American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Limits placed on farm production by rudimentary implements]: Gates, The Farmer’s Age, p. 287.

  [Coffin’s comment on haying day in July]: George, p. 6.

  [Report of English agriculturist on American hogs]: Paul Leland Haworth, George Washington, Farmer (Bobbs-Merrill, 1915), p. 57.

  [Traveler’s comment on Yankee farmers]: Joseph Holt Ingraham, The South-West. By a Yankee (Harper & Brothers, 1835), Vol. 2, p. 89.

  [Economic pressures on New England farm families]: Henretta, p. 7.

  [New England farm land values]: Gates, The Farmer’s Age, p. 29.

  [Cotton prices, 1815-27]: Stuart Bruchey, ed., Cotton and the Growth of the American Economy: 1790-1860 (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967), Table 3-A.

  [Population growth in the Gulf stales]: Stuart Bruchey, The Roots of American Economic Growth, 1607-1861 (Harper & Row, 1965), p. 156.

  [Crowding of small farmers by planters migrating to the Southwest]: Gates, The Farmer’s Age, p. 9.

  [Description of cotton planting by slaves]: Dr. J. W. Monett, “The Cotton Crop,” in Ingraham, p. 281.

  [Tendency of overseers and planters to use the whip as discipline]: Monett, p. 287, and Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (Pantheon, 1974). pp. 64-65.

  [Cotton-picking on the Dabney plantation]: Susan Dabney Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, Fletcher M. Green, ed. (Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), pp. 53-55.

  [Estimate of average amount of cotton picked by a field hand]: Monett, p. 287.

  [Dabney’s efforts to make his plantation self-sufficient]: Smedes, pp. 55-60.

  [Evading of overseer by slaves]: Monett, p. 286.

  [Small farmers in Mississippi]: Ingraham, p. 26.

  [Statistics on cotton shipments to New Orleans]: Bruchey, Roots, p. 156.

  [New England journalist on commission merchants]: Ingraham, p. 93.

  [Shortage of investment capital in South]: Bruchey, Roots, p. 40.

  [Georgia writer quoted on sterility of land]: Cates, The Farmer’s Age, p. 142.

  [Historian on the iron plow]: Clarence H. Danhof, quoted in Bruchey, Roots, p. 178.

  [Southern visitor to New York State fair on importance of iron plow]: Gates, The Farmer’s Age, p. 283.

  [Growth of national market for farm products]: Bruchey, Roots, pp. 153-60.

  Factories: The Looms of Lowell

  [Whitney on his debts and business setbacks]: Mirsky and Nevins, pp. 145-46.

  [Whitney’s heartbreak over Catherine Greene]: ibid., p. 284.

  [Description of Whitney’s first factory, Mill River]: ibid, p. 313.

  [Whitney’s altitudes toward his laborers]: ibid., p. 190.

  [Need to supervise every detail]: ibid., p. 225.

  [Wages for armorers]: Felicia Johnson Deyrup, Arms Making in the Connecticut Valley (George Shurnway, 1970), p. 242.

  [Summary of average wages for unskilled workers in Pennsylvania]: William A. Sullivan, The Industrial Worker in Pennsylvania, 1800 1840 (Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1955), p. 75.

  [Diversions at Harper’s Ferry armory described]: Merrill Roe Smith, Harper’s Ferry Armory and the New Technology (Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 65.

  [Contributions of John Hall and Simeon North to interchangeable parts manufacture]: Smith, p. 325.

  [Community of Salem, North Carolina, in 1799]: Frank P. Albright, Johann Ludwig Eberhardt and His Salem Clocks (University of North Carolina Press, 1978), pp. 3-6.

  [Control which the Elders Conference exercised over morals in Salem]: ibid., pp. 12-13.

  [Dependence of Salem on Philadelphia wholesale houses for manufactured articles]: ibid., p. 64.

  [Eli Terry’s methods of producing clocks by machine]: Dirk J. Siruik, Yankee Science in the Making (Little, Brown, 1948), p. 147.

  [Value of Whitney’s estate]: Mirsky and Nevins, pp. 312-13.

  [Slater’s introduction of cotton-spinning machinery into the United States]: Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience (Vintage Books, 1965), p. 27.

  [Power loom adopted by Lowell for cotton mills]: Robert Brooke Zevin, “The Growth of Cotton Textile Production after 1815,” in Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., The Reinterpretation of American Economic History (Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 139-41.

  [Site of the Waltham mills described]: Steve Dunwell, The Run of the Mill (David R. Godine, 978), pp. 30-33.

  [Building of Lowell]: Lamb, p. 107.

  [Lucy Larcom and conditions in Lowell factories]: Lucy Larcom, An Idyll of Work (James R. Osgood, 1875), passim. See also Dunwell, pp. 42-49.

