By the time of Hayes’s inauguration in March 1877, the nation was moving out of the economic depression. A bitter and violent railroad strike throughout the Northeast and Midwest later that year highlighted the persistent discontent as well as the solid anti-labor stance of the urban middle classes, the press, and the pulpit. America, to borrow a Carnegie metaphor, was thundering forward to the future, and those who would not or could not come aboard could only blame themselves.
Walt Whitman composed “Song of the Exposition” in 1871. The managers of the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia appropriated parts of it for the printed program, as it exemplified the fair’s buoyant optimism, its nationalistic tenor, and its emphasis on the great abundance of the land and the inventiveness of its people.
And thou America,
Thy offspring towering e’er so high, yet higher Thee above all towering,
With Victory on thy left, and at thy right hand Law;
Thou Union holding all, fusing, absorbing, tolerating all,
Thee, ever thee, I sing.…
Mark, thy interminable farms, North, South,
Thy wealthy daughter-states, Eastern and Western,
The varied products of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Georgia, Texas, and the rest,
Thy limitless crops, grass, wheat, sugar, oil, corn, rice, hemp, hops,
Thy barns all fill’d, the endless freight-train and the bulging store-house,
The grapes that ripen on thy vines, the apples in thy orchards,
Thy incalculable lumber, beef, pork, potatoes, thy coal, thy gold and silver,
The inexhaustible iron in thy mines.
All thine O sacred Union!
Ships, farms, shops, barns, factories, mines,
City and State, North, South, item and aggregate …62
The managers invited Whitman to the fair, and he came. He visited all of the major buildings and enjoyed himself immensely. Machinery Hall fascinated him the most, and, after he had toured the grounds, Whitman returned to gaze once again on the massive Corliss steam engine. It was a revelation. A visitor, just like Whitman, had stood before it and expressed his faith that here were embodied America’s ideals, a fitting centennial symbol. “Yes, it is still in these things of iron and steel that the national genius most freely speaks.” And again: “Surely here … is true evidence of man’s creative power; here is Prometheus unbound.”63
Whitman walked up to the engine and climbed onto the platform. Borrowing a chair from the mechanic, he sat in front of the meshing gears and thrusting pistons and worshiped. For thirty minutes, he did not move but sat agape in front of this metal god atop its altar. Whitman marveled at the repetitive, efficient movements dispensing power as a god would do. The poet saw America’s future. The new nation as a mighty machine powering prosperity and generating opportunity for anyone who could harness its energy. America, realizing the promise of its creation, heralding a century of untrammeled progress.64
“The Stride of a Century,” 1876. The figure of Brother Jonathan (precursor to Uncle Sam) straddles the main building of the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and the entire American continent. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Research for this book began when I was ten years old. At that time, and for at least a decade thereafter, my aunt and uncle Mary and Charles Gainor showered me with books on the Civil War era. The fascination continued through graduate school. My doctoral dissertation and first book concerned the origins of the war in Virginia. I have been moving forward in time professionally ever since. If, as some say, the aging process eventually initiates a second childhood, that might account for the resurgence of my Civil War passion, the one that produced this book.
That only tells part of the story, however. Along the way, family, friends, historians, and an array of librarians, archivists, and students have helped me immeasurably. These do not include the much larger number of scholars whose fine works I have relied upon and whom I acknowledge in my notes. I honed my interest in the origins of the war at the University of Maryland, where I was fortunate to have George H. Callcott as a mentor and a friend. He taught me many things, foremost of which was that history is a story and we should write it that way. At Maryland I encountered a group of fellow graduate students who encouraged my work and helped me maintain a healthy balance between work and recreation. Pete Daniel, Jim Lane, and Ray Smock have become lifelong friends.
My ideas as a historian and my values as a person derive from such relationships and also from close friendships formed after graduate school with fellow historians Peter Kolchin, Betsy Jacoway, Ray Mohl, Howard Rabinowitz, and especially Blaine A. Brownell. Blaine and I have written books together and have shared countless meals as well as each other’s joys and sorrows. He is a part of this book as well.
Though research and writing are solitary activities, they are also products of collaborations. What would we do without the professional help of librarians and archivists? Not much, and it would take much longer to do it. My gratitude goes out to Ed Bray of the Smithsonian Institution, Jennifer Ericson of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Kristi Finefield of the Library of Congress, Kevin Grogan of the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia, Yuhua Li of the Widener Library at Harvard, and Matthew Turi at the Southern Historical Collection in the Wilson Library of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Sherry Jordon and Marilyn Elysse of the interlibrary loan department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte have provided invaluable service to me.
I am especially grateful to Robert Barrett of Brigham Young University for making his artwork available to me. The same goes for Harmony Haskins of the Johnson Collection in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Jeffery Howe of the fine arts department at Boston College was kind enough to share his high-resolution image of that impressive Corliss steam engine.
