# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/United States, The/History

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X.—History
A.—Beginnings of Self-government, 1578–1690.
1. The American nation owes its origin to colonizing activities in which the British, Dutch, Swedes, French and Spaniards bore a share, and which were continued during a period of more than two centuries at the beginning of the modern era. The settlements of the Dutch and Swedes (New Netherland and New Sweden) were soon merged in those of the British, and of the territory colonized by Frenchmen and Spaniards the United States, as it was in 1783, included only certain outlying regions (Florida and certain posts on the Great Lakes and in the Mississippi Valley). All the European nations which were interested in colonization shared in the enterprise, and the population of the region was therefore cosmopolitan from the outset. But the British, especially after 1660, secured a controlling influence, to such an extent that the history of the period can properly be regarded as the record of an experiment in British colonization.
Permanent settlements on the Atlantic seaboard were first made in the early years of the 17th century, and they continued steadily to increase until after 1680. Relatively speaking, that was the period of settlement, but population continued slowly to advance westward. In the 18th century occurred a large immigration of Germans and Scottish-Irish, who settled in Pennsylvania and New York and thence overflowed into the western parts of Virginia and the Carolinas. The only colony which was founded in the 18th century was Georgia (1732), by means of which British outposts on the Florida frontier were strengthened.
2. British colonization originated chiefly in private initiative, though it acted in half-conscious obedience to certain General Aspects of Colonization.general principles of action. From this fact originated the trend toward self-government, which was fundamental and controlling in the history of the British on the American continent. But to an extent the tendencies which favoured self-government were counteracted by the influence of the British Crown and parliament. The influence of the Crown was continuous, except during the period of the Civil War and Commonwealth (1642–1660), while that of parliament was not felt until the middle of the 17th century, and its colonial legislation subsequent to that time was chiefly confined to matters of trade. The activities of Crown and parliament were directed toward the securing of Imperial interests and of that degree of subordination and conformity which, in states that have developed from Roman and feudal origins, attaches to the condition of colonies or dependencies. The term "imperial control" therefore suggests the second tendency in colonial affairs, to the discussion of which the historian must address himself.
3. Among the colonists the trend toward local independence and self-government was in harmony with the spirit of the English. Neither was it lacking among the other nationalities represented in the colonies. But in the case of the British it was greatly strengthened by the fact that the colonies were founded by private initiative, the government legalizing the efforts of the "adventurers" and planters, but leaving them in many cases almost wholly to themselves. Hence many small colonies and settlements were founded along the coast. A variety of motives—economic, religious and political—contributed to the founding of these colonies, and people correspondingly different in type came to inhabit them. As they differed from one another, so their descendants came to differ from the Europeans, out of the midst of whom they had come. The remoteness of the colonies from Europe and the difficulties under which communication with them was maintained confirmed and perpetuated the tendency toward independence both of England and its government. Somewhat similar conditions controlled intercolonial relations, kept the colonists apart from one another and checked efforts at co-operation. Thus it was that the causes which confirmed the colonists in the spirit of independence toward the mother country at the same time made them jealous of any external authority.
4. The term "chartered colonies" is the one which best describes the forms under which the British-American Chartered Colonies.settlements were founded and under which they all continued for periods varying from a single generation to that of the entire duration of their colonial existence. They were the direct and characteristic results of private initiative in colonization. The discoverers and would-be ​colonizers, acting individually or in groups, collected the ships, men and resources necessary for their enterprises, and procured from the Crown a charter. By this document the king conveyed to them a claim to the soil which would be valid in English law, gave them the right to transfer Englishmen thither as colonists, to trade with them and with the natives, and to govern the colony, subject to the conditions of allegiance and of British sovereignty in general. The rights and liberties of the colonists as British subjects, without attempt to define what they were, were guaranteed by the charters, and the grantee was prohibited from passing laws or issuing orders which were repugnant to those of England. In only a part of the charters—those chiefly which were issued subsequent to 1660—was express reference made to the calling of assemblies in the colonies. So general were the provisions of the charters that they only remotely determined the forms which government should assume under them and what the rights of the colonists should be. A considerable variety of institutions and social types existed under them. But their very indefiniteness made them valuable as objects of appeal to those who in time of controversy were upholding local rights and liberties.
5. Of the chartered colonies there were two varieties—proprietary provinces and corporate colonies. Though alike Proprietary Provinces in the fact that the patentees who founded them were mesne tenants of the Crown, they were quite unlike in their internal organization and to a considerable extent also in the character of the people who inhabited them. The proprietary province was a development from the principle of the fief, though with many variations. The early charters of discovery, those for example which were granted to John and Sebastian Cabot and to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, contemplated the founding of feudal principalities in the New World. The grant to Sir Walter Raleigh, which resulted in the abortive colonial experiment at Roanoke, was of the same character. At the period of transition from the rule of the Tudors to that of the Stuarts, trading companies and companies whose purpose was colonization were increasing in number and importance. The first half of the 17th century was distinguished by the founding of many such, in France and the Netherlands as well as in England. The joint companies which were chartered London and Plymouth Companies. by James I. in 1606, one to have its residence at London and the other at Plymouth, were of this character. They were granted the right to colonize, the one in northern and the other in southern “Virginia”; the intervening territory, three degrees in breadth, being left common to the two. The rights of the companies were confined to those of settlement and trade. The Plymouth patentees achieved no permanent result; but those of London founded Jamestown (1607) and other settlements along the James river, which later became the province of Virginia (q.v.).
6. But before this result had been reached the London patentees had secured in succession two new charters, one in 1609 and another in 1612. By means of these grants they had practically separated from the Plymouth Company, had secured a concession of territory 400 m. broad and extending through the continent, and had been able to perfect the organization of their company. By the grant of 1606 the right to govern the colonies had been reserved to councils of royal appointees, one resident in England and one in each distinct colony which should be founded. But by their later charters the London patentees were fully incorporated, and in connection therewith received not only the power to grant land but rights of government as well. This made the Virginia Company of London in the full sense of the word the proprietor of the province which it was founding. It now appointed resident governors, councillors and other officials for the colony, and instructed and controlled them in all ways, subject of course to the general supervision of the king in council. Under the charter of 1606, in order to facilitate colonization on a strange continent, joint management of land and trade was temporarily instituted. But under the fully organized company, as managed by Sir Thomas Smith, and especially by Sir Edwin Sandys and the Ferrars, this system was abandoned, and private property in land and the control of trade through private “magazines” were established. A number of distinct plantations and settlements were founded which later developed into counties and parishes. From these localities, in 1619, under authority from the company, representatives were elected who met with the governor and council at Jamestown and formed the first colonial assembly held on American soil. Its acts were duly submitted to the company in London for its approval or disapproval. Other assemblies were called, the tobacco industry was established and the principles upon which traffic in that staple was to be conducted with Europe were announced. Thus Virginia assumed the form of a proprietary province, with an English trading company as its proprietor.
7. Meantime west of England men had been making fishing voyages and voyages of discovery to northern “Virginia”, which New England Council. now was coming to be known as New England. In 1620 a new charter was procured, the reorganized company being known, in brief, as the New England Council. Like the London patentees, this body was now fully incorporated and received a grant of the vast territory between 40° and 48° N. lat. and extending through to the South Sea (Pacific). Full rights of government, as well as of trade and settlement, were also bestowed. The moving spirit in this revived enterprise was Sir Ferdinando Gorges (q.v.), an Anglican and royalist from the west of England. For a time John Mason (q.v.) was his most active coadjutor. Such backing as the company received came from nobles and courtiers, and it had the sympathy of the court. But lack of resources and of active interest on the part of most of the patentees, together with the development of a Puritan interest in New England, led to the failure of this enterprise. No colony was established directly by the council itself, but that part of its vast territory which lay adjacent to the coast was parcelled out among the patentees and by them a few weak and struggling settlements were founded. They were all proprietary in character, and those along the northern coast were more or less connected with Anglican and royalist interests. But, as events proved, Plymouth Colony (founded in 1620), which was Puritan and Separatist to the core, became a patentee of the New England Council; and the colony of Massachusetts Bay (founded in 1628-1630), which was to become the citadel of Puritanism in America, procured the original title to its soil from the same source. At the outset both Massachusetts and Plymouth must be classed as proprietary settlements, though far different from such in spirit and destiny. Massachusetts soon (in 1629) secured a royal charter for its territory between the Merrimac and Charles rivers, and thus took a long step towards independence of the council. At the same time the Plymouth settlers were throwing aside the system of joint management of land which, as in the case of Virginia, had been imposed upon them by adventurers who had lent money for the enterprise; were paying their debts to these same adventurers and securing control of the trade of the colony; were establishing a system of self-government similar to that of Massachusetts. Thus a strong Puritan interest grew up in the midst of the domain which had been granted to the New England Council, and in connexion therewith the type of colony to which we have given the name corporate came into existence.
8. In order to understand the nature of the corporate colony, it is necessary to explain the internal organization of that Corporate Colonies; the Virginia Company. type of company which, like the Virginia Company of London, was founded for purposes of trade and colonization. It was composed of stockholders, who became members as the result of the purchase of shares or of migration to the colony as planters, or of both acts combined. In the Virginia Company they were known as the “generality,” in the Massachusetts and other companies as the “freemen.” In them, when met as a democratically organized body under the name of “quarter court” or “general court,” was vested the governing power of the company. It ​elected the officers, chief among whom were a treasurer or governor, and a council or board of assistants. These, as well as the subordinate officers, held for annual terms only. Four times a year, at the law terms, the general courts met for the transaction of business, elections being held at the spring meeting. Membership in such companies might be indefinitely increased through the issue and sale of shares. They were, in other words, open companies, whereas the New England Council was a closed body, its membership being limited to forty. The Massachusetts Company was an open corporation of the type just described.
9. In 1629 the prospects of Protestantism at large, and of Puritanism in England, were so dark that the founders of Massachusetts Company; Removal of Charter to Massachusetts the Massachusetts Company, who were decidedly Puritan in spirit and inclined to nonconformity in practice, resolved to remove with their charter and the governing body of their company into New England. Preparatory to this, John Winthrop was elected governor and a settlement was made of their business relations in England. After the removal had been made, the assistants and general court met in New England and business was carried on there exclusively by planters. An order was soon passed that none should vote or hold office who were not members of some one of the churches within the colony. As all these churches were Independent or Congregationalist in form and doctrine, this order gave a wholly new definition to the term “freemen.” It made of this colony something approximating to a biblical commonwealth, and subordinated trade, land-holding and settlement to the interests of the Puritan faith. The board of assistants now assumed political and judicial functions. As local settlements about Massachusetts Bay were founded, the general court, which before had been a primary assembly—simply the freemen of the company—came to consist partly of representatives elected by the freemen of the towns. In this way a second chamber—that of the deputies—was added to the assistants to form the general court of the colony. Taxes were levied by this body, and laws and orders proceeded from it which related to all functions of government. It elected or appointed the governor and other chief officials, and determined the times of its own meeting. The governor had no veto and the general court was the controlling organ in the system.
10. Of primary importance in the affairs of the colony was everything which concerned religious belief and church government. The churches and their relation to the civil power presented the great questions upon which hinged its policy. This was true not only in its internal affairs, but in its relations with other colonies and with the mother country. An ecclesiastical system was developed in which Independent and Presbyterian elements were combined. By a rigid system of tests this was upheld against Antinomians, Baptists, Quakers and dissenters of all sorts. The securing of revenue from land and trade was considered subordinate to the maintenance of the purity of the faith. It was this which gave a point and vigour to the spirit of self-government in the New England colonies which is not perceptible elsewhere.
As a consequence of the Puritan migration from England and of the expulsion of dissenters from Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut; New Haven Colony; Rhode Island. Connecticut (q.v.), the New Haven Colony, and the towns about Narragansett Bay which became the colony of Rhode Island (q.v.), were settled. These all were corporate colonies, organized upon fundamentally the same plan as Massachusetts but differing from it in minor particulars. Their settlers at the outset had no charters, but by means of plantation or town covenants assumed powers of government, which ultimately were vested in general courts similar to that of Massachusetts. Rhode Island was formed by a union of towns, but elsewhere the colony was coeval with or antedated the town. Connecticut and Rhode Island, the former in 1662 and the latter in 1663, secured royal charters by which they were incorporated within New England itself and the governments which they had established there were legalized. New Haven was absorbed by Connecticut in 1664 under the charter of 1662 (see Connecticut), and Plymouth remained without a charter from the king until, toward the close of the 17th century, it became a part of the enlarged province of Massachusetts.
11. The most prominent feature of the New England land system was the “town grant,” which in every case became the territorial basis of a group settlement. Throughout New England, and in the outlying districts which were colonized by New Englanders, settlement was effected by groups. The process began in Plymouth and was extended through the entire section. The Puritan migration from Europe was of the same general character. Groups of people, animated by a common religious or political ideal, broke away from their original or temporary abiding-places and pushed farther into the wilderness, where tracts of land were granted to them by the general court. The corporate colonies did not seek profit from their land, but granted it freely to actual settlers, and in such amounts as suited their needs. No distinct land office was established by any New England colony. Land was not sold by the colony; nor, as a general rule, was it leased or granted to individuals. Rent formed no appreciable part of the colony revenue.
12. Over the founding of towns the general courts, as a rule, exercised a watchful supervision. Not only did the courts fix and maintain their bounds, but they issued regulations for the granting of lands, for common fields, fences, herds, the punishment of trespass, the admission of inhabitants and freeholders, the requirement that records of land titles should be kept, and the like. But subject to these general regulations, the allotment and management of its land was left to each town. The colonies had no land system apart from the town. It was partly in order to manage their lands that the towns were made centres of local government and town meetings or boards of town proprietors were established. By means of town action, taken in town meetings and by local officials, the land of each settlement was laid off as house lots, common and common fields, meadow and pasture. Detailed regulations were made for the management of common fields and for their ultimate division and allotment among their proprietors. The same was true of fences and herds. The result was an organization similar to the English manor, but with the lord of the manor left out; for in the case of the New England town administrative authority resided in the body of the freeholders. To this peculiarity in the form of New England settlement is due the prominence of the town, as compared with the county, in its system of local government. The town was the unit for purposes of taxation and militia service as well as of elections. It was also an important ecclesiastical centre, the parish usually corresponding with it in extent.
13. As a result of the process thus sketched, southern New England was settled by a population of English origin, with similar instincts and a form of political organization which was common to them all, Gorges, meantime, had secured (1639) a royal charter for his province of Maine, but Mason had died before he obtained such a guaranty for his settlements on the Piscataqua river. The small communities along that entire coast remained weak and divided. In 1635 the New England Council surrendered its charter. The helplessness of the Gorges family was insured by its adherence to the royalist cause in the English Civil War. Massachusetts availed itself of a forced interpretation of the language of its charter respecting its northern boundary to extend its control over all the settlements as far north-east as the Kennebec river. This was accomplished soon after 1650, and for the time Anglican and royalist interests throughout New England seemed hopelessly wrecked. New England had thus developed into a clearly defined section under Puritan domination. This fact was also clearly indicated by the organization, in 1643, of the New England Confederacy, or the United Colonies of New England (see New England), which comprised the orthodox Puritan colonies, whose leading magistrates, as annually elected commissioners, for twenty years exercised an advisory control over New England.
* Emery Walker sc.
​14. The colonies of the middle and southern sections of the territory, which later became the United States, were wholly Middle and Southern Colonies proprietary in form. This was true of New Netherland (founded by the Dutch West India Company in 1621) and of New Sweden (settled under the authority of the Swedish Royal Company in 1638), as well as of the English colonies which were established on that coast. In the case of Virginia and of the Dutch and Swedish settlements, trading companies were the proprietors. But the later English colonies, beginning with Maryland in 1632, and continuing with the Carolinas (1663), New York (1664), New Jersey (1665), Pennsylvania and the Lower Counties, afterwards Delaware (1681), were founded by individual proprietors or proprietary boards. Georgia (1732), the only English colony settled after 1681 on the continent, existed for twenty years under a proprietary board of trustees. By the efforts of adventurers of this class, put forth chiefly during the period of the Restoration, the entire coast-line from Florida to Acadia was permanently occupied by the English. But, unlike New England, the population of the other sections was of a mixed character, as were their economic and religious systems, and to an extent also their political institutions.
15. As has already been stated, in their internal structure and in the course of their history the proprietary provinces differed very materially from the corporate colonies. Those of later English origin also differed in some important respects from Virginia under the company and from New Netherland and New Sweden. The system of joint management of land and trade, which was so characteristic of early Virginia, was outgrown before the other proprietary provinces were founded. Neither did it prevail in the Dutch and Swedish provinces, but there the law and institutions of government of those nations existed, and no provision whatever was made for assemblies.
16. In the proprietary province the proprietor, or board of proprietors, was the grantee of powers, while in the corporate colony it was the body of the freemen organized as an assembly or general court. The proprietor might or might not be a resident of the province. He might exercise his powers in person, or, as was usually the case, delegate them to one or more appointees. In any case, the form of government of the proprietary province was essentially monarchical in character. The powers that were bestowed were fundamentally the same as those which were enjoyed during the middle ages by the counts palatine of Chester and Durham. In some charters express reference was made to Durham as a model. The normally developed provinces which resulted were miniature kingdoms, and their proprietors petty kings. As Coke said, their powers were king-like though not sovereign. This character arose from the fact that the grantee of power was the executive of the province. This branch of government was thereby brought into the forefront. At the beginning and for a long time thereafter it continued to bear the leading part in affairs. It was not so in the corporate colony, for there the freemen and the general court stood at the centre of the system, and their ultimate control, which no one dreamed of disputing, was maintained through a system of annual elections. In most of the corporate colonies the executive (i. e. the body of magistrates) was strong, but that was due to the political and social influence which its officials had gained, and not to their tenure of office. But the nature of the proprietary province demands further explanation.
17. In every case, apart from the ordinary rights of trade and the guarantees of the liberties of the colonists, the powers Government of the Proprietary Province. which were bestowed on the proprietors were territorial and governmental. The territory of the provinces was granted under the conditions which by English law controlled private estates of land. An entire province, or any part of it, could be leased, sold or otherwise disposed of like a private estate. It was an estate of inheritance, descending to heirs. The attitude of proprietors toward it was that of landlords, investors or speculators in land. They advertised for settlers, and, in doing so, an ever present motive with them was the desire to secure more private income from land. In 1664 the duke of York sold New Jersey to Berkeley and Carteret, and the sale was effected by deeds of lease and release. In 1708 William Penn mortgaged Pennsylvania, and under his will devising the province legal complications arose which necessitated a suit in chancery. Thus proprietors and proprietary boards changed with every generation or oftener. All this, of course, was different in the corporate colony.
18. In all the later proprietary charters, except that of New York, the operation of the statute Quia emptores was suspended, so far as relations between the proprietor and his immediate grantees were concerned. By virtue of this provision each proprietor, or board, became the centre from which originated an indefinite number of grants. These were held directly of the proprietor and through him of the Crown. In practice the same was true also of New York. The proprietors were thus left free to make grants on such conditions as they chose—limited by the nature of their patents—to erect or permit the erection of manors, to devise the machinery necessary for surveying, issuing and recording grants, and collecting rents. Preparatory to the exercise of this power, the proprietors issued so-called “concessions” or “conditions of plantation,” stating the terms on which they would grant lands to colonists. These were often accompanied by descriptions of the country, which were intended to be advertisements for settlers. Under a system of head rights, analogous to that which existed in Virginia, land was thus bestowed on settlers upon easy terms. Proportional amounts of land were granted upon the importation of servants, and in this way a traffic in servants and their head rights to land was encouraged among planters and masters of merchant vessels. In all the provinces, except New Netherland, a quit rent was imposed on all grants. In the Dutch province rents were sometimes imposed, but they varied in character and differed from the English quit rent. In Maryland fines were levied on alienations. In Maryland and Pennsylvania the demand for land became so great that it was sold. In most of the provinces manorial grants were made, but in none except New Netherland did the manor become an institution of government. In all the provinces territorial affairs were administered directly by the provincial authorities, and not by towns as in New England. In Maryland a land office was fully organized, towns developed only to a very limited extent, and when they did originate they were in no sense village communities. Lots in them were granted by provincial authorities and they were subject to a quit rent. They were simply more densely populated parts of the counties, and, unless incorporated as boroughs, had no distinct institutional life. In almost all cases land, in the provinces, was granted to individuals, and individual ownership, with direct relations between the owners or tenants and the proprietary authorities, was the rule. This was in marked contrast to the conditions which have been described as existing in the corporate colonies. In the corporate colony the elements of the fief had been eliminated, but in the provinces they still survived to a considerable degree.
19. Had governmental powers not accompanied the territorial grants which have been described, these grants would have been estates of land, unusually large, no doubt, but nothing more. In cases where the governmental rights of proprietors were suspended or resigned into the hands of the Crown, they remained thereafter only private landlords. But the fact that rights of government were bestowed with the land made the territory a province and the proprietor its political head. The bestowment of rights of land carried with it not only the obligation to pay quit rent, but to take to the proprietor the oath of fidelity.
20. In the discussion of the corporate colony it was necessary to dwell first and chiefly on the legislature. But in the case of the proprietary province the executive, for the reason already mentioned, demands first attention. The provincial charters made the proprietors the executives of their provinces and for the most part left it to them to determine how and under what forms the governmental powers which they had received should ​be exercised. The powers which were definitely bestowed were executive and judicial in character—the ordinance power, the authority to appoint all officers, to establish courts, to punish and pardon, to organize a military force and defend the provinces, to bestow titles of honour, to found churches and present to livings. The executive thus became the centre from and around which development in the province chiefly occurred. It gave to the proprietor an importance, especially at the outset, which was comparable with that enjoyed by the general courts in the corporate colonies. It made him in a derived and inferior sense the source, within the province, of office and honour, the fountain of justice, the commander of the militia, the recipient of the provincial revenue, the constituent part of the legislature. But in most cases the proprietors did not attempt to exercise these powers in person. Even if resident in their provinces they needed the assistance of officials. By means of commissioners they appointed a group of leading officials for their provinces, as a governor, councillors, a secretary, surveyor-general, receiver-general or treasurer, and somewhat later an attorney general. These all held office at the pleasure of the proprietor, and were subject to guidance by his instructions.
Altogether the chief place among these officials was held by the governor. He was par excellence the agent for the The Provincial Governor. proprietor for all purposes of administration. He regularly corresponded with the proprietor and received the latter's directions. In making appointments the proprietor was usually guided by his recommendations. In some cases he was a relative of the proprietor, and family influence in Maryland after the Restoration came to dominate the government of the province. In all his important acts the governor was required to take the advice of his council, and that body was expected to co-operate closely with him in all matters; but the governor was not bound to follow their advice. The relations between the two was the same as that between the king and his privy council in England. As settlements multiplied and counties and other local subdivisions were formed, other and inferior offices were created, the right of appointment to which rested with the governor, though it was exercised in the name of the proprietor. By means of an executive, thus organized, land was granted and the revenue from it collected, counties and other local divisions were established, relations were developed with the Indians, early preparations were made for defence, courts were opened and the administration of justice begun.
21. But in the later proprietary charters generally, with the exception of that issued to the duke of York, provision was made for assemblies. It was made, however, in very general terms, and it was left to the option of the proprietors to determine when, where and how they would call them. These legislatures did not originate in the natural or pre-existent rights of Englishmen, nor did the existence of a parliament in England make them necessary, though it greatly increased the difficulties of governing the colonies without them. Though they were not original in the sense which attached to the executive, they were immediately proven to be indispensable and their activity in the provinces gradually opened the way for the growth of modern democratic institutions.
22. When met in regular form, the provincial legislature consisted of the governor, the council or upper house, and the The Provincial Legislature. assembly or deputies. The latter, who were elected by the localities, constituted the only representative part of the legislature. In tenure and functions the governor and council were largely independent both of the deputies and of the electors. They were a part of the executive and were naturally swayed by a regard for the interests of the proprietor and by administrative traditions. Though a component of the legislature, the council was the legal advisor of the governor. In many cases the importance of the councils was increased by the fact that, with the governor, in early times they formed the highest judicial tribunal in the province. As the governor had the sole power of calling, proroguing and dissolving the general assembly, the council might advise him in such a way as to destroy the body itself or thwart its plans. The joint work of the council and assembly was subject to the veto of the proprietor, or of both the proprietor and his governor. The legislature of the province, therefore, differed materially from the general court, though in practice this was somewhat offset by the fact that in the New England colonies the magistrates were usually re-elected for a long series of terms.
23. In the province, as in the kingdom, the legislature was in a sense an expansion of the executive, developed out of it, and was to an extent controlled by it. Out of this relation arose the possibility of conflict between the two parts of the legislature—that which represented the people and that which represented the proprietor. In the history of the provinces this formed the central line of cleavage. From the first the assemblies largely controlled taxation. Using this as a lever, they endeavoured to limit and define the powers of the executive and to extend the sphere of legislation more widely. Fees, from which officials derived most of their support, were a favourite object of their regulation. Occasionally offices which had originally been appointive were made elective. Protests of various kinds were made against official cliques. British statutes which favoured liberty and the powers of parliament were often referred to as guides and ideals of the opposition. Now and again the lower house came to a deadlock with council or governor. Threatened or actual revolt was sometimes necessary to bring the executive to terms. By such tactics as these the popular elements in the constitutions of the provinces asserted themselves. The sphere of ordinance was gradually limited and that of statute extended, while incidentally the system of government became more complex.
In a number of provinces—the Carolinas, New Jersey and Pennsylvania—the proprietors at various times initiated Constitutions. elaborate constitutions, in which not only a land system, but forms and functions of government were prescribed on a large scale. These were variously known as fundamental constitutions, concessions and agreements, frames of government, and in every case were submitted to the general assembly for its acceptance or rejection. Long struggles often ensued over the question of acceptance, which usually ended in the modification or rejection of the schemes as too cumbersome for use or because they reserved excessive powers to the provincial executive.
24. Though the main features in the form and development of the proprietary provinces have thus been indicated, it Course of Development. should be noted that their history was by no means uniform. In New Netherland and New York occurred a struggle for the establishment of a legislature, which continued at intervals for forty years and was not permanently successful until after New York had become a royal province. The proprietors of New Jersey never secured a royal charter, and therefore were not able to establish satisfactorily their claim to rights of government. As grants of land had been made to the settlers in certain localities within that province before its purchase by Berkeley and Carteret, opposition was made to the collection of quit rents, as well as to the enforcement of rights of government, and disturbances, resulting from these causes, became chronic. The province was also divided into East and West Jersey, the boards of proprietors being greatly increased in both, and West Jersey attaining an organization which was almost democratic in character. Within the vast reaches of the Carolina grant developed two provinces. One of these—North Carolina—was almost entirely neglected by the proprietors, and the weakened executive repeatedly succumbed to popular violence. In South Carolina many violent controversies occurred, especially over the efforts of the proprietors to compel the acceptance of the Fundamental Constitutions, which originated with Locke and Shaftesbury. But in the end this failed, and a simple form of government, such as was adapted to the needs of the province, was developed. In Pennsylvania the liberal policy of the proprietor led at the beginning to unusual concessions ​in favour of the colonists. One of the most characteristic of these was the grant of an elective Council, which was intended to be aristocratic and the chief institution in the province. But owing to conflicts between it and the governors, affairs came to a deadlock. The total neglect of provision for defence by the Quaker province led to the suspension of Penn's powers of government for about two years after the English Revolution and the outbreak of the war with France. This did away with the elective Council for the time, and an appointive Council was soon substituted. Finally, in 1701, the Council was deprived of its powers of legislation and thereafter the legislature of Pennsylvania consisted of only one house—the Assembly.
B.—Development of Imperial Control, 1606-1760.
25. Turning now to the exercise of imperial control over the colonies, it is to be noted that it proceeded chiefly from theThe Crown. English Crown. It was exercised through the secretary of state, the privy council and a succession of boards subordinate to it which were known as commissioners of plantations or the board of trade; by the treasury and admiralty boards and their subordinate bureaus; by the attorney-general and the solicitor-general and by the bishop of London. The more continuous and intimate supervision proceeded from the privy council and the commissioners subordinate to it, and from the treasury board. The latter caused the auditing of such revenue as came from the colonies, supervised expenditures for them and had an oversight over appointments in the colonial service. The privy council received letters and petitions on almost every kind of colonial business, caused hearings and inquiries to be held, and issued letters, instructions and orders in council on an equally great variety of matters. It also acted as the regular court of appeal for the plantations. As time advanced, more of the administrative business passed directly into the office of one of the secretaries of state and the privy council became less active. The admiralty was concerned with the equipment of the navy for service in the colonies, and the high court of admiralty with the trial of prize cases and of cases arising from violations of the acts of trade. The assistance of the law officers of the Crown was sought in the drafting of charters, in the prosecution of suits for their recall, and in all cases which required the interpretation of the law as affecting the colonies and the defence of the interests of the British government in relation thereto. The bishop of London had supervision over the appointment and conduct of clergymen of the English Church in the colonies and over parish schools there. Not all of these boards and officials were active from the first, but they were created or brought into service in colonial affairs as the importance of the dominions increased.
26. The parliament by mentioning the dominions in its statutes could extend their provisions to the colonies. TheParliamentary Control. early acts of supremacy and uniformity contained such reference, but it was dropped after the Restoration and no serious attempt was ever made to enforce uniformity in the colonies. Parliament did not begin to legislate seriously for the colonies until after the Restoration. Then the acts of trade and navigation were passed, to which additions were made in the reign of William III. and from time to time during the 18th century. This body of legislation, including about fifty statutes, comprised the most important acts relating to the colonies which were passed by parliament. A few statutes relating to military affairs were passed about the middle of the 18th century. Certain other laws relating to currency and coinage, to naturalization, to the punishment of governors, to the post office, to the collection of debts, and to a few other miscellaneous subjects complete the colonial legislation of parliament prior to 1760. About one hundred statutes in all were passed. The colonists themselves imitated in a general way the organization and procedure of the English courts. The main features of the common law came spontaneously into force in the colonies. The legislatures of several of the colonies adopted large parts of the statute law of England. The colonists were always accustomed to avail themselves, as far as possible, of the great English statutes which guaranteed liberty. After about 1690 the obligation was very generally enforced upon the colonies of sending the acts of their assemblies to England for acceptance or rejection by the king in council. Thus a general agreement between colonial and English law was attained.
27. But this, though far-reaching, was only one of the objects which were sought through the exercise of imperial control. Its object was to maintain the rights of Great Britain over the colonies and her interests in them in all respects. The diplomacy of Great Britain concerned itself to an increasing extent, as the 18th century advanced, with the acquisition or losses of colonial territory, with the fixing of boundaries and with the securing of commercial interests. The interests of trade, more than any other subject, determined the colonial policy of England. The Church and her interests also demanded attention. In all these matters the English executive—the Crown—continuously, and for the most part exclusively, managed colonial affairs. During the Commonwealth in the 17th century parliament was the source of all activity, whether legislative or executive, but at other times, as we have seen, its legislation was confined chiefly to the subject of trade. The English courts also played a minor part except when, in conjunction with the executive, they were concerned in the revocation of colonial charters.
28. A natural condition which affected colonial administration as a whole and to a large extent determined its limitsIsolation of the Colonies. and character was the remoteness of the colonies from England. With this the conditions of sparse and scattered settlements in a new continent in the midst of savages were closely connected. At best three months were required for sending a despatch from London to America and procuring a return. This explains the large degree of self-government which the colonies possessed and the indifference with which their affairs were usually viewed, even by British officials. Only a relatively small part of colonial business came before English officials or received their serious attention. Only at long intervals and in summary fashion was it brought to the attention of parliament. It is believed that the affairs of the continental colonies were never seriously debated in parliament until after the beginning of the controversy which led to the American War of Independence. Social and political intercourse with the colonists and governmental control over them were therefore very imperfectly developed, as compared with that which existed within the realm. That is the real meaning of the distinction between the realm and the dominions. Over the counties and other local jurisdictions of the realm the control of Crown and central courts and parliament was continuously felt. In law and theory the same was true of the dominions; in fact, the control over them was almost wholly executive, and during most of the period it was to a degree unintelligent and weak. In theory the British Empire was a consolidated structure; in fact it was something more resembling a federation.
29. The central fact in colonial history during the 17th century was the development of the chartered colonies. AtDevelopment of the Chartered Colony. their founding, as we have seen, the Crown delegated rights of settlement and subordinate rights of government to proprietors, who used them in a variety of ways. The effect of this was to introduce a number of mesne lords between the king and his colonial subjects, a phenomenon which centuries before had vanished from England itself. The patentees governed the colonists, and the Crown only interfered at intervals to adjust matters. And when the Crown did this, its dealings were far more with the patentees and their officials than with the body of the colonists. The king had no officials of his own in the colonies, and a practical system of immunity existed. Under the first two Stuarts some rather desultory efforts were made to check the development of such a system in the early stages. After a controversy over a contract for ​the sole importation of tobacco, which became involved with the political struggles of the time in England, the charter of the Virginia Company of London was revoked (1624). A royal commission was appointed to readjust the affairs of Virginia and to inaugurate its government as a royal province, and the king declared that he desired the government of all his dominions to be monarchical in form. Several commissions were later appointed to manage the tobacco trade. In 1634 a board of commissioners of plantations was created and it received very large powers over the colonies. Of this body Archbishop Laud was the moving spirit. The year following the New England Council resigned its charter, a writ of quo warranto was issued against the Massachusetts charter, and a plan was nearly perfected for sending out Sir Ferdinando Gorges as royal governor, or rather governor-general, to New England. But means were lacking, the suit against the Massachusetts patent failed to accomplish its purpose, and troubles at home soon absorbed the attention of the government.
30. During the Great Rebellion in England New England was left practically to itself. Strife broke out in Maryland, over which the home government was scarcely able to exercise even a moderating influence. The Dutch from New Netherland and Europe were able to monopolize a large part of the carrying trade in tobacco and European goods. Virginia, with Barbadoes and a few other island colonies, assumed an attitude of distrust or hostility toward the new government in England. In 1651 and 1652 parliament sent out a commission, with an armed force, which reduced the island colonies to submission and adjusted affairs in Virginia by suspending government under Sir William Berkeley, the royalist governor, and leaving control in the hands of the Assembly. By a stretch of power the commissioners also took control of affairs in Maryland, but there they intensified rather than allayed the strife. Baltimore, however, managed to save his interests from total wreck, and at the Restoration was able fully to re-establish his authority.
31. During this period of unstable government in England the seeds were planted of a colonial policy which was henceforth Commercial Influences; Administrative Changes; Navigation Acts and other Restrictive Legislation. to dominate imperial relations. It was then that England entered upon the period of commercial rivalries and wars. The Cromwellian government determined to wrest the control of the carrying trade from the Dutch, and the Navigation Act of 1651 and the first Dutch War were the result. General Robert Sedgwick was sent against New Netherland, but ended in attacking Acadia. At this time also the national hatred of Spain, which had so characterized the age of Elizabeth, reasserted itself and the Spanish seas were invaded, Hispaniola was attacked, and Jamaica was conquered. In connexion with these events plans were formed for a more systematic colonial administration, which Cromwell did not live to execute, but which were taken up by Clarendon, the duke of York, the earl of Shaftesbury and a large group of officials, lawyers and merchants who surrounded them. They took definite shape after the Restoration in the creation of a council for trade and a council for foreign plantations, in the passage of the acts of trade, in the conquest of New Netherland and the organization within it of three English provinces, in the settlement of the Carolinas, in a resolute attempt to remedy grievances and adjust disputes in New England. These events and their consequences give greater importance to the next three or four decades than to any later period until the colonial revolt.
32. The council for foreign plantations was continued, sometimes under a patent and sometimes as a committee of the privy council, until, in 1696, it was commissioned as the board of trade. As a board of inquiry and report, subordinate to the privy council, the most important business relating to the colonies was transacted before it. The acts of trade, in which the principles of the system were laid down, were passed in 1660, 1663, 1673 and 1696. They expanded and systematized the principles of mercantilism as they had long been accepted, and as in some particulars they had already been applied to the Virginia tobacco trade. The import and export trade of the colonies was required to be carried on in English and colonial built ships, manned and commanded by Englishmen. The policy of the staple was applied to the trade of the colonies by the enumeration of their chief products which could not be raised in England and the requirement that such of these as were exported should be brought to England and pay duties there, and that thence the supplies not needed for the English market should be sent to foreign countries. The same policy was applied to all colonial imports by the requirement that they should pass through English ports. In order to prevent intercolonial traffic in enumerated commodities, which might lead to smuggling, the act of 1673 provided for the levy of an export duty on them in the colonies in cases where a bond was not given to land them in the realm. In the 18th century severe restrictive measures were passed to prevent the growth of manufactures, especially of wool, hats and iron, in the colonies; but these acts proved mostly a dead letter, because the colonies had not reached the stage where such industries could be developed on any scale. Certain compensations, favourable to the colonies, also appear in the system, e.g. the measures to suppress the raising of tobacco in England and Ireland, in order that the colonists might have the monopoly of that market; the payment of bounties on the importation of naval stores and on the production of indigo by the colonists; the allowance, on the re-exportation of colonial products, of drawbacks of part or all of the duties paid on importation; the admission of colonial imports at lower rates of duty than were charged on the same products from foreign countries. In order to ensure the enforcement of these acts elaborate provisions became necessary for the issue of bonds, and this, with the collection of a duty in the colonies, led to the appointment of colonial customs officers who were immediately responsible to the commissioners of the customs and the treasury board in England. With them the governors were ordered to co-operate. Courts of vice-admiralty, with authority to try cases without a jury, were established in the colonies; and just before the close of the seventeenth century they were given jurisdiction over violations of the acts of trade, a power which they did not have in England. Naval officers were very generally provided for by colonial law, who were to co-operate with the customs officers in the entry and clearance of vessels; but in some cases their aim was rather to keep control over trade in colonial hands. It thus appears that the resolve to enforce the policy set forth in the acts of trade resulted in a noteworthy extension of imperial control over the colonies. How far it was successful in the immediate objects sought it is impossible to say. In some of the colonies and at some times the acts were practically nullified. Illegal trading was always carried on, especially in time of war. In such times it was closely allied with privateering and piracy. But in the large it is probable that the acts were effective, and their existence always furnished a standard to which officials were required by their instructions and oaths to conform. By the Act of Union of 1707 Scotland was admitted to the advantages of the English trade system. In 1733, in order to check the development of the French colonies and prevent the importation Molasses Act. of their products into English possessions, the Molasses Act was passed. This provided for high specific duties on rum, molasses and sugar, when imported from foreign colonies into those of Great Britain. So high were these rates that they could not be collected, and therefore no serious attempt was made to enforce the act.
33. Returning again to the 17th century, in order to trace in other connexions the notable advance which was then made in colonial administration, we are to note that the conquest of New Netherland by the British in 1664 was an event of great importance. Taken in connexion with the settlement of the Carolinas, it completed the hold which the English had upon the North American coast and gave them for the first time an extent of territory which could be profitably developed. ​The occupation of New Netherland was effected by a royal commission, which was also empowered to hear complaints and report a plan for the settlement of disputes in New England. Precedents for such a commission existed in the past, and a little more than ten years later a similar body, accompanied by a military force, was sent to Virginia to adjust matters at the close of Bacon's rebellion. But the commission of 1664 was the most noteworthy example of its kind. Yet, though it succeeded at New Amsterdam and in the southern colonies of New England, it failed at Boston. Massachusetts would not admit its right to hear appeals. It did not succeed in wresting from Massachusetts the territory of New Hampshire and Maine, which the heirs of Gorges and Mason claimed.
34. In 1676 Edward Randolph was sent as a special agent to Massachusetts, to require it to send agents to England. He returned to England the sworn enemy of that colony and continued to be its tireless prosecutor. A series of negotiations ensued which lasted for almost a decade, and ended in the revocation of the Massachusetts charter by a degree in chancery, 1684. New Hampshire had already been organized as a royal province. Government under the charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut was soon after suspended. All New England was then organized as a dominion or vice-royalty under Sir Edmund Andros. Assemblies were everywhere abolished and government was left wholly in the hands of the executive. New York—also without an assembly—and New Jersey were Dominion of New England. soon after incorporated with the Dominion of New England, its boundary being extended to the Delaware river (see New England). After Bacon's rebellion in 1676 the lines of executive control were strengthened in Virginia, but the Assembly continued active. These rapid changes involved the downfall of the former system of chartered colonies and the substitution of royal provinces in their place. The effect of this was to introduce into the colonies a large number of officials of royal appointment—the governors, members of the council, judges, secretaries, surveyors-general, receivers-general and attorneys-general. The entire executive and judiciary in a royal province was appointed directly or indirectly by the king. Its members held under commissions subject to the king's pleasure and were controlled by his instructions. The exclusiveness of the chartered jurisdictions no longer obtained, but the Crown through its officials was brought into direct relations with the body of the colonists. Government could now be carried on under relations analogous to those between Crown and people in England.
35. By the abolition of assemblies and the union of colonies on a large scale James II. did violence to the strongest feelings and traditions of the colonists. The New Englanders not only viewed the levy of taxes by prerogative with the utmost aversion, but they feared a general unsettlement of land titles, the destruction of much that was valuable in their system of town government, and the introduction of Anglican worship among them. They shared also in the fear, which was widespread among the colonists, that the Crown intended by an alliance with the French and Indians to force Roman Catholicism upon them. Therefore the fall of the Stuart government in England was the signal for an uprising at Boston (April 1689) followed by a less successful one at New York. The Dominion of New England at once collapsed and the old colony governments were generally restored. A revolt against the Catholic proprietor in Maryland resulted in the suspension of his powers of government and the organization of Maryland as a royal province. William III. granted a new charter to Massachusetts (1691) in which full provision was made for an assembly, but also for a governor and secretary of royal appointment. Rhode Island and Connecticut were allowed Colonial Reorganization. to remain under their corporate charters. New York and New Hampshire were organized as royal provinces with assemblies. Proprietary government struggled back into existence in New Jersey. In Pennsylvania the governmental powers of the proprietor were suspended for two years (1692-1694), because of his neglect of provision for defence; then they were restored and Pennsylvania continued under proprietary government until the War of Independence.
36. The transition from the system of chartered colonies to that of royal provinces was thus begun and well advanced towards completion. But it was a gradual process, and the later stages of it were not reached until the second decade of the 18th century. South Carolina became provisionally a royal province in 1719, and a parallel change was completed in North Carolina a decade later. Georgia received a royal government in 1752. But in 1715 Maryland was permitted to resume its proprietary form. After the Revolution of 1689 the change to royal governments did not involve in any case the abolition of colonial assemblies. Henceforward the Crown had a fully equipped executive in every royal province, and for the maintenance of its rights could depend upon its efforts and the influence which it was able to exert upon the assemblies. The governors exercised the royal rights of calling, proroguing and dissolving the assemblies; they assisted in initiating legislation and exercised the right of veto. All bills passed by the assemblies were required to be submitted to the king in council, for acceptance or disallowance. The upper houses of the legislature were the councils of the provinces. These were small bodies and consisted, in every case except Massachusetts, of royal appointees. Their support was in most cases given to the governors, and by that means they were greatly assisted in resisting the encroachments of the lower houses of assembly, which were elected by the freeholders. But, as a rule, the Crown made no provision for the salaries of its governors and other officials, and left them largely dependent for support on appropriations by the assemblies. In very many eases the withholding of salaries was successfully resorted to by the assemblies as a means of thwarting the executive or forcing it into submission. Under this system of balanced forces, analogous in general to that which was reached after the Revolution in England, the colonies entered upon the long period of the French wars.
C.—The Struggle with the French, 1690–1760.
37. Early French discoveries and colonization in North America were confined chiefly to the valley and gulf of the St Lawrence. These led, in the early 17th century, to the establishment of the province of Canada. By 1610 the French had possessed themselves of the valley of the lower St Lawrence, and the relations with the Indian tribes were being determined. During the next fifty years Canada grew slowly into an autocratically governed province, in which a mild form of feudalism existed and in which the Catholic Church was so strong as to contest supremacy at times with the civil power. The fur trade became from the first a most important industry in the province. The Jesuits and other priestly orders undertook missionary work on a large scale among the natives. The fur trader and the missionary soon extended French influence through the region of the Great Lakes and involved the province in intimate relations with the Indian tribes, and that throughout a large area of country. Between the Iroquois and the French wars were almost continuous, but with the other Indian tribes the French were in general on friendly terms. The Iroquois, on the other hand, maintained friendly relations with the Dutch and afterwards with the English. This deeply affected relations between the English and the French, as well as the entire development of the province of New York.
38. Exploration was a most important incident of both the fur trade and the missionary enterprises of the French. Between 1670 and 1690 their work culminated in the great exploring activity of Marquette, Joliet and La Salle. The Ohio and Mississippi rivers were discovered and their courses were mainly or wholly traced. Explorers also penetrated far into the regions beyond the Mississippi. Posts were established at various French Expansion. points along the Great Lakes. During the first two decades of the 18th century the French also established themselves on the Gulf of Mexico, Mobile being founded in 1702 and New Orleans in 1718. ​Quebec and the Gulf ports were then connected by a series of forts which, though few and weak, sufficed for communication and for the establishment of a claim to the Mississippi Valley. They were Niagara and Detroit, commanding the approaches to lakes Erie and Huron; Fort Miami, on the Maumee river; Fort St Joseph, at the southern end of Lake Michigan; Vincennes and French Fort, on the Wabash; Fort Chartres, on the Mississippi opposite St Louis; Michillimackinac and Ste Marie, which guarded the upper lakes. French zeal and enterprise had thus seized upon the heart of the continent, and was prepared to oppose any westward movement which the English might in the future attempt. It seemed possible that English settlements might be confined to the coast, for they expanded slowly and no genius for exploration or sympathy with Indian life was shown. The tendency of British commercial policy was likewise to confine them there, for in no other way did it seem possible to restrict the trade of the colonists to British markets. The Indian alliances of the English were also far less extensive than those of the French. The provinces of South Carolina and Georgia had conflicts with the Spanish on the Florida frontier, and in these the Indian tribes of the south were also involved. But these rivalries were slight and local in character, when compared with the struggle for supremacy which was preparing between the French and English.
39. The conflict with the French was precipitated by events in Europe. It was the English Revolution of 1689 that opened the great conflict between France and England. The question of Protestantism versus Catholicism was involved, but at bottom the struggle was one for the balance of power among European states. Rival claims between the two powers in America, Africa and Asia existed at the beginning of the conflict, or originated and were intensified as it progressed. Questions of commercial and naval supremacy world-wide in extent were involved, and the colonial possessions of the two states were necessarily drawn into the struggle. In America it involved four intercolonial wars, which were closed respectively by the treaties of Ryswick (1697), Utrecht(1713), Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), and Paris (1763). Between the second and third wars intervened thirty years of peace, the early period of Hanoverian and Whig ascendancy in England, the so-called Walpole era. On the American continent during the first two wars the struggle was confined to the northern frontier, and consisted of devastating raids by the French and Indians, which in turn provoked retaliatory efforts on the part of the English. These took the form in part of attacks on Acadia and of unsuccessful efforts to conquer Canada by means of joint expeditions by sea and land. The favourite land route was that from New York by way of Lake Champlain to Montreal, while the expeditions by sea were forced to make the long and perilous voyage round Nova Scotia and through the Gulf and River St Lawrence to Quebec. In 1690, and again in 1711, an enterprise of this kind was actually undertaken. Acadia, “with its ancient limits,” and the claim of France to Newfoundland and the Hudson Bay territory were, however, ceded to England by the treaty of Utrecht.
40. As the great world-conflict progressed the relative importance of the colonial and maritime issues which were involved Wars between British and French in America. increased. The first two wars had their origin primarily in European questions. The third war had its beginning in the Spanish West Indies, and clearly revealed the existence of the Bourbon Family Compact, which bound France and Spain together in active alliance. On the American continent its most striking event was the capture, in 1745, of Louisburg, a stronghold which the French had recently fortified on Cape Breton for the purpose of defending its interests in the Gulf of St Lawrence. This victory was secured largely by the efforts of the New England colonists. In the following year another plan for the conquest of Canada was thwarted by the necessities of war in Europe. At the close of the war Louisburg, too, was restored to the French. After this fashion did the world-struggle react upon the special interests of the English in North America, and perplex and irritate the colonists. In the fourth intercolonial war (1754-63) the struggle between the two nationalities in North America was decided. Events which immediately preceded this war—the occupation of the Ohio Valley and the building of Fort Duquesne—clearly revealed an intention on the part of the French to exclude the English from the Mississippi Valley and confine them to the Atlantic slope. A persistent effort was also made to recover Acadia. The western, as well as the northern, frontier was not threatened, and the war which followed affected all the colonies. Great Britain sent over a succession of commanders-in-chief. Great improvement was made upon the crude efforts at joint colonial action which had characterized the earlier wars. To as great a degree did the Albany Congress of 1754 (see Albany, New York) surpass in importance the meetings of governors and military officers which had occasionally been held in previous times, though its plan of colonial union failed to meet the approval both of the colonists and of the government of Great Britain. The campaigns of this war were all upon a comparatively large scale. Campaigns were carried on not merely along the line of Lake Champlain and in Acadia, but against Fort Duquesne (see Pittsburg, Penn.), Oswego, and Fort Frontenac, Louisburg, and Quebec (q.v.) itself. The weak Spanish power was overthrown in Florida and expeditions were sent against the southern Indians. In all quarters, and especially after Pitt became secretary of state, the British assumed the offensive. The navy of Great Britain, as well as its army, was called into action on a much larger scale in America than ever before. The result was the conquest by the British of Canada, and with it of all North America east of the Mississippi river; the French claim to territory west of this river was ceded to Spain in 1762.
41. The wars with the French brought the problem of colonial defence among the English into greater prominence than ever before, and added it to the other questions which had been of practical moment from the first. Against the Indians the colonists in the 17th century had provided for their own defence. Chiefly with this object in view, each colony had developed a militia system, modelled in general after that of England. But such a force was not fitted for long campaigns or large operations. It was comparatively undisciplined; both officers and men were inexperienced and destitute of proper habits of command, as well as those of subordination; the commissariat was poor or totally lacking, and the men were able to remain away from their homes for only brief periods. The colonists possessed no navy, and for coast defence only a few rude forts. So poor were means of communication and so isolated were the colonies from one another, that co-operation in joint expeditions was very difficult. Equally difficult was it to secure proportional contributions of money from the colonies. Early in the French wars the British government prescribed quotas both of men and money to be raised by the colonies, but little attention was paid to these except by the colonies which were in immediate peril. Because of the limited amount of available money and the modest resources of the colonists heavy taxation was impossible, and the financing of the wars was a matter of great difficulty. The assemblies-resorted to the issue of bills of credit, to which they gave the legal tender quality, and for the redemption of which in nearly all cases they made inadequate provision. The paper depreciated and in some colonies became worthless. Great confusion resulted, involving loss to all, and among the sufferers were British merchants. Strained relations were produced between the assemblies and the colonial executive, because the latter, acting under royal instructions, persisted in vetoing bills for additional issues of currency. For this reason, in addition to others, the assemblies withheld the salaries of governors and other officials, and in this way sought to coerce the executives into submission. In some colonies the Assembly secured the right of electing the treasurer, and in most of them appropriations were made specific. Thus by skilfully utilizing their control over the purse, and that during a long period of war, the colonial assemblies were able materially to limit the authority of the executives and to establish not a few privileges for ​themselves and their constituents. It was in such ways as these that the constitutions of the provinces became developed and liberalized during the French wars. Many a precedent was then established which was utilized in the later struggle with the mother country. The home government on its part also became convinced that requisitions were altogether inadequate as a method of procuring revenue for general purposes.
42. The quality of the rank and file of the Canadian militia was not essentially different from that of the British colonies. But the Canadian government was autocratic. The power of the French was also concentrated in a single large province, and not distributed among thirteen or more colonies. These conditions greatly promoted military efficiency. When taken in connexion with their Indian alliances, they enabled the French to take the offensive in the earlier wars much oftener than did the English, and with much greater effect. The government at Quebec was not subject to the limitations of quotas and requisitions. There were no assemblies to thwart its will. The English frontier was also more accessible and more exposed than was the lower part of the valley of the St Lawrence. Quebec was in every sense a citadel to which additional security was given during a large part of every year by the intense cold of the Canadian winter. But so superior were the training and enterprise of the French coureur de bois that, with his Indian allies, he was far better able than the English farmer or artisan to penetrate the wilderness, whether in winter or in summer, and massacre the exposed dwellers on the frontier. It was this class which gave the French the superiority in the long succession of raids by which the English frontier was laid waste.
43. Though the French by their skill and boldness achieved a remarkable success, their defects and weaknesses were equally evident. The flow of population from France to America was never great, and even it was diminished by the exclusion of Huguenots. The natural growth of population within New France was not rapid. The result was that the French colonists did not become sufficiently numerous to maintain the interests to which their vast claims and possessions gave rise. The disparity between their numbers and those of the British colonists became greater with every generation. At the opening of the last intercolonial war the proportion of English to French colonists was approximately 15 to 1. New York alone had about the same population as that of all the French colonies on the North American continent combined. The resources of the British exceeded those of the French colonists to a corresponding degree. Had the decision of the questions at issue depended upon population and wealth alone, the issue could not long have remained doubtful. But the tendencies arising from these fundamental conditions were to such an extent offset by other circumstances, already alluded to, that the result of the struggle was for a long time uncertain. Had it been confined to the forces of the colonies alone, it would perhaps never have been decided. The English could have defended the territory which they occupied; so could the French. Moreover, with the French and English thus facing one another, it would have been impossible for the latter to have declared their independence. The French would never have desired to do this. Therefore, the two peoples must apparently have remained in the condition of colonists for an indefinite period. But the motherlands were to be the decisive factors in the problem, which thus depended to an extent on complications which existed in Europe or even on remoter seas and continents. When the climax of the struggle was reached the result might have been different if France at the time had not been so deeply involved in the politics of central Europe.
44. Of the first importance in reaching a decision were the fleets and armies of Great Britain and France, or those parts of them which were available for use on the continent of North America. During the larger part of the period under review the French neglected their fleet, while the English steadily advanced toward naval and commercial supremacy. But the first conspicuous service on the northern coasts was that which was rendered by Commodore Peter Warren and his squadron at the capture of Louisburg in 1745. In the next year a large French fleet was dispatched to North America, but it accomplished nothing. In the last intercolonial war the operations before Louisburg in 1758 and at Quebec (q.v.) in 1759 decisively proved the superiority of the British navy. The colonies also, in the later stages of the struggle, contributed loyally toward the result. France failed to make her natural military superiority effective in North America, and therefore her power on that continent had to yield before the combined attacks of Great Britain and her colonies by land and sea.
D.—The Colonial Revolt, 1763-1776.
45. The Treaty of Paris (1763), by which the period of colonial wars—but not the struggle between England and France—was British Acquisitions of Territory. concluded, added vast stretches of territory to the dominions of Great Britain in North America. The Floridas, Canada and Louisiana as far west as the Mississippi river now came into the possession of the English. Of the islands which were occupied, the two most important—Guadaloupe and Martinique—were restored to the French. The retention of Canada in preference to these involved an important change in the nature and objects of British colonization. Hitherto tropical colonies had been preferred to those in northern climes. The occasion of this had been the view that, as England was not over-populated, colonies were not needed as “homes for a surplus population.” Instead, they were estimated in proportion to their commercial value. The ideal was a self-sufficing commercial empire. The supporters of this view now argued that the islands which had been conquered from the French were more valuable than Canada and should be retained in preference to the northern continental territories, which had yet produced nothing for export except furs. But the government did not hesitate. Following the lead of Pitt, it was now bent upon continental expansion. Canada and the West were retained and the most important French islands were given back. The development of modern industry—the so-called industrial revolution—had already begun in Great Britain. Its effect was vastly to increase the population of the British Isles and to necessitate an overflow into the unoccupied regions of the globe. Colonies therefore began to be regarded from this point of view, and the retention of Canada opened the way for the change. Henceforth, as time progressed, colonies were to be valued as homes for a surplus population quite as much as sources of raw materials and food supplies. The retention of Canada and the West also coincided exactly with the desires of the continental colonies. The chief gains of the war went therefore to them and not to the island colonies. They now possessed a continental domain which was adequate to their need for expansion, and their long-cherished desire to be rid of the French was gratified. Though, as expansion progressed, conflicts with the Indian tribes of the interior, and that on a large scale, were to be expected, the conquest of the French removed the sense of dependence on Great Britain for military aid which the northern colonies in particular had previously felt.
