17. Vicksburg in 1862.--The Confederate failures of Corinth,

Perryville and Antietam were followed by a general advance by the

Federals. It is about this time that Vicksburg becomes a place of

importance. Farragut from New Orleans, and the gunboat flotilla

from the upper waters, had engaged the batteries in June and

July, but had returned to their respective stations, while a

Federal force under General Williams, which had appeared before

the fortress, retired to Baton Rouge. Early in August, Van

Dorn, now in command of the place, sent a force to attack

Williams, and on the 5th a hard-fought action took place at Baton

Rouge, in which Williams was killed but his troops held their

own. At this time the minor fortress of Port Hudson was

established to guard the rear of Vicksburg. In November Grant,

with 57,000 men, began to move down from the north against

General J. C. Pemberton, who had superseded the talented Van

Dorn. A converging movement made by Grant from Grand

Junction, W. T. Sherman from Memphis, and a force from Helena

on the Arkansas side, failed, owing to Pemberton's prompt

retirement to Oxford, Mississippi, and complications brought

about by the intrigues of an able but intractable subordinate,

McClernand, induced Grant to make a complete change of

plan. Sherman was to proceed down the great river, and join

the ships from the Gulf before Vicksburg, while Grant himself

drove Pemberton southwards along the Mississippi Central

railway. This double plan failed. Grant, as he pushed

Pemberton before him to Granada, lengthened day by day his

line of communication, and when Van Dorn, ever enterprising,

raided the great Federal depot of Holly Springs the game was

up. Grant retired hastily, for starvation was imminent, and

Pemberton, thus freed, turned upon Sherman, and inflicted a

severe defeat on that general at Chickasaw Bayou near Vicksburg

(December 29). McClernand now assumed command, and on the 11th

of January 1863 captured Fort Hindman near Arkansas Post.

This was the solitary gain of the whole operation. Meanwhile

Vicksburg was steadily becoming stronger and more formidable.

18. Fredericksburg.--McClellan, after the battle of the

Antietam, paused for some time to reorganize his forces, some

of which had barely recovered from the effects of Pope's unlucky

campaign. He then slowly moved down the east side of the

Blue Ridge, while Lee retired up the Valley on the west side

of the same range. On the 6th of November the Army of the

Potomac was at Warrenton, Lee at Culpeper, and Jackson in the

Valley. When on the point of resuming the offensive,

McClellan was suddenly superseded by Burnside, one of his

corps commanders. Like Buell, McClellan had tempered the

tools with which others were to strike; he was not again

employed, and in his fall was involved his most brilliant

subordinate, Fitz John Porter (q.v..) Burnside was by

no means the equal of his predecessor, though a capable

subordinate, and indeed only accepted the chief command with

reluctance. He began his campaign by cancelling McClellan's

operation, and, his own plan being to strike at Richmond from

Fredericksburg, he moved the now augmented army to Falmouth

opposite that place, hoping to surprise the crossing of the

Rappahannock. Delays and neglect, not only at the front,

but on the part of the headquarters staff at Washington,

permitted Lee to seize the heights of the southern bank in

time. When Burnside fought his battle of Fredericksburg

(q.v.) an appalling reverse was the result, the more

terrible as it was absolutely useless (December 13).

19. Closing Operations of 1862.--Chickasaw Bayou and

Fredericksburg ended the Federal initiative in the west and the

east; the Army of the Cumberland under Rosecrans alone could

claim a victory. Buell's successor retained the positions about

Nashville, whilst a new Army of the Ohio prepared to operate

in east Tennessee. Bragg lay at Murfreesboro (see STONE

RIVER), where Rosecrans attacked him on the 31st of December

1862. A very obstinate and bloody two days' battle ended

in Bragg's retirement towards Chattanooga. During these

campaigns the United States navy had not been idle. The part

played by the gunboats on the upper Mississippi had been most

conspicuous, as had been the operations of Farragut's heavier

ships in the lower waters of the same river. The work of Du

Pont and Goldsborough on the Atlantic coast has been alluded to

above. Charleston was attacked without success in 1862, but

from June to August 1863 it was besieged by General Gillmore

and Admiral Dahlgren, and under great difficulties the Federals

secured a lodgment, though it was not until Sherman appeared

on the land side early in 1865 that the Confederate defence

collapsed. Fort Fisher near Wilmington also underwent a

memorable siege by land and sea. Certain incursions were

from time to time made at different points along the whole

sea-board. Minor operations moreover, especially in Arkansas

and southern Missouri, were continually undertaken by both

sides during 1862-1863, of which the battle of Prairie

Grove, Arkansas (December 7, 1862), was the most notable

incident. Meanwhile the blockade had become so stringent

that few ordinary vessels could expect to break through, and

a special type of steamer came into vogue for the purpose.

20. Capture of Vicksburg.--In 1863 the campaigns once more

divided themselves accurately into those of east, centre and

west. This year saw the greatest successes and the heaviest

reverses of the Union army, Gettysburg and Vicksburg and

Chattanooga against Chancellorsville and Chickamauga.

Operations began in the west with the second advance upon

Vicksburg. One corps of the Army of the Tennessee was

detached to cover the Memphis & Charleston railway.

Grant, with the other three under Sherman, McClernand and

McPherson, moved by water to the neighbourhood of the

fortress. Many weeks passed without any success to the Union

arms. Vicksburg and its long line of fortifications stood

on high bluffs, all else was swampy lowland and intricate

waterways. As Sherman in 1862, so now Grant was unable to

obtain any foothold on the high ground, and no effective

attack was possible until this had been gained. At last,

after many trials and failures, Grant took a daring step.

The troops with their supplies marched round through a network

of lakes and streams to a point south of Vicksburg; Admiral

Porter's gunboats and the transports along with them "ran" the

batteries. At Bruinsburg, beyond Pemberton's reach, a landing

was made on the eastern bank and, without any base of supplies

or line of retreat, Grant embarked upon a campaign which made

him in the end master of the prize. On the 4th of July Pemberton

surrendered the fortress and 37,000 men. Grant's endurance

and daring had won what was perhaps the greatest success of the

war. General Joseph Johnston with a small relieving army had

appeared at Jackson, Mississippi, but had been held in check by

General F. P. Blair and a force from the Army of the Tennessee;

when Vicksburg surrendered a larger force was at once sent

against him, whereupon he retired. In the meanwhile Banks

had moved upstream from New Orleans, and laid siege to Port

Hudson. Operations were pressed with vigour, and the place

surrendered four days after Vicksburg. A Confederate attack

on the post of Helena, Arkansas, was the last serious fight on

the great river, and before the end of July the first merchant

steamer from St Louis discharged her cargo at New Orleans.

21. Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.--In Virginia Burnside

had made, in January 1863, an attempt to gain by manoeuvre

what he had missed in battle. The sudden swelling of rivers

and downpour of rain stopped all movement at once, and the

"Mud March" came to an end. A Federal general could retain

his hold on the men after a reverse, but not after a farce:

Burnside was replaced by General Joseph Hooker, who had

a splendid reputation as a subordinate leader. The new

commander displayed great energy in reorganizing the Army of

the Potomac, the discipline of which had not come unscathed

through a career of failure. Lee still held the battlefield

of Fredericksburg and had not attempted the offensive, and in

April he was much weakened by the detachment of Longstreet's

corps to a minor theatre of operations. Hooker's operations

began well, Lee was outmanoeuvred and threatened in flank

and rear, but the Federals were in the end involved in the

confused and disastrous battle of Chancellorsville (q.v.).

Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded, but his men and those

of Longstreet's who had remained with Lee defeated Hooker and

forced him to retire again beyond the Rappahannock, though

he had double Lee's force. But Hooker could at least make

himself obeyed, and when Lee initiated his second invasion of

the North a month after the battle of Chancellorsville, the

Army of the Potomac was as resolute as ever. On the 9th of

June the cavalry combat of Brandy Station made it clear to the

Federal staff that Lee was about to use the Valley once more

to screen an invasion of Maryland. Longstreet, A. P. Hill

and Ewell (who were now Lee's corps commanders) were at one

time scattered from Strasburg in the Valley to Fredericksburg,

and Hooker earnestly begged to be allowed to attack them in

detail. Success was certain, but the scheme was vetoed by the

Federal headquarters and government, whose first and ruling

idea was to keep the Army of the Potomac between Lee and

Washington. Hooker was thus compelled to follow Lee's

movements. Ewell's men were raiding unchecked as far north

as the Susquehanna, while Hooker was compelled to inactivity

before the forces of Hill and Longstreet. The Federal general,

within his limitations, acted prudently and skilfully. The

Army of the Potomac crossed that river only one day later than

Lee, and concentrated at Frederick. But Hooker was no longer

trusted by the Washington authorities, and his dispositions

were interfered with. Not allowed to control the operations

of his own men, the unfortunate general resigned his command

on the 28th. He was succeeded by General G. G. Meade, who,

besides steadiness and ability, possessed the confidence

of Lincoln and Halleck which Hooker had lacked. Meade was

thus able to move promptly, Lee was compelled to meet him,

and the Army of the Potomac began to take up its position

on Pipe Creek, screened by Generals Reynolds and Buford at

Gettysburg (q.v..) On the 1st of July the heads of Lee's

columns engaged Buford's cavalry outposts, and the conflict

began. All troops on both sides hurried to the unexpected

battlefield, and after a great three days' battle, the Army of

the Potomac emerged at last with a decisive victory. On the

4th, as Pemberton surrendered at Vicksburg, Lee drew off his

shattered forces. One third of the Army of northern Virginia

and one quarter of the Army of the Potomac remained on the

field. Pursuit was not seriously undertaken, and the armies

manoeuvred back to the old battle-grounds of the Rapidan and the

Rappahannock. A war of manoeuvre followed, each side being

reduced in turn by successive detachments sent to aid Rosecrans

and Bragg in the struggle for Tennessee. In October Lee

attempted a third Bull Run campaign on the same lines as the

second, but Meade's steadiness foiled him, and he retired

to the Rapidan again, where he in turn repulsed Meade's

attempt to surprise him (Mine Run, November 26-28, 1863).

22. Chickamauga.--In the centre Rosecrans and Bragg spent

the first six months of the year, as it were glaring at each

other. Nothing was done by the main armies, but the far-ranging

cavalry raids of the Confederates under J. H. Morgan and

other leaders created much excitement, especially "Morgan's

Raid" (June 27-July 26), through Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio,

which states had hitherto little or no experience of the

war on their own soil. At last the Army of the Cumberland

advanced. Rosecrans manoeuvred his opponent out of one

position after another until Bragg was driven back into

Chattanooga. These operations were very skilfully conducted

by Rosecrans and his second-in-command, Thomas, and, at a

trifling cost, advanced the Union outposts to the borders of

Georgia. Burnside and the new Army of the Ohio had now

cleared east Tennessee and occupied Knoxville (September 2),

and meanwhile Rosecrans by a brilliant movement, in which he

displayed no less daring in execution than skill in planning,

once more manoeuvred Bragg out of his position and occupied

Chattanooga. But he had to fight to maintain his prize, and

in the desperate battle of Chickamauga (q.v.) on the 19th

and 20th of September, Bragg, reinforced by Longstreet from

Virginia, won a complete victory. Thomas's defence won him

the popular title of the "Rock of Chickamauga" and enabled

Rosecrans to draw off his men, but the critical position of

the Army of the Cumberland in Chattanooga aroused great alarm.

23. Chattanooga.--Grant was now given supreme command in the

west, and the Army of the Tennessee (now under Sherman) and

two corps from Virginia under Hooker were hurried by rail to

Tennessee. In spite of his good record Rosecrans was deprived

of his command. But Thomas, his successor, was one of the

greatest soldiers of the war, and Grant's three generals, all

men of great ability, set to work promptly. Hooker defeated

Longstreet at Wauhatchie and revictualled Chattanooga (q.v.),

and on the 23rd, 24th and 25th of November the three armies

attacked Bragg's position. On the left Sherman made little

progress; on the right, however, Hooker and the men from

the Potomac army fought and won the extraordinary "Battle

above the Clouds" on Lookout Mountain, and on the 25th the

Confederate centre on Missionary Ridge was brilliantly stormed

by Thomas and the Army of the Cumberland. Grant's triumph was

decisive of the war in the west, and with Burnside's victory

over Longstreet at Knoxville, the struggle for Tennessee was

over. Vicksburg, Gettysburg and Chattanooga ended the crisis

of the war, which had been at its worst for the Union in this

year. Henceforth the South was fighting a hopeless battle.

