The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 by Julian Hawthorne

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[Illustration: THE WARRIOR'S LAST RIDE (See the Battle of Deerfield,
Vol. 1., p. 205) _Painted by Frederic Remington_]

THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FROM 1492 TO 1910

By JULIAN HAWTHORNE

VOLUME I

From Discovery Of America October 12, 1492

To

Battle Of Lexington April 19, 1775

CONTENTS OF VOLUME ONE

INTRODUCTION BEFORE DAWN

I. COLUMBUS, RALEIGH, AND SMITH

II. THE FREIGHT OF THE "MAYFLOWER"

III. THE SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS

IV. FROM HUDSON TO STUYVESANT

V. LIBERTY, SLAVERY, AND TYRANNY

VI. CATHOLIC, PHILOSOPHER, AND REBEL

VII. QUAKER, YANKEE, AND KING

VIII. THE STUARTS AND THE CHARTER

IX. THE NEW LEAF, AND THE BLOT ON IT

X. FIFTY YEARS OF FOOLS AND HEROES

XI. QUEM JUPITER VULT PERDERE

XII. THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM AND THE STAMP ACT

XIII. THE PASSING OF THE RUBICON

XIV. THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD

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 passed 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 assume 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 class 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 assigned 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 class; and the annals they have left to us have none
of the value which belongs to the productions of classical 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 God 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 embarrassment is rather in the
line of making a judicious selection from the enormous mass 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, repetitions, 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 pronounced. 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
emancipate 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 masses
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 cumulative 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 institute 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 assure 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 illustrate 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 shores 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 sunshine; 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 noble 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 passed 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 shores
were those of China; and though Balboa, in 1513, waded waist-deep into the
Pacific off Darien, and claimed it for Spain, yet the massive immensity of
America was not suspected. There was not space 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 passage; and still the truth was not fully realized.
And when, a century later, the English colonies were assigned 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 establishing 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 hardship; 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 spaciousness
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 pass 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 noble 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 appetite 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 noble; yet there seems to have been something
not ignoble 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 prone 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
leadership in commerce, and the ownership 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 passage 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 God. 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.

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