What Hath God Wrought (2 page)

In 1844, near the end of the period covered in this volume of
The Oxford History of the United States
, Ralph Waldo Emerson proclaimed that “America is the country of the Future. It is a country of beginnings, of projects, of vast designs and expectations.” Emerson spoke a common sentiment in that heady age of what might be called America’s national adolescence. In scarcely more than two generations since its founding, the young nation had stretched its domains to the Rocky Mountain crest and stood poised to assert its sovereignty all the way to the Pacific coast. The American people, lustily doubling their numbers every two decades, dreamed without embarrassment of extravagant utopias both spiritual and secular. Their economy, fueled by startling new technologies like the telegraph and the railroad, was growing robustly. Their churches were rocked by revivalism, even as their political system was giving the world an exhilarating lesson in the possibilities of mass democracy.

Yet Emerson’s America was already a country with a past. Its history held peril as well as promise—not least the noxious heritage of chattel slavery, a moral outrage that mocked the Republic’s claim to be a model of social and political enlightenment and eventually menaced the nation’s very survival.

What Hath God Wrought
recounts a critical passage in that history. It opens on a note both ironic and prophetic: Andrew Jackson’s storied victory over a crack British force at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Ironic because the battle was fought some two weeks
after
British and American delegates had signed a formal peace treaty in Ghent, Belgium. Prophetic because, as Daniel Walker Howe conclusively demonstrates, victory owed far less to the derring-do of the buckskin-clad backwoodsmen celebrated in song and fable than to the methodical gunnery of General Jackson’s artillery batteries, firing American-forged cannons that were among the early fruits of the onrushing industrial revolution whose gathering force was transforming countless sectors of national life.

As his subtitle declares, transformation is the central theme of Howe’s compelling narrative. Few periods in American history have witnessed changes as diverse, deep, and durable as the three decades following the War of 1812. Few historians have explained them as comprehensively, cogently, and colorfully as Howe.

Not the least of those changes transfigured the very nature of politics, in the United States and beyond. Americans in this era became the first people to embrace universal white manhood suffrage, build mass-based political parties, and invent the institutions and practices of democracy for a continent-sized nation. The often raucous spectacle of American democracy in this era fascinated the world, conspicuously including a brilliant young Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville. After nine months traversing Andrew Jackson’s United States in 1831–32, he wrote: “I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought there the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress” (
Democracy in America
, Everyman’s Library, 14).

No less an ambition animates Daniel Howe’s richly textured account. Like Tocqueville’s, his deepest subject is not simply politics—though the pages that follow do full justice to the tumultuous and consequential politics of the era—but the entire array of economic, technological, social, cultural, and even psychological developments that were beginning to shape a distinctively American national identity. Howe brings to bear an impressive command of modern scholarship to explicate topics as varied as the origins of feminism and abolitionism; the Missouri Compromise and the Mexican War; the crafting of the Monroe Doctrine and the clash with Britain over the Oregon country; the emergence of the Whig, Free Soil, and Republican Parties; the Lone Star revolution in Texas and the gold rush in California; the sectional differentiation of the American economy; the accelerating pace of both mechanical and cultural innovations, not least as they affected the organization of the household and the lives of women; and the emergence of a characteristic American literature in the works of writers like Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, James Fenimore Cooper, Margaret Fuller, Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman.

With singular deftness, Howe tells the remarkable story of American religion in this formative period, as the Second Great Awakening kindled roaring evangelical revivals and even spawned the new religion of Mormonism. Indeed, few if any other writers have so sensitively explored both the social and the doctrinal dimensions of the astonishing developments that were fracturing American Protestantism into countless sects, with consequences that have persisted to our own time.

Howe also recounts with admirable clarity the story of President Andrew Jackson’s notorious “Bank War” and his even more notorious policies of forcible Indian removals. And
What Hath God Wrought
artfully draws out the myriad implications of the homely tale that Jackson traveled to his inaugural in 1829 in a horse-drawn carriage and left the capital at the end of his term eight years later by train—marking in the arc of this one president’s tenure in office the pervasive impact of the “transportation revolution” that was one of the era’s signature achievements.

