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[Illustration: THE WARRIOR'S LAST RIDE (See the Battle of Deerfield,
Vol. 1., p. 205) _Painted by Frederic Remington_]
THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FROM 1492 TO 1910
By JULIAN HAWTHORNE
VOLUME I
From Discovery Of America October 12, 1492
To
Battle Of Lexington April 19, 1775
CONTENTS OF VOLUME ONE
INTRODUCTION BEFORE DAWN
I. COLUMBUS, RALEIGH, AND SMITH
II. THE FREIGHT OF THE "MAYFLOWER"
III. THE SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS
IV. FROM HUDSON TO STUYVESANT
V. LIBERTY, SLAVERY, AND TYRANNY
VI. CATHOLIC, PHILOSOPHER, AND REBEL
VII. QUAKER, YANKEE, AND KING
VIII. THE STUARTS AND THE CHARTER
IX. THE NEW LEAF, AND THE BLOT ON IT
X. FIFTY YEARS OF FOOLS AND HEROES
XI. QUEM JUPITER VULT PERDERE
XII. THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM AND THE STAMP ACT
XIII. THE PASSING OF THE RUBICON
XIV. THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD
INTRODUCTION
When we speak of History, we may mean either one of several things. A
savage will make picture-marks on a stone or a bone or a bit of wood;
they serve to recall to him and his companions certain events which
appeared remarkable or important for one or another reason; there was
an earthquake, or a battle, or a famine, or an invasion: the chronicler
himself, or some fellow-tribesman of his, may have performed some
notable exploit. The impulse to make a record of it was natural:
posterity might thereby be informed, after the chronicler himself had
passed away, concerning the perils, the valor, the strange experiences
of their ancestors. Such records were uniformly brief, and no attempt
was made to connect one with another, or to interpret them. We find
such fragmentary histories among the remains of our own aborigines; and
the inscriptions of Egypt and Mesopotamia are the same in character and
intention, though more elaborate. Warlike kings thus endeavored, from
motives of pride, to perpetuate the memory of their achievements. At
the time when they were inscribed upon the rock, or the walls of the
tombs, or the pedestals of the statues, they had no further value than
this. But after the lapse of many ages, they acquire a new value, far
greater than the original one, and not contemplated by the scribes.
They assume their proper place in the long story of mankind, and
indicate, each in its degree, the manner and direction of the processes
by which man has become what he is, from what he was. Thereby there is
breathed into the dead fact the breath of life; it rises from its tomb
of centuries, and does its appointed work in the mighty organism of
humanity.
In a more complex state of society, a class of persons comes into being
who are neither protagonists, nor slaves, but observers; and they
meditate on events, and seek to fathom their meaning. If the observer
be imaginative, the picturesque side of things appeals to him; he
dissolves the facts, and recreates them to suit his conceptions of
beauty and harmony; and we have poetry and legend. Another type of mind
will give us real histories, like those of Herodotus, Thucydides,
Tacitus and Livy, which are still a model in their kind. These great
writers took a broad point of view; they saw the end from the beginning
of their narrative; they assigned to their facts their relative place
and importance, and merged them in a pervading atmosphere of opinion,
based upon the organic relation of cause and effect. Studying their
works, we are enabled to discern the tendencies and developments of a
race, and to note the effects of civilization, character, vice, virtue,
and of that sum of them all which we term fate.
During what are called the Dark Ages of Europe, history fell into the
hands of that part of the population which alone was conversant with
letters--the priestly class; and the annals they have left to us have
none of the value which belongs to the productions of classical
antiquity. They were again mere records; or they were mystical or
fanciful tales of saints and heroes, composed or distorted for the
glorification of the church, and the strengthening of the influence of
the priests over the people. But these also, in after times, took on a
value which they had not originally possessed, and become to the later
student a precious chapter of the history of mankind.
Meanwhile, emerging august from the shadows of antiquity, we have that
great body of literature of which our own Bible is the highest type,
which purports to present the story of the dealings of the Creator with
His creatures. These wonderful books appear to have been composed in a
style, and on a principle, the secret of which has been lost. The facts
which they relate, often seemingly trivial and disconnected, are really
but a material veil, or symbol, concealing a spiritual body of truth,
which is neither trivial nor disconnected, but an organized, orderly
and catholic revelation of the nature of man, of the processes of his
spiritual regeneration, of his final reconciliation with the Divine.
The time will perhaps come when some inspired man or men will be
enabled to handle our modern history with the same esoteric insight
which informed the Hebrew scribes, when they used the annals of the
obscure tribe to which they belonged as a cover under which to present
the relations of God with all the human race, past and to come.
* * * * *
Modern history tends more and more to become philosophic: to be an
argument and an interpretation, rather than a bald statement of facts.
