three thousand prisoners 
were captured, together with forty-three pieces 
of bronze artillery, five thousand muskets, and 
accoutremente enough to supply an army. 
The American loss in killed and wounded 
amounted to four hundred and thirty-one ; 
that of the Mexicans to fully a tliousand. 
Santa Anna harely escaped with his life, 
leaving behind his private papers and his 
woodenlegJ 

The way thus opened, the victorious army 
pressed onward to JaUpa. On the 22d of tha 
month the strong castle of Perote, crowning 
the peak of the CordiDeraa, was taken witboat 
resistance. Here the Americans captured an- 
other park of artillery and a vast amount of 
warlike stores. From this point General Scott 
turned to the south, and led his army against 
Uie ancient and sacred city of Puebla 
Tlough the place contained a population of 
eighty tJiousand, no defense was made or at- 
tempted. It is one of the striking episodes of 
modern history that a handful of invadera, 
two thousand miles from their homes, diould 
thus march unopposed through the gates of a 
great foreign city. On the 15th of May the 
army was quartered in Puebla. General Scott 
DOW found hb forces reduced to five thousand 
men, and deemed it prudent to pause until re- 
inforcements could reach him irom Vera Crux. 

At this juncture negotiations were again 
attempted ; but tbe foolish hardihood of the 
Mexicans prevented satisfactory results. By 
midsumtner General Scott's reinforcements ar- 
rived, swelling his numbers to eleven thousand 
men. Leaving a small garrison in Puebla, he 
set out, on the 7th of August, on bis march 
for the capital. The route now lay over the 
crest of the CordHIeras. Strong resistance 
had been expected in the pnsses of tbe mount- 
ains; but the advance waa unopposed, and the 
American army, sweeping over the heights, 
looked down on tbe valley of Mexico. Never 
had a soldiery in a foreign land beheld a 
grander scene. Clear to the horizon stretched 
a most living landscape of green fields, vil- 
lages, and lakes — a picture too beautiftll to be 
torn with the dread enginery of war. 

Fifteen miles from tbe capital lay dw 



THE UNITED STATES.— MEXICAN WAR. 



79 



town of Ajotla. To this place the army now 
pressed forward, desoending from the mount- 
ains. Thus far the march had been along the 
great national road from Vera Cruz to Mexico. 
The remainder of the route, however, was 
occupied with fortifications both natural and 
artificial, and it seemed impossible to continue 
the direct march further. The army accord* 
inglj wheeled to the south from Ayotla, 
around lake Chalco, and thence westward to 
San Augustine. By this means the army was 
brought within ten miles of the capital. 
From San Augustine the approaches to the 
dty were by long causeways across marshes 
and the beds of bygone lakes. At the ends of 
these causeways were massive gates, strongly 
defended. To the left of the line of march 
were the almost inaccessible positions of Con- 
treras, San Antonio, and Molino del Bey. To 
the front and beyond the marshes, and closer 
to the city, lay the powerful bulwarks of 
Churubusco and Chapultepec The latter was 
a castle of great strength, and seemed impreg- 
nable. These various outposts of the city 
were occupied by Santa Anna, with a force 
•f fully thirty thousand Mexicans. The army 
•f Qeneral Scott was not one-third as great in 
nombers, and yet with this small force he con- 
tinued to press on against the capital. 

The first assaults were made on the 19th 
of August, by Generals Pillow and Twiggs, Ut 
Contreras. About night-fall the line of com- 
munications between this fortress and Santa 
Anna's army was cut, and in the darkness of 
tfie following night an assailing column, led by 
General Persifer F. Smith, moved against the 
enemy's position. The attack was delayed 
until sunrise, but at that hour the American 
column rushed forward with impetuosity, and 
six thousand Mexicans were driven in rout and 
confusion from the fortifications. The Amer- 
ican division numbered fewer than four thou- 
sand. This was the first victory of the mem- 
orable 20th of August A few hours later 
General Worth advanced on San Antonio, 
compelled an evacuation of the place, and 
routed the flying garrison. This was the eeeond 
victory. Almost at the same time General 
Pillow led a column against one of the heights 
ef Churubusco. Here the Mexicans had con- 
centrated in great force; but after a terrible 

kult the position was taken by storm, and 



the enemy scattered like chaiT. This was thu 
third triumph . The division of General Twiggs 
added a fourth victory by storming and hold- 
ing another height of Churubusco, while the 
fifth and last was achieved by Generals Shields 
and Pierce. The latter confronted Santa 
Anna, who was coming with a large army to 
reinforce his garrisons, and turned him back 
with large losses. The whole of the Mexican 
army was now driven into the fortifications of 
Chapultepec. 

On the following morning the alarm and 
treachery of the Mexican authorities were 
both strongly exhibited. A deputation came 
out to negotiate; but the intent was merely 
to gain time for strengthening the defenses. 
The terms proposed by the Mexicans were 
preposterous when viewed in the light of 
the situation. General Scott, who did not 
consider his army vanquished, rejected the 
proposals with scorn. He, however, rested his 
men until the 7th of September before renew* 
ing hostilities. On the morning of the 8th 
General Worth was thrown forward to take 
Molino del Bey and Casa de Mata, which were 
the western defenses of Chapultepec. These 
places were defended by about fourteen thou« 
sand Mexicans ; but the Americans, after los- 
ing a fourth of their number in the desperate 
onset, were again victorious. The batteries 
were now turned on Chapultepec itself, and 
on the 13th of September that frowning citadel 
was carried by storm. This exploit opened an 
avenue into the city. Through the San Cosme 
and Belen gates the conquering army swept 
resistlessly, and at nightfall the soldiers of the 
Union were in the suburbs of Mexico. 

During the night Santa Anna and the ofiS* 
cers of the Government fled from the city, but 
not until they had turned loose from the pris> 
ons two thousand convicts, to fire upon the 
American army. On the following morning, 
before day-dawn, a deputation came forth from 
the city to beg for mercy. This time the mes 
sengers were in earnest; but General Scott, 
wearied with trifling, turned them away with 
disgust. ** Forward r was the order that rang 
along the American lines at sunrise. The war 
worn regiments swept into the beautiful streets 
of the famous city, and at seven o'clock the 
flag of the United States floated over the halls 
of the Montezumas. It was the triumphant 



80 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



ending of one of the most briUiant and strik- 
ing campaigns of modern history. 

The American army, as compared with the 
hosts of Mexico, had been but a handful. The 
small force which had left Vera Cruz on the 
march to the capital had lost considerably by 
battle and disease. Many detachments had 
been posted en route to hold the line of com- 
munications, and for garrison duty in places 
taken from the enemy. The army had thus 
dwindled until, after the battles of Churubnsco 
and Chapultepec, fewer than six thouMnd men 
were left to enter and bold the capital. The 
invasion had been remarkable in all its par- 
ticulars. The obstacles which had to be over- 
come seemed insurmountable. There were 
walled cities to be taken, fortified mountain- 
passes to be carried by storm, and frowning 
castles with cannon on the battlements to be 
assaulted by regiments whose valor and im- 
petuosity were their only protection and war- 
rant of victory. Yet the campaign was never 
seriously impeded. No foot of ground once 
taken from the Mexicans was yielded by false 
tactics or lost by battle. The army which 
accomplished this marvel, penetrating a far- 
distant and densely, peopled country, held by a 
proud race, claiming to be the descendants of 
Cortez and the Spanish heroes of the sixteenth 
century, and denouncing at the outset the 
American soldiers as ** barbarians of the North," 
was, in large part, an army of volunteers — 
a citizen soldiery — which had risen from the 
States of the Union and marched to the Mex- 
ican border under the Union flag. 

Santa Anna, on leaving his conquered cap- 
ital, turned about with his usual treachery, and 
attacked the American hospitals at Puebla. 
At this place about eighteen hundred of the 
American sick had been left in charge of 
Colonel Childs. For' several days a gallant 
resistance was made by the enfeebled garrison, 
but the besiegers held out until General Jo- 
jBeph Lane, on his march to the capital, fell' 
upon them and drove them away. It was the 
Closing stroke of the war — a contest in which 
the Americans, had gained every single vic- 
tory from first to last. 

The war ended with the complete over- 
throw of the military power of Mexico. Santa 
Anna, the President, was a fugitive. It was 
manifest to all the world that the war had 



ended, and it only remained to determine the 
conditions of peace. Never was a nation more 
completely prostrated than was the Mexican 
Republic. In the winter of 1847-48 Ameri- 
can ambassadors met the Mexican Congress, in 
session at Ouadalupe Hidalgo, and on the 2d 
of February a treaty was concluded between 
the two nations. The terms were promptly 
ratified by the two governments, and on the 
4th of the following July, President Polk is- 
sued a proclamation of peace. By this im- 
portant treaty the boundary-line between Mex- 
ico and the United States was fixed as follows: 
The Rio Grande, from its mouth to the south- 
em limit of New Mexico; thence westward 
along the southern, and northward along the 
western boundary of that Territory to the 
river Gila; thence down that river to its con- 
fluence with the Colorado; thence westward to 
the Pacific Ocean. Thus was the whole of 
New Mexico and Upper California relinquished 
to the United States. Mexico guaranteed the 
free navigation of the Gulf of California and 
the river Colorado from its mouth to the con- 
fluence of the Gila. In consideration of these 
territorial acquisitions and privileges, the 
United States agreed to surrender the places 
occupied by the American army in Mexico, to 
pay that country fifteen million dollars, and 
to assume all debts due from the Mexican 
Government to American citizens, said debts 
not to exceed three million five hundred thou- 
sand dollars. It was thus that the territory 
of the United States was spread out in one 
broad belt from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 

On the north, however, the boundary-line 
between the American Republic and the do- 
minions of Great Britain had never been defi- 
nitely determined. The next question which 
the United States had to confront was the de- 
termination of this line, and in doing so they 
were obliged to deal with an adversary very 
different in character from Mexico. The 
Oregon boundary had been in dispute from 
the first decade of the century. By the terms 
of the treaty of 1818 the international line 
between the United States and the British 
Dominions had been carried westward frotn 
the north-western extremity of the Lake of 
the Woods to the crest of the Rocky Mount- 
ains, but from that point to the Pacific ho 
agreement could be reached. As early aa 



THE UNITED STATES.— MEXICAN WAR. 



81 



1807, and again in 1818 and 1826, the United 
States had formally claimed the parallel of 
fftj-four degrees and forty minutes; but this 
boundary Great Britain refused to accept. 

By a convention held in August of 1827, 
it was agreed by the two powers that the vast 
belt of territory west of the Bocky Mountains 
and between the parallels of forty-nine degrees 
and fifty-four degrees and forty minutes should 
remain open indefinitely and impartially for 
the joint occupancy of British and American 
dtizens. Great Britain named the forty-ninth 
parallel as the true boundary, and stoutly 
maintained it. By the agreement just referred 
to the difficulties between the two nations were 
obviated for sixteen years; but thoughtful 
statesmen, both British and American, became 
alarmed lest a question of so much importance, 
not settled on any permanent basis, should yet 
involve the two nations in war. 

N^otiations were accordingly renewed. In 
1843 the American minister resident at St 
James again proposed the parallel of fifty-four 
degrees and forty minutes; but the proposition 
was rejected. In the following year the British 
ambassador at Washington again suggested 
the forty-ninth parallel as the true boundary; 
but to this the American Government refused 
to accede. At this juncture war with Mexico 
broke out, and with it came the prospective 
extension of the territory of the United States 
to the south-west. The views of the Admin- 
istration in regard to the north-western bound* 
ary were relaxed with the prospect of Texas, 
Kew Mexico, and California. Here again we 
see underlying the controversy the still greater 
question of American slavery. If the United 
States had maintained its claim to fifty-four 
degrees and forty minutes as her north-western 
boundary, they would have acquired a terri- 
ritory in that region, inaccessible to slavery, 
and extensive enough for ten free States as 
large as Indiana. The Government, then 
strongly dominated by pro-slavery sentiments, 
looked with little or no enthusiasm upon this 
prospective enlargement of free territory, so 
that while the Administration was struggling, 
by the Mexican War and by purchase, to 
procure a south-western empire for the spread 
of human slavery, she permitted the opportu- 
nity to obtain a iVee north-western empire to 
unimproved. 



The matter involved came to an issue on 
the 15th of June, 1846, when the question was 
definitely settled by a treaty. Every point in 
the long-standing controversy was decided in 
favor of Great Britain. In the many diplo- 
matical contentions between that country and 
our own, the United States have always been 
able to maintain their position, with this single 
exception of the north-western boundary. The 
complete surrender to the British Government 
in this particular was little less than ignomin- 
ious, and can be accounted for onlv on the 
ground that the Government of the United 
States, as it then was, was indifferent to the 
extension of her domains in the direction of 
freedom. However this may be, the forty- 
ninth parallel was established as the inter* 
national boundary, from the summit 6f the 
Bocky Mountains to the middle of the channel 
which separates the Continent from Van- 
converts Island ; thence southerly through the 
middle of said channel and through Fuca's 
Straits, to the Pacific. Vancouver's Island 
itself was awarded to Great Britain, and the 
free navigation of the Columbia lUver was 
granted to the Hudson Bay Company and 
other British subjects on the same conditions 
as those imposed on citizens of the United 
States. The treaty was totally unfavorable to 
the interests of the American Republic, and 
was denounced by many as actually dishonor- 
able. It is certain that better terms might 
have been demanded and obtained.^ 

Within a few days after the signing of the 
treaty of peace with Mexico, an event occurred 
in California which spread excitement through- 
out the civilized world. A laborer employed 
by Captain Sutter to cut a mill-race on the 
American Fork of Sacramento River discovered 
some pieces of gold in the sand where he was 
digging. With further search, other particles 
were found. The i)ew8 spread as if borne on 
the wind. From all quarters adventurers 
came flocking. Other explorations led to 
further revelations of the precious metal. For 
a while there seemed no end to the discov- 



*Such was the indignation of the opponents 
of this treaty— especially the leaders of the Whig 
party— that the political battle cry of " Fifty-four 
Forty f or Fight" became almost as popular a motto 
as " Free Trade and Sailors* RighU " had been in 
the War of 1812. 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



3 limit to the quantity of gold, which 
might be had for picking up. Stra^liug 
gold-huDters sometimes gathered iu a few hours 
the value of five hundred dullara. The iutel- 
ligeuce neut flying through the States to the 
Atlantic, and then to the ends of the world. 
Men thousands of miles away were crazed 
with excitement. Workshops were shut up, 
business houses al>andoned, fertile farms left 
tenantless, offices deserted. As yet the ovei^ 



has never been overestimated. Nor is their 
richness yet exhausted. 

Iu the year 1846 an Act was passed in 
Congress for the orgauizatioo of the Shitb- 
BOMIAN INBTITUTION at Washington City. 
Twenty-two years previously an eminent Eng- 
Itsbmau, a chemist and philanthropist, named 
James Smithsun,' had died at Genoa, bequeath* 
iug, on cerlaiu couilitions, a large sum of 
money to the Uniied States. In the fUl of 



MINERa OF FORTY-NINK, 



land rout«s to California were scarcely dis- 
covered ; nevertheless, thousands of eager 
adventurers started from the States on the 
long, long journey across the mountains and 
plains. Before the end of 1850, San Fran- 
cisco had grown from a miserable Spanish 
vill^e of huts to a city of fift«en thousand 
inhabitants. By the close of 1852, California 
had s population of more than a quarter of a 
million. The importance of the gold-mines 
of California to the industries of the country 



1838, by the death of Smithson's nephew, the 
proceeds of the estate, amounting at that time 
to J515,00O, were secured by the agent of the 
National Government, and deposited in the 
mint. It had been provided in Smithson's 
will that the bequest should be used for the 



' Until after his graduation at Oxford, in 1786, 
this remarkable maa was known by the name of 
Jamet Loiat Mneit. Afterward, of his own accord, 
he chose the name of his reputed fath«r. Honlt. 
BmitL, Dulie of Northumberland. 



TRE UNITED STATED.— MEXICAN WAR. 83 

ntftblielimeDt at Washington City of "an in- | The Act of Establiahmeut provided that the 
stitution for the increase and diffusion of institution to be iounded from Bmithson'e hb- 
knowledge among men." In order to carry ' quest should be named, in his honor, the 

Smithsonian Institution : that the same 



ADVENTURERS EN RODTK OVERLAND TO CALIFORNIA. 

jut the great designs of the testator, an ample | priations and private gifts, buildings should be 

plan of organization was prepared by John provided suitable to maintain a museum of 

Quincy Adams, laid before Congress, and, after I natural history, a cabinet of minerals, a cbem- 

some modifications, adopted. ) ical laboratory, a gallery of art, and a library. 



M 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



FrofeflBor Joseph Henry, of Prioceton Col- 
l^;e, WW choaen secretary of the institutioD, 
and the pUo of oi^anizatlon was speedily and 
■ucoeaafully carried out The result has been 
the establiahment in the United Butes of one 
of the most beneficent inBtitutione known in 
the faiatory of mankiqd. The Smiihaonian 
CiiitirUmtiont to Knowledge already amount to 
nearly thirty volumes quarto, and the future 
is deetined to yield etill richer results in widen- 
ing the boundaries of human thought and 
increasing the happiness of men. 

On the 8th of June, 1845, Ex-President 
Andrew Jackson died st faia home, called the 



Hermitage, near Nashville. The veteran 
warrior and statesman had lived to the age of 
seventy-eight. On the 23d of February, 1848, 
Ex-President John Quincy Adams died, at the 
City of Washington. After bis retirement 
from the Presidency he had been chosen to 
represent his district in Congress. In that 
body he had displayed the most remarkable 
abilities and patriotism. There he acquired 
the well-earned aobriquet of the "Old Man 
Eloquent." At the time of his decease be 
was a member of the House of Representatives. 
He was struck with paralysis in the very seat 
from which he had so many times electrified 
the nation with his fervid and cogent oratory. 



In 1848, Wisconsin, the last of the fin 
great States formed from the Territory north- 
west of the river Ohio, was admitted into the 
Union. The new commonwealth came with a 
population of two hundred and fifty thousand, 
and an area of nearly fiFty-four thousand square 
miles. In the establishment of the western 
boundary uf the Biate, by an error of survey 
ing, the St. Croix Kver, instead of the Missis- 
sippi, was fixed as the line, by which Wiscon- 
sin lost to Minnesota a considerable distiiot 
rightfully helon^ng to her territory. 

The vast extension of the National domain 
and the increase of internal interests in 
the United States, noir 
f\tlly justified the esUb* 
lishment of a new Cabinet 
oSce, known as the De- 
partment of the Interior. 
This was done near tbe 
close of Polk's Admiiuft- 
tration. To the three 
original departments of 
the Government as organ- 
ized under the Administr^ 
tion of Washington bad 
adready been added the 
offices of Postmaster-Gen- 
eral and Secretary of the 
Navy. The Attorney- 
General of the United 
States had also come to 
be recognized as a mem* 
ber of the Cabinet. The 
duties assigned to the De- 
partments of State and 
Treasury had now become 
so manifold as to require a division of labor and 
the establishment of a separate office. A cer^ 
tain part of these duties were accordingly as- 
signed to what was at first known as the Home 
Department, and soon afterwards the Depart- 
ment of the Interior. In the beginning of the 
following Administration, the new Secretary- 
ship was first filled by General Thomas Ewing, 
of Ohio. 

Such were the leading events of the Ad- 
ministration of Polk. Near its close the peo- 
ple became, as usual, much excited about the 
succession to the Presidential office. Instead 
of two candidates, three well-known personagea 
were presented for the suffrages of the peofde. 



TEE UNITED STATES.— MEXICAN WAS. 



8S 



GvDflTal Lewie Caas, of Michigan, was nom- 
inatod by the Democrats, and General Zach- 
ary Taylor by tbe Whigs. Meanwhile, the 
accession of vast and unoccupied territoriee 
bad aroused to conuderable vigor the anti> 
slavery Bentiment of the country. At tbe 
first this seutiment was expressed in simple op- 
position to the extaiaion of slavery into tbe 
tben unoccupied national domains. As tbe 
representative of this seDtiipent, and tbe party 
founded thereon, Ex-President Martin Vac 
Buren was brought forward as the Free-Soil 
candidate for the Presidency. The particular 
drcumstances which gave rise to the new 
party, destined in future times to play so 
important a part in the history of tbe 
country, may well be Darrated. 

Most of the issues on which the Free- 
Soil party was based grew out of the Mex- 
ican War and the terms of tbe treaty witb 
which it was concluded. la 1846, David 
■Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, introduced into 
Congress a bill to prohibit tJavery in all the 
territory which might be secured by treaty 
witb Mexico. This proposition was the 
key to all that ensued on the line of op- 
podtion to the extension of slavery. The 
bill was defeated ; but the advocates of the 
measure, thenceforth called tbe Wiluot 
Proviso, formed themselves into a party, 
and in June of 1848 nominated Van 
Buren for the Presidency. The real con- 
test, however, lay between Generals Cass 
and Taylor. The position of the Whigs 
and the Democrats on the question of 
slavery, especially in its relation to the Ter- 
ritories, had not as yet been clearly defined, 
and as a consequence the election was 
left, in considerable measure, to turn on the 
personal popularity of the two candidates. 
The memory of General Taylor's recent vic- 
tories in Mexico, and tbe democratic aspects of 
his character in general, prevmled, and he was 
elected by a large majority. As Vice-Presi- 
dent, Millard Fillmore, of New York, was 
chosen. Thus closed the agitated and not in- 
glorious Administration of President Polk. 

Zachary Taylor was a Virginian by birth, 
a Kentuckian by breeding, a soldier by pro- 
fesdon, a Whig in politics. He was bom on 
the 24th of September, 1784. His father was 
Colonel Richard Taylor, an officer in the Rev- 



olutionary War. In the year 1785 the family 
removed to Kentucky, where the father died. 
In the War of 1812 young Taylor distin- 
guished himself in tbe North-west, especially 
in the defense of Fort Harrison against the 
Indians. In the Seminole War he bore a coa- 
spicuoua part. But his greatest renown wai 
won in Mexico. In that conflict, according 
to tbe popular estimation, he outshined Gen- 
eral Scott, and his popularity made easy bta 
way.to the Presidency. His reputation, which 
was strictly military, was enviable, and bis 
character above reproach. His Administn^ 
tlon began witb a renewal of tbe questioB 



about slavery in the Territories. Califomift, 
the Eldorado of the West, was the origin of 
the dispute, which now broke out with in* 
creased violence. 

Id his first message the new President ex- 
pressed his sympathy with the Californians, 
and advised the formation of a State Govern- 
ment preparatory to admission into the Union. 
The people of California promptly accept^ 
the suggestion, and a convention of delegates 
was held at Monterey, in September of 1849. 
A constitution prohibiting slavery was framed, 
tubmitted to the people, and adopted with but 
little opposition. XTuder this instrument Peter 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



the Missouri Compromiae had respect only Jij 
the Louisiftna Purchase, and that Califomi& 
could uot be regarded as included id that pur- 
chase; that the people of the proposed State 
had, iu auy event framed their CouBtitutiun 
to suit themselves. Such was the issue. The 
debates grew more and more violent, until 
the stability of the ITnion vaa seriously 
tbreateued. 

Meanwhile, other difficulties arose with re- 
spect to the territory obtained by the Mexican 
treaty. Texas set up a claim to New Mexico 
as a part of her domains; but the claim was 
resisted by the people of Banta F6, who de- 
sired a separate govemmcDt. A serious issue 
was thus raised between the State and t})e 
Territory, requiring the interference of Con- 
gress. By this ume the people of the South 
in general had begun to clamor loudly and 
bitterly with respect to the escape of fugitive 
slaves. It waa claimed that the bondmen of 
the South fleeing from service were received, 
on crossing the borders of the free States, by 
Abolitionists, and were aided in efiecting a final 
escape from their masters. A counter-cry was 
raised by the opponents of slavery, who de- 
manded that in the District of Columbia at 
least, where the national authority was para- 
mount, where no State Constitution guaran- 
teed the existence of the institution, the slave- 
trade should be abolished. The controversy 
increased in heat along the whole line, and 
the.-e was everywhere manifested between the 
parties a spirit of suspicion, ] 



It was at this epoch that the illustrious 
Henry Clay appeared for the last time as a 
conspicuous figure in the councils of hia 
country. He came, as he had come before, 
in the character of a peacemaker. His known 
predilection for compromise, especially on sec- 
tional questions within the United States, was 
once more manifested in full force. In the 
spring of 1850, while the questions above re- 
ferred to were under hot discussion in Con- 
gress, Clay was appointed chairman of a com- 
mittee of thirteen, to whom all the matters 
under discusnon were referred. On the 9th 
of May in that yf ar he reported to Congress 
the celebrated OHMtBDS Bill, covering most 
of the points in dispute. The [Mwisions of 
this important bill were as follows: JVrsf, the 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE SIXTH DECADE. 



•dfiuadoD of California as a free State, under 
the ConetituUoii already adopted ; »eetmd, the 
formation of Dew Statea, not exceeding four in 
number, out of the Territory of Texas, said 
States to permit or exclude slavery, aa the 
people thereof should determine; tiiird, the 
oi^anization of Territorial Governments for 
New Mexico and Utah, without conditions on 
the question of slavery ; fourth, the establish- 
ment of the present boundary-line between 
Texas and New Mexico, and the payment to 
Texas, for Hurrendering New Mexico, the sum 
of ten million dollars from the national treas- 
ury; jyih, the enactment of a more rigor- 
ous law for the recovery of fugitive slaves; 
liaih, the abalitjun of the slave-trade in 
the District of Columbia. 

With the report of the Omnibus Bill 
to Congress the debates broke out anew, 
and seemed likely to be interminable. In 
the midst of the discusuon that ensued, 
and while the issue was still undecided, 
President Taylor fell sick and suddenly 
died, on the 9th of July, 1860. In ac- 
cordance with the provisions of the Con- 
stitution, Mr. Fillmore at once took the 
oath of office and ent«red upon the duties 
of the Presidency. A new Cabinet was 
also formed, with Daniel Webster at the 
head as Secretary of State. Notwith- 
standing the death of the chief magistrate, 
tlie Government, as in the case of the 
decease of Harrison, again moved on 
without disturbance. 

In Congress the discussion of the Com- 
promise measureseontinued until autumn, 
when the views of Mr. Clay, sustained aa 
they were by his own eloquence, at length 
prevuled. On the ISth of September the last 
clause was adopted, and the wbnle received the 
sanction of the President Hereupon the ex- 
citement throughout the country rapidly abated, 
and the distracting controversy seemed at an 
end. Viewed in the light of subsequent events, 
however, the peaceful condition tliat ensued 
was only superficial. The deep-seated evU 
remained. At this time there were very few, 
if any, American statesmen who had discerned 
the bottom of the trouble which had arisen 
from time to time for more than a quarter of 
a century, and which was destined, in spite of 
all compromise, to appear and reappear until 



it should be cut from the body of American 
life with the keen edge of the sword. 

For the present, however, there was quiet. 
The Compromise acta of 1860 were the last, 
and perhaps the greatest, of those temporary, 
pacific measures which were originated and 
carried through Congress by the genius of 
Henry Clay. Shortly afterwards he bade 
adieu to the Senate, and sought at his beloved 
Ashland a brief rest from the arduous cares 
of public life. 

The passage of the Omnibus Bill was 
strictly a polUical settlement. The event soon 



showed that the mor<d convictions of few men 
were altered by its provisions. Public opinion 
was virtually the same as before. In the North 
appeared a general, indefinite, and growing 
hostility to slavery; in the South, a fixed 
and resolute purpose to defend and to extend 
that institution. To the President, whose party 
was in the ascendency in most of tbe Free 
States, the measure was fatal. For, although 
his Cabinet had advised him to sign the bill, 
the Whigs were at heart opposed to the Fugi- 
tive-Slave Law ; and when he gave his assent, 
tbey turned coldly from bim. In the Whig 
Convention two years afterwards, although the 



88 



UNIVER8A£ HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



policy of tbe President, with the usual polit- 
ical hypocrisy, was indorsed and approved — 
having a vote in its favor of 227 against 60 — 
not twenty votes could be obtained in the 
Northern States for his rei^mination. Thus 
do political parties punish their leaders for 
hesitating to espouse a principle which the 
parties themselves are afraid to avow. 

While the debates on the Compromise 
measures were still in progress in Congress, 
the attention of the country was turned with 
some interest to the affairs of Cuba. A law- 
less attempt was made by a few American 
adventurers to gain possession of that island. 
It was thought by the insurrectionists that the 
Cubans were ready to throw off the Spanish 
yoke and to appeal to the United States for 
annexation. In order to encourage such a 
movement General Narciso Lopez, a Spanish 
American soldier, organized an expedition in 
the South, and on the 19th of May, 1850, 
effected a landing, with a considerable body 
of followers, at Cardenas, a port of Cuba. 
There was, however, no uprising in his favor. 
Neither the Cubans themselves nor the Spanish 
soldiers in the island joined the insurgent^s 
standard, and Lopez was obliged to seek safety 
by returning to Florida. But he was not sat- 
isfied with his experience as a revolutionist. 
In the following year he renewed the attempt, 
and, with a band of four hundred and eighty 
men, a second time landed in Cuba. They 
were, however, attacked, defeated, and cap- 
tured by an overwhelming force of Spaniards. 
Lopez and the ringleaders were taken to 
Havana, tried, condemned, and executed. 

It was conceded that the first annual mes- 
sage of President Fillmore was a document of 
unusual ability. Many important measures 
were discussed and laid before Congress for the 
consideration of that body. Among these were 
the following: A system of cheap and uniform 
postage ; the establishment, in connection with 
the Department of the Interior, of a Bureau of 
Agriculture ; liberal appropriations for the im- 
provement of rivers and harbors ; the building 
of a national asylum for disabled and destitute 
seamen; a permanent tariff, with specific 
duties on imports and discrimination in favor 
of American manufactures; the opening of 
communication between the Mississippi and 
the Pacific coast ; a settlement of the land dif- 



ficulties in California; an act for the retire- 
ment of supernumerary ofi&cers of the army 
and navy; and a board of commissiones to 
adjust the claims of private citizens against the 
Government of the United States. Only two 
of these recommendations — the asylum for 
sailors and the settlement of the land claims 
in California — were carried into effect. For 
the President's party were in a minority in 
Congress, and the majority refused or neg- 
lected to approve his measures. 

At this epoch, still another and serious 
trouble arose between the United States and 
Great Britain. According to the existing 
treaties between the two countries the coast 
fisheries of Newfoundland belonged exclusively 
to England, but. outside of a line drawn three 
miles from the shore the American fisherman 
had equal rights and privileges. In course of 
time a contention spraog up between the 
fishermen of the two nationalities as to the 
location of the line. Should the same be 
drawn from one headland to another, so as to 
give all the bays and inlets to Great Britain? 
or should it be made to conform to the irreg^ 
ularities of the coast? Under the latter con- 
struction, American fishing-vessels might sail 
into the bays and harbors, and there ply their 
trade. But this privilege was denied by Great 
Britain, and the quarrel arose to such a height 
that both nations sent men-of-war into the 
contested waters. The difiiculty began in 
1852, and extended over a period of two years* 
At length reason triumphed over passion, and 
the difficulty was happily settled by negotia- 
tion. The right to take fish in any of the baya 
of the British possessions outside of a marine 
league from the shore was conceded to Amer- 
ican fishermen. 

The summer of 1852 was noted for the 
visit of the Hungarian patriot, Louis Kossuth, 
to the United States. He made a tour of the 
country, and was everywhere received with 
enthusiastic admiration. It was at this time 
that Austria and Russia had united against 
Hungary, and had overthrown the liberties of 
that land. Kossuth came to America to plead 
the cause of his country and to conciliate pub- 
lic opinion in behalf of the cause which he 
represented. He also sought to obtain such 
aid as might be privately given to him by 
those favorable to Hungarian liberty. Qs 



THE UNITED STATES.~THE SIXTH DECADE. 



s highly Bucceasful, and although the 
loDg-establbhed policy of the United States, not 
to have entanglements and alliances with 
foreign nations, forliade the GoTerameDt to 
interfere in behalf of HuDgarjr, yet the people 
in their private capacity gave to the caune of 
freedom in that land abundant contributioDH. 
To this epoch in our history belong the first 
endeaTore on the part of explorers to make 
known the regions about the North Pole. 
Systematic attempts were now made to enter 



of Franklin, but returned without i 
Henry Grinnell, a wealthy merchant of New 
York, fitted out several vessels at his own ex- 
pense, put them under command of Lieutenant . 
De Haven, and sent them to the North; but 
in vain. The Qovernment came to Grinnell's 
aid. In 1853 an Arctic squadron was equipped 
and the command given to Dr. Elisha Kent 
Kane; but this expedition also, though rich in 
scientific results, returned wiUiout the dtscov* 
ery of Franklin. 



EANB AND RI3 COWPAWIONS IN THE ARCTIC BBQTOMS, 



and explore the Arctic Ocean. As early a^ 
1845, Sir John Franklin, one of the bravest of 
English seamen, sailed ou a voyage of discov- 
ery to the extreme North. Believing in the 
pombility of a passage through an open polar 
aea into the Pacific, he made his way to an 
nnknown distance in that direction; but the 
extent of his success was never ascertained. 
Tears went by, and no tidings came from the 
daring stulor. It was only known that he had 
passed the country of the Esquimaux. Other 
azpeditions were at length sent out in search 
N.— Vol 4r-6 



The first half of the new decade was marked 
by the death nf a number of distinguished 
men. On the 31st of March, 1850, Senator 
John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, passed 
away. His death was much lamented, es- 
pecially in his own State, to whose interests he 
had devoted the energies of his life. Hia 
earnestness and zeal and powers of debate 
placed bim ia the front rank of American on^ 
tors. As a statesman, however, he was wed- 
ded to the destructive theory of State Rights; 
and the advocacy of this doctrine against tha 



90 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TBE MODERN WORLD. 



fapremaoyofCoDgresBBiid the nation has placed 
bim OD a lower level than tbat of bis great 
contemporaries, Webster and Clay. At the 
age of eixt;f-eight be fell from bis place, liice a 
scarred oak of the forest, never to rise again. 
Then followed the death of the President, al- 
ready mentioned. Then, on the 28th of June, 
1852, Henry Clay, having fought his last bat- 
tle, sank to rest. On the 24th of the following 
October the illustrious Dnniel Webster died at 
his home at Marshfield, Masaachugetts. The 
place of Secretary of State, made vacant by 
his death, was conferred on Edward Everett. 
In Europe the news of Lopez's ridiculous 



invasion of Cubv created great excitement. 
Notwithstanding the distinct disavowal of his 
proceedings by the Government of the United 
States, and the immediate dismissal of the 
officer at New Orleans who had allowed the 
expedition of Lopez to escape from that port, 
the Governments of Great Britain and France 
affected to believ'e that the covert aim and 
purpose of the United States was to acquire 
Cuba by conquest — that the American Gov- 
wnment was really behind the absurd fiasco 
of Lopez. 

Acting upon this theory the British and 
FVench ministers proposed to the American 



Government to enter into a TriforiiU Treaty, 
so-called, in which each of the contracting na- 
tions was to disclaim then and forever all in- 
tention of gaining possession of Cuba. To this 
proposal Mr. Everett replied in one of the 
ablest papers ever issued from the American 
Department of State. He informed Great 
Britain and France that the annexation of 
Cul}a was foreign to the policy of his Govern* 
ment; that the project was regarded by the 
United States as a measure hazardous and im' 
politic; that entire good faith would be kept 
with Spain and with all nations, but that the 
Federal Government did not recognize in any 
European power the right to meddle with 
aflairg purely American, and tbat, in ac- 
cordance with the doctrine set forth by 
President Monroe, any such interference 
would be regarded as an affront to the 
sovereignty of the United States. Such 
were the last matters of importance con- 
nected with the Administration of Presi- 
dent Fillmore. 

The time now drew on foV another 
Presidential election, and the political 
parties marshaled their forces for the con- 
test. Franklin Pierce, of New Hamp< 
shire, was put forward as the candidate 
of the Democratic party, and General 
Winfield Scott as (he choice of the Whigs. 
The question at issue, so far as one could 
be formulated, was the Compromise Acts of 
1850. But the parties, strangely enough, 
instead of being divided on that issue, 
were for once agreed as to the wisdom and 
justice of the measure. Both the Whig 
and Democratic platforms stoutly reaf- 
firmed the principles of the Omnibus Bill, 
by which the dissensions of the country bad 
been quieted. 

The philosophic eye may discover in this 
unanimity the enact conditions of the univer- 
sal revolt against the principles so stoutly 
affirmed. Certain it is that when (he two po- 
litical parties in any modern nation agree to 
maintain a given theory and fact, that theory 
and fact are destined to speedy overthrow. 
The greater the unanimity the more certain 
the revolution. It was so in the present in- 
stance. Although the Whigs and Democrala 
agreed as to the righteousness of the Omnibus 
Bill, a third party arose whcise members, 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE SIXTH DECADE. 



91 



whether Whige or Democrat, doubted and 
denied the wiedom of the Compromise of 1850, 
and declared that all the Territories of the 
United States ongbt to be free. John P. 
Hale, of New Hampshire, was put forward as 
the candidate of this Free-Soil party, and the 
largeness of his vote showed unmistakably the 
approach of the coming storm. Mr. Fierce, 
however, was elected by a handsome majority, 
and William R. Xing, of Alabama, was choBen 
Vice-President. 

Franklin Kerce was a native of N«w 
Hampshire, a graduate of Bowdoin College, 
■ lawyer by profession, a politician, a 
general in the Mexican War, a statesman 
of considerable ability. Mr. King, the 
Vice-President, had for a long time rep- 
resented Alabama in the Senate of the 
United States. On account of failing 
health he was sojourning in the island 
of Cuba at the time of the inauguration, 
and there received the oath of office. 
Growing still more feeble, be returned to 
his own State, vhere he died on the 18th 
of April, 1853. As Secretary of State 
ander the new \dmiDiBtration, William 
L. Ibircy, of Me.v York, was chosen. 

At the epoch of the accession of Pierce 
to the Presidency, the attention of the 
eountry began to be called again to the 
necessity of improved means of communi- 
cation between the East and West. Rail- 
roads had now been extended across the 
older 8tat«s of the Union and had at 
(ength reached the Mississippi River; but 
the vast territoriea lying west of the Father 
of Waters were still unexplored, except 
by the slow-going movements of primi- 
tive times. The question of a Pacific railroad 
was now agitated, and as early as the summer 
of 1853 H corps of engineers was sent out by 
the Government to explore a suitable route. 
At the first the enterprise was regarded by a 
majority of the people as visionary; but the 
intelligent minority discerned clearly enough 
the feasibility, and indeed the inevitable suc- 
cess, of the enterprise. In the same year of 
sending out the engineers the disputed bound- 
ary between New Mexico and the Mexican 
province of Chihuahua was satisfactorily set- 
tled. The ma[is on which the former treaties 
with Mexico had been based were found to be 



erroneous. Santa Anna, who had again be- 
come President of the Mexican Republic, at- 
tempted to take advantage of the error, and 
sent an army to occupy the territory between 
the true and the false boundary. This action 
was resisted by the authorities of New Mexico 
and the United States, and at one time m 
second war with the Mexicans seemed proba> 
ble. The difficulty was adjusted, however, by 
the purchase of the doubtful claim of New 
Mexico. This transaction, known as the 
Gadsden Purchase, led to the erectiqn of the 
new Territory of Arizona. 



In 1853 formal intercourse was opened 
between the United States and the Empire of 
Japan. Hitherto, in accordance with Oriental 
policy, the Japanese ports had been closed 
agnin^it the vessels of Christian nations. In 
order to remove this foolish and injurious re- 
striction. Commodore Perry, son of Oliver H, 
Perry, of the War of 1812, sailed with his 
squadron into the bay of Yedo. When 
warned to depart, he explained to the Japanese 
officers the sincere denire of the United States 
to enter into a commercial treaty with the 
Emperor. After much delay and hesitancy 
(in the part of the Japanese Government, con* 



92 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



eent vas obtained, and an interview was held 
between that august personage and Com modore 
Perry. An audience vaa obtained on the 14tb 
of July, and the American officer laid before 
the dusky monarch a letter from the President 
of the United States. The Government of 
Japan, however, was wary of accepting the 
proposition, and it was not until the spring of 
1864 that a treaty was effected. The privi- 
leges of commerce were then conceded to 
American vessels, and ^wo ports of entry were 
desig:nated for their use. 

While these events were happening in the 
far East the second World's Fair was opened, 
in the Crystal Palace, New York. It was the 



beginning of the era of interaatioual exposi- 
tions. The Palace, which had been erected at 
the American metropolis, was a marvel in 
architecture, being built exclusively of iron 
and glass. Thousands of specimens of the 
arts and manufactures of all civilized nations 
were put on exhibition within the spacious 
building. The enterprise and inventive genius 
of the whole nation were quickened into a 
new life by the display, and an impetus was 
given to this method of stimulating the in- 
dustries and arts of the nation. The sequel 
has shown that these international exhibitions 
are among the happiest fruits of an enlight- 
ened age. 

The lawless expedition of Iiopez into Cuba 



was sooD followed by the still greater fijibo^ 
tering expeditions of General William Walker 
into Central America. This audacious and 
unscrupulous adventurer began his operations 
in 1863. He first gathered a band of follower! 
in California, and escaping from the port of 
San Francisco, made a descent on La Paz, in 
Old California. In the following spring, he 
marched overiand, with a huudred men, into 
the State of Sonora, and there set up the 
standard of revolt. His band, however, were 
soon scattered and himself made prisoner. In 
May of 1854 he was subjected to a trial by 
the authorities of San Francisco, but was ac- 
quitted. Not satisfied with his experiences, 
he a second time raised a 
band, numbering sixty- 
two, and with this hand- 
ful proceeded to Central 
America. He was now 
joined by a regiment of 
insurgent natives, and 
with these he fought and 
gained a battle at Bivas, 
on tlie 29th of June, 
1865. In the second 
conflict, at Virgin Bay, 
be was also successful. 
Desultory fighting con* 
tioued until the follow- 
ing summer, when his 
influence had become so 
great that h« was elected 
President of Nicara- 
gua. Soon afterwards 
there was a change in 
his fortunes. A great insurrection ensued 
against his authority, and the other Central 
American States, assisted by the Vanderbilt 
Steamship Company, whose rights be had 
violated, combined against him. He was 
overthrown, and on the lat of May, 1857, was 
again made prisoner. In a short time, how* 
ever, be was foot-loose, and, making bis way to 
New Orleans, he succeeded in organizing s 
third company of adventurers — men who had 
everything to gain and nothing to lose. On 
the 25th of November he was successful in 
reaching Punta Arenas, Nicaragua, but within 
less than a month he was obliged to surrender 
to Commodore Paulding, of the United States 
Navy. He was taken as a captive to Ka« 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE SIXTH DECADE. 



Tork,,but, legfuniog bis liberty, he coDtinued 
hiB Bcheoaing, and in June of 1860 reached 
Central America for the third time. He uovr 
commanded a conNderable force. With hia 
Mxmj he made a descent on TnixiUo, Hon- 
duras ; hut the President of that State, as- 
sisted by a British man-of-war, soon over- 
powered and captured 
Dearly the whole band. 
Od the 3d of Sep- 
tember, Walker was 
brought to trial by a 
eourt-martial at Tnix- 
illo, was condemned 
and shot. The cour- 
age with which he met 
his &te has half re- 
deemed his forfeited 
&me, and left after 
times in doubt whether 
he shall be called &• 
■atio or hero.' 

To Perce's Ad- 
ministration belongs 
the episode in Amer- 
ican history known as 
the Mabtik KoezTA 
Affair. Martin 
Koozta had been a 
leader in the Hunga- 
rian revolt against 
Austria, in 1849. 
Afl«r the suppression 
of the rebellion he fled 
to Turkey, whence he 
was demanded by the 
Austrian GovemmeDt 
as a refflgee and 
traitor. The Turkish 
anthoritiee, however, 
refused to give him 
np, but agreed that 
be sbonld be sent 
into exile to some 

fiireign land, never to return. Eoezta there- 
upon chose the United States as his asy- 



lum, came hither, and took out his papers of 
intention, but not the papers of complete 
naturalization. In 1854 he returned to Tur- 
key, contrary, as it was alleged, to his former 
promise. At the city of Smyrna he received 
a passport from the American Consul there, 
and went ashore. The Austrian Consul at 



'The poet Joaquin Miller, claiming to have 
been a member of Walker's band in the first 
invasion o( Cential America, has affectionately em- 
balmed the memory of his brave leader in a poem, 
With WoifxT in Siearagva, which might well 
conciliate tiie good opinion of posterity. 



Smyrna, hearing of KosztaV. arrival in tlifl 
city, and having no power to arrest him on 
shore, induced some bandits to seize him and 
throw him into the water of the bay, where a 
boat, in waiting for that purpose, picked bim 
up and put him on board an Austrian frigate. 
The American officials immediately de- 
manded Koszta's release ; but this was refused 



94 



VNIVEB8AL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



Thereupon, Captain Duncan Ingraham, com- 
mander of the American sloop-of-war St. LouiSf 
loaded his guns, pointed them at the Austrian 
vesse], and was about to make hot work, when 
it was agreed by all parties that Koszta should 
be put in charge of the French Government 
until his nationality should be authoritatively 
decided. In this condition of afTairs the ques- 
tion was given over for discussion to Baron 
Hulseman — the Austrian minister at Washing- 
ton — and William L. Marcy, the American 
Secretary of State. The correspondence on 
the subject was one of the ablest discussions on 
record, and extended, before its termination, to 
almost every question affecting naturalization 
and citizenship, and, indeed, to many other 
important topics of international law. Mr. 
Marcy was completely trinmnhant m his argu- 
ment, and Koszta was remanded to the United 
States. Of so much importance \& ihe life of 
my& woLU^ when it involves the great question 
of human rights. 

The bad state of feelings cherished by Spain 
towards the United States after the invasion 
of Cuba by Lopez did not readily subside. 
In 1853-54 the peaceable relations' of the two 
countries were again endangered on account 
of Cuban complications. President Pierce be- 
lieved that, owing to the financial embarrass- 
ments of the Spanish Government, Cuba might 
now be purchased at a reasonable price and 
annexed to the United States. It can not be 
doubted that there had existed for some time, 
on the part of Democratic Administrations, a 
covert purpose to obtain possession of Cuba, 
and this again with respect to the institution 
of slavery. For a quarter of a century the 
South, embodying the slaveholding sentiment, 
had seen with alarm the overwhelming growth 
of the North and of the free institutions cher- 
ished by the Northern people. Against this, 
Southern statesmen had sought to oppose the 
machinery of the Government; and many 
were the devices adopted to prevent that natu- 
ral course of affairs which portended the lim- 
itation of the slave-system. The desire to 
purchase Cuba was one of those devices by 
which it was hoped to keep up the equipoise 
of the South and of the system of slave-labor 
on the one side, as against the North and the 
system of free-labor on the other. 

The duty of adjusting the delicate rela- 



tions of the United States and Spain with re- 
spect to the island was intrusted at first to 
Mr. Soule, the American Minister at Madrid; 
but afterwards James Buchanan and John Y. 
Mason were added to the Commission. A con- 
vention of the ambassadors of the various 
Governments concerned was held at Ostend, 
and an important instrument was there drawn 
up, chiefly by Mr. Buchanan, known as the 
Ostend Manifesto. The document was 
chiefly devoted to an elaborate statement of 
the arguments in &vor of the purchase and 
annexation of Cuba by the United States as 
a measure of sound wisdom to both the Span- 
ish and American Governments; but nothing 
of practical importance resulted from the em- 
bassy or the manifesto. The logic of events was 
ai^ainst the purchase, and the question at length 
lapsed. 

The time had now come for the territorial 
urfranization of the great domains lying west 
of Minnesota, Iowa* and Missouri. Already 
into these vast regions the tides of immigra- 
tion were pouring, and a government of some 
kind became a necessity of the situation. One 
must needs see, in the retrospect, the inevitable 
renewal undei these conditions of the slavery 
question as the most important issue which 
was likely to affect the creation of new Ter- 
ritories and new States. 

In January of 1854, Senator Stephen A. 
Douglas, of Illinois, brought before the Senate 
of the United States a proposition to organ- 
ize the Territories of Kan^^as and Nebraska. 
In the bill reported for . purpose a clause 
was inserted providing that the people of 
the two Territories, in forming their Con- 
stitutions, jAouM (fecicfe j(yr ihemsdves whether 
the new States should be free or slaveholding. 
This was a virtual repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise; for both of the new Territories 
lay north of the parallel of thirty-six degrees 
and thirty minutes, above which line it had 
been provided in the Missouri compact that 
slavery, or involuntary servitude, should not 
exist. 

What the ulterior motive of Senator Doug- 
las was in thus opening anew a question which 
had been settled with so great difiiculty thirty- 
three years before, can not well be ascertained. 
The friends of that statesman have claimed 
that his action in the premises was based upon 



TBE UlflTED STATES.— TEE SIXTH DECADE. 



95 



ft theoiy that all the TenitorieB of the Union 
should, as an abstract and general proposition, 
be left entirely free to decide their domestic 
inatitutiona for themselves. The opponents of 
Douglas held that his object was in this covert 
manner to open the vast domain of Kansas 
and Nebraska to the institution of slavery, 
and that thereby he hoped to secure the ever- 
lasting gratitude of the South, to the support 
of which he looked id hia aspirations for the 
Presidency, However this may be, the effect 
of his measure in the Senate was inevitable. 
At a single stroke the old settlement of the 
slavery question was undone. From January 
until May, Douglas's report, known as the Kam- 
8AB-Nebraska Bill, was debated in Congress. 
All the bitter sectional antagonisms of the 
past were aroused in full force. The bill was 
violently opposed by a majority of the repre- 
sentatives of the East and the North, but the 
minority from those sections, uniting with the 
Congressmen of the South, enabled Douglas to 
carry his measure through Congress, and in 
May of 1854 the bill was passed and received 
the sanction of the President. 

No sooner had this act for the organization 
of the two Territories been passed than the 
battle which had been waged in Congress waa 
transferred to Kansas. Whether the new 
State should admit slavery or exclude it, now 
depended upon the vote of the people. Free- 
State men and Slave^tate men both made a 
tush for the Territory, in order to secure the 
majority; and both parties were backed by 
factions throughout the Union. As a result, 
E^nsas was soon filled with an agitated mass 
of people, thousands of whom had been sent 
thither to vote. On the whole, the Free-Stato 
partisans gained the advantage on the score 
of immigration; for their resources were 
greater, and their zeal no less. But the pro- 
slavery party bad a corresponding advantage 
in the proximity of the great slave State of 
Missouri. With only a modest river between 
ber western borders and the prairies of Kansas, 
she might easily discharge into the Territory a 
large part of her floating population, to be re- 
manded when the purpose for which it was 
•ent across the boundary had been subserved. 

At the Territorial election of November, 
1864, a pro-slavery delegate was chosen to 
Congress, and in the general election of the 



following year the same party waa triumph- 
anL The State Le^lature, chosen at thia 
time, assembled at the town of Lecomptoo, 
and orgauized a Government and framed a 
Constitution permitting slavery. The Free- 
Soil party, however, declared the general 
election invalid on account of fraudulent vot- 
ing. A general convention of this party was 
held at Topeka, where aConstitntion excluding 
sUvery was adopted. A rival Government 
was otganized, and civil war broke out be- 
tween the two factions. 

From the autumn of 1855 until the follow- 
ing summer the Territory was the scene o/ 
constant turmoil and violence. On the 3d of 



September the President appointed John W. 
Geary, of Pennsylvania, Military Governor of 
Kansas, with full powers to restore order and 
punish lawlessness. On his arrival warlike 
demonstrations ceased, and the hostile parties 
scAtlfired to their homes. Meanwhile, how- 
ever, the agitation having iu center in the 
Territory had extended to all parts of the 
Union. The queetions thus raised were 
those on which the people of the United 
States divided in the Presidential election of 
1856. 

There was now no lack of an issue. James 
Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, was nominated aa 
the Democratic candidate. By planting hioteelf 



96 



UNIVERSAL HISTORT.—TBE MODERN WORLD. 



on the platform and principles of his party, in 
vfaich die doctrines of the Kansas-Nebraska 
Bill were distinctly reaffirmed, he was able to 
secure a heavy vote, both North an4 South; 
for many of the Northern Democrata, though 
opposed to slavery, held firmly to the opinion 
that the people of every Territory have the 
right to decide such questiouB for themselves. 
As the candidate of the Free-Soil, People's or 
Republican party, John C, Fremont, of Cali- 
fornia, was brought forward. The prime 
principle of this party was the total exclu- 
■ion of slavery from the Territories of the 



United States by CoDgressiooal enactment. 
In the meantime, still a fourth party had 
appeared. About the time when the Whig 
organization was dissolved, the foreign element 
in the United States, especially in some of the 
larger Eastern cities, had become bo strong as 
to be a prevailing force in politics. This ele- 
ment was mostly dominated, moreover, by 
Catholicism, and many other foreign influences 
and practices had been imported along with 
the foreigners from the respective European 
countries. The presence of such a power in 
the country aroused first the distrust and then 
the antagonism of the natives, and an Ameri- 



can, or EJiow-Nothing' party, ao-called, roas 
up in opposition to foreign influence in the 
United States. At one dme the movement 
became formidable, and several of the North- 
em States were carried at general elections by 
the Know-Nothinge. The leaders of the party, 
however, were anxious to ignore the slavery 
issue and to confine the attention of their 
followers to the matter of foreign influence 
and the best means to counteract it. As the 
candidate of this party, Millard Fillmore, of 
New York, was nominated for the Presidency. 
It was now seen, however, that the slavery 
question was uppermost in the minds of 
the American people.. On that issue they 
had divided in earnest, and no party dis- 
cipline could any longer force them from 
their portion. In the Presidential elec-' 
tion of 1866 a large majority decided in 
favor of Buchanan for the Presidency, 
while the choice for the Vice-preddency 
fell on John C. Breckinridge, of Ken- 
tucky. Fremont, however, obtained a. 
large vote in the Northern States, and 
but for the diversion made by the Enow- 
Kothinge his election had not lieen im- 
probable. 

James Buchanan was a native of 
Pennsylvania, bom on the 13th of April, 
1791. He was educated for the profes- 
sion of law. In 1831 be was sent as 
minister to Russia, and was afterwards 
elected to the Senate of the United States. 
From that position he was called to the 
office of Secretary of State, under Presi- 
dent Folk. Id 1853 he was appointed 
minister to Great Britain, and resided at 
the Court of St. James until his nomina- 
tion for the Presidency. On his accession to 
that office he gave the position of Secretary 
of State to General Lewis Cass, of Michigan. 
Scarcely had Buchanan been inaugurated 
as President before there was issued from the 
Supreme Court of the United States what is 
known in America as the Dred Scott I>b- 
CisiON. The opinion of the Court in the 
matter involved was so extraordinary, and the 



'The origin of this apparently absurd name is 
found in a part of the pledge which the members 
took on initiation. They promised to tiunn iwlking 
but the Union, and to htow nothing hut "America 
for Americans." 



THE amTED STATES.— THE SIXTH DECADR 



97 



mtjject matter of the deciuon m> important to 
the deetiniee of the country, that it engroaeed 
for a conuderable period the attention of the 
American people. Dred Scott was a Negro, 
and had been held as a aUve by a certain Dr. 
Emerson, of Missouri, a surgeon in the United 
States army. In course of time Emerson re- 
moved to Bock Island, nRaois, and after- 
wards, in 1836, to Port SoelUag, Minnesota. 
In these removab, Scott was taken along as a 
■lave. At thelatter place heandanegro woman, 
who had been bought by the surgeon, were 
married. Two children were bom of the mar- 
riage, and then the whole family were taken 
back to St Louis and sold. Dred Scott there- 
npOD brought soit for his freedom. The cause 
was tried sncceesively in the Circuit and the 
Supreme Court of Missouri, and in May of 
1854 was appealed to 
the Supreme Court of 
the United States. 
There the matter lay 
for about three years. 
After the Democratic 
trinmph in 1856, and the 
accession of Buchauan 
to the Presidency, the 
moment was deemed op- 
portune for giving a 
quietus to the doctrines 
of the Free-Soil party, 
and the decision was at 
once issued. In March, 
1857, Chief - Justice 

Soger B. Taney, speaking for the Court, de- 
cided that negroes, whether free or slave, were 
nd atuaa of the United Sates, and that they 
emdd nrf beome awA by ony procew known to the 
Cbtueifutim; that under the laws of the United 
States a n^ro could neither sue nor be siipd. 
and that therefore the Court had no jurisdic- 
tion of Dred Scott^s cause; that the slave was 
to be r^arded simply in the light of a per- 
sonal chattel, and that he might be removed 
from place to place by his owner, as any other 
I»ece of property ; that the Constitution gave 
to the slaveholder the right of removing to or 
through any State or Territory with hia slaves, 
and of returning at his will with them to a 
Btste where slavery was recognized by lawj 
■nd that, therefore, the Missouri Oompromise 
cf 1820, as well as the Compromise measures of 



1850, was nn constitutional and void. In these 
opinions six associate Justices of the Supreme 
Bench — Wayne, Nelson, Grier, Daniel, Camp- 
heil, and Catron — concurred, while two associ* 
ates — Judges McLean and Curtis — dissented. 
The decision of the majority, which was ac- 
cepted as the decision of the Court, gave great 
satisfactiou to the ultra-slaveholding sentinienta 
of the South, and, indeed, chimed in agreeably 
with the doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty 
which had been so zealously advocated by 
Senator Douglas and his followers. In the 
North, however, great excitement was pro- 
duced, and thousands of indignant comments 
and much bitter opposition were provoked by 
the dictum of the Court. 

It will be remembered that in one clause 
of the Compromise measures of 1850 provision 



was made for the oiganization of Utah Tern- 
tory. That remote region was occupied almost 
exclusively by the Mormons or Latter-Day 
Saints. They had escaped virtually from the 
jurisdiction of the United States, and had 
planted themselves in what they supposed to 
be an inaccessible country. At length, how- 
ever, the attempt was made to extend the 
American judicial system over the Territory. 
Thus far Brigharo Young, the Mormon Prophet 
and Governor, had, as the head of the theoc- 
racy, taken his own course in the administra- 
tion of justice. The community of Mormons 
was organized on a plan very different from 
that existing in other Territories, and many 
usages, especially jrolygamy, had grown up in 
Utah which were deemed repugnant to tht 
laws of the country. 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



Wheo the Federal Judge was sent out in 
1857 to- preside id the Territory, he waa re- 
sisted, insulted, and driven violently from the 
Beat of justice. The other officials of the 
Federal Government were in a like manner 
expelled, and the Territory became the scene 
of a reign of terror. The Mormons claimed 
in justification of their action that the officers 
who had been sent out to govern them were 
of so low a character as to command no re- 
spect. But the excuse was deemed insufficient, 
and Brigham Yuung was superseded in the 
Government by Alfred Gumming, Superin- 
tendent of Indian Affairs ou the Upper Mis- 
Bouri. Judge Delaoa R. Eckels, of Indiana, 



wa« appointed Chief-Justice of the Territory, 
and an army of two thousand five hundred 
men was sent to Utah to put down lawlessness 
hy force. 

Brigbam Young and the Morroon elders 
were not, however, disposed to yield without 
a struggle. The antagonism of the people of 
the Territory was excited to the highest 
degree. The Araericau army was denounced 
as a horde of barbarians, and preparations 
were made for resistance. In September of 
1857 the national forces entered the Territory, 
and on the 6th of October a company of Mor- 
mon rangers attacked and destroyed most of 
the supply trains of the army. Winter came 
on, and the Federal forces, under the com- 



mand of Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, 
were obliged to find quarters on Black's Fork, 
near Fort Bridges. 

In the meantime, the President dispatched 
Thomas L. Kane, of Pennsylvania, with con- 
ciliatory letters to the Mormons. Going by 
way of California, he reached Utah in the 
spring of 1858, and in a short time succeeded 
in hriuging about an understanding between 
Governor Gumming and the Mormons. In the 
latter part of May, Governor Powell, of Ken- 
tucky, and Major McCuUoch, of Texas, arrived 
at the head -quarters of the army, bearing from 
the President a proclamation of pardon to all 
who would submit to the national authority. 
The Mormons in general 
accepted the overture. 
In the fall of this year 
the army marched to 
Salt Lake City, but was 
afterwards quartered at 
Camp Floyd, forty milea 
distant. At this place 
the Federal forces re- 
mained until order was 
restored, when, in May 
of 1860, they were with- 
drawn from Utah. 

Meanwhile, in 1858, 
an American vessel, sail- 
ing innocently up the 
Paraguay Rtter, on an 
exploring expedition, 
was fired on by a jeal- 
ous garrison. Bepara- 
tion for the insult waa 
demanded, hut none was given, and the 
Government of the United States was obliged 
to send a fleet to South America to obtain sat- 
isfaction. A civil commissioner was sent with 
the squadron, who was empowered to offer 
liberal terms of settlement in respect to the 
injury. The authorities of Paraguay quailed 
before the approaching fieet, and suitable apol* 
ogies were made for the wrong which had been 
committed. 

The year 1858 was memorable in the hi» 
tory of the United States and of the whole 
world for the completion and laying of the 
first TEi;EaRAPHic Cable across the Atlantic 
Ocean. It was on the 5th of August in this 
year that the great enterprise was successfully 



TME UNITED STATES.— THE SIXTH DECADE. 



completed. The work was due Id a lat^ 
measuce to the energy and geulua of Cyrus W. 
Field, a wealthy merchant of New York City. 
The first cable was one thousand six hundred 
aad forty miles in length, extending from 
Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, to Valentia Bay, 
Ireland. Telegraphic communication was tbua 
established for a brief season between the Old 
World and the New, and the fraternal greet- 
ings of peaceful nations on the two sides of 
the Atlantic were for the first time transmitted 
through tbe depths of the sea. Unfortunately, 
however, tbe cable which, as at first em- 
ployed, was ill adapted to its purpose. In a 
short period it was parted on a reef, and the 
enterprise was thought by the unhopeful to 
have ended in i^lure. 

In 1858 the Territory of Minnesota was 
organized and admitted into tbe Union. Tbe 
Krea of the new State was a little more than 
eighty-one thousand square miles, and its pop- 
ulation at the date of admission about a hun- 
dred and fifty thousand. In the following 
year Oregon, the thirty-third State of tbe 
Union, was admitted, bringing a population 
ot forty-eight thousand and an area of eighty 



tbotisand square miles. It was on the 4th of 
Uarch in this year that General Sam Houston, 



of Texas, bade adieu to tbe ' Senate of the 
United States and retired to private li^ His 



fame as a General in the War for Texan ind^ 
pendence has already been mentioned. His 
career had been marked by the strangest 
vicissitudes. He was a Virginian by 
birth, but bis youth had been hardened 
among tbe mountains of Tennessee. He 
gained a military fame in tbe Seminole 
War, and soon, by the force of his char- 
acter, rose to political distinction. He 
was elected Governor of Tenneesee, bul 
while in the full tide of his ascendency 
bis life was suddenly overshadowed with 
a domestic calamity, tbe nature of which 
has never been fully ascertained. He 
suddenly resigned his office, left his home, 
and exiled himself among tbe Cherokee 
Indians, and was presently elected aB one 
of their chiefs. Afterwards he went to 
Texas, joined the American party there, 
became its leader, and was chosen Presi- 
dent of tbe State after the successful 
struggle for independence. He was next 
sent by the Legislature of Texas to 
represent tbe new Commonwealth in 
the Senate of tbe United States. He 
was a man of sterling integrity, strong 
will, and equally strong idiosyncrasies of char- 
acter. 



aalGOSA 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TSE MODERN WORLD. 



In the year 1869 died Waahington Irving, 
who might at the tiine of hia death be regarded 
aa the prince of American literature. For 
full; fiftjr yeara the power of his geniaa had 
been unremittingly devoted to the great work 
of creating for his native land a. literary rank 
among the nations of modern times. On both 
■idee of the Atlantic his name had become 
familiar as a household word. He it was, 
fiial of all, who wrung from the relnctant and 
proecriptive reviews of England and Scotland 



an acknowledgment of the power and ori^ 
nality of American genias. When Murray, 
the great bookseller of London, was obliged to 
pay for the manuscript of Srae^frvlge HaU, 
which he had not yet seen, the sum of a 
thousand guiueas, it was no longer doubtful 
that an American lit«rary genius had appeared, 
destined to universal recognition. Except Sir 
Walter Scott and Lord Byron, no other author 
of Irviug's times had received so munificent a 
reward for his labor. 



Chapter CXXIV.— Disunion and civil War. 



FTER the issuance of the 
Dred Scott Decision the 
excitement in the United 
States on the question of 
slavery became constantly 
greater and more heated. 
It had been believed by the 
pro-slavery party and by the Democratic Ad- 
miniBtration that the decision in question would 
allay the troubled waters and produce a calm; 
but, on the contrary, it appeared rather to be 
a torch cast among combustibles. In some of 
the Free States the opposition rose higher and 
higher, and what were called Pcrbonal Lib- 
EBTY BiUiB were passed, the object of which 
was to defeat the execution of the Fugitive* 
Slave Law. In the fall of 1859 the excitement 
of the country was still further aroused by 
the mad scheme of John Brown of Oaa- 
watomie to raise a servUe insurrection in the 
South. With a party of twenty-Que men, 
daring as himself, he made a sudden descent 
on the United States arsenal at Harper's 
Ferry, captured the place, and held his 
ground for nearly two days. The militia of 
Virginia, and then the national troops, were 
called out, in order to suppress the revolt. 
Thirteen ' of Brown's men were killed, two 
made their escape, and the rest were captured. 
The leader and his six companions were given 
over to the authorities of Virginia, tried, 
condemned, and hanged. The event was one 
which to the present day excites the keenest 
interest and liveliest discussion. Nor may it 
be easily decided whether ao adventurer, sup- 



porang himself under the direction of tlis 
Higher Law, may in such a manner attatih 
the abuses of a State. 

Meanwhile, in Kansas the controversy, ever 
and anon, broke out with added heat But 
the Free-Soil party gradually gained the upper 
hand, and it became evident that slavery would 
be interdicted in the Territory. But an issue 
had now been created between the Nortfa and 
the South. In the former the antialavery 
sentiment spread and became intense. It se^ 
tied into a eonvietion which might not be 
eradicated. In the South, on the other hand, 
the conviction grew that it was the settled 
purpose of the Northern people, first to gain 
the ascendency in the national Government, 
and then to attack them and their peculiar in* 
stitutions. Such was the alarming condition 
of affairs when the time arrived for holding 
the nineteenth Presidential election. 

The excitement, as usual, rose high. The 
Free-Soil party had now permanently taken 
the name of Bepublican. A great convention 
of delegates of that party was held in Chicago, 
and Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, was nomi- 
nated for the Presidency. A platform of princi- 
ples was adopted, in which opposition to tha 
extension of slavery was the one vital issue. 
In the month of April the Democratic con* 
vention assembled at Charleston, South Caro- 
lina; but no sooner had the body convened 
than its utt«r distraction of counsels was ap- 
parent The delegates were divided on tha 
slavery question, and, afler much debating 
and wrangling, the party was disrupted. Hi* 



THE UNITED STATES.— DISUNION AND CIVIL WAR. 



101 



delegates from the South, unable to obtain a 
distinct expression of their views in the plat- 
forir of principles, and seeing that the Northern, 
wing of the party was determined to nominate 
Senator Douglas — the great defender of popular 
sovereignty — withdrew from the convention. 
The remainder, embracing most of the delegates 
from the North, continued in session, balloted 
for a while for a candidate, and on the 3d 
of May adjourned to Baltimore. 

In that city, on the 18th of June, the dele- 
gates of the Northern wing of the party reassem- 
bled and chose Douglas as their standard-bearer 
in the approaching canvass. The seceding dele- 
gates adjourned, first to Richmond and after- 
wards to Baltimore, where they met on the 28th of 
June, and nominated John C. Breckinridge, of 
Kentucky. The American, or Know-Nothing, 
party had by this time lost something of its 
distinctive features, and took the name of Con- 
stitutional Unionists. Representatives of this 
party met in convention, and chose John 
Bell, of Tennessee, as their candidate. Thus 
were four political standards raised in the 
field, and the excitement swirled through the 
oountrv like a storm. 

The Republicans now gained by their 
compactness and the distinctness of their ut- 
terances on the slavery question. Most of the 
old Abolitionists, though by far more radical 
than the Republicans, cast in their fortunes 
with the latter, and supported Lincoln. The 
result was the triumphant election of the Re- 
publican candidate, by the votes of nearly all 
the Northern States. The support of the 
Southern States was for the most part given 
to Breckinridge. The States of Virginia, 
Kentucky, and Tennessee cast their ballots, 
thirty-nine in number, for Bell. Douglas re- 
ceived a large popular, but small electoral. 
Vote, his supporters being scattered through 
all the States, without the concentration neces- 
Bary to carry any. Thus, after having con- 
trolled the destinies of the Republic for sixty 
years, with only temporary overthrows in 1840 
aiid 1848, the Democratic party was broken 
into fragments and driven from the field. 

The issue of the Presidential election had 
been clearly foreseen, and the results were 
anticipated, at least in the South. The South- 
em leaders had not hesitated to declare, during 
the campaign, that^ the choice of Lincoln 



would be regarded as a just cause for a disso- 
lution of the Union. Threats of secession had 
been heard on every hand ; but in the North 
such expressions were regarded as mere polit- 
ical bravado, having little foundation in the 
actual purposes of the Southern people. At 
any rate, the Republicans of the populous 
North were not to be deterred from voting 
according to their political convictions. They 
crowded to the polls, and their favorite received 
a plurality of the electoral votes. 

At this time the Government, so far as 
Congress and the Executive were concerned, 
was under the control of the Douglas Democ- 
racy. A majority of the members of the 
Cabinet,' however, and a large number of 
Senators and Representatives belonged to the 
Breckinridge party, and had imbibed from a 
pro-slavery education all of the fire-eating 
propensities of the extreme South. Such 
members of Congress did not hesitate openly 
to advocate the principles of secession as a 
remedy for the election of Lincoln. In the 
interim between the fall of 1860 and the ex- 
piration of Mr. Buchanan's term of office, the 
animosity of the Southern leaders reached a 
climax. It was foreseen by them that with 
the ensuing spring all the departments of the 
Government would pass under RepublicaK 
control. The times were full of passion, ani- 
mosity, and rashness. It was seen that, for the 
present, disunion — the secession of the Southern 
States — was possible; but that if the matter 
should be postponed until the incoming Ad- 
ministration should be fully established, dis- 
union would be impossible. The attitude of the 
President favored the measure. He was not 
himself, in principle or profession, a dis- 
unionist. On the contrary, he denied the 
right of a State to secede, but at the same time 
he declared himself not armed with the Con- 
stitutional power necessary to prevent secession 
by force. Such a theory of government was 
sufficient of itself to paralyze the remaining 
energies of the Executive — to make him help- 
less in the presence of the emergency. The 
interval, therefore, between the Presidential 
election in November of 1860 and the inau- 
guration of Lincoln in the following Spring, was 
seized by the leaders of the South as the oppor- 
tune moment for dissolving the Union. 

The event showed that the measure bad 



102 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



been carefully prepared. The actual work of 
BeceasioD waa begun, as might have been an- 
dcipated, in South Caroliua. The old disunion 
proclivities of that State had slumbered in the 
embers for thirty years, and were now ready 
to burst forth iu flames. On the 17th of 
December, 1860, a couventioD, chosen by the 
people of South Carolina, aasembled at Gharles- 
toD, and, af^r three days of fiery discussion, 
passed a resolution that the Union, hitherto 
existing between South Carolina aud the other 
States under the name of the United States 
of America, was dissolved. It was a step of 
feirful importance, portending war and uni- 



versal discord. The action was coutagious. 
The sentiment of disunion spread like an 
insanity among the Southern people. In a 
short time the cotton -growing States were 
almost unanimously in support of the measure. 
By the firet of February, 1961, six other 
States — Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Geor- 
gia, Louisiana, and Texas — had passed ordi- 
nances of secession similar to that adopted by 
South Carolina, and had withdrawn from the 
Union. Nearly all the Senators and Repre- 
sentatives of those States, following the lead 
of their constituents, whom they themselves 
had instigated in their course, resigned their 
•eats in Congress, returned to the South. 



and gave themselves fully to the diaunijD 
cauae. 

Id the secession conventions, but little op- 
position was manifested to the movement. As 
a matter of fact, those who were opposed to 
disunion did not appear in the conventions, 
and their voices were unheard. The hot- 
headed leaders in the secession enterprise 
rushed together, carrying with them the en- 
thusiastic support of the planters and the 
young politicians of the Southern States, and 
by these the work was done. In some instances 
a considerable minority vote was cast against 
disunion. A few speakers boldly denounced 
the measure as disloyal, bad in principle, 
ruinous in results. The course of Alex- 
ander H. Stephens, afterwards Vice-Presi- 
dent of the Confederate States, was pe- 
culiar. He appeared in the Georgia 
convention, among a people with whom 
his voice had hitherto been prevalent in 
all matters affecting their interests. He 
undertook on the floor of the convention 
to stem the tide and to prevent the se- 
cession of his State. He delivered a long 
and powerful speech, in which, nnfortu- 
natelyfor his fame, he defended the tlieory 
of secession, advocated tlie doctrine of 
State sovereignty, declared his intention 
of abiding by the decision of the conven- 
tion aud his State, but at the same time 
spoke against secession on the ground 
that the measure loas impotitie, unwix, 
and likely to be dUartrout tii iU remilU. 
Not a few other prominent men in differ 
eut parts of the South held the same 
view ; but the opposite opinion prevailed, 
and secession was readily and enthusiastically 
accomplished. 

The formation of a new Government fol- 
lowed fnat on the heels of disunion. On the 
4th of February, 1861, delegates from six d 
the seceded States assembled at Montgoraerv, 
Alabama, and proceeded to form a new Gov- 
ernment, under the name of the Confeder- 
ate States of America. On the 8th of 
the month the organization was completed by 
the election of .lelferson Davis, of Mississippi, 
as provisional President, and Alexander H 
Stephens as Vice-President. On the same day 
of the meeting of the Confederate Congrew K 
Montgomery, a Peace Conference, so-ca led. 



INAUGURATION OF JKFFER90N DAVIS AT MONTGOMERY. 



lO^i 



UNIVERSAL HISTOBY.-^TME MODERN WORLD. 



ftBBenbled in Washington City. Delegates 
from twenty-one States were present, and the 
optimists who composed the body still dreamed 
of peace. They prepared certain amendments 
to the Constitution of the United States, and 
the same were laid before Coogress, with the 
recommendation that they be adopted. That 
body, freshly gathered from the people, and 
inspired with rising antagonism to the action 
of the Southern leaders, gave little heed to the 
recommendations, and the Conference dispersed 
without practical results. 

Buchanan was still President, and the 
Government was still under the direction of 
the Democratic party ; but the country seemed 
on the verge of ruin. It appeared that the 
Ship of State was purposely steered directly 
for the rocks. In the Executive Department 
there was a complete paralysis. The army 
had been sent in detachments to remote front- 
iers. The fleet was scattered in distant seas. 
The financial credit had run down to the low- 
est ebb. The Government was unable to 
borrow funds for current emergencies at 
twelv<$ per cent. The diverse counsels of his 
friends had distracted the President be hes-' 
itated, and knew not which way to turn. With 
the exception of Forts Sumter and Moultrie, 
in Charleston harbor, Fort Pickens, near Pen- 
sacola, and Fortress Monroe, in the Chesa- 
peake, all the important naval ports and posts 
in the seceded States had been seized by the 
Confederate authorities, even before the organ- 
ization of their Government. Meanwhile, in 
far-off Kansas the local warfare continued to 
break out at fitful intervals; but the Free 
State party had at last gained a complete 
ascendency, and the early admission of the 
new Commonwealth, with two additional 
Republican Senators, was a foregone con- 
clusion. 

With the beginning of the new year, the 
President roused himself for a moment, and 
made a feeble attempt to reinforce and pro- 
vision the garri^n of Fort Sumter The 
steamer Star of the West was accordingly sent 
out with men and supplies; but the Confeder- 
ates were informed of all that was done, and 
had no trouble in defeating the enterprise. 
As the steamer approached the harbor of 
Charleston she was fired on by a Confederate 
battery, planted for that purpose, and com- 



pelled to return. Thus in gloom and grief and 
the upheavals of revolution, the Administration 
of James Buchanan drew to a close. Such 
was the dreadful condition of affairs that it 
was deemed prudent for the new President t4 
approach the Capital without recognition. For 
the first time in the hbtory of the nation, the 
Chief Magistrate of the Bepublic slipped into 
Washington City by night, as a means of per- 
sonal safety.' 

The new Chief Magistrate was b. man for 
the hour and for the epoch. He had been 
thrown to the front by those processes which, 
in the aggregate, look so much like Providence. 
Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of 
the United States, was a Kentuckian by birth ; 
born in the county La Bue, on the 12th of 
February, 1809. His ancestors had immigrated 
thither from Rockingham County, Virginia; 
both father and mother were Virginians by 
birth. At the time of the emigration, how- 
ever, Kentucky was simply a territorial ex- 
tension westward of the Old Dominion. The 
childhood of Lincoln was passed in utter ob- 
scurity. It appears that the family were poor 
to the last degree — mere backwoods people of 
the lowest order. In 1816 the father, lipomas 
Lincoln, removed to Spencer county, Indi- 
ana — just then admitted into the Union — and 
built a cabin in the woods near the pres- 
ent village of Gentryville. This place was 
the scene of Lincoln's boyhood — a constant 
struggle with poverty, hardship, and toil. At 
the age of sixteen we find him managing a 
ferry across the Ohio, opposite the mouth of 
Anderson Creek — a service for which he was 
paid six dollars a month. In his youth he 
received, in the aggregate, about one yearns 
schooling, which was all he ever had in the 
way of formal education. In the year of his 
majority he removed with his father's family 
to tjie North Fork of the Sangamon Biver, ten 
miles west of Decatur, in Illinois. Here he 
and his father built another log house, and 
opened and fenced a farm. Here Abraham 
Lincoln, pushing forth from the ancestral 
cabin, began for himself the hard battle of 
life. 

"The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, 
The iron bark that turns the lumberer's axe ; 

The rapid that o'erbears the boatman's toil. 
The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks; 



THE UNITED STATES.— DISUNION AND CIVIL WAR. 



106 



"The ambuahed Indian, and the prowling bear, — 
Such were the needs that helped his youth tu 

Booghcultnre; butsuchtreeelargefruitmay bear, 
If but their stocks be ol right girth and grain." 

LIdcoId served as a flatboatman on the 
Hiseissippi, and after a trip to New Orleans 
returned to New Salem, a town twenty miles 
from Springfield, and became a clerk in a 
country store. At the outbreak of the Black 
Hawk War he was elected captiun of a com- 
pany, and went on a campaign into Wisconsin. 
From 1833 to 1836 he tried business for him- 
self, but a dissolute partner brought him to 
bankruptcy. He then b^an the study of law, 
for which he had always bad a preference; 
soon gained the attention of his fellow-men, 
and rose to distinction. His peculiar power, 
manifested at all periods of his life, of seizing 
the most difficult thought, and presenting it in 
such homely phrase as to make the truth ap- 
preciable by all men, made him a natural leader 
<tf the people. In 1849 he served in Congre«s 
for one term, where he distinguished himself 
as a humorous speaker. Ax candidate for the 
office of United States Senator Jrom Dlinoia 
in 1858, he first revealed to the nation, in his 
great debates with Senator Douglas, the full 
•cop« and originality of his genius. Two years 
afterwards he was nominated and elected to 
the Presidency. On his accesfflon to office he 
was fifty-two years of age. He came to the 
Presidency under such a burden of care and 
responsibility as had not been borne by any 
ruler of modem dmea. On the occasion of 
his inauguration he delivered a carefully pre- 
pared address, declaring his fixed purpose to 
uphold the Constitution, enforce the laws, and 
preserve the integrity of the Union. From 
the first it was the policy of his Administration 
to ignore the action of the seceded States as a 
thing in itaelf null, void, and of no effect 

At the bead of the new Cabinet was placed 
WiDiam H. Seward, of New York, as Secre- 
tary of State. Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, 
was appointed Secretary of the Treasury, and 
Simon Cameron Secretary of War; but the 
latter, in the following January, was succeeded 
in office by Edwin M. Stantou. The Secre- 
taryship of the Navy was conferred on Gideon 
, Welles. In his inaugural address and first 
official papera the President outlined not only 
M%-Vol. 4-? 



his theoretical, but his practical policy. Hie 
latter was, in brief, to repossess the forts, ar- 
senals, and public property which had been 
seized by the Confederates, and to reestablish 
the authority of the Federal Government in 
all parts. The first military preparations and 
movements were made with this end in view. 
Meanwhile, on the 12th of March, a body of 
commissioners from the seceded States sought 
to obtain from the National Government a 
recognition of their independence, but the 
n^otiations were of course unsuccessful. Then 
followed a second attempt on the part of the 
Government to reinforce the garrison at Fort 



Sumter; and witb that came the beginning 
of actual hostjliliee. 

The defenses in Charleston harbor were held 
by Major Robert Anderson. His whole force 
amounted to but seventy-nine men. Owing 
to the feebleness of his garrisons, he deemed 
it prudent to withdraw from Fort Moultrie and 
concentrate his whole force in Fort Sumter. 
By this time Confederate volunteers had flocked 
to the city, and powerful land-batteries were 
built around the harbor, bearing on Sumter. 

When it was known that the Federal Gov- 
ernment would reinforce the forts, the author* 
ities of the Confederate States determined to 
anticipate the movement by compelling An- 
derson to surrender. On the 11th of April. 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



107 



Q«nerttl P. T. Beauregard, commaDcUiit of 
Charleebin, sent a flag to Major Anderacii, de- 
mand ing an evacuation of the fort The 
Major replied that be Bhould hold the fort and 
defend his flag. On the following morning, 
April 12th, at half past four o'clock, the first 
gnn of the great War was dlacbarged &oni a 
Confederate battery. A terrific bombardmeDt, 
of thirty-four houre^ duration, followed. The 
fort was reduced to rutna,, set on fire, and 
obliged to capitulate. The honors of war were 
granted to Anderson and hie men, who had 
made a brave and obstinate resistance. It &p> 
peared, however, in the sequel, that no lives 
were lost, either in the fort or on the shore. 
The Confederatea in their initial movement 
were thus completely successful, and obtained 
control of the harbor of Charleston. 

But the efiect waa against the aggressors. 
Hie news of the capture of Sumter spread 
through the country like a flame of fire. 
There had been on the part of the people 
a vague expectation of TJolence, but tbe 
Ktual shock oame like a clap of thunder. 
The people of the towns poured into the 
■treets, and the country folk flocked to the 
Tillages, to gather tidings and comment on 
the outbreak of the war. Gray-haired men 
talked gravely of the deed that was done, 
and prophesied its consequencea. Hie 
general efiect of the capture of Sumter 
waa to consolidate opiuion in both the 
North and the South. On either side the 
sentiments of the people were crystallized into 
a firmly set antagonism, which could only be 
broken by the shock of battle. 

Three days after the fall of Sumter, Presi- 
dent Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five 
thousand volunteer, to serve three months in 
the overthrow of the secession movement. 
Two days later, Virginia seceded from the 
Union. On the 6th of May, Arkansas fol- 
lowed the example, and then North Carolina 
on the 20th of the same month. In Tennes- 
see, especially in East Tennessee, there was a 
powerful opposition to disunion, and it was 
not until the 8th of June that a secession or- 
dinance could be forced upon the people. In 
Missouri the movement resulted immediately 
in civil war, while in Kentucky the authori- 
ties issued a proclamation of neutrality. The 
people of Maryland were divided into hosUle 



parties, tLa diaunioo sendmeot being largelj' 
prevalent. 

Meanwhile, the volunteers from the NorUi 
i>egan to make their way to Washington. Co 
the 19th of April, when the fltst regiment of 
the Massachusetts volunteers was passing 
through Baltimore, they were fired upon by 
the citizens, and three men were killed. This 
was the flrst bloodshed of the war. On the 
day before this event a body of Confederate 
soldiers advanced against the armory of the 
United States at Harper's Ferry. The officer 
in command hastily destroyed a portion of 
the vast magazine gathered there, and then 
escaped into Pennsylvaota. On the 20th of 
the month another company of Virginians a^ 
sailed the great navy-yard at Norfolk. Hie 
officers commanding fired the buildings and 



ships, spiked the guns, and withdrew. Most 
of the cannons and many of the vessels were 
afterwards recovered by the Confederates and 
turned against the Government Virginia 
was soon filled with volunteers from the South, 
and in a short time Washington City was in 
imminent danger of capture. 

The first duty of the Oovemment waa to 
secure the Capital. This done, the President, 
on the 3d of May, issued another call for sol- 
diers. The number of the new call was set at 
eighty-three thousand, and the terra of service 
at three years or during the war. A fleet was 
equipped and sent out to blockade the South- 
ern ports, and ou every side were heard the 
notes of preparation. The spirit of the people 
had been thoroughly aroused, and a great war 
thundered in the horizon. Already the South- 
era Congress had ajourned from Mont^meiy, 



108 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



to meet, the 20th of July, at Richmond, which 
was chosen as the capital of the Confederacy. 
To that place had already come Mr. Dayin 
and the officers of his Cabinet, for the purpose 
of directing the affairs of the Government and 
army. So stood the antagonistic powers at the 
beginning of June, 1861. It was now evident 
to all men — slow indeed had they been to be- 
lieve it — that one of the greatest conflicts of 
modem times was impending over the United 
States. Let us look briefly into the causes 
which produced the Bebellion and led to the 
Civil War. 

The first and most general of these causes 
was Ae different eonstruetUm put upon As Nof- 
Uonal OmdUution by the people of the North and 
the South. A difference had always existed as 
to how the instrument was to be understood. 
The question at issue had respect to the rela- 
tion between the States and the General Gov- 
ernment. One party held that under the 
Constitution the Union of the States is indis- 
soluble; that the sovereignty of .the Nation is 
lodged in the central Government; that the 
States are subordinate; that the acts of Con- 
gress, until they are repealed or pronounced un- 
constitutional by the Supreme Courti are bind- 
ing on the States; that the highest allegiance 
of the citizen is due to the General Govern- 
ment, not to his State ; and that all attempts at 
Bnllification and disunion are in their nature 
didoyal and treasonable. The other party held 
that the National Constitution is a compact be- 
tween sovereign States ; that these States con- 
stitute a confederacy, or what the Germans 
would call a Siaatenbund; that for certain rea- 
sons the Union may be dissolved by the States; 
that the sovereignty of the nation is lodged in 
the individual States, and not in the central 
GFcvemment; that Congress can exercise no 
other than delegated powers; that a State 
feeling aggrieved may annul an act of Con- 
gress ; that the highest allegiance of the citizen 
Is due to his own State, and afterwards to 
the General Government; and that acts of 
nullification and disunion are justifiable, revo- 
lutionary, and honorable. The theory was, in 
brief, that the Constitution itself provided that 
the States, under the Constitution, might ab- 
rogate the Constitution as it related to them- 
selves, and thereby dissolve the Union. 

Here was an issue in its consequences the 



most fearAil that ever disturbed a nation, it 
struck into the very vitals of the Government. 
It threatened, with each renewal of the agita- 
tion, to undo the whole civil structure of the 
United States. For a long time the paities 
who disputed about the meaning of the Con- 
stitution were scattered in various sections. In 
the earlier history of the country the doctrine 
of State sovereignty had, indeed, been most 
advocated in New England. With the rise of 
the tariff question the local position of the 
parties was reversed. Since the tariff-— a Con- 
gressional measure— favored the Eastern States 
at the expense of the South, it came to pass, 
naturally, that the people of New England, 
and afterwards of the whole North, passed 
over to the advocacy of National sovereignty, 
while the people of the South became wedded 
to the doctrine of State rights. Thus as early 
as 1831 the right of a State to nullify an act 
of Congress was openly advocated in South 
Carolina, and by her greatest statesman in 
the Senate of the United States; and thus also 
it happened that the belief in State sover- 
eignty became more and more prevalent in 
the South, less and less prevalent in the North. 
The general effect of this localization of the 
two theories was to engender sectional parties, 
and to bring them ultimately into conflict. 

The second general cause of the Civil War 
was the different esfstemsf^ labor in the North and 
in the SouA, In the former sections the labor- 
ers were freemen, citizens, voters; in the latter, 
bondmen, property, slaves. In the South the 
theory was that the capital of a country should 
own the labor; in the North, that both labor 
and capital are free. In the beginning all the 
colonies had been slaveholding. In the East- 
ern and Middle States the system of slave- 
labor had been gradually abolished, being un- 
profitable. In the five great States formed 
out of the Territory North-west of the Biver 
Ohio slavery was excluded by the original 
Jeffersonian compact, under which that terri- 
tory was organized. Thus there came to be a 
line of dividon drawn through the Union 
east and west It was evident, therefore, that 
whenever the question of slavery was agitated 
a sectional division would arise between the 
parties north and south of the dividing line, and 
that disunion and war would be threatened 
But the danger arising from this source, and 



THE UNITED STATES.— DISUNION AND CIVIL WAR. 



109 



indeed from the first general cau^e above 
* mentioned, was increased, and the discord be- 
tween the sections aggravated, by several sub- 
ordinate causes. 

One of these was, at the time considered, 
merely an incident of industrial progress, 
namely, the invention of the cotton-gin. 
In 1793 Eli Whitney, a young collegian of 
Massachusetts, went to Georgia and resided 
with the family of Mrs. Greene, widow of 
General Greene, of the Kevolution. While 
there he became much interested in the diffi- 
cult process of picking cotton by hand ; that 
is, separating the seed from the fiber. So slow 
was this process that the production of upland 
cotton was nearly profitless. The industry of 
the cotton-growing States, however well it 
promised in the mere production of the plant, 
was rendered of no efiect by the tediousness 
of preparing the product for the market Mr. 
Whitney, with die inventive curiosity and 
ddll of his race, undertook to remove the dif- 
ficulty, and succeeded in constructing a gin 
which astonished the beholder by the rapidity 
and excellence of its work. Cotton in the 
seed, submitted to the action of the ma- 
chine, was separated to perfection and with 
great facility. From being profitless, cotton 
suddenly became the most profitable of all the 
staples of the South. The industry of the 
ootton-producing States was revolutionized. 
Whitney obtained patents on his invention; 
but the greed for obtaining and using his 
machine was so great that no courts could or 
would protect him in his rights. Before the 
Civil War it was estimated that the cotton-gin 
Iiad added an aggregate of a thousand millions 
of dollars to the revenues of the Southern 
States. Just in proportion to the increased 
profitableness of cotton, slave-labor became im- 
portant, slaves valuable, and the system of 
slavery a fixed and deep-rooted institution. 

Slave ownership more than ever before was 
now imbedded in Southern society. The sepa- 
ration between the laboring and the non-labor- 
ing class was not only a separation of race, 
but it was a separation of condition. The 
present generation of planters and slaveholders 
had inherited that condition. They had grown 
up in its presence, and had come to regard it 
as a rightful and necessary part of the best 
social organization in the world. Seeing them- 



selves manifestly lifted above the servile class, 
they came to look upon the system of free- 
labor and free-laborers in the North with con- 
tempt. 

From this time forth there was constant 
danger that the slavery question would so em- 
bitter the politics and legislation of the coun- 
try as to bring about dbunion. The danger 
of such a result was, as we have already seen, 
fully manifested in the Missousi Agitation 
of 1820-21. Threats of dissolving the Union 
were freely made both in the South and the 
North ; in the South, because of the proposed 
rejection of Missouri as a slaveholding State; 
in the North, because of the proposed enlarge- 
ment of the domain of slavery. When the 
Missouri Compromise was enacted it was the 
hope of Mr. Clay and his fellow-statesmen 
to save the Union by removing forever the 
"slavery issue from the politics of the country; 
but their success was temporary, evanescent. 
It had remained for Mr. Lincoln himself, in 
the opening of his great debates with Senator 
Douglas, to announce to the nation the ulti- 
mate irreconcilability of the opposing elements 
in the American system. He declared that a 
house divided against itself can not stand; 
that the institution of slavery, to carry out 
the analogy, must either become universal in 
the United States, or else, by limitation, be put 
in such a condition as to lead to its ultimate 
extinction. 

Next among the subordinate causes of the 
Rebellion and the Civil War should be men- 
tioned the Nullification Acts op South 
Carolina. These, too, turned upon the in- 
stitution of slavery and the profitableness of 
cotton. The Southern States had become 
cotton-producing; the Eastern States had 
given themselves to manufacture. The tariff 
measures seemed to favor manufacturers at thp 
expense of the producers of raw materiaL 
Mr. Calhoun and his friends proposed to 
remedy the evil complained of by annulling 
the laws of Congre-ss, and thus forcing an 
abolition of the tariff. His measures &iled ; 
but another compromise was found necessary 
in brder to allay the animosities which had 
been awakened. 

Next came the Annexation of Texas, 
with the consequent enlargement of the domain 
of slavery and the reawakening of the agitation* 



110 



VmVEBSAL HISTORY,— THE MODERN WORLD. 



Those who opposed the Mexican War did so, not 
so much because of the injustice of the conflict 
as because of the fact that thereby the area 
of slavery would be vastly extended. Then, 
at the close of the War, came the enormous 
acquisition of territory in the South-west 
Whether the same should be made into free or 
slaveholdiDg Stated, was the question next 
agitated. This controversy led to the passage 
of the Omnibus Bill, by which again, for a 
brief period, the excitement was allayed. 

In 1854, as we have seen, the Kansas- 
Nebraska Bill wa^ passed. Thereby the 
Missouri Compromise was repealed, and the 
whole question opened anew. Meanwhile, 
the character and civilization of the Northern 
and Southern people had become quite different. 
In population and wealth the North had far 
eutgrown the South. In the struggle for 
territorial domain, the North had gained the 
larger advantage. In 1860 the division of the 
Democratic party made certain the election of 
Lincoln, a professed Free-Soiler, by the votes 
of the Northern States. The people of the 
South were exasperated at the choice of a 
Chief Magistrate whom they regarded as in« 
different to their welfare, or positively hostile 
to their interests. 

Beturning, then, from these subordinate to the 
more general causes of the Civil War, we note, 
in the next place, ihe want of interooune between 
the people of the Noiih and the South, Obeying 
those cosmic laws by which the population of 
the earth has always been distributed, the 
people of the States west of the Alleghenies 
had been carried to their destinations in 
channels flowing from the east to the west — 
never from the north to the south. The arti- 
ficial contrivances had been arranged along 
the same lines. The great railroads and thor- 
oughfares ran east and west. All migrations had 
been back and forth in the same course. Be- 
tween the North and the South there had been 
only a modicum of travel and interchange of 
opinion. The people of the two sections had 
become much more unacquainted than they 
were in the times of the Revolution. From 
this want of intercourse and familiarity, the 
inhabitants of the two sections, without in- 
tending it, had become estranged, jealous, 
suspicious. They misrepresented each other^s 
beliefs and nurposes. They suspected each 



other of dishonesty and ill-wilL Before tlMi 
outbreak of the war, the people of the North 
and the South had come to look upon each 
other almost in the light of different nation- 
alities. 

A fourth general cause was found in the 
pMieaiwn and infiveme of seetumal books and 
wriiin^s. During the twenty years preceding 
the war, many works were published, both in 
the North and the South, whose popularity 
depended wholly or in part on the animosity 
existing between the two sections. Such books 
were frequendy filled with ridicule and false* 
hood. The manners and customs, the language 
and beliefe, of one section were held up to the 
contempt and scorn of the people of the other 
section. The minds of all classes, especially 
of the young, were thus prejudiced and 
poisoned. In the North the belief was fos- 
tered that the South was given up to inhu- 
manity, ignorance, and barbarism ; while in the 
South the opinion prevailed that the Northern 
people were a selfish race of men, mercenary, 
cold-blooded Yankees. 

Again, the evil inflvence of demagogues may 
be cited as a fifth general cause of the war. 
It is a misfortune of republican governments 
that they many times fall under the leadership 
of bad men. In the United States the dema- 
gogue has enjoyed special opportunities for 
mischief, and the people have suffered in 
proportion. From 1850 to 1860 statesmanship 
and patriotism were at a low ebb. Ambitfous 
and scheming men had come to the front, 
taken control of political parties, and pro- 
claimed themselves the leaders of public 
opinion. Their purposes were wholly selfish. 
The welfare and peace of the country were 
put aside as of little value. In order to gain 
power and keep it, many unprincipled men 
in the South were anxious to destroy the 
Union, while the demagogues of the North 
were willing to abuse the Union in order to 
accomplish their purposes. 

Added to all these causes was a growing 
ptMie opinion in the North against the inBtitutUm 
of slavery iieeify a hostility inborn and inbred 
against human chattelhood as a fact. The 
conscience of the Nation was roused, and the 
belief began to prevail that slavery was wrong 
per se, and ought to be destroyed. This 
opinion, comparatively feeble at the beginning 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



Ill 



ef the war, was rapidly developed, and bad 
mucb to do in determiniDg the direction and 
final issue of the conflict. Such, in brief, 
were the principal causes which led to the 
Civil War in the United States— oiie of the 
most terrible and bloody strifes of modern 

We shall now enter upon a brief summary 
of the principal events of the struggle be- 
tween the North and South, between the 
Union under the Constitution, backed by the 
raaobinery of the Grovernment at Washington 



detachment of Confederates, under the com- 
mand of General Magruder. On the 10th of 
June a body of Union troops was sent to di*- 
lodge them, but was repulsed with considera- 
ble loss. Such was tiie opening scene in Old 
Vii^inia. 

Westj)f the mounlains ibe conquest of the 
State had been uudertaken by General George 
B. McOletlan, destined to be a conspicuous 
figure of his epoch. Id the latter part of 
May, General Thomas A. Morris, commanding 
a force of Ohio and ludiona iroops, advanced 



FORTRESS UOKROX. 



and the populous Northern States on the one 
ride, and the machinery of the new Confed- 
eracy established at Richmond, backed by the 
forces of the South and the whole power of 
the ancient slaveholding system on the other. 
The war proper may be said to have opened 
on the 24th of May, 1861. On that day the 
Union army crossed the Potomac from Wash- 
ington City to Alexandria. A^t this time 
Portress Monroe, at the mouth of James River, 
was held by General B. F. Butler, with twelve 
Aousand men. In the immediate vicinity, at 
a place called Bethel Church, was stationed a 



from Parkersburg to Grafton, and on the 3d 
of June came upon the Confederates at Pbi- 
lippi. After a brief eugagement the Federals 
were successful, and the Confederates retreated 
toward the mounlains. It was at this juncture 
that General McClellau arrived in person, and 
on the Uth of July gained a victory of some 
importance at Rich Mountain. General Gar- 
nett, the defeated Confetierate commander, 
fell back with his forces to Cheat River, where 
he made a stand, but was a second time de- 
feated and himself killed in battle. 

Ou the 10th of August, General Floyd, 



112 



UNIVERSAL BISTOBY.—THE MODERN WORLD. 



MnanuuidiDg a detacbment of Confederates at 
Caniifez Feriy, on Oauley River, was attacked 
by General Kosecraoa and obliged to retreat. 
On the 14th of September a division of 
Confederat«s, under Gene>al Robert E. Lee, 
was defeated at Cheat Mountain, an aclloD 
wbicb restored the Federal authority through* 
out West Virginia. Meanwhile, in the be- 
ginning of June, General Robert Patterson 
marched from Chambersbiirg to retake Har- 
per's Ferry. On the Ilth of tbe month a di- 
visioQ of the army, under command of Colonel 
Lewis Wallace, made a suildeD and successful 
onset upon a detachment of Confederates sta- 
taoaed at Romney. Patterson then croesed 



the Potomac with (he main body, entered the 
Shenandoah Valley, and pressed back the Con- 
federates to Winchester. Thus far there had 
been only petty engagements, the premonitory 
onsets and skirmishes of the conflict ; but the 
time had now come for the first great battle 
of tie war. 

After the retirement of the main body of 
Confederates from West Virginia, the forcea 
in the State, commanded by General Beaure- 
gard, were concentrated at Manaseas Junction, 
on the Orange Railroad, twenty-seven miles 
weat of Alexandria. Another large force, led 
by Genera] Joseph F. Johnston, lay in the 
Shenandoah Valley, within supporting distance 



of Beauregard. The Union army at Alexan- 
dria was commanded by General Irwin H» 
Dowell. and General Patterson was stationed 
in front of Washington to watch Johnston's 
nlnvemente, in order that the latter might not 
form a junction with Beauregard. 

On the 16th of July the Federal army 
moved forward. Two days afterwards an un- 
important engagement took place between 
Centerville and Bull Bun. The Unionists 
then pressed on, aud on the morning of the 
2l3t of July came upon tbe Confederate army, 
strongly posted between Bull Run and Manas- 
sas Junction. Here a general battle ensued, 
continuing with great severity until noonday. 
Up to that time the advantage had been with 
McDowell, and it seemed not unlikely that the 
Confederates would suffer a complete defeat; 
but in the crisiB of the battle General Johnston 
arrived with nearly six thousand fresh troops 
from the Shenandoah Valley. The tide of 
victory turned immediately, and in a short 
time McDowell's whole army was thrown 
back in rout and confusion. A panic spread 
tJirough the Union forces. The army had 
been followed out from Washington oy a 
throng of non-combatants. Soldiers and citi- 
zens became mixed together, and the whole 
mass rolled back in disorganization into th« 
defenses of Washington. The losses were 
nearly equal, being on the Union side 2,951, 
and on the Confederate side 2,050, 

The chagrin and humiliation of the North 
were extreme, and the South was equally 
elat«d on account of the Confederate victory, 
For a while the Federal Government was 
more alarmed about the safety of Waehiogton 
City than it was concerned about the capture 
of Richmond. In the latter city, ou the day 
before the battle, the new Confederate Govern- 
ment had been formally organized. In the 
Southern Congress, there assembled, were 
manr men of distinguished abilities. Jefferson 
Davis, the President, was a far-eighted and 
talented man. His experience was wide and 
thorough in the affairs of State, and his repu- 
tation as a soldier, earned in the Mexican 
War, was fairly good. He had served in 
both Houses of the National Congress and as 
a member of President Pierce's Cabinet. Hii 
talents, decision of character, and ardent ad- 
vocacy of State Bights had made him tbe 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR 



113 



natural, if not the inevitable, leader of the 
South in the impending conflict. 

After the battle of Bull Bun, there was a 
lull in the military operations of the East 
In Missouri, however, hostilities broke out, and 
were attended with important consequences. 
That Commonwealth, though a slaveholding 
State, had retained its place in the Union. A 
convention had been called by Governor Jack- 
son, in accordance with an act of the Legis- 
lature, but had refused to pass an ordinance 
of secession. But the Missouri disunionists 
were numerous and powerful. The Governor 
favored their cause, and they were little dis- 
posed to give up the State without a struggle. 

Missouri became a battle-field for the con- 
tending parties. Federal and Confederate 
camps were organized in many parts of the 
State, and hostilities broke out in several 
places. The Confederates, by capturing the 
United States arsenal at Liberty, in Clay 
County, obtained considerable supplies,' arms, 
and ammunition. They thereupon formed 
Camp Jackson, near St. Louis, and the arsenal 
in that city was endangered by the activity of 
their proceedings. At this' stage of the game, 
however, Captain Nathaniel Lyon appeared on 
the scene, and sent the arms and stores in St. 
Louis up the river to Alton, and thence to 
Springfield, Illinois. Camp Jackson itself was 
icon afterwards attacked and broken up by 
the same vigilant officer. 

Meanwhile, the lead-mines in the south- 
western part of the State became an object of 
great importance to the Confederates. In order 
to secure possession of the same, they hurried 
up large bodies of troops from Arkansas and 
Texas. On the 17th of June, General Lyon 
encountered Governor Jackson at the head of 
a Confederate force, at Booneville, and gained 
a decided advantage. On the 5th of July 
the Unionists, under command of Colonel 
Franz Sigel, were again successful in a severe 
engagement with the Governor at Carthage. 
On the 10th of August the hardest battle 
fought thus far in the West occurred at Wil- 
son's Creek, a short distance south of Spring- 
field, Missouri. General Lyon made a daring 
but rash attack on a much superior force of 
Confederates, under command of Generals 
McCullough and Price. The Federals at first 
gained the field against heavy odds, but Gen- 



eral Lyon was killed, and his men retieated« 
his command falling to Sigel. 

After his victory, Price pressed northward 
across the State to Lexington, on the Missouri 
River, This place was held by two thousand 
six hundred Federals, under command of 
Colonel S^uUigan. A stubborn defense was 
made by the garrison, but Mulligan was obliged 
to capitulate. Price then turned to the south. 
The Federals rallied, and, on the 16th of Oc- 
tober, Lexington was retaken. General John 
C. Fremont, who had now been appointed to 
the command of all the Union forces in Mis- 
souri, followed the Confederates as far as 
Springfield, and was on the eve of making an 
attack when he was superseded by G^^neral 
Hunter.^ The latter retreated to St. Louis, 
and was in turn superseded by General Henry 
W. Halleck, on the 18th of November. It 
was now Price's turn to fall back towards Ar- 
kansas. The only remaining movement of 
importance was at Belmont, on the Mississippi. 

After the declaration of neutrality by Uie 
State of Kentucky, the Confederate General 
Leonidas Polk, acting under orders of his 
Government, had led an army into the State 
and captured the town of Columbus. The 
object of the movement was to give support 
and countenance to the Confederate cause in 
Kentucky ; for the Southern sympathizers in 
that Commonwealth were numerous and active. 
Polk planted batteries at Columbus, so as to 
command the Mississippi, and the Missouri 
Confederates gathered in force at Belmont, on 
the opposite bank of the river. In order to 
dislodge them. Colonel Ulysses 8. Grant, with 
a brigade of three thousand Dlinois troops, 
was sent, by way of Cairo, into Missouri. 
On the 7th of November he made a vigorous 
and successful attack on the Confederate camp 

*The command was taken from Fremont on 
account of his attitude towards the slaves. Thus 
far the Government had professed that slavery 
shonlrl not be interfered with, even in the States 
held by military occupation. General Fremont 
held the opposite view, and marched upon the 
Confederates not only as a military commander, 
but as an emancipator. He issued a proclama- 
tion in accordance with the facts, but the pro- 
slavery sentiment, even in the North, was as yet 
too strong to tolerate such radical proceedings, 
and Fremont was accordingly relieved of his com- 
mand for a reason which at a* later period of the 
war would have been no reason at all. 



THE UNITED STATES,— THE CIVIL WAR. 



115 



at BelmoDt, but General Polk threw reiDforce- 
meuts across the river. The guns of the bat- 
teries on the Kentucky side were brought to 
bear on the Union position, and Grant, after 
his success, was obliged to &11 back. Such, 
in general, were the. military operations in the 
West during the summer and fall of 1861. 

For a while after the battle of Bull Bun 
the Government at Washington was almost 
paralyzed. It was put on the defensive. The 
bridges over the Potomac ^ad to be vigilantly 
guarded lest, by a dash of cavalry, the Capi- 
tal might fall into the hands of the Confeder- 
ates. A brief season of great depression ensued ; 
but the reaction was correspondingly vigor- 
ous and salutary. As soon as the panic had 
subsided the Administration redoubled its en- 
ergies, and troops from the Northern States 
were rapidly hurried to Washington. The 
aged General Scott, still retaining his place 
as Commander-in-chief of the armies of the 
United States, unable to bear longer the bur- 
den resting upon him, now retired from active 
duty, and General George B. McClellan was 
called over fVom West Virginia to take com- 
mand of the Army of the Potomac. 

It was soon evident that as an organizer 
and disciplinarian the young commander had 
so superior. By the middle of October the 
forces under his command had increased to a 
hundred and fifty thousand men. Nor was 
it any longer the mere rout of volunteers 
which bad rushed forward to meet defeat at 
Bull Bun, but a compact, well-disciplined, 
and powerful army. On the 21st of October 
a brigade, numbering nearly two thousand 
men, was thrown across the Potomac at Ball's 
Bluff. The movement, however, was not well 
supported. Nor had adequate means of 
retreat been prepared. The Federals were 
attacked on their advance by a strong force of 
Confederates under General Evans, were 
driven to the river, their leader. Colonel 
Baker, killed, and the whole force routed 
with terrible loss. Fully eight hundred of 
Baker's men were killed, wounded, or taken. 

From the first it was seen by the Federal 
Government that the command of the sea-coast 
was an essential of success. Accordingly, in 
the summer of 1861, several important naval 
expeditions were sent out to maintain the in- 
terests of the United States. One of these, 



under command of Commodore Stringham and 
General Butler, proceeded to the North Caro- 
lina coast, and, on the 29th of August, cap- 
tured the forts at Hatteras Inlet. On the 7th 
of November a second armament, commanded 
by Commodore Dupont and General Thomas 
W. Sherman, entered the harbor of Port 
Boyal, and took Forts Walker and Beaure- 
gard. Hi'lton Head, a point most advantage- 
ous in operations against Charleston and 
Savannah, thus fell into the power of the Gov- 
ernment. Around the whole coast a blockade 
was established, which soon became so rigor- ' 
ous as to cut off all commerce and communi- 
cation between the Confederate States and 
foreign nations. It was in this juncture of 
affairs that a difficulty arose which brought 
the United States and Great Britain to th? 
very verge of war. 

Ever since the expansion of the cotton- 
producing interest in the Southern States the 
factories of England had been in a measure 
dependent upon the American cotton-fields 
for the raw material which they employed. 
Around this fact many other industrial inter- 
ests of Great Britain clustered. It was, there- 
fore, a serious calamity to the English factories, 
and to English industrial welfare in general, 
when the Southern ports were closed by the 
Federal blockade. A state of public feeling 
supervened in Great Britain very unfavorable 
to the United States, and strongly sympathetic 
with the Confederacy. In the meantime the 
Confederate Government had appointed James 
M. Mason and John Slidell, formerly Senators 
of the United States, to go abroad as ambas* 
sadors from the Confederate States to France 
and England. Before the ambassadors left 
America, the blockading squadron had closed 
around the Southern ports, and the envoys 
were obliged to make their escape from 
Charleston harbor on board a blockade 
runner. Having made their way from that 
port, they reached Havana in safety and were 
taken on board the British mail steamer TVen^, 
for Europe. 

On the 8th of November the vessel was 
overhauled by the United States frigate San 
Jacinto^ commanded by Captain Wilkes. The 
Trent was hailed and boarded. The two ao» 
bassadors and their secretaries were seized, 
transferred te the San Jacinto, carried to Bos- 



THE SAH Jacinto stoppinq thx TRBin'. 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



ton, and imprisoDed. The Trent proceeded od 
her way to England. The stoTy of the insult 
to the British flag was told, and the whole 
kingdom bui'St out in a blaze of wrath. 

The sequel boou showed how little dieposed 
even the moat civilized nations are to regard 
consistency and right when their prejudices are 
involved in the queotion. For nearly a half-cen- 
tury the Republic of the United States had 
stODtly contended for the exemption from insult 
of neutral flags on the high sea, and the Amer- 
ican theory had always been that the free flag 
makes free goods, contraband of war only 
being excepted. On the other hand. Great 
Britain had immemorially been the most arro- 
gant of all the civilized StaleB in the matter of 
search and seizure. She bad, in.tbe course of 
her history, insulted almost every flag that 
had been seen on ^e ocean. Yet, in this 
particular inetance, the position of the parties 
to the Trent affair was suddenly reversed, 
under the influence of passion and prejudice. 
At the first, the people of the United States 
loudly applauded Capt^u Wilkes. The House 
of Bepresenlatives passed a vote ^f thanks to 
him, with the presentation of a sword; and 
even the Administration was disposed to 
defend his action. Had such a course been 
taken, war would have been inevitaljle; for 
Great Britain, with equal inconsistency, had 
flung herself into a passion for the alleged 
insult to her flag and sovereignty. 

The country was saved from the peril, 
however, by the adroit and far-reaching di- 
plomacy of William H. Seward, the Secretary 
of State. When Great Britain demanded 
reparation for the insult and immediate liber> 
ation of the prisoners, he replied in a mild, 
cautious, and very able paper. It was con- 
ceded that the seizure of Mason and SlideU 
was not justifiable according to the law of 
nations, and a suitable apology was accord- 
ingly made for the wrong done. The Confeder- 
ate ambassadors were liberated, put on board 
a vessel, and sent to their destination. The 
action of the Secretary was both just and pol- 
itic. The peril of the war went by, and Great 
Britain, vniiwid intending it, was committed 
to a policy in regard to the rights of neutral 
flags, which she had hitherto denied, and 
which the United States had always contended 
for. So ended the first year of the Civil War. i 



mportant Fort Donelson, ten railea 



118 



UNJVEB8AZ HISTORY.— TRE MODERN WORLD. 



BOuth of tiie Tennessee line. At the begin- 
ning of the year a plan was formed by the 
Federal cheers for the capture of both these 
places. Early in February, Comniodore Foote 
was pent up the Tennessee, with a flutilla of 
gun-bobts, and at the same time General 
Orant moved forward to cooperate in an at- 
tach on Fort Henry. Before the land forces 
were well in positioD, however, the flotilla, 
unaBsisted, compelled the evacuation of the 
fort, the Confederates escaping to Donelson. 
Eighty-three prisonere and a large amount of 
stores were the trophies of the victory. 

After their success, the gun-boats dropped 
down the Tennessee, took on stores at Cairo, 
and then began the ascent of the Cumberland. 



Orant pressed on from Fort Henry, and as 
soon as the flotilla arrived began a siege of 
Fort DonelsoQ. The defenses were strong and 
well manned by more thai] ten thousaad Con- 
federates, under General Simon B. Buckner. 
Grant's forces numbered nearly thirty thou- 
sand; but the weather was extremely bad, 
the winter not yet broken, and the assaults on 
the fortifications perilous in the extreme. On 
the 14th of February the gun-boats were re- 
pulsed with considerable loss, Commodore 
Foote being among the wounded. On the 
next day the garrison attempted to break 
through Grant's lines, but were driven back 
with slaughter. On the 16th Buckoer was 
obliged to capitulate. His army, numbering 
fblly ten thousand men, became prisoners of 



war, and all the magazines, stores, and gnus 
of the fort fell into the hands of the Federals. 
It was the first decided Union victory of the 
war. The immediate result of the captura 
was the evacuation of Kentucky and the cap- 
ital of Tennessee by the Confederates. Nor 
did they ever afterwards recover the ground 
thus lost. 

Following up his success at Fort Donelson, 
General Grant now ascended the Tennessee 
River as far as Fittsbui^ Landing. In the 
beginning of April a camp was formed on the 
left bank of that stream, at a place called 
Shiloh Church. Here, on the morning of the 
6th of the month, the Union army was sud- 
denly attacked by the Confederates, led by 
Generals Albert S. 
Johnston and Beaure- 
gard. The shock of 
the onset was at first 
irresistible. All day 
long the battle raged 
with tremendous 
slaughteron bothndes. 
The Federals were 
gradually forced back 
nearer and nearer to 
the Tennessee, until 
they were saved by 
the gun-boats in the 
river. Night fell on 
the scene with the con- 
flict still undecided, hut 
in the desperate crisis 
General Buell arrived 
from Nashville with strong reinforcements. 
Grant, however, by no means despaired of gaiO' 
ing the victory, even unaided by the fresh ar^ 
rivals. During the night he, with General 
William T. Sherman, made arrangements to 
assume the oflenslve. General Johnston had 
been killecl in the battle of the previous 
day. Beauregard, on whom the command 
was now devolved, was unable to gain any 
further successes. On the contrary, as tbe 
battle was renewed on the morning of tho 
7th, everything went against the Confed* 
erates, and they were obliged to fall back ia 
full retreat to Corinth. The losses in killed, 
wounded, and missing in this dreadful conflict 
were more than ten thousand on each side. 
Tbere had never before been such a harvest 



THE UXITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



of death in the countries this side of the At- 
laotic. 

On the Missisaippi also the Uniouiets were 
gwning steadily. After the evacuation of 
ColumbuB, Kentucky, the Confederates pro- 
ceeded to Island Number Ten, a few miles 
below, and built thereon strong fortifications 
commanding the river. On the weetern shore 
was the town of New Madrid, held by a Con- 
federate force 
from Missouri. 
Against this 
plac« an expe- 
dition was made 
byGeneralJohn 
Pope, with a 
body of West- 
em troops, while 
at the same 
time Commo- 
dore Foote de- 
scended the Mis- 
sissippi with his 
flotilla, to attack 
the forts of the 
island. Pope 
was entirely sue- 
cessful in his 
movement, and 
gained ponses- 
sion of New 
Madrid. The 
land forces then 
cooperated with 
the gun -boats, 
And for twenty- 
three days Isl- 
and Number 
Ten was vigor- 
otisly bom- 
barded. On the 7th of April, while the 
Union army at Shiloh were rallying from the 
disasters of the preceding day, and were pur- 
suing the Confederates beyond the Tennessee, 
the garrison of Island Number Ten, numbering 
about five thousand, were made prisoners of 
war. By this striking success the Missisaippi 
was opened from above as far south as Mem- 
phis, and on the 6th of the following June 
that city was taken by the fleet of Commodore 
Davis. 

Early in the year General Curtis bad 



pushed forward through Missouri, entered 
Arkansas, and taken a position at Pea Ridge, 
among the mountains in the north-west angle 
of the State. Here, on the 6th of March, 
he was attacked by the Confederates and 
Indians, twenty thousand strong, under com- 
mand of McCullough, Mcintosh, and Pike. 
The conflict lasted for two days, at the end of 
which time the battle was decided in favor of 
the FpHahU M/>n.t11ni«r>. «„A M^ 



BUBBKNDER OF FORT DONEI..SOS. 

of naval warfare. After the destruction of tha 
Norfolk navy-yard, the Confederates had 
raised the United States frigate Merrimae, one 
of the sunken ships, and had plated her sides 
with an impenetrable armor of iron. At this 
time the Union fleet was lying at Fortress 
Monroe. When the equipment of the Merri- 
mae was complete, she was sent down to attack 
and destroy the squadron. Beaching that 
place on the 8th of March, the Merrimae, 
called by the Confederates the Virginia, began 
the work of destruction, and two poweHVil 



120 



UNIVEBSAL EISTOBY.— THE MOVEBN WORLD. 



ships, the Ouwberland and the Congrm, were 
sent to the bottom. Borne time before this, 
Captain John Ericsson, the great inventor, of 
New York, had invented and built a peculiar 
war vessel, with a eingle round tower of iron 
exposed above the water-line. The tower was 
made to revolve eo as to bring its single heavy 
gun to bear on the enemy in any direction. 
Except when the port-hole was tiiua momen- 
tarily exposed to an enemy's shot, the strange 
«rat't appeared invulnerable to any missile which 
the skill of man and the force of explosives 
had ever hurled. This vessel, called the 
Monitor, was offered in the service of the Gov- 
ernment, and at length steamed out from New 
York for Fortress Monroe. It happened. 



rather than was intended, that Ericsson's ship 
arrived in Hampton Roads at the very time 
when the Virpnia was making havoc in the 
Union fleet. On the morning of the 9th the 
two iron-clad monst«ra came face to face, and 
turned their terrible enginery upon each other. 
After fighting for five hours, the Virginia was 
obliged to give up the contest, and return 
badly damaged to Norfolk. Such was the 
excitement produced by this novel sea-fight 
that for a while the whole energies of the Navy 
Department were devoted to building monitors. 
Other events at sea were equally important. 
Early in February, 1862, a strong land and 
navalforce, under command of General Ambrose 
E. Burnnde and Commodore Goldsborough, 
was seat agunst the Confederate garrison at 



Boanoke Island. On the 8th of the month 
the squadron reached ila destination. The 
fortifications on the island were attacked and 
carried, and the garrisons, nearly three thou- 
sand strong, were taken prisoners. Bum^e 
next proceeded agauist New Berne, North Caro- 
lina, and on the 14th of March captured the 
city, after four hours of severe fighting. Pro- 
ceeding southward he reached the harbor of 
Beaufort, carried Fort Macon, at the entrance, 
and on the 25th of April took possession of 
the town. On the llth of the same month 
Fort Pulaski, commanding the mouth of the 6a 
vannah River, had surrendered to' General Gil- ■ 
more. This important capture resulted in the 
efiectual blockade of the emporium of Georgia. 
A still greater re- 
verse DOW awaited the 
Confederates, at Now 
Orleaua. Early in 
April a powerful squad- 
ron, commanded by 
General Butler and Ad- 
miral Farn^ut, entered 
the Mississippi, and pr» 
ceeded up the river as 
fiir as Forts Jackson 
and St. Philip, thirty 
miles from the Gul£ 
The guns of these forts, 
plauted on oppo6it« 
Bh<)res of the Mieeis- 
sippi, completely com- 
ix manded the river, and 
obstructions and tor> 
pedoes had been plauted in the channel. 
On the 18th of April the Federal fleet, com- 
prising forty-five vessels, was brought into 
position, and a furious bombardment of the 
forts was begun. An incessant shower of 
missiles was for six ^aya rained on the fortifi- 
cations. Still the forts were but little injured, 
and Farragut undertook the hazardous ^tei^ 
prise of running past the batteries. In tbts 
he succeeded. The chain which the Confed- 
erates had stretched across the river was 
broken, and their fleet above was overpowered. 
On the next day the Federal squadron reached 
New Orleans, and the city yielded. General 
Butler became commandant, and the fortifica- 
tions were manned with fifteen thousand Fed- 
eral soldiers. Three days afterwards, Foi 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



121 



Jackson and 8t Philip surrendered to Admiral 
Porter, who had remained below and proee- 
cuted the siege. The control of the Lower 
MiasiaBJppi, with the metropolis of the South, 
was thus recovered bj the Federal Govern- 
bient 

After Donelson and Shiloh, the Confeder- 
ates in Kentucky and Tennessee were much 
disheartened ; but they soon rallied from their 
discouragement, and renewed the struggle. 
An invasion of Kentucky was planned, and 
two strong divisions — one led by General 
Kirby Smith, and the other by Greneral Brax- 
ton Bragg — entered the State from East Ten- 
nessee. Smith's army pressed forward as far 
as Bichmond, Kentucky, and there, on the 
80th of August, attacked the Federals, rout- 
ing them with heavy losses. Lexington was 
taken, and then Frankfort; and Cincinnati 
was saved from capture only by the extraor- 
dinary exertions of General Lewis Wallace. 
Hie army of General Bragg advanced from 
Chattanooga to Munfordville, where, on the 
17th of September, he captured a Federal 
division of four thousand five hundred men. 

From this point Bragg pressed on toward 
Louisville; but General Buell made a forced 
march from Tennessee, and arrived in that 
eity only one day ahead of Bragg. That one 
day turned the scale. The Unionists hence- 
forth had the advantage, and the Confederates 
were turned back. Buell's army was swelled 
to a hundred thousand men by reinforcements 
pouring in from the North. The (General 
took the field in the begianing of October, the 
Confederates retiring before him to Perryville. 
At this place, on the 8th of the month, Bragg 
was overtaken, and a severe but indecisive bat- 
tle was fought. The retreat and pursuit then 
continued to East Tennessee, the ConfederatPS 
sweeping out of Kentucky a train of four 
thousand wagons laden with the spoils of the 
campaign. 

Meanwhile, in September stirring events 
had occurred in Mississippi. On the 19th of 
that month a hard battle was fought at luka 
between the Federal Army, under Generals 
Bosecrans and Grant, and the Confederate 
force, under General Price. The latter suf- 
fered a defeat, losing in addition to his killed 
and wounded, nearly a thousand prisoners. 
General Bosecrans now took post at Corinth 

F —Vol. 4-^ 



with twenty thousand men, while GhDioral 
Grant, with the remainder of the Federal 
forces, proceeded to Japkson, Tennessee. Per- 
ceiving this division of the army, the Con- 
federate Genends, Van Dorn and Price, turned 
about to recapture Corinth. Advancing for 
that purpose, they came upon the Federal de- 
fenses on the 3d of October. Another hotly 
contested battle ensued, which ended, aftcur 
two days of heavy fighting and heavy lossen 
on both sides, in the repulse of the CoA 
federates. 

The Mississippi Biver was now open to tht 
Federals above and below; but in the middle, 
namely, in the latitude of Tennessee, it was 
still held with a firm grip by the Confederacy. 
To relieve this stricture now became the prin- 
cipal end of the Federal endeavors. General 
Grant removed his head-quarters from Jackson 
to La Grange. General Sherman was now at 
Memphis, and it was the purpose of the two 
Union commanders to codperate in an eflbrt 
against Vicksburg. The movement promised 
to be successful, but, on the 20th of December, 
General Van Dorn succeeded in cutting Grant^s 
line of supplies at Holly Springs, and obliged 
him to fall back. General Sherman dropped 
down the river from Memphis as far as Yazoo, 
where he eflected a landing, and on the 29tb 
of December made an unsuccessful attack on 
the forts at Chickasaw Bayou. The result 
was exceedingly disastrous to the Federals, 
who lost in killed, wounded, and prisoners^ 
more than three thousand men. The enter- 
prise was abandoned, and the defeated army, 
returned to the fleet of gun-boats in the Mis« 
sissippi. 

The military operations of the year in tha 
West were destined to end with the great 
battle of Murfreesborough. After his success- 
ful defense of Corinth, General Bosecrans had 
been transferred to the command of the Army 
of the Cumberland. Late in the fall he 
established his head-quarters at Nashville, and 
there collected a powerful army. General 
Bragg, on his retreat from Kentucky, as 
above narrated, threw his force into Murfrees- 
borough. Thus the two Generals found them- 
selves face to face and only thirty miles apart. 

Late in December, Bosecrans moved against 
his antagonist, and on the evening of the 30th 
came upon the Confederates strongly posted oa 



122 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



8tone EUver, a short diatancft north-west of 
Murfreeaborough. During the night prepara- 
tions were ma4le od both sides for the im- 
pending battle. The plan of attack adopted 
bj Boeecrans contemplated the massing of bis 
forces on the left in sucli numbers as to crush 
the Confederate right wing, under Breckin- 
ridge, before assistance could be brought from 
the west side of the river. Bragg's plan of 
battle was the exact counterpart of that 
adopted by Bosecrans. Before daylight the 
Confederates were heavily massed, under Har- 
dee, on the left, and iu the early morning the 
battle began with a furious charge on the 



division of McCook, on the Union right. 
McCook's appeal for help was at first un- 
heeded hy Rosecrans, who did unt perceive 
the real nature of the Confederate onset. 
After a terrible stru^Ie, which lasted until 
noonday, the Union right was shattered to 
fragments and driven from the field. The 
brunt of the battle next fell on General 
Thomas, who commanded the Federal right 
center, and he, too, after desperate fighting, 
'vraa obliged to fall back to a new position. 
Here, however, he rallied his forces, and held 
his ground until General Rosecrans readjusted 
his line of battle. While tbis work was going 
en, die Confederates were barely prevented 



from an overwhelming victory by Uie heroiam 
of the division of General William B. Hazen. 
With only thirteen hundred men, be stayed 
the onset until the Federal lines were restored. 
At nightfall more than seven thousand UnkiD 
soldiers were missing from the ranks. 

General Rosecrans, however, was by no 
means disposed to yield the victory. During 
the night preparations were made to renew 
tbe battle on the morrow. On New-Year's 
morning General Bragg found his antagonist 
fitmly posted, with shortened lines and every 
disposition for fight. The day was spent in in< 
decisive skirmishing and artillery firing at long 
range. Early on the morning of the 2d 
the conflict broke out anew on the east 
side of Stone River, and for some hours 
there was terrific cannonading in that 
quarter. At three o'clock in the after- 
noon the Confederates were massed agunst 
the Union left, and the Nationals were 
driven across the river by the shock. 
At this juncture, however, the Federal 
artillery posted on the hills west of tbe 
stream opened a destruotire fire on the 
availing columns. At the same time the 
Federals rallied t« the chai^, turned 
upon their pursuers, and in one tremen- 
dous onset drove them from the field, with 
a loss of thousands. Oeueral Bragg had 
lost the prize. During the night he 
withdrew his broken columns through 
Murfreesbi) rough, and retreated in the 
direction of Tullahoma. The Union loss 
■n the two battles was two thousand five 
hundred and thirty-three killed, sevem 
thousand two hundred and forty-fiv* 
wounded, and nearly three thousand prisoners. 
That of the Confederates amounted in killed, 
wounded, and prisoners to between ten and 
eleven thousand men. 

In the meantime, a great campaign had 
been in progress in the East, in its prepara- 
tions more extensive and in its results more 
destructive than anything which had been 
witnessed west of tbe Alleghenies. llie Army 
of the Potomac had not been idle, and other 
divisions of the Union and Confederate forces 
had converted Virginia into a battle-field. 
The first stirring movements of the year were 
in the valley of the Shenandoah. Desiring to 
occupy this important district, the Federal 



'£HE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



tt w vg m meDt seot forward a strong divuion 
under General N. P. Banks, who prewed his 
yitkj southward, and in the last days of March 
occupied the town of Harrisonburg. On the 
other ude, General Stonewall Jackson iras Sent 
with a force of twenty tfaoiuand men to cross 
the Blue Kidge and cat off Bank^s retreat 
At Front Boyal, on the Shenandoah, just he- 
fore the gap in die mount^us, the Confeder- 
ates came upon a body of Federals, routed 
them, and captured their gune, and all the 
military stores in the town. 
Banks had succeeded in pass- 
ing with his main division to 
Strasburg, where he learned 
of the disaster at FrontBoyal, 
and immediately turned on 
his retreat down the valley. 
Jackson pursued him hotly, 
and it was only by the utmost 
exertions that the Federals 
gained the northern bank of 
the Potomac, 

It was now the turn of the 
Confederate leader to find 
himself in peril. General 
Fremont, at the head of a 
itrong force of fresh troops, 
had been sent into the valley 
to mtercept the retreat of the 
Confederates. Jackson was 
BOW obliged to save himself 
•nd hie army. With the ut- 
nost celerity he receded up 
the valley and reached Cross 
Keys before Fremont could 
attack him. Even then the 
battle was so little decisive 
that Jackson pressed en to 
Fort Republic, where he fell 
upon the division of CTeneral Shields, defeated it, 
and retired from his brilliant campaign to join 
in the defense of Kichmond. It was the first 
of those rapid and successful movements which 
revealed the military genius and daring of 
Btonewall Jackson. Meanwhile, on the 10th 
of March, the Grand Army of the Potomac, 
numbering nearly two hundred thousand men, 
thoroughly disciplined and equipped, and com- 
manded by General McCleilan, set out from 
the campe about Washington on a campaign 
•gMDSt the Confederate Capital. It had all 



the time been the theory of the National 
Government that the capture of lUcIunood 
was the principal object to be attained in the' 
war. It was only after many and sevei^e r»> 
verses, after the rise of a new group of com- 
manders, and a better apprehension of the 
nature of the conflict, that the theory was 
changed, and the' Confederate armies, rather 
than the seat of their Government, became the 
objective in the plans of the Union Generals. 
McClellan's advance proceeded to Mnnnmaa 



Junction, the Confederates falling bock and 
formiug new lines of defenses on the Rap> 
pahannock. At this Stage of the campaign, 
however, McCleilan changed his plan, and em- 
barked a hundred and twenty thousand of his 
men for Fortress Monroe, with a view to pro- 
ceeding from that point up the peninsula be- 
tween the Jame and York Rivers. The 
transfer of the troope occupied the time to the 
4th of April, when the Union Army left 
Fortress Monroe for Yorktown. The latter 
nlace was held by a garrison of ten thousand 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



ports, l&aeti wHli luppliea for the Army of tht 
Potomac 

McClellan now BdvRDced on Bichmond, 
snd when bul aeven miles from the city WM 
attacked, on the Slat of May, by the Oonfed- 
enUB in fldi ftR», ai « pUce called Fair Oaki, 
w Sena Pinet. Here for two days the battle 
raged, till, at last, the Confederates were 
driven back. The Union victory, however, 
waa by no means decisive. The Confederate loa 
was greatest, amounting to nearly eight thoa- 
8(Uid in killed and wounded, while that of the 
Federals was in excess of five thousand. Gen- 
eral Jooeph E. Johnston, Commander-in-Chief 
of the Confederates, was severely wounded, 
and his place at the head of the army wai 
filled by the appointment of General Robert 
E. Lee, a man whose military genius from 
this time to the close of the war was ever c(m- 
BpicuouB. He became the chief stay of tba 
Confederacy until the day of its final collapoe 
at Appomattox. 

After the battle of Fair Oaks there was a 
lull in the fighting for a short time, and Ho- 
Clellan determined to change bis base of sup- 
plies from the White House, so-called, on tha 
Pamunkey River, to some suitable point o> 
the James. The movement was hazardous in 
the last d^ree. Nor was it &irly begun until 
General Il>ee, discovering the purpose of bii 
antagonist, swooped donn on the right wing 
of the Union army at Oak Grove, and an- 
other hard-fought battle ennued, without deci- 
sive results. On the foUowiug day a third 
dreadful engagement occurred at Mechanic*- 
ville, and this time the Federals won the field. 
But on the fullovring morning Lee renewed 
the struggle at a place called Gaines's Mill, 
and came out victorious. On the 28th, there 
was but little fighting. On the 29th, McClel- 
lan's army, still in motion for the change of 
base, was twice attacked — in the forenoon ai 
Savage's Station, and in the afternoon in the 
White Oak Swamp — but the divisions defend- 
ing the rear-guard of the army were able to 
keep the Confederates at bay. 

On the 30th of the month was fought the 
desperate but iudeoisive battle of Glendale, or 
Frazier's Farm. On that night the Federal 
army reached Malvern Hill, on the north bank 
of the Jamee, twelve miles below Richmond. 
McClellan bad thus receded about five miles 



TBE VSITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



126 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



in a circuitous direction from the Confederate 
Capital. His position at Malvern Hill was 
strong, being under the protection of the Fed- 
eral gun-boats in the river. General Lee, how- 
ever, determined, if possible, to carry the 
place by storm. On the morning of the 1st 
of July the whole Confederate army was 
pushed forward to the assault. Throughout 
the day the struggle for the possession of the 
high grounds was furious in the last degree. 
Not until nine o'clock at night did Lee's shat- 
tered columns fall back exhausted. For seven 
days the roar of battle had been heard almost 
without cessation. No such dreadful scenes 
bad ever before been enacted on the American 
ContineDt. 

McClellan was clearly victorious at Malvern 
Hill, and in the judgment of after times might 
have at once made a successful advance on 
Richmond. Lee's army was shattered, and 
McClellan was still superior in numbers. Nor 
could it be doubted that the Union :irmy, now 
inured to fighting, was ready and able to con- 
tinue the struggle. Its commander, however, 
ihose, as usual, the less hazardous course. On 
the 2d of July he retired with his army to 
Harrison's Landing, a few miles down the 
river. The great campaign was really at an 
end. The Federal army had lost on the ad- 
vance from Yorktown to this point, in its 
progress, fully fifteen thousand men, and the 
capture of Bichmond, the great object for 
which the expedition had been undertaken, 
seemed further off than ever. The losses of 
the Confederates had been heavier than those 
of the Union army, but all the moral effect 
ef a great victory remained with the exultant 
S«uth. 

General Lee, perceiviDg that Richmond was 
not likely to be further molested, immediately 
formed the design of invading Maryland, and 
capturing the Federal Capital. The Union 
troops between Richmond and Washington, 
numbermg about fifty thousand men^ were 
under command of General John Pope. They 
were in scattered detachments at various points 
from Fredericksburg to Winchester and Har- 
per's Ferry. Lee moved forward about the 
middle of August, and Pope began at once to 
concentrate his forces as rapidly as possible. 
On the 20th of the month he put the Rappa- 
bflimock between his army and the advancing 



Confederates. Meanwhile, General Banks, 
while attempting to form a junction with Pope, 
was attacked by Stonewall Jackson, at Cedar 
Mountain, where nothing but desperate fight- 
ing saved the Federals from a complete rout 

While Pope was still engaged in gathering 
his army into one place, Jackson passed him 
with his division, on a flank movement, reached 
Manasscs Junction, and captured the men and 
stores at that place. Pope, with great au- 
dacity, now threw his army between the two 
divisions of the Confederates, hoping to crush 
Jackson before Lee could come to the rescue. 
On August the 28th and 29th, there was ter- 
rible but indecisive fighting at Manassas 
Junction, on the old Bull Run battle-ground, 
and at Centerville. At one time it appeared 
that Lee's army would be completely defeated, 
but the reinforcements which Pope expected 
a strong division under General Fitz John 
Porter, did not reach the field in time, and 
Pope was defeated. On the 31st of the month, 
the Confederates bore down on the UnioB 
army at Chantilly, fought all day, and won a 
victory. Generals Stevens and Kearney were 
among the thousands of brave men who fell 
from the Union ranks in this battle. On that 
night Pope withdrew his shattered columns as 
rapidly as possible, and took refuge within the 
defenses of Washington. He immediately re- 
signed his command, and his forces, known as 
the Army of Virginia, were consolidated with 
the Army of the Potomac, which had now 
been recalled from the peninsula below Rich- 
mond, and General McClellan was placed in 
supreme command of all the divisions about 
Washington. Thus ended in dire disaster 
what is known as the Peninsular Campaign. 

After his successes, both defensive and of* 
fensive, General Lee pressed on to the Poto* 
mac, crossed that river at the Point of Rocks, 
and on the 6th of September cai)tured Fred- 
erick. On the 10th, Hagerstown was taken; 
and on the 15th, Stonewall Jackson came upon 
Harper's Ferry, and frightened the command- 
ant, Colonel Miles, into a surrender, by which 
the garrison, nearly twelve thousand strong, 
became prisoners of war. On the previous 
day there was a hard-fought engagement at 
South Mountain, in which the Federals, com- 
manded by Generals Hateh and Doubleday, 
were victorious. McClellan's whole army was 



THE VmTED STATES,— TRE CIVIL WAR. 



127 



now ID the immedUto rear of Lee, who, on 
the night of the 14th, fell hack to Antietam 
Creek, and took a strong position in the 
vicinity of Sharpsborg. 

Od the following morning there was sharp 
but desultory fighting between the Union and 
Confederate cavalry. In the afternoon the 
Federal advance, coming in on the Sharpeburg 
road from KeedysviUe, received the opening 
volleys from the Confederate guns along the 
Antietam ; but night came on, and the conflict 
was postponed. With the morning there was 
great activity of properatlon in both armies. 
Later in the day the corps of General Hooker, 
who commanded on the Federal right, was 
thrown across the stream 
which separated the com- 
batants, and brought 
into a favorable poBitinn 
for action. In this quar- 
ter of the field, the Con- 
federate left, under 
command of General 
Hood, waa assailed and 
driven back a few miles 
in the direction of 
Bharpsburg. The rest 
of the day was spent in 
an irregular cannonade. 
During the night. Gen- 
eral Mansfield's corps 
crossed the Antietam, 
and joined Hooker. 

On the morning of 
the 17th both armies 
wero well in position, 

the Federals being strongest in number, and the 
CQnfederates having the advantage of an un- 
fordable stream in their front. It was of the 
first importance that General McCIellan should 
gain and hold the four atone bridges by which 
only his forces could be thrown to the 
other ude. General Burnside, who was oi^ 
dered to take the lower bridge, cross over 
and attack the division of A. P. Hill, en- 
countered unexpected delays, and waa re- 
tarded in his movamentB. On the nght. 
Hooker renewed the battle atsuDiiBe.and until 
late in the afternoon the conflict raged with 
almost unabated fury. Here fell the valiant 
General Mansfield and thousands of his com- 
ndes. At last Burnside forced the lower 



crossing, and carried the battle far up in th* 
direction of Sharpeburg ; hut the ConfederateO) 
being reinforced from other parts of the field, 
made a rally, and the Federals wero driven 
back nearly to the Antietam. It, was only hj 
terrible fighting that Burnside succeeded in 
holding his poiutioD on the west bank of the 
stream ; but ou the approach of darkness the 
greater part of the Union Army had gained ft 
safe lodgment between the river and tiharpa- 
burg. The Confederate forces still held nearly 
the same ground aa in the morning, and it 
seemed that the final struggle was reserved 
for the morrow. 