I have been fortunate to receive the assistance of several stellar graduate students. Boyd Harris, La Shonda Mims, Donna Ward, and Kathryn B. Wells were all that I could ask for and more. Kathy Wells not only engaged in research and lightened my editorial responsibilities but also read parts of the manuscript and shared her vast theological expertise with me.
Dr. Martina Kohl of the American Embassy in Berlin was brave enough to allow me to try out my ideas on the Civil War era in front of diverse audiences across Germany. I have benefited from this European perspective as well as from the ideas and friendship of Jörg Nagler of the University of Jena.
Working in a nurturing department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte has facilitated my research and writing. No one has been more supportive than Jürgen Buchenau, department chair. I also appreciate the support of the late Schley Lyons, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and his successor, Nancy Gutierrez. I hope that my Civil War–era historian-colleagues Mark R. Wilson and Jim Hogue will forgive me for pestering them with questions. I also hope I have transcribed their knowledge correctly. I very much appreciate the continued financial support of my research by the Davenport family.
I have also benefited from my association with Bloomsbury Press, first and foremost with Peter Ginna, who believed in this book from the outset, and his fine staff, including Pete Beatty, Nathaniel Knaebel, and Peter Miller. India Cooper was a copy editor nonpareil. To say Geri Thoma is my agent is to say only the half of it. I have enjoyed her sense of humor, benefited from her suggestions, and appreciated her dedication.
And speaking of dedication, it is a very easy thing to dedicate this book to my wife, Marie-Louise Hedin. George Callcott told me that history was a jealous mistress. It is my great vocational passion. Without the presence of family, however, it is a hollow pursuit. Marie-Louise and my wonderful family—my son, Erik; daughter, Eleanor; my late mother, Sarah; and my father, Alex, who at ninety-three is still teaching—have supported that passion. I can never match their support, but I return their love at least as equally. Marie-Louise is always my first reader and first friend.
This book is especially for her.
NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS
CG Congressional Globe
CW Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1953)
FD:SSW Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, ed. Philip S. Foner (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999)
CHAPTER 1: CRUSADES
1. The following account of the Ursuline convent derives from these sources: Nancy Lusignan Schultz, Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834 (New York: Free Press, 2000); Ray Allen Billington, “The Burning of the Charlestown Convent,” New England Quarterly 10 (March 1937): 4–24; Jeanne Hamilton, OSU, “The Nunnery as Menace: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834,” Catholic Historian, Winter 1996, http://www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/BURNING.TXT; Carmine A. Prioli, “The Ursuline Outrage,” American Heritage 33 (February/March 1982): 101–5.
2. Quoted in Billington, “Burning,” 5.
3. Quoted in Schultz, Fire and Roses, 115.
4. Quoted in Hamilton, “Nunnery as Menace,” 16.
5. Quoted in Schultz, Fire and Roses, 159.
6. Quoted in Billington, “Burning,” 15.
7. Quoted in ibid., 12.
8. Quoted in ibid., 15.
9. Quoted in ibid.
10. Quoted in Hamilton, “Nunnery as Menace,” 17.
11. Quoted in ibid, 8.
12. Rebecca Reed, Six Months in a Convent, or the Narrative of Rebecca Theresa Reed, Who Was Under the Influence of the Roman Catholics About Two Years, and an Inmate of the Ursuline Convent on Mount Benedict, Charlestown, Mass., Nearly Six Months in the Years 1831–32 (Boston: Russell, Odiorne & Metcalf, 1835), available on Google Books.
The Mother Superior’s reply is available at the American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives of the Catholic University of America.
13. Rebecca Theresa Reed, Supplement to “Six Months in a Convent” (Boston: Russell, Odiorne, 1835): 69, available on Google Books.
14. Maria Monk, Awful Disclosures (New York: Maria Monk, 1836): 104, available on Google Books.
15. William L. Stone, Maria Monk and the Nunnery of the Hotel Dieu (New York: Howe and Bates, 1836), 26, available on Google Books.
16. Quoted in A. James Reichley, Faith in Politics (Washington: Brookings Institution, 2002), 175–76.
17. Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 236–37. In additional to Noll’s excellent work, I am especially indebted to the insights of the following authors concerning the connection between politics, the economy, and religion in antebellum America: Robert H. Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Richard Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Mark A. Noll, ed., Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the 1980s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
18. Joan D. Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 102–19.
19. “William Jay Mocks and Dismisses the Proslavery Argument,” in Major Problems in the Early Republic, 1747–1848, ed. Sean Wilentz and Jonathan Earle, 2nd ed. (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2007), 394–95.
20. Quoted in Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 96.
21. Ibid.
22. Quoted in William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, vol. 1, Secessionists at Bay, 1776–1854 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 294.
