•5% - ^ ♦ ^^r.^ . 4^ o • " • ♦ *^^ HORACE GREELEY $20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 393 The discovery was made as casually as the great things in which Nature takes a hand usually happen. A man named James W. Marshall, engaged in building a sawmill near Sacramento, caught a glint of something shining in the mill race. He picked it up and showed it to a companion, and handed it, after the two had wondered what " that yellow stuff " could be, to the woman who did the camp cooking, with the request that she boil it in saleratus water. She was busy mak- ing soap and tossed it carelessly into the soap kettle, where it remained a day and a night and came out brighter for the boiling. Marshall then took it to Captain Sutter of Sutter's Fort on the Sacramento River, his partner in the mill enterprise, and behind closed doors with a cyclopedia and a pair of scales they endeavored to work out a problem with which they were totally unfamiliar. So far as their blundering guesses could go it was gold, but the idea seemed too wild for credence. Nothing much was said about it at the mill and the work of building went on, but the few men employed looked sharply at dirt they had carelessly walked over a hundred times, and were re- warded by finding occasional thin, scale-like particles of the same yellow substance. The Indians brought in similar pieces and turned them over to the lady of the soap kettle, she being the fountain head for food and supplies dear to the Indian heart. In about three weeks several ounces had been thus collected, when Marshall took the stuff to San Francisco to have it tested. On his return he and his partner bought a large tract of the land thereabout from the Indians for some beads and cotton handkerchiefs, — and the sawmill was never finished. A Georgia miner named Humphrey, who had been consulted in San Francisco because of his experience, 394 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING went quite mad his friends thought. He tried to in- duce some of them to join him, but they refused and he had to go to the site of the find alone. What he saw there pleased him. He made a rocker and began the business of placer mining in California. The owners of the land so easily bought from the Indians required a third of all gold mined upon it and collected this tribute until the following autumn, when an enter- prising party from Oregon declined to " pay tithes " as they called it. By this time there were many miners and the area of their labors had greatly broadened. But the news was so unbelievable that at first it traveled slowly. It was more than three months after Marshall's discov- ery before the San Francisco newspapers announced that gold mining had become a regular California in- dustry. By the latter part of the year miners began to arrive from Oregon and the Sandwich Islands and Mexico. In September the first fabulous tales of gold- finding on the Pacific coast, that had been slowly filter- ing eastward to set towns and farming communities agape with wonder, reached New York. They were treated at first as American humor, — Munchausen romances of the first water. In October they attracted real attention. In November new reports were awaited with eagerness. By December the stories began to be believed: and when early in the new year some of the actual gold reached the Philadelphia mint and was pronounced genuine, excitement took possession of the whole country. It was like a call to battle and its answering enthusi- asm, save that for patriotic ardor and the red glamour of war were substituted the lure of exploration and mirage of wealth. All the young men hungering for adventure saw here the chance of their lives. The dis- $20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 395 satisfied found their lot the blacker for this golden vision ; and those who had met disappointment grasped at an opportunity to set themselves right with Fortune. Announcements, jesting or eager or desperate, that they meant to seek the new El Dorado, followed, and preparation, open or secret, went on for the journey. Then came the wrenching loose from old ties and the starting forth to a life of danger and immense odds. Newspapers printed lists of those about to leave and of companies being organized. Greeley's " Tribune " kept a standing headline, " The Golden Chronicle," on its front page and filled two columns of each issue with names and details, while each local sheet echoed with the news affecting its own circle of read- ers. The furor grew until every hamlet had given up at least one of its able-bodied men while towns sent them out by companies and even regiments. From fifty to one hundred thousand rushed to California that first summer, and the numbers increased for three or four years. Every family had a kinsman embarked in the venture ; and just as in the case of armies in the field, those who remained behind followed them in imagination and waited hungry for news through in- terminable intervals of silence. Whether they traveled by land or sea, it was a long and perilous journey, with small chance of sending back word to those at home. What these weeks and months of vivid emotional imagining did to awaken our people to the extent and possibilities of their coun- try, can never be measured. There had always been a frontier with its lure of the beyond; but it had been an indefinite beyond, bounded only on the near side and stretching far out into space. Now they were forced to contemplate the country as a whole, with its wide plains, its mountains, its perils, and its treasures. 396 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Every line of writing about it, in books or in letters which found their precarious way back to old friends, every story of success or failure, every detail of physi- cal geography, every mocking casual hint of hardship or of fabulous wealth, was discussed and brooded over and prayed about in the homes they had left behind. If the adventurers chose to go by sea, they had the alternatives of a voyage six to ten months long around Cape Horn ; or thirteen days to Panama and a trip across that narrow and fever-infested bit of land, with a gambler's chance of finding a vessel at the other side on which to continue their journey. Every bit of merchandise they took with them, and often these seafarers put their available funds into something profitable for trading in the gold fields, had to be transported in small boats or on the backs of half- naked bearers up the Chagres River and through a jungle bewildering to northern senses in its medley of tropic sights and sounds and the wonder of malignantly luxurious vegetation. Cholera added terror to the uncertain length of their stay in Panama, for it might be weeks or even longer before the opportunity came to go on ; the vague sched- ule of the western coastwise ships being subject to sud- den and unexpected change through mutiny or a gust of gold fever that swept their sailors into miners and left the decks empty. It is said that Collis P. Hunt- ington was kept waiting three months, but with true mercantile genius made it a season of gain, tramping back and forth from the Atlantic to the Pacific twenty times, adding several thousands to his gains by vari- ous transactions. For those unblessed with business instinct it was a season of alarming encroachment upon their capital ; and it was apt to be a season of education for the waiting American, not only in money values, $20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 397 but in those frank details of living and dying which the Latin races take as a matter of course. From the piles of discarded and dishonored bones in the ceme- tery to the cock fighting and the deportment of the black-eyed seiioritas, the code was different to that in which they had been trained. When they finally took passage on an overcrowded and not altogether sea- worthy vessel, they were apt to be broader-minded if not better men. Travelers from the East continued to press in, with no way of relieving the pressure, until the town was dangerously congested and sickness came, and shortage of food was threatened. If the voyagers chose to cover the three thousand miles by land, there was the long journey to some frontier post where fitting out for the real expedition took place. Long before that the trip for Eastern men had assumed the proportions of an adventure. Typical jottings from Horace Greeley's diary show the gradual but inevitable fading out of civilization. " May 12, Chicago, — Chocolate and morning jour- nals last seen on the hotel breakfast table ; 23d, Leaven- worth, — Room bells and bathtubs make their final ap- pearance ; 24th, Topeka, — Beefsteaks and washbowls (other than tin) last visible. Barber ditto. 26th, Manhattan, — Potatoes and eggs last recognized. . . . Chairs ditto. 27th, Junction City, — Last visitation of a bootblack. . . . Beds bid us goodby; 28th, Pipe Creek, — Benches for seats at meals disappeared giving place to bags and boxes. . . . Our trust under Provi- dence, is in buoyant hearts and a rubber blanket." And when the frontier post was reached, the good weapons and the good advice that the voyager accumu- lated ! The calculations that took place about food and ammunition and clothing; the weight involved and what was really needed for the journey! A reliable 398 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING gun was the first requisite, for on that Hfe itself might depend. " From the moment of leaving St. Joe to the time of reaching Placerville or Sacramento the pistol should never be absent from a man's right side," vvfrote a man who had made the journey. " Remember it is handier there than on the other, — nor the bowie knife from his left." "As to food," another man of experience wrote, " it should always be observed that children as well as adults require about twice the quantity of provisions which they would require at home for the same length of time." The reason being that " deprived of vegetables and other sauce " and living in the open air, they were ravenous for more of the food that could be carried than even the most liberal provider would dream. There were fewer women and children in this mad rush than in the normal emigration of settlers. These parties were chiefly made up of men, and young men at that ; but there were women too and even children ; and care had to be taken in the forming of companies that moved westward together to see that the number of fighting men equaled or exceeded the number of noncombatants. The departure in high spirits and all friendliness was apt to give way in forty-eight hours or less to friction that an unwonted mode of life and unknown qualities of companions inevitably occasioned in such chance combinations. Then these descendants of the men of Runnymede followed their racial bent and stopped their journey to elect a leader and form themselves into a sort of legislature to enact rules and try offenders, a town-meeting on wheels, apt to be swayed by oratory and emotion, but a form of government that effectively quelled disturbance and soothed the spirit of discontent. " The Prairie," wrote Ampere, " is for Americans $20,000 OR $30,000 A YEAR 399 a magic word. One hears no more from them about the primeval woods. ' Prairie ' spells to them the future, it means progress, it is poetry." Slowly, by crawling ox-teams, the parties made their way over the varied zones marked out by Nature on the great flat map of the plains. The " weed prairie," rich in flowers ; the " rolling prairie," like a great undulating hayfield, stretching as far as sight could reach; the " motte prairie " ; the " salt prairie," where tufts of blue buffalo grass gave place to naked trodden earth around the " licks " and muddy springs where the great herds came to satisfy their craving for salt; and so on out to the sage-brush and the poisonous " soda prairie," where alkali glistened like hoar-frost. Then in time came the Rockies with their wonders and their hard- ships ; and after they were safely passed, more and ap- parently endless desert, where sage-brush and cactus grew too sparsely to cover weather-worn outcroppings of dull red stone and the crumbling beds of black lava, eloquent of a stormy geologic past. But few who made the journey were trained in science to note these signs of planet building. They saw only an arid landscape across which a well-worn, dusty trail stretched ever westward, marked at inter- vals by whitening bones of draft animals that had died of thirst and weariness; a trying, dreary desert where " a mule bitten in the jaw by a rattlesnake, lying dead beside a station tent," might be one of the freshest and most cheerful sights. And they were occupied with the threatening dangers and daily happenings of the march. The first death in the party, from the discharge of a gun, accidental or otherwise, was a tragic enigma, more mysterious than death at home. The illness of a woman or child brought a rush of sympathy, and the whole caravan 400 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING halted until the suffering was over or the delay im- perilled the safety of all. The great herds of buffalo that darkened the plain like a cloud; the mockery of a mirage that intensified the torturing lack of water; the heat or the fierce storms that swept the region in alternating seasons ; all had their effect on the spirits and courage of the little company, as did the play of personality on personality under such soul-revealing conditions. And ever present was the menace of In- dian attack that make necessary vigilance by day, and by night the guarded wagon-stockade, wagon chained to wagon with all the beasts and goods and women gathered inside its circle of canvas-covered prairie schooners. And when California was reached, all dun colored and dusty gray at the end of the dry season, save for the vivid green of an occasional pepper tree, or the almost black growth of its coniferous forests, what a land of exaggerated, impossible contrasts it seemed. Its mushroom towns of a hundred tents and shanties, where tents rented at twenty or forty thousand dollars a year, and games of chance went on under their roofs in which equal sums were staked on the turn of a card, appeared scarcely less abnormal than its landscape. Tents and players might vanish in a night, leaving nothing behind ; or they might give place in a few weeks to closely built city blocks that housed thousands where the tents had sheltered scores, but where all lived at the same mad speed. The gambling, the boasting, the drinking and shooting, the lavish, ill-ordered spending, the uncouth and unexpected bits of senti- ment and the crystal pure " grit " with which the ups and downs of that wild life were met and borne, have become trite to us through much repetition in graphic pen pictures by Bret Harte and his imitators. It is $20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 401 a kind of life America has known ever since, in one part or another of its territory, — in California or the Rock- ies or Alaska, — but then it was absolutely new, a burst- ing of American energy out of the trammels of Puritan- ism and the sober hardships of backwoods pioneering. The staunchest Puritan Father would have had his manners, if not his morals, wrenched a little in that atmosphere. The most carefully trained Methodist lad took to ways and forms of speech that would have horrified the gentle ladies and pious men of his family back East. But early training dies hard, and when Sunday came, the diggers with one accord laid aside their shovels to devote the day to, — purposes of washing ! If morals were lax according to the Eastern code, they had one of their own. It was not etiquette to in- quire too curiously into a man's past, particularly to ask what he had been called " when he lived at home." The journey west wiped the slate clean. Least said was soonest mended, and misfortune or a too straight aim might explain much. But if a man transgressed the elastic code of the community to which he had come, there was a vigilance committee to see that he did not violate it a second time. There was a rude kind of generosity in the justice. Stories of the murderers allowed to choose their own juries, which hung them, with no hard feelings on either side, have been told often enough to be believed. And quite aside from crime or deserved misfortune, there was hard luck in plenty which set men " temporarily " to strange tasks, — an ex-judge to driving an ox team, an ex- governor to playing the fiddle in a saloon, or lawyers and doctors to turn their hands to various and uncon- genial tasks. But whatever they did they were all good Americans and incipient millionaires. 402 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING From the nature of their new calling they were nomads. The pioneer settler had depended on his own labor for food, and was stationary for the time being at least, on the tract of land upon which he settled. He felled his trees and tilled his field, with a rifle ready beside him. But the miner did not plant and took no pleasure in broad fields. It was not the surface of the ground but a small portion of its inside that he wanted. He wandered about in search of it and when he had found it, dug it up and washed it prodigally away to cull his one harvest of golden grains. Mean- time he had to eat, and provisions were brought to him across thousands of miles. He bought them at exorbitant rates when he had funds, and fasted or was grub-staked by a friend when he had none. When he had the money nothing was worth haggling about, if it was worth considering at all. A dollar a pound was the accepted price for foodstuffs, when they did not cost more. Eggs might soar to three dollars apiece if the extravagant miner took a fancy to have them. Doctors charged $ioo or $50 for a visit, or gave their services for nothing. Boots worth $6 in New York sold for $100, and twenty dollar revolvers for $150. Fractional money was a nuisance; ten-cent coins, the smallest in circulation, were apt to infuriate the re- cipient and land in the brush instead of in his pocket. There is a tale of a $20, twenty-gallon cask of brandy which was kept full during the long trip to California by the simple expedient of pouring in water whenever brandy was extracted; and which finally sold in Sac- ramento for more than five hundred per cent, on the original investment. Yet for all the wild extravagance of living, statistics prove that the money dug out of the earth in those frenzied years, came to only about $600, or less than two dollars a day, for the whole $20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 403 number of men engaged in mining. Laborers in va- rious branches of industry received many times that much; yet such was the excitement of the game, the dazzling reward of success, and the hope springing eternal in each miner's breast, that other callings lan- guished and the hills were full of lean and often hungry men. Some of them stayed on for the rest of their lives, searching hopefully till the end. Those who re- turned, rich or poor, were greeted as though come back from the dead ; and had material for conversation and reflection for more years than they were likely to re- main above ground. And besides their personal ex- periences, good or bad, they brought back with them a life-giving breath of Western energy and belief in the future of the country whose vast extent they had measured and proved. They brought back also a different standard of values. Once acquired, that reckless disregard for ten- cent pieces might be curbed, but could never be eradi- cated. California changed the national and the indi- vidual viewpoint regarding money. In his impecunious youth Henry Clay centered his financial ambitions on " one hundred pounds a year Virginia money." Van Buren's $200,000 accumulated by his own energies had seemed to voters more than a man could honestly come by; and in the North, at least, $20,000 had long ago crystallized into a synonym for riches. " That 's Abner Johnson's boy," a little lad in New York State overheard a townsman say, referring to his small self as he sat holding the horses while his father traded at the country store. " Who 's Abner John- son ? " a new-comer asked. " Why he 's the richest man in Lewis County. He 's got $20,000 clear." Such a conversation could not have taken place after '49, though to this day in rural New England $20,000 404 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING has a significance to the conservative mind far above its money value. " I 've figured it all out," said a dweller in the hill country, not many years ago. "If a man owns his farm up here and zvorks, he can get 'most everything he needs for his livin' off it. He wants a little money for groceries and clothes, but not much. If he has his farm and $20,000 in the Savin's Bank and good bonds, he 's better off than the fellow worth $100,000 who lives in town. He has to work like thunder, an' pay rent, and in the end he ain't got nothin' to show for it." A city man who has his summer home on this same airy hilltop, musing aloud to the writer about his long life, told of running away to China when he was a youth, determined not to return until he had made a fortune large enough to retire upon. His people were well-to-do, he was accustomed to the best, and he re- solved that the amount should be ample. Twenty thousand dollars was the sum firmly fixed in his mind. He carried out his purpose and returned to find that $20,000 had shrunk meanwhile from a competency to a single year's income. Before the gold fever, one of our foreign visitors wrote that " nobody spends more than $10,000 a year in America." California miners when thoroughly aroused and interested were capable of spending $20,000 a minute. With the wide territorial expansion and the pictur- esque excesses of the gold fever, another period of our national life came to an end. Through very fullness of prosperity we ceased to be sufficient unto ourselves. An energetic business on the Pacific coast made neces- sary much traffic by sea; and steamers not being able to carry their motive power in a sheet of canvas as the old sailing ships had done, there was need for coal- $20,000 OR $30,000 A YEAR 405 ing stations. This led to our friendly but not too gentle knocking at the door of Japan in 1852. That hermit kingdom had received foreigners kindly two hundred and fifty years before, had observed them with intelligent Asiastic eyes for a quarter of a century, and then closed its ports firmly against all professing the Christian faith; had forbidden the building of ships large enough to sail for Christian lands, and confiscated all such Japanese-owned ships then in exist- ence. And at the time that happened Japan had colon- ies farther away than Massachusetts is from England. What occurred to turn hospitality to such black depths of distrust we can only conjecture. It required a fleet and guns, commanded by the brother of the hero of Lake Erie, and backed by a young republic's sub- lime confidence in its own good will, to force open doors that refused to be unlocked. On our own continent the mere weight of travel brought to the front new questions. The movement toward California across the Isthmus gave new life to that old chimera, a ship canal. The desert had to be bridged by law and order to link the East with settlements so far away. Kansas and Nebraska terri- tories were organized ; and with this the slavery ques- tion, that had brought on the Mexican War and that had lurked cloaked and specter-like in the background from the beginning of the government, threw off its disguise and came out into the open, no longer a specter but a demon. CHAPTER XIX SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE A THOUGHTFUL writer has said that Ameri- cans have " a national capacity for expecting national greatness." It was of course just this capacity that made the country in the first place and then developed it. Lafayette summed up our ideals and our early resources when he called our American Revolution " the grandest of contests won by skirmishes of sentinels and outposts." The out- come of that contest and the next one with England did not shake our young confidence in our motives or our destiny. Our wonderful physical growth con- firmed the belief that everything of ours must be big and good and bound to rise higher ; that just because it was American it would expand and was quite in- capable of sinking. To a cynic these properties sug- gest an unflattering comparison ; but the enthusiast sees in them only aspiration. The same optimism, our buoyant hope springing from a substratum of Puritan consecration, has enabled us many times to overcome impossibilities. It enabled us to keep clean and wholesome such a scramble for wealth as that rush to California. In a word, our motive power as a nation is spiritual rather than utili- tarian, wide-spread belief to the contrary notwithstand- ing. We are a sentimental people, and though over- laid with a substantial covering of practicality, senti- 406 SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 407 ment has come to the surface time and again to change our history in the making. At Monroe's second election, for example, the vote in the electoral college was virtually unanimous. It just failed of unanimity, but, oh, the wide difference ! A New Hampshire man wrote upon his ballot the name of John Quincy Adams, explaining to his colleagues that since Washington had been elected by unanimous vote, it was due to his memory that no one else should share the honor. The unexpected act is typical of our American ways. We go along in humdrum fashion, intent on the busi- ness in hand, which is as often as not a work of de- struction, and is oftener than not connected with dol- lars. Quite without warning a word is spoken, a chord of memory struck, and suddenly no persuasion in the world could tempt us to do the thing that a moment before seemed natural, if not inevitable. Whatever it is, it is done without breast-beating parade, almost with levity, for race amalgamation has corroded phlegm and sharpened stolidity and slowed up Latin emotionalism into a type of mind blessed with a keen sense of the absurd and cursed with a most cowardly horror of making itself ridiculous. The grim frontier jest that pictures a lynching party discovering its mistake too late and apologizing to the widow in the cryptic words, " The laugh is on us, ma'am," is nearer truth than fiction. We act as though ashamed of the sentiment that moves us and indulge the national sense of the ridiculous at the expense of emotion, even of rever- ence. With changing conditions, national sentiment has showed itself at different periods in varied and char- acteristic ways. Before so many racial elements came to dwell among us, its expression was more sedate. 