The facts contained in our best histories bear much the same relation
to the history itself, that the flesh and bones of the body bear to the
person who lives in and by them. The flesh and bones, or the facts,
have to exist; but the only excuse for their existence is, that the
person may have being, or that the history may trace a spiritual growth
or decadence. There was perhaps a time when the historian found a
difficulty in collecting facts enough to serve as a firm foundation for
his edifice of comment and deduction; but nowadays, his embarrassment
is rather in the line of making a judicious selection from the enormous
mass of facts which research and the facilities of civilization have
placed at his disposal. Not only is every contemporary event recorded
instantly in the newspapers and elsewhere; but new light is being
constantly thrown upon the past, even upon the remotest confines
thereof. Some of the facts thus brought before us are original and
vital; others are mere echoes, repetitions, and unimportant variations.
But the historian, if he wishes his work to last, must build as does
the Muse in Emerson's verse, with
.... "Rafters of immortal pine,
Cedar incorruptible, worthy her design."
Or he may be sure that the historian who comes after him will sift the
wheat from his chaff, and leave him no better reputation than that of
the quarry from which the marble of the statue comes. He must tell a
consecutive story, but must eschew all redundancy, furnish no more
supports for his bridge than its stability requires, prune his tree so
severely that it shall bear none but good fruit, forbear to freight the
memory of his reader with a cargo so unwieldy as to sink it. On the
other hand, of course, he must beware of being too terse; man cannot
live by bread alone, and the reader of histories needs to be told the
Why as well as the What. But the historical field is so wide that one
man, in his one lifetime, can hardly hope by independent and original
investigation both to collect all the data from which to build his
structure, and so to select his timbers that only the indispensable
ones shall be employed. In reality, we find one historian of a given
subject or period succeeding another, and refining upon his methods and
treatment. With each successive attempt the outlook becomes clearer and
more comprehensive, and the meaning of the whole more pronounced. The
spirit, for the sake of which the body exists, more and more dominates
its material basis, until at last the latter practically vanishes "in
the light of its meaning sublime." This is the apotheosis of history,
which of course has not yet been attained, and probably can never be
more than approximated.
* * * * *
The present work is a very modest contribution toward the desired
result. It makes few or no pretensions to original research. There are
many histories of the United States and the fundamental facts thereof
are known. But it remains for the student to endeavor to solve and
declare the meaning of the familiar events; to state his view of their
source and their ultimate issue. In these volumes, I have taken the
view that the American nation is the embodiment and vehicle of a Divine
purpose to emancipate and enlighten the human race. Man is entering
upon a new career of spiritual freedom: he is to enjoy a hitherto
unprecedented condition of political, social and moral liberty--as
distinguished from license, which in truth is slavery. The stage for
this grand evolution was fixed in the Western Continent, and the
pioneers who went thither were inspired with the desire to escape from
the thralldom of the past, and to nourish their souls with that pure
and exquisite freedom which can afford to ignore the ease of the body,
and all temporal luxuries, for the sake of that elixir of immortality.
This, according to my thinking, is the innermost core of the American
Idea; if you go deep enough into surface manifestations, you will find
it. It is what differentiates Americans from all other peoples; it is
what makes Americans out of emigrants; it is what draws the masses of
Europe hither, and makes their rulers fear and hate us. It may often,
and uniformly, happen that any given individual is unconscious of the
Spirit that moves within him; for it is the way of that Spirit to
subordinate its manifestations to its ends, knowing the frailty of
humanity. But it is there, and its gradual and cumulative results are
seen in the retrospect, and it may perhaps be divined as to the outline
of some of its future developments.
Some sort of recognition of the American Idea, and of the American
destiny, affords the only proper ground for American patriotism. We
talk of the size of our country, of its wealth and prosperity, of its
physical power, of its enlightenment; but if these things be all that
we have to be proud of, we have little. They are in truth but outward
signs of a far more precious possession within. We are the pioneers of
the new Day, or we are nothing worth talking about. We are at the
threshold of our career. Our record thus far is full of faults, and
presents not a few deformities, due to our human frailties and
limitations; but our general direction has been onward and upward. At
the moment when this book is finished, we seem to be entering upon a
fresh phase of our journey, and a vast horizon opens around us. It was
inevitable that America should not be confined to any special area on
the map of the world; it is of little importance that we fill our own
continent with men and riches. We are to teach men in all parts of the
world what freedom is, and thereby institute other Americas in the very
strongholds of oppression. In order to accomplish this, Americans will
be drawn forth and will obtain foothold in remote regions, there to
disseminate their genius and inculcate their aims. In Europe and Asia
are wars and rumors of wars; but there seems no reason why the true
revolution, which Americanism involves, should not be a peaceful and
quiet one. Our real enemies may be set in high places, but they are
very few, and their power depends wholly on those myriads who are at
heart our allies. If we can assure the latter of our good faith and
disinterestedness, the battle is won without fighting. Indeed, the day
for Mohammedan conquests is gone by, and any such conquest would be far
worse than futile.
