The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910 Part 1

The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910.

by Julian Hawthorne.

INTRODUCTION

When we speak of History, we may mean either one of several things. A savage will make picture-marks on a stone or a bone or a bit of wood; they serve to recall to him and his companions certain events which appeared remarkable or important for one or another reason; there was an earthquake, or a battle, or a famine, or an invasion: the chronicler himself, or some fellow-tribesman of his, may have performed some notable exploit. The impulse to make a record of it was natural: posterity might thereby be informed, after the chronicler himself had pa.s.sed away, concerning the perils, the valor, the strange experiences of their ancestors. Such records were uniformly brief, and no attempt was made to connect one with another, or to interpret them. We find such fragmentary histories among the remains of our own aborigines; and the inscriptions of Egypt and Mesopotamia are the same in character and intention, though more elaborate. Warlike kings thus endeavored, from motives of pride, to perpetuate the memory of their achievements. At the time when they were inscribed upon the rock, or the walls of the tombs, or the pedestals of the statues, they had no further value than this. But after the lapse of many ages, they acquire a new value, far greater than the original one, and not contemplated by the scribes.

They a.s.sume their proper place in the long story of mankind, and indicate, each in its degree, the manner and direction of the processes by which man has become what he is, from what he was. Thereby there is breathed into the dead fact the breath of life; it rises from its tomb of centuries, and does its appointed work in the mighty organism of humanity.

In a more complex state of society, a cla.s.s of persons comes into being who are neither protagonists, nor slaves, but observers; and they meditate on events, and seek to fathom their meaning. If the observer be imaginative, the picturesque side of things appeals to him; he dissolves the facts, and recreates them to suit his conceptions of beauty and harmony; and we have poetry and legend. Another type of mind will give us real histories, like those of Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus and Livy, which are still a model in their kind. These great writers took a broad point of view; they saw the end from the beginning of their narrative; they a.s.signed to their facts their relative place and importance, and merged them in a pervading atmosphere of opinion, based upon the organic relation of cause and effect. Studying their works, we are enabled to discern the tendencies and developments of a race, and to note the effects of civilization, character, vice, virtue, and of that sum of them all which we term fate.

During what are called the Dark Ages of Europe, history fell into the hands of that part of the population which alone was conversant with letters--the priestly cla.s.s; and the annals they have left to us have none of the value which belongs to the productions of cla.s.sical antiquity. They were again mere records; or they were mystical or fanciful tales of saints and heroes, composed or distorted for the glorification of the church, and the strengthening of the influence of the priests over the people. But these also, in after times, took on a value which they had not originally possessed, and become to the later student a precious chapter of the history of mankind.

Meanwhile, emerging august from the shadows of antiquity, we have that great body of literature of which our own Bible is the highest type, which purports to present the story of the dealings of the Creator with His creatures. These wonderful books appear to have been composed in a style, and on a principle, the secret of which has been lost. The facts which they relate, often seemingly trivial and disconnected, are really but a material veil, or symbol, concealing a spiritual body of truth, which is neither trivial nor disconnected, but an organized, orderly and catholic revelation of the nature of man, of the processes of his spiritual regeneration, of his final reconciliation with the Divine.

The time will perhaps come when some inspired man or men will be enabled to handle our modern history with the same esoteric insight which informed the Hebrew scribes, when they used the annals of the obscure tribe to which they belonged as a cover under which to present the relations of G.o.d with all the human race, past and to come.

Modern history tends more and more to become philosophic: to be an argument and an interpretation, rather than a bald statement of facts.

The facts contained in our best histories bear much the same relation to the history itself, that the flesh and bones of the body bear to the person who lives in and by them. The flesh and bones, or the facts, have to exist; but the only excuse for their existence is, that the person may have being, or that the history may trace a spiritual growth or decadence. There was perhaps a time when the historian found a difficulty in collecting facts enough to serve as a firm foundation for his edifice of comment and deduction; but nowadays, his embarra.s.sment is rather in the line of making a judicious selection from the enormous ma.s.s of facts which research and the facilities of civilization have placed at his disposal. Not only is every contemporary event recorded instantly in the newspapers and elsewhere; but new light is being constantly thrown upon the past, even upon the remotest confines thereof. Some of the facts thus brought before us are original and vital; others are mere echoes, repet.i.tions, and unimportant variations.

