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American Experiment Page 100

by James Macgregor Burns


  15. THE RIPENING VINEYARD

  [Webster’s death]: George Ticknor Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster (D. Appleton, 1870), Vol. 2, pp. 664-705; Claude M. Fuess, Daniel Webster (Little, Brown, 1930), Vol. 2, Ch. 30; Peter Harvey, Reminiscences and Anecdotes of Daniel Webster (Little, Brown, 1878), Ch. 12.

  [Description of Webster]: Harvey, p. 432.

  [“Any thing unworthy of Daniel Webster”]: Curtis, p. 698.

  [Webster’s determination to resign]: Webster to Fletcher Webster, July 4, 1852, Edward Everett Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  [Webster’s prediction that “the Whigs are ended”]: Curtis, p. 693.

  [Calhoun’s death]: Gaillard Hunt, John C. Calhoun (George W. Jacobs, 1907), Ch. 20; Margaret L. Coit, John C. Calhoun (Houghton Mifflin, 1950), Ch. 28.

  [Calhoun on “two peoples so different”]: Franklin Jameson, ed., Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1899 (Government Printing Office, 1900), Vol. 2, p. 784.

  [Clay’s death]: Glyndon G. Van Deusen, The Life of Henry Clay (Little, Brown, 1937), Ch. 25.

  [Emerson’s musings on Webster]: Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, eds. E. W. Emerson and W. E. Forbes (Houghton Mifflin, 1912), entry for Oct. 25, 1852, Vol. 8, pp. 335-36.

  The Cornucopia

  [John Muir’s boyhood life in Wisconsin]: John Muir, “Scotch Pioneers in Wisconsin,” in David B. Greenberg, ed., Land That Our Fathers Plowed (University of Oklahoma Press, 1969), pp. 87-95, 9, quoted at pp. 88, 89.

  [Nevins on the Northwestern Surge]: Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing, 1852-1857 (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947), Vol. 2, p. 160.

  [Population growth of states in the Northwest]: U.S. Civil War Centennial Commission, The United States on the Eve of the Civil War, as Described in the 1860 Census (Government Printing Office, 1963), p. 61.

  [The farmers and the land]: Allan G. Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt (University of Chicago Press, 1963).

  [Introduction and improvement of farm machinery]: Percy Wells Bidwell and John I. Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United States (Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1925), Part IV; Leo Rogin, The Introduction of Farm Machinery in Its Relation to the Productivity of Labor in the Agriculture of the United States During the Nineteenth Century (University of California Press, 1931).

  [James Baldwin’s farm life]: summarized in Nevins, p. 162.

  [Production of corn, wheat, and livestock]: ibid., pp. 169-71.

  [Stockman B. F. Harris]: ibid., p. 171.

  [Agricultural change in New England]: Percy W. Bidwell, “The Agricultural Revolution in New England,” American Historical Review, Vol. 26, No. 4 (July 1921), pp. 683-702.

  [Ephraim Bull of Concord]: Nevins, p. 174.

  [South Carolinian on southeastern farming]: J. Foster Marshall, pamphlet, Nov.11, 1857, quoted in Nevins, pp. 182-83.

  [Relative size of wheat and corn crops]: The United States on the Eve of the Civil War, pp. 70-71.

  [Southern farming]: Lewis Cecil Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Peter Smith, 1958), originally published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication No. 430, Vol. 2.

  [Prosperity under “King Cotton”]: The United States on the Eve of the Civil War, pp. 43, 45.

  [Farming, general aspects]: Paul W. Gates, The Farmer’s Age: Agriculture, Vol. 3 of The Economic History of the United States (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).

  [Denunciations of the railroads]: quoted in Stewart H. Holbrook, The Story of American Railroads (Crown, 1947), pp. 40-41.

  [Transportation changes]: George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, Vol. 4 of The Economic History of the United States (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1951); Caroline E. MacGill, History of Transportation in the United States Before 1860 (Carnegie Institution of Washington, reprinted by Peter Smith, 1948).

  [Mortgaging of property by Wisconsin farmers for railroad investment]: Taylor, p. 98.

  [Railroad development]: Albert Fishlow, American Railroads and the Transformation of the Ante-bellum Economy (Harvard University Press, 1965); Robert W. Fogel, Railroads and American Economic Growth (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964); Paul Wallace Gates, The Illinois Central Railroad and Its Colonization Work (Harvard University Press, 1934).

  [Nevins on lake vessels]: Nevins, p. 228.

  [Nevins on Mississippi riverboats]: ibid., p. 214.

  [George Cable on the New Orleans dock scene]: George W. Cable, Dr. Sevier (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1887), p. 52.

