The development of American nationality

Front matter

xOO,

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE AM E R I CAN PEOPLE

In Two Volumes

Preface To Volume II

The aim of the author, in writing this volume, has been to exhibit American history as a development. The central point of view has been the political, with the idea that the American people have expressed themselves more fully in their political life than elsewhere, and more so than has been the case with most other nations. To make clear this political development, the various factors, economic, social, intellectual, and moral, which from time to time have, by their interaction, contributed to it, have been treated in as much detail as the author believes their relative importance entitles them to. It cannot be hoped that any such selection of contributing factors will prove universally satisfactory, but the greater vitality which this method gives is felt to more than counterbalance the criticism that might be avoided by a more conventional treatment. With respect to military history, the author has departed from the standard of relative values, and given it less space than its real importance demands, believing that most persons possess a better knowledge of this than of other fields, owing to the interest which it seems to hold for them during their high school age.

As the chief purpose of this book is to serve as a text for use in college classes, the author calls attention to three assumptions that he has made with reference to college students : first, that they have some general knowledge of American history; second, that they will make some use of collateral reading ; third, that they have somewhat more maturity of mind than students in high schools, and may be expected to grasp more fundamental ideas and to comprehend a greater complexity of causal relations. With these viii PREFACE TO VOLUME II

assumptions in mind, it has been felt possible to eliminate some of the more commonly known facts, and to disregard chronology to a greater degree than is advisable in books for the use of less mature students. In thus adapting American history, the author has been guided by a ten years' experience in presenting the period under review to students of this type.

The bibliographical notes given at the end of the chapters are not intended to supply references for extensive topic work, which must always be molded to the capacity of the libraries available ; or to give authority to the text. Their sole purpose is to suggest supplementary reading. The aim has not been to make the lists long, but to give those references which have been found most useful in actual class-room work. In general, reference has not been made to rare works now out of print, but to material apt to be at hand in the average college library. With this point in mind extensive use has been made of publications of learned societies. References to the same work have seldom been repeated at the end of the several chapters, and in the absence of the articles specifically noted, many general histories might well be used to supplement other chapters than those in connection with which they are mentioned. No attempt has been made to equalize the references at the close of the several chapters, and it is the belief of the author that reading on some subjects is much more valuable than on others, and that students should not be encouraged to expect mechanical assignments of equal length to supplement the work of each subject or each week. The author believes in the value of general reading in the sources even more than in the reading of important special documents, and the source references are to such material as is readily available.

GENERAL REFERENCES

Channing, E., Hart, A. B., and Turner, F. J., Gtiide to the Study and Reading of American History, Boston, 1912. This guide in its newest edition should be in the hands of all college teachers of history. Its bibliographical references are richer than those of any textbook can be, and its pedagogical suggestions represent the latest thought with reference to college teaching.

McLaughlin, A. C, and Hart, A. B., Cyclopedia of American Government, N. Y., 1913.

Stanwood, E., History of the Presidency (to 1909), 2 vols., Boston, 1898, 1912. This contains party platforms and votes.

The following general histories are valuable through the periods mentioned :

1801-1817. Adams, H., History of the United States, N. Y., 1889-1891. 1492-1789. Bancroft, G., A History of the United States, 6 vols., N. Y.,

1883-1885. 1783-1865. Curtis, G. T., Constitutional History of the United States,

2 vols., N. Y., 1889-1896. 1789-1900. Dewey, D. R., Financial History of the United States, N. Y.,

1907. 1300-1907. Hart, A. B. [editor], The American Nation : A History,

27 vols., N. Y., 1904-1908. Each volume has a separate

author, and several of them are referred to in the chapter

bibliographies. 1783-1860. McMaster, J. B., History of the People of the United States

from the Revolution to the Civil War, 8 vols., N. Y., 1884-

1913. 1849-1877. Rhodes, J. F., History of the United States, 7 vols., N. Y.,

1891-1906. 1783-1865. Schouler, J., History of the United States, 6 vols., N. Y.,

1894-1899.

The following series are of especial value : for biography, the American Statesmen, edited by J. T. Morse ; and for state history, the American Commonwealths, edited by H. E. Scudder, and the Stories of the States, edited by E. S. Brooks.

