Nothing is more interesting than to trace, through many years and almost
endless wanderings and changes, the fortunes of an idea or habit of
thought. The subject is a much-neglected one, even in these days of
sweeping and minute investigation, because the inherent difficulties are
so great, and the necessary data so multifarious, confused, and
sometimes contradictory, that absolute proof and smooth presentation
seem well-nigh impossible. Yet the ideas, the opinions, even the
prejudices of men, impalpable and indefinite as they are, have at times
a wonderful vitality and force and are not without meaning and
importance when looked at with considerate eyes. The conditions under
which they have been developed may change, or pass utterly away, while
they, mere shadowy creations of the mind, will endure for generations.
Long after the world to which it belonged has vanished, a habit of
thought will live on, indelibly imprinted upon a race or nation, like
the footprint of some extinct beast or bird upon a piece of stone. The
solemn bigotry of the Spaniard is the fossil trace of the fierce
struggle of eight hundred years with the Moors. The theory of the Lord's
day peculiar to the English race all over the world is the deeply
branded sign of the brief reign of Puritanism. A certain fashion of
thought prevailed half a century ago; another is popular to-day. There
is a resemblance between the two, the existence of both is recognized,
and both, without much consideration, are set down as sporadic and
independent, which is by no means a safe conclusion. We have all heard
of those rivers which are suddenly lost to sight in the bowels of the
earth, and, coming as suddenly again to the surface, flow onward to the
sea as before. Or the wandering stream may turn aside into fresh fields,
and, with new shapes and colors, seem to have no connection with the
waters of its source or with those which finally mingle with the ocean.
Yet, despite the disappearances and the changes, it is always the same
river. It is exactly so with some kinds of ideas and modes of
thought,--those that are wholly distinct from the countless host of
opinions which perish utterly, and are forgotten in a few years, or
which are still oftener the creatures of a day, or an hour, and die by
myriads, like the short-lived insects whose course is run between
sunrise and sunset.
The purpose of this essay is to discuss briefly certain opinions which
belong to the more enduring class. They are sufficiently well known.
When they are mentioned everyone will recognize them, and will admit
their existence at the particular period to which they belong. The point
which is overlooked is their connection and relationship. They all have
the same pedigree, a marked resemblance to each other, and they derive
their descent from a common ancestor. My intention is merely to trace
the pedigree and narrate the history of this numerous and interesting
family of ideas and habits of thought. I have entitled them collectively
"Colonialism in the United States," a description which is perhaps more
comprehensive than satisfactory or exact.
In the year of grace 1776, we published to the world our Declaration of
Independence. Six years later, England assented to the separation. These
are tolerably familiar facts. That we have been striving ever since to
make that independence real and complete, and that the work is not yet
entirely finished, are not, perhaps, equally obvious truisms. The hard
fighting by which we severed our connection with the mother-country was
in many ways the least difficult part of the work of building up a great
and independent nation. The decision of the sword may be rude, but it is
pretty sure to be speedy. Armed revolution is quick. A South American,
in the exercise of his constitutional privileges, will rush into the
street and declare a revolution in five minutes. A Frenchman will pull
down one government to-day, and set up another to-morrow, besides giving
new names to all the principal streets of Paris during the intervening
night. We English-speaking people do not move quite so fast. We come
more slowly to the boiling point; we are not fond of violent changes,
and when we make them we consume a considerable time in the operation.
Still, at the best, a revolution by force of arms is an affair of a few
years. We broke with England in 1776, we had won our victory in 1782,
and by the year 1789 we had a new national government fairly started.
But if we are slower than other people in the conduct of revolutions,
owing largely to our love of dogged fighting and inability to recognize
defeat, we are infinitely more deliberate than our neighbors in
altering, or even modifying, our ideas and modes of thought. The slow
mind and ingrained conservatism of the English race are the chief causes
of their marvelous political and material success. After much obstinate
fighting in the field, they have carried through the few revolutions
which they have seen fit to engage in; but when they have undertaken to
extend these revolutions to the domain of thought, there has arisen a
spirit of stubborn and elusive resistance, which has seemed to set every
effort, and even time itself, at defiance.
By the treaty of Paris our independence was acknowledged, and in name
and theory was complete. We then entered upon the second stage in the
conflict, that of ideas and opinions. True to our race and to our
instincts, and with a wisdom which is one of the glories of our history,
we carefully preserved the principles and forms of government and law,
which traced an unbroken descent and growth from the days of the Saxon
invasion. But while we kept so much that was of inestimable worth, we
also retained, inevitably, of course, something which it would have been
well for us to have shaken off together with the rule of George III. and
the British Parliament. This was the colonial spirit in our modes of
thought.
The word "colonial" is preferable to the more obvious word "provincial,"
because the former is absolute, while the latter, by usage, has become
in a great measure relative. We are very apt to call an opinion, a
custom, or a neighbor "provincial," because we do not like the person or
thing in question; and in this way the true value of the word has of
late been frittered away. "Colonialism," moreover, has in this
connection historical point and value, while "provincialism" is general
and meaningless. Colonialism is also susceptible of accurate definition.
A colony is an off-shoot from a parent stock, and its chief
characteristic is dependence. In exact proportion as dependence lessens,
the colony changes its nature and advances toward national existence.