These are theories and speculations, and so far as they enter into my
book, they do so as atmosphere and aim only; they are not permitted to
mold the character of the narrative, so that it may illustrate a
foregone conclusion. I have related the historical story as simply and
directly as I could, making use of the best established authorities.
Here and there I have called attention to what seemed to me the
significance of events; but any one is at liberty to interpret them
otherwise if he will. After all the best use of a history is probably
to stimulate readers to think for themselves about the events
portrayed; and if I have succeeded in doing that, I shall be satisfied.
The history of the United States does mean something: what is it? Are
we a decadent fruit that is rotten before it is ripe? or are we the bud
of the mightiest tree of time? The materials for forming your judgment
are here; form it according as your faith and hope may dictate.
JULIAN HAWTHORNE.
BEFORE DAWN
When, four centuries ago, adventurers from the Old World first landed
on the southern shores of the Western Continent, and pushed their way
into the depths of the primeval forest, they found growing in its
shadowy fastnesses a mighty plant, with vast leaves radiating upward
from the mould, and tipped with formidable thorns. Its aspect was
unfriendly; it added nothing to the beauty of the wilderness, and it
made advance more difficult. But from the midst of some of them uprose
a tall stem, rivaling in height the trees themselves, and crowned with
a glorious canopy of golden blossoms. The flower of the forbidding
plant was the splendor of the forest.
It was the Agave, or American Aloe, sometimes called the Century Plant,
because it blooms but once in a lifetime. It is of the family of the
lilies; but no other lily rivals its lofty magnificence. From the gloom
of the untrodden places it sends its shaft skyward into the sunshine;
it is an elemental growth: its simplicity equals its beauty. But until
the flower blooms, after its ages of preparation, the plant seems to
have no meaning, proportion, or comeliness; only when those golden
petals have unfolded upon the summit of their stately eminence do we
comprehend the symmetry and significance that had so long waited to
avouch themselves.
This Lily of the Ages, native to American soil, may fittingly stand as
the symbol of the great Western Republic which, after so many thousand
years of spiritual vicissitude and political experiment, rises
heavenward out of the wilderness of time, and reveals its golden
promise to those who have lost their way in the dark forest of error
and oppression. It was long withheld, but it came at last, and about it
center the best hopes of mankind. These United States--this America of
ours, as we love to call it--is unlike any other nation that has
preceded or is contemporary with it. It is the conscious incarnation of
a sublime idea--the conception of civil and religious liberty. It is a
spirit first, and a body afterward; thus following the true law of
immortal growth. It is the visible consummation of human history, and
commands the fealty of all noble minds in every corner of the earth, as
well as within its own boundaries. There are Americans in all
countries; but America is their home.
The seed is hidden in the soil; the germ is shut within the darkness of
the womb; the preparation for all birth is obscure. For more than a
century after the discovery of Columbus, no one divined the true
significance and destiny of the nation-that-was-to-be. Years passed
before it was understood even that the coast of the New World was
anything more than the western boundaries of the Asiatic continent;
Columbus never wavered from this conviction; the Cabots fancied that
our Atlantic shores were those of China; and though Balboa, in 1513,
waded waist-deep into the Pacific off Darien, and claimed it for Spain,
yet the massive immensity of America was not suspected. There was not
space for it on the globe as then plotted by geographers; it must be a
string of islands, or at best but an attenuated outlying bulwark of the
East. News spread slowly in those days; Vasco da Gama had reached India
round the Cape of Good Hope before Balboa's exploit; Columbus, on his
third voyage, had touched the mainland of South America, and young
Sebastian Cabot, sailing from Bristol under the English flag, had
driven his prow against Labrador ice in his effort to force a northwest
passage; and still the truth was not fully realized. And when, a
century later, the English colonies were assigned their boundaries,
these were defined north, south and east, but to the west they extended
without limit. Panama was but thirty miles across, and no one imagined
that three thousand miles of solid land stretched between the
Chesapeake and the Bay of San Francisco. Then, as now, orthodoxy fought
against the heresy that there could be anything that was not as narrow
as itself.
