By accident, on October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered America. His purpose in undertaking his famous expedition was to prove that by sailing west one could reach India and the Far East, those fabled lands so excitingly described by overland travelers. Instead, his voyage brought him to the shores of a new world. We cannot know for certain whether Columbus ever suspected - either on thi…
It was Adams' misfortune to be the first President with a vigorous party opposition. The Republicans, who had taken shape as a group in the aftermath of the debates between Hamilton and Jefferson, were able by 1796 not only to mount a near-successful challenge in the Electoral College, but also to gain dominance in the House of Representatives. Adams and his party lived with the uncomfortable know…
Intra-Party Conflict. Of the Federalist leaders only John Marshall, soon to be appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by Adams, had opposed the Alien and Sedition Acts (though Hamilton had given them only qualified support, suspecting that their political consequences were apt to go against the Federalists). But the semblance of unity which this gave the Federalists was an illusion. Even as …
American historians have often called the election of Thomas Jefferson a "revolution." It scarcely qualifies for so emphatic a description. As Hamilton predicted, Jefferson as President was very much inclined to temporize, to accept the established order. Once in office, he hastened to assure his Federalist opponents that they had no need to fear for the future. "All . . . will bear in mind this s…
An even more immediate enemy of the triumphant Jeffersonians was the Federal judiciary. In the waning months of the old order, the Federalists had passed the Judiciary Act of 1801, which created twenty-three new judicial offices and substantially altered the judicial system. It reduced the Supreme Court to five members, and relieved the justices from the onerous task of circuit-riding. In the futu…
The Closing of the Port of New Orleans. Jefferson had long dreamed of an agrarian republic whose boundaries would expand to the western oceans. This expansion would secure vast acreages with which to endow future generations of farmers. It would also eliminate the danger of America's becoming involved in the embroilments that shook the peace of Europe. Nevertheless, the territories west of the Mis…
The prominent public man who retired to Monticello in 1809, at the age of sixty-six, had had his fill of politics. No longer obliged to accommodate his principles to necessity, he devoted his time to the management of his private affairs and to private comments on the course of the world. "I am tired of practical politics," he mourned, "and . . . the total banishment of all moral principle from th…
The so-called "Era of Good Feelings" opened with war and closed with the collapse of the Jeffersonian party. The era marked the emergence of an America self-assured in its foreign relations, dedicated to the politics of universal enfranchisement, and stirring with dynamic capitalism. A superficial glance would seem to confirm the idea that all was tranquil as the Americans waxed fat in their bound…
Florida. The war of expansion in the North and South had ended without expansion. The military power of Britain had put Canada beyond American grasp, but the weakness of Spain made another effort to secure East Florida attractive. The successful seizure of West Florida had been preceded by Congress' issuance of the No-Transfer Resolution of January 15, 1811. It had pointedly declared: Taking into …
The Growth of Latin-American Independence. James Monroe had watched with deep sympathy the struggle of the Latin-American countries for independence. It was a clear identification of Latin-American aspirations with those of his own nation. John Quincy Adams, his Secretary of State, viewed developments in Latin America differently. The restoration of peace in Europe posed the dire possibility of a …
Between 1803 and 1853, the United States extended its physical boundaries from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, and the American people settled the Ohio, Mississippi, and lower Missouri Valleys. The lure of cheap land coupled with a transportation revolution provided the incentive for resettling and made vast migrations possible. And as the Western population grew, it subtly disoriented…
Federal Land Policies. Even before the Constitution had been composed, the Northwest Ordinance provided for the steady organization and admission into the Union of western territories as states. Subsequently, the federal government expanded the agencies through which to dispose of its lands, altered policy so as to attract the maximum number of purchasers, and worked to minimize difficulties with …
The First Bank of the United States. In 1811 the charter of the First Bank of the United States expired. After a desultory debate in Congress, efforts to renew the charter were defeated. The United States was obliged at the outset of the War of 1812 to deal with the many state and private banks that were eager to assume the functions of the defunct First Bank - especially the functions of deposit.…
