The making of the American nation : or, The rise and decline of oligarchy in the West

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Chapter II. — General Qiieations . . . 51 — 70

Chapter III.— The English Standpoint . . 71—108 Chapter IV. — American Nationality and Democracy .......

Chapter V. — Mares' Nests, or John BuU and the

Chiralry 145—163

BOOK n.

Ameeicak Umtt and Nationality.

Chapter I. — Material Bases of Unity : Q-eography,

Strategy, Climate, Mountains and Eivers 165 — 186

Chapter II.^TJnity of Ideas and Interest : The

Constitution and Genius of America 187 — 224

Chapter III.- — Moral forces of America. Unity of

principle and purpose . . . 225 — 239

BOOK III. History

Chapter I. — 1670-1777. Union and Nationality ; Origin, Consolidation, and Progress of the Nation , 242—280

Chapter II. — 1777 — 1833. Disunion and Denationalisation. The era of compromise 281 — 300

Chapter III.— 1833-1860. Battle. Decline of

Slave Power 301—327

Book IV

Chipteb I.—" Eight" of Secession . . . 391—416 Chapter II. — Eecoustruction . . . 417 — 523

From page 1 to page 163 was written and printed during the heat of the American struggle, in fact, soon after the war begun. The arguments concern the particular question of American Unity ^ and the universal question of Democracy. The first is still considered an open question, whilst the last has to be explored by the light of this its first real precedent. That the mere tense, as to events now recent, is in the pages indicated, in the future instead of the past, will doubtless be considered a blemish by some, whUst others will consider that success establishes argument. The author can only state the fact, and submit the matter to the reader's judgment.

A volume " on Democracy," arose out of the present work, and is published concurrently with it.

PEEFACE.

" NatioH is a moral essence." — Burke.

"The Eepublicans are thQU&iion."— Jefferson.

" A People canijot rise but by a principle or a man."—

Mazzini.

" Future History approaclies. Historical effigy will no longer be the man-king; it will be the Mati-People. True History henceforth charged with the education of the royal infant, the People, will study the successive movements oi Humanity. In that (ordinary) History there is everything except History. The lamp, which smokes on the opaque frontage of royal accessions, hides the stariy reflection that the creators of civilization throw over ages." — Hugo.

"There is nothing in the world so sound as American Society. America has left behind it the cerements of the feudal system, hereditary aristocracy, primogeniture, entails, and the established Church." — Qoldwin Smith.

"Individuality wjll be a term of greater comprehension, and nations free and enlightened, will hereafter become one complex Individual, as single men now are." — Volney.

" To realise theae grades, of Individual National G-enius, is the boundless impulse of the world-spirit, the .goal of its iwesistibie urging. "-^J2isy«Z.

" Another good expedient would be to settle colonies in two or three parts of such a (conquered) State ; because if that is not done, it will be necessary to maintain a standing army there. Colonies, though nothing like so expensive, are more to be depended on and much less disgustful." — Machiavel. (The Prince.)

" We have done TOuch, but still mitch remains. Time and time's influences are with us. We could almost afford to sit still and let these influences worV.." -^Sherman to Qrawt, 1864.

" If Europe leaves America to Republicanism — well. If she interferes, we interfere, and the right hand of our resistance is clasped in brotherhood with the Eadicals of Europe to upset every throne on the Continent." — Wendell Phillips.

Three mighty problems, in whicli all Peoples and systems are concerned, are now, in the fulness of time, nearly worked out upon the American continent.

The making of the American Na4i<3-n.

The making of the American Democracy.

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The making of the first Federal Kepublican Empire.

A Nation is made of material Bases, Individuality and Organic Functions. By the first it exists ; by the second it exists as a nation ; and by the third it thinks, administrates, and acts.

A Democracy \s, made of a fourfold Freedom; — of School, Press, Church, and Assembly.

A Federation is made and preserved by an adjustment of relations between the parts and the whole.

Due and full consideration therefore of the American Federal Republic, has to do —

1st. With the material Bases of that nation, or its Territory, Labor, and Population.

2nd. With its national Individuality or Oneness of Ideas and Interests, of Institution, Race, Language, Boundary, and Religion.