On that day, however, General McCIellan 



acted on the defensive. It was another of 
those fatal delays for which the military career 
of that General was unfortunately noted. 
During the 18th two strong divisions of rein- 
fon:ements, under Generals Humphreys and 
Couch, arrived, and it was resolved to ifr 
new the attack on the following morning. 
But in the meantime General Lee, wiser than 
his antagonist, had availed himself of the de- 
lay, withdrawn hb shattered legions from 
their poation, apd recrossed the Potomac into 
Virginia. The great conflict, which bad cost 
the Union Army an aggregate of ten thousand 
men, had ended in a drawn battle, in which 
there was little to be praised except the 
heroism of the soldiery. To the Confederates, 



128 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



however, the result was equivalent to defeat. 
The promised uprising of the people of Mary- 
laud in behalf of the Confederate cause did 
not occur, and General Lee was obliged to 
give up & fruitless and hopeless invasion, 
which, in the short space of a month, had cost 
him about twenty-Qve thousand men. On the 
other side, the expectations which had been 
inspired by the movements and despatches of 
the Union commander previous to the battle 
had been sorely disappointed. 

It was late in October before General Mc- 
Clellan, following the retreaUog Confederates, 



to the protest of the President and the Cabinet, 
altered his plans, and chose Alexandria as hia 
base of operations. From this point it was 
proposed to go forward by way of the Orange 
Railroad through Culpepper to GordonsvUle, 
and thence by the Virgiuia Central to ita 
junction with the line reaching irom Freder- 
icksburg to Richmond. 

The whole month of October, however, was 
wasted with delay, and November was well 
begun before the Federal General, with hit 
army of a hundred and twenty thousand men, 
announced himself ready for the forward 
movement On the 
7th of the month, 
jast as the Union 
commander, ac- 
cording to bis de- 
■patches, was about 
to begin the cam- 
paign, he was super* 
seded and bis com- 
mand transferred to 
General Bumside. 
Right or wrong, tbe 
President at last 
reached the decirioB 
that General M(y 
Clellan was a man 
overcautious tad 
slow, too prudent 
and too much ah- 
I lead the armies of 



■nnoaLi at rat •ridoi o» itmrTtK. 

again entered Vii-ginia and readied Rectortown. 
The temper of the National Government was 
Still aggressive, and it was hoped that before 
the coming of winter the army might again b« 
thrown forward against Richmond. The Union 
commander still preferred to advance by the 
route which he had taken the previous spring, 
making bis base of supplies at West Point, on the 
Pamuokey. But this plan was objected to by 
the Administration, on the ground that Wash- 
ington City would thus be again uncovered 
and exposed to a counter invasion on the 
port of the Confederates. McCIellan yielded 



aign was now imme- 
le decided to form a 
he mouth of Acquia 

^.., ...._, „..ow Washington, and 

from, that point to force hia way, by battle, 
southward through Fredericksbuig ; but again 
the movements were much delayed, and that, 
too, when everything depended on celerity. A 
fortnight was lost in preparations for crossing 
the Rappahannock. General Lee thus found 
abundant time to discover the plan of bis an- 
tagonist, and to gather hia army on the heights 
in the vicinity of Fredericksburg. He chose 
not seriously to dispute the passape of the Union 
army across the river; hut rather allowed the 
Federals, with little molestation, to take their 
place on the right bank of the Rappahannock. 
On the 11th of Pecember, the Union army 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



129 



was brought into poritloD, with its several di- 
visioDS strebshing from the village of Falmouth 
lo a point opposite the mouth of the Massa- 
ponax, about three miles below. The pontoosa 
were laid in front of the corps of General 
Franklin, who held the Federal left, and hy 
this means the army was transferred, without 
serious oppodtion. In other ports, the Con- 
federate sharpshooters disputed the laying of 
pontoon bridges, and the crossing of the Fed- 
erals was considerably delayed. But by the 
nightfall of the 12th the army had be«n safely 
banaferred to the other aide of the river. 

On the moraiug of the ISth of December a 
general battle began on the left, where Frank- 
lin's division was met by that of Stonewall Jack- 
ton. At the first, a charge made. by General 
Heade was succesaful, and a gap was opened in 
the Confederate lines, but the movement was not 
■UBiained. The Confederates rallied, and the 
Federals were driven back with a loss of more 
than three thousand men. Jackson's loss was 
almost as great, and in this pari of the field 
the result was indecisive. But not so in the 
center and on the right. Here a portion of 
General Sumner's men were ordered forward 
against the Confederates, impregnably posted 
•D a height called Marye's Hill. They were 
mowed down by thousands and hurled back 
in confusion, while the defenders of the heights 
hardly lost a man. l^me and again the as- 
sault was recklessly renewed. A part of 
Hooker's corps, led by General Humphreys, 
came forward, charged with unloaded guns, 
and in fifteen minutes one-half of the four 
thousand brave fellows went down. Nor was 
the useless carnage ended until night came 
and closed the conflict. 

General Buruaide, rashly patriotic and al- 
most out of his wits, would have renewed the 
battle, but his division commanders finally dis- 
suaded him, and on the night of the 15th the 
Federal army was silently withdrawn across 
the Bappahaunock. The Union losses in this 
terrible conflict amounted to a thousand five 
hundred killed, nine thousand one hundred 
wounded, and sixteen hundred and fifty pris- 
oners and missing. The Confederates lost in 
killed five hundred and ninety-five, four thou* 
sand and sixty-one wounded, and six hundred 
and fifty-three missing and prisoners. Of all 
the important movements of the war, only that 



of Fredericksburg was undertaken witli ho 
probability of success. Under the plan of 
battle, if plan it might be called, nothing 
could be reasonably expected but repulse, 
rout, and ruin. Thus, in gloom, disaster, and 
humiliation, ended the great Virginia cam* 
paigna of 1862. 

It is now clear, in the light of the retro- 
spect, that had the war continued for another 
yew with the same general results and tend- 
encies, the Confederacy must have succeeded. 
The revolution which had been attempted 
would have been accomplished and the Amer< 
icau Union dissolved. It was now the aim 
and determination of the Confederate Govern* 
ment and of the military leaders to hold out, 
if poerible, against the superior resources of 



the Korth until they should compel the Na- 
tional Government to yield ihe contest. The 
war itself had new grown to unheard-of pro- 
portions. The Southern States were draining 
every source of men and means in order to 
support their armies. The superior energies 
of the North, though by no means so neariy 
exhausted, were greatly taxed. In the pr» 
viouB year, on the day after the battle of Mal- 
vern Hill, President Lincoln had issued a call 
for thr«e hundred thousand additinnal troops. 
During the exciting days of Pope's retreat 
from the Rappahannock, lie sent forth another 
call for three hundred thousand, and (0 this 
was soon added a requisition for a draft of 
three hundred thousand more. Most of these 
enormous demands were promptly met, and 
it l>ecame evident, in the spring of 1863, that 



130 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



in respect to resources the Federal Oovem- 
ment was vastly superior to the Confederacj, 
aud to this element of strength and encourage- 
ment was added the recollection of the great 
Union success which had attended the National 
armies in the campaigns of the West. 

It was on the first day of January, 1863, 
that President Liucola issued one of the most 
important documents of modern times — the 
Emancipation Proclamation. The war had 
been begun and waged thus far with no well- 
defined intention on the part of the Govern- 
ment to free the slaves of the South. Presi- 
flent Lincoln himself had said in his public 
papers that he would save the Union mA 
slavery if he could, but wilhovt it if he must 
Meanwhile, however, both the Administration 
and the Republican party throughout the 
country had come to look with greater and 
still greater disfavor on the institution of 
slavery. During the progress of the war, the 
sentiment of abolition had grown with great 
rapidity in the North, and among the soldiers 
in the field. When at last it became a military 
necessity to strike a blow at the labor-system 
of the Southern States, the step was taken 
with but little hesitancy or opposition. The 
preliminary proclamation of freedom to the 
slaves had been issued by the President in 
September of the previous year. In the paper 
which he sent forth on that occasion, he warned 
the people of the Southern States, that unless 
they laid down their arms and returned to 
their allegiance to the National Government, ho 
would, at the expiration of ninety days, issue 
a proclamation of freedom to the bondmen. 
His warning was of course met with disdain on 
the part of the South, and the Emancipation 
Proclamation was accordingly issued. Thus, 
after an existence of two hundred and forty- 
four years, the institution of African slavery 
in the United States was swept away. 

The military movements of the new year 
began on the Mississippi. General Sherman, 
though defeated at Chickasaw Bayou, was by 
no means idle. After that event he formed a 
plan for the capture of Arkansas Post, on the 
Arkansas River. At the very beginning of 
the year an expedition was sent out for that 
purpose, the land forces being under command 
of General John A. McClemand, and a flotilla 
Mnder Admiral David Porter. The Union ' 



forces entered Arkansas, and reached their 
destination on the 10th of the month. After 
a hard-fought battle with the Confederates, a 
Union victory was gained, and on the next 
day Arkansas Post surrendered, with nearly 
five thousand prisoners. As soon as the work 
was accomplished, the expedition was headed 
for Vicksburg, in order to cooperate with 
General Grant in a second effort to capture 
that stronghold of the Confederacy. 

A second time the Union army was col- 
lected at Memphis, and embarked on the 
Mississippi. A landing was effected at Yazoo, 
but the capture of the city from that directioB 
was found to be impracticable. The first 
three months of the year were spent by General 
Grant beating about the half- frozen bayous, 
swamps, and hills around Vicksburg, in the 
hope of gaining a position in the rear of the 
town. A canal was cut across a bend in the 
river, with a view to turning the channel of 
the Mississippi and opening a passage for the 
gun-boats, but a flood in the river washed out 
the works, and the enterprise ended in fiftilure. 
Then another canal was begun, but was pres> 
ently abandoned. Finally, in the beginning 
of April, it was determined at all hazards to 
run the fleet past the Vicksburg batteries. Cm 
the night of the 16th the boats were made ready, 
and silently dropped down the river. It had 
been hoped that in the darkness they might 
pass unobserved ; but all of a sudden the guns 
burst forth with terrible discharges of shot 
and shell, pelting the passing steamers; but 
they went by with comparatively little damage, 
and found a safe position below the* city. 

Gratified with his success, Grant now 
marched his land forces down the right bank 
of the Mississippi, and formed a junction with 
the squadron. On the 80th of April he 
crossed the river at Bruinsburg, and on the 
following day fought and defeated the Con- 
federates at Fort Gibson. The evacuation 
of Grand Gulf at the mouth of Big Black 
Biver followed immediately afterwards, and 
the Union army swept freely around to the 
rear of Vicksburg. 

On the 12th of May a strong Confederate 
division was encountered at Baymond, and 
aft^r a severe engagement, was repulsed. At 
this time General Johnston was on the march 
from Jackson to reinforce the ^;arrison at 



132 



UNIVEBSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



VickBbarg. Oranf 8 right wing, under Sher- 
man and McPherson, encountered Johnston's 
advance on the 14th of the month, and a 
severe battle was fought The Confederates 
were defeated, and the city of Jackson was 
captured by the Unionists. By these successes 
General Grant obtamed pok«e8sion of the com- 
munications between Vicksburg and the inte- 
rior, and General Pemberton, who commanded ' 
the Confederate army in the city, was cut off. 
He must now either repel the Federal army 
or be cooped up in Vicksburg. He accord- 
ingly sallied out with the greater part of his 
forces, and on the 16th met the Union army 
at Champion Hills, on Baker^s Creek. Here 
another battle was fought, and still another at 
Black Biver. In both of these the Federals 
were decisively victorious. It only remained 
for Pemberton to fall back with his disheart- 
ened forces within the fortifications of Vicks- 
bttig. The city was immediately invested. 

On the 19th of May Greneral Grant attempted 
to storm the Confederate works, but the 
attack which he made on that day was re- 
pulsed with great losses. Three days after- 
wards the attempt was renewed, but the assail- 
ants were again hurled back, with still grtoter 
destruction of life. In these two unsuccessful 
assaults the Union losses amounted to nearly 
three thousand men. Grant perceived that 
Vicksburg could not be taken by storm, and 
began a regular siege, which was pressed with 
ever increasing rigor. It was not long until 
the garrison was placed on short rations, and 
then a condition of starvation ensued. Still, 
Pemberton held out for more than a month, 
and it was not until the 4th of July that he 
was driven to surrender. By the act of capit- 
ulation, the defenders of Vicksburg, nearly 
thirty thousand strong, became prisoners of war. 
Thousands of small arms, hundreds of cannon, 
and vast quantities of ammunition and war- 
like stores were the other fruits of this great 
Union victory, by which the National Govern- 
ment gained more and the Confederacy lost more 
than in any other previous struggle of the war. 
It was a blow from which the South never 
recovered. 

The command of the Department of the 
Gulf had now been transferred from General 
Butler to General Banks, and the latter was 
conducting a vigorous campaign on the Lower 



Mississippi. Early in January he set out from 
his head-quarters at Baton Rouge, advanced 
into Louisiana, reached Brashear City, and 
gained a decisive victory over the Confeder- 
ate force at a place called Bayou Teche. 
He then returned to the Mississippi, moved 
northward to Port Hudson, invested the place, 
and began a siege. The beleaguered garrison, 
under General Gardner, made a stout defense, 
and it was not until the 8th of July, when the 
news of the fall of Vicksburg was brought to 
Port Hudson, that the commandant, with his 
force of more than six thousand men, was 
obliged to capitulate. It was the last of those 
successful movements by which the Mississippi 
was freed from Confederate control, and 
opened throughout its whole length to the 
operations of the Union Army. The strategy 
and battles by which the great river had been 
recovered reflected the highest honor upon 
the military genius of General Grant. From 
this time forth the attention and confidenea 
of the people of the North were turned to him 
as the military leader whose sword was des- 
tined to point the way to the final triumph of 
the National cause. 

It was at this epoch of the war that the 
feature of cavalry raids became, on both sides^ 
an important element of military operations. 
Perhaps the initiation of such movements may 
be referred to Stonewall Jackson's campaign 
down the Shenandoah Valley, in the summer 
of 1862. Later in the same year, after the 
battle of Antietam, the Confederate General, 
J. £. B. Stuart, commanding the cavalry wing 
of the Army of Northern Virginia, made a 
dash with a troop of eighteen hundred cavalry- 
men into Pennsylvania, reached Chambers- 
burg, captured the town, made a complete 
circuit of the Army of the Potomac, and r^ 
turned in safety to Virginia. Just before the 
investment of Vicksburg, Colonel Benjamin 
Grierson, of the Sixth Illinois Cavalry, struck 
out with his command from LaGrange, Ten- 
nessee, entered Mississippi, traversed the State 
to the east of Jackson, cut the railroads, 
destroyed much property, and after a rapid 
course of more than eight hundred miles, 
gained the .river at Baton Rouge. By these 
raids the border country of both sections was 
kept in perpetual agitation and alarm. With 
the progress of the war, such movements be- 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



came mora, and mora injurious. The com- 
maudeiB and eoldien in the same learned to 
perfection the art of destroying the resourcea 
of the enemy. Their destructive skill was 
directed chiefly to the annihilation of lul- 
mwla. This work became a new military art, 



division of the Confederate General Forrest, 
was surrounded, captured, and sent to Libby 
prison. In the latter part of June, Rosecrans 
resumed activitJeB, and by a series of flank 
movements succeeded in crowding General 
Bragg ont of Tennessee into Geor|pa. Tha 



QBANT AND 

and so skillful were the raiders that miles on 
miles of track and road-bed wera destroyed in 
a nngle day. 

After the battle of Murfreesborough, Gen- 
eral Roaecrans remained for a season inactive. 
Late in the spring the command of Ck)lonel 
Streight made a raid into Georgia, met the 



PITULATION OF VICKSBDRO. 

Union General pressed after, and t«ok post at 
Chattanooga, on the left bank of the Ten- 
nessee. 

During the summer months Bragg waa 
heavily reinforced by Johnston, from Missis- 
sippi, and Longstreet, from Virginia. On the 
19th of September he turned upon the Federal 



THE UNITED STATES.— TME CIVIL WAR. 



.135 



army at Chickamauga Creek, in the nortti- 
west angle of Georgia. During th« first 
day a hard battle was fought, but night 
fell on the aceoe with the victory unde- 
cided. Under cover of darkness the Coa- 
federates were strongly reinforced by the ar- 
rival of General Longstreet, who was stationed 
with his army on the left wing of Bragg. The 
Confederate right was commanded by General 
Polk, while the center was held by Ewell and 
Johnston. The Federal left was commanded 
by General Thomas, the center by Crittenden, 
and the right by McCook. The plan of the 
Confederate commander was to crush the 
Uaion line, force his way through the gap in 
Missionary Ridge, capture Rossville and Chat- 
tanooga, and annihilate Rosecran^s army. 

The battle was renewed at half-past eight 
o'clock on the moruiog of the 20th, the Confed- 
erates comiog on in powerful masses, and the 
Federals holding their ground with unflinch- 
ing courage. After the conflict had continued 
for some hours, with varying successes, the 
National battle-lioe wss opened by General 
Wood, acting on mistaken orders. Long- 
Street, who was over against this part of the 
line, seeing his advantage, thrust forward a 
heavy column, into the gap, cut the Union 
army in two, and drove the shattered right 
wiug in utter rout from the fleld. The brunt 
of the battle now fell on General Thomas, who, 
with a desperate firmness hardly equaled in 
the annals of war, held the left until nightfall, 
and then, under cover of darkness, withdrew 
into Chattanooga, where the defeated array of 
Roeecrans found shelter. The Union losses in 
this dreadful battle amounti'd, in killed, 
wounded, and missing, to nearly nineteen 
thousand, and the Confederate loss was equally 
appalling. 

The victorious Bragg now pressed forward 
to the uege of Chattanooga. The Federal 
lines of communication were cut off*, and for a 
while the army of Rosecraus was iu danger of 
total destruction. But General Hooker ar- 
rived with two array corps from the Army of 
the Potomac, opened the Tennessee River, and 
brought relief to the besieged. It was at this 
juncture that General Grant was promoted to 
the chief command of the Western armies, and 
anumed the direction of ai^irs at Chatta- 
aoogn- Nor was there ever a time in the 



course of the war when the change of com- 
mandera was immediately felt in so salutary a 
measure. General Sherman arrived at Cha^ 
taoooga with his division, and the Army of 
the Cumberland was so strengthened that of- 
fensive operations were immediately renewed. 
The left wing of the Confederate Army now 
rested on Lookout Mountain, and the right on 
Missionary Ridge. The position was seem- 
ingly impregnable, and it required a courage 
almost equal to hardihood on the part of the 
Union commander to attack his antagonist. 
General Bragg was not only con6dent of his 
ability to hold his lines against any advanoa 



that might be made, but even contemplat«d 
the storming of Chattanooga. But the posi- 
tion of the parties, their attitude towards each 
other, was destined to be suddenly reversed. 

On the 20th of November, Bragg gave 
notice to General Grant to remove all non- 
combatants from Chattanot^a, as the town 
was about to be bombarded ; but to this the 
Union General paid no attention. On the 
contrary. General Hooker, on the 23d of the 
month, was thrown with his corps across the 
river below Chattanooga, where he gained a 
fooling at the mouth of Lookout Creek, ftcing 
the mountain. From this position he was 



UNIVEBSAL HI8T0RY.~THE MODERN WORLD. 



•rdered to hold himaelf Id readioeM to 
mkke an anault on the following moniiDg. 
Hooker was supported by Generals Geary and 
OsterhauB, and the reniaiuder of the Union 
army was kept in a state of activity, in order 
to prevent the CoDfederates from sending rein- 
forcements to Lookout Mountain. 

At the beginning of the engagement a 
dense fog hung like a hood over the heights, 
effectually concealing the movemeula of the 
Federale. The charge began between eight 



of the mountMD the troops ^rang forward 
with irrenstJble energy. It was such a scene 
of dauntless heroism as has rarely been por- 
trayed in the records of battle. The charg- 
ing columns, ttruggliug against the obstacles of 
nature, facing the murderous fire of the Cod 
federate guns, could not be checked. The 
Union flag was carried to the top, and befora 
two o'clock in the aflenioon Lookout Mount- 
ain, with its cloud-capped summit overlook- 
ing the town and river, was swarming with 



BATTLE OF I/»ICOtTT MOnRTAIN. 



and nine o'clock, and in the space of two hours 
the ranges of the Confederate rifle-pits along 
the foot-hills were succesafully carried. It had 
been General Ho()ker's purpose to pause when 
this should be accomplished, but the enthusi- 
asm of his army rose to such a pitch as to 
suggest the still greater achievement of carry- 
ing the whole Confederate position. Taking 
advantage of the fog and the spirit of his sol- 
diers, Hooker again gave the command to 
ofaarge, and up the almost inaccessible slopes 



Federal soldiers. The routed Confederates rfr 
treated down the eastem slope, and across the 
intervening hills and valleys in the direction 
of Missionary Ridge. Such was the event of 
the 24th of November. 

General Grant had reserved the main bat- 
tle for the morrow. During the night of the 
24th, General Bragg concentrated his forces, 
and prepared to defend his position to the last. 
He now perceived that instead of being the 
attacking party he was himself to be assailed 



THE UNITED STATES,— THE CIVIL WAR. 



187 



with the whole resources of the Federals. Od 
the moroiDg of the 25th, Hooker^s victorious 
troops were ordered to proceed down the 
dopes of Lookout, cross the Chattanooga, and 
renew the battle at the sduth-westem terminus 
of Missionary Ridge. General Sherman had, 
in the meantime, built pontoon bridges over 
the Tennessee and the Chickamauga, thrown 
liis corps across those streams, and gained a 
iodgment on the north-eastern declivity of the 
Ridge. Oeneral Thomas, commanding the 
Union center, lay with his impatient soldiers 
on the southern and eastern slopes of Orchard 
Knob, awaiting the result of Sherman's and 
Hooker^s onsetF. 

" The latter Oeneral was slow in striking the 
■Confederates ; but at two o'clock in the after* 
Doon the signal of an artillery discharge from 
Orchard Knob announced the beginning of 
the assault along the whole line.^ The com- 
mand was instantly obeyed. The thrilling 
scenes of Lookout Mountain were again en- 
acted on a more magnificent scale. The Fed- 
oral soldiers were ordered by Grant to take 
the rifle-pits at the foot of Missionary Ridge, 
«nd then to pause and re-form for the principal 
assault; but such was the dan of the army, 
•Buch the impetuosity of its impact, that, after 
carrying the rifle-pits, the column, of its own 
motion, pressed forward at full speed, clamber- 
ing up the slopes and driving the Confederates 
in a disastrous rout from the summit of the 
Bidge. No more brilliant operstion was wit* 
nessed during the whole war. Nor was there 
•any battle of which the results were, on the 
whole, more decisive. During the night Gen- 
oral Bragg withdrew his shattered columns, 
ond fell back in the direction of Ringgold, 
<3eorgia. The Federal losses in the two great 
battles amounted to seven hundred and fifty* 
oeven killed, four thousand five hundred and 
twenty-nine wounded, and three hundred and 
thirty missing. The loss of the Confederates 
in killed, wounded and prisoners reached con- 
siderably beyond ten thousand. The conflict 
was so decisive as to put an end to the war 
in Tennessee, until it was renewed by General 
Hood, at Franklin and Nashville, in the winter 
of 1864. 



'The reverberations of Grant's six shotted 

.guns from Orchard Knob were the signal of the 

.beginning of the end of the Confederacy. 
N.— Vol. 4—9. 



While these important movements wer% 
taking place at Chattanooga, General Bumside 
was making a strenuous eflbrt to hold East 
Tennessee. On the 1st of September he had 
arrived with his command at Knoxville, where 
he was received by the people with lively sat- 
isfaction. East Tennessee had from the first 
been largely pervaded with Union sentiments. 
The Federal army had been much recruited 
by the mountaineers of this region, and the 
people in general looked forward to the over- 
throw of the Confederacy as the recovery of 
their liberties and fortunes. After Chicka^ 
mauga. General Longstreet was detached from 
the Confederate army and sent into East Ten- 
nessee, to counteract the movements of the 
Unionists. On his march to Knoxville he 
overtook and captured several small detach* 
ments of Federal troops, then invested the 
town and began a siege. On the 29th of No- 
vember, the Confederates made an attempt to 
carry Knoxville by storm, but were repulsed 
with heavy losses. 

All this time General Grant had looked 
with the utmost solicitude to the progress of 
events in East Tennessee, and the Administra* 
tion had been equally anxious lest the veteran 
Longstreet should achieve some great sucoesB 
by his campaign. As soon as Bragg fell hack 
from Chattanooga, General Sherman marched 
to the relief of Burnside ; but before he could 
reach Knoxville, Longstreet prudently raised 
the siege and retreated into Vireinia. 

In the meantime, the Confederates had re- 
sumed activities in Arkansas anc| Southern 
Missouri. In the early part of 1863, strong 
bodies commanded by Generals Marmaduke 
and Price, entered this country, and on the 
8tb of January reached and attacked the city 
of Springfield. They were, however, repulsed 
with considerable losses. On the 11th of the 
month a second battle was fought at the town 
of Hartsville, with the same results. On the 
26th of April, Greneral Marmaduke assaulted 
the post at Cape Girardeau, on the Misfflssippi, 
but the garrison succeeded in driving the Con- 
federates away. On the day of the surrender 
of Vicksburg, General Holmes, with a force 
of nearly eight thousand men, made an attack 
on Helena, Arkan^^as, but was defeated with 
the loss of one-fifth of his men. On the 18th 
of August, in this summer, the town of Lai^ 



138 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



rence, KjiQsas was sacked and burned, bsd a 
hundred and fortj persons killed by a band 
of deq>erate fellons, led by a chiet^iu called 
QuaDtrell. On the lOlh of September, the 
Federal Geoera) Steele reached Little Rock, 
the capital of Arkansas, captured the city, and 
Kstored the National authority in the State. 

But the greatest raid of the year nas re- 
•erved for the Confederate General Moi^an. 
He or^nized a calvary army, Dumberiog three 
thouBand, at the town of Sparta, Teuoessee, 
«nd at the head of his column struck out for 



in his rear a large force, under General Ho)v 
sou, pressed hard after. 

Morgan now made a circuit thrgugh south- 
eastern Indiana, crossed into Ohio at Harrison, 
passed to the north of Cincinnati, and then, 
becoming alarmed, attempted to regun and 
recrosB the Ohio. But the river was guarded: 
by gun-boate, and the raiders were driven- 
back. Morgan's forces began to melt away; 
but he pressed on resolutely, fightiug andi 
flying, unUI he came near the town of New 
Lisbon, where he was surrounded and captured* 



ATTACK OV FORT StTMTER 



the invasion of Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. 
As he passed through Kentucky he gathered 
strength. The large Confederate element in 
that State contributed lo his resources in men 
and means. Morgan reached the Ohio River 
at Brandenburg, crossed into Indiana, and be- 
gun his march to the north and east. The 
Home Guards of the State turned out, but the 
movement of the Confederate force was so 
uncertain and rapid that it was difficult to 
check Morgan's progress. He was resisted 
Sknously at Corydon and at other points, and 



by the brigade of General Shackelford. For 
nearly four months Morgan was imprisoned in- 
the Ohio penitentiary. Making his escape 
from this place, he fled to Kentucky, anit 
finally succeeded in reaching Richmond. 

We may now pause to glance at some im> 
portant movements on the sea-coast. On thb- 
Ist of January, General Marmaduke, by a 
I brilliant exploit, captured Galveston, Texas. 
I By this means the Confederates secured a much 
I needed port of entry in the South-west. On 
' the 7th of April, Admiral Bupout, with fc 



THE UNITED STATES—THE CIVIL WAH. 



powe.'^l fleet of iroD-clads, made an attempC 
to capture Cbarleston, but the squadron was 
driven bock much damaged. In tbe latter 
part of June the Biege of the city was begun 
anew b; a Strang land force, under command 
of General Q. A. Gilmore, aasisted by a fleet 
under Admiral Dahlgren. The Federal army 
first effected a lodgment on Folly Island, and 
then on Morris Island, where batteries were 
planted bearing upon Fort Sumter, Fort 
Wagner, and Battery Gregg — the latter at the 
northern extremity of the island. 

After the bombardment had continued for 
•ome time. General Gilmore, on the 18th of 
July, made an attempt to carry Fort Wagner 
by assault, but was repulsed with the loss of 
more than fifteen hundred men. The siege 
was resumed and pressed until the 6th of Sep- 
tember, when the Confederates evacuated Fort 
W^ner and Battery Gregg, and retired to 
Charleston. Gilmore thus obtained a posittou 
within four miles of the city, from which he 
conld bombard the wharves and buildings in 
tte lower part of the town. Meanwhile, the 
valla of Fort Sumter on the side next to Mor- 
tis Island had been pounded into powder by 
the land batteries and the gans of the raoni- 
tOTB. The harbor and city, however, still re- 
mained under the contrul of the Confederates, 
the only gain of tbe Federals being the eatab- 
lishment of a blockade so complete as to seal 
ap the port of Charleston. 

We may now turn to the consideration of 
aflkirs of the Army of the Potomac. In the 
spring and summer of 1863 that army, so un- 
fortunate thus far in its career, had been en- 
gaged in several desperate conflicts. AAer 
his fatal repulse at Fredericksburg, General 
Bumfflde was superseded by General Joseph 
Hooker, who, in the latter part of April, 
moved forward with his army in full force, 
crossed the Bappahannock and the Bapidan, 
and reached C h an eel tors vi lie. Here, on the 
evening of the 2d of May, he was attacked 
by the veteran army of Northern Virginia, led 
t^Lee and Jackson. The latter General, with 
extraordinary daring, put himself at the head 
of a division of twenty-five thousand men, 
filed off from the battle-field, outflanked the 
Union army, burst like a thunder-cloud upon 
the right wing, and swept everything to de- 
atmction. Bat it was the last of Stonewall's 



battles. As night came on, with ruin impend* 
ing over the Federal army, the great Confed- 
erate leader, riding through the gathering 
darkness, received a volley from his own Hues, 
and fell mortally wounded. He lingered a 
week, and died at Guinea Station, leaving a 
gap in the Confererate ranks which no other 
man could fill. 

On the morning of the 3d the battle was 
renewed with great fury. The Union right 
wing was restored, and the Confederates were 
checked in their career of victory. General 
Sedgwick, however, attempting to reinforce 
Hooker from Fredericksburg, was defeated 
and driven across the Bappahannock. The 
Uuioii Army was crowded between Chaooat 



lorsville and the river, where it remained in 
the utmost peril until the evening of the 6th, 
when Genera] Hooker succeeded in witfadraw< 
ing his forces to the northern bank. The 
Union losses in these terrible battles amounted, 
in killed, wounded, and prisoners, to about 
seventeen thousand, while that of the Con- 
federates was less than five thousand. So fiw 
as the eastern field of action was concerned, 
there was never a time when the Union cause 
appeared to greater disadvantage, or the Con< 
federate cause more likely to succeed. Tbs 
campaign, taken as a whole, had been the most 
disastrous of any in which the Federal Armv 
had as yet been engaged. 

Ths defeat of Hooker, however, waa <" 



140 



UNIVERSAL HI:STORY.—THE MODERN WORLD. 



Bome extent mitigated by the successful 
cavalry raid of General Stoneman. That 
ofBcer croEged the Rappahanuock, and on the 
29th of April pushed forward with a body of 



ten thousand men, tearing up the Virginia 
Central Railroad, and dashing on to the 
Chickahomioy. He succeeded in cutting Gen- 
eral Lee's communications, except around 



BATTLE op CHANPELLOR9VILI^.-JACKSOtrB CHASGFB. 



yf 



cavalry 
officer • 
29th ot 






\ 



St 

s. 









$^ 



^1 



TEE UNITED STATES.— TME CIVIL WAR. 



141 



irithin a few milee of lUchmoDd, aod on Uie 
8th of May recroBeed the Rappahannock in 
safety. To thie time also belongs the succesa- 
fal defense of Suffolk, on the Nansemond 
Hirer, by Qeneral Peck, againBt a siege con- 
ducted by General Longstreet The Con- 
federates retreated from the scene of action on 
the very day of the Union disaster at Chancel- 
loreville. 

Great was the elation of the Confederates 
on bCCOUDt of their BucceBses on the Rappahan- 
nock. General Lee now determined 
to carry the war into Maryland and 
PeDnsylvania. In the first week 
of June he threw forward his whole 
army, crossed the Potomac, and 
captured Hagerstown. On the 22d 
of the month he entered Cham- 
bereburg, and then pressed on 
through Carlisle, to within a few 
iniles of Harrisburg. The militia 
of Pennsylvania was hurriedly called 
oat, and thousands of Toluuteera 
came pouring in from other States. 
General Hooker, atill m command 
of the Army of the Potomac, 
pushed forward to confront his an- 
tagonist It was evident that a 
great and decisive battle was at 
- hand. General Lee rapidly con- 
centrated his forces near the vil- 
lageofGettysburg,capital of Adams 
County, Pennsylvania, while the 
Union Army was likewise gathered 
on the highlands beyond the town. 
On the very eve of battle the com- 
mand of the Army of tbe Poto- 
mac, and of all the Federal forces, 
was transferred from General 
Hooker to General George G. 
Ueade, who hastily drew up his army through 
the hill country in the direction of Gettys- 
burg. After two years of indecisive war- 
bre, it now seemed that the fate of the 
war, and perhaps of the American Republic 
itself, was to be staked on the issue of a single 
battle. 

On the morning of the 1st of July the 
Union advance, led by Generals Reynolds and 
Beauford, moving westward from Gettysburg, 
encountered the Confederate division of Gen- 
9ral A. P. Hill, coming upon tbe road from 



Hagerstewn, and tbe struggle began. In the 
afternoon both divisions were strongly rem* 
forced, and a severe battle was fought for the 
possession of Seminary Ridge. In this initial 
conflict the Confederates were victorious, and 
the Union line was forced from its position 
through the village and back to the hi^ 
grounds on the south. Here, at nightfall, a 
stand was made, and a new battle-line was 
formed, reaching from the eminence called 
Round Top, where the left wing of the Union 



army rested, around the crest of the ridges to 
Cemetery Hill, where the center was posted, 
and thence to Wolf Hill, on Rock Creek. 
The position was well chosen and strong, and 
the whole Union army, with the exception of 
Sedgwick's corps, was hurried forward into 
place during tbe night. The Confederate 
forces were likewise brought into position on 
Seminary Ridge and on the high grounds tf 
the left of Rock Creek, forming thus a semi- 
circle about five miles in extent. The cavalry 
of both armies hung upon the flanks, doing 



142 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TSE MODERN WORLD. 



eflTective service, but hardly participating in 
the main cooflicts of the center. 

On the morning of July 2d the battle nos 
begun by General Loogstreet on the Confed- 
erate right. Thftt commander moved forward 
with impetuosity, and fell upon the Union 
left, under General Sicklea. The struggle in 
this part of the 6eld was for the poesession of 
Great and Little Round Tops, and after t«rri- 
ble fighting, which lasted until six o'doclc in 
the evening, these strong positions remained in 



it waa found that, on the whole, tbe poiitioh 
of the two armies had not been materially 
changed by the conflict, although nearly forty 
thousand Union and Confederate dead and 
wounded already bore evidence of the porten- 
tous character of tbe battle. 

A general view of the field and of the sit- 
uation showed that the National forces were 
wiaely acting on the defensive. The Confed* 
erate army was making an invasion. It had 
come to a wall, and must break through or 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 



the hands of the Federals. lu the center the 
battle was also severe, lasting for the greater 
part of the day, hhiI being waged fur the raaa- 
tery of Cemetery Hill, which waa the key to 
the Federal position. Here, too, notwithstand- 
ing the desperate assaults of the Confederates, 
the integrity of the National line was pre- 
served till nightfall. On the Union right the 
Confederate onset was more successful, and 
that wing of the Federal army, under General 
Slocum, was somewhat shattered. But by ten 
o'clock at night, when the fighting had ceased. 



Buffer defeat The . burden of attack wax 
therefore upon Lee's army, and from this he 
did not flinch. In the darkness of night both 
Generals made strenuous preparations for the 
renewal of the struggle on the morrow ; but 
with the morning both seemed loath to begin. 
Doubtless both were well aware of the critical 
nature of the conflict. The whole nation, in- 
deed, discerned that the crisis of the Civil 
War had been reached, and that, perhaps, 
before sunset the issue would be decided foi 
or against the American Union. 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



143 



The whole forenoon of the 3d of July wajB 
^spent in preparations. There was little fight- 
ing, and that but desultory. At midday there 
was a lull along the whole line. Then burst 
forth the fiercest cannonade ever known on 
4he American Continent. Until after two 
o'clock the hills and surrounding country were 
ifihaken with the thunders of more than two 
hundred heavy guns. The Confederate artil- 
ierymen concentrated their fire on the Union 
•center, at Cemetery Hill, and this place became 
41 scene of indescribable uproar and death. The 
Union batteries, under direction of General 
Hunt, dr^w back beyond the crest, in order 
to cool the guns, and also for economy of am- 
munition. The consequent slacking of fire was 
•construed by the Confederates as dgnifying 
ihat their cannonade had been successful; and 
ihen came the crisis. The cannonade ceased. 
A Confederate column, numbering nearly 
twenty thousand, .and about three-fourths of 
■a mile in length, headed by the Virginians, under 
-General Pickett, moved forward for the final 
«nd desperate charge against the Union center. 
It was doubtless the finest military spectacle 
•ever witnessed west of the Atlantic ; but the 
onset was in vain, and the brave men who 
made it were mowed down with terrible 
slaughter. The head of the Confedei:ate col* 
nmn reached the Union line, but there sank 
into the earth. Then the whole was hurled 
back in ruin and rout. Victory hovered over 
ihe National army, and it only remained for 
Lee, with his broken legions, to turn back 
towards the Potomac. The entire Confeder- 
ate loss in this, the greatest battle of the war, 
was nearly thirty thousand ; that of the Fed- 
erals, in killed, wounded, and missing, twenty- 
three thousand one hundred and eighty-six. 
ft was strongly hoped by the Government that 
when the Confederate charge was broken and 
the retreat begun, General Meade would be 
able to spring forward from his position and 
perhaps complete the war by destroying the 
forces of his antagonist before they could re- 
oross the river; but the condition of the 
Union army would not permit of such a move- 
ment. General Lee accordingly withdrew his 
forces into Virginia, and the Federals took up 
their old position along the Potomac and the 
Bappahannock. Such were the more important 
military movements of 1863. 



Meanwhile, other difficulties had accumu- 
lated like mountains around the Administra^ 
tion. The war debt was piling up to infinity. 
At the time it was not so clearly seen as it was 
afterwards that the war must soon end or 
National bankruptcy ensue. The last call for 
volunteers had not been fully met, and there 
were not wanting those in portions of the 
North who purposely impeded the gathering 
of new forces. The anti-war party became 
more bold and open, and denounced the meas- 
ures of the Government. On the 3d of 
March, 1863, a Conbcbiftion Act was passed 
by Congress, and two months afterwards the 
President ordered a general draft of three 
hundred thousand men. All able-bodied citi- 
zens between the ages of twenty and forty-five 
were subject to the requisition. 

The measure furnished fuel for the fires 
which the anti-war party had kindled in the 
North. Bitter denunciations of the Govern- 
ment and its policy were heard in the Border 
States, and in some places the draft-ofiicen 
were forcibly resisted. On the 13th of July 
a serious crisis was reached in New York. A 
vast mob rose in arms in the city, demolished 
the buildings which were occupied by the 
Provost Marshals, burned the Colored Orphan 
Asylum, attacked the police, and killed about 
a hundred people, most of whom were negroes. 
For three days the authorities of the city were 
set at defiance. On the second day of the 
reign of terror, Governor Seymour arrived 
and addressed the mob in a mild-mannered 
way, promising that the draft should be sus- 
pended, and advising the rioters to disperse. 
But they gave little heed to his admonition, and 
went on with the work of destruction. Gen- 
eral Wool, commander of the military district 
of New York, then took the matter in hand; 
but even the troops at his disposal were at 
first unable to overawe the insurgents. Some 
volunteer regiments, however, came trooping 
home from Gettysburg. The Metropolitan 
Police Companies were compactly organized, 
and the insurrection was put down with a 
strong hand. The news of the fall of Vicka- 
burg and the defeat of Lee at Gettysburg 
threw a damper on these insurrectionary pro- 
ceedings, and acts of domestic violence ceased. 
Nevertheless, the anti-war spirit continued to 
express itself in parts of the North, and in 



J 



VHIVr.nSAL mSTOBY.—TBE MODERN WORLD. 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



145 



order to counteract it, the President, on the 
19th of August, issued a proclamation sus- 
pending the writ of habeas corpus throughout 
the Union. 

One of the lessons of the hour was the in- 
sufficiency of the conscription as a method of 
filling the Union army. That army was com- 
posed of volunteers who had espoused- the 
cause of the Government with a tolerably 
keen sense of the principles involved and a 
fervid patriotism for the flag of the Union. 
The introduction, into this great army, of re- 
cruits taken by the draft was a process quite 
foreign to the sentiments of the people. Only 
about fifty thousand men were added directly 
to the National forces by conscription. But 
in other respects the measure was salutary. 
It was seen that the Government would not 
scruple, in the la^t resort, to draw upon the 
human resources of the country by force. 
Volunteering was greatly quickened by the 
draft, and the plan of employing substitutes be- 
came generally prevalent in the last year ot the 
war. Such, however, were the terrible losses by 
battle and disease and the expiration of enlist- 
ments, that in October of 1863 the President 
was constrained to issue another call for three 
hundred thousand men. At the same time it 
was provided that any delinquency in meeting 
the demand would be supplied by a draft in 
the following January. By these active meas- 
ures the columns of the Union army were 
made more powerful than ever. With the 
approach of winter the disparity between the 
Union and Confederate forces began to be ap- 
parent to the whole world. In the armies of 
the South there were already symptoms of ex- 
haustion, and the most rigorous conscription 
was necessary to fill the thin, but still coura- 
geous, ranks of the Confederacy. It was on 
the 20th of June in this year that West Vir- 
ginia, separated from the Old Dominion, was 
organized and admitted as the thirty-fifth State 
of the Union. 

We come now to consider those movements 
by which the war was ended. The military 
operations of 1864 began, as in the previous 
year, in the West. In the beginning of Feb- 
ruary, General Sherman left Vicksburg with 
the purpose of destroying the railroad connec- 
tions of Eastern Mississippi. Marching off 
toward Alabama, he reached Meridian on the 



15th of the month, and tore up the tracks of 
the railways from Mobile to Corinth and from 
Vicksburg to Montgomery, for a distance of e 
hundred and fifty miles. Bridges were burned 
locomotives and cars destroyed, and vast quan- 
tities of cotton and corn given to the flames. 
General Sherman had expected the arrival at 
Meridian of a strong force of Federal cavalry, 
under command of General Smith, advancing 
from Memphis. The latter made his way into 
Mississippi, but was met, a hundred mile& 
north of Meridian, by the cavalry army of 
Forrest and driven back to Memphis. General 
Sherman, disappointed by this failure, retraced 
his course to Vicksburg, while Forrest con- 
tinued his raid northward into Tennessee, 
where, on the 24th of March, he occupied 
Union City. He then pressed on to Paducah^ 
Kentucky, where he assaulted Fort Anderson^ 
in the suburbs of the town, but was repulsed, 
with the loss of three hundred men. He 
then turned back into Tennessee, and came 
upon Fort Pillow, on the Mississippi, seventy 
miles above Memphis. This place was held 
by five hundred and sixty soldiers, about half 
of whom were Negroes. Forrest, having gained 
the outer defenses, demanded a surrender, but 
was refused. He then ordered an assault, and 
carried the fort by storm, in the course of 
which nearly all of the Negro soldiers were 
slaughtered. 

In the spring of 1864 occurred the Be<l 
River expedition, conducted by General Banks. 
The object of the movement was the capture 
of Shreveport, the seat of the Confederate 
Government of Louisiana. The plan em- 
braced the advance of a strong land force up 
Red River, to be supported by a fleet of gun- 
boats under command of Admiral Porter. 
The army was arranged in three divisions. 
The first, numbering ten thousand, advanced 
from Vicksburg, under command of General 
Smith; the second, led by General Banks in 
person, proceeded to New Orleans; while the 
third, under command of General Steele, set 
out from Little Rock. In the beginning of 
March, General Smith's division moved forward 
to Red River, and was joined by Porter with 
the fleet. On the 14th of the month, the 
advance reached Fort de Russy, which was 
taken by assault. The Confederates retreated 
up the river to Alexandria, and on the 16th 



146 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



that city was occupied by th« Federals. 
Tliree days af^rwards Natchitoches was occu- 
pied. But at this point the road was de- 
flected from the river, and further cooperatioD 
between the army and the gun-boats was im- 
possible. The flotilla proceeded up the stream 
toward Shreveport, and the land forces whirled 
off in a circuit to the left. 

Od the 8th of April, when the advauoe 
brigades were approaching the town of Mans- 
field, they were suddeuly attacked by "the 
Confederates in full fbice, aud advantageously 



difficulty that the flotilla descended th< rivei 
from the direction of Shreveport, for the Con- 
federates had now planted batteries on the 
banks. When the Federal retreat had pro- 
ceeded as far as Alesandria, the movement 
aras again checked by the low stage of the 
river. The waters had so receded that the 
gun-boata could not pass the rapids. The 
squadron was finally saved from its peril bj 
the skill of Colonel Bailey, of Wisconsin. He 
constructed a dam across the river, raising the 
water so that the vessels could be floated over. 



posted. A short and bloody battle took place, 
in which the Federals were completely routed. 
The victors made a vigorous pursuit as far as 
Fleusant Hill, where they were met, on the 
next day, by the main body of the Union 
army. A second and general engagement 
here ensued, iu which the Federals were only 
saved from a complete defeat by the hard 
fighting of the diviaioo of General Smith, who 
covered the retreat to the river. Nearly three 
thousand men, twenty pieces of artillery, and 
the supply trains ef the Federal array were 
lost in these disastrous battles. It was with 



It ON SED KIVER. 

The whole expedition broke to pieces, and re* 
turued as rapidly as possible to the Mississippi 
When General Steele, who had, in the mean- 
time, advanced from Little Rock toward Shreve- 
port, heard of the Federal defeats, he with- 
drew, after several severe encounters with the 
Confederates. To the National Government, 
the Red River expedition was a source of much 
shame and mortification. Geueral Banks waa 
relieved of his command, and General Canbf 
was appointed to succeed him. 

The time had now come when the evolu- 
tiun of military talent consequent upon the 



THE UNITED STATES.— TRE CIVIL WAR. 



147 



vftT reached its climax in the ascendency of 
Oeneral Ulysses S. Gntot. By degrees, 
through every kind of hardship and contu- 
mely, that commander had emerged from the 
obscurity which surrounded him at the begin- 
ning of die conflict, and stood forth, in silence 
and modesty unparalleled, as the leading figure 
of the times. After Vickaburg and Chatta- 
nooga, nothing could stay his progress to the 
«ommand-in-chief. Congress responded to the 
spirit of the country by reviving the high 
grade of LieuimantrQenenl, and conferring it 
on Grant. Thb brought with it the appoint- 
ment, by the President, on the 2d of March, 
1864, to the command-JD-chief of the land and 
naval forces of the 
United States. No fewer 
than seven hundred 
thousand Union soldiers 
were now to move at 
fais command. The first 
month after his appoint 
ment was spent in plaa- 
aing the great cam- 
paigns of the year. 
These were two in num- 
ber. The Army of the 
Potomac, under immedi- 
ate command of Meade 
and the General-io- 
«hief, was to advance 
npon Richmond, still de- 
fended by the army of 
Northern Virginia, un- 
der Lee. At the same ^^ 
time General Sherman, 
commanding tlie army at Chattanooga, now 
numbering a hundred thousand men, was to 
march against Atlanta. It was defended by the 
Confederates, under General Johnston. To 
these two great movements all other military 
operations were to be subordinated. Grant sent 
his orders to Sherman for the grand movement 
which was destined to end the war, and the 
1st of May, 1864, was fixed as the date of the 
advance. 

On the 7th of that month General Sher- 
man moved forward from Chattanooga. At 
Dalton he was confronted by the Confederate 
army, sixty thousand strung. After some 
manceuvering and fighting, he succeeded in 
turning Johnston's Sank, and obliged him to 



fall back to Besaca. Two hard-fought battle* 
occurred at this place, on the 14th and 15th 
of May, in which the Union army was vic- 
torious, and the Confederates obliged to re- 
treat by way of Calhoun and Kingston to 
Dallas. At the latter place, on the ^8th of the 
month, Johnston made a second stand. Ha 
intrenched himself and fought valiantly, bat 
was again outnumbered and outflanked, and 
compelled to fall back to Lost Mountain. 
From this positjon also he was forced, on the 
17th of June, after three days of desultory 
fighting. 

The next stand of the Confederates waa 
made on the Great and Little Keneeaw i&oaaU 



ains. From this line, on the 23d of June, the 
division of General Hood made a fierce attach 
on the Union center, but was Tepulsed with 
heavy losses. Five days afterwards General 
Sherman attempted to carry Kenesaw by 
storm. The assault was made with great au- 
dacity, but ended in a dreadful repulse and a 
loss of nearly three thousand men, Sherman, 
undismayed hy his reverse, then resumed his 
former tactics, outflanked his antagonist, and 
on the 3d of July compelled him to retreat 
acroM the Chattahoochee. By the 10th of the 
month the whole Confederate army had been 
forced back within the defenses of Atlanta. 

A siege immediately ensued. Atlanta waa 
a place of the greatest importance to the Con- 



148 



VmVERSAL mSTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



fedeney. Here were located the machine- 
shope, foaDdries, car-works and d6p6t8 of Bup- 
fdies, apoa the possessiun of which so much 
depended. The Confederate Goperament had, 
in the meantime, become diBBatiefied with the 
military policy of General Joseph E, Johnston. 
Tliat cautious and skillful commander had 
adopted the plan of falling back before the 
superior forces of Sherman, of contracting his 
lines, and of maintaining, by a sort of Fabian 
polkf, the destinies of the campaign. But 



this method waa not pleasing to the authorities 
at Richmond, and when Atlanta was besieged 
Johnston was superseded by the rash but danng 
General J. B. Hood. It was the policy of 
the latter to fight at whatever hazard. On 
the 20th, 22d, and 28th of July, he made three 
desperate assaults on the Uuion lines around 
Atlanta; but was repulsed in each engagement 
with dreadful losses. It was in the beginning 
•f the second of these battles that the brave 
GeDeral James B, McPherson, the bosom 



friend of Generals Grant and Sherman, and 
the pride of the Union army, was killed while 
reconnoitering the Confederate lines. In the 
three conflicts just referred to, the Confederates 
lost more men than Johnston had loet in all 
his masterly retreating and fightittg between 
Chattanooga and Atlanta. 

The si^e of the latter city was now pressed 
with great vigor. Sherman tightened his grip 
from day to day. At last, by an incautioua 
movement, Hood separated his .army; the 
Union commander thmst a column 
between the two divisions, and tfae 
immediate evacuation of Atlanta 
followed. On the 2d of Beptem- 
ber, Sherman's army marehed into 
the captured city. Since leaving 
Chattanooga, the Federals had 
lost in killed, wounded, and miss- 
ing fully thirty thousand men, 
and the Confederate losses were 
even greater. By retiring from 
Atlanta, however. Hood, though 
be lost the city, saved his array. 
He now formed the plan of 
striking boldly northward into . 
Tennessee, with the hope of com- 
pelling Sherman to evacuate 
Georgia. But the latter bad 
DO notion of losing his vantage 
ground, and after following Hood 
north of the Chattahoochee, he 
turned back to Atlanta. 

Hood swept on through Korth- 
em Alabama, crossed the Tenner 
see Kiver at Florence, and ad- 
vanced on Hashville. General 
Thomas, with the Arm^ of the 
Cumberland, had in the meantime 
been detached fhim Sherman's 
army and sent northward to con- 
front Hood. General Schofield, who com- 
manded the Federal forees in the southern 
part of the State, fell back before the 
Confederates and took post at Franklin, 
eighteen miles south of Nashville. Here, 
on the 30th of November, he was attacked 
by Hood, whom, after a hard-fought battle, 
he held in check until nightfall, when he 
escaped across the river and retreated within 
the defenses of Nashville. At the latter place, 
General Thomas rapidly concentrated his 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



149 



forces. A Hdc of iutreDcbmeDts was drawn 
around the city on the south. Hood came on, 
Goofident of victory, and prepared to begin 
the siege by blockading the Cumberland; but 
before the work was foirly begun, General 
llionias, on the 15th of December, moved 
oat from his works, fell upon the Confederate 
army, and routed it, with a loss of killed, 
wounded, and prisoners of fully twenty-five 
thousand men. For many days of freezing 
veather. Hood's shattered and disorganized 
oolumoB were pursued until at last the rem- 
nant found refuge in Alabama. The Confed- 
erate army was ruined, and the rash general 
who had led it to deetruo* 
lion was relieved of hie 
command. 

On the I4th of No- 
vember, General Sher- 
man burned Atlanta, and 
began faie famous Masch 
TO THE Sea. His army 
of veterans numbered 
azty thousand men. Be- 
lieving that Hood's army 
would be destroyed in 
Tennessee, and knowing 
that no Confederate force 
oould withstand him in 
froat, he cut his commu- 
nicaticna with the North, 
abandoned his base of 
supplies, and struck out 
boldly for the sea-coast, 
more than two hundred 
and fifty miles away. 

Neither Sherman himself nor General Grant 
bad any definite plan as to the terminus of the 
campaign; but the one bad self-reliance, and 
the other was calmly confident of the result. 
The country also had come to know its leaders 
and to trust them in every hazard. When Sher- 
man left Atlanta, and was lost to sight in the 
forests of Georgia, he was followed by the un- 
wavering faith of the Nation. 

As had been foreseen, the Confederates 
could ofler no successful resistance to his prog- 
ress. The Union army swept on through 
Macon and Milledgeville ; reached the Ogee- 
chee, and crossed in safety; captured Gibson 
«nd Waynesborough ; and on the lOth of 
~ r arrived in the vicinity of Savannah. 



On the 13tb, Fort McAllister, bdow the city, 
was carried by storm by the division of Gen- 
eral Hazen. On the night of the 20th Gen- 
eral Hardee, the Confederate commandant, es- 
caped from Savannah with fifteen thousand men, 
and retreated to Charleston. On the following 
morning the National advance entered, and on 
the '.^2d General Shermau made his head-quar- 
ters in Savannah. On his march from Atlanta he 
had lost only five hundred and sixty-seven men. 
The month of January, 1865, was spent 
by the Union army in the city. On the let 
of February, General Sherman, having garri- 
soned the place, began his march 



Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. TVi 
the Confederates the further progress of the 
invasion through the swamps and morasses of 
the State had seemed imposaible. Now that 
the veteran legions were again in motion, 
alarm and terror pervaded the country. 
Governor Magrath had already summoned to 
the field every white man in the State be- 
tween the ages of sixteen and sixty; but 
the requisition was comparatively ineffectual. 
Nevertheless, the Confederates formed a line 
of defense along the Salkehatchie, and pre- 
pared to dispute Sherman's march northward. 
It was all in vain. The passages of the river 
were forced, and on the Iltb of the montb 
the Confederate lines of communication be> 



150 



UNIVERSAL 'HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



tween Charleston and Augusta were cut o£ 
Oo the next daj Orangeburg was taken by 
the Seventeenth Corps. On the 14th the 
fords and bridges of the Congaree were car* 
ried, and the State road opened in the direc- 
tion of Columbia. Several divisions pressed 
rapidly forward; bridges were thrown across 
the Broad and Saluda Rivers, and the capital 
lay at the mercy of the conquerors. On the 
morning of the 17th Mayor Goodwin and a 
committee of the Common Council came out 
in carriages, and the city was formally sur- 
rendered. 

As soon as it became certain that Columbia 
must fall into the hands of the Federals, Gen- 
eral Hardee, commandant of Charleston, deter- 
mined to abandon that city also, and to join 
Generals Beauregard and Johnston in North 
Carolina. Accordingly, on the day of the 
capture o^ the capital, guards were detailed 
to destroy all the warehouses, stores of cotton, 
and dep6tfi of supplies in Charleston. The 
torch was applied, the flames raged, and con- 
atemation spread throughout the city. The 
great d6p5t of the North-western Bailway, 
where a large quantity of powder was stored, 
caught fire, blew up with terrific violence, and 
buried two hundred people in the ruins. Not 
until four squares in the best part of the city 
were laid in ashes, was the conflagration 
checked. During the same night. General 
Hardee, with his fourteen thousand troops, es- 
caped from desolated Charleston, and made 
bis way northward. On the morning of the 
18th the news was borne to the National 
forces of James and Morris Islands. In the 
forenoon the Stars and Stripes were again 
raised over Ports Sumter, Ripley, and Pinck- 
ney. Mayor Macbeth surrendered the city to 
a company which was sent up from Morris 
Island. The work of saving whatever might 
be rescued from the flames was at once begun, 
the citizens and Federal si^ldiers working to- 
gether. By strenuous exertions, the principal 
arsenal was saved; a (l^p6t of rice was also 
preserved, and its contents distributed to the 
poor. Colonel Stewart L. Woodford, of New 
York, was appointed military Governor of the 
city; and relations more friendly than might 
have been expected were soon established be- 
tween the soldiery and the people. 

Columbia was, next after Atlanta, the 



great arsenal of the Confederacy. Here were> 
the machine-shops and foundries so necesslbry 
to the South in the prosecution of the war. 
Sherman gave orders for the destruction of all 
public property, and then immediately re- 
newed his march northward. The course of 
the Union army now lay towards Charlotte, 
North Carolina. The National forces swept 
on without opposition as far as Winnsborough, 
where a junction was effected with the Twen- 
tieth Corps, under Slocum. Crossing the- 
Great Pedee at Cheraw, Sherman pressed cut 
towards Fayetteville, where he arrived with- 
out serious hinderance, and on the 11th of 
March took possession of the town. 

Meanwhile, on the 8th of the month, an 
exciting episode of the campaign had beea 
supplied by a dashing battle between Gen* 
erals Hampton's and Kilpatrick's cavafarj 
forces. To Hampton had been aseigned th^ 
duty of defending the rear of Hardee's col* 
umn on the retreat from Charleston. Resolv* 
ing to intercept him, Kilpatrick cut througk 
the Confederate lines. But the next morn- 
ing the Union ofiScer was surprised in hi» 
quarters, attacked and routed, himself barely 
escaping on foot into a swamp. Here, how- 
ever, he suddenly raUied his forces, turned on 
the Confederates, and scattered them in a 
brilliant charge. Hampton alsi; made a rally 
and returned to the onset But Kilpatrick 
held hb ground, until he was reinforced by a 
division of the Twentieth Corps under General 
Mitchell, when the Confederates were Anally 
driven back. Kilpatrick then conducted hia 
forces, without further molestation, to. Fayette- 
ville, where the other divisions of Sherman's 
army had already arrived. 

After t)je overthrow of Hood, in Tennessee, 
General Johnston had at length been recalled 
to the command of the Confederate forces. 
His influence on the destinies of the campaign 
now began to be felt in front of Sherman. 
The advance of the Union army was rendered 
more difficult by the vigilance of the Confed- 
erate General. At Averasborough, on Cape 
Fear River, a short distance north of Fayette 
ville, General Hardee made a stand, but was 
repulsed with considerable loss. On the 19tk 
of March, when Sherman was incautiously 
approaching Ben ton ville, the advance waie 
furiously assailed by the Confederates, ami 



THE UNITED STATES.-~THE CIVIL WAR. 



151 



the UdIoq urmy, after all its batUea and vic- 
tories, seemed for awhile in danger of defeat. 
But the brilliant fighting of the division of 
General Jefferson C. Davis saved the day. 



the end of the great march, and here General 

Sberman met bis antogooiBt, and entered into 
negotiations, not only for the surrender of the 
Confederate army, but also — and most unfor* 



and two days afterwards Sherman entered 
Goldsborough unopposed. Here he was joined 
by a strong column from New Berne, under 
General Schofield, and another from Wilming- 
ton, under General Terry. The Federal 
anny now turned to the north-west, and on 
the 13th of April entered Raleigh. This was 



nooga to Atlanta, from Atlanta to Savannah, 
from Savannah to Columbia, Irom Colombia 
to the final scene at Raleigh, While these 
decisive events were taking place, the famous 
cavalry raid of General Stonemaa was in 
progress. About the middle of March, he set 
out from Knoxville, at the head of six thou- 
sand men. The expedition crossed the mount- 



152 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



(udb; Wilkeeboroagh was captured, and Btone- 
man forced his way acrue^ the Yadkio, at 
Joaesville. It had been the plan of the cam- 
paign that the Union cavalry should make a 
diverdon in favor of Sherman, by penetrfitiag 
the western districts of South Carolina. But that 
commander, by the celerity of his movements, 
bad already reached Goldeborongh, in the North 
State, and was in no need of Stonemau's help. 
The movement of the latter, therefore, became 
an independent expedition, the general object 
being the destruction of public property, the 
capture of Confederate stores, and the (earing 
up of railways. 

Taming to the North, the Union troopers 



now traversed the western end of North Caro> 
lina, and entered Carroll County, Virginia. 
At Wytheville the railway was torn up, and 
then the whole line was destroyed from the 
bridge over New River to within four miles of 
Lynchburg. Christiansburg was captured, and 
the track of the railway obliterated for ninety 
miles. The expedition next turned to Jack- 
BOQville; thence southward; and then struck 
aud destroyed the North Carolina Railroad 
between Danville and Greensboro ugh. The 
track in the direction of Salisbury was torn up, 
and the factories at Salem burned. At Salisbury 
was located one of the great Confederate pris- 
ODi for captured soldiers. It bad been the aim 



of Stoneman to overpower the Confederataa 
and liberate the prisoners ; but the latter were 
removed before the arrival of the Union cav- 
alry. The town, however, was captured, and 
a vast store of ammunition, arms, provisiooB, 
clothing, and cotton fell into the hands of the 
raiders. 

On the 19th of April, a division of Htone- 
man's force, under Major Moderwell, reached 
the great bridge by which the South Caro- 
lina Railway crosses the Catawba River. 
This magnificent structure, eleven hundred 
and fifty feet in length, was set on fire and 
completely destroyed. After a fight with Fur- 
geson's Confederate cavalry, the Federals 
turned back to Dallas, where all the divisiona 
were concentrated, and the raid was at an end. 
During the progress of the expedition, ax 
thousand prisoners, forty-six pieces of artillery, 
and immense quantities of small arms had 
&]]en into the hands of Stoneman's men. The 
amount of property destroyed, and the damage 
otherwise done to the tottering Confederacy, 
could not be estimated. 

Greater stilt in importance were the events 
which had occurred on the Gulf and the At. 
lantic coast. In the beginning of August, 
1864, Admiral David Q. Farragut bore down 
with a powerful squadron upon the defense* 
of Mobile. The entrance to the harbor of that 
city was commanded, on the left, by Fort 
Gunes, and on the right by Fort Morgan. 
The harbor itaelf was defended by a Confed- 
erate fleet and the monster iron-clad ram Te» 
neasee. On the 5th of August, Farragut pre- ~ 
pared for battle, and ran past the forts into 
the harbor. In order to direct the movements 
of bis vessels, the old Admiral mounted to 
the maintop of his flagship, the Hartford, 
where he was lashed to the rigging. From 
that high perch he gave his commands during 
the battle. One of the Union ships struck a 
torpedo and went to the bottom. The rest 
attacked and dispersed the Confederate squad- 
ron ; but just as the day seemed won, the terrible 
Tennesiee came down at full speed to strike 
and sink the Hartford. The latter avoided the 
blow, and then followed one of the fiercest 
conflicts of the war. The Union iron-clads 
closed around their black antagonist, and bat- 
tered her with their beaks and fifleen-inoh 
bolts of iron, until she surrendered. Two daya 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



153 



afterwards Fort Gaines was taken, and on the 
1i3d of the month, Fort Morgan was obliged 
to capitulate. The port of Mobile was thus 
efTectuallj sealed up to the Confederates. 

Not less important to the Union cause was 
the capture of Fort Fisher. This powerful 
fortress commanded the entrance to Cape Fear 
River and Wilmington — the last sea-port held 
by the Confederate States. In December, 1864, 
Admiral Porter was sent, with the most pow- 
•erful American squadron ever afloat, to be- 
siege and take the fort. General Butler, with 
^ force of six thousand five hnndred men, 
accompanied the expedition. 

The armament came before Fort Fisher, 
and on the day before Christmas began a bom- 
bardment. Troops were sent ashore to carry 
the works by storm. But when General 
Weitzel, who led the column, came near enough 
to the fort to reconnoiter, he decided that an 
assault could only end in the destruction of 
his army. General Butler also came to the 
same conclusion, and the enterprise was aban- 
doned. Admiral Porter, however, remained 
before the fort with his fleet, while the land 
, forces, under Butler, returned to Fortress 
Monroe. The outcome of the expedition was 
humiliating to the National authorities, and 
€arly in January ihe same troops were sent back 
to Wilmington, under General Terry. The 
siege was at once renewed by the combined 
army and fleet, and on the 15th of the month 
Port Fisher was carried by storm. It was 
the last sea-port held by the Confederates, and 
their outlet to the sea was thus forever closed, 

The control of Albemarle Sound had been 
obtained in the previous October. The work 
was accomplished by a daring exploit of Lieu- 
tenant Cushing, of the Federal navy. The 
Bound was at the time commanded by the 
tremendous Confederate iron ram, called the 
Albemarle, Cushing undertook to destroy the 
dreaded vessel. With a number of daring vol- 
unteers he embarked on a small steamer, and 
on the night of the 27th of Ocf^ber entered 
the Roanoke. The ram lay at the harbor of 
Plymouth. The approach was made with 
great difficulty. Cushing, however, managed 
to get alongside, and with his own hands sank 
a terrible torpedo under the Confederate ship, 
exploded it, and left the ram a ruin. The 

brave adventure cost the lives or capture of 
N.— Vol. 4— iQ 



all of Cushing's party, except himself and on« 
other who escaped. A few days afterwards 
the town of Plymouth was captured by the 
Federal troops. 

During the progress of the war the com- 
merce of the United States had suffered dread- 
fully from the attacks of Confederate cruisers. 
As early as 1861 the Confederate Congress 
had authorized privateers to prey upon the 
commerce of the United States. But since 
the independence of the Confederacy was not 
acknowledged, neutral nations would not per 
mit privateers to bring their prizes into port 
The act authorizing the work was therefore of 
little direct benefit to the Confederacy, bat 
of great injury to the United States. 

The first Confederate ship sent out was the 
Savannahf which was captured on the same 
day that she escaped from Charleston. In 
June of 1861 the SunUery commanded by 
Captain Raphael Semmes, ran the blockade at 
New Orleans, and for seven months wrought 
havoc with the Union merchantmen on the 
high seas. But in February of 1862, Semmes 
was chased into the harbor of Gibraltar, where 
he was obliged to sell his vessel and discharge 
his crew. In the previous October the Con- 
federate ship Nashville ran out from Charles- 
ton, went to England and returned with a 
cargo worth 83.000,000. In March of 1868, 
she was sunk by a Union iron-clad in the 
mouth of the Savannah Biver. 

In course of time the coast of the South- 
ern States was so completely blockaded that 
Confederate war-vessels could no longer be 
sent abroad. Another plan, therefore, had 
to be adopted to maintain the Confederate 
cruisers. In the emergency, the emissaries 
of the South sought the ship-yards of Great 
Britain, and from that vantage-ground began 
to build and equip their privateers. In spite 
of all remonstrances, the British Government 
o^nnived at this proceeding, and here was laid 
the foundations of that difficulty which was 
destined to cost the treasury of England 
$15,000,000. It was in the harbor of Liver- 
pool that the privateer Florida was fitted out. 
Sailing from thence, in the summer of 1862, 
she succeeded in running into Mobile Bay. 
Escaping from that port in the foUowing Jan- 
uary, she destroyed fifteen Union merchant- 
men; was then captured in the harbor of 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THK HODERS WORLD. 



154 

Bafaia, Brazil, and was brought into Hampton 
Boada, where, by an accidental collision, she 
wtis Bent to tlie buttom. Meanwhile, the 
fftorgia, the OlvMfe, the Shenandoah, and 
Ihe Qiickamauga, all built at tbe ship-yards of 
'Glas^w, Scotland, escaped to sea, and made 
great havoc with the merchant-ships of the 
United States. When Fort Fisher was cap- 
tured, the Chiekamauga and another ship called 
the TalltQuutee, were blown up by the Confed- 
^ntei. The Georgia was captured in 1863, 



I States, she never once entered a Confederat* 
I port, but continued on the high sea, capturing 
I and burning. 

j Early in the summer of 1864, Senime» 
I sailed into the harbor of Cherbourg, France, 
i and was followed thither by Captain John A.' 
I Winslow, commander of the steamer Kearmrge, 

The French Government gave orders to 
I Semmes to leave the port, and on the 19th c^ 

June he sailed out to give his antagoniit- 
' battle. Seven miles from the shore, the tv» 



DESTRUCTION OF THE ALBEMARLE. 



«nd &e Shenandoah continued abroad until 
the clote of the war. 

But by fer the most destructive of all the 
Confederate vessels was the famous Alabama, 
built at Liverpool. Her commander was 
Captain Semmes, the same who had cruised in 
the Smifer. A majority of the crew of the 
Alabama were British subjects. Her arma- 
ment was entirely British, and whenever occa- 
sion required, the British dag was carried. In 
her whole career, involving the destruction of 
rixty-six vessels, and a loss of ten million 
dollars to the merchant-service of the United 



ships closed for the death struggle, and after ■ 
desperate battle of an houi^s duration, the 
Ali^ma was shattered and sunk. Scmmm 
and a part of his officers and crew were picked 
up by the English yacht Deerhoimd, which had 
come out from the harbor to witness the bat 
tie, were carried to Southampton, and set at 
liberty. 

We have now considered the military 
movements of 1864-65, in all parts of the 
field except at the center. We turn, then, to 
the critical and Rnal campaigns of the Army 
of the Potomac, and of those divisions of tjw 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 155 



National forces immediatelj associated there- 
with. After the great battle of Gettysburg, 
the shattered Confederate columns underGen- 
eral Leewere withdrawn into the Shenandoah 
Valley. He was followed by the Union cav- 
alry nnder. the command of General Gregg, 
who pressed after the Confederates, and at 
Shepherdstown gained some advantage over 
the division of General Fitzhugh Lee. Gen- 
eral Meade himself, with the main body of the 
Army of the Potomac, 
entered Virginia near 
Berlin, and moved for- 
ward through Lovetts- 
villetoWarrenton. The 
Blue Ridge was thus 
again interposed be- 
tween thetwoarmies. It 
was the hope of Meade to 
preoccupy and hold the 
passes of the moun tains, 
and to strike his antag- 
onist a fatal blow when 
he should attempt tore- 
turn to liicbmond. But 
Lee's movements were 
marked with his usual 
caution and sagacity. 
He first made a feint 
of crowding his army 
through Manassas Gap, 
and succeeded in draw- 
ing thither the bulk of 
the Federal forces to 
contest the passage. He 
then, by a rapid march 
southward, gained 
Front Royal and Chest- 
er Gap, swept through 
the pass, and reached 
Culpeper in safety. 
General Meade, sorely 'the man on hobseback. 

disappointed in his expectations of a battle, 
advanced his army and took up a position on 
the Rappahannock. 

A lull now ensued from July to September. 



aid of Bragg, who was hard pressed by Rose- 
crans in Tennessee. Perceiving that his an- 
tagonist was weakened, General Meade crossed 
the Rappahannock, pressed Lee back to the 
south bank of the Kapidan, and himself occu- 
pied Culpeper. Soon, however, Howard's 
and Slocum's corps were withdrawn from the 
Army of the Potomac, and Meade, in his tarn, 
was obliged to act on the defensive. But his 
ranks were rapidly filled with reinforcements. 



and by the middle of October be was again: 
strong enough to move forward. Lee had al- 
ready assumed the offensive, and, by skillful 
movements, had succeeded in throwing his 



Both the Union and Confederate armies were I army on the Union flank. Then began the 
much weakened by the withdrawal of large old race for the Potomac, and in that the Fed- 
numbers of troops to take part in thestruggles,erals were successful. Meade reached Bristow 
of the South-west. From Lee's army Long- Station in safety, and took up a strong posi- 
etreet's whole corps had been detached for the | tion on the Heights of Centerville. Lee, in 



156 



UNIVEESAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



turn, fell back, and the two armkfl at last 
came to rest for the winter, the one at Cul- 
peper, and the other on the upper Bappa- 
hanuock. 

In the following spring no movement took 
place in this part of the field until the arrival 
ol General Grant as Commander-in-chief. 
He took his station at the head of the Army 
of tlte Potomac ; but retained General Meade 
in immediate commaod. The campaign which 
now ensued was one of the most memorable iu 
history, and the story thereof has been reserved 



in-chief, were to begin the final struggle witb 
the veterans of Lee. 

On the first day of the advance. Grant 
crossed the Bapidan and entered the Wilder- 
ness. It was a country of oak-woods and 
thickets, west of Chaucelloreville. The Union 
army was immediately confronted and attacked 
by the Coufederalea. Through the 5th, 6th, 
aud 7th of May the fighting contiuued incea- 
Bantly, with terrible losses on both sides; but 
the results were indecisive- Jjee retired within 
his intrenchment, and Grant made a flank 



BATTLE OF SPOrraVLVAKIA CODRT-HO08K. 



for the closing narrative of the war. The 
forward movement of the Army of the Poto- 
mac was coincident with the advance of Sher- 
man in the West. From the 1st of May, 
1864, the Union anaconda began to tighten in 
folds ever more rignrons around the breaking 
body of the Confederacy. On the 3d of the 
month, the National camp at Culpeper 
was broken up, and the march on Richmond 
was begun. In three successive summers the 
Union army had been beaten back from that 
metropolis of the Confederacy. Now a hundred 
and forty thousand men, led by the General- 



movement on the left in the direction of 
Spottsylvania Court House. Here followed, 
from the morning of the 9th to the night of 
the I2th, one of the bloodiest struggles of the 
war. The Federals gained some ground, and 
the division of General Johnson was captured. 
But the losses of Lee, who fought on the de- 
fensive, were less dreadfiil than those of his 
antagonist. 

Meanwhile General Grant bad detached 
Sheridan from the Army of the Potomac, and 
sent him on a cavalry raid around the left 
flank of Lee's army, and against Richmond. 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



157 



The movemeDt was executed with all the 
. celerity and zeal for which Sheridan had now 
become famous. After crossing the North 
Anna he succeeded in retaking from the Cchi- 
federates a large detachment of Union prison- 
en. On the 10th of Ma^ he was confronted 
at a place on Yellow Tavem hy the command 
of Creneral J. E. B. Stuart, and a fiery cav- 
alry battle ensued, in which the Confederates 
were defeated with considerable loeses, includ- 
ing General Stuart himself, who was mortally 
wounded on the field. 

Afler Spottsylvania, Grant moved on to 
the left, cro»ed the Pamunkey to Hanovei^ 
town, and came to a place called Cold Harbor, 
twelve miles oorth-eaat of Richmond. Here, 
on the 1st of June, he 
made an attack on the 
Confederate linee, but 
waa repulsed with heavy 
loesea. On the morning 
of the 3d the assault 
was renewed, and in the 
brief space of a half 
hour nearly ten thou- 
sand Union soldiers fell 
dead or wounded be- 
fore the Confederate in- 
trendunento. The re- 
pulse of the Federals 
was complete, hut they 
bdd their lioes as firmly 
as ever.' 

Since the beginning 
of the campaign the 
loBsee of the Army of 
the Potomac, including the corps of Bum«de, 
had reached the enormous a^regate of sixty 
thousand. During the same period the Con- 
federatea had lost in killed, wounded, and 
prisoners about thirty-five thousand men. 

Whether or not General Grant conceded 
at this time the impossibility or, at least, the 
impracticability of taking Richmond by direct 
advance and assault from the north, may not 
be well determined. At any rate he decided 

' General Grant, in his Memoin, says: "I have 
always regretted that the last assanlt at Cold 
Harbor wss ever made. . . . No advantage 
whatever was gained to compensate tor the heavy 
loes we sustained. Indeed, the advantages, other 
than those of relative losses, were on the Confed* 
•rate cdde." 



.to change his base of supplies to James River, 
with a view te the capture of Petersburg and 
the conquest of Richmond from the south-east. 
General Butler had already moved his 
strong division from Fortress Monroe, and on 
the 5th of May had taken Bermuda Hun- 
dred and City Point, at the mouth of the Ap> 
pomattex. Advancing against Petersburg, he 
was met on the 16th by the corps of General 
Beauregard, and driven back to his position at 
Bermuda Hundred, where he was obliged to 
intrench himself and act on the defensive. On 
the 15th of June, General Grant, then en- 
g^ed in his change of base, brought his 
whole army into junction with Butler, and the 
combined forces moved against Petersburg. 



On the 17th and 18th, several assaults were 
made on the Confederate intrenchmenta, but 
the works were too strong to be parried in that 
manner. Lee's army was hurried into the 
defenses, and by the close of June, Peters- 
burg was regularly invested for a siege. 

A branch campaign bad, in the meantime, 
been under way in the Shenandoah Valley. 
On moving f<)rward from the Rapidau, Gen- 
eral Grant had despatehed Sigel up the valley 
with a force „ eight thousand men. On the 
15th of May, while the latter was advancing 
southward, he was met at New Market, Gflj 
miles above Winchester, by an array of Cos* 
federate cavalry, under General Breckinridge. 
The Union force was attacked and routed, and 



158 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



the cotumand of the flying diTimona was traos- 
ferred to General Hunter. Breckio ridge, be- 
lieving himself completely victorious ia the val- 
ley, returned to Richmond, whereupon, Hunter 
laced about towards Lynchburg, came upon 
the Confederates at Piedmont, and gained a 
signal victory. From this place he pressed 
forward with his own troope and the cavalry 
force of General Averill, against Lynchburg; 
'nit finding himself in peril, he was obliged to 



fetreat across the mountains into West Virginia. 
He valley was thus again exposed to a Con- 
federate invasion from the east. 

Lee, now hard pressed at Pclersbuf^, im- 
mediately despatched General Early, with 
orders to cross the Blue Rid(;e, sweep down 
the valley, invade Maryland, and threaten 
Washington City. Thus would the Con- 
federate General compel Grant to loosen 
his grip on Petersburg, in order to save the 
National Capital. But the menace could no 



longer avail. The ntuation, however, wat 
suf&cientiy alarming. Early, with a force of 
twenty thousand men, continued his course 
northward, and on the 5th of July, crossed ' 
the Potomac Four days afl'irward he met 
the divisioD of General Lewis Wallace, on the 
Monocacy, and drove him back with serioua 
lossea. But the check, given to the Confed 
erates, by the valor of Wallace and his com- 
mand, saved Washington and Baltimore from 
capture. Early dashed up witliia 
gunshot of these cities, then oi^ 
dered a retreat, and on the 12Ui 
of the month, led back his foroea 
acrtMB the Potomac, with vast 
qu an tides of plunder. 

General Wright, who was now 
put in command of the forces in 
Tie valley, set out in pursuit of 
Early, and followed him as fax 
as Winchester. There, on the 
24th of July, he struck the Con- 
federate rear, and gained a par- 
tial victory. But Early wheeled 
upon bis antagonist, and the 
Union troops were in turn driven 
back across the Potomac. Fol- 
lowing up bis advantage, the 
Confederate General prened on 
into Pennsylvania, burned Cham- 
hersburg, and returned into the 
valley laden with spoils. 

General Grant was great! j 
annoyed with these vezatJona 
raids, and was for a while per- 
plexed to know how he should 
end them. At length, :n the 
b^inning of August, he consot 
idated the forces on the upper 
Potomac into a single army, 
and gave the command to 
General Philip H. Sheridan. It was the 
destiny of this young and brilliant officer to 
rise grandly above the chaos of the last year 
of the war, and to contribute greatly, by his 
military genius, to the final success of the 
Union cause. The troops now placed under 
bis command numbered nearly forty thousand, 
and with these he at once moved up the 
valley. 

It was on the 19th of September that Sher 
idan came upon Early's army at Winchester. 



THE UNITED STATES.— TBE CIVIL WAR. 



15t» 



Here a hard-fought hattle ensued, and the 
<bnfederateB were deciaivelj defeated. Fol- 
lowing up his advantage, the Union General 
« second time overtook his antagonist, and on 
4he 22d of the month, again routed him at 
Fisher's Hill, The assault, in (his instance, 
was made upon the Confederates in an in- 
trenched posidon, and the Union victory was 
-complete. Then came one of the saddest 
«pisode8 of the war, in which t^e fruitful 
Shenandoah Valley, one of the few remaining 
«tore-houBes of the Confederacy, was utterly 
nvaged. The Commander-in-chief had given 
4^eridan orders to spare nothing from deatruc- 
tion that might any longer furnish the means 
«f subsistence to the enemy. The ruinous 
work was fearfully well done, and what with 
inch, and axe, and 
«word, there wasnoth- 
-fog left between the 
Koe Kdge and the 
AUegheniee worth 
fighting for. Mad- 
^ned by this destruo- 
^n, and BtuDg by his 
defeats, the veteran 
Early now rallied his 
forces, gathered what 
reinforcements h e 
■eould, and once more 
entered the valley. 
'Sheridan had in the 
meantime set his 
«rmy in a strong pori> 

tion on Cedar Creek, ashort distance from Stras- 
harg, and feeling secure in the situation, had 
^ne to Washington. Early had now every- 
-thing to gain, and the opportunity seemed to 
ofier. On the morning of the I9th of October 
he cautiously approached the Union camp, sur- 
{irised, burst in, carried the position, captured 
the artillery, and sent the routed troops in 
-conlbsion towards Winchester, The victors 
fursued as far aa Af iddletown ; then believing 
themselves completely triumphant, paused to 
■«at and rest Meanwhile, on the previous 
night, Shendnn bad returned to Winchester, 
■and was, at the lime of the rout of his army, 
on his way from that place to the front. 
While riding forward, he heard the sound of 
-tnttle, spurred on for twelve miles at fu!^ 
-•peed, met the panic-struck Amittvea, rallied 



them at his call, renewed their inspiration by 
bis presence, turned upon the astonished Con- 
federates, and gained one of the most signal 
victories of the war. Early's army was dis- 
organized and ruined. It was the end of strife 
in the valley of the Shenandoah. 

Having thus cleared the horizon of Vir 
ginia, and full of conGdence in the success of 
Sherman's great expedition to the sea, Grant 
now sat sternly down to the* in vestment of Pe- 
tersburg. All fall and winter long the siege 
was pressed with varying success. As early 
aS the 30th of July an attempt had been 
made to carry the place by storm. A mine 
was exploded under one of the forts, and an 
assaulting column sprang forward to gain the 
defenses. The attack, however, was repulsed, 



with serious losses. Then the siege went 
steadily forward until the 18th of August, 
when a division of the Union army seized the 
Weldon Railroad. The Ci^n federates made 
several desperate assaults, in the hope of gain- 
ing their lost ground; but they were beaten 
in their struggles, each army losing thousands 
of men. On the 28th of September, the Fed- 
erals stormed Battery Harrison, on the right 
hank of the James, and the next day General 
Paine's brigade of colored soldiers carried a 
powerful redoubt on Spring Hill. The 27th 
of October witnessed a bloody battle on the 
Boydton road, south of Petersburg. Then the 
Union army went into quarters for the winter. 
The aggressive struggle was not renewed 
until the close of February. On the 27th ol 
that month, General Sheridan, who had ifltiied 



160 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TEE MODERN WORLD. 



from tbe Shenandoah Valley, came upoD the | assault along the whole Hoe in front of Petere- 

fon;ee of Oeoeral Early at Wayneaborough, burg, and the works were carried. The rim 

defeated them, andthen joined theCommander- [ of iron and valcr which Lee had so long main- 
in-ohiaf lit Ppli>nihiir<r. Durinc March. 



EXPLOSION OF THE MINE BEFORE PETER3BUBO. 



road, an engagement in which the Confeder- 
ates were defeated with a lose of six thousand 
prisoners. 

Ou the following day Grant ordered ao 



standing the efforts of the 
Union soldiers, the better part of the Southern 
metropolis was reduced to ruins. 

It was the beginning of the swiftly coming 
end. Now was it perceived by all men that 



V 

5v 



I 

\ 






THE UNITED STATES-^THE CIVIL WAR. 



161 



the catastrophe was at hand, and that the 
strife could last but a few days longer. Gen- 
eral Lee retreated as rapidly as possible to 
the south-west, hoping to join the army of 
GeneralJohnston on its emergence fromCaro- 
lina. But that army was destined never to 
emerge. The Confederates, flying from Pe- 
tersburg, joined those on the retreat from 
Richmond at Amelia Court House. To this 
place Lee had ordered his supply trains, but 
the officer having the same in charge had fool- 
ishly mistaken his orders and driven the trains 
in ike direction of Danville. Nearly one-half 
of the Confederate army, now growing hope- 
less, had to be dispersed through the country 
to gather supplies by foraging. The 4th and 
5th of April, days precious to the sinking 
heart of Lee, were consumed with the delay. 
The victorious Federals meanwhile pressed 
on in full pursuit, and on the morning of the 
6th nearly the whole of the Union army was 
at Jettersville,on the Danville Railroad, ready 
to strike the Confederates at Amelia. Sheri- 
dan still pressed on by the left flank to the 
west, in the direction of Deatonsville, Ord 
came up with his division by way of the South 
Side Railroad to Burke^s Station. Lee fell 
back to the west from Amelia Court House, 
and reached Deatonsville; but here he found 
the vigilant Sheridan planted squarely in his 
course. The division of Ewell, six thousand 
strong, was flung against the Federal position, 
but was hurled back, broken to pieces and 
captured. The policy of Lee was still to make 
a detour to the west and south, around the 
Federal left; and by strenuous exertions he 
managed to gain the Appomattox at Farm- 
ville, crossed to the northern bank, and 
burned the bridges. He would thus interpose 
the river as a barrier between himself and his 
relentless pursuers; but it was all in vain. 
Hoping against hope, he made a desperate 
effort to hold the Lynchburg Railroad, but 
Sheridan was there before him. On the 7th 
of April the Confederates had their last slight 
success in battle. For a moment the flame 
of hope was rekindled only to be blown out 
in despair. On that day General Grant, then 
at Farmville, addressed a note to the Con- 
federate commander, expressing a desire that 



the further effusion of blood might be saved 
by the surrender of Lee's army. To this Gen- 
eral Lee replied, by declaring his desire for 
peace, but adding that the occasion for the 
surrender of the army of Northern Virginia 
had not yet arrived. 

On the 8th the process of surrounding and 
hemming in the Con federates went vigorously 
forward. On the morning of the 9th, when 
it became known that the left wing of the 
Union army had secured the line of the Lynch- 
burg Railroad — when the wrecks of Long- 
street's veterans attempting to cover the re- 
treat were confronted and driven back by 
Sheridan — the soul of the Confederate leader 
failed him. Seeing the utter uselessness of a 
further struggle,he sent General Grant a note, 
asking for a meeting preliminary to a sur- 
render. The Union commander immediately 
complied with the request. At two o'clock on . 
the afternoon of that day, Palm Sunday, the 
9th of April, 1865, the two great Generals met 
each other in the parlor of William McLean, 
at Appomattox Court House. There the terms 
of surrender were discussed and settled. It 
was agreed that General Grant should put his 
proposition in the form of a military note, to 
which General Lee could return a formal an- 
swer. TheUnion commander accordingly drew 
up and presented the following memorandum : 

Appomattox Court House, Va., \ 

April. 9, 186s. / 

General, — In accordance with the substance of 
my letter to you of the 8th instant, I propose to re- 
ceive the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginfa 
on the following teims, to -wit: Rolls of all the officers 
and men to be made in duplicate; one copy to be given 
to an officer to be designated by me, the other to be re- 
tained by such other officer or officers as you may desig- 
nate. The officers to give their individual paroles not 
to take up arms against the Government of the United 
States until properly exchanged, and each company or 
regimental commader to sign a like parole for the men 
of their commands. The arms, artillery, and public 
property, to be parked and stacked, and turned over to 
the officers appointed by me to receive them. This 
wiU not embrace the side-arms of the officers nor their 
private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and 
man will be allowed to return to his home, not to be dis- 
turbed by United States authority so long as they ob- 
serve their paroles and the laws in force where they 

reside. 

U. S. Grant, Lieutenant-General. 



VmVEBSAL HISTORY.— TBE MODERN WORLD. 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



163 



To this memorandum General Lee re- 
sponded as follows: 

Headquabtebs Armt of Northebn 1 

Virginia, April 9, 1865. j 

General,— I received your letter of this date, 
containing the terms of the surrender of the 
Army of Northern Virginia,- as proposed by yqu. 
As they are substantially the same as those ex- 
pressed in your letter of the 8th instant, they 
are accepted. I will proceed to designate the 
proper officers to carry the stipulations into 
effect. R. £. Lee, General. 

With the downfall of Lee's army, the 
collapse of the Confederacy was complete. 
The destruction of the military power meant 
the destruction of everything upon which the 
South had depended. In the narrative of 
Sherman's march northward from Savannah 
to Baleigh, we have already recounted the end 
ef that great campaign. The surrender of 
Johnston followed on the 26th of April, and 
on the same terms which bad been conceded 
seventeen days previously by Grant tx) Lee at 
Appomattox. In the overthrow of their two 
great armies, the Confederates themselves saw 
the end of all things. The work was done. 
After four dreadful years of bloodshed, devas- 
tation, and sorrow, the Civil War in the 
United States had ended with the complete 
triumph of the Union cause. It only remained 
t« extend the Federal authority over the 
Southern States, and to revive the functions 
of the National Government throughout the 
Union. 

After the surrender of Lee and Johnston, 
there was no serious effort to prolong the re- 
fflstance, or to reorganize the Confederacy. 
General Lee bade adieu at once to his war- 
worn veterans, and retired with shattered 
fortunes to private life. Mr. Davis and his 
Cabinet made their escape from Richmond 
to Danville, and there for a few days kept 
up the forms of government. From Dan- 
ville they fled into North Carolina, and were 
then scattered. The ex-Pre^ident with a 
few friends, made his way through South 
Carolina into Georgia, and encamped near 
the village of Irwinville. Meanwhile, the 
Union cavalry in that region were on the 
alert to make prisoners of the fugitives. The 
capture was finally effected on the 10th of 
May, by a division of the command of General 



Wilson. It appeared, in the light of the sequel, 
that the Administration, more particularly 
President Lincoln, would have connived at the 
escape of Davis from the United States. But 
the capture was made, and the distinguished 
prisoner was on the hands of the Government. 
He was at once taken as a captive to Fortress 
Monroe, and was there kept in confinement 
until May of 1867. He was then removed to 
Richmond, to be tried on a charge of treason. 
Soon afterwards he was admitted to bail, 
Horace Greeley and other eminent Union men 
going on his bond. The cause remained un- 
tried for about a year and a half, and was then 
dismissed from court It thus happened that 
the legal status of that error, fault, or crime, 
which the Confederate leaders had committed, 
was never legally determined, but left rather 
to dangle contentiously in the political sky of 
after times. 

We may now review the course of civil 
events as they had occurred in the National 
Government in the last year of the war. In 
the autumn preceding the downfall of the Con- 
federacy the Presidential election had been 
held, and Lincoln had been chosen for a second 
term. As Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, 
of Tennessee, was elected in place of Hannibal 
Hamlin. The opposing candidates, supported 
by the Democratic party, were General George 
B. McClellan, and George H. Pendleton, ef 
Ohio. There had been a time after the out- 
break of the war, when the spirit of party 
was so much allayed as to warrant the hope 
that the common cause of Republicans and 
Democrats would not be further imperiled by 
political animosity; but partisanship soon 
fiiamed up again, and the North became a 
scene of turmoil. The Democratic leaders 
grew more and more rampant in their denun- 
ciation; first, of the methods upon which the 
war was conducted; and then, of the war 
itself. In the Democratic national convention 
at Chicago a resolution was actually passed as 
a part of the platform declaring the war a 
failure, and demanding a cessation of hostili- 
ties until the arts of statesmanship should be 
exhausted in attempting a peaceable solution 
of the trouble. In General McClellan the 
party found a candidate to whom both the war 
Democrats and the anti-w«ir faction could be 
attached. 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAE. 



But the whole efibrt to defeat Lincolo, 
much leas to atop the war, could but end in 
confuaioD and f^lure. - LiocoId's majority woa 
very heavy, McClellan carrying only the 
States of Kentucky, Delaware, and Kew 
Jersey. In the summer preceding the elec- 
tion the people of Nevada had, in accordance 
with an act of Congress, prepared a Constitu- 
tion, and, on the 31st of October, the new 
Commonwealth waa proclaimed as the thirty- 
- sixth State of the Union. The gold and silver 
mines of Nevada were developed witli such 
rapidity that they soon surpassed those of 
California in their yield of the precious metal. 

During the progress of the Civil War the 
question of finance was, after the actual raili-' 
t&ry operations of the field, the most serious 
with which the Government had to contend. 
At the outbreak of the con6ict, even before 
the actual outbreak, the financial credit of the 
United States Iiad sunk to the lowest ebb. By 
the organization of the army and the navy 
the expenses of the Nationiil Government had, 
at the very beginning, been swelled to an 
enormous aggregate. The price of gold and 
silver, aa always happens in such emergencies, 
advanced so rapidly that the redemption of 
bank-notes in coin soon became impossible. 
On the 30th of December. 1861, the banks of 
New York, and afterwards those of the whole 
country, suspended specie payments. The 
premium on gold and diver rose higher and 
higher, and it soon became evident that those 
metals could no longer subserve the purpose 
of a currency. 

The situation was as novel aa it was trying. 
Fortunately, the destinies of the treasury were 
in the hands of a man of genius. Salmon P. 
Chase, the Secretary, faced the issue, and began 
to devise a seriea of expedients, which, in the 
course of time, entered into the financial history 
of the country, and, as they were tested by ex- 
perience, became imbedded in the National 
monetary system. Old things rapidly passed 
away, and all things became new under the 
Secretary's hands. As a temporary expedient 
be sought relief by issuing Treasury Notes, re- 
ceivable as money, and bearing interest at the 
rate of seven and three-tenths per cent. The 
fl^>edient was successful ; but by the beginning 
of 1862 the expenses of the Government had 
risen to more than a million dollars a day, and 



other measures, vaster and more permaoenti 
had to be devised. 

In order to meet the tremendous demands 
which were incessantly ari»ng. Congress, on 
the recommendation of the Secretary of the 
Treasury, made haste to provide an Iktebmal 
Revenue. This was made up from two gen* 
eral sources; first, a tax on manvfadwret, in- 
emnee, and eaiarMs; and, second, a xtamp du^ 
on all legal docuraenta. As soon as this system 
of revenue was provided for, another step was 
taken in- the issuance by the treasury of a 
hundred and fifty millions of dollars, in non- 
mterestrbeariug Leqal Temdeb Notes of tha 



United States, to be used aa money. Such 
was the beginning of that famous currency, 
which, under the name of Oreenbach, bore up 
the Nation during the war, survived the ahocks 
of the Revolutionary epoch, and continued, 
aAer the subudence of the confiict, to consU* 
tute one-half of the paper money used by the 
people of the United States. 

But the Greenback currency, its issue 
again and again as the emergencies multiplied, 
waa not of itself sufficient. A third great 
measure recommended by the Secretary, pro- 
vided for by Congress, and carried out suo- 
cessfully, waa the issuance and sale of UNim> 
States Bonds. These at first were made rs- 



166 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TME MODERN WORLD. 



deemahle at any time after five years and 
under twenty years from date, and were, from 
this fact, called the Five-Twenty Bonds. The 
interest upon them was fixed at six per cent, 
payable semi-annually in gold. The event 
showed that the clause making the interest 
payable in gdd, rather than in the Greenback 
currency, tended to aggravate the disparity in 
the value of coin and paper money. But the 
interests of the bond-purchasers were consulted, 
and the policy of paying interest in coin was 
continued. The second series, called the Ten- 
FoBTiES, was next issued, being redeemable 
by the Oovernment at any time after ten 
and under forty years from date. The inter- 
est on this series was fixed at five per cent, 
and both principal and interest were made 
payable in coin. It became the policy of the 
Government to convert the short-time, high- 
rate bonds into the long-time, low-rate bonds. 
As the Five-Twenties became redeemable they 
were, by the holders, for the most part, con- 
verted into Ten-Forties, and when, in course 
of time, the latter fell due, they were in turn 
converted into the ForR-PERCENTS, which con- 
stituted the third general issue. At last, when 
the credit of the Government was. fully 
reestablished, and its ability demonstrated 
to discharge its debt to the last farthing, 
Three-and-a-Halp Percents, and finally 
Three-Percents, were provided for, into 
which form the great debt was mostly con- 
verted. 

Meanwhile, the old banks of the United 
States disappeared. It became necessary to 
provide for the people something in the place 
of those local institutions, by means of which 
the ordinary business of the country must .be 
transacted. An act was accordingly passed 
for the establishment of National Banks. 
The constitution of these was peculiar in the 
last degree. But the event justified the wis- 
dom of the measure. The new financial insti- 
tutions were born out of the exigency of the 
times, and their anomalous character must be 
accounted for by the existing conditions. The 
Bank Act of May, 1862, provided that, in- 
stead of gold, the new banks might use 
National Bonds as the basis of their currency. 
It was provided that each bank, on purchas- 
injc^ and depositing with the Treasurer of the 
United States the requisite amount of bonds, 



might receive thereon, from the treasnty^ 
ninety per cent of the valuation of the bonds 
deposited, in a National Currency, such cur- 
rency to bear the name of the particular bank 
from which it was to be issued. 

The new banks spread rapidly, and in a 
short time a mixed currency, composed about 
half and half of the Greenbacks and the Na- 
tional Bank bills, took the place of the old 
local paper money, which had formerly con- 
stituted the bulk of the currency employed by 
the people. Meanwhile, gold and silver, on 
account of the high and ever-increasing pre- 
miums thereon, disappeared from sight, and all 
of the financial transactions of the country, 
great and small, swam henceforth for about 
seventeen years in an ocean of self-sustaining 
paper money. The precious metals became 
an article of merchandise ; but their fictitious 
connection with the national currency consti- 
tuted a dangerous element of monetary specu- 
lation, which the financial jobbers of the coun- 
try were not slow to discover, and to use with 
fatal efiect. The currency of the National 
Banks was, as we have said, furnished, and the 
redemption of the same guaranteed, by the 
Treasury of the United States. By the meas- 
ure above described, the means for prosecuting 
the Civil War were provided. At the end of the 
^conflict, the National Debt proper had reached 
the astounding sum of nearly three thousand 
millions of dollars I Nor can it well be doubted 
that had the war continued through another 
year national bankruptcy must have ensued. 

On the 4th of March, 1865, President Lin- 
coln was inaugurated for hi6 second term. 
The brief address which he delivered on that 
occasion was one of the most patriotic and 
able ever pronounced by a great man in a 
trying ordeal. He sought by calm and almost 
affectionate utterances to call back from their 
rebellious course the infatuated people of the 
Southern States, exhorting his countrymen, 
"with malice towards none, with charity for 
all," to go about the work of healing the Na- 
tion's wounds, and restoring political and social 
fellowship throughout the Union. 

It will be remembered that at this time the 
war, though iu its last great throes, was not 
ended. Within a month, however, the mili- 
tary power of the Confederacy was broken. 
Three days after the evacuation of Richmona 



liniKiL iNirua"-. 



166 



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FEDERAL UNIFORMS DURING THE CIVIl WAR. 1861-1865 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



167 



)rj lee'a Bxmj, the President visited that city, 
conferred with theauthoriiies, and then returced 
to WashingtoD. But, in the strange vicisei- 
tnde of thiugs, the tragedy of his own sad life 
had already entered its last act. On the evening 
of the 14th of April he attended Ford's Theater 
with his wife and a party of friends. As the 
play drew near its close, a disreputable actor, 
named John Wilkes Booth, stole unnoticed 
into the President's box, leveled a pistol at 
bis head, and shot him through the brain. 
Lincoln fell forward in his seat, was borne 
&om the building, lingered in an uDconecious 
Btate until the following morning, and died. 
It was one of the greatest tragedies of modem 
times — die most atrocious and diabolical mur- 
der known in mod- 
on history. The 
aMMwin leaped out 
of the box upon 
the stage, escaped 
into the darkness, 
and fled. 

It was immedi- 
ately perceived that 
a murderous con> 
spiracy had been 
formed to overthi ow 
the Gtovemment by 
aseasdnation. At 
the same hour an< 
other murderer, 
named Lewie Payne 
Powell, burst into 
the bed-chamber of 
Secretary Seward, who had been disabled 
by an accident, sprang upon the couch of 
the sick man, stabbed him nigh unto death, 
and made his escape into the night The 
city was wild with alarm and excitement. 
He tel^raph flashed the news throughout the 
land, and a tremor of alarm and rage ran 
everywhere. Troops of cavalry and the police 
of Washington departed in all directions to 
hunt down the conspirators. On the 26th of 
April, Booth was found concealed in a barn 
aouth of Fredericksburg. Befusing tn sur- 
render, he was shot by Sergeant Boston Cor- 
bett, and was dr^fed forth from the burning 
building to die. Powell was caught, convicted, 
And hanged. His fellow-conspirators, David 
E. Herrold and George A. Atzerott, together 



with Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, at whose house 
the plot was formed, were also condemned ana 
executed. Micbael O'Laughlin, I>octor Sam- 
uel A. Mudd, and Samuel Arnold were sen- 
tenced to imprisonment for life in the I>ry 
Tortugae, and Edward Spangler for a term of 

Thus ended in darkness, but not in shame, 
the strange career of Abraham Lincoln. He 
was one of the most remarkable men of any 
age or country — a man iu whom the qual- 
ities of genius and common sense wer» 
strangely mingled. He was prudent, far- 
sighted, and resolute; thoughtful, calm, and 
just; patient, tender-hearted, and great. The 
manner of his death consecrated his memory. 



Thrown by murder from the high seat of 
power, he fell into the arms of the American 
people, who laid him down as tenderly as chil- 
dren lay their father on the couch of death. 
The fiineral pageant was prepared on a scale 
never before equaled in the New World. 
From city to city, in one vast procession, the 
mourning people followed his remains to their 
last resting-place in Springfield. From all 
nations rose the voice of sympathy and 
shame — sympathy for his death, shame for the 
dark crime that caused it. 

Lincoln fell at an hour when, to all human 
seeming, the American people could least 
spare his services. The great Rebellion of the 
Southern States was tottering into oblivion, 
but the restoration of the Union remained to 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



LAST HOUR OP BOOTH. 



be accomplished. Who but Lincola, id such 
a crisis, was fitted for such a work ? His tem- 
per, after the overthruw of Lee, showed con- 
clusively the trend of his thoughts and sym- 
pathies — his sincere desire for peace, his love 
for bI) men of all sectioue. 

The words of mercy were upon his lips, 
Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, 

When the vile murderer brought swift eclipse 
To thoughts ol peace on earth, good- will towards 



The Old World and the New, from sea to eea, 
Uttered one voice of sympathy and shsmel 

Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat free ; 
Sad lite, cut short just as its triumph camel 



A deed accursed ! Strokes have been struck befora 
By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt 

If more of horror or disgrace they bore; 
But thy foul crime, tike CaJn's, stands datUj 

Vile band ! that branded murder on a strife, 
Whate'er ita grourids, stoutly and nobly strivei^ 

And with the martyr's crown crownest a life 
With much lo praise, little to be torgiveni' 

The death of Lincoln made necessary the 
immediate elevatiou of Andrew Johnson to tho 
Presidency. On the day after the assassin atioB 
he took the oath of office, and entered at once 
upon his duties as Chief Magistrate. He wu 

' From the London Puncft of May 6, 1865. 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 16» 

• Dative of North Carolina, born in Baleigh, I and elected to the Vice-prewdeacy in ptaoe of 

on thfr 29th of December, 1808. His boyhood Mr. Hamlin. Now, by th« trngic death of 

was passed in poverty and neglect. The family | the President, lie was called suddenly to ttie 

waa n1vuMirc> in thn Innt deo-n>e. and the aseumntioD of reBDODubillties. second 

Kfi lieh 

The edc 
taili 
mol 

Till 



in 
ud 



of < 
«fl 

faoli 
grei 

6en 
witi 
«b« 



Kb* 

ited 

.bj 

bed 



tioii 

had 



TOMB OF LINCOLN AT SPRINGFIELD. 



iiattire. There was do quailing, do spirit of 
oompromise. His life was frequently imperiled ; 
bat he fed od danger, and grew strong under 
the onsets of hie enemies. He held the office 
4t Governor until 1864, when he was nominated 



itary measure, and although the tnstHntion of 
slavery had fallen to pieces at the touch of the 
pen of Uncoln, it was deemed imxaaiy Is 
complete the work by statutory and Constitu- 
tioDal enactments. Thus were the doctnnu 



170 



VNIYERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



ftn<t logieal results of the war incorporated 
forever in the fundameDtal law of the laud. 

From the first, the President was confronted 
with the great questions ariung out of the con- 
flict. What, for instance, should be done with 
the leaders of the Rebellion ? On this issue 
the Toice of Liucoln was heard out of the 
grare. On the 29th of May, 1S65, the Ah- 
NEBTT Pkoclamatioh was issucd by the Pres- 
ideot. By its provisions a general pardon was 
extended to all persons— except those specified 
in certain clasaes — who had participated in the 
organization and defense of the Confederacy. 



The condition of parilDu was that those re- 
ceiving it should take an oath of allegiance to 
the United States. The excepted persons 
might also be pardoned on special application 
to the President. 

During the summer of 1865 the great 
amues were disbanded, and the victors and 
vanquished returned to their botnes to resume 
the work of peace. One of the most striking 
scenes ever witnessed in the country was the 
great military parade and review at Washing- 
ton City. It was the closing pageant of the 
war. About seventy-five thousand Union sol- 
diers, including Sherman's army from Caro- 



lina, paraded the streets, and passed the f^ 
viewing stand, where the President an(( 
principal officers, civil and military, of the 
United States were on the platform. After 
this the soldiers, as an organized force, melted 
rapidly away, and were resolved into the rai(k»> 
of citizenship. 

The close of the war left the finances of 
the Nation in a condition moat alarming. The- 
war-debt, already piled mountains high, went' 
on increasing until the beginning of 1866, 
and it was only by herculean exertions that- 
national bankruptcy could be warded off, 'Dio- 
yearly interest on the debt had increased 
to tl 33,000,000 in gold. The expenses 
of the government had reached an aggre- 
gate of «200.000,000 annually. But the- 
augmented revenues of the Nation anct 
the energy and skill of the financial man- 
agement of the treasury proved sufficient 
to meet the enormous outlay, and at lasf 
the debt began to be slowly diminished. 
On the 6th of December, 1866, a resolu- 
tion was passed in the House of Repre- 
sentatives pledging the faith of the Unitect 
Slates to the full payment of the National- 
indebtednes, both principal and interest 
During the whole period of the CiviP 
War the vital interests, not to say the 
existence, of the United States were con- 
stantly menaced by the hostility of foreigt^ 
powers. Of all the great monarchies of 
Europe, only Russia had been sincerely 
and at heart favorable to the cause of the 
Union. The Government of Great Brit- 
ain, from first to last, sympathized with th«- 
Confederacy — not, indeed, that she was in 
love with the institution of slavery, but 
that she secretly hoped for the dismemberment 
of the American Republic. Napoleon III., 
Emperor of the French, cherished plans, not a- 
few, to aid the Confederate States, and. to pre- 
cipitate, if possible, the downfall of the Union. 
His schemes embraced particularly the insti- 
tution of a French Empire in Mexico. In 
that country the distracted condition of affaire- 
furnished abundant opportunities for foreign 
interference. A French army was sent into- 
Mexico. The constituted authorities were 
overawed, an Imperial government was organ- 
ized, and early in 1864 the crown was offered 
to Maximilian, archduke of Austria. The kt- 



THE UNITED STATES— TSE CIVIL WAR. 



y OF THE UNION ARMY AT WASHINGTOM, ClTrtftt. 1«T. o. M 



172 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



ter repaired to Mexico, set up his goyemmeDt, 
and sustained it for a season, with the aid of 
French and Austrian soldiers. But the Mex- 
lean President, Benito Pablo Juarez, headed a 
revolution against the usurping Maximilian; 
and the Government of the United States re- 
buked France for her palpable and willful 
violaticu of the Monroe Doctrine. Napoleon, 
at length, became alarmed, and withdrew his 
army. Maximilian, thus left without support, 
was quickly overthrown and driven from the 
capital. He fled to the city of Queretaro, 
where he was besieged, and finally taken 
prisoner. On the 13th of June, 1867, he was 
tried by court-martial, and condemned to be 
■hot. Six days afterwards the sentence was 
carried into execution. Maximilian met his 
fitte like a hero. His death and the sad in- 
sanity of the Empress Carlotta awakened the 
commiseration, if not the sympathy, of man- 
kind for the ill-starred enterprise in which the 
misguided prince had lost his life, and his 
queen her reason. The scheme of Napoleon, 
who had hoped to profit by the calamitous 
dvil war in the United States, to gain a foot- 
hold in the New World and restore the ascen- 
dency of the Latin race west of the Atlantic, 
was justly brought to shame and contempt. 

After a few weeks of successful operation, 
the first Atlantic telegraph, laid by Cyrus W. 
Field in 1858, had ceased to work. The 
friends of the enterprise were, for a season, 
greatly disheartened. Not so, however, with 
Mr. Field, who continued, both in Europe 
and America, to agitate the claims of his 
measure and to plead for assistance. He made 
fifty voyages across the Atlantic, and finally 
secured sufficient capital to begin the laying of 
a second cable. The work was begun from the 
coast of Ireland in the summer of 1865. When 
the steamer Cheai Eastern had proceeded 
more than twelve hundred miles on her way 
to America, the cable parted and was lost 
But Mr. Field held on to his enterprise. 
Six millions of dollars had been spent in un- 
successful attempts, but still he persevered. 
In July of 1866 a third cable, two thousand 
miles in length, was coiled in the Oreat Eastern, 
and again the vessel started on her way. This 
time the work was completely successful. In a 
short time the same great vessel returned to 
mid-ooean, and, recovering the lost cable fiom 



the depths, carried the second line suoceflsfblly 
to the American coast. Aftier twelve years of 
unremitting efibrt, Mr. Field received a gold 
medal from the Congress of his country, and 
the plaudits of all civilized nations. 

On the 1st of November, 1864, an ilct waa 
passed by Congress, establishing the Postal 
Money-Ordeb System of the United States. 
The design of the measure was to secure a safe 
and convenient method of transmitting small 
sums of money through the mails. Notwith- 
standing the invaluable benefits of the system, 
it was at first received with little favor. In 
1870 there were two thousand and seventy-siz 
post-offices from which money-orders were issued* 
During that year the amount transmitted 
was more than thirty-four millions of dollars. 
The orders for 1875 numbered (ive million 
six thousand three hundred and thirty-three, 
and the amount of money sent amounted 
to more than seven tyngeven millions of dollars. 
Of all the orders issued during that year, only 
twenty-seven were paid to persons not entitled 
to the proceeds. Postal conventions have 
already been held, and the arrangements com- 
pleted for the exchange of American money- 
orders with Switzerland, Great Britain, and 
Germany. The requirements of civilization 
will no doubt soon demand similar compacts 
among all enlightened nations. 

The Administration of Presii^ant Johnson it 
noted as the time when the Territories of the 
United States were given approximately their 
final forms. The vast domains west of the 
Mississippi were reduced by Congressional 
enactments to proper geographical limits, and 
were organized with a view to an early admia- 
mon into the Union as States. A large part 
of the work had been accomplished during the 
Administration of Lincoln. In March of 1861, 
the Territory of Dakota, destined, after twenty- 
seven years, to become two great States, was 
detached from Nebraska on the north, and 
given a distinct political organization. The 
territory embraced an area of one hundred 
and fifty thousand square miles. The State 
of Kansas had at last, on the 29th of January, 
1861, been admitted into the Union, under a 
constitution framed at Wyandotte. In Febru- 
ary of 1863, Arizona, with an area of one hun- 
dred and thirteen thousand square miles, was 
sepamtcd £rom New Mexico on the west, and 



THE UNITED STATES.— THE CIVIL WAR. 



178 



(ngsDized as an independeDt Territory. On the 
8d of Hiuch of the same year, Idaho wae or- 
ganized out of portioaa of Dakota, Nebraska, 
aiwl Waahingtoa Terribaieflt and od the 26th 



milee. Od the let of March, 1667, the Teiri- 
tory of Nebraska, reduced to ita preeeut area 
ofeeveoty-six thoueaud square miles, was adimt> 
ted into the Uuion as the thirty -seventh 8tat«k 



JKJWN THE YUKON, ALASKA. 



of May, 1864, Montana, with an area of one hun- 
dred and thirty-Biz thousand square miles, was 
cut off from the eastern part of Idaho. By 
this measure the area of the latter Territory 
«as reduced to eighty -six thousand square 



Finally, on the 26th of July, 1868, the Territory 
of Wyoming, with an area of ninety-eight 
thousand square miles, was organized out of 
portions of Dakota, Idaho, and Utah. Thtu 
were the Territories of the great West reduced 



174 



UmVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



to their present limite, aa repre§eiitAd 'm the 
KCCompaDying map. 

The year 1867 was also signalized by the 
Purchase of Alaska. Two years previously 
this couutry had been explored by a corps of 
American scientists, with a view of establishing 
telegraphic comniunicatioD between the United 
States and Asia by way of Behring StraiL 
The report of the exploration showed that 
Alaska was by uo means the worthless country 
which it had been supposed to be. It was 
found that the coast fisheries, inclndiDg the 
products of the seal-islands, were of very great 



Talne, and that the forests of white pine and 
yellow cedar were among the finest in the 
world. Negotiations fur the purchase of the 
peninsula were accordingly opened with Russia. 
by Mr. Seward, the AraericaD Secretary of 
Bute, and on the 30th of March, 1867, a treaty 
was concluded by which, for the sum of seven 
million two hundred thousand dollars, AUska 
was purchased by the United Stales. The 
territory thus added to the domains of the Re- 
public embraced an area of five hundred and 
eighty thousand square miles, and a population 
of twenty-nine thousand souls. 



CHAt^'KR CXXV.— BPOOH OE^ R E CO NSX RUCTION. 



EBY soon after his accenion 
to the Chief M^istracy, 
serious d isagreements arose 
between Premdent John- 
son and the two Houses of 
Congress. The difficulty 
grew out of the great 
question of reSrganizing the Southern States. 
Strangely enough, the particular point in dis- 
pute was the theoretical one as to the relation 
which those States had sustained to the Federal 
Union during the Civil War. If biith parties to 
the quarrel had limited their views to the settle- 
ment ofthepracfico/ issues before them, the ques- 
tions involved might have been of easy solution. 
But the one party was as stubborn and dog- 
matic as the other was augry and demagogical. 
The President held, in brief, that the Ordinances 
of Secession had been, in their very nature, 
null and void, and that therefore the seceded 
States had never lieen out of the Union. On the 
other hand, the majority in Congress held that 
the acts of secession were iudeed illegal and uu- 
conslitutional, but that the seceded States had 
nevertheless been actually detached from the 
Union, aud that sjwcial legislation and special 
guarantees were necessary to restore them lo 
their former relation under the Government. 
Sucli was the real foundation of tiie disputes 
by which the question of reconstructing the 
Southern States was so seriously embarrassed. 
If the Chief Executive had been a man of 
Lincoln's character, or if Congress had been 



less infiuenced by its pasnons, by its growing 
dislike of the President, and by many other 
ulterior motives, the difficult might hftve been 
allayed or wholly obviated. 

In the summer of 1865 the work of recon- 
struction was undertaken by the President, in 
accordance with his own plans. On the dth 
of May he issued a proclamation for the restora- 
tion of Virginia to the Union. Twenty days 
afterward another proclamation was issued, es- 
tablishing a provisioual government for South 
Carolina, and at brief intervals similar meas- 
ures were adopted in respect to the other 
States of the late Confederacy. On the 24th 
of June the President proclaimed all re> 
trictions removed on trade and intercourse 
with the Southern States. On the 7th of the 
following September a second Amnesty Procla- 
mation was issued, by which alt persons who 
had upheld the Confederate cause, except the 
leaders, were unconditionally pardoned. 

In the meantime, Tennessee bad been reoi^ 
ganized, and in 1866 was restored to its place 
in the Union. But while these measures were 
carried out. Congress was pursuing its own line 
of policy with regard to the reconstruction of 
the Southern States. During the session ot 
1865-66 a Committee of Fifteen was appointed 
by that body to whom all matters appertaining 
to the reorganization of the .States of the over- 
thrown Confederacy should be referred. Soon 
afterwards the Civil Rights Bell was passed 
the object of which was to secure to the freed 



THE UNITED STATES,— EPOCH OF RECONSTRUGTIOK 



176 



mien of the South the fuh exercise of citizen- 
•chip. The measure was opposed and vetoed 
by the President, but was immediately repassed 
4)y a two-thirds Congressional majority. It 
-was the beginning of the open break between 
Mr. Johnson and Congress. On the occasion 
•of the celebration of Washington's birthday, 
Ihe bill was severely denounced by the Presi- 
*dent in a speech delivered in front of the Ex- 
ecutive mansion. The position assumed by 
-Congress was declared to be a new rebellion 
44^in8t the Government of the United States. 
In subsequent speeches and messages the same 
sentiments were reiterated, and the attitude of 
the Executive and the Legislative departments 
4)ecame constantly more unfriendly. 

In the summer of 1866 a call was issued 
"fer a National convention, to be held in Phil- 
ladelphia on the 14th of August. It was be- 
lieved that the President was behind the move- 
ment. The objects had in view were not very 
•dearly defined; but it was understood that 
4he general condition of the country would be 
•considered, measures of National policy dis- 
cussed, and all the political elements in opposi- 
tion to the majority in Congress be consolidated 
into a new political party, with which the 
President's name would be associated in lead- 
ership. At the appointed time delegates from 
«I1 Uie States and Territories were present 
Many members of the Republican party took 
part in the movement, and the convention was 
not lacking in enthusiasm. Still the meeting, 
«8 all other factious assemblages, exercised but 
little permanent influence on the affairs of the 
country. 

The President, perceiving that the Philadel- 
•phia convention was of no effect, now made an- 
other effort to rally public opinion in favor of his 
|K)licy. In the latter part of August he set 
out from Washington, accompanied by General 
<jrrant. Admiral Farragut, the leading members 
cf the Cabinet, and other-prominent officials, to 
make a tour of the Northern States. The ostensi- 
ble object of the excursion was that the President 
might be present at the laying of the coruer- 
atone of a monument to Senator Douj^las at 
<;/hicago. Departing from the Capital, the 
Presidential party passed through Philadelphia, 
New York, and Albany, and after taking part 
in the ceremonies at Chicago, returned by way 
of St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincin- 



nati, and Pittsburg. At all the principal 
towns and cities through which he passed the 
President spoke freely to the crowds in defense 
of his own policy, and in denunciation of that 
of Congress. 

The whole journey was a scene of intense 
excitement and partisan animosity. The gen- 
eral effect of the President's course was disas- 
trous to him and his political adherents. In 
the elections of the following autumn the meas- 
ures and attitude of Congress were sustained,' 
and most of the member^ of, that body re- 
elected by increased popular majorities. 
Nevertheless, the result of the election had 
little effect in altering the President's viewa 
or softening his feelings towards the Legialativ« 
department of the Government. His stubborn 
nature yielded in nothing, even when the voice 
of the Northern people was heard as the voice 
of many waters. 

By degrees the affiiirs and status of th« 
Administration grew critical. When Congreai 
convened, in December of 1866, the policy of 
the President was severely condemned. The 
attitude of all parties had strangely changed. 
It had been believed and feared that Mr. 
Johnson would pursue a course of angry retri- 
bution towards those who had been engaged 
in the rebellion. Now it was believed and 
openly charged that he ha^ gone over to the 
Confederate party. Though he had begun from 
premises which had been laid by Lincoln, he 
had reached practical conclusions therefrom 
which were offensive, not to say shocking, to 
the great majority of those who had upheld 
the Government during the war. Congress, in 
its growing animosity to the President, had 
abandoned the milder principles of reconcilia- 
tion, which Lincoln had evidently professed, 
and taken an attitude of relentless hostility 
towards the Confederate party in the South. 
Presently the Congressional committee ap» 
pointed at the session of the previous year 
brought forward their report, embodying a 
full plan of reorganizing the Southern States. 
After much discussion the measures proposed 
by the committee were adopted by Congress, 
and the work of reconstruction was begun.. 

As the first condition for the readmission 
of a State into the Union, it was enacted that 
the people of the same, by their Legislative 
Assembly, or otherwise, should ratify the Four- 



176 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



teenth Amendment to the Constitution, which 
declared the citizenship of all persons born or 
naturalized in the United States. In further- 
aoce of this policy, Congress at the same session 
passed an act requiring that in the National 
Territories the elective franchise should be 
granted without distinction of race or color 
before such Territory should be admitted into 
the Union. A similar measure was adopted 
with regard to the District of Columbia, for- 
bidding the further restriction of the right of 
•nifrage to White men. To all of these acts 
President Johnson opposed his veto; but in 
evary case his objection was overcome by the 
two-thirds' majority of Congress. 

For all practical purposes, the question re- 
■pecting the method of reorganizing the South- 
ern States resolved itself to this: Should the 
mml or the military plan of reconstruction be 
adopted? From the beginning the President 
had urged the superiority of the civil method. 
It was seen, however, by Congress and the 
North that to follow this method freely would 
be to remand at once the control of the lately 
seceded States into the hands of the old Con- 
federate party. Right or wrong, it was deter- 
mined by the majority that this should not be 
done. It was dear that if the leaders of the 
late Confederacy should return from all the 
Southern States as Representatives and Sena- 
tors, and should combine, as they were certain 
to do, with the Democratic Representatives 
and Senators from the Northern States, the 
Republican party would be immediately over- 
whelmed by an adverse majority. It was 
therefore determined in Congress that the 
military and suppressive method of governing 
the seceded States should be employed, and 
that an alliance between the Black Republicans 
of the South and the White Republicans of 
the North was the safest combioation for the 
interests of the Union. This view of the case 
was intensified by the hostility of the Execu- 
tive, and henceforth there was open political 
war between the two departments of the Gov- 
ernment. 

On the 2d of March, 1867, an act was 
passed by Congress by which the ten seceded 
States were divided into five military districts, 
each district to be under control of a gover- 
nor appointed by the President. After ap- 
pointing the commanders required by this law, 



the chief magistrate asked the opinion of Mr. 
Stanbery, his Attorney-General, as to the 
validity of the Congressional measures of recon- 
struction. An answer was returned that most 
of the acts were null and void, and the Presi- 
dent thereupon issued to the military com- 
manders an order which virtually nullified the 
whole proceeding. Congress now passed a 
supplemental act declaring the meaning of the 
previous law, and the process of re5rganiza- 
tion went on in accordance with the Con* 
gressional plan. The work, however, was 
greatly retarded by the distracted counsels of 
the Government, and the chaotic condition of 
affairs in the South. But in due time the 
States of Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, 
Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina 
were reconstructed, and in the months of 
June and July, 1868, were readmitted into 
the Union. In every case, however, the re- 
admission was effected against the protest and 
over the veto of the President 

Meanwhile, a difficulty arose in the Presi- 
dent's Cabinet which led to his impeachment 
On the 21st of February, 1868, he notified 
Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, of his 
dismissal from office. Such a circumstance 
had never before arisen in the administrative 
history of the country. The act was regarded 
by Congress as a usurpation of authority and a 
violation of law on the part of the President 
The reconstruction difficulties had already 
broken off* all friendly relations between the 
two Houses and the Executive. Accordingly, 
on the 3d of March, articles of impeachment 
were agreed to by the House of Repre* 
sentatives, in accordance with the forms of 
the Constitution ; and the cause against the 
President was immediately remanded to the 
Senate for trial. Proceedings were instituted 
in that body on the 23d of March, and con- 
tinued until the 26th of May, when the ques- 
tion was submitted to a vote of the Senators, 
acting as judges, and Mr. Johnson wa^ aquit 
ted. His escape from an adverse verdict, 
however, was very narrow — a two-thirds' 
majority was required to convict, and but 
a single vote was wanting to that result Sal- 
mon P. Chase, who, after his retirement from 
the Secretaryship of the Treasury, had been 
appointed Chief-Justice of the United States, 
presided over this remarkable trial, the first 



THE UNITED STATES.— EPOCH OF RECONSTRUCTION. 



17T 



of Its kind which hod ever dUtract«d, oot to 
«y disgrftced, the history of ths country. 

After the impeachment the AdmiuistnitioD 
of Johnson drew sullenly to a close. The time 
for another Presidential election was at hand, 
and General Ulysees S. Grant was nominated 
by the Republicans fur the Chief-magistracy. 
On the DemocraUc side the nomination was 
given to Horatio Beymour, of New York. 
The canvass was attended with great excite- 
ment The attention of the people, still agi- 
tated by the recent strife through which the 
Nation had passed, could not be diverted from 
the questioa and issues of the Civil War. 
The principles recently agitated by the 
majority in Congress were made the basis 
of the Bepublican platform of 1668, and 
on tliat platform General Grant was chosen 
by a very large electoral majority. The 
Totes of twenty-six States, amounting in 
the aggregate to two hundred and four- 
teen ballots, were cast in his favor, while 
hifl competitor received only the eighty 
votes of the remaining eleven Slates. Of 
the popular vote, however, Mr. Seymour 
obUined 2,703,600^Qst 3,013,188 given 
to General Grant. At the same election 
the choice for the Vice-presidency fell on 
Schuyler Colfax, of ludiana. 

Ulysses S. Grant, eighteenth President 
•f the United States, was a native of Ohio, 
bom at Point Pleasant, in that State, April 
27,1822. Hisboyhoodwasuneventful. At 
the age of seventeen he entered the United 
States Military Academy, at West Point, 
and waagiaduated in 1843. As a Lieutenant 
and Captain he served with distinction, and 
was promoted forgallantryin the Mexican War. 
After the close of that conflict lie retained his 
connection with the army for some years, and 
then redgned his commisaion. He became a 
merchant, resided near St. Louis, and after- 
wards at Galena, Dlinois. At the outbreak 
of the Civil War he was living in obscurity, 
Dor could any have foreseen the probability 
of hia emergence. His first national reputa- 
tion was won by the capture of Forts Henry 
and Donelson, in 1862. After Shiloh, he 
was conspicuous as a Union commander; but 
was for awhile held back by gloomy and ad verse 
oircumstancee, sufficient to have driven a less 
fMolute and taciturn spirit from the field of 



view. With Vicksburg his star came into thfr 
ascendant, and was never again clouded. la 
March of 1864 he received the appointment 
of Lieu tenant-General and Commander-in- 
Chief of the Union army. His subsequent 
career at the head of that army has been al- 
ready narrated. At the cloee of the war hi» 
reputation, though strictly militery, was very 
great, and his complications in the imbroglio 
between President Johnson and Congrev 
heightened rather than diminished the estima- 
tion in which he was held by his countrymen. 
At the Republican Convention in Chicago, 
on the 21st of May, 1868, General Grant had 



no competitor; he was unanimously nominated 
on the first ballot. On the day following hit 
inauguration as President he sent to tlie 
Senate the following nominations for hia 
Cabinet: For Secretary of State, Elihu B. 
Washburne, of Diiiiois; for Secretary of the 
Treasury, Alexander T. Stewart, of New York ; 
for Secretary of the Interior, Jacob D. Cox, 
of Ohio ; for Secretary of the Navy, Adolpb 
E. Borie, of Pennsylvania ; for Secretary of 
War, John M. Schofield, of Illinois ; for Post* 
master-General, John A. J. Cresewell, of 
Maryland ; for Attorney-General, E. R. Hoar, 
of Massachusetts. These nominations were at 
once confirmed; but it was soon discovered 



UmVERSAL HISTORY.- THE MODERN WORLD. 



that Mr. Stewart, being an importer of forei^ 
goods, was ineligible ta a positioa in the 
Cabinet. George S. Boutwell, of Massacbu- 
fletts, was accordingly appointed to the vacant 
position. Mr. Washbume also gave up bis 
office to accept the position of Minister to 
France, anii the vacancy was filled by the ap- 
pointment of Hamilton Fish, of New York. 

The first event by which the new Admini»- 
tration was signalized was the completion of 
the Pacific Railroad. We have seen how thia 
vast enterprise was projected as early as 1853, 
but ten years elapsed before the work of 
conBtructioD was aotually begun. The first 
division of the road extended irom Omaha, 



Nebraska, to Ogden, Utah, a distance of a 
thousand and thirty-two miles. This great 
flpan was known as the Union Pacific Rail- 
way. The Western division, called the Central 
Paeifiu, stretched from Ogden to San Francisco, 
a difitnnce of eight hundred and eighty-two miles. 
On the 10th of May, 1869, the great work was 
completed with appropriate ceremonies. 

Before the inauguration of PresidentGrant, 
two additional amendmpnta to the Constitution 
had been adopted by Congress. The first of 
these, known as the Fourteenth Amendment, 
extended the rights of citizenship to all persons 
born or naturalized in the United States, and 
declared the validity of the public debt. This 
wnendment was submitted in 1867, was rati- 



fied by three-fourths of the States, and in tlie 
following year became a part of the Constitu- 
tion. A few weeks before the expiration of 
Johnson's term the Fif^nth Amendment was 
adopted by Congress, providing that the 
rights of citizens of the United States to vota 
should Dot be denied or abridged on account 
of race, color, or previous condition of servi- 
tude. This article also, which was intended 
to confer the tight of sufirage on the emanci- 
pated Black men of the South, was submitted 
to the States, received the sanction of three- 
fourths of the Legislatures, and on ibt 30th 
of March, 1870, was proclaimed by the Presi- 
dent as a part of the Constitudoo. 

During the last years of the war, 
and the decade following, the monetarj 
affairs of the United States were ib 
such Goodition as to furnish oppor- 
tunity for great frauds and the wildert 
Bpecnlations. The buying and selling 
of gold, made necessar; at first by the 
exigencies of commerce, became at 
length a fictitious process, and was so 
manipulated by the speculators, espe- 
cially those having thdr haunts about 
the Gold Room in New York City, as 
to unsettle the business of the whole 
country. Crisis after crisis was reached 
and passed, marking so many disasters 
to the monetary affairs of the people. 
In the fall of 1869 occurred the most 
extraordinary excitement of all. Per- 
haps no other scheme of equal eztentand 
shrewd contrivance was ever concocted 
in the financial marts of the world. A 
company of unscrupulous speculators iu New 
Yorlt, headed by Jay Gould and. Tames Fisk.jr., 
succeeded in producing what is known as a 
"corner" in the gold-market, and brought the 
business interests of the metropolis to 'the 
vei^ of ruin. Some account of the conditions 
which made possible the nefarious transaction 
in question may serve to render the event in- 
telligible to the render. 

During the Civil War the credit of the 
Government had declined to such an extent 
that nt one time a dollar in gold was worth 
two hundred and eightj'-six cents in paj>er cur^ 
rency. Doubtless a part of this extraordinary 
premium on the precious metal was occasioned 
by the plethora of the Greenback and National 



THE UNITED STATES.— EPOCH OF RECONSTRUCTION, 



179 



bank issuer of paper money. But the greater 
part was due to an actual decline in the credit 
of the Goverument, a fear that the enormous 
war-debt would bear the Nation down to ulti- 
mate bankruptcy. After the restoration of the 
National authority, the value of paper money 
appreciated, and in the fall of 1869 the ratio 
of gold to the Greenback dollar had fallen off 
to about one hundred and thirty to one hun- 
dred. There were at this time in the banks 
of New York about $15,000,000 in gold coin, 
and in the sub-treasury of the United States, 
in Wall Street, a hundred millions additional. 
The plan of Gould and Fisk was to get control, 
by purchase, of the greater part of the 
116,000,000; to prevent the Secretary of the 
Treasury from selling any part of the hundred 
millions under his authority; then, having 
control of the market, to advance the price of 
gold to a fabulous figure, sell out all which 
they held themselves, and retire from the field 
of slaughtered fortunes with accumulated 
millions of spoils. 

Having carefully arranged tb' prelimi- 
naries, the conspirators, on the 13tli of Sep- 
tember, began their work by purchasing large 
sums of gold, at the same time constantly ad- 
vancing the price. As has been said, the 
process was wholly fictitious. No real gold 
was delivered to the purchasers,* the sellers 
simply agreeing to deliver at a certain price 
at a future date. One party of the gamblers 
thus became bound to do for the other what 
they could net do except by going into the mar- 
ket and buying the amounts which they were 
to deliver. But the purchasers soon exhausted 
the market, and they who were said to be 
** short on gold "were at their mercy. 

By the 22d of September the plotters had 
succeeded in putting the market price of gold 
up to a hundred and forty. On the following 
day the price rose to one hundred and forty- 
four. The members of the conspiracy now 
boldly declared their determination to advance 
the rate to two hundred, and it seemed that 
on the morrow they would put their threat into 
execution. By this time the whole business 
of the country stood quivering like an aspen 
in the wind, nor might any well foresee the 
results of the crisis. On the morning of the 
24th, known as Black Friday, the bidding in 
the Gold Room began with intense excitement. 



The brokers of Fisk and Gould first advanced 
the price to a hundred and fifty, then to a 
hundred and fifty-five, and finally to one hun- 
dred and sixty, at which figure they were 
obliged to purchase several millions by a com- 
pany of merchants, who had banded themselves 
together, determined to fight the gold-gamblers 
to the last. Just at this moment came a de- 
spatch that Mr. Bout well, Secretary of the 
Treasury, had unsealed the hundred millions 
under his control, and had ordered four mill- 
ions to be sold from the sub-treasury I The 
news occasioned an instantaneous panic. The 
price of gold went down twenty per cent, in 
less than as many minutes. The speculators 
were blown away in an uproar; but they man- 
aged, by accumulated frauds and corruptions, 
to carry off with them more than eleven mill- 
ion dollars as the profits of their game I Several 
months elapsed before the business of the 
country recovered from the effects of the shock. 

During the first three months of 1870 the 
work of reconstructing the Southern States 
was completed. On the 24th of January the 
Senators and Representatives of Virginia were 
formally readmitted to their seats in Congress, 
and the Old Dominion once more took her 
place in the Union. On the 23d of February 
a like action was taken with regard to Missis- 
sippi, and on the 30th of March the work was 
finished by the read mission of Texas, the last 
of the seceded States. For the first time since 
December of 1860 the voice of the people of 
all of the States was heard in the councils of 
the Nation. 

In the same year was completed the Ninth 
Census of the United States. It was a work 
of vast importance, and the results presented 
were of the most encouraging character. Not- 
withstanding the ravages of war, the last dec- 
ade had been one of wonderful growth and 
progress. During that time the populatic: 
had increased from 31,433,000 to 38,587,000. 
The center of population had now moved 
westward into the State of Ohio, and rested 
at a point Miy miles east of Cincinnati. The 
National debt, though still enormous, had 
been considerably reduced. The products of 
the United States had grown to a vast aggre- 
gate; even the cotton-crop of the South was 
regaining much of its former importance. 
American manufactures were competing with 



180 



UNIVERSAL BISTORY.—THE MODERN WORLD. 



those of England in the markets of the world. 
The Union now embraced thirty-seven States 
and eleven territories. From the narrow limits 
of the thirteen original Colonies, with their four 
hundred and twenty thousand square miles of 
territory, the National domain had spread to the 
vast area of three million six hundred and four 
thousand square miles. Few things have been 
more marvelous than the territorial growth of 
the United States. The purchase of Louisiana 
in 1803 more than doubled the geographical 
area of the Nation. The several Mej^ican ac- 
quisitions were only second in importance, 
while the recent Russian cession of Alaska was 
alone greater than the original Thirteen States. 
The nature of this territorial development will 
be best understood from an examination of the 
accompanying map. 

President Grant was by nature a man of 
ftw projects. He was perhaps the least vision- 
ary of all the great Americans who have risen 
to distinction in the political history of the 
country. If he had any^ particular dream of 
distinguishing his Administration by some 
apecifio feature, it was the project of the an- 
nexation of Santo Domingo. He also had in 
mind the enterprise of extending and amplify- 
ing the relations, civil, political, and social, 
between the American Republic and Mexico. 
But with respect to the purchase of Santo 
Domingo he had a real anxiety. He promoted, 
and may be said to have originated, the agita- 
tion on that subject In January of 1871 he 
appointed Senator Ben Wade, of Ohio; Presi- 
dent Andrew D. White, of New York; and 
Dr. Samuel Howe, of Massachusetts, as a 
Board of Commissioners to visit Santo Do- 
mingo, and report upon the desirability of an- 
nexing, that island to the United States. The 
question of annexation bad been feebly before 
the American people for several years ; but the 
;u;tual proposal awakened earnest advocacy on 
one side, and strong opposition on the other. 
After three months spent abroad, the Commis- 
aoners returned and reported in favor of the 
proposed annexation. The matter was laid be- 
fore Congress, but the opposition excited in 
that body was so great that the measure was 
defeated. 

Now it was that the day of retribution 
eame to Great Britain for her conduct towards 
the American Government during the Civil 






War. The unfriendliness w)iich she had 
shown to the United States, and the great and 
positive damages done to American commerce 
by the Confederate cruisers fitted out in the 
English ports, had l)een laid up by the 
Federal Government unto the day of reckon- 
ing. The United States held serious accounts 
against Great Britain, which must be settled 
in some equitable manner before relations of 
harmony could be re<§stablished. The Con- 
federate cruisers had been built and equipped 
in the ports of England with the full knowl- 
edge of the Government. Such ^ proceeding 
was in plain violation of the law of nations. 
Even if the independence of the Confederate 
States had been recognized, it would still have 
been unlawful for the private war-ships of 
that power to be built, equipped, manned and 
sent forth from the ports of a nation pretend- 
ing neutrality and friendliness to the United 
States. Time and again Mr. Seward had 
remonstrated with the British authorities, but 
without effect. As a matter of fact, the great 
monarchies of Western Europe believed and 
hoped that the American Republic had gone 
to pieces, that the bubble had burst, that 
the fragments of exploded republicanism, con- 
sidered as a type of human government — a 
type most dangerous to themselves — were 
already drifting in the whirlpool. As a con* 
sequence, they assumed a tone and manner 
toward the American Government, as if to say : 
'' We have said as much; the profits are now 
to us.** 

After the Civil War, however. Great Brit- 
ain became alarmed at her own conduct, and 
grew anxious for a settlement of the difiiculty. 
On the 27th of February, 1871, a Joint High 
Commission, composed of five British and five 
American statesman, assembled at Washington 
City. From the fact that the cruiser Alahcana 
had done most of the injury complained of, 
the claims xf the United States were called 
The Alabama Claims. After much discus- 
sion, the Commmissioners framed a treaty, 
known as the Treaty of Washington, by which 
it was agreed that all claims of either nation 
against the other should be submitted to a 
board of arbitration, to be appointed by 
friendly nations. Such a high court was ac- 
cordingly formed, and in the summer of 1872 
convened at Geneva, Switzerland. The cause 



TME UHITED STATES.— EBOua OF HECOaSISBCIIOX. 181 



182 



UNIVERSAL history:— THE MODERN WORi.l). 



of the two natiODS naa impartially heard, and 
on the 14th of September waa decided in 
fevor of the United States. By the decision. 
Great Britain was obliged, for the wrongs 
which she had done, to pay to the Treasury 
of the American Government $15,500,000. 

The year 1871 was remarkable as being the 
date when the railroad construction of the 
United States reached its maximum. In that 
year no less thau seven thousand six hundred 
and seventy miles of railroad were constructed. 



tended to two thousand eight hundred ancl 
eighteen miles. Ten years la^r there wer» 
nine tiiousand and twenty-one miles of track. 
According to the reports for 1860, the railroads 
of the country had reached the enormous ex- 
tent of thirty thousand six hundred and thirty* 
five miles, and in the next ten years, embracing 
the period of the Civil War, the amount was 
nearly doubled. Such is the victory of free 
enterprise, free industry, and free thought. It 
may well surprise and instruct the student of 



OP CHICAGO. 



