AmPageantEtext11-22

The Transportation Revolution 311

WIS. N.Y.

MICH.

IOWA Missis Delaware R.
pi R.
sip IND. OHIO Susquehanna R. N.J.
OhioIndianapolis Springfield Wheeling PA. Philadelphia
ILL.
Terre Haute Columbus Lancaster
Vandalia R. Cumberland
St. Louis
MO. Baltimore
MD. DEL.
KY. Cumberland (National) Road
VA. and Main Connections
Note also the Lancaster Turnpike.
Cumberland Road
Main connections
Lancaster Turnpike

steamboats could churn rapidly against the current, Chugging steamboats played a vital role in the
ultimately attaining speeds in excess of ten miles an opening of the West and South, both of which were
hour. The mighty Mississippi had met its master. richly endowed with navigable rivers. Like bunches
of grapes on a vine, population clustered along the
By 1820 there were some sixty steamboats on the banks of the broad-flowing streams. Cotton growers
Mississippi and its tributaries; by 1860 about one and other farmers made haste to take up and turn
thousand, some of them luxurious river palaces. over the now-profitable virgin soil. Not only could
Keen rivalry among the swift and gaudy steamers led they float their produce out to market, but, hardly
to memorable races. Excited passengers would urge less important, they could ship in at low cost
the captain to pile on wood at the risk of bursting the their shoes, hardware, and other manufactured
boilers, which all too often exploded, with tragic necessities.
results for the floating firetraps.

312 CHAPTER 14 Forging the National Economy, 1790–1860

“Clinton’s Big Ditch’’ in New York Ever-widening economic ripples followed the
completion of the Erie Canal. The value of land
A canal-cutting craze paralleled the boom in turn- along the route skyrocketed, and new cities—such
pikes and steamboats. A few canals had been built as Rochester and Syracuse—blossomed. Industry in
around falls and elsewhere in colonial days, but the state boomed. The new profitability of farming
ambitious projects lay in the future. Resourceful in the Old Northwest—notably in Ohio, Michigan,
New Yorkers, cut off from federal aid by states’ Indiana, and Illinois—attracted thousands of Euro-
righters, themselves dug the Erie Canal, linking the pean immigrants to the unaxed and untaxed lands
Great Lakes with the Hudson River. They were now available. Flotillas of steamships soon plied
blessed with the driving leadership of Governor the Great Lakes, connecting with canal barges at
DeWitt Clinton, whose grandiose project was scoff- Buffalo. Interior waterside villages like Cleveland,
ingly called “Clinton’s Big Ditch’’ or “the Governor’s Detroit, and Chicago exploded into mighty cities.
Gutter.’’
Other profound economic and political changes
Begun in 1817, the canal eventually ribboned followed the canal’s completion. The price of pota-
363 miles. On its completion in 1825, a garlanded toes in New York City was cut in half, and many
canal boat glided from Buffalo, on Lake Erie, to the dispirited New England farmers, no longer able to
Hudson River and on to New York harbor. There, face the ruinous competition, abandoned their
with colorful ceremony, Governor Clinton emptied rocky holdings and went elsewhere. Some became
a cask of water from the lake to symbolize “the mar- mill hands, thus speeding the industrialization of
riage of the waters.’’ America. Others, finding it easy to go west over the
Erie Canal, took up new farmland south of the Great
The water from Clinton’s keg baptized the Lakes, where they were joined by thousands of New
Empire State. Mule-drawn passengers and bulky Yorkers and other northerners. Still others shifted to
freight could now be handled with thrift and dis- fruit, vegetable, and dairy farming. The transfor-
patch, at the dizzy speed of five miles an hour. The mations in the Northeast—canal consequences
cost of shipping a ton of grain from Buffalo to New —showed how long-established local market struc-
York City fell from $100 to $5, and the time of transit tures could be swamped by the emerging behemoth
from about twenty days to six. of a continental economy.

CANADA Lake
Champlain

Carthage

3

Lake Ontario Oswego Erie Canal and Main Branches
The Erie Canal system, and others like it, tapped the
Niagara Falls Lockport Rochester 2 Rome UticaMohawk R. 5 VT. fabulous agricultural potential of the Midwest, while
Buffalo 1 Syracuse Troy canal construction and maintenance provided
employment for displaced eastern farmers squeezed
Lake Erie NEW YORK Schenectady off the land by competition from their more
4 Albany productive midwestern cousins. The transportation
Olean revolution thus simultaneously expanded the nation’s
MASS. acreage under cultivation and speeded the shift of the
Binghamton Hudson R. work force from agricultural to manufacturing and
“service’’ occupations. In 1820 more than three-
PENNSYLVANIA CONN. quarters of American workers labored on farms; by
N.J. New York 1850 only a little more than half of them were so
Erie Canal employed. (Also see the map on the top of page 313.)
1. Genesee Valley Canal
2. Oswego Canal
3. Black River Canal
4. Chenango Canal
5. Champlain Canal

Canals and Railroads 313

Lake Huron MAINE Principal Canals in 1840
VT. Note that the canals mainly facilitated
east-west traffic, especially along the
N.H. great Lake Erie artery. No comparable
network of canals existed in the South—
WIS. Lake Michigan Lake Ontario NEW YORK a disparity that helps to explain northern
Ohio R. Troy superiority in the Civil War that came
two decades later.
Albany MASS.

MICHIGAN Buffalo

Lake Erie CONN.

R.I.

Toledo N.J. New York
New Brunswick
INDIANA Cleveland PENNSYLVANIA

ILL. OHIO Trenton
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh Columbia

Cumberland MD. Baltimore

Cincinnati Washington DEL. A T L A N T I C

Portsmouth VIRGINIA OCEAN

Evansville Erie Canal (Under construction)
Delaware and Raritan Canal Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
Pennsylvania Canal Wabash and Erie Canal
Ohio and Erie Canal Miami and Erie Canal

The Iron Horse BRITISH NORTH AMERICA
(CANADA)
The most significant contribution to the develop-
ment of such an economy proved to be the railroad. Boston
It was fast, reliable, cheaper than canals to con-
struct, and not frozen over in winter. Able to go Detroit Pittsburgh New York
almost anywhere, even through the Allegheny bar- Chicago Philadelphia
rier, it defied terrain and weather. The first railroad
appeared in the United States in 1828. By 1860, only St. Joseph Cincinnati Washington,
thirty-two years later, the United States boasted Louisville D.C.
thirty thousand miles of railroad track, three- St. Louis Nashville Richmond
fourths of it in the rapidly industrializing North. Memphis

At first the railroad faced strong opposition Jackson Charleston
from vested interests, especially canal backers. Anx- Houston Savannah
ious to protect its investment in the Erie Canal, the
New York legislature in 1833 prohibited the railroads Jacksonville
from carrying freight—at least temporarily. Early
railroads were also considered a dangerous public New Orleans
menace, for flying sparks could set fire to nearby
haystacks and houses, and appalling railway acci- Railroads, 1850
dents could turn the wooden “miniature hells’’ into Railroads built 1850 – 1860
flaming funeral pyres for their riders.
The Railroad Revolution
Railroad pioneers had to overcome other obsta- Note the explosion of new railroad construction in the 1850s
cles as well. Brakes were so feeble that the engineer and its heavy concentration in the North.
might miss the station twice, both arriving and
backing up. Arrivals and departures were conjec-
tural, and numerous differences in gauge (the dis-
tance between the rails) meant frequent changes of

314 CHAPTER 14 Forging the National Economy, 1790–1860

trains for passengers. In 1840 there were seven Although this initial cable went dead after three
transfers between Philadelphia and Charleston. weeks of public rejoicing, a heavier cable laid in
But gauges gradually became standardized, better 1866 permanently linked the American and Euro-
brakes did brake, safety devices were adopted, and pean continents.
the Pullman “sleeping palace’’ was introduced in
1859. America at long last was being bound together The United States merchant marine encoun-
with braces of iron, later to be made of steel. tered rough sailing during much of the early nine-
teenth century. American vessels had been
Cables, Clippers, and Pony Riders repeatedly laid up by the embargo, the War of 1812,
and the panics of 1819 and 1837. American naval
Other forms of transportation and communication designers made few contributions to maritime
were binding together the United States and the progress. A pioneer American steamer, the Savan-
world. A crucial development came in 1858 when nah, had crept across the Atlantic in 1819, but it
Cyrus Field, called “the greatest wire puller in his- used sail most of the time and was pursued for a day
tory,’’ finally stretched a cable under the deep North by a British captain who thought it afire.
Atlantic waters from Newfoundland to Ireland.
In the 1840s and 1850s, a golden age dawned
for American shipping. Yankee naval yards, notably
Donald McKay’s at Boston, began to send down the
ways sleek new craft called clipper ships. Long, nar-

Communication and Trade 315

row, and majestic, they glided across the sea under a familiar sight. Their dusty tracks stretched from
towering masts and clouds of canvas. In a fair the bank of the muddy Missouri River clear to
breeze, they could outrun any steamer. California.

The stately clippers sacrificed cargo space for Even more dramatic was the Pony Express,
speed, and their captains made killings by hauling established in 1860 to carry mail speedily the two
high-value cargoes in record times. They wrested thousand lonely miles from St. Joseph, Missouri,
much of the tea-carrying trade between the Far East to Sacramento, California. Daring, lightweight rid-
and Britain from their slower-sailing British com- ers, leaping onto wiry ponies saddled at stations
petitors, and they sped thousands of impatient
adventurers to the goldfields of California and As late as 1877, stagecoach passengers were
Australia. advised in print,
“Never shoot on the road as the noise might
But the hour of glory for the clipper was rela- frighten the horses. . . . Don’t point out
tively brief. On the eve of the Civil War, the British where murders have been committed,
had clearly won the world race for maritime ascen- especially if there are women passengers. . . .
dancy with their iron tramp steamers (“teakettles’’). Expect annoyances, discomfort, and some
Although slower and less romantic than the clipper, hardships.’’
these vessels were steadier, roomier, more reliable,
and hence more profitable.

No story of rapid American communication
would be complete without including the Far
West. By 1858 horse-drawn overland stagecoaches,
immortalized by Mark Twain’s Roughing It, were

316 CHAPTER 14 Forging the National Economy, 1790–1860

Colu mbia R. i R. Main Routes West Before the
Portland Civil War Mark Twain described
. his stagecoach trip to California in
PACIFIC Missour i the 1860s: “We began to get into
OCEAN M ississipp country, now, threaded here and
R there with little streams. These had
Sacramento high, steep banks on each side, and
(Sutter's Fort) Snake R Fort every time we flew down one bank
San Francisco South Laramie and scrambled up the other, our
Pass party inside got mixed somewhat.
Los Angeles . Platte R. First we would all be down in a pile
o Fort Omaha at the forward end of the stage,
Kearny . . . and in a second we would shoot
Great R. to the other end, and stand on our
Salt Lake Salt Lake City Mississippi R.St. Josephheads. And . . . as the dust rose
from the tumult, we would all
Independence St. Louis sneeze in chorus, and the majority
of us would grumble, and probably
Arkansa s say some hasty thing, like: ‘Take
your elbow out of my ribs!—can’t
Colorad Santa Fe Cut-off R. you quit crowding?’”
Fort
Smith

Oregon Trail San Diego

California Trail

Pony Express overland mail

Mormon Trail

Santa Fe Trail Gulf of
Mexico
Spanish Trail

approximately ten miles apart, could make the trip and South together. But the truly revolutionary
in an amazing ten days. These unarmed horsemen changes in commerce and communication came in
galloped on, summer or winter, day or night, the three decades before the Civil War, as canals and
through dust or snow, past Indians and bandits. The railroad tracks radiated out from the East, across the
speeding postmen missed only one trip, though the Alleghenies and into the blossoming heartland. The
whole enterprise lost money heavily and folded ditch-diggers and tie-layers were attempting noth-
after only eighteen legend-leaving months. ing less than a conquest of nature itself. They would
offset the “natural’’ flow of trade on the interior
Just as the clippers had succumbed to steam, so rivers by laying down an impressive grid of “internal
were the express riders unhorsed by Samuel Morse’s improvements.’’
clacking keys, which began tapping messages to
California in 1861. The swift ships and the fleet The builders succeeded beyond their wildest
ponies ushered out a dying technology of wind and dreams. The Mississippi was increasingly robbed of
muscle. In the future, machines would be in the its traffic, as goods moved eastward on chugging
saddle. trains, puffing lake boats, and mule-tugged canal
barges. Governor Clinton had in effect picked up the
The Transport Web Binds the Union mighty Father of Waters and flung it over the
Alleghenies, forcing it to empty into the sea at New
More than anything else, the desire of the East to tap York City. By the 1840s the city of Buffalo handled
the West stimulated the “transportation revolution.’’ more western produce than New Orleans. Between
Until about 1830 the produce of the western region 1836 and 1860, grain shipments through Buffalo
drained southward to the cotton belt or to the increased a staggering sixtyfold. New York City
heaped-up wharves of New Orleans. The steamboat became the seaboard queen of the nation, a gigantic
vastly aided the reverse flow of finished goods up port through which a vast hinterland poured its
the watery western arteries and helped bind West wealth and to which it daily paid economic tribute.

By the eve of the Civil War, a truly continental
economy had emerged. The principle of division of

Forging a Continental Economy 317

labor, which spelled productivity and profits in the The Market Revolution
factory, applied on a national scale as well. Each
region now specialized in a particular type of eco- No less revolutionary than the political upheavals of
nomic activity. The South raised cotton for export to the antebellum era was the “market revolution” that
New England and Britain; the West grew grain and transformed a subsistence economy of scattered
livestock to feed factory workers in the East and in farms and tiny workshops into a national network of
Europe; the East made machines and textiles for the industry and commerce. As more and more Ameri-
South and the West. cans—mill workers as well as farmhands, women as
well as men—linked their economic fate to the bur-
The economic pattern thus woven had fateful geoning market economy, the self-sufficient house-
political and military implications. Many southern- holds of colonial days were transformed. Most
ers regarded the Mississippi as a silver chain that families had once raised all their own food, spun
naturally linked together the upper valley states and their own wool, and bartered with their neighbors
the Cotton Kingdom. They were convinced, as for the few necessities they could not make them-
secession approached, that some or all of these selves. In growing numbers they now scattered to
states would have to secede with them or be stran- work for wages in the mills, or they planted just a
gled. But they overlooked the man-made links that few crops for sale at market and used the money to
now bound the upper Mississippi Valley to the East buy goods made by strangers in far-off factories. As
in intimate commercial union. Southern rebels store-bought fabrics, candles, and soap replaced
would have to fight not only Northern armies but homemade products, a quiet revolution occurred
the tight bonds of an interdependent continental in the household division of labor and status.
economy. Economically, the two northerly sections
were Siamese twins.