3rd. With the completeness of its Organic Functions, that is, of its Legislature and Executive.

4th. With the origin and power of its Democratic Equality, in School, Press, Assembly, and Church.

5th. With the result, — Material, Political, and Religious Development.

6th. With the result of that^ namely, powers of Association, which compel political Equality.

7 th. With the conflict of State Rights and the principle of Inequality, with the national , bases, functions, and unity.

And lastly. With the final casting out of oligarchy secured by the recent war.

PREFACE. T

The Fedeeal Eepublic has been made by and depends upon the complete development and due adjustment of the rights and properties of the Individual, State, and Nation,

The Nation has been made by the (approximate) completion of the universality of its basis, in Education and the Suffrage, — by the adjustment of its relations Avith the " States," and by the revindication of the national Sovereignty, after fifty years of abeyance.

The Democracy is being made by the completion of Individual Right, — -even to the negro. By universal educational Development^ which secures association^ which everywhere and always produces Equality, the completion of Freedom.

The l^EPUBLicAN Empire is established by a settlement of the Principle of Federation on natural and indefeasible grounds. It is this principle of such vast and almost boundless applicability in the future, which suggests a possibility of combination and Unity on a scale never before supposed to be practicable.

Thus it appears that "Nation," " PemocraCy," and " Federation," fulfil and complement each other. To a given nationality are confided by the Supreme the destinies of a certain portion of the Human race. Gradually a mental, ' moral, and religious Freedom, develops an in tensest " individuality" into a universal Statesmanship, makes nation and Government one, and as a Democracy^ gives to the People entire Freedom, and to

&2 vi PREFACE.

the Legislature and Executive its collective wisdom and united Will,

There can be no true Democracy without an educated People: no complete nation that is not also a Democracy: here is at least something like finality in politics, for here are completeness of power and universality of right. Such nations and Democracies can alone enter as Units into still vaster Federal Unities.

Thus the making of a nation that is also a Democracy and a Confederation, involves the existence of a completer, a stronger, a sounder, a more comprehensive, and a loftier Unity, than has hitherto heen known.

AH nationality is a LIVING ORGANISM, and will give all that it hath for its life; but tMs GJ^anism is strong in proportion to its vast area and inexhaustible resources, to the complexity of its interrelations and civilization, and to the perfection, simplieity, and universality, of the principle of political Equality and individual preparedness on which it is based.

Democracy requires great things, and it achieves great things, but the ■ world's futm-e is with it. That Federated Democratic Empire has before it a mighty mission, to react upon the world, " and lead its isolated and fragmentary natioiialities into a higher unity," involving order, equality, and economy of power,— Freedom, organization, and the lightening of burdens everywhere.

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The material, political, and moral elements of America are now completing. Her material resources are unequalled. Her political power comes of an unrivalled material, political and religious freedom, and as she has prove i^ there is in the whole world no concentration of will so intense, all pervading, and terrible,as that of a Democracy.

The moral elements represent permanence and stability. The contest America has waged for national Life, was also a contest for Morality and Principle.

That making also meant the ascendency of the nationality over its two deadly foes, —materialism and oligarchy. It meant the definitive victoiy of national Unity not only over law-made classes (the vice of the old world), but over sectional and sinister interests supported by " State" power.

It is the NEXT STEP in the world-logic of History, to the English and French Revolutions, which settled on the carcases of Kings, the principle of the right divine of Peoples.

The Eoyal Nation is at last definitively constituted. The People sit at last in their own Purple, — with no equal yet in the world, and with no master save their conscience, their reason, and their God. Here then is the platform for a new and indefinite advance in political science and combinations, and in social and Individual well-being.

England halts for want of mature elements of Equality. America stopped hecan^^e the two exviii PREFACE.

tremes of politics were both represented in ter body politic, and one had got to be destroyed before the nation could advance. The majority in power and value were prepared for self-government. A Section would continue to rule over others, and meanwhile, keep those others in a state in which they could be ruled. Between them was essential war, and from the highest point of view, the nation, before it could proceed, simply had got to destroy the speciality of the section. It did its duty and destroyed it. Broadly speaking, for the nation self-government was a fact, but for the section Slavery was also a fact, and one of the two must destroy the other.