4o8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING It is doubtful if any of the continental worthies could have understood that lynching story, with the possible exception of Franklin, the only one of them born with the quality that has since come into its own as Ameri- can humor. Even in the sedate days our tribute to public men was apt to be paid in somewhat free and easy fashion. Washington is the only one in our national pantheon to whom decorous reverence has always been made. The admirers of Franklin who knew his reputation abroad were astonished when they came to this coun- try and made a pilgrimage to his tomb to find only a plain white slab in " an obscure corner of an obscure burying-ground," Not even a path led to it. But they might have found food for thought in the fact that the tall grass about it was pressed down by the tread of many feet, and that there was no need of a guide to show them the way. The roads leading to the homes of our early Vir- ginia Presidents were filled with admirers who arrived, according to the custom of the South, by coach and chariot, bringing their horses and their servants, and staying sometimes for days to cumber the stables and empty the larder. Washington, one of the richest Americans of his generation, escaped bankruptcy, hav- ing the fortune to die within three years of laying down the Presidency. The others all suffered. Jefferson paid the penalty of fame by being literally eaten out of house and home, and his biographer's idyllic state- ment that " no hard work was done at Monticello " scarcely tallies with the assertion of his daughter that she and her household servants were sometimes called upon to provide beds for half a hundred people. Monroe said of his visitors that " some were bounties and some were taxes." On the whole he thought that SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 409 there were enough of the former to offset the latter; but in his opinion pensions for Ex-Presidents were a necessity, since under our repubHcan plan they could not shut their doors and refuse hospitality to this sentimental horde without discredit to the country. Aiitres temps, autres mcriirs. Ex-Presidents are left in comparative seclusion now, and the lawns of Presi- dential candidates suffer. But there is a deal more than selfish and lively expectation of favors to come in the acclaim given a President or a President- elect. Monroe's shrunken figure in his old-fashioned military coat, light small-clothes, and obsolete head- gear, the " Last Cocked Hat," was insignificant enough ; and neither his personality nor the few offices at his disposal explained the furor with which he was greeted on that tour of his into the enemy's country shortly after he assumed office. The campaign had been un- usually bitter, but the whole population turned out and politics were forgotten in enthusiasm for the mighty country this unimposing little man represented. Men who for years had never willingly entered the same room suddenly found it agreeable to sit side by side at banquets and to shout themselves hoarse to- gether in the frenzy of fireworks, cheers, and artillery salutes that marked the President's progress. " The demon of party for a time departed and gave place to a general outburst of national feeling." Amazed and delighted, the people fell to analyzing their own sensations, and when the Boston " Sentinel " called it an era of good feeling, enthusiastically adopted the phrase into the language of the day. Such furors have swept the country again and again : sometimes for a person : sometimes in recognition of a great gift, as in the case of Jenny Lind; sometimes in an ovation to foreigners, like Kossuth and Garibaldi, 4IO OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING for gallant efforts in behalf of principles Americans hold dear. The crowning tribute of this kind was given to one who belonged both to Europe and America, to the first by birth, but to us if brotherly sympathy counts for any- thing at all. When Lafayette returned after fifty years to lay the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument, the number of our States had doubled. As Clay said in his address of welcome, a whole new world had come into being. Lafayette himself had experienced tragic vicissitudes in that half century. He had done his ineffectual best for Marie Antoinette, kneeling in dumb show of loyalty to kiss her hand on the balcony at Versailles while the mob howled below. The French Revolution had spared his life, but it had swept away all his wealth and inflicted upon him imprisonment and hardships too painful to remember. He had come to us as a young man in a ship of his own purchasing, with a gift of arms for the continental soldiers. For this second visit President Monroe, who as a subaltern had been wounded on the same American battle-field with Lafayette, offered him the courtesy of a na- tional ship. This Lafayette declined, preferring, he said, to come as a private person to meet old friends and renew old ties. Having little vanity, he could not dream of the welcome that awaited him. " It will burst ! " he cried, pressing both hands upon his heart, while tears streamed down his honest cheeks when on landing he realized the fervor of the greet- ing. The pent-up enthusiasm of fifty years was in those shouts, not only in tribute to his winning personality, but in gratitude for the help and comfort he had brought us on his first visit. Young and old, grave and gay, were caught up and carried out of their ordi- SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 411 nary behavior. Dr. Bowditch of Boston, the mathe- matician, confessed that instead of waiting in quiet dignity as he meant to do to watch Lafayette go by, he seemed to lose his senses at first sight of him, and regained them to find himself out with the crowd in the middle of the street battling to reach the barouche and huzzahing with all his might. If Lafayette had not been the sincerest and most genuine of men, and full of wiry health as well, he could never have survived that twelvemonth of ova- tions. He visited every State, almost every important town, interested in all that was new, reminiscent of all that was old, graciously playing his part in every cere- mony, whether it was standing godfather to all the children born in his path, as his compatriots said he did ; or leading the blind, white-haired widow of Gen- eral Montgomery through a minuet; or fraternizing with Harvard graduates on class day; or gossiping with old men who had served as privates in the Revo- lution. Interminable processions by day and recep- tions by night robbed him of half his rest, but left him apparently unwearied. Light-heartedness and tact helped him through moments that would have been trying to a more self- centered man; and he was not above slyly seeking in- formation to use it again with happy effect an hour later. " Now tell me all about this place, and for what it is remarkable," he commanded Josiah Ouincy, who as governor's aide accompanied him through Massa- chusetts. " This place " happened to be Andover, where Quincy had attended school, and the answer lacked neither detail nor picturesqueness. Lafayette treasured all the hints, and in his speech, seasoned with his French accent, made happy reference to An- dover's pride, the theological seminary, as that sacred 412 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING hill from which hope had gone .forth to the heathen and light to the uttermost parts of the earth. A little later Quincy met a proud and beaming townsman. " I was really surprised," he said, " at the particu- lar and accurate knowledge that General Lafayette possesses. I always knew that in the religious world our theological seminary was an object of great con- cern ; but I never supposed that in the courts and camps of Europe so much interest was taken in it." Quincy answered diplomatically that, after the talk he had had with the General, he was not surprised by his knowledge of local conditions. But there were many places where Lafayette's memory needed no prompting. On the trip up the Hudson he was on deck betimes to show his son the spot where Major Andre had been arrested ; he de- scribed Wayne's capture of Stony Point with eloquent hands and voice ; and pointed out the house where the Commander-in-chief and he were breakfasting with Mrs. Arnold at the time Washington learned of Arnold's treason. In Washington his mind ran for- ward as well as back, for here in a capital that had not then existed was most clearly to be seen the difference between the country he had left and the one to which he returned. As Clay put it, here he was " in the midst of posterity." The brilliant and dashing Clay captivated him. That was the man he wished to see President, he declared. But in his kindness of heart he found time to spend an hour with another of the unsuccessful Presidential candidates of 1824, the stricken Crawford, sitting so close to his paralyzed side that his attitude seemed an embrace. Three of his good friends of other days, Madison, Adams, and Jefferson, were now Ex-Presidents. La- fayette's meeting with the latter on the lawn at Monti- SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 413 cello, whither he had been escorted with trumpets and banners, was a moment of sudden change from gaiety to pathos. The trumpets ceased in the middle of a note and every head was bared as the General, a fine portly figure betraying little infirmity save the slight limp he had carried since Brandywine, dis- mounted to embrace his host. JefTerson, advancing to meet him, looked emaciated and old as well as ill. He was suffering physically, and mentally also, from troubles that were soon to drive him from the home he loved. And for all Lafayette's jauntiness, he was no longer young. He was nearing seventy, and there were wrinkles upon his face that the fine brown wig pulled low on his forehead could not hide. It was in the ceremony at Bunker Hill that enthusi- asm culminated. The weather was perfect, justify- ing the pious belief that the Lord would not permit it to rain on that day ; and the number of spectators was limited only by physical possibilities of space and transportation. " Everything that had wheels and everything that had legs " moved toward the monu- ment. In a room apart from the crowd Lafayette met the forty survivors of the battle, greeting each with the tenderness of a personal friend. No officer of field or staff remained alive, but one old captain, tottering with the weight of his ninety-five years, brought the far-off days of King George very close indeed. A young aide, the only person in the room who was not of that past time, pinned a badge over the heart of each veteran, and they filed out into the June sunshine for the ceremony. With them and the other survivors of the Revolution Lafayette elected to sit after he had done his part in laying the corner-stone. " I belong there," he said, refusing the chair of honor that had been prepared for him, and took his place 414 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING among them, his chestnut wig giving him a strangely youthful air in that company. The same chaplain who had invoked a blessing be- fore the soldiers went into action made a prayer, and Webster, rising, set the emotional key in those two opening words of his address, " Venerable men " spoken to the gray-haired band in that wonderful voice of his. It was more wonderful than ever that day, vibrant with feeling, and all his power of oratory and all his wealth of patriotism seemed concentrated in his speech. He played upon the vast audience as upon an instrument. Wave upon wave of feeling passed across the sea of upturned faces as cloud shadows pass over a meadow. He himself felt it as something almost uncanny. " I never," he said, speak- ing of it, " desire to behold again the awful spectacle of so many human faces all turned toward me." His popularity had lately been under partial eclipse, but this address, so eloquent and adequate, set him in full favor again, and many little accustomed to weep found the sunshine suddenly dimmed by a mist of sentiment and tears. Materially the country felt itself still much in La- fayette's debt. Besides the aid of his sword and cour- age, he had expended a fortune in our behalf, equipping a regiment and bringing us a ship. As an officer of the Revolution he was entitled to a grant of land and pay for his services. The latter he accepted only after his patrimony had been swept away by the Revolution in France. The former had been assigned him in the new territory of Louisiana, which, as Jejfferson wrote one of his Italian correspondents, " enabled us to do a handsome thing for Fayette." " Locations can be found adjacent to the city of New Orleans . . . the value of which cannot be calculated. I hope it will SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 415 induce him to come over and settle there with his family." A thousand acres of such land were set apart for him by his agent, but Congress, not being informed, granted the same tract to the city, and Lafayette with princely unselfishness refused to press his own prior claim. ** He could have no contest with the Ameri- can people," he said. During Lafayette's second visit. Congress bent on reparation, voted him two hundred thousand dollars in money and twenty-four thousand acres of " fertile land in Florida," which, so far as known, never proved of great benefit to him or his heirs. But it is a satis- faction to remember that this greatest wave of popu- lar feeling did not ebb without leaving a token more tangible than sighs and good wishes. And without that perhaps the account between Lafayette and our- selves was balanced, after all. No man is without his faults ; even neighborly gallantry may get his best friends into trouble ; and we are told that it is to Lafay- ette we are indebted for that pest of our farms, the thistle, sent over from France in a package of seeds addressed to Mrs. Madison and marked " very rare." Sometimes, alas ! a wave of popular sympathy in this sentimental country of ours lapses without prac- tical result. This happened when Jefferson's financial straits became known. A subscription was started, and twenty thousand dollars was sent him, with the intimation that it was merely a first payment for value received. Jefferson accepted it in the spirit in which it was sent. " I have spent three times as much money and given my whole life to my countrymen," he said. " Now they come nobly forward in the only way they can and save an old servant from being turned like a dog out of doors." But the impulse died down, and his home had to be sacrificed, after all. 4i6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING An interesting and possibly pertinent fact to be re- membered in considering national sentiment is that the successful warrior has cast his spell over us as he has over other nations since the dawn of history. The United States is a country devoted to ideals of peace, but war Presidents elected by the people would have governed about half the time had not death intervened. Peace, like heaven, seems indeed a hypothetical state of bliss, laudable and longed for in theory, but secretly feared as deadly dull to live in. In his autobiography General Scott sets forth the idea that men at heart adore fighting, and to prove it asserts that he had been told by Revolutionary worthies that Jefferson, brilliant and successful though he was, felt himself discredited and ill at ease in the presence of Washington, not because of Washington's calm dignity and great wisdom, but because of his military record; and that it was this " painful sense of inferiority " that forced him into political opposition. It is an interesting theory ; and it must be confessed that we find a military record a valuable asset in any walk of life. It would make curious reading could a table be compiled that would show how many candidates for office, from coroner to President, have been helped up the political ladder by bayonet and carbine. Perhaps the real reason is that a successful military record argues fearlessness and ability to strike out from the shoulder, qualities that have always had their fascination for us. We have done not a little in the way of hero-worship in the United States, but we have done much more in worshiping the heroic spirit; and the admiration of which we have been lavish has been most freely offered before the shrine of pure motive and high ideal. One proof of this is that although our national sense SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 417 of humor is keen, there is a distrust of the very same quality when it comes to serious matters of govern- ment. A pre-Revolutionary earnestness hngers among us yet to discredit wit and condemn satire in our pubHc servants. Humor has been a pitfall to many unwary politicians, and a quick tongue and a sense of the ridiculous have proved the undoing of more than one statesman amply endowed with talent and patriotism. Voters are willing to be amused by such men. They elect them to Congress, sometimes even to the Senate, but there they stop. John Ran- dolph's opium-tinged display of " intellectual jewelry " had rightly the morbid charm of a pathological ex- hibit; but the saner brilliant speeches of congressional wits from his day down to Thomas B. Reed have kept them from higher offices in the gift of the people. The one man with a reputation for humor who has been elected to the Presidency was elected not because of, but in spite of it. It was the unanswerable logic of his Cooper Institute speech and the white fearlessness of Lincoln's character, not his stories, that brought him success. Americans laugh at and with almost any- thing, but they take their country seriously. They often shirk their own part in the job of government, and revile political methods ; but they hold their Gov- ernment too sacred to be trusted in the hands of a jester. " In the privacy of their houses," wrote Miss Mar- tineau eighty years ago, " many citizens have lamented to me with feelings to which no name but grief can be given that the events of 1832-33 have suggested the words * use ' or ' value of the Union.' To an Ameri- can, a calculation of the value of the Union would formerly have been as offensive, as absurd as an esti- mate of the value of religion would be to a right- 4i8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING minded man. To Americans of this order the Union has long been more than a matter of high utility. It has been idealized into an object of love and venera- tion. In answer to this cui bono? many have cried in their hearts with Lear, ' O reason not the need ! ' . . . But instances of carelessness or levity about the Union are very rare, and this is the reason why more show of attachment to it is not made." Protestations of devotion are still rarer now. Even on the Fourth of July they are thought to be in ques- tionable taste. But question the fact of patriotism and see what happens. The change in the fashion of expressing sentiment can be seen in the political nicknames that have fol- lowed one another through the century. Washington was the Father of his Country ; Madi- son, Father of the Constitution; Jackson, the Preserver of the Union; Webster, Defender of the Constitution; Fremont, the Pathfinder ; William Henry Harrison, the Cincinnatus of the West. Names all of them as high sounding as titles in the age of chivalry, as well merited, doubtless, and acquired in the same way by popular acclaim. They have in them a world of grati- tude and admiration, but little levity. Side by side with them, though beginning a little later and growing more marked as the new Western note crept into poli- tics, is another group equally admiring, but expressing greater intimacy of feeling, and more daring, if not more wit. The Last Cocked Hat, applied to Monroe ; J. O. Adams's Old Man Eloquent; Jackson's Old Chief and Old Hickory ; Zachary Taylor's Old Rough and Ready ; Clay's Gallant Harry of the West ; Doug- las's Little Giant; and the Honest Old Abe that grew with Lincoln's cares and responsibilities into the fond and trusting Father Abraham. Of late years still SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 419 greater familiarity has crept in. Each can extend the list to suit himself. But it must not be forgotten that parallel to both, beginning very early and continuing on, is a third set, cruelly caustic, like His Superfluous Excellency applied to the elder Adams, and the Fox of Kinderhook directed against Van Buren, showing how keen is the people's demand for virtue, and that their criticism never sleeps. First and last enough sentiment has been expended upon American politics to equip a regiment of poets laureate. Distinctly American holidays are full of it. Fourth of July, of course, made itself. The twenty- second of February became one by common consent. It had its origin at a convivial supper in a New York tavern in 1783, when a company met to listen to an original ode and drink innumerable toasts. Enthusi- asm survived the wine, and as the gentlemen went gaily and unsteadily home they swore to meet again on future anniversaries. Regarded at first as a purely party custom, it broadened beyond Federal circles to take in all Americans. Jefferson's followers attempted a similar observance in his honor, but he countered with another bit of sentiment, refusing to divulge the date, on the ground that only the birthday of the nation should be so treated. Thanksgiving was sectional and religious as well as political, and sentiment graced it in plenty. One of the customs that lingered in good old New England households until the middle of the last century was to lay five grains of corn upon the plate of every person at table in memory of a day in early colonial history when five ships came sailing into harbor just in time to chase away the specter of famine. It was Washington who appointed the first national day of thanksgiving at the instance of Congress, after the adoption of the Constitution. For many years, 420 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING however, annual observance of the day remained a matter of state action, virtually confined to New Eng- land. Like the twenty-second of February, it became a national custom only gradually. Unlike the twenty- second of February, it spread largely through the in- fluence of a woman, Mrs. Sarah Joseph Hale, who ad- vocated it for twenty years, in the editorial columns of " Godey's Lady's Book " and in private letters to many governors. On the first inauguration day both Washington and Vice-President Adams took the oath of office clad from head to foot in garments grown and spun and fash- ioned on American soil. And the form of oath in which they pledged their loyalty has been carefully re- peated by office-holders high and low ever since. The color of the West Point uniform records an- other bit of feeling. It is a little sentimental note on the forgotten battle of Chippewa, when there was not enough blue cloth in the country to cover our small army, and the British commander, seeing a gray line of regulars advance, mistook them, to his undoing, for " nothing but a body of Buffalo militia." How quickly our public ear responds to rhythm or effective wording is seen in the eagerness with which some telling phrase is caught up and made to do duty as a rally ing-cry. Even the lilt of campaign songs and ephemeral, but temporarily popular campaign slang have turned the tide of battle. Marcy's glib justification of rewarding party loyalty, " To the victors belong the spoils," and the not quite frank " Fifty- four forty or fight," each did yeoman's service; and when it comes to more serious and sentimental utterances, their influence has been enormous. " Mil- lions for defense, but not one cent for tribute " both added to and steadied excitement in the X. Y. Z. affair. SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 421 Oay's " Free trade and sailors' rights " helped on the War of 1812. "Liberty and Union, one and in- separable, now and forever " out of Webster's reply to Hayne was a resounding line plucked from among the innumerable words of the Nullification debates and exalted into a national watchword. How much the glowing title of that new patriotic song the " Star- Spangled Banner " did to inspire enlistment, and the harder duty of cheerful endurance in the discouraging days of British invasion and burning, or how far Lawrence's dying injunction not to give up the ship has carried individual Americans from that day to this in deeds of heroism each heart must determine for itself. Once in a long while sentiment obliterates for an hour even our sense of humor. When Saxe-Weimer was traveling in this country, a dinner was given in his honor by the German Society of Philadelphia. Wishing to pay him the highest respect, they arranged to have only German music. Fortunately the genial duke's sense of fun was equal to the strain. " Our waiters were black," he wrote describing the occasion. " Even the music was performed by blacks, because white musicians will never perform at public enter- tainments. After every toast the music struck up; but our virtuosi were only acquainted with two Ger- man pieces. After drinking my health, they played * Ein Schiisserl und ein Reimerl,' and after the toast was given of ' The" German Athens,' they played ' O du lieber Augustin ! ' " " On the eighth day of January next, wind, weather, and snow permitting," a frontier paper announced late in 1837, " the Great Prairie will be set on fire in com- memoration of the great Whig victory in New York. The Prairie is about 300 miles long, with an average 422 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING breadth of from ten to twenty miles. The fires to be Hghted at eight o'clock in the evening." There is a wide and breezy enthusiasm about that which can not fail to awaken a responsive chord in every American breast, though as to fitness there might be room for difference of opinion. However enthusi- asm may stray from the path of fitness in such minor matters, in great crises American sentiment can be trusted not to go wrong. There were no huzzahs at Yorktown when the British gave up their swords ; at Vicksburg no humiliating cheers added to the bitter- ness of defeat. Instead, there was a brotherly pres- sure of hands and a breaking of bread. The end of the Rebellion was marked by no widespread celebra- tion of victory. Men, as best they could, set about obeying Lincoln's injunction to bind up the nation's wounds. In the early Western migration there was little time for anything except daily tasks, and little room to carry anything beyond the barest practical necessi- ties. But sentiment found a place in the pack of every immigrant family that crossed the Alleghanies. They could carry names with them, if nothing else. The cabin and the fare might be poor indeed, but a loom in the corner reproduced patterns woven " back yonder," and the names by which they were called, repeated over and over, carried the mind far rolling through biblical history in the wake of " Chariot Wheels," or through the heavens with the " Seven Stars," to bring it to earth again in some dearly loved garden spot beside a " Double Snowball " or a " Briar Rose." The names these immigrants gave their new homes are themselves a record of no mean interest. Often they repeated the name of the old home left east of the SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 423 mountains, as that had recalled some village around a gray Norman tower under moist English skies. They tell a tale of loyalty and homesickness, and of sturdy New World faith in ability to carve a home " equally as good " out of the forest or the rich prairie loam or the alkali of their new dwelling-places. In their trail can be followed successive waves of thought and culture. Lexington, Kentucky, was christened by some hunters who were camping on that spot when they first heard of the battle. The revolt against Puritan dominion is to be seen in the nightmare medley of Greek and classic names with which central New York is covered. The few Indian names that have survived race prejudice for their music's sake tell a story of their own, as does the boastful exuberance of those names ending in " opolis," planted along the line of march in a spirit of commercial optimism that withered into failure, which remain to clog the land- scape like last year's burrs. As we journey westward, alongside exotic French and Spanish saints and royal personages who fastened their tenacious names deep in our free soil years before men of English origin came to dispute them, are harsh descriptive phrases that etch like a biting acid the picture of a brave and virile and not over-squeamish phase of our young civilization, — the Deadwoods and Mudholes and Long-a-Comings of the miners and ranchmen who carried abundant senti- ment in their hearts, but counted it weakness and strove to hide it under callousness and profanity. How senti- ment grew and flourished on the new soil, and what strange and sometimes perverted forms it took, many a bit of local nomenclature shows. They are interesting reading, these names on our map. And rightly read, they yield up an unassailable history of American politics. The number of Clay and 424 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Calhoun and Webster counties testifies to the popular- ity of those famous leaders, and the Scott and Taylor and Harrison counties show what a hold military suc- cess had upon our peaceful imagination. While an oc- casional state capital may bear the name of a President, or a large and thriving city the name of our favorite Frenchman, even the beloved Franklin was not deemed worthy of having a State named after him, that honor being reserved for Washington alone. It is too soon for the country to have attained the finished beauty that covers the seamy side of Europe. We are still delving in our soil, and still cherish our American ideals, some of us with yearning, some with a hot conviction that makes it hard to remember they are still only a hope for the future, not an accomplished fact. When we think of our nation as hopelessly material, given over to pursuit of wealth and without the saving grace of poetry, it is well to remember that a vision brought our forebears across the sea ; that American conceptions of liberty are not prosaic, however short of ideal their working out may be ; that the country's industrial development has been like an epic, and Amer- ican invention a dream of magic. Stern necessity forced the early workers of the country to be practi- cal. Men had instantly to take up their part in feeding and defending the struggling settlements; and women found their hands more than full in rearing