For a hundred and fifty years we were English colonies. Just before the
revolution, in everything but the affairs of practical government, the
precise point at which the break came, we were still colonies in the
fullest sense of the term. Except in matters of food and drink, and of
the wealth which we won from the soil and the ocean, we were in a state
of complete material and intellectual dependence. Every luxury, and
almost every manufactured article, came to us across the water. Our
politics, except those which were purely local, were the politics of
England, and so also were our foreign relations. Our books, our art, our
authors, our commerce, were all English; and this was true of our
colleges, our professions, our learning, our fashions, and our manners.
There is no need here to go into the details which show the absolute
supremacy of the colonial spirit and our entire intellectual dependence.
When we sought to originate, we simply imitated. The conditions of our
life could not be overcome.
The universal prevalence of the colonial spirit at that period is shown
most strongly by one great exception, just as the flash of lightning
makes us realize the intense darkness of a thunder-storm at night. In
the midst of the provincial and barren waste of our intellectual
existence in the eighteenth century there stands out in sharp relief the
luminous genius of Franklin. It is true that Franklin was cosmopolitan
in thought, that his name and fame and achievements in science and
literature belonged to mankind; but he was all this because he was
genuinely and intensely American. His audacity, his fertility, his
adaptability, are all characteristic of America, and not of an English
colony. He moved with an easy and assured step, with a poise and
balance which nothing could shake, among the great men of the world; he
stood before kings and princes and courtiers, unmoved and unawed. He was
strongly averse to breaking with England; but when the war came he was
the one man who could go forth and represent to Europe the new
nationality without a touch of the colonist about him. He met them all,
great ministers and great sovereigns, on a common ground, as if the
colonies of yesterday had been an independent nation for generations.
His autobiography is the corner-stone, the first great work of American
literature. The plain, direct style, almost worthy of Swift, the homely,
forcible language, the humor, the observation, the knowledge of men, the
worldly philosophy of that remarkable book, are familiar to all; but its
best and, considering its date, its most extraordinary quality is its
perfect originality. It is American in feeling, without any taint of
English colonialism. Look at Franklin in the midst of that excellent
Pennsylvania community; compare him and his genius with his
surroundings, and you get a better idea of what the colonial spirit was
in America in those days, and how thoroughly men were saturated with it,
than in any other way.
In general terms it may be said that, outside of politics and the still
latent democratic tendencies, the entire intellectual life of the
colonists was drawn from England, and that to the mother country they
looked for everything pertaining to the domain of thought. The colonists
in the eighteenth century had, in a word, a thoroughly and deeply rooted
habit of mental dependence. The manner in which we have gradually shaken
off this dependence, retaining of the past only that which is good,
constitutes the history of the decline of the colonial spirit in the
United States. As this spirit existed everywhere at the outset, and
brooded over the whole realm of intellect, we can in most cases trace
its history best in the recurring and successful revolts against it,
which, breaking out now here, now there, have at last brought it so near
to final extinction.
In 1789, after the seven years of disorder and demoralization which
followed the close of the war, the United States government was
established. Every visible political tie which bound us to England had
been severed, and we were apparently entirely independent. But the
shackles of the colonial spirit, which had been forging and welding for
a century and a half, were still heavy upon us, and fettered all our
mental action. The work of making our independence real and genuine was
but half done, and the first struggle of the new national spirit with
that of the colonial past was in the field of politics, and consumed
twenty-five years before victory was finally obtained. We still felt
that our fortunes were inextricably interwoven with those of Europe. We
could not realize that what affected us nearly when we were a part of
the British Empire no longer touched us as an independent nation. We can
best understand how strong this feeling was by the effect which was
produced here by the French revolution. That tremendous convulsion, it
may be said, was necessarily felt everywhere; but one much greater might
take place in Europe to-day without producing here anything at all
resembling the excitement of 1790. We had already achieved far more than
the French revolution ever accomplished. We had gone much farther on the
democratic road than any other nation. Yet worthy men in the United
States put on cockades and liberty caps, erected trees of liberty,
called each other "Citizen Brown" and "Citizen Smith," drank confusion
to tyrants, and sang the wild songs of Paris. All this was done in a
country where every privilege and artificial distinction had been swept
away, and where the government was the creation of the people
themselves. These ravings and symbols had a terrific reality in Paris
and in Europe, and so, like colonists, we felt that they must have a
meaning to us, and that the fate and fortunes of our ally were our fate
and fortunes. A part of the people engaged in an imitation that became
here the shallowest nonsense, while the other portion of the community,
which was hostile to French ideas, took up and propagated the notion
that the welfare of civilized society lay with England and with English
opinions. Thus we had two great parties in the United States, working
themselves up to white heat over the politics of England and France. The
first heavy blow to the influence of foreign politics was Washington's
proclamation of neutrality. It seems a very simple and obvious thing
now, this policy of non-interference in the affairs of Europe which that
proclamation inaugurated, and yet at the time men marveled at the step,
and thought it very strange. Parties divided over it. People could not
conceive how we could keep clear of the great stream of European events.
One side disliked the proclamation as hostile to France, while the other
approved it for the same reason. Even the Secretary of State, Thomas
Jefferson, one of the most representative men of American democracy,
resisted the neutrality policy in the genuine spirit of the colonist.
Yet Washington's proclamation was simply the sequel to the Declaration
of Independence. It merely amounted to saying: We have created a new
nation, and England not only cannot govern us, but English and European
politics are none of our business, and we propose to be independent of
them and not meddle in them. The neutrality policy of Washington's
administration was a great advance toward independence and a severe blow
to colonialism in politics. Washington himself exerted a powerful
influence against the colonial spirit. The principle of nationality,
then just entering upon its long struggle with state's rights, was in
its very nature hostile to everything colonial; and Washington, despite
his Virginian traditions, was thoroughly imbued with the national
spirit. He believed himself, and insensibly impressed his belief upon
the people, that true nationality could only be obtained by keeping
ourselves aloof from the conflicts and the politics of the Old World.