Cotton Culture in the South. Rarely has a technological innovation influenced the course of a region's history more profoundly than did the invention of the cotton gin in 1794. It is doubtful whether slavery could have remained economically viable without it. Most certainly it shaped the course of Southern history, making the South the pre-eminent supplier of raw cotton for the swiftly expanding t…
Opposition to Adams. The clamor against Adams brought together a group of men in search of a leader. Prominent among them was Martin Van Buren, who in New York State had fought against debt imprisonment and for extension of the suffrage. An articulate but opportunistic advocate of the small farmer and the poor and a leading spokesman for Crawford, he had determined to destroy Adams although he had…
Inauguration day, March 4, 1829, saw an unprecedented tumult in Washington. A horde of office-seekers besieged the President-elect in his hotel and pursued him into the White House. Untold thousands of plain citizens had come for a look at the new President, whose military prowess had already made him a myth. A leading society matron recalled the day in vivid detail: Orange punch by barrels full w…
Bank Policy. The Second Bank of the United States had been chartered in 1816 for a period of twenty years. Despite the vagaries of its first years, the appointment of Nicholas Biddle to its presidency in 1823 made it a mainstay of the national banking system. Since it was permitted to issue up to $35,000,000 in notes that were receivable for federal government dues, it brought into effect a consid…
The Tariff of 1832. John Quincy Adams had earned a unique distinction after his departure from the presidency when on November 1, 1830, the constituents of his home district elected him to the House of Representatives. As chairman of the Committee on Manufactures, it was his responsibility to draw up a new tariff. Far from sharing the protectionist views of Clay, Adams agreed with the administrati…
As the nullification crisis waned, Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun entered into an alliance of convenience. The force that united them was "King Andrew," whose effective extension of executive power seemed to them to threaten the proper balance of legislative and executive relations. The Democratic Party. Under the shrewd management of Martin Van Buren, now Vice-President of the United States, a di…
The Heir. Martin Van Buren had earned as a result of his political machinations the sobriquet of Little Magician. Short, plump, and smiling, his tact and suave manners made him a leading social figure in Washington. Several Whigs noted that in spirit, if not in politics, he was one of them. But his pleasant qualities were balanced by a multitude of defects. Some Democratic opponents charged that h…
The Constitution had been composed in order to establish a more nearly perfect Union. It had attempted to resolve the competing authority of federal and state government through compromise, by assigning to each an ill-defined sphere of power. The result had been to leave both teetering on the edge of indecision or threatening dispute. The Union, created by compromise, sought to resolve continuing …
Polk's Policies. The South thought that Polk had been elected by its own votes and it meant to have a full reward. Under the guidance of Tyler and Calhoun, a joint resolution inviting Texas to join the Union passed Congress. The day before Polk's inauguration, the invitation was forwarded to Austin, Texas. This action permitted the taciturn, determined Polk to divert his energy to completing his o…
The offer of statehood to Texas hastened conflict with Mexico. The southern republic, ridden by debt and internal corruption, had nevertheless resolved to fight the moment Texas and the United States consummated annexation with the entrance of American troops into the new state. Invasion of Mexico. To meet concentrations of some 8,000 Mexican troops on the Rio Grande, Polk ordered General Zachary…
The Mexican War was officially ended. Like most wars, however, it had generated problems and raised troublesome issues which could not be resolved merely by the ratification of a peace treaty. Those which had now been raised by the war with Mexico were to propel the nation to a sectional crisis. Many people would later recollect that opponents of the war had called Polk "The Hangman of the Confede…
It is fair to say that reform has been to America what revolution has been to Europe; and the fundamental mythology of American reform movements, like the mythology of European revolution, has remained remarkably stable through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the United States has had to struggle to keep its nearly perfect society pure, and to strive for a fuller perfection of its society.…