Contents

PAGE

General Bibliography ix

CHAPTER

Chapter I The United States In 1783

The history of the American people from the landing at Jamestown to the present day is one and indivisible. It is, moreover, indissolubly connected with the development of European civilization. History does not occur in epochs, and each great event is at the same time the culmination of one line of causation and the starting point of another. For the purposes of study as well as of writing, however, something less than the whole must be taken, and the attempt should be made to divide at the point where fewest threads will be broken. In a history like this, where the main interest is political, the meeting of the first Continental Congress or the adoption of the Constitution might seem to be more logical dates for separation than 1783. In fact, 1789 is to serve as the real point of departure, but to treat of the Constitution without giving the conditions and the struggles out of which it came seemed impossible; and so this book and the preceding volume overlap for the period 1783 to 1789. In addition, this first chapter attempts to summarize those conditions resulting from colonial development which are most essential for an understanding of the subsequent history.

The event which makes 1 783 significant is that in that year Independ- American independence was finally achieved and formally enceacknowledged in the treaty of Paris. This treaty marked the failure of the attempt to govern the English settlements

Territory.

States and sections.

New England.

on the Atlantic coast of America as a portion of the British empire. It left them free to guide their own future development, and face to face with the problem of making of themselves a new nation. The territory assigned them by the treaty was amply sufficient for present needs, amounting to about 850,000 square miles; but the descriptions of its boundaries, owing to the lack of geographical knowledge at the time, were inaccurate, and occasioned years of controversy and sometimes danger of war. The national population amounted to less than 3,500,000, and occupied less than a third of the territory to which the treaty gave title. The remaining area was waste, or was peopled by Indians, and portions were still held by foreign powers. It was years before the actual situation was made to conform to the title we received in 1783, — before it became certain that the United States would be a great continental power.

The lack of unity within made our title the more precarious. There were thirteen distinct and separate state governments, united by but a loose bond of confederation, and Vermont had its own local authority which defied the rest. The effort to bind these separate states into one effective government was the first great national task, and was successful ; but there was another element of disunion, still more important and destined to prove more obstinate. Differences in the original stock, emphasized by different physical conditions and by the isolated life of the colonial period, had created several great sections or divisions of the country, which had sufficient similarity within themselves, and sufficient unlikeness to each other, to make them permanent entities, and to cause sectionalism to be a permanent factor in American history.

In the northeast lay New England. From its mountains, the White and the Green, the land sloped away south and east to the sea. Excepting a fringe of sandy plain only a few miles wide on the south shore, the whole region had been glacier swept. The tops of the granite ridges which radiated from Mount Washington toward the coast had been ground down, and the debris covered the intervening valleys with a soil, rough, filled with bowlders, and hard to work, but inexhaustible. These valleys, widening as they approached the sea, gathered up the waters into rivers, generally not navigable for long distances, but strong and rapid. At the falls of these rivers there stood already mills to grind flour and to saw the timber which covered nearly the whole region. Where the mountain ridges breasted the ocean they formed headlands and islands, and the intervening inlets and bays, into which the rivers flowed, afforded sheltering harbors for ships of all sizes, and were rich in all kinds of fish.

The New Englanders were of nearly pure English descent, New Engand the ancestors of a majority of them had been Puritans and m^, who came to America during the brief period between 1620 and 1640. They were, therefore, remarkably homogeneous. Religion had been an important cause of the first migration, and still played a large part in their lives. They were accustomed to look even at political matters from a religious point of view, and this tended to make them peculiarly tenacious of their opinions, and to consider their opponents not only as mistaken but as bad. This "New England conscience" was accompanied by a strong missionary spirit, under the impulse of which they tried firmly, and not always sympathetically, to impress upon others New England beliefs and usages. Their religion was Calvinistic. They held that the relations between God and man were regulated by contract, and this idea of contract they transferred to the other relations of life. Thus they had long based their political systems upon the theory, afterwards formulated by Locke and expressed in the Declaration of Independence, that government must rest on the consent of the governed, preferably expressed in the form of a written contract or constitution.

The town. Owing in part to the physical characteristics of New

England, the numberless little harbors of the coast and the hills of the interior, the people lived mostly in villages, rather than on farms. The village settlement was the center of the town, which was a geographical area corresponding to the modern, western township. Towns differed in size and were irregular in shape, but those lately founded averaged about six miles square. The town was also the smallest unit of local government and was a very busy one. It attended to practically all government matters not managed by the state; for, although counties existed, they did little except judicial business. Moreover, the recognized functions of government were unusually extensive. The town managed nearly all church affairs, and it exercised a very close supervision over the lives of the townspeople. All this business was done in the town meeting, which all voters could attend, and, between meetings, by a committee of selectmen. New Englanders, therefore, were accustomed to a government which actively interfered in their everyday life, to a government in which they took a direct part, and as a result of this direct participation, political education was more widely diffused there than in any other part of the world at that time. In most New England town meetings, due regard was paid to family and wealth and learning. As John Cotton had said, New England was neither "meerly democratical " nor "meerly aristocratical."

