Expansion and Conflict Part 9

As compared with all former standards, the country of 1850-60 was exceedingly prosperous. A series of good crop years, the low tariff of the United States, and the free-trade policy of England stimulated the unprecedented commercial activity. The financial system was more stable than it had ever been before, and the inter-sectional trade was a.s.suming proportions never dreamed of in the earlier days of the Republic. The manufactures of the East, which approximated $800,000,000 in value each year, were sold to the South in exchange for bills on Liverpool or London, or to the West in return for its grain and other foodstuffs. The banks and railroads brought all sections closer together, especially the East and the West; while the expanding merchant marine promised soon to give the United States the mastery of international commerce.

Thus the East had learned to prosper without a high tariff, and the South was voting for large subsidies to Eastern s.h.i.+pping. The West had found a way to develop her resources in spite of Southern and Eastern jealousy, and the laws of commerce were daily weakening the influence of state rights and sectional dislike. A new era had begun. Big business interests and great railway schemes had developed the corporation in its modern connotation; large harvests and a most enterprising industry were producing the capital for a new economic era; and all the social tendencies seemed to be working out a national life which was no longer parochial. It was the business of politics so to guide and regulate the varying activities of the people that sectional hatreds should pa.s.s away and that the resources of the country should not be squandered. Such was the task of Franklin Pierce, the new leader, who had not known personally the fears and dislikes of earlier days. But a country so rich and prosperous as the United States in 1850-60 had other interests, a social and intellectual life which must engage our attention before we take up the political evolution of the period.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

James Ford Rhodes's _History of the United Slates_, vols. _I_ and _II_, already mentioned, remains the best treatment of the period of 1850-60.

T. C. Smith's _Parties and Slavery_, in _American Nation_ series (1906), and McMaster's _History of the United States_, vol. _VIII_, are very valuable. T. P. Kettell's _Southern Wealth and Northern Profits_ (New York, 1860), is a suggestive study in sectionalism not too well known to scholars. But the _Census Reports_ of 1850 and 1860; J. E. B. DeBow's _Industrial Resources of the South and West_ (1857); and U.S. Senate _Executive Doc.u.ments_, no. 38, part 1, 52d Cong., 1st Sess., supply the needful statistics on population, crops, manufactures, and finance.

Freeman Hunt's _Lives of American Merchants_, 2 vols. (New York, 1858), gives some interesting information about leading _ante-bellum_ merchants and manufacturers. And the volumes of _Hunt's Merchant's Magazine_, 1839-60, _DeBow's Review_, 1846-60, and the _American Banker's Magazine_ for the same period are storehouses of the economic history of the time, K. Coman's _Industrial History of the United States_ (1910); E. L.

Bogart's _The Economic History of the United States_ (1908); and Horace White's _Money and Banking Ill.u.s.trated by American History_ (1911), are the best special works in their several lines.

CHAPTER XI

AMERICAN CULTURE

Four fifths of the people of the United States of 1860 lived in the country, and it is perhaps fair to say that half of these dwelt in log houses of one or two rooms. Comforts such as most of us enjoy daily were as good as unknown. Even in the cities baths were exceedingly rare, while in the country the very decencies of life were neglected.

Mosquitoes, flies, and other germ-harboring pests were regarded with equanimity, screens and disinfectants being used only in the best of hospitals. Malaria, typhoid, and other diseases claimed a large toll upon life each year. Physicians were less numerous than now and their art was only in its infancy. Trained nurses were just coming into their present role. Men regarded sickness as a visitation of Providence, and when the yellow fever epidemics seized the lower Southern cities, the losses and suffering were such as the present generation cannot appreciate.

Improvements in the matter of dress since 1830 were evident, but for the workaday world s.h.i.+rtsleeves, heavy brogan boots and shoes, and rough wool hats were, of course, the rule. Salt bacon and "greens," with corn bread and thin coffee, composed the common diet, though milk and b.u.t.ter relieved the monotonous fare for the farmers. "Hog-killing time" was always a happy season, for fresh meats were then abundant. Only in the larger towns did the people have fresh meats throughout the year. An explanation of the enthusiasm of _ante-bellum_ people for political speaking is found in the fact that barbecues either preceded or followed the oratory; and to a man who had lived for months on fat bacon and corn bread a fresh roast pig was a delight which would enable him to endure long hours of poor speaking. But in the cities and towns there was, of course, a better life. Frame houses, two stories high, painted white and adorned with green window blinds, were everywhere in good form, except where men were able to build brick or stone mansions or maintain the establishments of wealthy ancestors. In the South it was still the custom to guard the entrances to great plantation houses with chiseled lions or crouching greyhounds; in the East more attention was paid to flowers and shrubbery. Wealthy families of the East sometimes maintained more than one house servant, but the greater number counted themselves eminently respectable with cook, maid, and house girl all in one, and the pay was one or two dollars a week. Liveries and silver plate persisted mainly in the very exclusive circles of Philadelphia and New York, in Was.h.i.+ngton, and on the great plantations.