The railroad and the telegraph were both the principal causes and the most conspicuous emblems of the deep transformations that are Howe’s principal subjects. They catalyzed the phenomenal expansion of the slave South, as planters pushed the “Cotton Kingdom” over the Appalachians and out onto the loamy bottomlands of Alabama and Mississippi and ever onward to the West. The railroad’s iron tracks and the telegraph’s gossamer filaments tenuously bound together a nation growing ever larger even as it divided ever more bitterly over slavery. And when at last in 1846 Americans made war on Mexico to enlarge their dominions still further, the telegrapher’s key clacked war reports among newsrooms in Charleston, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. By war’s end the first newspaper wire service, the Associated Press, was born—but one example of the “communications revolution” that swept America in the years after Andrew Jackson had battled in ignorance of war’s end at New Orleans in 1815.

Howe’s history concludes with America’s victory in the Mexican War—a bittersweet triumph that both enlarged Thomas Jefferson’s vaunted “empire of liberty” in the West and reopened the festering wound of the slavery controversy. “Mexico will poison us,” a chastened Emerson presciently declared. That prognosis was bloodily confirmed scarcely a dozen years later when the Civil War engulfed the nation, a tale told with incomparable panache in the volume that chronologically succeeds this one in the Oxford series, James McPherson’s
Battle Cry of Freedom
. Like that acclaimed work,
What Hath God Wrought
is another outstanding contribution to
The Oxford History of the United States
, one that will enlighten scholars and general readers alike.

David M. Kennedy

On the twenty-fourth of May 1844, Professor Samuel F. B. Morse, seated amidst a hushed gathering of distinguished national leaders in the chambers of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, tapped out a message on a device of cogs and coiled wires:

WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT

Forty miles away, in Baltimore, Morse’s associate Alfred Vail received the electric signals and sent the message back. The invention they had demonstrated was destined to change the world. For thousands of years messages had been limited by the speed with which messengers could travel and the distance at which eyes could see signals such as flags or smoke. Neither Alexander the Great nor Benjamin Franklin (America’s first postmaster general) two thousand years later knew anything faster than a galloping horse. Now, instant long-distance communication became a practical reality. The commercial application of Morse’s invention followed quickly. American farmers and planters—and most Americans then earned a living through agriculture—increasingly produced food and fiber for distant markets. Their merchants and bankers welcomed the chance to get news of distant prices and credit. The New York
Journal of Commerce
, conceived by Morse himself and published by the famous Christian businessmen and philanthropists Arthur and Lewis Tappan, could put such intelligence carried over the telegraph to good use. The
Journal
has published continuously from 1827 to the present—since 2000 on the Internet as well as in print.

This book is a narrative history of the American republic between 1815 and 1848, that is, from the end of the War of 1812 to the end of the war with Mexico. Along with the traditional subject matter of history—political, diplomatic, and military events—the story includes the social, economic, and cultural developments that have extensively concerned historians in recent years. This reflects my own conviction that both kinds of history are essential to a full understanding of the past.

The invention of electric telegraphy, coming near the close of the period treated here, represented a climactic moment in a widespread revolution of communications. Other features of this revolution included improvements in printing and paper manufacturing; the multiplication of newspapers, magazines, and books; and the expansion of the postal system (which mostly carried newspapers and commercial business, not personal letters). Closely related to these developments occurred a simultaneous revolution in transportation: the introduction of steamboats, canals, turnpikes, and railroads, shortening travel times and dramatically lowering shipping costs. How these twin revolutions transformed American life will be central to the story told here. Their consequences certainly rivaled, and probably exceeded in importance, those of the revolutionary “information highway” of our own lifetimes.

Morse’s telegraph had particular importance for a large country with a population spreading into increasingly remote areas. Thomas Jefferson had declared the United States “an empire for liberty” and by his Louisiana Purchase had put the new nation on course to dominate the North American continent. In 1845, the ambition to occupy still more land would be characterized by John L. O’Sullivan’s
Democratic Review
as the fulfillment of America’s “manifest destiny”—a term that soon became as important as “empire” to describe American nationhood. Samuel F. B. Morse shared this view, which he reinforced with a religious sense of divine providence. Nation-builders awaited news as eagerly as did people selling crops.

