1860s

“ In the brief space of thirty years, between 1787 and 1817,—a short generation,—the Union had passed through astonishing stages. Probably no great people ever grew more rapidly and became more mature in so short a time. ”

“ England devoted thirty years of arduous labor to clearing away only a part of the débris. A young American in 1863 could see little or nothing of the future. He might dream, but he could not foretell, the suddenness with which the old Europe, with England in its wake, was to vanish in 1870. ”

“ In some cases, as in France, the change in institutions was immediate and sweeping; in others, as in Germany and Italy, the transformation was more gradual; but in all, the old state of things was doomed.
The thirty years or so just preceding the Revolution are those that most concern us in this study, though we shall often have occasion to look back to the early eighteenth century — and sometimes to the seventeenth.
To realize the conditions under which men lived in the eighteenth century is not easy. ”

“ The traces of the Revolution remain in a hundred scars and bruises and mutilations, but the visible marks of the war of 1870 have passed away. The country is so rich, so living, that she has been able to dress her wounds, to hold up her head, to smile again ”

“ But it was not only in its political position that England had developed with extraordinary rapidity after the American War. The whole condition of those industrial arts which give work to the lower orders was changed, and an enormous impulse given to the employment of industry. In spite of the constant complaints of those who were bent upon asserting the decline of the nation, the population had been gradually increasing ever since the Revolution of 1688; the rate of increase in the thirty years preceding 1780 was about 400,000 a year. ”

“ POLITICAL HISTORY. To study the history of America after 1840 is to have our attention drawn as by a powerful lodestone to the Civil War. It looms there in the middle of the nineteenth century, a stupendous thing, dominating and dwarfing all others. To it converge many ways that then seemed aimless or wandering, the unanswered questions of the Constitution, the compromises of statesmen, the intrigues of politicians, the clamor of impatient reformers, the silent degradation of the slave. ”

“ Enclosures.—The century and a half which extends from the middle years of the fifteenth century to the close of the sixteenth was, as has been shown, a period remarkable for the extent and variety of its changes in almost every aspect of society. In the political, intellectual, and religious world the sixteenth century seemed far removed from the fifteenth. It is not therefore a matter of surprise that economic changes were numerous and fundamental, and that social organization in town and country alike was completely transformed. ”

“ Occupying the centre, as it were, of all these events, we are too near them at present to appraise either their magnitude or importance at their legitimate value. Not the man at the base of a lofty tower, but he who stands at some distance from it can take its proportions aright, and we may depend upon it that the reader of the history of our period a hundred years hence will turn to the page that records the events of 1870 as at once the most interesting and important in the annals of many centuries. ”

“ New-Year’s Day of 1872 was one of those exceptionally beautiful days, when hope is generated in the saddest heart, and when the most pressing cares and anxieties retire for at least a time into the background of our lives. The sky was blue and clear, the sun bright, and the air quite soft and balmy for the time of year. We had had some bitter cold and gloomy weather, and we found the change most delightful. As in France we were in the habit of making presents among ourselves on this day, I looked over all my stores with a [58] view to keeping up the same pretty custom here; but alas! ”

“ The eight years in America from 1860 to 1868 uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations. ”

“ For hackneyed as the period of the Wars of the Roses may seem to the superficial reader, no student has yet adequately studied the secret of the age in which the great revolutions of the next century were being prepared—the age which made possible for England the revival of letters and the reformation, which founded her commercial greatness, which revolutionized her industrial system, which cast away the last bonds of feudalism and laid the foundations of the modern State. ”

“ But when we look to the simple facts, that our system and arrangements for the distribution of the franchise, such as they are, stood the triumphant test of 1848, when every other state in Europe was rocking before the whirlwind of revolution—and that no clamour has been heard for their alteration—we humbly venture to think that this is not the time for any extensive experiment. ”

“ I don't now pretend to measure the extent to which my interest in the events of 1848—I was five years old—was quickened by that souvenir, a tradition further reinforced, I should add, by the fact that some relative or other, some member of our circle, was always either "there" ("there" being of course generally Europe, but particularly and pointedly Paris) or going there or coming back from there: I at any rate revert to the sound of the rich words on my uncles' lips as to my positive initiation into History. ”

“ Character of the Period.—During the first quarter, or indeed the first half of the eighteenth century, colonial history contains few salient features apart from boundary disputes, quarrels with royal governors, and struggles with the French and Indians. There was a steady growth in numbers, which may be measured by the fact that from the first to the middle of the century New England increased fourfold, the Middle colonies sixfold, and the Southern colonies sevenfold in population. Wealth and general prosperity increased in fair proportion also. ”

“ Whatever the division in men's minds as to the relation between the close of the century and a race's history, and the precise moment at which the old century ends and the new begins, one thing in 1800 was radiantly clear to all men—the glory and the wonder, the endless peace and felicity not less endless, which the opening century and the new age dimly portended or securely promised to humanity. ”

“ Because of the accident of my birth in the year 1754, however, I have lived through a period which will be ever memorable in the history of the world—a period so crowded with worthy deeds and great men, especially on this continent, that there is small danger its interest will be soon exhausted. Do not conclude that I intend to venture upon a tale of the American Revolution; only a master's hand can fill in with due skill and proportion so wide a canvas, and that story waits. ”