Area. This population of New Englanders in 1783 occupied the

four states of Massachusetts (which included Maine), New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, and also the unrecognized state of Vermont. Nearly all the 900,000 inhabitants lived south of a line drawn across the middle of New Hampshire and Vermont. A desire to escape the rigid scrutiny of New England town life, combined with a restless seeking for better lands and climate, had caused many to migrate to other colonies, and now others were forced to do the same as the increasing population pressed up the narrowing valleys, where the soil became more and more difficult to cultivate. Thus a New England element was to be found in neighboring parts of New York and New Jersey, and was beginning to enter northern Pennsylvania and the Mohawk valley.

The majority depended for a living upon agriculture, Occupations, eking out the scanty returns of their rock-strewn glacial soil by weaving, or making shoes, or nails, of winter nights. A large number on the coast hoped, with the return of peace, to resume their fishing on the banks of Newfoundland. Most of those who hoped to grow wealthy engaged in commerce. They were accustomed to carry their fish to Spain and the West Indies ; of West Indian molasses they made rum, with which to purchase in Africa negroes to sell in America ; they served as carriers and agents for the less commercial people of the other colonies. The ships for all this trade were built in New England, where ship timber grew to the water's edge of many snug little harbors, which afforded equal security for construction, and facility for putting to sea. The economic life of the people, therefore, was varied. One man had several occupations. Mechanical skill and commercial shrewdness were developed. Many of the things to which they turned their hands, moreover, such as trading and fishing beyond the national boundaries, were of such a character as to thrive or droop according to the degree of protection and encouragement afforded by the government. Politics and industry were, therefore, closely connected. Boston, although surpassed in population by Philadelphia and New York, had the most widespread commercial connections of all the cities in the country. For years Americans were known in many parts of the world as Bostonese.

On the great Atlantic coast plain, with its sinuous, slow- The coast moving rivers, and its rich, thin, alluvial soil, a very different plantation 1 " C type of civilization had developed. The characteristic in- s y stem - stitution was the plantation. Back from the road or the river stood the mansion house of the owner; behind it clustered the cabins of the slaves, while beyond, the fields stretched away to the surrounding woods. This little village was the absolute possession of the master, and its object was the production of as large a crop as possible of the staple : tobacco or rice or indigo. Food was raised, and some simple trades were practiced, but these were of subsidiary interest. Its economic relations with the outside world consisted chiefly of shipping the crop to England, and receiving in return clothes, tools, and such other necessities or luxuries as might be ordered for the ensuing year. The one-crop system of cultivation used up the soil rapidly, and most plantations were surrounded by great tracts of land exhausted in the past, or reserved for future use.

When the land had been long used, and when there came to be great numbers of old and useless slaves, the plantation became less profitable. The planter, however, was not willing to reduce his standard of living. Many of the great families of Virginia had been founded by cavaliers, supporters of Charles I in the great English civil war, who had migrated to America during the Commonwealth, between 1648 and 1660, and who had tried to reproduce the conditions of their old English homes. The style of living they adopted became the aspiration of all planters, of whatever origin, who made money ; to curtail it, was to admit defeat. Some borrowed money and increased their holdings of land and slaves. Others sold out, and, investing in new land beyond the settlements, opened new plantations. This increasing area of production constantly lowered the price of the staple, whether tobacco, rice, indigo, or, later, cotton ; and this again reduced the profits of the planter on each slave and each acre. It again became necessary to enlarge the investment, or to move on. This same story continually repeated itself ; the plantations growing in size, and the plan-

THE PLANTATION COUNTRY 7

tation system stretching inward from the coast, across the tidewater region, and up into the piedmont or foothills. In the old plantation area, there remained the more successful, and to them succeeded their eldest sons. The community became wealthy and conservative. To the back country went the more adventurous, the younger sons, the successful merchants, and small farmers who aspired to become planters, taking with them some little capital, represented by young and able-bodied slaves.

In the tidewater region, lawyers, doctors, and the wealthiest merchants associated with the planters, but the remainder of the white population, consisting largely of the descendants of white servants brought over under conditions of practical slavery, were, for the most part, in poverty and dependence. In the piedmont, planters like Jefferson and Patrick Henry lived on terms approaching equality with independent farmers who came down from the mountain valleys, and plantation and small farm existed peaceably side by side.

