History of the United States

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the United Statesby Charles A. Beard and Mary R. BeardThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.netTitle: History of the United StatesAuthor: Charles A. Beard and Mary R. BeardRelease Date: October 28, 2005 [EBook #16960]Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: ISO-8859-1*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES ***Produced by Curtis Weyant, M and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.netHISTORYOF THEUNITED STATESBYCHARLES A. BEARDANDMARY R. BEARDNew YorkTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY1921_All rights reserved_COPYRIGHT, 1921,BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1921.Norwood PressJ.S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.NORWOOD, MASS., U.S.A.PREFACEAs things now stand, the course of instruction in American history inour public schools embraces three distinct treatments of the subject.Three separate books are used. First, there is the primary book, whichis usually a very condensed narrative with emphasis on biographies andanecdotes. Second, there is the advanced text for the seventh or eighthgrade, generally speaking, an expansion of the elementary book by theaddition of forty or fifty thousand words. Finally, there is the ...

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: History of the United States Author: Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard Release Date: October 28, 2005 [EBook #16960] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES *** Produced by Curtis Weyant, M and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES BY CHARLES A. BEARD AND MARY R. BEARD New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1921 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1921. Norwood Press J.S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. NORWOOD, MASS., U.S.A. PREFACE As things now stand, the course of instruction in American history in our public schools embraces three distinct treatments of the subject. Three separate books are used. First, there is the primary book, which is usually a very condensed narrative with emphasis on biographies and anecdotes. Second, there is the advanced text for the seventh or eighth grade, generally speaking, an expansion of the elementary book by the addition of forty or fifty thousand words. Finally, there is the high school manual. This, too, ordinarily follows the beaten path, giving fuller accounts of the same events and characters. To put it bluntly, we do not assume that our children obtain permanent possessions from their study of history in the lower grades. If mathematicians followed the same method, high school texts on algebra and geometry would include the multiplication table and fractions. There is, of course, a ready answer to the criticism advanced above. It is that teachers have learned from bitter experience how little history their pupils retain as they pass along the regular route. No teacher of history will deny this. Still it is a standing challenge to existing methods of historical instruction. If the study of history cannot be made truly progressive like the study of mathematics, science, and languages, then the historians assume a grave responsibility in adding their subject to the already overloaded curriculum. If the successive historical texts are only enlarged editions of the first text--more facts, more dates, more words--then history deserves most of the sharp criticism which it is receiving from teachers of science, civics, and economics. In this condition of affairs we find our justification for offering a new high school text in American history. Our first contribution is one of omission. The time-honored stories of exploration and the biographies of heroes are left out. We frankly hold that, if pupils know little or nothing about Columbus, Cortes, Magellan, or Captain John Smith by the time they reach the high school, it is useless to tell the same stories for perhaps the fourth time. It is worse than useless. It is an offense against the teachers of those subjects that are demonstrated to be progressive in character. In the next place we have omitted all descriptions of battles. Our reasons for this are simple. The strategy of a campaign or of a single battle is a highly technical, and usually a highly controversial, matter about which experts differ widely. In the field of military and naval operations most writers and teachers of history are mere novices. To dispose of Gettysburg or the Wilderness in ten lines or ten pages is equally absurd to the serious student of military affairs. Any one who compares the ordinary textbook account of a single Civil War campaign with the account given by Ropes, for instance, will ask for no further comment. No youth called upon to serve our country in arms would thinkof turning to a high school manual for information about the art of warfare. The dramatic scene or episode, so useful in arousing the interest of the