John Bach McMaster

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ If none were found, and the British ships wanted men, native-born Americans were taken off under the pretext that one could not tell an American from an English sailor. Our fathers could stand a great deal, but this was too much, and a cry for war went up from all parts of the country.
But Washington did not want war, and took two measures to prevent it. He persuaded Congress to lay an embargo for thirty days, that is, forbid all ships to leave our ports, and induced the Senate to let him send John Jay, the Chief Justice, to London to make a treaty of amity and commerce with Great Britain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
ARTICLE I SECTION 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. ”

“ Kansas a Slave Territory.%—The election of members of the territorial legislature took place in March, 1855, and for this the Missourians made great preparations. On the principle of popular sovereignty the people of Kansas were to decide whether the territory should be slave or free. Should the majority of the legislature consist of free-state men, then Kansas would be a free territory. Should a majority of proslavery men be chosen, then Kansas was doomed to have slavery fastened on her, and this the Missourians determined should be done. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But their food gave out, the Indians were hostile, and before September half of the party had died of fever. Had it not been for the energy and courage of John Smith, every one of them would have perished. He practically assumed command, set the men to building huts, persuaded the Indians to give them food, explored the bays and rivers of Virginia, and for two dreary years held the colony together. When we consider the worthless men he had to deal with, and the hardships and difficulties that beset him, his work is wonderful. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those who wanted a strong and vigorous federal government, who wanted Congress to have plenty of power to regulate trade, pay the debts of the country, and raise revenue, supported the Constitution just as it was and were called "Federalists." ”

“ 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. ”

“ When trade began to spring up between the colonies, and the New England merchants were competing in the colonial markets with English merchants, an act was passed providing that if a product which went from one colony to another was of a kind that might have been supplied from England, it must either go to the mother country and then to the purchasing colony, or pay an export duty at the port where it was shipped, equal to the import duty it would have to pay in England. ”

“ For twenty years past the farmers in every great agricultural state had been organizing, under such names as Patrons of Husbandry, Farmers' League, the Grange, Patrons of Industry, Agricultural Wheel, Farmers' Alliance. Their object was to promote sociability, spread information concerning agriculture and the price of grain and cattle, and guard the interests and welfare of the farmer generally. By 1886 many of these began to unite, and the National Agricultural Wheel of the United States, the Farmers' Alliance and Cooperative Union of America, and several more came into existence. ”