JOHNSON, Paul - A History of the American People (Parts 1 thru 4)

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A HISTORY

OF THE

AMERICAN

PEOPLE

______________________________

Paul Johnson

`Be not afraid of greatness'

Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, II, v

HarperCollins Publishers

This book was originally published in Great Britain in 1997

by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without

written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in

critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins

Publishers, Inc., 1o East 53rd Street, New York, NY ioozz.

HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or

sales promotional use. For information please write: Special Markets

Department, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1o East 53rd Street,

New York, NY 10022

FIRST U.S. EDITION

__________________________________________

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Johnson, Paul, 1928-

A history of the American people / Paul

Johnson.-1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

"Originally published in Great Britain in

1997 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson"-T.p. Verso.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-06-016836-6

I. United States-History. I. Title.

This book is dedicated to the people of America-strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions,

sometimes wrong-headed but always generous and brave, with a passion for justice no nation has

ever matched.

CONTENTS

Preface

PART ONE

‘A City on a Hill’

Colonial America, 1580-1750

Europe and the Transatlantic Adventure

Ralegh, the Proto-American, and the Roanoke Disaster

Jamestown: The First Permanent Foothold

Mayflower and the Formative Event

`The Natural Inheritance of the Elect Nation'

John Winthrop and His `Little Speech' on Liberty

Roger Williams: The First Dissentient

The Catholics in Maryland

The Primitive Structure of Colonial America

Carolina: The First Slave State

Cotton Mather and the End of the Puritan Utopia

Oglethorpe and Early Georgia

Why Colonial Control Did Not Work

The Rise of Philadelphia

Elected Assemblies versus the Governors

The Great Awakening and Its Political Impact

PART TWO

‘That the Free Constitution Be Sacredly Maintained’

Revolutionary America, 1750-1815

George Washington and the War against France

Poor Quality of British Leadership

The Role of Benjamin Franklin

Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence

The Galvanizing Effect of Tom Paine

Washington, the War, and the Intervention of Europe

Patriots and Loyalists: America's First Civil War

The Constitutional Convention

The Ratification Debate

Citizenship, the Suffrage, and `The Tyranny of the Majority'

The Role of Religion in the Constitution

The Presidency, Hamilton, and Public Finance

Success of Washington and His Farewell Address

John Adams and the European War

Central Importance of John Marshall

Jefferson's Ambivalent Rule and Character

The Louisiana Purchase

Madison's Blunders and Their Punishment

Andrew Jackson, the Deus Ex Machina

Jackson and the Destruction of the Indians

PART THREE

‘A General Happy Mediocrity Prevails’

Democratic America, 1815-1850

High Birth-Rates and the Immigrant Flood

The Market in Cheap Land

Spread of the Religious Sects

Emergence of the South and King Cotton

The Missouri Compromise

Henry Clay

The Advent of Jacksonian Democracy

The War against the Bank

America's Agricultural Revolution

Revolution in Transportation and Communications

Polk and the Mexican War

De Tocqueville and the Emerging Supernation

The Ideology of the North-South Battle

Emerson and the Birth of an American Culture

Longfellow, Poe, and Hawthornian Psychology

PART FOUR

`The Almost Chosen People'

Civil War America, 1850-1870

The Era of Pierce and Buchanan

Ultimate and Proximate Causes of the Civil War

The Rise of Lincoln

Centrality of Preserving the Union

The Election of 1860

Jefferson Davis and Why the South Fought

Why the South Was Virtually Bound to Lose

The Churches and the War

The War among the Generals

Gettysburg: `Too Bad! Too Bad! Oh! TOO BAD!'

The Triumph and Tragedy of Lincoln

Andrew Johnson and the Two Reconstructions

PART FIVE

Huddled Masses and Crosses of Gold

Industrial America, 1870-1912

Modern America and Its Aging Process

Mass-Immigration and `Thinking Big'

Indians and Settlers, Cowboys and Desperados

The Significance of the Frontier

Centrality of Railroads

Did the Robber Barons Really Exist?

Carnegie, Steel, and American Philanthropy

Pierpoint Morgan and Wall Street

Trusts and Anti-Trusts

Monster Cities: Chicago and New York

The Urban Rich and Poor

American Science and Culture: Edison and Tiffany

Church, Bierstadt, and the Limitless Landscape

Bringing Luxury to the Masses

The Rise of Labor and Muckraking

Standard Oil and Henry Ford

Populism, Imperialism, and the Spanish-American War

Theodore Roosevelt and His Golden Age

PREFACE

This work is a labor of love. When I was a little boy, my parents and elder sisters taught me a

great deal of Greek, Roman, and English history, but America did not come into it. At

Stonyhurst, my school, I was given a magnificent grounding in English constitutional history, but

again the name of America scarcely intruded. At Oxford, in the late 1940s, the School of Modern

History was at the height of its glory, dominated by such paladins as A. J. P. Taylor and Hugh