Religion and Education. Education at the beginning of the nineteenth century was firmly founded on religious precepts. The young student learned in his primer that "In Adam's Fall We Sinned All" and that "The idle Fool is whipt at School." Guilt and punishment were intertwined. Education, however, was almost exclusively the prerogative of boys; girls learned just enough so that they could copy a f…
The Early Status of Women. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a woman's place was almost exclusively in the home, though even before the Revolution there had been some who voiced discontent with their status. Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams and mother of John Quincy, had warned her husband in the days immediately preceding the Revolution that "if particular care and attention are not pa…
Early Antislavery Agitation. Of all the varieties of reform agitation initiated before the Civil War, none revealed more fully the nature of the reformer, or had a more powerful impact upon the history of the United States, than the movement for the abolition of slavery. Throughout the eighteenth century, constant and sharp attacks were made upon the institution. Two Quakers, John Woolman and Anth…
For good or for ill, ante-bellum reformers had defined the dimensions of the abuses that marred the American dream. They compelled the nation to look upon social injustice and they proposed solutions. They refused to allow the American conscience to continue its undisturbed sleep. They delivered a manifesto of conscience which stated that the abuses of society were the responsibility of the indivi…
In the mid-nineteenth century the growing industrial revolution pointed up the existence of two "nations" within each of the more progressive national states. In 1845, Benjamin Disraeli described the two figurative nations in England as being founded, one on industry, urbanization, and the exploitation of the working classes, the other on agriculture, the farmhouse and village, and established rel…
Changes in Northern Agriculture. By 1860, the output of American factories, mills, shops, and mines exceeded in value that of agriculture. Almost eighty per cent of all such industry was concentrated in the North. An extraordinary growth of wheat and corn production had occurred on the Midwestern prairies. As the locus of breadstuff agriculture shifted westward, the farm implement industry swiftly…
The key to the development of the American economy had become the railroad. Where scarcely a mile of track had existed in 1830, more than 30,000 miles crisscrossed the nation in 1860. To a considerable extent this leap in construction had resulted from the desire of various cities to secure to themselves the trade of the surrounding countryside. The unfortunate result was a variety of railroad gau…
Immigration. All Americans, with the possible exception of Indians, have one thing in common: either they are immigrants or the descendents of immigrants. From its very beginnings, America has been the terminus of a long series of migrations; from all over the world, men have always looked to America as a haven in which to escape their problems - social, religious, economic, and political. Until t…
The disintegration of the traditional parties during the 1850s signaled the final bankruptcy of sectional compromise. More than once the politicians had negotiated a settlement between the sections, but from 1854 they would struggle without success to resolve the slavery dispute. Everyone knew that the issue of slavery had to be removed from the realm of politics but no one knew how to do it. The …
The Election of 1856. By the time of the 1856 election, the political problems the republic faced had reached an impasse which seemed to bar any solution. The political flux of the decade had disrupted the normal party organizations as sectional ties came into conflict with political loyalties. The voter in 1856 was offered a choice among the Know-Nothings, the newly formed Republican Party, and t…
Lincoln and Douglas. Douglas, aware that he had made mortal enemies among both Republicans and Buchanan Democrats, reluctantly accepted the English Bill. For a time, when the fight with Buchanan had been hottest, some Republicans had proposed that Douglas be made their candidate for re-election as Senator from Illinois. But he refused to make a final break with the Democratic Party, rejecting all …
Time and again Southern spokesmen had threatened to secede; in the course of the 1860 campaign they had singled out the election of a "black Republican" as a sufficient cause. If the South failed to act now, its threats in the future would be as wind among dry, fallen leaves. The Confederacy. When the South Carolina legislature convened to elect a new governor, outgoing Governor Gist, bent upon se…
The Renaissance. As the great Swiss historian Jakob Burckhardt observed, the Renaissance "first gave the highest development to individuality, and then led the individual to the most zealous and thorough study of himself in all forms and under all conditions." It was this search that led to the Renaissance concern with new techniques in the arts and sciences, and manifested the willingness of men …
