D 385 -379 cop»3 13rQQ l;s_^ Southern Branch of the University of California Los Angeles Forr.% L 1 This book is DL'H on the last date stamped below APR 2 1 1924 ^\^ I y MAR17^92B MAR ^^ 2 195a ^^-^/^ i«^f SVIAY S 195p MAR 21 1928 APR 2 9 1929 it Koriu 1. 9— 5/i(-l"J,'2;. ^ 94 14 THE FIRST TELEGRAM {Chamber of the Sjiprcme Court, II 'ashijigton, May 24, 1844.) Professor Morse senuist, the Despatch as Dictated by Miss Annie Ellsworth — THE Key Note to the Achievements of the Xineteenth Century: "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT" {See Page 180.) The STORY OF THE j. j. j. NINETEENTH CENTURY J' J- ^ Of the CHRISTIAN ERA By ELBRWGE S. BROOKS A uthor of " The True Story of tf-.e United States," "The Story of Our War With Spain" "The American Soldier" "The American Sailor" "In Blue and White" Etc. //37^ " God 'j in his heaven — All 's right with the world !" Robert Browning. ILLUSTRATED BOSTON: LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY OqX, /.S)02- COPYRIGHT, igoo, BY LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY. SECOND EDIT/ON- Norwood Press : Printed by Berwick 6^ Smith. c^iiH'E M^.i.L, oLuuv;^, 3^ 6 (1,0 Y'S^ PREFACE. WITHOUT binding myself to the fiat of the mathe- matician, or the assumption of the Emperor of Germany, I have taken, for the purpose of this "story," the convenient round numbers of i8oo to 1900, inclusive, as constituting the Nineteenth Century. Years count for but little in the evolution of a divine plan, and the tyranny of figures is a matter of human limitation ; but the one hundred years, stretching from 1800 to 1900, certainly register the high-water mark of human development, and record the sublimest triumph of divine intention. From the rise and fall of Napoleon to the regnant supremacy of the people, the Nineteenth Century marched steadily on through effort to accomplishment, and, in all departments of human effort and human achievement, proved its right to be esteemed, in every sense, the "Wonderful Century." If, in attempting to tell, briefly and generally, the story of the Nineteenth Century I have fallen short in the rec- ord, or have been hampered by an impossible adjustment of the overabundance of material to the limitations of space, I shall still be satisfied if I may lead my readers to investi- gate and study more closely the remarkable happenings of the one hundred years of progress that are here imperfectly set down. This one thing any story of the Nineteenth Century, 5 PREFACE. whether briefly or bulkily told, must show : Progress, — progress in government, in literature, in law, in science, art, and the methods of application ; progress, especially, in human affairs and in the elevation and freedom of man. "The fact of our time which overshadows all others," says Benjamin Kidd, "is the arrival of Democracy." As a true democracy is the soul of progress, so this story of the Nineteenth Century has aimed to associate the growth of intelligence with the development of the people, and the triumphs of invention with the gradual " uplift " of mankind. In the hope that this rapid survey of the world's ad- vancement since the days when Franklin foresaw so clearly the triumphs of human endeavor, and Washington saw as clearly the possibilities of independence, may lead all who read it to appreciate the fact that in spite of suspicion and selfishness, in spite of evil and error, the world is ever growing better, and that divine purpose never takes a backward step, the author dedicates his story to all lovers of humanity, liberty, and equality, and especially to that great English-speaking race which, if true to its own tradi- tions, is, as one student of development declares, " destined to play an immense part in the immediate future of the world." "Whenever I meditate upon government," says Rousseau, « I am happy to find in my investigations new reasons for loving that of my own country." May that loyalty to their own homeland be the possession of all who honor these pages with their attention. ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS. Boston, March 15, 1900. CONTENTS. PAGE Chap. I. How the Centurj' Began 13 First Period. The Age of Napoleon. Chap. II. When One Man Strove to Master the World ... 31 Chap. III. The Grip of "The Man on Horseback" .... 47 Second Period. The Age of Wellington. Chap. IV. How Napoleon's Star Set at Last 65 Chap. V. How the Desire for Independence Grew .... 8i Third Pf.riod. The Age of Bolivar. Chap. VI. How the Finst Quarter Ended 99 Chap. VII. When the World Grew in Manliness 119 Fourth Period. The Age of Jackson. Chap. VIII. How the World had a New Shaking up . . . . 133 Chap. IX. What " Old Hickory" Helped to Accomplish . . 147 Fifth Period. The Age of Kossuth. Chap. X. Why the People grew Restless 165 Chap. XI. How All the World had another Shaking up . . . 182 Sixth Period. The Age of Cavour. Chap. XII. On the Portal of the Future 201 Chap. XIII. How One Man Liberated a Nation 220 Seventh Period. The Age of Lincoln. Chap. XIV. How Another Man Enfranchised a Race .... 239 Chap. XV. How Liberty and Union came in more lands than One 260 7 3 CONTENTS. Eighth Period. The Age of Bismarck. pagb Chap. XVI. When the World Readjusted Itself 279 Chap. XVII. The Last " One-Man Power " of the Century . . 297 Ninth Period. The Age of Tolstoi. Chap. XVIII. How the World began to Try the Golden Rule . 313 Chap. XIX. How the Nations Extended Their Influence . . 326 Tenth Period. The Age of Edison. Chap. XX. When Men began to Prove the Value of Things . 345 Chap. XXI. How the Century Closed 3^2 Chronological Record of the Nineteenth Century ... 3^5 Index 397 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE The First Telegram Frontispiece. AusTERLiTZ AND Napoleon faces 46 Waterloo and Wellington " 80 Types of the Age of Bolivar " 116 Types of the Age of Jackson " 146 Types of the Age of Kossuth " 182 Types of the Age of Cavour " 220 Abraham Lincoln " 260 Sedan and Bismarck " 296 Types of the Age of Tolstoi " 326 Types of the Age of Edison " 362 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. "A century of analysis and reve- lation "which has reduced the size of the world, and the -width of the oceans ; a century of federation and of brotherly lo7'e which has bound men closer and closer together." Edward Ez>erett Hale. TO THE CENTURIES: '■'■ I am the Century the Nineteenth from Christ! And though I guarded well thy treasures rare, — Inheritance unequalled and unpriced, For me the day's appointed task sufficed, To lighten and to ease the lot of man. From elemental strongholds I enticed Strange Titans hidden since the world began; Now, God's best creature wields them, subject to his plan. " I am the Centtiry the Nineteenth fi-om Christ! What goeth from us, is beyond recall ; Yet unto every age there shall befall A revelation for its heart alone: Lol I have kept my Weak Ones from the wall, And to my Strong their feebleness have shown ; The letter fades apace — the spirit must atone 1 " Edith Matilda Thomas. From the " Critic " for December, i8gg. THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER I. HOW THE CENTURY BEGAN. OF all the centuries that have passed since Christ was born at Bethlehem the Nineteenth Century has been the best, the greatest, the most wonderful. And this is as it should be ; for Christianity, sprung from that lowly manger at Bethlehem, means unrest, unrest means effort, effort means achievement, achievement means progress, and progress is the one thing that has made the Nine- teenth Century the greatest one hundred years since first the world began swinging in space, countless ages ago. Read with me, I pray you, the Story of the Nineteenth Century. When the Nineteenth Century was bom the world was in a restless state ; the great family of nations was dis- turbed by new ideas and new desires. That half of the globe known as the New World — because, though the old- est half geologically, it was the newest politically — had, in the last quarter of the Eighteenth Century set a new lesson for the rest of the world to learn : the lesson of man's independence, the power of the people, and the equal right of all to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. •3 14 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. To set this lesson so that all the world might read, a few thousand patriots — a fraction only of the three million colonists along the Atlantic coast of North America — had struggled through years^of protest, privation, determination, and battle, until success had been won, a nation of free- men established, and the world aroused to the knowledge of individual liberty and national independence. In America, when the Nineteenth Century opened, the greatest of Americans and the noblest of men had just closed his honorable and glorious career. George Wash- ington was dead. In France a marvellous man was just entering upon a career of greatness that was to rouse the world to wonder, set all Europe by the ears, and make its map anew. Napoleon Bonaparte was First Consul of France, and from a poor Corsican lieutenant of artillery had already become the dictator of Europe. Because of George Washington and American indepen- dence, came Napoleon Bonaparte and European enlighten- ment. Success in America meant desire across the seas. In cruel fashion and in poorly planned endeavor France had cast off the tyranny of centuries and established the French Republic, with the glorious motto, " Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity." Other nations, long bowed beneath a like tyranny of kings and princes and privileged classes wrongly called " Nobles," saw the success of Amer- ica and the effort of France, and longed to be their own masters and rulers. The people were beginning to br;ively think rather than to blindly obey. But desire does not always yield right methods. There is a right and a wrong way to attain results. America had taken the right way ; France had followed the wrong. So HOW THE CENTURY BEGAN. I5 the terrible spectacle of F'rancc's wrong way of doing a right thing had saddened, terrified, and sobered Europe, and had led her people to make haste slowly, uncertain whether it were wise to attempt to walk the path of liberty if that way led, as it had in France, through blood and terror, or to exchange a thousand tyrants for one relentless despot and continual war. Washington's greatness seemed well-nigh overshadowed by Napoleon's selfishness. And yet Napoleon's selfishness had not been valueless to the world. It had aroused where it had antagonized, and rebuilt where it had overthrown. The American Revolu- tion and the French Revolution had set the people to thinking. The greatness of Washington and the triumphs of Napoleon had shown men how, in the words of St. Paul, God had chosen "the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty ; and the things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are." For George Wash- ington was but a plain Virginia farmer, and Napoleon Bonaparte the son of a Corsican lawyer ; and those two men remade the world of 1800. Of Washington, Green, the historian of the English people, has declared, " No nobler figure ever stood in the fore-front of a nation's life " ; while Napoleon Bonaparte, by the very selfishness of his ambitions, destroyed old tyrannies, threw the vigor of endeavor into conquered peoples, and awoke, especially in Germany, that spirit of patriotism and union that finally led to his own overthrow, and the development of a new Europe. The times indeed were ripe for this making of a new Europe, a new America, and a new world. Even in the l6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. midst of wars and rumors of wars, men, thrown on their own resources or stirred to think out new ways of doing things along other than poHtical Hnes, were blessing the world with the hints toward the very things that were to make the Nineteenth Century so great. When Benjamin Franklin, the prophet of industrial America, came, in 1790, to the end of his long, useful, and helpful life, he said, " I have sometimes almost wished it had been my destiny to be born two or three centuries hence. For invention and improvement are prolific, and beget more of their kind. The present progress is rapid. Many things of great importance, now unthought of, will, before that period, be produced ; and then I might not only enjoy their advantages, but have my curiosity satisfied in knowing what they are to be." That was the wonderful old man's prophecy and regret in the closing years of the eighteenth century ; think now, what the opening years of the twentieth century show as the result of the advancing thought of the nineteenth ! " Many things of great importance will be produced," said Franklin ; suppose he could revisit the earth to-day, and see how his prophecy was realized within less than one hundred years of its utterance, and how the things that we accept as ordinary and commonplace are almost like some great magician's miracle compared to the things that Franklin knew, — hydraulic mining, the modern battleship, the telephone, electric lighting, and wireless telegraphy, the X-rays, and modern machinery ! The Nineteenth Century opened with some of these things "in the air." An English engineer and machinist, named Joseph Bramah, had already invented the remark- HOW THE CENTURY BEGAN. 17 able safety-lock and powerful hydraulic press that still bear his name ; he also invented a printing-press for banknotes, a machine for sawing stone, and he lost his life in devising a contrivance for uprooting tree-trunks. Illuminating gas was in use for lighting a few buildings in England and France ; Claude Chappe, a Frenchman of Normandy, had devised a sort of telegraphing by signal posts, so that a message could be sent one hundred and fifty miles in a quarter of an hour ; William Herschel, an English music teacher, had made some wonderful improvements in tele- scopes ; and Laplace, a French professor of mathematics, had made some startling astronomical discoveries ; an Italian professor, named Luigi Galvani, while skinning frogs' legs to make soup for his sick wife, had discovered the electrical currents which led to the development of galvanism ; and, about the same time, another Italian pro- fessor, named Alessandro Volta, also by noticing the mus- cular twitching of a frog, studied out his theory of electrical motion, from which came the voltaic pile or battery, known to us now as '* volts." In 1800, Dr. Edward Jenner, an English physician, had introduced vaccination as a preven- tion of the dreaded small-pox ; two brothers of central France, named Montgolfier, had discovered and attempted the possibility of air-travel by inflated balloons ; a Bohemian play-writer and printer, named Alois Senefelder, while try- ing to make out a washerwoman's bill for his mother without ink or paper, discovered the art of writing on stone — Uthography, now so wonderful in its productions; a French refugee to America, Marc Brunei, had introduced machinery into ship-building ; and an English chemist, named John Dalton, had revolutionized chemical knowledge 1 8 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. and method by his discovery that all chemical combinations were not between the chemical compounds, but between the beginnings or bases of those compounds — the units or atoms to which they could be reduced ; this great dis- covery was called the atomic theory. And in America, Eli Whitney had made the South, and ruined himself, by his invention of the cotton-gin. Those were but a few of the discoveries the world was making or putting to practical use when the Nineteenth Century began. They were simply the developments, or following out of, the thoughts and experiments that Ben- jamin Franklin and other great thinkers before him had dimly conceived or openly advocated ; indeed, certain of these modern discoveries had been known to the older nations or to those which, when the Nineteenth Century opened, had fallen again into darkness and ignorance, or were selfishly keeping to themselves, desiring no communi- cation with what they called " the barbarians of the outside world." Chief among this latter class of isolated peoples was the great empire of China. Bordering the western shore of the broad Pacific ; with a vast territory and a vaster population ; with a literature, arts, science, and inventions stretching back far beyond the time of Christ, China, known to our remote forefathers of the time of Columbus as Cathay, had, for centuries, drawn about herself a wall of isolation and seclusion as for- bidding as the great stone wall with which the Emperor Che-Hwang-te had, two hundred years before Christ, en- circled his great dominions. Dominated and ruled by its Tartar dynasty for over two hundred years it still kept so completely to itself that even in the year 1 800 it was but HOW THE CENTURY BEGAN. I9 little known to the people of Europe or America save as, under severe restrictions, trading-vessels would now and then enter one of its well-guarded ports. Japan, the island empire lying to the north and east of China was, likewise, a sealed book to the western world, as, indeed, were most of those far-reaching lands of the eastern hemisphere known as the Orient. India, Persia, and Afghan- istan were other hermit nations ; Asia Minor was sunk in degradation ; indeed, the very cradle of the progress and civilization of the world had stopped rocking ; for the lands from which, in distant ages, what is known as the Aryan peo- ple had migrated westward, and given to the world its first advance along the path of progress ; from whom, too, came those germs of civilization which, carried through Greece into Europe, gave religion, philosophy, literature, science, and art to man, were, when the Nineteenth Century began, buried in ignorance and sloth, ground down by tyranny and despotism, having made no step in the forward move- ment toward intelligence and civilization which had begun within its borders, and were, indeed, to remain thus lost and isolated until the influence of the west, begim by England in the south, by Russia in the north, and by America on its eastern borders, was to give it a lasting im- pulse, in an actual struggle for life and nationality, toward progress and enlightment. Of that great section of Eastern Europe familiar to us as Russia, but little was really known in 1800. Peter the Great had made the first forward movement for his bar- barous kingdom in the early years of the eighteenth cen- tury, and Catharine II., the German wife of another but most insignificant Peter, carried forward the might and 20 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. progress which the Great Peter had begun. But she died just before the Nineteenth Century was born ; and only when Alexander and Napoleon were rivals for the supremacy of Europe did Russia really assume a place among the great and progressive powers of the world. In that mighty struggle all the nations of Europe had a part. In the clash many an ancient power went down. Switzerland, long the only republic in the world, lost her liberties ; so, too, did Venice, the glory of the Middle Ages ; so, indeed, did all Italy, from the Alps to Sicily; while Spain and Portugal, Holland and Belgium, Denmark, Nor- way, and Sweden, fell under French control. Austria, proud and haughty under the domain of its Hapsburg emperors, only saved itself from ruin by a coalition with the French conqueror ; and the kingdom of Prussia, with all its large and small German duchies and principalities, was well-nigh swallowed in the vortex of war and dismemberment. Indeed, as the Nineteenth Century opened. Napoleon, fresh from his invasion of Egypt, was dreaming of univer- sal empire, and the great Mohammedan power known as the Turkish Empire, was already a tottering fabric, upheld only by the rival purposes of France and Russia. Upon Africa, that seat of earliest civilization, the black- ness of utter night had fallen. Where once, along the southern shores of the Mediterranean, Rome and Carthage had held sway, and learning and culture had their seat, only pirate states existed, demanding and enforcing tribute from the world, while Egypt, fallen into evil ways, had nothing but its ruins and its pyramids to tell of its ancient glory ; for even the vigor of its Ottoman conquerors seemed gone forever. Below the boundaries of the desert now THE CENTURY BEGAN. 21 wastes of Sahara, stretched a vast unexplored and unknown continent, the home of savage and warring tribes, drawn upon by the hunters of men for the victims of the horrible slave-trade, and more barbarous and brutal in their igno- rance than the roving red Indians of the American forests and prairies. These redmen of America, when the Nineteenth Cen- tury began, still occupied and dominated the largest portion of North America. The American Revolution had secured the independence of the United States, but the western portion of the new republic was a most uncertain and waver- ing line. In the year 1800 France still held most of the territory west of the Mississippi, under the name of Loui- siana. Spain owned certain territory east of the Missis- sippi, and south of the thirty-first parallel of latitude, under the name of Florida ; east and north of these boundaries, to the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes, lay the posses- sions of the United States of America, eight hundred and twenty-eight thousand square miles. The twentieth century opens with that area, on the continent alone, in- creased almost sevenfold, or over three and one-half mil- lion square miles, while the flag of the republic floats in possession over islands once crushed beneath the power of Spain. But in 1800 even the eight hundred thousand square miles of the United States were largely given up to Indian occupation ; for what is called the centre of population, or better, the " centre of gravity " of the population of the country, was but eighteen miles west of Baltimore, in Maryland. Only about three hundred and five thousand square miles of its territory were settled, and had a popu- 22 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. lation of a little over four million. In 1900 the population has grown to more than eighty million. England claimed possession of all the North American continent north of the Great Lakes, with the exception of the extreme northwesterly corner, which was known as Russian America. To-day that "corner" is known as Alaska, a valuable territory of the United States. Spain owned all of the present domain of the United States west of Texas, and including Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana ; she possessed Mexico and Central America, and all the vast territory of South America from the Isthmus of Panama to Cape Horn, excepting Brazil, which belonged to little Portugal. So you see that the civilized United States in the year 1800 occupied but a very small portion of the earth's sur- face, and had but a slight political influence. Their influence, in fact, was in ideas more than anything else. A new nation, they had undertaken a new problem, — the task of governing themselves. The young republic had a large area to develop ; it had no fear of its neigh- bors, as had every one of the rival states of Europe ; it had no desire for conquest, no need to waste its revenues in great armies or fleets of war ; no wish to do anything but to strengthen itself on its own soil by a career of peaceful industry. It had its own political differences, rivalries, and ambitions, but they were local rather than national. The spirit of union was voiced in the song of " Hail, Columbia ; " and, though the Republic had great sympathy for the experiment of popular liberty in France, yet when France sought to trade upon its sympathies, and embroil the United States in the foreign and domestic troubles of France, the now THE CENTURY BEGAN. 2$ Republic said, " No ! that is none of my business," and was ready to arm itself against the arrogant demands of France for money for its needs. " We helped you ; help us ! " said France ; and then came, in reply to the demand for "blackmail," the noble sentiment of Pinckney, the Ameri- can envoy to France : " Millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute ! " While the freemen of America were gradually feeling their way westward to the savage borders of their own domain, the adventurers of the world were following along the paths of discovery, and setting inquisitive feet upon the islands of the sea. When the Nineteenth Century began the island-continents that now comprise the geographical division known as Australasia were unknown save to a few daring navigators, and unoccupied save by their native tribes. New Guinea, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and the scattered archipelagoes that dot the western Pa- cific, were still practically unexplored. Spain and Portugal, France, Holland, and England, had for years voyaged, traded, and claimed possession in these Pacific waters as well as in what was known as the East Indies ; but actual occupation and colonization had been attempted only at few points, so that this vast stretch of fertile Pacific and Indian islands was practically unknown to civilization. In the great Indian peninsula, jutting out from southern Asia, England had, in 1800, obtained a considerable footing, thanks to the resistless energy of Clive ; but it w^as still a fierce struggle for possession between English governors and native princes in what Tennyson, later, called "wild Mahratta battle," and in no portion of the " uncivilized world," as Europeans arrogantly termed all vast stretches 24 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. of native possessions, had the aggressive and wealth-seeking white man yet secured, when the Nineteenth Century opened, absolute or undisputed possession. The West India islands, in the Atlantic waters, were possibly an exception. Since the days of Columbus and his companions, these fertile tropic islands had been under the ever-changing control of Spain, Holland, England, and France ; and their rich harvests of sugar-cane and tobacco were building up a profitable "West India " trade. When the Nineteenth Century began, the world, as I have told you, and as you may see from this opening pic- ture, was in a turmoil. Unrest was the order of the day. The spirit of liberty, the desire for possession, the lust of adventure, of greed and of gain, were struggling for mas- tery. Change was in the air. Man, through three hun- dred years, had been slowly developing the three great inventions of the Middle Ages — the mariner's compass, gunpowder, and printing — until, at last, civilization had applied them to its own practical and generally selfish uses. Wars, treaties, and revolutions, continuous and interminable, had resulted therefrom ; but this ceaseless upheaval was rapidly transforming the world, and making the way clear for the material, social, and intellectual devel- opment of the People who, in the Nineteenth Century, were to take affairs in hand, and lead the world to nobler heights of endeavor and achievement. In the year 1800 all Europe was at war. That was nothing new. Europe had forever been at war since the early days of Aryan immigration had led to the days of Roman dominion and power. But the wars that ushered in the Nineteenth Century were far different from those HOW THE CENTURY BEGAN. 2$ that had gone before. Now the people were rising, and the quarrels of individual rulers or of rival races gave place to the struggle for independence and manhood. To think and to reason! — the development of these faculties in man was the impulse toward independence. " 'Tis education forms the common mind, Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined," wrote one of the great English poets of the eighteenth century ; and just as that eighteenth century was drawing to a close, George Washington said to his countrymen in his famous " Farewell Address," " Promote, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." This means that the stupid man is content to be a slave ; but that liberty, which is founded on law, is possible only to the man who thinks, intelligently. For centuries learning and literature had been possible only to a comparatively small portion of the people. Edu- cation indeed had slumbered far beyond the night of the dark ages, as the times of grossest ignorance were called ; and not until the latter part of the eighteenth century did the people begin to desire to really know something. Such men as Comenius the Moravian, and Hermann Francke the German, and John Locke the Englishman, had laid the foundations upon which Rousseau and Basedow and Pesta- lozzi reared their systems of education, and prepared the way for the wonderful educational developments of the Nineteenth Century. But in 1800 these systems were only 26 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. in process of formation, and the education of the chil- dren of the world was slight and small. Prussia had, perhaps, the best system of education ; but, throughout the world, the uneducated were in a vast majority. Nearly sixty per cent of the people of England were unable to write their names, and in all the kingdom there were but three thousand schools, public and private. The United States had been too busy in setting up housekeeping to attend school — and what schools they had were few and poor. France was even worse off ; for her bloody revolu- tion had left no time for education. Italy and Spain were fearfully ignorant ; Austria and Russia were positively uneducated ; and while in China and India children had always gone to school, instruction, as in all oriental coun- tries, was confined to the simplest moral teaching ; and Hottentot and Bushman, knowing nothing but how to eat and shoot and sleep, were not so very far below the children of the people in most parts of what was then called the civilized world. Literature — the knowledge and reading of books — was confined to even smaller limits than was education. Great names were known to the world of letters ; but that world was very small in comparison to the real globe, or even to the real people of a nation. Doctor Samuel John- son was the great name in England ; the " Times " had just begun publication in London ; Goethe was the fore- most writer of Germany, and Rousseau the most popular in France ; Robert Burns was the one man who was touch- ing the heart of the people with his simple lays ; Moore and Byron were scarcely more than boys ; Schiller, Schlegel, Schelling, and Humboldt were the representatives of Ger- HOW THE CENTURY BEGAN. 2/ man thought and culture, as Derzhavin the poet, Karamzen the historian, and Kriloff the story-teller were in the van of Russia's slow growth in literature. Pushkin, the greatest of Russian poets, was a year-old baby when the Nineteenth Century began ; Alfieri and Parini were the great names in Italian literature, while Spain had fallen sadly from the " golden age " of Cervantes and Lope de Vega of two centuries before. In America, too, the American book was, as yet, a dull and uninviting affair ; there was little done in literature, for, so busy were our grandfathers and great grandfathers in setting their new nation on its feet, that they found no time for "book lamin'," and, as Lowell, in later days, declared, "They stole Englishmen's books and thought Englishmen's thought, "With English salt on her tail our wild eagle was caught." But in 1800 Washington Irving was a boy of thir- teen, and "the father of American Literature " was stor- ing up the material that was to awaken the creative thought of his native land. Cooper, too, was but a boy of ten. Bryant was not yet si.x, and Fitz-Greene Halleck had scarcely got into jackets. There had, as yet, come no gleam from the land of Washington of the light that was to stream across the ocean, and make the America of the last half of the Nineteenth Century a great book-readmg and book-making nation. So, after centuries of gradual gro\vth and of barbarism and semi-civilization, the world stood at the opening of the Nineteenth Christian Century, not yet truly Christian- ized, civilized, or progressive. Through all those centuries the people had slowly but surely been rising out of degrada- 28 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. tion into a knowledge of their own manhood and their own power, until, through blood and tears, through sorrow and suffering, through dawning self-knowledge and awakening intelligence, the world had come to that day of strife and turmoil and general unrest, out of which must come either still blacker darkness or the sunlight of the newborn day. " The representative man of the trajiiition epoch which uihered in the Nineteenth Century — the most tumultuous and yet the most fruit- Jul in the world's history." William Millisan Sloane. THE AGE OF NAPOLEON. Imperialism. (1800-1810.) NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH, Born Ajaccio, Corsica, Aug. is, lybq, Died St. Helena Island, May 3, iSsr. T CHAPTER II. WHEN ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. (From 1800 to i8oj.) HE Nineteenth Century has been famous for surmount- ing obstacles. The ingenuity of man has never been more courageously shown or magnificently demonstrated. And the lesson of contempt for obstacles was set by Napo- leon Bonaparte in the year 1800. Returning home after an unsuccessful campaign in Egypt, where he had gone with a glittering but unpractical dream of oriental conquest, he found France in a miserable condition, torn by political dissensions and weakened by the defeats of its armies. Napoleon settled the first by making himself Consul and head of the state ; he put an end to the second by leading an army over the Alps and conquering Italy. With an audacity as reckless as it was successful he won the battle of Marengo, forced the treaties of Luneville and Amiens, gave France a new and strong government, and, for the first time in many years, brought peace to Europe and the world. This was in 1802. In 1806 he declared himself King of Italy and Hereditary Emperor of France ; and, once again in the history of the world, the dream of the people — "the republic one and indivisible " — seemed shattered forever. But it was not so. Napoleon himself had shown the world what a man of the people could accomplish. The 31 32 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. very success of his ambitions and his tyranny had strength- ened the faith of the people in their own abihties, while the success of the greatest of modem dictators was, as we shall see, only temporary. The day of the one-man power was to be but brief ; the power of the people was coming on slowly, but surely and mightily. The success of Napoleon was the first step toward his downfall. It aroused inv^eterate enemies in all parts of the world. The lovers of liberty called him the assassin ; the partisans of aristocracy and personal power combined for the overthrow of this little Corsican, whom they declared an upstart and a usurper. But, before the downfall came, Napoleon Bonaparte was to scale the dizziest heights of his ambition. Guardian and guide of France, for good or for evil, dictator and master of Europe, the influence and power of the " Little Corporal," as his soldiers loved to call him, was far-reach- ing — it was, indeed, even in the earliest years of the Nineteenth Century, world-wide. Europe acknowledged it from the straits of Gibraltar to the North Sea, and agreed to the Treaty of Luneville, and the Peace of Amiens, in 1801 ; Asia and the islands of the Pacific knew it when those same treaties rearranged the possessions of European power in the far east and brought a change of masters ; Africa felt it when, with the withdrawal of French and English combatants, Mehemet Ali, the Albanian tobacco merchant, rose to the supreme power in Egypt ; and America recognized it when, in 1 800, Napoleon, First Con- sul, put a stop to the useless naval war between France and the United States, and later, in 1803, sold to the republic, for fifteen millions of dollars, the vast stretch of ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. 33 western territory known as Louisiana, and thus opened the door for the marvellous growth of America beyond the Mississippi. Across his highway to universal dominion, the goal of the mighty ambitions of this young conqueror of thirty- three, England stood as the only obstacle — the lion in his path. She had half a million trained fighting-men and a navy that was well-nigh invincible. Her foremost man and mightiest leader was William Pitt the younger, the great son of an even greater father. For one hundred years England and Scotland had been united under the name of Great Britain ; and the Union Jack, made from the combined crowns of St. George and St. Andrew, had been the national flag of the united kingdoms — "the meteor flag of England," one of the British poets of that day called it, as he proclaimed its invincibleness : — "The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn ; Till danger's troubled night depart, And the star of peace return." "Danger's troubled night " had by no means departed, even though, in 1801, the "star of peace " seemed for a brief time to have returned. On the second day of July, 1800, thanks to the effort of the great Pitt, a legislative union had also been formed between Great Britain and her restless western island dependency of Ireland. On Janu- ary 22, 1 801, the first imperial parliament of what has ever since been termed "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland " met in London ; the shadowy semblance of liberty known as "the national independence of Ireland" 34 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. was lost to the never really independent " Emerald Isle ; " but when Pitt, who, by this union and his opposition to Napoleon, hoped to make Great Britain the controlling in- fluence in Europe, sought, by a concession to the Roman Catholics, who had long been debarred from political power, to weld the men of the united kingdom more firmly to- gether, the king of England refused to make this liberal advance, and the great minister resigned his office. This stubborn, though conscientious, king of England was that same George the Third who had as obstinately held out against the prayers and protests of his American colonists and their English sympathizers, and had thus brought about the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and the final triumph and absolute independence of the United States in 1783. As he lost America when the eighteenth century was drawing to its close, so, again, when the Nineteenth Century was opening, he refused the wise counsels of Pitt, and, by his obstinacy and hatred of liberty, might have irretrievably crippled England had not the peo- ple of England shown more common sense than their big- oted and slow-witted king. An honest and well-intentioned old gentleman was George the Third, king of England ; but he hated anything approaching popular independence and freedom of thought or action, and could never really see beyond his own short but honest Hanoverian nose. It became necessary, soon, for men of action to look much farther than King George's nose. The peace of Europe, secured by England's advances and by Napoleon's shrewdness, was seen by all thinking men to be but a brief respite — "a peace," so one observer declared, "which everybody is glad of and nobody is proud of." Even stu- ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. 35 pid old King George saw this. " It is an experimental peace," he said, " nothing else. But it was unavoidable." So England, the lion in the path, stood in the way of Napoleon's ambition and a universal war. As for the newly-made Emperor of the French, it may be said that he used the brief respite to devote alike his iron will and his wonderful ability to the improvement of France, torn and wasted by years of revolution and of war. He restored religion and the Sabbath, equalized and reformed the taxes, beautified Paris, and improved the provinces by a system of public works, permitted the exiled royalists to return, and framed a system of just and uniform laws for France — the most enduring, so it is claimed, of all the achievements of Napoleon. Underneath all this peace-keeping and law-making, how- ever, lay the cherished ambitions of this remarkable Corsi- can. While strengthening his power and benefiting his people he was contemplating the conquest of all Europe, with himself — " Napoleon Imperateur ! " — victor, master, and ruler. But there was a fly in the amber. Before him, deter- mined and defiant, stood England, obstinate as King George himself. Her spirit irritated this would-be dictator, and he longed to see her crushed, and pushed out of his way. " Fifteen millions of people must give way to forty mil- lions," he declared, as he confidently compared his million fighting men and his army of allies against the half million fighting strength of Great Britain. Skilful and wise as a leader of men, and certain of his own strength, Napoleon began to prepare for what all men knew to be inevitable — the conflict with England. 36 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. He cleared the decks for action in all possible ways. On both sides of the Atlantic his will as well as his agencies were at work ; for, while forcing alliances in Europe, he stirred up the Mahratta tribes of Central India against the English ; and having, by treaty, secured from Spain the vast tract of Louisiana in North America, he crippled the possible power of England in America by selling to the republic of the United States the whole of Louisiana (a territory embracing the present states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma and the Indian Terri- tory, with goodly portions of Minnesota, Colorado, and Wyoming). The price that France, by the will of Napoleon, received from this vast land sale was but fifteen millions of dollars — a regular "bargain price," so it seems to us of to-day, who know the present resources of that wonderful western region. But money, just then, was no object to Napoleon, Emperor of the French. What he desired was to block the path of England. " This accession of territory by the United States," he declared, "establishes forever the power of the United States, and gives to England a maritime rival destined to humble her pride." ] A good deal of a prophet was this undersized Emperor of the French ; even more astute and far-seeing than were many of those who profited by his hatred of England. Thomas Jefferson was president of the United States. The man whose hand drew up the Declaration of Indepen- dence could find no clause in the Constitution of the United States giving him the power to thus "expand" the ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. ^y territory of the republic by purchase or accession. As other presidents, however, have done since his day, he con- sented to the transfer because he behcved it to be the will of the people. So the first experience of the United States in territorial expansion became fact ; patriots who feared for the republic for this "misconstruing the Con- stitution " have long since been proven false prophets ; and to-day, after a century of ownership, "the purchase of Louisiana," so Dr. Edward Channing declares, "is shown to have been one of the most fortunate events in the history of the United States." Napoleon had shrewdly seen that if France retained Louisiana she would be a menace and rival to the United States, who would thus be forced into an alliance with England. "From the day that France takes possession of New Orleans," one American statesman had declared, " she becomes our mutual and habitual enemy. From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation." Napoleon saw this ; he quickly made Louisiana American by sale and annexation, and thus " put a spoke in England's wheel." Then he gathered, at Boulogne, a great fleet and army for the invasion of England. " Let us but be masters of the channel for six hours," he said, "and we are masters of the world," But the mastery of the English Channel was not to be secured by the navy of France : indeed, the " ruler of the waves " was not to be the self-made emperor of the French. England, who had already, by her victories at Brest and Aboukir, driven the tricolor flag from the sea, and ruined the foreign trade of France, was too formidable an ad\-er- 38 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. sary for Napoleon's uncertain fleets. The mariners of Eng- land were still the unconquered defenders of that island kingdom, of which her favorite poet, Campbell, had declared " Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep ; Her march is o'er the mountain-waves, Her home is on the deep." And Napoleon, as had the Spaniards of the Armada in the days of "good Queen Bess," found Britannia very much "at home " when he called. In 1803 the short peace of the world was broken. England refused to give up the island of Malta in the Mediterranean, which Napoleon desired as a base of action for a possibly new invasion of Egypt and the east. An- gered at thus being thwarted, Napoleon made British obsti- nacy the cause of conflict. " Malta or war ! " he declared ; and, demanding the sup- port of his enforced allies of Spain, Holland, Switzerland, and Italy, he bent all his energies to the conquest of England, the recovery of Malta, and the victorious inva- sion of Egypt and the East. As the first step in this new career of conquest he commanded his fleets to rendezvous at Boulogne, that they might sweep the British from the waters of. the channel, and clear the way for his armies to invade England. But England was ready. A great sailor was in com- mand of her navy, Horatio Nelson, admiral of the fleet and conqueror of the Nile. Napoleon, with his two thousand vessels and his invading army of one hundred and fifty thousand men, could neither decoy, break through, nor con- ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. 39 quer the channel fleet of England. He tried the first, un- successfully; for Nelson, led away with some of his battle- ships into the stern chase of a French fleet across the Atlantic, saw through the emperor's trick in the very nick of time, and, racing back again, got in just ahead of the allied French and Spanish fleet, and forced it back to the shelter of the French forts. He tried the second, unsuccess- fully; for he could not weaken the cordon of British battle- ships that guarded the Channel shores. He tried the third, unsuccessfully, for Nelson, chasing the allied fleets of France and Spain into Cadiz, lured the French admiral, Villeneuve, out to battle, by purposely weakening his own fleet, and then, closing in upon the French ships off the Cape of Trafalgar, he ran up on his flagship the famous signal, " England expects every man to do his duty," did his own gloriously by crushing the whole hostile fleet in a wonder- ful sea-fight, and then fell, mortally wounded, in the very hour of victory. This remarkable sea triumph was won by England on the twenty-first of October, 1805. It broke forever the naval power of France, overthrew all Napoleon's deep- laid plans for the invasion and conquest of England, and turned his attention to the easier victory of the allied armies of Europe, which were already gathering to crush the great commander. At the close of the year 1 805 Russia, England, Austria, and Sweden stood united for this endeavor. Ranged on the side of France were Spain, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, Prussia, and the smaller German states, mostly unwilling allies, but cowed into union by the master power of Napo- leon. England, still guarding her own boundaries from 40 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. invasion, furnished the money to back up the fight to which Austria and Russia marched with mighty armies — at least three hundred thousand men. Once again the world was in the full sweep of terrible war. The peace and war which Napoleon could so easily force as his needs or his desires dictated, again, as in the case of his earlier triumphs, affected, either directly or indirectly, the whole civilized world. In India the "wild Mahratta battle," of which Tennyson speaks in " Locksley Hall," and which had been fanned into fury by the "seeking on " of France, raged hotly until tri- umphantly closed in 1 803 by the intrepid English general Wellesley, afterwards made famous under his title of Wel- lington ; on either side of the globe possessions changed hand, by conflict or treaty : as when the Danish West Indies were captured by the British in 1801 ; the French recap- turing from the British their possessions on the West Afri- can coast ; Egypt, evacuated by its British holders after the peace of Amiens ; and the Dutch given again, in 1803, their far-off African colony at the Cape of Good Hope, to be, for a hundred years, the bone of contention as Dutch and English, Boer and Briton, struggled for South African supremacy. These were but a few of the changes witnessed during the first five years of the Nineteenth Century, when, by the restless energy of one indomitable man, the whole world seemed shifting positions in a great international game of "stage-coach." In Europe the old " Holy Roman Empire " — never really Roman and always far from holy — was forever abolished ; Switzerland and North Italy were made into a chain of ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. 4 1 republics ; Germany was shuffled like a pack of cards till few could tell just where or what the German boundaries were ; Italy became all French, or was dominated by France ; and, of the forty-eight free imperial cities of Ger- many, only six retained their ancient rights. As France, fattening with conquest, swelled itself across the Rhine, Portugal, worsted in a vain conflict with Spain, and backed up by France, found herself shorn of provinces at home and colonies in South America ; while, of all Europe, no state, in 1805, found itself untouched or unchanged save Russia and England. In Russia a new czar had come to the throne, — Alex- ander the First, — destined to be a prominent figure in Europe's troubled story. And, in England, the never- absent spark of Irish rebellion fanned itself into a flame in 1803, when Robert Emmet, urged on by Napoleon's half promises, headed a revolt that came to speedy grief, cost- ing the young Irish patriot his life, and giving to the world a famous speech and yet more famous poem. That poem is, indeed, one of the most pathetic of the tender "melo- dies " of Thomas Moore : " Oh 1 breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade, Where cold and unhonored his relics are laid ; Sad, silent, and dark be the tears that we shed, As the night dew that falls on the grass o'er his head 1 But the night dew that falls, though in silence it weeps, Shall brighten ^\^th verdure the grave where he sleeps ; And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls, Shall long keep his memory green in our souls." Everywhere throughout the world, where the story of American liberty and the French overthrow of kings had 42 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. spread, this desire for independence that cost Emmet his hfe was stirring uneasily in these opening years of the Nineteenth Century. From the Gulf of Mexico to Cape Horn the sullen submission which for three centuries the enslaved people of South America had yielded to cruel and selfish Spain was smouldering in discontent ; and the val- ley of the Mississippi opened by Napoleon's shrewd " spoke in England's wheel," to the hand and ownership of Ameri- can pioneers, took on a new life of energy and endeavor. Poland, dismembered by the greedy powers of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, recognized in Napoleon a possible liberator, and stretched out to him appealing hands ; in Canada, the national antagonism between French and Eng- lish seemed ready to break into open trouble, while Greece, that ancient home of liberty, chafing under its subjection to a horde of Asiatic aliens, felt the dawning inspiration of independence, and awoke to a new vision of reviving its old nationality. How much the vigor of America in the Mediterranean aroused the downtrodden patriots of Europe to a sense of what a free nation may accomplish, it is not possible to say; but certainly the appearance of the victorious flag of the young western republic floating above the conquered strongholds of African despotism must have been an in- spiring as it was an unusual sight. For years the nations that traded along the shores of the Mediterranean had been at the mercy of a piratical confederation, known as the " Barbary Powers," because they included a line of vassal states founded by a terrible Turkish pirate named Barbarrossa in the sixteenth century. Wars and troubles at home had kept the civilized and com- ONK MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. 43 mercial states of Europe from brcakinj,^ up this nest of African pirates, though now and then some state, stung to madness by the depredations of these sea-thieves upon her commerce, would swoop down upon their ports to punish their sea-crimes. For the most part, however, European traders thought it more prudent to purchase the freedom of entrance into and safe saihng over the Mediterranean by concession or tribute than to use the war-ships and sailors needed elsewhere. So, for years, the Barbary pirates fat- tened on tribute, presents, or booty, playing off the rivalries of France and England against each other, and proving themselves the highwaymen and scourge of the Mediter- ranean waters. Into this disgraceful connivance with crime the United States, too, had been forced by the exigencies of its slender commerce and the weakness of its navy. But when, in 1800, Captain Bainbridge of the United States frigate "Washington" stoutly withstood the arbitrary demands of the Algerian dey, and when, following this, the pasha of Tripoli demanded an increase of tribute, and, upon its re- fusal, hewed down the flagstaff before the American con- sulate. Congress acted at once, and despatched an American squadron to punish the Barbary pirates. This was done so effectually under the leadership of such American naval heroes as Preble and Decatur, Bainbridge and Truxton, Rodgers and Dale, that an effectual stop was put to this shameful tribute to piracy ; and the laurels won by the American navy gave to it a value that was recognized, for the first time, by the powers of Europe, and was made apparent to those critics at home who would cast discredit on American enterprise abroad — as home critics of Ameri- 44 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. can enterprise there have ever been, from the days of Wash- ington to those of McKinley. America indeed — or the republic of the United States, rather, to which has been given pre-eminently the title of America — was just at that time in a critical mood. The government under the Constitution had become already a subject for party dispute and political rancor, and the chief duty of the American presidents seemed to be to keep the republic out of the wars and brawls into which hot heads and French intriguers would have forced it. John Adams saved it from a needless war with France ; Jefferson kept it from embroiling itself in European complications ; and both these men, though bitter in an unsparing rivalry, sought to follow the wise advice of Washington, and " steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." "Why," asked Washington, "should we quit our own to stand upon foreign ground ? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, should we entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, and caprice .-' " It was along this careful course that both Adams the Federahst and Jefferson the Democrat sought to steer the ship of the Union, just launched upon the sea of National Independence ; and, in spite of party strife and political passion, this policy, so necessary to a new and united nation, kept the repubhc from wasting war, through the opening years of a warlike country, and set itself to the development of a continent fruitful of marvellous possi- bilities. These possibilities were only beginning to be appreciated. ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. 45 So little did the Atlantic States know of the value of the Louisiana purchase that certain " statesmen " suggested the sale of the annexed acres to some "friendly power." The Northwest, only partially won from savage Indians and wandering traders, was almost an unexplored region, and slow methods of communication kept even the sections of the settled East from intimate acquaintance and asso- ciation. Steam navigation on land and water were still but un- formed and impracticable schemes in the busy brains of inventors ; electricity had not yet even begun its marvellous race with time, and postal facilities were scarcely facilities at all. Savings banks were not inaugurated in England until 1804, and the social conditions of England were such as even Englishmen in 1900 can have scarce a conception of. England, the most enlightened of civilized countries, was in so low a social condition that her working-people were little better than slaves, and her laws seemed made only for those who owned the land ; two hundred and twenty- three crimes or breaches of law were punished with the death-penalty, while prisoners, chained outside the prison- gate, begged from the passers-by ; discipline in the army and navy was largely maintained by the whip ; and the in- dustries of the land were carried forward only by the most exhausting labor, and with the most primitive tools. If this was the case with England, what must have been the condition of the rest of the world when all Europe was girding itself for war, and Napoleon Bonaparte seated him- self upon a throne .-* That world was little better than a vast slave-pen. The Russian peasants were serfs ; so, too, were nearly all those 46 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. of Austria and Prussia. Women and children worked in coal-pits, harnessed to wagons or weighed down with bas- kets, forgotten by the law, while morality was as low as manners were coarse and brutal, and all the world de- manded not only peace, but reform. The time for both these blessings was not yet ripe. Indeed, it needed still wider and more wasting wars to awaken good men to see the needs of their brethren, and find a way to meet them ; for war, after all, is what has brought the nations closer to each other than ever has a do-nothing peace, and war was to come with a vengeance. For when, by Nelson's victory at Trafalgar in October, 1805, the emperor of the French was forced to give up forever his dream of the conquest of England, and to yield his supremacy on the sea, he turned all his masterly genius, and all his terrible powers of concentration, against his enemies on land. At the head of a vast army of Frenchmen and their allies, he hurled himself on the great wall of armed men which Russia and Austria, with the money help of England, had raised up against him, and set himself to break, scatter, and destroy what is now known in history as the " third coalition against France." I CHAPTER III. THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." {From iSo^ to iSio. ) T was literally to hurl himself against the forces of Russia and Austria, that Napoleon, emperor and sol- dier, marched across the French border in 1805. With a rapidity that was startling and a strategy that was baffling, he flung the veterans who followed his eagles, first against one power, and then against another. Austria, torn and crippled by his fierce assault, went down in de- feat at Ulm ; and Russia, confronted by this wonderful soldier, in what is known as "the battle of the Three Emperors"" at Austerlitz, fled from the field in retreat, while, through the clouds, there burst upon the exultant Frenchmen that stream of light forever famous as "the Sun of Austerlitz." That sun shone full upon Napoleon with a blaze of glory. It displayed him as the foremost man of all the world, and, for a season, all the world bent in acknowledgment or sub- mission to this self-made master of men. The "third coali- tion " was shattered at a blow. Russia, defeated and flying, assented to one of those enforced treaties called a "mili- tary convention ; " Austria hastened to accept a truce ; and Napoleon's outstretched hand drew more "acquired" territory within the expanding boundaries of France. England, thus left alone, found even her money unavail- 47 48 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. able to purchase victories. The battle of Austerlitz re- made Europe ; for the peace of Pressburg, signed the day- after Christmas, 1805, gave the most of the Christmas gifts to triumphant France, and made the brothers and sisters of Napoleon, almost in spite of themselves, kings, queens, or princes over dismembered Europe. " Roll up that map," said Pitt, the great English states- man, whom Napoleon had checkmated, as he pointed to the map of Europe hanging on the wall ; " it will not be wanted these ten years." And then he died, — " killed by Austerlitz," so the verdict ran. But the death of Pitt, which men felt to be England's greatest loss, proved in the end a blessing ; for rivals joined hands and parties united, to help England to the stand which Pitt desired her to take, — the main bulwark against the ambitions of Napoleon, — and thus to make true the noble declaration of Pitt after Trafalgar : " Eng- land has saved herself by her courage; she will save Europe by her example." But for a while it seemed impossible to save Europe. Napoleon's triumph at Austerlitz had brought Europe to his feet ; he drew away all the smaller German states from Prussia by establishing what he called the " Confederation of the Rhine ;" and when Prussia, in despair, joined again with Russia and England in the Fourth Coalition against France, Napoleon once more, by his rapid and overwhelm- ing tactics, flung himself against the Prussians at Jena and Auerstadt, defeated them before their allies had time to move to their support, and then, from his headquarters at Berlin, swooped down upon the Russians at Eylau and Friedland, and whipped them so completely that they THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 49 were glad to sue for peace, and agree to the treaty of Tilsit in July, 1807. Then, joining with France the conqueror, in an enforced union against England, Russia likewise be- came the tool of France, and Napoleon, now at the pin- nacle of his power, was the acknowledged master and dictator of Europe. ,. Knowing that he could not successfully meet England JL on the sea, and that the invasion of that plucky island ^^^^kingdom was neither wise nor promising. Napoleon deter- mined to starve out his most stubborn foe by a commercial ITT. blockade of her ports. \ All nations under French control or in alliance with France were forbidden doing any busi- ness with England. All British ships were declared sub- ject to capture ; and the ships of any nation that attempted to trade with England were declared forfeit to France. By this tyrannical decree Napoleon hoped to humble England on the ocean, and throw the sea-trade of the world Q into the hands of England's foeman and rival, the repub- lic of the United States!^ As a result, American com- merce greatly increased. Her ships and sailors were on all waters, and, for a time, American vessels were the only neutral ships on the ocean doing a profitable trade with all the nations of Europe. England, of course, retaliated, and struck back at this union of all Europe — all the civilized world, in fact, against her. She issued what were called "Orders in Council " — that is, the king's orders approved by his councillors — prohibiting the trade of any neutral nation with France. This was a direct blow at America ; for, with France say- ing that no one should trade with luigland, and with Eng- land declaring that no one should trade with France, 50 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. America, as the only neutral trader on the sea, was in a "bad box." England was still the mistress of the seas. Her war- ships patrolled the coasts ; her captains stopped Ameri- can vessels whenever sighted, and, claiming the right of search, took off any man that was an Englishman or that looked like an Englishman. This complicated things sadly. It seemed to Americans that, what with F"rench "Decrees" and English "Orders in Council," the American carrying-trade was likely to be altogether destroyed ; so in 1807 Thomas Jefferson, presi- dent of the United States, by the advice and consent of Congress, proclaimed an "Embargo," forbidding American vessels to sail to any foreign port, — French or English or European, — and ordering all foreign vessels to remain in port. So far did the strong hand of Napoleon stretch throughout the world. Such things, however, could not long continue. Already signs of revolt against the tyranny of Napoleon were ap- parent in Europe. The first spoke in Napoleon's wheel was inserted by those from whom such action might least be expected — the slow-going, non-progressive nations of Spain and Portugal. Almost from the start, Spain and Portugal had been the most unquestioning in yielding obedience to the French conqueror. Portugal had helped him in all his efforts to humble England, and Spain had placed both her ships and soldiers at his command. They deserved the best treat- ment at his hands ; but, instead. Napoleon looked upon them with contempt ; and without their consent, without even consulting their wishes, he suddenly concluded that THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 5 I the coasts of Spain and Portugal were altogether too handy lor English ships ; and that, as Portugal seemed unduly dis- posed to lean upon England, and as English armies might land on the coasts of the Peninsula, and easily invade France from the south, it was best, so he decided, to order the kings of Spain and Portugal from their thrones, and put one of his numerous brothers in their place. To decide was to act with Napoleon, Emperor of the P^rench. At once he invaded Spain with an army of one hundred thousand men. Joseph, the eldest brother of Napoleon, was declared king of Spain ; and Portugal was wiped from the map. The kings of the two nations were kidnapped or driven into exile ; and of course, as possessor of both thrones. Napoleon also claimed possession of all the colonies of both Spain and Portugal — which meant all of South America and a goodly part of North America. Even in this did Napoleon scheme to better himself, be- cause of the loss of Louisiana, and, besides being dictator of Europe, to become master of the World. In all his- tory there never was quite so mighty a burglar nor, in his peculiar line, quite so remarkable a man ! But when he tried to force the bit into the mouth of Spain he made the mistake of his life. It was the begin- ning of the end. Already in Germany this protest against the tyrant had begun. When kings and princes bent in surrender or subservience to Napoleon it was a noble and patriotic woman, Louisa, queen of Prussia, who dared the wrath of the conqueror, and stirred to life, in the hearts of the German people, the passion for liberty and union. But all first attempts at resistance failed ; and it seemed as if, in no land, was successful opposition possible. 52 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. It was, however, this invasion of the heretofore friendly territory of Spain and Portugal that aroused retaliation, drew the attention of the emperor from more important matters, weakened his army, sapped his resources, and placed in his rear a foe instead of a friend. Then England saw her opportunity. Taking advantage of the popular rising in Spain against the abductor of its king and the plea for help that came from Portugal, Eng- land hastened to the assistance of the people of the Penin- sula, and in the summer of 1808 sent an army into the south under command of Sir Arthur Wellesley, Napoleon's later rival and final conqueror. It was a small army — only ten thousand men ; but it became a rallying-point for patriotic Spain and Portugal united against Napoleon. This time England came as the deliverer ; and, as to a deliverer, the people upon whom a French tyrant, backed by a French army, had forced a French king, responded heartily, " Bonaparte," said one eminent British statesman (the English never called him anything but Bonaparte if they could help it), " Bonaparte has yet to learn what it is to combat a people who are animated by one spirit against him." That spirit of union against a common foe inspired, also, aU Englishmen, however they differed in politics or religion. In the rescue of Spain they saw their first real opportunity ; " never," they declared, " had so happy an opportunity existed for Britain to strike a bold stroke for the rescue of the world." To attempt that stroke, Wellesley's ten thousand men landed in Portugal ; the patriots flocked to his standard ; the insurrection against Napoleon'3 blunder spread rapidly; THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 53 braced up by the support of England, the Spaniards won a victory over the French at Baylen, and Wellesley drove them out of Portugal, and forced one of their armies to surrender. It was the first disastrous blow that Napoleon, secure in his own triumphs, had felt. It aroused him to instant action. Securing himself from annoyance and attack in the rear by strengthening his alliance with the Russian Czar, and weakening Prussia by driving into exile the Baron Stein, its one great statesman who dared withstand his tyranny, Napoleon, in November, 1 808, invaded Spain with a great army of over two hundred thousand men, and, in his usual vigorous style, prepared to clean the English out of Spain and crush the insurrection. This was no easy task. The emperor of the French, whose presence alone at the head of his troops was equal to an additional army, might scatter the insurgents and defeat the English ; but, even his most strenuous effort to correct the mistake he had made of turning Spain from an ally into a foeman could not accomplish his ends. He broke through the Spanish lines, captured Madrid, and again set up his puppet brother as king ; but he had lost the support of the people of Spain. He forced the English, who were hastening to the relief of Madrid, to fall back in retreat; and at Corunna, in January, 1809, he drove their army from Spain ; but the English rallied and returned to annoy him. Wellesley, victorious at Talavera, became Vicount Wellington, while the retreat from Corunna gave to the world, in Wolfe's " Burial of Sir John Moore," a poem that will outlast all the questionable glories of French victory and tyranny : 54 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. " Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the ramparts we hurried ; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried. But half of our heavy task was done, • When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down From the field of his fame fresh and gory; We carved not a line, we raised not a stone, But we left him alone in his glory." But England never forgot him, and in due time he was mightily avenged. Thinking he had put an end to the Spanish defiance of his authority, and to England's aid to Spain, Napoleon returned to Paris to prepare for a new war with Austria, stirred to a fresh resentment against the all-devouring Corsican. His appetite, indeed, had now become insatiate. He proposed with the Czar of Russia, of whom he had made an ally, to divide Europe, if not the world, between them. But his very success, the success of the French people, and the knowledge of what the people, and not their kings, may accomplish, was impelling the patriotism of Germany to assert itself. For his own selfish ends Napoleon now picked a quarrel with Austria. That slow-going and king-ruled land pro- tested, but to no purpose ; whereupon, seeing how valiantly Spain had turned upon the conqueror, though in a fruitless defiance, Austria took a lesson from Spain and boldly defied the dictator. THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 55 Charles, Archduke of Austria, son and brother of its emperors, appealed to the Germans of Europe to help Austria in her struggle against the tryant. " Austria fights not only for her own autonomy," he declared ; "she takes the sword for the independence and honor of Germany." But Germany was not yet ready to prove her manhood. Prussia, overawed by Russia, dared not help ; and the "assorted Icjt " of little princes who had linked themselves to Napoleon's grandeur in his enforced Confederation of the Rhine, had joined all their small sized armies to the veterans of the P^mpire. Spain, on whom in earlier wars he had relied as a friend, now required a French army to keep it from being a successful foe ; but with his German allies, and with Russia holding back, he believed he could soon finish Austria. He did, but it was by no means an easy task. He was fighting the people now, where, before, he had fought sim- ply their kings and soldiers. " The liberties of Europe," the patriotic Archduke Charles, who led the armies of Austria, declared to his compatriots, "have taken refuge under your banner. Your victories will break their bonds, and your German brothers, still in the enemy's ranks, await their redemption." With the rapidity of action that made him so wonderful a soldier and so great a general, Napoleon turned upon Austria with an army of two hundred thousand men, de- feated her soldiers in a half-dozen battles, again occupied her captured capital, Vienna, and, pushing after her flee- ing army, fell upon the Archduke Charles, who stood pluck- ily at bay at Aspern and Esseling. 