"So fallen! So lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forever more! Revile him not—the Tempter hath A snare for all; And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, Befit his fall."

Clay had won. The President, resisting to the last and following the counsels of Seward, saw the majority of Congress yield slowly to influences which favored compromise. Calhoun died early in April, and though his followers maintained their position resolutely, their Whig allies were deserting them, and the Nashville convention proved a fiasco when it assembled in June. President Taylor died on the 9th of July, and the last obstacle to the success of Clay and Webster was removed. Millard Fillmore, the Vice-President, a close friend of Clay, became President; the Cabinet was reorganized, Webster becoming Secretary of State. One by one during the month of August all the features of the "Omnibus Bill" became law. The great majority of the Southerners indicated their ready acceptance of the compromise as a "finality"; and radicals like Jefferson Davis, Robert Barnwell Rhett, and William L. Yancey retired from public life, either voluntarily or by compulsion of the people. The big cities of the East and the Northwest celebrated the passage of the crisis with the firing of cannon, and everywhere the thanks of the people were expressed to the "great Congress" which had saved them from civil war.



If the logic of events ever pointed to one individual as the proper leader of the people or the fit man for the Presidency, it pointed to Daniel Webster in 1852. The Whigs had not all voted for the compromise, but their leaders had been its authors. The party was entitled to claim the glory for a great performance; and if they claimed it and nominated their candidate upon a platform of "henceforth there shall be peace between the sections," they would undoubtedly win and control the Federal Government for at least two or three presidential terms.

But with a most remarkable aptitude for blundering, the Whigs in their convention of 1852 hesitated in their pronouncement upon the compromise, and refused to nominate Webster. The radical element procured the nomination of General Winfield Scott, a Southern man of anti-slavery proclivities, and Scott blundered through the campaign, losing votes every time he made a public statement. Heart-broken, the "Godlike Webster" died before the day of election. Nor was Clay spared to witness the crushing defeat which awaited his beloved party in November. The Whig newspapers of that autumn appeared in mourning too frequently for the public mind not to be affected.

Conservative interests turned to the Democratic party, whose leaders promptly declared in their convention that the compromise was a finality. They nominated a popular but colorless young New Englander, Franklin Pierce, a colonel under Scott in the war with Mexico, and Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the campaign biography. Pierce said little during the months of electioneering. His role and that of his party was now one of conciliation. If elected he would enforce the laws and maintain the Union. Every State but four, Massachusetts, Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee, gave him their electoral votes. The support of the Free-Soil Democrats, 156,000 votes and all in the abolitionist sections, showed that the country was tired of agitation. The prolonged quarrel of the sections seemed definitely closed, and the future promised peace and prosperity.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

A. B. Hart's Slavery and Abolition (1906), in American Nation series; F. J. and W. P. Garrison's William Lloyd Garrison: the Story of his Life Told by his Children (1885-89), and both McMaster and Schouler in their histories, already mentioned, give all the essential facts about the abolitionists and the Wilmot Proviso struggle. James Ford Rhodes's History of the United States (from 1850 to 1877) is a work of the greatest importance, and it gives, in vol. I, the best account of the compromise measures of 1850. The following biographies are valuable for the period: T. W. Barnes, Memoir of Thurlow Weed (1884); William Birney, James G. Birney and his Times (1890); G. L. Austin, Life and Times of Wendell Phillips (1887); Henry Cleveland, Alexander Stephens in Public and Private (1866); W. H. Haynes, Charles Sumner (1909), in American Crises series; A. C. McLaughlin, Lewis Cass (1891), in American Statesmen series. Special for the lower South: Miss Cleo Hearon, Mississippi and the Compromise of 1850 (1914); W. G. Brown, The Lower South in American History (1902); J. W. DuBose, The Life of William L. Yancey; and A. C. Cole, The Whig Party in the South (1913), named in a previous note. J. D. Richardson's Messages and Papers of the Presidents (1900), vol. v; H. V. Ames's State Documents on Federal Relations (1907); and the Congressional Globe for the 29th and 30th Congresses give the most important speeches and documents bearing on the crisis of 1850.



CHAPTER X

PROSPERITY

Partisan opposition to Franklin Pierce had almost disappeared before the day of his inauguration in 1853. Charles Sumner, to be sure, was in the Senate, but he was a silent member, and Massachusetts inclined to follow Edward Everett rather than Sumner. William H. Seward still spoke for the anti-slavery Whigs in Congress, and Salmon P. Chase maintained a precarious hold on Ohio. There was a handful of Free-Soilers in the House of Representatives who were ready to make trouble for the new Administration, and resistance to the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law now and then broke out in riots in certain neighborhoods of New England and in the Western Reserve. But the opposition was everywhere declining until Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, with its exaggerated emphasis upon the cruelties of the slavery system, began to stir the consciences of men. Even so there was no substantial evidence that any great political upheaval or party change would occur within the next fifteen or twenty years. The people were contented with their country, and the growth of the population gave evidence of a great future.

When Jackson came to the Presidency there were about 12,500,000 people in the country; in 1850 the number had grown to 23,000,000, and in 1860 there were 31,000,000. The Census Bureau estimated that the population of 1900 would be 100,000,000 if the growth of the Pierce period was maintained. Not only was the normal native increase phenomenal, but foreigners poured into "the land of the free" in unprecedented numbers. In 1850 there were 2,800,000 foreign-born people in the United States; in 1860 there were 5,400,000, and this tide of immigration was of a very high social and economic character. The German element was large, industrious, and liberty-loving, many of them being refugees from the political persecutions of 1832-33 and 1848-50. The English, Scotch, and Irish composed most of the remainder, and these were already familiar with the ideals and political habits of the country and therefore readily assimilable. By far the greater part of this rich contribution to American life fell to the cities of the East and the open country of the Northwest, where good land was abundant and available at low prices.

If we compare the distribution of the population of 1850-60 with that of 1830, we shall see how well the sectional balance, on which so much depended, was maintained. In 1830, the East[7] had a population of 6,000,000 in a total of almost 13,000,000. This had increased only 500,000 in 1850; but between 1850 and 1860 the increase was nearly 2,000,000. The South had a population of 6,000,000 in 1830; in 1850, 8,900,000, and in 1860 this had grown to 11,400,000. The Northwest had, however, grown faster than either of the other sections, for her increase, including California and Oregon, had been from 4,800,000 in 1850 to 8,260,000 in 1860; that is, the growth of the East during the last decade of ante-bellum history was 21 per cent, that of the South, 28 per cent, and that of the Northwest, 77 per cent.

[Footnote 7: See chap. III of this volume.]

Keeping in mind the sectional conditions of 1830 as set forth in the third chapter of this volume, we shall come to a better understanding of the Civil War if the prosperity of the different parts of the Union be closely analyzed. The people of the United States were poor indeed in 1830 as compared with 1850-60. Between 1815 and 1846 the receipts of the Federal Treasury fluctuated violently; but from that date to 1860, except for two years of panic, the Federal Treasury was always full and there was generally an annual surplus of from $5,000,000 to $10,000,000. During the Jacksonian era the prices of staple commodities fluctuated as much as fifty per cent in single years. Cotton was twenty cents a pound during all of the twenties; it was as low as seven cents when nullification was the critical issue; but from 1850 to 1860 cotton sold at ten or twelve cents. Corn was in most places twenty-five cents a bushel during Jackson's and Van Buren's Administrations; between 1850 and 1860 it rose in price steadily and was almost everywhere readily marketable at fifty cents a bushel. In the era just preceding the war prices were steadily rising, and the demand for American produce, cotton, corn, tobacco, wheat, and sugar, was always greater than the supply.

