Union and Democracy

by Allen Johnson

The names of Bryant, Cooper, and Irving are linked with the city of New York which enjoyed for a brief time that primacy in the world of American letters which it was fast acquiring in commerce. The center of literary and scholarly activity in the next generation was Boston, where the New England renaissance began. In this revival of letters Harvard College had a notable part. In 1806, John Quincy Adams was appointed Professor of Rhetoric and gave a course of lectures which moulded the taste of that school of orators to which Edward Everett belonged—a school of oratory which found its models in Demosthenes and Cicero. Everett became Professor of Greek in 1815; and George Ticknor, Professor of Belles-Lettres in 1816. Prescott graduated in 1814, Palfrey in 1815, and George Bancroft in 1817,—all three to add to American historiography works of enduring excellence. In 1817, young Ralph Waldo Emerson entered college.

It was Boston, however, rather than Harvard College, which created the atmosphere that these young scholars—all from Boston families—breathed: for the Athenæum, the American School of Arts and Sciences, and the Massachusetts Historical Society had begun to exercise an increasing influence on the younger generation. Harvard College, like all colleges of the day, was hardly more than a species of higher academy whither boys went at a tender age to continue their study of the classics and mathematics, and incidentally to cultivate rhetoric and belles-lettres.

The liberation of the American mind from time-honored traditions and conventions appeared markedly in the ecclesiastical revolts and religious revivals of the age. Unitarianism took its rise quite as much in protest against the teaching of Calvinism, that man was brought into the world hopelessly depraved, as against the orthodox conception of Christ's nature. The definite separation of Unitarianism from Congregationalism dates from 1815 when William E. Channing published his memorable letter to the Reverend Samuel C. Thacher. The writings of Buckminster, Channing, and other theological liberals have a distinct place in the annals of American intellectual life. Universalism also took its rise at this time and spread with remarkable rapidity under the lead of Hosea Ballou. In western Pennsylvania and Virginia, the Campbells, father and son, led a departure from the established Presbyterian order. The Society of Friends was also rent by the teachings of Elias Hicks.

Revivals had been a recurring feature of New England religious life since the latter years of the seventeenth century. That they stimulated many forms of religious activity appears in the annals of missionary enterprises at home and abroad. In 1810 the American Board of Foreign Missions and in 1814 the American Baptist Missionary Union were founded. In 1812 four young missionaries went out to India; and five years later other devoted young men began their labors among the Cherokees and Choctaws of the Southwest. There is something at once heroic and pathetic in the humanitarian zeal of a people, whom Europeans still regarded with disdain, to carry to the remote ends of the earth a Christian civilization which they had themselves hardly attained. But an incomprehensible idealism has from first to last been interwoven in the texture of American character.

After the cessation of European wars the United States stood singularly aloof from the Old World, yet in the affairs of South America they did not cease to take a lively interest. The successive revolutions by which the provinces of the Rio de la Plata, Chili, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico threw off the yoke of Spain woke a thrill in the people of the United States, for they thought they saw the events of their own revolution repeated in the exploits of San Martín and Bolívar. To the imagination of Henry Clay, this was a sublime spectacle—"eighteen millions of people struggling to burst their chains and be free." He would have had the United States recognize these sister republics and join hands with them in forming an American system independent of Europe. And when the Administration hesitated, he exclaimed: "We look too much abroad. Let us break these commercial and political fetters; let us no longer watch the nod of any European politician; let us become real and true Americans, and place ourselves at the head of the American system."

