A Popular History of the United States from the first discovery of the western hemisphere ... to the end of the first century of the union of the States. Preceded by a sketch of the pre-historic period and the age of the mound builders. By W. C. Bryant and Sydney Howard Gay. Fully illustrated...

Front matter

A POPULAR HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. LONDON : GILBEET AND E1TINGTON, PBINTEBS, st„ John's square. /rZlUarn £Lt£es*^ C^y-uay^^-- j A POPULAR HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FROM the FIRST DISCOVERY OP THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE BY THE NORTHMEN, TO THE END OP THE FIRST CENTURY OP THE UNION OF THE STATES PRECEDED BY A SKETCH OF THE PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD AND THE AGE OE THE MOUND BUILDERS EY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT AND SYDNEY HOWARD GAY FULLY ILLUSTRATED VOLUME I HonDon : SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON * CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET 1876 [All rights reserved.]

Preface

. There are several excellent histories of the United States of North America in print, and it will naturally be asked what occasion there is for another. The title of this work is in part an answer to the question. It is intended to be a popular history — a work for that large class who have not leisure for reading those narratives which aim at setting forth, with the greatest breadth and variety of circumstance, the annals of our nation's life. At the same time it is the design of the present work to treat the subject more at large than is done in those compends, some of them able in their way, which are used as text-books in the schools. Unlike these latter, it is not a compilation from histories al ready written, but in its narrative of events and its representation of the state of our country at different epochs, has derived its materials through independent research from original sources.

It is also within the plan of this work to rely in part for its attraction,* on the designs with which it is illus trated — likenesses of taen conspicuous in our annals, views of places and buildings memorable in our history, and repre sentations of usages and ' manners which have had their day and have passed away. But in saying this, we state but a small part of our plan. It is our purpose to present within a moderate compass a view of changes, political and social, occurring within our Republic, which have an interest for every nation in the civil ized world, and the history of which could not be fully written until now. In the two centuries and a half of our existence as an off-shoot of the great European stock, a mighty drama has been put upon the stage of our continent, which, after a

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. 2 series of fierce contentions and subtle intrigues, closed in a bloody catastrophe with a result favorable to liberty and human rights and to the fair fame of the Republic. Within that time the institution of slavery, springing up from small and almost unnoticed beginnings, grew to be a gigantic power claiming and exercising dominion over the confederacy, and at last, when it failed in causing itself to be recognized as a national institution and saw the signs of a decline in its polit ical supremacy, declaring the Union of the States dissolved, encountering the free States in a sanguinary five years' war, and bringing upon itself overthrow and utter destruction. We stand therefore at a point in our annals where the whole duration of slavery in our country from the beginning to the end, lies before us as on a chart ; and certainly no his tory of our Republic can now be regarded as complete which should fail to carry the reader through the various stages of its existence, from its silent and stealthy origin to the stormy period in which the world saw its death-struggle, and recog nized in its fall the sentence of eternal justice.

It is instruc tive to observe how in its earlier years slavery was admitted, by the most eminent men of those parts of the country where it had taken the deepest root, to be a great wrong ; and how afterward, when the power and influence of the slave-holding class were at their height, it was boldly de fended as a beneficent and just institution, the basis of the most perfect social state known to theivvorld, — so powerfully and surely do personal interests periA't the moral judgments of mankind. The controversy assimed a deeper interest as the years went on. On the side o» slavery stood forth men singularly fitted to be its champions ; able, plausible, trained to public life, men of large personal influence and a fierce determination of will nourished by the despotism exercised on their plantations over their bondmen.

On the other side was a class equally able and no less determined, enthusiasts for liberty as courageous as their adversaries were imperious, restlessly aggressive, ready to become martyrs, and from time to time attesting their sincerity by yielding up their lives. So fierce was the quarrel, and so general was the inclination

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. 3 even in the free States to take part with the slave-owners, that the name of Abolitionist was used as a term of reproach and scorn • and to point out a man as worthy of wearing it, was in some places the same thing as to recommend him to the attentions of the mob. Yet even while this was a name of opprobrium, the hostility to slavery was gathering strength under a new form. The friends of slavery demanded that the authority of the master over his bondman should be rec ognized in all the territory belonging to the Union not yet formed into States, — in short, that the jurisdiction of the Republic, wherever established, should carry with it the law of slavery. A party was immediately formed to resist the application of this doctrine, and after a long and vehement contest elected its candidate President of the United States.

