John Bach McMaster

“ The petitioners did not say whether they would make a slave or a free state; but as the Missourians owned slaves, everybody knew that Missouri would be a slave state. To this the free states were opposed. If the tobacco-growing, cotton-raising, and sugar-making states wanted slaves, that was their affair; but slavery must not be extended into states beyond the Mississippi, because it was wrong. No man, it was said, had any right to buy and sell a human being, even if he was black. The Southern people were equally determined that slavery should cross the Mississippi. ”

“ France, they said, is an old friend; Great Britain, our old enemy. France helped win independence and loaned us money and sent us troops and ships; Great Britain attempted to enslave us. We were bound to France by a treaty of alliance and a treaty of commerce; we were bound to Great Britain by no treaty of any kind. To be neutral, then, was to be ungrateful to France. [10] As a result the Federalists were called the British party, and they, in turn, called the Republicans the French party or Democrats. ”

“ He believed that people should live together in communities in which the farms, the houses, the cattle, the products of the soil, should be owned not by individual men, but by the whole community. He held that there should be absolute social equality, and that no matter what sort of work a man did, whether skilled or unskilled, it should be considered just as valuable as the work of any other man.
All this was very alluring, and in a little while Owenite communities were started in Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and New York, only to end in failure. ”

“ THE FRONTIER.—The frontier of English settlement consisted of a string of little towns close to the coast in Maine and New Hampshire, and some sixty miles back from the coast in Massachusetts; of a second string of towns up the Connecticut valley to central Massachusetts; and of a third up the Hudson to the Mohawk and up the Mohawk to Schenec'tady. Most of Maine and New Hampshire, all of what is now Vermont, and all New York north and west of the Mohawk was a wilderness pierced by streams which afforded the French and Indians easy ways of reaching the English frontier. ”

“ While a great social and industrial revolution was going on in the free states, the people in the slave states remained in 1860 what they were in 1800. The stream of immigrants from Europe passed the slave states by, carrying their skill, their thrift, their energy, into the Northwest. The resources of the slave states were boundless, but no free man would go in to develop them. The soil was fertile, but no free laborer could live on it and compete with slave labor, on which all agriculture, all industry, all prosperity, in the South depended. ”

“ THE COMPROMISES.—In the course of the debates in the convention great difference of opinion arose on several matters.
The small states wanted a Congress of one house, and equality of state representation. The great states wanted Historical a Congress of two houses, with representation in proportion to population. This difference of opinion was so serious that a compromise was necessary, and it was agreed that in one branch (House of Representatives) the people should be represented, and in the other (Senate) the states. ”

“ THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. ”

“ PREFACE It is not too much to assert that most of our countrymen acquire at school all the knowledge they possess of the past history of their country. In view of this fact it is most desirable that a history of the United States for elementary schools should present not only the essential features of our country's progress which all should learn, but also many things of secondary consequence which it is well for every young American to know. ”

“ From our houses would go the sewing machine, the daily newspaper, gas, running water; and from our tables, the tomato, the cauliflower, the eggplant, and many varieties of summer fruits. We should have to destroy every railroad, every steamboat, every factory and mill, pull down every line of telegraph, silence every telephone, put out every electric light, and tear up every telegraphic cable from the beds of innumerable rivers and seas. ”

“ Then Philip, a chief of the Wampanoags, took the warpath (1675) and, joined by the Nipmucks and Narragansetts, sought to drive the white men from New England. The war began in Rhode Island, but spread into Massachusetts, where town after town was attacked, and men, women, and children massacred. Roused to fury by these deeds, a little band of men from Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut in the dead of winter stormed the great swamp fortress of the Narragansetts, destroyed a thousand Indians, and burned the wigwams and winter supply of corn. ”

“ White men were amazed at the rapidity with which the Indian followed the most obscure trail over the most difficult ground, at the perfection with which he imitated the bark of the wolf, the hoot of the owl, the call of the moose, and at the catlike tread with which he walked over beds of autumn leaves the side of the grazing deer. ”

“ Down the Ohio there was a great trade in bituminous coal, and the union of the coal, iron, and oil trades was already making Pittsburg a great city. In the South little change had taken place. Cotton, tobacco, sugar, and the products of the pine forests were still the chief sources of wealth; mills and factories hardly existed. The West had not only its immense farms, but also the iron mines of upper Michigan, the lead mines of the upper Mississippi and in Missouri, the copper mines of the Lake Superior country, and the lumber industry of Michigan and Wisconsin. ”

“ Negro Slavery.%—No living person under thirty years of age has ever seen a negro slave in our country. When Washington was President there were 700,000 slaves. When the Revolution opened, slavery was permitted by law in every colony. But the feeling against it in the North had always been strong, and when the war ended, the people began the work of abolition. In Massachusetts and New Hampshire the constitutions of the states declared that "all men are born free and equal," and that "all men are born equally free," and this was understood to abolish slavery. ”

“ Ever since 1789 France had been in a state of revolution, and at last (in 1792) the people established the French Republic, cut off the heads of the King and Queen (in 1793) , and declared war on England and sent a minister, Genet, to the United States. At that time we had no treaty with Great Britain except the treaty of peace. With France, however, we had two treaties,—one of alliance, and one of amity and commerce. The treaty of alliance bound us to guarantee to France "the possessions of the crown of France in America," by which were meant the French West Indian Islands. ”

