Part 14 (1/2)
It was at this juncture that Canning, who had become the head of the British ministry, protested against the policy of intervention and sought for ways and means to make the protest effective. The one power whose traditions of liberty and whose interests in this particular seemed to be identical with those of Great Britain was the United States. In truth, their interests were far from being identical. Two years before, in a conversation with the British minister at Was.h.i.+ngton, the Secretary of State, in his most uncompromising manner, had challenged the right of Great Britain to the valley of the Columbia River or to any part of the Pacific Coast. And so recently as April of this critical year 1823, Adams had taken alarm at the appearance of a British naval force off the coast of Cuba and had warned the Government at Madrid that ”the transfer of Cuba to Great Britain would be an event unpropitious to the interests of the United States.” At the same time Adams stated his conviction that within half a century the annexation of Cuba to the United States would be ”indispensable to the continuance of the Union itself.” Coupled with this prophecy was the equally frank a.s.surance that the United States desired to have Cuba and Porto Rico ”continue attached to Spain”--for the present.
[Map: Russian Claims in North America]
It was in midsummer of this year, too, that Adams protested against the ukase of the czar which had a.s.serted the claim of Russia to the Pacific Coast as far south as the fifty-first degree, and to a maritime jurisdiction one hundred Italian miles from the coast. Adams records in his diary that he told the Russian minister ”that we should contest the right of Russia to _any_ territorial establishment on this continent, and that we should a.s.sume distinctly the principle that the American continents are no longer subjects for _any_ new European colonial establishments.” The time had come when the United States was bound to take more than a sentimental interest in the affairs of Spanish America.
The disintegration of the Spanish colonial empire not only invited the Intervention of European powers in the internal affairs of the new republics, but also exposed portions of the North American continent to their aggressions.
On several occasions Canning conferred with Richard Rush, the minister of the United States resident in London, to ascertain whether his Government would join Great Britain in a public declaration against any ”forcible enterprise for reducing the colonies to subjugation on behalf of or in the name of Spain; or which meditates the acquisition of any part of them to itself, by cession or by conquest.” England had no designs upon the distant colonies of Spain, Canning a.s.severated; at the same time it ”could not see any part of them transferred to any other power with indifference.” Not trusting implicitly in Canning's altruism, Rush wisely suggested that Great Britain should first recognize the South American republics as a preliminary to a joint declaration. To this Canning would not commit himself; and Rush would not a.s.sume responsibility for a public declaration on any other conditions.
On receiving the dispatches from Rush recounting these interesting conferences, President Monroe took counsel with the two Virginia oracles, Jefferson and Madison. Both advised him to meet Canning's overtures and to make common cause with Great Britain--the one nation, as Jefferson put it, which could prevent America from having an independent system and which now offered ”to lead, aid, and accompany us in it.” Monroe was disposed to follow this advice. He not only drafted a message to Congress upon these lines, but he went further and urged the recognition of Greek independence in a way which departed widely from the traditional aloofness which earlier Presidents had maintained in matters of European concern. On the other hand, Adams was decidedly of the opinion that Canning's invitation should be declined. He did not wish the country to appear ”as a c.o.c.k-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war.” Moreover, Adams was considerably alarmed at the reactionary principles which the Russian ministry had avowed in a communication addressed to the minister at Was.h.i.+ngton. He urged the President to seize the occasion to make an explicit declaration of American principles.
”The ground I wish to take,” said he, ”is that of earnest remonstrance against the interference of European powers by force with South America, but to disclaim all interference on our part with Europe; to make an American cause and adhere inflexibly to that.”
Yielding to his contentious Secretary of State, President Monroe redrafted his message to Congress. In its final form, December 2, 1823, this famous state paper contained the essential principles of what has come to be known as the Monroe Doctrine. It was a.s.serted ”as a general principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have a.s.sumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.”
The message expressly disclaimed any purpose to interfere in European politics; but respecting the affairs of the Western hemisphere a direct and immediate interest was frankly avowed. ”The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America.” ”We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”
The immediate effects of the message are not easily traced. It is not clear, even, that the favorable treaty made with Russia in the following year was the outcome of what Canning somewhat contemptuously styled ”the new Doctrine of the President.” Russia, it is true, agreed to waive her claims below fifty-four degrees forty minutes and to exclusive jurisdiction in Bering Sea; but the conflicting claims of England in the Northwest remained, and Canning predicted that England would ”have a squabble with the Yankees yet in and about those regions.”
Later generations have read strange meanings into the message of President Monroe. Even contemporaries were not clear as to its import.
Interpreted in the light of its origin, it was a candid announcement that the United States did not purpose to meddle in the affairs of European states or of their existing dependencies, and a protest against the increase of power of European states in America either by intervention or by new colonization.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
In the concluding volume of Henry Adams's _History of the United States_ are excellent chapters on American literature, art, and religious thought. W. B. Cairns's _On the Development of American Literature from 1815 to 1833_ (1898) contains much interesting information about periodicals. Barrett Wendell's _A Literary History of America_ (1900) is full of pungent comment on early men of letters. C. C. Caffin, _The Story of American Painting_ (1907), and H. T. Tuckerman, _Artist-Life, or Sketches of American Artists_ (1847), record the small achievements of American art.
John Trumbull's _Autobiography, Reminiscences, and Letters, from 1756 to 1841_ (1841), is a book of great interest. E. G. Dexter's _A History of Education in the United States_ (1904) is an excellent manual. The Unitarian Movement can be best followed in J. W. Chadwick's _William Ellery Channing_ (1903). The history of the various denominations may be found in volumes of the _American Church History Series_. The genesis of Monroe's message is described by F. J. Turner, _The Rise of the New West_(in _The American Nation_, vol. 14, 1906), and F. E. Chadwick, _The Relations of the United States and Spain_ (1909). Both of these accounts are based on W. C. Ford, _John Quincy Adams: His Connection with the Monroe Doctrine_ (in Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, 1902). An excellent essay is that by W. F.