Meantime the rapid settlement of our Pacific coast by a purely free population, in consequence of the opening of the gold mines, showed the friends of slavery that they were to be hereafter in a minority, the power of which would dimin ish with every successive year. They instantly took the res olution to revolt against the Union, declared it thenceforth dissolved, and rushed into a war, in which their defeat carried with it the fall of slavery. It fell, dragging down with it thousands of private fortunes, and leaving some of the fair est portions of the region whence it issued its decrees ravaged and desolate, and others, for a time, given over to a confusion little short of anarchy. Writers who record the fortunes of nations have most generally and wisely stopped at a modest distance from the time in which they wrote, for this reason among others, that the narrative could not be given with the necessary degree of impartiality, on account of controversies not yet ended, and prejudices which have not had time to subside.

But in the case of American slavery the difficulty of speaking impar tially both of the events which form its history, and of the characters of its champions and adversaries, is far less now than it ever was before. Slavery has become a thing of the past ; the dispute as to its rights under our Constitution is closed forever. The class of active and vigilant politicians

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. who, a few years since, were ever on the watch for some opportunity of promoting its interests by legislation, is now as if it had never been ; slavery is no longer either de nounced or defended from the pulpits • the division of polit ical journals into friends and enemies of slavery exists no longer, and when a candidate for office is presented for the suffrages of his fellow citizens, it is no longer asked, " What does he think of the slavery question ?" So far indeed, does this fierce contest seem already removed into the domain of the past, and separated from the questions and interests of the present moment, that when a person is pointed out as having been a distinguished Abolitionist he is looked at with somewhat of the same historical interest as if it had been said, " There goes one who fought so bravely at Lundy's Lane ; " or, " There is one who commanded a company of riflemen at the battle of New Orleans."

The champions of slavery on one side — able men and skilled in the expedients of party warfare, and in many instances uncorrupt and pure in personal character, — and the champions of the slave on the other, fearless and ready for the martyrdom which they sometimes suffered, their faculties exalted by a sense of dan ger, — can now, as they and their acts pass in review before the historian, be judged with a degree of calmness belonging to a new era of our political existence. But the great conclusion is still to be drawn that the existence of slavery in our Republic was at utter variance with the free institutions which we made our boast ; and that it could not be preserved in the vast growth which it had at tained without altering in a great degree their nature, and communicating to them its own despotic character.

Where half the population is in bondage to the other half there is a constant clanger that the subject race will rise against their masters, who naturally look to repression and terror as their means of defence. The later history of slavery in our country is full of examples to show this — severe laws against sedition in the slave States, an enforced silence on the subject of human liberty, an expurgated popular literature, and vis itors to the slave States chased back by mobs across the fron-

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. 5 tier which they had imprudently crossed. It is remarkable that, not very long before the civil war, certain of the south ern journals began to maintain in elaborate leading articles that the time had arrived for considering whether the entire laboring class of whatever color, should not be made the serfs of the land-owners and others of the more opulent members of society. A history like this would have been incomplete and frag mentary had it failed to record the final fate as well as the rise and growth of an institution wielding so vast an influence both in society and politics, with champions so able and reso lute, organized with such skill, occupying so wide and fertile a domain and rooted there with such firmness as to be regarded by the friends of human liberty with a feeling scarcely short of despair.

To have broken off the narrative before reaching the catastrophe, would have been like rising from the spectacle of a drama at the end of the fourth act. Few episodes in the world's history have been so complete in themselves as this of American slavery. Few have brought into activity such mighty agencies, or occupied so vast a theatre, or been closed, although amid fearful carnage, yet in a manner so satisfactory to the sense of natural justice. Here is the place to speak of another important conclusion to be drawn from the result of our late civil war. It has proved the strength of our political system. When the slave States first revolted it is wonderful with what unanimity the people of the Old World, even those who wished well to the Northern States, adopted the conclusion, that the Union could endure no longer, and that the bond once broken could never be reunited.