24. Plan of Campaign for 1864.--Grant, now the foremost

soldier in the Federal army, was on the 9th of March 1864

commissioned lieutenant-general and appointed general-in-chief.

Halleck, Lincoln and Stanton, the intractable, if energetic,

war secretary, now stood aside, and the efforts of the whole

vast army were to be directed and co-ordinated by one supreme

military authority. Sherman was to command in the west,

Grant's headquarters accompanied Meade and the Army of the

Potomac. The general plan was simple and comprehensive. Meade

was to "hammer" Lee, and Sherman, at the head of the armies

which had been engaged at Chattanooga and Knoxville, was to

deal with the other great field army of Confederates under

Johnston, and as far as possible gain ground for the Union

in the south-east. Sherman's own plans went farther still,

and included an eventual invasion of Virginia itself from the

south, but this was not contemplated as part of the immediate

programme. Butler with the new Army of the James was to move

up that river towards Richmond and Petersburg. Subsidiary

forces were to operate on the sea-board, in the Shenandoah

Valley and elsewhere. At this time took place the Red River

Expedition, which was intended for the subjugation of western

Louisiana. The troops of General Banks and the war

vessels under Admiral Porter moved up the Red river, and

on the 16th of March 1864 reached Alexandria. Skirmishing

constantly with the Confederates under Kirby Smith and

Taylor, the Federals eventually on the 8th and 9th of April

suffered serious reverses at Sabine Cross Roads and Pleasant

Hill. Banks thereupon retreated, and, high water in the

river having come to an end, the fleet was in the gravest

danger of being cut off, until Colonel Bailey suggested, and

rapidly carried out, the construction of a dam and weir over

which the ships ran down to the lower waters. Eventually the

various forces retired to the places whence they had come.

25. The Wilderness Campaign.--Virginia was now destined

to be the scene of the bloodiest fighting of the whole

war. Grant and Meade, reinforced by Burnside's IX. Corps to a

strength of 120,000 men, crossed the Rapidan on the 4th of May

with the intention of attacking Lee's inner flank, that nearer

Richmond. With a bare 70,000 men the Confederate general

struck at the flank of Grant's marching columns in that same

Wilderness where Jackson had won his last battle twelve months

before. The battle of the Wilderness (q.v.) went on for

two days, with little advantage to either side. On his part

Grant had lost 18,000 men. Lee had lost fewer, but could

ill spare them, and Longstreet had been severely wounded (May

5-6). Grant, astonished perhaps, but here as always resolute,

tried again to reach Lee's right wing, and on the 8th another

desperate battle began at Spottsylvania (q.v.) Court House.

The fighting on this field lasted ten days, at the end of

which Grant had doubled his losses and was as far as ever from

success. On the 21st of May, with extraordinary pertinacity,

he sent Meade and Burnside once more against the inner flank

of the Army of northern Virginia. The action of North Anna

ended like the rest, though on this occasion the loss was

small. A week later the Federals, again moving to their

left, arrived upon the ground on which McClellan had fought

two years before, and at Cold Harbor (Porter's battle-field

of Gaines' Mill) the leading troops of the Army of the James

joined the lieutenant-general. Meanwhile the minor armies

had come to close quarters all along the line. The Army of

the James moved towards Richmond on the same day on which the

Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan. On the 16th of May

Butler fought the indecisive battle of Drury's Bluff against

Beauregard, in consequence of which he had to retire to

Bermuda Hundred, whence most of his troops were sent to join

Grant. At the same time the Union troops under Sigel in

the Shenandoah Valley were defeated at New Market (May

15). General Hunter, who replaced Sigel, won a combat at

Piedmont, and marched on the 8th of June towards Lynchburg.

The danger threatening this important point caused Lee to

send thither General Early with the remnants of Jackson's

old Valley troops. Hunter's assault (June 18) failed, and

the Federals, unable to hold their ground, had to make a

circuitous retreat to the Potomac by way of West Virginia.

26. Cold Harbor.--On the 3rd of June at Cold Harbor (q.v.)

took place the last of Grant's "hammering" battles in the open

fields. The attack of the Federals failed utterly; not even

Fredericksburg was so disastrous a defeat. Six thousand

men fell in one hour's fighting, and the total losses on

this field, where skirmishing went on for many days, were

13,000. But Grant was as resolute as ever. His forces once

more manoeuvred against Lee's inner flank, still found no weak

spot, and eventually arrived upon the James. The river was

crossed, Lee as usual conforming to the movement, and on

the 15th of June the Federals appeared before the works of

Petersburg (q.v.). Here, and in the narrow neck of land

between the Appomattox and the James, was the ganglion of

the Confederacy, and the struggle for its possession was

perhaps the greatest of modern history. A first assault made

at once (June 15-18) failed with a loss of 8150 men. Two

sharp combats followed on the 22nd of June and the 2nd of

July, as Grant once more began to feel Lee's right. But the

anniversary of Gettysburg saw Lee's works still intact, and

72,000 men of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the

James had fallen since the campaign had opened two months

before. History has few examples to show comparable to this

terrible campaign in Virginia. The ruthless determination

of the superior leaders had been answered splendidly by the

devotion of the troops, but the men of Chancellorsville and

Gettysburg were mostly dead or wounded, and the recruits

attracted by bounties or compelled by the "draft," which

had at last been enforced in the North, proved far inferior

soldiers to the gallant veterans whom they replaced.

27. Petersburg.--There was no formal siege of Lee's

position. A vast network of fortifications covered the

front of both armies, whose flank extended far to the

south-west, Grant seeking to capture, Lee to defend, the

Danville railway by which the Confederates received their

supplies. Richmond, though no longer of paramount importance,

was no less firmly held than Petersburg, and along the

whole long line fighting went on with little interruption.

On the 30th of July the Federal engineers exploded a mine

under the hostile works, and Burnside's corps rushed to the

assault. But the attempt ended in failure--the first defeat

of the Army of the Potomac which could fairly be called

discreditable. Still, Lee was losing men, few it is true,

but most precious, since it was impossible to replace them,

while the North poured unlimited numbers into the Federal

camps. The policy of "attrition" upon which Grant had

embarked, and which he was carrying through regardless of his

losses, was having its effect. About this time Early, freed

from the opposition of Hunter's forces, made a bold stroke upon

Washington. Crossing the Potomac, he marched eastward, and,

defeating a motley force (action of the Monocacy) which General

Lew Wallace had collected to oppose him, appeared before the

lines of Washington. The Federal capital was at the moment

almost denuded of troops, and forces hastily despatched from

the James only arrived just in time to save it. Thereupon the

Confederates retired, narrowly escaping Hunter, and the brief

campaign came to an end with an engagement at Kernstown. Early

had been nearer to the immediate success than Lee had been

in 1862 and 1863, but he had failed utterly to relax Grant's

hold on Petersburg, which was becoming daily more crushing.

On the decisive theatre the Federals made their way, little by

little and at a heavy cost, to the Weldon railway, and beyond

it to the westward. Lee's lines were becoming dangerously

extended, but he could not allow the enemy to cut him off

from the west. On the 25th of August there was a battle at

Reams Station, in which the Federals were forced back, and

the famous II. Corps under Hancock was for the first time

routed. But Grant was tireless, and five days later another

battle was fought, at Peebles Farm, in which the lost

ground was regained. Butler and the Army of the James at

the same time won some successes in front of the Richmond

works. One more attempt to outflank Lee to the westward was

made by Grant without success, before winter came on, and the

campaign closed with an expedition, under the direction of

General Warren, which destroyed the Weldon line. Grant had

not reached Lee's flank at any point, and his casualties from

first to last had been unprecedentedly heavy, but "hammering"

was steadily prevailing where skill and valour had failed.

28. Sheridan's Valley Campaign.--In the closing months of

the year Grant's brilliant cavalry commander Sheridan had

been put in command of an army to operate against Early in the

Valley. The Federals in this quarter had hitherto suffered

from want of unity in the command (e.g. Banks, Fremont and

McDowell in 1862). The Army of the Shenandoah would not be

thus handicapped, for Sheridan was a leader of exceptional

character. The first encounter took place on the Opequan near

Winchester. Early was defeated, but not routed (September

19), and another battle took place near Strasburg (Fisher's

Hill) on the 22nd. Always disposing of superior numbers,

Sheridan on this occasion won an important victory without much

loss. A combat which took place, at Mount Jackson, during

the pursuit, again ended successfully, and the triumphant

Federals retired down the Valley, ruthlessly destroying

everything which might be of the slightest value to the

enemy. Early sharply followed them up, his men infuriated by

the devastation of the "Granary of the Confederacy." At Cedar

Creek (q.v.), during a momentary absence of the Federal

commander, his camps were surprised by Early (October 19).

The Army of the Shenandoah was routed and driven towards the

Potomac. But the gallant stand of the old Potomac troops of

the VI. Corps checked the Confederates. Sheridan arrived on

the scene to find a new battle in progress. He was at his

best at such a moment, and the rallied Federals under his

command swept all before them. The victory was decisive,

and, the country being now bare of supplies, the Army of the

Shenandoah was sent to reinforce Grant, while the remnant of

Early's forces also went to Petersburg. Sheridan's campaign

was a famous episode of the war. It was conducted with

skill, though, with twice the numbers of the enemy at his

command, Sheridan's victory was a foregone conclusion.

But he had at least shown that he possessed to an unusual

degree the real attribute of a great captain--power over men.

29. Sherman and Johnston.--Meanwhile Sherman had fought his

Atlanta campaign. General Johnston opposed him almost on the

old Chickamauga battle-ground, where the Federal commander,

after a brief campaign in Mississippi and Alabama, the result

of which was to clear his right flank (February 3-March 6,

1864), collected his armies--the Army of the Tennessee under

McPherson, the Army of the Cumberland under Thomas (Hooker's

troops had now become part of this army) and the Army of

the Ohio under Schofield. In the celebrated campaign of

Atlanta the highest manoeuvring skill was displayed by both

the famous commanders. Whilst Grant, with his avowed object

of crushing Lee's army, lost no opportunity of fighting a

battle coute que coute, Sherman, intent rather on the

conquest of territory, acted on different lines. Johnston,

than whom there was no better soldier in the Confederate

service when a careful defence was required, disposed of

sensibly inferior forces, and it was to be expected that

the 18th-century methods of making war by manoeuvring and by

combats, not battles, would receive a modern illustration in

Georgia. Operations began early in May 1864, and five days

of manoeuvring and skirmishing about Resaca and Rocky Face

ended in Johnston's retirement to Resaca. A fortnight later

the same manoeuvres, combined with constant "tapping" at

the Confederate defences, caused him to fall back again. At

Adairsville the same process was gone through, and Johnston

retired to Cassville, where he offered battle. Sherman was

far too wary to be drawn into an action under unfavourable

conditions. If each general had been able to obtain a

great battle upon his own terms, each would have fought most

willingly, for neither desired a useless prolongation of the

war. As it was, both declined to risk a decision. Johnston's

inferiority in numbers was now becoming lessened as Sherman

had to detach more and more troops to his ever-lengthening

communications with Chattanooga. Another manoeuvre brought

about a heavy combat near Dallas (Pickett's Mills and New

Hope Church, May 25- 27). After a time Johnston fell back,

and on the 6th of June the Federals appeared before Marietta

(q.v.). Hitherto neither leader had offered a weak spot to

his opponent, though the constant skirmishing had caused a loss

of 9000 men to Sherman and about two- thirds of that number

to the Confederates. At this moment Sherman suddenly changed

his policy and sent his troops straight against the hostile

entrenchments. The neighbourhood of Marietta witnessed

for the next fortnight very heavy fighting, notably at Pine

Mountain on the 14th and Kenesaw on the 27th, both actions

being frontal assaults gallantly pushed home and as gallantly

repulsed. Sherman acted thus in order to teach his own

men and the enemy that he was not "afraid," and the lesson

was not valueless. He then resumed his manoeuvring, which

was now facilitated by improved weather and better roads.