Nor was it a local question only. It was a question whether Humanity could advance from Christianity to the first self Governed Nation in eighteen hundred years, or ivhether it must pass through some vast cycle of bloody ruin and reaction, of which those eighteen hundred years may have been hut a fraction.

America has done in four years a work of giants and of ages. Rather, perhaps, all nations and all time had prepared that nation for victory, as she in turn has prepared Victoiy for all the world and all the Future.

The work before her now is twofold. To complete the destruction of Oligarchy, and the reconciliation of Democracy with Centralisation. Each is but a part of the world involving question of the organisation of Democracy, or the reconciliation

PREFACE. ix

of Freedom with order. Obviously the only way to solve this problem is to give to every individual the means of learning to combine the two in himself. The freedom and the fitness for Freedom must be as universal as the concentration of power is intense.

This can only be achieved by a nation fit to receive and determined to possess political Equality.

The main object of this work is therefore to trace the Historical Development of that PRIJSI- CIPLE OF EQUALITY in Education, in religion, and in politics, entrusted by God to the care and final vindication of the American nation.

Hitherto the world has assumed some inherent antagonism between Freedom and Centralisation. A true Democracy has at last established itself, that not only develops an intenser Centralisation than Despotism ever boasted, but that develops, and also vindicates it, by a completer Freedom than ever before could be permitted.

Freedom had before been shown to be compatible with order. History now goes a step further, and proves that Democratic Equalitv is the postulate and complement of organised power, that Republican Equality by affirming individual Freedom, consolidates national Unity, and that Federal Republicanism solves the problem of the safe and unlimited increase of an Empire.

But that this principle of Equality, — the last and most important element, nay, the veiy essence

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and soul of Democ^flcy, has been tested by a desperate contest, and an irrevocable victory, the world need not have concerned itself mtich about the mere "Making of the American nation," and its settlement as the mightiest conglomerate of empire History has known.

It is precisely because it is not a mere question of territorial expansion, but rather a settlement hy court of ultimate appeal of the final question in politics^ a question affecting all systems and Peoples, the question whether Individuality must for ever give way to Unity, whether Freedom and order can or cannot be reconciled, whether the full Development of the man consists, or is incompatible with the perfectest organisation of the State.

Hitherto Government has always been a compromise (and after some infinitesimal sort — ^must always be a compromise) between Necessity and Right, between Force and Consent, between Progress and Disease.

The essence of Government is order. Order must reign by force or by consent. If force is used against Right the Government is destroyed. If consent is not yielded to the Right the People perishes. Force is cheap and can be used by the Few; ("anyone," said Oavour, "can govern by martial law.") Consent to bad Govemment is consent to ruin. Good Government can come only of general Intellectual and moral Development.

Where the Govemment of the all is good Govern-

PEEPACE. xi

meiat, Aere only are the means and the end both answeredj there and there only is Democracy, — there only is a Royal and also a loyal nation.

Broadly and absolutely, then, there are two great elements of interest in this American question ; the one of inteBsest interest to that People ; the other of universal interest.

§ Federal Republicanism,— in the true sense of it

—a new element in politics, is rendered possible by

new manhood and material Developments.

The State, or " State right " system, avoiding the old error of Federations,-^the Imperium in Imperio, maintains the proper local element of right, energy, occupation, and dis-centralisation.

This new element would maintain the Balance between, and has in fact forcibly adjusted the differences of the parts and the whole, between the Nation^ " State" and Individual.

Each State would successfully maintain and be upheld in its just local claims by the universal public opinion, and "locality" would thus hold its own against centralisation ; each Individual, on the other hand, helping to constitute the national opinion and Sovereignty, would also help to set aside and coerce any traitorous abuse of Freedom and " locality," by whatsoever strength supported.