The conception of an American system did not originate in the ardent mind of Henry Clay. It was as old as the Union itself. Foreign encroachment had been feared from the very birth of the nation. "You are afraid of being made the tool of the powers of Europe," said Richard Oswald to John Adams while peace negotiations were pending at Paris. "Indeed I am," rejoined Adams. "What powers?" asked Oswald. "All of them," said Adams; "it is obvious that all the powers of Europe will be continually manœuvring with us to work us into their real or imaginary balances of power.... But I think that it ought to be our rule not to meddle." Washington's refusal to enter into an alliance with France and his firm insistence upon neutrality were inspired by this same fear. Jefferson's negotiations for the purchase of New Orleans were motivated by the fear that France, once in possession of the mouth of the Mississippi, would threaten the isolation of the United States and drive us into the arms of Great Britain. "Jefferson is an American," Adet once said, with rare insight, "and by that title, it is impossible for him to be sincerely our friend. An American is the born enemy of European peoples."

The corollary of the principle of non-intervention was abstention on the part of the United States from the affairs of Europe. Could the United States, then, recognize the colonies of Spain as independent republics without emerging from its traditional isolation? President Monroe would have been glad to recognize the South American republics even before they had demonstrated their ability to maintain their independence; but his cool-headed Secretary of State prevailed upon him to await further evidence. It was not until 1822, indeed, that the President recommended to Congress the establishment of missions in the new republics of South America. Spain protested emphatically against this action; but Adams, now sure of his ground, justified the action of the Administration by an appeal to facts. So long as Spain was attempting to reduce the colonies by arms, the United States had observed "the most impartial neutrality." But war had ceased, and the United States had "yielded to an obligation of duty of the highest order, by recognizing, as independent states, nations which, after deliberately asserting their right to that character, had maintained and established it against all the resistance which had been or could be brought to oppose it."

In the year 1823, the traditional principles of American foreign policy were put to a severer test. Soon after the Congress of Vienna, that combination of the great powers was consummated which contemporaries usually but erroneously styled the Holy Alliance. Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain covenanted together to meet at fixed periods to consult upon their common interests and to consider the measures "most salutary for the repose and prosperity of nations, and for the maintenance of the peace of Europe." Three years later, France was admitted to the councils of these "self-appointed keepers of the world's peace." Innocent enough in its public professions, this association of the great powers was converted by Metternich of Austria, who had acquired a remarkable ascendency over the mind of his own sovereign and over that of the impressionable czar, into an instrument of reaction and repression, whenever and wherever the specter of revolution raised its head. Within a few years revolutionary uprisings occurred in Italy and Spain. The so-called legitimate sovereigns were driven from their thrones and constitutional governments were established. In successive congresses at Troppau and Laybach, the three powers, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, resolved to suppress these revolutionary movements. An Austrian army was commissioned to carry out this policy of intervention, as it was termed; and the King of the Two Sicilies was restored to his uneasy throne. Neither Great Britain nor France took part in these congresses. It now remained to chastise the revolutionists of Spain. At the Congress of Verona in 1822, the representative of Great Britain openly protested against any intervention in Spain. But again the three powers, now joined by France, resolved to restore the deposed Fernando VII. Early in the following year a French army crossed the Pyrenees and entered Madrid. It was commonly believed that the restoration of the monarchy was to be followed by a reduction of the revolted colonies and a restoration of the Spanish colonial empire.

It was at this juncture that Canning, who had become the head of the British ministry, protested against the policy of intervention and sought for ways and means to make the protest effective. The one power whose traditions of liberty and whose interests in this particular seemed to be identical with those of Great Britain was the United States. In truth, their interests were far from being identical. Two years before, in a conversation with the British minister at Washington, the Secretary of State, in his most uncompromising manner, had challenged the right of Great Britain to the valley of the Columbia River or to any part of the Pacific Coast. And so recently as April of this critical year 1823, Adams had taken alarm at the appearance of a British naval force off the coast of Cuba and had warned the Government at Madrid that "the transfer of Cuba to Great Britain would be an event unpropitious to the interests of the United States." At the same time Adams stated his conviction that within half a century the annexation of Cuba to the United States would be "indispensable to the continuance of the Union itself." Coupled with this prophecy was the equally frank assurance that the United States desired to have Cuba and Porto Rico "continue attached to Spain"—for the present.