But the historian, if he wishes his work to last, must build as does the Muse in Emerson's verse, with

.... "Rafters of immortal pine, Cedar incorruptible, worthy her design."

Or he may be sure that the historian who comes after him will sift the wheat from his chaff, and leave him no better reputation than that of the quarry from which the marble of the statue comes. He must tell a consecutive story, but must eschew all redundancy, furnish no more supports for his bridge than its stability requires, prune his tree so severely that it shall bear none but good fruit, forbear to freight the memory of his reader with a cargo so unwieldy as to sink it. On the other hand, of course, he must beware of being too terse; man cannot live by bread alone, and the reader of histories needs to be told the Why as well as the What. But the historical field is so wide that one man, in his one lifetime, can hardly hope by independent and original investigation both to collect all the data from which to build his structure, and so to select his timbers that only the indispensable ones shall be employed. In reality, we find one historian of a given subject or period succeeding another, and refining upon his methods and treatment. With each successive attempt the outlook becomes clearer and more comprehensive, and the meaning of the whole more p.r.o.nounced. The spirit, for the sake of which the body exists, more and more dominates its material basis, until at last the latter practically vanishes "in the light of its meaning sublime." This is the apotheosis of history, which of course has not yet been attained, and probably can never be more than approximated.

The present work is a very modest contribution toward the desired result. It makes few or no pretensions to original research. There are many histories of the United States and the fundamental facts thereof are known. But it remains for the student to endeavor to solve and declare the meaning of the familiar events; to state his view of their source and their ultimate issue. In these volumes, I have taken the view that the American nation is the embodiment and vehicle of a Divine purpose to emanc.i.p.ate and enlighten the human race. Man is entering upon a new career of spiritual freedom: he is to enjoy a hitherto unprecedented condition of political, social and moral liberty--as distinguished from license, which in truth is slavery. The stage for this grand evolution was fixed in the Western Continent, and the pioneers who went thither were inspired with the desire to escape from the thralldom of the past, and to nourish their souls with that pure and exquisite freedom which can afford to ignore the ease of the body, and all temporal luxuries, for the sake of that elixir of immortality.

This, according to my thinking, is the innermost core of the American Idea; if you go deep enough into surface manifestations, you will find it. It is what differentiates Americans from all other peoples; it is what makes Americans out of emigrants; it is what draws the ma.s.ses of Europe hither, and makes their rulers fear and hate us. It may often, and uniformly, happen that any given individual is unconscious of the Spirit that moves within him; for it is the way of that Spirit to subordinate its manifestations to its ends, knowing the frailty of humanity. But it is there, and its gradual and c.u.mulative results are seen in the retrospect, and it may perhaps be divined as to the outline of some of its future developments.

Some sort of recognition of the American Idea, and of the American destiny, affords the only proper ground for American patriotism. We talk of the size of our country, of its wealth and prosperity, of its physical power, of its enlightenment; but if these things be all that we have to be proud of, we have little. They are in truth but outward signs of a far more precious possession within. We are the pioneers of the new Day, or we are nothing worth talking about. We are at the threshold of our career. Our record thus far is full of faults, and presents not a few deformities, due to our human frailties and limitations; but our general direction has been onward and upward. At the moment when this book is finished, we seem to be entering upon a fresh phase of our journey, and a vast horizon opens around us. It was inevitable that America should not be confined to any special area on the map of the world; it is of little importance that we fill our own continent with men and riches. We are to teach men in all parts of the world what freedom is, and thereby inst.i.tute other Americas in the very strongholds of oppression. In order to accomplish this, Americans will be drawn forth and will obtain foothold in remote regions, there to disseminate their genius and inculcate their aims. In Europe and Asia are wars and rumors of wars; but there seems no reason why the true revolution, which Americanism involves, should not be a peaceful and quiet one. Our real enemies may be set in high places, but they are very few, and their power depends wholly on those myriads who are at heart our allies. If we can a.s.sure the latter of our good faith and disinterestedness, the battle is won without fighting. Indeed, the day for Mohammedan conquests is gone by, and any such conquest would be far worse than futile.

These are theories and speculations, and so far as they enter into my book, they do so as atmosphere and aim only; they are not permitted to mold the character of the narrative, so that it may ill.u.s.trate a foregone conclusion. I have related the historical story as simply and directly as I could, making use of the best established authorities.