Within a few days of the initial demonstration of his invention, Morse was keeping members of Congress in Washington abreast of developments at the Democratic national convention in Baltimore as they happened. The professor felt disappointment when his favorite candidate, the imperialist Lewis Cass of Michigan, missed out on the presidential nomination but was soon reassured to report that it went to another expansionist, James Knox Polk of Tennessee. Polk won the ensuing election and led the country into a war with Mexico. The conquest of that large republic by the small armed forces of the United States, despite formidable geographical difficulties and in the face of a hostile population, constituted one of the most amazing military achievements of the nineteenth century, and the early telegraph lines helped keep the U.S. president and public abreast of events. When the momentous conflict came to a close, the United States stretched from sea to sea, having acquired Texas, California, and everything in between. The electric telegraph then helped integrate this continental empire.

The text of Morse’s demonstration message came from the Bible: “It shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!” (Numbers 23:23). Credit for applying the verse to this occasion belongs to Nancy Goodrich Ellsworth, who suggested it to her daughter Annie, who in turn provided it to Morse. (The professor was in love with Annie.) The quotation proved the perfect choice, capturing the inventor’s own passionate Christian faith and conception of himself as an instrument of providence.

As Morse later commented, the message “baptized the American Telegraph with the name of its author”: God.
¹
The American public appreciated the significance of the message, for biblical religion then permeated the culture in ways both conventional and sincerely felt. Morse’s invocation of the Bible typified that recurrent importance of religion which has long characterized American history.

Morse’s synthesis of science and religion represented the predominant American attitude of the time; only a few eccentrics believed there was any conflict between scientific and religious truth. Revelation and reason alike, Americans were confident, led to knowledge of God and His creation. Religious awakening, expansion of education, interest in science, and technological progress all went hand in hand. Evangelists welcomed technological advances along with mass education as helping them spread the good news of Christ. Literature, like education and science, was saturated with religious meanings and motivations. The writers of America’s literary renaissance took advantage of the improvements in communications technology to market their art and their moral values to larger and more widespread audiences than writers had ever before enjoyed.

A combination of Protestantism with the Enlightenment shaped American culture and institutions. Morse’s telegraph appealed to both these strains in American ideology, for it fostered what contemporaries called the brotherhood of man and could also be viewed as promoting the kingdom of God. Many Americans interpreted their nation’s destiny in religious terms, as preparing the world for a millennial age of free institutions, peace, and justice. A Methodist women’s magazine explained the role that the electric telegraph would play in this process, revealing both the optimism and the arrogance characteristic of the time:

The first practical application of Morse’s invention—to report a political party convention—was no accident. The formation of mass political parties, their organization on local, state, and national levels, the application of government patronage to knit them together, their espousal of rival political programs, and their ability to command the attention of the public all combined to give this period of American history its distinctive, highly politicized quality. The rise of mass parties has often been traced to the broadening of the franchise (the right to vote) to include virtually all adult white males. However, no such parties with mass followings could have come into existence without the revolution in communication. Many newspapers of the time were the organs of a political party, existing to propagate its point of view; influential policymakers might be former journalists.
³
The newspapers quickly enlisted the telegraph in their quest to gather and distribute information; the newspapers of New York City formed the Associated Press wire service “to secure the transmission of news from the South, and particularly from the seat of War in Mexico, in advance of all ordinary channels.”
⁴

The most common name for the years this book treats is “Jacksonian America.” I avoid the term because it suggests that Jacksonianism describes Americans as a whole, whereas in fact Andrew Jackson was a controversial figure and his political movement bitterly divided the American people. Even worse difficulties arise from the familiar expression “Jacksonian Democracy.” Our own age finds the limitations on the democracy of that period glaring: the enslavement of African Americans, the abuse of Native Americans, the exclusion of women and most nonwhites from the suffrage and equality before the law. The Jacksonian movement in politics, although it took the name of the Democratic Party, fought so hard in favor of slavery and white supremacy, and opposed the inclusion of nonwhites and women within the American civil polity so resolutely, that it makes the term “Jacksonian Democracy” all the more inappropriate as a characterization of the years between 1815 and 1848. Nor did Andrew Jackson’s presidential campaigns constitute a nationwide struggle on behalf of universal white manhood enfranchisement. In most states, white male suffrage evolved naturally and with comparatively little controversy. The
consequences
of white male democracy, rather than its
achievement
, shaped the political life of this period.
⁵

