THE SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA
When the United States of America had once acquired the extensive
territory known at the beginning of the century as Louisiana there
was no effective bar to their extension westward until they came to
the shore of the Pacific. There were hostile Indians, and deserts
difficult to traverse in the slow-going wagons, but the westward
progress of the pioneers went on with no serious sets-back and at a
pace which was very wonderful considering the conditions. When the
railway era came--we may date its beginning approximately at
1830--the progress was much accelerated.
The population of the States grew very fast, both by the increase of
the old settlers and by immigration, especially from Ireland.
Ireland never had been happy in her Union with England, and her
people were discontented and very ready to try their fortunes under
the American flag. Just before the middle of the century the potato,
on which the Irish people chiefly live, had failed almost entirely,
and there had been cruel famine and distress, which further
encouraged them to emigrate.
Thus America grew great. We have seen that as early as 1823 she had
put forth that announcement known as the Monroe Doctrine, which
proclaimed that she deemed the whole of the vast South American
Continent, as well as the whole of the North which lay {209} south of
the Canadian border, to be her concern, and hers alone. She would
allow no European nation to interfere there.
[Sidenote: The South American states]
That did not imply that she herself would seek to upset arrangements
already made. What did happen in that South American section was
that it was divided into a number of States, which never became
united, as did the States of the North. Most of them, very soon
after their settlement, had become self-governing, their mother
countries in Europe being too war-weary to make very serious efforts
to retain them. Spanish was the language of the majority, but in the
State which had by far the largest territory of all, that of Brazil,
which had rather unexpectedly fallen to the share of Portugal under
the dispensation sanctioned by the famous Bull of Pope Alexander, the
common language was Portuguese. The population in all of them varied
from pure European to pure Indian, with every possible degree of
mixture between. Side by side, on the north-east shoulder of the
Continent, were, and are, the three Guianas, the British, French, and
Dutch.
But whereas these three still are European possessions, over all the
rest of the Continent the settlers soon threw off all allegiance to
their mother lands, as also did Mexico, once known as New Spain, at
the southern end of the Northern Continent.
Both Mexico and Brazil started their independent careers with
governors of the style of Emperor, but in Mexico he was very soon
ousted and a republican government instituted. In all the Spanish
States of South America, too, the form of government was republican;
but there was an Emperor of Brazil, of the royal family of Portugal,
though quite independent of the Portuguese Government, throughout
most of the century, until she too elected to become republican. The
Continent is for the greater part exceedingly {210} rich and fertile,
and supplies to Europe a great deal of its surplus products of very
many kinds. Were it not for the frequent revolutions and changes of
government, which make property insecure and distract the people from
productive work, all these States might be far more prosperous even
than they are. Naturally enough they always have had many immigrants
of the Latin race. Italians especially have been going out to the
States of that Southern Continent in very large numbers. The United
States have attracted the peoples of more Northern Europe, the
Germans and Scandinavia. Of Canada the population has been swelled
by English, Irish and, largely, by Scottish immigration. The French
have not gone there in great numbers, but we must always remember
that there is a considerable population, in certain parts of Canada,
that is French in race and in speech--the descendants of the original
French settlers.
Even after they had acquired Louisiana, the people of the United
States did not find themselves with an entirely unimpeded course to
the West, for Mexico, independent since 1822, possessed all or most
of that territory which you may now see marked on the map as Texas,
New Mexico, and Upper California, all of which passed, by conquest or
by arrangement, into the hands of the United States shortly before
the middle of the century. The transfer of California was
immediately followed by a violent rush of Eastern Americans to the
West, where gold, in great quantities, had just been found.
Thus, or somewhat thus, the general political boundaries of the
United States and of the other countries of the two American
Continents came to be as they are; but there was at least one moment
when the Union of the States itself was in grievous danger of
breaking up.
[Sidenote: The slavery question]
Between the States in the North and those in the {211} South there
were certain differences in interests and outlook which were very
likely to lead to a quarrel. There had been some difference even in
their original settlers. As already noticed, those who went to New
England and the Northern States generally were for the most part of
the Puritan persuasion, of a humbler social rank, and with more rigid
religious views than those who settled in Virginia and other States
of the South. The latter were largely of the landowning class at
home, and when they came to America formed large estates and worked
them by slave labour--negro slaves brought from America, or the
descendants of those Africans.