Trevor-Roper, Sir Maurice Powicke, K. B. McFarlane, and Sir Richard Southern, two of whom I

was fortunate to have as tutors and all of whose lectures I attended. But nothing was said of

America, except in so far as it lay at the margin of English history. I do not recall any course of

lectures on American history as such. A. J. P. Taylor, at the conclusion of a tutorial, in which the

name of America had cropped up, said grimly: `You can study American history when you have

graduated, if you can bear it.' His only other observation on the subject was: `One of the

penalties of being President of the United States is that you must subsist for four years without

drinking anything except Californian wine.' American history was nothing but a black hole in the

Oxford curriculum. Of course things have now changed completely, but I am talking of the

Oxford academic world of half a century ago. Oxford was not alone in treating American history

as a non-subject. Reading the memoirs of that outstanding American journalist Stewart Alsop, I

was intrigued to discover that, when he was a boy at Groton in the 1930s, he was taught only

Greek, Roman, and English history.

As a result of this lacuna in my education, I eventually came to American history completely

fresh, with no schoolboy or student prejudices or antipathies. Indeed my first contacts with

American history were entirely non-academic: I discussed it with officers of the US Sixth Fleet

when I was an officer in the Garrison at Gibraltar, during my military service, and later in the

1950s when I was working as a journalist in Paris and had the chance to meet such formidable

figures as John Foster Dulles, then Secretary of State, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and his

successor at SHAPE Headquarters, General Matthew Ridgeway. From the late 1950s I began

visiting the United States regularly, three or four times a year, traveling all over the country and

meeting men and women who were shaping its continuing history. Over forty years I have grown

to know and admire the United States and its people, making innumerable friends and

acquaintances, reading its splendid literature, visiting many of its universities to give lectures and

participate in debates, and attending scores of conferences held by American businesses and

other institutions.

In short, I entered the study of American history through the back door. But I also got to know

about it directly during the research for a number of books I wrote in these years: A History of

Christianity, A History o f the Jews, Modern Times: the World from the Twenties to the Nineties,

and The Birth o f the Modern: World Society, 1815-1830. Some of the material acquired in

preparing these books I have used in the present one, but updated, revised, corrected, expanded,

and refined. As I worked on the study of the past, and learned about the present by traveling all

over the world-but especially in the United States-my desire to discover more about that

extraordinary country, its origins and its evolution, grew and grew, so that I determined in the

end to write a history of it, knowing from experience that to produce a book is the only way to

study a subject systematically, purposefully, and retentively. My editor in New York, Cass

Canfield Jr of HarperCollins, encouraged me warmly. So this project was born, out of

enthusiasm and excitement, and now, after many years, it is complete.

Writing a history of the American people, covering over 400 years, from the late 16th century

to the end of the 20th, and dealing with the physical background and development of an immense

tract of diverse territory, is a herculean task. It can be accomplished only by the ruthless selection

and rejection of material, and made readable only by moving in close to certain aspects, and

dealing with them in fascinating detail, at the price of merely summarizing others. That has been

my method, as in earlier books covering immense subjects, though my aim nonetheless has been

to produce a comprehensive account, full of facts and dates and figures, which can be used with

confidence by students who wish to acquire a general grasp of American history. The book has

new and often trenchant things to say about every aspect and period of America's past, and I do

not seek, as some historians do, to conceal my opinions. They are there for all to see, and take

account of or discount. But I have endeavored, at all stages, to present the facts fully, squarely,

honestly, and objectively, and to select the material as untendentiously as I know how. Such a

fact-filled and lengthy volume as this is bound to contain errors. If readers spot any, I would be

grateful if they would write to me at my private address: 29 Newton Road, London W25JR; so

that they may be corrected; and if they find any expressions of mine or opinions insupportable,

they are welcome to give me their comments so that I may weigh them.

The notes at the end of the book serve a variety of purposes: to give the sources of facts,

figures, quotations, and assertions; to acknowledge my indebtedness to other scholars; to serve as

a guide to further reading; and to indicate where scholarly opinion differs, directing the reader to

works which challenge the views I have formed. I have not bowed to current academic nostrums

about nomenclature or accepted the flyblown philacteries of Political Correctness. So I do not

acknowledge the existence of hyphenated Americans, or Native Americans or any other qualified

kind. They are all Americans to me: black, white, red, brown, yellow, thrown together by fate in

that swirling maelstrom of history which has produced the most remarkable people the world has

ever seen. I love them and salute them, and this is their story.

PART ONE

‘A City on a Hill’

Colonial America, 1580 -1750

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1AHISTORYOFTHEAMERICANPEOPLE______________________________PaulJohnson`Benotafraidofgreatness'Shakespeare,TwelfthNight,II,vHarperCollinsPublishers2ThisbookwasoriginallypublishedinGreatBritainin1997byWeidenfeld&Nicolson.AHISTORYOFTHEAMERICANPEOPLE.Copyright©1997byPaulJohnson.Allrightsreserved.Printedi...

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