318 CHAPTER 14 Forging the National Economy, 1790–1860

Industry and Agriculture, 1860 Still a nation of farmers on the eve of the Civil War, Americans had
nevertheless made an impressive start on their own Industrial Revolution, especially in the Northeast.

Traditional women’s work was rendered superfluous Although their numbers were large, they left little
and devalued. The home itself, once a center of eco- behind them but the homely fruits of their transient
nomic production in which all family members labor. Largely unstoried and unsung, they are
cooperated, grew into a place of refuge from the among the forgotten men and women of American
world of work, a refuge that became increasingly the history.
special and separate sphere of women.
Many myths about “social mobility’’ grew up
Revolutionary advances in manufacturing and over the buried memories of these unfortunate day
transportation brought increased prosperity to all laborers. Mobility did exist in industrializing Amer-
Americans, but they also widened the gulf between ica—but not in the proportions that legend often
the rich and the poor. Millionaires had been rare in portrays. Rags-to-riches success stories were rela-
the early days of the Republic, but by the eve of the tively few.
Civil War, several specimens of colossal financial
success were strutting across the national stage. Yet America, with its dynamic society and wide-
Spectacular was the case of fur-trader and real open spaces, undoubtedly provided more “opportu-
estate speculator John Jacob Astor, who left an nity’’ than did the contemporary countries of the Old
estate of $30 million on his death in 1848. World—which is why millions of immigrants packed
their bags and headed for New World shores. More-
Cities bred the greatest extremes of economic over, a rising tide lifts all boats, and the improvement
inequality. Unskilled workers, then as always, fared in overall standards of living was real. Wages for
worst. Many of them came to make up a floating unskilled workers in a labor-hungry America rose
mass of “drifters,’’ buffeted from town to town by the about 1 percent a year from 1820 to 1860. This gen-
shifting prospects for menial jobs. These wandering eral prosperity helped defuse the potential class
workers accounted at various times for up to half conflict that might otherwise have exploded—and
the population of the brawling industrial centers. that did explode in many European countries.

Chronology 319

Chronology

c. 1750 Industrial Revolution begins in Britain 1842 Massachusetts declares labor unions legal in
Commonwealth v. Hunt
1791 Samuel Slater builds first U.S. textile factory
c. 1843-
1793 Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin 1868 Era of clipper ships

1798 Whitney develops interchangeable parts for 1844 Samuel Morse invents telegraph
muskets Anti-Catholic riot in Philadelphia

1807 Robert Fulton’s first steamboat 1845-
Embargo spurs American manufacturing 1849 Potato famine in Ireland

1811 Cumberland Road construction begins 1846 Elias Howe invents sewing machine

1817 Erie Canal construction begins 1848 First general incorporation laws in New York
Democratic revolutions collapse in Germany
1825 Erie Canal completed
1849 Order of the Star-Spangled Banner (Know-
1828 First railroad in United States Nothing party) formed

1830s Cyrus McCormick invents mechanical 1852 Cumberland Road completed
mower-reaper
1858 Cyrus Field lays first transatlantic cable
1834 Anti-Catholic riot in Boston
1860 Pony Express established
1837 John Deere develops steel plow
1861 First transcontinental telegraph
1840 President Van Buren establishes ten-hour
day for federal employees 1866 Permanent transatlantic cable established

For further reading, see page A10 of the Appendix. For web resources, go to http://college.hmco.com.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

15

The Ferment of
Reform and Culture

ᇻᇾᇻ

1790–1860

We [Americans] will walk on our own feet; we will work
with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, “THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR,” 1837

A third revolution accompanied the reformation prophets, and guidance by spirits. Societies were
of American politics and the transformation of formed against alcohol, tobacco, profanity, and the
the American economy in the mid-nineteenth cen- transit of mail on the Sabbath. Eventually overshad-
tury. This was a diffuse yet deeply felt commitment owing all other reforms was the great crusade
to improve the character of ordinary Americans, to against slavery (see pp. 362–368).
make them more upstanding, God-fearing, and lit-
erate. Some high-minded souls were disillusioned Many reformers drew their crusading zeal from
by the rough-and-tumble realities of democratic religion. Beginning in the late 1790s and boiling
politics. Others, notably women, were excluded over into the early nineteenth century, the Second
from the political game altogether. As the young Great Awakening swept through America’s Protes-
Republic grew, increasing numbers of Americans tant churches, transforming the place of religion in
poured their considerable energies into religious American life and sending a generation of believers
revivals and reform movements. out on their missions to perfect the world.

Reform campaigns of all types flourished in Reviving Religion
sometimes bewildering abundance. There was not
“a reading man” who was without some scheme for Church attendance was still a regular ritual for
a new utopia in his “waistcoat pocket,” claimed about three-fourths of the 23 million Americans in
Ralph Waldo Emerson. Reformers promoted better 1850. Alexis de Tocqueville declared that there was
public schools and rights for women, as well as
miracle medicines, polygamy, celibacy, rule by

320

Religious Revivalism 321

“no country in the world where the Christian reli- stressed the essential goodness of human nature
gion retains a greater influence over the souls of rather than its vileness; they proclaimed their belief
men than in America.’’ Yet the religion of these years in free will and the possibility of salvation through
was not the old-time religion of colonial days. The good works; they pictured God not as a stern Creator
austere Calvinist rigor had long been seeping out of but as a loving Father. Embraced by many leading
the American churches. The rationalist ideas of the thinkers (including Ralph Waldo Emerson), the Uni-
French Revolutionary era had done much to soften tarian movement appealed mostly to intellectuals
the older orthodoxy. Thomas Paine’s widely circu- whose rationalism and optimism contrasted sharply
lated book The Age of Reason (1794) had shockingly with the hellfire doctrines of Calvinism, especially
declared that all churches were “set up to terrify predestination and human depravity.
and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and
profit.’’ American anticlericalism was seldom that A boiling reaction against the growing liberal-
virulent, but many of the Founding Fathers, includ- ism in religion set in about 1800. A fresh wave of
ing Jefferson and Franklin, embraced the liberal roaring revivals, beginning on the southern frontier
doctrines of Deism that Paine promoted. Deists but soon rolling even into the cities of the North-
relied on reason rather than revelation, on science east, sent the Second Great Awakening surging
rather than the Bible. They rejected the concept of across the land. Sweeping up even more people
original sin and denied Christ’s divinity. Yet Deists than the First Great Awakening (see p. 96) almost a
believed in a Supreme Being who had created a century earlier, the Second Awakening was one of
knowable universe and endowed human beings the most momentous episodes in the history of
with a capacity for moral behavior. American religion. This tidal wave of spiritual fervor
left in its wake countless converted souls, many
Deism helped to inspire an important spin-off shattered and reorganized churches, and numerous
from the severe Puritanism of the past—the Unitar- new sects. It also encouraged an effervescent evan-
ian faith, which began to gather momentum in New gelicalism that bubbled up into innumerable areas
England at the end of the eighteenth century. Unitar- of American life—including prison reform, the tem-
ians held that God existed in only one person (hence perance cause, the women’s movement, and the
unitarian), and not in the orthodox Trinity (God the crusade to abolish slavery.
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit).
Although denying the deity of Jesus, Unitarians The Second Great Awakening was spread to the
masses on the frontier by huge “camp meetings.’’ As

322 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

many as twenty-five thousand people would gather A key feature of the Second Great Awakening was
for an encampment of several days to drink the hell- the feminization of religion, both in terms of church
fire gospel as served up by an itinerant preacher. membership and theology. Middle-class women, the
Thousands of spiritually starved souls “got religion’’ wives and daughters of businessmen, were the first
at these gatherings and in their ecstasy engaged in and most fervent enthusiasts of religious revivalism.
frenzies of rolling, dancing, barking, and jerking. They made up the majority of new church members,
Many of the “saved’’ soon backslid into their former and they were most likely to stay within the fold
sinful ways, but the revivals boosted church mem- when the tents were packed up and the traveling
bership and stimulated a variety of humanitarian evangelists left town. Perhaps women’s greater
reforms. Responsive easterners were moved to do ambivalence than men about the changes wrought
missionary work in the West with Indians, in Hawaii, by the expanding market economy made them such
and in Asia. eager converts to piety. It helped as well that evan-
gelicals preached a gospel of female spiritual worth
Methodists and Baptists reaped the most abun- and offered women an active role in bringing their
dant harvest of souls from the fields fertilized by husbands and families back to God. That accom-
revivalism. Both sects stressed personal conversion plished, many women turned to saving the rest of
(contrary to predestination), a relatively democratic society. They formed a host of benevolent and chari-
control of church affairs, and a rousing emotional- table organizations and spearheaded crusades for
ism. As a frontier jingle ran, most, if not all, of the era’s ambitious reforms.

The devil hates the Methodist Denominational Diversity
Because they sing and shout the best.
Revivals also furthered the fragmentation of reli-
Powerful Peter Cartwright (1785–1872) was the gious faiths. Western New York, where many descen-
best known of the Methodist “circuit riders,’’ or trav- dants of New England Puritans had settled, was
eling frontier preachers. This ill-educated but so blistered by sermonizers preaching “hellfire and
sinewy servant of the Lord ranged for a half-century damnation’’ that it came to be known as the
from Tennessee to Illinois, calling upon sinners to “Burned-Over District.’’
repent. With bellowing voice and flailing arms, he
converted thousands of souls to the Lord. Not only Millerites, or Adventists, who mustered several
did he lash the Devil with his tongue, but with his hundred thousand adherents, rose from the super-
fists he knocked out rowdies who tried to break heated soil of the Burned-Over region in the 1830s.
up his meetings. His Christianity was definitely Named after the eloquent and commanding
muscular. William Miller, they interpreted the Bible to mean
that Christ would return to earth on October 22,
Bell-voiced Charles Grandison Finney was the 1844. Donning their go-to-meeting clothes, they
greatest of the revival preachers. Trained as a lawyer, gathered in prayerful assemblies to greet their
Finney abandoned the bar to become an evangelist Redeemer. The failure of Jesus to descend on sched-
after a deeply moving conversion experience as a ule dampened but did not destroy the movement.
young man. Tall and athletically built, Finney held
huge crowds spellbound with the power of his ora- Like the First Great Awakening, the Second
tory and the pungency of his message. He led mas- Great Awakening tended to widen the lines between
sive revivals in Rochester and New York City in 1830 classes and regions. The more prosperous and con-
and 1831. Finney preached a version of the old-time servative denominations in the East were little
religion, but he was also an innovator. He devised touched by revivalism, and Episcopalians, Presbyte-
the “anxious bench,’’ where repentant sinners could rians, Congregationalists, and Unitarians continued
sit in full view of the congregation, and he encour- to rise mostly from the wealthier, better-educated
aged women to pray aloud in public. Holding out levels of society. Methodists, Baptists, and the mem-
the promise of a perfect Christian kingdom on bers of the other new sects spawned by the swelling
earth, Finney denounced both alcohol and slavery. evangelistic fervor tended to come from less pros-
He eventually served as president of Oberlin College
in Ohio, which he helped to make a hotbed of
revivalist activity and abolitionism.

The Birth of the Mormons 323

In his lecture “Hindrances to Revivals,’’
delivered in the 1830s, Charles Grandison
Finney (1792–1875) proposed the excom-
munication of drinkers and slaveholders:

“Let the churches of all denominations speak
out on the subject of temperance, let them
close their doors against all who have
anything to do with the death-dealing
abomination, and the cause of temperance is
triumphant. A few years would annihilate the
traffic. Just so with slavery. . . . It is a great
national sin. It is a sin of the church. The
churches by their silence, and by permitting
slaveholders to belong to their communion,
have been consenting to it. . . . The church
cannot turn away from this question. It is a
question for the church and for the nation to
decide, and God will push it to a decision.’’

perous, less “learned’’ communities in the rural American product, a new religion, destined to
South and West. spread its influence worldwide.