Factory hands and common laborers worked twelve hours a day under circ.u.mstances and conditions hardly better than those of 1830, for labor unions had only begun their agitation, and foreign immigrants were always ready to accept work without asking any questions. One or two States had pa.s.sed laws regulating hours of labor; but none had thought of the cost to the race of hard toil and long hours for women and children, and most men regarded the builder of a mill as a public benefactor because he furnished employment to just this element of the population. A man who had steady work on a farm was paid from ten to fifteen dollars a month with board; a day-laborer received a dollar a day without perquisites. Skilled laborers were paid two dollars a day in the South and slightly less in the East. The industrial belt continued to draw upon the country districts of the East, which, with the continued migration to the West, greatly impoverished the rural life and resulted in many abandoned farms. In the city housing conditions of the poor were worse if anything than they had been thirty years before.

Crowded tenements, filthy streets, flies, and vermin abounded. Under the English common law accidents in the mills were matters of concern only to the employees, and the human toll of the railways was enormous. Years of toil, a worn-out frame, a dependent old age, and finally the potter's field was the weary round of life to the millions of dependent people who swarmed about the industrial centers.

Under the pressure of outside criticism and the influence of religion, the lot of the slave was mending, though there was room enough for improvement. From sun to sun was always the plantation day, and the weekly ration was a peck of meal and four pounds of meat--salted "side meat" packed in Cincinnati or Chicago. Each negro family had a single-room cabin, where man, wife, and a dozen children were tucked away in the loft or slept on the floor, though there was usually a bed for the parents. There was, however, always plenty of fresh air, a big open fireplace, and generally shade trees about the negro quarters, which conditions probably account for the lower mortality rate in the South than in the East. Of clothing the slave had only what was absolutely necessary, children being limited to a single garment which reached slightly below the knees. Against accidents and disease more precautions were taken by masters of plantations than by masters of mills, for the life of a negro man or child-bearing woman was equal to twelve hundred dollars. Heavy ditching in malarial swamps was therefore done by Irishmen, whose lives were less important to the planter.

Physicians were promptly called for the slaves, and women in labor were generally cared for, because a negro baby was worth one hundred dollars.

If there was some public concern for the slaves in the fields and some beginnings of legislation on the conditions of employment in the industrial States, there was no thought for the isolated, lean, heavy-fisted farmer of the Southern up-country or the Western prairies.

Land was still cheap, crops were increasing in bulk and value every year. Nor did the farmer desire the attentions of society, provided the new railroads were laid through his districts and rates were not too exorbitant. He worked hard for a few months, then rested till harvest time, after which he hunted and fished. During the long cold winters of the Northwest he sat in his chimney corner or tended his cattle. Few thought of fertilizing their land; terracing against rains and floods was almost unknown, and for most farmers plowing was done up and down the hills, which only hastened the was.h.i.+ng-away process so characteristic of the Southern agriculture. Very few farmers thought it worth while to rotate their crops when fresh lands were to be had at a few dollars an acre. The area of the United States seemed limitless, and hardly a tenth of its arable land had ever been brought under cultivation. The inventions of 1840-50 enabled the Western farmer to grow larger crops, and harvest time was not so burdensome; corn-sh.e.l.lers and grain-fans shortened the hours of labor for the men. Sewing-machines and the revolving churns from the factories gave some relief to the women, whose round of labor, milking, cooking, cleaning, was.h.i.+ng, and attending children, was still almost ceaseless. Even the picnics and barbecues offered little to them, for they must still prepare the great baskets of food and serve their lords and masters while they deliberated on "bleeding Kansas," new railroad schemes, or negro slavery.