On February 11, Lincoln started eastward from Springfield. As he traveled, he patiently constructed a cabinet which included all his major rivals for the Republican nomination in 1860. William Seward headed the State Department; Salmon P. Chase, the Treasury Department; Simon Cameron, the War Department; and Edward Bates received the Attorney Generalship. News of a plot to assassinate Lincoln as h…
A civil war is, perhaps, the most tragic of wars. Within what has been a single nation, brother may fight brother, son may attack father, and friend may inflict wounds upon friend. The devastation, both physical and psychic, is borne by a single people. And when the war is ended, a single people know at the same time the triumph of victory and the despair of defeat. Of all the wars America has fou…
At the outbreak of the conflict neither side anticipated a drawn-out war. The initial willingness of the North to accept ninety-day enlistments gives some idea of the optimism that permeated the thinking of both sides. Each side thought that it would win, and that a single magnificent victory (such as the capture of the enemy capital) would suffice to cause its opponent to surrender. Each side als…
Any chance for a final victory escaped the grasp of the Confederacy in 1863. The Union had resolved to press the fight no matter how long it took or how much it cost. Vicksburg. Through the winter of 1863, Grant maneuvered to capture the Southern fortress at Vicksburg. After marching his army along the swampy west bank of the Mississippi to the south of the city in early May of 1863, Grant thrust …
Lincoln's Second Inaugural. At the very moment that the Civil War was ending, a new, overwhelming tragedy struck the nation. President Lincoln, haggard, heart-weary, had been inaugurated in March 1865 for his second term and had pledged the Union to fight until the end. Then there would be a just peace. In his Second Inaugural Address he promised that in a reunited nation there would be malice tow…
The Spaniards. No nation, as previously shown, was more successful as a colonizer in the sixteenth century than Spain. But its success was ephemeral, for within the polity of Spain there existed fundamental weaknesses. These deficiencies would deny Spain the strength needed in the long struggle for empire. The Spanish kingdom was actually a union of Castile and Aragon resulting from the marriage, …
The desire for profit motivated the founding of the first successful English colony. Two companies were organized in 1606 to establish colonies in Virginia. The London Company received a patent to settle a colony in southern Virginia; the Plymouth Company was designated to colonize northern Virginia; the Crown asserted its interest in the colonial settlement through the supervisory agency of a thi…
Between the clearly English colonies that stretched from Chesapeake Bay to Spanish Florida and those collectively called New England were the heterogeneous colonies destined to become the Middle Atlantic states. Here, as a consequence of English and Dutch rivalry, a polyglot society developed. The English based their claim to the Hudson and Delaware Valleys on the explorations of John Cabot in 149…
One might have suspected that the stern and forbidding coast of New England, storm-tossed, plagued with harsh winters and a stony soil, would have dissuaded the settlers. Only a stern breed of man would have ignored the obvious disadvantages and staked a claim upon these shores. Indeed, it was a harassed and dedicated people who chose to make New England their new home. Settlement of this region w…
Efforts to maintain religious orthodoxy in the New England colonies also proved difficult. The presence of large numbers of "strangers" made it almost inevitable that the Puritans - not inclined toward liberalism - would make strong efforts to restrict the behavior of the non-Puritans. When Thomas Morton erected a Maypole at "Merry Mount," he outraged the Pilgrims, who claimed he had invited his f…
Perhaps no historical problem is more difficult to resolve than attempting to determine the sources and foundations of national character. The first American settlers, primarily emigrants from Great Britain and western Europe, brought with them habits of mind, customs and mores, traditions and prejudices which inevitably were to become a part of the American character. The environment in which the…
The American Way. The colonies of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, unlike the Southern and New England colonies, drew their populations from diverse sources. English, Scottish and Scots-Irish, Welsh, Dutch, German, Swedish, Finnish, French, and Spanish-Jewish families settled in the region. The absence of a homogeneous society, particularly the failure of any one ethnic group to e…
New England had begun as a holy experiment in which a state governed by God's ordinances would be built. "Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness," the Pilgrim father William Bradford had sung, "but they cried unto the Lord, and he heard their voyce, and looked on their adversitie." A society dedicated to God did not mean that a soc…