Those powers which had regarded the United States as a somewhat uncomfortable neighbor, rapidly becom incr too strong to be reasonable in its dealings with the mon archies of Europe, fully believed that thereafter there would exist, on the North American continent, two rival common wealths of the same origin, yet so diverse from each other in their institutions, as to be involved in frequent disagreements, and thus to prove effectual checks upon each other, relieving the European powers from the danger of aggression in this

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. quarter. It was sometimes said by Englishmen who thought that they were speaking in the interest of humanity : " All the interest we feel in your quarrel is this, that you should go to pieces as quickly and with as little bloodshed as possible." The steps taken by Great Britain and France were in accord with the expectation of which I have spoken ; Britain instantly declaring the slave States a belligerent power — a virtual acknowledgment of their independence — and France posting a dependent Prince in Mexico with the view of intervening in that quarter as soon as it might appear politic to do so. Till the close of our civil war the armed cohorts of France hung like a thunder-cloud over our southwestern border, but the hour never came when the signal might be given for the grim mass to move northward.

The period of time at which the nation inhabiting the do main of our Republic came into being is so recent, that we may trace its growth with as much distinctness as if we were the contemporaries of its birth. The records of its early existence have been preserved as those of no other nation have been, which has risen to any importance in the annals of the world. To the guidance of these the historian may trust himself securely, with no danger of losing his way among the uncertain shadows of tradition. It is with a feeling of wonder that he sees colonies, planted in different parts of the North American continent so remote from each other, under such different circumstances, and so entirely without concert on the part of the adventurers who led them thither, united at last in a political fabric of such strength and solidity.

The columns of the great edifice were separately laid in the wilderness amid savage tribes, by men who apparently had no thought of their future relation to each other ; but as they rose from the earth it seemed as if a guiding intelligence had planned them in such a manner that in due time they might be adjusted to each other in a single structure. Those who at the outbreak of our civil war administered the governments of Europe, had, it is certain, little confidence in the stability and duration of a political fabric so framed. It was loosely and fortuitously put together, they thought, of ele-

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. 7 ments discordant in themselves, whose imperfect cohesion a shock like that of the southern revolt would destroy forever. It survived that shock, however, and, in part at least, for the very reason of its peculiar structure. It survived it be cause every man in the free States felt that he was a part of the government; because in our system of decentralized power a part of it was lodged in his person. He felt that he was challenged when the Federal Government was defied, and that he was robbed when the rebels took possession of the forts of the Federal Government and its munitions of war. The quarrel became his personal concern, and the entire people of the North rose as one man to breast and beat back this bold attack upon a system of polity, which every man of them was moved to defend by the feeling which would move him to defend his fireside.

Perhaps out of this fortuitous planting of our continent in scattered and independent settlements, has arisen the strongest form of government, so far as respects cohesion and self-maintenance, that the world has seen. Certainly the experience of the last few years, beginning with the civil war, gives plausibility to this idea. All the consequences of that war have not been equally for tunate with this. It may be admitted that, in some instances, the influence of a military life on the young men who thronged to our camps was salutary, in bringing out the bet ter qualities of their character and moulding it to a more manly pattern, by overcoming the love of ease and accustom ing the soldier to endure suffering and brave danger for the common cause. Yet it is certain that in other men it en couraged brutal instincts which had been held in check by the restraints of a peaceful order of things ; that it made them careless of inflicting pain, and indifferent to the taking of life.

Accordingly, after the close of the war, crimes of violence became fearfully numerous, men more often carried about deadly weapons, quarrels more often led to homicide, rob beries accompanied by assassination were much more frequent, and acts of housebreaking were perpetrated with greater audacity. It would seem invidious to say that these crimes were most frequent in the region which had been the

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. seat of the war ; but it is certain that there the peace was often deplorably disturbed by quarrels between the white race and the colored which led to bloodshed. Thus the state of society left by the war may be fairly put to the account of the great error committed in allowing slavery to have a place among our institutions. But while men were watching with alarm these offences against the public peace, it was discovered, with no little sur prise, that crimes of fraud had become as numerous, and were equally traceable to the war as their cause. So many oppor tunities had presented themselves of making easy bargains with the agents of the government, and so many chances of cheating the government offered themselves in the haste and confusion with which most transactions of this kind were ac complished, that hundreds of persons of whom little was known save that they had become suddenly rich, flaunted in all the splendor of exorbitant wealth, and exercised the in fluence which wealth commands.