immature pupil, seems out of place in a book that deliberately appeals to boys and girls on the very threshold of life's serious responsibilities. It is not upon negative features, however, that we rest our case. It is rather upon constructive features. _First._ We have written a topical, not a narrative, history. We have tried to set forth the important aspects, problems, and movements of each period, bringing in the narrative rather by way of illustration. _Second._ We have emphasized those historical topics which help to explain how our nation has come to be what it is to-day. _Third._ We have dwelt fully upon the social and economic aspects of our history, especially in relation to the politics of each period. _Fourth._ We have treated the causes and results of wars, the problems of financing and sustaining armed forces, rather than military strategy. These are the subjects which belong to a history for civilians. These are matters which civilians can understand--matters which they must understand, if they are to play well their part in war and peace. _Fifth._ By omitting the period of exploration, we have been able to enlarge the treatment of our own time. We have given special attention to the history of those current questions which must form the subject matter of sound instruction in citizenship. _Sixth._ We have borne in mind that America, with all her unique characteristics, is a part of a general civilization. Accordingly we have given diplomacy, foreign affairs, world relations, and the reciprocal influences of nations their appropriate place. _Seventh._ We have deliberately aimed at standards of maturity. The study of a mere narrative calls mainly for the use of the memory. We have aimed to stimulate habits of analysis, comparison, association, reflection, and generalization--habits calculated to enlarge as well as inform the mind. We have been at great pains to make our text clear, simple, and direct; but we have earnestly sought to stretch the intellects of our readers--to put them upon their mettle. Most of them will receive the last of their formal instruction in the high school. The world will soon expect maturity from them. Their achievements will depend upon the possession of other powers than memory alone. The effectiveness of their citizenship in our republic will be measured by the excellence of their judgment as well as the fullness of their information. C.A.B. M.R.B. NEW YORK CITY, February 8, 1921. =A SMALL LIBRARY IN AMERICAN HISTORY= _=SINGLE VOLUMES:=_ BASSETT, J.S. _A Short History of the United States_ELSON, H.W. _History of the United States of America_ _=SERIES:=_ "EPOCHS OF AMERICAN HISTORY," EDITED BY A.B. HART HART, A.B. _Formation of the Union_ THWAITES, R.G. _The Colonies_ WILSON, WOODROW. _Division and Reunion_ "RIVERSIDE SERIES," EDITED BY W.E. DODD BECKER, C.L. _Beginnings of the American People_ DODD, W.E. _Expansion and Conflict_ JOHNSON, A. _Union and Democracy_ PAXSON, F.L. _The New Nation_ CONTENTS PART I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD CHAPTER PAGE I. THE GREAT MIGRATION TO AMERICA 1 The Agencies of American Colonization 2 The Colonial Peoples 6 The Process of Colonization 12 II. COLONIAL AGRICULTURE, INDUSTRY, AND COMMERCE 20 The Land and the Westward Movement 20 Industrial and Commercial Development 28 III. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PROGRESS 38 The Leadership of the Churches 39 Schools and Colleges 43 The Colonial Press 46 The Evolution in Political Institutions 48 IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF COLONIAL NATIONALISM 56 Relations with the Indians and the French 57 The Effects of Warfare on the Colonies 61 Colonial Relations with the British Government 64 Summary of Colonial Period 73 PART II. CONFLICT AND INDEPENDENCE V. THE NEW COURSE IN BRITISH IMPERIAL POLICY 77 George III and His System 77 George III's Ministers and Their Colonial Policies 79 Colonial Resistance Forces Repeal 83 Resumption of British Revenue and Commercial Policies 87 Renewed Resistance in America 90 Retaliation by the British Government 93 From Reform to Revolution in America 95 VI. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 99 Resistance and Retaliation 99 American Independence 101 The Establishment of Government and the New Allegiance 108 Military Affairs 116 The Finances of the Revolution 125 The Diplomacy of the Revolution 127 Peace at Last 132 Summary of the Revolutionary Period 135 PART III. FOUNDATIONS OF THE UNION AND NATIONAL POLITICS VII. THE FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 139 The Promise and the Difficulties of America 139 The Calling of a Constitutional Convention 143 The Framing of the Constitution 146 The Struggle over Ratification 157 VIII. THE CLASH OF POLITICAL PARTIES 162 The Men and Measures of the New Government 162 The Rise of Political Parties 168 Foreign Influences and Domestic Politics 171 IX. THE JEFFERSONIAN REPUBLICANS IN POWER 186 Republican Principles and Policies 186 The Republicans and the Great West 188 The Republican