Here and there I have called attention to what seemed to me the significance of events; but any one is at liberty to interpret them otherwise if he will. After all the best use of a history is probably to stimulate readers to think for themselves about the events portrayed; and if I have succeeded in doing that, I shall be satisfied.

The history of the United States does mean something: what is it? Are we a decadent fruit that is rotten before it is ripe? or are we the bud of the mightiest tree of time? The materials for forming your judgment are here; form it according as your faith and hope may dictate.

JULIAN HAWTHORNE.

BEFORE DAWN

When, four centuries ago, adventurers from the Old World first landed on the southern sh.o.r.es of the Western Continent, and pushed their way into the depths of the primeval forest, they found growing in its shadowy fastnesses a mighty plant, with vast leaves radiating upward from the mould, and tipped with formidable thorns. Its aspect was unfriendly; it added nothing to the beauty of the wilderness, and it made advance more difficult. But from the midst of some of them uprose a tall stem, rivaling in height the trees themselves, and crowned with a glorious canopy of golden blossoms. The flower of the forbidding plant was the splendor of the forest.

It was the Agave, or American Aloe, sometimes called the Century Plant, because it blooms but once in a lifetime. It is of the family of the lilies; but no other lily rivals its lofty magnificence. From the gloom of the untrodden places it sends its shaft skyward into the suns.h.i.+ne; it is an elemental growth: its simplicity equals its beauty. But until the flower blooms, after its ages of preparation, the plant seems to have no meaning, proportion, or comeliness; only when those golden petals have unfolded upon the summit of their stately eminence do we comprehend the symmetry and significance that had so long waited to avouch themselves.

This Lily of the Ages, native to American soil, may fittingly stand as the symbol of the great Western Republic which, after so many thousand years of spiritual vicissitude and political experiment, rises heavenward out of the wilderness of time, and reveals its golden promise to those who have lost their way in the dark forest of error and oppression. It was long withheld, but it came at last, and about it center the best hopes of mankind. These United States--this America of ours, as we love to call it--is unlike any other nation that has preceded or is contemporary with it. It is the conscious incarnation of a sublime idea--the conception of civil and religious liberty. It is a spirit first, and a body afterward; thus following the true law of immortal growth. It is the visible consummation of human history, and commands the fealty of all n.o.ble minds in every corner of the earth, as well as within its own boundaries. There are Americans in all countries; but America is their home.

The seed is hidden in the soil; the germ is shut within the darkness of the womb; the preparation for all birth is obscure. For more than a century after the discovery of Columbus, no one divined the true significance and destiny of the nation-that-was-to-be. Years pa.s.sed before it was understood even that the coast of the New World was anything more than the western boundaries of the Asiatic continent; Columbus never wavered from this conviction; the Cabots fancied that our Atlantic sh.o.r.es were those of China; and though Balboa, in 1513, waded waist-deep into the Pacific off Darien, and claimed it for Spain, yet the ma.s.sive immensity of America was not suspected. There was not s.p.a.ce for it on the globe as then plotted by geographers; it must be a string of islands, or at best but an attenuated outlying bulwark of the East. News spread slowly in those days; Vasco da Gama had reached India round the Cape of Good Hope before Balboa's exploit; Columbus, on his third voyage, had touched the mainland of South America, and young Sebastian Cabot, sailing from Bristol under the English flag, had driven his prow against Labrador ice in his effort to force a northwest pa.s.sage; and still the truth was not fully realized. And when, a century later, the English colonies were a.s.signed their boundaries, these were defined north, south and east, but to the west they extended without limit. Panama was but thirty miles across, and no one imagined that three thousand miles of solid land stretched between the Chesapeake and the Bay of San Francisco. Then, as now, orthodoxy fought against the heresy that there could be anything that was not as narrow as itself.