This prosperity was unequally distributed, as always. The East had developed her manufactures beyond all expectation, and the great mill belt stretched from southeastern Maine to New York City, its center of gravity, thence to Philadelphia and Baltimore, and from these cities westward to Pittsburg. Another belt ancillary to this began in western Massachusetts and extended along the Erie Canal to Buffalo, thence to Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago. In these areas, or in the industrial belt as it may be termed, there lived about 4,000,000 mill operatives, whose annual output of wool, iron, and cotton manufactures alone was worth in 1860 $330,393,000 as compared to the $58,000,000 of 1830. Perhaps the meaning of these figures may become clearer if we note that the total investments in these industries was considerably less than the yearly product. Nor was the East less prosperous in other lines. Her tonnage had increased from a little more than 500,000 in 1830 to nearly 5,000,000 in 1860. The freight and passenger ships, built of iron, and encouraged by liberal subsidies from the Federal Government, employed 12,000 sailors and paid their owners $70,000,000 a year. They carried the manufactures of the East to the Southern plantations, to South America, and to the Far East. This great fleet of commercial vessels was owned almost exclusively in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, and its owners were at the end of the decade about to wrest from Great Britain her monopoly of the carrying trade of the world.



In spite of the efforts of President Jackson and of the purposes of the sub-treasury system, the concentration of capital in the Eastern towns and cities continued. Only New York, instead of Philadelphia, was the new center. The merchants of that city imported three fourths of the European goods consumed in the country, and they in turn exported nearly all of the great crops with which the balance of trade was maintained. New York was also a distributing center for the manufactures of the East which were sent to the South, the West, or the outside world. Thus the exchanges of all the sections were made there, and before 1860 its banks, with a capital of $130,000,000 and specie reserves of only $20,000,000, did a business of $7,000,000,000 a year. And while New York became the American London, the whole of the East was likewise securing the lion's share of the banking profits of the country. Although the assessed wealth of the section counted only one fourth of the total $16,000,000,000 for the country in 1860, the East had nearly two thirds of the banking capital; and the money in circulation there was $16.5 per capita as against $6.6 for the country as a whole.[8] Industry, commerce, shipping, and banking concentrated in the narrow area of less than 200,000 square miles, earned yearly returns equal as a rule to the total of the capital invested. Money changed hands rapidly, credits did the work of capital, and the rapid growth of population added large unearned increments to the fortunes of those who owned land or had established themselves in trade.

[Footnote 8: This comparison is based on the Census Reports for 1860. It does not vary materially from the estimates given for 1860 in Executive Documents of the Senate, no. 38, 52d Cong., 2d Sess.]



Naturally this concentration of industry and the economic resources of the country in the East led to the rapid extension of railways into the West and South. The New York Central, the Erie, the Pennsylvania, and the Baltimore and Ohio systems had already been founded, and they made connections in 1850-53 with the canals and railways of the Middle West. The Illinois Central, which connected the lower South with Chicago, was affiliated by means of interlocking directorates with the New York Central before 1856. John M. Forbes, the Boston capitalist, was president of the Michigan Central during the decade, and laying the foundations of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. Commodore Vanderbilt was organizing his steamboat and railroad properties and expanding the area of his activities till it reached, before 1860, the rich grain belt of the West, the cotton lands of the South, the Far Eastern trade via his Panama Railroad and Pacific steamers, and the great markets of Europe. During the decade under consideration the capitalists of the East built 4000 miles of railway east of Pittsburg, 7500 miles in the Northwest, and 5000 miles in the South. But the work was not all done at the expense of the capitalists. The Federal Government donated 20,000,000 acres of the most valuable lands in the country to the companies which built the roads; States, counties, and towns in the West and South voted many millions for the same purpose; and European capitalists loaned $450,000,000 secured by first mortgage bonds on the vast properties.

Thus the industrial belt of the East was reaching out toward Chicago, St. Louis, and New Orleans and beyond for a commerce that was already richer than the gold mines of California; and New York, Boston, Philadelphia, the canal towns, and Pittsburg were becoming centers of wealth and economic power which attracted the attention of the world. Great merchants, like the Lawrences of Boston and the Astors of New York, became the objects of emulation everywhere, and they in turn set the fashion of giving liberally of their means to the cause of education or the founding of hospitals, which has been a distinctive feature of the social history of the last thirty years.



The planters, on the other hand, had spread their system over the lower South in a remarkable manner since 1830. From eastern Virginia their patriarchal establishments had been pushed westward and southwestward until in 1860 the black belt reached to the Rio Grande. Tobacco, cotton, and sugar were still their great staples, and the annual returns from these were not less than $300,000,000; while the growth of their output between 1850 and 1860 was more than one hundred per cent. The number of slaves who worked the plantations had increased between 1830 and 1860 from 2,000,000 to nearly 4,000,000 souls, thus suggesting the comparison with the workers in the mills of the East. The exports of the black belt composed more than two thirds of the total exports of the country; but they were largely billed through Eastern ports, and most of the imports of the South came through New York, where a second toll was taken from the products of the plantation.

But the ratio of annual returns to the total investments was very unlike that of the East. In the South the assessed value of real estate and personal property, including slaves, in 1860 was $5,370,000,000, while the returns for the best years were somewhat over $300,000,000: that is, their investment was $1,000,000,000 greater than that of the East and their income not more than a third as great. Perhaps the banking statistics of the planter section will enable us to get a better view of their dependence upon the East. The South had in 1860 a banking capital of $89,131,000, a bank-note circulation of $68,344,000, and money on deposit, $56,342,000. Thus an annual return of $300,000,000 brought deposits of only $56,000,000; and the per capita circulation was only $10. New York City alone had twice as much money on deposit as all the Southern States, though the personal property valuation of the whole State of New York, with a population four times as great, was only $320,000,000 as against $240,000,000 for Virginia.

Although the system of agriculture in the South had not greatly improved since 1830, the annual crops sold for about four times as much as they had brought when Jackson was President. In spite of the "red gullies" and the waste lands, the owners of plantations were the wealthy men of the time. The Hairstons of Virginia and the Aikens of South Carolina were counted as the peers of the Astors of New York. But a Southern man worth $4,000,000 or $5,000,000 would not receive an annual income of more than $100,000 unless he happened to be in the midst of a new cotton region. Still the hold of the planters on the state and county governments of the South was, as we have seen in a former chapter, even more secure than it had been in 1830, and Southern public opinion was almost always the opinion of the planters. Yet there was great uneasiness in the South as to the future, and public officials, railway magnates, and newspaper men gathered in annual conventions to devise ways and means of increasing the power of the South and of competing with the East in the race for economic supremacy.



These conventions discussed scientific agriculture, the proper size of a plantation, and the duties of "Christian masters to their servants"; they outlined plans for connecting Southern ports with the Northwest, for opening a direct trade with Europe, and for annexing territory which might increase the area of the staple producing States. They supported Narciso Lopez and John A. Quitman in their filibustering expeditions against Cuba, and they heralded William Walker, who sought to make Nicaragua an American slave State in 1854-59, as a statesman and "man of destiny." The reopening of the African slave trade was the subject of long and earnest debate, and Southern delegations in Congress were urged to exert themselves to secure a repeal of the law against the slave trade in order that the South might have some means of increasing its laboring population to counterbalance the advantages which the East and Northwest derived from immigration. A paramount purpose of these gatherings was to solidify the South and to harmonize the interests of the border States with those of the lower South. In the background of all this, and especially after the struggle over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854, there was the ever-recurring probability of secession from the Union.

What added to the anxieties of Southern leaders was the extraordinary growth and expansion of the Northwest. In 1830 it had been the East that most feared the development of the Mississippi Valley; now it was the South that took pains to hedge and limit the opportunities of the newer States. And there was reason for the masterful politicians of the cotton country to watch the Northwestern frontier. Michigan had become a State in 1837, Iowa and Wisconsin in 1846, and Minnesota was to enter the Union in 1858. There were four Territories, Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon, and Washington, that might be admitted at any time. California was growing powerful, and she was already lost to slavery if not to the South. And a free State was likely to be formed in Colorado. Seven thriving Northwestern States and five promising Territories gave every assurance that the seat of political influence was about to be shifted to the upper Mississippi Valley. Moreover, the economic changes that were taking place in that region were such as might have alarmed conservative men both South and East.

The removal of the Indians from Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois had paralleled the similar removal from the lower South. But during the fifties, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota succeeded in pushing the natives into the arid Nebraska Territory. And now as the great "American Desert" proved to be desirable country for the pioneers, it was proposed to shift the Northwestern Indians into the Southern hinterland, now known as Oklahoma, and thus to bar the way of the planter civilization to New Mexico and California.