56 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. There the conqueror at first experienced defeat ; for in the archduke, he, for the first time, met a foeman really "worthy of his steel;" but, with re-enforced ranks, he again marched to the attack; and in the terrible battle of Wagram, on the fifth of July, 1809, he totally defeated the army of Austria, and drove that unhappy nation once again into a humiliating and destructive truce. The defeat of Austria crushed out all opposition to Napoleon, save where, in Spain and Portugal, the British army under Wellington battled stubbornly, but unsuccess- fully, against the French army of occupation, and the enraged people defended their honors and firesides against the invaders. There, again, a woman spurred her brothers to action; an4 the courageous defence of the city on the Ebro has made the " Maid of Saragossa " forever famous : "Her lover sinks — she sheds no ill-timed tear; Her chief is slain — she fills his fatal post; Her fellows flee — she checks their base career; The foe retires — she leads the sallying host: Who can appease like her a lover's ghost ? Who can avenge so well a leader's fall ? What maid retrieve, when man's flushed hope is lost.-" Who hang so fiercely on the flying Gaul, Foiled by a woman's hand, before a battered wall ? " So, too, among the stern heights of the Tyrol, Andreas Hofer, "innkeeper of the Sandhof," the only patriot who dared to answer the stirring appeal of the Archduke Charles by a revolt against the Bavarian allies of France, maintained a desperate resistance, even after Austria's overthrow, and, betrayed by a comrade, met Napoleon's vengeance bravely, — a hero to the last. Had Germany, at that time, shown the courage of Spain, THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 57 or the determination of the peasants of the Tyrol, Wagram might have been a dearly bought victory. But the humilia- tion of the kingdom of the great Frederick seemed complete, and even the outburst of one small band of patriotic Ger- mans, under the leadership of brave Major Schill, aroused but little enthusiasm, and brought death and disgrace to the heroic Schill and his bold eight hundred. So 18 10 saw the world practically at the feet of Na- poleon. The fifth coalition against him had ended in shameful defeat. He was literally king of kings, and "monarch of all he surveyed." His " Continental System" seemed perfected. Russia was his ally ; Austria and Prus- sia were his conquered foes ; the princes of the Rhine were his confederates ; the Pope of Rome was his prisoner ; Italy and Spain, Holland and Belgium, were "annexed " to the Empire, while Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were his vassal states. In all Europe only one nation dared still openly to resist and defy him — England; and all Europe was against her. The imperial hand was both grasping and far-reaching. Asia and America alike paid tribute to him, in yielding to him new possessions by conquest or treaty ; his dream of an oriental empire was by no means given up. "We will make an end of Europe," he declared, "and then, as robbers fling themselves on others less bold, we will fling ourselves on India." By the right of conquest over Spain and Portugal, he assumed possession of their colonies in North and South America ; he even contemplated making, out of the territory of the United States, a kingdom for some one of the Bour- bon princes whom the P'rench Revolution had overthrown. 58 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. " Three years more and I am lord of the universe," he said, full of assurance, as, puffed with the pride of power, he laid down the law for the world, made and unmade kings at his pleasure, divorced the wife whom he loved, contemptuously threw aside Russia's offer of the young sister of the Czar, whom he might have made his new wife, and, for state reasons only, married the daughter of that emperor of Austria who had been the centre and pivot of all the continual coalitions against him. In all history there is no parallel to the character of Napoleon, Emperor of the French. Europe, war-tossed and war- weary, was on the defensive. We look at the story of those days of battle and blood, and feel a certain contempt for all these foemen of Napoleon, who, hating him as they did, yet scarcely dared to strike a blow in protest. Austria, for whom Hofer roused the Ty- rol to rebellion, made no struggle to save that mountain patriot, whom, indeed, his own countrymen betrayed ; the following of Schill and the German revolutionists was small and uncertain ; even in Spain, where England was attempt- ting an offensive campaign, the Spanish people grew indo- lent and indifferent toward those who came to succor them, and Wellington could only hold a defensive position or withdraw before the French power ; and when, in July, 1 809, English soldiers attempted an assault on Napoleon's stolen strongholds in another part of Europe, they retreated discomfited and beaten from the marshes of Walcheren, and failed in their effort to deliver Holland. For this apathy and disinclination to "tackle " the victo- rious Emperor of France the people of Europe are not to be altogether blamed. They were learning but slowly that THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 59 they were, iiKlecd, the people. Long centuries of kingly rule and the tyranny of the minority had made them slow to rush into war in behalf of that arrogant minority. And, so far as the people were concerned, they were really, except for the waste and slaughter of war, benefited by the successes of this imperial robber of France, even if their kings and nobles were not. Napoleon Bonaparte had sprung from the people. He knew the woes and worries, the burdens and tyrannies, that the favored few, called the ''nobility," laid upon the toiling masses of Europe. " The man with the hoe," who through ages of serfdom had been scarcely better than the beast, was helped rather than hindered by "the man on horse- back," who rode roughshod over kings and princes, thrones and emperors, to victory and conquest. Napoleon Bona- parte was the great readjuster of Europe. In France, though the victorious nation was sorely bled for men to fill the armies of the Emperor, there was more safety and repose than the land had ever known. The good results of the terrible Revolution remained ; the law- lessness and tyranny had given place to order ; family, property, and religion were protected ; while, over all, still soared the glory of France, which as yet, under the Em- peror, had never known defeat. In Germany, thinking men recognized that Napoleon's success meant the overthrow of the old aristocratic meth- ods, and, by the terrible shaking it gave to those ancient thrones and dynasties, really meant the advance of that liberalism which develops the real power of the people. The laws forced by Napoleon upon the people he conquered were wiser and more just than any they yet had known; 6o THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. and the basis of the Code Napoleon, which gave a new civil law to France and its dependencies, to-day survives in the laws of those very nations which, later, combined for his overthrow. England, in her stern determination to fight this man who sought first to unite the continent against her, and then force her to yield to him or be broken in pieces, girded herself for the struggle as never before, intent on preserv- ing her nationality, constitutional liberty, and commercial supremacy. For these very things, too, was Napoleon fighting, al- though he did not know it himself. To-day, as we look back at that troublesome time — the first ten years of the Nineteenth Century — we know that, robber, destroyer, conqueror, tyrant, and despot though he was, Napoleon, Emperor of the French, was the dominating force of that bitter time ; he was the purgative dose that God gave to Europe and the world ; and his fight, even in spite of him- self, was for that " nationality, individual liberty, and popu- lar sovereignty " which, although he was to fall as their greatest sacrifice and victim, became the impelling forces of the Nineteenth Century. Thus, again, do we see how, as the English poet says, — " God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform." and how, as we may again and again discern in the story of the world, even when we cannot explain the reason for the existence of wrong and evil. Divine Providence is ever, in the interest of eternal progress, making use of the ways and even of the wiles of men — " From seeming evil still educing good." THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 6 1 Already, before 1810 came into the century, this prog- ress was almost apparent from the "Mount of Vision." It was in 1807 that Robert Fulton on the Hudson River demonstrated, by sailing his steamboat from New York to Albany, the practical value of that marvellous power of steam in navigation which Napoleon, to whom Fulton had presented his idea, contemptuously "turned down" as a " toy." In Great Britain, Telford and Macadam were mak- ing the first of those " good roads " which are to-day the glory of England ; in America, the simple but wonderful cotton-gin, invented in the closing years of the eigh- teenth century by Eli Whitney, a New England school- teacher in Georgia, had already, made the cotton crop of America one of the great factors in industrial progress, and had so increased the productive power of the United States as to lead Macaulay, the English historian, to de- clare that "what Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton-gin, has more than equalled in its relation to the power and prog- ress of the United States." By the year 18 10, indeed, the whole world had shown a substantial advance in producing things and in helping man, in spite of (perhaps because of) the terrible grip of the one man of his day, Napoleon. Savings banks and Bible societies, school societies and fine arts institutions, charitable endowments and hospitals, had already been established ; improvements in steam possibilities and in labor-saving machinery, in navigation, printing, weaving, stereotyping, and lighting had been made practical and helpful ; the slave-trade was abolished in England ; and, though cotton was making negro slavery a profitable neces- 62 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. sity in America, the importation of slaves was prohibited by Congress in 1808. And it is to the honor of Napoleon that he, alone of all monarchs and rulers, broke into that terrible and unjust persecution of the Jews which has been a blot upon Christian civilization from Constantine to Dreyfus. Intellectual thought was growing, as opposition to tyranny awakened it. In every country writers and thinkers, poets and philosophers, story-tellers and scientists, were laying the foundations for those new methods of imparting useful and inspiring thoughts which were to lift the world out of the slow and sleepy methods of a limited literature and a hampered intelligence into the broader fields of effort and the higher planes of achievement. The first decade of the Nineteenth Century closed with the light growing brighter and the prosperity of the people slowly but surely coming on. And yet, in 18 10, the whole world seemed at the mercy of the world-conqueror. How would civilization free itself from the burden of Napoleon and his million fighting men ? ' Our greittest yet with least pretence , Great in council and great in war. Foremost captain of his time. Rich in sariinf; common sense. And, as the greatest only are, 1 71 his simplicity sublime." Alfred Tennyson. THE AGE OF WELLINGTON. Militarism. (18/0-1820.) DUKE OF IVELLINGTON {A rth t4r It- 'ellesley) , CONQUEROR OF NAPOLEON, Born Dublin, Ireland, April ^o, lybq. Died IValmer Castle, England, Sept. 14, rSjs. CHAPTER IV. HOW napoleon's star set at last. (From 1810 to /8/j.) THAT question was one that was forcing itself upon the attention of thinking men and the desperate needs of conquered, vassal, allied, or hostile nations. Who would rid the world of Napoleon, Emperor of the French .-' There is a certain sympathy with all men who stand at bay. The champion of a great cause. Napoleon Bonaparte had placed himself above the cause he championed ; the vdctim as well as the slave of his own ambitions, he now stood the conqueror of the world ; and yet, in all the world, there was no man more alone than he — "in the midst of his glory — but alone ! " one contemporary declared. And now, as he braces himself for the final world- struggle, one cannot but admire the self-confidence, the supreme audacity, of the man. He had overthrown feudal- ism. The old aristocratic order, under which, for centu- ries, the world had groaned and labored, lay dead beneath his all-conquering heel when the Nineteenth Century was young, although that young Nineteenth Centur}' knew it not. Washington's Americans had dealt it the first stag- gering blow ; the unbalanced and furious revolutionists of France had bloodily grappled with and throttled it ; and Napoleon, pupil of America and §on of the Revolution, had finally overthrown it, and upon its ruins was striving to rear a new order and an imperial dynasty. 6s 66 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY." But this was not to be. God, in his wisdom, had used Napoleon as a mighty means for progress ; but now other means were necessary ; the people them^selves, and not one man, must be the power for the world's advance. Napo- leon's "star," in which he believed so implicitly, must set. When the year 1810 came in none but a prophet could have told how near that star was to its decline. Napoleon, Emperor of the French, seemed supreme. The European sea-coast, from Stockholm around to Trieste, was occupied or controlled by him ; and, of all the nations, only England stood his open foe. His simplest word seated and unseated kings ; a turn of his hand forced England and America into war. He loaded his favorites with gifts and titles ; he made Paris the centre of imperial display, bought the sup- port of his opponents, and muzzled, by subsidies or censor- ship, the liberty of the press. When his son was born — the heir upon whom all his highest ambitions turned — the proud father forced subjects and vassals into so mighty a festival of rejoicing, that, as one student of that time de- clares, "No boy ever came on the earthly stage amid such splendors, or seemed destined to honors such as appeared to await this one." Off in one corner of his vast domains trouble was con- tinuous. He had sought to force Spain into line ; but the "Spanish ulcer" as it has been called was, by the aid of England, slowly eating its way into a vital point. When the final struggle came, Spain was the enemy in the rear that helped on disaster. When Napoleon's brother Joseph, whom the emperor had made king of Spain, objected to the high-handed methods now NAPOLEON'S STAR SET AT LAST. 67 by which Napoleon sought to force the Spaniards to sub- mission and urged gentler measures, the emperor con- temptuously pushed him aside, and announced that Spain was hereafter to be a part of France. Even England's ministers weakened an instant before this imperious will. They would have withdrawn the British troops from the Peninsula ; but Wellington was not the man to desert an ally or take a backward step. "The honor and interest of England," he said, "require that we should hold our ground here ; and, please God, I will maintain it as long as I can." He did so, in spite of defeat and disaster. The people of Spain and Portugal re-aroused to madness at Napoleon's subversion of their liberties, threw aside their sluggishness, and rallied again to Wellington's side. Then making a stand against the French invaders behind the fortifications of Torres Vedras, they flung them back, terribly reduced, to Ciudad Rodrigo ; and the bloody battle of Albuera in May, 181 1, and the brilliant victory at Salamanca in July, 18 1 2, cleared the French from Portugal and southern Spain, and annihilated the military power of France in the well-defended Peninsula. The successful stand of Wellington at the lines of Torres Vedras awoke Europe to the knowledge that the French power was not irresistible and that a union in resistance to Napoleon's tyranny might deliver P^urope from his grip. More than this, the people were beginning to assert themselves rather than relying upon their useless kings. The spirit of German liberty, founded on a passionate love for the P'atherland and a slowly awakening knowledge of the real German power, was asserting itself in spite of the 68 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. timid Prussian king and the subservient and confederated princes of the Rhine. This assertion came slowly, however ; it was only se- cretly growing when, in 1811, Napoleon's gigantic ally, Russia, disputed the Corsican conqueror's claim to rule the continent of Europe ; became jealous of his efforts to bring the other nations to serve his purpose ; objected to his hurtful " continental system," and was angered at his com- mercial methods which had almost ruined business in Russia. The Czar, enraged with Napoleon for preferring an Austrian to a Russian princess in his choice of a wife, and fearful lest, in recarving Europe, Napoleon might slice away from Russia's platter too much of conquered and un- happy Poland, set about preparing an army to menace, or if need be fight, his victorious rival of France. So matters stood, when, in 181 1, Napoleon, determining on new conquests, declared of himself, " I am driven on- ward to a goal which I know not." He summoned to his standard an army of half a million men, and having pre- sided in Dresden over a glittering " Congress of kings," — vassal or allied princes, — set out in June, 18 12, on the effort of his life, — the invasion and conquest of Russia. To keep England out of the way, he had stirred up trouble between her and the United States, which resulted in the disastrous land campaigns and brilliant sea struggles known in our history as the War of 18 12. There were, of course, other surface reasons for this second embroiling of the " State of Great Britain " and the States that, forty years before, had been her successfully rebellious colonists. The old animosities had not died out. HOW NAPOLEON'S STAR SET AT LAST. 69 Men like Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, who bore upon their bodies the scars of British tyranny and in their hearts the smouldering desire for revenge, welcomed the oppor- tunity they sought ; shipmasters who had suffered from England's sea-arrogance, and merchants who had lost by her methods, longed to see America assert her rights on sea and land ; pioneers and borderers who knew how British agents stirred up the restless red Indians, and how British gold had supplied arms and ammunition for the bold chief Tecumseh's conspiracy of confederated tribes, formed for the destruction of the United States, burned with the de- sire to meet and forever overthrow the obstacle to the re- public's western expansion. But, behind all of these reasons for American indignation and pugnacity, may now be traced the restless finger of Napoleon, shrewdly stirring up trouble between these English-speaking rivals, issuing imperial "de- crees " that brought out obstinate and angry " Orders in Council" and "Embargoes" and " Non-intercourse Acts " and even conniving with England for an uncertain peace at the price of forcing from the United States a kingdom for the prostrate house of Bourbon. Abroad, France could not hope to retain her threatened colonies while hostile England ruled the seas. Her naval warfare had been continuously disastrous. She had lost Cay- enne and Martinique, San Domingo and Guadaloupe, in the American Indies ; in Africa and the Asiatic Indies, Sene- gal and Mauritius, the Isle de Bourbon and Java, with Batavia, had been wrested from her. England's sea-power must be occupied, and England's war-might diverted from European disturbances, if Napoleon was to have a free hand for his conquest of Russia, and in his estabUshment as em- 70 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. peror of the continent. In 1 8 1 2 the man who dominated the world had once more set all nations "by the ears." In his assault on Russia, Napoleon had the enforced and unwilling support of half the states of Europe. To the make-up of his "Grand Army," Frenchmen, Italians, Swiss, Dutchmen, and Poles, with the German of the Rhine lands, came, by order of their rulers, in battalions and brigades. Austria, with thirty thousand men, formed the right wing of his army ; Prussia, with twenty thousand men, occupied the left wing. Of all the European nations only Denmark could remain neutral. Sweden, whose prince was one of Napoleon's own generals, broke from the emperor and sided with Russia ; while England, fighting the French in Spain, made a treaty with France's open foes, Sweden and Russia. So the summer of 181 2 opened with the "Christian" nations of the world in arms against each other ; and Napo- leon, Emperor of the French and the dominating influence of the world, marched across the river Niemen to the in- vasion of Russia with an army of half a million men. Be- hind him were great reserves of supplies in storehouses and arsenals ; his communications were kept open so that fleet couriers could ride between Paris and Moscow with the latest news ; and before his victorious advance the Russians, overwhelmed by defeat at Borodino, fell back in flight, while before the old-time capital of Russia the con- queror cried to his soldiers in triumph : " They are ours at last ! March on ; let us open the gates of Moscow ! " Borodino was fought on the third of September, 181 2; the gates of Moscow were opened on the seventh ; and as Murat and his cavalry clattered down the deserted streets now NAPOLEON'S STAR SET AT LAST. 71 of the sacred city of Russia, — "Mother Moscow," as the adoring Russians call it, — Napoleon rode in triumph to the Kremlin, and in that wonderful old palace, half citadel and half sanctuary, declared himself the conqueror of Russia. Napoleon had brought with him to Russia the crown, sceptre, and robe with which, in the Czar's conquered capi- tal, he proposed to have himself solemnly invested as he was proclaimed " Emperor of the West." But that imposing regalia was never unpacked in Russia from the emperor's camp-chest. The change had come in the story of Napoleon. "God have mercy upon us!" was the cry with which the Russian soldiers flung themselves to death at the battle of Borodino. " Die for your faith and the Czar ! " was the cry of the Russian peasants, as, setting their "holy city " in fiames rather than leave it as a sport to the in- vader, they turned upon the conquering army, and began that terrible campaign of merciless devastation that laid western Russia in waste, and forced the French invaders into those days of historic horror known as "the retreat from Moscow." For into retreat the proudly proclaimed invasion of Russia speedily turned. The proposals for peace which Napoleon expected from the defeated Czar did not come, though he wasted four weeks in useless waiting. Instead, Russia, re-enforced by England, made peace with Turkey, drew her strengthening lines of obedient soldiers and home- defending peasants closely around Moscow, and fell upon the French emperor, who, in his enforced idleness in the Kremlin, had sunk energy in indolence, the soldier in the 72 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. emperor, and lost the old fire that had made him, through all the years before, the invincible warrior. Aroused to defence by Russia, for an instant the soldier in Napoleon blazed forth ; but again came indisposition and indifference. Already the Napoleon of the past was gone ; the world conqueror, unable to conquer himself, the victim even then of disease, indolence, and a desire for the com- forts of power, turned back from a nation at bay, and began the long retreat to France, dejected and dispirited, unable to endure the ignominy of a first defeat. The story of that historic retreat from Moscow is well known. Harassed in an enemy's country ; overtaken by driving snowstorms and bitter cold ; with allies falling away and vassals straggling and deserting ; exhausted, famishing, frozen, lost, and half-crazed by the horrors of the retreat, the great invading force of Napoleon the em- peror dwindled day by day, until, after the terrible tragedy at the crossing of the Beresina, scarce one hundred thousand men straggled over the River Niemen, where, six months before, nearly six hundred thousand men had proudly marched to conquest. But so dominant was Napoleon's influence in France, so great the belief in his genius and his glory, that, instead of protesting against the demands of this man who had just wasted the lives of three hundred thousand men, France responded at once to his summons for a new army that should annihilate Russia, and, for the twentieth time, help Europe "tear itself to pieces." A new army of three hun- dred thousand men was ready for action in May, 1813 ; and this, by the addition of the armies of his allies, he hoped to increase to more than half a million. now NAPOLEON'S STAR SET AT LAST. 73 But his allies had no desire to slaughter themselves for Napoleon's ambitions; the Confederates of the Rhine "confederated " slowly and sullenly ; Saxony hesitated and argued ; Austria held back, and secretly prepared to desert ; while Prussia, aroused by the stubbornness of Spain, the self-devotion of Russia, and the awakened patriotism of her own sons, "braced up" their king until he, too, re- sponded to the enthusiastic demands of his people, and, breaking away from his French alliance, sounded the bugle-call to arms, and bade all Germans unite for liberty and the Fatherland. " I have but one fatherland, and that is Germany," de- clared Stein, the patriotic statesman, who, recalled from exile, aroused Prussia to revolt, and Germany to unite. "What is the German P'atherland ? " sang Arndt, the peasant-poet from Rugen, — " Where'er resounds the German tongue, Where'er its hymns to God are sungl That land is the land, Brave German, that, thy fatherland 1 That is the German fatherland 1 Where scorn shall foreign triflers brand, Where all are foes whose deeds offend, Where every noble soul's a friend : Be this the land, All Germany shall be the land 1 " Angered by the audacity of the Prussian revolt, Napo- leon, aroused from his indolence, flung himself upon Ger- many at the head of one hundred and eighty thousand men. But, at Liitzen, and Bautzen, and Wurschen, fought in May, 1 8 1 3, though successful as a general, he was no longer 74 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. successful as a conqueror. The Germans would not yield; his victories were not decisive ; Prussia was not swept from his path ; Russia was not again invaded and punished ; both sides awaited the decision of Austria ; and Germany, jubilant with hope, and fast in its determination to be free, sang with enthusiasm the famous " sword-song " of Korner, who died for German unity at Lutzen almost before the ink had dried in which that stirring song was written : " Sword, on my left side gleaming, What means thy bright eyes beaming.^ It makes my spirit dance To see thy friendly glance. Hurrah 1 Yes, good sword, I am free, And love thee heartily. And clasp thee to my side, E'en as my plighted bride. Hurrah 1 Now let the loved one sing. Now let the clear blade ring. Till the bright sparks shall fly, Heralds of victory 1 Hurrah 1 " Austria decided. She cast in her lot against the hus- band of her princess. All Europe combined against Napo- leon in one last great "coalition ;" and at Leipsic, after two months of varying battle, three hundred thousand allies — ■ the soldiers of Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Sweden — met Napoleon's one hundred and thirty thousand men, and defeated them in the great conflict known as " the Battle of the Nations." Napoleon retreated across the Rhine with HOW NAPOLEON'S STAR SET AT LAST. 75 the shattered remains of his army, scarce seventy thousand in all ; and his power in luiropc was forever broken. The allies were jubilant ; Napoleon had been defeated ; France lay open before them ; and giving the defeated emperor scant time to retrieve himself, they pushed on to his destruction, while the emancipated Germans filled the air with their lusty singing of Arndt's rousing chorus in honor of their stout old li eld-marshal, Blucher : — " Then sound, blaring trampets 1 Hussars, charge once more ! Ride, field marshal, ride like the wnd in the roarl To the Rhine, to the Rhine, in your triumph advance! Brave sword of our country, right on into France! And here are the Germans : Jtichkeirassassa! The Germans are joyful; they're shouting hurrah!" " Wc are not at war with France, but with Napoleon ! " declared the allies ; and when the defeated emperor refused to consider their proposals for peace they crossed the Rhine, and, in three great armies of invasion, closed upon Napo- leon in France. But Napoleon in France was in no way inclined to admit defeat or accept peace. He granted truces ; he did not propose them, he arrogantly declared. So he gathered a new army, mostly raw recruits, and neglecting to fortify Paris, which in the security of his years of success he had never deemed necessary, he struck boldly at the invaders of PVance, and, aiming to surprise and overthrow each divis- ion of their army in turn, made a brilliant campaign in defence of his imperilled empire. The coalition was, however, too strong for him. Its members had sworn to each other to fight unceasingly against Napoleon, if it took twenty years to conquer him. 'j6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. It took only three months for the alHes to do this. In spite of a desperate resistance the conqueror at bay was conqueror but for a brief season ; slowly but surely, in spite of Napoleon's defence of unfortified France, the invaders closed about Paris, stormed and captured its weak barriers while Napoleon was desperately marching to attack them in the rear ; and before he could come up, his capital had surrendered, the allied armies had entered Paris as a cap- tured city, and Napoleon, deserted by the very men whom he had raised to riches and power, was forced to abdicate the throne upon which he had placed himself. On the sixth of April, 1814, with France divided in councils, and at the mercy of the enemy. Napoleon ceased to be the Emperor of the French, and contented himself with accept- ing the "generosity" of his allied enemies, who permitted him to retain the title of emperor, and to rule, as his "dominion," the little island of Elba, — a patch of rock and vineyard in the Mediterranean, eighteen miles long, by from two to three miles wide. Thus suddenly did " Napoleon's star " set in darkness. In all history there is no more striking example of meteoric success — and failure. At the mercy of the allies, France, having expelled Napoleon, accepted a Bourbon king — the brother of that Louis whom the Revolution had slaughtered — and an en- forced peace which left it smaller than when Napoleon first appeared to save her from the Revolution. The five great powers of Europe met in Congress at Vienna, and reset the continent within its old boundaries ; but, while at- tempting to restore things to the old conditions, the Con- gress of Vienna discovered that the world had progressed, HOW NAPOLEON'S STAR SET AT LAST. "J"] and was forced to acknowledge and permit such things as the rights of the governed and the necessity of consti- tutions. The world imagined that peace and prosperity had come at last ; but, suddenly, Napoleon broke from his enforced idleness at Elba, and landing in France with fifteen hun- dred men, roused the army to revolt from the dotard Bour- bon to the hero Napoleon, and with the cry of " Long live the emperor ! " drove the Bourbons from Paris, where Napoleon proclaimed himself once more Emperor of the French with but one object, "to increase the prosperity of France by strengthening public liberty." It was a dramatic and exciting episode in the world's story, just suited to such a nature as Napoleon's and to so volatile a people as the French. But it was as short-lived as it was impossible of success. On the first of March, 1815, Napoleon landed in France ; on the thirteenth he pro- claimed himself emperor. In just one hundred days he had staked all, and lost on his last throw for power. Waterloo was fought on the eighteenth of June, 1 8 1 5 ; and, on the twenty-second of June, the defeated adventurer abdicated his briefly occupied throne, "a sacrifice to the enemies of France," and, captured by England, was exiled to the far-off island of St. Helena — a prisoner for life! The star of Napoleon had set indeed. Then Byron, the English poet, wrote in true English denunciatory style : "'Tis done — but yesterday a king! And armed with kings to strive — And now thou art a nameless thing, So abject — yet alive 1 78 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Is this the man of thousand thrones, Who strewed our earth with hostile bones? And can he thus survive ? Since he, miscalled the Morning Star, Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far. Ill minded man! why scourge thy kind, Who bowed so low the knee ? By gazing on thyself grown blind, Thou taught'st the rest to see. With might unquestioned — power to save — Thine only gift hath been the grave To those that worshipped thee; Nor, till thy fall, could mortals guess Ambition's less than littleness." And then, looking over the whole world, blood-soaked and wreck-strewn after so many years of war, — the fruit of man's ambition, and the desperate struggle of the nations to preserve the old and selfish aristocracies, — Byron closed his fervid, stinging "Ode to Napoleon," with this stanza of peculiar interest to us, as coming from an English aristo- crat : — " Where may the wearied eye repose, When gazing on the great ; Where neither guilty glory glows Nor despicable state ? Yes — one — the first — the last — the best — The Cincinnatus of the West, Whom envy dared not hate, Bequeath'd the name of Washington, To make men blush there was but one I " Even as the poet wrote this appreciative verse, the land of Washington was in sore need of "the first — the last — the best " to guide it through the troubled waters into which Napoleon's hand had helped to steer it. For Wash- now NATOLEON'S STAR SET AT LAST. 79 ington believed in "adjustment;" he begged his country- men to keep out of foreign complications, and yet, in time of peace, to prepare for war. He and his successor, John Adams, had held the new and weak republic free from such entanglements. But Jefferson, with a hatred of England, and a leaning toward republican France, had scorned com- promise and adjustment; he never yielded anything to English demands ; but, at the same time, he neglected to strengthen the defences of the country so as to be able to back up this pugnacious attitude. Madison, the next president, adopted Jefferson's methods, but had neither his spirit nor ability, and when Napoleon, bent on his self- ish "continental system," sought to cripple England, and embroil her with America, in June, 18 12, America en- tered into the w^orld-struggle, as Washington had begged his countrymen not to do, and declared war against Eng- land. The war of 1 8 1 2 is not one of which Americans may feel proud. It w^as an a\'oidable war ; it was a leader- less war ; it was an ineffectual war. Arbitration might have prevented it ; but Napoleon had no wish to see it prevented. A great leader like Washington might have organized victory ; but the generals of the army were either superannuated Continentals or political place-hunters. It might have led to an abatement of the tyranny of the sea which England exercised ; but the very things for which America went to war were not even mentioned in the treaty of peace. America's victories on the sea, however, gave the first successful blow at Great Britain's claim to "rule the seas." The effect of these victories in England were, as Green 8o THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. says, "out of all proportion to their importance;" while Andrew Jackson's marvellous victory over Wellington's veterans at New Orleans, unnecessary, because fought after peace had been declared, gave to the close of a stupidly mismanaged land war a glory which has never been forgotten, and which is, indeed, held by Americans as largely constituting the war of 1812, This war of 1812, however, has been called by enthu- siasts the Second War of American Independence. And in a certain sense it was. It freed American politics from European standards ; it made America American ; it drew her sons out of the selfish limits of their own homes, and made them a united nation ; and as Dr. Edward Channing says, *' it led not merely to American independence of other nations, but to a breaking away from the hampering conditions of colonial life." This acquaintanceship of the world was, indeed, one of the chief results of the long and cruel war-period that closed in 181 5. If Napoleon Bonaparte had done nothing else, he had drawn the nations out of their old rivalries into a gradual knowledge of each other, first for protection and then for mutual advantage. The old barriers were broken down ; men began to know their neighbors and to think for themselves. In thus promoting the world's brotherhood Napoleon, called the Great, may be esteemed a great public benefactor. CHAPTER V. HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. {From i8ij to 1820.) WHEN William Makepeace Thackeray, an English boy, born in India, was on his way " home " to England, where he had been sent to school, as was the custom with English boys born abroad, his ship, on the way across, stopped at the English island of St. Helena. There, as his black servant took him on a long walk over the rocks and hills of that lonely South Atlantic isle, they saw a short, stout man walking in a garden. The black man stopped, and pointed out to the small English boy, the " sight " they had crossed the island to see. " That is he," said the black servant to the British child ; "that is Bonaparte! He eats three sheep every day, and all the little children he can lay hands on." The small boy swallowed the story whole, and looked with horror at "the Corsican ogre," as men called him. For young William Makepeace Thackery and his black Calcutta serv'ant were not the only ones who held that legendary opinion of the fallen Emperor of the French. But in 18 1 5 the age of Napoleon closed. The man who for ten years and more had been the dominant force — the one great man of the world — had fallen from his high estate. The age of Napoleon closed ; but his influence remained 81 82 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. for years to vex the minds of kings, and inspire the hopes of seekers after progress. Heavy as was his hand upon the nations, limitless as was his ambition, and bloody as was his pathway to power, the good he accomplished could not be undone. "Never before," says the Englishman Mackenzie, "had any man inflicted upon his fellows miseries so appalling ; never before did one man's hand scatter seeds destined to produce a harvest of political changes so vast and so beneficent." And that master in French literature, Victor Hugo, threw upon the screen the preponderating shadow of this world-troubler, who, harmless at St. Helena, was still an ever-present menace through the half-dozen years of life in exile that Heaven was still to allot to him : "Angel or demon 1 thou — whether of light The minister, or darkness — still dost sway This age of ours; thine eagle's soaring flight Bears us, all breathless, after it, away. The eye that from thy presence fain would stray Shuns thee in vain ; thy mighty shadow thrown Rests on all pictures of the living day. And on the threshold of our time, alone. Dazzling, yet sombre, stands thy form, Napoleon I " So the man who had set all the world astir "on the threshold of our time," as Victor Hugo says, although out of harm's way, the prisoner of remorseless England, still remained "the world's bugaboo," to frighten children like young Thackeray, and keep alive in Europe that spirit of bayonet-rule, or what we call militarism, best typified by the soldier who was the foremost man of the next decade, — Wellington, the conqueror of Napoleon, the victor of Waterloo, the soldier-councillor of kings. HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 83 The middle name of that small boy who saw " the Cor- sicaii ogre" at St. Helena, William Makepeace Thackeray, best expresses the desire of the world after the fall of Napoleon. The world was indeed united to make peace and keep it. But the Congress of Vienna, at which the Duke of Wellington was England's chief negotiator, and where the great powers of Europe met to carve up Napo- leon's short-lived empire, and readjust "the balance" of Europe, while working for peace, sought to uphold it with bayonets, and hedge it with kingly prerogatives. Something was happening in the world, however, des- tined to dull the bristling bayonets and limit the kingly prerogatives. Invention, which is said to be the handmaid of peace, though inspired by the energies of such a world- stirrer and warrior as Napoleon, was already stimulating the productive forces of the world, even as the awakening of the people was stimulating its intellectual forces. When Waterloo was fought, steamboats, dismissed by Napoleon, when offered for his consideration, as "mere toys," were sailing the rivers of America and England ; the electric telegraph, also contemptuously put aside by Napoleon when suggested to him by Sommering of Mu- nich, as a "German notion," was gradually working its way toward practical use ; and George Stephenson, the English- man, had just invented the locomotive. Steam and elec- tricity, the greatest civilizing and unifying forces of the Nineteenth Century, by means of which, could he have ap- preciated their value. Napoleon might perhaps have com- pleted his dream of conquest, and cemented his power, were, as the conqueror fell, preparing for their great mission of revolutionizing and developing the world. 84 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. The power of mind, also, was asserting itself ; intellec- tual thought was becoming more widely diffused ; poets, philosophers, teachers, scientists, and enthusiasts were finding a more extended audience, as the people learned to listen and appreciate ; and, though war had paralyzed edu- cation, the schoolmaster followed fast upon the vanishing trumpet-call. The results of revolution and imperialism were of advantage, even though desolation and death had walked beside the insurgent and the conqueror. Scott's " Marmion " and Moore's " Irish Melodies " ap- peared at the very height of Napoleonic power ; Niebuhr's " Roman History," which worked almost an overturn in the way of telling history, was published when Prussia lay at the feet of her conqueror; and Byron "awoke one morning and found himself famous " when, in 1812, the first cantos of his remarkable " Childe Harold " were pubHshed — and Napoleon was retreating from Moscow. Schiller's great work in German literature had closed with his grand climax of "William Tell" in 1804; but Goethe survived the death of the old order of things, and produced his masterpiece "Faust" — the first part, at least — in 1808 (the year when Napoleon met him at Erfurt), published " Elective Affin- ities" in 1809, and began the issue of his autobiography — "Truth and Poetry from my Own Life" — in 181 1. The interview between Goethe and Napoleon at Erfurt, in the midst of emperors, kings, and princes gathered at the behest of the imperial Corsican, was the meeting of the two greatest Europeans then living ; but it is said that Goethe was drawn to Erfurt to meet Talma, even more than to see Napoleon. Talma was the greatest actor of his time; though Kemble HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 8$ and Kean and Mrs. Siddons were still the chief stars of the English stage, and Schroder, at Hamburg, was striving to place Shakspcre on the German stage. Neither in Eng- land nor America, however, was the theatre considered respectable or "proper" in the first quarter of the Nine- teenth Century, and even great actors could not at once change this opinion. Religion, which is or has been too often a cloak for intolerance, gave the serious tone to teach- ing, criticism, and life which appeared wherever there was a protest against French follies and European insincerities ; but this, in turn, led to a deeper study and a more search- ing criticism, which gradually began to broaden and liberal- ize the religious thought, alike of Europe and of America. Criticism, which occupied itself with religious teachings, extended itself also to educational methods; but these moved slowly, and, throughout Europe, in those first years of a curbed but gradually increasing revolt against the Napoleonic despotism, the student was the first to protest, to revolt, and to rush to arms. The University of Jena was a "breeding-ground" for democratic ideas; the stu- dents who had fought at Waterloo formed themselves into a great secret society to preserv^e the independence and establish the unity of Germany ; while, in the castle where Luther defied both pope and emperor, five hundred stu- dents agreed to spread the idea of liberty through all the universities of the Fatherland, and adopted the college banner of black, red, and yellow, which speedily became liberty's colors in Germany. It was Korner, the student of Leipsic and Vienna, who woke Germany to passionate enthusiasm by his terrible but stirring summons to re- sistance: — 86 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. " My people, wake ! The signal-fires are smoking ; Bright breaks the light of Freedom from the north; 'Tis time thy steel in foemen's hearts was reeking. My people, wake I The signal-fires are smoking; The field is white ; ye reapers, hasten forth I The last, the highest hope lies in the sword ; Home to thy bleeding breast their lances strain; Make way for freedom ! Let thy blood be poured, To cleanse thy German land from every stain." But it was, also, the schoolboys of Paris and the students of the Polytechnic who made the last and most desperate stand against the allied invaders at the barricades of Paris in 1814 ; and it was the students of the University of Moscow, the cradle of the great Russian nationality, who, stirred to action by the songs of Zhukovski (whose " Poet in the Russian Camp " was, we are told, on the lips of all who loved the fatherland), lighted the fires that left the " holy city " of Russia a useless pile of ruins at the feet of the invader ; and that same year, in the famous Lyceum of the Czar, near St. Petersburg, a small boy was going to school whose songs, springing from the days of Russia's fight for leadership, were to make Alexander Pushkin the greatest poet of the Czar's dominions. It was he who first aroused the real spirit of liberty in Russia, braving exile and death, again and again, and making him- self so surely the poet of the people that what he says of himself — as the poet rather than Alexander Pushkin — is not nearly as conceited as it sounds in the lines he called " a Monument : " — " I've raised myself no statue made with hands, — The people's path to it lO weeds will hide. Rising with no submissive head it stands Above the pillar of Napoleon's pride. HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 8/ No I t shall never die: in sacred strains My soul survives my dust and flees decay ; And famous shrill I be while there remains A single poet 'neath the light of day. Through all great Russia will go forth my fame, And every tongue in it will name my name, And by the nation long shall I be loved, Because my lyre their nobler feelings moved : Because I strove to serve them with my song, And called forth mercy for the fallen throng. Hear Ciod's command, O muse, obediently, Nor dread reproach, nor claim the poet's bay; To praise and blame alike indifferent be And let fools say their say." The "fallen throng" throughout the civilized world was striving to lift itself into manhood before 1820 came around. The example of America, the brilliancy of France's mighty effort, the awakening spirit of German unity born of German defeat, all these had their effect upon men who thought and men who dared to act. From this came the " glorious discontent " that, so we are assured, "helped the people of England contrast the wrongs they were suffering with the rights they ought to have;" that led the "liberals" in Spain to rise in their demand for constitutional rights; that made the secret society of the Abruzzi — the "charcoal-burners" — the Carbonari — to stand as the champions of national liberty in Italy and southern France ; and that stirred the people of Central and South America to cast off the yoke of Spanish and Portuguese proprietorship which, for more than three hundred years, had weighed so heavily upon them. There, in the languorous tropics and under the Southern 88 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Cross, a people of mingled bloods had, through generations of oppression, been slowly feeling their way toward inde- pendence. Ineffectual risings against the power of Spain had been attempted, from that descendant of the Incas of Peru, tortured for rebellion near the close of the eighteenth century, to the brilliant failure of Miranda — the "knight- errant of liberty " as he has been called — who almost succeeded, and died in a treacherous captivity in the Spanish prisons of Cadiz. No reliable leader, however, from the revolutionists of South America appeared until the rise of Simon Bolivar of Caracas, sometimes called the "Washington of South America." In 1 805 this fiery young patriot had taken an oath on Mount Aventine, above the ruins of republican Rome, to give " liberty to the land of the Andes, and to pledge his life to the freedom of his native land." Spain's power in Europe was beaten down before the imperial will of Napoleon ; Joseph Bonaparte, ousting Fer- dinand the Bourbon, was declared king of Spain ; the Spanish colonies in America refused to accept the change of rulers ; and, in the disturbances that led to the return of the Bourbons, they attempted to govern themselves, and openly revolted against both the enforced French king and the regency that attempted to rule in the name of the exiled Ferdinand. Divided into three parties, — the royalists, or Bourbon supporters, the imperialists, or Bonaparte adherents, and the patriots, or independence party, — the struggle for freedom and possession went on for several years in the colonies of Spanish South America. The exiled king of Portugual had fled to Brazil, and there set up his throne ; HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 89 but through the colonies of Spain, from California to Buenos Ayres and Chili, revolt grew ; and under the lead of Itur- bide the Mexican, Bolivar the Colombian, and San Martin the Argentinian, the people fought for independence. Bolivar's capture of Caracas, in August, 18 13, gave him the title of " the Liberator ; " but it was years before liber- ation really came. Defeated again and again, but constant ever to his youthful vow to liberate his native land, in spite of disaster, treachery, exile, and attempted assassination, he held firm to his purpose, and, with the help of the negro republic of Hayti, returned to gather a new army of ten thousand men, and overthrow the Spanish forces at Angos- tura in Venezuela, and at Boyaca in Colombia. These successes practically freed the northern portion of South America from Spanish control, and Bolivar was made presi- dent of the newly delivered land. It was on the seventeenth of December, 18 19, that Bolivar proclaimed the new Republic of Colombia, after six years of struggle. Meantime, the patriots of the south, under the lead of the heroic San Martin, were also fighting their way to freedom. In September, 18 14, San Martin began to recruit the " army of the Andes " in the western part of Buenos Ayres, at the very foot of the great mountains. In two years he had a well-drilled and well-clothed army of nearly five thousand men ; and under the streaming " flag of the sun " — the banner of liberty — he started upon his famous march over the Andes, in January, 18 17, — more wonder- ful, because more difficult and at a far greater height, than was even Napoleon's crossing the Alps into Italy. The Spaniards of Chili made a bold stand against the invaders ; QO THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. but the patriot army was well generalled, and after more than a year of fighting, San Martin totally overthrew the Spanish power at the battle of the Maipo, a river of Chili ; and Argentina and Chili were free. Thereupon San Martin determined to still farther cripple the Spanish power and liberate Peru ; in the north, Bolivar was also deciding upon the same attempt, and had so far extended his patriotic desires as to declare himself, not simply a Colombian, but a South American. "My only ambition," he said, "is the freedom of my fellow-citizens." Thereupon he determined to achieve, if possible, the liberation of all South America from the Spanish yoke, and, after completing his conquests in the north, to boldly lead an army against the Spaniards in Peru. In Mexico matters were not so favorable to liberty. The revolutionists were less ably led ; and young Iturbide, who dreamed of independence, but had no desire for a republic, hoped to secure his ends through royalist or Bourbon means. So there was a struggle for leadership, and the customary Spanish-American rivalries ; but still, though its leaders fell, the spirit of liberty grew, and in 1820 the revolutionists rallied to the side of Iturbide, and royalists and patriots joined for one last stand against the Spanish viceroy. In Spain itself, after Napoleon's downfall, the weakness of the restored Ferdinand in his ill-success against the American colonies and his endeavors at home to fall back upon the old Bourbon methods which Napoleon had over- thrown, drove the liberals of Spain to revolt. The sale of Florida to the United States in 18 19, and the discontent HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 91 of the poorly-paid soldiers of the Spanish army, increased this spirit of discontent, and revolt became organized revo- lution at Cadiz. In Italy and Greece, too, the spirit of independence was constantly fiashing into revolt ; but, throughout Europe, the desire for peace after the long struggle against Napo- leon's ambitions was sufficient to hold in check for a time the curbed power of discontent ; and the force of the bayo- net, added to England's determination for peace, held the restored forces of absolutism in place, so that in 1820, it seemed as if Napoleon's influence had been overcome, and that the five great powers of Europe had achieved the restoration of the old-time monarchies. But the progress of independence was really going forward among the people themselves. In England the laboring classes, ground down by the huge debts which the wars against France had created, merged their grum- bling discontents into a great political movement, with the demand for parliamentary reform and the rights of the people as its banner cry. The leader of the people against the aristocracy in this " domestic battle " was William Cobbett, the son of a peasant farmer of Surrey. A residence in the United States had aroused in him the desire for political liberty ; and his writings, which were read " beside every cottage hearth in England," led to an ever-increasing popular de- mand for representation in parliament and for universal suffrage. " Misgovemment," declared Cobbett, " is the source of the people's misery. Reform parliament, and demand your rights." 92 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. The lords and aristocrats of Great Britain saw in this popular discontent the threat of a new rebellion. The government sought to put it down by force ; and when, maddened by the scarcity of money and the pangs" of real hunger, sixty thousand people assembled in St. Peter's Fields at Manchester to petition for relief, the soldiers charged upon them with tragic results, and the miserable Prince-regent — falsely called " the first gentleman of Europe" — thanked the magistrates for this brutal and cowardly act. "He the first gentleman of Europe!" cried the indig- nant, sham-hating Thackeray ; "there is no stronger satire on the proud English society of that day than that they admired this monstrous image of pride, vanity, and weak- ness who pretended to reign over England." That was in 1819, and George was then Prince Regent. In 1820 his father, the insane George the Third, died in his enforced restraint, a broken-down old man — sightless, deaf, his reason gone. The regent became George the Fourth, and, as Thackeray says, "pretended to reign." But, over the bier of stupid, obstinate, but brave, and well- meaning George the Third, to whom America owes so much, because his obstinacy forced her into independence and greatness, Thackeray, who loved sincerity, appealed to his "kin beyond sea:" "O brothers! speaking the same dear mother tongue," he said ; " O comrades ! enemies no more ; let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse and call a truce to battle. Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel, and who was cast lower than the poorest ; dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne, buffeted by rude hands, with HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 93 his children in revolt — our 'Lear'! Hush! strife and quarrel, over his solemn grave ! Sound, trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, dark curtain, upon this pageant, his grief, his awful tragedy." As for Americans, when 1820 came they were too busy and too prosperous to bear any real malice against poor, crazy old King George, though it has ever been the fash- ion, even to this day, to misunderstand and malign him. The United States of America, in that year that laid their old-time tyrant low, were on the verge of what is known in our history as "the Era of Good Feeling." James Monroe was president ; the Union embraced twenty-three States; Jackson, the "hero of New Orleans," was also the " conqueror of Florida ; " the tariff-act of 1 8 16 had enabled the manufacturers of New England to safely weather the "panic of 18 19," and the real struggle between " protection and free trade " was scarcely begun. The question of negro slavery, however, which, thanks to Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin, had grown of vital importance to the Southern States, was already becom- ing a national problem, and grew into still greater impor- tance, when, in 18 19, the admission of Missouri as a State came before Congress. Should it be a free or a slave State.-* It was north of the dividing-line which, under the name of "Mason's and Dixon's" limited the northward spread of sla- very, while the Arkansas territory, cut off from Missouri, was below that line. Proposals to restrict the extension of slavery caused much discussion ; and the struggle between free soil and slave soil, which was in time to convulse the entire Union, had already begun. In 1820 the population of the United States had grown 94 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. close upon ten millions. It had increased threefold since the close, of the American Revolution, and emigrants from over the sea were constantly swelling the total. In all the world it seemed to be the only land of freedom ; and its boundless possibilities were already beginning to be appre- ciated by the statesmen of Europe, as well as by those who sought it as a home. Industries of all kinds were growing rapidly, especially those connected with cotton, wool, and iron. The increase of trade and the development of commerce made better methods of transportation and communication necessary, and the inventive mind of the Yankee was seek- ing to meet the new requirements. Steam was gradually taking the place of the uncertain winds and the slow-going horse and ox. Before 1812 steamboats were running on the Hudson, the Delaware, the Ohio, and the St. Lawrence rivers. By 18 15 steam ferry-boats were plying between New York and Brooklyn; in 18 16 a steamboat was in operation from New Orleans to Louisville; and in 18 19 the first steamship crossed the ocean from Savannah to Liver- pool. Still, progress throughout the world in 1820, though sure, was, indeed, slow. Canals, to be sure, were improving the means of communication in all civilized countries ; in 18 15 small coasting steamers were in use between ports and harbors, though stages and mail-coaches were the only means for quick and comfortable travel by land. So great a scientist as Sir Humphry Davy, whose in- vention of the safety-lamp, in 18 15, had saved hundreds of miners' lives, declared the lighting of London by gas to be impracticable ; photography was only thought of as an HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 95 unexplored science, and geology had not yet attempted the explanation of the real formation of the earth ; medicine and surgery were little more than crude means of fighting off disease and death, and pain was still an unconquerable and destroying terror ; prisons were places of horror, tor- ture, and living death ; the real improvement of the crimi- nal had scarcely been thought of, while hospitals and asylums were but a trifle better than prisons; the "vam- pire of war," as it has well been called, was still the blood-sucker of civilization, with but little thouL^ht amon"- statesmen of ameliorating its horrors, or preventing it by arbitration ; philanthropy had not yet grasped the problem of how to secure a " broader and juster brotherhood " ; and creed, rather than Christianity, guided the religion of the world ; every land except America had a State Church ; while Protestants made laws against Catholics, Catholics ostracized Protestants ; both legislated against the Jews, and all the other religions of the world were simply set down as paganism or heathenism, without a redeeming quality. There was still much to be done to set the world moving along the pathway of progress. Intellectual growth was slow, although the inspiration of war had quickened the facul- ties of people. Germany and P2ngland were the chief rivals for the leadership in literature ; while of America, where intellectual thought, was, itself, in what is called the forma- tive stage, Sydney Smith, the English wit, scholar, and critic, said contemptuously in 1820, that it had done "abso- lutely nothing for the sciences, for art, for literature," and added the scornful query, " In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book ? " " All revolutions, like armies on the march, advance with iioneers in front . . . Such was Simon liolivar of Caracas. A true child of that sunny land, his temper was fiery and capri- cious, but he was brave and far-sighted, and capable of long sustained effort." Clements Robert Markhant. THE AGE OF BOLIVAR. INDEPENDENCE. (1820-18)0.) SIMON BOLiy^R, LIBERATOR OF SOUTH AMERICA. Born Caracas, Venezuela, fuly 24, 1783. Died San Pedro, Colombia, Dec. JJ, 1&30. CHAPTER VI. HOW THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. (From 1820 to 18 2 j.) AS if in answer to Sydney Smith's shaft of mingled ridicule and reproach, the very next year after he asked his famous question, Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, and James Fenimore Cooper began the real literature of America, 1 82 1, indeed, has been well called "the birth-year of American literature in all its departments ; " for in 1821 Washington Irving published "The Sketch Book," and established his claim to the title of " The Father of Ameri- can Literature ; " Cooper delighted England as well as America with "The Spy," and won the right to be con- sidered " the first American author to carry our flag outside the limits of our language ;" Bryant's " Poems," also pub- lished in that year, established the American revolt from Pope and his copyists, and Christopher North, the English critic, declared that " ' Thanatopsis ' alone would establish a claim to genius," That " genius," as was intimated in the last chapter, was to find formidable rivals in the literary giants of P2ng- land and Germany, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were making English verse glori- ous ; Scott and Lover, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austin, were the favorite English story-tellers ; Hallam was the 9y lOO THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. great historian, Foster the essayist, Romilly and Wilber- force were authorities in law and philanthropy ; and the great British reviews — the Edinburgh, the Quarterly, and the Westminster — were marking new tendencies of thought in English philosophy, criticism, legislation, and literature. In Germany a new school was succeeding that of Goethe and Schiller, The patriotic upheaval that led to the over- throw of Napoleon opened the way to deeper and more practical intellectual expression, which — smothered and shadowed for a while by the spirit of militarism and reac- tion which thoroughly-frightened Europe permitted to hold and disgrace it — was to burst finally into the development of that intelligent national spirit that was finally to redeem and ennoble German thought and effort. Humboldt, indeed, was still living and writing in France ; and Schlegel, though a professor at Bonn, was often long absent from his German home ; while Fouque, the German with a French name, whose " Undine " is still dearly loved by young and old, was a worker in Paris quite as much as at his Prussian home, to which, an invalid soldier, he had retired when peace came once again. Paris, indeed, was still, in spite of all its misfortunes and transitions, deemed the centre of European life and cul- ture ; and France, reduced to its original limits by the mandates of its conquerors, was, nevertheless, the home of intellectual achievement. The names of Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael stand foremost among those who helped by the pen, as did others by the sword, to the overthrow of Napoleon's imperialism ; while the former, as the beginner of a new school in literary creation (though HOW THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. lOI SO Stout a supporter of the Bourbons that the Louis who succeeded Napoleon declared that Chateaubriand's help in his councils was as good as one hundred thousand men), prepared the way for such later productions of the new France as Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac. Both these wonderful Frenchmen were boys when Waterloo was fought, and were laying the foundations of that marvellous intellectual power that was, before the Nineteenth Century reached middle age, to startle the world by its originality and achievement. The soldier, however, rather than the thinker, in the years between 1820 and 1825, was still the dominant power in the world. Wellington had not yet developed into the statesman; and when, in 1822, the merchants and bankers of London presented to the duke the splendid " Wellington shield," it marked the devotion of the English nation to "the greatest British soldier" of the century. Meantime, in far off St. Helena, the man who was most responsible for England's glorification of Wellington, the man whom the " Iron Duke " flung into defeat at Water- loo, had ceased to trouble the world to which, though rigorously imprisoned, he had still been a bugbear. Napo- leon was dead. On the fifth of May, 1821, the conqueror of Europe breathed his last, and Europe gave a great sigh of relief. " W^ellington has sent me here to perish on a rock," he said of his victor ; but to the last he hoped for escape, restoration, triumph, and glory. *' I closed the abyss of anarchy, and brought order out of chaos," he declared of himself. " I cleansed the Revolu- tion, ennobled the people, and made the kings strong. I STATE N0RF.1AL SCHOOL, 102 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. have awakened all ambitions, rewarded all merit, and enlarged the borders of glory." It was, of course, a piece of boasting ; but, in a sense, it was the truth. The "thin young man of 1792," as Taine calls him, " with lank hair, hollow cheeks, dried up with ambition, his heart full of romantic ideas, who destroyed five armies, became master, declared that any career is open to talent, and impelled others along with him in his enterprises," had opened a new highway for the world of the Nineteenth Century, and by his very down- fall had raised the hopes of all men who dreamed of progress and of liberty. But this "giant five feet high," as Balzac has epitomized him, stood, so that same great Frenchman prophetically declared less than ten years after the Corsican's death, "for a future which he alone saw." He stood for a future greater even than he himself could comprehend ; for he awoke the spirit of effort and progress, and, as Taine estimates him, " impelled others along with him in his enterprises." Even the relentless enemies he made were instruments for the progress of the race ; and the world which feared him living and maligned him dead has only lately begun to understand why God, who makes even the wrath of men to praise him, permitted Napoleon Bonaparte. The shaking-up he had given to kings and dynasties kept the world unsettled for years. We have already seen how it impelled South America to revolution ; roused the homeland-lovers of Italy, its half-million "Carbonari," to protest against the blundering powers who sought to carve the Italy Napoleon had united into petty and despotic prin- HOW THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. 