There is, perhaps, no fact in the history of the i 
world which exhibits so marvelous a develop- i 
ment of the physical resources of a nation. I 
Ere the niutteringa of the Civil War, with its ] 
untold destruction of life and treasure, had 
died away, the recriperative power, enterprise, 
and geniua of the American people were re- 
vealed as never before in establishing and ex- 
lending the lines of commerce and travel. In 
1830 there were but twenty-three miles of 
railway track in the New World. In 1840 
the lines in the United States had been ex- 



history that the United States of America, 
just emerged from the furnace of war, and 
burdened with an enormous debt, built in the 
single year 1871 more miles of railway than 
Spain, whose daring navigators went forth four 
hundred years ago to discover the Wester» 
hemisphere, has ever built in her whole careerT 
The same year is noted for a calamity al- 
most as vast in proportion as the enterprise 
just referred to was astonishing. The event 
in question was the hunting of the city of 
Chicago. On the evening of the 8th of Oct« 



THE UNITED STATES.— EPOCH OF RECONSTRUCTION. 



188 



ber a fire broke out in De Koven Street, and 
was driven bj a high wind into the lumber- 
yards and wooden houses of the neighborhood. 
The flames spread with great rapidity, leaped 
the South Branch of the Chicago River, and 
began to roar through the business parts of 
the city. All that night and all the following 
day the deluge of fire rolled on ; sprang across 
the main channel of the river, and swept into 
blackened ruins the whole district between the 
North Branch and Lake Michigan, as far 
northward as Lincoln Park. The area burned 
over was two thousand one hundred acres, or 
three and a third square miles. About two 
hundred lives were lost in the conflagration, 
]|nd the property destroyed amounted to about 
#200,000,000. No such terrible devastation 
had been witniessed since the burning of Mos- 
cow, in 1812. In the extent of the district 
burned over, the Chicago fire stands first; in 
the amount of property destroyed, second ; and 
in the suflering aocasioned, third, among the 
great conflagrations of history. 

On the 21st of October, 1872, was setded 
the remaining dispute concerning the geo- 
graphical boundaries of the United States. 
By the terms of the treaty of 1846 it was 
stipulated that the North-western boundary 
line, running westwatd along the forty-ninth 
parallel of latitude, should extend to the 
middle .of the channoL which separates the ' 
continent from Vancouver's Iriand, and thence 
southerly through the middls of said dumrid and 
of Fuca's Straits to the Pacific. But what 
was "the middle of said channel?'* for there 
were several channels. The British Qovern- 
ment claimed the Straits of Rosario to be the 
true line intended by the treaty, while the 
United States would have the Canal de Haro. 
So the question stood for a quarter of a cen- 
tury, and was then referred for settlement by 
arbitration to William I., Emperor of Ger- 
many. That monarch heard the cause, de- 
cided in favor of the United States, and 
the Canal de Haro became the international 
boundary. 

The civil Administration of President Grant 
was embarrassed throughout by the military 
spirit and influences which still dominated the 
country. The President himself was a military 
man, a general of armies rather than a states- 
man. At this epoch the great men of the coun- 



try had for the most part been connected with 
the war. Major-Generals and Brigadier-Gen- 
erals swarmed in the halls of Congress and 
thronged the White House. The President was 
very far from desiring to introduce or retain 
military methods in the conduct of the Govern- 
ment. He had, in fact, but little sympathy with 
war and the processes by which it is carried 
on. But, oil the other hand, he was not in 
sympathy with political methods, and knew 
nothing of the arts of the demagogue. As a 
natural result, he fell back upon the methods 
with which he was best acquainted, and the 
Administration was said, especially by his op- 
ponents, to have a military cast. On the 
whole, however, the President retained his 
powerful hold on the American people, nor 
was it likely, in the Presidential campaign of 
1872, that any other could supplant him ia 
their aflections and political confidence. 

As the quadrennial term drew to a close^ 
the political parties marshaled their forces for 
the contest. Many parts of the Chief Magis- 
trate's policy had been subjected to severe 
criticism and heated controversy. The Con-'^ 
gressional plan of reconstructing the Southern 
States had prevailed, and with that plan the 
President was in full accord. But the recon- 
struction ' measures had been unfavorably re- 
ceived in the South, and were generally de- 
nounced by the Democratic party. The, ele- 
vation of the negro race to the full rights of 
citizenship was met with much rational oppo- 
sition, to say nothing of race prejudice and 
political rancor. Owing to the disorganization 
of civil government in the Southern States, 
an opportunity was given in certain districts 
for bad and reckless men to band themselves 
together in lawlessness. Organizations known 
as Ku-Klux Clans were formed against the 
constituted authorities, and the latter were 
frequently what was called "carpet-bag gov- 
ernments;" that is, governments instituted by 
political adventurers who had gone from the 
North into the South with their carpet-hags in 
their hands. The military spirit was still rife ' 
in the country, and the issues of the Civil 
War were rediscussed with much bitterness. 

On these issues the people divided in the 
election of 1872. The Bepublicans renomi- 
nated General Grant for the Presidency. For 
the Vice-presidency Mr. Colfax declined a 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



duBtry be was now, at the age of Bixtj-one, 
thrown into the forefront of political strife. 

The canvass was one of wild ezcitcment 
and bitter denunciations. Mr. Greeley himself 
went before the people and spoke on the 
questions iuvolved in the contest. But every- 
thing seemed adverse to his prospects. Hia 
own utterances, his strauge personality, hia 
long contentions vith the Democratic party, 
the iocougniity of his following, and many 
other things, were paraded effectively agunat 
him. He was overwhelmingly defeated. Gen- 
eral Grant's majority was almost unprece- 
dented in the political history of liit country. 
Mr. Greeley, who had in the meantime re- 
tired from the editorship of the Tribtue, at- 
tempted to resume his duties, but the shock 
had been too great for his physical and mental 
powers. He died in less than a month after 
the election, and with him ended the caratf 
of the greatest journalist which America haa 
ever produced. 

A few days after the Presidential election 
of 1872 the city of Boston was visited by a 
conflagration only second in its ravages to that 
of Chicago, in the previous year. On the 
evening of the 9th of November a fire bioke 
out on the comer of Kingston and Bummer 
streets, spread to the north-east, and contjuued 
with almost unabated fury until the morning 
of the Uth. The best portion of the city, 
embracing some of the finest business blocb 
In the United States, was laid in ashes. The 
burnt district covered an area of eizty-fivft 
acres. Eight hundred buildings, property to 
the value of dgbty millions of dollars, and 
fifteen human lives were lost in the cod- 
flagration. 

Our attention may now be turned for a 
moment to an event of some importance on 
the &r-off Pacific Slope. In the spring of 
1872 an order was i^ued to Superintendent 
Odeneal to remove the Modoc Indians from 
their lands, on the southern shore of I^ake 
Klamath, Oregon, to a new reservation. The 
Indians, who had been greatly mistreated by 
former agents of the Government, refused to 
obey the order, and in the following Novera- 
ber a body of troops was sent to force them 
into compliance. The Modocs reusted, kept 
up the war during the winter, and then re- 
tzcated into an almost inaccesaible region. 



THE UNITED STATES.— EPOCS OF RECONSTRUCTION. 



18& 



known as the Lava Beda. Here, in the fol- 
lowing apriDg, the Indians were snrronnded, 
but would not yield. Od the 11th of April a 
conference waa held between them and ax 
members of the Peace Commission ; but in the 
midst of the council the treacherous savages 



The system of government inBtitiit«d in the 
Bouthem States, under the reconstnictioa 
policy of Congreaa, was very unsatisfactory. 
The old Confederate party in the South em- 
braced the best elements of society. The woA 



Aprrifktim. o.H.nDibiiD, 

their stronghold, but it was the Ist of June 

before General Davis and a force of regulars 

oould compel Captain Jacic and his murderous 

band to surrender. The chiefs were tried by 

court-martial, and executed in the following 

October. 

N.— Vol. +— 1> 



with them. Between the two parties thna 
constituted a great hostility exiated, and id 
some parts of the country the civil authority 
was in conBtsnt chaoa and turmoil. In 1873 
a difficulty arose in Louisiana which broke the 
peace of the State and produced much excite- 
ment. Owing to the existence of double 



186 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.^THE MODERN WORLD. 



election-boards, two sets of Presidential electors 
had been chosen in the previous autumn. At 
the same time two Governors, William P. 
Kellogg and John McEnery, were elected, and 
rival Legislatures were also returned by the 
rival boards. Two State governments were 
x)rganized, and for awhile the Commonwealth 
was in a condition' bordering on anarchy. 

The dispute was at length referred to the 
Federal Government, and the President de- 
cided in favor of Kellogg and his party. The 
rival Government was accordingly disbanded ; 
but on the 14th of September, 1874, the party 
opposed to the administration of Kellogg, and 
led by D. B. Penn, who had been returned as 
Lieutenant-Governor with McEnery, rose in 
arms and took possession of the State-house. 
Governor Kellogg fled to the Custom-house, 
and appealed to the President for help. The 
latter immediately ordered the adherents of 
Penn to disperse, and a body of I^ational troops 
was sent to New Orleans to enforce the proc- 
lamation. On the assembling of the Legisla- 
ture in the following December the difficulty 
broke out more violently than ever, and the 
soldiery was again called in to restore order 
and settle the dispute. 

About the beginning of President Grant's 
second term the country was greatly disturbed 
by what was known as the Credit Mobiueb 
Investigation in Congress. The " Credit 
Mobilier of America" was a joint-stock com- 
pany, organized in 1863, for the purpose of 
facilitating the construction of public works. 
In 1867 another company, which had under- 
taken to build the Pacific Railroad, purchased 
the charter of the Credit Mobilier, and the 
capital was increased to $3,750,000. Owing 
to the profitableness of the work in which the 
company was engaged the stock rose rapidly 
in value, and enormous dividends were paid 

^ to the shareholders. The money was made by 
the subletting of the Pacific Railway contracts 
to the Credit Mobilier company by the 
directors of the railroad ; that is, the managers 
of the railway company sublet the work to 

, ihem&dves as directors of the Credit Mobilier, 
at enormous prices. The railway was con- 
structed in a large part by a subsidy, granted 
by the Government, and in this manner the 
directors of the Credit Mobilier got their hands 
without obstruction directly into the treasury 



of the United States. It was with the Credit' 
Mobilier a fine qua rum that the door which 
they had thus opened into the treasury vaults 
should not be closed ; and, to prevent such 
possible obstruction, the managers resorted ta 
wholesale corruption. In 1872 a lawsuit id 
Pennsylvania developed the startling fact thai- 
much of the stock of the Credit Mobilier uki» 
(nvned by member$ of Confess! The managers 
of the company had placed their certificates in- 
wholesale quantities to the credit of Repre- 
sentatives, Senators, and other high officers iii» 
the Government. On these certificates large^ 
dividends were declared and paid to the hold- 
ers of the shares. Many were thus enriched^ 
without the expenditure of a dollar. .A 8us> 
picion that members of Congress holding the* 
certificates had voted corruptly in legislation' 
afifecting the Pacific Railroad at once seized 
the public mind, and led to a Congressional 
investigation, in the course of which many 
scandalous transac^rions were brought to lights 
and the faith of the people in the integrity of 
their public servants was greatly shaken. 

In the autumn of 1873 occurred one of the- 
most disastrous financial panics known in the- 
history of the United States. The alarm wa» 
given by the failure of the great banking- 
house of Jay Cooke & Co., of Piiiladelphia. 
Other failures followed in rapid succession.. 
Depositors everywhere hurried to the banks,, 
and withdrew their money and securitiea. 
Business was suddenly paralyzed, and many 
months elapsed before confidence was sxxf- 
ficiently restored to enable merchants and 
bankers to engage in the usual transactions of 
trade. The primary cause of the panic waa> 
the fluctuations in the volume and value of the 
National eurrency. Out of this had arisen b. 
wild spirit of speculation which sapped the- 
foundations of business, destroyed financial 
confidence, and ended in disaster. 

Not the least of the evil results of ihe- 
monetary disturbance was the check given to 
the construction of the Northern Pacific Rait' 
way. As early as 1864 a company had been 
organized, under a charter granted by Congress,, 
to construct a railway from Lake Superior ♦*> 
Puget Sound. The work also contemplated 
the running of a branch road, two hundre<l' 
miles in length, down the valley of the Colum* 
bia River to Portland, Oregon. Large subsi- 



THE UNITED STATES.— J^JfOVM OF RECONSTRUCTION. 
dies were grauted to the company by Congress, l_li:_i.-j r>i t^ i 

and other favorable le^aUtJon waa expected 
to follow. In 1870 the work of cunstruction 
was begun and carried westward from Duluth, 
Hinnemta. Jay Cooke's banking-house made 
heavy loans to this company, accepting as 
security the bonds of the road, for it was 
confideotly expected that such legislation 
would be obtuned as should secure the success 
of the enterprise and bring the bonds to par. 
In this condiUoQ of afiairs the Credit Mobilier 
scandal was blown, with ils shocking effluvia 
before the country, and no Congress would 
have dared to vote further subsidies to a rail- 
way enterprise. Jay Cooke's securities became 
comparatively worthless; then followed the 
&ilures and the panic. The work of construct- 
ing the Iforthem Pacific line was suddenly 
arrested, and it was only after years of delay 
that the enterprise was prosecuted to success. 
In 1875 the section of four hundred and 
fifty miles, extending from Duluth to Bismarck, 
Dakota, was put into operation. Then another 
span, a hundred and five miles in length, be* 
tween Kalama and Tacoma, in Washington 
Territory, was completed, and finally the whole 
line. Meanwhile the attention of the country 
was turned to the Texas and Pacific Railway, 
which had been projected from Shreveport, 
Louisiana, and Texarkana, Arkansas, by way 
of El Paso, Texas, to San Diego, California, a 
distance from Shreveport of fifteen hundred 
and fourteen miles. In 1875 the main line 
had been carried westward a hundred and 
eighty-nine miles, to Dallas,' Texas, while tbe 
line from Texarkana had progre^ed seventy- 
five miles towards BI Paso. 

On the 4th of March, 1875, the Territory 
of Colorado was authorized by Congress to 
form a State Constitution. On the Ist of 
July, in the following year, the instrument 
thus provided for was ratified by the people. 
A month later the President issued his 
proclamation, and the " Centennial State" 
took her place in the Union. The new Com- 
monwealth embraced an area of one^hundred 
and four thousand five hundred square miles, 
and a population of forty-two thousand souls. 
Public attention was directed to Colorado by 
the discovery of gold in 1852. Silver was 
discovered about the same time, and in the 
winter of 1858-9 the first colony ot' miners 



188 



UNIVERSAL mSTOBY.—TBE MODERN WORLD. 



under a stroke of paralysis at the home of hia 
daughter, in New York City; and on the 11th 
of March, in the following year, Senator 
Chades Sumner, of Maseacbusetta, died at 
Washington. He was a native of Boston; 
born in 1811; liberally educated at Harvard 
College. At the age of thirty-five he entered 
the arena of public life, and in 1850 suc- 
ceeded Daniel Webster in the Senate of the 
United States. This positioD he retained until 
the Ume of hie death, speaking much and 
powerfully on all the great questiona that 



merits which wiQ ttanBmit his name to after 
times aa that of a patriot atatesman. 

As the CENTENKtAL OF AjfERICAM InDB- 

FBNDENCB drew near, the people made ready 
to celebrate the great event with appropriate 
ceremoniea. Aa to the form of the celebration, 
an International Exposition of Arts and lur 
dustries was decided on ; as to the place, the 
city of Philadelphia, hallowed by Bevoludon- 
ary memoriea, was selected ; aa to the titt\e, the 
period from the 10th of May to the 10th of 
Novembei, 1876, waa choeeo. An appropim- 



HArN BUILDING. CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION. 



afj^tated the Nation. His lost days were spent 
in considering the interests and welfare of that 
country to whose service he had given the 
life-long energies of his genius. On the 22d 
of November, 1875, Vice-President Henry 
Wilson sank under a stroke of paralyua, and 
died in Washington City. Like Roger Sher- 
man, he bad risen from the shoemaker's bench 
to the highest honors of his country. With- 
out the learning of Seward and Sumner— 
without the diplomatic skill of the one, or the 
oratorical fame of the other — he nevertheless 
those great abilities and sterling 



tion of 11,500,000 was made by Congress to 
promote the enterprise, and voluntary ofieriogs 
and contributiona were forwarded from every 
State and Territory of the Union. The city 
of Philadelphia did her part by opening Piur- 
mount Park, one of the largest and raoat 
beautiful in the world, for the Exposition. 

The management of the enterprise was in- 
trusted tc a commission, which was oi^i;anized 
by the election of General Joseph R. Hawley, 
of Connecticut, as president; Alfred T. 
Goshom, of Ohio, as director-general; and 
John L. Campbell, of Indiana, as secretary. 



THE UNITED STATES.— EPOCH OF BEG0N8TBUCTI0N. 



TTnder the direction of this commiasioD five 
principal buildings were projected, and were 
brought to completion about the close of 1875. 
The largest of these great etructures, called the 
Main Building, was eighteen hundred and 
eightj feet in length and four hundred and 
Bixty-fbur feet wide, corering an area of a little 
more than twenty acres. The coat of the edi- 
fice was tl,580,000. The building second in 
importance was the Memorial Hall, <x Art 
G^ry, built of gran- 
ite, iron, and glass, 
and covering an area 
(^ seventy-six thousand 
■ix hundred and fifty 
square feet. IIiIb was 
by far the most elegant 
•nd permanent of all 
the structures erected 
for the occasion. Ma- 
diinery Hall, the third 
of the great edifices, 
was like the Mtun 
Building in general ap- 
pearance, though less 
beautiful and grand. 
Hie gronnd-fioor em- 
Ivaoed an areaof nearly 
thirteen acres. The 
cost of the structure 
was S542,000. Agri- 
cultural Hall occupied 
a space of little more 
than ten acres, and was 
built at a cost of 
nearly $260,000. The 
fifth and smallest of 
the principal buildings 
was Horticultural 
Hall, an edifice of the 
Moorish pattern, cov- 
ering a space of one 

and three-fifths acres, and costing about 
•300,000. llie other structures of chief 
interest were the United States Government 
Building, the Woman's Pavilion, and the De- 
partment of Public Comfort. After these 
came the Govemraent Buildings of Foreign 
Nations, the Model Dwellings and Bazars, 
School-houses and Restaurants, Judges' Halls, 
and Model Factories. 
On the 6th of January, 1876, the reception 



of articles for the Exposition was begun. A 
system of awards was adopted, and on the lOth 
of May the inaugural ceremonies were held 
under direction of the Centennial Commission, 
Preudent Grant making the opening address. 
By this time the attentjon of the people had 
been fully aroused to the interest and impok. 
tance of the event, and from the opening days 
of the Eipositton the grounds were crow<led 
with thousands and hundreds of thousands of 



INDEPENDENCE HALL. 

proceedings and of the various exhibits were 
sent broadcast to every civilized country 
of the world. Distinguished personages, 
among them Dom Pedro H., Emperor of Bra- 
zil, came from various nations to gather iu- 
structiim from the accumulated arts and 
industries of mankind. On the 4th of July 
the centennial of the great Declaration waa 
appro|>riately celebrated throughout the coun- 
try. The city of Philadelphia was crowded 



190 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



with two hundred and fifty thousand strangers. 
In Independence Square the Declaration wa« 
read from the original maniucript hy Richard 
Henry Lee, a grandaou of him by whom the 
resolution to be free was first offered in Cod- 
grese. A Naiwntd Ode was then recited by 
Bayard Taylor, and the Centennial Oration de- 
livered by Wiiiiam M. Evarts. At night the 
city was illuminated, aud the ceremonies con- 
cluded with a brilliant display of fire-works. 

The daily attendance in Fairmount Park 
varied from five thousand to two hundred and 
Hventy-five thousand persons. The grounds 
were open for one hundred and fifty-eight 
days; the total receipts for admiasion were 
$3,761,000, and the total number of vimtors 



MEMORIAL HALL. CENTENNIAL 

nine million seven hundred and eighty -six 
thousand. On the 10th of November the Ex- 
position was formally closed by the President 
of the United States, attended by General 
Hawley, Chairman of the Centennial Com- 
mission, and Director Goshorn, of Cincinnati. 
Efibrts were made, however, to secure, as lar 
as practicable, the permanency of the Centen- 
nial display. Machinery Halt was purchased 
by the city of Philadelphia, hut was afterwards 
removed from the grounds. After an attempt 
to preserve the Main Building it was sold by 
auction, and the materials removed. The 
Memorial Building was preserved intact, to- 
gether with a Urge part of the art treasures, 
which were exhibited therein during the Cen- 
tennial summer. The Woman's Pavilion was 



given as a memento by the Executive Com* 
mittee, and most of the Government Baildingt 
of Foreign Nations were presented to the city 
of Philadelphia. It can not be doubled that 
the Eiposition, considered as a whole, left a 
permanent' impression for good on the mindi 
of the American people, and contributed to 
the harmony and mutual interest of all the 
civilized States of the world. 

During the last year of President Granf* 
Administration the country was disturbed bj 
a war with the Sioux Indians. These fierce 
savages had, iu 1867, made a treaty with tlie 
United States agreeing to relinquish all the 
territory south of the Niobrara, west of the 
one hundred and fourth meridian, and nortlt 
of the forty- 
sixth parallel of 
latitude. By 
this treaty the 
Siiiux were coo- 
fined to a lai^ 
reservation Jn 
South-vesteni 
Dakota, and to 
this reservation 
they agreed to 
retire by the 1st 
of January, 
1876. 

Meanwhile, 
however, gold 
was discovered 
among the Black 
Hills, a region 
thegreaterpart of which belonged by the treaty 
to the Sioux reservation. But no treaty could 
keep the hungry horde of white gold-diggers and 
adventurers from overrunning the interdicted 
district. This gave the Siuux a good excuse, 
not to say R valid cause, for gratifying their 
native dispositirin by breaking over the limits 
of their reservation, and roaming at large 
through Wyoming and Montana, burning 
houses, stealing horses, and killing whoever op- 
posed them. 

The Government now undertook to drive 
the Sioux upon their reservation. A large 
force of regulars under Generals Terry and 
Crook was sent into the mountainous country 
of the Upper Yellowstone, and the Indians, to 
the number of oeveral thousand, led hy theb 



THE UNITED STATES.— EPOCH OF BECOmTRUCTION. 191 



oatioDB of the Territory objected to having 
the fierce savages of the North for their 
neighbors. 

On the 24tfa of November the Fourth Cav- 
alry attacked and decisively defeated the Siouz 
at a pass in the Big H{>rii Mountains. The 
Indians lost severely ia the engagement, and 



■aoted chie^ain Sitting Bull, were crowded 
4)ack i^inst the Big Horn Mountains aud 
lUver. Generals Cufiter and Reno, who were 
■eent forward with the Seventh Cavalry to dls- 
■«over the whereabouts of the Indians, found 
-them encamped in a large village, extending 
for nearly three miles alnng the left bank of 
the Little Big Horn. On 
the 25th of June, Gen- 
■eral Custer, without wait 
iag for reinforcements, 
oharged headlong with 
Ilia division into the 
Indian town, and was at 
■once assailed by thou- 
■flands of yelling warri- 
■owa. Of the details of 
■the struggle that ensued* 
Tery little U known. 
Oeneral Custer and every 
man of his command 
fell in the fight. The 
«onSict equaled, if it 
-did not surpass in de»> 
{>e ration and disaster, 
«ay other Indian battle 
■ever fought in America- 
The whole loss of the 
Seventh Cavalry was 
iwo hundred and sixty- 
«Qe killed, and fifty-two 
-wounded. General Reno, 
who hod been engaged 
with the savages at the 
tower end of the town, 
4ield his position on the 
hlaSk of the Little Big 
fiorn until General Gib- 
bon arrived with rein- 
forcements and saved the 
remnant from destruo- 
iion. 

Other divisions of the 
«rmy were soon hurried BATTtK OF THE Bia horn^cdbtbb'S death. 

4o the scene of hostility. 
During the summer and autumn the Indians 
were beaten in several engagements, and ne- 
^tiations were at length opened looking for 
the removal of the Siouz to the Indian Ter- 
ritory. But still a few desperate bands held 
■out against the antiority of the Govem- 
«>ent, and at the same time t^e civilized 



their town.containiDgonehuiidred and seventy- 
three huts, was totally destroyed. The army 
then went iuto winter-quarters at various 
points in the hostile country ; but active opera- 
tions were still carried on by forays and brief 
expeditions during December and January. 
On the 5th of the latter month the main body 



192 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



of the savages was overtaken and completely 
routed by the division of Colonel Miles. 

The remaining bands, under Sitting Bull 
and Crazy Horse, being now able to offer no 
serious rccistance, made their escape across 
the border, and became subject to the author- 
ities of Canada. Here they remained until 
the following autumn, when the Government 
reopened negotiations with them for their re- 
turn to their reservation in Dakota. A oom- 
miasion, headed by Greneral Terry, met Sit- 
ting Bull and his principal warriors at Fort 
Walsh, on the Canadian frontier. Here a 
conference was held on the 8th of October. 
Full pardon for past offenses was offered to 
the Sioux on condition of their peaceable return 
and future good behavior. But the irreconcil- 
able Sitting Bull and his savage chieft re- 
jected the proposals with scorn. The con- 
ference was broken off, and the Sioux were left 
at large in the British dominions north of Milk 
River. It was not until 1880 that, through 
the intervention of the Canadian Government, 
Sitting Bull and his band were induced to re- 
turn to the reservation of the Yankton Sioux 
on the north bank of the Missouri River, 
Dakota. 

In the meantime, "snlh the subsidence of 
the interest occasioned by the centennial 
oelebration, and the excitement caused by the 
war with the Sioux, came the Twenty-third 
Presidential election. Before the end of June, 
the National Conventions were held and 
standard-bearers selected by the political par- 
ties. General Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, 
and William A. Wheeler, of New York, were 
chosen as candidates by the Republicans; 
Samuel J. Tilden, of New York, and Thomas 
A. Hendricks, of Indiana, by the Democrats. 
A third — the Independent Greenback— party 
also appeared, and presented as candidates 
Peter Cooper, of New York, and Samuel 
P. Cary, of Ohio. The canvass began early 
and with great asperity. The cry raised by 
the Democratic party was Reform — reform in 
the public service and in all the methods of 
administration. For it was alleged that many 
of the departments of the Government, and 
the officers presiding therein, had become cor- 
rupt in practice and in fact. The Republicans 
answered back with the cry of Reform — 
averring a willinsrness and an anxiety to cor- 



rect public abuses of whatsoever sort, and to 
bring to punishment all who had dared to 
prostitute high places of honor to base uses. 
To this it was added that the Nationality 
of the United States, as against the doctrine 
of State Sovereignty, was not yet acknowledged 
iu the South ; and that the rights of the Black 
men must be protected with additional safe- 
guards. The Independent party echoed the 
cry of Reform — monetary reform first, and all 
other reforms afterwards. For it was alleged 
by the leaders of this party that the measure 
of redeeming the National legal-tenders and 
other obligations of the United States in 
^old — which measure was advocated by both 
the other parties — was a project unjust to the 
debtor class, iniquitous in itself and impossible 
of fulfillment. And it was further argued by 
the independents that the money idea itself 
ought to be revolutionized, and that a National 
paper currency should be provided by the 
Government, and be based, not on specie, but 
on a bond bearing a low rate of interest and 
interconvertible, at the option of the holder, 
with the currency itself. But the advocates- 
of this theory had only a slight political 
organization, and did not succeed in securing 
a single electoral vote. The real contest lay, 
as it had done for twenty years, between the 
Republicans and the Democrats. The can- 
vass drew to a close ; the election was held ; 
the general result was ascertained ; and botb 
parties claimed the victory! The election was- 
so evenly balanced between the candidates — 
there had been so much irregularity in the 
voting and subsequent electoral proceedings- 
in the States of Florida, Louisiana, South 
Carolina, and Oregon, and the powers of Con- 
gress over the votes of such States were so- 
vaguely defined under existing legislation — 
that no certain declaration of the result could 
be made. The public mind was confounded 
with perplexity and excitement, and more* 
than once were heard the threatenings of 
civil war. 

When Congress convened in December, the 
whole question of the disputed Presidency 
came at once before that body for settlement. 
The situation was seriously complicated by the 
political complexion of the Sen ate and theHiuse 
of Representatives. In the former body the 
Republicans had a majority sufficient to ton 



N 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



193 



trol ita action, while in the House the Demo- 
cratic majority was still more decisive and 
equally willful. 

The debates began, and seemed likely to be 
interminable. The question at issue was 
whether the electoral votes of the several 
States should, at the proper time, be opened 
and CQ^inted by the presiding ofBcer of the 
Senate, in accordance with the immemorial 
and constitutional usage in such cases, or 
whether, in view of the existence of duplicate 
and spurious returns from some of the States, 
and of alleged gross frauds and irregularities 
in others, some additional court ought to be 
constituted to open and count the ballots. 

Meanwhile, the necessity of doing something 
became more and more imperative. The great 
merchants and manufacturers of the country, 
and the Boards of Trade in the principal cities, 
grew clamorous for a speedy and peaceable 
adjustment of the difficulty. The spirit of 
compromise gained ground, and after much 
debating in Congress it was agreed that all the 



disputed election returns should be referred to 
a Joint High Cobimission, to consist of five 
members chosen from the United States Senate, 
five from the House of Representatives, and 
five from the Supreme Court The judgment 
of the tribunal was to be final in all matters 
referred thereto fur decision. The Commission 
was accordingly constituted. The counting 
was begun, as usual, in the presence of the 
Senate and the House of Representatives. 
When the disputed and duplicate returns were 
reached, they were referred. State by State, to 
the Joint High Commission, by which body 
the decision was made. On the 2d of March, 
imly two days before the time for the iruiugwraJlion^ 
the final decision was rendered. The Bepub* 
lican candidates were declared elected. One 
hundred and eighty-five electoral votes were 
cast for Hayes and Wheeler, and one hundred 
and eighty-four for Tilden and Hendricks. 
The most dangerous political crisis in the his* 
tory of the country passed harmlessly by with* 
out violence or bloodshed.^ 



CHAT=»XER CXXVI.— LATEST PERIOD. 




lUTHERFORD BUR- 
CHARD HAYES, nine- 
teenth President of the 
United States was born 
in Delaware, O., on the 
4th. of October, 1822. 
His primary education 
was received in the public schools. After- 
wards he was a student at the Norwalk 
Academy, and in 1837 at Webb's Prepara- 

*The complete domination of party politics 
in the United States was never more unhappily 
illustrated than in the work of the Joint High 
Commission. The fivo members of the Court 
from tBe House of Bepresentatives — that body 
being Democratic — were, of course, three Dem- 
ocraU and two Republicans; the five from the 
Senate— that body being Republican — ^were three 
Republicans and two Democrats; the five from 
the Supreme Court were, two Republicans, two 
Democrats, and Judge Joseph P. Bradley, who 
was called an Independent, but whose political 
antecedents and proclivitieis were Republican. 
When the proceedings began, it was at once 



tory School, at Middletown, Connecticut. In 
the following year he entered the Fresh- 
man Class, at Kenyon College, and in 1842 
was graduated ^m that institution with 
the highest honors. Three years aflerwarda 
he completed his legal studies at Harvard, 
and then began the practice of his professioik 
at Marietta and Fremont, and finally as city 
solicitor in Cincinnati. Here he won a dis- 
tinguished reputation as a lawyer. In the 

manifest that every Democratic member would" 
vote for his candidates, whatever might be the 
proofe; that every Republican would support 
Hayes and Wheeler whatever might be the facts ; 
and that Judge Bradley, who constituted the real 
Court, would decide according to his antecedents 
and proclivities. In no single instance during 
the proceedings did any member of the Court 
rise above his political bias. The decision, 
therefore, happy enough in its results, was sim- 
ply a political in*jigue — a work in which, 
on the whole, tl.e Republican leaders were 
more sagacious and skillful than their antag- 
onists. 



194 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



Civil War he perfurmed much honorable 
service Id the Union cause; rose to the rank 
of Major-Geueral, aud in 1864, while still in 
the field, was elected to Congress. Three 
years later he was chosen Governor of his 
native State, and was reelected in 1869, and 
again in 1875. At the Cincinnati Conven- 



tion of 1876 he had the good-fortune to be 
nominated for the Presidency over several of 
the most eminent men of the Nation. 

Id his inaugural address, delivered on the 
6th of March,' President Hayes indicated the 

• The 4th of March fell on Sunday. The same 
tiling has happened in the following years: 1753, 
1781, 1821 (Monroe's inaugurntion. second term). 



policy of bis Administration. The patriotio 
and conciliatory utterances of the address did 
much to lead the country back to political 
quietude. The South was assured of right 
purposes OD the part of the new Chief M^s- 
trate. A radicn] reform in the civil servios 
was avowed as a part of his policy, and • 
speedy return to 
specie payments was 
recommended as a 
final cure for the de- 
ranged finances of 
the Nation. Tha 
immediate effect of 
tbese assurances, so 
evidently made in 
good faitb and hon- 
esty, was to rally 
around the new Ad- 
ministration many of 
the better political 
elements in the hope 
of introducing a 
second "Era of Good 
Feeling," as peace- 
able and beneficent 
in its character aa 
the former turbu- 
lence had been ex- 
citing and dangeroua. 
On tbe 8th of 
Harcb the President 
sent to the Senate 
the names of those 
chosen for his Cabi- 
net In this, also, 
there were evidences 
of a ne« departure 
in the policy of the 
Government Th e 
Cabinet, though emi- 
nently able and xtates- 
manlike, was notice- 
ably non-partisan in 
its character. As Secretary of State, Will- 
iam M. Evarts, of New York, was chosen; 
John Sherman, of Ohio, was named as Secre- 
tary of the Treasury; George W. McCrary, 
of Iowa, Secretary of War; Richard W. 

1840 (Taylor's inauguration), 1877 (Hayes's i naucu- 
ration); and the same willoccurhereafteraa follows: 
1917, 1945, 1973, 2001, 2029, 2057, 2086, 2125, 218S. 



THE UyiTED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



195 



Thompson, of lodiana, Secretary of the Navy; 
Carl Bcburz, of Missouri, Secretary of the In- 
terior; Charles E. Devena, of Massachusette, 
Attorn ey-General ; and David M. Kee, of Teo- 
Deesee, Foatni aster-General. These nomiDaUons 
were duly ratjfied by the Senate, aud the new 
Administration was ushered in under. not un- 
favorable auspices. 

The summer of 1877 was notable in Amer- 
ican history for the great labor disturbance 
known as The Railroad Strike. For sev- 
eral years the mining districts of the country 
had been troubled with disputes aud outbreaks 
having their origin in the question of wages. 
The manufacturing towos and cities had wit- 
nessed similar troubles, 
and the great corpora- 
tions, having control of 
the lines of travel and 
commerce, were fre- 
quently brought to a 
standstill by the deter- 
mined oppowtion of their 
employ^. The working- 
men and capitalists of 
the country had for some 
time maintained toward 
each other a kind of 
armed neutrality, alike 
prejudicial to the intei> 
ests of both. 

In the spring of this 
year the managers of the 
great railways leading 
from the sea-board to the 
W^est, declared a Teduc- 

don of ten per cent in the wages of thdr work- 
men. This measure, which was to take effect at 
the middle of July, was violently resisted by the 
employ^ of the companies, and the most active 
steps were laken to prevent its success. The 
reduction was to take effect at that precise 
season of the year when the removal of the 
enormous grain product of the West would 
put upon the operatives of the railways the 
roost excessive labors of the year. It was also 
the s«ason when the receipts of railway traffic 
wero lai^r, and when, therefore, there was 
least rational ground for a reduction of wages. 
The resistance to the measure was natural and 
inevitable. On the 16th of July the employes 
if the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad left their 



posts, and gathered such strength in Baltimore 
and Martinsburgj West Virginia, as to prevent 
the running of trains and set the authorities 
at defiance. The militia was" called out by 
Governor Matthews, and sent to Martinsburg; 
but was soon dispersed by the strikers, who, 
for the time, remained masters of the line. 
The President then ordered General French to 
the scene with a body of r^ulars, and the 
blockade of the road was raised. On the 20th 
of the mouth a violent tumult occurred in 
Baltimore; but the troops succeeded in scat- 
tering the rioters, of whom nine were killed 
and many wounded. 

By this time the strike had spread every 



where. lu less than a week the trains had 
been stopped od all the important roads be- 
tween the Hudson and the Mississippi. Ex- 
cept in the cotton-growing States, the insur- 
rection was universal. Travel ceased; freighu 
perished en route; business was paralyzed. 
In Pittsburg the strikers, rioters, and danger- 
ous classes, gathering in a mob to the number 
of twenty thousand, obtained complete control 
of the city, and for two days held a reign of 
terror unparalleled in the history of the coun- 
try. The lawless violence, and madness of 
the scene recalled the days of the Frencl 
Revolution. The Union DepSt, all the machine- 
shops, and all the railroad buildings of the city 
were burned. One hundred and twenty-five 



t96 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



locomotives, and two thousand five hundred 
oars, laden with valuable merchandise, were 
destroyed amid the wildest havoc and uproar. 
The insurrection was finally suppressed by the 
regular troops and the Pennsylvania militia, 
but not until nearly a hundred lives had been 
k)6t| and property destroyed to the value 
of more than $3,000,000. 

On the 25th of July a terrible riot of like 
character occurred in Chicago. In this tumult 
fifteen of the insurgents were killed by the 
militia of the city. On the next day St. Liouis 
was imperiled by a similar mob. San Fran- 
cisco was also the scene of a dangerous out- 
break, which was here directed against the 
Chinese immigrants and the managers of the lum- 
ber-yards. Cincinnati, Columbus, Indianapolis, 
Louisville, and Fort Wayne were for a while 
in danger, but escaped without serious loss of 
Kfe or property. By the close of the month 
the alarming insurrection was at an end. 
Business and travel flowed back into their 
usual channels; but the sudden outbreak had 
given a shock to the public 'mind, and had re- 
vealed a hidden peril to American institutions. 

To this period belongs the history of the 
Nez Perce Was. The Indian tribe of this 
name had their haunts in Idaho. They had 
been known to the Government since 1806, 
wheu the first treaty was made with them by 
the explorers, Lewis and Clarke. Missionary 
stations had been established among them, 
and the Nation had remained on friendly 
terms until after the Mexican War. In 1854 
the authorities of the United States purchased 
a part of the Nez Perc^ Territory, large 
reservatioos being made in North-western 
Idaho and North-eastern Oregon. But some 
of the chiefs refused to ratify the purchase, 
and continued to roam at large. These came 
in conflict with the White settlers who had 
made their way into the disputed regions, 
and hostilities at once ensued. 

The war was begun by the savages in the 
usual predatory manner. . General Howard, at 
this time commanding the department of the 
Columbia, marched against the hostile tribe 
with a small force of regulars, but the Nez 
Percys, led by their noted chieftain Joseph, 
fled first in this direction and then in that, 
avoiding battle. During the greater part of 
the summer the pursuit continued; still the 



Indians could not be overtaken. In the fall 
they were chased through the mountains into 
Northern Montana, where they were confronted 
by other troops imder command of Colonel 
Miles. The Nez Perc^, thus hemmed in, were 
driven across the Missouri River, near the 
mouth of the Muselshell, and were finally 
surrounded in their camp north of the Bear^ 
Paw Mountains. Here, on the 4th of Octo- 
ber, they were attacked by the forces of Colonel 
Miles; a hard battle was fought, and the In- 
dians were completely routed.* Only a few 
braves, led by their chief, White Bird, mad« 
their escape. All the rest were either killed 
or made prisoners. Three hundred and sev- 
enty-five of the captive Nez Perces were 
brought back to the military post on the Mis- 
souri. The troops of General Howard had 
made forced marches through a mountainous 
country for a distance of sixteen hundred mUeal 
The campaign wad crowned with complete 
success. 

The year 1878 was noted in the financial 
history of the United States for the important 
Congressional measure, known as The Remon- 
ETIZATION OF SiLVER. When the American 
Republic was instituted in 1789 one of the 
most important matters imposed on the Treas- 
ury was the establishment of a system of 
coinage. At that time there might be said to 
be no unit of value in the Old Thirteen States. 
In general, the British system had prevailed^ 
and the pound sterling, with its subdivision? 
•of shilling^ and pence, was recognized as the 
money of account. The Revolution had dis- 
sipated coin frcLi the country, and the devices 
of paper money used in the epoch of Inde- 
pendence were various and uncertain. By the 
first coinage regulations of the United States, 
the standard unit of value was the American 
Silver Dollar, containing three hundred and 
seventy-one and one-fourth grains of pure 
silver. The reason of fixing upon this par- 
ticular weight was that the Spanish- American 
dollar, largely circulating at the time in the 
States, was found by analysis to contain ex- 
actly three hundred and seventy-one and one* 
fourth grains of pure metal. Since the peo- 
ple were already familiar with this dollar, and 
used it largely as a uhit of accounting, Mr. 
Hamilton wisely adapted the new national 
standard to the existing dollar. By such a 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



197 



mea«ure it was practicable to recoin the Spaa.- 
iBU doiiar into the new Americau doU&r. 

From the date of the adoption of this 
standard, in 1792, until 1873, the quantity of 
pure metal in the *8tandard unit had neyer 
been changed, though the amount of alloy 
contained in the dollar had been several times 
altered. From 1792 to 1849 this American 
silver dollar was the only standard unit of 
money and account. In the latter year, how- 
ever, the discovery of gold in California led 
to the establishment and coinage of a gold dol- 
lar, and from that time forth the standard 
nnit of value existed in both metaU, For nearly 
a quarter of a century the double unit prevailed, 
during which time it may be said to have been 
difficult to determine whether, in accounting 
in the United States, gold was measured by 
the silver standard, or silver by the standard 
t>f gold. In the years 1873-4, at a time when, 
4) wing to the premium on gold and silver, both 
metals were out of circulation, a series of acts 
were passed upon by Congress bearing upon the 
standard of value, whereby the l^al-tender 
quality of silver was first abridged, and then 
abolished. These enactments were completed 
by the report of the Coinage Committee in 
1874, by which the silver dollar was finally 
omitted from the list of coins to be struck at 
the National Mints. The general effect of 
these acts was to leave the gold dollar of twenty- 
three and twenty-two hundredths grains the 
angle standard unit of value in the United 
States. 

In course of time, the ulterior object of 
this demonetization of silver became sufficiently 
apparent. The manipulators of the measure 
had foreseen that the National paper currency 
of the country was destined, in a few years to 
come to par in coin — that is, that specie-pay- 
ments must soon be resumed by the Govern- 
ment. Meanwhile, there came the discovery 
of the inexhaustible silver-mines in the West- 
em mountuns. Thus was it also foreseen that 
silver must, erelong, be abundant and cheap. 
If that metal should be retained in the coinage, 
therefore, the payment of the National Debt 
would be proportionally easy. It was deemed 
expedient to strike down in time the legal- 
tender quality of silver, in order that the 
whole payment of the bonded indebtedness of 
the United States must be made in the more 



ooedy metal, namely, by the ringle standard 
of gold. 

In accordance with this project, The R£- 
SUMFTION Act was passed by Congress in 1875, 
whereby it was declared that on the 1st of 
January, 1879, the Government of the United 
States should begin to redeem its outstanding 
obligations in coin. As the time for resump- 
tion drew near and the premium on gold fell 
off, the question was raised as to the meaning 
of "coin" in the act for resuming specie pay- 
ments; and now for the first time the atten« 
tion of the people at large was aroused to the 
fact that, by the acts of 1873-4, the privilege 
of paying debts in silver had been takep away, 
and that after the beginning of 1879 all obli« 
gations, both public and private, must be dis- 
charged according to ^the measure of the gold 
dollar only. A great agitation followed. The 
cry for the remonetization of silver was heard 
everywhere. In vain did the bond-holding 
interest of the country exert itself to stay the 
tide. The question reached the Gt)vernment; 
and early in 1878 a measure was passed by 
Congress for the restoration of the legal-tender 
quality of the old silver dollar, and providing 
for the compulsory coinage of that unit at the 
mints at a rate of not less than two millions 
of dollars a month. The President returned 
the bill with his objections, but the veto was 
crushed under a tremendous majority; for 
nearly three-fourths of the members of Con- 
gress, without respect to party affiliations, gave 
their support to the measure; and the old 
double standard of values was thus restored. 

In the summer and fall of 1878 several of 
the Gulf States were scourged with a Yellow- 
Fever Epidemic, unparalleled in the history 
of the country. The disease made its appear^ 
ance in New Orleans, and from thence was 
quickly scattered among the other towns along 
the Lower Mississippi. Unfortunately the at- 
tention of the people in the Gulf country had 
been but little given to sanitary precautions, 
and the Southern citi^ were nearly all in a 
condition to invite the presence of the scourge. 
The terror soon spread from town to town, 
and the people began to fly from the pesti- 
lence. The cities of Memphis and Grenada 
became a scene of desolation. At Vicksburg 
the ravages of the plague were almost equally 
terrible ; and even in the parish towns remote 



198 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



from the river, and as far Dorth as Nashville 
and Louisville, the horrors of the fatal malady 
were felt. All summer long the disease held 
on unabated. The helpless populations along 
the Lower Mississippi languished and died by 
thousands. In the Northern States a regular 
system of contributions was established, and 
men and treasure were poured out without 
stint. The efforts of the Howard Association, 
at New Orleans, Memphis, and elsewhere, were 
almost unequaled in heroism and sacrifice. 
After more than twenty thousand people had 
fallen victims to the plague, its ravages were 
at last stayed by the grateful frosts of October. 

By the Eighteenth Article of the Treaty of 
Washington, it was agreed that the right of the 
inhabitants of the United States in certain sea- 
fisheries, which had hitherto belonged exclu- 
rively to the subjects of Great Britain, should 
be acknowledged and maintained. It was con- 
eeded, moreover, that the privilege of taking 
fish of every kind— excepting shell-fish — on 
the sea-coast and shores, and in the bays, har- 
bors, and creeks of the Provinces of Quebec, 
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward's 
Island, and the islands thereunto adjacent, 
without restriction as to distance from the shore, 
should be guaranteed to American fishermen 
without prejudice or partiality. On the other 
hand, the Oovernment of th^ United States 
agreed to relinquish the duties which had 
hitherto been charged on certain kinds of fish, 
imported by British subjects into American 
harbors. 

Several other concessions of minor impor- 
tance were mutually made by the two Govern- 
ments ; and in order to balance any discrep- 
ancy which might appear in the aggregate of 
such concessions, and to make the settlement of 
a vexed question full, fair, and final, it was 
further agreed, that any total advantage to the 
United States arising from the treaty might 
be compensated by a sum in gross, to be paid 
by the American Government to Great Britain. 
In order to determine what such sum might 
be, a Commission was provided for, to consist 
of one commissioner to be appointed by the 
Qucsen, one by the President of the United 
States, and a third — in case the Queen and the 
President should not agree on the third — by 
the Austrian Ambassador at the Court of St. 
James. This provision for the appointment of 



a third commissioner~or umpire was one of the 
strangest incidents of diplomatical history. As 
the event came to pass, the man who, by the 
terms of the treaty, held the power of appoint- 
ing, and did appoint, the umpire, was Count 
Von Beust, a Bourbon in politics, a Saxon 
renegade, an upholder of the House of Haps- 
burg, a hater of all republican institutions. 
Thus it was that a question which had proved 
to be too serious for the decision of the Joint 
High Commission itself, was remanded for set- 
tlement to a political adventurer, temporarily 
resident in London! « 

According to the agreement, the Commis- 
sion was constituted in the summer of 1877 ; 
and the sittings were held at Halifax. But 
little attention was given in the United States 
to the proceedings of the body until November, 
when the country was startled by the announce- 
ment, that by the casting vote of Mr. Del- 
fosse, Belgian Minister to the United States, 
who had been named as umpire by the Aus- 
trian Ambassador at London, an award of 
$5,000,000 had been made against the Amer- 
ican Government I The decision was received 
with general surprise, both in the United States 
and in Europe, and for a while it seemed prob- 
able that the arbitration might be renounced 
as iniquitous. It was decided, however, that 
the award, whether just or unjust, would better 
stand; the beneficent principle of arbitration 
was worth more to the United States than the 
cost of the adverse decision. Accordingly vk 
November, 1878, the amount awarded was 
paid — not without great popular dissatisfac- 
tion — to the British Government. 

The year 1878 witnessed the establishment 
of a Resident Chinese Embassy at Washing- 
ton. For twenty years the great and liberal 
treaty negotiated by Anson Burlingame had 
been in force between the United States and 
China. Under this compact the commercial 
relations of the two countries had been vastly 
extended, and a knowledge of the institutions, 
manners, and customs prevalent in the Celes- 
tial Empire so widely diffused as to break 
down, in some measure, the race-prejudice 
against the Chinese. The enlightened policy 
of the reigning Emperor had also contributed 
to establish more friendly intercourse with the 
United States. The idea of sending Resident 
Ambassadors to the American Govern me»* 



THE UNITED STATES.—LATEST PERIOD. 



199 



bad been entertaiaed fur several years. The 
Emperor had bees assured that the Mioiaters 
of China would be received with all the court- 
esy shown lo the most favored naiioii. The 
officers chosen by the Imperial Goverainent as 
its represeatatives in the United States were 
Chen Laii Pio, Minister Pienipoteutiary ; 
Yung Wing, Aesistaut Envoy; and Yung 
Tsang Siang, Secretary of Legation. Ou the 
28th of September the Embassy was received 
by the President, the ceremonies of the occa- 
noD being among the most novel ever wit- 
nessed is Washington City. 

The history of modern times contains mauy 
pleasing evidences of the growing estimate 



the United States, under patronage and con- 
trol 'of the Government. This service had 
esi3(«d as a private enterprise since 1871. 
The plan proposed and adopted, on the 
18th of June, 1878, embraced the estab- 
lishment of regular stations and light-houses 
on all the exposed parta of the Atlantic coast, 
and along the great Lakes. Each station was 
to be manned by a band of serfmeu, expe- 
rienced in the dangers of coast-storms, and 
drilled in the best methods of rescue and re- 
suscitation. Boats of the moat approved pat- 
tern were provided and equipped. A hundred 
appliances and inventions, suggested by the 
wants of the service, such as life-cars, with 



LAUNCHING A LIFE-BOAT. 



placed by civilized States upon the value of 
human life. In the legislation of Congress, 
several important acts of recent date bear wit- 
ness to the general interest felt in the country 
on the subject of better protection for those 
who are exposed on land and sea. The ques- 
tion of affording succor to shipwrecked sailors 
has, in several instances, engros^d the atten- 
tion of the Government, and many measures 
have been proposed with a view of giving greater 
security to "them that go down to the sea in 
ships." During the last session of the Forty- 
fifth Congress, a bill was proposed by H(mora- 
ble Samuel S. Cox, of New York, for the re- 
oi^anizatioii of The Life-Saving Service o/ 



hawsers and mortars for firing shot-lines into 
vessels foundering at a distance from shore, 
were supplied, and their use skillfully taught 
to the brave men who were employed at the 
stations. The success of the enterprise has 
been so great as to reflect tiie highest credit 
upon its promoters. The number of lives 
saved through the direct agency of the service 



reaches to thoi 
of human suflering e 
this beneficent niovei 
tion. So carefully a 
the United States n 



inually, and the amount 
]d distress alleviated by 
lent is beyond compiita- 
e the exposed coasts of 
guarded that .it is al» 



most impossible for a foundering ship to M 
driven within sight of the shore without at 



200 



UNIVERSAL HI&TORY.-rTHE MODERN WORLD. 



once beholding through the darkness the sud- 
den glare of the red-light signal, flaming up 
from the beach, telling of friends near by, 
and rescue soon to come. 

In accordance with the act of 1875, The 
Resumption op Specie Payments was ac- 
complished on the 1st day of January, 1879. 
For some time previous to the latter date the 
premium on gold had gradually declined, yery 
slowly, indeed, as the date of resumption drew 
near. During the last month of 1878 the dif« 
ference between the value of gold and paper 
dollars was so slight as to be scarcely per- 
ceptible in financial transactions. For some 
days the premium hovered about one per 
cent ; then sank to the level, and disappeared. 
The Gold Boom at New York City was closed, 
and metallic money reappeared on the counters 
of banks and in the safes of merchants. For 
more than seventeen years gold and silver coin 
had been used as merchandise rather than 
money, the legal-tender note of Vhe Govern- 
ment constituting the standard of value. 
During this whole period the monetary affairs 
of the Government had been in a state of 
distraction. The monetary unit had been so 
fluctuating as to render legitimate business 
almost impracticable. The purchasing power 
of a dollar could hardly be predicted from one 
week i» another. Besulting from this a 
rampant spirit of speculation had taken pos- 
session of the markets of the country, and the 
lawful transactions of the street, carried forward 
in accordance with the plain principles of polit- 
ical economy, suffered shipwreck. Meanwhile, 
fOTvena statesmen gave lectures on the nature 
of debt and the danger of overproduction. 

After the passage of the Resumption Act, 
and during the next four years, the value of 
the monetary unit steadily appreciated, and at 
the same time the debtor-classes of the country 
entered a period of great hardship ; for their 
indebtedness constantly augmented in a ratio 
beyond the probability, if not the possibility, 
of payment. Financial ruin and bankruptcy 
supervened; and these calamities were only 
checked, not ended, by the abrogation of the 
Bankrupt Act, in 1878. With the epoch of 
Resumption, however, a certain measure of 
confidence was restored, and the reappearance 
of coin money was hailed by many as the be- 
ginning of a better era. 



Thus passed away the Administration of 
Hayes. It was, on the whole, a peculiar 
quadrennium in American history. The meth- 
ods of the President lacked emphasb in every 
particular. Nor did the after-judgment of 
many of the American people fail to renew the 
doubts concerning the legality of his election. 
The biennial choice of Congressmen in 1878, 
being the election for members of the Forty- 
sixth Congress, resulted in a clear majority 
for the Democrats in both the House of Rep- 
resentatives and the Senate. For a season 
everything seemed to foretoken the complete 
restoration to power of the Democratic party. 
The leaders of that party were strongly hope- 
ful of success, and entered the campaign of 
1880 with unusual enthusiasm. The Repub- 
lican National Convention of that year was 
held in Chicago on the 2d and 3d of June. 
The platform .of principles adopted was largely 
retrospective. The history of the party during 
its twenty years of supremacy in the Grovem- 
ment was recited as the best reason why its 
lease of power should be continued by the 
people. The platform reaffirmed and em- 
phasized the doctrine of National Sovereignty 
as opposed to the theory of State Rights; de- 
clared in favor of popular education ; advocated 
a system of discriminating duties in favor of 
American industries; ratified the Administra- 
tion of Hayes ; and arraigned the Democratic 
party as unpatriotic in principle and firaudulent 
in practice. Upon this platform, after the 
greater part of two days had' been consumed 
in balloting. General James A. Garfield, of 
Ohio, was nominated for President; and 
Chester A. Arthur, of New York, for Vice- 
President 

The Democratic National Convention afr* 
sembled in Cincinnati, on the 22d of June. 
The platform of principles declared adherence 
to the doctrines and traditions of the party; 
opposed centralization in the Government; 
adhered tp gold and silver money and paper 
convertible into coin; advocated a tariff for 
revenue only ; denounced the Administration as 
the creature of a conspiracy; opposed the 
presence of troops at the polls ; praised Samuel 
J. Tilden for his patriotism ; declared for free 
ships, and an amendment to the Burlingame 
Treaty as against Chinese immigration; and 
appealed to the acts of the Forty-sixth Con- 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



tOl 



grefis as proof of the wisdom and economy of 
the party. After adopting this platform, the 
convention nominated for the Presidency, Gen- 
eral Winfield 8. Hancock, of New York ; and 
for the Vice-presidency, William H. English, 
of Indiana. 

Meanwhile, the National Greenback party 
had held a convention in Chicago, on the 9th 
of June, and nominated as standard-bearers 
General James B. Weaver, of Iowa, for Presi- 
dent ; and General Benjamin J. Chambers, of 
Texas, for Vice-President The platform of 
principles declared in favor of the rights of 
the laborer as against the exactions of capital ; 
denounced monopolies and syndicates; pro- 
claimed the sovereign power of the Govern- 
ment over the coinage of metallic and the 
iasuapce of paper money; advocated the abo- 
lition of the National banking system, and the 
sabstitution therefor . of a legal-tender cur- 
rency ; declared for the payment of the bonded 
debt of the United States as against all re- 
funding schemes; denounced land-grants; op- 
posed Chinese immigration and the increase of 
the standing army ; favored the equal taxation 
of all property, and unrestricted suffrage; 
demanded reform in the methods of Congres- 
sional procedure, and appealed for support to 
the sense of justice in the American people. 

During the canvass of 1880 the Third 
Party movement reached its climax for the dec- 
fule. The more rational part of the princi- 
ples of the Greenback party had in them at 
ihis time a quality which demanded the assent 
of a respectable minority of the American 
people. Thp correctness of the principles re- 
ferred to, their truth in theory and rightful- 
ness in practice, entered so strongly into the 
:political current of the time that they were 
wafted higher and higher, until finally the 
■question of the right and power of the Gov- 
•ernment to make legal-tender paper money, 
•absolutely, in time of peace as well as in time 
of war, was carried for judgment to the Su- 
preme Court of the United States; was there 
argued by able Constitutional lawyers before a 
full bench, and was decided, with only a single 
dissenting opinion, in favor of the Greenback 
theory of legal-tender paper money and its 
validity, independently of coin redemption. 
But, politically, the party representing these 

ideas was doomed to failure. As the canvass 
N.— Vol. 4—13 



progressed it became evident that the couteiC 
lay between the Hepublican and the Democratie 
party; also, that the long-standing sectional 
division into North and South was likely, onoa 
more, to decide the contest in favor of the 
former. That part of the Democratic plat- 
form which declared for a tariff for revenue 
only, alarmed the manufacturing interests and 
consolidated them in favor of the Bepublicau 
candidates. The banking and bond-holding 
classes rallied with great unanimity to the 
same standard, and the old war spirit, aroused 
at the appearance of a " Solid South," insured 
a solid North against the Democracy. The 
election resulted in the choice of Garfield and 
Arthur. Two hundred and fourteen electoral 
votes, including those of all the Northern 
States, except New Jersey, Nevada, and four 
out of the five votes of California, were caei 
for the Bepublican candidates, and one hun» 
dred and fifty-five votes, including those of 
every Southern State, were given to Hancock 
and English. The candidate of the National 
party secured no electoral votes, though, the 
popular vote given to Weaver aggregated three 
hundred and seven thousand, as against eighty- 
one thousand cast for Cooper and Gary in 
1876. 

The Administration of Hayes and the laal 
session of the Forty-sixth Congress expired on 
the 4th of March, 1881. The closing seanon 
had been chiefly occupied with the work of re> 
funding the National debt. About $750,000,. 
000 of five and six per cent, bonds became due 
during the year, and to provide for the pay* 
ment or refunding of this large sum was the 
most important matter claiming the attention 
of Congress. Late in the session a bill was 
passed by that body providing for the issuance 
by the Government of new bonds of two 
classes, both bearing three per cent, interest; 
the first class payable in from five to twenty 
years, and the second class in from one to ten 
years. The latter bonds were to be issued in 
small denominations adapted to the conditions 
of a popular loan. One provision of the bill 
required the National banks holding five and 
six per cent, bonds to surrender the same — 
the bonds having fallen due — and to receive 
instead the new three per cents. This clause 
of the law aroused the antagonism of the 
banks, and by every possible means they 



202 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



sought to prevent the passage of the bill. The 
capitalists of the couutry in general pursued 
the same course — this, for the reasons that the 
loan was too popular iu its character, and that 
the bonds were of so short a time that the 
Government would be able to control their re- 
demption at its pleasure. 

These considerations were specially repug- 
nant to the boud-holders as a class. Neverthe- 
less, on the last day of the session the bill for 
refunding, having ^been passed by Congress, 
was laid before the President for his signature ; 
but his approval was withheld. A veto mes- 
sage was returned to Congress, and the advo- 
cates of the measure being unable to command 
the requisite two-thirds majority, the bill failed 
to become a law. Thus the session closed with- 
out any provision for the seven hundred and 
fifty millions of dollars in bonds falling due in 
1881. The whole duty of providing for this 
large fraction of the public debt was remanded 
to another Administration and another Con- 
gress. 

After retiring flrom the Presidency, General 
Grairt, with his family and a company of per- 
sonal friends, set out to visit the countries of 
Europe and Asia, and to make a tour of the 
world. Though the expedition was intended 
to be private, it at once attracted the most 
conspicuous attention, both at home and abroad. 
The departure from Philadelphia, in May of 
1877, proved to be the beginning of a pageant, 
which, in its extent and magnificence, was 
never before accorded to a private citizen of 
any nation of the earth. Wherever the Ex- 
President went, he was welcomed with huzzas 
and dismissed with plaudits. First in Eng- 
land — at Liverpool, Manchester, London — 
and afterwards, in midsummer, in Belgium, 
Switzerland, Prussia, and France, everywhere 
the General's coming was announced by the 
thunder of cannon and a chorus of cheers. 
A short stay in Italy was followed by a voy- 
age to Alexandria and a brief sojourn in 
Egypt. Thence the company proceeded to Pal- 
estine, and afterwards to Greece. The follow- 
ing spring found the General and his party 
again in Italy, and the summer carried them 
into Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The 
next countries visited were Austria and Russia, 
while for the winter the distinguished tourists 
chose the south of France and Spain. Ireland 



was then visited, and in January of 1879 the 
company embarked from Marseilles for the 
East. The following year was spent in India^ 
Burmah, Siam, China, and Japan. In the 
fall of 1879 the party returned to San Fran- 
cisco, bearing with them the highest tokens or 
esteem which the great nations of the OlA 
World could bestow upon the honored repre- 
sentative of the New. 

The Census of 1880 was undertaken witb> 
more system and care than ever before in the- 
history of the country. The work was in- 
trusted to the general superin tendency of Pro- 
fessor Francis A. Walker, under whose di- 
rection the Census of 1870 had been conducted. 
During the decade the same astounding prog- 
ress which had marked the previous history^ 
of the United States was more than "ever- 
illustrated. In every source of National power,, 
in every element of National vigor, the de- 
velopment of the country had continued with- 
out abatement. The total population of the? 
Union now amounted to 50,152,866 — an in- 
crease since 1870 of more than 1,000,000 in- 
habitants a year. The population of the great. 
State of New York had risen to 5,083,173. 
Nevada, the least populous of the States, 
showed an enumeration of 62,265. Of the- 
11,584,188 added to the population during the* 
last decade, 2,246,551 had been contributed by 
immigration, of whom about 85,000 annually 
had come fn)m Germany. The number of citiee* 
having a population of over one hundred thou- 
sand inhabitants had increased from fourteen to* 
twenty-five. The center of population had* 
moved westward about fifty miles, and now- 
rested near the city of Cincinnati. 

The statistics of trade and industry were- 
likewise gratifying to National pride. Th?- 
curreut of the precious metals, which for many 
years had been constantly flowing from the- 
United States to foreign countries, turned' 
strongly iu 1880 towards America, The im- 
portation of specie during the year just men- 
tioned in excess of the exportation amounted* 
to $75,892,111. During the greater part of 
the period covered by the census, abundant- 
crops had followed in almost unbroken succes- 
sion, and the overplus in the great staples pe- 
culiar to our soil and climate had gone to* 
enrich the country, and to stimulate those fun-- 
damental industries upon which nationeil oei^ 



THE UNITED S2ATES.— LATEST PERIOD, 



petuity and iodiridual bappiuese are ultimately 
fouaded. ^ i 

DuriDg the Administration of Hayes several 
eminent Americans passed from the scene of 
their earthly activities. Among these may be 
mentioned Senator Oliver P. Morton, of Indi- 
ana, who, after battling for many years against 
the encroachments of paralysis, died at bis 
home in Indianapolis, November 1, 1877. StJIl 
more universally felt was the loss of the great 
poet and journalist, William Cullen Bryant, 
who, on the 12th of June, 1878, at the ad- 
vanced age of eighty-four, passed from among 
the living. For more than sixty 
years his name bad been known 
and honored wherever the English 
language is spoken. In his death 
one of the brightest lights of Amer- 
ican literature was extinguished. 
On the 19th of December, in the 
same year, the illustrious Bayard 
Taylor, recently appointed Ameri- 
can Minister to the German Em- 
pire, died suddenly at Berlin. His 
life had J>een devoted almost exclu- 
sively to literature, and almost 
every department of letters, from 
the common tasks of journalism to 
the highest charms of poetry, had 
heen adorned by his genius. His 
death, at the early age of fifty-four, 
left a gap not easily to be filled in 
the ranks of literary toilers. On 
the 1st of November. 1879, Senator 
Zachariah Chandler, of Michigan, 
one of the organizers of the Repub- 
lican party, and a great leader of 
that party in the times of the Civil 
War, died suddenly in Chicago; 
and on the 24th of February, 1881, another 
Senator, Matthew H. Carpenter, of Wisconsin, 
expired, after a lingering illness, at Washing- 
ton City. 

James A, Garfield, tw';ntieth President of 
the United States, was b-irn at Orange, Cuya- 
hoga County, Ohio, November 19, 1831. He 
was left in infancy to the sole care of his 
mother, and the rude surroundings of a back- 
woods home. The boy gathered from country 
toil a sound constitution, and from country 
schools the rudiments of education. Under 
liuch discipline he developed unusual faculties, 



and became well known, even in youth, as a 
promising lad — afterwards as a skillful me- 
chanic. Further on, we find him serving as 
4river and pilot of a canal-boat, plying the 
Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal. At the age of 
seventeen he attended the high-echool in Ches- 
ter, where he extended his studies to algebra, 
Latin, and Greek. In 1851 he entered Hiram 
College, in which institution he remained as 
student and instructor until 1854. In that 
year he entered Williams College, and two 
years afterward was graduated with hunor. 
Beturniug to Ohio, he was pade first a pro- 



fessor, and afterwards president of Hiram 
College. In this position he was serving at 
the outbreak of the Civil War, when he left 
his post to enter the army. Meanwhile, he 
bad studied law, imbibed a love for politics, 
and been elected to the Ohio State Senate. 

As a soldier, Garfield was first made a 
Lieutenant-Colonel, and afterwards Colonel of 
the Forty-second Regiment of Ohio Volunteers. 
He was soon promoted to a Brigadier-gener- 
alship, and did good service in Kentucky and 
Tennessee. He was made Chief of Staff to 
General Rosecrans, and bore a distinguished 



264 



UNIVERSAL mSTORY.^THE MODERN WORLD. 



part ID the battle of Chickamauga. Soon after- 
wards, while still in the field, he was elected 
by the people of his district to the House of 
Bepresentatives, in which body he served con* 
tinuously for seventeen years. In 1879 he 
was elected to the United States Senate, and 
hard upon this followed his nomination and 
election to the Presidency. 

In his inaugural address of March 4th, 
1881, Garfield presented a retrospect of the 
progress of American civilization during the 
last quarter of a century. The country was 
oongratulated on its high rank among the 
nations. The leading topics of politics were 
briefly reviewed, and the policy of the Ex- 
ecutive department of the Government set 
forth with clearness and precision. The pub- 
lic-school system of the United States was 
recommended to the jealous care of the people. 
Regret was expressed for the estrangement of 
the South and for the heart-burnings of the 
Civil War, which still remained in the Nation. 
The maintenance of the present National 
banking system was recommended, and also 
the repression of the practices of polygamy. 
The President advocated, finally, the restric- 
tion of Chinese immigration, and the mainte- 
nance of the equal rights of the enfranchised 
Black men of the South. 

On the following day the President sent 
to the Seuate for confirmation the names of the 
members of his Cabinet. The nominations 
were: For Secretary of State, James G. 
Blaine, of Maine ; for Secretary of the Treas- 
ury, William Windom, of Minnesota ; for 
Secretary of War, Robert T. Lincoln, of 
Illinois; for Secretary of the Navy, William 
H. Hunt, of Louisiana; for Secretary of the 
Interior, Samuel J. Kirkwood, of Iowa; for 
Attorney-General, Wayne MacVeagh, of Penn- 
sylvania ; for Postmaster -General, Thomas L. 
James, of New York. The nominations were 
promptly confirmed, and the new Administra- 
tion entered upon its duties. 

The first issue which engaged the attention 
of the Government after Garfield's inaugura- 
tion was the proposed Reform of the Civil 
Service. This question had been inherited I 
, from the Administration of Hayes, under j 
whom several spasmodic efforts had been made 
to introduce better methods in the selection 
of persons to fill the appointive offices of the 



United States. The real issue was — and has 
always been — whether the choice of the 
ofiBcials of the Government should be made on 
the ground of the character and fitness of the 
candidates, or on the principle of distributing 
political patronage to those who had best 
served the party; whether men should be 
promoted from the lower to the higher grades 
of official life, and retained according to the 
value and proficiency of their services, or 
whether they should be elevated to position in 
proportion to their success in carrying eleo 
tions and maintaining the party in power. 

The members of Congress, to whom the help 
of efficient supporters in their own districts 
and States seemed essential, and by whom the 
patronage of the Government had been mostly 
dispensed since the days of Jackson, held 
strongly to the old order of things, unwilling 
to relinquish their influence over the appoint- 
ing power. President Hayes, after vainly 
attempting to establish the opposite policy, 
abandoned the field near the close of his Ad- 
ministration. The National Republican plat> 
form of 1880 vaguely indorsed Civil-service 
Reform as a principle of the party; and some 
expectation existed that Garfield would take 
up the policy of his predecessor. But with 
the incoming of the new Administration the 
rush of the politicians for office was unprece- 
dented in the history of the country. The 
place-seekers, who claimed to have ''carried 
the election," swarmed into Washington, and 
thronged the Executive mansion, clamoring for 
office, until all plans and purposes of reform 
in the civil service were crushed out of sight 
and trampled under feet of men. 

This break from the principles of the Re- 
publican platform was soon followed with a 
serious political disaster, having its ultimate 
origin in the same question. A division arose 
in the ranks of the Republican .party, which 
for a while threatened the disruption and 
ruin of that organization. The two wings of 
the Republicans were nick-named the ''Half- 
breeds" and the ''Stalwarts;" the latter, headed 
by Senator Cockling, of New York, being the 
division which had so resolutely supported 
General Grant for the Presidency in the 
Chicago Convention ; the former, led by Mr. 
Blaine, now Secretary of State, and indorsed 
by the President himself, had control of the 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



205 



Chtvenimetit uid were numerically Btraoger 
tliftii their opponents. The Stalwarta claimed 
their proportional part of the appointive offices 
of the GoveninieDt, and the right of diepens- 
ing the same after the manner which had pre- 
vailed through several preceding Administra- 
tions — tliat is, the right to distribute the offices 
in the several States under the form of pat- 
ronage by the Senators and Representatives of 
those States in Congreas. The President, sup- 
ported by bis division of the party, and 1^ the 
professed reform element in politics, insisted in 
naming the officers in th« various States ao- 



oording to bis own wishes and what he con- 
eeived to be the fitness of things. 

The conteHt soon came to a crisia. The 
war between the two factions in the party 
broke out in respect to the offices in New York. 
The collectorship of customs for the port of 
New York is the best appointive office in the 
gift of the Government. To fill this position 
the President appointed Judge William Rob- 
ertson, and the appointment was bitterly an- 
tagonized by the New York Senators, Rosboe 
Conkling and Thomas C. Piatt, who, failing to 
prevent the confirmation of Robertson, resigned 
thur seats, returned to their State, and failed 
of a reelection. The breach thus efiected in 



the Republican ranks was such as to threaten 
the dismemberment of the party. 

Such was the condition of af&irs at the ad- 
journment of the Senate, in June. A few 
days afterwards, the President made arrange- 
ments to visit Williams College, where his two 
sons were to be entered for their education, in- 
tending to pass, after the Williams Commence- 
ment, a short vacation with his wife, who was 
sick, at the sea-side. On the morning of July 
2d, in company with Secretary Blaine and a 
few iriends, he entered the Baltimore Railway 
station at Washington, preparatory to taking 
the train to Long Branch, New Jersey. A 
moment afterwards, he was approached by a 
miserable political miscreant named -Charles 
Jules Guitean, who, from behind and unper- 
ceived, came within a few feet of the com- 
pany, drew a pistol, and fired upon the Chief 
Magistrate of the Republic, The aim of the 
assassin was too well taken, and the second 
shot struck the President centrally in the right 
side of the back. The bleeding man was 
quickly borne away to the Executive mansion, 
and the vile wretch who had committed the 
crime was hurried to prison. 

For a while the hearts of the American 
people vibrated between hope and fear. The 
best surgical aid was procured, and bulletins 
were daily issued, containing a brief account 
of the President's condition. The conviction 
grew day by day that he would ultimately re- 
cover. Two surgical operations were per- 
formed with a view of improving his chances 
for life; but a aeries of relapses occurred, and 
the President gradually weakened under his 
suffering. As a last hope he was, on the 6th 
of September, carefully conveyed from Wash- 
ington City to Elberoo, where he was placed 
in a cottage hotel only a few yards from the 
surf. Here for a brief period hope again re- 
vived ^ but blood-poisoning at length ensued, 
and the patient sank day by day. At last, on 
the eightieth day after the shot was fired, 
namely, on the evening of September 19th, 
the annivesary of the battie of Chickamauga, 
in which Garfield had won his chief military 
reputation, his vital powers suddenly gave way 
under exhaustion, and in a few moments death 
closed the scene. Through the whole period 
of his prostration, he had borne the pain and 
anguish of bis situation with. the greatest forti* 



VSiVEHSAL HISTORY—THE MODERN WORLD. 



ASSASSIXATIOS OF PRF.rJIDENT QAKFIELTJ. 



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207 



4ude and heroism. Nor con it be doubted that 
tiie great crime which laid him low heightened, 
Tatiier than eclipsed, the luster of bis life. 

Od the following day Vice-PresideDt Chester 
A. Arthnr, then in New York, took the oath 
«f office, and immediately repaired to Wash- 
ington. For the fourth time in the history of 
4he Republic, the duties of the Chief Magis- 
tracy were devolved on the Vice-President. The 
liiDeral of Garfield was observed first at Wash- 
ingtoD, whither the body was taken and placed 
in state in the rotunda of the Capitol. Here 
-it was viewed by tens of thousands of people 
«n the 22d and 23d of September. 
-Garfield bad choeen Lake View 
•Cemetery, at Cleveland, as the 
(ilace of his burial, and thither 
■the remains were conveyed, by 
-way of Philadelphia acd Pittsburg. 
Ae in the case of Liucoln's death, 
■the processions and ceremonies en 
Toute became a coatinuous pageant. 
On the 26th of September the body 
was laid in its final restiog-place. 
The day of the burial was obeerved 
-throughout the country in great 
Assemblies gathered from' hamlet 
«Dd town and city, all anxious to 
testify their sorrow for the calam- 
ity which had come upon the 
country in the President's death. 

We may here pause to narrate 
triefly the further events connected 
with the assassination and the aa- 
flassin. Guiteau proved to be a 
iiaif-crazy adventurer — a fool. He 
At once proclaimed the work which 
4ie had done, acknowledging that 
he bad shot the President, and 
«aying that he did so merely to remove him, 
»nd save the country. And here began that 
-extreme unwisdom of the authorities which 
eharacterized all the future proceedings. Two 
plwn constructions of the case were possible: 
Either Guiteau was a sane man, in the ordi- 
nary sense of that word, and had committed 
iite greatest atid vilest of political assassina- 
tions; or else he was a lunatic, who, under the 
influence of an insane halluciuatioQ, had shot 
-and killed the President. Plain common sense, 
prudence, patriotism, political sagacity, and the 
Ifbole array of facts regarding the prisoner's 



character and conduct, pointed unmistakably 
to his lunacy, and to the second construction 
given above. But prejudice, anger, folly, 
short-sightedness, and the mere vengeful pas- 
sions which flamed up in the excitement of the 
hour, all backed and aggravated by the crim- 
inal wickedness of the American newspapers — 
ready, for the sake of mere sensationalism, to 
espouse any theory or promote any course in 
order to keep the tur white with their own 
miserable editions — conspired to establish the 
theory of Guiteau's sanity, with the appalling 
conclusion that the President of the United 



States had been pdUicaUy as»a»nnated. Thii 
theory was urged and preached with inNans 
ferocity until it prevailed. The voice of reason 
was drowned, and the opportunity to save the 
American people from the indelible statu of po- 
litical assassination, was scorned and put aside. 
Guiteau was indicted and tried for murder. 
During the whole course of the trial, the as- 
semblage around the court-room in Washi[i|{ 
too was little less than a mob. The proceed- 
iiigs ended with a conviction, atid a condem- 
nation to death. Then followed another sen- 
sational imprisonment, and on the 30th of 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



June, 1882, the nretch was taken from the jful 
to the place of execution and banged. 

Chester A. Arthur, thus called to be Presi- 
deDt of the United States, was born in Frank- 
lia County, Vermont, October 5, 1S30. He 
waa of Irish parentage ; was educated at Union 
College, from which institution he was gradu- 
ated in 1849. For a while he taught school in 
his native Stat«, and then went to New York 
City to study law. He was soon admitted to 
the bar, and rose rapidly to diBtinction. Dur- 
ing the Civil War he was Quartermaster-Gen- 
enl of the State of New York, filling the 



office with great credit to himself and the Gov- 
ernment. From 1865 to 1871 he practiced 
law iQ New York, and was then appointed col- 
lector of customs for that port. This position 
he held until July, 1878, when he was re- 
moved by President Hayea. Returning to the 
practice of his profession for two years, he was 
nominated and elected to the Vico- presidency. 
Then followed the killing of Garfield, and the 
Mceauon of Arthur to the Chief Magistracy 
of the Union. 

The assumption of the duties of the Prea- 
dential ofiice by the new Executive was at- 



tended witli little ceremony or formality. On 
the 22d of September the oath of office was a 
teemtd time administered to him at the Capitol 
by Chief-Justice Waite. After this, in the 
presence of a few who were gathered in the 
apartment, he delivered an appropriate ad- 
dress, referring in a touching manner to the 
death of his predecessor. Those present, in- 
cluding General Grant, Ex-President Hayea, 
Senator Sherman, and his brother, the General 
of the Army, then paid their respects, and the 
ceremony was at an end. 

In accordance with the custom, the mem- 
bers of the existing Cabinet at once 
resigned their offices. The resigna- 
tions, however, were not accepted, the 
President inviting all the members to 
retain their places. For the time all 
did BO, except Mr. Windom, Secretary 
of the Treasury, who retired, and wa» 
succeeded by Judge Charles J. Folger, 
of New York. Mr. MacVeagh also re- 
signed a short time afterwards, and the 
President appointed as his successor 
Benjamin H. Brewster, of Philadelphia. 
The next of the old Garfield Cabinet 
to retire were Mr. Blaine, Secretary of 
State, and Mr. James, Postmaster- 
General, who were succeeded in their 
respective offices by Frederick T. Fre- 
linghuysen, of New Jersey, and Tim- 
othy 0. Howe, of Wisconsin. Mr. 
Lincoln — so great was the charm of 
that illustrious name — remained, as by 
GommoD consent, at the head of the 
Department of War. Besides the 
changes here referred to, not much die- 
position was shown to revolutionise 
the policy of the Government by the 
new Administration. The people generally, 
without respect to party lines, gave a tolerably 
cordial support to him who had been bo sud- 
denly, and by so calamitous a method, called 
to the Presidency, 

The new Administration inherited the 
troubles and complications of its predecessor. 
The first and one of the most serioua diffi- 
culties of the time was the important State trial 
relating to the alleged Star-Route Conspib- 
ACT. Under the recent conduct of afi^rs in 
the Post-office Department of the Government, 
there had been organized a class of fast-mul 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



2u9 



routes, known as the Star Routes, the os- 
tensible object being to carry the mails with 
rapidity and certainty into distant, and almost 
inaccessible portions of the Western States 
and Territories. The law governing the let- 
ting of mail contracts restricted the action of 
the Postmaster-Oeneral and his subordinates 
to definite limits of expenditure; but one 
dause of the law gave to the department the 
discretionary power to expedite such mail 
routes as seemed to be weaker and less 
efficient than the service required. This gave 
to certain officers of the Government the op- 
portunity to let the contracts for many mail lines 
at a mtrtufium, and then, under their discretion- 
ary power, to ** expedite*^ the same lines into 
efficiency at exorbitant rates, the end and aim 
being to divide the spoils among the parties to 
the contract. 

This alleged Star-Route conspiracy to de- 
fraud the Oovemment was unearthed during 
the Oarfield Administration, and Attorney- 
General MacVeagh was directed by the Presi- 
dent to prosecute the reputed conspirators. 
Indictments were presented by the grand jury 
against Ex-United States Senator Stephen W. 
Dorsey, of Arkansas ; Second Assistant Post^ 
master-General Thomas J. Brady, of Indiana ; 
and several others of less note. Mr. MacVeagh , 
however, seemed, in the conduct of the De- 
partment of Justice, to act with little spirit 
and no success. After his retirement from 
office, and the i^pointment of Brewster as 
Attorney-Genera], matters were quickened 
into sharp activity, and those indicted for con- 
spiracy were brought to trial. After several 
weeks of stormy prosecution and defense, the 
case went to the jury, who brought in a ver- 
dict absurdly convicting certain subordinates 
of participating in a conspiracy, which could 
not have existed without the guilt of their 
superiors I This scandal, occupying the public 
mind in the summer of 1882, contributed 
much to the defeat of the Republican party 
in the State elections of the following Novem- 
ber — a defeat so general as to remand, by 
overwhelming majorities, the control of the 
House of Representatives to the Democrats. 

Wc^may here turn aside from the course of 
political events — from the mere spectacular 
aspect of public affairs — to notice briefly some 
features of the beneficent progress of physical ' 



science. History, as a means of delineatiiig 
the course of human events, is, within the 
present century, departing more and more 
from the methods of the old annalists, whose 
attention was wholly directed to the civil, po- 
litical, and military movements of society. It 
is now beginning to be perceived that the 
sources of human happiness, the origins of 
human advancement, lie far removed from th^ 
fictitious splendors of public life. Yielding to 
this tendency in history, we shall here notice 
a few of those salutary inventions which have 
done so much in our day to add to the com« 
fort, the prosperity, and the honor of the 
American people. 

It is safe to aver that the recent rapid ad- 
dition by inventive processes to the resourcee 
of physical happiness, and to intellectual 
development as well, is the most striking 
feature of the civilization of our time. At 
no other age in the history of the world has a 
practical knowledge of the laws of nature been 
sa widely and so rapidly diffused. At no 
other epoch has the subjection of. natural 
agents to the will of man been so wonderfully 
displayed. It may be truthfully averred that 
the old life of the human race is giving place 
to the new life, based on scientific research, 
and energised by the knowledge that the con* 
ditions of our environment in the world are 
as benevolent as they are unchangeable. 

It has remained for the present era, and to 
American genius, to solve the problem of oral 
communication between persons at a distance 
from each other. A knowledge of the laws* 
of sound and electricity has enabled the 
scientists of our day to devise an apparatus 
for transmitting, or at least reproducing, the 
human voice at a distance of hundreds, or 
even thousands, of miles. The history of the 
Telephone must stand as a reminder to after 
ages of the inventive skill and scientific prog- 
ress of the last quarter of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury. This instrument, like many similar in- 
ventions, seems to have been the work of 
several ingenious minds, directed at nearly the 
same time to the same problem. The solution, 
however, may be properly accredited to Elisha 
P. Gray, of Chicago, and Alexander Graham 
Bell, of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology. It should be mentioned, also, that 
Amos E. Dolbear, of Tufil's College, Massa- 



210 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



chusetts, and Thomas A. Edison, of New Jer- 
sey, likewise succeeded in solving the difficulties 
in the way of telephonic communication, or, 
at least, in answering practically some of the 
minor questions jn the way of success. 

The telephone may be defined as an instru- 
ment for the reproduction of sound, particu- 
larly the sounds of the human voice, by the 
agency of electricity, at long distances from 
the origin of the vocal disturbance. It is now 
well known that the phenomenon called sound 
consists of a wave agitation communicated 
through the particles of some medium to the 
organ of hearing. Every particular sound has 
its own physical equivalent in* the system of 
waves in which it is written. The only thing, 
therefore, that is necessary in order to carry a 
sound in its integrity to any distance, is to 
transmit its physical equivalent, and to re- 
deliver that equivalent to some organ of hear- 
ing capable of receiving it 

Upon these principles the telephone was 
produced — created. Every sound which falls 
by impact upon the sheetriron disk of the 
instrument communicates thereto a sort of 
tremor. This tremor causes the disk to ap- 
proach and recede from the magnetic pole 
placed just behind the diaphragm. A current 
of electricity is thus induced, pulsates along 
the wire to the other end, and is delivered to 
the metallic disk of the second instrument, 
many miles away, just as it was produced in 
the first. The ear of the hearer receives from 
the second instrument the exact physical 
equivalent of the sound, or sounds, which were 
delivered against the disk of the first instru- 
ment, and thus the utterance is received at a 
distance just as it was given forth. 

As already said, the invention of the tele- 
phone stands chiefly to the credit of Professors 
Gray and Bell. It should be recorded that as 
early as 1837 the philosopher Page succeeded, 
by means of electro-magnetism, in transmitting 
musical tones to a distance. It was not, how- 
ever, until 1877 that Professor Bell, in a pub- 
lic lecture given at Salem, Massachusetts, 
astonished his audience, and the whole country 
as well, by receiving and transmitting vocal 
messages from Boston, twenty miles away. 
Incredulity had no more a place as it respected 
the feasibility of talking to persons at a dis- 
tance. The experiments of Gray at Chicago, 



a few days later in the same month, were 
equally successful. Messages were distinctly 
delivered between that city and Milwaukee, a 
distance of eighty-five miles, nor could it be 
longer doubted that a new era in the means 
of communication had come. 

The Bell telephone, with many modifica- 
tions and improvements, sprang into rapid 
use. Within reasonable limits of distance the 
new method of tralksmitting intelligence by 
direct vocal utterance, soon took the place of 
all slower and less convenient means of inter- 
communication. The appearance of the simple 
instrument was one of the many harbingers 
of the auspicious time when the constant in- 
terchange of thought and sentiment between 
man and man, community and community, 
nation and nation, shall conduce to the peace 
of the world, and the good-fellowship of the 
human race. 

After the telephone came the Phonograph. 
The new instrument was in some sense the 
complement of its predecessor. Both inven* 
tions are based upon the same principle of 
science. The discovery that every sound has 
its physical equivalent in a wave or agitation 
which affects the particles of matter composing 
the material through which the sound is trans- 
mitted led almost inevitably to the other dis* 
CO very of catching and retaining that physical 
equivalent or wave in the surface of some 
body, and to the reproduction of the original 
sound therefrom. Such is the fundamental 
principle of the interesting but, thus far, little 
useful instrument known as the phonograph. 
The same was invented by Thomas A. Edison, 
of Menlo Park, in the year 1877. The in- 
strument differs considerably in.structure and 
purpose from the Vibrograph and Phonautograph 
which preceded it. The latter two instruments 
were made simply to vrrite sound vibrations ; 
the former, to reproduce avdibly the sounds 
themselves. 

The Phonograph consists of three principal 
parts, — the sender or funnel-shaped tube, with 
its open mouth-piece standing toward the oper- 
ator; the diaphragm and stylus connected 
therewith, which receives the sound spoken 
into the tube ; and thirdly, the revolving cyl- 
inder, with its sheet-coating of tin-foil laid 
over the surface of a spiral groove to receive 
the indentations of the point of the stylus. 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



211 



Hie mode of operation is very simple. The 
cylinder ie revolved ; and the poiSt of the 
stylus, when there is no sound agitatiou in the 
funnel or mouth-piece, makes a smooth, cod- 
tinuous depression in the tin-foil over the 
epiral groove. But when any sound is thrown 
into the mouth-piece the iron disk or diaphragm 
is agitated; this i^tatioD is carried through 
the stylus and written in irregular marks, 
dots, and peculiar figures in the tin-foil over 
the groove. When the utterance which is to be 
reproduced has been completed, the instrument 
is stopped, the stylus thrown back from the 
groove, and the cylinder revolved backward to 
the place of starting. The stylus is then re- 
turned to its place in the groove, and the «yl- 
inder ia revolved forwaJrd at the same rate of 
rapidity as before. As the point of the stylus 
plays up and down in the indentations and 
through the figures in the tin-foil, produced 
by its own previous agitation, a quiver exactly 
equivalent to that which was produced by the 
utterance in the mouth-piece is communicated 
batiaoanh to the diaphragm, and by it is 
flung through the mouth-piece into the air. 
This agitation is of dourse the exact physical 
equivalent of the original sound, or, more 
properly, w the sound itself. Thus it is that 
the phonograph ia made to talk, to sing, to 
cry; to utter, in short, any sound sufficiently 
powerful to produce a perceptible tremor in the 
month-piece and diaphragm of the instrument. 
Much progress has already been made to- 
wards the utilization of the phonograph as a 
practical addition to the civilizing apparatus 
of our time. It may be said, indeed, that all 
the difficulties in the way of such a result 
have been removed. Mr. Edison has carried 
forward his. work to such a degree of perfection 
that the instrument may be practically em- 
ployed in correspondence and literary compo- 
sition. The problem has been to stereotype, so 
to speak, the tin-foil record of what has been 
uttered in the mouth-piece, and thus to pre- 
serve in a permanent form the potency of 
vanished sounds. Nor does it require a great 
stretch of the imagination to see in the inven- 
tion of the phonograph one of the greatest 
achievements of the age — a discovery, indeed, 
which may possibly revolutionize the whole 
method of learning. It would seem clear that 
nature has intended the ear, mther than the 



eye, to he.the organ of education. It is mani- 
festly against the fitness of things that the 
eyes of all mankind should be strained, weak- 
ened, permanently injured in childhood, with 
the unnatural tasks which are imposed upon 
the delicate organ. It would seem to be more 
in accordance with the nature aiid capacities 
of man, and the general character of the ex- 
ternal world, to reserve the eye for the dis- 
cernment and appreciation of beauty, and to 
impose upon the ear the tedious and hard taski 
of education. The Phonograph makes it pos- 
sible to read by the ear instead of by the eye, 
and it is not beyond the range of probability 
that the book of the future, near or remote, 
will be written in phonographic plates and 



made to reveal its story directly to the wait- 
ing ear, rather than through the secondary 
medium of print to the enfeebled and tired 
eye of the reader. 

But perhaps the most marked and valuable 
invention of the current age — the best cal- 
culated to atfect favorably the welfare of the 
people, especially in great cities — is Ihat of 
the Electric Light. The introduction of 
this superior system of illumination marks an 
epoch more interesting and important in the 
history of our country than any political con- 
flict or mere change of rulers. About the 
beginning of the eighth decade of the century 



212 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



the project of introducing the electric light for 
general purposes of illumination began to be 
agitated. It was at once perceived that the 
advantages of such lighting were as many as 
they were obvious. The light is so powerful 
as to render practicable the performance of 
many mechanical operations as easily by night 
as by day. Again, the danger of fire from 
illuminating sources is almost wholly obviated 
by the new system. The ease and expedition 
of all kinds of night employment are greatly 
enhanced. A given amount of ilUumination 
can be produced much more cheaply by 
electricity than by any means of gas-lighting 
or ordinary combustion. 

Among the first to demonstrate the feasi- 
bility of electric lighting was the philosopher 
Gramme, of Paris. In the early part of 1875 
he successfully lighted his laboratory by means 
of electricity. Soon afterward the foundry of 
Ducommun & Co., of Mulhouse, was similarly 
lighted. In the course of the following year 
the apparatus for lighting by means of car- 
bon candles was introduced into many of the 
principal factories of France and other lead- 
ing countries of Europe. It may prove of in- 
terest in this connection to sketch briefly the 
principal features of the electric light system, 
and to trace the development of that system 
in our own and other countries. 

Lighting by electricity is accomplished in 
several ways. In general, however, the prin- 
ciple by which the result is accomplished is 
one, and depends upon the resistance which 
the electrical current meets in its transmission 
through various substances. There are no 
perfect conductors of electricity. In propor- 
tion as the non-conductive quality is preva- 
lent in a substance, especially in a metal, the 
resistance to the passage of electricity ia pro- 
nounced, and the consequent disturbance 
among the molecular particles of the sub- 
stance is great. Whenever such resistance is 
enciountered in a circuit, the electricity is con- 
verted into heat, and when the resistance is 
great, the heat is, in turn, converted into 
light, or rather the heat becomes phenomenal 
in light; that is, the substance which offers 
the resistance glows with the transformed 
energy of the impeded current. Upon this 
simple principle all the apparatus for the pro- 
duction of the electric light is produced. 



Among the metallic substances, the one 
best adapted by its low conductivity to such 
resistance and transformation of force, \» 
platinum. The high degree of heat necessary 
to fuse this metal adds to its usefulness and 
availability for the purpose indicated. When 
an electrical current is forced along a platinum 
wire too small to transmit the> entire volume, it 
becomes at once heated — ^first to a red, and 
then to a white glow — and is thus made to send 
forth a radiance like that of the sun. Of the 
non-metallic elements which offer similar re* 
sistance, the best is carbon. The infusibility 
of this substance renders it greatly superior 
to platinum for purposes of the electric light. 

Near the beginning of the present century 
it was discovered by Sir Humphrey Davy that 
carbon points may be rendered incandescent 
by means of a powerful electrical current 
The discovery was fully developed in the 
year 1809, while the philosopher just referred 
to was experimenting with the great battery 
of the Royal Institution of London. He ob- 
served — rather by accident than design, or 
previous anticipation — that a strong volume of 
electricity passing between two bits of wood 
charcoal produces tremendous heat, and a light 
like that of the sun. It appears, however* 
that Davy at first regarded the phenomenon 
rather in the nature of an interesting display 
of force than as a suggestion of the possibility- 
of turning night into day. 

For nearly three-quarters of a century the 
discovery made by Sir Humphrey lay dormant 
among the great mass of scientific facts re* 
vealed in the laboratory. In course of 
time, however, the nature of the new fact be- 
gan to be apprehended. The electric lamp in 
many forms was proposed and tried. The 
scientists, Niardet, Wilde, Brush, Fuller, and 
many others of less note, busied themselves 
with the work of invention. Especially did 
Gramme and Siemens devote their scientific 
genius to the work of turning to good account 
the knowledge now fully possessed of the 
transformability of the electric current into 
light. 

The experiments of the last named two 
distinguished inventors brought us to the dawn 
of the new era in artificial lighting. The 
Russian philosopher, Jablochkoff, carried the 
work still further by the practical introduction 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



213 



of the carbon candle. Other scientists — Carr6, 
Foucault, Serrin, Rapieff, and Werdemann — 
had, at an earlier or later day, thrown much 
additional information into the common stock 
of knowledge relative to the illuminating pos- 
sibilities of electricity. Finally, the accumu- 
/ated materials of science fell into the hands 
•of that untutored but remarkably radical in- 
ventor, Thomas A. Edison, who gave himself 
with the utmost zeal to the work of removing 
the remaining difficulties in the problem. 

Edison began his investigations in this line 
of invention in September of 1878, and in 
December of the following year gave to the 
public his first formal statement of results. 
After many experiments with platinum, he 
aban<}pned that material in favor of the car- 
bon-arc in voeuo. The latter is, indeed, the 
•essential feature of the Edison light A small 
semicircle, or horseshoe, of some substance, 
4Buch as a filament of bamboo reduced to the form 
of pure carbon, the two ends being attached 
to the poles of the generating-machine, or dy- 
namo, as the engine is popularly called, is in- 
closed in a glass bulb, from which the air has 
been carefully withdrawn, and is rendered in- 
candescent by the passage of an electric cur* 
rent. The other important features of Edison's 
-discovery rela.te to the divisibility of the cur- 
rent, and its control and regulation in volume 
by the operator. These matters were fully 
mastered in the Edison invention, and the ap- 
paratus rendered as completely subject to 
^management as are the other varieties of illu- 
minating agencies. 

It were vain to speculate upon the future 
-of electric lighting. The question of artificial 
illumination has had much to do with the 
progress of the human race, particularly when 
aggregated into cities. Doubtless the old sys- 
tems of lighting are destined in time to give 
place altogether to the splendors of the electric 
glow. The general eflTect of the change upon 
society must be as marked as it is salutary. 
Darkness, the enemy of good government and 
morality in great cities, will, in a great meas- 
ure, be dispelled by the beneficent agent, over 
which the genius of Davy, Gramme, Brush, 
Edison, and a host of other explorers in the 
new continents of science has so completely 
triumphed. The ease, happiness, comfort, and 
welfare of mankind must be vastly multiplied. 



and the future must be reminded, in the glow 
that dispels the night, of that splendid fact that 
the progress of civilization depends, in a large 
measure, upon a knowledge of Nature's laws, 
and the dififusion of that knowledge among 
the people. 

We may here notice, in a few brief para- 
graphs, some of the great achievements belongs 
ing to the last quarter of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury in the matter of physical improvements. 
At no other time in modern history has civil 
engineering been turned to a better account 
than in the recent public works of the United 
States. First among these we may properly 
notice a few of the remarkable bridges which 
have been constructed within the period under 
contemplation. The principal place among 
such works may properly be given to the great 
Suspension Bridge over the strait known as 
East River, between New York and Brooklyn. 
The completion and formal opening of this 
work, which occurred on the 24th of May, 
1883, was an event of so great interest as to 
evoke universal attention and elicit many de- 
scriptions. 

The Brooklyn Bridge is the longest and 
largest structure of the kind in the world. 
The design was the work of the distinguished 
John A. Boebling, the originator of wire sub- ' 
pension-bridges, under whose supervision, and 
that of his son, Washington A. Boebling, the 
structure was completed.^ The elder of these 

' The personal history of the Roeblings, father 
and son, in connection with their s^eat work, is 
as pathetic as^it is interesting. The elder en- 
gineer was injured while laying the foundation 
of one of the shore-piers on the 22d of July, 
1869, and died of lockjaw. W. A. Roebling then 
took up his father's unfinished task. He con- 
tinued the work of supervision for about two 
years, when he was prostrated with a peculiar 
form of paralysis known as the " Caisson disease," 
from which he never fully recovered. His men- 
tal faculties, however, remained unimpaired, and 
he WAS able to direct with his eye what his hands 
could no longer execute. While thus prostrated, 
his wife developed a genius almost equal to that 
of her husband and her father-in-law. The pal- 
sied engineer, thus reinforced, continued for five 
years to furnish the plans for the work. These 
plans were almost all drawn by his wife, who 
never flagged under the tasks imposed upon her. 
In 1876, Roebling was partly restored to health, 
and lived to hear the applause which his genius 
and enterprise bad won. 



214 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



two eminent engiueers had already wod for 
himself an enduring fame bj the building of 
the first suBpension-bridge serosa the chasm of 
Niagara, rmd also the still greater structure of 
the same character across the Ohio Kver, be- 
tween Cincinnati and Covington. The latter 
structure, at the time of its erection, was by a 
thousand feet the longest of the kind in the 
world. The younger Roebling inherited much 
of bis father's genius, and added a genius of his 
own. The construction of the bridge over 
East River could not have been put into hands 
more capable if all nations bad b^n explored 
tor engineers. 



William C. Kingsley, President of the Bridge 
Trustees; and his predecessor in that office, 
Henry C. Murphy. The first plans and es- 
timates were prepared in 1865. The com- 
pany for the construction was organized two 
years afterwards. The capital was fixed at 
95,000,000. The enterprise was not pressed 
with due vigor undl 1675, when the work 
was taken up by the State of New York. A 
Board of Managers was appointed to bring 
the bridge to completion at as early a date as 
possilile. Congress also patronized the enter- 
prise by an act of June, 1869, authorizing the 
construction. The formal opening in May ol 



XA8T RIVER BRIDGE. 



The East River structure is what is known as 
a BUBpension bridge, being supported by four 
enormous wires, or cables, stretching from pier 
to pier in a single span, a distance of l,r)95reet. 
From the main towers to the anchonigcs on 
either side is 930 feet; fropn the anchorages 
outward to the termini of the approaches is, 
on the New York side, a distance of 1,562 
feet; and on the Brooklyn side 972 feet; giv- 
ing a total length of bridge and approaches of 
5,989 feet. The total weight of the structure 
is 64,700 tons; the estimated capacity of sup- 
port is 1,740 tons, and the "ultimate" re- 
nstance is calculated at 49,200 tons. 

The Brooklyn bridge was first projected by 



1883 drew the attention of the whole Nation 
to the metropolis, and proved by the interest 
which the event excited that even in America 
politics is not the best, at least not the only, 
vocation of mankind. 

Perhaps the most notable example of the 
(Jantilever Bridge as yet produced io the New 
World is the great structure of that order over 
the Niagara River, just above the village of 
Suspension Bridge, New York. It is the 
work of the distiuguished civil engineer, C. 6. 
Schneider, and is oue of the most beautiful 
structures of its kind ever constructed. The 
bridge has a total length of 910 feet, and 
crosses the river with a single span of 470 feet. 



THE UNITED STATES,— LATEST PERIOD. 



215 



The roadway is 239 feet above the water-level 
, in the chasm below. The materials employed 
in the construction are steel and iron. The 
erection of any kind of staging in the river at 
this point was impossible, and what is called 
the '* overhang" method of ' structure had to 
be adopted. Each of the great cantilevers 
were built out from the piers, section by sec- 
tion, until they had been advanced far enough 
from each side of the abyss to join their 
girders in the middle. 

Still another of -the most notable examples 
of successful bridge-building in the United 
States is that of the new Washington Bridge, 
extending from the upper extremity of Manhat- 
tan Island, across the gorge of the Harlem 
River to Westchester County, on the other 
side. The work is regarded as the most 
beautiful of its kind ever erected in America. 
The structure is of steel, and granite, and 
bronze. The chasm is spanned by two mag- 
nificent arches, having plate-girders of steel, 
each arch being from foot to foot a distance of 
610 feet. The piers are of massive masonry, 
which rise to the level of the roadway. The 
viaduct is supported on vertical posts rising 
from the arches. The height of the roadway 
is 152 feet above the level of tide-water in the 
Harlem, being forty feet in excess of the 
like measurement under the East River Sus- 
pension Bridge. The approaches to the struc- 
ture are broad viaducts of granite, carried on 
stone arches. All- of the ornamentation is of 
bronze. The Washington Bridge was con- 
structed in 1888-9, according to the designs 
and under the direction of the eminent civil 
engineer, Mr. William K Hutton. 

On the wbolci tbe Administration of 
Arthur proved to be uneventful. The Gov- 
ernment pursued the even tenor of its way, 
and the progress of the country was un- 
checked by serious calamity. In the domain 
of politics, we note here the gradual oblitera* 
tion of those sharply defined issues which for 
the last quarter of a century had divided the 
two great parties. As a consequence, there 
was noticeable a healthful abatement of par- 
tisan rancor. It became every year more ap- 
parent that the questions at issue in the po- 
litical arena "were merely factitious, and that 
the clamors of partisanship were kept up by 
those who hoped to gather the spoils of the 



political battle-field. Nor might any discern, 
in this decade, how much longer those ill- 
founded cries of alarm might serve to hold the 
people in line under the old party names. For 
the time being, however, the man who plowed 
or kept the flock, the mechanic, the artisan, 
the merchant, continued to come forth at the 
call of party leaders, and to vote, as had been 
his wont, on issues that were more imaginary 
than real. 

To this general fact, that party questions 
were no longer vital and distinct, there was 
one notable exception. It can not be doubted 
that the American people were, from 1880 to 
1890, really aud sincerely divided on the ques- 
tion of the Tariff. Whether the true policy 
of the United States is that of a free- trade or 
a protective system was a fundamental issue, 
and the decision was postponed. The policy 
of gathering immense revenues from customs 
duties during the Civil War, and in the decade 
thereafter, had become firmly imbedded as a 
factor in the industrial aud commercial sys- 
•tems of the country. A great manufacturing 
interest had been stimulated into unusual, not 
to. say inordinate, activity. Practically the 
political parties had become so much en* 
tangled with the finances and the industries 
of the country that no party discipline could 
withdraw and align the political forces in 
columns and battalions as of old. The ques- 
tion was fundamentally as ancient as the Re- 
public. Ever and anon, from the very founda* 
tion of the Government, the tarifi!* issue had 
obtruded itself upon the attention of the peo- 
ple. It may not be deemed inappropriate in 
this connection to state and briefly elucidate 
the various views which have been entertained 
on the subject. 

First, we have what is called the doctrine 
of Free Trade, pure and simple. The theory 
is, in a word, as follows: The indications of 
profitable industry are founded in nature. 
The hints and suggestions of the natural world 
are the true iudications of mankind as to how 
the various industries which human genius 
have devised are to be most profitably directed. 
Thus, a rich soil means agriculture. A barren 
soil' is the indication of nature against agri- 
cultural pursuits. Beds of ore signify mining; 
veins of petroleum, oil-wells; a headlong river, 
water-power ; hills of silica, glass-works ; for- 



216 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



«8t8 of pine, ship-masts and coal-tar; bays 
and havens and rivers, commerce. Free trade 
says that these things are the voice and edict 
of the natural world as to how human indus- 
try shall be exerted. The way to wealth, 
prosperity, happiness, is to follow the edict of 
nature whithersoever it calls. To go against 
human nature is to go against self-interest and 
■against common sense. Laisaez /aire, that is, 
** Let alone," is the fundamental motto of the 
system — hands off, and no meddling with the 
plain conditions which are imposed on man by 
his environments. Let him who lives in the 
fecund valley till the soil and gather a hun- 
dred-fold. Let him who inhabits the rocky 
upland, by river-side or bed of pent-up coal, 
devote his energies to manufacture. Let each 
procure from the other by exchange the nec- 
-essaries and conveniences of life which he 
could not himself produce but at a great dis- 
advantage, and an irrational and needless ex- 
penditure of toil. Let the producer of raw 
material send it near or far to the manufac- 
turer, and receive in turn the fabric which he 
must wear, even the food wherewith he must 
sustain his life. Why should he do otherwise? 
Why should either the man or the community 
struggle against the conditions of nature, and 
the immutable laws of industry, t > produce 
the entire supply of things necessary for human 
comfort, convenience, and welfare? It is in- 
tended that men should live together in amity ; 
that they should mutually depend one upon 
the other; that each should gain from the 
other's genius and exertion what he is unable 
to procure by his own endeavor and skill. 
Neighbors should be at peace. Different com- 
munities should not quarrel; should not put 
Interdicts and checks upon the natural laws 
of intercourse aud mutual dependency. Na- 
tions should not fight. The harmonious order 
of civilization requires a world-wide exchange 
of products. Men are happier and richer, 
fiud nations are more powerful, when they give 
themselves freely to the laws of their environ- 
ments, and toil in those fields of industry to 
which both their own dispositions and the be- 
nevolent finger of nature point the way. 

The theory continues : All contrivances of 
human law which controvert or oppose these 
fundamental conditions of legitimate industry 
Are false in principle and pernicious in appli 



cation. If civil society assume to direct the 
industries of her people against the plain in- 
dications of nature, then society becomes a 
tyrant. The rule of action in such case is no 
longer free but despotic. All laws which tend 
to divert the industries of a nation from those 
pursuits which are indicated by the natural sur- 
roundings are hurtful, selfish, self-destructive, 
and, in the long run, weakening and degrading 
to the people. A tariff duty so laid as to build 
up one industry at the expense of another is a 
piece of barbarous intermeddling with both 
the principles of common sense and the inhe- 
rent rights of men. If free trade makes one 
nation dependent on another, then it also 
makes that other nation dependent on the first 
The one can no more afford to fight the other 
than the other can afford to fight it Hence 
free trade as the great economic law among 
the nations. It is both sound in theory and 
beneficial in application. Hence a tariff for 
revenue only as the true principle of national 
action. It is the bottom economic policy of 
government relative to the interests of the 
people. Such is the general theory to which 
has been given the name of Xoimos /atre, but 
which is known among the English-speaking 
peoples by the more limited term. Free Trade. 
The first remove from the doctrines above 
set forth is that of Incidental Protkction. 
The primary assumptions of this theory are 
nearly identical with those of free trade. 
Nearly all of the propositions advanced by the 
free-trader are accepted as correct by the inci- 
dental protectionist. The latter, however, 
holds some peculiar doctrines of his owp. He 
claims that men, as the doctrine of Ledum 
/aire teaches, should labor according to the 
indications of nature, and that the attempt on 
the part of Government to divert the indus- 
tries of the people from one channel to another 
is contrary to right reason and sound policy. 
But he also holds that sinco a tariff is the 
common means adopted by most of the civ- 
ilized States of the world to produce the rev- 
enue whereby the expenses of government 
are met and sustained, the same should be 
so levied as to be incidentally favorable to 
those industries of the people which are placed 
at a natural disadvantage. He does not hold 
that any tariff should be levied with the tn- 
tention of protecting and fostering a given 



THE UNITED 8TATEB.— LATEST PERIOD. 



ai7 



^ 



industry, but that in every case the tax should 
be laid for public purposes ordy; that is, with 
the intention of sofltaining the State, and be 
only ineidentcdly directed to the protection of 
the weaker industry. These last assumptions 
furnish the ground of political divergence be- 
tween free-traders proper and incidental pro- 
tectionists. The latter take into consideration 
both the fundamental conditions of the argu- 
ment and the peculiar character of the indus- 
tries of the people. They claim that given 
pursuits may thus be strengthened and encour- 
aged by legislative provisions, and that natural 
and political laws may be made to cooperate 
in varying and increasing the productive re- 
sources of the State. 

The third general view relative to this ques- 
tion is known as the doctrine of Limited Pro- 
tection. The word " limited,** in the defini- 
tion, has respect to a time relation. The funda- 
mental difference between this theory and the 
preceding is this : The incidental protectionist 
denies, and the limited protectionist affirms, 
the wisdom of levying tariff duties with the 
interUion and purpose of protecting home indus- 
tries. The limited protectionist would have 
the legislation of the State take particular 
cognizance of the character and variety of the 
industries of the people, and would have the 
laws enacted with constant reference to the 
encouragement of the weaker — generally the 
manufacturing — pursuits. The doctrine of in- 
cidental protection would stop short of this ; 
would adopt the theory of '^let alone," 
00 far as the original purpose of legisla- 
tion is concerned; but would, at the same 
time, so shape the tariff that a needed stimulus 
would be given to certain industries. The 
limited protectionist agrees with the free-trader 
in certain assumptions. The former, as well 
as the latter, assents to the proposition that 
the original condition of industry is found in 
nature — in the environment of the laborer. 
But he also urges that the necessity for a varied 
industry is so great, so important, to the wel- 
fare and independence of a people, as to justify 
the deflection of human energy by law to cer- 
tain pursuits, which could not be profitably 
followed but for the fact of protection. 

This principle the limited protectionist gives 
as a reason for tarifl legislation, which he ad- 
vocates. He would make the weaker industry 

N. — Vol, 4 — 14 



live and thrive by the side of the stronger. 
He would modify the crude rules of naturs 
by the higher rules of human reason. He 
would not only adapt man to his environment, 
but would adapt the environment to him. He 
would keep in view the strength, the dignity^ 
the independence, of the State, and would be 
willing to incur temporary disadvantages for 
the sake of permanent good. In the course 
of time, when, under the stimulus of a pro- 
tective system, the industries of the State have 
become sufficiently varied, and sufficientlj 
harmonized with original conditions, he would 
allow the system of protective duties to ex- 
pire, and freedom of trade to supervene. 
But untU that time, he would insist that 
the weaker, but not less essential, industries of 
a people ' should be encouraged and fostered 
by law. He would deny the justice or 
economy of that system which, in a new 
country, boundless in natural resourcea^ 
but poor in capital, would constrain the people 
to bend themselves to the production of a few 
great staples, the manufacture of which, bj 
foreign nations, would make them rich, and 
leave the original producers in perpetual vas- 
salage and poverty. 

The fourth general view is embodied in the 
theory of High Psoi'ection. In this the 
doctrine is boldly advanced that the bottom 
assumptions of free trade are specious and 
false. The influence of man upon his envi- 
ronment is so great as to make it virtually 
whatever the law of right reason would sug^ 
gest. The suggestion of right reason is this: 
Every nation should he independent Iti 
complete sovereignty and equality should* be 
secured by every means short of injustice. In 
order that a State may be independent and 
be able to mark out for itself a great destiny, 
its industries must afford employment for all 
the talents and faculties of man, and yield 
products adapted to all his wants. To devote 
the energies of a people to those industries 
only, which are suggested by the situation and 
environment, is to make man a slave to nature 
instead of nature's master. It may be sound 
reasoning for the people inhabiting a fertile 
valley to devote themselves prindpcdfy to agri- 
cultural pursuits; but to do this to the exclu- 
sion of other industries is merely to narrow 
the energies of the race, make dependent the 



218 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



laborer, and finally exhaust those very powers 
of nature which, for the present, seem to sug- 
' gest one pursuit and forbid all others. 

The theory of high ' protection continues 
thus: It is the duty of society to buil^ up 
many industries in every locality, whatever 
may be the environment If nature furnishes 
DO suggestion of blast-furnaces and iron-works^ 
then nature must be constrained by means of 
human law. The production of manufactured 
values should be so encouraged by tariff du- 
ties as to become profitable in all situations. 
Not only should every State, but every com- 
munity and every man, be made comparatively 
independent. Every community should be 
able by its own industry to supply at least the 
larger part of its own wants. The spindle 
should be made to turn; the forge made to 
glow ; the mill-wheel made to turn ; the engine 
made to pant; and the towering furnace to 
fling up into the darkness of midnight its vol- 
canic glare, — all this whether nature has or has 
not prepared the antecedents of such activity. 
tAnd this can not be accomplished, or at least 
I not well accomplished, in any other way than 
'by the legal protection of those industries 
which do not flourish under the action of 
merely natural law. It is, in brief, the theory 
of the high protectionist that every com- 
munity of men, by means of its own varied 
and independent activities, fostered and en- 
couraged by the protective system of indns- 
tries, should become in the body politic what 
the ganglion is in the nerve system of man,— 
an independent, local power, capable of orig- 
inating its own action and directing its own 
energies. 

There is still a fifth position occasioDally 
assumed by publicists, and sometimes acted on 
by nations. This is the doctrine and practice of 
Prohibitory Tariffs. The idea here is that 
the mutual interdependence of nations is, on the 
whole, disadvantageous, and that each should 
be rendered wholly independent of the other. 
Some of the oldest peoples of the world have 
'adopted this doctrine and policy. The Ori- 
ental nations, as a rule, have, until recent 
times, followed persistently the exclusive the- 
ory in their national affairs. The principle is, 
that if in any State or Nation certain industrial 
conditions and powers are wanting, then those 
powers and cou'^i^ions should be produced by 



means' of law. Internal trade is, according to 
this doctrine, the principal thing, and commer- 
cial intercourse with foreign States a matter 
of secondary, or even dubious, advantage. 
If the price of the given home product be not 
sufficient to stimulate its production in such 
quantities as to meet all the requirements of 
the market, then that price should be raised by 
means of legislation, and raised again and 
again, until the foreign trade shall cease, and 
home manufacture be supplied in its place. 

True, there are not many of the modem 
peoples who now carry the doctrine of protec- 
tion to this extreme. But it is also true that^ 
in the endeavor to prepare protective sched- 
ules under the system of limited or high pro* 
tection, it has not infrequently happened that 
the tariff* is fixed at such a scale na to act as m 
prohibitory duty, and turn aside entirely the 
foreign commerce in the article on which the 
tarifi* is laid. 

Such, then, are the fundamental principle* 
which underlie the great controversy, and fur* 
nish the issues of political divergence in the 
United States. The question is as old as th* 
beginnings of civil progress in the New World* 
No sooner was the present governmental sy»^ 
tem in our country instituted, than the contro* 
versy broke out in the halls of legislation* 
The second statute ever enacted by Congreat 
under the Constitution was passed for the pur- 
pose of ''providing a revenue, and c^drding 
proUetion to American industry" The very ne- 
cessities which gave rise to the Constitution 
were those relating to commerce, and inter- 
woven with the tarifl*. From the beginning 
the question would not down. During the 
fourth and fifth decades of the century, the 
leading political agitations were produced by 
the revival ^f the tarifl* issue in our system. 
During the ascendency of Henry Clay, his so- 
called "American system" became, for a sear 
son, the bottom principle of Whig politics. In 
the ante-bellum epoch the Whig party cod- 
tinued to favor the protective system, while the 
Democratic party espoused free trade. After 
the war the question slumbered for a season. 
In 1880 a paragraph in the national platform 
of tlie Democratic party was inserted — not, in- 
deed, with the intention of evoking an old 
controversy from oblivion — which, by declaring 
in favor of a tariff for revenue only, unex*' 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



219 



pectedly precipitated the whole issue anew, 
and coDtributed to, perhaps determined, the 
defeat of the Democratic ticket. Even in 
those States where Democracy was in the as- 
cendant the growth of great manufacturing 
establishments had brought in a vast army of 
artisans, who, in spite of all party affiliation, 
refused to* support a platform which, according 
to their belief, was calculated to injure, if not 
destroy, the very business in which they were 
engaged. 

Both the Democrats and the Republicans, 
in the ensuing quadrennium made strenuous 
efforts to align their party followers on this ques- 
tion; but neither was successful. The event 
showed that the Democrats were by no means 
unanimous for free trade, and that the Repub- 
licans were equally far from unanimity in their 
support of protection. It was found that large 
numbers of Republican leaders, whose finan- 
cial interests lay in the direction of commerce 
rather than in manufactures, espoused the free- 
trade doctrine. Never was party discipline 
more strained on any subject than in the Presi- 
dential campaigns from 1876 to 1888. Es- 
pecially during the Administration of Arthur 
and his successor did the tariff question gather 
head, and the white crests of conflicting tides 
were seen along the whole surface of political 
controversy. Nor may the publicist and his- 
torian of the passing age clearly foresee the 
solution of the problem. One thing, however, 
may be safely predicted, and that is, that the 
question in America will be decided, as it has 
already been decided by Great Britain, ac- 
cording to self-mterest. No people will, in the 
long run, act against what it conceives to be 
its interest for the sake of supporting a given 
theory. When some party in power, what^ 
ever that party may be, shall become convinced 
that the interest of the United States requires 
the abolition of all protective duties, and the 
substitution therefor of a system of tariff for 
revenue only, then, and not till then, will the 
Laissez-faire theory of political econo^my take 
the place of that which has thus far prevailed 
on this side of the sea. 

Hardly had the crime of Garfield's murder 
been perpetrated, and the Presidency trans- 
ferred to Arthur, before the issue of naming 
his successor was raised by the ever-busy swarm 
of American politicians. To the calm-minded 



observer it appears a thing of wonder that 
the people of the United States have thus far 
permitted themselves to be cajoled, hood- 
winked, browbeaten, converted into slaves, by 
the ignorant hordes of interested adventurers 
who have arrogated to themselves the right of 
controlling the destiny of the American Re- 
public. It can hardly be wondered that under 
the continuance of such a system a spirit of 
political pessimism has gained ground to the 
very verge of prevalence in the United States. 
Of a certainty, the party newspaper has been, 
and continues to be, the abettor and agent of 
Kakistocracy in America. And until the reign 
of that evangel of evil is ended, the people 
of the United States must continue to beat 
about blindly, moping and groaning under the 
despotism of the bad. 

The year 1882 had hardly furnished a 
breathing time for the subsidence of passion 
until the great army of the interested went 
forth to arouse the country for another con- 
test In this haste might be seen the symp- 
toms of fear, for it could not be doubted that 
both the political organizations had become 
alarmed lest through the faihire of living, 
issues the old combinations which had divided 
the country for a quarter of a century should 
go to pieces and leav^ the field to the people. 
But the time had not yet come for the break<^ 
ing up of the political deeps, and the masses 
were still made to believe that ^he old ques- 
tions were vital to the welfare of the country. 

As the quadrennium came to a close, many 
prominent men were named in connection 
with the Presidential office. Among those 
most warmly advocated by the Republicans 
were James G. Blaine, of Maine; George 
F. Edmunds, of Vermont; President Chester 
A. Arthur; Joseph R. Hawley, of Con- 
necticut; John Sherman, of Ohio; John A. 
Logan and Robert T. Lincoln, of Illinois; and 
General William T. Sherman, of Missouri. 
Among the Democrats the leaders most fre- 
quently urged for the nomination in 1884 
were Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts; 
Samuel J. Tilden and Grover Cleveland, of 
New York ; Samuel J. Randall, of Penn- 
sylvania ; Thomas F. Bayard, of Delaware; 
Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio ; John G. Carlisle, 
of Kentucky; Joseph E. McDonald and 
Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana. Early in 



220 



UNIVERSAL mSTORT.—THE MODERN WORLD. 



1884, Chicago wu selected as the place of both 
the National conventione. The Greenback- 
Labor party held ita coDvention at Indian- 
apolis, in the month of April, and nominated 
General Butler for the Presidency, and A. M. 
West, of Mississippi, for the Vice-presidency. 
The Republican convention met on the 3d of 
May, and, after a spirited session of three days' 
duradon, nominated James Q. Blaine, of 
Mtune, and General John A. Logan, of 
DliDoia, for the Presidency and Vice-presi- 



jency, respectively. The Democratic delegates 
assembled on the 9th of July, and on the 11th 
completed their work by nominating for the 
Presidency, Grover Cleveland, of New York, 
and for the Vice-presidency, Thomas A. Hen- 
dricks, of Indiana. The nominations on 
both sides were received with considerable 
enthusiasm ; but a considerable lUctioD in 
each party refused to support the National 
ticket. 

As the election of 1884 drew nigh, every- 



thing seemed to depend open tbe electoral 
votes of New York and Indiana; and wheD 
the preliminary cgunting showed the latter 
State for the Democrats, the former became 
the single battle-field of the campaign. The 
event proved favorable to the Democrats, 
though their majority in the popular vote of 
New York was only 1,142. Hiis small pre- 
ponderance determined the result. It gave 
the vote of the Empire State to Cleveland 
and Hendricks, assuring to them 219 ballots in 
the Electoral College, agaiDst 
182 votes for Blaine and 
Logan. 

The seqael of the Pren> 
dential election of tliii ynr 
was less happy than generally 
happens under like circnn^ 
stances. For six tuccesrive 
AdministradoDs the Bepabli* 
can party had been Id power. 
The quarter of a century co^ 
ered by this ascendfacy hmi 
been by &r the moot important 
dnce the Be volution. Tie 
United Sutes of 1884 had 
been completely transformed 
from the United States of 
1860. The great, and. on iho 
whole, salutary changes which 
bad taken place in the social 
condition and civil polity of 
the American people were, ai 
always happens in such cases, 
claimed by the dominant party 
as the result of its manage- 
ment and control of National 
affairs. As a matter of fact, 
the Republican party was it- 
self the TOuU of a growth and 
development in the United 
States— merely one of the efeets, instead 
of the eausB, of the changed order of tbbga. 
But the leaders of that party were, in a 
considerable degree, honest in claiming that 
the tremendous and beneficial changes which 
had passed, like tbe shadows of great clouds 
over the American landscape, were attribu- 
table to the long period of Republican a»- 
cendency. To lose power, therefore, was polit- 
ical bitterness itself. For the Republican 
managers and office-holders to abdicate th^ 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



221 



offices, and go forth among the people power- 
less, seemed to them the end of National great- 
ness. Mr. Blwne himself, aotwithsttuiding his 
equanimity and self-possession, felt keenly the 
humiliation of the overthrow. It was under 
his banner that his party had at last come to 
defeat. &O0Q after the elec^on he delivered a 
speech which, far from being pacific in its 
tone, was, for the most part, a bitter invective 
agtunst the South. The Bepublican uewspv 
pers, especially in the 
West, took gp the hue 
and cry, and filled their 
columns with such matter 
as might well have ap- 
peared in the first year 
after 4he Civil War. By 
degrees, however, this 
feeling subsided, and near 
the close of Arthur's Ad- 
ministration the office- 
holders, as a class, began 
to trim their sails with 
the evident hope that the 
breezes of Civil Service 
Beform, to which the 
President-elect was 
pledged, might waft them 
still further on the high 
•eas of emolument. 

A short time before 
the retirement of Arthur 
from the Presidency, the 
command of the army of 
the United States was 
transferred ikim General 
William T. Sherman 
to Lieutenant - General 
Philip H. Sheridan. The 
former disUnguished offi- 
cer, one of the most tal- 
ented and eminent soldiers of the century, hav- 
ing reached the age at which, according to an act 
of Congress, he might retire from active serv- 
ice, availed himself of the provision, and laid 
down his command. The formal papers with 
which he concluded hia official relation with 
tbe army were marked with the aame fervor 
and patriotism which had characterized all of 
bis utterances since the time when he gave his 
services to the country in the dark days of dis- 
union. Nor could it be said that tbe new 



General, to whom the command of tbe Amer> 
ican army was now intrusted, was less a patriot 
and soldier than his illustrious predecessor. 

The recurrence of the birthday of Wash- 
ington, 1885, was noted for the dedication of 
the great monument which had been building 
for so many years at the CapitaL The erec- 
tion of such a structure had been suggested a> 
early as 1799. Nor could it well be doubted 
that the American people would, in due time, 



UnrTBHAHT-OEtrlSlL FHIUP H. UIBBIDilH. 

rear some appropriate memorial to the Father 
of his Country. The work was not under- 
taken, however, until 1835. In that year an 
oi^nization was effected to promote the en- 
terprise. But ftr a long time after the begin- 
ning, the work of building lagged, and it was 
not until Congress, taunted at last into action 
by the animadversions of the press and peo- 
ple, undertook the prosecution of the enter- 
prise, that it was brought to completjon. The 
cost of tbe Washington Monument was aboot 



222 



UNIVERSAL EISTORY.—TSE MODERN WORLD. 



11,500,000. It staods on the left bank of 
the Potumac, in the southern outskirU of 
Washington City. The structure was at the 
time of ila erectron the highest in the world. 
The shaft proper, without reckoning the foun- 
dation, is 555 feet in height, being thirty feet 
higher than the Cathedral at Cologne, and 
seventy-five feet higher than the Pyramid of 
Cheops in its preseut condition. The great 
obelisk is composed of more than eighteen 
thousand blocks of stone. They are mostly of 
white marble, and weigh several tons each. 
One hundred and eighty-one memorial stones, 
contributed by the different Stat«e of th« 



Union, and by friendly foreign nations, are 
set at various places in the structure. 

The dedication of the monument occurred 
on Saturday, the aist of February. The 
ceremonies were of the most imposing char- 
acter. A procession of more than six thou- 
sand persons marched , from the base of 
the monument, along Pennnylvania Avenue 
to the Capitol, while salutes were fired 
from the batteries of the navy-yard. At the 
Capitol the procession was reviewed by the 
President of the United States. Tlie con- 
cluding ceremonies were held in the House of 
Representatives, where a great throng of dis- 
tinguished people had assembled — not so 
much to do honor to the occasion as to he 
honored by it. The principal oration, written 



by Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, as well as the 
less, formal addresses of the day, was well 
worthy of the event, and calculated to add — 
if aught could add— to the fame of him who 
was "first in war, first in peace, and first ia 
the hearts of his fellow -citizens." 

Grover Cleveland, twenty-second President 
of the United States,, was born at Caldwell, 
New Jersey, March 18, 1837. Three year* 
afterwards he was taken by his father and 
mother to Fayetteville, near Syracuse, New 
York. Here, in his boyhood, he received 
such limited education as the schools of the 
place afforded. For a while in his youth he 
was clerk in a village store. Afterward the 
family removed, first to Clinton and then to 
Holland Patent. At the latter place his father 
died, and young Cleveland, left to hie own re- 
sources, went to New York and became a 
teacher in an asylum for the blind. Aft«r a 
short time, however, the young man, finding 
such pursuits uncongenial to his tastes, went to 
Bu&lo and engaged in the study of law. He 
was admitted to the bar in 1859, and, four 
years afterwards, began his public career aa 
Assistant District Attorney. In 1869 he was 
elected Sheriff of Erie County, and in 1881 was 
chosen Mayor of Buflklo. Hia nest pmmotioa 
by his fellow- citizens was to the governorship of 
New York, to which position he was elected, in 
1882, by the astonishing majority of 192,854 — 
the majority being perhaps unparalleled in 
the history of American elections. It iraa 
while he still held this office that, in July of 
1884, he was nominated by the Democratic 
party for the Presidency of the United States. 

Much interest was manifested by the public 
in the constitution of the new Cabinet. On 
the day following the inauguration the nomi- 
nations were sent to the Senate, and were aa 
follows: For Secretary of State, Thomas F. 
Bayard, of Delaware; for Secretary of the 
Treasury, Daniel Manning, of New York; for 
Secretary of the Interior, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, 
of Missi-s-tippi ; for Secretary of War, William 
C. Endicott, of Masi^acbusetts; for Secretary of 
the Navy, William C. Whitney, of New York; 
for Post master- Gen e ral , William F. Vilas, of 
Wisconsin ; for Attorney-General, Augustus 
H. Garland, of Arkansas. The peculiarity of 
the appointments was that two of them were 
from New York. But the prejudice which 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



223 



toight arise on this account was fully counter- 
balanced by the high character and undoubted 
abilities of the men whom the President had 
<;ho8en as the responsible advisers of his Admin- 
istration. 

The most serious question which confronted 
the new President, and which continued to 
>beset bis course through the whole quadren- 
oium, was the distribution of official patronage. 
The Democratic party had come into power 
on a platform distinctly enunciating the doc- 
trine of reform in the civil service. From 
^dmost the beginning of the Government it 
4iad been the custom of the party in power to 
•distribute to its own partisans all the appointive 
-offices. This usage^ well established since the 
•days of Jackson, had been the origin and 
•cause of the greater part of the abuses which 
had existed in the various departments of 
the Government. £xtreme party men had 
•claimed always that '* to the victors belong the 
spoils" of office. Of late years, however, the 
best political opinion of the country turned 
with disgust from the gross practice of re- 
garding men for mere party services, and in 
the evenly balanced Presidential contest of 
1880 and 1884 it became all important that 
4>oth the dominant parties should conciliate, at 
least by professions of sympathy, the growing 
phalanx of civil service reformers. They it 
^as who in the late election, believing in the 
•sincerity of Cleveland, had thrown their influ- 
-ence in his favor, and thereby secured his ele- 
vatiou to the Presidency. He went into office 
pledged to carry out the views of those by 
whose suffrages he had been raised to power. 
"These views, moreover, were his own; and it 
ihus happened that the new Administration 
was launched with ** Civil-service Reform" in- 
•«cribed on its pennon. 

In the political management of States by 
party ascendency, it ever happens that the 
practical application of the principles on which 
-the party has come into power is attended 
with extreme difficulty. In the first place, 
ihe so-called principles are frequently formu- 
lated simply as a means to gather votes and 
reach success. Ailer the election has been 
won and the party accedes to power, there is 
no further thought of carrying into effect the 
alleged "principles" by which party success 
•faas been achieved. In the contest of 1884 



many of the Democratic leaders had upheld 
the banner of civil service merely as an ex- 
pedient. To such elements of his party the 
President's sincere attempt at the beginning 
of his Administration to enforce the principles 
of the party platform by an actual reform in 
the system of appointments was little less than 
appalling. To them the declaration in favor 
of a better order of things relative to the ap- 
pointive offices of the Government was purely 
nominal. They accordingly made a rush to 
gather the spoils of the victory which they 
claimed to have won. From the day of the 
inauguration a great crowd of office-seekera 
thronged the Capital, and the Chief Magistratt 
was besieged by hundreds and thousands of 
those whose principal claims to preferment 
were, that they had served the party. During 
the first year of the new Administration it 
was a grave question whether or not the Presi- 
dent would be able to stand by the flag of 
reform, or whether he would be driven to re- 
adopt the cast-off policy of satisfying with 
official appointments the hungry horde that 
surged around the- Presidential mansion. 

It was one of the peculiarities of the 
epoch upon which we here enter in American 
history that the memories and deeds of the 
Civil War seemed to arise again in the public 
mind by a sort of uncaused revival, the true 
origin of which it might be difficult to dis- 
cover. Perhaps, on the whole, this renewal 
of interest should be chiefly ascribed to the 
fact that the great men whose genius had de> 
termined the destinies of that conflict now en- 
tered the shadows of old age, and became talk- 
ative about the stirring exploits of their 
youth and vigorous manhood. At this time 
began to appear that series of authoritative 
publications concerning the War for the Union, 
in which many of the leading participants re- 
lated their part in the drama. This work, so 
important to the right understanding of the 
great struggle for and against the Union, was 
begun by General William T. Sherman, who, 
in 1875, published his Memoirs^ narrating the 
story of that part of the war in which he had 
been a leader. This was not indeed the first 
of the publications on the subject. As early 
as 1870, Alexander H. Stephens, late Vice- 
President of the Confederacy, had completed 
his two volumes entitled the War Between ihe 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



iog to completion his two volumes of ifetno(n, 
from the sale of whicb — such is the gratitude 
of Eepublica — the reeourcea of his family must 
be chiefly drawn. It was a race, with death 
for the goal. Bcarcely had the enfeebled Qen- 
eral laid down his pencil until the enemy 
knocked at the door. The last days of Grant 
were hallowed bv the sympathies of the 
Nation which he had so gloriously defended. 
The news of his death passed over the land 
like the shadow of a great clond. Almost 
every city and hamlet showed, in some ap- 
propriate way, its emblems of grief. The 
funeral ceremonies equaled, if they did not 
surpass, any which have ever been wit- 
nessed. The procession in New York City 
was perhaps the most solemn aud imposing 
pageant ever exhibited in honorof thedead, at 
least since the funeral of the Duke of Wel- 
lington. On August 8, 1885, the body of 
General Grant was laid to rest in Riverside 
Park, overlooking the Hudson. There, on a 
summit from which may be seen the great 
river and the metropolis of the Nation, is tfar 
tomb of him whose courage and magnanimitj 
in war will forever give him rank with the few 
master spirits who, by their heroic deeds, have 
honored the. human race, and by their geniti» 
have changed the course of history. 

Within less than three months from the 
funeral of Grant another distinguished Union 
commander fell. On the 29th of October 
General George B. McClellan, organizer of 
the Army of the Potomac, at one time General- 
in-Chief, subsequently Dem'icratic candidate 
for the Presidency, and at a later period Gov- 
ernor of New Jersey, died at his home at St. 
Cloud, in that State. The conspicuous part 
which he had borne during the first two year» 
of the war, his eminent abilities as a soldier 
and civilian, and his unblemished character 
as a man and citizen, combined to heighten 
the estimate of his life and services, and to 
evoke the sincerest expressions of national 
sorrow on the occasion of his death.' 

After another brief interval, a third great 
military leader fell in the penou of General 

'The posthumous publication o( MeCUUan'i 
(hvn Stmy, under the auspices of his bereaved 
wife, is. on the whole, to be greatly regretted. Aa 
a contribution to the military — even the civil — 
history of the time, the work is valuable i but U> 



THE UNITED STATES.^LATEST PERIOD. 



225 



Wiofield 8. Hancock. This brave and gen- 
erous commander was. at the tJme of hu death, 
the Senior Major-Genend of the American 
ftnny. Always a favorite with the people and 
tjie soldiers, he had, since the close of the war, 
occupied a conspicuous place before the public 
In 1880 he was the Democratic candidate for 
the Presideucy, and, though defeated by Gen- 
eral Gar6eld, the defeat was without dishonor. 
His death, which occurred at his home on 
Qoveroor's Island, on the 9th of February, 
1886, was universaDy de^ored, and the peo- 
ple omitted no mark of respect for the memory 
of him who, in the great struggle for the 
preservation of the Union, had won and borne 
the title of "Hero of Gettysburg." Thus 
have paned away the gallant Generals of the 
Army of the Potomac. George B. McClellan, 
Ambrose E. Bumside, Joseph Hooker, George 
G. Meade, and Wmfield S. Hancock have, one 
by one, joined 

"The innumerable caravan that moves 
To that myeterions realm, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of Death." 

Before the close of the year 1886, still au- 
•ther among the greatest of the commanders of 
the Civil War ended his earthlf career. Late 
in December, General John A. Logan, United 
States Senator from Illinois, fell sick at his 
home, called Calumet Place, in Washington 
City. His disease was rheumatism, to which 
he hAd been subject at intervals since his ex- 
posure and hardships in the early Weelem 
campaigns. After a few days' illness he be- 
came suddenly worse, sank into a comatose 
condition, and, on the 26th of the month, 
breathed his last. His military and civil career 
had been distinguished in the highest degree. 
At the outbreak of hostilities in 1861 few men 
did more than Logan to strengthen and unify 
the Union sentiment in the wavering Border 
States. Hie voice was a clarion, beard shrill 
and far above the confuuon and uproar of the 
times. Resigning hie seat In Congress, he had 
joined the first advance of the Union army, 
and fought in the battle of Bull Run. With- 
out previous military training, he rose rapidly 



McClellan's memory the book is damaging. In a 
few matters the civilians in authority over McClel- 
Ian — but not Lincoln— are put on the defensive; 
but, token alti^ether, the apology, the eiilogr, 
works by contraries and mars the General's fame. 



to distinction, and became the Volunteer Gen- 
eral par exedUince of the war. After the close 
of the conflict he returned to political life, and 
was chosen to the United States Senate. In 
1884 he was nominated for the Vice-presi- 
dency on the Republican ticket with James G. 
Blaine. That ticket being defeated, he re- 
sumed his duties in the Senate, and remained 
at his post unUl his death. The ceremonies of 
the funeral and the general voice of the Amer- 
ican press indicated in an unmistakable mao- 
□er the enduring place which he had merited 
and won in the afiections of the people. 

Id the meantime, a distinguished civilian 
had fidlen from high office. On November 25, 



1885, Vice-President Thomas A. Hendricks, 
after what was supposed to be a trifling illness 
of a single day, died suddenly at bis home, in 
Indianapolis. The fatal message came in the 
form of paralysis. Not a moment's warning 
was given of the approach of that pale courier 
who knocks impartially at the door of the 
peasant and the portal of the great. The life 
of Heudricka had been one of singular purity, 
and the amenities of his character had been 
conspicuous in the stormy arena of American 
politics. The high qualities of the man, com- 
bined with his distinction as Governor, Sena- 
tor, and Vice-President, drew from the people 
many evidences of public and private respect 
for his memory. The body of the dead states- 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



mao was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery, near 
lodianapolia, tbe funeral pageant eurp&aing in 
Krandeur and solemnity any other display of 



the kind ever witnessed in the Western States, 
except tbe funeral of Lincoln. 

The death of the Vice-President was soon 
followed by that of Horatio Seymour, of New 
York. On the 12th of February, 1886, this 
distinguished citizen, who had tieen Governor 
of the Empire State, and in 1868 Democratic 
candidate for the Presidency against General 
Grant, died at bis home in Utica. He had 
reached the age of seventy-six, and, thougb 
for many years living in retirement, had never 
ceased to hold a large share of tbe attention 
of hia fellow-citizens. Still more distinguished 
Id reputation and eminent in aliility was Sam- 
uel J. Tilden, also of the Empire Slate, who 
died at his himie, called Greystone, at Yonkers, 
near New York City, on the 4th of August, 
1886. Mr. Tilden had lived to make a marked, 
perhaps an ineSaeeable, impression on the 
political thought of the epoch. He had ac- 
quired within the lines of his own party an 
bifluence and ascendency far greater than that 
of any other statesman of his time. Hia in- 
tellectual force could not be doubted, nor could 



it be claimed that he &iled to apply hia &cnt 
ties assiduously to the greatest political Ques- 
tions of the age. 