An equally important factor in the development of the Northwest was the invention and manufacture of grain-planting and harvesting machinery by Cyrus McCormick and others about 1845. This enabled the farmers to increase their operations very much as the Whitney gin had done for the cotton farmers of 1800. Still the transportation of wheat and corn is so difficult that no great revolution would have been possible but for the simultaneous building of thousands of miles of railways which opened to grain production the vast prairie lands remote from the rivers. The manufacture of farm implements and the building of railroads made the Northwest a staple-producing area of greater importance than the South had been, though this was recognized by only a few men before the beginning of the Civil War.



The value of the wheat and corn crops of the Northwest increased from $80,000,000 in 1850 to $225,000,000 in 1860. In addition to this the Northwest produced pork in great quantities for the cotton plantations, and fresh meats for the industrial cities of the East. The railways, of which mention has already been made, thus brought the isolated farmers of the Western interior into close contact with the markets of the world, and the Northwest was fast becoming the food-producing region of the country and at the same time exporting grain worth at least $50,000,000 a year. In New York, Pennsylvania, and other Eastern States the corn and wheat output steadily declined between 1850 and 1860, while the up-country of the South failed to produce the foodstuffs needed by the planters. Thus the manufacturing and the older staple-producing States came to rely on the Northwest for a large part of their provisions.

Western farmers were now well-to-do. They deserted their log cabins and built frame houses; they bought large quantities of the finer goods of the East. Pianos made in Germany and silks from France found their way to Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. Villages became towns and towns grew rapidly into cities. Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Chicago imitated the ways and manners of Boston and New York. It was a busy, ambitious life that animated the West and produced industrial leaders like Cyrus McCormick, William B. Ogden, and John Y. Scammon, and politicians like Stephen A. Douglas, Salmon P. Chase, and the Dodges of Iowa and Wisconsin.

But in this busy region with its self-sufficing agriculture, the actual surplus capital, as in the South, found its way to Eastern cities. With a population of nearly 8,000,000 and foreign exports of more than $50,000,000, the Northwest still had only $10,425,000 on deposit in her banks and $27,000,000 invested in banking enterprises. Her per capita circulation was only $4. Here as in the South the amount of specie in the banks was twice as great in proportion to population and the volume of business transacted as in the East. The debts of the Northwest to the East and to Europe cannot well be estimated, but they were enormous. States, counties, and corporations owed hundreds of millions, and when the interest on these obligations was paid at the end of each year, the remaining net increase was small indeed. The West had been badly in debt during the Jackson period; it was still in debt.

While the growing Northwest owed more to the rest of the world than it was likely to pay in half a century, its leaders saw that it must continue to expand its area and improve its economic life. Undoubtedly the one leader who best understood the needs of his region was Stephen A. Douglas, Senator from Illinois and perpetual candidate for the office of President of the United States. Young, active, and ardently patriotic, Douglas had been among the first to see during the Polk Presidency that the old Western policy of internal improvements and freer lands for all who might come must be changed. The West, even the Northwest, was firmly attached to the Democratic party; but the center of that great organization was the South. The leaders of that section looked more and more to free trade as a national policy. If they succeeded, as there was every reason to expect they would succeed, there would be no more easy money for the building of canals and roadways. Moreover, the South was now jealous of the expanding Northwest, and her leaders were growing more hostile toward the idea of free lands for the Northwestern settlers.

Douglas and his friends in both houses of Congress worked out a new policy during the years 1845 to 1850. It was to induce the Federal Government to give large tracts of public land to the Northwestern States on condition that they be given again by the States to railroad corporations as aids to the building of new lines. The roads would sell their lands at good prices, the Government would sell its remaining lands at high prices after the building of the roads, and the farmers would cheerfully pay these higher prices if markets for wheat and corn could be created. The leaders of the lower South were interested in this new American system, for there was government land in their States and they needed railroads quite as much as the Northwesterners. Capitalists of the East and Europe would be enlisted because the great tracts of rich land would be security for money they might lend at high rates to the roads. Finally, the increasing armies of immigrants gave assurance that the railroad lands could be sold easily.

The outcome was the building of the Illinois Central, the Mobile and Ohio, and other shorter lines in each of the Western and Northwestern States during the decade of 1850-60. The railroad lands sold as high as $8 or $10 an acre, and the government lands advanced in value accordingly, though the Federal Treasury did not profit to the full extent of these promises. The growth and expansion of the Northwest described above was due largely to this policy of Douglas. Chicago bankers loaned all the money they had and borrowed all they could borrow for the building of railroads. The thriving young city, always the pet of Senator Douglas, increased its business in marvelous manner during the decade. It soon distanced St. Louis in the race for wealth and population, and before 1854 conceived of the scheme of building a great railway, long ago proposed by Asa Whitney, of Michigan, to the Pacific. This road was to connect with the Illinois Central in Iowa, thread its way through the Indian lands in Nebraska, and finally bring San Francisco and the Far East into touch with the commercial center of the Middle West. It was a magnificent undertaking, not unlike that of the Erie Canal, which had made New York the Emporium of the East; it was even more daring for a section already in debt to the limit of its ability to pay. But these ambitious Northwestern men and politicians had already won the support of the railway men of New York and Boston, and their agents still borrowed money with ease in London and Liverpool. And with States like Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa doubling their population each decade, and hence increasing their land values three or fourfold, even the impossible became possible. The most ambitious section of the Union during the Pierce Administration was the Northwest, and it need not surprise us to learn that Douglas, her mouthpiece, was the most ambitious leader of his party.

As compared with all former standards, the country of 1850-60 was exceedingly prosperous. A series of good crop years, the low tariff of the United States, and the free-trade policy of England stimulated the unprecedented commercial activity. The financial system was more stable than it had ever been before, and the inter-sectional trade was assuming proportions never dreamed of in the earlier days of the Republic. The manufactures of the East, which approximated $800,000,000 in value each year, were sold to the South in exchange for bills on Liverpool or London, or to the West in return for its grain and other foodstuffs. The banks and railroads brought all sections closer together, especially the East and the West; while the expanding merchant marine promised soon to give the United States the mastery of international commerce.

Thus the East had learned to prosper without a high tariff, and the South was voting for large subsidies to Eastern shipping. The West had found a way to develop her resources in spite of Southern and Eastern jealousy, and the laws of commerce were daily weakening the influence of state rights and sectional dislike. A new era had begun. Big business interests and great railway schemes had developed the corporation in its modern connotation; large harvests and a most enterprising industry were producing the capital for a new economic era; and all the social tendencies seemed to be working out a national life which was no longer parochial. It was the business of politics so to guide and regulate the varying activities of the people that sectional hatreds should pass away and that the resources of the country should not be squandered. Such was the task of Franklin Pierce, the new leader, who had not known personally the fears and dislikes of earlier days. But a country so rich and prosperous as the United States in 1850-60 had other interests, a social and intellectual life which must engage our attention before we take up the political evolution of the period.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

James Ford Rhodes's History of the United Slates, vols. I and II, already mentioned, remains the best treatment of the period of 1850-60. T. C. Smith's Parties and Slavery, in American Nation series (1906), and McMaster's History of the United States, vol. VIII, are very valuable. T. P. Kettell's Southern Wealth and Northern Profits (New York, 1860), is a suggestive study in sectionalism not too well known to scholars. But the Census Reports of 1850 and 1860; J. E. B. DeBow's Industrial Resources of the South and West (1857); and U.S. Senate Executive Documents, no. 38, part 1, 52d Cong., 1st Sess., supply the needful statistics on population, crops, manufactures, and finance. Freeman Hunt's Lives of American Merchants, 2 vols. (New York, 1858), gives some interesting information about leading ante-bellum merchants and manufacturers. And the volumes of Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, 1839-60, DeBow's Review, 1846-60, and the American Banker's Magazine for the same period are storehouses of the economic history of the time, K. Coman's Industrial History of the United States (1910); E. L. Bogart's The Economic History of the United States (1908); and Horace White's Money and Banking Illustrated by American History (1911), are the best special works in their several lines.