1 03 cipalities ; set Spain to attempt the working out of its own salvation, by forcing the stupid Bourbon king to yield liberal reforms, and encouraged Greece to revolt against her Turkish oppressors. To stop these popular protests, and still this shaking-up of thrones, the troubled kings kept their soldiers under arms, and the Wellington spirit of militarism smothered insurrections, and held the people in check. Austria over- ran Italy ; France marched an army into Spain ; Turkey turned her ruthless destroyers upon Greece ; and every- where the spirit of liberty was combated, and for the time suppressed ; for liberty, Uke a smouldering fire, bursts out fiercely again and again, only to be smothered by the weight of force flung upon it, until such time as the force itself, becoming fuel for the flame, contributes at last to the mighty blaze of freedom. Across the seas, this blaze of freedom burned more brightly in America than anywhere else. Led by the ex- ample and energy of Bolivar, Spanish America gradually worked out its salvation. In 1821 Brazil announced its in- dependence of Portugal ; and when the prince regent, Dom Pedro, was sent to crush rebellion, the people shrewdly made him the leader of revolt by naming him Perpetual Defender; and in October, 1822, he was proclaimed con- stitutional emperor, and Brazil declared itself independent. Peru was the decisive battle-ground of South American independence. San Martin from the south, and Bolivar from the north, invaded the last stronghold of Spain. The two "liberators" met at Guayaquil, in Ecuador, on the twenty-fifth of July in 1822. There San Martin generously and patriotically yielded the leadership to Bolivar; on the 104 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. twenty-fourth of December the united armies won the crowning victory of Ayacucho in Peru, and Simon Bolivar had estabUshed the independence of South America. This earnest effort for Hberty in the south profoundly affected the people of the United States, whose historic struggle for independence in 1776 had been the spark that had first lighted the torch of liberty. Sympathizing with all movements for deliverance and republican rule, the "Americans" — as the people of the United States have ever been called — recognized the commercial and political value of an independent South America, and extended to the patriots who followed the lead of Bolivar recognition and support. Money was appropriated by Congress to send diplomatic missions to the "independent nations on the American continent," and interference in American affairs by the princes and potentates of Europe was sternly for- bidden. This was in 1823. That year marks an epoch in the history of America as well as in the story of the Nine- teenth Century. The powers of Europe — notably Russia, Austria, and Prussia — had, in 181 5, formed a league for the professed purpose of uniting the European governments in a "Christian brotherhood," to be called the Holly AlH- ance. Its real purpose was to keep things as they were, exclude all Bonapartes from power, and overawe the spirit of popular liberty. Later, all the sovereigns of Europe excepting the king of England, joined this mutual admira- tion society. The Czar of Russia was the acknowledged head of the alliance ; and, among other things, this kingly syndicate considered the crushing out of the Spanish- American republics. HOW THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. 105 Thereupon England, the only nation that had not joined the Alliance, asked the United States what they were go- ing to do about it, and suggested that England and America unite against the so-called Holy Alliance. But America was not yet ready to join England in ex- treme measures. John Ouincy Adams was secretary of state, and, like the wise statesman he was, saw that such a union would only embitter the European powers, and per- haps lead to a movement against the republic which might give Europe the footing in America that was especially to be guarded against. '^ "Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence — I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens," Washington had said in his immortal Farewell Address, "the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake. . . . It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." — This sage advice of 1796 was seen, by the wise heads of 1823, to be still the best course for America. So England's offer of friendship and treaty was politely declined. But none the less was the threatened interference of the Holy Alliance to be firmly met. James Monroe was president of the United States. He was the last soldier of the Revolution to hold that high office, and the spirit that had sent him charging against the Hessian battery at Trenton on a historic December morning determined him to resist foreign aggression. In his seventh annual message of December, 1823, he put this "spoke in the wheel " of Russia, who already had a footing in northwestern America, and was believed to covet our western coast. I06 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. " The occasion has been judged proper," he wrote, " for asserting as a principle that the American continents by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain are henceforth not to be considered as sub- jects for future colonization by any European power." Having thus warned off all foreign colonial trespassing on American soil, he added these impressive and important words : " The citizens of the United States cherish sentiments the most friendly in favor of the liberty and happiness of their fellow-men on the other side of the Atlantic. In the wars of the European powers, in matters relating to them- selves, we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy to do so. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced, that we resent injuries or make preparation for our defence. With the movements in this hemisphere we are, of necessity, more intimately connected . . . and to the defence of our government which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of our most enlight- ened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted. " We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and the allied powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. " With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not inter- fere. But with the governments who have declared their independence, and whose independence we have, in great HOW THE FIRST QUARTER EMDED. lo/ consideration and in just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power, in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." "^ This was the official declaration now famous as the " Monroe Doctrine." Based upon the farewell plea of Washington in 1796 and upon Jefferson's earnest inaugural words in 1801 — "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations ; entangling alliances with none," — accepted by the sober sense of the American people as both wise and practical in those days of cautious begin- nings, put into words by that great son of a great father, John Ouincy Adams, — the determination, the writing, and the responsibility were James Monroe's, and to him rightly belongs the credit of declaring to the world America's policy of peace, but of possession and of protection as well, — the historic "Monroe Doctrine." The world accepted this declaration as decisive and final. England, though refused an alliance, recognized a principle, and backed up President Monroe's announcement with the intimation to the Holy Alliance that any use of force in America would be resented by Great Britain ; the powers of Europe understood that it was to be " hands off" for them in the American continent ; Russia never pro- gressed beyond the boundaries of Alaska, and in time withdrew altogether ; and from that day to this, with one notable exception, European interference in American con- trol has been confined to criticism and suggestion, with no attempt at force. I08 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Balked in America, the Holy Alliance still had its own way in Europe. When Italian discontent broke into the open revolt of the Carbonari secret societies in 1821, the Holy Alliance, handmaiden to that other " unholy " affair, the Holy Inquisition, authorized Austria to crush the Italian revolution ; and for the time it was crushed. But the Holy Alliance, while crushing Italian indepen- dence, awoke in a great friend of humanity the hatred of tyranny. Byron, exiled from England, mourned over the defeat of Italy, flung himself into the struggles of Greece toward freedom, extolled the glorious liberty of America, and wrote impassioned verses, which, read in every civil- ized tongue, kept alive in the hearts of men the determi- nation to be free. It was the stirring lines of Byron that largely influenced the later revolutions in Germany, awoke once more the slumbering patriotism of Italy, stirred again and again its smothered embers in Spain, helped on the enthusiasm of Bolivar in South America, and from the Andes to the Bal- kans, kept alive the spark of effort that gradually led the world to " strike for its altars and its fires." With all his faults and all his failings, Byron, the aristocrat who wor- shipped liberty, stands out in those years, between 1820 and 1825, as he yet remains, their most fascinating person- ality, "the largest figure," as Professor Minto declares, "of a new era." His wonderful poetry wept over the fall of the old com- monwealths of Europe, the degradation of Greece, the timidity and indifference of patriots, the unaided attempts at independence, and gloried in the rise of America. " One great clime," he said — HOW THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. IO9 " Whose vigorous offspring, by dividing ocean Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for and Bequeathed — a heritage of heart and hand And proud distinction from each other land Whose sons must bow them at a monarch's notion, As if his senseless sceptre were a wand Full of the magic of exploded science — Still one great clime in full and free defiance Yet rears her crest, unconquered and sublime, Above the far Atlantic 1 She has taught Her Esau brethren that the haughty flag, The floating flame of Albion's feebler crag May strike to those whose red, right hands have bought Rights cheaply earned with blood." The " Esau brethren " of the America whom Byron apostrophized, had, for selfish motives, in this " holy alli- ance " stamped out liberalism in southern and western Europe ; for selfish motives, also and because they coveted the lands of the Turk, they gave first a secret and then an open aid to Greece, when she endeavored to throw off the yoke of the Ottoman. Here, too, Byron's unchained devotion to what an ener- getic American of our day has called "the strenuous life," flung itself into burning and now famous words to urge the Greeks to action : " Hereditary bondsmen ! know ye not Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow ? By their right arms the conquest must be wrought ? Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye ? No ! True, they may lay your proud despoilers low, But not for you will Freedom's altars flame. Shades of the Helots ! triumph o'er your foe ; Greece ! change thy lords, thy state is still the same ; Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thy days of shame." no THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. As Taine the Frenchman says, "Byron wars against human roguery." He would trust to no Holy Alliance to redeem Greece — " Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." The Greeks struck that blow in 182 1. On land and sea they drove their Turkish tyrants, proclaimed their inde- pendence in January, 1822, and, even when menaced by feud and faction, still struggled on to liberty. Byron, fol- lowing his words with deeds, came over from Italy to fight in the ranks, and, as their commander-in-chief at Misso- longhi, died in 1825 — a martyr to Grecian hberty, whose name is still held dear in every Grecian household, and whose portrait still holds the place of honor on the wall of every home as the popular hero of Greece. Two great Turks — or rather Egyptians — came to the front in this war of Greek iridependence, Mehemet Ali and Ibrahim Pacha. Conquerors for a while in Greece, they were finally defeated by the patriots and their European allies — for the Holy Alliance had no wish to see Turkey succeed ; but they, too, learned lessons of enlightenment, and later set on foot methods of progress which well-nigh lifted Egypt out of its bondage to barbarism. So, as has ever been the case, both victory and defeat are of advan- tage to man. Byron's example fired other world-patriots to help the cause of Greek independence. From France and Ger- many, from Switzerland, from England, and even from dis- tant America, came the Philhellenes, or Friends of Greece, to fight as volunteers. But even the growing sympathy of the world, and such heroic resistance as the siege of Misso- HOW THE PIRST QUARTER ENDED. Ill longhi, did not put a stop to the factional strife among the patriots, nor to the steady advance of the murderous crescent borne by Ibrahim and his Turco-Egyptians. The sortie of Marco Bozzaris from Missolonghi against the Turkish vanguard at Carpenisi made that Greek patriot in his victory and his death, through Fitz-Greene Halleck's stirring lines, forever famous, and showed how the sym- pathy of the world pulsed in unison with Greek desire for freedom — "For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's — One of the few, the immortal names That were not bom to die." The miserably selfish Holy Alliance, which had crushed out independence in Spain and Italy, and had frowned upon the desires of patriots, had no wish for Greek success, ex- cept as it might weaken Turkey. "The monarchs of Europe," says Dr. Donaldson, "were afraid that the rising of the Greeks was only another eruption of democratic feeling fostered by the French Revolution, and thought that it ought to be suppressed." They gave, therefore, no open support or sympathy to the cause ; and it looked, in 1 82 5, as if the growth of liberty had been cut short in Europe by the recognized rulers of the people. Only across the Atlantic was independence really won. But even in America independence did not mean free- dom for all. Progress comes slowly at first; and while the white American, freeing himself from tyranny, still held the black man in bondage, the inconsistency of this condi- tion of slavery in a land of freedom had not yet struck home to the hearts of men. But public opinion was begin- 112 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. ning to move in the right direction. The last heretic was burned in Mexico in 1815, and that very year the break from the old-school theology was made by liberalism ; the religious advance in America was the forerunner of a broader liberty, and the agitation of the anti-slavery re- formers throughout the world marked the first assaults upon an institution that was as old as the world and error. England had abolished the slave-trade in 1807, Napoleon in 181 5, the Dutch stopped it in 18 14, the Swedes in 181 3, and Great Britain paid money for its extinction by Portugal and Spain. The United States, during the Na- poleonic wars, had prohibited the importation into its terri- tory of negro slaves, and in 1822 had founded, on the west coast of Africa, the republic of Liberia as a refuge for those civilized blacks who were not permitted to reside as citizens in "civilized " lands. But while the nations of Europe and the American republic combined to stop the nefarious traffic in men under the protection of their flags, the African continent, from which negro slaves were drawn, was still sunk in the barbarism that gave to so much of it the name of " the dark continent." The least known, although the seat of one of the oldest civilizations, and the least important portion of the globe politically, this vast Southern continent in the year 1825 was only just beginning to enlist the attention of scientists and explorers. The Moors had long been established along the Mediterranean shores ; England, France, Portugal, and Holland had foothold or colonies, mostly along the western and southern coast ; but the interior was an unknown and unexplored land, peopled by savage black tribes, — Ethio- HOW THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. II3 pian, Hottentot, Kaffir, and other of the negro peoples, while the ocean edge of the continent itself was known only by the materials it yielded to commerce under the names of the Grain Coast, the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast, the Slave Coast, etc. In 1825 the commercial value of Africa was, as I have said, just beginning to be esteemed worthy the attention of Europeans, although the unhealthiness of its climate and the terrors of its unknown regions kept all, except the hardiest, most venturesome, or most greedy of civilized man from its borders. In the same way commerce, which had first attracted Europeans to the still older continent of Asia, had led them to conquer and to colonize that heathen land ; and Dutch and Danes, Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Britishers, Russians and Portuguese, alike, strove for power and possession with the fierce and warlike races native to its soil. By 1825 Russia, pushing into Siberia, had stopped for commercial reason and for the Chinese trade, on the banks of the Amur River. She was on the point of rupture with Persia ; was worrying Turkey and Armenia, and threatening the Afghan border. England, gradually reducing the great Indian peninsula, was also waiting to pounce upon Afghan- istan, whose native owners were at feud, while, in the east, she was badgering Burmah into war. Anam was an un- willing and grumbling vassal to France, and the fertile islands of the South China Sea were rebellious subjects of Spain and Holland. Japan and China were still hermit na- tions, while the island continent of Australia, wrested by England from its aboriginal inhabitants, was just emerging from its earliest disastrous contact with white "civilization," which had first turned it into a convict colony, but was 114 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. gradually laying the foundations for industrial and agricul- tural improvement. So, over the world, as the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century closed, hung still the shadow of the sword. Black slavery in America, white slavery in Europe, barbarism and isolation in Asia, degradation and mystery in Africa — all these were upheld by the brute force of men or the tyranny of military government. To the age of Napoleon had succeeded the age of Wellington ; but out of both had come in due time the age of Bolivar — for liberation was abroad, independence was the desire of men, and liberty their dream. Invention was sharpening intellect and doubling production ; philanthropy was emerging from dreamland into real effort ; commerce was clearing the way for progress ; theology was softening into religion ; and men were becoming more like world-lovers and workers than merely selfish and narrow localists, with no eye beyond their own borders. To the student of the century, 1825 shows a marked improvement in manliness, method, and achievement over 1800, even though aristocracy was still the governing power, and the cause of the people moved but slowly toward results. But in 1825 Abraham Lincoln was a boy in his teens ; so, too, were Tennyson, Whittier, Longfellow, Gladstone, and John Bright. Sarmento, a boy of eleven, was perhaps just beginning to dream of what he was to do for his fellowmen as South America's intellectual liberator — the educational hero of his continent ; and Victor Em- manuel, a boy of five, was breathing the love of Italy with the airs that swept down the Piedmont Alps. Cavour, Mazzini, and Garibaldi, too, were boys in their Italian now THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. 115 homes ; and as the old Lafayette, returning from his last visit to a grateful America in 1824, still dreamed his dream of an impossible epoch of constitutional liberty in Bourbon France, young Louis Kossuth, who later was to make an American trip as hero and patriot, was hurrahing in the ranks o*f Hungarian protest, and the seven-year old Alex- ander of Russia was learning, even in the heart of despot- ism, lessons that were in after years to blossom into his greatest gift of freedom to men. The boys of 1825 were prophetic of the sunrise that was to come ; for the old order was surely changing to the new. CHAPTER VII. WHEN THE WORLD GREW IN MANLINESS. (From 182^ to fSjo.) ON the twenty-sixth of October, 1825, Governor De Witt Clinton of the State of New York officially opened the Erie Canal, thus uniting the Great Lakes and the Atlantic, and sending the western development of the United States forward with a mighty stride ; on the very next day, October the twenty-seventh, George Stephenson, in England, opened the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and ran the first locomotive drawing cars that carried pas- sengers and freight. The new era of achievement and the conquest of time and space had begun. On the twenty-fifth of October, 1825, Szechenyi, the apostle of Hungarian emancipation, in a speech before the Diet, sprang into leadership as the advocate of a new Hungary, independent of Austrian control ; and, on the twenty-sixth of the following December, Russian revolu- tionists in the square of the Senate made a bold but inef- fectual stand against their despotic autocrat ; but, when they shouted for the Constitution they demanded, the soldiers, whom they thought to overawe by their demon- stration, hurrahed too, thinking, however, that this new word, " Constitution," was a cheer for the wife of the crown prince, Constantine. So unknown a term was Constitu- tonal Freedom in despotic Russia in 1825. lid TYPES OF THE } AGE OF BOLIVAR i Bolivar Monroe Byron K.ORNER Stephenson Heber WHEN THE WORLD GREW IN MANLINESS. IIJ That very year, too, though white Christian civilization was girding itself for its wrestle for the possession of the world, Christianity throughout the thirty parts of the known world was but in the proportion of five to twenty- five, and the Japanese Yeddo and the Chinese Pekin, closed to every effort of this same white civilization, led all others as the most populous cities of the world. Christian civilization had a work on hand, before which the fabled labors of Hercules were but child's play. But the work was begun manfully, even though uncon- sciously. In that same year of 1825 the first steam voyage from England to India was made by Captain Johnson in the Enterprise; and as, rounding "the Stormy Cape" (where English colonists in South Africa were developing the region which English enterprise had wrested from Dutch incompetency), the wondrous craft steamed into the Indian Ocean, it was the forerunner of that indomitable spirit of English expansion which neither wind nor tides could baffle as it set out to advance its flag in every quarter of the globe — "a power," as the American Webster, in now famous words, declared in less than ten years after the voyage of the Enterprise, " which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and mili- tary ports, whose moving drum-beat following the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." That voyage of the Enterprise meant the quicker absorp- tion, by the five parts Christian civilization, of the twenty- five parts Pagan stagnation. It meant the attempted solu- tion, by England, of the great problem of Asiatic control Il8 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. and the opening of what we call to-day " spheres of influ- ence." It meant, too, a marvellous growth in that forerunner of Christian expansion — the Missionary Society, an inhuence greater than the drumbeat and the flag in the progress of the world. When the Nineteenth Century began, there were but seven missionary societies in existence. By 1825 these seven had grown into fifteen, and the gates of heathen isolation were already being stormed by Christian crusaders. So religion and commerce were going forth, hand in hand, to occupy the world. It was often an ill-assorted partnership, for the ways of business are not always friendly to those of conversion ; but, even when most antagonistic, they helped each other until, in 1832, the clarion summons of the Englishman Heber in his " Mis- sionary Hymn" of 1820 could be answered by the tri- umphant notes of the author of " America " as he sang " The morning light is breaking, The darkness disappears." " From Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand," in the year 1825, the army of Christian occupation was already in motion. Past Greenland's icy mountains other than Christian missionaries were pushing their way. In 1825 the spirit of enterprise and the love of adventure were endeavoring to solve the secret of the North Pole and find that North- west Passage that should give the commerce of Europe the " short cut to Cothay " which had been the endeavor of discoverers since the days of Columbus and his com- WHEN THE WORLD GREW IN MANLINESS. I 19 panions. The Englisli naval officer, Lieutenant Parry, was in that year trying for the third time to force his two ships into the western seas at Barrow Sirait ; Captain, afterwards Sir John Franklin was seeking the open Polar Sea by an overland route ; and on the nineteenth of May, 1825, Captain Beechey, in the Blossom, attempted to force the passage by a western route. Nothing conclusive was established by their expeditions beyond a study of the "lay of the land ; " but in 1829 a combined scientific and naval English expedition, under command of Sir John Ross, made another attack upon the icy ramparts of the Pole. This resulted in little beyond establishing the true position of the "North magneiic pole" as running through the Gulf of Bothnia ; and Ross's expedition for three years and more was practically lost, imprisoned in Arctic ice. Below the Pole, in the great north land, the lines of commercial enterprise pushed far into the homes of the fur-bearing animals ; and the two great fur trusts, — the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company, — bitter and often bloody rivals for the monopoly of the fur trade, had, by 1825, united into one company, on equal terms, and England thus controlled the valuable fur trade of the North. Across the still unknown regions of the Northern United States, from the Great Lakes to the Pacific, John Jacob Astor had merged rival traders into the American Fur Company, founded Astoria on the Columbia River as his Pacific port, and laid the foundation of the immense Astor fortune. In Russian America (now Alaska), and in Siberia and Northern Europe, the Russian Fur Companv was pursuing the same commercial enterprise to warm the 120 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. luxurious ones of earth, which had sent into the frozen regions of the north adventurers and traders to wrest from savao-e Indian and barbarous Siberian the business of strip- pino- from sea and land animals, from seal and otter, beaver, martin, and sable, the skins designed for the use of man. About that time, too, the trade in. buffalo-robes and skins became an important American enterprise, and began gradually to decimate the enormous roving bands of the great "wild cow" of the western plains. Nineteenth Century enterprise was already beginning to burst its bonds. With the growth of enterprise came also the growth of luxury, learning, intelligence, and invention. Music, art, and literature became more widely recognized as factors or results of progress, and the people gradually opened their eyes to the fact that the world was made for them and not for the few who claimed dominion over them. Even "the man with the hoe" was less brutal, degraded, and blind to his own manhood than were his fathers before the days of the bloody but glorious Revolution in France. Jean Francois Millet, who, later, made his immortal draw- ing of this stolid son of the soil, was himself, in 1825, a boy of eleven years, working beside his peasant father in the dull fields of Barbizon, but beginning to look up from the soil, that keeps men beasts, to the sky that makes them men. In Germany the princes of the big and little kingdoms and duchies that really made up the nation were as slow in keeping their promises of popular liberty as they had been quick to make them when the spectre of Napoleonism WHEN THE WORLD GREW IN MANLINESS. 121 set every princeling shivering with anxiety ; but the people were reading again, as they had read many a time before, the old Bible injunction, " Put not your trust in princes." The oftener they read the warning, however, the more heed they were beginning to give to it. In 1825 the re- actionary or kingly power was still too strongly intrenched in Germany and Austria, thanks to the haunting memories of the French Revolution and of Napoleon, to admit of any real political progress ; but this subserviency could not long continue; provincial "diets," or deliberative as- semblies, in which the people had a certain representation, were granted in Prussia and other German states ; Goethe still lived to finish his wonderful poem of progress, " Faust," and to show himself, in his old age, the prophet of mankind under the new order of things ; while Uhland's stirring songs were sinking so deeply into the dissatisfied popular heart of his fatherland as to become folk-songs of Germany. Poet and student, however, were not in accord with the rulers of Germany in 1825. They were, indeed, what is called in diplomatic language persona noji grata — persons not wanted. Uhland and Arndt were deprived of their professorships because of their "popular" leanings; the brothers Grimm (best known to American boys and girls as the authors of that ever famous book of fairy stories dear to us all as " Grimm's Tales," but really leaders in German scholarship and philology) were " sent packing " from the university where they were professors, because of their love for German independence and union ; and other scholars and thinkers were disgraced for similar reasons, while the young men who, as students, dared to think and 122 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. speak of liberty were suppressed with stern hand. Hum- boldt still found the air of Paris more healthful for his great scientific labors than his native Germany ; and Berzsenyi, Hungary's greatest poet, almost fell a victim, for his fervent imtriotism, to Austria's hatred of the Hun- garian's passion for his fatherland. The greatest advance in practical independence and popular liberty has not, however, always been made by those most rigorously held down by tyranny, but by those who, knowing the benefits of freedom, refuse to be domi- nated by autocratic methods, or to be deprived of the op- portunities for progress. The English-speaking lands are those which have soonest achieved independence, and most outspokenly combated dropping back beneath the yoke. In 1825 Great Britain was in the mood for reforming abuses ; her people were most determinedly bent upon going a step higher in social, political, and domestic free- dom. Neither in England nor Scotland were the people represented in parliament ; they had no word in the gov- ernment of their native land ; they had neither voice, influ- ence, nor authority in its councils. A seat in parliament was the gift of the " lord of the manor " represented there, and the member, in most instances, was the tool or creature of the great man who controlled the borough ; seats were bought and sold like merchandise ; the ministers of the king were the real rulers of England, and did their best to oppose and antagonize the free right of Englishmen to speak as they felt as to the state of things in England. The French Revolution, however, hateful though it was to Englishmen, yet had its influence upon them. The WHEN TlIK WORLD CKKW IN MANLINESS. 123 French people had asserted themselves ; if need be, the English people could do so too. When the miserable, graceless, and useless person who posed as king of England, " by the grace of God," under the title of George the Fourth (whom Thackeray the I'^ng- lishman disposes of by one scathing bit of comparison with the great George of America — Washington, and asks, "which is the nobler character to admire?") — when this English George, wrongly called a gentleman, sought to re- peat the story of licnry the Eighth, with Henry's ability left out, and " put away " his true and lawful wife, the ministers of the king attempted to " back up " their good for-nothing monarch in his wickedness, and, in 1820, en- deavored to force Parliament to pass a bill of " pains and penalties" to degrade the queen in the true Henry the Eighth style. But they reckoned without their host. For the people of England almost rose in revolt. " God bless you ! We will bring your husband back to you," cried a British working-man to the persecuted queen ; and the people of England, without influence, without representation, without political rights though they were, would have done this had not the death of the unfortunate Queen Caroline, in 1821, prevented the consummation of their manly indignation. But what they could not do for her, they could do for the England which king George and his ministers misrepre- sented and misruled. A storm of indignation against king and ministers swept the country ; the moral feeling as well as the intelligence of Englishmen asserted themselves ; the king, even though hedged about with all the false preroga- tives of " royalty," found himself detested ; the ministers 124 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. were held responsible for the popular discontent and rest- lessness, and the people demanded a reform of parliamen- tary methods. But when a fortunate death in the cabinet raised the statesman Canning to power, a new day dawned for England. As Mr. Gardiner, the English historian, declares, " the failure of the ministers to carry the Bill of Pains and Penalties was a turning-point in the history of the country." Canning asserted the right of England to free action, in spite of the " Holy Alliance." He believed in the greater right of the English people to govern themselves. He protested, in behalf of England, against the use of force against the patriots of Spain and Italy. He recognized the new republics of revolted South America. He spoke for the freedom of Greece. He voiced the English people's defiance of despotism, headed the party of progress, and was joyfully accepted and hailed as "the champion and spokesman of national and popular liberty." He died in 1827, a martyr to his own exertions in behalf of right and progress ; but his work lived after him. Be- cause of his policy and his eloquent appeals, the barriers of English aristocracy weakened. The people demanded the redress of wrongs that held them down ; commercial and religious selfishness were replaced by a more generous spirit in church and trade ; Roman Catholics and Protes- tant " dissenters," so long excluded from office and oppor- tunity, were allowed a voice and vote ; the death penalty for minor crimes and slight offences was removed ; the iniquitous laws respecting the importation of corn were modified ; concessions to the people were demanded and granted, and when, in 1830, George the Fourth closed WHEN THE WORLD GREW IN MANLINESS. 1 25 his good-for-nothing hfe, the people found that even royal protests could not stand against the popular will, and that the " last of the Georges " had been a reformer in spite of himself. Wellington, victor of Waterloo, was then prime minister of England. In spite, too, of his military style of ordering things, in the face of his dislike and scorn of the popular will, the " Iron Duke " was forced to yield to the majority of his countrymen, and second the demands of Englishmen that miUtary despotism and royal tyranny should be curbed. Out of this recognition of the voice of the real England came the union against the Turkish butchers in Greece. Wellington cared little for the Greek patriots, but he did wish to "head off" Russia. So, in 1826, he proposed to the new Czar Nicholas, that Russia and England should jointly " interfere " in behalf of Greece. The next year France joined the alliance ; and on the 20th of October, 1827, the combined fleets of England, France, and Russia, under command of an English admiral, annihilated the fleets of Turkey and Egypt at the battle of Navarino, com- pelled the retreat of Ibrahim Pasha and his soldiers from their campaign of devastation, and virtually brought about the independence of Greece. For after a brief war be- tween Russia and Turkey, when Russian troops invaded Turkey, both in Europe and Asia, and brought about the peace of Adrianople in 1829, Turkey gave up the fight; and, in 1830 the Conference of London officially declared the independence of Greece. In that very year of 1830, however, the Duke of Welling- ton announced himself as ojiposed to parliamentary reform ; belicvino- in force rather than in concession, he would have 126 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. put down the popular demand by the bayonet ; he declared that it was simply an agitation for change by fanatics and disorderly persons ; and he resisted all reform so stoutly, that he became unpopular, and in November, 1830, was forced to resign as Prime Minister of England. In that very year of 1830, too, George Stephenson in- augurated what may be considered as really the modern era of railways by opening the Liverpool and Manchester Railway — the first "long line" — and driving his newly- invented locomotive the " Rocket " up to a surprising speed of twenty-nine miles an hour. "But suppose a cow should get on the track.?" queried one of the noble lords before whom the indomitable North Country farmer's son was explaining his invention. " It would be vera bad for the coo, me lord," replied Stephenson quietly. Others than the old fogies who stood in the way of in- ventive genius learned the same lesson. The Duke of Wellington, seeking to oppose the popular will, tried to stand on the track in front of the spirit of progress in 1830, and found out that, as Stephenson declared, such a position was, "vera bad for the coo." 1830 was really the birthday of reform. Between 1825 and 1830 reform was in the air not only in matters political, but in almost all branches of human thought. The mind of man was gradually being freed from the chains of centuries of blind belief, and was reach- ing out for " exactness " in all the sciences — from law and life to religion, medicine, and manners. While Stephenson, the farmer collier's son, was develop- ins: the locomotive and revolutionizing the means of trans- WHEN THE WOFfM! SdlOU 1/6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. composed the republic in 1840 were only then beginning the agitation that, in time, made America really free ; and when the census of 1840 showed the Southern States that they were really falling behind their Northern associates in wealth and population, they sought to break the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and by the formation of slave States out of the unorganized national domain west of the Missis- sippi, regain the power and control, that seemed to be slip- ping from them. In the North, slowly but surely, the work of the lovers of freedom was already beginning to bear fruit. Often fanatical in their assertions, and unwise in their actions, the handful of Abolitionist reformers made slow converts — but they made them ; and the demand for " free soil, free labor, and free men," which, a few years later, became the rallying cry of a new political party, was, even in 1 840, ac- cepted as the necessity for real American progress, by all who were gradually growing into that advocacy of liberal ideas which reared itself upon an aggressive revolt from the old methods and the old tyrannies. Literature, the handmaid of progress, was already lead- ing the van in behalf of real freedom ; and Garrison, who said boldly, " I will be as harsh as truth and as uncom- promising as justice," found his work supplemented by the philippics of Wendell Phillips and the pleas of Charles Sumner ; while Whittier, the poet of freedom, perhaps did more in crystallizing the conscience and thought of the North than any other writer of those days of a seemingly unpopular revolution. From 1833 to 1848 the Quaker poet, whose verses, as Bryant said, " stirred the blood like a trumpet calling to battle," was writing and publishing WHY THE PEOPLE GREW RESTLESS. \^^ his "Voices of Freedom;" and, in 1840 he sent to the World's Convention of the Friends of Emancipation, at London, those stirring verses that Hterally "called the roll " of the forces of Freedom, and which still stand as a remarkable summing up of the cause of liberty as the .world saw it in 1 840 : "Yes, let them gather — Summon forth The pledged philanthropy of Earth, From every land whose hills have heard The bugle-blast of Freedom waking, Or shrieking of her symbol bird From out his cloudy eyrie breaking: Where justice hath one worshipper. Or truth one altar built to her : Where'er a human eye is weeping O'er wrongs which Earth's sad children know — Where'er a single heart is keeping Its prayerful watch with human woe : Then, let them come, and greet each other, And know in each a friend and brother 1 " That whole poem is well worth re-reading to-day. Whit- tier's " symbol bird " was by no means the " tame eagle " of Louis Napoleon; and his roll-call was more than that — it was, in truth, a clarion call for liberty. And yet, so halting is even reform sometimes, that same convention, assembled in London in June, 1840, to advocate and work for freedom throughout the world, re- fused seats to the female delegates sent to take part in its proceedings ! While intellectual and political advances were being made throughout the civilized world in this fifth decade of the Nineteenth Century, science and invention were I/S THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. keeping in step with the advance, while photography, the handmaid of science and art, had but just stepped into the arena of the world's practical progress. In 1839 Arago, a famous French astronomer, announced to the French Academy of Science that a panorama artist named Daguerre had discovered a way of making per- manent sunlight pictures. This was the daguerreotype — the forerunner of modern photography. In that same year of 1839 an Englishman named Fox Talbot made almost the same discovery ; in 1840 Professor Draper of New York first actually made photographic portraits from life. After that, experiments were multiplied; but the invention, even then, was not esteemed as anything more than a plaything in art. Daguerreotypes were luxuries, costly, and not always permanent or satisfactory ; and the uses to which the sun could be put for the pleasure and aid of man were not even dreamed by those "photographic cranks" of sixty years ago. In nothing has the Nine- teenth Century made more marvellous strides than in the art of photography. While this beginning of the great enslavement of light for the service of man was being made practically possible, the ingenuity of man was also seeking quicker means for the conveyance of thought. The post-office and the postal system of modern civilization, dating back to the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the University of Paris established an inland postal service, had progressed but slowly through all the years thereafter, although Oliver Cromwell, greatest of Englishmen, saw the value of an organized and reliable postal service, and, during his pro- tectorate, a regular system of postage and carriers was WHY THE PEOPLE GREW RESTLESS. 1 79 attempted in England. Louis the Eleventh, a great but unscrupulous French king, founded in 1464 the postal system of France, while the Austrian postal service is one of the oldest on record. In America, Benjamin Franklin first made the American post-office self-supporting ; but all these systems were but attempts in the way of reliable service, and amounted to nothing of practical value or benefit until the real postal reform was put into operation in England in 1840. John Hill, an Englishman, was the originator of the plan of penny postage in Cromwell's day, although his efforts came to naught ; but another public benefactor of the same name — Rowland Hill, of Birmingham — made himself in the " forties " the father of the modern postal service by recommending a penny postage on all letters in the United Kingdom not exceeding half an ounce in weight. "Perhaps," he said, "the difficulties in the way might be obviated by using a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous wash which, by applying a little moisture, might be at- tached to the back of the letter." And there you have the modern postage-stamp ! Rowland Hill's recommendations were, after much dis- cussion, accepted by Parliament ; they were assented to by the British government, and penny postage began in Janu- ary, 1840. No suggestion of practical utility, so one au- thority declares, has ever been "so speedily effective in promoting reforms in any degree so beneficial to the human race," as was this penny-postage plan instituted by Rowland Hill. Tt)-day no country so small, no nation so large, but has an established postal service ; and the system of inter- l8o THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, national postage is one of the most effective methods of promoting the "neighborliness," if not the brotherhood of man. Following closely upon this modern and beneficial meth- od in 1840 for the systematic communication of thought, came the official acceptance and adoption of Professor Morse's wonderful invention of the electric telegraph. After disheartening failures, rebuffs, and discouragements, the determined inventor at last found himself empowered by Congress to construct an experimental telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington. It was completed ; and on the twenty-fourth of September, 1 844, Morse stood beside his instrument, set up in the Chamber of the Su- preme Court in the Capitol, and despatched over the wires to Baltimore the message suggested to him by a girl of fif- teen, who stood beside him at his instrument : " What hath God wrought! " God had indeed wrought much — for science, for civili- zation, and for mankind ; for, from the persistent endeavors of this undaunted inventor, came the rapid and accurate conveyance of thought. To-day two oceans are crossed and seamed with electric cables, and the news of the world is read each morning in every civilized home. Samuel Finley Breeze Morse in 1844 stretched the first wire of that magnificent system that in time brought all the world in touch, and no invention or happening of the Nineteenth Century has so signally united and benefited all mankind. If was in 1840 that lucifer matches, before that date only a cumbrous and bothersome experiment, became so cheap as to secure universal adoption and discard the old- time methods of producing light and fire, while the light- WHY THE PEOPLE GREW RESTLESS. l8l ing and heating of the houses of the people by gas and oil and coal made rapid strides during those busy, creative years toward the close of the half century. So, gradually, the march of progress which affected social order and political forms, which increased the desires of men for greater constitutional and personal liberty, and drew the world's unrest onward to the new upheaval that closed the first half of the Nineteenth Century, exhibited itself also in the fields of intellectual and scientific en- deavor ; while the years that brought forward Carlyle and Emerson, Balzac and Hugo, Strauss and Schelling, Schop- enhauer and Humboldt, Ranke and Bancroft, Tennyson and Macaulay, Agassiz and Whittier, and made them impor- tant factors in the world's developing thought, marked also a distinctly forward step in the comfort and enlightenment of the race. CHAPTER XI. HOW ALL THE WORLD HAD YET ANOTHER SHAKING-UP. {From 1845 to iSjo.) ON the sixteenth of September, 1845, Abd-El-Kader the heroic Arabian patriot, defeated the Frend " expansionists " in Africa ; in June of that same year the republic of Mexico declared war against the " expansion- ists " of North America; and on the fourteenth of Decem- ber the Sikhs of the Punjab — the natives of Northern India — rose against British expansion. The protest against the new order of things — growth by absorption — was vigorously begun by the patriots of what Kipling calls "the lesser tribes without the law." Of course these patriotic protests were fruitless. The valiant tribesmen of North Africa were bravely led ; the soldiers of Mexico were, as General Grant asserts, "brave soldiers inefficiently led ;" the Sikhs of the Punjab, as be- came their names, for Sikh means "disciple," were brave soldiers and fierce religionists, feud-torn, and united only against the English. But, brave or not, they all went down in defeat before the invincible though lesser forces of the trained soldiers of civilization. Algeria submitted to its French conquerors in 1847, and to-day is prosperous und^.r French rule; Mexico closed a losing fight in 1847, when its capital city fell before the irresistible arms of GenenJ Scott, and nearly a million square miles of territory were 182 TYPES OF THE ) Emerson Webster ' Rowland H.ll Morse AGE OF KOSSUTH ) O'Connell Kossuth now THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UP. 1 83 annexed, by conquest and purchase, to the United States. But to-day Mexico is united because of that war of 1846, and her patriots celebrate as hohdays the anniversaries of Chapultepec and MoUno del Rcy, which are regarded as Mexican defeats. The Punjab was conquered and annexed to the British domains in 1849, even though the Sikhs were acknowledged to be the bravest foemen faced by the English in India ; but to-day the Punjab, with its twenty- five millions of inhabitants, is a great, peaceable, and pros- perous section of England's Indian Empire, well on its way toward a progressive civilization, with schools and colleges, railways and telegraphs, newspapers and literary societies, trade and manufactures, and life is safer to-day in the Pun- jab than it ever was through the long centuries of barbar- ism, feud, and warfare. Patriotism, unless accompanied by progress, is of little worth ; and education by conquest is one of the paths along which mankind advances toward final and universal brotherhood. It is sometimes hard for us to see this in the midst of the sorrows and worries that attend the path of conquest, and the immediate effect upon the victor is often scarcely less disastrous than upon the vanquished. The first French colonists to Algeria either died off, as do most first colo- nists, or left in disgust ; the arrogance of British military rule led to frequent disturbance in India ; and the conquest of Mexico by the United States, more vehemently opposed by large numbers of American citizens than any similar attempt at " expansion," stirred the slavery fighters of the North to indignant protest against the accession of more slave territory, and gradually brought about that inevitable conflict based upon Abraham Lincoln's immoral declara- 1 84 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. tion, ten years after the close of the Mexican war, that " a house divided against itself cannot stand," and "that a government half slave and half free cannot endure." Lit- erature came to the aid of this protest against slave expan- sion ; and the " Biglovv Papers " of James Russell Lowell — a born reformer in his hatred of tyrants and demagogues — helped on the great advance by the pitiless sarcasms of one who beheved the Mexican war " a national crime, com- mitted in behoof of slavery, our common sin." The crisis forced upon the American people by their success in the war with Mexico was immediate and stern. North and South became engaged in a contest of words and measures as to the extension or limitation of slavery ; and Whittier's ringing words, as he read the terms of the treaty of peace with Mexico, roused in the lovers of liberty a determination to curb the conquest of the national do- main by the "national sin " : — " Forever ours 1 for good or ill, on us the burden lies ; God's balance, watched by angels, is hung across the skies. Shall Justice, Truth, and Freedom turn the poised and trembling scale ? Or shall the Evil triumph, and robber wrong prevail? Shall the broad land o'er which our flag in starry splendor waves Forego through us its freedom, and bear the tread of slaves? By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and shame ; By all the warning words of truth with which the prophets came ; By the Future which awaits us ; by all the hopes which cast Their faint and trembling beams across the blackness of the past ; And by the blessed thought of Him who for Earth's freedom died, O my people 1 O my brothers 1 let us choose the righteous side." Calhoun for the Southern extremists, and Seward for the Northern protestors, fought the battle out on the HOW THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UP. 1 85 floor of Congress ; the giants of the earlier clays, Webster the Northerner, and Clay the Border-State man, sought to arrest the conflict by compromise ; for a time, as Dr. Edward Channing puts it, " sentiment yielded to interest," and the " Compromise of 1850 admitted California into the Union as a free State, permitted no restriction against sla- very in the southern territories, and passed, what the North- ern reformers denounced as ' the sum of all villanies,' the Fugitive Slave Law." All this, while an apparent victory for the South, only made the North more determined in opposition to the growth of slavery, so that the earliest results of the Mexi- can war seemed to be distrust, antagonism, and evil. And yet to-day, in the light of later events, the Mexican war is seen to have been of advantage to both republics ; the school of preparation for America's greater and neces- sary conflict, the first " strenuous step " along the highway of liberty, expansion, and development. Meanwhile, across the sea, an even mightier struggle was preparing. On the twenty-sixth of May, 1846, Louis Na- poleon Bonaparte escaped from his prison in the Castle of Ham; Louis Kossuth, who had led a "boycott" of Aus- trian manufactures until Hungary should be released, was elected, in 1847, a member of the Hungarian diet, or par- liament, and demanded of Austria constitutional reform ; a terrible famine in Ireland, in 1846, forced England to such acts of relief as broke down its arbitrary measures for "protecting its industries," and pledged the nation to free trade ; the rising, independent spirit of the Prussian peo- ple compelled the king to call a representative assembly of all the German states to discuss the question of popular 1 86 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. rights ; and throughout all Europe the spirit of protest against the old order of kingly despotism seemed once again awakening. All the world recognized this; and Whittier, poet of freedom, open-eyed for every new ad- vance, wrote, jubilantly, in 1848 : — " The day is breaking in the East of which the prophet told, And brightens up the sky of Time, the Christian Age of Gold ; Old Might to Right is yielding, battle blade to clerkly pen, Earth's monarchs are her people, and her serfs stand up like men ; The isles rejoice together ; in a day are nations born. And the slave walks free in Tunis and by Stamboul's Golden Horn I " The day really "broke in the East" when, on the twenty-second of February, 1848, the birthday of Washing- ton, prince of patriots, the French government dispersed a banquet in Paris prepared by the advocates of popular reform. France was still far from free ; her constitutional monarchy was little better than a " close corporation ; " her king was tricky and dishonest ; only one Frenchman in thirty had the privilege of a vote ; the ruling party in par- liament disregarded the public will, and the people were ripe for revolt. Grumbling at the selfish king blossomed into open protests against the illiberal policy of his minis- ters ; speeches of criticism gave place to denunciations of the government ; the opposition party in the Assembly grew stronger and more insistent ; the people of Paris began again, as in the days of the first Revolution, to cry for justice ; and at last, when the reform banquet of Feb- ruary 2 2d was prohibited, the match was set to the tinder. The people rose in anger ; they barricaded the streets of Paris, and declared war on the government ; the city now THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UP. 1 8/ militia called out to disperse the rioters, took their part. Guizot, the unpopular minister, resigned ; the regulars fired on the mob ; the people vowed vengeance ; king Louis Philippe begged Thiers to act as minister ; the regulars were drawn back in submission ; the mob and the militia marched on the Tuilleries. It was the old story of the Revolution of 1789, without its brutality and bloodshed. The mob and the militia tore down the barricades ; revolt was storming the palace ; the people were in control once more. Then Louis Philippe abdicated the throne of France in favor of his grandson, and disguised as a tradesman, under the name of William Smith, fled with the queen in a "hack" from Paris and the France he had misgoverned. France, weary of his rule, which might have been glorious had he but been a man, wished for a republic — and got it ! Two days after, on the twenty-fourth of February, 1848, the republic was declared ; " Liberty, Equality, and Fra- ternity " were again the watchwords of the "sovereign people " ; the tricolor was restored as the flag of France ; Lamartine, poet and patriot, was made one of the new ministry ; the nation accepted the action of Paris and wel- comed the republic ; and the second French Revolution — that of 1848 — was complete ! It needed but this success to set Europe in a blaze. Year by year the people had grown more and more dis- contented with their condition. They were tired of acting as the tools and puppets of self-seeking kings, princes, and ministers. The despotism of the Bourbons enraged Italy ; the absolutism of Austria infuriated Hungary; the arro- gance of her Prussian king aroused Germany ; and the 1 88 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. restlessness of the agitator had, for the moment, more influence than the command of the tyrant. Stirred by the news from Paris, and fired by the elo- quence of Kossuth, Hungary spoke out in bold demand for reform, and sent a deputation to King Ferdinand of Austria, offering him his choice between reform or revolu- tion. As it seemed to be a case of what we call "Hobson's choice," reform was granted ; home rule was established in Hungary ; Szechenyi and Deak were made members of the new Hungarian government, and Kossuth was ap- pointed minister of finance. By this time poor King Ferdinand of Austria was in hot water. The flight of the king of France, and the demands of Kossuth, stirred the Austrian people to clamor for greater freedom. Headed by the students, who compelled the magistrates of the city to go with them, a Vienna mob forced its way into the imperial palace, and demanded a liberal constitution. Terrified at this uprising of the peo- ple, Metternich, the crafty and aristocratic relic of the days of despotism, resigned his office of prime minister, and fled in a hurry ; the king summoned a national assembly ; but when the students, the militia, and the people tried to dic- tate laws. King Ferdinand, too, began to fear for his head, and fled from his capital. Then Italy, which was under Austrian control, followed the lead of Hungary and Aus- tria, drove out its viceroys and rulers, sent the Austrian garrisons packing, and, headed by Charles Albert, king of Sardinia and Savoy, united the peninsula in a defiance of its tyrants. The uprising grew with success. From the English Channel to the borders of Turkey the leaders of the people HOW THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UP. 1 89 hurrahed for constitutional Uberty ; Milan, Messina, Mu- nich, Prague, Berlin, Vienna, Naples, and the smaller Ger- man cities joined the ranks of reform ; London itself was threatened by Chartist mobs ; kings, princes, viceroys, and ministers went scurrying for shelter ; even the Pope of Rome fled from the Vatican ; the Emperor of Austria abdicated ; and the King of Prussia declared his willingness to grant reforms and unite all Germany into a nation. If only the patriotic leaders of the revolt against old tyrannies had joined hands in mutual help and a union for indepen- dence, the second half of the Nineteenth Century might have dawned upon a free and united Europe. But the day for unity of action had not yet come. Suc- cess in revolution often reacts upon those who lead it. The people of France — or Paris — which is declared to be France — split up into parties and cHques, each jealous of the other, and each distrusting the other. The taxpayers began to grumble at the new burdens laid upon them ; the National Assembly undertook to rid itself of the mob that had fastened upon it ; the red flag of revolution appeared in the streets of Paris ; and the bloody uprising of June 23, 1848, filled the unruly city with blood. Then Louis Napoleon Bonaparte appeared upon the scene. Even as the uncle had brought security out of chaos, he, the nephew, would redeem France ! At least, that is what he said. He came over from London where he had been li\ine: in exile, and where he was serving as a special policeman against the Chartist rioters. In June, 1848, he was elected to the National Assembly from one of the Paris districts, and in September he took his seat. 190 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. " My name," he said, "is the symbol of order, nationahty, and glory." So France, too, believed. Terrified by the fear of a new Revolution, the middle classes — the real strength of France — saw in a Bonaparte the organizer of order, the safety of the state ; and when, in December, 1848, a presi- dent of the Republic for four years was to be chosen. Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte adventurer, politician, and plotter, was elected by a popular vote of over five mil- lions, and proclaimed President of the French Republic " one and indivisible," to which he swore to remain faithful, and to fulfil all the duties imposed upon him by the Con- stitution. A Napoleon Bonaparte once again guided the affairs of France — was he to be Napoleon the Great — or the Little ? "The toadstool," wrote Victor Hugo, "sprouts up at the foot of the oak ; but it is not the oak ! " Meantime, in Hungary, a real patriot had come to the front ; another Louis — Kossuth — assumed leadership " by the will of the people." For more than fifty years had the independence of Hungary not only been promised but guar- anteed by the Austrian kings ; this independence had never been established. Through good and ill they stood loyal to Austria, and when, in 1806, Napoleon I. tried to draw away the Hungarians from their Austrian fealty, the tempted patriots indignantly refused ; but independence, or, at least, constitutional freedom, they would have. For this the wise Szechenyi had labored peacefully for years ; failing to ob- tain it, the fiery Kossuth proposed to secure it, even by force, if need be. HOW THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UP. IQI The need for force soon came. The Emperor Ferdi- nand promised but did not perform. Encouraged by his secret messengers, the non-Hungarian provinces refused to join the Hungarian uprising and clamored for separate rights. Civil war threatened; and when, in July, 1848, Kossuth, in an impassioned speech to the Hungarian As- sembly, asked for money and an army to defend the nation, rivals became brothers and patriots, and an army of two hundred thousand men was raised for the defence and in- dependence of Hungary. " You have risen like one man," exclaimed Kossuth, with tears in his eyes. " I bow before the greatness of the nation." For a time the nation, indeed, was great, alike in its efforts, its sacrifices, its patriotism, and its successes. Under the able leadership of Kossuth, an army was placed in the field ; the Croatian insurgents were defeated ; and when the Emperor Ferdinand declared the Hungarians rebels, and prepared to subdue them, the Assembly ans- wered by the defiance of revolution. But just then Austria itself caught the French revolu- tion fever ; and the Emperor Ferdinand abdicated in favor of his nephew Francis Joseph, an energetic young prince of eighteen. Even an energetic young prince, however, was not equal to a united nation with Kossuth at its head. When Aus- tria refused peace or independence, the war of the Revo- lution began with spirit. Success followed success ; the Hungarian general, Gorgei, drove the invading Austrians from the kingdom ; and when Austria begged and received the help of Russia, these allies, too, were defeated and 192 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. driven out. Thereupon Hungary, under the leadership of Kossuth, threw off the Hapsburg yoke, and on the four- teenth of April, 1849, declared itself a free and indepen- dent nation. Kossuth was appointed governor ; and the brave defend- ers of their homeland, whose successes had alike startled and thrilled the world, pledged themselves anew to main- tain the liberties of Hungary. The whole nation sang the Hungarian Marseillaise — the " Up ! Magyar " of Petofi (Magyar being the Hungarian's home-name) : "Up! Magyar, up I thy country calls," rang this trumpet-call of independence, as the young poet, who it has been said, " means more to Hungary than did even Burns to Scotland," urged his brothers to the final struggle with tyranny, even to the death : " Where every fettered race, tired with their chains, Muster their ranks and seek the battle plains, And, for the struggle. Freedom's flag unfold, The sacred signal there inscribed in gold, — ' For the world's liberty : ' And, far and wide, the summons to be free Fills East and West, and to the glorious fight Heroes press forward, battling for the right, — There will I die 1 " Kossuth, the governor, would have followed up the Hun- garian victories by a march upon Vienna, there to force the Austrians to terms and ward off the Russian invasion. But Gorgei, the general, fell back upon the capital instead, for better concentration. The great national enthusiasm was frittered away in bickerings and jealousies, as has too HOW THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UP. 1 93 often been the case even as in the days of our own " Conway Cabal," which nearly wrecked the efforts of Washington. Austria and Russia combined to crush out Hungarian lib- erty, and invading Hungary, attacked the patriots at every available point, forced Gorgei to surrender, drove Kossuth and his comrades into exile, and before the close of 1849 had re-conquered and re-enslaved the kingdom. The fate of Hungary was the fate of all other attempted revolutions of that time. Lack of union among the leaders and jealousy toward the efforts of rival peoples, held back the " fettered races " from co-operation and support ; tax- payers grumbled at the price of liberty ; conservative men feared the excesses of the people ; and the liberation of Europe was "unavoidably postponed." But the example and influence of Kossuth did not die. His heroic endeavors and his appeals for independence were as seeds planted in a stubborn soil, which at last bore fruit ; and though a new Napoleon betrayed France, and Hungary lost for a time her political rights ; though Italian unity was defeated, and German and Austrian patriots were shot, exiled, or forced into flight, — the dawn of constitu- tional freedom came yet nearer to the people who rose to enforce it, and 1850 was really the beginning of a new era, that of Cavour and nationality. Religion, which so often is the companion and sometimes the forerunner of liberty, was in those closing years of the half-century making progress and attempting unity in the world. In 1846 a world'^s convention of Protestant Chris- tians was held in London for the purpose of promoting re- ligious intercourse, co-operation, unity, and fellowship among what were termed Evangelical Christians; and though the 194 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. lines were closely 'and sternly drawn against liberalism, Romanism, and what was judged to be infidelity, the attempt toward a more positive brotherhood was of great and last- ing benefit, and the religious conditions of the world were materially bettered, consolidated, and advanced. But, even against what was then received as the accepted " Orthodoxy " of the Christian world, a movement which logically belongs to this same " era of revolution " was be- gun. As America was the home of civil and political liberty, so, too, as was its right, did it become the home of religious brotherhood and liberty. As Hosea Ballou stood for the first, so did William Ellery Channing stand for the second. Channing died before the first half of the Nine- teenth Century closed, but he had begun the work that gradually loosened the fetters of creed. " Liberty," so one of his associates and successors de- clared, " is the key of his religious, his political, his philan- thropic principles. Free the slave, free the serf, free the ignorant, free the sinful. Let there be no chains upon the conscience, the intellects, the pursuits, or the persons of men." The world was not yet quite ready to accept this vigor- ous doctrine ; but, along different lines, men were working towards it. In 1847 Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American, aroused intellectual England with his lectures on seven "Representative Men;" in his "English Traits," published in 1850, he re-introduced England to America; while his searching work as essayist and poet proclaimed, as has well been said, "the independence of American thought." Thomas Carlyle, the great and vigorous-minded P^nglish- man, whom Emerson greatly helped to make known to the HOW THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UP. 1 95 world, was, as 1850 drew near, " expressing vital truths," so Leslie Stephen puts it, "with surpassing force." His "Oliver Cromwell," published in 1845, re-made English history ; and his studies of the needs and duty of mankind were so forcibly presented, that the world to-day willingly acknowledges the sway of his "powerful intellectual stimu- lus." Herbert Spencer, the deep thinker, was formulating his new and convincing philosophy; and young Charles Darwin, sailing to strange lands in the Beagle, was stor- ing up the results of his researches into life and growth, which later were to find expression in a theory that was to startle, antagonize, and finally readjust the opinions of the world. The revolution in political and intellectual thought that marked this especial period, extended also to mechanical production. As intelligence widens, men endeavor to free themselves from the deadly drudgery of labor, believing it to be better for themselves and the world to be able to make a thousand shingles a minute in a Western steam sawmill than to expend a lifetime making lace by hand in the dark cellars of Belgium. The Jacquard loom and Cartwright's power-loom which opened the Nineteenth Century, and Arkwright's spinning- frame which closed the eighteenth, were developed almost out of the recognition of their inventors before the half century was completed ; machinery was introduced into every branch of weaving and cloth-printing, and the price of manufactured material lessened as the ease of production improved. In 1846 Elias Howe's invention of the sewing- machine revolutionized hand-sewing, from shoes to carpets, and from dresses to harnesses, while labor-saving in ma- 196 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. chinery was followed by pain-saving in sickness. For the discovery of ether by Dr. Morton of Boston in 1846, and of chloroform by Waldie of LiverjDool in 1847, did actually, as Mr. Wallace says, " rob the surgeon's knife of its terrors, and make it possible to save more lives by surgery than by any other branch of medicine." The revolution in surgery and the saving power of anaesthetics, which were the record of the years between 1845 ^rid 1850, can scarcely be over- estimated or really understood by those of to-day who share the blessings of this life-saving agent. So into all departments of life and thought, of endeavor and achievement, of government and action, the spirit of new methods found entrance in the era of revolution which closed the first half of the Nineteenth Century ; and the people of the world, though still wanting in real brother- hood, and isolated in communities and conscience, were, nevertheless, coming nearer and nearer together, as through success and failure, through rivalries and conciliations, through radicalism and conservatism, they struggled up- ward toward the light which in 1850 burned so much clearer, brighter, and stronger than in 1 800. It was James Russell Lowell, a prophetic and truth- loving young American poet, who in 1845 sent out a mes- sage and a plea to his fellow-men which voiced much of this strenuous revolution in manners, methods, and morals : — " For mankind are one in spirit and an instinct bears along, Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong; Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame; — In the gain or loss of one race, all the rest have equal claim. HOW THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING Ul'. 