46. In consequence of the policy thus adopted, largely increased burdens were, devolved on the imperial government, Changed Colonial Policy of Great Britain: Strengthening of Imperial Control. while the conquest and the events which led to it strengthened imperialist sentiment and ambitions. The course of action which was at first favoured by leading officials, both in England and the colonies, was a more systematic administration of Indian affairs, the employment of sufficient regular troops under the commander-in-chief to defend the newly acquired territory, the maintenance of posts with English settlers in the interior on a scale sufficient to prevent the French or Spanish from securing the trade of the region. Improved methods of administration were urged through the press by Thomas Pownall, Henry McCulloh, Francis Bernard and Dr John Campbell. French methods were praised and ​the shortcomings of the surviving chartered colonies were again emphasized. This all required additional revenue, as well as administrative vigour, and that at a time when Great Britain was specially burdened with debt and when several of the colonies had recently incurred heavy expenditures. The large acquisitions of territory also necessitated some changes in the acts of trade. The necessity for their more vigorous enforcement was revealed by the existence of a large contraband trade between the colonists and the enemy during the later years of the war and also of a considerable illegal trade with Europe. These conditions, together with the conviction that, as the continental colonies had reaped the chief advantages of the war, some favour should be extended to the islands, led to the passage of the Sugar Act by the Grenville ministry in 1764. It also caused a resort to writs of assistance in two of the colonies, and finally the legalization of them in all the colonies by act of parliament (1767). The aid of the navy was directly invoked in the enforcement of the trade laws, and the activity of the customs officials and of the admiralty courts in the colonies was increased. Garrisons of regular troops—numbering several thousand—with a commander-in-chief were now present in the colonies in time of peace, and their aid might possibly be invoked by the civil power to suppress disorder. The Sugar Act itself was a trade and revenue act combined, and the fact was expressed in the preamble of the measure. It was intended directly to affect the traffic between the northern colonies and the foreign West Indies in lumber and food-stuffs, molasses and rum. The duty on foreign molasses, for which provision had been made in the Molasses Act of 1733, was halved; but now it was proposed really to collect this duty. A cry was immediately raised in New England that, if the duty was collected, the manufacture of rum—of which molasses was the staple material—would be lessened or wholly prevented and a most important industry sacrificed. The fisheries would incidentally suffer. The supply of coin, with which colonial balances were paid in England, they also said, would be lessened. Another act of parliament, passed about this time, prohibited the bestowment of the legal tender quality on colonial bills of credit. Though parliament regarded this act as a necessary remedy for the excesses of which many of the colonies had been guilty in the issue of paper money, it was generally regarded in America as a blow at a necessary system of credit. In spite, however, of the opposition and criticism which it provoked in the northern colonies, it is probable that the Sugar Act could have been permanently enforced. The Act of Trade of 1673 and the Molasses Act—though the latter was not fully executed—were two early instances of the exercise by parliament of the right to tax the colonies. Had the Sugar Act been enforced, a clear and decisive precedent in favour of this right would have been established. In view of the general situation, that was probably as far as the British government should have gone at that time. But it immediately committed itself to another and still more significant measure, and the two acts combined caused an outburst of protest and resistance from the colonists.
47. Repeatedly in earlier years the imposition of a stamp duty upon the colonies had been suggested. Archibald Cummings, William Keith, ex-governor of Pennsylvania, and Governor George Clinton cf New York had prominently urged this policy. With the outbreak of the fourth intercolonial war comprehensive plans of parliamentary taxation were repeatedly proposed. The cost of the regular troops which must be stationed in America was estimated at about £300,000 annually. The Sugar Act was expected to yield about £45,000 a year. It was thought that the colonies should raise about £100,000 more as their reasonable share of the cost. George Grenville resolved to secure this by means of a stamp duty. This would fall upon the island colonies equally with those of the continent, though it would be expended chiefly for the enlarged military force on the mainland. Though its simplicity and ease of collection recommended it, the Stamp Act was a purely fiscal measure, and its character was not concealed by any features which allied it to the earlier acts for the regulation of trade. It involved an extension of the British system of stamp duties to the colonies, and was intended to draw revenue directly from many lines of their activity. It was passed by parliament in 1765, almost without debate and with scarcely a thought that it would be resisted. It provided for the appointment of officials to distribute the stamped papers in the colonies and further extended the power of the admiralty courts by giving them jurisdiction over violations of this act. The legal theory upon which the act was based was that of the unqualified sovereignty of parliament as the representative body for the whole empire, and that its authority, if it chose to use it, was as effective for purposes of taxation as for the regulation of trade or other objects of legislation. But Stamp Act. never before, during the century and a half of colonial history, had the taxing power been so unqualifiedly exercised or in such trenchant force as by this statute. It followed close on the heels of the Sugar Act, which itself had aroused much hostile criticism. The two measures also came at a time when the consciousness of strength among the colonists had been increased by the defeat and expulsion of the French. Moreover, at the time when the policy was initiated, George III. had undertaken to crush the Whig party and to revive the latent prerogatives of his office. This resulted in the formation of a series of coalition ministries. Vacillation and uncertainty were thus introduced into the colonial policy of the government. The royal policy also brought into the public service in England and kept there an unusually large group of inferior men who persistently blundered in the treatment of colonial questions. It was only with the accession of the North ministry, in 1770, that permanence and a certain consistency were secured. But, in the view of the colonists, the prestige of the government had by that time been seriously lowered, and the stubborn self-will of the king became the only available substitute for broad and intelligent statesmanship.
48. Determined opposition to the Stamp Act was shown in all the colonies, by or before the time (Nov. 1) when it was to go into effect. The forms assumed by this opposition were such as characterized the entire controversy with Great Britain until the opening of hostilities in 1775. It consisted in the passage of resolutions of protest by the lower houses of some of the colonial legislatures; in the calling of a congress at New York, which was attended by delegates from nine of the colonies; in the activity of mobs organized under the name of the “Sons of Liberty” in all the large seaports and in some smaller inland towns; and, finally, in a somewhat widely extended movement against the importation of British, or even foreign, goods and in favour of frugality and the encouragement of home manufactures. The newspaper press also sprang into much greater activity than ever before, and many notable pamphlets were published in defence of the colonial cause. The most important resolutions at the outset were those adopted by the Virginia House of Burgesses and by the House of Representatives of Massachusetts. Through the first-named body the dramatic eloquence of Patrick Henry (q.v.) forced five resolutions. Two others, which threatened resistance and the coercion of any who should venture to uphold the home government, failed to pass, but the whole seven were published broadcast through the colonies. The calling of a general congress was proposed by the House of Representatives of Massachusetts. Prominent among its members was James Otis, who had already distinguished himself by radical opposition to measures of the government, especially in the case against writs of assistance which was argued before the superior court in 1761. Samuel Adams (q.v.), already a prominent man, was now elected a member of the house from Boston. He almost immediately became its leader, drafting its most important resolutions and papers, and to a large extent directing its policy. With the aid of others he was able greatly to increase the activity of the town-meeting in Boston, and in the course of a few years to develop it on occasion into a great popular convention, which could be utilized to overawe the government. Throughout New England the town and its institutions served well the purposes of opposition and ​facilitated its extension over large areas. The county system of the provinces along the middle and southern coast was not so well adapted to these purposes, and their population was more dispersed. The intense Puritan spirit, with its century and a half of pronounced independence, both in polity and temper, was also lacking outside New England; though on the frontiers of the provinces from Pennsylvania southward was a Scottish-Irish population which exhibited many of the New England characteristics. But the tenant farmers of New York, the German pietist sects of Pennsylvania, the Quakers wherever they had settled, and in general the adherents of the English Church were inclined toward indifference or, as the controversy progressed, toward positive loyalism. Hence the mixture of nationalities in the Middle Colonies greatly increased the difficulty of rousing that section to concerted action. In Pennsylvania the issues were obscured by a struggle on the part of the western counties to secure equal representation with those of the east. This helped to make loyalists of the Quakers. Special grievances also produced among the frontier settlements of North and South Carolina quite as much dislike of the officials and social leaders of the tide-water region as they could possibly feel toward Crown and parliament. Throughout the struggle New England and Virginia exhibited a unity and decision in action which were not equalled elsewhere.
49. But to return to the Stamp Act. Before the meeting of the Congress at New York outbreaks of mob violence in Colonial Opposition. Boston had forced the stamp distributor there to resign, and had wrecked the house of Thomas Hutchinson, the chief justice. Owing largely to the indecision of the elective council, the government had proved powerless to check the disorder. The resolutions passed by the Congress, as well as its petitions to the home government, gave authoritative form to the claims of the colonial opposition in general, though the body which issued them, like all the congresses which followed until 1776, was extra-legal and, judged by the letter of the law, was revolutionary. In these utterances, as later, the colonists sought to draw their arguments from British precedents and their own history. As they owed allegiance in common with subjects within the realm, so the rights of the two were the same. The two British rights which, it was claimed, were violated by the Stamp Act were the right to trial by jury and the right to be taxed only by an assembly in which they were represented. The former grievance was simply an incident of the latter, and was occasioned by the extension of the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts. The tax was a direct grievance. Therefore, for purposes of legislation like this these bodies denied that parliament was representative of the whole empire (so-called virtual representation), and asserted that it represented only the realm. For purposes of taxation, their assemblies, they affirmed, were the only representative bodies they had known. Therefore, ignoring the earlier and tentative measures by which parliament had actually taxed the colonies, and falling back upon the sweeping declarations of their assemblies, they denied the right of parliament to tax them. They declared that the recent policy of parliament was wholly an innovation and insisted upon a return to the Constitution as it was before 1763. The doctrine of natural right and compact was also resorted to with increasing emphasis in New England utterances. For purposes of government they had all along acknowledged—and now did so expressly—that parliament bound them; and the inference would have been fair that they were represented in it. But they did not draw this inference, nor did they seek by any scheme of reform to secure representation in the imperial legislature. James Otis was the only colonial leader who ever contemplated the possibility of such a solution. Adams early declared it to be undesirable. The British never proposed it, and therefore it played practically no part in the discussion.
50. The decisive blows, however, were struck by the mobs in the colonies and by the government itself in England. As the time for the execution of the Stamp Act approached, more or less violent demonstrations occurred in New York and in many other localities. The stamp distributors were forced to resign. Everywhere in the original continental colonies the use of stamped papers was prevented, except to a slight extent in Georgia. Business requiring the use of stamps was in part suspended, but far more generally it was carried on without their use. Without the aid of the militia, which in no case was invoked, the colonial executives proved indisposed or powerless to enforce the act and it was effectively nullified. In England the petitions of the colonists produced little effect. There the decisive events were the accession of the Rockingham ministry to power and the clamours of the merchants which were caused by the decline in American trade. What might have happened if Grenville had remained in office, and if the duke of Cumberland had not been suddenly removed by death, it would be impossible to tell. But the serious lack of adjustment between British politics and colonial government is illustrated by the fact that, more than three months before the Stamp Act was to go into effect, the ministry whose measure it was resigned, and a cabinet which was indifferent, if not hostile, to it was installed in office. Preparations were soon made for its repeal. The slight extent to which relations with the colonies had been defined is indicated by the fact that the debates over the repeal contain the first serious discussion in parliament of the constitution of the British Empire. While the colonies were practically united in their views a great variety of opinions was expressed in parliament. On the question of right Lord Mansfield affirmed the absolute supremacy of parliament in realm and dominions, while Camden and Pitt drew the same sharp line of distinction between taxation and legislation upon which the colonists insisted, and denied the right of parliament to tax the colonies. The debates at this time gave rise to the fancied distinction between internal and external taxes, of which much was made for a few months and then it was dropped. But motives of expediency, arising both from conditions in the colonies and in England, proved decisive, and in the spring of 1766 the Stamp Act was repealed, while its repeal Repeal of the Stamp Act; the Declaratory Act. was accompanied with the passage of a statute (The Declaratory Act) affirming the principle that Great Britain had the right to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever. This measure was received with demonstrations of joy in the colonies, but the prestige of the home government had received a severe blow, and the colonists were quick to resent further alleged encroachments.
51. These soon came in the form of a colonial Mutiny Act and of the so-called Townshend Acts (1767). The former was intended Townshend Acts. largely to meet the needs of the troops stationed in the West and in the new colonies, but it also affected the older colonies where garrisons of regular soldiers existed. The act provided for a parliamentary requisition for barrack supplies, and partly because it included certain articles which were not required for the soldiers in Europe, the New York legislature at first refused to make the necessary appropriation. Partly through the influence of the governor, it later came to think better of it and in a non-committal way appropriated the supplies required. But meantime in England the Pitt-Grafton ministry had come into office, in which the brilliant but reckless Charles Townshend was chancellor of the exchequer, Pitt himself was disabled by illness, and the ministry, lacking his control, steadily disintegrated. Townshend availed himself of this situation to spring upon his colleagues and upon parliament a new measure for colonial taxation, and with it a bill legalizing writs of assistance and establishing a board of commissioners of the customs in America, and a third bill suspending the functions of the assembly of New York until it should comply with the terms of the Mutiny Act. These Bills all became law. Before the last-mentioned one reached the colonies, the New York Assembly had complied, and therefore the necessity for executing this act of parliament was avoided. The establishment of a customs board at Boston, of itself, did not provoke much criticism. But the Act of Trade and Revenue, which provided for the collection in the colonies of duties on glass, lead, painters' colours, paper and tea, and that out of the revenue ​raised therefrom salaries should be paid to the governors and judges in America, opened anew the controversy over taxation.
52. John Dickinson, in his Letters of a Farmer (1767-1768), denied in toto the authority of parliament to tax the colonies, and his argument was widely accepted. Massachusetts petitioned the home government, and in a circular letter conveyed its views to the other colonies and asked an expression of theirs in return. This provoked Hillsborough, the incumbent of the new colonial secretaryship, to order the Massachusetts house to rescind its action and the other colonies to treat the letter with contempt. The Massachusetts assembly refused to rescind and was dissolved by the governor. The activity of the customs officials at Boston in seizing John Hancock's sloop, “Liberty,” occasioned rioting, which in turn was followed by the transfer of two regiments to Boston. Several vessels of war were also stationed in its harbour (autumn of 1768). Deprived of their assembly, the towns of Massachusetts chose deputies, who met in convention, but without important result. Favourable replies to its circular letter were, however, received from a majority of the colonies. Resolutions against the new act were passed by many colonial assemblies, and in several cases petitions were sent to England. But, either because these addresses were not sent through the regular constitutional channels, or because they expressed views inconsistent with the Declaratory Act, they were laid on the table or rejected outright. The king and ministers expressed the view that the Americans were opposed to all restrictions, and that in Massachusetts treason or misprision of treason had already been committed. In this they had the support of large majorities in parliament. The statute of 35 Henry VIII., for the punishment in England of such offences when committed outside the realm, was now revived, and the royal officials in Massachusetts were instructed to collect evidence against suspected popular leaders with a view to their deportation across sea for trial. Though sufficient evidence was not found, nothing could have been better calculated to increase the exasperation of the colonists than a threat of this kind. It drew from the Virginia burgesses strong addresses and resolutions of protest. Fear lest the English Church would induce the government to establish a colonial episcopate caused much discussion at this time, especially in New England, and led to plans for joint action on the part of Dissenters, in self-defence. Though the government never sanctioned the plan, the fears which were aroused by its discussion contributed appreciably to the general agitation. In the course of 1769 the policy of commercial nonintercourse was again revived, and resolutions in favour of its enforcement were passed by many local bodies. But it was found difficult to enforce these, and, as the colonies were prosperous, trade, open and illicit, with Europe continued to be large. The British merchants did not clamour for relief, as they had done at the time of the Stamp Act, but gave loyal support to the policy of the government. The king was also steadily gaining an ascendancy, which in 1770 was permanently established by the accession of Lord North to the premiership. Thus, on both sides of the ocean, parties were bracing themselves for a struggle, the one for and the other against the principle of the Declaratory Act. The question of revenue was now largely obscured by that of right and power.
53. It cannot be said that the Townshend Revenue Act was nullified, for to a certain limited extent it was executed. But Tea Tax. in 1770, on the specious plea that the duties were uncommercial because they were levied on British manufactures, all except the duty on tea—3d. per ℔—were repealed, and a drawback of one-fourth and later of three-fifths of this duty was granted on the re-exportation of tea to the colonies. But the preamble of the act was retained, and with it the principle of taxation. For this reason opposition continued and non-importation agreements, especially against tea, were maintained. But after the collision which occurred between the troops and the people in Boston, in March 1770, the soldiers were removed from that town and affairs became more quiet. For more than a year it seemed as if the controversy was wearing itself out and that the old relations would be restored. But the conduct of certain naval officers and small vessels of war which had been trying to suppress illegal trade in Narragansett Bay led, in June 1772, to the destruction of the schooner “Gaspee.” The inquiry which necessarily followed this, together with legislation for the protection of the royal dockyards, ships and supplies, again revealed the possibility that colonists might be removed to England for trial. About the same time provision was made for the payment by the home government of the salaries of the governors and of the judges of the superior court of Massachusetts while those officials continued to hold at the pleasure of the Crown. These events occasioned a movement in Massachusetts and Virginia which led at once to the organization of committees of correspondence, and these ultimately extended far and wide throughout the colonies. At the same time in England the East India Company appealed to parliament for relief from the losses caused by the transfer of the American trade so largely to the Dutch, and in response the Tea Act was passed authorizing the company to import its teas into the colonies and providing that the English duties should be wholly drawn back on exportation, and that no compensation need be made to the government for consequent loss of revenue. This, it was expected, would enable the company to out-compete the Dutch. But popular uprisings prevented the reception or sale of the tea at any of the ports and culminated in the destruction (Dec. 16, 1773) of 340 chests at Boston. As the king and the North ministry were now fully intrenched in power, coercion was at-once resorted to and affairs were thus brought to a crisis.
54. Those among the colonists who were intelligent enough to watch the course of events had long felt that they were being Quebec Act. enveloped in a network of relations over which they had no control. This was a result of the development of the empire, with its world-wide interests and its policies the motives for which had their origin in conditions which by the colonists were dimly perceived, if perceived at all. They were particularists whose views and resources were alike narrow, but whose perception of their interests was clear. The Quebec Act, which was passed by parliament near the close of the session of 1774, furnished a case in point. Owing to the failure of the imperial government to secure the revenue which it had hoped to collect under the Stamp Act and the later statutes, it had been forced to abandon its plans for the vigorous administration of Indian affairs and of the West. In view of these facts it was thought wisest and cheapest to commit the immediate charge of the West to the province of Quebec, and therefore to extend its bounds southward to the Ohio. The Roman Catholic religion was recognized as legal within Quebec, and no provision was made for an assembly. Its extension also indicated a purpose to prevent the westward movement of population across the mountains, which was already beginning from the Middle and Southern colonies. It is true that this act involved the possibility of danger to the colonies, but exaggerated inferences were drawn respecting it and the motives which probably impelled its passage. So it had been with the distinctively imperialist measures from the first and so it was to continue.
55. But the acts of the session of 1774 which were of most immediate importance were those which directly affected Massachusetts, where lay the centre of disturbance. One of these closed the port of Boston, another substituted an appointed for an elected council in Massachusetts and took the selection of jurors out of the hands of the people, and a third made possible the removal from Massachusetts of the trials of persons indicted for capital offences committed in support of the government into neighbouring colonies or to Great Britain, where a fair hearing was considered possible. General Thomas Gage, who had been commander-in-chief in America, was now appointed governor of Massachusetts, with authority to uphold the new acts with military force. As soon as knowledge of the fate impending over Boston reached the other colonies, conventions, local and provincial, were held, and the plan of a general congress, as proposed by Massachusetts and Virginia, was adopted. Delegates were chosen from all the colonies except Georgia, though that province fell into line when the ​second Congress met. The members were instructed to the general effect that they should consult together and adopt such measures as were best calculated to secure the just rights of the colonists and redress their grievances. Voting by colonies, but occasionally listening to utterances which implied that Americans were now thrown into a single mass, this body sent addresses to the king, to the people of the colonies, of Quebec First Continental Congress. and of Great Britain, and prepared a declaration of rights. It is a significant fact that an address was not sent to either of the houses of parliament. In its statement of rights the Congress (known as the First Continental Congress) limited itself to those which it believed had been infringed since 1763. These acts they described as innovations, and claimed themselves to be the true conservatives who only desired peace on the basis of the former Constitution. Even Joseph Galloway's elaborate plan of union (see Galloway) between Great Britain and the colonies was debated at great length and was laid on the table by a majority of only one, though later all reference to it was expunged from the record. But, on the other hand, the warlike “Suffolk Resolves” (see Milton, Mass.) were approved, as was the opposition which Massachusetts was making to the recent acts of parliament; and the view was expressed that, if an attempt were made to execute them by force, all America should support Massachusetts. Though the work of this Congress was deliberative, it performed one positive act which contained the germ out of which new governments were to develop. That was the issue of the Association, or non-importation and non-exportation agreement, accompanied with resolutions for the encouragement of agriculture and home manufactures and for the organization of committees to carry these measures into effect. Coercion, according to the principle of the boycott, was to be applied by the colonies and other local bodies to all who declined to accept and obey the terms of the Association. This policy had been followed at intervals since the time of the Stamp Act. It had been The Association, or Non-Importation and Non-Exportation Agreement. revived and urged by very many local and provincial bodies during the past few months. The Congress had been called with a view to its enforcement throughout the continent. Its issue of the Association gave this policy wide extension, and at the same time strengthened the system of committees, whose energies were henceforth to be chiefly devoted to its enforcement. The Association became the touchstone by which loyalty to the colonies, or loyalty to the king, was determined. Those whose loyalty to the king forbade their submission to the new regulations now felt the coercive power of committees, even to the extent of virtual trial, imprisonment or banishment. Local bodies, acting under general regulations of Congress, and all revolutionary in character, accomplished these results and thus laid the foundation of the new governments. From this action the First Continental Congress derived its chief significance.
56. The line of policy thus indicated was not such as would conciliate the home government, though it is doubtful if at that time anything short of an acknowledgment of the principle of the Declaratory Act would have been effective. All measures of congresses and committees, everything which did not emanate from the assemblies and come through legal channels, savoured of sedition and was little likely to secure a hearing. The Association, with its threats and coercive spirit, and depending as it did upon extra-legal bodies for enforcement, was a direct blow at the commercial system of the empire and could scarcely help provoking retaliation. When the Congress adjourned, some of its members predicted war. In New England the impression that war was inevitable was widespread. In Massachusetts a provincial congress was at once organized, which assumed the reins of government and began to prepare for defence. A committee of safety was chosen to carry on the work during recesses of the Congress. Thomas Gage, the governor, began fortifying Boston, while he looked about for opportunities to seize military stores which the colonists were accumulating. The raising of voluntary militia companies was soon begun in Virginia. In South Carolina, as earlier in Boston and New York, a quantity of tea was now actually destroyed, and a general committee assumed practical control of the province. From New York City and Philadelphia as centres the process of revolutionizing the two most conservative provinces was carried on. When parliament met, at the close of 1774, the king and ministers declared that a most daring spirit of resistance existed in Massachusetts, which was countenanced by the other colonies, where unlawful combinations against the trade of Great Britain were already widely extended. In these opinions the government had the support of the majority in the two houses, and in a joint address the rebellion in Massachusetts was declared to be a fact. As a conciliatory measure Chatham proposed that parliament agree by resolution not to levy any tax upon the colonies, but that the Continental Congress be required to make a free grant of a perpetual revenue which should be fully at the disposition of parliament, the Congress fixing the quota which should be paid by each province. But the imperialist and mercantilism ideas of Chatham were expressed in the further provisions that the system of trade and navigation should not be changed and that the army might be lawfully kept in any part of the dominions where it was deemed necessary, though it should never be used to violate the just rights of the people. Edmund Burke, in his great speech on conciliation, advocated a return to the system of requisitions and did not consider a representation of the colonists in parliament as a possibility. But these motions were rejected, and a resolution introduced by Lord North was passed. This contained no recognition of extra-legal bodies, but provided that when the assembly of any colony should engage to support civil government within the colony and contribute according to its ability to the common defence, the king and parliament would then forbear to levy any more taxes on that province except what were necessary for the regulation of trade. The colonies, with the exception of New York, North Carolina and Georgia, were excluded from the fisheries, as a counter stroke to the Association. North's resolution proved utterly futile, and the two parties drifted steadily toward war, though, as Burke never tired of asserting, the British government in its military estimates made no adequate provision for meeting the crisis.
57. On the 19th of April 1775 hostilities began in Massachusetts. They had been narrowly escaped two months before, Outbreak of Hostilities; Lexington and Concord; Bunker Hill. when, on a Sunday, Gage had sent an expedition by water to Salem in search of powder. Now, on a week-day, a force was sent overland to Concord, 20 m. from Boston, to seize or destroy the military stores which the colonists had brought together at that village. The minute-men were warned to oppose the approaching force, and at Lexington (q.v.), a village situated on the road to Concord, occurred a skirmish in which the first blood of the American War of Independence was shed. The troops marched on to Concord (q.v.) and destroyed such of the stores as had not been removed or concealed. On their return march they were pursued by a galling fire from behind fences and buildings, and had it not been for the arrival of a relieving force the command would have been destroyed before it reached the protection of the British vessels of war at Boston. The “Lexington alarm” brought in throngs of militiamen from all parts of New England. Officers were appointed by the provincial congress of Massachusetts and by similar bodies in the other colonies, and immediately the so-called siege of Boston began. Cannon, as well as every other form of military equipment, were now in great demand. In order to secure a supply of the former and at the same time strike a telling blow at British authority in the north, Ticonderoga (q.v.) was surprised and taken on the 10th of May. Men from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and the New Hampshire Grants (later Vermont) co-operated in this enterprise. It was soon followed by a dash into Canada, by steps which involved New York in the affair, and by the organization of a military force under General Philip Schuyler for permanent service on the northern frontier. ​Meantime reinforcements reached Boston, led by Howe, Clinton and Burgoyne, and it was resolved to extend the British lines by occupying the heights of Dorchester on the south and those of Charlestown on the north. The Americans, hearing of this, seized Breed's Hill, overlooking Charlestown, where they hastily threw up a redoubt on the night of the 16th of June. The British might easily have entrapped them, but instead on the next day the American position was assaulted on the left and carried, though with much difficulty and after a loss to the assailants of more than 1000 men. Such was the battle of Bunker Hill (q.v.), one of the most dramatic encounters in the war which was then beginning. In connexion with all these events the Americans, as in their earlier conventions and manifesto es, claimed to be acting on the defensive. But it was not difficult to perceive that, especially in New England, this claim only imperfectly concealed an intensely aggressive spirit. (For military events of the war, see American War of Independence.)
58. The news of the outbreak of hostilities aroused strong feeling throughout the colonies. The Second Continental Congress met under its influence. Its members, however, had been chosen and instructed before the clash of arms, and for that reason the course which had been worked out for them differed only slightly, if at all, from that which had been followed by their predecessors. To a certain extent the new body adhered to the former course of action. But a state of war now existed in New England and on the Canadian border. Troops were expected soon to arrive at New York. Reports of these events were thrust upon the attention of Congress at once, and the provinces involved asked for advice as to what course they should pursue. The northern frontier especially demanded attention. As a result of these events in the colonies generally the Association was being changed from a system of co-operation against British trade into a union for purposes of defence. This new situation the Congress was forced to meet. This it did largely by resolutions of advice to the colonies, but also by positive orders. Of the former class were the resolutions about the procuring of military supplies, the assumption of powers of government by the various colonies, and concerning defence at New York City, on the northern frontier and, later, in the Highlands of the Hudson. Of a more decisive character was the appointment of officers for the army, George Washington being made commander-in-chief, the prescribing of their pay, the issue of continental bills of credit, the issue of articles of war, the regulation of trade and of Indian affairs, and the establishment of postal communication. As the colonies were passing through a strong reaction against executive authority, Second Continental Congress. the Congress did its business with the help of temporary committees and did not seek to establish a permanent executive. The same was true for a time of the congresses and conventions in the different colonies. As the movement progressed through 1775 and the early months of 1776, executive authority in the royal and proprietary provinces collapsed. The assemblies were either dissolved or ceased to meet. The governors, their authority gone, retired on board British vessels of war, returned to England or, perchance, found themselves prisoners in the hands of the revolutionists. This gradual fall of the old governments, imperial and colonial, was the revolution on its negative side. The rise of the system of congresses, conventions and committees, deriving their authority from the people, was the revolution on its positive side, and foreshadowed the new federal system which was rising on the ruins of the half-federated empire. The process in the different colonies was as varied as were their social and political conditions.
59. In Connecticut and Rhode Island the corporate system of government, which they had inherited from the 17th century, necessitated no change. The general assemblies always had been the centres of power, and the leading officials were elective for short terms and were subject to the control of the electorate. So far as the internal organization of the colonies was concerned that was all which the revolution demanded. In the two proprietary provinces—Pennsylvania and Maryland—the executives were not so directly interested and pledged to support the imperial government as were those of the royal provinces. But Governor Robert Eden of Maryland was so tactful that, though the last Assembly met in 1774, he was able, with the courts, to keep up some form of government there in the name of the Crown and proprietor until the early summer of 1776. In Pennsylvania the proprietors, though in sympathy with the British government, never sought actively to influence events in their province. So strong was the conservative spirit there that the proprietary Assembly even met—though without a quorum—as late as September 1776, at the time when the convention was completing the first constitution of the state. In the royal provinces the prorogation of the legislatures for indefinite or prolonged periods caused them early to disappear—that of Massachusetts in October 1774. The burgesses of Virginia last met for business in May 1774. They were prorogued Collapse of the Royal Governments. to several later dates, but the governor was never again able to meet them. The long and important session of January-March 1775 was the last held by the New York Assembly. In April 1775 Governor John Martin of North Carolina met the Assembly for the last time, and even then the Provincial Convention was in session at the same time and place and the membership of the two bodies was the same. In May 1775 disappeared the Assembly of Georgia; in June those of New Hampshire and South Carolina met for the last time. Governor William Franklin was able to meet the Assembly of New Jersey as late as November, but months before that date the Provincial Convention had practically assumed the control of affairs. The royal courts and executives continued some form of activity a few months longer and then totally vanished.
60. After Bunker Hill the command at Boston had been transferred from Gage to Sir William Howe. In July Washington took command of the colonists and gradually established some degree of order and discipline among them. Though the American levies were raw and ever fluctuating in numbers, the British never seriously attempted to break through their lines. Indeed, it was not the plan of the British to make New England the chief seat of war. As early as the 2nd of August 1775 Lord Dartmouth wrote to General Gage on “the obvious advantages that would attend the taking Possession of New York and the hazard of the Army's continuing at Boston.” On the 5th of September he wrote to Howe that every day's intelligence exhibited this fact in a clearer light. Rhode Island was considered as a convenient naval station, and steps were soon taken to secure possession of it and its surrounding waters. This indicates what was necessarily the fact, that the British would so plan the war as to secure the maximum of advantage from their fleet. This would give them an easy command of the entire coast, and enable them to secure a foothold at strategic centres. Hence it was that, though the arrival of a fresh supply of cannon enabled Washington to fortify Dorchester Heights, this simply enabled him to hasten a process for which Howe Evacuation of Boston; American Expedition against Canada. had long been preparing. The evacuation occurred on the 17th of March 1776, and the British force withdrew temporarily to Halifax. Meantime the bold expeditions of Arnold and Montgomery against Canada—suggesting the joint efforts of the French wars—had met with only a partial success. Montreal had been occupied, but the assault upon Quebec had failed. A small American force awaited the return of spring in Canada, in order that they might renew the struggle for that colony.
61. The view, as it was now repeatedly expressed by king and parliament, was that the colonists were in open rebellion. North's offer of conciliation was peremptorily rejected by Congress. The acts of parliament were being openly resisted, and Congress in its manifestoes had ignored the two houses. Therefore the British government stood committed to coercion. That was the meaning of the legislation of the winter of 1776—the prohibition of trade with the rebellious colonies, the increase ​of the estimates for the army and navy, the employment of German auxiliaries for service in America. Preparations were made to send a large military and naval force against the colonies the following season, and that it should operate in part against the insurgents in New York and the southern colonies and in part through Canada. New England was no longer to be the direct object of attack. The Howes, as commanders of the royal army and navy, were appointed commissioners to grant assurance of peace and pardon and the repeal of the obnoxious acts, provided submission was made and some way could be found by parliament in which an imperial revenue for purposes of defence could be secured from the colonies. Military operations, meanwhile, should be directed against points of least resistance, and in that way, if possible, the union of the colonies should be broken. The trend of British policy indicated that an invasion from Canada might be attempted and the effort be made to hold Charleston, Philadelphia, and especially New York as strategic points on the coast.
62. The course of events in the colonies by which this situation was met was the erection of a system of feeble defences about New York and the removal thither of the army of about 9000 men in the spring of 1776; the fitting out of privateers to prey on British commerce and of a few small armed vessels by the colonies and the general government to watch the coast and procure supplies; the disarming of loyalists; the opening of American ports to the trade of all peoples who were not subject to the British Crown; and the tentative opening of relations with France. As the result of a combination of ill luck, bad management and American energy the British suffered a repulse at Charleston, South Carolina, in June, which was analogous to the affair of the year before at Bunker Hill, and which necessitated a postponement of their plans in the South. The Congress and the various revolutionary bodies in the colonies were forced to carry on War upon a constantly increasing scale. They had to assume powers of government and gradually to perfect their organization for the purpose. Committees in Congress became more permanent. Conditions approximating to those which existed the year before in New England extended through the colonies generally. On the 15th of May 1776, as the result of various earlier applications on the subject, and especially of one from certain Whigs in New York, the Congress recommended to the assemblies and conventions of the colonies where no government sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs had been established, “to adopt such government as shall, in the opinion of the representatives of the people, best conduce to the happiness of their constituents in particular and of America in general.” The preamble to this resolution set forth as facts the statements that the colonies had been excluded from the protection of the Crown, that no answer had been given to their petitions for redress, and that the whole force of the kingdom was to be used for their destruction, and therefore that it was no longer reasonable or honest for the colonists to take the oaths or affirmations necessary for the support of government under the Crown. Organization of State Governments; Declaration of Independence. Though the preamble was warmly debated, it was adopted. And this act marked a turning-point, for the progress of events from that time to the declaration of independence was rapid and decisive. The colonies—now becoming states—one after another, in response to letters from Philadelphia, empowered their delegates to concur in declaring independence. On the 7th of June R. H. Lee of Virginia introduced in Congress a resolution “that these United Colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states,” that it was expedient forthwith to take effectual measures for securing foreign allies, and that a plan of confederation should be formed. John Dickinson and others, speaking for the Middle Colonies, argued that the order of procedure should be reversed. But John Adams and the more aggressive party insisted that the proposed declaration would simply state the facts and would open the way for foreign alliances; that it was useless to wait for unanimity. The debate showed that the delegates from the Middle Colonies and South Carolina could not act, and so the decision was postponed for three weeks. In the interval steps were taken to draft a plan of treaties and articles of confederation. A board of war and ordnance, the earliest germ of an executive department, was also created by Congress. At the end of the three weeks the delegates from all the colonies except Georgia, South Carolina and New York had received instructions favourable to independence. The two former left their delegates free, and under the influence of the British attack on Charleston they voted for independence. News had just come that Howe had landed with a large force at Sandy Hook—as events proved, it was an admirably equipped army of 30,000 men, supported by a fleet. Under the impression of these stirring events Dickinson and his leading supporters ceased their opposition, and the Declaration, substantially in the form given to it by Thomas Jefferson, was agreed to (July 4, 1776), only three adverse votes being cast. The delegates from New York took no part, but a few days later the act was approved by the convention of that state. The signing of the document by the members took place at a later time. Thus triumphed the tendencies toward self-government which had been predominant in the continental colonies from the first, and which the system of imperial control had only superficially modified and restrained. But the most significant part of the document for the future was the preamble, in which the democratic aspirations of the new nation were set forth, the spirit to which Thomas Paine had just made so powerful an appeal in his Common Sense. Governments, it was said, derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and when any system becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to abolish it and to institute a new government, establishing it upon such principles and under such forms as seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. (See Independence, Declaration of.)
E.—The Struggle to Maintain Independence, 1776-1783.
63. Viewed from one standpoint, the declaration of independence was apparently an act of the utmost recklessness. The people were by no means a unit in its support, and in several of the states widespread indifference to it, or active sympathy with the British, prevailed. In New York, South Carolina and Georgia a condition of civil war came sooner or later to exist. The United States, as yet, had no international status, and it would seem that that must be secured, if at all, by a series of victories which would ensure independence. But how could these be won against the greatest naval power on the globe, supported by Veteran armies of continental and British troops? The colonies had no money; the few vessels which, as a collective body, they did send out, were more like privateers than anything else. Their army was an undisciplined throng of militiamen, serving on short enlistments, without organized commissariat, and for the most part under inexperienced officers. Its numbers, too, were far inferior to those of the British. Taxation by the Finance; Weaknesses and Defects of the American General Government. Continental Congress for the support of the war was not among the possibilities of the case. The colonies were struggling against taxation by one imperial body, and it was not likely that they would submit to similar impositions at the hands of another. The Congress, moreover, as has truly been said, was little more than a general committee or interstate council of safety, and had to proceed largely by way of advice. A strong tendency also toward the provision for immediate needs by the issue of bills of credit had been inherited from the period of the French wars, and resort was again had to that device. The battle of Bunker Hill had been immediately followed by an order of Congress for the issue of $2,000,000 in that form of currency. Issues followed in rapidly increasing amounts, until by the close of 1779 $241,000,000 had been authorized. The states put out nearly as much ($209,000,000), Virginia and the two Carolinas issuing the largest amounts. All that Congress could do to secure the redemption of its issues was to recommend to the states to provide the means therefor; but this they failed to do, or even to provide for the redemption of their own issues. The continental paper money depreciated until it became ​worthless, as to a large extent did that of the states also. The states decreed it to be legal tender, and dire threats were uttered against those who refused to receive the bills; but all to no purpose. The Congress also tried to induce the states to tax themselves for the general cause and was forced to rely on requisitions for the purpose. The colonies had insisted that the system of requisitions was good enough for the mother country, but when applied by Congress it proved as complete a failure as when resorted to by the Crown. The revolution was therefore never financed. It early became necessary to resort to loans and that chiefly from foreign sources. It was therefore an absolute necessity that the colonies should secure international recognition and status. Then loans were obtained from the governments of France and Spain and from private bankers in Holland to the amount of about $7,830,000.
64. The collapse of royal government left the colonies in a chaotic state. The old institutions had disappeared and new ones could not be immediately developed to take their place. But the institutions of local government, the town and county systems, were left intact, and upon these as a basis the new fabrics were erected. It was therefore easier to construct the governments of the states than to define and develop the general government. At first little else was intended than that the Congress should be the mouthpiece of the patriot party. It proceeded mainly by way of recommendation, and looked to the states, rather than to itself, as the ultimate sources of authority. Upon them it depended for the execution of its measures. The common will, as well as enactment, was lacking which would have given the force of positive law to the measures of Congress. As the war proceeded the states grew jealous of the central body and tried to prevent appeals to it from the state courts in prize cases. Under the pressure of war, moreover, the enthusiasm, which had been strong at the outset, declined, and it became increasingly difficult to secure co-operation or sacrifice toward any general enterprise. At the same time, war devolved upon Congress an enormous burden of work. It was forced to devise general policies and provide for their execution, and also to attend to an infinite number of administrative details. This was due not only to the exigencies of the time, but to the fact that no general executive was developed. As was characteristic not only of this revolution, but of all others, the committee system underwent an enormous development. “The whole congress,” wrote John Adams, “is taken up, almost, in different committees, from seven to ten in the morning. From ten to four or sometimes five we are in congress, and from six to ten in committees again.” “Out of a number of members,” writes another, “that varied from ten dozen to five score, there were appointed committees for a hundred varying purposes.” Upon its president and secretary the Congress was forced to depend not a little for the diligence and ability which was requisite to keep the machine going. But as the war progressed most of the able members were drawn off into the army, into diplomatic service or into official service in the states. Sectional and state jealousies also developed and became intense. By many the New Englanders were regarded with aversion, and members from that section looked with dislike upon the aristocrats from the South. As the Congress voted by states the smaller commonwealths were often moved by jealousy of their larger rivals to thwart important measures. But, above all, the conduct of the war and foreign relations occasioned infinite jealousies and cabals, while many of the most important measures seemed to meet with downright indifference. Washington's correspondence abounds in evidence of these facts, while it is well known that he was the object against whom one of the cabals of the time was directed. Benjamin Franklin was the object of somewhat similar jealousies. But, as time passed, rudimentary executive departments, beginning with the board of war and the postmaster-general, were developed, and some advance was made toward a working and permanent system. In 1781 the offices of foreign secretary, superintendent of finance, secretary of war and secretary of marine were created.
65. For a time, and indeed during most of the struggle, the course of the land war seemed to justify these criticisms and gloomy fears. Until its very close the campaign of 1776, from the American standpoint, was a dismal failure. The battle of Long Island was lost by the Americans and, as at Bunker Hill, it would have been quite possible for the British to have captured the entire force which opposed them on Long Island. Howe compelled Washington to evacuate New York City. On the Fort Washington. 16th of November the practical abandonment of the state of New York by the main army was necessitated by the capture of Fort Washington. Earlier in the year the Americans had been compelled to retire from Canada, while the Tories in northern New York were contributing valuable aid to the British.
66. But there was another side to the picture, and already certain faint outlines of it might be discerned. The British commander was proceeding slowly, even according to established European methods. At almost every step he was failing to seize the advantages that were within his reach, while Washington was learning to play a losing game with consummate patience and tact. Although he was constantly trying to rouse Congress and the states to more vigorous action, he showed no disposition to break with the civil power. Already, too, the physical obstacles arising from the wooded and broken character of the country, and from the extremely poor means of communication, were becoming apparent to the British; while the Americans always had the alternative, if too hard pressed, of withdrawing beyond the mountains. After Washington had crossed the Delaware, Howe, instead of seizing Philadelphia and driving Congress and the American army to some remote places of refuge, as he might have done, prepared for winter quarters. Washington seized the opportunity to return across the Delaware and surprise the British outposts at Trenton (Dec. 26, 1776) and Princeton (Jan. 3, 1777), and thus secured a safe post of observation for the winter at Morristown. Confidence was to an extent restored, the larger part of New Jersey was regained, and many loyalists were compelled to take the oath of allegiance. Howe's plan for the next campaign involved the strengthening of his army by large reinforcements from home and by all the men who could be spared from Canada. With this force he proposed to capture Philadelphia and thereby to bring the War of Independence to an end in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. New England and the states farther south could then be dealt with in detail. But Howe was overruled by Lord George Germain, the colonial secretary, whose plan included an invasion from Canada, in which Tories and Indians should share, while Howe should advance up the Hudson and meet the northern forces at Albany. If this ambitious scheme should succeed, the British would occupy, the valley of the Hudson and New England would be cut off from the rest of the colonies. General Burgoyne was appointed to command the northern expedition. But the failure of the plan was almost ensured from the outset by neglect on the part of British officials to instruct General Howe as to his part in its execution, while Burgoyne was forced to surrender near Saratoga on the 17th of October. Meanwhile, Howe, who had long waited for instructions respecting the northern expedition, was finally informed that he might undertake the Pennsylvania campaign, but with the hope that at its close he would still be able to march up the Hudson. Thereupon, embarking his army, Howe sailed for Chesapeake Bay, at the head of which he landed and advanced towards Philadelphia. Washington's army opposed his march at the Brandywine (Chad's Ford), but was defeated (Sept. 11, 1777) and forced to retire beyond Philadelphia. The British then entered the city (Sept. 26) and the Congress withdrew to Lancaster, and later to York, in the interior of Pennsylvania. The British fleet had in the meantime arrived in Delaware Bay, and, after a prolonged and brave defence, had captured Forts Mercer and Mifflin. When the winter began the Delaware, as well as lower New York and Rhode Island, was in the possession of the British. With the fragments of an army Washington retired to Valley Forge (q.v.).
​67. But the influence of Burgoyne's surrender in Europe was to prove a turning-point in the war. Since 1763 a strong sentiment at the French court had been favourable to a resumption of war with Great Britain. An opportunity was now presented by the colonial revolt. In November 1775 the Congress created a committee of secret correspondence, which, in April 1777, was developed into a committee of foreign affairs, and this continued until 1781, when the office of foreign secretary was established. To Congress, and to the members who were serving on its secret committee, the possible attitude of France was known from an early date. The necessity of securing supplies and loans from Europe was also imperative, though the United States had nothing to pledge in repayment except the future products of her soil. In February 1776 Silas Deane (q.v.) was sent to Paris, ostensibly as a business agent, and with the connivance of the French government supplies were sent to America and American vessels were received into French ports. Soon American privateers were bringing their prizes into French harbours, and British commerce began to suffer from these attacks. On the French side Beaumarchais and others actively co-operated in this. In the autumn of 1776 Congress appointed three commissioners to France, and resolved that Spain, Prussia, Austria and other European states should be approached with a view to securing recognition and aid. In December 1776 Franklin, who, with Deane and Arthur Lee, had been appointed commissioner to France, arrived at Paris, bringing with him proposals for treaties of commerce and alliance. But, though the attitude of the French court toward the Americans was friendly, and though it continued to send secret aid, and to exert a favourable influence upon Spain, yet it could not be French-American Alliance. induced to abandon its outward appearance of neutrality until after the news of Burgoyne's surrender arrived. Then the real purpose of the French government was revealed. On the 6th of February 1778 the treaties were signed, and in the following summer war between France and England began. The influence of France under the Family Compact was also persistently used to bring Spain into the alliance. The latter was naturally hostile to England, but her aversion to colonial revolts and her desire to substitute mediation for war kept her from declaring against England until April 1779. In October 1779 Henry Laurens (q.v.) was elected minister to the Netherlands, and sailed for Europe, taking with him a plan of a commercial treaty. But Laurens and his papers were captured by the British at sea, and partly by that event the Netherlands were forced into war with England. With the other states of northern Europe they undertook to defend the interests of neutrals against the arrogant enforcement by Great Britain of the rights of search at sea. Thus the conflict expanded into a commercial and naval war, Great Britain being confronted by the larger part of Europe.
68. The conclusion of the treaty of alliance by France was immediately followed by the equipment of a fleet under the comte d'Estaing, which sailed from Toulon in April 1778, having on board M Conrad Alexandre Gérard de Rayneval, who had been accredited as minister to the United States, and Silas Deane, who was returning to report to Congress. Sir Henry Clinton had now succeeded Howe in command of the British army. The certainty that a French fleet would soon appear in American waters made it necessary for the British to evacuate Philadelphia and return to a point on the coast where the army could be in easy communication with the fleet. This fact shows how the French alliance had changed the nature of the war. It now became to a large extent a contest between the two navies, the principal evolutions of which occurred in West Indian and European seas. (See American War of Independence.) In the north the British now relatively neglected the land war, and refrained from sending such forces to the eastern coast as had supported Howe in 1776. The Americans, on the other hand, had a naval force upon which they relied, in the hope that the blockade of their coasts might be raised and trade routes opened more freely. On the evacuation of Philadelphia in June Washington's army pursued the British as they retired toward New York, and the indecisive battle of Monmouth was fought on the 28th of June. It did not prevent Clinton from reaching New York, and that city continued to be the centre of British power and operations in the north until the close of the war. The Congress returned to Philadelphia, where Gérard was received, and where he was soon exercising an influence favourable to the policies of Washington and opposed to the clique of which General Horatio Gates was the leader. Washington's army came gradually to occupy a line of forts, of which West Point in the Highlands of the Hudson was the citadel. From there as a centre it was possible to communicate with Newport on the east and with the Delaware region on the south, and at the same time to prevent the British from gaining access to the interior of the country. Though the fleet of D'Estaing carried a heavier equipment of cannon than did that of Admiral Howe, the French commander did not choose to risk an attack on New York, but passed eastward to Newport. Howe followed him, while Washington and his generals planned active cooperation with the new allies by land. But a sudden storm so dispersed and injured the fleets that the French admiral retired to Boston for repairs and later sailed for the West Indies.
69. While the war and foreign relations were thus developing, the states were organizing their governments and Congress State Constitutions. was beginning to consider articles of confederation between the states. In this way an effort was made to gather up and make permanent the positive results of the revolution. As under the chartered and royal governments of the colonial period the source of political authority had been the Crown, now by a necessary reaction this was sought in the people. This principle had been stated in the Declaration of Independence, and had been implied throughout the earlier controversy and in much of the history of the colonies as well. The colonies had insisted on a more precise definition of the powers of government; they had opposed parliament because its powers were undefined and therefore dangerous. Following these ideas, the states now described their institutions of government and defined their powers by means of written constitutions. These were formulated by the provincial Congresses—which had now become the legislatures—or, as they came to insist upon a more specific expression of the popular will, by conventions chosen for the purpose by the electors. Connecticut and Rhode Island retained their colonial charters. In the earlier days of hasty and temporary devices, the constitutions, like statutes, had been promulgated by the legislatures which formed them and had been put into force by their authority alone. But as time passed and more permanent arrangements became necessary an express popular approval of the instruments was insisted upon and was obtained before they were put into force. The establishment of state governments in this way began before the issue of the Declaration of Independence. It was actively continued during 1776 and the early months of the following year, by which time all of the states had secured at least a temporary constitution. South Carolina and New Hampshire revised theirs before the close of the war. Massachusetts did not secure a constitution which suited her until 1780, but then her procedure corresponded in all particulars with what was to be later American practice in such matters. Of the constitutions of the revolutionary period the two most striking features were the bills of rights and the provisions which were made concerning the executives and their relations to the legislatures. The men of that generation were jealous of government. They insisted upon individual rights, not as acquired and guaranteed by the state, but as original, natural and inhering in time prior to all governments. Governments were instituted for the common benefit, protection and security. Officials were trustees and were accountable to the people. There should be no hereditary title to office or power. There should be no titles of nobility, and in Virginia the system of entails was swept away. Monopolies were declared to be inconsistent with the spirit of a free state. The doctrine that it was unlawful to resist ​arbitrary power was declared to be absurd. Freedom of the press and of conscience was asserted, and no obstacles to fair and speedy jury trials were to be tolerated. Elections should be free and frequent, and a preference was expressed for short terms of office. The legislature was universally regarded as the most important department of government. Although the principle of the separation of powers was recognized, in eight states provision was made that the executives should be elected by the legislatures, eleven withheld from them the veto, and the states generally provided for a council to advise them. So manifold and important, however, were the restrictions on suffrage that the states were as yet far from being democracies. On the other hand, many wild and impractical ideas were cherished, and there were anarchic tendencies, which were revealed soon after the war and still later, under the influence of the French Revolution.
70. The first draft of the Articles of Confederation between the states was prepared by John Dickinson in the early summer The Articles of Confederation. of 1776 and was reported. The report was debated for some weeks after the issue of the Declaration of Independence. Owing to the pressure of war it was then laid aside until the autumn of 1777. By that time the feeling in favour of state sovereignty had so increased that the impossibility of securing assent to the articles in any form had begun to be feared. But the document was completed and submitted to the states in November 1777, when all were encouraged by the news of Burgoyne's surrender. The system for which provision was made in this document was a “confederacy,” or “firm league of friendship” between the states, for their common defence, security and general welfare. The Congress was to be continued, and was to consist of delegates annually appointed by the legislature of each state and paid by their states. No attempt was made to create an executive for the confederacy, though authority was given to Congress to appoint a council of state which should manage general affairs, especially during recesses of Congress. To Congress various general powers were entrusted, as deciding on peace and war and superintending the conduct of the same, building a navy, controlling diplomatic relations, coining money and emitting bills of credit, establishing post offices, regulating Indian trade, adjusting boundary disputes between the states. The financial powers entrusted to Congress included those of borrowing money and determining necessary expenditures, but not the power to tax. For supplies the general government had to depend on requisitions from the states. The same system also had to suffice for the raising and equipment of troops. Congress could not make its laws or orders effective in any matter of importance. This was simply a continuation of the policy under which the revolution was being conducted. The Americans had thought that the military and financial concerns of the British Empire could be managed under a system of requisitions, and now they were bent upon trying it in their own imperial relations. The control of trade was also practically left with the states, the Americans in this matter failing to live up to the requirements of the British system. The predominance of the states was further ensured by the provision that no votes, except those for daily adjournment, could be carried without the assent of a majority of all the states, and no important measure without the consent of nine states. But a common citizenship was declared to exist, and Congress received authority to establish a court of appeal which might pass finally on all disputes between states. Taken as a whole, the Articles of Confederation would bear favourable comparison with other schemes of their kind, and they fairly represented the stage of development to which the American states had then attained. The defects which existed in them were reflections of the immaturity, political and social, which had always been apparent in the Americans as colonists and which was to characterize them as a nation for generations to come.
71. We have seen that, on the whole, the attitude of Great Britain, after the peace of 1763, was not favourable to the colonization of the Mississippi Valley. To the colonists the Quebec Act gained in offensiveness by seeming to imply that it was intended to exclude them from the West. But all such plans were swept away by the outbreak of the War of The West. Independence. Already, before the beginning of hostilities, emigrants had begun to flock across the mountains. Plans were on foot for the establishment of a number of commonwealths, or proprietary provinces, as the case might be. Vandalia was planned in western Virginia, Watauga in western North Carolina. Daniel Boone and his associates pushed farther west into the Kentucky region, and there it was proposed to establish the commonwealth of Transylvania. Other similar projects were started, all repeating in one form or another the political methods which were used when the seaboard colonies were first settled. The backwoodsmen who managed these enterprises were extreme individualists, believed in the propriety of resistance to governments, and were in full sympathy with the War of Independence. They desired to escape to the free land and life of the West and be rid of the quit rents and other badges of dependence which still lingered in the East. The states which had claims in the West opposed the founding of independent settlements there and, if possible, induced the settlers to be content with the status of counties within some one of the eastern states. After the beginning of the War of Independence, the British from Detroit incited Indian raids for the purpose of destroying or driving out the settlers, especially in Kentucky. These provoked the expeditions of George Rogers Clark (q.v.), in 1778 and 1779. With a force of Virginians he seized Kaskaskia and later, after a long march, captured Vincennes and compelled General Henry Hamilton, who had come with a relief force from Detroit, to surrender. This secured to the Americans a permanent hold upon the North-West. But Spain, after she entered upon the war, was determined, if possible, to wrest the valley of the Mississippi from the British and to keep all, or the larger part of it, for herself. To that end, operating from New Orleans, her troops took possession of Natchez, and other posts on the lower Mississippi, and occupied Mobile and Pensacola. These events prevented the possibility of the expulsion of the Americans from the West, but devolved upon their representatives at Paris the necessity of engaging in a diplomatic contest against Spain for the purpose of securing the Mississippi as the western boundary of the United States. But meanwhile the occupation of the West by Americans had a notable influence upon the ratification of the Articles of Confederation.
72. Within the Confederacy a fundamental line of cleavage was that between the large and small states. It was jealousy Articles of Confederation Ratified. on the part of the latter, their fear lest they might be absorbed by their larger neighbours, which had necessitated the adoption of the plan that in the Congress the delegates should vote by states. When the articles were referred to the states for ratification, the difficulty reappeared. Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York, with Virginia and the three states to the south of it, had large claims to territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, which were without hope of westward extension, hesitated to enter the Confederacy, if the large states were to be still further increased by additions to their areas of vast stretches of western country. They insisted that before ratification the states which had claims to western lands should surrender these for the common benefit of the United States. Maryland insisted upon this until, in the end, the cause of state equality and of nationality triumphed. Congress declared that the ceded lands should be formed into states, which should become members of the union with the same rights as other states. When, in 1781, this course of action had become possible, Maryland ratified the articles and they came into effect. The possibility of the expansion of the United States through the development of territories was thus ensured.
73. So far as the North American continent was concerned, the character of the last stage of the struggle with Great Britain ​was determined by the fact that the British resolved to transfer the main seat of war to the Southern states, in the hope that Georgia and South Carolina might be detached from the Union. At the close of 1778 Savannah was captured. In The War in the South. September 1779 D'Estaing returned and assaulted Savannah, but, failing to capture it, sailed for France. In 1780 Clinton sailed from New York, besieged Charleston with a force much superior to that of Lincoln, and captured it (May 12). State government in South Carolina ceased. But the chance of detaching those states from the Union and of bringing the war in that region to an end was finally lost by the British. This was chiefly due to an order which recalled the paroles of many of those who had surrendered at Charleston and required that they should perform military service under the British. The attempt to enforce this order, with the barbarities of Colonel Banastre Tarleton and certain Tory bands, provoked a bloody partisan conflict in the upper districts, especially of South Carolina, which contributed more than any other cause to turn the scale against the British in the remote South. By the winter of 1781 they were forced back to Charleston and Savannah. (See American War of Independence.)
74. During the summer of 1780 Washington was prevented from accomplishing anything in the North by the demoralized condition of the finances and by the decline of public spirit. It was very difficult to secure recruits or supplies. The pay of the troops had fallen so into arrears that some of them had already begun mutiny. A second French squadron and military force, under De Ternay and Rochambeau, landed at Newport, but they were at once shut up there by the British. Clinton and Cornwallis were now planning that the latter, having put down resistance in the remote South, should march through North Carolina and Virginia to Baltimore and Philadelphia and that a junction of the two British forces should be effected which, it was believed, would complete the ruin of the American cause. This, too, was the period of Arnold's treason and the death of André. But the turn of the tide in favour of the Americans began with the partisan warfare in South Carolina, which delayed the northward march of Cornwallis, who retired to Yorktown. Wilmington and thence marched north with a small force into Virginia, and in July retired to Yorktown, in the peninsula of Virginia. Washington and Rochambeau had meantime been planning a joint move against the British at New York, or possibly in Virginia, and a letter was sent to De Grasse, the French admiral in the West Indies, suggesting his co-operation. De Grasse replied that he would sail for the Chesapeake. This confirmed Washington and Rochambeau in the opinion that they should march at once for Virginia and, after junction with the force of Lafayette, co-operate with De Grasse against Cornwallis. By well-timed movements the forces were brought together before Yorktown (q.v.), and Cornwallis was forced to surrender on the 19th of October 1781.
