The New Nation - free ebook by Frederic L. (Frederic Logan) Paxson

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

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PREFACE

A new nation has appeared within the United States since the Civil War, but it has been only accidentally connected with that catastrophe. The Constitution emerged from the confusion of strife and reconstruction substantially unchanged, but the economic development of the United States in the sixties and seventies gave birth to a society that was, by 1885, already national in its activities and necessities. In many ways the history of the United States since the Civil War has to do with the stru

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CHAPTER I

THE CIVIL WAR The military successes of the United States in its Civil War maintained the Union, but entailed readjustments in politics, finance, and business that shifted the direction of public affairs for many years. In the eyes of contemporaries these changes were obscured by the vivid scenes of the battlefield, whose intense impressions were not forgotten for a generation. It seemed as though the war were everything, as though the Republican party had preserved the nation, as though the nat

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CHAPTER II

THE WEST AND THE GREENBACKS The activity of the North and the East between 1861 and 1865 was imitated and magnified among the youthful communities that made up the western border and ranged in age from a few weeks to thirty years. These had been mostly agricultural in 1857. Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Kansas had been the frontier before the Civil War. In place of these, now grown to be populous and more or less sedate, a new group appeared farther west, within what had been believed to be th

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CHAPTER III

THE RESTORATION OF HOME RULE IN THE SOUTH The eight Southern States whose votes were cast in 1868 were far different from the States of the same names in 1860, and were, like the three still outside the Union, largely under the control of radical Republicans. Restoration, after a fashion, they had received, but it had been accompanied by a revolution in society, in politics, and in economic life. "Reconstruction" is an inappropriate name for what took place. Many efforts have been made to show t

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CHAPTER IV

THE PANIC OF 1873 "Are not all the great communities of the Western World growing more corrupt as they grow in wealth?" asked a critical and thoughtful journalist, Edwin L. Godkin, in 1868, as he considered the relations of business and politics. He answered himself in the affirmative and found comrades in his pessimism throughout that intellectual class in whose achievements America has taken conscious pride. For at least ten years they despaired of the return of honesty. James Russell Lowell,

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CHAPTER V

THE HAYES ADMINISTRATION The reëlection of Grant in 1872 was almost automatic. No new issue had forced itself into politics to stir up the old party fires or light new ones. The old issues had begun to lose their force. Men ceased to respond when told that the Union was in danger; they questioned or ignored the statement. Many of them contradicted it and voted for Greeley in 1872, but they were impelled to this by repulsion from Republican practice rather than by attraction to Democratic promise

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CHAPTER VI

BUSINESS AND POLITICS A great commercial revival, affecting the whole United States, began during the Administration of Hayes. Ingersoll had predicted it, in defining his candidate in 1876, when he declared: "The Republicans of the United States demand a man who knows that prosperity and resumption, when they come, must come together; that when they come, they will come hand in hand through the golden harvest-fields; hand in hand by the whirling spindles and the turning wheels; hand in hand past

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CHAPTER VII

THE NEW ISSUES Garfield died before he met his first Congress, the Forty-seventh, which was elected with him in 1880, but he lived long enough to foresee the first chance to do party business that had appeared since 1875. When Grant lost the lower house at the election of 1874, the Democrats gained control of that body and Michael C. Kerr, of Indiana, supplanted Blaine as Speaker. On Kerr's death in 1876, Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, took the place, and was continued in it through the nex

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CHAPTER VIII

GROVER CLEVELAND The Administration of Chester A. Arthur proved that the President had never been so discreditable a spoilsman as the reformers had believed, or else that he had changed his spots. The term ended in dignity and Arthur hoped to secure a personal vindication through renomination by his party. His struggle precipitated a contest of leaders, and until the nominations were made, none could say where either party stood. The independents, chiefly of Republican antecedents, hoped to reta

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CHAPTER IX

THE LAST OF THE FRONTIER Five statutes that received the signature of Grover Cleveland are documentary proof of the new problems and the changing attitude of the National Administration during the eighties. They indicate that the chief function of the National Government had ceased to be to moderate among a group of self-sufficient States and had come to be the direction of such interests as were national in importance or extent. On February 4, 1887, the Interstate Commerce Law was passed in rec