Religious diversity further reflected social cleav- After establishing a religious oligarchy, Smith
ages when the churches faced up to the slavery ran into serious opposition from his non-Mormon
issue. By 1844–1845 both the southern Baptists and neighbors, first in Ohio and then in Missouri and
the southern Methodists had split with their north- Illinois. His cooperative sect rasped rank-and-file
ern brethren over human bondage. The Methodists Americans, who were individualistic and dedicated
came to grief over the case of a slaveowning bishop to free enterprise. The Mormons aroused further
in Georgia, whose second wife added several house- antagonism by voting as a unit and by openly but
hold slaves to his estate. In 1857 the Presbyterians, understandably drilling their militia for defensive
North and South, parted company. The secession of purposes. Accusations of polygamy likewise arose
the southern churches foreshadowed the secession and increased in intensity, for Joseph Smith was
of the southern states. First the churches split, then reputed to have several wives.
the political parties split, and then the Union split.
Continuing hostility finally drove the Mormons
A Desert Zion in Utah to desperate measures. In 1844 Joseph Smith and
his brother were murdered and mangled by a mob
The smoldering spiritual embers of the Burned- in Carthage, Illinois, and the movement seemed
Over District kindled one especially ardent flame in near collapse. The falling torch was seized by a
1830. In that year Joseph Smith—a rugged visionary, remarkable Mormon Moses named Brigham Young.
proud of his prowess at wrestling—reported that he Stern and austere in contrast to Smith’s charm and
had received some golden plates from an angel. affability, the barrel-chested Brigham Young had
When deciphered, they constituted the Book of received only eleven days of formal schooling. But
Mormon, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- he quickly proved to be an aggressive leader, an
Day Saints (Mormons) was launched. It was a native eloquent preacher, and a gifted administrator.
Determined to escape further persecution, Young
in 1846–1847 led his oppressed and despoiled

324 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

Latter-Day Saints over vast rolling plains to Utah as Under the rigidly disciplined management of
they sang “Come, Come, Ye Saints.’’ Brigham Young, the community became a prosper-
ous frontier theocracy and a cooperative common-
Overcoming pioneer hardships, the Mormons wealth. Young married as many as twenty-seven
soon made the desert bloom like a new Eden by women—some of them wives in name only—and
means of ingenious and cooperative methods of irri- begot fifty-six children. The population was further
gation. The crops of 1848, threatened by hordes of swelled by thousands of immigrants from Europe,
crickets, were saved when flocks of gulls appeared, where the Mormons had established a flourishing
as if by a miracle, to gulp down the invaders. (A missionary movement.
monument to the sea gulls stands in Salt Lake City
today.) A crisis developed when the Washington gov-
ernment was unable to control the hierarchy of
Semiarid Utah grew remarkably. By the end of Brigham Young, who had been made territorial gov-
1848, some five thousand settlers had arrived, and ernor in 1850. A federal army marched in 1857
other large bands were to follow them. Many dedi- against the Mormons, who harassed its lines of sup-
cated Mormons in the 1850s actually made the thir- ply and rallied to die in their last dusty ditch. Fortu-
teen-hundred-mile trek across the plains pulling nately, the quarrel was finally adjusted without
two-wheeled carts. serious bloodshed. The Mormons later ran afoul of
the antipolygamy laws passed by Congress in 1862
Polygamy was an issue of such consequence and 1882, and their unique marital customs delayed
that it was bracketed with slavery in the statehood for Utah until 1896.
Republican national platform of 1856:
“It is both the right and the imperative duty Free Schools for a Free People
of Congress to prohibit in the Territories
those twin relics of barbarism—Polygamy Tax-supported primary schools were scarce in the
and Slavery.’’ early years of the Republic. They had the odor of
pauperism about them, since they existed chiefly
to educate the children of the poor—the so-called
ragged schools. Advocates of “free’’ public education

Problems of Public Education 325

Columbia R.

Missouri R.

Fort Hall

Fort Bridger (Fort Laramie) Winter Quarters
North Platte R.
Salt Lake City Nauvoo
Mormon Station Platte R. Council Carthage
Bluffs
Colorado R.

Beaver Moab
Parowan

Mountain Meadow Cedar City
St. George

Las Vegas Littlefield Lee's Ferry

Barstow Tuba City R io Grande Arkansas R.
Mississippi R.Red R.
San Bernardino Holbrook

Mormon trek, 1846–1847 Tempe Luna
California Trail Mesa
Mormon Corridor
Proposed state of Deseret Thatcher
Current state boundaries Pomerene

St. David

Mormon settlements
( ) Non-Mormon settlement

Fort

The Mormon World After Joseph Smith’s murder at Carthage in 1844, the Mormons abandoned their
thriving settlement at Nauvoo, Illinois (which had about twenty thousand inhabitants in 1845), and set
out for the valley of the Great Salt Lake, then still part of Mexico. When the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
(see p. 384) in 1848 brought the vast Utah Territory into the United States, the Mormons rapidly
expanded their desert colony, which they called Deseret, especially along the “Mormon Corridor’’ that
stretched from Salt Lake to southern California.

met stiff opposition. A midwestern legislator cried ing of manhood suffrage for whites in Jackson’s day.
that he wanted only this simple epitaph when he A free vote cried aloud for free education. A civilized
died: “Here lies an enemy of public education.’’ nation that was both ignorant and free, declared
Thomas Jefferson, “never was and never will be.’’
Well-to-do, conservative Americans gradually
saw the light. If they did not pay to educate “other The famed little red schoolhouse—with one
folkses brats,’’ the “brats’’ might grow up into a dan- room, one stove, one teacher, and often eight
gerous, ignorant rabble—armed with the vote. Taxa- grades—became the shrine of American democracy.
tion for education was an insurance premium that Regrettably, it was an imperfect shrine. Early free
the wealthy paid for stability and democracy. schools stayed open only a few months of the year.
Schoolteachers, most of them men in this era,
Tax-supported public education, though miser- were too often ill trained, ill tempered, and ill paid.
ably lagging in the slavery-cursed South, triumphed They frequently put more stress on “lickin’” (with
between 1825 and 1850. Grimy-handed laborers a hickory stick) than on “larnin’.’’ These knights of
wielded increased influence and demanded instruc- the blackboard often “boarded around’’ in the
tion for their children. Most important was the gain-

326 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

community, and some knew scarcely more than known as the “Schoolmaster of the Republic.’’ His
their older pupils. They usually taught only the “reading lessons,’’ used by millions of children in
“three Rs’’—“readin’, ’ritin’, and ’rithmetic.’’ To many the nineteenth century, were partly designed to pro-
rugged Americans, suspicious of “book larnin’,’’ this
was enough. Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) wrote of his
education (1859),
Reform was urgently needed. Into the breach “There were some schools so-called [in
stepped Horace Mann (1796–1859), a brilliant and Indiana], but no qualification was ever
idealistic graduate of Brown University. As secretary required of a teacher beyond ‘readin’, writin’
of the Massachusetts Board of Education, he cam- and cipherin’ to the rule of three. . . . There
paigned effectively for more and better school- was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for
houses, longer school terms, higher pay for education. Of course, when I came of age I
teachers, and an expanded curriculum. His influ- did not know much. Still, somehow, I could
ence radiated out to other states, and impressive read, write and cipher to the rule of three,
improvements were chalked up. Yet education but that was all. I have not been to school
remained an expensive luxury for many communi- since. The little advance I now have upon this
ties. As late as 1860, the nation counted only about a store of education, I have picked up from
hundred public secondary schools—and nearly a time to time under the pressure of necessity.
million white adult illiterates. Black slaves in the I was raised to work, which I continued till I
South were legally forbidden to receive instruction was twenty-two.’’
in reading or writing, and even free blacks, in the
North as well as the South, were usually excluded
from the schools.

Educational advances were aided by improved
textbooks, notably those of Noah Webster (1758–
1843), a Yale-educated Connecticut Yankee who was

The Growth of Higher Education 327

mote patriotism. Webster devoted twenty years to An editorial in the popular women’s
his famous dictionary, published in 1828, which magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1845,
helped to standardize the American language. probably written by editor Sarah Josepha
Hare (1788–1879), argued for better
Equally influential was Ohioan William H. education for women as a benefit to all of
McGuffey (1800–1873), a teacher-preacher of rare society:
power. His grade-school readers, first published in
the 1830s, sold 122 million copies in the following “The mass of mankind are very ignorant and
decades. McGuffey’s Readers hammered home last- wicked. Wherefore is this? Because the
ing lessons in morality, patriotism, and idealism. mother, whom God constituted the first
teacher of every human being, has been
Higher Goals for Higher Learning degraded by men from her high office; or,
what is the same thing, been denied those
Higher education was likewise stirring. The religious privileges of education which only can enable
zeal of the Second Great Awakening led to the plant- her to discharge her duty to her children
ing of many small, denominational, liberal arts col- with discretion and effect. . . . If half the
leges, chiefly in the South and West. Too often they effort and expense had been directed to
were academically anemic, established more to sat- enlighten and improve the minds of females
isfy local pride than genuinely to advance the cause which have been lavished on the other sex,
of learning. Like their more venerable, ivy-draped we should now have a very different state of
brethren, the new colleges offered a narrow, society.’’
tradition-bound curriculum of Latin, Greek, mathe-
matics, and moral philosophy. On new and old cam- part to the dedicated work of Emma Willard
puses alike, there was little intellectual vitality and (1787–1870). In 1821 she established the Troy (New
much boredom. York) Female Seminary. Oberlin College, in Ohio,
jolted traditionalists in 1837 when it opened its
The first state-supported universities sprang up doors to women as well as men. (Oberlin had already
in the South, beginning with North Carolina in 1795. created shock waves by admitting black students.) In
Federal land grants nourished the growth of state the same year, Mary Lyon established an outstand-
institutions of higher learning. Conspicuous among ing women’s school, Mount Holyoke Seminary (later
the early group was the University of Virginia, College), in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Mossback
founded in 1819. It was largely the brainchild of critics scoffed that “they’ll be educatin’ cows next.’’
Thomas Jefferson, who designed its beautiful archi-
tecture and who at times watched its construction Adults who craved more learning satisfied their
through a telescope from his hilltop home. He dedi- thirst for knowledge at private subscription libraries
cated the university to freedom from religious or or, increasingly, at tax-supported libraries. House-
political shackles, and modern languages and the to-house peddlers also did a lush business in feed-
sciences received unusual emphasis. ing the public appetite for culture. Traveling
lecturers helped to carry learning to the masses
Women’s higher education was frowned upon through the lyceum lecture associations, which
in the early decades of the nineteenth century. A numbered about three thousand by 1835. The
woman’s place was believed to be in the home, and lyceums provided platforms for speakers in such
training in needlecraft seemed more important than areas as science, literature, and moral philosophy.
training in algebra. In an era when the clinging-vine Talented talkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson jour-
bride was the ideal, coeducation was regarded as friv- neyed thousands of miles on the lyceum circuits,
olous. Prejudices also prevailed that too much learn- casting their pearls of civilization before apprecia-
ing injured the feminine brain, undermined health, tive audiences.
and rendered a young lady unfit for marriage. The
teachers of Susan B. Anthony, the future feminist,
refused to instruct her in long division.

Women’s schools at the secondary level began to
attain some respectability in the 1820s, thanks in

328 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

Magazines flourished in the pre–Civil War years, cranks. But most were intelligent, inspired idealists,
but most of them withered after a short life. The usually touched by the fire of evangelical religion
North American Review, founded in 1815, was the then licking through the pews and pulpits of Ameri-
long-lived leader of the intellectuals. Godey’s Lady’s can churches. The optimistic promises of the Sec-
Book, founded in 1830, survived until 1898 and ond Great Awakening inspired countless souls to do
attained the enormous circulation (for those days) battle against earthly evils. These modern idealists
of 150,000. It was devoured devotedly by millions of dreamed anew the old Puritan vision of a perfected
women, many of whom read the dog-eared copies society: free from cruelty, war, intoxicating drink,
of their relatives and friends. discrimination, and—ultimately—slavery. Women
were particularly prominent in these reform cru-
An Age of Reform sades, especially in their own struggle for suffrage.
For many middle-class women, the reform cam-
As the young Republic grew, reform campaigns of all paigns provided a unique opportunity to escape the
types flourished in sometimes bewildering abun- confines of the home and enter the arena of public
dance. Some reformers were simply crackbrained affairs.

In part the practical, activist Christianity of
these reformers resulted from their desire to reaf-
firm traditional values as they plunged ever further
into a world disrupted and transformed by the tur-
bulent forces of a market economy. Mainly middle-
class descendants of pioneer farmers, they were
often blissfully unaware that they were witnessing
the dawn of the industrial era, which posed
unprecedented problems and called for novel ideas.
They either ignored the factory workers, for exam-
ple, or blamed their problems on bad habits. With
naive single-mindedness, reformers sometimes
applied conventional virtue to refurbishing an older
order—while events hurtled them headlong into
the new.

Imprisonment for debt continued to be a night-
mare, though its extent has been exaggerated. As
late as 1830, hundreds of penniless people were lan-
guishing in filthy holes, sometimes for owing less
than one dollar. The poorer working classes were
especially hard hit by this merciless practice. But as
the embattled laborer won the ballot and asserted
himself, state legislatures gradually abolished
debtors’ prisons.

Criminal codes in the states were likewise being
softened, in accord with more enlightened Euro-
pean practices. The number of capital offenses was
being reduced, and brutal punishments, such as
whipping and branding, were being slowly elimi-
nated. A refreshing idea was taking hold that prisons
should reform as well as punish—hence “reformato-
ries,’’ “houses of correction,’’ and “penitentiaries’’
(for penance).

Sufferers from so-called insanity were still being
treated with incredible cruelty. The medieval con-
cept had been that the mentally deranged were

In presenting her case to the Massachusetts Social Reform 329
legislature for more humane treatment for
the mentally ill, Dorothea Dix (1802–1887) cursed with unclean spirits; the nineteenth-century
quoted from the notebook she carried with idea was that they were willfully perverse and
her as she traveled around the state: depraved—to be treated only as beasts. Many
crazed persons were chained in jails or poor-houses
“Lincoln. A woman in a cage. Medford. One with sane people.
idiotic subject chained, and one in a close
stall for seventeen years. Pepperell. One often Into this dismal picture stepped a formidable
doubly chained, hand and foot; another vio- New England teacher-author, Dorothea Dix
lent; several peaceable now. . . . Dedham. The (1802–1887). A physically frail woman afflicted with
insane disadvantageously placed in the jail. In persistent lung trouble, she possessed infinite com-
the almshouse, two females in stalls . . . ; lie passion and willpower. She traveled some sixty
in wooden bunks filled with straw; always thousand miles in eight years and assembled her
shut up. One of these subjects is supposed damning reports on insanity and asylums from first-
curable. The overseers of the poor have hand observations. Though she never raised her
declined giving her a trial at the hospital, as voice, Dix’s message was loud and clear. Her classic
I was informed, on account of expense.” petition of 1843 to the Massachusetts legislature,
describing cells so foul that visitors were driven
back by the stench, turned legislative stomachs
and hearts. Her persistent prodding resulted in
improved conditions and in a gain for the concept
that the demented were not willfully perverse but
mentally ill.

