How the United States Entered the Century.
[=The Great Republic of the West=]
Hitherto our attention has been directed to the Eastern Hemisphere,
and to the stirring events of nineteenth century history in that
great section of the earth. But beyond the ocean, in North America, a
greater event, one filled with more promise for mankind, one destined
to loom larger on the horizon of time, was meanwhile taking place, the
development of the noble commonwealth of the United States of America.
To this far-extending Republic of the West, a nation almost solely an
outgrowth of the nineteenth century, our attention needs now to be
turned. Its history is one full of great steps of progress, illuminated
by a hundred events of the highest promise and significance, and it
stands to-day as a beacon light of national progress and human liberty
to the world, "the land of the brave and the home of the free."
A hundred years ago the giant here described was but a babe, a newborn
nation just beginning to feel the strength of its limbs. It is with
this section of its history that we are here concerned, its days of
origin and childhood. Two events of extraordinary significance in human
history rise before us in the final quarter of the eighteenth century,
the French Revolution and the American Declaration of Independence and
its results. The first of these revolutionary events we have dealt
with; the second remains to be presented.
[=The Great Men who Founded our Nation=]
There is one circumstance that impresses us most strongly in this
great event, the remarkable group of able men who laid the foundation
of the American commonwealth. Among those whose hands gave the first
impulse to the ship of state were men of such noble proportions as
George Washington, the greatest man of the century not only in America
but in the whole world; Benjamin Franklin, who came closely to the
level of Washington in another field of human greatness; Patrick Henry,
whose masterpieces of oratory still stir the soul like trumpet-blasts;
Thomas Jefferson, to whose genius we owe the inimitable "Declaration of
Independence;" Thomas Paine, whose pen had the point of a sword and the
strength of an army; John Paul Jones, the hero of the most brilliant
feat of daring in the whole era of naval warfare, and Alexander
Hamilton, whose financial genius saved the infant state in one of the
most critical moments of its career. These were not the whole of that
surpassing coterie, but simply in their special fields the greatest,
and it is doubtful if the earth ever saw an abler group of statesmen
than those to whom we owe the Constitution of the United States.
It is not our purpose to tell the story of the American Revolution.
That lies back of the borders of time within which this work is
confined. But some brief statement of its results is in order, as an
introduction to the nineteenth century record of the United States.
[=Weakness of the States After the Revolution=]
It was a country in almost an expiring state when it emerged from
the fierce death struggle of the Revolution. It had been swept by
fire and sword, its resources destroyed, its industries ruined, its
government financially bankrupt, its organization in a state of
tottering weakness, little left it but the courage of its people and
the aspirations of its leaders. But in courage and aspiration safety
and progress lie, and with those for its motive forces the future of
the country was assured.
The weakness spoken of was not the only or the worst weakness with
which the new community had to contend. Though named the United
States, its chief danger lay in its lack of union. The thirteen recent
colonies--now states--were combined only by the feeblest of bonds,
one calculated to carry them through an emergency, not to hold them
together under all the contingencies of human affairs. Practically
they were thirteen distinct nations, not one close union; a group of
communities with a few ties of common self-interest, but otherwise
disunited and distinct.
[=The Articles of Confederation=]
"Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union" had been adopted in
1777 and ratified by the agreement of all the states in 1781. But the
Confederation was not a union. Each state claimed to be a sovereign
commonwealth, and little power was given to the central government.
The weak point in the Articles of Confederation was that they gave
Congress no power to lay taxes or to levy soldiers. It could merely
ask the states for men and money, but must wait till they were ready
to give them--if they chose to do so at all. It could make treaties,
but could not enforce them; could borrow money, but could not repay it;
could make war, but could not force a man to join its armies; could
recommend, but had no power to act.
The states proposed to remain independent except in minor particulars.
They were jealous of one another and of the general Congress. "We are,"
said Washington, "one nation to-day and thirteen to-morrow." That well
expressed the state of the case; no true union existed; the states were
free to join hands more closely or to drift more widely asunder.