CHAPTER XI

AMERICAN CULTURE

Four fifths of the people of the United States of 1860 lived in the country, and it is perhaps fair to say that half of these dwelt in log houses of one or two rooms. Comforts such as most of us enjoy daily were as good as unknown. Even in the cities baths were exceedingly rare, while in the country the very decencies of life were neglected. Mosquitoes, flies, and other germ-harboring pests were regarded with equanimity, screens and disinfectants being used only in the best of hospitals. Malaria, typhoid, and other diseases claimed a large toll upon life each year. Physicians were less numerous than now and their art was only in its infancy. Trained nurses were just coming into their present role. Men regarded sickness as a visitation of Providence, and when the yellow fever epidemics seized the lower Southern cities, the losses and suffering were such as the present generation cannot appreciate.

Improvements in the matter of dress since 1830 were evident, but for the workaday world shirtsleeves, heavy brogan boots and shoes, and rough wool hats were, of course, the rule. Salt bacon and "greens," with corn bread and thin coffee, composed the common diet, though milk and butter relieved the monotonous fare for the farmers. "Hog-killing time" was always a happy season, for fresh meats were then abundant. Only in the larger towns did the people have fresh meats throughout the year. An explanation of the enthusiasm of ante-bellum people for political speaking is found in the fact that barbecues either preceded or followed the oratory; and to a man who had lived for months on fat bacon and corn bread a fresh roast pig was a delight which would enable him to endure long hours of poor speaking. But in the cities and towns there was, of course, a better life. Frame houses, two stories high, painted white and adorned with green window blinds, were everywhere in good form, except where men were able to build brick or stone mansions or maintain the establishments of wealthy ancestors. In the South it was still the custom to guard the entrances to great plantation houses with chiseled lions or crouching greyhounds; in the East more attention was paid to flowers and shrubbery. Wealthy families of the East sometimes maintained more than one house servant, but the greater number counted themselves eminently respectable with cook, maid, and house girl all in one, and the pay was one or two dollars a week. Liveries and silver plate persisted mainly in the very exclusive circles of Philadelphia and New York, in Washington, and on the great plantations.

Factory hands and common laborers worked twelve hours a day under circumstances and conditions hardly better than those of 1830, for labor unions had only begun their agitation, and foreign immigrants were always ready to accept work without asking any questions. One or two States had passed laws regulating hours of labor; but none had thought of the cost to the race of hard toil and long hours for women and children, and most men regarded the builder of a mill as a public benefactor because he furnished employment to just this element of the population. A man who had steady work on a farm was paid from ten to fifteen dollars a month with board; a day-laborer received a dollar a day without perquisites. Skilled laborers were paid two dollars a day in the South and slightly less in the East. The industrial belt continued to draw upon the country districts of the East, which, with the continued migration to the West, greatly impoverished the rural life and resulted in many abandoned farms. In the city housing conditions of the poor were worse if anything than they had been thirty years before. Crowded tenements, filthy streets, flies, and vermin abounded. Under the English common law accidents in the mills were matters of concern only to the employees, and the human toll of the railways was enormous. Years of toil, a worn-out frame, a dependent old age, and finally the potter's field was the weary round of life to the millions of dependent people who swarmed about the industrial centers.

Under the pressure of outside criticism and the influence of religion, the lot of the slave was mending, though there was room enough for improvement. From sun to sun was always the plantation day, and the weekly ration was a peck of meal and four pounds of meat—salted "side meat" packed in Cincinnati or Chicago. Each negro family had a single-room cabin, where man, wife, and a dozen children were tucked away in the loft or slept on the floor, though there was usually a bed for the parents. There was, however, always plenty of fresh air, a big open fireplace, and generally shade trees about the negro quarters, which conditions probably account for the lower mortality rate in the South than in the East. Of clothing the slave had only what was absolutely necessary, children being limited to a single garment which reached slightly below the knees. Against accidents and disease more precautions were taken by masters of plantations than by masters of mills, for the life of a negro man or child-bearing woman was equal to twelve hundred dollars. Heavy ditching in malarial swamps was therefore done by Irishmen, whose lives were less important to the planter. Physicians were promptly called for the slaves, and women in labor were generally cared for, because a negro baby was worth one hundred dollars.

If there was some public concern for the slaves in the fields and some beginnings of legislation on the conditions of employment in the industrial States, there was no thought for the isolated, lean, heavy-fisted farmer of the Southern up-country or the Western prairies. Land was still cheap, crops were increasing in bulk and value every year. Nor did the farmer desire the attentions of society, provided the new railroads were laid through his districts and rates were not too exorbitant. He worked hard for a few months, then rested till harvest time, after which he hunted and fished. During the long cold winters of the Northwest he sat in his chimney corner or tended his cattle. Few thought of fertilizing their land; terracing against rains and floods was almost unknown, and for most farmers plowing was done up and down the hills, which only hastened the washing-away process so characteristic of the Southern agriculture. Very few farmers thought it worth while to rotate their crops when fresh lands were to be had at a few dollars an acre. The area of the United States seemed limitless, and hardly a tenth of its arable land had ever been brought under cultivation. The inventions of 1840-50 enabled the Western farmer to grow larger crops, and harvest time was not so burdensome; corn-shellers and grain-fans shortened the hours of labor for the men. Sewing-machines and the revolving churns from the factories gave some relief to the women, whose round of labor, milking, cooking, cleaning, washing, and attending children, was still almost ceaseless. Even the picnics and barbecues offered little to them, for they must still prepare the great baskets of food and serve their lords and masters while they deliberated on "bleeding Kansas," new railroad schemes, or negro slavery.

Whether the lot of the landless and the less talented had improved since the day of Jackson would be hard to determine. If it was easier to purchase land, or if there was an actual increase in wages, the number of the poorer class of Americans had increased both actually and relatively, and thus competition operated to prevent improved housing and a better country life. Still the life of the great majority in the United States was less grinding than that of Europeans of the same class, and the opportunity for a poor man to rise in the social and economic scale was distinctly better. That is what made America the Mecca of so many thousands during the decade of 1850-60. Yet illiteracy and dependency, causes and results of poverty, were almost appalling. Georgia had a population of 43,684 white illiterates, to say nothing of the 500,000 blacks; Massachusetts had 46,262; Indiana, 60,943; Pennsylvania, 72,156, and North Carolina, 68,128. There were 101 persons in the jails of Georgia on June 1, 1860; Virginia had 189; Massachusetts, 1161, and Illinois, 485. In the open life of the South and West, where men could easily get to the land, there was little crime and jails were often empty; in the industrial belt the prisons were always occupied. In like manner and for the same reasons Southern and Western hospitals for the insane and homes for the poor often showed very small percentages of these unfortunates. Perhaps the unrelieved poverty of the industrial workers and the stress of uncertainty in the matter of employment made the differences. Certainly the weight of the old English common law system, adopted in all the States, bore hardly on the dependent classes of the East; and the courts were not loath to send undefended men to prison. In the South the worker was punished by his master on the plantation for all the minor offenses, and it was only free negroes and the poorer whites who were the subjects of the ordinary social discipline and punishment.

The abounding wealth and strenuous zest of American life were creating just those gradations in society and distinctions of caste against which constitutions and laws inveighed. On the broad basis of African slavery the enterprising Southerner had built and was now perfecting a social class hardly inferior to the aristocracies of Europe. Soft hands and exclusive manners were there as elsewhere in the world the evidences of a gentle life; sturdy personal independence and rough ways, here as in England, were the marks of middle-class training, through which recruits to the privileged order had generally come. Openly and on all proper occasions the Southerners announced the break-down of democracy and the benefits of a cultured elite; the few thousand "first families," who lived upon the incomes of plantations, spent their winters in New Orleans, their springs in Charleston, and their summers at the Virginia springs. Among these, tutors were engaged to train children, and every man had his valet, every lady her maid. Travel in Europe, sojourns at Newport and Saratoga, and acquaintance with the best hotels of Philadelphia and New York were common to this group of most attractive people. When Congress was in session, they dominated the social life of the capital, gave elaborate balls, and brought effective pressure to bear upon aspiring Eastern and Western public leaders. Douglas had married a beautiful North Carolina heiress, the wife of Jefferson Davis was the granddaughter of a governor of New Jersey, and even William H. Seward was strongly influenced by the graces of his planter friends. Senators, representatives, and judges of the federal courts owned estates in the lower South which yielded incomes ofttimes greater than their official salaries. The very flower and beauty of the land were Southern gentlemen like Robert E. Lee and Wade Hampton, or ladies like the sprightly Mrs. Chestnut or the genial Mrs. Pryor.