When Louisiana was taken over from the French, slavery was in use all
over its then vast extent. In the Northern section, soon to be known
as the State of Missouri, slavery was abolished. It was retained in
the South.
The idea of the slavery of the black races was not repugnant to the
conscience of men of that day. It was not until later, and only
after the great English philanthropist Wilberforce had devoted his
whole life to the cause, that slavery was abolished in the British
and French West Indies. The condition of the slaves, once they had
arrived, was not, generally, so very bad, but the horrors that they
suffered in the passage from Africa to America were unspeakable; the
death-rate was terribly heavy; and the slave raids in Africa itself
made the lives of the wretched negroes in their native country
miserably anxious even if they evaded capture.
But the consciences of white men were not alive to these miseries
then, even as they were not alive to the miseries inflicted by the
industrial system on many who worked under it. When consciences did
begin to be stirred, it was only in accordance with human nature that
expressions of disgust with the conditions of slavery should be
uttered by the people of the {212} Northern States, who were not
owners of slaves, and should be keenly resented by those in the South
who did own slaves and whose sugar crops and cotton and maize were
cultivated by slave labour.
Thus came division between slave States and non-slave States, that is
to say, States in which slavery was the law of the land and States in
which it was not. Now and again a slave would escape, and the right
claimed by the master of an escaped slave to follow him and recapture
him would naturally be resented in a State which did not recognise
slavery.
So dissatisfaction arose, and so it grew, over this slave question,
between the Abolitionists, as they were called--that is, those who
favoured the abolition of slavery generally, and of the slave trade
in particular--and the anti-Abolitionists. Nearly all the North was
of the former, nearly all the South of the latter persuasion.
And this divergence about slavery was but one point of difference
among several. The question of tariff--the duties to be paid on
goods entering American ports--was another. There were
Protectionists and Free-traders then and there, as there are here and
now. There were States in the South that claimed the right to
"nullify," as it was called, in respect of goods brought to their
ports, the Act of Congress which imposed the duties. The
nullifaction claim--the claim to "make nothing of" the Act--was
disallowed; and thence arose more bitterness.
[Sidenote: The War of Secession]
So the embers of discontent went smouldering until active war broke
out between the two sections in 1861; and it broke out over a
difference, which was not actually a difference over slaves or
tariffs although it originated in those questions. The point on
which it broke out was this: that the Southern States claimed for
themselves the right to secede, to cut themselves off, from the
Union. That is why the war is called {213} the War of Secession.
They even called themselves by a distinctive name, not the "United,"
but the "Confederate" States. The North resisted, and refused them
the right to break away and govern themselves as they wished. It
was, perhaps we may think, a singular position to be taken by those
United States which had lately fought so well and triumphantly to
gain their own independent right to self-governance, but almost
certainly it is a good thing for mankind that they did take that
attitude. Had the attempted "secession" succeeded, the States of
North America might have been as disunited as the States of South
America; and so might never have stood, as they do, a strong force
for peace in the world.
The War of Secession was waged with varying fortune, at first rather
favouring the South, though always it was the South which, as the
chief battlefield, had to endure the worst of the misery. It was a
particularly cruel war in the divisions that it caused between
friends and even between families. There were moments when the cause
of the North was in great danger; but the North was able to dispose
of rather larger forces and perhaps of a tougher type of soldiery,
although the endurance and the aptitude for strategy and fighting
seem to have been remarkable on both sides among armies of which only
a small minority were soldiers by profession and training. The
Northern advantages were compensated by the very remarkable military
ability for war of the Southern leaders.
The sympathies of Europe and of England generally were rather with
the South than with the North, and England gave some just cause of
offence to the North by allowing the South to fit out privateering
vessels in British ports.