“ All the china, glass, hardware, cutlery, woolen goods, linen, muslin, and a thousand other things were imported from Great Britain. Before the war the Americans had paid for these goods with dried fish, lumber, whale oil, flour, tobacco, rice, and indigo, and with money made by trading in the West Indies. Now Great Britain forbade Americans to trade with her West Indies. Spain would not make a trade treaty with us, so we had no trade with her islands, and what was worse, Great Britain taxed everything that came to her from the United States unless it came in British ships. ”

“ A very large number of men, for instance, opposed the funding of the Continental Congress debt at its face value, because the people never had taken a bill at the value expressed on its face, but at a very much less value; some opposed the assumption of the state debts, because Congress, they said, had power to pay the debt of the United States, but not state debts; others opposed the National Bank because the Constitution did not give Congress express power in so many words to charter a bank. ”

“ That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. ”

“ New industries, new trades and occupations, new needs in the business world, afforded to his son and daughter opportunities for a livelihood unknown in his youth, while the free school system enabled them to fit themselves to use such opportunities without cost to him. When our country became independent, and for fifty years afterwards, a working day was from sunrise to sunset, with an hour for breakfast and another for dinner. ”

“ Things unknown in 1763.%—Had a traveler landed on our shores in 1763 and made a journey through the English colonies in America, he would have seen a country utterly unlike the United States of to-day. The entire population, white man and black, freeman and slave, was not so great as that of New York or Philadelphia or Chicago in our time. If we were to write a list of all the things we now consider as real necessaries of daily life and mark off those unknown to the men of 1763, not one quarter would remain. ”

“ A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union."
Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, asserted that the Personal Liberty laws of some of the free states "constitute the only cause, in my opinion, which can justify secession."
The South seceded, then, according to its own statements, because the people believed that the election of Lincoln meant the abolition of slavery. ”

“ The Navy Department was created, and a Secretary of the Navy appointed. Frigates were ordered to be built, money was voted for arms, a provisional army was formed, and Washington was again made commander in chief, with the rank of lieutenant general. The young men associated for defense, the people in the seaports built frigates or sloops of war, and gave their services to erect forts and earthworks. Every French flag was now pulled down from the coffeehouses, and the black cockade of our own Revolutionary days was once more worn as the badge of patriotism. ”

“ In many cases it is hard to decide whether a state has power to do a certain thing. Whenever the question turns on the interpretation of the Federal Constitution, it is decided by the United States courts. The Federal Constitution and the laws and treaties made in accordance with it are supreme in case of any conflict with a state constitution or law.
The powers of government exercised by the states are more numerous, and affect the individual citizen in more ways, than those of the nation. ”

“ Over the affairs of each company presided a council appointed by the King, with power to choose its own president, fill vacancies among its own members, and elect a council of thirteen to reside on the company's lands in America. Each company might coin money, raise a revenue by taxing foreign vessels trading at its ports, punish crime, and make laws which, if bad, could be set aside by the King. All property was to be owned in common, and all the products of the soil deposited in a public magazine from which the needs of the settlers were to be supplied. ”

“ Till 1793 we had scarcely any commerce with the West Indies. England would not allow our vessels to go to her islands. Neither would Spain, nor France, except to a very limited degree. It was the policy of these three countries to confine such trade as far as possible to their own merchants. But in 1793 France, you remember, made war on England and opened her West Indian ports to all neutral nations. The United States was a neutral, and our merchants at once began to trade with the islanders. What these people wanted was lumber, flour, grain, provisions, salt pork, and fish. ”

“ The effect of new mechanical appliances on the movement of population was amazing. The day when emigrants settled along the banks of streams, pushed their boats up the rivers by means of poles, carried their goods on the backs of pack horses, and floated their produce in Kentucky broadhorns down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, was fast disappearing. The steamboat, the canal, the railroad, had opened new possibilities. Land once valueless as too far from market suddenly became valuable. ”

“ In February, 1895, the natives of Cuba for the sixth time in fifty years rebelled against the misrule of Spain and founded a republic. A cruel, bloody, and ruinous war followed, and as it progressed, deeply interested the people of our country. The island lay at our very doors. Upwards of $50,000,000 of American money were invested in mines, railroads, and plantations there. Our yearly trade with Cuba was valued at $96,000,000. Our ports were used by Cubans in fitting out military expeditions, which the government was forced to stop at great expense. ”

“ So far the war had been one for the preservation of the Union. By making it a war for union and freedom the North would become more earnest than ever. 2. The rulers of England, who wanted Southern cotton, were only waiting for a pretext to acknowledge the independence of the South. If, however, the North engaged in a war for the abolition of slavery, the people of England would not allow the independence of the Confederacy to be acknowledged by their rulers.
The time to make such a declaration was after some victory gained by the Union army. ”

“ To the Great West.%—From Philadelphia went out one of the great highways to what was then the far West, but to what we now know as the valley of the Ohio. The traveler who to-day makes the journey from Philadelphia to Pittsburg is whisked on a railroad car through an endless succession of cities and villages and rich farms, and by great factories and mills and iron works, which in the days of Washington had no existence. He makes the journey easily between sunrise and sunset. ”

“ Industrial Progress.%—In 1789 our country had no credit and no revenue, and was burdened with a great debt which very few people believed would ever be paid. But when the government called in all the old worthless Continental money and certificates and gave the people bonds in exchange for them, when it began to lay taxes and pay its debts, when it had power to regulate trade, when the National Bank was established and the merchants were given bank bills that would pass at their face value all over the country, business began to revive. ”