75. As the effect of this event was to drive Lord North from power in England, it proved to be the last important operation Treaty of Peace. of the war in America. The king was compelled to give way. Rockingham was called into office at the head of a cabinet which considered the recognition of American independence to be indispensable. The negotiations fell into the hands of Shelburne, the friend of Franklin and disciple of Adam Smith. Richard Oswald was the leading British agent, while Franklin, Jay, John Adams and Henry Laurens were the American negotiators. From the first the acknowledgment of independence, the settlement of the boundaries and the freedom of fishing were insisted on as necessary terms by the Americans. Free commercial intercourse and the cession of Canada to the United States, partly in payment of war claims and partly to create a fund for the compensation of loyalists, were also put forward as advisable conditions of peace. The first three points were early conceded by the British. They also agreed to restrict Canada to its ancient limits. But discussions later arose over the right to dry fish on the British coasts, over the payment of debts due to British subjects prior to the war, and over the compensation of the loyalists. Adams vigorously insisted upon the right to dry and cure fish on British coasts, and finally this concession was secured. Franklin was opposed to the demands of the loyalists, and they had to be content with a futile recommendation by Congress to the states that their claims should be adjusted. It was also agreed that creditors on either side should meet with no lawful impediment to the collection of their debts. Both France and Spain considered the claims of the Americans to be excessive, and were not inclined to yield to them. But the Americans negotiated directly with the British and the articles were signed without consultation with the French government. This course was offensive to Vergennes, but it was insisted upon as necessary, especially by Jay and Adams, while the diplomatic skill of Franklin prevented a breach with France. Peace was formally ratified on the 3rd of September 1783.
76. The American army was now disbanded. Since the close of active military operations both officers and men had been striving to secure their pay, which was hopelessly in arrears. Congress had voted half-pay to the officers for life, and many had agreed to accept a commutation of this in the form of full pay for a certain number of years. Certificates for these amounts were issued. But in this, as in other cases, it was found impossible to procure the money for the purpose from the states. Parts of the army repeatedly mutinied, and it was only the influence of Washington which prevented a general outbreak against Congress and the civil government. When the disbandment was finally effected the officers found their certificates depreciated in value and the states indisposed to honour them. They consequently received only a small part of their due, and the privates scarcely anything. This deplorable result was due in part to poverty, but quite as much to bad faith. The country was left in a most demoralized condition, the result of the long war and the general collapse of public and private credit which had accompanied it. It should not be forgotten that the conflict had taken to a considerable extent the form of a civil war. In many of the states Loyalists and Whigs had been arrayed against one another, and had been more or less fully incorporated with the two contending armies. In general the Loyalists showed less capacity for combined action than did their opponents, and in the end they were everywhere defeated. The real tragedy of the conflict will be found, not in the defeat of the British, but in the ruin of the Loyalists. It was accompanied by wholesale confiscations of property in many quarters, and by the permanent exile of tens of thousands of the leading citizens of the republic. These were the émigrés of the War of American Independence, and their removal deeply affected property relations and the tone and structure of society in general. Many of those who had been social and political leaders were thus removed, or, if they remained, their influence was destroyed (see Loyalists). New men and new families rose in their places, but of a different and in some ways of an inferior type. By this process sympathizers with the War of Independence gained and kept the ascendancy. British and monarchical influences were weakened, and in the end the permanence of republican institutions was ensured. But, as had been foreseen, society in this period of transition exhibited so many repulsive features as almost to cause the stoutest hearts to despair.
Bibliography.—Sources: The records in which are contained the materials for the internal history of any one of the British colonies are the land papers, the minutes of the executive council, the journals of the upper and lower houses of the legislature, the laws and the correspondence and miscellaneous papers which originated from the intercourse between the colonial authorities—especially the governor—and the home government or other colonies and states. Every one of the original states has published these records in part, in series which are known under the general names of colonial records or archives or documents, or provincial papers. The first seven volumes of the Provincial Papers of New Hampshire (Concord) contain general records, while other volumes are filled with local and miscellaneous records. Massachusetts has published Records of the Colony of New Plymouth (12 vols., Boston, 1885-1887), the Records of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England, 1628-1686 (5 vols., Boston, 1853-1854), the Records of the Court of Assistants (1 vol.), and its laws for the entire ​colonial period. Connecticut has printed The Colonial Records of Connecticut (15 vols., Hartford, 1850-1890), and the Records of the Colony of New Haven, 1638-1665 (2 vols., Hartford, 1857-1858). The Records of the Colony of Rhode Island fill 10 vols. (Providence, 1856-1865). New York has published the Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland (1 vol.), the Colonial Laws of New York from 1664 to the Revolution (5 vols., Albany, 1894), The Journal of the Legislative Council, 1691-1775 (2 vols., 1861), the Journal of the Votes and Proceedings of the General Assembly, 1691-1765 (2 vols., 1764-1766), the Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York (15 vols., 1853-1883), Minutes of the Albany Commissioners for Detecting Conspiracies (3 vols., 1909-1910) and the Documentary History of the State of New York (4 vols., 1849-1851). New Jersey has published the Grants and Concessions (1 vol.), edited by Leaming and Spier, and 28 vols. of The Archives of the State of New Jersey (Newark, 1880 sqq.). Pennsylvania has published 16 vols. of Colonial Records, 1683-1790 (Philadelphia, 1852) and four series of Pennsylvania Archives (1852-1856, 1874-1893, 1894-1895, &c.), the latter containing miscellaneous records relating to the colonies and the War of Independence. Under the title of Statutes at Large (11 vols.) its laws to the close of the War of Independence have been published. The Archives of Maryland (27 vols., Baltimore) contain the proceedings of the council, the assembly and the provincial court, with the laws, for a part of the colonial period. The Records of the Virginia Company of London (2 vols., Washington, 1906) have been printed; also Henning's Statutes at Large (13 vols., 1819-1823), and the Journal of the House of Burgesses for the later provincial period. Under the titles of Colonial Records (1886-) and State Records, North Carolina has published the sources of her early history very fully, except the land papers and laws. Thomas Cooper's Statutes of South Carolina (4 vols., to 1782) contain practically all of its sources which that state has published. Georgia has published 12 vols. of Colonial Records, containing minutes of the trustees and of the governor and council. The Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1574-1660 (London, 1860), and for 1661-1700 (13 vols., London, 1880-1910), the Acts of the Privy Council Colonial, 1613-1720 (2 vols., London, 1908-1910), and the Calendars of Treasury Papers (for the 18th century) cover relations between the British government and the colonies. Additional matter may also be found in many of the reports of the British Historical MSS. Commission. Hazard's Historical Collections (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1792-1794) is still valuable. B. Perley Poore's Federal and State Constitutions (2 vols., Washington, 1877) contains the texts of the colonial charters and state constitutions; and a similar collection was edited by F. N. Thorpe (7 vols., ibid., 1909). The records of many New England towns have been printed, as also those of New York City, Philadelphia and Albany. The Original Narratives of Early American History (1906-1910), edited by J. F. Jameson, contain reprints of much source material.
Cobbett's Parliamentary History, Almon's Remembrancer (17 vols., London, 1775-1784), and the writings of the British statesmen of the period, contain much material which is indispensable to the history of the War of Independence on its British side. Of official matters relating to the period of the War of Independence, special reference should be made to the Public Journals of the Continental Congress (13 vols.), and the Secret Journals (4 vols.). A new and improved edition (1908 sqq.) has been edited by W. C. Ford and G. Hunt. Indispensable to the student is Peter Force's American Archives (9 vols., Washington, 1837-1853), covering the years 1774 to 1776 inclusive. Francis Wharton's Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States (6 vols., Washington, 1889), and the earlier and less complete edition of the same by Jared Sparks (12 vols., Boston, 1829-1830), are also of great value. Alden Bradford's Massachusetts State Papers is valuable for that province. The journals of committees of safety, provincial congresses, conventions and early state legislatures are also for the most part in print. The colonial and revolutionary newspapers contain material of great variety. Semi-official also are the writings of the statesmen of the War of Independence—John and Samuel Adams, Jefferson, Dickinson, Franklin, Washington, Jay, all of which exist in very satisfactory editions. Henri Doniol's Histoire de la participation de la France à l'établissement des États-Unis d'Amérique (5 vols., Paris, 1886-1900) is a diplomatic history of the War of Independence and the peace, dealing chiefly with France.
The states all have historical societies, and there are many private and local societies in addition. Of these the most prominent are the societies of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. In addition, mention should be made of the Prince Society of Boston, the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, Mass., the Essex Institute of Salem, Mass., the Narragansett Club of Providence, R.I., and the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. The American Historical Association (Washington, D.C.) publishes valuable monographs; the second volume of the Report of the Association for 1905 is a detailed Bibliography of American Historical Societies (Washington, 1907).
Standard Histories: Of these the histories of the states first demand attention. Jeremy Belknap's History of New Hampshire (3 vols., 1784-1792; enlarged, 3 vols., Boston, 1813); Thomas Hutchinson's History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay (3 vols., Boston, 1767, and vol. iii., London, 1828); Samuel Greene Arnold's History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1636-1790 (2 vols., New York, 1859-1860); Benjamin Trumbull's Complete History of Connecticut, Civil and Ecclesiastical, to 1764 (New Haven, 1818; revised, 2 vols., New London, 1898); John Romeyn Brodhead's History of the State of New York (2 vols., New York, 1853-1871); William Smith's History of the Late Province of New York, from its Discovery to 1762 (2 vols., New York, 1829-1830); Samuel Smith's History of the Colony of Nova Cæsaria, or New Jersey, to 1721 (Burlington, N.J., 1765; 2nd ed., Trenton, 1877); Robert Proud's History of Pennsylvania from 1681 till after the year 1742 (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1797-1798); John Leeds Bozman's History of Maryland, 1633-1660 (2 vols., Baltimore, 1837); John V. L. McMahon's A Historical View of the Government of Maryland from its Colonization to the Present Day (Baltimore, 1833); William Stith's History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia (Williamsburg, 1747); John Daly Burk's History of Virginia (3 vols., Petersburg, 1804-1805); François Xavier Martin's History of North Carolina (2 vols., New Orleans, 1829); William James Rivers's Sketch of the History of South Carolina to the Close of the Proprietary Government by the Revolution of 1719 (Charleston, 1856); Edward McCrady's South Carolina (4 vols., New York, 1897-1902)—covering the period from 1670 to 1783—and Charles Colcock Jones's (jun.) History of Georgia (2 vols., Boston, 1883) are especially noteworthy. William Bradford's History of Plimouth Plantation (latest edition, Boston, 1898), and John Winthrop's History of New England, 1630-1649 (2 vols., Boston, 1825-1826), are essentially original sources, as are the Writings of Captain John Smith (Arber's ed.) for early Virginia. So are Alexander Brown's Genesis of the United States (2 vols., Boston, 1890), and the First Republic in America (Boston, 1898). Philip Alexander Bruce's Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (2 vols., New York, 1896) and W. B. Weeden's Economic and Social History of New England (2 vols., Boston, 1890) are of great value. Edmund B. O'Callaghan's History of New Netherland (2 vols., New York, 1846-1848), John Gorham Palfrey's History of New England (5 vols., Boston, 1858-1890) and I. B. Richman's Rhode Island, its Making and its Meaning (New York, 1902), are valuable for colonial New York, New England and Rhode Island respectively. George Bancroft's History of the United States (6 vols., 1884-1885) still has a great reputation, though it is altogether inadequate for the colonial period. Richard Hildreth's History of the United States (6 vols., New York, 1849-1852) is dry but accurate. John Andrew Doyle's English in America (5 vols., New York, 1882-1907) is valuable for the 17th century. Herbert L. Osgood's American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (3 vols., New York, 1904-1907) discusses the institutional history of the period. John Fiske has popularized the history of the times in a number of excellent works, some of them of decided originality. Francis Parkman's France and England in North America (12 vols., latest ed., Boston, 1898) is a classic on the history of Canada and its relations with the British colonies. William Kingsford's History of Canada (10 vols., Toronto, 1887-1898), and François Xavier Garneau's Histoire du Canada (4 vols., Quebec, 1845-1852), may be cited as holding places of special authority. Justin Winsor's Christopher Columbus (Boston, 1891), Cartier to Frontenac (ibid., 1894), and later volumes, are especially valuable for the history of exploration, discovery and cartography. The American Notion (22 vols., New York, 1903-1907), a co-operative history, edited by A. B. Hart, outlines the political history of the country as a whole. Edward Channing's History of the United States (8 vols., New York, 1905 sqq.), and Elroy McKendree Avery's History of the United States and Its People (15 vols., Cleveland, Ohio, 1905 sqq.) devote much space to the colonies and War of Independence. Sir George Otto Trevelyan's American Revolution (3 vols., London, 1899-1904) is a brilliant literary performance. Of special value is Lecky's study of the same subject in his History of England in the Eighteenth Century (8 vols., London, 1878-1890). George Louis Beer's Origins of the British Colonial System (New York, 1908) and his British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765 (New York, 1907), Justin Harvey Smith's Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony (2 vols., New York, 1907) and S. G. Fisher's Struggle for American Independence (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1908) are valuable monographs. For biography see the “American Statesmen Series” (16 vols., Boston) and Samuel V. Wells's Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (3 vols., Boston, 1865); James Kendall Hosmer's Life of Thomas Hutchinson (Boston, 1896); William Garrott Brown's Life of Oliver Ellsworth (New York, 1905); B. J. Lossing's Life and Times of Philip Schuyler (2 vols., New York, 1860-1873) and Bayard Tuckerman's Philip Schuyler, Major-General in the American Revolution (New York, 1903); George Washington Greene's Life of Nathanael Greene (3 vols., Boston, 1867-1871) and William Johnson's Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene (Charleston, 1822); William Thompson Reed's Life and Correspondence of George Reed (Philadelphia, 1870); Charles Janeway Stillé's Life and Times of John Dickinson (Philadelphia, 1891); William Wirt Henry's Patrick Henry (3 vols., New York, 1891);, John Marshall's Life of George Washington (5 vols., Philadelphia, 1804-1807); C. Tower's The Marquis de La Fayette in the American Revolution (2 vols., ibid., 1895); F. Kapp's Life of Frederick William von Steuben (New York, 1859), and his Life of John Kalb (New York, 1884). Moses Coit Tyler's Literary History of the American Revolution (2 vols., New York, ​1897) is of unique interest. Lorenzo Sabine's Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (2 vols., Boston, 1864), and Claude Halstead Van Tyne's The Loyalists in the American Revolution (New York, 1902); Herbert Friedenwald's The Declaration of Independence (New York, 1904), and John Hampden Hazelton's the Declaration of Independence—Its History (New York, 1906), are valuable special studies. Many important monographs have appeared in the “Johns Hopkins University Studies,” “the “Columbia University Studies,” the “Harvard Historical Studies,” and among the publications of the universities of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, The Carnegie Institution has issued the first volume of a report, edited by C. M. Andrews and F. G. Davenport, on materials in British archives for the period before 1783. The bibliography of American history receives adequate treatment in Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America (8 vols., Boston, 1886-1889) and in J. N. Larned's Literature of American History (Boston, 1902).
    (H. L. O.)
F.-The Struggle for National Government, 1783-1789.
77. The long struggle to secure the ratification of the Articles of Confederation had given time for careful consideration of the new scheme of government. Maryland's persistent criticism had prepared men to find defects in them. Conventions of New England states, pamphlets, and private correspondence had found flaws in the new plan; but a public trial of it was a necessary preliminary to getting rid of it. The efforts of the individual states to maintain the war, the disposition of each state to magnify its own share in the result, the popular jealousy of a superior power, transferred now from parliament to the central government, were enough to ensure the articles some lease of life. A real national government had to be extorted through the “grinding necessities of a reluctant people.”
78. Congress and its committees had already begun to declare that it was impossible to carry on a government efficiently under the articles. Its expostulations were to be continued for several years before they were heard. In the meantime it did not neglect the great subject which concerned the essence of nationality-the Western territory. Virginia had made a first offer to cede her claims, but it was not accepted. A committee of Congress now made a report (1782) maintaining the validity of the rights which New York had transferred to Congress; and Territorial Cessions. in the next year Virginia made an acceptable offer. Her deed was accepted (March 1, 1784); the other claimant states followed; and Congress, which was not authorized by the articles to hold or govern territory, became the sovereign of a tract of some 430,000 sq. m., covering all the country between the Atlantic tier of states and the Mississippi river, from the British possessions nearly to the Gulf of Mexico.
79. In this territory Congress had now on its hands the same question of colonial government in which the British Territorial Government. parliament had so signally failed. The manner in which Congress dealt with it has made the United States the country that it is. The leading feature of its plan was the erection, as rapidly as possible, of states, similar in powers to the original states. The power of Congress over the Territories was to be theoretically absolute, but it was to be exerted in encouraging the development of thorough self-government, and in granting it as fast as the settlers should The Ordinance of 1787. become capable of exercising it. Copied in succeeding acts for the organization of Territories, and still controlling the spirit of such acts, the Ordinance of 1787 (July 13, 1787) is the foundation of almost everything which makes the modern American system peculiar.
80. The preliminary plan of Congress was reported by a committee of which Thomas Jefferson (q.v.) was chairman, and was adopted by Congress on the 23rd of April 1784. It provided for the erection of seventeen states, north and south of the Ohio, with some odd names, such as Sylvania, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Polypotamia and Pelisipia. These states were for ever to be a part of the United States, and to have republican governments. The provision, “After the year 1800 there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said states, other than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” represented Jefferson's feeling on this subject, but was lost for want of seven states in its favour.
81. The final plan of 1787 was reported by a committee of which Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, was chairman. The prohibition of slavery was made perpetual, and a fugitive slave clause was added. The ordinance covered only the territory north of the Ohio, and provided for not less than three nor more than five states. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin have been the resultant states. At first Congress was to appoint the governor, secretary, judges and militia generals, and the governor and judges were, until the organization of a legislature, to make laws subject to the veto of Congress. When the population reached 5000 free male adult inhabitants the Territory was to have an assembly of its own, to consist of the governor, a legislative council of five, selected by Congress from ten nominations by the lower house, and a lower House of Representatives of one delegate for every 500 free male inhabitants. This assembly was to choose a delegate to sit, but not to vote, in Congress, and was to make laws not repugnant to “the principles and articles” established and declared in the ordinance. These were as follows: the new states or Territories were to maintain freedom of worship, the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, trial by jury, proportionate representation, bail, moderate fines and punishments, and the preservation of liberty, property and private contracts; they were to encourage education and keep faith with the Indians; they were to remain for ever a part of the United States; and they were not to interfere with the disposal of the soil by the United States, or to tax the lands of the United States, or to tax any citizen of the United States for the use of the navigable waters leading into the Mississippi or St Lawrence rivers. These articles were to be unalterable unless by mutual consent of a state and the United States. The transformation of the Territory, with its limited government, into a state, with all the powers of an original state, was promised by Congress as soon as the population should reach 60,000 free inhabitants, or, under certain conditions, before that time.
82. The Constitution, which was adopted almost immediately afterwards, provided merely (art. iv, § 3) that “Congress shall have power to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations respecting, the territory or other property belonging to the United States,” and that “new states may be admitted by the Congress into this Union.” Opinions have varied as to the force of the Ordinance of 1787. The Southern school of writers have been inclined to consider it ultra vires and void; and they adduce the fact that the new Congress under the Constitution thought it necessary to re-enact the ordinance (Aug. 7, 1789). The opposite school have inclined to hold the ordinance as still in force. Even as to the Territorial provision of the Constitution, opinions have varied.
83. In the interval of the settlement of the territorial question the affairs of the “league of friendship,” known as the United Difficulties of the Confederation. States, had been going from bad to worse, culminating in 1786. The public debt amounted in 1783 to about $42,000,000, of which $8,000,000 was owed abroad—in Holland, France and Spain. Congress had no power to levy taxes for the payment of interest or principal; it could only make requisitions on the states. In the four years ending in 1786 requisitions had been made for $10,000,000 and the receipts from them had amounted to but one-fourth of what had been called for. Even the interest on the debt was falling into arrears, and the first instalment of the principal fell due in 1787. To pay this, and subsequent annual instalments of $1,000,000, was quite impossible. Robert Morris, the financier of the War of Independence, resigned in 1783 rather than “be the minister of injustice,” hoping thus to force upon the states the necessity of granting taxing powers to Congress. Washington, on retiring from the command-in-chief, wrote a circular letter to the governors of all the states, urging the necessity of granting to Congress some power to provide a national revenue. Congress (April 18, 1783) appealed to the states for power to levy specific duties on certain enumerated articles, and 5% on others. It was believed that with these duties and the requisitions, which were now to be met by internal taxation, $2,500,000 per annum could be raised. Some of the states ratified the proposal; others ratified it with modifications; others rejected it, or changed their votes; and it never received the necessary ratification of all the states. The obedience to the requisitions grew more lax. In 1786 a committee of Congress reported that any further reliance on requisitions would be “dishonourable to the understandings of those who entertain such confidence.”
​84. In the states the case was even worse. Some of them had been seduced into issuing paper currency in such profusion Of the States. that they were almost bankrupt. Great Britain, in the treaty of peace, had recognized the independence of the individual states, naming them in order; and her government followed the same system in all its intercourse with its late colonies. Its restrictive system was maintained, and the states, vying with each other for commerce, could adopt no system of counteracting measures. Every possible burden was thus shifted to American commerce; and Congress could do nothing, for, though it asked for the power to regulate commerce for fifteen years, the states refused it. The decisions of the various state courts began to conflict, and there was no power to reconcile them or to prevent the consequences of the divergence. Several states, towards the end of this period, began to prepare or adopt systems of protection of domestic productions or manufactures, aimed at preventing competition by neighbouring states. The Tennessee settlers were in insurrection against the authority of North Carolina; and the Kentucky settlers were disposed to cut loose from Virginia. Poverty, with the rigid execution of process for debt, drove the farmers of western Massachusetts into an insurrection (Shays's Insurrection) which the state had much difficulty in suppressing; and Congress was so incompetent to aid Massachusetts that it was driven to the expedient of imagining an Indian war in that direction, in order to transfer troops thither. Congress itself Of Congress. was in danger of disappearance from the scene. The necessity for the votes of nine of the thirteen states for the passage of important measures made the absence of a state's delegation quite as effective as a negative vote. Congress even had to make repeated appeals to obtain a quorum for the ratification of the treaty of peace with Great Britain. In 1784 Congress actually broke up in disgust, and the French minister reported to his government—“There is now in America no general government—neither Congress, nor president, nor head of any one administrative department.” Everywhere there were symptoms of a dissolution of the Union.
85. Congress was evidently incompetent to frame a new plan of national government; its members were too dependent on Proposals for a Convention. their states, and would be recalled if they took part in framing anything stronger than the articles. The idea of a convention of the states, independent of Congress, was in the minds and mouths of many; Thomas Paine had suggested it as long ago as his Common Sense pamphlet: “Let a continental conference be held . . . to frame a continental charter . . . fixing the number and manner of choosing members of Congress, members of assembly . . . drawing the line of business and jurisdiction between them.” To a people as fond of law and the forms of law as the Americans there was a difficulty in the way. The articles had provided that no change should be made in them but by the assent of every state legislature. If the work of such a convention was to be subject to this rule, its success would be no greater than that of Congress; if its plan was to be put into force on the ratification of less than the whole number of states, the step would be more or less revolutionary. In the end the latter course was taken, though not until every other expedient had failed; but the act of taking it showed the underlying consciousness that union, independence and nationality were now inextricably complicated, and that the thirteen had become one in some senses.
86. The country drifted into a convention by a roundabout way. The navigation of Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac needed regulation; and the states of Maryland and Virginia, having plenary power in the matter, appointed delegates to arrange such rules. The delegates met (1785) at Alexandria, Va. (q.v.), and at Washington's house, Mount Vernon. Maryland, in adopting their report, proposed that Pennsylvania and Delaware Convention of 1786. be asked to nominate commissioners, and Virginia went further and proposed a meeting of commissioners from all the states to frame commercial regulations for the whole. The convention met (1786) at Annapolis (q.v.), Maryland, but only five states were represented, and their delegates adjourned, after recommending another convention at Philadelphia in May 1787.
87. Congress had failed in its last resort—a proposal that the states should grant it the impost power alone; New York's veto Convention of 1787. had put an end to this last hope. Confessing its helplessness, Congress approved the call for a second convention; twelve of the states (all but Rhode Island) chose delegates; and the convention met at Philadelphia (May 25, 1787), with an abler body of men than had been seen in Congress since the first two Continental Congresses. Among others, Virginia sent Washington, James Madison, Edmund Randolph, George Mason and George Wythe; Pennsylvania: Franklin, Robert and Gouverneur Morris and James Wilson; Massachusetts: Rufus King, Elbridge Gerry and Caleb Strong; Connecticut: William S. Johnson, Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth; New York: Alexander Hamilton; New Jersey: William Paterson; and South Carolina the two Pinckneys and John Rutledge. With hardly an exception the fifty-five delegates were clear-headed, moderate men, with positive views of their own and firm purpose, but with a willingness to compromise.
88. Washington was chosen to preside, and the convention began the formation of a new Constitution, instead of proposing The Virginia Plan. changes in the old one. Two parties were formed at once. The Virginia delegates offered a plan (see Randolph, Edmund), proposing a Congress, of two houses, having power to legislate on national subjects, and to compel the states to fulfil their obligations. This is often spoken of as a “national” plan, but very improperly. It was a “large-state” plan, proposed by those states which had or hoped for a large population. It meant to base representation in both houses on population, so that the large states could control both of them, and it left the appointment of the president or other executive and the Federal judges to Congress—so that the whole administration of the new government The New Jersey Plan. would fall under large-state control. On behalf of the “small states” Paterson of New Jersey brought in another plan. It continued the old Confederation, with its single house and equal state vote, but added the power to regulate commerce and raise a revenue, and to compel the states to obey requisitions. The large states had a general majority of six to five, but the constant dropping off of one or more votes, on minor features, from their side to that of the small states prevented the hasty adoption of any radical measures. Nevertheless, the final collision could not be evaded; the basis of the two plans was in the question of one or two houses, of equal or proportionate state votes, of large-state supremacy or of state equality. In July the large states began to show a disposition to force their plan through, and the small states began to threaten a concerted withdrawal from the convention.
89. The Connecticut delegates, from their first appearance in the convention, had favoured a compromise. They had been The Compromise. trained under the New England system, in which the assemblies were made up of two houses, one representing the people of the whole state, according to population, and the other giving an equal representation to the towns. They proposed that the new Congress should be made up of two houses, one representing the states in proportion to their population, the other giving an equal vote to each state. At a deadlock the convention referred the proposition to a committee, and it reported in favour of the Connecticut compromise. Connecticut had been voting in the large-state list, and the votes of her delegates could not be spared from their slender majority; now another of the large states, North Carolina, came over to Connecticut's proposal, and it was adopted. Thus the first great struggle of the convention resulted in a compromise, which took shape in an important feature of the Constitution, the Senate.
90. The small states were still anxious, in every new question, to throw as much power as possible into the hands of their ​special representative, the Senate; and that body thus obtained its power to act as an executive council as a restraint on the president in appointments and treaties. This was the only survival of the first alignment The Work of the Convention. of parties; but new divisions arose on almost every proposal introduced. The election of the president was given at various times to Congress and to electors chosen by the state legislatures; and the final mode of choice, by electors chosen by the states, was settled only two weeks before the end of the convention, the office of vice-president coming in with it. The opponents and supporters of the slave trade compromised by agreeing not to prohibit it for twenty years. Another compromise included three-fifths of the slaves in enumerating population for representation. This provision gave the slaveholders abnormal power as the number of slaves increased.
91. Any explanation of the system introduced by the Constitution must start with the historical fact that, while the national government was practically suspended, from 1776 until 1789, the only power to which political privileges had been given by the people was the states, and that the state legislatures were, when the convention met, politically omnipotent, with the exception of the few limitations imposed on them by the early state constitutions; The general rule, then, is that the Federal government has only the powers granted to it by the Federal Constitution, while the state has all governmental powers not forbidden to it by the state or the Federal Constitution. But the phrase defining the Federal government’s powers is no longer “expressly granted,” as in the Articles of Confederation, but merely “granted,” so that powers necessary to the execution of granted powers belong to the Federal government, even though not directly named in the Constitution. This question of the interpretation or “construction” of the Constitution is at the bottom of real national politics in the United States: the minimizing parties have sought to hold the Federal government to a strict Construction of granted powers, while their opponents have sought to widen those powers by a broad construction of them. The strict-construction parties, when they have come into power, have regularly adopted the practice of their opponents, so that construction has pretty steadily broadened.
92. Popular sovereignty, then, is the basis of the American system. But it does not, as does the British system, choose its legislative body and leave unlimited powers to it. It makes its “Constitution” the permanent medium of its orders or prohibitions to all branches of the Federal government and to many branches of the state governments: The Constitution. they must do what the Constitution directs and leave undone what it forbids. The people, therefore, are continually laying their commands on their governments; and they have instituted a system of Federal courts to ensure obedience to their commands. A British court must obey the act of parliament; the American court is bound and sworn to obey the Constitution first, and the act of Congress or of the state legislature only so far as it is warranted by the Constitution. But the American court does not deal directly with the act in question; it deals with individuals who have a suit before it. One of these individuals relies on an act of Congress or of a state legislature; the act thus comes before the court for examination; and it supports the act or disregards it as “unconstitutional,” or in violation of the Constitution. If the court is one of high rank or reputation, or one to which a decision may be appealed, as the United States Supreme Court, other courts follow the precedent, and the law falls to the ground. The court does not come into direct conflict with the legislative body; and, where a decision would be apt to produce such a conflict, the practice has been for the court to regard the matter as a “political question” and refuse to consider it.
93. The preamble states that “we, the people of the United States,” establish and ordain the Constitution. Events have shown that it was the people of the whole United States that established the Constitution, but the people of 1787 seem to have inclined to the belief that it was the people of each state for itself. This belief was never changed in the South; and in 1861 the people of that section believed that the ordinances of secession were merely a repeal of the enacting clause by the power which had passed it, the people of the state. An account of the form of government established by the Constitution appears elsewhere (see United States: VII.—Constitution and Government, pp. 646 sqq.).
94. The Constitution’s leading difference from the Confederation is that it gives the national government power over individuals. The Federal courts are the principal agent in securing this essential power; without them, the Constitution might easily have been as dismal a failure as the Confederation. It has also been a most important agent in securing to the Its Power over Individuals. national government its supremacy over the states. From this point of view the most important provision of the Constitution is the grant of jurisdiction to Federal courts in cases involving the construction of the Constitution or of laws or treaties made under it. The 25th section of the Judiciary Act of 1789 permitted any Supreme Court justice to grant a writ of error to a state court in a case in which the constitutionality of a Federal law or treaty had been denied, or in which a state law objected to as in violation of the Federal Constitution had been maintained. In such cases, the defeated party had the right to carry the “Federal question” to the Federal courts. It was not until 1816 that the Federal courts undertook to exercise this power; it raised a storm of opposition, but it was maintained, and has made the Constitution what it professed to be—“the Treason. supreme law of the land.” Treason was restricted to the act of levying war against the United States, or of adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. The states, however, have always asserted their power to punish for treason against them individually. It has never been fully maintained in practice; but the theory had its effect in the secession period.
95. The system of the United States is almost the only national system, in active and successful operation, as to which the exact location of the sovereignty is still a mooted question. The contention of the Calhoun school—that the separate states were sovereign before and after the adoption of the Constitution, that the Union was purely voluntary, and that the The Sovereignty. whole people, or the people of all the other states, had no right to maintain or enforce the Union against any state—has been ended by the Civil War. But that did not decide the location of the sovereignty. The prevalent opinion is still that first formulated by Madison: that the states were sovereign before 1789; that they then gave up a part of their sovereignty to the Federal government; that the Union and the Constitution were the work of the states, not of the whole people; and that reserved powers are reserved to the people of the states, not to the whole people. The use of the bald phrase “reserved to the people,” not to the people of the several states, in the 10th amendment, seems to argue an underlying consciousness, even in 1789, that the whole people of the United States was already a political power quite distinct from the states, or the people of the states; and the tendency of later opinion is in this direction. The restriction to state lines seems to be a self-imposed limitation by the national people, which it might remove, as in 1789, if an emergency should make it necessary.
96. By whatever sovereignty the Constitution was framed and imposed, it was meant only as a scheme in outline, to be filled up afterwards, and from time to time, by legislation. The idea is most plainly carried out in the Federal judiciary: the Constitution only directs that there shall be a Supreme Court, and marks out the general jurisdiction of all the courts, Details of the System. leaving Congress, under the restriction of the president’s veto power, to build up the system of courts which shall best carry out the design of the Constitution. But the same idea is visible in every department, and it has carried the Constitution safely through a century which has radically altered every other civilized government. It has combined elasticity with the limitations necessary to make democratic government successful over a vast territory, having infinitely diverse interests, and needing, more than almost anything else, positive opportunities for sober second thought by the people. A sudden revolution of popular thought or feeling is enough to change the House of Representatives from top to bottom; it must continue for several years before it can make a radical change in the Senate, and for years longer before it can carry this change through the judiciary, which holds for life; and all these changes must take place before the full effects upon the laws or Constitution are accomplished. But minor changes are reached in the meantime easily and naturally in the course of legislation. The members of the Convention of 1787 showed their wisdom most plainly in not trying to do too much; if they had done more they would have done far less.
97. The convention adjourned on the 17th of September 1787, having adopted the Constitution. Its last step was a resolution that the Constitution be sent to the Congress of the Confederation, with the recommendation that it be submitted to conventions elected by the people of each state for ratification or rejection; that, if nine states Submission to Congress. should ratify it, Congress should appoint days for the popular election of electors, and that then the new* Congress and president should, “without delay, proceed to execute this Constitution.” Congress resolved that the report of the convention be sent to the several legislatures, to be submitted to conventions; and this was all the approval the Constitution ever received from Congress. Both Congress and the convention were careful not to open the dangerous question, How was a government which was not to be changed but by the legislatures of all the states to be entirely supplanted by a different system through the approval of conventions in three-fourths of them? They left such questions to be opened, if at all, in the less public forum of the legislatures.
98. Before the end of the year Delaware, Pennsylvania and ​New Jersey had ratified; and Georgia, Connecticut and Massachusetts followed during the first two months of 1788. Thus far Federalists and Anti-Federalists. the only strong opposition had been in Massachusetts, a “large state.” In it the struggle began between the friends and the opponents of the Constitution, with its introduction of a strong Federal power; and it raged in the conventions, legislatures, newspapers and pamphlets. In a classic series of papers, the Federalist, Alexander Hamilton, with the assistance of James Madison and John Jay, explained the new Constitution and defended it. As it was written before the Constitution went into force, it speaks much for the ability of its writers that it has passed into a standard textbook of American constitutional law.
99. The seventh and eighth states—Maryland and South Carolina—ratified in April and May 1788; and, while the Ratification. conventions of Virginia and New York were still wrangling over the great question, the ninth state, New Hampshire, ratified, and the Constitution passed out of theory into fact. The Anti-Federalists of the Virginia and New York conventions offered conditional ratifications of all sorts; but the Federalists stubbornly refused to consider them, and at last, by very slender majorities, these two states ratified. North Carolina refused to ratify the Constitution, and in Rhode Island it was referred to the several towns instead of to a convention and was rejected by an overwhelming majority, the Federalists, who advocated the calling of a convention, refraining from voting (§112). Congress named the first Wednesday of January 1789 as the day for the choice of electors, the first Wednesday in February for the choice of president and Inauguration. vice-president, and the first Wednesday in March for the inauguration of the new government, at New York City. The last date fell on the 4th of March, which has been the limit of each president's term since that time.
100. When the votes of the electors were counted before Congress, it was found that Washington had been unanimously Fall of the Confederation. elected president, and that John Adams, standing next on the list, was vice-president. Long before the inauguration the Congress of the Confederation had expired of mere inanition; its attendance simply ran down until (Oct. 21, 1788) its record ceased, and the United States got on without any national government for nearly six months. The struggle for nationality had been successful, and the old order faded out of existence.
101. The first census (1790) followed so closely upon the inauguration of the Constitution that the country may fairly be said to have had a population of nearly four millions in 1789. Slavery in the United States. Something over half a million of these were slaves, of African birth or blood. Slavery of this sort had taken root in almost all the colonies, its original establishment being everywhere by custom. When the custom had been sufficiently established statutes came in to regulate a relation already existing. But it is not true, as the Dred Scott decision held long afterwards (§215), that the belief that slaves were chattels simply, things, not persons, held good at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. Times had changed somewhat. The peculiar language of the Constitution itself, describing a slave as a “person held to service or labour,” under the laws of any state, puts the general feeling exactly: slaves were persons from whom the laws of some of the states withheld personal rights for the time. In accordance with this feeling most of the Northern states were on the high road towards abolition of Abolition in the North. slavery. Vermont had never allowed it. In Massachusetts it was swept out by a summary court decision that it was irreconcilable with the new state constitution. Other states soon began systems of gradual abolition, which finally extinguished slavery north of Maryland, but so gradually that there were still 18 apprentices for life in New Jersey in 1860, the last remnants of the former slave system. In the new states north of the Ohio slavery was prohibited by the ordinance of 1787 (§81), and the prohibition was maintained in spite of many attempts to get rid of it and introduce slavery.
102. The sentiment of thinking men in the South was exactly the same, or in some cases more bitter from their personal Feeling in the South. entanglement with the system. Jefferson's language as to slavery is irreconcilable with the chattel notion; no abolitionist agitator ever used warmer language than he as to the evils of slavery; and the expression, “our brethren,” used by him of the slaves, is conclusive. Washington, George Mason and other Southern men were almost as warm against slavery as Jefferson, and there were societies for the abolition of slavery in the South. In the Constitutional convention of 1787 the strongest opposition to an extension of the period of non-interference with the slave trade from 1800 to 1808 came from Virginia, whereas every one of the New England states, in which the trade was an important source of profit, voted for this extension. No thinking man could face with equanimity the future problem of holding a separate race of millions in slavery. Like most slave laws, the laws of the Southern states were harsh: rights were almost absolutely withheld from the slave, and punishments of the severest kind were legal; but the execution of the system was milder than its legal possibilities might lead one to imagine. The country was as yet so completely agricultural that Southern slavery kept all the patriarchal features possible to such a system.
103. Indeed, the whole country was almost exclusively agricultural, and, in spite of every effort to encourage manufactures Agriculture, Commerce and Manufactures. by state bounties, they formed the meagrest element in the national production. Connecticut, which now teems with manufactures, was just beginning the production of tinware and clocks; Rhode Island and Massachusetts were just beginning to work in cotton from models of jennies and Arkwright machinery surreptitiously obtained from England; and other states, beyond local manufactures of paper, glass and iron, were almost entirely agricultural, or were engaged in industries directly dependent on agriculture. Commerce was dependent on agriculture for export and manufactured imports were enough to drown out every other form.
104. There were but five cities in the United States having a population of more than 10,000—New York (33,000), Philadelphia Changes since 1790. (28,500), Boston (18,000), Charleston (16,000) and Baltimore (13,000). The population of the city of New York is now greater than that of the original thirteen states in 1790; the state of New York has now about twice as many inhabitants as the thirteen had in 1790; and the new states of Ohio and Illinois, which had hardly any white inhabitants in 1789, have each a larger population than the whole thirteen then had. Imports have swollen from $23,000,000 to $1,475,612,580 (1909); exports from $20,000,000 to $1,728,203,271 (1909), since 1790. The revenues of the new government in 1790 were $4,000,000; the expenditures, excluding interest on the public debt, but $1,000,000; now both the revenues and the expenditures are about $1,000,000,000. It is not easy for the modern American to realize the poverty and weakness of his country at the inauguration of the new system of government, however he may realize the simplicity of the daily life of its people.
105. Outside the cities communication was slow. One stage a week was enough for the connexion between the great cities; The West. and communication elsewhere depended on private conveyance. The western(settlements were just beginning to make the question more serious. Enterprising land companies were the moving force which had impelled the passage of the Ordinance of 1787; and the first column of their settlers was pouring into Ohio and forming connexion with their predecessors in Kentucky and Tennessee. Marietta and Cincinnati had been founded. But the intending settlers were obliged to make the journey down the Ohio river from Pittsburg in bullet-proof flat-boats, for protection against the Indians, and the return trip depended on the use of oars. For more than twenty years these flat-boats were the chief means of river commerce in the West; and in the longer trips, as to New Orleans, the boats were generally broken up at the end and sold for lumber, ​the crew making the trip home on foot or on horseback. John Fitch and others were already experimenting on what was soon to be the steamboat; but the statesman of 1789, looking at the task of keeping under one government a country of such distances, with such difficulties of communication, may be pardoned for having felt anxiety as to the future. To almost all thinking men of the time the Constitution was an experiment, and the unity of the new nation a subject for very serious doubt.
106. The comparative isolation of the people everywhere, the lack of books, the poverty of the schools and newspapers, were Literature. all influences which worked strongly against any pronounced literary development. Poems, essays and paintings were feeble imitations of European models; history was annalistic, if anything; and the drama hardly existed. In two points the Americans were strong, and had done good work. Such men as Jonathan Edwards had excelled in various departments of theology, and American preaching had reached a high degree of quality and influence; and, in the line of politics, the American state papers rank among the very best of their kind. Having a very clear perception of their political purposes, and having been restricted in study and reading to the great masters of pure and vigorous English, and particularly to the English translators of the Bible, the American leaders came to their work with an English style which could hardly have been improved. The writings of Franklin, Washington, the Adamses, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Jay and others show the secret of their strength in every page. Much the same reasons, with the influences of democracy, brought oratory, as represented by Patrick Henry, Fisher Ames, John Randolph and others, to a point not very far below the mark afterwards reached by Daniel Webster. The effect of these facts on the subsequent development of the country is not often estimated at its full value. All through an immigration of every language and dialect under heaven the English language has been protected in its supremacy by the necessity of going back to the “fathers of the republic” for the first, and often the complete, statement of principles in every great political struggle, social problem or lawsuit.
107. The cession of the “North-West Territory” by Virginia and New York had been followed up by similar cessions by Limits of Settlement. Massachusetts (1785), Connecticut (1786) and South Carolina (1787). North Carolina did not cede Tennessee until early in 1790, nor Georgia her western claims until 1802. Settlement in all these regions was still very sparse. The centres of Western settlement, in Tennessee and Kentucky, had become more firmly established, and a new one, in Ohio, had just been begun. The whole western limits of settlement of the old thirteen states had moved much nearer their present boundaries; and the acquisition of the Western title, with the liberal policy of organization and government which had been begun, was to have its first clear effects during the first decade of the new government. Almost the only obstacle to its earlier success had been the doubts as to the attitude which the Spanish authorities, at New Orleans and Madrid, would take towards the The Mississippi River. new settlements. They had already asserted a claim that the Mississippi was an exclusively Spanish stream from its mouth up to the Yazoo, and that no American boat should be allowed to sail on this part of it. To the Western settler the Alleghanies and bad roads were enough to cut him off from any other way to a market than down the Mississippi; and it was not easy to restrain him from a forcible defiance of the Spanish claim. The Northern states were willing to allow the Spanish claim for a period of years in return for a commercial treaty; the Southern states and the Western settlers protested angrily; and once more the spectre of dissolution appeared, not to be laid again until the new government had made a treaty with Spain in 1795 (see Pinckney, Thomas), securing common navigation of the Mississippi.
108. Contemporary authorities agree that a marked change Social Conditions. had come over the people since 1775, and few of them seem to think the change one for the better. Many attribute it to the looseness of manners and morals introduced by the French and British soldiers; others to the general effects of war; a few, Tories all, to the demoralizing effects of rebellion. The successful establishment of nationality would be enough to explain most of it; and if we remember that the new nation had secured its title to a vast western territory, of unknown but rich capacities, which it was now moving to reduce to possession by emigration, it would seem far more strange if the social conditions had not been somewhat disturbed.
G.—The Development of Democracy, 1789-1801.
109. All the tendencies of political institutions in the United States had certainly been towards democracy; but it cannot be Democracy in the United States. said that the leading men were hearty or unanimous in their agreement with this tendency. Not a few of them were pronounced republicans even before 1775, but the mass of them had no great objections to a monarchical form of government until the war-spirit had converted them. The Declaration of Independence had been directed rather against the king than against a king. Even after popular sovereignty had pronounced against a king, class spirit was for some time a fair substitute for aristocracy. As often happens, democracy at least thought of a Caesar when it apprehended class control. Certain discontented officers of the Continental Army proposed to Washington that he become king, but he promptly and indignantly put the offer by. The suggestion of a return to monarchy in some form, as a possible road out of the confusion of the Confederation, occurs in the correspondence of some of the leading men; and while the Convention of 1787 was holding its secret sessions a rumour went out that it had decided to offer a crown to an English prince.
110. The state constitutions were democratic, except for property or other restrictions on the right of suffrage, or provisions carefully designed to keep the control of at least one house of the state legislature “in the hands of property.” The Federal Constitution was so drawn that it would have lent itself kindly either to class control or to democracy. The electoral system of choosing the president and vice-president was altogether anti-democratic, though democracy has conquered it: not an elector, since 1796, has disobeyed the purely moral claim of his party to control his choice. Since the Senate was to be chosen by the state legislatures, “property,” if it could retain its influence in those bodies, could control at least one house of Congress. The question whether the Constitution was to have a democratic or an anti-democratic interpretation was to be settled in the next twelve years.
111. The states were a strong factor in the final settlement, from the fact that the Constitution had left to them the control of the Influence of Immigration. elective franchise: they were to make its conditions what each of them saw fit. Religious tests for the right of suffrage had been quite common in the colonies; property tests were almost universal. The former disappeared shortly after the War of Independence; the latter survived in some of the states far into the constitutional period. But the desire to attract immigration was always a strong impelling force to induce states, especially frontier states, to make the acquisition of full citizenship and political rights as easy and rapid as possible. This force was not so strong at first as it was after the great stream of immigration began about 1848, but it was enough to tend constantly to the development of democracy. In later times, when state laws allow the immigrant to vote even before the period assigned by Federal laws allows him to become a naturalized citizen, there have been demands for the modification of the ultra state democracy; but no such danger was apprehended in the first decade.
112. The Anti-Federalists had been a political party, but a party with but one principle. The absolute failure of that Organization of the New Government. principle deprived the party of all cohesion; and the Federalists controlled the first two Congresses almost entirely. Their pronounced ability was shown in their organizing measures, which still govern the American system very largely. The departments of state, of the treasury, of war, of justice, and of the post-office were rapidly and successfully organized; acts were passed for the regulation of seamen, commerce, tonnage duties, lighthouses, intercourse with the Indians, Territories, and the militia; a national capital was selected; a national bank was chartered; the national debt was funded, and the state debts were assumed as ​part of it. The first four years of the new system showed that the states had now to deal with a very different power from the impotent Congress of the Confederation. The new power was even able to exert pressure upon the two states which had not ratified the Constitution, though the pressure was made as gentle as possible. As a first step, the higher duties imposed on imports from foreign countries were expressly directed to apply to imports from North Carolina and Rhode Island. North Carolina having called a second convention, her case was left to the course of nature; and the second convention ratified the Constitution (November 21, 1789). The Rhode Island legislature asked that their state might not be considered altogether foreigners, made their duties agree with those of the new government, and reserved the proceeds for “continental” purposes. Still no further steps were taken. A bill was therefore introduced, directing the president to suspend commercial intercourse with Rhode Island, and to demand from her her share of the continental debt. This was passed by the Senate, and waited but two steps further to become law. Newspaper proposals to divide the little state between her two nearest neighbours were stopped by her ratification of the Constitution (May 29, 1790). The “old thirteen” were thus united under Completion of the Union. the Constitution; and yet, so strong is the American prejudice for the autonomy of the states that these last two were allowed to enter in the full conviction that they did so in the exercise of sovereign freedom of choice. Their entrance, however, was no more involuntary than that of others. If there had been real freedom of choice, nine states would never have ratified: the votes of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Virginia and New York were only secured by the pressure of powerful minorities in these states, backed by the almost unanimous votes of the others.
113. Protection was begun in the first Tariff Act, whose object, said its preamble, was the protection of domestic manufactures. Hamiltonian Protection. The duties, however, ranged only from 7½ to 10%, averaging about 8½%. The system, too, had rather a political than an economic basis. Until 1789 the states had controlled the imposition of duties. The separate state feeling was a factor so strong that secession was a possibility which every statesman had to take into account. Hamilton's object, in introducing the system, seems to have been to create a class of manufacturers, running through all the states, but dependent for prosperity on the new Federal government and its tariff. This would be a force which would make strongly against any attempt at secession, or against the tendency to revert to control by state legislatures, even though it based the national idea on a conscious tendency towards the development of classes. The same feeling seems to have been at the bottom of his establishment of a national bank, his assumption of state debts, and most of the general scheme which his influence forced upon the Federalist party. (See Hamilton, Alexander; and Federalist Party.)
114. In forming his cabinet Washington had paid attention to the opposing elements which had united for the temporary The First Cabinet. purpose of ratifying the Constitution. The national element was represented by Hamilton, secretary of the treasury, and Henry Knox, secretary of war; the particularist element (using the term to indicate support of the states, not of a state) by Jefferson, secretary of state, and Edmund Randolph, attorney-general. At the end of 1792 matters were in train for the general recognition of the existence of two parties, whose struggles were to decide the course of the Constitution's development. The occasion came in the opening of the following year, when the new nation was first brought into contact with the French Revolution.
115. The controlling tendency of Jefferson and his school was to the maintenance of individual rights at the highest possible The Jefferson School of Politics. point, as the Hamilton school was always ready to assert the national power to restrict individual rights for the general good. Other points of difference are rather symptomatic than essential. The Jefferson school supported the states, in the belief that they were the best bulwarks for individual rights. When the French Revolution began its usual course in America by agitation for the “rights of man,” it met a sympathetic audience in the Jefferson party and a cold and unsympathetic hearing from the Hamilton school of Federalists. The latter were far more interested in securing the full recognition of the power and rights of the nation than in securing the individual against imaginary dangers, as they thought them. For ten years the surface marks of distinction between the two parties were to be connected with the course of events in Europe; but the essence of distinction was not in the surface marks.
116. The new government was not yet four years old; it was not familiar, nor of assured permanency. The only national The Hamilton School. governments of which Americans had had previous experience were the British government and the Confederation: in the former they had had no share, and the latter had had no power. The only places in which they had had long-continued, full, and familiar experience of self-government were their state governments: these were the only governmental forms which were then distinctly associated in their minds with the general notion of republican government. The governing principle of the Hamilton school, that the construction or interpretation of the terms of the Constitution was to be such as to broaden the powers of the Federal government, necessarily involved a corresponding trenching on the powers of the states. It was natural, then, that the Jefferson school should look on every feature of the Hamilton programme as “anti-republican,” meaning, probably, at first no more than opposed to the state system, though the term soon came to imply something of monarchical and, more particularly, of English tendencies. The disposition of the Jefferson school to claim for themselves a certain peculiar title to the position of “republicans” developed into the appearance of the first Republican, or the Democratic-Republican, party, about 1793.
117. Many of the Federalists were shrewd and active business men, who naturally took prompt advantage of the opportunities Party Differences. which the new system offered. The Republicans therefore believed and asserted that the whole Hamilton programme was dictated by selfish or class interest; and they added this to the accusation of monarchical tendencies. These charges, with the fundamental differences of mental constitution, exasperated by the passion which differences as to the French Revolution seemed to carry with them everywhere, made the political history of this decade a very unpleasant record. The provision for establishing the national capital on the Potomac (1790) was declared to have been carried by a corrupt bargain; and accusations of corruption were renewed at The National Capital. Genet's Mission. every opportunity. In 1793 a French agent, Edmond Charles Edouard Genet (1765-1834), appeared to claim the assistance of the United States for the French republic, and went to the length of commissioning privateers and endeavouring to secure recruits, especially for a force which he expected to raise for the conquest of Louisiana from Spain. Washington decided to issue a proclamation of neutrality, the first act of the kind in American history. It was the first indication, also, of the policy which has made the course of every president, with the exception of Polk, a determined leaning to peace, even when the other branches of the government have been intent on war. Genet, however, continued his activities, and made The Whiskey Insurrection. outrageous demands upon the government, so that finally Washington demanded and secured (1794) his recall. The proclamation of 1793 brought about the first distinctly party feeling; and it was intensified by Washington's charge that popular opposition in western Pennsylvania (1794) to the new Admission of Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee. excise law (see Whiskey Insurrection) had been fomented by the extreme French party. Their name, Democrat, was applied by the Federalists to the whole Republican party as a term of contempt, but it was not accepted by the party for some twenty years; then the compound title “Democratic-Republican” became, as it ​still is, the official title of the party. There was no party opposition, however, to the re-election of Washington in 1792, or to the admission of Vermont (1791), Kentucky (1792) and Tennessee (1796) as new states.
118. The British government had accredited no minister to the United States, and it refused to make any commercial treaty or to give up the forts in the western territory of the United States, through which its agents still exercised a commanding influence over the Indians. In the course of its war with France, the neutral American vessels, without the protection of a national navy, fared badly. A treaty negotiated in 1794 by Jay's Treaty. Chief-Justice John Jay (q.v.) settled these difficulties for the following twelve years. But as it engaged the United States against any intervention in the war on behalf of France, was silent on the subject of the right of search, and agreed to irksome limitations on the commercial privileges of the United States, the Republicans, who were opposed to the negotiation of any treaty at this time with Great Britain, made it very unpopular, and the bitter personal attacks on Washington grew out of it. In spite of occasional Republican successes, the Federalists retained a general control of national Election of 1796. affairs; they elected John Adams president in 1796, though Jefferson was chosen vice-president with him; and the national policy of the Federalists kept the country out of entangling alliances with any of the European belligerents. To the Republicans, and to the French republic, this last point of policy was only a practical intervention against France and against the rights of man.
119. At the end of Washington's administration the French Directory broke off relations with the United States, demanding the abrogation of Jay's treaty and a more pronounced sympathy with France. Adams sent three envoys, C. C. Pinckney (q.v.), John Marshall and Elbridge Gerry (q.v.), to endeavour to re-establish the former relations; they were The “X.Y.Z.” Mission. met by demands for “money, a great deal of money,” as a prerequisite to peace. They refused; their letters home were published, and the Federalists at last had the opportunity of riding the whirlwind of an intense popular desire for war with France. Intercourse with France was suspended by Congress (1798); the treaties with France were declared at an end; American frigates were authorized to capture French vessels guilty of depredations on American commerce, and the president was authorized to issue letters of marque and reprisal; and an American army was formed, Washington being called from his retirement at Mount Vernon to command it. The war never went beyond Quasi-war with France. a few sea-fights, in which the little American navy did itself credit, and Napoleon, seizing power the next year, renewed the peace which should never have been broken. But the quasi-war had internal consequences to the young republic which surpassed in interest all its foreign difficulties: it brought on the crisis which settled the development of the United States towards democracy.
120. The reaction in Great Britain against the indefinite “rights of man” had led parliament to pass an alien law, a sedition law suspending the writ of habeas corpus, and an act giving wide and loosely defined powers to magistrates for the Error of the Federalists. dispersion of meetings to petition for redress of grievances. The Federalists were in control of a Congress of limited powers; but they were strongly tempted by sympathies and antipathies of every sort to form their programme on the model furnished from England. The measures which they actually passed were based only on that construction of the Constitution which is at the bottom of all American politics; they only tended to force the Constitution into an anti-democratic direction. But it was the fixed belief of their opponents that they meant to go farther, and to secure control by some wholesale measure of political persecution.
121. Three alien laws were passed in Tune and July 1798. The first (repealed in April 1802) raised the number of years necessary for naturalization from five to fourteen. The third The Alien and Sedition Laws. (still substantially in force) permitted the arrest or removal of subjects of any foreign power with which the United States should be at war. The second, which is usually known as the Alien Law, was limited to a term of two years; it permitted the president to arrest or order out of the country any alien whom he should consider dangerous to the country. As many of the Republican editors and local leaders were aliens, this law really put a large part of the Republican organization in the power of the president elected by their opponents. The Sedition Law (to be in force until March 1801 and not renewed) made it a crime, punishable by fine and imprisonment, to publish or print any false, scandalous and malicious writings against the government of the United States, either house of Congress, or the president, or to stir up sedition or opposition to any lawful act of Congress or of the president, or to aid the designs of any foreign power against the United States. In its first form the bill was even more sweeping than this and alarmed the opposition thoroughly.
122. Most of the ability of the country was in the Federalist ranks; the Republicans had but two first-rate men—Jefferson The Republican Opposition. and Madison. In the sudden issue thus forced between individual rights and national power, Jefferson and Madison could find but one bulwark for the individual—the power of the states; and their use of it gave their party a pronounced list to state sovereignty from which it did not recover for years. They objected to the Alien Law on the grounds that aliens were under the jurisdiction of the state, not of the Federal government; that the jurisdiction over them had not been transferred to the Federal government by the Constitution, and that the assumption of it by Congress was a violation of the Constitution's reservation of powers to the states; and, further, because the Constitution reserved to every “person,” not to every citizen, the right to a jury trial. They objected to the Sedition Law on the grounds that the Constitution had specified exactly the four crimes for whose punishment Congress was to provide; that criminal libel was not one of them; and that amendment I. forbade Congress to pass any law restricting freedom of speech or of the press. The Federalists asserted a common-law power in Federal judges to punish for libel, and pointed to a provision in the Sedition Law permitting the truth to be given in evidence, as an improvement on the common law, instead of a restriction on liberty.
