American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Everett on “wheel of fortune”]: ibid., p. 271.

  [Channing on hardships of the rich]: ibid., p. 272.

  [“Ode to the Factory Girl”]: ibid.

  [Channing on “Elevation of Soul”]: ibid., p. 273.

  [American politics a “romance”]: Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (Harcourt, Brace, 1955), p. 140.

  [Van Deusen on Ohio Whigs]: Van Deusen, p. 96.

  [Wealth of Boston Whiggery]: Robert Rich, “ ‘A Wilderness of Whigs’,” Journal of Social History. Vol. 4 (Spring 1971), pp. 263-76.

  [Justice Story]: Hartz, p. 104. [Shaw and “fellow-servant rule”]: Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, rev. ed. (Harper & Brothers, 1961), p. 778.

  [Everett on “Numbers against Property”]:Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, p. 110.

  [Lawrence’s loan to Harrison]: Seager, p. 145.

  [Daniel Webster as typical Whig]: Irving H. Bartlett, Daniel Webster (W. W. Norton, 1978).

  Experiments in Escape

  [Sophia Ripley letter]: Sophia Willard Dana Ripley to John S. Dwight, Aug. 1, 1840, in Zoltán Haraszti The Idyll of Brook Farm (Trustees of the Boston Public Library, n.d), pp. 12-13.

  [Jefferson on laboring in the earth]: Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, Thomas P. Abernethy, ed. (Harper & Row, 1964), p. 157.

  [Owenite and other communitarian associations]: Arthur Eugene Bestor, Jr., Backwoods Utopias (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950); John F.C. Harrison, Quest for the New Moral World (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969); V. F. Calverton, Where Angels Dared to Tread (Bobbs-Merrill,1941); William E. Wilson, The Angel and the Serpent (Indiana University Press, 1964); Everett Webber, Escape to Utopia (Hastings House, 1959); Donald E. Pitzer, ed., Robert Owen’s American Legacy (Proceedings of the Robert Owen Bicentennial Conference) (Indiana Historical Society, 1972). 440

  [Owen’s goals]: quoted in Calverton, p. 180.

  [Evil of individualism]: Bestor, p. 8.

  [New Harmony purchased]: Harrison, p. 164.

  [New Harmony members]: Webber, p. 139.

  [“Pecuniary inequality”]: Bestor, p. 120.

  [Regulations for members]: Wilson, p. 118.

  [Arrival of Philanthropist]: ibid., p. 138.

  [Pelham is “free”]: quoted in Bestor, p. 167.

  [“Persons of color”]: Wilson, p. 118.

  [Mrs. Pears on equality]: Bestor, p. 175.

  [Bestor on paradox of experiment]: ibid.

  [Brown denounces Owen]: ibid, p. 188.

  [Decline of New Harmony]: ibid., pp. 197-201.

  [Fourier and Fourierism]: Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, The Teaching of Charles Fourier (University of California Press. 1969); Mark Poster, ed., Harmonian Man (Doubleday, ‘97’]: Charles Gide, Intro., Design for Utopia: Selected Writings of Charles Fourier (Schocken Books, 1971)

  [Fourier on commercial world]: Poster, p. 3.

  [Fourierist associations in America]: Bestor, pp. 238-40.

  [Brook Farm]: Edith Roelker Curtis, A Season in Utopia (Thomas Nelson, 1961); Haraszti.

  [Failure of communal societies]: Maren L. Carden, Oneida: Utopian Community to Modern Corporation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), p. 20.

  [Intellectual leaders who could not plan]: Webber, pp. 192-99.

  [Greeley’s admiration]: quoted in Bestor, p. 10. [Marx and Engels]: quoted in ibid., p. 11.

  13. THE EMPIRE OF LIBERTY

  [Adams on peace and prosperity]: quoted in Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, 9th ed. (Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 191.

  [Jackson denounces French]: ibid., p. 195. [Refusal to apologize]: ibid., p. 197.

  [Andrew Jackson Pageot]: ibid., p. 198.

  [Rochester Democrat demands revenge]: ibid., p. 200. [Vow to liberate Canada]: ibid, p. 201.

  [Ashburton pays Sparks’s “expenses”]: Samuel F. Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States, 5th ed. (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), p. 263.

  Trails of Tears and Hope

  [Frontier ruffians]: Ray A. Billington, Westward Expansion (Macmillan, 1960), p. 482.

  [Tocqueville’s pioneer]: Theodore R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star (Macmillan, 1968), pp. 103-4.

  [Immigrant population]: Billington, pp. 301-2, 308.

  [Steamboat fares]: Richard B. Morris, Encyclopedia of American History, Bicentennial Edition (Harper & Row, 1976), p. 602.