Nor did the commercial and industrial life of the East fail to produce a similar fruit. If the Eastern gentleman were less dependent on his valet and less averse to work with his hands, he was nevertheless a gentleman, and the chasm between him and the toiler in the mills was difficult to bridge. There was nowhere in the United States a more exclusive society than that in which the Danas and the Winthrops of Boston moved. And the New England elite were never so happy as when they could run off to England and frequent the dinners and receptions of the British aristocracy; both the manners and the ideals of the Eastern upper class resembled strikingly those of the "best people" of Old England. It was all in striking contrast to the ideals of the Puritans of old times, but it was natural. In New England, as in the South, democracy was flouted and a privileged position greatly prized. The old American "equality" was only skin deep, as any one would have recognized if he had attempted familiarities with either the Eastern or the Southern social leaders. The difference was that the one group lived in cities when they were at home, and the other in the country.

Nor was this American social life scorned by European noblemen. Charles Sumner was always welcome in the greatest houses of London, and the Slidells and the Masons of the South received no less flattering attentions from their European economic and social kinsmen. One of Bismarck's most intimate friends was John L. Motley, and the friendship had been contracted long before Motley had won fame as a historian. American heiresses had already found suitors among the British nobility. The kinship of Eastern social life with that of Europe was recognized, and the relations of the well-to-do at the North with the wealthy of the South were many and intimate. Thus in America as elsewhere talent, birth, and money produced social strata, and before 1860 the distinctions of class were only less sharply drawn here than in the older countries of the world.

But, next to the very necessaries of life, religion was the most important subject to Americans of 1860. The Puritan spirit, while losing some of its hold in New England, had captured the people of the rest of the country. Except as to the Catholics and the Episcopalians, all Americans were born, or thought themselves born, utterly depraved and weighted down with the sin of Adam and Eve, their "first parents," from which burden the only way of escape was through prayer and agony of soul. Even this prospect was denied to many, for some influential religious teachers urged that God could not hear the supplications of sinners. These must await the call of Heaven, and if this failed, they were bound for the "lake of fire," whence there was no return. The intelligent and well-informed spoke with all seriousness of "getting religion," and in the vast country districts the most suitable season for this was the hot July and August days. Revivals among nearly all the leading denominations were held at this time in the churches or under widespread arbors made from the branches of trees. The preaching and the singing were not unlike that which brought the Germans of the eighth century to the Roman communion. The other worlds were just two: one the city of the golden gates and pearly streets, the other the bottomless pit of liquid fire into which Satan would surely plunge all who failed to make their peace with God in this life. The old Puritan lines formerly learned by every child—

"God's vengeance feeds the flame With piles of wood and brimstone flood, That none can quench the same"—

represented to most people of the decade just preceding the Civil War all they said. Both old men and young children dreamed of the awful retribution which awaited them in the other world.

And there was a fiery zeal in the work of saving men's souls from the wrath to come which showed that it was no figurative faith which moved the preachers and their co-workers. A song sung by all ran in one of its favorite stanzas:—

"Must I be carried to the skies On flow'ry beds of ease, While others fought to win the prize And sailed through bloody seas?"

Excitement naturally overcame many, and they rushed forward to the mourner's benches in front of the altar and cried out for mercy, or silently prayed for days and weeks till the light "broke upon them" and they went forth shouting for joy. These then became exhorters, and moved among their friends in the congregation, begging them to yield their "proud and haughty spirits" ere it should be too late. At times scores of penitents would be on their knees in the spaces about the altar, others would be "laboring" with the sinners not yet stricken, and still others thanking God in loud voices for their delivery from sin and Satan, whom all regarded as an active demon always seeking whom he might destroy.

In the South the deism which had influenced the generation led by Washington and Jefferson had given way to the stern faith of the Calvinists, for whether one were Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, or Campbellite, the essentials of his religion were the same. Wealthy planters, small farmers, and negro slaves sought the salvation of their souls in the same churches and under the same preachers. In fact it was common for men to be told by their pastors that unless they were willing to sit down in heaven by the side of the "poor slave" they could not be saved, and the slave often begged his master to accept the terms of salvation. A few great planters who were not touched by the religious fervor of the time held aloof, and the poorer whites and the slaves came to accept the view that these were the rich men who could not be saved, and commonly said hell was their unavoidable portion.

In the East, save in the Unitarian and Episcopalian churches, there was the same religious realism. In the great revivals of 1857 earnest men and great congregations prayed aloud that God might convert the heretical Theodore Parker, or that, if he were not a subject of grace, as many believed he was not, he might be taken from this world, where he was doing infinite mischief. Of course he was to be consigned immediately to the "fiery furnace below." And the greatest of American preachers, Henry Ward Beecher, in the same revival, gathered about him the hard-headed business men of New York City and together they prayed that wicked playwrights and worldly-minded theater-goers might be brought to a realizing sense of the shame of their conduct, and that the houses of their frivolous vice might be converted into temples of Christian worship. Again, those who would not heed the solemn warnings of the pulpit were "given up," and the Heavenly Father was asked to remove them "hence."

The influence of this sense of the awfulness of the after life to those who might not be saved was far-reaching. The farmer, driven by the hard necessity of making a living for himself and family to remain away from church, meditated sorrowfully as he followed his plow, and often at the end of his furrow fell upon his knees and besought the Creator to save his undying soul and spare him the everlasting torture of the damned. A popular little gift book, published by the American Tract Society of New York, was entitled Passing Over Jordan, and on an early page we find the following typical lines:—

"My thoughts on awful subjects roll, Damnation and the dead: What horrors seize my guilty soul Upon a dying bed."

And a young woman who received this as a New Year's present was a perfectly normal girl of Cincinnati and the daughter of a prominent family there.

What was happening in the United States during the thirty years we are studying was the saving of the people from the rough and often coarse and sensual life of the frontier. Under conditions such as have been described the influence and power of the preacher in young America were extraordinary. And the clergy deserved the authority they exercised. Never before the war was a Methodist bishop even charged with immoral conduct. The standards of the Baptists and Presbyterians were equally high. The preachers who called men to repentance were beyond question of the highest character. Earnest, sincere, overwhelmed with the sense of their responsibility, they "preached the Word with power," and the Word was the Bible which all believed implicitly from cover to cover. It was not clear to preacher or congregation how God spoke to man first in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, then in the Greek of the New Testament, and finally in the Authorized Version of James I. But it mattered not; the Bible was inspired by the Heavenly Father, for it was so stated in Revelation, and a curse was held up for him who denied its truth or so much as removed one syllable or added a line. It was the authority of the Bible as preached by Martin Luther and John Calvin, and the interpreters of the Sacred Book were the clergy, not the Pope or some distant sacerdotal see.

Just how many people were members of the churches it would be very difficult accurately to determine. The Methodists of the South numbered nearly a million in 1860, those of the North were equally strong. The Baptists, North, South, and West, were nearly as numerous. The Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Christians (Campbellites) had each some hundreds of thousands of members. All the churches, including Catholics, offered seating accommodations for about 20,000,000 of the 31,000,000 people of the country; which is a large proportion. And from the census returns, it seems that church accommodations were always best and most plentiful in the older communities, the East having almost as many pews as there were people. The South could seat 6,500,000 worshipers,—that is, a little more than half of the population; the Northwest was able to accommodate only about 4,000,000.

With Protestant churches so powerful and their ministers so influential, it is only natural that the religious teachings of the time should have told in politics and the sectional struggle. The Southerners believed almost implicitly in the claim of their great Presbyterian preacher, B. M. Palmer, when he declared in 1860: "In this great struggle, we defend the cause of God and religion; it is our solemn duty to ourselves, to our slaves, to the world, and to Almighty God to preserve and transmit our existing system of domestic servitude, with the right, unchallenged by man, to go and root itself wherever Providence and Nature may carry it." Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, and all other important bodies of Christians in the South held and taught the same doctrine. In the Northwest there was some hesitation about going so far, but the majority undoubtedly believed with Dr. Nathan L. Rice, of Chicago, that slavery was divinely established and not to be disturbed by man. In the East some of the Unitarians taught abolition and supported Garrison and Phillips; more of the Congregationalists were of the same mind. But in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia the greater clergy had come to regret the former tendency to denounce slavery, and they were inclined to preach the doctrine that Providence had established slavery and that it should be left to Providence to remove it in due time. Only in the rural districts of the East, where the old New England spirit still flourished, was slavery declared to be "the awful curse." And here it was that the old sectional hatred was strongest. The churches and the clergy with all their influence had thus given up the problem of slavery, and their counsel and advice were to maintain the Union and to put down all sectional conflict. Nationalism with the South dominant was the meaning of this; nor do the election returns of 1852 and 1856 make a different showing.