123. The Republican objections might have been made in court, on the first trial. But the Republican leaders had strong doubts of the impartiality of the Federal judges, who were Federalists. They resolved to entrench the party in the state Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. legislatures. The Virginia legislature in 1798 passed a series of resolutions prepared by Madison, and the Kentucky legislature in the same year passed a series prepared by Jefferson (see Kentucky: History). Neglected or rejected by the other states, they were passed again by their legislatures in 1799, and were for a long time a documentary basis of the Democratic party. The leading idea expressed in both was that the Constitution was a “compact” between the states, and that the powers (the states) which had made the compact had reserved the power to restrain the creature of the compact, the Federal government, whenever it undertook to assume powers not granted to it. Madison's idea seems to have been that the restraint was to be imposed by a second convention of the states. Jefferson's idea is more doubtful; if it meant that the restraint should be imposed by any state which should feel aggrieved, his scheme was merely Calhoun's idea of nullification; but there are some indications that he agreed with Madison.
124. The first Congress of Adams's term of office ended in 1799. Its successor, elected in the heat of the French war excitement, Effects of the Laws. kept the Federalist policy up to its first pitch. Out of Congress the execution of the objectionable laws had taken the shape of political persecution. Men were arrested, tried and punished for writings which the people had ​been accustomed to consider within legitimate political methods. The Republican leaders made every trial as public as possible, and gained votes constantly, so that the Federalists began to be shy of the very powers which they had sought. Every new election was a storm-signal for the Federalist party; and the danger was increased by schism in their own ranks.
125. Hamilton was now a private citizen of New York; but he had the confidence of his party more largely than its nominal Federalist Schism. head, the president, and he maintained close and confidential relations with the cabinet which Adams had taken unchanged from Washington. The Hamilton faction saw no way of preserving and consolidating the newly acquired powers of the Federal government but by keeping up and increasing the war feeling against France; Adams had the instinctive leaning of an American president towards peace. Amid cries of wrath and despair from his party he accepted the first overtures of the new Napoleonic government, sent envoys to negotiate a peace, and ordered them to depart for France when they delayed too long. Then, discovering flat treachery in his cabinet, he dismissed it and blurted out a public expression of his feeling that Hamilton and his adherents were “a British faction.” Hamilton retorted with a circular letter to his party friends, denouncing the president; the Republicans intercepted it and gave it a wider circulation than its author had intended; and the Hamilton faction tried so to arrange the Election of 1800. electoral vote that C. C. Pinckney should be chosen president in 1800 and Adams should be shelved into the vice-presidency. The result depended on the electoral vote of New York; and Aaron Burr, who had introduced the drill and machinery of a modern American political party there, had made the state Republican and secured a majority for the Republican candidates. These (Jefferson and Burr) received the same number of electoral votes (73), and the House of Representatives (controlled by the Federalists) was thus called upon to decide which should be president. There was an effort by the Federalists to disappoint the Republicans by making Burr president; but Jefferson obtained that office, Burr becoming vice-president for four years. This disputed election, however, led to the adoption in 1804 of the 12th amendment to the Constitution, which prescribed that each elector should vote separately for president and vice-president, and thus prevent another tie vote of this kind; this amendment, moreover, made very improbable the choice in the future of a president and a vice-president from opposing parties.
126. The “Revolution of 1800” decided the future development of the United States. The new dominant party entered “Revolution of 1800.” upon its career weighted with the theory of state sovereignty; and a civil war was necessary before this dogma, put to use again in the service of slavery, could be banished from the American system. But the democratic development never was checked. From that time the interpretation of the Federal Constitution has generally favoured individual rights at the expense of governmental power. As the Republicans obtained control of the states they altered the state constitutions so as to cut out all the arrangements that favoured property or class interests, and reduced political power to the dead level of manhood suffrage. In most of the states outside of New England this process was completed before 1815; but New England tenacity was proof against the advancing revolution until about 1820. For twenty years after its downfall of 1800 the Federalist party maintained its hopeless struggle, and then it faded away into nothing, leaving as its permanent memorial the excellent organization of the Federal government, which its successful rival hardly changed. Its two successors—the Whig and the second Republican party—have also been broad-constructionist parties, but they have admitted democracy as well; the Whig party adopted popular methods at least, and the Republican went further in the direction of individual rights, securing the emancipation of enslaved labour.
127. The disputed election of 1800 was decided in the new capital city of Washington, to which the government had just been The New Capital. removed after having been for ten years at Philadelphia. Its streets and parks existed only on paper. The Capitol had been begun; the Executive Mansion was unfinished, and its audience room was used by Mrs Adams as a drying room for clothes; and the congressmen could hardly find lodgings. The inconveniences were only an exaggeration of the condition of other American cities. Their sanitary conditions were bad, and yellow fever and cholera from time to time reduced several of them almost to depopulation. More than once, during this decade, the fever visited Philadelphia and New York, drove out most of the people, and left grass growing in the streets. The communication between the cities was still wretched. The traveller was subject to every danger or annoyance that bad roads, bad carriages, bad horses, bad inns and bad police protection could combine to inflict upon him. But the war with natural obstacles had fairly begun, though it had little prospect of success until steam was brought into use as the ally of man.
128. About this time the term “the West” appears. It meant then the western part of New York, the new territory The West. north of the Ohio, and Kentucky and Tennessee. In settling land boundaries New York had transferred (1786) to Massachusetts, whose claims crossed her territory, the right to (but not jurisdiction over) a large tract of land in central New York, and to another large tract in the Erie basin. The sale of this land had carried population considerably west of the Hudson. After other expeditions against the Ohio Indians had been defeated, one under General Anthony Wayne had compelled them in 1794-95 to give up all the territory now in the state of Ohio. Settlement received a new impetus. Between 1790 and 1800 the population of Ohio had risen from almost nothing to 45,000, that of Tennessee from 36,000 to 106,000, and that of Kentucky from 74,000 to 221,000—the last-named state now exceeding six of the “old thirteen” in population. The difficulties of the western emigrant, however, were still enormous. He obtained land of his own, fertile land and plenty of it, but little else. The produce of the soil had to be consumed at home, or near it; ready money was scarce and distant products scarcer; and comforts, except the very rudest substitutes of home manufacture, were unobtainable. The new life bore most hardly upon women; and, if the record of woman's share in the work of American colonization could be fully made up, the price paid for the final success would seem enormous.
129. The number of post offices rose during these ten years from 75 to 903, the miles of post routes from 1900 to 21,000, Post Office. and the revenue from $38,000 to $231,000. These figures seem small in comparison with the 61,158 post offices, 430,738 m. of post routes (besides 943,087 m. of rural delivery routes), and a postal revenue of $191,478,663 in 1908, but the comparison with the figures of 1790 shows a development in which the new Constitution, with its increased security, must have been a factor.
130. The power of Congress to regulate patents was already bearing fruit. Until 1789 this power was in the hands of the Patents. states, and the privileges of the inventor were restricted to the territory of the patenting state. Now he had a vast and growing territory within which all the profits of the invention were his own. Twenty patents were issued in 1793, and 23,471 one hundred years afterwards; but one of the inventions of 1793 was Eli Whitney's cotton gin.
131. When the Constitution was adopted it was not known that the cultivation of cotton could be made profitable in the Cotton. Southern states. The “roller gin” could clean only 6 ℔ a day by slave labour. In 1784 eight bags of cotton, landed in Liverpool from an American ship, were seized on the ground that so much cotton could not be the produce of the United States. Eli Whitney (q.v.) invented the saw-gin, by which the cotton was dragged through parallel wires with openings too narrow to allow the seeds to pass; and one slave could now clean 1000 ℔ a day. The exports of cotton leaped from 189,000 ℔ in ​1791 to 21,000,000 ℔ in 1801, and doubled in three years more. The influence of this one invention, combined with the wonderful series of British inventions which had paved the way for it, can hardly be estimated in its commercial aspects. Its political influences were even wider, but more unhappy. The introduction of the commercial element into the slave system of the South robbed it at once of the patriarchal features which had made it tolerable; while it developed in slave-holders a new disposition to defend a system of slave labour as a “positive good.” The abolition societies of the South began to dwindle as soon as the results of Whitney's invention began to be manifest.
132. The development of a class whose profits were merely the extorted natural wages of the black labourer was certain; and its political power was as certain, though it never showed itself clearly until after 1830. And this class was to have a peculiarly distorting effect Slavery and Democracy. on the political history of the United States. Aristocratic in every sense but one, it was ultra-Democratic (in a purely party sense) in its devotion to state sovereignty, for the legal basis of the slave system was in the laws of the several states. In time, the aristocratic element got control of the party which had originally looked to state rights as a bulwark of individual rights; and the party was finally committed to the employment of its original doctrine for an entirely different purpose—the suppression of the black labourer's wages.
H.—Democracy and Nationality, 1801–1829
133. When Jefferson took office in 1801 he succeeded to a task larger than he imagined. His party, ignoring the natural forces which tied the states together even against their wills, insisted that the legal basis of the bond was in the power of any state to withdraw at will. Democracy and Nationality. This was no nationality; and foreign nations naturally refused to take the American national coin at any higher valuation than that at which it was current in its own country. The urgent necessity was for a reconciliation between democracy and nationality; and this was the work of this period. An underlying sense of all this has led Democratic leaders to call the war of 1812–15 the “Second War of Independence”; the result was as much independence of past ideas as of Great Britain.
134. The first force in the new direction was the acquisition of Louisiana in 1803. Napoleon had acquired it from Spain, and, fearing an attack upon it by Great Britain, offered it to the United States for $15,000,000. The Constitution gave the Federal government no power to buy Louisiana. and hold territory, and the party was based on a strict construction of the constitution. Possession of power forced the strict construction party to broaden its ideas, and Louisiana was bought, though Jefferson quieted his conscience by talking for a time of a futile proposal to amend the Constitution so as to grant the necessary power. (See Louisiana Purchase; and Jefferson, Thomas.) The acquisition of the western Mississippi basin more than doubled the area of the United States, and gave them control of all the great river-systems of central The Steamboat. North America. The difficulties of using these rivers were removed almost immediately by Robert Fulton's utilization of steam in navigation (1807). Within four years steamboats were at work on western waters; and thereafter the increase of steam navigation and that of population stimulated one another. The “centre of population” has been carefully ascertained by the census Census of Population. authorities for each decade, and it represents the westward movement of population very closely. During this period it advanced from about the middle of the state of Maryland to its extreme western limit; that is, the centre of population was in 1830 nearly at the place which had been the western limit of population in 1770.
135. Jefferson also laid the basis for a further acquisition in the future by sending an expedition under Meriwether Lewis (q.v.) and William Clark to explore the territory north of the then Spanish territory of California and west of the Rocky Mountains—the “Oregon country” as it was afterwards The Oregon Country. called. The explorations of this party (1804–1806), with Captain Robert Gray's discovery of the Columbia river (1792), made the best part of the claims of the United States to the country forty years later.
136. Jefferson was re-elected in 1804, serving until March, 1809; his party now controlled almost all the states outside of New England, and could elect almost any one whom it chose to the presidency. Imitating Washington in refusing a third term of office, Jefferson established Election of 1804. more firmly the precedent, not since violated, restricting a president to two terms, though the Constitution contains no such restriction. The great success of his presidency had been the acquisition of Louisiana, which was a violation of his party principles; but all his minor successes were, like this, recognitions of the national sovereignty which he disliked so much. After a short and brilliant naval war the Barbary pirates were reduced to submission (1805). The long-continued control of New Orleans by Spain, and the persistent intrigues of the Spanish authorities, looking towards a separation of the whole western country from the United States, had been ended by the acquisition of Louisiana, and the full details concerning them will probably remain for ever hidden in the secret history of the early West. They had left behind a dangerous ignorance of Federal power and control, of which Aaron Burr (q.v.) took advantage (1806–07). Organizing an expedition in Kentucky and Tennessee, probably for the conquest of the Spanish colony of Mexico, he was arrested on the lower Mississippi and brought back to Virginia. He was acquitted; but the incident opened up a vaster view of the national authority than democracy had yet been able to take. It had been said, forty years before, that Great Britain had long arms, but that three thousand miles was too far to extend them; it was something to know now that the arms of the Federal government were long enough to reach from Washington city to the Mississippi.
137. All the success of Jefferson was confined to his first four years; all his heavy failures were in his second term, in which he and his party as persistently refused to recognize or assert the inherent power of the nation in international affairs. The Jay treaty expired in Difficulties with Great Britain. 1806 by limitation, and American commerce was thereafter left to the course of events, Jefferson refusing to accept the only treaty which the British government was willing to make. All the difficulties which followed may be summed up in a few words: the British government was then the representative of the ancient system of restriction of commerce, and had a powerful navy to enforce its ideas; the American government was endeavouring to force into international recognition the present system of neutral rights and unrestricted commerce, but its suspicious democracy refused to give it a navy sufficient to command respect. The American government apparently expected to gain its objects without the exhibition of anything but moral force.
138. Great Britain was now at war, from time to time, with almost every other nation of Europe. In time of peace European nations followed generally the old restrictive principle of allowing another nation, like the United States, no commercial access to their colonies; but, when Neutral Commerce. they were at war with Great Britain, whose navy controlled the ocean, they were very willing to allow the neutral American merchantmen to carry away their surplus colonial produce. Great Britain had insisted for fifty years that the neutral nation, in such cases, was really intervening in the war as an ally of her enemy; but she had so far modified her claim as to admit that “transhipment,” or breaking bulk, in the United States was enough to qualify the commerce for recognition. The neutral nation thus gained a double freight, and grew rich in the traffic; the belligerent nations no longer had commerce afloat for British vessels to capture; and the “frauds of the neutral flags” became a standing subject of complaint among British merchants and naval officers. About 1805 British prize courts ​began to disregard transhipment and to condemn American vessels which made the voyage from a European colony to the mother country by way of the United States. This was really a restriction of American commerce to purely American productions, or to commerce with Great Britain direct, with the payment of duties in British ports.
139. The question of expatriation, too, furnished a good many burning grievances. Great Britain maintained the Expatriation. old German rule of perpetual allegiance, though she had modified it by allowing the right of emigration. The United States, founded by immigration, was anxious to establish what Great Britain was not disposed to grant, the right of the subject to divest himself of allegiance by naturalization under a foreign jurisdiction. Four facts thus tended to break off friendly relations: (1) Great Britain's claim to allegiance over American naturalized subjects; (2) Impressment. her claim to the belligerent right of search of neutral vessels; (3) her claim of right to impress for her vessels of War her subjects who were seamen wherever found; and (4) the difficulty of distinguishing native-born American from British subjects, even if the right to impress naturalized American subjects were granted. British naval officers even undertook to consider all who spoke the English language as British subjects, unless they could produce proof that they were native-born Americans. The American sailor who lost his papers was thus open to impressment. A particularly flagrant case of seizure of Americans occurred in 1807. On the 27th of June the British ship “Leopard” fired upon the American frigate “Chesapeake,” which, after having lost 3 men killed and 18 wounded, hauled down its flag; the British commander then seized four of the “Chesapeake's” crew. This action aroused intense anger throughout the country, and but for the impotence of the government would undoubtedly have led to immediate war. The American government in 1810 published the cases of such impressments since 1803 as numbering over 4000, about one-third of the cases resulting in the discharge of the impressed man; but no one could say how many cases had never been brought to the attention of a government which never did anything more than remonstrate about them.
140. In May 1806 the British government, by orders in council, declared a blockade of the whole continent of Europe Orders in Council. from Brest to the Elbe, about 800 m. In November, after the battle of Jena, Napoleon answered by the “Berlin decree,” in which he assumed to blockade the British Isles, thus beginning his “continental system.” A year later the British government answered by further orders in council, forbidding American trade with any Berlin and Milan Decrees. country from which the British flag was excluded, allowing direct trade from the United States to Sweden only, in American products, and permitting American trade with other parts of Europe only on condition of touching in England and paying duties. Napoleon retorted with the “Milan decree,” declaring good prize any vessel which should submit to search by a British ship; but this was evidently a vain fulmination.
141. The Democratic party of the United States was almost exclusively agricultural and had little knowledge of or The Navy. sympathy with commercial interests; it was pledged to the reduction of national expenses and the debt, and did not wish to take up the responsibility for a navy; and, as the section of country most affected by the orders in council, New England, was Federalist, and made up of the active and irreconcilable opposition, a tinge of political feeling could not but colour the decisions of the dominant party. Various ridiculous proposals were considered as substitutes for a necessarily naval war; and perhaps the most ridiculous was adopted. Since the use of non-intercourse agreements as revolutionary weapons against Great Britain, an overweening confidence in such measures had sprung up, and one of them was now resorted to—the embargo of the 22nd of December 1807, forbidding foreign commerce altogether. It was expected to starve Great Britain into a change of policy; and its effects may be seen by comparing the $20,000,000 exports of 1790, $49,000,000 of 1807 and The Embargo. $9,000,000 of 1808. It does not seem to have struck those who passed the measure that the agricultural districts also might find the change unpleasant; but that was the result, and their complaints reinforced those of New England, and closed Jefferson's second term in a cloud of recognized misfortune. The pressure had been slightly relieved by the substitution of the Non-Intercourse Law of the 1st of March 1809 for the embargo; it prohibited commercial intercourse with Great Non-Intercourse Law. Election of 1808. Britain and France and their dependencies, leaving other foreign commerce open, prohibited the importation from any quarter of British and French goods, and forbade the entrance of British or French vessels, public or private, into any port of the United States. Madison, Jefferson's secretary of state, who succeeded Jefferson in 1809, having defeated the Federalist candidate C. C. Pinckney in the election of 1808, assumed in the presidency a burden which was not enviable. New England was in a ferment, and was suspected of designs to resist the restrictive system by force; and the administration did not face the future with confidence.
142. The Non-Intercourse Law was to be in force only “until the end of the next session of Congress” and was to be abandoned as to either belligerent which should abandon its attacks on neutral commerce, and maintained against the other. In 1810 the American government was led to believe that France had abandoned its system. Napoleon continued to enforce it in fact; but his official fiction served its purpose of limiting the non-intercourse for the future to Great Britain, and thus straining relations between that country and the United States still further. The elections of 1811-1812 resulted everywhere in the defeat of “submission men” and in the choice of new members who were determined to resort to war against Great Britain. Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, William H. Crawford and other new men seized the lead in the two houses of Congress, and forced Madison, it is said, to agree to a declaration of war as a condition of his renomination in 1812 when he defeated De Witt Clinton by an electoral vote of 128 to 89. (See Madison.) Madison sent to Congress a confidential Election of 1812. War with England. “war message” on the first of June and on the 18th war was declared. The New England Federalists always called it “Mr Madison's war,” but the president was about the most unwilling participant in it.
143. The national democracy meant to attack Great Britain in Canada, partly to gratify its western constituency, who Tippecanoe. had been harassed by Indian attacks, asserted to have been instigated from Canada. Premonitions of success were drawn from the battle of Tippecanoe, in which William Henry Harrison had defeated in 1811 the north-western league of Indians formed by Tecumseh (q.v.). Between the solidly settled Atlantic states and the Canadian frontier was a wide stretch of unsettled or thinly settled country, which was Theatre of the War. itself a formidable obstacle to war. Ohio had been admitted as a state in 1802, and Louisiana was admitted in 1812; but their admission had been due to the desire to grant them self-government rather than to their full development in population and resources. Cincinnati was a little settlement of 2500 inhabitants; the fringe of settled country ran not very far north of it; and all beyond was a wilderness of which little was known to the authorities. The case was much the same with western New York; the army which was to cross the Niagara river must journey almost all the way from Albany through a very thinly peopled country. It would have been far less costly, as events proved, to have entered at once upon a naval war; but the crusade against Canada had been proclaimed all through Kentucky and the West, and their people were determined to wipe out their old scores before the conclusion of the war. (For the military and naval events of the war see American War of 1812.)
144. The war opened with disaster—General William Hull's surrender of Detroit; and disaster attended it for two years. Political appointments to positions in the regular army were ​numerous, and such officers were worse than useless. The war department showed no great knowledge, and poverty put Disaster by Land. its little knowledge out of service. Futile attempts at invasion were followed by defeat or abortion, until the political officers were weeded out at the end of the year 1813, and Jacob Brown, Winfield Scott, E. W. Ripley and others who had fought their way up were put in command. Then for the first time the men were drilled and brought into effective condition; and two successful battles in 1814—Chippewa and Chippewa and Lundy's Lane. Washington Burnt. Lundy's Lane—threw some glory on the end of the war. So weak were the preparations even for defence that a British expedition in 1814 met no effective resistance when it landed and burned Washington. For some of the disasters the responsibility rested as much, or more, upon the war department as upon the officers and soldiers in the field.
145. The American navy was but a puny adversary for the British navy, which had captured or shut up in port all the other State of the Navy. navies of Europe. But the small number of American vessels, with the superabundance of trained officers, gave them one great advantage: the training and discipline of the men, and the equipment of the vessels, had been brought to the very highest point. Captains who could command a vessel but for a short time, yielding her then to another officer who was to take his sea service in rotation, were all ambitious to make their mark during their term. “The art of handling and fighting the old broadside sailing frigate” had been carried in the little American navy to a point which unvarying success and a tendency to fleet-combats had now made far less common among British captains. Altogether the American vessels gave a remarkably good account of themselves.
146. The home dislike to the war had increased steadily with the evidence of incompetent management by the administration. Feeling in New England. The Federalists, who had always desired a navy, pointed to the naval successes as the best proof of folly with which the war had been undertaken and managed. New England Federalists complained that the Federal government utterly neglected the defence of their coast, and that Southern influence was far too strong in national affairs. They showed at every opportunity a disposition to adopt the furthest stretch of state sovereignty, as stated in the Kentucky Resolutions; and every such development urged the national democracy unconsciously further on the road to nationality. When the New England states sent delegates to meet at Hartford, Hartford Convention. Conn. (q.v.), and consider their grievances and the best remedies—a step perfectly proper on the Democratic theory of a “voluntary Union”—treason was suspected, and a readiness to suppress it by force was plainly shown. The recommendations of the convention came to nothing; but the attitude of the dominant party towards it is one of the symptoms of the manner in which the trials of actual war were steadily reconciling democracy and nationality. The object which Hamilton had sought by high tariffs and the development of national classes had been attained by more natural and healthy means.
147. In April 1814 the first abdication of Napoleon took place, and Great Britain was able to give more attention to her American Peace. antagonist. The main attack was to be made on Louisiana, the weakest and most distant portion of the Union. A fleet and army were sent thither, but the British assault was completely repulsed (Jan. 8, 1815) by the Americans under Andrew Jackson. Peace had been made at Ghent fifteen days before the battle was fought, but the news of the battle and the peace reached Washington almost together, the former going far to make the latter tolerable.
148. The United States really secured a fairly good treaty. It is true that it said not a word about the questions of impressment, search and neutral rights, the grounds of the war; Great Britain did not abandon her position on any of them. But everybody knew that circumstances had changed. The new naval power whose frigates alone in the past twenty years had shown their ability to fight English frigates on equal terms was not likely to be troubled in future with the question of impressment; and in fact, while not renouncing the right, the British government no longer attempted to enforce it. The navy, it must be confessed, was the force which had at last given the United States a recognized and cordial acceptance in the family of nations; it had solved the problem of the reconciliation of democracy and nationality.
149. The remainder of this period is one of the barrenest in American history. The opposition of the Federalist party to the Extinction of the Federalist Party. war completed the measure of its unpopularity, and it had only a perfunctory existence for a few years longer. Scandal, intrigue and personal criticism became the most marked characteristics of American politics until the dominant party broke at the end of the period, and real party conflict was renewed. But the seeds of the final disruption are visible from the peace of 1814. The old-fashioned Republicans looked with intense suspicion on the new form of Republicanism generated by the war, a type which instinctively bent its energies toward the further development of national power. Clay was the natural leader of the new Democracy; but John Quincy Adams and others of Federalist antecedents or leanings took to the new doctrines kindly; and even Calhoun, Crawford and others of the Southern interest were at first strongly inclined to support them. One of the first effects was the revival of protection and of a national bank.
150. The charter of the national bank had expired in 1811, and the dominant party had refused to recharter it. The attempt to Bank of the United States. carry on the war by loans resulted in almost a bankruptcy and in a complete inability to act efficiently. As soon as peace gave time for consideration, a second bank was chartered (April 10, 1816) for twenty years, with a capital of $35,000,000, one-fifth of which was to be subscribed for by the national government. It was to have the custody of the government revenues, but the secretary of the treasury could divert the revenues to other custodians, giving his reasons for such action to Congress.
151. Protection was advocated again on national grounds, but not quite on those which had moved Hamilton. The additional Protection. receipts were now to be expended for fortifications and other national defences, and for national roads and canals, the latter to be considered solely as military measures, with an incidental benefit to the people. Business distress among the people gave additional force to the proposal. The war and blockade had been an active form of protection, under which American manufactures had sprung up in great abundance. As soon as peace was made English manufacturers drove their American rivals out of business or reduced them to desperate straits. Their cries for relief had a double effect. They gave the spur to the nationalizing advocates of protection, and, as most of the manufacturers were in New England or New York, they developed in the citadel of Federalism a class which looked for help to a Republican Congress, and was therefore bound to oppose the Federalist party. This was the main force Manufactures. which brought New England into the Republican fold before 1825. An increase in the number of spindles from 80,000 in 1811 to 500,000 in 1815, and in cotton consumption from 500 bales in 1800 to 90,000 in 1815, the rise of manufacturing towns, and the rapid development of the mechanical tendencies of a people who had been hitherto almost exclusively agricultural, were influences which were to be reckoned with in the politics of a democratic country.
152. The tariff of 1816 imposed a duty of about 25% on imports of cotton and woollen goods, and specific duties on iron imports, Tariff of 1816. except pig-iron, on which there was an ad valorem duty of 20%. In 1818 this duty also was made specific (50 cents a cwt.). The ad valorem duties carried most of the manufacturers through the financial crisis of 1818-1819, but the iron duties were less satisfactory. In English manufacture the substitution of coke for charcoal in iron production led to continual decrease in price. As the price went down the specific duties were continually increasing the absolute amount of protection. Thus spared the necessity for improvements ​in production, the American manufacturers felt English competition more keenly as the years went by, and called for more protection.
153. James Monroe (q.v.) succeeded Madison as president in 1817, and, re-elected with hardly any opposition in 1820, he “Era of Good Feeling.” served until 1825. So complete was the supremacy of the Republican party that this is often called “the era of good feeling.” It came to an end when a successor to Monroe was to be elected; the two sections of the dominant party then had their first opportunity for open struggle. During Monroe's two terms of office the nationalizing party developed the policy on which it proposed to manage national affairs. This was largely the product of the continually swelling western movement of population. The influence of the steamboat was felt more and more every year, and the want of a similar improvement in land transport was correspondingly evident. The attention drawn to western New York by the war had filled that part of the state with a new population. The southern Indians had been completely overthrown by Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812, and forced to cede their lands. Admission of New States. The admission of the new states of Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), Alabama (1819), Maine (1820) and Missouri (1821)—all but Maine the product and evidence of western growth—were the immediate results of the development consequent upon the war. All the territory east of the Mississippi, except the northern part of the North-West Territory, was now formed into self-governing states; the state system had crossed the Mississippi; all that was needed for further development was the locomotive engine. The four millions of 1790 had grown into thirteen millions in 1830; and there was a steady increase of one-third in each decade.
154. The urgent demand of western settlers for some road to a market led to a variety of schemes to facilitate intercourse Erie Canal. between the East and the West—the most successful being that completed in New York in 1825, the Erie Canal. The Hudson river forms the great natural breach in the barrier range which runs parallel to the Atlantic coast. When the traveller has passed up the Hudson through that range he sees before him a vast campaign country extending westward to the Great Lakes, and perfectly adapted by nature for a canal. Such a canal, to turn western traffic into the lake rivers and through the lakes, the canal, and the Hudson to New York City, was begun by the state through the influence of De Witt Clinton, was derisively called “Clinton's big ditch” until its completion, and laid the foundations for the great commercial prosperity of New York state and city. Long before it was finished the evident certainty of its success had seduced other states into far less successful enterprises of the kind and had established as a nationalizing policy the combination of high tariffs and expenditures for internal improvements which was long known as the “American system.” The tariffs of duties on The “American System.” imports were to be carried as high as revenue results would justify; within this limit the duties were to be defined for purposes of protection; and the superabundant revenues were to be expended on enterprises which would tend to aid the people in their efforts to subdue the continent. Protection was now to be for national benefit, not for the benefit of classes. Western farmers were to have manufacturing towns at their doors, as markets for the surplus which had hitherto been rotting on their farms; competition among manufacturers was to keep down prices; migration to all the new advantages of the West was to be made easy at national expense; and Henry Clay's eloquence was to commend the whole policy to the people. The old Democracy, particularly in the South, insisted that the whole scheme really had its basis in benefits to classes, that its communistic features were not such as the Constitution meant to cover by its grant of power to Congress to levy taxation for the general welfare, and that any such legislation would be unconstitutional. The dissatisfaction in Tariffs of 1824 and 1828. the South rose higher when the tariffs were increased in 1824 and 1828. The proportion of customs revenue to dutiable imports rose to 37% in 1825 and to 44% in 1829; and the ratio to aggregate imports to 33% in 1825 and 37% in 1829. As yet, Southern dissatisfaction showed itself only in resolutions of state legislatures.
155. In the sudden development of the new nation circumstances had conspired to give social forces an abnormally materialistic cast, and this had strongly influenced the expression of the national life. Its literature and its art had amounted to little, for the American people were still engaged in the fiercest of warfare against natural difficulties, which absorbed all their energies.
156. In international relations the action of the government was strong, quiet and self-respecting. Its first weighty action took place in 1823. It had become pretty evident that the Holy Alliance, in addition to its interventions in Europe to suppress popular risings, meant to aid Spain in bringing her revolted South American colonies to obedience. Great Britain had been drifting steadily away from the alliance, and George Canning, the new secretary, determined to call in the weight of the transatlantic power as a check upon it. A hint to the The Monroe Doctrine. American minister was followed by a few pregnant passages in Monroes annual message in December. “We could not view,” he said, “any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them [the South American states], or controlling in any other manner their destiny by any European power, in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition towards the United States.” If both the United States and Great Britain were to take this ground the fate of a fleet sent by the Alliance across the Atlantic was not in much doubt, and the project was at once given up.
157. It was supposed at the time that Spain might transfer her colonial claims to some stronger power; and Monroe therefore said that “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” This declaration and that quoted above constitute together the “Monroe doctrine” as originally proclaimed. The doctrine has remained the rule of foreign intercourse for all American parties. Added to the already established refusal of the United States to become entangled in any European wars or alliances, it has separated Europe and America to their common, advantage. (See Monroe Doctrine.)
158. By a treaty with Russia (1825) that power gave up all claims on the Pacific coast south of the present limits of Alaska. The North-west Boundary. The northern boundary of the United States had been defined by the treaty of 1783; and, after the acquisition of Louisiana, a convention with Great Britain (1818) settled the boundary on the line of 49° N. lat. as far west as the Rocky Mountains. West of these mountains the so-called Oregon country, on whose limits the two powers could not agree, was to be held in common possession for ten years. This common possession was prolonged by another convention (1827) indefinitely, with the privilege to either power to terminate it, on giving twelve months' notice. This arrangement lasted until 1846 (see Oregon: History).
159. Monroe's term' of office came to an end in March 1825. He had originally been an extreme Democrat, who could hardly speak of Washington with patience; he had slowly modified his views, and his tendencies were now eagerly claimed by ​the few remaining Federalists as identical with their own. The nationalizing faction of the dominant party had scored almost Election of 1824. all the successes of the administration, and the divergence between it and the opposing faction was steadily becoming more apparent. All the candidates for the presidency in 1824—Andrew Jackson, a private citizen of Tennessee; William H. Crawford, Monroe's secretary of the treasury; John Quincy Adams, his secretary of state; and Henry Clay, the speaker of the House of Representatives—claimed to be Republicans alike; but the personal nature of the struggle was shown by the tendency of their supporters to call themselves “Adams men” or “Jackson men,” rather than by any real party title. Calhoun was supported by all groups for the vice presidency, and was elected without difficulty. The choice of a president was more doubtful.
160. None of the four candidates had anything like a party organization behind him. Adams and Clay represented the nationalizing element, as Crawford and Jackson did not; but there the likeness among them stopped. The strongest forces behind Adams were the new Party Divergence. manufacturing and commercial interests of the East; behind Clay were the desires of the West for internal improvements at Federal expense as a set-off to the benefits which the seaboard states had already received from the government; and the two elements were soon to be united into the National Republican or Whig party (q.v.). Crawford was the representative of the old Democratic party, with all its Southern influences and leanings. Jackson was the personification of the new democracy—not very cultured, perhaps, but honest, and hating every shade of class control instinctively. As he became better known the whole force of the new drift of things turned in his direction. Crawford was taken out of the race, just after the electors had cast their votes, by physical failure, and Adams, later, by the revival of ancient quarrels with the Federalists of New England; and the future was to be with Clay or with Jackson. But in 1824 the electors gave no one a majority; and the House of Representatives, voting by states, gave the presidency to Adams.
161. Adams's election in 1825 was due to the fact that Clay's friends in the House—unable to vote for him, as he was the lowest in the electoral vote, and only three names were open to choice in the House—very naturally gave their votes to Adams. As Adams appointed Clay The Adams Administration 1825-29. to the leading position in his cabinet, the defeated party at once raised the cry of “bargain and intrigue,” one of the most effective in a democracy, and it was kept up throughout Adams's four years of office. Jackson had received the largest number of electoral votes, though not a majority, and the hazy notion that he had been injured because of his devotion to the people increased his popularity. Though demagogues made use of it for selfish purposes, this feeling was an honest one, and Adams had nothing to oppose to it. He tried vigorously to uphold the “American system,” and succeeded in passing the tariff of 1828; he tried to maintain the influence of the United States on both the American continents; but he remained as unpopular as his rival grew popular. In 1828 Adams was easily displaced by Jackson, the electoral vote being 178 to 83. Calhoun was re-elected vice-president.
162. Jackson's inauguration in 1829 closes this period, as it ends the time during which a disruption of the Union by the of peaceable withdrawal of any state was even possible. The party which had made state sovereignty its bulwark in 1798 was now in control of the government Election of 1828. Democracy and Nationality. again; but Jackson's proclamation in his first term, in which he warned South Carolina that “disunion by armed force is treason,” and that blood must flow if the laws were resisted, speaks a very different tone from the speculations of Jefferson on possible future divisions of the United States. And even the sudden attempt of South Carolina to exercise independent action (§§ 172-173) shows that some interest dependent upon state sovereignty had taken alarm at the drift of events, and was anxious to lodge a claim to the right before it should slip from its fingers for ever. Nullification was only the first skirmish between the two hostile forces of slavery and democracy.
163. When the vast territory of Louisiana was acquired in 1803 the new owner found slavery already established there by custom recognized by French and Spanish law. Congress tacitly ratified existing law by taking no action; slavery continued legal, and spread further through the Slavery. territory; and the state of Louisiana entered as a slave state in 1812. The next state to be carved out of the territory was Missouri, admitted in 1821. A Territory, on applying for admission as a state, brings a constitution for inspection by Congress; and when it was found that the new state of Missouri proposed to recognize and continue slavery, a vigorous opposition spread through the North and West, and carried most of the senators and representatives from those sections with it. In the House of Representatives these two sections had a greatly superior number of members; but, as the number of Northern and Southern states had been kept about equal, the compact Southern vote, with one or two Northern allies, generally retained control of the Senate. Admitted by the Senate and rejected by the House, Missouri's application hung suspended for two years until it was successful by the admission of Maine, a balancing Northern state, and by The Missouri Compromise. the following arrangement, known as the Missouri Compromise of 1820: Missouri was to enter as a slave state; slavery was for ever prohibited throughout the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of lat. 36° 30′, the main southern boundary of Missouri; and, though nothing was said of the territory south of the compromise line, it was understood that any state formed out of it was to be a slave state, if it so wished (see Missouri Compromise and Missouri, § History). Arkansas entered under this provision in 1836.
164. The question of slavery was thus set at rest for the present, though a few agitators were roused to more zealous opposition to the essence of slavery itself. In the next decade these agitators succeeded only in the conversion of a few recruits, but these recruits were the ones who Sectional Divergence. took up the work at the opening of the next period and never gave it up until slavery was ended. It is plain now, however, that North and South had already drifted so far apart as to form two sections, and it became evident during the next forty years that the wants and desires of these two sections were so divergent that it was impossible for one government to make satisfactory laws for both. The chief cause was not removed in 1820, though one of its effects was got out of the way for the time.
165. The vast flood of human beings which had been pouring westward for years had now pretty well occupied the territory east of the Mississippi, while, on the west side of that stream, it still showed a disposition to hold to the river valleys. The settled area had increased from The Settled Area. 240,000 sq. m. in 1790 to 633,000 sq. m. in 1830, with an average of 20.3 persons to the square mile. There was still a great deal of Indian territory in the Southern states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida, for the Southern Indians were among the finest of their race; they had become semi-civilized, and were formidable antagonists to the encroaching white race. The states interested had begun preparations for their forcible removal, in public defiance (see Georgia: History) of the attempts of the Federal government to protect the Indians (1827); but the removal was not completed until 1835. In the North, Wisconsin and Michigan, with the northern halves of Illinois and Indiana, were still very thinly settled, but everything indicated early increase of population. The first lake steamboat, the “Walk-in-the-Water,” had appeared at Detroit in 1818, and the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 added to the number ​of such vessels. Lake Erie had seven in 1826; and in 1830, The Steamboat. while the only important lake town, Detroit, was hardly yet more than a frontier fort, a daily line of steamers was running to it from Buffalo, carrying the increasing stream of emigrants to the western territory.
166. The land system of the United States had much to do with the early development of the West. From the first settlement, The Land System. the universally recognized rule had been that of absolute individual property in land, with its corollary of unrestricted competitive or “rack” rents; and this rule was accepted fully in the national land system, whose basis was reported by Jefferson, as chairman of a committee of the Confederation Congress (1785). The public lands were to be divided into “hundreds” each ten miles square and containing one hundred mile-square plots. The hundred was called a “township,” and was afterwards reduced to six miles square, of thirty-six mile-square plots of 640 acres each. From time to time principal meridians and east and west base lines have been run, and townships, have been determined by their relations to these lines. The sections (plots) have been subdivided, but the transfer describes each parcel from the survey map, as in the case of “the south-west quarter of section 20, township 30, north, range 1 east of the third principal meridian.” The price fixed in 1790 as a minimum was $2 per acre; it has tended to decrease, and no effort has ever been made to gain a revenue from it. When the nation acquired its western territory it secured its title to the soil, and always made it a fundamental condition of the admission of a new state that it should not tax United States lands. To compensate the new states for the freedom of unsold public lands from taxation, one township in each thirty-six was reserved to them for educational purposes; and the excellent public school systems of the Western states have been founded on this provision. The cost of obtaining a quarter section (160 acres), under the still later homestead system of granting lands to actual settlers, has come to be only about $26; the interest on this, at 6%, represents an annual rent of one cent per acre—making this, says F. A. Walker, as nearly as possible the “no-rent land” of the economists.
167. The bulk of the early westward migration was of home production; the great immigration from Europe did not begin until about 1847. The West as well as the East thus had its institutions fixed before being called upon to absorb an enormous foreign element.
I.—Industrial Development and Sectional Divergence, 1829-1850.
168. The eight years 1829-1837 have been called “the reign of Andrew Jackson”; his popularity, his long struggle for the New Political Methods. presidency, and his feeling of his official ownership of the subordinate offices gave to his administration at least an appearance of Caesarism. But it was a strictly constitutional Caesarism; the restraints of written law were never violated, though the methods adopted within the law were new to national politics. Since about 1800 state politics in New York and Pennsylvania had been noted for the systematic use of the offices and for the merciless manner in which the officeholder was compelled to work for the party which kept him in place. The presence of New York and Pennsylvania politicians in Jackson's cabinet taught him to use the same system. Removals, except for cause, had been relatively rare before; but under Jackson men were removed almost exclusively for the purpose of installing some more serviceable party tool; and a clean sweep was made in the civil service. Other parties adopted the system, and it remained the rule at a change of administration until comparatively recent years.
169. The system brought with it a semi-military reorganization of parties. Hitherto nominations for the more important The New Organization of Parties. offices had been made mainly by legislative caucuses; candidates for president and vice-president were nominated by caucuses of congressmen, and candidates for the higher state offices by caucuses of the state legislatures. Late in the preceding period “conventions” of delegates from the members of the party in the state were held in New York and Pennsylvania; and in 1831-1832 this became the rule for presidential nominations. It rapidly developed into systematic state, county, and city “conventions”; and the result was the appearance of that complete political machinery, the American political party, with its local organizations, and its delegates to county, state and national conventions. The Democratic machinery was the first to appear, in Jackson's second term (1833-1837). Its workers were paid in offices, or hopes of office, so that it was said to be built on the “cohesive power of public plunder”; but its success was immediate and brilliant. The opposing party, the Whig party (q.v.), had no chance of victory in 1836; and its complete overthrow drove its leaders into the organization of a similar machinery of their own, which scored its first success in 1840. Since that time these strange bodies, unknown to the law, have governed the country by turns; and their enormous growth has steadily made the organization of a third piece of such machinery more difficult or hopeless.
170. The Bank of the United States had hardly been heard of in politics until the new Democratic organization came into Bank of the United States. hostile contact with it. A semi-official demand upon it for a political appointment was met by a refusal; and the party managers called Jackson's attention to an institution which he could not but dislike the more he considered it. His first message spoke of it in unfriendly terms, and every succeeding message brought a more open attack. The old party of Adams and Clay had by this The Whig Party. time taken the name of Whigs, probably from the notion that they were struggling against “the reign of Andrew Jackson,” and they adopted the cause of the bank with eagerness. The bank charter did not expire until 1836, but in 1832 Clay brought up a bill for a new charter. It was passed and vetoed; and the Whigs made the veto an important issue of the presidential election of that year. They were beaten; Jackson was re-elected, receiving 219 electoral votes, and Clay, his Whig opponent, only 49, and the bank party could never again get a majority in the House of Representatives for the charter. The insistence of the president on the point that the charter was a “monopoly” bore weight with the people. But the president could not obtain a majority in the Senate. He determined to take a step which would give him an initiative, and which his opponents could not induce both houses to unite in overriding or punishing. Taking advantage of the provision Removal of the Deposits. that the secretary of the treasury might order the public funds to be deposited elsewhere than in the bank or its branches, he directed the secretary to deposit all the public funds elsewhere. Thus deprived of its great source of dividends, the bank fell into difficulties, became a state bank after 1836, and then went into bankruptcy. (See Banks and Banking: United States; and Jackson, Andrew.)
171. All the political conflicts of Jackson's terms of office were close and bitter. Loose in his ideas before 1829, Jackson showed a steady tendency to adopt the strictest construction of the powers of the Federal government, except in such official perquisites as the offices. He grew into strong opposition to Opposition to the “American System.” all traces of the “American system,” and vetoed bills for internal improvements unsparingly; and his feeling of dislike to all forms of protection is as evident, though he took more care not to make it too public. There are many reasons for believing that his drift was the work of a strong school of leaders—Martin Van Buren, Thomas H. Benton, Edward Livingston, Roger B. Taney, Levi Woodbury, Lewis Cass, W. L. Marcy and others—who developed the policy of the party, and controlled it until the great changes of parties about 1850 took their power from them. At all events, some persistent influence made the Democratic party of 1830-1850 the most consistent and successful party which had thus far appeared in the United States.
172. Calhoun (q.v.) and Jackson were of the same Calhoun and Jackson. stock—Scottish-Irish—much alike in appearance and characteristics, the former representing the trained and educated logic of the race, the latter its instincts and passions. Jackson was led to break off his friendly relations with ​Calhoun in 1830, and he had been led to do so more easily because of the appearance of the doctrine of nullification (q.v.), which was generally attributed, correctly enough, to the authorship of Calhoun. Asserting, as the Republican party of 1798 had done, the sovereign powers of each state, Calhoun held that, as a means of avoiding secession and violent struggle upon every occasion of the passage of an act of Congress which should seem unconstitutional to any state, the state might properly suspend or Nullification. “nullify” the operation of the law within its jurisdiction, in order to protect its citizens against oppression. The passage of the Tariff Act of 1832, which organized and systematized the protective system, forced the Calhoun party into action. A state convention in South Carolina (q.v.) on the 24th of November 1832 declared the Tariff Act null, and made ready to enforce the declaration.
173. But the time was past when the power of a single state could withdraw it from the Union. The president issued a proclamation, warning the people of South Carolina against any attempt to carry out the ordinance of nullification; he ordered a naval force to take possession of Charleston harbour to collect the duties under the act; he called upon Congress for additional executive powers, and Congress passed what nullifiers called the “bloody bill,” putting the land and naval forces at the disposal of the president for the collection of duties against “unlawful combinations”; and he is said to have announced, privately and profanely, his intention of making Calhoun the first victim of any open conflict. Affairs looked so threatening that an unofficial meeting of “leading nullifiers” agreed to suspend the operation of the ordinance until Congress should adjourn; whence it derived the right to suspend has never been stated.
174. The president had already asked Congress to reduce the duties; and many Democratic members of Congress, who had Tariff of 1833. yielded to the popular clamour for protection, were very glad to use “the crisis” as an excuse for now voting against it. A compromise Tariff Act, scaling down all duties over 20% by one-tenth of the excess every two years until 1842, when the remaining excess over 20% should be dropped, was introduced by Clay and became law. Calhoun and his followers claimed this as all that the nullification ordinance had aimed at; and the ordinance was formally repealed. But nullification had received its death-blow; even those Southern leaders who maintained the right of secession refused to recognize the right of a state to remain in the Union while nullifying its laws; and, when protection was reintroduced by the tariff of 1842, nullification was hardly thought of.
175. All the internal conditions of the United States were completely altered by the introduction of railways. For twenty The Locomotive. years past the Americans had been pushing in every direction which offered a hope of the means of reconciling vast territory with enormous population. Stephenson's invention of the locomotive came just in time, and Jackson's two terms of office marked the outburst of modern American life. The miles of railway were 23 in 1830, 1098 in 1835, some 2800 in 1840, and thereafter they about doubled every five years until 1860.
176. A railway map of 1840 shows a fragmentary system, designed mainly to fill the gaps left by the means of communication Railways of 1840. in use in 1830. One or two short lines run back into the country from Savannah and Charleston; another runs north along the coast from Wilmington to Baltimore; several lines connect New York with Washington and other points; and short lines elsewhere mark the openings which needed to be filled at once—a number in New England and the Middle states, three in Ohio and Michigan, and three in Louisiana. Year after year new inventions came in to increase Anthracite. and aid this development. The anthracite coal of the Middle states had been known since 1790, but no means had been devised to put the refractory agent to work. It was now successfully applied to railways (1836), Iron. and to the manufacture of iron (1837). Hitherto wood had been the best fuel for iron-making; now the states which relied on wood were driven out of competition, and production was restricted to the states in which nature had placed coal alongside of iron. Steam navigation across Ocean Navigation. The Telegraph. the Atlantic was established in 1838. The telegraph came next, S. F. B. Morse's line being erected in 1844. The spread of the railway system brought with it, as a natural development, the rise of the American system of express companies, whose first phases of individual enterprise appeared in 1839. No similar period in American history is so extraordinary for material development as the decade 1830-1840. At its beginning the country was an overgrown type of colonial life; at its end American life had been shifted to entirely new lines, which it has since followed. Modern American history had burst in with the explosiveness of an Arctic summer.
177. The steamboat had aided Western development, but the railway aided it far more. Cities and states grew as if the Western Settlement. oxygen of their surroundings had been suddenly increased. The steamboat influenced the railway, and the railway gave the steamboat new powers. Vacant places in the states east of the Mississippi were filling up; the long lines of emigrant waggons gave way to the new and better methods of transport; and new grades of land were made accessible. Chicago was but a frontier fort in 1832; within a half-dozen years it was a flourishing town, with eight steamers connecting it with Buffalo, and dawning ideas of its future development of railway connexions. The maps change from decade to decade, as mapmakers hasten to insert new Admission of Arkansas and Michigan. cities which have sprung up. Two new states, Arkansas and Michigan, were admitted (1836 and 1837). The population of Ohio grew from 900,000 to 1,500,000, that of Michigan from 32,000 to 212,000, and that of the country from 13,000,000 to 17,000,000, between 1830 and 1840.
178. With the change of material surroundings and possibilities came a steady amelioration of social conditions and a Social Conditions. development of social ideals. Such features of the past as imprisonment for debt and the cruel indifference of old methods of dealing with crime began to disappear; the time was past when a state could use an abandoned copper mine as its state prison, as Connecticut had formerly done (see Simsbury, Connecticut). The domestic use of gas and anthracite coal, the introduction of expensive aqueducts for pure water, and the changing life of the people forced changes in the interior and exterior of American dwellings. Wood was still the common building material; imitations of Greek architecture still retained their vogue; but the interiors were models of comfort in comparison with the houses even of 1810. In the “new” regions this was not yet the case, and here social restraints were still so few that society seemed to be reduced almost to its primitive elements. Western steamers reeked with gambling, swindling, duelling and every variety of vice. Public law was almost suspended in some regions; and organized associations of counterfeiters and horse-thieves terrorized whole sections of country. But this state of affairs was altogether temporary, as well as limited in its area; the older and more densely settled states had been well prepared for the change and had never lost command of the social forces, and the process of settling down went on, even in the newer states, with far more rapidity than could reasonably have been expected. Those who took part in the movements of population in 1830-1840 had been trained under the rigid forms of the previous American life; and these soon re-asserted themselves. The rebound was over before 1847, and the Western states were then as well prepared to receive and digest the great immigration which followed as the older states would have been in 1830.
179. A distinct American literature dates from this period. Most of the publications in the United States were still cheap Literature. reprints of foreign works; but native productions no longer followed foreign models with servility. Between 1830 and 1840 Whittier, Longfellow, Holmes, Poe, Hawthorne, Emerson, Bancroft and Prescott joined the advance-guard of American writers—Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Drake, ​Irving and Cooper; and even those writers who had already made their place in literature showed the influence of new conditions by their growing tendency to look less to foreign models and methods. (See American Literature.) Popular education was improved. The new states had from the first endeavoured to secure the best possible system of common schools. The attempt came naturally from the political instincts of the class from which the migration came; but the system which resulted was to be of incalculable service during the years to come. Their absolute democracy and their universal use of the English Common School System. language have made the common schools most successful machines for converting the raw material of immigration into American citizens. This supreme benefit is the basis of the system and the reason for its existence and development, but its incidental advantage of educating the people has been beyond calculation. It was an odd symptom of the general change that Newspapers. American newspapers took a new form during these ten years. The old “blanket-sheet” newspaper, cumbrous to handle and slow in all its ways, met its first rival in the type of newspaper which appeared first in New York City, in the Sun, the Herald and the Tribune (1833, 1835 and 1841). Swift and energetic in gathering news, and fearless, sometimes reckless, in stating it, they brought into American life, with very much that is evil, a great preponderance of good.
180. The chaos into which a part of American society had been thrown had a marked effect on the financial institutions Land Sales. of the country, which went to pieces before it for a time. It had not been meant to make the public lands of the United States a source of revenue so much as a source of development. The sales had touched their high-water mark during the speculative year 1819, when receipts from them had amounted to $3,274,000; in other years they seldom went above $2,000,000. When the railway set the stream of migration moving faster than ever, and cities began to grow like mushrooms, it was natural that speculation in land should feel the Speculation. effects. Sales rose to $3,200,000 in 1831, to $4,000,000 in 1833, to $5,000,000 in 1834, to $15,000,000 in 1835, and to $25,000,000 in 1836. In 1835 the president announced to Congress that the public debt was extinguished, and that some way of dealing with the surplus should be found. Calhoun's proposal, that after the year 1836 any surplus in excess of $5,000,000 should be divided among the states as a loan, was adopted, as regards the surplus (almost $37,000,000) of that year; and some $28,000,000—still carried on the books of the treasury as unavailable funds—were actually distributed before the crisis of 1837 put an end to the surplus and to the policy. The states had already taken a hand in the general speculation by beginning works of public improvement. Foreign, particularly English, capital was abundant; and states which had been accustomed to think a dozen times over a tax of a hundred thousand dollars now began to negotiate loans of millions of dollars and to appropriate the proceeds to the digging of canals and the construction of railways. Their enterprises were badly conceived and badly managed, and only added to the confusion when the crash came. If the Federal government and the states felt that they were rich, the imaginations of individuals ran riot. Every one wanted to buy; prices rose, and every one was growing richer on paper. The assessed value of real estate in New York City in 1832 was $104,000,000; in 1836 it had grown to $253,000,000. In Mobile the assessed value rose from $1,000,000 to $27,000,000. Fictitious values were the rule.
181. When Jackson in 1833 ordered the government revenues to be deposited elsewhere than in the Bank of the United States, there was no government agent to receive them. The secretary of the treasury selected banks at various points in which the revenue should be deposited by the collecting officers; but these banks were organized under charters from their states, as were all banks except that of the United States. The theory of the dominant party denied the constitutional power of Congress to charter a bank, and the states had not yet learned how to deal with such institutions. Their grants of bank charters had been based on ignorance, intrigue, favouritism or corruption, and the banks were utterly unregulated. The Democratic Corporations. feeling was that the privilege of forming banking corporations should be open to all citizens, and it became so. Moreover, it was not until after the crash that New York began the system of compelling such deposits as would really secure circulation, which was long afterward further developed into the present national bank system. In most of the states banks could be freely organized with or without tangible capital, and their notes could be sent to the West for the purchase of government lands, which needed to be held but a month or two to gain a handsome profit. (See Banks and Banking: United States.) “Wild-cat banks” sprang up all over the country; and the “pet banks,” as those chosen for the deposit of government revenues were called, went into speculation as eagerly as the banks which hardly pretended to have capital.
182. The Democratic theory denied the power of Congress to make anything but gold or silver coin legal tender. There The “Specie Circular.” have been “paper-money heresies” in the party; but there was none such among the new school of Democratic leaders which came in in 1829; they were “hard-money men.” In July 1836 Jackson's secretary of the treasury ordered land agents to take nothing in payment for lands except gold or silver. In the following spring the full effects of the order became evident; they fell on the administration of Van Buren, Jackson's successor. Van Buren had been Jackson's secretary of state, the representative man of the new Democratic school, and, in the opinion of the opposition, the evil genius of the Jackson administration; and it seemed to the Whigs poetic justice that he should bear the weight of his predecessor's errors. The “specie circular” turned the tide of paper back to the East, and when it was presented for payment most of the banks suspended specie payment with hardly a struggle. There was no longer a thought of buying; every one wanted to sell; and prices ran down with a rapidity even more startling than that with which they had risen. Failures, to an Panic of 1837. extent and on a scale unprecedented in the United States, made up the “panic of 1837.” Many of the states had left their bonds in the hands of their agents, and, on the failure of the latter, found that the bonds had been hypothecated or disposed of, so that the states got no return from them except a debt which was to them Repudiation. enormous. Saddled suddenly with such a burden, and unable even to pay interest, some of the states “repudiated” their obligations; and repudiation was made successful by the fact that a state could not be sued by its creditors except by its own consent. Even the Federal government felt the strain, for its revenues were locked up in suspended banks. A little more than a year after Congress had authorized the distribution of its surplus revenues among the states Van Buren was forced to call it into special session to provide some relief for the government itself.
183. Van Buren held manfully to the strictest construction of the powers of the Federal government. He insisted that the Sub-treasury Scheme. panic would best right itself without government interference, and, after a four years' struggle, he succeeded in making the “sub-treasury scheme” law (1840). It cut off all connexion of the government with banks, putting collecting and disbursing officers under bonds to hold money safely and to transfer it under orders from the treasury, and restricting payments to or by the United States to gold and silver coin. Its passage had been preceded by another commercial crisis (1839), more limited in its field, but more discouraging to the people. It is true that Jackson, in dealing with the finances, had “simply smashed things,” leaving his successor to repair damages; but it is far from certain that this was not the best way available at the time. The wisest scheme of financial reform would have had small chance ​of success with the land-jobbers in Congress, and Van Buren's firmness found the way out of the chaos.
184. Van Buren's firmness was unpopular, and the Whig party now adopted methods which were popular if somewhat Election of 1840. demagogical. It nominated William H. Harrison in 1840; it contrasted his homely frontier virtues with Van Buren's “ostentatious indifference to the misfortunes of the people” and with the supposed luxury of his life in the White House; and, after the first of the modern “campaigns” of mass meetings and processions, Harrison was elected, receiving 234 electoral votes and Van Buren only 60. He died on the 4th of April 1841, only a month after his inauguration, and the vice-president, John Tyler, became president. Tyler was of the extreme Calhoun school, which had shown some disposition to grant to Van Buren a support which it had refused to Jackson; and the Whigs had nominated Tyler to retain his faction with them. Now he was the nominal leader of the party, while his politics were opposite to theirs, and the real leader of the party, Clay, was ready to force a quarrel upon him. The quarrel took place; the Whig majority in Congress was not large enough to pass any measures over Tyler's veto; and the first two years of his administration were passed in barren Tariff of 1842. conflict with his party. The “sub-treasury” law was repealed (1841); the tariff of 1842 introduced a modified protection; and there the Whigs were forced to stop. Their dissensions made Democratic success comparatively easy, and Tyler had the support of a Democratic House behind him during the last two years of his term.