  [Economy of the Northwest]: Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Trans-Appalachian Frontier (Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 293-95, 321-46-

  [“King Whirl”]: Wilbur J. Cash, The Mind of the South (Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), pp. 11-12.

  [Plantation house]: ibid., pp. 15-16.

  [Items bought by Southerners]: Rohrbough, pp. 309, 315; Thomas D. Clark, Three American Frontiers, Holman Hamilton, ed. (University Press of Kentucky, 1968), p. 33.

  [Emerson on West]: quoted in Frederick J. Turner, The United States, 1830-1850 (Henry Holt, 1935), p. 378.

  [Three waves of settlers]: Frederick J. Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in George R. Taylor, ed., The Turner Thesis Concerning the Role of the Frontier in American History, rev. ed. (D. C. Heath, 1956), pp. 9-10.

  [Everyone involved in politics]: Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, “A Meaning for Turner’s Frontier, Democracy in the Old Northwest,” in Taylor, p. 104. [Slick law]: Rohrbough, p. 307.

  [Jefferson’s toast]: Katharine C. Turner, Red Men Calling on the Great White Father (University of Oklahoma Press, 1951), p. 39. [Mary Rapine and Petalesharo]: ibid., pp. 51-57.

  [Henry Clay on Indians]: Diary of John Quincy Adams, cited in Frederick Merk, History of the Westward Movement (Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), p. 186.

  [Black Hawk and Easterners]: Katharine C. Turner, p. 90.

  [Massacre of Indians]: Billington, pp. 300-1; see also Milo M. Quaife, ed., Life of Black Hawk (Lakeside Press, 1916).

  [Cherokee wealth]: Billington, p. 314.

  [Indian spiritual values]: Eufaula Harjo, a Creek sage, quoted in Angie Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States (University of Oklahoma Press, 1970); p. 4.

  [Ross’s eloquence]: Grant Foreman, Advancing the Frontier, 1830-1860 (University of Oklahoma Press, 1933), p. 322.

  [Mistreatment of tribesmen]: Grant Foreman, Indian Removal (University of Oklahoma Press, 1932), pp. 131, 114, 272; see also Flora W. Seymour, Indian Agents of the Old Frontier (Appleton-Century, 1941), pp. 3-14.

  [Army private’s account]: Debo, pp. 108-9.

  [Choctaw government]: Grant Foreman, The Five Civilized Tribes (University of Oklahoma Press, 1934). pp 32-33. [Choctaw Academy]: ibid., p. 66.

  [Austin’s arrangement]: Fehrenbach, pp. 135-37.

  [Austin in Mexico City]: Eugene C. Barker, The Life of Stephen F. Austin (Lakeside Press, 1949), pp. 43-44.

  [Jeffersonian paradise]: Fehrenbach, p. 166.

  [Houston’s call]: Llerena Friend, Sam Houston: The Great Designer (University of Texas Press, 1954), p. 63.

  [Travis’ appeal]: Fehrenbach, p. 208.

  [“EI Bostono”]: David M. Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War (University of Missouri Press, 1973), p. 92.

  [California description]: Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision: 1846 (Houghton Mifflin, 1942), p. 45.

  [Wagon train election]: Frederick Turner, United States, p. 367.

  [Larkin’s scheme for Californian independence]: Billington, pp. 570-72.

  [Sutter and the new arrivals]: Julian Dana, Sutter of California (Macmillan, 1936), passim.

  Annexation: Politics and War

  [“Manifest Destiny”]: Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History (Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), p. 24. [Douglas on “area of liberty”]: ibid., p. 28. [“American multiplication table”]: ibid, p. 29.

  [“Who is Polk?”]: Eugene I. McCormac, James K. Polk (University of California Press, 1922), p. 248; see also Charles Sellers, James K. Polk: Continentalist, 1843-1846 (Princeton University Press, 1966),
p. 105.

  [Benton on Oregon]: Bailey, p. 224.

  [Claim to Oregon “unquestionable”]: ibid., p. 225. [Looking John Bull in the eye]: ibid, p. 228.

  [“Reannexation of Texas” in Democratic platform]: quoted in Charles Sellers, “Election of 1844,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections (Chelsea House, 1971), Vol. 1, p. 773.

  [Slidells status]: George Meade, The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), Vol. 1, p. 65.

  [Sequence of events on Rio Grande]: George W. Smith and Charles Judah, Chronicles of the Gringos (University of New Mexico Press, 1968), pp. 61-62.

  [Polk’s decision for war]: Allan Nevins, ed., Polk: The Diary of a President,1845-1849 (Longmans, Green, 1929), pp. 81-83.

  [War message]: Pletcher, p. 386.

  [Mexican prisoners]: Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U S. Grant (Webster, 1885), Vol. 1, pp. 117-18.

  [Mexicans at Buena Vista]: Justo Sierra, The Political Evolution of the Mexican People, Charles Ramsdell, trans. (University of Texas Press, 1969), pp. 241-42.