  [Industrial innovation and enterprise]: Joseph and Frances Gies, The Ingenious Yankees (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976); Thomas C. Cochran and William Miller, The Age of Enterprise (Macmillan, 1947).

  [Interchangeable parts]: Gies, Ch. 13.

  [Hawthorne on the “scribbling women ”]: quoted in John T. Frederick, “Hawthorne’s ‘Scribbling Women,’ ” New England Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 2 (June 1975), pp. 231-40, at p. 231.

  [Economic expansion of the 1850s]: Stuart Bruchey, The Roots of American Economic Growth (Harper & Row, 1965); Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States (Prentice-Hall, 1961); Charles H. Hession and Hyman Sardy, Ascent to Affluence (Allyn and Bacon, 1969).

  [Differences among economic historians as to period of greatest expansion]: Bruchey, Ch. 4.

  [Inequality in the 1850s]: Lee Soltow, “Economic Inequality in the United States in the Period from 1790 to 1860,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 31, No. 4 (December 1971), pp. 822-39; Edward Pessen, Riches, Class, and Power Before the Civil War (D. C. Heath. 1973).

  [Workers’ wages]: Edgar W. Martin, The Standard of Living in 1860 (University of Chicago Press, 1942), p. 409 (Appendix).

  [Inequality as constant]: Soltow, p. 839.

  The Cornucopia Overflows

  [American exhibits at the Crystal Palace]: National Intelligencer, Feb. 3, 1852, quoted in Nevins, p. 254.

  [“Floating palaces” in the coastal trade]: William H. Ewen, “Steamboats to New England,” The Log of Mystic Seaport, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Summer 1980), pp. 43-50.

  [Eastern ports, relative standing]: Robert Greenhalgh Albion, The Rise of New York Port (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939), Appendix I, p. 389.

  [American ships]: Taylor, Ch. 6.

  [Marcy’s instructions an diplomatic dress]: Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People (F. S. Crofts, 1941). pp. 282, 283. [America’s cup]: “Yachts and Yachting,” in Encyclopedia Americana, International Edition (Americana Corporation, 1977), Vol. 29, p. 635.

  [Young America]: Merlo E. Curti, “ ‘Young America,’ ” American Historical Review, Vol. 32, No. 1 (October 1926), pp. 34-55.

  [Support for those “who had suffered in the cause of liberty”]: ibid., p. 48.

  [Kossuth’s reception in New York Harbor]: Bailey, p. 286.

  [Seward on democracy and markets]: quoted in William Appleman Williams, The Roots of the Modern American Empire (Random House, 1969), p. 99.

  [Punch cartoon]: reproduced in Bailey, p. 283.

  [Pierce on expansionism]: James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington, DC: Bureau of National Literature, 1913), Vol. 4, p. 2731.

  [Marcy on the spoils system]: quoted in Dumas Malone, ed,. Dictionary of American Biography (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933), Vol. 12, p. 275.

  [Cuba and the Black Warrior incident]: Nevins, Ch. 10.

  [Soulé]: Amos A. Eltinger, The Mission to Spain of Pierre Soulé , 1853-1855 (Yale University Press, 1932).

  [Tribune on Ostend Manifesto]: quoted in Nevins, p. 362.

  [U.S. diplomacy as a “singular profession”]: London Times, March 24, 1855; see also Eltinger, pp. 406-10, for other foreign commentary.

  [incidents in Central America]: Bailey, pp. 290-95.

  [American whalers]: Elmo Paul Hohman, The American Whaleman (Longmans, Green, 1928); Edward A. Ackerman, New England’s Fishing industry (Chicago: U
niversity of Chicago Press, 1941); Marshall B. Davidson, Life in America (Houghton Mifflin, 1951), Vol. 1, pp. 340-45.

  [Whaling statistics]: Hohman, Appendixes.

  [Melville on the whale chase]: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (Hendricks House, 1962), pp. 222, 223-24.

  [Chinese trade]: John King Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 2 vols. (Harvard University Press, 1953); Hallelt Abend, Treaty Ports (Doubleday, Doran, 1944).

  [The Matthew Perry expedition to Japan]: Francis L. Hawks, comp., Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan (D. Appleton, 1856); Official Report, “Commodore Perry’s Landing in Japan, 1853,” Old South Leaflets No. 151 (Directors of the Old South Work, n.d.), Vol. 7, pp. 1-28; Arthur Walworth, Black Ships off Japan (Archon Books, 1966).

  [Japanese lament about the black ship]: quoted in Bailey, p. 330.

  “It Will Raise a Hell of a Storm ”

  [Stephen Douglas]: Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (Oxford University Press,1973); Robert W. Johannsen, ed., The Letters of Stephens. Douglas (University of Illinois Press, 1961).