185. The success of the Democratic machinery, and the reflex of its temporary check in 1840, with the influences brought to bear on it by the returning Calhoun faction, were such as to take the control of the party out of the hands of the leaders who had formed it. They had had high regard for political principle, even though they were willing to use doubtful methods for its propagation; these methods had now brought out new men, who looked mainly to success, and to close connexion with the controlling political element of the South as the easiest means of attaining success. When the Democratic convention of 1844 met it was expected to renominate Van Buren. A majority of the delegates had been sent there for that purpose, but many of them would have been glad to be prevented from doing so. They allowed a resolution to be passed making a two-thirds vote necessary for nomination; Van Buren was unable to command so many votes; and, when his name was withdrawn, James K. Polk was nominated. The Whigs nominated Clay.
186. The beginning of the abolitionist movement in the United States, the establishment of the Liberator (1831), Abolitionist Movement. and of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833), and the subsequent divisions in it, are dealt with elsewhere (see Garrison, William Lloyd). Up to that time “abolition” had meant gradual abolition; it was a wish rather than a purpose. Garrison called for immediate abolition. The basis of the American system was in the reserved rights of the states, and slavery rested on their will, which was not likely to be changed. But the cry was kept up. The mission of the Abolitionists was to force the people to think of the question; and, in spite of riots, assaults and persecution of every kind, they fulfilled it manfully. In truth, slavery was more and more out of harmony with the new economic conditions which were taking complete control of the North and West, but had hardly been felt in the South. Thus the two sections, North and South, were more and more disposed to take opposite views of everything in which slavery was involved, and it had a faculty of involving itself in almost everything. The status of slavery in the Territories had been settled in 1820; that of slavery in the states had been settled by the Constitution; but even in minor questions the intrusive element had to be reckoned with. The Abolitionists sent their documents through the mails, and the South wished the Federal government to interfere and stop the practice. The Abolitionists persisted in petitioning Congress for the passage of various measures which Congress regarded as utterly unconstitutional; and the disposition of Congress to deny or regulate the right of petition in such matters (see Adams, John Quincy) excited the indignation of Northern men who had no sympathy with abolition. But the first occasion on which the views of the two sections came into flat contrast was on the question of the annexation of Texas.
187. The United States had had a vague claim to Texas until 1819, when the claim was surrendered to Spain in part compensation Texas. for Florida. On the revolt of Mexico Texas became a part of that republic. It was colonized by Americans, mainly southerners and slave-holders, seceded from Mexico in 1835, and defeated the Mexican armies and established its independence in the following year. Southern politicians desired its annexation to the United States for many reasons. Its people were kindred to them; its soil would widen the area of slavery; and its territory, it was hoped, could be divided into several states, to reinforce the Southern column in the Senate. People in the North were either indifferent or hostile to the proposal; Van Buren had declared against it, and his action was a reason for his defeat in the Democratic convention. Oregon. On the other hand, there were indications that the joint occupation of the Oregon country could not last much longer. American immigration into it had begun, while the Hudson's Bay Company, the British tenant of the soil, was the natural enemy of immigration. To carry the sentiment of both sections, the two points were coupled; and the Democratic convention declared for the reannexation of Texas and the reoccupation of Oregon.
188. One of the cardinal methods of the political Abolitionists was to nominate candidates of their own against a doubtful Liberty Party. friend, even though this secured the election of an open enemy. Clays efforts to guard his condemnation of the Texas annexation project were just enough to push the Liberty party (q.v.), the political Abolitionists, into voting for candidates of their own in New York; on a close vote their loss was enough to throw the electoral votes of Election of 1844. Admission of Texas. that state to Polk, and its votes decided the result. Polk was elected (November 1844); and Texas was annexed to the United States in the following spring. At the next meeting of Congress (1845) Texas was admitted as a state.
189. West of Texas the northern prolongation of Mexico ran right athwart the westward movement of American population; and, though the movement had not yet reached the barrier, the Polk administration desired further acquisitions from Mexico. The western boundary of Texas was undefined; a strip of territory claimed by Texas was settled exclusively by Mexicans; but the Polk administration directed General Zachary Taylor, the American commander in Texas, to cross the Nueces river and seize the disputed territory. Collisions with Mexican troops followed; they were beaten in the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and were chased across the Rio Grande. Taylor followed and took the city of Monterey.
190. On the news of the first bloodshed Congress declared war against Mexico, over the opposition of the Whigs. A land War with Mexico. and naval force took possession of California, and a land expedition occupied New Mexico, so that the authority of Mexico over all the soil north of her present boundaries was abruptly terminated (1846). At the opening of 1847 Taylor fought the last battle in northern Mexico (Buena Vista), defeating the Mexicans, and General Winfield Scott, with a new army, landed at Vera Cruz for a march upon the city of Mexico. Scott's march was marked by one successful battle after another, usually against heavy odds; and in September he took the capital city and held it until peace was made (1848) Peace. by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Among the terms of peace was the cession of the present California, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, the consideration being a payment of $15,000,000 by the United States and the assumption of some $3,000,000 of debts due by Mexico to American citizens. With a subsequent rectification of frontier (1853) by the Gadsden Treaty (see Gadsden, James), this cession ​added some 500,000 sq. m. to the area of the United States; Texas itself made up a large additional area. The settlement of the north-east and north-west boundaries (see Maine and Oregon) by the Webster-Ashburton and Buchanan-Pakenham treaties (1842, 1846) with the Texas and Mexican cessions, gave the United States the complete territorial form retained until the annexation of Alaska in 1867.
191. In the new territory slavery had been forbidden under Mexican law; and its annexation brought up the question of Slavery in the New Territory. its status under American law. He who remembers the historical fact that slavery had never been more than a custom, ultimately recognized and protected by state law, will not have much difficulty in deciding about the propriety of forcing such a custom by law upon any part of a territory. But, if slavery was to be excluded from the new territory, the states which should ultimately be formed out of it would enter as free states, and the influence of the South in the Senate would be decreased. For the first time the South appears as a distinct imperium in imperio in the territorial difficulties which began in 1848.
192. The first appearance of these difficulties brought out in the Democratic party a solution which was so closely in line “Squatter Sovereignty.” with the prejudices of the party, and apparently so likely to meet all the wishes of the South, that it bade fair to carry the party through the crisis without the loss of its Southern vote. This was “squatter sovereignty,” the notion that it would be best for Congress to leave the people of each Territory to settle the question of the existence of slavery for themselves. The broader and democratic ground for the party would have been that which it at first seemed Wilmot Proviso. likely to take—the “Wilmot Proviso,” a condition proposed to be added to the act authorizing acquisitions of territory, providing that slavery should be forbidden in all territory to be acquired under the act (see Wilmot, David). In the end apparent expediency carried the dominant party off to “squatter sovereignty,” and the Democratic adherents of the Wilmot Proviso, with the Liberty party Free Soil Party. and the anti-slavery Whigs, united in 1848 under the name of the Free Soil party (q.v.). The Whigs had no solution to offer; their entire programme, from this time to their downfall as a party, consisted in a persistent effort to evade or ignore all difficulties connected with slavery.
193. Taylor, after the battle of Buena Vista, resigned and came home, considering himself ill-used by the administration. Election of 1848. He refused to commit himself to any party; and the Whigs were forced to accept him as their candidate in 1848. The Democrats nominated Lewis Cass; and the Free Soil party, or “Free-Soilers,” nominated Van Buren. By the vote of the last-named party the Democratic candidate lost New York and the election, and Taylor was elected president, receiving 163 electoral votes, while Cass received 127. Taking office in March 1849, he had on his shoulders the whole burden of the territorial difficulties, aggravated by the discovery of gold in California and the sudden rise of population there. Congress was so split into factions that it could for a long time agree upon nothing; thieves and outlaws were too strong for the semi-military government of California; and the Californians, with the approval of the president, proceeded to form a constitution and apply for admission as a state. They had so framed their constitution as to forbid slavery; and this was really the application of the Wilmot Proviso to the richest part of the new territory, and the South felt that it had been robbed of the cream of what it alone had fought cheerfully to obtain.
194. The admission of California was not secured until September 1850, soon after Taylor's sudden death (July 9), Admission of California. and then only by the addition of a bonus to Texas, the division of the rest of the Mexican cession into the Territories of Utah and New Mexico without prohibition of slavery, and the passage of a fugitive slave law. The slave trade, but not slavery, was forbidden in the District of Columbia. The whole was generally known as the Compromise Measures of 1850 (q.v.). Two of its features need notice. As has been said, slavery was not mentioned in the act; and the status of slavery in the Territories, was thus left uncertain. Compromise of 1850. Congress can veto any legislation of a territorial legislature, but, in fact, the two houses of Congress were hardly ever able to unite on anything after 1850, and both these Territories did establish slavery before 1860, without a Congressional veto. The advantage here was with the South. The other point, the Fugitive Slave Law (q.v.), Fugitive Slave Law. was a special demand of the South. The Constitution contained clauses directing that fugitive criminals and slaves should be delivered up, on requisition, by the state to which they had fled. In the case of criminals the delivery was directed to be made by the executive of the state to which they had fled; in the case of slaves no delivering authority was specified, and an act of Congress in 1793 had imposed the duty on Federal judges or on local state magistrates. Some of the states had Personal Liberty Laws. passed “Personal Liberty Laws,” forbidding or limiting the action of their magistrates in such cases, and the act of 1850 transferred the decision of such cases to United States commissioners, with the assistance of United States marshals. It imposed penalties on rescues, and denied a jury trial.
195. The question of slavery had taken up so much time in Congress that its other legislation was comparatively limited. The rates of postage were reduced to five and ten cents for distances less and greater than 300 m. (1845); and the naval school at Annapolis was established in the same year. The military academy at West Point had been established as such in 1802. When the Democratic party had obtained complete control of the government, it re-established (by act of 6th August, 1846), the “sub-treasury,” or independent treasury, Tariff of 1846. which is still the basis of the treasury system. In the same year, after an exhaustive report by Robert J. Walker, Polk's secretary of the treasury, the tariff of 1846 was passed; it reduced duties, and moderated the application of the protective principle. Apart from a slight reduction of duties in 1857, this remained in force till 1861.
196. Five states were admitted during the last ten years of this period: Florida (1845), Texas (1845), Iowa (1846), Wisconsin Admission of Florida, Iowa and Wisconsin. (1848) and California (1850). The early entrance of Iowa, Wisconsin and Florida had been due largely to Indian wars—the Black Hawk War (see Black Hawk) in Iowa and Wisconsin (1832), and the Seminole War in Florida (1835-37), after each of which the defeated Indians were compelled to cede lands as the price of peace. The extinction of Indian titles in northern Michigan brought about the discovery of the great copper fields of that region, whose existence had been suspected long before it could be proved. Elsewhere settlement followed the lines already marked out, except in the new possessions on the Pacific coast, whose full possibilities were not yet known. Railways in the Eastern states were beginning to Railways and Telegraphs. show something of a connected system; in the South they had hardly changed since 1840; in the West and they had only been prolonged on their original lines. The telegraph was brought into use in 1844; but it is not until the census of 1860 that its effects are seen in the fully connected network of railways which then covers the whole North and West.
197. The sudden development of wealth in the country gave an impetus to the spirit of invention. Charles Goodyear's Invention. method of vulcanizing rubber (1839) had come into use. Cyrus Hall M‘Cormick had made an invention whose results have been hardly less than that of the locomotive in their importance to the United States. He had patented a reaping machine in 1834, and this, further improved and supplemented by other inventions, had brought into play the whole system of agricultural machinery, whose existence was scarcely known elsewhere until the London “World's Fair” of 1851 brought it into notice. A successful sewing-machine came in 1846; the power-loom and the surgical use of anaesthetics in the same year; and the rotary press for printing in 1847.
​198. All the conditions of life were changing so rapidly that it was natural that the minds of men should change with them or become unsettled. This was the era of new sects, of communities, of fantastic proposals of every kind, of transcendentalism in literature, religion, and politics. Not the most The Mormons. fantastic or benevolent, but certainly the most successful, of these was the sect of Mormons or Latter-day Saints. They settled in Utah in 1847, calling their capital Salt Lake City, and spreading thence through the neighbouring Territories. They became a menace to the American system; their numbers were so great that it was against American instincts to deprive them of self-government; while their polygamy and total submission to their hierarchy made it impossible to erect them into a state having complete control of marriage and divorce. The difficulty was lessened by their renunciation of polygamy in 1890 (see Mormons).
199. The material development of the United States since 1830 had been extraordinary, but every year made it more The South. evident that the South was not sharing in it. It is plain now that the fault was in the labour system of the South: her only labourers were slaves, and a slave who was fit for anything better than field labour was prima facie a dangerous man. The divergence had as yet gone only far enough to awaken intelligent men in the South to its existence, and to stir them to efforts as hopeless as they were earnest, to find some artificial stimulus for Southern industries. In the next ten years the process was to show its effects on the national field.
J.—Tendencies to Disunion, 1850-1861.
200. The Abolitionists had never ceased to din the iniquity of slavery into the ears of the American people. Calhoun, Slavery and the Sections. Webster and Clay, with nearly all the other political leaders of 1850, had united in deploring the wickedness of these fanatics, who were persistently stirring up a question which was steadily widening the distance between the sections. They mistook the symptom for the disease. Slavery itself had put the South out of harmony with its surroundings. Even in 1850, though they hardly yet knew it, the two sections had drifted so far apart that they were practically two different countries.
201. The South remained much as in 1790; while other parts The “Slave Power.” of the country had developed, it had stood still. The remnants of colonial feeling, of class influence, which advancing democracy had wiped out elsewhere, retained all their force here, aggravated by the effects of an essentially aristocratic system of employment. The ruling class had to maintain a military control over the labouring class, and a class influence over the poorer whites. It had even secured in the Constitution provision for its political power in the representation given to three-fifths of the slaves. The twenty additional members of the House of Representatives were not simply a gain to the South; they were still more a gain to the “black districts,” where whites were few, and the slave-holder controlled the district. Slave-owners and slave-holders together, there were but 350,000 of them; but they had common interests, the intelligence to see them, and the courage to contend for them. The first step of a rising man was to buy slaves; and this was enough to enrol him in the dominant class. From it were drawn the representatives and senators in Congress, the governors, and all the holders of offices over which the “slave power,” as it came to be called, had control. Not only was the South inert; its ruling class, its ablest and best men, united in defence of tendencies hostile to those of the rest of the country.
202. Immigration into the United States was not an important factor in its development until about 1847. The Immigration. immigrants, so late as 1820, numbered but 8000 per annum; their number did not touch 100,000 until 1842, and then it fell for a year or two almost to half that number. In 1847 it rose again to 235,000, in 1849 to 300,000, and in 1880 to 428,000; all told, more than two and a quarter million persons from abroad settled in the United States between 1847 and 1854. Leaving out the dregs of the immigration, which settled down in the seaboard cities, its best part was a powerful nationalizing force. It had not come to any particular state, but to the United States; it had none of the traditional prejudices in favour of a state, but a strong feeling for the whole country; and the new feelings which it brought in must have had their weight not only on the gross mass of the people, but on the views of former leaders. And all the influences of this enormous immigration were confined to the North and West. The immigration avoided slave soil as if by instinct. So late as 1880 the census reported that the Southern states, except Florida, Louisiana and Texas, are “practically without any foreign element”; but it was only in 1850-1860 that this differentiating circumstance began to show itself plainly. And, as the sections began to differ further in aims and policy, the North began to gain heavily in ability to ensure its success.
203. Texas was the last slave state ever admitted; and, as it refused to be divided, the South had no further increase The Sections in Congress. of numbers in the Senate. Until 1850 the admission of a free state had been so promptly balanced by the admission of a slave state that the senators of the two sections had remained about equal in number; in 1860 the free states had 36 senators and the slave states only 30. As the representation in the House had changed from 35 free state and 30 slave state members in 1790 to 147 free state and 90 slave state in 1860, and as the number of presidential electors is the sum of the numbers of senators and representatives, political power had passed away from the South in 1850. If at any time the free states should unite they could control the House of Representatives and the Senate, elect the president and vice-president, dictate the appointment of judges and other Federal officers, and make the laws what they pleased. If pressed to it, they could even control the interpretation of the laws by the Supreme Court. No Federal judge could be removed except by impeachment, but an act of Congress could at any time increase the number of judges to any extent, and the appointment of the additional judges could reverse the opinion of the court.
204. In circumstances so critical a cautious quiescence and avoidance of public attention was the only safe course for the Tendencies to Disunion. “slave power,” but that course had become impossible. The numbers interested had become too large to be subject to complete discipline; all could not be held in cautious reserve; and, when an advanced proposal came from any quarter of the slave-holding lines, the whole army was shortly forced up to the advanced position. Every movement of the mass was necessarily aggressive; and aggression meant final collision. If collision came it must be on some question of the rights of the states; and on such a question the whole South would move as one man.
205. The Protestant churches of the United States had reflected in their organization the spirit of the political Sectarian Division. institutions under which they lived. Acting as purely voluntary associations, they had been organized into governments by delegates, much like the “conventions” which had been evolved in the political parties. The omnipresent slavery question intruded into these bodies, and split them. The Methodist Episcopal Church was thus divided into a Northern and a Southern branch in 1844, and the equally powerful Baptist Church met the same fate in the following year. Two of the four great Protestant bodies were thus no longer national; it was only by the most careful management that the integrity of the Presbyterian Church was maintained until 1861, when it also yielded; and only the Episcopal and Roman Catholic Churches retained their national character.
206. The political parties showed the same tendency. Each began to shrivel up in one section or the other. The Party Changes. notion of “squatter sovereignty,” attractive at first to the Western democracy, and not repudiated by the South, enabled the Democratic party to pass the crisis of 1850 without losing much of its Northern vote, while Southern Whigs began to drift in, making the party continually ​more pro-slavery. This could not continue long without beginning to decrease its Northern vote, but this effect did not become plainly visible until after 1852. The efforts of the Whig party to ignore the great question alienated its anti-slavery members in the North, while they did not satisfy its Southern members. The Whig losses were not at first heavy, but, as the electoral vote of each state is determined by the barest plurality of the popular vote, they were enough to defeat the party almost everywhere in the presidential election of 1852. The Whigs Election of 1852. nominated General Winfield Scott and the Democrats Franklin Pierce; and Pierce carried all but four of the thirty-one states, and was elected, receiving 254 out of the 296 electoral votes. This revelation of hopeless weakness was the downfall of the Whig party; it maintained its organization for four years longer, but the life had gone out of it. The future was with the Free Soil party, though it had polled but few votes in 1852.
207. During the administration of Taylor (and Vice-President Millard Fillmore, who succeeded him) Clay, Webster, Changes in Leadership. Calhoun, Polk and Taylor were removed by death, and there was a steady drift of other political leaders out of public life. New men were pushing in everywhere, and in both sections they showed the prevailing tendency to disunion. The best of them were unprecedentedly radical. Charles Sumner, William H. Seward, and Salmon P. Chase came into the Senate, bringing the first accession of recognized force and ability to the antislavery feeling in that body. The new Southern men, such as Jefferson Davis, and the Democratic recruits from the Southern Whig party, such as Alexander H. Stephens, were ready to take the ground on which Calhoun had always insisted—that Congress was bound not merely to the negative duty of not attacking slavery in the Territories, but to the positive duty of protecting it. This, if it should become the general Southern position, was Certain to destroy the notion of “squatter sovereignty,” and thus to split the Democratic party, which was almost the last national ligament that now held the two fragments of the Union together.
208. The social disintegration was as rapid. Northern men travelling in the South were naturally looked upon with Social Divergence. increasing suspicion, and were made to feel that they were on a soil alien in sympathies. Some of the worst phases of democracy were called into play in the South; and, in some sections, law openly yielded supremacy to popular passion in the cases of suspected Abolitionists. Southern conventions, on all sorts of subjects, became common; and in these meetings, permeated by a dawning sense of Southern nationality, hardly any proposition looking to Southern independence of the North was met with disfavour.
209. Calhoun, in his last and greatest speech, called attention to the manner in which one tie after another was snapping. Progress of Disunion. But he ignored the real peril of the situation—its dangerous facts: that the South was steadily growing weaker in comparison with the North, and more unable to secure a wider area for the slave system; that it was therefore being steadily forced into demanding active Congressional protection for slavery in the Territories; that the North would never submit to this; and that the South must submit or bring about a collision by attempting to secede.
210. Anti-slavery feeling in the North was stimulated by the manner in which the Fugitive Slave Law was enforced Fugitive Slave Law. immediately after 1850. The chase after fugitive slaves was prosecuted in many cases with circumstances of revolting brutality, and features of the slave system which had been tacitly looked upon as fictitious were brought home to the heart of the free states. (See Fugitive Slave Laws.) The added feeling showed its force when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by Congress Kansas-Nebraska Act. (1854). It organized the two new Territories of Kansas and Nebraska. Both of them were for ever free soil by the terms of the Missouri Compromise (q.v.). But the success of the notion of squatter sovereignty in holding the Democratic party together while destroying the Whig party had intoxicated Stephen A. Douglas (q.v.), and other Northern Democrats; and they now applied the doctrine to these Territories. They did not desire “to vote slavery up or down,” but left the decision to the people of the two Territories and the essential feature of the Missouri Compromise was specifically repealed.
211. This was the grossest political blunder in American history. The status of slavery had been settled, by the Constitution or by the compromises of 1820 and 1850, on every square foot of American soil; right or wrong, the settlement was made. The Kansas-Nebraska Act took a great mass of territory out of the settlement and flung it into the arena as a prize for which the sections were to struggle. The first result of the act was to throw parties into chaos. An American or “Know-Nothing” The “American Party.” (q.v.) party, a secret oath-bound organization, pledged to oppose the influence or power of foreign-born citizens, had been formed to take the place of the defunct Whig party. It had been quite successful in state elections for a time, and was now beginning to have larger aspirations. It, like the Whig party, intended to ignore slavery, but, after a few years of life, the questions complicated with slavery entered its organization and divided it also. Even in 1854 many of its leaders in the North were forced to take position against the Kansas-Nebraska Act, while hosts of others joined in the opposition without any party organization. No American party ever rose so swiftly as this latter; The Republican Party. with no other party name than the awkward title of “Anti-Nebraska men,” it carried the Congressional elections of 1854 at the North, forced many of the former Know-Nothing leaders into union with it, and controlled the House of Representatives of the Congress which met in 1855. The Democratic party, which had been practically the only party since 1852, had now to face the latest and strongest of its broad-constructionist opponents, one which with the nationalizing features of the Federalist and Whig parties combined democratic feelings and methods, and, above all, had a democratic purpose at bottom. It acknowledged, at first, no purpose aimed at slavery, only an intention to exclude slavery from the Territories; but, under such principles, it was the only party which was potentially an anti-slavery party, the only party to which the enslaved labourer of the South could look with the faintest hope of aid in reaching the status of a man. The new party had grasped the function which belonged of right to its great opponent, and it seized with it its opponent's original title. The name Democrat had quite taken the place of that first used—Republican—but the latter had never passed out of popular remembrance and liking at the North. The new party took quick and skilful advantage of this by assuming the old name (see Republican Party), and early in 1856 the two great parties of the present—Democratic and Republican—were drawn up against one another.
212. The foreign relations of the United States during Pierce's term of office were overshadowed by the domestic Koszta Case. difficulties, but were of importance. In the Koszta case (1853) national protection had been afforded on foreign soil to a person who had only taken the preliminary steps to naturalization (see Marcy, W. L.). Japan had been opened to American intercourse and commerce Japan. (1854). But the question of slavery was more and more thrusting itself even into foreign relations. A great Southern republic, to be founded at first by the slave states, but to take in gradually the whole territory around the Gulf of Mexico and include the West Indies, was soon to be a pretty general ambition among slave-holders, and its first phases appeared during Pierce's administration. Efforts were begun to obtain Cuba from Spain; and the three leading Ostend Manifesto; Filibustering. American ministers abroad, meeting at Ostend, united in declaring the possession of Cuba to be essential to the well-being of the United States Filibuster (1854). (See Buchanan, James.) “Filibustering” expeditions against Cuba or the smaller South American states, intended so to revolutionize them as to lay a basis for an ​application to be annexed to the United States, became common, and taxed the energies of the Federal government. But these yielded in importance to the affairs in Kansas.
213. Nebraska was then supposed to be a desert, and attention was directed almost exclusively to Kansas. No sooner Kansas. had its organization left the matter of slavery to be decided by its “people” than the anti-slavery people of the North and West felt it to be their duty to see that the “people” of the Territory should be anti-slavery in sympathy. Emigrant associations were formed, and these shipped men and families to Kansas, arming them for their protection in the new country. Southern newspapers called for similar measures in the South, but the call was less effective. Southern men without slaves, settling a new state, were uncomfortably apt to prohibit slavery, as in California. Only slaveholders were trusty pro-slavery men; and such were not likely to take slaves to Kansas and risk their ownership on the result of the struggle. But for the people of Missouri, Kansas would have been free soil at once. Lying across the direct road to Kansas, the Missouri settlers blockaded the way of free-state settlers, crossed into Kansas, and voted profusely at the first Territorial election. The story of the contest between the free-state and pro-slavery settlers is told elsewhere (see Kansas: § History); here it need only be said that the struggle passed into a real civil war, the two powers mustering considerable armies, fighting battles, capturing towns and paroling prisoners. The struggle was really over in 1857, and the South was beaten. There were, however, many obstacles yet to be overcome before the new state of Kansas was recognized by Congress, after the withdrawal of the senators of the seceding states (1861).
214. In the heat of the Kansas struggle came the presidential election of 1856. The Democrats nominated James Buchanan, Election of 1856. declaring, as usual, for the strictest limitations of the powers of the Federal government on a number of points specified, and reaffirming the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska Act—the settlement of slavery by the people of a Territory. The remnant of the Whig party, including the Know-Nothings of the North and those Southern men who wished no further discussion of slavery, nominated the president who had gone out of office in 1853, Millard Fillmore. The Republican party nominated John C. Frémont; the bulk of its manifesto was taken up with protests against attempts to introduce slavery into the Territories; but it showed its broad-construction tendencies by declaring for appropriations of Federal moneys for internal improvements. The Democrats were successful in electing Buchanan; but the position of the party was quite different from the triumph with which it had come out of the election of 1852. It was no longer master of twenty-seven of the thirty-one states; all New England and New York, all the North-West but Indiana and Illinois, all the free states but five, had gone against it; its candidate no longer had a majority of the popular vote. For the first time in the history of the country a distinctly anti-slavery candidate had obtained an electoral vote, and had even come near obtaining the presidency. Fillmore had carried but one state, Maryland; Buchanan had carried the rest of the South, with a few states in the North, and Frémont the rest of the North and none of the South. If things had gone so far that the two sections were to be constituted into opposing political parties, it was evident that the end was near.
215. Oddly enough the constitutionality of the Compromise of 1820 had never happened to come before the Supreme Court The Dred Scott Decision. for consideration. In 1856-1857 it came up for the first time. One Dred Scott, a Missouri slave who had been taken in 1834 to Illinois, a free state, and in 1836 to Minnesota, within the territory covered by the Compromise, and had some years after being taken back to Missouri in 1838 sued for his freedom, was sold (1852) to a citizen of New York. Scott then transferred his suit from the state to the Federal courts, under the power given them to try suits between citizens of different states, and the case came by appeal to the Supreme Court. Its decision, announced on the 6th of March 1857, put Scott out of court on the ground that a slave, or the descendant of slaves, could not be a citizen of the United States or have any standing in Federal courts. The opinion of Chief Justice Taney went on to attack the validity of the Missouri Compromise, for the reasons that one of the Constitutional functions of Congress was the protection of property; that slaves had been recognized as property by the Constitution, and that Congress was bound to protect, not to prohibit, slavery in the Territories. The mass of the Northern people held that slaves were looked upon by the Constitution, not as property, but as “persons held to service or labour” by state laws; that the Constitutional function of Congress was the protection of liberty as well as of property; and that Congress was thus bound to prohibit, not to protect, slavery in the Territories. A large part of the North flouted the decision of the Supreme Court, and the storm of angry dissent which it aroused did the disunionists good service at the South. From this time the leading newspapers in the South maintained that the radical Southern view first advanced by Calhoun, and but slowly accepted by other Southern leaders, as to the duty of Congress to protect slavery in the Territories, had been confirmed by the Supreme Court, that the Northern Republicans had rejected it; even the “squatter sovereignty” of Northern Democrats could no longer be submitted to by the South.
216. The population of the United States in 1860 was over 31,000,000, an increase of more than 8,000,000 in ten years. Admission of Minnesota and Oregon. As the decennial increases of population became larger, so did the divergence of the sections in population, and still more in wealth and resources. Two more free states came in during this period—Minnesota (1858) and Oregon (1859)—and Kansas was clamouring loudly for the same privilege. The free and slave states, which had been almost equal in population in 1790, stood now as 19 to 12. And of the 12,000,000 in slave states, the 4,000,000 slaves and the 250,000 free blacks were not so much a factor of strength as a possible source of weakness and danger. No serious slave rising John Brown's Raid. had ever taken place in the South; but John Brown's attack (1859) on Harper's Ferry as the first move in a project to rouse the slaves (see Brown, John), and the alarm which it carried through the South, were tokens of a danger which added a new horror to the chances of civil war. It was not wonderful that men, in the hope of finding some compromise by which to avoid such a catastrophe, should be willing to give up everything but principle, nor that offers of compromise should urge Southern leaders further into the fatal belief that “the North would not fight.”
217. Northern Democrats, under the lead of Douglas, had been forced already almost to the point of revolt by the determination Division of the Democratic Party. of Southern senators to prevent the admission of Kansas as a free state, if not to secure her admission as a slave state. When the Democratic convention of 1860 met at Charleston the last strand of the last national political organization parted; the Democratic party itself was split at last by the slavery question. The Southern delegates demanded a declaration in favour of the duty of Congress to protect slavery in the Territories. It was all that the Douglas Democrats could then do to maintain themselves in a few Northern states; such a declaration meant political suicide everywhere, and they voted it down. The convention divided into two bodies. The Southern body adjourned to Richmond, and the Northern and Border state convention to Baltimore. Here the Northern delegates, by seating some delegates friendly to Douglas, ​provoked a further secession of border state delegates, who, in company with the Richmond body, nominated John C. Breckinridge (q.v.) and Joseph Lane for president and vice-president. The remainder of the original convention nominated Douglas and H. V. Johnson.
218. The remnant of the old Whig and Know-Nothing parties, now calling itself the Constitutional Union party, met Constitutional Union Party; Republican Party. at Baltimore and nominated John Bell (q.v.) and Edward Everett. The Republican convention met at Chicago. Its “platform” of 1856 had been somewhat broad-constructionist in its nature and leanings, but a strong Democratic element in the party had prevented it from going too far in this direction. The election of 1856 had shown that, with the votes of Pennsylvania and Illinois, the party would have then been successful, and the Democratic element was now ready to take almost anything which would secure the votes of these states. This state of affairs will go to explain the nomination of Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, for president, with Hannibal Hamlin, a former Democrat, for vice-president, and the declaration of the platform in favour of a protective tariff. The mass of the platform was still devoted to the necessity of excluding slavery from the Territories. To sum The Parties and Slavery in the Territories. up: the Bell party wished to have no discussion of slavery; the Douglas Democrats rested on “squatter sovereignty” and the Compromise of 1850, but would accept the decision of the Supreme Court; the Republicans demanded that Congress should legislate for the prohibition of slavery in the Territories; and the Southern Democrats demanded that Congress should legislate for the protection of slavery in the Territories.
219. No candidate received a majority of the popular vote, Lincoln standing first and Douglas second. But Lincoln and Election of 1860. Hamlin had a clear majority of the electoral vote, and so were elected, Breckinridge and Lane coming next. It is worthy of mention that, up to the last hours of Lincoln's first term of office, Congress would always have contained a majority opposed to him but for the absence of the members from the seceding states. The interests of the South and even of slavery were thus safe enough under an anti-slavery president. But the drift of events was too plain. Nullification had come and gone, and the nation feared it no longer. Even secession by a single state was now almost out of the question; the letters of Southern governors in 1860, in consultation on the state of affairs, agree that no state would secede without assurances of support by others. If this crisis were allowed to slip by without action, even a sectional secession would soon be impossible.
220. In October 1860 Governor W. H, Gist, of South Carolina, sent a letter to the governor of each of the other cotton states Secession. except Texas, asking co-operation in case South Carolina should resolve upon secession, and the replies were favourable. The democratic revolution which, since 1829, had compelled the legislature to give the choice of presidential electors to the people of the states had not affected South Carolina; her electors were still chosen by the legislature. That body, after having chosen the state's electors on the 6th of November, remained in session until the telegraph had brought assurances that Lincoln had secured a sufficient number of electors to ensure his election; it then (on the 10th) summoned a state convention and adjourned. The state convention, which is a legislative body chosen for a special purpose, met first at Columbia and then at Charleston, and on the 20th of December unanimously passed an “ordinance of secession,” repealing the acts by which the state had ratified the Constitution and its amendments, and dissolving “the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the ‘United States of America.’ ” The convention took all steps necessary to prepare for war, and adjourned. Similar ordinances were passed by conventions in Mississippi (Jan. 9, 1861), Florida (Jan. 10), Alabama (Jan. 11), Georgia (Jan. 19), Louisiana (Jan. 26) and Texas (Feb. 1).
221. The opposition in the South did not deny the right to secede, but the expediency of its exercise. Their The Argument for Secession. effort was to elect delegates to the state conventions who would vote not to secede. They were beaten, says A. H. Stephens, by the cry, originally uttered by T. R. R. Cobb before his state legislature (Nov. 12, 1860), “we can make better terms out of the Union than in it.” That is, the states were to withdraw individually, suspend the functions of the Federal government within their jurisdiction for the time, consider maturely any proposals for guarantees for their rights in the Union, and return as soon as satisfactory guarantees should be given. A second point to Action at the State Conventions. be noted is the difference between the notions of a state convention prevalent in the North and in the South. The Northern state convention was generally considered as a preliminary body, whose action was not complete or valid until ratified by a popular vote. The Southern state convention was looked upon as the incarnation of the sovereignty of the state, and its action was not supposed to need a popular ratification. When the conventions of the seceding states had adopted the ordinances of secession, they proceeded to other business. They appointed delegates, who met at Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, formed a provisional constitution (Feb. 8) The “Confederate States.” for the “Confederate States,” chose a provisional president and vice-president (Jefferson Davis and A. H. Stephens), and established an army, treasury, and other executive departments. The president and vice-president were inaugurated on the 18th of February. The permanent constitution, adopted on the 11th of March, was copied from that of the United States, with variations meant to maintain state sovereignty, to give the cabinet seats in Congress, and to prevent the grant of bounties or any protective features in the tariff or the maintenance of internal improvements at general expense; and it expressly provided that in all the territory belonging to the Confederacy but lying without the limits of the several states “the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government” (see Confederate States of America).
222. Under what claim of Constitutional right all this was done passes comprehension. That a state convention Constitutional Rights. should have the final power of decision on the question which it was summoned to consider is quite as radical doctrine as has yet been heard of; that a state convention, summoned to consider the one of secession, should go on, with no appeal to any further popular authority or mandate, to send delegates to meet those of other states and form a new national government, which could only exist by warring on the United States, is a novel feature in American Constitutional law. It was revolution or nothing. Only in Texas, where the call of the state convention was so irregular that a popular vote could hardly be escaped, was any popular vote allowed. Elsewhere the functions of the voter ceased when he voted for delegates to the state convention; he could only look on helplessly while that body went on to constitute him a citizen of a new nation.
223. The Border states were in two tiers—North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas next to the seceding states, and The Border States. Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri next to the free states. None of these was willing to secede. There was, however, one force which might draw them into secession. A state which did not wish to secede, but believed in state sovereignty and the abstract right of secession, would be inclined to take up arms to resist any attempt by the Federal government to coerce a seceding state. In this way, in the following spring, the original seven seceding states were reinforced by four of the Border states.
224. In the North and West surprisingly little attention was given to the systematic course of procedure along the ​Gulf. The people of those sections were very busy; they had heard much of this talk before, and looked upon it as a kind Feeling in the North. of stage-thunder, the inevitable accompaniment of recent presidential elections. Republican politicians, with the exception of a few, were inclined to refrain from public declarations of intention. Some of them such as Seward, showed a disposition to let the “erring sisters” depart in peace, expecting to make the loss good by accessions from Canada. A few, like Senator Zachariah Chandler, believed that there would be “blood-letting,” but most of them were still doubtful as to the future. In the North the leaders and the people generally shrank from the prospect of war, and many were prepared to make radical concessions to avert hostilities. Among the various proposals to this end that offered in the Senate by John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, and known as the Crittenden Compromise, was perhaps received with most favour. This took the form of six proposed amendments to the Constitution, of which two were virtually a rephrasing of the essential feature of the Missouri Compromise and of the principle of popular or squatter sovereignty, and others provided that the national government should pay to the owner of any fugitive slave, whose return was prevented by opposition in the North, the full value of such slave, and prohibited the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia “so long as it exists in the adjoining states of Virginia and Maryland or either.” This proposed compromise was rejected by the Senate by a close vote on the 2nd of March 1861. A Peace Congress, called by Virginia, met in Washington from the 4th to the 27th of February 1861, 21 states being represented, and proposed a constitutional amendment embodying changes very similar to those of the Crittenden Compromise, but its proposal was not acted upon by Congress. Democratic politicians were hide-bound by their repetition of the phrase “voluntary Union”; they had not yet hit upon the theory which carried the War Democrats through the final struggle, that the sovereign state of New York could make war upon the sovereign state of South Carolina for the unfriendly act of secession, and that the war was waged by the non-seceding against the seceding states. President Buchanan publicly condemned the doctrine of secession, though he added a confession of his inability to see how secession was to be prevented if a state should be so wilful as to attempt it. Congress Admission of Kansas; Morrill Tariff of 1861. did nothing, except to admit Kansas as a free state and adopt the protective Morrill tariff; even after its members from the seceding states had withdrawn, those who remained made no preparations for conflict, and, at their adjournment in March 1861, left the Federal government naked and helpless.
225. The only sign of life in the body politic, the half-awakened word of warning from the Democracy of the North and West, The “War Governors.” was its choice of governors of states. A remarkable group of men, soon to be known as the “war governors”—Israel Washburn of Maine, Erastus Fairbanks of Vermont, Ichabod Goodwin of New Hampshire, John Albion Andrew of Massachusetts, William Sprague of Rhode Island, William Alfred Buckingham of Connecticut, Edwin Dennison Morgan of New York, Charles Smith Olden of New Jersey, Andrew Gregg Curtin of Pennsylvania, William Dennison of Ohio, Oliver Perry Morton of Indiana, Richard Yates of Illinois, Austin Blair of Michigan, Alexander Williams Randall of Wisconsin, Samuel Jordan Kirkwood of Iowa, and Alexander Ramsey of Minnesota—held the executive powers of the Northern states in 1861-1862. Some of these governors, such as Andrew and Buckingham, as they saw the struggle come nearer, went so far as to order the purchase of warlike material for their states on their private responsibility, and their action saved days of time.
226. The little army of the United States had been almost Seizure of United States Property. put out of consideration; wherever its detachments could be found in the South they were surrounded and forced to surrender and were transferred to the North. After secession, and in some of the states even before it, the forts, arsenals, mints, customhouses, ship-yards and public property of the United States had been seized by authority of the state, and these were held until transferred to the new Confederate States organization. In the first two months of 1861 the authority of the United States was paralysed in seven states, and in at least seven more its future authority seemed of very doubtful duration.
227. Only a few forts, of all the magnificent structures with which the nation had dotted the Southern coast, remained to it—the Position of the Remaining Forts. forts near Key West, Fortress Monroe at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, Fort Pickens at Pensacola and Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour. Both the last-named were beleaguered by hostile batteries, but the administration of President Buchanan, intent on maintaining the peace until the new administration should come in, instructed their commanding officers to refrain from any acts tending to open conflict. The Federal officers, therefore, were obliged to look idly on while every preparation was made for their destruction, and even while a vessel bearing supplies for Fort Sumter was driven back by the batteries between it and the sea.
228. The divergence between the two sections of the country had thus passed into disunion, and was soon to pass into open Slavery and Disunion. hostility. The legal recognition of the custom of slavery, acting upon and reacted upon by every step in their economic development and every difference in their natural characteristics, surroundings and institutions, had carried North and South further and faster apart, until the elements of a distinct nationality had appeared in the latter. Slavery had had somewhat the same effect on the South that democracy had had on the colonies. In the latter case the aristocracy of the mother-country had made a very feeble struggle to maintain the unity of its empire. It remained to be seen, in the American case, whether democracy would do better.
K.—The Civil War, 1861-1865.
229. Secession had taken away many of the men who had for years managed the Federal government, and who understood Embarrassments of the Government. its workings. Lincoln's party was in power for the first time; his officers were new to the routine of Federal administration; and the circumstances with which they were called upon to deal were such as to daunt any spirit. The government had become so nearly bankrupt in the closing days of Buchanan's administration that it had only escaped by paying double interest, and that by the special favour of the New York banks, which obtained in return the appointment of John A. Dix as secretary of the treasury. The army had been almost broken up by captures of men and material and by resignations of competent and trusted officers. The navy had come to such a pass that, in February 1861, a House committee reported that only two vessels, one of twenty, the other of two guns, were available for the defence of the entire Atlantic coast. And, to complicate all difficulties, a horde of clamorous office-seekers crowded Washington.
230. Before many weeks of Lincoln's administration had passed, the starting of an expedition to provision Fort Sumter Fort Sumter. Rising in the North. brought on an attack by the batteries around the fort, and after a bombardment of 36 hours the fort surrendered (April 14, 1861). It is not necessary to rehearse the familiar story of the outburst of feeling which followed this event and the proclamation of President Lincoln calling for volunteers. The 75,000 volunteers called for were supplied three or four times over, and those who were refused felt the refusal as a personal deprivation.
231. There had been some belief in the South that the North-West would take no part in the impending conflict, and The North-West. that its people could be persuaded to keep up friendly relations with the new nationality until the final treaty of peace should establish all the fragments of the late Union upon an international basis. In the spring months of 1861 Douglas, who had long been ​denounced as the tool of the Southern slave-holders, was spending the closing days of life in expressing the determination of the North-West that it would never submit to have “a line of custom-houses” between it and the ocean. The batteries which Confederate authority was erecting on the banks of the Mississippi were fuel to the flame. Far-off California, which had been considered neutral by all parties, pronounced as unequivocally for the national authority.
232. The shock of arms put an end to opposition in the South as well. The peculiar isolation of life in the South “Following the State.” precluded the more ignorant voter from any comparisons of the power of his state with any other; to him it was almost inconceivable that his state should own or have a superior. The better educated men, of wider experience, had been trained to think state sovereignty the foundation of civil liberty, and, when their state spoke, they felt bound to “follow their state.” The president of the Confederate States issued his call for men, and it also was more than met.
233. Lincoln's call for troops met with an angry reception wherever the doctrine of state sovereignty had a foothold. The Border States. The governors of the Border states generally returned it with a refusal to furnish any troops. Two states, North Carolina and Arkansas, seceded and joined the Confederate States. In two others, Virginia and Tennessee, the state politicians formed “military leagues” with the Confederacy, allowing Confederate troops to take possession of the states, and then submitted the question of secession to “popular vote.” The secession of these states was thus accomplished, and Richmond became the Confederate capital. The same process was attempted in Missouri, but failed, and the state remained loyal. The politician class in Maryland and Kentucky took the extraordinary course of attempting to maintain neutrality; but the growing power of the Federal government soon enabled the people of the two states to resume control of their governments and give consistent support to the Union. Kentucky, however, had troops in the Confederate armies; and one of her citizens, the late vice-president, John C. Breckinridge, left his place in the Senate and became an officer in the Confederate service. Delaware cast her lot from the first with the Union.
234. The first blood of the war was shed in the streets of Baltimore, when a mob attempted to stop Massachusetts troops Civil War. on their way to Washington (April 19). For a time there was difficulty in getting troops through Maryland because of the active hostility of a part of its people, but this was overcome, and the national capital was made secure. The Confederate lines had been pushed up to Manassas Junction, about 30 m. from Washington. When Congress, called into special session by the president for the 4th of July, came together, the outline of the Confederate States had been fixed. Their line of defence held the left bank of the Potomac from Fortress Monroe nearly to Washington; thence, at a distance of some 30 m. from the river, to Harper's Ferry; thence through the mountains of western Virginia and the southern part of Kentucky, crossing the Mississippi a little below Cairo; thence through southern Missouri to the eastern border of Kansas; and thence south-west through the Indian Territory and along the northern boundary of Texas to the Rio Grande. The length of the line, including also the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, has been estimated at 11,000 m. The territory within it comprised about 800,000 sq. m., with a population of over 9,000,000 and great natural resources. Its cotton was almost essential to the manufactories of the world; in exchange for it every munition of war could be procured; and it was hardly possible to The Blockade. blockade a coast over 3000 m. in length, on which the blockading force had but one port of refuge, and that about the middle of the line. Nevertheless President Lincoln issued his first call for troops on the 15th of April, President Davis then issued a proclamation (on the 17th) offering letters of marque and reprisal against the commerce of the United States to private vessels, and on the 19th Lincoln answered with a proclamation announcing the blockade of the Southern coast. The news brought out proclamations of neutrality from Great Britain and France, and, according to subsequent decisions of the Supreme Court, made the struggle a civil war, though the minority held that this did not occur legally until the act of Congress of the 13th of July 1861, authorizing the president, in case of insurrection, to shut up ports and suspend commercial intercourse with the revolted district.
235. The president found himself compelled to assume powers never granted to the executive authority, trusting to Suspension of “Habeas Corpus.” the subsequent action of Congress to validate his action. He had to raise and support armies and navies; he even had to authorize seizures of necessary property, of railroad and telegraph lines, arrests of suspected persons, and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in certain districts. Congress supported him, and proceeded in 1863 to give the president power to suspend the writ anywhere in the United States; this power he promptly exercised. The Supreme Court, after the war, in the Milligan case (4 Wallace, 133) decided that no branch of the government had power to suspend the writ in districts where the courts were open—that the privilege of the writ might be suspended as to persons properly involved in the war, but that the writ was still to issue, the court deciding whether the person came within the classes to whom the suspension applied. This decision, however, did not come until “arbitrary arrests,” as they were called, had been a feature of the entire war. A similar suspension took place in the Confederate States.
236. When Congress met (July 4, 1861) the absence of Southern members had made it heavily Republican. It Congress. decided to consider no business but that connected with the war, authorized a loan and the raising of 500,000 volunteers, and made confiscation of property a penalty of rebellion. While it was in session the first serious battle of the war—Bull Run, or Manassas—took Bull Run. place (July 21), and resulted in the defeat of the Federal army. (For this and the other battles of the war see American Civil War, and the supplementary articles dealing with particular battles and campaigns.) The over-zealous action of a naval officer in taking the Confederate The “Trent” Case. envoys James M. Mason and John Slidell out of the British steamer “ Trent ” sailing between two neutral ports almost brought about a collision between the United States and Great Britain in November. But the American precedents were all against the United States, and the envoys were given up.
237. The broad-construction tendencies of the Republican party showed themselves more plainly as the war grew more Paper Currency; Slavery. serious; there was an increasing disposition to cut every knot by legislation, with less regard to the constitutionality of the legislation. A paper currency, commonly known as “greenbacks” (q.v.), was adopted and made legal tender (Feb. 25, 1862). The first symptoms of a disposition to attack slavery appeared: slavery was prohibited (April 16) in the District of Columbia and the Territories (June 19); the army was forbidden to surrender escaped slaves to their owners; and slaves of insurgents were ordered to be confiscated. In addition to a homestead act (see Homestead and Exemption Laws) giving public lands to actual settlers at reduced rates, Congress began a further development of the system of granting public lands to railways. Another important act (1862) granted public lands for the establishment of agricultural and mechanical colleges (see Morrill, J. S.).
238. The railway system of the United States was but twenty years old in 1850, but it had begun to assume some Railways in 1850. consistency. The day of short and disconnected lines had passed, and the connexions which were to develop into railway systems had appeared. Consolidation of smaller companies had begun; the all-rail route across the state of New York was made up of more than a dozen original companies at its consolidation in 1853. The Erie railway, chartered in 1832, was completed from ​Piermont to Dunkirk, New York, in 1851; and another line—the Pennsylvania—was completed from Harrisburg to Pittston, Pennsylvania, in 1854. These were at least the germs of great trunk lines. The cost of American railways has been only from one-half to one-fourth of the cost of European railways; but an investment in a Far Western railway in 1850-1860 was an extra-hazardous risk. Not only did social conditions make any form of business hazardous; the new railway often had to enter a territory bare of population, and there create its own towns, farms and traffic. Whether it could do so was so doubtful as to make additional inducements to capital necessary. Land Grants. The means attempted by Congress in 1850, in the case of the Illinois Central railroad, was to grant public lands to the corporation, reserving to the United States the alternate sections. At first grants were made to the states for the benefit of the corporations; the act of 1862 made the grant directly to the corporation.
239. The vital military and political necessity of an immediate railway connexion with the Pacific coast was hardly The Pacific Railways. open to doubt in 1862; but the necessity hardly justified the terms which were offered and taken. The Union Pacific railroad was incorporated; the United States government was to issue to it bonds, on the completion of each 40 m., to the amount of $16,000 per mile, to be a first mortgage; through Utah and Nevada the aid was to be doubled, and for some 300 m. of mountain building to be trebled; and, in addition to this, alternate sections of land were granted, The land-grant system, thus begun, was carried on extensively, the largest single grants being those of 47,000,000 acres to the Northern Pacific (1864) and of 42,000,000 to the Atlantic & Pacific line (1866).
240. Specie payments had been suspended almost everywhere towards the end of 1861; but the price of gold was but Prices in Paper. 102.5 at the beginning of 1862. About May its price in paper currency began to rise. It touched 170 during the next year, and 285 in 1864; but the real price probably never went much above 250. Other articles felt the influence in currency prices. Mr D. A. Wells, in 1866, estimated that prices and rents had risen 90% since 1861, while wages had not risen more than 60%.
241. The duties on imports were driven higher than the original Morrill tariff had ever contemplated. The average rates, which had been 18% on dutiable articles and 12% Tariff and Internal Revenue Taxation. on the aggregate in 1860-1861, rose, before the end of the war, to nearly 50% on dutiable articles and 35% on the aggregate. Domestic manufactures sprang into new life under such hothouse encouragement; every one who had spare wealth converted it into manufacturing capital. The probability of such a result had been the means of getting votes for an increased tariff; free traders had voted for it as well as protectionists. For the tariff was only a means of getting capital into positions in which taxation could be applied to it, and the “internal revenue” taxation was merciless beyond precedent. The annual increase of wealth from capital was then about $550,000,000; the internal revenue taxation on it rose in 1866 to $310,000,000, or nearly 60%.
242. The stress of all this upon the poor must have been great, but it was relieved in part by the bond system on which Bonds. the war was conducted. While the armies and navies were shooting off large blocks of the crops of 1880 or 1890, work and wages were abundant for all who were competent for them. It is true, then, that the poor paid most of the cost of the war; it is also true that the poor had shared in that anticipation of the future which had been forced on the country, and that, when the drafts on the future came to be redeemed, it was done mainly by taxation on luxuries. The destruction of a Northern railway meant more work for Northern iron mills and their workmen. The destruction of a Southern road was an unmitigated injury; it had to be made good at once, by paper issues; the South could make no drafts on the future, by bond issues, for the blockade had put cotton out of the game, and Southern bonds were hardly saleable. Every expense had to be met by paper Paper Issues in the South. issues; each issue forced prices higher; every rise in prices called for an increased issue of paper, with increased effects for evil. A Rebel War-Clerk's Diary gives the following as the prices in the Richmond market for May 1864: “Boots, $200; coats, $350; pantaloons, $100; shoes, $125; flour, $275 per barrel; meal, $60 to $80 per bushel; bacon, $9 per pound; no beef in market; chickens, $30 per pair; shad, $20; potatoes, $25 per bushel; turnip greens, $4 per peck; white beans, $4 per quart or $120 per bushel; butter, $15 per pound; lard, same; wood, $50 per cord.” How the rise in wages, always far slower than other prices, could meet such prices as these one must be left to imagine. Most of the burden was sustained by the women of the South.
243. The complete lack of manufactures told heavily against the South from the beginning. As men were drawn Manufactures. from agriculture in the North and West, the increased demand for labour was shaded off into an increased demand for agricultural machinery; every increased percentage of power in reaping-machines liberated so many men for service at the front. The reaping machines of the South—the slaves—were incapable of any such improvement, and, besides, required the presence of a portion of the possible fighting-men at home to watch them. There is an evident significance in the exemption from military duty in the Confederate States of “one agriculturist on such farm, where there is no white male adult not liable to duty, employing 15 able-bodied slaves between ten and fifty years of age.” But, to the honour of the enslaved race, no insurrection took place.
244. The pressing need for men in the army made the Confederate Congress utterly unable to withstand the growth of Confederate Congress and President. executive power. Its bills were prepared by the cabinet, and the action of Congress was quite perfunctory. The suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and the vast powers granted to President Davis, or assumed by him under the plea of military necessity, with the absence of a watchful and well-informed public opinion, made the Confederate government by degrees almost a despotism. It was not until the closing months of the war that the expiring Confederate Congress mustered up courage enough to oppose the president's will. (See Confederate States of America.) The organized and even radical opposition to the war in the North, the meddlesomeness of Congress and its “committees on the conduct of the war,” were no doubt unpleasant to Lincoln but they carried the country through the crisis without the effects visible in the South.
245. Another act of Federal legislation—the National Bank Act (Feb. 25, 1863; supplemented by the act of June 3, 1864)—should be mentioned here, as it was closely National Banking System. connected with the sale of bonds. The banks were to be organized, and, on depositing United States bonds at Washington, were to be permitted to issue notes up to 90% of the value of the bonds deposited. As the redemption of the notes was thus assured, they circulated without question all over the United States. By a subsequent act (1865) the remaining state bank circulation was taxed out of existence. (See Banks and Banking: United States.)
246. At the beginning of 1862 the lines of demarcation between the two powers had become plainly marked. The Admission of West Virginia. western part of Virginia had separated itself from the parent state, and was admitted as a state (1863) under the name of West Virginia. It was certain that Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri had been saved to the Union, and that the battle was to be fought out in the territory to the south of them.
247. At the beginning of the war the people and leaders of the North had not desired to interfere with slavery, but circumstances had been too strong for them. Lincoln had declared that he meant to save the Union as he best could—by preserving slavery, by destroying it, or by destroying part ​and preserving part of it. Just after the battle of Antietam (17 Sept. 1862) he issued his proclamation calling on the revolted The Emancipation Proclamation. states to return to their allegiance before the next year, otherwise their slaves would be declared free men. No state returned, and the threatened declaration was issued on the 1st of January 1863. As president, Lincoln could issue no such declaration; as commander-in-chief of the armies and navies of the United States he could issue directions only as to the territory within his lines; but the Emancipation Proclamation applied only to territory outside of his lines. It has therefore been debated whether the proclamation was in reality of any force. It may fairly be taken as an announcement of the policy which was to guide the army, and as a declaration of freedom taking effect as the lines advanced. At all events, this was its exact effect. Its international importance was far greater. The locking up of the world's source of cotton supply had been a general calamity, and the Confederate government and people had steadily expected that the English and French governments, or at least one of them, would intervene in the war for the purpose of raising the blockade and releasing the Southern cotton. The conversion of the struggle into a crusade against slavery made intervention impossible for governments whose peoples had now a controlling influence on their policy and intelligence enough to understand the issue.
248. Confederate agents in England were numerous and active. Taking advantage of every loophole in the British Confederate Privateers. Foreign Enlistment Act, they built and sent to sea the “Alabama” and “Florida,” which for a time almost drove Federal commerce from the ocean. Whenever they were closely pursued by United States vessels they took refuge in neutral ports until a safe opportunity occurred to put to sea again. Another, the “Georgia,” was added in 1863. All three were destroyed in 1864. (See Alabama Arbitration.) Confederate attempts to have ironclads equipped in England and France were unsuccessful.
249. The turning-point of the war was evidently in the early days of July 1863, when the victories of Vicksburg and The Current of Success changes. Gettysburg came together. The national government had at the beginning cut the Confederate States down to a much smaller area than might well have been expected; its armies had pushed the besieging lines far into the hostile territory, and had held the ground which they had gained; and the war itself had developed a class of generals who cared less for the conquest of territory than for attacking and destroying the opposing armies. The great drafts on the future which the credit of the Federal government enabled the North to make gave it also a startling appearance of prosperity; so far from feeling the war, it was driving production of every kind to a higher pitch than ever before.
250. The war had not merely developed improved weapons and munitions of war; it had also spurred the people on to a more careful attention to the welfare of the soldiers, the fighting men drawn from their own number. The sanitary commission, the Christian commission, and other voluntary associations for the physical and moral care of soldiers, received and disbursed very large sums. The national government was paying an average amount of $2,000,000 per day for the prosecution of the war, and, in spite of the severest taxation, the debt grew to $500,000,000 in June 1862, to twice that amount a year later, to $1,700,000,000 in June 1864, and reached its maximum on the 31st of August 1865—$2,845,907,626. But this lavish expenditure was directed with energy and judgment. The blockading fleets were kept in perfect order and with every condition of success. The railway and telegraph were brought into systematic use for the first time in modern warfare. Late in 1863 Edwin M. Stanton, the secretary of war, moved two corps of 23,000 men from Washington to Chattanooga, 1200 m., in seven days. A year later he moved another corps, 15,000 strong, from Tennessee to Washington in eleven days, and within a month had collected vessels and transferred it to North Carolina.