Had the American nation betrayed their trust, chaos would have reigned in political philosophy, and dismay would have smitten all Peoples. ' Step by step, tyrannies had been isolated.

xii PREFACE.

weakened, and destroyed, and freedom had matured and advanced towards Equality, but the last and greatest question remained, — whether Equality could ever be adopted as a principle of Government^ or whether its existence in America was a mere creature of the hour, of the country, or of the race, — part of an immature civilisation and a scattered people. Whether the universal people do verily gravitate towards Democracy, or whether political science has exhausted itself in the mixed constitutional Governments. Whether nations as well as Individuals can verily reign, and whether the interests and the rights of " the All " are compatible with a "balanced" and orderly Government.

The result of the American struggle has not confounded but confirmed the conclusions of centuries,

America alone amongst nations has appealed to the whole and to the all. Her manhood was developed in Religion, in Politics, and in Education, and under this threefold stimulus and partnership in Democracy, the good and the bad, the North and the South, the Republic and the Oligarchy, grew together, till Lincoln and the Judgment.

And there is this further Law, which is perhaps of the essence of the question, — those who mil not appeal to the all^dare not appeal to the whole. Those who would not serve the People^ can only partially develop even the instruments of oppression. Tyrants who do not dwarf, emasculate, corrupt or destroy their agents, have not studied " the Prince," and may be safely trusted to destroy themselves.

PREFACE. liii

Democracy not only appeals to and lives by the complete Development of national manhood, hut it cannot live without it.

Thus, either by the comparative weakness or the positive evil of systems imperfect or bad, does the cause of the all advance.

Freedom, removed beyond the reach of the enervating traditions and overpowering influence of corporate bodies, Hierarchies, Castes, and Coalitions, hostile to it in Church and in State, develops itself naturally and irresistibly into the principle of Equality. When a nation is free, the Individuals who compose it will always use their freedom to seek after Equality.

DEVELOPMENT (the term Education is corrupted to mean mere learning) and ASSOCIATION are the means whereby mankind advances. The two together give power and unity to the People. They are the premises of which the logical conclusion is EQUALITY.

The History of the world is a struggle for and against these factors of Democracy.

And what is all this — but the very actual History of the making of the American nation and Democracy? — two hundred years, compressed in about as many words and seconds. ' Americans are a nation and search out Unity. Americans are a Democracy, — they will have their representation complete. All nations will follow them.

In man are the forces, and they will out. Men

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who cannot see the necessity, of a gi-adually completed representation, will feel the ultima ratio of revolution, destroying them and their phantasies together. In politics there is no finality but with the all. Deanocracy is the goal of progress. The fate of selfish and perverse oligarchies, if not their blood, will be upon themselves or upon their children.

" The making of the American nation" and Democracy thus appears to solve Problems which have been propounded in vain smce the world began.

These difficulties are inherent in Grovernment, but they affect all questions as to the extension of territory, or the character and value of the nationality, and will at once be appreciated by every reader who will consider how, in every age and Government of the past, centralisation has overpowered individual or provincial rights, or how individual or local self-assertion have destroyed national unity.

Thus, from Despotism to anarchy, from excess of freedom to excess of oi'ganisation, the world has swayed, till it had well nigh settled down to disbelief in political perfectibility, and to accept the dangerous heresy — as in France, that a good autocrat is a good system^ — in England, that a (so called) mixgd constitutional Government, is not only the ne plus ultra of political science, but really the form of Government under which England is to remain.

At last there comes forth a true Federal Republic

PREFACE. XT

which, after infimte preparation and controversy, is proved to be a nation, and as such is definitively constituted, and proclaims to the world " here is an arrangement which is not a constituted anarchy" (Hegel) like Germany, nor an oligarchy like England, nor an autocracy like France,— which is neither a compromise, a sacrifice, an interregnum, nor an expedient, — which preserves Unity and Individuality, organisation and local rights, not in spite of but by means of each other, by a new, but also a true^ a complete^ <Xnd a natural interpretation of the rights and properties of each.

It seems to me worth while to turn aside to see this great sight, to see how these things are done in America, and whether and to what extent, they can be repeated elsewhere.

The tiling is called FEDERAL REPUBLICAN- ISM. It implies a state of Society in which these things are possible, and it will lead to a complete re-modelling, not of the science, but of the practice of politics.