And this physical denial or belittlement of the American continent had
its mental complement in the failure to comprehend the destiny of the
people which was to inhabit it. Spain thought only of material and
theological aggrandizements: of getting gold, and converting heathen,
to her own temporal and spiritual glory; and she was as ready to shed
innocent blood in the latter cause as in the former. England, without
her rival's religious bigotry, was as intent upon winning wealth
through territorial and commercial usurpations. Though not a few of the
actual discoverers and explorers were generous, magnanimous and kindly
men, having in view an honorable renown, based on opening new fields of
life and prosperity to future ages, yet the monarchs and the trading
Companies that stood behind them exhibited an unvarying selfishness and
greed. The new world was to them a field for plunder only. Each aimed
to own it all, and to monopolize its produce. The priestly missionaries
of the Roman Catholic faith did indeed pursue their ends with a
self-sacrifice and courage which deserve all praise; they devoted
themselves at the risk and often at the cost of their lives to the
enterprise of winning souls, as they believed, to Christ. But the
Church dignitaries who sent forth these soldiers of religion sought
through them only to increase the credit of their organization; they
contemplated but the enlargement of their power. The thought of
establishing in the wilderness a place where men might rule themselves
in freedom entered not into their calculations. The spirit of the old
order survived the birth of the spirit of the new.
But the conflict thus provoked was necessary to the evolution which
Providence was preparing. The soul grows strong through hardship; truth
conquers by struggling against opposition. It is by resistance, at
first instinctive, against restraint that the infant attains
self-consciousness. The first settlers who came across the ocean were
animated solely by the desire to escape from oppression in their native
land; they had as yet no purpose to set up an independent empire. But,
as the breath of the forest and the prairie entered into their lungs,
and the untrammeled spaciousness of the virgin continent unshackled
their minds, they began to resent, though at first timidly, the
arrogant pretension to rule them across the waves. Their environment
gave them courage, made them hardy and self-dependent, enlightened
their intelligence, weaned them from vain traditions, revealed to them
the truth that man's birthright is liberty. And gradually, as the reins
of tyranny were drawn tighter, these pioneers of the New Day were
wrought up to the pitch of throwing off all allegiance, and setting
their lives upon the cast. The idea of political freedom is commonplace
now; but to conceive it for the first time required a mighty effort,
and it could have been accomplished nowhere else than in a vast and
untrodden land. The Declaration of Independence, nearly three centuries
after Columbus's discovery of America, showed the hitherto blind and
sordid world what America was discovered for. Individual men of genius
had surmised it many years before; but their hope of forecast had been
deemed but an idle vision until in a moment, as it were, the reality
was born.
It was essential, however, to the final success of the great revolt,
that the men who brought it to pass should be the best of a chosen
race. And this requisite also was secured by conflict. It was the
inveterate persuasion of many generations that America was the land of
gold. Tales told by the Indians stimulated the imagination and the
cupidity of the first adventurers; legends of El Dorado kindled the
horizons that fled before them as they advanced. Somewhere beyond those
savage mountains, amid these pathless forests, was a noble city built
and paved with gold. Somewhere flowed a stately river whose waters
swept between golden margins, over sands of gold. In some remote region
dwelt a barbarian monarch to whom gold and precious stones were as the
dross of the wayside. These stories were the offspring of the legends
of the alchemists of the Dark Ages, who had professed to make gold in
their crucibles; it was as good to pick up gold in armfuls on the earth
as to manufacture it in the laboratory. The actual discovery of
treasure in Mexico and Peru only whetted the inexhaustible appetite of
the adventurers; they toiled through swamps, they cut their way through
woods, they scaled precipices, they fought savages, they starved and
died; and their eyes, glazing in death, still sought the gleam of the
precious metal. Worse than death, to them, would have been the
revelation that their belief was baseless. The thirst for wealth is not
accounted noble; yet there seems to have been something not ignoble in
this romantic quest for illimitable gold. There is a magic in the mere
idea of the yellow metal, apart from such practical or luxurious uses
as it may subserve; it stood for power and splendor--whatever good the
men of that age were prone to appreciate. Howbeit, the strongest and
bravest of all lands were drawn together in the search; and inevitably
they met and clashed. Foremost among the antagonists were Spain and
England. The ambition of Spain was measureless; she desired not only
the mastery of America and its riches, but the empire of the world, the
leadership in commerce, and the ownership of the very gates of Heaven.
England sought land and trade; she was practical and unromantic, but
strong and daring; and in her people, unlike the Spanish, were
implanted the seeds of human freedom. She had not as yet the prestige
of Spain; but men like Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh went far to
win it; moreover, the star of Spain had already begun to wane, while
that of England was waxing. Whenever, therefore, the strength of the
two rivals was fairly pitted, England had the better of the encounter.