251. On the other hand, the Federal armies now held almost all the great southern through lines of railroad, except the Georgia Conscription. lines and those which supplied Lee from the South. The want of the Southern people was merely growing in degree, not in kind. The conscription, sweeping from the first, had become omnivorous; towards the end of the war every man between seventeen and fifty-five was legally liable to service, and in practice the only limit was physical incapacity. In 1863 the Federal government also was driven to conscription. The first attempts to carry it out resulted in forcible resistance in several places, the worst being the “draft riots” in New York (July), when the city was in the hands of the mob for several days. All the resistance was put down; but exemptions and substitute purchases were so freely permitted that the draft in the North had little effect except as a stimulus to the states in filling their quotas of volunteers by voting bounties.
252. In 1864 Lincoln was re-elected with Andrew Johnson as Vice-president. The Democratic Convention had declared Election of 1864. that, after four years of failure to restore the Union by war, during which the Constitution had been violated in all its parts under the plea of military necessity, a cessation of hostilities ought to be obtained, and had nominated General George B. McClellan and G. H. Pendleton. Farragut's victory in Mobile Bay (Aug. 5), by which he sealed up the last port, except Wilmington, of the blockade-runners, and the evidently staggering condition of the Confederate resistance in Admission of Nevada. the East and the West, were the sharpest commentaries on the Democratic platform; and its candidates carried only three of the twenty-five states which took part in the election. The thirty-sixth state—Nevada—had been admitted in 1864.
253. The actual fighting of the war may be said to have ended with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to General U.S. Surrender of Lee. Grant at Appomattox, Va., on the 9th of April 1865. All the terms of surrender named by Grant were generous: no private property was to be surrendered; both officers and men were to be dismissed on parole, not to be disturbed by the United States government so long as they preserved their parole and did not violate the laws; and he instructed the officers appointed to receive the paroles “to let all the men who claim to own a horse or mule take the animals home with them to work their little farms.” It should be stated, also, to Grant's honour that, when the politicians afterwards undertook to repudiate some of the terms of surrender, he personally intervened and used the power of his own name to force an exact fulfilment. General Joseph E. Johnston, with the only other considerable army in the field, surrendered on much the same terms at Durham Station, N.C. (April 26), after an unsuccessful effort Surrender of Johnston. at a broader settlement. All organized resistance had now ceased; Union cavalry were ranging the South, picking up government property or arresting leaders; but it was not until May that the last detached parties of Confederates gave up the contest.
254. Just after Lee's surrender President Lincoln died by assassination (April 15), the crime of a half-crazed enthusiast. Death of Lincoln. Even this event did not impel the American people to any vindictive use of their success for the punishment of individuals. In the heat of the war, in 1862, Congress had so changed the criminal law that the punishment of treason and rebellion should no longer be death alone, but death or fine and imprisonment. Even this modified punishment was not inflicted. There was no hanging; some of the leaders were imprisoned for a time, but never brought to trial.
255. The armies of the Confederacy are supposed to have The Opposing Armies. been at their strongest (700,000) at the beginning of 1863; and it is doubtful whether they contained 200,000 men in March 1865. The dissatisfaction of the southern people at the manner in which Davis ​had managed the war seems to have been profound; and it was only converted into hero-worship by the ill-advised action of the Federal government in arresting and imprisoning him. Desertion had become so common in 1864, and the attempts of the Confederate government to force the people into the ranks had become so arbitrary, that the bottom of the Confederacy, the democratic elements which had given it all the success it had ever obtained, had dropped out of it before Sherman moved northward from Savannah; in some parts the people had really taken up arms against the conscripting officers. On the contrary, the numbers of the Federal armies increased steadily until March 1865, when they were a few hundreds over a million. As soon as organized resistance ceased, the disbanding of the men began; they were sent home at the rate of about 300,000 a month, about 50,000 being retained in service as a standing army. The cost of the Civil War has been variously Cost of the War. estimated: by Mulhall (Dictionary of Statistics, 4th ed., 1899, p. 541) at £555,000,000 and (p. 586) at £740,000,000; by Nicolay and Hay (Abraham Lincoln, vol. x., p. 339) at $3,250,000,000 to the North and $1,500,000,000 to the South; by Edward Atkinson (the Forum, October 1888, p. 133), including the first three years of Reconstruction at $5,000,000,000 to the North and $3,000,000,000 to the South. The last alone of these estimates is an approximation to the truth. The ordinary receipts of the government for the four fiscal years 1862 to 1865 totalled $729,458,336, as Compared with $196,963,373 for the four preceding years, 1858–1861; the difference representing the effort of the treasury to meet the burden of war. In the same period more than $2,600,000,000 was secured in loans upon the credit of the nation; and this total was raised by later borrowings on account of the war to more than $2,800,000,000. The immediate and direct cost of the struggle to the North was therefore about $3,330,000,000. To this sum must be added, in order to obtain the final and total cost: (1) the military pensions paid on account of the war since 1861—about $3,600,000,000 up to 1909, inclusive; (2) the interest on the war debt, approximately $3,024,000,000 in the same period; (3) the expenditures made during the war by state and local governments, which have never been totalled, but may be put at $1,000,000,000; and (4) the abnormal expenditures for army and navy during some years following the war, which may be put, conservatively, at $500,000,000. The result is a total of some $11,450,500,000 for the North alone. But the cost to the South also was enormous; $4,000,000,000 cannot be an exaggeration. It follows that, up to 1909, the cost of the war to the nation had approximated the tremendous total of $15,500,000,000.
256. In return for such an expenditure, and the death of probably 300,000 men on each side, the abiding gain was incalculable. The rich section, which had been kept back in the general development by a single institution, and had been a clog on the advance of the whole country, had been dragged up to a level with the rest of the Results of the War. country. Free labour was soon to show itself far superior to slave labour in the South; and the South was to reap the largest material gain from the destruction of the Civil War. The persistent policy of paying the debt immediately resulted in the higher taxation falling on the richer North and West. As a result of the struggle the moral stigma of slavery was removed. The power of the nation, never before asserted openly, had made a place for itself; and yet the continuing power of the states saved the national power from a development into centralized tyranny. And the new power of the nation, by guaranteeing the restriction of government to a single nation in central North America, gave security against any introduction of international relations, international armament, international wars, and continual war taxation into the territory occupied by the United States. Finally, democracy in America had certainly shown its ability to maintain the unity of its empire.
Bibliography.—Sources: The proceedings of the Continental Congress from 1783 to 1788 are in The Journals of Congress, vols. viii. to xiii., and The Secret Journals of Congress, 4 vols. There is a new and greatly, improved edition of the Journals (Washington, 1904–), edited by W. C. Ford and Gaillard Hunt from the originals in the Library of Congress. The debates of Congress for the period from 1789 to 1824, were collected from newspapers, abridged and published under the title of The Annals of Congress (43 vols., Washington, 1834–1856). The principal debates from 1825 to 1837 are in the Register of Debates in Congress (29 vols., Washington, 1825–1837), and from 1833 to 1873 the debates are in the Congressional Globe (108 vols., Washington, 1834–1873). There is an Abridgement of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, by T. H. Benton (16 vols., New York, 1860). The acts of Congress, together with important documents, are in the appendices of the Annals, Register and Globe. See also United States Statutes at Large, from 1789 to 1865 (13 vols., Boston, 1845–1866), vol. vii. contains the treaties between the United States and the Indian tribes to 1845; and Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, edited by C. J. Kappler under direction of the Senate committee on Indian affairs (Washington, 1904). Treaties of the United States have been published in Statutes at Large, and in Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols and Agreements between the United States of America and Other Powers, 1776–1909 (Washington, 1910) which superseded a collection of 1889 edited by John H. Haswell. The decisions of the United States Supreme Court were reported from 1789 to 1800 by A. J. Dallas (4 vols., Philadelphia, 1790–1807); from 1801 to 1815 by William Cranch (9 vols., Washington, 1804–1817); from 1816 to 1827 by Henry Wheaton (12 vols., New York, 1816–1827); from 1828 to 1842 by Richard Peters (16 vols., Philadelphia, et al., 1828–1842); from 1843 to 1860 by B. C. Howard (24 vols., Philadelphia, et al., 1843–1860); in 1861 and 1862 by J. S. Black (2 vols., Washington, 1862–1863); and from 1863 to 1874 by J. W. Wallace (23 vols., Washington, 1865–1876). There is a valuable collection of Cases on constitutional law, in 2 vols., by J. B. Thayer (Cambridge, 1894–1895). A large portion of the important executive documents are contained in The Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1897, compiled by J. D. Richardson (10 vols., Washington, 1896–1899), and the American State Papers: Documents Legislative and Executive (38 vols., Washington, 1832–1861); two volumes of these State Papers relate to commerce and navigation, 1789–1823; five to finance, 1789–1828; six to foreign relations, 1789–1859; two to Indian affairs, 1789–1827; seven to military affairs, 1789–1838; four to naval affairs, 1789–1836; eight to public lands, 1789–1837; one to the post office department; two to miscellaneous affairs. There is considerable first-hand material on the framing and ratification of the Constitution in the Documentary History of the Constitution, 1786–1870 (5 vols., Washington, 1894–1905), and The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution . . . together with the Journal of the Federal Convention, by Jonathan Elliot (5 vols., Philadelphia, 1861; 2nd ed., 1888). See also J. F. Jameson, “Studies in the History of the Federal Convention of 1787,” in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1902, vol. i.; and Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia, 1888), edited by J. B. McMaster and F. D. Stone. For the Civil War by far the most important source is the vast compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, in four series, an atlas and a general index (Washington, 1880–1900). The material in William MacDonald's Select Documents Illustrative of the History of the United States, 1776–1861 (New York, 1898) relates almost wholly to constitutional development, foreign relations and banking. A. B. Hart's American History told by Conternporaries (New York, 1901), of which vol. iii. and part of vol. iv. are collected from this period, consists largely of contemporary narratives, correspondence and extracts from diaries on a great variety of subjects. The Library of Congress has 333 vols. of Washington Manuscripts, 135 vols. of Jefferson Manuscripts, 75 vols. of Madison Manuscripts, 64 vols. of Alexander Hamilton Manuscripts, more than 200 letters between Jackson and Van Buren, a collection of Polk-papers, the more important part of Webster's correspondence, a few Clay letters, 22 vols. of Salmon P. Chase papers besides over 6300 letters, "and 440 Blennerhassett manuscripts. The Massachusetts Historical Society has the Adams papers; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania has the Buchanan papers; the Historical Society of New Hampshire has a large collection of Webster papers; and the Historical Society of Chicago has some of the Polk papers. Various valuable reports on manuscript materials available to students of this period have been published in the Annual Reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission of the American Historical Association, and there is much valuable material in the Annual Reports of the association and in the volumes of the American Historical Review. The American Historical Association has published an index in its “Bibliography of American Historical Societies,” edited by A. P. C. Griffin, in vol. ii. of its Annual Report for 1905 (Washington, 1907). See also, for social and economic sources, Documentary History of American Industrial Society (Cleveland, O., 1910 sqq.). Among the most useful published works of the public men of the period are: The Writings of George Washington edited by W. C. Ford (14 vols., New York, 1889–1893); Complete Works of Alexander Hamilton, edited by H. C. Lodge (9 vols., New York, 1885–1886), and The Works of John Adams . . . with a Life of the Author, edited, with ​Life, by C. F. Adams (10 vols., Boston, 1850–1856), representing the Federalists; The Writings of James Madison, edited by Gaillard Hunt (9 vols., New York, 1900–1910), and The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by P. L. Ford (10 vols., New York, 1892–1899), representing the Anti-Federalists or Republicans; The Writings of James Monroe, edited by S. H. Hamilton (7 vols., New York, 1898–1903); Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, comprising Portions of his Diary from 1795 to 1848, edited by C. F. Adams (12 vols., Philadelphia, 1874–1877); Works of Henry Clay, comprising his Life, Correspondence and Speeches, edited, with Life, by Calvin Colton (10 vols., New York, 1904) and Thomas Hart Benton’s Thirty Years’ View; or, a History of the Working of the American Government (2 vols., New York, 1854–1856), for the “Middle Period”; The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, edited by J. W. McIntyre (18 vols., Boston, 1903); Letters of Daniel Webster, edited by C. H. van Tyne (New York, 1902); Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, comprising his Speeches, Letters, State Papers and Miscellaneous Writings, edited by J. G. Nicolay and John Hay (2 vols., New York, 1902); The Works of William H. Seward, edited by G. E. Baker (5 vols., 2nd ed., Boston, 1883–1890), and The Works of Charles Sumner (15 vols., Boston, 1870–1883), for the Northern view; The Works of John C. Calhoun, edited by R. K. Crallé (6 vols., New York, 1854–1855); Alexander H. Stephens, Constitutional View of the Late War between the States (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1868–1870), and Jefferson Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (2 vols., New York, 1881), for the Southern view.
Secondary Works: Three large and important secondary works cover the whole, or nearly the whole, period from the War of Independence to the Civil War. They are: James Schouler, History of the United States of America under the Constitution (rev. ed., 6 vols., New York, 1899), scholarly and comprehensive, but lacking in clearness, and, in the latter portion, unfair to the South; J. B. McMaster, History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War (7 vols., New York, 1883–1910), especially valuable for its treatment of social and economic conditions and for material gathered from newspapers; H. E. von Holst, Constitutional and Political History of the United States (2nd ed., 8 vols., Chicago, 1899), chiefly a treatment of the constitutional aspects of slavery by a German with strong ethical and strong anti-slavery sentiments. The period is ably treated in sections by A. C. McLaughlin, The Confederation and the Constitution, vol. x. of “The American Nation Series” (New York, 1905); J. S. Bassett, The Federal System, vol. ii. of “The American Nation Series”; Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (9 vols., New York, 1891), quotes freely from records in foreign archives; J. W. Burgess, The Middle Period, 1817–1858 (New York, 1901), and J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (7 vols., New York, 1900–1906), which, although written largely from Northern sources, is for the most part fair and judicial. For lists of works dealing with special events (e.g. the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law, &c.), see the articles devoted to those subjects. See also vols. xii. to xxi. of “The American Nation Series,” consisting of Edward Channing, The Jeffersonian System; K. C. Babcock, The Rise of American Nationality; F. J. Turner, Rise of the New West; William MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy; A. B. Hart, Slavery and Abolition; G. P. Garrison, Westward Expansion; T. C. Smith, Parties and Slavery; F. E. Chadwick, Causes of the Civil War; and J. K. Hosmer, The Appeal to Arms, and Outcome of the Civil War. For further study of the Civil War see Edward McPherson, Political History of the United States during the Great Rebellion (Washington, 1864; 3rd ed., 1876), chiefly a compilation of first-hand material; J. W. Burgess, The Civil War and the Constitution (2 vols., New York, 1901). The best account of the military operations of the Mexican War is in R. S. Ripley, The War with Mexico, (2 vols., New York, 1849). For a list of works relating to the military events of the War of 1812 and the Civil War see the separate articles on those subjects. On the War with France, 1798, see G. W. Allen, Our Naval War with France (New York, 1909). On the development of the West there are: H. B. Adams, Maryland’s Influence upon Land Cessions to the United States (Baltimore, 1885); B. A. Hinsdale, The Old North-West (revised ed., New York, 1899), a scholarly work; Justin Winsor, The Westward Movement (Boston, 1897), a storehouse of facts, but dry for the general reader; Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West (4 vols., New York, 1889–1896), a graphic outline. Other important works on special subjects are: Edward Stanwood, History of the Presidency (Boston, 1898), a study of presidential campaigns; J. P. Gordy, History of Political Parties in the United States (2 vols., rev. ed., New York, 1900–1902); E. D. Warfield, The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 (New York, 1887); Freeman Snow, Treaties and Topics in American Diplomacy (Boston, 1894); J. B. Moore, A Digest of International Law (6 vols., Washington, 1906), and History and Digest of the International Arbitrations to which the United States has been a Party (6 vols., Washington, 1898); E. S. Maclay, History of the United States Navy from 1775 to 1894 (3 vols., New York, 1897–1902); G. W. Allen, Our Navy and the Barbary Corsairs (Boston, 1905); J. R. Spears, History of our Navy (4 vols., New York, 1897); D. R. Dewey, Financial History of the United States (New York, 1903); W. G. Sumner, History of Banking in the United States (New York, 1896); R. C. H. Catterall, The Second Bank of the United States (Chicago, 1903); F. W. Taussig, Tariff History of the United States (4th ed., New York, 1898); E. L. Bogart, Economic History of the United States (New York, 1907); E. D. Fite, Social and Industrial Conditions in the North during the Civil War (New York, 1910), and J. L. Bishop, History of American Manufactures (3 vols., 3rd ed., Philadelphia, 1867). For biographies of the leading statesmen of the period see American Statesmen, edited by J. F. Morse, jun. (32 vols., new ed., Boston, 1899); see also the bibliographies at the close of the biographical sketches of statesmen in this edition of the Ency. Brit. There is a “Critical Essay on Authorities” in each volume of The American Nation; and both The Literature of American History, edited by J. N. Larned (Boston, 1902), and Channing and Hart’s Guide to the Study of American History, are valuable bibliographical guides.  (A. J.; C. C. W.)
L.—History, 1865–1910.
257. The capitulation of Lee (April 9, 1865), followed by the assassination of Lincoln (April 15) and the surrender of the last important Confederate army, under J. E. Johnston, marked the end of the era of war and the beginning of that of Reconstruction, a problem which involved a revolution in the social and political structure of the South, in the relation, of state and nation in the American Federal Union, and in the economic life of the whole country.
258. Economically the condition of the South was desperate. The means of transport were destroyed; railways and bridges were ruined; Southern securities were valueless; the Confederate currency system was completely disorganized. Great numbers of the emancipated negroes wandered idly from place to place, trusting the Union armies for sustenance, while their former masters toiled in the fields to restore their plantations.
259. The social organization of the South had been based on negro slavery. Speaking generally, the large planters had constituted the dominant class, especially in the cotton states; and in the areas of heaviest negro population these planters had belonged for the most part to the old Whig party. Outside Social and Economic Condition of the South. of the larger plantation areas, especially in the hill regions and the pine barrens, there was a population of small planters and poor whites who belonged in general to the Democratic party. In the mountain regions, where slavery had hardly existed, there were Union areas, and from the poor whites of this section had come Andrew Johnson, senator and War governor of Tennessee, who was chosen vice-president on the Union ticket with Lincoln in 1864 as a recognition of the Union men of the South. Accidental as was Johnson’s elevation to the presidency, there was an element of fitness in it, for the war destroyed the former ruling class in the Southern States and initiated a democratic revolution which continued after the interregnum of negro government. Of this rise of the Southern masses Johnson was representative.
260. The importance of personality in history was clearly illustrated when the wise and sympathetic Lincoln, who had the confidence of the masses of the victorious North, was replaced by Johnson, opinionated and intemperate, whose antecedents as a Tennessean and Democrat, and whose state rights’ principles and indifference Distrust of President Johnson. to Northern ideals of the future of the negro made him distrusted by large numbers of the Union Republican party.
261. The composition of this party was certain to endanger its stability when peace came. It had carried on the war by a coalescence of Republicans, War Democrats, Whigs, Constitutional Unionists and Native Americans, who had rallied to the cause of national unity. At the outset it had asserted that its purpose was not to Union Republican Party. interfere with the established institutions in slave states, but to defend the Constitution, and to preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired. But the war had destroyed slavery, as well as preserved the Union, and the civil status of the negro and the position of the revolted states now became burning questions, reviving old antagonisms and party factions. To the extremists of the Radical wing it seemed in accordance with ​the principles of human liberty that the negro should not only be released from slavery but should also receive full civil rights, including the right to vote on an equality with the whites. This group was also ready to revolutionize Southern society by destroying the old ascendancy of the great planter class. Of this idealistic school of radical Republicans, Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, was the spokesman in the Senate, and Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, in the House.
262. For many years before the war parties had differed on such important questions as the tariff, internal improvements and foreign policy; and the South had used its alliance with the Northern Democracy to resist the economic demands of the industrial interests of the North. A return of Southern congressmen, increased in numbers by the inapplicability to the new conditions of the constitutional provision by which they had representation for only a fraction of the slaves, might mean a revival of the old political situation, with the South and the Northern Democracy once more in the saddle.
263. Any attempt to restore the South to full rights, therefore, without further provision for securing for the freedmen Northern Attitude towards the South. the reality of their freedom, and without some means of establishing the political control of the the victorious party, would create party dissension. Even Lincoln had aroused the bitter opposition of the radical leaders by his generous plan of Reconstruction. Johnson could have secured party support only by important concessions to the powerful leaders in Congress; and these concessions he was temperamentally unable to make. The masses of the North, especially in the first rejoicings over the peace, were not ungenerous in their attitude; and the South, as a whole, accepted the results of defeat in so far as to acquiesce in the permanence of the Union and the emancipation of the slaves, the original issues of the war.
264. In the settlement of the details of Reconstruction, however, there were abundant opportunities for the hatred engendered by the war to flame up once more. As it became clear that the Northern majority was determined to exclude the leaders of the South from political rights in the reconstruction of the Union, and especially as the radicals disclosed their purpose to ensure Republican ascendancy by subjecting the section to the rule of the loyalist whites and, later, to that of the emancipated negroes, good will disappeared, and the South entered upon a fight for its social system. The natural leaders of the people, men of intelligence and property, had been the leaders of the section in the war. Whatever their views had been at first as to secession, the great majority of the Southern people had followed the fortunes of their states. To disfranchise their leaders was to throw the control into the hands of a less able and small minority of whites; to enfranchise the blacks while disfranchising the white leaders was to undertake the task of subordinating the former political people of a section to a different race, just released from slavery, ignorant, untrained, without property and fitted only to follow the leadership of outside elements. The history of this attempt and its failure constitutes much of that of the Reconstruction.
265. These underlying forces were in reality more influential than the constitutional theories which engaged so much of the discussion in Congress, theories which, while they afford evidence of the characteristic desire to proceed constitutionally were really urged in support of, or opposition to, the interests just named.
266. The most extreme northern Democrats, and their southern sympathizers, starting from the premise that Theories Regarding the Status of the Southern Whites. constitutionally the Southern states had never been out of the Union, contended that the termination of hostilities restored them to their former rights in the Federal Union unimpaired and without further action. This theory derived support from President Lincoln's view that not states, but assemblages of individuals, had waged war against the government. The theory of the extreme Republican Radicals was formulated by Sumner and Stevens. The former contended that, while the states could not secede, they had by waging war reduced themselves to mere Territories of the United States, entitled only to the rights of Territories under the Constitution. Stevens went further and, appealing to the facts of secession, declared the Southern states conquered provinces, subject to be disposed of under international law at the will of the conqueror. In the end Congress adopted a middle ground, holding that while the states could not leave the Union, they were, in fact, out of normal relations, and that the constitutional right of the Federal government to guarantee republican governments to the various states gave to Congress the power to impose conditions precedent to their rehabilitation.
267. It is necessary to recall the initiation of Reconstruction measures by President Lincoln rightly to understand the position President Lincoln's Policy. which was taken by President Johnson. Impatient of theoretical discussion, Lincoln laid down practical conditions of restoration in his proclamation of the 8th of December 1863. In this he offered amnesty to those who would take an oath of loyalty for the future and accept the acts of Congress and the proclamation of the president with reference to slaves. From the amnesty he excepted the higher military, civil and diplomatic officers of the Confederacy as well as those who had relinquished judicial stations, seats in Congress, or commissions in the army or navy to aid the rebellion, and those who had treated persons in the Federal service otherwise than lawfully as prisoners of war. The proclamation provided, further, that when in any of the seceding states (except Virginia, where the president had already recognized the loyal government under Governor Francis H. Pierpont) a number of persons not less than one-tenth of the voters in 1860 should have taken the above described oath, and, being qualified voters under the laws of the state in 1860, should have established a state government, republican in form, it should be recognized. Lincoln's comprehension of Southern difficulties was shown in his declaration in this proclamation that the president would not object to such provisions by the states regarding the freedmen as should, while declaring their freedom and providing for their education, recognize their condition as a labouring, landless and homeless class.
268. Although Lincoln expressly pointed out that the Attitude of Congress; the First Reconstruction Bill. admission of the restored states to representation in Congress rested exclusively with the respective houses, and announced his readiness to consider other plans for Reconstruction, heated opposition by the radicals in Congress was called out by this proclamation. They feared that it did not sufficiently guarantee the abolition of slavery, which up to this time rested on the war powers of the president, and they asserted that it was the right of Congress, rather than that of the president, to determine the conditions and the process of Reconstruction. In a bill which passed the House by a vote of 73 to 59 and was concurred in by the Senate, Congress provided that Reconstruction was to be begun only when a majority of the white male citizens of any one of the Confederate States should take oath to support the Constitution of the United States. The president should then invite them to call a constitutional convention. The electors of this convention would be required to take an oath of allegiance which excluded a much larger class than those deprived of the benefit of the amnesty proclamation, for it eliminated all who had voluntarily borne. arms against the United States, or encouraged hostility to it, or voluntarily yielded support to any of the Confederate governments. In addition to entrusting the formation of a constitution to the small minority of thorough-going loyalists, the bill required that the state constitution should exclude a large proportion of the civil and military officers of a Confederate government from the right of voting, and that it should provide that slavery be for ever abolished and that state and Confederate debts of the war period should never be paid. In July 1864 Lincoln gave a “pocket veto” to the bill and issued a proclamation explaining his reasons for refusing to sign, whereupon Benjamin F. Wade and Henry W. Davis (q.v.), leaders of ​the radicals, violently attacked the president. The triumph of Lincoln in the election of 1864 did not clearly signify the will of the people upon the conditions of Reconstruction, or upon the organ of government to formulate them, for the declaration of the Democratic convention that the war was a failure overshadowed the issue, and the Union party which supported Lincoln was composed of men of all parties.
269. On January 31st 1865 the House concurred in the vote of the Senate in favour of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Thirteenth Amendment. Constitution abolishing slavery throughout the Union. Four years earlier Congress had submitted to the states another Thirteenth Amendment by the terms of which no amendment should ever authorize Congress to interfere with slavery within the states. But owing to the war this amendment had remained unratified, and now Congress proposed to place beyond constitutional doubt, or the power of states to change it, the emancipation of slaves. By the 18th of December 1865 the amendment had been ratified and was proclaimed in force.
270. In the meantime, Louisiana, in accordance with Lincoln's proclamation, had adopted a constitution and abolished slavery within the state. Owing to the obstructive tactics of Sumner, aided by Democrats in the Senate, Congress adjourned on the 4th of March 1865 without having recognized this new state government as legitimate. “If we are wise and discreet,” said Lincoln, “we shall reanimate the states and get their governments in successful operation with order prevailing and the Union re-established before Congress comes together in December.”
271. Such was the situation when Johnson took up the presidency upon Lincoln's death. After an interval of uncertainty, in which he threatened vengeance against various Southern leaders and gave the radicals some hope that he would favour negro suffrage, President Johnson accepted the main features of Lincoln's policy. Congress not being in session, he was able to work out an executive Reconstruction on the lines of Lincoln's policy during the summer and autumn of 1865. On the 29th of May he issued a proclamation of amnesty, requiring of those who desired to accept its provisions an oath to support the Constitution and Union, and the laws and proclamations respecting the emancipation of slaves. Certain specified classes of persons were excepted, including certain additions to those excluded by Lincoln, especially “all persons who have voluntarily participated in said rebellion and the estimated value of whose taxable property is over twenty thousand dollars.” This provision was characteristic of Johnson, who disliked the Southern planting aristocracy, and aimed at placing the preponderant power in the hands of the Democratic small farmers, who had been his supporters. To those of the excepted classes who would ask pardon from the president, he promised a liberal clemency. As part of his system he issued Policy of President Johnson. another proclamation in which he appointed a governor for North Carolina and laid down a plan for Reconstruction. By this proclamation it was made the duty of the governor to call a convention chosen by the loyal people of the state, for the purpose of altering the state constitution and establishing a state government. The right to vote for delegates to this convention was limited to those who had taken the oath of amnesty and who had been qualified to vote prior to the secession of the state. To the state itself was to be left the determination of the future qualifications of electors and office-holders.
272. Already Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas had governments which had been recognized by Lincoln. Between the 13th of June and the 13th of July 1865 Johnson applied the same process which he had outlined for North Carolina to the remaining states of the Confederacy. Before Congress met in December all the Confederate states, except Texas (which delayed until the spring of 1866), had formed constitutions and elected governments in accordance with the presidential plan. All of their legislatures, except that of Mississippi, ratified the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery.
273. Gradually, however, the South turned to its former leaders to shape its policy, and the radical Republicans of the North were alarmed at the rapidity of the process of restoration on these principles. The disorganized and idle condition of the former slaves constituted a serious element in the Southern situation, as Lincoln had foreseen. The negroes expected a grant of land from confiscated Southern estates, and it was difficult to preserve order and to secure a proper labour supply.
274. Under these conditions the efforts of the South to provide security for their communities by bodies of white militia were looked upon with apprehension by the North, and there was sufficient conflict between the two races to give colour to charges that the South was not accepting in good faith the emancipation of the slaves. Especially irritating to Northern sentiment were the so-called “black codes” or “peonage laws,” Southern “Black Codes.” passed by the newly elected Southern legislatures. They rested on the belief that it was necessary that the former slaves should be treated as a separate and dependent class, and varied in severity in the different states. Some of these imposed special disabilities upon the negro in the matter of carrying weapons and serving as witnesses. Vagrancy laws and provisions regarding labour contracts which had precedents in colonial and English legislation, but were specifically framed to restrain the negroes only, were common. Mississippi denied them the right to own land, or even to rent it outside of incorporated towns; South Carolina restricted them to husbandry and to farm or domestic service, unless specially licensed. Although several of the Southern states, perceiving that their course was likely to arouse the North to drastic measures, repealed or mitigated the most objectionable laws, the North had received the impression that an attempt had been made to restore slavery in disguised form.
275. The problem of succouring and protecting the negroes had forced itself upon the attention of the North from the The Freedmen's Bureau. beginning of the war, and on the 3rd of March 1865 Congress had created the Freedmen's Bureau (q.v.), with the power to assign abandoned lands, in the states where the war had existed, to the use of the freedmen; to supervise charitable and educational activities among them; to exercise jurisdiction over controversies in which a freedman was a party; and to regulate their labour contracts. The local agents of the bureau were usually Northern men; some of them gave the worst interpretation to Southern conditions and aroused vain hopes in the negroes that the lands of the former masters would be divided among them; and later many of them became active in the political organization of the negro.
276. Although the national government itself had thus recognized that special treatment of the freedmen was necessary, Congress, on assembling in December 1865, was disposed to regard the course of the South in this respect with deep suspicion. Moreover, as the Thirteenth Amendment was now ratified, it was seen that the South, if restored according to the presidential policy, would return to Congress with added representatives for the freed negroes. Only three-fifths of the negro slaves had been counted in apportioning representatives in Congress; though now free they were not allowed to vote.
277. Under the leadership of the Radicals Congress refused, therefore, to receive the representatives of the states which had met the conditions of the president's proclamations. A joint committee of fifteen took the whole subject of Reconstruction under advisement, and a bill was passed continuing the Freedmen's Bureau indefinitely. When this was vetoed by President Johnson (Feb. 19, 1866) Congress retaliated by a concurrent resolution (March 2) against admitting any reconstructed state until Congress declared it entitled to recognition, thus asserting for the legislative body the direction of Reconstruction.
278. While the measure was under consideration the president in an intemperate public address stigmatized the leaders of the radicals by name as labouring to destroy the principles ​of the government and even intimated that the assassination of the president was aimed at. It was hardly possible to close Breach between the President and Congress; the Civil Rights Bill. the breach after this, and the schism between the president and the leaders of the Union Republican party was completed when Congress passed (April 9, 1866) the Civil Rights Bill over Johnson's veto. The act declared the freedmen to be citizens of the United States with the same civil rights as white persons and entitled to the protection of the Federal government. It provided punishment for those who, relying upon state authority, should discriminate against the negroes.
279. To place this measure beyond the danger of overthrow by courts, or by a change of party majority, on the 13th of The Fourteenth Amendment. June 1866 Congress provided for submitting to the states a Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This gave constitutional guarantee of citizenship and equal civil rights to freedmen, and, in effect, provided that when in any state the right to vote should be denied to any of the male inhabitants twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation in the state should be reduced in the proportion which the number of such citizens bore to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in the state. This section of the amendment, therefore, left the states the option between granting the suffrage to the negro or suffering a proportionate reduction in the number of representatives in Congress. It was a fair compromise which might have saved the South from a long period of misrule and the North from the ultimate breakdown of its policy of revolutionizing Southern political control by enfranchisement of the blacks and disfranchisement of the natural leaders of the whites. But the South especially resented that section of the amendment which disqualified for Federal or state office those who, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, afterwards engaged in rebellion, which involved the repudiation of their leaders. The amendment further safeguarded the validity of the United States debt and declared null the war debt of the seceding states and the Confederacy and forbade the payment of claims for emancipation.
280. In order to ensure the passage of this amendment the Radical leaders proposed bills which declared that, after its adoption, any of the seceding states which ratified it should be readmitted to representation. But it also provided that the higher classes of officials of the Confederacy should be ineligible to office in the Federal government. These bills were allowed to await the issue of the next election.
281. For further protection of the rights of the negro, Congress succeeded in passing, over President Johnson's veto, an act continuing the Freedmen's Bureau for two years. Tennessee having ratified the Fourteenth Amendment was (July 24, 1866) restored to representation and Congress adjourned, leaving the issue between the president and the legislative body to the people in the Congressional elections.
282. The campaign brought with it some realignment of party. President Johnson having broken with the leaders of the Union Party Realignments. Republican party was more and more forced to rely upon Democratic support, although his executive appointments were still made from the ranks of the Republicans. The so-called National Union Convention, which met in Philadelphia in midsummer in an effort to abate sectionalism, and to endorse the president's policy, included a large number of War Democrats who had joined the Union party after the secession of the South, many moderate Southerners, a fragment of the Republican party, and a few Whigs, especially from the Border states. They claimed that the southern States had a right to be represented in Congress. Other meetings friendly to the Radicals were called, and under the designation of Union-Republican party they declared for the Congressional policy. While the campaign for elections to Congress was in progress the president made a journey to Chicago, speaking at various cities en route and still further alienating the Republicans by coarse abuse of his opponents. As a result of the autumn elections two-thirds of the members of the House of Representatives were opposed to him. Almost contemporaneously every seceding state except Tennessee rejected the Fourteenth Amendment, and thereby paved the way for the entire triumph of the Northern extremists, who favoured negro suffrage on idealistic grounds or as a means for forcing the South to agree to the Republican policy.
283. In the ensuing winter and spring Congress completed the conquest of the president, awed the Supreme Court, and provided a drastic body of legislation to impose negro suffrage on the South. By the Tenure of Office Act (March 2, 1867) Congress forbade the president to remove civil officers without Tenure of Office Act. the consent of the Senate, and at the same time by another act required him to issue military orders only through the general of the army (Grant), whom the president was forbidden to remove from command or to assign to duty at another place than Washington, unless at the request of the officer or by the prior assent of the Senate. These extraordinary invasions of the presidential authority were deemed necessary to prevent Johnson from securing control of the military arm of the government, and to protect Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war, and General Grant. Fearing lest the president might take advantage of the interim during which Congress would not be in session, the Fortieth Congress was required to meet on the 4th of March immediately following the expiration of the thirty-ninth.
284. The Reconstruction Act of the 2nd of March 1867 provided for the military government of the Southern states while Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867. the drastic policy of Congress was being carried out. It was passed over the veto of the president and declared that no legal governments or adequate protection for life or property existed in the seceding states, except Tennessee. These states it divided into five military districts, each to be placed under the command' of a general of the army, whose duty it was to preserve law and order, using at discretion either local civil tribunals or military commissions. But the existing civil governments were declared provisional only and subject to the paramount authority of the United States to abolish, modify, control, or supersede them. The act further provided that a constitutional convention might be elected by the adult male citizens of the state, of whatever race, colour or previous condition, resident in the state for a year, except such as might be disfranchised for rebellion or felony. No persons excluded from holding office under the Fourteenth Amendment were eligible for election to the convention or entitled to vote for its members.
285. When the convention, thus chosen under negro suffrage, and with the exclusion of Confederate leaders, should have framed a state constitution conforming to the Federal Constitution and allowing the franchise to those entitled to vote for the members of the convention, the constitution was to be submitted for the approval of Congress. If this were obtained and if the state adopted the Fourteenth Amendment, and this amendment became a part of the Federal Constitution, then the state should be entitled to representation in Congress; but the senators and representatives sent to Congress were required to take the “ironclad oath,” which excluded those who had fought in the Confederate service, or held office under any government hostile to the United States, or given support to any such authority.
286. By the pressure of military control Congress thus aimed at forcing the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as Supplementary Acts. the acceptance of negro suffrage in the state constitutions of the South. A supplementary act of the 23rd of March 1867 and an act of interpretation passed on the 19th of July completed this policy of “thorough.” In the registration of voters the district commanders were required to administer an oath which excluded those disfranchised for rebellion and those who after holding state or Federal office had given aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States.
287. Against this use of military power to govern states in ​time of peace the Supreme Court interposed no effective obstacle. Like the executive it was subordinated to Congress. Supreme Court Decisions. It is true that in the case ex parte Milligan, decided in December 1866, the court held military commissions unlawful where the ordinary civil tribunals were open. In the case of Cummings v. Missouri (Jan. 14, 1867) it decided also that a state test oath excluding Confederate sympathizers from professions was a violation of the prohibition of ex post facto laws; and the court (ex parte Garland) applied the same rule to the Federal test oath so far as the right of attorneys to practise in Federal courts was concerned.
288. But threats were made by the radicals in Congress to take away the appellate jurisdiction of the court, and even to abolish the tribunal by constitutional amendment. The judges had been closely divided in these cases and, when the real test came, the court refused to set itself in opposition to Congress. When Mississippi attempted to secure an injunction to prevent the president from carrying out the Reconstruction acts, and when Georgia asked the court to enjoin the military officers from enforcing these acts in that state, the Supreme Court refused (April and May 1867), pleading want of jurisdiction. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase argued that if the president refused to obey the court could not enforce its decree, while if he complied with the order of the court, and if the House of Representatives impeached him for refusing to enforce the law, the Supreme Court would be forced to the vain attempt to enjoin the Senate from sitting as a court of impeachment.
289. In one instance it seemed inevitable that the court would clash with Congress; the McCardle case involved an McCardle Case. editor's arrest by military authority for criticizing that authority and the Reconstruction policy. But Congress, apprehending that the majority of the court would declare the Reconstruction acts unconstitutional, promptly repealed that portion of the act which gave the court jurisdiction in the case, and thus enabled the judges to dismiss the appeal. Afterwards, when the Reconstruction policy had been accomplished, the court, in the case of Texas v. White (1869), held that the Constitution looked to “an indestructible Union composed of indestructible states”; and that although the secession acts were null, and the Federal obligations of the seceding Texas v. White. states remained unimpaired, yet their rights were suspended during the war. It also held that in re-establishing the broken relations of the state with the Union, Congress, under the authority to guarantee to every state a republican form of government, was obliged to regard the freedmen as part of the people of the state, and was entitled to decide what government was the established one. This decision, though it did not involve the direct question of the constitutionality of the Reconstruction acts, harmonized with the general doctrines of the Congressional majority.
290. The powerful leaders of the Republicans in Congress had been awaiting their opportunity to rid themselves of Impeachment of President Johnson. President Johnson by impeachment. After various failures to convince a majority of the House that articles should be preferred against him, an opportunity seemed to present itself when Johnson, in the summer recess of 1867, suspended Secretary Stanton and made General Grant the acting secretary of war. The Senate, on reassembling, refused to consent to the suspension, and General Grant yielded his office to Stanton, thus spoiling the president's plan to force Stanton to appeal to the courts to obtain his office and so test the constitutionality of the Tenure of Office Act. This proved to be a turning-point in Grant's political career, for by his break with Johnson he gained new support among the masses of the Republican party. To Johnson's foes it seemed that the president had delivered himself into their hands when he next defied Congress by taking the decisive step of removing Stanton in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act, and the House announced to the Senate (Feb. 25, 1868) its decision to bring articles of impeachment against the president. But careful reading of the law showed that it could not be relied on as conclusive ground for impeachment, for it provided that cabinet officers should hold office during the term of the president by whom they were appointed and for one month thereafter, subject to removal with the consent of the Senate. As Stanton had been appointed by President Lincoln and had merely continued under Johnson, a doubtful question was raised. The leaders, therefore, incorporated additional charges in the articles of impeachment which they pushed through the House of Representatives. By these the president was accused of attempting to bring the legislative branch into disgrace by his public utterances and of stigmatizing it as a Congress of only part of the states. This raised the question whether it was necessary to show a legal, technical crime or misdemeanour as the necessary ground of impeachment. Had the theory of the leaders that this was not the case been successful, the executive would have been reduced to an obvious dependence upon Congress. Acquittal by the Senate. In the spring of 1868, however, the trial by the Senate resulted in a verdict of acquittal. (See Johnson, Andrew.)
291. Meanwhile the military Reconstruction of the South and the organization of the negro vote progressed effectively. “Carpet-baggers” and “Scalawags”; the Union League. The party management of the negroes was conducted by “carpet-baggers,” as the Northern men who came South to try their fortunes under these new conditions were nicknamed, and by the white loyalists of the South, to whom was given the name “scalawags.” In the work of marshalling the freedmen's vote for the Republican party secret societies like the Loyal League, or Union League (q.v.), played an important part. As the newly enfranchised mass of politically untrained negroes passed under Northern influence politically, the Southern whites drew more and more together in most of the former Confederate States, and although they were unable under the existing conditions to take control, they awaited their opportunity. A “Solid South” was forming in which old party divisions gave way to the one dominant antagonism to Republican ascendancy by negro suffrage; and a race antagonism developed which revealed the fact that underneath the slavery question was the negro question.
292. Politically the important fact was that the Republicans had rejected the possibility of reviving the old party lines in the South, and had gambled upon the expectation of wielding the united coloured vote with such leadership and support as might be gained from former Northerners and loyal whites. In the end negro rule failed, as was inevitable when legal disabilities and military force were removed; but the masses of the Southern whites emerged with a power which they had not possessed under the old rule of the planting aristocracy. For the time being, however, negro votes gave control to the Republicans. In South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana the negroes were in a majority; in Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Texas they were in the minority; while in Georgia the two races were nearly evenly balanced.
293. The white leaders of the South were divided as to the best means of meeting the problem. Some advocated that Policy of the South; the Ku-Klux Klan. those entitled to vote should register, and then refrain from the polls, in order to defeat the constitutions made under negro suffrage, for the law required them to be ratified by a majority of the qualified voters. Others would have the white race bear no part in the process. Societies such as the “Ku-Klux Klan” and the “Knights of the White Camelia” were organized to intimidate or restrain the freedmen. But for the present the Republicans carried all before them in the South. Some of the new state constitutions imposed severe disfranchisement upon the former dominant class, and before the end of July 1868 all of the former Confederate States, except Virginia, Mississippi and Texas, had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, which was proclaimed in effect. By the beginning of 1870 these three states had also ratified the amendment, as had ​Georgia a second time, because of her doubtful status at the time of her first ratification.
294. By the summer of 1868 Arkansas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida, Six Southern States Restored to Union. having satisfied the requirements of the Reconstruction acts, were entitled to representation in Congress. But Georgia did not choose her senators until after the adjournment of Congress, and, inasmuch as the state excluded the negro members of the legislature in September, Congress on reassembling returned the state to military rule until its submission. Alabama was restored in spite of the fact that her white voters had remained away from the polls in sufficient numbers to prevent a majority of all the voters registered from having ratified the constitution of the state, as the Reconstruction acts had required. The nominating conventions and the campaign of 1868 gave interesting evidence of the trend of political and economic events. Party lines, which had broken down in the North when all united in saving the Union, were once more reasserting themselves. President Johnson, who had been elected by the Union Republican party, had found his most effective support among the Democrats. The Republicans turned to General Grant, a Democrat before the outbreak of the war. His popularity with the Republicans was due not only to his military distinction, but also to his calm judgment in the trying period of the struggle between the president and Congress. He was seriously considered by the Democrats until he broke with Johnson in the Stanton episode.
295. The Republican nominating convention met on the 20th of May 1868, a few days after the failure of the National Republican Convention; Grant Nominated for the Presidency. impeachment proceedings, and it chose Grant as the candidate for the presidency. The platform supported the Congressional Reconstruction measures. Upon the vital question whether universal negro suffrage should be placed beyond the power of states to repeal it by a new constitutional amendment, the platform declared: “The guarantee by Congress of equal suffrage to all loyal men at the South was demanded by every consideration of public safety, of gratitude and of justice, and must be maintained; while the question of suffrage in all the loyal states properly belongs to the people of those states.” Nowhere in the North was the negro an important element in the population, but the North had shown an unwillingness to apply to itself the doctrines of negro rights which had been imposed upon the South. Between 1865 and 1868 Connecticut, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Ohio and Michigan had refused to give the negro the right to vote within their own bounds, and this plank was evidence of the unwillingness of the party to make a direct issue of universal negro suffrage. Although the platform failed to indicate the future proposals of the Republican leaders on the negro question, on the topics of finance and currency it clearly showed that the party was controlled by economic interests which were to exercise increasing influence upon it. It pronounced in favour of payment of the public debt, not only according to the letter but the spirit of the laws under which it was contracted. The significance of this lay in its challenge to the Democratic agitation on the currency question.
296. It was this question which gave the tone to the proceedings of the Democracy at their convention in July 1868. The situation can best be presented by a brief review of the financial history just preceding the convention. Together with the discussion over political Reconstruction in the South, Congress and the administration had been obliged to deal with the reconstruction of debt, taxation and currency in the nation at the close of four years of expensive war. At its maximum point the debt had risen to $2,758,000,000, of a complicated variety of forms, and of the total less than one-half was funded. The problems of funding, readjustment of taxation, and resumption of specie payments proved to be so complicated with the industrial growth of the nation that they led to issues destined to exert a long continued influence.
297. The various war tariffs, passed primarily for the sake of increased revenue, had been shaped for protection under the Finance; the Tariff; Internal Revenue. influence of the manufacturing interests, and they had been framed also with reference to the need of compensating the heavy internal taxes which were imposed upon the manufacturers. When the war ended public sentiment demanded relief from these heavy burdens, and especially from the irksome internal taxes. The rapidly growing grain-raising districts of the Middle West exhibited a lively discontent with the protective tariff, but this did not prevent the passage in 1867 of the Wool and Woollens Act, which discriminated in favour of the woollen manufacturers and raised the ad valorem duty on wool. In spite of several large reductions of internal revenue, the national debt was being extinguished with a rapidity that only a prosperous and growing nation could have endured.
298. The currency question, however, furnished the economic issue which was most debated in the period of Reconstruction. The Currency Question; “Greenbacks.” One set of interests aimed at rapidly reducing the volume of the currency by retiring the legal tender notes, or “greenbacks,” issued during the war, on the ground that they had been provided only as a war measure, that the country needed a contraction of this currency, and that specie payments would be hastened by the withdrawal of the greenbacks. The secretary of the treasury, Hugh McCulloch, pressed this policy to the foreground, and desired authority to issue bonds to retire these notes. Another set of interests demanded the retention of the greenbacks, supporting their views by arguments varying according to the degree of radicalism of the speakers. The more moderate, like Senator John Sherman, of Ohio, who reflected the views of parts of the West, argued that the recuperation of the nation and the rapid increase of business would absorb the existing currency, while gold would cease to go abroad. Thus, by the increasing credit of the government, specie payment would be automatically resumed, and the holders of currency certificates would convert them into coin obligations at a lower interest rate. Others wished to use the greenbacks to pay the principal of such of the bonds as did not explicitly specify coin as the medium of payment; the most extreme, so far from contracting the currency by retiring the greenbacks, wished to increase this form of money, while diminishing the circulation of the notes of the national banks. The discussion tended to produce a sectional issue with the West against the East, and a social issue with bondholders and the creditor class in general arrayed against the less well-to-do. Congress agreed with Secretary McCulloch, and in the Funding Act of 1866 not only provided for converting short-time securities into long-term bonds, but also for retiring ten million dollars of greenbacks in six months and thereafter not more than four millions monthly. But the agricultural depression of 1866 produced a reaction. Loud demands were made that bonds should be paid in greenbacks instead of coin, that United States securities should be taxed, and the national bank notes suppressed. In 1868, on the eve of the presidential campaign, Congress, alarmed by the extent of these popular demands, suspended the process of contraction by decisive majorities in both houses, after forty million dollars in greenbacks had been retired by the secretary of the treasury.
299. Ohio was the storm centre of the agitation. The “Ohio idea” that greenbacks should become the accepted The “Ohio Idea.” currency of the country was championed by George H. Pendleton, of that state, and his friends now brought him forward for the Democratic nomination for president on this issue. In the national convention of that party they succeeded in incorporating into the platform their demands that there should be one currency for the government and the people, the bondholder and the producer, and that where the obligations of the government did not expressly provide for payment in coin, they should be paid in lawful money (i.e. greenbacks) of the United States.
300. But another wing of the Democratic party desired to ​make prominent the issue against the Reconstruction measures of the Republicans. This wing added to the platform and declaration that these acts were unconstitutional and void, and the demand that the Southern states should be restored to their former rights and given control over their own elective franchise.
301. Although the followers of Pendleton had shaped the financial plank of the platform, they could not nominate their National Democratic Convention; Seymour Nominated for the Presidency. leader. The opposition was at first divided between the various candidates. New York, which feared the effect upon the conservative financial interests of the East if Pendleton were nominated, attempted to break the deadlock by proposing an Ohio man, Chief Justice Chase. But eager as Chase was for the presidency he had flatly refused to abandon the views which he held in favour of negro suffrage. Ohio was, therefore, able to retaliate by stampeding the convention in favour of Horatio Seymour, of New York, chairman of the convention. As the war governor of his state he had been a consistent critic of the extremes to which the Federal administration had carried its interpretation of the war power. For vice-president the convention nominated Francis P. Blair, jun., of Missouri, who had denounced the unconstitutionality of the Reconstruction acts in unmeasured terms.
302. But the popularity of Grant in the North, together with the Republican strength in the states of the South which Grant Elected. had been reconstructed under negro suffrage, gave an easy victory to the Republicans in the election of 1868. Seymour carried only Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Oregon, of the North; and Maryland, Kentucky, Georgia and Louisiana of the South. Tennessee, and five of the former Confederate States, upon which negro suffrage had been imposed under military Reconstruction (North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama and Arkansas) voted for Grant. Virginia, Mississippi and Texas had not yet been restored.
303. This decisive victory and the knowledge that it had been won by the advantage of the negro vote in the restored states Fifteenth Amendment. led the Republican leaders to ignore their recent platform declaration in regard to negro suffrage. Shortly after Congress assembled propositions were made to place the freedman's right to vote beyond the power of the states to change. To do this by constitutional enactment it was necessary to make the provision universal, and Congress, therefore, submitted for ratification the Fifteenth Amendment declaring that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.” Congress was given power to enforce the amendment by appropriate legislation. By the 30th of March 1870 the amendment had been ratified; but it is doubtful whether this could have been accomplished by legislatures chosen on the issue. As it was, the states of Virginia, Mississippi, Texas and Georgia were required to ratify it as a condition of their readmittance to representation in Congress, and the three former states, having been permitted to vote separately on the obnoxious provisions of their constitutions in regard to the disfranchisement of former Confederates, rejected those clauses, adopted the Fifteenth Amendment and were restored in 1870. Georgia Readmitted. Georgia, after a new experience of military rule, likewise ratified the amendment, and her representatives were likewise admitted to Congress.
304. As soon as the Fifteenth Amendment was proclaimed in effect, and the military governments of the South were New Congressional Measures. superseded, the dominant party proceeded to enact measures of enforcement. These seemed especially necessary in view of the fact that, partly by intimidation of the coloured vote, Louisiana (1868) and Tennessee (1869) broke away from the Republican column; while in the election of 1870 Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and Alabama went Democratic. The enforcement legislation of 1870 provided penalties for violating the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments and re-enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Jurisdiction was given to the Federal courts to maintain the equality of the races before the law. The underlying doctrine of the acts was that the amendments guaranteed the freedmen against invasion of their rights by the acts of individuals as well as by explicit legislation of the states. In the next two years (1871 and 1872) acts were passed providing for effective Federal supervision of Congressional elections, and the “Ku-Klux Acts” (1871 and 1872) still further increased the power of the Federal courts to enforce the amendments and authorized the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and use military force to suppress the public disorders occasioned by the attempts to intimidate negro voters. But these stern measures were accompanied by some efforts to restore harmony, such as the repeal of the “ironclad oath” for ex-Confederates, in 1871, and the passage of the General Amnesty Act of 1872. The North was becoming restive under the long continued use of the Federal military arm within state borders in time of peace, and especially with the results of negro rule under “carpet-bag” leadership.
305. In any case the cost of rehabilitating the public works and providing education and the political and judicial Extravagance of Reconstruction Governments. institutions which should equally apply to the hitherto non-political class of the blacks, would have been a heavy one. But the legislatures, especially of Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas and Alabama, plunged into an extravagance made possible by the fact that the legislatures contained but few representatives who paid considerable taxes, and that they were controlled by Northern men who were sometimes corrupt, and often indifferent to the burdens laid upon the propertied classes of the South. In 1872 it was estimated that the public debts of the eleven reconstructed states amounted to nearly $132,000,000, two-thirds of which was composed of guarantees to corporations, chiefly railway companies. Legislative expenses were grotesquely extravagant, the coloured members in some states engaging in a saturnalia of corrupt expenditure. Gradually this alienated from the so-called Radical party the support of Southern whites, because they resented the concessions of the carpet-bag leaders to the negro vote, because they suffered from the burden of taxation, and above all because race friction increased, drawing the whites together, in spite of former antagonisms between localities and classes.
306. By 1872 a coalition had been formed under the name of Conservatives. But the control of electoral machinery in the strongly centralized state executives chosen by negro votes, and coercion by the Federal authority, still upheld Republican rule in various Southern states. Virginia and North Carolina were practically bankrupt, the capitals of Louisiana. Arkansas and Alabama, where rival state officers claimed possession, were occupied by Federal troops, and many of the governments were so corrupt that only the contemporaneous revelations of rottenness in New York City and in certain branches of the Federal government afford a parallel.
307. It was a time of lax public morals after war, which was ill suited to the difficult experiment of transferring political power to a race recently enslaved. Only the strong arm of the Federal authority sufficed to prevent the whites of the South from overthrowing a condition of things which it was impossible under American political ideas permanently to maintain.
308. An important economic reorganization was in progress in the South. White districts were recovering from the war Economic Changes in the South. and were becoming the productive cotton areas by the use of fertilizers and by the more intelligent white labour. Cities were rising, and the mines and manufactures of the southern Appalachians were developing. In the black belt, or region of denser negro settlement, the old centres of cotton production and the citadels of the Southern political aristocracy, the blacks became tenant farmers, or workers on shares, but the white farmer in other areas raised his cotton at less cost than the planter who lived in the rich soils of the former cotton areas. The effective and just direction of negro labour was a difficult problem and was aggravated by ​the political agitation which intensified race friction. It became evident that there was a negro problem as well as a slavery question, and that the North was unable to solve it.
309. In the meantime important foreign relations had been dealt with by Secretary William H. Seward, under Johnson, Foreign Relations. and by Secretary Hamilton Fish, under Grant. Not only were many treaties of commerce and extradition, including one with China, negotiated by Seward, but he also brought about a solution of more important diplomatic problems. The relations of the United States with France and England had been strained in the course of the war, by the evident friendliness of the governments of France and England for the South. Not only had Napoleon III. been inclined to recognize the Confederacy, but he had also taken advantage of the war to throw into Mexico a French army in support of the emperor Maximilian. The temptation to use force while American military prestige was high appealed even Maximilian. to General Grant; but Seward by firm and cautious diplomatic pressure induced France to withdraw her troops in 1867; the power of Maximilian collapsed, and the United States was not compelled to appeal to arms in support of the Monroe Doctrine. Russia's friendly attitude throughout the war was signalized by her offer to sell Alaska to the United States in 1867. Seward promptly accepted it and the Alaska. treaty was ratified by the Senate and the purchase money ($7,200,000) was voted by the reluctant House, which saw little in the acquisition to commend it. Later years revealed it as one of the nation's treasure houses, particularly of gold and coal.