30. Atlanta.--Johnston in due time evacuated the Marietta

lines. On the 7th of July his fortifications on the Chattahoochee

river were turned, and he fell back into the Atlanta (q.v.)

position, which was carefully prepared, like all the others,

beforehand. Here Johnston was deprived of his command. His

campaign had not been unsuccessful, for Sherman had never

succeeded in taking him at a disadvantage, but the whole of the

South, including President Davis and his chief of staff General

Bragg, clamoured for a more "energetic" policy, and General J.

B. Hood was put in command on the understanding that he should

"fight." The new general, whose bold and skilful leading had been

conspicuous on most of the Virginia battlefields, promptly did

so. At first successful, the Confederates had in the end to

retire. A few days after this battle (called Peach Tree

Creek) took place the battle of Atlanta, which was fiercely

contested by the veterans of both sides, and in which

McPherson, one of the best generals in the Union army, was

killed. Still, Hood was again beaten. The Army of the

Tennessee, under its new commander General O. O. Howard, fought

and won the battle of Ezra Church on the 28th of July, and,

Atlanta being now nearly surrounded, Hood was compelled to adopt

the Fabian methods of his predecessor, and fell back to the

southward. An attack on the Army of the Ohio near Jonesboro

concluded the Atlanta campaign, which left Sherman in control

of Atlanta, but hampered by the necessity of preserving his

communications with Chattanooga and weakened by a total loss

of 30,000 men. In this celebrated campaign the American

generals rivalled if they did not excel the exploits of

Marlborough, Eugene and Villars, under allied conditions.

31. The March to the Sea.--Although General Canby, with a

Federal force in the south, had been ordered to capture Mobile

early in the year--after which he was to operate towards

Atlanta--Mobile still flew the Confederate flag, and Hood,

about to resume the offensive, was thus able to base himself

on Montgomery in order to attack Sherman in flank and rear.

But the Federal commander was not to be shaken off from his

prize. He held firmly to Atlanta, clearing the city of non-

combatants and in other ways making ready for a stubborn

defence. Thomas and the Army of the Cumberland were sent back

to guard Tennessee. A heavy attack on the post of Allatoona

(to the garrison of which Sherman sent the famous message,

"Hold the fort, for I am coming") was repulsed (October 5).

The main armies quickly regained contact, each edging away

northwestwards towards the Tennessee and coming into contact at

Gaylesville, Alabama, and again at Decatur. General Slocum

with Hooker's old Potomac troops garrisoned Atlanta, and every

important post along the railway to Chattanooga was held in

force. Sherman had now resolved to execute his plan of

a march through Georgia to the sea and thence through the

Carolinas towards Virginia, destroying everything of military

value en route. With the provisos that if Lee turned upon

Sherman, Grant must follow him up sharply, and that Thomas

could be left to deal with Hood (both of which could be,

and were, done), the scheme might well be decisive of the

war. Preparations were carefully made. Fifty thousand picked

men were to march through Georgia with Sherman, and Thomas

was to be reinforced by all other forces available. There was

no force to oppose the "March to the Sea." Hood was far away

on the Tennessee, which he crossed on the 29th of October at

Tuscumbia, making for Nashville. Want of supplies checked the

Confederates after a few marches, while Schofield was pressing

forward to meet them at Pulaski and Thomas was gathering, at

Nashville, a motley army drawn from all parts of the west.

It was at this same time that Sherman broke up his railway

communication, destroying Atlanta as a place of arms, and set

out on his adventurous expedition. There was little in his

path. Skirmishes at Macon and Milledgeville alone varied

the daily routine of railway-breaking and supply-finding, in

which a belt of country 60 m. wide was absolutely cleared.

On the 10th of December the army, thoroughly invigorated

by its march, appeared before the defences of Savannah.

On the 13th of December a division stormed Fort McAllister,

and communication was opened with the Federal fleet. The

march concluded with the occupation of Savannah on the 20th.

32. Nashville.--Hood, at a loss to divine Sherman's purpose,

hastened on into Tennessee amidst weather which would have

stopped most troops. Schofield met him on the Duck river,

while Thomas was shaping his army in rear. Hood manoeuvred

Schofield out of his lines and pushed on once more. At Franklin

Schofield had to accept battle, and thirteen distinct assaults

on his works were made, all pushed with extraordinary fury

and lasting far into the night. Thomas ordered his lieutenant

to retire on Nashville, Hood following him up, impressing

recruits, transports and supplies, and generally repeating the

scenes of Bragg's march of 1862. The civil authorities and the

lieutenant-general also urgently demanded that Thomas should

advance. Constancy of purpose was the salient feature of

Thomas's military character. He would not fight till he was

ready. But this last great counterstroke of the Confederacy

alarmed the whole North. So great was the tension that Grant

finally sent General J. A. Logan to take command. But before

Logan arrived, Thomas had on the 15th and 16th of December

fought and won the battle of Nashville (q.v.), the most

crushing victory of the whole war. Hood's army was absolutely

ruined. Only a remnant of it reassembled beyond the Tennessee.

33. The Carolinas.--From Savannah, Sherman started on

his final march through the Carolinas. Columbia, his first

objective, was reached on the 17th of February 1865. As

usual, all that could be of possible value to the enemy

was destroyed and, by some accident, the town itself was

burned. Sherman, like Sheridan, was much criticized for his

methods of reducing opposition, but it does not seem that his

"bummers" were guilty of wanton cruelty and destructiveness,

at least in general, though the cavalry naturally gave

more ground for the accusation than the main body of the

army. And the methods of the Confederates had on occasion

been somewhat similar. The Confederate general Hardee managed

to gather some force (chiefly from the evacuated coast towns)

wherewith to oppose the onward progress of the Federals. As

commander-in-chief, Lee now reappointed Johnston to command,

and the latter soon attacked and very nearly defeated his

old opponent at Bentonville (March 19-20). But the "bummers"

were no mere marauders, but picked men from the armies that

had won Vicksburg and Chattanooga, and, though surrounded,

held their ground stoutly and successfully. Advancing once

more, they were joined at Goldsboro by the forces lately

besieging Fort Fisher (see below), and nearly 90,000 men marched

northward towards Virginia, pushing Johnston's weak army before

them. Meanwhile the bulk of the forces at Nashville had been

sent to the north-east to close Lee's escape to the mountains,

and in March the final campaign had opened at Petersburg.

34. The Final Campaign.--At last Lee's men had lost heart

in the unequal struggle. Sheridan raided the upper James

and destroyed all supplies. Grant lay in front of the

Army of northern Virginia with 125,000 men, and when active

operations began Lee had no resource but to try and escape

to the south-west in order to join Johnston. The western

movement was covered by a furious sortie from the lines of

Petersburg, which was repulsed with heavy loss. Grant felt

that this was a mere feint to screen some other move, and

instantly carried the Army of the Potomac to the westward,

leaving a bare screen of troops in his lines. On the 29th

of March the movement began, followed in rapid succession

by the combats of White Oak Road and Dinwiddie Court House

and Sheridan's great victory of Five Forks. At the same

time the VI. Corps at last carried the Petersburg lines by

storm. Thereupon Lee and Longstreet evacuated the Petersburg

and Richmond lines and began their retreat. Their men were

practically starving, though their rearguard showed a brave

front. The remnant of Ewell's corps was cut off at Sailor's

Creek, and when Sheridan got ahead of the Confederates while

Grant furiously pressed them in the rear, surrender was

inevitable (April 8). On the 9th the gallant remnant of the

Army of northern Virginia laid down its arms at Appomattox

Court House, and the Confederacy came to an end. Johnston

surrendered to Sherman at Durham Station on the 26th, and soon

afterwards all the remaining Confederate soldiers followed their

example. So ended the gigantic struggle, as to the conduct

of which it is only necessary to quote, with a more general

application, the envoi of a Federal historian, "It has not

seemed necessary to me to attempt a eulogy of the Army of the

Potomac or the Army of northern Virginia." The general terms

of surrender were that the Confederates should give up all

material, and sign a parole not to take up arms again. There

were no manifestations of triumph or exultation on the part

of the victors, the lot of the vanquished was made as easy as

possible, and after a short time the armies melted into the

mass of the people without disturbance or disorder. A general

amnesty proclaimed by the president of the United States

on the 29th of May was the formal ending of the Civil War.

35. Character of the War.--No undisciplined levies could

have fought as did the armies on both sides. Grave faults

the men had, from the regular's point of view. They required

humouring, and their march discipline was very elastic. But in

battle the "thinking bayonets" resolutely obeyed orders, even

though it were to attack a Marye's Hill, or a "Bloody Angle,"

for they had undertaken their task and would carry it through

unflinchingly. So much may be said of both armies. The great

advantage of the Confederate--an advantage which he had in a

less degree as against the hardier and country-bred Federal

of the west--was that he was a hunter and rider born and bred,

an excellent shot, and still not infrequently settled his

quarrels by the duel. The town-bred soldier of the eastern

states was a thoughtful citizen who was determined to do his

duty, but he had far less natural aptitude for war than his

enemy from the Carolinas or his comrade from Illinois or

Kansas. At the same time the more varied conditions of

urban life made him more adaptable to changes of climate

and of occupation than the "Southron." Irish brigades

served on both sides and shot each other to pieces as at

Fredericksburg. They had the reputation of being excellent

soldiers. The German divisions, on the other hand, were rarely

as good as the rest. The leading of these men was in the

hands, as a rule, of regular or ex-regular officers, who made

many mistakes in their handling of large masses, but had been

taught at West Point and on the Indian frontier to command

men in danger, and administer them in camp. The volunteer

officers rarely led more than a division. When given high

command at once they usually failed, but the best of them

rose gradually to the superior ranks; Logan, for instance,

became an army commander, Sickles, Terry and others corps

commanders. Cleburne, one of the best division commanders of

the South, had been a corporal in the British army. Meagher,

the leader of the "Irish brigade" at Fredericksburg, was the

young orator of the "United Irishmen." But Lee, the Johnstons,

McClellan, Grant and Sherman had all served in the old army.

Most of them were young men in 1861. Stuart was twenty-eight,

Sheridan thirty, Grant and Jackson under forty, while some of

the subordinate generals were actually fresh from West Point.

36. Strategy and Tactics.--The roughness of much of the

country gave a peculiar tone to the strategy of the combatants.

Roads were untrustworthy, rivers swelled suddenly, advance and

retreat were conditioned and compelled, especially in the case

of the ill-equipped Confederates, by the exigencies of food

supply. Long forward strides of the Napoleonic type were

rarely attempted; "changes of base" were indeed made across

country, and over considerable distances, as by Sherman in

1864, but ordinarily either the base and the objective were

connected by rail or water, or else every forward step was,

after the manner of Marlborough's time, organized as a separate

campaign. Hence field fortifications played an unusually

prominent part, time and material being available as a rule

for works of solid construction. In isolated instances of

more rapid campaigning--e.g. Antietam and Gettysburg--they

were of subordinate importance. The attack and defence of

these entrenchments led to tactical phenomena of unusual

interest. Cavalry could not bring about the decision in

such country, and sought a field for its restless activity

elsewhere. Artillery had fallen, technically, far behind

the infantry arm, and in face of long- range rifle fire could

not annihilate the hostile line with case-shot fire as in the

days of Napoleon. In a battle such as Chancellorsville or

the Wilderness guns were almost valueless, since there was

little open space in which they might be used. It thus fell

to the infantry to attack and defend with its own weapons, and

the defence was, locally, almost inexpugnable behind its tall

breastworks. One line of works could be stormed, but there

were almost always two or three retrenchments behind. The

attacking infantry, who found it necessary to cross a fire-swept

zone 1000 yds. broad, had to be used resolutely in masses,

line following line, and each carrying forward the wrecks

of its predecessor. Partial attacks were invariably costly

failures. The use of masses was never put in practice more

sternly than by Grant in 1864. At the same time, as has

been said, the cavalry arm found plenty of work. The horses

were not trained for European shock- tactics, nor did the

country offer charging room, and though melees of mounted

men engaging with sword and pistol were not infrequent, the

usual method of fighting was dismounted fire action, which

was practised with uncommon skill by the troopers on both

sides. The far-ranging strategic "raid" was a notable feature

of the war; freely employed by both sides, it was sometimes

harmful, more usually profitable, especially to the South, by

reason of the captures in material, the information acquired

and the alarm and confusion created. These raids, and the more

ordinary screening work, were never executed more brilliantly

than by Lee's great cavalry general, "Jeb" Stuart, in Virginia,

but the Federal generals, Pleasonton and Sheridan, did

excellent work in the east, as also Wheeler and Forrest on the

Confederate, Wilson and Grierson on the Federal, side in the

west. The technical services, in which the mechanical skill and

ingenuity of the American had full play, developed remarkable

efficiency. Whether it was desired to build a railway

bridge, disable a locomotive or cut a canal, the engineers

were always ready with some happy expedient. On one occasion

an infantry division of 8000 men repaired 102 miles of

railway and built 182 bridges in 40 days, forging their own

tools and using local resources. Many novelties, too, such as

the field telegraph, balloons and signalling, were employed.