Within a short distance of each colonial settlement lay a tract of unexplored wilderness. For many Americans these areas of rugged, uninhabited forest were an irresistible attraction. Tempted by the potential wealth and fertility of these lands, seeing in them a haven from religious, social, and political persecutions, many colonials began to migrate into the frontier regions, there repeating the …
By the seventeenth century the economic philosophy now known as mercantilism had gained considerable prestige and support in England. Simple emphasis upon bullionism no longer seemed reasonable as an economic way of life. The mercantilists' definition of wealth, which had originally encompassed only gold and silver, now was extended to include all commercial activity. This extension explains the m…
The most direct effect of mercantilism on the colonies was to encourage them to concentrate on the production of crops that were profitable in world trade. This concentration, in turn, tended to make the individual colonies very susceptible to the vagaries of demand for their particular staple. Before long, the economy of many individual colonies became almost entirely dependent upon the productio…
The New England merchant who transported slaves did so in search of profit, but he was responding to a genuine need. "This country is long on land," Captain John Smith wrote in 1609, "and short on men." From the outset, all the colonies suffered from a critical shortage of labor. As a result, the early colonists were threatened with deprivation of food if each man did not work diligently. Minister…
As early as the middle of the fifteenth century, Portuguese sailors discovered that Negroes were available in large numbers along the west coast of Africa. Spain actively joined the slave trade when labor shortages developed in her Caribbean possessions. The Dutch gained a firm foothold in the trade in the middle of the sixteenth century and retained a substantial control of the West African marke…
Free Land. The colonial labor problem was made even more difficult by the availability of free land. Workers who were dissatisfied with their jobs felt that a solution to their problems was to be had by moving west. By siphoning off these discontented colonials, the free land served as a safety valve; but few industries could really afford to lose large numbers of workers, no matter how discontent…
The first British Empire was the result of haphazard growth. Charter, proprietary, and royal colonies were at first established without any plan for developing a central administrative apparatus. However, as the empire grew, the need for such administration became so great that the London government launched several experiments in the administration of colonial areas. The final effort in this dire…
"The sovereignty of the Crown I understand," wrote Benjamin Franklin. "The sovereignty of Britain I do not understand. . . . We have the same King, but not the same legislature." Franklin's statement went to the core of the colonial dispute with the mother country. George III came to believe that his difficulties with the American colonials grew from his "scrupulous attachment to the rights of Par…
Prelude to Conflict. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle merely provided a breather for the major European antagonists. Recouping their strength, both the French and British prepared for another test. In the New World, many colonials determined to assert their claims to the French-held territories. Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia attempted the expulsion of the French from the Ohio Valley in 1753. …
The Treaty of Paris put an end to the period of salutary neglect. The British had created an empire haphazardly, but also at an immense cost. The exhilaration of victory was accompanied by a widespread desire to return to peacetime pursuits and to reap the fruits of victory. Debate over how best to achieve this result rang through the halls of Parliament. Once again the old mercantilist theories w…
When Parliament resolved that the colonials should bear some part of the total cost of defending the empire, it ran afoul of the colonial belief that only their colonial assemblies were authorized to tax them. The spirit of independence that more than a half century of "salutary neglect" had induced now confronted Parliament with an insoluble problem. Colonial Assemblies and Taxation. In theory Pa…
Townshend's Ministry. The repeal of the Stamp Act was greeted by the colonials with undisguised glee. The colonial assemblies even agreed to compensate the victims of the Stamp Act riots. In Britain, the Rockingham ministry, compelled to increase domestic taxes in order to compensate for the loss of expected Stamp Act revenues, lost the support of the king and of the followers of Pitt. Forced to r…