310. With England affairs were even more threatening than with France. Confederate cruisers (notably the “Alabama”), The “Alabama” Claims. built in England and permitted by the negligence of the British government to go to sea, had nearly swept the American merchant marine from the ocean. Unsettled questions of boundary and the fisheries aggravated the ill feeling, and England's refusal in 1865 to arbitrate made a serious situation. Prolonged negotiations followed a change of attitude of England with regard to arbitration, and in 1870 President Grant recommended to Congress that the United States should pay the claims for damages of the Confederate cruisers, and thus assume them against England. However, in 1871, the treaty of Washington was negotiated under Secretary Fish, by the terms of which England expressed regret for the escape of the cruisers and for their depredations, and provided for arbitration of the fisheries, the north-western boundary, and the “Alabama” claims. Senator Sumner had given fiery expression to demands for indirect damage done by the destruction of our merchant marine and our commerce, and for the expenses of prolonging the war. For a time this so aroused the passions of the two nations as to endanger a solution. But Sumner, who quarrelled with the president, was deposed from the chairmanship of the committee on foreign relations, and Secretary Fish so arranged matters that the Geneva arbitration tribunal ruled these indirect claims out. Thus limited, the case of the United States was victorious, the tribunal awarding damages against Great Britain to the amount of $15,500,000. Two months later the San Juan Island. German emperor gave to the United States the disputed north-west boundary, including the San Juan island in Puget Sound. The fisheries controversy was not settled until 1877.
311. In the West Indies also important questions were presented. Seward had negotiated a treaty of purchase of the Danish Danish West Indies; Santo Domingo. West Indies, but the Senate refused to ratify it, nor did Grant's attempt to acquire Santo Domingo meet with a different fate at the hands of that body (1870). In Cuba another insurrection was in progress. Secretary Fish “pigeon-holed” a proclamation of President Grant recognizing the Cubans as belligerents, and secured a policy of neutrality which endured even the shock of the “Virginius affair” in 1873, when fifty of the men of the filibustering steamer flying the American flag were shot by the Spanish authorities (see Santiago, Cuba). It was shown that the vessel had no right to the flag. Negotiations about an The “Virginius” Affair. isthmian canal resulted only in a treaty with Nicaragua in 1868 giving to the United States a right of way across the isthmus and in provisions for a government survey of the Panama route. Foreign relations in this period were chiefly significant in that they were conducted in a spirit of restraint and that peace was preserved.
312. It was in the field of domestic concerns, in economic and social development, that the most significant tendencies appeared. The old issues were already diminishing in importance before the other aspect of Reconstruction which came from the revived expansion of the nation toward the West and the new forms taken by the development of American industrial society.
313. The Republican party, following the traditions of the Whigs, was especially responsive to the demands of the creditor class, who demanded legislation to conserve their interests. Its victory in 1868 was signalized by the passage in the spring of the following year of an act pledging the faith of the United States to pay in coin or its equivalent all the obligations of the United States, except in cases where the law authorizing the issue had expressly provided otherwise. In 1870 and 1871 refunding acts were passed, providing for the issue of bonds to the total amount of $1,800,000,000, one billion of which was to run for thirty years at 4%. This abandonment of the doctrine of early convertibility was made in order to render the bonds acceptable to capitalists, but in fact they soon went to a premium of over 25%. Long before their maturity the government Financial Measures. had a surplus, but although it could then borrow at 2½% these bonds could not be retired. While the legislature was thus scrupulous of the credit of the nation and responsive to the views of capital, the Supreme Court was engaged in deciding the question of whether the legal tender notes (greenbacks) were constitutional. Successive decisions in 1868 determined that they were not legal tender for state taxes, that they were exempt from taxation, and that they were not legal tender in the settlement of contracts providing for payment in specie. In the case of Hepburn v. Griswold (1870) Chief Justice Chase, under whom, as secretary of the treasury, the notes were first issued, gave the opinion of the court denying that they were legal tender in settlement of contracts made before the first Legal Tender Act, and intimating that they were not legal tender for later contracts. The judges had divided, four to three. Within a year the court was changed by the appointment of one new judge to fill a vacancy, and the addition of another in accordance with a law enlarging the court. In 1871 the former decision was reversed and the constitutionality of the Legal Tender Acts sustained on loose-construction reasoning. In 1884 the court went to the extent of affirming the right of Congress to pass legal tender acts in time of peace, in accordance with the usage of sovereign governments, as an incident to the right of coinage, and it declared that the power to borrow money includes the power to issue obligations in any appropriate form. In 1871 and 1872 Secretary George S. Boutwell illustrated the power of the administration to change the volume of the currency, by issuing in all over six million dollars of legal tender notes; and, following the practice of his predecessors, he sold gold from the treasury to check speculations in that part of the currency. The most noteworthy instance of this was in 1869, when two Wall Street speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk, jun., attempting to corner the gold market and relying upon a supposed influence in the councils of President Grant, ran up the premium on gold until Secretary Boutwell ordered the sale of gold by the government. The result was the financial crash of “Black Friday.”
314. Speculation and the rapid growth of great fortunes were characteristic of the period. The war itself had furnished means for acquiring sudden riches; the reorganization of taxation, currency and banking increased the opportunities as well as the uncertainties; and the opening of new fields of speculative enterprise in the oil fields of Pennsylvania and Ohio and the gold and silver mines of the mountains of the Far West tended in the ​same direction. An enormous development of manufactures resulted from the diminished commerce and increased demand Manufactures. for manufactured goods, the protection afforded by the tariff, the stimulus due to rising prices, and the consumption of the rapidly growing West. It was officially reported in 1869 that “within five years more cotton spindles had been put in motion, more iron furnaces erected, more iron smelted, more bars rolled, more steel made, more coal and copper mined, more lumber sawn and hewn, more houses and shops constructed, more manufactories of different kinds started, and more petroleum collected, refined and exported, than during any equal period in the history of the country.”
315. Between the Civil War and 1872 the extension of the nation’s activity to the industrial conquest of the great West, as well as the economic reorganization of the East, had a profound effect upon the development of the United States. Between 1862 and 1872 grants were made to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railways. Pacific companies, and to other connecting corporations, for railways from the Missouri to the Pacific, amounting to nearly 33,000,000 acres, and in the same period large loans of funds were made by the general government for this enterprise. Construction advanced rapidly after 1866, and by 1869 an all-rail connexion had been established on the line of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railways between the East and San Francisco. Various grants were made in these years to other roads, both transcontinental and Middle Western. Between 1850 and 1871 Congress granted about 155,000,000 acres for railway construction, but not all these grants were perfected. It is estimated that some $500,000,000 were invested in the construction of Western railways between 1868 and the panic of 1873, and about 30,000 m. of railway had been added.
316. The effects of this extraordinary extension of railway transportation were immediately apparent. In the Far West the railway lines rapidly made possible the extinction of the bison herds which had occupied the great plains. Divided into the northern and Effects of Railway Extension. southern herds by the Union Pacific railway in 1869, the southern herds were slaughtered in the period between 1871 and 1879, and the northern herds between 1880 and 1883. This opened the way for the great extension of the cattle country, following the retreat of the Indians. Upon the plains Indians the effect was revolutionary. Their domain had been penetrated by the railways, at the same time that their means of subsistence had been withdrawn. During the Civil War most of these Western tribes had engaged in hostilities against the Federal government. In 1866 and 1867 General George Crook was reducing the Indians of the South-West to submission, while other generals trained in the Civil War were fighting the Indians in the northern plains and Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma. By the Peace Commission Act of the 20th of July 1867 commissioners, including General William T. Sherman, were sent to negotiate treaties. As a result the tribes of the Indian Territory were so concentrated as to permit the transfer of other Western tribes to the same region, while the Sioux of the northern plains were given a reservation embracing the western portions of the Dakotas. Discontent with these treaties resulted, however, in hostilities following 1867. Between the close of the war and 1880 some $22,000,000 were expended in Indian wars, although the act of 1871 inaugurated the change of policy whereby the Indians were no longer dealt with by treaty, but were regarded as wards of the nation, to be concentrated on reservations and fed at the expense of the nation under the supervision of Indian agents.
317. Part of these Indian difficulties were due to the opening up of new mining areas in the Rocky Mountains, some of them within the Indians’ choicest hunting grounds. At the beginning of the Civil War a preliminary mining boom struck Colorado; the rich Comstock lode was opened in Mining. Nevada; Arizona was the scene of mining rushes; the Idaho mines were entered; and the Montana ores were discovered; so that in the period of the Civil War itself the Territories of Nevada, Idaho and Montana had been organized and the mountains provisionally occupied from the northern to the southern limit. The discovery of gold in the Black Hills in 1874 continued the same movement. In 1860 the nation produced $156,000 worth of silver, in 1861 over $2,000,000 and in 1873 nearly $36,000,000. In the last-mentioned year the production of gold amounted also to $36,000,000, although in 1860 it had been $46,000,000. Capital in mines and quarries of the United States was over $65,000,000 in 1860, over $245,000,000 in 1870, and nearly $1,500,000,000 in 1880.
318. This revolution in the life of the great plains and the Rocky Mountains, opening the way to agriculture and to cattle raising, and preparing for the exploitation of the precious metals of that great area, was contemporaneous with the important development of the farming regions of the Middle West. Even during the Civil War the agricultural development of the northern half of the Mississippi Valley had continued. This was aided by the demand for food products to supply the armies and was made possible by the extension of railways, the taking up of the prairie lands through the operation of the Homestead Law of 1862, the marketing of the railway land grants, and the increased use of agricultural machinery in those years. Between 1860 and 1870 the population of the North Central group of states (engaged chiefly in grain raising) increased over 42%, and in the Development of the Middle West. next decade by 34%, a total addition to the population in those two decades of 8,000,000. Between 1870 and 1880 about 200,000 sq. m. were added to the farm lands of the United States, an area almost equal in extent to that of France. In the same decade the North Central states increased their improved farms from near 78,500,000 acres to over 136,800,000 acres. The product of Indian corn about doubled between 1860 and 1880, and that of wheat and oats more than doubled. The addition came chiefly from the Middle West. In 1860 the North Central states raised 95,000,000 bushels of wheat; in 1870 nearly 195,000,000; in 1880 329,000,000. In 1870 the same states produced 439,000,000 bushels of corn; in 1880 they produced over 1,285,000,000.
319. The pressing need of increased transportation facilities had led, as we have seen, to lavish land grants and to subsidies by nation, states and municipalities to the railways. The railways themselves, tempted by these opportunities, had extended their lines in some cases beyond the immediate needs of the regions entered in advance of settlement. Extravagances in construction and operation, aggravated by “construction rings” of Railway Abuses. railway officials, who secured the contracts for themselves and their friends, and by rolling stock companies who received extravagant prices by favouritism, as well as the watering of stock in the creation of systems by absorption and consolidation of railway corporations, brought about a condition where the roads were no longer able to meet the demands of their stockholders for returns on the investment without imposing rates that the Western farmer deemed extortionate. In the competitive development of these roads and in the struggle of business corporations and localities with each other, the roads also discriminated, between persons and places. This condition chiefly accounted for the political unrest which manifested itself in the West in the so-called “Granger” movements of the ’seventies.
320. The farmers felt the pressure of the unsettled currency, taxes were very heavy, the protective tariff seemed to them to bear unduly upon the producers of crops which exceeded the home consumption and had to seek the foreign markets. The price of Indian corn, wheat and cotton in the early ’seventies tended to fall as production rose, so that the gold value of the total crop was not greatly increased during the decade after the war, in spite of the extraordinary extension of agricultural settlement and the increase of production. Dissatisfaction with his share in the prosperity of the country, and especially with the charges of middlemen and transportation companies, discontent with the backwardness of rural social conditions, and a desire for larger political influence, all aided in fostering the growth of ​organizations designed to promote the farmers' interests. The most influential of these organizations was the Patrons of Husbandry, which was founded in 1867 and spread chiefly after 1872 by local clubs or “granges,” especially in the West and South.
321. The height of the movement was reached in the autumn of 1874, It threatened the disruption of the old political parties The “Granger” Movement. in most of the Middle Western states. By holding the balance of power the Grangers secured legislation in many of these states, fixed maximum railway rates, and provided for regulation through commissions to prevent discriminations. In the reaction after the panic of 1873 (when nearly a fifth of the railway mileage of the United States had passed into the hands of receivers) many of the “Granger laws” were repealed, the regulation was rendered nominal and the railways more than regained their political power in the states; yet the agitation had established the important principle, sanctioned by decisions of the Supreme Court, that the railways were common carriers subject fully to public regulation so far as it was not confiscatory. The movement for regulation of interstate commerce by congressional legislation was begun at this time under the leadership of congressmen from the Granger states. Later efforts were more wisely considered and more effective; but the rural democracy showed its opposition to the increasing political influence of capital, to special privileges and to the attempts of corporations to avoid public control periodically thereafter (see Farmers' Movement). The attempt to eliminate the middlemen by co-operative stores and grain elevators was another feature of the time which gained a brief strength but soon declined.
322. The presidential election of 1872 took place in the midst of this Western upheaval. At the same time in the South the The Tweed Ring. reform Republicans and Democrats were uniting under the name of “Conservatives” against the carpet-bag rule, and control was passing into their hands. A reform movement was active against the evident corruption in national and municipal administrations, for Grant's trust in his appointees was grossly violated. The Tweed Ring was systematically looting New York City, and prior to Tweed's indictment in 1871 (See New York (City); Tammany Hall; Tilden, S. J.) it was acquiring large power in state legislation. Jay Gould, the railway operator, was one of the signers of Tweed's million dollar bail bond. Civil service reformers, men of moderate views with respect to Reconstruction, such as Carl Schurz, many War Democrats who had adhered to the Union party, and tariff reformers began to break away.
323. The Liberal-Republican movement started in Missouri, and a national convention was called to meet at Cincinnati on Liberal Republican Movement. the first of May 1872. Their platform announced irreconcilable differences on the tariff and left it to the Congressional districts, attacked the corruption of civil service by the administration, supported the results of the war as embodied in the last three amendments and demanded amnesty and local civil government for the South. It opposed further land grants to railways, but denounced repudiation and demanded specie payments in terms which excluded from its support the advocates of inflation of the currency. This effort to combine the opponents of Grant's administration was wrecked by the nomination of Horace Greeley, a strong protectionist, who did not command the confidence of the masses of the disaffected. Although endorsed by the Grant Re-elected. Democrats, Greeley was defeated by Grant, who ran on the record of the Republican party, which now dropped the word Union from its name. Greeley died before the electoral count; the Democrats won only the states of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia and Texas, the votes of Louisiana and Arkansas being thrown out.
324. The enormous cost of the war, the excessive railway building, over-trading, and inflated credit and fluctuating currency, the sinking of capital in opening new farming lands and in readjusting manufactures to new conditions brought their results in the panic of 1873, precipitated by the failure (Sept. 18) of Jay Cooke, the financier of the Northern Pacific railway. For over five years the nation underwent a drastic purgation; railway building almost ceased, and so late as 1877 over 18% of the Panic of 1873. railway mileage of the nation was in the hands of receivers. The iron industry was prostrated, and mercantile failures for four years amounted to $775,000,000. At the close of the period there was a replacement of partnerships and individual businesses by corporations, but in the interval political unrest was in the foreground.
325. The charges that congressmen had been bribed by stock in the Crédit Mobilier (q.v.), a construction company The Crédit Mobilier; the Salary Grab. controlled by Union Pacific stockholders, led to a congressional investigation which damaged the reputations of prominent Republicans, including Vice-president Schuyler Colfax; but the same Congress which investigated this scandal voted itself retroactive increases of salary, and this “back-pay grab” created popular indignation. Evidences of fraud and corruption in revenue collection under the “moiety system,” and the general demoralization of the civil service continued. The demand for relief from the stringency of the crisis of 1873 expressed itself in the so-called Inflation Bill (passed April 1874), providing a maximum of four hundred million dollars for greenback issues. This was vetoed by Grant, but he later signed a bill accepting as a maximum the existing greenback circulation of $382,000,000. This compromise was satisfactory neither to contractionists nor greenbackers. The latter especially resented the provisions regarding the national banks and their circulation.
326. The “tidal wave” in the Congressional elections of 1874 was the result of these conditions. It marked a political Republicans lose Control of Congress. revolution. The House of Representatives, which exhibited a two-thirds Republican majority in 1872, showed an opposition majority of about seventy, and the Senate was soon to be close. Such Republican strongholds as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Massachusetts went over to the Democrats in the state elections, while in the grain-raising states of the Middle West the Grangers were holding the balance of power, and in the South the Republican radicals remained in force in few states and only by the use of Federal troops. President Grant in his message of December 1874 acknowledged that public opinion was opposed to this use of force, but declared that without it negro suffrage would be worse than a mockery. Thus by the year 1874 the era of triumphant Republicanism and Reconstruction was closing. The leaders perceiving power about to pass from them rapidly enacted a series of party measures before the meeting of the newly elected Congress. Under the leadership of Senator John Sherman an act was passed (Jan. 14, 1875) providing for resumption of specie payments on the 1st of January 1879, gradually contracting greenbacks to three hundred million dollars and compensating this by expanding the circulation of the national banks. Sherman's personal preference was to make the greenbacks exchangeable for 4% bonds and thus to make the general public instead of the banking houses the purchasers of these securities, but he was unable to convince his colleagues. In the field of the tariff a similar policy was followed. The act of 1870 had somewhat reduced duties on tea, coffee, sugar and iron; but under Western pressure in 1872 the Republican, Congress had consented to a 10% reduction on most classes of goods in order to save the The Tariff. general system of protection. On the eve of their relinquishment of full power the Republicans (March 3, 1875) repealed the Tariff Act of 1872, increased the duties on molasses and sugar and increased the revenue tax on tobacco and spirits. Thus the tariff was restored to the war basis, before the incoming Democratic House could block the advance. Similarly on the 1st of March Civil Rights Act. Congress passed a Civil Rights Act, milder than the measure for which Sumner had fought so long, guaranteeing equal rights to the negroes in hotels, public conveyances, and places of amusement and forbidding the exclusion of them from juries. But an effort to pass a new force bill levelled against the intimidation of negro voters failed. By these measures the Republicans placed the ​important features of their policy where they could be overturned only by a Democratic capture of presidency and Senate.
327. In the midst of these changes the Supreme Court handed down decisions undoing important portions of the Reconstruction Supreme Court Decisions. system by restraining the tendency of the nation to encroach on the sphere of the state; and restricting the scope of the recent constitutional amendments. On the 14th of April 1873, in the Slaughter House cases, the courts held that the amendments were primarily restrictions upon the states for the protection of the freedom of the coloured man, rather than extensions of the power of the Federal government under the definition of United States citizenship, and that general fundamental civil rights remained under state protection. In the case of the United States v. Reese, decided on the 27th of March 1876, the court declared parts of the act of 1870 (which provided for the use of Federal force to protect the negro in his right to vote) unconstitutional, on the ground that they did not specify that the denial of suffrage must be on the sole ground of race or colour. A reasonable prerequisite, such as a poll tax, for voting was permissible. The South later took advantage of this decision to restrain negro suffrage indirectly. In United States v. Cruikshank (1876) the court held that the amendments to the Constitution left it still the duty of the state, rather than of the United States, to protect its citizens, even when whites had mobbed the negroes. The right of the nation in the case was held to be limited to taking care that the state governments and laws offered equal protection to whites and blacks. The affirmation of the power of the states over common carriers in the Granger cases (1877) has been mentioned. In 1883 the court declared the conspiracy clause of the Ku-Klux Act unconstitutional and restricted the application of the law to acts of a state through its officers and not to private citizens. In the same year it declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 invalid.
328. In 1875 President Grant refused the appeala of the “carpet-bagger” Governor Adelbert Ames of Mississippi to be supported by troops, whereupon Ames resigned his office into the hands of the Conservatives. The Mississippi plan of general intimidation of negroes to keep them from the polls was followed in Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida which alone remained Republican. Thus steadily the radical Reconstruction policy and Republican control of the South were being reversed. It was made clear that negro suffrage could be enforced upon the South only by military rule which could no longer command Northern sympathy or the sanction of the Federal court. Northern interest increasingly turned to other issues, and especially to discontent over administrative corruption.
329. The spoils system had triumphed over the advocates of civil service reform to such an extent that Grant abandoned The Whisky Ring. the competitive system in 1875 on the ground that Congress did not support him in the policy. Enormous frauds in the collection of the internal revenue by the Whisky Ring with the connivance of Federal officials were revealed in 1875, and about the same time, Secretary of War William W. Belknap resigned to avoid impeachment for corruption in the conduct of Indian affairs. The enforced resignation in 1876 of Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin H. Bristow (q.v.) after he had successfully exposed the Whisky Ring, and of Postmaster-General Marshall Jewell, who had resisted the spoils system in his department, tended to discredit the administration. Blaine, the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, fell under suspicion on account of his earlier relations with the Little Rock & Fort Smith and Northern Pacific railways (see Blaine, J. G.), which left it doubtful, in spite of his aggressive defence, whether he had not used his influence as speaker in previous Congresses to secure pecuniary advantages from land grant railways. This clouded Blaine's prospects for a presidential nomination, and the House of Representatives voted a resolution against the third term which Grant seemed not unwilling to accept.
330. Thus the campaign of 1876 approached, with the Republicans divided into (1) steadfast supporters of the Grant administration, (2) a discontented reform wing (which favoured ex-Secretary Bristow), and (3) an intermediate group which followed Blaine. This statesman made a bold stroke to shift Party Platforms of 1876. the fighting which the Democrats planned to make against the scandals of the administration, to the old time war issues. By proposing to exclude Jefferson Davis from amnesty, he goaded southern congressmen into indiscreet utterances which fanned anew the fires of sectional animosity. The Republican platform, while deprecating sectionalism, placed the war record of the party in the foreground and denounced the Democracy, because it counted upon the united South as its chief hope of success. A compromise candidate was selected in the person of Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, who had vigorously opposed the greenback movement in his state, and whose life and character, though little known to the general public, made him acceptable to the reform leaders of the party. The Democrats, demanding reform, economy, a revenue tariff and the repeal of the resumption clause of the act of 1875, chose the reform governor of New York, Samuel J. Tilden, as their candidate. The Independent National, or Greenback, party, which was to develop rapidly in the next two years, nominated Peter Cooper, a New York philanthropist, and demanded the repeal of the Resumption Act, and the enactment of a law providing a paper currency issued directly by the government, and convertible on demand into United States obligations bearing a rate of interest not exceeding one cent a day for each one hundred dollars and exchangeable for United States notes at par. It also proposed the suppression of bank paper, and was in general antagonistic to the bond-holding and banking interests.
331. The election proved to be a very close contest. Tilden, according to the count of both parties, had a plurality of over Hayes-Tilden Contest; the Electoral Commission. a quarter of a million votes, and at first the leading Republican journals conceded his election. He had carried New York, Indiana, New Jersey and Connecticut and, by the Democratic count, the solid South. But the Republican headquarters claimed the election of Hayes by one electoral vote, based on the belief that the states of South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, had gone Republican. Since these states were in the midst of the transition from negro to white government, and elections were notorious for fraudulent practices, a serious question was raised, first as to the proper authority to count the electoral vote, and second, how far it was permissible to go behind the returns of the state authorities to ascertain the validity of the canvass of the votes in the state. The political capacity and moderation of the nation were severely tested; but in the end a characteristic American solution was found by the creation of an Electoral Commission (q.v.) in which five associate justices of the Supreme Court were joined with an equal number of representatives from each of the two houses of Congress. The result was that this commission refused to “go behind the returns,” and Hayes was declared elected by one vote. To prevent the threatened danger of a filibuster by Democrats of the House of Representatives against the completion of the count until after legal date for the inauguration of the president, Hayes's friends agreed with leading Democrats that he would withdraw the Federal troops from Louisiana. Thus a new era began under a moderate and reforming Republican president, a close Republican Senate and a Democratic House of Representatives. The Southern question was not settled, but other issues of an economic and social nature increasingly forced themselves to the front. They were concealed in a measure by the fact that the following of each of the leading political parties was divided on financial policies, which resulted in attempts to compromise and evade the issue by the party managers. During the dozen years that followed Hayes's inauguration neither party held complete possession of both the executive and the two houses of Congress. His own moderate character, the conditions of his election and ​the check imposed during the first two years by a Democratic House of Representatives (and during the second two years by an opposition in both houses) made the period of Hayes's administration a transition from the era of Reconstruction to the era of dominant economic and reform agitation.
332. When he withdrew the troops which sustained the Republican governments in Louisiana and South Carolina, those states returned to the rule of the white Democrats. In the Congress elected in 1878 the former slave states chose 101 Democrats to the House of Representatives and only four Republicans. Leading Republicans like Blaine protested vigorously against the policy, declaring that the men who saved the Union should govern it; and on the other hand the Democrats in Congress added “riders” to appropriation bills designed to starve the administration into complete cessation of the use of troops and Federal deputy marshals at Southern elections. Extra sessions had to be summoned in 1877 and 1879 to provide supplies for the government, due to this policy. Hayes assisted his party by vetoing these coercive attempts of the Democrats and it was not until later that Federal attempts to supervise Southern elections entirely ceased.
333. As his early policy toward the South had dissatisfied many of the leaders of his party, his opposition to the spoils Civil Service Reform. system alienated others. In 1877 a Civil Service Reform Association was formed in New York, and under the leadership of reformers like George William Curtis, Carl Schurz, John Jay and Dorman B. Eaton, it extended to other states. In June 1877 President Hayes issued an executive order against the participation of Federal officers in political management, and he furnished evidence of his sincerity by removing Alonzo B. Cornell, the naval officer of New York, who was also chairman of both state and national Republican committees, and Chester A. Arthur, collector of the port of New York. As both men were friends of Senator Roscoe Conkling of that state, the leader of the Grant men, this was a bold challenge. The “Stalwarts” answered it by soon afterward securing the nomination of Cornell as governor of New York and Arthur as vice-president of the United States.
334. The monetary question rose to primary importance at this time. Hayes himself had campaigned in Ohio successfully Coinage Act of 1873. against the Greenback movement, and he chose as his secretary of the treasury, John Sherman, former senator from that state, whose long service as chairman of the finance committee had made him familiar with conditions and influential with moderate men of all factions. The per capita circulation of the nation had fallen from $20.57 in 1865 to $15.58 in 1877 and was still declining. The remarkable increase in the production of silver, as the new mining regions were opened, was accompanied by a fall in its ratio to gold from 15 to 1 in 1860 to 17 to 1 in 1877. Congress had, in 1873, passed an act dropping the standard silver dollar from the list of coins; but the significance of this omission of a coin not widely circulated, although it came at a time when European nations were adopting the gold standard, passed almost unnoticed at the moment; but the demonetization of silver was afterward stigmatized as a conspiracy, “the crime of 1873.” As the date (January 1, 1879) for the redemption of the greenbacks in specie approached, demands were renewed for the replacement of national bank notes by greenbacks, for the postponement, or abandonment of resumption, for the free coinage of silver, and for the use of silver as well as gold in the payment of bonds redeemable in “coin.” Sectional grouping of the debtor against the creditor regions, rather than party alignment, showed itself in the votes, for each party had its “soft money” as well as its “hard money” followers. Many who could not support the Greenback party in its theory that currency derived value from purchasing power based on the government's credit and authority rather than on convertibility, would, nevertheless, make larger use of paper money; while men who did not assent to the free coinage reasoning opposed the single gold standard as too narrow and too much under the influence of the speculative and banking interests, and would adopt some system of bi-metallism.
335. A Monetary Commission, appointed in 1876, reported in 1877, but without agreement or real influence upon the The Bland-Allison Act. country. The president took strong ground against free coinage (though he would resume coinage of silver in limited quantities) and against the payment of bonds in silver; but the House of Representatives passed the measure, known as the Bland Bill, for the free coinage of silver, by a vote of 163 to 34. In the Senate this was amended, and as it finally passed both houses it was known as the Bland-Allison Act after the two leaders, the Democratic representative from Missouri and the Republican senator from Iowa. This compromise was carried over the veto of President Hayes and became a law on the 28th of February 1878. In the vote of the 15th of February, all but one of the senators from New England, New York and New Jersey opposed it, while the states West of the Alleghanies furnished only four opposing votes. The law restored the legal tender character of the silver dollar and authorized the secretary of the treasury to buy silver bullion at the market price, to an amount of not less than $2,000,000 nor more than $4,000,000 per month, and to coin the bullion into silver dollars. Silver certificates of denominations not less than ten dollars were to be issued upon deposit of silver dollars. As neither the silver nor the certificates circulated freely the denominations of the certificates were reduced in 1886, when they filled the deficiency in the contracting banknote circulation.
336. Hardly had the Bland-Allison compromise been effected on the silver issue when an act was passed (May 31, 1878) forbidding the further retirement of greenbacks, which remained at $346,681,000. Substantially the same sectional alignment was followed in the vote on this bill as in the silver votes. Not satisfied with this legislation, nearly a million voters cast their ballots for Greenback party candidates at the Congressional elections in the autumn of 1878. The preparations of Secretary Sherman had been so carefully made, and the turning tide of trade brought coin so freely to the United States, that before the date of resumption of specie payments a gold reserve had been accumulated to the amount of $133,000,000 in excess of matured liabilities and the greenbacks rose to par before the date of redemption.
337. In the campaign of 1880, Hayes and Tilden both declined to stand for renomination. Thus the issue of the “fraud of Party Platforms of 1880. 1876,” which the Democratic platform called the paramount issue, was subordinated. Nor was it possible for the Republicans to force the tariff question into a commanding position, for although the Democratic platform declared for a tariff for revenue only, a considerable wing of that party led by Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, favoured protection. General Winfield S. Hancock, a distinguished soldier in the Civil War, whose nomination for the presidency by the Democrats was designed to allay Northern distrust, refused to make the tariff a national issue. The recent adjustment of the monetary question and the return of prosperity relegated the discussion of the currency also to a subordinate place, so that the Greenback party was able to poll only a little over 300,000 votes instead of the million which it commanded two years before. It favoured unlimited coinage of silver as well as the replacement of bank-notes by greenbacks.
338. The Republicans, after a heated convention in which the followers of Grant (who had recently returned from a several Garfield Elected President. years' trip round the world), Blaine and Sherman, fought each other to a deadlock, selected General James A. Garfield (q.v.) of Ohio, who was political manager for Sherman in the convention. This was a blow to the Grant, or “Stalwart” wing, which was partly placated by the nomination of Arthur for the vice-presidency. Garfield's popular plurality was only a little over seven thousand out of a total vote of over nine millions; but his electoral vote was 214 to Hancock's 155. The area of the former slave ​states marked the boundaries between the Republican and the Democratic states, except that Hancock also carried New Jersey, Nevada and California. The Republicans won the elections for the House of Representatives which would meet in 1881, and the Senate was at first nearly evenly divided, two independents holding the balance. In the ensuing four years party lines were badly broken, factions made bitter war upon each other, and the independent reformers or “Mugwumps” (q.v.) grew in numbers. The selection of Blaine as secretary of state committed Garfield to the anti-Grant wing, and the breach was widened by his appointment of the collector of the port of New York against the protests of Roscoe Conkling and Thomas C. Platt, the “Stalwart” senators from New York. They resigned, then sought re-election in order to vindicate the right of senatorial recommendation; but were defeated.
339. In the midst of this excitement the president was assassinated by a disappointed office-seeker of unsound mind. Assassination of Garfield; Arthur becomes President. Vice-President Arthur, who succeeded Garfield in September 1881, by his tact and moderation won the admiration of former opponents; but the bad crops in 1881 and the dissatisfaction with boss rule among independent voters caused a Democratic victory in the Congressional campaign of 1882. Gar6eld's assassination had given new impetus to the movement against the spoils system, a National Civil Service Reform League had been organized in 1881, President Arthur presented the question in his message of December of that year, and in 1882 George H. Pendleton, a Democratic Pendleton Act. senator from Ohio, urged the subject upon the attention of Congress. Stimulated by the elections of 1882 Congress passed an act (January 16, 1883) authorizing the president to appoint a commission to classify certain of the Federal employees, and providing for appointment and promotion within this classified list by competitive examination, the employees being distributed among the states and territories according to population, with preference for soldiers and sailors of the Civil War. Congressional recommendations for these offices were not to be received, and political assessments for campaign purposes were forbidden. This was an effective beginning in the purification of the civil service; but the evil of assessment of employees was succeeded by the evil of soliciting campaign contributions from corporations interested in legislation. The extension of the competitive Anti-Polygamy Act; Chinese Exclusion. list proceeded gradually through succeeding administrations. The Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act (1882) was levelled at the Mormons (q.v.), and the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed at the demand of labour, after a long agitation in 1882, the way having been prepared by the Treaty of Peking in 1880. Bills to this effect had been vetoed by Hayes and Arthur as violative of international agreement, but the desire of the politicians to win the California vote, and the compromise by which the exclusion was limited to ten years finally carried the measure, and the Supreme Court (1889) held it constitutional. Later acts modified and extended the exclusion.
340. From 1879 to 1890 the treasury showed a surplus of revenue over expenditure. This furnishes the explanation of much of the legislation of that period. It led to extravagant appropriations, such as the Arrears of Pensions Act of 1879, and the River and Harbor Act of 1882 providing for the expenditure of more than $18,000,000, which was passed over the veto of Arthur. Appropriation bills were merely constructed in various committees of Congress under a system of bargaining between interests and sections with primary reference to the political fortunes of the congressmen.
341. The surplus also strengthened the demand fora reduction of the tariff. A tariff commission, composed of men friendly to protection, appointed in 1882, proposed an average reduction of 20 to 25%. Nevertheless in the act as passed in 1883 duties were increased in general on those protected articles which continued to be imported in large volume, especially on certain woollen goods and about two-thirds of the imported cotton goods, and on iron ore and some steel products, while they were lowered on finer grades of wool and cheaper grades of woollen and cotton fabrics, &c. It was unsatisfactory to large portions of both parties and did not materially lower the revenue; but the act of 1883 made extensive reductions in internal taxes. As the Senate had just fallen into the hands of the Republicans, and the House would not become Democratic until the new Congress met, this protective law gave the former the advantage of position. Moreover the Democrats were themselves divided, nineteen Representatives (one-third from Pennsylvania) voting with the Republicans on the act of 1883. In the next Congress (1884), when the leaders made an attempt to rally the Democrats to show their position by passing a bill for a horizontal reduction of 20% in general, forty-one Democrats voted against the bill and prevented its passage through the House.
342. Thus the campaign of 1884 found both parties still lacking unity of policy although it seemed possible that the tariff might become the touchstone of the contest. The Republicans challenged the independents by nominating Blaine, whose record was objectionable to many reformers, and who had been chiefly identified with the Reconstruction politics. The Democrats, taking advantage of the situation, nominated Grover Cleveland (q.v.) of New York. He had won approval by his reform administration as mayor of Buffalo and as governor of New York during the past two years, when he had shown an independence of party “bosses” and had convinced the public of his sincerity and strength of character. He represented conceptions and interests which had grown up since the war, and which appealed to a new generation of voters. Party Platforms of 1884. The platform emphasized the idea that “new issues are born of time and progress,” and made the leading question that of reform and change in administration, lest the continued rule of one party should corrupt the government. On the question of tariff the Democrats took a conservative attitude, emphasizing their desire to promote healthy growth, rather than to injure any domestic industries, and recognizing that capital had been invested and manufactures developed in reliance upon the protective system. Subject to these limitations, they demanded correction of the abuses of the tariff and adjustment of it to the needs of the government economically administered. The Greenbackers nominated General Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts, recently chosen governor of that state on the Democratic ticket, but he polled only 175,000 votes, while John P. St John, the candidate of those who would prohibit the liquor traffic, secured 150,000 votes, an unprecedented gain. The Prohibitionist platform included a demand that all money, coin and paper, should be made, issued and regulated by the government and be a legal tender for all debts, public and private.
343. The campaign abounded in bitter personalities, and the popular vote was close, Cleveland's plurality being only Cleveland Elected President. twenty-three thousand. The great state of New York, with electoral votes enough to have turned the scale, was carried by the Democrats by only a few more than one thousand votes out of a total of over a million. Cleveland's electoral majority was 37. The election was nevertheless recognized as making an epoch. For the first time since victory came to Lincoln and the Republicans on the eve of the Civil War, nearly a quarter of a century earlier, the country had entrusted power to the Democrats, although over two-thirds of their electoral vote came from the former slave states. New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Indiana constituted their Northern territory. Perhaps the most significant thing about the result was the evidence that in the North political and sectional habits and prejudices were giving way among a sufficient number of independent voters, responsive to strong personal leadership on reform issues, to turn the political scale. The transition from war issues which began in 1872, and became marked in 1876, was completed by the election of Cleveland in 1884.
​During the first half of his term President Cleveland had the opposition of a strongly Republican Senate. In the second half the Senate remained Republican by a majority of two, and the House continued Democratic. His civil service policy naturally met severe criticism not only from Civil Service. his party foes, but also from the spoils men among his Democratic followers, who desired a clean sweep of Republican office-holders, and from those of his independent supporters who looked to him to establish the service on a strictly non-partisan basis. The outcome of the first two years of his administration was that, of the entire body of Federal office-holders, two-thirds were changed and the obnoxious Tenure of Office Act was repealed, thus leaving the president the right of removal without presenting his reasons. Nevertheless there was a gain, for Cleveland somewhat checked the political activity of officeholders, the criticism by the Republicans placed them on record against the former spoils system, and before leaving the presidency (but after the election of 1888 showed that power was to pass to the Republicans), he transferred the railway mail service to the classified list requiring competitive examination.
344. The transition of executive power for the time to the Democratic party, however much it impressed the imaginations of the public as the end of an era, was not so significant as the national growth and expansion in the decade between 1880 and 1890 whereby forces were set loose which determined the characteristics of the succeeding period. Between these years the nation grew from about fifty millions to over sixty-two millions. The Middle West, or North Central group of states, gained nearly five millions and the Western division over a million and a quarter. West of the Alleghanies altogether more than eight million souls had been added, while the old Eastern states gained but four millions. In 1890 the North Central division alone had achieved a population nearly five millions greater than that of the North Atlantic, while the trans-Alleghany region surpassed the whole East by about ten millions, and the numbers of its representatives in House and Senate placed the political destiny of the nation in its hands.
345. One of the most important reasons for the wholesale taking up of Western resources in these and the following years was the burst of railway building subsequent to the interruption of the panic of 1873. The eager pioneers pushed into western Kansas and Nebraska Development of the West. as they had into the northern Ohio Valley a half-century before. Nebraska grew from a population of one hundred and twenty-three thousand in 1870 to nearly half a million in 1880 and to over a million in 1890. From about a third of a million in 1870, Kansas rose to almost a million in 1880, and to nearly a million and a half in 1890. The railway had “boomed” the Golden West and a cycle of abundant rains seemed to justify the belief that the “Great American Desert” was a myth. Thus settlers borrowed money to secure farms beyond the region of safe annual rainfall under the agricultural methods of traditional pioneering. Swift disappointment overtook them after 1886, when droughts and grasshoppers ruined the crops and turned back the tide of Middle Western colonists until the western parts of these states were almost depopulated, Kansas alone losing one-seventh of its population; nor did prosperity return for a decade.
346. As the column of settlement along the Ohio Valley had extended its Hanks into the old North-West between the Ohio and the Great Lakes, and into the old South-West of the lower Mississippi after the War of 1812, so the later pioneers by railway trains began to take possession of the remoter and vaster North-West and South-West. The “granger roads,” centring in Chicago, thrust their lines out to develop wheat farms in interior Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas, where the virgin soil of the prairie farms brought returns that transferred the wheat belt to this new land of promise, and by competition forced the older wheat areas to develop varied agriculture. The introduction of the recently invented steel roller system of making flour into the Minneapolis mills not only built up a great flour industry there but created a demand for the hard wheat suited to the North-western prairies. The pine forests of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota were exploited in the same era.
347. A more impressive movement was in progress as additional transcontinental railways were extended from the frontier to the Pacific. In 1870 for a thousand miles west of Duluth, at the head of Lake Superior, along the line of the projected Northern Pacific railway there were no cities or little towns. Relying upon its land grant and upon the undeveloped resources of the vast tributary region, the railway, after halting for a few years subsequent to the panic of 1873 at Bismarck on the Missouri rushed its construction to Seattle and was opened in 1883. The Great Northern, a product of the vision and sound judgment of James J. Hill, started from St Paul without a land grant and reached Puget Sound in 1893, constructing lateral feeders as it built. Thus a new industrial zone had been brought into existence. Colorado had become a state in 1876; in 1889 North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Montana were admitted as states and the next year Idaho and Wyoming were added. The Western political forces, especially the friends of silver, were thus given the balance of power in the Senate and additional weight in the electoral college.
348. As a new North-West was opened by the completion of the Canadian Pacific (1883), the Northern Pacific (1883) and Mexico, Arizona and southern California to San Francisco by 1883. In 1883 also the lines which became the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, extending from the lower Missouri The South-West. valley, with St Louis and Kansas City as important terminals, through south-eastern Colorado, northern Arizona and New Mexico, reached the same goal. The Denver & Rio Grande in the same period opened new mining areas between Denver and Ogden. Not only additional mines were reached by these lines, but a great cattle country, recently the habitat of the bison and the Indian, was opened. All the large cities commanding the approaches to this country developed packing industries, but Chicago especially profited. Although her main supply was still the Middle Western farms, this domestic supply was supplemented by vast quantities of range cattle. South-eastern Texas was the original home of these cattle ranches, but the driving of herds to supply the miners of the Rocky Mountains revealed the fact that the whole bison country was capable of supporting range cattle, and the practice grew of driving the stock to the feeding ground of the north and returning. The height of the movement along the cattle trail, which in its largest extent ran through the public lands of the great plains from Texas to the Dakotas and Montana, was reached in 1884. In that period cattlemen fought over the possession of the range, controlled vast tracts by seizing the approaches to the water supplies under perversion of the land laws, fenced in the public domain, either defiantly or by leases from land grant roads, and called out proclamations of presidents from Hayes to Cleveland. The steady advance of the farmer, and protective measures against the spread of the cattle diseases known as Texas fever, gradually prevented the continuance of the trail, and ultimately broke down the system of great ranches. The grade of cattle was improved and great packing interests organized the industry on the basis of concentrated large scale production. About 1870 shipment of livestock from Chicago had become significant, and within a decade the refrigerator car revolutionized the packing industry by making possible the shipment of dressed beef not only to the markets of the Eastern United States but even to Europe. The value of slaughtering and packing industries in the United States increased from less than thirty million dollars in 1870, to over three hundred millions in 1880, and to five hundred and sixty-four millions in 1890.
349. Another important revolution in American economic life was effected by the opening of new iron-mines, the growth of the steel and coal industry and the rise of an extraordinary internal commerce along the Whole length of the Great Lakes. By 1890 the output of pig-iron in the United States surpassed ​that of Great Britain, having doubled since 1880. The full meaning of the revolution is seen in the fact that by 1907 the Mining and Commerce. United States produced more pig-iron and steel than Great Britain, Germany and France combined. As a result of the growth of the wheat, lumber and iron-ore production of the North-West, the traffic along the thousand miles of the Great Lakes grew (chiefly after 1890) by leaps, and changed from wooden sailing vessels to steel ships driven by steam. The traffic through the Sault Ste Marie Canal came greatly to exceed that through the Suez Canal.
350. The South shared in these industrial transformations. Not only did white labour produce an increasing proportion of The South. the cotton crop, which was now extended into the cut-over pine lands, but cheap white labour came from the uplands to cotton mills situated at the water-powers. This, with the abundant supply of raw material, enabled the South to develop cotton manufacture between 1880 and 1890 on a scale that threatened New England's dominance. The southern Appalachians began to yield their treasures of coal and iron; northern Alabama became one of the great centres of the iron industry and the South produced nearly 400,000 tons of pig iron in 1880 and two and a half millions twenty years later. By 1890 the production of coal, iron-ore and pig-iron in this section was as great as that of the United States in 1870. The value of the products of manufacture in the South rose from $338,000,000 in 1880 to $1,184,000,000 in 1900. The exploitation of the long leaf pine forests also attracted Northern capital. Fruit and truck gardening grew rapidly, and the South began to exhibit traits of industrial development familiar in the North and West. Protective tariffs and the interests of capital found recruits in the old-time planting states; but the negro problem continued to hold the South as a whole to the Democratic party.
351. The opportunities opened to capital by these forces of growth in the West and South, as well as the general influence Industrial and Financial Changes. of an age of machine production, led to transformations in the East which brought new difficulties for political solution. The East began to exhibit characteristics of other long-settled countries where increasing density of population and highly developed industry are accompanied by labour troubles, and where problems of democratic society and government take the form of forcible action or political revolt, in the absence of ample outlets into adjacent areas of cheap lands and new opportunities. To capital the opening resources of the West, and the general national prosperity after 1879, offered such inducements that large scale production by corporations and vast designs became the order of the day. The forces which had exhibited themselves in increased manufacture and railway development between the Civil War and the panic of 1873 now found expression in a general concentration of industries into fewer plants with vastly greater capital and output, in the combination of partnerships into corporations, and of corporations into agreements, pools and trusts to avoid competition and to secure the needed capital and economies for dealing with the new problems of industrial magnitude. Western farming competition led to the actual abandonment of much inferior land in New England and to agricultural disadvantages in the Middle states. As agriculture became less attractive and as industrial demands grew, the urban population of the East increased at the expense of the rural. The numbers of cities of the United States with more than 8000 people nearly doubled between 1880 and 1890; by 1900 the urban population constituted a third of the total, and this phenomenon was especially marked in the North Atlantic division, where by 1900 over half the population was in cities of more than eight thousand inhabitants.
352. In similar fashion concentration of industry in large establishments was in progress. In 1880 nearly two thousand mills were engaged in the woollen industry; in 1890 not many more than thirteen hundred. Even more marked was the change in iron and steel, where large-scale production and concentration of mills began to revolutionize this fundamental industry, and other lines of production showed the same tendency. The anthracite mines of Pennsylvania, the great resource for the nation, fell into the possession of seven coal-carrying railways which became closely allied in interest. In most of the important industries the tendency of large organizations to subject or drive out the small undertakings became significant. Already the railways to avoid “cut-throat competition” had begun to consolidate their systems by absorption of component lines, to form rate agreements and to “pool” their earnings in given districts. Western agitation had led to reports and bills by committees headed by Western congressmen, such as the report of William Windom, of Minnesota, in 1874, where the construction of Federal lines to regulate rates by competition, was suggested; the report of George W. McCrary of Iowa, whose bill for regulation was passed by the House in 1874 under the stimulus of the Granger movement, but failed in the Senate; that of John H. Reagan, of Texas (1878), whose bill forbidding pooling and compelling publicity of rates by the machinery of the Federal courts, was discussed for several years, but failed to become law; and that of Shelby M. Cullom, of Illinois, in 1886.
353. The decision of the Supreme Court in the Wabash case, made in that year, reversed the doctrine followed in the case of Munn v. Illinois, and held that the regulative power of the state (even in the absence of Federal legis- state Comlation) was limited to traffic wholly within the '”°"°°A"'° state and not passing from one state to another. The Cullom bill as enacted into the Interstate Commerce Law of the 4th of February 1887, was framed to prevent unjust discrimination's by the railroads between persons, places and co mmodities, the tendency of which was, as the report declared, to foster monopoly. The law forbade discrimination's and pooling, made a higher charge for a short haul than for a long haul over the same road illegal (unless permitted after investigation by the commission), required publicity of rates, and provided for a commission to investigate and fine offenders. But the decisions of the commission were reviewable by the Federal courts and the offender could be coerced, if he refused to obey the commission, only by judicial proceedings. The commission was empowered to provide uniform accounting and to exact annual reports from the roads. The principle settled by the law was an important one, and marked the growing reliance of the former individualistic nation upon Federal regulation to check the progress of economic consolidation and monopoly. But the difficulties by no means disappeared; the Federal judiciary refusing to accept the findings of the commission on questions of fact, retried the cases; and the Supreme Court overruled the commission on fundamental questions, and narrowed the scope of the act by interpretation.
354. Labour exhibited the tendency to combination shown by capital. The Knights of Labor, founded in 1869, on the Labour Combinations; Industrial and Social Unrest. basis of “the individual masses” instead of the trades unions, and professing the principle that “the injury of one is the concern of all,” grew from a membership of about one hundred thousand in 1885 to seven hundred and thirty thousand in 1886. The number of strikes in 1886 was over twice as many as in any previous year. In one of the strikes on the Gould railway system six thousand miles of railway were held up. In New York, Henry George, author of books proposing the single tax on land as a remedy for social ills, ran for mayor of the city and received 68,000 out of 219,000 votes. At the same time socialistic doctrines spread, even among Western farmers. But sympathetic strikes, anarchistic outbreaks, and drastic plans for social change did not appeal to the people as a whole. The Knights of Labor began to split, and the unions, organized as the American Federation of Labor, began to take their place with a less radical membership. President Cleveland broke with precedents in 1886 by sending in the first message on labour, in which he advocated, without success, a labour commission to settle controversies. A national bureau of labour to collect statistics had been established in 1884; state legislation increasingly provided for arbitration of labour disputes, and regulation of factories and child ​labour. Early in 1885 a law had been enacted forbidding the importation of labour under contract, and in 1888 the Chinese Immigration. Exclusion Act was continued. Immigration was exceptionally large in the decade from 1880 to 1890, amounting to about five and a quarter millions as compared with two million eight hundred thousand for the previous decade. But a large number of these new-comers settled on the newly opened lands of the Middle West. By 1890 the persons of German parentage in the Middle West numbered over four millions—more than half the total of persons of German parentage in the nation. Minnesota held 373,000 persons of Scandinavian parentage, and of the whole of this element the Middle West had all but about 300,000. The Irish constituted the largest element among the English-speaking immigrants. The population of foreign parentage amounted to one-third of the whole population of the United States in 1890. In the midst of this national development and turmoil President Cleveland struggled to unite his party on a definite issue. The silver question continued to divide each party, the continued fall of silver leading to renewed agitation for free coinage. In 1886 a bill for this purpose was defeated by a majority of 37 in the House, 98 Democrats favouring it, and 70 opposing, as against 26 Republicans for Cleveland's Vetoes. it and 93 against. The surplus led to extravagant appropriation bills, such as special pension bills, which Cleveland vetoed by the wholesale, thereby incurring criticism by veterans of the Civil War, and river and harbour improvement measures, particularly the act of 1886, to which the president gave reluctant assent and the bill of 1887 to which he gave a “pocket veto” by refusing his signature. But the retention of the surplus in the treasury would create a monetary stringency, its deposit in banks aroused opposition, and its use to buy bonds was unpopular with the Democrats. Cleveland boldly met the issue and gave purpose to his party Tariff Message. by his annual message of December 1887, which he entirely devoted to an exposition of the situation arising from the surplus, and to a demand for a revision of the tariff in order to reduce revenue. He did not profess free trade doctrines: “It is a condition which confronts us, not a theory,” he declared. The election of 1886 had reduced the Democratic majority in the House, but the president was able The Mills Bill. to induce his party to pass the Mills Bill (1888) through that body as a concrete presentation of policy. The bill put many important raw materials (including wool and unmanufactured lumber) on the free list, substituted ad valorem for specific duties to a large extent, and generally reduced the protective duties. It was believed that the measure would remit over fifty and a-half million dollars of duties, nearly twenty millions of which would result from additions to the free list. The Republican Senate also found party unity on the tariff issue and its committee on finance, under the leadership of Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island, drafted a counter proposal. They would reduce revenue by repealing the taxes on tobacco, and the taxes on spirits used in the arts and for mechanical purposes, and by revising the tariff so as to check imports of articles produced at home.
355. On the tariff issue the two parties contested the election of 1888, the Republicans denouncing the Mills Bill and the Benjamin Harrison elected President. Democrats supporting it. Blaine having withdrawn from the contest, and John Sherman having secured but little more than half the votes necessary to nominate, the Republicans picked from a multitude of candidates General Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, grandson of President William Henry Harrison, to run against Mr Cleveland. The popular vote was exceedingly close, but Harrison had an electoral majority of 65, having carried all of the states except the solid South, Connecticut and New Jersey. The increasing use of money to influence the election, and particularly the association of great business interests with such political “bosses” as Matthew S. Quay of Pennsylvania and Thomas C. Platt of New York, were features of the campaign. The Congressional elections ensured to the Republicans the undisputed control of all branches of the government when the Fifty-first Congress should convene, and it was generally agreed that the party had a mandate to sustain the protective tariff.
356. Lacking a large majority in either house the Republicans were not only exposed to the danger of free silver defections in Speaker Thomas B. Reed. the Senate, but to “filibustering” by the Democratic minority in the House as a means of blocking the victorious party's programme. These obstructive tactics were made possible chiefly by the use of privileged motions and roll calls to delay business, and the refusal to respond on the roll call for a vote, thus preventing a quorum. Speaker Thomas B. Reed of Maine, a virile and keen-witted leader, greatly strengthened the power of the speaker, as well as expediting the business of the House, by ruling that the Constitution required a present, not a voting, quorum; and in spite of disorderly protests he “counted a quorum” of those actually present. By securing rules sanctioning this action and empowering the speaker to refuse to entertain dilatory motions, that officer became the effective agent for carrying on the business of the party majority. As his power through the committee on rules, which he appointed, grew, he came, in the course of time, also to dominate the action of the House, refusing to recognize members except for motions which he approved, and through his lieutenants on important committees selecting such measures for consideration as seemed most desirable. This efficiency of action was secured at a loss to the house as a representative and debating body, responsive to minority proposals.
357. But the discipline of party caucus and House rules enabled the Republican leaders to put through with rapidity The Sherman Anti-Trust Act. a number of important laws. One of these was the measure known as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of the 2nd of July 1890, which declared combinations affecting commerce between the several states, or with foreign nations, illegal and punishable by fine of imprisonment or both. This act, the full power of which was not exhibited until later, was a response to the growing unrest of the nation as other corporations emulated the success of the Standard Oil Trust (formed in 1882). The members of a trust combined in an organization managed by boards of trustees whose certificates the former owners accepted instead of their shares of stock in the component companies. Competition was thus eliminated within the combination and the greatly increased capital and economies enabled it not only to deal with the increasing magnitude of business operation, but also to master the smaller concerns which opposed it. State legislation had proved unable to check the process, partly because the trust was an interstate affair. By putting into operation its power under the Constitution to regulate interstate commerce, Congress responded to the popular demand for Federal restraint of these great combinations which threatened the old American ideals of individualism and freedom of competition. The trusts, although embarrassed, soon showed their ability to find other devices to maintain their unified control. Nor was the act used, in this period, to prevent the railways from agreements and combinations which in large measure neutralized the anti-pooling clause of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887.
358. Another important law was the so-called Sherman Silver Purchase Act of the 14th of July 1890. By 1889 the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. ratio of silver to gold had fallen to 1 to 22. In the twelve years of the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 over 378,000,000 silver dollars had been coined from bullion purchased at the market price. This bullion value was falling: it was $.89 in 1877 and $.72 in 1889. The production of gold in the United States in 1878 was about two and one-half million fine ounces, and of silver about thirty-five millions; in 1890 the gold production was 1,588,000 and the silver 54,500,000. The Silver Purchase Act authorized the secretary of the treasury to purchase each month 4,500,000 oz. of silver at its market price and to pay for it in treasury notes redeemable at his discretion, in silver or gold. This law, passed to placate the demands of the free silver men by increasing the use of silver, was insufficient to prevent the Senate from passing a free coinage bill by a combination of Democrats and the ​silver Republicans, chiefly from the newer states of the Far West; but this free coinage bill was lost in the House by a small majority. The explanation of this sudden re-opening of the question was that of party apprehension. In some of the Republican states of the Middle West, long relied upon as safe, the Farmers' Alliance had been spreading, and fomenting a demand for unlimited coinage of silver. A silver convention held at St Louis in the fall of 1889 had been attended by many delegates from this region as well as from the new silver-mining states whose increased power in the Senate was soon to be effective. It was feared, therefore, that a veto of a free coinage measure might array the West and South-West against the East and break up the party.
359. The customs duties upon which the fighting of the campaign of 1888 had turned was promptly taken up, and in The McKinley Tariff. the McKinley Tariff Act of the 1st of October 1890 the Republicans embodied their conceptions of protection to American industry. Some of the main features of this law were: the addition of agricultural products to the protected articles; the extension of the free list particularly the inclusion therein of raw sugar, which had been bringing in a revenue of $50,000,000 annually; the granting of compensating bounties to sugar planters to an amount of about $10,000,000 a year; and the raising of duties to the prohibitory point on many articles of general consumption which could be produced at home. Mr Blaine, then secretary of state, had just been active in promoting closer relations with South America wherein he hoped for an extension of American trade and he severely criticized the bill as it passed the House, because the free list opened wide the doors of American trade, particularly to sugar producing countries, without first exacting compensating advantages for our products in those markets. To meet this criticism a provision was finally added authorizing the president to impose discriminating duties where it was necessary to obtain the advantages of reciprocity.
360. This tariff, which passed on the eve of the Congressional elections of 1890, was immediately followed by such increases in prices and the cost of living that it was potent in bringing about the political revolution, or “land slide,” which swept the Republicans from power in the House of Representatives. The Republicans returned but 88 members as compared with nearly twice that number in the Congress which passed the McKinley Bill. The South sent but four Republicans; New England a majority of Democrats; and such strongholds of Republicanism as the Middle Western states of Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Kansas, hitherto responsive to the traditions of the Civil War, sent Democratic or independent delegations. Looked at broadly, the movement was a rural uprising, strongest in the South and Middle West, the old Granger areas, against forces which seemed to them to threaten their ideals of American democracy. But the movement was recruited, by the silver-mining states and discontented labour interests.