Where religious influences were so potent, it was natural that the clergy should exert themselves for the education of the young. Yale College was a "school of the prophets" which sent out to the West the young preachers and teachers so much needed if Congregationalism was to hold its own in that region. Princeton was Presbyterian headquarters for both West and South, and few institutions have ever exerted a greater civilizing force in a new nation than that school of sternest theology. Dr. Charles Hodge was there a tower of orthodox and conservative strength which could be seen from afar. In numerous other institutions the Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Friends, and Campbellites trained their ministers and urged upon all the importance of education. At the University of Virginia there were chaplains maintained by the different denominations for the religious instruction of the students. The Methodists of Michigan regularly appointed a professor to the state university for the same purpose. Other state universities, like those of Indiana and North Carolina, were brought under practical denominational control through the zealous activity of Presbyterian presidents.

The education of the little children was, however, too much for the most zealous of religious organizations. Jefferson had set in motion influences which had greatly strengthened the cause of popular education in the South and West. But nowhere did the States prepare fully for the work. In the Northwest the public school lands were wasted by thoughtless or venal politicians, and in the older South the label, "school for the children of the poor," went far to defeat all efforts made by legislatures on behalf of good public school systems. In the period of 1840-50 Horace Mann revived the New England interest in education and laid the foundations for the school systems of to-day. Even so ardent a Southerner as William L. Yancey, of Alabama, became a disciple of the New England reformer, and tried to do a similar work in his State. In Indiana, Illinois, and the other Western States educational reforms followed. There were in consequence about 5,000,000 children in school in the year 1860. Of these the South had 796,000, the Northwest, exclusive of California, 2,005,196, and the East, 2,011,826; which shows that Southern public opinion had not yet been aroused to the importance of the subject. But the figures for illiteracy, already given, do not show a worse condition among the whites of the South than is shown in the Northwestern States.

If the returns for college education be taken, the balance among the sections is fairly reestablished. There were 25,882 college students in the South in 1860, and this does not take into account the large number of Southern students in Eastern institutions like Princeton and Harvard. There were at the same time 16,959 college students in the Northwest, and 10,449 in the East.

Between education and the attainments of science and invention there is some connection, though genius often defies all conventional methods of instruction. In addition to the epoch-making inventions of McCormick and his competitors, Samuel F. B. Morse had perfected his electric telegraph, which was in operation in most of the countries of Europe before 1860. Richard M. Hoe revolutionized newspaper publishing in the late forties by his rotary printing-press, which put out thousands of copies of a paper in an hour. Nor was Elias Howe's sewing-machine any less of a wonder when it came into use about 1850. Draper and Morse's new photography, Thurber's typewriter, Woodruff's sleeping-car, and many other marvelous contrivances of the same period showed the fertility of the American inventive genius.

In scientific research the United States could not present so many evidences of her success, though in 1860 Alexander Dallas Bache, the head of the Coast Survey, was counted one of the leading scientists of his time, and Louis Agassiz, the Swiss-American naturalist, was teaching now in Charleston, now in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, and beginning the great work, Contributions to the Natural History of the United States, which his son, Alexander, was to complete. Joseph Henry, the first head of the Smithsonian Institution, was equally well known, and he and Professor Bache were the backbones of the American National Academy of Science, just beginning its beneficent work. Silliman, of Yale, and Mitchell, of the University of North Carolina, were the best-known geologists.

Nor was art degenerating in this period of great prosperity. Hiram Powers, of Cincinnati, the ablest sculptor of his country, was greatly hurt because Congress refused him the contract for the decorative work on the magnificent Capitol in Washington, at last nearing completion. His aspirations were not unreasonable, for his Greek Slave, a beautiful work in marble, had captured the imagination of both American and foreign critics in 1851. Still, Thomas Crawford, his successful competitor, was a sculptor of real gifts, as one may see in his statues of Jefferson and Patrick Henry in Richmond. The work of Allston, Sully, and De Veaux, the painters, was being improved upon by Chester Harding, Eastman Johnson, and William Morris Hunt, all influenced, however, by Turner of England, the Duesseldorf (Germany) and Barbizon (France) schools. There were now many wealthy business men in the country, and thus artists had a fair chance of a livelihood while their ideals and technique were developing. In Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were the beginnings of the museums which were a few years later to become schools of art of no mean importance.

But the flower of American culture was its literature. To be sure Edgar Allan Poe, whose Raven and short stories were ere long to give him the first rank among all American men of letters, had been suffered to starve in the midst of New York's millions in 1849, and Hawthorne found it very difficult to find the means of a meager livelihood in Massachusetts. If the Raven and the Scarlet Letter were born unwelcome, Ralph Waldo Emerson was making a living as author and sage of his generation, and there were others of the Transcendentalists—Thoreau, the woodland poet, Margaret Fuller, the woman knight-errant, recently drowned at sea, and Amos Bronson Alcott—whose writings appeared in standard editions and who lived by their pens. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a professor at Harvard till 1854, though savagely criticized by Poe and Margaret Fuller, had won the American heart in his Village Blacksmith and Evangeline. He scored his greatest triumph in Miles Standish in 1858. And another Harvard professor, Oliver Wendell Holmes, was just coming into a national reputation in 1860 by his Autocrat of the Breakfast Table and other similar writings.

A more radical poet was John Greenleaf Whittier, contributor to the National Era, a radical anti-slavery journal which first gave publicity to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous Uncle Tom's Cabin. Whittier's Ichabod, which appeared in 1850, and is already quoted in these pages, gave its author a devoted following among the radicals and hastened Webster to his grave. Mrs. Stowe's work was perhaps the most influential book ever written by an American, though it hardly ranks as literature. Of a similarly intense nature was James Russell Lowell, whose Biglow Papers of 1846 to 1857 unmercifully lampooned the party which waged the war on Mexico and ridiculed the leaders of the South and West. Succeeding Longfellow at Harvard, Lowell helped to establish in 1857 the Atlantic Monthly, which still remains the best of American magazines.

There was nowhere else in the country such a school of literary men as this of New England, though in Charleston William Gilmore Simms was still publishing historical novels, espousing the cause of Southern literature in Russell's Magazine, and stimulating the ambitions of young men. One of his pupils, Henry Timrod, whose At Magnolia Cemetery is likely to prove immortal, was worthy to be compared with Poe; and another, Paul Hamilton Hayne, certainly deserved a higher rank and a better fortune than either of these struggling poets has been accorded. But perhaps the most original writings of the time were those of a certain group of obscure men in Georgia and the lower South. A. B. Longstreet, the author of Georgia Scenes, William Tappan Thompson, of Major Jones's Courtship, and Joseph B. Baldwin, of Flush Times in Alabama and Mississippi, struck a rich vein of ludicrous humor which Mark Twain worked out after the war.

In Richmond the Southern Literary Messenger was still the clearing-house for Southern writers, and De Bow's Review was eminent in the field of social and economic studies. New York City had, however, become the Mecca of the men who had manuscripts to submit. There the Harper Brothers published their Harper's Magazine, which went to 150,000 subscribers, we are told, each month, and the Knickerbocker Magazine, distinguished by the contributions of Washington Irving, the Nestor of American writers, tried to keep pace. Both the Harpers and the Putnams did an enormous business in books of all kinds, now that so many Americans had grown rich. Walter Scott's novels were imported for the South in carload lots, while Dickens's numberless volumes found ready sale in the East, thus showing the different tastes of the sections.