Agitation for peace also gained momentum in
the pre–Civil War years. In 1828 the American Peace
Society was formed, with a ringing declaration of
war on war. A leading spirit was William Ladd, who
orated when his legs were so badly ulcerated that he
had to sit on a stool. His ideas were finally to bear
some fruit in the international organizations for
collective security of the twentieth century. The
American peace crusade, linked with a European
counterpart, was making promising progress by
midcentury, but it was set back by the bloodshed of
the Crimean War in Europe and the Civil War in
America.

Demon Rum—The “Old Deluder’’

The ever-present drink problem attracted dedicated
reformers. Custom, combined with a hard and
monotonous life, led to the excessive drinking of
hard liquor, even among women, clergymen, and
members of Congress. Weddings and funerals all too
often became disgraceful brawls, and occasionally a
drunken mourner would fall into the open grave
with the corpse. Heavy drinking decreased the
efficiency of labor, and poorly safeguarded machin-
ery operated under the influence of alcohol
increased the danger of accidents occurring at work.
Drunkenness also fouled the sanctity of the family,

330 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

threatening the spiritual welfare—and physical The most popular anti-alcohol tract of the era
safety—of women and children. was T. S. Arthur’s melodramatic novel, Ten Nights
in a Barroom and What I Saw There (1854). It
After earlier and feebler efforts, the American described in shocking detail how a once-happy vil-
Temperance Society was formed at Boston in 1826. lage was ruined by Sam Slade’s tavern. The book was
Within a few years, about a thousand local groups second only to Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a best-
sprang into existence. They implored drinkers to seller in the 1850s, and it enjoyed a highly successful
sign the temperance pledge and organized chil- run on the stage. Its touching theme song began
dren’s clubs, known as the “Cold Water Army.’’ with the words of a little girl:
Temperance crusaders also made effective use of
pictures, pamphlets, and lurid lecturers, some of Father, dear father, come home with me now,
whom were reformed drunkards. A popular temper- The clock in the belfry strikes one.
ance song ran,
Early foes of Demon Drink adopted two major
We’ve done with our days of carousing, lines of attack. One was to stiffen the individual’s
Our nights, too, of frolicsome glee; will to resist the wiles of the little brown jug. The
For now with our sober minds choosing, moderate reformers thus stressed “temperance’’
We’ve pledged ourselves never to spree. rather than “teetotalism,’’ or the total elimination of
intoxicants. But less patient zealots came to believe
that temptation should be removed by legislation.
Prominent among this group was Neal S. Dow of
Maine, a blue-nosed reformer who, as a mayor of
Portland and an employer of labor, had often wit-
nessed the debauching effect of alcohol—to say
nothing of the cost to his pocketbook of work time
lost because of drunken employees.

Dow—the “Father of Prohibition’’—sponsored
the so-called Maine Law of 1851. This drastic new
statute, hailed as “the law of Heaven Americanized,’’
prohibited the manufacture and sale of intoxicating
liquor. Other states in the North followed Maine’s
example, and by 1857 about a dozen had passed
various prohibitory laws. But these figures are
deceptive, for within a decade some of the statutes
were repealed or declared unconstitutional, if not
openly flouted.

It was clearly impossible to legislate thirst for
alcohol out of existence, especially in localities
where public sentiment was hostile. Yet on the eve
of the Civil War, the prohibitionists had registered
inspiring gains. There was much less drinking
among women than earlier in the century and prob-
ably much less per capita consumption of hard
liquor.

Women in Revolt

When the nineteenth century opened, it was still a
man’s world, both in America and in Europe. A wife
was supposed to immerse herself in her home and
subordinate herself to her lord and master (her hus-

The Feminist Movement Takes Form 331

band). Like black slaves, she could not vote; like reward for human endeavor. Neither foul eggs nor
black slaves, she could be legally beaten by her over- foul words, when hurled by disapproving men, could
lord “with a reasonable instrument.’’ When she mar- halt women heartened by these doctrines.
ried, she could not retain title to her property; it
passed to her husband. The women’s rights movement was mothered by
some arresting characters. Prominent among them
Yet American women, though legally regarded was Lucretia Mott, a sprightly Quaker whose ire had
as perpetual minors, fared better than their Euro- been aroused when she and her fellow female dele-
pean cousins. French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville gates to the London antislavery convention of 1840
noted that in his native France, rape was punished were not recognized. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a
only lightly, whereas in America it was one of the mother of seven who had insisted on leaving “obey’’
few crimes punishable by death. out of her marriage ceremony, shocked fellow femi-
nists by going so far as to advocate suffrage for
Despite these relative advantages, women were women. Quaker-reared Susan B. Anthony, a militant
still “the submerged sex’’ in America in the early lecturer for women’s rights, fearlessly exposed herself
part of the century. But as the decades unfolded, to rotten garbage and vulgar epithets. She became
women increasingly surfaced to breathe the air such a conspicuous advocate of female rights that
of freedom and self-determination. In contrast to progressive women everywhere were called “Suzy Bs.’’
women in colonial times, many women now
avoided marriage altogether—about 10 percent of Other feminists challenged the man’s world. Dr.
adult women remained “spinsters’’ at the time of Elizabeth Blackwell, a pioneer in a previously forbid-
the Civil War. den profession for women, was the first female grad-
uate of a medical college. Precocious Margaret Fuller
Gender differences were strongly emphasized edited a transcendentalist journal, The Dial, and
in nineteenth-century America—largely because
the burgeoning market economy was increasingly
separating women and men into sharply distinct
economic roles. Women were thought to be physi-
cally and emotionally weak, but also artistic and
refined. Endowed with finely tuned moral sensibili-
ties, they were the keepers of society’s conscience,
with special responsibility to teach the young how
to be good and productive citizens of the Republic.
Men were considered strong but crude, always in
danger of slipping into some savage or beastly way
of life if not guided by the gentle hands of their lov-
ing ladies.

The home was a woman’s special sphere, the
centerpiece of the “cult of domesticity.” Even
reformers like Catharine Beecher, who urged her
sisters to seek employment as teachers, endlessly
celebrated the role of the good homemaker. But
some women increasingly felt that the glorified
sanctuary of the home was in fact a gilded cage.
They yearned to tear down the bars that separated
the private world of women from the public world
of men.

Clamorous female reformers—most of them
white and well-to-do—began to gather strength as
the century neared its halfway point. Most were
broad-gauge battlers; while demanding rights for
women, they joined in the general reform movement
of the age, fighting for temperance and the abolition
of slavery. Like men, they had been touched by the
evangelical spirit that offered the promise of earthly

332 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

When early feminist Lucy Stone (1818–1893) “street sweeping’’ female attire by donning a semi-
married fellow abolitionist Henry B. Black- masculine short skirt with Turkish trousers—
well (1825–1909) in West Brookfield, “bloomers,’’ they were called—amid much bawdy
Massachusetts, in 1855, they added the ridicule about “Bloomerism’’ and “loose habits.’’ A
following vow to their nuptial ceremony: jeering male rhyme of the times jabbed,
“While acknowledging our mutual affection by
publicly assuming the relation of husband Gibbey, gibbey gab
and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a The women had a confab
great principle, we deem it a duty to declare And demanded the rights
that this act on our part implies no . . . To wear the tights
promise of voluntary obedience to such of the Gibbey, gibbey gab.
present laws of marriage, as refuse to recog-
nize the wife as an independent, rational Fighting feminists met at Seneca Falls, New
being, while they confer upon the husband York, in a memorable Woman’s Rights Convention
an injurious and unnatural superiority.” (1848). The defiant Stanton read a “Declaration of
Sentiments,’’ which in the spirit of the Declaration
took part in the struggle to bring unity and republi- of Independence declared that “all men and women
can government to Italy. She died in a shipwreck off are created equal.’’ One resolution formally
New York’s Fire Island while returning to the United demanded the ballot for females. Amid scorn and
States in 1850. The talented Grimké sisters, Sarah denunciation from press and pulpit, the Seneca
and Angelina, championed antislavery. Lucy Stone Falls meeting launched the modern women’s rights
retained her maiden name after marriage—hence movement.
the latter-day “Lucy Stoners,’’ who follow her exam-
ple. Amelia Bloomer revolted against the current The crusade for women’s rights was eclipsed by
the campaign against slavery in the decade before
the Civil War. Still, any white male, even an idiot,
over the age of twenty-one could vote, while no
woman could. Yet women were gradually being
admitted to colleges, and some states, beginning
with Mississippi in 1839, were even permitting
wives to own property after marriage.

Utopian Communities 333

Wilderness Utopias ticed free love (“complex marriage’’), birth control
(through “male continence,” or coitus reservatus),
Bolstered by the utopian spirit of the age, various and the eugenic selection of parents to produce
reformers, ranging from the high-minded to the superior offspring. This curious enterprise flour-
“lunatic fringe,’’ set up more than forty commu- ished for more than thirty years, largely because its
nities of a cooperative, communistic, or “commu- artisans made superior steel traps and Oneida Com-
nitarian’’ nature. Seeking human betterment, a munity (silver) Plate (see “Makers of America: The
wealthy and idealistic Scottish textile manufacturer, Oneida Community,” pp. 336–337).
Robert Owen, founded in 1825 a communal society
of about a thousand people at New Harmony, Indi- Various communistic experiments, mostly
ana. Little harmony prevailed in the colony, which, small in scale, have been attempted since
in addition to hard-working visionaries, attracted a Jamestown. But in competition with democratic
sprinkling of radicals, work-shy theorists, and out- free enterprise and free land, virtually all of them
right scoundrels. The colony sank in a morass of sooner or later failed or changed their methods.
contradiction and confusion. Among the longest-lived sects were the Shakers. Led
by Mother Ann Lee, they began in the 1770s to set
Brook Farm in Massachusetts, comprising two up the first of a score or so of religious communities.
hundred acres of grudging soil, was started in 1841 The Shakers attained a membership of about six
with the brotherly and sisterly cooperation of about thousand in 1840, but since their monastic customs
twenty intellectuals committed to the philosophy of prohibited both marriage and sexual relations, they
transcendentalism (see p. 340). They prospered rea- were virtually extinct by 1940.
sonably well until 1846, when they lost by fire a large
new communal building shortly before its comple- The Dawn of Scientific Achievement
tion. The whole venture in “plain living and high
thinking’’ then collapsed in debt. The Brook Farm Early Americans, confronted with pioneering prob-
experiment inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic lems, were more interested in practical gadgets than
novel The Blithedale Romance (1852), whose main in pure science. Jefferson, for example, was a gifted
character was modeled on the feminist writer Mar- amateur inventor who won a gold medal for a new
garet Fuller. type of plow. Noteworthy also were the writings of
the mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch (1733–1838)
A more radical experiment was the Oneida
Community, founded in New York in 1848. It prac-

334 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

on practical navigation and of the oceanographer insisted on original research and deplored the
Matthew F. Maury (1806–1873) on ocean winds and reigning overemphasis on memory work. Professor
currents. These writers promoted safety, speed, and Asa Gray (1810–1888) of Harvard College, the
economy. But as far as basic science was concerned, Columbus of American botany, published over 350
Americans were best known for borrowing and books, monographs, and papers. His textbooks set
adapting the findings of Europeans. new standards for clarity and interest.

Yet the Republic was not without scientific tal- Lovers of American bird lore owed much to
ent. The most influential American scientist of the the French-descended naturalist John J. Audubon
first half of the nineteenth century was Professor (1785–1851), who painted wild fowl in their natural
Benjamin Silliman (1779–1864), a pioneer chemist habitat. His magnificently illustrated Birds of Amer-
and geologist who taught and wrote brilliantly at ica attained considerable popularity. The Audubon
Yale College for more than fifty years. Professor Society for the protection of birds was named after
Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), a distinguished French- him, although as a young man he shot much feath-
Swiss immigrant, served for a quarter of a century at ered game for sport.
Harvard College. A path-breaking student of biology
who sometimes carried snakes in his pockets, he Medicine in America, despite a steady growth of
medical schools, was still primitive by modern stan-

Science and Health 335

An outbreak of cholera occurred in New York
City in 1832, and a wealthy businessman,
Philip Hone (1780–1851), wrote in his diary
for the Fourth of July,

“The alarm about the cholera has prevented
all the usual jollification under the public
authority. . . . The Board of Health reports
to-day twenty new cases and eleven deaths
since noon yesterday. The disease is here in
all its violence and will increase. God grant
that its ravages may be confined, and its visit
short.’’

dards. Bleeding remained a common cure, and a and dentists, working independently, successfully
curse as well. Smallpox plagues were still dreaded, employed laughing gas and ether as anesthetics.
and the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadel-
phia took several thousand lives. “Bring out your Artistic Achievements
dead!’’ was the daily cry of the corpse-wagon drivers.
Architecturally, America contributed little of note
People everywhere complained of ill health— in the first half of the century. The rustic Republic,
malaria, the “rheumatics,’’ the “miseries,’’ and the still under pressure to erect shelters in haste, was
chills. Illness often resulted from improper diet, continuing to imitate European models. Public
hurried eating, perspiring and cooling off too buildings and other important structures followed
rapidly, and ignorance of germs and sanitation. “We Greek and Roman lines, which seemed curiously
was sick every fall, regular,’’ wrote the mother of out of place in a wilderness setting. A remarkable
future president James Garfield. Life expectancy Greek revival came between 1820 and 1850, partly
was still dismayingly short—about forty years for a
white person born in 1850, and less for blacks. The
suffering from decayed or ulcerated teeth was enor-
mous; tooth extraction was often practiced by the
muscular village blacksmith.

Self-prescribed patent medicines were common
(one dose for people, two for horses) and included
Robertson’s Infallible Worm Destroying Lozenges.
Fad diets proved popular, including the whole-
wheat bread and crackers regimen of Sylvester Gra-
ham. Among home remedies was the rubbing of
tumors with dead toads. The use of medicine by the
regular doctors was often harmful, and Dr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes declared in 1860 that if the medi-
cines, as then employed, were thrown into the sea,
humans would be better off and the fish worse off.

