Early Americans
RICHARD BRETT-SMITH
The History of the United States John A. Garraty (Allen Lane the Penguin Press 95s) The Great Revolt and its Leaders Carleton Beals (Abelard-Schuman 40s) The Triumph of Nationalism William P. Murphy (Quadrangle Books Chicago $10.00) Dr Garraty's huge volume, subtitled 'A History of Men and Ideas,' is written by a New Yorker born in 1920 and now Professor of History at Columbia University. Mr Beals, by far the senior in age and experience of the three authors here reviewed, subtitles his book 'The History of Popular American Uprisings in the 1890s,' but also covers much previous ground in the post-Civil War period : he comes from the very heartland both of America and of one of the great agricultural revolts, Kansas. Dr Murphy, a native Tennesseean (subtitle : 'State Sovereignty, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of the Constitution'), was forced to leave his teaching post at the University of Mississippi in 1962 when he de- fended Supreme Court decisions and a view of state sovereignty unpopular in the South; he is now Professor of Law at the University of Missouri, a border state in the war between the states. All three authors share an outstanding quality in their approach to American history: a high regard for facts coupled with a liberal outlook in the best sense.
I take Dr Garraty's book first because for one man, even with the freely acknowledged help and advice of many others, it is a massive achievement. Its publishers claim it to be `the most informative, readable and reliable intro- duction to the history of the United States,' with some justice, but, considering its price and length (900 pages odd with supplements), I • boggle rather at the word Introduction.' Obviously a work like this, ranging from the disputed discoverers of America to the first part of the disputed presidency of Lyndon Johnson, who won, we are reminded, the biggest popular majority in American history when he beat Goldwater, cannot please everybody. If it were true, for example, presumably because of Wil- berforce's achievements, that 'the mass of or- dinary people' in Britain, as distinct from the politicians, favoured the North rather than the South in the Civil War, was it for the right reasons? One suspects that the British mass had only the foggiest ideas about the real issues. For, as Dr Garraty also says, Lincoln was not a complete abolitionist regarding slavery, but believed that emancipation would come 'in God's good time.' And we are reminded that the American slave population was some 800,000 in 1800 but nearly four million in 1860 despite the official outlawing of the slave traffic in 1808. Lincoln held that 'the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy' (Rhodesia, Nigeria today?), and, as Dr Garraty rightly points out, slavery was the fundamental cause of the South's secession, but not of the North's determination to resist it, which sprang from the Federal side's love of the Union.
Usually all three authors are scrupulously fair in their references to Britain. They are writing, after all, primarily as and for Americans, and this applies to any judgment of style. Mr Beals's book, colourful but unevenly written, at times will appear slangy even to Americans, not helped by inconsistency in the use of quotation marks. Some British readers may find them- selves occasionally groping desperately not just for an atlas but for an H. L. Mencken or approximation to that famous dictionary. If the phrase 'on the skids' is common to both countries, what of 'prairie schooner'? Mr Beals's own term 'facial mattress' for a beard seems uncomfortable.
Yet this is a fascinating book, which reminds us that for most of the struggling farmers and workers the era of the 1890s and before was far from gay. Basically it is the story of the revolts in the Central West and the South of the men and women of the 'grass roots,' many of them Bible-quoting, tough, freedom-loving frontiers- men, against unfair land taxation and exploita- tion by the new landowners and industrialists, the railroads, the 'Robber Barons' like Jay Gould, and corrupt state and sometimes national governments. Put another way, it was the spirited but hopeless fight of a dying agri- cultural system against industrial progress and the inevitable translation of farming into the big business that it has long since widely be- come in America. The revolt failed but, as Mr Beals shows, it won lasting and notable victories for liberty.
His story of farmers' organisations and unions that became strong in the 1870s to 1890s in Minnesota, Texas, Kansas .and else- where, of the People's party, the Greenback- Labour party, and finally the Populist party, shows how in maTiy ways they were the fore- runners of Henri Wallace's Progressive party which fought without a hope of winning against Truman and Dewey in 1948. But in 1900 Wil- liam Jennings Bryan, with his usual mixed motives on a combined Democratic-Populist ticket, silver-tongued against the gold standard and handsomely backed by the silver interests, could have beaten McKinley in a wiser cam- paign and came fairly close to doing so.
Despite the suffering Mr Beals recounts, his book is great fun to read, because of the many characters, rogues, mavericks, plain dotties and some geniuses in its pages. Henry George, whose Progress and Poverty in its time rivalled Das Kapital as a best-seller, the chronicler Hamlin Garland, whom Stephen Crane thought 'like a nice Jesus Christ,' Sockless' Jerry Simp- son, the ex-Canadian from Kansas who became a dandy in Congress, and Jacob Coxey, the rich Ohioan who led the most famous march of the unemployed (including that of today's negroes) on Washington. Of them all my favourite is Ignatius Donnelly, 'the Sage of Nininger' (Minnesota), amongst other things an erudite Baconian, a novelist like Verne who foresaw television, stratospheric flight and a Wil- sonian 'United Republics of Europe. Mr Beals describes him as 'merely a premature ma,' add- ing 'though for years considered a crackpot, nearly everything he fought for has become the adopted law of the land.'
Professor Murphy writes of the formative years of the Republic (1776-1789) as a constitu- tional lawyer and historian, and his carefully researched, sometimes controversial, book will appeal most to his colleagues. Many of the greatest figures of the period, from Washington and Madison, Franklin and Gouverneur Mor- ris, live again in his pages, but too drily. Out- standing but lesser-known men such as John Dickinson, largely responsible for drafting the original Articles of Confederation, and Thomas Burke, the North Carolinian Irishman with his namesake's brilliance, who drastically amended them, emerge more interestingly. Burke was the first notable States Righter, but his victory was shortlived, though not in vain; ultimately the central government was bound to triumph over the power of individual states, but, as Profes- sor Murphy says, if the balance was clearly struck in favour of the nation, the checks against Congress and the White House still exist, there are still many states' rights, and often battle is re-engaged (e.g. Little Rock). The Constitution, though permanent, is still adapt- able.
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