JOHN BACH McMASTER.
HISTORIAN OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.
OHN BACH McMASTER is one of the few men who excel in widely different fields. To be a teacher of English grammar, a college instructor in civil engineering, to do the work of a specialist in the United States Coast Survey, to write a monumental history and to build up a great department in a leading university, surely this is a sufficiently long catalogue for a man forty-five years old. The father of Prof. McMaster was, at the beginning of the Civil War, a banker and planter at New Orleans. The son, however, grew up in the Northern metropolis, and was graduated at the College of the City of New York at the age of twenty, in 1872. After a year devoted to teaching grammar in that institution he took up the study of civil engineering, and began, in the autumn of 1873, the work of preparing his “History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War.”
He was appointed, in 1877, Instructor in Civil Engineering at Princeton, and became, in 1883, Professor of American History in the University of Pennsylvania. Besides the four volumes of his “History” already published, he has written a “Life of Benjamin Franklin” for the “Men of Letters Series,” and has been a frequent contributor upon historical topics to the leading periodicals. His “History” is not a story of political intrigue, of the petty jealousies of neighboring communities, of our quarrels with each other or with the Indians, but tells in a clear and strikingly pictorial manner the story of the people themselves, of how they lived and dressed, what they ate, what were their pleasures, their social customs, how they worshipped, how they grew to be a mighty nation and became the people that we are. It is a wonderful story, and not only is every page filled with living interest, but any chapter might well be a monument to the painstaking accuracy, the devoted labor, the historical insight, and the literary skill of the author. But if Prof. McMaster has been in love with his work as a historian he has none the less been devoted to his office as an instructor of youth. During the years in which he has filled a chair in the University of Pennsylvania, the department of history of the United States has assumed such proportions that it may fairly claim to outrank any similar department in any other institution in the country. In this way and as a lecturer before bodies of teachers, Prof. McMaster has held a foremost place in the movement which has demanded, and successfully demanded, that in the lower schools greater attention shall be paid to the history and institutions of our own country, and which is bringing about a more intelligent patriotism and a widespread interest in the way in which we govern ourselves. The boy who applies for admission to the University of Pennsylvania, if he imagines that the history of his country consists of a list of dates of explorations, battles, and of presidents, and of the names of generals and politicians, will be astonished when he is asked to draw a map showing how the United States obtained the various portions of its territory, to tell what were the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, and to outline the relations between the President and the two houses of Congress in our government. But the trembling applicant will find his blundering answers leniently judged, and when he looks back from the eminence of his graduation day upon this time of trial, he will agree that the view of history taken by Prof. McMaster is the true one, and that no man has done more than he to bring the intelligent people of our time to that opinion.
THE AMERICAN WORKMAN IN 1784.[¹]
(FROM “A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.”)
[¹] Copyright, D. Appleton & Co.
HERE can, however, be no doubt that a wonderful amelioration has taken place since that day in the condition of the poor. Their houses were meaner, their food was coarser, their clothing was of commoner stuff; their wages were, despite the depreciation that has gone on in the value of money, lower by one-half than at present. A man who performed what would be called unskilled labor, who sawed wood, dug ditches, who mended roads, who mixed mortar, who carried boards to the carpenter and bricks to the mason, or helped to cut hay in harvest-time, usually received as the fruit of his daily toil two shillings. Sometimes when the laborers were few he was paid more, and became the envy of his fellows if at the end of a week he took home to his family fifteen shillings, a sum now greatly exceeded by four dollars. Yet all authorities agree that in 1784 the hire of workmen was twice as great as in 1774.
On such a pittance it was only by the strictest economy that a mechanic kept his children from starvation and himself from jail. In the low and dingy rooms which he called his home were wanting many articles of adornment and of use now to be found in the dwelling of the poorest of his class. Sand sprinkled on the floor did duty as a carpet. There was no glass on his table, there was no china in his cupboard, there were no prints on his wall. What a stove was he did not know, coal he had never seen, matches he had never heard of. Over a fire of fragments of barrels and boxes, which he lit with the sparks struck from a flint, or with live coals brought from a neighbor’s hearth, his wife cooked up a rude meal and served it in pewter dishes.