children and contriving orderly households out of the abundant lack with which they were surrounded. Even after pioneer days were over they were under the same ne- cessity to dig or die. Confronted by the unsightly gashes such work makes in nature's beauty, they scarcely heeded them, so intent were they upon what these gashes were to become. It has not been through SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 425 lack of idealism, but because of it, that we have over- looked much that was crude and even laughable in our daily life. And if the time ever comes when this flame of hope dies out, leaving only ashes of criticism, it will usher in sad and perilous days for our beloved land. CHAPTER XX SUFFRAGE AND REFORM THE American mind tends to idealism but not to reverence. With a passionate belief in things that are to be, it has shown small re- spect for things that are or things that have been. Perhaps optimism for the future is incompatible with reverence for the past. To fight toward an ideal one must be willing to destroy. Reform was the reason for our being a nation; it is not strange, therefore, that efforts toward betterment have from the first appealed to our people, nor that we have chosen to do such work in companies. " Wher- ever," wrote De Tocqueville, " at the head of some new undertaking, you find the government in France or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association." First there was the association of the colonies. In- side this combination grew up the great political par- ties. Then came the banding together of groups of men in the interest of many social reforms. Some of these remained aloof from politics, but others honey- combed the great parties and brought about the forma- tion of new ones. From this point of view our history has been a series of associations, breaking up into ever smaller units until like figures in a kaleidoscope, a multitude of them rush together again to form some new and dominating combination. The broadening opportunities for education and the 426 SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 427 narrowing of opportunities to make a living can both be traced in such associations ; the first in their grow- ing numbers; the second in their history of increasing bitterness and changing methods. Unhappily the saying that anarchists are " the result of a university education on an empty stomach," is too true to be amus- ing ; but fortunately in the years of which we have been thinking there were few empty stomachs in America, and those devastating furies of the modern world were as yet unknown. A leaven of political unrest was at work however. A disillusioned portion of society ad- mitted that neither the Declaration of Independence nor the triumph of the Democratic party had brought about the millennium. But it still had faith in a mil- lennium, and went about its labor of reform ardent and earnest, and bothersome to fellow-citizens who were inclined to let well enough alone. Its desire for change found expression in move- ments of many kinds, three of which were notable be- tween the beginning of the century and the Civil War. The first occurred about 1812 and was semi-religious in character. It led to the formation of many mission- ary and temperance societies and to nation-wide federa- tion of church denominations, which until then enjoyed only local organization. Through interest in orphan asylums and like enter- prises with a civic as well as philanthropic bearing, these gradually merged into reforms more social than religious. Increasing rapidly in number, they reached their greatest loquacity and popularity during the dec- ade between 1830 and 1840 which has been called with uncomplimentary levity, the hot-air period of American history. Discussing the need for reforms such as these reawakened class consciousness that had slumbered peacefully during the years when all America worked 428 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING with its hands. Roused afresh, this once more en- tered politics, chiefly by means of organizations among laborers to secure better hours and better laws, — the first beginnings of vast industrial armies that were to pit their strength half a century later against almost impregnable combinations of capital. The third align- ment, at once political and moral, was the one that took place for and against slavery just before the Civil War. Although reform is no matter of latitude and longi- tude, it seems true that less thought was given to it in the South than in the North. In the lavish care-free Southern life, with many servants, much was allowed to go at loose ends. Little attention was paid to de- tail and none at all to economy ; and it was natural that where effect rather than accuracy was esteemed, showy talents of oratory and emphatic speech should be ap- preciated. There was large tolerance for human frailties. More drinking and card playing went on than in the North. Horse-racing was so important that schools were given holiday during race week as a matter of course; and men were quick with their words and their weapons. They were large-hearted and generous, but less inclined to weigh moral values than New Englanders trained from childhood in careful management, and born with a cold-blooded preference for logic over emotion, and a grudging distrust of the pleasant things of life. But it is instructive to remember that up to the time of the Civil War our country was governed for forty- eight years by Southern presidents and only twenty- four years by men from Northern States. Further- more, that not one of the Northern Presidents was given a second term, while those from the South who lived to complete their terms of office were popular enough to win reelection, with but two exceptions. SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 429 Like many other salutary and wholesome things, the spirit of censorship and reform in the New England temperament had to be taken in small doses with long intervals between. The nation was, however, predisposed to reform, and once inoculated its work went on even in periods of apparent rest. Nowhere is this more evident than in the change that came over voting in the United States. We who were brought up to consider man- hood suffrage almost a birthright, receive something of a shock when we learn that as late as 1800 only about one third of the heads of families in the country were allowed to vote. Accidents of religiori or property deprived two men out of three of the right. Vermont, the first new State to join the original thirteen, lived gallantly up to the spirit of the Declaration of Inde- pendence and adopted manhood suffrage in its consti- tution of 1777, but the other States hedged it about with whatever restrictions their lawmakers deemed safest and best. The Constitutional Convention with really masterly inactivity had refrained from raising a tempest that would have burst upon the country had it tried to im- pose uniform qualifications for electors of Federal officers. It contented itself with providing that elec- tors for representatives in Congress should possess " the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature," thus leav- ing the matter entirely within state control. Hamilton had wished to make property the basis of representation in order to enlist the solid material in- terests in preserving the Union. Jefferson's ideal of democracy, on the other hand, held suffrage to be a distinct right of the individual, no mere privilege of his possessions. Half way between the two was 430 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Franklin's indulgent assertion that any form of gov- ernment may be a blessing to the people if well admin- istered, with its inescapable corollary that since the best has possibilities of evil, moral uprightness is the root of all political well-being. Jefferson's idea gained headway, and even before Washington died property qualifications had been re- duced in some of the States, and public sentiment al- ready showed a marked trend toward dropping all re- ligious tests from politics. The States admitted to the Union after 1800 were comparatively liberal in be- stowing the franchise, especially west of the Alleghan- ies, and gradually the older States changed their con- stitutions to conform to the new spirit. New York tried to compromise by making its senate represent property and its lower house persons, but this was decided to be unconstitutional. The South made slaves do duty for the benefit of their masters as both persons and property, five blacks being counted as three whites in apportioning representatives in Con- gress. This implied that they were a little more than half human; but Chief Justice Taney's decision in the Dred Scott case that Negroes " had no rights which the white man was bound to respect " robbed them of even this fractional personality. They continued to be rep- resented in Congress on this basis, however, as long as slavery lasted. Taken all in all, men with brown skins have not fared well as to suffrage in the free United States. Negroes were enslaved in the South and disfranchised in the North after slavery went out of fashion there ; and Indians and Mongolians have both been discriminated against. Women, on the other hand, were allowed to vote in several of the States in the early days, despite the restricted suffrage, provided they fulfilled all the SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 431 conditions of age, religious tests, tax paying, and prop- erty holding. In New Jersey this right was granted in the constitution of 1776 and exercised by a few enter- prising spirits until 1807 when the legislature illegally denied it. It was properly a matter for constitutional amendment, but the legislature acted on the assumption that three women had " repeated," an accusation they indignantly denied, claiming that men bribed to impersonate them voted first in their own character, and returned to the polls again after donning petticoats. Not many women seemed to care, however, and when a new constitution was made they were ignored. With a few exceptions, changes in state constitutions were toward greater liberality, and by 1832 seven of them, Vermont, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, — one in New England, three in the South and three in the West, — had al- ready reached the point of requiring no property quali- fication whatever. Two other New England States, Maine and New Hampshire, granted suffrage to any man not on the pauper list. The remaining States appraised the privilege of voting as worth all the way from an estate valued at sixty pounds to merely pay- ing a tax, or serving in the militia as an equivalent. In North Carolina and New York it cost considerably less to vote for a state representative than for a state senator. In North Carolina a man might do the former if he paid taxes, while to do the latter he must own fifty acres of ground ; in New York both were rated higher. In Rhode Island at the present day cer- tain questions of imposing taxes can be voted on only by persons owning $134 in property, but this is prac- tically the last vestige of the restriction. Jefferson likened our system of government to " the planets revolving round their common sun, acting and 432 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING acted upon according to their respective weights and distances," to produce " a beautiful equIHbrlum , . . unexartipled but in the planetary system." The Ideal of our Government is of course diversity in unity. There is no doubt that w^e attained the diversity, for up to the time of the Civil War more constitutions had been drafted than there were years in our national history, — and no two of them alike. Such of these variegated instruments as ran the gantlet of approval and became laws in their respective States were speed- ily supplemented by legislation on every conceivable subject, from abolishing primogeniture to keeping crows out of cornfields. There seemed only one thing with which state con- stitutions hesitated to tamper. That was the judiciary system. As a rule they let the courts alone, which was wise, since the complicated system of state and Federal courts was itself a bold experiment. To the Federal courts fell the task of reducing the great mass of conflicting state regulations to a code that could be administered in harmony with the supreme law of the land, the Constitution of the United States. They proved equal to it, — the first effective bodies of their kind in history. In addition to all the newly made indigenous laws, there was a background of English law that we in- herited as we did the English language, and that like the English language proved in need of change to adapt it to new necessities. Fortunately these vast labors did not come upon the judges all at once. A faded little diary kept by John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, bears witness that American law was a matter of slow growth. Fre- quent entries in his clear handwriting state that the Court adjourned for lack of something to do, — a fact SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 433 as hard now to believe as that the present great De- partment of State began with a secretary and one as- sistant, and at the time Madison took charge of it mus- tered only nine employees, himself and the colored messenger included. Once the English mind conceded our right to na- tionality, our efforts at self-government were watched with interest, even with secret pride. But it took time to reach this point. Chief Justice Jay attracted little notice as a lawyer in London when sent there on a foreign mission. Four or five years later his succes- sor, Ellsworth, who appeared in Westminster Hall during the progress of a famous trial, drew many curious glances. When study of his marked and un- familiar features had established the fact that he was no red Indian, lawyers of the Crown crowded about him to find out how English law bore transplanting. The third Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, could have answered them much better, for it was he who established American law upon a firm foundation, and in doing so raised his office to its pres- ent high place in public esteem. It was not at first considered an honor rivaling the Presidency. Both Jay and Ellsworth were sent abroad on missions of im- portance to fill up their time to advantage; and twice during the six years Jay served as Chief Justice, he was candidate for governor of New York, resigning when successful to assume what he evidently thought the higher office. John Marshall's great opportunity came to him in a threefold manner, — a long term of service, increased business before the courts, and a mind peculiarly fitted to the task. In constitutional law he has been called " master of the Commonsense," and this he used to make over English law, by democratic patterns, into 434 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING workable American form. Appointed by the elder Adams almost at the beginning of the century, he re- mained Chief Justice thirty-four years, a picturesque, as he was an important, national figure. " No one who really knows how the national life of the United States has developed," says a recent writer, " will dis- pute the assertion that no man can be named to whom the nation is more indebted for solid and far-reaching services." Federalist in politics, and wisely conservative in his great work, he was democratic in personal behavior to a degree that amazed foreigners. A tall man, careless in his dress, and seeming to regret his height, there was little in his appearance to warrant a second glance, ex- cept his brilliant and penetrating eyes. But his de- portment could not fail to attract attention. " People in Washington don't begin to understand him," a Richmond admirer declared. " Why, do you know, I have met Marshall carrying his dinner through the streets in an open basket! " On the part of a South- erner of position such conduct was scarcely credible. " Yes, sir. And I have seen that man walking on his hands and knees with a straw in his mouth." This Nebuchadnezzar performance was not due to temporary insanity, but to love of the game of quoits, a favorite pastime in the South. In the course of it disputes arose that no amount of judicial acumen could settle. Mathematics and careful measurement constituted the only court of appeal. Once a group of elderly gentlemen, coatless and engaged in a hotly contested game, was pointed out to a French nobleman, a guest of the Barbecue, the Richmond Quoit Club, and he was told that it con- tained not only the Governor of Virginia, but the Chief Justice of the United States, and several judges of the SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 435 high court of appeals. He was incredulous. Was it possible, he asked, that dignitaries of the Government could thus " intermingle with private citizens " ? When assured that the proof was there before his eyes, he exclaimed in rapture that he had never before realized the full beauty of a republic. This democratic " intermingling " counted for much in our national development and for much more in the reforms that little by little invaded law and custom. " Public discussion," Hart tells us, " is the antiseptic of politics." It was well that legislators who made the laws, and judges who administered them, should hear at first hand from humbler private citizens who were likely to feel the weight of them. In every such group lawyers and farmers were sure to be well repre- sented, the wide term farmer including the owner of broad acres as well as the poor who made a scanty living from the soil. Agriculturists formed by far the greatest part of the population. Agriculture, the law and the ministry were the three callings then in good and regular standing in the United States. Ministers were a small class with a large but visibly decreasing in- fluence. The lawyers were by training and disposition best fitted to take an active part in politics, the absorb- ing national concern. Often they were both lawyers and farmers, for they were not necessarily dwellers in towns. The many spots of sparse population marked " Court House " on Virginia maps, and the many sub- stantial New England homes with small but equally substantial " offices " in the same garden enclosure, testify to that. When we read that an ambitious youth entered the law office of So and So, it does not follow that he forsook green fields or lost touch with the people who tilled them. It probably meant that he left an elm-shaded village street where he was born 436 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING for another under whose trees the man of the region who was best educated and most bountifully endowed with brains happened to dwell. When the country- side came to this local celebrity for advice it might find him getting in his hay if a Northerner, or watching his slaves in the field if a Southerner. Or he might be preparing a case for court, or away at the state capital making laws. Such were often the phases of a many- sided career. There were merchants, of course, and a few phy- sicians and other professional men; but it was a broad- minded father who encouraged his son to adopt any except one of the three professions. If he became a preacher his future salvation was assured, however poor he might remain in this world's goods. If a farmer, he could probably continue an honest man and raise turnips and potatoes to feed his family and stock. If he showed an aptitude for exercising his mind out- side of theology, a lawyer's training was the thing for him, useful alike in legislative halls, on the bench, or in efforts to break laws already in force. One of our English visitors asserted that " the very first object of the Americans after a law is passed is to find out how they can evade it." This was scarcely fair; but in one sense it was more flattering than de- rogatory. There was room for improvement along many lines, law not the least among them, in spite of many statutes and the guiding influence of patriots like John Marshall. Broadening suffrage and diffused edu- cation, friendly quoit playing and lively political argu- ment, all had their part in softening rigors that now seem to us barbarous, and the half century witnessed the amelioration of many a crying abuse. Criminal as well as constitutional law underwent a decided change. All the horrid prison accessories of stocks, pillory, SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 437 whipping-post, ducking stool, treadmill, shears, and branding iron continued in evidence down to the Revolution and even later, and laws had hardly been changed since, though various grotesque penalties had become a dead letter through sheer inability to obtain a conviction. As late as 1830 branding, ear cropping, exposure on the gallows with a halter around the neck, flogging, the wearing of scarlet letters, and the like could be found upon the statute books. Severe as these old laws now seem, it must not be forgotten that America had been progressive compared with the rest of the world. William Penn sent a code to England so humane that Queen Anne and her coun- selors would have none of it; and Pennsylvania, lead- ing the colonies in such matters, afterwards led the States when her revised code of 1794 inaugurated what proved to be the beginning of a prison system for the United States, Other States copied more or less of it, the bad as well as the better elements. In some States white convicts were practically sold into slavery like Negroes, their services being auctioned off to the highest bidder. The jails were places of horror and the details of prison management too re- volting to read. The death rate within them was shockingly high. There was no attendance on the sick, no clothing provided for the needy. Decency was not to be found, and comparative degrees of misery depended solely on the compassion or brutality of the jailer in charge. The worst prison of all, pos- sibly, was Newgate of evil memory, near Granby, Con- necticut, an underground hades in an abandoned cop- per mine, whose forlorn and rotting captives were reached only by means of a ladder down a seventy- foot shaft. The people of those days appear to have been 438 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING strangely callous and absurdly sensitive at the same time. With political ideals rarely equaled in history, they were oddly indifferent to human misery, though their nerves vibrated in indignant protest at things that to-day seem harmless enough, or mere matters of taste, like a dance tune on the Sabbath or a statue undraped. Perhaps it is an evidence of their largeness of view that they worked first for great political reforms, and were content to let individuals struggle along as best they might until these were attained. But to us who enjoy the fruit of their labors and have not yet suc- ceeded in bringing to pass lesser reforms for which common sense clamors aloud, their code of manners and morals seems warped, to say the least. It became evident that change of some sort was im- perative, for in spite of many and strict laws and a long list of capital offenses, the number of criminals increased alarmingly. Highway robbery, though pun- ishable with death, was so common that it might be called a fashionable occupation. Robbing the United States mails was a crime of crimes, yet the United States attorney at Philadelphia averred that in no '"^^ ^country on the planet was the mail exposed to such "danger. Some critics wished to return to old and even harsher laws. Others contended that repressive measures had definitely failed of their purpose. Still others advocated establishing a Botany Bay at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon, where male- factors could be transported to work out their own destruction. The hard times of 1816-17 at once increased the troubles and brought a season of enforced and chas- tening meditation that led to systematic inquiry into their cause. This disclosed how large a proportion of city dwellers depended upon charity. In New York SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 439 it was one seventh. One reason for the many infrac- tions of order appeared to be that city government wsls still attempted by methods that had been adequate enough when introduced, but were now utterly out- grown. Drink, lotteries, pawnbrokers, and charitable institutions were named as four chief causes of dis- tress. It seemed unkind to class charitable institutions with the evils they were designed to relieve, but, as Lafayette's gift of thistle seed amply proves injudi- cious giving is itself almost a crime. Philadelphia, foremost in charity as it had been in prison reform, was a veritable paradise for beggary. Much of the iniquity of life in our seaboard cities was traced and solemnly laid to the national partiality to oysters, which furnishes another illustration of the fact that the difference between a blessing and a curse is after all only in degree. The oyster boat at the town wharves had been fol- lowed by the oyster man who drove about in his cart, and wheelbarrow men who sold the luscious bivalve upon the street corners. One of these had the enter- prise to set up business in a cellar and reaped such success that oyster cellars grew to be almost as numer- ous as tippling houses and as much of a menace. They provided other things besides oysters and rapidly be- came the club houses of idle and vicious youth, where gambling and imbibing all sorts of moral and physical poison went on. Scarcely less demoralizing were the second-hand shops in which a business of selling stolen goods and other kinds of illicit trade was pursued. But chief of the causes of distress in town and coun- try was intemperance. " The great evil still is drunk- enness " is a sentence to be found in almost every book written about America, although occasionally a frank Englishman would add that he saw less outward 440 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING signs of it in several months' residence than in a single walk from Charing Cross to Cornhill. It affected all classes and brought to each its own punishment. Even Clay's great talents did not exempt him from inexorable law. Although esteemed not less in so- ciety because he gave way to this weakness, and pos- sibly even helped by it politically with those who felt closer akin to a man tempted like themselves, the sins of the father were visited very heavily upon his chil- dren. One of his sons was insane and another hope- lessly dissipated. Citizens who had an uncomfortable turn for statis- tics estimated that more money was annually spent for drink in the United States than for religion and edu- cation combined. It was an old-accepted habit that awakening social conscience was just beginning to recognize as an evil that might be combated. Spirits had been part of the daily ration in the harvest field and in the army. Drink flowed like water on militia training days and rum had been served to horses as well as to laborers in that " most diabolical " work of road building. Stimulants were supplied at funerals as a matter of course, and decanters appeared unbidden and without extra charge on the tables of inn and steamboat. As late as the time of Lafayette's visit the militiamen who were sent out to meet him at Bos- ton's city line were served while waiting his coming, with bread and cheese and free punch. This use of the town's money was deemed perfectly proper, though as one who recorded it adds, a proposal to furnish free school books to the city's children would have called forth amazed denunciation. Temperance societies had been a feature of that semi-religious period of organization about the time of the War of 1812. They were not confined to white JOHN C. FREMONT SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 441 men. One of the earliest and most successful owed its existence to a Miami chief, named Little Turtle, and Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet set an ex- cellent example to their white neighbors in their vil- lage of Tippecanoe. Some of the societies were most temperate in their pledges. One organized near Sara- toga in 1808 exacted a pledge not to drink except at public dinners. The members of another, formed a year after Lafayette's tardiness gave Boston militia- men their free punch, agreed not to consume more than a pint of applejack daily, a quart having been the previous limit. Temperance was a new fashion; but it grew surely if slowly. By 1836 public opinion had so far changed that total abstinence was advocated. Four years later the far-reaching " Washingtonian " movement was started at Baltimore. But to diagnose intemperance as a disease was a much later develop- ment, and we