Part 1 (1/2)
Beginnings of the American People.
by Carl Lotus Becker.
INTRODUCTION
In the following volumes the authors seek to present a brief account of the beginnings, development, and final unity of the people of the United States. There are many histories of the country, many biographies which are in large measure histories; but these are exhaustive works traversing minutely certain periods, like Rhodes's _History of the United States from 1850 to 1877_, or Nicolay and Hay's _Abraham Lincoln: A History_; or they are shorter ”patriotic” accounts which seek to prove something, or which fail to tell the whole story. Important as these cla.s.ses of historical literature are, they hardly suffice for the teachers of advanced college cla.s.ses, or for business and professional men who would like to know how the isolated European plantations or corporations in North America became in so short a time the great and wealthy nation of to-day.
To meet these needs, that is, to describe in proper proportion and with due emphasis, but in the brief s.p.a.ce of four short volumes, the forces, influences, and masterful personalities which have made the country what it is, has not been an easy task. For, contrary to the view of European students, American history is not simple. The hostile camps of Puritans and Church of England men, the Dutch of New Amsterdam and the Catholics of Maryland, could hardly be expected to merge into a single state without violent struggle. Nor could the hundreds of thousands of Scotch Calvinists, militant enemies of England and all her ways, who seized and held the fertile highlands of the Middle and Southern colonies, submit quietly to any program not of their own making. And again, in the thirties and fifties of the nineteenth century, millions of people speaking a strange tongue sought asylum in the Mississippi Valley--an isolated region whose early inhabitants, of whatsoever national strain, were strongly inclined to secession or revolt against the older Eastern communities. Never was a nation composed of more diverse ethnic groups and elements.
And the geographical environments of these groups and segments of older civilizations were quite as dissimilar as those among which the nations of Europe developed. The cold and bleak hills of New England no more resemble the rich river bottoms of the South than the sand dunes of Prussia resemble the fertile plains of Andalusia. Geographical differences tend to produce economic differences. If to these be added inherited antagonisms like those of Puritan and Cavalier, one wonders how the East and the South of the United States ever became integral parts of one great social unit. Adding to this apparent impossibility the new antagonism of the West toward the East as a whole, the historian wonders at the statecraft that could hold the diverse elements together till certain economic and social factors became powerful enough to conquer in a long and b.l.o.o.d.y war. Or was it the influence of new inventions, railways, and the tightening bonds of commerce that did the work?
Leaving the reader to answer this question for himself, it remains for the Editor to set forth in as few words as possible the method, the emphasis, and the interpretations of the authors of these volumes.
Professor Becker approaches his work, the discovery of the New World, the rise of the plantations, the slow growth of an American culture, and finally the Revolution of 1776, from the standpoint of a student of modern European history. The infant colonies are to him disjected particles of ancient Europe. Their changes under the new environment, their tendency to isolation and petty quarrels during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, before the days of steam and electricity, and their defensive alliance against the new, imperialistic England of George III, are the special themes of his study. But here, as elsewhere in our cooperative undertaking, the object has been to portray only those things which seem to have counted in the final make-up of the Confederacy of 1783, and of the United States of to-day. Moreover, the daily life of the people, amus.e.m.e.nts, manners, religious predilections, and the everyday occupations of men and women have been accorded some of the s.p.a.ce which, from another view-point, might have been devoted to an account of government and the arguments of jurists.
Thus Professor Becker has presented a true and entertaining picture of the purposes of European capitalists interested in the plantations, of the poor people who were packed off to America to serve the ends of commerce, and of the energetic men of the eighteenth century who slowly worked out for England the conquest of North America. The reading of chapters III and V of the _Beginnings of the American People_ can hardly fail to give one a new view of, and a new interest in, colonial history.
Nor has Professor Johnson approached his theme, _Union and Democracy_, in a different spirit. He is neither a champion of the wholesome nationalism which gave the Federalists their place in history nor a defender of the radical idealism which Professor Becker has shown to be the mainspring of the Revolution of 1776, and which Jefferson called to life again in his struggle to win control of the national machinery, 1796 to 1800. In treating the period 1783 to 1828, Professor Johnson had the difficult task of tracing the important influences which culminated in the Const.i.tution of 1789, the Jeffersonian revolt of 1800, the foreign complications of 1803 to 1815, and the so-called Era of Good Feelings. Here again the popular prejudices, if one desires so to term them, land speculations, and sectional likes, and dislikes receive attention; but the formation of the Const.i.tution, the organization of the Federal Government, international quarrels about the rights of neutral commerce, and finally the War of 1812 are naturally the main topics.
The chapters which treat of the results of the second war with England, the westward movement, and the national awakening, and especially the one which a.n.a.lyzes the problems which underlay the great decisions of Chief Justice Marshall, will probably prove most instructive to the reader. The author has made his narrative much clearer and the factors which entered into the political struggles of the time more intelligible by resort to many black-and-white maps; for example, those which show the popular att.i.tude toward the Const.i.tution in 1787-89 and the alignment of parties in the contest of 1800.