And this physical denial or belittlement of the American continent had its mental complement in the failure to comprehend the destiny of the people which was to inhabit it. Spain thought only of material and theological aggrandizements: of getting gold, and converting heathen, to her own temporal and spiritual glory; and she was as ready to shed innocent blood in the latter cause as in the former. England, without her rival's religious bigotry, was as intent upon winning wealth through territorial and commercial usurpations. Though not a few of the actual discoverers and explorers were generous, magnanimous and kindly men, having in view an honorable renown, based on opening new fields of life and prosperity to future ages, yet the monarchs and the trading Companies that stood behind them exhibited an unvarying selfishness and greed. The new world was to them a field for plunder only. Each aimed to own it all, and to monopolize its produce. The priestly missionaries of the Roman Catholic faith did indeed pursue their ends with a self-sacrifice and courage which deserve all praise; they devoted themselves at the risk and often at the cost of their lives to the enterprise of winning souls, as they believed, to Christ. But the Church dignitaries who sent forth these soldiers of religion sought through them only to increase the credit of their organization; they contemplated but the enlargement of their power. The thought of establis.h.i.+ng in the wilderness a place where men might rule themselves in freedom entered not into their calculations. The spirit of the old order survived the birth of the spirit of the new.

But the conflict thus provoked was necessary to the evolution which Providence was preparing. The soul grows strong through hards.h.i.+p; truth conquers by struggling against opposition. It is by resistance, at first instinctive, against restraint that the infant attains self-consciousness. The first settlers who came across the ocean were animated solely by the desire to escape from oppression in their native land; they had as yet no purpose to set up an independent empire. But, as the breath of the forest and the prairie entered into their lungs, and the untrammeled s.p.a.ciousness of the virgin continent unshackled their minds, they began to resent, though at first timidly, the arrogant pretension to rule them across the waves. Their environment gave them courage, made them hardy and self-dependent, enlightened their intelligence, weaned them from vain traditions, revealed to them the truth that man's birthright is liberty. And gradually, as the reins of tyranny were drawn tighter, these pioneers of the New Day were wrought up to the pitch of throwing off all allegiance, and setting their lives upon the cast. The idea of political freedom is commonplace now; but to conceive it for the first time required a mighty effort, and it could have been accomplished nowhere else than in a vast and untrodden land. The Declaration of Independence, nearly three centuries after Columbus's discovery of America, showed the hitherto blind and sordid world what America was discovered for. Individual men of genius had surmised it many years before; but their hope of forecast had been deemed but an idle vision until in a moment, as it were, the reality was born.

It was essential, however, to the final success of the great revolt, that the men who brought it to pa.s.s should be the best of a chosen race. And this requisite also was secured by conflict. It was the inveterate persuasion of many generations that America was the land of gold. Tales told by the Indians stimulated the imagination and the cupidity of the first adventurers; legends of El Dorado kindled the horizons that fled before them as they advanced. Somewhere beyond those savage mountains, amid these pathless forests, was a n.o.ble city built and paved with gold. Somewhere flowed a stately river whose waters swept between golden margins, over sands of gold. In some remote region dwelt a barbarian monarch to whom gold and precious stones were as the dross of the wayside. These stories were the offspring of the legends of the alchemists of the Dark Ages, who had professed to make gold in their crucibles; it was as good to pick up gold in armfuls on the earth as to manufacture it in the laboratory. The actual discovery of treasure in Mexico and Peru only whetted the inexhaustible appet.i.te of the adventurers; they toiled through swamps, they cut their way through woods, they scaled precipices, they fought savages, they starved and died; and their eyes, glazing in death, still sought the gleam of the precious metal. Worse than death, to them, would have been the revelation that their belief was baseless. The thirst for wealth is not accounted n.o.ble; yet there seems to have been something not ign.o.ble in this romantic quest for illimitable gold. There is a magic in the mere idea of the yellow metal, apart from such practical or luxurious uses as it may subserve; it stood for power and splendor--whatever good the men of that age were p.r.o.ne to appreciate. Howbeit, the strongest and bravest of all lands were drawn together in the search; and inevitably they met and clashed. Foremost among the antagonists were Spain and England. The ambition of Spain was measureless; she desired not only the mastery of America and its riches, but the empire of the world, the leaders.h.i.+p in commerce, and the owners.h.i.+p of the very gates of Heaven.

England sought land and trade; she was practical and unromantic, but strong and daring; and in her people, unlike the Spanish, were implanted the seeds of human freedom. She had not as yet the prestige of Spain; but men like Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh went far to win it; moreover, the star of Spain had already begun to wane, while that of England was waxing. Whenever, therefore, the strength of the two rivals was fairly pitted, England had the better of the encounter.