1 97 New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth, They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth ; Lo ! before us gleam her camp-fires 1 We ourselves must Pilgrims be ; Launch our Mayflower and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key." " The regenerator of Italy, and one of the greatest of modern statesmen, Cavour led the way in two of the tnost salutary re7>olutions that have taken place in t/ie history of t/ie world, and deserves to be gratefully remembered not only as a true patriot, but as one of the benefactors of man- kind." Thomas Kirkup. THE AGE OF C A FOUR. Nationality. {1850-1860.) COUNT DI CAl^OUK {Cami/lo Benso), REGENERATOR OF ITALY, Born Turin, Italy, August 10, iSro, Died Turin, Italy, June 6, 1801. CHAPTER XII. ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE, {From rSjo to /8jj.) " T^HE portal of the Future," as we know it, may well 1 be placed at the year 1850. A half-century of endeavor had opened up new fields of effort and achieve- ment, into which the earnest workers of the world were passing through the open door of opportunity. Commercial activity and gold-getting are as foremost in the vanguard of progress as philanthropy and brotherly love ; war has been as great a world-developer as peace ; and conquest has borne improvement in its train, even though booty and blood made selfishness more odious and greed more brutal. We cannot always divorce pain from progress. Fifty years had made a notable change in the history and environment of mankind. The warring elements were still unloosed, and the millennium seemed as far away as ever ; but " the cross that turns not back " had gone steadily forward, and ChristiaJnity, the pronounced foe to isolation, was still, as in the early day, "a light to lighten the Gentiles," as new spheres of energy lay open to the hands and feet of men. The discovery of gold in California in 1848, and the greedy rush that followed that epoch-making event, were mighty factors in the development and diffusion of Western 203 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. civilization. By 1850 one hundred thousand men had found their way by the route of the Isthmus of Panama or across the plains into that exaggerated El Dorado ; and the territorial limit of population was so exceeded that on the ninth of September, 1850, California was admitted to the Union, — the thirty-first State to be made from the great area into which, in less than sixty years, the American republic had expanded. In India, British possession stretched from the Coro- mandel Coast to the Himalayas ; and the queen of England ruled, by governors and viceroys, over an area equal in extent to all of Europe and a population of more than one hundred and ninety million subjects. England now had colonial possessions in every part of the globe. In Europe, in North and South America, in Africa, Asia, Australasia, and Oceanica, she ruled over possessions covering eight milhon square miles and two hundred and fifty million inhabitants. France, Spain, Por- tugal, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden, also had colonial possessions, but their combined possessions, alike in area and population, amounted to less than one-fourth of the immense holdings of Great Britain, which, in 1850, covered one-sixth of the land surface of the globe, and included one-sixth of the inhabitants of Earth. In this list of foreign land-holders Germany and the United States, Russia, Austria, and Italy, of the great powers of the world were missing. But in 1850 Germany was not yet really Germany ; it was a loosely joined and irre- sponsible bunch of kingdoms and principalities and duchies, of which Prussia was the largest and most influential ; but the princes and powers of Germany had enough to do ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 203 to evolve out of their huniiliati(jn at the hands of Napoleon the wonderful path to power and nationality which was yet before them. Indeed, in the struggle for recognition, even Prussia in 1850 was but second best ; for the Deutscher Bund, or Germanic Confederation of the forty-seven Ger- man independent states that had once comprised the " Holy Roman Empire " destroyed by Napoleon, had made an Austrian rather than a German prince its head or regent. So Germany had neither time nor desire for foreign colo- nization; Austria had all it could attend to in keeping in- tact the military colonies established on her eastern borders as " buffers " to Russia and Turkey ; Russia had her hands full with Siberia and her Asiatic boundaries ; and Italy, torn by political and papal feuds, and unsuccessful in the Revo- lution of 1848, was virtually disunited — a fief of Austria and the Pope of Rome, save where, in the fair regions about the Lake of Geneva, he who was Duke of Savoy and King of Sardinia waited the hour when he could strike once again for the liberation of Italy. As for the United States, that constantly expanding Republic had more than enough territory of its own on hand to occupy itself at home without reaching out for "foreign" possessions. True, she had. in 18 16, evinced a desire to occupy the island of Lampedusa, in the Mediter- ranean, said to be the original of Shakspere's island in " The Tempest," in order to gain a foothold in Europe ; but American statesmen saw the wisdom of Napoleon's criticism. "What fools those Americans are!" said the exiled conqueror at Saint Helena. "They, who can do what they please in one half of the globe, why should they wish 204 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. to hold a worthless little island which will certainly em- broil them with the European powers," So, returning to Washington's farewell advice, the Re- public occupied itself with its own vast domain, and colon- ized itself at home. For the method in which the United States provided for the " continuous western advance of new settlements," was, in itself, a pronounced system of colonization, — a logical fulfilment of that "unexampled energy and capacity for colonization " which has ever marked the development of the English-speaking race. But while the English-speaking race was cementing its nationalities a new era, inspired by this same desire for nationahty came, in 1850, to the other nations of the world. Germany, where, as Balzac observes, "everything goes slowly and gravely," was, in spite of Austrian pre- dominance, cautiously feeling her way toward this inevi- table fact. In 1850 the "League of the Three Kings," consisting of Prussia, Saxony, and Hanover, determined to act independently of Austria, and called together a national parliament at Erfurt. Thereupon Austria protested, and, seeking the further humiliation of Prussia, proposed to the rulers of Saxony, Wiirtemberg, Bavaria, and Hanover, the " League of the Four Kings," which should " crowd out " Prussia, and continue Austria in the ascendency. Austria won the day, but it was only a temporary victory ; for, out of the slow work of conference and diet, the stronger spirit of that nationality was born, which, in time, consolidated Germany, and made her the mighty power in Europe that she is to-day. It was in enslaved and divided Italy, however, that the spirit of nationality was first to display itself in Continental ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 205 Europe. There, at Turin, in the little court of young Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia and Savoy, an energetic man of forty was offered and accepted a position in the king's cabinet. His name was Camillo Benso di Cavour. With his entrance upon the field of Italian politics a new era for Italy, and, indeed, for the world, was opened, and the age of Cavour, of union and nationality, began. Under his cautious but statesman-like lead the kingdom of Sardinia rose to a foremost place among the states of Italy ; and when, in 1852, he became prime minister of Sardinia, he became also virtual ruler of his country, and slowly but surely paved the way for the regeneration of Italy and the nationality of that race which, in the " brave days of old," had made Rome mistress of the world. But the days of 1850 were not those of old Rome. Races were consolidating instead of being conquered, and whoever tried to be master or mistress could neither play the part of Caesar nor fill the role of imperial Rome. True, there were those who tried it ; but the Nineteenth Century knew but one Napoleon — and him it overthrew and cast aside. In France, however, the "nephew of his uncle" essayed this dangerous act; the "toadstool" of Victor Hugo's simile essayed to play the part of the oak ; the " prince- president of France," as his Corsican uncle before him had been, strove first for the throne of France, and then for the dictatorship of Europe and the world ; and while the world watched anxiously, and patriots were divided be- tween hope and fear, the ancient fable of the ox and the frog told by wise old Aesop was once again displa}ed to the world — to end even as did Aesop's fable. 2o6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. In December, 1848, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was elected president of France for four years. "Those who accuse me of ambition," he declared, "little know my heart." In December, 185 1, three years from the day when he had sworn to support and defend the republic, Louis Napo- leon Bonaparte flung aside the constitution he was pledged to obey, and by that favorite act of a despot known as a coup d'etat — or stroke of state — with the army at his back, overthrew the government, trampled on the con- stitution, and demanded of the French people his election as prince-president for ten years. And the French people, terrorized into obedience, elected him ! "I will remain chained to the wheel," Louis Napoleon Bonaparte grandiloquently announced, " if I cannot prevent the ship from drifting to destruction." Paris rose in revolt ; but the bayonets of the army bloodily quelled the insurrection, and one year later, on the eighth of December, 1852, the Senate of France re- stored the Empire, and declared the prince-president heredi- tary Emperor of France under the title of Napoleon III. The toadstool had shot up wondrously ; the frog was swelling to great proportions ! "Liberty," said the new Emperor, "never helped to make a durable political edifice ; it can only crown a political edifice which time has consolidated." And thus he proposed to consolidate ! But, though thus " railroaded " into the supreme control, all France did not agree to this "act of the people ;" and thoughtful men the world over scarcely echoed the fervid words of that over-wrought English poet, Elizabeth Barrett ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 20/ Browning, who thought she saw in this new Napoleon another deliverer of Italy : " Emperor, emperor I From the centre to the shore, From the Seine back to the Rhine, Stood eight millions up and swore By their manhood's right divine So to elect and legislate This man should renew the line Broken in a strain of fate And leagued kings at Waterloo When the people's hands let go ; Emperor Evermore." In equally fervid language, however, did Victor Hugo, the overwrought patriot, protest. "What!" he exclaimed; "is it this Bonaparte who has consummated this disaster ? Is it in the centre of the greatest people of the world, in the middle of the greatest century of history, that this man has arisen and triumphed ? . . . What the lion would not have dared, the ape has done ! What the eagle would have feared to seize in his talons the parrot has clutched in its claws ! — In one single day, between the dark and the dawn, the absurd has become possible ; axioms have become chimeras, and every- thing that was a lie has become a living fact . . . God was marching onward ; and Louis Bonaparte, with plume on head, threw himself across the path and said to God 'Thou shalt go no farther ! ' And God has stopped." " But do you imagine that this is so .-* " he concluded. ... " You do not hear, in the shadow beyond, that muf- fled sound ! You do not hear some one moving backward 208 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. and forward ! You do not see that the breathing of that which is behind makes the canvas tremble ! " And time proved that the patriot was more of a prophet than the poet. But, before that bitter day, the poet's dream was first to come true, when the Emperor Napoleon posed as the de- liverer of Italy. " When a deed is done for freedom," as Lowell says, that deed is really an expression of advancing thought. Politics and patriotism were not the only factors in the triumph of nationality. The explorer and the reformer helped on in the development equally with the statesman and the soldier. In 1850 the explorer was abroad; the reformer was pressing for action. Sir John Franklin, the Englishman, hunting for that baffling Northwest Passage, had for five years been lost in Arctic ice ; and Captain Robert McClure, the Irishman, searching for the lost Sir John, discovered, on October 26, 1850, from the heights of Point Russell, a (if not the) northwest passage, by which one might go from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But Sir John Franklin and his daring comrades were never found alive. In 1849 David Livingstone, the intrepid missionary, bearing alike the cross and the medicine-chest, penetrated into the un- known regions of South Africa, and discovered the lakes which are the central drainage-point of that still disputed part of the "dark continent." Livingstone's brothers of the cross were also enlarging the field of missionary endeavor, and, notwithstanding sec- tarian differences and denominational jealousies, were doing yoeman service for civilization and progress. Undeterred ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 209 by privation or hardship, faithful even in the face of death, the true men and women who in the mid-years of the cen- tury were going up and down the world in the cause of Christian civilization, even though often mistaken in methods, tactless in action, and hampered by unworthy associates, were alike world-redeeming and epoch-making pioneers of progress ; and, as Dr. Maclear well says, " the reflex influence of their lives and self-denial has told upon the church at home, while, apart from their influence, the entire history of important portions of the world's surface would have been altered." The efforts of these agents of progress were needed ; for other agents were also progressing along more sordid and selfish Hnes. All the civilized nations, so-called, were knocking at the door of the " uncivilized," seeking, de- manding, and often forcing an entrance, in the interest of trade and profit. Already had England secured a foothold upon the long- forbidden land of China. Hong Kong was a regularly ceded and occupied English possession ; Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai were, by treaty, opened to British trade and British consuls. France and the United States also secured admittance into certain ports, and, gradually, missionaries and merchants found entrance into the " Flowery Kingdom." But in 1850 the Emperor Taou-Kwang, who was lib- eral in his views, and favored the better acquaintance of the West and the East, died ; his son, who succeeded, him, was rash, narrow-minded, and dissolute, and hated Europeans ("Western devils," as he called them) quite as heartily as he loved to oppress his people. There- 2IO THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. upon the people rebelled, and, even as their Western brothers had done, demanded relief. In August, 1850, this discontent broke into open insurrection ; and a wedge of southern provinces of the empire, uniting, under a self-raised leader of great ability, Hung-sew-tseuen by- name, changed insurrection to rebellion, and threatened the existence of the long-established Tartar dynasty. Hung-sew's followers termed themselves tai-pings, or "princes of peace ;" and their leader, having acquired a smattering of Christian teaching, promulgated a sort of spurious Christianity, and declared himself a heavenly mes- senger, sent for the regeneration of China. The people flocked to his standard ; almost all of Eastern China fell before his victorious advance ; and in 1852, in the captured city of Nanking, the Tai-ping chief declared himself Em- peror of China, under the title of Teen-wang — the heav- enly king. Thus did the half-understood teachings of Christian missionaries, and the crude demands of the people for independence, learned from foreign contact, well-nigh overturn the great conservative empire. For fourteen years the Tai-ping rebellion continued, and its results did much to bring about the threatened "break up" in China at the end of the century. In 1853 Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, a vet- eran of the naval war of 1812, with an American squadron opened the doors of Japan to civilization and progress. For centuries that secluded island empire had held the world at bay, refusing alike trade and communication to Europe and America. But America believed that the time had arrived to enforce some recognition of com- mercial and international rights ; and Commodore Perry, ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE, 211 armed with a letter from the president of the United States, conducted himself in so friendly and diplomatic a manner that the barriers of Japanese exclusiveness were fairly broken down, and a treaty of commercial alliance was' concluded between the empire of Japan and the republic of the United States. Thus, in their several ways, did the Anglo-Saxon race open the doors of the Orient, and, in the mid-years of the Nineteenth Century, bring about the neighborlincss of the world. But neighbors are not always friendly, and, even in families, dissensions and differences appear. In the year 1852 three great men died, — WelUngton, the conqueror of Napoleon, and Webster and Clay, the mighty " Unionists " of America. Their deaths ushered in a new dispensation. In England, indeed in all Europe, militarism, of which Wellington had been the chief expo- nent, gave place to popular government, and in America concession yielded to the demand for a surer nationality. " His voice is silent in your council-hall Forever," wrote Tennyson, in his magnificent ode on the death of the Great Duke, " Yet, remember, all, He spoke among you, and the Man who spoke ; Who never sold the truth, to serve the hour, Nor paltered with Eternal God for power; Who let the turbid streams of rumor flow Through either babbling world of high or low; Whose life was work, whose language rife With rugged maxims hewn from life; Who never spoke against a foe ; 212 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke All great self-seekers trampling on the right ; Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named; Truth-lover was our Enghsh Duke ; Whatever record leaps to light He never shall be shamed." And in America, where, in 1852, Henry Clay, "the great pacificator," and Daniel Webster, the "expounder of the Constitution," dropped from their exalted places in the ranks of the living, their efforts and services for the Union they so passionately loved are remembered by the republic for whose integrity they labored, and they are accorded foremost places in the rank of historic Americans. " We may put aside," said (even as I write this chapter in my " story ") the junior senator from the great State which Daniel Webster so nobly represented in his migh- tiest days, — " we may put aside all his other achievements, all his other claims to remembrance, and inscribe alone upon the base of his statue the words uttered in the Sen- ate, ' Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and insepa- rable.' ... No other words are wanted for a man who so ably represented and so expressed the faith and hopes of a nation." But, with the deaths of Clay and Webster, the dissen- sions in the American family, no longer to be checked by pacificator or orator, waxed hotter as the conscience of the North and the necessities of the South were drawn into insistent antagonism. Henry Clay's last act of pacification was the Compro- mise of 1850, which, so people hoped, by a little giving up on either side and a little supposed benefit to both sides, ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 213 would bring within the borders of the republic peace and good will to men. But one of those concessions to the South was the hate- ful Fugitive Slave Law. The North was justly indignant at this most un-American invasion of its rights and liberties ; on the other hand, the South, committed to slavery, with its money invested in this human property and dependent upon maintaining it, could see only injustice, bigotry, and un- friendliness in the growing annimosity of the North. In the very year that Henry Clay died, in 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published " Uncle Tom's Cabin." That remarkable and timely book lifted the slavery crusade out from the little company of Abolitionist agitators, and made it a world-stirring question of humanity and philanthropy ; "beyond any other single influence," says Mr. Merriam, "it planted in the men and women of the North a deep and passionate hostility to human slavery." The influence of this book upon the times, as Professor Bates says, "can hardly be estimated." It touched not only the land of its birth, it went to every land ; ten thou- sand copies a day were sold in London ; it was translated into twenty-five languages and tongues, and is still, to-day, the most widely-read novel in the English language, even though the age it helped to create has long since passed, and the style of its telling has been superseded by better literary art. Literature, indeed, in the opening " fifties " was making an imperishable mark upon the world. In 1850 Alfred Tennyson published " In Memoriam," of which Dr. Van Dyke declares that " it is hardly too much to say that ' In Memoriam ' stands out, in present vision, as the most illus- 214 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. trious poem of the century. Certainly, he adds, "it has been the most frequently translated, the most widely quoted, and the most deeply loved." To us, who read the steadily progressing story of the Nineteenth Century, with all its strivings toward higher endeavor and loftier achievement, this " English classic on the love of immortahty and the immortality of love," as it has so well been described, contains an even nobler note of progress and performance as the poet heard the New Year chimes that, from an English church tower, " rang in " the year 1850, — the close of our half-century, the opening of a new and still more glorious half. Take down your "Ten- nyson," and turning to the one hundred and fifth section of " In Memorian " read again those noble verses, fitting accompaniment for the vigil of every one who in hope and trust and faith "sees the New Year in." " Ring out a slowly dying cause And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace." There was need for that New Year wish in 1850. The old cause of tyranny was indeed slowly dying; the "sweeter manners," however, were as slow in coming. But science and invention were grappling with the " old shapes of foul disease," even while the " narrowing lust of gold " was seeking out the newly occupied quarters of the globe, and the " thousand years of peace " seemed scarcely yet ready to begin. ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 21$ But the " neighborliness of the world " of which I have spoken was already beginning to display itself. In 1851 there was opened in London, or rather in what was then its "marvellous Crystal Palace," the International Exhibi- tion of 185 I. " Not merely national in its scope and bene- fits," so said Prince Albert, the truly "princely" husband of Queen Victoria, " but comprehensive of the whole world." There had been Industrial Exhibitions before that half- century year. The French had inaugurated the idea, and had, before 185 1, held at least eleven such expositions, between 1798 and 1849. But these were national rather than international. The exhibition of 1851 was the first to bring together in the peaceful rivalry of "show" the products and manufactures of the world. A great building of glass and iron — hence called the "Crystal Palace " — was erected in Hyde Park, two miles from the heart of the city ; eighteen acres were set aside for the display ; and the exhibition building, covering a space of a million square feet, was divided into four great depart- ments — raw material, machinery, manufactures, and fine arts. One-half of the space was given to England and her colonies, and one-half to foreign countries. The value of the goods exhibited exceeded eight million dollars ; and the famous exhibition was opened by Queen Victoria on the first of May, 185 1, closing on the eleventh of October of the same year. It was a noble enterprise ; and its success led to similar attempts by other great nations of the world, notably France, Austria, and the United States, gradually growing in extent, magnificence, and value, as a commer- cial and peaceful educator, until they culminated in the 2l6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. great Paris Exhibition of 1900, which came as the fitting consummation of the genius, progress, and achievement of the Nineteenth Century. But the friendly rivalries of production did not soften the sterner rivalries of power. In Eastern Europe an "inevitable conflict" was preparing, where Turkey, the " sick man of the East," obstructed the pathway of Russian expansion. For centuries Russia had looked forward to the posses- sion of Constantinople and the sea-coast of Turkey ; noth- ing but the jealous watchfulness of Western Europe has prevented this absorption of a ruined and wasted portion of one of the earth's fairest regions ; the "balance of power " — that vague and useless principle of European arrange- ment, to which England was so long pledged, and for which it has so often fought — decreed that a weak power rather than a strong one should control the eastern shores of the Mediterranean ; and Turkey was maintained in her " lordly heritage," which, by neglect, despotism, and brutality, she reduced to stagnation and decay — a Nineteenth Century anomaly. The position of Turkey in this age of progress is one of the few remaining relics of that age of Militarism, fitly dominated by Wellington, the soldier, who stoutly maintained that Turkey must be kept as a weak and " assisted " nation in order to sustain the balance of power in Europe. Into this condition of affairs came the new Emperor of France — the third Napoleon, sometimes called the Little. He declared that the Roman Catholic pilgrims to the birth- place of Christ should have a key to the chief door of the church of Bethlehem just as the Greek Christians had. ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 217 Now, Bethlehem, as did all Palestine, belonged to the Sultan of Turkey ; the Emperor of Russia was a Greek Christian ; but when Napoleon insisted on what he termed the rights of his church, the Sultan, sorely pressed, said he should have the key. In February, 1853, the key was given, whereupon the Czar Nicholas said the rights of the Greek Church had been invaded, and insisted that the Christian population of Turkey should be placed under his guardianship and protection. This would have been giving Russia the footing she desired in Turkey. The Sultan sought the advice of Eng- land, France, Austria, and Prussia ; they told the Turkish despot to tell the Russian despot to mind his own business. This refusal made the Czar angry ; and he at once marched an army — not into Palestine, but into the Turkish prov- inces along the Danube, " to insure the restoration of our rights," that is, the sole possession of the key to the great front door of the Church at Bethlehem. Then Turkey declared war against Russia. England, fearful lest the success of Russia should lead to the occu- pation and control of the eastern Mediterranean, — her way to India, — protested, and secretly encouraged Turkey. Napoleon, welcoming the opportunity to prove his rights to his name, and to avenge the disgrace of the retreat from Moscow, openly encouraged the Turks. The old- time foemen and rivals, England and France, allied them- selves to save Turkey for Europe ; and when, in Novem- ber, 1853, a Russian fleet destroyed a Turkish fleet in the Black Sea, France and England declared that it was hostile to the peace of Europe for a Russian warship to sail the Black Sea, and sent their own warships through the Bosporus 2l8 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. into the Black Sea, made an alliance with Turkey, and on the twenty-eighth of March, 1854, declared war against Russia. Once more there was strife in Europe. To this conflict has been given the name of the Crimean War, because the chief stronghold of Russia on the Black Sea was at the port of Sebastopol on the Russian penin- sula known as the Crimea. Armies were despatched to this point ; the French and English marched side by side ; and had there been abso- lute agreement between the leaders, Sebastopol would have speedily been won. But there were delays which enabled the Russians to strengthen their defences and increase their army ; and the famous siege of Sebastopol began. Great battles accompanied this siege. Alma was fought, and the allies won ; Balaklava was fought, and the allies won ; Inkerman was fought, and the alUes won. But still Sebastopol held out, ably defended by Todleben, the only great soldier of the bloody Crimean War. And at Balaklava, on the twenty-fifth of October, 1854, occurred that miserable mistake in orders by which " the noble six hundred " rode to death and fame in the ever- glorious cavalry " Charge of the Light Brigade," which Tennyson has made immortal : — " ' Fonvard ! the Light Brigade I ' Was there a man dismayed ? Not though the soldier knew Some one had blundered. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die, Into the Valley of Death Rode the six hundred." ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 219 So 1855 came around with the world at war again; but, out of it, with misery came heroism ; with resistance came regeneration ; with horror came courtesies and ame- lioration ; for the Crimean War was responsible for Florence Nightingale, whose unselfish devotion knew neither friend nor foe ; whose shadow on the wall the grateful soldiers would kiss even in their suffering ; and whose efforts revo- lutionized the horrors of military hospitals, and led to the Red Cross service of this gentler day of " malice toward none and charity to all." The Crimean War led, also, in December, 1854, to a stronger alliance between the western powers of Europe, and brought' to the front, as the representative of the little kingdom of Sardinia, the great man of the age, the leader in the struggle for nationality, Camillo, Count di Cavour, prime minister of Victor Emmanuel, and regenerator of Italy. CHAPTER XIII. HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. (From i8^j to i860.) THE year 1855 opened with cold and sickness in the camp of the aUies, and with the twin towers of the Malakoff and the Redan still standing impregnable above the defences of Sebastopol. Thus stood, too, throughout the world, in that year of 1855, other twin towers, seemingly impregnable, relics of the days of barbarism and despotism. Even, as in Egypt and the East, the stick-plough and the shadoof of Abraham's time were still used in farming, so, in civilized lands, cer- tain institutions of the days of patriarchial barbarism still survived, unmolested. There was slavery in progressive America, and serfdom in veneered Russia ; labor was still disenfranchised in phil- anthropic England, and popular rights were disregarded in revolutionary France ; absolutism still held sway in liberal Germany, and Austria's clutch still lay stern and unyield- ing upon the throat of trampled Italy ; intemperance and pauperism .still walked hand in hand throughout the world, and all alliances for mutual protection and mutual benefit seemed alike powerless to resist and impotent to reform. Gradually, however, the trenches of the allies drew closer and closer to the Russian works ; disease and in- competency, to be sure, wasted the allied ranks, but they TYPES OF THE / Thiers AGE OF CAVOUR i l\wi^r°"'' Nai'oi.eon III \'n.TOKIA Tennyson HUW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 221 never relaxed their stubborn grip upon besieged Sebastopol. Austria, fearful for its eastern boundaries, joined the alli- ance against Russia ; and the Count Cavour, with the for- tunes of Italy in his hands, boldly and shrewdly pledged the little kingdom of Sardinia to the same alliance, and secured for himself the friendship of England and France, so necessary to his patriotic plans. In September, 1855, the twin towers of the Malakoff and the Redan fell before the allied assaults ; Sebastopol was evacuated, and the Crimea lay at the mercy of the allies. Crushed by the weight of his disasters and the failure of his plans, the Czar Nicholas died of a broken heart — and the stubborn cause of despotism seemingly died with him. The defeat of Russia in the Crimean War was her salvation rather than her disgrace. The new Czar, Alexander II., making a virtue of necessity, accepted proposals of peace, and the war came to an end by the treaty of Paris on the twenty-fifth of February, 1856. Thus was Russia, at an enormous cost of life and treasure to Eastern and Western Europe, prevented from deciding the fate of Turkey ; the " sick man," upheld by Western bayonets, still sat at the gateway to the East, a disgrace to civilization, and the " Eastern question " was far from settled. England, through her " unpreparedness " and blunders, lost a certain amount of military prestige. France, to satisfy the ambitions of her Emperor, had accomplished little except to annoy Prussia, irritate Aus- tria, and dissatisfy England, in a war which had not been brilliant, and which, at an enormous cost, had accomplished little for France. Out of it all one man, only, came forth as victor — the Count Cavour. 222 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. This shrewd and far-seeing statesman had accompHshed his purpose ; he had forced the great powers of Europe to recognize and include Sardinia as a " power ; " he had aroused the interest of Europe by the courage of the Sar- dinians in the battle of the Tchernaya ; and, admitted to the Congress at Paris, he had presented the grievances of Italy so strongly that both England and France were forced to acknowledge the justice of his cause ; and Italy suddenly awoke to the fact that she " had found a man " — a statesman who, as Mr. Kirkup declares, was "capable of commanding at once the confidence of Italy and the respect of Europe." As to the "key to the front door" of the birthplace of Christ at Bethlehem, which had unlocked the temple of war, I cannot find that its ownership was decided by the treaty of Paris ; but as to-day the great fortress-like Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem seems to be the joint property of the Greek, Latin, and Armenian Chris- tians, it is possible that the saintly usurper Napoleon III. had his way. He had his way for a while in other things. Because Austria seemed for the time the better ally to " tie to," Great Britain appeared to be more friendly to Austria than to France ; and Cavour was determined to defy Austria. So the great Italian turned to France. He found Louis Napoleon ready to listen and advise ; when the time came for action, the wily Emperor of the French was ready also to act. He was constantly, as Madame Mohl declared, "attempting little cojips d'etat;" and this time he was ready to try one both on Austria and Italy ! HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 223 Cavour, knowing how much Itahan nationahty depended upon his shrewdness, "made up " to the Emperor Napoleon ; for he knew that he must have the help of one of the great powers if he wished successfully to defy Austria. So, while seeking the sympathy of England, he strove for the open assistance of France ; he knew that Russia, because of the Crimean War, was jealous and suspicious of Austria ; that Prussia was trying to overcome the influence of Aus- tria in the German states, and that Hungary, never for- getting its humiliation, was discontented and restless. He had secured the aid of France ; if he could also make friends for Sardinia of all the rivals of Austria, and could get the good will of England, his success seemed assured. The Sardinian army had made a good record in the Cri- mean War ; Cavour strengthened and improved it ; and Austria, seeing that the army was altogether too large for so small a kingdom as Sardinia, grew uneasy and protested. Thereupon Cavour pushed his plans ; and by a tempting offer of new territory for France, even the king Victor Emmanuel's own homeland of Savoy, he drew the willing Napoleon into his scheme ; and at Plombieres, a watering- place in southern France, in the fall of 1858, he so worked with the Emperor Napoleon, that an alliance against Austria was agreed upon. On New Year's Day, 1859, ^^e Emperor Napoleon HI. sprung his little mine on Austria. He followed the ex- ample of his famous uncle, in 1S03, and openly insulted the Austrian ambassador at a public reception, just as the greater Napoleon had served the English ambassador, and for the same purpose — war. War came speedily. On the twenty-third of April, 224 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 1859, Austria demanded the immediate disarmament of the Sardinian forces; and this, of course, being refused, within three days the Austrian army crossed the Ticino into Sardinian territory. At once Napoleon declared war on Austria, proclaiming it as his purpose to expel Austria from Italy. King Victor Emmanuel, in the Sardinian parliament, said, "We are not insensible to the cry of suffering that rises to us from so many parts of Italy ; " and the purpose of Cavour to liberate and regenerate Italy seemed near to accomplishment. The world thrilled at this new blow for liberty ; and, as it heard Napoleon's declaration that he would make Italy free from the Alps to the Apennines, the world believed him ; for the fox wore the lion's skin just then, and the world really believed him to be a lion. He came into Italy as commander-in-chief ; King Victor Emmanuel, the real soldier, served as his second ; and the allied forces of France and Italy flung themselves on the Austrians, and defeated them at Montebello, and Magenta, and Solferino ; the puppet princes, set up by Austria, fled for their lives ; Venice was threatened ; Northern Italy was freed from the Austrian yoke ; and when, on the eighth of June, 1859, Napoleon III. and Victor Emmanuel rode into Milan at the head of a conquering army, and Lombardy was declared annexed to Sardinia — or the kingdom of Savoy, as it was sometimes called — the lovers of liberty and progress flung their caps in the air, and the most of them, at that moment, echoed Mrs- Browning's praises: " Shout for France and Savoy 1 Shout for the helper and doer; HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 22$ Shout for the good sword's ring, Shout for the thought still truer. Shout for the spirits at large Who passed for the dead this spring, Whose living glory is sure. Shout for France and Savoy 1 Shout for the council and charge ! Shout for the head of Cavour ; And shout for the heart of a King, That's great with a nation's joy. Shout for France and Savoy 1 Ay, it is He Who rides at the King's right hand 1 Leave room for his horse and draw to the side, Nor press too near in the ecstasy Of a newly-delivered, impassioned land. He is moved, you see. He, who has done it all 1 They call it a cold, stern face, But this is Italy Who rises in her place — For this he fought in his youth, Of this he dreamed in the past. The lines of the resolute mouth Tremble a little at last. Cry, he has done it all I Emperor Evermore." Yet this was the man — "he who had done it all " — who, after the welcoming plaudits of Milan and the triumph of Solferino — in which, however, so even French histo- rians to-day declare, " the command-in-chief was below the proper level " — this was the man who, two weeks after Solferino, without a word to his trusting ally of Sardinia, or his superior in statecraft, Cavour, secretly met the Em- peror Francis Joseph of Austria, at Villa Franca, near 226 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Verona, and there signed a treaty of peace that set the world a-wondering and enraged the patriots of Italy. It was another of Napoleon's little coups d'etat. And where was Italy .-* The peace of Villa Franca stopped the triumphant course of Italian independence, gave only Lombardy to Victor Emmanuel (and that not , directly, but as a gift through Napoleon), made the Pope of Rome head of an Italian" confederation which left out Southern Italy, and gave back to the puppets of Austria two of their richest provinces, Austria was, of course, humiliated by this treaty, but only in a trifling way ; Italy and Victor Emmanuel were even more bitterly humiliated ; even France was not satis- fied with its Emperor's actions ; and when the Italian provinces of Nice and Savoy were practically seized by France, the Italian patriots were roused to a hot indigna- tion against their "deliverer," and Garibaldi, the radical revolutionist, took the field. Cavour refused to sign the treaty, and resigned as prime minister ; but when he saw that, even with all this disap- pointment, Italy had really been the gainer, that the power of Austria in the peninsula was really broken, and that he could still hold in his grasp the destiny of Italy, he returned to his post, and again took up his life-work — the liberation and unity of all Italy. The world was puzzled at the new move of the sphinx- like Emperor of the French at Villa Franca : he liked to be called " the sphinx," he was always so mysterious. Palmerston, the prime minister of England, did not be- lieve in Napoleon's Italian plans, and openly said so. HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 22/ " The emperor's mind is as full of schemes," he said, "as a warren is full of rabbits; but his plans will never satisfy the reasonable wishes of the Italian people." The rest of the civilized world felt so too ; and from America, after the bafiliing peace of Villa F'ranca, came this warning pica for patience from that wise young prophet, Lowell : " Wait a little; do we not wait ? Louis Napoleon is not Fate ; Francis Joseph is not Time ; There's One hath swifter feet than Crime. Wait, we say : our years are long ; Men are weak, but Man is strong; Since the stars first curved their rings We have looked on many things. Great wars come and great wars go, Wolf-tracks light on polar snow ; We shall see him come and gone, This second-hand Napoleon. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin 1 Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever I In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever." "Do wc not wait .?" asked the prophet -poet in America of impatient Europe. We had waited long in America, as through the years the cause of freedom halted just short of fulfilment. Nearer and nearer drew the two opposing ideas which for years, honestly believed in and honestly upheld, had lived under the shelter of the stars and stripes — liberty and slavery. More and more strenuously as the people saw both justice and strength in the demand of the North, 228 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, was the limiting of slavery demanded. " No more slave States ! " was the cry. In 1856 the question came to a crisis over the partition of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska as material for new States in the Federal Union. Should those new States be opened to slavery or not .<* was the query to be ans- wered. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, passed by Congress in 1854, left it to the people of the two territories to decide the question for themselves. At once the pro-slavery and anti-slavery men made desperate efforts to gain control ; and emigration, especially into Kansas, which was the section most in dispute, led to an open contest that became almost a border war. After three years of this political and civil strife, however, the party of freedom won, and in 1861 Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free State. But before that day came, the results of the struggle had been something more than the question of freedom or slavery in Kansas. Compromise was broken down, politi- cal attitudes changed, and the national government was forced either to forbid or foster slavery. It could not be left as a question for individual States to consider and decide. Upon the complexion of the next administration, the settlement of this matter largely hung. Italy and Ger- many were fighting out the question, each in its own peculiar way. The republic of the United States must do the same — State Sovereignty or Nationality, which should it be ? The man who declared, " This government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free ; " the man who said, HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 229 " I do not expect the house to fall, but I expect it will cease to be divided " — Abraham Lincoln of Illinois — God's especial instrument for wisdom of choice and Amer- ican nationality, was elected president, and the inevitable conflict assumed a new and sterner stage. This choice and election were not brought about without disturbances and upheavals. Honest in their belief that slavery was not only right but necessary, the power in the Southern States, aided and abetted by sympathizers and supporters in the North, stubbornly and arrogantly com- bated the " awakening of the Northern conscience." Feud and fanaticism, riot and mob, vindictiveness and vituperation, hot heads on both sides, and the peace-at-any- price man between — all these increased and exaggerated the growing quarrel, which neither calm counsel nor con- servative compromise could longer restrain or settle. There is such a thing as nationalism of thought, where the best utterances and the best achievements of men unite all thinkers in a union of intellectual interest. There is no sectionalism in the "republic of letters." How much this diffusion of the best thought of the world helped toward the progress of nationality and the coming of freedom, it may be hard to say ; but certainl)' the de- cade between 1850 and i860 was the era of the highest productive thought yet reached in the world. German scholarship was teaching England and America to think rationally and not to accept blindly ; Hegel and Kant and Schelling, pioneers of progress in the early years of the century, were interpreted to the widely-growing class of readers and thinkers ; Goethe and Schiller, Fichte and Jean Paul, Madame de Stael and Rousseau, were widely 230 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. read in other than their own lands, and freedom of thought led to freedom of action. "The old is for slaves," declared Emerson, the American ; and while those who, as in every age, think the new of little value, and bemoan the fact that there are none to compare with the giants of the past, the young men of the present, upon whom all real advance always depends, were appreciating the fact that there are always giants in the "new dispensation." Certainly those years between 1850 and i860 were the high-water mark of intellectual activity. Then Dickens and Thackeray, Car- lyle and Ruskin, the Brownings and Tennyson, Trollope and Reade, Macaulay and Kingsley, were doing their best work in England. Darwin published his " Origin of Spe- cies " in 1859. Herbert Spencer began his great work in psychology and philosophy, and John Stuart Mill was emancipating philosophy from pedantry. Germany was prolific of great students, philosophers, scientists, and story- tellers, — Ranke and Mommsen, Curtius and Sybel, in his- tory ; Fischer and Ueberweg in philosophy ; Liibke in art ; Schmidt and Hettner in literary studies ; Strauss in theol- ogy ; Liebig and Virchow, Biichner and Helmholtz, in phys- iology and physics ; Freytag and Rueter in story-telling ; while Wagner, unsuccessfully attempting his new departure in music, was already preparing the way for what was after- ward accepted as "the music of the future." These all were doing brilliant work in Germany in 1859 ; while in France, Balzac, though dead, and Victor Hugo, though in exile, were still the literary giants, with the two Dumas, father and son, Gautier, Flaubert and George Sand, Sainte- Bueve and Taine, Guizot and Thiers and Michelet — names to add lustre and glory to the literary achievements of HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 23 1 France in poetry, fiction, and history, even as Cousin and Comte in philosophy, De Tocqueville, who left his work unfinished, and Renan, who was just commencing, Simon and De Remusat in philosophy and politics, with other stu- dents of wisdom and power, made the second empire rich in productive labors. In Russia, Turgenieff was the most prominent man of letters, as he was also the greatest of Russian novelists until overshadowed by the greater glory of Tolstoi' ; while across the sea in America, names dear to all lovers of English speech were holding the attention and the admiration of men and women, — Longfellow and Whittier, Holmes and Lowell, Bancroft and Motley and Prescott, Emerson and Margaret Fuller and Curtis, Haw- thorne the great story-teller, Ik Marvel and Dr. Holland, and others of lesser brilliancy but of equal temporary fame ; while Thoreau and Whitman, then unappreciated, were doing work which the future was to hail as great and en- shrine as immortal. Surely it was a wonderful ten years — that decade be- fore i860. It was great in other fields of effort and production. In 1855 Bessemer, the English engineer, dis- covered and perfected the modern method of making steel ; and that same year the great cataract of Niagara was spanned by its first suspension-bridge ; in 1857 and again in 185S the union of America and Europe by a submarine telegraph cable beneath the Atlantic Ocean was attempted, and on the twentieth of August, 1858, messages of congrat- ulation actually passed between the queen of England and the president of the United States ; but " some one had blundered " in the proper insulation of the wire, and the power of transmission gave out. In that same year of 232 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 1858 the mightiest of modern steamships, up to that time, was launched — the Great Eastern ; and Sartorius advo- cated the idea of introducing steam into war-vessels. In 1859 the Social Science Association, for the study of new economic, social, and political questions, was founded ; and the great railroad tunnel through Mount Cenis, to connect France and Italy, was begun ; Dr. Livingstone, at the head of an exploring expedition, was penetrating the mysteries of Central Africa; the Victoria Bridge at Montreal was opened in 1859. And John Brown, hung on the second of December, 1859, for " mvading the State of Virginia " at the head of an armed insurrection, expiated a criminal blunder of con- science by a heroic death, and stepped into the immortality of a questionable martyrdom. But John Brown's servile insurrection was not the only disturbance of that nature that distressed the world. Far across the sea, in the "expanded " sections of British India, a stupid blunder of English military red tape set the fires of rebellion aflame. The Hindoos of India, sprung from the Mussulman conquest of Asia, had the Mohammedan's religious scruples against pork. Certain of these had be- come soldiers in the British army's "native contingent," known as Sepoys ; but they were horrified and enraged when ordered to bite the cartridges, greased with ham fat, which were served out with the new Enfield rifle. As soon as possible the British military authorities did away with this offending method, but all too late ; their "fore- thought came afterward;" the harm had been done ; the caste-crushed, creed-bound Sepoy lost confidence in his British commander and overlords ; a frenzy of religious HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 233 fanaticism swept the native soldiers into revolt ; and Nana Sahib, a dethroned Indian prince and pensioner of England, raised the standard of rebellion ; hostile chiefs joined him ; the Sepoys at Meerut and Delhi and Cawnpore mutinied against their officers, and with savage cruelties massacred the men, women, and children of the hated blood of Europe. The horrors of the Sepoy mutiny are among the dark spots of the Nineteenth Century's story. All Central India was in revolt ; and Nana Sahib, attempting to set up a native government, was unable to command the storm he had raised. Gradually, however, British pluck and bravery triumphed ; the hastily collected British troops, led by the brave General Havelock, were everywhere victorious ; the mutiny was crushed out by vigorous and sometimes brutal measures ; and British dominion, which had at first been shaken almost to its very foundations by this unexpected revolt, was at last re-established. But the massacre at Cawnpore, the relief of Lucknow, and the siege of Delhi were three ever memorable happenings of this terrible mutiny ; while the story of Jessie Brown and the " Pipes of Lucknow " — "Oh I dinna ye hear the slogan far away?" has outlived even the gallant deeds of Havelock and the unshaken loyalty of the Sikhs. The spirit of true patriotism that was cementing the Christians of the West into sure nationalities was alto- gether lacking in the pagan East. Class and caste, which provoked the Sepoy mutiny, were the very things that condemned it to failure. Indeed, as Professor Seeley says, "the mutiny was in great measure put down by turning 234 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. the races of India against each other ; " and it is by making India Enghsh rather than keeping it Indian that Great Britain has strengthened and preserved her mighty power in Asia. So, throughout the world, the decade of 1850 to i860, which may justly be called the age of Cavour, or the era of nationality, was, even by its mistakes and failures, as by its successes, putting the despots down and exalting the nation-builders. For the failure of the Sepoy mutiny was the very best thing for modern India, released by British unity from the days of feud and despotism ; and the failure of John Brown strengthened both sides of the American contestants for the conflict that was now seen to be inevi- table. The efforts of Cavour and Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi in Italy inspired the world to equal efforts in unity and patriotism ; and the Russian overthrow in Sebas- topol had cemented that great nation into nobler endeavor, and aroused in the new Czar the desire to help rather than hinder his subjects by making them men instead of keeping them slaves. Those historic ten years were, therefore, forward-look- ing, forward-moving days. The thought of the world was broadening with its desires — perhaps because of them ; and an age that could create a Cavour, and bring forward a Lincoln, was doing mighty service for mankind and for all time. The age that could produce in one language alone, as did those then years, Macaulay's " England," Thackeray's "Pendennis," "Esmond," " Newcomes," and " Virginians," Dickens's " David Copperfield," Carlyle's "Frederick the Great," Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Bulwer Lytton's "My Novel," George Sands's HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 235 "Life," Tennyson's " In Memoriam," Max Miiller's "Com- parative Mythology," Buckle's " History of Civilization," George Eliot's " Adam Bcdc," Darwin's " Origin of Spe- cies," Emerson's " Representative Men," Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," Longfellow's "Hiawatha," and Holmes's "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," with other equally great though perhaps less popular books ; which could open Japan to commerce, probe the mysteries of darkest Africa, withstand the shock of savage rebellion in Asia, and pave the way for nationality and liberty in Europe and America ; which could attempt an Atlantic cable, open Parliament to the Jews, bring the world together in a great international exhibition, and range itself openly against oppression, bigotry, despotism, and greed — such an age as that had surely made for itself an imperishable record. " He carried the sorrcnvs of his country as truly as lie bore its burdens ; aiidw/ien he came to speak on the second immortal day at Gettysburg, he condensed into a Jew sentences the innermost meaning of the struggle and the victory in the life of tlu tuition." Hamilton Wright Mabie. THE AGE OF LINCOLN. Freedom. (1860-1870.) ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE EMA NCI PA TOR, Bom Nolins Creek, Kentucky, Feb. 12, 180Q, Died {{Washington, D.C., April 13, iSOj. CHAPTER XIV. HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. {From i860 to /86j.) IN the very month, May, i860, in which Garibaldi, the Italian patriot, wrested Sicily from the control of Aus- tria, and entered Palermo as a conqueror, Abraham Lincoln, the man of the people, was nominated for president of the United States. That month was the opening of a new era for the world — the era of freedom — the age of Lincoln. In that same year John Stuart Mill, the Englishman, published his famous essay " On Liberty." The three men may be said to represent the three phases or degrees of real freedom. For Garibaldi was a patriot by revolu- tion ; Mill was a patriot by theory ; Lincoln was a patriot by a stern but loving conservatism. And, of those three phases, the noble conservatism of Lincoln — which was based on his immortal words : " with malice toward none, with charity for all ; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right" — has best stood the test of time, and has been the keynote to the world's truest and surest progress. Accepting things as they were, not sulking because they were not as he wished to have them, Cavour returned to his post, and in January, i860, took his seat as president of the council in the new kingdom of Sardinia. That kingdom embraced, when he returned to office, Lombardy 239 240 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. and the original territory of the kingdom of Sardinia and Savoy. But to bring about release from Austria, Cavour had been compelled to pledge to Napoleon III., for French assistance, his own home province of Savoy, and the ad- joining one of Nice, the birthplace of Garibaldi, That was Louis Napoleon's love for Italian freedom ! This sacrifice, made by the house of Savoy to the Italian cause, raised a storm of indignation against Cavour ; but he was wiser than his critics ; he knew what concessions to the cause of independence were necessary, and he made them. Victor Emmanuel said nothing when he saw the cradle of his race sacrificed on the altar of unity ; but Gari- baldi, with the hot blood of all revolutionists, declared that Cavour "has made me a foreigner in my own house," and betook himself to the south where, at the head of a thousand "soldiers of liberty," he raised the standard of revolution in Southern Italy with the rallying cry " Italy and Victor Emmanuel ! " It proved a trumpet-call. Volunteers flocked to his standard. Sicily was speedily won. On the twenty-sev- enth of May the red-shirted liberator entered Palermo ; then, crossing to Naples, he drove out the Bourbon king, who was at once a despot and a coward, entered Naples in triumph, defeated and scattered the king's army, and proclaimed himself, in the name of Victor Emmanuel, dictator of the Two Sicilies. Mazzini, his brother revolu- tionist, joined him, and together they tried to rule the kingdom they had won ; but neither of them had capacity for administration ; few real revolutionists have — from Sam Adams to Aguinaldo. Garibaldi, brave as a lion in battle, was not a statesman ; and he and Mazzini had sev- now ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 241 eral schemes in mind — among others the proclamation of a republic, and the overthrow of the Papal power at Rome. Trouble seemed brewing ; the Sicilies, freed from the Bourbons, were discontented with results, and anarchy was threatened. Then Cavour acted. "Garibaldi wishes to perpetuate the revolution," he said. "We wish to terminate it." While the revolution in Naples was in progress, Cavour had been busy at nation-making in the north. Northern Italy, between the Po and Tuscany, joined the new king- dom on March 14, i860; two days later Tuscany was annexed by popular vote ; and when the great statesman saw that Garibaldi's unsupported design on Rome might endanger the Italian cause, and set Europe against him, he advocated the same measure himself; and, with the sanction of Napoleon — for he was shrewd enough to still keep friends with France — he sent a Sardinian army to invade the domains of the Pope "for the unification of Italy." King Victor Emmanuel followed with re-enforcements, crossed the Apennines, and effected a union with Garibaldi, coming from the south. The temporal dependencies of the Pope revolted in favor of Italian unity. Garibaldi hailed Victor Emmanuel as King of Italy, resigned his dic- tatorship of Naples, and retired to his island home of Caprera. Then Sicily and Naples voted for annexation ; Victor Emmanuel entered the latter capital in triumph in November, and Cavour said exultantly, " We are Italy ; we work in her name." There was no repressing the triumphant spirit of nation- ality ; from the Alps to the Apennines, in spite of Napo- leon's backsHding, Italy was free ; and on the eighteenth 242 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. of February, 1861, the first Italian parliament met at Turin, and Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed king of Italy. Cavour's great work was done. The dream of his youth was realized. " A new Italy," says Mr. Kirkup, " had sprung from the ashes of the old, an Italy of representative government and of enlightened progress, the mistress of her own destinies, and a worthy member of the common- wealth of nations." Then the terrible strain of years of thought and effort told on the great statesman ; the reac- tion came; and on the sixth of June, 1861, he died, still talking of Italy, and saying, "A free church in a free state ! " — his life-long idea of freedom. " We came home in a cloud here," runs the last letter ever written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the English- Italian patriot. " I can scarcely command voice or hand to name Cavour. That great soul which meditated and made Italy has gone to the divine Country. If tears or blood could have saved him to us, he should have had mine. I feel yet as if I could scarcely comprehend the greatness of the vacancy. A hundred Garibaldi's for such a man." And at Florence, three weeks after, she too, died, over- come, it is now asserted, by grief at the death of Cavour, so dear to her was Italy free, so great the man who had ac- complished this freedom. " A hundred Garibaldis for such a man ! " and yet it is Garibaldi, the revolutionist, who has always been popularly accepted as the hero and chief instrument of Italian inde- pendence and nationality. All instruments have their use ; the revolutionist. Garibaldi, was a mighty factor toward Italian unity ; but it was Cavour, the conservative, who re- now ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 243 deemed and regenerated Italy, just as, in America, John Brown, the fanatic, paved the way for Lincoln, the conser- vative statesman. The way was rapidly being paved for this great man's coming. Nominated for the presidency in May, i860, Abraham Lincoln was elected in November following, and the American people faced a mighty crisis. Great men in the Nineteenth Century have not been meteoric ; they have been largely self-made ; the greatest of them all, Abraham Lincoln, was comparatively an un- known man in i860. ** Who is this huckster in politics .'' " demanded the chief spokesman of the radical Abolitionists. Indeed, of " this obscure, not to say unknown man," as he was described. Dr. Edward Channing remarks, " It is certain that at that time few persons realized the grandeur of Lin- coln's character, his splendid common sense, and his mar- vellous insight into the real nature of things." But the agitators of the South realized what the election of a republican president meant. Congress, in December, i860, sought to pass compromise measures ; but the day of compromise had gone forever. Then South Carolina, seeking to maintain her stand as a sovereign State whose rights were paramount to those of the nation, failed to ap- preciate the constitutional progress of the Nineteenth Cen- tury and the democratic spirit that underlies true national- ity. She asserted her right to go out of the Union, if she wished to, and on the twentieth of December, i860, " se- ceded ;" — that is, declared through her State convention, that "the union between the State of South CaroHna and other States united with her under the compact entitled 244 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 'The Constitution of the United States of America ' is dis- solved." The people of South Carolina were not asked to vote upon this action ; the State convention simply author- ized it. Other Southern States followed in the same way ; and by the first of February, 1861, seven Southern States had, in convention, also passed ordinances of secession and elected delegates to a Constitutional convention at Mont- gomery in Alabama. There, on the fourth of February, 1 86 1, the "Confederate States of America," were decreed, the main object of which confederation was, according to its constitution, "to recognize and protect the institution of slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States." Jefferson Davis was made president of the new Confeder- acy, and was inaugurated on the twenty-second of Febru- ary, 1 86 1 —Washington's birthday — the memorial day of the man who, in his immortal Farewell Adddress, had so solemnly pleaded with his fellow-countrymen. "The unity of government which constitutes you one people," said George Washington, "is the main pillar in the edifice of your real independence. . . . Cherish a cor- dial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it, . . . dis- countenance whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can, in any event, be abandoned, and indignantly frown upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts." Abraham Lincoln proposed to do what Washington had insisted upon — preserve the Union. He was inaugurated March 4, 1861 ; and in his address as President of the United States, he outhned his determination. " I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the now ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 245 Constitution," he said, "the Union of these States is per- petual. . . . No State upon its own mere motion can law- fully go out of the Union ; . . . therefore the Union is unbroken. ... In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow- countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assist you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the gov. ernment, while I shall have the most solemn one to pre- serve, protect, and defend it." That was Abraham Lincoln, the incarnation of a just conservatism. And how his plea for the brotherhood of Americans supplemented Washington's plea for an undis- turbed Union ! His inaugural words are immortal : " I am loath to close. We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land wnll yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." "This broad land," that Abraham Lincoln had taken an oath to keep intact, had widened and developed marvel- lously since the day when Washington wrote his Farewell Address, sixty-five years before. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as president in 1861, the thirteen original States had grown to thirty-four ; the limits of the land had swollen from the eight hundred thousand square miles of Washington's day to three millions ; the population had in- creased from four millions to more than thirty-one millions ; 246 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. the republic had grown from a loose confederacy of isolated communities, which the world regarded with curiosity and indifference, to a great nation, which all the world re- spected, recognized, and feared. As the crisis came which Lincoln must face and control, the world prophesied the downfall of the republic ; and absolutism, not yet "scotched" in Europe, gleefully prophesied the failure of democracy in America. Even reformers across the sea had, many of them, echoed Mrs. Browning's gratuitous and in- sufferable " curse," because America, a free republic, still endured slavery : " When wise men give you their praise, They shall pause in the heat of the phrase, As if carried too far ; When ye boast your own charters are true, Ye shall blush ; for the thing which ye do Derides what ye are. This is the curse. Write!" And the Emperor of the French, with his acknowledged contempt for hberty, voiced the aristocratic sentiment of Europe in language that but thinly veiled his belief that the American republic was doomed. Even in America, opinion was divided. Radical Repub- licans and Abolition leaders were inclined to advise a peace- able separation, l)elieving that any attempt to maintain a Union in which such hostile forces existed as slavery and freedom was an impossibility. William Lloyd Garrison, a leader of the Abolition sentiment, insisted on disunion. "If we would see the slave power overthrown," he said, "the Union must be dissolved ;" and even Horace Greeley, the greatest editor of his day, the champion of free speech, now ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 247 free labor, and free men, asserted that if the slave States chose to form an independent nation they had a clear moral right to do so. Fortunately for humanity and progress Abraham Lincoln held other views. From his youth a hater of slavery, he still held that his personal opinions were of no weight in this crisis. " My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union," he declared. " I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. But I took an oath that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, pro- tect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, This oath forbids me to practically indulge my primary ab- stract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I would save the Union ; I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. . . . Whatever I do, I shall do because it helped to save the Union." This noble position of a just conser\'atism, of a man who knew his duty and stood ready to execute it, Abraham Lincoln steadfastly kept .through the four years of bitter and wasting war that followed his inauguration as president. For that war came speedily. Compromise and conces- sion were no longer possible. The Southern States, in a firm belief in their right to withdraw from the Union if they so desired, seceded. The Northern leaders, believing in the national idea to which all the world was advancing, held that the voluntary union of States into a nation could not be dissolved by the action of one or more States ; for as Mr. Lincoln declared, " One party to a contract may violate or break it, but it requires all to lawfully rescind it." Unprepared for war — the ever-repeated stor}' when war 248 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. actually comes, — weakened by the withdrawal of many army and navy officers who sympathized with the South, or believed it their duty to "stand loyal to their State," rather than to the republic that had educated and supported them, the military force of the United States was sadly depleted, and many of the southern forts which belonged to the whole Union were actually taken possession of by the States on whose soil they stood. One such point of de- fence, however. Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, was held by an officer who believed that his oath to the republic was higher than his duty to his State. " I am a Southern man," replied Major Robert Ander- son in command at Fort Sumter, when urged to desert his post ; " but I have been assigned to the defence of Charleston Harbor, and I intend to defend it." He had the opportunity to prove his noble words. Stung to foolish and hasty action by the demands of their own hot heads and the defiant position of Major Anderson and his little command, the South Carolina forces opened fire on Fort Sumter on the twelfth of April, 1861 ; on the fourteenth the fort surrendered, riddled by the bombard- ment and wasted by fire ; but Major Anderson had done his duty, and the foohsh action of "the first gun" threw the responsibility of war upon the Southern leaders, and aroused the North to united, determined, and patriotic action. Then war followed — the most determined and, in many respects, the most notable struggle of the century ; for it was waged for a principle, by men of equal courage, equal fortitude, and equal will, brothers in speech and lineage; the most dreadful of all conflicts — a civil war. HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 249 Great armies were raised ; great battles were fought ; great victories were won. There was patriotism according to the Northern idea north of the Potomac ; south of the Potomac there was patriotism according to the Southern idea ; and on both sides were valor, devotion, sacrifice, and faith. Speedily a great general was made leader on the Southern side — Robert E. Lee ; gradually a greater general was evolved on the Northern side — Ulysses S. Grant ; and finally, after months and years of mistakes, errors, failures, re-enforcements, and successes, the war be- came a campaign, desperately waged for victory, between those two rival captains. The struggle was fought out on Southern soil ; only once did the Confederate armies succeed in an invasion of the north ; and at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, on the first, second, and third of July, 1863, the invaders were repulsed and driven back after one of the decisive battles of the world — the terrible battle of Gettysburg. The war hinged mainly on the possession of the border States — those that had always formed the dividing-line between North and South, between slavery and freedom ; and it was due to the patient determination of an even greater leader than Grant or Lee — Abraham Lincoln, the president — that these border States were held, saved, and retained for the Union. By his wise, patient, and conservative action, — yielding neither to the defiance of the South nor to the impatience of the North, swayed neither by victory nor defeat, by failure or success, — Abraham Lincoln held strictly to his course — to save the Union. Then, at last, when after two years of uncertain war and ineffectual campaigns, he 250 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. saw that the people of the North were beginning to believe in him alone, to trust to him and to him only as the real saviour of the Union ; when he knew that the time was ripe for one vital and crowning act that would strengthen the North, compel the rebellious South, convince the wavering border States, and show the watching world that the gov- ernment of the United States was pledged to freedom as well as nationality, Abraham Lincoln acted. On the first of January, 1863, he issued the emancipation proclamation, which he had long contemplated ; in which, as he declared, " I am going to fulfil the promise made to myself and to my God ; " for which, so he told his cabi- net, he alone was responsible. " I do not wish for your advice about the main matter ; that I have determined for myself," he said. And thus that immortal document ran : "Now therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power vested in me as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the au- thority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, in accordance with my purpose so to do, order and declare that all per- sons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are and henceforth shall be free, and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons." It was done ; this edict, which, as Mr. Rhodes declares, "heralded a new epoch in the world's progress," was thus HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 25 I given to the world, and the nature and complexion of the republic's struggle for union and nationality were utterly and irrevocably changed. And not only was the complexion of the war for the Union changed by Abraham Lincoln's immortal act ; pub- lic opinion throughout the world was changed. England, which had too long toyed with the question of right, and to the eternal shame of Gladstone, England's leading states- man, had leaned towards recognition of the Southern Con- federacy, — a possible power based upon the slavery that England had so arrogantly condemned, — was turned by Lincoln's act of justice from foe to friend ; that is to say, the people of England, led by such inspired men as John Bright, became staunch supporters of the Union, and gave a hearty amen to the prayer of their great preacher, New- man Hall: "God bless and strengthen the North; give victory to their arms ! " France, whose emperor from the first was unfriendly to the Union, really favored the North ; for, remembering her own struggle for freedom, the people, as John Stuart Mill wrote from Southern France to an American friend, "are unquestionably with you." The people of Europe, indeed, so far as they compre- hended the situation, were friendly to the people of the American Republic ; but with the rulers it was different. Chief among these unfriendly rulers was, as I have inti- mated, the Emperor of the French. Professing to derive his title from the will of the people, Louis Napoleon recog- nized no will as superior to his own, and schemed to con- trol affairs not only in Italy, Syria, and Algeria, — in Europe, Asia, and Africa, — but in America as well. Pos- ing as the Heaven-sent leader of the Latin race, he sent his 252 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. thoughts across the sea, and saw his opportunity in dis- tracted America, where, as he fondly dreamed, the Repub- lic of the United States was doomed to speedy destruction, and where he might, therefore, safely set on foot an enter- prise that should exalt the Latin over the Anglo-Saxon race, and make Napoleon III. the head and hero of it all. To this restless adventurer opportunity was never lack- ing. The sympathy of Europe was with Italy rather than with him, because of his double dealing toward the Italian desire for nationality ; and he felt that he must recover his lost prestige, especially with the French people, who always mistrusted, even when they supported him, because his name seemed to them a guaranty of strength and order. Across the sea, in the republic of Mexico, there had been unsettled and revolutionary conditions ever since the close of the war with the United States in 1848, and the overthrow and flight of the dictator Santa Anna in 1853. Spanish-American republics learn the wisdom of order slowly ; and Mexico, from the time of her independence, had been especially unfortunate — though the most un- stable republic was preferable to Spanish despotism. But out of these confusions finally emerged in 1861 a semblance of peace, with the victory of the liberalist, Benito Juarez, as president of the republic, and the suc- cessful termination of the three years' War of Reform. In this war, however, the property of certain foreigners resi- dent in Mexico had suffered loss, while the expense of redeeming the republic from the grasp of the reactionists and " illiberals," crippled the country, and led Juarez and his congress to the unwise measure of suspending the payment of bonds and foreign obligations. HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 253 This of course angered the foreign governments whose subjects were thus affected ; and the three powers most interested — England, France, and Spain — demanded justice and a settlement of the claims for indebtedness, amounting to over eighty millions of dollars. At a con- vention at London in 1861, the three powers made an alliance to enforce their demands; and in January, 1862, the republic of Mexico was invaded by a joint military and naval expedition of England, France, and Spain. The United States, when urged to join this debt-collect- ing alliance, bluntly refused ; and instead, offered to help Mexico either with money or credit. But the allies would have justice only from Mexico, and the Mexicans prepared to fight. By some wise management, however, on the part of Mexican diplomats, the trouble was arranged so far as England and Spain were concerned. Spain found that her dream of reconquering Mexico for the Spanish crown was not possible ; and England, not altogether satisfied with the company into which she had fallen, hastened to agree to any just compromise. But the Emperor Napoleon III. believed that his great opportunity had come. His soldiers were on Mexican soil ; across the border, the great republic, that had given him welcome and a home in his days of exile and disaster, was fighting for its very existence. There was no time like the present ; and Louis Napoleon, with all the ambi- tion and none of the ability of his great uncle, determined to carry out his scheme of control, make true his dream of a universal fusion of the Latin race and the overthrow of the Anglo-Germanic powers, and establish in Mexico a 254 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. great Latin empire, of which France — and therefore Louis Napoleon Bonaparte — should be mainspring, dictator, and head. So, when the other allies withdrew, the French troops remained ; and, joining to themselves certain recreant Mexicans who were ready to conspire against the republic, they marched into the interior. The patriots rallied to repel the invasion, and on the fifth of May, 1862, won the victory of Puebla, still a national anniversary under the title of "the glorious fifth of May." But Napoleon had made up his mind. Defeat could not be permitted. Re-enforcements were hurried across the sea until their numbers were irresistible ; the French troops advanced steadily to victory, conquering the north and south. Occupying the city of Mexico, they first estab- lished a provisional government that usurped the executive power, and then, under orders from Napoleon, decreed the Empire of Mexico, and offered the crown to a Euro- pean prince, Maximilian, archduke of Austria, and brother of its emperor. In June, 1864, the Austrian arrived in Mexico ; upheld and defended by foreign bayonets, he ruled as emperor in the "halls of the Montezumas," and Napo- leon's crazy scheme of conquest and Latin supremacy seemed on the highroad to success. In other parts of the world, also, the Emperor Napoleon was striving to have the foremost " finger in the pie." He had forced from Italy, as the price of his " assistance," the provinces of Nice and Savoy ; and Germany was only re- strained by the cooling advice of England from the in- dignant protest of war over what would some day become a question of Franco-German boundaries. Napoleon's HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 255 agents intrigued in Belgium for the annexation of that kingdom to France ; and other of his agents, in the same business, stirred up war between Spain and Morocco ; his soldiers occupied the chief military posts in Syria, and kept England perplexed over the imperial plotter's designs in the East. He attempted to dictate to England as to her action when, in 1863, the Poles broke out in another insurrection, and he almost involved France in a " single- handed war " with Russia. He set Europe laughing at his pretensions as he endeavored to follow his great uncle's lead, and assemble a convention of kings at Paris ; and, by secretly encouraging the designs of Prussia in her great land-steal of the province of Schleswig-Holstein from Den- mark, he helped bring about the Schleswig-Holstein War of 1864, in which Prussia and Austria united against Den- mark. This war was concluded in a few months by the defeat of the Danes, a truce and peace conference at London, and finally, by the treaty of Vienna, on the thirtieth of October, 1864, under which Denmark relinquished the old Danish provinces of Schleswig-Holstein to the victorious allies. There was, in fact, a good deal of restlessness and strife throughout the world between i860 and 1865. Besides the great struggle in the United States, the war in Mex- ico, the Prussian attack on Denmark, and the war for liberation in Italy, there were rebellions in Poland, New Zealand, and China. Spain sought the conquest of Morocco; and Russia quelled into submission the long defiant Circassians of the Caucasus, and advanced her power by force in Central Asia. 256 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. But, in spite of wars and rumors of wars, the world made a substantial advance ; and Galileo's famous declara- tion, under equally unfavorable conditions, "and yet it moves," might apply to this season of unrest, when, in- deed, England was the only power pursuing a policy of peace. For in the same year in which the war for free- dom and union broke out in America, and while Italy was struggling for independence, the last man of all the world from whom a progressive advance might be expected, took a mighty stride forward. On the third of March, 1861, the day before that on which Abraham Lincoln was inau- gurated president of the United States, Alexander II., Czar of all the Russians, emancipated the serfs in his dominions, and practically abolished manhood slavery. Whether this act of liberation came from his own pro- gressive ideas, or was the heritage of a command from his dying and defeated father, it was certainly a mighty deed — a concession of despotism to liberty, of bigotry to progress. Other lands were making similar concessions at about that same period of the world's history The Japanese, for centuries confined within the limits of their own bar- baric exclusiveness, awoke from their long sleep of ages when Perry the American knocked at their door, and fol- lowed up their treaty of commerce and amity by sending an embassy from this island kingdom to meet and study the civilizations of the world. On the fourteenth of May, 1 860, the Japanese embassy was received at Washington ; from America it crossed the sea, and visited most of the European capitals, thus laying the foundations for that direct and friendly association with the outside world now ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 257 which resulted finally in the establishment of treaty rela- tion with eighteen civilized nations. A new era began, also, in Germany in the accession to the throne of Prussia, in 1861, of King William the First ; while the American visit of the Prince of Wales, the heir to the English throne, began the gradual drawing nearer, in i860, of two nations kindred in speech and manners, after nearly a century of distrust and separation. This growing consideration and friendliness between England and America felt its severest strain, and stood its direst test, as the war between the States of the Ameri- can Union began to have a resultant influence upon Eng- lish society and people. From some inexplicable cause the ruling classes in England favored the Southern cause ; but the working-men of England favored the North in its efforts to re-establish union and proclaim liberty. Even while Gladstone, prime minister of England, was saying in a public speech "We may anticipate with certainty the success of the Southern States so far as their separation from the North is concerned," John Bright, the real leader of England's liberal and progressive thought at that time, declared to the English people : " I say that this war, be it successful or not, be it Christian or not, be it wise or not, is a war to sustain the government, and to sustain the authority of a great nation ; and that the people of England, if they are true to their own sympathies, to their own his- tory, and to their own great act of 1834, will have no sym- pathy with those who wish to build up a great empire on the perpetual bondage of millions of their fellow men." There was a strong movement, however, among the rul- ing men in England to recognize the Southern Confederacy, 258 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. or at least to prevail upon France, Russia, and the other •' great powers " to intervene in the struggle that was shak- ing the republic. But the clear-headed and wise queen of England would not consent, and threw all her influence on the side of the North ; while the real workers of England, the five million disfranchised men and the four millions who had a vote, stood loyal to freedom and the cause of the Union as it was being fought out in America, even when the failure of the cotton crop, upon which their daily bread almost de- pended, drove the working-people of England close to suffering and starvation. Let America remember that to-day, even as Abraham Lincoln did when, in 1863, he wrote to the working-men of Manchester : " I cannot but regard your decisive utterances as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and re- inspiring assurance of the inherent power of truth, and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity, and freedom." " We have reason to thank the English common people," wrote Mr. Rhodes in 1 899, " for their comprehension, right thinking, and hearty utterance of sympathy, and for their appreciation and admiration of Abraham Lincoln. They received his words gladly ; and while trained writers criti- cised his grammar, his 'inelegant English,' his backwoods style of expression, they grasped the ideas for which he stood, and their hearts went out to him." Lincoln's "grammar, inelegant EngUsh, and backwoods expressions," of which the cultured classes complained, have to-day a place in English literature which neither the HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 259 ponderous phrases of English orators nor the tripping sen- tences of English writers can surpass. Eor his words went straight to the root of things, and found lodgment in every heart that beat responsive to the love of freedom and the appreciation of simple and rugged eloquence. His two-minute speech, on " the second great day at Get- tysburg," as Mr. Mabie fitly characterizes it, at the dedi- cation of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg — the memorial field of that great and decisive battle of the war — was " notable," says Mr. Morse, " because through it the literature of our tongue received one of its most distin- guished acquisitions;" even to-day it rings out, not to America only, but to all the world, like a trumpet-note of exultant freedom, voiced by a master, a prophet, and a man. " Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal . . . We are met on a great battle-field. . . . We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. ... It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us . . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of free- dom ; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." CHAPTER XV. HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME IN MORE LANDS THAN ONE. {From i8b^ to iSyo.) THE "great task," for which Lincoln so eloquently pleaded at Gettysburg, , very nearly approached com- pletion when the year 1865 was born. Four years of terrible war had brought victory to the armies of the Union ; foreign hostility and foreign inter- ference had been stilled by the knowledge of Americaji determination and freedom's wonderful success ; the Eman- cipation Proclamation of 1863 cleared the atmosphere and electrified the world. The schemes of Louis Napoleon, who sought to lead the powers of Europe into intervention, recognition, and "perhaps," as he suggested, "even more active measures," were beaten down by the hammer-blows of Grant and the magnificent patience and persistence of Lin- coln. Russia returned a decisive and instant refusal ; Ger- many bought United States bonds with perfect confidence, and " was obstinately bent against " the cause of the bellig- erent Confederacy. "All parties and classes in Europe," wrote Mr. Adams in 1865, "are resolved on a strict neutral- ity;" and John Bright, in the fall of 1864, wrote to Charles Sumner, "to re-elect Mr. Lincoln will be to tell Europe that your country is to be restored and slavery destroyed." That announcement to Europe and the world was made in November, 1864. Abraham Lincoln was re-elected 260 ABRAHAM LINCOLN From RRAO^'s Okk.inai, I'motockaph "A't-rc birth of our ticiv soil, (he first A iiiericait " HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 26 1 president of the United States by two hundred and twelve electoral votes against his opponent's twenty-one, and by a clear majority of half a million in the popular vote. " Seldom in history," said Emerson, " was so much staked on a popular vote ; I suppose never in history." " It is not wise to swap horses when crossing streams," declared Mr. Lincoln in the quaint, homely, direct phrase that the people loved. No " swapping " was done ; the war was to be fought to a final and triumphant end ; and that end came when, on the ninth of April, 1865, General Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox to General Grant. The South had fought nobly, persistently, valiantly. Against ever-increasing odds ; against the growing hostility of the world ; against privation, suffering, disaster, and loss, they still fought on, and only gave up the struggle when they recognized the uselessness of continued conflict, the loss forever of the chief privilege for which they had fought, and the slowly growing conviction that an undivided union, pledged to free- dom and founded on equality, was stronger and better than two rival and separate republics, or than a loose confeder- acy of States built on the theory of temporary rather than indissoluble association. "I can promise for the Southern people," said General Lee, after it was all over, "that they will faithfully obey the Constitution and laws of the United States, treat the negro with kindness and humanity, and fulfil every duty incumbent on peaceful citizens, loyal to the Constitution of their country." "With malice toward none, with charity for all," said Mr. Lincoln in his immortal second inaugural, " with firmness 262 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the Nation's wounds . . . to do all which may cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." It was not to be permitted to this great and noble man to finish the work. He saw the end of the conflict ; he walked, not in triumph but in sadness, through the streets of the fallen capital of the short-lived Confederacy ; then, like Moses standing in view of the promised land, he died, stricken down by an assassin's bullet and a villain's deed, just when the South needed his wisdom and his love even more than did the triumphant North. So the great man of the century passed out of life ; and as the whole world, just learning to appreciate his worth as, to-day, it is just beginning to recognize his real great- ness, mourned its loss, the words of the American poet, Willis, written upon the death of a much smaller great man, were aptly fitted to the departure of this, — " the first American :" " For the stars on our banner grown suddenly dim, Let us weep in our darkness ; but weep not for him : — Not for him who, departing, left millions in tears ; Not for him who has died, full of honors and years; Not for him who ascended fame's ladder so high. From the round at the top he has stepped to the sky." To me Abraham Lincoln is the typical man of the Nine- teenth Century. Can any one of any blood in any land — Christian or pagan — stand as his equal ? None surely will question his claim to being esteemed the typical American. That prophet-poet who foresaw so clearly — Lowell, the highest type of American culture — HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 263 has sketched the martyr-president in hnes now grown familiar : " Great captains with their guns and drums Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last silence comes ; These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, Our children shall behold his fame. The kindly-earnest, brave, fore-seeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American." After the bloody arbitrament of war, other disturbances and happenings seem small by comparison. But the moral battle-field is often the sterner and more stubborn of the two. In America the new president, Andrew Johnson, and the Congress were confronted with the questions of reward and punishment, and of the methods of restoring the rights and privileges of citizens to the inhabitants of the Southern States. It proved a complex and puzzling problem, fertile with the mistakes of partisan or fanatical "reconstructors," unrepentant "rebels," and unwise offi- cials and law-makers. The problem involved the security and safety of the exhausted South, to which the triumphant North was pledged, but in which the emancipated negroes were made the factors in a campaign of overturned condi- tions, that threw the lowest order of demagogues to the surface, and awoke the passions rather than the patience of the land-owners of the South. It involved even the president of the United States himself, as a border man of personal obstinacy and antagonistic tendencies, who, in seeking to enforce his own ideas, swung away from the party that had placed him in power, and became so hostile to the majority in Congress as to lead to his impeachment. 264 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. in which he only escaped conviction and removal by a slender majority. The disputes that filled his presidency hindered the reconstruction of the Union, bur law and order at last prevailed ; while the glory of the republic and its true meaning as the land of liberty were established by two Amendments to the Constitution, one of which, in 1865, officially established Lincoln's decree of emancipation, by declaring the absolute and entire abolition of slavery ; while the other, adopted in 1868, guaranteed the protection of the law to all, and made all native or naturalized resi- dents of the republic, citizens of the United States. It was a mighty step in advance, made at the cost of thousands of lives and millions of treasure, in the war waged for the in- tegrity of the Union and the freedom and equality of man. The close of the civil war in the United States hastened the overthrow of that other monstrous and futile attempt against personal and national liberty in America. The ambitious and aristocratic schemes of the Emperor Louis Napoleon, looking to the establishment of an empire in Mexico, ruled over by one of his puppets, and having for its purpose the overthrow of Anglo-Germanic supremacy by the unity of the Latin races, were rudely and utterly brought to naught by the re-establishment of the complete authority of the Union. A veteran army of victorious Americans was ready to enforce, if need be, the assertion of the Monroe doctrine, and to succor the threatened liber- ties of Mexico. Troops were massed on the Mexican bor- der; the French minister was notified that the French must leave — and they left. Louis Napoleon, baffled and defeated in an enterprise unpopular even in France, made HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 265 a virtue of necessity ; and in March, 1867, he withdrew the French armies from Mexico, leaving his "assisted Emperor" Maxim ihan deserted and alone. The end came speedily. Unprotected by French bay- onets, the " empire " of Maximilian crumbled at once ; and the unfortunate young Austrian, captured by the Mexican patriots, who knew not the clemency of their northern neighbors, was adjudged an enemy of the republic, and promptly put to death. And thus the pretentious experi- ment of a Latin empire in North America went down in inevitable and dismal failure, while the tragedy of Maximil- ian and Carlotta stands as another terrible warning to usurpers and kings. Meantime, across the sea, Louis Napoleon was having troubles of his own, and was stupidly but perhaps uncon- sciously laying in his own path snares and pitfalls, destined soon to trap and destroy him. His power indeed seemed supreme, but it was hollow and inflated ; the " Sphinx of the Tuileries," as that practical American and sound republican, John Hay, called him, was found to have, after all, but "feet of clay ;" and the people of France as well as of the world were gradually finding him out. His unwise interference in Mexico ; his weak and futile attempt to "maintain the predominance of France" in the Schleswig- Holstein war of 1864; the rise of a strong man in Ger- many ; the decline of administrative ability in France ; the growing influence upon the emperor of corrupt and selfish adventurers, who sought wealth and power at his expense, — all tended to weaken and unmask him, even while he was possessed by his own pride, and sought to blind the people in the old imperial Roman way, by beautifying Paris, and 266 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. emphasizing the splendors of his court. In the summer of 1 86/, during the great International Exhibition at Paris, he entertained the princes and potentates of Europe ; and in that splendid "show year" the Emperor Napoleon III. seemed, like his wonderful uncle in 1810, to have "attained the pinnacle of human greatness." But a "pinnacle " is a very "teeterish " place to stand on, as the Emperor Napo- leon in due time discovered, and as John Hay, studying events in Paris, prophetically expressed it : "For an Qidipus-People is coming fast With swelled feet limping on, If they shout his true name once aloud His false, foul power is gone. Afraid to fight and afraid to fly, He cowers in an abject shiver; The people will come to their own at last — God is not mocked forever." On the other side of the Rhine a growing and unifying power was gradually crowding upon France. A man was there rising to leadership who was destined to make Prussia great and Germany united, and whose indomitable will and " clear perception " of his country's needs were to usher in a new era in the history of Germany, of Europe, and the world; for in October, 1862, Count Otto Von Bismarck was made prime minister of Prussia and minister of foreign affairs; while in 1867 he became Chancellor of the North German Confederation and the chief figure in the monu- mental plan of a greater and united Germany. The North German Confederation was a union for mutual protection of all the German States north of the Main, and was one of the results of the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, sometimes called the " Seven Weeks' War " for it was HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 267 begun, waged, and ended within that brief space of time ; Prussia then and thus put an end to the long rivalry of Austria in German affairs, and came from it victor, leader, and organizer. Austria had helped Prussia wrest from Denmark the Schleswig-Holstein territory, in the war of 1864; then they quarrelled over the spoils ; the war of words grew to a war of deeds; and the German States — North and South — divided into two parties, as in America, though on a question of leadership rather than of slavery. Austria de- clared that she was the upholder of " the freedom, power, and integrity of the whole German Fatherland;" Prussia also declared that the Fatherland was in danger from the designs of Austria, "faithless and regardless of treaties." And then, north and south, the rival factions of Germany sprang at each other's throats. In 1864 a German inventor had produced a breech-load- ing musket known as the Prussian needle-gun. That terrible invention won the war against Austria within seven weeks. The South German armies could not withstand the withering fire of the deadly needle-gun backed up by powerful artillery ; the battle of Sadowa, in June, 1866, was an Austrian defeat, and the actual war campaign of seven days led to the triumph of Prussia and the treaty of Prague. This treaty gave to Prussia all that she demanded. To her ally, Italy, it gave Venice, and other Austrian posses- sions in Italy ; it excluded Austria from the German Union, and brought about the North German Confederation of 1867, wnth Prussia as the head of the league and Count Bismarck as its directing hand. The treaty of Prague, although it said nothing of the 268 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Emperor of France, was the signal for the death-knell of Napoleon III. The success of Prussia meant the downfall of the empire in France. Because he had kept his hands off in the conflict with Austria, Napoleon suggested to Prussia that he should be rewarded by a few frontier towns for being so good and friendly. "Not a single foot of German soil," Bismarck replied; and Napoleon, again disappointed, began to scheme anew. He had met an opponent before whom he was but a child; but like a child, he went headlong into folly. How far the spirit of American nationalism and the success of America's dominant sovereignty affected the other nations of the world we may not estimate ; few of them perhaps would acknowledge this influence; but there can be little doubt that the forward movement in the American republic, from the Revolution that gave it birth to the conflict that tested it and the acts that have made it, at the close of the Nineteenth Century a great world- power, has had an incalculable influence upon the attitude and development of other nations. This influence, conscious or unconscious, which found its highest expression in Abraham Lincoln, displayed itself not only in the remarkable growth of emigration from Europe to America, but in the trend of thought and action in Europe. Great men, wrought upon by this American idea of freedom, sought to ingraft upon European thought a modified democracy or a finer spirit of union. In England, John Bright, upon whom had fallen the mantle of Richard Cobden as a moral reformer, sought to make reform practical and helpful to his fellow-countrymen. HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 269 He has been called the "modern representative of the ancient tribunes of the people ; " having " as his password and his political livelihood " the welfare of the common people ; "full of faith that popular instincts are both morally right and intellectually sound " — the faith that Abraham Lincoln had. In France, Adolph Thiers, champion of liberalism in politics, constantly arraigned the imperialism of Louis Napoleon, charging him with being the enemy and betrayer of the French people, while his vigorous denun- ciation of the emperor's Mexican policy found expression in a warning of danger to the state which was scarcely short of prophetic. In Italy, Cavour's influence, even though the great statesmen had gone, still swayed the actions of the liberal and determined unionist Victor Em- manuel, even when the ijl-timed folly of the radical unionist Garibaldi, in 1867, almost plunged Italy in a new war; while in Spain, that noble republican, Emilio Castelar, "a pure and intelligent statesmen," as Edward Everett Hale calls him, in a land whose people, through centuries of despotism, had been trained to regard monarchy with superstitious reverence, strove to lead his fellow countrymen into the broader spirit of national independence. His work was unconsciously fostered by the unprincipled and unjwpular Queen Isabella, who, in a reign torn by fac- tion and intrigue, lost first the respect, and then the confi- dence, of her subjects, and in 1868 was driven from her throne by a popular revolution, led by Marshal Serrano and General Prim, and fostered by Castelar. The latter would have attempted a republic, but the military leaders preferred a constitutional monarchy ; and, unable to decide upon any native prince capable of ruling, they went into 2/0 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. the " foreign market " for a king, first offering the crown to a German, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, a relative of King William of Prussia. This choice angered the Emperor Napoleon and his un- wise advisors, who claimed to see, in this invitation to a German prince, the interference of Germany in European affairs, and especially in those of the Latin countries, of whom Napoleon had determined to be the recognized leader and head. He saw no way of counteracting this North German influence save by war ; and secretly, but determinedly, he set about preparing for this crisis, and forcing Germany into the offensive. The wisdom of national union which was being worked out in Germany, and also in Italy, where Victor Emmanuel was gradually bringing the whole Italian peninsula, includ- ing even the papal territory of Rome itself, into a complete and consistent union, was seen also in Austria. There, what has been described as "a judicious readiness to acquiesce in accomplished facts," led the Emperor of Aus- tria, stunned by the shock of Sadowa, to consent to the advance proposed by his new and more liberal prime min- ister. Baron Beust, in 1867, and grant constitutional liberty to Hungary, and, by pronounced concessions, to allay the discontent in other divisions of the empire. In June, 1867, the Emperor and Empress of Austria were crowned at Pesth as king and queen of Hungary ; and Francis Deak, the old-time friend and comrade of the patriot Kossuth, not only saw in this union of the " dual kingdoms " a result of his own exertions through years of discouragement, but was himself recognized as an important factor in the pacifi- cation and unity of Austria. now LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 2/1 All these movements marked a distinct advance ; but the years just preceding 1870 marked, also, a distinct advance in other than poHtical and national measures. The world was being made anew by the march of invention, improve- ment, and neighborliness. In March, 1865, the first direct telegram from India was received in England ; the East and West were thus brought into instantaneous touch ; and the successful laying of the Atlantic cable, in the summer of 1866, after five unsuccessful attempts, joined the Old world and the New, and was the beginning of that vast enterprise in submarine telegraphy, which to-day seams the oceans and deep waters of the world with one hundred and fifty thousand miles of cable. More direct and quicker means of communication between Europe and the East were also secured, at the same time, by the successful completion of the Suez Canal. Through the narrow neck of land that separates Africa from Asia, and divides the waters of the Mediterranean and Red Seas, human ingenu- ity for nearly twenty-five hundred years, since the days of the Pharaoh Necho, had been endeavoring to cut a ditch for joining the waters of Europe and Asia — the Indian and Atlantic oceans. This was done at last, after ten years of labor in the shifting sand of Egypt, by an enter- prising and indomitable Frenchman, Ferdinand de Les- seps. In February, 1867, the first ship worked its way through the uncompleted canal; and on the seventeenth of November, 1869, ^^^ work was pronounced complete, and the Suez Canal was formally opened by the Khedive of Egypt and representatives of all the kingdoms of Europe, when a fleet of fifty vessels sailed through the ninety miles of canal, — "a gala day for all commercial nations." 2/2 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. The year that witnessed the formal opening of the Suez Canal, witnessed also the completion of another link in world-connection. This was the Pacific railroad, the first direct route of steam communication across America, begun in November, 1865, and completed in May, 1869. The distance from Omaha to San Francisco, thus bridged by this great railroad enterprise, was nearly two thousand miles ; and the connection by rail between Omaha and New York completed the direct service in a railroad stretching over more than three thousand miles of plain and prairie, mountain and river, a gigantic engineering enterprise that opened up, to occupation and development, the wide and wonderful regions of "the Far West." This practical development of the United States by suc- cess in authority, growth, commercial expansion, and domestic vigor, as displayed between 1865 and 1870 in the triumph of the Union in 1865, in the acquisition by pur- chase, in 1 867, of Russian America, now known as Alaska, in the wonderful growth of trade and manufacture, and the foreign and interstate commerce after the success of the ocean cable and the overland railroad, led other Eng- lish-speaking peoples to consolidate and unite. On May first, 1867, the Dominion of Canada was proclaimed as the formal union, under one joint confederation, of the British provinces of North America ; into this confederation, how- ever, Newfoundland declined to enter; but in 1869 the territory of the great northern syndicate, known as the Hudson's Bay Company, was ceded to the British crown. And in 1870 this territory was incorporated in the Domin- ion, to be followed later by British Columbia, the North- west Territory, and Manitoba, the only protest to this HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 2/3 action being the armed insurrection of the French element, which for more than a hundred years had chafed under the results of the defeat of Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham. The Canadian half-breed, Louis Riel, who led this Red .River rebellion, was, however, defeated in 1870, and Canada was practically a united dominion of the Brit- ish Empire. The success of federation in Canada led at last to a closer union of the colonies of the crown, fostered by concessions and aid from the wise queen of England ; and the colonial possessions of Great Britain grew and strengthened with the years. Thus was another result of American manhood and enterprise exhibited to the world ; for the home-rule system of colonial government was the direct outcome of the American Revolution, and the crown of Great Britain had learned wisdom by experience. As Mr. Mackenzie, the Englishman, declares, " the vast folly of 1776 will not be repeated." A conservative reformer was at the helm in England. William Ewart Gladstone was prime minister, with so strong a support behind him as to enable him to uproot abuses and reform methods as had never before been pos- sible ; and the redress of the wrongs that still clung to the English state and the English church began vigorously in 1869 and 1870. But, with reforms, the demands of those most benefited grow. The workers protested against the despotism of society ; the regeneration of labor was demanded ; and, out of many grievances, by many unwise methods, much fanatical friction, and many threats of revolution, finally emerged in 1866 the first united revolt of labor. Germany and France had led in these unwise attempts at forcible readjustment, while the open 2/4 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. antagonism between labor and capital led all governments to appreciate and seek to curb the advance of those ultra reformers known under the general name of Sociahsts. The more violent of these "social reformers" openly- declared that the triumph of their principles was only to be obtained " by the violent overturning of all existing social order ; " and the plan upon which they would "reorganize " the world was based upon such staggering demands as : no rent for land ; no inheritance of property ; no home prop- erty for those who left it for other lands ; a single direct tax ; compulsory labor for all ; free education ; national ownership of banks, methods of transportation, manufac- tures, and agriculture. This would indeed have overturned society ; and the great middle class, which is the strength and sinew of all lands, did not take kindly to the idea. But the laboring classes did believe in anything that would give them less work and more money ; so, one of the earliest outgrowths of this demand for the "emancipation of labor" was the formation of trade and labor unions and the united protest of what are known as "strikes." The leader and chief agitator of this labor upheaval was a German socialist, resident in London, named Karl Marx. In 1866 a congress of delegates of the " International Association of Laborers," meeting in Geneva in Switzer- land, under the directing guidance of Karl Marx, declared that "the emancipation of the laboring class must be accomplished by the laboring class itself, and must be ac- complished in every country where modern society exists." It also recommended the organization of workingmen against the " intrigues of capitalists," the investigation of HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 275 the conditions of the working-classes throughout the world ; the co-operation of workingmen in producing the results of their own labor, and the abolition of standing armies. This was the beginning of strikes and labor troubles, which first assuming formidable proportions in 1866 by open-air meetings, processions, and organized resistance to capital, have disturbed the centres of trade, crippled pro- duction, antagonized capital, and terrorized unwilling com- rades through forty years of unrest, while, at the same time, reorganizing methods, shortening hours of labor, establishing improved methods of supply and demand, mak- ing capital less autocratic and labor more independent. So every reform, however hampered it may be by fanati- cism, extravagance, and revolt, must in time benefit more than it weakens, and help on the sure and steady progress of the world. The age of Abraham Lincoln, — the era of freedom, as we may call it, — which comprised the ten years from i860 to 1870, had done wonders for the world. Emancipation in America and Russia, independence in Italy, union in Germany and Austria, liberalism in France and Spain, democracy, under the lead of Gladstone in England, con- solidation in Canada, and a closer approach toward federa- tion by the progressive English colonies throughout the world — these all had been helped on by, if not indirectly resulting from, that uprising of the people against outworn theories and despotic claims which, inspired by the ques- tionable demands of reform, and led on by that greatest of progressive conservatives, Abraham Lincoln, had pushed on the world in a mighty stride toward freedom^ While 276 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. freeing labor from the shackles of time, and elevating pro- duction by advanced methods of creation and invention, it had prepared the real people to take their proper place as at once the makers of progress, the developers of power, the masters of ingenuity, and the civilizers of the world. " In giving the German />eof>le />olilicnl unity Bismarck realized their strongest and deepest desire . . . and when, as he ex- pressed it, ' Germany was put in the saddle,^ it made him a national hero." Munroe Smith. THE AGE OF BISMARCK. Unity. (1870-1880.) PRINCE yON BISM/tRCK (Otto Eduard Leopold), CREATOR OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE, Born SchoKhausen, Prussia, April /, 1S13, Died Friedrichsruh, Prussia, July ^O, /S<)8. w CHAPTER XVI. WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. {From i8yo to iSyj.) HEN Giuseppi Garibaldi — "the lame lion of Ca- prera " as his admirers loved to call him, sought, with the radical reformer Mazzini, to unite Italy by revo- lutionary methods, his chief cry was, " Rome the capital of all Italy!" Like all radical reformers. Garibaldi refused to listen to wisdom ; and when in 1867, with his insurgents, he invaded Roman territory, he was defeated at Mentana by the French soldiers, who were, with their bayonets, bolstering up the temporal power of the Pope. " Italy shall never enter Rome. No, never ! " declared the prime minister of the Emperor Napoleon ; and as, by treaty with France, King Victor Emmanuel was pledged not to interfere with the Papal dominion, it looked as if Gari- baldi's purpose and the desire of Cavour were not to be attained ; for almost the last words of the great Italian statesman were to the effect that Rome was the inevitable capital of United Italy. Cavour, rather than the minister of Napoleon, was the true prophet. North and south of the Papal power lay free and united Italy ; and every Italian in the Papal states, though a good Roman Catholic, was a better Italian, who, while acknowledging the spiritual sway of the Pope, denied his power as a temporal prince, and yearned for union with 279 28o THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Italy. But French occupation shut out ItaUan posses- sion. The inevitable, however, was to come in spite of the Emperor Napoleon. It was, indeed, to come because of him. The defeat of Austria in 1866, the formation of the North German Confederation that same year, and the mas- terly methods by which Bismarck made Prussia the leading power in Europe, wounded the pride of France, and forced Napoleon to attempt the crippling of Germany. He did this in his customary underhanded way. His agents sought, by stirring up the Eastern neighbors of Russia, to so occupy the Czar as to keep him from interference in the West. Then he tried to bind Italy and Austria to France in a triple alliance against Prussia ; but though it came to nothing, both France and Napoleon believed that the nation could, if need be, meet and defeat Germany single-handed. So when, in 1869, Spain, distracted by domestic troubles, offered its vacant throne to a German prince. Napoleon and the French government declared the negotiation a German plot ; and the Emperor ordered his minister at Berlin to demand from King William of Prussia that his relative, the German prince, should never accept the offer of the Spanish throne. King William, of course, refused. He declared he had nothing to say in the matter, and did not propose to mix up in the affair. Thus forced into action by the public sentiment of France, which seemed to demand that a stop should be put to Germany's growing power. Napoleon could not control the spirit he himself had raised ; and weakly yielding to the popular cry, on the nineteenth of July, 1 870, he declared war against Germany. WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 28 1 It was not really so much the public sentiment of France that brought about this crisis as of the French army and the insistent people of Paris, perpetually dissatisfied and forever creating some new excitement. They quite over- ruled the soberer judgment of France, which already, by a growing minority, was criticising and opposing the disas- trous designs of Napoleon. " On to Berlin ! " rang the cry ; and the armies of both nations pushed east and west to the frontiers. The cam- paign that followed was brief, one-sided, and decisive. Ger- many, for the first time fighting as a united nation, was victorious from the start, thanks to the effective measures of Bismarck and the masterly generalship of Von Moltke. The great army upon which Napoleon relied to conquer Prussia was mostly on paper ; the million men he had ex- pected to lead dwindled to less than two hundred and fifty thousand ; and if ever an army showed " unpreparedness " it was that with which the Emperor Napoleon in 1870 set out to face the perfectly equipped German army of four hundred thousand men. The issue was nev^er in doubt : from the battle of Worth, on the sixth of August, 1870, to the surrender at Sedan, on the second of September, victory was always with the Ger- mans. Napoleon was sent as a prisoner to the German castle at Wilhelmshoe ; and two days after, on the fourth of September, 1870, his empire fell, his ambitious empress was fleeing to England, and for the third time the French Republic was proclaimed. " Down with the Empire ! Long live the Republic ! " shouted the same fickle multitude that had cried " On to Berlin!" and "Long live the Emperor!" but two months 282 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. before ; and then, speedily, the republic itself was fighting for life. The German army advanced on Paris ; the city was defended by the volunteers with a resistance that sur- prised the German invaders. For four months the German besiegers were held at bay ; the German demands for sur- render were refused ; and not until two French armies of re-enforcement and relief were overthrown did the brave defenders of Paris yield to the inevitable, and surrender to the German besiegers on the twenty-eighth of January, 1 87 1. And thus fell the Empire of Napoleon the Little. Meantime France's necessity was Italy's opportunity. German victories called the French garrison from Rome ; and when Sedan toppled over Napoleon, the army of Victor Emmanuel assaulted and captured "the imperial city;" the secular power of the Pope was abolished ; and Rome, by a vote of one hundred and thirty thousand to fifteen hundred, united itself to the kingdom of Italy, of which, since the first of July, 1 87 1, it has been the capital. The overthrow of Napoleon cemented a still stronger nationality. Above the renewed patriotism of the Mar- seillaise swelled the deeper and ever-growing volume of the "Watch on the Rhine," as the sons of the Fatherland avenged in 1870 the disaster of 1807, and the son of Queen Louise of Prussia held in captivity the person and the pal- ace of the nephew of the man who had humiliated his mother. And in that captured palace at Versailles, on the eighteenth of January, 1870, in the presence of the sover- eign princes and the representatives of the free cities of Germany, William, king of Prussia, was proclaimed and crowned William I., Emperor of Germany, and German unity had been effected at last. WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 283 But German unity was born almost in the throes of French anarchy. Defeated, dispirited, and crushed, France, through its veteran patriot, Thiers, on the twenty-sixth of February, 1871, agreed to the peace of Versailles, as im- posed by the imperious Bismarck. By this she surrendered to Germany the Rhine provinces of Alsace and Lorraine (five thousand square miles of territory and a million and a half inhabitants), and agreed to pay to Germany one billion dollars as indemnity for making war. This peace was rati- fied on the tenth of May following, by the treaty of Frank- fort on the Main, by which, as the results of the Franco- German war of 1870, the military power of France was destroyed, a new western boundary for Germany was forced from France, and the political unity of Germany was ac- knowledged and realized. Before all this was completed, however, anarchy and ter- ror once more held the unfortunate city of Paris in their grip. On the eighteenth of March, 1871, the agitators, radicals, revolutionists, and socialists in Paris denied the new republic's right to surrender, and barricading the city, declared the rule of the Commune — the people — estab- lishing on the ruin of the empire the rule of the armed mob, which very nearly desolated the beautiful city, and was only suppressed on the twenty-eighth of May by the bombardment, assault, and capture of the city by the com- bined forces of the army of the republic and her German conquerors. Upon this final overthrow, the third Republic of France rose to power. The veteran Thiers, patriot, and firm oppo- nent of Napoleon, was elected president ; and the nation set itself so nobly and heroically to keep the treaty with Ger- 284 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. many, that, to the astonishment of the world, before the time limit fixed by the treaty, the whole of the vast obliga- tions to Germany had been fulfilled, and "the heel of the conqueror " was removed from French territory. It was another instance of the indomitable will of the people, so often displayed in the vigorous Nineteenth Century. The downfall of Napoleon, the rise of the French Re- public, the establishment of the German Empire, and the unity of England, well characterized by an English observ^er as "the astonishing events of 1870," affected the whole of Europe, and changed the relations that had been so long based upon rivalry and antagonisms to a condition of " pro- found peace" — a peace which continued for years in Europe, and led all nations to acknowledge the leadership and masterly ability of the great man of the age, Bismarck, the power behind the throne in Germany. This remarkable man — the creator o'f German unity — applied himself to the work of making Germany strong and great as well as united. "The unity of Germany," he had declared in 1862, "is to be brought about, not by speeches nor by the votes of majorities, but by blood and iron." Proceeding upon that "stalwart" and often terrible creed of power by force, Bismarck had overturned European politics. He established the German empire "under the military predominance of Prussia; " he made Germany the leading power of Europe ; because of his methods, the Napo- leonic Empire had been finally overthrown, Italy was united, and the temporal power of the Pope destroyed ; the first enduring republic in France had been established, and the foreign policy of Europe completely altered ; methods and WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 285 systems of war were changed ; while, because of the very force that Bismarck had proclaimed as necessary to the de- fence and protection of nations, peace rather than war has been adopted as the thing to strive for ; and public senti- ment, educated by representative assemblies and the power of the press, has to a great extent, as Professor Seignobos declares, " paralyzed the personal will of sovereigns and ministers, and put more pressure on governments to keep them from war." In September, 1872, the Emperors of Germany, Austria, and Russia with their ministers met at Berlin, and pledged themselves to maintain the peace of Europe, and especially to keep France from war. " Europe recognizes the German Empire as the bulwark of general peace," Bismarck declared ; and in thus isolating France and England from the rest of Europe, the great chancellor displayed his ability, statesmanshi}), and power. France, however, though storing up a sleeping vengeance against her conqueror, Germany, needed all her strength to rebuild and strengthen her own edifice without seeking a new war; and England, great at home and abroad, had little wish to mix up in the confusing caldron of European poli- tics. In commerce and industry Great Britain, in 1870, ruled supreme. Under the lead of Gladstone, peace was the main object of the United Kingdom, — peace and com- mercial development; and he who has been called "the greatest living master of finance," safely steered his country through all the dangers of home and foreign disturbance to the proud position of the leading force in the Christianizing and civilizing of the world. Of course, good Americans may be inclined to dispute 286 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. this pre-eminence ; but, like France, the Republic of the United States had too much to occupy herself at home in healing the wounds and covering the scars of civil war to assume any position of leadersliip beyond her ocean borders. These borders in 1870 were stronger and better de- veloped than ever. The supremacy of the American mer- chant marine had, indeed, been lost in the waste of civil war; but the internal improvement and domestic growth of the great American Republic were astonishing. In railways and manufactures, in crops and productions, this growth was steady and enormous, while the commercial interests at home and abroad, after the close of the civil war, increased mightily. In the five years between 1870 and 1875 the ex- ports and imports more than doubled in value over those of the five years between i860 and 1865; in each case — ex- ports as well as imports — the totals crowded the limit of three billions of dollars ; while, for the corresponding periods of five comparative years, immigration into the United States increased nearly threefold — the total of " new citizens" from abroad between 1870 and 1875 reaching nearly to two millions. Guided by the misfortunes of the United States because of uncertain confederation, state sovereignty, and diverse laws, the new Dominion of Canada centralized its power in its parliament at Ottawa, which set the limits of the duties and powers of the different Provincial assemblies. At the head of the Dominion stood the governor-general, appointed for a term of five years by the queen. But the governor-general is scarcely a political power ; he can do nothing without the consent of his council, which, in its turn, is responsible to the people ; senators and judges WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 287 are appointed for life ; and Canada's provincial government, thanks to the American Revolution and England's increase in wisdom, is the most stable and nearest perfection of any possible colonial government. It is, indeed, but a short step from this confederation to national independence, should the Dominion ever desire it. On the southern side of the American border the repub- lics of Central and South America were slowly feeling their way to stability. Security comes haltingly when passion is mistaken for patriotism, and the countrymen of Bolivar and San Martin had not yet schooled themselves in the calmer methcxls of liberty. Political and sectarian differ- ences provoked both feud and faction, and the ruling power was not always the recognized one ; revolts and revolutions were frequent ; and the growth of the southern republics in self-government was retarded by the atmos- phere of passion and the environments of suspicion, in which the twin oak-trees of hberty and law can never flourish sturdily. The foremost South American of this period of unrest was Domingo Sarmiento of Buenos Ayres. Realizing that the greatest civilizer was education, and that upon the future rather than the past depended the progress of his race, this philanthropic statesman devoted his life to eman- cipating South America from ignorance, superstition, and greed. It was not an easy task. Throughout South Amer- ica presidents were dictators, and dictators were tyrants ; but Sarmiento, through many discouragements, defeats, and dangers, held steadily to his purpose. Envy and slander could not dull his enthusiasm ; exile and injustice could not stay his endeavors. The Argentine RepubUc at last SiAT£flOUKAl 288 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. elected him its president in 1865, and his administration of four years is known as the "golden age" of Argentina. The other South American republics in time followed his methods, if not his lead ; and, gradually, the " real army of liberation" — the farmers, the artisans, and the school- masters of South America — began the thankless but glori- ous task of redeeming and uniting the races which Spain for so many years had held in thrall. In this enfranchisement, Anglo-Saxon and German en- terprise, as well as native energy, has borne a mighty share ; and Wheelwright and Meiggs and Lowe, leaders in material and industrial growth, are more to be remem- bered as benefactors of South America than Francia, Lopez, and Rosas, — tyrants and dictators, — whose selfish ambitions well nigh crippled the progress of their home- land. In Mexico, the northern outpost of Spanish America, three hundred revolutions tell the stormy story of an advance toward true national freedom, which began at last, when, in 1874, the amended liberal constitution was ac- cepted as the organic law of the republic, and the rise of Porfirio Diaz led the way to order and prosperity. Brazil, a sort of absolute constitutional empire, if one can understand so manifest an anomaly, was held in peace and power by the wise judgment and liberal rule of that bene- ficent monarch, Dom Pedro II., who in 1871 made his em- pire a free nation by the emancipation of every child born of slave parents and of all slaves held by the state. In this philanthropic advance Dom Pedro wisely recognized and accepted the liberal spirit of his day, even though his wisdom led to his own undoing ; for it was decreed by fate WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 289 that neither king nor emperor should long exist in the liberty-loving air of South America. The liberty-loving air of America was furnishing strength- ening ozone to other struggling lands. When, in 1835, the Dutch burghers, farmers, or " boers," of Cape Colony, dissatisfied with the liberal policy of Great Britain towards the black nations of Africa, went northward on their " exo- dus," or "great trek" as it was called, they laid the foun- dations of the Dutch republics of Africa known as the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In 1852 the Boers of the Transvaal secured their independence, and two years later the Orange Free State was established in its separate nationality. Both, however, were slave-holding republics, torn with dissensions, and so hostile to the growth of British power in South Africa that, finally, the peace of that whole "New World" was threatened, industry suffered, and the slave-trade flourished. At last England, in 1876, protested and finally acted ; but the sturdy stand for independence and nationality, even in the midst of feud and faction, showed how deeply the love of liberty was ingrained in the Dutch nature, which, stubbornly independent, has done so much for the personality of nations and of men. The persistence of Europe, however, was doing more in Africa than schooling the Boers in independence ; it was unlocking the mystery of the Dark Continent, and preparing the way for the regeneration and development of that un- known corner of the world. When David Livingstone, in 1856, had emerged from the unknown after an absence of sixteen years and a tramp of eleven thousand miles, he brought with him the key to Africa. For his report opened the eyes of the world to the commercial value of Africa as 290 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. well as its spiritual needs, and explorer and missionary fol- lowed the path that Livingstone had blazed ; Du Chaillu the Frenchman ; Burton, Speke, and Grant, the English- men ; Rohefs and Von der Decken the Germans ; Baker and Walker and Reade the Englishmen ; Schweinfurth the Rus- sian ; Mohr and Nachtigal the Germans ; Stanley the Ameri- can ; De Brazza the Italian ; and Serpa Pinto the Portuguese, — had, in the twenty years between Livingstone's first re- ports and his own death " in the harness," discovered, ex- plored, and opened the way for commerce into the long locked regions of the oldest of civilized and latest of regen- erated lands. From the days of the Phoenician explorers, seven hundred years before Christ, to those of Livingstone and Stanley, nineteen hundred years after Christ, Africa had remained a mystery; but by 1875 the genius and ro- mance of exploration, pushed forward by the restless energy of the Nineteenth Century, had opened the country to the eyes of the world, and the story of exploration grew into the story of occupation. By that date it was estimated that the twelve million square miles of African area sup- ported a population of at least two hundred millions of people ; and the nations of Europe disputed with the fol- lowers