From 1829 to 1865 was the stormy period of our national history--a period in which the nationality planned by the ”Fathers” was being forged from the discordant elements of East, South, and West,--from the economic interests of cotton and tobacco planters; of the owners of the industrial plants of the Middle States and the East; and of the necessities of the isolated West striving always for markets. What made the process so doubtful and so long drawn out was the unfortunate fact that the great industrial and agricultural interests coincided so exactly with the older social and political antagonisms. The leaders.h.i.+p of the times was, therefore, sectional in a very vital way; so much was this the case that the most popular and captivating of all the public men of the time, Henry Clay, was defeated again and again for the Presidency because no common understanding between New England and the South, or between New England and the West, could be found.
Twice during the period a permanent _modus vivendi_ seemed to have been agreed upon, in the Jacksonian Democracy of 1828, and in the Pierce organization of 1852, combinations of South and West which rested on the big plantation system with slavery underlying, and on the small farmer vote of the West charged always with the potential revolt which democracy connotes. While these subjects receive the careful attention of the author, the ”way out,” and the national expansion of the Polk Administration, are none the less carefully studied. But aside from the sharp and challenging problems of the time, an earnest effort has been made to describe the cultural life of the people, the pastimes, the religious revivals, the literary and artistic output of the exuberant America of 1830 to 1860. The Civil War and its attendant ills are compressed into relatively small s.p.a.ce, though here, too, the effort is made to include all that is vital.
In like manner Professor Paxson gives much s.p.a.ce to the ”interests”
which came to dominate the country soon after the cessation of hostilities in 1865. The business and the greater social tendencies of the _post-bellum_ period had become evident during the decade just preceding the war. For this reason, the author reaches back into the midst of the conflict to take up the thread of his narrative. The economic conditions and changes of 1861 to 1865 are therefore treated in connection with the great issues of the seventies and eighties--the protective tariff and ”big business.” The money question, railway regulation, corruption in public affairs, never absent from our national life, are the chief themes of Professor Paxson's book. But while the _motif_ of the volume is prosperity, business success, and commercial expansion, s.p.a.ce has been found for sympathetic accounts of the dominating personalities of the time,--for Blaine and Cleveland; for Bryan, Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. And as is fitting, the leaders of the industrial and intellectual interests of the time also receive attention.
Of closer personal and scholarly interest to Professor Paxson is the subject of the growth and development of the Rocky Mountain States: Far-Western railway-building, mining, cattle-raising, and the establishment of government agencies for the conservation of the national resources. While the older and dangerous sectionalism seems to be forever past, the special interests of the Far West, as shown in this work, still lend color to a new sectionalism which sometimes threatens the old political party habits; witness the contest of 1908-12 and the troubles between California and j.a.pan. And here Professor Paxson challenges attention by his treatment of the results of the Spanish-American War, the imperialism which brought to the United States the control of the Philippines, and made the isolated and somewhat provincial country of Blaine and Cleveland a world-power, with interests in the Pacific and a potential voice in the final destiny of China.
Such have been the problems and the aims of the writers of these four short volumes. In order to visualize the main topics discussed, resort has been made to the making of maps, simple drawings intended to show at the different crises just where, or how important, were the decisive factors. This is a feature which, it is thought, will please both lay and professional readers. Certainly the making of these maps was no small part of the work of each author, and in most instances they are entirely original and made from data not hitherto used in this way; for example, the drawings which show just what sections of the States the various candidates for the Presidency ”carried.” The same may be said of those which treat of the cotton, tobacco, and industrial areas of the United States.
Although there may be faults and errors in the work, it seems to the Editor that, on the whole, the story of the beginnings, the growth, and the present greatness of the country, as set forth in these volumes, is both interesting and suggestive, that the real forces have been duly emphasized, and that at many points contributions to historical knowledge have been made.
WILLIAM E. DODD.
PREFACE
In preparing this sketch of the American colonies, I have had friendly encouragement and a.s.sistance from a number of men whose knowledge of the subject as a whole, or of certain aspects of it, is far more extensive and accurate than my own. I am particularly indebted to my colleagues in the University of Kansas, Professor F.H. Hodder and Professor W.W.
Davis, who have read and criticized the ma.n.u.script chapter by chapter.
The editor of the series has not only read the ma.n.u.script, but has put me in the way of much valuable material which I should otherwise have missed. Professor G.S. Ford and Professor Wallace Notestein, of the University of Minnesota, and Professor F.J. Turner, of Harvard University, have read portions of the ma.n.u.script. These good friends have saved me many minor errors and some serious blunders; and their cautions and suggestions have often enabled me to improve the work in form and arrangement, and in relative emphasis.
CARL BECKER.
BEGINNINGS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
CHAPTER I