In the present state of the world's History, and of political science, when hostile Principles are still contending in the West, and conflicting hostile theories are on their trial everywhere ; — when the principles of Freedom and Slavery ; of the rule of the Collective Reason, or the deputed Power ; of virtual and actual representation ; of autocracies. Prerogatives, monarchies, oligarchies, privileges, representations, and Democracies, have been subxvi l^KEFACE.

mitted to the ultima ratio of nations ; — when the latest, the intensest, the strongest, and the worst of oligarchies, is smitten in its Den by the best Democracy that ever existed,^^the only one that ever proved its right to exist ; — when political dogmas, North and South, have been framed with absolute precision and candour, and urged with the inexorable logic of war ; during such a contest, I, say, of Principles and Parties, to bring into a focus, to concentrate and organise the essential FACTS i-espectiiig the' nation and the cause, which occasioned, which maintain, and which will settle the controversy, is, if honestly and carefully performed, a service not without importance* in the present, or meaning for the future.

It were a question for ideologists, and as such would have its value, " what were a perfect Government for perfect men?" It is a question for antiquarians, " whether Governments that are passed were suited to nations that are gone ?"

The question of questions for living, fighting, and praying men, was lately, whether America was or was not ripe for Democracy ; whether America was or was not a nation : With some it is still a question, whether influences which involve the future of the whole world, are or are not now to go forth upon it. Whether the nation, colonised, educated, fitted, prepared, as the child and champion of Democracy, is now to stand up before God and the Peoples, to vindicate or to betray the truth of the unity and equality of the race, — of the

PHEFACE. iTil

force tliat resides in the Collective Reason of a nation, and in the recuperative energies of free Institutions. Whether America is the last, and the greatest of failures, or the first, the greatest, and the only Eupublic.

The Americans are on their trial, ■ not the Principles. Principles are not on their trial, — they are. before and after Peoples, eternal, and "patient, because eternal."

Oligarchy has been on its trial since the world began, and has constantly been condemned and respited times without number, simply because "the world's government must be carried on." Democracy rests on Christianity, which taught the natural unity and equality of man, and the means to realise it, and, as a principle, Democracy can never go on its trial, till Christianity go with it.

The question in any age, and of any race and form of Grovernment, is, "is the actual form suited to the actual race ?" What is the perfect theory as applied to an instructed People, is not the question for uninstructed Peoples, nor ever will be.

Let us then believe in, and rest upon the unchangeable, while we question the questionable, and assail that which ought to be, because it can be, destroyed.

We have seen that the strongest, the completest military, social, and political organisation of oligarchy the world ever knew, has not been strong enough to break down the Democracy of America.

We shall see that America is fit for Democracy, xviii PEEPACE.

—for that rmle by and for the all, to whieh the world tends as surely as to the judgment I

And kaswing what to doubt and what not to dou.bt,™.wh«:t to investigate in ordeir to test and destroy, and what to examine in order to exalt aBid to imitate, —let us also make sure of <me t&JBg m0re,-^tha/t tke ti'uth can be attained respecting this American nation, and can be a^ttained by us, now. That truth is one and indivisible, that it is m^e for man and man for it, that it is made to be understood by human reason, and that the collective humasi reason of an educated nation, is likelier to reduce it to practice, than are the units.

Democracy looks through every man back to that which is behind him— «ra Awra,, — the Soul, — the Infinite,— Grod,

All ether theories look to thai; whieh is about a maa, — ^his property, his rank, his " qualificati(ms." But; these are only questions of adjvsimmt and preparation,— as answering the question, " for what instalment of ^elf-govermeut is this nation ready ?

America now attains its majority. The hour of its manhood has struck. For a complete nationality it wanted two things; — a thorough application of the principles of Freedom and Equality irrespective of skin-caste, and a more .complete administrative unity.

These things the war has provided or is the means of providing. The Slave fight was a " big

PEEFACE. xix

job." It was the fiery ordeal tlirougli which America had to pass from federation to nationa,lity.

"The South" has been the occasion; Freedom AND Equality of conditions the motive power; and the various National Unities, the ultimate bases upon which the movement depends.