Spain might dominate, for a while, the southern regions of the continent; and her priests might thread the western wildernesses, and build white-walled missions there; but to England should belong the Atlantic coast from Labrador to Florida: the most readily accessible from Europe, and the best adapted to bring forth that wealth for which gold must be given in exchange. The struggle, as between the Spanish and the English, was temporarily suspended, and it was with France that the latter now found themselves confronted. The French had entered America by way of the St. Lawrence, and down the Mississippi, in expectation, like the others, of finding a pa.s.sage through to India; they had planted colonies and conciliated the Indians, and were destined to give England much more trouble than her former foe had done. They, like the English, wished to live in the new world; Spain's chief desire was to plunder it and take the booty home with her. In the sequel, England was victorious; and thus approved her right to be the nucleus of the Race of the Future. Finally, it was to be her fate to fight that Race itself, and to be defeated by it; and thus, as the chosen from the chosen, the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies were to begin their career.

The birth of America must therefore be dated, not from the discovery of the land, but from the culmination in revolt of the English Colonies.

All that preceded this was as the early and ambiguous processes of nature in bringing forth the plant from the seed. Nature knows her work, and its result; but the onlooker sees the result only. The Creator of man knew of what a child America was to be the mother: but the world, intent upon its selfish concerns, recognized it only when the consummation had been reached. And even now she eyes us askance, and mutters doubts as to our endurance and our legitimacy. But America is Europe's best and only friend, and her political pattern must sooner or later, and more or less exactly, be followed by all peoples.

Democracy, however unwelcome in its first and outward aspect it may appear, is the logical issue of human experiments in government; it is susceptible of much abuse and open to many corruptions; but these cannot penetrate far below the surface; they are external and obvious, not vital and secret; because at heart the voice of democracy is the voice of G.o.d. It may be silent for long, so that some will disbelieve or despair, and say in their haste that democracy is a fraud or a failure. But at last its tones will be heard, and its word will be irresistible and immortal: the word of the Lord, uttering itself through the mouth of His creatures.

The preliminary episodes and skirmis.h.i.+ngs, therefore, which went before the spiritual self-consciousness of America, will be treated here in outline only; only such events and persons as were the sources of subsequent important conditions will be drawn in light and shadow. This period of adventure and exploration is, it is true, rich in picturesque characters and romantic incident, but they have little organic relation to the history of the true America--which is the tracing of the development and embodiment of an abstract idea. They belong to Europe, whose life was present in them, though the men acted and the incidents occurred in a strange environment. They are attractive subjects of study in themselves, but have small pertinence to the present argument.

Our aim will be to maintain an organic coherency.

Still less can we linger in that impressive darkness before dawn which prevailed upon the continent before the advent of Columbus. The mystery which shrouds the origin and annals of the races which inhabited America previous to the European invasion has been a.s.siduously investigated, but never dispelled. At first it was taken for granted that the "Indians," as the red men were ignorantly called, were the aboriginal denizens of the country. But the mounds, ruined cities, pottery and other remains since found in all parts of the land, concerning which the Indians could furnish no information, and which showed a state of civilization far in advance of theirs, were proof that a great people had existed here in the remote past, who had flourished and disappeared without leaving any trace whereby they could be accounted for or identified. They are an enigma compared with which the archeological problems of the Old World are an open book. We can form no conception of the conditions under which they lived, of their personal characteristics, of their language, habits, or religion. We cannot determine whether these forerunners of the Indians were one people in several stages of development, or several peoples in simultaneous occupation of the land. We can establish no trustworthy connection between them and any Asiatic races, and yet we are reluctant to believe them isolated from the rest of mankind. If they had dwelt here from their creation, why had they not progressed further in civilization?--and if they emigrated hither from another continent, why do their remains not indicate their source? By what agency did they perish, and when? The more keenly we strive to penetrate their mystery, the more perplexing does it appear; the further we investigate them, the more alien from anything we are or have known do they seem. Elusive as mist, and questionable as night, they form a suggestive background on which the vivid and energetic drama of our novel civilization stands out in sharp relief.