had no inebriate asylums before the one established near Binghamton, New York, in 1858. In the early part of the century marked intemperance and not a little blasphemy had gone hand in hand with strict Sabbath observance. Public gambling houses had been regarded as legitimate business enterprises. Lotteries flourished and had the approval of the best elements in the community as a means of raising funds to build churches and endow colleges and also to cancel government debts. John Adams had sanctioned such an undertaking to pay off Holland's claims against the United States. Not only lotteries but lottery insur- ance flourished. Although some of the States had scarcely been called upon to grant a divorce, it might have been better for the peace of mind of wives and the morals of the whole community had the " practice of unmarrying " been a little more common and laws on the subject better defined. Illegitimate births were 442 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING not uncommon and certain forms of loose living were leniently judged. A widespread dread of hospitals prevailed, which was not strange, considering their quahty. They were for the indigent or the sick and friendless stranger. No well-to-do patient was to be found in them. The Pennsylvania Hospital, one of the earliest, had been built partly to care for the insane. This class, to the shame of society, was treated little better than crimi- nals. Hospitals received such patients without en- thusiasm, looked after them in a way more barbarous than humane, and if they became too violent sent them on to prison. Dr. Rush's " tranquillizing chair," in which a patient could be strapped so that he was un- able to move a muscle, had been an example of what the best and most benevolent did for these unfortunates in the early days. They were still the victims not only of disease, but of ignorance and stupidity. Gradually, however, manners and morals and philanthropy were being measured by a new standard. With the change in the point of view children came to be regarded in a new light, as a class that needed special safeguarding. It was recognized as monstrous that drink should be sold by the pennyworth to mere babies of five years, or that orphans and such small unfortunates as became public charges should be placed in almshouses sheltering derelicts of all ages and every degree of infirmity. The manifest injustice of bring- ing up children in such company led to the estab- lishment of orphan asylums. The very first banding together of the women of New York for charity was for the relief of widows and small children. This developed into an Orphan Asylum Society to which the legislature made a grant of $500, and in so doing com- mitted the State to its responsibility in educating such SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 443 waifs. Reformatories were inaugurated soon after, where useful trades could be taught boys who were less criminal than idle, but were likely to become criminals if left to the tender mercies of jail wardens. Unsatis- factory as such institutions for wholesale treatment of the young have since proved, they were an immense advance over what had gone before. The systematic education of defective children came in its turn, partly as a result of this movement, partly through the quickening influence of Horace Mann in his crusade for better schools. The first school for blind children was founded in New York in 1831. Dr. Gallaudet's school for deaf mutes was opened in Hartford as early as 18 17. That the Federal Government took a hand in the schooling of such children was due to a sorry little band taken to Washington for exhibition by " an adventurer " in 1844. The impression got abroad that he maltreated them, and it was evident that though he expressed a desire to found a school, and asked leading citizens for funds, he proposed to account to no one. All but five of the children were returned to their parents. These being foreigners were absolutely at the mercy of chance. Their helplessness appealed to Amos Kendall, Andrew Jackson's " twilight " friend and amanuensis. He had them bound out to him in order to give him legal authority over them, and later gave for their use the property that has since grown into the government college at Kendall Green. One of the greatest reforms of the period was the abolition of imprisonment for debt practised in Amer- ica ever since the days when Georgia was a penal colony of the Crown. Originally it had been possible to cast a man into jail for failure to pay the smallest sum, even one cent, and the state of such a prisoner 444 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING was worse in some ways than that of a common male- factor, for the latter was at least entitled to prison fare, such as it might be. The debtor, on the contrary, had been forced to provide his own food and fuel and covering, and his indebtedness went on increasing the longer he stayed in jail, where he was liable to remain until his creditor's heart melted or he was released by death, unless meanwhile he was fed by some humane society. The law had been so amended that a small provision for food and blankets was made at the ex- pense of the creditor, whose refusal to pay resulted in the discharge of the prisoner. Some of the States I also fixed a minimum sum for which a man could be sent to jail. New Hampshire, one of the earliest to do so, made it $13.33. A few States exempted women and two or three exempted soldiers of the Revolution. Constitutions of the newer States usually contained a provision that no citizen willing to give up his estate to his creditors should be so imprisoned. If a sufficiently large bond was furnished, a debtor might reside within certain specified limits outside the prison, and in the cities there were large colonies of such persons living in dramatic and sometimes pictur- esque discomfort. In spite of all these changes debtor's laws were harsh and unjust. This last pro- vision contained in itself obvious opportunities for ex- tortion, which were not neglected. It was estimated during Jackson's administration that seven or eight thousand persons were sent to jail annually for debt, most of them for very trifling sums. The hard times of Van Buren's administration would have increased their number enormously, had not public indignation already risen to such a point that the practice had to stop. It was an issue that the Workingmen's party justly and very cleverly made its own. New York, SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 445 the first State to fall in line, abolished imprisonment for debt in 1830. Three years later Congress went to the fullest extent it could by passing an act that for- bade imprisonment for debt under process from Federal courts. It really went farther than this, for by ex- ample and influence it hastened action in the various States. Richard M. Johnson of Tennessee, afterwards Vice- President of the United States, was especially diligent in urging Congress to pass this law. He was ambitious and probably saw in the measure both justice and policy. At any rate the career of this gentleman em- phasizes the recurring thought that Providence uses the tools that come to hand without being over par- ticular as to their quality. He was not above " politi- cating," to use a term current in the Middle West half a century ago ; that is, making a trade of politics ; for in the early pages of Amos Kendall's autobiography we find the two of them engaged in a post office transaction hard to distinguish from plain buying and selling. In the popular mind Johnson was personally credited with the death of Tecumseh, with its lurid details, and much lauded for it. On the whole, he was an honorable man according to the standards of his time and locality, and this effort of his to abolish imprisonment for debt ought to go far toward balancing, if it does not entirely blot out that post office deal, on the books of the Re- cording Angel. The same may be said of all the efforts at reform and of most of the men engaged in them. Good and bad and indifferent worked together and produced good in the long run. Not any section or group of individuals had a monopoly of virtue. The States that were foremost in establishing free schools, or those earliest to adopt manhood suffrage, were cer- 446 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING tainly not the first to respond to all such impulses. Pennsylvania, a leader in philanthropy, was one of the States where children suffered most from factory labor after machines made the work of small hands and bodies profitable. All that can be claimed is that the trend was toward a sane and courageous study of sore spots in our civi- lization and an effort to treat them as a physician treats disease, rather than as superstition treats fetiches. With absolutely the same ends in view that have been the goal of governments and individuals since the be- ginning, religion and law and custom emerged from their old attitude of coercion to try measures a little more in harmony with the Golden Rule. There was decided gain in many directions and a falling back in others. Great advance was made in laws governing labor, in the care of dependent chil- dren, in sobriety. Extradition treaties were entered into between the United States and other nations. Prison conditions were improved and penal laws so changed that they were no longer too drastic to be en- forced. There was much less ferocity in the manner of inflicting punishments. Stocks and branding irons were banished to museums. Public executions became things of the past. And if in some cases, like the grudging admission that married women have property rights, the small gain came as much through fear on the part of frugal fathers of what sons-in-law might do with their hard- earned wealth, as through a sense of justice or the efforts of the women themselves, that is simply in line with the humorous way things seem to go in this queer old world. Indeed, the study of half-hearted movements for re- form in some quarters and earnest but unwise efforts in SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 447 others, leads to the moral reflections that tl\e growth and fostering of public sentiment in this country has been like the building of coral insects, — a work of many poor worms, but tending always upward. ,^. ^' CHAPTER XXI NEWS AND BOOKS AMERICA and the art of printing came into being at the same time. It would be tortur- ing coincidence to dwell unduly upon this, but the temptation is strong to moralize on the part the one discovery played in developing the other. No great country has come under the thrall of the printed word so completely as the United States ; and no great country was ever made in such a hurry. Statesmen early saw what a weapon printing put into their hands. Political battles before and after and during the Revolution were waged with pamphlet and press, Jefferson's very first message to Congress recommended abolishing postage on newspapers " to facilitate the progress of information " ; and elsewhere he declared that if he had to choose between a Govern- ment without newspapers and newspapers without a Government, he would unhesitatingly favor the latter. The effectiveness of these purveyors of opinion grew with the years until, when Jackson's strong hold on public imagination was strongest, they were almost an instrument of torture in the hands of his political lieutenants. Such use forced newspapers into a prominence far ahead of national development in other fields of letters. In literature we were children of Europe, respectful but backward. In material things we were children of 448 NEWS AND BOOKS 449 Europe, poor but resourceful. In politics we were young giants, forging ahead in ways that were not the ways of our fathers. De Tocqueville described the American pioneer in- vading his wilderness " armed with the Bible, an axe, and a file of newspapers." The picture was not far- fetched; for the newspaper followed him to the farthest clearing. Travelers told of riding " with the mail " by day and by night along roads scarcely marked out in the forest, the driver throwing papers recklessly right and left where there was no sign of habitation. Asked if the bears took an interest in politics, he ex- plained that there was a settler somewhere in the neigh- hood and that he or his children were usually waiting. " But when I don't find them ready I throw the paper under a tree ; and I warrant you they '11 look sharp enough to find it; they're always curious of news in these wild parts." Sometimes the stages themselves served as vehicles of information, bounding along with bands of white muslin fastened around their tops that proclaimed some startling message in letters large enough for all who saw to read. It was thus the news of peace went out from Philadelphia after the War of 18 12. There seem to be national types in journalism just as there are national peculiarities in noses, — or con- sciences. Editorials, for example, born in France at the time Marat's Ami dii Peuple added to the frenzy of the French Revolution, took root only after they crossed the Channel, and found congenial soil in the English press. Even in times of political tragedy French papers have managed to give more space to art and drama and literature than we, with our British inheritance, think quite seemly. Our national desire has always been to print news; even if next day we 450 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING had to make news by confessing that the news of the day before was all a mistake. And next to news, as a specialty of American jour- nals, has come advertising, used and paid for by our impatient countrymen with lavish recklessness. Its tone has changed but never its purpose. Back in 1704 the " Boston News Letter," the second venture of its kind on this continent, set forth in language of ex- treme and injured dignity the " loss " of two anvils weighing over a hundred pounds each, with the request that " whosoever had taken them up " return them and receive a reward. Advertisements soon ceased to be so polite, but they have never ceased to be interesting reading. Merchants have described their wares with beguiling efifect. Doctors have advertised " a large stock of genuine medicines." Lotteries have printed seductive lists of prizes which, in what one of our foreign visitors called the " Despotic States," might include a human being or two. Notices of runaway slaves have emphasized the tragic cruelty of that sys- tem. Preliminaries to the duel have been printed in " cards " denouncing some worthy citizen as a coward and worse. The page of progress has been illumi- nated with advertisements of the " locomotive engine " scheduled to leave daily with a train of cars " when the weather is fair." And many a pathetic notice has been inserted asking for tidings of family or friends captured by the Indians. Though news has been the constant desire of our press it was satisfied at first but slowly. In the real colonial period of American newspapers, which ended long before our colonial relations with England ceased, editors had to obey orders or go to prison. Therefore they printed little real news and fewer real opinions. NEWS AND BOOKS 451 There came a time of rebellion when they went to prison rather than obey orders, even though their busi- ness suffered, and it would have paid them well had it been possible to follow an oriental custom and engage a " prison editor " for the express purpose of going to jail. After the Revolution came the party press, a result of rule by the majority. And after that the independent press, outgrowth of railroads and tele- graphs, with such wide facilities for gathering news that no party could control it. About forty papers weathered the Revolution and the years of uncertainty following it. With a more stable form of government they began to increase, and by the middle of the century there was scarcely a hamlet in the North or West that did not publish its own little weekly sheet and receive the larger jour- nals that printed the proceedings of Congress. In the Southern States local papers were less plentiful, for the conditions that retarded free schools worked equally against an untrammeled press. It was not a thriving speculation in districts where law and pub- lic opinion alike demanded silence on one engrossing topic. Daily papers early became common, but while most of the newspapers were still weeklies and semi-weeklies, it was etiquette in towns large enough to support several to have them issued on successive days, giving the com- munity all the benefits of a daily press and insuring a better sale for each in turn. In those early papers long letters signed by Veritas and other gentlemen with borrowed Latin names occupied much space. Crime was consigned to delicate oblivion, or if mentioned at all was treated in the most guarded manner. Local departments received scant attention and there was 452 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING almost nothing in the way of pungent paragraphs. On the other hand the editorial vocabulary was lurid in the extreme. " The Americans are certainly a calm, rational, civil, and well-behaved people, not given to quarrel, or to call each other names," wrote one of our visitors in 1820. " Yet, if you were to look at their newspapers, you would think them a parcel of Hessian soldiers. An unrestricted press appears to be the safety-valve of their free Constitution. . . . Were a foreigner im- mediately upon landing to take up a newspaper (espe- cially if he should chance to land just before an elec- tion), he might suppose that the whole political ma- chine was about to fall to pieces and that he had just come in time to be crushed in its ruins. But if he should not look at a newspaper he might walk through the streets on the very day of election and never find out that it was going on, unless, indeed, it should happen to him, as it happened to me, to see a crowd collected round a pole surmounted by a cap of liberty, and men walking in at one door of a house and walking out at another. Should he then ask a friend hurrying past him, ' What is going on there ? ' he may receive for an answer, ' The election of repre- sentatives. Walk on. I am just going to give in my vote, and I will overtake you." Several causes worked together to bring about a change from this early journalistic style. One was the growth of the new West, with its earnestness overlaid by a casual offhand manner. Another was a dawning national sense of literary style. A third was the quickened pace of life propelled by steam. A fourth was the moral issue that was already taking hold on men's minds. With a great question like slavery looming in the background, ' traitor ' and ' beast ' NEWS AND BOOKS 453 seemed extravagent terms to apply to fellow citizens who differed only about the tariff or who would make the best candidate for the legislature. Extravagant language of another sort flourished, being part of the exuberant young country's process of growing up, but it provoked little notice beyond wonder and mirth. It had its root in country printing offices, where the time hung heavy and editors were filled with a praiseworthy desire to " liven up the town." Sometimes their imaginations soared to really poetic heights. One masterpiece of this kind described a totally empty hack drawing up before the office of a rival paper, the carriage door opening and the editor of that damnably adjectived journal slipping furtively from it to his sanctum. Even in 1830 the pace set for printing news was slow enough. Though it had been the custom for many years to print long reports of congressional speeches, the country waited day after day for a transcript of the great debate between Webster and Hayne. It did not see the light of print in Wash- ington journals for two weeks, and March came in before it could be read in Boston, though Hayne's speech was delivered on the 25th of January. But there was impatience at the delay and the newspapers felt it necessary to apologize. " We do not know what has become of Mr. Hayne's and Mr. Webster's speeches," the " Philadelphia Gazette " admitted on February 15. As causes and reforms became fashionable, they began to have papers devoted to their own ends. A paper printing religious news and no other made its appearance soon after our second war with England. This was not only a novelty but an inspiration, and several good Americans disputed the honor of thinking 454 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING of it first. The " Boston Recorder," claimed by two citizens as being a paper of their own invention, de- veloped within itself another novelty destined to great growth, — a children's department which expanded in time into the " Youth's Companion." Papers printing secular news on Sunday made their appearance about 1825. The first one, strange to say, was edited by a theological student, and, as might have been expected, was denounced as a through ticket to perdition. The work of " Our Special Correspondent " at Washington and elsewhere scored a decided advance in 1830, through the imitative cleverness of James Gordon Bennett. Browsing one day in the Congres- sional Library he came upon the witty letters of Horace Walpole, describing court happenings in the reign of George II, and forthwith decided to apply the same method to the " court of John Q. Adams." Published anonymously, these letters of his made a sensation and were widely copied, being infinitely more amus- ing than the effusions of Veritas, or the unskilful marshaling of political facts sent back by the average congressman to his home paper. Somewhat later a woman boldly invaded the field of journalism in Washington, where she established the " Huntress," and let fly barbed arrows in all direc- tions. She was aggressive and unprepossessing, not very clever, and she wore a man's manner as well as a man's hat and umbrella. John Quincy Adams re- ferred to her as " that virago errant," and one of her own calling said she was a terror rather than a tempta- tion. Though neither as woman nor editor of a type to make feminine invasion of journalism popular, she added one more complication to its field. Another de- veloped in a new way of selling papers. Up to 1833 they could be had only by subscription, with possibly NEWS AND BOOKS 455 a few extra copies to be bought at the printing house. Then suddenly they appeared on the newstands and in the arms of ubiquitous urchins forever dodging under foot. This invasion of the street was the crowning piece of strategy of the party press, and took place soon after Jackson and Van Buren pooled their useful knowledge of politics and human nature. Almost in- stantly the journals that had grown arrogant under the fostering care of politics and were now beginning to prove ungrateful, found themselves obliged to fight for their lives against a flock of lesser papers, partizan in tone, that were sold upon the streets for half their cost. With the founding of the independent press, led by the " New York Herald," all the elements of modern journalism were in the field, at least in embryo. There were news boats and news expresses, both well-defined attempts at systematic news gathering. The sema- phoric telegraph displayed its signals, and extras burst like bombs upon a peaceful town. Bennett, now editor of the " Herald," set a wild pace of three editions, morning, evening, and weekly; and, having injected wit into special correspondence, began printing finan- cial articles that were the despair of the other papers. All this induced rivalry and hustling, and by the time Dickens reached New York Harbor in 1842, American reporters had acquired something of their later agility, and leaped gaily aboard the vessel as he neared shore, to get his impressions of America be- fore he set foot upon its soil. These enterprising young men discovered too that they could wield power by concerted action, and did not scruple to do so on occasion, to avenge insults fancied or real. When the magnetic telegraph was perfected, it opened up undreamed possibilities in news gathering; 456 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING and two years after Morse demonstrated its practi- cability, Richard Hoe's invention of the " lightning " rotary press added thousands to the number of news- papers it was possible to print in an hour. This again increased the pace, the competition, and the appetite for news. Alliance, both for profit and defense, fol- lowed, and in 1848 seven journals of New York City made an agreement with each other and the owners of telegraph patents for a news service favorable to them, which they would consent to sell to other newspapers on condition that these supply to the association special news in their own neighborhoods. This was the be- ginning of the Associated Press, which has expanded and changed and suffered the ups and downs of modern business, and is now incorporated as a " gentleman's " fish and game club under the laws of New Jersey. Not content with being able to telegraph on land, invention aspired to telegraph under the sea, a proj- ect encouraged and hoped for by the press. English and American enterprise and English and American capital worked eight years to accomplish the marvel. Time and again ships with endless lengths of cable, and tenders laden with necessary supplies, set fbrth from both shores to meet in midocean, splice their respective portions, and cautiously begin the work of paying out as they sailed homeward. Time and again the cable parted and the work was lost; but at length in 1858 words of congratulation flashed between the English Queen and the white-haired President Bu- chanan, and New York went wild in an ovation to Cy- rus Field, the American millionaire who had made our part of the venture possible, and to the officers of the ship that had carried the American half of the cable. But almost before their shouts had ended, the cable parted again and even the hopeful press was cast down. b;2:5^ AVILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT NEWS AND BOOKS 457 The " Tribune," not always hopeful, registered its fear that the project must be given up "as a complete failure." It required eight more years to prove the "Tribune" wrong; but when the two hemispheres were at last united, American journalism spread its activities and embraced the whole world in its tentacles for news getting and news telling. The connection between our newspapers and the growth of American literary activity in other fields has been more intimate than we are wont to remember. From Franklin down, few of the writers whose names endure escaped editorship sooner or later. We have Franklin's word for it that at the time he established himself in Philadelphia there was not a good bookstore south of Boston, and that " those who loved reading had to send for their books to England." Those who loved writing imported their ideas from the same source for many years after. The significant fact is that they did import them, and that books were written and poems composed upon American soil al- most from the landing of the first settler, under condi- tions most unfavorable to such expression. These works were serious and the public they reached was small. It wished to be instructed and did not expect to be amused, which, considering the output, was a mercy, like tempering the wind to the shorn lamb. Even as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century, after American writers were fairly numerous and some of them had won recognition from British critics (with proper reservations, of course), they wrote in an English way and usually upon English themes. There were a few literary rebels, like Noah Webster, who miscalled that " blue-backed speller " out of which millions of little Americans learned their a-b abs and all they ever knew about the science of 458 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING words, " The first part of a Grammatical Institute of the EngHsh language." He meant the American language, and in the Grammar which formed a more advanced part of the same Institute, held that it was correct to say " you was " because " the practice is universal except among men who learn the language out of books." He chose the broad democratic basis of popular support. It was no passing enthusiasm with him but a lifelong conviction upheld in the crown- ing work of his life, the great dictionary published in 1828, which championed American spelling and illus- trated its definitions by examples from American au- thors. His classmate, Joel Barlow, attempted the same service for American poetry in the Columbiad, which was to be a New- World Iliad ; but such rebels could be counted on one hand. Even Charles Brock- den Brown, commonly named as the first of our