[=False Ideas in Finance=]
The time from the revolt against the stamp duties in 1775 to the
inauguration in 1789 of the National Government under which we live
has been called the critical period of American history. It was
a period which displayed all the inaptitude of the Americans for
sound financiering. There is hardly an evil in finances that cannot
be illustrated by some event in American affairs at that time. The
Americans began the war without any preparation, they conducted it
on credit, and at the end of fourteen years three millions of people
were five hundred millions of dollars or more in debt. The exact
amount will never be known. Congress and the State Legislatures issued
paper currency in unlimited quantities and upon no security. The
Americans were deceived themselves in believing that their products
were essential to the welfare of Europe, and that all European nations
would speedily make overtures to them for the control of American
commerce. It may be said that the Americans wholly over-estimated their
importance in the world at that time; they thought that to cut off
England from American commerce would ruin England; they thought that
the bestowal of their commerce upon France would enrich France so much
that the French king, for so inestimable a privilege, could well afford
to loan them, and even to give them, money.
The doctrine of the rights of man ran riot in America. Paper currency
became the infatuation of the day. It was thought that paper currency
would meet all the demands for money, would win American independence.
Even so practical a man as Franklin, then in France, said: "This
effect of paper currency is not understood on this side the water;
and, indeed, the whole is a mystery even to the politicians, how we
have been able to continue a war four years without money, and how we
could pay with paper that had no previously fixed fund appropriated
specifically to redeem it. This currency, as we manage it, is a
wonderful machine: it performs its office when we issue it; it pays
and clothes troops and provides victuals and ammunition, and when
we are obliged to issue a quantity excessive, it pays itself off by
depreciation."
If the taxing power is the most august power in government, the abuse
of the taxing power is the most serious sin government can commit.
No one will deny that the Americans were guilty of committing most
grievous financial offenses during the critical period of their
history. They abused liberty by demanding and by exercising the rights
of nationality, and at the same time by neglecting or refusing to
burden themselves with the taxation necessary to support nationality.
[=Constitutions of Colonies and Confederated States=]
The inability of the Congress of the Confederation to legislate under
the provisions of the Articles compelled their amendment; for while
the exigencies of war had forced the colonies into closer union,--a
"perpetual league of friendship,"--they had also learned additional
lessons in the theory and administration of local government; for
each of the colonies, with the exception of Connecticut and Rhode
Island, had transformed colonial government into government under
a constitution. The people had not looked to Congress as a central
power; they considered it as a central committee of the States. The
individualistic tendencies of the colonies strengthened when the
colonies transformed themselves into commonwealths.
The struggle, which began between the thirteen colonies and the
imperial Parliament, was now transformed into a struggle between two
tendencies in America, the tendency toward sovereign commonwealths and
the tendency toward nationality. The first commonwealth constitutions
did not acknowledge the supreme authority of Congress; there was yet
lacking that essential bond between the people and their general
government, the power of the general government to address itself
directly to individuals. Interstate relations in 1787 were scarcely
more perfect than they had been fifteen years before. The understanding
of American affairs was more common, but intimate political association
between the commonwealths was still unknown. The liberty of nationality
had not yet been won. A peculiar tendency in American affairs from
their beginning is seen in the succession of written constitutions,
instruments peculiar to America. The commonwealths of the old
Confederation demonstrated the necessity for a clearer definition of
their relations to each other and of the association of the American
people in nationality.
[=The Constitutional Convention and its Work=]
A sense of the necessity for commercial integrity led to the calling
of the Philadelphia Convention to amend the old Articles, but when
the Convention assembled it was found that an adequate solution of
the large problem of nationality could not be found in an amendment
of the old "Articles of Confederation," but called for a new and
more vigorous Constitution. This Convention combined the associated
states into a strongly united nation, possessed of all the powers of
nationality, civil, financial and military. It organized a tripartite
government, consisting of Supreme Executive, Supreme Legislative, and
Supreme Judicial departments, each with all the power "necessary to
make it feared and respected." While the Upper House of Congress still
represented the states as separate commonwealths, the Lower House
represented the people as individuals; it standing, not for a group
of distinct communities, but for a nation of people. And to this House
was given the sole power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and
excises, and to pay the debt, and provide for the common defence and
general welfare of the United States."