  [Liberty cap]: soldier quoted in Lloyd Lewis, Captain Sam Grant (Little, Brown, 1950), p. 194.

  [Amphibious assault described]: Correspondence of John Sedgwick, Major-General (De Vinne Press, 1902), Vol. 1, p. 71.

  [Valley of Mexico]: Lewis, p. 225.

  [Scott’s choice]: De Voto, pp. 489-90.

  [Scott on Chapultepec assault]: quoted in Sedgwick, p. 113.

  [American casualties]: K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846-1848 (Macmillan, 1974), p. 397.

  [Grant’s lament]: Lewis, p. 261.

  The Geometry of Balance

  [Post-Mexican War politics in general]: William R. Brock, Parties and Political Conscience: American Dilemmas, 1840-1850 (KTO Press, 1979); Roy Franklin Nichols, The Democratic Machine, 1850-1854, (Longmans, Green, 1923); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of U.S. Political Parties (Chelsea House, 1973), Vol. 1; Roy F. Nichols, The Stakes of Power, 1845-1877 (Hill & Wang, 1961).

  [John Quincy Adams on internal Whig divisions]: Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams (Lippincott, 1877), Vol. 12, p. 274.

  [John Quincy Adams on three-fifths rule as fatal drop of prussic accid]: quoted in Brock, p. 233.

  [Justice Taney on community rights]: quoted in Dumas Malone, ed., Dictionary of American Biography (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), Vol. 18, p. 292.

  [Dalzell on balance as organic]: Robert F. Dalzell, Jr., Daniel Webster and the Trial of American Nationalism, 1843-1852 (W. W. Norton, 1972), p. 14.

  [Strategic questions facing antislavery movement]: Aileen S. Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834-1850, (Pantheon Books, 1969).

  [Liberty party]: Theodore C. Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest (Longmans, Green,1897), Vol. 6 of Harvard Historical Studies; Joseph G. Rayback, “The Liberty Party Leaders of Ohio: Exponents of Antislavery Coalition,” Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, Vol. 57 (April 1948), pp. 165-78; Betty Flade-land, James Gillespie Birney: Slaveholder to Abolitionist (Cornell University Press, 1955).

  [Liberty party in New York election of 1844]: Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy (Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 134, 209-13.

  [Conscience Whigs]: Kinley J. Brauer, Cotton versus Conscience (University Press of Kentucky, 1967); Martin B. Duberman, Charles Francis Adams, 1807-1886 (Houghton Mifflin, 1961); David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf, 1960); Frank Otto Gatell, John Gorham Palfrey and the New England Conscience (Harvard University Press, 1963); and biographies of Conscience Whig leaders.

  [Cotton Whigs]; Thomas H. O’Connor, Lords of the Loom: The Cotton Whigs and the Coming of the Civil War (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968).

  [Free-Soil party]: Frederick J. Blue, The Free Soilers (University of Illinois Press, 1973); Joseph G. Rayback, Free Soil: The Election of 1848 (University Press of Kentucky, 1970); Theodore C. Smith; Aileen S. Kraditor, “The Liberty and Free Soil Parties,” in Schlesinger, History of U.S. Political Parties, Vol. 1, pp. 741-61 and appendices.

  [Eric Foner on Free-Soil party evasion of Negro rights issue]: Eric Foner, “Politics and Prejudice: The Free Soil Party and the Negro, 1849-1852,”Journal of Negro History, Vol. 50, No. 4 (October 1965), p. 239.

  [1848 presidential election]: Flagg Papers, Columbia University Library, esp. correspondence with John A. Dix.

  [Lewis Cass]: Frank B. Woodford, Lewis Cass (Rutgers University Press, 1950).

  [1848 election results]: Svend Petersen, A Statistical History of the American Presidential Elections (Frederick Ungar, 1963), pp. 31-32.

  [The Southern Address]: Charles M. Wiltse, John C. Calhoun Sectionalist, 1840-1850 (Bobbs-Merrill, 1951), quoted at p. 385.

  [Gold discovered]: Dana, pp. 296-302.

  [Population hurries to mines]: Col. Richard B. Mason, letter in John C. Fremont, The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California (Derby, 1851), p. 427.

  [Prospectors’ methods]: Milo M. Quaife, ed., Pictures of Gold Rush California (Lakeside Press, 1949), pp. 192-234.

  [Gold rush]: Quaife, Pictures, pp. xx-xxv.

  [San Francisco]: Dana, p. 353.

  [Statehood convention]: Dana, pp. 342-49.

  [Slavery prohibition]: ibid., pp. 347.