Whether the lot of the landless and the less talented had improved since the day of Jackson would be hard to determine. If it was easier to purchase land, or if there was an actual increase in wages, the number of the poorer cla.s.s of Americans had increased both actually and relatively, and thus compet.i.tion operated to prevent improved housing and a better country life. Still the life of the great majority in the United States was less grinding than that of Europeans of the same cla.s.s, and the opportunity for a poor man to rise in the social and economic scale was distinctly better. That is what made America the Mecca of so many thousands during the decade of 1850-60. Yet illiteracy and dependency, causes and results of poverty, were almost appalling.

Georgia had a population of 43,684 white illiterates, to say nothing of the 500,000 blacks; Ma.s.sachusetts had 46,262; Indiana, 60,943; Pennsylvania, 72,156, and North Carolina, 68,128. There were 101 persons in the jails of Georgia on June 1, 1860; Virginia had 189; Ma.s.sachusetts, 1161, and Illinois, 485. In the open life of the South and West, where men could easily get to the land, there was little crime and jails were often empty; in the industrial belt the prisons were always occupied. In like manner and for the same reasons Southern and Western hospitals for the insane and homes for the poor often showed very small percentages of these unfortunates. Perhaps the unrelieved poverty of the industrial workers and the stress of uncertainty in the matter of employment made the differences. Certainly the weight of the old English common law system, adopted in all the States, bore hardly on the dependent cla.s.ses of the East; and the courts were not loath to send undefended men to prison. In the South the worker was punished by his master on the plantation for all the minor offenses, and it was only free negroes and the poorer whites who were the subjects of the ordinary social discipline and punishment.

The abounding wealth and strenuous zest of American life were creating just those gradations in society and distinctions of caste against which const.i.tutions and laws inveighed. On the broad basis of African slavery the enterprising Southerner had built and was now perfecting a social cla.s.s hardly inferior to the aristocracies of Europe. Soft hands and exclusive manners were there as elsewhere in the world the evidences of a gentle life; st.u.r.dy personal independence and rough ways, here as in England, were the marks of middle-cla.s.s training, through which recruits to the privileged order had generally come. Openly and on all proper occasions the Southerners announced the break-down of democracy and the benefits of a cultured elite; the few thousand "first families," who lived upon the incomes of plantations, spent their winters in New Orleans, their springs in Charleston, and their summers at the Virginia springs. Among these, tutors were engaged to train children, and every man had his valet, every lady her maid. Travel in Europe, sojourns at Newport and Saratoga, and acquaintance with the best hotels of Philadelphia and New York were common to this group of most attractive people. When Congress was in session, they dominated the social life of the capital, gave elaborate b.a.l.l.s, and brought effective pressure to bear upon aspiring Eastern and Western public leaders. Douglas had married a beautiful North Carolina heiress, the wife of Jefferson Davis was the granddaughter of a governor of New Jersey, and even William H.

Seward was strongly influenced by the graces of his planter friends.

Senators, representatives, and judges of the federal courts owned estates in the lower South which yielded incomes ofttimes greater than their official salaries. The very flower and beauty of the land were Southern gentlemen like Robert E. Lee and Wade Hampton, or ladies like the sprightly Mrs. Chestnut or the genial Mrs. Pryor.

Nor did the commercial and industrial life of the East fail to produce a similar fruit. If the Eastern gentleman were less dependent on his valet and less averse to work with his hands, he was nevertheless a gentleman, and the chasm between him and the toiler in the mills was difficult to bridge. There was nowhere in the United States a more exclusive society than that in which the Danas and the Winthrops of Boston moved. And the New England elite were never so happy as when they could run off to England and frequent the dinners and receptions of the British aristocracy; both the manners and the ideals of the Eastern upper cla.s.s resembled strikingly those of the "best people" of Old England. It was all in striking contrast to the ideals of the Puritans of old times, but it was natural. In New England, as in the South, democracy was flouted and a privileged position greatly prized. The old American "equality"

was only skin deep, as any one would have recognized if he had attempted familiarities with either the Eastern or the Southern social leaders.

The difference was that the one group lived in cities when they were at home, and the other in the country.

Nor was this American social life scorned by European n.o.blemen. Charles Sumner was always welcome in the greatest houses of London, and the Slidells and the Masons of the South received no less flattering attentions from their European economic and social kinsmen. One of Bismarck's most intimate friends was John L. Motley, and the friends.h.i.+p had been contracted long before Motley had won fame as a historian.

American heiresses had already found suitors among the British n.o.bility.

