Still the great currents of national growth ran on. New England was achieving unity and national feeling as a manufacturing region, and Webster was developing those powers which were to make him the orator of consolidation. While the leaders of the middle states played the game of personal politics, their people and those of the growing west were rallying around the man who personified their passion for democracy and nationalism—the fiery Jackson, who confused sectional opposition to the government with personal hostility to himself. This frontiersman was little likely to allow political metaphysics, or even sectional suffering, to check his will. And on the frontier of the northwest, the young Lincoln sank his axe deep in the opposing forest.
CHAPTER XX
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AIDS
The authorities characterized in the Critical Essays of Babcock's Rise of American Nationality, MacDonald's Jacksonian Democracy, and Hart's Slavery and Abolition (American Nation, XIII., XV., XVI.), include most of the general authorities, and need not be repeated here in detail. In addition, account should be taken of several indexes to government documents: L.C. Ferrell, Tables… and Annotated Index (1902); two by J.G. Ames: Finding List (1893) and Check List (1895); J.M. Baker, Finding List (1900-1901); the Index to the Reports of… Committees of the House (1887); and Index to Reports of… Committees of the Senate (1887); Ben Perley Poore, Descriptive Catalogue of Government Publications (1885); L.P. Lane, Aids in the Use of Government Publications (American Statistical Association, Publications, VII. (1900), 40-57); L.C. Ferrell, "Public Documents of the United States" (Library Journal, XXVI., 671); Van Tyne and Leland, Guide to the Archives of the Government of the United States in Washington (Carnegie Institution, Publications, No. 14, 1904). For bibliography of state official issues, see R.R. Bowker [editor], State Publications: a Provisional List of the Official Publications of the Several States of the United States from their Organization (3 vols., issued 1899-1905); see also J.N. Larned, Literature of American History (1902), 7-13; and I.S. Bradley, in American Historical Association, Report, 1896, I., 296-319, a bibliography of documentary and newspaper material for the Old Northwest.
GENERAL SECONDARY WORKS
The general histories of the period 1819-1829 almost without exception extend over earlier or later fields, and are described in earlier or later volumes of this series. To the usual list, James Schouler, J.B. McMaster, George Tucker, H.E. Von Hoist, J.P. Gordy, may be added: S. Perkins, Historical Sketches of the United States, from the Peace of 1815 to 1830 (1830), the work of a careful contemporary.
BIOGRAPHIES
The most serviceable biographies in this period can be found through the lists in Channing and Hart, Guide to the Study of American History (1896), p. 25. The volumes of the American Statesmen series are accurate and well written, especially Morse's John Quincy Adams, Schurz's Henry Clay, Adams's John Randolph, Roosevelt's Thomas H. Benton, McLaughlin's Lewis Cass, Shepard's Van Buren. SECTIONAL HISTORY
Among the bibliographies useful for attacking the mass of local and
state histories for this period are the following: R.R. Bowker,
State Publications (New York, 1899, 1902, 1905); A.P.C. Griffin,
Bibliography of Historical Societies of the United States (American
Historical Association, Reports, 1890, 1892, 1893).