of Mahomet for occupation, interest, and influence. As the disappearance and loss of Livingstone in Africa led Stanley on his relief expedition, and opened a new era in African development, so in the Tartarean darkness and cold around the Pole, the loss of Sir John Franklin, in 1S45, and the forty relief expeditions sent out by England and America to seach for and succor him, led to the more determined exploration of the northern ice-bound seas. The introduction of steam into navigation rendered this WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 291 task somewhat easier ; and the English expedition of 1875, when, with two powerful screw-steamers, Captain Nares forced his way through the ice floes to the very edge of the paleocrystic sea, and stormed the barriers of the vast Polar pack, at the very highest northern altitudes yet reached by civilized man, was the advance of that modern polar discovery which, before the close of the Nineteenth Century, had very nearly forced the secrets of the Pole. So, too, the famous expedition of the " Challenger," under the same valiant Captain Nares, between the years 1872 and 1 874, pushed into the lifeless regions of the Antarctic, and "challenged" its mysteries. The close of the third quarter of the investigating Nineteenth Century marked a mighty increase in the world's knowledge of its own hidden places and its own vast possibilities. What exploration was doing for geographical and an- thropological knowledge, science was equalling. By 1875 the results of seventy years of research, investigation, effort, and ingenuity, were telling mightily in production and improved methods. The two greatest forces of modern civilization, steam and electricity, had made and were mak- ing enormous strides towards practical perfection. Land and sea were crossed and zigzagged with railway tracks and steamship routes. The carrying facilities of the world were vastly increased ; and the telegraph system had grown to such useful proportions that, in the year 1S70 alone, nearly fifty million "telegrams" were sent over the wires and cables of this wonderful electrical marv-el. In other lines of human achievement the three-score years and ten of the century's life had wrought revolutions as notable and as valuable as were those which had remod- 292 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. elled politics and remade states. It literature and art, in science and research, in learning and enlightenment, in a growing familiarity with great questions, and a deeper con- sciousness of vast possibilities, the whole world was broad- ening into a more intelligent productiveness, learning more clearly the how and the why, as well as the where and the when, of many a great world-problem or a long-hidden mys- tery. Nineteenth Century science has proved the "open sesame " to many a darkened treasure-cave. In 1870 more than one fearless investigator stood before the sealed door of the cave with the "open sesane " on his lips. Darwin, with his bold "Origin of Species," and still bolder " Descent of Man ; " Spencer, with his " Sociology " and his modern system of philosophy ; Tyndall, with his wonderful studies in heat and light, — actually stormed the treasure-house of nature, and " looted " it of mysteries and facts. In France, Renan, breaking away from what he deemed "the barrenness of the scholastic method," was startling the conventional, and upsetting old theories with a vigor and realism that were almost brutal in their bril- liancy ; while the struggle for political and national unity in Germany increased the numbers and influence of the students and thinkers of the Fatherland, to whose labors the people of Germany, loyal to their own, responded with a growing respect and a deepening conviction. In every civilized land the years between 1870 and 1875 displayed not only a growth of intellectual vigor in the producers, but a corresponding growth of appreciation in the people. It was in 1872 that Wagner settled at Bayreuth, and there founded the theatre in which he broke away from old methods, and revolutionized the dramatic music of the WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 293 world ; it was in 1876 that Emerson published his poems " Brahma " and " The Over Soul " — so packed with thought, as Professor Bates observes, "that to the thoughtless they seem nonsense;" and it was in 1873 that Carlyle, long neglected as a "freak," was sufficiently recognized by his contemporaries as to warrant the publi- cation of his complete works; it was in 1873 that Walt Whitman, invalided by his self-sacrificing hospital work during the Civil War, retired in poverty to Camden, " will- ing," as he said, " to wait to be understood." And yet these four "freaks," or " fanatics," as unthinking people called them, are to-day acknowledged as moving powers in modern thought. More than any other man did Wagner directly influence "the music of the future;" Whitman, so John Burroughs declares, will be "an enormous feeder to the coming poetic genius of his country ; " while, as for those "twins of thought," Carlyle and Emerson, it may to-day be accepted that they were, as Mr. Garnett declares, " the two men who had the largest share in forming the minds from which the succeeding generation was to take its complexion." "Rarely," he adds "have nations been more fortunate in their instructors than the two great English-speaking peoples during the age of Carlyle and Emerson." "A man perfects himself by working," said Carlyle; "foul jungles are cleared away; fair seed fields rise in- stead, and stately cities ; and, withal, the man himself fast ceases to be jungle and foul unwholesome desert thereby." There was inspiration even for the thoughtless in this, as there was in the simple but stirring lines of Emerson : 294 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. "The men are ripe of Saxon kind To build an equal state, — To take the stature from the mind, And make of duty fate. For He that worketh high and wise, Nor pauses in his plan, Will take the sun out of the skies Ere freedom out of man." In the heart of Europe, men not altogether of " Saxon kind," — a sturdy nation of mountaineers and farmers, — were holding their own in 1870, and "perfecting them- selves by working," were also making "of duty, fate," as they set an example in conservative freedom. "It would," says Professor Siegnobos, " be a mistake to measure the interest of Switzerland's history by the size of her territory. This little country fills a large place in the history of the existing institutions of Europe." The cantons of Switzer- land, indeed, furnish a practical example of what, in a land girdled by absolutism, or bordered by insurrection, popular sovereignty can accomplish ; for, through all the wars and revolutions, the overthrow of states, and the fall of dynas- ties since 18 14, the Swiss people have steadily held their own as the oldest existing republic. In 1874 a new and yet more liberal constitution was adopted by this liberty- loving people, which led to something unheard of in Europe — direct government by the citizens of the repub- lic ; a distinct advance ; for, as Professor Siegnobos de- clares, " no civilized people had yet gone so far in this path." Not even free America ; for there, in 1870 and 1875, the problem of reconstruction still hampered the work of politi- WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 295 cal enfranchisement, and created for over eight years — from 1868 to 1876 — what Doctor Edward Channing char- acterizes as "a period of political uncertainty." Grant, the great soldier of the Civil War, had, in 1868, been elected president of the United States ; he had been re-elected in 1872 ; and though he gave a vigorous and often statesman- like administration, the speculative spirit was abroad, and the growth of great fortunes, quickly made, and often as quickly dissipated, introduced a new and serious feature into American life — the money-power. Cities, increasing rapidly, were careless of their finances, and greed and corruption tainted many a fair name. Unwise and short- sighted policy in the efforts to make men out of the enfranchised race led to persecution in the South and unreasoning criticism in the North, so that injustice and disorder had frequently to be met and punished. All reformatory work, however, is slow, and reconstruc- tion and security had to struggle with terrorism and fac- tion ; but, gradually, a better state of things was evolved, and by 1875 the nation had not only accepted but indorsed the methods for cementing anew the lasting union of the American Republic. Abroad, the republic grew in strength and importance ; and when by arbitration, in 1 871, the Treaty of Washington amicably settled the unforgotten grudge against England for her open aid to the Confederate States, and through the Emperor of Gennany, the northwestern boundary dis- pute with England was settled in favor of the United States, the world awoke to the real importance and strength of the great new power across the western sea. Thus were the people of Saxon blood — the three great 296 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Anglo-Germanic nations of the world — drawing nearer to- gether. Bismarck, the guiding hand of Germany, the typical man of this age of union through strength, was instrumental in thus arbitrating the disputes of England and America, while, at the same time, unifying and strengthening the Empire by his process of national evolution. That process led in 1872 to a direct and open rupture with the Roman Catholic Church, a complicated struggle between the be- lievers in Bismarck and the followers of the Pope, known now in German history as " the Culturkampf " — the fight for civilization. But in 1875 Bismarck won ; for in that year he declared that his "armor was complete," and by a union of forces with the liberals and the progressives he turned the tide his way, and organized the new empire on the broad national lines he had himself desired. " Bismarck's Party," as his opponents called the workers for real German unity, triumphed, and the foundations of empire were well and strongly laid by the strongest man of his day — the master mind of that Age of Unity — the decade between 1870 and 1880. CHAPTER XVII. THE LAST "ONE-MAN POWER*' OF THE CENTURY. (From i8yj to 1880.) OTTO VON BISMARCK, Chancellor and Prince of the Empire, — he had been made Prince Bismarck in 1871, — fought and won in 1875 his struggle for civiliza- tion — the Culturkampf. He had firmly established the Empire, over-riding sometimes the desires and wishes of his "imperial master," William the Emperor. Things seemed to be going his way ; his statesmanship and power were recognized even by his opponents and enemies ; and he was easily, as the third quarter of the Nineteenth Century opened, the foremost man in the world. In spite of a cen- tury of democratic progress, it seemed as if absolutism and the one-man power had again fastened its firm grip on the world, and that German unity and nationality seemed to have been accomplished at the expense of German inde- pendence and manhood. There were, even in Germany, those who held this view; and those who desired equality and freedom quite as much as German nationality began to agitate and organize. While Bismarck was waging his "Culturkampf" he was shrewd enough to see that the friends of freedom and equality were good allies for his side; and he so favored for the moment the Liberal and Progressive parties, with whom he had really little sympathy, and even the Socialists whom 297 298 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. he hated, as to give him strength and victory. But, w^hen he had triumphed, he made few concessions to his Uberal allies ; he rejected their demands for political power, strengthened the army, and passed stringent laws against all "opponents of the government." This action especially displeased the radical reformers of Germany, who were studying the affairs of the world, and believed that the equality and freedom of man was the spirit of the age. The Socialists of Germany, largely drawn from the working classes, under the guidance of able leaders, strengthened their organization, and boldly set themselves to fight the all powerful chancellor and prince. When he wished to check their agitation by laws against the liberty of the press, the usually willing parliament, or "Reichstag," of Germany would not agree ; but when some hot -heads and fanatics of the radical Sociahsts twice attempted the life of the old emperor, the opinions of the Reichstag changed, and Bismarck was able to get the upper hand again, and secure the passage of strong laws against "the subversive efforts of the Social Democrats." This was in 1878 ; and for a time, at least, the progress of socialism was checked. Then it was that Bismarck broke off from his liberal connections, and joined hands with the conservative and reactionary forces, even going back with them to certain of the old traditions of the despotic kings of Prussia, " assist- ing" rather than elevating the "most numerous and least instructed class," and endeavoring to make a paternal rather than a self-helpful government. In England, also, at this tim-e, a similar reactionary policy seemed to be in the ascendant. The Liberal party, under the lead of Gladstone, lost for a time its control ; the Conserv- THE EAST "ONE-MAN POWER" OF THE CENTURY. 299 ative party, with its brilliant but unreliable chief, Disraeli — known, after 1 876, as Lord Beaconsfield — came into power, and sought to establish three prime factors, hardly consistent in the democracy into which Great Britain had at last grown. These were the throne, the house of lords, and the Established Church. Disraeli admired Bismarck, and wished to play a similar part in English history. So he set out to accomplish this by increasing the national power of England, and, "in the name of British honor," to adopt a warlike policy which should undo the popular reforms of Gladstone. To divert attention from home matters, he followed the course of the two Napoleons, and sought for glory abroad. This he found in strengthening the union of the British col- onies with the crown, expanding the borders of the kingdom, and becoming head nurse to the " sick man " of Europe. His first step was to unite the parent nation and all its dependencies in one mighty and solid empire. Gladstone's policy tended toward a practical if not absolute separation of the colonies from the mother country, without affording a chance for "the American blunder of 1776." Disraeli's policy was to block all such attempts toward colonial inde- pendence by a unity of interests and a strengthening of ties. To accomplish this, he sent the Prince of Wales on a visit to India in 1875 ; and in 1877 he had the queen duly proclaimed Victoria, " by the grace of God, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India." Thus did he attempt the Bismarck role, and establish the " unifi- cation " of England, while, by a vigorous and aggressive foreign policy, he gained the good-will of the colonies, and enlarged the borders of the empire. 300 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. In one section of the vast empire, however, there was perpetual unrest. The " vigorous policy " of England, from the clays of Strongbow and the Geraldines, hundreds of years back, had never been "vigorous" to the end, if absolute conquest were desired. Neither Henry the Eighth, Elizabeth, nor Cromwell, the most " vigorous " of English "pacificators," completed the work they had begun ; and Ireland, the western outpost of the home king- dom, gave to each new generation and to each change of ministry an unsettled problem. The successor of Emmet and O'Connell in the seventies was an Anglo-American brought up in Ireland, Charles Stewart Parnell, of County Wicklow. He took up, in 1875, the cause of Irish inde- pendence, and in 1879 was made leader of the Irish Home Rule party, pledged to the blockade of all English affairs, in and out of Parliament, until Ireland's wrongs had been recognized, and the Irish question settled. A defensive association, first started among the Irish peasants, was revived in 1877 as the " Irish Land League." In 1879 this had so grown as to extend over all Ireland, and was intended to limit the powers of the landlords in Ireland, and make of the peasants and farmers small landed proprietors, who were advised to stick to their farms on their own terms of rental, and not to give up until driven away by force. The Land League promised to stand behind the people, and help them fight the landlords. Very much of the money-help needed to support the Land League and strengthen the Irish cause came in the way of great contributions from Irish sympathizers in America, who might have been better employed in making themselves real Americans. In that rapidly growing THE LAST "ONE-MAN POWER" OF THE CENTURY. 3OI country the imperilled union was again firmly established. Since 1871 all the States were represented in Congress; and by 1876, the centennial year, these States numbered thirty-eight, while the western territories, fast filling up with a sturdy and thrifty population, were also pressing on to statehood. With wealth and power and a mighty area of land ; with a steadily increasing population and a vast showing in national and intellectual progress, — the republic of the United States of America, after one hundred years of life, had triumphantly disproved the prophecy of that positive old despot, Frederick the Great, who, at the close of the American Revolution, had declared that no single republic could be held together in a territory so vast as that which extended from Maine to Georgia. " It will break into sections or give place to a monarchy," said the great Frederick, who, even though king "by divine right," was not, you see, infallible, and did not, as he thought, know everything. In 1876, after a century of struggle, effort, and achieve- ment, the United States of America had not split up into sections, and had not set up a king. Instead, the world saw, on the western shores of the Atlantic, a mighty republic, the home of liberty, equality, and fraternity, a land of peace and plenty, a monument of national success, which in that centennial year sent out an invitation to all the nations of the earth to come across the seas, and help it celebrate its hundredth birthday. " The world and his wife " accepted the cordial invitation ; and from the tenth of May till the tenth of November, 1876, there was held in the city of Philadelphia, where the 302 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Declaration of Independence was signed, one of the great international exhibitions of the Nineteenth Century. It was the largest of the six International Exhibitions held since (and including) the first London Exhibition of 1851. The buildings and grounds covered sixty acres ; there were sixty thousand exhibitors ; and, during the one hundred and fifty-nine days of the exhibition, it was seen by ten million visitors. It did much to acquaint the world with the resources and possibilities of the great Republic ; it did more towards bringing together the scattered peoples of the world, and increasing that spirit of neighborliness which, in spite of political selfishness, wars, and feuds, is still resistlessly bringing nearer the federation of the world, while, best of all, it cemented in still stronger bonds the reunited sections of a once threatened Union. "The people of Montgomery, Alabama, the birthplace of the Confederate government, through its city council," so ran the message sent on July fourth, " extend a cordial and fraternal greeting to all the people of the United States, with an earnest prayer for the perpetuation of concord and brotherly feelings throughout the land." And, across the sea, from the grand-nephew and suc- cessor of that great Frederick who could see no endur- ing union for the Republic of 1776, came a significant greeting for the same glorious anniversary. It was from " William, by the grace of. God, Emperor of Germany," etc., to Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States. " Great and good friend," it said, " it has been vouch- safed to you to celebrate the centennial festival of the day upon which the great Republic over which you preside THE LAST "ONE-MAN POWER" OF THE CENTURY. 303 entered the rank of independent nations. The purposes of its founders have by a wise application of the teachings of the history of the foundations of nations, and with in- sight into the distant future, been realized by a develop- ment without a parallel. To congratulate you and the American people upon the occasion affords me so much the greater pleasure, because, since the treaty of friendship which my ancestor of glorious memory. King Frederick II., who now rests with God, concluded with the United States, undisturbed friendship has continually existed between Germany and America, and has been developed and strengthened by the ever-increasing importance of their mutual relations, and by an intercourse becoming more and more fruitful in every domain of commerce and sci- ence. That the welfare of the United States and the friendship of the two countries may continue to increase is my sincere desire and confident hope." And it was countersigned "Von Bismarck," — the man of "blood and iron," the man who had established and would maintain nationality by force ; the man who scorned republicanism and detested democracy. The prophecy of Frederick the Great had indeed been sufficiently disproved by the message of his imperial descendant. " P'ruitfiil in every domain of commerce and science," — thus had run the greeting of the Emperor of Germany. The year 1876 was indeed this; three-quarters of a cen- tury had culminated in a marvellous display of developed energies, and the " miracles of science," by which all the world was affected, and in whose wonder-working all na- tions had a share, seemed especially traceable to the achievements of American thought and effort. 304 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. " The realm of scientific investigation," so said the Lon- don Times of that day, " is actively occupied at present by our American cousins, and with results simply astounding." It was at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia that these marvellous possibilities were first fully realized, and that those "four new wonders of the world," — the electric light, the telephone, the phonograph, and the microphone, were either practically demonstrated or positively out- outlined. Inexhaustible light, instantaneous communica- tion of sound, the preservation of actual speech, the intensifying of almost inaudible sounds — these were the " four new wonders " that were given to the world between 1875 and 1880; and their practical utilization revolution- ized the methods of world-communication, and displayed the electricity which 1800 knew only as a toy, as the real and coming force of the world. And for much of this discovery, development, and adaptation, America is re- sponsible. In something more than material affairs was the world making progress in those "three-quarter " years. In 1875 France adopted a new constitution, admirably suited to a people of the peculiar nature of the French. It was a con- serv^ative compromise between republicanism and royalty — or the organization, as it has been termed, of a constitutional monarchy, in which a president elected for seven years holds the position of a constitutional king, acting through a ministry appointed by himself, but personally responsible to the representative assembly of the republic. In 1878 Americanized Japan, which had, only as late as 1 87 1, abolished its old feudalism of the dark ages, took steps to make itself, like England, a constitutional mon- THE LAST "ONE-MAN POWER" OF TII'E CENTURY. 305 archy, establishing local elective assemblies, with rights of petition, extending the franchise to all men over twenty-one who could pay a land-tax of five dollars, and set about se- curing for itself constitutional freedom, a national assembly, and the highest forms of civilized government. In 1876 Spain, resting from the exhausting struggle of factional strife, followed the lead of Cavour and Bismarck, and declared for "the Constitutional Unity of Spain." The desires of Castelar the republican were not suited to unrepublican Spain ; the military dictatorship of the sol- dier Serrano pleased neither republican nor monarchist. A king was called for, but he must be neither despot nor feudal lord ; he must be a constitutional and a liberal king. So, following the spirit of the age, a constitution was adopted in 1876. A king was selected in the person of the son of the exiled Isabella ; and Alfonso XII., recognized as the constitutional king, ascended the throne of Spain as the head of the new condition of affairs. Portugal, too, in 1877, achieved a conservative regeneration of its govern- ment, extending the right of suffrage and permitting the representation of minorities. But the long-considered union with Spain has not yet been effected. Electoral reforms and constitutional methods also, about this same time, went into effect in aristocratic Austria, where Bismarck's policy of nationalism was being attempted with the rival and warring elements of a factional and divided people. In 1876, however, the eastern borders of Austria were disturbed by a determined effort on the part of the Christian dependencies of Turkey to break away from their Mohammedan masters. The " Sick Man of Europe" began to grow very sick indeed about 1S75. 306 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. The Turkish debt grew larger, money became scarcer, and the " Sublime Porte " (that odd title of a gate on a dock which has been taken by Turkey as its official name) was practically bankrupt. An increase of taxes roused certain of the Christian departments of Turkey to rebellion. In- surrection first broke out in 1875, in Herzegovina, one of the northwestern border provinces of the Sultan. In May, 1876, the peasants of Bulgaria revolted, and the powers of Europe demanded that Turkey reform her ways. Mean- time, the Turks themselves were splitting into parties. A new generation of progressive Turks, popularly known as "Young Turkey," declared that the Sultan was respon- sible to the people for his actions ; and if he did not reign legally, he should be deposed. This alarmed the Sultan, He made one of the leaders of the " Young Turkey " party grand vizier — Midhat Pasha, a man who was almost a statesman ; and in December, 1 876, a constitution, which was solemnly proclaimed to be " the property of all Otto- man subjects," was actually drafted and promulgated ! It provided for a cabinet and a parliament, such as the more progressive European nations had established, and gave to the Turkish empire, so it was declared, " the reign of lib- erty, justice, equality, and the triumph of civilization." It almost seemed as if the spirit of the Nineteenth Cen- tury had penetrated even the darkness of absolute Turkey ! But while doing this, and attempting to put down the revolution in Herzegovina, the scum of the Turkish army was turned loose upon the rebels in Bulgaria, and a cam- paign of massacre followed which roused Europe and America to horror and protest. Three of the powers of Europe, — Russia, Austria, and THE LAST "ONE-MAN POWER" OF THE CENTURY. 307 Germany, — after a conference at Berlin, presented a "memorandum" of reforms to the Sublime Porte, which the Sultan's council refused to accept because, so it was asserted, they were " contrary to the Constitution ! " Then Midhat Pasha was " discharged ; " and as Turkey seemed going back to its old ways, the European powers threat- ened, in March, 1877, to abandon Turkey to her own devices, but to take from her all her Christian provinces. This was Russia's scheme. England, alone, objected to it, because it meant Russia's supremacy, and peril to Eng- land's possessions in the East. But, after long discussion, it was practically adopted ; and when Russia backed up its demands by a war with Turkey (in which the siege of Plevna in Bulgaria, in 1877, ^^s the most important happening), the Sultan gave in, and by the Peace of San Stefano, dictated by victorious Russia and the Congress of Berlin, in 1878, renounced his sovereignty over nearly all the Christian states tributary to him in Europe. This Congress of Berlin, however, materially modified Russia's demands at San Stefano, as the dismemberment of Turkey there proposed seemed all too favorable to Rus- sia ; and Russia was, as it had been since the downfall of the great Napoleon, his successor as a menace to Europe. Prince Bismarck was president of the Congress of Berlin ; Beaconsfield was the English representative; and these two men dominated the Congress, curbed and cut down Rus- sia's share in "the Turkish land-grab," and gave to Aus- tria the right of occupation and virtual suzerainty which Russia had coveted. " Young Turkey " was for the time defeated; and the strong man of Europe, Bismarck, the genius of his age, had again won a triumph in nationality, 308 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. by fostering a union of the Christian nations of the Balkan Peninsula. " We want permission to build churches ; we want a bishop of our own race ; we want schools ; we want taxes fixed ; we do not want soldiers in our houses ! " Thus had run the petition addressed to western Europe by the Christian mountaineers of Herzegovina, who had started this Turkish overthrow of 1875. *' I, Khame, king of the Bagamangwato, greet Victoria, the great Queen of the Eng- lish," ran the petition of the African chief to England, in 1876. " I ask her majesty to pity me, and to hear what I write, quickly. The Boers are coming into my country, and I do not like them. They sell us and our children. The custom of the Boers has always been to cause people to be sold, and to-day they are still selling people," So, from two far-separated and utterly distinct persecuted peoples, came the cry to Europe for rehef. And Europe heeded it. The Christians of the Balkans were liberated ; and England, in 1877, annexed the Transvaal, put a stop to Dutch civil war in South Africa, and saved the native Africans from the curse of slavery. The Congress of Berlin, which in June, 1878, settled for the time all the perplexing problems of the Eastern Ques- tion, settled another thing for the time being. It showed that Germany's influence was " preponderant " in Europe. And in 1880 Germany was Bismarck. He had raised his country to its greatest height of glory ; he had united, developed, and advanced her from a loose and shifting confederacy of jealous and often warring states to an imperial and undivided nation ; he had defeated in succession Austria, France, and Russia ; he had triumphed THE LAST "ONE-MAN POWER" OF THE CENTURY. 309 in the dismemberment of Turkey ; stamped down the rising threat of Socialism ; emerged victorious from his Cnltiir- kampf — his "fight for civiUzation," — and in 1877, on the heights of the Niederwald, overlooking the redeemed and reconquered Rhine, where Arminius, earliest of Ger- man patriots, had, ages before, overthrown the legions of the invading Romans, he had laid the foundation of that glorious national monument which commemorates German valor, German triumph, German redemption, German unity, and German greatness. And in 1880 the greatest of all Germans, of all Europeans, indeed, was the statesman Otto Von Bismarck, creator of German unity. " Tolstoi's purpose is mainly to make others realize that religion, that Christ, is for this actual world here, and not /or some potential world elsewhere. . . . In any event, his endeavor /or a right li/e cannot be /orgotten. Even as a pose, i/ ■we are to think so meanly o/ it as that, it is by /ar the most impressive spectacle o/ this century. . . . IVe must recognize him as one o/ the greatest men o/ all time be/ore we can measure the extent of his renuncia- tion." . . . William Dean Howells. THE AGE OF TOLSTOI. P HIL A NTHR OPY. (i88a-i8ifO.) COUNT TOLSTOI (Lyoff Nikolaievich), THE REALIST OF PHILANTHROPY, Bom Tula, Russia, August 28, lSz8. CHAPTER XVIII. HOW THE WORLD BEGAN TO TRY THE GOLDEN RULE. {From 1880 to 188^) WHILE Bismarck was cementing the foundation of German unity, and building the edifice of German power ; while the United States was working its way from perplexities to peace ; while England was increasing her power abroad, and new men and new measures were taking firm hold upon every nation, — civilized and uncivilized, king- hedged or free, — there lived in the most absolute of mod- ern monarchies a man destined to be the incarnation of conservativ^e equality — Tolstoi the Russian. A count of the empire, a soldier of Scbastopol, a man of wealth, position, and estate, he had been awakened, aroused, and moved to a higher mission by the emancipa- tion of the serfs of Russia in 1861. He received a vision of universal brotherhood ; and, returning to his estates in Central Russia, he devoted himself to the humanizing of the world, — especially of the world of Russia, as it lay about him. Count Lyon Tolstof was what the practical politicians slightingly call "a literary fellow." Worse than that in the practical politician's eye, he wrote novels. How could a man who lived in fiction deal with fact .-' But it was the facts that really were facts that impelled Count Lyon Tolstoi to write his fictions. The spirit of 314 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. the age had been the growth of nations into independence and union. Why should not all men be united and free .-' this Russian dreamer asked himself. But ignorance can never be independent ; illiteracy can never achieve unity. The first step towards making men really men must be in education, and true education is based on brotherhood. So Count Lyon TolstoT determined to live as a brother among his brothers ; and, literally ac- cepting the words of him from whom the nineteen progres- sive centuries date their beginning, he took as his life-text : " One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." It was, indeed, the spirit of the age that impelled the Russian count to attempt the levelling of rank and caste, of poverty and wealth, into one universal brotherhood. It was in many ways a wild, impracticable, and unwise scheme ; for equality is not equal mathematical distribution, and brotherhood is not absolute harmony ; without differences of opinion there could be little real progress. The story of the Nineteenth Century has, however, proved again and again the truth of the Great Teacher's declaration which follows after the text taken by Tolstoi, " Whosoever ex- alteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth him- self shall be exalted." As Professor Lange well says : " Out of the humility of fidelity springs the courage of freedom." It was this humility of fidelity that led Count Tolstoi, in pursuance of his new theory, to live among and labor with his neighbors, the emancipated serfs, in equality and com- radeship. Eighty years of the " courage of freedom," from Washington to Lincoln, from Robespierre to Garibaldi, from Bolivar the South American to Ito the Japanese, had now THE WORLD TRIED THE GOLDEN RULE. 315 taught the world the real meanings of the first misunder- stood " slogan " of French enfranchisement : " liberty, equal- ity, fraternity." For out of all this had come, first and foremost, the wisdom of unity ; and it was unity of purpose that was at the base of Tolstof's plan. " He cannot admit in his arraignment of civilization," says Howells, "the plea of a divided responsibility ; he will not suffer the prince, or the judge, or the soldier, to shirk the consequence of what he officially does." An undixided responsibility is to-day the law for men as well as nations. The publication of Tolstoi's "Anna Karenina," just be- fore 1880, was held to be a literary event in Russia; its translation and appearance in Western languages, soon after 1880, marked a new era in the world's advance ; for it was recognized as introducing certain new elements into the practical affairs of life, — self-surrender, realism, philan- thropy, and truth. Of course the wisdom of putting these elements into actual practice as Tolstoi has done is open to question. The radical reformer, as we have seen in the cases of John Brown and Wendell Phillips, of Mazzini the Italian, and Owen the Englishman, were unwise, even excitable and revolutionary in their methods ; the real reform was estab- lished by such conservative, well-balanced men as Lincoln, Cavour, Thiers, and Gladstone. But when Tolstoi, by the extent of his renunciation of wealth, fame, honors, and power, became, as Howells declares, " the most im- pressive spectacle of the century," he put into practice a •principle that had been gradually strengthening with the century, — the desire to benefit others, called by philoso- phers "altruism," and covering a course of actions designed to benefit others rather than ourselves. 3l6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. This is the very opposite of selfishness ; and selfishness, which has been the curse of the world for ages, has had its hardest knocks in this progressive Nineteenth Century, — the century of a growing faith in liberty, equality, and fraternity. Tolstoi's radical altruism profoundly affected the world ; and the decade between 1880 and 1890, which first dis- played the practical spirit of philanthropy and of actions prompted by benevolent instincts, may rightly be esteemed the era in which Tolstoi' the Russian was the dominating, even if unacknowledged influence, in literature, science, and art, in manners, morals, and methods, in living, at- tempting, and doing. A hasty glance over the happenings of those ten years between 1880 and 1890 might not at first convey the im- pression of a growing spirit of benevolence and philan- thropy. But it existed, none the less. There were wars and rumors of wars to record ; but they were not the per- sonal wars of former days ; they were wars for civilization rather than of ambition ; of democracy rather than of des- potism. Even the domestic quarrels were based on differ- ing ideas of justice rather than the blind ways of diplomacy. In England, as Professor Macvane explains, even when Tory supremacy came again "in the eighties," the Conser- vatives did not oppose all new reforms ; they did oppose some proposed by radical agitators ; but " many of the lib- eral reforms of the years since 1880 have been enacted by the Tories." When Gladstone, in 1881, sought to main- tain English rule and property rights in Ireland, he did not attempt to stamp out by the bloody methods of old what he called Parnell's "new gospel of pillage." He sought HOW THE WORLD TRIED THE GOLDEN RULE. 317 rather to help the Irish peasants by a "land-court " and an "adjustment " of rentals ; he arrested Parnell, but he did not punish or persecute him in the old way. When Bis- marck in Germany battled with the forces of socialism and unrest in 1881, he did not wage a warfare of fire and sword as his baronial ancestors would have done. He issued a message of helpfulness to the needy, declaring that "be- yond the duty of defence, the state has the task put upon it of promoting in positive ways the well-being of all its members, particularly the weak." And even in France, when Gambetta, the radical, rose to power in 1880, he counselled his followers not to resort to the bloody ways of the first revolutionists, but " to cultivate union, discipline, and patience, and settle questions, one by one." Here, certainly, was a marked advance upon the old methods of revolution and repression ; and as both political and religious creeds seemed to clash less hostilely, and to be held not less strongly but less brutally, it seemed as if the world were, indeed, doing better by itself, and as though it were seeking a closer approach to that brotherhood at- tempted by Tolstoi the Russian, and voiced by Lowell the American — " Oh, chimes of sweet Saint Charity, Peal soon that Easter morn. When Christ for all shall risen be. And in all hearts new born I That Pentecost when utterance clear To all men shall be given ; When all shall say ' My brother ' here. And hear ' My son ' in heaven 1 " But the Pentecost season was yet far away. The world was simply approaching it slowly, with many slips and 3l8 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. many strivings along the upward pathway. The struggle for wealth was still fierce ; the power of money seemed scarcely less immovable ; the strife for power and possession was still stubborn and strong. In Asia, England and Russia overstepped the boundaries of Turkey, and became rivals for dominion in the East ; in Africa, England and France struggled for the joint control of Egypt, and were first faced by the native revolt under Arabi Pasha, in 1881, and then forced into a "dissolution of partnership " by the successful assumption of financial control by England in 1883 ; while in South Africa, the obstinately independent Boers of the Transvaal proclaimed in 1880 the South African Republic, notwithstanding the equally obstinate assertion of the British cabinet that "the Transvaal shall be and shall continue to be forever an in- tegral portion of her Majesty's dominions." Even when Mr. Gladstone came into power, soon after, he declared that " the Queen cannot be advised to relinquish her sover- eignty over the Transvaal;" but when the Boers, firm in their faith, fought bravely for their cause, and in Febru- ary, 1 88 1, won the battle of Majuba Hill, Mr. Gladstone stopped his re-enforcements, and offered the Boers " self- government subject to British suzerainty " if they would lay down their arms. It was the grave mistake of a great man. Mr. Gladstone would have been wiser had he remembered the advice of Po- lonius to young Laertes, and had fought the quarrel out. Later complications would have been spared ; and his aban- donment of the Englishmen in the Transvaal after he had assured them that they should be protected, was declared by all to be little short of "national dishonor." A simi- HOW THE WORLD TRIED THE GOLDEN RULE. 319 lar policy in the war against the Arabian revolt from Egypt in 188 1, led to the abandonment and death of the brave General Gordon at Khartoum ; while the war on the Afghan border, from which, in 1881, the British troops were also withdrawn, resulted in little glory save the bril- liant march of the now famous General Roberts to the re- lief of Kandahar. In each of these " affairs," however, it seemed to Eng- land as if the national honor had been sacrificed ; and though really, in each case, Mr. Gladstone was but follow- ing out his "altruism" — his Tolstof faith — his desire to keep England from despotic strifes and unholy wars, his in- tentions were misjudged, and the great peace minister was well-nigh overthrown. But he adhered to his policy, joined hands with the Irish in the demand for home rule, and ad- vocated the practical independence of Ireland. His desires were noble, and his aims were high ; but so, too, were those of Count Tolstoi' ; so, too, were those of Henry George, a marked character of that day in the United States ; but public opinion and official thought had not pro- gressed to these higher planes of endeavor, and Gladstone, as well as Tolstoi' and Henry George, were but leaders of a wavering minority. In 1880 the population of the United States had grown to more than fifty millions ; the centennial year had opened a new epoch in the story of the great republic, for then force gave place to freedom ; slavery and State rights be- came dead issues, and political questions were matters of principle rather than of personal jealousies. In 1883 the civil-service theories of office-upholding supplanted the old Jacksonian creed that '* to the victor belong the spoils ; " 320 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. and the protection of American industries, the welfare of the country, and the "greatest good of the greatest num- ber," became the peaceful problems that demanded settle- ment Thus, too, it may be seen, was the great western nation tending toward the "altruistic" methods, and the Tolstoi' idea of philanthropy in government was securing a foot- hold, if not an absolute trial. In 1880 slavery was abolished in Cuba; in 1881 Greece, thanks to English backing, secured from Turkey its ancient northeastern limits of Thessaly ; in 1882 the Salvation Army instituted its peculiar, creedless, semi-military, and semi-religious plan of saving the "submerged tenth" — the lowest orders of society — by a campaign of reforma- tion and philanthropy; in 1883 Henry George attempted his radical but well-intentioned plan of race relief, or "land nationalism ; " and India, reclaimed and advanced by Eng- lish occupation, hailed Victoria as empress supreme, and, urged by Mr. Bright's "Tolstoi'an cry " of "justice to In- dia," almost secured, in 1883, an absolute advance toward "equal rights ; " in 1884 the republic of France presented to the people of the United States, as a mark of friendly feeling and brotherly love, the gigantic statue of Liberty, which to-day in New York harbor stands, a welcoming landmark, at the gateway to the commercial metropolis of the western world. And in that same year of 1884 a new franchise bill in England added to the voters of Great Britain nearly two million freemen, and lessened the in- equalities of race and class, against which reformers had so long protested. The Australasian colonies of Great Britain took forward steps toward union and federation in a season HOW THE WORLD TKU'ID THE GOLDEN RULE. 32 1 of increasing prosperity ; and the revision of the New Tes- tament in 1 88 1 marked the development of scholarly thouf^^ht and the freedom of criticism. These certainly looked like an advance along the pleas- anter paths of peace and fraternity, and a growth in broad- ening and helpful methods. There are, of course, offsets to every benefit, and hindrances to every advance. Those opening years of the " eighties " were no exception in this way. But of what lasting benefit is progress, obtained without sacrifice or opposition ? Progress comes because of opposition ; and the "^ thought " of that wise Roman, Marcus Aurelius, was as true in the nineteenth century as it was in the second century, when he uttered it : " That which is a hindrance is made a furtherance to an act, and that which is an obstacle on the road helps us on the road." In the years between iSSo and 1885 there was no lack of such hindrances and obstacles. There were "boycot- ting " and violence in perplexed Ireland ; there was politi- cal murder in the Emerald Isle, the assassination of a czar in Russia and of a president in the United States : Lord Cavendish struck down in Phenix Park by Irish "terrorists," Alexander of Russia by Nihihst "reformers," and President Garfield in America by a political fanatic. An unreasoning despotism filled Siberia with political e.xiles, and persecuted the Jews in Russia. Even the wel- coming hand of free America, stretched out to all the world, was stricken down by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 ; and the trades unions and labor agitators who clamored for it were but another obstacle in the upward path to their own liberty. The irksome bond of union 322 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. between Norway and Sweden was strained almost to snap- ping in 1884, as the Norwegian writer and reformer, Bjornson, sought to introduce " foreign ideas " and certain of the teachings of TolstoL In South America, progres- sive Chili waged war with Peru and Bolivia over the own- ership of mines and boundaries ; and the naval battle off Point Angamos tested the new war invention of armored fighting-ships. In Europe international jealousies over the vexed Eastern question held England almost alone against a half -allied Europe ; and one of these old-time despotisms, the " League of the Three Emperors," was renewed when, in 1884, Germany, Austria, and Russia sought to keep France quiet, " discipline " Italy, and " isolate " England. Bismarck was still "in the saddle," with Austria and Russia as his submissive allies. But no great man, in this advancing age, can long hold undisputed sway. The " Iron Chancellor's " critics grew openly hostile ; even the for- merly subservient Reichstag would not grant his desires ; majorities threatened his power, and departments denied him assistance ; and only the loyalty of the old Emperor William, to whom the iron chancellor was almost indis- pensable, could save him from falling before the power of the growing opposition. In France a new leader had risen to power, Leon Gam- betta, chief of the republicans ; but his methods and his manners savored too much of the dictator, and a republican "dictator " is worse than a king. France had experienced too much of this "Napoleonic" leadership; and in three months after his elevation as prime minister in 1882, pop- ularity and power were both lost by Gambetta, and France, HOW THE WORLD TRIED THE GOLDEN RULE. 323 to divert agitation and criticism at home, set out on a career of colonial expansion. In Africa, Asia, and the "isles of the sea," she revived the old Napoleonic dream of empire and a stop to British expansion. Madagascar was overrun, Annam " protected," Tonquin "assimilated," the Soudan "influenced," and the Congo claimed ; and by 1885 France was recognized as one of the great powers that had established " spheres of influence " in the world of expanding possession. It was about this time, indeed, the early "eighties," that this phrase, "spheres of influence," came into diplomatic usage. It referred to such sections or regions of newly appropriated country as, by mutual consent, might be occu- pied or developed by the power for which it was named, or by whom it was controlled. Very many of these " spheres," especially in Africa, were acquired or appropriated about this time by European powers, who, as in the case of France, sought to divert criticism at home by expanding abroad. The criticism at home in all cases came from the oppo- nents of the party in power — those who were " agin' the government," as the saying was ; and in many cases these opponents were of that openly hostile class who were against all government of the kind under which they lived. In Germany the Socialists, in Russia the Nihilists, in France the Communists, in Austria the Anarchists, with equally radical " ists " in other parts of Europe, were for- ever attempting to stir up strife by extreme measures — from strikes and discontent among the working-people, to assassination and destruction among kings and ruling classes. 324 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. The principle underlying all these radical organizations is, of course, a true one — it is the desire for liberty, equal- ity, and fraternity that has been at the basis of all revolu- tions since the days of Robespierre ; but as in his case, even though he was called "the Incorruptible," selfishness tinges endeavor; jealousy contributes to all movements ; and hatred of all who have money, property or social position, official power, military authority, or genius for leadership, impels these unwise, fanatical, or conscienceless " reform- ers " to outrage the very principle of brotherhood for which Tolstoi stands, and for which these so-called reform- ers clamored, until one feels almost ready to exclaim with Madam Roland, — the victim of the Revolution she upheld : "O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!" These revolutionary reformers depended largely upon the working-man for their recruits and sympathizers ; un- able to see that capital and labor depend upon and are necessary to one another, the " agitators " endeavored to stir up strife between the capitalist and the wage-earner, basing their action upon the fundamental idea which they continuously "preached at " their followers: "The history of all society is the history of struggles between classes. . . . Labor is the sole origin of wealth. . . . Emancipa- tion of labor must be the work of the laboring class," and urging a union of forces among the working-men of the world to assert and compel the rights of labor. This, of course, rightly directed, means a steady rise of the people ; but it has never been well or properly led, — save, perhaps, in such excellent fraternal and self-helpful organizations as "The Brotherhood of Locomotive P^ngineers " in the United States, with others, perhaps, equally reticent and equally HOW THE WORLD TRIED THE GOLDEN RULE. 325 practical in other sections of the world. But the contest between labor and capital is as old as the Pharaohs, and the secession of the Plebes to the Sacred Mount ; and even the wonderful Nineteenth Century was not able to decide it, although it did much to intensify, unite, and practical- ize it. And here again, as in so many other departments of life and action, the unity for which Tolstoi stood and for which, almost unconsciously, the world was laboring, was apparent. Eighty years of material and intellectual progress had brought the world more closely in touch ; and in spite of differences and drawbacks, in spite of obstacles and oppo- sition, in spite of agitation and antagonism, the " chimes of sweet Saint Charity," which Lowell yearned to hear, could now and then be faintly caught, as some loving soul like Tolstof the "Brother," some worker for good like Booth the Salvationist, some practical optimist like Arnold Toyn- bee the " Settlement " organizer, some ante-mortem philan- thropist like Peter Cooper, — sought in his own peculiar and not always practical way to help rather than to hinder the real progress of the people toward self-help, self-control, and self -adjustment. CHAPTER XIX, HOW THE NATIONS EXTENDED THEIR INFLUENCE. {From i88j to iSgo.) THE telephone and the typewriter came into general use about 1885. Before that date they had been first curiosities, and then luxuries ; but by 1885 they had both become necessities, and the benefit and advantage derived from them by civilization had already become incalculable. Developments, both, of the greater inventions of the tele- graph and the printing-press, they were in a sense fitting accompaniments to those new phases of intellectual prog- ress which were making education the property of the masses rather than of the individual, regulating labor so that it was support rather than servitude, and introducing more of comfort and manliness into the harsher conditions of daily life. Philanthropy is not alone an element of charity ; it is an element of progress as well ; and whatever simplifies labor and softens drudgery is as helpful as philanthropy and as welcome as benevolence. In 1885 education was extending not only to the teach- ings of the schools, but to the instruction of the people in all helpful and elevating ways. In certain nations it had become a function of government, and Bismarck's rule in Germany had grown into a paternal as well as a supervis- ing authority. An independent people is apt to object to this paternalism, however, and neither England nor America 326 TYPES OF THE ) Hi-oo , „_ __ _,,_, ___,, I Gram Gladstone AGE OF TOLSTOI \ wTJVek R?rsUvEN-soM THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 327 could have been developed by such methods as Germany had been. The German government co-operated with the German people, and had become indeed government by regulation. It regulated hotels and railroads, telegraphs and nursing, the sale of provisions and the health of cities, even athletics and advertising ; it advised with scientific exactness, and endeavored to combine benevolence with justice. School attendance was compulsory, and every field of life aiid labor was cared for by men taught and drilled for their especial work. It was a great scheme for physical and intellectual development, but people are ever apt to rebel against too much "management." At the head of the German nation stood in 1889, after a thousand years of the Fatherland's struggle toward suprem- acy, a representative of the "divine right of kings," which those thousand years had persistently proclaimed, and which Bismarck had so strenuously insisted upon. The old Emperor William, the ruler of united Germany, died in March, 1888. That same year his son and successor, Frederick III., a sick man at the time of his accession, died within three months of his father, June, 1888. Even in that brief reign a revolt was begun by the throne against the autocracy of Bismarck ; and when, upon the death of his father, the young Emperor William II. ascended the throne, he did so with an overweening confidence in his own powers and an unc|uestioning belief in his own abilities that argued an early "friction" between himself and his mighty chan- cellor. " Not since the first Napoleon," wrote an observer in Berlin, " has a young man wielded such tremendous power as has fallen to the lot of this headstrong, violent, and re- 328 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. vengeful prince. . . . Let the map-makers get ready and sharpen their tools," he added, "for they will have work to do." Russia, the home of Tolstof the philanthropist, had grown into a united and mighty nation, composed of people who were slow to change, and had not yet become used to the freedom their master the Czar had given them. Katkoff, the great leader of Russian nationality, who had labored for what is called the "Russification " of the empire, died in 1887, and czar and peasant alike mourned beside his bier ; for the true Russian felt that Russia could be the real nation which its greatest rulers, from Peter to Alex- ander — arbitrary and despotic though they were — had sought to make it, only as it followed the path marked out for it by this great privy councillor. The world outside, who knew only the despotism, the nihilism, and the exiles of Russia, could not appreciate the mighty influence of this man, who wished to make Russia Russian and not German ; national and not divided. Tolstoi's higher idea of broth- erhood, however, did not fit well into Katkoff' s idea of nationality. Education and enlightenment, too, had brought England to a condition of prosperity unequalled in her history. Poverty and need, suffering and squalor, still existed ; but the age of philanthropy had improved the condition of the people ever since the day when Charles Dickens, in his masterly novels, led the crusade against English official- ism, even as Thackeray did against English sham. The "cry of the children," as voiced thirty years before by Mrs. Browning, like the cry for bread from starving England in the still earlier days of the Chartist troubles, THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 329 had led British statesmen and lawmakers through a period of philanthropic and industrial progress until, in the decade of the "eighties," the advance of the people had been almost as remarkable as the progress of the kingdom in all material things — thanks to the practical operations of thought, as exhibited in such discoveries as railway growth, telegraph and telephone expansion, cheap post- age, and the skilled and energetic application of steam and machinery to the productive industries of her mul- tiplying manufactories. The year 1887 was duly celebrated in England as the fiftieth anniversary of the coronation of Queen Victoria. With splendid ceremonies in Westminster Abbey ; with military and naval pageants, as notable as they were extensive ; with delegations from every part of the vast empire ; with waving banners and brilliant illumination ; with swelling music and booming cannon, — the British P^mpire, from bound to bound, kept fitting national thanksgiving for the unparalleled progress of the em- pire during the fifty years of Queen Victoria's reign. The Victorian age had indeed been the age of progress ; the reign of Victoria had been more eventful than that of either or all of the three other reigns that reached the half-century limit — Henry III,, Edward III., and George III. ; for the people had progressed as never before in an equal space of time ; every department of life and action had advanced and broadened ; and the voice of the people expressed through their parliament was now the supreme power of the land, which monarchs could not curtail nor ministers disregard. " Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers," Tennyson, 330 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. brightest of the Victorian poets, had written years before ; and in all this notable advance through fifty years of effort and achievement since that slight girl of eighteen had seated herself in the coronation chair of England, wisdom sometimes kept but unequal step with knowledge, and sometimes "lingered" woefully. A nat- ural dislike of change has always held man back from the forward step ; and every improvement has been resisted, from independence to electricity, and from labor- saving machinery to parhamentary reform and national expansion. Even in the years succeeding 1885, when humanity was slowly taking the place of selfishness in the way of the world, every advance was resisted and every attempt toward the general good was checked. In England Gladstone, master-builder of British democ- racy, who, from the Tory of 1832, had become "the Great Commoner" of 1885, fell from power in 1886 for lack of support by the people he sought to benefit, unite, and glorify. Gambetta, who, in France, would have made his country a parliamentary republic, fell, in 1882, because those whom he would have helped feared his dictatorial ways, and died, disgraced, within a few months of his down-fall ; while the political adventurer Boulanger, " the hope of the people" in 1886, who loudly proclaimed him- self the mainstay of "the open republic," and was hailed with exultant "vivas ! " fell by reason of his very success in 1889, ^^^ was driven into exile and suicide. In Italy, Crispi, major and minister of Garibaldi, the republican dic- tator of Sicily in i860, prime minister of Italy and leader for the constitution, liberty, and peace, and hailed in 1887 as " the one minister necessary to Italian honor," fell from TIIK NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 33 I leadership because he dared to criticise a foreign policy which he thought bad for Italy. Bismarck, the creator of German unity, and the hope of the nation while the old Emperor William lived, toppled from power in 1889, be- cause he dared declare his opposition to the policy of the young F^mpcror William, who arrogantly demanded " un- questioning obedience to the crown." In seeking to com- promise matters in Austria between those who demanded " German unity in Austria " and those who clamored for Slavonian union (or "Austria for the Czechs"), Count Taaffe lost his grip ; while Svendrup, who labored for reform and education and Scandinavian supremacy in Norway and Sweeden, was forced from power as prime minister in 1889. So, in all lands those who led or desired the advance of the people in nationality or reform felt the uncertainties of power or the fickleness of popularity. But the power of the people survived all changes and attacks. This power of the people displayed itself in all lands. The imperial federation of England in 1887 — an out- growth of colonial loyalty in the splendor of the Queen's Jubilee of that year — became more firmly estabhshed, and, by 1889, even Ireland seemed at peace. The advo- cates of monarchy in France yielded, in 1889, to the evi- dent determination of the French people to remain a republic " one and indivisible ; " and the Paris exhibi- tion of that year, held to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the Republic, once again drew all eyes to the fact that France was great and prosperous, and had no desire for Boulanger's policy of "Agitation and adven- ture." The " League of Peace " between Germany, Aus- 332 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. tria, and Italy in 1887 was but enforcing the popular disapproval of anything that should disturb the " harmony of Europe ;" so, to divert the energies of agitators, increase the commercial prosperity, and broaden the world-influence of civilization, the leading governments of Europe set busy hands at work abroad, and, before 1890, were entering upon an era of colonial expansion, and finding vent for all their international jealousies in what has been well called the "Scramble for Africa." This "scramble" seemed to affect every portion of the former "dark continent," — dark no longer, thanks to European "exploitation." Before 1890 dawned, England was in Egypt struggling for the possession of the Nile ; she was in South Africa consolidating her power over insur- gent Zululand ; she was establishing a protectorate over Zanzibar ; while Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Belguim, entering into the " scramble," marked out "spheres of influence" which, by 1890, had zigzagged and circled over all Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to the Mediterranean, and " influenced " all sections of the dark continent not claimed by Turkey as suzerain or held as native powers. The "native powers " indeed were by that time few and far between ; even the Dutch Boers of South Africa had assumed the name of Afrikanders, — that is, white natives, — and had organized the Afrikander Bund, which aimed not only at white Dutch influence and suprem- acy in South Africa, but at the ultimate complete indepen- dence of that section as the " United States of South Africa." Even the United States of America had a little interest in Africa. For on the west coast, with a sea frontage of THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 333 four hundred miles, and an area of nearly fifteen thousand square miles, the American Colonization Society had, in 1822, founded a colony of free negroes who desired the political and social freedom denied them in the United States. This philanthropic experiment resulted in an inde- pendent and established government as the Republic of Liberia in 1847, recognized as such by foreign nations, and "assisted" especially by England and the United States, with a president, senate, and house of representatives, and a milUon and a half inhabitants. So, even though the great American republic had no real sphere of influence in Africa, it had to a certain extent 2, protege, even though it was not a recognized and "influenced " one. The United States of America, meanwhile, secure in its mighty homeland, was fast growing into greatness in those years when Europe was outlining spheres of influence abroad. In the ten years between 1880 and 1890 over five million immigrants had come into the United States through the ports of New York, Baltimore, Boston, Phila- delphia, and San Francisco; the population of the great republic had grown from fifty millions in 1880 to sixty- two millions in 1890, and 1889 closed with forty-two States in the Union. As against the thirteen States of 1789, when the Constitution was adopted and the less than four millions of inhabitants, this growth was phenomenal in the history of the world. It was an eloquent commentary on the value of personal liberty, national independence, and equal rights. The one hundred years of popular government which closed in 1889 were fitly recognized by a jubilee cele- bration, in the city of New York, of the Centennial aiini- 334 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. versary of the adoption of the Constitution, and the inaug- uration of George Washington as first president of the United States. What that inauguration and that Consti- tution meant, not only to the United States of America, but to the world at large, this story of the Nineteenth Century has tried to suggest, but it cannot adequately tell or even estimate ; for the influence of that one hundred years of government " of the people, by the people, for the people," had been felt throughout the world; and the "new birth of freedom " which freedom's chief martyr, Abraham Lincoln, desired for his own homeland, had even before the American Republic's hundred years of constitutional liberty closed, extended to all peoples and to all lands. Especially had the people of the south lands of America — the republics of Central and South America — felt this influence and impulse. Less contained and less conserva- tive than the cooler Anglo-Saxon temperament of the North, the Latin Americans of the South, as they had established independence only through blood, maintained it also only through blood. Feud and faction, and the rest- lessness of minorities, kept those fertile lands nearer the equator in perpetual turmoil and frequent change. But though revolution succeeded revolution, never once did those nations let go the main and central fact of republi- can independence ; and the effect of personal and political liberty was so great that even the liberal empire of Brazil, was, in 1889, overthrown, and the republic proclaimed in its place. Even the good old Emperor, Dom Pedro, be- cause he was an emperor, was exiled , and on the nineteenth of November, 1889, the provisional government declared that monarchy was abolished, and that "the provinces of THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 335 Brazil, united by federation, compose the United States of Brazil." Thus was the last vestige of old-world monarchy swept from the shores of free America. In the very year that saw the downfall of monarchy in Brazil, Japan, that old island despotism of the Asiatic seas, became a constitutional monarchy. Adopting the methods and many of the manners of Western civilization, Americanized as well as Europeanized in its shrewd and ready adoption of progressive ways, this Oriental empire of forty millions agreed to and promulgated, on the eleventh of February, 1899, a Constitution, founded on that of Ger- many, and guaranteeing to the people of Japan liberty of religion, freedom of speech, the franchise to all men who paid a small specified tax, with a legislative assembly consisting of a house of lords and a house of commons, in the English style. New treaties were signed with all the great powers of the world ; commissioners were sent to Europe and America to study methods of legislation ; railways and street-cars were introduced and extended ; and a nation, hermit for centuries, and known to the com- merce of the world for less than twenty years, possessed in 1889 a foreign commerce amounting to more than one hundred millions of dollars, with national banks, harbor im- provements, and even a national debt ! In all modern his- tory there is no such sudden leap into civilization as this marvellous awakening of Japan. This progress of Japan, with the growing possibilities of China as a land for trade and development, extended the European desire for "spheres of influence" from Africa to Asia ; and Great Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and Russia had now large holdings or sure footings on the 336 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. islands and continents of the Asiatic shores of the Pacific. Even the United States felt the impulse to make itself secure in the Pacific, and looked with a practical business eye upon the mid-Pacific island group of Hawaii and the further western group of Samoa. Already was civilization touching these western stepping-stones to Asia. The king- dom of Hawaii — long known as the Sandwich Islands — were so closely connected with the