War for Commercial Independence 193 The Republicans Nationalized 201 The National Decisions of Chief Justice Marshall 208 Summary of Union and National Politics 212 PART IV. THE WEST AND JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY X. THE FARMERS BEYOND THE APPALACHIANS 217 Preparation for Western Settlement 217 The Western Migration and New States 221 The Spirit of the Frontier 228 The West and the East Meet 230 XI. JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 238 The Democratic Movement in the East 238 The New Democracy Enters the Arena 244 The New Democracy at Washington 250 The Rise of the Whigs 260 The Interaction of American and European Opinion 265 XII. THE MIDDLE BORDER AND THE GREAT WEST 271 The Advance of the Middle Border 271 On to the Pacific--Texas and the Mexican War 276 The Pacific Coast and Utah 284 Summary of Western Development and National Politics 292 PART V. SECTIONAL CONFLICT AND RECONSTRUCTION XIII. THE RISE OF THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 295 The Industrial Revolution 296 The Industrial Revolution and National Politics 307 XIV. THE PLANTING SYSTEM AND NATIONAL POLITICS 316 Slavery--North and South 316 Slavery in National Politics 324 The Drift of Events toward the Irrepressible Conflict 332 XV. THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 344 The Southern Confederacy 344 The War Measures of the Federal Government 350 The Results of the Civil War 365 Reconstruction in the South 370 Summary of the Sectional Conflict 375 PART VI. NATIONAL GROWTH AND WORLD POLITICS XVI. THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF THE SOUTH 379 The South at the Close of the War 379 The Restoration of White Supremacy 382 The Economic Advance of the South 389 XVII. BUSINESS ENTERPRISE AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 401 Railways and Industry 401 The Supremacy of the Republican Party (1861-1885) 412 The Growth of Opposition to Republican Rule 417 XVIII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREAT WEST 425 The Railways as Trail Blazers 425 The Evolution of Grazing and Agriculture 431 Mining and Manufacturing in the West 436 The Admission of New States 440 The Influence of the Far West on National Life 443 XIX. DOMESTIC ISSUES BEFORE THE COUNTRY (1865-1897) 451 The Currency Question 452 The Protective Tariff and Taxation 459 The Railways and Trusts 460 The Minor Parties and Unrest 462 The Sound Money Battle of 1896 466 Republican Measures and Results 472 XX. AMERICA A WORLD POWER (1865-1900) 477 American Foreign Relations (1865-1898) 478 Cuba and the Spanish War 485 American Policies in the Philippines and the Orient 497 Summary of National Growth and World Politics 504 PART VII. PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY AND THE WORLD WAR XXI. THE EVOLUTION OF REPUBLICAN POLICIES (1901-1913) 507 Foreign Affairs 508 Colonial Administration 515 The Roosevelt Domestic Policies 519 Legislative and Executive Activities 523 The Administration of President Taft 527 Progressive Insurgency and the Election of 1912 530 XXII. THE SPIRIT OF REFORM IN AMERICA 536 An Age of Criticism 536 Political Reforms 538 Measures of Economic Reform 546 XXIII. THE NEW POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 554 The Rise of the Woman Movement 555 The National Struggle for Woman Suffrage 562 XXIV. INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY 570 Coöperation between Employers and Employees 571 The Rise and Growth of Organized Labor 575 The Wider Relations of Organized Labor 577 Immigration and Americanization 582 XXV. PRESIDENT WILSON AND THE WORLD WAR 588 Domestic Legislation 588 Colonial and Foreign Policies 592 The United States and the European War 596 The United States at War 604 The Settlement at Paris 612 Summary of Democracy and the World War 620 APPENDIX 627 A TOPICAL SYLLABUS 645 INDEX 655 MAPS PAGE The Original Grants (color map) _Facing_ 4 German and Scotch-Irish Settlements 8 Distribution of Population in 1790 27 English, French, and Spanish Possessions in America, 1750 (color map) _Facing_ 59 The Colonies at the Time of the Declaration of Independence (color map) _Facing_ 108 North America according to the Treaty of 1783 (color map) _Facing_ 134 The United States in 1805 (color map) _Facing_ 193 Roads and Trails into Western Territory (color map) _Facing_ 224 The Cumberland Road 233 Distribution of Population in 1830 235 Texas and the Territory in Dispute 282 The Oregon Country and the Disputed Boundary 285 The Overland Trails 287 Distribution of Slaves in Southern States 323 The Missouri Compromise 326 Slave and Free Soil on the Eve of the Civil War 335 The United States in 1861 (color map) _Facing_ 345 Railroads of the United States in 1918 405 The United States in 1870 (color map) _Facing_ 427 The United States in 1912 (color map) _Facing_ 443American Dominions in the Pacific (color map) _Facing_ 500 The Caribbean Region (color map) _Facing_ 592 Battle Lines of the Various Years of the World War 613 Europe in 1919 (color map) _Between_ 