Then, too, his splendid personal dignity, which still holds us silent
and respectful after the lapse of a hundred years, communicated itself
to his office, and thence to the nation of which he was the
representative. The colonial spirit withered away in the presence of
Washington.
The only thorough-going nationalist among the leaders of that time was
Alexander Hamilton. He was not born in the States, and was therefore
free from all local influences; and he was by nature imperious in temper
and imperial in his views. The guiding principle of that great man's
public career was the advancement of American nationality. He was called
"British" Hamilton by the very men who wished to throw us into the arms
of the French republic, because he was wedded to the principles and the
forms of constitutional English government and sought to preserve them
here adapted to new conditions. He desired to put our political
inheritance to its proper use, but this was as far removed from the
colonial spirit as possible. Instead of being "British," Hamilton's
intense eagerness for a strong national government made him the
deadliest foe of the colonial spirit, which he did more to strangle and
crush out than any other man of his time. The objects at which he aimed
were continental supremacy, and complete independence in business,
politics, and industry. In all these departments he saw the belittling
effects of dependence, and so he assailed it by his reports and by his
whole policy, foreign and domestic. So much of his work as he carried
through had a far-reaching effect, and did a great deal to weaken the
colonial spirit. But the strength of that spirit was best shown in the
hostility or indifference which was displayed toward his projects. The
great cause of opposition to Hamilton's financial policy proceeded,
undoubtedly, from state jealousy of the central government; but the
resistance to his foreign policy arose from the colonial ignorance which
could not understand the real purpose of neutrality, and which thought
that Hamilton was simply and stupidly endeavoring to force us toward
England as against France.
Washington, Hamilton, and John Adams, notwithstanding his New England
prejudices, all did much while they were in power, as the heads of the
Federalist party, to cherish and increase national self-respect, and
thereby eradicate colonialism from our politics. The lull in Europe,
after the fall of the Federalists, led to a truce in the contests over
foreign affairs in the United States, but with the renewal of war the
old conflict broke out. The years from 1806 to 1812 are among the least
creditable in our history. The Federalists ceased to be a national party
and the fierce reaction against the French revolution drove them into an
unreasoning admiration of England. They looked to England for the
salvation of civilized society. Their chief interest centered in English
politics, and the resources of England formed the subject of their
thoughts and studies, and furnished the theme of conversation at their
dinner tables. It was just as bad on the other side. The Republicans
still clung to their affection for France, notwithstanding the despotism
of the empire. They regarded Napoleon with reverential awe, and shivered
at the idea of plunging into hostilities with anyone. The foreign policy
of Jefferson was that of a thorough colonist. He shrank with horror from
war. He would have had us confine ourselves to agriculture, and to our
flocks and herds, because our commerce, the commerce of a nation, was
something with which other powers were likely to interfere. He wished us
to exist in a state of complete commercial and industrial dependence,
and allow England to carry for us and manufacture for us, as she did
when we were colonies weighed down by the clauses of the navigation
acts. His plans of resistance did not extend beyond the old colonial
scheme of non-importation and non-intercourse agreements. Read the
bitter debates in Congress of those years, and you find them filled with
nothing but the politics of other nations. All the talk is saturated
with colonial feeling. Even the names of opprobrium which the hostile
parties applied to each other were borrowed. The Republicans called the
Federalists "Tories" and a "British faction," while the Federalists
retorted by stigmatizing their opponents as Jacobins. During these sorry
years, however, the last in which our politics bore the colonial
character, a new party was growing up, which may be called the national
party, not as distinguished from the party of state's rights, but as the
opposition to colonial ideas. This new movement was headed and rendered
illustrious by such men as Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, the brilliant
group from South Carolina, comprising Calhoun, Langdon Cheves, and
William Lowndes, and at a later period by Daniel Webster. Clay and the
South Carolinians were the first to push forward the resistance to
colonialism. Their policy was crude and ill-defined. They struck out
blindly against the evil influence which, as they felt, was choking the
current of national life, for they were convinced that, to be truly
independent, the United States must fight somebody. Who that somebody
should be was a secondary question. Of all the nations which had been
kicking and cuffing us, England was, on the whole, the most arrogant,
and offensive; and so the young nationalists dragged the country into
the war of 1812. We were wonderfully successful at sea and at New
Orleans, but in other respects this war was neither very prosperous nor
very creditable, and the treaty of Ghent was absolutely silent as to the
objects for which we had expressly declared war. Nevertheless, the real
purpose of the war was gained, despite the silent and almost meaningless
treaty which concluded it. We had proved to the world and to ourselves
that we existed as a nation. We had demonstrated the fact that we had
ceased to be colonies. We had torn up colonialism in our public affairs
by the roots, and we had crushed out the colonial spirit in our
politics. After the war of 1812 our politics might be good, bad, or
indifferent, but they were our own politics, and not those of Europe.
The wretched colonial spirit which had belittled and warped them for
twenty-five years had perished utterly, and with the treaty of Ghent it
was buried so deeply that not even its ghost has since then crossed our
political pathway.