He rarely tasted fresh meat as often as once in a week, and paid for it a much higher price than his posterity. Everything, indeed, which ranked as a staple of life was very costly. Corn stood at three shillings the bushel, wheat at eight and six pence, an assize of bread was four pence, a pound of salt pork was ten pence. Many other commodities now to be seen on the tables of the poor were either quite unknown or far beyond the reach of his scanty purse. Unenviable is the lot of that man who cannot, in the height of the season, when the wharfs and markets are heaped with baskets and crates of fruit, spare three cents for a pound of grapes, or five cents for as many peaches, or, when Sunday comes round, indulge his family with watermelons or cantaloupes. One hundred years ago the wretched fox-grape was the only kind that found its way to market, and was the luxury of the rich. Among the fruits and vegetables of which no one had then even heard are cantaloupes, many varieties of peaches and pears, tomatoes and rhubarb, sweet corn, the cauliflower, the eggplant, head lettuce, and okra. On the window benches of every tenement-house may be seen growing geraniums and verbenas, flowers not known a century ago. In truth, the best-kept gardens were then rank with hollyhocks and sunflowers, roses and snowballs, lilacs, pinks, tulips, and, above all, the Jerusalem cherry, a plant once much admired, but now scarcely seen.
If the food of an artisan would now be thought coarse, his clothes would be thought abominable. A pair of yellow buckskin or leathern breeches, a checked shirt, a red flannel jacket, a rusty felt hat cocked up at the corners, shoes of neats-skin set off with huge buckles of brass, and a leathern apron, comprised his scanty wardrobe. The leather he smeared with grease to keep it soft and flexible. His sons followed in his footsteps, and were apprenticed to neighboring tradesmen. His daughter went out to service. She performed, indeed, all the duties at present exacted from women of her class; but with them were coupled many others rendered useless by the great improvement that has taken place in the conveniences of life.
She mended the clothes, she did up the ruffs, she ran on errands from one end of the town to the other, she milked the cows, made the butter, walked ten blocks for a pail of water, spun flax for the family linen, and, when the year was up, received ten pounds for her wages. Yet, small as was her pay, she had, before bestowing herself in marriage upon the footman or the gardener, laid away in her stocking enough guineas and joes to buy a few chairs, a table, and a bed.
“THE MINISTER IN NEW ENGLAND.”[¹]
(FROM “A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.”)
[¹] Copyright, D. Appleton & Co.
IGH as the doctors stood in the good graces of their fellow-men, the ministers formed a yet more respected class of New England society. In no other section of the country had religion so firm a hold on the affections of the people. Nowhere else were men so truly devout, and the ministers held in such high esteem. It had, indeed, from the days of the founders of the colony been the fashion among New Englanders to look to the pastor with profound reverence, not unmingled with awe. He was not to them as other men were. He was the just man made perfect; the oracle of divine will; the sure guide to truth. The heedless one who absented himself from the preaching on a Sabbath was hunted up by the tithing-man, was admonished severely, and, if he still persisted in his evil ways, was fined, exposed in the stocks, or imprisoned in the cage. To sit patiently on the rough board seats while the preacher turned his hour-glass for the third time, and with his voice husky from shouting, and the sweat pouring in streams down his face, went on for an hour more, was a delectable privilege. In such a community the authority of the reverend man was almost supreme. To speak disrespectfully concerning him, to jeer at his sermons, or to laugh at his odd ways, was sure to bring down on the offender a heavy fine. His advice was often sought on matters of State, nor did he hesitate to give, unasked, his opinion on what he considered the arbitrary acts of the high functionaries of the province. In the years immediately preceding the war the power of the minister in matters of government and politics had been greatly impaired by the rise of that class of laymen in the foremost ranks of which stood Otis and Hancock and Samuel Adams. Yet his [♦]spiritual influence was as great as ever. He was still a member of the most learned and respected class in a community by no means ignorant. He was a divine, and came of a family of divines. Not a few of the preachers who witnessed the Revolution could trace descent through an unbroken line of ministers, stretching back from son to father for three generations, to some canting, psalm-singing Puritan who bore arms with distinction on the great day at Naseby, or had prayed at the head of Oliver’s troops, and had, at the restoration, when the old soldiers of the protector were turning their swords into reaping-hooks and their pikes into pruning-knives, come over to New England to seek that liberty of worship not to be found at home. Such a man had usually received an education at Harvard or at Yale, and would in these days be thought a scholar of high attainments.
[♦] ‘spiritunl’ replaced with ‘spiritual’