  [Remarks on slavery by Representatives Allen and Hilliard]: Congressional Globe, 31st Congress, 1st session (Appendix), Dec. 12, 1849 (speeches of Dec. 12, 1849, and Dec. 13, 1849), pp. 33-35.

  [Extremist feelings in 1849-1850]: Claude M. Fuess, Daniel Webster (Da Capo Press, 1968),

  Vol. 2, pp. 20l-2.

  [Clay’s meeting with Webster on omnibus proposal]: ibid, pp. 204-5; Dalzell, p. 173; Glyndon G. Van Deusen, The Life of Henry Clay (Little, Brown, 1937), p. 399.

  [Clay “never before arisen to address any assembly … so anxious ”]: Congressional Globe, Feb. 5 and 6, 1850, p. 115.

  [Clay’s presentation of his omnibus proposal to the Senate]: ibid., pp. 115-27, quoted at p. 127.

  [Calhoun’s speech]: quoted in Dalzell, p. 174 (March 4, 1850).

  [Webster’s speech]: Congressional Globe, March 7, 1850, pp. 269-76, quoted at pp. 269, 276.

  [Philip Hone on post-Compromise rejoicing]: quoted in Brock, p. 315.

  [California lawlessness]: Dana, pp. 367-68 and passim.

  14. THE CULTURE OF LIBERTY

  [Emerson on the limited culture of Massachusetts]: The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, eds. E. W. Emerson and W. E. Forbes (Houghton Mifflin, 1912), Vol. 8, p. 339 (Oct. 1852).

  [John Adams on the generational sequence of studies]: James T. Adams, The Adams Family (Literary Guild, 1930), p. 67.

  [New England cultural development in general]: F. O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 1941); Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1958), Vol. 2: The Romantic Revolution in America; Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England (E. P. Dutton, 1936); Russell Blaine Nye, The Cultural Life of the New Motion (Harper & Brothers, i960); Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965).

  [Harvard conflict over religion]: Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard (Harvard University Press, 1936), pp. 187-90.

  [Parrington on Washington Irving’s detachment from literary America]: Parrington, p. 203.

  [Parrington on William Cullen Bryant’s “self-pollenizing nature”]: Parrington, p. 239.

  [Harvard in the early nineteenth century]: Morison, pp. 224-30; Brooks, Ch. 2.

  [William Ellery Channing on experience and experiment]: Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 4 (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), p. 7.

  [Channing on the “great nature” and “divine image” of man]: quoted in Parrington, p. 334.

  [Oliver Wendell Holmes on Channing’s “bland, superior look”
]: quoted in Brooks, p. 43.

  The Engine in the Vineyard

  The title of this section is adapted from Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden (Oxford University Press, 1967), which is a major source of ideas for this chapter.

  [Emerson’s return to Concord with Lidian]: Ralph L. Rusk, The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), pp. 222-24.

  [The Emersons’ home in Concord]: Stephanie Kraft, No Castles on Main Street (Rand McNally, 1979), Ch. 11.

  [Emerson’s early life]: Rusk, Chs. 1-10; Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 3, pp. 132-34.

  [Emerson on moving “from the Unconscious to the Conscious”]: quoted in Rusk, p. 66.

  [Emerson’s return to Concord in 1834, with his mother]: ibid., pp. 208-9.

  [Emerson’s Nature]: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (Munroe, 1836). Quoted on nature, pp. 77, 9, 12, 53, 79; quoted on man, pp. 14, 41, 50-51, 80.

  [Emerson on man’s talent and genius]: quoted in Perry Miller, ed., The American Transcendentalists (Anchor Books, 1957), p. 58, from Emerson’s lecture, “The Method of Nature,” Waterville College, Maine, Aug. 11, 1841.

  [Emerson on man’s magnetic needle]: quoted in Brooks, p. 206.

  [Emerson on self-reliance]: “Self-Reliance,” in Mary A. Jordan, ed., Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Houghton Mifflin, 1903), quoted at pp. 86, 88, 111.

  [Theodore Parker on worshipping with no mediator between people and the father of all]: quoted in Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 7, pp. 239-40.

  [Margaret Fuller as “unsexed version of Plato’s Socrates”]: Barrett Wendell, A Literary History of America (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901), p. 300; see also Marie Mitchell Olesen Urbanski, Margaret Fuller’s “Woman in the Nineteenth Century” (Greenwood Press, 1980).

  [Harriet Martineau on Margaret Fuller’s circle of women intellectuals]: quoted in Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 4, p. 64.

  [Emerson on a “foolish consistency”]: Jordan, p. 93.

  [Emerson on technology]: quoted in Marx, p. 230.

  [“Things are in the saddle … ”]: Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Ode Inscribed to W. H. Channing,” Richard Ellmann, ed., The New Oxford Book of American Verse (Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 67-69. On Emerson and his circle, see also Joel Porte, Representative Man (Oxford University Press, 1979).