The kins.h.i.+p of Eastern social life with that of Europe was recognized, and the relations of the well-to-do at the North with the wealthy of the South were many and intimate. Thus in America as elsewhere talent, birth, and money produced social strata, and before 1860 the distinctions of cla.s.s were only less sharply drawn here than in the older countries of the world.

But, next to the very necessaries of life, religion was the most important subject to Americans of 1860. The Puritan spirit, while losing some of its hold in New England, had captured the people of the rest of the country. Except as to the Catholics and the Episcopalians, all Americans were born, or thought themselves born, utterly depraved and weighted down with the sin of Adam and Eve, their "first parents," from which burden the only way of escape was through prayer and agony of soul. Even this prospect was denied to many, for some influential religious teachers urged that G.o.d could not hear the supplications of sinners. These must await the call of Heaven, and if this failed, they were bound for the "lake of fire," whence there was no return. The intelligent and well-informed spoke with all seriousness of "getting religion," and in the vast country districts the most suitable season for this was the hot July and August days. Revivals among nearly all the leading denominations were held at this time in the churches or under widespread arbors made from the branches of trees. The preaching and the singing were not unlike that which brought the Germans of the eighth century to the Roman communion. The other worlds were just two: one the city of the golden gates and pearly streets, the other the bottomless pit of liquid fire into which Satan would surely plunge all who failed to make their peace with G.o.d in this life. The old Puritan lines formerly learned by every child--

"G.o.d's vengeance feeds the flame With piles of wood and brimstone flood, That none can quench the same"--

represented to most people of the decade just preceding the Civil War all they said. Both old men and young children dreamed of the awful retribution which awaited them in the other world.

And there was a fiery zeal in the work of saving men's souls from the wrath to come which showed that it was no figurative faith which moved the preachers and their co-workers. A song sung by all ran in one of its favorite stanzas:--

"Must I be carried to the skies On flow'ry beds of ease, While others fought to win the prize And sailed through b.l.o.o.d.y seas?"

Excitement naturally overcame many, and they rushed forward to the mourner's benches in front of the altar and cried out for mercy, or silently prayed for days and weeks till the light "broke upon them" and they went forth shouting for joy. These then became exhorters, and moved among their friends in the congregation, begging them to yield their "proud and haughty spirits" ere it should be too late. At times scores of penitents would be on their knees in the s.p.a.ces about the altar, others would be "laboring" with the sinners not yet stricken, and still others thanking G.o.d in loud voices for their delivery from sin and Satan, whom all regarded as an active demon always seeking whom he might destroy.

In the South the deism which had influenced the generation led by Was.h.i.+ngton and Jefferson had given way to the stern faith of the Calvinists, for whether one were Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, or Campbellite, the essentials of his religion were the same. Wealthy planters, small farmers, and negro slaves sought the salvation of their souls in the same churches and under the same preachers. In fact it was common for men to be told by their pastors that unless they were willing to sit down in heaven by the side of the "poor slave" they could not be saved, and the slave often begged his master to accept the terms of salvation. A few great planters who were not touched by the religious fervor of the time held aloof, and the poorer whites and the slaves came to accept the view that these were the rich men who could not be saved, and commonly said h.e.l.l was their unavoidable portion.

In the East, save in the Unitarian and Episcopalian churches, there was the same religious realism. In the great revivals of 1857 earnest men and great congregations prayed aloud that G.o.d might convert the heretical Theodore Parker, or that, if he were not a subject of grace, as many believed he was not, he might be taken from this world, where he was doing infinite mischief. Of course he was to be consigned immediately to the "fiery furnace below." And the greatest of American preachers, Henry Ward Beecher, in the same revival, gathered about him the hard-headed business men of New York City and together they prayed that wicked playwrights and worldly-minded theater-goers might be brought to a realizing sense of the shame of their conduct, and that the houses of their frivolous vice might be converted into temples of Christian wors.h.i.+p. Again, those who would not heed the solemn warnings of the pulpit were "given up," and the Heavenly Father was asked to remove them "hence."

The influence of this sense of the awfulness of the after life to those who might not be saved was far-reaching. The farmer, driven by the hard necessity of making a living for himself and family to remain away from church, meditated sorrowfully as he followed his plow, and often at the end of his furrow fell upon his knees and besought the Creator to save his undying soul and spare him the everlasting torture of the d.a.m.ned. A popular little gift book, published by the American Tract Society of New York, was ent.i.tled _Pa.s.sing Over Jordan_, and on an early page we find the following typical lines:--

"My thoughts on awful subjects roll, d.a.m.nation and the dead: What horrors seize my guilty soul Upon a dying bed."