novel- ists, was English in manner and theme, though he set a lively American pace by publishing his seven novels in four years, besides founding a magazine, of which he wrote most of the contents, and having meanwhile the best reasons to consider himself an invalid. During the years of political revolt and the years after it, while we were yet unimaginatively English in many ways, and our writers were conscientiously copy- ing English masterpieces and thinking English literary thoughts, American babies were being born who were to change all that. Washington Irving, who sounded the first note ; Richard H. Dana ; Fenimore Cooper, the first to produce a truly American novel ; Fitz Greene Halleck; James Gordon Bennett, responsible for so much that is American in our press ; and William Cul- len Bryant, the first poet his country could not easily do without, were all born between the end of the Revo- lution and the beginning of the new century; while NEWS AND BOOKS 459 Bancroft, Emerson, Hawthorne, Whittier, Holmes, Long-fellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Horace Greeley, and that child of actors and misfortune, Edgar Allan Poe, were born before the War of 181 2; and almost every year since has seen the birth of some American destined to literary fame on both sides of the Atlantic. Although Irving published Diedrich Knickerbocker's immortal work in 1809, and only two years after Diedrich made his bow to the world, a boy of seven- teen in Massachusetts wrote " Thanatopsis," our dis- tinctively American literary life may be said to have begun at the time that so many other great changes took place in the United States, soon after the close of the War of 181 2. The nation in this, as in politi- cal and material ways, was waking to consciousness of its power. Young Bryant left his remarkable poem lying in a drawer without troubling to show it to any one. Six years later it was found by his astonished father and sent without the author's knowledge to the " North American Review." Cooper's " Spy " published in 1 82 1 was doubly a surprise, because his novel of the previous year had been so English in subject and treatment that British reviewers assumed as a matter of course he must be one of themselves. Groups of authors interested in the development of an American literature appeared in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York; and a feeling for the value of words more marked than had as yet been shown manifested itself in every parsonage and law office and printing estab- lishment in the land. The new style in public speak- ing was one result ; a distinct improvement in the qual- ity of newspapers was another. Quarterlies and monthlies had early been established and had kept pace with newspapers. In those half- 46o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING way houses between books and the daily press new writers found opportunity to try their art; and the number of American classics, from " Thanatopsis " to " Uncle Tom's Cabin," first printed in magazine or newspaper, induces the belief that the periodical press has in truth been the fostering guardian, if not the real parent, of a distinctively American literature. The increasing number of journals and magazines provided many editorial chairs to be filled; and in a country destitute of the mellow atmosphere of scholar- ship, where everything was new and almost everybody was in a hurry, the responsibilities of editorship sub- stituted a craftsman's knowledge of tools for theory, and the need for accuracy in the use of those tools taught greater respect for form than any amount of basking in historic atmosphere would have instilled in an American mind. Editing was thus a practical and chastening experience, comparable for the author to the benefit of stage training for a playwright. The work-a-day part of editing also rendered a service not to be lightly esteemed. Comment has al- ready been made on the number of Americans who have gained fame in some other than their ostensible calling. Every self-respecting American had a prac- tical business. It was a law imposed by the wilderness, where it was as binding as the old Levitical code that decreed a handicraft for every Jewish child. It had not yet been outgrown; and since literature had scarcely come to be classed as a profession, all these writers had to be something else in " real life," — doctors or law- yers or what not. Thoreau made lead pencils, Lowell was a lawyer. Poe was trained in the navy. Holmes was a physician. The list could be extended indefi- nitely; but to realize the universal custom it is only necessary to remember how the old soldiers crowded NEWS AND BOOKS 461 around Lafayette and asked, " What do you do for a living in your own country? " Editorship proved a business obvious enough to ful- fil public expectation, tedious enough to satisfy the demands of the most exigent conscience, yet congenial at bottom to a writer's turn of mind. One may love one's business, but the love of a hobby glows with a warmer flame. The love of craft reflected back upon routine work, and a beneficent circle was established. The worthy Dr. Buckingham wrote that the " New York Evening Post," edited by a poet named Bryant, who might fairly rank with Campbell, the author of " Pleasures of Hope " showed its superiority over its rivals in " talent, wit, taste, and above all in gentle- manly fairness of argument." The reverend gentle- man looked askance on Bennett's hustling activity and thought the price he charged for advertising good English-made lectures grasping to the point of avarice. Not all editorial chairs could be filled by authors worthy to rank with the perpetrator of the " Pleasures of Hope " ; but those of less ability added each his por- tion to the growing interest, and contributed many a bit of excellent work. Like, for instance, that clever " Moon Hoax," purporting to be what Sir John Her- schel saw through the " nearly seven tons " lens of his telescope at the Cape of Good Hope, but which was really what Richard Adams Locke saw in his mind's eye through the editorial rooms of the " New York un. Interest did not exhaust itself in editors' sanctums, or in cities east of the Alleghanies. The mails had been opened to books as early as 1804 and these fol- lowed newspapers westward into lately invaded haunts of deer and bear. Not in very great numbers, to be sure. Political news was an American necessitv; 462 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING books were a luxury. But respect for books and for those who read them was great. " If a stranger sup- posed to understand Latin sojourned in the neighbor- hood he was looked upon as a wizard," Lincoln wrote, in his fragment of autobiography. And in that fron- tier neighborhood where Lincoln grew up, hungering for intellectual food, he found books that could scarcely have been chosen better with reference to his coming needs. Love of literature and literary ability manifested themselves in the most unlikely places. The mill girls of Lowell, recruited from the farm kitchens of New England, flowered into authorship in the " Lowell Offering," a series of annuals of distinct merit. When Vandalia, the early capital of Illinois, was barely ten years old it had its Antiquarian and Historical Society, whose proceedings were published " from the Black- well Press of Vandalia " with as much gravity and decorum as though Vandalia had been for centuries a seat of learning like Oxford or Leipsic. A shoemaker plying his trade in a village on the banks of the Susquehanna might have a great love for books and know not only some law but enough medi- cine to make his presence in the village doubly valuable, and work away in his leisure hours when past middle age to teach himself the wizard's tongue, Latin. After the Erie Canal was opened, a traveling bookstore was established on a boat that made several trips a year, and did " considerable business " at the towns along the way selling chiefly the ancient .authors, medical, reli- gious, and law books, with a sprinkling of new novels. One could almost believe the enthusiastic Frenchman who wrote at the time that newspapers began to be sold upon the streets in New York, " everybody is literary in America." There was as much truth in his NEWS AND BOOKS 463 rash statement as there had been in Sydney Smith's sneer of a decade before, " Who reads an American book?" " Every one," wrote this Frenchman again, " besides a paper from Washington or from some Atlantic town, receives that of the village from which he has emi- grated. . . . Reviews and magazines, literary journals, novelties of every sort, come to us from New York, Philadelphia, and England at a moderate price, and a month or two after their publication over the Atlantic." " I had read, I have no doubt, the last romance of Sir Walter Scott before it had reached Vienna." Miss Martineau, never backward about asking ques- tions, has left a curious note of what she conceived to be the relative popularity of British authors in the United States. She found Hannah More better known than Shakespeare, but admitted that this might be an index of religious sentiment and not of literary taste. Scott was idolized. She did not need to tell us that: the favorite names of stagecoaches and steam- boats prove it without her testimony. Miss Edgeworth was also a great favorite, but Bulwer was read more than either. Byron was scarcely mentioned. You could not buy Wordsworth's poems in every shop, but she thought they lay " at the heart of the people." Our citizens had a bowing acquaintance with Coleridge and Lamb ; and she mentioned " Sartor Resartus " as perhaps " the first instance of the Americans having taken to their hearts an English work which came to them anonymously, unsanctioned by any recommenda- tion, and even absolutely neglected at home." She had small opinion of American writers. She thought the moral beauty of Miss Sedgwick of a much finer char- acter than the bonhomie of Irving; and pronounced Cooper's novels to have " a very puny vitality." Bry- 464 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING ant was our one poet, and Bancroft, who had then pub- lished his first two volumes, our only historian. Our interest in visiting literary celebrities was marked. A contemporary has written that with the single exception of Lafayette, Miss Martineau herself was more feted than any foreigner who had up to that time visited us. Her outspoken opinions on slavery caused her popularity to wane in some parts of the country; and Dickens was never forgiven for his " American Notes," but during his stay here enthusi- asm knew no bounds. His movements were chronicled with a fidelity that the press of his own country would have reserved for royalty. Forty dollars were paid for tickets to the ball given in his honor in Boston, and an unpoetic and envious Philadelphian figured that at the current price of hogs those little bits of pasteboard represented the equivalent of 40,000 pounds of pork. Officials and private citizens vied to do him honor. President Tyler entertained him at a reception. "What think you?" wrote young Mrs. Tyler, the President's daughter-in-law. " He and Washington Irving were both speaking to me at the same time! " She preferred Irving, who exerted himself to be agree- able, while Boz showed plainly that he was bored by the crowd surging about him and jumping up and down in a desire to get a sight of his short person over the heads of taller neighbors. After an hour he retired *' and left the unused enthusiasm to Irving." The country waited expectant for the book he was to write about America, and nineteen hours after a copy of it reached New York it had been reprinted and was on sale. The New York publishers disposed of 50,000 copies in two days, and Philadelphia's first con- signment of 3000 was exhausted inside of half an hour. Anger and astonishment filled the breasts of his NEWS AND BOOKS 465 friendly hosts. What they read seemed like a breach of hospitality, — and hurt the more for the truth in his criticisms. But resentment of his sharp words never materially affected Dickens's popularity in America as an author. New Orleans was the one city in the United States where little attention was paid to reading. Even its newspapers were poor, and in 1830 its population of 60,000 supported only three bookshops, whose stocks were made up mainly of French works that merited the criticism so unjustly heaped upon Jefferson's library. " A collection of books, good, bad, and in- different, new, old, and, worthless, in languages which many cannot read and most ought not." This was what was said of Jefferson's collection when he offered it to Congress to replace the one burned by the British. It was really the best library of its size in the country, but it was suspected of being atheistic in tone, and the tirades against it were, like Hannah More's popularity, an index of religious feel- ing. It was colored by politics, also. Indignant pa- triots who disapproved of Jefferson's lack of belief in theology and superabundance of faith in the people were not sorry to see him on the verge of bankruptcy, and they vigorously opposed the purchase. Cyrus King said it would " bankrupt the Treasury and dis- grace the nation." The purchase was made, however, becoming the nucleus of the present great Library of Congress. It could be regarded with more pride as an index of the real literary appreciation of Congress were it not for the fact that these books were bought " by the pound " so to speak. Jefferson himself suggested an impartial method of determining their worth by their size, — ten dollars for a folio, six dollars for a quarto, three for 466 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING an octavo, regardless of subject matter or any mitigat- ing circumstances inside them. He may have done this in honest simplicity, but one suspects an under- current of subtle derision. This purchase occurred about the time that the " Knickerbocker " group of authors in and near New York, Irving and Cooper and Bryant and their fellows, were coming into their own. Their most important work was done by 1850, and long before the half cen- tury struck New England's literary promise had also flowered. By that time Longfellow and Whittier had been publishing for twenty years and Emerson for ten. Hawthorne too had made his rare genius known in " Mosses from an Old Manse " and Poe, one of that Northern company by accident of birth, had given the world his haunting melody and died. It is quite right that the poets and philosophers of this New England group should hold first place in the affections and remembrance of their countrymen, but it is pleasant to dwell for a moment on its historians, with their record of brotherly courtesy and triumph over physical pain. Of the four best known in this smaller circle, Prescott labored, as did his fellow his- torian Parkman, in a twilight of blindness, unable to use his eyes for more than ten minutes at a time, while he wrote those vivid pictures of Spanish rule on two continents that read Hke brilliant romance and were instantly acclaimed and translated into many tongues. Parkman did for the history of the French in Can- ada what Prescott did for the record of the Spaniards in Mexico, though even more cruelly handicapped by ill health. Motley's inauspicious debut as a writer of romance turned to triumph when he found his in- spiration in the history of the Netherlands. Ban- croft's theme was the history of his own country. NEWS AND BOOKS 467 Sympathy and courtesy enter into the story in the fact that Irving, who meant himself to write a his- tory of the conquest of Mexico and had already gath- ered material for it, gave up the plan when he heard of Prescott's ambition, and sent him his notes. And Prescott a few years later passed on the kindness to Motley by resigning that part of his scheme which would have encroached on the territory Motley had chosen for his own. On the poets and the philosophers and the fun- makers of that large New England company there is small need to dwell, for their names and their thoughts are a national heritage. But it is significant that in a nation endowed with a gay and optimistic impudence, and given over in common estimation to pursuit of the dollar, the psychological and the spiritual have exer- cised the strongest fascination and been accorded the highest place. When one thinks of distinctively American writers, it is not of those who dealt with material subjects, but of the men like Hawthorne and Emerson, tuned to a spiritual key. The Knickerbocker group had developed purely American themes in literary forms of unquestioned merit. The mission of the writers of New England was to add an ethical and spiritual force to American letters. They were of Puritan stock, and they were ten years nearer the fiery trial of the Civil War. The men who brought about the liberal movement in re- ligion that split the churches of that section during the first quarter of the century were their intellectual forerunners, and an undertone of austerity is to be found in the most genial of their writings. Right was right to them as inexorably and inevitably as it had been in the eyes of their Puritan fathers, though those worthies would have felt obliged to consign these de- 468 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING scendants to perdition for the way in which they ex- pressed their behef. Some stopped on the brink of unorthodoxy in mere Hterature, and covered up their granite sense of truth with the flowers of fable and verse. Some carried it into the reahns of philosophy. These were the men who in spirit dominated all the rest. They were exceedingly liberal in being willing to cull good from any source, Christian or pagan. They were as rigid as their forebears in insisting that every- thing they accepted measure up to the high standard they set, and like their ancestors they were revolution- ary in applying these rules to every-day custom. They chose to be led by the inner light wherever it might take them. They were, in short, idealists trying to apply their system based on the old Platonic doctrine of ideas, to the hard and often balky facts of New Eng- land village life. And they were withal kindly, im- practical gentlemen and ladies whose unconscious singleness of purpose and gentle lack of humor moved their neighbors to mirth, but toned the entire nation for the struggle that lay before it. The dreaming Alcott was a target for criticism as well as for wonder. Townsfolk might be pardoned for thinking his daughter, writing her wholesome stories for girls and working hard with hands and pen to offset her transcendental father's objection to thwarting the business of canker worms, or taking other practical steps to help nature feed his flock, the better citizen and truer philosopher of the two. They might wonder at Thoreau in his hut on Walden Pond, living out his theory that " a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone." The volume that came from that hut in the woods might seem to them a very useless waste of time and NEWS AND BOOKS 469 ink ; but not one of them could help being impressed by Emerson. Fredrika Bremer, who attended an Alcott " con- versazione," wrote that "' both the proposition and the conversation were in the clouds," though she made ineffectual efforts to focus them on something more solid. " Alcott drank water and we drank, — fog," she wrote, " but the good Alcott hears an objection as if he heard it not." Emerson appeared to her as strong and positive as Alcott was vague. He both attracted and repelled her. She felt his " ice-alp na- ture " to be repulsive and chilling, but she could see that this was only one side of him. In Emerson's study where the furniture was grave, useful, and com- fortable but not beautiful, hung a single picture, a large copy in oils of Michael Angelo's Parcse, — like the furniture, grave and useful, but not beautiful. The great man took her driving, and alighting to get her a glass of water from a favorite spring, tied the reins to a tree ! Truly a guardian angel as well as the Parcse was domesticated in his house, and had the upper hand of them. Both he and Alcott made their way into the West in books and in lecture tours as well. The new coun- try showed itself as eager to meet and hear these prophets of New England as the East was to behold the literary lights of Europe. Cincinnati early had its Dorfenville's Hell and similar attractions, but these were soon rivaled by lyceum lectures by Emerson and Theodore Parker, at a price so low that it cost scarcely more to wander with them in realms of philosophy than to descend to Avernus. A letter from Emerson to Mr. Ainsworth R. Spofford, who was arranging for such a course of lectures, brings to mind vividly the standard of plain living and high thinking then 470 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING current all over the country. After promising to de- liver five lectures Emerson added in a postscript: " I observe that you set your course tickets at one dollar. You must do what is best in your city, con- sulting your usage. But at New York my friends I believe convinced themselves that Mr. Horace Greeley with whom it had been left, should have made the single tickets 50 cents instead of 25. The lecturers complained of me as an injurer of the profession." Year after year, East and West, the moral note rang stronger in the works of these older writers and the young men and women who joined their ranks in ever increasing numbers ; and when at last all other issues merged in the great battle for and against slavery, they lifted their voices and some of them gave their lives for freedom. CHAPTER XXII THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS FORTUNATELY the number of seers is limited, for prophecy is a heady wine. Like the character in French comedy who was sur- prised to learn that he talked prose without knowing it, the average citizen goes about his business un- conscious that he has an " aim " or a " tendency," much less that he is living it. But studying history by cancelation brings to mind that passage in which Ruskin speaks of the " awful " lines of a tree, mean- ing the lines which tells of its struggle up into the air, — the real story of its life. One by one material details shrivel like leaves, revealing the vital framework with- out which no leaves, perfect or misshapen, could have found nourishment. The rush toward new lands; the country's wonder- ful, increasing wealth during those years of national expansion ; its almost indecent haste to reap the benefit of new inventions; the hustle of business; the tempta- tions and personalities of politics ; the grotesqueness of the newly rich, adopting luxury without assimilating it; and the bitterness of the poor, envying luxury while lacking bread, covered with a dense mantle the old principles and ideals that had moved Americans up to the time the Constitution was adopted and for twenty- five years thereafter. While individuals or groups might be heedless, or 471 472 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING rascally, or vicious, men in the mass had at heart the real good of the community. This was the essence of democracy and harked back to the basic idea of personal worth and responsibility, — no American monopoly, but a human tendency that had an uncom- mon chance to develop on our soil. It had already undergone one mighty transformation. It came to the country originally as religious conviction, and by im- perceptible degrees grew into political revolt. It was now on the verge of another change. The people as a whole cared more to speculate in dollars than in philosophy. They were blind to the large significance of small things; were too much en- grossed in the details of their full young life to see the big trend and sweep of them all together. They did not discern the kinship between their forefathers' revolt against spiritual dominion, or their grandfathers' re- volt against kings, and this lately developed national antipathy to laws of entail and debtors' prisons ; nor did they stop to wonder at the white man's increasing sensitiveness to blows upon a black man's skin. Yet it was the inherited tendency to think, and to experi- ment boldly by putting thoughts into practice, that was driving political parties into a new division on the question of slavery and was about to shatter old dogmas of belief. They failed to see the likeness between science with a large S, that began to invade life at every turn, and religion with a large R with which their childhood had been familiar. If the majority of Americans thought at all about the theological side of their new civilization, they were loyal to their fathers, even though falling away from their stiff code in practice. Straws already indicated the direction of the great storm that Darwin and his followers were to let ' " 'z^^S'^^ix^Wi: "'"*: SAMUEL F. B. MORSE THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 473 loose, but their books were only in process of being written. Time would convince many that " revelation might come through the microscope," but to a genera- tion that shuddered at the thought that the world had not been planned and neatly finished off, and Adam and Eve set up in housekeeping, in the space of six days, this bit of revelation was hidden. Good people, pained at innovation, felt obliged to protest, and enacted once more that comico-tragic scene in life which is played whenever the radical of one genera- tion slips unconsciously into the conservatist of the next. This new cult called science, seeming to threaten the very foundations of religion, had to such minds noth- ing in common with invention, working comfortable magic in daily living. They did not see that in ac- cepting one they must of necessity admit the other; that in stepping aboard a railroad train they were be- ginning a longer journey than was indicated on their tickets; or that in opening the doors of their barn to a new threshing machine they opened the covers of their Bibles to the prying lever of higher criticism. To conservatives, the men who gave themselves up to science and followed wherever it might lead them seemed utterly without excuse; infinitely more blame- worthy than the Concord philosophers with their half- pagan ideas, or even the anti-slavery maniacs who were threatening to turn civilization upside down. The world was full of strange noises ; each one of these bands proclaiming a different thing. We know to-day that their varied notes united in one great chord of moral earnestness : an earnestness for which thousands of that generation and the next willingly laid down their lives. We can see now that all shared the same sturdy Puritan characteristics; claimed the right to think for 474 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING themselves ; denied that one mind had authority to im- pose conclusions on another; recognized individual responsibility in the choice between good and bad ; and stood firm rejecting compromise, unwilling to buy in- dulgence for body or soul. The anti-slavery enthusiasts made the greater clamor for their crusade was by word of mouth as well as print, and their protests were the most disturbing be- cause directed against a custom that could not conven- iently be dropped. The Concord philosophers and their satellites had leanings in the same direction, but could be more readily forgiven since they dealt in ab- stractions, and impartiality is easier in matters not personal. The scientists worked usually in silence, and it was confessed that they had brought forward practical marvels like the telegraph; but they were looked upon as a dangerous class, secretly fomenting opinions that reason could not refute but which meant death to cherished religious beliefs that had been good enough for holier men than they to live and die by. Up to that time even the word by which they set such store had a more restricted meaning. Science had been any one of the speculative arts. Philosophy embraced them all together, expressing what science does now, — with this important difference : science bears a vital relation to everyday life; philosophy was a region where the trained intellect might exercise, but it had no connection with practical affairs. It seemed quite reasonable in 1840 or 1850 for a brilliant young- ster of twenty-one to be made " professor of natural sciences " at an excellent academy, and expected to teach botany, chemistry, astronomy, and all other in- teresting and unpractical systems of mental gymnastics that students saw fit to demand. This was commonly the first step in the public career of the young men who THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 475 adopted the new profession and worked out many im- portant problems during the following decades, among them