Victims of surgical operations were ordinarily
tied down, often after a stiff drink of whiskey. The
surgeon then sawed or cut with breakneck speed,
undeterred by the piercing shrieks of the patient.
A priceless boon for medical progress came in
the early 1840s, when several American doctors

The Oneida Community nity’s sense of moral propriety. Indicted for adultery
in 1847, Noyes led his followers to Oneida, in the sup-
John Humphrey Noyes (1811–1886), the founder posedly more tolerant region of New York’s Burned-
of the Oneida Community, repudiated the old Over District, the following year. Several affiliated
Puritan doctrines that God was vengeful and that communities were also established, the most impor-
sinful mankind was doomed to dwell in a vale of tant of which was at Wallingford, Connecticut.
tears. Noyes believed in a benign deity, in the sweet-
ness of human nature, and in the possibility of a The Oneidans struggled in New York until they
perfect Christian community on earth. “The more were joined in the 1850s by Sewell Newhouse, a
we get acquainted with God,” he declared, “the clever inventor of steel animal traps. The manufac-
more we shall find it our special duty to be happy.” ture of Newhouse’s traps, and other products such
as sewing silk and various types of bags, put the
That sunny thought was shared by many early- Oneida Community on a sound financial footing. By
nineteenth-century American utopians (a word the 1860s Oneida was a flourishing commonwealth
derived from Greek that slyly combines the mean- of some three hundred people. Men and women
ings of “a good place” and “no such place”). But shared equally in all the community’s tasks, from
Noyes added some wrinkles of his own. The key to field to factory to kitchen. The members lived under
happiness, he taught, was the suppression of self- one roof in Mansion House, a sprawling building
ishness. True Christians should possess no private that boasted central heating, a well-stocked library,
property—nor should they indulge in exclusive and a common dining hall, as well as the “Big Hall”
emotional relationships, which bred jealousy, quar- where members gathered nightly for prayer and
reling, and covetousness. Material things and sexual entertainment. Children at the age of three were
partners alike, Noyes preached, should be shared. removed from direct parental care and raised com-
Marriage should not be monogamous. Instead all munally in the Children’s House until the age of thir-
members of the community should be free to love teen or fourteen, when they took up jobs in the
one another in “complex marriage.” Noyes called his community’s industries. They imbibed their reli-
system “Bible Communism.” gious doctrines with their school lessons:

Tall and slender, with piercing blue eyes and I-spirit
reddish hair, the charismatic Noyes began voicing With me never shall stay,
these ideas in his hometown of Putney, Vermont, in
the 1830s. He soon attracted a group of followers We-spirit
who called themselves the Putney Association, a Makes us happy and gay.
kind of extended family whose members farmed
five hundred acres by day and sang and prayed Oneida’s apparent success fed the utopian
together in the evenings. They sustained their spiri- dreams of others, and for a time it became a great
tual intensity by submitting to “Mutual Criticism,” tourist attraction. Visitors from as far away as
in which the person being criticized would sit in Europe came to picnic on the shady lawns, specu-
silence while other members frankly discussed his lating on the sexual secrets that Mansion House
or her faults and merits. “I was, metaphorically, guarded, while their hosts fed them strawberries
stood upon my head and allowed to drain till all the and cream and entertained them with music.
self-righteousness had dripped out of me,” one man
wrote of his experience with Mutual Criticism. But eventually the same problems that had
driven Noyes and his band from Vermont began to
The Putney Association also indulged in sexual shadow their lives at Oneida. Their New York neigh-
practices that outraged the surrounding commu- bors grew increasingly horrified at the Oneidans’

336

licentious sexual practices, including the selective dans abandoned communism altogether and
breeding program by which the community became a joint-stock company specializing in the
matched mates and gave permission—or orders— manufacture of silver tableware. Led by Noyes’s son
to procreate, without regard to the niceties of matri- Pierrepont, Oneida Community, Ltd., grew into the
mony. “It was somewhat startling to me,” one world’s leading manufacturer of stainless steel
straight-laced visitor commented, “to hear Miss knives, forks, and spoons, with annual sales by the
࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝࿝ speak about her baby.” 1990s of some half a billion dollars.

Yielding to their neighbors’ criticisms, the Onei- As for Mansion House, it still stands in central
dans gave up complex marriage in 1879. Soon other New York, but it now serves as a museum and pri-
“communistic” practices withered away as well. The vate residence. The “Big Hall” is the site of Oneida,
communal dining hall became a restaurant, where Ltd.’s annual shareholders’ meetings. Ironically,
meals were bought with money, something many what grew from Noyes’s religious vision was not
Oneidans had never used before. In 1880 the Onei- utopia but a mighty capitalist corporation.

337

338 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

stimulated by the heroic efforts of the Greeks in the Painting, like the theater, also suffered from the
1820s to wrest independence from the “terrible Puritan prejudice that art was a sinful waste of
Turk.’’ About midcentury strong interest developed time—and often obscene. John Adams boasted that
in a revival of Gothic forms, with their emphasis on “he would not give a sixpence for a bust of Phidias or
pointed arches and large windows. a painting by Raphael.’’ When Edward Everett, the
eminent Boston scholar and orator, placed a statue
Talented Thomas Jefferson, architect of revolu- of Apollo in his home, he had its naked limbs draped.
tion, was probably the ablest American architect of
his generation. He brought a classical design to his Competent painters nevertheless emerged.
Virginia hilltop home, Monticello—perhaps the Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828), a spendthrift Rhode
most stately mansion in the nation. The quadrangle Islander and one of the most gifted of the early group,
of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, wielded his brush in Britain in competition with the
another of Jefferson’s creations, remains one of the best artists. He produced several portraits of Wash-
finest examples of classical architecture in America. ington, all of them somewhat idealized and dehu-
manized. Truth to tell, by the time he posed for Stuart,
The art of painting continued to be handi- the famous general had lost his natural teeth and
capped. It suffered from the dollar-grabbing of a raw some of the original shape of his face. Charles Willson
civilization; from the hustle, bustle, and absence of Peale (1741–1827), a Marylander, painted some sixty
leisure; from the lack of a wealthy class to sit for por- portraits of Washington, who patiently sat for about
traits—and then pay for them. Some of the earliest fourteen of them. John Trumbull (1756–1843), who
painters were forced to go to England, where they had fought in the Revolutionary War, recaptured its
found both training and patrons. America exported scenes and spirit on scores of striking canvases.
artists and imported art.

Landmarks in Arts and Literature 339

During the nationalistic upsurge after the War of A genuinely American literature received a
1812, American painters of portraits turned increas- strong boost from the wave of nationalism that fol-
ingly from human landscapes to romantic mirror- lowed the War of Independence and especially the
ings of local landscapes. The Hudson River school War of 1812. By 1820 the older seaboard areas were
excelled in this type of art. At the same time, portrait sufficiently removed from the survival mentality of
painters gradually encountered some unwelcome tree-chopping and butter-churning so that litera-
competition from the invention of a crude photo- ture could be supported as a profession. The
graph known as the daguerreotype, perfected about Knickerbocker Group in New York blazed brilliantly
1839 by a Frenchman, Louis Daguerre. across the literary heavens, thus enabling America
for the first time to boast of a literature to match its
Music was slowly shaking off the restraints of magnificent landscapes.
colonial days, when the prim Puritans had frowned
upon nonreligious singing. Rhythmic and nostalgic Washington Irving (1783–1859), born in New
“darky’’ tunes, popularized by whites, were becom- York City, was the first American to win international
ing immense hits by midcentury. Special favorites recognition as a literary figure. Steeped in the tradi-
were the uniquely American minstrel shows, featur- tions of New Netherland, he published in 1809 his
ing white actors with blackened faces. “Dixie,’’ later Knickerbocker’s History of New York, with its amusing
adopted by the Confederates as their battle hymn, caricatures of the Dutch. When the family business
was written in 1859, ironically in New York City by an failed, Irving was forced to turn to the goose-feather
Ohioan. The most famous black songs, also ironi- pen. In 1819–1820 he published The Sketch Book,
cally, came from a white Pennsylvanian, Stephen C. which brought him immediate fame at home and
Foster (1826–1864). His one excursion into the South abroad. Combining a pleasing style with delicate
occurred in 1852, after he had published “Old Folks charm and quiet humor, he used English as well as
at Home.’’ Foster made a valuable contribution to American themes and included such immortal
American folk music by capturing the plaintive spirit Dutch-American tales as “Rip Van Winkle’’ and “The
of the slaves. An odd and pathetic figure, he finally Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’’ Europe was amazed to find
lost both his art and his popularity and died in a at last an American with a feather in his hand, not in
charity ward after drowning his sorrows in drink. his hair. Later turning to Spanish locales and biogra-
phy, Irving did much to interpret America to Europe
The Blossoming and Europe to America. He was, said the Englishman
of a National Literature William Thackeray, “the first ambassador whom the
New World of letters sent to the Old.’’
“Who reads an American book?’’ sneered a British
critic of 1820. The painful truth was that the nation’s James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) was the
rough-hewn, pioneering civilization gave little first American novelist, as Washington Irving was
encouragement to “polite’’ literature. Much of the the first general writer, to gain world fame and to
reading matter was imported or plagiarized from make New World themes respectable. Marrying into
Britain. a wealthy family, he settled down on the frontier of
New York. Reading one day to his wife from an
Busy conquering a continent, the Americans insipid English novel, Cooper remarked in disgust
poured most of their creative efforts into practical that he could write a better book himself. His wife
outlets. Praiseworthy were political essays, like The challenged him to do so—and he did.
Federalist of Hamilton, Jay, and Madison; pamphlets,
like Tom Paine’s Common Sense; and political ora- After an initial failure, Cooper launched out
tions, like the masterpieces of Daniel Webster. In the upon an illustrious career in 1821 with his second
category of nonreligious books published before novel, The Spy—an absorbing tale of the American
1820, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (1818) is Revolution. His stories of the sea were meritorious
one of the few that achieved genuine distinction. His and popular, but his fame rests most enduringly
narrative is a classic in its simplicity, clarity, and on the Leatherstocking Tales. A deadeye rifleman
inspirational quality. Even so, it records only a frag- named Natty Bumppo, one of nature’s noblemen,
ment of “Old Ben’s’’ long, fruitful, and amorous life. meets with Indians in stirring adventures like The
Last of the Mohicans. James Fenimore Cooper’s
novels had a wide sale among Europeans, some of
whom came to think of all American people as

340 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

born with tomahawk in hand. Actually Cooper was Trumpeters of Transcendentalism
exploring the viability and destiny of America’s
republican experiment, by contrasting the unde- A golden age in American literature dawned in the
filed values of “natural men,’’ children of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, when an
wooded wilderness, with the artificiality of modern amazing outburst shook New England. One of the
civilization. mainsprings of this literary flowering was tran-
scendentalism, especially around Boston, which
A third member of the Knickerbocker group in preened itself as “the Athens of America.’’
New York was the belated Puritan William Cullen
Bryant (1794–1878), transplanted from Massachu- The transcendentalist movement of the 1830s
setts. At age sixteen he wrote the meditative and resulted in part from a liberalizing of the straight-
melancholy “Thanatopsis’’ (published in 1817), jacket Puritan theology. It also owed much to for-
which was one of the first high-quality poems pro- eign influences, including the German romantic
duced in the United States. Critics could hardly philosophers and the religions of Asia. The tran-
believe that it had been written on “this side of the scendentalists rejected the prevailing theory,
water.’’ Although Bryant continued with poetry, he derived from John Locke, that all knowledge comes
was forced to make his living by editing the influen- to the mind through the senses. Truth, rather, “tran-
tial New York Evening Post. For over fifty years, he set scends’’ the senses: it cannot be found by observa-
a model for journalism that was dignified, liberal, tion alone. Every person possesses an inner light
and conscientious.

Leading Transcendentalists 341

In 1849 Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) Hailed as both a poet and a philosopher,
published On the Duty of Civil Emerson was not of the highest rank as either.
Disobedience, asserting, He was more influential as a practical philosopher
and through his fresh and vibrant essays en-
“I heartily accept the motto, ‘That riched countless thousands of humdrum lives.
government is best which governs least’; and Catching the individualistic mood of the Republic,
I should like to see it acted up to more he stressed self-reliance, self-improvement, self-
rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it confidence, optimism, and freedom. The secret of
finally amounts to this, which also I believe— Emerson’s popularity lay largely in the fact that his
‘That government is best which governs not ideals reflected those of an expanding America. By
at all’; and when men are prepared for it, the 1850s he was an outspoken critic of slavery, and
that will be the kind of government which he ardently supported the Union cause in the Civil
they will have. Government is at best an War.
expedient; but most governments are
usually, and all governments are sometimes, Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was Emer-
inexpedient.’’ son’s close associate—a poet, a mystic, a transcen-
dentalist, and a nonconformist. Condemning a
that can illuminate the highest truth and put him or government that supported slavery, he refused to
her in direct touch with God, or the “Oversoul.’’ pay his Massachusetts poll tax and was jailed for a
night.* A gifted prose writer, he is well known for
These mystical doctrines of transcendentalism Walden: Or Life in the Woods (1854). The book is a
defied precise definition, but they underlay con- record of Thoreau’s two years of simple existence in
crete beliefs. Foremost was a stiff-backed individu- a hut that he built on the edge of Walden Pond, near
alism in matters religious as well as social. Closely Concord, Massachusetts. A stiff-necked individual-
associated was a commitment to self-reliance, self- ist, he believed that he should reduce his bodily
culture, and self-discipline. These traits naturally wants so as to gain time for a pursuit of truth
bred hostility to authority and to formal institutions through study and meditation. Thoreau’s Walden
of any kind, as well as to all conventional wisdom. and his essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience exer-
Finally came exaltation of the dignity of the individ- cised a strong influence in furthering idealistic
ual, whether black or white—the mainspring of a thought, both in America and abroad. His writings
whole array of humanitarian reforms. later encouraged Mahatma Gandhi to resist British
rule in India and, still later, inspired the develop-
Best known of the transcendentalists was ment of American civil rights leader Martin Luther
Boston-born Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). King, Jr.’s thinking about nonviolence.
Tall, slender, and intensely blue-eyed, he mirrored
serenity in his noble features. Trained as a Unitarian Bold, brassy, and swaggering was the open-
minister, he early forsook his pulpit and ultimately collared figure of Brooklyn’s Walt Whitman
reached a wider audience by pen and platform. He (1819–1892). In his famous collection of poems
was a never-failing favorite as a lyceum lecturer and Leaves of Grass (1855), he gave free rein to his gush-
for twenty years took a western tour every winter. ing genius with what he called a “barbaric yawp.’’
Perhaps his most thrilling public effort was a Phi Highly romantic, emotional, and unconventional,
Beta Kappa address, “The American Scholar,’’ deliv- he dispensed with titles, stanzas, rhymes, and at
ered at Harvard College in 1837. This brilliant times even regular meter. He handled sex with
appeal was an intellectual Declaration of Independ- shocking frankness, although he laundered his
ence, for it urged American writers to throw off verses in later editions, and his book was banned in
European traditions and delve into the riches of Boston.
their own backyards.
*The story (probably apocryphal) is that Emerson visited
Thoreau at the jail and asked, “Why are you here?’’ The reply
came, “Why are you not here?’’