Mr. Tilden was bom on tbe 14tli of Feb- 
ruary, 1814, and was thus in the seventy-third 
year of bis age at the time of bis death. H« 
bad been a prominent figure in his native 
State for fully forty years, and had held many 
places of public trust and honor. In 1870-71 
he was among the foremost in unearthing the 
astounding frauds and robberies which had 
been perpetrated on the city treasury of New 
York, and in the following year was sent to 
the General Assemblj^ where bis services were 
invaluable. In 1874 he was elected Governor 
of New York by a majority of more than 
fifty tbou^md votes. In tbe executive office 
he was one of the ablest and most thorough- 
going men who ever occupied the gubema> 
torial chair of the State. In 1876 he was 
nominated for the Presidency, and in the eleo- 
tion of that year received a large majority of 
the popular vote, only failing of a majority in 
the Electoral College because of the tactics of 
tbe leaders of the party in power. Neither 
he nor General Hayes was clearly elected, the 
Democrats having carried two or three States 
with the shot-gun, and the Republicans, by 
tbe aid of the Electoral Commission, having 



counted in tbe electoral votes of a Slate o* 
two which they did not carry at all. Aftef 
tbe contest, Mr. Tilden retired to private life. 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



227 



but coDtinued b> guide the counsels uf his 
party, and to influeDce public opiuiou, up to 
the dat« of hiB death. Perhaps one of his 
ablest — as it was his last — pubhc paper was a 
general letter od the subject of "The Coast 
and Harbor Defenses of the United States," a 
publication which led to the legislation uf the 
FoFtj-nioth CoDgreas on that important sub- 
iect Thus, withio the space of less than 
eleven months, four of those eminent American 
leaders, who had been candidates of the Demo- 
cratic party for the Presidency of the United 
Btates, and the distinguished Vice-President, 
recently chosen by that party to the second 
place of hoDor in the Government, had fallen 
from their places in the ranks of the living. 

To thb list of the American great, whose 
activities have recently ended in de^th, must 
here be added the illustrious name of Henry 
Ward Beecher. To him, with little reserva- 
tion, we may assign the first place among our 
orators and philanthropists. Nor is it likely 
that his equal in most of the sublime qualities 
of energy and manhood will soon he seen 
again on the stage of life. His personality 
was so large, so unique and striking, as to con- 
stitute the man in some sense mi generU. 
His kind is rare in the world, and the circum- 
■tancea which aided in his development have 
passed away. That fact in American his- 
tory — the institution of slavery — which brought 
out and dbplayed the higher moods of his 
anger and stormy eloquence, can not again 
arouse the indignation of genius. The knig>'t 
and his dangerous foil sleep together in 
the dust. 

Mr. Beecher had the happy fortune to re- 
tain his feculties unimpaired to the very close 
of his career. On the evening of the 5th of 
March, 1887, at his home in Brooklyn, sur- 
rounded by his family, without premonition or 
portent, the message came by apoplesy. An 
artery broke in that magnificent heavy brain 
that had been for more than forty years 
one of the greatest batteries of thought and 
action in the world ; and the aged orator, 
neariog the close of his seventy-fourth year, 
sttuk into that deep sleep from which no power 
on earth could wake him. He lived until the 
morning of the 8th, and qntetly entered the 
shadows. The sentiments awakened by his 
death, the circumstances of his sepulture, and 



the common eulogium of mankind, proved 
beyond doubt the supreme place which he had 
occupied in the admiring esteem, not only of 
his cotiutrymen, but of all the great peoples 
of the world. 

To this brief mortuary record, for the ninth 
decade of the century, must also be added 
some reference to the death of Morrison 
Remich Waite, Chief-Justice of the United 
States. His decease came at his home in 
Washington City, on the 23d of March, 1888. 
The event suggests and justifies the additioK 
of a few paragraphs relative to the history 
and penonnd of the great tribunal over whidi 
Judge Waite presided during the last fourteen 
years of his life. 



In the formation of the Constitution of the 
United States, it was intended that the three 
General Departments of the Government 
should be of correlative rank and infiuence. 
The sequel, however, as developed in the 
actual working of our National system, has 
shown< that the Executive and Legislative, 
departments predominate, naturally — perhaps 
inevitably — over the judicial branch, and that, 
in the popular estimate at least, the Supreme 
Court is of small importance as compared with 
the Presidency and the two Houses of Con- 
gress. This dieesteem of the judiciary is not 
verified by a broader and more philosophical 
view of the subject. The importance, es- 
pecially of the conservative opinion of our 



228 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



great National Court, in determining, at least 
n^atively, the final validity of all legislation 
and all subordinate judicial decisions, can 
hardlj be overestimated. The same maj be 
■aid of the Supreme Bench, considered as the 
only immovable breakwater against the un- 
scrupulous and rampant spirit of party. It is 
fortunate that the offices of our Chief-Justice 
and of the associate Justices are appointive^ 
and are thus removed, in great measure, from 
the perfidy of the convention and the passion 
of a partisan election. It may be of interest 
to glance for a moment at some of the vicis- 
situdes through which the Supreme Court has 
passed since its organization in 1789. The 
Court was then instituted by the appointment 
of John Jay as Chief-Justice, who held the 
office until 1796, when he gave place to 
Oliver Ellsworth. The latter remained in 
office until, in 1800, the infirmities of age com- 
pelled his resignation. Then came the long 
and honorable ascendency of Chief-Justice 
J<An Marshall, who presided over the Court 
from his appointment in 1801 to his death in 
1835. This was the Golden Age of the 
American Supreme Court. From 1835 to 
1837 there was an interregnum in the Chief- 
Justiceship, occasioned by the disagreement of 
President Jackson and the Senate of the 
United States. But in the latter year the 
President secured the confirmation of Judge 
Roger B. Taney as Chief-Justice, who entered 
upon his long term of twenty-seven years. It 
was his celebrated decision in case of the 
negro Dred Scott, relative to the status of tlie 
slave-race in America, that applied the torch 
to that immense heap of combustibles whose 
explosion was the Civil War. 

After the death of Chief-Justice Taney, in 
1864, President Lincoln appointed, as his suc- 
cessor, Salmon P. Chase, recently Secretary of 
the Treasury, and author of most of the finan- 
cial measures and expedients by which the 
National credit had been buoyed up and pre- 
served during the Rebellion. His official term 
extended to his death, in 1873, and covered the 
period when the important issues arising from 
the Civil War were under adjudication. To 
Chief-Justice Chase fell also, by virtue of his 
office, the duty of presiding at the impeach- 
ment of President Andrew Johnson. In 1874 
the appointment of Morrison R. Waite as 



Chief-Justice was made by President Grant, 
and the death of this able jurist devolved on 
President Cleveland the duty of naming hb 
successor. 

Chief-Justice Waite was born at Lyme, 
Connecticut, on the 29th of November, 1816. 
From the public school he was transferred to 
Yale College, and was graduated from that in- 
stitution in 1837. He then became a student of 
law, and, after completing his course, removed 
to Ohio, where he entered upon the practice of 
his profession at Maumee City. After serving 
one term, in 1849-50, in the Legislature of the 
State, he removed to Toledo, which became 
henceforth his home, until his duties as Chief- 
Justice called him to Washington City. He had 
been frequently solicited to become a candidate 
for office, but had adhered to his profession until 
1871-72, when he accepted from President 
Grant the appointment as member of the cele- 
brated Board of Arbitration, to sit at Geneva, 
in the adjudication of the Alabama Claims. 
Here he was associated with Charles Francb 
Adams, Caleb Cushing, and William M. 
Evarts; and, though he was less known to the 
public than they, he, nevertheless, bore him- 
self with honor among his colleagues. Shortly 
after his return the death of Chief-Justice 
Chase opened the way for Mr. Waiters ap- 
pointment to the highest and most important 
judicial seat in America; and to this august 
position he brought a character, talents, and 
attainments equal to the responsibilities of his 
office. 

During his occupancy of the Supreme 
Bench, Chief-Justice Waite steadily rose in the 
esteem and confidence of the Nation. He was 
not, perhaps, a man of the highest order of 
genius or of the very highest rank as a jurist; 
but, on the whole, the office of Chief-Justice 
was rarely, if ever, more worthily borne than 
by its latest occupant He was a man of 
equable and judicial temper, little disposed, if 
disposed at all, to look beyond the Supreme 
Bench to a possibly higher seat. His death 
was from pneumonia, and was so sudden as to 
be announced to the country by the same de- 
spatches which gave first information of his 
serious sickness. He died peacefully, at his 
home. His funeral was held first in the hall 
of the House of Eepresentatives, and after- 
ward from his old residence in Toledo, at 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST FEHIOD. 



which city his remaios were finally committed 
to the tomb. 

The death of Chief-Justice Waite made 
way for the return ia the supreme judicial 
office in the United 6tat«B of some member of 
the political party which^ had loug been out 
of power. Since the epoch of the Civil War 
the court had been filled almost exclusively 
with judges who, by political affiliaUon, be- 
longed to the Republican party. The first dis- 
tinctly Democratic appointment which was 
made in the last quarter of a century was the 
recent one of Judge Lucius Q. C. Lamar, 
who, by the nomination of President Cleve- 
land, was transferred from the Secretaryship 
of the Interior to the Supreme Beuch. It thus 
happened, in the vicissitude of things, that the 
two political theories which were opposed to 
each other in the War for the Union, and are 
still opposed by party name, became confluent 
in the high court of the Nation. This circum- 
stance was to some a source of alarm and 
prejudice ; but the fear was not well founded. 
Partisan dispositions are less potent and dan- 
gerous — if, indeed, they assert themselves at 
all—on the Supreme Bench of the United 
States. Thus far in its history the court has, 
as a rule, been as pure In its administration 
and methods as it has been great in reputation. 
The muddy waters of party conflict have only 
occasionally reached as high as the chambers 
of our honored tribunal ; and the fear that it 
may be otherwise hereafter may hopefully be 
put aside as a groundless and spectral chimera 
of the hour. On May 1, IBSS, the President 
appointed Judge Melville W. Fuller, of Chi- 
cago, to the vacant Chief-justiceship. 

The impression produced by the death of 
<%ief'Ju3tice Waite had scarcely passed when 
the decease of another citizen, most noted for 
high character and great talents, called the 
public attention to the rapid disappearance of 
the Nation's most distinguished representatives. 
On the 18th of April, at the Hofiman House, 
New York City, Honorable Koscoe Conkliog, 
Ex-Senator of the United States, died after a 
brief and painful illness. A local indamma- 
tioD, resulting in the formation of a pus-sack 
under the mastoid bone of the skull, led to the 
cutting of the skull in hope of saving Mr. 
Conkling's life ; but he succumbed to the fatal 
malady and the shock of the operation. 



Roscoe Coukling was bom in Albany, New 
York, on the 30th of October, 1829. After the 
completion of an academic course of study, he 
went as a student of law to Utica, in 1846. 
On reaching bis majority he was admitted to 
the bar, and was soon afterward appointed to 
the office of County Attorney. From tbe be- 
ginning of his career his great talents and 
remarkable force of character were manifest. 
He made a profound impresuon, first upon 
the local, and then upon the general, society 
of New York. In 1858 he was mayor of 
Utica, and in tbe same year was sent to the 
National House of Representatives. He had 
already become an able politician, and was 
soon recognized as the leader of the Bepublioao 



party in hie native Slate. His rise was rapid, 
and his influence became marked in the af- 
fairs of the GovemmenL He served for dz 
years in the Lower House, and in 1866 waa 
elected to the Senate. In that body he aspired 
to leadership, and gradually attained it, though 
not without many struggles and contests with 
the great men of the epoch. He was twice 
reelected Senator— in 1872, and 1878; but in 
his third term, namely, in 1881, he found 
himself in such relatione with the Ciarfield 
Admin istration as induced him to resign his 
seat. This step was regarded by many as the 
mistake of his political life. At any rate, he 
failed of a reflection, the Administration party 
getting control of the Legblature of New 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TEE MODERS WORLD. 



York, and aendiog another in his place. After 
that date, Mr, Conkling retired to private life, 
and took up with the greatest euccesa the 
practice of his profession in New York City. 

Roecoe Conkling was a man of the highest 
courage and stanchest convictions. He never 
shone to greater advantage than when leading 
the forces of General Grant in the Chicago 
Convention of 1880. He was a bom political 
general. His will, and permsteDC]r, and pride, 
gave him a power which, if it had been tem- 
pered with greater urbanity, could hardly have 
fiuled to crown his life with the highest honors 
of the Nation. His talents rose to the re^on 
of genius, and his presence was magnificent — 
Ml inspiration to his friends, a terror to his 



6Demie8, As a summary of the results of his 
career, it may be said that, at the time of his 
death, none except his eminent rival, Mr, 
Blaine, might justly contest with him the 
proud rank of most distinguished private citi- 
zen of the United States, 

Meanwhile, in the spring of 1886 had oc- 
curred one of the most serious labor agitations 
which had ever been witnessed in the United 
States. It were difficult to present an adequate 
statement of the causes, general and sijecial, 
which produced these nlarming troubles. Not 
until after the close of the Civil War did there 
appear the first symptoms of a renewal, in the 
TJew World, of the struggle which has been 
gtnng on for so long a time in Europe between 



the laboring classes and the capitalists. It had 
been hoped that such a conflict would never 
be renewed in the countries west of the Atlan- 
tic, Such a hope, however, was doomed to 
disappointment. The first well-marked symp- 
toms of the appearance of serious labor strikes 
and insurrections occurred as early as 1867. 
The origin of these difficulties was in the coal- 
and iron-producing regions of FeuDsylvania 
and in some of the great manu&ctoriee of New 
England. For a while the disturbances pro 
duced but little alarm. It was not antil the 
great railroad strike of 1S77 that a general ap- 
prehension was excited with respect to the un- 
friendly relations of labor and capital. In the 
following year much nneasinesa existed ; but 
the better tiroes, extending from 1879 to 1882, 
with the consequent fiivorable rate of wages, 
tended to remove, or at least to postpone, tfae 
renewal of trouble. 

A series of bad crops ensued, and the aver- 
age ability of the people to purchase was cor- 
respondingly diminished. The speculative 
mania, however, did not cease, and the lai^ 
amounts of capital withdrawn from legitimate 
producUon and lost in visionary enterprises, still 
further reduced the means of employing labor. 
Stagnation ensued in business; stocks declined 
in value, manufactories were closed, and the 
difficulty of obt^ning employment was greatly 
enhanced. 

While these causes — half-natural, half-arti- 
ficial — were at work, others, wholly fictitioua, 
but powerful in their evil results, began to 
operate in the crestion of strife and animoeity. 
Monopolies grew and flourished to an extent ' 
hitherto unknown in the United States. On 
the other hand, labor discovered the salutary 
but dangerous power of combination. A rage 
for organizing took possession of the minds of 
the laboring men of the country, and to the 
arrogant front of monopoly was opposed the 
insurrectionary front of the working classes. 

More serious still than the causes here re- 
ferred to was the introduction into the United 
States of a large raa^s of ignorant foreign 
labor. The worst elements of several Eu- 
ropean States C'intributed freely to the manu- 
factories and workshops of America, and a 
class of ideas utterly un-American became dom- 
inant in many of the leading establishments of 
the country. Communistic theories of societv 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



23] 



and anarchic views of goverument began to 
clash with the more sober republican opinions 
and practices of the people. To all this must 
be added the evils and abuses which seem to be 
incident to the wage system of labor, and are, 
perhaps, inseparable therefrom. The result 
has been a growing jealousy of the two great 
parties to production, the laborer and the cap- 
italist. 

The opening of trade for the season of 1886 
witnessed a series of strikes and labor im- 
broglios in all parts of the country. Such 
troubles were, however, confined for the most 
part to the cities and towns where labor was 
aggitegated. The first serious trouble occurred 
on what is known as the Gould System of 
railways, reaching from the Mississippi to the 
South-west. A single workman, belonging to 
the Knights of Labor, and employed on a 
branch of the Texas and Pacific Railway, at 
that time under a receivership, and therefore 
beyond the control of Jay Gould and his sub- 
ordinates, was discharged from his place. This 
action was resented by the Knights, and the 
laborers on a great part of the Gould system 
were ordered to strike. The movement was, 
for a season, successful, and the transportation 
of freights from St. Louis to the South-west 
ceased. Gradually, however, other workmen 
were substituted for the striking Knights ; the 
movement of freights was resumed, and the 
strike ended in comparative failure ; but this 
end was not reached until a severe riot in East 
St. Louis had occasioned the sacrifice of several 
innocent lives. 

Far more alarming was the outbreak in 
Chicago. Li that city the Socialistic and 
Anarchic elements were sufficiently powerful 
to present a bold front to the authorities. 
Processions bearing red flags, and banners 
with communistic devices and mottoes, fre- 
quently paraded the streets, and were ad- 
dressed by demagogues who avowed themselves 
the open enemies of society and the existing 
order. On the 4th of May a vast crowd of 
this reckless material collect d in a place 
called the Hay market, and were about to be- 
gin the usual inflammatory proceedings, when 
a band of policemen, mostly officers, drew 
near, with the evident purpose of controlling 
or dispersing the meeting. A terrible scene 
ensued Dynamite bombs were thrown from 



the crowd and exploded among the officers, 
several of whom were blown to pieces and 
others shockingly mangled. The mob was, in 
turn, attacked by the police, and many of the 
insurgents were shot down. Order was pres- 
ently restored in the city ; several of the lead- 
ing Anarchists were arrested, brought to trial, 
condemned, and executed on the charge of 
inciting to murder. Many precautionary meas- 
ures were also taken to prevent the recurrence 
of such tragedies as had been witnessed in the 
Haymarket Square. On the following day a 
similar, though less dangerous, outbreak oc-. 
curred in Milwaukee; but in this city the in- 
surrectionary movement was suppressed with- 
out serious loss of life. The attention of the 
American people — let us hope to some good 
end — was called, as never before, to the dan- 
gerous relations existing between the upper and 
nether sides of our municipal populations. 

The summer of 1886 was memorable in 
American annals, on account of that great 
natural phenomenon known as the Charleston 
Earthquake. On the night of the 31st of 
August, at ten minutes before ten o'clock, it 
was discovered at Washington City, and at 
several other points where weather and signal- 
stations were established, that communications 
with Charleston, South Carolina, were suddenly 
cut off. The discovery was made by inquiries 
relative to the origin of a shock which had 
that moment been felt, with varying degrees 
of violence, throughout nearly the whole country 
east of the Mississippi and south of the Great 
Lakes. In a few minutes it was found that 
no telegraphic communication from any side 
could be had with Charleston ; and it was at 
once perceived that that city had sufiTered from 
the convulsion. Measures were hastily devised 
for further investigation, and the result showed 
that the worst apprehensions were verified. 
Without a moment's warning the city had been 
rocked and rent to its very foundations. 
Hardly a building in the limits of Charleston, 
or in the country surrounding, had e^aped 
serious injury, and perhaps one-half of all 
were in a state of semi-wreck or total ruin. 
With the exception of the great earthquake 
of New Madrid, in 1811, no other such sceub 
of devastation and terror had ever before been 
witnessed within the limits of the United 
States. 



\ 



UNIVERSAL BISTORr.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



Many scientists of national reputation hut^ 
ried to the scene, and made a careful gcrutioy 
of the phenomenoD, with aview of contributing 
■ometbiDg to the exact knowledge of mankind 
reepectJDg the causes and character of earth- 
quakes. A few facta and principles were de- 
tormined with tolerable accuracy. One was, 
that the point of origin, called the ^neenter, 
of the great convulsion had been at a place 
about twenty miles from Charleston, and that 
the motion of the earth imfflediat«ly over this 



EARTHQUAKE AT CBABLESTON. 

center had been nearly up and down — that is, 
vertical. A second point, tolerably well estab- 
lished, was that the tsoseismic lines, or lines of 
equal disturbance, might be drawn around the 
epicenter in circles very nearly concentric, 
and that the circle of greatest disturbance was 
at some distance from the center. Still a third 
item of knowledge tolerably well established 
was that away from the epicentei^as illustrated 
in the ruins of Charleston — the aptatlon of 
4ae earth was not in the nature of a single 



shock or convulsion, as a dropping or eliding 
of the region to one side, but rather % series 
of very quick and violent oscillatioDS, by 
which the central country of the disturbance 
was, in the course of some five minutes, settled 
somewhat to seaward. 

The whole coast in the central region of the 
disturbance was modified with respect to the 
sea, and the ocean itself was thrown into tur> 
moil for leagues from the shore. The people 
of the city were in a state of the utmost conster- 
nalJon. They 
fled from their 
fiUling honsea 
to the publie 
squares and 
parks and far 
into the coun- 
try. Afraid to 
return into the 
ruins they 
threw up tenta 
and I ight 
booths for pro- 
tection, and 
abode for weeks 
away from their 
homes. The 
convulsion was 
by fiu- the great- 
est that this con* 
tinent has ex- 
perienced with- 
in the historical 
epoch. The 
disaster to 
Charleston 
served to bring 
out some of the 
rv«rtibt.itm t> w nntw. ^^^' qualities 
of our (»viliza- 
tion. Assistance came from all quarters, and 
contributions poured in for the support and 
encouragement of the afflicted people. For 
several weeks a series of diminishing shocks 
continued to terrify the citizens and paralyie 
the efforts at restoration. But it was discov- 
ered in the course of time that these sbocki 
were only the dying away of the great convul- 
sion, and that they gave cause for hope of 
entire cessation rather than continued alarm. 
In the lapse of a few months the dArit w«» 



} 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



23t 



flleared away, businesB was resumed, and the 
•people were again safe in their homes. 

On the 4th of March, 1887, the second ses- 
sion of the Forty-ninth Congress expired by 
statutory limitation. The work of the body 
had not been so fruitful of results as had been 
desired and anticipated by the friends of the 
Oovemment; but some important legislation 
had been effected. Oa the question of the 
tariff nothing of value was accomplished. 
True, a serious measure of revenue reform had 
been brought forward at an early date in the 
session; but owing to the opposition of that 
wing of the Democratic party headed by 
fiamuel J. Sandall, and committed to the doc- 
trine of protection, as well as to the antago- 
nism of the Republican majority in the Senate, 
the act failed of adoption. In fact, by the be- 
|;inning of 1887, it had become apparent that 
the existing political parties could not be forced 
to align on the issue of free trade and tariff, 
And as a result no legislation looking to any 
actual reform in the current revenue system 
of the United States could be carried through 
Congress. 

On the question of extending the Pension 
List, however, the case was different. A great 
majority of both parties could always be 
<;ounted on to favor such measures as looked 
to the increase of benefits to the soldiers. At 
the first, only a limited number of pensions 
liad been granted, and these only to actually 
disabled and injured veterans of the War for 
the Union. With the lapse of time, however, 
«nd the relaxation of party allegiance, it be- 
•came more and more important to each of the 
{Nirties to secure and hold the soldier vote, 
without which it was felt that neither could 
maintain ascendency in the government. Nor 
•can it be denied that genuine patriotic senti- 
fnent and gratitude of the Nation to its de- 
fenders coincided in this respect with political 
ambition and selfishness. The Arrears of Pen- 
sions Act, making up to those who were already 
recipients of pensions such amounts as would 
have accrued if the benefit had dated from the 
time of disability, instead of from the time of 
granting the pension, was passed in 1879, and, 
at the same time, the list of beneficiaries was 
greatly enlarged. 

The measure presented in the Forty-ninth 

Oongress was designed to extend the Pension 
N.— Vol. 4— 15 



List so as to include all regularly enlisted and 
honorably discharged soldiers of the Civil War, 
who had become, in whole or in part, depend- 
ent upon the aid of others for their mainte- 
nance and welfane. The measure was known 
as the Dependent Pensions Bill, and though 
many opposed the enactment of a law which 
appeared to fling away the bounty of the 
Government to the deserving and the unde- 
serving, the evil and the just, alike, yet a ma- 
jority was easily obtained for the measure io 
both Houses, and the act was passed. Preo* 
dent Cleveland, however, ibterposed his veto, 
and the proposed law fell to the ground. A 
strenuous effort was made in the House of 
Bepresentatives to pass the bill over the veto^ 
but the movement failed. 

By far the most important and noted piece 
of legislation of the session was incorporated 
in the act known as the Interstate Commerce 
Bill. For some fifteen years complaints 
against the methods and management of the 
railways of the United States had been heard 
on many sides, and in cases not a few the com- 
plaints had originated in actual abuses, some 
of which were wiUful, but most were merely 
incidental to the development of a system so 
vast and, on the whole, so beneficial to the 
public. In such a state of affairs the lasting 
benefit is always forgotten in the accidental 
hurt. That large class of people who, in de- 
spite of the teachings of history, still believe 
in the cure of all things by law, and that man- 
kind are always about to perish for want of 
more legislation, became clamorous in their de- 
mand that Congress should take the railways 
by the throat and compel them to accept what 
may be called the system of uniformity as it 
respects all charges for service rendered. It 
was believed in Congress that to take up this 
call, and champion the alleged cause of the 
people, would be one of the most popular 
measures of the period. The Interstate Com- 
merce Bill was accordingly prepared, with a 
multitude of lengthy and involved clauses re- 
quiring a commission of great lawyers for their 
interpretation. It was enacted that all freiglV 
carriage across State lines within the Union 
should be at the same rate per hundred for all 
distances, and between all places, and under 
substantially the same conditions, and that pas* 
senger fares should be uniform for all persona 



234 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



It must be borne in mind that, in the very 
nature of things, railways are unable to carry 
freight at as small a rate per hundred, or pas- 
sengers at as small a charge per mile, between 
places approximate as between places at great 
distances. It must also be remembered that 
in some regions it is many times more expen- 
sive to build and operate a railn>ad than in 
others. To carry one of these great thorough- 
fares over the Rocky Mountains is a very dif- 
ferent thing from stretching a similar track 
across the level prairies of Illinois. It must 
•till further be considered that, in the nature 
of the case, competition will do its legitimate 
and inevitable work at an earlier date and 
more thoroughly between great cities, even 
when remotely situated, than between unim- 
portant points, however near together. The 
traffic and travel between two villages is not 
sufficient to create competition among the car- 
riers. It is as absurd to suppose that railway 
tarifis can be the same between New York 
and Chicago as they are between two Missouri 
towns, as it is to suppose that butter can com« 
mand the same price in an Iowa village that it 
does in the Quincy Market of Boston. What 
should be said of an attempt in Congress to 
make the price of wheat and pork uniform 
throughout the United States. 

The Interstate Commerce Bill was con- 
eeived against all the natural, manifest, and 
undeniable principles of the commercial world. 
It was passed with the belief that all dis- 
criminations in the charges made by railways 
doing business in more than one State could 
be prevented by law. It was passed as if to 
amend or abrogate those natural laws of trade 
and traffic which, in their kind, are as absolute 
and as beneficial as the law of gravitation. 
It was passed with the ulterior design of 
securing to its promoters the support of that 
ignorant and embittered race of men whose 
prejudices are out of all proportion to their 
knowledge of human rights, or their recogni- 
tion of the paramount interests of the whole 
people. It was passed under the pernicious 
anti-democratic theory of governmental pater- 
nalism, which says that men are infants or 
imbeciles, unable to care for themselves unless 
they are fed, and led, and coddled by some 
Motherly governipent, of which they are the 
iflieftponsible offipring. It is safe to say that 



no other measure ever adopted %j the Amcc^ 
ican Congress was so difficult of applicatioiL 
or was so barren of results with respect to tW 
interests which it was intended to promota 
Disorder was the first-born of the Interstate 
Commerce Bill, and its last ofi&pring was — 
apathy. 

During the whole of Cleveland's Adminis- 
tration the public mind was swayed and ex- 
cited by the movements of politics. The uni* 
versality of partisan newspapers, the combina- 
tion in their columns of all the news of the- 
world with the invectives, misrepresentations, 
and counter-charges of party leaders, kept 
political questions constantly uppermost, to the- 
detriment of social progress and industrial 
interests. Scarcely had President Cleveland* 
entered upon his office as Chief Magistrate 
when the question of the succession to the* 
Presidency was agitated. The echoes of the- 
election of 1884 had not died away before the* 
rising murmur of that of 1888 was heard. 

By the last year of the current Administn^ 
tion it was seen that there would be no general* 
break-up of the existing parties. It was also* 
perceived that the issues between them must, 
be madBf rather than found in the existing-, 
state of affairs. The sentiment in the United^ 
States in favor of the Constitutional pro- 
hibition of the manufacture and sale of iiH 
toxicating liquors had become somewhat ex* 
tended and intensified since the last quadrennial* 
election. But the discerning eye might per- 
ceive that the real issue was between the Re* 
publican and Democratic parties, and that the^ 
questions involved were to be rather those of 
the past than of the future. 

One issue, however, presented itself whick. 
had a living and practical relatioii to affistirs^ 
and that was the question of Protection xa 
American Industry. Since the campaiga. 
of 1884, the agitation had been gradually ex- 
tended. At the opening of the session, i» 
1887, the President, in his annual message te 
Congress, departed from all precedent, and de- 
voted the whole document to the discussioi^ 
of the single question of a Reform of the Reve- 
mie System of the United States. The existing: 
rates of duty on imported articles of com* 
merce had so greatly augmented the income 
of the Government that a large surplus had 
accumulated, and was still accumulatiiig. itk- 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



235 



ttM lifational Treasury. This fact was made | 
tha basis of the President's argument in favor 
of a new system of revenue, or, at least, an 
ample reduction in the tariff rates under the 
i'ld. It was immediately charged by the Re- 
publicans that the project in question meant 
the substitution of the system of free trade in 
the United States, as against the system of 
protective duties. The question thus involved 
was made the bottom issue in the Presidential 
campaign of 1888. 

As to the nominees of the various parties, 
it was, from the first, a foregone conclusion 
that Mr. Cleveland would be nominated for re- 
election by the Democrats. The result justi- 
fied the expectation. The Democratic Na- 
tional Convention ' was held in St. Louis, on 
the 5th day of June, 1888, and Mr. Cleveland 
was renominated by acclamation. For the 
Vice- presidential nomination there was a con- 
siderable contest; but, after some balloting, 
the choice fell on Ex-Senator Allen 6. Thur- 
man, of Ohio. The Republican National Con- 
vention was held in Chicago, on the 19th day 
tf June. Many candidates were ardently 
pressed upon the body, and the contest was 
long and spirited. It was believed, up to the 
time of the Convention, that Mr. Blaine, who 
was evidently the &vorite of a great majority, 
would be again nominated for the Presidency. 
But the antagonisms which that statesman had 
awakened in his own party made it inexpedient 
to bring him forward figain as the nominee. 
His name was, accordingly, not presented to 
the convention. The most prominent candi- 
dates were Senator John Sherman, of Ohio; 
Judge Walter • Q. Gresham, of Chicago; 
Chauncey M. Depew, of New York; Ex- 
Governor Russell A. Alger, of Michigan ; Ex- 
Senator Benjamin Harrison, of Indiana; and 
Senator William B. Allison, of Iowa. The 
voting was continued to the eighth ballot, when 
the choice fell upon Benjamin Harrison, of 
Indiana. In the evening, Levi P. Morton, of 
New York, was nominated for the Vice-presi- 
dency on the first ballot. 

In the meantime, the Prohibition party had 
held its National Convention, at Indianapolis, 
and on the 30th of May had nominated for the 
Presidency General Clinton B. Pisk, of New 
Jersey, and for the Vice-presidency John A. 
Brooks, of Missouri. The Democratic platform 



declared for a reform of the revenue system 
of the United States, and reaffirmed the prin- 
ciple of adjusting the tariff on imports, with 
strict regard to the actual needs of govern- 
mental expenditure. The Republican plat- 
form declared also for a reform of the tariff 
schedule, but at the same time stoutly affirmed 
the maintenance of the protective system, as 
euchy as a part of the permanent policy of the 
United States. Both parties deferred to the 
patriotic 'sentiment of the country in favor of 
the soldiers, their rights and interests, and both 
endeavored, by the usual incidental circum- 
stances of the hour, to gain the advantage of 
the other before the American people. The 
Prohibitionists entered the campaign on the 
distinct proposition that the manufacture and 
sale of intoxicating liquors should be prohib* 
ited throughout the United States by con- 
stitutional amendment. To this was added a 
clause in fisivor of extending the right of suf- 
frage to women. 

As the canvass progressed during the sum* 
mer and autumn of 1888, it became evident 
that the result was in doubt. The contest was 
exceedingly close. As in 1880 and 1884, thtr 
critical States were New York, Connecticut, 
New Jersey, and Indiana. . In all of the othei 
Northern States the Republicans were almost 
certain to win, while the Democrat^ wer« 
equally certain of success in all the South. 
In the last weeks of the campaign, General 
Harrison grew in favor, and his party gained 
perceptibly to the close. The result showed 
success for the Republican candidate. He re- 
ceived two hundred and thirty-three electoral 
votes, against one hundred and sixty-eight 
votes for Mr. Cleveland. The latter, however, 
appeared to a better advantage on the popular 
count, having a considerable majority over 
General Harrison. General Fisk, the Prohi- 
bition candidate, received nearly three hun- 
dred thousand votes; but under the system of 
voting no electoral vote of any State was ob- 
tained for him in the so-called ** College," by 
which the actual choice is made. As soon as 
the result was known, the excitement attendant 
upon the campaign subsided and political ques- 
tions gave place to other interests. 

The last days of Cleveland's Administra- 
tion and of the Fiftieth Congress were signal- 
ized by the admission inta the Union of FoUH 



286 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



New States, making the number forty-two. 
Since the incoming of Colorado, in 1876, no 
State had been added to the Republic. Mean- 
while, the tremendouB tides of population had 
continued to flow to the west and north-west, 
rapidly filling up the great Territories. Of 
these, the greatest was Dakota, with its area 
of one 'hundred and fifty thousand nine hun- 
dred and thirty-two square miles. In 1887 
the question of dividing the Territory by a 
line running east and west was agitated, and the 
measure finally prevailed. Steps were taken 
by the people of both sections for admission 
into the Union. Montana, with her one hun- 
dred and forty-five thousand seven hundred 
and seventy-six square miles of territory, had 
meanwhile acquired a sufficient population; 
and Washington Territory, with its area of 
sixty-Dine thousand nine hundred and ninety- 
four square miles, also knocked for admission. 
In the closing days of the Fiftieth Congress a 
bill was passed raising all these four Territo- 
ries — South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana 
and Washington — to the plane of Statehood. 
The Act contemplated the adoption of State 
Constitutions, and a proclamation of admission 
by the next President. It thus happened that 
the honor of bringing in this great addition to 
the States of the Union was divided between 
the outgoing and incoming Administrations. 

Another Act of Congress was also of 
National importance. Hitherto the Govem- 
emment had been administered through seven 
Departments, at the head of each of which 
was placed a Cabinet officer, the seven together 
constituting the advisers of the President 
No provision for such an arrangement exists 
in tlie Constitution of the United States; but 
the statutes of the Nation provide for such a 
system as most in accordance with the Hepub- 
lican form of government Early in 1889 a 
measure was brought forward in Congress, 
and adopted, for the institution of a new de- 
partment, to be called the Department of 
Agriculture. Practically" the measure involved 
the elevation of what had previously been an 
Agricultural Bureau in the Department of the 
Interior to the rank of a Cabinet office. 
Among foreign nations, France has been con- 
spicuous for the patronage which the Govern- 
ment has given to the agricultural pursuits of 
that country. Hitherto in the United States. I 



though agriculture has been the greatest of aB 
the producing intereste of the people, it has 
been neglected for more political and leas use- 
ful departments of American life and enter* 
prise. By this act of Congress the Cabinet 
offices were increased in number to eight in- 
stead of seven. 

Benjamin Harrison, twenty-third President 
of the United States, was bom at North Bend, 
Ohio, on the 20th of August, 1833. He is 
the son of John Scott Harrison, a prominent 
citizen of his natire State ; grandson of Presi* 
dent William Henry Harrison ; great-grandson 
of Benjamin Harrison, signer of the DeeUursi- 
tion of Independence. In countries where at- 
tention is paid to honorable lineage, the circonH 
stances of General Harrison's descent would 
be considered of much importance; bat in 
America little attention is paid to one^s 
ancestry, and more to himself. 

Harrison's early life was passed, as that of 
other American boys, in attendance at scho<d 
and at home duties on the fkrm. He was a 
student at the institution called Farmen^ Col- 
lege for two yeara. Afterwards he attended 
Miami University, at Oxford, Ohio, and was 
graduated therefrom in June, 1852. He took 
in marriage the daughter of Dr. John W. Soott, 
president of the Oxford Female College. After 
a course of study he entered the profession of 
law, removing to Indianapolis and establishing 
himself in that city. With the outbreak of 
the war he became a soldier of the Union, and 
rose to the rank of Brevet Brigadier-General 
of Volunteers. Before the close of the war he 
was elected Reporter of Decisions of the 
Supreme Court of Indiana. 

In the period following the Civil War, 
General Harrison rose to distinction as a 
civilian. In 1876 he was the unsuccessful 
candidate of the Republican party for Got* 
emor of Indiana. In 1881 he was elected .to 
the United States Senate, where he won the 
reputation of a leader and statesman. In 1884 
his name was prominently mentioned in oon« 
nection with Uie Presidential nomination of 
his party, but Mr. Blaine was successfoL 
After the lapse of four years, however, it was 
found at Chicago that General Harrison, more 
than any other, combined in himself all the 
elements of a sucr^iful candidate; and the 
event iustified the choice of the party in 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



237 



making him the standard-bearer io the ensuing 
ounpaign. ^ 

General Harrison was, in accordance nith 
the Qsagee of the Go7ernment, inaugurated 
President on the 4th of March, 1889. He 
had succeeded better than any of his prede- 
ceeaors in keeping his ovn counsels during the 
ioterim between his election and the inaugura- 
tioD. No one had discerned his purposes, and 
all waited with interest the ex* ' 
prenions of his Inaugural Ad- 
dress. Id that document he set 
forth the policy which he would 
fiiTor as Uie Chief EzecuUre, 
recommcDding the same geneial 
roeasurea which the BepobHoan 
party had advocated during the 
campaign. 

On the day following the in- 
•ogural ceremonies. President 
Harriaon sent in the nomina- 
tions for his Cabinet officers, as 
follows : For Secretary of 8tal«, 
James G. Blaine, of Maine; 
(iw Secretary of the Treasory, 
William Windom, of Minnesota; 
for Secretary of War, Redfield 
doctor, of Vermont; for 8eo- 
retary of the Kary, Benjamin 
P. Tracy, of New York; for 
Postmaster-General, John Wan- 
amaker, of Pennsylvania; for 
Secretary of the Interior, John 
W. Noble, of Missouri; for At- 
torney-General, William H. H. 
Miller, of Indiana ; and for Sec- 
retary of Agriculture — the new 
department— Jeremiah Rusk, of 
Wisconijn. Tliese appoint- 
ments were immediately con- 
firmed by the Senate, and the 
members of the new Admin- 
istratioD assumed their respective official 
duties. 

Within two months after Harrison's inau- 
guration, an event occurred which recalled the 
mind of the American people to the striking 
incidente of the Revolutionary epoch. The 
event in question was the great Centennial 
Cblebration of the Institution of the 
Amebic AN Republic. The particular date 
•elected was the 30th of April, 1889, being 



the centennial anniversary of the inauguration 
of Washington, at New York City. All of 
the ceremonies connected with the commemora- 
tion, in 1889, were associated, as far as prao 
ticable, with the scenes of the first inauguration. 
The event was so interesting in itself, and so 
distinctly National, as to warrant a few para^ 
graphs descriptive of the scenes and incidents 
of the celebrution. 



The period extending from the year 1776 
to the year 1789 was marked in the colonial 
history of the United States by several crises, 
difierent in kind, but each so well defined in 
character, as to be worthy of commemoration by 
the people of another and distant age. These 
critical period:^ were: 

1, The Declaration of Independence. 

2. The formation of the Constitution af 
the United States. 



238 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



3. The adoption of the Constitution by the 
States. 

4. The Institution of the New Government 
The Declaration of Independence was a 

iemocratic and popular revolution. By it, the 
allegiance of the Old Thirteen Colonies to the 
Mother Country was finally broken off. It | 
was essentially destructive in its character. 
The first stages of all revolutions have this 
distinctive aspect. They destroy. It remains 
for a subsequent movement. to rebuild. The 
revolution, in its first intent, abolishes and 
obliterates an existing order. It implies that 
the people have borne as long as possible 
some system which presses upon them, as if it 
were chains and fetters. It is to break the 
chains — real or imaginary — to throw off the 
fetters, that the revolution begins its career. 
Such was the case with our own destructive in- 
surrection of 1776. It was leveled against the 
existing order, and was most happily successful. 
In the second stage, we have another 
aspect. It was not long after the achievement 
of independence until the Revolutionary 
patriots came to see that mere independence 
was not enough ; that mere destruction of 
popular abuses could not suffice for the future 
of America. Acting from these sentiments, 
the Fathers began to consult about rebuilding, 
M* building anew, a structure in which civil 
liberty in America might find an abiding 
place. These discussions began almost as soon 
as independence was clearly gained. Wash- 
ington and his friends earnestly debated the 
feasibility of a better system of government. 
Conferences were held, first at Mount Vernon, 
then at Annapolis ; and finally a great conven- 
tion of delegates was assembled at Philadelphia. 
This occurred, as we have said, in the summer 
of 1787. The result of the labors of this 
convention is well known. That strange com- 
promise, called the Constitution of the United 
States, was produced and signed by the dele- 
gates, with Washington as their president. 
This, then, was the Epoch of Formation — the 
second of our Revolutionary crises. 

Immediately after this event, a period of 
political agitation, the first real and general 
agitation known in the history of the United 
States, occurred. The new Constitution, laid 
before the States, was the bottom fact from 
which the stormy discussions of the next two I 



years sprang. Should that Constitution bo 
adopted ? or should it be rejected* and the old 
Confederative system of government be con- 
tinued as before? On these questions there 
was a division of parties, and the controversy 
waxed violent. All the Old Thirteen States 
were shaken from center to boundary-line. 

In a forii^er part of the present work/ the 
story of the adoption of the Constitution by 
the several States has been narrated ; nor is it 
necessary here to repeat the well-known 
account of how, in State after State, a majority 
of the delegates was at last secured in favor 
of the new system of government. This epoch 
of agitation, of controversy, and the final 
adoption, is the third great crisis to which wo 
have made reference as belonging to our 
Revolutionary history. 

After the Constitution had been adopted 
by nine or ten of the States, came the striking 
event of the institution of the New Govern- 
ment. The paper model of that government 
existed in the Constitution itself. How Wash* 
ington was unanimously chosen as first Chief 
Magistrate of the New Republic, is known to 
all the world. A Congress was constituted by 
the election of a House of Representatives and 
a Senate, in accordance with the provisions of 
the new instrument. All things were mado 
ready, as an architect might prepare materials 
for a structure. Then came the actual build- 
ing of the temple. The scene was in Old 
New York — the New York of a hundred 
years ago.' 



'See Vol. III., pp. 619-620. 

' New York Citj^ at the time of which we speak* 
was limited to the lower end of Manhattan Isl- 
and. It was no more than a speck in compari* 
son with the Centennial Metropolis of the Nation. 
Its northern limits were marked by the present 
building of the New York TimeB, Immediately 
north of this lay a lake, called the Collect Pond, 
about sixty feet in depth, covering that part ol 
the city now occupied by the Tombs. It is said 
that the capitalists, even the adventurers, of that 
day, were without faith as to the future extensiosi 
of the city northward. The population was ap- 
proximately forty thousand. Water was distrib* 
uted to the citizens in hydrants, and drawn from 
what was known as the Old Tea-water Pump, 
standing at the head of Pearl Street. No system 
of public street-cleaning had been adopted. The 
streets were lighted with oil lamps. Much of tho 
work was done by slaves, and slave auctions wexo 
at that time still a common occurrence. 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



239 



It is an interesdng historical by-study to 
<Dote with care the* varying sentiments with 
wLich the people of the United States contem- 
f)lated the centennial return of the different 
-crises above delineated. The masses were 
warm in their affections towards the destructive 
■revolution accomplished by the Declaration of 
Independence and the war which followed. 
They took more interest in the fact of in- 
dependence and the means by which -it was 
fiecomplished than in any other part of the 
Bevolutiouary drama. With what zeal and 
••uccess the centennial anniversary of the Dec- 
laration was observed in 1876, in the city of 
Philadelphia, has already been fully narrated.' 
The second centennial, that is, the centennial 
•ef the Formation of the Constitution, did not 
4iwaken in the United States any considerable 
-degree of enthusiasm. The people took little 
interest in that part of our national history 
•covering the development of our new institu- 
tional structure. * 

In 1887 there was in the city of Philadel- 
4pbia an effort to commemorate the anniversary 
of the Constitution, and some local interest 
-was excited in the event. But there was no 
wide-spread zeal, no throbbing of the popular 
lieart over the coming of that anniversary. 
The same may be said with respect to observ- 
ing the intermediate stages of the adoption of 
the Constitution by the States. No celebrations 
of more than local importance were held in 
«ny State in commemoration of this event. 
At the first, it was even doubted whether the 
<;entennial of the Institution of the Govern- 
ment itself could awaken sufficient public en- 
'thusiasm to warrant a national celebration. 

Events, such as the formation of our Con- 
stitution, its adoption by the people of the 
States, and the setting up of the new form of 
'i;overument instead of the old, are not suf- 
ficiently spectacular and heroic to set the 
masses aglow, and to produce the requisite 
<heat of a great national celebration. In New 
York City, however, the event of 1789 could 
not by any means be allowed to pass without 
an effort to impress upon the minds of the 
present generation the great movements of a 
century gone by. The New York Historical 
-Society took the matter up, and as early as 



» See pp. 188-190. 



March of 1884 a resolution was adopted to 
undertake the enterprise of a centennial oel« 
ebration, commemorative of the founding of 
the Government, and particularly of the -in- 
auguration of Washington as first President 
Soon afterwards a public meeting was held at 
the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and formal steps 
were taken for the prosecution of the work. 
It was not, however, until the close of 1887 
that the enterprise was espoused by the 
municipality. At that time a committee of 
forty-nine citizens, with Mayor Abram 8. 
Hewitt as chairman, was appointed for the 
general supervision of the project; and many 
capitalists, military men, merchants, and others, 
gave their influence and their means for the 
promotion of the cause. 

At an early date it was determined that the 
celebration should conform as nearly as practi- 
cable to the ceremonies attending the actual 
inauguration of Washington. About this 
central idea all the other features of the event 
were clustered. The celebration was totally 
different in character from the great industrial 
and art expositions which have constituted 
the largerpart of national centennial displays 
and festivities. The jubilees of France, the 
great World's Fairs of England, and our own 
Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, in 
1876, were of this kind. But in the case of 
the commemoration of the American Govern- 
ment, at New York, the feature of exposition 
was wholly omitted. Everything was de- 
signed to point backward to the events of a 
century ago, and to evoke, through the shadows 
of several generations, a vivid recollection of 
the manners and condition of the American 
people when the Republic of 1789 was in- 
stituted. 

During the whole of 1888, and the first 
months of the centennial year, the prelimi- 
naries of the celebration were prosecuted with 
zeal. Meanwhile, the Presidential election had 
been held, in which the temporary ascendency 
of the Democratic party was replaced by Re- 
publican success. Benjamin Harrison, of In- 
diana, was chosen President. Ex-President 
Cleveland retired at the close of his Adminis- 
tration to New York City, and became a resi* 
dent of that metropolis. Happily enough, the 
incoming Chief Magistrate was intimately as- 
sociated, in his family relations, with the greal 



UNIVEESAL HISTORY.— T3E MODERU WORLD. 



VIEWS TN THE CITY OF NKW YORK. 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



241 



events of the Bevolution. His great-grand- 
father, also named Benjamin Harrison, had 
presided in the Colonial Congress when the 
Declaration of Independence was adopted, Mr. 
Hancock being absent from the chair on 
that ever-memorable day. The son of that 
distinguished statesman had become ninth 
President of the United States, and now the 
great-grandson was chosen by the election of 
the American people to the same high office 
and dignity. 

It was decided by the committee to devote 
two days, namely, the 30th of April and the 
1st of May, to the celebration. For a fort- 
night before these days, the great trains on 
the railways centering in the metropolis began 
to pour out an unusual cargo of human life. 
The throngs were gathered from all parts of 
the Republic, but principally from the Old 
Thirteen States. For three days before the 
opening of the celebration, the Atlantic coast 
was visited with great rain-storms, which 
threatened to mar all that had been attempted ; 
but the skies cleared, the air became fresh, 
and the sunshine bright The rise of the cen- 
tennial morning was as auspicious as though 
it were the dawning of the first day. 

We may here speak of the general appear* 
ance of the city. Every pains had been taken 
to put the metropolis into gala dress and to 
present to the eye the most inspiring spectacle. 
Never was a city more completely clad in gay 
apparel. Every street on both sides, as far as 
the eye could reach, was ornamented with flags 
and streamers, mottoes, and emblems of jubi- 
lee. In this respect Broadway and Fiflh Ave- 
nue were the most elaborately and beautifully 
adorned. It is doubtful whether in the his- 
tory of mankind a finer display has been made 
in the streets of any city. The decorations 
extended to every variety of public and private 
edifices. Scarcely a house on Manhattan Isl- 
and but had its share in the display. Indeed, 
if one had been lifted in a balloon above old 
Castle Ghu*den, sweeping northward with his 
glass, he would have seen flags on flags from 
the Battery to Spuyten Dnyvil. Along both 
sides of the North River and East River, and 
in the islands of the bay, the universal em- 
blems were flung to the breeze. And the 
parest of sunshine glorified the scene with a 
Uaze of morning light. 



Arrangements had been made for President 
Harrison, Vice-President Morton, the members 
of the Cabinet, and other prominent men con* 
nected with the Government, to go to the city 
from Washington. A magnificent train was 
prepared for the accommodation of the com- 
pany, and in the early morning of the 29tb 
of April, the distinguished party arrived at 
Elizabeth, New Jersey, and were presently 
conducted across the harbor in a gaily decked 
steamer to the landing on the New York side. 
The bay was covered with vessels, the ship» 
of foreign nations vying with those of the 
. United States in flinging their flags and 
streamers to the breeze. 

The part assigned to President Harrison in 
the commemorative exercises was the part of 
Washington. On the arrival of the Chief 
Magistrate, he was tendered public receptiona 
at several places in the city; and in the 
evening he attended a great ball in the Met* 
ropolitau Opera-house, which had been pre* 
pared in imitation of the Washington ian ball, 
given on the occasion of the first inauguration, 
at which the Father of his Country led the 
first cotillion. 

On the morning of the 30th of April 
the people of New York, and the hundred» 
of thousands of strangers gathered there, 
poured into the streets to witness the great 
military parade, which was the feature of the 
day. Meanwhile, in the lower part of the 
city, the exercises which had been planned in 
imitation and commemoration of Washington'^ 
accession to the Presidency were under way. 
Wall Street and Broad Street were packed 
with people. A great platform had been 
erected in front of the Treasury Building, now 
occupying the site of old Federal Hall, and 
marked by the presence of Ward's colossal 
statue of Washington. It was here that the 
oratorical and literary exercises took place. 
These consisted of a Centennial Oration by 
Hon. Chauncey M, Depew ; also of an address 
by President Harrison, of a poem written by 
John Greenleaf Whittier, and of such re* 
ligious services as were appropriate to the oc* 
casion. 

The accessories were all in keeping witb 
the occasion. President Harrison sat in a 
chair which had been Washington's. The 
table also was Washington's, and the Bible 



242 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



which was hud thereon was that od which the 
Father of his Couatry had taken the soletno 
«ath to support and defend the Constitution 
«f the United States. The Whittier poem 
was read by Mr, C. W. Bowen, secretary of 
the Citizens' Committee, The oration of Mr. 
Depew was of a high order, eulogiigtic of the 
present — the voice of a patriot who believes 
in the past and trusts the future. The address 
by the President was also able and patriotic 
The exercises were closed with a benediction 



OLD FEDERAL HALL. 

by Archbishop Corrigan, of the archdiocese 
of Hew York. 

In the meantime, the military parade — 
greatest of all such displays in the United 
States, with the single exception of the review 
of the soldiers at Washington at the close of 
the Civil War — was in preparation for the 



march. The principal streets 
part of the city had been assi 
formation of the various divi 



the lower 

Igned for the 
of the 



parade. A number of magnificent carriages 



bearing the President, the Vice-Preniient, the 
membersof the Cabinet, and other distinguished 
representatives of the Government, swept up 
to the head of the colamD, and led the way to 
the great reviewing stand, which had been 
prepared on the west side of Madison Square, 
looking down into Fifth Avenue. Here the 
President and his companions took their places 
to review the column as it passed, and for nz 
hours the Chief Magistrate stood up to recog- 
ni7^. in his offifial capacity, the passing aqua^ 
' rons of the greateat 

parade ever knows 
in a time of peace 
west of the Atlan tic. 
It were difficult 
to describe the great 
proceeaton. It was 
admirably mao* 
aged — wholly mili- 
tary. The different 
divisions were ar- 
ranged in files from 
eighteen lo twenty, 
two men abreast. 
Jo many places tha 
inarching was in 
close rank, so that 
the knees of those 
in the rear rank 
fittedalmostgeomet> 
rically into those 
of the men in front. 
The passage was at 
the rate of mora 
than nine thousand 
per hour. TTie best 
estimates place tha 
number in line at 
over fifty-two thoa> 
sand. Major-Gen- 
eral John M. ischofield was commander-in- ' 
chief. The course of march was from Wall 
Street into Broadway ; up Broadway to Wav- 
erly Place; through Waverly Place into Fifth 
Avenue; along that magnificent thoroughfare 
to Fourteenth Street; thence around Union 
Square to Fifth Avenue; and theuce northward 
to Central Park. 

Through all this distance, and on both sides 
of the street, was a solid wall of human be- 
ings, rising to the rear by every kind of coik 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 243 

trivance which iogenuity could invent, so as i thousand regulars— infantry and cavalry — 
togain a view of the procesBion. The mass on drawn from the army; then came the cadets from 
the sidewalks was from twenty to fifty persons i West Point, whose marching, and unifonn, 
deep. In every 
advantageous po- 
sition scaffolding, 
with ascending 
seats, Jiad been 
erected for the 
accommodation of 
th e multitudes, 
and oot a seat was 
left unoccupied. 
At the street-croBB- 
ings every variety 
of vehicle had 
beeo drawn up, 
and the privilege 
of standing on 
boxes, or sitting 
in carts, wagons, 
or hacks, was sold 
at high figures to 
the eager people 
who pressed into 
the crowd. Win- 
dows, and every 
other available 
point of view — 
house-topt, bal- 
conies, stoops, ve- 
randas — were 
crowded to their 
utmost' capacity. 
In favorite locali- 
ties, fabulous 
prices were 
charged for the 
privilege of look- 
ing &om a win- 
dow upon the pass- 



The latter was, as 
we have said, pre- 
ceded by the Pres- 
idential company. 
General Schofield, 

senior Major- sub-treasury building, wall street. 

General of the 

American army, as chief marshal, rode at the I aud bearing, were of such excellence as to ez- 
head of the column. After him, and leading cite a chorus of cheers from end to eiid of the 
the van of the procession proper, were over two 1 long march. Next followed the artillery and 



244 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



batteries of the regular army. Many of the 
guns, and much of the armor, was resplendent 
for its brilliancy. After these came the ma- 
rines and naval cadets, a vast column of appren* 
tiees, whose march, by its peculiar rolling 
movement, denoted that the column had been 
recently gathered from the decks of ships. 

Thus closed the first division of the proces- 
sion — that is, those who were taken from the 
Army and Navy of the United States. Then 
followed the militiamen — the National Guards 
of the different States. At the head was a 
column of three hundred and seventy men 
from Delaware ; for Delaware had been first 
of the Old Thirteen States to adopt the Con- 
stitution, and was thus given a place of honor 
on the Centennial Anniversary. The Gov- 
ernor of each State represented in the parade 
rode at the head of the division from his own 
Commonwealth. Most of the Governors were 
in civil attire. General Beaver, of Pennsyl- 
vania; General Fitzhugh Lee, of Virginia; 
and General John B. Gordon, of Georgia, 
were conspicuous at the head of their divisions. 
It was noticed that those who were present 
from the Southern States were received with 
unstinted applause. Governor Beaver rode at 
the hea^ of the Pennsylvania troops, number- 
ing fully eight thousand men. Then came 
Governor Green, with the soldiers of New 
Jersey, three thousand seven hundred strong; 
then Georgia, with General Gordon and his 
staff. The Foot Guards, from Connecticut, 
preceded by the Governor, numbered six hun- 
dred. Governor Ames, of Massachusetts, 
headed the column of one thousand five hun- 
dred from the Old 6ay State — a noble division, 
oontaining the Ancient and Honorable Artil- 
lery of Boston, all uniformed after the most 
antique pattern. The men of Maryland were 
five hundred strong. Then came New Hamp- 
shire ; then Vermont, with a division of seven 
hundred. Governor Richardson, of North 
Carolina, followed with a body of five hun- 
dred men. This division was fortunate in 
bearing an old flag belonging to North Caro- 
lina in the pre-Revolutionary epoch. After 
this came the great division of New York. 
Twelve thousand men, arranged in four bri- 
gades of eighteen regiments, one battalion, and 
five batteries, were the contribution of the 
Empire State tc the great display. At the 



head of the line rode Governor David B. Hill 
In this column the Seventh Regiment, mad€ 
up of prominent men of New York City, and 
numbering over one thousand, was,- perhaps, 
the most conspicuous single body in the whole 
procession. The Twenty-second Regiment vied 
with its rival; and it might be difficult to de* 
cide whether the palm for marching and other 
evidences of elegant training should be awarded 
to the West Point Cadets, the Seventh Regi- 
ment of New York, the Twenty-second Regi- 
ment of the same State, the squadron from the 
Michigan Military Academy, or the Twenty- 
third Regiment, of Brooklyn. 

Behind this magnificent display of the mil- 
itary came the veterans of the Civil War, the 
men of the Grand Army of the Republic, 
headed by their Commander-in-Chief, General 
William Warner. These were arranged column 
after column to an aggregate of twelve thou- 
sand, according to the locality from which they 
were gathered, the rear being closed with a 
magnificent body of old soldiers, numbering 
nearly four thousand, from Brooklyn and 
Kings County, New York. It was already 
nightfall when this extreme left of the columD 
passed the reviewing stand, and the parade for 
the day was at an end. 

The evening of the 30th was occupied with 
one of the most elaborate and sumptuous ban« 
quets ever spread in the United States. For 
this purpose the Metropolitan Opera-house, in 
Broadway, had been procured and decorated. 
It was claimed by those experienced in such 
matters that the floral ornamentation of the 
hall was far superior in costliness and beauty 
to anything of like kind ever before dis- 
played in the country. The boxes of the the- 
ater were adorned with the National colors 
and with the shields and coats-of-arms of the 
various States of the Union. Over the pros- 
cenium arch was a portrait of Washington, ar- 
ranged in a cluster of evergreens and flowers. 
The auditorium was brilliantly illuminated, 
and the scene of splendor on every hand 
might well dazzle the eye and surprise the 
imagination of the beholder. The banqueters, 
embracing many of the chief men of the Na- 
tion, were seated at a series of tables, the first 
and principal one being occupied by the Pres- 
ident of the United States, the Governor of 
New York, the Vice-President, the Lieuten- 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



245 



ant-Governor, ChiefJuBtice Fuller, Judge An- 
drews, General Schofield, Admirid Porter, Sen- 
ator Evarts, Senator Hiscock, Ex-President 
Hajes^ Ex-President Cleveland, Bishop Pot- 
ter, Speaker Cole of the New York Assem- 
bly, Secretary Proctor, Hon. 8. S. Cox, Gen- 
eral William T. Sherman, Clarence W. Bowen, 
and Elbridge T. Gerry, the last two represent- 
ing the Citizens^ Committee. At this table 
Mayor Grant presided, and read the toasts of 
the evening. 

The feast began at nine o'clock in the evening. 
At the close, a series of brief addresses were 
delivered by the Governor of New York, Ex- 
President Cleveland, Ex-President Hayes, 
General Sherman, Senator Evarts, President 
Eliot of Harvard, James Russell Lowell, 
Senator Daniel, and others. The closing 
address was by the President of the United 
States. Nearly all the speeches were faultless 
in their subject-matter, eloquent in delivery, 
and worthy to be regarded as classics of the 
occasion. 

The programme prepared by the Citizens^ 
•Committee embraced a general holiday of 
ihree dayia^ duration, during which business 
was suspended throughout the city. On the 
'29th and 80th of April and on the 1st day of 
May the restriction was faithfully regarded. 
One might traverse Broadway and find but 
few business establishments open to the public. 
This was true particularly of the two princi- 
kpal days of the festival. 

It now remains to notice the great civic 
.parade of the 1st of May, with which the 
•commemorative exercises were concluded. 
The design was that this should represent the 
industries, the progress, and in general the 
-civic life of the Metropolis of the Nation and 
of the country at large, as distinguished from 
the military display of the preceding day. 
It was found from the experience of the 30th 
-that the line of march was too lengthy, and 
-the second day's course was made somewhat 
^shorter. It is not intende4 in this connection 
to enter into any elaborate account of the civic 
•procession of the third day. It was second 
only in importance to the great military 
parade which" had preceded it. The procession 
was composed, in large part, of those various 
'Civic orders and brotherhoods with which 
jnodem society so much abounds. In these 



the foreign nationalities, which have obtained 
so large a footing in New Yor^k City, were 
largely prevalent The German societies were 
out in full force. Companies representing 
almost every nation of the Old World were 
in the line, carrying gay banners, keeping 
step to the music of magnificent bands, and 
proudly liiling their mottoes and emblems in 
the May-day morning. 

The second general feature of this proces- 
sion was the historical part. The primitive 
life of Manhattan Island, the adventures of 
the early explorers and discoverers along the 
American coast, the striking incidents in the 
early annals of the Old Thirteen States, were 
allegorized, and mounted in visible form on 
chariots, and drawn through the streets. All 
the old heroes of American History, from 
Columbus to Peter Stuyvesant, were seen again 
in mortal form, received obeisance, and heard 
the shouts of the multitudes. From ten o'clock 
in the forenoon till half-past three in the after- 
noon the procession was under way, the princi- 
pal line of march being down Fifth Avenue 
and through the principal squares of the city. 
With the coming of evening the pyrotechnic 
display of the preceding night was renewed in 
many parts of the metropolis, though it could 
hardly be said that the fire-works were equal 
in brilliancy, beauty, and impressiveness to the 
magnificent day pageants of the streets. 

One of the striking features of the celebra* 
tion was the ease an^ rapidity with which the 
vast multitudes were breathed into and 
breathed out of the city. In the principal 
hotels fully one hundred and fifty thousand 
strangers were registered as jscuests. More 
than twice this number were distributed 
in" the smaller lodging-houses and private 
dwellings of New York and Brooklyn. Yet 
the careful observer abroad in the streets 
saw neither the coming nor the going. With 
the appearance of the days of the celebration 
the throngs were present; on the following 
days they were gone. The great railways 
centering in the metropolis had done their 
work noiselessly, speedily, effectively. It may 
well be recorded as one of the marvels ^i 
modem times that only two persons are said 
to have lost their lives in this tremendous 
assemblage, extending through several days, 
and that at least one of these died suddenly 



246 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



from heart disease, while the manner of the 
death of the other was unknown. Such is the 
triumph which the mastery of the human 
mind over the forces of the material world has 
easily achieved in our age, under the guidance 
of that heneficent science by which the world is 
at once enlightened and protected from danger. 

The close of the year 1888 and the begin- 
ning of^ 1889 were marked by a peculiar 
episode in the history of the country. An 
unexpected and even dangerous complication 
arose between the United States and Germany 
relative to the Samoan Islands. This com- 
paratively unimportant group of the South 
Pacific lies in a south-westerly direction, at a 
distance of about five thousand miles from 
Ban Francisco, and nearly two thousand miles 
eastward from Australia. The long-standing 
policy of the Government, established under 
the Administration of Washington and ever 
since maintained, to have no entanglements 
with foreign nations, seemed in this instance 
to be strangely at variance with the facts. 

During 1888 the civil affairs of the Samoan 
Islands were thrown into extreme confusion 
by what was really the progressive disposition 
of the people, but what appeared in the garb 
of an insurrection against the established au- 
thorities. The Government of the islands is a 
monarchy. The co*:ntry is ruled by native 
princes, and ip Independent of foreign powers. 
The c^p^tal, Apia, lies on a bay of the same 
name on the northern coast of the principal 
island. It was here that the insurrection 
gained greatest headway. 

The revolutionary movement was headed 
by an audacious chieilain called Tamasese. 
The king of the island was Malietoa, and his 
chief supporter, Mataafa. At the time, the 
German Empire was represented in Samoa by 
its Consul-General, Herr Weber, and the 
United States was represented by Hon. Harold 
M. Sewall. A German armed force virtually 
deposed Malietoa, and set up Tamasese on the 
throne. On the other hand, the representative 
of the United States, following the policy of 
his Government, stood by the established au- 
thority, supporting the native sovereign and 
Mataafa. The American and German authori- 
ties in the island were thus brought into con- 
flict, and serious difficulties occurred between 
the ships of the two nations in the harbor. 



When the news of this state of affair» 
reached Germany, in April, 1889, several ad« 
ditional men-of-war were sent out to the island 
to uphold the German cause. Mataafa and 
the Germans were thus brought to war. 
Meanwhile the American Government took up 
the cause of its Consul, and of King Malietoa, 
as against the insurrection. A section of the 
American navy was despatched to the distant 
island, and the ships of war of two of the great- 
est nations of Christendom were thus set face 
to face in a harbor of the South Pacific Ocean. 

In this condition of affairs, on the 22d of 
March, 1889, one of the most violent hurri« 
canes ever known in the islands blew up from 
the north, and the American and German 
war-vessels were driven upon the great reef 
which constitutes the only breakwater outside 
of the harbor of Apia. Here they were 
wrecked. The American war-ships Niprie, 
Trenton f and Vandalia were dashed into ruins. 
The German vessels, Adler, Olga, and Eber^ 
were also lost. The English vessel, GaUiopef. 
which was caught in the storm, was the only 
war-ship which escaped, by steaming out to 
sea. Serious loss of life accompanied the dis- 
aster: four American officers and forty-six 
men, nine German officers and eighty-seveo 
men, sank to rise no more. 

Meanwhile, England had become interested 
in the dispute, and had taken a stand with the 
United States as against the decision of Cirer- 
many. The matter became of so great im- 
portance that President Harrison, who had, in 
the meantime, acceded to office as Chief Mag- 
istrate, appointed, with the advice of the Sen- 
ate, an Embassy Extraordinary, to go to Berlin 
and meet Prince Bismarck in a conference, 
with a view to a peaceful solution of the diffi- 
culty. The Ambassadors appointed for thie 
purpose were J. A. Kasson, of Iowa; William 
W. Phelps, of New Jersey ; and G. H. Bates, 
of Delaware. The Commissioners set out on 
the 13th of April, and, on their arrival at the 
capital of the German Empire, opened nego- 
tiations with the Chancellor Bismarck and hie 
son. The attitude and demand of the Amer- 
ican Government was that the independence 
of Samoa, under its native sovereign, should 
be acknowledged, and guaranteed, by the great 
nations concerned in the controversy. The 
conference closed in Mav, 1889, with the resi 



THE UNITED STATES.— LATEST PERIOD. 



ur 



toration of King Malietoa, and the recognition 
of hia sovereignty over the island. 

The dosing week of May, 1889, was made 
forever memorable in the history of the United 
States by the destruction of Johnstown, Penn- 
sylvania. The calamity was caused by the 
bursting of a reservoir and the pouring out of 
a deluge in the valley below. A large artifi* 
cial lake had been constructed in the ravine of 
the South Fork River, a tributary of the 
Conemaugh. It was a fishing lake, the prop- 
erty of a company of wealthy sportsmen, and 
was about five miles in length, varying in depth 
from fifty to one hundred feet. The country 
below the lake was thickly peopled. The 
city of Johnstown lay at the junction of the 
South Fork with the Conemaugh. In the last 
days of May unusually heavy rains fell in all 
that region, swelling every stream to a tor- 
rent The South Fork Lake became full to 
overflowing. The dam had been imperfectly 
constructed. On the afternoon of May Slst 
the dam of the reservoir burst wide open in 
the center, and a solid wall of water from 
twenty to fifty feet in height rushed down the 
valley with terrific violence. 

The destruction which ensued was as great 
as the modem world has witnessed. In the 
path of the deluge every thing was swept away. 
Johnstown was totally wrecked, and was 
thrown in an indescribable heap of horror 
against the aqueduct of the Pennsylvania rail- 
way, below the town. Here the ruins caught 
fire, and the shrieks of hundreds of victims 
were drowned in the holocaust. About three 
thousand people perished in the flood or were 
burned to death in the ruins. The heart of the 
Nation responded quickly to the suflerings of 
the survivors, and millions of dollars iu money 
and supplies were poured out to relieve the 
despair of those who survived the calamity. 

The year 1889 witnessed the assembling at 
Washington City of an International Congress. 
The body was composed of delegates from the 
Central and South American States, from 
Mexico, and the United States of America. 
Popularly the assembly was known as the 
••Pan-American Congress." The event was 
the culmination of a policy adopted by the 
United States some years previously. General 
Grant, during his PresiBency, and in the sub- 
iequent period of his life, had endeavored to 



promote more intimate relations with the Span- 
ish-American peoples. James 6. Blaine, Sec- 
retary of State under Garfield, entertained a 
similar ambition. That statesman was accused 
of a purpose to create in the United States a 
policy similar to Disraeli's high-jingoism in 
Great Britain. The United States were to be- 
come the arbiter of the Western nations. To 
this end the Central American and South 
American States must be brought, first into 
intimacy with our Republic, and afterwards 
be made to follow her lead in warding ofi* all 
Europeanism. 

The death of Garfield prevented the insti* 
tution of some such policy as that here vaguely 
defined. Nevertheless, in 1884, an Act was 
passed by Congress, authorizing the President 
to appoint a commission ''to ascertain and 
report upon the best modes of securing more 
intimate international commercial relations be- 
tween the United States and the several coun* 
tries of Central and South America." Com* 
miasioners were sent out to the countries 
referred to, and the movement for the Con* 
gress was started. Not until May of 1888, 
however, was the Act passed providing for the 
Congress. The Spanish American nations re- 
sponded to the overtures, and took the neces* 
sary steps to mee^. the United States in the 
conference. The objects contemplated were, 
first, to promote measures pertaining to the 
peace and prosperity of the peoples concerned ; 
to establish customs-unions among them; to 
improve the means of communication between 
the ports of the States represented, and to ad- 
vance the commercial interests and political 
harmony of the nations of the New World. 

The Spanbh-American and Portuguese- 
American States, to the number of nine, ap- 
pointed their delegates, and the latter arrived 
in the United States in the autumn of 1889. 
President Harrison on his part named ten 
members of the Congress as follows : John F. 
Hanson, of Georgia; Morris M. Estee, of 
California; Henry G. Davis, of West Vir- 
ginia; Andrew Carnegie, of Pennsylvania ; T. 
Jefiersou Coolidge, of Massachusetts ; Clement 
Studebaker, of Indiana; Charles K. I^'lint, of 
New York; WUliara H. Trecoot, of South 
Carolina ; Cornelius N. Bliss, of New York ; 
and John B. Henderson, of Missouri. Mexico 
sent two representatives, namely : Matias 



248 



VmVEBSAL HISTORY,— TBE MODERN WORLD. 



Romero and Enrique A. Mezis. Brazil, etill 
«ii Empire, also eent two delegates: J. G. do 
Amaral Valente and Salvador de Mendonca. 
The representative of Honduras was Jeronimo 
Zelaja Fernando Cruz, the delegate of Oua- 
temaU, and Jacinto Castellanos of San Salva- 
dor. Costa Kica Bent as her representative 
Manuel Aragon. Horatio Quzman, Minister 
of Nicaragua, represented his Government in 
the Congress. The Arf^entine Uepublic had 
tvo delegates: Koque Saenz Peflaand Manuel 
ijuintana, Chili sent two delegates: Emilio 
C. Varas and Jos^ Alfonso. The representa- 
tives of the United States of Colombia were 
Jos^ M. Hurtado, Carlos Martinez Silva, and 
Glimaco Calder6n. The delegates of Vene- 
zuela were Nieanor Bolet Peraza, Jos^ An- 
drade, and Francisco Antonio Silva; that of 
Peru was F. C. C. Zegarra; that of Ecuador, 
Jos^ Maria Placido Caamafio ; that of Uru- 
guay, Alberto Kin; that of Bolivia, Juan F. 
Velarde; that of Hayti, Arthur Laforestrie; 
and that of Paraguay, Jos£ S. Decoud. 
' The representatives met in Washington 
City in October. Committees were formed to 
report to the body suitable* action on the 
subjects which might properly come before 
it for discussion. From tbi' £rst the proceed- 
ings took a peculiarly praet.i'al direction. The 
great questions of commerce were at the bot- 
tom of the reports, the debates,and the actions 
which followed. Nor can it be doubted that 
the movement, as a whole, conduced in 
the highest degree to the friendship, pros- 
perity, and mutual interests of the nations 
concerned. 

At the same time, an International Mari- 
time Conference, for which provisions had 
been made in the legislation of several na- 
tions, convened at Washington In-this case 



the States of Europe were concerned in com- 
mon with those of the New World. All the 
maritime nations were invited by the act of 
Congress to send representatives to the Na- 
tional Capital in the following year, to con- 
sider the possibility of establishing uniform 
rules and regulations for the government of 
vessels at sea, and for the adoption of a com- 
mon system of marine signals. Twenty-six 
nations accepted the call of the American 
Government, and appointed delegates to the 
Congress. They, too, as well as the repre- 
sentatives of the Pan-American Conference, 
held their sittings in November and Decem- 
ber of IHSO. The same practical ability and 
good sense, as related to the subjects under 
consideration, were shown by the members of 
the Maritime Conference as by those of the 
sister body, and the results reached were 
equally encouraging and equally grati^ng, 
not only to the Government of the United 
States, but to all the countries whose interests 
were involved in the discussions. 

The history of the United States has been 
traced in the present Book from the Treaties 
of Ghent and Vienna, in 1815, to the dawn of 
yesterday. The republic has passed through 
stormy times, but has at last entered her sec- 
ond century of Nationality in safety and 
peace. The clouds that were recently so black 
above her have sunk behind the horizon. The 
equality of all men before the law has been 
written with the iron pen of war in the Con- 
stitution of the Nation, The Union of the 
States has been consecrated anew by the blood 
of patriots and the tears of the lowly. The 
temple of freedom, reared by the Fathers, still 
stands in undiminished glory. Thk Past HAS 

TAUGHT ITS LESSOR, THS PbKSKMI HAS US 
DUTT, AND THB FdIUBS ITS HOFB. 



$(u>& lai>nl);-JI<t«ii!r. 



GREAT BRITAIN. 



CHAPTER CXXVII.— LAST TWO HANOVERIANS. 



mnoke of the Battle of 
iterloo rolled back to 
I bordera of Belgium, 
1 then to the coDfines 
Europe. A field of 
olatioD waa revealed 
;hout a parallel in mod- 
em IiiBtorT'. The wrecks lay heaped on every 
ooaat. It was at once apparent that a bloody 
traDsformation had been eSected among the 
Western nations. Nor might the prescience 
of Btatesrarji or philosopher diacover in the ex- 
isting condition the true results of the Bevo- 
lutionary conflict. 

One of the first facts discoverable in the 
then condition of Western Europe was that 
Oreat Britadi had been least of all shaken 
from her political moorings. It was discerned, 
as the roar of battle receded to the horizon, 
that England had, oven through the epoch of 
turmoil and violence, held on her tedious and 
labored course, like aheavy ship, toiliog with the 
breakers, battered with the storms, but. never- 
theless, eaaentjally sound in her structure. It 
could but be acknowledged, moreover, that 
Great Britian only had emerged from the con- 
flict of twenty years' duration with military 



honor and civil precedence. It was by flie 
indomitable coarage of the English soldiers, 
as much as by tlie half-accidental coming of 
Blucher, that the Imperial eagle of France 
had been struck to the dust on the plateau of 
Mont St. Jean. Through his whole career, 
the Cordcan had found no other foe which ho 
BO much dreaded as England. With that all- 
prevailing discernment wherewith he surveyed 
the field of Europe and made it the ches^ 
board for his mighty game, he recognized that 
the player who sat in the fogs of the Britidt 
Islands was his real antagonist. He well knew 
that the free institutions of England, as well 
as the native vigor of the English race, had 
conspired to develop in the Saxon Isles a civil 
and military power of which even his Im- 
perial France might well stand in awe. Du» 
ing the whole period of the Republic, the 
Consulate, and the Empire, the Government 
of Ore«t B"^'D maintained an attitude of 
sullen and unyielding hostility, first to the re- 
publican tendencies of the French Nation, hot 
more particularly to Napoleon himself. Ob 
many occasions the conduct of England to- 
wards France was of a kind not to be justified 
in honorable diplomacy. Sometimes, indeed, 
(253) 



254 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



the EDglisb ministry crossed the border-line of 
perfidy in its proceedings with Bonaparte. But 
in such iustances the English people, consider- 
ing the character and principles of the foe with 
whom they had to deal, found little difSculty 
in framing a justification for the course pur- 
sued by their rulers. 

In other respects the policy of Great 
Britain was more honorable, more commend- 
able. As a rule, she stood stoutly to her 
time-honored principle of non-interference in 
the affiiirs of other States. Nor did she, after 
Waterloo, notwithstanding her anger and heat 
of blood, at any time assent to the project of 
the dismemberment and partition of France. 
And what is of much more importance, she de- 
clined, though strongly urged to such a course, 
to become a party to that unholy Holy Alli- 
ance, whereby her chief partners in the last 
great struggle with Napoleon now proposed to 
direct the destinies of Europe. It may be 
profitable to the reader in this connection to 
elucidate in brief the genesis and character of 
the so-called Holy Alliance. 

Madame the Baroness Knidener was a 
Russian princess, born in Riga, an adventuress 
in her palmy days, and a mystic when her 
palmy days were over. From the age of 
thirteen she traveled through the principal 
cities of Europe. Her wealth was great, her 
accomplishments many. At length princes 
and kings became her playfellows, and, in 
some sense, her toys. After 1803 she resided 
mostly in Paris. Afterwards she returned to 
Riga, and devoted herself to religious mys- 
ticism. Again at Paris, in 1814, we find her 
in her salon, receiving the visits of monarchs. 
She became a prophetess — the Cassandra of the 
modern Ilium. She foretold the vicissitudes 
of the last year of the Napoleonic regime. 
Alexander of Russia met her at Heilbronn a 
month before Waterloo, and became infatuated 
with her and her doctrines. Henceforth, for 
several years, she moved the Czar according 
to the impulse of her reverie and purpose. 
•Strange that this woman should have con- 
tributed so novel a chapter to the history of 
modern Europe as that recorded in the pages 
•f the Holy Alliance ! 

It was on the 26th of September, 1815, 
that the league so-called was made. The 
imrties to the compact were Alexander I., of 



Russia; Emperor Francis, of Austria; an<l 
Frederick William HI., of Prussia. To the 
Alliance, however, nearly all the other Powen^ 
except Rome, England, and France, soon ac- 
ceded. It is said that the tefms of the compact 
were arranged for the most part by Alexander, 
acting under the immediate inspiration of 
Madame Kriidener. The Czar was then in- 
Paris, and was in almost constant companion- 
ship with the prophetess. The Alliance aspired* 
to be no less than a new basb for the political 
order and conduct, not only of Europe, but of 
the world. The compact assumed to be the 
application, and we might say the codificatioi^ 
and real presence, of the principles of Chris- 
tianity considered as a means and method of 
political action. Henceforth, civil govern- 
ment was to be a distinctly religious affair^ 
Christian in all its sanction and proceedings. 
The States of Europe were to conduct their 
affairs on the basis of Christian amity and fel> 
lowship; and we, the hereditary princes of 
Christendom, are to be the patriarchs and 
fathers of the people. It might be difficult to 
know to what extent the royal figure-head^ 
who completed and signed the Alliance were- 
self-deceived in respect to the nature and in- 
evitable tendencies of their agreement. Bui 
the whole philosophical meaning and purport 
of the compact might well be summed up in 
the one dreadful word — despotism. 

The three monarchs signed the* Alliance in 
September of 1815. But the contents of the- 
agreement were not known to Europe until 
the 2d of February, 1816, when the paper 
was published in full in the Frankfort J<mm» 
One of the special features of the instrumeow 
was that by which all members of the Bona- 
parte family were to be forever excluded, not 
only from the throne of France, but from all 
the sovereignties of Europe. The monarch* 
were very sincere in their project, as we shall 
hereafter see, in their conduct towards the re- 
publican and revolutionary movements of 
1820-24. The Republicans of Naples and 
Piedmont, of Spain, and of France herself, shall 
feel, in full force, the results of the scheme- 
contrived by Kriidener and Alexander. Not- 
until the latter has been called to his account- 
not until fifteen years have passed away and a 
new revolution in France shall have driven the- 
Elder Branch of the House of Bourbon m\m 



GREAT BRITAIN.— LAST TWO HANOVERIANS. 



25t 



perpetual exile — shall the effects of Uie Hoi; 
Alliance sink ioto the earth and disappear. 

To the everlasting credit of Great Britain 
be it said, that she had do part or lot in the 
compact. She stood out against all blandish- 
mente. No inducements could be offered, no 
motire suggested, to seduce her from her im- 
memorial policy of nou-interference in the af- 
fairs of foreign States. George Canning, at 
that time British Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
■ought with all his might and influence to 
ooonteract the effecia of the hypocritical com- 
pact by which it was sought to combine the 



mental theories which he inherited and assidu- 
ously cultivated to the close of his reigu. 
Owing to bis recnrring paroxysms of insanity, 
that reigu may be said to have ended with the 
establiahmeut of the Regency in 1811. George 
Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales, became 
Regent in consequence of bis father's malady, 
and by the act of Parliament It is a notice- 
able fact in the history of England that the 
Heir-Apparent to the throne nearly always, 
during his minority, and up to the time of hit 
accession, adopts ^tbe political prinoiplu and 
espouses the cause of the Opposition. Tto 



WINDSOR CASTLE. 



powers of Europe in a univeraal femily des- 
potism. 

No adequate idea can he acquired of the 
political and civil history of Great Britain in 
the period immediately succeeding the Ka- 
poleonic wars without talcing into consideration 
the character of the reigning dynasty, lie 
first two princes of the line of Hanover-Bruns- 
wick had been foreigners — Germans, speaking 
the German tongue, uDderatanding but little 
of the genius and tendency of English institu- 
tions. With the accession of George HI,, 
however, a new era opened up, a new policy 
on the part of the young and popular sov- 
ereign. It is not the place in which to review 
the reign of George HI., to note the govem- 



leadere of the party, so-called, have alwayi 
adopted the policy of seducing the Prince, if 
possible, from' the political principles of th* 
reigning king. This was true especially of the 
Prince Kegent, who, in his younger years, 
fell under the dominion of the Whigs. He 
sought the society of his lather's opponents ia 
Parliament, and was initiated by Fox and 
Sheridan, not only into the principles and 
practices of the Whig sanctum, but also int« 
the social excesses and vices of which those 
leaders were the easy chiefs. 

It was under this Regency that the intei^ 
national crisis of 1815 was reached and brokea 
on the plain of Waterloo. However great the 
glory that came to England by that event, it 



266 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 

cuuld hardly be said that the military gplen- 1 Castle. We may here pause for a moment to 
dors of the time fo(;used near the throne. The notice the character sud disposition of hissao 
madness of the nomiual king was heightened ] censor, George IV. 



by his blindness, and on the 20th of January, i GeorgeAugustuwFrederick,PriiioeofWales, 
1820, he passed away, being then in the eighty- who now acceded to the throne, with the title 
second year of his age, and the sixtieth of : of George IV., was the first of the nine sons 
hin reign. Ilis body was laid away with • of George III. From his birth he had been 
funeral pomp in the royal vaults at Windsor noted for his comeliness of person. He had 



aREAT BRITAIN.— LAST TWO HANOVERIANS. 



257 



an ease of carriage and a grace of manner 
which gained for him at an earlj age the so- 
briquet of "the Gentleman George;" but long 
'before he reached his majority it was known, 
not only to England, but to all Europe, that 
the veneering of accomplishments which in- 
cased the Heir Apparent was only a trans- 
parent gloss through which all manner of 
vices and excesses played hide-ai.d-go-seek 
within. The story of the Prince's life can not 
be repeated on the pages of respectable litera- 
ture, fie plunged at will into the whirl of 
all vicious excitement. He did not stop short 
of the grossest profligacy ; and to this he added 
the habit of falsehood to an extent that made 
his name proverbial. Even his plighted faith 
oould not be trusted. The political agitations 
in the midst of which he was nurtured, and 
which might have well provoked *the highest 
powers of his mind, had to him no attractions. 
Schooled in everything that Fox and Sheridan 
had taught him in his'^outh, he flung him- 
self at full length into the pool of vice, and 
rejoiced in it as though it were a sea-bath in 
summer. At last he fell in love with Mrs. 
Fitzherbert, who had been twice a widow at 
the age of twenty-live. Him she led on until 
she drew him into a private marriage, which 
became the sccmdalum mcucimtan of the age. 
The nation was in a turmoil over the event. 
Fox, misled by the Prince as to the facts in 
the case, went openly to the House of Com- 
mons and denounced the story as a malicious 
falsehood. The Prince's salary was raised from 
fii^y thousand pounds to sixty thousand, and 
Parliament gave him a hundred and sixty-one 
thousand pounds to discharge his debts; in- 
duced thereto by the falsehood which Fox had 
given to the House of Commons. 

But the story of the Prince's personal life 
need not be pursued. On coming to the throne 
in 1820, it was expected that a Whig ministry 
would be at once called to the conduct of af- 
fairs. But the king dealt doubly with those 
who had been his friends, and sought, by 
means* of a coalition, to make easy sailing 
through a sea of political apathy. He had 
already adopted the same policy during the 
Regency. He disliked George Canning, to ' 
whose energy of character much of the success 
of the British Government during the Revolu- 
tionary epoch must be attributed. Nor can it 



be doubted that the king's unfriendliness and 
the indisposition of Canning to take part in 
the Parliamentary proceedings against Queen 
Caroline, induced the statesman's temporary 
withdrawal from the Ministry. 

During the greater part of the reign of 
George IV. the Government was conducted 
under the ministerial leadership of Earl Liver- 
pool. The latter had acceded to office 
after the assassination of Perceval, in 1812; 
and he remained at the head of the Cabinet 
until 1827, when his declining health com- 
pelled him to retire. It was, however, to the 
energy, we might say the unscrupulous vigor, 
of the Marquis of Londonderry, better known 
as Lord Castlereagh, that the success of the 
home management of Great Britain must be 
attributed at this epoch. The latter statesman 
Jiad become leader of the House of Commons 
as early as 1812. He became the guiding 
spirit of the foreign policy of the Government 
during the last years of the Napoleonic era, and 
for fully a decade remained in the ascendant. 
He it was who represented the king at the 
second Treaty of Paris, and signed the com- 
pact of peace in 1815. He was, perhaps^ 
the only one of the great political leaders of 
his time who remained in the favor of the 
Prince Regent, as he had been always in favor 
with George HI. He was the personal ad- 
viser of the new king, and traveled abroad 
with him into Hanover, in October of 1821, 
meeting there, in International discussion, the 
Prince Metternich. This, however, was the 
end of his career. Castlereagh's intellect gave 
way under the prescure of overwork and a 
highly nervous organization, and on the 12th of 
August, 1822, he committed suicide with his 
penknife. 

The general character of the history of 
England, in the period from 1815 to 1825, 
can not be understood without the survey of 
the whole of Europe. After the treaty of 
Vienna, Great Britain shared somewhat in the 
exhaustion, not to say the apathy, which 
supervened in all parts of the Continent. The 
passions — apolitical, social, military, govern- 
mental — which had flamed and roared around 
the squares of Wellington, subsided into an 
almost absolute quiet in the five ensuing years. 
Despotic governments were, for the time, easily 
restored, and a flock of legitimate princes. 



258 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



nuhing back into the vacuum about the 
thrones of their ancestors, found, for a 
brief season, as comfortable seats as any kings 
had occupied since the Middle Ages. 

But the halcyon epoch of Bourbonism was 
of short duration. No more than half a dec- 
ade elapsed after the battle of Waterloo until 
the flames of revolution, caught from the 
great conflagration in France, began to shoot 
up in little jets in almost every country of 
Western Europe. This revival of the revolu^ 
tionary spirit, however, did not seriously ap- 
pear in England. Her insular position, and 
the spirit of her people and institutions, were 
alike unfavorable to the political insurrections 
which, at this epoch, broke out in nearly all 
the Latin States. 

But Oreat Britain could by no means avoid 
instant connection with the affairs of the 
Continent. The first foreign entanglement of 
the British Government after the treaty of 
Vienna, sprang from the necessity under 
which the Government found itself to resist 
and resent the work of the Holy Alliance in 
the Spanish Peninsula. Of all the restored 
sovereigns, none settled back into his seat more 
comfortably than did Ferdinand VII., of 
Spain. The methods of government which 
were relnstituted belonged, in that country, to 
the sixteenth century rather than to the nine- 
teenth. The- opposition of the liberal party 
was unavailing to check the abuses and ex- 
travagance of the reign. Finally, in 1819, 
the Spanish king, in order to replenish his 
wasted exchequer, sold Florida to the United 
Spates. Presently a revolt broke out at Cadiz. 
The insurrection spread ; the peasants of the 
provinces rose in arms, and, in 1822, the pop- 
ular movement resulted in the election of the 
patriot Riego as President of the Cortes. 

Such was the condition of affairs when the 
cause of Ferdinand was espoused by the Holy 
Alliance. France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia 
took the astounding course of ^formal armed 
intervention in the affairs of Spain, Nothing 
could be more cheering to the political optimist 
than to see Great Britain in this emergency 
turning squarely about, and in the very Ikce 
•f her recent allies protesting by the resolute 
mouth of Canning against the Spanish inter- 
vention. Though her protest was unavailing 
for the time, it nevertheless served the pur- 



pose of a warning against such work in iim 
future, and pointed with a menacing index tm 
the downfall of the Alliance. 

This complication of England relative to 
Spain had not been unraveled until the king- 
dom became profoundly interested in the 
affiurs of Greece. Here again the leaning of 
the British Nation, not radical, but ever in- 
clining to the side of political liberty, waa 
strikingly manifested. It is not the place t9 
recount the fortunes of the Greek Revolution 
which broke out in 1821, and again in 1824 
It is sufficient to note that the attitude of 
Great Britain was consistent with her record* 
In no country did the society of the Phil- 
hellenes find so congenial a seat as in England. 
The Government confronted Turkey ; and Mr* 
Canning, no less than Lord Byron and other 
British patriots, stood stoutly for the inde- 
pendence of the Greeks. While the monarcha 
of the Continent feared the rising of the 
Greeks as another eruption of that fearful 
democracy which had jostled so many from 
their thrones. Great Britain deliberately pro- 
moted the cause of Grecian liberty. This 
policy was persistently adhered to until the 
summer of 1827, when the situation of affairs 
in the East led to the appointment of ambas- 
sadors by Great Britain, France, and Russia, 
to consider the questions at issue. A confer- 
ence was held in London in the beginning of 
July, and on the 6th of that month a com- 
pact was signed, in accordance with which the 
nations concerned would proceed to terminate 
the Turco-Grecian War. A joint expedition 
was fitted out, consisting of English, French, 
an^ Russian vessels, and sent into the Eastern 
Mediterranean. 

The object in view was to compel the Sul- 
tan to grant an armistice pending the determi- 
nation of the conditions of peace. The allied 
armament reached the Bay of Navarino on the 
20tb of October. The Sultan promptly and 
emphatically declined the mediation of the 
Powers, and the issue came at once to the 
arbitrament of battle. Meanwhile, Ibrahim 
Pasha received large reinforcements from 
Egypt, and was ordered to put down the 
Greek insurrection at every hazard. 

The captains of the allied fleets, however, 
had received orders not to permit the further 
destruction of the Greek insurgents. The com- 



GREAT BRITAIN.— LAST TWO HANOVERIANS. 



259 



naiiderB of the squadron tberefore bore down 
«poD the Turkish Admiral, who had taken hiB 
{Ki«tioD at the bottom of the Bay of Navarino, 
where a battle was opened by a discharge from 
the Turkish guns. The conflict became gen- 
■«ral and continued furiously for four hours, 
when the work was done. The ^uadron 
4>f the Ottomans was blown to Iragmenta. 



In that year he became Home Secretary of 
England, in which relation he was called upon, 
first of all, to administer coercive measures 
for the discontent of Ireland. In that country 
already, and in the House of Commons, a 
strong sentiment was developing for Catholic 
emancipation; and, for the time. Peel was con- 
fltraiued by his office, and perhaps by his ood> 



BATTLK or HAVARINa 



Aiarcely anything remained but the dfbris of 
■hips floating od the agitated sea. Thus by a 
wangle stroke the Greek crisis was ended, and 
the way prepared for a permanent settlement 
■4if afl^rs in the East. 

We may here pause for a moment to speak 
of, at least, one of the great measures of 
'€ir Bohert Peel. That statesman entered the 
J ministry of Lord Liverpool in 1822. 



victiona, to lead the opposition to this mov» 
ment. On this question he was defeated in 
the House of Commons in 1825, and sought 
to retire from the Ministry; but his Bervieea 
could not well be spared. He soon found a 
work more in accord with his faculties and 
spirit, in reforming and humanizing the crimi* 
nal code of Great Britain. The history of 
this reform conatitutes of itself a chapter ii 



260 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.-'THE MODERN WORLD. 



the evolution of English civilization — a chapter 
which would reach back for its material to the 
times of the Pagan ascendency in the British 
Islands, and would draw to itself from the 
Middle Ages, and subsequently, a great part 
of English history. The reader of the present 
age is aware, in the light of a dim apprehen- 
sion, that the bottom principles of English 
law, especially on its criminal side, were de- 
duced from the customs of barbarism ; but he 
can hardly be aware of the extent to which 
all the elements of that J^arbarism continued 
vital in the code of Great Britain down to the 
dose of the first quarter of the nineteenth 
century. 

The cruel savagery expressed in that code 
can hardly be described in language. It 
would require an artist's brush, and the blood- 
dripping canvases of a great gallery, to reveal 
the cruel scheme of the criminal law under 
which the English race groaned from age to 
age, and from which the inveterate con- 
servatism of that people forbade tiiem to 
be delivered. As late aa a time within 
the memory of men yet living, the offenses 
fltiU punishable by death under the statute law 
of England were innumerable. If, in the last 
years of the Napoleonic era, the death penal- 
ties due, under the jurisprudence of the king^ 
dom, had been inflicted as the law demanded, 
the highways of the kingdom would have been 
well-nigh a continuous gibbet, and a large 
percentage of the people hangmen by profession. 
Out of the very necessity of things, the judges 
had been driven to the continuous use of 
respite, in order to avoid the death penalties 
which they were obliged to pronounce from 
day to day. At every assizes, large numbers 
of criminals, whose lives had been demanded 
by the law for petty offenses, many of which 
have now ceased to be criminal at all, were 
respited by the judges because of the sheer 
impracticability of continuous executions. And 
yet, under this shocking condition of affairs — 
such was the profound hypocrisy of the age — 
the law-making and la\7-administering powers 
of Great Britain stood stubbornly against 
every effort at reform, hugging the barbaric 
abuses which they had received from a pagan 
ancestry, as though those abuses were the 
fery palladium of English liberty. 

At the epoch of which we speak, the lives ' 



of almost all criminals brought to the bar of 
justice lay at the mercy of the court Aa 
late as 1807 the theft of a pocket-handke"^ 
chief from the person was still a capital of- 
fense. If a soldier or a mariner, so unidrtu- 
nate as not to have a pass from the magistrate 
or the commanding officer, durst beg for bread 
enough to keep him alive until he might reach 
his post, his life was demanded by the law. 
Nor might any elaboration of details ade- 
quately represent the revolting cruelties of the 
system of jurisprudence which was still main- 
tained and practiced to the close of the reigD 
of George HI. 

It was in the first years of the present cen- 
tury that that great legal reformer, Sir Samuct 
Rom illy, appeared in Parliament, and under- 
took the work of reforming the English crimi- 
nal code. To him, perhaps more than to any 
other Englishman, must be ascribed the con« 
ception of the great task of re^tablishing the 
criminal jurisprudemce of Great Britain on a 
new basis of tolerable humanity. The reader 
will readily recall the fact that in France the 
reform of the criminal code had been glori- 
ously accomplished in the last decade of the 
preceding century amidst the flame and roar 
of revolution. He must also remember that 
it was from Mirabeau, that titan of destruction 
and reform, that Sir Samuel Bomilly derived 
the larger part of those humane principles of 
which he became the advocate and expounder 
in the House of Commons. What, therefore,, 
must have been his chagrin when, after hav- 
ing managed to secure the repeal of the stat* 
ute of 8 Elizabeth, chap. 4, whereby petty 
theft was made a capital offense, he was obliged 
year after year to see his bills for the aboli- 
tion of other equally sanguinary statutes- 
thrown out of the House of Lords, rejected 
with disdain by the statesmen and publicists 
of his time, and himself viewed askance a» 
the enemy of society I 

The work of Sir Samuel Romilly was taken 
up and carried into the intellectual world by 
the distinguished scholar and jurist, Sir Jamea 
Mackintosh. Him the versatile Macaulay haa 
chosen to call "the father of English jurispru- 
dence.** Mackintosh, however, was a scholar 
and thinker rather than a parliamentarian; 
and however great and salutary his work may 
have been in reforming the mini of Great 



GREAT BRITAIN.— LAST TWO HANOVERIANS. 



261 



Britain, his influence on the criminal code was 
but feeble and indirect. Such was the status 
of aflairs when the ascendency of Sir Robert 
Peel became an acknowledged fact in the 
British Parliament. 

The temper and temperament of Sir Robert 
were well adapted to the work which he now 
received from the hands of Komilly and 
Mackintosh, and which he was destined to 
carry forward triumphantly. That work was 
completed, or at least begun, io five principal 
Acts which Peel introduced iuto Parliament, 
and which he defended on the 9th of March, 
1826, in one of the most able and effective 
speeches of the century. The formulation of 
the new principles of jurisprudence was the 
work of PeeFs hand and brain; but the 
principles of the reform he had received from 
his predecessors. His great strength and 
capacity as a legislator lay in his ability — his 
power almost unrivaled — of gathering the 
essentials of other men's creations, and of 
giving thereto the form and force of statute 
law. 

We may not suppose that the reform of 
the English code, to which we have here 
given considerable space, was by any means 
complete and final under the work of the 
statesmen and publicists above referred to. It 
is indeed out of the question that anything 
should be complete and final in the legislation 
and jurisprudence of England. A race of 
people who out of the nature of their own 
feelings derive little — almost nothing — from 
abstract reason, and everything from ex- 
perience and tentative movements in this 
direction and in that, must needs march in the 
rear of a people like the French, who are 
nothing if ^not rational. But at the same time, 
the English people, though their progress is 
alow and tortuous, march securdy, and rarely 
lose by relapse and retrogresnon ^hat they 
have once gained under the law of experience. 

We here come to one of those ever-recur- 
ring ministerial crises in which the civil history 
of England so much abounds. The year 1827 
marked the limit on Lord Liverpool's ascend- 
ency. The Premier fell sick, and through his 
illness, rather than by inefficiency, his Ministry 
was broken up. In this emergency George 
Canning was sent for by the king, and placed 
at the head of the Oovemment. But Sir 



Robert Peel, the Duke of Wellington, and 
other leading Tories, refused to support the 
new Premier, and Canning was obliged to 
solicit the support of the Whigs. Peel had 
already become the rival of Canning, and to 
this, rather than to any divergence in the 
policy of the two statesmen, their separation 
must be attributed. Canning, however, did not 
long live to hold the dubious ascendency 
which he had reached. In August, 1827, he 
died; and in the following January a new 
Ministry was constituted under the leadership 
of the Duke of Wellington. 

Another death, occurring at nearly the 
same time with that of Canning, had an im- 
portant influence on the course of the reign* 
ing dynasty. Frederick, Duke of York and 
Albany, second son of George III., and heir 
tS the crown after the reigning king, died, 
and his title and right were transferred to the 
Duke of Clarence, who was destined soon to 
accede to the throne as William IV. It was 
one of those circumstances above the will and 
purpose of man, by which the European 
dynasties have been so frequently deflected 
into unforeseen channels, producing many 
times anomalous results and complications in 
the royal families. 

The Duke of Wellington was induced to 
accept the office of Premier by the solicitations 
of the king. At the time of his accession to 
office, the repeal of the Test and Corporation 
Acts was already pending in the House of 
Commons. The measure was violently opposed 
by the Tories; but Wellington, to the great 
disappointment of many of his political follow* 
ers, advised the House of Lords not to ofier 
further resistance to a measure which must ul- 
timately prevail, and the act was accordingly 
carried. It was soon found, however, that 
even this cojicessi^n could not secure the re- 
tention of the Liberal elements in the Cabinet. 
A quarrel broke out between the duke and 
Huskisson, and the Liberals withdrew from 
the Ministry. It was believed that the cause 
of Catholic emancipation would now be per- 
manently checked; but the election of O'Con- 
nell, in 1828, proved conclusively, even to 
Wellington and Peel, that that cause must in- 
evitably prevail. It was seen that further re- 
sistance to the removal of the cruel disabilities 
to which the Catholics had long been sub* 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



jected, vould lead to turmoil and Ti'olence, if 
Dot to civil war, in the kingdom. 

But, before beginning au account of the 
measures by which Catholic emancipation was 
finally eSected, we may here turn briefly from 
the consideration of afiairs in the home Gov- 
ernment of Great Britain to speak of the 
fortign relations of the kingdom. To this dec- 



meee, would, sooner or later, bring th« 
two nations into conflict It was on the 
north-eastern froDtier of Bengal that the op- 
posing powers at length came together in hoa- 
tilicy. The Burmeee were, at that time, mak- 
ing war on Aseam, and it was in resifltanoe 
of this movement that the British, in East 
India, oppooed a barrier of force. 



GEORGE CANNING. 



ade, namely, the third of the century, belongs 
the history of the extension of British terri- 
tory and domination in the East by the con- 
quest of Burmah. It might have been fore- 
seen that, in the nature of things, the estab- 
lishment, and the extension, of the British 
power in India, and the well-known war- 
like and aggressive disposition of the Bur- 



After some desultory fighting, war was d»- 
dared, in February of 1824. An expedilJOD 
was sent out from India, under command of 
Commodore Grant and Sir Archibald Camp- 
bell. In May of 1824 the armament entered 
the Irawadi River, and came before the Bur- 
mese city of Rangoon. War now broke out 
in earnest, the British gradually penetrating 



GREAT BRITAIN.— LAST TWO HANOVERIANS. 



263 



into the interior^ the Burmese, with their half- 
barbarouB methods of warfare, falling back be- 
fore the invasion. Bandoola, General of the 
Burmese army, collected a force of sixty 
thousand men, and, in the latter part of 1824, 
fought several battles with the British army^ 
about five thousand strong, in which the latter, 
' though so greatly inferior in numbers, were 
pearly always victorious. On the 2d of April, 
m the following year, the city of Donabew 
was taken by Sir Archibald, and here Ban- 
loola was killed. Later, in the same month, 
Prome was captured by the British, and, on 
the 17th of September, an armistice was con- 
<sluded for a month. 

Later in the year, an army of sixty thou- 
sand men advanced against the British from 
Ava, the capital. But the latter held out 
under repeated attacks, in none of which were 
the Burmese more than partially successful. 
A decisive battle was fought on the 1st of De- 
cember, and negotiations for peace were im- 
mediately opened. It was soqn found, how- 
ever, that the Burmese were insincere, and 
hostilities broke out more violently than ever. 
In January of 1826, Sir Archibald Campbell 
advanced on Ava, the Burmese capital. On 
the 9th of February, a decisive battle was 
fought near the ancient city of Pagan-Myo, in 
which the British were completely victorious. 
The defeated enemy now came quickly to 
terms, though many acts of violence and hos- 
tility still told of the unsettled condition of 
affairs in the country. The Treaty of Yan- 
dabo put an end to the war, and became the 
basis of the large accession of territory known 
as British Burmah. The Burmese sovereign 
was obliged to give up Aracan, together with 
the provinces of Mergui, Tavoy, and Yea; to 
yield all of bis claims to the kingdom of As- 
«am and the c^mtiguous States, and to pay a 
large indemnity for the expenses of the war. 
The strength, vigor, and resistless impact of 
the British power borne on the vehicle of Sir 
Archibald's small army against an ancient and 
populous kingdom, more than ten thousand 
miles distant from the seat of the English 
Oovernment, was but another illustration of 
4ke vitality and enterprise of that warlike race 
which has fastened the crooked flukes of its 
anchors under the chalky walls of the British 
Islands. 



Returning to the home affairs of the king- 
dom, we may properly present in this con- 
nection some fuller account of the agitation 
which now arose relative to the penal disabil- 
ities under which the Boman Catholics of 
England and Ireland had been placed by the 
Act of Union. Kow it was that the great agi- 
tator and reformer, Daniel CConnell, ap- 
peared on the scene, and began, with vehe* 
ment invective and unanswerable argument, to 
demand the removal of the penalties againd^ 
his Catholic countrymen. He instituted a so- 
ciety called the Catholic Association, small at 
first, but growing slowly to larger proportions, 
and spreading to all parts of the United 
Kingdom. In 1828 he was elected for Clare 
to the House of Commons, an event which 
foretold the success of the cause which he ad- 
vocated. A measure embodying his principles 
of reform was introduced and carried through 
the House of Commons against the most stren* 
uous opposition ; but the bill was rejected in 
the House of Lords. The excitement rose to 
such a pitch as to endanger the peace of the 
country ; and in Ireland the fires of civil war 
smouldered, ready to burst into flame. In 
1828 the repeal of the Test and Corporation 
Acts, which had been in force since the time 
of Charles II., was, as we have said, carried 
through Parliament, in a bill introduced for 
that purpose by Lord John Russell. 

It was believed by the Tories that so great 
a concession as was implied in this measure 
would satisfy the Catholics and bring quiet to 
the Kingdom. But the event proved other- 
wise. . With the triumphant election of 0*Con- 
nell to Parliament, the agitation broke out 
anew. It was claimed that the reformatory 
measures thus far promoted had been intended 
to .favor only the Protestant Dissenters of 
Great Britain, and that nothing short of the 
removal of the legal disabilities of the Catho- 
lics would suflice. It was clearly in defiance 
of the statute forbidding the admission of 
Romanists to Parliament that O'Connell was 
elected to that body. The crisis was reached 
when the time came for the Irish agitator 
to take his seat in the House of Commons. 
The Ministry, backed by the Protestant clubs 
which had been formed in most parts of the 
ELingdom, determined to exclude O'Connell 
from his place. When this project was known, 



264 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



part J aoimosity was faoDed to a white heat 
The public became so convulsed that an appeal 
to arms seemed inevitable, unless the Govern- 
ment should yield. It was in the face of this 
alarming condition of affairs that the Ministry, 
at the opening of the Parliamentary session 
of 1829, was obliged to retreat It was per- 
ceived by the Tory leaden that it would be 
better for the Government to bring forward a 
bill of their own motion to relieve the Catho- 
lics of their disabilities thaiS to be driven to 
such a course by the impending revolution. 

In accordance with this prudential scheme, 
a bill was at once prepared, which had the 
effect of arousing all the deep-seated preju- 
dices of the Kingdom. The Tory Ministers 
were denounced as traitors, not only to their 
party, but to the Constitution of Great Brit- 
ain. Many of the extreme partisans refused 
to follow their leaders further in the direction 
of reform. The Duke of Wellington and Sir 
Robert Peel became the objects of bitter dislike 
to the Ultra-Tories, and the latter statesman 
was actually defeated for reelection by the 
University of Oxford. Nevertheless, on the 
13th of April, 1829, the Relief Bill was 
passed, and for the first time in one hundred 
and fifty years the Roman Catholic subjects 
of Great Britain were made equal before the 
law with the other people of the Kingdom. 
Henceforth the discrimination against them 
extended no further than to their exclusion 
from the offices of Regent, Viceroy of Ireland, 
and Lord Chancellor of the Kingdom.^ 

George IV., who had personally resisted to 
the last the recent measures of reform, was 
correspondingly humiliated at his own and the 
defeat of his Tory Ministry. His health was 
already greatly enfeebled. He presently re- 
tired from the public gaze, and sought seclu- 
sion in the shades of Windsor Castle. The 
worn-out debauchee took no further interest in 
public affairs, and the public responded by tak- 



' By a strange coincidence the venerable Cathe- 
dral of York, the pride of the Church of England, 
was almost destroyed by fire at the very time 
when the triumphant Catholics were hailing the 
passage of the Relief Bill through Parliament. It 
seemed that the violence done to the Mother 
Church by Henry VIII. and the Reformers of 
the Sixteenth Century, was about to be avenged 
by the concurrent ravages of party strife and the 
devouring elements. 



ing as little interest in the affairs of the king. 
The latter was taken seriously ill early in tho 
year, and died on the 26th of June, 1830. 
The Duke of Wellington, who was not want- 
ing in power of personal analysis, and was no 
flatterer of men, living or dead, summed up 
the qualities of the deceased monarch as fol- 
lows: "He was the most extraordinary com- 
pound of talent, wit, buffoonery, obstinacy, 
and good-feeling — in short, a medley of the 
most opposite qualities, with a great prepon- 
derance of good — that I ever saw in amy char- 
acter in my life." Of his reign, however^ 
though short and little distinguished for glory, 
it may be said that hardly any other decade in 
the history of England has been more marked 
for the many practical reforms which it witr 
nessed, for the advance of all liberal senti- 
ments in society and State, and for the dif- 
fusion abroad of more humanizing tendencies, 
than was the otherwise feeble and unsteady 
reign of George IV. 

The late king lef% no legitimate children ta 
inherit his title and crown. ^ His brother, the 
Duke of York and Albany, was long skice dead. 
The next elder of his brothers was William 
Henry, Duke ^f Clarence, who now acceded 
to the throne, with the title of William IV. 
He had been a sailor in his boyhood, serving 
with distinction under Admirals Digby, Rod- 

^ As for Queen Caroline, she also had gone to 
the land where shameless persecution could no 
longer assail her. She had, after the infamous 
trial to which she had been subjected in the 
House of Lords, been permitted to resume her 
title of Queen, but was forbidden to enter West* 
minster Hall on the day of her husband's corona- 
tion. It was the death-stab in the woman's 
bosom ; she pined for nineteen days, and yielded 
her shattered life to the elements. Even this was 
not the end of the dark fatality that overhung her 
career. Her daughter, the Princess Charlotte A u- 
giista, was wedded, in 1816, to Leopold of Saxe* 
Coburg, afterwards king of the Belgians, but on 
the 6th of November in the following year she 
died in the agonies of child-birth — on event that 
wrung from the stern soul of Byron one of hie 
sublimest stanzas: 

PeaMtnts bring forth in safety I C&n it be^ 

O tliou that wert so happy, so adored I 
Tljose who weep not for kings shall weep for thee, 

And freedom's heart grown heavy, cea-«e to hoavd. 

Her many griefs for okk; for she had poured 
Her orisons for thee, nnd o'er thy head 

Beheld her Iris! Thou, too, lonely lord 
And desolate consort— vainly weit thou wed I 
The husband of a year, the father of the dead I 



GREAT BRITAIN.— LAST TWO HANOVERIANS. 



26B 



ney, andNebon. But during tbe reiga of hU 
. brotber he had lived tbe life of a private gen- 
tleman at Bushj Park. UofortuDately, the 
life ot' William bad not been sucb as to jus- 
tify any hopes that might be entertained of 
reforming and redeeming the general charac- 
ter which was now borne 
throughout Europe by 
the princes of HanoVer- 
Brunswick. 8ome idea 
of the moral and polit- 
ical priuciples by which 
the new king was likely 
to be guided may be had 
from a scrutiny of bia 
conduct while a member 
of tbe House of Lords. 
While sitting id that 
body, he bad defended 
the recklesBuess, the ex- 
travagance, and de- 
bauchery of his brother, 
tbe Prince Segent. He 
bad spoken in favor of 
the Bill of Divorcement, 
by which that alleged 
gentleman proposed to 
put away forever from 
her royal seat and in- 
heritance the unfortu- 
nate Queen Caroline. 
He had denounced the 
proposed emancipation 
of the slaves, as against 
the laws of justice and 
the interests of human- 
ity. In his private life 
bis relations were hardly 
more well-timed and re- 
spectable than those of 
his brother, the Regent 
He had become enam- 
ored with a certain Mrs. 
Jordan, an actress by 
profession, with whom 
be lived for nearly twenty years, the union 
b«ing broken off at last for merely political 
reasons. In 1818 he had taken in marriage 
Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, who, in course of 
time, obtained a great influence over her easy- 
going husband. But no family sprang from 
the Prince's legitimate marriage, and he was 



destined to be left at tbe end of bis reign, •• 
his brother George IV. had been, without an 
beir capable of inheriting tbe crown. 

William IV. came to the throne at a time 
when tbe agitation for reform iu all tbe legis- 
lative and administrative methods of the Eing- 



CATHEDRAL OF YORK. 

dom was rife. It seemed at this epoch that 
the energies of the nation, long consuming 
themselves in war, bad turned suddenly against 
the rough barriers and impediments to civil 
liberty, which the Middle Ages had entuled 
on modern England. No sooner had ths 
Catholic question been settled by the concea- 



m 



UyiVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



eion of the rights which had been withheld 
from that large body of British subjects since 
the times of the Restoration, than another 
question of still more vital importance was 
presented to the English people. This was the 
question of a reform of the British Parliament, 
particularly of that part of the sy8t«m which 
related to the basis of representation in the 



WILLIAM IV. 

House of Commons. In times past this basis 
had be«n determined ratlier by landed estates 
than by population; hut the whole growth of 
the civil polity of England had been in the 
direction of an enlargement uf popular right'* — 
a drifting away from those feudal ideas upon 
which representation had bo long been founded. 
The history of the evolution of the British 



Parliament would, in itsdetailasad philosophy, 
involve the greater part of the history of the En- 
giish-speakJDg race. Originally, the House of 
Lords had been deduced from the Witenage* 
m<3t of the Saxon kings. The Witenagenidt 
was, at first, an assemblage of the great men — 
literally, the wise men — whom the sovereign 
was wont to call into council. It was an as- 
semblage of the Witan, or Vi^iie 
Men, of the Kingdom. It con- 
sisted of temporal lords, of earls, 
of dukes, of barons, of archbish- 
ops, and bishops, and abbots, 
brought together, and constitut- 
ing a body of magnates, from 
whom the king was wont to seek 
advice and support in times of 
trouble. The House of Commons 
had arisen from a very difierent 
source, and had been of slower 
development. Its origin is to be 
sought in the Anglo-Saxon moott, 
or meetings, consisting, at first, 
of such voluntary assentblsges of 
freemen as might be essential to 
the welfare of the tribe. The 
first of the moots was the toum- 
moot, which included the assem- 
bled freemen and cultivators of 
the folk-lands, gathered together 
to regulate the civil affairsof their 
township, their village, or parish. 
Next came the burg-mool, being 
an assemblage of the principal 
men of the hurgh, for the pur- 
pose of administering munidpsl 
affairs. The hundred-moot had a 
still more important place in the 
English system. It comprised the 
reeves and chief freemen gathered 
from the several townships and 
burghs within the limits of the 
80H»lled Hundred. Above this 
assembly was the aftire-moot. It 
was a body gathered from the shire or county, 
having an ealderman for its president, and ex- 
ercising jurisdiction over the several hundreds 
comprised within the shire. The body was 
composed of a reeve and four freemen from 
every hundred. Its members can hardly be 
said to have been elected, at least not by wch 
methods as would constitute a modem eleo- 



GREAT BRITAIR'-LAST TWO HANOVERIANS. 



267 



tion. But they were sent to the various moots 
by the common voice, and by methods which 
had in them the germ of a true election. 

In many emergencies it became desirable 
for the medieval kings of England to call 
not only the Great Council or House of 
Lords, but also the Commons — that is, repre- 
sentatives from the various moots above 
described — to assist and support the sovereign 
in his wars, and to give him counsel in the 
general a0airs of his government. The student 
of history will readily recall the fact that the 
Commons of the Western European kingdoms 
were, in the times of which we speak, an ex- 
tremely modest folk, very little disposed to in- 
terfere in the affairs of state, timid in all 
political matters, slow to convene even at the 
sovereign's call, and meek in his presence. In 
England, however, on account of the peculiar 
structure of society, the Commons grew into 
greater prominence than in any other country. 
A burgess or middle class sprang up, in whose 
hands much wealth was at length accumulated. 
They it was who henceforth must, in large 
measure, furnish the revenues of the King- 
dom. As a consequence, the English Com- 
mons were more frequently called by the 
king to assist him with their presence and 
their means. For several centuries there was 
an approximation between the two Houses of 
Parliament. But at length the growth of 
the Commons alarmed both the king and the 
lords, and in the reign of Edward HI. the 
two Houses were formally separated. The 
organization of each became more definite, 
and each henceforth pursued its independent 
lines of development. 

The reader may perceive, in the situation 
here prepared, the elements of that great con- 
flict by which, at the middle of the seven- 
teenth century, the monarchy and aristocracy 
of England were for a while subverted. In 
the Second Revolution, of 1688, the House of 
Commons was again triumphant. It became 
the most powerful and regular legislative body 
in all Christendom. But the point of peculiar 
interest to the student of history is that the 
old barbaric constitution of the Commons had 
been, through all stages of the evolution, 
preserved as the fundamental basis of the 
House. Such was the astonishing conservatism 
•f t^oe English race that the abuses which had 



flowed down in the stream of popular govern* 
ment were preserved along with the uses and 
advantages of the organization. Aye, more; 
the abuses of the system were hugged and 
embraced with as much fervor as were the 
true principles of progresss, enlightenment, and 
freedom which constituted the vital part of 
the Parliamentary system of government. 

At length, however, the gradual growth 
and diflusion of political enlightenment made 
it impossible for the abusive part of the sys- 
tem longer to survive. This crisis was reached 
in the beginning of the fourth decade of the 
present century. The reformatory spirit was 
already abroad in the Kingdom. Tlie efibrt 
to repeal the more obnoxious of the disabilities 
wliich had long been imposed on the Catholics 
made manifest the abuses which were inter- 
mingled and blended with the very structure 
of the House of Commons ; and no sooner had 
the repeal been passed, than the reforming 
party turned upon the House itself, with the 
determination to exorcise the evils under 
which that great body was laboring as the 
governing force of England. 

Tlie very foundation had to be broken up. 
It was perceived that the vice was deep-seated, 
reaching down to the very basid on which the 
House of Commons rested. The various bor- 
oughs of the Kingdom, from which the repre- 
sentatives sitting in the House were drawn by 
election, had been mapped out long ago, and, 
though the population had fluctuated from side 
to side; though great communities had been 
planted where none existed before; though 
other great communities had, in the mutations 
of industry, under the landed system of Great 
Britain, and in answer to the calls of commerce, 
disappeared from the places where they did ex- 
ist, the old basis of representation still pre- 
vailed; so that the House of Commons no 
longer represented the England of the present, 
but the England of a mythical past. Large 
cities had sprung up where hitherto there was no 
dweller. Such were Liverpool, Manchester, 
and Leeds, which, though inhabited by teem- 
ing thousands, were absolutely unrepresented 
in Parliament. The ancient boroughs knew no 
such cities, and conservative England had thus 
far respected her ancient boroughs — must re- 
spect them still I Many old districts had be- 
come well-nigh depopulated ; but conservative 



268 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



England still regarded her old districts — ^must 
regard them still ! Such, for instance, was the 
rotten borough of Gratton. Buch was tlie bor* 
ough of Old Sarum, which no longer contained 
a single house, and yet it continued to be rep> 
resented hy two members oj the House of Commons. 
Such boroughs were the so-called ** pocket" bor- 
oughs; for they might well be carried in the 
pocket I Liverpool had no representative; Old 
Sarum had two representatives. At length 
the sturdy artisans of the great manufactur- 
ing towns determined no longer to endure the 
abominable mockery of representative govern- 
ment in which they, the bone and sinew of 
England, had no part or lot. Popular lead- 
ers at once took up the clamor. The recent 
success of the political revolt in behalf of the 
Boman Catholics furnished the example — 
gave encouragement to the movement. A 
popular belief was diffused abroad that the 
movement could but be crowned with success. 
But against it all, the reactionary party, the 
conservative, obstructing element in British 
politics, that ancient Toryism which had 
through so large a period of British history 
<sontroIled, or antagonized, the destinies of 
the kingdom, set themselves with the firmness 
and obstinacy of the immovable rocks in the 
Hill of Taric. 

It happened at this particular juncture that 
the affairs of Continental Europe tended much 
to strengthen and intensify the popular move- 
ment in England. In the very year of the 
accession of William IV. to the English 
throne, the roused-up people of France dis- 
posed of their king by a most summary pro- 
cess. At the same time a rebellion occurred 
in Belgium, which led to the severance of that 
important power from the dominion of Hol- 
land, and the establishment of an independent 
kingdom under the rule of Leopold, of Saxe- 
Coburg, who received the crown, in July of 
1831, with the title of Leopold I., Kiug of the 
Belgians. In these movements of the Liberals 
of the Continent, the people's party of Eng- 
land was quick to discover the omens of suc- 
cess. On the other hand, the English Tories 
found in the destruction of the continental 
systems, with which they sympathized, every 
reason for distrusting popular government and 
adhering to the past. To the Liberals of 
Great Britain Louis Philippe, of France, was 



a pleasing character to contemplate; to the 
Tories he was a menace, a specter. 

Thus it was that the great project of r^ 
forming the basis of representation in the 
British House of Commons became the all-ab- 
sorbing question in the first years of William IV. 
The measure met with the greatest opposition 
b the body to which it was directed. A 
ministerial crisb was precipitated by the fool- 
ish declaration of the Duke of Wellington 
against the proposition for Parliamentary re- 
form. He was suddenly deprived of the con- 
fidence of the country, and a coalition of the 
Whig party with those who had followed the 
political fortunes of Canning was formed. 
The Wellington Ministry was dissolved, and in 
November of 1830 the king summoned Eari 
Grey to form a new Cabinet, pledged to carry 
out the reformatory policy. It is believed 
that Qie earl himself had but little sympathy 
with the popular cause; but he was willing, 
on assuming the leadership of the Govern- 
ment, to promote at least certain features of 
the proposed Parliamentary revolution. 

The Reform Bnx., so-called by preeminence 
over all other Parliamentary measures having 
like purposes as their end, was accordingly 
prepared, and, on the 1st of March, 1831, was 
laid, by Lord John Russell, before the House 
of Commons. Then it was that ''storming 
fury rose," such as, perhaps, was never heard 
before in that turbulent arena where so many 
of the battles of English liberty have been 
fought and won. The bill passed to its second 
reading, and through its second reading, by a 
majority of one vote. It was seen by the ad* 
vocates of the measure that it was destined to 
failure, and Parliament was dissolved with an 
appeal to the country. 

The English Nation was now shaken to its 
center. A new Parliament was returned much 
more favorable to the bill than was the pre- 
ceding. The second reading of the act was 
now carried by a majority of one hundred and 
thirty-six. The third reading was pressed, 
and the act went triumphantly through the 
House of Commons. Earl Grey carried the 
bill to the Lords, where it was rejected by 
a majority of forty-one. Here, then, the issue 
was made up. The landed aristocracy of 
Great Britain planted itself squarely in the 
way of reform, and the question was whether 



GREAT BRITAIN.— LAST TWO HANOVERIANS. 



the aDoient prejudicCT of the kingdom, repre- 
sented in the House of Lords, would yield to 
the popular, and now overwhelming, pressure 
in the House of CommooB, or whether, on the 
* contrary, the popular party, bearing the ban- 
ner of reform, and backed by the decisive re- 
sults of the recent Parliamentary election, 
would be hurled back, routed, overthrown. 

It can not be doubted thatr the last moutlis 
•of 1830-31 witnessed in England a crisis more 
serious and alarming than anything which had 
been known since the BevolutJon of 1688. 
The radical reformers and the Ultra-Tories 
vere ready to decide the issue by civil war. 
Between the extremists, however, rose the 
<3r6y Ministry, carrying with it the great 
moderate party of Englishmen, who, though 
determiued on reform, still sought to reach 
the result by methods «bort of revolution. In 
the emergency two courses, and only two, 
were open to the Government. There was 
jwtween the two Houses of Parliament what, 
in more recent phraseology, would be de- 
nominated a political "deadlock." This might 
be broken either, first, by a declaration from 
the House of Commons that the assent of the 
lords was not necettary for the passage of the 
bill ; or, secondly, by creating under royal 
prerogative a sufficient number of new peers 
4o bear down the adverse Tory majority in the 
Upper House. Each of these methods is ob- 
jectionable in the last degree. To declare 
the assent of the House of Lords unnecessary 
was revolutionary. To create the new peers 
-would be to drown the House of Lords and 
■destroy its distinctive character. With much 
reluctance it was determined by the Ministry, 
on the 1st of January, 1832, to demand of the 
ting the creation of the new peers. Under 
this menace the Tory Lords receded somewhat, 
«nd the bill was allowed to pass its second 
reading. But when it came tft the third read- 
ing, the passage of the measure could not be 
forced, and the Grey Ministry resigned. 

Wellington was now asked to form a new 
"Cabinet, and undertake the Government. 
But the task was hopeless. After a single 
■week of such political turmoil as has rarely 
been witnessed in Great Britain, the king 
was obliged to send again for Earl Grey, and 
recommit to him the destinies of the State. 



iia 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



in ix>Qdoii the palace of the Duke of Wel- 
lington waa assailed by a furious mob, with 
whom not even the memories of Waterioo 
could prevail any longer. Nottingham was 
burned to the ground, and a large part of 
Bristol destroyed by insurgents beyond the 
control of the authorities. But as it became 
evident that the reformatory movement would 
succeed, as the Tories shrank before their op- 
ponents, a better temper prevailed, and the 
ship of State at length outsailed the storm 
and anchored in clear water. 

Perhaps no other measure ever adopted by 
the British Parliament was more salutary in 
its effects than was the Reform Bill of 1832. 
It was a new era from which many other re- 
formatory projects ^ere to date their origin 
and possibility. By the Reform Bill, the so- 
called pocket and rotten boroughs were dis- 
franchised. No longer might some landed 
nabob carry in his pocket several Parliamen- 
tary votes, behind which there was no constitu- 
ency. Other decayed boroughs, while they 
did not actually lose their representation in 
the House of Commons, had that representa- 
tion greatly reduced. The votes thus gained 
from the disfranchised boroughs, were redis- 
tributed to the counties and manufacturing 
towns to which an adequate representation had 
hitherto been denied. The whole disfranchise- 
ment extended to fifty-six boroughs and about 
thirty small towns. The general efiect was 
that of equalization, by which the populous 
counties and the cities were given their just 
equipoise in the House of Commons.* Certain 
property qualifications on the suffrage were 
allowed to stand. Indeed, in the light of the 
liberal principles which now prevail in Eng- 
land and the United States with respect to the 
rights and prerogatives of citizenship, we can 
but be surprised that the very moderate prin- 
ciples incorporated in the Reform Bill of 1832 
should ever have been regarded as radical or 
extreme. The right of voting in the English 
boroughs was still restricted to the tenants of 
houses worth ten pounds a year. Properties 
under this valuation, or rather the holders of 
the same, lay as before, under complete disfran- 
chisement In the counties, tenants paying a 



* Ireland gained, under the new apportionment, 
five additional members in the House. 



rental of fifty pounds per annum were enti«' 
tied to suffrage, while freeholders having an 
income from their own lands of forty shillings, 
or landed property worth ten pounds a year^ 
were permitted to vote under the provisions of 
the bill. Such were the general features of 
the reform by which the Parliamentary repre- 
sentation in the House of Commons was de^^ 
termined for the ensuing thirty-six years. 

We now come to consider the legislatioi^ 
of the so-called Reformed Parliament, which 
began its existeoce in 1833. The liberalizing: 
tendencies which had been produced and dis- 
seminated during the period of agitation, now 
speedily bore their fruits. No sooner had the 
House of Commons again assembled than a^ 
bill was brought forward for the abolition of 
slavery in all the colonies and possessions of 
Great Britain. In this case, the agitator wa» 
William Wilberforce, Hull, one of the en- 
thusiasts of humanity, at that time a member 
of the Commons for the county of York. 
During the greater part of his life he had 
been engaged in projects looking to the aboli- 
tion, first, of the slave-trade, and then of slavery^ 
itself. As early as the ascendency of Willian^ 
Pitt, Wilberforce, in conjunction with that 
statesman, sought to secure the abolition of the 
slave-trade in the British dominions. No great 
step, however, was taken in this direction until 
1807. Pitt, in the meanwhile, died, and 
Wilberforce struggled on against the selfish- 
ness of men and the prejudice of ages. He 
was already in the last act of his life whe]> 
the Reformed Parliament, under the inspira- 
tion and leadership of Brougham, Buxton,, 
Clarkson, and many other philanthropists, whO' 
had heard the cry of the oppressed, took up- 
his unfinished task, and, as his life went down- 
in the shadows, the Mene Tekd Upharsin of 
slavery was seen in burning letters over against 
the wall. Even then the slaveholders of the 
Kingdom rallied all their powers to defeat the 
measure; but the gale of public opinion blew 
hard against them, and they and their cause 
went down together. A month after the death* 
of Wilberforce, when, from the mountain-top* 
uplifted high, he had caught across the river 
one certain glance of the radiant landscape,, 
the Emancipation Bill was passed, an* 
human slavery met its quietus throughout the 
British dominions. It could not be said, how^ 



OREAT BRITAIN.— LAST TWO HANOVERIANS. 



971 



ever, that the slaveholders suffered greatly 
from the loss of their alleged ** property." 
The plan of abolition was so gradual in its 
application, and the steps taken so ample to 
remunerate those who were supposed to have 
suffered financially by the destruction of servi- 
tude, that none might 'well complain. Those 
who had held slaves were allowed therefor an 
aggregate compensation of twenty millions of 
pounds. The emancipation, moreover, was 
postponed to such dates as were supposed to 
be convenient for the masters. Slave children 
under six years of age were to become free in 
the summer of 1834; slaves of the field, in 
seven years; and domestic servants, in five 
years from the passage of the act. It was 
estimated that the slaves of the Kingdom, for 
whom a compensation was given to the owners, 
numbered, at the time of the passage of the 
Emancipation Bill, about eight hundred thou- 
sand. 

Daniel O'Connell now reS^ppeared on the 
stage of British politics, and became one of 
the leading figures of the scene. The as- 
cendency which he had acquired during the 
agitation for the repeal of the penal disabil- 
ities of the Catholics, now carried him to the 
front of another movement, still more impor- 
tant and radical in its character. England 
for three centuries had been a Proteistant 
Btate. The Reformation had entered into 
combination with the whole frame of civil so- 
ciety. In no other State of modern Europe 
had the religious institutions of the country 
been blended more completely with the polit- 
ical structure than in the major island of the 
Kingdom. Ireland, on the other hand, was a 
Catholic country. Into the Western Island 
the Reformers of the sixteenth century had 
never been able to penetrate. The Celtic race 
proved itself most loyal and devoted to the 
Mother Church. Hardly might it be said that 
Spain Or Portugal, or Italy herself, had re- 
mained more profoundly iufected with the 
Holy Faith, as dispensed from the chair of St. 
Peter, than had Ireland. 

This divergence and antagonism in the re- 
ligious system of the people of the two islands 
constituted in the fourth decade of the present 
century, as it had done for generations, and as 
it does to the present day, the insuperable bar 
to political and social sympathy between the 



English and Irish races. At the reformatory 
epoch, of which we are here presenting a 
sketch to the reader, the leaders of the Cath- 
olic, we might say, the Irish, party in the 
United Kingdom, were elated by their success 
in securing the passage of the Repeal Bill. 
They had shared in the more recent excite- 
ments attendant upon the reformation of the 
British Parliament. They were for many rea- 
sons emboldened to strike out for a more rad- 
ical reform, and in Daniel O'Connell they 
found the impersonation of the cause. 

The two most offensive symbols of the sub- 
ordination of the Irish people to the British 
Government were the Established Church, and 
the System of Tithing by which it was sup- 
ported. The Episcopalian Establishment was 
as fixed in Ireland as in England. It sat 
brooding over a people who were utterly 
alienated from it. The Irish were Catholics, 
but they must support the Church of England. 
That Church existed among them for its own 
good. In many parts of the counfry the Es- 
tablishment was represented mei^ely by the 
buildings, the clergymen, and the parish. 
Parishioners there were none. To support 
such an institution, foreign in every particu- 
lar to the genius and sympathies of the peo- 
ple — to support it by taxes and rentals laid 
heavily and perpetually upon the Irish Cath- 
olic peasantry — was an iniquity so palpable ah 
to be monstrous in the estimation of posterity. 

Against this whole system of foreign eccle- 
siastical domination, O'Connell now raised his 
voice. He demanded the disestablishment of 
the Church in Ireland. He demanded that 
the tithing system, by which that Church was 
supported, should be abolished; that the dio- 
ceses should be broken up, and the bishops and 
priests of the Church of England left to such 
free support as they might still obtain ; that 
the Establishment, in a word, should hence- 
forth be made to rest on its own basis, just as 
the Mother Church rested, in the island. 

At this time a state of affairs had super- 
vened in Ireland on the religious side of 
society very similar to that which existed in 
England before the passage of the Reform 
Bill. O'Connell's measure was in the nature 
of an ecclesiastical reform, by which inequal- 
ities of taxation and similar abuses were to 
be removed. But the propositions of the 



272 



UNIVERSAL BISTORY.^THE MODERN WORLD. 



reformer were met with violent oppodtion in 
Parliament and throughout the country. The 
wrath of the prelates of the Church of 
England, and those who were associated with 
theni iu interest — backed, as they were, by the 
Tory party, and all the prejudices born of 
conservatism — roee to the pitch of violence. 
The agitation was fanned to a flame- The 
Jfinietry of Earl Grey tottered under the as- 



aanlta of its adversaries. Meanwhile, the first 
fruits of the agitation, as always happens in 
such cases, were bitter to the taste. The Irish 
peasantry, outraged for generations by the in- 
tolerable exactions of the English Estahlish- 
ment, broke into revolt. Id many places the 
country was terrorized by the excesses of the 
iMsurrections. Crime and bloodshed were in 
tfae path of those who now avenged themselves 
f»r the wrongs which had been inflicted upon 
them. At the first, the British Ministry en- 



deavored to assert itself and mainti^n llw 
asendency of the ancient order by the passage 
of a CoBbcion Bill, the object of which waa 
to supprees the Irish movement by force of 
arms. But the measure, as might well have 
been foreseen, only a^ravated the evil which 
it was designed to mitigate. 

In the midst of the confnrion tbe Ministry 
of Grey wont to pieces on the rt>cks. He 
Earl resigned, and was 
succeeded in office by 
William Lamb, better 
known as Lord Hel- 
bourne. But he also 
was unable to weather 
the storm. After a 
brief and unsteady ef- 
fort to hold the belm, 
he was obliged, though 
supported by the king, 
to ^ve place to a new 
Conservative Hini^ 
tiy, under the leader- 
ship of Sir Robert PeeL 
.- This movement, how- 
ever, was as unstable 
as its predecessor. The 
appeal to the oountrj 
which was now made 
resulted in tbe over- 
throw of Feel and tbe 
reappointment of Hel- 
boume as Premier, in 
1S35. In the mean- 
time, however, Parlia< 
ment had attempted 
to cast a tub to the 
Irish whale by adopt- 
ing a measure of 
partial reform. Aa 
act was passed bj 
which ten of the bishoprics in Ireland were 
abolished, and the revenues of the Church 
rearranged ou a basis approximating to 
justice. 

This was the epoch of the ascendency 
of Daniel O'Connell in the House of Coip- 
moDS. As a debater he had become pre- 
eminent. This, too, in his old age; for he waa 
beyond fifty when he entered Parliament 
The analysis of his character and purposes has 
been difficult, even when the same have heaa 



GREAT BRITAIK'-LAST TWO HANOVERIANS. 



273 



illumined by the light of Bubsequent events. 
It seems to have been his policy to demand 
muchf and to accept for his country-men 
whatever he could get. His oratory was rude 
and boisterous; his invective a thing to be 
dreadedf even by the greatest and most cal- 
lous Parliamentarians of his time. As a field- 
speaker, it is doubtful whether any man of 
the century has been his superior. He swajed 
the multitudes of his excitable countrymen 
at his willf and was given by his admirers the 
hardly too. extravagant epithet of the '^Un- 
crowned King." 

It is to the era wnicn we are nere consider- 
ing that we may properly assign the begin- 
nings of another measure of reform in the 
administration of Great Britain. Parliament 
was now, for the first time, called upon to wres- 
tle with the great question of pauperism. The 
existing Poor Laws of the country were such 
that the number of those claiming public char- 
ity of the kingdom increased from year to 
year. The disease was seen to be aggravated 
by the very means which had been adopted to 
allay its ravages. The amount annually ap- 
propriated for the support of paupers had run 
up to the enormous sum of seven millions of 
pounds, and still the cries for gratuitous sup- 
port increased and multiplied. It was under 
the Administration of Lord Melbourne that 
the reform of the Poor Laws was undertaken 
by Parliament. The measures adopted were 
successful only to a limited degree; but they 
had the merit of leading in the right direc- 
tion. The new statute forbade the further 
payment of benefits to able-bodied paupers 
in their own homes, and required all those 
who demanded an entire or partial support at 
the hands of the public, to enter the work- 
houses, and earn by labor what they sought, 
and had previously received, as a gratuity. 

In the year 1835 still another impetus 
was given to the car of reform, by the passage 
through Parliament of the Municipal Act. 
This measure was especially designed to 
ameliorate the condition of towns and cities. 
The act was a sort of sequel to the Reform 
Bill of 1882. It was provided that the tax- 
payers of municipal corporations and boroughs 
might elect a body of town councilors, and 
that the latter might chose one of their own 
number as chief magistrate of the corporation. 



The principle of local self-government was 
thus, with great advantage, introduced and 
applied among the municipal populations of 
Great Britain. 

Sharp after this came the passage, In 1836, 
of what was known as the Tithe Commuta- 
tion Act, by which it was provided that a 
fixed rent, to be determined by the average 
price of corn for the seven preceding years, 
should be substituted for the irregular tithes, 
which had hitherto been collected in the 
parishes. Some of the English dioceses were, 
at the same time, reformed, and, in other 
bills, it was enacted that marriages might 
thereafter be solemnized in the churches of 
Dissenters. 

In the early part of the reign of William 
IV. much ill-feeling was created in Great 
Britain and Holland by the conduct of tho 
former country towards the latter. The difli • 
culty.was entailed as one of the consequenceti 
of the Belgic Revolution of 1830-82. 

King William I., of Holland, naturally 
looked to England for sympathy in his contest 
with the revolted Belgians. What, therefore, 
were his chagrin and resentment to find the 
whole influence of the British Government 
thrown on the side of the insurrectionists an d to 
see the crown of the kingdom of Belgium con- 
ferred on Leopold, son-in-law of the late king 
of England. To the student of history, how- 
ever, this course of the British Government, 
will not appear astonishing or unnatural. 
From time immemorial it has been the ill-dis- 
guised policy of England, in the maintenance 
of her own ascendency, to give her sympathies 
to the revolutionary party in foreign States ; 
this to the extent of encouraging the rupture 
of rival kingdoms up to the point when the 
revolution itself becomes a menance to British 
interests. It was in pursuance of this political 
habit that in 1835 the encouragement of the 
British Government was openly given to Isa- 
bella of Spain, at that time engaged in a civil 
war with her uncle, Don Carlos. A division of 
the English Army, under command of General 
Evans, was sent into the Spanish Peninsula, 
and took active part in upholding the child- 
qu^en of the kingdom. 

