Beginnings of the American People | Page 2

new, imperialistic England of
George III, are the special themes of his study. But here, as elsewhere
in our coöperative undertaking, the object has been to portray only
those things which seem to have counted in the final make-up of the
Confederacy of 1783, and of the United States of to-day. Moreover, the
daily life of the people, amusements, manners, religious predilections,
and the everyday occupations of men and women have been accorded
some of the space which, from another view-point, might have been
devoted to an account of government and the arguments of jurists.
Thus Professor Becker has presented a true and entertaining picture of
the purposes of European capitalists interested in the plantations, of the
poor people who were packed off to America to serve the ends of
commerce, and of the energetic men of the eighteenth century who
slowly worked out for England the conquest of North America. The
reading of chapters III and V of the Beginnings of the American People
can hardly fail to give one a new view of, and a new interest in,
colonial history.
Nor has Professor Johnson approached his theme, Union and
Democracy, in a different spirit. He is neither a champion of the
wholesome nationalism which gave the Federalists their place in
history nor a defender of the radical idealism which Professor Becker
has shown to be the mainspring of the Revolution of 1776, and which
Jefferson called to life again in his struggle to win control of the
national machinery, 1796 to 1800. In treating the period 1783 to 1828,
Professor Johnson had the difficult task of tracing the important
influences which culminated in the Constitution of 1789, the
Jeffersonian revolt of 1800, the foreign complications of 1803 to 1815,
and the so-called Era of Good Feelings. Here again the popular
prejudices, if one desires so to term them, land speculations, and

sectional likes, and dislikes receive attention; but the formation of the
Constitution, the organization of the Federal Government, international
quarrels about the rights of neutral commerce, and finally the War of
1812 are naturally the main topics.
The chapters which treat of the results of the second war with England,
the westward movement, and the national awakening, and especially
the one which analyzes the problems which underlay the great
decisions of Chief Justice Marshall, will probably prove most
instructive to the reader. The author has made his narrative much
clearer and the factors which entered into the political struggles of the
time more intelligible by resort to many black-and-white maps; for
example, those which show the popular attitude toward the Constitution
in 1787-89 and the alignment of parties in the contest of 1800.
From 1829 to 1865 was the stormy period of our national history--a
period in which the nationality planned by the "Fathers" was being
forged from the discordant elements of East, South, and West,--from
the economic interests of cotton and tobacco planters; of the owners of
the industrial plants of the Middle States and the East; and of the
necessities of the isolated West striving always for markets. What made
the process so doubtful and so long drawn out was the unfortunate fact
that the great industrial and agricultural interests coincided so exactly
with the older social and political antagonisms. The leadership of the
times was, therefore, sectional in a very vital way; so much was this the
case that the most popular and captivating of all the public men of the
time, Henry Clay, was defeated again and again for the Presidency
because no common understanding between New England and the
South, or between New England and the West, could be found.
Twice during the period a permanent modus vivendi seemed to have
been agreed upon, in the Jacksonian Democracy of 1828, and in the
Pierce organization of 1852, combinations of South and West which
rested on the big plantation system with slavery underlying, and on the
small farmer vote of the West charged always with the potential revolt
which democracy connotes. While these subjects receive the careful
attention of the author, the "way out," and the national expansion of the

Polk Administration, are none the less carefully studied. But aside from
the sharp and challenging problems of the time, an earnest effort has
been made to describe the cultural life of the people, the pastimes, the
religious revivals, the literary and artistic output of the exuberant
America of 1830 to 1860. The Civil War and its attendant ills are
compressed into relatively small space, though here, too, the effort is
made to include all that is vital.
In like manner Professor Paxson gives much space to the "interests"
which came to dominate the country soon after the cessation of
hostilities in 1865. The business and the greater social tendencies of the
post-bellum period had become