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CHAPTER X

NATIONAL BUSINESS Transportation was a fundamental factor in the two greatest problems of the eighties. In the case of the disappearance of free land and the frontier, it produced phenomena that were most clearly visible in the West, although affecting the whole United States. In the case of concentration of capital and the growth of trusts, its phenomena were mostly in the East, where were to be found the accumulations of capital, the great markets, and the supply of labor. Through the improvem

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CHAPTER XI

THE FARMERS' CAUSE The Republican protective policy had its strongest supporters among the industrial communities of the East where the profits of manufacture were distributed. In the West, where the agricultural staples had produced a simplicity of interests somewhat resembling those of the Old South in its cotton crop, the advantage of protection was questioned even in Republican communities. The Granger States and the Prairie States were normally Republican, but they had experienced falling p

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CHAPTER XII

THE NEW SOUTH The Old South, in which two parties had always struggled on fairly equal terms, was destroyed during the period of the Civil War, while reconstruction failed completely to revive it. The New South, in politics, had but one party of consequence. With few exceptions white men of respectability voted with the Democrats because of the influence of the race question which negro suffrage had raised. From the reestablishment of Southern home rule until the advent in politics of the Farmer

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CHAPTER XIII

POPULISM The election of 1890 stunned and bewildered both old parties. The Republicans lost their control of the Lower House, while the Democrats paid for their victory the price of a partial alliance with a new movement whose weight they could only estimate. Populism was engendered by local troubles in the West and South, but its name now acquired a national usage and its leaders were encouraged to attempt a national organization. In a series of conventions, held between 1889 and 1892, the Peop

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CHAPTER XIV

FREE SILVER Serious students of finance are almost unanimous in their belief that the adoption of free silver would have brought into operation the Gresham Law and would have resulted in a reduction of the value of the dollar. But the motives which divided the United States were less economic law than personal interest. The creditor foresaw the shrinkage of his property, and feared it. The debtor saw the lightening of his debt, and easily convinced himself that the ethics of the case required su

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CHAPTER XV

THE "COUNTER-REFORMATION" The mission of Populism did not end when free silver had been driven like a wedge into all the parties. Its more fundamental reforms outlasted both the hard times and the recovery from them. Although obscured by the shadow of the larger controversy, the reforms had been stated with conviction. The Populist party was not permitted to bring the reformation that it promised, but it stimulated within the parties in power a "counter-reformation," that was already under way.

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CHAPTER XVI

THE SPANISH WAR Cuba broke out in one of her numerous insurrections in 1895. The island had been nominally quiet since the close of the Ten Years' War, in 1878, but had always been an object of American interest. More than once it had entered into American diplomacy to bring out reiterations of different phases of the Monroe Doctrine. Its purchase by the United States had been desired to extend the slave area, or to control the Caribbean, or to enlarge the fruit and sugar plantation area. The fr

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CHAPTER XVII

THEODORE ROOSEVELT Out of the humiliating debates upon the war, on the capacity of Alger and Shafter, on the management of the commissary and the field hospitals, on the failure of Sampson and Shafter to coöperate, on the tactics and the alleged weakness of Schley, and on the diplomatic sincerity of McKinley, only one name caught the public ear. The only career that placed a soldier in line for political promotion was that of Theodore Roosevelt, who was still under forty years of age, although h

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CHAPTER XVIII

BIG BUSINESS The panic of 1893 ended the first period of the trust problem. The preceding years had been years of formation and experiment. They had been accompanied by an increasing popular distaste for combinations of capital and a growing activity in the organization of labor. The Sherman Law of 1890 had temporarily quieted the anti-trust movement, while economic depression had checked the extravagance of speculation that had been prevalent everywhere. During the years of depression attention

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CHAPTER XIX

THE "MUCK-RAKERS" Before Roosevelt was inaugurated for his second term, the national "revival," in which he and Bryan and other preachers of civic virtue had played the speaking parts, was sweeping over the country. The menace of the trusts was seen and exaggerated as railways, corporations, and labor availed themselves of the means of coöperation. The connection between the great financial interests and politics was believed to be dangerous to public welfare. All the mechanical reforms for the

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CHAPTER XX

NEW NATIONALISM The process of adjusting national administration and laws, to meet the needs of life and business that knew no state lines, had been begun during the Roosevelt period. For its completion it was necessary that a successor be found, convinced of the Roosevelt policies and able to carry them out. Three Republicans of this type were often mentioned for the Presidency in 1908. Elihu Root had been the legal mainstay of three administrations, and had received the public commendation of

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