And the historians had increased their vogue with a people just beginning to realize that they had ancestors and taking a becoming pride in their early history. Bancroft's History of the United States was sold in all sections in a way that would astound present-day historians. Richard Hildreth, a sturdy partisan, added his six volumes to Bancroft's in 1849-54 by way of antidote; and George Tucker, of the University of Virginia, still further "corrected" the history of his country, the better to suit the tastes of Southerners. John L. Motley published his Rise of the Dutch Republic in 1856 at his own expense, and suddenly found himself one of the foremost historians of his time, his work being quickly translated into all the important languages of Europe. William H. Prescott, an older man and a greater historian, already well known for his Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, gave to the printer his Reign of Philip II in 1855-58, and easily maintained his supremacy in the field of history.

It was an aspiring generation that produced Poe, Hawthorne, Lowell, and the rest, and if one considers the character of American culture, its lack of unity, and the still youthful nature of its people, it is easy to understand the pride in its budding art and maturer literature, the sensitiveness to foreign criticism, the provincialism which demands attention and a "place in the sun." Carlyle's scorn and Macaulay's contempt were indeed as irritating as they were unjust, for America had gone a long way since the rough backwoodsman, Andrew Jackson, came to the Presidency by almost unanimous consent in 1829.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

James Ford Rhodes in his History of the United States, vol. I, chap. IV, gives an account of social conditions in the South just prior to the war and, in vol. III, chap. XII, there is a similar picture of conditions in the North. McMaster's last volume describes the life of the people for this period. But I have found most valuable information in works of travel like F. L. Olmsted's A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (1856) and A Journey Through the Back Country (1863), W. H. Russell's My Diary North and South (1863), Sir Charles Lyell's A Second Visit to the United States (1849), Peter Cartwright's Autobiography (1856), and James Dixon's Personal Narrative (1849); and in John Weiss's Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker (1864); Beecher and Scoville's Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (1888); W. E. Hatcher's Life of J. B. Jeter (1887); T. C. Johnson's The Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer (1906); and the valuable American Church History series (1893-97). On American sculpture Lorado Taft's American Sculpture (1903), and Charles H. Caffin's American Masters of Sculpture (1903), are useful and discriminating. Caffin has also written The Story of American Painting (1907), which is perhaps the best short account of the subject. For a good view of the literary and publishing interests of 1860, W. P. Trent's A History of American Literature (1903) is most valuable, and W. B. Cairns's A History of American Literature (1912) is likewise important. George H. Putnam's George Palmer Putnam: A Memoir (1912) and J. H. Harper's The House of Harper (1912) give important information about the rise of the publishing houses. Of course De Bow's Review, Resources of the South and West, and the Reports of the Census for 1850 and 1860 are indispensable.



CHAPTER XII

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

If the two preceding chapters have shown that the larger social and economic interests tended strongly toward the elimination of sectional hostility, political conditions and party vows gave even stronger assurances that there should be no more conflicts like those of 1833 and 1850. Yet there was one section of the country which was a sort of storm center, the Northwest. There a wide expanse of rich lands held by Indians, a rapidly increasing population, and great annual harvests of wheat and corn, selling at high prices, created a condition not unlike that of the lower South when Jackson became President. Removal of the Indians from the fertile areas of the Nebraska country, the creation of new Territories, and the building of railroads connecting the wheat and corn areas with Chicago and the Eastern markets were the demands of the Northwest in 1853, and a really great party leader would have seen the problem and his duty.

But Pierce was not a great leader. In the make-up of his Cabinet he chose William L. Marcy, of New York, for Secretary of State, James Campbell, of Pennsylvania, for Postmaster-General, and Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, for Attorney-General, all of whom were close political allies of the South. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, became Secretary of War, and James C. Dobbin, of North Carolina, Secretary of the Navy. Both of these were extreme pro-slavery men. From the West, James Guthrie, of Kentucky, and Robert McClelland, of Michigan, were taken into the President's Council, the one to be Secretary of the Treasury and the other the head of the Department of the Interior. Although Douglas had been the strongest candidate for the nomination for the Presidency before the recent Democratic Convention, neither he nor any of his friends was selected. Nor did it seem wise to those who were then shaping the destinies of the country to conciliate the still powerful anti-slavery element of the East.

Looking backwards the new Administration found three lines of procedure open to it, all suggested by President Polk in his later messages to Congress. One of these was the closer attachment of California to the rest of the country, another was the purchase of Cuba as a makeweight to the growing Northwest, and the third was the rapid expansion of American commerce by federal subsidies to shipping and the opening of new channels of trade.

To carry into effect the first of these, James Gadsden, an able railroad president of South Carolina, was sent to Mexico to purchase a large strip of land lying along the southern border of New Mexico and thus make easy the building of a national railway from Memphis to San Francisco, for the lowest passes over the Rocky Mountains were in this region. Gadsden returned in the autumn successful. For $10,000,000 he had secured 50,000 square miles of territory, and the way was open for the Government to lay its plans for the greatest undertaking ever proposed by the most latitudinarian politicians. Davis, hitherto an extreme States-rights leader and disciple of Calhoun, worked out the program. The constitutional authority for building a Pacific railroad was deduced from the "war powers" of the Federal Government, and, though it was not definitely stated that the road should pass through the recent annexation, it was commonly understood that such was the purpose of the President and that the lower South was to be the economic and social beneficiary of the great improvement. Arkansas, Texas, and California were willing and anxious to build the parts of the road that passed through their territory. With the exception of a group of Gulf-city representatives and some of the up-country Democrats of the older South, the leaders of the party approved the plan, and Pierce made the Pacific railroad the burden of his first annual message to Congress. Congress voted the money for the preliminary survey of five routes to the Pacific, and confided the work to Jefferson Davis, the recognized leader of the Administration. The people of the country, long familiar with the arguments of Asa Whitney and others in favor of such an undertaking, made no objection, though men of political foresight saw the far-reaching purposes of the scheme.

To effect the second object of the Democratic program, the purchase of Cuba, Pierre Soule, of Louisiana, was sent to Spain. Soule was one of the most ardent of Southern expansionists, and his mission was not relished at Madrid any more than it was approved by conservative Eastern Democrats. In support of the new Spanish Minister, John Y. Mason, of Virginia, and James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, both former members of the Polk Cabinet, were sent as Ministers to France and England respectively. Soule made little progress till the Black Warrior, an American coasting vessel, was seized in 1854 by the Spanish authorities in Havana and searched in the expectation of finding evidence that the people of the United States were still assisting the Cuban insurrectionists. No proof was discovered, and the people of the country, especially those of the South, were greatly excited; for a time it seemed that war would ensue. Davis and Soule pressed the case upon the President, at the risk of war and perhaps in the hope that war would follow and that thus Cuba, so long coveted, would fall into the lap of the United States. But Marcy, though ambitious of annexing Cuba, was hard pressed by Eastern public opinion, and he persuaded Pierce to recall his hasty minister. This was not done, however, until the three ministers concerned had met at Ostend in the autumn of 1855 and published to the world the manifesto which declared it to be the purpose of their Government not to allow any other European country to get possession of Cuba, and which further stated that the United States was always ready to pay a fair price for the island. A more moderate man succeeded Soule, but the subject was pressed at Madrid with increasing persistence during the remainder of that and the next Administration.

The third item of the Democratic policy, the expansion of American commerce, was furthered by a continuation of the subsidies to steamship companies like the Collins line, which put upon the ocean many vessels of the best and largest build. Even more was planned in offering Robert J. Walker the mission to China, and the appointment of Townsend Harris, a wealthy New York merchant, as consul to Ningpo, Japan. Walker declined, but Harris accepted, and within two years, with the assistance of Commodore Perry, he succeeded in opening the hermit kingdom to the civilization and commerce of the United States. It was the beginning of modern Japan, and it marked a new stage in the development of American trade in the Orient. In all these measures Pierce met with some opposition in the East, particularly in the rough handling of the Cuban question; and there was much dislike of the Southern filibustering against Lower California and, especially at the close of the Administration, against Nicaragua, which was seized by William Walker, the Tennessee imperialist already mentioned, and proclaimed in 1856 a slave State. But the opposition was rather to the spirit and tone of things, and the very plain subserviency of the President to Southern wishes, than against expansion as such. The real resistance to Pierce came on another matter and in the most unexpected way, in the struggle over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.