The smallest unit of government was the parish, which Government had civil as well as religious duties, and which was governed by a vestry composed of the wealthier planters. More important was the county, governed by a county court, composed of a number of the greater planters appointed by the governor. Members of the legislature were elected by the people, who, having come together and heard speeches and eaten and drunk at the candidates' expense, divided into two crowds to be counted. The government exercised few functions. Poor relief, education, and often road and bridge making were largely left to the individual planter. Under these conditions the planter class came to be all-powerful, and the planters came to believe strongly in democratic principles, meaning, thereby, the least government possible. In the management of their large plantations, with sometimes hundreds of souls dependent upon them, many acquired great administrative ability and a strong sense of public duty.

It was by no accident that for more than two thirds of the period before the Civil War our presidents were of this class.

In 1783 plantations occupied nearly all the Atlantic coast plains of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The system had a foothold in the piedmont region of these states, and some veterans of the Revolution were planning to establish plantations in the beautiful blue-grass district along the banks of the Kentucky. The population of this area was about 1,200,000, of whom nearly half were slaves. There was only one really important city, Charleston, whither the South Carolina planters had to flee, at certain seasons, to escape the fever.

The region between the plantation country and New England consisted of the valleys of three great rivers, the Hudson, the Delaware, and the Susquehanna, which ran into three great bays, and near whose mouths stood the busy cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Each valley had distinguishing characteristics. The Hudson had been settled by the Dutch, and although many English, New Englanders, Germans, and others had mixed with them, they were still an important factor. The Delaware region was largely occupied by English and German Quakers, whose kindly humanity had made Philadelphia a real abode of brotherly love and social betterment, but the extreme tolerance of whose creed caused them to be less influential than the New Englanders in impressing their ideas upon others. Quaker shrewdness and honest dealing, moreover, had built up many substantial fortunes, and Philadelphia was one of the few places in the United States where capital was seeking investment on a large scale. The Susquehanna valley contained a large proportion of Germans, still using their native tongue. Generally known as " Pennsylvania Dutch," they constituted about one fourth the population of that state. They lived to a considerable extent in separate com-

THE MIDDLE STATES 9

munities, and clung tenaciously to their national customs. It was many years before they ceased to be a distinct element, and many of their characteristics remained to their descendants long after their unity was broken up by intermarriage and dispersal. The Susquehanna valley contained also many Scotch-Irish and English. Its natural port, Baltimore, lay in Maryland, and so was affiliated politically with the plantation area.

Throughout the whole region there was a varied agricul- Economic ture, producing every year a surplus for export, the han- con ltloni ' dling of which supported a mercantile community in the three leading cities. This trade, although, unlike that of New England, it was confined almost entirely to the local needs of the section, was already sufficient to make New York the most cosmopolitan city in America, and Philadelphia the financial center. There were those, too, who even in 1783 foresaw unlimited possibilities of expansion. The headwaters of the three great rivers of the region are in the Appalachian mountains, where they interlace with those of the rivers of the Ohio and Great Lake systems. Where these rivers break through the mountain ridges and plateaus, some to flow eastward, some westward, they form low passes, which even in Indian times afforded routes for war and trade and migration between the coast and the Mississippi valley. It was felt that when the Middle States developed, if only the passes could be made convenient highways, these cities would become the gateways of western commerce. This, however, was a dream of the future ; and, moreover, as yet the great mineral resources of the mountains had but little effect on the life of the people.

The Dutch, the Germans, and the Scotch-Irish were com- Political paratively inexperienced in the political institutions by which con ltlons - they were governed, and the Quakers largely indifferent to politics. In New York, as a result of the method of settlement, great tracts of land were held by landlords who rented

IO it to tenant farmers, whose votes they controlled. Self-government, therefore, did not work so smoothly as in New England and Virginia. There existed, also, well-defined interests, the mercantile, the agricultural; the German, the Dutch, and the Quakers; the city, the country. To lead such a population required men who could organize their supporters ; and the germs of party organization and the spoils system were already to be found. To adjust the conflicting forces required men clever at shifting political alliances to suit the needs of the moment. These problems resembled, on a small scale, those of the nation as a whole, and many of the politicians trained in the Middle States came to exercise great influence in national affairs, harmonizing, conciliating, and manipulating the divergent sections and parties.

The system of local government combined some of the characteristics of the sections to the east and south. In Pennsylvania, the county was all-important, but its officials were elected by the people. In New York, township and county divided the local powers, the county being governed by representatives from all the townships of which it was composed. Lying in the road between the coast and the West, the Middle States were to contribute much to the traits of that section which was yet to be developed, and among other things, one or the other of these methods of managing local affairs has been adopted by every state north of the Ohio and the Missouri. In some respects the Middle States were in 1783 the most American of the sections; the population of this region was somewhat over 700,000.