342 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was at first a financial
failure. The only three enthusiastic reviews that it
received were written by the author himself—
anonymously. But in time the once-withered Leaves
of Grass, revived and honored, won for Whitman an
enormous following in both America and Europe.
His fame increased immensely among “Whitmani-
acs’’ after his death.

Leaves of Grass gained for Whitman the infor-
mal title “Poet Laureate of Democracy.’’ Singing
with transcendental abandon of his love for the
masses, he caught the exuberant enthusiasm of
an expanding America that had turned its back on
the Old World:

All the Past we leave behind;
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world,

varied world;
Fresh and strong the world we seize—world

of labor and the march—
Pioneers! O Pioneers!

Here at last was the native art for which critics had
been crying.

In 1876 the London Saturday Review referred Glowing Literary Lights
to Walt Whitman (1819–1892) as the author
of a volume of Certain other literary giants were not actively asso-
ciated with the transcendentalist movement,
“so-called poems which were chiefly though not completely immune to its influences.
remarkable for their absurd extravagances Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–
and shameless obscenity, and who has since, 1882), who for many years taught modern lan-
we are glad to say, been little heard of guages at Harvard College, was one of the most pop-
among decent people.’’ ular poets ever produced in America. Handsome
and urbane, he lived a generally serene life, except
In 1888 Whitman wrote, for the tragic deaths of two wives, the second of
whom perished before his eyes when her dress
“I had my choice when I commenced. I bid caught fire. Writing for the genteel classes, he was
neither for soft eulogies, big money returns, adopted by the less cultured masses. His wide
nor the approbation of existing schools and knowledge of European literature supplied him with
conventions. . . . I have had my say entirely
my own way, and put it unerringly on record
—the value thereof to be decided by time.’’

Prominent Writers 343

many themes, but some of his most admired Undeterred by insults and the stoning of mobs,
poems—“Evangeline,’’ “The Song of Hiawatha,’’ and Whittier helped arouse a calloused America on the
“The Courtship of Miles Standish’’—were based on slavery issue. A supreme conscience rather than a
American traditions. Immensely popular in Europe, sterling poet or intellect, Whittier was one of the
Longfellow was the only American ever to be hon- moving forces of his generation, whether moral,
ored with a bust in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster humanitarian, or spiritual. Gentle and lovable, he
Abbey. was preeminently the poet of human freedom.

A fighting Quaker, John Greenleaf Whittier Many-sided Professor James Russell Lowell
(1807–1892), with piercing dark eyes and swarthy (1819–1891), who succeeded Professor Longfellow
complexion, was the uncrowned poet laureate of at Harvard, ranks as one of America’s better poets.
the antislavery crusade. Less talented as a writer He was also a distinguished essayist, literary critic,
than Longfellow, he was vastly more important in editor, and diplomat—a diffusion of talents that
influencing social action. His poems cried aloud hampered his poetical output. Lowell is remem-
against inhumanity, injustice, and intolerance, bered as a political satirist in his Biglow Papers,
against especially those of 1846 dealing with the Mexican
War. Written partly as poetry in the Yankee dialect,
The outworn rite, the old abuse, the Papers condemned in blistering terms the
The pious fraud transparent grown. alleged slavery-expansion designs of the Polk
administration.

The scholarly Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1809–1894), who taught anatomy with a sparkle at
Harvard Medical School, was a prominent poet,
essayist, novelist, lecturer, and wit. A nonconformist
and a fascinating conversationalist, he shone
among a group of literary lights who regarded
Boston as “the hub of the universe.’’ His poem “The
Last Leaf,’’ in honor of the last “white Indian’’ of the
Boston Tea Party, came to apply to himself. Dying at
the age of eighty-five, he was the “last leaf’’ among
his distinguished contemporaries.*

Two women writers whose work remains enor-
mously popular today were also tied to this New
England literary world. Louisa May Alcott
(1832–1888) grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, in
the bosom of transcendentalism, alongside neigh-
bors Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller. Her philosopher
father Bronson Alcott occupied himself more devot-
edly to ideas than earning a living, leaving his
daughter to write Little Women (1868) and other
books to support her mother and sisters. Not far
away in Amherst, Massachusetts, poet Emily Dick-
inson (1830–1886) lived as a recluse but created her
own original world through precious gems of
poetry. In deceptively spare language and simple
rhyme schemes, she explored universal themes of

*Oliver Wendell Holmes had a son with the same name who
became a distinguished justice of the Supreme Court
(1902–1932) and who lived to be ninety-four, less two days.

344 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

nature, love, death, and immortality. Although she drunk in a Baltimore gutter and shortly thereafter
refused during her lifetime to publish any of her died.
poems, when she died, nearly two thousand of them
were found among her papers and eventually made Two other writers reflected the continuing
their way into print. Calvinist obsession with original sin and with the
never-ending struggle between good and evil. In
The most noteworthy literary figure produced somber Salem, Massachusetts, writer Nathaniel
by the South before the Civil War, unless Edgar Allan Hawthorne (1804–1864) grew up in an atmosphere
Poe is regarded as a southerner, was novelist heavy with the memories of his Puritan forebears
William Gilmore Simms (1806–1870). Quantita- and the tragedy of his father’s premature death on
tively, at least, he was great: eighty-two books an ocean voyage. His masterpiece was The Scarlet
flowed from his ever-moist pen, winning for Letter (1850), which describes the Puritan practice
him the title “the Cooper of the South.’’ His of forcing an adultress to wear a scarlet “A” on her
themes dealt with the southern frontier in colonial clothing. The tragic tale chronicles the psychologi-
days and with the South during the Revolutionary cal effects of sin on the guilty heroine and her secret
War. But he was neglected by his own section, even lover (the father of her baby), a minister of the
though he married into the socially elite and gospel in Puritan Boston. In The Marble Faun
became a slaveowner. The high-toned planter (1860), Hawthorne dealt with a group of young
aristocracy would never accept the son of a poor American artists who witness a mysterious murder
Charleston storekeeper. in Rome. The book explores the concepts of the
omnipresence of evil and the dead hand of the past
Literary Individualists weighing upon the present.
and Dissenters
Herman Melville (1819–1891), an orphaned and
Not all writers in these years believed so keenly in ill-educated New Yorker, went to sea as a youth
human goodness and social progress. Edgar Allan and served eighteen adventuresome months on a
Poe (1809–1849), who spent much of his youth in whaler. “A whale ship was my Yale College and my
Virginia, was an eccentric genius. Orphaned at an Harvard,’’ he wrote. Jumping ship in the South Seas,
early age, cursed with ill health, and married to a he lived among cannibals, from whom he provi-
child-wife of thirteen who fell fatally ill of tuberculo- dently escaped uneaten. His fresh and charming
sis, he suffered hunger, cold, poverty, and debt. Fail- tales of the South Seas were immediately popular,
ing at suicide, he took refuge in the bottle and but his masterpiece, Moby Dick (1851), was
dissipated his talent early. Poe was a gifted lyric not. This epic novel is a complex allegory of good
poet, as “The Raven’’ attests. A master stylist, he also and evil, told in terms of the conflict between a
excelled in the short story, especially of the horror whaling captain, Ahab, and a giant white whale,
type, in which he shared his alcoholic nightmares Moby Dick. Captain Ahab, having lost a leg to the
with fascinated readers. If he did not invent the marine monster, lives only for revenge. His pursuit
modern detective novel, he at least set new high finally ends when Moby Dick rams and sinks Ahab’s
standards in tales like “The Gold Bug.’’ ship, leaving only one survivor. The whale’s exact
identity and Ahab’s motives remain obscure. In the
Poe was fascinated by the ghostly and ghastly, end the sea, like the terrifyingly impersonal and
as in “The Fall of the House of Usher’’ and other sto- unknowable universe of Melville’s imagination,
ries. He reflected a morbid sensibility distinctly at simply rolls on.
odds with the usually optimistic tone of American
culture. Partly for this reason, Poe has perhaps been Moby Dick was widely ignored at the time of
even more prized by Europeans than by Americans. its publication; people were accustomed to more
His brilliant career was cut short when he was found straightforward and upbeat prose. A disheartened
Melville continued to write unprofitably for some
years, part of the time eking out a living as a customs
inspector, and then died in relative obscurity and
poverty. Ironically, his brooding masterpiece about

Pioneering Historians 345

the mysterious white whale had to wait until the (1796–1859), who accidentally lost the sight of an
more jaded twentieth century for readers and for eye while in college, conserved his remaining weak
proper recognition. vision and published classic accounts of the con-
quest of Mexico (1843) and Peru (1847). Francis
Portrayers of the Past Parkman (1823–1893), whose eyes were so defective
that he wrote in darkness with the aid of a guiding
A distinguished group of American historians was machine, penned a brilliant series of volumes
emerging at the same time that other writers were beginning in 1851. In epic style he chronicled the
winning distinction. Energetic George Bancroft struggle between France and Britain in colonial
(1800–1891), who as secretary of the navy helped times for the mastery of North America.
found the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845, has
deservedly received the title “Father of American Early American historians of prominence were
History.’’ He published a spirited, superpatriotic his- almost without exception New Englanders, largely
tory of the United States to 1789 in six (originally because the Boston area provided well-stocked
ten) volumes (1834–1876), a work that grew out of libraries and a stimulating literary tradition. These
his vast researches in dusty archives in Europe and writers numbered abolitionists among their rela-
America. tives and friends and hence were disposed to view
unsympathetically the slavery-cursed South. The
Two other historians are read with greater writing of American history for generations to come
pleasure and profit today. William H. Prescott was to suffer from an antisouthern bias perpetuated
by this early “made in New England’’ interpretation.

346 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

Chronology

1700s First Shaker communities formed 1835 Lyceum movement flourishes

1794 Thomas Paine publishes The Age of Reason 1837 Oberlin College admits female students
Mary Lyon establishes Mount Holyoke
1795 University of North Carolina founded
Seminary
1800 Second Great Awakening begins Emerson delivers “The American Scholar’’

address

1819 Jefferson founds University of Virginia 1841 Brook Farm commune established

1821 Cooper publishes The Spy, his first successful 1843 Dorothea Dix petitions Massachusetts
novel legislature on behalf of the insane

Emma Willard establishes Troy (New York) 1846-
Female Seminary 1847 Mormon migration to Utah

1825 New Harmony commune established

1848 Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention
held
1826 American Temperance Society founded
Oneida Community established
1828 Noah Webster publishes dictionary
American Peace Society founded 1850 Hawthorne publishes The Scarlet Letter

1830 Joseph Smith founds Mormon Church 1851 Melville publishes Moby Dick
Godey’s Lady’s Book first published Maine passes first law prohibiting liquor

1830- 1855 Whitman publishes Leaves of Grass
1831 Finney conducts revivals in eastern cities

VARYING VIEWPOINTS

Reform: Who? What? How? and Why?

Early chronicles of the antebellum period univer- treatment of early educational reform, proponents
sally lauded the era’s reformers, portraying them were community leaders who sought a school sys-
as idealistic, altruistic crusaders intent on improv- tem that would ease the traumas of America’s indus-
ing American society. trialization by inculcating business-oriented values
and discipline in the working classes.
After World War II, however, some historians
began to detect selfish and even conservative The wave of reform activity in the 1960s
motives underlying the apparent benevolence of prompted a reevaluation of the reputations of the
the reformers. This view described the advocates of antebellum reformers. These more recent interpre-
reform as anxious, upper-class men and women tations found much to admire in the authentic reli-
threatened by the ferment of life in antebellum gious commitments of reformers and especially in
America. The pursuit of reforms like temperance, the participation of women, who sought various
asylums, prisons, and mandatory public education social improvements as an extension of their func-
represented a means of asserting “social control.” In tion as protectors of the home and family.
this vein, one historian described a reform move-
ment as “the anguished protest of an aggrieved class The scholarly treatment of abolitionism is a
against a world they never made.” In Michael Katz’s telling example of how reformers and their cam-
paigns have risen and fallen in the estimation of his-

Varying Viewpoints 347

torians. To northern historians writing in the late ology of female autonomy that rejected male domi-
nineteenth century, abolitionists were courageous nance. When men behaved in immoral or illegal ways,
men and women so devoted to uprooting the evil of women reformers claimed that they had the right—
slavery that they were willing to dedicate their lives even the duty—to leave the confines of their homes
to a cause that often ostracized them from their and actively work to purify society. More recently,
communities. By the early twentieth century, how- historians Nancy Hewitt and Lori Ginzberg have
ever, an interpretation more favorable to the South challenged the assumption that all women reform-
prevailed, one that blamed the fanaticism of the ers embraced a single definition of female identity.
abolitionists for the Civil War. But as the racial Instead they have emphasized the importance of class
climate in the United States began to change by differences in shaping women’s reform work, which
the mid-twentieth century, historians once again led inevitably to tensions within female ranks. Giving
showed sympathy for the abolitionist struggle, and more attention to the historical evolution of female
by the 1960s abolitionist men and women were reform ideology, Ginzberg has also detected a shift
revered as ideologically committed individuals ded- from an early focus on moral uplift to a more class-
icated not just to freeing the enslaved but to saving based appeal for social control.
the moral soul of America.
Historians of the suffrage movement have
Recently scholars animated by the modern femi- emphasized another kind of exclusivity among
nist movement have inspired a reconsideration of women reformers—the boundaries of race. Ellen
women’s reform activity. It had long been known, of DuBois has shown that after a brief alliance with the
course, that women were active participants in chari- abolitionist movement, many female suffrage
table organizations. But not until Nancy Cott, Kathryn reformers abandoned the cause of black liberation
Sklar, Mary Ryan, and other historians began to look in an effort to achieve their own goal with less con-
more closely at what Cott has called “the bonds of troversy. Whatever historians may conclude about
womanhood” did the links between women’s domes- the liberating or leashing character of early reform,
tic lives and their public benevolent behavior fully it is clear by now that they have to contend with the
emerge. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg showed in her study ways in which class, gender, and race divided
of the New York Female Moral Reform Society, for reformers, making the plural—reform movements—
example, that members who set out at first to convert the more accurate depiction of the impulse to
prostitutes to evangelical Protestantism and to close “improve” that pervaded American society in the
down the city’s many brothels soon developed an ide- early nineteenth century.