Spain might dominate, for a while, the southern regions of the
continent; and her priests might thread the western wildernesses, and
build white-walled missions there; but to England should belong the
Atlantic coast from Labrador to Florida: the most readily accessible
from Europe, and the best adapted to bring forth that wealth for which
gold must be given in exchange. The struggle, as between the Spanish
and the English, was temporarily suspended, and it was with France that
the latter now found themselves confronted. The French had entered
America by way of the St. Lawrence, and down the Mississippi, in
expectation, like the others, of finding a passage through to India;
they had planted colonies and conciliated the Indians, and were
destined to give England much more trouble than her former foe had
done. They, like the English, wished to live in the new world; Spain's
chief desire was to plunder it and take the booty home with her. In the
sequel, England was victorious; and thus approved her right to be the
nucleus of the Race of the Future. Finally, it was to be her fate to
fight that Race itself, and to be defeated by it; and thus, as the
chosen from the chosen, the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies were
to begin their career.
The birth of America must therefore be dated, not from the discovery of
the land, but from the culmination in revolt of the English Colonies.
All that preceded this was as the early and ambiguous processes of
nature in bringing forth the plant from the seed. Nature knows her
work, and its result; but the onlooker sees the result only. The
Creator of man knew of what a child America was to be the mother: but
the world, intent upon its selfish concerns, recognized it only when
the consummation had been reached. And even now she eyes us askance,
and mutters doubts as to our endurance and our legitimacy. But America
is Europe's best and only friend, and her political pattern must sooner
or later, and more or less exactly, be followed by all peoples.
Democracy, however unwelcome in its first and outward aspect it may
appear, is the logical issue of human experiments in government; it is
susceptible of much abuse and open to many corruptions; but these
cannot penetrate far below the surface; they are external and obvious,
not vital and secret; because at heart the voice of democracy is the
voice of God. It may be silent for long, so that some will disbelieve
or despair, and say in their haste that democracy is a fraud or a
failure. But at last its tones will be heard, and its word will be
irresistible and immortal: the word of the Lord, uttering itself
through the mouth of His creatures.
The preliminary episodes and skirmishings, therefore, which went before
the spiritual self-consciousness of America, will be treated here in
outline only; only such events and persons as were the sources of
subsequent important conditions will be drawn in light and shadow. This
period of adventure and exploration is, it is true, rich in picturesque
characters and romantic incident, but they have little organic relation
to the history of the true America--which is the tracing of the
development and embodiment of an abstract idea. They belong to Europe,
whose life was present in them, though the men acted and the incidents
occurred in a strange environment. They are attractive subjects of
study in themselves, but have small pertinence to the present argument.
Our aim will be to maintain an organic coherency.
Still less can we linger in that impressive darkness before dawn which
prevailed upon the continent before the advent of Columbus. The mystery
which shrouds the origin and annals of the races which inhabited
America previous to the European invasion has been assiduously
investigated, but never dispelled. At first it was taken for granted
that the "Indians," as the red men were ignorantly called, were the
aboriginal denizens of the country. But the mounds, ruined cities,
pottery and other remains since found in all parts of the land,
concerning which the Indians could furnish no information, and which
showed a state of civilization far in advance of theirs, were proof
that a great people had existed here in the remote past, who had
flourished and disappeared without leaving any trace whereby they could
be accounted for or identified. They are an enigma compared with which
the archeological problems of the Old World are an open book. We can
form no conception of the conditions under which they lived, of their
personal characteristics, of their language, habits, or religion. We
cannot determine whether these forerunners of the Indians were one
people in several stages of development, or several peoples in
simultaneous occupation of the land. We can establish no trustworthy
connection between them and any Asiatic races, and yet we are reluctant
to believe them isolated from the rest of mankind. If they had dwelt
here from their creation, why had they not progressed further in
civilization?--and if they emigrated hither from another continent, why
do their remains not indicate their source? By what agency did they
perish, and when? The more keenly we strive to penetrate their mystery,
the more perplexing does it appear; the further we investigate them,
the more alien from anything we are or have known do they seem. Elusive
as mist, and questionable as night, they form a suggestive background
on which the vivid and energetic drama of our novel civilization stands
out in sharp relief.
Scarcely less mysterious--though living among us still--are the red men
whom we found here. They had no written languages or history; their
knowledge of their own past was confined to vague and fanciful
traditions. They were few in numbers, barbarous in condition, untamable
in nature; they built no cities and practiced no industries: their
women planted maize and performed all menial labors; their men hunted
and fought. Before we came, they fought one another; our coming did not
unite them against a common enemy; it only gave each of them one enemy
the more. After an intercourse of four hundred years, we know as little
of them as we did at first; we have neither educated, absorbed nor
exterminated them. The fashion of their faces, and some other
indications, seem to point to a northern Asiatic ancestry; but they
cannot tell us even so much as we can guess. There have been among
them, now and again, men of commanding abilities in war and
negotiation; but their influence upon their people has not lasted
beyond their own lives. Amid the roar and fever of these latter ages,
they stand silent, useless, and apathetic. They belong to our history
only in so far as their savage and treacherous hostility contributed to
harden the fortitude of our earlier settlers, and to weld them into a
united people.