Besides being the field where the first battle with the colonial spirit
was fought out, politics then offered almost the only intellectual
interest of the country, outside of commerce, which was still largely
dependent in character, and very different in its scope from the great
mercantile combinations of to-day. Religious controversy was of the
past, and except in New England, where the liberal revolt against
Calvinism was in progress, there was no great interest in theological
questions. When the Constitution went into operation the professions of
law and medicine were in their infancy. There was no literature, no art,
no science, none of the multifarious interests which now divide and
absorb the intellectual energies of the community. In the quarter of a
century which closed with the treaty of Ghent we can trace the
development of the legal and medical professions, and their advance
towards independence and originality. But in the literary efforts of the
time we see the colonial spirit displayed more strongly than anywhere
else, and in apparently undiminished vigor.
Our first literature was political, and sprang from the discussions
incident to the adoption of the Constitution. It was, however, devoted
to our own affairs, and aimed at the foundation of a nation, and was
therefore fresh, vigorous, often learned, and thoroughly American in
tone. Its masterpiece was the _Federalist_, which marks an era in the
history of constitutional discussion, and which was the conception of
the thoroughly national mind of Hamilton. After the new government was
established, our political writings, like our politics, drifted back to
provincialism of thought, and were absorbed in the affairs of Europe;
but the first advance on the road to literary independence was made by
the early literature of the Constitution.
It is to this period also, which covers the years from 1789 to 1815,
that Washington Irving, the first of our great writers, belongs. This is
not the place to enter into an analysis of Irving's genius, but it may
be fairly said that while in feeling he was a thorough American, in
literature he was a cosmopolitan. His easy style, the tinge of romance,
and the mingling of the story-teller and the antiquarian remind us of
his great contemporary, Walter Scott. In his quiet humor and gentle
satire, we taste the flavor of Addison. In the charming legends with
which he has consecrated the beauties of the Hudson River valley, and
thrown over that beautiful region the warm light of his imagination, we
find the genuine love of country and of home. In like manner we perceive
his historical taste and his patriotism in the last work of his life,
the biography of his great namesake. But he wrought as well with the
romance of Spain and of England. He was too great to be colonial; he did
not find enough food for his imagination in the America of that day to
be thoroughly American. He stands apart, a notable gift from America to
English literature, but not a type of American literature itself. He had
imitators and friends, whom it has been the fashion to call a school,
but he founded no school, and died as he had lived, alone. He broke
through the narrow trammels of colonialism himself, but the colonial
spirit hung just as heavily upon the feeble literature about him. In
those years also came the first poem of William Cullen Bryant, the first
American poem with the quality of life and which was native and not of
imported origin.
In that same period too there flourished another literary man, who was
far removed in every way from the brilliant editor of Diedrich
Knickerbocker, but who illustrated by his struggle with colonialism the
strength of that influence far better than Irving, who soared so easily
above it. Noah Webster, poor, sturdy, independent, with a rude but
surprising knowledge of philology, revolted in every nerve and fiber of
his being against the enervating influence of the colonial past. The
spirit of nationality had entered into his soul. He felt that the nation
which he saw growing up about him was too great to take its orthography
or its pronunciation blindly and obediently from the mother land. It was
a new country and a new nation, and Webster determined that so far as in
him lay it should have linguistic independence. It was an odd idea, but
it came from his heart, and his national feeling found natural
expression in the study of language, to which he devoted his life. He
went into open rebellion against British tradition. He was snubbed,
laughed at, and abused. He was regarded as little better than a madman
to dare to set himself up against Johnson and his successors. But the
hard-headed New Englander pressed on, and finally brought out his
dictionary,--a great work, which has fitly preserved his name. His
knowledge was crude, his general theory mistaken; his system of changes
has not stood the test of time, and was in itself contradictory; but the
stubborn battle which he fought for literary independence and the hard
blows he struck should never be forgotten, while the odds against which
he contended and the opposition he aroused are admirable illustrations
of the overpowering influence of the colonial spirit in our early
literature.
What the state of our literature was, what the feelings of our few
literary men apart from these few exceptions, and what the spirit with
which Webster did battle, all come out in a few lines written by an
English poet. We can see everything as by a sudden flash of light, and
we do not need to look farther to understand the condition of American
literature in the early years of the century. In the waste of barbarism
called the United States, the only oasis discovered by the delicate
sensibilities of Mr. Thomas Moore was in the society of Mr. Joseph
Dennie, a clever editor and essayist, and his little circle of friends
in Philadelphia. The lines commonly quoted in this connection are those
in the epistle to Spencer, beginning,--
"Yet, yet, forgive me, O ye sacred few,
Whom late by Delaware's green banks I knew;"
which describe the poet's feelings toward America, and his delight in
the society of Mr. Dennie and his friends. But the feelings and opinions
of Moore are of no moment. The really important passage describes not
the author, but what Dennie and his companions said and thought, and has
in this way historical if not poetic value. The lines occur among those
addressed to the "Boston frigate" when the author was leaving Halifax:--
"Farewell to the few I have left with regret;
May they sometimes recall, what I cannot forget,
The delight of those evenings,--too brief a delight,
When in converse and song we have stol'n on the night;
When they've asked me the manners, the mind, or the mien,
Of some bard I had known or some chief I had seen,
Whose glory, though distant, they long had adored,
Whose name had oft hallowed the wine-cup they poured.
And still, as with sympathy humble but true
I have told of each bright son of fame all I knew,
They have listened, and sighed that the powerful stream
Of America's empire should pass like a dream,
Without leaving one relic of genius, to say
How sublime was the tide which had vanished away!"