For further reading, see page A10 of the Appendix. For web resources, go to http://college.hmco.com.

Previous Chapter Continue to Part III

PART THREE

TESTING THE
NEW NATION

ᇻᇾᇻ

1820–1877

The Civil War of 1861 to of its own biological repro-
1865 was the awesome duction—a fact that sug-
trial by fire of American gests to many historians
nationhood, and of the that conditions under slav-
American soul. All Ameri- ery in the United States
cans knew, said Abraham were somehow less puni-
Lincoln, that slavery “was tive than those in other
somehow the cause of this slave societies. Indeed a
war.” The war tested, in distinctive and durable
Lincoln’s ringing phrase at African-American culture
Gettysburg, whether any managed to flourish under
nation “dedicated to the slavery, further suggesting
proposition that all men that the slave regime pro-
are created equal . . . can vided some “space” for
long endure.” How did this African-American cultural
great and bloody conflict development. But how-
come about? And what ever benignly it might
were its results? be painted, slavery still
remained a cancer in the
American slavery was heart of American democracy, a moral outrage that
by any measure a “peculiar institution.” Slavery was mocked the nation’s claim to be a model of social
rooted in both racism and economic exploitation, and political enlightenment. As time went on, more
and depended for its survival on brutal repression. and more voices called more and more stridently
Yet the American slave population was the only for its abolition.
enslaved population in history that grew by means

348

The nation lived 1861—witnessed a series
uneasily with slavery of ultimately ineffec-
from the outset. Thomas tive efforts to come to
Jefferson was only one grips with that question,
among many in the including the ill-starred
founding generation who Compromise of 1850, the
felt acutely the conflict conflict-breeding Kansas-
between the high princi- Nebraska Act of 1854,
ple of equality and the and the Supreme Court’s
ugly reality of slavery. The inflammatory decision
federal government in in the Dred Scott case
the early Republic took of 1857. Ultimately, the
several steps to check slavery question was set-
the growth of slavery. It tled by force of arms, in
banned slavery in the the Civil War itself.
Old Northwest in 1787,
prohibited the further The Civil War, as
importation of slaves Lincoln observed, was
after 1808, and declared assuredly about slavery.
in the Missouri Compro- But as Lincoln also
mise of 1820 that the repeatedly insisted, the
vast western territories war was about the viabil-
secured in the Louisiana ity of the Union as well
Purchase were forever and about the strength of
closed to slavery north democracy itself. Could a
of the state of Missouri. democratic government,
Antislavery sentiment even abounded in the South built on the principle of
in the immediate post-Revolutionary years. But as popular consent, rightfully deny some of its citizens
time progressed, and especially after Eli Whitney’s the same right to independence that the American
invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s, the south- revolutionaries had exercised in seceding from the
ern planter class became increasingly dependent on British Empire in 1776? Southern rebels, calling the
slave labor to wring profits from the sprawling plan- conflict “The War for Southern Independence,”
tations that carpeted the South. As cotton cultivation asked that question forcefully, but ultimately it, too,
spread westward, the South’s stake in slavery grew was answered not in the law courts or in the legisla-
deeper, and the abolitionist outcry grew louder. tive halls but on the battlefield.
The Civil War unarguably established the
The controversy over slavery significantly inten- supremacy of the Union, and it ended slavery as
sified following the war with Mexico in the 1840s. well. But as the victorious Union set about the task
“Mexico will poison us,” predicted the philosopher of “reconstruction” after the war’s end in 1865, a
Ralph Waldo Emerson, and he proved distressingly combination of weak northern will and residual
prophetic. The lands acquired from Mexico—most southern power frustrated the goal of making the
of the present-day American Southwest, from Texas emancipated blacks full-fledged American citizens.
to California—reopened the question of extending The Civil War in the end brought nothing but free-
slavery into the western territories. The decade and dom—but over time, freedom proved a powerful
a half following the Mexican War—from 1846 to tool indeed.

349

16

The South and the
Slavery Controversy

ᇻᇾᇻ

1793–1860

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave,
the other end fastens itself around your own.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 1841

A t the dawn of the Republic, slavery faced an “Cotton Is King!’’
uncertain future. Touched by Revolutionary
idealism, some southern leaders, including Thomas As time passed, the Cotton Kingdom developed into
Jefferson, were talking openly of freeing their slaves. a huge agricultural factory, pouring out avalanches of
Others predicted that the iron logic of economics the fluffy fiber. Quick profits drew planters to the vir-
would eventually expose slavery’s unprofitability, gin bottomlands of the Gulf states. As long as the soil
speeding its demise. was still vigorous, the yield was bountiful and the
rewards were high. Caught up in an economic spiral,
But the introduction of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin the planters bought more slaves and land to grow
in 1793 scrambled all those predictions. Whitney’s more cotton, so as to buy still more slaves and land.
invention made possible the wide-scale cultivation
of short-staple cotton. The white fiber rapidly Northern shippers reaped a large part of the
became the dominant southern crop, eclipsing profits from the cotton trade. They would load
tobacco, rice, and sugar. The explosion of cotton bulging bales of cotton at southern ports, transport
cultivation created an insatiable demand for labor, them to England, sell their fleecy cargo for pounds
chaining the slave to the gin, and the planter to the sterling, and buy needed manufactured goods for
slave. As the nineteenth century opened, the rein- sale in the United States. To a large degree, the pros-
vigoration of southern slavery carried fateful impli- perity of both North and South rested on the bent
cations for blacks and whites alike—and threatened backs of southern slaves.
the survival of the nation itself.

350

The Cotton Empire 351

ade, and the South would triumph. Cotton was a
powerful monarch indeed.

The Planter “Aristocracy’’

Cotton accounted for half the value of all Ameri- Before the Civil War, the South was in some respects
can exports after 1840. The South produced more not so much a democracy as an oligarchy—or a gov-
than half of the entire world’s supply of cotton—a ernment by the few, in this case heavily influenced
fact that held foreign nations in partial bondage. by a planter aristocracy. In 1850 only 1,733 families
Britain was then the leading industrial power. Its owned more than 100 slaves each, and this select
most important single manufacture in the 1850s group provided the cream of the political and social
was cotton cloth, from which about one-fifth of its leadership of the section and nation. Here was the
population, directly or indirectly, drew its liveli- mint-julep South of the tall-columned and white-
hood. About 75 percent of this precious supply of painted plantation mansion—the “big house,’’
fiber came from the white-carpeted acres of the where dwelt the “cottonocracy.’’
South.
The planter aristocrats, with their blooded
Southern leaders were fully aware that Britain horses and Chippendale chairs, enjoyed a lion’s
was tied to them by cotton threads, and this depend- share of southern wealth. They could educate their
ence gave them a heady sense of power. In their children in the finest schools, often in the North or
eyes “Cotton was King,’’ the gin was his throne, and abroad. Their money provided the leisure for study,
the black bondsmen were his henchmen. If war reflection, and statecraft, as was notably true of men
should ever break out between North and South, like John C. Calhoun (a Yale graduate) and Jefferson
northern warships would presumably cut off the Davis (a West Point graduate). They felt a keen sense
outflow of cotton. Fiber-famished British factories of obligation to serve the public. It was no accident
would then close their gates, starving mobs would that Virginia and the other southern states pro-
force the London government to break the block- duced a higher proportion of front-rank statesmen
before 1860 than the “dollar-grubbing’’ North.

But even in its best light, dominance by a
favored aristocracy was basically undemocratic. It
widened the gap between rich and poor. It ham-
pered tax-supported public education, because the

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) wrote in 1782,

“The whole commerce between master and
slave is a perpetual exercise of the . . . most
unremitting despotism on the one part, and
degrading submissions on the other. . . .
Indeed I tremble for my country when I
reflect that God is just; that his justice
cannot sleep forever.’’

Unlike Washington, Jefferson did not free his
slaves in his will; he had fallen upon
distressful times.

352 CHAPTER 16 The South and the Slavery Controversy, 1793–1860

rich planters could and did send their children to few protested when the husbands and children of
private institutions. their slaves were sold. One plantation mistress har-
bored a special affection for her slave Annica but
A favorite author of elite southerners was Sir noted in her diary that “I whipt Annica’’ for
Walter Scott, whose manors and castles, graced by insolence.
brave Ivanhoes and fair Rowenas, helped them
idealize a feudal society, even when many of their Slaves of the Slave System
economic activities were undeniably capitalistic.
Southern aristocrats, who sometimes staged joust- Unhappily, the moonlight-and-magnolia tradition
ing tournaments, strove to perpetuate a type of concealed much that was worrisome, distasteful,
medievalism that had died out in Europe—or was and sordid. Plantation agriculture was wasteful,
rapidly dying out.* Mark Twain later accused Sir largely because King Cotton and his money-hungry
Walter Scott of having had a hand in starting the subjects despoiled the good earth. Quick profits led
Civil War. The British novelist, Twain said, aroused to excessive cultivation, or “land butchery,’’ which
the southerners to fight for a decaying social struc- in turn caused a heavy leakage of population to the
ture—“a sham civilization.’’ West and Northwest.

The plantation system also shaped the lives of The economic structure of the South became
southern women. The mistress of a great plantation increasingly monopolistic. As the land wore thin,
commanded a sizable household staff of mostly many small farmers sold their holdings to more
female slaves. She gave daily orders to cooks, maids, prosperous neighbors and went north or west. The
seamstresses, laundresses, and body servants. Rela- big got bigger and the small smaller. When the Civil
tionships between mistresses and slaves ranged War finally erupted, a large percentage of southern
from affectionate to atrocious. Some mistresses farms had passed from the hands of the families
showed tender regard for their bondswomen, and that had originally cleared them.
some slave women took pride in their status as
“members’’ of the household. But slavery strained Another cancer in the bosom of the South was
even the bonds of womanhood. Virtually no slave- the financial instability of the plantation system.
holding women believed in abolition, and relatively The temptation to overspeculate in land and slaves
caused many planters, including Andrew Jackson in
*Oddly enough, by legislative enactment, jousting became the
official state sport of Maryland in 1962.

Problems in the Cotton South 353

Basil Hall (1788–1844), an Englishman, True souls of the South, especially by the 1850s,
visited part of the cotton belt on a river deplored the fact that when born, they were
steamer (1827–1828). Noting the wrapped in Yankee-made swaddling clothes and
preoccupation with cotton, he wrote, that they spent the rest of their lives in servitude to
Yankee manufacturing. When they died, they were
“All day and almost all night long, the captain, laid in coffins held together with Yankee nails and
pilot, crew, and passengers were talking of were buried in graves dug with Yankee shovels. The
nothing else; and sometimes our ears were South furnished the corpse and the hole in the
so wearied with the sound of cotton! cotton! ground.
cotton! that we gladly hailed a fresh
inundation of company in hopes of some The Cotton Kingdom also repelled large-scale
change—but alas! . . . ‘What’s cotton at?’ European immigration, which added so richly to the
was the first eager inquiry. ‘Ten cents [a manpower and wealth of the North. In 1860 only 4.4
pound ],’ ‘Oh, that will never do!’” percent of the southern population were foreign-
born, as compared with 18.7 percent for the North.
his later years, to plunge in beyond their depth. German and Irish immigration to the South was
Although the black slaves might in extreme cases be generally discouraged by the competition of slave
fed for as little as ten cents a day, there were other labor, by the high cost of fertile land, and by Euro-
expenses. The slaves represented a heavy invest- pean ignorance of cotton growing. The diverting of
ment of capital, perhaps $1,200 each in the case of non-British immigration to the North caused the
prime field hands, and they might deliberately white South to become the most Anglo-Saxon sec-
injure themselves or run away. An entire slave quar- tion of the nation.
ter might be wiped out by disease or even by light-
ning, as happened in one instance to twenty The White Majority
ill-fated blacks.
Only a handful of southern whites lived in Grecian-
Dominance by King Cotton likewise led to a dan- pillared mansions. Below those 1,733 families in
gerous dependence on a one-crop economy, whose 1850 who owned a hundred or more slaves were
price level was at the mercy of world conditions. The the less wealthy slaveowners. They totaled in 1850
whole system discouraged a healthy diversification some 345,000 families, representing about 1,725,000
of agriculture and particularly of manufacturing. white persons. Over two-thirds of these families—
255,268 in all—owned fewer than ten slaves each.
Southern planters resented watching the North All told, only about one-fourth of white southerners
grow fat at their expense. They were pained by the owned slaves or belonged to a slaveowning family.
heavy outward flow of commissions and interest to
northern middlemen, bankers, agents, and shippers. The smaller slaveowners did not own a majority
of the slaves, but they made up a majority of the
masters. These lesser masters were typically small

1,733 own 100 or more slaves Slaveowning Families, 1850
6,196 own 50–99 More than half of all slaveholding families
29,733 own 20–49 owned fewer than four slaves. In contrast,
54,595 own 10 –19 2 percent of slaveowners owned more than
80,765 own 5–9 fifty slaves each. A tiny slaveholding elite
105,683 own 2– 4 held a majority of slave property in the
68,820 own 1 each South. The great majority of white
southerners owned no slaves at all.