that idea of scientific agriculture about which Jef- ferson had vaguely dreamed. " His lifetime saw the development of chemistry out of alchemy," said the daughter of one such man, speak- ing of the wonderful changes his quiet devotion helped to bring about, and the trenchant yet humorous philoso- phy of life that enabled him to labor in silence while noisy comrades claimed more and did less. He and his like, faithful of heart and bold of vision, toiled in many fields, slowly fathoming mysteries and translat- ing truths of nature as they saw them into formulas which were to revolutionize commerce and agriculture and medicine. Criticism they braved hourly; occa- sionally they braved indictment for manslaughter. The doctors had taken this grave risk in their experi- ments with ether. They were all gallant knights errant of the mind, tilting against problems half for the fun of it, half for love of humanity, — without thinking overmuch about that part of it, or caring at all what became of their souls according to a theology dear to their fathers, but narrow and inadequate to them, since their glimpse into wide new realms. This glimpse made of them the seers and poets of the nineteenth century. Like mountains, the greatness of poets and seers can be best measured from a distance. As a nation we prided ourselves on being practical. We frowned on artists as useless folk, and poets to be quite re- spectable had to write according to time-honored rules in " hours curtailed from their sleep and other refresh- ment," working by day at an obvious and more re- munerative trade. Yet, as it happened, the two men who accomplished most in the wizard's work of trans- 476 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING forming the work-a-day world were artists by pro- fession. Steamboats and fine arts seem far apart, A poetic vision bridged the distance, and mechanics came to have such sway over Fulton's mind that it displaced portraits and landscape painting. He saw the part canals might perform in opening up inaccessible parts of the country and cementing the Union by bringing the people together. Dreaming of universal peace, he dallied with the problem of submarine explosives, first used in warfare about the time Sir Walter Raleigh sailed home from Virginia with a weed called tobacco. It was while coquetting with the French government about torpedoes that Fulton continued experiments on the Seine with his steamboat, the ugly duckling of his brood of inventions. Even Franklin had thought the idea of propelling boats by steam impractical. " Ful- ton's folly" this particular model was called; and we have Fulton's word that while experiments were in progress no one encouraged him by a single hopeful remark. It required a man like Livingston, broad- minded and wealthy to help him out; in addition, the vigorous opposition of a man like Vanderbilt to crystal- lize their combined faith into business sagacity; and, when the time was ripe, a man like Webster to argue before the Supreme Court with an eloquence that re- leased " every creek and river, every lake and harbor " from the monopoly they held so long. Morse the artist was earliest president of the Ameri- can Academy of Design. Morse the inventor worked in the growing solitude of his studio while dust gath- ered upon his canvases. For economy's sake he ate and cooked and slept in the narrow space that housed his inspiration, which was, to link by the mysterious " electro-magnetic " force that had been tamed to run THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 477 along a wire, those lines of signal posts from which messages had long been sent laboriously, letter by letter. Twelve years of his life went into making the vision a reality, while his friends believed him mad and his family faced the possibility of putting him under re- straint. It took three years of labor to achieve a working model. Two years later, in 1837, he received his first patent. Then followed five years of besieging Congress for money with which to build a practical line. Granted finally in the closing hours of a session, it was ridiculed to the last by scoffers who recommended that half of it be spent on experiments with mesmerism, or denounced the whole scheme as a manifest fraud be- cause the dot and dash alphabet could only be under- stood by one versed in Pottawotomi. After that came two years' exciting battle with cir- cumstances. Twenty-seven thousand dollars of the precious $30,000 allowed by Congress went into the ground in vain experiments at laying wires in lead pipes. When this was found to be impractical, Morse told his superintendent of construction that the public must never know of the failure ; and the superintendent, being loyal and clever, broke the great plow used in the work. Newspapers dilated on the '* accident " and the time necessary for repairs, while Morse in despair snatched at the brief respite to cudgel his brains for some substitute. Finding none he was forced to adopt the poles that he had distrusted and rejected early in his experiments. But the line was finished; and the first message it carried, " What hath God wrought ! " had the old Puritan ring. It was at once a paean of victory and a solemn hymn of praise shortened to " telegraphese." Inventions such as these turned poetry to practical uses with a vigor that smacked of impiety. Men 478 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING grasped eagerly after the " practical " benefits they brought, but were shocked at the clear thinking and dis- regard of precedent that inevitably followed. Willing to be cured of diseases, or to take short cuts through time and space, their eyes were holden to the new heavens and new earth visibly unrolled before their eyes. This was what might have been expected, for the school of experience is thorough. They were going too fast; and lessons slurred over have to be learned later in painful review. The nation had profited by many truths in its advanced course in politics and sociology, but one fundamental fact had been glanced at askance and hurried by in the hope that through some miracle, it might cease to exist when the time came to open the book at that spot and hunt for it. In the important matter of slavery, the country, as Henry Wilson so graphically put. it, *' attempted the impossible feat of moving at once in opposite direc- tions." Slavery had been with us from the first. A year before that Christmas season of 1620 when the MayHower landed its Pilgrims, a Dutch slaver sailed up the James River with its load of evil omen, and the twenty black wretches in its hold slipped unnamed and dumb into the life of the people, to wield an influence greater than that exercised by the later comers, whose names are remembered and revered. Little heed was paid to them, for slavery was found the world over, in savagery and civilization. The Bible recognized it; and God-fearing seekers after righteousness, like the worthies of Connecticut who felt constrained to reject the jury system because there was no warrant for it in the laws of Moses, had little THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 479 difficulty in accepting a practice as old as history and so advantageous to thrift. The Crown encouraged it. Colonists both North and South were offenders. Newport became a flourishing slave mart, and Yankee commerce and shipping profited quite as much as Southern agriculture. There were over half a million bondmen on our free soil when the framers of the Con- stitution came together. These statesmen recognized the grim anomaly, but the need for harmony was paramount, and they felt unable to deal with it in the drastic manner it deserved. Whether slaves were to be considered at all in the representation in Congress; whether importation of Africans should be encouraged or prohibited ; and what must be done with fugitive slaves, were questions around which the compromises of the Constitution re- volved. A program of conciliation seemed best, and where that was impossible one of discreet silence. The makers of the Constitution hoped to accomplish by atrophy what they feared to undertake by ampu- tation. They were silent even as to its name, feeling it an evil, and shunned the very word, referring to the oppressed class as " persons held to service or labor." They rejoiced that there was a decided and apparently growing sentiment against it, and hoped that their provision for ending the trade in slaves from Africa after 1809, and taxing it meanwhile, would bring about its ultimate end. Six years later the invention of Eli Whitney's cotton gin struck the knell of that hope, rousing slavery from the coma they had sincerely regarded as the be- ginning of its death. From that moment its peaceful extinction receded into the distance. More and more excuses were ma-de for it. For a time the question of 48o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING its morality disappeared from view. It was first as- sumed to be a necessity, then asserted and believed to be a positive blessing. Later the right or wrong in- herent in it again came under discussion and the old Prophet's cry, " Repent ye ! " rang through the country from end to end; but for years only its economic and political aspects interested society. It had long been known that the soil of the South could produce excellent cotton, but the labor of sepa- rating the fibers from the seed was too great to make it a profitable crop. A negro woman working the en- tire day could clean only a single pound. With this newly invented machine, a slave by turning a crank prepared fifty times as much in the same number of hours. Only one thing could happen. There was an immense rise in the value of cotton lands, and a great increase in the demand for slave labor. During the fifteen years that intervened between Whitney's inven- tion and the day when the slave trade ceased by law, thousands of captives were brought into the country from Africa, while the purchase of Louisiana added 30,000 more slaves to the South as well as a vast territory. This removed slavery from the old patriarchal re- lation of master and servant as members of one household to that of callous business in which the slave was merely an animal whose work and profit were to be calculated like those of the cattle whose labors he shared. His hours of toil were fifteen or sixteen out of the twenty-four. The estimated cost of his food for a year was $7.50. A like trivial amount covered his clothing and his blanket, and the sacks he used in picking cotton. An easy sum explains why the early hope of slavery's extinction vanished, and how money- lust gradually dulled or obliterated the sense of right THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 481 In Virginia in 1790 the price of a field hand was $250. In i860 it had increased to $1600. By that time one third of the population of the South was slave, though only about one white man in twenty was a slave owner. The system created social dis- tinctions unknown elsewhere in America. The slave- owners were an aristocracy blessed with wealth and cursed with the idleness wherein Satan finds his choicest opportunities. They " did not vex themselves with the harassing cares of commerce, nor were they reduced to the necessity of toil. They devoted them- selves to social intercourse, to the cultivation of ele- gant literature and fine oratory," to quote one of them- selves. They gathered into their own hands political and social consequence, ruled despotically over their slaves, and insisted in national politics on the demo- cratic principle of State rights to safeguard them in the exercise of this feudal power. In addition to the aristocrats and their dusky vassals, there was a large class of " poor whites," looked down upon by even the Negroes themselves; and also a small and distrusted element of free blacks. The slaves were more disliked and feared as they grew in number ; partly because their increase made them a race menace, partly because of the viciousness in human nature which makes a man want to kick the fellow man he bullies when he can not kick back. Mrs. Trollope, with her strong preference for the comforts of England, felt happy and at her ease under the ministrations of the slaves of the South. Nowhere else in America did she find domestic service of a kind to be endured. But she deplored the effect of the sys- tem on the masters. She " could not but think that the citizens of the United States had contrived by their political alchemy to extract all that was most noxious 482 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING both in democracy and slavery, and had poured the strange mixture through every vein of the moral or- ganization of their country." From worst to best the possibilities of the system were wide. There were pampered house servants in plenty, and touching and beautiful friendships between masters and dependents whose dark skins condemned them to servitude. But for scores of these there were thousands driven to the fields in herds, whose patience and tractability speak more eloquently for their loyalty than for their intelligence. The fear of slave insurrec- tion under which the masters lived seems to have been a mirage of their own guilty consciences, for the few attempts of this kind serve only to emphasize their rarity. Yet laws for the two races were notoriously unequal. An Englishman who visited South Carolina about 1830 wrote that " until recently " there had been seventy-one crimes for which slaves paid with their lives, for which the severest punishment meted out to whites was im- prisonment in the penitentiary. The only severe laws controlling whites in their dealings with blacks were those against educating these profitable dependents out of sheep-like acquiescence in their fate. Intelligence might bode ill to their oppressors; so the penalty for teaching a slave to read was very heavy. In some States even free Negroes could not be educated. They were, indeed, particularly feared, the fact of their being free arguing more brains or greater thrift and therefore greater possibilities of danger. Under the laws of South Carolina free Negroes who once left the State could not return; nor could such un- desirable citizens enter from another State; while if brought by ship they must be detained in jail at the cost of the captain until his vessel put to sea again. THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 483 Economically slavery was to the South like some high- power explosive, — immensely valuable and potentially most dangerous. Politically it was also valuable, and as events proved even more explosive. The fact that each State was entitled to two votes in the United States Senate made the relative number of free and slave States a matter of great political importance. It was about that cen- tral fact that the political battle raged. The Ordinance of 1787 made United States territory north of the Ohio River forever free. That little was heard of slavery in national politics and that there was a practi- cal balance of power between the two sections up to 1820, was due to the chance that the eight new States entering the Union during that time lay four to the south and four to the north of the Ohio, and that they happened to be admitted in nearly alternate order, so that neither side gained a*ny marked advantage. There were eleven slaveholding and eleven non- slaveholding States at the time Missouri desired ad- mittance with slavery. It was known that Arkansas had hopes of the same kind. This prospective gain by the South of four votes in the Senate roused the North, heretofore quiescent if not indifferent, to an animated discussion of slavery's moral status. Ex- tremists argued that it ought to be restricted in both Missouri and Arkansas. Radical Southerners con- tended that Congress had no right to impose restric- tions of this kind on new States, and fell back on an old threat of disunion that had already done service for both North and South. Hot debates in Congress and among the people re- sulted in a plan of compromise, — a proposal to settle the dispute by dividing Federal territory arbitrarily at the line of 36° 30^ and permitting slavery to the 484 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING south of it but forbidding it to the north, except in the case of Missouri, which was to be allowed to enter the Union as a slave State, though it lay entirely north of this line. This was the famous Missouri Compro- mise. Henry Clay made it his own during the two years it was before the people, and gained thereby his greatest reputation. Attached to a bill to admit Maine as a free State, it became a law in March, 1820, and the final trial of strength was postponed forty years. But these proved to be years of increasing unrest. Although the balance of power in the Senate was kept for a time by admitting new States in couples, a free State and a slave State on the same day, the moral question was not allowed to lapse. In the furor for reform that gained headway soon after the Missouri Compromise, so grave a matter as this of slavery in a free country could not fail to attract attention. That season of agitation in behalf'of the poor and oppressed strengthened the inborn convictions of those opposed to slavery, and their denunciations added materially to the bitterness of those who thought their rights as- sailed. Each side advanced to more radical ground. Then came the movement for Nullification in 1832, adding patriotic indignation on the part of the North. The South's need for new territory out of which to make more slave States, forced the annexation of Texas and brought on the Mexican War. But the very territory wrested from Mexico introduced irritating slavery questions of its own. Whether the line of 36° 30' applied to this new acquisition, or only to regions under Federal control at the time the Com- promise measure was passed, could be vigorously argued on both sides. Mexican law prohibited slavery. It was easy to declare that void ; but when the lapse of years and unforeseen conditions in California ex- THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 485 hausted slave territory while there yet remaned stretches out of which free States might be made, the South began a determined effort to repeal the Missouri Compromise and throw open to slavery all United States territory wherever located. This was success- ful, but opposition to it brought on the Civil War. Abolition societies had existed before the Constitu- tion, but they had little political importance up to the date of the Missouri Compromise, and even after it. While slavery was regarded as a question of labor rather than of morals, instinctive feeling against it spent itself in efforts to palliate the evil, not to remove it. Such was the object of the national society for colonizing Negroes in Africa that was formed in 18 16 at a meeting over which Henry Clay presided. Madi- son became its president and Henry Clay its vice-presi- dent. Chief Justice Marshall was a member. Jeffer- son favored it. So did John Randolph, for the char- acteristic reason that it was meant for free Negroes, and by taking these dangerous firebrands out of the country would in the long run secure property in slaves. For fifty years it enlisted the interest of many brilliant minds, some for reasons quite the opposite of those urged by Randolph ; but it failed at any time to win the confidence of the Negroes themselves. The less enterprising did not even know of its existence and some of the most intelligent shared Randolph's view. A national convention of colored men in Phila- delphia in 1 83 1 addressed the members of the Coloniza- tion Society in a petition respectful in form, but flatly suggesting that it was " pursuing the direct road to perpetuate slavery with all its unchristian concomitants in this boasted land of freedom ; and as citizens and men whose best blood is sapped to gain popularity for that institution we would in the most feeling manner 486 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING beg of them to desist; or, if we must be sacrificed to their philanthropy, we would rather die at home." A scheme which might have worked to the good of all, and ended slavery without the horrors of civil war, if passions could only have been held in leash, was that for gradual emancipation, credited by his admirers to Thomas Jefferson. But Providence willed otherwise. And, as Lincoln, greatest of the prophets and martyrs of the years that lay just ahead, admonished his coun- trymen in the solemn words of his second inaugural, if God willed that all the wealth piled by the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil should be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn by the lash be paid in another drawn by the sword, " as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said, ' the judg- ments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' " In a general way the militant abolition movement dates from the time of the Nullification excitement. It was then that the prophets' note of warning that had been sounding here and there began to be heard above other notes, and that the missionary impulse gained a force which threw prudence to the winds, and under the motto inscribed on Garrison's paper the " Libera- tor," " Duty is ours, Consequences are God's," began its active crusade, — a crusade in which it must be ad- mitted the wishes of the Lord and the works of the Evil One were at times hopelessly confused. Anti- slavery societies increased at a prodigious rate between 1835 and 1840, and the words and acts of their mem- bers began to sting like scorpions. In spite of this such agitation was deplored both North and South and once again it was proved that prophets are without honor in their own country. The first marked result was to rouse in the North resentment and a feeling of hostility against the col- THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 487 ored people themselves. Indeed, the Negro as an indi- vidual had been steadily losing favor through all the years that his cause gained in importance. When Lafayette, who belonged in France to a society called " Les Amis des Noirs " and early applied for member- ship in one of our own abolition societies, returned to the United States he was astounded at the race preju- dice that had developed between his visits. At the time of the Revolution free Negroes had been allowed to vote in New Jersey and in North Carolina ; and he remembered that they fought gallantly at Lexington, and that white and black soldiers used to mess together in utmost friendliness. After the manner of reformers, the abolitionists were more zealous than diplomatic, and their willingness to match words with deeds shocked their conservative neighbors. Often when they were merely trying to follow the Golden Rule at great inconvenience to them- selves, they were accused of a wanton desire for the most intimate relationships. Anger roused a super- sensitiveness that found expression in divers and often turbulent ways. In 1835 Garrison was mobbed and hustled through the streets of Boston with a halter round his neck. Whittier was stoned. For the crime of admitting a colored girl to her school in the free State of Connecticut, Prudence Crandall, who acted in utter disaccord with her name, was imprisoned in a cell from which a murderer had just been led to execu- tion. Tried three times, her case was not decided upon its merits, but finally quashed for informality. Her brother meanwhile spent eight months in a Wash- ington jail on the charge of giving an antislavery paper to a man who had asked for it. Webster complained with bitterness that there was no North ; that resistance to demands of the South 488 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING was overborne by Northern men. Feeling grew until mob violence ceased to be new or startling. In 1841 Cincinnati, which some one called " a conquered province of Kentucky," was for two days under con- trol of rioters; the cause of the disturbance being an abolition paper called the " Philanthropist." After the publication of Dr. Channing's book on slavery, South Carolinians declared that if he should enter that State at the head of 20,000 men he would never get out alive. Handbills and lithographs were sent to abolitionists showing them hanging from the gallows, and offering rewards for the heads or ears of such disturbers of the peace. The murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy at Alton, Illinois, in November, 1837; the oath of his brother Owen be- side his dead body to further the cause in which he had lost his life; riots and burning in Boston and Philadelphia and Cincinnati, were the serious side of feeling that found a quaint expression in the Native American newspapers that scored Forrest the actor for playing Othello. One of these asserted that if caught, Shakespeare would deserve lynching. Whether the editor imagined him a contemporary is not clear. The " Gladiator," a play in which slaves successfully revolt, came under condemnation. Forrest was warned not to act the character of Spartacus a second time. Even John Quincy Adams astonished Fanny Kemble as he sat beside her at dinner by breaking out in expres- sions of sincere disgust at Desdemona ; whose mis- fortunes, he said, were nothing more than she deserved, — a just judgment upon her for marrying a " nigger." Adams had never identified himself with the anti- slavery men. He thought the colonization scheme more impractical than casting nativities by the stars, and said that if the Almighty wanted to get rid of 1 89 1, by M. P. Rice ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 489 slavery He would find better means than either the colonization or the abolition societies. Yet he fully realized the magnitude and the menace of slavery. No one attentive to the progress of our history, he wrote in December, 1838, could fail to see that in the silent lapse of time slavery had been winding its cob- web thread around all our free institutions; and his fight against the passage of a " gag " law in Congress designed to make it impossible to consider petitions on the subject, was one of the stirring achievements of his later years, for which he was accused of conspir- ing with British abolitionists and threatened with ex- pulsion. The issue was bigger than men ; it compelled them to take sides. Congress seethed with feeling. In the House an hour came while Giddings of Ohio was speaking when a colleague from Georgia questioned him; he re- plied; the Georgian threatened to knock him down if he repeated certain words; he did repeat them, and while the bellicose Georgian was being borne from the hall by his friends, a fire-eater from Louisiana with a cocked pistol took his place, threatening to shoot. A friend of Giddings placed himself opposite the Lou- isianian, his hand conveniently near his concealed wea- pon. Members from the Democratic side took posi- tions near the Southerner, each with his hand in his pocket, while New Englanders lined up on the other side, and " thus confronted and thus supported, Gid- dings continued his speech to the end." H there was a crevice of weakness or inconsistency in a man's nature, slavery found it out. Personal feel- ing about it made strange political fellowships, and in- dividuals changed sides upon it most unexpectedly. They either succumbed to its insidious poison or joined the chorus of denunciation. They could not stand 490 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING still. Usually men became cautious as they grew older and wished to drop discussion and if possible to let sleeping dogs lie. There are few instances more pathetically dramatic than the last great debate in which the three congres- sional giants, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, took part. It occurred in 1850 at the time California was ad- mitted to the Union. Part of this new State lay below the line of 36° 30', but the argonauts who had peopled it so suddenly were not of a sort that took kindly to slavery or its doctrines. There were already fifteen free and fifteen slave States. To admit Cali- fornia free would break the balance of power, and the South protested quite as vigorously as the North had done when Missouri entered. It seemed that the peo- ple were ready to fly at one another's throats. Clay had quieted a similar disturbance in 1820. He was besought to exercise his great influence again. He was now an old man and had retired from the Senate seven years before; but to meet this crisis he was re- elected, and shortly after his return, rose to offer a " comprehensive plan " for adjusting the difficulty. He proposed that California be admitted as it wished without slavery; that the rest of the land acquired from Mexico be divided into two territories in which slavery should be neither authorized nor forbidden, presumably leaving the old Mexican law in force. That the slave trade be forbidden in the District of Columbia, but that slavery as an institution be per- mitted there. That Texas receive $10,000,000 for the adjustment of her state boundaries. Finally, that a new and much stricter fugitive slave law be enacted. The compromises of the Constitution had been mutual concessions necessary that the people might learn to live and work together; they endured thirty THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 491 and three years; those upon which Clay had staked the reputation of vigorous manhood lasted thirty years, but proved like the half-hearted measures of the Colo- nization Society, only a postponing of final decision. These of his old age were meant to hush discussion for all time. They only lasted three years, instead of thirty. Neither side was pleased by them, which is perhaps the best evidence that they were as truly a compromise as that heated subject and time could af- ford. After allowing a week for this plan of his to filter through the minds of the people. Clay supported it in a speech that continued for two days. He seemed feeble when he rose to begin ; he was so feeble in fact that he had asked a friend's assistance in mounting the long flight of steps that led to the Senate chamber; but he would not listen to the sug- gestion that he defer his speech. The country was in danger, li anything he could say might avert it, his health, even his life, was of little consequence. As he proceeded his voice gained in strength and his audience succumbed once more to his old eloquence and charm. But it was pathetically evident that in thus summoning back old energy he was making an effort of will over failing powers, for which his life might indeed be the forfeit. In the debate that followed Calhoun opposed him. He was opposed to giving in to the North on any point whatever. He too was feeble ; his death was to occur within the month. He was already too ill to speak. What he had to say was read to the Senate by his friend Mason of Virginia, while he sat by, pale as a statue, the mark of death visibly upon him, but with burning eyes that flashed in feverish haste from face to face to read the effect of his words as they fell from the lips of another. 