The evils apprehended by these excellent gentlemen are much more
strongly set forth in the previous epistle, but here we catch sight of
the men themselves. There they sit adoring Englishmen, and eagerly
inquiring about them of the gracious Mr. Moore, while they are dolefully
sighing that the empire of America is to pass away and leave no relic of
genius. In their small way they were doing what they could toward such a
consummation. It may be said that this frame of mind was perfectly
natural under the circumstances; but it is not to the purpose to inquire
into causes and motives; it is enough to state the fact. Here was a set
of men of more than average talents and education; not men of real
talent and quality, like Irving, but clever men, forming one of the two
or three small groups of literary persons in the United States. They
come before us as true provincials, steeped to the eyes in colonialism,
and they fairly represent the condition of American literature at that
time. They were slaves to the colonial spirit, which bowed before
England and Europe. They have not left a name or a line which is
remembered or read, except to serve as a historical illustration, and
they will ultimately find their fit resting-place in the foot-notes of
the historian.
With the close of the English war the United States entered upon the
second stage of their development. The new era, which began in 1815,
lasted until 1861. It was a period of growth, not simply in the
direction of a vast material prosperity and a rapidly increasing
population, but in national sentiment, which made itself felt
everywhere. Wherever we turn during those years, we discover a steady
decline of the colonial influence. Politics had become wholly national
and independent. The law was illustrated by great names, which take high
rank in the annals of English jurisprudence. Medicine began to have its
schools, and to show practitioners who no longer looked across the sea
for inspiration. The Monroe doctrine bore witness to the strong foreign
policy of an independent people. The tariff gave evidence of the eager
desire for industrial independence, which found practical expression in
the fast-growing native manufactures. Internal improvements were a sign
of the general faith and interest in the development of the national
resources. The rapid multiplication of inventions resulted from the
natural genius of America in that important field, where it took almost
at once a leading place. Science began to have a home at our seats of
learning, and in the land of Franklin found a congenial soil.
But the colonial spirit, cast out from our politics and fast
disappearing from business and the professions, still clung closely to
literature, which must always be the best and last expression of a
national mode of thought. In the admirable _Life of Cooper_, recently
published, by Professor Lounsbury, the condition of our literature in
1820 is described so vividly and so exactly that it cannot be improved.
It is as follows:--
"The intellectual dependence of America upon England at that period is
something that it is now hard to understand. Political supremacy had
been cast off, but the supremacy of opinion remained absolutely
unshaken. Of creative literature there was then very little of any value
produced; and to that little a foreign stamp was necessary, to give
currency outside of the petty circle in which it originated. There was
slight encouragement for the author to write; there was still less for
the publisher to print. It was, indeed, a positive injury, ordinarily,
to the commercial credit of a bookseller to bring out a volume of poetry
or of prose fiction which had been written by an American; for it was
almost certain to fail to pay expenses. A sort of critical literature
was struggling, or rather gasping, for a life that was hardly worth
living; for its most marked characteristic was its servile deference to
English judgment and dread of English censure. It requires a painful and
penitential examination of the reviews of the period to comprehend the
utter abasement of mind with which the men of that day accepted the
foreign estimate upon works written here, which had been read by
themselves, but which it was clear had not been read by the critics
whose opinions they echoed. Even the meekness with which they submitted
to the most depreciatory estimate of themselves was outdone by the
anxiety with which they hurried to assure the world that they, the most
cultivated of the American race, did not presume to have so high an
opinion of the writings of some one of their countrymen as had been
expressed by enthusiasts, whose patriotism had proved too much for their
discernment. Never was any class so eager to free itself from charges
that imputed to it the presumption of holding independent views of its
own. Out of the intellectual character of many of those who at that day
pretended to be the representatives of the highest education in this
country, it almost seemed that the element of manliness had been wholly
eliminated; and that, along with its sturdy democracy, whom no obstacles
thwarted and no dangers daunted, the New World was also to give birth to
a race of literary cowards and parasites."
The case is vigorously stated, but is not at all over-charged. Far
stronger, indeed, than Professor Lounsbury's statement is the
commentary furnished by Cooper's first book. This novel, now utterly
forgotten, was entitled _Precaution_. Its scene was laid wholly in
England; its characters were drawn from English society, chiefly from
the aristocracy of that favored land; its conventional phrases were all
English; worst and most extraordinary of all, it professed to be by an
English author, and was received on that theory without suspicion. In
such a guise did the most popular of American novelists and one of the
most eminent among modern writers of fiction first appear before his
countrymen and the world. If this were not so pitiable, it would be
utterly ludicrous and yet the most melancholy feature of the case is
that Cooper was not in the least to blame, and no one found fault with
him, for his action was regarded by everyone as a matter of course. In
other words, the first step of an American entering upon a literary
career was to pretend to be an Englishman, in order that he might win
the approval, not of Englishmen, but of his own countrymen.
If this preposterous state of public opinion had been a mere passing
fashion it would hardly be worth recording. But it represented a fixed
and settled habit of mind, and is only one example of a long series of
similar phenomena. We look back to the years preceding the revolution,
and there we find this mental condition flourishing and strong. At that
time it hardly calls for comment, because it was so perfectly natural.
It is when we find such opinions existing in the year 1820 that we are
conscious of their significance. They belong to colonists, and yet they
are uttered by the citizens of a great and independent state. The
sorriest part of it is that these views were chiefly held by the best
educated portion of the community. The great body of the American
people, who had cast out the colonial spirit from their politics and
their business, and were fast destroying it in the professions, was
sound and true. The parasitic literature of that day makes the boastful
and rhetorical patriotism then in the exuberance of youth seem actually
noble and fine, because, with all its faults, it was honest, genuine,
and inspired by a real love of country.