The Massachusetts Government Act. The impending crisis in imperial relations could no longer be ignored. The government of George III, faced with defiance of central authority by theoretically subordinate units, determined to assert its supremacy. On March 31, 1774, the king approved the Massachusetts Government Act which gave the royal governor of Massachusetts the right to appoint all inferior o…
Throughout the winter and early spring of 1775, relations between Britain and New England worsened. The closing of the port of Boston brought extensive unemployment and embittered the hot-tempered workers of South Boston. Even more aggravating was the presence in the Massachusetts metropolis of thousands of troops, supported by the Royal Navy. The appointment of General Gage as royal governor bro…
Agitation for Independence. As the Americans came to know both victory and defeat, agitation grew rapidly for a final break with Britain. Secret discussion flared into the open with the publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense on January 10, 1776. Distributed by the tens of thousands, the pamphlet argued: Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the w…
King and Parliament. The disunity of the American war effort raises the question of why it succeeded. The simplest explanation is the folly of George III and his ministers in alienating not only the American Whigs but also the sentiment of a considerable body of English. Although the English Whigs gave little positive aid to the Americans, they did even less to assist the Crown in its struggle to …
Having failed to subdue either New England or the middle colonies, the British now shifted their main attack to the South. The region was torn by internecine warfare made more ferocious by ruthless guerrillas who often used the guise of war to settle personal grievances. An earlier effort to capture Charleston, South Carolina, in late June of 1776, had ended in a British defeat. The British now de…
To achieve independence was not to justify it. A good many Americans realized that they now were confronted by a difficult test, one that would require courage and determination. To the young Alexander Hamilton, for instance, peace meant the beginning, and not the end, of exertion: "The object will be to make our independence a blessing. To do this we must secure our Union on solid foundations - a…
As the individual states experimented in democracy, the need for a more comprehensive union became increasingly evident. The possession of common political beliefs provided a promising meeting ground upon which to forge an effective union. When the colonials issued the Declaration of Independence, it was presented as "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America." Despite the…
The Philadelphia Convention. Virginia again took the lead in implementing the Annapolis proposals. After Congress timidly agreed, on February 21, 1787, to recommend revision of the Articles of Confederation, the state legislatures of Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and North Carolina moved swiftly to name delegates to the new convention. The full prestige of Virginia was thrown behin…
The ratification of the Constitution launched a new experiment in government. The men who had brought about the Revolution, the Confederation, and the Constitution now had to make a success of the new republic. George Washington took stock of his political and economic inheritance when he reached New York in late April of 1789 to be inaugurated: the old Confederation had bequeathed to him a foreig…
The Creation of the Treasury Department. The Treasury Department was established by Congress on September 2, 1789, by legislation which (unlike that setting up the State and War Departments) did not permit the President to add to the Secretary's duties or to direct him in the implementation of those duties. Although Congress made the Secretary subject to removal by the President, it also obliged h…
The Agrarian Republic. As Hamilton's schemes unfolded, Jefferson took an increasingly vigorous role in opposing them. Though responsible for ending opposition to Hamilton's proposals on the national debt, Jefferson afterward came to believe that he had been tricked by his colleague in the cabinet; and he did not mean to be tricked a second time. Jefferson, firmly committed to the ideal of an agrar…
But Washington unwittingly aided the conflict by consulting the entire cabinet on all matters except those related to the Treasury. This gave Hamilton an opportunity to extend his activities into the domain of Jefferson without fear of a similar intrusion into this own departmental business. In the realm of foreign affairs, the two men were divided by Hamilton's strong sympathy for Great Britain a…
As the United States slowly negotiated settlements with Britain and Spain, domestic affairs were overshadowed by an insurrection in western Pennsylvania. The Whiskey Rebellion. A dispute originated in a decision undertaken by Congress, at the behest of Hamilton, to institute an excise tax on distilled whiskey. Hamilton, though aware that excises had always provoked opposition, believed that the ta…
