CHANNING'S SHORT HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.* IT is an
interesting and reassuring incident of a twelvemonth within which the relations of Great Britain and the United States have been in an exceptionally unsatisfactory condition that a history of the latter country should have been written by a Professor of Harvard as part of a series in course of production at our own Cambridge. In inviting Professor Channing to undertake this task, Professor Prothero, the editor of the series, selected a historical student whose work abundantly proves the justice of the claim which he modestly makes in his preface, that he has studied and written "without malice in his heart." It would,
• Tho United States of America. 1765-1866. By Edward Channinr, Ph.D., Assistant Profs gar of History is Harvard Unlvers.ty. .. Csmb.iags Historical aeries." Cankbedge r Unirenity Press, we think, be difficult for any one to approach the treat- ment of the many controversial issues which are strewn across the period dealt with in this book with more entire freedom from prejudice or bias than that shown by its author. And that is to say that Professor Channing possesses in a high degree what is the prime qualification of a historian, and particularly of a historian of comparatively recent events. The second chief qualification of a historian—the power of vivid presentment of the events related—he does not seem to us to possess in such large measure. It is certainly not his fault, but it is his misfortune, that in this respect his book has to stand comparison with Mr. Goldwin Smith's outline History of the United States, which has hardly been out three years, and must be very fresh in the memory of all who have read it.
The Oxford historian's narrative lays hold of the reader, and is laid down by him with regret. To the Harvard historian's work, adopted by Cambridge, that kind of charm cannot be credited. It is instructive and helpful towards the right understanding of the several stages of the period treated, but it lacks the quality of impressiveness. The difference lies partly in style, partly in temper. Mr. Goldwin Smith is a consummate literary artist, and Mr. Channing is only a good plain writer. But besides that, Mr. Channing is either• want- ing in, or has thought it his duty, as a scientific student of history, largely to divest himself of, strong feelings with regard to the actors and the events of the past. If he has any enthusiasms they are rigorously restrained. Mr. Goldwin Smith, though a just, is a severe, judge of all individuals and classes upon whom can be laid any share of responsibility for the violent separation of the two branches of the Anglo-Saxon race. He has a page and a half of " Woes," impartially, but very sternly, distributed among them. There is nothing of this kind in Mr. Channing's book, but neither is it touched by any glow of admiration for the manner in which American liberties were asserted in general, or for the "grandeur of the Boston Tea-party" in particular, such as has been lately avowed by Mr. Fiske. That distinguished writer, whose work on the American Revolution was published in 1891, asserted that even American historians had generally failed to do justice to the greatness of the " heroic " action of Boston, and dwelt with fervour on the nobility of the conduct of the people of that city, as inspired by Samuel Adams, at "the one supreme moment in a controversy supremely important to mankind." We should hardly think that Mr. Fiske will consider Mr. Channing's account of the " Tea-party " a satis- factory sequel to his remonstrance. Our author notes, indeed, quite justly, that the colonists regarded the device by which the British Government allowed the East India Company to send tea to America, without paying the usual shilling duty in England, but subject to Charles Townshend's threepenny duty on arrival in American ports, "as an attempt to bribe them into surrender by giving them tea cheaper than the people of England could buy it," and that they "refused from North to South, apparently without any urging from the Committees of Correspondence, to have any- thing whatever to do with it."
" Large quantities," he proceeds, " were at once despatched to Philadelphia, Charleston, New York, and Boston. The consignees at the two first-named ports resigned when re- quested by the people. No tea was landed at Philadelphia and New York, the collectors of those ports allowing the vessels to clear without breaking bulk. At Charleston the collector insisted upon the tea being landed. It was stored in a damp cellar and soon spoiled. At Boston, however, a combination of circumstances brought on an explosion. Among the consignees were the sons of Governor Hutchin- son. They refused to resign. The collectors of the port refused to allow the vessels to clear outward until the tea had been landed in conformity to law. The governor de- clined to grant a permit to the vessels to pass the fort until they were properly cleared. The only way to cut the knot was to destroy the tea, and it was thrown into the harbour by a mob. These occurrences at once aroused great excitement on both sides of the Atlantic," and so forth. Here, and in what precedes and follows, there is no attempt whatever to make light of the importance of the " Tea-party " link in the chain of events that led to the separation of the American colonies from this country, but the tone in which the subject is treated appears to forbid—even when all allowance is made for the difficulties of condensation—our attributing to Mr. Channing tha strain of feeling which animates Mr. Fiske. Our author plainly recognises that it was by the influence of a com- paratively few men, such as Samuel Adams in Massachusetts, and Patrick Henry and Jefferson in Virginia, who appear to have been essentially separatist from an early date, that the bulk of the colonists up till, and perhaps even after, the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776, were being led along a path the issue of which they were not prepared for, and did not at all desire. Unhappily, the policy of the British Government was calculated, intermittently indeed at first, but, from the Boston outbreak up to Burgoyne's capitulation at Saratoga, cumulatively, to cause general anxiety and alarm, and to stimulate united hostile action among the colonies. And the very conciliatory overtures then made by Lord North came too late.