Yet it was during this period, between the years 1815 and 1861, that we
began to have a literature of our own, and one in which any people could
take a just pride. Cooper himself was the pioneer. In his second novel,
_The Spy_, he threw off the wretched spirit of the colonist, and the
story, which at once gained a popularity that broke down all barriers,
was read everywhere with delight and approbation. The chief cause of the
difference between the fate of this novel and that of its predecessor
lies in the fact that _The Spy_ was of genuine native origin. Cooper
knew and loved American scenery and life. He understood certain phases
of American character on the prairie and the ocean, and his genius was
no longer smothered by the dead colonialism of the past. _The Spy_, and
those of Cooper's novels which belong to the same class, have lived and
will live, and certain American characters which he drew will likewise
endure. He might have struggled all his life in the limbo of
intellectual servitude to which Moore's friends consigned themselves,
and no one would have cared for him then or remembered him now. But,
with all his foibles, Cooper was inspired by an intense patriotism, and
he had a bold, vigorous, aggressive nature. He freed his talents at a
stroke, and giving them full play attained at once a world-wide
reputation, which no man of colonial mind could ever have dreamed of
reaching. Yet his countrymen, long before his days of strife and
unpopularity, seem to have taken singularly little patriotic pride in
his achievements, and the well bred and well educated shuddered to hear
him called the "American Scott"; not because they thought this truly
colonial description inappropriate and misapplied, but because it was a
piece of irreverent audacity toward a great light of English literature.
Cooper was the first, after the close of the war of 1812, to cast off
the colonial spirit and take up his position as a representative of
genuine American literature; but he soon had companions, who carried
still higher the standard which he had raised. To this period, which
closed with our civil war, belong many of the names which are to-day
among those most cherished by English-speaking people everywhere. We see
the national spirit in Longfellow turning from the themes of the Old
World to those of the New. In the beautiful creations of the sensitive
and delicate imagination of Hawthorne, there was a new tone and a rich
originality, and the same influence may be detected in the remarkable
poems and the wild fancies of Poe. We find a like native strength in the
sparkling verses of Holmes, in the pure and gentle poetry of Whittier,
and in the firm, vigorous work of Lowell. A new leader of independent
thought arises in Emerson, destined to achieve a world-wide reputation.
A new school of historians appears, adorned by the talents of Prescott,
Bancroft, and Motley. Many of these distinguished men were far removed
in point of time from the beginning of the new era, but they all
belonged to and were the result of the national movement, which began
its onward march as soon as we had shaken ourselves clear from the
influence of the colonial spirit upon our public affairs by the struggle
which culminated in "Madison's war," as the Federalists loved to call
it.
These successes in the various departments of intellectual activity were
all due to an instinctive revolt against colonialism. But, nevertheless,
the old and time-worn spirit which made Cooper pretend to be an
Englishman in 1820 was very strong, and continued to impede our progress
toward intellectual independence. We find it clinging to the lesser and
weaker forms of literature. We see it in fashion and society and in
habits of thought, but we find the best proof of its vitality in our
sensitiveness to foreign opinion. This was a universal failing. The body
of the people showed it by bitter resentment; the cultivated and highly
educated by abject submission and deprecation, or by cries of pain.
As was natural in a very young nation, just awakened to its future
destiny, just conscious of its still undeveloped strength, there was at
this time a vast amount of exuberant self-satisfaction, of cheap
rhetoric, and of noisy self-glorification. There was a corresponding
readiness to take offense at the unfavorable opinion of outsiders, and
at the same time an eager and insatiable curiosity to hear foreign
opinions of any kind. We were, of course, very open to satire and
attack. We were young, undeveloped, with a crude, almost raw
civilization, and a great inclination to be boastful and conceited. Our
English cousins, who had failed to conquer us, bore us no good will, and
were quite ready to take all the revenge which books of travel and
criticism could afford. It is to these years that Marryat, Trollope,
Hamilton, Dickens, and a host of others belong. Most of their
productions are quite forgotten now. The only ones which are still read,
probably, are the _American Notes_ and _Martin Chuzzlewit_: the former
preserved by the fame of the author, the latter by its own merit as a
novel. There was abundant truth in what Dickens said, to take the great
novelist as the type of this group of foreign critics. It was an age in
which Elijah Pogram and Jefferson Brick flourished rankly. It is also
true that all that Dickens wrote was poisoned by his utter ingratitude,
and that to describe the United States as populated by nothing but
Bricks and Pograms was one-sided and malicious, and not true to facts.
But the truth or the falsehood, the value or the worthlessness, of these
criticisms are not of importance now. The striking fact, and the one we
are in search of, is the manner in which we bore these censures when
they appeared. We can appreciate contemporary feeling at that time only
by delving in much forgotten literature; and even then we can hardly
comprehend fully what we find, so completely has our habit of mind
altered since those days. We received these strictures with a howl of
anguish and a scream of mortified vanity. We winced and writhed, and
were almost ready to go to war, because English travelers and writers
abused us. It is usual now to refer these ebullitions of feeling to our
youth, probably from analogy with the youth of an individual. But the
analogy is misleading. Sensitiveness to foreign opinion is not
especially characteristic of a youthful nation, or, at least, we have no
cases to prove it, and in the absence of proof the theory falls. On the
other hand, this excessive and almost morbid sensibility is a
characteristic of provincial, colonial, or dependent states, especially
in regard to the mother country. We raged and cried out against adverse
English criticism, whether it was true or false, just or unjust, and we
paid it this unnatural attention because the spirit of the colonist
still lurked in our hearts and affected our mode of thought. We were
advancing fast on the road to intellectual and moral independence, but
we were still far from the goal.