Reddaway, _The Monroe Doctrine_ (2d. ed., 1905).
CHAPTER XVII
THE NEW DEMOCRACY
By the year 1824, the West had become a section to be reckoned with by those who were calculating their chances in the presidential race. Since the war six Western States had been admitted into the Union. The population west of the Alleghanies had increased by nearly a million and a half within a decade. The relative importance of this new section appears in the census returns. In 1790, less than six per cent of the total population lived west of the Alleghanies; in 1820, nearly thirty-two per cent were domiciled in this vast region. In the National Legislature the West had acquired notable weight. By the apportionment of 1822, it had forty-seven out of two hundred and thirteen members of the House; in the Senate, eighteen out of forty-eight. But these figures do not tell the whole tale. As Professor Turner has well said, rightly to estimate the weight of Western population we must add the people of western New York and of the interior counties of Pennsylvania, and of the trans-Alleghany counties of Virginia, as well as the people of the back-country of Maine, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Vermont, North Carolina, and Georgia. ”All of these regions were to be influenced by the ideals of democratic rule which were springing up in the Mississippi Valley.”
[Map: Distribution of Population 1820]
Economic conditions bred a democratic society in the West. What Gallatin said of Pennsylvania was true of the greater West: ”An equal distribution of property made every individual independent and produced a true and real equality.” The basal characteristic of the West was individual owners.h.i.+p of land; and the reaction of the sense of proprietors.h.i.+p upon individual character was the most significant fact in the history of its population. Intense individualism and rugged self-reliance were the salient characteristics of the Westerner. So far as he reflected upon his social relations, he believed in complete social equality. In numberless instances the pioneer had migrated to escape the social inequalities and depressing conventions of older communities; and he was not minded to encourage the reproduction of these conditions in his new home. ”America, then, exhibits in her social state an extraordinary phenomenon,” wrote De Tocqueville in his notable study of American democracy. ”Men are there seen on a greater equality in point of fortune and intellect, or, in other words, more equal in their strength, than in any other country of the world, or in any age of which history has preserved the remembrance.”
Life on the frontier, where a man wrestled with the primitive forces of Nature and conquered by dint of his indomitable will, made the Westerner perhaps overconfident in his ability to deal with all obstacles in the way of human achievement and withal somewhat impatient under the restraints imposed by the more complicated social order in the older communities to the East. The sweep of the prairies and the wide horizon lines of the Middle West may have exercised a subtle influence upon temperament. At all events, the Westerner was buoyant and optimistic, taking large views of national destiny and of the possibilities of human achievement in a democracy.
There was danger, indeed, that in cutting loose from the irritating restraints of the older communities, the people of the West would sacrifice much of the grace and many of the intellectual and spiritual refinements of an older civilization. ”In this part of the American continent,” observes De Tocqueville, ”population has escaped the influence not only of great names and great wealth, but even of the natural aristocracy of knowledge and virtue.” It seemed to two young New Englanders who traversed the vast region from the Western Reserve to New Orleans in 1813, in the interests of missionary societies, that the people were wrapped in spiritual darkness, ”being ignorant, often vicious, and utterly dest.i.tute of Bibles and religious literature.” The General Bible Society of the United States was founded in 1816 to dispel this irreligious gloom. Within five years this organization and its numerous auxiliaries had distributed one hundred and forty thousand Bibles and Testaments through the new States.
Yet the irreligion of the West was painted darker than it really was.
Methodism had struck root where other denominations could not thrive.
Its methods and organization, indeed, were peculiarly adapted to a people which could not support a settled pastor. ”A sect, therefore, which marked out the region into circuits, put a rider on each and bade him cover it once a month, preaching here to-day and there to-morrow, but returning at regular intervals to each community, provided the largest amount of religious teaching and preaching at the least expense.” The Baptists, too, secured a footing in the new communities and labored effectively in creating religious ties between the old and the new sections of the country. In religion as in politics the people of the West were responsive to emotional appeals. The circuit rider, with his intense conviction of sin and his equally strong conviction of salvation through repentance, wrought great crowds in camp meetings into ecstasies of religious excitement. Odd religious sects and strange ”isms” were to be found in the back-country. At New Harmony on the Wabash River were the Rappites, a sect of German peasants who came first to Pennsylvania under their leader George Rapp, and who afterward returned thither. At Zoar in Ohio was the Separatist community led by Joseph Baumeler. Shaker societies were formed at many places; and Mormonism was just beginning its strange history through the revelations of Joseph Smith in western New York.
The intellectual horizon of the Western world was necessarily limited.
Absorbed in the stern struggle for existence, the people had no leisure and no heart to enjoy the finer aspects of life. Education was a luxury which only the prosperous might possess. The purpose to make elementary education a public charge developed tardily. Outside of New England, indeed, a public school system did not exist. Throughout the older portions of the West the traveler might find academies and so-called colleges, but none supported at public expense. The State of Indiana, it is true, entered the Union with a const.i.tution which made it the duty of the legislature to provide, as soon as circ.u.mstances permitted, ”for a general system of education, ascending in a regular gradation from towns.h.i.+p schools to a State University, wherein tuition shall be gratis, and equally open to all.” But years pa.s.sed before circ.u.mstances permitted the realization of this ideal. Meantime, the prosperous planters of the Southwest employed tutors for their children, and the well-to-do farmers of the Northwest paid tuition for their boys at academies. But young Abraham Lincoln had to teach himself Euclid and to cipher on the back of a wooden shovel, by the flickering embers of a log-cabin fire.
The new Commonwealths entered the Union as self-confessed democracies.