37. The Union and Confederate Navies.--The naval war had

been likewise fruitful of lessons for the future. Though

wooden ships were still largely employed, the ironclad even

then had begun to take a commanding place, and the sailing ship

at last disappeared from naval warfare. Mines, torpedoes and

submarines were all employed, and with the "Monitor" may fairly

be said to have begun the application of mechanical science

to the uses of naval war. The Federal navy was enormously

expanded. Three hundred and thirteen steamers were brought

into the service. Sloops of an excellent type were built for

work on the high seas, of which the celebrated "Kearsarge" was

one. Gunboats were constructed so fast that they were called

"ninety-day gunboats." Special reversible paddle steamers

(called double-enders) were designed for service in the inlets

and estuaries, and sixty-six ironclads were built and employed

during the four years. Mississippi river steamers were armed

with heavy guns and protected by armour, boiler-plates, cotton

bales, &c., and some fast cruisers were constructed for ocean

work, one of them actually reaching the high speed of 17.75

m. per hour. The existing Federal navy of 1861 already

included some large and powerful modern vessels, such as the

"Minnesota" and "Powhatan." To oppose them the Confederates,

limited as they were for means, managed to construct various

ironclads, and to improvise a considerable fleet of minor

vessels, and, though a fighting navy never assembled under a

Confederate flag-officer, the Southern warships found another

more damaging and more profitable scope for their activity. It

has been said that the blockade of the Confederate coast became

in the end practically impenetrable, and that every attempt

of the Confederate naval forces to break out was checked at

once by crushing numerical preponderance. The exciting and

profitable occupation of blockade- running led to countless

small fights off the various harbours, and sometimes the United

States navy had to fight a more serious action when some new

"rebel" ironclad emerged from her harbour, inlet or sound.

38. Fort Fisher.--Many of the greater combats in which the

navy was engaged on the coast and inland have been referred

to above, and the fighting before Charleston, New Orleans,

Mobile and Vicksburg is described in separate articles. One

of the heaviest of the battles was fought at Fort Fisher in

1864. This place guarded the approaches to Wilmington, North

Carolina. Troops under Butler and a large fleet under Admiral

Porter were destined for this enterprise. An incendiary

vessel was exploded close to the works without effect on

the 23rd-24th of December, and the ships engaged on the

24th. The next day the troops were disembarked, only to be

called off after a partial assault. Butler then withdrew,

and Porter was informed on the 31st that "a competent force

properly commanded," would be sent out. On the 8th of January

1865 General Terry arrived with the land forces, and the armada

arrived off Fisher on the 12th. On the 13th, 6000 men were

landed, covered by the guns of the fleet, and, after Porter

had subjected the works to a terrific bombardment, Fisher

was brilliantly carried by storm on the 15th. Reinforcements

arriving, the whole force then marched inland to meet Sherman.

39. Other Naval Actions.--Apart from this, and other actions

referred to, two incidents of the coast war call for notice--the

career of the "Albemarle" and the duel between the "Atlanta"

and the "Weehawken." The ironclad ram "Albemarle," built at

Edwards' Ferry on the Roanoke river, had done considerable damage

to the Federal vessels which, since Burnside's expedition to

Newberne, had cruised in Albemarle Sound, and in 1864 a force

of double-enders and gunboats, under Captain Melancton Smith,

U.S.N., was given the special task of destroying the rebel

ram. A naval battle was fought on the 5th of May 1864, in

which the double-ender "Sassacus" most gallantly rammed the

"Albemarle" and was disabled alongside her, and Smith's vessel

and others, unarmoured as they were, fought the ram at close

quarters. After this the ironclad retired upstream, where she

was eventually destroyed in the most daring manner by a boat's

crew under Lieutenant W. B. Cushing. Making his way up the

Roanoke as far as Plymouth he there sank the ironclad at her

wharf by exploding a spar-torpedo (October 27). On the 17th of

June 1863 after a brief action the monitor "Weehawken" captured

the Confederate ironclad "Atlanta" in Wassaw Sound, South

Carolina. This duel resembled in its attendant circumstances

the famous fight of the "Chesapeake" and the "Shannon." Captain

John Rodgers, like Broke, was one of the best officers, and

the "Weehawken," like the "Shannon," was known as one of the

smartest ships in the service. Five heavy accurate shots from

the Federal's turret guns crushed the enemy in a few minutes.

40. The Commerce-Destroyers.--Letters of marque were issued

to Confederate privateers as early as April 1861, and Federal

commerce at once began to suffer. When, however, surveillance

became blockade, prizes could only with difficulty be brought

into port, and, since the parties interested gained nothing

by burning merchantmen, privateering soon died out, and was

replaced by commerce-destroying pure and simple, carried out

by commissioned vessels of the Confederate navy. Captain

Raphael Sommes of the C.S.S. "Sumter" made a successful cruise

on the high seas, and before she was abandoned at Gibraltar

had made seventeen prizes. Unable to build at home, the

Confederates sought warships abroad, evading the obligations

of neutrality by various ingenious expedients. The "Florida"

(built at Liverpool in 1861-1862) crossed the Atlantic,

refitted at Mobile, escaped the blockaders, and fulfilled the

instructions which, as her captain said, "left much to the

discretion but more to the torch." She was captured by the

U.S.S. "Wachusett" in the neutral harbour of Bahia (October 7,

1862). The most successful of the foreign-built cruisers

was the famous "Alabama," commanded by Sommes and built at

Liverpool. In the course of her career she burned or

brought into port seventy prizes, fought and sank the U.S.S.

"Hatteras" off Galveston, and was finally sunk by the U.S.S.

"Kearsarge," Captain Winslow, off Cherbourg (June 19, 1864).

The career of another promising cruiser, the "Nashville," was

summarily ended by the Federal monitor "Montauk" (February 28,

1863). The "Shenandoah" was burning Union whalers in the

Bering Sea when the war came to an end. None of the various

"rams" built abroad for the "rebel" government ever came into

action. The difficulties of coaling and the obligations

of neutrality hampered these commerce-destroyers as much as

the Federal vessels that were chasing them, but, in spite of

drawbacks, the guerre de course was the most successful

warlike operation undertaken by the Confederacy. The

mercantile marine of the United States was almost driven off

the high seas by the terror of these destructive cruisers.

41. Cost of the War.--The total loss of life in the Union

forces during the four years of war was 359,528, and of the

many thousands discharged from the services as disabled or

otherwise unfit, a large number died in consequence of injuries

or disease incurred in the army. The estimate of 500,000 in

all may be taken as approximately correct. The same number is

given as that of the Southern losses, which of course fell upon

a much smaller population. The war expenditure of the Federal

government has been estimated at $3,400,000,000; the very large

sums devoted to the pensions of widows, disabled men, &c.,

are not included in this amount (Dodge). In 1879 an estimate

made of all Federal war expenses up to that date, including

pension charges, interest on loans, &c., showed a total of

$6,190,000,000 (Dewey, Financial History of the United States.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The United States government's Official

Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (70 vols., most

of which are divided into two or three "parts," and atlas,

1880-1900) include every important official document of either

side that it was possible to obtain in the course of many years'

work. A similar but less voluminous work is the Records of

the Union and Confederate Navies (1894- ); The Rebellion

Record (1862-1868), edited by F. W. Moore, a contemporary

collection, has been superseded to a great extent by the

official records, but is still valuable as a collection of

unofficial documents of all kinds. Battles and Leaders of

the Civil War (1887-1889) is a series of papers, covering

the whole war, written by the prominent commanders of both

sides. The sixteen volumes of the Campaigns of the Civil War

(1881-1882) and the Navy in the Civil War (1883) (written

by various authors) are of very unequal merit, but several

of the volumes are indispensable to the study of the Civil

War. Of general works the following are the best:- -Comte de

Paris, History of the Civil War in America, translated

from the French (1875-1888); Horace Greeley, The American

Conflict (1864-1866); J. Scheibert, Der Burgerkrieg i.

d. Nordam. Freistaaten (Berlin, 1874); Wood and Edmonds,

Civil War in the United States (London, 1905); T. A. Dodge,

Bird's Eye View of our Civil War (revised edition, 1887);

E. A. Pollard, A Southern History of the War (1866).

The contemporary accounts mentioned should be studied with

caution. Of critical works, J. C. Ropes, The Story of

the Civil War (1894-1898); G. F. R. Henderson, Stonewall

Jackson and the American Civil War (London, 1898) and The

Science of War, chapters viii. and ix. (London, 1905);

C. C. Chesney, Essays in Military Biography (1874);

Freytag-Loringhoven, Studien uber Kriegfuhrung, 1861-1865

(Berlin, 1901-1903), are the most important. Publications

of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts (vols.

i.-x., 1881 onwards) also comprise critical accounts of

nearly all the important campaigns. A critical account of

the Virginian operations and the Chickamauga campaign is

Gen. E. P. Alexander's Military Memoirs of a Confederate

(1906). C. R. Cooper, Chronological and Alphabetical Record

of the Great Civil War (Milwaukee, 1904) may be mentioned

as a work of reference. A fairly complete bibliography will

be found in J. N. Larned, Literature of American History

(Boston, 1902), and useful lists in Ropes, op. cit., and

in the Cambridge Modern History, vol. vii. p. 812. For

biographies, memoirs and general works, see the lists

appended to the various biographical articles and to the

articles UNITED STATES and CONFEDERATE STATES. (C. F. A.)

AMERICAN LAW. The laws of the various states and territories

of the United States rest at bottom on the same foundation

as those of England, namely, the English common law as it

existed at the beginning of the 17th century. (See ENGLISH

LAW.) The only exceptions worth noting are to be found in

the state of Louisiana, the territory of New Mexico, and

the acquisitions following the Spanish war of 1898. Those

derive most of their law from France or Spain, and thus

remotely from the principles of Roman jurisprudence. A part

also, but comparatively a small part, of the law of Texas,

Missouri, Arizona and the Pacific states comes from similar

sources. The United States as a whole has no common law,

except so far as its courts have followed the rules of English

common-law procedure in determining their own. Most of the

positive law of the United States comes from the several

states. It is the right of each state to regulate at its

pleasure the general relations of persons within its territory

to each other, as well as all rights to property subject to its

jurisdiction. Each state has also its own system of adjective

law. The trial courts of the United States of original

jurisdiction follow in general the practice of the state

in which they sit as to procedure in cases of common-law

character. As to that in equity, or what means the same

thing, chancery causes, they follow in general the practice

of the English court of chancery as it existed towards the

close of the 18th century, when the original Judiciary Act

of the United States was adopted. The public statutes of

the United States are to be found in the Revised Statutes

of 1873, and in the succeeding volumes of the Statutes at

Large, enacted by each Congress. Those of each state and

territory are printed annually or biennially as they are

enacted by each legislature, and are commonly revised every

fifteen or twenty years, the revision taking the place of

all former public statutes, and being entitled Revised

Statutes, General Statutes, or Public Laws. The private

or special laws of each state, so far as such legislation is

permitted by its constitution, are in some states published

separately, and made the subject of similar compilations

or revisions; in others they are printed with the public

session laws. American courts are often given power by

statute to make rules of procedure which have the force of

laws. Municipal subdivisions of a state generally have

authority from the legislature to make ordinances or by-laws

on certain subjects, having the character of a local law,

with appropriate sanctions, commonly by fine or forfeiture.