This second period in our history closed, as has been said, with the
struggle generated by a great moral question, which finally absorbed all
the thoughts and passions of the people, and culminated in a terrible
civil war. We fought to preserve the integrity of the Union; we fought
for our national life, and nationality prevailed. The magnitude of the
conflict, the dreadful suffering which it caused for the sake of
principle, the uprising of a great people, elevated and ennobled the
whole country. The flood-gates were opened, and the tremendous tide of
national feeling swept away every meaner emotion. We came out of the
battle, after an experience which brought a sudden maturity with it,
stronger than ever, but much graver and soberer than before. We came out
self-poised and self-reliant, with a true sense of dignity and of our
national greatness, which years of peaceful development could not have
given us. The sensitiveness to foreign opinion which had been the marked
feature of our mental condition before the war had disappeared. It had
vanished in the smoke of battle, as the colonial spirit disappeared from
our politics in the war of 1812. Englishmen and Frenchmen have come and
gone, and written their impressions of us, and made little splashes in
the current of every-day topics, and have been forgotten. Just now it is
the fashion for every Englishman who visits this country, particularly
if he is a man of any note, to go home and tell the world what he thinks
of us. Some of these writers do this without taking the trouble to come
here first. Sometimes we read what they have to say out of curiosity. We
accept what is true, whether unpalatable or not, philosophically, and
smile at what is false. The general feeling is one of wholesome
indifference. We no longer see salvation and happiness in favorable
foreign opinion, or misery in the reverse. The colonial spirit in this
direction also is practically extinct.
But while this is true of the mass of the American people whose mental
health is good, and is also true of the great body of sound public
opinion in the United States, it has some marked exceptions; and these
exceptions constitute the lingering remains of the colonial spirit,
which survives, and shows itself here and there even at the present day,
with a strange vitality.
In the years which followed the close of the war, it seemed as if
colonialism had been utterly extinguished: but, unfortunately, this was
not the case. The multiplication of great fortunes, the growth of a
class rich by inheritance, and the improvement in methods of travel and
communication, all tended to carry large numbers of Americans to Europe.
The luxurious fancies which were born of increased wealth, and the
intellectual tastes which were developed by the advance of the higher
education, and to which an old civilization offers peculiar advantages
and attractions, combined to breed in many persons a love of foreign
life and foreign manners. These tendencies and opportunities have
revived the dying spirit of colonialism. We see it most strongly in the
leisure class, which is gradually increasing in this country. During the
miserable ascendancy of the Second Empire, a band of these persons
formed what was known as the "American colony," in Paris. Perhaps they
still exist; if so, their existence is now less flagrant and more
decent. When they were notorious they presented the melancholy spectacle
of Americans admiring and aping the manners, habits, and vices of
another nation, when that nation was bent and corrupted by the cheap,
meretricious, and rotten system of the third Napoleon. They furnished a
very offensive example of peculiarly mean colonialism. This particular
phase has departed, but the same sort of Americans are, unfortunately,
still common in Europe. I do not mean, of course, those persons who go
abroad to buy social consideration, nor the women who trade on their
beauty or their wits to gain a brief and dishonoring notoriety. These
last are merely adventurers and adventuresses, who are common to all
nations. The people referred to here form that large class, comprising
many excellent men and women, no doubt, who pass their lives in Europe,
mourning over the inferiority of their own country, and who become
thoroughly denationalized. They do not change into Frenchmen or
Englishmen, but are simply disfigured and deformed Americans.
We find the same wretched habit of thought in certain groups among the
rich and idle people of our great eastern cities, especially in New
York, because it is the metropolis. These groups are for the most part
made up of young men who despise everything American and admire
everything English. They talk and dress and walk and ride in certain
ways, because they imagine that the English do these things after that
fashion. They hold their own country in contempt, and lament the hard
fate of their birth. They try to think that they form an aristocracy,
and become at once ludicrous and despicable. The virtues which have made
the upper classes in England what they are, and which take them into
public affairs, into literature and politics, are forgotten, for
Anglo-Americans imitate the vices or the follies of their models, and
stop there. If all this were merely a fleeting fashion, an attack of
Anglo-mania or of Gallo-mania, of which there have been instances enough
everywhere, it would be of no consequence. But it is a recurrence of the
old and deep-seated malady of colonialism. It is a lineal descendant of
the old colonial family. The features are somewhat dim now, and the
vitality is low, but there is no mistaking the hereditary traits. The
people who thus despise their own land, and ape English manners, flatter
themselves with being cosmopolitans, when in truth they are genuine
colonists, petty and provincial to the last degree.
We see a like tendency in the same limited but marked way in our
literature. Some of our cleverest fiction is largely devoted to studying
the character of our countrymen abroad; that is, either denationalized
Americans or Americans with a foreign background. At times this species
of literature resolves itself into an agonized effort to show how
foreigners regard us, and to point out the defects which jar upon
foreign susceptibilities even while it satirizes the denationalized
American. The endeavor to turn ourselves inside out in order to
appreciate the trivialities of life which impress foreigners
unpleasantly is very unprofitable exertion, and the Europeanized
American is not worth either study or satire. Writings of this kind,
again, are intended to be cosmopolitan in tone, and to evince a
knowledge of the world, and yet they are in reality steeped in
colonialism. We cannot but regret the influence of a spirit which wastes
fine powers of mind and keen perceptions in a fruitless striving and a
morbid craving to know how we appear to foreigners, and to show what
they think of us.