361. Farm products had not proportionally shared the general increase in prosperity. This convinced large portions of the Western Discontent. agricultural West that the currency system had too narrow a basis in gold, which was appreciating in value. Much of the Middle Western agricultural development had been made on borrowed Eastern capital, and it seemed to the farmer that the principal of his mortgage was in effect increasing with the rise in the price of gold, at the same time that his crops brought a smaller net profit. He did not give due attention to the effect of greatly increased production, as the new wheat lands were opened on such a grand scale; but he was keenly sensitive to increased freight rates and discriminations, to the influence of Eastern capitalists, banks, bondholders, trusts and railways upon Federal and state legislatures and judiciary, and to the large amount of railway lands, unproductively held by the companies, while the land hunger of the nation was exhibited in the rush to newly opened Indian lands, such as Oklahoma (1889) and parts of the Sioux reservation (1890). After the evidence of the power of this tide of Western discontent in the elections of 1890, those portions of it which were ripest for revolt combined in 1892 as the People's party or Populists, soon to prove an important political factor.
362. The Republicans meanwhile had been actively reducing the surplus. In 1892 the excess of revenue over expenditures Pensions. was ten million dollars; by 1893 only two millions. This was effected not only by the Tariff Act but by such measures as the Dependent Pension Act of 1890 (resulting in a list of pensioners of the Civil War which cost the nation $68,000,000 by 1893, over half of these pensioners having been added during Harrison's administration); the rapid construction of the new navy, raising the United States from twelfth to fifth in the list of naval powers; the repayment of the direct war tax to the states (1891) to the amount of fifty-one millions; and other appropriations such as those provided by river and harbour bills. The Democrats stigmatized this Congress as a “billion dollar Congress” from its expenditures, to which Speaker Reed replied that the United States was a billion dollar nation. In fact the Democrats when they regained power were not able greatly to diminish the cost of government.
363. The Democratic House in the Fifty-second Congress repressed obstructive Republican tactics by methods like those adopted by Speaker Reed, and contented itself with passing a series of bills through that body proposing reductions of the tariff in special schedules, including free wool and a reduction of the duty on woollens, free raw material for the cotton planters of the South, free binding twine for the farmers of the North and a reduced duty on tin plate for the fruit raisers. The new industries of the southern Appalachians prevented action on coal and iron. Of course these bills failed in the Republican Senate. A bloody strike on the eve of the election of 1892 in Homestead Strike. the great steel works at Homestead, Pennsylvania, where armed guards engaged by the company fired upon the mob which sought higher wages, was not without its adverse effect upon public sentiment in regard to the Republican tariff for the protection of labour.
364. During the campaign of 1892 the Democrats rejected a conservative tariff plank, denounced the McKinley tariff in violent language, and denied the constitutional power to impose tariff duties except for the purpose of revenue only. But Cleveland, who was renominated in spite of vigorous opposition from leading politicians of his own state, toned down the platform utterances on the tariff in his letter of acceptance. In their declarations upon the currency the Democrats furnished a common standing ground for the different factions by attacking the Silver Purchase Act of 1890 as a cowardly makeshift.
365. The People's party, in its national convention at Omaha (July 1892), drew a gloomy picture of government corrupted in The People's Party. all of its branches, business prostrated, farms covered with mortgages, labour oppressed, lands concentrating in the hands of capitalists. Demanding the restoration of government to the “plain people,” they proposed an expansion of its powers, to afford an adequate volume of currency and to check the tendency to “breed tramps and millionaires.” Among their positive proposals were: the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the legal ratio of sixteen to one; the expansion of a national currency issued directly to the people; the establishment of postal savings banks; government ownership of the railways, telegraph and telephone; restoration to the government of the lands held by railways and other corporations in excess of their needs; and a graduated income tax. In supplementary resolutions the Australian ballot system, which had spread rapidly in the past few years, was commended, as also were the initiative and referendum in law-making. Combining with the Democratic party in various states beyond the Mississippi, and with Republicans in some of the Southern states, they won large masses of voters in the West, and exerted an influence upon public opinion in that section beyond what was indicated in the returns, although General James B. Weaver of Iowa, their candidate for the presidency, received over 1,000,000 popular votes and 22 votes in the electoral college. The Republicans renominated President Harrison, though he lacked an enthusiastic personal following. They ​supported the McKinley Tariff Act in spite of the wave of opposition shown in the elections of 1890. But, fearing party divisions, they, like the Democrats, made an ambiguous declaration on the currency. The result of the election of 1892 was to Cleveland re-elected President. return the Democrats under Cleveland to power by a plurality of over 380,000 and an electoral plurality of 132. Congress in both branches was to be Democratic in 1893, and the way was open for the first time in a generation for that party to carry out a policy unchecked by any legislative or executive branch of government.
366. But before Cleveland was fairly started in his second administration the disastrous panic of 1893 swept the nation, Panic of 1893. nor did prosperity return during the four years that followed. The panic is not, directly at least, to be traced to the silver purchases, but was the result of various causes, including the agricultural depression, farm mortgages, reckless railway financiering and unsound banking in the United States, as well as to Argentine and European financial troubles. The panic began in the spring with the failure of the Reading railway (which had undertaken the acquisition of coal land and an extension of activity beyond its resources) and the collapse of the National Cordage Company, one of the numerous examples of reckless trust financiering into which large banks had also been drawn. Clearing-house certificates were resorted to by the New York banks in June, followed in August by partial suspension of specie payments. Currency remained at a premium for a month; deposits in national banks shrank enormously; national bank loans contracted more than 14.7%; failures were common; 22,000 m. of railways were under receiverships, and construction almost ceased. The interruption to business is indicated by the decline of iron production by one-fourth.
367. The panic of 1893 was in many ways a turning-point in American history. It focused attention upon monetary questions, prostrated the silver-mining states, embittered the already discontented farming regions of the West, produced an industrial chaos out of which the stronger economic interests emerged with increased power by the absorption of embarrassed companies, and was accompanied by renewed labour troubles. Most noteworthy of these was the Pullman Car Company strike near Chicago in 1894, which led to sympathetic strikes by the American Railway Union, extending over twenty-seven states and Territories from Cincinnati to San Francisco. Mobs Railway Strike. of the worst classes of Chicago burned and looted cars. The refusal of Governor John P. Altgeld of Illinois to call out the militia, and the interference with the United States mails, led President Cleveland to order Federal troops to the scene, on the constitutional ground that they were necessary to prevent interference with interstate commerce and the postal service and to enforce the processes of the Federal courts. The latter issued a sweeping injunction requiring that the members of the American Railway Union or other persons desist from interference with the business of the railways concerned. The president of the striking organization, Eugene V. Debs, was imprisoned for contempt of court and conspiracy.
368. The most immediate political effect of the panic was upon the silver issue. Soon after the outbreak of the financial crisis, the gold reserve, which protected the greenbacks and the treasury notes issued under the Silver Purchase Act, shrank ominously, while foreigners returned their American securities instead of sending gold. To sell bonds in order to replenish the gold reserve, and to repeal the Silver Purchase Act without substituting free coinage, would aggravate western discontent and turn away the promise of recruits to the Democratic party from the Populists of the prairie and silver-mining states; to carry out the Democratic platform by a tariff for revenue only while mills were shutting down would be hazardous in Repeal of Silver Purchase Act. the East. The fruits of victory were turning to ashes; but Cleveland summoned a special session of Congress for August, while the panic was acute, and asked his party to repeal the Silver Purchase Act without accompanying the repeal with provisions for silver. Not until the last of October 1893 was repeal carried, by a vote in which the friends of repeal in the House were about equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, and nearly two-thirds of its opponents Democrats.
369. By this time the surplus had disappeared and the gold reserve was drawn upon for ordinary expenses. Early in 1894 the administration, failing to secure legislation from Congress to authorize the sale of gold bonds on favourable terms to protect the reserve, sold under the Resumption Act of 1875 $50,000,000 5% bonds, redeemable in ten years. Part of this very gold, however, was withdrawn from the reserve by the presentation of legal tender notes for redemption, and the “endless chain” continued this operation to the verge of extinguishing the reserve, so that another loan of $50,000,000 in 1894 was followed in 1895 by a dramatic meeting between Cleveland and some of his cabinet with the important Wall Street banker, J. Pierpont Morgan, who agreed on behalf of his syndicate to sell the government $65,166,000 of gold for $62,315,000 of bonds, equivalent to 4% bonds for thirty years at a price of 104. In return the syndicate agreed to use its influence to protect the withdrawals of gold from the treasury. These securities were over-subscribed when offered to the public at 112¼. President Cleveland had protected the treasury and sustained the parity of gold and silver, but at the cost of disrupting his party, which steadfastly refused to authorize gold bonds. Again, in the beginning of 1896, the treasury was forced to sell bonds, but this time it dealt directly with the public and easily placed $100,000,000 in bonds at about 111, affording a rate of interest about equal to 3.4%.
370. Before the political harvest of the monetary issue was reaped, the Democrats had also found party ties too weak to The Wilson Bill. bear the strain of an effective redemption of the party pledges on the tariff. The Wilson Bill prepared as the administrative measure was reported late in 1893, while the panic was still exerting a baneful influence. Its leading features were the substitution of ad valorem for specific duties in general, the extension of the free list to include such materials of manufacture as iron ore, wool, coal, sugar and lumber, and the reduction of many prohibitory rates. The loss in revenue was partly provided for by an income tax, significant of the new forces affecting American society, and an increase in the duty on distilled liquors. Although the bill passed the House by an overwhelming majority, it met the opposition in the Senate of the representatives, Democratic as well as Republican, of those states whose interests were adversely affected, especially the iron ore and coal producing states of the Southern Appalachians, the sugar producers of Louisiana, the wool growers and manufacturers of Ohio, and the regions of accumulated property in the East, where an income tax was especially obnoxious. Led by Senators Arthur P. Gorman, of Maryland; Calvin S. Brice, of Ohio; and David B. Hill, of New York, the bill was transformed by an alliance between Democratic and Republican senators, on the plea that it would otherwise result in a deficit of $100,000,000. Coal, iron ore and sugar were withdrawn from the free raw materials and specific duties replaced ad valorem in many cases, while many other individual schedules were amended in the direction of protection. The House, given the alternative of allowing the McKinley Act to remain or to accept the Senate's bill, yielded, and the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act became a law without the president's signature, on the 27th of August 1894. He called upon his followers still to fight for free raw materials, and wrote bitterly of “the trusts and combinations, the communism of pelf, whose machinations have prevented us from reaching the success we deserved.” Even the income tax was soon (1895) held by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional.
371. Toward the close of his administration Cleveland's brusque message on the Venezuelan boundary question (see later) aroused such excitement and so rallied the general public (though not the more conservative) that the war spirit, shown soon afterwards against Spain, might have been a potent factor ​in the election of 1896 had not England exhibited exceptional moderation and self-restraint in her attitude. The silver question, therefore, became the important issue. The Republicans nominated McKinley and declared for the gold standard in opposition to free coinage, losing thereby an influential following in the silver-mining and prairie states, but gaining the support of multitudes of business men among the Democrats in the East and Middle West, who saw in the free-silver programme a violation of good faith and a menace to returning prosperity. The Democratic convention marked a revolution in the party. Free Silver Issue; William J. Bryan. The old school leaders were deposed by decisive majorities, and a radical platform was constructed which made “the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation,” the paramount issue. Objecting also to the decision against the income tax, and to “government by injunction as a new and highly dangerous form of oppression,” they incurred the charge of hostility to the Federal judiciary. William J. Bryan made a brilliant speech in behalf of free coinage, and so voiced the passion and thought of the captivated convention that he Gold Democrats. was nominated by it for the presidency over the veteran free-silver leader, Richard P. Bland of Missouri. The Cleveland men, or “gold Democrats,” broke with their party after it became committed to free silver, and holding a convention of their own, nominated General John McA. Palmer of Illinois for the presidency on a platform which extolled Cleveland, attacked free coinage, and favoured the gold standard. Its main influence was to permit many Cleveland men to vote against Bryan without renouncing the name of Democrats. On the other hand the Populist convention also nominated Bryan on a platform more radical than that of the Democrats, since it included government ownership of the railways, the initiative and referendum, and a currency issued without the intervention of banks.
372. The contest was marked by great excitement as Bryan travelled across the country addressing great audiences. The endangered business interests found an efficient manager in Marcus A. Hanna of Ohio, McKinley's adviser, and expended large sums in a campaign of education. In the event, the older states of the Middle West, holding the balance between the manufacturing and capitalistic East and the populistic prairie and mining states of the West, gave their decision against free silver. But class appeals and class voting were a marked feature of the campaign, the regions of agricultural depression and farm mortgages favouring Bryan, and those of urban life favouring McKinley. Labour was not convinced that its interests lay in expanding the currency, and Mr Hanna had conducted McKinley's campaign successfully on the plea that he was the advance agent of prosperity under the gold standard and a restoration of confidence. McKinley carried all the Northern William McKinley elected President. states east of the Missouri, and North Dakota, Oregon and California of the Farther West, as well as Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia and Kentucky along the borders of the South. His plurality over Bryan in the popular vote was more than 600,000, and his electoral majority 95. All the departments of government were transferred by the election to the Republicans.
373. Having secured power, the administration called a special session of Congress, and enacted the Dingley protective Dingley Tariff. tariff (July 24, 1897) under which the deficit in the treasury was turned into a surplus. The act raised duties to their highest point, and as the protective schedules included some important articles produced by trusts which had a practical monopoly, such as sugar and petroleum, this was seized upon by the Democrats to stigmatize the tariff as the “mother of trusts.” Many articles which had been placed on the free list in the Tariff Act of 1894, including lumber, wool and the raw material for cotton baling, were made dutiable. The high rates were defended, in part, by the provision authorizing the president to negotiate reciprocity treaties under which they might be lowered. Several such treaties were signed, but the Senate refused to ratify them.
374. The Republicans also wrote their triumph into the Gold Standard Act of the 4th of March 1900, which ensured Gold Standard Act. the maintenance of this standard by reserving $150,000,000 of gold coin and bullion to redeem the United States notes and the treasury notes of 1890, and by authorizing the sale of bonds when necessary to maintain the reserve. National banks were authorized in the smaller towns (three thousand or less) with a capital of $25,000, half of that formerly required, and increased circulation was further provided for by permitting the national banks to issue United States bonds up to their par value.
375. The economic policy of the Republicans was facilitated by the prosperity which set in about 1898. The downfall of silver-mining turned the prospectors to seek new gold fields, and they found them, especially in Alaska, about this time; and contemporaneously the chemists discovered cheaper and more efficient methods of extracting the gold from low-grade ores. Within five years after the crisis of 1893 the gold production of the United States nearly doubled. The United States Economic and Industrial Changes. coined $437,500,000 in gold in the five-year period 1897-1902, while the average for five-year periods since 1873 had been only $224,000,000. Thus gold instead of silver began to inundate the market, and to diminish the demand for expansion of the currency. Agriculture, prostrated in the years immediately preceding and following the panic of 1893, turned to the scientific study of its problems, developed dry farming, rotation and variety of crops, introduced forage crops like alfalfa, fed its Indian corn to cattle and hogs, and thus converted it into a profitable and condensed form for shipment. Range cattle were brought to the corn belt and fattened, while packing industries moved closer to these western centres of supply. Dairy-farming replaced the unprofitable attempts of older sections of the Middle West and the East to compete with the wheat-fields of the Farther West. Truck and fruit farming increased in the South, and the canning industry added utility to the fruits and vegetables of the West. Following the trend of combination the farmers formed growers' associations and studied the demand of the market to guide their sales. The mortgaged farms were gradually freed from debt. The wheat crop increased from less than 400,000,000 bushels valued at $213,000,000 in 1893 to 675,000,000 bushels valued at $392,000,000 in 1898. Prosperity and contentment replaced agitation in the populistic West for the time, and the Republican party gained the advantage of these changed conditions. Land values and the price of farm products rose. The farmers soon found it profitable to sell all or part of their land and re-invest in the cheaper virgin soils of the farther North-West and South-West, and thus began a new movement of colonization into the new West, while the landowners who remained gained an increasingly higher status, though farm labour failed to share proportionally in this advance.
376. In the South also there was greater contentment as the new industries of iron, textiles and forestry grew, and as The South. the cotton crops increased. Unrest was diminished by the new state constitutions, which after 1890 disqualified negro voters by educational and tax requirements so contrived as not to disfranchise the poor whites.
377. In the decade which followed the crisis of 1893 a new industrial structure was made out of the chaos of the panic. “High Financiering.” “High financiering” was undertaken on a scale hitherto unknown. Combinations absorbed their rivals; Standard Oil especially gained large interests in New York banks and in the iron mines and transportation lines about the Great Lakes, while it extended its power over new fields of oil in the South-West. In general, a small group of powerful financial interests acquired holdings in other lines of business, and by absorptions and “community of interest” exerted great influence upon the whole business world. The group of financiers, headed by J. Pierpont ​Morgan, came to dominate various Southern transportation lines and the anthracite coal roads and mines, and extended their influence to the Northern Pacific railway, while a new genius in railway financiering, Edward H. Harriman, began an avowed plan of controlling the entire railway system of the nation. Backed by an important banking syndicate he rescued the Union Pacific from bankruptcy, and with its profits as a working basis he started in to acquire connecting and competing lines. Labour also shared in the general prosperity after 1898. Relative real wages increased, even allowing for the higher cost of living, and the length of the working day in general decreased except in special industries.
378. By 1900 the continental United States had a population of 76,000,000; an aggregate real and personal wealth of $88,500,000,000; a per capita public debt of $14.52, and per capita money circulation of $26.94 against $21.41 in 1896. In 1901 bank clearings amounted to nearly $115,000,000,000 General Prosperity. against $45,000,000,000 in 1894. Imports of merchandise had fallen in this period, while exports rose from about $847,000,000 in 1893 to $1,394,000,000 in 1900. Of these exports food stuffs and food animals, crude and partly manufactured, aggregated nearly 40% of the total. The production of pig-iron, which was about 7,000,000 long tons in 1893, was nearly twice that in 1900. This economic prosperity and these far-reaching processes of social change by which the remaining natural resources of the nation were rapidly appropriated, went on contemporaneously with the extension of the activity of the nation overseas. The first rough conquest of the wilderness accomplished, the long period of internal colonization drawing to a close, the United States turned to consider its position as a world power.
379. To understand this position it is necessary to return to an earlier period and briefly survey the foreign relations since the close of the Reconstruction era. The most significant and persistent influence came from the growing interest of the United States in the Pacific, as its population and economic power extended to that ocean. The problem of an overflow of Chinese migration to the Pacific coast, and the jeopardizing of the American standard of labour by this flood, had been settled by various treaties and laws since 1880. The question of the relation of the United States to an interoceanic canal was not so easily settled. In 1878 Colombia granted a concession to a French company, promoted by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the engineer of the Suez Canal, to dig a tide-level canal through the Isthmus of Panama. President Hayes voiced the antagonism of the United States to this project Isthmian Canal. of European capital in his message of 1880 in which he declared that such a canal should be under the control of this nation, and that it would be “virtually a part of the coast-line of the United States.” Although an American company was organized to construct a canal under a concession from Nicaragua in 1884, no real progress was made, and the French company, defeated by engineering and sanitary difficulties, failed at the close of 1888.
380. Meantime, for a few months, Blaine, as secretary of state under President Garfield, began a vigorous foreign policy with especial reference to the Pacific. He attempted to get the consent of England to abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850, which contemplated the construction of an isthmian canal by private enterprise under joint control and neutralization of the United States and Great Britain, together with such other powers as should join them. In South America he actively pressed the influence of the United States to settle the war between Chile and Peru. Again, in the years from Pan-American Congress. 1889 to 1892, Blaine held the portfolio of state, and attempted to increase the influence of his country in Spanish America by the Pan-American Congress of 1890, which proposed a great international railway system and bank, commercial reciprocity and arbitration, without immediate results. (See Pan-American Conferences.) Indeed, the bad feeling aroused by his earlier policy toward Chile found expression in 1891 in a mob at Valparaiso, when some of the men from the United States ship “Baltimore” on Chile. shore leave were killed and wounded. An apology averted the war which President Harrison threatened. Blaine also asserted, against Canada particularly, the right of Bering Sea. the United States to the seals of the Bering Sea; but in 1893 arbitrators decided against the claim.
381. As the navy grew and American policy increasingly turned to the Pacific, the need of coaling stations and positions Samoan Islands. advantageous to its sea power was appreciated. By a tripartite treaty in 1889 the Samoan islands
were placed under the joint control of the United States, England and Germany, and, a decade later, they were divided among these powers, Tutuila and the harbour of Pago-Pago falling to the United States. The Hawaiian islands, which had been brought under the influence of civilization by American missionaries, were connected by commercial ties with the United States. Upon the attempt of the ruler to overturn the constitution, the American party, aided by Hawaiian Islands. the moral support of the United States, which landed marines, revolted, set up a republic, and asked annexation to the Union. A treaty, negotiated under President Harrison to this end, was withdrawn by President Cleveland, after investigation, on the ground that the part of the United States in the revolution was improper. He attempted without success to restore the original state of affairs, and on the 7th of July 1898 the islands were annexed.
382. President Cleveland's conservatism in this and other matters of foreign policy had not prepared the people for Venezuelan Boundary. the sudden exhibition of firmness in foreign policy with which he startled the nation in his message of December 1895 upon the question of the boundary of Venezuela. That nation and England had a long-standing dispute over the line which separated British Guiana from Venezuela. Great Britain declined to arbitrate, at the suggestion of the United States, and gave an interpretation to the Monroe Doctrine which the administration declined to accept. President Cleveland thereupon brusquely announced to Congress his belief that Great Britain's attitude was in effect an attempt to control Venezuela, and proposed that a commission on the part of the United States should report upon the disputed boundary, and support Venezuela in the possession of what should be ascertained to be her rightful territory. Secretary-of-State Richard Olney declared: “To-day the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.” Great Britain tactfully accepted arbitration, however, and in the end (1899) was awarded most of the territory regarding which she had been unwilling to arbitrate.
The growing activity of the United States in foreign relations next manifested itself against Spain. Cuba in its commanding position with reference to the Gulf of Mexico and the approaches to the proposed isthmian canal, as well as in its commercial relations, and its menace as a breeding spot for yellow fever, had long been regarded by the United States as an important factor in her foreign policy. Successive administrations from the time of Jefferson had declared that it must not fall to another European nation, if Spain relinquished it, and that it was against the policy of the United States to join other nations in guaranteeing it to Spain. Between 1868 and 1878 Cuba; Spanish-American War. a harsh war had been in progress between the island and the mother country, and American intervention was imminent. But Spain promised reforms and peace followed; again in 1895 revolt broke out, accompanied by severe repressive measures, involving grave commercial injury to the United States. (See Spanish-American War.)
383. By the Treaty of Paris, signed on the 10th of December 1898, Spain lost the remaining fragments of her ancient American Treaty of Paris, 1898. Empire. She relinquished Cuba, which the United States continued temporarily to occupy without holding the sovereignty pending the orderly establishment of an independent government for the island; Porto ​Rico, Guam and the Philippines were ceded outright to the United States, which agreed to pay $20,000,000 to Spain, and to satisfy the claims of its citizens against that power. By the treaty Congress was to determine the civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants of the ceded territory.
384. As a result of the Spanish-American War, the United States found itself in a position of increased importance and Results of the War. prestige among the nations of the world. Especially in the Pacific, it was immediately involved in the diplomatic situation created by the efforts of European states to divide China into spheres of influence or of actual possession. The interests of the United States in the trade with China, as well as her new position in the Philippines, inclined her to oppose this policy, and Secretary-of-State John Hay showed himself one of the great American diplomats in his treatment of this difficult problem. In order to preserve Chinese entity and the “open door” for trade, he drew replies from the nations concerned, the result of which was to compel them to avow and moderate their intentions. When the Boxer insurrection broke out in China in 1900, and the legations were besieged at Peking, it was largely through the United States that a less rigorous treatment was secured for that disordered nation.
385. The acquisition of Porto Rico and the acceptance of responsibilities in Cuba gave new importance to the isthmian canal and increased the relative weight of the United States in regard to its control. The popular excitement with which the voyage of the “Oregon” was followed, as it took its way 14,000 m. around South America to participate in the destruction of the Spanish fleet in the battle of Santiago, brought home to the American people the need of such communication between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
386. But the immediate political issues were concerned with problems of the relation of the newly won lands to the United States government. Bryan had persuaded his party to join in ratifying the treaty of Paris, expecting to determine the status of the islands later. But attention soon turned to the insurrection which broke out (Feb. 4, 1899) in the Philippines (q.v.) under Aguinaldo, after it became probable that the administration intended to retain these islands, not under a weak protectorate, but as a possession to be ruled and The Philippines. “assimilated.” It was not until the spring of 1902 that this insurrection was completely put down, and in the interval the question of the destiny of the islands and the harshness of the measures of repression aroused political debate. The Democrats and many Republicans charged the administration with a policy of imperialism.
387. The same issue was involved, in its constitutional and economic aspects, in the treatment of Porto Rico and Cuba. While the insurrection continued in the Philippines the government there was legally a military one, although exercised in part through civil officers and commissions. But in the case of Porto Rico the question was whether the “Constitution follows the flag,” that is, whether it extended of its own force without an act of Congress to acquired territory, and covered the inhabitants with all the rights of citizens of the United States, as an integral part of the American people. Not only was it a Porto Rico and Cuba. question whether the native inhabitants of these new acquisitions could be wisely entrusted with this degree of political liberty, but the problem of the tariff was involved. The beet sugar producers of the United States feared the effect of the competition of Porto Rican sugar unless a protective tariff excluded this commodity. But if Porto Rico were an integral part of the United States the Dingley tariff could not be applied against its products, since this act imposed duties only on articles from “foreign countries.” To meet this difficulty the Foraker Act of 1900 imposed a special tariff for two years upon Porto Rico, the proceeds to go to that island's own treasury. The act further asserted the principle that the inhabitants of the new possessions were not incorporated into the United States or entitled to all the privileges of citizens of the United States under the Constitution, by declaring that statutory acts of the United States locally inapplicable should not be in force in Porto Rico. The Supreme Court sustained this act in 1901, holding that Porto Rico was not so strictly a part of the United States that separate customs tariffs could not be imposed upon the territory. The close division of the court and the variety of opinions by which the decision was sustained left it somewhat uncertain whether and how far the Constitution extended of its own force to these annexations. The Foraker Act also provided a government for the island (see Porto Rico). In Cuba the United States remained in authority until the 20th of May 1902, and details of the work of the government there, and the subsequent arrangements whereby the United States secured the substantial advantages of a protectorate without destroying the independence of Cuba, will be found in the article on Cuba.
388. Meantime, in the election of 1900, the Democrats renominated Bryan on a platform which opposed the Republican “Imperialism.” administration's acts in relation to the newly acquired territory and declared that “imperialism” was the paramount issue. The platform reaffirmed its silver doctrine of the previous campaign and denounced the tariff as a breeder of trusts. The Republicans renominated McKinley and endorsed his administration. While the Democrats declared for publicity in the affairs of interstate corporations and favoured enlargement of the interstate commerce law to prevent discriminations in railway rates, the Republicans were less hostile in their attitude toward the combinations, admitting the necessity of honest co-operation of capital to meet new business conditions. The Populists divided, the “anti-fusionists” supporting a separate ticket, with free silver, government ownership of railways, and anti-imperialism prominent in their demands; the other wing supported Bryan. Re-election and Assassination of McKinley. Marcus A. Hanna, the Republican campaign manager, who was increasingly influential with the great business interests of the country, appealed to labour to support the administration and thereby retain “a full dinner pail.” McKinley received an electoral majority of 137 and a popular plurality of 849,790. Before his second term was fairly begun he was shot by an anarchist while attending the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, and died on the 14th of September 1901. His wisdom in choosing able cabinet officers, his sympathetic tact in dealing with men and with sections, as well as the victories of the Spanish-American War, had brought him popularity even among his political opponents. But McKinley, like Cleveland, lacked the imagination to perceive and the desire to voice the aspirations and demands that had been gathering force for many years for legislation and executive action that should deal with the problem of effective regulation of the economic forces that were transforming American society. This gave his opportunity to Theodore Roosevelt (q.v.), who as vice-president now succeeded to office.
It was in foreign relations, which Secretary Hay continued to conduct, that continuity with McKinley's administration Roosevelt. was most evident. But even here a bolder spirit, a readiness to break new paths and to take short cuts was shown by the new president. Venezuela had long delayed the payment of claims of citizens of various nations. In 1901, the president, having been informed by Germany of its intention to collect the claims of its citizens by force, but without acquisition of territory, announced that the United States would not guarantee any state against punishment if it misconducted itself, provided that the punishment did not take the form of acquisition of territory. As a result, a blockade of Venezuela was undertaken by the joint action of Germany, England and Italy at the close of 1902. The diplomatic intervention of the United States early the next year resulted in Venezuela's agreement to pay the claims in part and to set aside a portion of her customs receipts to this end. But since the blockading powers demanded preferential treatment, the United States secured a reference of the question to the Hague court, which decided that this demand was justified. San ​Domingo offered a similar problem, having a debt incurred by revolutionary governments, beyond its power to pay, and San Domingo. being threatened with forcible intervention by European states. President Roosevelt, in 1904, declared that in case of wrongdoing or impotency requiring intervention in the western hemisphere the United States might be forced “to the exercise of an international police power.” In 1905 San Domingo and the United States signed a protocol under which the latter was empowered to take possession of the custom-house, conduct the finances and settle the domestic and foreign debts of San Domingo. In spite of the refusal of the Senate to assent to this protocol, President Roosevelt put the arrangement unofficially into effect, until, in 1907, the Senate consented to a treaty authorizing it with some modifications.
389. In the Far East the Boxer insurrection in China had been followed by the combined military expedition of the powers Policy in the Far East; the Portsmouth Treaty. to the relief of Peking (in which the United States shared), and the exaction of a huge indemnity, of which the United States relinquished nearly half of its share, as in excess of the actual losses. The United States protested against Russian demands upon China, and actively participated in the negotiations which resulted in Russia's agreement to evacuate Manchuria. The delays of that power and her policy toward China having led Japan to declare war, Secretary Hay's diplomacy was influential in limiting the zone of hostilities; and the good offices of President Roosevelt brought about the conference between the two powers at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which terminated hostilities in 1905. In this, and in his efforts to promote peace by extending the power of the various international peace congresses and by making the Hague tribunal an effective instrument for settling disputes, Roosevelt won the approval of Europe as well as of America. The dispute over the boundary between Alaska and Canada was narrowed by diplomatic discussion, and the remaining questions, involving the control of important ports at the head of the great inlets which offered access to the goldfields, were settled by arbitration in 1903 favourably to the American contentions.
390. The Isthmian Canal also received a settlement in this administration by a process which was thoroughly characteristic of the resolution of President Roosevelt. The Clayton-Bulwer treaty was superseded by the Hay-Pauncefote treaty of 1901, by which Great Britain withdrew her objections to a canal constructed by the United States, and under the sole guarantee of neutralization by the latter power. The treaty also omitted a clause previously insisted on, forbidding the fortification of the canal. Having thus cleared the way, the United States next debated the advantages of the Nicaragua and the Panama routes. Influenced by the cost of acquiring the rights and property of the French company, an American The Panama Canal. commission reported in 1901 in favour of the Nicaraguan route; but upon receiving information that a smaller sum would be accepted, the Spooner Law was enacted (June 28, 1902) authorizing the president to purchase the rights and property of the Panama Company for $40,000,000, to acquire upon reasonable terms the title and jurisdiction to a canal strip at least 6 m. wide from Colombia, and through the Isthmian Canal Commission to construct the canal. But if the president was unable to secure a valid title from the French company and the control from Colombia within “a reasonable time and upon reasonable terms” the Nicaraguan route was to be made the line of the canal. With this means of pressure the president acquired the French rights; but Colombia declined to ratify the treaty negotiated for the purpose of giving the United States the specified control, on the terms offered. In this emergency an insurrection broke out in Panama on the 3rd of November 1903. The naval force of the United States, acting under the theory that it was obliged to keep open the transit across the isthmus by its treaty obligations, excluded armed forces from the canal strip, and the Republic of Panama, having declared its independence of Colombia, was promptly recognized on the 6th of November. Twelve days later a treaty was negotiated with this republic, by which the United States paid Panama $10,000,000, together with an annuity of $250,000 to begin ten years later, and guaranteed the independence of the republic, receiving in exchange the substantial sovereignty and ownership of a ten-mile strip for the canal. This treaty was ratified by the Senate on the 23rd of February 1904, and excavation was begun in 1907. (See Panama Canal.)
391. In the Philippines early in 1901 municipal and provincial governments were provided for, and the president The Philippines. had been for a brief time granted full power to govern the archipelago. He appointed judge Taft civil governor, and limited the power of the military governor to regions where insurrection continued. On the 1st of July 1902 Congressional authority was substituted for that of the president, but Taft remained governor. The provisions of the Constitution guaranteeing life, liberty and property were in general extended specifically to the dependency, and a legislative assembly was promised, the lower house elective, and the upper house to consist of the Philippine Commission. By negotiations with Rome Governor Taft secured for the Philippines the “friars' lands” which had been a source of friction. On the 16th of October 1907 the first Philippine assembly was convened in the presence of Taft, then secretary of war.
392. The tariff question complicated American relations with both the Philippines and Cuba. Beet sugar and tobacco interests feared the competition of these products, and opposed freedom of trade between the United States and the new territories. The Philippine tariff of 1902 made a reduction of only 25% from the Dingley tariff in the case of the products of those islands, instead of the 75% urged by Taft; but the duties were to go to the Philippines. In the case of Cuba a more heated controversy arose over the tariff—Roosevelt strongly urged a substantial reduction in justice to Cuba at several regular and special sessions of Congress; but not until the close of 1903 was a treaty in operation which, under the principle of reciprocity, admitted some products of the United States to Cuba at reduced rates, and allowed Cuban products a reduction of 20% from the Dingley tariff, stipulating at the same time that so long as this arrangement continued no sugar should be admitted at reduced rates from any other country. This sacrifice of the means of reciprocity with sugar countries for the advantage of the beet sugar raisers of the West was quickly followed by the acquisition of preponderant interest in the beet sugar refineries by the Sugar Trust, which was thus able to control the domestic market; but for the time being it was evident that the forces friendly to the protective tariff had increased their following in important agricultural regions.
393. The dominant historical tendencies of the beginning of the 20th century in the United States, however, were characterized by huge combinations of capital and labour, the rapid passing of natural resources into private possession, and the exploitation of these resources on the principle of individualism by aggregations of capital which prevented effective competition by ordinary individuals. Pioneer conceptions of individual industrial achievement free from governmental restraint were adopted by huge monopolies, and the result was a demand for social control of these dangerous forces.
394. After the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 the combinations found in the favourable laws of states like New Jersey opportunity to incorporate under the device of the “holding company,” which was supposed to be within the law. A “promotion mania” set in in 1901. The steel industry, after a threatened war between the Standard Oil and Carnegie groups, was united by Pierpont Morgan into the United States Steel Corporation with stocks and bonds aggregating $1,400,000,000. Combinations of Capital. This was only one of the many combinations embracing public utilities of all kinds. Where open consolidation was not effected, secret agreements, as in the case of the meat packers, effectively regulated the market. In the field of railway transportation, Harriman used the bonds of the ​Union Pacific to acquire the Southern Pacific with the Central Pacific, and by 1906 he was dictator of one-third of the total mileage of the United States. Meanwhile the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific had been brought into friendly working arrangements under James J. Hill, and tried to secure the Burlington railway. A fierce contest followed between the Hill, Morgan and Harriman forces, resulting in a compromise by which the Northern Securities Company, a holding company for the joint interests of the contestants, was created. It was admitted by the counsel for this company that the machinery provided The Northern Securities Company. in this organization would permit the consolidation of all the railways of the country in the hands of three or four individuals. By using notes of one railway company, based on its treasury securities, it was possible to acquire a controlling interest in others; and by watering the capital stock to recover the cost of the undertaking, while the public paid the added rates to supply dividends on the watered stock.
395. Following a similar tendency the great Wall Street banking houses were dominated by the large financial groups in the interest of speculative undertakings, the directors of banks loaning to themselves, as directors of industrial combinations, the funds which flowed into New York from all the banks of the interior. By a similar process the great insurance and trust companies of New York became feeders to the same operations. Thus a community of control over the fundamental economic interests of the nation was lodged in a few hands. Rebates and discriminations by the railways gave advantage to the powerful shippers, and worked in the same direction.
396. Such was the situation in domestic affairs which confronted Roosevelt when he became president. In his first message he foreshadowed his determination to grapple with these problems. In 1903 he instructed the attorney general to bring suit to dissolve the Northern Securities Company as a combination in restraint of trade, and in 1904 the Supreme Court held the merger illegal. But the effect was to increase the tendency to change from incomplete combination of financial interests to consolidated corporations owning the property, and to lead the government, on the other hand, to The Elkins Law; the Bureau of Corporations. seek to regulate these vast business interests by legislation. The Elkins Law, passed in 1903, increased the power of the interstate commerce commission to prosecute offenders, especially those who violated the anti-rebating clauses. In the same year the creation of the Federal Bureau of Corporations provided for increased publicity in the affairs of these organizations.
397. Labour was combining in its turn. Not only did local unions in most of the trades increase in number and power, but Combinations of Labour. workers in separate industries over large areas were combined for collective bargaining and the national organization, the American Federation of Labor, had a membership by 1905 of approximately 2,000,000. Labour legislation by the states increased under these influences, and political leaders became increasingly aware of the power of the labour vote, while employers began to form counter organizations to check the growth of the movement. In 1902 Pennsylvania members of the United Mine Workers of America, led by John Mitchell, struck. Inasmuch as their employers were the owners of the anthracite coal monopoly under the control of an allied group of coal-carrying railways, the contest was one of far-reaching importance, and soon brought about a coal famine felt throughout the nation. So threatening was the situation that President Roosevelt called a conference of the contestants, and succeeded in inducing them to submit their difficulties to an arbitration commission which, by its report, in the spring of 1903, awarded to the miners shorter hours and an increase of wages.
398. Steadily the United States enlarged its economic functions. In 1903 Congress created a Department of Commerce and Labor and made the secretary a member of the cabinet. The reports of this department gave publicity to investigations of the perplexing industrial conditions. The Department of Agriculture enlarged its staff and its activity, investigating diseases of plants and animals, ascertaining means of checking insect pests, advising Economic Measures of the Federal Government. upon the suitability of soils to crops, seeking new and better seeds, and circulating general information. The contemporaneous development of agricultural education in the various Western and Southern states whose agricultural colleges had been subsidized by land grants and appropriations by the Federal government, and the experimental farms conducted by railways, all worked to the same end. Congress passed acts to limit the substitution of oleomargarine for butter (1902) and provided for the limitation of the spread of live-stock diseases (1903). The nation began also to awake to the need of protecting its remaining forests, which were rapidly falling into the hands of corporations by perversion of homestead and other land laws. President Cleveland had withdrawn large forest tracts, and in 1898 Gifford Pinchot was made head of a division of forestry in the Department of Agriculture. In 1901 the work was organized under a separate bureau, and four years later the National Forests were placed under his management.
399. The increasing demand for lands for agriculture led also, under Roosevelt, to the real beginning of national irrigation The Reclamation Service. actively in the vast arid area of the Far West. The Reclamation Service was created by the act of the 17th of June 1902, which set aside the proceeds of the sale of public lands in thirteen states and three Territories as a fund for irrigation works. The government itself reserved timber and coal tracts, water powers and other requisites for construction, and sold the irrigated lands to actual settlers in small farms, while retaining title to the reservoirs and the works. The income from the reclamation fund between 1901 and 1910 aggregated over $60,000,000 By the use of suitable crops and dry farming agricultural occupation was extended into formerly desert lands.
When corruption was discovered in the Land Office and Post Office, Roosevelt, instead of yielding to the effort to conceal the scandal, compelled effective investigation. Two United States senators were convicted of land frauds. The application to all kinds of lands, whether coal lands, timber tracts, water rights or other natural resources, of the general principle of homesteads governing the acquisition of agricultural lands, had invited fraudulent entries. The Homestead Act of 1862, the Timber Culture Act of 1873, the Desert Land Act of 1877, the Stone and Timber Act of 1878 had all been used by corporations to secure great tracts of valuable land through employing men to homestead them, and the laws themselves were loosely enforced. In successive messages, and by reports of public land commissions, the administration urged the importance of readjusting the land laws for the protection of the public.
400. In the election of 1904 the popularity of President Roosevelt, after his strenuous activity in challenging some of Election of 1904. the strongest tendencies in American life, was put to the test. His political management exhibited the fact that he was trained in the school of the New York politician as well as in the reformer's camp, and he was easily nominated by the Republicans on a platform which endorsed his administration, and made no promise of tariff changes. The Democrats turned to the conservative wing, omitted any reference to silver or the income tax, and nominated judge Alton B. Parker, of New York. The radicals, who favoured William R. Hearst, the well-known newspaper proprietor, who was influential with the masses of large cities, were largely represented in the convention, but unable to poll a third of its vote. Parker accepted the nomination after telegraphing that he regarded the gold standard as irrevocably established. The issue of imperialism had been largely eliminated by the current of events and the anti-trust issue was professed by both parties. In the outcome Roosevelt won by the unprecedented popular plurality of over 2,500,000, and an electoral majority of 196.
407. The state elections of the same period showed that a ​wave of reform and of revolt against former political forces was rising. In five states which Roosevelt carried by his popularity the machine Republican candidates for governor were defeated by reforming Democratic candidates, and in cities like Chicago and Philadelphia the issues of reform and radicalism won unexpected though temporary success. Roosevelt had “stolen the thunder” of the parties of social unrest, including the old populistic areas of the Middle West and the labour element of the cities at the same time that he retained control of the Republican party machinery.
402. In his second administration President Roosevelt pressed his policies so hard and with such increasing radicalism The President's Radicalism. that he lost control of the regular organization in Congress before the end of his term. In the House Speaker Joseph G. Cannon, of Illinois, exhibited the full power of his office in concentrating party policies in the hands of the few regular leaders, while in the Senate a directing group of New England men who had served for a long time, chiefly senators Nelson W. Aldrich and Eugene Hale, showed a similar mastery. Against this control a significant revolt, illustrative of revived discontent in the Middle West, was made by the Republican senator Robert M. La Follette, of Wisconsin, who had won his fight in that state against the faction friendly to the railways, and had secured primary elections, railway rate regulation on the basis of expert valuation of the physical property of the railways, and a system of taxation which rested more heavily upon public utilities. In pressing similar policies upon Congress he became isolated from the party leaders, but forced them to go on record by roll calls.
403. In New York a legislative investigation of the insurance companies disclosed such connexions with the high New York Insurance Investigation. financiering of Wall Street as to create widespread distrust and to lead to reform legislation. The attorney who conducted the investigation, Charles Evans Hughes (b. 1862), had shown such ability that he was chosen governor of New York in 1906. His administration was marked by independence of the party machine and a progressive policy. Foreign relations were conducted during the second administration of Roosevelt by Secretary Elihu Root from 1905. He fostered friendly relations with the other American nations, allaying their concern lest ambitious designs of their larger neighbour might endanger their independence. In Cuba a signal illustration of the good faith of the United States was exhibited when an insurrection in the summer of 1906 left the republic substantially without a government. Cuba. Mr Taft, then secretary of war, was sent, under the treaty provisions for intervention, to organize a provisional government. During his few days' service as governor-general he set in motion the machinery for restoring order. But President Roosevelt had plainly stated that if the insurrectionary habit became confirmed in Cuba she could not expect to retain continued independence.
404. Attention was again fixed upon the Pacific coast, not only by the earthquake and conflagration which in 1906 Japanese Immigration. destroyed the business parts and much of the residence section of San Francisco, but also by municipal regulations there against the presence of Japanese in the public schools. The incident seemed to threaten grave consequences, which were averted by the popularity of Roosevelt both in California and in Japan. In the Immigration Act of the 20th of February 1907 the problem of exclusion of Japanese labour, which underlay the difficulty, was partly solved by preventing the entrance to the continental United States by way of neighbouring countries of persons holding passports issued by a foreign government for going to other countries or dependencies of the United States. Since Japan discouraged its citizens from migrating directly to the United States this satisfied California.
405. As a demonstration of the naval power of the United States in Pacific waters, the President sent the American fleet on a cruise around the world, in the course of which they were received in a friendly spirit by Japan. The navy was increased to keep pace with the growth of that of other nations, both in numbers and size of vessels, in this period, but not to the extent demanded by the administration. Already a more efficient organization of both army and navy had been effected. While the nation prepared for war, it also engaged prominently in the successive international peace congresses between 1899 and 1907, aiming consistently to increase the use of arbitration.
406. The tendencies of the government to deal with social improvement were exemplified by the laws of 1906 providing Railway Rate Regulation Act. for pure food and meat inspection. The Railway Rate Regulation Act of 1906 strengthened previous inter-state acts by including pipe lines (except for gas and water) under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and extending the meaning of “common carrier” to include express and sleeping-car companies. Published rate schedules were required, not to be changed without thirty days' notice, and more stringent provisions were made to prevent rebating. The act provided for review by the Federal courts, and did not permit the commission to investigate an increase of rates until the rates went into operation, nor did it provide for a valuation of the railways as a basis of rate-making which the commission had desired. Later acts partly met the demands of railway employés by increasing the liability of common carriers and by providing for shorter hours.
407. Although Roosevelt had made concessions to the railways in the formation of the act of 1906, his utterances showed a tendency alarming to the large business interests and the holders of corporation securities generally. The unsettled business conditions were reflected in the stock market, and began to produce a reaction against the activity of government in this direction. The panic of 1907 started with the downfall of an attempted combination of a chain of banks, copper interests and other enterprises of F. Augustus Heinze and Charles W. Morse, two daring operators in Wall Street, and was followed by the collapse of the Knickerbocker Trust Company (October 21, 1907). Already, in 1903, liquidation had begun in some of the stocks so actively issued in the preceding years. The leading New York banks failed to check speculation, however, and were even contributors to the movement up to the time of the panic. The country was generally prosperous, though much of the banking funds was tied up in New York City at this juncture. Clearing-house certificates were resorted to; by the 1st of November partial suspension was general throughout the nation; and banking facilities were more completely interrupted than at any time since the Civil War. Financial Panic of 1907. The government greatly increased its deposits, and offered Panama 2% bonds to the amount of $50,000,000, and 3% certificates for $100,000,000, with the object of providing the national banks a basis for additional note issues. But these were taken only to a small amount, as they proved useful for their moral effect chiefly. An enormous addition to the money supply was made in the course of the panic, both by governmental activity, gold imports and national bank-notes. The crisis was brought to a close before the end of 1907 by the vigour of the government and the activity of the large financial interests under the lead of J. P, Morgan, who finally entered the field to stop the decline, at the same time that his associates in the Steel Trust acquired possession of their last remaining rival of importance, the Tennessee Coal & Iron Company.
408. The reaction after the panic, and the loss of influence resulting from his announcement that he would not permit his renomination for the campaign of 1908, left Roosevelt unable to exercise the compelling power which he had displayed in previous years. Congress under the control of the Conservation. conservatives refused him legislation which he asked, but before he left the presidency he raised a new issue to national importance in his calling of a congress of state governors and experts to consider the need ​of the conservation of natural resources (see Irrigation: United States; and the article Roosevelt). This congress met in May 1908 and endorsed the proposal for vigorous attention by state and nation to the question.
409. In the campaign of 1908 he succeeded, against the opposition of both the extreme conservative and the radical wings, in procuring the nomination of Secretary Taft by the Republicans on a platform endorsing the Roosevelt policies, promising a revision of the tariff at a special session, on the basis of such protection as would equal the difference between the cost of production at home and abroad, together with a reasonable profit to American industries, and providing for maximum and minimum rates to be used in furthering American commerce and preventing discrimination's by other nations. A postal bank was promised, a more effective regulation of the railways, and a modification of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Labour failed to secure a thoroughgoing pledge to prevent the use of the writ of injunction in labour disputes, but the convention promised legislation to limit its use. The Democrats again selected William J. Bryan as their candidate; demanded the enforcement of criminal law against “trust magnates” and such additional legislation as would prevent private monopoly; opposed the use of injunctions in cases where they would issue if no industrial dispute was involved; impugned the Republicans good faith in tariff revision, promising for themselves a substantial reduction of duties; favoured an income tax and a guarantee fund by national banks to pay depositors of insolvent banks, or a postal savings bank, if the guaranteed bank could not be secured; demanded election of United States senators by direct vote of the people, legislation to prevent contributions by corporations to campaign funds, and a more efficient regulation of railways. The party also declared against centralization, favouring the use of both Federal and state control of interstate commerce and private monopoly.
410. The Republicans won a sweeping victory, Taft's popular plurality reaching about 1,270,000 and his electoral William H. Taft, President. majority 159. But it had been won by some ambiguity of utterance with respect to tariff and railway regulation. The result was made manifest early in the new administration, when party contentions over the direction of revision of the tariff, the thoroughness of the regulation of railways and corporations, and the question of where the postal bank fund should be placed, resulted in a movement of “insurgency” among the Republicans of the Middle West. The insurgents termed themselves “Progressive Republicans,” and did not hesitate to join forces with the Democrats in order to shape legislation to their wishes. Progressives and Democrats united in overturning the control of Speaker J. G. Cannon in the House of Representatives by modifying the rules, and a group of senators, chiefly from the Middle Western states, destroyed the control of the regular leaders in the Upper House. President Taft's influence over the revolting wing was further weakened by the charges made against his secretary of the interior, Richard A. Ballinger, on behalf of Gifford Pinchot, the chief forester, who accused the administration of obstructing Mr Roosevelt's “conservation” policy.
411. Mr Pinchot was indeed removed from office, but the “conservation” issue was raised to primary importance by the Roosevelt's “New Nationalism.” return of Mr Roosevelt from his African trip. His influence was revealed even while he was enjoying the hospitality of European countries on his return. There was a widely extended desire to know his judgment of the administration's policy; but he maintained silence until the close of the summer of 1910, when in a series of public utterances in the West he ranged himself, on the whole, with the progressive wing and announced a “new nationalism” which should enlarge the power of the Federal government and drive the “special interests” out of politics. The “insurgents” achieved remarkable victories in the Middle West, California, New Hampshire and New York in the fall conventions and primary elections, retiring various leaders of the regular wing of the Republicans. Senators Aldrich and Hale, former regular leaders in the Senate, had already announced their purpose to resign. President Taft's utterances indicated his intention to discontinue the use of patronage against the leaders of the progressive wing and to secure additional tariff revision by separate schedules. The result of the autumn elections was a pronounced victory for the Democratic party.
412. At the close of the first decade of the 20th century the United States was actively engaged in settling its social economic questions, with a tendency toward radicalism in its dealings with the great industrial forces of the nation. The “sweat shops” and slums of the great cities were filled with new material for American society to assimilate. To the sisterhood of states had been added Oklahoma (1907), and in 1910 Congress empowered New Mexico and Arizona to form constitutions preparatory to statehood, thus extinguishing the last Territories, except the insular dependencies and Alaska. Already the food supply showed signs of not keeping pace with the growth of population, while the supply of gold flowed in with undiminished volume. High prices became a factor in the political situation. Between 1890 and 1900, in the continental United States, farms were added in area equal to that of France and Italy combined. Even the addition of improved farm land in that decade surpassed the whole area of France or of the German Empire in Europe. But intensive cultivation and agricultural returns hardly kept pace with the growth in population or the extension of farms.
Bibliographical Guides.—J. N. Larned (ed.), The Literature of American History (Boston, 1902), is useful so far as it extends. The “Critical Essays on Authorities,” in vols. xxi.-xxvi. (1907) of the “American Nation Series” (New York, 1905-1907), edited by A. B. Hart, constitute the best bibliographical apparatus for the whole period. W. Wilson, History of the American People, vol. v., has helpful evaluated lists of authorities. The Cambridge Modern History, vol. vii., has a useful unannotated list. Periodical literature, important for this era, can be found through the successive volumes of the Index to Periodical Literature (New York, 1882 sqq.), edited by W. F. Poole and W. J. Fletcher. Public documents are listed in B. P. Poore, Descriptive Catalogue of Government Publications of the United States, 1775-1881 (Washington, 1885); J. G. Ames, Comprehensive Index of Publications of the United States Government, 1881-1893 (Washington, 1894); Catalogue of Public Documents of Congress and of all Departments of Government of the United States, 1893-1899; Tables of and Annotated Index to Congressional Series of United States Public Documents (Washington, 1902). For economic material see the bibliographies in D. R. Dewey, Financial History of the United States (New York, 1902); E. L. Bogart, Economic History of the United States (ibid., 1907); F. A. Cleveland and F. W. Powell, Railroad Promotion and Capitalization in the United States (New York, 1909); and Miss A. R. Hasse's Index of Economic Material in the Documents of the United States (Washington, 1907 sqq.).
The Library of Congress publishes, under the editorship of A. P. C. Griffin, lists and references to books and articles on special subjects.
General Accounts.—Much the most satisfactory treatment is in the volumes of the “American Nation Series” mentioned above, such as W. A. Dunning, Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-1877; E. E. Sparks, National Development, 1877-1885; D. R. Dewey, National Problems, 1885-1897; J. H. Latané, America as a World Power, and A. B. Hart, National Ideals Historically Traced. All these were published in 1907. The later volumes of J. F. Rhodes History of the United States since the Compromise of 1850 (7 vols., New York, 1893-1904), cover the period from 1865 to 1876 with solid judgment and accuracy; Woodrow Wilson, History of the American People, vol. v. (New York, 1902), gives an informing presentation with a sympathetic treatment of Southern conditions. Lee and Thorpe (editors), History of North America, vols. xvi.-xx.; H. W. Elson, History of the United States, vols., iv and v. (New York, 1905), and W. Garner and H. C. Lodge, History of the United States, vol. iv. (Philadelphia, 1906), deal with the period as part of a general history. E. B. Andrews, The United States in our own Time (New York, 1903), and H. T. Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic, 1885-1905 (New York, 1906), are popular presentations.
Documentary Sources.—The Congressional documents and state public documents afford valuable material. The Congressional debates have become too bulky for the general reader, but in the president's messages, as collected in J. D. Richardson (ed.), Messages and Papers of the Presidents (to 1899), the main questions are presented, and detailed information is in the reports of the heads of departments and bureaus. W. MacDonald, Select Statutes of United States, 1861-1898 (New York, 1903), contains important laws, with brief historical introductions.
    (F. J. T.)
* ↑ When the total number should reach 25, the legislature itself was to have the power of regulating the number and proportion. Property qualifications were prescribed for electors, representatives and members of the council.
* ↑ A third plan was introduced by Charles Pinckney; for a discussion of this plan see the separate article on Pinckney.
* ↑ Genet, fearing the fate of his fellow Girondists in France, remained in the United States and became a naturalized American citizen.
* ↑ In these letters as published the letters X, Y and Z were substituted for the names of the French agents with whom the American envoys dealt; and the letters are known as the X Y Z correspondence.
* ↑ Adams received 65, Pinckney 64 and John Jay 1.
* ↑ Jefferson received 162 electoral votes and his opponent, C. C. Pinckney, only 14.
* ↑ In 1816 Monroe received 183 electoral votes and his opponent, Rufus King, 34; in 1820 Monroe received 231 and his opponent, John Quincy Adams, 1.
* ↑ For a generation the making of “internal improvements” by the Federal government was an issue of great political importance. In 1806 Congress made an appropriation for the National or Cumberland Road, eventually constructed from Fort Cumberland, Md., to Vandalia, Ill. The policy of making such improvements was opposed on the ground that the Constitution gave to the Federal government no power to make them, that it was not an “enumerated power,” and that such improvements were not a “necessary and proper” means of carrying out any of the enumerated powers. Others argued that the Federal government might constitutionally make such improvements, but could not exercise jurisdiction over them when made.
* ↑ Jackson received 99, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37; in the House of Representatives Adams received the votes of 13 states, Jackson of 7, and Crawford of 4. For vice-president Calhoun received 182 electoral votes, and his principal competitors, Nathan Sanford, of New York, and Nathaniel Macon, of North Carolina, received 30 and 24 respectively.
* ↑ A prompt admission of Missouri would have balanced the slave and free states, but Alabama's admission as a slave state balanced them in 1819.
* ↑ In the election of 1836 Van Buren received 170 electoral votes W. H. Harrison (Whig) 73, Hugh L. White 26, Daniel Webster 14 and W. P. Mangum 11.
* ↑ Polk received 170 electoral votes and Clay 105.
* ↑ Buchanan received 174 electoral votes, Frémont 114 and Fillmore 8. The popular vote was: for Buchanan, 1,838,169; for Frémont, 1,341,264; for Fillmore, 874,534.
* ↑ In his decision Taney, referring to the period before the adoption of the Constitution, wrote: “They (negroes) had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” This was intended to be merely a historical statement, but it is often incorrectly quoted as if it referred to the status of the negro in 1857.
* ↑ Lincoln received 180 electoral votes, Breckinridge 72, Bell 39 and Douglas 12. Their popular votes were 1,866,352, 847,514, 587,830 and 1,375,157 respectively.
* ↑ Lincoln received 212 electoral votes and McClellan only 21; but Lincoln's popular vote was only about 407,000 in excess of McClellan's, out of about 4,000,000.
* ↑ There was a conflict with regard to the electoral vote of Oregon also. (See Oregon: History.)
* ↑ In 1910 Hughes was appointed a justice of the United States Supreme Court.