The stone rejected of the builders really became the head of the corner, for in spite of all that the Pierce Administration could do, the problem of the Northwest, which Douglas personified, became the bone of contention between the sections, and again, as in 1850, the South, the East, and the Northwest struggled for supremacy. When the Davis plans for a southern Pacific railroad were maturing, Senator Douglas, the head of the Senate Committee on Territories, was preparing to renew his six-year fight for the opening of the wide Nebraska hinterland of his section. The squatters of the Kansas and the Platte River Valleys were already confronted with hostile Indians who protested against the unlawful seizure of their lands. And now that wheat and corn were becoming great staple crops, the Northwestern pioneers were loudly demanding that the natives should not be permitted to cumber the ground. They must move on to the arid desert beyond or be carried into the Southern country, which Davis, as we have seen, was trying to open to Southern pioneers. It was a real conflict of interest between the lower South and the Northwest, and in order to win, the Northwestern politicians must find allies in the East as Clay had done in 1825-36, though Douglas as an "old-line" Democrat could not so readily see this.

He resorted to management and finesse. He found two delegates from Nebraska in Washington in December, 1853, one from what was soon to be Kansas, the other from the pioneers of Nebraska. It was natural, therefore, for him to change his Nebraska bill of the former sessions into a bill for the creation of two Territories, with the two rival delegates as their prospective spokesmen in Congress. Besides, Douglas, who was a consummate politician, would have two more loyal followers and two other embryo States in his wing of the Democratic party.



Hence Douglas prepared for the removal of the Indians, for the creation of two Territories instead of one, and he enlisted in his cause the Senators and Representatives of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, by showing them that their own schemes for the granting of public lands to assist in the building of railroads would be furthered by their voting for the opening of Nebraska. Every economic and political instinct of the people of the Northwest tended to enlist them in the cause of Douglas and Nebraska. And it was known to most of the Chicago public and big business men that a Pacific railroad was to be laid from Council Bluffs, a point already in railroad connection with Chicago, to San Francisco, in the event of the rapid development of the Platte River country. But St. Louis and Missouri leaders would oppose this because they had been fighting since 1848 to get a railway to the Pacific directly from Kansas City.

There was, however, a vigorous pro-slavery party in Missouri, led by David Atchison. This party had overthrown Benton, and their first purpose was the making of Kansas a slave State. It was the western half of Missouri which now controlled the State, and the commercial element of St. Louis, to which the Pacific railroad was so attractive, was in the minority. Douglas won Atchison and western Missouri to his plans by holding out to them that their contention, as old as Missouri itself, that the Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional, might be granted by Congress. When this was fully appreciated, Kentucky and Tennessee leaders became interested. Southern newspapers took up the discussion and Douglas immediately became a statesman. Even Jefferson Davis was led to commit himself to the new Kansas-Nebraska Bill when the anti-slavery men of the East began to attack it. And on Sunday, January 22, Pierce promised Douglas the official support of the Administration.

The bill now provided for two Territories west of the Missouri River, for the formal repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and for the adoption of the old Cass doctrine of popular sovereignty, whereby the settlers in the new communities were to determine for themselves whether they would have slaves or not. If any dispute arose as to this a test was to be made of the question in the United States courts. This looked like a surrender of a large part of the public domain to the South, and the repeal of the semi-sacred Compromise was perhaps the boldest proposition that had ever been offered in Congress. Still the great purpose was the development of the Northwest, and wise public men might have seen that the populous free States of the Northwest would inevitably win and make the 400,000 square miles of Nebraska free territory; and if the railroad bills which Douglas supported and tied to his main measure by all kinds of promises passed, the supremacy of the Northwest would be certain.

But the weakness of popular government is the fact that public men are seldom strong enough to deny themselves the opportunity of an appeal to the people on a side issue, if such appeal promises political victory. The day that Douglas introduced his bill, there appeared in the New York papers, The Appeal of the Independent Democrats, signed by Senators Chase and Sumner and the Free-Soil members of the House. It was an able protest against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and a denunciation of the "unscrupulous politician" who made this surrender of national and free States rights in order to secure for himself the coveted Presidency. The essential purpose of the Douglas legislation, the rapid upbuilding of the Northwest and the blocking of the Davis plans for a Pacific railroad, were entirely overlooked. A wave of excitement swept over the East and the New England colonies of the Northwest. Petitions poured into Congress, meetings were held to denounce Douglas as a second Benedict Arnold, and he was burned in effigy by thousands who never took the trouble to read the Kansas-Nebraska Bill or seriously contemplated its effects. In Congress Chase, Sumner, Seward, and even moderates like Edward Everett denounced the ambitious politician from Illinois who had dared to "sell the birthright of the free States for a mess of pottage." It was a revival of the sectional hatred, as well as of the fears of the aggressive planters who had enticed Douglas to go one step farther than he had intended.

Though the South had begun to fear the consequences of popular sovereignty and to see that Douglas was only making the more certain the power of his group of States, its spokesmen felt compelled to support him in a fight against abolitionists and anti-slavery agitators. Alexander Stephens, an able Whig leader of Georgia, and most other members of that party in the South, gave Douglas hearty support. The struggle developed into a fight between the East and the South. A great many of the followers of Douglas were won away from the original program when it seemed a mere question of slavery extension, and the Democrats of the Northwest divided sharply. After four months of angry debate and unprecedented log-rolling the bill became law, and the President promptly organized Kansas and Nebraska as Territories. Members of Congress went home after the adjournment to face their constituents, and a most exciting campaign followed. In Wisconsin and Michigan a new party was organized. Its appeal was to the fundamental American doctrines that all men are equal and that no great interests should rule the country. It received immediate support in the two States mentioned, and in all the counties of the Northwest where the New England influence was predominant, in northern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Naturally the remnants of the old party organizations, the Whigs and the Free-Soilers, lent enthusiastic support.

Chase and Sumner had called into being a new idealist movement resembling that which had overwhelmed the Federalists in 1800, and a group of new leaders, soon to become famous, emerged. In addition to the well-known names already mentioned, there now appeared the kindly, shrewd Abraham Lincoln, of Kentucky and Illinois; J. W. Grimes arose in Iowa to threaten a Democratic machine which had never known defeat; Zachary Chandler, of Michigan, was making ready the stroke which was to unhorse the great and popular Cass; and Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio, joined Chase and Giddings, thus making up the trio which was to rule that State for years to come. The young and vigorous Republican party of the Northwest, guided by this company of ambitious "new" politicians, readily effected the union of East and Northwest which Adams and Clay had long striven in vain to perfect. The work of Chase, Seward, Lincoln, and Sumner of these years paralleled that of Calhoun, Jackson, and Benton in 1828; and as a result the Democrats lost their hold on the legislatures of nearly all the States above the Ohio and the Missouri Rivers, and their overwhelming majority in the Federal House of Representatives disappeared as if overnight.

While the new Republican party, almost wholly sectional in its origin and perhaps in its purposes, was winning leadership in the country, the more conservative Whigs of the East sought to affiliate with a small organization of nativists who called themselves Americans and whose slogan was "America for Americans." Foreigners should be barred from citizenship and Catholics should be ostracized. In the South most followers of Clay and in the East many admirers of Webster avoided a complete surrender to the Democrats by stopping in this halfway house. The "Know-Nothings," as the party was called in derision of their failure to answer questions about their platform, gained so many followers from the dissatisfied elements of the older parties that in 1855 it seemed likely they would sweep the country. In Virginia they made their most spectacular campaign. Henry A. Wise, a Whig who had gone into the Democratic party with Stephens, was their greatest opponent, and in the gubernatorial campaign of 1855 he completely discomfited them; in Georgia they likewise lost their contest. The South was accepting the Democratic leadership and becoming solid, as Calhoun had prayed that it might become. In the East, Seward and Weed persuaded most of the Whigs to unite with the Republicans, and when the first national convention of the Americans met in 1856, it was clear that its leaders could not hold the Southern and Eastern wings together on the slavery question. The anti-slavery Americans bolted, and the remnant which remained nominated ex-President Fillmore, who in the succeeding election received a majority in only one State, Maryland, though his popular vote was nearly a million. The parties of the future were plainly the Democratic, Southern, pro-slavery, and well organized, and the Republican, Northern, we may now say, anti-slavery, and also well organized.