23. Lyman Beecher, A Plea for the West (Cincinnati: Truman & Smith, 1835), 22, 26.
24. Henry David Thoreau, “Walking” (1862), http://www.bartleby.com, paragraph 22; John Patrick Diggins, ed., The Portable John Adams (New York: Penguin, 2004), 214.
25. Quoted in Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962), 70.
26. Quoted in Terry A. Barnhart, “‘A Common Feeling’: Regional Identity and Historical Consciousness in the Old Northwest, 1820–1860,” Michigan Historical Review 29 (Spring 2003): 67–68.
27. John O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 17 (July/August 1845): 6.
28. The following works informed my discussion of the Latter-day Saints: Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005); Reid L. Nielson and Terryl L. Givens, eds., Joseph Smith, Jr.: Reappraisals After Two Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), especially the essay by Richard H. Brodhead, “Prophets in America Circa 1830: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nat Turner, Joseph Smith,” 13–30; Ray Allen Billington, The Far Western Frontier, 1830–1860 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1956), chapter 9; Nathan O. Hatch, “The Democratization of Christianity and the Character of American Politics,” in Noll, Religion and American Politics, 102; Donald C. Swift, Religion and the American Experience (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), 95–101; Tuveson, Redeemer Nation, 176.
29. This assessment appeared in an unflattering article on the Mormons, “Memoir of the Mormons,” Southern Literary Messenger 14 (November 1848): 653–54.
30. Quoted in Brodhead, “Prophets in America,” 24 (Smith), 25 (Emerson).
31. Quoted in Tuveson, Redeemer Nation, 176.
32. Quoted in Billington, Far Western Frontier, 196.
33. Quoted in ibid., 199.
34. Thomas Jefferson to John Dickinson, March 6, 1801, in Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892–99), 9: 343, http://oll.libertyfunding.org/title/757.
35. Quoted in Richard Carwardine, “Trauma in Methodism: Property, Church Schism, and Sectional Polarization in Antebellum America,” in God and Mammon: Protestants, Money, and the Market, 1790–1860, ed. Mark A. Noll (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 206, 208. Mitchell Snay offers an excellent account of the evangelical sectional schism in Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
36. Quoted in Snay, Gospel of Disunion, 135.
37. Both quoted in Noll, America’s God, 199.
38. The best analysis of the Whig Party is Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). See 118.
39. Quoted in Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics, 75.
40. Quoted in ibid., 53.
41. Quoted in ibid., 137.
42. The following works have informed my discussion of the annexation controversy, in addition to the others noted: Robert F. Durden, The Self-Inflicted Wound: Southern Politics in the Nineteenth Century (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985), 49–51; John D. Eisenhower, So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (New York: Random House, 1989), 13–26; Freehling, Secessionists at Bay, part 6; Joel H. Silbey, Storm over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
43. Irving H. Bartlett, John C. Calhoun: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1994) and John Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union: A Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988) are among the best of several Calhoun biographies. See also Lacy K. Ford Jr., “Republican Ideology in a Slave Society: The Political Economy of John C. Calhoun,” Journal of Southern History 54 (August 1988): 405–24. Calhoun’s works are collected in a well-edited series of volumes, Clyde N. Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, 28 vols. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1959–2003).
CHAPTER 2: EMPIRE
1. James K. Polk, “First Annual Message,” December 2, 1845, American Presidency Project, h
ttp://www.presidency.ucsb.edu.
2. Quoted in John D. Eisenhower, So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (New York: Random House, 1989), 45, 23.
3. Quoted in Ray Allen Billington, The Far Western Frontier, 1830–1860 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1956), 171.
4. U. S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1972; first published in 1886), 63.
5. Quoted in Eisenhower, So Far from God, 47.
6. John C. Pinheiro, “‘Religion Without Restriction’: Anti-Catholicism, All Mexico, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,” Journal of the Early Republic 23 (Spring 2003): 69–96.
7. Soldier quoted in Billington, Far Western Frontier, 173; Taylor quoted in Eisenhower, So Far from God, 65.
8. James K. Polk, “Message on War with Mexico,” May 11, 1846, Archives of The West, http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/two/mexdec.htm.
9. “War with Mexico,” May 11, 1846, in The Gathering of the Forces by Walt Whitman: Editorials, Essays, Literary and Dramatic Reviews and Other Material Written by Walt Whitman as Editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1846 and 1847, ed. Cleveland Rodgers and John Black (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920), 240.
10. “Our Territory on the Pacific,” July 7, 1846, in ibid., 246.
11. Philip Callow, From Noon to Starry Night: A Life of Walt Whitman (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1992), 24–25.
12. George Bancroft, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent, 10 vols. (1834–74). The books appeared in numerous editions, some abridged over the years (the latest in 2010). Little, Brown published several editions beginning in 1846.
13. Quoted in Richard Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 145.
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