With this Constitution the United States of America first came into
existence; a strong, energetic and capable nation; its government
possessed of all the powers necessary to the full control of the
states, and full ability to make itself respected abroad; its people
possessed of all the civil rights yet known or demanded.
[=Restrictions on the Right of Suffrage=]
Yet the people, in their political privileges, were still controlled by
the constitutions of the states, and these fixed close restrictions on
the right of suffrage, the electorate being confined to a small body
whose ownership of real estate and whose religious opinions agreed
with the ideas existing in colonial times. The property each voter was
required to possess differed in different commonwealths. In New Jersey
he must have property to the value of fifty pounds, in Maryland and the
Carolinas an estate of fifty acres, in Delaware a freehold estate of
known value, in Georgia an estate of ten dollars or follow a mechanic
trade; in New York, if he would vote for a member of Assembly he must
possess a freehold of twenty pounds, and if he would vote for State
Senator, it must be a hundred. Massachusetts required an elector to own
a freehold estate worth sixty pounds or to possess an annual income of
three pounds. Connecticut was satisfied if his estate was of the yearly
value of seven dollars, and Rhode Island required him to own the value
of one hundred and thirty-four dollars in land. Pennsylvania required
him to be a freeholder, but New Hampshire and Vermont were satisfied
with the payment of a poll-tax.
[=Religious Qualifications of Voters=]
The number of electors was still further affected by the religious
opinions required of them. In New Jersey, in New Hampshire, in Vermont,
in Connecticut, and in South Carolina, no Roman Catholic could vote;
Maryland and Massachusetts allowed "those of the Christian religion" to
exercise the franchise, but the "Christian religion" in Massachusetts
was of the Congregational Church. North Carolina required her electors
to believe in the divine authority of the Scriptures; Delaware was
satisfied with a belief in the Trinity and in the inspiration of
the Bible; Pennsylvania allowed those, otherwise qualified, to vote
who believed "in one God, in the reward of good, and the punishment
of evil, and in the inspiration of the Scriptures." In New York, in
Virginia, in Georgia, and in Rhode Island, the Protestant faith was
predominant, but a Roman Catholic, if a male resident, of the age of
twenty-one years or over, could vote in Rhode Island.
[=Property Qualifications of Officials=]
The property qualifications which limited the number of electors were
higher for those who sought office. If a man wished to be governor of
New Jersey or of South Carolina, his real and personal property must
amount to ten thousand dollars; in North Carolina to one thousand
pounds; in Georgia to two hundred and fifty pounds or two hundred
and fifty acres of land; in New Hampshire to five hundred pounds; in
Maryland to ten times as much, of which a thousand pounds must be of
land; in Delaware he must own real estate; in New York he must be
worth a hundred pounds; in Rhode Island, one hundred and thirty-four
dollars; and in Massachusetts a thousand pounds. Connecticut required
her candidate for governor to be qualified as an elector, as did
New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. In all the
commonwealths the candidate for office must possess the religious
qualifications required of electors.
[=Condition of the Country in 1787=]
From these statements it is evident that the suffrage in the United
States was greatly limited when, after the winning of American
independence, the Constitution of the United States was framed and the
commonwealths had adopted their first constitutions of government. It
may be said that in 1787 the country was bankrupt, and America was
without credit, and that of a population of three million souls, who,
by our present ratio, would represent six hundred thousand voters,
less than one hundred and fifty thousand possessed the right to vote.
African slavery and property qualifications excluded above four hundred
thousand men from the exercise of the franchise. It is evident, then,
that at the time when American liberty was won American liberty had
only begun; the offices of the country were in the possession of
the few, scarcely any provision existed for common education, the
roads of the country may be described as impassable, the means for
transportation, trade, and commerce as feeble. If the struggle for
liberty in America was not to be in vain, the people of the United
States must address themselves directly to the payment of their debts,
to the enlargement of the franchise, to improvements in transportation,
and to the creation, organization, and support of a national system of
common taxation. It is these great changes which constitute the history
of this country during the nineteenth century.