Law in the United States has been greatly affected by the

results of the Civil War. During its course (1861-1865) the

powers of the president of the United States may be said to

have been re-defined by the courts. It was its first civil

war, and thus for the first time the exercise of the military

authority of the United States within a state which had not

sought its aid became frequent and necessary. Next followed

the amendments of the Constitution of the United States having

for their special purpose the securing beyond question of the

permanent abolition of slavery and the civil and political

rights of the coloured race. At the outset the Supreme Court

of the United States was inclined to treat them as having a very

limited operation in other directions. One of the provisions

of the XIVth Amendment is that no state shall deny to any

person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the

laws. The benefit of this guarantee was claimed by the butchers

of New Orleans, in contending against a monopoly in respect

of the slaughter of cattle granted by the state of Louisiana

to a single corporation. Their suit was dismissed by the

Supreme Court in 1873, with the expression of a doubt whether

any action of a state not directed by way of discrimination

against the negroes as a class, or on account of their race,

would ever be held to come within the purview of the provision

in question.1 The chief justice and three of his associates

dissented from the judgment, holding that the XIVth Amendment

did protect the citizens of the United States against the

deprivation of their common rights by state legislation.2

Public sentiment supported the view of the minority, and it

was not long before changes in the personnel of the court,

occurring in common course, led it to the same conclusions. The

protection of the XIVth Amendment is now invoked before it more

frequently than is that afforded by any other article of the

Constitution. In one of its recent terms twenty-one cases of

this nature were decided.3 Very few of them related to the

negro. Since the decision in the Slaughter-House Cases, the

controversies as to the constitutional rights of the negro have

been comparatively infrequent, but there has been a great and

steadily increasing number in all the courts in the country,

involving questions of discrimination in favour of or against

particular individuals, or of changes affecting the rights

of parties in the accustomed forms of judicial procedure.

Down to 1868, when this amendment was adopted, it was, as

to most matters, for the state alone to settle the civil

rights and immunities of those subject to its jurisdiction.

If they were to be free from arbitrary arrests, secure in

liberty and property, equal in privilege and entitled to an

impartial administration, it was because the constitution

of the state so declared. Now they have the guarantee of

the United States that the state shall never recede from

these obligations. This has readjusted and reset the

whole system of the American law of personal rights.4

The Supreme Court of the United States has used the great

power thus confided to it with moderation. Its general

rules of decision are well stated in these words of Mr

Justice Brown, found in one of its recent opinions:--

"In passing upon the validity of legislation, attacked

as contrary to the XIVth Amendment, it has not failed to

recognize the fact that the law is, to a certain extent, a

progressive science; that in some of the states methods of

procedure, which at the time the constitution was adopted

were deemed essential to the protection and safety of the

people or to the liberty of the citizen, have been found to

be no longer necessary; that restrictions which had formerly

been laid upon the conduct of individuals, or of classes of

individuals, had proved detrimental to their interests;

while, upon the other hand, certain other classes of persons,

particularly those engaged in dangerous or unhealthful

employments, have been found to be in need of additional

protection. Even before the adoption of the constitution,

much had been done toward mitigating the severity of the

common law, particularly in the administration of its criminal

branch. The number of capital crimes, in this country at

least, had been largely decreased. Trial by ordeal and by

battle had never existed here, and had fallen into disuse in

England. The earlier practice of the common law, which denied

the benefit of witnesses to a person accused of felony, had

been abolished by statute, though, so far as it deprived

him of the assistance of counsel and compulsory process for

the attendance of his witnesses, it had not been changed in

England. But, to the credit of her American colonies, let it be

said that so oppressive a doctrine had never obtained a foothold

there. The 19th century originated legal reforms of no less

importance. The whole fabric of special pleading, once

thought to be necessary to the elimination of the real issue

between the parties, has crumbled to pieces. The ancient

tenures of real estate have been largely swept away, and land

is now transferred almost as easily and cheaply as personal

property. Married women have been emancipated from the

control of their husbands, and placed upon a practical equality

with them with respect to the acquisition, possession and

transmission of property. Imprisonment for debt has been

abolished. Exemptions from executions have been largely

added to, and in most of the states homesteads are rendered

incapable of seizure and sale upon forced process. Witnesses

are no longer incompetent by reason of interest, even though

they be parties to the litigation. Indictments have been

simplified, and an indictment for the most serious of crimes

is now the simplest of all. in several of the states grand

juries, formerly the only safeguard against a malicious

prosecution, have been largely abolished, and in others the

rule of unanimity, so far as applied to civil cases, has

given way to verdicts rendered by a three-fourths majority.

This case does not call for an expression of opinion as to

the wisdom of these changes, or their validity under the

XIVth Amendment, although the substitution of prosecution by

information in lieu of indictment was recognized as valid in

Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516. They are mentioned

only for the purpose of calling attention to the probability

that other changes of no less importance may be made in the

future, and that while the cardinal principles of justice are

immutable, the methods by which justice is administered are

subject to constant fluctuation, and that the Constitution

of the United States, which is necessarily and to a large

extent inflexible and exceedingly difficult of amendment,

should not be so construed as to deprive the states of the

power to amend their laws so as to make them conform to the

wishes of the citizens as they may deem best for the public

welfare without bringing them into conflict with the supreme

law of the land. Of course, it is impossible to forecast

the character or extent of these changes, but in view of the

fact that from the day Magna Carta was signed to the present

moment, amendments to the structure of the law have been made

with increasing frequency, it is impossible to suppose that

they will not continue, and the law be forced to adapt itself

to new conditions of society, and particularly to the new

relations between employers and employees, as they arise."5

The Civil War deeply affected also the course of judicial

decision in the southern states. During its progress it

engaged the attention of a very large part of the population,

and the business of the courts necessarily was greatly

lessened. Upon its close political power passed, for a

time, into new hands, and many from the northern and western

states took prominent positions both at the bar and on the

bench. The very basis of society was changed by the abolition of

slavery. New state constitutions were adopted, inspired or

dictated by the ideas of the North. The transport system

was greatly extended, and commerce by land took to a large

extent the place formerly filled by commerce by navigation.

Manufacturing came in to supplement agricultural industry.

Cities grew and assumed a new importance. Northern capital

sought investment in every state. It was a natural consequence

of all these things that the jurisprudence of the South should

come to lose whatever had been its distinctive character. The

unification of the nation inevitably tended to unify its law.

The Bar Association.

An important contribution towards this result was made by the

organization of the American Bar Association in 1878. Of the

fourteen signers of the call for the preliminary conference, five

were from the southern states. Its declared objects were "to

advance the science of jurisprudence, promote the administration

of justice and uniformity of legislation throughout the Union,

uphold the honour of the profession of the law, and encourage

cordial intercourse among the members of the American Bar."

Law schools.

Largely through its efforts, the American law schools have

taken on a new character. The course of study has been both

broadened and prolonged, and the attendance of the students

has increased in full proportion to the additions to the

facilities for obtaining a more thorough training in the

profession. When the association commenced its labours,

those studying law in the offices of practising lawyers

very largely outnumbered those found in the law school.

The proportion is now reversed. During the year 1900, for

instance, the state board of law examiners in New York

examined 899 applicants for admission to the bar of that

state. Of these all but 157 had received their legal education

wholly or in part at a law school.6 In 1878 few law schools

had adopted any system of examination for those desiring

to enter them. Such a requirement for admission is now

common. In only one school were opportunities then afforded

for advanced studies by graduate students with a view to

attaining the doctorate in law. Courses of this description

are now offered by several of the university schools.

Reports.

A more scientific character has thus been taken on by American

law. It is noticeable both in legal text-books and in the

opinions of the courts of last resort. In the latter precision

of statement and method in discussion are invited by the

uniform practice of preparing written opinions. The original

practice of reading these from the bench has been generally

discontinued. They are simply handed down to an official

reporter for publication, which is done at the expense of

the government by which the court is commissioned. With

the judicial reports of each state the lawyers of that state

are required to be familiar; and this is rendered possible,

even in the larger ones, by state digests, prepared every

few years by private enterprise. Outside of the state their

circulation is comparatively limited, though sets of all are

generally found in each state library, and of many in the Bar

libraries at the principal county seats. The private libraries

of lawyers in large practice also often contain the reports

of adjoining and sometimes those of distant states as well

as those of their own and of the Supreme Court of the United

States. The decisions of one state, however, are now best known

in others through unofficial reports. One large publishing

concern prints every case decided in the courts of last

resort. They are published in several distinct series, those,

for instance, coming from the northern Atlantic states being

grouped together as the Atlantic Reporter, and those from the

states on the Pacific coast as the Pacific Reporter. Another

house has published a compilation professing to give all the

leading American cases from the first to the latest volume of

reports. Another makes a similar selection from the decisions

of each year as they appear, and publishes them with critical

annotations. There are also annual digests of a national

character, comprehending substantially all American cases and

the leading English cases reported during the preceding year.

These various publications are widely diffused, and so the

American lawyer is enabled, in preparing for the argument

of any cause involving questions of difficulty, to inform

himself with ease of such precedents as may apply. A

court in Texas is thus as likely to be made acquainted

with a decision in Maine or Oregon as with one in any

nearer state, and in the development of American law all

American courts are brought in close touch with each other.

English and American law.

This tendency has been advanced by the steady growth of

codification. That is beginning also to serve to bring English

and American law nearer together in certain directions.

A Negotiable Instruments Act, promoted by the American Bar

Association and prepared by a conference of commissioners

appointed by the several states to concert measures of uniform

legislation, has been adopted in the leading commercial

states. It is founded upon the English "Chalmers's Act,"

and the English decisions giving a construction to that

have become of special importance. The acts of parliament

known as the Employers' Liability Act and the Railway and

Canal Traffic Act have also served as the foundation of

similar legislation in the United States, and with the same

result. Modern English decisions are, however, cited less

frequently in American courts than the older ones; and the older

ones themselves are cited far less frequently than they once

were. In the development of their legislation, England

and the United States have been in general harmony so far

as matters of large commercial importance are concerned,

but as to many others they have since 1850 drawn apart.

Statutes, at one point or another, probably now affect the

disposition of most litigated causes in both countries. Their

application, therefore, must serve more or less to obscure

or displace general principles, which might otherwise control

the decision and make it a source of authority in foreign

tribunals. The movement of the judicial mind in the United

States, and also its modes and form of expression, have a

different measure from that which characterizes what comes

from the English bench. American judges are so numerous,

and (except as to the Supreme Court of the United States) the

extent of their territorial jurisdiction so limited, that they

can give more time to the careful investigation of points of

difficulty, and also to the methodical statement of their

conclusions. Whatever they decide upon appeal being announced

in writing, and destined to form part of the permanent

published records of the state, they are expected and

endeavour to study their words and frame opinions not only

sound in law but unobjectionable as literary compositions.

The choice of American judges, particularly in the older

states, has been not uninfluenced by these considerations.

Marshall, Bushrod Washington, Story, Kent, Ware, Bradley, and

many of their contemporaries and successors, were put upon the

bench in part because of their legal scholarship and their power

of felicitous expression. Hence the better American opinions

have more elaboration and finish than many which come from the

English courts, and are more readily accepted as authorities

by American judges. But the great multiplication of reports

has so widened the field of citation as in effect to reduce

it. Each of the larger and older states has now a settled

body of legal precedent of its own, beyond which its judges

in most cases do not look. If a prior decision applies, it is

controlling. If there be none, they prefer to decide the

case, if possible, on principle rather than authority.

While the state courts are bound to accept the construction

placed upon the Constitution and laws of the United States by

the Supreme Court of the United States, and thus uniformity of

decision is secured in that regard, the courts of the United

States, on the other hand are as a rule obliged to accept in

all other particulars the construction placed by the courts

of each state on its constitution and laws. This often gives

a seeming incongruity to the decisions of the Supreme Court

of the United States. A point in a case coming up from one

judicial circuit may be determined in a way wholly different

from that followed in a previous judgment in a cause turning

upon the same point, but appealed from another circuit,

because of a departure from the common law in one state which

has not been made in another. In view of this, a doctrine

originally proposed by Mr Justice Story in 18427 has not

been infrequently invoked of late years, which rests upon the

assumed existence of a distinctive federal jurisprudence of

paramount authority as to certain matters of general concern,

as for example those intimately affecting commerce between

the states or with foreign nations. The consequence is that

a case involving such questions may be differently adjudged,

according as it is brought in a state or in a federal court.8

The divergences now most noticeable between English

and American law are in respect of public control over

personal liberty and private property, criminal procedure

and the scope of the powers of municipal corporations.