On* the whole, the Ministry of Lord Mel- 
bourne was ineflBcient, and the times of its 
ascendencv uneventful. The Premier himself 



274 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TBE NODERIT WORLD. 



owed his high place in the Government to 
negative rather than positive qualitiea. He 
has been pronounced by political critics to 
have been deficient in insight and in energy; 
and his political influence must be referred, 
not to his onn strength, but to condilioua in- 
dependent of his will, and to the concurreace 
of fortunate circumstances. It was the hap- 
piness of Melbourne, however, to form the 
connecting link between the reign of William 
IV. and the girl -sovereign who succeeded him. 
As for the king, his life was now rapidly 
waning. In the last years of bis reign he ex- 
ercised only the slightest influence on the 
course of events. William began to show 
ngns of debility in May of 1837. It was 



fo'und that he labored from a fatal affectioB 
of the heart. Declining for several weeks, he 
came to his death on the 20th of June, in that 
year. He died, as bis brother before him had 
died, with no legitimate children; and the 
large family of alleged illegitimate heirs were, 
of course, excluded from the throne. It be- 
longed to the Melbourne Ministry to steer the 
ship of State from the narrow and stormy seas 
of an unpopular reign into the ocean — almost 
shoreleaa — of the Victorian epoch; an ocean 
wide and free — ^not, indeed, without its seawiDi 
of storm and tempest, but for the most part 
&nned with gentle breezes from infinite 
regions, and crowned with the radiance •£ 
■nnlight. 



Charter CXXVi II. —Epoch ok chartism. 



iHE reader of history must 
\ be constantly surprised 
with the Ticissitudes 
through which the Boyal 
Houses of Europe have 
been fated to pass. Time 
1 and again we have the 
recurring phenomenon of a princely family in 
fiill bloom suddenly struck with blight and 
barrenness. Who could have foreseen that 
the House of Tudor, represented in the vigor- 
ous and passionate Henry VIII., could have 
so suddenly and strangely descended into ex- 
Unction and oblivion? Who could have an- 
ticipated the equally sudden descent of the 
House of Stuart into the female line? And 
who can contemplate without wonder the de- 
termination of nature that not one of the 
seventeen children of Queeu Anoe should 
reach maturity? Why shouM Henry, six 
times wedded to fertile queeus, be unable to 
perpetuate the name of Tudor? Why should 
Anue be mocked as if she were a fruitful tree, 
doomed to jjear forever, but dropping its un- 
ripe and blasted apples to the earth ? So also 
we view with astonishment the sudden decad- 
ence of the family of George III. Nine sons 
are born to him, and two of them in turn 
wear his crown, and yet at the death of 



William IV., in June of 1837, not a ringl« 
male child of the legitimate blood of the 
English Guelfs, not a nngle true cion of that 
House of Hanover>BruD8wick, which had been 
transplanted from Germany to England, r»- 
mained to inherit the cn^wn. Edward, Duk» 
of Kent, fourth son of George IH., had been 
laid with his fathers since 1826. To his sur- 
viving family, however, by the established 
laws of English descent, the monarchy must 
now go for a sovereign. And that sovereign 
was found in the person of the Duke of Ken^s 
daughter, the Princess Alexamdrika Vic- 
TOEiA, and to her the crown descended without 
the shadow of dispute. 

The Princess at this time was seventeen 
years and one month of age. She had been 
the heir-presumptive during the reign of her 
uncle William IV. Her education, in the 
meantime, was intrusted to the Duchess of 
Korthumberland, by whom the Princess wu 
removed from the degrading influences of the 
court, and carefully trained for the duties 
alike of queenhood and womanhood. Her 
development had been carefully guarded, and 
she had grown up a virtuous, intelligent, and 
prudent girl, fitted by every kind of discipline 
for the exalted rank and trying Juties of her 
station. Nothing in history presents a stronger 



OREAT BRITAIN— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



275 



X. WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. Z087. 



2. William Rufus, HOO. S. Henby I., 1185. 

GEOFFREY PLANTAOENET— Matilda. 



Adela. 

I 
4. Stsphbn, 1151 






5. Henry II., 1189. 

I 



ft. Richard Lion He^bt, 1199. 



7. John Lackland, 1216. 
8. HSNRY III., 1272. 



9. Edward L, 1807. 

10. Edward II., 1827. 

I 

11. Edward in., 1377. 



Edward. Lionel, - Edmund, John, 

the Black Piinoe. Dake of Clarenoe. Duke of York. Duke of LANCASTER. 



Thomas, Duke of Glouoester. 



12. RidiARD II., 1400. Philippa. 



Boiler Mortimer. 

Ann e Earl of Cambridge. 11 • 

RICHARD. D Jke OF YORK. ^' ^"^"^ ^' ^^'^- Mttgaret-Duke o^ 

I 



18. Hjsnry IV., 1418. John Beaufort 

14. Henry V., 1422. John. OWEN TUDOR. 

16. HBifRY VL, 1471. MIogBret-Duke of Richmond. 



16. Edward IV., 1488. 



1& Richard m., I486. 



17. Edward V., 1488. 



Elizabeth: 



WALTER STUART. 
Robert IL 



22. Mary, 1666. 28. Elizabeth, 1608. 21. Edward VI., 1658.. 



20. Henry Vin., 1547. Maigaret^ 



Robert UL 
—09. Hehbt Vn., 1609. jamcL 

JamealL 
James in. 
James IV. 



James V. 

Mary, Queen of Scots. 
24. James I. (VI.), lOKw 



^ I 

25. Charles I., 1649. 



n 

26. Charles II., 1685. 27. James II., 1701. 



Mary. 



Elizabeth. 

SOPHIA-DUXB Of'hANOVBR- 

BRUNSWICK. 

80. Oeoroe L, 1727. 



29. ANNE, 1714. JamesEdward 28. MARY,-a8. WILLIAM IIL OF ORANGE. 170.. ^- ^«^»«»II- 1760. 



(Pretender). 



1694. 



Charles Edward. 



Cardinal of York. 



Frederick, Prince of WsleSL 
32. Gboboe m., 1820. 



THE MONARCHS 

OF 

ENGLAND. 

SXPLAKATIOIT: 

Those who reigned are printed In Small CAPXTAiisand nambered. 
Connectinsr links are printed in Roman type. 
Names of Housen In dark-faced type. 



83. George, IV. . 1830. 84. William IV. , 1837. Duke of Kent 

I 
Prince Albert— 35. Victoria. 

Prince of Wales. 



Albert Victor. 



Geoiige. 



•ontrast than is afforded by the sentiments, the 
instincts, and purposes of the maidenly bosom 
«f Victoria on the day of her accession, and 



T 



the passions floating in that purlieu of filth 1 The circumstances of the inauD^ration of 



find abomination, which swelled and broke in 
a surf of indescribable offensiveness around the 
English throne during the last two reigns. 



276 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



the joung Queen were such as to awaken the 
enthuBJastic adiniraiioD of her subjecLs. Her 
youth and inexperience, and her furtuQate 
igDorauce of the world, it had been supposed, 

would Iphvp hpr B hplnlfsa nnvici> In 

the 
■boi 



ness under trial. The war-battered Welling* 
ton said gruffly that he could not have wished 
a better performance from bis own daughter. 
On coming to power, the new Queen rejected 

t.liA nRtnii A IcvAnfiriiia wbich 

»m- 
Kus- 
iply 
by 

Mb. 



(iUKKS VICIUKIA. 



iDuaical tones of girlhood, showed neither fear 
nor embarrassment, blushed crimsdo red when 
her two aged uncles knelt to kiss her hand, 
and won the hearts of all. Peel declared him- 
self amazed at her manner and behavior, at 
her deep sense of the situation, at ber firm- 



one of the most important iu English histoiy, 
will ever be remembered. 

The maiden ruler who was thus called t* 
the throne of England was the thirty-fifth in 
order of succession from William the Conqueror, 
and the fifth Queen Regnant of the United 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



277 



Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The 
oontingencj which had been provided for 
on the accession of George I. had thus at 
last arrived. Under the constitution of the 
Dukedom of Hanover-Brunswick, the princes 
of that line must be male ; for the Salic Law» 
prevalent immemorially in Germany as well 
as France/ excluded women from the throne. 
Accordingly, when George L was called by 
Parliament to the sovereignty of Great Britain, 
it was provided that so long as a male heir re- 
mained to wear the crown, Hanover and 
England should be governed by a common 
king; but in case the English crown should 
bil into the female line, then Hanover should 
revert to some other branch of the falnily in 
which the male line was still preserved. The 
event had come. The daughter of the Duke 
€f Kent had inherited the English throne. 
Hanover was accordingly severed from its 
political relations with Great Britain, and on 
the accession of Victoria became an inde- 
pendent power. Duke Ernest, of Cumber- 
landy was chosen king. 

The new sovereign of England came into 
power under the auspices of the Tories. Lord 
Melbourne was still Prime Minister. The 
Queen herself sympathized in her youth, as 
■he has always done, with the Tory party, and 
the Ministry of that party remained in power 
f» it had been in the closing years of George 
IV. A new Parliament was created by an 
appeal to the country, and the result showed 
that the Tory, or, as it now began to be called, I 
the Oonaervative^ party had a slight gain in the I 
elections. If we should glance into the En- 
glish Parliament at this time, we would dis- 
cover in that body an array of political talent, 
not to say genius, which could hardly be sur- 
passed in the palmiest days of British history. 
The foremost man of all was, doubtless. Lord 
Henry Brougham, at that time fifty-eight years 
•f age. Perhaps no abler or stronger charac- 
ter has appeared in the arena of statesmanship 
within the present century. He was a great 
orator, as that term is used, to describe not 
only the temporary influence of the speaker 
•ver those whom he addresses, but also to sig- 
nify a solidity of subject-matter and cogency 
•f reasoning, such as may well influence the 
thought of readers in another age and country. 
Brougham had risen to the Chancellorship in 



1830. In 1835 he was left out of the Whig 
Ministry, and, during the remainder of hiB 
career, pursued an independent course on all 
questions of the day, wielding, in his old age» 
a free-lance, which he hurled with the power 
of a giant After him, the second place among 
the Parliamentarians of the time has been as- 
signed to Lord John Lyndhurst, who, as a 
debater, has had few superiors in the British 
House of Lords. Lyndhurst was the son of 
John Singleton Copley, an American painter 
of the Colonial times, and was born in Boston^ 
in the year 1772. He was a Tory by politics, 
a statesman by profession. Without the ag- 
gressive force of Brougham, without his rug* 
gedness of character and stormy disposition, 
he nevertheless rose easily to a high plane of 
influence in British affairs, and maintained it 
through a long and eventful life. In the House 
of Commons of this time might be seen sitting, 
for the city of London, George Grote, the histo* 
nan of Greece. There, also, was Edward Lytton 
Bulwer, destined to the peerage. In the same 
body appeared, for the first time, the eccentrie 
and foppish Benjamin Disraeli, for whom des* 
tiny had reserved the task of making his au* 
gust Queen Empress of India. William £. 
Gladstone had then seen five years' service in 
the House. Lord John Russell had just begun 
his career as leader of his party. There were 
Palmerston, and Peel, and Stanley, O'Connell 
and Sheil, shouting to the charge for the 
emancipation of Ireland. It has been re- 
marked that of the great names who were des- 
tined, in the next forty years, to be blazoned 
on tho escutcheon of British Parliamentary 
history, only four — Roebuck, Cobden, Bright, 
and Macaulay — were wanting in the Parlia- 
ment which assembled when Victoria took the 
scepter. 

The Government of the Queen inherited 
from its predecessor all of the reformatory tend- 
encies of the age. Those tendencies had not 
yet satisfied themselves by taking organie 
forms in the English Constitution. But for a 
brief season the reformatory movements were 
checked by the diversion of the attention of 
the Government to the affairs of Lower Canada. 
In that country an insurrection broke out in 
1838, and the Goverflment found itself under 
the necessity of suspending the colonial con- 
stitution, in virtue of which Canada had her 



278 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



dvil existence. In order to secure a better 
administration in the Provincey John George 
liambton, Lord Durham, was selected as a 
new Governor, and to him was assigned the 
difficult task of quelling the insurrection, pac- 
ifying the people, and reorganizing the Gov- 
ernment. On repairing to America and as- 
suming his duties in Canada, he was so 
unfortunate as to adopt measures bejond the 
limits of his instructions, and perhaps beyond 
the limits of present application to the then 
conditions in Canada. The ordinances which 
he prepared for the government of the Prov- 
ince were subsequently taken as the basis of 
Canadian nationality, but they were disap- 
proved by the House )f Lords; whereupon 
the Governor was so deeply offended that, with- 
out waiting to be recalled, he abandoned his 
post and returned to England. 

Nor did the event fail to justify, in some 
measure, what had seemed to be the rashness 
and impractical temper of Lord Durham. Pow- 
erful friends at home approved and defended 
his course. His report on the condition of 
aflairs in Canada was one of the ablest papers 
of the times, and Parliament was soon obliged 
to adopt the very policy which the discarded 
Governor had attempted to maintain in his 
brief and extraordinary administration. 

The period of history upon which we are 
now entering was marked in the history of all 
<$ountrie8 by the great extension of scientific 
knowledge. It was the epoch, rather, in which 
scientific knowledge began to be extensively 
applied in all industrial and commercial enter- 
prises. It was, in short, the dawn of the new 
era of contrivance and invention. The aug- 
mentation* of the productiveness of human 
labor in almost all departments of industry 
became perceptible from the fourth decade of 
the century, and the volume of applied force 
was destined to increase and widen through 
the whole Victorian Age. It were difficult, in- 
deed, as it is always difficult, to point out with 
exactitude the beginnings, the true origins, of 
the great discoveries and inventions which 
have so vastly multiplied in our times. Per- 
haps we should cite the last quarter of the 
eighteenth century as the general date of the sci- 
entific discoveries which began to be utilized 
fifty years afterwards. The discovery of oxy- 
gen-gas by Priestley, in 1774, might almost be 



said to be the first stage in the natural sciences. 
What, indeed, had mankind actually known 
about the true constitution of nature up to 
the time of Priestley and Franklin? The 
scientific men of this and the subsequent age, 
however, were explorers and discoverers rather 
than inventors. It is with tlie application of 
discovery, the adaptation, or, if we may so say, 
the incorporation of the principles by which 
phenomena are governed into physical con- 
trivance, that we are here to consider and il- 
lustrate. 

One of the greatest of the achievements to 
which we refer was the extension of StEAM 
Navigation — particularly the navigation of 
the Atlantic Ocean by steamships — and the 
establishment by this means of regular lines of 
communication between Europe and America. 
The Atlantic Ocean was first traversed expert 
imen tally by a small steamer called the Savaai^ 
nah, in 1816. The vessel was constructed at 
New York, was successfully steered to Liver- 
pool under the propulsion of steam, and con- 
stituted the brief experimental wonder of the 
times. The next voyages accomplished by the 
came agent were made a 'few years later be- 
tween Holland and the Dutch West Indian 
colonies. It was, however, in the early part 
of the year 1838 that the practical feature of 
ocean steam navigation was demonstrated on a 
large scale. In that year the British-built 
steamships Sirius and Oreat Western made their 
trial voyages across the Atlantic. The first 
trip of the Oreat Western was made from Bris* 
tol to New York in fifteen days. The SiriuB 
steamed out from Cork and reached the Amer- 
ican metropolis in seventeen days on- her trial 
trip. It was the demonstration of a great 
problem, the favorable solution of which was 
destined to exercise a vast influence, not only 
on the commercial affairs of nations, but on the 
nations themselves by the extension of inter* 
course and the stimulation of intemationality. 
This was particularly true of that feature of 
the improvement which related to the trans* 
mission of the oceanic mails. Nor will th# 
patriot reader on this side of the Atlantic fail 
to recall Avith pride the fact that the Mother 
Country, essentially maritime as she is, at tho 
bottom of her greatness, was constrained to 
draw, upon the genius of the American Repub- 
lic for the first suggestions and demonstrationt 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



279 



of the practicability of propelling vessels by 
steam-enginery. 

The same pride may well be 'inspired by 
the story of the indebtedness of the Mother 
Country to her daughter in the matter of ap- 
plying the electrical current as a means of 
communication. In England, the first to 
make such application of electricity was Sir 
Charles Wheatstone, at that time professor of 
experimental philosophy in King's College, 
London. It was in June of 1836 that Wheat- 
atone produced what i^ay be called the rudi- 
mentary telegraph. In that year he took out 
a patent ''for improvements in giving signals 
and sounding alarms in distant places by 
means Of electric currents, transmitted through 
metallic circuit'' Similar discoveries had 
already been made by our own Professor Morse, 
but it does not appear that Wheatstone was 
indebted for his contrivance to the American 
inventor. Both philosophers were working 
out, independently, the solution of the same 
problem. With Wheatstone was associated 
Mr. Cooke, an Englishman of scientific attain- 
ments and business experience, whos6 practical 
abilities were joined with those of the phi- 
losopher in his patent for the first electrical 
apparatus of the telegraphic kind in England. 

It should be observed, however, that the 
work of Wheatstone was limited to the sound- 
ing of fflgnals at a distance, and did not reach 
to the conveyance of information by means of 
language. The latter achievement was the 
work of Morse, ab has already been delineated 
in another chapter. In the matter of the rail- 
road, however, the first actual production be- 
longed to England. There it was that Stephen- 
ion led the way into the new continent of 
commerce and travel. The London and Bir- 
ningham Railway was not, however, opened 
in its whole length until 1838, fully sixteen 
years after the successful opening of the first 
line, eight miles in length, to the Hetton 
colliery. An act for the transmission of the 
English mails by railway was passed through 
Parliament in 1838, and thenceforth the de- 
velopment and extension of the system was 
rapid and constant until it became universal. 

We come at this same period in English 
history, to one of those remarkable features in 
civilization dependent in part on physical con- 
trivance and in part on civil administration. 



We refer to the establishment of what, in 
English parlance, is called The Penny Post. 
The methods of transmitting the mails bj 
irregular and local agencies, such as had been 
in vogue since the Middle Ages, continued in 
operation in Great Britain to within the 
memory of men still living. The idea of a 
general postal system, operating at cheap rates 
under direction and control of the Govern- 
ment, did not enter the mind of any British 
statesman until after the accession of Victoria. 
Even then the project had to be carried to 
Parliament, and persistently advocated by a 
man wiser in his generation than any member 
of that body, before the feasibility of the 
scheme was acknowledged and adopted. The 
xperiences of Sir Rowland BBU — for to him 
all mankind are perpetually indebted for the 
conception of a cheap and universal postal 
system-^were almost identical in his dealings 
with the British Parliament and advocacy of 
his proposed measure before that body with 
those of Professor Morse before the American 
Congress. The scene in either instance of 
these two pioneers before the two great repre- 
sentative law-making bodies of the English- 
speaking Nations may well remind one of the 
attitude of Columbus, surrounded with a group 
of bigoted monks and ignorant school-men, and 
trying to reveal to their bat-winged imagina- 
tions the glories of a New World ! 

It was in the year 1839 that the Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer laid before Parliament 
a proposition in which it was declared expe- 
dient to reduce the postage on letters to one 
uniform rate of one penny charged upon every 
letter of a given weight. The measure also 
proposed the abolition of the franking privi- 
lege hitherto possessed by members of Parlia- 
ment, and the restriction of franking to such 
official documents as must be transmitted by 
the officers of Government. The striking 
feature of the proposition was that it reversed 
the existing theory in regard to the transmis- 
sion of matter by mail. Hitherto the receipts 
from the post-office department had many 
times fallen short of the expenditure. The 
prevalent systems of mail-carrying were so 
imperfect and irregular, that many of the 
leading business houses in Great Britain had 
chosen to employ private parties to carry their 
mail from city to city. By this means, and 



280 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODE RUT WORLD. 



by many others, the aggregate receipts of the 
post-office department were reduced to a figure 
as meagre as the system itself wascontemptible. 
Whenever from any such causes a deficiency 
had arisen, it had been the custom of tue 
department to advance the rates of postage, 
believing that thereby the aggregate receipts 
would be increased. It remained for Rowland 
Hill to demonstrate the fallacy of this position 
and demonstrate the truth of the reverse. In 
1837 he published a pamphlet entitled Post- 
office Reform; its Importance and Practica- 
bility, It was one of those rare productions 
whioh,by their invincible logic and cogent array 
of facts, make a conquest of the human mind. 
Hill's work foughtits way even into Parliament. 
The post-office authorities decried the project. 
The Postmaster-General denounced it in the 
House of Lords as a visionary scheme. When 
Parliament took the matter up, and, in spite 
of itself, began to admit the truthfulness of 
Hill's demonstrations, the officials of the de- 
partment assented to try the project, but 
hedged against the consequences. Sydney 
Smith satirized the enterprise with his usual 
bitterness. Nevertheless, the ministry gave 
way under the impact of the truth. The great 
commercial cities caught a glimpse of the 
benefits of the new system, and poured their 
petitions in its favor into the House of Com- 
mons. A bill was brought in embodying the 
scheme of Rowland Hill, and on the 10th of 
January, 1840, the act for the establishment 
of postage at the uniform rate of one penny 
per letter of not more than half an ounce in 
weight, was adopted against the strenuous 
opposition of a large party in both Houses of 
Parliament. And it may well surprise pos- 
terity to know that among the names of those 
most bitterly antagonistic to the act w^ere 
those of the Duke of Wellington and Sir 
Robert Peel. The country and the world 
immediately responded to the new system by 
pouring an increased volume of revenue into 
the post-office department of every nation 
where cheap postage, after the manner devised 
by Sir Rowland Hill, has been adopted as a 
method of adminstration. 

We here approach one of the most remark- 
able episodes in thepoliticalhistory of England. 
It was in the year 1838 that the extraordinary 
social and industrial upheaval known by the 



general name of Chartism occurred. It is 
doubtful whether any other agitation of lik& 
kind, more general, more profound, more 
heated, had shaken the fabric of British 80« 
ciety than was the sudden and unexpected in- 
surrection of the masses in favor of what wa» 
known as " the People's Charter." This name 
was given to a brief summary of political prin- 
ciples said to have been drawn up by Daniel 
O'Connell, in the year above named, and 
handed by him to the Secretary of the Work« 
ingmen's Association, with the remark : 
•'There's your charter; agitate for it, and 
never be content with anything less." It is 
proper, first of all, to state concisely what 
were the principles of political action sum- 
marized in the People's Charter. 

The document in question- contained six 
brief formal propositions, which were as fol- 
lows: 

1. We demand Universal Suffrage — by 
which was meant rather Manhood Suffrage 
than what is now known as universal suffrage, 
meaning the ballot in the hands of both sexes. 
This, the Chartists did not demand. 

2. We demand an Annual Parliament — 
by which was meant the election of a new 
House of Commons each year by the people. 

3. We demand the right to Vote by Bal- 
lot — by which was meant the right of the 
people to employ a secret ballot at the elec- 
tions instead of the method viva voce. 

4. We demand the Abolition of the Prop- 
erty Qualification now requisite as a condition 
of eligibility to Membership in the House of 
Commons. 

5. We demand that the Members of Parlia- 
ment shall be paid a salary for their services. 

6. We demand the Division of the Coun- 
try into Equal Electoral Districts — by which 
was meant an equality of population^ as 
against mere territorial extent. 

Such, in brief, was the code of political 
doctrines under which the Chartist reformers 
of 1838 went forth to agitate the country. 

To the reader of to-day it must appear a 
matter of astonishment that the representatives 
of the working classes of Great Britain should 
have been called upon, at a time within the 
memory of men still living, to defend and ad- 
vocate political principles so self-evident and 
common-sense as those declared in the Charter; 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



281 



«nd his wonder must be raised to amazement 
when he is told that the whole governing 
power of Great Britain, the King, the Minis- 
try, the House of Lords, the House of Com- 
mons, the Tories as a party, the Whigs as a 
party, and — all party divisions aside — the 
great Middle Class of Englishmen set them- 
flelves in horrified antagonism to the Charter 
and its advocates, as though the former were 
the most incendiary document in the world, 
and the latter a rabble of radicals gathered 
from the purlieus of the French Revolution. 
How can such an incredible fact in the pres- 
ent-century history of Great Britain be ex- 
plained and interpreted? 

In the first place, the great Reform Bill of 
1832 had proved a signal failure. This is said 
with respect to the workingmen of Great 
Britain — to the masses of the people. That 
bill had been agitated in the first place by 
the well-to-do Middle Class of Englishmen. 
The battle for the standard in the Parliament- 
ary war of 1828-32 was between the Middle 
Class and the Aristocracy. The former fought 
for an extension of their rights; the latter for 
the maintenance of their exclusive privileges. 
But in that contest neither the representatives 
of the Middle Class nor the representatives of 
the Aristocracy had had the slightest care for 
the interests of the working masses — for the 
^rights of the real people of England. Never- 
theless, the real people had been profoundly 
egitated by the Middle Class orators and 
statesmen, and had been led to believe that 
the Reform Bill was intended to remove the 
evils under which the workingmen of Great 
Britain toiled on in the obscure drama of pov- 
erty from birth to death. 

The real people of England were thus en- 
listed in favor of the reform measures of 1832, 
and followed the banners of Earl Grey, Sir 
Robert Peel, and Lord John Russell. But 
what was the chagrin, mortification, disappoint- 
ment, and, presently, the rage of the working- 
men when, after the passage of the Reform 
Bill, they began to perceive that, so far as 
themselves were concerned, the measure had 
been a delusion and a snare. They saw, after 
five years of bitterness, that though great bene- 
fits had been derived from the bill by the 
Middle Class, no benefit whatever had reached 
themselves. They beheld, moreover, the Whig 



party withdraw from them and stand aloof, as 
though it would affiliate with that very Aris- 
tocracy from whose hands the Reform Bill had 
been so hardly wrung. Henceforth in the 
ears of the toiling masses the word R^ovm^ 
used in connection with the Parliamentary 
measures of 1832, sounded as a mockery, and 
the mention of it began to awaken on the 
features of all workingmen, from the hard- 
handed artisans of London to the soot-smutted 
miners of Wales, a sardonic grin, presently 
stifiTening into a frown of unspeakable hatred. 
Such was the principal antecedent of the agi- 
tation which arose under the Charter. 

Other causes cooperated with the principal 
cause. The amendment to the Poor Laws, 
while correct in principle and ultimately vin- 
dicated in practice, for the present worked 
hardship and engendered dissatisfaction. Be- 
yond all this, the working people of Englan^ 
were, at this time, ignorant to the last degree. 
They knew only in a certain vague way that they 
were oppressed, that they were suffering. 
They knew enough to perceive that the pro- 
ducts of their toil went to enrich the landed 
gentry, or to fill the cofiTers of great merchants 
and manufacturers. Superstition had not yet 
loosened its hold upon the popular imagination. 
Ignorant leaders came forth like apparitions, 
first, to deceive, and then disappoint, the 
masses. One of these, by the name of Thorn, 
a bankrupt brewer and half-madman, appeared 
in Canterbury, proposing to lead the people. 
He called himself Sir William Courtenay, of 
Powderham Castle, Knight of Malta, King of 
Jerusalem. Multitudes followed him about, 
until presently, near the gates of Canterbury, 
he and some of his principal followers, at the 
head of a large body of rioters, were shot dead 
in a conflict with the militia. But the fanatics 
who followed his banner believed that their 
leader would come forth by resurrection, and 
at length conduct them to social happiness 
and plenty. The industrial districts of Eng- 
land were rife with such delusions, and the ex- 
istence of the insurrectionary tendency among 
the working-classes was used by the Middle- 
Class Whigs as an excuse for inclining to the 
side of conservatism, and for locking with 
strong chains the wheels of the car of reform. 

But there were not wanting in England cer- 
tain brave spirits warmed with the enthusiasm 



1 



282 



UNIVERSAL HISTORYr^THE MODERN WORLD. 



of humaDitj, fearing not the menace of political 
ostracism, dreading not even the dungeon and 
the gibbet, who took up the People's Charter, 
so-called, and went forth among the masses to 
defend and advocate its doctrines. Among 
these, several names were conspicuous. First of 
all may be mentioned Feargus O'Connor, who 
was, perhaps, the most popular and vehement 
of all the Chartist leaders. Thomas Cooper, a 
poet of no mean capacity, a philanthropist in 
word and deed, buoyed up the cause of Chart- 
ism with tongue and pen. In the eighth decade 
of the present century the lecture-goers of the 
United States were called, time and again, to 
hear the silvery tones of the voice of an aged 
Englishman. He was a veritable 8axon. His 
full beard and mustache were long and white. 
fle was short and thick in figure, of florid 
complexion ; and those fierce blue eyes, which 
he had taken by heredity from his Teutonic 
ancestors in the Hollowlands along the Bal- 
tic, by turns blazed with the fierceness of- 
his earnest convictions, or beamed with 
the benignity of his generous spirit Great 
were the themes which he presented on the 
American platform. Eloquent was the old 
man as he delineated some of the leading vicis- 
situdes of English history, or portrayed the 
thrilling crises of Continental society. With- 
out note or memorandum, he spoke for hours 
without a pause, and his hearers sat enraptured. 
On his last round before the free people 
of the West, the old man's right thumb was 
covered with the black stall which concealed 
the incipient felon destined to cause his death. 
He is gone. It was Henry Vincent, the 
Chartist orator, who, in 1828, suffered imprison- 
ment in Wales for advocating the People's 
Charter. 

Chartism became popular throughout Eng- 
land. The chief seats of the agitation 
were in the manufacturing and commercial 
cities. In all such situations the Chartists be- 
came numerous and powerful. The leaders, 
as a class, were men of the highest respectabil- 
ity and most earnest purpose. In some in- 
stances, mere factionists and adventurers, 
having everything to gain and nothing to lose, 
threw in their fortunes with the cause, and 
generally brought disgrace upon it. But for 
the rest, the movement was directed by an in- 
telligent enthusiasm for which it would be 



difficult to find a parallel as the prime motive 
of any other political agitation. It can not 
be denied — and it was a fact, indeed, gloried in 
by the Chartist reformers themselves — that the 
multitudes who followed in the wake were men 
of low degree, drawn from the mines and fac- 
tories, the dirty streets of cities, and the hum* 
ble shops of country villages. This mass, 
however, constituted a large part of the En- 
glish people, and their struggle for emancipa- 
tion was among the noblest of the popular 
excitements of the century. 

The methods, moreover, adopted by the 
Chartist leaders to secure their ends were in 
the highest degree commendable. The orators 
went from city to city, from village to village, 
speaking to the throngs that gathered to share 
a common enthusiasm and to hear discussed 
the principles of the People's Charter. Torch- 
light processions, popular dinners, and muld* 
tudinous gatherings became the order of the 
day, and the movement presently gathered 
such head that the Government, not without 
reason, grew apprehensive of a political up- 
heaval in the kingdom. As a rule, all the 
English artisans and the producing classes, 
properly so-called, espoused the Chartist cause. 
The Ministry and Parliament became aittrmed» 
and strenuous measures were adopted to pre- 
vent the further spread of the excitement, and 
to trammel up the consequences of the work 
already done. 

The Chartist meetings began to be broken 
up, and the leaders to be prosecuted. One of 
the severest crises was that attendant upon the 
effort to release Henry Vincent from prison "at 
Newport. For this purpose a vast force of 
workingmen was crudely organized, under the 
leadership of a Newport trader by the name of 
Frost. He was assisted by several others, and 
his forces were arranged in three columns, to 
converge on Newport at a certain hour of the 
night; but the movements of the rude in- 
surgents were so irregular that only the column 
headed by Frost arrived at the scene of action 
at the appointed time. This division was con- 
fronted by the citv authorities, and a collision 
occurred, in which the workingmen were dis- 
persed. Frost and the other leaders were 
taken, tried, convicted, and condemned tof 
death. The sentence was not carried into ex- 
ecution, but was commuted into banishment 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



283 



for ife. Three of the leaders were seot to 
the penal colonies; but in course of time the 
animosity of the Government was cooled, and 
those of the coDdemned Chartists who had ni>t 
died in the interim regained their freedom. 

It were long to follow the deeliuiea of the 
agitation during the next ten jears. The 
movement ebbed and flowed. Those of the 
Chartist leaders who had espoused the cause 
through an unselfish enthusiasm, inspired by 
sympathy for the woes of the English masses, 
held stoutly on. Persecutions and prusecu- 



Jamaica. It grew out of the abolition of 
slavery in that country, and of a struggle be- 
tween the old masters and the freedmeu, not 
unlike the chaos which ensued in tlie Southern 
States in tJie decade succeeding the American 
Civil War. On the whole, the Imperial Gov- 
ernment of Jamaica, that is, the Governor, 
ihe Council, and the other royal officers, 
favored the maintenance of the rights of the 
enfranchised classes in the island. But the 
Assembly, represeuting the old dominant mas-' 
ter-class of the people, planted themselves 



VI BW OF JAMAICA. 



tions did not appall them ; imprisonment, and 
even death, did not suffice to still their 
voices. We shall hereafter see that as late as 
1848 the Chartists, as a party, were as numer- 
ous and powerful, as capable of shaking the 
country with their tread, as they had been in 
the spring-tide of the agitation. 

The Ministry of Melbourne now tottered to 
its fall. The circumstance which was destined 
to give the coup de yrace to that rather long- 
lived and tittle sensational Cabinet related to 
the administration of affairs in the island of 



against the freedmen, and a clash thus arose 
in the heart of the Government. 

The question was one which greatly pui- 
zled the Ministry; but the Gordian knot was 
cut at length by an act suspehding or abrogat- 
ing the Jamaican Constitution. This measure 
was violently opposed by Sir Robert Peel and 
the Conservatives on the one side, and by the 
Radicals on the other. The latter now consti- 
tuted a considerable body in Parliament. They 
had, in the times of the Reform a^tation, fol- 
lowed the Whig banner with enthusiasm; but. 



284 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.-'THE MODERN WORLD. 



like the Chartists, of which they were really 
the representatives, they had eaten the worm- 
wood and drank the gall of bitterness and dis- 
appointment on account of the small outcome 
of the Reform movement to popular liberty. 
The combined attack of the two wings was 
more than the Melbourne Minbtry could 
stand. The Premier resigned his place, and 
suggested to the Queen that she call Sir Rob- 
ert Peel to the head of the Government. 

Between the larger paragraphs of English 
greatness are interlarded many paragraphs of 
English littleness. We here come to one of 
those extraordinary episodes in the Parlia- 
mentary history of Great Britain which may 
well excite a smile on the lips of posterity. 
The young Queen of the United Kingdom had 
her royal household after the manner of her 
ancestry. Among the personages composing 
the household, two of the most important were 
th^ Ladies of the Bed-chamber. This delicate 
office of personal and intimate attendance on 
the Queen had been given to the wife of Lord 
Normanby and the sister of Lord Morpeth, 
afterwards Lord Carlisle. These two noble- 
men had both been holding high offices under 
the Whigs. The first had been Lord-Lieuten- 
ant of Ireland, and the second, Irish Secretary 
in the same Administration. But these officers 
had, of course, gone down with the Whig 
Ministry of Melbourne. The question was 
whether the wife of the one and the sister of 
the other. Ladies of the Bed-chamber to the 
Queen, should or should not go out of place 
with the Ministry. When Sir Robert Peel 
went to the Queen to accept from her the of- 
fice of Premier, he thought he discovered a 
specter, two specters indeed, in Her Majesty's 
bed-chamber. He conceived that the retention 
of two eminent Whig ladies in closest attend- 
ance upon their royal mistress would break the 
efficiency of the new Conservative Ministry 
about to be formed. He, therefore, rather 
abruptly and without due tact, demanded that 
the Queen's ladies-in-waiting should share the 
fate of the fallen Ministry. 

The young Queen was shocked at the propo- 
sition. She had become greatly attached to 
the ladies who were now regarded as a menace 
to Sir Robert and his Conservatives. She ac- 
cordingly consulted with Lord John Russell, 
and, on his advice, replied to Sir Robert that * 



she could not consent to a course which she 
conceived to be contrary to usage, and which 
was so greatly repugnant to her feelings. 
Sir Robert thereupon refused to accept the 
Government, and made a high-sounding ora- 
tion in Parliament in defense of his position. 
A Ministerial crisis was thus produced, and 
the Queen was obliged to recall Lord Mel- 
bourne to the head of the Government. The 
excitement growing out of this *' Question 
of the Bed-chamber," as it was called, spread 
through the country, and a oonsiderable in- 
terval elapsed before Parliament swung back 
into its customary mood. 

The return of Lord Melbourne to the head 
of the Government was only for a brief season. 
On resuming office he was still confronted with 
the Jamaica Bill. That measure had to be 
modified and remodified under the dictation 
of the Opposition, until its leading features 
were tinkered away. Even these beatings 
about could not save the already discredited 
Whig party from rout and overthrow. The 
Ministry staggered on for a brief season, and 
was driven finally from power to make way, 
in September of 1841, for the accession of Sir 
Robert Peel and the Conservatives. 

The attention of the British public could but 
be called, at an early date, to the question of 
the succession. Here, indeed, was a Maiden 
Queen on the throne of England. As for the 
rest, the English Guelfs were well-nigh extin- 
guished. The great family of George HI. had 
come to this: a modest, quiet, and not un- 
comely young woman on the English throne. 
Nor' was the Queen herself unmindful of the 
situation. Girlish fancy, as well as Imperial 
duty, had suggested to her the desirability-^ 
the necessity— of marriage. To her credit be 
it said, that she was totally devoid of that un- 
womanly pride which flamed in the bosom of 
Elizabeth Tudor, making her prefer the sin« 
gleuess and selfishness of royal power to the 
charms of wifehood and motherhood. At the 
opening of Parliament, in 1840, Victoria ap- 
peared in person, and declared her intention 
to be married to her cousin. Prince Albert 
of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The young Majesty 
said in her speech, that she trusted that the 
step which she was about to take would be 
conducive to the interests of her people as 
well as to her own domestic happiness. It was 



\ 



GREAT BRITAIN.^EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



2SS 



fcoown that the ro^al marriHge thus anoouDced 
was, both on the Queen's part and the part 
of tbe Prince, an afikir of the heart, rather 
than an affiur of rojal and poliUoal oonven- 
ience. 

The event fully justified public expecta- 
tion. Prince Albert was eminently worthy of 
the trying statjon to which he was called. 
His situation was peculiar in tbe last degree. 
From one point of view, it seemed that the 
law of nature was reversed and made of no 
«fi'ect by the Constitution of Great Britun. 
The Prince was the husband of thr Queen, 
but the law of affection came in to rectify 
and amend the hardship to which the husband 
was subjected; and there can be no doubt 
that while the Queen heucefortb held the 
•cepter over his head, he to the end of life 
lield an equally imperial scepter over her heart 

It may well be asked, especially in a Re- 
public like ours, what part or lot Prince 
Albert, in such a situation, had, or could have, 
with respect to the public affairs of the king- 
dom. Was be simply a cipher by the side of 
that ugnificant unit, the Queen? or might he 
be reckoned among the political and civil 
forces of the reignT In the first place, the 
Prince was by nature and discipline a gentle- 
man and scholar. The domestic pursuits 
«hanned him from his boyhood. In his intel- 
lectual preferences he choee art and education 
as the two subjects most oongenial to his taste, 
And to these elevaljng branches of culture he 
devoted himself with assiduity. He became 
the patron of many of the noblest enterprises 
•f the Victorian era; and although never what 
might be called a popular prince among the 
people to whom he was set in such strange 
relation, he nevertheless exercised on the men 
and manners of his time a most wholesome in* 
flueuce, the effects of which have not yet 
passed away. Nor may we overlook bis 
«qns.lly salutary, though indirect, influence on 
the Queen, and through the Queen on the 
Ministry, the Parliament, the whole Adraini^ 
tration of Great Britain. In this respect he 
was a moderating and conservative force, 
checking, as far as he might, the evil con- 
seCjuences of party legislation and the rage of 
politics. He was in all respects a cautious, 
prudent man, tittle disposed to interfere, except 
vith affectionate advice, in the affairs of the 



august personage by his side. His patronaga 
of art and learoing endeared him in a high de- 
gree to the intellectual classes of England. 
Painters and poets sought fab company, and 
scientific men, laboring in the dark minea ot 
truth from which new laws of the world %m 
drawn forth and elucidated for the benefit of 
mankind, tuioed erer to Prince Albert as to a 
wise counselor and steadfast friend- 
Some of the incidents of the PrinoA 
career, after his union with the Queen, may 
well be narrated. At the outset be was sub- 
jected to a humiliation in Parliament, by Mm 



reduction of the proposed annuity of fifty 
thousand pounds to thirty thousand pounds — 
this the work of the Tory Opposition. Hit 
good sense, however, led him to make no sign* 
and presently afterwards he received the great 
compliment of being declared Regent in case 
of the Queeil's death with issue. In this casa 
the Opposition joined with the Ministry, and 
the act was passed by unanimous vote. It 
can not be doubted that the measure con* 
tributed not a little to the dignified estimata 
which was henceforth placed on the Prince by 
the English people. Ever afterwards he con- 
stituted a kind of outside Privy Council to tha 



286 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.^THE MODERN WORLD. 



Queen and extant Ministry ; nor would it be 
easy to point out, in the twenty-one years of 
his life subsequent to the royal marriage, a 
single instance in which his influence was ex- 
ercised to the hurt of the British Nation. 

Meanwhile, the Prince set his mind on the 
accomplishment of many improvements and 
reforms in the existing order. In the early 
years of his ascendency he undertook, among 
other thingS) to effect the abolition of dueling 
in the army. The Prince's project contem- 
plated the establishment of a system of Courts 
of Honor, before which the difficulties con- 
stantly arising between officers and among 
soldiers, might be arbitrated without appeal 
to the barbarous code duello. In this work he 
secured the cooperation of the Duke of 
Wellington, and, although the measure of es- 
tablishing courts failed of adoption, the atti- 
tude of the Prince, and of those statesmen 
who espoused his views, prevailed over the 
brutal usages of the past to the extent of their 
extinction. Dueling, as a practice among 
public men and soldiers, disappeared from En- 
glish society, if not as a direct result of the 
enlightened agitation started by Prince Albert, 
at least coincidently with the effort which he 
made in that direction. 

Following the course of events, we come 
now to consider the history of the so-called 
Opium War between England and China. 
Tl>e circumstances leading to this unfortunate 
and disgraceful catastrophe had their root 
partly in the industrial and political constitu- 
tion of the Chinese Empire, partly in the com- 
mercial transactions of the British East India 
Company; but, more properly, in the wanton 
avarice and conscienceless policy of the Home 
Government of Great Britain. The matter at 
issue related to the introduction and sale of 
opium by British traders in the ports of 
China. Such importation had begun under 
the auspices of the East India Company, and 
was carried on by that gigantic corporation 
until 1834, when the charter and exclusive 
rights of the company expired. Meanwhile, 
the opium-trade had become important. Many 
districts in India produce the poppy in exu- 
berant abundance. The drug drawn therefrom 
was carried by the ships of the Company to 
the Chinese ports, and sold to native merchants, 
under whose encouragement the opium-smok- 



ing habit spread rapidly among the people^ 
The Im|)erial Government took the alarm, and 
adopted the policy of excluding ^he opium- 
ships from all the harbors of China. 

The measures looking to this end were rea- 
sonable in the highest degree. The right of 
the Chinese authorities to protect the people 
of the Empire from the disastrous effects of 
the opium-habit could not be gainsaid with the 
slightest show of reason. The trade in opiun» 
had, meanwhile, passed from the monopoly 
of the British East India Company to the 
general merchant-marine of tlie kingdom. At 
this time the ports which were open to En- 
glish commerce and Englbh intercourse ii» 
general were Canton and Macao. In these 
ports of entry the British Government had 
planted superintendents, whose conduct, in- 
stead of being directed with judicial fairnea» 
and in accordance with the principles of inter- 
national law, was wholly biased by the inter* 
ests of the illicit trade of their countrymen. 

Nor did the Home Government in thi» 
emergency take the first step towards the main- 
tenance of right and honor in its dealing with 
the Chinese, authorities. Even when Captain 
Elliott, chief superintendent in the port of 
Canton, made one appeal after another to the 
Ministry for instructions covering the discharge 
of his duties, he received no reply. Mattem 
were allowed to drift in their own pernicious 
course. The British traders became bolder 
and bolder, discharging enormous cargoes of 
the deadly drug under the very eyes of the 
Chinese officers. After a while the Govern^ 
ment sent out a dispatch to Captain Elliott, 
telling him virtually that those who traded in 
opium against the edict of the Emperor would 
have to take the consequences ; that the Britisk 
authorities would not interfere to protect those 
merchants who were engaged in the illicit 
trade, but that they must bear such losses ae 
their own persistency and the execution of the 
Chinese laws might entail. This was equiva- 
lent to saying that the British traders in the 
East might provoke a war with China, witk 
the implied inference that, after ike war vm» 
begun, Great Britain would defend her inter- 
ests without looking into the justice or injua- 
tice of the conflict. It was clear that as soon 
as hostilities should be precipitated, excessee 
would be committed by the Chinese, unao- 



V 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



287 



quainted as they were with the usages of Eu- 
ropean warfare, and that the Home Govern- 
ment of England would be obliged to take up 
the cause of its traders and other subjects on 
the coast of China. 

The war came on. The Imperial officers in 
the Chinese ports demanded that the intro- 
duction of opium should absolutely cease, and 
that the cargoes now in store should be given 
up for destruction. At length, in 1839, 
Captain Elliott was constrained to comply 
with this demand. It was agreed that all the 
opium then in the himds of Englishmen should 
be surrendered to the native officers, and he 
also exacted a pledge — of no validity — from 
the merchants that they would cease to traffic 
in the drug. Accordingly, on the 8d of April, 
in the year just named, 20,383 chests of opium 
were given up to the mandarins, and, under 
direction of the Imperial Commissioner Lin, 
were destroyed. It was this event — though 
the same had been brought about in virtual 
conformity with the^ instructions which Captain 
Elliott had received — that precipitated hostili- 
ties. A declaration of war was made by the 
English Government in 1840, and the East 
Indian fleet was sent to the Chinese coast. 
Native armies were thrown into the field ; but 
in the conflict which ensued they were like 
sheep for the slaughter. There could be 
but one result What could the diminu- 
tive, undisciplined, half-armed men of the 
Orient, though fired with, the valor of 
Spartans, do before the shining bayonets and 
vomiting cannon of Great Britain ? 

As a matter of course, the English were 
constantly victorious. In the first year the 
British fleet captured the town of Chusan, 
and in 1841 the Bogue Forts were easily 
taken. It is narrated that when one of the 
Chinese towns was captured, the Tartar gen- 
eral, in the hour of defeat, shut himself up 
in his house, and ordered his servants to burn 
him to death. It was the custom of the routed 
Chinese to drive their wives and children into 
wells and ponds, and then cut their own 
throats in the very frenzy of their hopeless 
rage. When the British squadron sailed up 
the river Peiho against the Chinese capital, 
some futile eflbrts were made at negotiations, 
but the movement came to naught. The im- 
portant city of NinioiK), distant somewhat from 



the sea, was taken, and then Amoy, i'ar to the 
south, fell into the hands of the British. 

^ Not, however, until an array was planted 
in front of Nankin, did the Imperial Govern- 
ment realize the hopelessness of further resist- 
ance. Negotiations were again opened, which 
soon resulted in a treaty — a treaty as one-eided in 
its provisions as the war had been in its results. 
The island of Hong Kong was ceded to Great 
Britain. It was agreed that British consuls 
should be established in the five great ports 
of Canton — Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and 
Shanghai — and that those places should be 
thrown open to British traders. Finally, an 
indemnity of four and a half million pounds 
sterling was wrung from the Chinese Govern- 
ment as the price of the war, and to this was 
added another large sum to pay for the opium 
which had been destroyed at the outbreak of 
hostilities. The treaty was as humiliating to 
the Chinese as the war itself had been an 
outrage to their nationality. If there be a 
single instance in the recent history of man- 
kind more highly illustrative of the possible 
meanness, avarice, and arrogance of the 
strong — an example of the willful persecution 
and unmerited punishment of an unoflending' 
people by one less numerous, but more mighty 
than themselves — ^it is that of the Opium War 
of Great Britain with China. 

We are now come to the epoch in British 
history when the Melbourne Ministry, the as- 
cendency of which had reached well back into 
the last reign, tottered and fell. The Whig 
Government, represented by this Ministry, had 
been for some time in a moribund condition. 
If we glance into Parliament at the close of 
1840, we shall see a Government respected 
by no party, not even by itself; yet the Whigs 
clung to power. Time and again the Ministry 
was beaten on important votes in the House 
of Commons; but Lord Melbourne still cluog 
to his office. It was a time of temporizing and 
political expedients, most of which were 
adopted merely for the purpose of holding the 
party in power. In the many months of the dec- 
adence of the Ministry, however, sev iral meas- 
ures were either originated or promoted, the 
value of which after times have been quick t« 
perceive and augment. 

First among the popular movements be- 
longing to this time may be mentioned the 



28S 



UNIVERSAI* HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



establishment of a System of Pubuc Educa- 
tion in Great Britain. In this important 
enterprise we see again illustrated the ever-re- 
curring fact that in the British system of state 
and tociety, everything is the result of growth. 
It might be impossible to point out a siugle 
fltrOdng feature in the great nationality of the 
England of the present day which has not 
proceeded from some germinal beginning in 
the past, been promoted in the planting and 
development by the courage and foresight of 
a few progressive Englbhmen, opposed and as- 
sailed by the majority, pushed up and out 
against such opposition by the inherent vitality 
•f the measure, and brought finally to efflo- 
rescence and fruiting by that simple law of 
social evolution against the operation of which 
neither men nor nations can prevaiL So it 
was in the case of the project for the estab- 
lishment of a system of public education. 

It was in the year 1834 that the first grant 
•f public money was made by Parliament for 
the education of the children of th^) people. 
It was the meagre sum of twenty thousand 
pounds a year. Even this pittance, given 
forth from that treasury which had poured out 
Immemorially its multiplied millions and bill- 
Ions for the prosecution of wars, was virtually 
a ' contribution to the Church of England 
rather than to the common people. There had 
been organized in connection with the Estab- 
lished Church what was called the National 
School Society. There also existed another 
body, called the Foreign School Association, 
which actually went so far in the direction of 
radicalism as to admit to its benefits children 
•f all Christian denominations. While the ef- 
fortfl of the National School Society were di- 
rected wholly to the educational work of the 
Church of England, the sister organization 
went so far as to promote the education of the 
children even of Dissenters. 

It was into the hands of these two societies 
that the annual Parliamentary appropriation 
of twenty thousand pounds was directed ; and 
by these *wo societies the money was expended 
up to tht year 1839. To this time no effort 
whatever had been made in Great Britain to 
extend, under the patronage of the Govern- 
ment, the advantages of education to the masses 
of the people. Up to this time a scheme 
looking to a system of common secular educa- 



tion reaching to the poor would have beea 
regarded with horror by the most progreanv^ 
statesmen of the country. In 1839, however, 
a bill was introduced by Lord John Kuasell, 
increasing the annual appropriation to thirty 
thousand pounds, and at the same time pro- 
viding that the distribution of the funds should 
be transferred to a Committee of the Privy 
Council. Hitherto the money had been an- 
nually distributed precisely where it was not 
needed, and withheld from the very places which 
were crying to Heaven for such assistance. 
Under the new scheme of disbursement the 
method was reversed, and tiie benefits of tiie 
measure extended to those poor and crowded 
localities which were thronged with the chil- 
dren of the people. It was actually conceded 
that the aid of the law might be extended to 
schools in which the Roman Catholic versioD 
of the Bible was read! The measure was at 
once vehemendy assailed by the Oppoeition. 
It was declared that to extend the aid of the 
Government to schools not under the control 
and direction of the Church of England was 
an outrage on the Constitution of Great Bri^ 
ain, a menace to religion and morality, a 
measure for the propagation of heresy and in- 
cendiarism in both Church and State. 

Great was the clamor over Lord John Rua- 
sell's Bill. The measure at length prevailed, 
and the foundations were tiius laid for the 
great system of popular education since estab- 
lished and developed in Great Britain. But 
we can not pass from the subject without not- 
ing with amazement, and for the instructioa 
of all who are interested in studying the evo- 
lution of enlightenment among the nations^ 
and especially the slow progress of the coming 
dawn in the brains of the great, that the Russell 
Bill was opposed in Parliament with both the 
voices and the votes of Sir Robert Peel, Lord 
Stanley, William E. Gladstone, and Benjamia 
Disraeli. Nor may we pass without mentioning 
the other fact, that the measure contemplating 
the establishment of secular schools in the United 
Kingdom was supported by Daniel (yConndl 
and Smith O'Brien— a fact giving as good 
cause for pride among the Irish people as may 
ever he given to the present on account of 
anything done in the past. 

Some honor mav therefore be claimed for 
the Melbourne Ministry as having had under its 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



289 



\ 



patronage and direction the first formal measure 
for the secular education of the English people. 
Meanwhile, an incident in the history of the 
Parliamentary government of this epoch may 
well he cited as illustrative of the tendencies 
of civil procedure. It was the law of Parlia- 
ment that the reports of its committees should 
be published for the information of the body 
and the people. A certain prison report, 
made near the beginning of 1840, contained a 
paragraph denouncing a book published by a 
certain Stockdale, as a work at once disgusting 
and obscene. For this publication the author 
of the book brought suit for libel against the 
Parliamentary printers, and obtained judgment 
against them. But the House of Commons 
fefused to acknowledge the validity of a judg- 
ment against its officers or agents for doing 
what the House had directed them to do. An 
issue was thus made between the Queen's 
Bench on the one side, and the Commons on 
the other. The sherifls, ordered to carry out 
the judgment of the Court, were arrested by 
authority of the House, and for some time it 
looked as though the High Court of England 
and the House of Commons would end the 
matter by arresting and imprisoning each 
other I At length, however, Parliament gained 
the day, and an act was passed exempting, 
for the future, the officers of* the House from 
such interference and prosecution as they had 
recently sufiered* The incident is cited here 
to illustrate the general law that under the 
governmental and civil systems, established by 
the English-speaking race, conflicts and dis- 
putes between the Legislative and the Judi« 
ciary nearly always conclude with a victory 
of the former over the latter. 

Still another historical incident may serve 
lo show the spirit and manner of the times. 
If we look in on London in the year 1840, we 
shall find no public institution more worthy 
of commendation, more honorable to the 
genius of the English people, than the British 
Museum. The institution was, by the law of 
its government, open to the public, but on 
Sundays it was closed. In July of the year 
just referred to, Joseph Hume, an enlightened 
and progressive member of the House of Com- 
mons, hoping on the principle of counter- 
attraction to draw large numbers of people of 
tbe poorer claas away from the purlieus of 



vice and degradation, and to raise them some- 
what to a higher and purer plane of thought 
by the contemplation of the grand and beauti- 
ful, introduced a bill that the British Museum 
and the National Gallery of Art should be 
opened at certain hours on Sunday. Mr. 
Hume carefully provided that the opening 
should be after the conclusion of divine service 
in the churches and, more particularly, ''at 
such hours as taverns, beer-sh^, and gin-Aopa 
are legally opened.** The proposition was met 
with invective and the appeal to the odium 
iheologicum. Mr. Hume was denounced as a 
covert enemy of the Sabbath day, a foe to 
the Church, and a dangerous man to society, 
because he had introduced a bill which might 
serve to draw some thousands of people on 
Sunday afternoons from the sacred association 
of the gin-shops to the degrading influences of 
the British Museum I 

Passing from these minor incidents in the 
civil history of the Kingdom, we come to con- 
sider a very important and serious aspect of 
foreign affiiirs. It was at this time that Great 
Britain was drawn by her interest, and under 
the policy which she had prescribed for her> 
self, to a stem and warlike interference in the 
affiiirs «>f the East. The scene was Egypt and 
Syria. In the former country the ruler, at 
this epoch, under the general suzerainty of the 
Turkish Sultan, was the famous Pasha Mehe- 
met Ali. He was a warrior, a statesman, a 
man of genius, despising the Sultan, his mas- 
ter, and having a general contempt for the 
methods of government employed by the Sub- 
lime Porte. It is quite likely that Mehemet 
Ali was ambitious of establishing an independ- 
ent sovereignty. Quite like him in character 
and abilities was his adopted son, Ibrahim 
Pasha; General of the Egyptian army. To 
him Mehemet Ali looked for the conduct of his 



wars. 



The Porte, at this time, had fallen into that 
chronic decline which, though seemingly des* 
tined never to destroy, has, since the beginning 
of the century, fatally afflicted the Ottoman 
Empire. The outlying provinces and de- 
pendencies of Turkey were subject to the prey 
of whoever might go forth to ravage. To 
Mehemet Ali, Syria was the inviting field. 
He carried thither his victorious arms, and 
made a conquest of the country. Hie Sultan 



{ 



290 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



was conetraiDed for a nhile to let his powerful 
vatBol have hie way, but at length, in 1839, 
declared war agaiDst him. A decialve battle 
was fought, and Ibrahim Pasha gained a great 
victory over the Turks. The 8ullau died. 
Capitan Pasha, Admiral of the Ottoman fleet, 
iemtted to the Egyptians, and the event of 



and territorial integrity of the Turkish Em- 
pire. It ia not the place in which to explain 
the origin and true nature of this theory, 
which has been so prominent in the diplomacy 
of the States of Western Europe during tlM 
greater part of the present century. It la 
germane, however, to theqaeetioD immediato'ly 



MEBBMET AU PASHA. 



fif^yptian independence, with the consequent 
loes to Turkey of all the countries around the 
eastern and south-eastern bnrdere of the Medi- 
terranean, knocked at the door. 

It will be remembered that the well-known 
policy of the Western Powers, particularly of 
England, was, at the time of which we speak, 
and «noe has been, to maintain the political 



before us to note the feet that, ot all A» 
Western Kingdoms, Great Britain was most 
devotedly and coDsistently attached to the 
principle of maintaining the unity and inde- 
pendence of the Ottoman Power. On the 
other hand, France was least devoted to tha 
same principle. Prussia and Austria were d» 
voted to it in a general way. BoasiB wm 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 291 

devoted to it, Dot devoted to it, or devoted to it I of Catherine II., the' Russian power has been 
In a measure, aa suited the interest and pasBion I slowly but surely, like one of the avalanches 



«f the hoor. The reader of general history I of the Alps, sliding donn from the nnrth-eost 
will readily recall the &ct that, since the days upon the lowlands of the Ottoman. It will 
4>f Peter I., more particularly since the days | also be remembered that the neoesdty, or 



292 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



■eeming necessity, of resistiDg this pressure 
had been the mainspriug of the policy adopted 
by the Western Powers to uphold the integrity 
and autonomy of Turkey. 

The threatened establishment of an inde- 
pendent Egypt under the sovereignty of Me- 
hemet Ali seemed to contravene the general 
purpose of Western Europe, and England 
resolved to interfere. An English fleet was 
accordingly despatched to the Mediterranean, 
and uniting with the Turkish squadron, pro- 
ceeded to the bombardment of Acre. An En- 
glish army in Egypt, allied with Turkish and 
Egyptian forces, attacked the strongholds of Me- 
hemet, and drove him thence with great losses. 
Ibraham Pasha, though he had shown himself 
more than a match for the native armies of 
the Orient could not resist the impact of 
British bayonets and British cannon. Mehemet 
Ali was obliged to give up the hopeless con- 
test, and to content himself with a restricted 
government in Egypt All of his Asiatic 
conquests were wrested from him and restored 
to the Porte. Ambassadors representing the 
parties to the controversy came together in 
London, and in July of 1840 the terms of 
settlement were arranged and signed by the 
Western Powers. 

They were signed by all but Franoe« In 
that country Louis Philippe was now king, 
and Adolphe Thiers was his Minister of State. 
It was the belief of Thiers that the whole busi- 
ness in Egypt had been fomented and managed 
by Great Britain in her own interest. The 
belief was not without foundation. Thiers was 
enraged at beholding the covert elevation of 
the British standard in the East. He con- 
ceived that France had been disparaged in the 
whole course of the Egyptian complication, 
and that the disparagement was the careful 
work of Great Britain. He declared his pur- 
pose of going to war sooner than submit to 
the humiliation of his country. The king, 
however, and the government as a whole, re- 
fused to follow the bellicose Prime Minister, 
and he was at length obliged to resign his 
oflice. M. Guizot acceded to the leadership of 
the French Cabinet, and in July of 1841 the 
Treaty of London was signed Ly the represent- 
ative of France. Thus, for the decade which 
we are here considering, was the Eastern ques- 
tion disposed of under the auspices of England. 



During all these events, the Whig Ministry 
of Melbourne stumbled on in paralytic fashion 
to the inevitable downfall. The straw which 
at last broke the camel's back was a proposition 
introduced by Lord Russell, then in the Min- 
istry, with regard to regulating the trade in 
corn.' His proposition was to establish a duty 
at a fixed rate of eight shillings the quarter 
on wheat, with proportional rates for the other 
cereals, rye, barley, oats, etc. His proposition 
was a concession to the principle of free trade, 
which was just then beginning to claim, as it 
never had claimed before, the attention of the 
British public. Being so, the proposition of 
Russell was in the nature of an explosive with 
a lighted fuse in the mid-camp of the Ministry. 
Melbourne, and the rest who were vehement 
protectionists, must either follow for the free- 
trade modification of the corn laws, or else 
combat the proposition of Russell and give up^ 
their offices. Such was the condition of affaira 
when at last Sir Robert Peel, in June of 1841, 
brought forward the proposal in the House of 
Commons of a direct vote of want of confidence 
in the Ministry. The resolution was adopted by 
a majority of one. Parliament was dis> 
solved. The Tories came back in the early 
autumn with a great accretion of strength. 
Melbourne and his colleagues resigned, and a 
new Conservative Ministry was organized under 
the Premiership of Sir Robert Peel. 

The auspices of the new Tory, or, as it wa^ 
now called, Conservative Government, may be 
said to have been favorable at home, unfavorw 
able abroad. It was in the early .days of Sir 
Robert's Administration that the news began to- 
be borne to London of the direful disasters which 
had overtaken the British authorities, civil and 
military, in Cabul. The city so-called is the 
capital of the State of the same name, in the 
northern part of Afghanistan. If we look into- 
this far region, in the year 1837, we shall find 
on the throne of Cabul a native prince by the 
name of Dost Mohammed. He was, in a cer- 
tain sense, a usurper; that is, h^ had led a 
popular revolution against Shah Soojah Moolk, 
the old so-called legitimate sovereign of Cabul,. 
and had expelled both him and his house. 

* The reader well understands that canij in the 
English phraseology, is the generic name for the 
several varieties of cereal grains, and notpartica- 
larly of the grain so called in America. 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



293 



Do8t Mohammed established himself in the 
kingdom, and set his brothers and sons at the 
head of the petij subject States — this with the 
enthusiastic approval of the popular revolu- 
tionary party. 

The reader might well ask by what possible 
construction of international politics this course 
and condition of affidrs in Cabul could be of 
the slightest interest to Great Britain. Why 
should England concern herself in the least 
about the destinies resulting from a revoluti'^n 
in a petty kingdom in Northern Afghanistan? 
Jl full answer to these questions would require 
Ihe exposition of many international policies 
and a mass of details which might well fill a 
volume. It is sufficient for our purpose to 
summarize the leading features of the compli- 
cation ; to express, if we may, in a few para- 
graphs, the essence of this far-off Asiatic im- 
broglio. First of all we must consider the 
British East Indian Empire. This vast Power, 
at the time of which we speak, was already 
stretching out its long and sinewy arms from 
Calcutta over the Indian populations, num- 
bering in the aggregate much more than a 
hundred millions. Some of the provinces of 
India were actually subject to the authority 
cf Great Britain; others had alliances of 
friendship and dependence with her ; and still 
others, while maintaining a show of inde> 
pendence, were overawed by her presence and 
scepter. 

One of the countries thus dependent by 
alliance with the East Indian Government of 
Great Britain, was the Punjaub. This great 
province, embracing the Upper Indus Valley, 
lay next to the borders of Afghanistan. The 
Ameer of the Punjaub was a friend and de- 
pendent of the East Indian Government. It 
was to him, for friendship and protection, that 
the overthrown Shah Soojah, of Cabul, with the 
members of his family and a few of the princes 
who had adhered to his cause, fed after the 
revolution effected in Cabul by Dost Moham- 
med. Such was the situation, viewed from t>4 
English side of the landscape. 

Consider, in the next place, the colossal 
power of Russia. There she lies, with extended 
dominions, like a great shadow, aye, like a 
great substance, over all the north-western 
parts of Asia. Her policy of territorial ag- 
grandizement wa« weU known and well 



dreaded at the time of which we speak. 
Friendly were her relations with the Shah of 
Persia. The Czar patronized the Shah, treated 
him like a small kinsman, used him like a 
friendly puppet, protected him, encouraged 
him, finally put him out as a feeler in the di- 
rection of Afghanistan. In other words, it 
was on the line of Cabul that the conflicting 
interests, or rather ambitions, of Great Britain 
and Russia met in the East, as they had al- 
ready met in the West, on the line of the 
Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. The figure 
is sufficiently ridiculous ; but at this time Russia 
was the monkey of Asia; Persia was the 
cat ; Cabul was the cat's-paw, and India was 
the oven, in which were roasting the English 
chestnuts. To complete the fiction, a lion was 
lying by the door of the oven I 

All this was by hypothesis. Overt acts as 
yet there had been none. But the situation 
was such, in the estimation of both Great 
Britain and Russia, a. to make it desirable to 
have the alliance of Dost • Mohammed. At 
this time there was resident at that monarch's 
court a certain Alexander Burnes, kinsman, 
though the name be differently spelled, of the 
poet Bums, of great memory. The English- 
man had gone from India into Afghanistan 
and CabuL There he found Dost Mohammed 
favorable to an alliance with England. But 
he also found the emissaries of Russia at the 
court, busy with their schemes and tempta* 
tions. Dost Mohammed desired, as the sequel 
has shown, to go with England. But, through 
some perversity and blindness, the British 
East Indian Government had determined to 
undertake the restoration of Shah Soojah, the 
obsolete king of Cabul, to the throne of his 
ancestors. This, of course, compelled Dost 
Mohammed to fall over towards the side of 
Persia and Russia. At this juncture the Gov- 
ernor-General of India, in pursuance of his 
folly, sent out an array by way of the Punjaub 
to conduct Shah Moolk back to his dominions. 
The policy of Lord Auckland, the Governor- 
General, in this particular, had the full con- 
currence and support of the Home Govern- 
ment of Great Britain. The British force 
was under command of Sir W. Macnagh- 
ten, whose second in command was General 
Elphinstone. It appears that there was on 
the part ot.the leaders of the expedition the 



294 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TSE MODERN WORLD. 



ulterior object of obtaining for themeelves dip- 
lomatical positioDs at the Court of Shah 
Soojah, whom tliey were carrying along with 
them, like an East Indian idol, to be set up 
again in hie palace at Cabul. Lofty ambitioD 



cm th« part of Sir W. MacDaghten to be 
eoToy extraordinary at such a court, in Buch 
a place, under euch conditioDS I 

In the meantime, hostilitiee had begun by 
an attack of the Peraiana on the city of Herat, 
popularly designated as the "key of India," 
Th« place is situated on the lines of communi- 
cation between the plateau of Asia and the 
valley of the Indu.'j. It lies five hundred and 
fifty miles eastward of Cabul. In 1837, Herat 
was besieged by a Persian army of about 
thirty-five thousand men. The native prince, 
in defending his city, was assisted by Colonel 
EHred Pottinger, Commandant of the British 
garrison in Herat. It was to his abilities and 
courage, rather than to the valor of the native 
troops, that the Persian force was held at bay 
and finally beaten off. 

By the beginning of October, 1838, Sir W. 
Macnaghten had collected his forces west of 
the Indue, and .thence set out on his ill-starred 
expedition for the restoration of Shah Soojah 
to the throne of Cabul, The movement to 
the interior was valiantly resisted by Dost 
Mohammed and his sons. The half-wild Af- 
ghan soldiery, though unable to stand in bat- 
de before the disciplined army of Great 
Britain, nevertheless fought as for their altars 



and native land. It was manifest firom the 
first that so far from any uprising of the peo- 
ple in favor of Shah Soojah, Doat Mohammed 
held the complete and universal allegiance of 
bis subjects. I1iey rallied to his standard, 
and threw themselves in the advance and on 
the fianka of the British army. They planted 
themselves in the town of Ghuznee, where 
they resisted the whole force of their enemy, 
suffering a siege until what Ume the British, 
by heaping bags of gunpowder against one of 
the gates and blowing open the wall with an 
expIoflioD, rushed through the breach aod took 
the town. The Afghans retreated, and the 
way was opened to Jelalabad, which vras de> 
fended by the celebrated Akbar Khan, one of 
the eons of Dost Mohammed. 

This city was also taken after much hard 
fighting. The invadera then came to Cabul, 
from which Dost Mubammed escaped into the 
open country. Macnaghten's idol. Shah Ho(v 
jah, was reinstated in his ancient palace; hut 
it was evident from the first that he would 
have to be maintained in place by the Britiah 
army. Dost Mohammed rallied his forces and 
returned to the contest. On the 2d of No* 
veraber, 1840, he fought with the British 
army a decisive battle, in which only the En- 




glish artillery prevented the Afghans from win- 
Ding a clear victory in the field. They were, 
however, defeated, and on the evening of the 
same day, Dost Mohammed, of his own ao- 
cord, rode to the British head-quarters, a^ 



GREAT URITAIN.— EPOCH OF CBARTJSM. 



29S 



nounced himeelf as KiDg of Cabul, and sor- 
rendered aa a prisoner of war. 

The downfall of Mohammed, however, by 
DO means ended the con teat. The BrilJBh 
armf lay in its cantonmenta at Cabul fiT a 
full year, upholding a dubious peace. On the 
anniversary of Dost Mohammed's battle, 
namely, November 2, 1841, a popular inaur- 
rection broke out in Cabul, which, for violence 
and horror of details, was almost unparalleled. 
When Alexander Burnes undertook to appease 
the rage of the inaui^euta, be and bis brother and 



with the kuivcB of the Afghans. The backed 
and disfigured body of the murdered English- 
man was exbibted as a trophy in the bazars 
of Ca^ul. Shah Soojah soon afterwards met 
a similar fate. 

The command of the British army was de- 
volved on General Elphinstone, and to him 
Abkar and his chiefs now dictated whatever 
terms they would. It appears that in this 
dreadful emergency the spirit of the British 
officers and men gave way. They fell into a 
condition of semi-despair, from which they never 



BIR ROBERT AND LADV SALE. 



their company were attacked and cut to pieces. 
Then thn flames of revolt broke out on every 
hand. Akbar Kiian became at once the bad 
and the good angel of the insurrection. He 
led it, and, at the same time, restrained the 
sav^e instincts of his followers to a sort of 
half-civilized warfare, which was still too hor- 
rible to be depicted in language. Sir W. 
Macnaghten and several of his officers were at 
length invited to a conference wilh Akbar 
and his chie& An altercation ensued, and 
Macnachten and hie companions were butchered 



recovered. General EJphiustone even went m 
far as to appeal to the consideration of Akbar 
Khan and the Afghan troops I Nor does It 
appear that Akbar himself was unwilling to 
show the courtesies of victory to the van- 
quished. But the chieftains and the balf-sav- 
age Afghan soldiery could not be restrained. 
A treaty was made, the terms of which were 
■iicwted hy Akbar and accepted by Elpfain- 
Bioue. The British army should at once, and 
without delay, withdraw from Afghanistan to 
Je\alabad, take up the garrison at the latter 



UmVERSAL mSTORY.-TBE MODERN WORLD. 



place, leave the couutry forever, give up hostages 
tor the fulfillmeat of the compact, receive a 
conduct oil the retreat, cross the Indus out of 
aight, go. 

It was DOW the dead of winter, 1841-42. 
The armj, about sixteen thousand stroug, in- 
cttidiDg the allied natives, and bearing along 
the wives of the living officers and the widow 
of the murdered Macnaghten, as well as th^r 
children and other helpless creatures who had 
come out with the expedition from India, left 
Cabul to make its w&y through the dreadful 
pass called the Koord Cabul, a horrible mount- 
tin gorge five miles in extent, traversed hy a 



their purpose, or else to put the English still 
further iu hia power, demanded that the wives 
and children should now be given up ae the 
price of liberation for the army. Lady 
Macnaghten, Lady Sale, whose husband. Sir 
Eobert, was at that IJme commandant at Jel- 
alabad ; Mrs, Stuart, Mrs. Trevor, with her 
seven children, and some others wers accord- 
ingly surrendered, in the heart of the Asiatic 
desolations, to the compassionate keeping of 
Akbar and his retainersi The remnant of the 
army was then permitted to pasH but it was 
the passage of death. The force m<;lted away. 
Finally it dwindled to a handful. The ooluiaa 



ahbital of dr. bbydon at jelalabad. 



toaring torrent now frozen into a glacier, and 
covered] with impassable accumulations of 
SDOW. It were long to tell the story of that 
^wful march. It may well be within the 
limits of truth to aver that, for horror and 
despair, no other such retreat is known in the 
history of the world ! The fugitives toiled on 
through the snows, freezing, starving, drop- 
ping dead of despur, thinned at the rear and 
on both flanks by the cruel bullets of treacher- 
ous foes, and finally coming against au im- 
passible barricade which the Ghilzyes had 
thrown up across the pass. Akbar Khan, 
either trying to buy off hia own chieftains from 



was still on the road to Jelalabad, where Gen* 
eral Sale was holding out against the enemy; 
but Akbar Khan had compelled Elphinstone, 
as commander in chief, to agree that Sale 
should evacuate Jelalabad, join the fugitives, 
and fly from the country. But there were 
soon no fugitives to join. Arriving within a 
few miles of Jelalabad only six men out of 
the sixteen thousand were alive. Five of these 
were struck down before the fortress was 
reached. Doctor Brydon was the solitary 
^fugitive who at last tottered up half-dead 
against the gate of Jelalabad to recite tiie 
story of the roost appalling disaster, the moM 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EP0G3 OF CHARTISM. 



297 



•bameful overthrow, the moat cruel destruction, 
which had ever overtakcD a British armj. 

The sequel is soon told. Akbar Khan bad 
bad his revenge. Even the raging fury of hie 
chieftains must have been satisfied. The tide 
of disaster was stayed at Jelalabad. General 
Sale refused to recognize the validitj of the 
terms which had been 
extorted from Elphin- 
ttone. He defended 
the city, and the Af- 
ghans were driven 
back. General Pol- 
lock, who had been 
defending the Khyber 
FasB, came to the re^ 
«ue. General Nott, 
commandant of the 
British forces at Can- 
dahar, set out for the 
front to restore the 
fortunes of tbe British 
cause. General Sale, 
having driven back 
the enemy, was en- 
abled to march out 
of Jelalabad. Every- 
thing foretokened a 
speedy recovery. 

But there was noth- 
ing to recover. The 
body of Shah Soojah, 
stripped of its bai^ 
boric jewels, and 
hacked and gashed 
with sabers, had long 
since been thrown into 
a ditch at CabuL 
Shah Soojah was no 
toDger a factor in in 
tematiooal politics. 
Meanwhile, Lord 
Auckland's term as 
<3ovemor-General of 

India expired, and Iiord Ellenborougb was sent 
outby the Home Governmvit to supersede him. 
Of course, it was easy to reconquer Afghanis- 
tan. In September of 1842, General Pol- 
lock's army reentered Cabul. A few signal 
acta of vengeance were inflicted on tbe Afghans. 
Their great bazar, in which they had exhibited 
tiu> mutilated body of Sir W. Macnaght^Q 



was razed to the ground. An expedition, 
under command of General Bale, was sent out, 
in. the hope of recovering tbe English women 
and children who had been given up to the 
enemy. After many vicissitudes, the hostages 
were found in the Fortress of Bemeam, in tba 
fax wild region of the Indian Caucasus, and 



THE KHYBER PAB8. 

all of them who remained alive were restored 
to their friends and kludred. It was indeed 
the chief glory of the campaign that General 
Sale was able to rescue his wife and her 
wretched companions from captivity. As for 
the rest, the consequences, or at least the ben- 
efits, of the war were naught. Dost Mohammed 
came un out of bis exile in India, and waa 



298 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



restored to the throne of Qabul, to become the 
ally of Great Britain I Nor were the general 
international relations of the principal Powers, 
whose jealousy had led to the conflict, in any 
wise materially altered by its issue. An army 
of sixteen thousand men had sunk in despair 
and death, amid the horrors of the Koord 
Cabul, with no appreciable advantage arising 
from the awful sacrifice. 

We may now return to consider the pro- 
gress of events in the Home Government of 
Great Britain. Just as the last echoes of the 
disasters of Cabul were heard in England, a 
new agitation broke out, of which the conse- 
quences have not yet wholly disappeared. 
Daniel 0*Connell arose, and stood again on the 
stage of British politics ; and his figure, his at- 
titude, his speech, were more alarming to En- 
glish conservatism than ever before. It is 
doubtful whether any other personage has ever 
appeared in the arena of Parliament in whom 
were concentrated so many of the elements of 
the storm ab in O'Connell. He was a man 
of majestic presence ; an orator by nature ; 
the Celt of the Celts ; stern and yet humorous ; 
bitter in his antagonisms ; firm in his friend- 
ships ; loving Ireland with passionate devotion ; 
•a Catholic, but not a P^ist ; a friend of free- 
dom and humanity ; an agitator by nature ; a 
reformer by practice. He was already sixty- 
eight years of age. He had not entered Par- 
liament until he was fifty-four. But when he 
did come, it' was the apparition of a new force, 
the rising up of a new figure on the stage, to 
whom the greatest Parliamentarians did either 
obeisance of admiration or menace of antipathy 
and hatred. 

The connection of Daniel O'Connell with 
the Reform Bill of 1832, and particularly 
with the act repealing the disabilities of the 
Catholics, has been noted already. He be- 
came in that work and subsequently the coad- 
jutor of the Reformers in the House of Com- 
mons. He supported the Ministry of Lord 
Melbourne, and in many emergencies gave 
material aid to the Whig party. He, like 
other liberal statesmen of his time, had hoped 
and expected great things from the reform 
measures of 1828-32; but, like the rest, he 
had been sorely disappointed. He, too, had 
quickly perceived that the reform had not yet 
•truck down to the real people of England. 



Moreover, he w^as quick to discern that the 
support which he had given to the Whig Min- 
istry had not been reciprocated by the party. 
He saw that the Whigs were afraid of him; 
that their party was disparaged in the estimfi- 
tiou of the British public by his support; that 
whereas Lord Melbourne and his following 
were willing to avail themselves of the aid of 
0*Conuell in emergencies, they were equally 
willing to know him not when the emergency 
was passed. It thus happened that in the in^ 
terval between 1832 and 1842, (yConnell 
thought much and profoundly on the most 
radical of all questions afiecting the political 
destinies of his country. 

That question was simply this : Whether, 
on the whole, the political and civil union of 
Ireland with England was an advantage or a 
disadvantage to the former country, a blessing 
or a curse to the Irish people. Right or wrong, 
he came to the conclusion that the Union was a 
curse; that the woes of Ireland in the first 
third of the present century were largely trace- 
able to the position of subordination into 
which she had been forced against her will; 
and that the only remedy, the only prospect 
of recovery for Ireland, was the repeal of the 
Union between that country and England. He 
took his stand accordingly. He went boldly 
into the House of Commons, and to the people 
of both islands, and declared his purpose to 
have the Act of Union annulled. He an* 
nounced prophetically that the year 1843 
should be known in history as the ''Year of 
Repeal," and that agitation was the order of 
the day. 

We may revert for a nloment to the time 
and circumstances of the event by which the 
political destiny of Ireland had been merged 
with that of Great Britain. In the last stormy 
decade of the eighteenth century the people of 
that island had, as a rule, shown no undue 
loyalty to the British crown. The society of 
" United Irish-men," in sympathy and almost in 
league with France, had had an extensive in- 
fluence in its work of agitating for Irish inde- 
pendence. At length the English Government 
bore down heavily on the Irish insurgents, 
and after the loss of about twenty thousand 
men, and the expenditure of more than thirty 
million pounds sterling, suppressed the revolt. 
Many of the Irish patriot leaders were con- 



300 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



demned and executed. By the year 1799 the 
iDBurrection was at an end, and a state of 
quiet in which there was a mixture of torpor 
and despair supervened in Ireland. Then 
came the Act of Union, by which it was pro- 
vided that the two islands should henceforth 
be merged in a common government under the 
title of the United Kingdom of Great Britain 
and Ireland; that the existing English dynasty 
should continue in authority over both alike; 
that the United Kingdom be represented in a 
single Parliament; that Ireland be granted 
therein a representation in the House of Lords 
ef twenty-eight temporal peers, and in the 
House of Commons of one hundred repre- 
sentatives ; that the Irish Episcopal Church be 
merged with that of England ; that man« 
nfactures and commerce should be on the 
same footing in the two islands; that the 
national expenditure be in proportion of 
ffteen for England to two for Ireland, for 
twenty years; and that the existing law courts 
should be maintained, with an appeal from the 
Irish Chancery to the House of Lords. This 
great Act for the future administration of the 
United Kingdom was passed in 1800, and went 
into effect on the first day of the present 
century. 

Uuder the Act of Union, Ireland entered 
on her career of subordination to Great 
Britain. It was a career of alternate passion 
and apathy, of excitement and torpor, of 
sporadic insurrections and spasms of loyalty. 
It can not be doubted that the Act of Union 
was, in the first place, forced upon the people 
ef the island against the wishes of four-fifths 
of the population. It is almost equally cer- 
tain that at no time, even to the present day, 
could the measure have received* the assent of 
a majority. At the time which we are here 
considering, the Union had been in force a 
little more than forty years. O'Connell came 
to the deliberate conclusion that it could be 
and should be repealed. Nor could it well be 
said that the means whiQh he adopted to this 
end were inefficient, or that his method was 
one of political unwisdom. In fact, he had 
studied thoroughly the genius of English in- 
stitutions, and no one knew better than he the 
character of the antagonists with which he 
had to deal. His plan was essentially that of 
the Chartists. It was agitation, open and 



above board ; discusnon of the question befow 
the people, an appeal to justice, and after- 
wards to that profound prejudice of race which 
had existed immemorially between his coun- 
trymen and the people of England. 

The excitement which now arose surpassed 
any thing in the previous history of Great 
Britain, except only those fiery pasrions which 
swept the country during the two revolutions 
of the seventeenth century. O'Connell set up 
his battle-flag in the House of Commons and 
his rallying standard in Ireland. The contest 
evoked all the volcanic fires of his nature. 
The Irish rose by thousands and hundreds of 
thousands to his call. No orator of this, or 
perhaps of any, century has so swayed the 
multitudes of his countrymen. The tides ebbed 
and rolled like those of the sea. In England 
the opposition to O'Connell and 'his party was 
kindled to a white heat Never were such 
denunciations heard in any other civilized 
country as were launched at the head of the 
great Irish agitator. To the alarmed uppei^ 
classes of English society, whether Whig or 
Tory, O'Connell became the bHe noire of the 
epoch. They hurled at him every epithet 
which party malice could invent They called 
him the ** Big Beggarman," and traduced hia 
character in all the figures and forms of speech. 
But to the excitable Irish he "was the '* Un- 
crowned King." He planned in Ireland a 
series of mass-meetings,- which were successful 
to an extent never known in any other country. 
Thousands, tens of thousands, finally hundreds 
of thousands, poured from hut and hamlet and 
town to the places of the great assemblages. 
Ireland was not wanting in spots consecrated 
by patriotic memories. Tradition had hallowed 
many a place as the scene of great deeds, in 
the old heroic days when wild Irish chieftains 
had led their subdued clans in the struggle for 
freedom. O'Connell adroitly chose such places 
for the meetings of the people. One great 
throng was assembled at Kilkenny, where rose 
the old round tower of St Canice's Cathedral. 
Another meeting was held in the orator^s na- 
tive county of Kerry, where, in the midst of 
his thrilling oration, he turned about, and ap- 
pealed to *' yonder blue mountain, where you 
and I were cradled." Again, at Mullaghmast, 
an innumerable multitude was gathered, whom 
the speaker fired by referring to a still more 



GREAT BRITAIR— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



301. 



1>umiDg memory. "Here," said he, "three 
hundred and ninety Irish chieftains perished f 
and then weat on to describe the betrayal of 
the old heroes of his countrymen by the hated 
Saxons, who had invited them to a banquet. 

Ireland was'now shaken to its center. The 
means for carrying forward the peaceable revo- 
lution began to be provided. A popular sub- 
scription, caUed the "rent/' was taken up, 
which aggregated forty-eight thousand pounds. 
All the while the ieader counseled his fol- 
lowers to maintain the peace, to indulge in no 
acts that might stain the history of the sacred 
cause. Under the magic of his influence, they 
obeyed him as'children might obey a venerated 
father. 

Meanwhile, the Government became alarmed. 
All Ireland was in peaceable insurrection. 
True, among the vast multitudes which had 
arisen at (yConnell's call, many were ready 
for violence, ready for the revolution by the 
sword and fire. But such audacious fraction 
of the whole was held in check by the dicta- 
torship of the master. " Every man," said be 
in proclamation, " who is guilty of the slight- 
est breach of the peace is an enemy of me and 
of Ireland." Bat the Government could no 
longer with safety to itself— so it was decided 
•by the Ministry — ^refrain from interference 
with the revolutionary movement. Greatest 
of all (yConnell's meetings was that which he 
•appointed to be held at Cluntarf, Recently a 
monster gathering had been held on the Hill 
of Tara, where stood the stone used for the 
•coronation of the ancient kings of Ireland. 
But at Clontarf, near Dublin, the scene of the 
great victory which the Irish had gained afore- 
time over the Danes, it was proposed to hold, 
on the 8th of October, 1843, & political meet- 
ing, which of itself should give reality and 
sanction to the revolution. It was proposed to 
bring together at this place a human sea, com- 
posed of five hundred thousand Irishmen, de-' 
voted to the cause of a peaceable severance 
from the dominion of Great Britain. 

The preparations went on effectively. It 
oould not be doubted that the meeting was 
destined to be the greatest assemblage ever 
held in the British Islands. Nor can there be 
doubt that O'Connell was fully able to sway 
the multitude to his will, and that his purpose 

was wholly peaceable. But the Lord Lieu* 

N. — Vol. 4 — lo 



tenant of Ireland saw the thing in a different 
light. With the sanction of the Home Gov- 
ernment he accordingly took steps to prevent 
the assemblage. He issued a proclamation on 
the day before the meeting, declaring that it 
was calculated to excite well-grounded appre- 
hension that those engaged in the movement 
had in view the alteration of the laws and 
Constitution of England by physical force. 
He therefore warned the people not to attend 
the proposed meeting; to stay at their homes; 
to disperse each to his own place. Military 
preparations were made to carry out the edict 
and prevent the assemblage. The Irish were 
already gathering in heavy masses from all di- 
rections. A dreadful collision with untold 
destruction of human life was at the door. 
In the emergency, O'Connell again showed his 
imperial ascendency over the minds of Yam 
countrymen. He sent out a proclamation on 
the eve of the meeting declaring that the oi^ 
ders of the Lord Lieutenant must be obeyed ; 
that the authorities must not be resisted by 
force; that the multitudes must return to their 
homes. The order of the leader was univer- 
sally obeyed, and the meeting at Clontarf did 
not take place. 

Great, however, was the chagrin of many 
of O'Connell's followers. The more radical 
had hoped that a conflict would be precipi- 
tated — much as our fathers had forced the 
hand of Great Britain on the slope of Bunker 
Hill. The great division of younger Irish 
patriots went sullenly to their homes, and 
O'Connell never regained his mastery ovw 
their minds. As for the victorious Govern- 
ment, it at once proceeded to make the most 
of its advantage. Prosecutions were instituted 
against O'Connell and his leading coadjutors. 
He and his son, John O'Connell, also 8ir John 
Gray, and Sir Charles Duffy, with some others, 
were arrested and brought to trial on a charge 
of stirring up disaffection among the Irish 
people, and exciting them to insurrection, 
against the Constitution and Government of* 
the United Kingdom. O'Connell conducted' 
his own defense, but not with the vigor which 
he had displayed in the open field. He and 
his associates were convicted. O'Connell him- 
self was sentenced to imprisonment for a year, 
and to pay a fine of two thousand pounds. 
The rest were condemned to punishment less 



302 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



severe. (yCoonell immcdUitely appealed to 
the House of Lords, and by that body the 
sentence of the court below was reversed. The 
convicted men were set at liberty, and the 
crisis was at an end. 

It can not be doubted that the influence of 
O'Connell over his cotintrymen waned from 
the time of the Clontarf catastrojihe. His 
natural forces were expended in this final 



contest iu favor of Irish independence. He t«- 
mnined in the House of CommouB until 1846, 
making his last speech in that body on the 3d 
of April, in this year. It was noticed that 
the fires of his stormy oratory were already 
quenched. He became a subject of melan- 
cholia. Foreseeing the end of his life, he 
withdrew from the public gaze and set out for 
Rome, where he hoped to die. Just as the 
first gloom of the potato famine began to settle I 



on his country, he departed for Italy. Arriv- 
ing at Genoa, he could go no further. There, 
on the 15th of May, 1847, the most remarkablt- 
Irishman of the present century ended hit- 
tempestuous career. 

Id the meantime, the Administration of Peet 
had taken up and disposed of several impor- 
tant matters claiming the attention of the- 
English people. It may be noted, however, 
in the light of the retro^ 
epect, that the legisla-- 
tion of the times was di- 
rected rather to social 
than to political questions 
This fact is illustrated ii» 
the bill brought into Par- 
liament by Lord Ashley- 
for the allegation of the 
conditiuns of life among- 
the roioers of Great Brit- 
ain. It is probably true 
that until within the dis- 
tinct memory of men etili 
living, the life of the En- 
glish miner was one of 
the most terribly degraded 
existences known in his- 
tory. It is impossible t» 
conceive of any conditioA 
of human hardship aoA 
depravity more appallinfr 
in ' itself, more horribt^ 
in its consequences, than 
that which was present Ib 
the collieries of England 
and Wales. This was es- 
pecially true of the women 
and girls who were com- 
pelled to toil their live» 
away in dark, damp 
mines, where the sun. 
light never penetrated,, 
where comfort never came. It was shown by- 
a Parliamentary investigation of the state of 
affairs in the coal-mines, that women and girl» 
were hitched instead of mules to the coal-carts, 
and obliged to draw them through the filtlk 
and grime of narrow passages, until not only- 
all semblance of womanhood, but the very 
lineaments of humanity were obliterated. It 
was revealed, that under these conditions, » 
state of immorality existed in these subterrar- 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



303 



nean caverns too awful in its manifestations to 
be discussed even for the instruction of after 
times. Lord Ashley procured the passage of 
an Act by which the evils in question were 
abolished. In 1842 a bill was passed providing 
that, after a limited period, no woman or girl 
should thereafter be employed in the mines 
and collieries of England. 

Two years afterwards, the Factories Act was 
passed, by which the daily hours of toil of 
children under thirteen years of age were re* 
duced to six and a half, but the clause of the 
bill reducing the working hours of men to ten 
failed of adoption. It has been remarked by 
those who have studied carefully the debates 
attendant upon these measures, that a large 
proportion of English Parliamentarians, backed 
by perhaps a majority of the middle and upper 
classes of the people, deeply reprobated the 
fact and tendencies of Lord Ashley's bill. It 
was urged that to prevent women and girls 
from pursuing the horrid life to which they 
had been condemned hitherto in the mines was* 
an abridgment of the natural rights of En- 
glishmen to labor in what manner they chose — 
an attempt to annul the necessary laws which 
should govern the relations of the employed 
and the employes. 

It was to this period that the first effort to 
establish Secular Universities in the United 
Kingdom must be referred. We have already 
seen how the project for the establishment of 
Common Schools was resisted ; how the Church 
of England contested the measure by which 
her monopoly of the child-mind of the realm 
was to be broken up. The same kind of prej- 
udice and bigotry displayed itself in full force 
when the project for the establishment of the 
Queen's University in Ireland, with three col- 
leges subordinate thereto, was laid before Par- 
liament. It was proposed that the new insti- 
tution should be entirely undenominational in its 
character, its management, its teachings. For 
once the proposition had the effect of bringing 
into union the combined forces of Catholicism 
and the Established Church. The Catholics, 
constituting fully five-sixths of the Irish people, 
and the Episcopal Establishment, embracing 
the remainder, were equally vehement in resist- 
ing and resenting the proposal for the estab- 
lishment of what both parties chose to de- 
nominate a ''godless" institution. 



At this time Wales was thrown into a vio- 
lent excitement by an insurrection of the com- 
mon people against the Toll Roads, on which 
the ever-increasing rates of toll became a bur- 
den no longer tolerable. The movement 
against the roads and the managers took one 
of the most grotesque and singular forms ever 
witnessed. Some one discovered a passage in 
the twenty-fourth chapter of the Book of 
Genesis, as follows: 

''And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto 
her, Thou art our sister ; let thy seed possess the 
gate of those which hate them." Of a certainty, 
this must mean that the toll-gates of Wales 
should be possessed by the seed of Bebeccal 
An association was accordingly formed, called 
the Daughters of Rebecca, whose business it 
should be to possess the gates. Since an ef- 
fective corps, of rioters could not well be or- 
ganized out of women, it became necessary to 
extemporize the daughters by putting men 
into women's clothing. Such was the aspect 
of the riots. The assaults on the toll-roads 
were made by night. The insurrection rather 
gained the day, for^ although the rioting 
Daughters of Rebecca were presently sup* 
pressed, their doings had been sufiiciently sig- 
nificant to induce the passage, by Parliament, 
of an act for the abolition of the exorbitant 
tolls. 

Another struggle between human right and 
human authority was fought out at this time 
in a peculiar manner. The Italian patriot, 
Joseph Mazzini, was, at the date of which we 
speak, resident as an exile in London. He 
was engaged in political correspondence with 
the Sardinian and Austrian Governments for 
the promotion of the cause of the emancipa- 
tion of Italy. Knowledge of such correspond- 
ence was brought to Sir James Graham, 
Home Secretary for the Government, and, by 
his command, Mazzini's mail was arrested, his 
letters opened, and his com'hiunication with 
foreign States thus cut off. The question was 
whether or not, under the Constitution, such 
right of pillaging private mails existed ; and, 
though the conservative spirit rather favored 
the exercise of such a prerogative by the 
Government, it was accompanied with such a 
nudge in the ribs of Sir James Graham and 
the Ministry as signified, when rendered into 
I English: This right exists; but let it never 



304 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



be exercised again, — a pecaliarl; English eolo- 
tioD of the question. 

In 184S an alarming difficulty, arinng out 
•f comparatively trifling circumBtancea, threat- 
eDed the peace of Great Britain and France. 
Miaeionaries had made their way into the island 
of Tahiti, in the South Pacific, and had so &r 
succeeded as to convert and educate the young 
Queen Pomare, sovereign of the island. The 
French also were busy in that far region, and 
by variuus means succeeded in induciug the na- 
tive queen, notwithstanding her partiality for 
£aglaud, to put hereelf under the protection 
•f France. This done, the French Admiral, 
cruising by the island, compelled Pomare to 
built the flag of Lis country above her owo. 



wrecked in a peculiar manner. The great li^ 
duBtrial question, involving the policy of Eng- 
land as it respected her existing laws on tha 
subject of protection to the home industries of 
England, was the reef on which Sir Robert's 
ship finally went to pieces. The iaue her» 
opened before the reader is one of the widest 
and most interesting in the history of dvilixed 
nations. We have already, in a previous chaf^ 
ter, discussed the question of Free Trade and 
Customs Duties for Protection to Home In- 
dustry in our own country. This was th« 
question, which now arose with peculiar mff 
nificance in the history of Great Britain. It 
can hardly fail of interest that we shonld, ttt 
the very beginniug, take foraiuQiiientahij^iM 



ISLE OF TAHITL 



The queen thereupon appealed to Victoria for 
protection, for a guarantee of her independ- 
ence. The French Government disavowed the 
act of its admiral in Tahiti, but an unfriendly 
feeling was fomented in both France and Eng- 
land over the question, and the bad blood of 
the day came uear finding vent by the sword. 
The difficulty was at length settled by the 
restoration of the rights of Queen Pomare, 
and the war spirit subsided. Nor will the 
American reader fail to note, for his interest 
and instruction, the Tahiti incident of 1843-4 
as almost in exact annlngy with the crisis 
through which our own country and Gerniiiny 
have recently pa.=sed, relative to the Samnan 
Islands. 

The Ministry of Peel was destined to he 



point of view, and note, with perfect impar- 
tiality, some of the bottom principles and cos> 
ditions out of which this great industrial prok 
lem has arisen. 

Consider, first, the British Islands with r» 
apect to the industrial conditions which have 
been impressed upon them by the hand of 
nature, and, in a secondary sense, by the 
progress of civilization. These islands are of 
small extent. In the distribution of minerals, 
no other country has surpassed them. In the 
distribution o^ agricultural lands, these coun- 
tries are limited. Tliey are insular, hemmed 
in by the sea, having no expansive background 
ol broad territories. Tlie country, moreover, 
is mountainous; broken in nearly all parts 
into irregularities of surface, forbidding to the 



GREAT BRITAIN— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



305 



agricultural instincts of men. In other parts 
we have marsh-lands, great sluggish rivers, 
and originally over the whole landscape a 
heavy, almost impenetrable forest. It was 
natural in such a situation that mining, manu- 
frcturing, and commercial industries should 
•pring up and flourish from the earliest days. 
Here were almost limidess supplies of block- 
tin, of iron, of copper, of coal, of all the con- 
^mitants of those industrial pursuits which 
ielate to the extraction of minerals and their 
oombination with labor in the higher forms 
of value. 

In such a country the agricultural pursuits 
must inevitably lag in the rear of the other 
progressive industries. This natural &ct,^nd* 
ing to the disparagement of agriculture in 
ESngland, was aggravated by the peculiar or- 
ganization of English society. The establish- 
ment of the feudal system, and the building 
up thereon, in after times, of the most power- 
All landed. aristocracy in Europe have tended 
•ver since the Middle Ages to concentrate the 
ownership of lands in Britain in the hands of 
a few; and this tendency has still further re- 
tarded the agricultural interests of the king* 
dom. Out of these &cts it was found, long 
before the close of the seventeenth century, 
that the agricultural pursuits were so dispar* 
aged in England as to call for legislation in 
their behalf. In 1670 a Com Law was passed, 
imposing a duty on the importation of the 
eereal grains. It was a measure intended to 
stimulate the production of those grains at 
home, rather than a device for revenue. Let 
the reader, moreover, observe with care that 
the Corn Law was from its incipiency a meas- 
ure of Uie barons and lords, a project of the 
country squires to increase the receipts from 
their estates. The lands were sublet by the 
landlords to their tenants, the peasantry of 
England. With the increase in the price of 
grain thus artificially produced, the tenants 
would be able to bear a higher rate of rent. 
Thus the coffers of the land-owning class would 
be filled with an increased volume of revenue, 
drawn ultimately from the consumers of bread- 
vtufis. But the consumers of breadstufis were 
mostly the manufacturers, the miners, the ar* 
tisans, the shop-keepers, and the merchants. 
The country peasantry were indeed few in 
numbers, as compared with the multitudes who 



under the laws of nature and industry, had 
accumulated, and were still accumulating, in 
the manufacturing atid mining districts. 

Thus came in the Corn Law as an artificial 
agency to stimulate the production of grain in 
Great Britain. During the whole of the eight- 
eenth century the policy adopted by the Act 
of 1670 continued in force. It became the 
immemorial usage of Great Britiun^to assess 
and collect large customs duties on all im- 
ported grains; so that at the beginning of 
the modem era the Protective system bad be- 
come what might be called a part of the Brit- 
ish Constitution. 

Consider, on the other hand, the natural 
and artificial conditions present in the United 
States of America. It would be difficult to 
find in the same a single element of the prob- 
lem which is not directly the reverse of the 
corresponding fact in Great Britain. Here 
there is a continent of rich agricultural lands. 
They are spread out from ocean to ocean, from 
the Lakes to the Gulf. It is estimated that the 
Mississippi Valley alone contains two billions 
of arable acres. On the whole, the distribu- 
tion of minerals in our country is not propor- 
tionally abundant. The deposits, though 
rich enough, and even inexhaustible, axe far 
apart. In some regions, coal and iron are 
present together. Copper lies on one coast; 
lead is far distant. Tin, there is none at all 
east of the Rockies. 

It is riot needed that we should review in 
extenso the industrial features which nature 
has impressed on our country. Suffice it to 
say, that in almost every particular they are 
the exact reverse of those of England. Here 
the agricultural interest foreran all other forms 
of industry. The manufacturing and com- 
mercial interests have lagged behind. Agri- 
culture has been at a natural advantage in the 
industrial development of the United States. 
Manufactures have been at a natural disad- 
vantage. It thus has happened that the policy 
adopted by the American Government, and 
ratified by the people, of encouraging the 
weaker, namely, the manufacturing interest, 
has been the exact reversal of the policy of 
England. In this country, the suggestion and 
motive of the Protective System has always 
proceeded from the manufacturing and artisan 
I classes. Here the protected article has been 



i 



306 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



the product of workmanship, rather than the 
product of nature ; and its increased price has 
been drawn ultimately from the agricultural 
classes, who have constituted the body of con* 
Burners. 

These paragraphs have been inserted in this 
connection for the purpose of elucidating for 
the American reader the whole question before 
us, but more particularly to account for the 
fact that the Protective System was for more 
than a hundred and fifly years naturally and 
inveterately pursued in Great Britain with re- 
spect to agricultural produds^ while in the 
United States it has been followed, not with 
equal persistency, but still persistently, with 
respect to the manufaeturing industries. The 
brief study here presented may serve to show 
how it b that the sentiment of Free Trade 
originated in the very heart and soul of the 
English manufacturing towns; was fostered 
there ; was promoted from those places as cen- 
ters by a manufacturers' propaganda, and 
finally forced, as a permanent policy, on the 
British Parliament, against the fiercest opposi- 
tion of the landlords and country squires of 
the Nation ; while on this side of the sea, the 
sentiment of Free Trade has had its origin 
and propulsion from the producers of those 
great staples which are developed from the 
soil — has made its way, in so far as it has pro- 
gres8e<I at all, against the whole force of the 
manufacturing interest, and has been unable 
to the present d..y to gain an ascendency in 
the American Congress because of the superior 
compactness and solidarity of the manufactur- 
ers of the country. 

We now return from this digression to con- 
sider the destiny of the Corn Laws in Eng- 
land. In 1815 the old statute of 1670 was 
reSnacted by Parliament Under the new law 
the ports of England were absolutely closed 
against the importation of foreign grain; that 
is, such was the effect of the law. In some 
cases the price of wheat was raised to nearly 
five dollars a bushel. It is needless to say that 
the crowded people of the manufacturing 
towns cried out fiercely against such prices, 
and it was only by an amendment to the 
Corn Laws, by which a sliding scale, as it was 
called, was substituted for the Act of 1815, 
that the clamor of the starving populace was 
stilled for a season. It was in the nature of 



this sliding scale to adjust the duty on grain 
to existing prices, so that when the prices rose 
to a certain level the duty on foreign importar 
tions should cease. The intent and aim of the 
policy were simply to preserve and maintain a 
high price on the English cereals, so that they 
might be produced notwithstanding the disad- 
vantages under which such production had 
been placed by nature. 

From 1815 to 1841, it may be said that 
both Whigs and Tories were equally devoted 
to the Corn Laws in both theory and practice. 
They were so in theory, because it was accepted 
as a truism not any more to be doubted than 
an axiom in mathematics, that the Protective 
System, as such, was a necessary part of the 
true nationality of England. It was accepted 
in practice, because it seemed at least super- 
ficially to accomplish a given result Self- 
interest was thought to be subserved by such 
a law. We have seen how the Com Laws pro- 
ceeded from the agricultural, or rather the 
land-owning, side of the British public. If we 
glance at the constitution of Parliament, at 
the epoch which we are here considering, we 
shall be no longer surprised at the compactness 
and force of th^ Protective System as it related 
to agricultural products. Every member of 
the House of Lords was a large land-owner^ 
and fully five-sixths of the members of the 
House of Commons were in the same category. 
Parliament was a land-owning institution. It 
was virtually based on land-ownership. . At 
first sight, it will appear strange in the extreme 
that in a country marked out by nature for 
the most successful development of all manu- 
facturing industries, the evolution of the 
governing body in civil society should have 
been wholly from the side of land. But the 
student of history will readily recall the Non 
man conquest, the distribution of the lands of 
the Island by William and his followers in 
sixty thousand fiefs, the establishment of the 
feudal system, the ever-growing disposition of 
the people during the Middle Ages, and sub- 
sequently, to attach importance to land-owneiw 
ship, and will easily understand the anomaly 
of a land-owning Parliament in a manufactur- 
ing and commercial country. 

The circumstances to which we have here 
referred will throw additional light on the 
struggle of 1832. That contest was simply 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



3OT 



Ibr the enfranchisement and reprcBentation 
of the manufacturing towne. It viaa for 
-the diefrancbiseraent of the decayed landed 
constituencies. Until that time, it might 
almost be said that the manufacturing in- 
tereeta of Great Britaitt were unrepresented in 
Ihe governing body of the realm. If they 
were represented at all, it was because of their 
■flubordinated importance to the landed in- 
■terests of the kingdom. What, therefore, 
-must have been the indescribable prejudice 
4Uid antagonism against which the propagan- 
dists of the Anti-corn-law League must battle 
in the attempted reversal of public opinion, 
«iid for the substitution of the principle of 
Free Trade instead of the Protective System, 
irhich had prevailed immemoriallyl 

Nevertheless, that indefinite thing called 
•public opinion did, between the years 1841—46, 
change over from the old system to the new, 
-from the dogmas of Protection to the theory 
-and practice of Free Trade. The revolution 
was accomplished, as nearly all such changes 
are in England, by agitation. The movement 
-began, as we have said, from the manufactur- 
ing towns. It had its heart in Manchester. 
Leeds and Birmingham became coadjutors in 
ihe work. The agitator, the great inspiring 
spirit of the oncoming battle, was Richard 
Cobden. He had been brought up as a ware- 
ItousemaD in London. When about the age 
«f thirty, he traveled much in foreign lands, 
observing carefully the industrial condition of 
all peoples. He then became a partner in a 
-cotton-printing establishment near Manchester, 
and at length distinguished himself as a 
fiampbleteer. It was but natural that he 
flhould become deeply impressed with the dis- 
paraged condition of the manufacturing in- 
^Inatries of the country, 

At length, in the year 1838, a commercial 
-crisis occurred in the town of Bolton-le-Moors, 
in Lancashire, and neariy all the business in- 
terests of the place, and the surrounding region, 
went to wreck. Three-fifths of .the manufac- 
turing establishments were shut up on account 
of the disaster. More than five thousand 
workingmen were thrown out of employment, 
left homeless, and without the means of secur- 
ing a subsistence. In thisappalliogcondition, 
the suffering masses were confronted in a 
atartling manner with the efiects of the Col-n-law 



System, They perceived that they must starve 
because of the exorbitant prices^f breadstuffi, 
and that these exorbitant prices were the 
product, not of the relation of supply and de- 
mand, but of the law of Parliament. From 
this time forth the agitation broke out, and 
Cobden was the torch-bearer of the new light.) 
Meetings to secure the abolition of the Com 
Laws began to be held in the manufacturing 
cities, and able speakers instructed the people 
in the laws of political economy. Now it waa 
that John Bright took bis stand by the ride 



of Cobden. In Parliament almost the sole 
apostle of Free Trade was Charles Villiers, a 
man of aristocratic lineage, but a sound con- 
vert to the doctrines of Free Trade. Daniel 
O'Connell himself, now near the sunset, threw 
some of the last energies of his life into the 
Imitation for the abolition of the Protective 
System. Milner Gibson, a Tory in his ante- 
cedents, joined the league, and W. J. Fox, 
a Unitarian minister, popular and eloquent, 
added his influence to the cause. 

At first, however, the effort of those who 
had oi^nized the Anti-corn-law League and 



808 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



established the Free Trade Hall id Manches- 
ter, seemed almost as hopeless as the struggle 
of a swimmer to ascend Niagara. The whole 
▼dame of national influence, of national 
practice and tradition, roared and rushed in 
the face of the agitators, and seemed to bear 
them down with ah overwhelming pressure. 
Hot they were not destined to be swept away. 
Circumstances favored, as they have rarely 
fcvored, the cause of the reforming party. 
That most unanswerable of all arguments, 
human misery, came to the aid of the propa- 
ganda. Wretchedness, woe, want, starvation, 
despair, uttered their voices, and the cry at 
length reached the profoundest recesses of 
prejudice and conservatism. It reverberated 
tfirough the Kingdom. The towns were 
ehaken at first, and then the country-side be- 
gan to heave and swell. It was not, as we 
have said the voice of man, but the voice of 
hanger, of thurst, the clamor of women and 
riiildren for bread. We have just seen how 
at Bolton-le-Moors the appeal of starvation was 
first made on account of a commercial crash. 
Bot it was at once seen that any other city, 
in which the manufacturing interest predom- 
inated, and where thereby dense masses of 
population had been drawn together, might 
■offer a like catastrophe at the mere wave of 
a wand. It was perceived that the whole 
manufacturing and artisan industries of Great 
Britain were saved from sliding into the horri- 
Ue pit only by such temporary shores and 
props as might ne at any moment broken and 
knocked away. Even Parliamentarians must 
■ee it and shudder. Even the great land- 
owner, secure in his estates, with his multi- 
plied tenantry, and his herds of Teeswater 
hullocks, must hear the cry in his fastness, and 
tremble at the possible consequences. 

But to mere commercial disaster, and the 
aerious consequences following in the wake, a 
fiir more dreadful circumstance was now to be 
added. The summer of 1845 in Ireland was 
unusually wet and cold. As the season wore 
on, it became certain that the potato-crop was 
about to prove a failure. It was noticed, on 
J'ggJng into the hills where the young bulbs 
were swelling to maturity, that a peculiar rot 
had attacked them, and that already, in mid- 
aammer, a considerable part of the expected 
product had been destroyed. In a country of 



such various resources as the United States,. 
where the failure of some single product oc- 
curs with scarcely a notice except in the cen- 
sus, where the abundance of other thinga 
makes up for the deficit, and the well-sus- 
tained tide of life sweeps on without a check 
in its flow or diminution in its volume, it la 
almost impossible to conceive of the dismay 
and horror with which the people of Ireland, 
in this summer of 1845, must have regarded 
the impending failure of the potato. Before 
the season was ^et well advanced, or the full 
extent of the disaster more than vaguely con* 
jectured, the Belief Committee of the Man* 
sion House in Dublin issued a paper in which 
it was declared that no reasonable conjectura 
could be formed with respect to the limit of 
the effect of the potato disease, and that the^ 
destruction of the entire crop seemed an im- 
minent possibility. — ^Let us look for a moment 
at the condition of the Irish peasantry. 

A great majority of the Irish were depend* 
ent absolutely, at this time, upon the potato for 
subsistence. This was particularly true of all 
the people in the southern and western part» 
of the island. In the North country soma 
other articles — oatmeal in particular — were 
eaten; but apart from this, the potato waa 
the be-all and the end-all of the Irish peasants 
resources. It will surprise the American work* 
ingman to know that, in 1845, not a few of 
the Irish peasants, but all of them, lived, not 
principally or in the main, but wholly , exdusivdy^ 
on the potato. Such a thing as meat, or any 
other of the more concentrated forms of human 
food, was absolutely unknown in the Irish- 
man's home. His meal was of the potato 
only. All of his meals were so. He had 
nothing else. His children grew to manhood 
and womanhood, and then to old age, without 
ever having once in their lives known the taste 
of meat-food. In such a condition, what shall 
we say of the terror which the gloomy, wet 
summer of 1845, and the spread, ever-increas- 
ing and widening, of the potato-rot must have 
inspired among the crowded populations of 
the ill-omened island? 

The cry was soon heard across the channeL 
At first the country squires of England, satis* 
fied in their abundance, were disposed to deny 
the story of the famine, to put it off as a scare, 
as a hobgoblin conjured up by the Opposition 



310 



UMVERSAL HISTORY.- THE MODERN WORLD. 



and the Free Traders; but the specter would 
not down, and the shadow thereof soon fell 
across the obdurate and conservative conscience 
of Great Britain. Such was the condition of 
affairs that John Bright, speaking of the crisis 
afterwards; declared that Famine itself had 
joined the Free-Trade cause. 

But why the cause of Free Trade ? For the 
reason that the grains which all the world 
stood ready to pour into the harbors of starv* 
ing Ireland were excluded therefrom by the 
Corn Laws of Great Britain. Even if not 
excluded, the price was so exorbitantly high 
as to be beyond the reach of the Irish peas- 
antry. The Corn Law thus stood, like the 
tree of Tantalus, with its boughs hanging 
low and laden with abundance over the 
heads of the Irish people, but ever beyond 
their reach. Grain must take the place of the 
potato, or the Irish must starve. But grain 
can not be substituted as the food of the peo- 
pie so long as the present prices are main- 
tained. The present prices are the result of 
the Corn Laws. Therefore, the Corn Laws 
must be abolished, and that speedily, for 
starvation is an exigency which, if not met at 
once, need not be met at all. 

Such was the tremendous argument with 
which the Free Traders were reinforced in the 
autumn of 1845. Meanwhile, Cobden, Bright, 
and Villiers had gone on with the argument in 
the abstract, with the appeal to the judgment 
and understanding of the English people. 
Under their appeals, during the last five 
years, a large and influential following of Free 
Traders had been organized outside of the pales 
of party. Free Trade was their one great 
principle. To them the shibboleth of Whig 
or Thry was no longer anything. They did 
not care to pronounce it at all, but stood ready 
to join their forces with either party if thereby 
the abolition of the Protective System could 
be secured. The Whigs, who now constituted 
the Opposition, were naturally more inclined 
to the doctrine of Free Trade than were the 
Conservatives in power. But as a matter of 
fact, the foundation of both parties was under- 
mined, and each awaited the catastrophe. Sir 
Robert Peel and his Ministry had come into 
power under the distinct pledge of supporting 
the existing system of industry. In particular, 
they had promised that the Corn Law should be 



upheld. It had been noted, however, that Sir 
Robert, in his public utterances on the sub- 
ject, was disposed to regard the Corn Laws as 
exeeptional, and a suspicion crept over the 
country that at heart and in theory Sir Robert 
was more of a Free Trader than a Proteo- 
tionist Cobden and his followers looked 
upon the matter in this light, and calmly 
awaited the issue. 

Such was the condition of affiiirs when 
famine knocked at the door, and the Govern- 
ment was obliged, fiolens volens^ to take its 
stand and declare a policy for the immediate 
relief of the country. On the opening of 
Parliament, in January of 1846, Peel went 
boldly to the front and outlined the legislation 
which he should undertake. It consisted in 
brief of the gradual, and yet speedy, abolition 
of the Corn Laws, and with it virtually the 
whole system of Protection. Of course, the 
policy was only dimly suggested in the 
Premier's speech at the opening of the sesrion ; 
but the outline was sufficient, and the Con- 
servative party had before it the. alternative 
of being dragged at the wheels of the chariot 
of Free Trade, or of finding. for itself a new 
leader in place of Sir Robert Peel. 

The situation and the occasion have ever 
since been memorable in the Parliamentary his- 
tory of Great Britain. The Conservative Min- 
istry, with the exception of Lord Stanley, had 
all gone over with Sir Robert, agreeing to sup- 
port him in carrying out the new policy of the 
Government. For the moment it seemed to 
the landed interests of Great Britain, and es- 
pecially to the representatives of that interest 
in Parliament, though they still constituted an 
overwhelming majority of the whole, that the 
end of all things had come; that the league 
of the manufacturing towns with commercial 
disaster and domestic distress at home, and 
with the potato famine in Ireland, had won 
the day over the ancient order of society, and 
was about to stamp the residue under foot. 
Only one avenue of escape seemed open. If 
a new leader could be discovered to rally to 
the breach and reorganize the shattered Con- 
servative ranks, all might yet be well. 

The leader came like an apparition. On 
the night when Sir Robert Peel, having aban- 
doned the cherished principles of the Conserv- 
ative party, foretokened in his speech the 



GREAT BRITAIN,— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



311 



adoption of the Free-Trade policy, and when 
the Conservatives, without a voice, still sat un- 
der the paralysis of the hour, a strange figure 
arose in the House of Commons, and began to 
thunder against Sir Robert Peel in a perfect 
atorm of invective and bitter sarcasm. It was 
that fantastic Hebrew, Benjamin Disraeli, who, 
from being the butt of the House of Commons, 
now suddenly arose to the rank of leadership, 
from which the vicissitudes of fully thirty 
years could hardly suffice to shake him. The 
world knows the history of the man ; how he had 
entered Parliament as a Badical ; how he had 
made himself, by his quaint apparel and loud 
ways, a mixture of peacock and jackdaw; how 
he had been hooted down without finishing his 
maiden speech ; how he had persevered against 
€very species of prejudice, from the deep-seated 
prejudice of race to the gad-fly prejudice of 
mere manners; how he had gained in spite of 
all; how he had drifted over to the Conservative 
benches; and finally how, on the memorable 
night above referred to, he had suddenly 
sprung open like an automatic knife, and cut 
his way to the very heart of the temporizing 
policy of the Prime Minister. From that 
hour unto the day of his death, Benjamin 
Disraeli never ceased to be the idol of the old 
<5on8ervative landed aristocracy of Great Brit- 
ain. Henceforth he stood for the ancient 
system ; for the monarchy as a general fact, 
and for the Queen as a particular instance; 
for the feudal land-tenure of the aristocracy; 
for privilege and prerogative; for the House 
of Lords; for the Established Church, and for 
every fact and principle in the British system-- 
of society and government whereby that sys- 
tem might better be maintained in its ancient 
solidarity and grandeur. 

Notwithstanding the brilliancy of Disraeli's 
attack on Peel; notwithstanding the sudden 
rally of the Protectionist party, and its quick 
recovery of all that might yet be saved from 
the wreck, there was no hope that the tide 
could be stemmed, that the determination of 
the country to substitute Free Trade for the 
Protective system could be thwarted or turned 
from the purpose. Until this end should be 
accomplished, the Ministry of Peel must live. 
The new scheme of the Government was 
quickly perfected and laid before Parliament. 
It was not a declaration for immediate Free 



Trade. The measure proposed by the Ministry 
still included the imposition of a duty of ten 
shillings a quarter on wheat, so long as the 
price should not exceed forty-eight shillings. 
Above that figure, the duty was to be reduced, 
until at fifty-three shillings a quarter, the 
tariff should stand at four shillings only: this 
arrangement for the time. At the end of three 
years the »y«tein of protection on grain was to 
be abandoned in toto. It was foreseen that, 
when once abandoned, protective duties could 
no more be revived. It was also clearly dis- 
cerned that the protective principle, as applied 
to the production of sugar, and other agricul* 
tural as well as a few manufacturing interests, 
must go along with the major concession in the 
case 0^ grains. The legislation of the hour 
meant, in a word, a complete revolution and re- 
versal of the ancient industrial policy of the 
British Government, with the substitution for 
the time-honored system of Free Trade, pure 
and simple. In Parliament, the Protectionists, 
still vital, and now under the leadership of 
Lord George Bentinck and Disraeli, made a 
strong rally against the bill proposed by the 
Ministry. But the measure was passed in the 
House of Commons on the 15th of May, 1846, 
by a majority of ninety-eight votes. In the 
House of Lords the bill was carried through by 
the support of the Duke of Wellington, and 
became henceforth the law of the realm. 

The Ministry of Sir Robert Peel had now 
but a month to live. While the Anti-corn- 
law agitation had been going on in England, 
the disaffection in Ireland, though less spec- 
tacular in its manifestations than before, had 
become more dangerous. In that distracted 
island the pangs of famine had sharpened the 
fangs of politicar antagonism, and there were 
blood-stains in the pathway. Crime came in 
the wake of the great movement which O'Con- 
nell had brought so nearly to success. The 
younger and more thoughtless of the Irish 
patriots sought to accomplish by terrorism 
what the leader had failed to achieve by rea- 
son and remonstrance. It became necessary 
for the Government to exert itself in some 
way against the lawlessness which was preva- 
lent in many parts of Ireland. To this end a 
Coercion Bill came from the Ministry, 
and was laid before the House of Commona 
It was proposed to suppress by force the 



S12 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



disKSections of the Irish people. It* was 
to the GoTeTDment of Sir Bobert Feel a 
(bmgeroiis, aad, as the eequel proved, a falal 
expedient. The immemorial policy of the 
Whig party had been against the principle of 
eoBrcioD as applied to social disturbances 
among the lubjecta of Great Britain. The 
Chartiata, and after them the Free Traders 
■nder the leadership of Cobden, had them- 
selves so many times felt the weight of perse- 
•nUoD tJiat they also arrayed themselves against 



the principle. As for the Protectionist wing of 
the Conservatives, now under tlie leadership of 
Lord George Beiilinok and Disraeli, their rage 
against Peel and the Ministry knew no bounds; 
and while, as a rule, they would have adhered 
to coercion as a principle, they were ready to 
abandon consistency if they might by any 
means overturn the Government of Peel. 
Finally, the Irish representatives were, of 
course, bitterly opposed to the coercion of their 
•onntrymen. There thus accumulated in the 



Opposition so many elements of power that 
when the Coiircion Bill was put on its passage, 
June 25, IS46, the Ministry was defeated by 
a majority of seventy-three votes. 

Sir Bobert Peel thereupon put bis resigna^ 

tlou in the hands of the Queea, and Lord 

John Russell was named as his succesaor. 

The new Cabinet included Lord Palmerston, 

as Foreign Secretary ; Sir Charles Wood, aa 

Chancellor of the Exchequer ; Lord Grey, as 

Secretary for the Colonies; and Sir George 

Grey, as Secretary for 

Home A^r«. The 

brilliant Thomas Bab- 

ington Macaulay had 

a seat in the Cabinet, 

as Paymaster-GenenJ 

for the QovenimeDL 

Meanwhile, during 
the pn^prees of the rec- 
ord in the preceding 
pages, an incident of 
a very different kind 
had occurred in the 
history of Great Brit- 
ain. It was at the 
middle of the fifth dec- 
ade that the attention 
of the Britieb public 
was first seriously 
drawn to the posdbid- 
ties that lay hidden in 
the Arctic Begions. 
In the very summer 
of the beginning of 
the Irish famine an 
enterprise was pro- 
jected which was des- 
tined, before the move- 
ment should subside, 
to add largely to the 
geographical information of mankind. It wa« 
at this date that the daring adventurer. Sir 
John Franklin, undertook his voyage of polar 
discovery. Tjiis remarkable sea-captain had ' 
already achieved renown by his voyages and 
explorations. As ekriy as 1819 he had been 
sent to the Arctic Seas by the Hudson Bay 
Company ; a voyage which detained him diree 
and a half years, and extended to a distance 
of nearly sis thousand miles. Afterwards, in 
1836, he was made Governor of Van Dieman'i 



GREAT BRITAIN.- EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



313 



Land, in which office be conducted the affiurs 
of the Islandera with the greatest euccess. At 
the time of uadertaking his great Arctic voy- 
age — that on which his fame with posterity 
seeme to depend — he~was already la his six- 
tieth year. The inspiratioD of the eDt«rpriBe 
was the hope of discovering a north-western 
passage into the Pacific Ocean. Two ships, 
the Erebm and the Terror, were fitted out, and 
in May of 1845 Sir John sailed on the ill- 
.&ted voyage. His ships were last seen by 
the Esquimaux, in July of the same year. 
From that date they disappeared forever from 
nght. 

The interest of nearly all nations ^as ex- 
cited by the uncerttunty which shrouded the 
ble of Frawklin and his companions. In the 



Britain. It was discovered that Sir John had 
died in June of 1847, and that hie companions 
had perished to a roan among the rigors of the 
frozen zone. 

It was early in the Administration of 
Lord Russell that the peaceable relations of 
France and England were seriously disturbed 
by a marriage project which was said to be 
French in its origin, but Spanish in its appli- 
cation. The reader on this side of the sea 
may well wonder how such a question as a 
marriage, even the marriage of a queen, could 
be thought to jeopard the peace of Europe. 
But when we regard the peculiar constitution 
of the European kingdoms, and particularly 
the dynasties which control them, we need 
not be 80 much astonished that the Intei^ 



EREBUB AND TERROR OUTWARD BOUND. 



United Stntee especially profound sympathy 
was evoked, and efforts, not a few, were put 
forth for the discovery and possible rescue of 
the Arctic explorers. We have already seen 
in the preceding Book how the Grinnell expe- 
dition, and afterwards the expedition of Dr. 
Elisha Rent Kane — most eminent of Ameri- 
can Arf^tic travelers — was fitted out and de- 
spatched into the North Seas. Little, however, 
was accomplished towards the discovery of 
Franklin, although the knowledge of mankind 
respecting the regions of the North Pole was 
extended and many times multiplied. It was 
not until 1859 that the ship Fox, under Cap- 
tain McCltntock, sent into the Arctic Ocean 
by Lady Franklin, had the good fortune to 
Steer in the track of the lost sailors of Great 



marital relations of the Royal families should 
be regarded as important. The student of 
history will not ful to remember that, in some 
instances, the law of descent, by which the 
place of the crown is determined in hereditary 
governments, has, by sheer force of its own 
workings, produced an almost intolerable re> 
suit. At one time it appeared that Charlee 
V. was to receive by legitimate inheritance 
the larger part of Continental Europe. If 
the so-called Balance of Power among thn 
European States is to be preserved, then the 
sovereigus who wear the crowns may well be 
constrained to give heed to the marriage com- 
pacls by which the crown is to be deflected in 
this direction or in that. 

At the time of which we speak, young 



314 



UyiVERSAL HISTORY.— TBE MODERN WORLD. 



Isabella II., of SpaiD, who had aovi reached 
the age of Bixt«en, was thought to be eligible 
for marriage. It had bug beeu Uie policy of 
Prance, as far as practicable, to keep up the 
UDion of blood and iuterest between the Freocli 
aad Spanish Boiirboos. The attempt to du so 
bad, in more than one instance, been the 
cause of war It might have been thought 
that, with the accession of the younger branch 
of Bourbon, in the person of the Citizen King 
of France, the traditional policy would have 



been abandoned. But Louis Philippe, and 
Guizot, his Minister of State, seem, on the 
contrary, to have strongly desired that the 
young Queen of Spain should be wedded to a 
French Prince. The king himself had two 
eligible sous who might aspire to Isnirella's 
hand. The elder of these was the Diic 
d'Aumale, and the younger the Due de Mont- 
pen sier. It happened, moreover, that the 
Spanbh Queen had a marriageable sister, the 
so-called Infanta, Princess Maria Louisa, who 
must also be provided with a husband. 



The intrigue of Louis Philippe was fiiiy 

reaching in its character. His programme con- 

templated the marriage uf Isabella to her 

cousin, Francisco de Assis, and the coincident 

tnarrii^e of the Due de Montpenmer and th» 

Infanta. It was conjectured by the plotters 

that Isabella herself in such a union vwM die 

ehildleet, and that, in that event, the Spanish 

crown would descend to the offspring of Mout- 

penuer. He, after the Due d'Aumale, wa» 

heir to the crown of France. Thus was to be 

provided the ponihle 

union of the two 

crowns on the head 

of an Orleans Prince 

of France. 

As soon as tlie pur- 
pose of the French 
Court with respect to 
the double marriage 
was blown abroad, it 
creaied great exclt«- 
ment at other Euro- 
pean capitals. Eng- 
land herielf, though 
insular and to a great 
degree disentangled 
from Continental alli- 
ances, was deeply of- 
fended at the proposed 
union between the 
French and Spanish 
royal families. The 
project led to remon- 
strances and diplomat- 
ical correspondence 
not a little. It hap- 
pened that at this time 
Victoria passed over 
to the Continent, and 
made a visit to Louis Philippe at Eu, During 
the interview, the king stnutly disavowed 
for himself and his Minister the purpoee of 
having the Spanish Infanta married to his sou, 
at lenet, until what time, by the marriage of 
Isabella and the birth of offspring to her, the 
descent of the Spanish crown should he pro- 
vided for. Nevertheless, Jn course of time, 
the double marriage project was carried out 
perfidiously, as was believed at most of the 
courts of Europe. Isabella was wedded to her 
cousin, Francis of Assis, and on the same da/ 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



ai5 



tiie Infanta, Maria Louisa, was married to the 
Due de Montpensier. England was beaten by 
the intrigue. She must either submit to the 
successful manipulation of the French Gov- 
ernment, or else go to war.^ It is not likely 
that in any event she would have chosen the 
latter course. But her indignation was ex- 
treme, and she expressed her displeasure in 
the strongest terms consistent with peace. 

The careful reader of history, however, will 
have noted the small effect of such schemes as 
this supposedly dangerous double marriage. 
Never was the truth of the principle more 
cogently illustrated that in the instance before 
us. The elaborate provision which Louis 
Philippe was making for the inheritance by 
his posterity of the crown of both France and 
Bpain was soon blown utterly away. The 
Revolution of 1848 in France put both himself 
and his sons forever out of sight. Living in 
exile in England until the day of his death, 
he must often have contemplated from a dis- 
tance the humiliating and ridiculous outcome 
of his intrigue relative to the Spanish crown. 
Even if the Revolution of 1848 had never 
occurred, the result would have been the same ; 
for at length the marriage of Queen Isabella 
and her cousin was blessed with the birth of a 
Bon — against the expectations and hopes of the 
French Court, whose dignitaries had contrived 
the marriage. These events — the expulsion of 
Louis Philippe and his family, and the birth 
of a legitimate heir to the Spanish crown — 
served to convert the anger of England, first 
into indifference, and then into contempt. 

We are now arrived at that period in En- 
glish history when Chartism was destined, after 
one huge effort to force itself as a modifying 
principle into the Constitution of Great Brit- 
ain, to sprawl into oblivion and be seen no 
more. The effort in question was made in 
1848. It was in this year that the energies of 
all Europe seemed, by gathering and com- 
pression, to explode in a universal revolution. 
We shall hereafter narrate, on a larger scale, 
how in nearly all the European capitals, in- 
surrection put his bugle to his lips, and blew a 
blast which, in instances not a few, startled 
the legitimate kings from their seats, and sent 
them flying by day or night into foreign lands. 
Paris was the scene of such a revolt, which 
ended in the downfall of the House of Orleans 



tod the erection of a republic. Berlin was 
the scene of another such insurrection, almost 
successful, against the reigning dynasty. Brus' 
sels likewise suffered revolt, though the king 
of the Belgians, by a wise declaration that if 
his people did not wish him for their sovereign, 
then he himself had no wish to reign longer,' 
snatched the bolt from the clouds and con* 
ducted it harmlessly to the earth. All around 
the horizon the thunder of revolution was 
heard, and even England felt the jar. 

In that country, however, the conditions, 
civil, social, and political, were very different 
from those of the Continental Powers. Eng- 
land had stability, equanimity, equipoise. Her 
foundations were laid deep on the very con- 
crete of barbarism. Her structure had been 
raised experimentally. It had been built, here 
a little and there a little, remodeled, altered 
much in details and slightly in general plan. 
But it was essentially the same colossal fabric 
which had grown into shapeliness and grandeur, 
if .not into political beauty, through ages of _ 
development. On that structure many cen- 
turies had wrought. On it the Conqueror had 
used his battle-axe, and the Plantagenets their 
swords. The war-hamnjers of York and Lan- 
caster had resounded on the wall. Tudor had 
leared one battlement, and even Stuart had 
contributed something to the magnificence of 
the pile. William Henry of Orange had gone 
round about it, and the four Georges and 
William of Hanovel'-Brunswick had at least 
d^ in the stately chambers of the edifice. 
Now Victoria had added grace and woman- 
hood, and the coping-stones were not without 
glory. Nor may we ever forget that, under 
the shadow of the great temple, that rude 
creature, called Englidi lAbertyy had grown and 
flourished. 

Wherefore England was not easily disturbed. 
She was with difiliculty shaken by agitation. 
Least of all was she amenable to the argument 
of insurfection. Tongue-force and pen-force 
she might indeed fear and feel; but sword 
force not at all. Out of all which circum- 
stances came English indifference to the polit- 
ical revolt of 1848. Nevertheless, the Chart- 
ists, who for a decade had maintained their 
cause in the manufacturing districts and great 
cities, imagined that now had come the day of 
salvation. Now was the hour in which, a8 



m 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



Englishmen, they might gain, by peaceful 
agitation, or, at most, the diiiplay of physical 
force by numbers, the democratic rights which 
they sighed for, and which seemed to be the 
rare-ripe fruit of insurrection in the Conti- 
nental States. 

So the Chartbt agitation broke out anew. 
The movement was augmented by the misfor- 
tunes through which England had recently 
passed. (yConnell's great campaign for the 
repeal .of the Union bad ended in defeat; but 
the discontented spirits of both Ireland and 
England were not stilled. The agitation for 
the repeal of the Corn Laws had indeed been 
successful. But the Reform legislation of 1832 
had brought only disappointment and mockery 
to the working democracy of England. The 
ranks of Chartism were augmented from nearly 
all the columns of discontent, and it was be^ 
lieved by the leaders that the time had now 
come, when, by a single great rally, they might 
bear down Parliament, and constrain the Oov- 
emment to yield to their demands.- 

In pursuance of this general policy, the 
Chartists proceeded to prepare a monster pe- 
tition to the House of Commons, demanding 
that the principles of the People's Charter 
should be acknowledged by that body, and in- 
corporated in the Constitution of the realm. 
It was arranged that the petition should first 
be signed by millions of English workingmen, 
and that it should then be carried to the House 
of Commons by a delegation at the head of a 
procession, which it was hoped to swell to the 
number of five hundred thousand persons. For 
this purpose, the multitudes were to assemble on 
Kennington Common, on the 10th of April, 
1848. The Chartists hoped to make the dem- 
onstration by far the most formidable which 
had been known in the political history of 
mankind* It was believed that half a million 
of people could be brought together and ar- 
ranged in a single procession. At this time 
Feargus O'Connor was the acknowledged 
leader of Chartism, and he was to be the mov- 
ing spirit of the multitude. The fatal defect 
in the \vhole proceeding was that the Chartists 
themselves had no clear idea of the After That. 
Suppose the House of Commons will not hear 
our petition, will not yield to our demand, will 
not feel the display of force and^ numbers. 
What then ? Shall we fight ? Shall we peace- 



ably disperse to our homes, and leave the En^ 
glish Government to ridicule both our prooee- 
sion and ourselves? It was precisely the same 
difiiculty which had wrecked the cause of re- 
peal in the hands of O'Connell. The younger 
and fiercer spirits who followed that storm 
breathing Irish Achilles, would fain have 
fought; but the older, the wiser^ the more 
conservative, includii^ the leader himself, and 
vast majority, sought the end only by appeal, 
by argument, and by the olive-branch. 

So also with the Chartists. Meanwhile, 
however, there was great alarm in London and 
throughout the kingdom. There were rumon 
of insurrection in every city. Bat, as usual, 
the event soon showed that the crooked flukes 
of the British 'anchors had fiut hold of the 
ledges under the sea. The defisiMe of the 
metropolis was intrusted to the Duke of Wel- 
lington. Military preparations were made to 
maintain the peace, and if need be, to break 
up the Chartist demonstration. About two hun- 
dred thousand militiamen were enrolled for th^ 
occasion, and before the day of the meet* 
ing it was evident that the demonstration 
was doomed to failure.' Instead of a half 
million, only twenty thousand, or at most 
twenty-five thousand persons, assembled on the 
Common. Orders had been issued by the 
Government forbidding the formation of the 
procession, as having for its purpose the dis- 
turbance of the peace of the realm. Feargus 
O'Connor advised his followers to obey the 
mandate. He and some of the Chartist lead- 
ers proceeded, however, to present the huge 
petition to the Commons. But the effect was 
naught. It was boasted that the papers con- 
tained seven million signatures. But this 
statement was found to be greatly exag- 
gerated. Fewer than two millions of names 
were found, and of these many were spurious 
and fictitious. Nevertheless, it could not be 
said that a paper signed by a million of 
earnest Englishmen was absurd. The Chartist 
movement was a failure, not because of .the 
political principles on which it was projected, 
but because those principles were already 

' Among those who served as special police- 
men on this memorable occasion was at least one 
notable personage — no other than Louis Napoleon 
Bonaparte, soon to be President of the French 
Republic, and afterwards Emperor Napoleon IIL 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EPOCS OF CHARTISM. 



31T 



Tirtuailly acknowledged in the heart of Eng- 
laud, aod were deedDod, in so far as they were 
valid and applicable to the political condition 
of Qreat Britain, to be rapidly incorporated 
«B eleraeDts cf the Conatitutiou. At least 
three of the six articles of the Chartist charter 
were soon adopted by Parliamentary approval. 
The principle of Manhood SuHrage is virtually 
a part of the English CoDstitution. The right 
of voting by Secret Ballot, deposited in a 
ballot-boi, has also been acknowledged as a 
f>art of the modiu 
operandi of all British 
elections. In like man- 
ner, the Property 
Qualification imposed 
on candidates for Par- 
liameut, against which 
the Ghartiata so vehe- 
mently and justly de- 
claimed, has long unoe 
been abolished. It is 
an anachronism in pol- 
itics to insist on die 
doing of a thing al- 
ready done — on tha 
acknowledgment of a 
principle already ac- 
knowledged. As in 
America the struggle 
of the Greenback party 
for predominance as a. 
party ended in failure, 
though the principle 
for which all rational 
Greenbackers con- 
tended — namely, that 
the Congress of the 
United States has the ; 
right and power, in- 
depend ently of the 

fact of war, to make absolute paper money, 
and to constitute the same a legal tender 
in the payment of all debts not specifi- 
cally otherwise provided for — was ultimately, 
and almost unanimously approved by the Su- 
preme Court, and driven into the Constitu- 
tional interpretations of our Republic; so 
the Chartist agitation as an organic political 
party movement collapsed, ended in dust and 
smoke, though the principles for which the 
Qisrtists comendwi were approved, not only 



by the intelligence and conscience of the 
English Nation, but by Parliamentary adopdon. 
The correlative agitation in Ireland, how- 
ever, was- destined to run on for a conriden^ 
ble period. Daniel O'Connell now slept in • 
quiet grave under the blue skies of Italy. 
Tlie younger and more enthusiastic division of 
the Irish patriots, after the collapse at Cloo- 
tarf, parted company with the Conservativefl^ 
and continued to propagate the doctrines of 
Repeal and Revolution. The party thus ooo* 



Btituted now took on the name of Youna 
Ireland, and devoted itself with assiduity to 
the emancipation of the Irish people from the 
control of England. The Nation newspaper 
was established as the organ of the propi^ 
gauda, and William Smith O'Brien becanw 
the leader of the new party. Belonging as 
he did to the upper class of society, being a 
man of wealth and rank, he was able to give to 
the cause a strong impetus. Associated with 
him was Thomas Francis Meagher, who bad 



S18 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



tune as an orator — a thing always easential to 
agitation in Ireland. Two other leaders of 
great prominence also appeared in the persons 
of Sir Charles Gavan Dufly, founder of the 
Nation, and John Mitchel, an Irish revolu- 
tionist, pure and ample. To these men the 
party of Young Ireland now looked for coun- 
sel and direction. 

Around the nucleus here defined was im- 
mediately gathered much of the intellect of 
the island. Especially did the young men 
fresh from the universities rItUy to the call for 
the independence of their country. They con- 
tributed to the radical newspapers the keenest 
part of their intellectual product in both prose 
and verse. Some were for going farther, and 
some not so far. All were for the repeal of 
the Union, and the establishment of Irish in- 
dependence by revolution. But what did the 
revolution mean? It was the old difficulty 
over again. Did revolution mean outright re- 
bellion, downright war, the unsheathed sword, 
battle and blood and death? Or did it mean 
something less than these? 

Here the party divided. The more radical 
of the radical took to the leadership of Mitchel. 
That great insurrectionist established a new 
newspaper called the United Irishman, and it 
was at once perceived that around this truly 
revolutionary standard was gathered the body 
of Young Ireland. Mitchel's newspaper soon 
surpassed the Nationin influence and circulation, 
as it surpassed it from the first in vehemence 
and biLterness towards the British Government. 
The D<»w organ teemed with the wildest dia- 
tribes and invectives. Rebellion was openly 
advocated as the only remedy for the ilb of 
Ireland. Even the measures by which the 
war was to be carried on were discussed with 
all the bravado of anarchy. Methods of de- 
stroying British soldiers and their abbettors in 
civil society were explained with as much 
coolness as though they had been the methods 
of the butcher's stall. Articles appeared in 
the United Irishman demonstrating the useful- 
ness of vitriol as an agent of destruction. 
Mitchel and his correspondents rose to the 
high pitch of fanaticism, and it became evident 
that they meant to provoke the English Gov- 
ermment to a collision. 