354 CHAPTER 16 The South and the Slavery Controversy, 1793–1860

ILL. IND. Richmond

MISSOURI TERR. Memphis Ohio R. KY. VA.

Cumberlan d R.

Arkansas Mississippi Nashville Tennessee R.
R.
R. TENN. N.C. Raleigh

ARKANSAS TERR.

Red Columbia

Birmingham Augusta S.C.

Sabine R. MISS. ALA. Macon Charleston
R. LA. Jackson Savannah
TEXAS GA.
ATLANTIC
(Spanish) OCEAN

Baton Mobile
Rouge

New Orleans

GULF OF MEXICO FLA.
TERR.

Southern Cotton Southern cotton production, 1820
Production, 1820 Major production areas
Other production areas

ILL. IND. Richmond

KANS. MO. Memphis Ohio R. KY. VA.
R. ARK.
Cumberlan d R.

Arkansas Mississippi Nashville Tennessee R.
R.
INDIAN TENN. N.C. Raleigh
TERR.

Red Columbia

Birmingham Augusta S.C.

TEXAS Sabine R. MISS. ALA. Macon Charleston
R. LA. Jackson Savannah
GA.

Baton Mobile ATLANTIC
Rouge OCEAN

New Orleans FLA.

GULF OF MEXICO

Southern Cotton Southern cotton production, 1860
Production, 1860 Major production areas
Other production areas

farmers. With the striking exception that their They lived in modest farmhouses and sweated
household contained a slave or two, or perhaps an beside their bondsmen in the cotton fields, laboring
entire slave family, the style of their lives probably callus for callus just as hard as their slaves.
resembled that of small farmers in the North more
than it did that of the southern planter aristocracy. Beneath the slaveowners on the population pyra-
mid was the great body of whites who owned no

The Spread of the Slave Power 355

Distribution of Slaves, 1820
The philosopher Ralph Waldo
Emerson, a New Englander,
declared in 1856, “I do not see
how a barbarous community and a
civilized community can constitute
a state. I think we must get rid of
slavery or we must get rid of
freedom.’’

Distribution of Slaves,
1860

slaves at all. By 1860 their numbers had swelled to leys. To them, the riches of the Cotton Kingdom were
6,120,825—three-quarters of all southern whites. a distant dream, and they often sneered at the lordly
Shouldered off the richest bottomlands by the mighty pretensions of the cotton “snobocracy.’’ These red-
planters, they scratched a simple living from the thin- necked farmers participated in the market economy
ner soils of the backcountry and the mountain val- scarcely at all. As subsistence farmers, they raised

356 CHAPTER 16 The South and the Slavery Controversy, 1793–1860

corn and hogs, not cotton, and often lived isolated Southern sea. They ultimately played a significant
lives, punctuated periodically by extended socializ- role in crippling the Confederacy. Their attachment
ing and sermonizing at religious camp meetings. to the Union party of Abraham Lincoln was such
that for generations after the Civil War, the only con-
Some of the least prosperous nonslaveholding centrated Republican strength in the solid South
whites were scorned even by slaves as “poor white was to be found in the southern highlands.
trash.’’ Known also as “hillbillies,’’ “crackers,’’ or
“clay eaters,’’ they were often described as listless, Free Blacks: Slaves Without Masters
shiftless, and misshapen. Later investigations have
revealed that many of them were not simply lazy Precarious in the extreme was the standing of the
but sick, suffering from malnutrition and parasites, South’s free blacks, who numbered about 250,000 by
especially hookworm. 1860. In the upper South, the free black population
traced its origins to a wavelet of emancipation
All these whites without slaves had no direct inspired by the idealism of Revolutionary days. In
stake in the preservation of slavery, yet they were the deeper South, many free blacks were mulattoes,
among the stoutest defenders of the slave system. usually the emancipated children of a white planter
Why? The answer is not far to seek. and his black mistress. Throughout the South were
some free blacks who had purchased their freedom
The carrot on the stick ever dangling before with earnings from labor after hours. Many free
their eyes was the hope of buying a slave or two and blacks owned property, especially in New Orleans,
of parlaying their paltry holdings into riches—all in where a sizable mulatto community prospered.
accord with the “American dream’’ of upward social Some, such as William T. Johnson, the “barber of
mobility. They also took fierce pride in their pre- Natchez,’’ even owned slaves. He was the master of
sumed racial superiority, which would be watered fifteen bondsmen; his diary records that in June
down if the slaves were freed. Many of the poorer 1848 he flogged two slaves and a mule.
whites were hardly better off economically than the
slaves; some, indeed, were not so well-off. But even The free blacks in the South were a kind of
the most wretched whites could take perverse “third race.’’ These people were prohibited from
comfort from the knowledge that they outranked working in certain occupations and forbidden from
someone in status: the still more wretched African- testifying against whites in court. They were always
American slave. Thus did the logic of economics vulnerable to being highjacked back into slavery
join with the illogic of racism in buttressing the by unscrupulous slave traders. As free men and
slave system. women, they were walking examples of what might
be achieved by emancipation and hence were
In a special category among white southerners
were the mountain whites, more or less marooned “Arthur Lee, Freeman,” petitioned the General
in the valleys of the Appalachian range that Assembly of Virginia in 1835 for permission
stretched from western Virginia to northern Georgia to remain in the state despite a law against
and Alabama. Civilization had largely passed them the residency of free blacks. After asserting his
by, and they still lived under spartan frontier condi- upstanding moral character, he implored,
tions. They were a kind of living ancestry, for some “He therefore most respectfully and earnestly
of them retained Elizabethan speech forms and prays that you will pass a law permitting him
habits that had long since died out in Britain. on the score of long and meritorious service
to remain in the State, together with his wife
As independent small farmers, hundreds of and four children, and not force him in his
miles distant from the heart of the Cotton Kingdom old age to seek a livelihood in a new Country.”
and rarely if ever in sight of a slave, these mountain
whites had little in common with the whites of the
flatlands. Many of them, including future president
Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, hated both the
haughty planters and their gangs of blacks. They
looked upon the impending strife between North
and South as “a rich man’s war but a poor man’s
fight.’’

When the war came, the tough-fibered moun-
tain whites constituted a vitally important penin-
sula of Unionism jutting down into the secessionist

Free Blacks and Enslaved Blacks 357

resented and detested by defenders of the slave Plantation Slavery
system.
In society’s basement in the South of 1860 were
Free blacks were also unpopular in the North, nearly 4 million black human chattels. Their num-
where about another 250,000 of them lived. Several bers had quadrupled since the dawn of the century,
states forbade their entrance, most denied them the as the booming cotton economy created a seem-
right to vote, and some barred blacks from public ingly unquenchable demand for slave labor. Legal
schools. In 1835 New Hampshire farmers hitched importation of African slaves into America ended in
their oxen to a small schoolhouse that had dared to 1808, when Congress outlawed slave imports. But
enroll fourteen black children and dragged it into a the price of “black ivory’’ was so high in the years
swamp. Northern blacks were especially hated by before the Civil War that uncounted thousands of
the pick-and-shovel Irish immigrants, with whom blacks were smuggled into the South, despite the
they competed for menial jobs. Much of the agita- death penalty for slavers. Although several were
tion in the North against the spread of slavery into captured, southern juries repeatedly acquitted
the new territories in the 1840s and 1850s grew out them. Only one slave trader was ever executed, N. P.
of race prejudice, not humanitarianism. Gordon, and this took place in New York in 1862, the
second year of the Civil War. Yet the huge bulk of the
Antiblack feeling was in fact frequently stronger increase in the slave population came not from
in the North than in the South. The gifted and elo- imports but instead from natural reproduction—a
quent former slave Frederick Douglass, an aboli- fact that distinguished slavery in America from
tionist and self-educated orator of rare power, was other New World societies and that implied much
several times mobbed and beaten by northern row- about the tenor of the slave regime and the condi-
dies. It was sometimes observed that white south- tions of family life under slavery.
erners, who were often suckled and reared by black
nurses, liked the black as an individual but despised Above all, the planters regarded the slaves
the race. The white northerner, on the other hand, as investments, into which they had sunk nearly
often professed to like the race but disliked individ-
ual blacks.

358 CHAPTER 16 The South and the Slavery Controversy, 1793–1860

$2 billion of their capital by 1860. Slaves were the Slavery was profitable for the great planters,
primary form of wealth in the South, and as such though it hobbled the economic development of the
they were cared for as any asset is cared for by a pru- region as a whole. The profits from the cotton boom
dent capitalist. Accordingly, they were sometimes, sucked ever more slaves from the upper to the lower
though by no means always, spared dangerous South, so that by 1860 the Deep South states of
work, like putting a roof on a house. If a neck was South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and
going to be broken, the master preferred it to be that Louisiana each had a majority or near-majority of
of a wage-earning Irish laborer rather than that of a blacks and accounted for about half of all slaves in
prime field hand, worth $1,800 by 1860 (a price that the South.
had quintupled since 1800). Tunnel blasting and
swamp draining were often consigned to itinerant Breeding slaves in the way that cattle are bred
gangs of expendable Irishmen because those per- was not openly encouraged. But thousands of
ilous tasks were “death on niggers and mules.’’ blacks from the soil-exhausted slave states of the
Old South, especially tobacco-depleted Virginia,
were “sold down the river’’ to toil as field-gang
laborers on the cotton frontier of the lower Missis-
sippi Valley. Women who bore thirteen or fourteen
babies were prized as “rattlin’ good breeders,’’ and
some of these fecund females were promised their
freedom when they had produced ten. White mas-
ters all too frequently would force their attentions
on female slaves, fathering a sizable mulatto popu-
lation, most of which remained enchained.

Slave auctions were brutal sights. The open sell-
ing of human flesh under the hammer, sometimes

Life Under Slavery 359

with cattle and horses, was among the most revolt-
ing aspects of slavery. On the auction block, families
were separated with distressing frequency, usually
for economic reasons such as bankruptcy or the
division of “property’’ among heirs. The sundering
of families in this fashion was perhaps slavery’s
greatest psychological horror. Abolitionists de-
cried the practice, and Harriet Beecher Stowe seized
on the emotional power of this theme by putting it
at the heart of the plot of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Life Under the Lash

White southerners often romanticized about
the happy life of their singing, dancing, banjo-
strumming, joyful “darkies.’’ But how did the slaves
actually live? There is no simple answer to this ques-
tion. Conditions varied greatly from region to

In 1852, Maria Perkins, a woman enslaved in region, from large plantation to small farm, and
Virginia, wrote plaintively to her husband from master to master. Everywhere, of course, slav-
about the disruption that the commercial ery meant hard work, ignorance, and oppression.
traffic in slaves was visiting upon their The slaves—both men and women—usually toiled
family: from dawn to dusk in the fields, under the watchful
eyes and ready whip-hand of a white overseer or
“I write you a letter to let you know of my black “driver.’’ They had no civil or political rights,
distress my master has sold albert to a other than minimal protection from arbitrary mur-
trader on Monday court day and myself and der or unusually cruel punishment. Some states
other child is for sale also and I want you to offered further protections, such as banning the sale
let hear from you very soon before next cort of a child under the age of ten away from his or her
if you can I dont know when I dont want you mother. But all such laws were difficult to enforce,
to wait till Christmas I want you to tell Dr since slaves were forbidden to testify in court or
Hamelton and your master if either will buy even to have their marriages legally recognized.
me they can attend to it know and then I can
go after-wards I dont want a trader to get Floggings were common, for the whip was the
me they asked me if I had got any person to substitute for the wage-incentive system and the
buy me and I told them no they took me to most visible symbol of the planter’s mastery. Strong-
the court houste too they never put me up a willed slaves were sometimes sent to “breakers,’’
man buy the name of brady bought albert whose technique consisted mostly in lavish laying
and is gone I dont know whare they say he
lives in Scottesville my things is in several
places some is in staunton and if I should be
sold I dont know what will become of them I
dont expect to meet with the luck to get
that way till I am quite heart sick nothing
more I am and ever will be your kind wife
Maria Perkins.”

360 CHAPTER 16 The South and the Slavery Controversy, 1793–1860

on of the lash. As an abolitionist song of the 1850s often rough and raw, and in general the lot of the
lamented, slave was harder here than in the more settled areas
of the Old South.
To-night the bond man, Lord
Is bleeding in his chains; A majority of blacks lived on larger plantations
And loud the falling lash is heard that harbored communities of twenty or more
On Carolina’s plains! slaves. In some counties of the Deep South, espe-
cially along the lower Mississippi River, blacks
But savage beatings made sullen laborers, and lash accounted for more than 75 percent of the popula-
marks hurt resale values. There are, to be sure, tion. There the family life of slaves tended to be rela-
sadistic monsters in any population, and the tively stable, and a distinctive African-American
planter class contained its share. But the typical slave culture developed. Forced separations of
planter had too much of his own prosperity riding spouses, parents, and children were evidently more
on the backs of his slaves to beat them bloody on a common on smaller plantations and in the Upper
regular basis. South. Slave marriage vows sometimes proclaimed,
“Until death or distance do you part.’’
By 1860 most slaves were concentrated in the
“black belt’’ of the Deep South that stretched from With impressive resilience, blacks managed to
South Carolina and Georgia into the new southwest sustain family life in slavery, and most slaves were
states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. This raised in stable two-parent households. Continuity
was the region of the southern frontier, into which of family identity across generations was evidenced
the explosively growing Cotton Kingdom had burst in the widespread practice of naming children for
in a few short decades. As on all frontiers, life was grandparents or adopting the surname not of a
current master, but of a forebear’s master. African-
Americans also displayed their African cultural roots
when they avoided marriage between first cousins,
in contrast to the frequent intermarriage of close rel-
atives among the ingrown planter aristocracy.