Under the constitutional provision that no one shall be

deprived of life, liberty or property without due process

of law, American courts frequently declare void statutes

which in England would be within the acknowledged powers of

parliament. These provisions are liberally expounded in

favour of the individual, and liberty is held to include

liberty of contract as well as of person. Criminal procedure

is hedged about with more refinements and safeguards to the

accused than are found in England, and on the other hand,

prosecutions are more certain to follow the offence, because

they are universally brought by a public officer at public

expense. The artificiality of the proceedings is fostered by

a general right of appeal on points of law to the court of last

resort. It is in criminal causes involving questions of

common-law liability and procedure9 that English law-books

and reports are now most frequently cited. American municipal

corporations are confined within much narrower limits than

those of England, and their powers more strictly construed.

Trial by jury.

Trial by jury in civil causes seems to be declining in public

esteem. The expenses necessarily incident to it are

naturally increasing, and the delays are greater also from a

general tendency, especially in cities, where most judicial

business is transacted, to reduce the number of hours a

day during which the court is in session. The requirement

of unanimity is dispensed with in a few states, and it has

been thus left without what many deem one of its essential

features. The judge interposes his authority to direct

and expedite the progress of the trial less frequently and

less peremptorily than in England. A jury is waived more

often than formerly, and there is a growing conviction that,

with a capable and independent judiciary, justice can be

looked for more confidently from one man than from thirteen.

The United States entered on the work of simplifying the forms

of pleading earlier than England, but has not carried it so

far. Demurrers have not been abandoned, and in some states

little has been done except to replace one system of formality

by another hardly less rigid. The general plan has been

to codify the laws of pleading by statute. In a few states

they have proceeded more nearly in accordance with the

principles of the English Judicatare Act, and left details

to be worked out by the judges, through rules of court.10

The legislature and the courts.

Most of the state constitutions assume that the powers of

government can be divided into three distinct departments,

executive, legislative and judicial; and direct such a

distribution. In thus ignoring the administrative functions

of the state, they have left a difficult question for the

courts, upon which the legislature often seeks in part to cast

them. The general tendency has been to construe, in such

circumstances, the judicial power broadly, and hold that it

may thus be extended over much which is rather to be called

quasi-judicial.11 A distinction is taken between entrusting

jurisdiction of this character to the courts, and imposing

it upon them. Where the statute can be construed as simply

permissive, the authority may be exercised as a matter of

grace, when it would be peremptorily declined, were the meaning

of the legislature that it must be accepted.12 The courts,

for similar reasons, have generally declined (in the absence

of any constitutional requirement to that effect) to advise the

legislature, at its request, whether a proposed statute, if

enacted, would be valid. While its validity, were it to be

enacted, might become the subject of a judicial decision, it

is thought for that reason, if for no other, to be improper to

prejudge the point, without a hearing of parties interested. The

constitutions of several states provide for such a proceeding,

and in these the Supreme Court is not infrequently called upon

in this way, and gives responses which are always considered

decisive of legislative action, but would not be treated as

conclusive in any subsequent litigation that might arise.

Police power of states.

The general trend of opinion in the Supreme Court of the United

States since 1870, upon questions other than those arising

under the XIVth Amendment, has been towards recognizing the

police power of the several states as entitled to a broad

scope. Even, for instance, in such a matter as the regulation

of commerce between different states, it has been upheld as

justifying a prohibition against running any goods trains

on a Sunday, and a requirement that all railway cars must

be heated by steam.13 In the "Granger Cases,"14 the

right of the state to fix the rate of charges for the use

of a grain elevator for railway purposes, and for general

railway services of transportation, was supported, and

although the second of these was afterwards overruled,15 the

principle upon which it was originally rested was not shaken.

On the other hand, reasons of practical convenience have

necessarily favoured the substantial obliteration of state

lines as to the enforcement of statutory private rights.

Massachusetts in 1840, six years before the passage of Lord

Campbell's Act, provided a remedy by indictment for the negligent

killing of a man by a railway company, a pecuniary penalty being

fixed which the state was to collect for the benefit of his

family. In most of the other states by later statutes a

similar result has been reached through a civil action brought

by the executor or administrator as an agent of the law. In

some, however, the state must be the plaintiff; in others the

widow, if any there be. The accident resulting in death often

occurs in a state where the man who was killed does not reside,

or in which the railway company does not have its principal

seat. It may therefore be desirable to sue in one state

for an injury in another. Notwithstanding such an action

is unknown to the common law, and rests solely on a local

statute, the American courts uniformly hold that, when civil

in form, it can be brought under such statutes in any state

the public policy of which is not clearly opposed to such a

remedy. In like manner, the responsibilities of stockholders

and directors of a moneyed corporation, under the laws of the

state from which the charter is derived, are enforced in any

other states in which they may be found. Thus a double liability

of stockholders to creditors, in case of the insolvency of

the company, or a full liability to creditors of directors

who have made false reports or certificates regarding its

financial condition, is treated as of a contractual nature,

and not penal in the international sense of that term.16 As

a judgment of one state has equal force in another, so far as

the principle of res adjudicata is concerned, the orders of

a court in a state to which a corporation owes its charter,

made in proceedings for winding it up, may be enforced to

a large extent in any other. The shareholders are regarded

as parties by representation to the winding- up proceedings,

and so bound by decrees which are incidental to it.17

The provisions of the United States law on different subjects

and the literature concerning them are given in the separate

articles. See the bibliography to the article LAW; also

Cooley on The Constitutional Limitations which rest upon

the Legislative Power of the States of the American Union;

Andrews on American Law; and Russell on The Police

Power of the State, and Decisions thereon as illustrating

the Development and Value of Case Law. (S. E. B.)

1 The Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wallace's Reports, 36, 81.

2 Ibid. 89, 111, 129.

3 Guthrie on the Fourteenth Amendment, 27.

4 Baldwin's Modern Political Institutions, 111, 112.

5 Holden v. Hardy, 169 United States Reports, 336, 385-387.

6 Columbia Law Review, i. 99.

7 Swift v. Tyson, 16 Peters' Reports, 1, 19.

8 See Forepaugh v. Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad

Company, 128 Pennsylvania State Reports, 267; Faulkner v. Hart,

82 New York Reports, 313; and Lake Shore & Michigan Southern

Railway Company v. Prentice, 147 United States Reports, 101.

9 See, as examples, Commonwealth v. Rubin, 165 Massachusetts

Reports, 453, in which Holmes, C.J., traces the rule that, if

a man abuse an authority given him by the law, he becomes a

trespasser ab initio, back to the Year Books; and Commonwealth

v. Cleary, 172 Massachusetts Reports, 175, in which the

same judge refers to Glanville and Fleta as authority for the

proposition that the admission in evidence, in cases of rape,

of complaints made by the woman soon after the commission of the

offence is a perverted survival of the old rule that she could

not bring an appeal unless she had made prompt hue and cry.

10 This has been carried furthest in Connecticut. See

Botsford v. Wallace, 72 Connecticut Reports, 195.

11 Norwalk Street Railway Company's Appeal, 69

Connecticut Reports, 576; 38 Atlantic Reporter, 708.

12 Zanesville v. Zanesville Telephone Company, 63

Ohio State Reports, 442; 59 North-Eastern Reporter, 109.

13 New York Railroad v. New York, 165 United States Reports, 628.

14 Munn v. Illinois, 94 United States Reports,

113; Chicago Railroad Company v. Iowa, ibid. 155.

15 Wabash Railway Company v. Illinois, 118

United States Reports, 557; Reagan v. Farmers' Loan

and Trust Company, 154 United States Reports, 362.

16 Huntington v. Attrill, 146 United States Reports, 657.

17 Great Western Telegraph Company v. Purdy,

162 United States Reports, 329; Fish v. Smith, 73

Connecticut Reports, 377; 47 Atlantic Reporter, 710.

AMERICAN LITERATURE.

Beginnings.

The earliest books which are commonly described as the

beginnings of American literature were written by men born

and bred in England; they were published there; they were,

in fact, an undivided part of English literature, belonging

to the province of exploration and geographical description

and entirely similar in matter and style to other works of

voyagers and colonizers that illustrate the expansion of

England. They contain the materials of history in a form

of good Elizabethan narrative, always vigorous in language,

often vivid and picturesque. John Smith (1579-1631) wrote

the first of these, A True Relation of such Occurrences

and Accidents of Note as hath happened in Virginia (1608),

and he later added other accounts of the country to the

north. William Strachey, a Virginian official of whom little

is known biographically, described (1610) the shipwreck of

Sir Thomas Gates on the Bermudas, which is believed to have

yielded Shakespeare suggestions for The Tempest. Colonel

Henry Norwood (d. 1689), hitherto unidentified, of Leckhampton,

Gloucestershire, a person eminent for loyalty in the reign of

Charles I. and distinguished in the civil wars, later governor

of Tangiers and a member of parliament for Gloucester, wrote

an account of his voyage to Virginia as an adventurer, in

1649. These are characteristic works of the earliest period,

and illustrate variously the literature of exploration which

exists in numerous examples and is preserved for historical

reasons. The settlement of the colonies was, in general,

attended by such narratives of adventure or by accounts

of the state of the country or by documentary record of

events. Thus George Alsop (b. 1638) wrote the Character

of the Province of Maryland (1666), and Daniel Denton a

Brief Description of New York (1670), and in Virginia

the progress of affairs was dealt with by William Stith

(1689-1755), Robert Beverly (f. 1700), and William Byrd

(1674-1744). Each settlement in turn, as it came into

prominence or provoked curiosity, found its geographer and

annalist, and here and there sporadic pens essayed some practical

topic. The product, however, is now an indistinguishable mass,

and titles and authors alike are found only in antiquarian

lore. The distribution of literary activity was very uneven

along the sea-board; it was naturally greatest in the more

thriving and important colonies, and bore some relation

to their commercial prosperity and political activity and

to the closeness of the connexion with the home culture of

England. From the beginning New England, owing to the character

of its people and its ecclesiastical rule, was the chief seat

of the early literature, and held a position apart from the

other colonies as a community characterized by an intellectual

life. There the first printing press was set up, the first

college founded, and an abundant literature was produced.

The characteristic fact in the Puritan colonies is that

literature there was in the hands of its leading citizens

and was a chief concern in their minds. There were books

of exploration and description as in the other colonies,

such as William Wood's (d. 1639) New England's Prospect

(1634), and John Josselin's New England's Rarities (1672),

and tales of adventure in the wilderness and on the sea, most

commonly described as "remarkable providences," in the vigorous

Elizabethan narrative; but besides all this the magistracy

and the clergy normally set themselves to the labour of

history, controversy and counsel, and especially to the care of

religion. The governors, beginning with William Bradford

(1590-1657) of Plymouth, and John Winthrop (1588-1649) of

Massachusetts Bay, wrote the annals of their times, and the

line of historians was continued by Winslow, Nathaniel Morton,

Prince, Hubbard and Hutchinson. The clergy, headed by John

Cotton (1585-1652), Thomas Hooker (1586-1647), Nathaniel

Ward (1579- 1652), Roger Williams (1600-1683), Richard Mather

(1596-1669), John Eliot (1604-1690), produced sermons,

platforms, catechisms, theological dissertations, tracts of all

sorts, and their line also was continued by Shepard, Norton,

Wise, the later Mathers and scores of other ministers. The

older clergy were not inferior in power or learning to the

leaders of their own communion in England, and they commanded

the same prose that characterizes the Puritan tracts of the

mother country; nor did the kind of writing deteriorate in their

successors. This body of divines in successive generations gave

to early New England literature its overwhelming ecclesiastical

character; it was in the main a church literature, and its

secular books also were controlled and coloured by the Puritan

spirit. The pervasiveness of religion is well illustrated

by the three books which formed through the entire colonial

period the most popular domestic reading of the Puritan

home. These were The Bay Psalm Book (1640), which was

the first book published in America; Michael Wigglesworth's

(1631-1705) Day of Doom (1662), a doggerel poem; and the

New England Primer (c. 1690), called "the Little Bible." The

sole voice heard in opposition was Thomas Morton's satirical

New English Canaan (1637), whose author was sent out of

the colony for the scandal of Merrymount, but satire itself

remained religious in Ward's Simple Cobbler of Agawam

(1647). Poetry was represented in Anne Bradstreet's (1612-1672)

The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America (1650), and was

continued by a succession of doggerel writers, mostly ministers

or schoolmasters, Noyes, Oakes, Folger, Tompson, Byles and

others. The world of books also included a good proportion

of Indian war narratives and treatises relating to the

aborigines. The close of the 17th century shows literature,

however, still unchanged in its main position as the special

concern of the leaders of the state. It is Chief-Justice Samuel

Sewall's (1652-1730) Diary (which remained in manuscript until

1878) that affords the most intimate view of the culture and

habits of the community; and he was known to his contemporaries

by several publications, one of which, The Selling of

Joseph (1700), was the first American anti-slavery tract.