It was not until after four years of fighting, that is to say, in
1865, that the end came with the surrender {214} of General Lee's
Southern army to the forces of General Grant at Appomatox in
Virginia. That was the end of the fighting, and peace terms were
agreed very shortly afterwards. The claim of any State or collection
of States to break away from the Union has never been put forward
since, and the authority of Congress was confirmed over the whole
Union.
The effects of the war were grievous for the vanquished. Their
fairest territories had been overrun by the troops of both sides,
their crops had been ruined and, heaviest blow of all, their slaves
were emancipated so that there was the less labour available to
repair the losses. All the money that they might have spent in
hiring labour had gone in the war, and the problems of the peace were
scarcely less difficult than those of the war.
It was very many years before the South recovered, and it has
scarcely recovered now. Nor has the bitter feeling of the South
towards the North, which arose from the war and from the many
differences of which it was the outcome, even yet wholly died away.
As lately as 1924 a member of one of the old Virginian families told
me that the Great War, of 1914-1918, by summoning Americans from
North, South, East, and West to serve in the same regiments and in a
common cause, had done more to bring them together and create a sense
of unity, and dispel the misunderstandings, than anything that had
happened in all the years between the American War of Secession and
the Great War.
[Sidenote: Maximilian in Mexico]
While the United States were thus in the agonies of their Civil
contest, an attempt was made to interfere with the affairs of Mexico
which was in direct defiance of that Monroe Doctrine already
mentioned. Just as there is now, at this time of writing, so were
there then, Europeans and European property in Mexico which the
Government of the country was not able to make {215} tolerably
secure. It did not seem to be putting out much effort to secure
them. Europe thought then, as she is perhaps justified in thinking
now, that if the United States forbade any foreign interference with
the American Continents it was their business to see that the States
of those Continents behaved themselves in a reasonable manner. At
that moment the United States were obviously unable to undertake any
such responsibility. Europeans in Mexico therefore appealed to
Europe, and especially to Napoleon III., to enforce a better
government on the country. It was the sort of appeal to which the
character of Napoleon, made him peculiarly ready to respond, and
under his promise of support Maximilian, brother of Francis Joseph of
Austria, went out to take over the government of Mexico, with the
title of Emperor. His reception was by no means as warm as he had
expected. On the contrary, he found his own partisans inferior in
force to those of the opposing faction. For a brief while he held a
nominal rule over some two-thirds of the country. The French troops
supporting him were quite insufficient to put down the native
republican bands. His position was very shaky even at its best.
Then in 1865 the United States, freed from their Civil War,
reasserted the Monroe Doctrine, and made some demonstrations under
arms which clearly indicated that they were ready to give active
effect to it. Upon that, Napoleon recalled his French troops, and
the already shaky position of the Mexican Emperor at once became
desperate. He was captured, tried by a court martial, condemned, and
shot.
So, tragically and ingloriously, ended what really was Europe's one
and only attempt at action opposed to the doctrine enunciated by
Monroe.
A certain implication, or what has been considered an implication, of
that doctrine, namely, that the {216} United States shall abstain
from any interference with affairs foreign to her own two Continents,
even as she has forbidden the foreigner to interfere with them--this
implication she violated, most happily for Europe, in the Great War.
But she had already violated it in her own Spanish war, of 1898,
which followed on Spain's ineffective attempts to restore reasonably
good government in Cuba, that island which lies in a position to
guard the Gulf of Mexico and the Panama Canal. Spain was unable to
enforce respect for the lives and property of Americans in the
island, and, not unjustifiably, the United States, after some years
of long-suffering, resolved that the Spanish rule must be overthrown.
Even America herself shared in the general surprise that the complete
defeat of Spain was so easy; and she was genuinely surprised also to
find the sympathy of Great Britain cordially with her in the short
war.
And as its results, not only Cuba itself, but also the far-off
Philippines, those Spanish-owned islands where Portuguese going East
and Spaniards going West had unexpectedly met a few centuries before,
were given over to the United States.
Nearly at the same time certain Samoan Islands and the Hawaiian group
of islands were annexed to the United States. Therefore she too must
now shoulder her portion of what Kipling has well called "the white
man's burden."
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