  [Lowell as a social experiment]: Benita Eisler, ed., The Lowell Offering (Lippincott, 1977), p. 15, quoted in Anna D. Socrates, “The Women of Lowell: A Study in Leadership and Consciousness-Raising” (Williams College, Nov. 1979).

  [Merchants’ pursuit of stable investment returns from the Waltham-Lowell system]. Robert F. Dalzell, Jr., “The Rise of the Waltham-Lowell System and Some Thoughts on the Political Economy of Modernization in Ante-bellum Massachusetts,” Perspectives in American History, Vol. 9 (1975). pp. 229-68.

  [Skepticism of Cabots and Lowells toward Francis Cabot Lowell’s plans for a textile mill]: Ferris Greenslet, The Lowells and Their Seven Worlds (Houghton Mifflin, 1946), p. 156.

  Freight: The Big Ditches

  [Maiden voyage of the Clermont]: Dangerfield, pp. 407-9, and John S. Morgan, Robert Fulton (Mason/Charter, 1977). pp. 140-43; see also Robert R. Livingston, “The Invention of the Steamboat,” Old South Leaflets; Vol. 5, No. 108 (Old South Meeting House, 1902), pp. 161-76 (which includes letters by Robert Fulton).

  [Skepticism about the steamboat]: quoted in Morgan, p. 140.

  [Speed of the Clermont and the reactions of amazed bystanders]: ibid., p. 142.

  [Fulton on his plans to use steamboat on the Mississippi River]: ibid., p. 143.

  [Fulton’s early interest and training in navigation]: ibid, pp. 41-42.

  [Livingston’s New York State monopoly on steam navigation]: Dorothy Gregg, “John Stevens, General Entrepreneur,” in Miller, p. 135.

  [Description of building the Clermont]: Louis C. Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Waters (Harvard University Press, 1949), p. 66.

  [Comparatively low cost of steamboat construction]: Gregg, p. 133.

  [Livingston’s interest in steam navigation]: Dangerfield, p. 287.

  [Fulton’s careful study of records of other inventors in steam navigation]: Morgan, pp. 156-58.

  [Prohibitive cost of freight transport by wagon]: Kirkland, p. 136.

  [Settler digging clay from the middle of the road]: Buley,· p. 459.

  [Livingston’s influence in securing a monopoly of steam navigation on the lower Mississippi]: Dangerfield, p. 417.

  [Roosevelt’s difficulties in building the Mississippi steamboat]: Morgan, pp. 168-69.

  [Sinking of the New Orleans]: Morgan, p. 170.

  [Speed of the Washington as compared to keelboats]: Buley, p. 413.

  [Steamboats’ failures in transporting heavy freight]: Buley, p. 427.

  [Lincoln’s flatboat trip to New Orleans]: Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None (Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 14-15·

  [Rise of cities on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers]: Louis Bernard Schmidt, “Internal Commerce and the Development of National Economy before 1860,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 47, No. 6 (December 1939), pp 798-801.

  [“Wedding of the waters” at Erie Canal celebration]: Ronald E. Shaw, Erie Water West: A History of the Erie Canal, 1792-1854 (University Press of Kentucky, 1966), pp. 186-91.

  [Song “ ’Tis done... ”]: Madeline Sadler Waggoner, The Long Haul West (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1958), p. 128.

  [The Pennsylvania Canal]: Kirkland, pp. 146-47; Waggoner, Ch. 11.

  The Innovating Leaders

  [Forman’s interview with Jefferson]: David Hosack, Memoir of De Witt Clinton (J. Seymour, 1829), p. 347; Jefferson to Clinton, Dec. 12, 1822, ibid., pp. 347-48.
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  [Robert Lamb on role of extended family in decision-making process]: Lamb, p. 93.

  [Broadus and Louise Mitchell on root-cutting technique]: Broadus Mitchell and Louise Pearson Mitchell, American Economic History (Houghton Mifflin, 1947), p. 353.

  [Role of state governments in economic development and promotion]: Carter Goodrich et al., Canals and American Economic Development (Columbia University Press, 1961), passim; Roger L. Ransom, “Interregional Canals and Economic Specialization in the Antebellum United States,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, Second Series, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Fall 1967), pp. 12-35.

  [Elkanah Watson]: Hugh M. Flick, “Elkanah Watson’s Activities on Behalf of Agriculture,” Agricultural History, Vol. 21, No. 4 (October 1947), pp. 193-98; Watson is quoted at p. 194.

  [Appeal of Erie Canal proposal to group interests]: Julius Rubin, “An Innovating Public Improvement: The Erie Canal,” in Goodrich, quoted at pp. 53-54.

  [The new triangle of trade]: Schmidt, p. 821; see also Douglass C. North, “The United States in the International Economy, 1790-1850,” in Seymour E. Harris, ed., American Economic History (McGraw-Hill, 1961), pp. 181-205.