Scarcely less mysterious--though living among us still--are the red men whom we found here. They had no written languages or history; their knowledge of their own past was confined to vague and fanciful traditions. They were few in numbers, barbarous in condition, untamable in nature; they built no cities and practiced no industries: their women planted maize and performed all menial labors; their men hunted and fought. Before we came, they fought one another; our coming did not unite them against a common enemy; it only gave each of them one enemy the more. After an intercourse of four hundred years, we know as little of them as we did at first; we have neither educated, absorbed nor exterminated them. The fas.h.i.+on of their faces, and some other indications, seem to point to a northern Asiatic ancestry; but they cannot tell us even so much as we can guess. There have been among them, now and again, men of commanding abilities in war and negotiation; but their influence upon their people has not lasted beyond their own lives. Amid the roar and fever of these latter ages, they stand silent, useless, and apathetic. They belong to our history only in so far as their savage and treacherous hostility contributed to harden the fort.i.tude of our earlier settlers, and to weld them into a united people.

Posterity may resolve these obscurities; meanwhile they remain in picturesque contrast to the merciless publicity of our own life, and the scientific annihilation of time and distance. They are as the dark and amorphous loam in which has taken root the Flower of the Ages. If extremes must meet, it was fitting that the least and the most highly developed examples of mankind should dwell side by side, at the close of the nineteenth century, in a land to which neither is native: that Europe, the child of Asia, should meet its prehistoric parent here, and work out its destiny before her uncomprehending eyes. The world is an inn of strange meetings; and this encounter is perhaps the strangest of all.

The most dangerous enemy of America has been--not Spain, France, England, or any other nation in arms, but--our own material prosperity.

The lessons of adversity we took to heart, and they brought forth wholesome fruit, purifying our blood and toughening our muscles. So long as the Spirit of Liberty was threatened from without, she was safe and triumphant. But when her foes abroad had ceased to harry her, a foe far more insidious began to plot against her in her own house. The tireless energy and ingenuity which are our most salient characteristics, and which had rendered us formidable and successful on sea and land, were turned by peace into productive channels. The enormous natural resources of the continent began to receive development; men who under former conditions would have been admirals and generals, now became leaders in commerce, manufactures and finance; they made great fortunes, and set up standards of emulation other than patriotism and public spirit. Like the old Spanish and English adventurers, they sought for gold, and held all other things secondary to that. An anomalous oligarchy sprang into existence, holding no ostensible political or social sway, yet influential in both directions by virtue of the power of money. Money can be possessed by the evil as well as by the good, and it can be used to tempt the good to condone evil. The exalted maxim of human equality was interpreted to mean that all Americans could be rich; and the spectacle was presented of a mighty and generous nation fighting one another for mere material wealth. Inevitably, the lower and baser elements of the population came to the surface and seemed to rule; the ordinary citizen, on whom the welfare of the State depends, allowed his private business interest to wean him from the conduct of public affairs, which thereby fell into the hands of professional politicians, who handled them for their personal gain instead of for the common weal. We forgot that pregnant saying, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and suffered ourselves to be persuaded that because our written Const.i.tution was a wise and patriotic doc.u.ment, we were forever safe even from the effects of our own selfishness and infidelity. As some men are more skillful and persistent manipulators of money than others, it happened that the capital of the country became ma.s.sed in one place and was lacking in another; the numbers of the poor, and of paupers, increased; and the rich were able to control their political action and sap their self-respect by dominating the employment market. "Do my bidding, or starve," is a cogent argument; it should never be in the power of any man to offer it; but it was heard over the length and breadth of free America. The efforts of laboring men, by organization, to check the power of capitalists, was met by the latter with organizations of their own, which, in the form of vast "trusts" and otherwise, deprived small manufacturers and traders of the power of independent self-support.

Strikes and lockouts were the natural outcome of such a situation; and the sinister prospect loomed upon us of labor and capital arrayed against each other in avowed hostility.