618-619 "THE NATIONS OF THE WEST" (popularly called "The Pioneers"), designed by A. Stirling Calder and modeled by Mr. Calder, F.G.R. Roth, and Leo Lentelli, topped the Arch of the Setting Sun at the Panama-Pacific Exposition held at San Francisco in 1915. Facing the Court of the Universe moves a group of men and women typical of those who have made our civilization. From left to right appear the French-Canadian, the Alaskan, the Latin-American, the German, the Italian, the Anglo-American, and the American Indian, squaw and warrior. In the place of honor in the center of the group, standing between the oxen on the tongue of the prairie schooner, is a figure, beautiful and almost girlish, but strong, dignified, and womanly, the Mother of To-morrow. Above the group rides the Spirit of Enterprise, flanked right and left by the Hopes of the Future in the person of two boys. The group as a whole is beautifully symbolic of the westward march of American civilization. [Illustration: _Photograph by Cardinell-Vincent Co., San Francisco_ "THE NATIONS OF THE WEST"] HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES PART I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD CHAPTER I THE GREAT MIGRATION TO AMERICA The tide of migration that set in toward the shores of North America during the early years of the seventeenth century was but one phase in the restless and eternal movement of mankind upon the surface of the earth. The ancient Greeks flung out their colonies in every direction, westward as far as Gaul, across the Mediterranean, and eastward into Asia Minor, perhaps to the very confines of India. The Romans, supported by their armies and their government, spread their dominion beyond the narrow lands of Italy until it stretched from the heather of Scotland to the sands of Arabia. The Teutonic tribes, from their home beyond the Danube and the Rhine, poured into the empire of the Cæsars and made the beginnings of modern Europe. Of this great sweep of races and empires the settlement of America was merely a part. And it was, moreover, only one aspect of the expansion which finally carried the peoples, the institutions, and the trade of Europe to the very ends of the earth.In one vital point, it must be noted, American colonization differed from that of the ancients. The Greeks usually carried with them affection for the government they left behind and sacred fire from the altar of the parent city; but thousands of the immigrants who came to America disliked the state and disowned the church of the mother country. They established compacts of government for themselves and set up altars of their own. They sought not only new soil to till but also political and religious liberty for themselves and their children. THE AGENCIES OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION It was no light matter for the English to cross three thousand miles of water and found homes in the American wilderness at the opening of the seventeenth century. Ships, tools, and supplies called for huge outlays of money. Stores had to be furnished in quantities sufficient to sustain the life of the settlers until they could gather harvests of their own. Artisans and laborers of skill and industry had to be induced to risk the hazards of the new world. Soldiers were required for defense and mariners for the exploration of inland waters. Leaders of good judgment, adept in managing men, had to be discovered. Altogether such an enterprise demanded capital larger than the ordinary merchant or gentleman could amass and involved risks more imminent than he dared to assume. Though in later days, after initial tests had been made, wealthy proprietors were able to establish colonies on their own account, it was the corporation that furnished the capital and leadership in the beginning. =The Trading Company.=--English pioneers in exploration found an instrument for colonization in companies of merchant adventurers, which had long been employed in carrying on commerce with foreign countries. Such a corporation was composed of many persons of different ranks of society--noblemen, merchants, and gentlemen--who banded together for a particular undertaking, each contributing a sum of money and sharing in the profits of the venture. It was organized under royal authority; it received its charter, its grant of land, and its trading privileges from the king and carried on its operations under his supervision and control. The charter named all the persons originally included in the corporation and gave them certain powers in the management of its affairs, including the right to admit new members. The company was in fact a little government set up by the king. When the members of the corporation remained in England, as in the case of the Virginia Company, they operated through agents sent to the colony. When they came over the seas themselves and settled in America, as in the case of Massachusetts, they became the direct government of the country they possessed. The stockholders in that instance became