Meanwhile, an actual revolution had broken 
out in Paris, and discharged the Orleans 



princes from all further service. Tlie event 
was hailed in Ireland as a sure precursor of a 
general revolution, in the course of which the- 
Celtic Island must of necessity achieve its in- 
dependence. O'Brien and Meagher went to- 
the French capital to solicit from Lamartine, 
then almost supreme in State afiairs, his sym- 
pathy and patronage in the matter of the Irisb 
revolution. At length, matters in Dublin and 
in other parts of the Island came to such • 
pass that it was no longer optional with Gov- 
ernment whether they would or would not 
proceed to the issue and trial of strength with 
the Irish insurrection. The Lord-Lieutenant 
had good reason for regarding Mitchel's paper 
as not only seditious, but incendiary. Still, 
according to current statutes, it was a difficult 
matter to proceed against the rampant editor 
and his establishment Though hb paper gave 
from day to day deliberate instruction in the 
art of killing, which, under the circumstances, 
appeared very much like the art of murder, 
there had been as yet no such overt acts a» 
would warrant his arrest for crime. Anything 
short of criminal prosecution went for nothing 
when directed against the favorite leaders of 
the people; for they immediately freed them- 
selves from duress under the law of baU, and 
became more active than ever. 

In Parliament, it was deemed that the 
emergency called for speedy and severe reme- 
dies. A bi]l was accordingly hurried through^ 
making all written incitement to crime a 
felony under the statutes. It was a deadly 
blow aimed at the Irish insurgents; but Mitchel 
at least was undaunted. Ho went on more 
violently than before, and was arrested and 
thrown into prison. Even from his cell he 
hurled defiance at the Government, and urged 
his countrymen to rescue him from the clutches 
of tyranny. But the outside party was want- 
ing in courageous leadership. Mitchel was 
tried and found guilty. Standing in the dock, 
he made a furious and defiant speech, and 
went down game under a sentence of fourteen 
years' transportation to the Bermudas. He 
was hurried out of Dublin, and as the ship 
which bore him from sight dropped Ibehind 
the horizon, the hope of a successful Irish in- 
surrection disappeared. 

The condemnation and banishment of their 
most courageous leader roused thf animosity of 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



319 



even the more moderate party of young Ireland- 
era, and^they all took on the character of 
rebels against the Government; not rebels in- 
deed in fact, but rebels in spirit and purpose. 
Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and others left Dub- 
lin and went to Ballingarry, where they were 
surrounded by a crowd of insurgents, whom 
they brought into a state faintly resem- 
bling military discipline. The Tipperary po- 
lice stood against the insurgents, and were 
attacked by them. O'Brien's forces obliged 
the posse to take refuge in a cabin, and there 
assailed them with such rude arms as they 
possessed. The police fired from the windows, 
and several of the assailants were shot down. 
The remainder at length dispersed. It was a 
trivial afiair, rescued from ridicule only by its 
serious consequences. O'Brien was pursued to 
Thurles, where he was taken. Meagher and 
two others were soon afterwards captured in 
the mountains. A court was called at Clon- 
mel, and in September of 1848 the prisoners 
were found guilty. O'Brien was sentenced to 
be hanged, beheaded^ and quartered; for such 
was the still merciful statute of Great Britain 
relative to treason. Meagher was likewise 
sentenced to death, with the added horrors 
of mutilation. Standing in the dock, the 
brave young Irishman cried out, with uplifted 
hand and steady voice: ''Even here, where 
the shadows of death surround me, and from 
where I see my early grave opening for me in 
no consecrated soil, the hope which beckoned 
me forth on that perilous sea wherieon I have 
been wrecked, animates, consoles, enraptures 
me. No, I do not despair of my poor old 
country, her peace, her liberty, her glory." 

The sentences of the condemned men were 
commuted into other forms of punishment. 
O'Brien was to be transported for life. All 
of the convicts were sent to Australia, from 
which, in course of time, both Mitchel and 
Meagher effected their escape. O'Brien re- 
fused to avail himself of the opportunities to 
get away, and was at length pardoned ; first, 
on condition of not returning to England or 
Ireland, and afterwards unconditionally. As 
to Sir Charles Duffy, he was twice brought to 
trial, and twice the jurj refused to convict. 
The prosecutions ended with the condemnation 
%nd expulsion of the leaders. Young Ireland 
was broken up. and another element was 



added to the now chronic despair of the Irish 
people.^ 

It may well be supposed that the conse- 
quences of all the agitation and disasters which 
had visited the unfortunate Island would tell 
in some phenomenal manner on the destinies 
of the Irish race. The country had first been 
shaken from center to circumference by the voice 
of O'Connell, and heated with his arguments 
for the repeal of the Union. The discourage- 
ment which ensued after the failure of this 
movement, was profound. Then came the po- 
tato &mine, in which hunger and disease and 
death ravaged, without check, through some of 
the most fertile parts of the Island. This was fol- 
lowed, hard after, by the Young Ireland insur- 
rection, by the clamor for revolution, and the 
vague hope that, in some way, the yoke of 
England might be thrown off, and Irish happi- 
ness be secured by the way of Irish Independ- 
ence. This hope also was completely blasted. 
The Irish patriots were doomed to see their 
favorite young leaders escape the death pen- 
alty only by transportation to the South At- 
lantic. It can not be wondered at that the 



'The ultimate fate of the leaders in the Irish 
Rebellion is worthy of particular note. Smith 
O'Brien, after his final return to Ireland, retired 
to Wales, and died there in 1864. Mitchel, on his 
escape, came to the United States, and resided in 
Richmond, Virginia. When the American Civil War 
came on, he became a violent partisan of the South. 
But after the war he removed to New York, and 
thence went back to Ireland. He was elected to 
the House of Commons, was refused admission to 
tlie body, and was elected again. It appeared for 
the time that there was to be a serious con- 
flict between the rights of his constituency and 
the prerogative of Parliament. Mitchel, however, 
was already sinking to the grave, and before the 
controveifly was ended he had found that rest in 
which, according to the epitaph of Swift, the 
"savage indignation" could pursue him no far- 
ther. Dufiy became a member of the House of 
Commons, and was afterwards Prime Minister 
of the Colony of Victoria, Smyth rose to Parlia- 
ment, and was an honored and distinguished 
member. McGee went to Canada and became a 
Minister of the Crown, until what time he was 
struck down by an assassin. Martin, who reached 
a seat in Parliament, held consistently to his old 
political and revolutionary principles to the day 
of his death. Thus, tnrough strange vicissitudes, 
and in distant regions, though not unhonored in 
its final day, expired and passed from memory 
that remarkable body of misdirected patriotism 
called Young Ireland. 



820 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



people of the Island gave up in despair, and 
oegan to look abroad for some possible escape 
irom the horrors of the situation. 

There, beyond the Atlantic, thej caught a 
glimpse of a broad and open land, from which 
rumor had brought back, on liberal wings, the 
report, not only of plenty, but of freedom. 
It is a sad day in the life of man when the 
strong tie which binds him to native land, 
snaps asunder ; when he is constrained to turn ' 
his back on the home of his ancestors, to go 
on shipboard, and see behind him, in the 
gloaming of the first evening, the green shore 
of his own country sink behind the sea. The 
Irish Emiqratiox to America, which now 
ensued as the legitimate consequence of the 
hardships to which the nation had been ex- 
posed, while it was one of the most striking 
examples of voluntary expatriation ever known, 
was by no means a surprising event Behind 
the emigrants were famine, pestilence, land- 
lordism, robbery, the oppressions of the British 
Government — every compulsive force that 
might well drive a people into exile. In the 
course of two or three years from the begin- 
ning of the potato famine, the country was de- 
populated at the rate of about a million souls 
per annum. Nearly the whole tide was poured 
into America. The exiles of Erin, generally 
in rags, were seen by hundreds and thousands 
in the streets of the American sea-board cities, 
from which they gradually distributed them- 
selves into the interior, chiefly along the line of 
the great railways and canals, which about that 
time were in construction, and finding employ- 
ment and profitable wages at the hands of pub- 
lic contractors. 

It is from this point of view that the 
problem of Irefand in America henceforth is 
to be considered. It can not be doubted that 
the great emigration contributed many un- 
favorable elements to American life. It could 
not be expected that ship-loads of half-starved 
Irish peasants, uneducated, inexperienced, of 
low estate, unfed in all their lives with other 
food than the potato, could at once and favor- 
ably assume the duties of Republican citizen- 
ship. Our own system has been largely to 
blame for the vices that came with the Irish 
exodus. But the appearance of these people 
has not been an unmixed curse. In the first 
place, something is due to the principle of in- 



ternationality — to that principle which de- 
mands the exposure and distribution of ouf 
own good, of our own strength, to those who 
have it not, of whatever clime or race. We 
may not forget the incalculable benefits which 
the Irish emigrants received from their con- 
tact with our people and institution^ Then, 
again, we may well consider the material ad- 
vantage to ourselves. If virtue, indeed, flowed 
from the hem of our garments at the touch of 
Ireland, strength was given back into our 
own constitution from the wound made in 
our soil by the Irish flpade. The addition of 
so large a body of cheerful and patient labor- 
ers to our own strained resources of physical 
force must by no means be overlooked in 
considering the general features and character 
of the problem. Finally, it shall not be for- 
gotten that in the day when American institu- 
tions — aye, the very existence of the American 
Republic — was staked on the gage of battle; 
when the day of conflict came, and the free 
system of representative government on this 
side of the sea was under trial of the sword; 
when everything which the American heart 
holds dear waB at jeopard in the smoke and 
blood and carnage of Civil War, — then the 
Irish contingent contributed its full quota to 
the Union Army, and on every field, from 
the Rappahannock to the Ozark Mountains^ 
Irish life was freely and gratefully given un- 
der the Star-banner which had received and 
guarded the exiles of 1850 in the dark day of 
their banishment. 

While the attention of the British Parlia- 
ment had been principally drawn to the events 
narrated in the preceding pages, other mat- 
ters of less importance, but still of interest to 
the reader, had occurred. Among these, one 
of a peculiar sort may be mentioned as 
illustrative of the nature and tendencies of 
British legislative thought at the epoch before 
us. The incident referred to had many of the 
features of that remarkable Martin-Koszta 
Affair to which the reader^s attention haa 
been directed in a former chapter. Beginning 
with a merely personal matter, the event 
which we are now to consider was, as in the 
case of Koszta with our own country, destined 
before its close to bring forth and elucidate 
many important principles of international lair 
and comity. 



GREAT BRITAIN.— EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



321 



The affiiir in question arose in distant 
Greece, and was based ultimately upon the 
rights of British citizens resident abroad. 
Greece was, religiously considered, under the 
sway of the Eastern, or so-called Greek Cath- 
olic Church. That Church, as the Roman 
Church in the West, had its superstitions many 
and its traditional practices many, of which a 
certain usage was annually to bum an ef^gj 
of the traitor, Judas Iscariot. This ceremony 
was performed in connection with the Easter 
celebration in each year. It was generally an 
uproarious performance, at which the ruder 
citizenship was given license, not only to con- 
tribute to the burning of Judas, but to in- 
dulge in other half* lawless amusements. At 
length the authorities of Athens concluded to 
abolish the ceremony. Accordingly, in 1847, 
the police were instructed to prevent the an- 
nual celebration. The movement was seriously 
resented by the people, and a mob arose 
headed by two sons of the Greek Minister of 
War. The insurgents came at length to the 
spot where the Judas was to have been burned, 
but, being deprived of the annual s^'v. rts which 
they had been wont to enjoy, they turned 
aside to find some actual Judas on whom they 
might be revenged. Such a Judas was not far 
to seek. It chanced that there was resident 
Dear the scene a certain Jew named Don Pa- 
cifico, whose house the angry mob attacked 
and destroyed. But Don Pacifico had the pru- 
dence and craft of his race. He was a Portu- 
guese by descent, bom at Gibraltar, but a cit- 
izen of Great Britain. It was the latter cir- 
cumstance, that Ib, his being a subject of the 
^British crown, that now stood him well in 
hand. He accordingly made up an inventory 
of his losses, which he estimated at the very 
liberal figure of thirty-two thousand pounds 
sterling. He also claimed that among his pa- 
pers, which had been destroyed by the mob, 
there were certain documents establishing the 
indebtedness of the Portuguese Government to 
himself in many additional thousands of 
pounds. The event showed that the imagina- 
tion of Don Pacifico had been thrifty in the 
last degree, and that his legitimate claim would 
have to be reduced to a small fraction of what 
was shown in his inventory. But the princi- 
ple was all the same, and Don Pacifico loudly 
demanded that the Greek Government should 



compensate him for his losses. He also ap- 
pealed to the British Minister of Foreign Af- 
fairs, and, being a subject of the British 
crown, his claim was taken up and indorsed 
by the Minister. Thus the issue was made be- 
tween Great Britain and Greece. Palmerston, 
at that time Secretary for Foreign AiTairs, 
formulated a series of claims, at the head of 
which was set that of Don Pacifico, and de- 
manded that the Grecian Government should 
liquidate the whole or abide the coBse- 
quences. 

The Greek authorities, however, v^ere little 
disposed to allow the validity of the claims, 
whereupon a British fleet was despatched to 
the sea-port of Athens to compel payment. 
In the emergency, Greece appealed to France 
and Russia to aid her against the unjust 
demand of Great Britain. Both of those 
governments had been somewhat ofiended 
at the precipitancy of England in displaying 
force in the harbor of a friendly power. The 
English Ministry was accused of a covert dis- 
position to loose herself from the engagement 
by which the independence of Greece had 
been guaranteed at the establishment of the 
Greek monarchy. France was more mild- 
mannered, and profiered her good ofiSces in 
the settlement of the difiUculty. It appears 
that the English Ambassador at Athens pro- 
ceededy in conjunction with^the representative 
of France, to adjust and allow so much of the 
claims of Don Pacifico as might be valid, but 
at the same time Lord Palmerston went ahead 
to force a settlement in his own way. 

All of these circumstances combined to 

m 

give an occasion for the Opposition in Parlia- 
ment to attack the foreign policy of the Gov- 
ernment, and the methods of Lord Palmerston 
in the Greek afiair in particular. Palmerston, 
however, defended himself and the course which 
he had taken, in a masterly speech in the 
House of Commons, and the policy of the 
Foreign Office was upheld by a great majority. 
The claim of Don Pacifico, reduced to more 
moderate proportions, was at length discharged 
by the Greek Government, but only after the 
controversy had dragged along till all parties 
were anxious to be freed from its further con- 
sideration. A difficulty which came near lead- 
ing at one time to serious consequences was 
^ finally eliminated from the thought of the 






322 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



nations concerned by the diversion of their 
attention to other questions and interests. 

In the course of the debate in Parliament 
on the matter of Don PaciBco and his troub- 
les in Athens, Sir Robert Peel made his last 
speech in that great body, where he had been 
10 long distinguished, and for several years 
supreme. It was in the early morning of 
June 29^ 1850, that the eminent statesman 
left the House of Commons for the last time. 
He was a member of the Boyal Com mission, 
which had been constituted to superintend the 
great Industrial Exhibition in Hyde Park, 
the preparations for which were making at 
^ that time. Sir Robert attended a meeting of 
the Commission, and then visited the Queen 
at Buckingham Palace. On leaving the latter 
place, he was thrown from his horse, and be- 
coming entangled in the bridle, was crushed 
under the animal's knees and hoofs. His in- 
juries were fatal, and, after suffering for three 
days in great agony, he died, on the 2d of 
July. The event produced a shock through* 
out the kingdom. It was proposed that the 
dead statesman should be buried in Westmin- 
ster, but Peel had provided otherwise in his 
will. In that document he had stipulated also 
that no member of his family should accept 
any title or other mark of honor on account 
of the services which he had rendered to 
the country. For this reason, when the offer 
was made to elevate Lady Peel to the Peerage, 
the honor was declined. Nor will the repub- 
lican reader of the New World fail to do obei- 
sance to the sterling spirit of the man who 
could thus deliberately rest the reputation of 
his family with posterity on his own unaided 
name. 

Just at the time of which we speak, the 
interest of all England was excited by a pro- 
ceeding of the Pope of Rome relative to his 
alleged/ jurisdiction in Great Britain. The 
reader must in this connection recall hurriedly 
the history of the English Church. He must 
remember how closely, from the day of its 
birth, that Church had been identified with 
the political Constitution of the Kingdom. The 
Reformation in England had run a course very 
different from the destinies of the same move- 
ment on the Continent. Every part of the 
Establishment had now been for a long time 
interwoven with the civil fabric until not only 



the independency, but the very existence of 
the one seemed to be involved with that of the 
other. The Church of England had from the 
middle of the sixteenth century rested heavily 
on Catholicism. It had remained for the 
nineteenth century to remove most of the dis- 
abilities under which the Catholics had long 
groaned, and to introduce a reign of compara- 
tive toleration. No sooner, however, was the 
weight lifted and Rome set free, than she be- 
gan her old-time tactics for the recovery of 
her supremacy. Strange to say, moreover, at 
this very time, a reaction in favor of the 
Mother Church was discovered in the v^l^ 
heart of Episcopalianism. Several of the 
leading ecclesiastics discovered a sudden lik- 
ing for the ceremonials, to say nothing of the 
dogmas, of Rome. It was noticed that, in the 
highest places of the Church, an unusual honor 
began to be paid to the saints. The sign of 
the cross was made as reverently by Church- 
men as bv Catholics, and the claim of infalli- 
bility was institilted. It was observed that 
some of the bishops read the liturgy in a 
manner and tone strongly in sympathy with 
the Latin chant of the Roman priestj and at 
last it was recommended in some dioceses that 
auricular confession be made, and that penance 
be done and absolution granted for sins. This 
was indeed Sanckt Ecclesia Rediviva! It only 
remained to elevate the host to complete the 
transformation. In the autumn of 1850 the 
people of England suddenly awaked to find 
that their National Church was apparently 
slipping back into the open .portal of *' the 
Flaminian Gate." 

Pius IX. was quick to discern and to ap- 
preciate the advantage which this movement 
seemed to promise. He accordingly issued a 
letter or bull, dividing England into dioceses, 
to be placed under the control of one Arch- 
bishop and twelve Suffragans. More th&n 
this — and this was the gravamen of his offense — 
he proceeded to authorize the bishops and 
archbishops to take their names or titles /nwi 
iJie name of the dhc^^es to which they were re- 
spectively assigned. This sounded very much 
like the assumption of a certain indefinite ter- 
ritoridl domiuion over the diocese, rather than 
that merely ecclesiastical authority against 
which no one could raise objections. The as- 
sumptions of the Papal bull were immediately 



GREAT BRITAIN.'-EPOCH OF CHARTISM. 



323 



4Mcked bj a pronunciamento of Cardinal Wise- 
cnan, the new Catholic Archbishop of England. 
The pastoral letter which he now addresssed to 
Ills subjects was, according to its superscrip- 
tion, '* given out of the Flaminian Gate at 
Borne.** The communication, which was or- 
-dered to be read publicly in all the Catholic 
Ohurches of London, was little less than inso- 
lent. It declared that '*the beloved coun- 
try" — meaning England — "had been received 
to a place among the fair Churches which 
^constituted the splendid aggregate of the 
<3atholic communion." It went on to say that 
Oatholic England had been restored to its true 
orbit in the ecclesiastic firmament, etc. 

Now it was, however, that the matter was 
overdone. The English people suddenly sprang 
•up in indignation against the Papal assump- 
tions, and the Island rang from shore to shore 
with loud denunciations of the whole impudent 
scheme, which had seemingly been devised 
for the restoration of the country to the do- 
<ininion of Rome. Lord John Russell, at the 
liead of the Ministry, wrote a general letter, 
in which he called the attention of the people 
of England to the insidious plot of the Pope 
jigainst the principles of the Reformation, and 
Against the still greater fact of English liberty. 
By the opening of Parliament in 1851 the 
public temper had become so much aroused 
that the Ministry were impelled, as much by 
the force of the popular voice as by their own 
oonvictions, to take some action against the 
4Miheme of the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman. 
To do so, however, was a step attended with 
igreat difficulty. In the first place, England 
•had now openly adopted the principle of uni- 
versal toleration in matters of religion. In 
the next place, it was seen by the leading 
ininds that even the extraordinary pretensions 
«nd claims, which had recently been set up 
with respect to Papal dominion in Great 
Britain, were idle and empty, void of effect, the 
mere sound of brazen cymbals. 

But the real difficulty in dealing with the 
-question lay in the peculiar division which 
then existed in Parliament. In that body 
there were three political parties, the Whigs, 
the Conservatives, and the so-called Peelites, 
The latter had belonged, for the most part, to 
the Conservative party, but had adhered to 
43ir Robert Peel in the matter of Free Trade, 



and had thus parted company with the Pro- 
tection division, representing, in general, the 
landed aristooracy of Great Britain. When 
the Peel Ministry gave way, it waB not the 
accession of the Whigs; the overthrow of the 
recent Government was personal rather than 
political. Besides the three divisions already 
mentioned, there was a strong Irish contingent, 
and this, since the passage of the Reform 
measures by which the disabilities resting on 
the Catholics had been removed, was made up 
almost exclusively of Catholic members. Any 
measure now proposed by Lord Russell against 
the assumptions of Rome would be at once as* 
sailed, for purely political reasons, by Disraeli 
and the Conservatives proper, while the Irish 
party, which, in general, had cooperated with 
Sir Robert Peel on everything except reli^ous 
questions, would, of course, oppose the Ministry 
in a measure directed against Rome. 

As to the party in power, it was itself made 
up of extremes* Those who strongly adhered 
to the Church of England were rampant for 
the emlctment of strenuous measures against 
the Papal interference. Of this kind were all 
the prelates and their following, both in and 
out of Parliament At the other extreme of 
the Ministerial party were those moderate 
statesmen, who were indifferent to the vapor- 
ings of Rome, and would have been glad if 
the question had never been brought into the 
House of Commons. It was in the midst of 
these embarrassments that Lord John Russell 
brought before Parliament the so-called £o 

GLE8IA8TICAL TiTLES BiLL, by whlch it WSS 

proposed to prohibit Catholic Bishops from ths 
use of all such titles as, being derived from 
their dioceses, might hint at temporal, that is, 
territorial, jurisdiction. To accept of any such 
title was made a crime, under a penalty of a 
hundred pounds for every such assumption. 
The measure in this form, however, could not 
be passed through Parliament. The bill was 
so amended as to omit the more stringent 
clauses, and, even in the emasculated form, was 
only accepted as an end to the controversy. It 
does not appear that the Roman hierarchy was 
much disturbed or impeded by the measure. 
The statute continued in force, or, rather, noi in 
force, until 1871, wh^n it was quietly abro- 
gated by the same body which had adopted it 
twenty years before. 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY,— THE MODERN WORLD. 



Chapter cxxix.— From Hyde park, to bosp-horuSs 



IE have dow arrived at a 
year iu the biatory of 
England in which society 
made a new departure 
from its beaten course. It 
is not on«n that the etu- 
dent of the eocial evolu* 
lion is permitted to seethe beginnings of thiags. 
Aa a rule, lie is obliged to content himself nith 
following the lines of force already operative 
in affaire, without being able to discover ex- 
actly their origin. In 1851, London, or, rather, 
all Eugland and the world, were destined to 
witness, in Hyde Park, the fir^t great Inter- 
national Exhibition op Arts and Indus- 
TBiES. The project certainly originated with 
^nce Albert, Consort of the Queen. We 
have seen, in a former place, to what an exteut 
tiie inlereets and sympathies of the Prince 
were devoted to the industrial and artistic side 
of life. His position in English society, his 
ample wealth, his power and influence in pub- 
Uc affairs, gave him abundant opportunity to 
study out measures for the promotion of such 
matters as he conceived to be of benefit to 
the people. It was out of these antecedents 
that the concept of the Hyde Park Exhibition 
arose in his mind. He conceived that, if by 
some meana, a plan could be devised for bring- 
ing together, under suitable conditions, the 
choice products, manufactures, and artistic 
achievements, not only of the Engliah people, 
but of all civilized States, the reflex effect of 
such an exposition must be salutary in the 
highest degree. Albert was preeminently a 
practical man ; but he also had, in some good 
measure, the inspiration of philanthropy, and 
was even capable of dreamiiifr of a better age. 
He imn^Mued that if such an Exhibition as he 
contemplated could be successfully carried out, 
it would tend to produce, by acijuaintance, a 
better understand inj; among the nations, sug- 
gest friendly counsels am<)ng them, and dis- 
courage war — all thi.=, in liililitiim to sliniu- 
lating a healthful rivalry among (he various 
peoples in the matter of their industries and 
arts. Thus even might the reign of Violence 



be ended, and the reign of Peace be ushered 
iu. It can hardly be doubted that the Prince, 
and those immediately associated with him. 
were carried forward against extreme opposi- 
tion aud almost insuperable difficulties, by the- 
pleasing hopes which they entertained of the 
betterment of mankind by the work they had 
in hand. 

It was on the 21st of March, 1851. tbat 
Prince Albert, speaking at the Lord Mayor** 
banquet in the Mansion House, set forth in a 
happy and not unpoetical way, the project of 
the Exhibidon. In concluding his address he- 
declared that it should be the end of the en- 
terprise to "give the world a true test, a liv- 
ing picture, of the point of industrial develoi^ 
ment at which the whole of mankind had 
arrived, and a new starting-point, from which 
al) nations will be able to direct their further 
exertions." The proposition of the distin- 
guisbed speaker met with an immediate and 
hearty acceptance by many of the public mei 
present, and before the end of tbe banquer 
the first formal steps were taken for the pro- 
motion of the enterprise. 

But no such measure has ever been pro- 
jected in Great Britain without at once awak- 
ening the antagonistic forces which slumber 
ever at the door. In that country, the party 
method of advocacy and opposition is applied 
to everything. It might be said, without ex- 
aggeration, that if the Premier of England 
should lax before the House of Commons a- 
resolution that men ought to be good and 
happy, the leader of the Opposition would be 
ready with a reply; the debate would be sharp- 
and protracted, and the majority for the meas- 
ure would be determined by a division of tbc 
House! For this reason, progress in England- 
is laborious in the last degree. The course- 
towards better thiugs is rendered tortuous and' 
diflicult. The streams of national life flow 
like water underground — turned in this direc- 
tion and in that by the nature of the media, 
perc'ilatiiig through gravel-beds, deflected by 
misplaced strata, and finally issuing through- 
hitherto undiscovered orifices in unexpected 



GREAT BRITAIN.— FROM HYDE PARK TO BOSPHORUS. 326 



HI 



!' :1 
'li' 

J 



326 



UNIVEBSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



pAces, on unknown hill-ndes. Let the reader, 
however, fail not to note that, by such a pro- 
cess, the waters are purified and the springs 
rendered perennial in their flow. 

No sooner was the Prince's project known 
than opposition arose in every quarter. First 
of all, it was said that a World's Fair, held in 
London,' would bring to the metropolis a 
m'^fainge of all nations. With them would 
come their vices and diseases, and the people 
would become infected with both. In par- 
ticular, it was urged that the Red Bepublicans 
of the Continent would come over in swarms, 
and that their presence in London would ex- 
cite the revival of Chartism, Irishism, Revolu- 
tionism, and every other political calamity. 
It was even urged that the English home 
would be invaded, English altars polluted, 
English wives and daughters turned from the 
practices of virtue by the unscrupulous, 
bearded adventurers who would gather in t1 a 
metropolis. In the next place, the British 
press, from the London Times all the way 
round to Punchy broke loose with invective 
and ridicule to such a degree that at times it 
seemed the Prince and his project would be 
blown away in a common blast of contumely 
and laughter. 

It may well be admitted that many real 
difficulties attended the enterprise, even after 
the Royal Commission, with Prince Albert at 
the head, was appointed to carry it forward. 
In the first place, an embarrassment arose in 
the matter of securing a suitable site for the 
Exhibition. Hyde Park was at length chosen ; 
but the most strenuous efforts were made to 
prevent its use by the Commissioners, for the 
purpose. It was argued that the beautiful 
park would be forever despoiled! if it were 
opened to the vulgar hordes who wor.ld come 
tramping from every quarter to the monster 
fair. But the Commissioners at length car- 
ried the day, and the park was selected as the 
scene of the Exposition. In the next place, 
some colossal structure was required in which 
the arts and industries of the contributing 
nations might be displayed properly. This 
was a serious question ; for it might well be 
asked how any edifice, under any method of 
building, could be reared and put under roof 
with sufficient capacity for the contemplated 
display. 



The difficulty was met by the genius of 
Sir Joseph Paxton. It had been at first sug- 
gested to attempt the construction of a huge 
building of brick and stone. But the objec- 
tions to such a structure were obvious. A 
building of the kind must at the best appear, 
like a monster factory or warehouse. Besides, 
it was doubtful whether the requisite strength 
could be secured in a construction of the 
kind, to say nothfng of the admission of light. 
It was a happy inspiration which brought to 
Sir Joseph's mind the idea of a building of 
iron and glass. He conceived that a Cr ysttai. 
Palace, to use his own language, might be 
constructed which would meet, in the happiest 
manner, all the requirements of the Exhibi* 
tion. The event showed the entire wisdom of 
the plan proposed, A great palace of irc^ 
and glass, for the display of the industrial 
and artistic products of mankind, was success- 
fiiUy constructed, and London was at length 
gratified, not to say glorified, with the sight 
'of the completed structure. 

Meanwhile, public opinion had, to a large 
extent, veered around to the Prince's quarter. 
From the first the Queen had ardently pro* 
moted the cause in which her husband had so 
heartily embarked. She felt for him and all 
his projects as much enthusiasm aq^ devotion 
as her calm and somewhat sedate, though 
womanly, spirit was able to entertain. As it 
became evident that tlie Exhibition was des- 
tined to be successful, and as the opening day 
of the Great Fair approached, the zeal of the 
people and exhibitors rose to the level of the 
occasion. The pleasing duty of formally 
opening the Exhibition was justly allotted t^ 
Prince Albert. It was really a great day in 
the history of England, and of the Western 
nations, when the Royal procession was 
formed from Buckingham Palace to Hyde 
Park. It was estimated that the way thither 
was lined with fully three-quarters of a million 
of people, and, at the opening hour, no 
fewer than thirty thousand were seated under 
the shimng roof of the Crystal Palace. 
The Queen herself attended proudly with he» 
husband, and her glowing account of the 
opening ceremonies may well be repeated as 
-n adequate description of the scene. "The 
great event," said Her Majesty, ** has taken 
place — a complete and beautiful triumph- 



GREAT BRITAIR-'FROM HYDE PARK TO BOSPHORU& 



327 



glorious and touching sight, one which I shall 
ever be proud of for my beloved Albert and 
my country. . . . The park presented a 
wonderful spectacle — crowds streaming through 
it, carriages and troops passing, quite like the 
Coronation-day, and for me the same anxiety — 
no, much greater anxiety, on account of my 
beloved Albert The day was bright, and all 
bustle and excitement. • . . The Green 
Park and Hyde Park were one densely 
crowded mass of human beings, in the highest 
good-humor, and most enthusiastic. I Q^ver 
saw Hyde Park look as it did — ^as far as the 
eye could reach. A little rain fell just as we 
started ; but, before we came near the Crystal 
Palace^the sun shone and gleamed upon the 
gigantic edifice, upon which the flags of all 
nations were floating. • . . The glimpse^ 
of the transept through the iron gates, the 
waving palms, flowers, statues, myriads of peo- 
ple filling the galleries and seats around, with 
the flourish of trumpets as we entered, gave 
us a sensation which I can never forget. . . . 
The sight as we came to the middle was mag- 
ical — so vast, so glorious, so touching. One 
felt, as so many did whom I have since spoken 
to, filled with devotion — more so than by any 
service I have ever heard. The tremendous 
cheers ; the joy expressed in every face ; the im- 
mensity of the building ; the mixture of palms, 
flowers, trees, statues, fountains; the organ, 
with two hundred instruments and six hun- 
dred voices, which sounded like nothing ; and 
my beloved husband, the author of this peace 
festival, which unites the industry of all na- 
tions of the earth, — all this was moving 
indeed ; and it was and is a day to live for- 
ever." 

The Exhibition extended irom the 1st day 
of May to the 15th of October, when the cere- 
monies of the display were formally closed by 
Prince Albert From first to last, Hyde Park 
and Crystal Palace were thronged to their ca- 
pacity. At times it was estimated that quite 
a hundred thousand persons were within the 
precincts. Even financially the enterprise was 
crowned with success. In the beginning the 
money requisite for projecting so great a wort 
had been raised by private subscription. Aft- 
erwards, a^ large guarantee had been provided 
against the possible losses attendant upon the 
Exhibition. But at the close the treasury ^gB 



full, and a large sum was left as profits to be 
expended by the Commissioners. 

We shall not fail to note the exemplary re- 
sults of the World's Fair in Hyde Park. It 
was the first of many such displays; nor could 
it be doubted, as the event has so well attested, 
that all civilized States would covet the dis- 
tinction and glory of eclipsing the first Inter- 
national Fair. The Hyde Park Expositioa 
was soon followed by a similar display in 
Dublin, and by another of painting and sculp- 
ture in Manchester. The city of Paris, under 
the auspices of the Second Empire, held two 
great International Expositions; apd under the 
Bepublic, two others of still greater grandeur 
have been given. In 1862, England did her- 
self the honor of a second Exhibition, in Ken- 
sington. In 1873, Austria came to the front 
with her Exposition at Vienna ; and in 1876 
the Americans availed themselves of the cen- 
tennial anniversary of their Independence to 
set forth at Philadelphia one of the grandest 
and most successful of all the International 
Exhibitions; 

In the meantime, in the course of the 
thirty-eight years that have elapsed since the 
first display of the kind, nations and people 
have come to a truer understanding of the' 
real significance and value of such enterprises. 
The roseate expectations which were at first 
entertained, that such comings together of the 
peoples of difl^erent countries would usher in 
a reign of peace and fraternity for all man- 
kind, have disappeared in the light of the re- 
ality; but much has remained of solid value, 
of progress and humanity, as the residue of 
International displays. They have grown in 
favor, and may well be regarded as a perma- 
nent element in the civilization of the future. 

The date in English history made famous 
by the Hyde Park Exhibition is memorable 
in Parliamentary annals for the rise to influ- 
ence and promised ascendency of Henry John 
Temple, better known by his title of Lord 
Palmerston. We have already seen him tak- 
ing his station, in 1846, as Secretary for For- 
eign Aflairs, in the Ministry of Lord John 
Russell. That position he held during the 
Revolutionary year, 1848. At that time he 
was obliged, in virtue of his office, to give 
constant attention to the relations of Great 
Britain with almost every Continental power 



828 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY,— THE MODERN WORLD. 



Europe was in a state of active eruption, and 
the ezteut to which England might be affected 
thereby was problematical even to Eugliab 
statesmen. The condition of affairs on the 
Continent changed like the varying figures of 
a kaleidoscope, and Lord Palmerston must 
needs be on the alert in the Foreign OfBce of 
Great Britain lest the kingdom 'should be 
shaken from her moorings by the agitations 
abroad. 

For these great duties and responsibilities, 
Palmerston was both fitted and unfitted — fitted 
by intellect and training ; unfitted by disposi- 
tion. He was naturally quick-tempered, im- 
pulsive, and self-willed, not to say aggressive, 
in disposition. In the stormy time of the Eu- 
ropean upheaval he nevertheless conducted 
the affairs of the Foreign Office with great 
ability. But it was soon discovered in the 
Russell Cabinet that Palmerston was disposed 
Id run his department of the Government 
without much respect to either the Premier or 
the Queen. In instances not a few he con- 
ducted important negotiations, and sent out 
despatches, without submitting them to the re- 
visory rights of his colleagues or the sanction 
of the sovereign. As a result, when things 
went badly, the Government was held responsi- 
ble for measures which it had not approved. 
A break was thus produced, which was in the 
nature of a fracture between Palmerston and hts 
fellow-ministers, but a real rupture between 
him and the Royal family. When the Prince- 
President, Louis Napoleon, effected his great 
Coup HEtat^ at the close of 1851, very serious 
consequences were entailed by the recklessness 
of Lord Palmerston. It had been the settled 
policy of Great Britain to move with extreme 
caution with respect to recognizing the validity 
of the proceedings of Prince Napoleon. When 
that personage, however, had accomplished his 
purpose by revolution. Lord Palmerston, in an 
imprudent conversation with the Polish Minis- 
ter, at London, expressed his hearty approval 
of what Napoleon had done. The remark was 
immediately conveyed to the French Minister, 
and by him despatched to his Government, at 
Paris. England seemed thus to be committed 
to the poliey of recognizing the Coup (VEiat 
whether she would or not. Likewise, on the 
occasion of the visit of Kossuth to London, 
Lord Palmerston, who, in the conduct of the ^ 



Foreign OlBBoe, had done his best to support 
the fortunes of the Hungarian Revolution, 
Had been deterred from giving a formal recep- 
tion to the fugitive Kossuth only by the re- 
monstrance of the Cabinet. When thus 
balked in the expreesion ot his sympathy 
for the political exile, he was still so impru- 
dent as to accept an address from a body of 
English Radicals, who had held a meeting 
in honor of Kossuth, and adopted resolu- 
tions including an expression of animosity 
and contempt for Austria. By accepting 
this paper from their hands, Palmerston waa 
put into the attitude of approving the animad- 
versions which some of his countrymen had 
uttered against the Austrian Government. 

The Queen and the Prince Consort were 
much offended at the proceedmgs of the re- 
fractory Minister. Her Majesty had long since 
had occasion to send to Lord John Russell » 
memorandum, expressing her displeasure at 
the treatment which she had received from the 
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and also adding 
explicit directions for his conduct thereafter. 
Palmerton's course in declaring his approval 
of the Coup d'Etai of Napoleon brought affairs 
to an open rupture. Lord Russell, with the 
concurrence of the Queen, afler having ob- 
tained an acknowledgment from Palmerston 
that the report of his expressed views relative 
to the Paris Revolution was correct, addressed 
the Minister a formal note, notifying him of 
his dismissal ^m office. This summary pro- 
ceeding was the source of great excitement 
both at home and abroad ; and when Parlia- 
ment convened, in February of 1852, the 
whole question was debated with vehemence 
and acrimony. The course of Lord Russell, 
however, was overwhelmingly approved by the 
House of Commons, and Palmerston was, for 
a seasim, remanded to retirement, if not ob« 
scurity. 

The circumstance of the recent French Rev* 
olution, by which Louis Napoleon paved his 
way to Empire, was destined, in its English 
correlations, to be the rock on which the 
Russell Ministry went to pieces. There had 
arisen in En<rland a feeling of unrest and in- 
security on account of the supposedly defense- 
less condition of the Kingdom. By a sort of 
instinctive movement, the public mind was 
seized with the passion for organizing and dis- 



GREAT BRITAIN.— FROM HYDE PARK TO BOSFMORUS. 



32b 



cipiming a kind of NatioDal Guard againflt the 

possible emergencies of the time. The gath- 
ering, discipline, and equipment of voluntary 
militia companies became the order of the day, 
and for the nonce it seemed that Great Britain 
was to become a camp. There was actual 
dread of a French war, and the sentiment 
of the nation was focused in a ballad from 
the Laureate, addressed to his countrymen; 

There is a sound of thunder afar. 
Storm in the South that darkens the day — 

Storm of battle and thunder of war; 
Well, if it do not roll our wayl 
Form, fofm ; riflemen, form I 



Let your Reforms for a moment go ; 

Look to your butts, and take good aims I 

Better a rotten borough or so. 

Than a rotten fleet, or a city in flames I 

Form I form I Riflemen, form ! 

Ready, be ready to meet the storm. 

Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen, form I 

Form, be ready to do or die I 

Form in Freedom's name and the Qaeen'al 
True, that we have a faithful Ally,^ 

But only the Devil knows what he means I 

The military movement referred tx) in Ten- 
oyson^s lyric had thus far been of a popular 
character. The' idea had possessed the people 
that there was insecurity, and that England 
must prepare herself against the threatening 
condition of the Continent Many men were 
yet living who had fought at Waterloo ; many 
more who remembered that fatal cataclysm. 
Now there was come into the field another 
Bonaparte, nephew of the Corsican. His re- 
cent proceedings among the French showed 
that he would scruple not at any means of 
restoring the Napoleonic r^me. All this 
was particularly alarming to the England of 
1852. When Parliament met, it was neces- 
sary that the Ministry should respond to the 
voice of the country by some action promotive 
of the general military organization of the 
Kingdom. A Militia Bill was accordingly pre- 
pared by Lord John Russell, and laid before 
the House of Commons. The debate thereon 
at ODce revealed the fact that the proposed 
statute had been badly devised. One clause, 
which made the organization of the militia 
local in character, rather than general, was 

* Meaning LouisNapoleon Bonaparte. 



particularly unfortunate. The attack on the 
Ministerial Bill was general and from all 
quarters, and, to the surprise of the Govern- 
ment, a majority was against them. Palmer- 
ston, who was now out of the Ministry, made 
a powerful and characteristic speech against 
the p^ylicy of Lo)*d Russell, and the latter, 
without prolonging the controversy, resigned 
his office. In the existing condition of parties 
in Parliament it seemed almost impracticable 
to form a new Ministry at all ; but the Queen, 
in the emergency, called to her aid the Earl 
of Derby, and under his leadership the Ad- 
ministration was reorganized. 

The new Prime Minister was not wanting 
in great abilities; but he had extreme dif- 
ficulty in bringing into his Cabinet men of 
equal character with himself. The portfolio 
of the Treasury was given to Disraeli, who 
soon showed himself, contrary to all expecta- 
tion, to possess the same genius for figures 
and schedules which he had already displayed 
in the wider domain of general politics. The 
Ministry was somewhat conglomerate, not 
made up on strict party. lines, but by selection 
and expediency. If Palmerston could have 
been induced to join it, sufficient power might 
have been developed in the Cabinet to extend 
the Government indefinitely. But as things 
stood, the end of the current Administration 
was seen frpm the beginning; the Derby 
Ministry was a pis dUer from the first, and on 
account of its obscure membership was desig- 
nated as the "Who? Who? Ministry." 

A Parliamentary incident of the time 
serves well to illustrate the peculiar move- 
ments of the public mind in England, and the 
resoluteness with which opinion in that coun- 
try is sometimes confronted by the individual 
will. In 1847 Thomas Babington Macaulay^ 
the historian/ had lost his seat in the House 
of Commons. For some time he had sat in 
that body as the representative of Edinburgh, 
and had reflected fame on his constituents by 
the brilliancy of his talents. At length, how- 
ever, he gave oflense to his rigid and exacting 
people by supporting a bill for a Parliamentary 
grant to the Royal Catholic College of May- 
nooth, in Leinster, Ireland. Accordingly, 
when the election came round, Macaulay's 
name sank to the third place on the poll-book 
> of Edinburgh, and he was, fortunately for him* 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TEE MODERN WORLD. 



DDKE OF WELLINGTON. 



GBEAT BMITAnr.—FROM HYDE PARK TO VO&THORUS. 



331 



self, and still more fortunately for the interests 
•f historical literature, remanded to private 
life. Proud in his humiliation, he refused to 
stand for any other constituency, and Edin- 
burgh, equally stiff in her resolve, was slow 
to recall her offending favorite to her service. 
At length, however, her resentment gave place 
to common sense, and it was signified to Ma- 
caulay that if he would offer himself, he should 
be again elected to Parliament. Not he. If the 
electors of Edinburgh should choose, of their 
own volition, to return him to the House of 
Commons, he would heed their call. '* I should 
Dot,'* said he in answer, *' feel myself justified 
in refusing to accept a public trust offered to me 
in a manner so honorable and so peculiar::^ 
He was accordingly elected by a great majority, 
and at the opening of the session, in 1852, 
again took his seat in Parliament 

It was in this same autumn that the aged 
Duke of Wellington reached the- end of his 
eventful career. He died quietly in Walmer 
Castle, on the 14th of September, 1852, in the 
eighty-fourth year of his age. He was among 
the last survivors of that Revolutionary Era, 
in which he had been so conspicuous and heroic 
a figure. More than thirty-seven years had 
elapsed since, on that stormy and tumultuous 
June afternoon, on the plateau of Monte Saint 
Jean, he had said : '' Rise, Guards, and charge I* 
A whole generation had passed away since the 
great military Captain of England had issued 
firom that sulphurous uproar of Waterloo, to be, 
in some sense, the Arbiter of Western Europe. 
In the interval, he had been called oft»n to the 
councils of his country, where the simplicity of 
his character and his touching, almost fatherly 
devotion to the Queen, rather than any great 
political talents, were displayed. In his last 
years he drew to himself, in a remarkable de- 
gree, the veneration and affection of the En- 
glish people. This was particularly true in 
London, where his face and form were known 
to almost every workman of the streets. So 
great was his reputation that the people called 
him, by preeminence, ** The Duke," as though 
there were no other d uke in the kingdom. After 
reaching much beyond his fourscore years, he 
went down to the grave in full honor, and, 
after life's fitful fever, he slept well. His 
funera] called forth almost the entire popula- 
tion of London, and the pageant of that day 



was unrivaled by anything which had ever 
yet been witnessed in the British Isles. The 
muse of Tennyson took wing, and his song said . 

Bury the Great Duke 

With an empire's lamentation ; 
Let us bury the Great Duke 
To the noise of the mourning of a mighty 
nation — 
Mourning when their leaders fall, 
Warriors carry the warrior's pall, 
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall. 

Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore? 
Here, in streaming London's central roar. 
Let the sound of those he wrought for. 
And the feet of those he fought for. 
Echo round his bones for evermore. 

We have already remarked the temporary 
character of the Derby Ministry. The elec- 
tions of 1852, though slightly in favor of the 
Administration, had no emphasis. On the re- 
opening of Parliament, the onus of the Gov- 
ernment fell on Disraeli, Minister of the 
Treasury. We have seen above that his open- 
ing pass in the management of his Depart- 
ment had been, in a measure, successful ; but 
on that occasion he had merely temporized 
with the great questions of the revenue, which 
he must now discuss in accordance with some 
permanent policy. Disraeli had now com- 
pletely abandoned the principles of Protection 
and become as sound a Free-trader as any. It 
was necessary that some alterations should be 
made in the income taxes of the Kingdom^; 
that the same should be greatly reduced, if 
not abolished, in the interest of the landlord 
class. In order to make up for the resulting 
deficit in the revenue, Disraeli proposed a re* 
duction of the malt-tax, and other modifica- 
tions in the existing schedule. In presenting 
the budget to the House of Commons, he made 
an elaborate and able speech, again exhibiting 
the vast resources of his genius and acquire* 
ments. But another, as strong as he, stood at 
the door, and no sooner had the Minister con- 
cluded his speech, than William E. Gladstone 
rose to reply. Notwithstanding the great ef- 
fect which Disraeli's address had produced on 
the House, his rival bore him down in the de- 
bate, and the Derby Ministry, beaten on the 
resulting vote, were obliged to resign. Die 
conflict on this occasion was the first passage 
at arms in the struggle for leadership between 
Disraeli and Gladstone — a duel of Parliament- 



i 



3S2 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WOULD. 



ary giants, which was deetiDed to continue with 
exciting alternations of victory and defeat for 
twenty-four years, until what time the Queea 
should remove her favorite from the arena by 
raising him to the peerage as the Earl of 
BeocoDsfield. 

With the downfall of the Derby Ministry, 
a CotllitioD Cabinet was formed under the 
leadersbip of Lord Aberdeen as Prime Min- 
later. Lord Russell was again called into the 
Government as Secretary of Foreign A&irs. 
Falmerston, who had been the agent of the 
latter statesman's overthrow, now became bia 
colleague, accepting the office of Home Secre- 
tary. Gladstone waa made Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, this being his first entrance into 
the Cabinet. The place which he accepted 
was, as we have seen, the most difficult, not 
to say dangerous, office in the Administration ; 
but the new Minister entered upon his duties 



with the confidence of a veteran, and it was at 
once perceived that his abilities in handling 
the difficult problems of finance were as con- 
epicuous as they hod already been shown to be 
on the wider plain of general politics. 

We have now arrived at that epoch in the 
history of England, when the attention of the 
people and the Government waa drawn away 
&om the home afiairs of the Kinj^dom to the 
greatest and most perplexing international 
controversy which has troubled Europe in 
the present century. It is doubtful, indeed, 
whether any other fact in the diplomacy of 
the kingdoms of Modern Europe since the rise 
of statecraft, has been so great a menace, so 
far-reaching in it^ ramifications, and so difficult 
of settlement, as that s^i-called Eastern Ques- 
tion, on an account of which we are now to 
enter. It has involved the entire fabric of 
Europe, and a considerable portion of Asia, in 
♦hf> folds of a complication which neither the 



talons of France nor the spear of St Georg* 
has as yet prevailed to loose. 

Of this vast complication, Turkey" is the 
heart and cent«r. Slie holds in general the 
south-eastern parts of Europe and the approx- 
imate regions of Asia. 80 far aa her position 
is concerned, it is such as to give her undis- 
puted control of those narrow waters which 
separate the Asiatic dominions from the coun- 
tries of Southern Europe, and such control has 
been guaranteed by treaties many, for more 
than a century. At the upper limit of Eu- 
ropean Turkey, the river Danube dischargea 
by many mouths into the Black Sea. Follow- 
ing the coast of that stormy water southward, 
we come to Constantinople, on the Bospborus, 
a strait much narrower and more easily con- 
trolled than that of Gibraltar. Then, through 
the Sea of Marmora, we make our way, through 
the Dardanelles, into the Archipelago, and 
thence into tho 
free waters of Uw 
Mediterranean. 

The advan- 
tage of the situ- 
ation was clearly 
discerned by the 
Roman Cnsarb 
Constandne and 
bis sons selected 
that old Byzan- 
tium, lying on the point of land next the Bos- 
phorus, and looking in to Asia Minor, as the seat 
of the ]£astern Empire. In the City of Conatan- 
tine, so founded and so patronized, the Roman 
power long maintained itself after the Eternal 
City of the West had gone down before the 
assaults of the Barbarians. It was within ■ 
few years of the birth of Columbus that the 
last Eastern Ctesar, still bearing the nanae of 
Conatantine, yielded his scepter to Mohammed 
II. and bis army of Ottoman Turks. The 
name of the conqueror was sufliciently signifi- 
cant What Abdalrahman and his Saracen 
host had been unable to accomplish on tha 
field of Tours, more than seven centuries be- 
fore, that was now effected at Constantinople 
by the Ottoman Emperor and his fierce sol- 
diery. Islam was set up in Europe. The 
Crescent shone on high above the dome of St 
Sophia. 

The conquest of Constantinople was mor^ 



GREAT BRITAIN.— FROM HYDE PARK TO B0SPH0RU8. 



333 



fer more, than a mere victory of Islam over 
Christianity. It brought the warlike Otto- 
mans to predominance in Eastern Europe. 
Than these no fiercer or more courageous sol- 
diers battled in the sixteenth century. They 
were the descendants of the iron-forgers of the 
Altais. They had themselves been converted 
to the profession of the Prophet with the 
flword and battle-axe of Arabia. Then, in 
turn, they had become the most zealous and 
succesi^ful propagandists of the new faith. 
Mohammed organized his empire from the cap- 
ital which h3 had conquered, and the Ottoman 
Power was an established fact in Europe. 

The Turks were, from the first, Asiatics, 
not Europeans. They had the thought and 
habitude of the Orient With the Occident 
they had nothing in common. Their religion 
was not more foreign to Europe than them- 
selves. The whole history of the Turkish 
power appeared from the first in the nature of 
a historicaL displacement, by which a part of 
Asia had been thrown, as if by a geologic 
convulsion, among countries of a different type 
and origin. To the rest of Europe the Turks 
were an everlasting menace. Up from the 
South-east, by successful wars, they made their 
way towards the heart of Europe. There was 
no nation as far west as the Atlantic that did 
not, as late as the close of the seventeenth 
century, have serious apprehensions of what 
might come to pass from the aggressions of the 
Ottoman Po\ver. 

The Turks, for more than three hundred 
years, maintained their isolation among the 
States of Europe. They assimilated in no par- 
ticular with the civilization of the West. Nor 
might it well have been foreseen what would 
be the condition of Eastern Europe in the 
nineteenth century if the Ottoman had not 
lost his power and ambition. But at length 
he sickened. Paralysis came, in body, soul, 
and member. The Oriental habit at length 
predominated over the ethnic forces of the 
race. The sons of the iron-forgers became 
Orientals pure and simple. Mohammedanism 
and opium wrought together in the deteriora- 
tion of the Turk, until he became the creature 
Inborn we see to-day. 

In the next place we must take into consid- 
eration the condition of the subject peoples 
over whom the Ottoman scepter in Europe 

Vol 



had been extended. Those of the southern 
part of European Turkey, with the exception 
of the Greeks and Albanians, generally yielded 
to the sway of Islam, and were gradually as- 
similated to the dominant power. But in the 
Danubian countries the people of the subject 
States retained their profession of Greek 
Catholicism. The provinces in this region re- 
mained Christian under Mohammedan rule. 
As a general thing, the Ottomans were little 
disposed to persecute for mere opinion's sake. 
Particularly after the decay of the Turkish 
political power had well set in, did the author- 
ities of the Sublime Porte act tolerantly to- 
wards the Christian subjects of the Empire, 
so long as the latter lay quiet under, the system 
of Government which the Sultans had estab- 
lished. Up to this point, therefore, the reader 
will hardly discover the outlines of tnose 
threatening complications which, under tne 
name of the Eastern Question, have so much 
distracted the States of modern Europe. 

Thus much, however, is but the beginning 
of the problem. In the next place, consider 
the Russian Empire. We speak here of that 
European Russia extending from the Ural 
Range to the borders of Germany, and from 
the Caucasus and the Black Sea on the south to 
the Arctic Ocean. Within this almost infinite 
domain a vast power, political and ethnic, 
emerged suddenly to view at the close of the 
seventeenth century. That Inspired Barbarian, 
Peter the Great, appeared on the scene, and 
became one of the principal actors. He put 
himself at the head of the Slavonic race, 
organized an Empire on a large scale, lefl the 
old inland capital of Moscow, made his way to 
the Gulf of Finland, and planted there his new 
seat of Gx)vemment. It was clearly his policy 
to issue and briog with him, among the civlK 
ized States of the West, the new Muscovite 
power, which he had created rather than 
mherited. In this stupendous scheme he beat 
about somewhat at random, and made many 
and grave mistakes. One thing he clearly per- 
ceived, and that was that the inland barbaric 
character of the Muscovite dominion must give 
place to a new system, which should be mari- 
time, and therefore commercial, in its character, 
and international in its relations. The posses- 
sion and development of sea-board emporia was 
a sine qua non in the scheme of the Czag^ 



884 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TEE MODERN WORLD. 



In a word, there was, must be, for this new 
Imperial Russia, an miUet to Uie ocean, and 
thence to the wotld. The project was rational 
in the highest degree, and from the day of its 
conception until the present, the enterprise 
of Peter I. has never ceased to be the dream 
and purpose of his succesors. 

Let us now see how Peter's plan might be 
carried into effect. In the first place,it would 
be possible to make a way to the south-east 
by the conquest of Persia, through Afghanis- 
tan, into the valley of the Indus, and thence 
to the great waters of the Indian Ocean. But 
the draught on Peter^s mind was not in that 
direction. The great States with which he 
desired to compete lay westward. The iuter- 
nationalsystem in to which he would enter was 
European, not Asiatic. We shall see,however, 
that at a later age, when the British East In- 
dian Empire was so forward in development 
as to check the Russian movement, the Czar 
Nicholas actually sought, partly by diplomacy 
and partly by force, to make his way through 
Afghanistan into India. The great disaster 
to the British arms in Cabul, an account of 
which already has been given, was as we have 
seen, the direct result of the Russian policy 
in its Eastern application. In the second 
place. Czar Peter might take possession of the 
Black Sea, and from that vantage work his 
way by conquest through the Turkish domin- 
ions westward to the iEgean. Or, by vary- 
ing thescheme,he might take his coursedirect- 
ly to the Bosphorus, overwhelm Constanti- 
nople, take possession of the straits, and thus 
send his ships freely into the Mediterranean. 

It must be remembered, however, that to 
deal thus with Turkey, in the first years of the 
eighteenth century, was a very different meas- 
ure from a similar aggression after the lapse 
of a hundred and fifty years. But still a third 
course was open to Peter, and this he chose 
to follow. He might select the Baltic as his 
means of exit into the Atlantic, in which case 
his new capital must be founded on that coast. 
Thiswas accordingly done — a measure which 
may be regarded as the greatest of the Czar's 
mistakes. The event soon showed that vast in- 
ter-commercial relations could not well be es- 
tablished between Russia and the Western 
kingdoms byway of the Baltic Sea. St. Peters- 



burgh was too faraway from the fortieth paral- 
lel of latitude to become a great commerial em- 
porium. No doubt Peter the Great was con- 
strained to pursue the course which he finally 
chose, in his attemptedexit to warm water and 
the freedom of the world. The destruction of 
theOttomanPower at that timewas too serious 
a matter to be rashly undertaken. But con- 
sidered as a fact, the establishment of theRus- 
sian capital on the Gulf of Finland was an 
error in policy which the whole force of the 
Empire has not yet been able to correct. 

As long ago as the times of Empress Cath- 
erine, the embarrassment of the situation was 
severely felt. That imperious personage, 
ablest, perhaps, of the woman sovereigns 
known in history, perceived clearly that St. 
Petersburgh, considered as the emporium of 
the Empire, was a failure. We may now see 
clearly how Catherine chafed and fretted on 
account of the barriers against her progress in 
the only directions whither she desired to go. 
Over one of the gates of St. Petersburgh, on 
the side looking towards the Black Sea, she 
put up this inscription: "TAe Way to Constan- 
tinoplej' But that way was too arduous even 
for the ambition of the Czarina and for Su- 
waroff. Perceiving the impracticability of a 
conquest of Constantinople in her day, she 
cast a longing eye to India, and in the last 
year of her life we find her, ill pursuance of 
this ambition, engaged in planning the inva- 
sion and conquest of Persia. Death cut short 
the enterprise, and the great drama which was 
on in France drew the attention of her suc- 
cessors to the stirring events in Europe. 

But notwithstanding the mistake of Czar 
Peter,notwithstanding the defeat or failure of 
many of the plans of Catherine II., the Rus- 
sian Empire continued to grow and expand 
with marvelous rapidity. Already in the age 
of Frederick the Great the military resources 
of Russia were observed with amazement and 
some consternation by the Western Powers. 
It is doubtfulwhether any other great Empire 
has become vast, and regular,and strong, in so 
few generations as have elapsed since t}ie ap- 
parition of Russia among the European na- 
tions. Already in the closing years of the 
Napoleonic era the tremendous impact of the 
Russian power made Europe tremble. It was. 



GREAT BRITAIN— FROM HYDE PARK TO B08FH0RU8. 



336 



against that monstrous structure that the 
Grand Army of the Corsican broke itself into 
pieties, while the Boreal tempests roaring out of 
Lithuania hid the residue under the snows for- 
ever. The Muscovite had come. 

Henceforth Bussia, by her force and ve- 
hemence, inspired a dread in all the Western 
States. It should not be said that France 
and England feared the power of the Czar; 
but there was constant apprehension of his 
aggressiveness. The Bussian dominions were 
wide enough, and had a population sufficiently 
vast to constitute a physical terror to Eastern 
Europe, and the passions which were known 
to slumber in the breasts oi the Bomanofis 
might well inspire alarm in the domain of 
diplomacy. 

At the time of which we speak the Bussian 
erown was worn by Emperor Nicholas I. 
He was at this time fifty-six years of age. 
He was a son of that Paul I. whose 
aaaasaination, in 1801, was so fatal a cir- 
cumstance to Napoleon. Nicholas, as all 
the Gzars, and particularly the Czarina Cath- 
erine, had done before him, looked with ever- 
longing eyes upon the Bosphorus, and the pos- 
sible exit by that route into the warm waters 
of the Mediterranean. It could hardly be 
said to be a secret in any part of Europe that 
the Czar desired the dismemberment of the 
Turkish Empire. The decadence of that 
power had, in the meantime, been still more 
clearly manifested than in the first quarter of 
^he century. But the Western Powers had 
uow come to look upon Turkey as a barrier 
to. the progress of Bussia, a sort of buffer be- 
tween the ramVhead of Muscovism and the 
walls of European civilizatiod on the East. 
Turkey might suffice to deaden the stroke and 
distribute its effects, so that they should not 
be felt in the West Nor was Nicholas him- 
self at all careful in the matter of concealing 
his desires and purposes. The Bussian Czar 
was, as yet, too little removed from the honesty 
oi barbarism to be a good diplomatist, and 
thus thought it no harm to speak to the rep- 
resentatives of the Western States relative to 
the probable dismemberment of Turkey. He 
did not perceive that his open cupidity would 
jar on the diplomacy of the West. Calling 
to mind the easy process of International spoli- 
ation which his grandmother, Catherine XL, 



had had with Austria and Prussia in the di- 
vision of Poland, he conceived that the same 
method might well and cordially be adopted 
by himself, Napoleon HI. , and Victoria. 

Czar Nicholas was not wanting in great 
ability. His dark and piercing eyes easily 
saw the situation, but did not see the temper 
of those with whom he had to deal. He 
thought that the only thing to be done was to 
gain a colleague or two in the matter of 
shaking the Ottoman tree, assured, as he was, 
that the ripe fruit would fall richly to the 
ground. He discerned, moreover, that his fel- 
low, his true co&djutor in the work before 
him, was Great Britain. Austria had been 
already subordinated to his purpose. Prussia 
he felt sure of securing to his interest. France 
he did not so greatly regard, because of the 
revolutionary condition of affairs in that coun* 
try. But England was a necessity, and he 
accordingly began his overtures to her. As 
early as 1844, on his visit to London, the 
Czar plainly told the Duke of Wellington and 
Lord Aberdeen, at that time Secretary of 
Foreign Affairs, what he thought ought to be 
donje in the event of the approaching dissolu- 
tion of Turkey. It seems that the courtesies 
of the occasion required the English statesmen 
to be silent, and the Czar mistook their silence 
for assent. Accordingly, on his return to 
St Petersburgh, he had his Minister of State 
to prepare a memorandum of the ''arrange- 
ment^ which he supposed he had made with 
Great Britain. Afterwards he opened up cor- 
respondence with England, calling the atten- 
tion of that Power to his supposed understand- 
ing with her, and demonstrating the course 
which Bussia and Great Britain should take 
together when the cataclysm should occur in 
Turkey. From these negotiations England 
either drew back, or again answered with 
silence. 

The reader will not fiiil to perceive some 
of the reasons why Great Britain had, before 
the epoch at which we have now arrived, be- 
come profoundly anxitus that the political and 
territorial integrity of the Ottoman Power 
should be maintained. In her anxiety, the 
strongest element was doubtless her desire to 
hold her commercial ascendency in the Medi- 
terranean. Let the student look attentively 
) at the map of that great Inland Sea, and the 



336 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY,— THE MODERN WORLD. 



position of the European States relative thereto. 
Let him observe how, on the rock of Gibral- 
tar, Great Britain has set her fortress, com- 
manding the western entrance. Let him note 
the analogy between Gibraltar and the Bos- 
phorus. The latter is the eastern entrance to 
the Mediterranean. If England could control 
that strait, she would be absolutely mistress 
of the situation. Note the fact that, at the 
south-eastern angle of the Mediterranean, Great 
Britain has managed, since the beginning of 
the century, to hold the upper hand. Could 
she accomplish the same at the north-east ex- 
tremity, her sovereignty of the whole region 
of the Mediterranean would be complete. 

It was not to be supposed, however, that 
in the case of the dismemberment of Turkey, 
the control of the Bosphorus would fall to 
England. That must inevitably be the por- 
tion of the Czar. Though that personage 
might willingly concede to England the estab- 
lishment of her dominion in Egypt, together 
with the possession of Candia and other nota- 
ble advantages in the East, he would inevi- 
tably take for himself the Danubian provinces, 
and the control of the Bosphorus. For this 
reason England strongly desired that Turkey, 
her ally and friend, not to say her dependent, 
should retain her place among the nations, and 
keep her paralytic grip on the only channel 
leading from the Black Sea into the Mediter- 
ranean. Great Britain would stand behind 
the Sublime Porte, and guarantee its autonomy 
and the independence of Turkey. If Eng- 
land could not herself obtain possession of the 
Bosphorus, she would see to it that the pos- 
session of the Bosphorus should remain in the 
hands of her ally and dependent She would 
nuke Turkey her proxy, and would do by her 
what she could not openly do herself. While 
seeking to avoid open and deliberate responsi- 
bility in the matter in hand, she would 
adopt, nevertheless, the old law maxim appli- 
cable to the question: Qui per alium fadt, 
faeit per se. 

We must now take into consideration still 
another aspect of this multifarious Eastern 
Question. Glance for a moment at the old 
Turkish town of Jerusalem. There the rivalry 
between Russia and the Western Powers was 
based wholly on religious differences. Within 
tibe Holy City the Greek Catholic Church and 



the Soman Catholic Church were set faoA te 
face, and the bitterness of their rivalry was 
proportional to the folly of the superstitions 
which divided them. The Greek Church had 

i 

; its fountain-head of authority in St Peters- 
burgh, and the Roman Church looked to the 
Eternal City as the seat of its government In 
Jerusalem many of the sacred places were held 
by the Greeks; others, by the Latin monks 
representing Rome. In times past the pro- 
tectorate of the Latin monks in Jerusalem, 
and, in general, the guardianship of Christian 
interests in all Syria, had been conceded to 
France. The protectorate of the Greek 
Church, in its whole extent, belonged to Rus- 
sia. It thus happened that when a Greek ec- 
clesiastic fell into a quarrel with a Latin 
monk, in Jerusalem — a quarrel relative to the 
Church in Bethlehem, the Sanctuary of the 
Nativity, the Tomb of the Virgin, the Stone 
on which the body of Christ was anointed, or 
the Seven Arches of the Mother of God — the 
Greek priest had behind him the Czar of Rus- 
sia, and the Latin monk the ruler of France. 
Not without the profoundest elements of in- 
struction is this picture of the array of the 
greatest political powers of modern times be- 
hind the poor, pitiful, obsolete superstitions 
rampant in an old Syrian town. 

The matter, however, was safficsfint to Air- 
nish a pretext for the antagonism of France 
and Russia. But yet it is due to civilization 
to say that a more powerful and valid reason 
was found for French hostility. The accession 
to power of Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte 
was accomplished, as we shall see in a succeed- 
ing chapter, by means at which a scrupulous 
ruler would have startled. But Napoleon did 
not scruple. He went straight forward, and 
accomplished his purpose. No sooner had he 
done so, however, than he found it necessary 
to distract the attention of the French people 
from the rather shocking manner in which he 
had come to power. Having made a success 
of the Coup (TEtatf he must now obliterate 
the memory thereof by a coup de gloire. For- 
eign war was almost a necessity of the situa- 
tion; and a Latin monk in Jerusalem, quar- 
reling about his monopoly of the Anointing 
Stone, constituted as good an excuse as any. 
It should be remembered, also, that France, 
in particular France ynder the «cepter of 



GREAT BRITAIN.— FROM HYDE PARK TO BOSPUORUS. 



337 



NapoIeoD ni. , had a recoCectwn, aa it respected 
BueeU, which she desired to quench. She still 
remembered the year 1812, and waited for the 
opportunity to write the MalaltholT iustead of 



the Bridge of Beresina. It has been one of 
the peculiarities of the French people that their 
attention thus can be diverted from the hard- 
ships occasioned by political couvulsiona at 



CHOECH op THE HOLY 8EP0LCHER. 



338 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY:— THE MODERN WORLD. 



home to the glorification of the name of 
Franoe by victory in foreign wars. 

Still another element must be introduced 
into the complication. We have seen already 
that a large part of the subject populations of 
the Ottoman Empire were Christians of the 
Greek Catholic faith. They were thus subject, 
tecclesiastically, to the Russian Primate of the 
Church, and were under the protection of the 
Czar. These people were also Slavonic in 
their origin, and were thus- divorced in their 
race sympathies from the Turks. The Dan- 
ubian Principalities were more Russian than 
Turkish in manner and custom and ethnic 
preference. Among these elements of sym- 
pathy felt by the peoples inside of European 
Turkey for Russia and her system, the relig- 
ious identity constituted the safest and surest 
pretext which the Czar might seize upon as a 
claim for interference, and this he adopted as 
his argument with the Western Powers in 
justification of his proceeding. 

In the meantime, however, Nicholas made 
a final open overture, in the hope of securing 
the assent and codperation of England. Up 
to the beginning of 1853 the Czar still be- 
lieved that the Government of Great Britain 
was in virtual accord with his own on the 
question of how Turkey should be disposed of 
in case of her dismemberment. In January of 
that year, while he was in attendance at a ducal 
party, given by his friend the Archduchess 
Helen, to which the diplomatical corps at St 
Petersburgh was invited, he plucked aside the 
English Ambassador, Sir Hamilton Seymour, 
and openly revealed to him, in a free con- 
versation, his views relative to Turkey. He 
expressed his wish that the Dan ubian Princi- 
palities should become independent under his 
own protection. The Turkish Power, as such, 
was to cease to exist The Czar disavowed 
any purpose of occupying Constantinople ; but 
it was clear from the conversation that that 
metropolis was no longer to constitute a bar- 
rier to his exit into the .£gean. All South- 
eastern Europe was, according to the Czar's 
plan, to be reorganized, under the auspices 
of Russia and England. Nicholas told Sir 
Hamilton that, so far as he was concerned. 
Great Britain might take possession of Egypt 
and Candia as her part of the spoils. He did 
not seek to have the work done by treaty, 



but simply by an informal agreement of the 
parties.^ 

The effect of these radical propositions upon 
the English Ministry may well be imagined. 
The British Government informed Nicholas 
that they could not be a party to ' the spoli- 
ation of Turkey. The Government of the 
Porte was in friendly alliance and under treaty 
stipulations with Great Britain, and the dip- 
lomatical morality prevalent among the West- 
ern States, would by no means permit such 
a proceeding on the part of England as that 
contemplated by the Czar. That sovereign 
was thus, in «• aense, mated at the outset; but 
he immediately fell back upon his right to ex- 
ercise a protectorate over the several millions 
of Christians who were subject to Ottoman 
rule. On this point he expressed himself with 
determination, and in defense of his course 
and purpose, he confidently set forth the Treaty 
of Kutchuk-Kainardji, which had been con- 
cluded by Empress Catherine and the Sultaa 
in 1774. According to the terms of this in- 
strument, the Ottoman Government had con- 
ceded to the Czar the right ** to protect con- 
stantly the Christian religion and its churches; 
and also to allow the Minister of the Imperial 
Court of Russia to make, on all occasions, repre- 
sentations, as well in favor of the new church in 






' It was in the course of this ever-memorable 
conversation between the Czar and Sir HamiltoB 
Seymour that Nicholas, in a very animated and 
witty manner, struck off a phrase which waa 
destined to pass into the diplomatical and com* 
mon language of the times, and, indeed, to re- 
main forever as a peculiar expression in the his- 
torical jargon of the Nineteenth Century. The 
Czar, addressing Sir Hamilton, said: /'We have 
on our hands a tick man— a very sick man; it 
will be a great misfortune if, one of these days, he 
should slip away from us before the necessaiy 
arrangements have been made.'' From th« 
moment this conversation was divulged, Turkey 
became known by the epithet of the '*8idc 
Man." If one may be permitted to smile at 
national decay, and to enjoy the wit of an Em* 
peror, then indeed may the pungent phrase be 
accepted as one of the happiest conceits which 
was ever uttered. The *'Sick Man." of the East 
has survived nearly forty years, but the truthful^ 
ness of the Czar's phrase is as clear to-day as it 
was in January of 1853. It only remains to say 
that the " necessary arrangements " to which tbm 
Czar referred had respect to what England and 
Russia were expected in a friendly way to do 
the occasion of the funeral I 



GREAT BRITAIN,— FROM HYDE PARK TO BOSPMORUS. 



339 



Constantinople, of which mention will be made 
in the Fourteenth Article, as in favor of those 
who officiate therein, promising to take such 
representations into due consideration, as being 
made by a confidential functionary of a neigh- 
boring and sincerely friendly Power." Under 
this compact, the Czar now took his stand, and, 
in the resulting correspondence, Lord John 
Russell, perhaps inadvertently, admitted the 
correctness of the position which Nicholas bad 
assumed. Addressing Sir Hamilton Seymour, , 
on the 9th of February, 1853, Lord Russell 
said: "The more the Turkish Government 
adopts the rules of impartial law and equal 
administration, the less will the Emperor of 
Russia find it necessary to apply that excep- 
tional protection which his Imperial Majesty 
has found so burdensome and inconvenient, 
though, no doubt, prescribed by duty and 
sanctioned by treaty." It would therefore ap- 
pear clear that, according to the Treaty of 
1774, and by the admission of Lord Russell 
relative thereto, the Czar did have the right 
of interference in the Turkish Principalities 
for the protection of the Oreek Christians 
resident therein. 

It was not long, however, until England 
awoke to a realization of the fact that to 
grant the Czar's construction of the Treaty of 
1774 was virtually to give away the whole 
question. That construction was, that the Rus- 
sian Emperor had a general right of interference 
on behalf of the Greek Christians throughout 
the Turkish dominion. There, for instance, 
at the extreme south of European Turkey, 
were the Greek Principalities, with about four- 
teen millions of people, nominally Christians. 
What should be done with these? Should it 
be admitted that the Greeks, on the line of their 
religious sympathies, might accept the general 
protectorate of the Czar to the virtual abroga- 
tion of their allegiance to the Turkish sover- 
eign ? This would indeed seem to be the mean- 
ing of the concession which the Porte had made 
to Catherine the Great. The Western Powers, 
however, and England in particular, chose to 
put another and very different sense into the 
Treaty of E[ainardji. The English interpreta- 
tion of that instrument now was that the Sultan 
had merely conceded the Russian Minister at 
Constantinople the protectorate of a certain 
Oreek church in that city, and that no general 



right or prerogative of the Czar respecting the 
Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire had 
been granted. 

Nevertheless, the Czar went straight ahead 
with his scheme of interference. Other matters 
had now been cleared away. The dispute be- 
tween the Latin monks and the Greek eccle- 
siastics in Jerusalem had been easily settled. 
But the demands of the Czar relative to the 
Turkish Christians were urgent, and would 
take no denial. Nicholas despatched Prince 
MentschikoflT. to Constantinople to extort from 
the Sultan a guarantee that certain reforms 
should be at once made in his administration 
relative to his Christian subjects. These de- 
mands were deemed by the Porte to be un- 
reasonable ; and Mentschikoff withdrew. The 
Czar thereupon ordered two divisions of his 
army to cross the Pruth into Turkish territory, 
and to hold the country until the Sultan should 
accede to the demands made upon him. 

Meanwhile, diplomacy was busy at tho 
problem. Ambassadors from England, Aus- 
tria, France, and Prussia, met at Vienna to 
wrestle with the question of peace and war. 
Though Russia had already invaded the Turk- 
ish dominions, she continued to represent her- 
self as peaceable. She would have peace; 
but guarantees must be given; and Turkey 
must concede the Russian protectorate over 
her Christian subjects. The diplomates were 
disposed to yield to the Czar's demands, and a 
memorandum was prepared in accordance with 
his wishes. The question seemed at the point 
of solution, and peace about to be secured, 
when everything was suddenly changed by the 
action of Lord Stratford de Redclifie, at that 
time Minister Plenipotentiary of Great Britain 
at Constantinople. He pointed out to the Sul- 
tan, with great force and clearness, the results 
which were sure to follow his acceptance of the 
proposed new treaty. He urged the Porte to 
fight, and showed conclusively that, in the 
event of war, the Western Powers, and par-j 
ticularly England and France, must espouse 
the Turkish cause, and that, in that event, the 
autonomy and independence of the Ottoman 
Empire would be secured. His views pre- 
vaUed ; and the memorandum of the Vienna 
Convention was accordingly rejected. With 
that rejection, war be came a certainty, and 
the solution of the Eastern Question, to which 



840 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY— THE MODERN WORLD. 



we have here allotted bo much space, was re- 
manded to the sword. 

There was now, during the later part of 
1853, a brief interval of that kind of negotia- 
tion which precedes a war after the same has 
become a certainty. When Turkey refused to 
accept the proposal of the Vienna mediators, 
ihe offered to strike out certain offending 
words in their memorandum, and to put 
therein a clause which would be acceptable. 
But this modification was rejected with scorn 
by Russia. Meanwhile the Emperor of the 
French had not only joined fully in the pur- 
poses of England, but was clearly covetous of 
leadership in the coming conflict Under this 
■entiment, he wrote a letter to Czar Nicholas, 
urging him in a somewhat lofty strain to keep 
the peace of Europe, and closing with a threat 
that in case the peace was broken, he and his 
Ally, the Queen of England, would regard 
war as a measure of necessity and justice. To 
this the Czar replied that he was acting under tlie 
plain stipulations of former treaties. From this 
position he would not recede, and that, should 
Russia be forced into a conflict, the Emperor 
of the French would And her as able to defend 
herself in 1854 aa she had been in 1S121 With 
such pleasant reminders the two Imperial 
personages sought to soothe each other's feel- 
ings when they had determined to fight. 

In the meantime, however, war had actually 
begun. Glance again at the map of the Black 
Bea and the surrounding countries. It will be 
seen that the northern and eastern shores be- 
long to the Russian Empire, while the south- 
em coast is held by Turkey. Each nation 
had its fleet in these Eiixine waters, the Rus- 
sian squadron having its base at Sebastopol 
in the Crimean Peninsula on the north ; and 
the Turkish fleet holding a like relation in the 
town of Sinope on the southern shore. It had 
now become clear that Russia, in order to 
make sure of the neutrality of Austria, must 
withdraw her arms from the Danubian Prin- 
cipalities into which she had penetrated; for 
the Austrian Emperor was averse in the high- 
est decree to such occupation by the forces of 
the Czar. It was also clear that hostilities 
must break out on the Black Sea. The En- 
glish and French fleets and armies were al- 
ready on their way to the East. As soon as 
they should arrive at the entrance to the Dar- 



danelles, the Sultan, having control of that 
narrow strait, and also of the Sea of Marmora 
and the Bosphorus itself, would, under his pre- 
n>gative, open those waters for the passage of 
the allied squadron into the Black Bea. Na- 
ture and civilization had conspired to make 
that water and the adjacent shores the seat of 
the impending conflict 

Russia now sought to precipitate hostilities 
and to gain advantage before the arrival of 
the French and English forces. She accord- 
ingly allowed the Russian commander in the 
Black Sea to hover about Sinope with a view 
of provoking a battle. The provocation was 
readily, almost anxiously, accepted. On the 
30th of November, 1853, the Turkish fleet 
sailed out from Sinope and anticipated the 
Russians in giving battle. The result was the 
annihilation of the Turkish squadron, and the 
bombardment and destruction of Sinope. The 
news of the conflict created great excitement 
in England and France, and the war spirit 
flamed high. Soon afterwards all diplomatical 
correspondence was broken off. The Russian 
Ambassadors were ordered home from Paris 
and London, and those of England and France 
withdrew from St. Petersburgh. Declarations 
of war were mutually made by Turkey, Great 
Britain, and France, as Allied Powers on the 
one side, and by Russia on the other. It re- 
mained to decide the issue by the arbitrament 
of battle. 

It is not purposed in this connection to 
give an account of the Crimean War. A 
narrative of that conflict will be reserved for 
the chapter devoted to the history of Eastern 
Europe in the present century. It has been 
the purpose in the current narrative to make 
clear the antecedents of the conflict betweer 
the Allied Powers and Russia in the Black Sea, 
by reciting with tolerable fullness the principal 
features of the Eastern Question — a question 
which, for ages to come, must continue to elicit 
the keenest interest on the part of all students 
of history. The narrative has been given, as 
it were, from the British point of view, — this 
for the reason that Great Britain properly 
may be regarded as the leading factor in the 
maintenance of the Turkish cause, and the 
principal contributor to the very imperfect 
solution of the questions involved in the war. 
We may now revert for a ipoment to the 



GttEAT BRITAIN,— FROM HYDE PARK TO B08PH0RUS. 



341 



progress of affairs in the Home Government 
of England. 

The Ministry of Lord Aberdeen had been 
primarily disposed to peace. It will be po- 
membered that Lord Palmerston had accepted 
office in the Cabinet, but it was as Home Sec- 
retary. In the duties of his position he de- 
voted himself assiduously to several questions 
of much importance in the domestic economy 
of England ; but apparently gave little atten- 
tion to the foreign affairs of the Government. 
The sequel showed, however, that his eye was 
steadily fixed upon the progress of events in 
the East, and also that he did not agree with 
his colleagues in their peaceable dispositions. 
Such a state of affairs in the Cabinet was sure 
to produce a rupture. Lord Aberdeen was a 
man of peace, and Gladstone, Secretary of the 
Exchequer, was in sympathy with the views 
of the leader. Those views predominated for 
a while in the policy of the Government, and 
it was in accordance with this 4>olicy that the 
futile efforts for peace had been made by the 
four Powers in Council at Vienna. 

Meanwhile, however, the war spirit pre- 
vailed more and more in Great Britain, and 
Lord Palmerston, better than any of his col- 
leagues, discerned the drift of public sentiment 
and the inevitable course of events. At 
length the news arrived that the Turkish 
fleet had been destroyed in the furious conflict 
off Einope. The official reports of the battle 
showed that four thousand Turks had been 
reduced by slaughter to four hundred, and 
that of this handful not a single man had es- 
caped without a wound. Though the battle 
had been fought fairly enough, the press of 
Western Europe described the engagement as 
** The Massacre of Sinope." The news in 
England was like the pouring out of a tank 
of oil on a bonfire. Lord Palmerston urged 
the Cabinet to move forward with decision to 
a declaration of war. He advocated the 
sending of an armament immediately into the 
Black Sea; for, with his usual breadth of un- 
derstanding, he had discerned that that water 
was to be the seat of the impending conflict. 

At the first his radical views were not ac- * 
oepted, and he resigned his office. For the 
moment the real cause of his retirement was 
dissembled; but the country soon perceived 
that Palmerston had gone out because bis 



views relative to affairs in the East could not 
be impressed on the Cabinet. Those views 
had now become the sentiments of the English 
people, and it was not long till the Aberdeen 
Ministry was borne down by public opinion. 
The policy of Government fell into line with 
the . common voice, and Palmerston was at 
once recalled to office. He was not destined 
at the first, however, to give actual direction 
to the war, which was declared by Great 
Britain in March of 1854. It was not until 
the 5th of February in the following year, 
when the inefficient Ministry of Lord Aber- 
deen had gone to pieces, that Palmerston 
was called, not indeed to the War Office, not 
to the Secretaryship of Foreign Affairs, but to 
the position of Premier of England. Under 
his auspices the Crimean War, in the cour&e 
of the ensuing year, was brought to a success- 
ful conclusion. After the accession of Palmer- 
ston, there was never any further complaint of 
inefficiency in the support of the British cause, 
and when it came to settling the controversy 
at the Treaty of Paris, in 1856, the influence 
of the English Premier was conspicuously pre- 
dominant. 

Before proceeding, however, with the nar- 
rative of the foreign relations of Great 
Britain under the Palmerston regime, we may 
well notice a few of the important domestic 
questions which came under his supervision 
while holding the office of Home Secretary. 
One circumstance which has been much dwelt 
upon is the fact that Lord Palmerston, much 
more than any other British statesman of the 
age, had received and accepted the results of 
the teaching of that new natural science which 
was, at that time, scarcely more than germinal 
in the public mind. He adopted and en- 
deavored to apply these results in his Ad- 
ministration, and excited much antagonism by 
his common sense and straightforward deal- 
ings with domestic, and even religious, ques- 
tions of the time. It was in the year 1853 
that the cholera, worst of Asiatic scourges, 
made its appearance in many parts of Europe, 
and at length broke out in Edinburgh. That 
city was at the time poorly drained, without 
adequate sanitary provisions of any kind, 
given up to neglect and dirt ; in a word, well 
prepared by the ignorance of man for the 
ravages of an infectious disease. The scourge 



\ 



342 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



came, and the Presbytery of the city con- 
eluded, after their manner, that it might best 
be stayed by a national fast. Accordingly, in 
the fall of the year above named, the Presby- 
ters, by their Moderator, addressed a letter to 
Lord Palmerston, Home Secretary of the 
Kingdom. The document vras so worded as 
to bear the character of an appeal to the 
nation, and of a rebuke to the Hume Secre- 
tary for his implied negligence in proclaiming 
the fast fur nhich the letter was ostensibly a 
petition. What, therefore, waa the astonish- 
ment of the Presbyters and of the public 
generally, when Lord Palmerston replied from 



tlie stand-point of a man of science? He 
informed the Moderator, and, through that 
official, the Presbytery and the general public, 
that, according to his views of the natural 
world an& of the system of government 
established for mankind, the weal or woe 
of the humaD race depends upon the ob- 
servance or neglect of the beneficent natural 
laws under which men are bom and live and 
die. He informed the petitioners that the 
cholera was not the result of the Divine anger, 
but of the sowing of pestilential germs in the 
filth which had accumulated, through their 
ignorance and neglect, around their own 
homes, and that the scourge, if combated at 



all, must be met on its own field, and van 
quished by the application of scientific and 
sanitary agents. In the conclusion of his let- 
ter, the Home Secretary expressed himself and 
the principles by which his office was governed 
as follows: 

"Lord Pidroerston would therefore suggest 
that the best eourae which the people of this 
country can pursue to deeerve that the further 
progress of the cholera should be stayed, will 
be to employ the interval that will elapse be- 
tween the present time and the beginning of 
next spring, in planning and executing meas- 
ures by which those portJona of our towns 
and cities which are inhabited by the 
poorest classes, and which, from the na> 
ture of things, must most need purifica- 
tion and impruveroent, may be freed 
from those causes and sources of con- 
tagion which, if allowed to remain, will 
infallibly breed pestilen<», and be fmit- 
fa\ in death, tn tpite <^ aU &£ prm/ert 
tmdfattingg of a vniUd but wuHve notum," 
Perhaps this reply of Lord Palmei^ 
ston to the Presbytery of Edinburgh is 
the first public document of its kj»d, the 
first to suggest openly the subetiti'tion 
of rational and Bcientific methods, in- 
stead of religious humiliations, for the 
remedy of physical evils, which has ap- 
peared in the documentary history of 
the English-speaking nice. 

In other particulars, Lord Palmerston 
was equally remarkable in administer 
ing the duties of his office. It wat 
during his ascendency in the Homa 
Department that the plan of trans- . 
portation as a punishment for felonies gave 
way, and the ticket-of-leave system was estab- 
lished. It is known to all the world how 
Great Britain, by her transportation of crim* 
inals to Australia and other remote regions, 
had balf-unwittingly built up penal colonies, 
and how these colonies had reformed them- 
selves, gradually substituting law for license, 
and becoming well-ordered plantations. To 
continue to pour into such reformed settle- 
menis the filthy ooze of London, was to defil« 
the colonies back to their original condition. 
Protests arose from thesettlementaof New South 
Wales against the contJnuance of a system 09 
to the reviving virtues of the colonists. 



GREAT BRITAIN,— FROM HYDE PARK TO BOSPEOROS. 



848 



At length euch protests were heard by the 
Home Goveroroent, and, as a meaus of allevi- 
ating the distress of her foreign eettlenient^, 
Lord Palmerston invented the tieket-of-leave. 
This meant, in a word, that those convicts in 
the penal colonies who exhibited evidences of 
reformatjon, might receive 
from the authorities tickets 
entitling the holders to go 
free, returning, should they 
choose, to their homes in 
England. The measure 
proved to be salutary. 
Great numbers of the ticket- 
of-leave men became good 
citizens, both at home and 
abroad, and the plan was 
made an entering wedge 
for the abolition of the 
whole system of transpor- 
tation. 

Lord Palmerston also 
secured the adoption of 
measures by which London 
and other great manutao- 
turing cities of the King- 
dom were freed from the 
smoke and soot of the iao- 
tories. Such establishments 
were obliged, by law, to 
introduce contrivauces for 
the consumption of their 
own smoke, thus relieving the public. Still 
another important measure was that by which 
the grave-yards in London were shut up against 
the further accumulation of dead bodies. 
Lord Palmerston seems to have felt a scientific 
horror for the further poisoning of the earth 
by the deposition of the dead in unsuitable 
localities. In one instance, application was 
made to him for the burial of a distinguished 



ecclesiastic under the roof of one of the sacred 

structures. The Secretary replied with the 
declaration, that he coOld not see any possible 
advantage in having the decora position of a 
dead body going on under the feet of the liv- 
ing. In denial of the request, he urged that 



the pavements of a church were the last plaoo 
in the world for the burial of the dead. The 
Minister concluded that England was the last 
civilized country in which people still insisted 
in accumulating the putrefying bodies of ths 
dead amid the dwellings of the living. " As to 
burying bodies under thronged churches," said 
he, " you might as well put them under libifr 
ries, drawing-rooms, and dining-rooms." 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TBE MODERN WORLD. 



Chapter CXXX— sepoy rebellion. 



BOM 1854 to 18.56. theat- 
t«Dtioa of Great Britaia 
was almoat wholly ab- 
eorbeii with the eveDts of 
the Criraean War, aad 
with the terms of the 
treaty by wliich that con- 
flict WB8 concluded. We shall hereaAer notice 
the couditiont of settlement. Forthe present, 
we pasB on to consider the nest great event in 
which the history of England found expression 
in foreign lands. This was The Sepoy Re- 
BELUOTT IN INDIA. The outbreak of the in- 
lurrection beloDgs to the year 1857. The re- 
volt and its suppression covered some of the 
most tragical circumstances which history has 
been called to record \a modern times. In 
order to understand the fundamental character 
and shocking incidents of the iusurrection, and 
of the methods employed by Great Britain for 
the restoration of order in India, the ground 
must first be cleared with one or two prepar- 
atory studies of the state of Indian civilization, 
and of the style of the British GovenimeDt at 
the time of the outbreak. 

The field which here opens before us is of 
almoBt infinite extent. The peoples of India 
are descended from the most ancient branch 
of the Aryan race. Long before the Hellenic 
.tribes set foot in Europe, the Indie shepherds 
had built in the valleys of the great rivers of 
the East the institutions of society and religion. 
NatiouB multiplied in this far region of the 
earth. Wars and transformations and recon- 
structions innumerable ensued, even before the 
days when the horsemen of Alexander con- 
fronted the elephants of Porus. A mere out- 
line of the history of India, from the time 
when the Macedonian conquest revealed the 
mysteries of the Enst to the nations of the 
West, down to the time when the Portuguese 
ships, in the early part of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, began to visit the coasts " of Ormuz and 
of Ind," would occupy a whole chapter of the 
present work. We must here reduce the whole 
to a summary. 

Many nations and peoples grew and flour- 



ished between the Himalayas and the western 
seas. Empires rose and passed away. The 
Indian populations increased to a hundred 
millions, and then to more than two hundred 
millions. Under Timour the Great, wfaoo» 
reign covered the greater part of the four- 
teen^ century, India was conquered and consoli- 
dated; her peoples were brought undera single 
sway, and the Mogul, or Mongol, dynasty was 
established at Delhi. The successors of Ti- 
mour continued to reign in the ancient capital 
down to the time of the Portuguese conquests 
in India. The hereditary sovereigns of Delhi 
retained at least a tiominal authority over vast 
and populous regions, and were little disturbecl 
by the impact of European adventurer* od 
the sea-coasts. At length the Portuguese- ban- 
ner was pulled down from the place where it 
stood in the East, and the flag of Holland 
was raised in its stead in the Indies. The 
Dutch ascendency was soon followed by the 
French, and finally by the English. 

It were long to tell the story of the British 
East India Company; of the foot-hold which 
it gained on the western coast, and more par- 
ticularly on the Bay of Bengal. The history 
of the planting and extension of the commer' 
cial, and finally the political, intereslsof Great 
Britain in India, is full of incidents moat 
highly illustrative of the power and persist- 
ency of the race. At length the Government 
of the East India O-ompany gave place to that 
of a Governor-General and other officials sent 
out from England. A hundred years had 
now elapsed since Lord Robert Clive had or- 
ganized what we are henceforth entitled to 
call the British East Indian Empire. The 
primitive seat of the Government was at 
Hooghly, an ancient Indian -town on the river 
of the same name ; but this place was at length 
abandoned for Calcutta, which became the 
capital and the port of India. From this 
maritime nucleus tlie strong arms of English 
authority were ultimately stretched out over 
two hundred millions of native subjects in the 
East. 

In the middle of the present centurr thfc 



GREAT BRITAIN.— SEPOY REBELLION. 



345 



indiao doniinioDB of Great BritaiQ were or- 
ganized uuder three priDuipal territorial divia- 
ions or presidencies. The first of these was 
Beogal; the secoud, Bumbaj; and the third, 
Madras. Frotn the eapitaLs of theee cuun- 
tries, with a few thousand uffiuials, civil and 
military, the administraciou of all India was 
conducted. The native princes still existed, 
«till held a certaiu rank and authority over 
their respective peoples. Above tbeni all waa 
the aged King of Delhi, liueal descendant of 
the great Timour, repreaentative of the Mogul 
dynasty, nominal Emperor of India. 

With these Dative sovereigns and princes, 



arm of British authority was vastly cheaper 
and hardly less efficient than would have been 
an army of native soldiers sent out from Eng- 
land. But it bad in it the potency of all 
dangers. Many local difficulties had occurred 
of such character as to give Great Britain 
warning of worse things possible. At the 
time of the destruction of the English army, 
in Cabul, symptoms of a general disatfection 
were noticed in several of the subject prov- 
inces; and had it not been for the speedy 
and completely successful rally made by the 
Government, and the triumphant conquest of 
Cabul before the very face of all India, it 



DIAMOND HARBOR, BOOGKLT. 



and with the peoples under them, the Govern- 
ment of Great Britain temporized from year 
to year. It must not be forgotten that the 
primary business of England in India bad 
been commerce. It might almost be said that 
fluch has been her business in the world. But 
to maintain her commercial asceudeocy in 
India and in the adjacent seas, required many 
expedients and a vast expenditure of force. 
One of the most etTective of these expedients was 
the organization and discipline of native armies 
under English officers. It was found that the 
Hindus made good soldiers, and were glad to 
accept service and compensation at the bands 
of the Government. The military establish- 
ment thus created and maintained as the right 



were hard to predict what other disasters 
might have followed in the train. 

Of all the East Indian armies that of Ben- 
gal was most dangerously composed. It had 
been enlisted almost wholly of High-caste 
Hindus, a class of the people more intelligent 
and high-spirited, though not less superstitious, 
than were the others below them in rank. 
The extent to which all the people of India 
were subject to superstition is known as an 
objective notion to the whole world. But the 
bitterness and obduracy of the social and re- 
ligious prejudices which pervaded every rank 
and class of the population can never be ap- 
preciated and understood but by him who has 
studied the phenomena on the spot of their 



346 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TEE MODERN WORLD. 



production. The class-uame by which the na- 
tive suldien of Hindu derivation in the Bengal 
army were known was Sepoys. As we have 
said, they constituted an excellent but danger- 
ous soldiery; excelleut, because of their easy 
diacipline and courage In fight; dangerous, 
because of their superstitions aud that peculiar 
- sublety of character fur which the word 
Indian ia the best definition. 

At the first, the Sepoy army had been to a 
ooDsiderable extent officered by caplains chosen 
from themselves. But, ia course of time, 
nearly all the commaods were taken by En- 



countrymen of Low-caste condition can not be 
eiplaiued to the people of the Western nations 
or understood by them. The Mohammedan, 
under the influence of his Arabian religion, 
looked with like contempt and horror upon the 
character of the Brahmin. In only one thing 
could all be said to agree, and that was in a 
certain covert detestation of the English officers 
and of the British Government, by which they 
were held down and checked in their native 
impulses and passions. 

We may well look still further into the 
compositiou of the native armies of India. In 



NATIVE OFFICERS OF T 

glisb oflScers, who might thus easily rise to 
rank. This was a cause of jealousy on the 
part of the native Boldiera. We must not 
understand that the whole military force of 
Bengal was made up of the Brahmin caste. 
Low-caste men were also recruited. Some 
regiments were filled up in good part with 
Mohammedans. Between these various ele- 
ments present in the army of natives there 
was constant hatred, and almost equally con- 
stant difficulty. The idea of any affiliation 
between the different castes was repugnant to 
the sentiment of all. The extent to which 
the Brahmin soldier despised and abhorred his 



E BOMBAY ARMY. 

the Beiigalese regimenti>, a great majority of 
the soldiers were, as we have intimated, High- 
caste Brahmins; but in the armies of Bombay 
and Madras, a majority of the men were of 
other derivation-^ Mohammedans and Low -caste 
recruits of many orders. As originally organ- 
ized, the Indian soldiers were under enlistment 
for service in India only. Foreign service they 
were not expected to perform. This ia sud 
of the Bengalese army, not of the native 
troops in Bombay and Madras. The latter 
might be called to serve abroad. The British 
authorities at length determined that the ex- 
emption hitherto conceded to the 8epoy» 



GREAT BRITAIN.— SEPOY REBELLION. 



347 



of BeDgal wae a miBtakeii measure. Accord- 
ingly, ia 1866, a change was made in the 
military regulations, by which foreign aervice 
as well as home duty was exacted of the Ben- 
galese forces. The Sepoy was put upon the 
same level and disciplJDe with the soldier uf 
Madras and Bombay. This change was greatly 
resented in the army of Bengal, which had 
hitherto beea regarded as a tavorite of tlie 
Government. The Sepoy felt that he had 



together in lai^e numbers in a given regiment, 
where, by associating together, they could 
better preserve the usages and gratify the 
pride of their caste. The nature of military 
discipline, however, is communal. Each 
soldier under command is even as his fellow. 
When the regimental line is lormed and the 
order given, it is impossible that' caste should 
assert itself. When off duty, however, the 
Sepoys at once fell under the dominion of 



been degraded by being reduced to the rank of 
the soldiers of the North-west, whom he was 
accustomed to regard as so &r beneath himself. 
The High-caste Brahmin Sepoy was in the 
highest degree exclusive in all his habite and 
sentiments. The social system made bis famdy 
relatives as numerous, as. a clan. All these 
were bound together by the prmciples of caste, 
which could not be loosed. It was customary 
(or Sepoys of a tiommon blood and name to get 



their prejudices, and the customs of caste were 
immediately observed. The Brahmin soldier 
cooked his food apart, ate it apart, slept apart, 
would not converse or communicate in any 
manner with the soldier of a caste different 
from his own. Besides these differences and 
divisions, the presence of Mohammedanism 
added to the hatred and animosity whictt 
burned in the breasts of the soldiers. Reltg> 
ious prejudices augmented and intensified the 



348 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



bitterness which existed among the castes on 
the score of social stratification. 

At first view it would appear that an army 
constituted as was that of Bengal could not be 
disciplined or kept in subordination at all. 
But not so. Under British authority and 
management the military forces were brought 
to good discipline and made highly effective. 
The wise Government played off the prejudices 
and passions of the native soldiers so as to 
make a balance of animosity. The hatred of 
one party for another was put in equipoise 
against the hatred of the other for it. Over 
both the sword of England was easily ex- 
tended, and, though the condition was one of 
great danger, the authorities of Calcutta and 
the Home Government of Great Britain were 
afike free from serious apprehension. 

To the circumstances already narrated other 
causes of disaffection and mutiny must be 
added. The territorial and political manage- 
ment of India had been greatly changed, not 
to say revolutionized, under recent administra- 
tions. We have already referred to Lord 
Olive as the great organizer of British power 
in the East. After him, the most energetic 
and powerful of the East India Governor- 
Generals was Lord Dalhousie. He was ap- 
pointed to office in the latter part of 1847, and 
immediately began to extend the influence 
and rationalize the methods of government by 
which the Hindu populations were kept in 
order. 

We may not here enumerate the various 
measures wUch Lord Dalhousie made effective 
during Ilia administration. The greatest of all 
his schemes was the annexation of the Northern 
and North-western provinces of India. Thus 
were the Punjaub, Nagpore, Sattarah, Jhansi, 
Berar, and Oudh incorporated with the British 
dominions. Lord Dalhousie reformed and re- 
organized territories as large as the major 
kingdoms of Europe, and handled popula- 
tions, governments, and laws as though they 
had been the subjects of committee reports in 
the common council of an English town. The 
British system of cheap postage was introduced 
into the country. ' Railroads began to be built 
of greater extent than were possible in th^ 
narrow limits of the British Isles. A telegrapn 
was carried from Calcutta to Agra, thence to 
the river Indus, and finally to Bombay and 



Madras. Under these improvements, civil, 
political, and social, the ancient institutions of 
the country gave way, and what may well be 
called New India arose in place of that old 
India which had been handed down from 
Alexander to the Mogul Emperors, and from 
the Mogul Emperors to modern times. 

It is needless to say that the great and 
salutary administration of Lord Dalhousie was 
an offense against the ancient prejudices of 
the Hindus. They began to feel themselves 
shaken from the very ground. It appeared to 
the imagination of the Brahmin that the end 
of all things was approaching; that the venerable 
system of society, which had its ultimate roots 
among the mysteries of the Vedic Hymns, was 
about to pass away. He saw the ancient 
kingdom of Oudh, which the East India Com- 
pany had agreed to defend, abolished under 
the radicalism of Dalhousie; the honored 
chiefs converted into dependents and syco- 
phants, and the old King of Oudh himself 
dethroned and transferred to a pensionary 
residence near Calcutta. All of these pro- 
ceedings were of a character to excite and 
alarm the conservative peoples, among whom 
it was a principle of action to conceal their 
real sentiments and passions under the garb 
of acquiescence and docility. 

The British Government, however, felt no 
fear. The ofiicials in India went straight 
ahead with the administration, civil and 
military, heeding not the lessons which might 
well have been drawn from the frequent local 
disturbances and mutinies which they had to 
suppress. Improvements were freely intro- 
duced from England. At length it was de- 
termined to replace the old-style, ineffective 
muskets with which the Sepoy armies were 
supplied, with Enfield rifles. A cargo of these 
arms was accordingly sent out, and the same 
were distributed to the Sepoy soldiery. 

We are now arrived at that stage in the 
progress of affairs when only a fortuitous cir- 
cumstance was needed to fire the magazine. 
When a revolution breaks out, it is the wont 
of historians and people to seize upon the 
particular fact whereby the train is hghted, 
and to call that fact the cattse of the revolu- 
tion. Such a view of the case is as superficial 
as to say that the spark in the ship's hold, 
lighting at first a few grains of powder, then 



GREAT BRITAIN.— SEPOY REBELLION. 



349 



sputteriDg a few moments io zigzag lines as 
the flame ruDS into the magazine, is the cause 
of the explosion ; or to regard the overturn- 
ing of a coal-oil lamp by the widow's cow, in 
an obscure stable-shed, as the eaiue of the 
burning of Chicago. Nevertheless, the point 
of ignition may well be regarded as critical, 
and the mistaken theory which ascribes thereto 
a causative influence oi( subsequent events 



manufacturers employed both the tallow of 
cattle and the fat of swine. The cartridges 
were grecued, to the end of making them tm* 
pervious to moisture and to facilitate their 
movement in the barrels of the rifles. Now 
the cow is the sacred animal of the Hindu 
superstition. To eat her, or to treat her bodj 
or parts with disrespect, is one of the highest 
forms of sacrilege. Aa for the hog, be is held 



may be overlooked, along with similar errors 
peculiar to the human understanding. 

The Eufield rifles then, put, as we have 
■eeu, into the hands of the Sepoys, brought 
with them the incidental circumstance which 
was to perform the part of a match in the 
coming conflagration. The fact to which we 
bere refer has become, celebrated among the 
peculiar episodes of modern history. The 
Enfield rifles were fed with cartridges, and 
in thp preparation of the cartridges the 



r CALCUTTA. 

as abominably unclean by both Hindus and 
Mnbammedans. In the loading of the riflea, 
the manual of arms directed that the crest of 
the cartridge should be bitten ofi* with tb* 
teeth before inserting it in the chamber of the 
weapon. To the Sepoys, to touch, and es- 
pecially to tast«. the flesh or any of tb« 
products of the bated swine, is to be defiled 
almost beyond the hope of purification. Of 
course, the British authorities bad not intended 
to do violence to the prejudices of the Sepoy 



350 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



■oldien, and it has even been denied that the 
cartridges contained the offensive substances. 
But the probability is that the denial was an 
afterthought intended to trammel up the con- 
sequences. ''Give me a drink," said a Hindu 
one day to a Sepoy soldier of a higher caste. 
It was at a spring or well. The Sepoy looked 
upon the other with a glance of loathing, and 
was about to pass on. Should the rim of his 
canteen or cup be forever polluted by touching 
the lips of a vulgar creature of the lower 
caste? "You are very particufar about your 
caste to^ay,** said the Hindu. "Perhaps 
yon do not know that every time you bite off 
your cartridge you take thsfaicfahog into your 
nundhr 

The Sepoy, horror-struck at what was said, 
told* his companions. The papers of the cart- 
ridges were examined, and were found to be 
greased. The storm of insurrection broke out 
in a moment. The spark had fallen into the 
ship's hold, where the combustibles were accu- 
mulated, and the explosion followed. Never- 
theless, the officers of the Government made, 
at first, strenuous efforts to put out the insur- 
rection by peaceable means. The incident to 
which we have referred above occurred in the 
latter part of 1856, at the town of Meerut, a 
military post of considerable importance, lying 
a short distance from the ancient city of Delhi, 
between the rivers Ganges and Jumna. The 
fi^rst insurrection of the Sepoys was in the na- 
ture of a panic, rather than hostile mutiny. 
The officers of the army first sought by denial 
of the pollution of the cartridges to stay the 
revolt; and when this did not avail, an order 
was issued, in January of 1857, that the rifles 
should be served with cartridges of a different 
manufacture, in which the purity of the ma- 
terials was guaranteed. The Governor-General 
issued a proclamation to the array, in .which 
assurances were given that no offense was in- 
tended against the principles of caste or the 
religious customs of the country. But the mis- 
chief was done, and the spirit of mutiny spread 
from regiment to regiment, until at the open- 
ing of spring, 1857, the whole Sepoy army was 
infected. In the emergency, which was now 
manifest, some of the regiments were disbanded. 
In other cases, the leaders of the spreading 
revolt were executed. When the Bengal cav- 
alry at Meerut were served with a supply of 



new cartridges, they refused to use them — this 
against the assurance of the officers that the 
cartridges contained no impure materials. The 
recusant Sepoys were accordingly arrested^ 
brought to trial and condemned, some to im* 
prisonment, and some to banishment The 
convicts were put in irons in the presence of 
their countrymen, and were sent to the prison 
of Meerut. 

On the following day, May 10, 1857, the 
mutiny broke out in earnest The native sol- 
diers marched from their barracks, stormed 
the prison, released their condemned fellow- 
soldiers, and shot down the English guard that 
attempted to stay their progress. The revolt 
flamed high. The English rallied as large a 
force as they could, returned the charge, and! 
the mutineers were driven out of their canton* 
meuts. The whole body of the insurrectioa 
then broke out of Meerut, and rolled off in 
the direction of Delhi. 

The events which now rapidly ensued 
showed conclusively that the insurrection had 
been fomented for a definite purpose, and that 
purpose was no less than the recovery of Na- 
tional Independence. As soon as the insur- 
gent soldiery could reach Delhi, they imme- 
diately proceeded to draw the old king or 
emperor from his Oriental seclusion in the pal- 
ace of his ancestors, the Grand Moguls, and 
to proclaim him Emperor of India. The 
antiquated sovereign had been subsisting in 
Eastern splendor by means of the pension 
which had been granted to him, in the first 
place, by the East India Company, and after- 
wards continued by the Government at Cal- 
cutta. As we have said, the King of Delhi 
was the descendant and representative of what- 
ever remained of the great Mogul dynasty, 
which had been established over all India by 
Tiraour Lenk. There was therefore a certaiA 
rationality and legitimacy in the notion of re- 
storing the obsolete sovereign to the throne of 
his ancestors. Meanwhile, the mutiny gath- 
ered head. The Sepoy troops, holding tlfe 
barracks at Delhi, broke into insurrection and 
joined the routineers who had come from 
Meerut. The British contingent was obliged 
to give way before the revolt, and the ancient 
palace of the Mogul sovereigns of India, shin- 
ing in the brilliant light of a May morning, 
was again inhabited by a native Emperor. 



OHEAT BRITAIN.— SEPOY REBELUOS. 



361 



DuwD to Benaree, and thence to Calcutta, 
the rumor of the JnBurrectioa waa borne od the 
winga of the wind. Conceive of the condition 
of affiiirs in that fkr capital, when the story 
WIS promulgated of the successfkil rising of 



well-grounded panic which ever distracted aD 
Euglish colony. The BritiBh people, officials 
and other, now resident in Bengal, numbered in 
all fewer than a hundred thousand. This mere 
htuidl'ul, by comparison, was expected to hold 



THBONB-BOOM, FALACB OP DELHL 



tihe Sepoy army at Meerut and Delhi. Lord 
Dalhi)usie had now been succeeded in office by 
Lord Canning, as Governor-General of India. 
Upon liim, and the officers of Government as- 
sociated with him, was devolved the duty of 



■taking the progress of the most dreadful and people were frenued, and rushed to the Gov- 



in subjection multiplied millions of natives !■ 
hot insurrection against the Government. An 
incredible alarm spread among the English of 
Calcutta, wild rumors of horrible massacres 
of women and children filled the air. The 



352 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



eroment House, ftltanat iDsaoe with fear, cry- 
iog for protection, aud clamoring for veuge- 
ance, oot ooly against the 8epoys, but against 
the Hindus in general. Terror heightened 
the confusion, and the wonder was, and a, 
that Lord Canning was able to hold the panic 
in check, and, at the same time, take the first 
measures for the restoration of order. 

It has beeu mentioned that the dethroned 
King of Oudh had been transferred by the 
Government, during the administxaliua of 



■ouglit to allay the frenzy of the people, and 
in particular to check the violence of the pro- 
ceedings which were urged by the officers of 
the Goveroment, and by the English gener- 
ftllyi against the natives. Ab yet there had 
been no revolt at Calcutta; but the frantic 
populace were ready to proceed against the 
Hindus as though the latter had already com- 
mitted the most horrid crimes recorded in ibe 
brutalities of history. 

The same spirit was exhibited in a still 



Lord Dalhousie, to a pensionary residence at 
Garden E^ach, near Calcutta. The suspicion 

at once arose that the deposed sovereign, who, 
in case of the success of the revolt would be 
restored to his kingdom, under the sovereignty 
of the Emperor of Delhi, was in the conspir- 
acy. Acting upon this apprehension, Lord 
Canning ordered ihe King of Oudh to he 
taken from his palace and held, for the time 
being, as a kind of hostage in Fort William, 
which was the military residence of tiie Gov- 
ernor-General himself. As for the rest, he 



more marked degree when the news at length 
reached England. The inhabitants of the 
Home Kingdom put no bounds to their rage 
and fury. The reports which went flying 
abroad were frightfully exaggerated, and the 
people well-nigh lost their self-control in dis- 
cussing measures of revenge. The Englidi 
newspapers of the summer of 1857 teemed 
with editorials and contributions, in which the 
most cruel methods known to the barbarities 
of mediseval warfare were openly advocated as 
the proper means of redress in India. 



GREAT BRITAIN.— SEPOY REBELLIOS. 



358 



Ab soon as Lord OaDoing succeeded in re- 
storing some'^ slight confidence and order in 
Calcutta, he instituted such measures as might 
best sliore up the shaken Government of 
India. He perceived at a glance that to wait 
for the coming of a British army from the 
Home Kingdom, ten thousand miles away, 
would be to wut for destruction. Unless 
something could be done long before a British 
army could come to the rescue of the East 
Indian Empire, tbe Government of England 
in Hindustan would 
either be trampled in 
blood or cast into the 
Bay of Bengal. la 
the emergency, for- 
tune stood Lord Gau- 
ning well in band. 
He was BufiBciently 
Acquainted" with all 
the movements on the 
vast board of Empire 
to be able to see what 
pieces — here a knight, 
and there a castle — 
might be seized by 
hiniself and made 
available against tbe 
enemy. In his sore 
trial he remembered 
that at tJiat very day 
an English armament, 
which had been sent 
out weeks before for 
a descent on the porta 
of China, was ^ready 
on the Indian coast, 
within his reach. He 
accordingly took the 
great responsilnlity of 

arresting the squadron en roide, and diverting 
it to the greater need of India. The Chinese 
imbroglio might well be left to settle itself as 
it might, or to reniain perpetually unsettled, 
in the presence of the appalling condition of 
afiairs at Calcutta and Delhi. 

But the stopping of the English armament 
was not the only measure which Lord Canning 
-adopted for the salvatioti of the Government 
and people. Early in this year, Sir James 
Outram had been sent with an army on an 
expedition against Persia. He made short 



work with the campaign. Meeting the enemy 
at Ebushab, he inflicted upon him a decisive 
and overwhelming defeat, ending the wtu' with 
a blow. Him Lord Canning now remembered 
and summoned with all speed to return to 
India. In this matter, also, fortune favored 
the movement. Telegraphic communication 
had been eflected by Lord Dalhourie between 
Calcutta and Lahore, capital of the Punjaub. 
Thither L<jrd Canning sent on its way to 
General Outram the following despatch; " Wb 



WANT ALL OUR BEST MEN HERE." Never WU 

a truer telegram urged by the electric current 
to its destination. Outram responded with 
alacrity. Bringing his army with him, he 
returned speedily, and on his arrival at Cal- 
cutta, was appointed to the command of the 
two divisions of the Army of Bengal. 

We may here notice a few of the leading 
incidents of the spread and development of 
the insurrection. The Punjaub was saved from 
the revolt, or at least from its worst eflecta, 
in a marvelous manner. That province at 



864 



VNIVER8AL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



the time was under authority of Sir John 
Lawrence. That ofScer, however, waa not at 
Lahore, when, oo the lltb of Maj, the news 
was borne thither of the mutiuj' at Meerut. 
In bia absence the command of the capital 
rested op Colonel Bobert Montgomery. The 
Britiah army at that place lay at the time in 
the cantonments known as Meean Meer, about 
ta^ miles from the city. The army consisted 
of more than five tbousaud men, of whom 
•bout thirteen hundred were British regulars. 
It could uot be discerued by the Enghsb au- 
tlioritiea whether or not the nalivfl troops 



On the evening on which the intelligenoa 
of the insurrection at Meerut was brought t* 
Lahore, a great ball, half civil, half mill* 
tary, had been projected. It was decided that 
the entertainment should proceed as though 
nothing perilous was at the door. During the 
night the officers made preparations for the fol- 
lowing day. A military parade and review 
was ordered for the early morning. In ttie 
arrangement for. the same the artillery, heavily 
loaded with grape, was planted in a certain 
position before which, in one of the evolutions 
of the review, the Sepoy regiments must pre- 



VIEW or LAHOKB-THE KN0L18H CHORCH. 



would remain loyal or join the revolt. The 
ntuation was one of great peril. The officers 
did not dare to let raatters drift along until an 
unquenchable mutiny should flame up around 
the very quarters where they were establiebed. 
On the other hand, it was not just, perhaps not 
expedient, to assume that the native troops 
Would mutiny. It was resolved, however, by 
the authorities, not to risk everything on the 
hope that the Sepoys would remain loyal and 
obedient. The presumption on the other aide 
was so strong that it was determined to mate 
the mutiny at a single move. 



sent themselves in line. The English soldiers, 
at the moment when the Sepoys should come 
into this position, were to be behind the twelve 
guns of the batteries, and the artiller]mien 
were to stand at their posts with lighted 
matches. The plan was carried out to the 
letter. When the four thousand native troops 
whirled into the fatal position which had been 
contrived for them, they were halted, and tbe 
command was given to dock armt! It was the 
altenmtive of obedience or death. The Sepoyi 
perceived at a glance that the European sol- 
diers bad them in their power. They obeyed 



GREAT BRITAIN.— SEPOY REBELLION. 



&e oommftDd, aod stacked their arroe,and the 
latter were immedUtel; borne away to the 
«antoDmeDts. In the lower Punjaub the En- 
glish were equally eucceflaful in mauceuvering 
the Sepoys out of power, and in eaviug the 
ProTtQce from serious rebellion. 

In Oudh, however, a very different result 
was reached. That great Frovioce was des- 
tined to fall under the dominioa of the rebels, 
aod to become the scene of some of the moet 
tragic events recorded in modem 
history. It was on the 30th of May 
that the insurrection broke out in 
the dty of Lucknow, the ancient 
capital of Oudh. At this place the 
British army, made up in large part 
of Sepoys, was under command of 
the Qovemor, Sir Henry Lawrence. 
When the rebellion showed itself he 
•trove with great energy to stay the 
insurrectioD, and to expel the insur- 
gents from the city. But this effort 
was ia vain. It must be remembered 
that Lucknow was a dty with a popu- 
lation of more than two hundred thou- 
aand, and to hold down this enormous 
mass of rebels with a small body of 
English soldiers was an impoeubility. 
The Governor, therefore, fell back be- 
fore the revolt, and posted himself in 
the ResidcDcy, or military head-quarters 
of the Governmeot, a short distance 
from the city. Here he was imme- 
diately be«eged by overwhelming num- 
bers. Alt through June he held out 
with extraordinary courage. But he 
was not destined to witness the result 
of the struggle. On the 2d of Ji.ly, 
white he was reclining in his tent, a 
shell burst through, exploded, and ahat 
tered his limbs so terribly that not 
even amputation could save his life. He died 
two days afterwards, and the garrison was left 
to defend itself without hia able and cour- 
ageous direction. 

Soon after the events just described, a mes- 
sage was carried to Lucknow from Sir Hugh 
Wheeler, commandant at the city of Cawn- 
pore, distant about fifty miles. This important 
place, memorable forever for the horron of 
this summer, lay on the south bank of the 
river Ganges. Here was stationed a di- 



366 
usual. 



vision of the army, made up, 
of a fraction of English soldiers and a 
great majority of Sepoys. Gawnpore was re- 
garded as one of the roost important milittiry 
stations in Upper India; nor must the reader 
fail to remember, in his attempt to realize the 
course and character of the Indian Mutiny, 
that Cawnpore is distant from Calcutta more 
than six hundred miles. 

The Englidi military force of the city num- 



bered only about three hundred men, including 
the officers. The Sepoys in the ranks numbared 
fully three thousand, including the Fifty-third 
and Sixty-fifth Regiments of Infantry ,^he Sec-' 
ond Regiment of Bengal Cavalry, and a com- 
pany of the First Artillery. There were, how- 
ever, in Cawnpore about a thouaaod other 
English residents, of whoro a large number 
were women and children. Considering the 
whole population as a mass, about one in fifty 
was of European birth. It was the misfortune. 



356 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.^THE MODERN WORLD. 



or one of the many mLsfortunes, of the aita- 
ation, that Sir Hugh Wheeler, upon whom so 
great a responsibilitj devolved, was already 
seventy-five years of age. He was, moreover, 
a man by nature and discipline but little ca- 
pable of facing the dreadful emergency which 
had now arrived. He had been fully warned 
of the spread of the revolt When the rebell- 
ion broke out at Meerut, and soon afterwards 
at Lucknow, Sir Henry Lawrence sent word 
to his subordinate at Cawnpore to make every 
preparation to meet and repel the coming rd> 
Tolt. But Sir Hugh Wheeler was unable to 
grasp the situation. The position in which he 
planted his forces was ill-chosen, and the de- . 
fenses which he prepared were little better 
than contemptible. Some mud walls, about 
four feet in height, were thrown up as a pro- 
tection for the garrison. But the intrench- 
ments were so slight that a horseman would 
have little di£5culty in passing them at a bound. 

Within this most miserable situation, the 
English commander gathered the fated com- 
pany of Europeans, who must maintain them- 
selves against the multiplied thousands of 
enraged and triumphant enemies. There were, 
in idl, within the fortifications, about four 
hundred English soldiers. Of non-combatants, 
some four hundred and sixty-five, including the 
civil ofiScials, the railway managers, merchants, 
and shop-keepers of Cawnpore, were gathered 
into the pen. Of grown women, married and 
unmarried, wives and daughters of the English 
ofiicers and residents, there were two hundred 
and eighty ; and the remainder were children. 
Such was the situation when the native host 
of insurgents, composed largely of the ruffian 
element, always aggregated about large cities, 
encompassed the English position and began 
the siege. It was in the face of this emer- 
gency that Sir Hugh Wheeler appealed to Sir 
Henry Lawrence for assistance, and appealed 
in vain. Before the extent and full horror of 
the situation was known, the shell from the en* 
emy's battery had relieved Sir Henry of all 
the responsibilities and dangers of plan and 
march and battle. 

Now it was that Sir Hugh Wheeler made 
the fatal mistake of calling to his aid another 
ally whose name has become infamous in 
the history of our century. About twelve 
miles distant from Cawnpore, up the River : 



Granges, lies the little town of Bithoor. Thia 
place had been, previously to the annexation 
of Oudh by the English, the seat of one of 
the princely dynasties of the great race of the 
Mahrattas. At the time of the English ac- 
cession in Oudh the throne of Bithoor was oc- 
cupied by a certain prince named B&ji Bio. 
He was overtaken in evil, perhaps treas* in- 
able, projects, and was dethroned for his mis- 
conduct. The English authorities, however, 
permitted him to retain a palace in Bithoor, 
and gave him in his retirement a pension of 
eighty thousand pounds. B&ji Rio still claimed 
to be the Peshwa of Punah. He had no son 
of his own loins, but, in accordance with the 
custom of his countrymen, he had adopted a 
son who should inherit his estates, and at 
length conduct his funeral rites ; for this the 
tradition of the Mahrattas prescribed as a 
necessary antecedent to the blessedness of 
Nirvana. By Indian law, an adopted son has 
ail the rights, privileges, and rank of a natural 
heir. The youth chosen by B&ji Rio as hi^ 
successor bore the name of Dandhu Panth^ 
but is universally known in history by his 
official name or rajah-title of Nana Sahib. 

At the time of the outbreak of the mutiny, 
this Nana Sahib, claiming all the rights and 
emoluments of his adoptive father, was resident 
in petty princely state at Bithoor. Unwisely, 
however, the English Government, at the 
death of Biji Rio, had cut off the pension, 
and the Nana Sahib was left to the inherit* 
ance of his father's personal estate only. Al 
this he was enraged ; but, Indian-like, he dis- 
sembled his passion and abided his time. It 
were long, indeed, to give the story of the 
efforts made by Nana Sahib to regain his pen- 
sionary inheritance. In pursuance of this end 
he sought the aid of a young Mohammedan, 
named Amizulah Khan, resident at his court, 
and used him henceforth as his emissary and 
representative. Amizulah Khan went to Lon- 
don, and, being well educated and extremely 
handsome in person, cut for a season a re> 
markable figure in English society. But hia 
mission was vain. The British Government 
refused to restore the Nana's pension, and 
Amizulah Khan at length returned to India. 
It thus happened that Nana Sahib, ex-Rajah 
of Bithoor, though in outward friendship and 
alliance with the English, bore about in hia 



1 



GBEAT BRITAIN.— SEPOY REBELLIOK 



357 



breast a smothered volcano full of hot pitch and 
sulphurous fire. 

It was to this dangerous, able, and revenge- 
ful Indian Prince that Sir Hugh Wheeler, 
already at the door of desperation, now ap- 
plied for assistance. Nana Sahib readily ac- 
cepted the call, and came speedily at the head 
of his army into Oawnpore. For a few days 
the Nana made a pretense of cooperating with 
the English; but he was soon persuaded by 
his countrymen to put himself at their head, 
crush the hated foreigners, and thus recover 
the ancient sovereignty of Punah. So in the 
city he assumed command of the mutineers, 
and was thenceforth the chief of the insur 
gents in the region of Cawnpore. Under his 
direction the siege was pressed. Nana Sahib 
notified the English commander that on the 
12th of June his position would be assaulted. 
The attack was made, and slich was the cour- 
ageous fighting of the four hundred soldiers 
behind the mud works, that the Hindus were 
repulsed with large losses. The garrison also 
sufiered. From day to day, a shower of balls 
was poured incessantly into the inclosure. 
The water supply of the garrison was limited 
to a single well, and this spot was under direct 
fireof the enemy. Whoever went thither to 
get water for his thirsty comrades, or for the 
famishing women and children, did so at the 
peril of his life. Rarely did such a martyr 
return from his mission without streams of 
blood pouring from his bullet wounds. 

Meanwhile, insurgents from the surround- 
ing districts of Oudh joined themselves to the 
forces of Nana Sahib, ^.nd another assault was 
made on the intrenchments. But again the 
thousands of the enemy were driven back. 
Each British soldier had now not only hb own 
life, but the lives of the women and children 
in his hand. There was no alternative but 
that of victory, and so the charging soldiers of 
Oudh fell headlong with the British balls in 
their breasts, and the assaulting host rolled back 
in confusion. It became apparent to Nana 
Sahib, not only that the English works could 
not be carried by storm, but that his own hold 
as a leader of the rebellion was loosened by 
failure. He accordingly sent Amizulah Khan 
and another officer to tender to the English 
favorable terms of capitulation. Starvation 
was already at hand, and it was determined to 



accept the overture. Terms were accordingly 
agreed upon, by which it was stipulated that 
on condition , of surrender, all of those Eu- 
ropeans in Cawnpore who had not been in any 
way connected with the acts of Lord Dal- 
housie should retire from the city, and receive 
safe conduct to Allahabad. The English Gen- 
eral, and the officers and men under his com- 
mand, had no apprehension of the astounding 
treachery which constituted the basis of this 
agreement The Hindus had long since 
adopted the habits and usages of civilized war- 
fare. It had been a long time since, within 
the borders of India, the general rules by 
which armies are fought and surrendered, had 
been violated. But the capitulation of Cawn- 
pore was now to constitute such an exception 
as should make the civilized world start back 
in horror. 

It was arranged that the retiring garrison 
should be put on barges and conducted down 
the Ganges. At the appointed time, the whole 
company, military and civil, men, women, and 
children, were marched out of the miserable 
pen of death, where they had so bravely de- 
fended themselves, and were led to the boats 
at the river's edge. The embarkation was 
made, and the barges .were loosed from the 
bank. Along the shores were gathered a vast 
multitude of Sepoys With their arms in their 
hands. Just as the boats were turning into 
the stream, the blast of a trumpet was heard, 
and instantly the straw-thatched roofs of the 
barges were seen in flames. The treacherous ruf- 
fians who managed the boats had only waited for 
the signal to dash lighted torches into the roofs, 
and then, jumping overboard, swam ashore. In 
another moment the crowds on the barges were 
made the targets for thousands of muskets. 
The flames spread. Every discharge from the 
shore struck down scores in death. The bot- 
toms of the boats were instantly filled with 
the dead and dying. No language can de? 
scribe the horror of the scene. Nearly the 
whole company perished miserably in blood 
and fire. Only a single boat-load drifted into 
the river and was about to be borne away by 
the current. Further down the stream this 
barge was recaptured, and about ninety per- 
sons were taken back into Cawnpore as prisoners. 
Of those who had embarked only four men es- 
caped to tell the story. Those who were retaken 



J 



?58 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



were at once divided, the meD from the women 
and children, and the former were shot to 
death. The helpless remainder were thrown 
into a small prison-house, where they were set 
to work to grind corn and serve their captors. 

For a while the outrages done to this despair- 
ing company of English women and children 
were limited to such indignities as came of im* 
prisonment and servitude. But Nana Sahib 
and his lieutenants were not yet satisfied with 
their revenge. Already divisions of the British 
army had begun to penetrate the rebellious 
provinces, and Nana Sahib perceived that it 
was the beginning of the eud. He resolved, 
however, that the prisoners in his hands should 
perish. One of his body-guards, in uniform, 
with two Sepoys and two Mohammedans, was 
aent to the prison to carry out the mandate of 
horrid butchery. The five murderers entered, 
with drawn swords, and slashed and hacked 
and stabbed until the room was packed with 
the dying and dead. The awftil shambles re- 
mained in that condition until the following 
morning, when a second company came, dragged 
the mutilated bodies forth, and cast them, 
after they had stripped from them the rem- 
nants of clothing, into a dry well which gaped 
open near at hand. As the bodies were seized 
for this final plunge from the sorrows and 
sufferings of life, it was found that a few of 
the women were not yet dead, and at least one 
of the children tried io rxin away ! It was the 
acme of horror. Some time afterwards, when 
the English soldiers retook Cawnpore, they 
were obliged to look down, with rage and tears, 
into that awful pit, and recover therefrom, as 
best they might, the mangled forms of beauti- 
ful women and helpless children whom the 
Sepoys had there consigned to the final igno- 
miny. Till the history of Great Britain shall 
fall into the oblivion of the eternities, the rec- 
ollection and story of the Cawnpore massacre 
will still be revived and repeated, as the most 
horrid incident of warfare belonging to the 
nineteenth century. 

It may interest the reader to know some- 
thing of the future of Nana Sahib. When 
the English marched back on Cawnpore, he 
was still in command of the rebellious forces. 
He had the courage to fight with the British 
army in a desperate battle, in which he was 
fompletely defeated, and his forces scattered 



in all directiona. He thereupon fled into GawB- 
pore, and thence to his own palace at Bithoor. 
It is said that, on arriving there, he completed 
the infamy of his life by the murder of a cap- 
tive woman who had been spared for his own 
purposes from preceding butcheries. This 
done, h^ mounted his horse and fled from 
Bithoor forever. He well knew that the aveng- 
ing angel was in the wake of his flight He 
made his escape into the wild district of Nepal, 
and was never heard of afterwards. Rumors 
of his whereabouts were sometimes borne to 
the British authorities, but were always found 
to be groundless. Nana Sahib had forever 
vanished from the sight of those who, even if 
they had laid the avenging hand upon him, 
could never have wreaked on his treacherous 
life a fitting retribution for his crimes. 

We may now pass from the insurrection 
proper to consider the reconquest of the re- 
bellious districts by the English. It is just to 
say that, after the first wild hours of panic, the 
energies of the British race were never more 
heroically displayed than in the work of re- 
covering India from the clutches of the ma- 
tineers. It will be remembered that every* 
thing of military and civil procedure had to 
be directed from Calcutta. Communications 
between the revolted provinces were, in a great 
measure, cut off, and the Government was 
under the necessity of urging forward the 
various mil itary^i visions from Lower Bengal 
as a base. It was clearly perceived that the 
first point to be gfuned in the reconquest of 
the country was the recovery of Delhi. Thai 
place was logically the seat of the rebellion. 
There old Bah^ur Shah had been proclaimed 
as Emperor of all India. His sons had been 
assigned to the command of the various divis* 
ions of the Sepoy army, and the latter, to tht 
number of more than fifty thousand, had 
taken possession of Delhi. All the Europeans 
and Eurasians, with the exception of about 
fifty, nearly all of whom were women, had 
been expelled from the city, and rebellion was 
rampant and victorious in all the region round 
about. Even the fifty prisoners were soon 
brought forth from their place of confinement 
to be butchered, in cold blood, in the cour^ 
yard of the palace. 

The command of the expedition for the re* 
covery of Delhi was given to Sir Henry Bai^ 



GREAT BRITAIS.—8EF0Y REBELLION. 



nard, who advanced into Oudh with an army 
numberiog about ten thousand. He first met 
the insurgeDts io force at Badli-ka-Sarai, 
fought with them a hard battle, aad won a 
complete victory. He then made his way to 
Delhi, and took up bis position on a ridge 
«Terlooking the city. For the time, however, 
it nas impossible to recapture the stronghold 
from the enemy. On the 23d and 25th of 
August, bloody battles were fought with the 
mutineers, who, sallying out'in overwhelming 
numbers, sought to carry the British position. 
At length, in the early, part of September, 



which he was presently taken to be banished to 
Baogoon. Thus fell and disappeared the laat 
lineal descendant of Timour the Great. Delhi 
was at once put under military government. 
Order was restored, first in the city, and then in 
the surrounding regions. By the beginning of 
the following year tlie British authority was suffi- 
ciently established to admit of the restoration 
of civQ government in Delhi, and the rebellion 
in this quarter was at an end. 

The reader will not have forgotten ths 
dreadful condition in which the small English 
garriaon at Lucknow was left after the death 



GRAND MOSQttK AT DELHL 



the neavy batteries arrived, and the defenses 
«f the city were soon battered down. On the 
14th of the month an assault was ordered, and 
Delhi was carried by storm. It was not, 
however, until after six days of almost inces- 
sant fighting that the different districts io the 
city were all recovered. The terrible charac- 
ter of the struggle may be known from the 
«xtent of the British losses, which were a thou- 
aand and twelve men killed, and nearly four 
thousand wounded. As soon as victory was de- 
«l8red for the English, the old Emperor shut 
bimself up in the tomb of Ham&yun, from 



of Sir Henry Lawrence. Before the ftll of 
that brave commander be had carefully cal< 
culated the chances, and bad decided that 
hope for his command lay in the defense of 
their position at the Residency to the last day 
and the last man. It was known that the 
British authorities would put forth every effort 
for the rescue, and that ei»ne lime during the 
autumn the sound of British cannon in the 
distance would announce the morning of de- 
liverance for all who might then survive. It 
happened that when Sir James Outram was 
recalled, as we have seen, from his Persisa 



860 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



campaign, one diviBion of his army, under 
command of Sir Henry Havelock, was or- 
dered to proceed to Allahabad, to put down 
the revolt in that region, and afterwards to 
act in support of Sir Hugh Wheeler, at 
Cawnpore, and Sir Henry Lawrence, at 
Lucknow. This hazardous work could never 
have been assigned to abler hands or a more 
courageous spirit. Havelock was on the 
march by the begioning of July. On the 
12th of the month he fought his first battle 
with the enemy at Futtehpur, and won a 
victory. On the 15th he had two successful 
engagements with the Sepoys. On the 16th 
he came to Cawnpore. In battle after battle 
he was victorious in this district of the Oudh, 
and sought by every possible means to strike 
out in the direction of Lucknow. But his 
forces were insufficient for the hazard, and he 
was obliged to await the arrival of General Out- 
ram with another division of the army. When 
the latter came, the campaign for the relief 
of Lucknow was at once renewed. Although 
General Outram was in supreme command, 
alike of civil and military affairs, he refused 
to supersede Havelock in the field, declaring 
that to the latter should remain the glory of 
recovering the capital and rescuing the garri- 
son from the merciless clutch of the Sepoys. 

We may here transfer our station to the in- 
side of the Residency at Lucknow, and share in 
our sympathies the sufferings and trials to 
which the garrison was subjected during the 
fearful summer and fall of 1857. The siege, 
the defense, and the relief have become ever 
memorable in the annals of the century. We 
have seen how, in the dawn of the great 
mutiny. Sir Henry Lawrence took the wise 
precaution to withdraw his soldiers and the 
English population of Lucknow from the city 
to the Residency, and to make there his 
preparations for the coming storm. It was by 
the wisdom of Lawrence in these trying days 
that the possibility of salvation from the same 
fate which befell the garrison at Cawnpore 
was secured. He made the most of the days 
of peace and the incipiency of the rebellion by 
the construction of strong defenses around the 
Residency, and by storing therein, in places of 
security, the largest supply of provisions which 
it was possible for him to gather. Thus 
prepared, he awaited the outbreak, wisely 



choosing to defend himself in hb chosen place 
rather than to attempt to cut his way through 
the enemy's country in the hope of escape. 

Then came the tempest. The first shock 
was ably and successfully resisted. Though 
the besieged were under constant fire, and were 
pressed on every side; though their numbers 
were diminished daily by death and wounds and 
disease, yet the onsets of the Sepoys were suc- 
cessfully resisted, and each successive assault 
was repelled. We have already spoken of the 
fatal accident by which Sir Henry Lawrence, 
losing his life, rose to perpetual fame. The 
command of the garrison was transferred to 
General Inglis, and the defense continued to 
be bravely conducted. On the 20th of July 
the mutineers made another assault on the 
English position, but were again hurled back 
with great losses. The same thing happened 
on the 10th of August, and eight days after- 
wards, the Sepoys, in overwhelming numbers, 
and with desperate courage, a third time at- 
tempted to carry the Residency by storm. But 
the attack was met with the usual spirit, and 
the rebels were driven back with heavy losses. 
During the remainder of August, though the 
siege was pressed with ever-increasing vigor, 
the undaunted garrison held out courageously. 
On the 5th of September, the first rumors of 
the approach of Havelock were wafted into 
the Residency. That General, accompanied 
by Outram, had fought his way along the 
Cawnpore road during nearly the whole of 
August. It was not, however, until the 22d 
of September that the coming army of relief 
reached the Alambagh, a strong position and 
military station about four miles distant from 
the Residency. This place was held and 
strongly defended by the Sepoys. But the at- 
tack of the English, on September 25th, could 
not be resisted. The Alambagh was taken by 
storm, and the besieged garrison, in the in* 
closure of the Residency, could already hear 
the sounds of victorious battle. Leaving a 
small force behind to hold the Alambagh, 
Havelock pressed on to the relief of the pent- 
up garrison. Through the remaining miles he 
fought a continuous battle with the Sepoys, 
and on the 26th of the month, planted himself 
in front of the gates of the Residency, and 
then broke through. 

Great was the relief and great the rejoicing 



M-2 



UNIVERSAL HISTORV.—TIIE MODERN WORI.U. 



within the fortifications; but the event eooo 
■bowed ttiat the eiid was iiul yeL Thougli 
(he garriaoa was stnmgiy reinlbrced, ihuugb 
the dauger that the Kesitleocy might be ear- 
ned by storm aod the defeodere !» given op 
to butchery was for the time removed, yet 
from BDotlier poiut of view tlie peril of the 
situation was hardly lesa than it had beeu dur- 
ing the summer months? The forces which 
Baveluck and Ouiraiu had beeu able tu briug 



discipllue. They also perceived that they httA 
pui everythiug on the cast of the die. They 
understood well enough that in case of the 
failure of the mutiny. Great Britain would 
visit upon them a terrible puDishment for their 
rel>elliun, treacheries, and murders. They 
fought with desperation, and the Eogliah. gar- 
rison found DO relief by day or night. A 
slorm of bullets and cannon-ehot poured con- 
stantly on the Uefeuses, and the loaaei of the 



ATTACK ON THB ALAMBAGB. 



with them were by no means sufficient to war- 
rant a withdrawal from the defenses and ex- 
posure to the open country. The numbers 
within (he inclosure of the Residency had 
been greatly increased, hut the consumption of 
supplies was correspondingly augmented. On 
the whole, the peril was only lessened and 
postponed, rather llian removed. Nor wore the 
besieging hosts greatly discouraged. The Sepoys 
had learned to fight. Their long contact with 
the British army hnd given them cumpe ami 



besieged were severe. The hot sun of the In- 
dian summer and autumn scorched the sufferer* 
in the inclosure with burning heat. Disease 
and wasting added to the ever-accumulating 
sorrows. Bnitle wa« before the gates, pesti- 
lence in the air and water. Not only was the 
whole force of the English again shut up 
within the defenses of the Residency, but the 
small garrison which Havelock had left in the 
Alambagh was also besieged, and could hardly 
bold its own against the constant aseaalta of 



GREAT BRITAIN.— SEPOY REBELLION. 



363 



tbe enemy. Through the whole of October 
the brere garriBon kept up the defense, aud 
lived on hope of another succor, which was 
sure to cotne. 