And a young woman who received this as a New Year's present was a perfectly normal girl of Cincinnati and the daughter of a prominent family there.

What was happening in the United States during the thirty years we are studying was the saving of the people from the rough and often coa.r.s.e and sensual life of the frontier. Under conditions such as have been described the influence and power of the preacher in young America were extraordinary. And the clergy deserved the authority they exercised.

Never before the war was a Methodist bishop even charged with immoral conduct. The standards of the Baptists and Presbyterians were equally high. The preachers who called men to repentance were beyond question of the highest character. Earnest, sincere, overwhelmed with the sense of their responsibility, they "preached the Word with power," and the Word was the Bible which all believed implicitly from cover to cover. It was not clear to preacher or congregation how G.o.d spoke to man first in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, then in the Greek of the New Testament, and finally in the Authorized Version of James I. But it mattered not; the Bible was inspired by the Heavenly Father, for it was so stated in Revelation, and a curse was held up for him who denied its truth or so much as removed one syllable or added a line. It was the authority of the Bible as preached by Martin Luther and John Calvin, and the interpreters of the Sacred Book were the clergy, not the Pope or some distant sacerdotal see.

Just how many people were members of the churches it would be very difficult accurately to determine. The Methodists of the South numbered nearly a million in 1860, those of the North were equally strong. The Baptists, North, South, and West, were nearly as numerous. The Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Christians (Campbellites) had each some hundreds of thousands of members. All the churches, including Catholics, offered seating accommodations for about 20,000,000 of the 31,000,000 people of the country; which is a large proportion. And from the census returns, it seems that church accommodations were always best and most plentiful in the older communities, the East having almost as many pews as there were people. The South could seat 6,500,000 wors.h.i.+pers,--that is, a little more than half of the population; the Northwest was able to accommodate only about 4,000,000.

With Protestant churches so powerful and their ministers so influential, it is only natural that the religious teachings of the time should have told in politics and the sectional struggle. The Southerners believed almost implicitly in the claim of their great Presbyterian preacher, B.

M. Palmer, when he declared in 1860: "In this great struggle, we defend the cause of G.o.d and religion; it is our solemn duty to ourselves, to our slaves, to the world, and to Almighty G.o.d to preserve and transmit our existing system of domestic servitude, with the right, unchallenged by man, to go and root itself wherever Providence and Nature may carry it." Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, and all other important bodies of Christians in the South held and taught the same doctrine. In the Northwest there was some hesitation about going so far, but the majority undoubtedly believed with Dr. Nathan L. Rice, of Chicago, that slavery was divinely established and not to be disturbed by man. In the East some of the Unitarians taught abolition and supported Garrison and Phillips; more of the Congregationalists were of the same mind. But in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia the greater clergy had come to regret the former tendency to denounce slavery, and they were inclined to preach the doctrine that Providence had established slavery and that it should be left to Providence to remove it in due time. Only in the rural districts of the East, where the old New England spirit still flourished, was slavery declared to be "the awful curse." And here it was that the old sectional hatred was strongest. The churches and the clergy with all their influence had thus given up the problem of slavery, and their counsel and advice were to maintain the Union and to put down all sectional conflict. Nationalism with the South dominant was the meaning of this; nor do the election returns of 1852 and 1856 make a different showing.

Where religious influences were so potent, it was natural that the clergy should exert themselves for the education of the young. Yale College was a "school of the prophets" which sent out to the West the young preachers and teachers so much needed if Congregationalism was to hold its own in that region. Princeton was Presbyterian headquarters for both West and South, and few inst.i.tutions have ever exerted a greater civilizing force in a new nation than that school of sternest theology.

Dr. Charles Hodge was there a tower of orthodox and conservative strength which could be seen from afar. In numerous other inst.i.tutions the Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Friends, and Campbellites trained their ministers and urged upon all the importance of education.

At the University of Virginia there were chaplains maintained by the different denominations for the religious instruction of the students.

The Methodists of Michigan regularly appointed a professor to the state university for the same purpose. Other state universities, like those of Indiana and North Carolina, were brought under practical denominational control through the zealous activity of Presbyterian presidents.