[=Payment of Debt and Extension of Suffrage=]
All these have been gained since the adoption of the Constitution.
The remarkable financial operations of Alexander Hamilton--by which
the crushing load of debt of the new nation was funded, for payment
in after years a customs tariff established as a means of obtaining
revenue, and provision made for paying the claims of the soldiers
of the Revolution--saved the credit and secured the honor of the
nation. As regards the franchise, it was greatly extended during the
nineteenth century. By the time the Erie canal was excavated property
qualifications for suffrage had disappeared in nearly all the states,
and by the middle of the century such qualifications had been abandoned
in them all. Those of a religious character had vanished thirty years
earlier.
As yet, however, the right to vote was limited to "free, white, male
citizens." Twenty years afterwards, on March 30, 1870, a further great
extension of the right of suffrage was made, when, in accordance with
the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, it was proclaimed by
Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State, that the right of citizens of this
country to vote could not be denied or abridged by the United States
or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.
Universal suffrage, so far as male citizens were concerned, thus
became the common condition of American political life in 1870. But
the struggle for liberty in this direction was not yet ended. Female
citizens, about the middle of the century, gave voice to their claim to
the same right, and with such effort that they had gained the right to
vote at all elections in four of the States--Wyoming, Colorado, Utah,
and Idaho--by the end of the century, and partial rights of suffrage
in a majority of the States. The outlook is that before many years
universal suffrage in its fullest sense will be established in the
United States.
[=Development in State Constitutions=]
With the westward movements of the millions of human beings who have
occupied the North American continent have gone the institutions and
constitutions of the east, modified in their journey westward by the
varying conditions of the life of the people. The brief constitutions
of 1776 have developed into extraordinary length by successive
changes and additions made by the more than seventy Constitutional
Conventions which have been held west of the original thirteen States.
These later constitutions resemble elaborate legal codes rather
than brief statements of the fundamental ideas of government. But
these constitutions, of which those of the Dakotas and of Montana
and Washington are a type, express very clearly the opinions of
the American people in government at the present time. The earnest
desire shown in them for an accurate definition of the theory and the
administration of government proves how anxiously the people of this
country at all times consider the interpretation of their liberties,
and with what hesitation, it may be said, they delegate their powers in
government to legislatures, to judges, and to governors.
[=Progress in the United States=]
The struggle for liberty will never cease, for with the progress of
civilization new definitions of the wants of the people are constantly
forming in the mind. The whole movement of the American people in
government, from the simple beginnings of representative government in
Virginia, when the little parliament was called, to the present time,
when nationality is enthroned and mighty commonwealths are become the
component parts of the "more perfect union," has been toward the slow
but constant realization of the rights and liberties of the people.
Education, for which no commonwealth made adequate provision a century
ago, is now the first care of the State. Easy and rapid transportation,
wholly unknown to our fathers, is now a necessary condition of daily
life. Trade has so prospered that the accumulated wealth of the country
is more than sixty billions of dollars. Newspapers, magazines, books
and pamphlets are now so numerous as to make it impossible to contain
them all in hundreds of libraries, and the American people have become
the largest class of readers in the world.
A century ago there were but six cities of more than eight thousand
people in this country; the number is now more than five hundred.
Three millions of people have become seventy-five millions. The area
of the original United States has expanded from eight hundred and
thirty thousand square miles to four times that area. With expansion
and growth and the amelioration in the conditions of life, the earnest
problems of government have been brought home to the people by the
leaders in the State, by the clergy, by the teachers in schools and
colleges, and by the press.
But though we may be proud of these conquests, we are compelled in
the last analysis of our institutions, to return to a few fundamental
notions of our government. We must continue the representative idea
based upon the doctrine of the equality of rights and exercised by
representative assemblies founded on popular elections; and after our
most pleasing contemplation of the institutions of America, we must
return to the people, the foundation of our government. Their wisdom
and self-control, and these alone, will impart to our institutions that
strength which insures their perpetuity.