Two centuries ago England exported that Nation and that Democracy to America, — but it was in retail, in little, in embryo. Nevertheless all but time and numbers, was furnished by this nation, for that.

Usually, Democracy does not make Civilisation, but Civilisation Democracy. There, Freedom and Religion had already made men Priests and Kings unto themselves, and thus completed and planted in the boundless West, Democracy, Civilisation, and Nationality, worked together, and each upon the other, till they produced another English nation, without certain institutes of Feudality and relics of Barbarism, certain forms of force or favour in Church and in State still sm-viving and fastened upon ourselves.

The laws, — economic, moral, and political, that govern nations, reveal, at the present epoch, no limit to American nationality Southward, until central America is: reached, the region of Panama, where, whether formally or not, there will be of necessity a real neutralisation between all the living and trading nations of the earth. For Panama will become the greatest thoroughfare, and most important Highway for all nations.

XX PEEFACE.

I here, assume, for reasons amply detailed hereafter, that the American nation is ready for and worthy of Democracy, and that they are now putting beneath their feet their only dangerous foe, — Oligarchy, with its eldest-bom, Slavery. For if Slavery, or any other phase of Oligarchy, — save that natural one which will rise and fall for ever with individual character and talent,— prevail in America, then, there is for it, neither Democracy nor National Unity, but Disunion and foreign alliances, and for other Peoples whose cause it represents, but a return to the vicious inane cycles of the political past.

The American nationality rests now, upon a Unity of Ideas, Circumstances, and Interests; of Eace, Language, Literature, Eeligion, Institution ; also upon the natural material unities of its moun- , tain and water systems, and upon the powerful artificial ones, of commerce, coin, banks, post- , service, weights and measures, telegraph, rail, and revenue.

The more one knows of the facts of National History, — the more complete one's comprehension of the pririciples of Statesmanship, the more thorough will be the acquiescence in the irresistible influence of such a combination of all the factors of Nationality.

Nor does the natural Territorial Unity of America stay with the present limits of the nation.

Northwards as Southwards must the propa-

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ganclism of Freedom and neiglibourliood naturally and ultimately extend.

The Lakes of Canada are moving roads,— not barriers. The races and languages of Canada are French as well as English, and as much American as either. American Eagles and English Sovereigns divide the circulation of gold, while the silver coinage is almost exclusively American. The influences that tend to unite Canada with America, if not in name, in reality and substance, may be peaceful and slow, but they are irresistible.

It is notorious how Napoleon, in a tract prepared at Ham, pointed out how a certain spot near Panama possesses all the requisites for a great world-centre of commerce.

I mention elsewhere these ideas of Napoleon III. as to Panama. Similar purposes visited the mighty mind of Pitt, who said, "you must take Panama." But see the sequel as to the necessary effects of this transit on the commerce of the world in favour of America, and see Captain Pirn's " Gate of the Pacific," as to the idea that America intends to retain and to monopolise its advantages, and the consequent necessary abandonment by England of Australia, New Zealand, and British Columbia,

The leading facts of this great question have been familiar to everybody but the English, ever since the last century, when the Abbe Raynal wrote,—" Some careful observers affirm that a

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quiet possession of the Mosquito country would one day be more valuable to Great Britain than all the Islands which that nation possesses in the West Indies."

It is a strange comment on English " Statesmanship " that with the keys of the Gates of the East and of the West, of Suez and Panama, in the hands of her possible enemies, England makes no worthy effort at neutralisation of transit routes.

The master of Mexico would of course control

the Tehuantepec route, and his power in respect to

the other two passages cannot fail to be enormous.

According to a report presented to Congress and

hereafter referred to, the securing to Americans

the Panama passage will give to much of the

American Pacific commerce, an advant«,ge equal to

fourteen thousand miles, as compared with the old

relations between American and English shipping.

" "When in the History of all time," we may well ask with Buchanan (Message, January, 1861), "when has a confederacy been bound together by such strong ties of mutual interest. Each portion of it is dependent upon aU, and all upon each portion for prosperity and domestic security. Pree trade throughout the whole supplies the wants of one from the productions of another, and scatters wealth everywhere."