Posterity may resolve these obscurities; meanwhile they remain in
picturesque contrast to the merciless publicity of our own life, and
the scientific annihilation of time and distance. They are as the dark
and amorphous loam in which has taken root the Flower of the Ages. If
extremes must meet, it was fitting that the least and the most highly
developed examples of mankind should dwell side by side, at the close
of the nineteenth century, in a land to which neither is native: that
Europe, the child of Asia, should meet its prehistoric parent here, and
work out its destiny before her uncomprehending eyes. The world is an
inn of strange meetings; and this encounter is perhaps the strangest of
all.
The most dangerous enemy of America has been--not Spain, France,
England, or any other nation in arms, but--our own material prosperity.
The lessons of adversity we took to heart, and they brought forth
wholesome fruit, purifying our blood and toughening our muscles. So
long as the Spirit of Liberty was threatened from without, she was safe
and triumphant. But when her foes abroad had ceased to harry her, a foe
far more insidious began to plot against her in her own house. The
tireless energy and ingenuity which are our most salient
characteristics, and which had rendered us formidable and successful on
sea and land, were turned by peace into productive channels. The
enormous natural resources of the continent began to receive
development; men who under former conditions would have been admirals
and generals, now became leaders in commerce, manufactures and finance;
they made great fortunes, and set up standards of emulation other than
patriotism and public spirit. Like the old Spanish and English
adventurers, they sought for gold, and held all other things secondary
to that. An anomalous oligarchy sprang into existence, holding no
ostensible political or social sway, yet influential in both directions
by virtue of the power of money. Money can be possessed by the evil as
well as by the good, and it can be used to tempt the good to condone
evil. The exalted maxim of human equality was interpreted to mean that
all Americans could be rich; and the spectacle was presented of a
mighty and generous nation fighting one another for mere material
wealth. Inevitably, the lower and baser elements of the population came
to the surface and seemed to rule; the ordinary citizen, on whom the
welfare of the State depends, allowed his private business interest to
wean him from the conduct of public affairs, which thereby fell into
the hands of professional politicians, who handled them for their
personal gain instead of for the common weal. We forgot that pregnant
saying, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and suffered
ourselves to be persuaded that because our written Constitution was a
wise and patriotic document, we were forever safe even from the effects
of our own selfishness and infidelity. As some men are more skillful
and persistent manipulators of money than others, it happened that the
capital of the country became massed in one place and was lacking in
another; the numbers of the poor, and of paupers, increased; and the
rich were able to control their political action and sap their
self-respect by dominating the employment market. "Do my bidding, or
starve," is a cogent argument; it should never be in the power of any
man to offer it; but it was heard over the length and breadth of free
America. The efforts of laboring men, by organization, to check the
power of capitalists, was met by the latter with organizations of their
own, which, in the form of vast "trusts" and otherwise, deprived small
manufacturers and traders of the power of independent self-support.
Strikes and lockouts were the natural outcome of such a situation; and
the sinister prospect loomed upon us of labor and capital arrayed
against each other in avowed hostility.
Danger from this cause, however, is more apparent than actual. The
remedy, in the last resort, is always in ourselves. Laws as to land and
contracts may be modified, but the true cure for all such injuries and
inequalities is to cease to regard the amassing of "fortunes" as the
most desirable end in life. The land is capable of supporting in
comfort far more than its present population; ignorance or selfish
disregard of the true principles of economy have made it seem
otherwise. The proper state of every man is that of a producer; the
craving of individuals to own what they have not fairly earned and
cannot usefully administer, is vain and disorderly. Men will always be
born who have the genius of management; and others who require to have
their energies directed; some can profitably control resources which to
others would be a mischievous burden. But this truth does not involve
any extravagant discrepancy in the private means and establishments of
one or the other; each should have as much as his needs, intelligence
and taste legitimately warrant, and no more. Such matters will
gradually adjust themselves, once the broad underlying principle has
been accepted. Meanwhile we may remember that national health is not
always synonymous with peace. It was the warning of our Lord--"I am not
come to bring peace? but a sword." The war which is waged with powder
and ball is often less contrary to true peace than the war which exists
while all the outward semblances of peace are maintained. We must not
be misled by names. America is perhaps too prone to regard herself in a
passive light, as the refuge merely of the oppressed and needy; but she
has an active mission too. She stands for so much that is contrary to
the ideas that have hitherto ruled the world that she can hardly hope
to avoid the hostility, and possibly the attacks, of the
representatives of the old order. These, she must be able and ready to
repel. We have freely shed our blood for our own freedom; and we should
not forget that, though charity begins at home, it need not end there.
