The American People
A Short History of the American People. By Robert Granville Caldron. 1860-1921. (G. P. Potatoes Sons. 12s. 6d.) IT was a prime merit of J. R. Green that he broke away from the habit of writing history as though it properly consisted of battles and the acts of sovereigns. He gave us instead, or at least in equal proportion, the lives of the people. Professor Caldwell, Professor of American History at the Rice Institute, in his two volumes of which the second is now before us, has given
us even more than the lives of the people ; he has emphasized their opinions. He recognizes in this second volume that the materials of history, at least since 1876, have not yet fallen
into a conventional form—how much of error may be due to that " conventional form " !—and he therefore has tried not so much to compile a record as to seek an interpretation. Nearly half of this volume, which "reaches from 1860 to 1920, deals with topics which are more social than political. The first volume surveyed American history from Columbus to the outbreak of the Civil War. Iri the present volume the Civil War takes up more space than any other subject ; sod rightly so, for it was at once a rupture of the old life and a point of departure ; and it threw ut, the magnificent character of Lincoln, perhaps the greatest known type of Anglo-Saxon, personality in the conduct of affairs, with his persistence all2 patience, his tolerance and humour. Professor
makes a careful study of this memorable man. caldstu After the Civil War came the reconstruction, almost as painful and groping as the reconstruction of Europe after the Great War. The old life of the South was as much beyond recall as the life of the Mississippi River, which Is fortunately preserved, however, in the best books of Mark Twain. There was no need to regret much that had passed away, but that did not prevent a school of writers from rising who glorified the Old South, and enveloped with an air of romance conditions which were sometimes wrong and shameful, just as Sir Walter Scott, with less injury to history, idealized the Highland life of Scotland. Industrialism spread north and south, particu- larly in the North ; the population grew, and the familiar frontiers had to be passed by ordinary people who at last followed the pioneers to the West.
By 1882 the transition had been almost accomplished. In that year the railways to the Far West were open for the greater part of the distance and the best of the vast new regions had already been taken up. In that year, too, about 800,000 immigrants came to America from Europe, a number that was not exceeded in any other year during the century. This huge expansion had its effect upon the character of business and the business man. During the Civil War the jobber and the merchant prince had been the dominant industrial class. Now the middleman jumped into the saddle. Even the express companies and the grain elevator companies of the West were essentially middlemen buying transportation wholesale from competing railway companies and selling it retail to the public.
Professor Caldwell does not forget the rise of that special product of the American brain, the popular newspaper, but he seems to lose touch with the values which we expect from a scholar when he describes Mr. Pulitzer as a " brilliant Journalist " and consigns to a footnote on the same page Mr. E. L. Godkin, the cultured and fastidious editor of the New York Evening Post.
The author makes persons and events speak for themselves. He seldom ventures a comment of his own, though he does, as he professes to do, " interpret " by means of his selection. He is noticeably judicial in writing of President Cleveland, whose combative methods. he evidently disliked. At the same time he sees that Cleveland's heedless challenge to Great Britain brought into play beneficent forces which had been gathering in the background in both countries, and in the end conjured good out of evil. The world-wide sanction of the Monroe Doctrine was something distinctly gained. It virtually rules out a large part of the workl from any likelihood of war on the grand scale.
Similarly, Professor Caldwell is perfectly fair to Mr. Roose- velt. If he condemns the Panama policy he is properly grateful to Mr. Roosevelt for having greatly raised polities in social esteem. He indulgently hints that only President Wilson's illness prevented an amendment of the League Covenant which would have made; it acceptable to the American people. He is plainly a League man himself and a good friend of Great Britain, though he is always —as he ought to be—very much an American. This is a valuable " short history " written in careful English and admirable in its temper and impartiality.
The two handsome volumes of The Rise of American Civilization provide much more difficult material for fair judgment. The authors are ambitious, immensely industrious, and widely read, but their work reminds one of the curate's first sermon which ranged from Genesis to Revelation. It was hardly necessary to link American history with the misty origins of primitive nations. The account of the company settlements in America is good and clear, and the authors call attention to the system of indentured white servants which is ignored by many historians. Jefferson's extraordinary mingling of Jacobinism and eighteenth-century deism is also well described. But the authors at their worst produce some exasperatingly turgid writing. In introducing the Civil War they entitle their chapter " The Irrepressible Conflict, though they evidently mean no more than "inevitable." There were only two parties to the Civil War and the conflict was mutual ; there was no third party that could have repressed it. The second Christian name of Edgar Allan Poe is spelt wrong in the text but not in the index.
Previous page