Puritanism.

The literature of the first century, exemplified by these few

titles, is considerable in bulk, and like colonial literature

elsewhere is preserved for historical reasons. In general,

it records the political progress and social conditions of

the Puritan state, and the contents of the Puritan mind. The

development of the original settlement took place without any

violent check. Though the colony was continually recruited

by fresh immigration, the original 20,000 who arrived before

1640 had established the principles of the state, and their

will and ideas remained dominant after the Restoration as

before. It was a theocratic state controlled by the clergy,

and yet containing the principle of liberty. The second

and third generations born on the soil, nevertheless, showed

some decadence; notwithstanding the effort to provide against

intellectual isolation and mental poverty by the foundation

of Harvard College, they felt the effects of their situation

across the sea and on the borders of a wilderness. The people

were a hardfaring folk and engaged in a material struggle

to establish the plantations and develop commerce on the

sea; their other life was in religion soberly practised and

intensely felt. They were a people of one book, in the true

sense,--the Bible; it was the organ of their mental life

as well as of their spiritual feelings. For them, it was

in the place of the higher literature. But long resident

there in the strip between the sea and the forest, cut off

from the world and consigned to hard labour and to spiritual

ardours, they developed a fanatical temper; their religious

life hardened and darkened; intolerance and superstition

grew. Time, nevertheless, ripened new changes, and the

colony was to be brought back from its religious seclusion

into the normal paths of modern development. The sign was

contained, perhaps, most clearly in the change effected in

the new charter granted by King William which made property

the basis of the franchise in place of church-membership, and

thus set the state upon an economic instead of a religious

foundation. It is rather by men than by books that these

times are remembered, but it is by the men who were writers

of books. In general, the career of the three Mathers

coincides with the history of the older Puritanism, and

their personal characteristics reflect its stages as their

writings contain its successive traits. Richard Mather, the

emigrant, had been joint author in the composition of The

Bay Psalm Book, and served the colony among the first of its

leaders. It was in his son, Increase Mather (1639-1723),

that the theocracy, properly speaking, culminated. He was

not only a divine, president of Harvard College and a prolific

writer; but he was dominant in the state, the chief man of

affairs. It was he who, sent to represent the colony in

England, received from King William the new charter. His

son, Cotton Mather (1663-1728), succeeded to his father's

distinction; but the changed condition is reflected in his

non-participation in affairs; he was a man of the study and

led there a narrower life than his father's had been. He

was, nevertheless, the most broadly characteristic figure of

the Puritan of his time. He was able and learned, abnormally

laborious, leaving over 400 titles attributed to him; and at

the same time he was an ascetic and visionary. The work by

which he is best remembered, the Magnalia Christi Americana,

or the Ecclesiastical History of New England from its First

Planting in the Year 1620, unto the Year of our Lord 1698

(1702), is the chief historical monument of the period, and

the most considerable literary work done in America up to that

time. It is encyclopaedic in scope, and contains an immense

accumulation of materials relating to life and events in the

colony. There the New England of the 17th century is

displayed. His numerous other works still further amplify the

period, and taken all together his writings best illustrate

the contents of Puritanism in New England. The power of the

clergy was waning, but even in the political sphere it was far

from extinction, and it continued under its scheme of church

government to guard jealously the principles of liberty.

In John Wise's (1652-1725) Vindication of the Government of

New England Churches (1717) a precursor of the Revolution is

felt. It was in another sphere, however, that Puritanism

in New England was to reach its height, intellectually and

spiritually alike, in the brilliant personality of Jonathan

Edwards (1703-1758), its last great product. He was free

of affairs, and bred essentially the private life of a

thinker. He displayed in youth extraordinary precocity and

varied intellectual curiosity, and showed at the same early

time a temperament of spiritual sensitiveness and religious

ideality which suggests the youth of a poet rather than of a

logician. It was not without a struggle that he embraced

sincerely the Calvinistic scheme of divine rule, but he was

able to reconcile the doctrine in its most fearful forms with

the serenity and warmth of his own spirit; for his soul at

all times seems as lucid as his mind, and his affections were

singularly tender and refined. He served as minister to the

church at Northampton; and, driven from that post, he was for

eight years a missionary to the Indians at Stockbridge; finally

he was made president of Princeton College, where after a few

weeks' incumbency he died. The works upon which his fame is

founded are Treatise concerning the Religious Affections

(1746), On the Freedom of the Will (1754), Treatise on

Original Sin (1758). They exhibit extraordinary reasoning

powers and place him among the most eminent theologians.

He contributed by his preaching great inspiring force to the

revival, known as "the Great Awakening," which swept over the

dry and formal Puritanism of the age and was its last great

flame. In him New England idealism had come to the birth. He

illustrates, better than all others, the power of Puritanism

as a spiritual force; and in him only did that power reach

intellectual expression in a memorable way for the larger

world. The ecclesiastical literature of Puritanism, abundant

as it was, produced no other work of power; nor did the

Puritan patronage of literature prove fruitful in other

fields. If Puritanism was thus infertile, it nevertheless

prepared the soil. It impressed upon New England the

stamp of the mind; the entire community was by its means

intellectually as well as morally bred; and to its training

and the predisposition it established in the genius of the

people may be ascribed the respect for the book which has

always characterized that section, the serious temper and

elevation of its later literature and the spiritual quality of

the imagination which is so marked a quality of its authors.

Franklin.

The secularization of life in New England, which went on

concurrently with the decline of the clergy in social power,

was incidental to colonial growth. The practical force

of the people had always been strong; material prosperity

increased and a powerful class of merchants grew up; public

questions multiplied in variety and gained in importance.

The affairs of the world had definitely obtained the upper

hand. The new spirit found its representative in the great

figure of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), who, born in Boston,

early emigrated to Philadelphia, an act which in itself may

be thought to forecast the transfer of the centre of interest

to the west and south and specifically to that city where

the congress was to sit. Franklin was a printer, and the

books he circulated are an index to the uses of reading in

his generation. Practical works, such as almanacs, were

plentiful, and it is characteristic that Franklin's name is, in

literature, first associated with Poor Richard's Almanack

(1732). The literature of the 18th century outside of New

England continued to be constituted of works of exploration,

description, colonial affairs, with some sprinkling of crude

science and doctrines of wealth; but it yields no distinguished

names or remembered titles. Franklin's character subsumes

the spirit of it. In him thrift and benevolence were main

constituents; scientific curiosity of a useful sort and invention

distinguished him; after he had secured a competence, public

interests filled his mature years. In him was the focus of the

federating impulses of the time, and as the representative of

the colonies in England and during the Revolution in France,

he was in his proper place as the greatest citizen of his

country. He was, first of men, broadly interested in all the

colonies, and in his mind the future began to be comprehended

in its true perspective and scale; and for these reasons to

him properly belongs the title of "the first American." The

type of his character set forth in the Autobiography (1817)

was profoundly American and prophetic of the plain people's

ideal of success in a democracy. It is by his character and

career rather than by his works or even by his great public

services that he is remembered; he is a type of the citizen-

man. Older than his companions, and plain while they were of

an aristocratic stamp, he greatens over them in the popular

mind as age greatens over youth; but it was these companions

who were to lay the foundations of the political literature of

America. With the increasing political life lawyers as a

class had naturally come into prominence as spokesmen and

debaters. A young generation of orators sprang up, of

whom James Otis (1725-1783) in the north, and Patrick Henry

(1736-1799) in the south, were the most brilliant; and a group

of statesmen, of whom the most notable were Thomas Jefferson

(1743-1826), James Madison (1751-1836), and Alexander Hamilton

(1757-1804), held the political direction of the times; in the

speeches and state-papers of these orators and statesmen and

their fellows the political literature of the colonies came to

hold the first place. The chief memorials of this literature

are The Declaration of Independence (1776), The Federalist

(1788), a treatise on the principles of free government, and

Washington's Addresses (1789-1793-1796). Thus politics

became, in succession to exploration and religion, the most

important literary element in the latter half of the 18th century.

18th-century poetry and fiction.

The more refined forms of literature also began to receive

intelligent attention towards the close of the period. The

Revolution in passing struck out some sparks of balladry and

song, but the inspiration of the spirit of nationality was

first felt in poetry by Philip Freneau (1752-1832), whose

Poems (1786) marked the best political achievement up to his

time. Patriotism was also a ruling motive in the works of

the three poets associated with Yale College, John Trumbull

(1750-1831), Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), and Joel Barlow

(1754-1812), authors respectively of McFingal (1782), a

Hudibrastic satire of the Revolution, The Conquest of Canaan

(1785), an epic, and The Vision of Columbus (1787), later

remade into The Columbiad, also an epic. These poets gathered

about them a less talented company, and all were denominated

in common the "Hartford Wits," by which name rather than by

their works they are remembered. The national hymn, "Hail

Columbia," was composed by Joseph Hopkinson (1770-1842) in

1798. Fiction, in turn, was first cultivated by Charles Brockden

Brown (1771-1810), a Philadelphian, who wrote six romantic

novels (1798-1801) after the style of Godwin, but set in the

conditions of the new world and mixing local description and

observation with the material of mystery and terror. Fiction

had been earlier attempted by Mrs Susanna Haswell Rowson, whose

Charlotte Temple (1790) is remembered, and contemporaneously

by Mrs Hannah Webster Foster in The Coquette (1797) and by

Royall Tyler (1758-1826) in The Algerian Captive (1799);

but to Brown properly belongs the title of the first American

novelist, nor are his works without invention and intensity

and a certain distinction that secure for them permanent

remembrance. The drama formally began its career on a regular

stage and with an established company, in 1786 at New York,

with the acting of Royall Tyler's comedy The Contrast; but

the earliest American play was Thomas Godfrey's (1736-1763)

tragedy, The Prince of Parthia, acted in Philadelphia in

1767. William Dunlap (1766-1839) is, however, credited with

being the father of the American theatre on the New York

stage, where his plays were produced. One other earlier

book deserves mention, John Woolman's (1720-1772) Journal

(1775), an autobiography with much charm. With these various

attempts the 18th century was brought to an end. In 200

years no literary classic had been produced in America.

The new nation.

The new nation, which with the 19th century began its integral

career, still retained the great disparities which originally

existed between the diverse colonies. Political unity,

the simplest of the social unities, had been achieved; "a

more perfect union," in the language of the founders, had

been formed; but even in the political sphere the new state

bore in its bosom disuniting forces which again and again

threatened to rive it apart until they were dissipated in

the Civil War; and in the other spheres of its existence,

intellectually, morally, socially, its unity was far from being

accomplished. The expansion of its territory over the

continental area brought new local diversity and prolonged the

contrasts of border conditions with those of the long-settled

communities. This state of affairs was reflected in the

capital fact that there was no metropolitan centre in which

the tradition and forces of the nation were concentrated.

Washington was a centre of political administration; but that was

all. The nation grew slowly, indeed, into consciousness of

its own existence; but it was without united history, without

national traditions of civilization and culture, and it was

committed to the untried idea of democracy. It was founded

in a new faith; yet at the moment that it proclaimed the

equality of men, its own social structure and habit north and

south contradicted the declaration, not merely by the fact

of slavery, but by the life of its classes. The south long

remained oligarchic; in the north aristocracy slowly melted

away. The coincidence of an economic opportunity with a

philosophic principle is the secret of the career of American

democracy in its first century. The vast resources of an

undeveloped country gave this opportunity to the individual,

while the nation was pledged by its fundamental idea to material

prosperity for the masses, popular education and the common

welfare, as the supreme test of government. In this labour,

subduing the new world to agriculture, trade and manufactures,

the forces of the nation were spent, under the complication of

maintaining the will of the people as the directing power; the

subjugation of the soil and experience in popular government

are the main facts of American history. In the course of this

task the practice of the fine arts was hardly more than an

incident. When anyone thinks of Greece, he thinks first of

her arts; when anyone thinks of America, he thinks of her arts

last. Literature, in the sense of the printed word, has had a

great career in America; as the vehicle of use, books, journals,

literary communication, educational works and libraries have

filled the land; nowhere has the power of the printed word

ever been so great, nowhere has the man of literary genius

ever had so broad an opportunity to affect the minds of men

contemporaneously. But, in the artistic sense, literature, at

most, has been locally illustrated by a few eminent names.