We should not interpret too strictly the maxims which admonish us to
mind our own housekeeping, and to avoid entanglements with the quarrels
or troubles of our neighbors. We should not say to the tide of our
liberties, Thus far shalt thou go, and no further. America is not a
geographical expression, and arbitrary geographical boundaries should
not be permitted to limit the area which her principles control. We,
who seek to bind the other nations to ourselves by ties of commerce,
should recognize the obligations of other ties, whose value cannot be
expressed in money.
America wears her faults upon her forehead, not in her heart; her
history is just beginning; she herself dreams not yet what her ultimate
destiny will be. But so far as her brief past may serve as a key
wherewith to open the future? a study of it will not be idle.
CHAPTER FIRST
COLUMBUS, RALEIGH AND SMITH
The records will have it that America was discovered in consequence of
the desire of Europe to profit by the commerce of Cathay, which had
hitherto reached them only by the long and expensive process of a
journey due west. One caravan had passed on the spices and other
valuables to another, until they reached the Mediterranean. It was
asked whether the trip could not be more quickly and cheaply made by
sea. Assuming, as was generally done, that the earth was flat, why
might not a man sail round the southern extremity of Africa, and up the
other side to the Orient? It was true that the extremity of Africa
might extend to the Southern ice, in which case this plan would not
serve; but the attempt might be worth making. This was the view of
Henry of Portugal, a scientific and ingenious prince, whose life
covered the first sixty years of the Fifteenth Century. And Portuguese
mariners did accordingly sail their little ships far down the Atlantic
coast of the Dark Continent; but they did not venture quite far enough
until long after good Prince Henry was dead, and Columbus had (in his
own belief) pioneered a shorter way.
Columbus was a theorist and a visionary. Many men who have been able to
show much more plausible grounds for their theories than he could for
his have died the laughing-stock of the world. Columbus was a
laughing-stock for nearly twenty years; but though the special
application of his theory was absurdly wrong, yet in principle it
chanced to be right; and he was so fortunate as to be empowered to
bring it to a practical demonstration. His notion was that the earth
was not flat, but round. Therefore the quickest route to the extreme
East must be in exactly the opposite direction; the globe, he
estimated, could not be much over fifteen thousand miles in girth;
Cathay, by the land route, was twelve thousand miles or so east of
Europe; consequently the distance west could not be more than three
thousand. This could be sailed over in a month or two, and the saving
in time and trouble would be immense.--Thus did he argue--shoving the
Atlantic into the Pacific Ocean, subtracting six or seven thousand
miles from their united breadth, and obliterating entirely that western
continent which he was fated to discover, though he was never to
suspect its existence.
The heresy that the earth was a sphere had long been in existence;
Aristotle being the earliest source to which it could be traced.
Sensible people did not countenance it then, any more than they accept
to-day the conjecture that other planets than this may be inhabited.
They demonstrated its improbability on historical and religious
grounds, and also made the point that, supposing it were round, and
that Columbus were to sail down the under side of it, he would never be
able to climb back again. But the Genoese was a man who became more
firmly wedded to his opinion in proportion as it met with ridicule and
opposition; proofs he had none of the truth of his pet idea; but he
clung to it with a doggedness which must greatly have exasperated his
interlocutors. By dint of sheer persistence, he almost persuaded some
men that there might be something in his project; but he never brought
any of them to the pitch of risking money on it. It was only upon a
woman that he was finally able to prevail; and doubtless the
intelligence of Isabella of Castile was less concerned in the affair
than was her feminine imagination. Had she known more, she would have
done less. But so, for that matter, would Columbus.