Mr. Channing's treatment of his subject, as we have indicated, is remarkable both for its fairness and for its inde- pendence, though its singularly unimpassioned tone is a dis- advantage to it as a story. His account of the "critical period" between the peace and the adoption of the Constitu- tion, is a good example of condensed narrative, and brings clearly into view both the urgent dangers of anarchy, barbarism, and public contempt into which the new nation found itself plunging in the early years of its independent existence, and the singular wisdom on the part of its leading statesmen, when brought together in the Federal Convention, by which those dangers were avoided. In this connection, and somewhat more fully in an earlier chapter, Mr. Channing points out that the sources of several of the most important features of the American system of government, as elaborated in the Constitution of the United States and of the several States, were to be found in the system of government under the Crown which was in force before the Revolution. The colonists had been long "accustomed to government resting immediately on written constitutions, to the exercise of the veto power, and to the interpretation of their laws and the overruling of the decisions of their courts by a judicial body (the Privy Council in England) from which there was no appeal." This is a circumstance well deserving of notice, and it doubtless has had a good deal to do with that smooth working of the complicated parallel system of Federal and State government which a priori would have seemed so ex- tremely improbable, but which, with an immense exception, has in fact prevailed.
As to that immense exception—we refer, of course, to the division between South and North on the subject of slavery —there is much that is very useful to be found in Mr. Channing *s book. It does not possess the intense interest of Mr•. Goldwin Smith's brief sketch of the development of the diverging tendencies which carried the Western branch of our race into the most terrible civil strife of modern times. But it does explain with sufficient fullness and clearness the leading facts with regard to the original differences and the widening division between the social and economic interests of the North and South, the growth of the moral movement against slavery, and the various " compromises" arranged by Congress between light and darkness. It is difficult even so, as Mr. Channing recognises, to understand precisely why the slave-power chose the occasion of Lincoln's election to the Presidency for secession from the Union :— "Plainly, Mr. Lincoln, the President [as he was] of a minority, and supported [as he was until the Senators and the Representa- tives of the seceding States withdrew] by a minority in Congress, had no mandate from the country to destroy Southern institutions or to establish Republican theories of Nationalism. So long as the Southerners remained in Congress, it would have been impos- sible for him to do these things or either of them. In point of fact, the Republicans could not have destroyed slavery so long as a condition of peace continued. The levying of war by the Southern leaders completely changed the aspect of affairs. The Republicans gained control of Congress, and the President became entitled to exercise his war powers' as the constitutional Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States."
Why, then, did the Southern leaders rush into secession ? On this point Mr. Channing's theory seems very reasonable. " It is probable," he says, " that very many of them did not expect that separation would be of long continuance. They hoped to make better terms out of the Union than in it. The p-ople of the North seemed to have reached the limit of what mt.;ht be called peaceable compromise; secession might bring
about coercive compromise, so to speak The con-
sequences of failure never seem to have presented themselves to the Southern leaders. Probably they had never regarded failure as possible." And the abject attitude of Congress after the secession of seven States was announced, to which, curiously enough, our author does not refer, must have con- firmed for a brief space their optimistic anticipations. It only needed, however, the clear, strong lead given by Lincoln after his inauguration to rouse Unionist feeling in the North, with its overpowering resources in men and money, in such a fashion as, from the first made the success of the secession hopeless. Mr. Channing's lucid and concise sketch of the war is one of the best features of a book which, though not without lee dgfauts de sex patties, is a distinctly useful aid to the study of a subject upon which every intelligent English- man ought to be well informed.
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