  [“Impersonal” economic forces dominating the marketplace]: Zevin, passim.

  9. THE WIND FROM THE WEST

  [Migration west]: Oscar Handlin, The Americans (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1963), Ch. 14; Harry J. Carman, Harold C. Syrett, and Bernard W. Wishy, A History of the American People (Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), Vol. 1, Ch. 12; Ray Allen Billington, Westward Expansion (Macmillan, 1960).

  [Morris Birkbeck on the small family wagons]: quoted in Carman, Syrett, and Wishy, p. 361.

  [Hollidaysburg Aurora on the Allegheny Portage Railroad trip]: quoted in Madeline Sadler Waggoner, The Long Haul West (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1958), pp. 196-97.

  [Sights and sounds of the Erie Canal]: Waggoner, p. 155; my description of passing through the canal is mainly drawn from this work; and from Ronald E. Shaw, Erie Water West (University Press of Kentucky, 1966).

  [Dickens on canal-barge life]: Waggoner, pp. 152, 153.

  [Spitting]: Edward Pessen, Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics (Dorsey Press, 1969), p. 23. [Mrs. Trollope on shucking]: ibid., p. 23.

  [Individualism on the frontier]: Ray Allen Billington, The American Frontier Thesis: Attack and Defense (American Historical Association, 1958), p. 36.

  [ Westerners as outsiders]: Frederic Austin Ogg, The Old Northwest: A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond (Yale University Press, 1919), pp. 101-2; see also Robert E. Riegel and Robert G. Athearn, America Moves West, 4th ed. (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), pp. 78-80.

  [Contradictions of frontier people]: Pessen, pp. 34-35.

  [Character of frontier people]: see also Louis B. Wright, Culture on the Moving Frontier (Indiana University Press, 1955); Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion (Stanford University Press, 1957); Richard Hofstadter and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Turner and the Socialogy of the Frontier (Basic Books, 1968); Robert E. Riegel, Young America, 1830-1840 (University of Oklahoma Press, 1949); Dale Van Every, The Final Challenge (William Morrow, 1964).

  [Andrew Jackson’s life and character]: Marquis James, Andrew Jackson: Portrait of a President (Bobbs-Merrill, 1937); Michael Paul Rogin, Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian (Alfred A. Knopf, 1975); Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767-1821 (Harper & Row, 1977)

  The Revolt of the Outs

  [Polk on the “American tripod”]: James K. Polk, in the House of Representatives, March 29, 1830, 21st Congress, 1st session, Register of Debates, pp. 698-99, quoted in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Little, Brown, 1945), p. 62.

  [The Jackson men as insiders and outsiders]: Pessen, Ch. 8, passim. See also Sydney H. Aronson, Status and Kinship in the Higher Civil Service (Harvard University Press, 1964).

  [Jackson’s comments on the “corrupt bargain”]: Jackson to John Coffee, Feb. 19, 1825, in John Spencer Bassett, ed., Correspondence of Andrew Jackson (Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1928), Vol. 3, pp. 277-78; Jackson to James Buchanan, June 25, 1825, ibid., p. 287.

  [Election of 1828]: Robert V. Remini, The Election of Andrew Jackson (Lippincott, 1963); Edward Pessen, New Perspectives on Jacksonian Parties and Politics (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1969); Robert V. Remini, “Election of 1828,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections (Chelsea House, 1971),Vol. 1, pp. 413-92. On New York State and national aspects of the campaign. I have used the John W. Taylor Papers, New-York Historical Society: the Amariah Flagg Collection, Columbia University Library; and the A. C. Flagg Papers, New York Public Library For a Massachusetts Whig view, see the Edward Everett Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Box 3, Folders 1 and 2.

  [Calhoun on prospects for 1838]: Calhoun to Jackson, Jan. 24, 1827, Bassett, Vol. 3, p. 332.

  [ Van Buren on a North-South coalition and reorganization of the old Republican party ]: Remini in Schlesinger, Elections, Vol. 1, p. 417.

  [“Hurra Boys” for Jackson]: Remini, Election, p. 111.

  [Campaign slander and abuse]: Remini in Schlesinger, passim; Clyndon G. Van Deuscn, The Jacksonian Era (Harper & Brothers, 1959). pp. 26-27.

  [Jackson’s marriage to Rachel Robards]: Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Empire, Ch. 5.

  [Reactions to the 1828 election outcome]: Remini, in Schlesinger, Elections, p. 434.

  [Webster on Jackson’s “breeze”]: Daniel Webster to Ezekiel Webster, inclosure, Feb. 1829, in C. H. Van Tync, ed., Letters of Daniel Webster (McClure, Phillips, 1902), p. 142.

  [Randolph on finding leaders of a revolution]: John Randolph to J. Brockenbrough, Jan. 12, 1829, Feb. 9, 1829, in Hugh A. Garland, Life of John Randolph of Roanoke (D. Appleton, 1855), Vol. 2, p. 317.