Almost as little is known of the personal character of this man as of
Shakespeare's; and the portraits of him, though much more numerous than
those of the poet, are even less compatible with one another. The
estimates and conjectures of historians also differ; some describe a
pious hero and martyr, others a dissolute adventurer and charlatan. We
are constrained, in the end, to construct his effigy from our own best
interpretation of the things he did. Some little learning he had; just
enough, probably, to disturb the balance of his judgment. He could read
Latin and make maps, and he had ample experience of practical
navigation. His life as a mariner got him the habit of meditation, and
this favored the espousal of theories, which, upon occasion, he could
expound with volubility or defend with passion, as his Italian
temperament prompted. His imagination was portentous, and the Fifteenth
Century was hospitable to this faculty; there was nothing--except plain
but unknown facts--too marvelous to be believed; and that Columbus was
even more credulous than his contemporaries is proved by the evidence
that even facts were not exempt from his entertainment. An ordinary
appetite for the marvelous could swallow stories of chimeras dire, and
men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders; but nothing short of
the profligate capacity of a Columbus could digest such a proposition
as that the earth was round and could be circumnavigated. The type of
half-educated fanatics to which he belonged has always been common;
there is nothing exceptional or remarkable in this fanatic except the
fortune which finally attended his lifelong devotion to the most
improbable hypothesis of his time. It has been our custom to eulogize
his courage and his constancy to the truth; but if he had adopted
perpetual motion, instead of the rotundity of the earth, as his dogma,
he would have deserved our praises just as much. His sole claim to our
admiration is, that in the teeth of all precedent and likelihood, he
succeeded by one mistake in making another: because he fancied that by
sailing west he could find the Indies, he blundered upon a land whose
identity he never discovered. Doubtless his blunder was of unspeakable
value; but a blunder not the less it was; while as to his courage and
perseverance, as much has been shown by a thousand other scientific and
philosophical heretics, whose names have not survived, because the
thing they imagined turned out an error.
From another point of view, however, Columbus is specially a creature
of his age. It was an age which felt, it knew not why, that something
new must come to pass. The resources of Europe were exhausted; men had
reached the end of their tether, and demanded admittance to some wider
pasturage. It was much such a predicament as obtains now, four hundred
years later; we feel that changes--enlargements--are due, but know not
what or whence. The conception of a voyage across the Atlantic, in that
age, seemed as captivating, and almost as fantastic, as a trip to the
Moon or Mars would, to an adventurer of our time. Given the vehicle, no
doubt many volunteers would offer for the journey; Columbus could get a
ship, but the chances of his arriving at his proposed destination must
have appeared as problematical to him as the Moon enterprise in a
balloon would to a world-weary globe-trotter of to-day. It was not
merely that the ship was small and the Atlantic large and stormy; there
were legends of vast whirlpools, of abysmal oceanic cataracts, of
sea-monsters, malignant genii, and other portents not less terrifying
and fatal. Columbus would not have been surprised at falling in with
any of these things; but the physical courage which must have been his
most prominent trait, added to incorrigible pride of opinion, brought
him through.
But the significant feature of his achievement is, not that he sailed
or that he arrived, but that he was impelled, irresistibly as it were,
to make the attempt. He made it, because it was the one thing left in
the world that seemed worth doing; it was the only apparent way of
escape from the despair of the familiar and habitual; it was an
adventure charged with all unknown possibilities; once conceived, it
must be executed at whatever cost. Columbus was fascinated; the unknown
drew him like a magnet; he was the involuntary deputy of his period to
incarnate its yearnings in act. The hour had struck; and with it, as
always, appeared the man. So it has ever been in the history of the
world; though we, with characteristic vanity, uniformly put the cart
before the horse, and declare that it is the man that brings the hour.
Be that as it may, Columbus was fitted out with three boats by the
Spanish king and queen, set sail from Spain on the 3d of August, 1492,
and arrived at one of the Caribbean islands on the 12th of October of
the same year. He supposed that he had found an East Indian
archipelago; and with the easy emotional piety of his time and
temperament, he fell on his knees and thanked God, and took possession
of everything in sight in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella.
The deed had been done, and Columbus had his reward. It would have been
well for him had he recognized this fact, and not tried to get more. He
had found land on the other side of the Atlantic; what no other man had
believed possible, he had accomplished; he had carried his point, and
proved his thesis--or one so much resembling it that he never knew the
difference. This, and not a more sordid hope, had been the real motive
power of his career up to this time; and the moment when the light from
another world gleamed across the water to his hungry eyes had been the
happiest that he had ever known, or would know. A mighty hope had been
fulfilled; the longing of an age had been gratified in his triumph; a
fresh chapter in the world's history had been begun. The thoughts and
emotions that surged through the ardent Italian, as he knelt on that
coral beach, were lofty and unselfish; as were, in truth, those of the
age whose representative he was, when it saw him depart on his
adventure. But before the man of destiny had risen from his knees, he
had ceased to act as the instrument of God, and had begun to think of
personal emoluments. So much he must make over to Spain; so much he
might keep for himself; so much was promised to his shipmates. He would
be famous--yes: and rich and powerful too; he would be a great
vicegerent; his attire should be of silk and velvet, with a gold chain
about his neck, and gems on his hands. So adversity set his name among
the stars, and prosperity abased his soul to dust. The remaining years
of his life were a fruitless struggle to secure what he deemed his
rightful wages--to coin his immortal exploit into ducats; and his end
was sorrowful and dishonored. The proud self-abnegation of the ancient
Roman was lacking in the medieval Genoese.