Meanwhile, in distant En^nd, Lord Pal- 
merston had called Sir Colin Campbell, the 
hero of Balaklava, from his retirement, and on 
tho Ilth of July, conferred on him the com- 
mand -in - chief of 
the British forces in 
India. " Wlien will 
you be able to set 
out for tbe seat of 
war, Sir Colin?" 
said Palmerston. 
" Within twenty- 
four hours," was the 
reply; and on the 
evening of the 12th, 
the new commander 
left England for 
Calcutta. He ar- 
rived at the latter 
city on the 13th of 
August, and with * 
great energy pre- 
pared an expedition 
for the relief of the 
British garrisons in 
O'ldh. His forces 
consisted of six thou- 
■and men, supported 
with an artillery 
contingent of thirty- 
nx guns. What ar- 
rai^ements had been 
made in the South, 
what relief might 
be expected from 
the direction of Cal- 
cutta, was unknown 
to the sufferers at 
Lucknow; but they 

well knew that they were not forgotten, and that 
the day of retributiou would come at the last. 

Sir Colin's army at length reached Cawn- 
pore, and from that point proceeded by the 
Htme route which Havelock had taken to 
Lucknow. Like his predecef«or, .Campbell 
also had to tight his way, and it was not until 
the 10th of Novemher that he was able to 
open his guns against the besiegers of the 



Alambagh. That place and another similar 
position, called the Dilkusha Palace, lying 
south-east of Lucknow, were immediately car- 
ried. The garrison which had been so hardly 
pressed in the Alambagh was relieved, and the 
British army was free to march for the 
Residency. 

It is narrated that on the 16th of Novem* 



ber, when the shadow of despair seemed ready 
to descend on Havelock and those who were 
under his protection, a little Scotch maiden, 
daughter of an officer, fell asleep in the shade 
of the ramparL Suddenly she sprang up, 
and, clapping her hands, ran with flying plaid, 
crying out as she came: "Dinna ye hear it? 
Dinna ye hear itT It's the slf^n of the 
Hiffhlflndersl" Her quick ear had caught in 



364 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD, 



the distance the sound of the Scottish hag- 
pipe, shrilly piping at the head of the coming 
regiments the well*known air, The GampbelU 
are Omiingl True or false, the incident is one 
of the most picturesque which can be selected 
from the vast panorama of history. The cry 
of the Highlanders' pibroch was indeed the 
premonition of victory. Sir Colin Campbell 
carried one after another of the rebel strong- 
holds around the city, and, in six days from 
the Alambagh, fought his way to the gates of 
the Residency. The forces within and without 
the defenses were joined, and the second relief 
of Lucknow was accomplished. 

It was at once determined by Sir Colin and 
his associate commanders that the non-com- 
batants in the Residency must be saved by 
withdrawal from the place. To make this 
movement was still a matter of great hazard, 
for the Sepoys hung in multitudes on every 
quarter. On the 19th of November the 
English batteries were opened furiously on 
the strongest position held by the enemy, as 
though an assault were about to be ordered. 
While the cannonade was kept up, Campbell 
and Havelock ordered the quiet withdrawal 
of the garrison and non-combatants to the 
Dilkusha Palace and the Alambagh. The 
movement was effected without disaster, and 
the retreat from Luckuow was safely begun. 

An incident of these days cast a gloom over 
the British Empire, and emphasized the close 
of a heroic life. On reaching the Alambagh, 
Henry Havelock could go no further. He 
was exhausted. Battle and toil, hunger, thirst, 
anxiety, sleeplessness, and finally disease, had 
done their work. On the 24th of November the 
hero died. Three days afterwards the Queen of 
England, little knowing the uselessness of the 
honor which she gave, bestowed on him the 
title and dignity of a Baronet. The honor 
descended to his son ; nor might it be said 
that such a distinction was needed by him who 
had found his final rest in the soil of the old 
kingdom of Oudh, under the fiery glare of the 
sun of India. 

The rest of the story of the suppression of 
the great mutiny may be briefly told. There 
could be no further massacres of women and 
children in Oudh. It was now soldier to sol- 
dier, or rather one soldier against many, for the 
Sepoys were nearly always from four to ten times 



as numerous as tha-attacking English forces. 
As soon as he was free for action, Sir Colin 
Campbell marched again for Cawnpore. In 
that city the English cause had, of late, fared 
badly. Cawnpore had been placed, after iU 
recovery by the English, under command of 
General Windham. Not long afterwards, the 
Hindu Governor, or Scindia, of Gwalior 
gathered an army of insurgents, and advanced 
on Cawnpore, hoping to recapture the city 
from the British garrison. General Windham 
marched t>ut to meet the Scindia, and waa 
worsted in battle. He was obliged to faU 
back to his defenses, and the rebels succeeded 
in reoccupying Cawnpore. Such was the con- 
dition of affairs which called urgently for the 
presence and aid of Sir Colin Campbell. He 
marched at once against the place, himself at 
the head of one division, and Sir Hope Grant 
leading another. The enemy were thus doubly 
attacked, and Cawnpore was finally restored 
to English authority. 

The event which we have just described 
occupied the closing months of 1857 and the 
opening of the next year. During the winter, 
Lucknow was held by the Hindus in fuU 
force. In other quarters ot the horizon the 
sky had cleared. It was perceived, even by 
the enemy, that the British power in India 
was unshaken, and that the day of retributioB 
was at hand. In the presence of these fact3 
the rebellion was dissolved into its original 
elements. At Lucknow, however, the mutiny 
drew to itself all of its remaining resources, 
and the duty was devolved on Sir Colin 
Campbell of carrying this last fortress of the 
revolt. With the opening of spring the cam- 
paign was undertaken for the recapture of the 
capital. The British army again reached Luck- 
now about the middle of March, and on the 19th 
of the month fought with the Sepoys the last 
great battle of the war. The English were com- 
pletely victorious. About two thousand of 
the mutineers were killed outright m the en- 
gagement. A hundred cannon were taken 
from the rebels, and the army of insurgents, 
broken into fragments, was scattered in all di- 
rections. .Lucknow was completely recovered. 
Nor did the Sepoys make any further serioua 
efforts for the recapture of the ancient capital 
of Oudh. 

In the last conflicts of the war, several 



GREAT BRITAIN.— SEPOY REBELLION. 



365 



•miDent soldiers tost their lives. Among tlie 
leet may be mentioned Sir William Peel, who 
was serinusty wounded io the battle before 
Lucknoff, and who shortly afterwards died of 
■mall-pox at Cawnpore. Another hero of fiery 
character and atmnge career, who fell in tlie 



liad takeu refuge. In that retreat, Hodaon, 
with his own hand, seized tlie fallen monarchy 
drew him forth, and delivered hira to hii 
horsemen to he borne away to the head-quartera 
of General Wilson, Hoilson also captured 
the three royal princes of Delhi, and in a fit 



hat battle, was Colonel Hodson, known in 
India as "Hodson of Hodson's Horse." His 
career had been one of singular reckless- 
ness and darinfr. He it was who, after the 
recapture of Delhi, had, with the help of 
Hindu spies, penetrated the tomb of Ham- 
iyun, where the last of the Mogul Emperors 
N.— Vol. 4— 33 



of rage hail them condemned to death. H< 
then took a carbine from the hands of one of 
his men, and shot the princes dead, leaving 
their bodies before the gates of Delhi. During 
the rest of the war, he had gone through all 
hazards and perils, to fall at last by a Sepoy 
bullet io the hour of final cooqueM. Tte 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



tmier may not have forgotteu that out of the 
duasKra of Cabul, eudiug in the total de- 
atructioQ of a British army, and uf all who 
were de[>eDileiit od its protection, a single man 
bad escaped to carry the news of the horror to 
Jeialabad. That man was i)r. Brydon, who 
lived through the siege of Lucknow, enduriug 
all the hardehipsaiid sutTenngs of that dreadful 
utuatioa, to be rescued with the garrison, and 
'to be mentioned with praise in the report of 
the campaign as one of the heroes of Luck- 



, Nearly all of the leaders who bad distinguished 
I themBelves — and who had notf — were honored 
I with titles and dignities and pensions. 8ev- 
I eral of tlie Generals were made Baroneta. Sir 
I Colin Campbell was rtused to the peerage, 
I with the title of Lord Clyde. During the rest 
, of his life, which extended to 1863, he enjoyed 
a pension of two thousand pounds a year. At 
^ tlie scenes of the principal events of the w«t, 
j memorials were erected by the Govemmenl to 
I commemorate the valor and sacrifice of those 



EODSOrr SEIZING THE KItJQ OF CELHL 



now, who had taken part in both sorrow and 
victory, to be remembered "as an example of 
the invincible energy, and enduring courage 
of British soldiers." 

The year 18.18 witnessed the reeslablish- 
ment of civil authority in Lucknow. The 
mutiny was at an end, and the power of Great 
Britain in the East was presently more firmly 
fixed than ever before. The nation was not 
ungrateful to those who had upheld the cause 
of the country in those almost impenetrable 
iCfions t«n thousand miles from London. 



who died in the massacres and battles. The 
Residency at Lucknow bears witness in many 
of its details and surroundings to the tragJo 
events, to the valor and the glory of 1857. 
There, to the present day, may be seen the 
ruined wrrks, behind which the heroes who 
fought under Havelock, stood and battled for 
the flag of England. There may be seen the 
old mosque and the mngniliceDt banyan-trea 
through whose branches the Sepoy bollel* 
whistled during the siege. There, near Rt 
hand, rises the significant mound, its sides te*^ 



6REAT BRITAIN.— SEPOY REBELLION. 



3G7 



raced and covered with the fragrant flowers of 
lodia, while on the further elope rise the 
feathery bamboos which overshadow the last 
resting-place of two thousand British soldiers 
who died of battle and pestilence in the siege 
of Lucknow. At Cawupore, over the horrid 
well whose open mouth received the mutilated 
bodies of the murdered women and children, 
a memorial has been erected; while round 
about the spot' a beautiful garden, planted 
with flowers and shrutis, and protected 
by a wall, preserves the memory of 
those who perished under the swords 
of the murderers sent to their bloody 
work in the prison-house by the Kajah 
of Bithoor. 

With the subsidence of the rebellion 
in India, a difficult and serious task 
was left on the hands of the Govern- 
ment. By what means should a 
rftorganization of those vast popula- 
tions be effected. In the flrst place, 
the question of retribution must be 
met. It was resolved by the authori- 
ties, civil and military, that a distinc- 
tion should be made between those 
who had merely participated in the 
mutiny, contending openly with the 
British forces in battle, and those 
who had taken part in the many hor- 
rid massacres, of which the Sepoys 
bad been guilty. As far as practi- 
cable, this distinction was carried out 
in the punishment of those who fell 
into the power of the British. The 
Hindu soldiers who were taken, and 
whose hands were not stained n.th 
butchery and assassination, were treated 
as prisoners of war. But those who 
had been guilty of massacre were at 
ance destroyed by being blown alive 
from the mouths of cannon. In ext«nuation 
of this severity, which had in it so strong a 
flavor of barbarism, the explanation was given 
by the British authorities that the Sepoys, 
under their peculiar superstitions, cared little 
or nothing for the mere foct of death, but 
were horrified at the thought of mutilation. 
The method of military execution was deduced 
from this theory; but after times have hardly 
Mns«ut«d to the wholesale and savage process 
hr which the guilty Sepoys were obliterated. 



After die first rigors ol' the military 
method were passed, the civil government pro- 
ceeded as best it might with the reSrganiza- 
tion of the country. In March of 1858 Lord 
Canning issued to the inhabitants of Oudh a 
proclamation, in which he defined, with much 
severity, the measures by which they might be 
restored to conditions of peace. It was set 
forth that all chiefs and landowners who should 
at onoe surrender to the Britbh Commissioner 



should be spared, provided only that thay 
had not been guilty of massacre or assassina- 
tion. The proclamation of the Governor-Gen- 
eral went on to say that any further indulgence 
which might be extended to the people of 
Oudh, and indeed their whole condition there- 
after, must depend on their own course in sur- 
rendering themselves to the justice and mercy 
of the British Government. The general effect 
of the proclamation was to confiscate the lands 
of all who had taken part in the mutiny, and 



368 



UMVEESAL RiaTORY.--THE MODERN WORLD. 



this sigDmed the whole population ; for there 
was not perhaps one in a thousand of the land* 
owners in aii Oudh who had not been engaged 
in the Ili'beHion. It was perhaps not in- 
tended by Lord Canning that the penalty 
should be so rigorously exacted as might be 
inferred from the proclamation. It was the 
purpose rather to make the people understand 
that the British Government, in the exercise 
of prerogative which had arisen out of the 
war, had become the original proprietor of the 
lands of Oudh, and that all who henceforth 
held or owned such lands must do so under a 
tide derived from the Crown of England. 

As soon as the policy of the Governor- 
General was known in England a violent con- 
troversy arose relative thereto, and the dis- 
eussion in Parliament did not end until the 
Gk>vernment of India was revolutionized. Lord 
Ellenborough and most of the Ministry an- 
tagonized the principles of Lord Canning's 
proclamation, and motions were introduced in 
both Houses of Parli&ment to substitute a new 
policy for that of the Governor-General. To 
the American reader, the condition of affairs 
and the controversy relative thereto, may well 
bring to mind the divisions between the Ex- 
ecutive and Congress in the work of recon- 
structing the Southern States at the close of 
the Civil War. It appeared that, in the case 
of Lord Canning, he had sent certain private 
and explanatory letters to England in con- 
nection with the proclamation, and that thes") 
were withheld until the break was made be- 
tween the Governor-General and the Ministry. 
Since no other policy could be substituted for 
that proposed by Canning, the latter officer 
went straight ahead to meet the difficulties be- 
fore him according to his own methods. 

It soon appeared that the measures pro- 
posed were not in effect so severe as they were 
theoretically. The people of Oudh, particu- 
larly the landowners, were now thoroughly will- 
ing to accept the best terms of settlement 
which might be had at. the hands of the Gov- 
ernment. It was found that Canning's policy 
was the remedy for many of the ancient abuses 
•with which the people of the Province had 
been afflicted. The somewhat dependent posi- 
tion in which the land-owners were placed, 
gave opportunity for an extension of rights 
and influence among the village communities. 1 



Id fact, the domestic revolution was more in 
form than in substance. There had always 
existed in Oudh a proprietary right of the 
kingly and feudal governments in the lands 
of the country, and the transfer of this pro- 
prietary right to Great Britain did not, after 
all, so greatly disturb the status of the land* 
lords and the village tenantry. 

Meanwhile, the whole question of the pre»> 
ent condition and future government of India 
was under full discussion in Parliament. In 
the preceding pages many references have been 
made to that famous East India Company, under 
whose auspices the civil and govermental de- 
velopment of India had taken place. As early 
as 1595, what was called *'A Company for 
Remote Parts," was formed in Amsterdam, 
and was presently chartered, with the general 
privilege of trade with the East Indies, for 
twenty-one years. Afterwards the charter was 
extended to 1644. Still again, in 1655, the 
rights of the C/ompany were revived, and con« 
tinued till the year 1700. We have already seen 
how, with the maritime ascendency of England, 
dating from about the middle of the seventeenth 
century, the power of the Portuguese, the 
Dutch, and the French in the far East, gave way 
before the greater vigor and aggressiveness of 
the English fleets. Even before this event, in 
the year 1599, Queen Elizabeth had granted 
to '* The Governor and Company of Merchants 
of London, trading with the East Indies,** a 
charter for fifleen years, conceding to the cor- 
poration the exclusive right of commerce with 
all the countries from the Cape of Good Hope 
eastward to the Straits of Magellan, excepting 
only such coasts and islands as might already 
be occupied by some friendly European State. 
Such was the origin of that great corporation 
which was destined to furnish, in after times, 
some of the most important, and, at the same 
time, most romantic, chapters in the hbtory of 
the British Empire. 

In the time of Cromwell an effort was 
made to set free the trade with East India. 
But the attempt was futile ; and the charter of 
the Company was renewed by the Protector, 
and again by Charles II. In 1698 a second 
company of like character with the original 
was formed ; but a few years afterwards the two 
were merged under the title of "The United 
Company of Merchants trading with the EasI 



GREAT BRITAIN.— SEPOY REBELLION. 



369 



iDciies.'' The goyernment of the Company 
waa in the hands of a Governor and a Board 
of Directors, varying in number at different 
times and under different statutes. In 1708 
tluree Local Councils were established in India, 
one for Madras, one for Bombay, and one for 
Calcutta. During this century, the political 
and territorial relations of the Company were 
vastly extended in Hindustan. In 1757 the 
government of the corporation succeeded in 
deposing the nabob of Bengal, by which act 
great and rich provinces were secured. It was 
in 1761 that the defeat and virtual expulsion 
of the French from India enabled the Company 
to pursue with still greater freedom its policy 
of aggrandizement. Soon afterwards that 
most remarkable episode in the history of the 
country, the administration of Warren Hastings 
occurred, to be followed by his impeachment 
and the consequent revelation, to the mind of 
England and all Europe, of the tremendous 
resources, the vast extent, the complicated 
governmental system, the antique civilization, 
and limitless populations of India. Hence- 
forth it was seen that the East India Company, 
08 a private corporation, could not be lefl in- 
depend<>nt of governmental control, to pursue 
its own course in the management of an Em- 
pire as great in weahh, and many times greater 
in population, than the Home Kingdom of 
Great Britain. Accordingly, on the proposi- 
tion of William .Pitt, a Board of Control was 
appointed for India, to consist of the two 
principal Secretaries of State, the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, and such members of the 
Privy Council as the sovereign might designate. 
The Company's charter, however, was, in 
1793, extended by act of Parliament to the 
year 1814. Indeed, the monopoly of trade in 
the East, which had been so long conceded to 
the Company, was not abolished until April 
of 183T. 

If, then, at the time of the Indian mutiny, 
we glance at that Government which experi* 
ment, statute, and commercial interest had 
conspired to form through the two and a half 
preceding centuries, we shall find the Adminis- 
tration to be composed of a Board of Directors, 
part of whom were nominated by the Crown, 
and part chosen by the Company. The 
Crown Directors had a right of reviewing all 
dedsions made by the general Company. The 



Governor-General of India was an officer of 
the ^Crown, though he might be recalled by 
the Compauy. The system was complicated in 
the last uegree, and in some particulars was 
vague and incomprehensible. As early as 
1852, Lord Ellen borough had recommended 
that the governmental prerogatives of the 
Company be transferred to the Crown. 

It remained, however, for the Indian mutiny 
to rouse Parliament and the country to the 
necessities of the situation. Four years pre* 
viously the civil patronage which had belonged 
to the Company was taken away, and placed 
under the same competitive system which pre- 
vailed in the civil service of Great Britain. 
At the very beginning of 1858, before civil 
government was restored at Lucknow, Lord 
Palmerston brought in a bill for the transfer 
of all the civil aud political authority of the East 
India Company directly and absolutely to tho 
Crown of England. The measure contemplated 
the appointment, by the British Home Gov« 
emment, of a President and Council of 
eight members for the Administration of India. 
Before the bill could be passed, however. 
Lord Palmerston was thrown out of office by 
circumstances to be narrated hereafter. 

He was succeeded by Lord Derby, with 
Lord EUenborough as Secretary for the Colo* 
nies. A new bill was prepared, more compli- 
cated and less practical than that proposed by 
Palmerston. In the course of the discussion 
which ensued, it was found that the Ellen- 
borough bill was virtually devoid of merit. 
At length Lord John Russell, whose clear 
judgment had so many times discovered a way 
through like perplexities, prepared a bill 
called ''An Act for the Better Government 
of India.* In it provisions were made that all 
the territories, all the civil and political rights, 
hitherto held and exercised by the East India 
Company, should be transferred absolutely to 
the Crown of England. The principal admin- 
istrative officer was to be *known as the Vice- 
roy, or Governor-General. He was to be ap- 
pointed by the Crown. A Council for India, 
consisting of fifteen members, was to be ap- 
pointed, eight of whom were to be chosen by 
the Crown, and the other seven were conceded 
to the Directors of the Company. There was 
also to be a Council Resident in India, for tho 
immediate support and assistance of the Vice* 



370 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



roy. The act was passed on the Ist of Sep- 
tember, 1858. The Queen was proclaimed 
aovereign of India, and Lord Canning, in rec- 
ognition of the ability and fidelity with 
which he had discharged the duties of his 
office in the most critical epoch through which 
the British Government had yet passed in the 
East, was appointed first Viceroy of India. 
The civil revolution thus effected marked the 
beginning of a new era in the development 
of the British East Indian Empire — a move- 
ment which may be said tp have reached its 
culmination when, in April of 1876, Queen 
Victoria, under the auspices of Disraeli, re- 
ceived the crown and title of Empress of 
India. 

Reference has been made above to the sud- 
den downfall of the Palmerston Ministry. The 
cause of tiie unexpected collapse of the Gov- 
ernment was known and read of all. On the 
14th of January, 1858, the Italian exile, Felice 
Orsini, for some time resident in England, but 
who had more recently gone over to the French 
capital, had taken his station near the entrance 
of the Grand Opera-house, and thrown under 
the carriage of Louis Napoleon and the Em- 
press an explosive bomb. The Emperor and 
Eugenie escaped unhurt, but ten of the ex- 
posed by-standers were killed, and a hundred 
and fifty-six wounded. A full account of the 
attempted assassination of the French ruler 
will be given in the following chapter. In this 
place the event is to be considered only in its 
relations to England, and particularly to the 
Palmerston Government. 

It was at once known that for some time 
Orsini had lived, publicly and privately, in 
England. It was discovered that his bombs 
had been manufactured in Birmingham. Or- 
sini had spoken much in many parts of the 
Kingdom, urging the British Government to 
espouse the cause of Italy against Austria. 
These circumstances, and many other incidents 
of the attempted assassination, were noised, not 
only in England and France, but throughout 
Europe. For the time, the immemorial policy 
of Great Britain in making the country a 
haven and asylum for political refugees from 
every part of the world, was subjected to the 
severest criticism. In France especially "were 
animadversions offered, from quarters high and 
quarters low, on that type of Government 



which absorbed into itself the half-moideroot 
malcontents from all other nations. In Eng> 
land there was some sympathy with these 
mews — some disposition to adopt a more strin- 
gent policy relative to the political aliens who 
had found, or might hereafter find, asylnm in 
the Kingdom. 

At the head of this opinion stood Lord 
Palmerston himself. His attitude in this par* 
ticular must be interpreted from his peculiar 
constitution. Ever since his entrance into 
public life his politics had been divided into 
two parts, the first part being devoted to 
liberalism in England, and the other part to 
absolutism abroad. Lord Palmerston waa 
therefore allied at many crises of his career 
with those European rulers who had least 
footing in the actual sympathies of Gieat 
Britab. Thus it was in the case of Napo* 
leon III. It will be remembered that Lord 
Palmerston had already had a notable fall from 
the English Ministry, in 1852, on occount of 
his unseasonable defense of the Omp SEtaL In 
the case of the Orsini afiair, the English 
statesman's partiality again stood stoutly forth* 
In accordance with his own disposition, and 
under the stimulus of communications received 
from the French Cabinet, he brought into the 
House of Commons a bill known as '' The 
Conspiracy-to-murder Bill." The act was in 
the open face of the whole antecedent policj 
of Great Britain. It contemplated the trans- 
ference of conspiracy to murder from the list 
of misdemeanors to the category of felonies, 
with the penalty of penal servitude in periods 
extending from five years to the life-time of 
the convict. At the first view it would ap* 
pear that the measure covered the case ; but 
when we take into consideration the im- 
memorial policy and law of the English-speak- 
ing race, to the efiect that an overt act, and 
not a contemplated or prepared crime, is 
necessary to constitute a felony, we shall see 
the untenable character of the Bill proposed 
and defended by Palmerston. Many of the 
ablest Parliamentarians at once perceived the 
anti-British character of the measure. Par* 
ticularly did John Arthur Roebuck hold up to 
the hostile judgment of the House the pro- 
posed statute. At length, Milner Gibson 
threw his influence against Palmerston, and 
when the Bill came to a vote for the secoad 



na^ng, it failed by a considerable majority. 
It only remained for Lord Palmerston to 
resign his ofiGce. He, who at the beginning 
of tbe year bad been as firmly planted in 
power as any Prime Minister who had con- 
ducted the Government for the last quarter 
of a century, suddenly lost his hold by His 
sympathy for the ruler of France, and by 
confounding the misdemeanor of plotting a 
crime with the actual commission of the 
crime itself. 

The American reader will hardly fail, in 
perusing this significant paragraph, to call to 
mind the similar effort made, and still making, 
in bis own country, with respect to anarchism. 
In the United States the British theory 
of free asylum has been cordially, fully, 
and righteously adopted. Any other 
course on the part of the American 
Republic would be to belie the Tery 
principles on which the Republic is 
founded. No movement in our coun- 
try has been more pitiably contempt- 
ible than that which proposes to 
regard the United States as meant 
exclusively for the selfish promotion 
of the interests of those who have the 
good fortune to be bom American. 
True, every human government tnust 
first care for its own; but the Amer- 
ican Government can not stop with 
this narrow construction. The United 
States exists for the world, for man- 
bind, f or an enlarged human liberty. It 
must needs be that offenses will come 
under such a system. The Anarchists 
in American cities plotted to com- 
mit crime. In a most conspicuous instance, 
crimes were committed. The authorities 
might proceed either against the conspiracy 
or against the murderous deed done in Hay- 
market Square, The conspiracy was a mis- 
demeanor. The bomb-throwing was a felony. 
As a mattei of ract the Anarchists were con- 
victed of conspiracy, and were not convicted 
of throwing the bombs. They were tried for 
murder, and were convicted o£ anarchy! The 
attempt made in several quarters to stretch 
the principles of American law, so that plot- 
ting and conspiring to commit crime shall be 
pnt into the category of felonies, along with 
the overt acts of riot, murder, and assassina- 



GREAT BRITAIN.— SEPOY REBELLION. 371 

tion, is one of the most dangerous fallacies 
with which recent jurisprudence has been 
afflicted — a principle by far more evil in itself 
and pernicious in its tendencies than the evil 
which it is intended to remove. 

Before his final exit from office, lord Pal- 
merston had the good fortune to decorate his 
crest with a feather from the East. The' 
feather was plucked from the abundant plum- 
age of China. Canton had at last been taken 
by the allied French and English fleets. 
How long the military operations on that far 
coast had been suspended or balked by the 
troubles and diasters of the British Empire, 
the reader may well infer. For it will not be 



CHABLES ROBERT DARWIN. 

forgottun how, at the outbreak of the East 
Indian War, Lord Canning had put forth his 
hand, and in the emergency diverted the En- 
glish armament, which bad been sent out to 
China, from its intended purpose and brought 
the fleet to his own assistance. Of small im- 
portance was it to Great Britain that tha 
Chinese coast should be broken at the can- 
non's mouth, in comparison with the great 
crisis in India. But with the lapse of time 
Outram and Campbell and Havelock were 
successful in India. The great insurrection 
of the Sepoys was beaten into the earth; order 
was restored, and the Government; as we 
have seen, reconstructed on a broader and 



372 



UNIVERSAL mSTORY.'-THE MODERN WORLD. 



more rational basis. Thus relieved, from her 
•mbarraatmento, Oreat Britain foand herself 
free to join the French in a vigorous proeecu> 
tion of the war on China. 

The Emperor Napoleon had meanwhile 
found a reasonable cause for his hostility in the 
cruel treatment which had been visited by the 
Chinese on a company of French missionaries. 
Napoleon III. was in a frame of mind for the 
prosecution of a foreign war. The French 
Nation had found some measurable gratifica^ 
tion of pride in the issue of the conflict in the 
Crimea, and in the ability of the Emperor to 
bring the ambassadors of the great Powers 
together under his auspices in the Treaty of 
Paris. But it was necessary for him to con- 
tinue his foreign enterprises to the end, that 
the French might be still further elated with 
his government Thus England and France 
bore down 4n general armament upon China, 
and struck at Canton. It was no great matter 
that European fleets should prevail over the 
rude and primitive defense with which the 
Chinese were able to protect their city. Can- 
ton was bombarded and taken. At this time 
the Imperial Commissioner, Yeh, was in the 
eity. The allies succeeded in running down 
the Oriental dignitary, and capturing him in 
his retreat. To him, in his obstinacy, the 
British authorities chose to refer the recent 
hostilities and destruction of life and property. 
Nor could it well be doubted that the cruelty 
and recklessness of his administration had been 
such as to justify severe measures against him. 
It was said that in a recent Chinese rebellion 
he had ordered the ignominious execution of 
one hundred thousand rebel prisoners. Yeh 
was accordingly treated as a political prisoner; 
was sent to Calcutta, and kept in confinement 
nntQ the following year, when he died. 

Canton taken, it remained to reestablish 
peace. To this end Lord Elgin, on the part 
of Great Britain, and Baron Gros, on the part 
of France, were empowered by their respective 
Governments to form a new treaty with China. 
The policy of non-intercourse adopted by the 
Imperial Government was one of the chief 
causes of offense, and against this the Eu- 
ropean ministers protested to the extent of 
securing tne establishment of embassies at the 
Chinese Court. It was also agreed that China 



should henceforth have representatives at St. 
James and Versailles. It was provided that 
the Christian religion should henceforth be 
tolerateu in the Chinese Empire, and that cer- 
tain of the Chinese rivers should be accessible 
to the merchant- vessels of England and 
France. As to the expenses of the war, pay- 
ment therefor was, as a matter of course, ex- 
acted from China Lord Palmerston was able, 
in his official capacity, to inform' his country-* 
men of the success of the military operadona 
in the East, before the political eclipse into 
which he was now to enter. 

Before concluding the present chapter, we 
may well pause to note a single event in the 
intellectual and scientific progress, not only of 
the British people — not only of the English- 
speaking race — but of all civilized nations. It 
was in the year 1859 that the greatest of mod- 
em naturalists, Charles Robert Darwin, pub- 
lished his Origin of Species by Means of Natural 
SeUction, The work produced an immediate 
and vivid sensation among the thinking people 
on both sides of the Atlantic. The new doe- 
trine of the Natural History of Life was at 
once assailed with all manner of adverse and 

• 

acrimonious criticisms, with every variety of 
argument and prejudice. In the course of a 
few years, no fewer than three hundred and 
twelve authors had published works on the 
subject, a great majority of which were de- 
voted to the attempted refutation of the hypotb* 
esis, which now gained the name of Darwinisnt 
But it seemed that the united antagonism of a 
thousand assailants was insufficient to beat 
down the small and modest treatise which the 
naturalist had put forth, embodying his views 
as to the methods by which the various forms 
of animal and vegetable life -on the earth have 
been evolved into their present aspect and ac- 
tivities. The ensuing quarter of a century was 
largely occupied in the scientific world with 
the debate, which was waged, with ever-increaa- 
ing advantage on the side of the Darwinans; 
nor may it be well denied, as the controversy 
subsides, that a new era has been reached in 
the history of the human mind, as it respects 
its fundamental concepts of the processes and 
movements by which the varieties of animated 
being on the earth have appeared and reached 
their present development. 



GBEAT BRITAIN.— SUFFHAOE REFORM. 



373 



CHARXIBR CXXXI.— SURKRAQE) RE^KORM and AlvIKR- 

ICAN CONIRLICATION. 




IITH the fall of Palmer^ 
ston, Lord Derby again 
came to the head of the 
Government With him 
were associated Benjamin 
Disraeli y as Chancellor of 
the Exchequer ; Lord 
Stanley, as Secretary for the Colonies; Lord 
Malmesbury, as Secretary of Foreign Af&irs; 
and Greneral Peel, as Secretary of War. Of 
these, by far the strongest and ablest leader 
was Disraeli, whose coming ascendency in 
the Government of Great Britain might be 
easily discerned. One of the first expedients 
of the new Cabinet was no< to do what its pred- 
ecessor proposed to do. This principle was 
applied at once to the Conspiracy Bill, which 
was allowed to die of inanition. As for the 
rest, the attention of Parliament was at once 
directed to the question of the removal of the 
remaining political disabilities of the Jews. 

It was very fitting that one himself by 
birth a Jew, though nominally a Christian, 
should be leader of the House of Commons in 
the day when the final emancipation of his 
race was effected. It is difficult for the man 
of to-day, who has the English language as 
his birthright and the principles of English 

» 

liberty as his bulwark, to understand the bit- 
ter, causeless, unreasoning prejudices of race 
which still held from the exercise of human 
rights, at so late a period of British history, 
80 large and influential a class of people as the 
Jews. It seemed as though a considerable 
portion of the legislation and jurisprudence of 
England had been specially contrived for the 
oppression and distress of the Jewish race. 
As late as 1830, almost all the rights of citi- 
zenship were positively denied to Jewish sub- 
jects. No office, civil, military, or corporate, 
could be held by a Jew. The profession of 
law, whether as barrister or attorney, was 
closed against him. A Jew was forbidden to 
teach school, and might not even serve as 
janitor of a school-building! He was inter- 
dicted from voting, and was, of course, ex- 



cluded from membership in either House of 
Parliament. It is almost inconceivable that 
the mere bar of race descent should have been 
made the instrument of such degradation and 
oppression; and the wonder is still greater 
that the measures which were from tim6 to 
time brought forward for the removal of the 
load with which every Jew was encumbered, 
should have been met with violent opposition, 
even in the House of Commons. 

After the year 1830, however, the question 
of reform would not down. Bills were intro- 
duced at every session for Jewish emancipation, 
and at length public sentiment rallied to the 
cause. The English people, as such, went over 
to the side of the Jews, but Parliament — the 
House of Lords in particular — still refused to 
concede the removal of the disabilities. It was 
in the first year of the reign of Queen Victoria 
that the Jews first gained admission to certain 
executive offices. A Jew might be a sheriff, 
a constable, a hangman. It was at length 
perceived that pressure would have to be ex« 
erted upon Parliament from without. The 
friends of Jewish emancipation adopted the 
policy of electing certain citizens, otherwise 
qualified, but of the Jewish race, to the House 
of Commons. This was by no means difficult 
to do. In 1847 the Baron Lionel Bothschild 
was elected as one of the members for the 
City of London, and another Hebrew, named 
David Salomons, for the borough of Bhore- 
ham. At this time the House of Lords had 
just rejected by a strong vote the proposition 
for the extension of full citizenship to the 
Jews. Baron Bothschild, who was a man of 
the highest character, thereupon resigned his 
seat, and Salomons was refused admission. 

It must be understood that the anti-Jewish 
prejudice in Parliament had found its last 
barricade in the oath which, according to ex- 
isting statutes, was required of all those who 
were inducted into office. This oath required 
allegiance tu tne British crown as supreme in 
State and Church, abjuration of all foreign 
jurisdictions, and faithful discharge of th» 



374 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



given official daties; and to this was added, as 
a clause of sanction, '*od the true faith of a 
Christian." Behind this clause the conserva- 
tism of England took refuge. It was of 
course the custom of infidels, skeptics, atheists, 
ti id omne ^wniM, to take this oath without 
compunction; but honest Jews would not 
subscribe such an obligation. Great Britain 
took no offense at hypocrisy or perjury, pro- 
vided only the applicant would swear, using 
the words ** on the true faith of a Christian." 

In the meantime. Baron Bothschild and 
David Salomons, the latter recently elected 
from Greenwich, again presented themselves 
for membership, and offered to subscribe the 
oath with the invidious clause omitted. But 
the point was not yielded, and both the mem* 
bers sought to take their seats in spite of the 
bar against them. Both were excluded, Salo- 
mons with considerable violence, and Baron 
Bothschild with such gentle force as the officer 
of the House might use towards one of high 
degree. 

For several years the contest dragged on, 
until, finally, in 1858, a bill was introduced by 
Lord John Russell, providing that the official 
oath might be modified when it was to be 
administered to Jews. The measure was 
passed by the House of . Commons, but was 
rejected in the House of Lords. At length, 
however, the substance of the act was accepted 
in both Houses of Parliament, and henceforth 
the Jews were admitted to all official relations 
on taking such a modified oath as was accept- 
able to their consciences and consistent with 
their religious faith. 

Almost coincidently with the Act just 
named, namely, the act of the Parliamentary 
session of 1858, another measure of reform 
was adopted, by which a long-standing scandal 
was removed from the governmental polity of 
Great Britain. It will be remembered that 
the great Reform Bill of 1832, while it had 
greatly equalized representation and extended 
the franchise among the middle classes of 
Englishmen, had done nothing to ameliorate 
the political or social condition of the working- 
men. They who had expected so much from 
the legislation of Earl Grey received nothing at 
all. The English masses had asked for bread ; 
Parliament gave them a stone. They asked a 
Ash, and were given a serpent. For twenty-six 



years the poorer people of Great Britian had 
stretched up their hands to the branchea of that 
fallacious tree, called by preeminence the Re- 
form Bill, and had plucked only the apples of 
Sodom. 

Time and again the more liberal statesmen 
of England had moved in the direction of re- 
viving and extending the principles of that 
Reform Bill of 1832, more particularly as it 
affected the character of the House of Com- 
mons. The time had now arrived when 
another of the great principles for which the 
Chartists had contended was to find its way 
into the Constitution of Great Britain. The 
old abusive statute which required as a quali- 
fication that members of Parliament should 
possess a certain amount of landed property^ 
was still in full force. This is to say, the let* 
ter of the law was in force, but not the spirit. 
It has been the peculiarity of the whole insti- 
tutional, and especially the constitutional, devel- 
opment of the British Empire, that the cur* 
rent legislation and all existing administra- 
tive and judicial proceedings have been 
encumbered and weighted down with a mass 
of obsolete statutes, many of which had their 
origin amid the half-barbarism, the bigotries 
and brutalities of the Middle Ages. As a re- 
sult, every reformatory movement in Great 
Britain has been hobbled and retarded, drawn 
from its course to right and left, or jerked 
backwards on its haunches, by the long and 
strong thongs of ancient precedent, time- 
honored restriction, and irrational, or at least 
unreasoning, conservatism. In every instance 
the Old Man of the Sea has compelled the 
youthful Sindbad to mount on his shoulders, 
and ride him backwards towards the past 

These circumstances must account for the 
stow and toilsome progress of all reformatory 
movements in England. In the case before 
us, the Past had decided that land-ownership 
was a necessary qualification for membership 
in the British Parliament. Civilization had 
long since outgrown this restriction. Chartism 
had denounced the principle, and the con- 
science and judgment of England recognized 
the justice of the denunciation. Bat still the 
letter survived. At length a state of circum- 
stances supervened which made it necessary to 
obviate the law by fraudulent practices. Thai 
stubborn spirit of conservatism for which, i 



GREAT BRITAIN.—SUFFRAOE REFORM. 



375 



ell ages, the British Saxon haa been so noted, 
refused to admit that the law should be re- 
pealed. That indeed would sweep away a 
landmark of the past Subterfuge and fraud 
were accordingly adopted in order that the will 
of England might be done in the face of the 
English law. It became customary for the can- 
didates who we're before the country for elec- 
tion to Parliament, and who were not them- 
selves land-owners, to obtain the nominal and 
temporary transfer of properties to themselves, 
holding the same until after election and 
qualification for duty in Parliament, and then 
deeding back to the real owners what they had 
held in trust. This method of ''beating the 
IttW ** became so common that a large propor- 
tion of the members of the House of Commons 
might be justly charged with holding their 
seats by a process which, applied to any ordi- 
nary relation of life, would have been de- 
nounced as mere fraud. 

The reader will find in these conditions an 
example of the many similar perplexities 
which have tepded to produce and foster in 
the public life of Great Britain a species of 
political hypocrisy, of which the English people 
themselves appear to be but half conscious. 
In the midst of some such embarrassment, it 
b in vain that even the greatest English 
statesman should arise, point out the nature 
of the evil, and demand, with the most cogent 
argument and appeal to conscience, the abro- 
gation of the offending statute. The political 
machinery of England, and more particularly 
the peculiar spirit of the people, will not 
tolerate such a direct, manly, and rational 
method of abolishing abuses. Parliament 
must beat around the question, adopt subter- 
fuges, offer amendments, and finally choose 
some half-way expedient, under which it is 
hoped that the injurious usage of the past will 
txpire, rather than be destroyed. In the in- 
stance before us, the effort was made, from 
time to time, to abolish the property qualifi- 
cation for members of Parliament. One act 
proposed to substitute a declaration, instead of 
the oath hitherto required of the candidate, 
that he was a land-owner; as though the 
declaration were a feebler and less hurtful 
form of falsehood than the direct and robust 
perjury of the oath. 

In the next place it was sought to make 



the property qualification general, by substi- 
tuting a requirement that the Parliamentarian 
should possess, not necessarily landed property, 
but a fund of some kind equivalent to six 
hundred pounds a year for a county constitu- 
ency, or three hundred pounds for a borough. 
But this measure by no means removed the 
tendency to fraud. It was more easy indeed 
for some rich frieujd to loan, fro iompore, a 
sufficient sum to a moneyless candidate than 
it had been to make to him a fraudulent 
transfer of landed property. The abuse was 
aggravated by the amendment, and the House 
of Commons continued to be filled in good 
part with those who had obtained their seats 
in the open face* of the law. The condition 
was made still more abusive by the fact that 
the members of Parliament from Scotland 
were free from the property qualification. 
Those who were chosen to represent the great 
Universities were also exempt from the action 
of the pernicious statute. 

In the year 1858 it was found that about 
sixty members of the House were in their 
seats by the force of a fraudulent declaration. 
It happened at this session that one poor 
member, who had come in in the usual way. 
was unfortunate enough to fall into the clutches 
of the law. Once in the hands of an English 
court, there was no escape. His fellow-mem- 
bers came at once to see the precipice on 
which more than half a hundred others were 
standing. The votes of these were necessary 
to the Ministry. Therefore the Government 
by a herculean effort, and under compulsion, 
must abolish the sacred old statute which, 
since the days of Queen Anne, had required 
a landed property as a qualification for mem* 
bership in the Commons. To Locke King, a 
member of the House, belongs the honor of 
having prepared and introduced the measure 
by which Parliamentary membership was made 
henceforth to depend on the man rather than 
on land-ownership. 

The year 1859 was noted in the history of 
England for the founding of the great Amer^ 
ican Colony of British Columbia. The measure 
was the virtual beginning of English civiliza- 
tion in the vast regions lying north of the 
westermost , parts of the United States. At 
the time of which we speak, the ofiice of 
Secretary for the Colonies was held by Sir 



876 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



Edward Bulwer LjttoD, and from his rich 
and capacious understanding arose the project 
of opening on the far Pacific a new field for 
the exercise of the energies of his countrymen. 
The new territory, to which the name of Britis|i 
Columbia was given, was bounded on tlie south 
by the parallel of forty-nine degrees and furty 
minutes, being the boundary-line of the 
United States; on the east by the principal 
chain of the Rocky Mountains; on the north 
hj Simpson's River and the Finlay Branch of 
Peace River; and on the west by the Pacific. 
In course of time, Vancouver's Island was 
annexed to the nevr Province; and, after twelve 
jears of independent colonial existence, Brit- 
ish Columbia itself was added to the Dominion 
of Canada. Thus in the year 1871, Britbh 
America on the north was carried through in 
one broad band, as the United States had 
already been, from ocean to ocean. 

It was under the administration of Lord 
Lytton in the colonial office that a striking 
revival of interest occurred in Great Britain 
with respect to that group of Grecian Islands 
called Ionian. These Islands are seven in 
number, beginning with Corfu on the north, 
and extending around the western coast of 
Greece to Cerigo, off the southern extremity 
of the peninsula. They are essentially Hel- 
lenic, geographically, ethnically, historically. 
But for a long time the Ionian group had 
been the subject of covetous contention among 
the Latin States of Western Europe. About 
the beginning of the present century, Bona- 
parte, on more occasions than one, made the 
Ionian Islands the subject of special clauses in 
his treaties. At the Congress of Vienna, in 
1815, the Islands were granted nominal inde- 
pendence under the protection of Great Britain. 
Corfu was the capital. The chief administra- 
tive oflicer was a British Lord High Com- 
missioner, appointed by the Government. 
Under him was a legislative body, consisting 
of a Senate of six and an Assembly of forty 
members. It was not long until the Greek 
revoluticwi broke out. After a hard and 
murderous conflict, the independence of the 
country was achieved, and King Otho, a Ger- 
man Prince, was put on the throne under the 
protection of the Great Powers. 

Henceforth the populations of the Ionian 
Islands, themselves of Grecian origin, strove 



by every means in their hands to identify- 
themselves with the Mother-land of Greece. 
The protectorate of Great Britain now consti* 
tuted a bar to such a movement. The loniana^ 
from year to year, grew more and more restle9» 
under what was in every essential a foreign 
domination. It became a serious matter to Lord 
Lytton how he should continue a satisfactory 
administration in the Islands. He at length 
determined to send out as a Commissioner 
Extraordinary to Corfu, William £. Glad- 
stone, who was recognized as a Philhellene, 
and might for that reason be most acceptable 
to the Islanders. It was at the close of 185ft 
that Gladstone went on his mission. It 
appears that the Islanders at once leaped to 
the conclusion that the new Commissioner had 
come to them in the character of a liberator. 
He was received with great enthusiasm by the 
impetuous patriots of Ionia, and had great 
difficulty in making them understand the true 
nature of his mission. The general effect of 
his presence in the Islands was to increase the 
agitation in favor of a union with Greece. 
At the close of the Gladstone episode the dia* 
content at the foreign protectorate was greater 
than ever, and the succeeding Lord High 
Commissioner had great difficulty in- main- 
taining peace. 

At length, however, the difficulty was 
solved by a natural evolution, the results 
of which were satisfactory to all parties. 
In October of 1862, a popular revolution 
occurred in Athens, by which King Otho was 
remanded to private life. In his place was 
chosen Prince George of Denmark, son of 
Christian IX., and brother to the Princess of 
Wales. The fact that the brother-in-law of 
the future sovereign of Great Britain was thus 
chosen king of the Hellenes, at once modified 
the views of the English Government relative 
to the maintenance of the protectorate over 
the Ionian Islands. It was conceded by Lord 
John Russell, then in office, that the Islands 
should belong henceforth to the kingdom of 
Greece. Accordingly, in 1863, the protectorate 
was finally relinquished, and the little Ionian 
Republic was merged with the mother country 
of Hellas. A fortunate marriage settlement 
had accomplished a result which otherwise 
would hardly have been effected but by the 
agency of war. 



GREAT BRITAIN.SUFFRAOE REFORM. 



377 



We may here enter upon an account of 
the final conflict by which the Right of 
Suffrage was extended to the workingnien of 
England. Time and again we have referred 
to the ineffectiveness of the Reform Bill of 
1832, considered »a a measure of enfranchise- 
ment and genuine extension of popular rights. 
It would appear strange that a people of the 
liberty-loving antecedents of the English race 
«hou]d, in their historical career, have exiiibited 
«o many symptoms of apprehension relative to 
the suffrage. It would seem axiomatic that 
a country possessing so great and powerful an 
organ of liberty as the House of Commons 
would revert instinctively to manhood's suffrage 
as the very palladium of the system of free 
government. But, on the other side, we have 
to take into consideration the composite charac- 
ter of English society and English institutions. 
We must remember that, from the days of the 
Tudors, from the days of the Plantagenets, 
aye, from the days of the Conqueror himself, 
England had been, politically considered, an 
aristocracy. There was the king. There was 
the House of Lords. There was the graduated 
■order of nobility. There was the landed 
gentry, by far the most powerful and resolute 
of its kind in all Europe. These parts of 
British society were fixed and established by 
the traditions of centuries. 

All these elements of England's strength 
and greatness were set against the principle of 
general suffrage. While the Commons grew, 
the aristocracy opposed their growth. Never- 
theless, the whole history of Great Britain, 
«ince the Revolution of 1688, has been the 
history of the gradual rise and ever-imminent 
«upremacy of the House of Commons. Back 
of this development has been heard evermore 
in the distance the cry of the common man — 
the appeal of the masses for their constitu- 
tional rights and just influence in the Govern- 
ment. At the time of which we speak, the 
liberal elements in Parliament were sufficiently 
numerous, could they be marshaled into a 
single phalanx to bear down the Conservative 
Ministry, and to carry an extension of the 
«uffrage by a coup de main. But the divisions 
among the Liberal and Radical elements in the 
House, generally forbade such a union of effort. 

At the close of the sixth decade of the 
ntury, Benjamin Disraeli was the undisputed 



leader of the Conservative Party. Each year 
seemed to add a new demonstration of his 
great abilities, a new display of his powers in 
the Government. At this date Europe fell 
into commotion and war. It looked for a 
season as though Napoleon the Little was 
about to turn the tables on his critics and 
satirists, and to justify his claim to the war- 
boots and cocked hat of Napoleon the Great. 
It is not the place in which to enter on a 
narrative of those stirring events in the course 
of which a United Italy was to emerge from 
the smoke of battle, and the rising crest of 
Hohenzollern be seen abjove the turmoil of 
Sadowa. Suffice it to say that, in these events, 
Great Britain seemed to have no part or lot. 
Such a situation has always been annoying to 
English statesmen. Under such circumstances 
they feel that the prestige of Great Britain is 
lost, or at least diminished. It is a sentiment 
with which the great mass of the English 
people sympathize in a profound degree. To 
all Britons it seems unnatural and unhistorical 
that any great thing should happen in Eu- 
rope in which England has no master part. 

Such was the condition of affairs in 1859. 
The crisis in Europe required that the English 
Government should do something at home 
which might satisfy the amour propre of the 
people by compensation for the noise abroad. 
In such an emergency. Reform is the cry with 
which a Ministry must attract to itself the 
continued interest of the nation. But how 
should a Conservative Minister cry Reform? 
To the genius of Disraeli the dilemma was 
sufficiently emharrassing, but not confound- 
ing. He perceived that reform must be taken 
under the patronage of the Government, and for 
the present he might almost say, Vetat c'erf 
moi. So he became a Reformer, and intro- 
duced into Parliament a bill for the extension 
of the suffrage. It was his theory that the 
franchise might be extended laterally ; that 
is, to considerable classes and groups of dis- 
franchised Englishmen, who, so to speak, 
flourished in the same stratum with those who, 
under the Reform Bill of 1832, already had 
the right of suffrage. Below this stratum lay 
that other and profoundly deep formation, the 
English lower classes — the workingmen, the 
peasantry, the operatives, the miners of Great 
Britain. 



i 



378 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



S 



It was not the purpose of Disraeli to dip 
down into the great sea. His measure by no 
means contemplated the enfranchisement of the 
masses. In fact, the bill proposed was in the 
nature of another tub thrown to the British 
;whale. The act provided that in boroughs, 
all persons having property to the amount of 
ten pounds a year, in funds, or stocks of the 
East India Company; all persons who had on 
deposit sixty pounds in savings bank ; all per- 
sons receiving pensions to the amount of 
twenty pounds a year; also all professional 
men, such as doctors and lawyers, alumni of 
the universities, ministers, school-teachers, etc., 
should become enfranchised. ^Another clause 
of the bill provided that the conditions of suf- 
frage in counties and boroughs respectively 
should be equalized — a provisioh which had 
in it the elements of right and justice. But 
in its principal features the bill was little bet- 
ter than an absurdity. It was at once seen that 
many of the persons seemingly admitted to the 
franchise by the new measure were already 
enfranchised. Under existing statutes, a law- 
yer or a physician, as well as a country landlord, 
bad the right of suffrage, provided the prop- 
erty qualiOcations were sufficient. Again, it 
was seen' that one having the requisite funds 
in a savings bank might, in one year, be a 
voter, and in the next year, by the mere fact 
of withdrawing and profitably investing his 
money, even in a cottage provided for his 
young wife, would thereby be disfranchised. 

Nevertheless, Disraeli brought all of his 
resources to the defense of his bill. A fiery 
and protracted debate ensued in the House of 
Commons, until, at length, Lord Russell thrust 
a sword into the whole proceeding by offering 
a resolution to the effect that the House of 
Commons would not be satisfied with any re- 
adjustment of the franchise which did not 
provide for a greater extension of the suffrage 
to the English people than was contemplated 
in the Ministerial Bill. Over this resolution, 
there was a sharp and decisive struggle, and 
the Government was defeated by an emphatic 
majority. Thereupon Parliament was dis- 
solved and a new election was held, at which, 
though the Conservatives gained slightly, the 
decision was against the Ministry. The Con- 
servatives were driven out of office by a vote 
of a want of confidence. 



At this juncture the two leading stategmeo 
! in Parliament, after Disraeli, were Lord Pal- 
merston and Lord John Russell. Neither of 
these, indeed, might be considered as second 
to the recent leader of the House. It were 
more fitting to say that Disraeli had, by genius 
and persistency, thrust himself into the same 
rank with Palmerston and Russell. ' The 
Queen, however, called to her aid Lord Gran- 
ville, and directed him to form a Cabinet. It 
was soon discovered that this could not be 
done. Lord Russell would not enter the Min- 
istry of Granville, preferring to serve under 
his great rival. Lord Palmerston. The latter 
was accordingly once more summoned by the 
Queen to take charge of the Government. 
He accepted the trust, and from June of 1859 
to his death, in Octol>er of 1865, remained in 
the high office of Premier. Nor will the 
reader of our times fail to look back with 
admiration upon the veteran statesman, 
already in the seventy-fiflh year of his age, 
resuming, at the call of his sovereign, the 
severest duties and heaviest responsibilities 
which can be imposed, under the existing 
constitutions of the civilized States, upon any 
ministerial officer. 

In the new Cabinet, Gladstone became 
Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Secretary- 
ship of Foreign Affairs was assigned to Lord 
John Russell. The Home Office was given to 
Sir George Cornewall Lewis. The place of 
Minister of War was allotted to Sidney Her- 
bert ; the Colonial Secretaryship, to the Duke 
of Newcastle; the Secretaryship for Ireland, 
to Edward Card well; and the Secretaryship 
for India, to Sir Charles Wood. The Presi- 
dency of the Board of Trade was offered ta 
Richard Cobden ; but the latter, ever at vari- 
ance with Lord Palmerston, on account of his 
foreign policy, would not accept the place,^ 
and the same was assigned to Milner Gibson. 

No sadder incident was known in the 



* It was on this occasion that the somewhat 
celebrated mot of Cobden was delivered. He 
urged that he could not accept office under Pal- 
merston on account of the severe strictures which 
he had made on that statesman's course and con- 
duct. It was answered that Lord Russell, who 
had just accepted the Foreign Office, had been, in 
a former crisis, equally severe in denunciation of 
Palmerston and his policy, "Yes," replied Cob- 
den, indifferently, " but I mearU wfhcU I said.** 



GREAT BRITAIN.SUFFRAQE REFORM. 



379 



history of this year, 1859, than the death of 
Lord Macaulay. On the 28th of December 
he fell from his place in Parliament, to be 
consigned on the 9th of the following month 
to his rest, near the statue of Addison, in the 
Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. His 
life had been one of singular intellectual 
activity. As was said by Johnson of Gold- 
smith, he had touched almost every variety of 
literature, and had touched nothing which he 
did not adorn. We may not pause, in this^ 
place, to recount the story of his life. It is 
doubtful whether a more brilliant intellect has 
passed across the sky of England within the 
present century. He had not only the genius 
of a great literary man, the acumen of a 
scholar, the accomplishments of a parliamen- 
tarian, the gifts of a statesman, but also the 
soul and spirit of a profound humanity which 
linked him strongly to his age. 

In no incident of his career was the great- 
ness of Macaulay more conspicuous than in 
his labors as President of the Commission for 
the Revision of the Penal Code of British 
India. Though he was then but a young 
man, being but thirty-three years of age, the 
work which he produced is conspicuous in the 
jurisprudence of the century. The Criminal 
Code which he prepared is still a part of the 
constitution of the British East Indian Em- 
pire. In it are reproduced, in a form at once 
concise and beautiful, the spirit aud ''real 
presence" of the law of England, in which 
Macaulay was so profoundly versed. He had 
the honor, besides, of introducing a new era 
in historical literature. Though his history 
of England is not more accurate than the 
works produced in the last half of the 
eighteenth century, though it is not free from 
the political bias and passionate vehemence 
of the author, it, nevertheless, introduced 
another style of historical writing, the useful- 
ness and success of which have been demon- 
strated by the ever-widening popularity of the 
production. Nothing so brilliant, so varied, 
•0 lucid in treatment, so masterly in style and 
diction, had ever before appeared in English 
prose. Within thirty years of the appearance 
of the History of England, the sale of the work 
had reached in Great Britain a hundred and 
forty thousand copies, and it has been alleged 
that in the United States no other book, with 



the single exception of the Bible, has ever had 
so wide a distribution. 

We have already narrated the circum* 
stances under which the Ministry of Lord 
Palmerston came into power. The Govern- 
ment, in his hands, was destined to pass 
through perilous emergencies in the course of 
the six years which lay before. In the first 
place, the relations of England with France, 
or more properly with the governing power 
in France, became strained. It would be 
difficult to explain, from the stand of con- 
sistency, the course which Great Britain had 
pursued towards the Bonaparte family in the 
relations of that family to the F;*ench throne. 
In the first place, England, in common with 
the other powers, had registered her vow at 
the Congress of Vienna, that no Bonaparte 
should henceforth occupy a European throne. 
That family was to be eradicated root and 
branch. In course of time, England per- 
ceived that she had no more affection, even 
for the Citizen King, than she had for the 
Napoleons. One of them had at least had 
the merit of greatness. When that Bonaparte, 
who had recently done police duty in the 
streets of London, and who, as the student 
prisoner of Ham, had occupied his time in 
composing a political pamphlet on the Extinc- 
turn of Pauperiem, suddenly stepped across the 
Channel to be President of the French Re- 
public, and then Emperor Napoleon IH., 
Great Britain first shaded her eyes with her 
hand, then said she would not endure it, then 
endured it, and, finally, applauded. Within 
two years from the time when the parvenu 
Prince took on him the French crown, Eng- 
land was his faithful ally in the Crimean 
War. 

At the close of that conflict, Great Britain 
had some difiiculty in preventing France from 
monopolizing the glory. Soon afterwards she 
became exceedingly distrustful of Bonaparte. 
She watched his movements with ever-increas* 
ing dislike. Now she saw him enter ujion a 
victorious war with Austria. She saw him 
create a Duke of Magenta, on the field of that 
name, h la Napoleon the Great. She heard 
with astonishment the word Soiferino, and 
then, with greater astonishment, the word 
Villafranca. She perceived that the whole 
Italian scheme had, in the last act, been pur- 



380 



UNIVERSAL HISTORr,'-THE MODERN WORLD, 



posely ^iven over to miscarriage, and she was 
sufficiently an jeered to have taken the sword 
if a Buiuible excuse couhl have heen found 
for the use of that weapon. It was another 
one of tiiose einergenoi»»8 iu which it appeared 
to England that her prestige was giving way. 
Nevertheless, for the time l>eing, she waa 
obIige<i to use her glass and see in liie dis- 
tance, with as much equanimity as she could 
command, the war-eagle of Bonaparte, the 
sword of Victor Emanuel circling in the horizon, 
and Count Cavour wearing the crown of 
European diplomacy. 

It has be^Mi observed already that in such 
a situation, Great Britain always attempts to 
counteract by some form of h(»me activity the 
effects of those foreign enterprises in which she 
bears no part. In the present instance, the 
Ministry became especially active, and the 
first form of subject-matter on which they 
seized was the ccmstruction of a new commer- 
cial treaty with France. The measure was 
somewhat sensational both in itself and in the 
methods employed for its accomplishment. 
The negotiations, instead of procee<ling from 
the Foreign Office and going through the 
hands of the British Minister at Paris, appear 
to have originated with John Bright, and to 
have been conducted privately by Richard 
Cobden directly with the French Emperor 
himself. 

France had, as a rule, been opposed to 
Great Britain on what may be called the 
general theory of commerce. The French 
political economy inclined strongly to Protec- 
tion, while that of Great Britain ha<l gone over, 
soul, body, and member, to the i)rinciple of 
Free Trade. The particular matter now in hand 
was to secure from Napoleon such abrogation 
of the existing restrictions on commerce be- 
tween Great Britain and France as could not, 
in all probability, be secured from the French 
Government, apart from the will an<l pref- 
erence of the Emperor. Cobden succeeded, in 
his personal discussion and correspondcFice 
with Napoleon III., in bringing that person- 
age very nearly into accord with his own 
views. It can not be doubted that the ante- 
Imperial residence of Louis Napoleon in 
England had made him in some measure a 
convert to the English theory of political, 
economy. The terms of a treaty were accord- 



ingly framed in which great concessions were 
made to the principle of Free Trade. The 
4iuties which had been previously laid by the two 
Governments on importations of each other^s 
goods were eilher wholly abolished or greatlj 
reduced. The tariff en English coal and coke, 
raw iron, tools, machinery, yarns, flax, and 
hemp, was so far reduced as to make their 
importation into France virtually free ; while, 
on the other hand, the duties on light French 
wines were abolished — a measure which led at 
once to a remarkable increase iu the consump- 
tion of such drinks in Great Britain. It was 
noticed, moreover, as a striking evolution in 
social economy, that the heavy alcoholio 
liquors, which had hitherto been used in such 
excessive quantities in England, were reduced 
in consumption in corresponding ratio. Nor 
will the socialist of our own age and countrj 
fail to record as an important fact that drunk* 
eimess and its correlated and dependent forma 
of vice were greatly diminished by the substi- 
tution of the light French wines for the fiery 
beverages which the English people had for- 
merly used. 

When the new commercial treaty waa 
brought before Parliament, it was subjected to 
a hot fire from the Opposition. But the 
advocacy of Gladstone and his followers pre* 
vailed. The compact conceived by Bright and 
Cobden passed into statutory form, and both 
countries were, presently, well satisfied with 
the working of the scheme. At the same 
time, the Ministry were busily engaged in 
promoting a measure of internal ecoDomy 
of the same general character with the French 
treaty. When the general principle of Free 
Trade became the policy of Great Britain, 
certain conspicuous exceptions still remained 
as witnesses and landmarks of the ancient 
system. Among others of the kind, the duty 
on paper had never been abolished. Aa a 
result, all departments of industry having 
the use of paper, of printed paper in particu- 
lar, as their bottom fact, were stilted up above 
the horizon of low prices which prevailed with 
respect to all other values. It remained for 
the Palmerston Ministry to attack and level 
this standing example of the old Protective 
system. 

The leadership of this movement fell to 
Gladstone. His proposition to abolish the 



GREAT BRITAIN. -SUFFRAOE REFORM. 



381 



duty on paper was met with every form of 
argument and influence which the paper 
interest could invent and employ. The posi- 
tion assumed was, that tlie manufacture and 
use of paper was exceptional to the general 
principle of Free Trade; ^hat book making 
and newspaper production were of a different 
nature from those other departments of in- 
dustry in which free competition might be left 
to work out its own results; that it was not 
desirable that cheapness should prevail in 
literature and journalism, lest books and news- 
papers should become the cheap vehicle for 
the universal dissemination of all things bad 
and dangerous among the English people. 
The Ministry, however, prevailed over the 
Opposition, and the bill was carried through 
the House of Commons. When the same was 
laid before the House of Lords, that body 
took the unusual responsibility of voting 
adversely on the measure. A violent contro- 
irersy arose over the action of the Lords in 
tefusing their assent to a measure which the 
House had approved, relative to the revenues 
^f the kingdom. For the time, the abolition 
^f the paper duty was held in abeyance, and 
It was not until the following session that the 
measure was finally adopted. 

It will be remembered that the project on 
which the recent Conservative Ministry had 
gone to wreck was the bill prepared and ad- 
vocated by Disraeli for the '* lateral extension " 
of the suffrage. It will be recalled how the 
Liberals combined against the proposed Act, 
and defeated it. It must be borne in mwA 
that the movement of Disraeli for the reform 
of the franchise was in accordance with what 
he ]>erceived to be the determination of the 
English people. He sought to patronize and 
satisfy the public sentiment with a measure 
which seemed to do without doing — which 
ostensibly granted, but granted not. With 
the accession of Lord Palmerston, the new 
Ministry inherited from its predecessor the 
very embarrassment which Disraeli and his 
colleagues had been unable to surmount. The 
Liberals must now t^y to appease the country 
with some measure of reform. A bill was 
accordingly prepared at the session of 1860, 
providing that the property qualifications for 
the franchise in counties should be reduced to 
ten pounds, and in boroughs to six pounds. ' 

N. — Vol. 4 — 24 



The measure also contemplated a new appor* 
tioument of the seats in the House of Com- 
mons. Twenty-five of the boroughs, repre- 
sented at the time by two members each, were 
reduced to one member each. The member- 
ship thus gained was distributed to the larger 
counties and towns^ Another feature of the 
bill was the proposition that in every county 
or borough represented by three members 
in Parliament, the third member should be 
chosen by the minority, that is, the Opposi- 
tion. It was the beginning of that still 
debated feature of popular government, the 
minority representation. The method to be 
employed in securing the given result was the 
simple requirement that in boroughs electing 
three members, each elector should vote for 
two candidates and only two. 

But the new Reform Bill was destined to a 
peculiar fate. The Opposition, under the 
leadership of Disraeli, assailed the measure 
with vehemence and ability. It was soon dis- 
covered that the proposed Act was peculiarly 
Gladstonian in its origin, development, and 
defense. It was also believed that Lord Pal- 
merston had no heart or interest in the mat* 
ter. It became doubtful whether the Liberals 
could be aligned in support of the Ministerial 
Bill. After the debate had proceeded to a 
great extent, the bill was remanded for the 
consideration of the committee, and was finally 
withdrawn from the House. In the mean- 
time, other great interests had supervened, 
which drew the attention of the nation to 
events beyond the sea ; the question of reform 
was given over to another Cabinet and a more 
convenient season. 

Early in 1860 the long-standing difiicultj ' 
between Great Britain and China took still 
another phase of development. Arrangements 
had been made between the two countries for 
a settlement of all existing troubles by means 
of a treaty. Even the terms of the treaty had 
in the main been agreed upon at Tien-Tsin, 
and it only remained that the formal ratifica- 
tions of the compact should be exchanged as 
preliminary to peace. It was provided in the 
treaty that the ratifications, so called, should 
be exchanged at Pekin. In March of 1869, 
Frederick Bruce, a brother to Lord Elgin, 
was sent as Envoy Extraordinary to China, 
with a view to the ratification of tho settle- 



882 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



ment Meanwhile, a gtrong feeling of oppoei* 
tion had arisen in China to having the treaty 
ratified at the eapUcU. The Emperor and hia 
Government were averse in a high degree to 
having the amhassadors of foreign nations at 
his court For a considerable period, France 
and England had been in alliance in the 
Chinese war, and the negotiations consequent 
thereon, and French ambassadors were to 
accompany those of England to Pekin. 

The British Government, knowing Uie in- 
disposition of the Chinese Emperor to admit 
foreign representatives to his court, sent orders 
to the English Admiral commanding in Chi- 
nese waters to accompany the embassy with an 
armament When the squadron thus provided 
for arrived at the mouth of the Peiho River, 
by which the commissioners were to ascend to 
the capital, it was found that the Chinese had 
obstructed the entrance and planted batteries 
commanding the approach. The English ves- 
sels undertook to force their way through, and 
were repulsed with heavy losses. Another ex- 
pedition bad to be fitted out before the way 
could be cleared, and much hard fighting took 
place before the European army came within 
reach of Pekin. Negotiations were renewed, 
and the ratification of the treaty was exacted 
of the Chinese Government at the capital. In 
the meantime, a company of Englishmen, who 
had been sent under a flag of truce within the 
enemy's lines, had become involved in a diffi- 
culty, been seized by the Chinese, and sub- 
jected to such cruel treatment that half of the 
number had died. As a measure of retalia- 
tion for this outrage. Lord Elgin ordered the 
Chinese Summer Palace, a magnificent collec- 
tion of buildings, picturesquely situated in a 
park on the outskirts of Pekin, to be de- 
stroyed. Within the Palace had been col- 
lected, through centuries and ages, the archse- 
ological, historical, and artistic treasures of 
China. No such other collection of rare and 
time-honored materials — no such other assem- 
bly of pagodas and temples, of grottoes, lakes, 
and bridges, of terraces, groves, and laby- 
rinths — existed anywhere in the world. And 
yet by an act of wanton destruction, for which 
all future ages will hold Lord Elgin to ac- 
count, the whole marvel of Chinese greatness 
was swept away. What good end might be 
subserved by such an act of vandalism in the 



most populous capital of all Asia, has never 
yet been discovered. 

The difficulty with China was not the only 
Oriental trouble in which Great Britain waa 
at this time involved. A civil war broke oat 
in that part of Syria which is dominated by 
the Lebanon ; and the conflict was of such a 
nature as to draw both England and France 
to the rescue. It were impossible, perhaps, 
for an American reader to apprehend fully 
the conditions present in Syrian society at the 
time of which we speak. Suffice it that there 
existed in that country the ancient Christian 
sect called the Maronites, representatives from 
the earlier centuries of our era of Bomao 
Catholicism in the East There also was the 
nation of the Druses, a sect which may be de- 
fined as heretical Mohammedans. Over both 
was established a Turkish Government, subject 
to the Sublime Porte. Between the Maronites 
and the Druses, though at some periods in 
their career they had been in alliance, rival- 
ries, enmities, hostilities, had sprung up, and 
each party regarded the other as its enemy in 
chief. In May of 1860, one of the monks of 
the Maronites was murdered, and it was be- 
lieved that a band of Druses were the doers 
of the deed. The Maronites made an attack 
on the suspected party, and several of the 
Druses were killed. Then the Druses rose in 
considerable numbers, fell upon the Maronite 
villages in the vicinity of Beyrout, and de- 
stroyed them. They then besieged a large 
town near Mount Hermon, and when the 
Maronites within were hard pressed, the Turk- 
ish Governor ordered them to surrender, under 
promise of protection. The infuriated Druses, 
however, attacked the prisoners and destroyed 
them to the last man. The Druse population 
of Damascus also rose against the Christians, 
and a massacre ensued in which it .was esti- 
mated that two thousand persons were cut 
down by the swords of the Mussulmans. 

It was the news of these proceedings that 
seemed to call od England and France to 
interfere in the affairs of Syria. The other 
Powers of Western Europe agreed to a com- 
pact under which order in the Lebanon should 
be restored under the French and Englbh 
flags. A squadron was sent out by the allies 
to the Syrian coast, and the Druse insurrection 
was quickly quelled. Presently afterwards^ 



GREAT BRITAIK--AMERICAN COMPLICATION. 



383 



Ambassadors were sent to ConstantiDopIe, by 
whom it was decided that henceforth a Chris- 
tian Oovemor, under the suzerainty of the 
Bultan, should rule the insurgent populations 
of Northern Syria. The whole disturbance 
and its conclusion was another illustration of 
the complete decadence and imbecility of the 
Turkish Government in the lands over which 
it had long exercised authority. Soon after 
the settlement of the difficulty, the Turkish 
ruler, Abdul-Medjid, died, and was succeeded, 
on the 25th of June, 1861, by his brother, 
Abdul-Aziz, who was destined to signalize his 
accession to the throne with promises, of great- 
ness and reform, and to end it, after sixteen 
years, by suicide. 

It fell to the Ministry of Lord Palmerston 
to conduct the Government of Great Britain 
during the whole period of the American 
Civil War. It was an epoch critical in the 
last degree. In the light of the retrospect, it 
would appear that at no crisis in modern 
times have the fortunes and the welfare of 
the English-speaking race been more seriously 
imperiled than in the years 1861-62. The 
conduct of England towards the American 
Bepublic in that great crisis has been much 
discussed in every civilized country, particu- 
larly in our own. The American people have 
not yet recovered from the shock and strain to 
which they were subjected by the course of 
that great insular nation with which we are 
in strongest affinity of language, institutions, 
and laws. The animosities transmitted from 
our War of Independence had long since died 
away. 

The Revolutionary soldiers had gone to 
sleep in the soil of the country, which they 
had helped to create eighty-five years before. 
Their descendants had returned to their ancient 
ethnic sympathies with the Mother Country, 
and a feeling had supervened that the whole 
English race had, so to speak, embarked for a 
common destiny. 

When the secession of the Southern States 
began, in the winter of 1860, when a Southern 
Confederacy was organized and war pro- 
claimed as the means by which it was to be 
perpetuated, the National Government and a 
great majority of the American people looked in- 
stinctively to Great Britain for a liberal meas- 
ure of support and confidence. There were 



good reasons why such expectations should be 
entertained. It was already felt, on this side 
of the sea, that the institution of slavery was 
deep down in the bottom of our National con- 
troversy. With that institution the whole 
movement and destir^ of the Confederate en- 
terprise were from the first- involved. True, 
the National Government had not as yet 
drawn the sword against this final cause of 
all our woe. It was said, indeed, that it was 
not meant to attack and destroy the peculiar 
institution. But the saying was one of those 
unconscious or half-conscious falsehoods in 
which the purposes of nations are so many 
times concealed or denied. As to Great 
Britain, her antipathy to slavery had long 
since become constitutional. It was not at all 
doubted in America that England was sin- 
cerely and thoroughly committed to the policy 
of the abolition of human servitude in every 
part of the world. She had publicly an- 
nounced to the nations that the touch of the 
slave's foot on the soil of Great Britain made 
him free forever. She had gone so far as to 
foster and promote in this country that Anti- 
slavery Society, at the existence of which the 
South had taken such mortal offense. In a 
thousand instances she had justly denounced 
American slavery as a shame and burning 
disgrace to the great people by whom it waa 
fostered. It could but be expected, therefore, 
that when the seceded States had banded 
themselves together uudej; a governmental 
compact in which slavery was openly declared 
to be the chief comer-stone, England would 
throw the whole weight of her infiuence into 
the scale against what she must logically 
regard as a conspiracy for the maintenance of 
slavery. It was fondly believed throughout 
the North that consistency, national instinct, 
devotion to free political institutions, and 
every other motive, would act as a compul- 
sive force to hold Great Britain in sympathy 
with the cause of the United States, against 
secession and the Confederacy. 

But what were the facts as they were 
developed from the very outbreak of our 
Civil War? Great Britain at once placed 
herself in the precise attitude towards the 
United States on the one side and the seces- 
sion cause on the other, which she would have 
assumed if two friendly nations, of equal rank 



384 



VMVERSAL HISTORY.^THE MODERN WORLD. 



and like antecedents, had gone to war on the 
Continent. She declared neutrality. With 
what must always appear to America an 
indecent and eager haste, she recognized the 
belligerency and the equal war- rights of the 
seceded States. She p^-'-ned precisely what 
Gladstone declare<l to be the case, namely, 
that Jefferson Davis and hif fellow-statesmen 
of the South had created a nation in a day. 
Without waiting to see what course the Na* 
tional Administration would pursue, without 
pausing to observe what kind of a method the 
National Government would take in order to 
put down the insurrection, what kind of a blow 
might be given to the revolt, she rushed in 
medias re$, and on the 8th of May, 1861, in 
less than a month after the first cannon-shot 
had boomed from the land-batteries of 
Charleston against the walls of Sumter, the 
English proclamation, by Lord John Russell, 
recognizing the perfect equality of the two 
parties to the conflict, was issued. The 
American people were astounded to know 
that the Government of the United States 
had been placed by Great Britain on an exact 
level with what a great majority regarded as 
an inexcusable insurrection. 

Such was the situation considered somewhat 
in the abstract. Concrete acts soon followed 
which tended still further to establish the 
unfriendliness of Great Britain to the United 
States, and to intensify the ill-feeling on both 
sides of the Atlantic. The Battle of Bull 
Run was fought, and the National army was 
thrown into a panic. The news of the disaster 
flew to England, was published everywhere, 
and was received with a burst of enthusiasm, 
as though some international event of the 
happiest augury had occurred. The jubilation 
was out of all proportion to the occasion. It 
was declared that the bubble had burst — the 
** bubble" being nothing less than the Amer- 
ican Republic. Lord Palmerston referred to 
the retreat of the Union army on Washington 
as the "unfortunate and rapid movement of 
the Northern soldiers." The highest govern- 
mental ofSoers indulged in the bitterest sar- 
casm on the National cause and its upholders. 
Every conceivable falsehood was circulated to 
the prejudice of the Government of the 
United States and the character of the Union 
army. On the other hand, the South was 



lauded in all the forms of rhetorical exagger- 
ation. The Southern soldiers were heroes; 
the Northern soldiers were poltroons. The 
South was chivalrous, liberty -loving; the 
North was mercenary, mean. At times, the 
Kingdom was in a roar of delight Confederate 
victories were heralded, and Union Buccesaes 
falsified out of the record. 

All these things, when the rumor and re- 
port thereof were borne back to America, pro- 
duced in the Government and among the 
people their legitimate results. Before the 
close of the summer of 1861, hatred of the 
Mother Country had supervened wherever the 
Stars and Stripes were still the emblem of a 
respected nationality. 

We may now consider the causes for the 
conduct of Great Britain with respect to our 
Civil War. What reasons existed for her 
thus planting herself in antagonism to the 
United States? Was there any justification 
or excuse for the course of England in giving 
her sympathy and virtual support to the cause 
of the Confederacy? First of all. Great Brit- 
ain had, in common with other nations, the 
sentiment which, under such conditions as then 
existed in the United States, is fallaciousij 
called fair play. The South was the weakei 
party. When a fight is on, it is the weaker 
party that, right or wrong, receives the sjrm- 
pathy of the world. To this extent England 
can only be said to have acted after the man- 
ner of other nations. In the next place, the 
intered of England seemed to her at the time 
to require the speedy success of the Southern 
Confederacy. It was out of the States of the 
South that the greater part of raw cotton 
which was consumed in the English factories 
was drawn. A large industrial interest in Great 
Britain was directly dependent on the regular 
continuance of this supply. It is difiicult in 
America to appreciate how completely, not 
only the operatives proper, but almost the 
whole people, in such manufacturing cities aa 
Manchester were dependent on the regular de- 
livery of raw cotton in that mart At the 
very outset the Government of the United 
States saw the necessity of closing the South- 
ern ports. This could only be done by the 
process called blockade. According to Inter- 
national Law, a nation may blockade the 
ports of an enemy, but not its own ports. 



GREAT BBITAIN.-AMERICAN COMPLICATION. 



385 



At the outbreak of the war the United States 
was not disposed to admit that the Southern 
States were an "enemy'' in the technical 
sense of that word. When the blockade was 
stretched around the Southern coast and be- 
came ever more rigorous, it was still held by 
the Oovemment that the Southern States 
were in the character of insurrectionary prov- 
inces. There was much that was illogical in 
the situation. However necessary it was to 
establish and maintain the blockade, it was 
kardly logical to do so without doing pre- 
iisely what Great Britain had been so seriously 
blamed for doing at the very outset, namely, 
lecognizing the complete belligerent rights of 
the Confederacy. 

This palpable break in the policy of the 
National Government was quickly seized by 
Great Britain and France as a warrant for the 
vnfriendly course which they were pursuing. 
In the former country, the condition was 
aggravated by the immediate cessation of the 
supply of cotton, and the wide-spread distress 
consequent thereon in the manufacturing 
districts. Had it not been for the. strong 
republican sympathy which existed among the 
people of Lancashire and in other industrial 
districts of similar character, it were hard to 
say what evil results would have immedi- 
ately ensued. It was the astonishing non 
9equitur of the situation that the workingmen 
of Manchester, who were the real sufferers on 
account of the blockade, were the best friends 
which the United States had in England; 
while, on the other hand, the worst enemies 
of the National Government were the country 
squires and Tory aristocrats, who did not 
themselves feel even an inconvenience on 
account of the war in America. 

It was not long, however, until Great 
Britain found a much more tangible basis for 
her hostilities. The Southern Confederacy had 
been quick to perceive their advantage in 
England and France. While all the rest of 
Europe was on the side of the National Gov- 
ernment, the sentiments of those two nations 
from whom, as Mother Country and "Tradi- 
tional Friend," we had most to expect, were 
wholly averse. This fact was quickly seized 
upon by the Confederate Government in the 
belief that a recognition of the independence 
of the South could be obtained. To accom- 



plish this end, it was necessary to send abroad 
ambassadors 'to the courts of England and 
France. The story of the outgoing and cap- 
ture of Mason and Slidell has already been 
recounted. In the present chapter we are 
considering the matter only from the English 
point of view. The act of Captain Wilkes in. 
running down the Tretit, and in taking from 
under the protection of the British flag the two 
envoys of the Confederacy, and then allowing 
the steamer to go on her way, was irregular 
and illegal from beginning to end. Neverthe* 
less, the deed was applauded to the echo in 
the United States. Public meetings were held 
in Tammany Hall, New York, and in Faneuil 
Hall, Boston, at which strong indorsement 
and high compliment were given to Captain 
Wilkes for his heroic fracture of the law of 
nations. The National House of Bepresenta- 
tives, with equal ignorance and patriotism, 
blinded by the one and fired by the other, 
actually passed a vote of thanks, and ordered 
the presentation of a sword to the commander 
of the San Jacinto for his capture of the 
** traitors," Slidell and Mason. 

Great Britain, well knowing that the thing 
done was against International Law and an 
insult to the English flag, made all haste to 
improve the occasion. Her wrath knew no 
bounds. She demanded the release of the 
Confederate ambassadors, and an apology for 
the act of Wilkes, and was courteous enough 
/to give the United States seT^en days in which 
to choose between peace and war I Of course. 
Mason and Slidell were liberated and sent to 
their destination; but the animus of Great 
Britain had been so unhappily displayed that 
there was no further hope of the restoration of 
good feeling during tlte continuance of the 
war. By the insane passion which the British 
Government displayed, it betrayed itself, and 
it was known henceforth, bv the Government 
of the United States and by- the whole 
American people, that England only waited 
for an opportunity to do the Nation the 
greatest harm in her power. 

But we are still under the necessity of 
looking deep down into the sea of motive, and 
of discovering there, if we may, the ultimate 
reason of British hostility to the United 
States. That ultimate reason is to be found in 
the deep-seated antipathy of England to the 



386 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



republican form of governmeDt as developed 
in our country. The organization of political 
■ocietj on this side of the Atlantic had been 
on too liberal a scale to be pleasing in the 
British Isles. Even that limited monarchical 
system, which is the boast of the dominant 
classes in England, could but feel a mortal 
offense at the successful demonstration of 
republicanism in America. We are here on 
the ground of the true explanation. Great 
Britain had subscribed, for centuries, a histor- 
ical allegation to the effect that Hereditary 
Monarchy, an Aristocratic organization of 
society, a Graduated Order of Nobility, a 
stratification of the people into classes, the 
permanent maintenance of a political and 
social difference between the upper and the 
under man, are the prerequisites of English 
liberty and English perpetuity. But the 
United States had established political liberty, 
and were about to demonstrate its perpetuity 
on a splendid scale. The American Republic 
had become what Lord Bacon might have 
defined as a "forth-showing instance** to all 
nations and peoples. 

All this appeared to be in the nature 
of a refutation of the English order and 
theory of society. While Great Britain 
would never have confessed that she re- 
garded our republican institutions as a men- 
ace to her own, it is nevertheless true that 
such was her unconcious or half-conscious 
sentiment. As a matter of fact and in brief, 
Great Britain desired and hoped that the 
American Republic would go to pieces, and 
that the judgment of the English-speaking 
race would thus be obliged to revert to and 
reaccept the ancient order of political society 
as embodied and illustrated in the British 
Constitution. If we say that such a sentiment, 
entertained by all the governing classes in 
England with respect to the United States 
and their destiny, was mean in the lowest 
degree, we must also admit that it was natural 
in the highest degree. 

The limits of the present chapter do not 
permit a further expansion of the subject. 
British society, by which is meant all the 
ruling and dominant parts of society, fixed 
itself inveterately in support of the cause of 
the South. Henceforth, the North, that is, 
the National Government, expected nothing 



from Great Britain except her sneers and ill* 
concealed animosity. It happened, however^ 
that destiny was preparing for all this a 
remedy, or at least a compensation. Under 
the British Constitution and in accordance 
with the immemorial usages of the Kingdom, 
many things may be done in England at 
which other peoples would startle and take 
alarm. It was the policy of Frederick tha 
Great, publicly announced in a witty aphorisna 
embodying the understanding between himseU 
and his people, that they should say whatevei 
they pleased, and he would do whatever hb 
pleased. It might almost be said that this 
policy has been reversed in Great Britain; 
that is, that the sovereign may say whatever 
he pleases, and the people do whatever pleases 
them. In the case before us, it pleased the 
ship-builders of Great Britiun to constitute 
themselves a naval base for the Southern Con- 
federacy. Scarcely had the war begun until 
adventurers and emissaries from the Confed- 
erate States began to use the dock-yards of 
Great Britain as the field of their operations. 
The Confederate States had no navy. Thej 
had no commerce on the high seas. The 
United States had both. The policy of the 
Confederates therefore fell naturally into ths 
work of purchasing and sending forth priva- 
teers. In the begidning the United States 
would fain have remanded all such business 
to the category of piracy. But, unfortunately, 
the National Government had itself for a long 
time resisted the international movement for 
the abolition of privateering. Her folly in 
this respect now returned to plague the in- 
ventor. The Government could not consist* 
ently fulminate the decree of piracy against 
a species of warfare which she herself contin* 
ued to recognize with favor. 

Behind this covert the Confederate Captains 
went forth to build, to buy, and to bum. A 
narrative has been given already of the course 
and fate of the Confederate cruisers. It is 
sufficient, in this place, to point out the fact that 
of the seven principal vessels which got afloat on 
the high seas, and which, for longer or shorter 
periods, did havoc with the merchant marine 
of the United States until the latter was ex- 
tinguished, five were notoriously and openly 
built in the dock-yards of Great Britain. 
There, also, they were equipped and manned* 



OREAT BRITAIN.— AMERICAN COMPLICATION. 



The outrage of such & proceeding was a stench 
Id the nostrils of tbe nations. The conse- 
quences entailed thereby have been outlined 
already in the history of our own country. 
It may sufBce, in this connection, to remark 
npon the wisdom of Lincoln, and the good 
fortune of the United Slates in having at the 
court of St. James, in these days, that magnifi- 
cent exemplar of American diplomacy, Charles 
Francis Adams. His steadiness in the dark 
day of trial, his equanimity and firmness, his 



other Adams, as diplomatist or statesman, ii 
worthy of a higher rank than he. 

It may not be deemed inappropriate to 
depart from the chronological order of events 
in order to follow the sequel of the cruise df 
the Aldxtma, and of the connection of Great 
Britain therewith. Ad account has been pre- 
sented, in a former chapter, of the Treaty of 
Washington, of May, 1871, and of the pro- 
vision made therein for a Court of Arbitration, 
to be convened in December of the same year. 



GENEVA, swrrzBRLijniL 



clear insight of tbe situation, his constant 
remoustrancea with Great Britain, his patience 
under her continued policy of wrong-doing, 
and his final declaration and protest to Lord 
John Russell, when tbe two Confederate rams 
were about to put to sea, that " this is war," 
with the full warning that he then gave to the 
British Government that the cotuequeiuxg of 
all this flagrant injustice must, in the nature 
of things, be treasured up unto a day oS 
settlement, — must ever bear witness to the 
«ommon opinion of his countrymen that no 



at Geneva, Switzerland, for the purpose <^ 
determining the validity or invalidity of tha 
claims of the American Government against 
Great Britain, for the destruction of the com- 
merce of the United States by tbe Confederate 
cruisers. The event proved to be the most im* 
portant in the history of modern diplomacy. 
The Geneva Tribunal was constituted on th« 
15th of December, 1871. The appointment of 
the five arbitrators had been left, one each, t* 
the Governments of the United States, Great 
Britain, Italy, Switzerland, and Brazil, Ths 



UXIVUKSAL HISTORY.— TRE MODERS WORLD. 



GREAT BRITAIN.— AMERICAN COMPLICATION. 



389 



judges appointed were, on the part of Eng- 
land, Sir Alexander Cockburn, at that time 
Lord Chief-Justice of the Kingdom; on the 
part of the United States, Charles Francis 
Adams ; on the part of Italy, Count Frederick 
Sclopis; on the part of Switzerland, M. 
Jacques Staempfli ; and on the part of Brazil, 
Viscount d'ltajuba. The counsel for Great 
Britain were Lord Tenterden and Sir Koundell 
Palmer, afterwards Lord Selbourne. The coun- 
sel for the United States were J. C. Bancroft 
Davis, William M. Evarts, Caleb Cushing, 
and Morrison R. Waite. The court, in its 
entirety, was the most august and able tribunal 
which international jurisprudence has called 
into being within the present century. 

After the organization was effected, and the 
statement of the causes of the two great nations 
had been made, the court adjourned until June, 
1872, from which time the sessions were contin- 
uous to the dose, in September of the same year. 
The proceedings awakened the profoundest in- 
terest, not only in the nations specially con- 
cerned in the controversy, but throughout 
Christendom. The pleadings and arguments 
were, from beginning to end, a battle of the 
giants, in which the representatives of the 
United States gained steadily to the close of 
the contest Near the beginning, an action 
was taken by which "Three Rules relating to 
Neutral Nations," were formulated, which, 
while they have not as yet been generally in- 
corporated into the law of nations, became the 
basis of the settlement and the final award of 
the court These rules are as follows: 

•* A neutral Government [under such cir- 
cumstances as existed at the time of the 
American Civil War] is bound — 

**1. To use due diligence to prevent the 
fitting out, arming, or equipping within its 
jurisdiction of any vessel which it has reason- 
able ground to believe is intended to cruise or 
carry on war against a power with which it 
[the neutral government] is at peace; and 
also to use like diligence to prevent the 
departure from its jurisdiction of any vessel 
intended to cruise or carry on war as above, 
such vessel having been specially adapted in 
whole or in part within such jurisdiction to 
warlike uses. 

**2. Not to permit or sufiTer either bellig- 
erent to make use of its ports or waters as the 



base of naval operations against the other, or 
for the purpose of the renewal or augmenta- 
tion of military supplies, or arms, or recruit- 
ment of men. 

**3. To exercise due diligence in its waters 
as to all persons within its jurisdiction, to pre- 
vent any violation of the foregoing obliga- 
tions and duties." 

The principles of international conduct here 
enunciated were, in the first instance, brought 
before the court tentatively as covering the 
position and claims held by the United States. 
After the discussions were concluded, these 
rules were fully adopted by the court in a 
special stipulation of the treaty, as follows: 
''And the high contracting parties agree to 
observe these rules as between themselves in 
future, and to bring them to the knowledge 
of other maritime powers, and to invite them to 
accede to them." 

After a three months' session, the decision 
of the tribunal was reached, on the 14th of 
September, 1872. All the members of the 
court, with the exception of Sir Alexander 
Cockburn, signed the report and the award. 
The English Lord Chief-Justice wrote a long 
dissenting opinion; but his views were, of 
course, of no effect on the general decision of 
the court. That decision constituted what is 
known in diplomacy as the Geneva Award. 
The general position assumed by the United 
States was fully substantiated, with the ex- 
ception of the somewhat extravagant claims 
made by the National Government under the 
title of *' consequential damages.*' As a final 
and complete settlement of the so-called ''Ala- 
bama Claims,'' a sum in gross of fifteen million 
five hundred thousand dollars was awarded to 
the United States, as full and complete com- 
pensation for the damages done to her com- 
merce and nationality by the English-built^ 
English-equipped, and English-manned priva* 
leers of the Southern Confederacy. 

Returning from this anticipation of events 
that were to come as the legitimate fruits of 
British sowing, we note the continued ani- 
mosity of the English-ruling classes towards 
our National Government to the very close of 
the war. With the exception of Bright and 
Forster and a few others, such as the Duke of 
Argyll, all the public men of England re- 
mained wedded to their idols. The newspaper 



390 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



pre» of the kingdom seemed to be given over 
to a delusion that it might believe a lie. The 
stream of misrepresentation with regard to the 
progress of the American War continued to 
flow bankfoll to the end. If anything could 
have equaled the completeness of the collapse 
of the Confederacy in the early spring of 
1865, it would have been the still more utter 
collapse of public opinion in Great Britain. 
All the cherished dreams of the dominant 
party in politics and society suddenly burst 
like a bubble, and faded into viewless air. 
Great Britain awoke one day to the shocking 
realization that there was no longer anywhere 
in the world her darling Southern Confederacy, 
but only the American Union, one and io- 
dissoluble. It may well be hoped that the 
lesson was sufficient, and that the arrogance, 
selfishness^ and unconscionable self-esteem which 
had conspired to throw the kingdom and the 
English people into a vicious attitude and 
malign relation with the largest political 
division of the English-speaking race, and to 
pour the embers of heart-burning and distrust 
into many millions of patriotic breasts on this 
side of the Atlantic, have been forever ex- 
tinguished in the heart of the British Nation. 
The Palmerston Ministry survived until 
after the close of the CivU War. Though the 
difficulties of the Government of Great Britain 
were the most serious, they were not by any 
means the only foreign embarrassments with 
which the Cabinet of Palmerston had in those 
days to contend. In 1863 the Dauish com- 
plication with Germany relative to the Prov- 
inces of Schleswig and Hoktein led to hostil- 
ities and the clamor of arms. Denmark, as 
we shall hereafter see, was hard pressed by 
her more powerful neighbors. The project of 
severing the disputed Provinces from the 
Danish crown struck coldly on the conscious- 
ness of Great Britain. The integrity of 
Denmark had been guaranteed by the Congress 
of Vienna, to which both England and France 
were parties. Consistency seemed to require 
that Great Britain should now prevent Austria 
and Prussia from breaking the balance of 
power. The Prince of Wales had but just 
married the Princess Alexandra, daughter of 
the King of Denmark, thus presenting her full 
of youth, beauty, and almost every charm and 
wtue known to womanhood, as the future 



Queen of Great Britain. The marriage was 
as popular as the. Princess was attractive to 
the British public. The Danish Government 
believed that dependence might be placed on 
Great Britain as a buttress of support in the 
war with Germany. The British Ministry 
took up the^cause of the Danes, and was ready 
to declare war; but in so doing, the cooperation 
of France was a necessary condition of succesa. 
Lord Russell accordingly became a suitor to 
Napoleon IIL to join him in the work of 
maintaining, by arms, the integrity of the 
Danish dominions. But what was the surprtse 
of the English Ministry when the Emperor of 
France coldly refused the overture! Great 
Britain suddenly found herself in the humil- 
iating, not to say ridiculous, attitude of a 
rejected suitor. The Danes were, out of the 
necessity of the situation, left to fight their 
own battle, and the English Cabinet was left 
to face the sarcasms of Disraeli, and the 
attacks of the whole Conservative party in 
and out of Parliament. 

It was in this emergency that Lord Pal- 
merston fought and gained his last battle in 
the Britbh House of Commons. On the 4th 
of July, 1864, Disraeli challenged the very 
existence of the Ministry by introducing a 
resolution to the effect that the Queen's Got- 
ernment had failed to maintain the policy of 
upholding the integrity and independence of 
Denmark, had lowered the just infiuence 
of England in the capitals of Europe, and had 
thereby diminished the securities for peace. 
On these propositions the adroit author of 
them made a powerful and effective speech^ 
and it appeared for the time that the Govern- 
ment would be beaten. There could, indeed, 
be little doubt that the arraignment of the 
Ministry by Disraeli with respect to the 
mismanagement of the Danish question was a 
true bill. A considerable fraction of the more 
advanced Liberals had long been dissatisfied 
with Palmerston and his whole foreign policy. 
It appeared for the nonce that the veteran 
statesman, whose memory of great things 
reached back to Austerlitz, was about to be 
humiliated in the last year of his life. It is 
probable that such would have been the 
result if the issue had been fought out on the 
line proposed by the leader of the Opposition. 
But in the emergency, an amendment was 



GREAT BRITAIN.^AMERICAIH COMPLICATION. 



391 



proposed by Kinglake, by which the question 
was carefully transferred to the safer ground 
of a general approval or disapproval by the 
House of the Palmerston Government. This 
^ve opportunity for the aged Prime Minister 
to defend himself and his measures in the last 
speech which he was ever to make in Parlia- 
ment. He was already eighty years of age; 
but his genius, as the event soon proved, had 
not yet taken flight. He spoke for a long 
time with his usual cogency, taking advantage, 
urith all his old-time skill, of the peculiar con- 
ditions and temper of the House. His influ- 
ence prevailed. 

*' Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run, 
Along Morea's hills, the setting sun." 

The proposition of Kinglake in support of 
the Ministry was adopted by a clear majority, 
but it was the last day of the glory of 
£ndymion. During the session of 1865 it 
was perceived by all that Palmerston's career 
was at an end. He began to totter with 
feebleness, and became almost blind. He was 
«till able on his eightieth birthday to ride on 
horseback to the Hilsea fortifications, and make 
« personal inspection of the works. At an ear- 
lier period in the same year he had ridden 
from Piccadilly to Harrow, a distance of 
twelve miles, in a single hour — a feat which 
may well emphasize not only the extraordinary 
vigor of the man, but also testify to the un- 
•conquerable force and longevity of the English 
race at its best estate. From his last Parlia- 
mentary contest, Palmerston retired to his 
•residence, called Brocket Hall, where, after a 
«hort illness, he expired on the 18th of Octo- 
ber, 1865. 

Before finally dismissing this period of 
English history, covering the relations of the 
Kingdom with the United States during the 
Oivil War, we should not fail to notice the 
<lome8tic cloud which, in the meantime, had 
«ettled darkly over the Royal Palace. After 
a wedded life of unclouded serenity through a 
4Span of twenty-one years, the Queen was now 
fated to enter the shadows of perpetual widow- 
hood. Before speaking in particular of the 
•death of the Prince Consort, we may property 
refer, with praise, to the fact that, in the 
midst of the storm and passion of the dmes, 
when it seemed that all England was in a roar 



of delight over the supposed collapse of the 
American Union, Prince Albert had the 
wisdom and generosity to maintain, by voice 
and action, his well-known friendliness to the 
United States. At the time, it was not 
known in our country how steady and valuable 
a friend we had lost in the death of the 
Queen's husband. After events have set the 
matter right, and the memory of the PrincOi 
Consort will long be green 6n this side of the 
Atlantic. 

The pure domesticity of the Royal Family 
during the life of the Prince has already been 
emphasized. Viewed politically, and with re- 
spect to the perpetuity of the reigning dynasty, 
the marriage had been so successful as not 
only to satisfy but well elate the friends of 
the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. No fewer 
than nine children, strong, vigorous sons and 
daughters, all of whom grew without accident 
or distress to manhood and womanhood, were 
born of the fortunate marriage. The eldest 
of these was the Princess Victoria, bom in 
1840, wedded at the age of eighteen to the 
Crown Prince of Prussia, more recently Ger^ 
man Empress and widow of Frederick IH. 
The second was a son, Albert Edward, Prince 
of Wales, born in 1841, to whom, in 1863, was 
given in marriage the Princess Alexandra of 
Denmark. In our own day he still stands, as 
from his birth, heir expectant to the crown of 
England. The third was the Princess Alice, 
born in 1843, and married in 1862 to Prince 
Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt. Tha fourth was 
Alfred, bom in 1844, Duke of Edinburgh in 
1866, to whom was married, in 1874, the Grand 
Duchess Maria, daughter of Alexander II. of 
Russia. The Princess Helena was born in 
1846, and was married, in 1866, to Prince 
Christian of Schleswig-Holstein. The fourth 
daughter, Louise, was born in 1848, and was 
wedded, in 1871, to the Marquis of Lorne. 
The third son, Arthur, was born in 1850, and 
Leopold, the fourth son, in 1863. Beatrice, 
the last heir of the House, was bom in 1857. 
The younger, as well as the elder Princes and 
Princesses, have been distributed in marriage 
among the oldest Houses of Europe; and if 
the England of the present day has found 
some reason to be querulouB about the heavy 
pensions which have had to be settled on the 
multiplied and multiplying descendants of 



392 



UmVEHSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



Prince AJbert, she hu, on the other hand, 
under her oim theory of human govemiuent, 
^reat cause U> n'j<iice at the fact that the 
extinction of the reiguin)^ dynasty, or any 
serioug trouble with respect to the descent of 
the CrowD, seems to be either vhully im- 
ponible or a great way off. 

Prince Albert the C<)nBort promised a long 



life. While he could not be called a very 
robust or vigorous man, he, neverthelcM, bore 
good heftlth. and was of strictly temperate 
habits. In the first dnys of Deccmlrer, 1861, 
he contracted cold, and was thrown into a 
fever. At first little attention was paid to liis 
ailment; then it was known that he was seri- 
ously, though it was not thought dangeroui^ly, 
ill. On the night of the 14th of December, 



however, the great bell of St. Paul's began to 
toll, and with the morning light it was 
published frrim Wiodsor Caatle that the 
Prince Consort was dead. ' He had expired 
having the Queen, the Prince of Wales, and 
the Princewes Alice and Helena by ha bed- 
side. The event Berved to bring bis bigb 
character and blameleee life into strong relief, 
aodintoastill bolder 
contrast with the 
dark background 
which had been 
painted socially and 
morally by the pre- 
ceding kings and 
prioces of the House 
of Hanover-BniDS- 
wick. TotheQueen 
herself, the death 
of ber husband was 
an immedicable 
wound. She entered 
with sorrowful s^ 
renity that career 
of grand widowh.ood 
which has now 
lengthened out to 
nearly tbirty years, 
during which her 
chief domestic con- 
solation baa been in 
the great family of 
Bone and daughters, 
at whose head she 
still si tsinthedignity 
of royal motherhood. 
The death of 
Lord Palmerston 
was Dot the end of 
tbe Liberal Govern- 
ment. A modifica- 
tion was, of course, 
necessary in the Min- 
istry, and it was expected by the public that 
the Cabinet would be entirely reconstructed. 
The Queen named Lord John Russell as Prima 
Minister; and that statesman, now seventy- 
three years of a^, assumed the direction of 
Government, The only other change made 
in the Ministry was the calling of Lord Clar- 
endon to occupy the place made vacant by 
Lord Russell in the Secretaryship of Poreiga 



QREAT BRITAIN.— AMERICAN COMPLICATION. 



393 



Affairs. The leadersh!^ of the House of 
Commons still devolved on Gladstone. The 
general effect of these changes was slight; but 
the student of Parliamentary history could not 
fail to discern in the signs of the times an 
approaching, perhaps imminent, Ministerial 
revolution. 

For the time being, however, public atten- 
tion was drawn away from the evolution of 
home politics to the serious, calamitous, dis- 
graceful condition of affairs in Jamaica. Just 
two days after the death of Lord Palmerston, 
Governor Edward John Eyre, of that Island, 
reported to the Colonial Secretary the out- 
break of an alarming insurrection of the negro 
population under his government. It were, 
perhaps, a thankless task to undertake, in 
this connection, a thorough analysis of the 
antecedents, causes, and conditions of this 
revolt. Perhaps we may best sum up the 
whole by saying that the insurrection had its 
roots in the institution of slavery, and that 
its immediate cause was the injustice' and 
tyrannous conduct of the British Govern- 
ment in the Island. Wo have already ex- 
plained that, with the abolition of slavery, a 
state of affairs had supervened in Jamaica 
very similar to that with which the Govern- 
ment of the United States was for many years 
embarrassed after the downfall of the Confed- 
eracy. Tlie lands of the Island had been held, 
under the ancient regime^ in large^tracts by 
white landlords, who cultivated their estates 
by means of slave labor. In course of time, 
much of the land was deteriorated in fertility 
and value. Parts of the estates were thrown 
out to the commons, ceased to be cultivated, 
and were overgrown with thickets. 

When slavery was abolished, the ex-slave- 
holders of Jamaica, who were now obliged to 
pay wages to the negroes for their labor, 
found it expedient to permit the Black men to 
occupy and cultivate for themselves, the aban- 
doned lands just referred to. Nearly all of 
«uch lands were by this time encumbered with 
delinquent taxes and quit-rents, which had 
accumulated against them. The general con- 
dition on which the negroes were permitted to 
occupy was that they should discharge all 
delinquencies of tax and rent that might have 
accrued. This was done in a great number 
of instances, and the Black men thus acquired 



for themselves a kind of property right which 
it is difficult to define. At length the industry 
of the Blacks brought the lauds again into 
cultivation, and thereby restored their value. 
Whereupon, the original owners or their rep- 
resentatives came forward to reclaim their 
estates, which the negroes had occupied and 
improved. In order to dispossess the latter, a 
process was resorted to very similar to that em- 
ployed in more recent times in the eviction of 
Irish tenants by their English landlords. It 
was resistance to this process of dispossession 
by eviction; with all of its aggravating cir- 
cumstances and injustice, that led to the 
negro insurrection of 1865. 

The revolt began on the 7th of October, 
at a place called Morant Bay, in the south- 
easternmost part of the Island. There had 
been at this town some previous disturbances, 
and Governor Eyre now sent thither a squad 
of troops to aid the authorities in the arrest of 
the offenders. On the 11th of the month the 
magistrates held a meeting in the Court-house 
Square of Morant Bay, where they were pro- 
tected by a small body of volunteer soldiers. 
While the proceedings were under way, tha 
Courtrhouse was attacked by a large force of 
rioting negroes armed with bludgeons and 
corn-knives, and eighteen persons, including 
the principal officer of the county, were killed. 
Meanwhile, the troops sent by the Governor 
approached, and the rioters dispersed in all 
directions. No further effort at resistance waa 
made or thought of by the negroes, who were 
doubtless daz^d at their own success. The 
whole country, however, was at once declared 
under martial law, and the authorities, under 
direction of the Governor, proceeded to hunt 
down the rebels, and to hale them before 
courts-martial for punishment. 

What followed is one of the most disgrace- 
ful chapters in the -colonial history of the 
British Empire. Such another carnival of 
inexcusable butchery was hardly ever held 
under the auspices of any power claiming to 
be civilized. No rebels in arms were found 
by Governor Eyre's soldiers anywhere; but 
capture, hanging, flogging, and burning be- 
came the order of the day for many weeks 
together. No age, sex, or condition was 
exempt from the cruelties and brutalities to 
which the terrified negroes were subjected* 



394 



UmVERSAL HISTORY— THE MODERN WORLD. 



According to the report of a Royml Commis- 
aioD, which wu presendj Bent out by the 
Hom« GuveromeDt to inquire into this reign 
of terror, do fewer thfm four hundred uid 
thirty-nine persoos were actually put to death 
with hardly the fonn or mockery of juetice' 
The Bame report showed that six hundred 
others, many of them women, some of whom 
were about to became mothers, were cruelly, 
bloodily, mereilessly whipped with wire caUo'- 
Bine-taila. until ecuree of them were ready to die. 



aod the proaecutiona were at once braaght t» 
an end. An elaborate document, covering the 
theory and i4>plication of martial law, waa 
prepared by Lord Cbief-Jastice Cockbuni. 
Eyre was removed from the goveraorahip of 
Jamaica, and was succeeded by Sir HeiuT' 
Storks. A measure was at once agitated for m 
complete reformatioa of the government of 
the Island. In December of 1866, an act 
was passed by the Jamaican Assembly, re- 
questing the Queen to take such stepe a* 



JAMAICA INSURRECTION. 



It was also shown that a certain George 
William Gordou, a Baptist negro minister of 
good character, who had the courage to Btand 
up fi)r his race, and to hold some sort of 
buckler in the face of their enemies, was 
arrested, condemned to death, and hanged, 
with scarcely the semhlnnce of evidence 
against him, and with none of the ordinary 
toeans of kgal defense in his hands. 

The news of all this produced, as well it 
might, a great sensation in England. John 
Stuart Mill took up the cause of the Islanders, 



would abrogate the existing order and secnr* 
the benefits of a local, civil autonomy in the 
Island, similar to that which existed in the 
other colonial governments of the Empire. 
Thus was the ancient constitotion unde* 
which, during more than two hundred yean 
of abuses and wrongs, Jamaica had been in» 
goverued, overthrown and abolished. A new 
order supervened, by which even the com- 
posite and divergent populations of the IslaDd 
were brought at length to a condition n- 
sembling harmony and progress. 



OhJSAT BRITAIN.— FENIANiaM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 



895 



CHAF>TrER CXXXII.— KENIANISM AND DISESTAB- 

UISHNIKNT. 




T was not under favorable 
auspices that the quasi- 
Liberal Ministry of Lord 
Russell assumed the task 
of Government at the 
close of 1865. There 
were in the kingdom at 
that date many elements of discouragement 
and discontent. Superficially, the prosperity 
of the year was greatly disturbed by the 
cattle plague which had spread through several 
parts of the Island, and had swept away more 
than forty thousand animals. Even this large 
loss was not the whole. Science was baffled 
in dealing with the contagion, and it was 
found necessary to prevent its further ravages 
by killing whole herds of cattle in the ex- 
posed counties. It was a time of social and 
financial alarm. The premonitory rumors of 
the Fenian conspiracy in Ireland had reached 
the Government and the people. Asiatic 
cholera was making its way westward, stage 
by stage, through the sea-ports of the Medi- 
terranean. The foreign relations of the King- 
dom, while not positively disturbed, were 
suffering at the extremities, like the anteniKB 
of some huge insect thrust out far into 
hospitable regions. There were also premoni- 
tions of a financial panic — a thing particularly 
dreaded by the great commercial interests of 
the Kingdom. Deep down under all this was 
the profound discontent of the masses with 
their political condition. The question of a 
reform of the franchise, which had been post- 
poned during the whole of the Palmerston 
rSgime, was ever ready to assert itself. It was 
known that Gladstone, who was now the 
dominant Liberal in the Cabinet, and Bright, 
who was the master spirit out of the Cabinet, 
both seeing ^e to eye on the question of a 
general reform of the suffrage, had long post- 
poned the renewal of the attempt to reach the 
lower classes with the ballot, and to secure a 
more equitable apportionment of the seats in 
the House of Commons. 

The season at length arrived for the work 



to begin. At the opening of the session of 
1866, the speech from the throne drew the 
attention of Parliament formally to the ex* 
tension of the suffrage as one of the duties 
incumbent upon Her Majesty's €rovernment. 
It devolved on Gladstone to lead in the 
contest. Accordingly, on the 12th of March, 
in the year just named, he brought before the 
House a Ministerial Bill, in which it was 
proposed to reduce the property qualification 
on the franchise from fifty pounds to fourteen 
pounds in the case of suffrage in the oounties, 
and from ten to seven pounds for the boroughs. 
There were other clauses in accordance with 
which the franchise, under certain conditions, 
was to be extended to lodgers, to those having 
deposits in savings banks, and certain other 
classes of persons. Considered as a whole, the 
bill was very mild in its provisions, insomuch 
that the Badical reformers felt for it a 
measure of contempt, while the Conservatives, 
being now in the Opposition, set themselves 
against the measure as a mere matter of 
politics. It came to pass, at length, that some 
of the discontented and extreme Liberals 
banded themselves together and demanded of 
Gladstone the radical and substantial amend- 
ment of the pending bill. The Ministry 
found itself between two fires. The dissen- 
tient Radicals were known as the AdyUamites^ 
so-called by John Bright from their malcontent 
disposition ; for David had once, in the day of 
trouble, hidden in the cave of Adullam, and 
called to him ''every one that was in distress, 
and every one that rvas discontented.** The Adul- 
lamites, though from an entirely different 
motive, joined with Disraeli and the Con- 
servatives, and when the Gladstone bill came 
to a vote it was defeated. It only remained 
for Lord Russell and the members of the 
Cabinet to put their resignations into the 
hands of the Queen. The Liberal Ministry 
was at an end, not indeed for attempting to 
carry a reform of the franchise through 
Parliament, but because the measure which 
they proposed was so tame as to create no 



396 



UMVi-JiSAL BISrORY.—THE MODERN WORLD. 



ttitbuHiaani, haviog the name of reform without 
the Bubstance. 

A Dew CoDHervative Caliiuet was now 
Gonetitulcd, with Lord Dt-rhv tor Prime Minis- 
ter. While hiiiiseir a xbitesman of great 
abilities, the real leadership f<-ll, as before, to 
Diaraeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer. The 
Parliamentary struggle which now ensued was 



one of the oddest episodes in the political 
history of Great Britain. The recent Liberal 
Ministry had been pledged to a reform of the 
auSTrage, and had failed, being overwhelmed 
by the Opposition under the leadership of the 
very man who had now, by the success of the 
Conservatives, inherited the unsolved question. 
The far-sighted Disraeli had, in fact, for many 
Teaia hedged against the very situation in 



which he now found himaelf. He bad alwaj^ 
in the Parlianientary debates, merely acted ths 
part of a destruction ist with the measures 
proposed by the Liberals. He had said little 
against the reform of the suffrage as a prin- 
ciple. His attacks had been upon this meas- 
ure and that proposed by the Liberals. Hia 
political expediency and adroitneaa now stood 
him well in hand, 
llie people, in 
the meantime, had 
Btirreil up the kin^ 
dom with a reform 
agitation almost uq- 
equaled in extent 
and vitality. Great 
meetings were held 
everywhere, and th« 
most far-aeeing of 
them who upheld 
the ancient order 
saw the handwrit* 
ing OR the wall. It 
was no longer to b« 
doubted that the 
workingmen of 
Great Britain wera 
ID terrible eamert 
in the matter of gain- 
ing the right of 
suflrage. The Re- 
form League became 
active as never be- 
fore. The agitatora 
in London prepared 
to hold a monster 
meeting in Hyde 
Park, for the di» 
cuaaton of the quea- 
tion of extending 
the franchise. The 
leaders of the move- 
ment were careful 
to keep within the forms and spirit of the 
law; bul the Government, in a moment of 
folly, undertook to prevent the meeting. On 
the morning of the 23d of July, 1866, when 
the head of the column of Reformen reached 
the gates of Hyde Park, they found them 
closed. A large division of the multitude 
hereupon turned aside to Trafalgar Square, 
where the masses were addressed by Joha 



GREAT BRITAIN.-- FENIANISM AND DISESTARJ^lSHMENTr 



397 



Bright and other orators. But before the 
close of the day, a vast throng had assembled 
around the mclosures of Hyde Park, where the 
half-intentional pressure of the crowd on the 
iron railing caused it to give way for a consid- 
erable distance, and the human flood poured in. 
The people scattered at once by thousands 
through the park, running and shouting and 
triumphing in a license which otherwise did 
little harm. There were flsticufls and broken 
heads, mutually delivered by the police and 
the rough citizenship, but otherwise the dem- 
onstration ended with night-fall, and London, 
on the next morning, examining her vitals, 
found every organ in its place and performing 
its usual functions. 

It was in the face of all this that the Derby 
Ministry must now stand or fall. In the 
oraergency, it occurred to Disraeli that the 
time had arrived for a new chapter in British 
fK)litics. Hitherto, it had always been the 
principle of political action that the party in 
power should hold to its dogmas and defend 
them until Overthrown by an adverae Parlia- 
mentary majority. The Conservatives and 
Liberals had always stood each to their bat- 
teries until the guns were silenced by a veri- 
table charge and victory of the Opposition. 
In the present instance, it occurred to Disraeli 
that it would be just as well for the Conserva- 
tives to become reformers themselves, and 
thus gather the wind out of the Liberal fleet, 
leaving it becalmed at sea. Why should a 
donservative Ministry go out of power and 
office on such a slight technicality as polit- 
ical consistency? It appears that the age 
and time and occasion were ripe for such a 
ohange in the ethics and methods of British 
politics. Wherefore, Benjamin Disraeli, Con- 
servative leader of the, House of Commons, 
walked boldly into the arena, and declared 
that the Derby Government would itself take 
tip and promote a reform of the franchise. 

On the 5th of February, 1867, the Queen's 
speech from the throne, at the opening of 
Parliament, had declared to the Commons and 
Lords that their attention was about to be di- 
rected to the method of the representation of 
the English people in Parliament, and to an 
extension of the elective franchise. In accord- 
ance with this policy, which had doubtless 

been inspired by himself, Disraeli announced 
N.— Vol. 4— as 



that the Government would, first by a series 
of resolutions and afterwards by a formal bill, 
undertake the measures on which England 
had determined. On the 11th of February 
the preliminary skirmish was opened. The 
leader of the House proposed his resolutions, 
some of which were platitudes, others truisms, 
and still others absurdities. It was a business, 
however, in which Disraeli was thoroughly at 
home. He kept the interest of the House by 
this means until the 25th of the month, when 
he brought in a Reform Bill, quite similar in 
its provisions to the one on which he had over- 
thrown the Russell Ministry in the preceding 
year. The franchise in boroughs was to be 
reduced from ten pounds to six pounds. That 
in the counties was to be fixed at twenty 
pounds. A great number of instances of in- 
dividual and professional extensions of the suf- 
frage were enumerated; but, on the whole, 
the Bill was the same in method and spirit aa 
that' which the recent house had refused to ac- 
cept at the hands of Gladstone. 

On this measure the debates were taken 
up anew. . Many amendments were offered, to 
which, while Disraeli declared he would never 
consent, yet he consented. The struggle over 
the measure as a whole continued until the 
beginning of March, when three members of 
the Ministry, refusing to follow Disraeli fur* 
ther, resigned and went out of office. On the 
18th of the month another surprise was ad« 
ministered to the House by Disraeli's intro* 
ducing a second Bill in place of the first, the 
provisions of which'— that is, of the new Bill — 
were so radical and thorough-going as fairly to 
take the breath of both Parliament and people. 
Nevertheless, it was perceived that the man- 
ager understood the situation, and that the 
stormy elements around him were only the 
sport of that Machiavellian wit, for which no 
parallel can be produced in the history of 
modem times. It was at once perceived that 
the country was to have its way. Even the 
Radicals, or some of them, took the alarm at 
the thorough-going character of the measure 
before the House. John Bright, who had fa- 
vored the first Bill proposed as the best which 
the spirit of the age demanded or would bear, 
set himself in opposition to the second Bill on 
account of its apparently revolutionary char- 
acter. With the progress of the debater 



398 



UMVEKSAL HJSTORY.-THE MODERN WORLD. 



however, it became clear that the measure > 
would be ad<>pte<l. A few amend wen Ut were , 
forced through the Houses and other mo«iiii- 
cations were made or act^eptwl by the Ministry. | 
But on the 15th of August the Bill was finally I 
put on Its [MLSsage, ami was carried through ( 
the Commons by a fair majority. Disraeli 
had succeeded in his new SK'heme of outdoing 
the Liberals in their own chosen £eld of agi- 
tation and reform. 

Thus, after the lapse of abi)ut thirty years, 
another of the great principles of the Pt»ople'8 
Charter Was admitted into the Constitution 
of Great Britain. In accordance with the 
new Bill, all male householders in English 
boroughs who were asi»essed for the relief of 
the poor, and all resident lodgers who had 
been so for one year, and paying a rental of 
not less than ten pounds annually, w<!re ad- 
mitted to the franchise. In the counties the 
poesession of a property yielding an annual 
▼alue of five pounds was the requisition. 
Those who occupied lands or tenements pay- 
ing a rental of twelve pounds a year were 
enfranchised. The great principle of the Bill 
was Household Suffrage. It was not the pur- 
pose and intent of the measure that all man- 
ner of men in the bottom of society should 
be allowed to vote, but the provisions were 
such that all the English householdiog peas- 
antry were admitted to the suffrage. On the 
question of a redistribution and apportionment 
of the seats in the House of Commons, much 
was also accomplished. Many of the small 
boroughs hitherto represented in Parliament 
were disfranchised, and others were reduced 
in their representative capacity. At the same 
time the great and populous municipalities, 
such as Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, 
and Leeds, received additional representation 
according to their increased importance in the 
Kingdom. The University of Loudon was 
granted a member in the House of Com- 
mons. The principle of minority representa- 
tion was established to this extent, that in 
every borough entitled to three members of 
Parliament, the elector should vote for two 
candidates only, the effect of which was to se- 
cure the third candidate for the minority. 
In London, which by the provisions of the 
Act was entitled to four members in the 
House, each elector might vote for three, 



which would leave in this instance the fbiurtib' 
member for the minority. 

It only remains to note the extension of the 
Reform Bill, In the following year, to the 
electoral methods of Scotland and L^and. In 
the former country, the measure adopted was. 
essientially identical with that of England, with 
the exception of the clause relating to the> 
assessment for the poor, which was omitted. 
The Scotch apportionment .of members in the- 
House of Commons was also amended by an 
increase of representation. In Ireland, simi- 
lar provisions were made as to the qualifi< 
tions for the suffrage, but no improvement 
attempted with respect to the representation 
in Parliament It was thus, after a struggle- 
which had extended through a whole genera- 
tion, that the principles of popular liberty, ex- 
pressed in a broader and freer exercise of the- 
right of suffrage, were at last accepted as a^ 
necessity by the political parties, and were in* 
terwoven with the constitutional fabric of 
Great Britain. Nor will the thoughtful reader* 
fail to observe with interest and instruction* 
that new political expediency, devoid doubt- 
less of the moral quality, bat highly suc- 
cessful in application, whereby the genius and- 
craft of Disraeli were enabled to compel the 
British Conservatives of 1867 into the service* 
of the greatest and most salutary civil reform. 
of the age and country. 

We are now at the threshold of another of 
those remarkable chapters which record the- 
struggles of the Irish people against the polit- 
ical authority and social domination of Great. 
Britain. No extended narrative, or even re- 
capitulation, can here be undertaken of the 
numberless political conspiracies, secret organ- 
izations, and widely extended plots whereby 
the Celtic population of Ireland have time and* 
again striven to free themselves from the 
thralldom which they profess to be galled 
withal. The origin of such movements is to- 
be found deep down in the ineradicable 
prejudices of race and religion. Perhaps the 
prejudice of race alone might be overcome; 
perhaps the prejudice of religion alone might 
be obviated ; but the prejudice of race and 
religion has thus far constituted an insurmount- 
able barrier to the affiliation and unity of the 
Irish and English peoples. 

As early as 1858 the first rumors of ther 



GREAT BEITAIN.'-FENIANISM AND DI8E8TABLISHMEN2: 



399 



existence of the Fenian societies were whis- 
pered in Great Britain and America. The 
i^enian Brotherhood may be defined as a 
secret politico-military organization based on 
the fundamental, motive of the independence 
of Ireland. The tradition of such an order is 
as old as Ireland itself. The name Fenian is 
given in the Ballads of the Irish Fili, or Bards, 
as the name of certain miltary clans which 
fought for the native kings of the Island, long 
before the beginnings of authentic hbtory. 
There is a period in the primitive develop- 
ment of the Irish race which may properly be 
called the Fenian Period, when the native 
sovereigns of the race, surrounded by their 
clans, battled for independence of each other 
or supremacy in Ireland. Out of these ancient 
traditions the Celts have always been eager to 
gather inspiration in their endless contests 
with the Saxons. 

It was a happy conceit which led the dis- 
contented of 1857 to choose for their new 
political association the ancient name of 
Fenian Brotherhood. We must remember 
that, for more than ten years, the population 
of Ireland Had been escaping in shoals to the 
American coasts. The exiles of Erin in the 
United States entered quickly and with en- 
thusiasm into their new relations as citizens 
of the Republic ; but they did not cease to 
turn with longing eyes to the green Mother 
Island across the Atlantic. To the restless 
Irishmen of the American cities, their new 
situation seemed to provoke some effort in 
behalf of the Old Country. At length, in 
1847, in the city of New York, the Fenian 
Brotherhood was founded by Michael Doheny, 
John O'Mahoney, and Michael Corcoran, after- 
wards a Brigadier-General in the Union Army. 
The head-quarters of the society was in Union 
Square. At this time an order of like 
character existed in Ireland under the name 
of the Phoenix Society. Its founder was James 
Stephens, who, in 1858, came to America; and 
the two societies were merged into one, under 
the presidency of 0*Mahoney. Correspond- 
ence between the Irish and American Brother- 
hoods was at once greatly extended. It 
became the order of the day to raise funds in 
America for the support of the Irish cause. 
The leading spirits from this time until the 
outbreak of the Civil War in the United 



States, were O'Mahoney and Stephens, who 
went back and forth between Old Ireland and 
New Ireland, establishing new chapters of the 
Brotherhood, and rapidly extending its influ* 
ence, not only in the Mother Island, but 
throughout the United States and even into 
British America. 

At this juncture of affairs, the secession of 
the Southern States occurred. The side of 
the American Republic, so to speak, was torn 
out by the Confederate leaders, and the gleam 
of bayonets was seen everywhere in the North 
and the South as the marshaling lines of blue 
and gray soldiers swept into the field of 
battle. When the armies were organized, it 
could but be observed that the regiments, 
especially those from the great cities, had in 
them a large percentage of Irish soldiers. In 
the Confederate ranks the eager Celtic coun- 
tenance was seen in every line, though the 
numbers were not so great as in the armies of 
the Union. It was evident that, for the time, 
the Fenian enthusiasm had found vent in the 
unfortunate war for and against the Union of 
the States. 

If we look closely into the heart of the 
question, we shall find the large Irish con- 
tingent in the Union army cherishing a secret 
or half-revealed hope and expectancy that, in 
the course. of the confiict. Great Britain would 
so conduct herself as to bring on an Anglo- 
American war. We have seen how fatally 
near was that hope to a realization. The 
Irish-Americans who fought for the Union, 
and even those who fought against it, per- 
ceived that a war between the United States 
and England meant, in all probability, the 
revolt and independence of Ireland. We may 
well suppose that when the affair of the Trerd 
was amicably settled, there was a certain 
heart-sinking in the breasts of thousands of 
Irish-American soldiers — a feeling of disap- 
pointment that they had thus been deprived 
of the opportunity of marching, under the 
Stars and Stripes, against a British army in 
Canada. 

Canada ? Aye, that was, indeed, the region 
to which the Fenian gaze was now directed. 
The Civil War in the United States ended 
with the complete restoration of the Union. 
Fenianism sprang up anew. Far and wide 
the Brotherhood extended its divisions. In 



400 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



almost eveiy considerable American town, 
there was a Fenian lodge and muster-hall. 
Great sums of money were transmitted to 
Ireland, and in March of 1867 a general 
rising of the Irish people was planned and 
awaited. The scheme contemplated an Irish 
insurrection against which the British author- 
ities would, of course, at once proceed with 
vigor and animosity. Hereupon, the vast 
army of Fenians in the United States would 
arise in its might, and precipitate itself on 
Canada. The pressure on Ireland by the 
British soldiers was to be counteracted by a 
■tall greater pressure in Canada by the Ameri- 
can-Fenian army. In fact, the movement 
began to look exceedingly portentous. It 
can not be claimed that the politico-military 
plan adopted by the Fenians was irrational or 
even impracticable. Doubtless it would, in 
any event, have ended, finally, in failure ; but 
it would have been at such excessive cost and 
distress to Great Britain as to have led, in all 
probability, to a great change in the civil 
administration of Ireland, or, possibly, to the 
independence of the country. The trouble 
and weakness of the whole movement lay in 
that fatal want of practical ability, in that 
overzeal and absence of prudent foresight, 
which have marked all similar enterprises 
undertaken by the Celtic race. There is un- 
doubtedly in this respect an ethnic weakness 
in the Irish people, for which it is difficult to 
account on any other ground than that of a 
race-inaptitude for the management and con- 
duct of large a^Tairs. 

In the crisis under consideration, the pro- 
posed rising in Ireland ended in mere agita- 
tion, dust, and smoke. It has been noted by 
critics friendly to the Irish cause at this 
juncture, that the first days of March, 1867, 
were marked in Ireland by an unprecedented 
&11 of snow, obstructing all the roads, filling 
the fields fence-deep with impassable snow- 
beds, packing the mountain gorges and 
coverts of the peasantry to such an extent 
that for nearly two weeks, including the date 
appointed for the insurrection, all formidable 
gatherings and musterings of the Fenians were 
made impossible. Only in a few places in the 
counties of Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary, 
and Louth, did any actual rising take place. 
The insurrections were local, feeble, easily 



suppressed by the police. For the rest, the 
insurgents were quickly scattered, and the# 
leaders arrested and brought to trial. One of 
the most prominent of these was Colonel T. F. 
Burke, who, from being a valued Confederate 
soldier, had gone back to Ireland and England 
to be one of the leaders of the expected revolt. 
On the 23d of November he was arrested, 
along with another Fenian Captain named 
Casey, and the two were lodged in the Clerk- 
enwell prison. Shortly afterwards a barrel 
of powder was exploded against the outer 
wall, producing a shock as if of an earth- 
quake. Six persons were killed ; eleven others 
were mortally wounded, and about a hundred 
and twenty others received injuries of greater 
or less severity. Five men and one woman 
were arrested for the crime. The woman and 
one of the men were soon released for want of 
evidence against them. Three of the other 
men were tried and acquitted ; but the fifth 
was condemned and executed in spite of the 
most strenuous efforts made in his behalC 
Colonel Burke was himself condemned te 
death ; but a public meeting was held in St. 
James's Hall, London, and a powerful and 
convincing speech was delivered to the multi- 
tude by John Stuart Mill, wh(( pleaded elo- 
quently for clemency to the prisoner. The 
evidence against Burke had never been con- 
clusive as to the commission of any crime, 
and the sentence of death was not carried into 
execution. 

In a short time another startling event 
occurred, being the successful attempt of a 
band of Fenians in Manchester to rescue two 
prisoners, who were in a van, in charge of 
the police, on the way to jail. The van was 
stopped in the street in open day. One of 
the Fenians, in the attempt to shoot the lock 
ofiT of the door, had the misfortune to kill a 
police officer who was inside. The doors were 
then opened, and the two prisoners, named 
Kelly and Deasy, making their escape, wero 
seen no more. Of this offense against the 
law, five of the Fenians were found guilty, 
and were condemned to die. It was at length 
discovered that one of the condeipned men 
had had absolutely nothing to do with either 
the plot or the crime. One other of the con* 
victs also escaped the death penalty; but the 
remaining three, Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien, 



GREAT BRITAIN.— FEmANISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 



401 



were executed. All of them went to their 
death like heroes. The news of the execu* 
tions was carried to the countries on both 
sides of the Atlantic, and the Fenians were 
more than ever enraged against the English 
Government. 

In the meantime, the Fenian cause in 
America had run its course. In the first 
place, a quarrel broke out in the Brotherhood, 
and two separate societies were formed, pro* 
fesslng the same general objects and principles, 
but at enmity with each other. From this 
time forth the plans of the Amencan Fenians 
went always from worse to worse. One of the 
favorite schemes of the order was the invasion 
of Canada. This part of the programme was 
DOW favored by one wing of the Fenians and 
disapproved by the other. At length the for- 
mer party went ahead on the line of its own 
purpose, and threw forward a body of armed 
men to the Niagara River. On the night of 
May 31, 1866, that stream was crossed, and 
Fort Erie was occupied by the invaders. The 
Canadian volunteers who came against them 
were defeated and dispersed. It appeared for 
the moment thit the war had actually begun ; 
but at this juncture the Government of the 
United States came to the front, forbade any 
further exodus of the Fenians, and arrested 
the leaders of the movement on the American 
frontier. By this time the Canadian authori- 
ties had rallied and sent forward a body of 
troops. The Fenians on the Canadian side 

^ were overpowered, and many of them, under 
sentences of courts-martial, were shot. Some 
by retreating, succeeded in , recrossing the 
Niagara, and saved themselves by flight into 
the interiop. By the close of the year 1868 
the excitement had subsided ; and though the 
Brotherhood was maintained for a considerable 
period afterwards, the motif of the enterprise 

* was gone, and the word Fenian lost its terrors, 
not only in America, but also in Great Britain. 
Co'incidently with this race disturbance oc- 
curred in England the first serious break of 
civil society with the Trades-Unions. It 
were difiicult to point out the beginning of 
such associations in Europe. It is certain 
that the attempt would carry us far back into 
mediaeval times, and perhaps to the classical 
ages. The genaial cause of Trades-Unionism, 
however, is not far to seek. It might almost 



be said that the fact is concomitant with prop> 
erty itself. Certain it is that the appearance 
of Trades-Unions is a perfectly natural phe- 
nomenon in all those countries whose people 
are sufficiently advanced to have a division of 
labor and a distribution of values. It is 
equally certain that the appearance and de- 
velopment of unionism have ever been the 
signal for the alarm and relentless opposition 
of the so-called upper classes of society. The 
Trades-Union has been, from the hour of its 
birth, the h^^ noire of capital and capitalists. 
In England the guilds of trade have had a pe- 
culiarly stormy career. The whole feudal 
system, dominant in the civil and social con- 
stitution of Great Britain, has from the first 
set itself with relentless animosity against the 
very existence of Labor Unions. 

Viewed from the side of the laborer, such 
organizations appear to be not only natural, 
but inevitable. The laborer, at a certain 
stage of his evolution, marks the example 
which capital has already set him, in the 
organization of those who purchase aud employ 
industry. In every country the employer^ 
Unions have forerun by a considerable date 
the Unions of the working classes. It is 
indeed a peculiar sort of economic logic which 
concedes to the employer the right and privi- 
lege of combining with his fellow in order to pro- 
duce results against the natural laws of trade, 
and which at the same time forbids the arti- 
san to enter into a like combination with hia 
fellow- workmen to secure himself against the 
efiects of the combinations above him. 

The English Trades-Unions had their first 
formidable apparition in the great manufactur- 
ing towns; It was in Sheffield, Manchester, and 
Birmingham that the presence of trade com- 
binations began, at the epoch which we are now 
considering, to manifest themselves in a jnan- 
ner well calculated to alarm the existing 
order. As early as 1855, certain secret acta 
of violence of a peculiar character began to 
be known and rumored through the kingdom* 
The character of the things done pointed to 
the Trades-Unions as their origin. A charge 
of powder would be fired with a fuse by night 
against the house of some laborer who had 
opposed the principles or practices of the 
Union with which he was allied by his call* 
ing. The family of a workman would be ter- 



402 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY. — THE MODERN WORLD. 



rorized by some kind of foray or attack, 
designed to frighten the offending household 
out of the community. Sometimes the work- 
man himself was beaten; sometimes his tools 
were broken up and destroyed. The phenom- 
^ena were, in short, precisely such as have 
Imore recently become 'familiar in every 
(American city where labor organizations exist, 
and where striking has been adopted as the 
method of obtaining redress of grievances. 

The outrages against life and property 
referred to above began in Sheffield, but the 
same facts soon afterwards appeared in Man- 
chester and other manufacturing cities. In 
1867 an investigation was begun under the 
auspices of a Parliamentary Commission, and 
many scandalous practices were brought to 
light as a part of the method of the Trades- 
Unionists. But the inquisition had not pro- 
ceeded far until it was demonstrated that the 
practices in question had been provoked by 
the long-standing abuses of society. The 
reader of to-day may well be surprised to 
know that less than a quarter of a century ago, 
within the distinct memory of men not yet 
beyond the middle stage of life, all such 
organizations as Labor Unions were absolutely 
outlawed in Great Britain. The statutes of 
the realm not only -did not recognize the right 
of such associations to be formed and to exist 
under protection of the laws, but actually for- 
bade all such associations as unlawful, per- 
nicious, dangerous to the peace of society. 
Not only this, but the whole dominant public 
opinion of England held the same ground and 
taught the same principles. There was not 
an influential public journal, not a respectable 
pulpit, not a judicial tribunal, in the Kingdom 
of Great Britain wherein any other principle 
than that of absolute prescription of Trades- 
Unionism was either declared or tolerated. 
Nevertheless, the Unions did exist. They 
were a natural growth— just as they have been 
iin America — of the existing industrial con- 
'ditions. But their being a natiiral product ' 
Tof the established order did not prevent the 
ruling classes of society from the attempt to 
put them down both by suasion and by force. 

We may not here enter upon the history 
of the struggle which ensued. It extended 
from 1667 to 1875, the agitation broadening 
and d^eoening until public opinion was grad- 



ually shaken into a better frame. Parliament 
was obliged to abandon the old proscriptive 
theory, and to frame new statutes in which 
the rights of workingmen were acknowledged 
fully, and fortified by law. The new statutes 
were, as usual in English legislation, of a very 
moderate and conservative character. Organ- 
ized society conceded just so much to the 
individual, just so much to the masses, as waa 
necessary to the ends of peace — nothing mora. 
The principles of the new laws were, first of 
all, the recognition of the absolute equality of 
contract on the part of the workmen and their 
employers. Should there be an infraction of 
this principle on the part of either, the other 
might proceed against him by legal process 
for the recovery of damages. The rule of 
imprisonment for the mere violation of in- 
dustrial principles was abrogated; a workman 
might no longer be imprisoned except for the 
actual commission of crime. At the same 
time, the rights of general society were strictly 
guarded. Those who were employed, for in- 
stance, in the service of the municipality, aa 
in the management of the water-supply or 
gas-supply of a city, might not, with impunity, 
break their contract to do service to the hnrfc 
of the people at large. The new rules were 
in some respects severe, or at least just, as it 
respected employers. The latter were no 
longer autocrats. They might no longer, al 
the suggestion of caprice or anger, violate the 
agreements which they had made with work'* 
men — no longer use them and abuse them at 
their will. 

Another important principle, as it respected 
the Trades- Unions, was established by the 
legislation of 1875. The rule of striking 
against the reduction of wages, or for other 
hardship, was frankly and fully conceded; bnl 
the right of strikers to go beyond their own 
act to interfere with other workmen, to forbid 
the prosecution of the enterprise which they 
had abandoned, to break, destroy, and perse- 
cute, as a means of bringing employers to a 
settlement, was denied and interdicted. On 
the whole, the legislation of the period marked 
an important stage in that industrial evolu- 
tion through which all civilized people are 
now passing, in the course of which, ere the 
work be fully done, the wage-system of labor 
itself must either be radically modified, or else 



GREAT BRITAIK—FENIANISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 



403 



^ive place in Mo to that cooperative system 
of industry which, appears to be the destiny 
of the times to come. 

We may here turn briefly from the home 
•history of England to notice another foreign 
war in which she was engaged. Our attention 
in this instance is directed to Abyssinia, and 
to the career of King Theodore III., Emperor, 
or Negiis, of that country. The story is 
another of those remark^ible episodes in which 
the foreign relations of Great Britain in the 
present century so much abound. In the first 
place, it must be remembered that Abyssinia 
is a Christian rather than a Mohammedan 
€tate, and that the people are thus, on the 
«ide of their religious sympathies, allied some- 
what with the peoples of the West. In the 
next place, it should be remarked that, on the 
•ethnic side, the Abyssinians are out of union 
with the Nigritian races, and even with the 
Arabs. The race descent is rather Hamitic 
than otherwise, and the development of the 
-country, civil and political, has throughout 
been, to a certain degree, anomalous. 

The Government is monarchical. King 
Theodore, nearly fifty years of age at the time 
of which we speak, had himself obtained the 
throne by usurpation. His character might 
well remind us of some of the great historical 
personages of antiquity. He is represented as 
having had mvich of the native talent and all 
of the eccentricity and barbaric passion of 
Peter the Great. Theodore was, however, by 
no means a barbarian. He had lofity purposes 
and great ambitions. His generosity, when 
his anger was not kindled, knew no bounds. 
He had, in some measure, the ken of a states- 
man. He would have been glad to enter into 
relations — civil, political, and marital — with 
the Western peoples. At one period in his 
career he strove, with much anxiety, to open 
fi personal correspondence with no less a 
personage than Her Majesty, the Queen of 
England. He would be her lover, and would 
lead Victoria from her weeds of widowhood to 
the splendors of Oriental nuptials, the richness 
of Oriental apparel, the gorgeousness of an 
Oriental crown. It does not appear that the 
serious Queen of Great Britain was greatly 
moved by the worship of her African adorer. 
It is even doubtful whether his missives ever 
reached the steady eyes of the Royal mistress 



of Windsor Palace. At all this, Theodore, in 
the true lover's mood, became greatly angered. 
He could not conceive why it was that the 
Queen of England should not desire his de- 
votion; and if even a partial concept of the 
difference betwen him and the Queen — between 
his people and hers — did enter his conscious- 
ness, it was only to, aggravate the evil. 