  [Douglas’ Nebraska bill]: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, pp. 405-8.

  “It will raise a hell of a storm”]: quoted in David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861(Harper & Row, 1976), p. 160.

  [Douglas on leaving slavery to the laws of climate, etc.]: quoted in ibid., p. 172.

  [Salmon P. Chase]: Albert B. Hart, Salmon P. Chase (Houghton Mifflin, 1899).

  [Charles Sumner]: David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf, 1960).

  [Longfellow, Lieber, and Winthrop on Sumner]: quoted in ibid., pp. 214, 227, 212, resp.

  [“Appeal of the Independent Democrats”]: see the New York Times, Jan. 24, 1854, p. 2.

  [Douglas on the storm soon spending its fury]: Stephen A. Douglas to Howell Cobb, April 2, 1854, in Johannsen, ed., Letters of Stephen A. Douglas, p. 300.

  [Greeley on the Kansas-Nebraska bill]: Jeter Allen Isely, Horace Greeley and the Republican Party (Princeton University Press, 1947), p. 49.

  [Press reaction to Kansas-Nebraska bill]: Nevins, Ch. 9; Isely, passim.

  [Rise of the Know-Nothings]: Michael F. Holt, “The Politics of Impatience: The Origins of Know Nothingism,” Journal of American History, Vol. 60, No. 2 (September 1973), pp. 309-31.

  [Know-Nothing party’s stated purpose]: quoted in Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1853-1892 (University of North Carolina Press, 1979). p. 68.

  [Anti-Negro prejudice, 1850s]: Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union (Oxford University Press, 1980), esp. Ch. 4; C. Vann Woodward, American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue (Little, Brown, 1971), Ch. 5; Nevins, passim; Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790—1860 (University of Chicago Press, 1961); Eugene H. Berwangcr, The Frontier Against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy (University of Illinois Press, 1967).

  [Early fusion and Republican meetings]: Hans L. Trefousse, “The Republican Party, 1854-1864,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of U.S. Political Parties (Chelsea House, 1973), p. 1145; Isely, p. 84.

  [Douglas’ speeches like “cannon-balls”]: Carl Schurz, Reminiscences (McClure, 1907), Vol. 2, p. 30.

  [Burns incident in Boston]: Nevins, pp. 150-52.

  [Seward on competition for Kansas]: Congressional Globe, 33rd Congress, 1st session. Appendix, p. 769.

  [The struggle for Kansas]: James C. Malin, The Nebraska Question, l852-1854 (University of Kansas Press, 1953); James A. Rawley, Race &Politics: “Bleeding Kansas” and the Coming of the Civil War (Lippincott, 1969).

  [John Brown at Pottawatomie]: Slephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood (Harper & Row, 1970), Ch. 10.

  [Sumner on Congress as a “godless place”]: quoted in Donald, p. 278.

  [Sumner’s speech “The Crime Against Kansas”]: Congressional Globe, 34th Congress, 1st session, Appendix, pp. 529-47. [Exchange of insults between Sumner and Douglas]: ibid., p. 547.

  [Brooks’s assault on Sumner]: Avery O. Craven, The Growth of Southern Nationalism (Louisiana State University Press, 1953); see also Robert L. Meriwether, ed., “Preston S. Brooks on the Caning of Charles Sumner,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 2 (April 1951).

  The Illinois Republicans

  [Potter’s listing of diverse rivals of the Republicans]: Potter, p. 249.

  [Edward Everett’s admonition to nativist leader]: Edward Everett to W. B. Weiss, Feb. 14, 1853, Reel 14, Edward Everett Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  [Antebellum Springfield]: Paul M. Angle, “Here I Have Lived”: A History of Lincoln’s Springfield (Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, 1935) pp. 1-84; Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln:

  The Prairie Years (Harcourt, Brace, 1926), Vol. 2, passim.

  [The Lincoln-Herndon law office]: David Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon (Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), p.72; Sandburg, passim.

  [Lincoln riding circuit]: Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), Ch. 5; Sandburg, passim.

  [David Davis]: Willard L. King, Lincoln’s Manager, David Davis (Harvard University Press, 1960).

  [Lincoln’s law practice]: Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None (Harper & Row, 1977), esp. pp. 95-105.

  [Lincoln on acquiring property]: quoted in Williams, p. 296.

  [Lincoln “swallowed up” in greed for office]: from Herndon’s lectures on Lincoln, quoted in Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, p. 202. [“Ambition was a little engine that knew no rest”]: William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Abraham Lincoln (D. Appleton, 1917), Vol. 2, p. 44.

  [Reaction of Whig junto to passage of Kansas-Nebraska bill]: Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, pp. 81-82.

  [Lincoln to Speed on his political views]: quoted in Thomas, pp. 163-64.