the voters and the governor, the chief magistrate. [Illustration: JOHN WINTHROP, GOVERNOR OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COMPANY] Four of the thirteen colonies in America owed their origins to the trading corporation. It was the London Company, created by King James I, in 1606, that laid during the following year the foundations of Virginia at Jamestown. It was under the auspices of their West India Company, chartered in 1621, that the Dutch planted the settlements of the New Netherland in the valley of the Hudson. The founders of Massachusetts were Puritan leaders and men of affairs whom King Charles I incorporated in 1629 under the title: "The governor and company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." In this case the law did but incorporate a group drawn together by religious ties. "We must be knit together as one man," wrote John Winthrop, the first Puritan governor in America. Far to the south, on the banks of the Delaware River, a Swedish commercial company in 1638 made the beginnings of a settlement, christened New Sweden; itwas destined to pass under the rule of the Dutch, and finally under the rule of William Penn as the proprietary colony of Delaware. In a certain sense, Georgia may be included among the "company colonies." It was, however, originally conceived by the moving spirit, James Oglethorpe, as an asylum for poor men, especially those imprisoned for debt. To realize this humane purpose, he secured from King George II, in 1732, a royal charter uniting several gentlemen, including himself, into "one body politic and corporate," known as the "Trustees for establishing the colony of Georgia in America." In the structure of their organization and their methods of government, the trustees did not differ materially from the regular companies created for trade and colonization. Though their purposes were benevolent, their transactions had to be under the forms of law and according to the rules of business. =The Religious Congregation.=--A second agency which figured largely in the settlement of America was the religious brotherhood, or congregation, of men and women brought together in the bonds of a common religious faith. By one of the strange fortunes of history, this institution, founded in the early days of Christianity, proved to be a potent force in the origin and growth of self-government in a land far away from Galilee. "And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul," we are told in the Acts describing the Church at Jerusalem. "We are knit together as a body in a most sacred covenant of the Lord ... by virtue of which we hold ourselves strictly tied to all care of each other's good and of the whole," wrote John Robinson, a leader among the Pilgrims who founded their tiny colony of Plymouth in 1620. The Mayflower Compact, so famous in American history, was but a written and signed agreement, incorporating the spirit of obedience to the common good, which served as a guide to self-government until Plymouth was annexed to Massachusetts in 1691. [Illustration: THE ORIGINAL GRANTS] Three other colonies, all of which retained their identity until the eve of the American Revolution, likewise sprang directly from the congregations of the faithful: Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, mainly offshoots from Massachusetts. They were founded by small bodies of men and women, "united in solemn covenants with the Lord," who planted their settlements in the wilderness. Not until many a year after Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson conducted their followers to the Narragansett country was Rhode Island granted a charter of incorporation (1663) by the crown. Not until long after the congregation of Thomas Hooker from Newtown blazed the way into the Connecticut River Valley did the king of England give Connecticut a charter of its own (1662) and a place among the colonies. Half a century elapsed before the towns laid out beyond the Merrimac River by emigrants from Massachusetts were formed into the royal province of New Hampshire in 1679. Even when Connecticut was chartered, the parchment and sealing wax of the royal lawyers did but confirm rights and habits of self-government and obedience to law previously established by the congregations. The towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield had long lived happily under their "Fundamental Orders" drawn up by themselves in 1639; so had the settlers dwelt peacefully at New Haven under their "Fundamental Articles" drafted in the same year. The pioneers on the Connecticut shore had no difficulty in agreeing that "the Scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men." =The Proprietor.=--A third and very important colonial agency was the proprietor, or proprietary. As the name, associated with the word "property," implies, the proprietor was a person to whom the king granted property in lands in North America to have, hold, use, and enjoy for his own benefit and profit, with the right to hand the estate down