United States in trade and commerce that already the old-time despotism of the Kamehameha of 1800 had changed into the limited and constitutional monarchy of 1887 — fast tending towards a republic, while American influence was dominating the islands. The native kingdom of Samoa, whose " ideas and manners," wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, "date back be- fore the Roman Empire," were, in 1885, coveted by and practically partitioned among the merchants and traders of three foreign powers — England, Germany, and the United States. Rival provinces and rival kings disturbed with their jealousies the peacefulness of this South Sea island group, fomented and disturbed by the rival traders of the three nations. In 1886 Germany, backing up one of the rival native kings against the one in possession, practically annexed Samoa under a tributary king to the open dis- approval of England and America. In 1889 the United States, to whom a coaling-station had been granted, for- mally protested against the action of Germany, and what looked at first like an insignificant bit of commercial rivalry developed at once into an international dispute. Civil war broke out between the rival kings ; German, American, and British warships were hurried in semi-hostile fashion to Apia, and a three-cornered war seemed imminent. THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 337 Suddenly, on the sixteenth of March, 1889, Dame Na- ture took a hand. On the morning of that day a fearful hurricane burst upon Samoa. " The formidable surf of the Pacific," as Stevenson calls it, lashed into fury by the terrible wind, broke into the harbor of Apia, driving the warships ashore, shattered and wrecked them with fearful loss of life, and awoke three great nations to the truth that, as Stevenson, the historian of what he calls this " footnote of history," declares, "not the whole Samoan archipelago was worth this loss in men and ships." National arbitra- tion ensued. The Conference of Berlin, held in April, 1889, arrived at an amicable arrangement of international difficulties ; and, again to quote from Stevenson, " the so- called hurricane of March sixteenth made thus a marking epoch in world-history. Directly and at once it brought about the Congress and Treaty of Berlin ; indirectly, and by a process still continuing, it founded the modern navy of the United States. Coming years and other his- torians will declare the influence of that. . . . For, with the hurricane, the broken warships, and the stranded sail- ors," he continues, "came an end of violence. . . . Two years of blundering were obliterated by the negotiations at Berlin. The example thus offered by Germany is rare in history ; in the career of Prince Bismarck, so far as I am instructed, it should stand unique, for he seems magnani- mously to have owned that his policy was wrong." This was the hardest as it was the noblest thing a man of the Iron Chancellor's nature could do. It showed, after all, the Tolstoi strain. But Bismarck's action in the Samoan dispute was only a slight halt in his scheme for the colonial expansion of Germany, which had already involved him in 33S THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. trouble with his colonial rivals, England and Spain. So, however much the influence of what we may call the Tol- stoi" element of fraternity really did touch him, we may not absolutely say ; but certainly this influence was affecting the civilized world. Especially did it draw the United States into a desire for mutual relations with its own American neighbors ; and in 1 889 James G. Blaine, the energetic and able Secretary of State, brought about one of his plans for greater unity in the meeting of a Pan-American Congress, which, on the nineteenth of November, assembled at Washington. Rep- resentatives from the principal states of North and South America were present ; and consultations were held result- ing in the reaffirmation of the " Monroe Doctrine " of 1824, and the closer union of the American Republics in matters common to the various states, and for the "furtherance of international commerce and comity," including, even, the vast idea of an iron band of railway connection from Beh- ring Sea to Terra del Fuego. So, gradually, as the last decade of the Nineteenth Cen- tury drew near, did the world draw nearer together in neigh- borliness ; the unknown corners of the earth were fewer, the unexplored parts smaller, the unbeaten tracks scarcer. Trade and commerce, curiosity and pleasure, science and investigation, were beating all roads into highways, and un- earthing the odd folks and queer places that had been hid- den away since the origin of species and the budding life of man. True, growth did not put a stop to selfishness, nor did • development overcome greed ; new opportunities aroused fresh discussions as to ownerships, and new pos- sibilities started fresh quarrels. With thirty-three thousand THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 339 Steam and sailing vessels engaged in the carrying trade of the world, with a tonnage of twenty-two millions, and with nearly forty nations battling for the business of the globe, competition grew sharp, and rivalries were often bitter ; but the policy of " live and let live " had well-nigh sup- planted the old methods of business brutality, and the " Black Fridays " that had marked panics in speculation grew less frequent and less ruinous. The vast development of the gold and diamond mining industry in South Africa did, indeed, increase the friction between Boer and Briton in that land of clashing interests, and brought to the surface, as the prime mover in the whole trouble, the restless and remarkable English diamond miner, Cecil Rhodes of Kimberley. Rival interests, poor management, and careless financiering put an end in 1889, after eight years of work, to the great scheme by which De Lesseps, hero of the Suez Canal, sought to join the Atlantic and the Pacific by a canal through the Isthmus of Panama ; the half-breed Canadian of the "great lone land," Louis Riel of the Red River country, for a second and last time tried to raise a revolt against English supremacy in Canada in 1885, only to meet defeat and death at Regina ; Servia and Bulgaria, those restless principalities on the Balkan borders of Turkey, fell into the wrangle of war in 1885, over the union of "the two Bulgaries," which ended in Bulgarian victory, European protest, and Russian domi- nation ; labor troubles shook both sides of the sea ; and the determined " Russification " of the Czar's dominions finally swallowed up the individuality of Poland and Fin- land, in spite of protest and desires for liberty, — all these were obstacles in the path of that broader and wiser charity 340 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. which was gradually influencing and harmonizing men and nations, and bringing them nearer in friendship and agree- ment as befitted the age of Tolstoi", the philanthropist. Of course I would not be considered as asserting that Tolstof, the Russian count who, since the Crimean War, had been working out his problem of humanity in his own peculiar way, was recognized or accepted by the world as its tutor in humanity and its leader in fraternity. His ways and methods were alike overstrained and impractical ; the key-notes of his teachings, " resist not evil," worked out along his lines could scarcely help the world forward ; and his attempt to do in this nineteenth century literally the will of Christ as conveyed to the people of the first century would scarcely fit the changed conditions of the world ; but, as Howells says of Tolstoif, " No man so glori- ously gifted and so splendidly placed has ever bowed his neck and taken the yoke upon it ; " and in many ways his story and his influence must have affected the world of his day — even while it rejected and ridiculed his methods. But, after all, the spirit of the Nineteenth Century itself had been the world's greatest purifier — enlightening, enfran- chising, and redeeming ; for, in that uplifting of the people, the very clement that moved Tolstof, the Christ-like wish to benefit others, had place ; what the Germans called the Zeitgeist — the spirit of the time — that general drift of thought or feeling which characterizes or directs any period or epoch — had, in the decade of 1880 to 1890, been, in spite of strife and selfishness, in spite of greed and gain, the altruistic or benevolent awakening ; the better con- science of the world was being touched ; education and philanthropy were doing practical work ; aristocracy was THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 34 1 gradually yielding to democracy — not the democracy that vulgarizes, but the democracy that uplifts — the democracy of Lincoln and Emerson, of Gladstone and Tolstoi, the democracy which, as Lowell says, has "energy for good," and which, he adds, "amid all the fruitless turmoil of the world, holds one thing steadfast and of favorable omen — the instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves." " The/acilities and possibilities of communication luith our /ello-wtnen, and the improvements in the produc- tion of light for conitnon use are suf- ficiently ne-w and remarkable to distinguish this century from all the ages that preceded it." Alfred Russel Wallace. THE AGE OF EDISON. Energy. (1890-1900.) THOMAS ALVA EDISON, THE " WIZARD OF MENLO PARK; Born Milan, Ohio, February 11, 1847. CHAPTER XX. WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE THE VALUE OF THINGS. {From i8go to i8gj.) " M^ Other period in the history of the human race," 1 N says Professor Seig^obos, " has seen such profound and rapid transformation in the material conditions of Hfe as have taken place during the Nineteenth Century." And this has largely been because of the world's methods of practically applying the inventions of the century, many of which, indeed, had their beginnings in the eighteenth cen- tury, but, in their inception, lacked the demand for appli- cation which came because of international needs and international help. This help came not always because of friendship, for inventors have ever been rivals, and often enemies. But the means of communication, of comparison, and of infor- mation have increased so notably as the people of the world became more neighborly and in touch with one an- other that, as Professor Seignobos has well explained, "the scholars and inventors of all nations have been united in so close an international collaboration that it is not always possible to determine which country takes the initiative in each invention ; and they have passed from one nation to another, gaining imperceptibly from each." The practical application of these international inven- tions was so widely made during the last ten years of the 345 346 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. century, that the decade between 1890 and 1900 may well be termed the era of scientific progress and application ; while the ability to use, develop, test, and establish these notable and often crude beginnings of invention was, in those years, so remarkably displayed by a certain remark- able American inventor, that the closing ten years of the Nineteenth Century —the heir of all the ages of invention and discovery, of thought and effort, that preceded them — may, without injustice to others, be broadly character- ized as the age of Edison. In his New Jersey laboratory and work-rooms, Thomas Alva Edison, often spoken of as " the Wizard of Menlo Park," tested, tried, and practically developed many new inventions that had already become public necessities — from "the ticker" to the telephone, and the phonograph to the incandescent lamp. Other men may have been even more remarkable in originality of investigation and invention, but none had more wonderful facility for devel- oping and adapting the crude ideas of other men to prac- tical results than had Edison ; and as a genius in the application of scientific discovery, he stands unique in his day and generation. " We live at a time," says Benjamin Kidd, "when science counts nothing insignificant. She has recognized that every organ and rudimentary organ has its utilitarian his- tory. Every phase and meaning of life has its meaning in her eyes ; nothing has come into existence by chance." When, in the late " seventies," James Prescott Joule, the English scientist, developed his discoveries as to the mechanical value of heat, and that the forces of nature, showing that mechanical action, heat, light, electricity, WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 347 magnetism, and chemical action are so closely related that any one may be used to produce the rest, he made one of the greatest discoveries of the age — the economy of nature, which permits no such thing as waste, and the preservation of force as an indestructible element ; in other words, the practical value of energy. That, I beheve, may be taken as typical of the closing decade of the Nineteenth Century — the application of energy to life. Whether it is keeping, by a display of force, the armed peace of Europe, or redeeming from degradation in spite of itself "the submerged tenth of the human race," towards whose recovery the Salvation Army directs its peculiar and energetic methods ; whether it is keeping alive for the preservation of society the very labor agitations that seem to threaten it, or displaying at a mighty fair in Chicago in 1893 the accumulated produc- tions of the world ; whether it is extending the benefits of civilized progress to all the corners of the globe, and into all "staked out" "spheres of influence," or urging the world on to a still more rapid development by a series of surprising inventions from new means of production to new means of destruction — energy has been behind it all ; and the restlessness of achievement entered into every department of life, from education to finance, and from politics to literature. This is the new doctrine of " the strenuous life." When the " nineties " came, the great lights of litera- ture who had made the age so glorious had already been extinguished, or were near their end. Balzac and Thack- eray, Macaulay and Dickens, Heine and Bryant, Schopen- hauer and Humboldt and Thiers, had long since passed 348 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. away ; Longfellow and George Eliot, Darwin and Hugo, Turgeneff and Green and Robert Browning had not lived out the "eighties ; " and when 1900 came, few of the great names save Tolstoi the Russian and Ibsen the Norwegian were on the roll of the living. In 1891 died Bancroft and Lowell ; in 1892, Whittier and Tennyson "crossed the bar," and that same year Renan tested his own theories of life and death; in 1894 Holmes closed the glorious roll of Boston's once famous literary circle — "the last leaf" on that tree of goodly fellowship of kindred soul which had raised America far above the plane of Sydney Smith's once querulous query about the American book. And when Holmes died people asked, " Will there ever be any men like those again .'* " regardless of the very fact for which the closing Nineteenth Century stood — the conser- vation of energy and the thrift of nature which can pro- duce and develop, if need be, a hundred Tennysons or a hundred Longfellows, diffused in smaller quantities to be sure, but of equal value when the total influence is reck- oned up. The future may not need flaring beacon-lights, when men may draw help and radiance, guidance and good, from all their fellow-men. Only great needs now call out the great man. In art no less than in literature, the Nineteenth Century had made wonderful strides. No need now for a Michael Angelo or a Raphael to stand as lone peaks above a level sea, when the level itself was raised to a new and glorious elevation. A century which in music began with Beetho- ven and closed with Wagner displayed alike the energy, courage, and prophecy of progress ; while the experimental age of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Horace Vernet developed. WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 349 thanks to photography and the advance of education, into the more natural achievements of Leighton, and Baudry, and Sargent, and St. Gaudens. La Farge and WilHam Morris, in 1895, linked art to craftsmanship, and glorified the union of hand and brain ; while through the century great names stood out as mas- ters and leaders in their profession, — Ingre the delineator, Daubigny the naturalist, Corot the mystic. Millet the hu- manitarian, Meissonier the miniaturist, Baudry, master of nobility in decoration, Whistler the etcher, Veretschagin the realist, Munkacsy the storyist, Sargent the portraitist, Chavannes the decorative tonist, Montecelli the colorist, Tryon the animalist — these all, with Hunt and Inness, Abbey and Pyle, Landseer and Rossetti, Laurens and For- tuny and Israel, Bastien-Lepage and Van Mark and Vierge, with Thorwaldsen and St. Gaudens, and Macmonnies and Baraye and Fremiet, displayed, in painting and sculpture, in decoration and design, the wonderful progress of a cen- tury, great in these as in all other departments of endeavor and achievement. The year 1890 saw also the result of an inevitable clash between the old and the new ; between the statesman of a changing era and the strong man of a new dispensation. " Let the king's will be the highest law," wrote the "strenuous" young Emperor of Germany in the album of an autograph hunter in 1 890 ; and that very year came the struggle between the king's will and that of his equally determined Chancellor. Political parties of all sorts sprang into existence upon the accession of William II. The rest- less young emperor took vigorous measures to foster and ob- tain his own desires ; and when Prince Bismarck wished to 350 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. have things his way, and especially wished to curb and dis- countenance labor councils and conferences, young William declared that he was emperor, and that he proposed to rule alone. At last, when Bismarck refused to give up an old law which compelled all other ministers of state to commu- nicate with the emperor through him, the Chancellor, William the Emperor demanded the resignation of Bismarck the Chancellor, and the great minister fell from power. " I am as much afflicted as if I had lost my grandfather anew," said the young emperor; "but we must endure whatever God sends us, even if we should have to die for it. The post of officer on the quarter-deck of the ship of state has fallen to me ; the course remains unchanged. Forward, with all steam! " The emperor managed to " put up with his loss," how- ever, and, the very incarnation of the energy of his day, drove the ship ahead with remarkable force, and in apparent though often questionable security. Although he never recalled Bismarck to power, the two opposing natures were finally reconciled ; and when, in 1893, Bismarck was brought very near to death's door, the young emperor visited the old statesman, and fervently congratulated him on his re- covery ; while on the eightieth birthday of the prince in 1895, when the Reichstag refused, by Socialist votes, to wish their old enemy " many happy returns of the day," the emperor was so indignant that he very nearly dissolved the assembly. But Bismarck never again regained his lost power. Although linking himself strongly with his army and the display of power, William of Germany worked in the inter- ests of the peace of Europe, which he sought to maintain WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 35 1 by leagues and alliances. In 1891 the triple alliance, or " League of Peace," was again renewed by Germany, Aus- tria, and Italy. It was a measure hailed, even by those who were not parties to it, as a fresh security ; and the peace of Europe was maintained, not without some friction, but at least with effectiveness. The fear of war, which had become more terrible by the production of new instru- ments of destruction — dynamite, melinite, and other fear- ful explosives, torpedoes, smokeless powder, a transforma- tion in artillery and firearms, and accuracy of aim — held the nations in check. To the great powers came not again the clash of arms ; and 1870 saw the last great Continental war of the century. The victories of peace had, however, fully as restraining an influence as the advance in methods of war. The tele- graph, the railway, and the newspaper were quite as potent factors for peace as were dynamite, smokeless powder, and maxim guns. Of the fifty thousand newspapers of the world, more than one-half were printed in the English lan- guage ; of this number the United States and Canada issued over twenty thousand; and the total yearly circula- tion of the newspapers of the republic and the dominion was thirty five hundred millions. Admitting all their short- comings and all their faults, can the influence for good, as a factor of communication and race progress, of this immense output of printed sheets, in one land only in 1894, be even estimated.-' In 1890 the railroads of the world reached a total of over three hundred and fifty thousand miles of track, carrying twenty three hundred millions of passen- gers, and transporting more than fourteen hundred million tons of freight ; in 1 893 the miles of railway had increased to 352 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. over four hundred and six thousand, and the carrying facil- ities had proportionately increased. Comfort as well as speed and strength were sought after and attained, — the Empire State Express on a New York railroad making in 1893 a mile in thirty -two seconds, equivalent to one hun- dred and twelve and a half miles an hour, while, in 1 894, a special train was run from Jacksonville in Florida to the city of Washington, seven hundred and eighty miles, in- cluding thirty four stops, in less than sixteen hours; in 1800 it would have taken nearer sixteen days to make this same trip. Steam on the water was accomplishing equally won- derful things. In June, 18 19, the steamship "Savannah," made the ocean run to Liverpool in twenty-six days ; in October, 1894, the Cunard steamship "Lucania" made the ocean run from Queenstown to New York in five days, seven hours, and twenty-three minutes! In April, 1877, the first telephone message was sent, a distance of three miles, between Boston and Somerville, in Massachusetts ; in 1893 conversation by telephone was possible between New York and Chicago, a distance of more than a thousand miles, and electricity, practically applied to daily uses, was lighting towns and buildings on both sides of the sea, while by 1893, over five thousand miles of electric street rail- ways — " trolley-roads " — were in operation in the United States. Here, indeed, had been a startling change since "old Ben Franklin's day," — that dear old philosopher who wished he might be able to see what electricity would be doing in a hundred years. In no way were the wonderful achievements of peace more widely and practically displayed than at the splendid World's Fair at Chicago, which opened on May i, 1893, as a WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 353 commemorative jubilee of the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, the Genoese navigator. To the success of this mighty Inter- national Exhibition, all the nations and colonies of the world contributed, and every department of the world's progress and pleasure was represented, from the Parliament of Re- ligions to the Midway Plaisance, and from the caravels of Columbus to the triumphs of electricity. The exposition grounds covered six hundred and thirty acres, with a front- age of a mile and a half on Lake Michigan; and one hun- dred and fifty buildings, great and small, made up the glorious "White City," erected within a mighty city which, at the time of the World's Fair, had a population of one and a half millions — the outgrowth in sixty years from the straggling little village of 1832, built in the shelter of a frontier fort, and with a population of less than three hun- dred. In no single instance of material development could the Nineteenth Century show a greater wonder than in the marvellous growth of the city of Chicago, the metropolis of the prairies and the lakes. As to moral and spiritual growth, what could the Nine- teenth Century display in the decade of material progress, four hundred years after Columbus the navigator had thrown open the door of a new world ? At the Parliament of Religions, convened at the World's P"air, in Chicago, all religions were represented, " from the dignified repre- sentatives of hoary Brahmanism, to the exponents of the latest born of Christian sects." No similar gathering had ever been achieved or attempted in the world's history ; and in nothing was the spirit of the Nineteenth Century — the age of Lincoln and TolstoY, of Gladstone and Bismarck, 354 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. of Cavour and Edison — more significantly displayed. For it represented unity, independence, fraternity, power, and progress, and ably proved, as Dr. Momerie declared, " that there is a unity of religion underlying all the diversities of religions ; " the archimandrite from ancient Damascus agreed with Professor Drummond of modern Glasgow, that the spirit of love was "the greatest thing in the world;" and the archbishop of Zante joined hands with Max Miiller and Lyman Abbott and Cardinal Gibbons in token of the fraternity of faith. Was not that typical of Nineteenth Century progress and brotherhood ? Even trials for her- esy, and the sullen flicker of occasional persecution or bigotry, could not belittle or curtail the real religious growth of the world. And though statistics showed in 1892 over three million registered paupers in Europe and America, taking no ac- count of the " out-door poor," even among these philan- thropy and charity were attempting the new practical work of self-help rather than unwise and unquestioning giving. The Salvation Army, organized primarily for " the evan- gelization of the unchurched masses," but thinking first of saving the body in order to "save the soul" of man, had, in spite of peculiar and boisterous methods, gradually won the respect and encouragement of all who sought the bet- tering of the race, and by 1894 it had five thousand "corps" or branches in the four quarters of the globe ; it directed and conducted twelve thousand officers, and had an annual income of four millions of dollars. To this army of the "unchurched" the army of the "churched," through the various branches of the Christian Church — Roman Cath- olic, Protestant, Greek, Abyssinian, Coptic, Armenian, WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 355 Nestorian, and others, showed a total, in 1892, of nearly five hundred million communicants, scattered throughout the world, of which nearly one hundred and twenty mil- lions were English-speaking communities, while the Chris- tian Sunday-schools of the world, nurseries of Christian civilization, numbered, in 1893, two hundred and twenty- five thousand, with over twenty millions of scholars, and more than two miUion teachers. This was a notable ad- vance since the day, one hundred years before, when Robert Raikes, the English " newspaper man," started in his home town of Gloucester the uncertain experiment which was the beginning of the Sunday-school statistics of the world. But even in the early nineties the world needed the energy of application from the forces of good as well as from the forces of scientific progress. Evil still stalked abroad in the world ; but, thanks to the wide methods of communication and publicity, the forces of evil could no longer work in the darkness or in secret. When, in 1893, the hired assassins and brutal soldiers of " the unspeakable Turk " began the bloody massacre of the Armenian Chris- tians, whom Europe had protected as " Christians and agents of civilization," all the world flamed into an out- burst of indignant protest. Labor disturbances, too, in which the workingnien, unwisely counselled and unwisely led, resorted, in many instances, from rightful protest to open revolt ; and anarchy, the assassin of honest labor, allied itself to peaceful agitation until, in Europe and America, strikes developed into riots in which govern- mental authority and the " bayonet cure " were forced to quell the rising, only to still further antagonize the opposi- 356 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. tion of labor and capital. Anarchy assassinated the presi- dent of France in 1895; anarchy disturbed the peace in Italy and Spain, and set back the real progress of democ- racy ; while, even in free America, the dozen strikes of 1894 produced lawlessness and disorder, interfered with traffic, travel, and the rights of citizens, caused a loss of many millions in property and wages, and compelled the president of the United States to take "prompt and rigor- ous measures " to suppress the riotous demonstration, and rallied to the side of repression the " law-abiding masses of the people " and the power and resources of the entire nation. But all this was on the wrong side of the account, — an account swelled quite as much by the arrogance of money as by the anarchy of labor. On the other side the balance really stood ; for, in spite of evil methods and the curse of selfishness, neighborliness increased, and progress was real and lasting. The sea-encircled lands of Australasia drew nearer towards federation ; the " submerged tenth " of the British slums was lifted, by practical philanthropy, nearer to the light. In 1892 Gladstone, now recognized as truly the " Grand Old Man," was made, for the fourth time, pre- mier of England, and bent his great energies to the " frank concession of Home Rule to Ireland ; " one hundred thou- sand miles of telegraph wire were bringing India into touch with the world, and the National Congress at Calcutta in 1890 was a nearer step toward native representation and social reform ; Norway, in 1891, following the lead of the patriots Bjornson and Sverdrup and other champions of Norwegian liberty, moved boldly for independence and popular sovereignty ; in 1 893 England and the United WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 357 States agreed to peacefully " arbitrate " the long-standing seal-killing disputes of the Behring Sea ; and in 1 894 the Hawaiian people overturned their monarchy, and declared the republic of Hawaii. That same year the new method of settling international disputes by arbitration rather than by war was tried even by the volcanic South American nations ; and the khedive of Egypt, looking toward inde- pendent action, sought to free himself from British control. In 1893 universal suffrage was established under a peculiar plan in Belgium ; but it was the people's victory. Even in Russia, in spite of the horrors of Siberian exile, — some- times cloaked under so gentle a phrase as " enforced resi- dence by administrative authority," — the accession of a new czar, Nicholas H., in 1894, was the beginning of a new drift toward democracy, even though the new ruler declared it an "absurd dream." In Sweden the form of address to the monarch became, instead of the divine-right grand- iloquence of "Most Gracious Majesty," the simpler and more republican formula, "To the king," — a significant change. In 1893 Bohemia, that "lemon squeezed by Austria," as one of her patriot sons called the ancient kingdom, very nearly secured home rule and the right of suffrage, and did, in fact, gain a distinct advance in repre- sentation ; and even Austria itself, that empire of slow progress and mixed nationalities, though advancing only by that snail-like " forward, march ! " of " two steps for- ward and one back," gradually slipped on toward liberal methods and a union through concession. So, as the "nineties" grew into middle age, the world assumed a more steadfast attitude toward peace and na- tionality. Europe was no longer the absolute aristocracy 358 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. of the earlier years of the century ; there were parhamen- tary government in the west, constitutional government in the centre, and even a diluted despotism in the east. 1890 to 1895 saw in Europe a distinct advance upon the old illiberal and tyrannical ways, and definitely announced "the fact of our time," as Benjamin Kidd called it — "the arrival of Democracy." Across the sea, democracy was establishing itself still more securely. Seventy millions of Americans, in the great republic they had founded and maintained, gave the impulse to the rest of the vast continent, where forty mil- lions of people, in sixteen sister republics, stretched from the Rio Grande to " the Horn ; " while to the north, from the Bay of Fundy to " the far-flung, fenceless prairie " of "the great lone land," the Dominion of Canada was a democracy in everything but name. Still following the dream of Columbus, and seeking the east by way of the west, democracy, crossing America, had bridged the sea to Asia ; and in the islands of Japan was developing with surprising vigor the ideas of constitu- tional nationality. Too vigorous, indeed, was this develop- ment for the overgrown and reactionary neighbor of the island empire ; and when, in 1 894, there was trouble in China's vassal kingdom, Korea, that " hermit nation " pro- claimed its independence, and solicited the help of Japan. Japan's energy enraged China's obstinacy; and at once progress and reaction were pitted against one another in the conflict known as the China-Japan War of 1894, — forty millions against four hundred millions ! Again was the value of modern methods and unity of forces demonstrated. For China, relying upon her very "bigness," and supreme in WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 359 her confidence of her own superiority and traditions, showed herself to be no match at all for a people so persevering, so energetic, and so adaptable as the Japanese ; up-to-date methods faced old crudities of conflict in war, and on land and sea China was absolutely overmastered and defeated ; and the same spirit of energy which marked the age of Edison triumphed in the modern combat between the David and Goliath of the Oriental world. For it was west- ern civilization that had trained the eye and drilled the arm of Japan, — that very civilization which China spurned as "foreign" and contemptible, and would have none of. German, French, and American officers had schooled the Japanese in the science of modern war ; leading officers of the Japanese navy were Annapolis men ; and once again, in the East, as had been not unfrequently displayed in the West, was shown the truth of the old Bible saying, that " God hath chosen the weak things of the world to con- found the things which are mighty;" only in this case weakness had been drilled into strength, and might had been lost in self-conceit. Mightier things even than governments and nations were overthrown about this time by the spirit of modern energy. The progress, or rather, the application of scientific inves- tigation, which so filled the closing decade of the Nine- teenth Century, defied even disease and death in its bold stand for improvement. Medicine and surgery made dis- tinct advances. In 1890 the German Dr. Koch an- nounced his discovery of a remedy for consumption, and the Frenchman Louis Pasteur boldly attempted the cure of hydrophobia by inoculation. The use of anaesthetics and antiseptics, developed into wonderful exactness, "robbed 360 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. the surgeon's knife " of its terrors, while English and American physicians showed that even the dangers of chloroform might be prevented by proper treatment. A reform in hospital methods was one of the greatest tri- umphs of the early nineties ; the Geneva Cross grew into the still nobler Red Cross Societies to ameliorate the horrors of the battle-field ; while the theory of disease germs revolutionized the formerly accepted laws of sanita- tion, and lessened the terrors of what were known as zymotic diseases — that is, infectious and contagious sick- nesses, like small-pox, diphtheria, and their dread associates. The care of the body and the strengthening of the mind are almost kindred advances, and the era of new methods in medicine and surgery was also the era of new methods in education. " Aliens, idiots, women, and Indians not taxed" — even in progressive America these, in the early days of the century, had been excluded classes, so far as representation and suffrage were concerned. But in 1890 how great was the change! All over the civilized world aliens were protected by reasonable laws ; lunatics and criminals were cared for by wiser, less brutal, and more reformatory methods ; Indians and conquered tribes were dealt with more justly; and woman found entrance into nearly all the occupations and professions, while the mar- vellous advance of the new system of " Higher Education " raised her to a position of possibility in which culture and intelligence recognized no limitations of sex in effort and achievement. In nothing, probably, did the Nineteenth Century display more clearly its spirit of democratic and universal progress than in its improvement in the condition of woman throughout the civilized world. WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 36 1 "I have no fear," said Mr. Gladstone in 1893, "lest the woman should encroach upon the power of man ; the fear I have is lest we should invite her, unwillingly, to tres- pass upon the delicacy, the purity, the refinement, the ele- vation, of her own nature, which are the present sources of its power." The voice of woman was, however, potent in many ways in many lands ; and in the United States of America, leader in democratic reform, the right of woman to a voice in government, especially in matters of ta.xation and education, was in 1895 recognized and granted, to a greater or less extent, in twenty-four of the fifty States and Territories. So with a distinct advance and a direct application of all the new methods in thought, work, and life, the Nineteenth Century drew toward its close. Problems were still un- solved, wrongs still unrighted, evils still predominant. But " the silent and strenuous rivalry " which occupied the energies of the world worked for good rather than for evil; and the "end of the century," the yf;/ de sitcle, as people called this close of a period, was putting the work of man in his hundred years of development to practical use, while the strengthing and bracing influence of energy, application, and endeavor were leaving an enduring mark, not only upon the history of the time, but upon the resist- less progress of the race. CHAPTER XXI. HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. {From i8g^ to igoo ) " T^HE silent and strenuous rivalry of the race," as the 1 conditions of the Nineteenth Century have been called, had attained a new height of effort in 1895. The wars for nationalism were over. Armed peace prevailed in Europe ; bitter rivalries were smothered by the fear of man ; and though the continent of Europe was still mutu- ally antagonistic, and national distrust prevailed, peace and neighborliness were nevertheless forced on all the Chris- tian nations by the very condition of things ; and while the cost of standing armies, enormous navies, and mighty arma- ments kept the people poor, it also kept them peaceful, save as political and social upheavals worried them all into watchfulness of each other, and forced them into an intelli- gent growth in manhood, that came even in spite of them- selves. " To the thoughtful mind, the outlook at the close of the Nineteenth Century," wrote Benjamin Kidd in 1895, "is profoundly interesting. History can furnish no parallel to it. The problems which loom across the threshold of the new century surpass in magnitude any that civilization has hitherto had to encounter. We seem to have reached a time in which there is abroad in men's minds an instinctive feeling that a definite stage in the evolution of Western 362 HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 363 civilization is drawing to a close, and that we are entering on a new era." That new era was the outcome of the democratic ad- vance and the wonders of industrial inventions that had so notably marked the Nineteenth Century. These new con- ditions, each of which existed because of the other, were themselves the outgrowth of the New Europe that suc- ceeded the downfall of Napoleon Bonaparte in 18 14. The vast changes which, after that date, came to the world, were because the impelling necessity of self-preservation had aroused men to the development of practical science, industrial expansion, and the application of mechanical in- ventions. Steam in manufacturing and agriculture ; scien- tific methods in the construction of roads, bridges, viaducts, and tunnels ; improved methods of mining and handling such earth-products as coal, metals, and petroleum ; and the application of machinery to the further working of these products by furnaces, steam hammers, machinery, and tools ; marvellous development in the practical usefulness of the two greatest forces of modern civilization in labor-saving processes of steam and electricity, so that, in 1900, steam had usurped the place of water, wind, and horse-power in every department of production and locomotion, while electricity, by furnishing direct and marvellous means of instantaneous communication and illumination, had abso- lutely altered the conditions of life ; remarkable advances in chemical knowledge, — matches, fertilizers, gas-lighting, sugar, colorings, photography, explosives, medicines, bleach- ing and tanning, preserved and condensed foods, wood-pulp, and other equally useful productions ; the scientific advance in farming, agricultural methods, cattle- and stock-breeding 364 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. and raising, with the remarkable applications of anaesthet- ics and antiseptics, which have practically conquered pain, — all these, as Professor Seignobos declares, have materi- ally " affected international politics by changing the practi- cal conditions of government, and transforming the con- ditions of society." " Only one hundred years ago," says Benjamin Kidd, " nations and communities were as distant from each other in time as they were at the beginning of the Christian era. Since then the ends of the world have been drawn together, and civilized society is becoming one vast, highly organized interdependent whole — the wants and requirements of every part regulated by economic laws, bewildering in their intricacy — with a nervous system of five million miles of telegraph wire, and an arterial system of railways and ocean steamships, along which the currents of trade and popula- tion flow with a rapidity and regularity previously unima- gined." " The old bonds of society," he continues, "have been loosened ; old forces are becoming extinct ; whole classes have been swept away, and new classes have arisen. The great army of industrial workers throughout the world is almost entirely a growth of the past hundred years. Vast displacements of population have taken place and are still taking place. The expansion of towns, one of the most remarkable features of the industrial revolution, still con- tinues unabated, no less in America and Australia than in England, Germany, and France ; and civilization is every- where massing together, within limited areas, large popula- tions, extremely sensitive to innumerable social stimuli which did not exist at the beginning of the century. The HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 365 air is full of new battle-cries, of the sound of the gathering and marshalling of new forces, and the reorganization of old ones." This is an excellent "snap-shot" at the condition of the world in 1895. Revolutions and the struggle for nation- ality and union had done a wonderful work for human progress. But the Franco-German war of 1870 was the last of these national crises. The reactionary period had ended ; the period of absolutism had given place to democ- racy ; and revolutions were those of peace and progress, rather than of personal and imperial rivalry. The Tolstoi theory had affected war as well as society ; and conflicts were waged for what are called "altruistic" or beneficial reasons, instead of for private and personal aggrandizement. The one-man power had given place to the power of the people; and even the last of these ambitious individuals — Bismarck and William II. in Germany, Disraeli in England, and Napoleon III. in France — had helped in this transition, and stood for " democratic monarchy " rather than indi- vidual despotism. The sovereignty of the people had taken the place of the personality of the sovereign. The world, however, was by no means at peace. Every year from 1895 to 1900 saw a new war; but the purposes for which those wars were waged differed altogether, as I have said, from the wars of the first three-quarters of the century. 1895 saw the close of the war between China and Japan, and the beginning of the war that ultimately drove Spain from America, when the patriots of Cuba made their final stand for liberty ; 1896 saw the revolt of the Armenian subjects of Turkey against the cruelties of the Sultan, and their appeal to the Christian nations of Europe ; 1 897 saw 366 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. the war between Greece and Turkey for the readjustment of boundaries and the protection of the persecuted ; 1 898 witnessed a war between Spain and the United States, waged for the liberation of Cuba from the Spanish yoke ; 1899 saw the triumph of arbitration over war in the case of the Venezuela dispute, and it also saw the outbreak of war in South Africa, which in 1900 became a struggle for civili- zation and Anglo-Saxon supremacy in the dark continent, against the obstinacy of limited ideas, and the last of the one-man power in a so-called but despotic republic — the stubborn mountaineers of the Transvaal pitted against the power and will of progressive England. The world was by no means at peace ; but would uni- versal peace mean universal progress.? The young Em- peror of Russia evidently thought so, though with a million armed men at his back; for in August, 1898, he sent to all the powers of the world a proposal for an international agreement for disarmament and universal peace. The principles of Tolstof the philanthropist were bearing fruit in the last place of all where such proposals might be ex- pected — his own homeland of autocratic Russia. "The maintenance of universal peace and a possible re- duction of the excessive armaments which weigh upon all nations in the present condition of affairs all over the world," said Nicholas the Czar, supreme lord of one hun- dred governments, and one hundred and thirty millions of people, " represent the ideal aims towards which the effort of all governments should be directed. . . , The present moment seems a very favorable one for seeking, by way of international discussion, the most effective means of assur- ing for all peoples the blessings of a real and lasting peace. HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 367 and above all things for fixing a limit to the progressive development of present armaments. ... It is the su- preme duty, at the present moment, of all states to put some limit to these unceasing armaments, and to find means of averting the calamities which threaten the whole world." Actuated by this humanitarian desire, the Czar proposed, "to all governments accredited to the Imperial Court," the meeting of a conference to discuss this grave problem. " Such a conference," he concluded, " with God's help, would be a happy augury for the opening of a new century. It would powerfully concentrate the efforts of all states which sincerely wish to see the triumph of the grand idea of universal peace over the elements of trouble and dis- cord. It would, at the same time, bind their agreements by the principles of law and equity which support the security of states and the welfare of peoples." This proposition from the Czar of all the Russias sounded as grand and noble as, coming from such a bayonet-upheld autocrat, it seemed astounding. But the powers of the world expressed their sympathy with his aims, and agreed to his proposal for a Universal Peace Conference, which duly assembled at the Hague, the capital of Holland, in May, 1899, and was composed of delegates officially ap- pointed by the governments of twenty-six of the nations of the world, from St. Petersburg to Washington, includ- ing even the old-time Oriental despotisms of China and Japan. It seemed, indeed, as if the vision of Tennyson, sixty years before, was about to be fulfilled — " When the war-drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags are furled In the Parliament of man, the federation of the world." T,68 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. It seemed as if the dream of Longfellow, the American peace-lover, as he stood in the arsenal at Springfield in 1843, was to be practically attempted : " Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals and forts." " The power that fills the world with terror " was as much more terrible in 1899 than it was in 1843 as fifty years of advance in the making of guns and explosives could' render it. The armaments of the world, which the Czar wished the nations to limit or curtail, amounted in 1899 to four million men, on a "peace" footing, with re- serves to be called on in case of war of ten times that number and a "fighting population" many times greater; the naval strength, in actual service and in reserve, was proportionate to this tremendous land total, while the forts and land and water defences were equally enormous. The " wealth bestowed on camps and courts," to provide for and maintain the armed peace of the world, was almost beyond calculation ; the expenditures in the United States alone for army and navy support during the one hundred and ten years of the life of the republic (from 1789 to 1899) exceeded seven thousand millions of dollars ; the mind can scarcely grasp the total war expenditures of the world during the one hundred years of the busy and pro- gressive but often pugnacious Nineteenth Century, which had, thanks to the Czar of Russia, the prospect of universal peace at its close. But this peace was not at once to come. Even while the Russian Czar was sending abroad his invitation to a now THE CENTURY CLOSED. 369 peace conference, two of the great powers of the world were pitted in a war for humanity's sake. The long continued struggle of the Cubans for relief from Spanish tyranny — a tyranny which for a hundred years had been an eyesore to the world and especially to Cuba's nearest neighbor, the United States — broke out again in open rebellion in 1895, and so disturbed com- mercial and industrial relations between Cuba and the United States, to say nothing of the conscience of a nation schooled to independence, that the United States, in 1896, demanded reforms from Spain, and when these were refused, or seen to be only superficial, threatened armed intervention. In February, 1898, an American battleship sent into Havana harbor for humane purposes and the protection of American interests, was destroyed by a sub- marine mine, with great loss of life ; and naturally Spain was held accountable for the outrage. Thereupon the United States insisted upon the withdrawal of Spain from Cuba ; and when this was refused, war was declared. The six great powers of Europe, in the interests of peace and arbitration, begged the president of the United States to agree to a peaceful settlement ; but the time for that had passed, and the president declared that only forcible meas- ures could end a situation that had become " intolerable." Regulars and volunteers were assembled in an army of invasion ; the naval and military forces of the United States were hurried into action ; and in just one hundred and thir- teen days — from the declaration of the war on April 12 to the signing of the preliminary treaty of peace on August 12 — the brief but vigorous humanitarian war against Spain had secured all for which war was waged. 370 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Cuba was wrested from the grasp of Spain, and put on the road toward independence, and the heirs to the glory of Columbus had lost their imperial heritage after four hundred years of tyrannical possession. But the war for the liberation of Cuba had done more. In spite of itself the Republic of the United States was forced from its continental isolation to the position of a world power. The thunder of Dewey's guns at Manila announced the entrance of a new competitor in the field of foreign authority and action ; and by the treaty of peace with Spain, signed by the President of the United States on the sixth of February, 1899, the great American Re- public became, almost in spite of itself, a colony-owning nation. The Philippines, and Tutiula of the Samoan group ; Hawaii, annexed in July, 1898 ; Porto Rico, and the small Pacific islands of Guam and Wake, were ceded to and oc- cupied by the United States ; and ten million people of alien blood and speech came under the protection of the Stars and Stripes. Cuba was freed, and, under American tutelage, was led onward to a secure and stable indepen- dence ; and a war begun for humanity ended in colonial empire. Colonial possession and permanence were giving new labors and new duties to other nations of the world. In 1895 thirty-eight thousand Outlanders, or foreign residents of the Dutch Republic of South Africa, where wonderful mining properties had been developed since 1880, peti- tioned the Volksraad, or Dutch government, of the South African Republic, for better representation and a redress of grievances. Their petition was denied ; and when the Outlanders endeavored to enforce their demand, a hasty HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 37 1 and ill-timed incursion into the Transvaal in 1896, led by Dr. Jameson of the British South African Company, brought about unfortunate complications that hindered the promised reforms, and led finally, in October, 1899, to a war for possession and right of suzerainty between the Transvaal Republic and Great Britain. The South Afri- can Republics were, while practically independent, by agree- ment subject to the over-lordship of the Queen of England — in other words, they were self-governing vassals. But the predominant influence of one self-willed and remarkable man, Paul Kruger, President of the Transvaal, pitted against the equally predominant influence of another and equally determined man, Cecil Rhodes, of Kimberley, forced the burgher republic into a war for independence ; and the Nineteenth Century, which opened in the struggle of a people for independence, closed in much the same way. But between the France of 1799, battling for progress, and the South African Republic of 1899, struggling against it, the difference is vast ; and Paul Kruger, of the Transvaal, the last leader of limitation, could scarcely hope to stand successfully in the pathway of that world develop- ment for which England stands. To the mad dash of Cervera, the Spaniard, through the fiery gauntlet of San- tiago, and the heroic stand of the Afrikander, Cronje, "the old lion of the veldt," ringed about by British guns, the world owes and will ever pay the tribute of praise for dauntless valor ; but alike the cause of Spain and that of the Boers of South Africa were against the spirit of the age, and God permits no obstacle long to bar the onward march of civilization. A march against obstacles is always more triumphant 372 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. and self-helpful than an unopposed advance ; and even when 1895 had brought the Nineteenth Century to the high plane of achievement, there were obstacles to surmount and barriers to clear away. And these barriers were not always thrown up by the ignorant and timid — the natural foes of progress ; they were raised by the backward-look- ing statesmen and thinkers in every land (the Tories of the world), who " clave to the way of their fathers ; " or, like Ephraim of old, were "joined to their idols," and would neither accept nor follow the beckoning hand of the new century. There were doctors of the old school, who, though mighty men in their profession, yet absolutely op- posed the advance and blessings of anaesthetics and anti- septics, those marvellous destroyers of pain ; there were scientists who placed phrenology above vaccination as a help to man, arrogantly denying the value of a discovery that had almost banished from the earth smallpox, that scourge of all the centuries before the Nineteenth ; there were well-meaning but short-sighted statesmen and patri- ots who believed in the selfishness of isolation and limita- tion rather than in the development that shrinks the ocean space into ferry crossings, and brings into closer touch the peoples and nations of the world ; who, learning only wrong lessons from the past, were, like the timid lover of Mon- trose's verse : " He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch. To gain or lose it all 1 " There were those, old enough to know better, who believed in the past so implicitly — even though the story of the HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 373 Nineteenth Century is fairly punctuated with constitutional changes — that they would not admit progress possible to that greatest of all the Constitutions of the world, but of which Franklin, greatest of all the philosophers of his day, said, as he signed it: " It is not perfect; it has many faults." So, through the. last years of the century, objectors, critics, and croakers were always in evidence — from those who sneered at the triumphs of electricity, and repeated the story of Stephenson and the cow on the track, to those who made barbarism no bar to independence, misquoted Lincoln and Jefferson, and misjudged Cromwell. But the trend of the world was, fortunately, away from the pessi- mist and the fossil. The world of 1900 exists because of progressive thought and action ; and, as James Russell Lowell said in his noble essay on Democracy, " An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail, in the long run." The years from 1895 to 1900 saw Cuba in revolt, and Armenia protesting against persecution and massacre ; they saw arbitration successful over the unnecessary threat of war in both hemispheres, and a tendency to a closer friendship among the English-speaking races of the world ; they saw attempts toward international adjustment, church union, postal union, commercial union, and univer- sal peace ; but they also saw the rashness of selfishness in South Africa, war between Turkey and Greece over " old scars," and the intervention of Europe in favor of the " unspeakable Turk," rather than the liberty-loving Greek ; they saw assassination in high places, in Spain, Austria, and Italy, in Mexico, Brazil, and Persia, in France, and China, and the Balkans ; they saw the baffling injustice of the 374 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Dreyfus case, a blot upon the fair name of France ; they saw the advance toward union of the republics of Central America, in 1896, and the subsequent collapse of the " United States of Central America," through jealousies and selfishness ; they saw, greatest of all in effort and failure, the assembling at the Hague, in May, 1898, of the Universal Peace Conference proposed by the young Czar of Russia, and its adjournment in July, with little accom- plished beyond the proposed establishment of a Court of Arbitration for the settlement of disputes between nations and the reaffirmation of the Monroe Doctrine by the dele- gates from the United States. Universal Peace was thus pushed off as a problem for the twentieth century to solve. K-' V Success, which so often comes because of failure, had marked the century even to the close. Success and fail- ure in politics, diplomacy, government, statesmanship, and international effort had been paralleled by success and fail- ures in economic, social, scientific, and material endeavors. Capital, roused to its own defence by the aggressions of labor, answered union with combines, strikes with trusts, competition with syndicates, and legislation with legisla- tion. Opposing parties in the United States loudly pro- claimed against trusts as a " discrimination in favor of wealth and against individual enterprise," "hurtful to the people and something to be prohibited and abolished ; " but before the close of 1899 there were five hundred of these combines, consolidations, pools, or agreements, popu- larly termed " trusts" known to exist in the United States > and in all civilized countries, where speculation crowds upon production ; " the new aristocracy of personal wealth,'' as Professor Seignobos characterizes this energy of banker. now THE CENTURY CLOSED. 375 manufacturer, and merchant, " had made a place for itself in politics by furnishing the main stay of the liberal parties, and trying to guide the democratic mass of the nation." ^ — rj The application of the triumphs of science to t^e grow- ing needs of the world, which especially marked this last decade of the century — the age of Edison, as we have chosen to term it — had, however, more success than fail- ures to its credit. The development of electricity was the chief marvel of the age, especially when combined with the advance in engineering. As there was no space too wide to be spanned or tunnelled, so there was no force too great to be controlled. Projects were considered or com- pleted which the mid-century would have deemed impos- sible, and the third quarter stupendous. Niagara was forced to play the part of a great mill-dam, and turn the busy wheels, and light the shops and streets of Buffalo twenty-two miles away — " perhaps the most stupendous engineering effort ever undertaken ; " it was proposed to turn the vast Saraha desert into a fertile garden by irri- gation, even as the Arizona deserts in America had been reclaimed ; to bridge or tunnel the English Channel ; to connect by railway Cairo and the Cape in Africa, and Van- couver and Patagonia in America, even as Russian enter- prise, when the century closed, was already pushing for- ward the tracks of the great Siberian railway, and join- ing St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, the greatest railway scheme attempted, by which, and with its connecting lines of railway and steamship, it will be possible, in 1904, to go "round the world in thirty days." Telegraph lines were stretching in every direction — into the heart of darkest Africa, across, around, and beneath the world ; and 1^6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. the close of the century had even witnessed the marvel of wireless telegraphy and communication between ship and shore by waves of sound and currents of transmission. Indeed, .there seemed nothing too vast to comprehend, too wonderful to attempt, or too impossible to achieve. In 1899 the world was seamed by four hundred thousand miles of railway tracks, joined and underlaced by one hundred and sixty thousand miles of submarine cable, crossed by four million miles of telegraph wire, and brought ear to ear with millions of miles of telephone, while those new servants of man, the electric light and the photographic camera, were accomplishing marvels for the moral as well as the commercial growth of the world. The electric spark, which has diminished crime by flood- ing the dark places with the tell-tale light, was also in 1896, by the discovery of the X-rays by Professor Ront- gen of Wiirzburg, made to penetrate and register, by the help of photography, matter, and substances never before revealed to the eye of man. " With the exception of anti- septics and anaesthetics," says Professor Thompson, " no discovery of the century has done so much for operative surgery." The linotype which sets and stereotypes, line upon line, bars of type ready for the press ; the invention of the Frenchman, Chassagne, for actually photographing in colors ; the discovery by the Englishman, Professor Ram- sey, of the element known as liquid air, "a fifth constituent of the atmosphere," with which wonderful things are possible ; the revolutionizing of ship-building by the "whale-backs," and of hou.se-building by the towering "sky-scrapers," — these and many other remarkable ad- HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 377 vances in discovery, invention, and application, marked the decade of energy, the era of Edison, the end of the century. Edison and Tesla, Pasteur and Rontgen, Koch and Joule, Marconi and Gray, Bell and Kelvin, and a score of investigators, discoverers, and adapters, helped to make the age the "very top and crown" of scientific progress. Nansen, and Peary, and Wellman, and Borchgrevink forced still farther north and south into the ice and cold of the arctic and the antarctic ; while the novel plan of Andree, the Frenchman, to wrest the secret of the pole by balloon expedition, in 1898, ended in still greater mys- tery, for the foolhardy explorer was never heard of again. While the unbeaten tracks of the earth were being trodden by inquisitive feet, inquisitive and trained eyes were searching the heavens with such mighty " finders " as the Yerkes and Lick telescopes, while deep-sea soundings and investigations added to the knowledge of hidden things ; so that, indeed, "the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth " grew more and more but as open books to be read and translated by man. The gold of the Klondike, unearthed in cold Alaska, where a section five hundred miles long by one hundred wide was found, in 1898, to be teeming with the yellow metal, sent thousands of skilled and unskilled adventurers to suffer, and succeed or fail, in the new " diggings," — one of the largest and richest mining areas in the world, but one of the severest and most remote. But what will man not dare for gain and gold ? It is the spirit that has set mankind in motion since Aryan migration first peopled Europe, and the eagles of Rome IJ?, THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. reconquered the golden East. It is the basis of exploration, occupation, colonization, and development, making citizens of the homeless, and patriots of the wanderers, from the days of the Golden Fleece and the fables of Cathay, to the development of California, Australia, the Transvaal, and the even more unfamiliar "waste places of the world." It is responsible for the "scramble for Africa," the expansion of the nations, and the new boundaries of the earth. A famous French statesman and financier of the eigh- teenth century said, long before the American Declaration of Independence, "Colonies are like fruits that cling to trees only till they ripen. As soon as America can take care of herself, she will do what Carthage did." Even before America was quite ready to take care of her- self she made the foward stride to independence. But, doing as Carthage did, she also set a new lesson for England and other colonizing nations of Europe to read ; and they read it — all save Spain. For, save by Spain, the monumental folly of England in 1776 has not since been attempted. As a result, the spheres of influence marked out by the civilized nations of to-day have well-nigh appropriated the world. The colonies and dependencies of European powers are in every zone. Denmark has firm footing in Greenland, and Iceland, and the West Indies ; France is dispersed through Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, over a total colonial area of two and one-half million square miles ; Germany governs a million square miles of territory, with over ten millions of colonial subjects, in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific ; little Holland, or the Kingdom of the Neth- erlands, as it prefers to call itself, has colonial possessions in the East and West Indies, covering sixty times as much HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 379 area, with seven times as great a population, as the Lillipu- tian mother country ; Italy, a new-comer among colonizing nations, has dependencies along the Red Sea and the Somali coast ; Portugal, like Holland, small in home dominions, has colonial possessions in Africa and Asia embracing eight hundred thousand square miles, and more than nine million inhabitants ; Russia, that mighty autocracy, which claims possession of one-seventh of the land surface of the globe, and knows itself only as "all the Russias " — Russia in Europe, Russia in Asia, Finland, and Poland — counts nothing it absorbs as a colony, but as Russia, and holds its dependencies in Asia, Bokhara, Khiva, and Port Arthur as vassal rather than colonial possessions ; Spain, once the greatest of colonizing nations, found, in 1900, its foreign dependencies shrunken into narrow limits in Africa and the Pacific, two hundred and forty thousand square miles, and less than one hundred and seventy-five thousand inhab- itants, against four hundred thousand with eleven million inhabitants in 1898; while Turkey, still holding a weak clutch on Egypt and Tripoli, just came within the limit of colonial ownership ; the United States, successors equally by the might of right and the right of might to the colonial possessions of Spain, found itself, in 1900, not by inten- tion but by circumstances, master of colonial possessions and protector of possible republics among the Atlantic and Pacific islands, Cuba and Porto Rico, Hawaii, the Philip- pines, Samoa and Guam, two hundred thousand square miles of territory, and twelve and a half millions of people ; while, greater than all other nations combined in extent of area, diversity of location, and number of inhabitants, the British Empire stands out as the giant of modern coloniza- 380 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. tion and civilization ; in Europe and Asia, in Africa and Australia, in America and the Isles of the Sea, Great Britain holds vast dependencies, and " the meteor flag of England " floats in possession in every zone that girdles the globe, and in every wind that blows. " What is the Flag of England } " asked the foremost of living English writers, "Winds of the world declare!" and the four winds each make answer— North, South, East, and West : "The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night, The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light : What is the Flag of England.' Ye have but my bergs to dare, Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there 1 My basking sun-fish knows it, and wheeling albatross, Where the lone wave lights with fire beneath the Southern Cross. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare, Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there I The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild ass knows. The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows. What is the Flag of England ? Ye have but my sun to dare, Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there I The dead, dumb fog hath wrapped it — the frozen dews have kissed — The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist. What is the Flag of England ? Ye have but my breath to dare. Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there 1 " So the English-speaking race from the days of Drake have gone forth to conquer drifts and seas, and sands and waves ; and, to-day, more than one-quarter of the popula- tion of the civilized world resides under the protection of the Flag of England ; and that little island kingdom, with its area of but one hundred and twenty thousand square miles and less than forty million inhabitants, dominates a HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 381 world empire that includes twelve millions of area and four hundred millions of people. And what of the Speech of England — the conqueror of the world. In the eleventh century after Christ scarcely two million people were English-speaking ; at the close of the eighteenth century twenty-one million people called the English tongue their own ; at the opening of the twen- tieth century the English language is the native tongue of one hundred and sixty milUons. Of the other dominating languages of the world, eighty millions speak Russian, eighty millions speak German, fifty-eight millions French, forty-four millions Spanish, and thirty-four millions Italian ; to-day, as a recent investigator declares, " the English lan- guage is in the ascendant, and ere long may be, if not the universal language, at least the tongue spoken by more persons than any other two languages. In this world absorption of speech and power, the re- public of the United States claims lot and part. The first of England's foreign possessions, the first also to break away and set England a new lesson in colonial rights and government, the stars and stripes of the American republic float in possession or protection over nearly four million miles of area and ninety millions of people. "These colonists," said Mr. Seeley, in his "Expansion of England," "which, when they parted from us did but fringe the Atlantic sea-board, and had but lately begun to push their settlements into the Valley of the Ohio, how steadily, how boundlessly, and with what self-reliance, have they advanced since ! They have covered with their States and Territories first the Mississippi \''alley, next the Rocky Mountains, and, lastly, the Pacific Coast. They have made 382 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. no difficulty of absorbing all the territory ; it has not shaken their political system. And they have never said, as, among us, even those who are not pessimists say of our colonies, that if they wish to secede, of course they can do so. On the contrary, they have firmly denied this right, and to maintain the unity of their vast state have sacri- ficed blood and treasure in unexampled profusion. They firmly refused to allow their union to be broken up, or to listen to the argument that a state is none the better for being very large." So the Nineteenth Century closes in Anglo-Saxon union and supremacy. What Napoleon as a world conqueror strove to dominate at the opening of the century, the sovereign people, led to democracy by the example of America and the steady onward course of England, have achieved at the end. Since 18 14, when Napoleon fell, every state in Europe and many outside that world-possessing continent, have changed their political or social organization. " The nine- teenth century," says Professor Seignobos, "has been a time of internal revolution." It has been more than that : it has been a century of emancipation — emancipation of thought, of speech, of ideas, of manners, of methods, and of men. Personal gov- ernment has given place to democratic government, the sovereignty of the prince has become the sovereignty of the people, " and the word ' control ' has come to mean •rule.'" "The fact of our time which overshadows all others," says Benjamin Kidd, "is the arrival of Democracy. . . It is a new Democracy. . . To compare it with de- HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 383 mocracies which held power under the ancient empires is to altogether misundertand both the nature of our civiliza- tion and the character of the forces that have produced it. The arrival of this new Democracy is the crowning result of an ethical movement in which qualities and attributes we have all been taught to regard as the very highest of which human nature is capable, find the completest ex- pression they have ever reached in the history of the race." In 1800 men rode in stage coaches, and in 1900 in auto- mobiles ; they carried flint and steel, where to-day they use the electric light ; they groaned beneath the surgeon's uncertain knife, took months to cross the ocean, had scarcely one newspaper a week, and lived in their own isolated, limited, small, and selfish fashion, save where a few aristocrats kept " open house ; " drunkenness was the fash- ion, duelling the only code of honor, and bigotry the rule. The laws of humanity were few, and kindness to the unfor- tunate, the unprotected, and to animals almost an uncertain quality ; slavery or serfdom was the normal condition of the majority of the world's people, and the crimes of to-day were scarcely even the vices of our grandsires : education was for the few, power was the prerogative of a handful of aristocrats, and the " submerged tenth " of 1900 was the submerged nine-tenths of 1800. Men took but few pleasures, and took them seriously ; the days of the tallow-dip were the days of secrecy, superstition, and igno- rance. Sport was for the most part cruelty, and athletics were brutally undeveloped ; weakness was the fag of strength, and what we know as the "amenities of life" were as rare as courtesy and as little understood as the "mysteries" of science. 384 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Look out over the bright, brilliant, progressive, and prosperous world that greets the twentieth century, and exclaim in the words of the psalmist and the first telegram : "What hath God wrought ! " This is a grand progress to have been a part of ; it is a e:rand achievement to have lived to see. Failures and drawbacks the Nineteenth Century had in plenty ; but its successes far exceeded its failures ; absolute and steady progress was its record ; its story, one of triumphant advance. In literature, science, and art ; in invention, improvement, and possession ; in liberty, humanity, civil- ization, and law the Nineteenth Century stands, " the heir of all the ages in the foremost files of time ; " and in unity, in neighborliness, in brotherhood, and all the gentler and more refining, no less than in the strenuous and deter- mined ways of men this wonderful century, in spite of bickerings and jealousies, in spite of greed and arrogance, in spite of hates and feuds, in spite of selfishness and sus- picion, steps grandly in the advance as the flower and pride of all the centuries since Christ came to Bethlehem, and taught men that Golden Rule which, after nine- teen hundred years of slow and sullen schooling, is to become the motive and creator of the great things which the new century holds in store for man. /T^ THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TOLD CHRONOLOGICALLY. 1799. Death of Washington, December 14 ; Napoleon First Consul of France, December 24 ; Mowing-machine patented in England. 1800. Pius VII. pope of Rome, March 14 ; Napoleon crosses the Alps, May 17; Battle of Marengo, June 14. 1801. Union of Great Britain and Ireland, January i ; Peace of Luneville, February 5 ; Alexander I. czar of Russia, March 24 ; French evacuate Egypt, September 2 ; Jefferson president of United States, March 4. 1802. Peace of Amiens, March 27 ; Napoleon consul for life, August 3. 1803. Cape of Good Hope restored to Dutch, February 21 ; Louisiana sold to the United States, April 30; England and France at war. May 18 ; Battle of Assaye, September 23. 1804. Napoleon emperor of the French, May 18 ; Saving banks established. 1805. Napoleon king of Italy, May 26 ; Third coalition against France ; Battle of Ulm, October 17 ; Victory of Trafalgar and death of Nelson, October 21 ; Battle of Austerlitz, December 2 ; Peace of Pressburg, December 26. Lewis and Clarke's overland e.xpedition to the Pacific. 1806. Cape of Good Hope taken by English, January 8 ; Confederation of the Rhine, July 12 ; Holy Roman Empire dissolved, August 6; Death of Fox, September 18; Battle of Jena, October 14; BerUn decrees, November 21. 1807. England abolishes slave-trade, March 25 ; Battle of Friedland, June 14 ; Peace of Tilsit, July 7 ; Fulton's steamboat makes first trip from New York to Albany, August 7 ; French invade Portugal, Novem- ber • Orders in Council, November ; Embargo Act, December. 1808. Wellesley lands in Spain, August 1 ; Siege of Saragossa raised, August 4; Abolition of Spanish Inquisition, December 4. X809. Burial of Sir John Moore. January 16; Madison president of United States, March 4 ; Ilofer's revolt in Tyrol, April 8 ; Napoleon excommu- nicated by the pope, June 10; Arrest of the pope, July 5; Battle of 3S5 386 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY "Wagram, July 6; Peace of Vienna, October 14; Divorce of Empress Josephine, December 15. 1810. Napoleon marries Maria Louisa of Austria, April i ; Wellington at Torres Vedras, October 10 ; Insanity of George III., November. 181 1. Massacre of the Mamelukes, March i ; English conquer Java, August 26. i8ia. Wellington storms Ciudad Rodrigo, January 19; United States declares war against Great Britain, June 18; Napoleon declares war against Russia, June 22 ; Battle of Borodino, September 7 ; Burning of Moscow, September 16; Retreat from Moscow, October and November. 1813. War of Liberation ; Battle of Liitzen, May 2 ; Perry's victory on Lake Erie, September 10 ; Wellington invades France, October 7 ; Battle of Leipsic, October 18; Street -lighting by gas, London. 1 814. Allies invade France, January; Bolivar president of Venezuela, January i ; Capitulation of Paris, March 31 ; Abdication of Napoleon, April 1 1 ; Napoleon exiled to Elba, May 4 ; Americans invade Canada, July; British capture and bum Washington, August 24; Congress of Vienna, November 3 ; Treaty of peace between United States and Great Britain, December 24 ; London Times uses steam printing-press ; Stephenson perfects the locomotive. 1815. Jackson's victory at New Orleans, January 8 ; Napoleon escapes from Elba, February 26 ; Napoleon in Paris, March 20 ; Treaty of Vienna (Europe against Napoleon), March 25 ; Battle of Waterloo, June 18; Second abdication of Napoleon, June 22 ; Napoleon arrives at St. Helena, October 16; Formation of Holy Alliance, September 26; Sec- ond Peace of Paris, November 20. 1816. Cheap newspapers for the people started by Cobbett. 1817. Monroe president of United States, March 4 ; Discoveries in spectnmi analysis. 1818. Bemadotte king of Sweden, February 6; Allies evacuate France, November 30 ; Steam navigation on the Great Lakes. 1819. Florida ceded to United States by Spain, February 22; " Reform- ers" massacred at Manchester, August 16; First steamship crosses Atlantic. 1820. George IV. king of England. January 22 ; Jesuits expelled from Russia, March 25 ; Carbonari revolt in Naples, July 2. 1821. Revolution in Brazil, January; Insurrection in Greece, March 6; Independence of Brazil proclaimed, April 22 ; Death of Napoleon at St. Helena, May 5 ; Republic of Liberia founded ; Florida ceded to United States. TOLD CHRONOLOGICALLY. 387 1822. Greeks declare their independence, January i ; Iturbide emperor of Mexico, May 22 ; Dom Pedro emperor of Brazil, October 12. 1823. Death of Pius VIL, August 20 ; Leo XH. elected pope, September 28 ; Great Britain recognizes South American republics, October 30 ; British Anti-Slavery Society founded ; Mormonism founded. 1824. Bolivar dictator of Peru, February 10; Death of Lord Byron at Missolonghi, April 18. 1825. John Quincy Adams president of United States, March 4 ; Dutch East India ports opened to all nations, July 27 ; Independence of Brazil recognized, September 7 ; Nicholas I. czar of Russia, December i ; First steam voyage to India ; First railway in England, September 27. 1826. Spaniards evacuate Peru, January ; Massacre of Janissaries at Constantinople, June 15 ; Death of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, July 4 ; Brazil abolishes slave-trade, November 23 ; First railroad in United States. 1827. Death of Pestalozzi, February 17 ; Erection of the kingdom of Greece, July 6; Death of Canning, August 8; Charles X. of France dissolves Chamber of Deputies, November 5 ; Battle of Navarino, October 27 ; Friction matches invented. 1828. Wellington administration in England, January 25 ; Russia declares war against Turkey April 26 ; Corn- Law in England ; Test Act repealed. 1829. Death of Leo XII., February 10; Andrew Jackson president of United States, March 4; Peace of Adrianople, September 14 ; Suttee in India suppressed, December 14; Stephenson builds the " Rocket " locomotive. 1830. Independence of Greece recognized by the Powers of Europe, Feb- ruary 3 ; William IV. king of England, June 26 ; French conquer Al- giers. July 5 ; Revolution in France, July 27 ; Flight of Charles X., July 30; Abdication of Charles X., August 2 ; Louis Philippe, king of France, August 9 ; Insurrections and revolutions in Europe ; Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened, September 15; Independence of Bel- gium, November 18 ; Death of Pius VII., November 30; Death of Boli- var, December 17. 1831. Gregory XVI. elected pope February 2 ; Hereditary peerage abol- ished in France, December 29 ; McCormick invents reaping-machine. 1832. Poland absorbed by Russia. February 26 ; Death of Goethe. March 22; Death of Cuvier, May 13: Reform Bill passed, June 7; Otho king of Greece, August 30; Death of Sir Walter Scott, September 21 ; Nulli- fication in South Carolina. 1833. First Reform Parliament of United Kingdom, January 29 ; Santa 388 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Anna president of Mexico, April i8; Abolition of slavery in British colonies, August 28 ; Isabella II. queen of Spain, September 29. 1834. Death of Lafayette, May 20 ; Poor Law Act (England) passed, August 14. 1835. Ferdinand I. emperor of Austria, March 2 ; Texas revolts against Mexico, July; Death of Cobbett, June 18; Independence of Texas, December 22. 1836. Thiers prime minister of France, February 22 ; Louis Napoleon at Strasburg, October 29. 1837. Martin Van Buren president of United States, March 4 ; Victoria queen of England, June 20; Pillory abolished in England; Father Ma- thew begins his temperance reform. 1838. Death of Talleyrand, May 17 ; Independence of Peru, July 29; Re- bellion in Canada ends, November 17; Chartist meetings suppressed, December 12; International Copyright Act. 1839. Daguerreotypes invented, January 9 ; Chartist riots at Birmingham, July 15; Christian VIII. king of Denmark, December 3; Pope pro- hibits slave-trade, December 3 ; English settle New Zealand ; Discovery of gold in Australia. 1840. Penny-postage in England, January 10 ; Frederick William VI. king of Prussia, June 7 ; Louis Napoleon arrested at Boulogne, August 6 ; William II. king of Holland, October 7 ; Remains of Emperor Na- poleon brought to France, November 30 ; Second funeral of Napoleon, December 15; First crank bicycle made. 1841. Union of Upper and Lower Canada, February 10; William Henry Harrison president of United States, March 4 ; "Tracts for the Times" condemned in England, March 15 ; Death of President Harrison; John Tyler president of United States, April 4 ; Prince of Wales bom, No- vember 9. 1842. Corn-law passed, April 29 ; Great Chartist petition. May 2 ; Con- quest of Boers of Natal, June 26; Ashburton Treaty between United States and Great Britain, August 9; Death of Channing, October 2. X843. Natal annexed to Cape Colony, May ; Arrest of O'Connell, Octo- ber 14. 1844. Death of Thorwaldsen, March 24; Morse's first telegram, May 27 ; Brigham Young head of Mormon church, June 27. 1845. Death of Sydney Smith, February 22 ; James Knox Polk president of United States. March 4; Sir John Franklin lost in the Arctic; Mexico declares war against United States, June 4. 1846. Escape of Louis Napoleon from France, May 26; Death of Greg- TOLD CHRONOLOGICALLY. 389 ory XVL, June i ; Treaty of Washington for Oregon boundary, June 15 ; Pius IX. elected pope, June 16; Repeal of English corn-law, June 26; New Mexico annexed to United States, August 23 ; "The Spanish Mar- riage," September; Morton administered ether, October i6. 1847. Death of Sir John Franklin, June 1 1 ; Capture of city of Mexico, September 15 ; Death of Mendelssohn, November 4 ; Surrender of Abd- el-Kader, December 22 ; Mormons found Salt Lake City. 1848. Year of revolutions ; Gold discovered in California, January ; Fred- erick VII. king of Denmark, January 20; Death of John Quincy Ad- ams, February 2 1 ; Revolution in P'rance, February 23 ; Abdication of Louis Philippe, February 24 ; French republic proclaimed, February 26 ; Abolition of slavery in French dominions, April 27 ; Treaty between Mexico and United States, May 19; Death of George Stephenson, Aug- ust 12; Louis Napoleon elected deputy, September 20 ; elected presi- dent of French republic, December 20 ; Simpson introduces chloroform. 1849. Rush for gold to California; Zachary Taylor, president of United States, March 4 ; Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia, March 24 ; Inde- pendence of Hungary proclaimed ; Kossuth appointed governor, April 14; Defeat of Hungarians resignation of Kossuth, August 11. 1850. Death of Calhoun, March 31 ; North German parliament at Erfurt, March 20 ; Death of Wordsworth, April 24 ; Death of Peel, July 2 ; Death of President Taylor; Millard Filmore president of United States, July 9; Death of Balzac, August 18; First Building and Loan Association formed. 1851. International Exhibition opened at London, May i ; Death of Cooper, September 14 ; Cotip d'dtat at Paris, December 2 ; Louis Napo- leon president for ten years, December 20. 1852. Death of Thomas Moore, February 26 ; Death of Henry Clay, June 29; Death of Wellington, September 14; Death of Daniel Webster, October 24; Louis Napoleon emperor of France, December 2; "Uncle Tom's Cabin " published. 1853. Franklin Pierce president of United States, March 4 ; Taiping rebellion in China; capture of Shanghai, Sepember 7. 1854. France declares war against Russia, March 27 ; England declares war against Russia, March 28 ; Battle of Alma, September 20 ; Battle of Balaklava, October 25. 1855. Sardinia declares war against Russia, January 26; I^ord Palmerston, prime-minister of England, February 6 ; Death of Charlotte Bronte, March 31; Storming of the Malakoff, September S; Alexander II. czar of Russia, March 2 ; Sebastopol captured, September 9. 390 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 1856. Death of Heine, February 17; Treaty of Paris, March 30; Evacu- ation of Crimea, July 12. 1857. Dred Scott decision, March 6 ; Sepoy mutiny in India, January, May; James Buchanan president of United States, March 4; Massacre at Cawnpore, July 15 ; Death of Beranger, July 16 ; First Atlantic Cable laid, and fails, August ; Death of Comte, September 5 ; Relief of Luck- now, September 25 ; English and French capture Canton, December 29 ; Kansas-Nebraska war, December. 1858. "Great Eastern" launched, January 31 ; First message over new Atlantic cable, August 20 ; Commercial treaty between Great Britain and Japan, August 26 ; England assumes sovereignty of India, Septem- ber I ; Death of Robert Owen, November 17. 1859. Italy declares war against Austria, April 27 ; Death of Humboldt, May 6 ; Battle of Magenta, June 4 ; Louis Napoleon and Victor Em- manuel enter Milan, June 8 ; Death of Metternich, June 1 1 ; Battle of Solferino, June 24 ; Treaty of Villa franca, July 7 ; Death of Washing- ton Irving, November 28 ; John Brown hanged for insurrection in Vir- ginia, December 2 ; Death of Macaulay, December 28. i860. Cavour prime-minister of new kingdom of Italy, January 21 ; Gar- ibaldi enters Palermo, May 27 ; Garibaldi proclaims Victor Emmanuel at Naples, May 27; Prince of Wales visits America; Secession of South Carolina, December 20 ; Japanese embassy in America. 1861. William I. king of Prussia, January 2 ; Southern States secede from the Union, January, February ; Jefferson Davis president of Southern Confederacy, February 4 ; First Italian Parliament at Turin, February 18; Alexander czar of Russia, emancipates the serfs, March 3 ; Abraham Lincoln president of the United States, March 4 ; Victor Emmanuel king of Italy, March 17; Bombardment of Fort Sumter, April 12; Great Britain and France recognize Confederate States as belligerents, June 15; Death of Cavour, June 6; Death of Mrs. Brown- ing, June 29; Battle of Bull Run, July 21 ; Seizure of British steamer " Trent," November 8 ; Confederate commissioners given up to Eng- land, December 28 ; Death of Prince Albert, prince consort of Eng- land, December 14. 1862. Japanese embassy in Europe ; fight between " Monitor " and " Mer- rimac," March 4 ; Defeat of Garibaldi, August 29 ; France declares war on Mexico April 16. 1863. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, January i ; Death of Stone- wall Jackson, May 2 ; Battle of Gettysburg, July 3 ; Surrender of Vicks- burg, July 4 ; Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, July 10 ; Battle of TOLD CHRONOLOGICALLY. 39 1 Chickamauga, September 19; Battle of Chattanooga, November 24; Death of Thackeray, December 24. X864. Austro-Pnissian army invades Holstein, January 21 ; Russia con- quers Circassia ; Death of Meyerbeer, May 2 ; " Alabama " sunk by " Kearsage " off Cherbourg, June 19; Repeal of Fugitive Slave Law, June 23 ; Treaty of Vienna, end of Schleswig-Holstein war, October 30 ; Sherman's march to the sea ; Geneva convention for rehef of wounded in war. 1865. First direct telegram from India to London, March i ; Death of Cobden, April 2 ; Surrender of Lee, April 9 ; Assassination of Lincoln, April 14; Andrew Johnson, president of the United States, April 15; Paraguay declares war on Argentine Confederation, April 16; Capture of Jefferson Davis, May 10; Florence capital of Italy, May 11 ; Salva- tion Army created, July 5; Death of Palmerston, October 18; Leopold II. king of the Belgians, December 10; Slavery abolished in United States, December iS; Death of Fredrica Rremer, December 31. 1866. Civil Rights bill in United States, April 12; Fenian raids into Canada, June 8 ; Prussia withdraws from German confederation, June 14 ; War between Prussia and Austria, June ; Battle of Sadowa, July 3 ; Treaty of Prague, August 23 ; Venice united to Italy, November 4 ; Rome evacuated by French, December 11. 1867. Death of Cousin, January 14 ; Schleswig-Holstein absorbed by Prussia, January 24 ; Hungary's constitution restored, February 7 ; First ship in Suez Canal, Februaiy 17 ; Alaska purchased by United States, March 13; French evacuate Mexico, March 16; Dominion of Canada constituted, March 29; E.xecution of Ma.ximilian, June 19; Battle of Mentana ; Defeat of Garibaldi, November 3 ; France annexes Cochin China ; Modern bicycle invented ; John Pratt patents modern typewriter. 1868. Impeachment of President Johnson, February 25 ; Napier captures Magdala, April 13 ; Death of Lord Brougham, May 7 ; Insurrection in Spain, September 18; Flight of Queen Isabella, September 30; Death of Rossini, November 13; Gladstone prime minister of England, December 9 ; Mutsuh-ito progressive mikado of Japan. 1869. Death of Lamartine, February 28 ; Ulysses S. Grant president of United States, March 4; Great Britain assumes Hudson Bay Territory, April 9; Irish Church Disestablishment Act, July 26; Formal opening of Suez Canal, November 17 ; Pacific Railway completed. 1870. Death of Dickens, June 9; Spanish crown offered to Prince Leo- pold, July 4 ; Protest of France, July 6; Vatican Council declares Infal- 392 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. libility of the Pope, July i8, France declares war against Prussia, July 19; Irish Land Act passed, August i; Battle of Sedan, Septem- ber I ; French army surrenders ; Lx>uis Napoleon a prisoner in Germany, September 2 ; Republic proclaimed in Paris, September 4 ; Italian troops occupy Rome, September 20 ; Rome, capital of Italy, October 9 ; Death of Lee, October 13; Communist insurrection in Paris, October 31 ; Amadeus, son of Victor Emmanuel, king of Spain, November 16; Bavaria united to Germany, November 23 ; Death of Dumas, pire, December 5 ; German Empire declared, December 10 ; Mount Cenis tunnel completed ; Guido Verbeck, educational power in Japan. 1871. William I. crowned Emperor of Germany at Versailles, January 18 ; Capitulation of Paris, January 28 ; Thiers " chief of executive," February 17 ; Germans evacuate Paris, March 18 ; Commune proclaimed at Paris, March 28; Treaty of Versailles, May 10; Death of Herschel, May 11 ; Communists bum Paris, May 24 ; Commune overthrown, May 28 ; Thiers president of France, August 31 ; Opening of Mt. Cenis tunnel, September 17; Emancipation in Brazil, September 27; Burning of Chicago, October 8 ; " Alabama " Arbitration Commission at Geneva, December 18; British Columbia joins Dominion of Canada; Japan abolishes feudalism. 1872. Death of Mazzini, March 10 ; Great Britain takes the Gold Coast of Africa, April 6 ; Eruption of Vesuvius, April 24 ; Germany expels Jesuits, June 19 ; Death of Juarez, July 18 ; English Ballot Act passed, July 18 ; First railroad in Japan; University extension in England. 1873. Death of Napoleon III., January 9; Republic proclaimed in Spain, February 1 1 ; Death of Livingstone, May 4 ; Death of John Stuart Mill, May 8 ; Macmahon, president of France, May 24 ; Home rule for Egypt, June 8 ; Emperor of China receives foreign ministers, June 29 ; " Ala- bama " award paid, September 6 ; Germans evacuate France, Septem- ber 16; Death of Landseer, October i ; Death of Agassiz, December 15; 1874. Serrano, dictator of Spain, January 12 ; Wolseley captures Coomas- sie, February 4 ; Death of Strauss, February 8 ; Disraeli prime minister of England, February 18; Death of Sumner, March 11; Death of Guizot, September 12; Alphonso king of Spain, December 30; Chau- tauqua Educational System organized. 1875. Prince of Wales visits India, October 11 ; Herzegovina revolts against Turkey ; Republican constitution in France, February. 1876. First railroad in China, June 30; Centennial Exhibition, Phila- delphia, May 10; Turkish Constitution proclaimed, December 24; Tele- phone patented, March 7 ; American National Baseball League formed. TOLD CHRONOLOGICALLY. 393 1877. Russia invades Turkey, June 27 ; Capture of Plevna, December 10 ; Storming of Kars, November 8 ; Death of Thiers, September 4 ; Victoria empress of India, January 1 ; Rutherford B. Hayes president of the United States, March 4 ; Rebellion in Japan suppressed, September 24 ; Electric lighting in Paris and London. 1878. Peace of San Stefano, March 3 ; Congress of Berlin, June 13 ; Death of Victor Emmanuel, January 9; Humbert king of Italy, Januai-y 9; Death of Pius IX. ; Leo XIII. pope, February 7 ; International Exhibi- tion at Paris; British occupy Cyprus, July 13; Franchise in Japan; Edison invents phonograph. 1879. Grevy president of France, January 30 ; Death of Prince Louis Napoleon in South Africa, June i ; Zulu War; Irish Land League advo- cated by Parnell ; Resumption of specie payment in United States, January i. x88o. Conference of Berlin, June 16; Gladstone prime minister of Eng- land, April 28 ; Modern Athletics (amateur and professional) become established. 1881. Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor formed, February 2. Assassination of Ale.xander I., czar of Russia; Ale.xander II. czar, March 13 ; Electoral Suffrage in Italy, January 21 ; Milan king of Servia, March 6 ; Opening of St. Gothard Railway, March 22 ; Death of Garibaldi, June 2; Gambetta minister of France, November 13; Irish Land Act, August 22 ; James A. Garfield, president of United States. March 4 ; Assassination of Garfield, July 2 ; Chester A. Arthur presi- dent of United States, September 19. 1882. French expansion in Africa and Asia ; Death of Gambetta, Decem- ber 31 ; Phoenix Park assassination (Dublin), May 6 ; Bombardment of Alexandria, July 11 ; Battle of Tel-el-keber, September; Irish Coercion Act. July 14 ; Chinese excluded from United States, May 6 ; New Con- stitution for Japan, October. 1883. Death of Peter Cooper, April 4 ; Brooklyn Bridge opened. May 24; German national monument unveiled, September 28 ; Australian colonies declare for union, December 8. X884. Socialists banished from Vienna, January 31 ; Arbitration board for labor disputes established in America. May 23 ; Electric exhibition in Philadelphia, September 2 ; Porfirio Diaz president of Mexico, De- cember I. 1885. Death of " Chinese " Gordon at Khartoum, January 27 ; Grover Cleveland president of United States, March 4 ; King of the Belgians sovereign of the Congo State, April 21 ; Reunion of Union and Con- 394 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. federate veterans at Gettysburg, May 4 ; Surrender of Canadian insur- gent leader, Kiel, May 14; Death of Victor Hugo, May 22; Death of U. S. Grant, July 23. 1886. Great Britain annexes Burmah, January i ; Gladstone prime minis- ter of England, Febmary 3 ; Anarchist riots in Chicago, May 4 ; Trouble between Greece and Turkey, May; Ludwig of Bavaria com- mits suicide, June 13; Cuban autonomy refused by Spain, June 30; Gladstone resigns, July 21 ; Statue of Liberty in New York harbor unveiled, October 27. 1887. Interstate Commerce Bill (U. S.), January 21 ; Queen Victoria's Jubilee, June 21 ; Mormons give up polygamy, July 7 ; Beginning of new U. S. navy, August 15; Sadi-Camot president of France, Decem- ber 3; Independence of Corea, December 21. 1888. Death of William I., emperor of Germany, March 9 ; Frederic III. emperor of Germany, March 9 ; Railroad opened in Central Asia, May 27; Death of Frederick III., emperor of Germany; William II. suc- ceeds, June 15; Death of General Sheridan, August 12; Chinese Ex- clusion Bill signed, October i . 1889. Troubles in Samoa, January; Benjamin Harrison president of the United States, March 4 ; Death of Ericsson, March 9 ; Death of John Bright, March 27 ; American and German war-ships destroyed by hurri- cane in Samoa, March 15; Centennial celebration of Washington's inauguration at New York, April 30 ; International exhibition at Paris, May 6; Exile of Boulanger, August 15; Pan-American Congress at Wa.shington, October i ; Brazil a republic, November 1 5 ; Charies I. king of Portugal, December 28. 1890. Labor troubles in Germany, February ; Firth of Forth bridge opened, March 4 ; Resignation of Bismarck, March 17 ; Australian ballot system introduced into America, April 2 ; Federation of Women's clubs formed, April 23 ; Austria refuses citizenship to Kossuth, May 30 ; European powers combine to suppress anarchy, June 3 ; Revolutions and wars in Central and South America. July; Statue of Daguerre unveiled at Washington, August 15; Financial panic in London, November 15. 1891. Germany takes possession of African territory, January i ; Revo- lution in Chili, January 7; Death of Bancroft, January 17; Death of General Sherman. February 14; Fonseca president of Brazil, Febraary 25; Telephone between London and Paris, March 17; Death of von Moltke. April 24; Death of Sir John Macdonald. June 6; Trial of smokeless powder, July 25; Death of Lowell, August 12; Death of Pamell, October 6. TOLD CHRONOLOGICALLY. 395 1892. Behring Sea arbitration treaty, February 29 ; Death of Walt Whit- man, March 26 ; Gladstone prime minister of England, August 1 1 ; Centennial celebration of first French Republic, September 22 ; Death of Tennyson, October 6 ; Death of Whittier, September 7. 1893. Insurrection in Mexico, January i ; Labor riots in Holland, January 2; Revolution in Hawaii, January 16; Grover Cleveland president of United States, March 4 ; World's Fair opens in Chicago, May i ; Eight- hour working day meetings in England, May 7 ; French in Siam, July ; Death of Tyndall, December 4. 1894. French troops in the Soudan, January 25 ; International Sanitary Conference at Paris, February 7 ; Gladstone resigns and declines a peer- age, March 2 ; Insurrection and arbitration in South America, February, March; "Industrial armies" in United States, April; Opening of Man- chester ship-canal, May 21 ; Strikes in Ohio, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, June; Assassination of President Carnot of France, June 24; Casimir- Perier president of France, June 27 ; Japan declares war against China, August I ; Battle of Yulu River, September 16; Liberal movement against English House of Lords. October 27 ; Death of Alexander II, of Russia, November i ; Nicholas II. czar of Russia, November 2 ; Nicaragua Canal Company incorporated, November 25. 1895. Degradation of Dreyfus, January 5 ; Bread-riot in Newfoundland, January 8; Felix Faure president of France, January 17; Japanese capture Wei-Hai-Wei. January 31 ; Revolution in Cuba, February 24; Treaty of peace between China and Japan, April 16; Standard Oil Company indicted as a Trust. April 27 ; Opening of Harlem ship-canal, June 17; World's Women's Christian Temperance Union meets at London, June 19; Death of Huxley, June 29; French victorious in Madagascar. July 3; Cuba declares her independence, July 15; Li- Hung-Chang chancellor of China, August 30; Massacres in Armenia, October; President Cleveland's Venezuela message, December 17. 1896. Jameson's raid into Transvaal, January i ; Jameson surrenders to Boers, January 2 ; Roentgen discovers X-rays, January 5 ; President prohibits prizefighting in United States territory, February 7 ; Anglo- American meetings in London in favor of arbitration, March 3 ; Aus- tralia declares for federation, March 5 ; Olympic games at Athens, April 6; Shah of Persia assassinated. May i ; National millennium celebrated at Buda-Pesth, May 2 ; Civil service in United States, May 6 ; Mada- gascar a French colony, June 20; Irish Land Bill passed, August 13; Philippine Islands revolt against Spain, August 31; International Women's Congress at Berlin, September 19 ; Victoria's reign now long- 396 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. est in England's history, September 23 ; Opening of Danube Canal, September 27 ; England's acceptance of Monroe Doctrine, November 9 ; Death of Harriet Beecher Stowe. 1897. Anglo-American arbitration treaty signed at Washington, January 11; Venezuela treaty signed, February 2 ; William McKinley president of United States, March 4 ; Sultan of Zanzibar abolishes slavery, April 6; War between Turkey and Greece, April 17; Arbitration treaty re- jected by United States, May 17; Andree's balloon search for North Pole, July II ; Klondike gold craze, July 17; Treaty of peace between Turkey and Greece, December 4 ; Sealing-treaty between United States, Japan, and Russia, November 6. 1898. United States battleship Maine destroyed in Havana, February 15 ; United States demand the surrender of Cuba from Spain, April 20 ; War between United States and Spain, April 21 ; Battle of Manila Bay, May I ; Death of Gladstone, May 19; Destruction of Spanish fleet at Santiago, July 3; Surrender of Santiago, July 14; Americans capture Porto Rico, July 28; United States annexed Hawaii, August 12 ; Sur- render of Manila, August 13; Czar of Russia proposes International Peace Conference, August 27 ; English victory at Omdurman, Egypt, September 2 ; Capture of Khartoum, September 4 ; Wilhelmina queen of Holland, September 4 ; French at Fashoda, September 10; English occupy Fashoda, September 20 ; Dreyfus case reopened, September 27 ; Bones of Columbus carried to Spain, September 27 ; United States demands the Philippines, October 31 ; Turks expelled from Crete, November 7 ; Treaty of Paris, between Spain and United States, Decem- mber 10; Friction between Boers and Outlanders, December 29; Anglo- American League, July 13; Death of Bismarck. 1899. Death of President Faure, P'ebruary 16 ; Emile Loubet president of France, February 18; Samoans attack American and British sailors, April i; Banishment of Roger Williams (1635) revoked by Massachu- setts legislature, April 18; Cromwell's three hundredth anniversary cele- brated in England, April 25 ; Rebellion of Aguinaldo in Philippines, February 4 ; International Peace Conference at the Hague, May 18; Dreyfus declared guilty, September 9; pardoned, September 19; War between England and the Dutch republics, October 10; England relin- quishes claims in Samoa, November 8 ; Samoan partition treaty signed, December 2 ; Aguinaldo's Philippine revolt overthrown, November 24 ; Philippine ports opened to commerce, December 11. NDEX. Abd-el-Kader, defeats French, 182. Abercrombie, Dr., discovery in med- icine, 127. Abolition of slavery, English, 143. Aboukir, victory of, 37. Adams, John, 44 ; death of, 128. Adams, John Quincy ; declines An- glo-American alliance, 105 ; joint author of Monroe Doctrine, 107 ; advocates Pan-American Con- gress, 129; defeat of, 130. Adrianople, peace of, 125. Afghanistan in 1800, 19. Africa in 1800, 20; little known in 1825, 112; commercial value rec- ognized, 113; explorers in, 290; " scramble for," 332. Afrikander Bund, the, 332. Alaska in 1800, 22. Albuera, battle of, 67. Alexander II., czar, accession of, 221 ; emancipates serfs, 256. Alfieri, 27. Alfonso XII., king of Spain, 305. Algiers, dey of, 43. Alma, battle of, 218. Alsace and Lorraine lost by France, 283. American Fur Company, 119. Amiens, treaty of, 31. Anaesthetics, value of, 196. Anarchists in Austria, 323. Anderson, Major Robert, 248. Andes, San Martin crosses, 89. Angamos Point, battle of, 322. Anglo American Alliance suggested in 1S23, 105. Anglo-Saxon influence and union, 38'- Angostura, battle of, 89. Apia, hurricane at, 337. Appomattox, surrender at, 261, Arabi Pasha, revolt of, 318. Arctic explorations in 1825, 118; in 1S50, 208; later discoveries, 290. Armenian revolt of 1896, 365. Arndt rouses Germany, 73 ; song to Bliicher, 75 ; persecuted, 121. Asia attracts European nations, 113. Asia Minor in i8oc, 19. Aspern, battle of, 55. Astor, John Jacob, founds Astoria, 119. Astronomy in 1830, 149. Art in Nineteenth Century, 349. Atlantic cable, first despatch, 231. Atomic theory, 18. Auerstadt, battle of, 48. Austerlitz, battle of, 48 ; " Sun of," 48 ; results of, 48. Australia in 1800, 23 ; in 1825, 113. Australian farmers object to aboU- tion of slavery, 143. Australasia in 1800, 23 ; federation desired, 320. Austria in coalition, 20, 39, 43 ; Na- poleon quarrels with, 54 ; defeat of, 56 ; wins coalition of 18 13, 74 ; troubles of, in 184S, 191 ; seeks help of Russia, 191 ; war with Ger- many, 267 ; grants Hungary re- forms, 270 ; electoral reform in, 305- Austro-Prussian war of i866, 266. Ayacucho, battle of, 104. Bainbridge, Com., 43. Balaclava, battle of, 218. Ballooning, 17. Ballou, Hosea, position of, 194. 397 39S INDEX. Baltimore and Ohio Railway begun, 138. Balzac on Napoleon, 102 ; on revo- lutions, 158; on North America, 160; on American liberty, 175. Barbary pirates, 42. " Battle of the Nations." See Leip- sic. Bautzen, battle of, 73. Baylen, battle of, 53. Beechey, Captain, in the Arctic, 119. Behring Sea arbitration, 357. Belgium under French control, 20 ; revolt in, 136; independence rec- ognized, 137 ; universal suffrage in, 357- Beranger, songs of, 133 ; on change of governments, 136. BerUn, capture of, 48 ; congress at, 285 ; conference of 1877 in> 3°? '< in 1889, 337. Berzsenyi, hated by Austria for liberalism, 122. Bessemer process of steel, 231. Bethlehem, key of church at, 216, Beust, Baron, liberal Austrian min- ister, 270. Bismarck becomes chancellor, 266 ; head of North German confed- eration, 267 ; snubs Louis Napo- leon, 268 ; defeats Napoleon's schemes, 280 ; effective war meas- ures of, 281 ; forces demands at Peace of Versailles, 283 ; creator of German unity, 254 ; typical of his age, 296 ; wins " Culturkampf," 296 ; socialism, 298 ; achievements of, 308 ; methods of, 317 ; unpopu- larity of, 322 ; paternal rule of, 326; revolt agamst, 327 ; dismissal of, 331, 350 ; in Samoan affairs, 337. Bjomson, Norwegian reformer, 322 ; patriotism of, 356. Black Hawk, the Sac, 155. Blaine, James G., plans Pan-Amer- ican Congress, 338. Blucher, field-marshal, 75. Boers of Africa, 40 ; object to abo- lition of slavery, 143; in Trans- vaal, 289 ; native protest against, 30S ; proclaims South African Republic, 318 ; war with England, 371- Bolivar, Simon, " the Liberator," oath on Mount Aventine, 88 ; cap- tuies Caracas, 89 ; in Peru, 103 ; meets San Martin, 103 ; proposes Pan-American Congress, 129 ; death of, 129. Bonaparte. See Napoleon. Booth, of Salvation Army, 325. Borodino, battle of, 70. Botany in 1830, 149 Boulanger, rise and fall of, 330. Boiilogne, fleet at, 37 ; Louis Napo- leon at, 169. Bourbons, return of, 76. Boyaca, battle of, 89. Boycotting, 321. Bozzaris, Marco, sortie of, iii. Bramah, Joseph, safety lock, 16. Brazil, independence of, 103 ; condi- tion in 1870, 288 ; becomes repub- lic, 335- Brest, victory at, 37. Bright, John, sides with United States in Civil War, 251, 257; " tribune of the people," 269 ; ad- vocates "justice to Ireland," 320. Bright, Richard, discoveries in med- icine, 127. Broussais, researches in medicine, 127. Brunei, Marc, ship-building machin- ery, 17. Brown, Jessie, at Lucknow, 233. Brown, John, executed for insurrec- tion, 232. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, on Na- poleon III., 207 ; on entry into Milan, 224 ; on death of Cavour, 242 ; on American " curse," 245 ; death of, 242. Bryant, William Cullen, 27 ; pub- lishes " Thanatopsis," 99. Buffaloes, hunting of, for robes, 120. Bums, Robert, 26. Byron, Lord, 26 ; on Napoleon, 77 ; publishes " Childe Harold," 84 ; in Greek war of independence, ic8 ; death of, 1 10. INDEX. 399 Cable, Atlantic, successfully laid, 271. Calcutta, National Congress at, 356. Calhoun, champion of slavcrj', 184. California, gold discovered in, 201 ; . admitted to Union, 202. Canada, union of, 175 ; wise colonial government of, 286 ; proclaimed Dominion, 272 ; Kiel's rebellion, 273 ; federation of, 273 ; almost a democracy, 358. Canning in power, 124. Cape Colony, condition of, in 1870, 289. Caracas, capture of, 89. Carbonari in Italy, 87 ; revolt of, 108. Carlyle, Thomas, influence of, 194 ; " French Revolution " of, 150 ; in- fluence of, 293. Carpenisi, battle of, iii. Caroline, Queen, troubles of, 123. Carroll, Charles, of CarroUton, 138. Castelar, Emilio, leads Spanish re- publicans, 269 ; desires of, 305. Cavour, Count di, rise of, 193 ; in Victor Emmanuel's cabinet, 205 ; appearance of, 219; Crimean tri- umph of, 220; appeals to France, 222, 223 ; move against Austria, 223 ; president of council, 234 ; pledges territory, 240 ; success of, 241 ; death of, 242 ; influence of, 242 ; true prophet, 279. Cawnpore, massacre at, 233. Centennial Exhibition of 1S76, 301. Central America, United States of, 374- Cervera, fatal dash of, 371. Channing, William Ellery, position of, 194. Chappe, Claude, telegraphy, 17. Chapultepec, and Molino del Rey, Mexican holidays, 183. " Charcoal burners " of the Abruzzi. See Carbonari. " Charge of the Light Brigade," 218. Charles, Archduke, 55. Charles X. of France, 135 ; deposed, 136. Chartists, the, 150. Chassagne, photograph in colors, 376. Chauteaubriand, influence of, loi. Chicago, World's Fair at, in 1893, 352 ; marvellous growth of, 353. Chili, war with Peru and Bolivia, 322. China in 1800, 18; England's foot- ing in, 170; opened to outside commerce, 209 ; rebellion in, 210 ; war with Japan, 358, 365. Chloroform, discovery of, 196. Christianity, world's convention of, 193- " Citizen King," the. See Louis Philippe. Ciudad Rodrigo, battle of, 67. Clay, Henry, and Missouri Com- promise, 145 ; Compromise of 1850, 185 ; death of, 211, 212. Clinton, De Witt, opens Erie canal, 116. Clive in India, 23. Cobbett, William, reformer, 91. Cobden, Richard, influence of, 172. Colombia, republic of, declared, 89 Colonial possessions of European states, 202. Colonial possessions of world in 1900, 379. Cotton-gin, 18. Comenius, 25. Commercial league organized in Pnis.sia, 138. Commune desolates Paris, 283 ; overthrown, 2S3. Communists in France, 323. Compromise of 1850, 185, 212. Confederation of the Rhine, 48. Conference, Universal Peace, 367, 37-4- Congress of Kings. See Dresden. " Continental System " of Napoleon, 57- Cooper, J. Fenimore, 27 ; publishes " The Spy," 99. Cooper, Peter, philanthropy of, 325 Corunna, battle of, 53. Crimean War, 21 8. Crispi, Italian prime minister, defeat of, 330. 400 INDEX. Cronje, heroic stand of, 371. Crystal palace of 1851, 215. Cuba, slavery abolished in, 320; rev- olution in, 365; aided by United States, 369 ; liberation of, 366. " Culturkampf " the. See Bismarck. Czar of Russia head of Holy Al- liance,i04 ; emancipate sserfs, 256. Daguerre discovers daguerreotype, 178. Dale, 43. Dal ton, John, atomic theory, 17. Darwin, investigations of, 292. Davis, Jefferson, inaugurated, 244. Davy, Sir Humphry, against gas- lighting, 94. Deak, Francis, recognized by Aus- tria, 270. Decatur, 43. " Decrees of 1807," 49. Delhi, siege of, 233. Disraeli, policy as prime minister, 299. Draper, Professor, makes photo- graphic picture, 178. Dresden, congress at, in 181 1, 68. Democracy, "arrival of," 382. Denmark, defeat of, in 1864, 255. Denmark under French control, 20. Derzhavin, 27. Dewey, Adm., at Manila, 370. Diaz, Porfirio, ability of, 288. Dickens, "Pickwick Papers," 150. Dreyfus case, the, 374. Dom Pedro II., of Brazil, wisdom of, 284 ; exile of, 334. Dost Mohammed, 154. Dutch in Africa, 40. Eastern Question, the, 166. Education in 1800, 25. Egypt against Turkey, 167. Edison, Thomas Alva, age of, 346, 375- Elba, island of, 76 ; Napoleon es- capes from, 77. Electricity, development of, 375. " Embargo Act," 50. Emancipation Proclamation. See Lincoln. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, influence of, 194, 293. Emmett, Robert, 41. Engineering projects in 1899, 375. England in North Amenca, 22 ; in Asia in 1800, 23; opposition to Napoleon, ;i2y 35' 4i I i" "805, 45; against Europe, 49 ; literature in 1820, 99 ; suggests alliance with U. S., 105; recognizes Mon- roe doctrine, 107 ; first railway in, 116; reforms demanded in, 122; influence of French revolution on, 122; takes Hong Kong, 180; af- fairs in 1840, 171; foreign pos- sessions of, 202 ; in China, 209 ; joins France in Crimean war, 217 ; literature in i860, 230, 234 ; quells Sepoy mutiny, 233 ; position toward U. S. in civil war, 251 ; friendly vnth, 257 ; workingmen of, favor U. S., 258 ; reforms of 1870, 273; in Asia, 318; Victo- rian Jubilee in, 329 ; imperial fed- eration of, 331 ; war with Boers, 371 ; vastness of colonial posses- sions, 380. English people defend Queen Caro- line, 123. English-speaking world, 381. " Era of Good FeeUng," U. S., 93. Erfurt, Goethe and Napoleon at, 84. Erie Canal opened, 116. Esseling, battle of, 55. Ether, discovery of, 196. Ethics in 1830, 149. Ethnology in 1830, 149. Europe at war in 1800, 24 ; in 1805, 47 ; in 1806, 48 ; on the defensive in 1810, 58; revolution of 1830, 137; in 1840, 172; upheaval in 1848, 188; discontent in, 323. Exhibition,International,of 1851,215. Expansion in 1830, 154. Eylau, battle of, 48. Finland "Russified," 339. Ferdinand of Austria, flight of, 188 ; abdication of, 191. Florida sold by Spain to United States, 90. INDEX. 401 " Forces of France." See National Guard. France in North America, 21 ; co- lonial defeats, 69 ; invasion of, 76 ; becomes constitutional mon- archy, 136 ; abolishes hereditary peerage, 137; early railroads in, 139; excluded from European councils, 167, 170 ; revolution of 1848, 187; literature in, 230; peo- ple friendly to U. S., 251 ; declares war against Germany, 280 ; in war with Germany, 281 ; defeated by Germany, 282 ; colonial ad- vance of, 322 ; communism in, 323- Francke, Hermann, 25. Francis Joseph, accession of, 191 ; at Villa Franca, 225. Franklin, Benjamin, prophecy of,i6 ; experiments of, 18. Franklin, Sir John, in the Arctic, 119; loss of, 208. Friedland, battle of, 48. Froebel, founds his kindergarten system, 127. Freiligrath, Friedrich, love of father- land, 134. Frederick the Great, prediction of, 301 ; disproved, 303. Frederick III. of Germany, death of, 327. Fulton, Robert, 61. Fugitive Slave Law, 185, 213. Galvani, Luigi, galvanism, 17. Gambetta, methods of, 317; leader in France, 322 ; defeat of, 330. Garibaldi, revolt of, 226; enters Palermo, 239, 240 ; character of, 239 ; revolts in Southern Italy, 240 ; dictator of Sicily, 240 ; in- vades Roman territory ; defeated, 279. Garrison, William Lloyd, favors se- cession, 246. Gas in use, 17. Geneva Cross, the, 360. Geneva, Labor Congress at, 274. Geography in 1830, 149. Geology in 1830, 149. George III., obstinacy of, 34 ; death of, 92. George IV., regent and king, 92 ; persecutes Queen Caroline, 123. George, Henry, efforts of, 319; land-relief plans, 320. Germany in 1805, 41 ; humiliation of, 57; literature in 1820, 100; condition in 1825, 120; literature in i860, 230; growth of, 266; Bismarck chancellor of, 266 ; war with Austria, 267 ; growing power of, 280; war with P' ranee, 281; defeats France, 282 ; " bulwark of peace," 285 ; socialism in, 297 ; na- tional monument erected by, 309 ; paternal government of, 327 ; re- volt against Bismarck, 327. Gettysburg, battle of, 249 ; Lincoln at, 259. Goethe in 1800,26; in 1805 84; completes " Faust," 120. Gold in California, 201 ; developed in South Africa, 339. "Good roads," 61. Gordon, General, abandonment of, 319- Gorgei, Hungarian general, 191 ; surrender of, 192. Gladstone, W. E., sides with South- ern Confederacy, 251 ; prime min- ister, 273 ; influence of, 285 ; defeated, 298; methods of, 316; foreign policy of, 318; criticized, 319; concession to Ireland, 319; defeat of, 330 ; premier for fourth time, 356 ; on Woman's Suffrage, 361. " Grand Old Man," the. See Glad- stone. Grant, Ulysses S., 249 ; defeats Lee, 261 ; president U. S., 295. Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom of, ^^ ; parliament of, 138. Great Eastern launched, 232. Greece, powers interfere in behalf of, 125 ; independence declared, 125 ; war with Turkey, 366. Greeley, Horace, favors secession, 246. 402 INDEX. Greerv, on Washington, 15. Grimm, the brothers, banished for Uberahsm, 121. Guayaquil, " liberators " meet at, 103. Guizot founds popular educational system, 138; prime minister, 171. Hague, Peace Conference of 1899 at, 367. Hahnemann founds homoeopathy 127. Hall, Newman, prayer for the Union cause in United States, 251. Halleck. Fitz-Greene, 27 ; on Marco Bozzaris, in. Havelock, march of, 233. Hawaii becomes constitutional mon- archy, 336 ; annexed, 370. Heber, Reginald, missionary hymn, 118. Heine, the satirist, 134; influence of, 158. Herschel, William, telescopes, 17. Herzegovina, revolt of, 306 ; appeal to Europe, 308. Higher education, 360. Hill, John, originator of postal ser- vice, 179. Hill, Sir Rowland, inaugurates pen- ny-postage, 179. History, in 1830, 149. Hofer, Andreas, 56. Holland under French control, 20, 39- Holy Alliance formed, 104 ; warned by United States, 107 ; interferes in Europe, 108 ; arouses Byron. 108; fears Greek success, in; puts down revolt, 137 ; Cannning defies, 124. " Holy Roman Empire " abolished, 40. Homoeopathy. See Hahnemann. Hong Kong, England assumes pos- session of, 170; occupied by Eng- land, 209. Horse railroad, first, 138. Howells on Tolstoi, 315. Hudson's Bay Company, 119. Hugo, Victor, on Napoleon, 82; " Hernani," 133; on Napoleon in., 207. Humboldt, Alex, von, self-banished for liberalism, 122. Hungary desires independence, 116; revolution in, 188 ; condition in, 190; declares its independence, 192. Hung-sew-tseuen, leader of Tai-ping rebellion, 210. Ibrahim Pacha in Greece, 1 10 ; retreats, 125; unsuccess, 155. Improvements in 1810,61. India in 1800, 19; first telegram from, 271. Indians, American, in 1800, 21. Inkerman, battle of, 218. International Association of Labor- ers, 274. Inventions, progress of, in 1850, 195. Ireland, union with " United King- dom, 33 ; in 1879, 300 ; land league in, 301 ; concessions to, 319 ; " justice," 320. Irving, Washington, 27 ; publishes " Sketch-Book," 99. Isabella of Spain, flight of, 269; son of, king, 305. Italy under French control, 20, 40. Iturbide, revolts against Spain, 90. Jackson, Andrew, hatred of Eng- land, 69 ; conqueror of Florida, 93; president United States, 130; the "Age" of, 133 ; "makes his mark," 151 ; influence of, 153, 159. Jameson's raid, 371. Japan in 1800, 19; treaty with United States, 211; sends em- bassy abroad, 256; advance in, 304 ; constitutional monarchy, 335 ; development of, 358 ; war with China, 359. Jefferson, Thomas, purchase of Louisiana, 36 ; in 1805, 41 ; pro- claims embargo, 50; dislike of England, 79 ; suggests " Monroe Doctrine," 107; death of, 128. Jena, battle of, 48 ; University of, 85. Jenner, Edward, vaccination, 17. INDEX. 403 Jews, treatment of, by Napoleon, 62; English parliament open to, 235. Johnson, Samuel, 26. Johnson, Andrew, impeachment of, 263. Joseph, king of Spain, objects to Napoleon's methods, 66. Karamzen, 27. Kansas-Nebraska trouble, 228. Katkoff, Russian nationalist, 328. Kandahar, relief of, 319. Kean, 85. Kemble, 84. Khame, Zulu chief, appeal of, 308. Kipling, on " Flag of England," 380. Kidd, Benjamin, on changing order of the centurj', 364. Klondike, gold in. 377. Koch, discovers consumption cure, 359- Kossuth, Louis, the liberator, 165 ; impulsiveness of, 173; demands independence, 174 ; boycotts Aus- tria, 185 ; rouses Hungary to rev- olution, 188; leader of people, 190 ; governor, 192 ; defeat of, 193. Korea causes war in East, 358. Korner, " Sword Song," 74 ; arouses Germany, 85. Kriloff, 27. Kruger, Paul, influence of, 371. Labor-saving machinery, 140. Labor troubles, 355. Laenec, researches in medicine, 127. Lafayette commands National Guard, 135 ; refuses crown of France, 1 36. Lampedusa, island. United States desires, 203. " Land Grab," the Turkish, 307. Land League. See Ireland. Land Nationalism. See Henry George. Laplace, astronomer, 17. " League of Peace," the, 351. League of the f^our Kings, 204 ; League of the Three Kings, 204. Lee, Robert E., 249 ; defeat of, 261 ; on Southern loyalty, 261. Leipsic, battle of, 74. Leopold of Hohenzollem offered crown of Spain, 270. Lincoln, Abraham, elected, 229 ; nominated, 239 ; character of, 239, 243 ; election of, 243 ; obscu- rity of, 243 ; pleas for Union, 245; on Slavery, 247 ; conserva- tion of, 249 ; issues Emancipa- tion proclamation, 250 ; to Eng- hsh workingmen, 258 ; speech at Gettysburg, 259 ; re-elected, 260 ; asassination of, 262 ; char- acter of, 263 ; age of, 275. Liberia, republic of, 233- Literature in 1800, 26 ; in i860, 229, 234; in 1890, 347. Lithography, 17. Liquid air discovered, 376. Livingstone, Dr. David, explora- tions in Africa, 208, 232 ; " dis- covers " Africa, 289. Livesey, Joseph, first " teetotaler," 147- Locke, John, 25. Locomotives in America, 138. Lombardy annexed to Sardinia, 224. London, Conference of, 125. London Times on America in sci- ence, 304. Louise of Prussia, Queen, avenged, 282. Louisiana, sale of, by Napoleon, 36, 45- Louis, Napoleon, at Boulogne, 169; imprisoned, 170 : escape of, 185; in France, elected to National As- sembly, 189 ; president of French republic, 190; ambitions of, 205 cou/) d'etat of, 206; emperor, 206 brings about Crimean war, 216. unites with England against Rus- sia, 217 ; helps Cavour, 222 ; joins Italy against Austria, 22 ; de- clares war against Austria, 224 ; serts Italy, 225 ; hostility of toward America, 246 ; unfriendly to the Union, 251 ; desires to found Latin kingdom in America, 252 ; invades Mexico, 254 ; conquers Mexico, and makes Maximilian 404 INDEX. emperor, 254 ; in European af- fairs, 254 ; warned, 264 ; evacuates Mexico, 265 ; schemes in Europe, 265 ; height of power, 266 ; " Sphinx of the Tuileries," 265 ; in Austro-Prassian war, 268 ; angered over German " influence " in Spain, 270 ; seeks war with Ger- many, 270 ; refuses Rome to Italy, 279 ; schemes of, 280 ; protests against German king for Spain, 280 ; proclaims war against Ger- many, 280 ; defeat and surrender of, 281. Louis Philippe, king of France, 136, 165 ; gives Egypt no support, 167 ; asks England for " ashes of Na- poleon," 167 ; unpopularity of, 170 ; abdication of, 187. Lowell, James Russell, on progress, 196; on Villa Franca, 227. Lucknow, relief of, 233. Luneville, peace of, 31. Liitzen, battle of, 73. Lyceum of the Czar, 86. Macadam, 61. McClure, Robert, Arctic explora- tions of, 208. Mackenzie, Robert, on Napoleon, 82 ; on Charles X., 135. Madison in War of 181 2, 77. Madrid, capture of, 53. Magenta, battle of, 224. " Maine," destruction of the, 369. Maipo, battle of the, 90. Majuba Hill, battle of, 318. Malakoff, the, at Sebastopol, 220 ; fall of, 221. Malta, cause of war, 38. " Man with the hoe " in 1825, 120. Manchester, massacre at, 92. Mann, Horace, fights for education, 127 ; influence of, 161. Manzoni, pleas of, 133. Marengo, battle of, 31. Marx, Karl, socialist, 274. Mathew, Father, temperance cru- sade of, 148. Maximilian made emperor of Mexico, 254 ; defeated and executed, 265. Mazzini supports Garibaldi, 240. Mechanical successes in 1830, 149. Mehemet Ali, rise of, 32 ; in Greece, no; revolts against Turkey, 166. Menlo Park, " Wizard of." See Edi- son. Mentana, battle of, 279. Metternich, diplomacy of, 157; meth- ods of, 173 ; flight of, 188. Mexico, last heretic burned in, 112 j war with United States, 182 ; in- fluence of war on, 183 ; in 1861, 252 ; trouble with European cred- itors, 252 ; invaded by allies, 253 ; war with France, 254 ; America supports, 264 ; French evacuate, 265 ; defeats and executes Max- imilian, 265 ; prosperity in, 288. Mickiewicz seeks to arouse interest in Poland, 174. Midhat Pasha, grand vizier, 306 ; abandoned, 307. Milan, Victor Emmanuel enters, 224. Militarism holds people in check, 1820, 103. Mill, John Stuart, essay " On Lib- erty," 239 ; character of, 239. Millet, Jean Fran9ois, at Barbazon, 120. Minto, Prof., on Byron, 108. Miranda, " knight-errant of liberty," 88. Missionary movement in 1825, 117 ; character, 208. Missolonghi, Byron dies at, no; siege of, no; Marco Bozzaris at, III. Missouri, admission of, 93, 145. Mohl, Madam, on Napoleon III. ,222. Monroe, James, president, 93, 105 ; announces his " Doctrine," 105. Monroe Doctrine, 105; accepted by the world, 107 ; joint responsibility for, 107 ; effect of, on Europe, 107. Montebello, battle of, 224. Moiitgolfier, ballooning, 17. Montgomery, secession convention at, 244 ; loyalty of, in 1876, 302. Moore, Sir John, " Burial of," 53. Moore, Thomas, 26 ; on Emmett, 41 ; Irish melodies, 84. INDEX. 405 Morse, S. F. B., designs first tele- graph, 141 ; sends first telegram, 180. Moscow, capture of, 70 ; retreat from, 71 ; university of, 86. Mount Cenis tunnel, 232. Naples, Victor Emmanuel enters, 241. Napoleon, influence of, 15; First Consul, 31; king of Italy, 31 ; em- peror of .P'rance, 31 ; power of, 32 ; ambition of, 35 ; after Trafal- gar, 46 ; in Spain, 53 ; insatiate appetite for conquest, 54 ; " lord of the universe," 58 ; influence of, 59 ; grip of, 61 ; supremacy of, in 1810 ; treatment of Spain, 66 ; in 181 1, 68; stirs up war between England and United States, 68 ; '(Grand Army" of, in 1812, 70; invades Russia, 70 ; in Moscow, 71 ; retreats, 72 j raises new army in 1813, 72 ; coalition against, 73 ; refuses truce, 75 ; defeated, 76 ; banished to Elba, 76 ; lands in France, 77 ; conquered and ban- ished to St. Helena, 77 ; age closed, 81 ; death of, loi ; on the future of Europe, 157 ; second funeral of, 167, 169 ; on American " e.xpansion," 203. Nares near North and South poles, 291. National Guard of France hiss Charles X., 135. Navarino, battle of, 125. Needle-gun, invention of, 267. Nelson, Horatio, victories of, 38 ; death of, 39. New Guinea in iSoo, 23. New Orieans, battle of, 80. Newspapers, growth and power of, 351- New Zealand in 1800, 23. Niagara forced to work, 375. Nicholas I. of Russia, absolutism of, 157 ; death of, 221. Nicholas II. of Russia, advances under, 357 ; proposes peace con- ference, 367 ; invites the world, 368. Nice pledged to France, 240. Niebuhr, Roman history, 84 Niederwald, national monument on, 309- Niemen River, Napoleon crosses, 70. Nightingale, Florence, service of, 219. Nineteen Hundred, the world in, 383. North German Confederation, 266, 267. Northwest Company, 119. Northwest Passage discovered, 208. Norway under French control, 20. Obstacles in 1885, 321. O'Connell, Daniel, Irish agitator, 174 ; defeat of, 175. " On to Beriin I " 281. Opposition to constituted govern- ment, 323. Orange Free State, 289. " Orders in Council," 49. Ornithology in 1830, 149. Outlanders, revolt of, 370. Pacific railroad built, 272. Palmerston, Lord, consents to give France remains of Napoleon, 168 ; foremost statesman, 170 ; on Louis Napoleon, 226. Panama, Pan-American Congress at, 129; canal, 339. Pan-American Congress fair pro- posed, 129 ; in 1889, 338. Parini, 27. Paris captured, 1814,76; revolt in, 186 ; surrender of, 282 ; commune in, 283. Parliament of ReHgions, the, 353. Parnell, Charles Stuart, Irish leader, 300 ; arrest of, 317. Parn-, Lieutenant, in the Arctic, 1 19. Pasteur, hydrophobia cure, 359. Peace, conference for universal, 367, 374; victories of, 351. Pedro, Dom, emperor of Brazil, 103. Perry, Commodore M. C, opens China to America, 210. Persia, in iSoo, 19. Peru, battle-ground of South Atner- 4o6 INDEX. ican independence, 103 ; conquest of, 104 ; war with Chili, 322. Pestalozzi, 25 ; educating the people, 127. Petofi, author of Hungary's Marseil- laise, 192. Philadelphia, exhibition of 1876, 301. Philanthropy, age of, 328. Philhellenes, or " Friends of Greece," no. Philippines, ceded to United States, 370. Philology in 1830, 149. Philosophy in 1830, 149. Photography, advances in, 376. Physiology in 1830, 149. Pinckney, reply to France, 23. Pitt, Willian, leader of England, 23^ 34 ; after Austerlitz, 48 ; after Trafalgar, 48. Plevna, siege of, 307. Plombieres, alliance of, 223. Poland revolution in, 137 ; " Russifi- cation " of, 337. Polytechnic of Paris, 86. Pope,the, a prisoner of Napoleon, 57. Portugal under French control, 20 ; revolts from Napoleon, 51, 52 ; aroused against Napoleon, 67. Postage, penny, in England, 179. Postage-stamp, first, 179. Prague, treaty of, 267. Preble, 43 Prim, General, Spanish leader, 269. Prussia awed by France, 20 ; in 1805, 39, 42. Psychology in 1830, 149. Puebla, battle of, 254. Pushkin, Alexander, 27 ; his " Monu- ment," 86. Railroads, early, in Europe, 139; development of, 351 ; speed on, 352; in 1899, 376. Ramsey, Professor, discovers liquid air, 376. Reactionary rulers in 1830, 154. Rebellion of 1861 in United State.s, 249. Redan, the, at Sebastopol, 220 ; fall of, 221. Red Cross, the, 360. Reform Bill of 1832 passed by par- liament, 137, 143 ; importance of, 171. Religion in 1830, 149; growth and broadening in, 354. Rhodes, Cecil, influence of, 371. Riel, Louis, first rebellion of, 273 ; defeat and death of, 339. Renan, observations of, 292. Roberts at Kandahar, 319. " Rocket," the, first locomotive, 126. Rodgers, 43. Romberg revolutionizes study of nervous diseases, 127. Rome, capture of, 282 ; made capi- tal of Italy, 279, 282. Rontgen discovers X-rays, 376. Ross, Sir John, in the arctic, 119. Rousseau, 25, 26. Russia in 1800, 19 ; in 1805, 41 joins France, 49 ; against Napo leon, 67; invades Siberia, 113 jealousy of western Europe, 216 influence of Crimean War on, 221 234 ; serfs emancipated, 256 war with Turkey, 307 ; in Asia 318; national unity of, 328 " Russification " of Poland and Finland, 339. Russian America. See Alaska. Russian Fur Company, 119. " Russification." See Russia. St. Helena, Napoleon banished to, 77- Sadowa, battle of, 267. Salamanca, battle of, 67. Salvation Army, the, 325. Samoa, trouble in, 336 ; hurricane in. 337-_ San Martin, the liberator, 89 ; crosses Andes, 89 , in Peru, 103 ; meets Bolivar, 103 ; resigns leadership, 103 ; death of, 130. San Stefano, peace of, 307. Saragossa, " Maid of," 56. Sardinia, kingdom of, rise to power of, 205. Sarmiento, Domingo, statesmanship of, 287. INDEX. 407 Sartorius advocates steam for war vessels, 232. Scheiling, 26. Schill, Major, 57. Schiller, 26; in 181 5, 84. Schlegel, 26. Schroder, 85. Science in 1830, 145. Scott, Sir Walter, " Marmion," 84. Sebastopol, siege of, 218; fall of, 221. Second War of American Inde- pendence (1812), 80. Sedan, surrender of, 281. Seeley, Prof., on Sepoy rebellion, ^^^■ Seignobos on transformation dur- ing Nineteenth Century, 345, 364. Senef elder, Alois, lithography, 17. Sepoy rebellion, 232. Serrano, Marshal, Spanish leader, 269 ; dictator, 305. " Seven Weeks' War " of 1866, 266. Seward champion of anti-slavery, 1 84. Sewing-machine, invention of, 195. Ship-building, 17. Schleswig-IIolstein War, 255. Sicily, conquest of, 240. " Sick Man of Europe," the, 166, 306. Siberia, Russia in, 113. Siddons, Mrs., 85. Sikhs of the Punjab, revolt of, 182 ; loyalty of, in Sepoy rebellion, 233. Slavery in United States in 1820, 145 ; abolished in Cuba, 320. See Lincoln. Slave-trade abolished, 112. Small-po.x, prevention of, 17. Smith, S. F., author of " America," missionary hymn, 118. Smith, Sydney, contempt for Ameri- can literature, 95. Socialism in Germany, 323. Socialist efforts, 274, 298. Social Science Association, 232. Solferino, battle of, 224. Sommering suggests telegraph to Napoleon, S3. South African Republic proclaimed, 318. South America, progress of, 287 ; real benefaction of, 288 ; in 1889, 334- South Carolina secedes, 243. Southern Confederacy struggles for recognition, 257. Southern States secede, 244. Spain in North America, 21 ; under French control, 20, 39 ; turns against Napoleon, 51, 67 ; sells Florida, 90; revolution in, 91, 269 ; seeks " alien " king, 270 ; constitutional unity of, 305 ; Al- fonso, king of, 305 ; war with United States, 369; defeat of, 370. Spanish America, revolt of, 87, 89. Spencer, philosophy of, 292. " Spheres of Influence," 323,332,'379. Steamboats, 61, 83, 94. Steamships, development in and -speed of, 352. Stein, e.xile of, 53 ; rouses Germany, 73- Steinheil perfects a telegraph, 142. Stephenson, George, opens first railway in England, 116; inaugu- rates modem railway, 126. Stevenson, Robert Louis, in Samoa, 336 ; on Bismarck, 337. Strasburg, Louis Napoleon at, 169. Strikes and labor troubles, 275. Students, enthusiasm of, in 181 5, 85. Suez Cana] built and opened, 271. " Sully," ship, Morse designs tele- graph on, 141. Sumter, Fort, bombardment of, 248. Sweden under French control, 20 ; reforms in, 357. Switzerland under French control, 20, 40 ; new constitution of, 137 ; popular government in, 294. Sverdrup, Norwegian leader 356. Szechenyi, " Apostle of Hungarian emancipation," 116, 173. Tai-ping rebelhon in China, 210. Taine on Napoleon, 102 ; on Byron, 1 10. Talbot, Fo.x, improves daguerrotype, 1 78. 4o8 INDEX. Talma on Erfurt, 84. Taou-Kwang, Chinese emperor, 209. Tara, Hill of, great meeting on, 1 74. Tasmania in 1800, 23. Tchernaya, battle of, Sardinians at, Teen-wang, See Hung-sew. Telegram, the first, 180. Telegraph, beginnings of, 142 ; Morse's idea of, 142 ; experiments with, 143 ; growth of, 291. Telephone introduced, 326. Telford, 61. Temperance reform, 147. Tennyson, " Locksley Hall," 150, 155; Ode on Wellington, 211 ; "In Memoriam," 213, 214; "Charge of the Light Brigade," 218. Thackeray, William Makepeace, at St. Helena, 71 ; on George IH. and George IV., 92. Theatre in 181 5, 85. Thiers, Louis Adolph, prime minis- ter, 165 ; desires constitutional monarchy, 166; arraigns Louis Napoleon, 269 ; agrees to peace of Versailles, 283 ; president of French republic, 283. Tilsit, treaty of, 49. " Times," London, 26. Todleben, ability of, 218. Tolstoi", Count Lyon, 313 ; teachings of, 314 ; influence of, 316, 325, 340, Torres Vedras, stand at, 67. Total Abstinence vSociety, first, 147. Toynbee, Arnold, " settlement " or- ganizer, 325. Trafalgar, battle of, 39. Transvaal annexed, 308. See South African Republic. Tripoli, pasha of, 43. Trusts, rise of, 374. Truxton, 43. Turin, Victor Emmanuel proclaimed king of Italy at, 242. Turkey in 1800, 20 ; war with Rus- sia, 217, 307 ; in 1875, 3°5; trou- bles in, 306 ; war with Greece, 366. See " Sick Man of Europe," and " Eastern Question." Tyndall, studies of, 292. Typewriter introduced, 326. Tyrol, revolt of, 56. Uhland's folk-songs, 120, " Uncle Tom's Cabin " published, 213. United States in 1800, 21 ; in the Mediterranean, 42 ; in 1805, 44 ; Napoleon's designs on, 57 ; in 1820, 93 ; steamboats in, 94 ; rec- ognizes South American Repub- lics, 104; industries and inventions in 1830, 141 ; slavery in, 145 ; "isms" in, 145; literature in, in 1835, 160; not represented at first Pan-American Congress, 129; in 1830-1840, 134; slavery troubles of 1840, 176; reformers in, 176; expansion of, 203 ; treaty with China, 210; secession in, 243, 244; opinions in, in 1861, 246; treaty with Japan, 211 ; crisis in 1856 in, 228 ; liberation in, in i860, 231, 234 ; Civil War in, 249, 260 ; Eu- ropean sympathy, 251, 260; close of war, 261 ; new epoch in 1880, 319; growth of, 222' centennial of Constitution, 334 ; in the Pa- cific, 336 ; arbitrates sealing trou- bles, 357 ; vvoman suffrage in, 360 ; war with Spain, 369 ; conquers Philippines, 370 ; becomes world- power, 370 ; advances in, by 1870, 286 ; celebrates centennial, 301. Universal Peace conference, 367, 374- Vaccination, 17. Van Dyke, Dr., on " In Memoriam," 213. Venice overthrown, 20. Versailles, peace of, 283. Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia, 205 ; declares war on Austria, 224 ; annexes Lombardy, 224 ; supports Cavour, 240 ; enters Naples, 241 ; hailed king of Italy, 241 ; pro- claimed king, 242 ; unites Italy, 269, 270 ; bound by treaty, 279. Victoria, Queen, accession of, 150; INDEX. 409 favors American Union, 25S ; em- press of India, 299 ; jubilee of, 329- Victoria bridge opened, 232. Victorian Era, the, 150. Vienna, Congress of, 83. Villeneuve, defeat of, 39. Villa Franca, peace of, 225, 226 ; Lowell's poem on, 227. Volksraad refuses redress, 370. Von Moltke, masteriy generalship of, 281. Volta, Alessandro, voltaic pUe, 17. Wagner at Bayreuth, 292 ; influ- ence of, 293. Wagram, battle of, 56. Walcheren, defeat at, 58 Wales, Prince of, visits America, 257- Wallace on early railways in Eng- land, 139. Washington, George, influence of, 14, 15; farewell advice, 25, 44; against foreign alliances, 205 ; sug- gests " Monroe Doctrine," 107 ; plea for union, 244. Washington, treaty of, 295. War of i8i2. United States and England, 79. War of Liberation in 1S13, 74. Waterloo, battle of, 77. Watts, James, modern steam-engine dates from, 140. Wellesley. See Wellington. Wellington, Duke of, in India, 40 in Portugal, 52, retains Spain, 67 prominence of, 82 ; shield, 101 prime minister, 125 ; resigns, 126 death of, 211. Webster, Daniel, champion of Amer- ican idea, 128, 145; on compro- mise of 1850, 185 ; death of, 211, 212. West Indian Islands in 1800, 24. " White City," the, 353. Whitman, influence of, 293. Whitney, Eli, 18, 61. Whittier on England's abolition of slavery, 144. William I., king of Prussia, 257. William I., of Germany, refuses Na- poleon's demands ; proclaimed . emperor, 282 ; arbitrates between England and United States, 295 ; centennial greeting to United States, 302 ; death of, 327. William II. of Germany, accessiotf of, 327 ; arrogance of, 331 ; " strenuousness of," 349 ; dimisses Bismarck, 350. Wilhelmshoe, Napoleon III. pris- oner at, 2S1. Wolfe's " Burial of Sir John Moore," 54- Woman, advance of, 360. Woman's suffrage, 361. Worth, battle of, 281. Wurschen, battle of, 73. X-RAYS, discovery of, 376. " Young Germany " in 1835, 158. Young Turkey, 306. Zhukovski, " Poet in the Russian Camp," 86. Zoology in 1830, 149. Zulu appeal to England, 308. M 1 A UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. na PHQ/C ^APR 11986 ivLi\i£vVALS 3 1158 01094 1374 AA 000 804 027 i ^^S ANGELES, CALlF