  [Douglas-Lincoln confrontations, 1854]:Johanssen, Stephen A. Douglas, pp. 456-59; Oates, With Malice Toward None, pp. 113-18.[Douglas journeys home “by the light of my own effigy”]: Johanssen, Stephen A. Douglas, p. 451.

  [The Republican “third cadre” in Illinois]: Victor B. Howard, “The Illinois Republican Party,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Summer 1971), Part I: “A Party Organizer for the Republicans in 1854,” pp. 124-60. See also Paul Selby, “Genesis of the Republican Party in Illinois,” Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society, 1906, No. 11 (Springfield, Ill., 1906), pp. 270-83, and Paul Selby Collection, Illinois State Historical Society. Dee Ann Montgomery conducted field research in Illinois on the Illinois Republicans.

  [Meeting of anti-Nebraska editors]: Howard; Part II: “The Party Becomes Conservative, 1855-1856,” pp. 297-99.

  [Lincoln’s response to Herndon in regard to the call]: quoted in Thomas, p. 165: see also Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, p. 84.

  [Bloomington convention]: Howard, Part II, p. 303.

  [Douglas’ situation in the Democratic national convention, 1856]: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, pp. 515-22.

  [Republican platform]: Nevins, p. 461.

  [Nevins on Fremont as a candidate]: ibid., p. 462; see also Allan Nevins, Fremont, Path- marker of the West (D. Appleton, 1939). pp. 425-32.

  [Benton opposes Fremont]: Nevins, Pathmarker of the West, p. 448.

  [The Whigs’ last hurrah]: Roy F. Nichols and Philip S. Klein, “Election of 1856,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections, 1889-1968 (Chelsea House, 1971), Vol. 2, pp. 1007-33.

  [Republican reporter’s comment on Whigs]: ibid., p. 1031.

  [1856 campaign]: Schlesinger, Elections; Nevins, Ordeal of the Union; Don C. Seitz, Lincoln the Politician (Coward-McCann, 1931); Kleppner.

  [Mrs. Emerson and the Republican delegation]: Report of the Wayland, Mass., delegation to the Republican National Convention, 1856, from the 8th Congressional District meeting at Concord, Mass., June 2. 1856, Emerson Papers, Concord Free Public Library.

  [The Republica
ns’ battle song]: Wilfred E. Binltley, American Political Parties: Their Natural History (Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), p. 219.

  [Lincoln’s Galena speech]: quoted in Thomas, p. 168.

  16. THE GRAPES OF WRATH

  [Washington at the time of Buchanan’s inaugural Address ]: Constance M. Green, Washington, Village and Capital, 1800-1878 (Princeton University Press, 1962), Ch. 7, “The Eye of the Hurricane, 1849-1860.”

  [Description of Washington ]: Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (Dix & Edwards, 1856). Ch. 1; Daniel D. Reiff, Washington Architecture, 1791-1861 (U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 1971), pp.113-18; Green; Robert Sears, Pictorial Description of the United States (Robert Sears, 1849), p. 282, 301; John Hayward, A Gazetteer of the United States of America (Case, Tiffany, 1853), pp. 612-15; John W. Reps, Monumental Washington (Princeton University Press, 1967).

  [Olmsted’s black servant]: Olmsted, pp. 4-5.

  [Arrest of “genteel colored men”]: ibid, pp. 16-17; Green, pp. 186-87.

  [Marriage of Jefferson Davis and Sarah Taylor]: Holtnan Hamilton, Zachary Taylor: Soldier of the Republic (Bobbs-Merrill, 1941), Vol. 1, Ch. 7.

  [Carl Schurt on Jefferson Davis]: Carl Schurz, Reminiscences (McClure, 1907), Vol. 2, p. 21.

  [Seward on “higher law than the Constitution”]: quoted in Thornton K. Lothrop, William Henry Seward (Houghton Mifflin, 1896), p. 86.

  [Green on the “eye of the hurricane”]: Green, p. 180.

  South Carolinians: The Power Elite

  [Preston Brooks’s assault and vindication]: David H. Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), pp. 297-311; Avery O. Craven, The Growth of Southern Nationalism, 1848-1861 (Louisiana State University Press, 1953), pp. 228-36. .

  [South Carolina]: Louis B. Wright, South Carolina (W. W. Norton, 1976); Rosser H. Taylor, Ante-Bellum South Carolina: A Social and Cultural History (University of North Carolina Press, 1942); William A. Schaper, “Sectionalism and Representation in South Carolina,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1900 (Government Printing Office, 1901), Vol. 1, pp. 245-58; William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War (Harper & Row, 1965), Ch. 1; Olmsted, Ch. 6.

 

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