[217] Lafayette's journeys to America.
[218] An exact justification of Lacretelle's prediction; above, p. 94.
[219] Histoire des Etats Unis, 3 vols.; preface dated 1855; the lectures had been delivered in 1849. Washington is the hero of the work, which is carried on only to 1789.
[220] Washington, libérateur de l'Amérique, 1882, often reprinted, dedicated: "A la mémoire de Lazare Hoche, le soldat citoyen, qui aurait été notre Washington s'il eût vécu."
[221] August 1, 1786.
[222] "It is estimated that there are more small holdings of land in France than in Germany, England, and Austria combined." Report of the [U.S.] Commissioner of Education, 1913, p. 714.
[223] To Richard H. Lee, December 14, 1784. On French exertions in that line, Consul-General Skinner wrote: "If correspondents could penetrate, as the writer has done, the almost inaccessible mountain villages of this country, and there discover the enthusiastic French forester at work, applying scientific methods to a work which can not come to complete fruition before two or three hundred years, they would retire full of admiration and surprise and carry the lesson back to the United States." Daily Consular Reports, November 2, 1907.
[224] "The story of French success in the exploration, the civilization, the administration, and the exploitation of Africa, is one of the wonder tales of history. That she has relied on the resources of science rather than those of militarism makes her achievement the more remarkable.... Look at Senegambia as it is now under French rule.... Contrast the modernized Dahomey of to-day with its railways, schools, and hospitals with the blood-soaked country of the early sixties; remember that Algeria has doubled in population since [the time of] the last Dey—and you will have a bird's-eye view, as it were, of what the French have accomplished in the colonizing field." E. Alexander Powell, The Last Frontier, New York, 1912, p. 25. Concerning the Arabs under French rule, Edgar A. Forbes writes: "The conquered race may thank the stars that its destiny rests in a hand that seldom wears the rough gauntlet." The Land of the White Helmet, New York, 1910, p. 94.
[225] To Lafayette, Aug. 15, 1786. Cf. below, p. 347. Same views in Franklin, who had written to his friend David Hartley, one of the British plenipotentiaries for the peace: "What would you think of a proposition, if I should make it, of a family compact between England, France, and America?... What repeated follies are those repeated wars! You do not want to conquer and govern one another. Why, then, should you continually be employed in injuring and destroying one another?" Passy, Oct. 16, 1783.
[226] June 15, 1782.
IV
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
On two tragic occasions, at a century's distance, the fate of the United States has trembled in the balance: would they be a free nation? Would they continue to be one nation? A leader was wanted on both occasions, a very different one in each case. This boon was granted to the American people, who had a Washington when a Washington was needed, and a Lincoln when a Lincoln could save them. Neither would have adequately performed the other's task.
A century of gradually increasing prosperity had elapsed when came the hour of the nation's second trial. Though it may seem to us small, compared with what we have seen in our days, the development had been considerable, the scattered colonies of yore had become one of the great Powers of the world, with domains reaching from one ocean to the other; the immense continent had been explored; new cities were dotting the wilderness of former days. When in 1803 France had, of her own will, ceded the Louisiana territories, which have been divided since into fourteen States, minds had been staggered; many in the Senate had shown themselves averse to the ratification of the treaty, thinking that it might prove rather a curse than a boon. "As to Louisiana, this new, immense, unbounded world," Senator White, of Delaware, had said, "if it should ever be incorporated into this Union ... I believe it will be the greatest curse that could at present befall us; it may be productive of innumerable evils, and especially of one that I fear even to look upon."
What the senator feared to look upon was the possibility, awful and incredible as it might seem, of people being so rash as to go and live beyond the Mississippi. Attempts would, of course, be made, he thought, to prevent actions which would entail such grave responsibilities for the government; but those meritorious attempts on the part of the authorities would probably fail. "It would be as well to pretend to inhibit the fish from swimming in the sea.... To every man acquainted with the manner in which our Western country has been settled, such an idea must be chimerical." People will go, "that very population will go, that would otherwise occupy part of our present territory." The results will be unspeakable: "Our citizens will be removed to the immense distance of two or three thousand miles from the capital of the Union, where they will scarcely ever feel the rays of the general government; their affections will be alienated; they will gradually begin to view us as strangers; they will form other commercial connections, and our interests will become distinct."
The treaty had been ratified, however, and the prediction, not of Senator White, of Delaware, but of Senator Jackson, of Georgia, has proved true, the latter having stated in his answer that if they both could "return at the proper period," that is, "in a century," they would find that the region was not, as had been forecasted, "a howling wilderness," but "the seat of science and civilization."[227] The fact is that if the two senators had been able to return at the appointed date, they would have seen the exposition of St. Louis.
Progress had been constant; modern inventions had brought the remotest parts of the country nearer together. The telegraph had enabled "the rays of the general government" to reach the farthest regions of the territory. That extraordinary attempt, the first transcontinental railroad, was soon to be begun (1863) and was to be finished six years later.
And now all seemed to be in doubt again; the nation was young, wealthy, powerful, prosperous; it had vast domains and resources, no enemies, and yet it looked as though her fate would parallel that of the old empires of which Tacitus speaks, and which, without foes, crumble to pieces under their own weight.
Within her frontiers elements of destruction or disruption had been growing; animosities were embittered among people equally brave, bold, and sure of their rights. The edifice raised by Washington was shaking on its base; a catastrophe was at hand, such a one as he had himself foreseen as possible from the first. Slavery, he had thought, should be gradually but thoroughly abolished. "Your late purchase," he had written to Lafayette, "of an estate in the colony of Cayenne, with a view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof of humanity. Would to God a like spirit would diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country, but I despair of seeing it."[228] And to John Francis Mercer: "I never mean (unless some particular circumstance should compel me to it) to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by slow, sure, and imperceptible degrees."[229] For many reasons the steadiness of the new-born Union caused him anxiety. "We are known," he had written to Doctor W. Gordon, "by no other character among nations than as the United States.... When the bond of union gets once broken everything ruinous to our future prospects is to be apprehended. The best that can come of it, in my humble opinion, is that we shall sink into obscurity, unless our civil broils should keep us in remembrance and fill the page of history with the direful consequences of them."[230]