Danger from this cause, however, is more apparent than actual. The remedy, in the last resort, is always in ourselves. Laws as to land and contracts may be modified, but the true cure for all such injuries and inequalities is to cease to regard the ama.s.sing of "fortunes" as the most desirable end in life. The land is capable of supporting in comfort far more than its present population; ignorance or selfish disregard of the true principles of economy have made it seem otherwise. The proper state of every man is that of a producer; the craving of individuals to own what they have not fairly earned and cannot usefully administer, is vain and disorderly. Men will always be born who have the genius of management; and others who require to have their energies directed; some can profitably control resources which to others would be a mischievous burden. But this truth does not involve any extravagant discrepancy in the private means and establishments of one or the other; each should have as much as his needs, intelligence and taste legitimately warrant, and no more. Such matters will gradually adjust themselves, once the broad underlying principle has been accepted. Meanwhile we may remember that national health is not always synonymous with peace. It was the warning of our Lord--"I am not come to bring peace? but a sword." The war which is waged with powder and ball is often less contrary to true peace than the war which exists while all the outward semblances of peace are maintained. We must not be misled by names. America is perhaps too p.r.o.ne to regard herself in a pa.s.sive light, as the refuge merely of the oppressed and needy; but she has an active mission too. She stands for so much that is contrary to the ideas that have hitherto ruled the world that she can hardly hope to avoid the hostility, and possibly the attacks, of the representatives of the old order. These, she must be able and ready to repel. We have freely shed our blood for our own freedom; and we should not forget that, though charity begins at home, it need not end there.

We should not interpret too strictly the maxims which admonish us to mind our own housekeeping, and to avoid entanglements with the quarrels or troubles of our neighbors. We should not say to the tide of our liberties, Thus far shalt thou go, and no further. America is not a geographical expression, and arbitrary geographical boundaries should not be permitted to limit the area which her principles control. We, who seek to bind the other nations to ourselves by ties of commerce, should recognize the obligations of other ties, whose value cannot be expressed in money.

America wears her faults upon her forehead, not in her heart; her history is just beginning; she herself dreams not yet what her ultimate destiny will be. But so far as her brief past may serve as a key wherewith to open the future? a study of it will not be idle.

CHAPTER FIRST

COLUMBUS, RALEIGH AND SMITH

The records will have it that America was discovered in consequence of the desire of Europe to profit by the commerce of Cathay, which had hitherto reached them only by the long and expensive process of a journey due west. One caravan had pa.s.sed on the spices and other valuables to another, until they reached the Mediterranean. It was asked whether the trip could not be more quickly and cheaply made by sea. a.s.suming, as was generally done, that the earth was flat, why might not a man sail round the southern extremity of Africa, and up the other side to the Orient? It was true that the extremity of Africa might extend to the Southern ice, in which case this plan would not serve; but the attempt might be worth making. This was the view of Henry of Portugal, a scientific and ingenious prince, whose life covered the first sixty years of the Fifteenth Century. And Portuguese mariners did accordingly sail their little s.h.i.+ps far down the Atlantic coast of the Dark Continent; but they did not venture quite far enough until long after good Prince Henry was dead, and Columbus had (in his own belief) pioneered a shorter way.

Columbus was a theorist and a visionary. Many men who have been able to show much more plausible grounds for their theories than he could for his have died the laughing-stock of the world. Columbus was a laughing-stock for nearly twenty years; but though the special application of his theory was absurdly wrong, yet in principle it chanced to be right; and he was so fortunate as to be empowered to bring it to a practical demonstration. His notion was that the earth was not flat, but round. Therefore the quickest route to the extreme East must be in exactly the opposite direction; the globe, he estimated, could not be much over fifteen thousand miles in girth; Cathay, by the land route, was twelve thousand miles or so east of Europe; consequently the distance west could not be more than three thousand. This could be sailed over in a month or two, and the saving in time and trouble would be immense.--Thus did he argue--shoving the Atlantic into the Pacific Ocean, subtracting six or seven thousand miles from their united breadth, and obliterating entirely that western continent which he was fated to discover, though he was never to suspect its existence.

The heresy that the earth was a sphere had long been in existence; Aristotle being the earliest source to which it could be traced.

Sensible people did not countenance it then, any more than they accept to-day the conjecture that other planets than this may be inhabited.

They demonstrated its improbability on historical and religious grounds, and also made the point that, supposing it were round, and that Columbus were to sail down the under side of it, he would never be able to climb back again. But the Genoese was a man who became more firmly wedded to his opinion in proportion as it met with ridicule and opposition; proofs he had none of the truth of his pet idea; but he clung to it with a doggedness which must greatly have exasperated his interlocutors. By dint of sheer persistence, he almost persuaded some men that there might be something in his project; but he never brought any of them to the pitch of risking money on it. It was only upon a woman that he was finally able to prevail; and doubtless the intelligence of Isabella of Castile was less concerned in the affair than was her feminine imagination. Had she known more, she would have done less. But so, for that matter, would Columbus.