The education of the little children was, however, too much for the most zealous of religious organizations. Jefferson had set in motion influences which had greatly strengthened the cause of popular education in the South and West. But nowhere did the States prepare fully for the work. In the Northwest the public school lands were wasted by thoughtless or venal politicians, and in the older South the label, "school for the children of the poor," went far to defeat all efforts made by legislatures on behalf of good public school systems. In the period of 1840-50 Horace Mann revived the New England interest in education and laid the foundations for the school systems of to-day.

Even so ardent a Southerner as William L. Yancey, of Alabama, became a disciple of the New England reformer, and tried to do a similar work in his State. In Indiana, Illinois, and the other Western States educational reforms followed. There were in consequence about 5,000,000 children in school in the year 1860. Of these the South had 796,000, the Northwest, exclusive of California, 2,005,196, and the East, 2,011,826; which shows that Southern public opinion had not yet been aroused to the importance of the subject. But the figures for illiteracy, already given, do not show a worse condition among the whites of the South than is shown in the Northwestern States.

If the returns for college education be taken, the balance among the sections is fairly reestablished. There were 25,882 college students in the South in 1860, and this does not take into account the large number of Southern students in Eastern inst.i.tutions like Princeton and Harvard.

There were at the same time 16,959 college students in the Northwest, and 10,449 in the East.

Between education and the attainments of science and invention there is some connection, though genius often defies all conventional methods of instruction. In addition to the epoch-making inventions of McCormick and his compet.i.tors, Samuel F. B. Morse had perfected his electric telegraph, which was in operation in most of the countries of Europe before 1860. Richard M. Hoe revolutionized newspaper publis.h.i.+ng in the late forties by his rotary printing-press, which put out thousands of copies of a paper in an hour. Nor was Elias Howe's sewing-machine any less of a wonder when it came into use about 1850. Draper and Morse's new photography, Thurber's typewriter, Woodruff's sleeping-car, and many other marvelous contrivances of the same period showed the fertility of the American inventive genius.

In scientific research the United States could not present so many evidences of her success, though in 1860 Alexander Dallas Bache, the head of the Coast Survey, was counted one of the leading scientists of his time, and Louis Aga.s.siz, the Swiss-American naturalist, was teaching now in Charleston, now in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, and beginning the great work, _Contributions to the Natural History of the United States_, which his son, Alexander, was to complete. Joseph Henry, the first head of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, was equally well known, and he and Professor Bache were the backbones of the American National Academy of Science, just beginning its beneficent work. Silliman, of Yale, and Mitch.e.l.l, of the University of North Carolina, were the best-known geologists.

Nor was art degenerating in this period of great prosperity. Hiram Powers, of Cincinnati, the ablest sculptor of his country, was greatly hurt because Congress refused him the contract for the decorative work on the magnificent Capitol in Was.h.i.+ngton, at last nearing completion.

His aspirations were not unreasonable, for his Greek Slave, a beautiful work in marble, had captured the imagination of both American and foreign critics in 1851. Still, Thomas Crawford, his successful compet.i.tor, was a sculptor of real gifts, as one may see in his statues of Jefferson and Patrick Henry in Richmond. The work of Allston, Sully, and De Veaux, the painters, was being improved upon by Chester Harding, Eastman Johnson, and William Morris Hunt, all influenced, however, by Turner of England, the Dusseldorf (Germany) and Barbizon (France) schools. There were now many wealthy business men in the country, and thus artists had a fair chance of a livelihood while their ideals and technique were developing. In Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were the beginnings of the museums which were a few years later to become schools of art of no mean importance.

But the flower of American culture was its literature. To be sure Edgar Allan Poe, whose _Raven_ and short stories were ere long to give him the first rank among all American men of letters, had been suffered to starve in the midst of New York's millions in 1849, and Hawthorne found it very difficult to find the means of a meager livelihood in Ma.s.sachusetts. If the _Raven_ and the _Scarlet Letter_ were born unwelcome, Ralph Waldo Emerson was making a living as author and sage of his generation, and there were others of the Transcendentalists--Th.o.r.eau, the woodland poet, Margaret Fuller, the woman knight-errant, recently drowned at sea, and Amos Bronson Alcott--whose writings appeared in standard editions and who lived by their pens. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a professor at Harvard till 1854, though savagely criticized by Poe and Margaret Fuller, had won the American heart in his _Village Blacksmith_ and _Evangeline_. He scored his greatest triumph in _Miles Standish_ in 1858. And another Harvard professor, Oliver Wendell Holmes, was just coming into a national reputation in 1860 by his _Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_ and other similar writings.