The encouragement which their success and the mystery with which it was accompanied gave to dishonest dealings, was felt throughout the community, and the evil became fearfully contagious. The city of New York was a principal seat of these enormities. In that busy metropolis men are so earnestly occupied with their private affairs, so absorbed in the competitions of business, that it is not easy to fix the attention of the greater proportion, even of the most intelligent, upon matters of public and gen eral interest as long as the chances of individual success are left open. But the boundless waste of those who had posses sion of the public funds, the sudden increase of the city debt, and the enormous taxation to which the citizens were sub jected, at length alarmed the entire community ; the tax-pay ers consulted together ; they, called in the aid of the most sa gacious and resolute men, who with great pains tracked the offenders through all their doublings and laid their practices bare to the public eye.

The infamy of those who were con cerned in these enormities followed their exposure. I have already spoken of the contagious nature of these ex amples of corruption. The determination to effect a reform

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. 9 and drag the offenders to justice, when once awakened spread with equal rapidity. It is remarkable how, immediately after the exposure of the enormous knaveries committed in New York, the daily journals were filled with accounts of lesser villainies in less considerable places. It seemed for a while as if peculation had been taken up by a large class as a profession, so numerous were the instances of detection. The public vigilance was directed against every person in a pecuniary trust ; some who had never before been suspected, found themselves suddenly in the custody of the law, and others, fearing that their turn might soon come, prudently ran away. There never has been a time when it was so dangerous for a public man to make a slip in his accounts. Investigation be came the order of the day, and a considerable part of the con tents of every daily paper consisted of the proceedings of committees formed for examining into the accounts of men who held pecuniary trusts.

At first sight it seemed as if the world had suddenly grown worse ; on a second reflection it was clear that it was growing better. A process of purgation was going on ; dishonest men were stripped of the power of doing further mischief and branded with disgrace, and men of whom better hopes were entertained put in their place. The narrative of these iniquities could not properly stop short of the punishment which overtook the offenders, and which, while it makes the lesson of their otherwise worthless lives instructive, vindicates to some extent the character of the nation at large. In reviewing the history of the last hundred years there is one question which stands out in special prominence : the policy of encouraging domestic manufactures by high duties on goods imported from other countries.

It was recommended in the early years of our Republic by Hamilton, whose au thority had great weight with a large class of his fellow cit izens ; and afterwards under the name of the American Sys tem, was made the battle-cry of a great party under a no less popular leader, Henry Clay. But after a struggle of many years, during part of which the protective system seemed to have become thoroughly incorporated into our revenue laws,

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. a tendency to freedom of trade began to assert itself. The tariff of duties on imported commodities, became from time to time weeded of the provisions which favored particular manufactures, and although still wanting in simplicity of pro ceeding and far more expensive in its execution than it should have been, was in the main liberal and not unsatisfactory to all parties. The manufacturers had ceased from the struggle for special duties, and seemed content with those which were laid merely for the sake of revenue. The question of protection was no longer a matter of controversy. But the war revived the old quarrel, and left it a legacy to the years which are yet to come. When the southern members at the beginning of the war withdrew from Congress, there were found, among those whom they left in their seats, a majority who had been educated in the Henry Clay school of politics, and were therefore attached to the protective system.

In laying taxes to supply the necessities of the Treasury, they enacted a tariff of duties more rigidly restrictive and of more general application than the country had ever before known. This opened again the whole controversy. The struggle of forty years which had ended as we have already related, is revived under circumstances which strongly imply that we have the same ground to go over again. The manufacturers are not likely to give up without a struggle what they believe so essential to their prosperity, and the friends of free trade, proverbially tenacious of their purposes, are not likely to be satisfied while there is left in the texture of our revenue laws, a single thread of protection which their ingenuity can detect or their skill can draw out. The history of our Republic shows that a nation does not always profit by its own experience, even though it be of an impressive nature.

Our government began the first century of its existence with a resort to paper money and closed it with repeating the expedient. In the first of these instances slips of paper with a peculiar stamp were made to pass as money by the authority of Congress, and were known by the name of Continental money, which soon became a term of op probrium. The history of this currency is a sad one : a his-

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. 11 tory of creditors defrauded, families reduced from competence to poverty, and ragged and hunger-bitten soldiers who were paid their wages in bits of paper scarcely worth more than the coarse material on which their nominal value was stamped. The more of this Continental money was issued the lower it sank in value. The whole land was filled with discontent, and the leaders of the Revolution were in the utmost perplexity. The injustice inflicted and the distress occasioned by this policy are not merely recorded in our annals, there are many per sons yet living who have heard of them in their youth at the firesides of their fathers. Eighty years afterwards, in the midst of our late civil war, when the necessity of raising money for the daily expenses of maintaining and moving our large armies from place to place upon the vast theatre of our war, began to press somewhat se verely upon our government, the question was again raised whether the government notes should not be made a legal ten der in the payment of debts, and the Treasury relieved from the necessity of providing for their redemption in coin.