492 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING On the 7th of March, Webster, the last of the great triumvirate, spoke in his turn, and to many his speech was the most pathetic of all, for it seemed to his anti- slavery friends to show not failing bodily or mental powers, but how far the corroding effects of slavery had eaten into his New England spirit. " I speak to- day for the preservation of the Union, hear me for my cause," he said, and went on to plead for com- promise ; to admit that slave labor was necessary to the South ; to imply that slavery had changed from the curse it had once been into a blessing, religious, social, and moral; that the age of cotton had become the golden age of the South. It was a powerful speech, one of his greatest, but it " fell heavy " on many hearts. He was denounced as one who had placed himself in the " dark list of apostates," a ** rec- reant son of Massachusetts who misrepresented her in the Senate," and compared to Benedict Arnold. On the other hand, the patriots who feared strife and still wished to throttle discussion, crowded his mail with letters of appreciation. "If Washington had risen from his tomb and addressed the Senate he would have uttered the words of your speech," wrote one of them. Although Clay's plan at first pleased neither side, each thinking that the other gained too much, there was a sincere desire in all sections to end contention, and the law was passed. Its friends rejoiced in it as a " finality." Calhoun died before it became a law. Two years later Clay and Webster followed him. If either hoped to gain the Presidency by means of it, Death intervened. Their places in the Senate and in the public eye were speedily filled by new leaders. The country settled itself to an honest attempt to consider other matters, but the old question would not down. THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 493 The contest in Congress, and the death of the men so long prominent as leaders, had shaken and demoral- ized both political parties. A considerable portion of the Democrats rallied round an entirely new man, Stephen A. Douglas, whose partizans were blatant against " Old fogies " and clamorous that " Young America " be given the reins of power. The Whigs who had begun their party career as " Clay's Infant School " and had grown old with him, remained loyal as an organization to this last compromise of his, but as individuals found that they could not honestly reconcile it with their sense of right. Those whose sympathies leaned towards the South allied themselves with the Democrats; the antislavery elements in both camps flowed together into a new free-soil organiza- tion; and the Whig party was dead. "Died of an effort to swallow the Fugitive Slave Law," was the epitaph suggested for it. The Fugitive Slave Law was harsh indeed; but it is notorious that injustice and misery in the abstract make little appeal to individual men and women, though single tragedies can fire the mass of people with avenging energy. Even a telling bit of fiction may exert more influence than a hundred authentic cases considered together. From this comes the world-old habit of teaching by parable. A parable called " Uncle Tom's Cabin," written by a young woman and printed as a serial story in a newspaper in 1852, had no little part in firing indignation against this new Fugitive Slave Law, The lash and the sundering of families were unlovely details that the advocates of slavery could not deny ; and this story set them forth in a way that gripped the imagination. Even Southerners themselves could not face un- moved concrete instances of the working of their sys- 494 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING tern. John Randolph was once asked by a young man, who was the greatest orator he had ever heard, his questioner meaning to draw out reminiscences of Patrick Henry. To his amazement Randolph an- swered : " The greatest orator I ever heard was a woman. She was a slave. She was a mother, and her rostrum was the auction block," and rising he imitated the tones and pathos with which this woman appealed from law to the innate justice of the bystand- ers, and the scorching words of indignation with which she finally denounced them. " There was eloquence ! " he said. " I have heard no man speak like that. It was overpowering," and he sat down as though over- come himself by the recollection. Then, as if fearing that he had expressed himself too freely to a North- erner, he entered upon an explanation and defense of the policy of the South. Every free-state sympathizer in the North, man, woman or child, knew by actual experience or by hearsay of just such instances as this. Genuine stories that were typical became almost as widely and pas- sionately familiar as the imaginary woes of Uncle Tom. There was the Edmonston family,- " educated, religious, and refined, and valued in the market at $15,000." And Emily Russell, the quadroon girl who was sent South with a coffle gang, her ransom for any reasonable sum having been refused for the sinister reason that she was " the most beautiful woman in the country." Fortunately she died ; and her poor old mother learning of her death broke out, not in lamenta- tion, but in praise to the Lord who had heard her prayer at last. Many who lived near the border talked with and fed and passed on to their next good friend the shiver- ing wretches who came to them in the dead of night THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 495 by means of grapevine telegraph and underground rail- way; and after passing them on rejoiced to hear no news of them, for in this case no news was good news and meant probable escape. Sometimes such white sympathizers were forced to witness and actively assist in returning the miserable fugitives to bondage. The new law required citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves whether they liked it or not, and did not even allow the Negro to testify In his own defense. Sometimes the men en- gaged in such efforts at helping Negroes to freedom were cast into prison for " slave stealing " and suffered even to death. Happenings like these did not tend to break the spirit that had made Garrison's " Liberator " a factor in American history, though the paper had been started without funds and even without the promise of a single subscriber. The new Fugitive Slave Law was a subject that rent the churches. Theodore Parker said that for two weeks he wrote his sermons " with a sword In the open drawer under the inkstand, and a pistol in the flap of the desk loaded and ready." Anti-manhunting leagues were formed to which octogenarians and young enthusiasts alike belonged. They carried no firearms, but met to practise a sort of jiu-jitsu drill for their self-imposed mission. " First persuasion, then force," was their motto. H it came to the latter they proposed to seize and hurry away the man who would not be persuaded. Each member had his work assigned him, " even to the particular limb to which he should devote his atten- tion." The inflammable South meanwhile was not quiet. It demanded more and more, and set about the repeal of the Missouri Compromise under the leadership of that champion of Young America and of " progress," 496 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING Douglas, upon whose shoulders frayed and trailing remnants of the mantle of Clay's popularity had de- scended. He was wonderfully effective, a shrewd speaker of untiring energy, whose audacity was matched only by his ambition. He was so zealous a believer in " manifest destiny " and in the Monroe Doctrine that he desired, so the papers averred, to have the Caribbean Sea declared an American lake. Although still comparatively young his convictions on slavery had already undergone marked changes. In 1849, h^ described the Missouri Compromise as " can- nonized in the hearts of the American People " ; "a sacred thing which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb " ; but in a few years he came to a point where he regarded it as only a matter for local police regulation. In 1854, mainly through his efforts, the bill to organize the two territories of Kansas and Nebraska, both of which lay north of 36° 30', leaving the question of slavery in them to be decided by what Douglas called squatter sovereignty, the vote of their own people, was passed by Congress and signed by President Pierce. At once smoldering resentment of the new Fugitive Slave Law, which after all had been obeyed in the main, and indignation at such wholesale retrogression in principle blazed out anew; for the effect of the bill was to repeal the Missouri Compromise and open all the territory of the vast Northwest to slavery. In the excitement that followed, it was found that the Prophet's cry of warning had been heeded even where most resented. That slave pen within sight of the Capitol, crowned with its gracious figure of Liberty, had been accepted heretofore as a matter of course; now it had become a mockery too bitter to endure. Once again the mandate, " Choose ye this day whom THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 497 ye will serve ! " thundered imperative and clear. Once again the great question hurried men off their old footing on to new ground. In this new crisis freedom, like slavery, found its foremost champion in the State of Illinois, but in a man the opposite of Douglas, physically and mentally. Douglas was short and thick-set and aggressive. The figure and character of Lincoln, we know as we know those of no other public man. Like Clay, Lincoln had opposed slavery where slavery was popular in the days of his ambitious adolescence. Unlike Clay, he firmly opposed it in the day of his power. He was already a state leader. In his one term in Congress during the Mexican War he had voted forty times for the Wilmot Proviso and he had introduced a bill to rid the national capital of that crying scandal, the slave pen. At the end of his term he had returned to Illinois, where in his growing interest in the practice of law, politics almost faded from his mind. But the repeal of the Missouri Compromise " roused him as he had never been before." A young man who was after- ward to live in the closest touch with him during years of stress, had his first sight of him at the moment when quivering with excitement, Lincoln burst into the office of his friend and neighbor, Milton Hay, waving a newspaper and exclaiming, *' This will never do ! Douglas treats it as a matter of indifference mor- ally whether slavery js voted down or voted up. I tell you it will never' do ! " When the militant in spirit and young in years gathered in the Bloomington convention of May, 1856, where the Republican party of Illinois came into being, Lincoln, teacher and prophet, predestined leader and martyr, immovable in the granite of his stern moral 498 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING convictions, stood upon the platform and made that ringing " lost " speech of his, an utterance so inspired that even practical reporters forgot their duty and let the eloquent words escape. Lincoln himself could never recall w^hat he said; but those v^ho listened, and w^ho saw his rugged face transfigured by emotion, never forgot the hour. Later he supplied cold logic in addition to magnetic enthusiasm, opposing the clever word-juggling of Douglas with relentless reasoning to pierce his casuistry. Events followed thick and fast. The clash between Southern ambition and free-state feeling soon brought about actual civil war in Kansas, where one after an- other four Democratic governors with a strong bias toward slavery, turned free-state advocates in spite of personal advantage and party loyalty. Men who had withstood the beguilement of Nullifi- cation cast their fortunes with the South. Howell Cobb, who had been against disunion in 1832, became an arch conspirator in the cabinet of Buchanan. Jef- ferson Davis, who had asked indignantly in the Senate if that chamber was " to be the hotbed in which plants of sedition were to be nursed," and as secretary of war had declared that rebellion must be crushed, was hurried along the road that was to bring him to leader- ship of a great rebellion. Oregon in the far Northwest, swinging pendulum fashion as far as it could go without adopting slavery, entered the Union as a free State but with lav^s more severe against Negroes than those of the South, for there was not a slave State in which a free Negro could not sue in court. In 1857 the United States Supreme Court rendered its decision in the Dred Scott case, affirming that Negroes had no rights the white man was bound to respect. In 1858 the great Lincoln- THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 499 Douglas debates took place, in which Douglas gained a senatorship and lost the presidency, goal of his ambi- tion as it had been of Clay's. His antagonist, uncon- scious of destiny and unshaken by defeat, rejoiced that he had been able " to make some marks " which would tell for the cause of civil liberty, and resolved to fight in the ranks in the political campaign of i860. In 1859 occurred the John Brown raid with its useless sacrifice of lives and its train of tragic after- events that served the purpose of expiatory justice, — and more ; for the song, " John Brown's Body," im- provised by the Massachusetts 12th in Boston Harbor, grew into an emotional and far-reaching force. Finally, in i860 the Republican convention gathered in the Wigwam at Chicago and nominated for Presi- dent the man who had expected to fight in the ranks, — Lincoln, with the heart of gold and the sense of right that only pity could make swerve a hair's breadth from strict justice. Providence willed that he was to carry the sorrows of a nation upon his sorrowing spirit through four bitter years of war ; and that through his act the tragedy of slavery should come to its end. CHAPTER XXIII THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS WHEN kindly Harriet Martineau was in this country about 1833 working with bee-hke industry to gather material for her book, " Society in America," almost every man of note marched up and placed himself at the end of her ear- trumpet. Commendable gallantry, urged on by curi- osity, prompted this obliging readiness, for a live au- thoress was not often to be met with in the United States of those days. But the good lady was more earnest than sprightly, and it is to be feared that some of the gentlemen lived to regret their politeness. One citizen of Cincinnati, — " one of the noblest citizens," she assures us, — writhed impaled while she prosed on in eulogy of his raw little town as a dwelling place for the ambitious and the philanthropic, until at last he got a chance to answer: " Yes, we have a new creation going on here. Won't you come and dabble in the mud? " " Mud " there was in abundance during those forma- tive years, but the mud had a quality all its own. Our new political creation differed, even in its materials, from others about whose beginnings records have been kept. When it became Ex-President Madison's turn to approach Miss Martineau's ear-trumpet, he explained this difference by telling her that the United States had been created " to prove to the world things here- tofore held to be impossible." 500 THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 501 America has indeed been a place of experiment ever since its discovery flung a challenge to the discontented whisper already running through hovel and palace of the old world, the insistent, disturbing question whether common people had not a right to a voice in their own affairs. Men willing to sacrifice all they owned to learn the answer took up the challenge. Women akin to them in spirit were not wanting; and so it came about that this portion of North America was settled by a class radically different to those who went forth where hunger or lust of conquest were im- pelling forces. Unworthy motives were by no means absent; but, broadly speaking, the best impulses of humanity rather than the worst inspired its coloniza- tion. A large proportion of the settlers crossed the ocean for the privilege of doing their own thinking on one subject or another. During the colonial period the injustice of arbitrary taxation roused loyal subjects of the British King to protest and then to revolt. After they had gained their independence the relation of the newly formed nation to its component parts, — State Rights, — and later still the rights of the indi- vidual tangled in the tragic question of slavery, occu- pied them with ever-increasing intensity until the Civil War. Since then one or more such questions has been with us in varying form. Lately we have been face to face with the wrongs of the commercially op- pressed. Our whole national, intellectual life might be summed up by saying that it began with insistence on the Rights of Man and has now reached considera- tion of the Rights of Men. In other words, side by side with the " mud " inseparable from opening up and settling a new country, great and purely moral ques- tions have occupied our people, who have alwa,ys 502 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING craved and always had such problems on which to whet their minds and their courage. It has been said that the United States became a nation in spite of themselves, because up to the point of actual rebellion, the colonists had no thought of changing allegiance. But they came of fighting stock; and after town meetings had changed imperceptibly but inevitably into continental armies, they fought as they had argued, with such whole-hearted earnestness that in the end they found themselves free when they had only meant to be rationally governed. Whether the unexpected outcome be looked upon as the largess of Providence, or only a sarcastic renewal by Fate of that challenge flung to the masses when the New World was discovered, depends upon the mental angle of the observer. Circumstances working upon human nature form the dynamo of history. After seven years of fighting, although waters three weeks wide rolled between Americans and their former allegiance, they were only at the threshold of their real struggle. They had boasted that they meant to be a new and specially righteous nation. Instant proof was demanded. And the proof required of them was a sacrifice of the first-fruits of victory, — that they give up a portion of their newly won liberty for the common good. All told they were only a handful on the edge of an unexplored continent, — in numbers less than are gath- ered now under the roofs of our largest town. They were scattered far and wide in helpless little groups, divided by leagues of wilderness ; a wilderness not even comfortably empty, but alive with savages who came and went like shadows, who barely tolerated the set- tlers when friendly, and when angered were enemies more to be dreaded than wild beasts. Behind these THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 503 mysterious deadly people stretched cordons of white men far from friendly. Spaniards to the south of them; French along the Mississippi River; their own blood-brothers in Canada. More disquieting than any or all of these was their own division of interest. No longer colonies, they had not yet become states; but they were already hemmed in by sectional needs and prejudices. A South and an East had long existed. A West was be- ginning to make itself heard; and the citizens of one section had difficulty in understanding the others. Even Washington, for all his breadth of view, is reported to have said to General Lincoln : " We know what we Virginians have been fighting for, with our fine farms and climate. But can you tell what it is that you New Englanders have fought for, with your cold and barren lands? " " Yes," the other answered with some asperity, " for the liberty of using our heads and our hands." With Washington as President, the new Govern- ment took up its work. The half century that fol- lowed falls naturally into three divisions, not unlike those in the unfolding life of an individual. They might be called the years of Consciousness, of Growth, and of Conscience. During the first, which ended with the signing of the treaty of Ghent in 18 14, the country was engaged in establishing its relations with the outside world. De- tails of domestic adjustment, engrossing as they were, fade historically into insignificance before questions of international import. In the next period questions of foreign policy gave way to the demands of national growth and develop- ment. Manufactures gained upon and overtook agri- culture. Domestic commerce grew to overshadow 504 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING foreign trade. Exploration and annexation brought vast tracts under the potent young flag. Invention took a long step forward, opening a new chapter, not only in American history but in the habits of the whole civilized world. Far reaching as these changes proved to be, they were inspired primarily by home needs. With the egotism of youth the country was interested mainly in itself; was voicing its own desires, and vaunting and testing its own lusty strength. As in the case of a growing lad, moral development went on silently with the physical and when the time was ripe, suddenly and imperatively claimed attention. The absorbing questions of the third period, differing radically from those that preceded them, came upon the country before it knew it and engrossed it com- pletely. It is curious to note how strands of varied and purely material interests braided and wove themselves into one great moral issue which dominated the ten years preceding the War of the Rebellion. Develop- ment of machinery, invented merely to manufacture cotton, led by devious but clearly traceable ways to the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico. Dis- covery of gold in California sent a large and eager part of the population sweeping across the continent in a mad rush. Though a rush primarily after gold, it was in truth more; it was a test of endurance and a strengthener of character. In that rough battle with fortune artificial barriers crumbled. Right might as- sert itself in uncouth form, but wrong could not mas- querade as right under shelter of convention. Possession of Aladdin caves of treasure gave the country the comfortable assurance that it was rich. But with this assurance grew the feeling of noblesse oblige, the conviction that it could not only afford THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 505 but was in duty bound to take thought for the things of the spirit. The invention of the Hoe press led, about the same time, to the formation of the Press Association with hitherto undreamed of facihties for spreading a gospel. Discoveries in science fostered inherited tendencies to think bravely and truly along new lines. These in turn led back to the truth, lost and rediscovered time and again, that there is no es- cape from moral obligations. And all together con- spired to let loose that mighty flight of words for and against slavery that brought about the purging cata- clysm of civil war. The leaders of the three periods were as different as the issues they upheld. In the first period they were a group of gentlemen of fortune and position, essen- tially English in birth and training; who wore the lace ruffles and many of the prejudices of Europe. They revolted, not from hatred of England, or of monarchy, but from loyalty to an idea. Their foothold was only a narrow strip of land between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic. Standing firmly on this, with their backs to a wilderness, they looked regretfully eastward across the sea toward " home " and everything they had been taught to value, — everything, that is, except liberty. At the opening of the second period the frontier had already passed the barrier of the Alleghanies and was pushing toward the center of the continent. Before it came to an end the frontier had reached the desert, had leapt that again, and established a rude but virile civili- zation on the Pacific coast. The leaders were no longer men of wealth and inherited position. A younger gen- eration was living out ideals for which their elders had cheerfully given up whatever advantages inheritance had brought them. These younger men, especially those across the mountains, faced life under condi- 5o6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING tions of more than theoretical democracy. Mentally and physically a new type of citizen had been created. They and their followers looked toward the West rather than toward the East. Some of them, dazzled by the rapidly unfolding vision of national greatness, cher- ished a contempt for the Old World, which was far from being in the hearts of their elders. More than one of the older leaders had frankly be- lieved that sooner or later our political experiment must end in some form of monarchy. It is hard to conceive a surer means of political suicide, or a shorter road to oblivion, than to breathe such a doubt in the hearing of this generation of aggressively American patriots. In another way also they expressed the democratic change. The leaders of popular thought no longer sat in the Presidential chair. This interval of nearly forty years gave the country only one Presi- dent of strong personality; and he happened to be a dictator by nature, though a democrat by profession of faith. The real leaders were in Congress. Of the three foremost, one was the popular idol of his day; another the greatest orator the country has produced ; the third embodied sectional ambition in a superlative degree. Each wanted desperately to be President, yet not one of them achieved the coveted honor. Malice asserted that they desired it too much, — that even their friends feared they might barter opinion for place. May it not have been instead the working out of an obscure democratic instinct which prompted the coun- try to keep them close to itself, instead of setting them apart in an aloofness which even a republic wraps about its chief officer? In the decade between 1850 and i860 the type of leader again changed. The second period had been a carnival of oratory, which furnished at once the THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 507 amusement and intellectual stimulus of the hour. There had been time for long speeches. People flocked to hear debates and listened willingly for hours, even for days at a stretch, to the great leaders or their clever