From central Pennsylvania to northern Georgia, southerly and southwesterly, there sweeps a broad mountain belt, one hundred and fifty miles wide, seven hundred miles long, and composed of almost unbroken parallel ridges, with valleys, now fertile with a rich limestone soil, now waste and fruitless, lying between. About 1720, pioneers began to enter these mountain troughs in Pennsylvania, where the

THE FRONTIER II

Susquehanna breaks through many of the ridges. Naturally this movement included many of the valley Germans; it included also adventurous or unsuccessful families from nearly all the other colonies ; but the characteristic strain was furnished by that Scotch element which, attracted to northern Ireland in the early seventeenth century, now began to seek its fortunes in America. Allured by good hunting and fertile limestone bottoms, and impelled by the need of more room for their large families which clannishly clung together, this population had by 1 783 pushed to the southern extremities of the valleys.

The individual settler, with his family, here met the wild Charactersingle-handed, and lived a self-sustaining life; he must mend his gun, and raise his corn, and kill his meat. The community was almost cut off by lack of facilities for transportation from all the world besides, and most men within it began with the ax and plow, and sent their sons out again with the ax and plow to win a living. It was, therefore, a democratic community, and one apt to chafe under authority. It had resisted England, 1 its Revolutionary epic culminating in the battle of Kings Mountain ; but it was equally ready to resist the authority of the states. A broad belt of wilderness separated this back country from the coast settlements, where government centered, and distrust was mutual. Free from the state patriotism so powerful in the older communities, the frontier possessed a strong national feeling, fostered by the Presbyterian church with which many of the Scotch- Irish settlers were connected, which was the oldest nationwide institution in America and whose synods had for many years regularly drawn ministers and elders from the whole region to Philadelphia or New York. Life afforded no opportunity for formal education, and but a narrow range of

J In accordance with common usage the words England and English are often used in this book to apply to the kingdom of Great Britain ; in speaking of immigrants therefrom, however, the several racial stocks are differentiated.

experience, but it gave self-reliance, practical ability to cope with vital problems individually, or, if needs be, to organize to fight the Indians or resist interference, and it allowed only the courageous and physically fit to develop into manhood.

This population in 1783 fairly well filled the mountain valleys, and was flowing out to the eastward into the piedmont, particularly in Virginia, where it was already mingling with the first waves advancing from the coast. The greater portion of the migration, however, was westward. In 1775 Daniel Boone moved his family into Kentucky, and by 1783 steadily increasing streams were flowing into the Mississippi valley, following the courses of the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Kanawha, and the Ohio. The total population of this area amounted to about 550,000, and closely allied to it in characteristics were about 150,000 living in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, who have been already counted as belonging to New England.

The differences between the sections, and even those between smaller localities within the greater sectional areas, were accentuated by the difficulties of transportation. The British government had discouraged trade between the several colonies, desiring each to deal directly with the mother country. Roads were few and poor except in closely settled areas, as those around Boston and Philadelphia. To go by land from one state to another was in most cases an adventure taking time, strength, and often courage. Commercial intercourse was nearly all by water, and the coasts were by no means easy of navigation. Much time and money and skill would be required before the states could be knit together by a common life.

The divergencies of the sections were offset by many bonds of union. Nearly the whole population spoke English, which meant that their minds were fed by the same ideas, derived from the English literature of the time, particularly on religious, legal, and political lines. The great bulk of the population, aside from the negro slaves, was of

ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION 13

Teutonic stock; the Scotch, except a few living chiefly in North Carolina, being from the lowlands, where Anglo- Saxon blood predominated. In Maryland there were many Roman Catholics, but elsewhere Protestants were in overwhelming majority, and of them the greater number were Calvinists. There was a common political experience based upon the fact that all the states were confronted by much the same problems. The English common law was universally accepted. Most important of all was the similarity of practice and principle with regard to methods of government other than local. The defense of these colonial political institutions had been in large measure the object of the Revolution, and now they had been crystallized in the constitutions of the several states.

Organic unity among the states was actually represented Articles of by the Articles of Confederation. These established not t jon. so much a form of government as a method of diplomatic intercourse, and the organization took the form of a body called a Congress, a term at that time denoting a meeting of diplomatic representatives. The delegates of each state jointly cast one vote, though Rhode Island had only about 60,000 population, while Virginia had 700,000. Two or more members had to be present to cast the vote of a state, and they might, by dividing equally, nullify it. The assent of nine states was necessary to all important measures, and to amend the Articles the consent of the legislature of every state was necessary. The delegates were elected and paid by their state legislatures, and were liable to recall at any time. Their term was for one year, and they could be reelected only twice in any series of six years.