“ As the horrors of the French Revolution lead us when we reflect on them to examine with a new interest the last age of the old régime because the explanation of them must lie there, so do the successes of 1866 and give a new interest to the period that precedes them in German history. ”

“ Every great political party that has done this country any good has given to it some immortal ideas that have outlived all the members of that party.
[Speech at Cleveland, Ohio, October 11, 1879.—Resumption of Specie Payments.]
Now, what has been the trouble with us? 1860 was one shore of prosperity, and 1879 the other; and between these two high shores has flowed the broad, deep, dark river of fire and blood and disaster through which this nation has been compelled to wade, and in whose depths it has been almost suffocated and drowned. ”

“ It may be that the industrial revolution which began in the reign of George the Third has produced most of its fruits, and has had its day. We may have to look forward to such a change as is imagined by Anatole France at the end of his Isle of the Penguins, when, after an orgy of revolution and destruction, we shall slide back into the quiet rural life of the early modern period. ”

“ England and the new American Colonies setting new standards in government by the people; the French theorists and economists giving the world new ideas as to the function of the State; enlightened despots on the thrones of Prussia, Austria, Spain, and Russia; and the hatreds of the hundred years of religious warfare dying out; the world seemed to many, about 1775, as on the verge of some great and far-reaching change in methods of living and in government, and about ready to enter a new era and make rapid advances in nearly all lines of human activity. ”

“ Upwards of thirty years' experience and observation teaches me that the factory system of Old England and that of New England are as widely different in their results, as the two forms of government under which they are respectively carried on. Not to enter into details at present, I would simply say that the system of Old England could not exist in New England; neither could the New England system exist in Old England; the thing is impossible, so long as the systems of government remain as they are. ”

“ Nationalism and Localism in History Legislation, 1860-1900 THE CURRICULUM
The Civil War marked a turning point in American history. Forces undreamed of before 1860 conspired to change the whole tenor of American life. From isolated rural communities of simple tastes and unexploited resources, the United States emerged into a growing urbanization of multifarious activities. Prior to 1860 there had been little change from the days of George Washington, when nine-tenths of the people had been engaged in agriculture ”

“ It is not, however, only on the other side of the Atlantic that clouds are hanging heavily on the horizon. No one can cast a glance at the present condition of Europe without considerable apprehension as to what may be the history of the year 1861. ”

“ Now, Sir, a transition from darkness to light has taken place - and it ought to be hailed, notwithstanding all the inconveniences which accompany such transactions - and it is rather a serious question for us to consider whether the English nation and Government from 1860 to 1880, or whether the influences which acted during the years 1883-4 and 1885, and which are to some extent acting now, lead us in the right or wrong direction. ”

“ A man can be alive in 1860 and 1830 at the same time, don't you see? Bodily, I may be in 1860, inert, silent, torpid; but in the spirit I am walking about in 1828, let us say;—-in a blue dress-coat and brass buttons, a sweet figured silk waistcoat (which I button round a slim waist with perfect ease) , looking at beautiful beings with gigot sleeves and tea-tray hats under the golden chestnuts of the Tuileries, or round the Place Vendome, where the drapeau blanc is floating from the statueless column. ”

“ The most interesting records of the great revolution just ending have seemed to me to be those portraying the spirit and bearing of the people throughout the South, just before and at the outbreak of the war. Stories of battles, and sieges, and retreats, are kaleidoscopic repetitions of deeds with which all history is crowded ”

“ Indeed, as we recede from the event, the Revolution of 1848 presents itself ever more definitely as it appeared to certain of its actors, and to a few of the more speculative onlookers, as but an aftermath of 1789 and 1793, as the net return, the practical result to France and to Europe of the glorious sacrifices and hopes of the revolutionary era. ”

“ How is it that England, the head quarters of the great industrial war, whose field is the world, treats with marked coldness, indifference, and disdain, not only the United States, but every one of her great colonies as well? ”

“ With that Revolution of 1688 the struggles characteristic of the seventeenth century in England came to an end. A new 24 working basis is found for thought, politics, society, literature. But while those vast changes had been shaking England, two generations of American colonists had cleared their forests, fought the savages, organized their townships and their trade, put money in their purses, and lived, though as yet hardly suspecting it, a life that was beginning to differentiate them from the men of the Old World. ”

“ No one can read the history of the United States since the drafting of the Declaration of Independence without being struck by the complete transformation in the forms of American life. The Industrial Revolution which had gripped England for half a century, made itself felt in the United States after 1815. ”

“ The influences of the old régime, as founded in the seventeenth century, were such as to exalt the importance of the individual; the influences of the new are such as to raise the importance of the mass. ”

“ If we look about the periphery of the nation, everywhere we see the indications that our world is changing. On the streets of Northeastern cities like New York and Boston, the faces which we meet are to a surprising extent those of Southeastern Europe. Puritan New England, which turned its capital into factories and mills and drew to its shores an army of [295] cheap labor, governed these people for a time by a ruling class like an upper stratum between which and the lower strata there was no assimilation. ”

“ The European Revolution of 1848 was the culmination of the bourgeois revolutionary movement which began in the sixteenth century, and which in England partially, though very imperfectly, succeeded in breaking down the monarchical bureaucracy veneered with Feudalism—into which the mediæval political system had become transformed—at the close of the seventeenth century. ”