imitators. Early in the third period the greatest leaders died. Even before it began the telegraph had been born; and with the telegraph came impatience of unnecessary words. At the same moment new leaders made their appearance, — men with something less of eloquence, something more of the fanatic in their makeup. In- tellectually they were a reversion toward the standard of the Puritans. They looked neither eastward toward Europe, nor westward toward the future, but inward, searching their own consciences for truth. Thus ora- tory suffered a partial eclipse, while the moral question gained in importance, to be argued in a new eloquence made up of fewer words and ever-increasing earnest- ness. These new leaders were to be found neither in the White House nor in Congress. They were scattered among the people ; each at first with only a small fol- lowing and a reputation made up far more of blame than of praise. Some of them were rich, but most of them were poor. Some were criminal in act, if noble in spirit. From such intimate and lowly beginnings their influence grew till it invaded Congress, and flowered at last in Lincoln, to find its culmination and its consecration in the White House. Each of the three periods develops its own climax. That of the first was war with England. In the second period there was war also, but it was only an incident in the unfolding drama; — a pictur- esque incident, whose easy success added one more item to the sum rolling up for final accounting. The 5o8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING real victories of that period were over the powers of earth and air. The continent was measured; elusive forces were harnessed; doors to the wonder-house of the chemical laboratory were thrown open. The cli- max came in a wild orgy of invention and then the rush for Eldorado. The third period opened with the nagging dis- comfort of reawakened conscience. Moral responsi- bility dimmed the luster of new-found gold, and turned the enjoyment of riches to bitterness. The keenest minds spent themselves in futile endeavor to find a plan by which the slavery question could be settled to the liking of all concerned, — some way of reconciling God and Mammon. The Compromises of 1850 were attempted, rejoiced over as a solution, and broken al- most as soon as made. Then came the striking hour of costly retribution. In point of years this period is still very close to us. Our grandfathers and our fathers were the men called upon to work out its problems to their often surprising conclusions; yet already it is so remote from present habits of life and thought that it might be divided from us by centuries instead of having ended, so to speak, day before yesterday. Time is undoubtedly the greatest factor in history. With the lapse of years so many names dwindle to nothingness; so many dates drop out entirely. And Time does such astonishing things with the few that remain, playing with them as a master juggler plays with his balls ; exalting some and abasing others out of all semblance to their original state; changing all suddenly into something else; until finally individuals merge into types, — men and women who may or may not have drawn the breath of life, but who live immor- tal because they embody some force or tendency for THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 509 which battle has been waged, and won or lost, in the course of the world's progress. History in this way takes on an epic quality, — ceases to be mere names and dates and becomes drama. In looking at far distant periods we see only a few bare facts, against a chilly horizon, so bleak and compellingly true that we seek instinctively to clothe them again in human flesh and frailty. To that end it is considered virtuous for history to borrow from archeology, even occasionally to filch from poetry. Coming down through the years facts multiply and the ethics of the game change. A poet's vision is still demanded of the historian, but a poet's license is de- nied him. His task becomes a labor of choice and rejection, principally the latter, — and woe betide him if he choose unwisely. Names and dates, coupled with deeds important or futile, swarm upon the printed page in smaller and ever smaller type as we approach our own day, until just as the vision is blinded, the type suddenly becomes very large again, the page expands to monstrous size, a smell of fresh ink assails our nostrils, and wakes us to the realization that we are reading, not history, but the morning's news which will be history before an- other dawn. The epic quality, — picturesqueness in a story worth the telling, — is perhaps the final and only passport to an enduring place in history. Of the picturesque, American history early had its full share. Viking voyages, for example, seen dimly through mists of the past, as their high-prowed, many-oared boats must have loomed through the fogs of our northern coast upon the eyes of astounded natives. Then the lonely figure of Columbus, grown old and shabby in pur- suit of his magnificent idea, towering over a hand- 5IO OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING ful of mutinous sailors and forcing them on and on over unknown seas to prove him right. And the romance of Spanish conquest in the Southwest with its gallant, high-sounding names, its high animal spirits, its dare-devil bravery and its shocking cruelty. And the no less marvelous if soberer expeditions of black-robed priests from France, who carried loyalty to their God and their King through endless leagues of our wilderness to the portals of death and beyond. These are far enough in the past for Time to have worked his will with them. In comparison all that has happened since seems tame and colorless, even the Revolution with its high ideal of personal and religious liberty ; while the interval between that and the crimson stain of the Civil War, appears a mere jumble of names and dates. Perhaps the most difficult page of history for any generation to read with real sympathy is the one that lies immediately back of its own day, hidden by the shadow that falls forever between new and old. In this eclipse issues once vital look merely commonplace ; modes of thought once startling dull to self-evident truism ; the charm of novelty has departed forever from fashions and manners; and the glamour of the antique has not yet had time to gather in mellowing haze and convert it into a " period " more or less odd and picturesque. Such has been the fate of this period we have been considering; an eclipse in this case rendered doubly dark and doubly lasting because of the great interest of the Revolution that preceded it, and the poignant tragedy that came after. Yet in itself it was a won- derful time, in which a few struggling colonies became welded into a great nation and expanded to fill a vast continent. THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 511 No one can foretell Time's final verdict on this stretch of years. The Master-Juggler works in his own fashion and will not be hurried ; but no one can help guessing, and study of it fosters the belief that in picturesqueness it can hold its own with any of the centuries that went before. Not only our own peo- ple, but great principles and world-wide movements were involved. Kings and nations of Europe flashed into the story, effectively, if briefly. Napoleon's covetous glance rested a moment upon New World soil and added an empire, not to his own government, but to ours. Japan and China, hermit nations, old and nodding when the States of Europe were in the mak- ing, opened their doors and woke to new life at the friendly, imperative knocking of our young republic. Buccaneers and Barbary pirates and laws of gross injustice connected it with the Middle Ages. The crime of slavery, for which we were to pay later in blood, linked us inexorably with the iniquity of all time. Savages in our own woods brought us face to face with prehistoric man. The spectrum brought us in touch with distant stars, and anesthetics sent us out trustingly upon the edge of that great sea whose farther limit no man knows. Not content with the mere surface of the earth, the young nation invaded heaven and the deep places of land and sea, and forced them to yield up secrets hidden since the beginning of time. And all this happened in a little over fifty years, — a short time in which to bridge the gulf between an almost archaic past and the America we know to-day. THE END INDEX Abolition movement, 485-9- See Slavery. Adams, Abigail, 8, 26, 33-4, 36, 141, 190, 267-8, 280. Adams, Hannah, 267-8. Adams, John, 11-23, 25-33, 27, 41, 63-5, 68, 70, 141, 156, 202, 268, 291-2, 296, 22^, 412, 419-20, 434, 441. Adams, John Quincy, 87, 102-3, 128, I 30-1, 133-42, 149-51, 153, 155-6, 173, 178, 189, 228, 249, 268, 314, 318, 336, 339, 342, 346, 351, 354-5, 389-90, 407, 418, 454, 488-9. Adams, Louisa Catharine, 140-1, 280-1. Adams, Samuel, 289. Addams, Jane, 269. Alabama, 76, 250, 431. Alamo, 353. Alaska, 384, 401. Alcott, Amos Bronson, 468-g. Alcott, Louisa M., 468. Alien and Sedition Laws, 21, 185, 189. Ampere, Jean Jacques, 210, 215, 284, 313, 398-9. Amusements, 193, 195, 211, 213- 20, 298, 428. Andre, Major John, 412. Argall, Samuel, 265. Arizona, 384. Arkansas, 249, 483. Army of the United States, 4, 86, 8g-90, 96-102, 111-12, 145-8, 246, 360-73. Arnold, Benedict, 412, 492. Art, 1 13-14, 211-13, 221, 275, Ays-7- Articles of Confederation, 3-5, 53. Astor, John Jacob, 248, 385. Austria, 60, 130. Bainbricjge, William, 41, 43. Bancroft, George, 459, 464, 466. Banks First Bank of the United States, 85, 125. Second Bank of the United States, 126, 164-8, 339, 341. State Banks, 125', 168, 340, 343- Tyler's veto of National Bank, 349. Barclay, Robt. H., 95. Barlow, Joel, 458. Barney, Joshua, 100. Barnum, Phineas T., 218-20. Barron, James, 199. Bayard, James A., 103. Bennett, James Gordon, 454-S, 458, 461. Berkeley, William, 316. Blackhawk, 258-9. Blair, Francis P., 160. Blanchet, Francis Norbert, Father, 388. Blennerhasset, Harman, 71-2, 73-5. Blitz, Antonio, 218. Boone, Daniel, 1 14-17, 162, 246, 253, 292-3. Boston, 210, 291, 304, 457, 459, 487, 488. Bowditch, Nathaniel, 411. Bowie, James, 353. Bradstreet, Anne Dudley, 267. Bragg, Braxton, 379. Bremer, Fredrika, 222, 284, 325, 382, 469. Brent, Margaret, 266. Brown, Charles Brockden, 458. Brown, Jacob, General, 97. 513 514 INDEX Brown, John of Ossawatomie, 499. Brown, John of Virginia, 162. Bryant, William CuUen, 458-9, 461, 463-4, 466. Buchanan, James, 161, 374, 456, 498. Buckingham, James S., 191, 461. Bulwer-Lytton, 463. Burr, Aaron, 22, 23, 25, 63-81, 97-8, 139, 190, 224, 279, 287, 292, 323. Burr, Theodosia, 69, 71, 73-4, ^6, ^^, 80, z^2,- Butler, Benjamin, i8i. Cabinet, 21, 144, 148, 153, 158- 60. Cabot, Sebastian, 46. Calhoun, John C, 124, 133, 149, 157, 159, 166, 176-7, 178, 179, 181, 192, 253, 350, 389- 90, 424, 490-92, 506. Calhoun, Mrs. John C, 158. Calhoun, Madam, 283. Calhoun, Miss, 283. California, 357. 2,7Z-1^, 384, 390-405, 406, 484, 490, 504. Calvert, Leonard Lord, 266. Camp meetings, 299-301. Canada, 66, 90-91, 94-97, 104-5, 119, 246, 339, 350, 374, 388-9. Canals, 113, 224, 227, 230-33, 240-42. Canning, George, 131. Caroline, 264. Carroll, Chas., 244. Carroll, Henry, 105-7, 125. Carson, Kit, 375, 392. Cartwright, Peter, 302-3. Cass, Lewis, 359, 381. Castro, 376-7. Channing, Wm. Ellery, 301-2. Channing, William Henry, 488. Chevalier, Michel, 204, 242-3, .336. Children, 442-3, 446. Chilton, Mary, 265. Clark, William, 48-50, 116. Clinton, De Witt, 231. Cockburn, George Admiral, 100. Cocke, William, 254. Clay, Henry, 75, 79, 86, 97, 103-4, 114, 129, 133-5, 137- 40, 148, 150, 155, 157-8, 164, 165-7, 176-81, 196, 201, 232, 340-41, 347-«, 349-51, 355, 359, 380, 403, 410, 412, 418, 421, 423, 440, 484-5, 490- _ 93, 496, 497, 499, 506. Clinton, George, 63. Cobb, Howell, 498. Colorado, 378. Columbia River, 384-5, 387, 392, 438. Columbus, 509-10. Commerce, 46, 48, 54-6, 88, 91, 109, 126, 227, 235, 294, 503. Colonization Society, 485-6, 488-9, 491. Congress, 6-7, 21-3, 42, 48, 53, 63, 86, 96, 109, 124, 126, 131, 138, 141, 143-4, 147, 165, 166-7, 172-200, 201, 211, 214, 224-5, 241, 247, 250, 280, 304, 321, 342, 349, 354-5, 358-9, 361, 364, 390, 415, 417, 419, 445, 451, 46s, 477, 479, 483, 489-93, 496-7, 50^7. House of Representatives, 23-S, 129, 140, 141-2, 150, 173-6, 329, 345, 354, 386, 429. Senate, 70, 150, 157, 166-7, ■ 176-80, 189-90, 341, 355, 378, 382, 389, 417, 483-4, 490-92, 498. Connecticut, 53, 487. Continental Congress, 3, 4, 53, 247, 288-9. Constitution of the U. S., 23, 58, 63, 182-3, 186, 190, 357, 432, 452, 479- Convention of 1787, 4-5, 54, 429. Cook, James, Captain, 384. Cooper, James Fenimore, 458, 459, 463, 466. INDEX 515 Cortez, Hernando, 363, 365, 367. Corwin, Thos., 359. Cotton, 109, 479-80, 504. Courts, 6, 25-6, 143, 147, 257, 432, 498. Crandall, Prudence, 487. Crawford, William H., 132, 1 33-5, 1 55, 412. Crockett, David, 152, 173-5, 252, 353- Currency, 125-6, 165-6. Cushing, Caleb, 181. Custis, Nelly, 8. Dallas, Alexander James, 107. Dana, Richard H., 458. Davis, Jefferson, 259, 365, 379, 498. Decatur, Stephen, Admiral, 43- 45, 199. Dale, Richard, Commodore, 42. Dearborn, Benjamin, 241. Declaration of Independence, 28, 30, 209-10, 244, 259, 268, 427, 429. Delaware, 25, 104. Democratic Republicans. See Political Parties. Democratic Party. See Politi- cal Parties. De Soto, Hernando, 52. De Tocqueville, 123, 176, 206, 210, 250-2, 265, 290, 320, 426, 449- Dickens, Charles, 196, 208, 254, 455, 464-5. Douglas, Stephen A., 182, 418, 493, 495-9- Drake, Francis, Sir, 384. Dubourg, Abbe, 147. Duche, Rev. Mr., 289. Duels, 64, 69, 138-9, 197-9, 450. Eastern States, 3, 54, 56, 72, 74, 118, 121, 152, 185, 243, 249, 316-17, 386, 401, 469- 70, 503, 506. Eaton, John Henry, Gen., 158. Edmonston family, 494. Education, 267-9, 273-5, 278, 283-4, 294-5, 314-25, 426, 428, 436, 443, 451, 482, 487. Edwards, Jonathan, 67. Ellsworth, Oliver, 29, 41, 433. Embargo, 38, 85, 91, 126. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 459, 466-7, 469-70. Emigration, 55, 1 19-21, 142, 249, 270. England, 5, 13, 18, 37-8, 53, 59- 61, 77-9, 85-95, 9&-100, 102-5, 118, 125-6, 130-31, 14s, 248, 261-2, 289, 307, 332, 339, 351, 374, 384, 387, 389, 426, 449, 457, 463, 505. 'Equality, 132-3, 204-7. Era of Good Feeling, 128-9. Erie Canal, 113, 121, 136, 230- 33, 240-41, 462. Evans, Oliver, 240-41. Everett, Edward, 136. Explorations, Early American, 46-7, 52, 109, 510. Fannin, 353. Federal Government, 5, 6, il, 125. Field, Cyrus, 456. Fillmore, Millard, 284, 313, 383. Fillmore, Miss, 285, 313. Florida, 53, 60, 62, 74, 145, 148-9, 222, 249, 250, 258, 288, 351. Forrest, Edwin, 488. France, 5, 13, 18, 20, 37, 46, 52, 57-62, 74, 79, 85, 88, 89, no, 118, 130, 248, 288, 374, 388, 426, 449, 503, 510. Franchise, 314-15, 429-31, 452. Franklin, Benjamin, 10, 14, 55, 64, III, 292, 297, 303, 325, 326, 331, 408, 430, 457, 476. Fremont, John C, 375-7, 388, 392, 418. French Revolution, 18, 57, 120. Fugitive Slave Law, 490, 493-6. Fulton, Robert, 233-4, 476. Gadsden Purchase, 384. Gales, Joseph, 106-7. Gallatin, Albert, 103. 5i6 INDEX Gallaudet, Thomas Hopkins, .443- . Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 409-10. Garrison, William Lloyd, 169, 486-7, 495. Georgia, 53, 250, 297, 443. Genet, Edmond Charles, 279. Giddings, Joshua R., 489. Gladwyn, Major, 264. Gold, Discovery of, in Cali- fornia, 392-5. Goodyear, Charles, 327-8. Gore, Christopher, 180. Grant, U. S., 2^^, 365, 371, ^72, 378-9. Gray, Robert, Captain, 48, 384. Greeley, Horace, 179, 182, 344, 395, 397, 459, 470. Hahnemann, C. F. S., 2>33- Haiti, 59, 138. Hale, Mrs. Sarah Joseph, 420. Hall, Basil, 209-10. Halleck, Fitz Greene, 458. Hamilton, Alexander, lo-ii, 13, 17, 20, 21, 22-3, 32, 54, 64-6, 68-70, 78, 82, 85, no, 117, 125, 172, 292, 429. Hamilton, Elizabeth Schuyler, 64. Hamilton, James, 155, 156. Harris, Martin, 305-6. Harrison, William Henry, 97, 98, 172, 249, 261-2, 341-9, 355, 381, 418, 424. Harte, Bret, 400. Hartford Convention, 125, 185. Harvey, William, 332. Hassler, Ferdinand R., 330-1. Hawley, Jesse, 231. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 459, 466, 467. Hay. John, 239. Hayne, Robert Young, 185-6, 187, 421, 453. Henry, Joseph, 329. Henry, Patrick, 173. Herschel, John, Sir, 461. Hoe, Richard, 456. Holidays, American, 121-2, 419-20. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 459, 460. Holy Alliance, 130-1, 138. Hospitals, 442. Houston, Sam, 175, 198, 352-4, 358. Hull, Isaac, 88, 92. Hull, William, 88, 94, 97. Huntington, Collis P., 396. Hutchinson, Anne, 266. Huxley, Thomas Henry, 320. Illinois, 104, 309, 317, 431, 462, 488, 497. [Indiana, 104, 240, 342, 431. Indians, 48, 50-1, 53, 98, 104, III, 113, 115-17, 121, 144, 148, 173-4, 245-63, 264-5, 307, 342, 352, 357, 374, 385, 386-7, 391, 393, 423, 441, 450, 502-3, 511. Internal Improvements, 129, 167-8. Invention, 201, 217-18, 325-31, 455-7, 473, 476-7, 479-8o, 504, 505, 508. Iowa, 121, 388. Irving, Washington, 83, 458, 459, 463, 464, 466, 467. Jackson, Andrew, 71, 74, 76, 80, 97-8, 102, 128-9, 133-6, 139- 40, 143-72, 175, 185-9, 234, 249-50, 259, 278, 282-3, 293, 2,2,3, 22,7, 339, 341-2, 351, 354-5, 418, 443-4, 448, 455- Jackson, Mrs. Andrew, 153, 158, 282-3, 288, 293. Jackson, Charles Thomas, Dr., 222- Japan, 405. Jay, John, 32, 41, 54, 288-9, 432-3. Jenner, Edward, 332. Jefferson, Thomas, 10, 11, 16- 17, 19, 23-32, 34-42, 46, 48, 57-8, 60, 62-1, 68-9, 71-2, 75-7, 79, 82, 85, 87, 96, 99, no, 124, 128, 130, 143, 156, 177, 187, 191, 222, 225, 248-9, 279, 293, 304, 320-21, 331, 357, 408. 412-16, 419, 429-32, 448, 465-6, 485-6. INDEX 517 Johnson, Richard M., 192, 262, 340, 445- Kansas, 121, 405, 496, 498. Kearney, Philip, 375. Kemble, Fanny, 290, 301. Kendall, Amos, 160-63, 191-2, 202, 443. Kentucky, 56, 75, in, 1 13-16, 177, 380, 431, 488. Kentucky Resolutions, 185. Keokuk, 256, 258. Key, Francis Scott, 102. Knox, Henry, General, 6, 11, 68. Kossuth, Louis, 409. Kremer, George, 175, 176. Labor, 206, 278, 289, 321, 338, 403, 446, 479-S2. Lafayette, 118, 150, 162, 269, 291, 296, 406, 410-15, 439- 41, 461, 464, 487. Lardner, Dionysius, 234. La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, 268. La Salle, Robert Cavelier de, 52. Lawrence, James, 421. Ledyard, John, 47-8. Lee, Daniel, 386. Lee, Jason, 386, 388. Lee, Robert E., 379. L'Enfant, Pierre Charles, 33, 34- Lewis, Meriwether, 48-51, 116. Lewis, WiUiam B., Major, 150, 160. Lewis and Clark Expedition, 39,48-51,116,384-385- Lincoln, Abraham, 177, 204, 235, 244, 329, 331, 344, 362, 417-18, 422, 462, 486, 497, 507. Lincoln, Benjamin, 503. Lind, Jenny, 219-21, 409. Literature, 267, 274, 457-70, 493- Livingston, Robert R., 57-60, 61, 233-4, 476. Locke, Richard Adams, 461. Longfellow, Henry W., 459, 466. Louis XV, 324. Louisiana, 30, 39, 47, 51, 52, 57, 59-62, 87, 116, 127, 130, 222, 248, 350-1, 357, 384, 431, 480. Lovejoy, Elijah P., 488. Lovejoy, Owen, 4^. Lowell, James Russell, 359, 460, McCulloch, Hugh, 142. McLaughlin, Dr., 387, 388. Madison, Dolly, 36, 83, 84-5, loi, 107, 193, 280, 415. Madison, James, 32, 82-6, 96-7, 100-102, 106-7, 126-28, 156, 280, 292, 412, 418, 433, 485, 500. Madison, Madam, 280. Maine, 104, 239, 350, 389, 431, 484. Mann, Horace, 322, 324, 443. Mansfield, Arabella, 266. Manufactures, 119, 126, 227, 278, 321, S03-4. Marat, Jean Paul, 449. Marbois, Frangois, 60. Marie Antoinette, 410. Marshall, James W., 393-4. Marshall, John, 39, 64, 76, 177, 433-5, 436, 485- Martineau, Harriet, 160, 191, 207, 224, 290, 417-18, 463-4, 500. Maryland, 225, 239, 266. Mason, James M., 491. Massachusetts, 53, 89, 105, 185, 290, 315, 492. Medicine, 266, 331-4, 450. Mexico, 72-4, 78, 80, 142, 350- 56, 358, 360-80, 390, 391, 394, 484, 490. Michigan, 97, 104, 250. Mississippi, 75, 250, 317, 351. Mississippi River, 6, 47-8, 52-7, 86, 102, 104, 109-10, 1 12-13, 121, 224, 231, 234-6, 238- 40, 246, 248-51, 254-5, 257-8, 288, 351, 503. Missouri, 116, 249, 308-9, 391, 43 1, _ 483-4- Missouri Compromise, 129, 351, 483-5, 491, 495-8. 5i8 INDEX Monroe, Elizabeth, Mrs., 140, 280. Monroe, James, 58, 59, 60, 61, 85, 86, 127, 128-33, 136, 140, 14&-9, 156, 199, 222, 249, 407-9, 4 TO, 418. Monroe Doctrine, 129-32, 496. Montgomery, Richard, Gen., 411. Mormons, 305-12, 375, 392. Morris, Gouverneur, no, 222, 230, 22,2,- Morse, Samuel F. B., 328, 456, 476-7. Morton, Wm. Thomas Green, m. Motley, John Lothrop, 466-7. Mott, Lucretia, 277. Music, 213, 216, 219-21, 421. Napier, Charles, Sir., 104. Napoleon, 13, 57, 59-61, 78, 87, 120, 130, 174, 351, 511. Navy, U. S., 39-45, 7^, 86, 89- 96. Nebraska, 405, 496. Negroes, 55, 95, 126, 136, 146, 181, 191, 322, 380-1, 430, 437, 450, 472, 481-2. Nevada, 375, 378. New England, 3, 38, 47, 56, 91, 109, 113, 121-2, 126, 133, 168, 202-3, 210, 231, 239, 284, 288-9, 291, 295, 322, 359, 403-4, 428-9, 431, 462, 466-7, 469, 503. New Hampshire, 407, 431, 444. New Jersey, 70, 241, 431, 487. New Mexico, 378, 384, 392. New Orleans, 53, 55, 57-60, 71-4, 91, 102, 135, 145-8, 198, 216, 231, 234-5, 240, 243, 288, 304, 324, 414, 465. Newspapers, 15 1-2, 241-2, 254, 268, 344, 363, 394-S, 448- 57, 460-63, 477, 486, 488, 493, 495, 50s, 509- New York, 53, 70, 155, 239, 241, ZZ7, 403, 423, 430, 431, 442, 444-5- New York City, 121-2, 123, 191, 208-9, 210, 216, 231, 295, 337, 394, 438-9, 442, 456, 459, 462-4, 466. Nicholson, Mrs., 279. Nolan, Philip, 350-1. Non-Intercourse Act, 85-6. North, 1 12-13, 118, 177, 184, 198, 283, 307, 316, 352, 359, 428, 430, 451, 479, 483-4, 486-8, 490-4, 503. North Carolina, 53, 112, 239, 288, 431, 487. Northwest, 97, 248, 355, 357, 374, 389, 496, 498. Northwest Territory, 53-4, 117, 342, 357. Nullification, 164-5, 168, 179, 184-90, 341, 421, 484, 486, Ogle, Charles, 345. Ohio, 104, 224, 308, 344-5, 488. Ohio River, 55, 112-3, 143, 224-5, 231, 236, 239-40, 247, 260, 483. O'Neil, Peggy, 158-9, 283. Ordinance of 1787, 483. Oregon, 39, 47, 51, 355, 357, 376, 386, 387-92, 394, 438, 498. Osceola, 258. Osgood, Samuel, 279. Otis, James, 268. Paine, Thomas, 19, 28. Pakenham, Edward, Sir, 102, 146. Panama, 138, 396. Panic of 1837, 337-9, 444. Parker, Theodore, 469, 495. Parkman, Francis, 466. Penn, William, 437. Pennsylvania, 112, 239, 241, 246, 321, 324, 437, 446. Perry, M. C, 405. Perry, Oliver Hazard, 95, 262, 405. Peter, Mrs., 193. Philadelphia, 4, 22, 22,, S^, I43, 209, 214, 231, 241-3, 287, 290, 295, 297, 334, 394, 421, 439, 449, 457, 459, 463-4, 485. 488. Philanthropy, 278, 438-9. INDEX 519 Pierce, Franklin, 496. Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, 16, 21. Pineda, Alonzo de, 52. Pioneers, 235, 422-4, 449. Pocahontas, 173, 265. Poe, Ed^ar Allen, 459, 460, 466. Political Parties, 151-3, 295-6, 304, 328, 488-9, 497-8. Anti-Masonic, 141, 166, 304. Democratic, 164, 166, 170, 309, 340-41, 343, 346, 349- 50, 355, 359, 361, 389, 427, 493. Democratic-Republican, 11- 12, 17, 19, 22, 26, 30, 38-9, 56, 65, 68, 82, 124, 128, 427. Federalist, 11-12, 19-23, 26, 30, 38, 56, 58, 65, 11, 82, 109- 10, 124-5, 128, 193-4- Native American, 488. Republican, 497-9. Whig, 164, 170, 194, 309, 340- 41, 343-50, 355, 359-62, 421, 493- Young Republican, 86-7, 90, 96, 127. Polk, James K., 328, 355, 358, 361, 366, 369, 374, 384. Pontiac, 264. Powers, Hiram, 217. Preftble, Edward, Commodore, 42. IPrescott, William H., 466-7. Priestley, Joseph, 28. Prisons, 231, 243, 436-7, 443-^- Prussia, 130. Public Lands, 54, 109-13, 116- 17, 121. Punishments, 436-8, 446, 482. Quincy, Josiah, 163. Quincy, Josiah, Jr., 163-4, I93- 4, 196-7, 336, 411-12. Quitman, John Anthony, 365. Railroads, 222, 227, 240-44, 284. Randolph, Edmund, 8, 11. Randolph, John, 15, 64, 138-9, 173, 176, 189, 199, 292, 417, 485, 494. Reed, Thomas B., 417. Reform, 275-7, 426-47, 484. Religion, 192, 195, 209, 214, 245, 252, 287-312, 317, 318, 453-4, 467-8, 472-5, 495. Reynolds, John P., 379. Rhode Island, 4, 89, 431. Rigdon, Sidney, 306-7. Roads, 9, 39, 95, 116, 119, 222- 31, 240, 271-2, 440. Rodders, John, Commodore, 90. Roelandsen, Adam, 316. Rolfe, John, 265. Ross, Betsey, 269-70. Royall, Ann, 454. Rumsey, James, 233. Rush, Benjamin, Dr., 26, 442. Russell, Emily, 494. Russell, Jonathan, 103. Russia, 47-8, 88, 102-3, 130-31, 384-5. Sacajawea, 50, 51, 265. Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de, 353-4, 358-9, 365-71, ZIZ. Savarin, Brillat, 287. Saxe Weimar, 215, 229, 236-7, 287, 325, 421. Schools, 113, 118, 274, 294-5, 314-25, 443, 451. Science, 113, 472-5, 505, 5o8. Scott, Dred, 430, 498. Scott, Walter, 228, 463. Scott, Winfield, 35, 97, 98-9, 140, 144, 147-8, 172, 189, 192, 254-7, 336-7, 341-2, 365-73, 379-80, 381-2, 416, 424. Secession, 47, 119, 125. Sedgwick, Catharine Maria, 463. Sevier, John, iii, Shakespeare, 463, 488. Sherman, William T., 379. Slavery, 41, 121-2, 129, 178, 184-5, 2y(>-T, 304, 318, 351-2, 359, 362, 382, 405, 452, 464, 470, 478-99, 501, 505, 508. Smith, John, Capt., 265. Sloat, John Drake, Commodore, Smith, Joseph, 305-11. Smith, Sydney, 463. Smithson, James, 329. 520 INDEX Southern States, 3, 46, 75, 98, 109, 1 12-13, 118, 126, 133, 177, 184, 185, 198, 202, 229- 30, 248, 283-4, 316-18, 324, 338, 341, 350, 359, 381, 386, 428, 430-1, 451, 479, 481, 483, 484-s, 486-8, 490, 492- 5, 498, 503. South America, 129, 130, 138. South Carolina, 25, 112, 185, 188, 239, 288, 482, 488. Southey, Robert, 287. Southwest, ^2, 74, 247, 351-2, 355, 357, 389, 510- Spain, 46, 52-7, 62, 72, 74, 88, 98, 116, 1 18-19, 130, 145, 148-9, 248-9, 258, 288, 350- 51, 384, 390-91, 503, 510. Spanish RepubHcs, 129-31. Spaulding, H. H., 387. Spaulding, Solomon, 307. Speculation, 204. Spofford, Ainsworth R., 469. Stackelburg, Baron, 193. Stagecoach, 222, 224, 228-30. Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 277. States' Rights, 125, i83-17- Story, Joseph, 322. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 459, 493. Stuart, Gilbert, 8. Stuart, James, 202. Talleyrand, 20, 58-61, 65, 78, 336. Tammany, 68, 139. Taney, Roger B., 166, 430. Tariff, 126, 129, 138-9, 185, 188. Taylor, Bayard, 219. Taylor, Father, 302. Taylor, Zachary, 360-68, 379- 83, 418, 424. Tecumseh, 98, 144, 249, 259-62, 342, 441, 445. Temperance, 195-6, 211, 228, 22,"], 260, 428, 439-42. Tennessee, 254, 352. Texas, 'jz, 142, 350-56, 357-9, 378, 384, 386, 484, 490, 504. Theaters, 195, 211, 213-17, 488. Thomas, George H., 379. Thoreau, Henry IDavid, 460, 468. Tippecanoe, 261-3, 342. Trafalgar, ZT- Treasury, U. S., 339-40, 343. Treaty of Ghent, 89, 102-8, 125, . 385, 503. Tripoli, war with. See War. Trist, Nicholas P., 369, 372. Trollope, Mrs., 152, 203-4, 217, 236, 254, 27s, 295, 481. Tyler, John, 281-82, 341, 348- 50, 355-6, 389, 464- Tyler, Julia, Mrs., 281-2. Tyler, Letitia, Mrs., 281. Underground Railway, 494-5. Ursuline Nuns, 73-4, 147, 324. Utah, 311-12, 378. Van Buren, Martin, 152, 155, 158-9, 167, 170-71, 188, 283, 336-7, 339-40, 345-6, 354-5, 403, 419, 444, 455. Vancouver, George, 384. Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 476. Van Rensselaer, 140, Vermont, 429, 431, Victoria, Queen, 456. Virginia, 4, 35, 109, 112, 115', . 127, 481, 503. Virginia Resolutions, 185, 187. Walker, Thomas, Dr., iii. Walpole, Horace, 454. War, Civil, 378, 422, 427-8, 432, 467, 504, 510. Mexican, Z17-'JZ, 390, 405, 484, 497, 504, 507- of 1812, 45, 85-108, 113, 119, 124-5, 145. ^^7, 240, 294, 343, 352, 364, 406, 421, 449, 459, 507. Revolutionary, 3, 451, 487, 501-2, 510. Tripoli, 39-45, 86, 92, 511. Warren, Mercy, 268. Wasliington City, 22, 24, 33-4, 72, ioa-102, 104-7, 125, W 56 INDEX 521 153-4, '^75> 190-200, 229, 283, 325, 347-^, 412, 463. 496. Washington, George, S-iS. I7- 19, 21-2, 28, 32-3, 37, 41, 63-7, 100, 143, 156, 172, 181, 190, 222, 233, 247, 269-70, 291, 342, 407-8, 412, 416, 418, 4I9--20, 424, 430, 492, 503. Washington, Martha, 8, 33, 279. Washington, Mary, 269, 286. Wayne, Anthony, Gen., 249, 253-4, 412. Webster, Daniel, 155, 157, 166, 172, 176, 179-83, 196-7, 328, 340, 347, 350, 355, 382, 389, 414, 418, 421, 424, 453, 476, 487, 490, 492, 506. Webster, Noah, 457-8. Wellington, Duke of, 370. Wells, Horace, Dr., 333. West, 3-4, 46-58, 62, 72, 74, I 10-123, 133, 142, 152, 172-5, 185, 210, 224, 231, 234-40, 243, 247, 270-73, 284, 307, 316-18, 384-405, 430, 431, 451-2, 469-70, 503, 506. West Indies, 37. West Point, 321, 420. Whigs. See Political Parties. Whisky Insurrection, 11. Whitefield, George, 297. Whitman, Marcus, 386-7. Whitney, Eli, 331, 479-80. Whittier, John Greenleaf, 168, 211, 459, 466, 487. Wilkinson, James, Gen., 72-3, 75, 97- Willard, Emma Hart, 324. Wilmot Proviso, 362, 497. Wilson, Henry, 478. Winthrop, Robert C., 381. Wisconsin, 104. Wise, Henry A., 160-61, 330. Woman's Rights Movement, 276-8. Worth, William J., Gen., 365. Wright, Silas, 328. Wythe, George, 177, 268. Women, 36, 209, 213, 236, 253, 264-86, 295, 323-5, 430-31, 442, 444, 446. X.Y.Z. Affair, 20, 21, 58, 420. Young, Brigham, 310-11. o - • . -♦> V.0* -is^/!,;', v./ /.^Ife\ % .*'% ■«5 ^ "^v^C,^' • »cS^.^k*^ O ^^^^ V- V^ ♦L^'' ^ Ap^ •ill.* > V" »' V <^ > .: e> ^ J"^^ ^ <* VT» A ♦ 4 VVT* A