Another term that has sometimes been applied to this period—more by historians than by the general public—is “the market revolution.” I avoid this expression also. Those historians who used it have argued that a drastic change occurred during these years, from farm families raising food for their own use to producing it for distant markets. However, more and more evidence has accumulated in recent years that a market economy already existed in the eighteenth-century American colonies.
⁶
To be sure, markets expanded vastly in the years after the end of the War of 1812, but their expansion partook more of the nature of a continuing evolution than a sudden revolution. Furthermore, their expansion did not occur in the face of resistance from any substantial group of people preferring subsistence farming to market participation. Most American family farmers welcomed the chance to buy and sell in larger markets. They did not have to be coerced into seizing the opportunities the market economy presented.

Accordingly, I provide an alternative interpretation of the early nineteenth century as a time of a “communications revolution.” This, rather than the continued growth of the market economy, impressed contemporary Americans as a startling innovation. During the thirty-three years that began in 1815, there would be greater strides in the improvement of communication than had taken place in all previous centuries. This revolution, with its attendant political and economic consequences, would be a driving force in the history of the era.

The America of 1848 had been transformed in many ways: by the growth of cities, by the extension of United States sovereignty across the continent, by increasing ethnic and religious diversity as a result of both immigration and conquest—as well as by expanding overseas and national markets, and by the integration of this vast and varied empire through dramatic and sudden improvements in communications. But while the citizens of the giant republic largely agreed in welcoming the growth of their economy, they were very far from uniting in a bland consensus. The
nature
of the expanding economy constituted one of the most frequently debated issues: Should it remain primarily agricultural, with manufactured products imported, or should economic diversification and development be encouraged along with economic growth?

Not all Americans endorsed their country’s imperial destiny of territorial expansion. For some people, the Christian religion provided a fulcrum for criticism of American national aggrandizement rather than an endorsement of it. America’s national mission should be one of democratic example rather than conquest, they insisted. The government’s massive dispossession of eastern Indian tribes in the 1830s aroused bitter protest. Later, a strong political opposition criticized Polk’s war against Mexico. Opponents of slavery deplored territorial expansion as a plan (in the words of the poet James Russell Lowell) “to lug new slave states in.” Critics of American culture wondered whether Morse’s invention was merely an improved means to an unimproved end. “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas,” noted Henry David Thoreau, “but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”
⁷

In fact, the various improved means of communication carried very important messages. The early national period witnessed new and controversial ideas being formulated, publicized, and even in many cases implemented. The history of the young American republic is above all a history of battles over public opinion. The political parties debated serious issues, economic and constitutional; political divisions were sharp and party loyalties fierce. Meanwhile, innovators at least as original as Morse explored novel approaches in law, in education, in popular politics, and in corporate organization.
⁸
Workers tried to legitimate labor unions in the eyes of public opinion and struck in defiance of the common law. Like technology, politics, and economic development, American religion displayed remarkable originality. Millenarians warned of the imminent Second Coming of Christ. The evangelical movement prompted national soul-searching and argument over the country’s goals and the best means to achieve them. Reformers motivated by religion challenged long-held practices relating to the treatment of women, children, and convicts; utopians of every stripe founded communities dedicated to experimenting with new gender roles and family relationships. Manners and customs came under as much criticism as institutions: Cockfighting, dueling, and drinking alcohol (among other traditional pursuits) became controversial. All such reforms were created, discussed, and propagated through the enormously expanded media of print and wire. Through these debates, disparate groups competed to define America’s national mission. That America, among the nations of the world, had a mission no one doubted. Whatever America stood for, whether an empire for liberty or a light of virtue unto the nations, the Hand of God had wrought it.