This King Theodore had his capital in the 
city of Magdala, a natural stronghold, situated 
about two hundred miles from the Gulf of 
Aden, latitude 11° 22' N., and longitude 
39° 25' E. Here was reared by nature a vast 
Basaltic plateau to the level of nine thousand 
one hundred and ten feet above the sea. On 

m 

this plateau a second elevation rises about one 
thousand feet; and on this, with precipitouB 
sides all around, was built the Abyssinian cap- 
ital, a place which Gsesar might well have 
described as '* fortified by the nature of the 
ground^" Theodore was a man of military 
ambition. He had a treasury and an army, 
the latter composed of nearly a hundred and 
fifty thousand men of war. -The sea-port of 
Magdala is the island and town of Massowah, 
in the Red Sea, a short distance from the 
African coast. It was in this island that the 
agents land representatives of the British Gov- 
ernment first made the acquaintance oi King 
Theodore, first became familiar with his meth- 
ods and principles of Government 

The king, at the beginning, conceived a 
great liking for the few English officers who 
came to his shore. This was particularly 
true of the British Consul Plowden, who, from 
Massowah, had given material aid and counsel 
to Theodore in the matter of putting down an 
insurrection. Plowden joined the king in 
this work, and was unfortunately killed by 
the Abyssinian insurgents. The character of 
the monarch was well illustrated in what en« 
sued. When the rebellion was suppressed, he 
deliberately ordered the execution of more 
than a hundred rebels, as a sort of sacrifice to 
the memory of his friend, the Consul. Soon 
afterwards Captain Cameron was sent out to 
Massowah to take the vacant consulship. He 
adopted the opposite policy from that of his 
predecessor, and would have little to do with 
the king of Abyssinia. The latter had already 
become jealous and suspicious of England and 
of all Englishmen. The Queen would not 



GREAT BRITAIN.— FENIANISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 



405 



answer his love-letters, and he resented the 
insult The suspicion of Theodore grew hot 
against Captain Cameron, and presently,- in 
• an hour of inadvertent wrath, he ordered the 
arrest of all the British within his reach. 
Cameron himself was taken ; and the news 
flew to England that British subjects had been 
thrown into Abyssinian prisons under the ca- 
pricious rage of an African despot 

At first an effort was made to open ne- 
gotiations with Theodore, with a view to 
securing the liberation of the captives. It 
was a delicate work, for the fear was constantly 
present that the prisoners might suffer a 
wholesale slaughter by the king^s orders. An 
embassy was constituted of Mr. Bassam, 
British representative at Aden, Lieutenant 
Prideaux, and Dr. Blanc, who, making their 
way to Magdala, opened negotiations with the 
king, only to be seized in turn and added to 
the other prisoners. It was perceived that a 
military invasion for the liberation of the 
captives was the only remedy. In such an 
emergency Oreat Britain never hesitates. 
The Cromwellian rule of action was that 
every Englishman shall be protected if it re- 
quires every other Englishman to do it. The 
Government of Lord Russell immediately 
sent despatches to Sir Robert Napier, Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the British army in Bom- 
bay, to transfer his forces to the Abyssinian 
coast, and bring Theodore to his knees. The 
expedition landed at Mulkutto, on Annesley 
Bay, in the autumu of 1867, and the advance 
was thrown forward under command of Colonel 
Merewether. The English Greneral adopted 
the plan of r ':ing friends with the Abyssinian 
chieftains, and many of them, tired of the 
despotism of Theodore, made common cau3^ 
with the British. 

The expedition into the interior, however, 
was one of great hazard. The advance 
proper began in January of 1868 ; but it was 
not until April that a force of three thousand 
men debouched into tho plateau before Mag- 
dala. Meanwhile, the native monarch had 
displayed great skill and courage. Though a 
large part of his army had broken away by 
mutiny, he defended himself with a courage 
and heroism worthy of success. On the 10th 
of April a pitched battle was fought, the 
Abyssinians coming on to the charge with the i 



ferocity of wild men, and much of the disci* 
pline of the civilized. But courage and 
enthusiasm were as naught before the dis- 
charges of British musketry and cannon. 
About two thousand of the Abyssinians were 
killed or wounded. On the north side of 
Magdala, sitting- like a fortress on a rock, 
a narrow approach was found, and a 
British storming party, making its way to the 
summit, shattered the city gate and rushed in. 
Theodore had taken his stand at the post of 
danger, behind the gate, and when the portal 
was broken, he put himself forever to rest 
with the rough consolation of suicide.- The 
English prisoners already had been sent in 
safety to the British camp. Lord Napier at 
once proceeded to the complete demolition of 
Magdala. Not one stone was left upon 
another. The widow of the king and her 
son were carried away by the victorious in- 
vaders. The mother died in the British camp, 
and the son was taken to England. There he 
was educated at the charge of the Queen, and 
was sent to India; but he died before maturity, 
and the House of Theodore III. was ex- 
tinguished. The expedition, conducted by Sir 
Robert Napier, was regarded in England as 
one of the most complete military successes 
ever won by British arms in the East The 
commander was made Baron Napier of Mag- 
dala, and received a pension during the 
remainder of his life. 

We have now arrived at that period in the 
recent history of England, when the whole 
narrative is colored and impregnated in every 
part with the spray from Ireland. From the 
date which we have now reached, namely, the 
close of the sixth decade of the century to 
the present day, there has been no time when 
the principal tone and rhythm of British poli« 
tics have not been derived from the ethnic, 
social, civil, and religious relations of the 
people of the two Islands. We already have 
remarked upon the ineradicable differences be- 
tween the Irish and English nationalities. 
Prominent among these divergent sentiments 
and dispositions has been the religious discord 
which has sounded immemorially on the two 
• sides of 8t. George's Channel. 

It is not needed to recount in this connec- 
tion the circumstances which, extending 
through many centuries, have wrought out a 



406 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD, 



completed ProtestaDtism in England and a 
perfect Catholicism in Ireland. It is sufficient 
to note the fact of the divergeuce, and of the 
irreconcilable character of the two parties to 
the controversy. In the present century the 
Irish peasantry has been as profoundly and 
ardently Catholic as even the common folk of 
Italy, Spain, or Portugal. Here the priest 
of the Mother Church has remained supreme. 

m 

Here the ancieut tradition has flourished, and 
the ancient worship has been preserved in its 
fervor and reality. The inquirer, after a can- 
did survey of the field*, may well turn aside 
and say : ** What place is there for Prot(»stant- 
hm in such a country as this? What rights 
eousness, other than that which is native to the 
genius of this race, can here be planted and 
made to grow T The extension of the Episco- 
pal Establishment over the people of Ireland 
has been a mockery from the first day. If 
the world be indeed in process of evolution 
into better and higher forms, then the support 
of English Episcopalianism by the people of 
Ireland, against all of their instincts and voli- 
tions, has been from the beginning destined 
to cease, and to be remembered only as an 
intolerable injustice, borne impatiently for a 
season. 

These ideas continued to obtrude themselves 
into British politics. The Conservative party 
opposed their progress and dissemination. 
That party, now in power in the House of 
Commons, sought by every means to prevent 
the reopening of questions relative to the 
I^ish State Church. It could be foreseen that 
quietude and the mere continuance of the 
existing system by sufferance were the only 
means of maintaining it longer. To debate 
such a question ,is always to destroy the abuse. 
Hitherto, only a few radical members of 
Parliament, willing to hazard the consequences 
of extreme ideas, had ventured to pronounce 
the word Disestablishment. But that term 
could no longer be discarded from the vocab- 
ulary of British politics. On the 16th of 
March, 1838, a debate broke out in Parlia- 
ment based on a resolution introduced by John 
Francis Maguire, and bearing on the general 
condition of Ireland. In the course of 
Maguire's speech, he spoke of the Irish Episco- 
pal Establishment as a ''scandalous and 
monstrous anomaly. " The question at once 



caught fire. It was perceived by the Liberal 
leaders of the House that the time had come 
for the introduction of another great reform. 
On the 30th of the month just mentioned, 
Gladstone introduced a series of resolutiona 
declaring that the Established Church in 
Ireland sfumld cease to exist; that it was not 
desirable for the Government of Great Britain 
to support that Church after the revenues 
derived from the Irish people should be tak^i 
away; and that the Queen be asked to sur- 
render her interest in the temporalities of the 
Irish Church. 

The debate was now opened in earnest. 
It was perceived that in the speeches of the 
Conservatives, the speakers hardly dare ven* 
ture upon the defense of the existing eccle8ias« 
tical order in Ireland. Even party discipline^ 
energized by the leadership of Disraeli, was 
not sufficient to bring the Conservative party 
to the further active maintenance of the 
abusive and intolerable system which had so 
long prevailed in the Celtic Island. At 
length the question came to the direct issue, 
and Gladstone's resolution in favor of dises- 
tablishment was adopted, in the House of 
Commons, by a majority of sixty-five votes. 

The Conservatives, however, were unwill- 
ing, in the existing condition of afiairs, to 
give up the Government. It was determined 
by Disraeli and the other leaders of his party, 
that an appeal should be made to the country. 
At the close of July» Parliament was accord- 
ingly dissolved and a new election ordered for 
the following November. The question of 
disestablishment was debated before the people, 
and the result of the elections showed quite 
an increase in the Liberal majorities. The 
Conservative ministry resigned, and a new 
Cahinet was formed under the leadership of 
Gladstone. Even John Bright was brought 
into the Government as President of the 
Board of Trade. Everything went forward at 
full tide. The Queen's speech indicated to 
Parliament that the Ministry would undertake 
important legislation relative to the State 
Church in Ireland. On the 1st of March, 
1869, the Prime Minister brought in a bill in 
which it was provided that the Irish Churck 
as a State Establishment should cease tc 
exist — that it should become simply a free 
Episcopal Church, resting on the same general 



GREAT BRITAIN.— FENIANISM AND DISESTASLISSMENT. 



407 



conditions with tlie other Dissen^g organiza- 
tions in tbe country. 

The result of the measure, if adopted, 
irould be, first of all, that the Irish Bishops in 
tbe House of Lfords should lose their seat«. 
The Church of Ireland, being reduced from all 
pulitical relation, could no longer be repre- 
sented in one of tbe Parliamentary bodies. 
The general effect of the proposal was the 
complete severaoce of the Episcopal Estab- 
lishment in Ireland from the State Church of 
England. Many provisions were made in the 
Bill for the preservation of the existing inter- 
ests and vested rights of Irish Churchmen. 
The Government, however, if aUccessfut, would 
find tittle difficulty in meeting all the ex- 
penditures and prospective outlay from the 
large sums which must, under the provisions 
.of the measure, revert to the treasury of the 
Kingdom. As a prudential principle, it was 
provided in the Bill that, after all just claims 
bad been met, the remaining fund coming 
into the bandii of tbe Government should 
be reserved fur the promo tjon of various 
enterprise^ among the Irish people. 

On these proposiUons a great debate ensued. 
The Conservative Opposition adopted the 
policy of saving — if that should be poeuble — 
the existence of the State Establishment in 
Ireland, and of granting, as a concession to 
public opiuioD, only such concessions as might 
not under any conditions be longer withheld. 
But the triumphant Liberals, led forward in 
solid phalanx hy Gladstone, marched straight 
ahead for the principal position held by the 
defenders of the Past, determined to be diverted 
by nothing from the victory which was now 
within their power. On the 26th of July, 
1869, the Ministerial Bill, having been adopted 
by the House of Commons and accepted by 
the House of Lords, received the assent of the 
Queen, and the Irish Church was struck from 
its foundations. It was provided in the Act 
that an interval should elapse before the 
measure should go into efiecL The Establish- 
ment was permitted to continue on the old 
basis until the 1st of January, 1871 — this to 
the end that the multifarious relations by 
which the ecclesiastical organization was bound 
to secular society in Ireland might be gradu- 
ally and harmlessly broken and dissolved. 
The legislation, considered as a whole, was one 



of the most Important acts of Parliament 
within the present century, and, as the event 
has shown, was but tbe introductory stage in 
tbe vast and profound agitation which has 
extended to the present day with respect to 
whole structure of Irish society. 

It had been foreseen by the Liberal Min- 
istry that the movement which they had 
started could not be stopped with the simple 
disestablishment of the Irish Church. There 
were at least two other great questions lying at 
the very bottom of. the condition of Ireland 



which must of necessity spring into view and 
demand solution as soon as disestablishment 
was accomplished. Gladstone had had the 
courage to announce at the outset that the 
Lilierat policy contemplated still further 
advances in the direction of Irish reform. 
The two great issues to which reference has 
just been made were, first, the system of Land 
Tenure, and, secondly, the System OF Educa- 
tion, in Ireland. It could but be foreseen that a 
propersolutionof each of these questions must, 
in ils turn, be as revolutionary in nature 
and extent as was the disestablishment of the 



408 



UMVERSAL HISTORY.-^THE MODERN WORLD. 



Churoh. Bat Gladstone and his followers 
were undaunted by the prospect before them, 
and went forward at once to attack that 
ancient and deep-seated Irish land system 
which has constituted a problem in the polit- 
ical history, not only of Great Britain, but of 
the whole EnglLsh-speaking race. How the 
evils which have been handed down through 
oenturies of abuse, accumulating from gener* 
•tion to generation, stiffening into usage first 
and into law afterwards, twining by many 
nmifications around the Constitution of 
Great Britain, and having the general effect 
of reducing the Irish tenantry to a lower and 
ever lowe^ level of hardship, cruelty, and in- 
justice with respect to the lands which they 
have immemorially occupied, but could not 
•wn, may be abrogated by legislation and 
teplaoed with a new system at once rational, 
Bberal, and just — has been a question greater, 
perhaps, than the abilities of any statesman or 
group of statesmen which England has yet 
produced* Nevertheless, this was the ques- 
tion which the Gladstone Ministry was now 
obliged to face. By their own act the issue 
had been thrown into the arena, and the 
Liberal Government must stand or fall on the 
result. 

The courage with which the Prime Minister 
BOW took up the system of land tenure in Ire- 
hmd was worthy of all praise. Whatever may 
be said of the wisdom or unwisdom of the reme- 
dies which were proposed, nothing can be said 
against the spirit and resoluteness with which the 
Government took up the question of allevi- 
ating the ills of the Irish peasantry by better- 
hig their relations with respect to the lands 
on which they lived. Nor may we well 
appreciate the condition of the agitation which 
was now begun in Parliament and throughout 
the country, without pausing to review, in a 
few paragraphs, the existing system of land 
tenure in Ireland. 

In the first place, the use of the word 
tystein in this connection, is hardly justified by 
the conditions to be examined. It could 
badly be said that there was a "system** of 
Irish landownership. There were many fea- 
tures about the condition of land tenure which 
were unmistakable. Some of these features 
were so common as to be recognized almost 
everywhere in Ireland, but many others were 



local and peculiar. The whole social, politicaU 
and industrial condition of this unfortunate 
country had been transmitted, like most other 
corresponding facts in England, from the 
Middle Ages. But the hardships of original 
barbarism had been aggravated by a hundred 
other hardships, extending through several 
centuries. Among these hard conditions may^ 
be mentioned, first of all, the fact of war. 
Ireland had been invaded, devastated, con« 
quered, time and again, by the dominant people. 
One Irish revolt had followed another, and 
each revolt had, in its turn, been put down by 
the same hand and the same method. Irish 
insurrections and suppressions had become a 
monotonous fiict in the history of the Island 
from the times of Henry VII. to the age of 
Victoria. 

Of all the conditions of Irish society^ 
changed by recurring British conquests, the 
most constant and destructive was the confisca- 
tion of the lands. Originally, the Irish people,, 
like other mediseval peasantry, had owned 
their lands. But by conquest, they had lost 
posvsessipn. First one province, and then 
another, in revolt would be invaded, and, as a 
penalty for insurrection, the lands would be 
subjected to confiscation. We may not here 
enumerate the occasions and circumstances of 
the various land-seizures by which the Irish 
people were ultimately dispossessed — despoiled 
of their own homes. But dispossession became 
the prevalent condition throughout Ireland — 
this in the face of the fact that the Island ia 
agricultural in nearly all of its natural sugges- 
tions. The same is true of the development. 
From an immemorial day the Irish Celts have 
been tillers of the soil. They were, moreover, 
from the earliest times, strongly attached to the 
soil. Hardly any other people have had a 
stronger home instinct The Irishman i» 
never, by preference, a rover. He has little 
of the adventurous spirit by either sea or land. 
On the contrary, he fixes himself by ethnic 
preference to a certain district, a certain 
locality, a certain home. However poor the 
condition mav have been in which the Irish^ 
man in recent centuries has found himself in 
his own country, he has never been wanting 
in ardent attachment even to the hard lot 
which human history has assigned him. To 
him the green sod, the surrounding hills, th^ 



GREAT BRITAIN.— FENIANISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 



409 



intervening vales, the blue smoke ascending 
from the hut where his father lived before 
iiim, the humble hamlet in the distance, the 
«pire of his own church with its ever-ringing 
liell, have constituted a landscape dearer than 
any other in the scenery of the world. Of 
ills own choice he leaves it never. Of his own 
will, he holds fast to the soil out of which he 
deduces his whole existence. There is not in 
«11 Western Europe or the two ' Americas 
another people so devoted to the earthy so con* 
«tant in handling that precious dirt out of 
which all things grow and blossom, as are the 
Irish peasants. 

Of cities and towns, on the other hand, 
irelaod has but few. After Dublin, Belfast, 
Oork, Limerick, and Waterford, the remain- 
ing cities may be passed without mention. 
'Great manufacturing interests do not exist 
bore. No vast aggregations of artisans, trades- 
men, or miners are found. The population is 
distributed on the lands as a tenantry, or at 
jnost gathered in small hamlets and villages, 
which rarely expand into the proportion of 
towns. How great therefore to this people 
tiie hardship of dispossession I How extreme 
the penalty of living and toiling ever on lands 
which they may never own I How degrading 
the conditions of that perpetual rent-paying 
{QTStem, removed by only one degree from posi* 
tive servitude I All this is to say that, in pro- 
eess of time, and by many methods, the prin- 
cipal of which was confiscation, the Irish lands 
{lassed into the hands of foreign, that is, En- 
j^lish, owners, and by these same processes and 
methods the Irish people were reduced to the 
place of renters, fixed upon the soil by a se- 
ries of regulations devised by British landlords 
in their own interest, and held down under 
the weight of ever-increasing poverty and de- 
ttasement. 

Such, on the one hand, was the system of 
EngliBh landlordism, and such, on the other, 
the subjection of the Irish rent-paying peas- 
antry during the whole of the present century 
^own to the time of the Gladstonian reforms. 
While on the religious, that is, the ecclesias- 
tical, and on the political side, the condition 
of the Irish people had been alleviated by sev- 
eral Parliamentary acts, on the industrial and 
land-renting side nothing whatever had been 
accomplished. It is probably tnie>^ on the 



contrary, that in 1869 the conditions of land 
tenure in Ireland were aggravated with more 
evils and poisoned with more injustice and 
cruelty than at any previous date in the his- 
tory of the country. It had come to pass-— 
as was said of the slaves in America — that the 
Irish tenants had no rights which Britishi 
landlords were bound to respect Lord Pal- 
merston is credited with having said that 
tenant-right was landlord-right, which was 
equivalent, if true, to an utterance of the most, 
absolute slavery. Another aphorism of like 
kind ran in this wise, that tenant-right was 
landlord's vrrang, as much as to say that eveij 
symptom and claim of right and privilege^ to 
say nothing of equality, on the part of the 
tenant, was an utterance not only of disloyalty, 
but of incendiarism and crime. 

It is difiicult for people Bving in America, 
and will at length be difficult for people living 
in Great Britain, to understand the complete 
autocracy of English landlordism as late as 
the sixth decade of the current century. The 
landlord had all power; the tenant, none. If 
the latter fell into a still more abject poverty 
than that which he had inherited; if he could 
no longer, from misfortune, disease, or decrep- 
itude, discharge the ever-accruing rentals 
which his foreign master exacted, — he was sub- 
ject to that dreadful process called eviction: 
that is, he might be turned out, ejected, 
expelled from his home, and the poor residue 
of his goods be hurled after him by a sum- 
mary process of police, and without respect to 
season or condition. The history of eviction 
in Ireland could never be written. It is a 
tale of woe among the lowly — a record of 
heartlessness and selfish avarice applied to the 
suffering bodies and lives of the weak, with a 
relentless cruelty for the expression of which 
human language is wholly inadequate. The 
vices of the system reached to the very bot- 
tom. It was itself a vice of monstrous pro* 
portions, and its corrupting and degrading 
influence had gone on until a point had been 
reached beyond which it was impossible for 
the grinding despotism of the master-class to 
exact anything further. 

One of the greatest curses attendant upon 
this universal land tenantry was the curse 
that it inflicted on the soil itself. It is in the 
nature of all such crimes to bend around al 



410 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



the last, like the fabulous serpent with the 
tail-dart, and sting itoelf fatally in the head. 
The working of the system discouraged — 
almost interdicted — all effort at the improve- 
ment and development of the Irish lands. In 
the CHae of a thrifty peasant who, by excess 
and skill of industry, brought his lands into 
higher cultivation and superior productive- 
ness, the landlord was always quick to dis- 
cover his advantage by imposing a higher rate 
of rent The more the tenant .toiled, the 
more he was taxed. The more he produced, 
the heavier burden was imposed upon him. 
On the contrary, the improvident were rather 
encouraged than stimulated to industry. It 
might almost be said that in Ireland it was 
better to hold poor lands under half cultiva- 
tion, and to keep the improvements thereon at 
U minimum and in a state of decay, than for 
the occupant to employ his energies only to 
be taxed down again to the lowest possible 
level. It was inevitable that under such con- 
ditions all agricultural enterprise should sink 
away; that everything should revert to desola- 
tion ; that the renter's cot should stand in the 
midst of brambles and waste, rather than be 
Improved and preserved for the benefit of 
foreign landlords. 

These landlords were absentees. They lived 
in another island, across a water narrow enough 
for the collection of rent, broad enough to con- 
ceal the condition of the Irish peasantry from 
the open inspection of tlie English people. 
The ruling classes always posses^ the means 
of information and the processes by which it 
is distributed. The newspaper of modern 
times belongs to the upper man. The under 
man has no voice; or if, having a voice, he 
cries out, his cry is lost like a shout in the 
desert Capital, in the places of power, seizes 
upon the organs of public utterance, and howls 
the humble down the wind. Lying and mis- 
representation are the natural weapons of 
those who maintain an existing vice and 
gather the usufruct of crime. 
, The fact should here be recorded that, in a 
single county of Ireland, the land tenure was 
somewhat more tolerable than that described 
above. In the county of Ulster, tenant-right 
was not wholly the right of the landlord. 
For reasons that can not be enumerated here, 
the people of this part of Ireland had, in the 



course of generations, obtained a better ord^r 
than could be found in any other part of the 
Island. This is the part of the country ^rhich 
is circled by the North Channel, lying over 
against Scotland. Doubtless the industrial 
system of the latter country, and particularly 
the methods of land tenure therein^ pasjed 
over by community of race, and insured, at 
length, a state of affairs more happy, or at 
least less abusive, than otherwise would have 
prevailed. In Ulster the tenants had a few 
rights which landlords were obliged to respect 
The privilege of eviction, which the master- 
class exercised at will in other parts of the 
Island, was here restricted to the case of Don« 
payment of rent The tenure was rather that 
of a lease than of mere tenantry-at-will. The 
occupant of the laud might hold it indefinitelj, 
and transmit to his son after him. He might 
go so far as to sell out his rights by quitclaim, 
and the landlord was obliged to recognize 
the purchaser as his renter under the same 
rights and conditions which had held with 
respect to the former tenant Many other 
slightly favorable circumstances in the land- 
tenure system of this part of the country, 
made the hohlings of the tenants much more 
valuable and satisfactory than those present in 
the other counties. As a result, the country 
was better improved. It could but be noticed 
that just in proportion as the conditions of 
land-holding were ameliorated, not- only were 
the lands brought into a higher state of culti- 
vation and increased productiveness, but the 
peasants who dwelt thereon were raised to a 
higher plain of contentment, industry, and 
happiness. 

Such, then, were the aspects of the case as 
they were presented to the Gladstone Ministry 
at the beginning of 1870. On the 15th of 
February in that year, the Prime Minister laid 
before Parliament his celebrated Irish Lani> 
Bill. The measure was, to a certain extent, 
revolutionary; for it was based on a new 
theory of land tenure, fundamentally different 
from that which had hitherto prevailed. It 
contemplated the abrogation of those absolute 
and arbitrary rights which the landlords had 
claimed and exercised. The new theory was, 
that tenantry of land was a copartnership in 
production ; a part of the benefits belonging 
to the tenants as well as to the landowners. 



GREAT BRITAIN.— REFORMS OF THE EIGHTH DECADE. 



411 



The aspect of affairs in Ulster gave the hint 
and outline of the new legislation. One of 
the most oppressive and iniquitous features 
of the prevalent system in the larger part of 
Ireland, was the claim of the landlord to the 
improvements made on the lands held by the 
tenant. In such improvements there is always 
a certain fixedness which gives to the land- 
owner an advantage over the tenant. When 
the latter is at length evicted, or removes at 
his own will to another estate, the improve- 
ments which he leaves behind represent a con- 
siderable part of all the labor which he has 
exerted during his occupancy. These improve- 
ments he must, to a great extent, surrender to 
the estate which he abandons. 

The rule in Ireland had been peculiarly 
distressing and unjust. All compensation to 
the tenant for the properties which he had 
created on the estate of the landlord was 
refused. The new legislation was. directed to 
the cure of this injustice. But the principal 
object wa» to annul that prerogative of the 



landlord by which tenants might be evicted 
at will. Under the provision of the measure, 
the dispossessed or removing tenant might 
claim and collect by law a just compensation 
for the improvements which he had, in whole 
or in part, put upon the estate. But his great 
advantage was in the clause which forbade his 
eviction so long as he continued to pay his 
rent. On these great and salutary principles 
the debates in Parliament were conducted. 
The Conservatives did less to obstruct the 
measure than they had done in the matter 
of the disestablishment of the Irish Church. 
Strangely enough, a part of the opposition to 
the Bill came from the Irish members of the 
House, who, while recognizing the great ad* 
vantages to be gained by the Act, regarded it 
as not sufficiently thorough-going to meet the 
demands of the existing conditions. On the 
2d of June, 1870, the Land Bill was passed 
by Parliament, and on the 1st of the following 
August the royal assent was given to the 
measure. 



CHAF>XKR CXXXIIL— REKORIVIS OK THE EIGHTH 




T WILL be remembered 
that the third branch of 
reform which the Glad- 
stone Ministry had prom- 
ised, related to the Higher 
Education in Ireland. 
But before this part of the 
governmental scheme could be brought into 
form, an agitation had arisen on the whole 
question of education, particularly the pri- 
mary education, in England. It began to be 
recognized as a fact already known to educa- 
tors in other lands, that the elementary edu- 
cation in England was the poorest, most irreg- 
ular, and inefficient to be found in any of the 
Western nations above the grade of Italy and 
Spain. For fully a half century the German 
States and the United States of America had 
been far ahead of England in their systems of 
primary instruction. In England there was, 
indeed, no sydem at all. The children of the 
Dation received their instruction in schools 



which were supported in part by private gifts; 
in part, by endowments; in part, by govern- 
mental aid ; and, in a few instances, by local 
taxation. In all of the schools, religious, or 
rather sectarian, influences and interests had 
prevailed to the extent of working the greatest 
hardships and injustice to the children of all 
the Non-conformists of the Kingdom. The lat- 
ter had no rights under the law in schools 
which were not created and maintained by 
themselves. 

The general condition was such as to be a 
scandal, not only to Great Britain herself, 
but to the nineteenth century. It was on the 
17th of February that William JE. Forster, 
Vice-President of the Council on Education, 
brought into Parliament an Education Bill 
providing for a general system of public ele- 
mentary instruction. As might be expected 
in such a country as England, and among 
such a people as the English, the proposed 
measure looked, first of all, to the principli 



412 



UJ^lVESSAL HISTORY.— TBE. MODERN WORLD. 



«f compulfflon tn attendsDce at the public 
■choolB. Few things are pleasing to the 
British mind that have not in them the pre- 
dominating element of authority. The Fors- 
ter Bill provided that all cbildrea in England 
and Wales should, between the ages of five 
and twelve years, be compelled to attend the 
pablio district schools. The execution of this 



elauae was, however, left to the option of the 
School Boards of the respective districU ! that 
is, if in any place the Board should decide in 
favor of compulsion, that should be the rule. 
But if the decision should be against compul- 
sion, the attendance was to remain free, as 
before. 

The Bill contemplated the establishment 
Hid maintenance of a public free-school in 



every district. The funds for the support of 
the same were to be derived from three gen* 
eral scources; first, from a local tax, levied 
under the direction of the School Board for 
that district ; secondly, from direct grant oat 
of the treasury of the Kingdom ; and, thirdly, 
from such fees as were paid into local treasuries 
by persons not otherwise entitled to the privi- 
leges of the schools 
Id those districts. 
As to the existing 
system, it was pre- 
served as far as prac- 
ticable, and carried 
over under the new 
metiioda. It was 
not found expedient 
that all, or even % 
large -part, of the 
existing schools 
should be destroyed, 
but rather reorgan- 
ized under the new 
law.' 

As might have 
been anticipated, 
the greatest opposi- 
tion to the new sys- 
tem was made on 
account of its secular 
character. Ultra-re- 
ligionists of every 
shade and character 
took arms against a 
measure which, if 
successful, would 
break their own nai> 
row monopoly of 
the public schools. 
Church -ot- England 
men opposed the 
Forster Bill, bfr 
cause the State Es- 
tablishment might be injured by the secular 
ediicaUon of the people. Roman Catholics 



' Charles Dickens, of great memory, lived t» 
see the educationHl aptation which was now on, 
but not its consummation in the nfw statutory 
acts of the epoch. Doubtless, in his last days, 
his mind reverted with ever-increasing pleaanre 
to the reform which his genius and pen had sa 
powerfully contributed to bring about in the 
educational system of Great Britun. 



GREAT BBITAIN.—REFORMS OF THE EIQHIH DECADE 



413 



•ppoeed it, becausa Uie; rejected the principles 
(^ secular educatioD in Mo. The Noq-cod- 
formifltB also antagooized Oie measure, because 
Ibsy held it uojust that themselves should be 
taxed to educate the childreo of others in 
doctrines of religioa and society which they 
did Dot accept, miis, indeed, was a most seri- 
ous break which Foreter had to cooeider; for 
the Non-coDformists represented in Parliament 
were the adhereats of the 
Gladstone Uinistry, and 
their votes might, ere* 
long, be necessary for the 
maintenance of thitt Min* 
istry in power. Bo great 
was the oppoution to the 
measure that the Bill was 
more than once saved 
from defeat by the aid of 
«ertab CoDserratives who 
had the same interest in 
the cauae of education, 
and were as much devoted 
thereto, as the Liberals 
themselves. The Bill 
was finally adapted, and 
tt was not long until the 
benefits of the new sys- 
tem were so manifest that 
the voice of carping and 
prejudice was stilled fyf 
«ver. 

Cii;cumstanceB bad 
meanwhile supervened 
which induced the Min- 
istry to continue the edu- 
cational reform in Eug- 
laud before attempting 
the solution of the Irish 
educationalproblem. The 
next measure unitertakeii 
was embodied in the so- 
-called University Tests Bill, and was directed 
to the correction of abuses existlnE: nt Ox- 
ford and Cambridge. It is an instructive 
lesson to study the origin and development, 
the priociples and methods, of the two great 
English Universities. Noting the difference 
between the spirit and organic law which 
prevailed in these institutions from the later 
Middle Ages down to a time within the 
iiemory of men still living, and the spirit and 



organic law which ought to prevail at any 
university of liberal learning in any civilized 
age or country, we can but be impressed with 
^e amazing progress in the direction of lib- 
erty and the emancipation of man which our 
most recent period has exhibited. Why it k 
that universities show a natural tendency t* 
become the last hold of conservatism and big- 
otiy; why it is that liberalism, freedooa. 



emancipation, all the concomitants of the teal 
prngress of mankind, receive as a rule so cold a 
reception in the halls of the higher learning; 
why it is that all narrowness and littleness 
find there a warm accord; why it is that the 
Past is there enthroned and the Future ever 
expelled ; why it is that the birds of ill-omMi, 
the owls of semi -barbarism, and all the deni- 
zens of the night take refuge and hatch thell 
young under the eaves and roots of anoieBl 



414 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



mivenities, — are questionB which require much 
philosophy and not a little equanimity, on the 
part of the modern inquirer, to iiolve. 

▲t Oxford and Cambridge the abuses of 
medisBval darkness were strongly intrenched* 
Until a recent day, dissenters in religion were 
• excluded from the advantages of those vener- 
able institutions. Only the elect of the Es- 
tablished Church might gather there the 
treasures of classical learning, the wealth of 
scientific principles, the lore of philosophy, the 
honeyed sweets of Hymettus. It remained 
for the Gladstone Ministry to break down the 
middle wall of partition, and to admit all 
Englishmen on terms of equality and justice, 
mot only to the advantages of learning af- 
forded at Oxford and Cambridge, but alsa to 
the honors which those institutions had te 
eonfer and the ambitions which they had to 
inspire. It is a fact worthy of note that the 
Bill by which the ancient restrictions were 
removed and«the law of free competition sub- 
stituted therefor, was three timei passed by the 
House of Commons before it was finally ac- 
cepted, with many grimaces and expressions 
of discontent, by the House of Lords. There 
sat the Bishops of the Established Church, 
last to yield to the pressure of humanity, 
last to accept the generous principles of a 
larger liberty. 

Before considering the attempt of the 
Government in 1873 to reform the Irish (Jni- 
Tersity system, we may well note a few of the 
leading measures which had, in the meantime, 
occupied the attention of Parliament and the 
country. First of these was the Ballot Bill, 
introduced into the House of Commons by 
Forster, in February of 1871. Hitherto, the 
method of voting at the polls in Great Britain 
had been viva voce. Each elector was required 
to speak aloud at the voting-place his choice 
of men and measures. It may be seen at a 
glance how many and serious are the objec- 
tions to such a system. If society were of a 
uniform consistency throughout; if it were or- 
ganized on truly republican principles, so that 
every elector might stand on terms of perfect 
•quality with every other; if, in other words, 
the under man had as little cause to fear the 
upper man as the upper man has to fear him, — 
then the method of open voting might be 
preferable to the secret ballot. It may be said 



in favor of the former system, that in a 
country it is a positive stimulus to independ- 
ence of political character, that the v^ter be 
required to go openly to the polls and declare 
his choice aloud in the hearing of wit- 
nesses. It is not unlikely that, in couxBe 
•of time, society will return to this method, be> 
cause of its independent and man-making^ 
character. Of a certfiinty, no citizen of a free 
government ought to be under the slightest 
constraint in the matter of publicly dedarin^ 
his preference at the polls. The right to do 
this is, indeed, the very essence of civil libertj. 
But, practically, the question has to be con- 
sidered in relation to the existing condition of 
society. Even in the United States such a 
social system has supervened as to make it 
dangerous for the under man openly to declare 
his choice. In Great Britain, where the social 
stratification is more universal and obdurate, 
the danger of voting viva voce is correspond* 
ingly aggravated. We have already seen how 
the Cliartists fixed upon the secret ballot a8 
one of the six articles of the People's Charter. 
From the time of the Chartist agitation down 
to the epoch which we are here considering, 
the question of the ballot had never ceased te 
be revived by the Radicals in the House of 
Commons. Nor had the common people ever 
relinquished the hope that the safeguard of 
secret voting would, at length, be conceded te 
them. In the Ballot Bill proposed by Forster, 
it was provided that hereafter, at each election, 
official voting papers should be prepared and 
distributed at the polling-places. The method 
of election was, that the voter should go to the 
polls where his registry was determined, and 
there deposit his secret vote in the box from 
which, at the close of the polls, the ballots 
were to be taken and counted by the proper 
officers. 

The reform contemplated in the measure 
was greater than might appear to an American 
reader, long accustomed to similar usages of 
the ballot-box in his own country. Many of 
the corruptions, intimidations, and abusee 
which had prevailed under the old system in 
Great Britain were abolished under the new. 
But the Bill was forced through Parliament 
against the strenuous opposition of the Con« 
servatives in the Commons and the still more 
unreasoning hostility of the Lords. It may be 



ORE AT BRITAIN.— REFORMS OF THE EIGHTH DECADE. 



415 



noted that in the debates attendant upon the 
passage of the Act, the question of extending 
the ballot to women was frequently advocated, 
and was bj no means regarded as so dangerous 
an innovation as the same measure has been 
reckoned to be by Conservatives in America. 

Still another project, which was carried out 
imder the auspices of the Gladstone Govern- 
ment, was the reformation of the British army. 
In that department of the public service, as 
in every other, abuses had crept in and /had 
become so crystallized by long prevalence, that 
their eradication seemed almost impossible. 
This was especially true with respect to the 
manner of obtaining commissions in the army. 
These, instead of being the reward of a mili- 
tary education or of valor in the field, were 
purchased by (hose who were able to pay the 
price, and the usage had so long prevailed 
that the transaction had come to be regarded 
as other business methods of the public market. 
The British officer purchased his commission. 
He held it as long as he chose, subject, of 
course, to the discipline of the army, and then 
sold his rank to some other aspirant, who, 
henceforth took his place in the service. 

It is to the credit of the British Govern- 
ment that this crying abuse did not originate 
in an Act of Parliament, but in a Royal war^ 
rant, wherein the privilege of purchasing com- 
missions was granted by the sovereign. It is 
needless to say to how great an extent merit 
was discouraged and demerit promoted under 
such a system. It was determined by the 
Liberal Ministry that the practice of purchas- 
ing commissions should cease. In the summer 
of 1871 a Bill for the Reorganization of the 
Army was introduced by Cardwell, Secretary 
of War, and, afler a hot debate. Was adopted 
on the 3d of July in that year. The House 
of Lords, however, taking advantage of the 
fact that the session was near its close, refused 
to concur, and the Government suddenly found 
Itself balked in the work of reform. It re- 
mained for Gladstone, however, to discover a 
way through the embarrassment, and at the 
same time to set the ministerial foot with some 
emphasis on the recusant House of Lords. 
He boldly declared that the sovereign, under 
direction of the Government should, of her own 
prerogative, cancel the Royal warrant on which 
the abuses in the army were dependent. This 



was accordingly done; but the daring procedure 
on the part of the Ministry created great ex- 
citement, and, on the whole, tended to wea&en 
the hold of the Prime Minister even on his 
own followers in Parliament. 

We have now arrived at that period in 
recent English history when the Alabama 
Claims, held and urged by the Government 
of the United States against Great Britain, 
were brought to settlement before the Geneva 
Tribunal. An account of the proceedings 
before this august court, and the judgment 
given thereby against Great Britain, haa 
already been presented. At the same time, 
England was shaken by the throes >f Gonti* 
nental Europe. Now it was that the Emperor 
Napoleon IH. entered upon the last rash act 
of his astonishing career. He declared war 
against Prussia for a cause which posterity 
must ever hold ridiculous. His armies wer# 
defeated, and his Empire went down witk 
himself amid the fire and smoke from the 
crater of Sedan. Nominally a prisoner for a 
brief season at Wilhdmshohe, he soon left the 
land of his captivity and repaired to England. 
There, with the dethroned Empress and hia 
son, the Prince. Imperial, he took up his resi- 
dence at Chiselhurst, where, on the 9th of 
January, 1873, he died, being in the sixty* 
fifth year of his age. 

Resuming the broken narrative of the Edu- 
cational Reform in Qreat Britain, we come to 
consider the effort made by the Gladstone 
Ministry, in 1873, for the passage of the Irish 
University Bill. At the opening of Parlia- 
ment the Queen had indicated in her speech 
the importance of the subject to whicl: the 
attention of the two Houses was to be directed. 
The measure proposed was the work of Glad- 
stone, and upon that statesman devolved the 
duty of defending the plan which he had 
devised for the betterment of the Higher Edu- 
cation in Ireland. That country, like Eugland, 
had two principal universities. The first was 
the University of Dublin, old and well estab- 
lished, thoroughly interwoven in all its laws, 
usages, and management with the Church of 
England, or rather, the Episcopal Church in 
Ireland, of which it constituted the educational 
expression. As a matter of course, the Cath- 
olics were excluded from its benefits. This is 
to say that Dublin University was open to the 



416 



UNIVERSAL HIBTORY.—THE MODERN WORLD. 



elect one-fifth of the Irish people — the fifth 
composed in large measure of Englishmen and 
their immediate descendants — while to the 
other four-fifths all of its fountains were sealed. 
The second institution was the comparatively 
recent Queen's University, an account of the 
founding of which has been given already. 
This university was a strictly secular establish* 
ment; and in that system of government, also, 
the Catholics had neither part nor lot. In a 
word, the university privileges of Ireland, 
with the exception of those furnished by a 
small Catholic University, established and 
supported by themselves, were totally denied 
to the Irish Catholics in their own country. 
The Catholic youth might indeed enter the 
Queen's University; but that institution was 
conducted on principles which no Catholic 
could accept without breaking with his Church, 
and such a course could not rationally be ex* 
pected of a people so ardently devoted to the 
interests of their own religion. 

The Bill proposed by Gladstone must, if 
possible, meet the contradictory conditions ex* 
isting among the Irish people. The project 
was one of extreme difficulty. The Glad- 
stonian idea was to remove from Dublin Uni- 
versity its denominational character, and at the 
same time to make it central and paramount 
to all the other colleges in the Island. Dublin 
was to be the center and sun of the system. 
This made necessary the removal from the in- 
itituti n '^f the Faculty of Theology; for it 
was absurd to suppose that the young men of 
Ireland could pass the ordeal of that body of 
instruction. In the next place, it was neces- 
•ar to strike from the curriculum such 
departments of inquiry as Moral Philosophy 
and Modem History; for it could not be 
hoped that any professor in the world was 
sufficiently adroit to give instruction in that 
system of ethics which was deduced from 
theological dogmas, without putting at naught 
both the facts of psychology and violating 
everv sentiment of those to whom he should 
address his instruction. The general result 
therefore was, that Dublin University, though 
indicated as the center of the Irish system, 
was to be considerably reduced in the extent 
and variety of its curriculum. Such a measure 
could but offend, not only the University 
itself, but the whole Episcopalian system of 



which it was a part The event soon showed 
that the smaller institutions, some for one 
reason, and some for another, were in like 
manner offended; for where is the university 
or college which, under the inspiration of local- 
ism, is not fain to regard itself as supreme? 
Where is the college which voluntarily enters 
into a system where its own place b that of 
perpetual subordination 7 

We may not here enter into all that wae 
said in the great debates between the Liberah 
and the Conservatives relative to the Irish Uni- 
versity Bill. It had been noted already that 
the Gladstone Minbtry was losing its hold 
upon Parliament and the country. Occasional 
elections for filling Parliamentary vacancies 
had told against the Government Here and 
there the Conservatives gained a member. 
The Opposition, under the leadership of 
Disraeli, began to dbplay unusual spirit 
There were dissensions in the Ministry itself^ 
and the mbtakes, which not a few had been 
made by the dominant party during the last 
four years, were skillfully paraded by the 
Conservative orators. Perhaps, moreover, 
there was something in that political restless- 
ness which, in all free or semi-free countries, 
so frequently displays itself in the change of 
leaders for tne mere sake of changing. In the 
present instance, it can not be doubted that 
England had been constantiy agitated since 
the accession of Gladstone to power, and now 
the country was tired of agitanon. It waa 
clear to the Minbters themselves that theii 
days in office were numbered. When the 
Irish University Bill was put on its second 
reading in Parliament, it was defeated by a 
majority of three votes. The majority was, of 
course, composed of the Conservatives, the 
Radical Irish party, and other disaffected 
Liberals. The Gladstone Minbters resigned 
their offices, and the Queen called Dbraeli to 
form a new Cabinet The latter declined the 
service, for the reason that it was not clear to 
him that he could command a majority in the 
House of Commons. The Gladstonians were 
accordingly recalled to office. The Cabinet 
was reconstructed, and the Government dragged 
on feebly for a season. 

This method, however, was not to the 
liking of the Prime Minister. He determined 
to regain all or to lose all by dissolving Par> 



GREAT BRITAIN.— REFORMS OF THE EIGHTH DECADE, 



417 



liament and appealing to the people. The 
• announcement of this determination Tvas a 
complete surprise. The elections Tvhich en- 
sued were hardly begun until it was clear that 
a great political relUstion had taken place 
throughout the country. The bottom motive 
in it all was simply the English fear that the 
car of Beform propelled by the Liberal party 
was pushed too fast and too far. That polit- 
ical timidity for which the British Nation has 
heeti proverbial since its emergence from the 
Middle Ages, again prevailed to check the 
progress of those salutary movements which 
had marked the history of the last six years. 
The Liberals were defeated at the polls, and 
the Conservatives came back to the House of 
Commons with a majority of fifty members. 
The Gladstone Ministry now made haste to 
retire, and Disraeli was at once installed as 
Prime Minister. Thus, in the spring of 1874, 
that extraordinary and eccentric personage, 
that genius born of an Oriental race in the 
foggy island of Britain, was for the last time 
placed in one of the proudest political posi- 
tions to which the statesmen of modern times 
may aspire. The Cabinet which he constructed 
was one of great ability. Lord Cairns was 
made Chancellor; Lord Derby, Secretary of 
Foreign Affairs ; Lord Salisbury, Secretary for 
India; Lord Carnarvon, Secretary for the Col- 
onies ; Mr. Cross, Secretary for Home Affairs ; 
Mr. Hardy, Secretary of War ; Mr. Hunt, Sec- 
retary of the Admiralty ; Sir Stafford North- 
cote, Chancellor of the Exchequer. As for 
Gladstone, he virtually retired from sigbt, 
coming into the House of Commons only at 
intervals, and speaking little on the questions 
proposed by the new Government. The 
lately triumphant Liberals went into a polit- 
ical eclipse, which, in the course of the next 
three years, threatened to be total, if not per- 
petual. 

For a season after the accession of the Con- 
servative Ministry, no striking display of force 
was seen under the new political order. One 
of the first contests in Parliament was over a 
measure introduced into the House of Lords 
by the Archbishop of Canterbury for the Reg- 
ulation if Public Worship. We have already 
had occasion to refer to the ecclesiastical move- 
ment, which had been observed in the Episco- 
pal Establishment towards the Church of 



flome. The impulse in this direction had had 
its origin in the extreme High Churchbm of the 
University of Oxford. As a result, an excess 
of Ritualism had appeared in many of the 
first churches in the Kingdom^ insomuch that 
the difference between the Episcopal worship 
therein and the ceremonies in the Catholic 
cathedrals consisted chiefly in the distinction. 
But not all, not even a majority, of the 
Churchmen of the Establishment followed in 
the wake of this movement Many held 
back, prefen*ing the simpler and severer forma 
of worship which had been handed down from 
the reign of Edward VL As a result, there 
came to pass great and perplexing diversities 
in the religious manners and doctrines of the 
people — this inside of the Established Church, 
The existing ecclesiastical law was not suffi* 
cient to prevent the divergences of practice 
and belief, and an appeal was made to the civil 
law to regulate what the Church Courts could 
no longer control. A spirited debate ensued 
on the Archbishop of Canterbury's Bill, and 
the measure was at length forced through 
Parliament by the dominant party. But it 
was soon discovered that, so far from accom- 
plishing the expected results, so far from 
bringing the methods of worship and doctrine 
to a common standard, the Act proved to be 
a mere nullity, standing in the statute as the 
expression of a wish and purpose rather than 
as a vital energy. 

The next governmental measure which 
demanded the attention of Parliament was a 
bill for the protection of them that go down 
to the sea in ships. It had come to the atten- 
tion of the public that a large part of the 
vast merchant marine of Great Britain was 
unseaworthy — unsafe as a vehicle of commerce 
and passage. The existing laws on the subject 
were imperfect, ineffective. Indeed, the cur- 
rent legislation was of a character to aggra- 
vate the abuse; for the laws of insurance 
provoked and perpetuated the evil. The ship- 
owners little cared to bear the expense of 
marine improvements and of such outlays as 
were requisite to keep their ships in repair, 
for the reason that they were well insured, 
and, in hundreds of instances, it was actually 
profitable to the owners that their vessels 
should go to the bottom of the sea. But this 
method of security and ^in involved the loss 



418 VSIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 

of valuable merchandise and rUU more valu- 1 second circumstance vas the existence of the 
able human lives. The agitation against the British Eobt Indian Empire, and the relations 
xistinj; abu^e was led l>y Mr. I'linisull, a|of that vast country and of those multitudi- 



lihilaiLthropio memlwr of the House of Ci 
nions, and after tiery and angry delmtes, ex* 
tending to midsummer, a bill was finally 
|ms.<ed for the belter protection of Englitih 
F-euinea and English commerce. 

With the year 1875 there came into modern 
Ilritish history a new condition, which may be 



populations with the Uuseian Power. A« 
far hack as the days of Lord Clive, more par- 
ticularly as long ago as the times of Warren 
Hastings, the British mind perceived certain 
gorgeous outlines, certain splendid cumali in 
the Oriental heavens, under the shadow of 
which the existing social and political senti- 



defined aa Imperialism. The appearance of j ments of Great Britain were somewhat modi- 
such a fact in the midst of a democratic age tied. In the third place, we may refer the 
and a people politically progresigiveoiay beac-| half-formed Imperialist concepts of these days 

to the Prime Uinjster of 
England. Disraeli was un- 
doubtedly one of the most 
gorgeous and spectacular of 
modern statesmen. Him- 
self of Eastern descent, his 
mind naturally inclined to 
the vast and splendid, not 
to say the factitious, in 
national character. Few 
men of the century have 
cherished and followed 
vaster and higher ambitions 
than he. Soon after his ac- 
cession to power, it became 
evident that his dreams were 
of many colors, and of a 
foreign cast. One of the 
striking manifestations of 
this disposition came to the 
surface at the opening of 
Parliament in 1878. The 
Prime Minister announced 
that the Queen of Eng- 

VICTOHIA, EMPRESS OF INDIA. , , _ „, . .„ „jj i. 

land was about to add to 

her royal titles that of 

counted for by three circunistanccs. The first j Empress of India. The proposition was 

of these was that ever-reviving Eastern Ques- strongly opposed by many of the Liberals, and 

tion, by which the attention of England was I was, perhaps, distasteful to a majority of the 



drawn away from the Home Islands, and from 

Western Europe, to the countries of the Ei 

to Egypt, to Crete, to Greece, and t" the Otto- 



English people. The pressure from without 

was, in this respect, so emphatic that the Min- 

try agreed that the new honor and title 



man Empire. Familiarity with the course should not be employed in the Home King- 
of events in those far lands brousl't of net-es- ' dom of Great Britain, but only abroad ; that 
sity, out of the Levant, a certain modicum of is, in India itself. There were many statesmen 
Eastern ideas, which, though theyraightneverjso stout in their English preferences as to , 
grow ill Englishsoil, were nevertheless planted argue that the Imperial diadem of the Indies, 
therein political conservatories, and looked on ' made new, so to speak, for the occasion, was 
withsoraewonderasinteresting exotics. The j no addition to the crown of Alfred and the 



GREAT BRITAIN.— REFORMS OF TUB EIGHTS DECADE. 



419 



Conqueror, of Plautagenet and Tudor. But 
the splendor-loying Prime Minister had ^is 
way, and Victoria reigned as Empress of 
India. 

It is in evidence that the Queen of Eng- 
land greatly admired, and honored the remark- 
able personageat the head of her Government. 
We may not assume that this admiration was 
personal, or that it was 
even a reciprocal senti- 
ment for the Prime Min- 
ister's loyalty and devo- 
tion to herself. The 
daughter of the Duke 
of Kent has never been 
sentimental. Her Ger- 
man descent and English 
education, as well as the 
traditions of the English 
crown, have conspired to 
make and to keep her 
one of the most practical 
of great women. Hec 
admiration for Disraeli 
rested rather upon that 
strong conservatism- 
which he displayed in 
politics and his fidelity 
to the royal and aristo- 
-cratic order in Great 
Britain. To these ele- 
ments of English nation- 
ality none was more 
faithful than he. 

It was natural under 
these conditions that the 
Queen should devise 
somedistinguishedhonor 
for the man who had 
served her Government 
so long and well. If the 
honor were ever to come, 
the time was at hand to 
confer it. Disraeli was 
already in his seventy-first year. At that 
age a statesman can hardly be blamed for 
looking back upon the hard-fought battle 
of life, and for considering the expediency 
of a brief day of rest ere the curtain fall. 
In such a condition of affairs an English 
leader naturally looks to the peerage. Al- 
ready, in 186S, the Queen had signified her 



desire to make Disraeli a Peer of the realm. 
But at that date he did not feel that the time 
had come for his retirement from that great 
arena, the House of Commons. He accord- 
ingly declined the honor for himself, but ac- 
cepted for his wife the title and dignity of 
Viscountess of Beaconsfield. In 1870 the con- 
ditions were altered. On the 11th of Au- 




gust in that summer, being then in the full 
tide of his power and renown, he made his 
last speech in the House of Commons, and it 
has been noted that the closing words of the 
speech were "the existence of that Empire." 
On the following morning it was announced 
throughout England that Benjamin Disraeli 
had been created a Peer under the title of 



420 



VM VERSA L HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



the Earl of Beacon.sBeld ; nor was the houor ]e88 
distiuguished for the fact that it odce had 
been tendered to £<lmund Burke, and by hiin 
declined. 

The American reader will not understand 
that such a change of relation as that through 
which Lord Beaconsfield parsed in 1876 im- 
plies the disappearance of the actor from pub- 
lic life. It means in England that his active 
career in Parliament, more particularly in 
the House of Commons, is at an end. In the 
case of Beaconsfield, he was destined yet to 
appear in one of the most dramatic s|)ectacle8 
of the last quarter of the nineteenth century; 
namely, in the Congress of Berlin. We shall 
not in this place, but rather in a sul)8equent 
chapter, narrate the revival of the Eastern 
Question in European politics, the war be- 
tween Turkey on the one side and Servia and 
Montenegro, inspired by Russia, on the other; 
the conference at Constantinople ; the progress 
and incidents of the Turco-Russian War; the 
issue of that conflict; and, finally, the assembly 
and deliberations of the International Ambas- 
sadors at Berlin, in July of 1878. All these 
matters belong rather to the recent history of 
Eastern Euro{)e than to the annals of Great 
Britain. It is sufficient in this connection to 
record the fact that the interests and reputa- 
tion of England were sustained in the Con- 
gress of Berlin by the Earl of Beaconsfield in 
a manner most satisfactory to the nation. The 
British public saw with delight her represent- 
ative standing in that great conference face 
to face with Prince Bismarck, his equal in in- 
tellect and almost his equal as a diplomatist. 

We here draw near the close of the chapter 
covering the most recent events in English 
history. It only remains to present an outline 
of a few additional movements to bring the 
narrative to a close. It is exceedingly difficult 
to give a true historical estimate of those tend- 
encies and aspects of society lying immedi- 
ately under our own observation. In such a 
case, perspective is wanting, and the mind of 
the writer is unconsciously swayed by the 
dominant temper and passion of the day. On 
the Parliamentary side, the greatest by far of 
all the more recent agibitions in England is 
that suggested by the words Home Rule. 
The expression was not new. Ever since the 
union of Ireland with England at the begin- 



ning of tiie present century, an occasional 
demand had been made for the creation of an 
Irish Parliament, as a means of dissipating the 
chronic discontent of the people of that Island. 
It was believed by a small body of publie 
men, that, without any general disturbance of 
the so-called Imperial system by which Great 
Britain and Ireland were held in union, a 
Parliamentary body might be properly per- 
mitted in the latter country, having jurisdic- 
tion and prerogative in all matters of local 
legislation. This would signify, in a word, 
that the vexed and vexing question which had 
so much disturbed the Great Parliament with 
respect to the affairs of Ireland might be re- 
manded constitutionally to an Irish House or 
Commons, for satisfactorv settlement 

As early as 1868, Disraeli himself, in a 
canvass of the country, had spoken of an agi- 
tation at that time appearing in Ireland for 
the measure afterwards known as Home Rule. 
An Irish political organization already had 
been effected under the name of the Home- 
Rule League for the promotion of this cause. 
During the eighth decade which followed, and 
running beneath the events narrated in the 
preceding pages, was this new form of agitation. 
At length the parties in England began to con* 
sider the question, and to divide on the new- 
issue presented in Irish politics. Meanwhile the- 
Government got on its hands two petty African 
wars, an account of which will be given pres- 
ently. The great conflict between Turkey and 
Russia came and went In 1877 a period of 
business depression came, to be followed with 
that inevitable distress and discontent amou^ 
the common people which always train after 
commercial panics and collapses. The winter 
of 1878 was one of great severity. There ia- 
one fact in modern society which, perhaps, 
fortunately for the worlfl, political parties can 
not explain away. No lie, however adroit, 
can make a hungry man believe that he i» 
full. No loud-mouthed professions of devotion 
to the cause of the suffering on the part of a 
dominant faction in Government can make 
the sufferers follow longer the banners of pre- 
tenders. It is for this obvious reason that the 
days of distress are always days of political 
revulsion. In 1878 and 1879 the poorer 
people of the kingdom, especially in Ireland, 
felt the pangs of hunger, and, resorting to the 



GREAT BRITAIN.— REFORMS OF THE EIGHTH DECADE, 



421 



sublime fallacy of pain, they laid the blame 
•f their condition on the Conservative Gov* 
emment. Many other circumstances, which 
may not be enumerated here, added to the 
popular discontent and the consequent weaken- 
ing of the Ministerial party. 

As to the Liberals, we have seen how com* 
plete and dispiriting was their downfall in 
1874. With the retirement of Gladstone no 
competent leader of the Opposition could be 
found, and the Liberal party went from bad 
to worse, until, in 1876 and 1877, it may be 
said to have reached the nadir. But jt is in 
the nature of political vicissitudes that the 
bottom point of decline is ihe point of re- 
action and revival. The Liberals emerged 
at the very time when the Conservatives, 
weighed down by the unfortunate condition 
of the oountryt began to sink. The Home 
Bole agitation lay like a bank of clouds 
aorofls 8t George's Channel. The time had 
oome; Gladstone suddenly loomed up from 
his retirement, where he had amused himself, 
in the meantime, with controversial essays 
against the Papacy, and challenged, not only 
the policy, but the existence of the Conserva- 
tive Government. He defied the Ministry 
and dared them to submit themselves and 
their measures to the people. The challenge 
was not at the first accepted. The Parliament 
was already nearing its Constitutional limita- 
tion. At length the Ministers were rather 
provoked and taunted into a dissolution and 
an appeal to the people* The same occurred 
in March of 1880, and the elections followed 
soon afterwards. As soon as the results be- 
gan to be declared, it was evident that one of 
the greatest political reactions ever ^nown in 
England had taken place. The Conservatives 
were routed. When the smoke cleared up, 
and the footings were made, the triumphant 
Liberals came out of the contest with a ma- 
jority of a hundred and twenty members, and 
the humiliation which they had suffered six 
years before was visited in double measure 
upon their opponents. 

At the first, it seemed that the shock had 
been felt as high as the Throne itself. The 
Queen, in so far as she was permitted under 
the English Constitution to have political 
sentiments, was heartily with the Conserva- 
tives, and it may not be doubted that she felt 



not only a woman's mortification, but a Queen's 
grief, at the Liberal triumph. Her feelings in 
this respect were still further wounded by the 
fact that Gladstone must again be called to the 
head of the Government. This result she was 
human enough to try to obviate. She first 
sent for Lord Hartington,and requested him 
to form a new Cabinet; but that nobleman was 
unwilling to assume a responsibility which he 
knew to belong to the great leader of the 
Liberals. The sovereign then called Lord 
Granville; but he also declined, for the same 
reason which had prevailed with Hartington* 
It only remained for the Queen to yield to the 
inevitable, and summon Gladstone again to 
power. This accordingly was done, and a new 
Ministry was constituted, into whose hands 
some of the most important issues of t)ie age 
were remanded at once for solution. 

But we may properly here turn aside from 
the stirring Parliamentary dramas about to be 
enacted, to present an outline of those two 
mimic African wars in which the British 
Government became involved during the as- 
cendency of Beaconsfield. The first of these was 
the Ashantee War. . The petty African king- 
dom of Ashantee lies on the interior of the 
Gold Coast, eastward from Liberia. It com* 
prises an area of about seventy thousand 
square miles, and a population of more than a 
million. The capital is Coomassie, at a con* 
siderable distance from the coast. Here the 
native monarch held hb court in a sort of 
barbaric splendor. The Ashantee Kingdom 
was organized on the basis of a military aris- 
tocracy. A number of petty lords had each 
his local court and government. Many of 
the usages of the Ashantees are repulsive 
to, the sentiments of Europeans. The prac*. 
tice of polygamy is universal, and the 
constitution of the kingdom assigns to the 
monarch an exact maximum of three thousand 
three hundred and thirty-three wives. The 
religion of the land demands human sacrifices, 
such offerings being made in the belief that 
the dead are in need of servants and attend* 
ants in the other world. • 

For a long time the Ashantees had held 
relations with the Dutch on the African coast. 
From them the kiug, by treaty, received an 
annual tribute in return for the advantages 
which the Dutch miners had in the country. 



GREAT BRITAIN.— REFORMS OF THE EIGHTH DECADE. 



428 



In orijer to understand the fatuatjon ve roust 
take into consideration also the Fantees, whose 
territory lay between Ashantee Land and the 
Gulf of Guinea. The Ashantees and the 
Fantees were kinsmen by race descent, and had 
been in alliance, but at length became estranged 
and hostile. The territories of the two States 
were divided by the river Prah, and across 
this stream warlike excursions were frequently 
made, the one people into the country of the 
other. On two or three former occasions the 
English bad been at war with the Ashantee 



Ashantees to terms, compelling the king to 
pay an indemnity of six thousand ounces of 
gold, and to give up his son as a hostage. A 
British protectorate was established over Fao- 
tee Land, and all the other petty dependeociea 
between the river Prah and the sea. In 1843 
the Crown of England assumed the govern- 
ment of this part of the coast, and from that 
time forth there was mutual suspicion aad 
mutual misunderstanding between the Eunn 
peana and the Ashantees. At length, iu 1S67, 
an arrangement was made between the Ea- 



' COOUAS8IK. 



nation, and in one conspicuous instance had 
sufiered a disastrous and humiliating defeat. 
On the 7th of August. 1826, Sir Chariea 
McCarthy, then in charge of British interests 
on the Gold Coast, fought a battle witJi the 
army of the Ashantee king, ten thousand 
strong, at Dudowah, was defpated by the ne- 
groes, and himself slain. Ouly about fifty 
men of the wliole force succeeded in reaching 
the English head-quarters in Fantee Land, 
which was the base of operations. 

Of course, Great Britain soon brought the 



glish and the Dutch, by which all the forts of 
the latter lying eastward of the Sweet River 
were surrendered to Great Britain, while al 
the English forts west of that river were given 
to the Dutch. By this transaction the king 
of Aehantee lost the annual stipend which 
had been paid to him for the rights of occu- 
pancy by the Dutch. As a conseqence, 
he justly claimed that the English, in tak- 
ing control in place of the Dutch, had as- 
sumed their obligations to himself. But thii 
claim was disallowed or neglected fay the 



424 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TSE MODERN WORLD. 



British authorities, and becaue the basis of 
hoetilitj. 

The immediate occasion of the outbreak of 
the war, however, was the act of one of the 
Ashantee chieftains, iu decoying four Euro- 
peans ioU) his tumn aud inakiug them prison- 
era. TTie British Governor demanded the sur- 
render of these captives, and tlie demand wns 



refused by the Ashantee king. Several otlier 
circumstances aggravated the diffinilly. The 
Fantees were in alliance with the Enplisli, or 
rather under their protection, and this fact wns 
a source of alarm and jealousy on the part of 
the king of Ashantee. His ill-feeling grew 
to such a pitch that, early In 1873, he took the 
hazardous step of crossing tiie Prah with nn 
vmy, thus invading the land of the Fantees, 



By this act he was brought into direct contact 
with the British, and the Home Government 
was constrained to send out an army to bring 
the refractory nation to submission. The com- 
mand of the expedition, which vrna sent out 
in the fall of 1873, was given to Sir Garnet 
WoJaeley, who reached the Gold Coast in the 
beginning of October, aud found an army of 
Ash a u tees, forty 
thousand strong, 
ready to oppose his 
progress. But if 
tbey bad been four 
hundred thousand 
strong they could 
hardly, by their 
half-savage methods 
of warfare, have 
stayed the Bcitiah 
invadon of their 
country. 

On the 20th of 
January, in the fol- 
lowing year, the 
English crossed the 
Prah, and entered 
Ashantee Land. 
They met and de- 
feated the native 
army in two or three 
battles, aud on the 
4th of February 
reached Coomaasie. 
The Ashantee king 
was now glad to 
make what terms be 
might with the con- 
queror. Every thing- 
must be done with 
the utmost haste. It 
was well known to 
r Sir Garnet that a 

month's delay in that 
region would be fatal to his army ; for tiie fevers 
and other maladies to which Europeans were 
subject in the African summer were far more 
fatal than the exigencies of battle. The 
Englisli commander accordingly exacted his 
terms in haste, and set out for the coa^it. 
Coomas^ie was burned. An indemnity ol 
fifty thouwind ounces of gold was agreed to 
by the king, and the latter was obliged to 



GREAT BSITAIK— REFORMS OF THE EIGHTH DECADE. 



tenouDce hU claims of sovereignty over the 
petty States which had hitherto been subject 
to him. He was also obliged to grant free- 
dom of trade between his capital and the 
coast, and to keep open the highway from 
Coomassie to the river Prah. Finally, he 
must agree to renounce and abolish the 
practice of human sacrifice. Sir Garnet 
Wolseley then retired from the country, and 
tbe expedition returned to England. 

More important by far was tbe war with 
the Zulus of South-eastern Africa. Zulu 



445 



as it is sometimes written. For a considerable 
period he had been on terms of friendship and 
intimacy with the English, but was in con- 
Btant difficulty with the Buers, or half-Dutch 
peoples of the adjacent Transvaal Republic. 
The same thing was true of other native tribes, 
some of whom were always at war with the 
Buers. It appears that the civil aflairs of the 
Transvaal were badly managed. When Sir 
TheopbiluB Shepstone was sent out as Got* 
ernor of the British colonies on this part of 
the Afriu..! coast he was led to believe that 



PONTOON BRinOK OVER T 



Land lies to the north of the colony of 
Natal. It has a sea-line of about a hundred 
and thirty miles, and includes among its 
population several important tribes. The coun- 
try is to a great extent aboriginal in both its 
people and productions. Tbe wild animals 
peculiar to the region represent several African 
types, such as the antelope, the rhinoceros, the 
hippopotamus, the bu&alo, aod the lion. The 
people are brave, warlike, energetic. At tbe 
time of the outbreak of the Zulu war, the king 
of the coL'Btry was Cetewayo, or Cetshwayo, 



the Boers desired to pass under the dominion 
of Gre^t Britain. He accordingly published a 
declaration to the effect that the Transvaal 
Bepublic had become a part of the British 
Dominion. It thus heppened that England, 
by an act of usurpation, inherited the quarreU 
and difiiculties of the Boers with their neigb- 
bors. The Zulus were greatly alarmed by the 
new aspect of affairs, and became suspicioua 
and jealous of everything done by the Euro- 
peans in their part of tbe country. 

One of the disputes between Zulu Lan4 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERS WORLD. 



u)d tte TraoBvaal Republic was with respect 
to ttf ownership of a small territory lying 
betwecD the two 6tat«s. The inatt«r was 
referred to the decisioD of British Coinmia- 
aioDers, wlio made the award in favor of the 
Zulus. But the new Britiah GoverDor, Sir 
Bartle Prere, refused or neglected to execute 
the lermfl of the settlement. Cetewayo was 
surprised and angered that the Eoglish author- 
ities, after having decided the question in his 
Aivor, should be guilty of what seemed to him — 
and to all the world — to be an act of bad 
faith. Hoetilitiee broke ouL The English 
Governor demanded that the Zulu army 
should be disorganized and di:<pereed. Cete- 
wayo refused to acquiesce, and the British 
forces began an invanion of the country of the 
Zulus. On the 22d of January, 1879, a 
severe battle waa 
fought and the 
English were ut- 
terly defeated. 
The disaster was 
humiliating in 
the last degree, 
and was, as a 
matter of course, 
soon retrieved. A 
new force under 
command of Lord 
Clielms ford, again 
iBOLBB o KB marched into Zu- 
lu Land, routed 
the i>arbarianB, captured the king, and brought 
the war to an end before the middle of autumn. 
The native monarthy waa abolished, and a 
civil government, known as the New Republic, 
was organized in its stead. As for the 
dethroned king, he was remanded to impris- 
onment, but the principal native chieftains, 
who had been bis subjects, were permitted to 
remain in local authority. 

One of the principal incidents of this petty 
and by no means honorable war, was the 
death, in one of the ekirmisbes with the Zulus, 
of the Prince Imperial of France. An account 
has already been given of the retirement of 
Napoleon III., wilh Eugenie and their son, 
to Chiselhurst, in England- There, for about 
seven years, the education of the Prince was 
conducted at the military school of Wool- 
wich Arsenal. After his graduation he 



would fain see actual warhre. The Prioco 
appears to have had in him much sentiment 
and romance. When the Zulu war broke out. 
several of his classmates were in the army of 
Lord Chelmsford, and the Prince, at his own 
earnest request, was assigned to a place on the 
General's sti^. In this relation be entered 
Zulu Laud, and exhibited during the campaign 
much military spirit. He waa asNgned, on » 
certain occasion, to the command of a recon* 
noitering party, having the duty of deter- 
mining the situation of afiairs about tweotf 
miles from camp. While on this expedition, 
his company was surrounded by* large foroo 
of Zulus, and in the effort to cut his waf 
through, the Prince was killed. His body- 
was taken back to England, and deposited- in 
the Memorial Chapel at Chiselhurst, beaide 
the sarcophagus of his father. 

The death of the Prince was a severe 
shock, almost a death-blow, to the hopes of the 
Bonapartiste of France, who had looked to the 
son of Napoleon HI. as the embodiment and 
impersonation of all Imperial expectations for 
the future. But the world at large was le^ 
concerned with the political effect of the 
Prince's death than with the shocking calamity 
which it brought to the beautiful but now 
widowed ex-Empress of the French. To her 
the loss of her son was the final stroke. 
Nothing in history — that is, in its merely per- 
sonal parts — is more melancholy and affecting 
than the spectacle of this lone woman, ftllen 
from glory, a widow in a foreign land, stripped 
of her Imperial diadem, her husband dethroned 
and dead, and now, at last, her promistng and 
gallant son cut down in the wild chaparral of 
South-eastern Africa, stabbed to death with 
twenty wounds, and hacked into mutilation 
with the as.'^igais of the Zulus. 

At the very time these events were occur- 
ring in South Africa, England found herself, 
again at war in Afghanistan. The utuatioa 
and relations of that country with respect to 
the British Ea»t Indian Empire have already 
been described. In every instance in which 
the Eastern Question, by disturbing the 
peace of Europe, has brought the ominous 
name of Russia to the attention of the 
Western Powers, Great Britain has taken the 
alarm with respect to her Indian frontier on 
the side of Afghanistan. The latter country 



GREAT BRITAIN^.— REFORMS OF THE EIGHTH DECADE. 



427 



bu seemed to Rumia to constitute a sort of 
■outh-easteru passage into lodia, just as the 
fiosphorus has constituted the south-western 
passage into the countries of Southern Europe. 
The gravitation of the Busslaa Empire has 
pressed in both directions, bearing alike on the 
PuDJaub and the Ottoman dominions. Id both 
directions the preasure had been distressing — 
M &r aa any physical force may be said to be 



before. The conflict with Turkey seemed to 
imply another Auglo- Russian war, and the ex- 
pectation of such an event was for a vhile rite 
in Great Britain. 

It could not well be doubted that, in csm 
of the outbreak of hostilities between England 
and Russia, the armies of the Czar would pour 
down by way of Persia, through Cabul or the 
passes of the Hindu Kush, and precipitate 



HIKDU KDBH UOUNTAINa. 



dietresBing — to Great Britain. For about fifty 
years she has suffered alarm and dread oa ac- 
count of her exposure in this direction. It 
was so on the occasion of the difficuilies wtooh 
culminated in the Turco-Russian War. The 
aggressions of Russia brought to Engl anil 
■erious apprehensions that the settlement whioh 
fbllowed the Crimean invasion of 1855 would 
Wve to be reviewed bv the same methods as 



themselves on India. It was therefore of great 
hypothetical importance to the British Gov- 
ernment to hold Cabul as an outpost and de- 
pendency against Russian aggression. It will 
be remembered that after the overthrow of 
Dost Mohammed, the government of Cabul 
finally went to his son, called Shere Ali. It 
was now deemed of importance that an En- 
glisli mission and embassy should be estate 



428 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



Bdied at tbe court of 8h«r« Ali, bo that the 
dome GoveromeDt might be coustautljr id- 
foraaed of tbe movements of Russia in that 
remote regiou, and more generally that tbe in- 
fluence of Great Briiain might he and renuun 
paramouut iu Afghani^taD. 

To thie end it was arranged that an expe- 
<Ution in tbe character of a peacable embatw;, 



Peshawur, in September of 1878, and came 
to the frontier lines dividing Afghanistan iix>in 
India. Here they were met by messeogera 
from Sbere Ali, interdicting tbe further ad- 
vance. Since the British Embaaey came in k 
peaceable character, the forbidding of ita pro- 
gress into Cabul was easily construed into an 
insult and act of hottility, Aa a matter of fiuC, 



SHERE ALL 



but really bearing with it the potency of war, 
should be despatched from India to Cabul. It 
was known that the Russian Government bad 
either sent or was about to send an ambassa- 
dor of its own to the court of Shere Ali, and 
the English were determined not to be behind 
in establishing their mission at tbe same place, 
de expedition accordingly set out from 



tbe expediti 



lition at ODce took the character of 
and the movement, supported by 
military force, continued until Cabul was again 
occupied by British soldiers. Another divi^ 
ion of tbe army took possession of Candahar, 
and tbe Government was soon in condition ta 
dictate lis own terms of settlement. 

At this juncture Shere Alt died, and mm 



GREAT BRITAIS.—REBORMS OF THE EIGHTH DECADE 



■Dooeedad by his son, Yakoob Kban. The 
latter made haste to confer with the Britieh 
authorities, and at a pUce called Qandamak 
• new treaty was made and ngned, on the 5th 
of May, 1879. It was agreed that the Ameer 
Aoold graot DAW boundary-liqes for British 



should support that country against all foreign 
enemies. The egt&bKshment of the English 
misuoa at Cabul was also granted by th« 
Ameer, and Sir I^ewis Cavagnari becamn tbe 
representaUre of England at the Court of 
Yalcoob Khan. Everything seemed to have 



HAZARAH, FEO« NOSTHERN HIOHLANDS-AFOHAN WASRIOB. 



ludb, and that be should be compensated for 
the cession by die payment from the treasury 
ti British India of sixty thoosand pounds. It 
was also agreed that, for tbe concessions thus 
gained by Great Britain, she should hereafter 
regard Cabul as under her protectorate, and 



turned out in perfect accord with the plans aid 
purposes of Great Britain.- 

Scarcely, however, had the English Em- 
bassy been planted in Cabul until a revolt 
broke out, very similar to that which bad haj^ 
pened in the case of Sir Alexander Bnmw, fal 



430 UMVEHSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 

the dftya of Dost Mohainmed. The Engliib I ghaniitan to quell the iiiBurrectioD. The £■- 
t^rueiitativM aud other officers in Cabul I glish foroei a aecood time fought their war 

without Mi-ioui resiBtmnce 
to Cabul, which was en- 
tered and taken on the 
24th of December, 1879. 
Yakoob £han was, of 
couree, depoeed, made 
prisoner, and sent U> In- 
dia to await his trial on a 
charge of perfidjr and 
tnaasacre. Tbe rebellion 
waa completely aup- 
preased, aod Britiafa gai^ 
risone wen eatablished in 
the country to hold, as if 
it were an outpoat, tbe 
conquered province of 
CabuL 

It was Boon perceived, 
however, that the enbjn- 
gation was only real in tbe 
□ear neighborbood of tke 
garrison. The renuundflr 
of the people were t«- 
strained from bostJIitr 
only so far aa tbe danger 
of puniahment was felt. 
The questioQ thusarisiDg 
from the occupation of 
Afghanistan, and tbe prtH 
posed establishment of • 
Dew frontier-line for Bri^ 
ish India on that aide, 
— - ~^^ were transmitted by tha 

Government under Die- 
were attacked by tbe insurgents and munlered. I raeli to the Liberals under Gladstone; and tbe 
The atnicity was in every respect shocliiiig, and | i^8ues arisiug from tbe controversy have not, to 
another British army had tii be gent into Af- i tlie present day, been satisfactoFily adjusted. . 



CHAHTER CX,XX1V-— battle KOR HOlsdE RULS., 




ITH the opening of the 
Parlinnietilary wssi<m of 
1881 bejran the last (Treat 
contest with which the re- 
cent history of Kiiiilnml is 
concerned respecliiig ihe 

dition of Ireland, The Home Rule party, as 



a party, now made its formal apparition ia 
the H<iuse ot Commons. On moat questiona 
of nntionii) policy the new party was in nat* 
Ural sympathy with the Liberal Ministry, and 
on tbe Irish question the Liberals were in nat> 
iirnl sympathy with the new patty; but tbe 
vicis.«itude» of politics destroyed, or revereed. 
these natural relations. Tbe Home Balers 



GREAT BRITAIN.— BATTLE FOR HOME RULE. 



431 



men brought aronnd to the side of the Cod- 
aervativea in opposition to the GoverniueDt, 
and the Gladstone Ministry had to content 
itself with Liberal support only. At the head 
of the Home Rule party appeared a new leader 
in the person of Charles Stewart Parnell. The 
tody of his following was made up exclusively of 
irishmen, many of them poor men and of small 
reputation in the 
political world, 
while a few, such 
■s the hiatoriau 
McCarthy and 
Mr. Shaw, were 
already leadeie 
of note and in- 
fluence. All, 
however, were • 
profiiundly de- 
voted to the 
cause of Ireland, 
and to this cause 
every other prin- 
ciple, every 
other policy, was 
made subserv- 
ient. 

Id the Got- 
oniment, that is, 
in the Ministry, 
the Home Rulen 
had no part or 
lot. At the first 
their faction was, 
as much as pos- 
sible, ignored by 
both the domi- 
nant parties, but 
this method of 
dealing with the 
men of one ides 
eoon had to be 
abandoned. A 
^tat« of affairs 

had now supervened in Ireland which could no 
longer be put aside or hidden under the cloaks 
of tbe Ministry. Suffering had come — want, 
distress, passion, rebellion, hatred, every specter 
thatarisesattheconjurationof tyranny, around 
the huts of the lowly. The celebrated Land 
lieague was formed, having for its object the 
«lleviation of the hardships of the Irish ten- 



antry, without much regard to the existing 
laws. Crime began to express the prevailiug 
sense of the people. Outrages were done to 
life and property, and the Oovemment was 
obliged, by the mere stress of the existing con- 
ditions, to take np the difficulties of Ireland, 
to present therefor some sort of remedy. 
In January, 1861,it was thought necessary to 



pass a Coercion Bill against the Irish tenants 
and members of the League, whose lawless, 
or at least unlawful, proceedings took con- 
stantly a bolder form. Tbe measure proposed 
was, in its leading principle, a. suspension 
of the'fia6ea« Gorput, permitting the officers, 
in any district designated by the Lord-Lieu- 
tenant, to arrest and imprison without judicial 



4S2 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.'-THE MODERN WORLD. 



prooeflB the disturbers of the peace. At the 
same time a new Land Bill was announced, 
which was merely an extension and amend- 
ment of the Act of 1870, by which the ten- 
ant-right of Ulster had been made the standard 
for the whole of Ireland. With the intro- 
duction of these measures into Parliament, 
the Home Rulers adopted the policy of Ob- 
struction ; that is, they systematically impeded 
the consideration and passage of the bills by 
every parliamentary artifice and expedient 
known to English usage. The Constitution of 
the House of Commons was such as to give 
great liberty in this respect In that body 
everything had hitherto been conceded to the 
freedom of debate and the rights of the mi- 
nority. There was no rule for the ** previous 
question," or other expedient for bringing a 
pending question to vote, so long as a member 
continued to debate it or offer amendment 
thereto. Even the motion for *' closing the 
debate" at a given time was amendable, and 
might itself be debated. 

The Home Rulers in Parliament at this 
time numbered thirty-seven. They deter- 
mined that the Co^rci(m Bill should not be 
brought to a vote, and from the 6th of Jan- 
uary to the 2d of March the debate was pro- 
longed. It was seen by the Ministry that some 
measure, even if it were without precedent 
and actually unconstitutional, must be adopted 
in order that the will of the majority might 
be legally expressed. The method finally em- 
ployed was found in the prerogative of the 
Speaker. It was agreed that, on the 2d of 
March, he jibuld arbitrarily announce tha^ 
the debate was closed, and that the vote should 
thereupon be taken. This was accordingly 
done against the uproarious opposition, the 
protests, and cries of ** privilege," on part of 
the Home Rulers. The Bill was carried, and 
measures were at once instituted under its pro- 
visions for the suppression of violence in Ireland. 

On the day following the passage of the 
Coercion Bill the leaders of the Irish party 
were forcibly expelled from the House of Com- 
mons, and at length three of the members, 
including Parnell and O'Brien, were thrown 
into prison, where they remained until the 
following year. It is in the nature of British 
public opinion to undergo reaction, to take on 
a different complexion under every change of 



condition, and to express the altered state of 
affairs in some new political theory. No 
sooner had the Government triumphed over 
the Home Rulers, no sooner were the leaders 
imprisoned, than sympathy for them and their 
cause began to be expressed, not only by the 
public, but in the Ministry itself. The com- 
position of the Liberal party at this time was 
peculiar. The members composing it were 
graduated in their political opinions all the 
way down from a strict coLservatism at the 
one extreme to a rank radicalism at the other. 
The Liberals of the latter type had all aJon^ 
been in sympathy with the Irish cause. There 
was danger that Gladstone would lose largely 
by disintegration on both wings of his army. 
On the whole, he himself inclined towards the 
Radical and Reformatory camp ; but for a 
while the exigencies of the Government re- 
quired of him a prudent conservatism, lest he 
might lose what may be called the upper 
division of the Liberal party. 

The Government now went on with other 
legislative enactments bearing on the Irish 
cause. The Land Bill was passed, by which 
it was hoped to stop the clamor of the Irish 
tenantry. It was soon seen, however, that the 
measure was of little avail. What would at a 
former period have satisfied the tenants was 
now, when they were aroused to the point of 
war, neglected and disregarded by them as a 
scheme to defraud them of their rights. The 
cry had now been raised for the absolute na- 
tionalization of the Irish lands, which meant, 
of course, the destruction of the very principle 
of English landlordism. The foreign land- 
tenure became ever more precarious. Partly 
by the poverty of the people, and partly by 
recusancy, the rents fell into arrears. There 
was almost a universal refusal to pay any 
longer the immemorial tax which the peasants 
owed to the landlords. Violence became the 
order of the day. Outrages against life and 
property multiplied. Evictions were resisted, 
and it seemed at times that the foreign domi- 
nation was about to be ended by a univertol 
insurrection of the peasants against their mas- 
ters. In a single month, in the summer of 
1882, no fewer than five hundred and thirty- 
one outrages were reported against the system 
of foreign landlordism and that status in lie- 
land by which landlordism was upheld. 



GREAT BRITAIN.— BATTLE FOR HOME RULE. 



433 



It was in this condition of affairs that the 
astute Gladstone perceived the necessity of a 
change of policy. The Coercion Bill expired 
in October of 1882. It had proved a signal 
failure. The Arms Bill, under the provisions 
of which the Irish people were to be disarmed, 
and which had resulted in the surrender of 
their weapons by all the better classes, and in 
the concealment of arms by the lawless and 
the criminal, had also completely failed of the 
intended results. All the measures which the 
Government had thus far taken to suppress 
violence, restore order, bring the country again 
into a state of contentment, or even acquies- 
•cence, had proved abortive. The Land League 
.seemed about to triumph over Parliament and 
the country. 

It was at this juncture, that communica- 
tions were begun between Gladstone and 
Pamell, who was still in prison. An alleged 
"treaty" was formed between the two, in 
which it was understood that the Irish leader 
would be content with a bill abolishing Arrears 
•of Bent, and with a just extension of tenant 
rights. These being conceded, the Home 
Bulers would join the Government in the at- 
tempt t6 restrain the Land League, or rather 
the lawless adherents of that body, from further 
violence and crime. It was in April of 1882 
that Gladstone threw out the first hints in the 
House of Commons that a new policy might 
be expected, and that the release of the Irish 
prisoners was contemplated as a measure of 
pacification. By this time the Irish jails were 
well filled with persons who had been arrested 
•on suspicion under the suspension of Habeas 
-Corpus, and in accordance with the Coercion 
Bill. More than eight hundred persons, many 
-of them of excellent character, had been im- 
prisoned. It was known to the Government 
that it wad needless to bring the suspected 
persons to trial before Irish juries. Of a cer- 
tainty, such juries would never convict Cheir 
fellow-countrymen of crime for committing 
acts in which they themselves had either 
jictually participated, or with which they were 
in sympathy. The law in such cases required 
that the jury should be drawn from the vicinage, 
.and this assured to the prisoners a trial before 
their neighbors and friends. The Govern- 
ment, therefore, was obliged to hold the sus- 
'.pected persons by a suspension of the Habeas ' 



Corpus ; but this could not continue forever ; 
and now for the first time the policy of con- 
ciliation was to be tried. 

Unfortunately, at this very juncture, an 
event occurred which threatened to undo the 
very history and tendency of the times. In the 
lawless period, which it was hoped was now 
about to close, many murders and assassina- 
tions had been committed. At the time of 
which we speak Lord Frederick Cavendish, 
who was holding the position of Financial 
Secretary of the Treasury, was appointed 
Chief Seecretary for Ireland, to succeed Mr. 
Forster, whose antipathy to the Irish cause 
had been so great as to lead to this change in 
official relations. With Lord Cavendish as 
under Secretary, was appointed Thomas Henry 
Burke, a man of distinction, who was also sup- 
posed to be friendly to Ireland. The new 
officers were sent out, and arrived in DubUxi. 
On the evening of the 6th of May, 1882, wm 
they were driving in Phoonix Park, in that 
city, they were attacked by four murderers, 
partly disguised under slouched hats. It is 
thought that Mr. Burke was the first to fall 
under the knives of the assassins. It appeared 
that Lord Cavendish sought to defend his 
friend from the assault, and, in doing so, he 
too was stabbed to death. Many persons were 
sitting or walking within a few hundred feet 
of where the crime was committed, and yet 
the assassins were enabled to mount a car and 
drive from the park without discovery. A 
considerable quantity of gold coin, bank-notes, 
and other valuables were found on the bodies 
of the murdered men, and it was perceived 
from the first that the assassination had been 
for political, and not for mercenary, motives. 

A great sensation was produced by this' 
event throughout Ireland and Great Britain. 
It was natural, inevitable, that the crime 
should be charged to the Land League. 
Pamell, Davitt, and others who might speak 
authoritatively for that association, made haste 
to deny for it all connection with the murder 
of Cavendish and Burke, and to denounce the 
crime lYi the strongest terms. Nevertheless, 
the Land Leaguers and the Home Rule party 
had to bear the odium of the assassination. 
As a matter of fact, the Land League, as such, 
was organized on a plane altogether too high 
for the patronage or justification of such deeds 



434 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



M that done in Phoenix Park. But the or- 
jp^nization had drtlwn after it the very draff 
and offal of Irish discontent. Such associa- 
tions must needs have about them a paiiunbra 
of crime. They are created for the correction 
of abuses, the removal of oppression, the at- 
tainment of justice. But all this implies that 
there is abuse, oppression, injustice ; and these, 
in their turn, imply that kind of resistance 
which, in the hands of the ignorant and vile, 
takes the form of crime. 

The murder of the Irish Secretaries, in the 
country to which they had been sent, was a 
great shock to the Government Parnell had 
DOW been liberated from prison, and soon re- 
turned to his place in the House of Commons. 
In that body violent denunciations were poured 
upon his head, and it was demanded of him 
and his colleagues that they should wash their 
hands and the hands of/ the League of all 
complicity in the great crime. The course of 
Parnell was such as might have been expected 
from a brave, high-spirited man. In his replif 
he scarcely deigned to disclaim knowledge or 
participation on the part of himself and his 
friends in the assassination of Cavendish and 
Burke, saying that all defense of himself and 
his party, and of the principles of his party, 
was impossible in such a court as the English 
Parliament His cause was prejudged. His 
judges were his enemies and the enemies of 
his people; nor was he anxious under such 
circumstances to justify himself at the bar of 
British opinion. At that bar he was con- 
demned already — both he and his cause. He 
was responsible only to the people of Ireland. 
It was to the public opinion of that country 
that he made his appeal. Crime was crime, 
by whomsoever committed. As for the rest, 
he stood for the cause of an oppressed people. 
For that cause he had suffered an unjust im- 
prisonment, and for that cause he and his party 
were now maligned, slandered, and reduced to 
the category of criminals. 

It could but be that the Irish party suffered 
greatly in the ordeal through which they now 
passed. It could but be that the Government 
was held back from its natural gravitation in 
the direction of Home Rule, and it could but 
be that the justice and reasonableness of the 
position held by Parnell and his associates 
must become constantly more evident even in 



the high places of England. The embarraa^ 
ment of the Ministerial party was extreme. 
They had a fair working majority through the 
whole of 1882, and the same in 1883 ; but the- 
incidental elections which occurred at inter- 
vals in Ireland showed that the Land Leagu^v 
was predominant in that country over all 
other forces combined. The Home Rule partjr 
gained at the Irish elections, and their num- 
bers increased to over seventy. It was evi- 
dent that their strength was likely, ereloDg. 
to enable them to hold the balance of power 
between the two major parties in Parliament, 
and thus virtually either to direct the course 
of legislation, or to stop proceedings altogether. 

It can not be doubted that in this situation 
of affairs the Liberal party, though in the ma- 
jority, had before it the alternative either of 
depending on the Conservatives for support 
against the common enemy, or else of entering 
into combination with that enemy in order to- 
keep the Conservatives from again coming 
into power. As for the Home Rulers thea&- 
selves, they had one definite object in view, 
and that was the nationalization of Ireland. 
To this, with them, all other questions wera^ 
subordinate. For this they were willing to 
enter into combinations with any party soever, 
so that their one great end might be attained. 
It could hardly be doubted, however, that 
Gladstone himself, whose influence over the 
Liberals was so great as to constitute an au« 
thority, would never enter into a treaty with 
the Conservative leaders against the Iriab 
cause. It became, therefore, a question when 
and how the Parnellites and the LiberaJa 
would combine in the work of a radical reform 
on behalf of Ireland. 

Such, in general, was the aspect of Engliak 
history from the Parliamentary side in the 
year 1883. During the session which ex- 
tended to the beginning of summer in that 
year, the condition of parties and of policies 
was not materially altered. The attention of 
the Home Government began to be drawn to 
the verv serious consideration of the affairs of 
Egypt. In that country a war had broken 
out, some account of which will be given near 
the conclusion of the present chapter/ In Ire- 
land the policy of the Government had done 
something toward the restoration of order. 
The outrages, for which the preceding yeai 



GREAT BRITAIN—BATTLE FOR HOME RULE. 



43d 



had been memorable, were in great measure 
suppressed ; but it could not be said that the 
determination of the Home Rulers was weak- 
ened •r in any wise diverted from their one 
great object Then followed the vacation of 
Parliament during the summer months, and 
until the beginning of October. 

At the next session the Parnellites were in 
full force. An element of weakness had, in 
the meantime, made its appearance in the So- 
ciety of Orangemen, who, being Protestant, 
and seeing their Catholic fellow-countrymen 
whally given up to the work of land reform 
and nationalization, naturally fell into their 
traditional opposition. The Irish leaders 
sought zealously, during the after part of 1884, 
to allay the merely religious prejudices of 
their countrymen, to the end that a united 
Ireland might compel the English Ministry to 
the adoption of such measures as ^e Home* 
Rulers advocated. In the meantime, a serious 
break had occurred in the Government on the 
immemorial question of the franchise. It had 
been determined by the Ministry, in answer 
to the call of the country, that still another 
effort should be made for the more complete 
enfranchisement of the English people. It 
kad been found that e^en the Liberal measures 
of 1867 required revision and amplification to 
meet the demands of the working-classes of 
Englishmen. A new Franchise Bill was accord- 
ingly prepared, and passed by a decisive ma- 
jority through the House of Commons. As 
has always happened in the case of such legisla- 
tion, the House of Lords disapproved of the 
proposed extension of the suffrage, and in this 
particular case refused their assent to the Bill. 
The Ministry had to accept the defeat of their 
measure for the time, and it was only after an 
additional Act covering the distribution, or, as 
Americans would say, the reapportionment of 
the new seats provided for under the Franchise 
Act had been adopted, that the Lords with- 
drew their opposition, and assented to the 
measure as a whole. 

But by this time the foreign relations of 
Great Britain had become so critical as to de- 
mand the best skill of the Government in the 
prevention of great wars. For a season, it ap- 
peared that England and Russia were to try 
their prowess on the side of India. Egypt 

was in an uproar. Khartoum fell, and Charles 

/ 



George Gordon went to his death at the hands 
of the Mahdi's assassins. All these things 
called for immediate and extraordinary exer- 
tions. Armies must be at once equipped and 
sent to Egypt. The strain upon the Ministry 
became extreme.' The Goveriunent was ac- 
cused of all manner of neglect with respect to 
British interests in the East, particularly in 
Egypt. The London Times cried out that no 
words were sufficient to express the disgust of 
the people at the weakness and folly of the 
Administration. **The Country," said that 
organ of Conservative opinion, *'is obliged to 
confess that everything has been done that could 
be done to add to the risks of defeat. Advice 
has been spurred, time wasted,and opportuuitv 
lost.'' 

The Queen, in her speech to Parliameni, 
had indicated the necessity for greatly increased 
expenses, and, to provide for these, it became 
necessary to increase the revenues of the 
Kingdom. A new budget was presented in 
June of 1885, in which the policy of the 
Government was defined. It was proposed 
that the increased expenditure of the ensuing 
year should be met by placing a duty of a 
shilling a gallon on beer, to be retained for 
one year from the date of the Act. The 
measure was advocated by the Secretary of the 
Exchequer, but the Conservatives opposed the 
budget on the ground that all the additional 
expenditure could have been provided for by a 
slight increase of the duties on tea and the 
light wines. It was argued that ale and beer 
were the drinks of the common people, and that 
the Ministerial Bill proposed to put on them 
the expenses of the Egyptian war. The 
debate on the adoption of the budget was 
concluded by Gladstone on the evening of the 
5th of June, when the Bill was put on its 
second reading in the House of Commons. 
Much to the surprise of the country at large, 
and in all probability to the Government 
itself, the budget was rejected by a majority 
of twelve votes. Precedent has established 
the rule in the British Parliament, that a de- 
feat of the budget signifies the end of the 
Ministry proposing it. It is not clear that 
such was the intent of the House of Commons 
in the present instance ; but Gladstone, never- 
theless, determined • to follow the precedent, 
and he and his fellow-Ministers accordingly 



436 



UXIVEBSAL HISTORY.— TEE MODERN WORLD. 



tendered their resigDatioDs to the Queen. 
Hie nme were accepted by Her Majesty, who 
immediately sent for the Marquu of Salisbury, 
and intrusted him with the duty of formiug a 
new Coaservative MiDistry. 

Such was another remarkable example of 
the vicissitude which may be expected at 
InterTals in the political history of Great 
Britain. It would have been thought im- 
possible, only a few months before, that the 
Gladstone Government could be overthrown 



in any present emerfrenoy. The [ihilosophy of 
the question lay in the fiict tluit, on the whole, 
the statesmen of the Lihenil purty in England 
have not shown themselves the e<)U!il of the 
Conservatives in the miinappment of forfijrn 
affairs. On the other hiind, the Conservatives 
have fallen far short of the Lihcrals in the 
Home Admini-itration of ihe Kinfrdom, and in 
all measures of pnifrrc-a and reform. It can 
hardly be doubted that the attention of the 
Gladstonian party had beeu almost wholly 



fixed upon domestic questions, and. In particB- 
lar, on the establishment of some aatiafactorj 
and permanent policy for the settlement of the 
difficulties with Ireland. This withdrawal ttf 
the attention of the Government from the 
multifarious foreign complications in which 
the whole modern history of England is in- 
volved, contributed to the disaster of Khar- 
toum, left the public mind nncertaia as to tbo 
ability of the existing Government to cope 
with the trouble in Afghanistan, and led to 
the withdrawal of the support 
of thirty or forty members of 
the Liberal party from the 
Ministry in the matter of the 
budget Though the propor- 
tion of the Government to 
increase the revenues by the 
taxation of beer and spirits 
was eminently proper, though 
the Ministry, with all of its 
outside difficulties and inode 
diseensioDs. was still full of vi- 
tality and force, the ConservB' 
tivea and the Pamellites, by 
combining their cohorts and 
:: gaining a modicnm of support 
: from disaffected Liberals, mo- 
ceeded in overwhelming the 
Government with an adverse 
vote on the budget, and the 
Gladstone Ministry was at so 
end. 

The Ministerial crisis in the 
British system frequently signi- 
fies the defeat of the victors 
In the present case, the ti> 
umph of the Conservative 
party was of dubious im- 
port The victory was achieved 
in the very face of impend- 
ing measures which threatened to divide and 
wreck the Liberal party. The time had 
arrived when it was necessary either to aban- 
don or renew the SuppresnoD of Crimes Act, 
under the operation of which the peace, « 
at least the quiet, of Ireland had been for s 
wliile secured. It was the disposttioD of the 
Gladstonians with respect to reviving this 
measure that led the Pamellites to vote with 
tlie Conservatives against the Ministerial 
budget. It was clear that the Home Rule 



GREAT BRITAIN.— BATTLE FOR HOME RULE. 



437 



fMurty would prove to the Salisbury Govern- 
ment a broken reed. Little were the Parnell- 
ites concerned about anything except the cause 
of Ireland, and that was the very issue which 
the Conservatives, more than the Liberals, 
would have avoided. The Home Rulers had 
thus at last worked their way into a position 
where they could defeat and overthrow a Min- 
istry, of either party at will, and it became 
•evident that their political aim was to beat 
down first one, and then the other, until the 
-cause of Home Rule for L^land should be at 
length adopted by one of the parties as a 
means of keeping itself in power. 

There was another reason, also, why the Earl 
of Salisbury hesitated under such conditions 
to accept the responsibility of the Government. 
The Parliament of 1880 had now nearly 
•expired, and a new election was at hand. 
Gladstone himself had foreseen the impending 
fltruggle before the people, and it is not im- 
probable that he was less averse to the adverse 
vote on his budget than might have been sup- 
posed. Be that as it may, it was clear that, 
•during the remainder of the existing Parlia- 
ment, the Salisbury Ministry must adopt a 
temporizing and conciliatory policy with the 
Lrish party, and, by vigor abroad and Conserv- 
atism at home, win, if possible, from the Glad- 
•stonians a victory at the ensuing election. In 
the canvass that followed, there was a dispo- 
sition on the part of both Conservatives and 
Liberals to ignore and gloss over the one great 
question of the day, namely, the settlement 
of the issue raised and defended with so much 
vigor by the Home Rulers. Pamell was now 
-supreme in the management of his party. He 
passed the word to his followiDg that every- 
where and under all circumstances they should 
strike at the Liberal majorities, and reduce or 
reverse them wherever they might. 

The elections were held for a new House 
•of Commons in December of 1886. The 
•question really was whether the Liberals would 
be able to obtain a majority of all the seats in 
the House. Soon after, the elections began ; 
and as the first reports came in from the center 
of England, the Conservatives gathered a 
transient hope that they might be victorious, 
but the news from the country-side destroyed all 
such expectations. From Wales and Scotland 
•the news came of great Liberal gains, and the 



aggregate result in Great Britain showed a ma- 
jority of about eighty for the Liberal party. 
But the Irish elections turned everything to con- 
fusion. In all that country, not a single Liberal 
was eleded I Out of the one hundred and three 
Irish seats in the Commons, fewer than twenty 
were won by the Conservatives. Dublin 
University sent two of these, and nearly 
all the remainder were from the extreme 
North, in Ulster. Parnell came out of the 
battle with a compact body of eighty-five fol- 
lowers. 

The politicians and statesmen were now 
easily able, by a few figures, to count the 
probabilities. Should the Parnellites, in the 
new Parliament combine with the Conserva- 
tives, they would be able to bear down the 
Liberals with a small majority of about five 
votes; but should they combine with the 
Liberals, the majority over the Conservative 
party and the Salisbury Ministry would be 
nearly a hundred and seventy. Such was the 
situation of affairs at the opening of the Par- 
liamentary session in January of 1886. 

It now remained to be seen what course 
the Earl of Salisbury would take in his en- 
deavor to conduct a minority Government. 
The development of tendencies .at the opening 
of the session was awaiteu with intense in- 
terest by the nation. It was clear to all that 
the Irish question could no longer be thrust 
into the background, except by a co&lition of 
the two dominant parties against the third; 
and it was equally clear that such a combina- 
tion could never be effected.' -The debates 
began over the answer of the House to the 
speech of the Queen. Before the discussion 
was closed, the Prime Minister gave notice of 
the intention of the Government to introduce, 
at an early day, a bill for the further repres- 
sion of the Irish land-troubles on the line of 
coercion and punishment. It was foreseen by 
the Liberals that they themselves would be 
placed at a disadvantage by having either to 
support or oppose a measure like that sug- 
gested by Salisbury. It was therefore deemed 
expedient to bring the matter to a crisis by 
immediately overthrowing the Ministry. This 
was done on a motion to amend the address 
to the Queen, on which the Parnellites voted 
to a man with the Liberals, and though the 
latter lost a few votes from their own calendar 



438 



VSIVEKSAL mSTORY.-TUE MODERN WORLD. 



Ly disaffection, (lie ('i>vertimeiit was over- 
whelmed, and the Ministers resigned. 

It iiuwTemaiiied tu he seen whether a new 
Liljeral Miuistry could l)e f<)rmed which 
ehould be able to commaod a majority oE 



WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE. 

the House on matters relating to the Iri>h 
(|iipstiiin. Gladstone va.s as a matter of 
C"ur>e, and out of the necessity of the situa- 
tion, ret^alled to the place of Prime Minister. 
Sir Farrer Her^chell was made Lord Hiijh 
Chancellor; Earl Spencer, President of the 



Council ; H. C. E, Childers, Home Secretary; 
Earl Uosebery, Secretary forForei^n Affairs; 
Earl Granville, Secretary for the Colonies: 
Earl Tiniherly, Secretary for India; Camp- 
bell - Bannermau, Secretary for ^Var : Sir 
William Vernou- 
Harcourt.Cliaiicellor 
of the Exchequer ; the 
Marquie of Ripou, 
First Lord of the 
Admiralty ; Joseph 
Chamberlaiu, Pretsi- 
dent of the Qovem- 
ment Board; Geoi^e 
Otto Trevelyaii ; Sec- 
retary for Scotland; 
A. J. Muiidella, Pre- 
sident of tne Board 
of Trade; and John 
Moriey, Chief Secre- 
tary for Ireland. 

But it wai« not so 
much with the con- 
stitution of the new 
Ministry as with the 
IriBh policy which 
was to he propoeed 
thereby, that the 
public was now con- 
cerned. For a consid- 
erable period it had 
been noised abroad 
r that Gladiitone was 
gradually inclining 
in his sympathies and 
opinions to the cause' 
of Home Kule in Ire- 
land. It was Observed 
on the first night of 
the session that Par- 
nell's speech could 
only be interpreted 
as signifying the 
probable support of 
the Liberals by the 
Irish party, and the 
probable support of 
' Home Kule principles by the former. The 
' event justified the anticipation. Gladstone at 
once devoted himself to the prtparatinh of 
an elalHirate scheme for the establishment 
of an Irish Parliament, and the virtual con- 
''■ ues:.iono£ nationality tothelrishpeople. The 



GREAT BRITAIN.— BATTLE FOR HOME RULE. 



43» 



idan proposed contemplated the continuance of 
the l^ational Union of Ireland and Great 
Britain, under the Government of the Crown 
aud the Imperial Parliament at Liondon. 
The Prime Minister elaborated a scheme 
which was perhaps the most extensive, not' 
to say revolutionary/ of any single measure 
proposed in Parliament since the accession of 
Victoria. The matter came speedily to an 
issue; In June of 1886 the question was de- 
bated befoi'e the House of Commons, the 
speech ot Gladstone himself being awaited 
with the greatest interest, not only by the 
British public, but by the people of all West- 
ern Europe and America. In the latter coun- 
try, the daily press of the following morning 
presented American readers with a report ver- 
batim ot the Prime Minister's address, in which 
he defended and advocated with the greatest 
ability the establishment of Home Rule for 
Ireland. When the question went to vote, it 
was not yet certainly known whether or not 
the Ministerial Bill had carried; but the di- 
vision showed a negative result. The Minis- 
terial measure was beaten by a small and in- 
decisive majority. This was effected by the 
combined votes of the Conservatives and those 
of nearly a hundred Liberals, who refused to 
follow the majority of their party on the ques- 
tion before the House and the country. 

The break in the Liberal party proved to 
be hopeless, and, since the Irish question was 
now uppermost in all men's minds, the Glad- 
stone Ministry passed from power. At first, 
however. Parliament was prorogued, and the 
question at issue was remanded to the people. 
It could hardly be hoped that, under existing 
conditions, the policy of Gladstone could gain 
from the country a more emphatic indorse- 
ment than he and his party had received at 
the late election. It only remained for the 
Prime Minister to resign his office. The be- 
ginning of 1887 found matters in a condition 
of chaos. Though the Earl of Salisbury was 
presently recalled to the head of the Govern- 
ment, though the Conservative party, with 
the aid of the so-called Liberal-Unionists — ^a 
division made up of those who had broken 
away from their allegiance to the Gladstone 
Ministry — were able for the next two years to 
maintain a doubtful ascendency over the Lib- 
erals and Parnellites, yet it was an ascendency 



gained by sufferance rather than by conquest. 
As to the Irish question, it remained and still 
remains,* unsettled, and the year 1889 wit- 
nessed the remarkable manoeuver of a nego- 
tiation between the Paruellites and the ^rl 
of Salisbury's Government with respect to a 
proposal by the latter of some measure at the 
ensuing session of Parliament conceding, in 
some limited form, the principle of Home 
Rule for Ireland. 

The year 1887 was memorable for the cele- 
bration of the jubilee or fiftieth anniversary 
of the accession of Queen Victoria. It had 
not been often in the history of England that 
such an event had been possible. Only in 
two or three instances had so long a reign oc- 
curred, or one on the whole so benign in its 
character and tendencies. The Queen herself 
had been a popular sovereign, though this i» 
said rather of English society — by which is 
meant the upper third 6f the people — than ef 
the masses at large. The principal day of 
Her Majesty's Semi-centennial was, of course, 
the 2l8t of June — that being the anniversary 
of the accession — and the principal scene of 
the home celebration, the Abbey of Westmim* 
ster. On that day and to that place the 
Queen was conducted by her sons, her sons- 
in-law, and her grandsons, as a guard of 
honor. About ten thousand persons assembled 
at the Abbey to participate in the ceremonies. 
Representatives were present, bearing con- 
gratulations from all the reigning Houses io 
Europe and from the Governments of the New 
World. London was splendidly decorated for 
the occasion, and the other cities of the 
United Kingdom expressed their loyalty with 
a variety of festivities and celebrations. The 
Poet Laureate, now become Baron Tennyson, 
honored the occasion with a personal poem 
addressed to. Her Majesty. From the center 
the jubilee spirit extended iuto all the British 
colonies of the world ; and from the foot-hills 
of Burmah to where the mountains of British 
Columbia look down on the Pacific, the Queen's^ 
name and reign were remembered with con- 
gratulations and festivals. 

The present chapter may be appropriately 
concluded with a sketch of the recent relations- 
of Great Britain and Egypt. At the begin- 



>At the beginning of 1890. 



440 



CMVERSAL HISTOBY.—TSE MODERN WORLD. 



ning of tlie ninth decade of the century, it 
tnighl almost be said that Egj^pt nas a foreign 
dependency of the Britiah Empire. The pre- 
pooderance of the influenee of the Euglisb 
Ouvernraent in South-eaatern Africa at this 
epoch, and for some time previously, may be 
referred to two general ciiiiAidera^oos. The 
Cnt of these was the long-standing policy of 



Great Britain in nphoMirif: the iiidepciK^'nce 
and nutonomy of Tiirkpy. Tlils theory cnrried 
with it tli<^ niaiiiteTi.iii<-e of Etrvpt tu< a Prov- 
ince of llie Turkish Empire, Tlie espression 
"Province of the Turkish Empire," however, 
is too exact to express the (le[K'Tidciit rcliitions 
of the different countries uniier ibe (rpoernl 
away of the SiiKnii. In the cn^ of Egypt, 
it wmld not be said that the country was an 



integral part of the Ottoman dominiocB; sod 
yet the Egyptian Oovcmmeot bad its origin 
and authority from ConstantiooiJe. 

The Egyptian Viceroys had no ooostaifw 

rank or power. Sometimes they were merely 

satrapa of the Sultan, and sometimea thej 

reached the condition of aemi4Ddepeodenoa. 

But whatever the chamcter of the Govers* 

ment might be. 

Great Britam heM 

to the policy of sa^ 

porting the existing 

order, believing, ma 

•he did, that this 

course was ooodn- 

dve to the integritjr 

of her euten lino 

of defense against 

the a gg r c a si ona of 

Rusria. 

In the second 
place, a financial 
reason existed fi» 
the support given bj 
England to Egypt. 
Hie Utter countrj 
had iMCome indebted 
in eeveral waya to 
England and to En- 
gli^ capitalistB. A 
large part of the 
bonds reiweeenting 
the Egyptian debt 
were held in Great 
Britain, and the rev- 
olutionary tenden- 
cies in Egypt seemed 
constantly to threat- 
en the validity at 
the bonds. Tb» 
principle of inter- 
national law which 
decrees the int^ri^ 
of a debt through the vicissitudes of revolu- 
tion, milking each successive Government re- 
sponsible fiir the valid indebtedness of its pre- 
decessor, nnd which denies the confiscabili^ 
of nntionnl bonds, was not suffidently well 
ree'ignixed In Egypt to make the obligationa 
of tJie Government to England perfecUy se- 
cure; and this fact constituted a powerM 
rea-son for upholding the existing Status. 



GREAT BRITAIN.— BATTLE FOR HOME RULE. 



441 



5 



SomethiDg of the same reasons existed in 
the case of France. She also had a large fund 
invested in Egypt. The Suez Canal was the 
product of French capital. France had in 
general cooperated with Great Britain, under 
the theory that the integrity of the Turkish 
Empire should be maintained in all its parts. 
Such were the conditions which made it ex- 
pedient, it not necessary, for England and 
France to assume a sort of protectorate over 
Egypt as a part of their international policy, 
and as a means of protecting their interests in 
the East. This policy, however, was much 
more ably and persistently followed by Great 
Britain than by the French Government ; but 
in course of time the English ascendency in 
Egypt aroused the jealousy of France, and led 
to an effort on her part to regain her relative 
^fluence in the Nile Valley. For a con- 
liderable period the Egyptian Khedive had 
had an arrangement with France and England 
by which the latter countries exercised what 
was called Financial Control of the affairs ci 
Egypt. This condition remained in force 
until 1883, when Lord Dufferin, who had 
been sent from Constantinople to Egypt as 
the representative of British interests in that 
country, secured the withdrawal of the ** Con- 
trol," to the end that a greater autonomy 
might be secured to the local government in 
the management of its own affairs. 

No adequate understanding, however, may 
be had of the general condition of Egypt in 
eur day, without noting the historical progress 
of the country during the larger part of the 
century. At the time of the Napoleonic in- 
vasion, Egypt was broken up into petty 
Muslim principalities, having little coherence 
or governmental unity. The general con- 
sequence of the shock given to the land of the 
Pharaohs by the impact of European ism was 
to bring about the ascendency of Mehemet 
Ali, and the establishment of his house as the 
reigning dynasty down to our own time. We 
have seen how nearly, at one or two crises, 
this able General and statesman succeeded in 
securing the complete autonomy and inde- 
pendence of his country and people. At the 
close of the fourth decade he seemed, indeed, 
on the eve of actually reversing the relative 
places of Cairo and Constantinople. In 1840 
the Turkish Empire was saved from dismem- 



berment only by the actual intervention of 
the Great Powers, staying the progress of 
Egyptian arms in Syria, and rendering of no 
avail the great victories of Homs, Konieh, 
and Nizib, in the latter of which battles 
Ibrahim Pasha, son of Mehemet All, over- 
threw and dispersed a Turkish army of eighty 
thousand men. 

The veteran Mehemet, already more than 
seventy years of age, next turned his atten- 
tion to the revision of the constitution and laws 
of Egypt, working afler models which he had 
drawn from the great governments of Europe. 
Nearly all the methods of administration 
which the inquirer discovers to-day as the 
springs of civil action in Egypt were devised 
by Mehemet Ali. He established new systems 
of taxation, revised the customs-duties, ar- 
ranged the laws of quarantine, patronized 
manufactories, planted colleges of languages 
and of medicine, and introduced printing- 
presses and journalism as a means of dissem- 
inating information and creating a public opin- 
ion in a country long doininated by the gross- 
est forms of Orientalism. In the last years 
of his life he visited Constantinople, was there 
received with many marks of distinction, and 
was honored with the title of Vizier. 

When the Western Powers came, as we 
have just seen, to the rescue of Turkey, and 
forced Egypt back from her course of devel- 
opment, the terms of dependency upon the 
Porte were made as mild as possible. It was 
agreed that Mehemet Ali should retain for 
himself and his successors the Pashalic of 
Egypt, on thesiraple condition of the payment 
of one-fourth of his net revenues to the Sul- 
tan. The subordinate conditions of the settle- 
ment were that the Turkish fleet, which had 
been treacherously surrendered to the Egyp- 
tians, should be restored; that Syria, which 
had been gained by conquests, should be given 
up; and that the standing army of Egypt 
should be limited to eighteen thousand men. 
Already, Mehemet and his son Ibrahim had 
succeeded m reducing the rebellious Egyptian 
Beys to subjection, and a considerable degree 
of unity had been attained in the Government 
, Ibrahim Pasha acceded to his father's po- 
litical honors and authority, in 1844, and con- 
tinued in office until his death, four years 
afterwards. The veteran Mehemet lived a few 



442 



UMVER8AL fflSTORY.-THE MODEBJH WORLD. 



months longer, and the Government of Egypt 
dlesoended to hia nephew, Abbas Pasha, whoee 
character reverted to the Oriental type, with 
many disastrous consequences to the Egyptian 
people. EUs death, in 1854, was bailed as a 
deliverance, and the reaction which followed 
brought the fourth son of Mehemet Ali, Said 
Pasha, to the throne. It was under his reign 
tnat the concession was made to France of 
the right and opportunity to construct the 
Suez Canal. The abilities of Said were, how- 
ever, not as great as his political principles 
were salutary. At his death, in- 1863, the 
crown descended to his nephew Ismail, who, 
with his title of Khedive, granted to him in 
1866 by an Imperial firman, was destined to a 
long and important reign. Nearly all of the 
events in the recent history oi Egypt, in 
which European and American readers are 
likely to find interest and instruction, have 
happened during the Administration of Ismail 
Khedive. He continued in power until 1879, 
when he was deposed by the Porte at the in 
ftigation of Prance and England. This action 
was deemed essential to the interests of the 
Western Powers in securing that financial con> 
trol of the country to which we have referred 
above. The title of Khedive was^ transferred 
to Mohammed Tewfik. A new system of 
Bquidation for the Egyptian creditors was de- 
vised on the basis of a four-and-a-half per 
cent, fund, that rate being agreed to by France 
and England jointly. 

Without pausing to notice in this connec- 
tion the events of IsmaiFs reign, we may here 
refer to the decisive effect ot his deposition 
from power. The foreign intervention was, 
from the first, hateful to the large and grow- 
ing class of intelligent Egyptians who desired 
the freedom and independence of their country. 
It can not be doubted that the objection to 
Lsraail on the part of England and France 
was his too great independence of character 
and his desire that Egypt might be first of all 
for the Egyptians. On the other hand, Tewfik 
was thought to be sufficiently subservient. 
History is not the place for tirade and denun- 
ciation, but every calm-minded and just patriot 
in all the world must be shocked and angered 
at this spectacle of the suppression and abuse 
of a helpless country and people by means of 
Ae imbecility of the Viceroy, and for merely 



mercenary oonsiderationB. The Egyptians 
found themselves subject to a foreign bonded 
debt, the financial control of their oonntrj as- 
sumed by the holders of that debt, and them- 
selves reduced to the rank of hewers of wood 
and drawers of water for capitalists more than 
three thousand miles away. 

It was not long, under these circumstances, 
until the mutterings of discontent were heard. 
In February ot 1881, some regiments of the 
Egyptian army stationed at Cairo earned a 
petition to the Khedive, demanding the dia- 
missal of one of the ministers, justice for the 
soldiers, and a general reform for the people. 
This movement was heartily ratified by tb« 
Egyptians generally. Other petitions weri 
sent in to the Government, and the army waa 
exhorted to maintain the honor of the country. 
A leader of both soldiers and people appeared 
in the person of Ahmed el Arabi, who t>ecame 
at once the recognized chief of what waa 
henceforth known as the National party. The 
movement resulted in a general uprising of 
the native Egyptians against ail the foreign 
oppression and distresses under which Egypt 
had long been groaning. The Khedive at first 
yielded to the pressure, and in September of 
1881 a new Ministry was appointed in har- 
mony with the popular demands. Arab! 
himself, who had hitherto been a Bey, waa 
raised to the rank of Pasha, and his leading 
followers received honor and promotion at the 
hands of the Government 

The next movement was in favor of a re* 
vised Constitution. A Chamber, composed of 
Egyptian notables, was convoked, and it waa 
proposed to reclaim the management of the 
Egyptian finances in all particulars, except so 
much as related to the foreign bonded debt* 
At this juncture it was found that a sort of 
counter-revolution was making head in the 
army, the same being fomented by certain Cir* 
cassian officers, jealous of the influence and 
growing fame of Arabi. The latter put down 
the mutiny with a strong hand, and the re- 
bellious officers were condemned to death. 
The English and French ofi&cials representing 
the Control interfered to prevent the execu- 
tion of the sentence, and, as a precautionary 
measure, some iron-clad vessels from the allied 
squadron were ordered to take station in the 
Bay of Alexandria. In that city a riot broke 



GREAT BRITAIN.— BATTLE FOR HOME RULE. 



443 



oat, induced by a quarrel in the etreet be- 
tween an Arab and a Maltese, and followed by 
a massacre, in which many Europeans, includ- 
ing some of the officers of the city, lost their 
lives. 

Meanwhile, tbe new Egyptian Constitution 
was published iu England, and popular sym- 
pathy in that country was directed strongly to 
tlie National party. Up to this time, tbe rev- 
olution had gone no further than a revolt 
agfunst the foreign, that is, the Circassain, of* 



Foreign Affairs, and M. Gambetta, at that 
time in the ascendant in the French Govern- 
ment, determined upon an exactly oppoflil« 
policy. Instead of supporting Arabi, the 
statesmen just referred to sent a joint note to 
the Khedive announcing their intention to up- 
hold the existing order in I^pt, and speak- 
ing in a tone of menace and dictation againxt 
the popular party. The Khedive was assured, 
even against what were, perhaps, his own se- 
cret wishes in the premises, that his Govern- 



FALACK OF THE K 



fidals, who, in both the army and civil affiiirs, 
had used and abused the authority which they 
held from the Khedive and the Porte. Arabi 
and the revolutionists looked to England and 
France for the support of their cause, and, in 
the beginniug of 1882, there was popular ex- 
pectation that the Egyptian National party 
would be upheld by the intervention of the 
Western Powers. For some reason, however, 
the nature of which has never been fully di- 
vulged, Lord Granville, English Secretary for 



ment should he maintained against all revolt 
audjlanger, whether from without or mfAin his 
dominions. The meaning was clear, and it wag 
at once perceived by the National party, that 
the Khedive himself and his whole officiary 
were in the way of further reform. The anger 
of the popular leaders was turned especially 
against Sherif Pasha, the Egyptian Minister, 
who was believed lo be at one with the foreign 
intervention. That officer was obliged, in Feb- 
ruary of 1882, 10 resign his office, and Arabi 



444 UNIVERSAL HISTORY— THE MODERN WORLD. 

ifa« himself put at the head of the Gnvem- I quillity in the country. The Turkish troops, 
tnent. however, were forbidden to land. Derriab 

It was oD the 17th of May Id this year i Paslia was himself admitted to Cairo with maDy 
that the Eiipiifh and Frenih fleets were ordered ■ deinonHtrotioiiB of loyalty, but the whole matter 
to Alexandria. The repri'^iilntiveB of (ireat . was Euperficial. Arabi had the hearta aod 
Britain deninnded tlie disiiiis^U iif the Niilitmal | confidence of the people, and they refused abso- 
Miniatry and the exile of Arabi Fm^ha. The i lulely to i)ermit his departure from the country 

It was at this juncture 
that the Alexandrian riot 
cceurred. About fifty 
Europeansand nearly four 
hundred natives lost their 
lives in the outbreak, the 
responsibility for which- 
has never been satisJkc 
to rily determined. Doubt- 
less the inflamed conditioD 
of public opinion in the 
city, ratherthan any other 
patent circumstance, was 
the efficient cause of the 
riot. However this may 
have been, the effect id 
Western Europe was suf- 
ficiently decisive. The 
London Times raised the 
ciy of immediate and act- 
ive intervention. The 
Gladstone Ministry wa- 
vered for a moment under 
the combined assaults of 
the Tory organs and the 
English bondholders, 
whose Egyptian securities 
bad Jallen to fifty-two 
cents on the dollar. At 
this time the Admiral of 
the English squadron in 
the Bay of Alexandria 
was Sir Beauchamp Sey- 
mour. On perceiving that 
the Egyptian Nationalists 
■were repairing and man- 
ning certain fortifications 
AHMED •mm p*sH», j^ ^Yif. harbor which bore 



first clause of this demand was complied with, 
but it was found impi)»isi1i!e to depose Arabi 
with a mere document. On the cimtrary, lie 
became practically the dictator of Egypt, In 
this emergency the Sultan took the matter in 
hand, and sent out Dervish Pasha as a special 
commissioner to reestablish order and tran- 



upon his position, he sent an ultimatum to the 
town thiit the works in question should be 
aijandimed under threat of bombarding the 
city. Within two days the menace was carried 
into execution. The English vessels opened fire 
on AlesaiKlria, and the shot and shell wrought 
great havoc to property and life. The ^y[^ 



GREAT BRITAIN.— BATTLE FOR HOME RULE 



44$ 



tiam, finding that they were unable to hold 
«ut aguitst the rain of death, evacuated 
Alexandria, setting fire to the city aa they 
withdrew. The European quarter was burned 
to the ground, and much damage was done in 
other parts, especially those districts under 
fire of the British ships. It was estimated 
that the loss of proper^ amounted to four 
millioD pounds sterling. The bombardment 
resulted in a hopeless break between the two 
Egyptian parties. Alexandria had been 
defended by the joint action of the Khedive 
and AralH, but the former now went over to 
the English and put himself under protection 
of the fleet Arabi, with the NaUonaliat 
army, withdrew from Alexandria to Kafr 



command of Sir Garnet Wolseley, was accoitl* 
ingly brought over from India, and pitched 
against Arabi's forces at Tei-el-Kebir. In this 
vicinity four hard battles were fought before 
British discipline could overcome the cour- 
ageous Egyptians, fighting for independence. 
The decisive engagement occurred on the 9th 
of September, 1882. Arabi's forces were com- 
pletely routed, and thrown back on Cairo. The 
British advance soon reached that city ; the 
provisional Government was overthrown, and 
Arabi surrendered himself as a prisoner. Tha 
Khedive was soon restored to office, but it^aa 
evident that the power was in the hands of 
foreigners. The national army was disorgan- 
ised. Arabi was about to be put to death. 



MODKBN UOHT-HOUSE AT AliBXAKDKTA. 



Dowar, about twelve miles distant, and there 
intrenched himself with so much skill that it 
was found impoarifole to dislodge him from 
his position. 

Cairo was now made the Nationalist capital. 
A decree was passed by the provisional Gov- 
ernment, depodng Khedive Tewfik from power. 
The whole public opinion of I^pt, in so far 
as a public opinion existed, was heartily with 
Arabi and the revolution. Great Britain, 
however, was now committed to the cause of 
Tewfik, or, rather, to the cause of her own in- 
consistent connstency. It became necessary, 
therefi>re, that the British contingent in Egypt 
should be strongly reinforced. The Anglo- 
Indian army, thirty thousand itronnp. uwW 
N.— Vol. ^— 38 



but a reaction in British public opinion bronj^ 
about a commutation of his sentence. H* 
and five of bis fellow -Nationalists were con- 
demned to perpetual exile, and on the 4tb of 
January, 1888, were carried away for Ceylon. 
During the remainder of tbe year, and until 
the beginning of 1883, the financial control of 
Egypt was retained by England and Franee. 
This arrangement, however, ceased by the 
action of the Powers in Januaiy, 1883, and a 
certain degree of autonomy was restored to 
the Egyptian Governments Later in the same 
year, a new scheme of government, part En- 
glish, part American, and part Oriental, was 
devised under the inspiration of Lord Dufferin, 
and became the organic law of '^he countiT. 



GREAT BRITAIN,— BATTLE FOR HOME BULK 



447 



A general amneaty waa giauted by tbe Khe- 
dive, and many refornw were iDtroduceO into 
the admiDistration. It could but be nuticed, 
however, by the people who had already been 
borne down with taxation and other abuses of 
power, that the new schedule was more ex- 
ceaeive than tbe old. One of the principal 
changes now introduced was the reorganiza- 
tion of the Egyptian army, whjch waa effected 
under directioo of General Wood, an English 
officer, and twenty-five other subordinate com- 
manders of the same nationality. The civil 
police of Egypt was intrusted to a force 
which was put under command of Baker 
Paaha. Tbe defense of the Soudan, to which 
we must now turn our attention, was intrusted 
to a divinoD of the army under command of 



ance as the leader and avenger of his people 
is, to the present day, somewhat similar to that 
of the German peasants, who hold to the tra- 
dition that Frederick Barbarossa still sits nod- 
ding in the cave of Salzburg, and will come 
forth whenever Fatherland is endangered. The 
Mohammedan superstition, however, is relig- 
ious, Messianic in ils character. The Shiitee 
are ever in expectation of tbe coining of JE3 
MahdL Throughout the Mohammedan Eof 
pire, the ignorant and infatuated are ever 
ready to say, Lo, here I or, Lo, there I It haa 
frequently happened that several Hahdis have 
lived at tbe same time. Id 1882 there were 
at least three pretenders of this character. 
El-Senusi appeared in Tripoli, another led the 
ignorant in Aidio ; and tbe third, namely the 



OH THX WHtn KILB. 



Hictcfl Pasha, and that force was obliged, in 
November of 1883, to confront the hosts of the 
Uahdi. 

Who, then, waa the Mahdi T The historical 
notes of the ninth decade of our century 
abound with references to his name. At the 
bottom of tbe whole question is a profound 
Mohammedan superstition, running back in 
its ultimate origin almost to tbe days of the 
PropheL The third Caliph of the House of 
Abbas was the first to be called El Mahdi, that 
* is, "he who is guided aright.' Afterwards, 
tbe term waa adopted by the Shiite Moham- 
medans as the name of their expected Messiah. 
In 879, A. D., the twelfth of the Imams, 
named Mohammed Ahu'l-Kasim, mysteriously 
disappeared, but the Shiites never accepted his 
death as a fact. Their belief in his re&ppear- 



Sfaeikh Mohammed, of Dongola, appeared is 
the Egyptian Soudan as tbe true El Mahdi. 
At the very time when Arabi Pasha waa leading 
what promised to be a successful revolution 
in Lower Egypt, this Mohammed el Mahdi 
gained the ascendant over the wild natives of 
the Soudan. While Arabi was attempting, by 
rational means and in a natural manner, to 
throw off the foreign yoke at Cairo and Alex- 
andria, the Mahdi, with no less enthusiasm, 
was leading the Soudanese in a wild rebellion 
against the constituted authority. 

Tbe student of history will readily recall 
the southern limit of ancieut Egypt, as fixed 
by nature at the upper cataract of the Nile; 
but in modern times the limits of the country 
in tbe direction of the equator have been 
vastly extended. It was in this region that 



448 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE MODERN WORLD. 



the ezplorationB of Sir Samuel W. Baker, in 
Ike yean 1862-64, opened up a new world to 
geography, and poflsiblj to civilization. The 
base of his own and of all subsequent move- 
meuts into the valley of the White Nile, was 
the town of Khartoum, Ijing at the junction 
of the White Nile with the principal river. 
Sir Samuel W. Baker first made his way among 
the branching tributaries of the Blue Nile as 
far as Gondt^koro, somewhat south of the 
fifteenth parallel. From this place his explo- 
rations were extended southward to Victoria 
Nyanza, under the equator, and thence west- 
ward to the companion lake, to which he gave 
the name of Albert Nyanza, in honor of the 
Prince Consort 

The country thus revealed was of vast ex* 
lent and importance. In 1869 the Khedive 
Ismail followed up the work by sending a 
body of troops with Baker to occupy the 
country which he had explored, to extend the 
boundaries of Egypt to the head-waters of the 
Nile, to suppress the slave-trade, and to in- 
troduce the cotton plant into the fertile val- 
leys traversed by the English adventurer. In 
April of 1871, Baker was again at Gondokoro. 
He had now, however, excited the animosity 
of the slave-merchants and the hostility of 
the ignorant natives. For two years he held. 
bis own, penetrating the country as far as 
Ungoro, and finally, in 1873, falling back to 
Gondokoro, and thence into Egypt. In with- 
drawing from the Soudan he left as his suc- 
eessor, and the inheritor of his enterprises, 
Colonel Charles George Gordon, better known 
by his title of Chinese Gordon. The latter now 
became the principal figure of the Soudan. He 
maintained himself precariously and with in- 
sufficient forces during the period of the 
revolutionary movements in Egypt, keeping at 
bay, while he was unable to subdue, the hostile 
Soudanese. 

We may now go forward at once to the 
year 1883. France and England agreed 
finally to withdraw their ** Financial Control* 
of. Egypt, and to leave the Khedive's Govern- 
ment to such a feeble autonomy as it might be 
able to assume. The overthrow and banish* 
ment of Arabi, however, was not sufficient to 
bring the wild natives of Upper Egypt and 
the Soudan to a submissive spirit. On the 
contrary. El Mahdi and bis army became, in 



that far region^ more formidable than before. 
In 1884 the useless Conference of Liondon was 
held for a general consideration of the condi- 
tion of Egyptian afiairs. The meeting came 
to nothing. At that very time Chinese Gror- 
don, with his mixed force of English and 
Egyptians, was cooped up in Khartoum, and 
the insurrection which the Mahdi had kindled 
in the Soudan was spreading down the valley. 
It now became a question most serious whether 
the Englishman could any longer hold back 
the rising tide of revolt which, like the an- 
nual inundation of the Nile, threatened ta 
deluge all Egypt 

From this time forth, the insurgent natives, 
led by the Mahdi, increased in numbers and 
ferocity. In July, and again in August, rf 
1884, Gordon fought and won several battles 
with the Prophet's forces; but it was like beat- 
ing down the Hydnu During the remainder 
of the year he continued to hold his place at 
Khartoum. It can not be doubted that he 
might well have abandoned the place and r^ 
tired to safe ground in Middle Egypt; but 
such a movement was not in Chinese Gordon's 
nature. His character, indeed, is one of the 
strangest, and we might almost say most attract- 
ive, within the limits of modem biography. 
While he was willing to receive relnforcementi^ 
he was also willing to take his chances single- 
handed against the armies of the Mahdi. All 
of his messages in the after part of 1884 con- 
tinued to give the note of confidence, repeat- 
ing the assurance that he was able to hold 
Khartoum against the enemy. But in' mid- 
winter the pressure around the town became 
constantly greater. The mixed character of 
the garrison also constituted an element of 
danger. In fact, it could hardly be expected 
that the native forces in the Khedive's army 
should be free from certain sympathies with 
the Mahdi. We have already said that he 
represented the ignorant and superstitious ride 
of the very same movement which Arabi had 
so nearly led to success in Lower Egypt 
Gordon's case grew constandy more desperate. 
He was finally hemmed in, cut off from com* 
munications, reduced in supplies, and brought 
to miserable straits. About the middle of 
January, 1885, negotiations, partly between 
Gordon himself and the Mahdi, and partly 
secret and treacherous between the natives of 



OBEAT BBITAIN.—BATTLE FOR HOME BuLS. 



449 



Ihe garrison and the enemy outude, were 
opened, and the result waa the admieeion by 
night of the Mabdi's hoet into Kbartonm. 
Gordon was obliged to surrender, borne down 
as he was by mere stress of numbers. On the 
27th of January, when he was standing in the 
street, giving some directions relative to the 
capitulation, some of the Mahdl's asaassins 
sprang upon bim from behind and stabbed 
him to death. Such Ls the current report of 
the occasion, and the manner of hia murder. 
A oonsiderable part of the garrison shared his 



its leaders, and the latter, struggling with the 
unconquerable Irish disorders, went speedily 
to their fall. It could of course be only a 
matter of time when an army would be sent 
up the Nile, when Ehartoum would be retaken, 
when the Mabdi's barbaric Islamites would be 
scattered, and Gordon's memory avenged. 
But for the time being, the shock, having its 
origin even so for away as the confluence 
of the White Nile and the Blue, was felt to 
the bottom of the political order of Great 
Britain, resulting in a revenal of the Govern- 



WABRIOBS or TSB IUHi>t IN BATTX1C VITH THE SHZDIVE? FOSCBS. 



late; Khartoum fell into the handa of the 
Ibibdi, and the general result was the tem- 
porary annihilation of foreign influence on the 
Upper Nile. 

The reader will readily perceive the tre- 
mendous effect which the news of this disaster 
must produce in England. It was the one cir- 
cumstance which was wanted by the Tories in 
their assaults on the Gladstone Ministry. The 
charge that Gordon bad been crimnally aban- 
doned to his fste was precisely the kind to tell 
upon the British public. The whole calamitous 
episode bore hardly on the Liberal Party and 



ment and the construction of the Salisbury 
Ministry. 

It was at this latest period in the history 
of Great Britain that the public mind, and, 
indeed, the attention of the civilized world, 
was again turned to African exploration and 
discovery. The real knowledge of mankind 
respecting the character of Central Africa had 
begun with David Livingstone. How that 
indefatigable explorer made his way into th« 
heart of the Continent, how he disappeared 
from ^ght, how he was for some years lost t» 
the civilized nations, and how, at length, tha 



450 



UNIVERSAL BISTORY.—TBE MODERN WORLD, 



young American adventurer, Henry M. 
Stanley, sent out by Jamea Gordon Bennett 
Duder tlie single mandate, " Find Liviug- 
. ■tone," Bucceeded in reaching Victoria Nyaoza 
kod in discovering the object of hie search, ia 
known to tbe world. From this date trarel- 
Mi> geogmphers, ezplorera. bf^an 



and theuce to the Equatorial Province, as ■ 
medical officer on tbe Btaff of Charles George 
Gordon. The career of that brave but eccen* 
trie commander down to his death at Khajv 
toum, has already been sketched above. 

By this time. Dr. Schnitzer had beconM 
fint an ^mdi, then a Beg, and finallj • 



DAVID LlVmOBTOKB. 



the equatorial r^oos of the Dark Continent, 
Aod to contribute almost yeariy to the infor- 
.oatJon of mankind relative to the country 
and ita inhabitants. At length, in 1876, 
Bduard Sohnitzer, a Sileslan naturalist of res- 
olute and adventurous spirit, left home, went 
to Egypt, and took service in the army of the 
Kbediv«. He was sent first to Khartoum, 



Padia, according to tbe Egyptian military 
phraseology. He bad taken the name of 
Emin, and is known henceforth as Emin Pasha. 
He was left in the South when Gordon fell 
back to Khartoum. With the capture of thai 
place, Emin found himself hemmed in by the 
forces of the Mahdi on the north, and those 
of Mwaugo, King of Uganda, on the soDtk. 



UHEAT BRITAIN.— BATTLE FOR HOME RULE 



451 



Enough was known in Europe of the African 
ntuation to excit« the keenest intereet and the 
liveliest apprebensions for the safety of Erain 
Pasha, and plans began to be devised for his 
relief. 

In England an Emin Bey Belief Commit- 
tee WAS formed in 1886. Of this body, Sir 
William Mackinnon, Secretary of the Boyal 
Geographical Society, was chairman. At this 
time Henry M. Stanley was in the service of 
the King of the Belgians; but it was felt by 
the English Belief Committee that 
■o other than Stanley could be in- 
tnuted with the expedition in 
March of Emin. The Bel^an moo- 
aroh had at this time a fleet of 
transports in the lUver Congo, and 
these he cheerfully, placed at the 
disposal of Stanley, to whom the 
command was given by common 
oonsent. 

By the beginning of 1887 the 
expedition had been fully equipped. 
Stanley was called from New York 
to London, and on the 27th of 
January reached Alexandria on his 
way to Zanubar. It was finally 
determined, however, that the best 
rente for penetrating the interiw 
was up the valley of the Congo. 
His was accordingly taken, and in 
June of 1887 Stanley and his foroea 
were lost to sight. 

Uore than a year went by, and 
it was not until September of 1888 
that the first authentic information 
ef the progress of the expedition 
was received in London. Then 
followed another long period of 
dlenoe and anxieCy; but on the 
16th of January, 1889, a letter from Stanley 
was received at Brussels, and all doubts as to 
lis whereabouts and the success of the expe- 
dition were set at resL Emin Pasha had been 
found and resaued. The sources of the Ifile 
had been more fully determined than ever be- 
fore. A fresh-water lake, named Albert Ed- 
ward Kyania. nearly thirty thonsand miles iu 
extent and nine hundred feet above the level 
of Victoria Nyanza, had been discovered and 
explored. The command had sufiered untold 
fcardshipt, bad traversed vast stretches of al- 



most irapassable country, had fought severe 
and critical battles, had been decimated with 
fever and famine, but had courageously accom- 
plished its mission and regained .the coast, to 
hear afar off the plaudits of mankind. 

We have thus reached the point in the 
recent annals of Great Britun at which per* 
spective ceases for want of distance. The 
events to be conddered are only of yesterday, 
disproportion ed by their nearness, undeter- 
mined in their historical relations. There is • 



point at which the serious and elevated nar* 
rative of history descends through contempo- 
rary documents and reviews into mere jour- 
nalism, and is lost in the miscellany of the 
morning paper. It is inexpedient for the 
writer to attempt to follow this descent and 
distribution of the historical lines, from the 
high plane of judicial and uniropassioned crit- 
icism, downward into the malarial region 
where political prejudice, local pas^on, and 
mere obscurity and confusion darken the vis- 
ion and confound the understanding. Nel 



462 



VSIVERSAL HISTORY.— TBE MODERN WORLD. 



without a moment'B regret va^j an; mHous 
mind turn from the cooBideraUon of so great 
» fact u the History of the British Empire in 
the present century. It is doubtless Uue tliat 
the autbora and readeis of the twentieLh cen- 
tury will look back upon a landsoape differently 
adjusted irom that which the clearest sight 
of our own time is able to discover and de- 
Kribe. But much has been alreuiy discerned 
fat the dust and distraction of the epoch ; much 
more will soon take its true place and proper- 
tloo OD ^« historio page- Much which has 
already ariseD in the Victorian Age stands out 
■nblime and tall agaiust the background of 
nrolatioDary tumult, of storm and chaos, 
iriA wbidi the oentoiy was ushered in. Eng- 



land abides. The Island-built Empire ia n 
shaken by the tempeeU 

The Lion has laid his magnificent head 
Between bia paws; but he is not deadi 
The Ocean of Atlas rolb and swells 
Upon the shorea where the Briton dwells; 
The tide is high, and the seergod sprawls 
Against the wave- worn, chalky walls! 
The saiiura have made the anchors fast. 

The crooked flakes are nnder the sea ; 
The heaving deep, 'neath the billowy blast 
Tliat toaeeH the sea-mew, aurgea past— 

Britanma, wliat carce she T 
The poet's dust, with the dnst of the Un^ 

Is shrined by the Abbey wall; 
And the Chnrch of Elizabeth spreads her nk 
Above the dome, while the siagen sing 

In the famous Chapel of Faoll 



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