  [New York politico on patronage]: William L. Mackenzie, The Lives and Opinions of Benj’n Franklin Butler… and Jesse Hoyt (Cook, 1845), pp. 51-52.

  [Van Buren besieged by job seekers]: Martin Van Buren, The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren (Government Printing Office, 1920), Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1918, Vol. 2, pp. 231-32.

  [Parton on wave of fear]: James Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson (Mason Brothers, 1860), Vol. 3, p. 212.

  [Adams on the officialdom in terror]: Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams (Lippincott, 1876), Vol. 8, p. 144 (April 25, 1829).

  [Conversation of two job seekers]: Amos Kendall, Autobiography, William Stickney, ed. (Lee and Shepard, 1872), p. 308.

  [Jackson’s appointment policy]: Aronson, passim.

  [Jackson’s defense of removals]: James D. Richardson, Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Bureau of National Literature, 1897), Vol. 2, pp. 1011-12 (Dec. 8, 1829).

  [Madison on rotation]: Gaillard Hunt, ed., The Writings of James Madison (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), Vol. 9, pp. 539-40 (Aug. 29, 1834).

  [Jackson’s Cabinet]: Leonard D. White, The Jacksonians (Macmillan, 1956), Ch. 5.

  [Jackson’s “kitchen cabinet”]: Richard P. Longaker, “Was Jackson’s Kitchen Cabinet a Cabinet?” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 44, No. 1 (June 1957), pp. 94-108.

  [Blair filling columns with “public opinion”]: Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel (Harper & Brothers, 1838), Vol. 1, p. 155.

  [Jackson on not making a cabinet for the ladies]: Jackson to J. C. McLemore, April 1, 1829, Andrew Jackson Papers, Library of Congress, 2nd Series.

  [Clay on Jackson sweeping over the government like a tornado]: Register of Debates (Gales and Seaton, 1837), Vol. 13, 24th Congress, 2nd session, Jan. 16, 1837, p. 438.

  The Dance of the Factions

  [The Webster-Hayne debate]: Claude M. Fuess, Daniel Webster (Da Capo Press, 1968), Vol. 1, Ch. 15; Theodore D. Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne and His Times (Macmillan, 1909), Chs. 9-14; Charles M. Wiltse, John C. Calhoun, Nullifier,1829-1839 (Bobbs-Merrill, 1949), Ch. 4.

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sp; [Hayne on “selfish and unprincipled” East]: ibid., p. 365.

  [Webster’s statements before the climactic debate]: quoted in Fuess, pp. 372, 374.

  [Economic, social, and political change in South Carolina]: Charles S. Sydnor, The Development of Southern Sectionalism, 1819-1848 (Louisiana State University Press, 1948), passim; William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War (Harper & Row, 1965), Part 1.

  [Pinckney on slavery]: Freehling, p. 109.

  [Calhoun’s “South Carolina Exposition ”]: Richard K. Crallé, ed., Reports and Public Letters of John C Calhoun (D. Appleton, 1855), Vol. 6, pp. 1-59 (consisting of original draft of the Exposition, adopted with alterations by the South Carolina Legislature, Dec. 1828), passim.

  [Webster on the cry of “Consolidation.”]: The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, National Edition (Little, Brown, 1903), Vol. 5, p. 257.

  [Webster’s sense of audience response in the Senate]: Webster to Jeremiah Mason, Feb. 27, 1830, in Charles M. Wiltse, ed., The Papers of Daniel Webster, Correspondence 1830–1834 (University Press of New England, 1977), Vol. 3, pp. 18–19; Fuess, Vol. 1, p. 374. [Bay State men cry over “encomium upon Massachusetts”]: Fuess, p. 378.

  [Webster’s climactic words]: Register of Debates (Gales and Seaton, 1830), Vol. 6, 21st Congress, 1st session, Jan. 27, 1830, pp. 58-80.

  [The toasts at the Indian Queen Hotel]: Van Buren, Autobiography, pp. 413-17; Freehling, p. 192.

  [Emerson on Webster]: The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, eds. E. W. Emerson and W. E. Forbes (Houghton Mifflin, 1912), Vol. 7, p. 87.

  [Henry Clay and the Maysville Turnpike]: Clement Eaton, Henry Clay and the Art of American Politics (Little, Brown, 1957). pp. 10, 96-97.

  [Webster on the coming crisis]: Webster to Clay, May 29, 1830, in Wiltse, Papers of Daniel Webster, Vol. 3, p. 80.

  [Van Buren on Mrs. Eaton]: Van Buren to Jackson, July 25, 1830, quoted in John A. Munroe, Louis McLane: Federalist and Jacksonian (Rutgers University Press, 1973). p. 293·