The Sec retary of the Treasury applied to some of the most eminent bankers and men of business, English and American, for their opinions. Certain of the wisest of these vehemently dissuaded him from a resort to paper money. They pointed to the dis asters which experience had shown to have invariably attended the measure, and urged him to trust to the loyalty of the country, of which he had seen such gratifying proofs already given, for obtaining the necessary supplies of money for the war. This could be done by issuing debentures payable at a somewhat distant date, and for such moderate sums as persons of moderate means could conveniently take. At all events they urged that the expedient of resorting to paper money should be post poned till every other was tried and the necessity for it became imminent and unavoidable.

These wise counsels were not followed. Others had given their opinion that a resort to paper money was unavoidable, and after some hesitation it was resolved to take the step immediately. The moment that the project was brought before Congress, it found eager cham pions, both on the floor of the two chambers and in the lobbies ; VOL. I. a

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. for whenever a measure is proposed which involves a change of nominal values, there spring up in unexpected quarters hun dreds of patriotic persons to assist in hurrying it through Con gress. The government was relieved of the obligation of pay ing its notes ; but a solemn pledge was given that they should be°paid at the earliest practicable moment. While the war lasted, we went on making issue after issue of these notes, with no provision for their payment. Meantime the prices of every commodity rose, and with them the expenses of the war, — and speculation flourished. For eight years after the war no approach had been made towards the fulfillment of the solemn pledge of which I have spoken, although in that time many millions of the national debt had been paid off in our depreciated currency.

So vast was the mass of promises to pay, and so small the accumula tions of gold within the reach of the government, that not one of those who within that period administered the Treas ury Department ventured to propose any plan for returning to specie payments, but averting his eyes from the difficulty, allowed our finances to drift toward an uncertain future. Then came the panic of 1873, which swept so many large banking and commercial houses to their ruin. Immediately a loud call was heard for a new issue of paper money, from these who fancied that they saw in the measure a remedy for their own pecuniary embarrassments. The question was hotly debated in Congress ; a majority of both houses was found to be in its favor ; the pledge which bound the country to return to specie payments was scouted, as given in igno rance of the true interests of the country ; and a bill was passed, adding, as President Grant observed in his message, a hundred millions to our depreciated currency.

Fortunately for the country he sent back the bill with his objections, and it failed to become a law ; else the mischiefs and disasters of the days of Continental money might have returned upon us, with a violence proportioned to the growth which our com mercial interests had in the meantime attained. It is not likely that this question will again be raised in our day, and the bitter experience which we have had of the

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. 13 mischiefs of paper money in these two instances, will remain as a warning to the coming times ; — though who shall say with any confidence that the warning will be duly heeded ? But there is another controversy bequeathed to us by the late civil war, which will probably lead to acrimonious and protracted disputes and perhaps be made to some extent the basis of party divisions. Of that I would now speak. Before the war the boundaries of the powers assigned to the National Government, and those which remained with the several States, were pretty sharply defined by usage, and attempts were but rarely made to go beyond them. The leaders of opinion in the Southern States deemed it necessary to the security and permanence of slavery, that any encroachment of the National Government on the rights reserved to the States should be resisted to the utmost ; and it must be admitted that although many of them pushed the claim of State sovereignty to an absurd extent, they did good service in keeping the eyes of the people fixed upon that limit beyond which, under our Constitution, the National Government has neither function nor power.

When the civil war broke out it was apparent that the majority of those who remained in Congress had not been trained to be scrupulous on this point. One of their early measures, — the creation of a system of national banks, — would, twenty years before, have been regarded by a majority of the people of the United States as a direct violation of the Constitution. Other measures were adopted in the course of the war for which it was impossible to find any authority in the Constitution, and of which the sole justification was military necessity. As compared with the state of opinion wliich prevailed before the war, it is man ifest that a certain indifference to the distinction between the Federal power and that of the States has been creeping into our politics. Schemes for accumulating power in the govern ment at Washington, by making it the owner of our rail ways, for administering telegraphic communication by Federal agency, for cutting canals between river and river, and for an extensive system of national education with a central bureau at Washington, show this tendency. These and kin-