We see, also, men and women of talent going abroad to study art and
remaining there. The atmosphere of Europe is more congenial to such
pursuits, and the struggle as nothing to what must be encountered here.
But when it leads to an abandonment of America, the result is wholly
vain. Sometimes these people become tolerably successful French artists,
but their nationality and individuality have departed, and with them
originality and force. The admirable school of etching which has arisen
in New York; the beautiful work of American wood-engraving; the Chelsea
tiles of Low, which have won the highest prizes at English exhibitions;
the silver of Tiffany, specimens of which were bought by the Japanese
commissioners at the Paris Exposition, are all strong, genuine work, and
are doing more for American art, and for all art, than a wilderness of
over-educated and denationalized Americans who are painting pictures and
carving statues and writing music in Europe or in the United States, in
the spirit of colonists, and bowed down by a wretched dependence.
There is abundance of splendid material all about us here for the poet,
the artist, or the novelist. The conditions are not the same as in
Europe, but they are not on that account inferior. They are certainly as
good. They may be better. Our business is not to grumble because they
are different, for that is colonial. We must adapt ourselves to them,
for we alone can use properly our own resources; and no work in art or
literature ever has been, or ever will be, of any real or lasting value
which is not true, original, and independent.
If these remnants of the colonial spirit and influence were, as they
look at first sight, merely trivial accidents, they would not be worth
mentioning. But the range of their influence, although limited, affects
an important class. It appears almost wholly among the rich or the
highly educated in art and literature; that is, to a large extent among
men and women of talent and refined sensibilities. The follies of those
who imitate English habits belong really to but a small portion of even
their own class. But as these follies are contemptible, the wholesome
prejudice which they excite is naturally, but thoughtlessly, extended to
all who have anything in common with those who are guilty of them. In
this busy country of ours, the men of leisure and education, although
increasing in number, are still few, and they have heavier duties and
responsibilities than anywhere else. Public charities, public affairs,
politics, literature, all demand the energies of such men. To the
country which has given them wealth and leisure and education they owe
the duty of faithful service, because they, and they alone, can afford
to do that work which must be done without pay. The few who are imbued
with the colonial spirit not only fail in their duty, and become
contemptible and absurd, but they injure the influence and thwart the
activity of the great majority of those who are similarly situated, and
who are also patriotic and public spirited.
In art and literature the vain struggle to be somebody or something
other than an American, the senseless admiration of everything foreign,
and the morbid anxiety about our appearance before foreigners have the
same deadening effect. Such qualities were bad enough in 1820. They are
a thousand times meaner and more foolish now. They retard the march of
true progress, which here, as elsewhere, must be in the direction of
nationality and independence. This does not mean that we are to expect
or to seek for something utterly different, something new and strange,
in art, literature, or society. Originality is thinking for one's self.
Simply to think differently from other people is eccentricity. Some of
our English cousins, for instance, have undertaken to hold Walt Whitman
up as the herald of the coming literature of American democracy, not
because he was a genius, not for his merits alone, but largely because
he departed from all received forms, and indulged in barbarous
eccentricities. They mistake difference for originality. Whitman was a
true and a great poet, but it was his power and imagination which made
him so, not his eccentricities. When Whitman did best, he was, as a
rule, nearest to the old and well-proved forms. We, like our
contemporaries everywhere, are the heirs of the ages, and we must study
the past, and learn from it, and advance from what has been already
tried and found good. That is the only way to success anywhere, or in
anything. But we cannot enter upon that or any other road until we are
truly national and independent intellectually, and are ready to think
for ourselves, and not look to foreigners in order to find out what they
think.
To those who grumble and sigh over the inferiority of America we may
commend the opinion of a distinguished Englishman, as they prefer such
authority. Mr. Herbert Spencer said, recently, "I think that whatever
difficulties they may have to surmount, and whatever tribulations they
may have to pass through, the Americans may reasonably look forward to a
time when they will have produced a civilization grander than any the
world has known." Even the Englishmen whom our provincials of to-day
adore, even those who are most hostile, pay a serious attention to
America. That keen respect for success and anxious deference to power so
characteristic of Great Britain find expression every day, more and
more, in the English interest in the United States, now that we do not
care in the least about it; and be it said in passing, no people
despises more heartily than the English a man who does not love his
country. To be despised abroad, and regarded with contempt and pity at
home, is not a very lofty result of so much effort on the part of our
lovers of the British. But it is the natural and fit reward of
colonialism. Members of a great nation instinctively patronize
colonists.
It is interesting to examine the sources of the colonial spirit, and to
trace its influence upon our history and its gradual decline. The study
of a habit of mind, with its tenacity of life, is an instructive and
entertaining branch of history. But if we lay history and philosophy
aside, the colonial spirit as it survives to-day, although curious
enough, is a mean and noxious thing, which cannot be too quickly or too
thoroughly stamped out. It is the dying spirit of dependence, and
wherever it still clings it injures, weakens, and degrades. It should be
exorcised rapidly and completely, so that it will never return. I cannot
close more fitly than with the noble words of Emerson:--
"Let the passion for America cast out the passion for Europe. They who
find America insipid, they for whom London and Paris have spoiled their
own homes, can be spared to return to those cities. I not only see a
career at home for more genius than we have, but for more than there is
in the world."