The most obvious fact with regard to this literature is

that--to adopt a convenient word--it has been regional.

It has flourished in parts of the country, very distinctly

marked, and is in each case affected by its environment

and local culture; if it incorporates national elements

at times, it seems to graft them on its own stock. The

growth of literature in these favoured soils was slow and

humble. There was no outburst of genius, no sudden movement,

no renaissance; but very gradually a step was taken in

advance of the last generation, as that had advanced upon its

forefathers. The first books of true excellence were

experiments; they seem almost accidents. The cities of

Boston, New York and Philadelphia were lettered communities;

they possessed imported books, professional classes, men

of education and taste. The tradition of literature was

strong, especially in New England; there were readers used

to the polite letters of the past. It was, however, in

the main the past of Puritanism, both in England and at

home, and of the 18th century in general, on which they were

bred, with a touch ever growing stronger of the new European

romanticism. All the philosophic ideas of the 18th century were

current. What was most lacking was a standard self-applied

by original writers; and in the absence of a great national

centre of standards and traditions, and amid the poverty of such

small local centres as the writers were bred in, they sought

what they desired, not in England, not in any one country nor

in any one literature, but in the solidarity of literature

itself, in the republic of letters, the world-state itself,--the

master-works of all European lands; they became either actual

pilgrims on foreign soil or pilgrims of the mind in fireside

travels. The foreign influences that thus entered into American

literature are obvious and make a large part of its history;

but the fact here brought out is that European literature and

experience stood to American writers in lieu of a national

centre; it was there that both standard and tradition were found.

Early 19th-century classics.

American literature first began to exist for the larger world

in the persons of Washington Irving (1785-1859) and James

Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). Their recognition was almost

contemporaneous. The Sketch Book (1810) was the first

American book to win a great reputation in England, and The

Spy (1821) was the first to obtain a similar vogue on the

continent. The fame of both authors is associated with New

York, and that city took the first place as the centre of the

literature of the period. It was not that New York was more

intellectual than other parts of the country; but it was a highly

prosperous community, where a mercantile society flourished and

consequently a certain degree of culture obtained. The first

American literature was not the product of a raw democracy

nor of the new nationality in any sense; there was nothing

sudden or vehement in its generation; but, as always, it was

the product of older elements in the society where it arose

and flourished under the conditions of precedent culture. The

family of Irving were in trade. Cooper's father was in the

law. A third writer, William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), is

associated with them, and though he announced his poetic talent

precociously by Thanatopsis (1807), his Poems (1832),

immediately republished in London, were the basis of his true

fame. Born in Massachusetts, he lived his long life in New

York, and was there a distinguished citizen. His father was a

physician. All three men were not supremely endowed; they

do not show the passion of genius for its work which marks

the great writers; they were, like most American writers, men

with the literary temperament, characteristically gentlemen,

who essayed literature with varying power. If the quality

of this early literature is to be appreciated truly, the fact

of its provenance from a society whose cultivation was simple

and normal, a provincial bourgeois society of a prosperous

democracy, must be borne in mind. It came, not from the people,

but from the best classes developed under preceding conditions.

Irving.

Irving all his life was in the eyes of his countrymen, whatever

their pride might be in him, more a travelled gentleman

than one of themselves. He had come home to end his days at

Sunnyside by the Hudson, but he had won his fame in foreign

fields. In his youth the beginnings of his literary work

were most humble--light contributions to the press. He

was of a most social nature, warm, refined, humorous, a

man belonging to the town. He was not seriously disposed,

idled much, and surprised his fellow-citizens suddenly by

a grotesque History of New York (1809), an extravaganza

satirizing the Dutch element of the province. He discovered

in writing this work his talent for humour and also one

part of his literary theme, the Dutch tradition; but he did

not so convince himself of his powers as to continue, and

it was only after the failure of his commercial interests

that, being thrown on himself for support, he published in

London ten years later, at the age of thirty-six, the volume

of sketches which by its success committed him to a literary

career. In that work he found himself; sentiment and

distinction of style characterized it, and these were his main

traits. He remained abroad, always favoured in society

and living in diplomatic posts in Spain and England, for

seventeen years, and he later spent four years in Spain as

minister. Spain gave him a larger opportunity than England

for the cultivation of romantic sentiment, and he found there

his best themes in Moorish legend and history. On his return

to America he added to his subjects the exploration of the

west; and he wrote, besides, biographies of Goldsmith and

Washington. He was, as it turned out, a voluminous writer;

yet his books successively seem the accident of his situation.

The excellence of his work lies rather in the treatment than

the substance; primarily, there is the pellucid style, which

he drew from his love of Goldsmith, and the charm of his

personality shown in his romantic interest, his pathos and

humour ever growing in delicacy, and his familiar touch with

humanity. He made his name American mainly by creating the

legend of the Hudson, and he alone has linked his memory

locally with his country so that it hangs over the landscape

and blends with it for ever; he owned his nativity, too,

by his pictures of the prairie and the fur-trade and by his

life of Washington, who had laid his hand upon his head;

but he had spent half his life abroad, in the temperamental

enjoyment of the romantic suggestion of the old world, and by

his writings he gave this expansion of sympathy and sentiment

to his countrymen. If his temperament was native-born and

his literary taste home-bred, and if his affections gave

a legend to the countryside and his feelings expanded with

the view of prairie and wilderness, and if he sought to

honour with his pen the historic associations and memory of

the land which had honoured him, it was, nevertheless, the

trans-Atlantic touch that had loosed his genius and mainly fed

it, and this fact was prophetic of the immediate course of

American literature and the most significant in his career.

Cooper's initiation into literature was similar to that of

Irving. He had received, perhaps, something more of scanty

formal education, since he attended Yale College for a

season, but he early took to the sea and was a midshipman.

He was thirty years old before he began to write, and it was

almost an accident that after the failure of his first novel

he finished The Spy, so deterring was the prejudice that no

American book could succeed. He was, however, a man of great

energy of life, great force of will; it was his nature to

persist. The way once opened, he wrote voluminously and with

great unevenness. His literary defects, both of surface and

construction, are patent. It was not by style nor by any

detail of plot or character that he excelled; but whatever

imperfections there might be, his work was alive; it had body,

motion, fire. He chose his subjects from aspects of life

familiar to him in the woods or on the sea or from patriotic

memories near to him in the fields of the Revolution. He thus

established a vital connexion with his own country, and in so

far he is the most national by his themes of any of the American

writers. What he gave was the scene of the new world, both

in the forest and by the fires of the Revolution and on

the swift and daring American ships; but it was especially

by his power to give the sense of the primitive wilderness

and the ocean weather, and adventure there, that he won

success. In France, where he was popular, this came as

an echo out of the real world of the west to the dream of

nature that had lately grown up in French literature; and,

besides, of all the springs of interest native to men in

every land adventure in the wild is, perhaps, the easiest

to touch, the quickest and most inflaming to respond.

Cooper stood for a true element in American experience and

conditions, for the romance in the mere presence of primeval

things of nature newly found by man and opening to his coming;

this was an imaginative moment, and Cooper seized it by his

imagination. He especially did so in the Indian elements

of his tale, and gave permanent ideality to the Indian

type. The trait of loftiness which he thus incorporated

belongs with the impression of the virgin forest and prairie,

the breadth, the silence and the music of universal nature.

The distinction of his work is to open so great a scene

worthily, to give it human dignity in rough and primitive

characters seen in the simplicity of their being, and to

fill it with peril, resourcefulness and hardihood. It is

the only brave picture of life in the broad from an American

pen. Scott, in inventing the romantic treatment of history in

fiction, was the leader of the historical novel; but Cooper,

except in so far as he employed the form, was not in a true

sense an imitator of Scott; he did not create, nor think, nor

feel, in Scott's way, and he came far short of the deep human

power of Scott's genius. He was not great in character; but

he was great in adventure, manly spirit and the atmosphere of

the natural world, an Odysseyan writer, who caught the moment

of the American planting in vivid and characteristic traits.

Bryant.

This same spirit, but limited to nature in her most elemental

forms and having the simplest generic relations to human

life, characterizes Bryant. He, too, had slender academic

training, and came from the same social origins as Irving and

Cooper; but, owing to his extraordinary boyish precocity, the

family influences upon him and the kind of home he was bred

in are more clearly seen. He framed his art in his boyhood

on the model of 18th-century verse, and though he felt the

liberalizing influences of Wordsworth later there always

remained in his verse a sense of form that suggests a severer

school than that of his English contemporaries. He lived the

life of a journalist and public man in New York, but the poet

in him was a man apart and he jealously guarded his talent in

seclusion. Though he was at times abroad, he resembled

Cooper in being unaffected by foreign residence; he remained

home-bred. He wrote a considerable quantity of verse; but

it is by a quality in it rather than by its contents that his

poetry is recalled, and this quality exists most highly in

the few pieces that are well known. To no verse is the phrase

"native wood-notes wild" more properly applied. His poetry

gives this deep impression of privacy; high, clear, brief in

voice, and yet, as it were, as of something hidden in the

sky or grove or brook, or as if the rock spoke, it is nature

in her haunts; it is the voice of the peak, the forests, the

cataracts, the smile of the blue gentian, the distant rosy

flight of the water-fowl,--with no human element less simple

than piety, death or the secular changes of time. It is,

too, an expression of something so purely American that it

seems that it must be as uncomprehended by one not familiar

with the scene as the beauty of Greece or Italian glows; it

is poetry locked in its own land. This presence of the pure,

the pristine, the virginal in the verse, this luminousness,

spaciousness, serenity in the land, this immemorialness of

natural things, is the body and spirit of the true wild,

such as Bryant's eyes had seen it and as it had possessed his

soul. In no other American poet is there this nearness to

original awe in the presence of nature; nowhere is nature so

slightly humanized, so cosmically felt, and yet poetized.

Poetry of this sort must be small in amount; a few hundred

lines contain it all; but they alone shrine the original

grandeur, not so much of the American landscape, as of wild

nature when first felt in the primitive American world.

American romanticism thus began with these three writers,

who gave it characterization after all by only a few simple

traits. There was in it no profound passion nor philosophy

nor revolt; especially there was no morbidness. It was sprung

from a new soil. The breath of the early American world was

in Bryant's poetry; he had freed from the landscape a Druidical

nature-worship of singular purity, simple and grand, unbound

by any conventional formulas of thought or feeling but deeply

spiritual. The new life of the land filled the scene of

Cooper; prairie, forest and sea, Indians, backwoodsmen and

sailors, the human struggle of all kinds, gave it diversity

and detail; but its life was the American spirit, the epic

action of a people taking primitive possession, battling with

its various foes, making its world. Irving, more brooding and

reminiscent, gave legend to the landscape, transformed rudeness

with humour and brought elements of picturesqueness into

play; and in him, in whom the new race was more mature, was

first shown that nostalgia for the past, which is everywhere

a romantic trait but was peculiarly strong under American

conditions. He was consequently more free in imagination

than the others, and first dealt with other than American

subjects, emancipating literature from provinciality of

theme, while the modes of his romantic treatment, the way

he felt about his subjects, still owed much to his American

birth. In all this literature by the three writers there

was little complexity, and there was no strangeness in their

personalities. Irving was more genially human, Cooper

more vitally intense; Bryant was the more careful artist

in the severe limits of his art, which was simple and

plain. Simplicity and plainness characterize all three;

they were, in truth, simple American gentlemen, of the

breeding and tastes that a plain democracy produced as its

best, who, giving themselves to literature for a career,

developed a native romanticism, which, however obvious and

uncomplicated with philosophy, passion or moods, represented

the first stage of American life with freshness of power,

an element of ideal loftiness and much literary charm.

General progress.