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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
H

E R I C F O N E R is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, where he


earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, he focuses on the Civil War and
Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century America. Professor Foner’s publications
include Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War; Tom
Paine and Revolutionary America; Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy; Reconstruction:
America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877; The Story of American Freedom; and Forever Free: The
Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. His history of Reconstruction won the Los Angeles Times
Book Award for History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Parkman Prize. He has served as president
of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association. In 2006
he received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching from Columbia University. His
most recent books are The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, winner of the Ban-
croft and Lincoln Prizes and the Pulitzer Prize for History, and Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden
History of the Underground Railroad, winner of the New York Historical Society Book Prize.
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ... vii
LIST OF M APS, TABLES, AND FIGU RES ... xix
PREFACE ... xxi
ACK NOWLEDGMENTS ... xxvii

15 . “ W H A T I S F R E E D O M ? ”: R E C O N S T R U C T I O N ,
18 6 5 –18 7 7 . . . 5 5 0
THE MEANING OF FREEDOM ... 552
Blacks and the Meaning of Freedom ... 552 H Families in Freedom ... 552
H Church and School ... 553 H Political Freedom ... 553 H Land, Labor, and
Freedom ... 554 H Masters without Slaves ... 555 H The Free Labor
Vision ... 556 H The Freedmen’s Bureau ... 557 H The Failure of Land
Reform ... 558 H Toward a New South ... 559 H The White Farmer ... 560 H
The Urban South ... 561 H The Aftermath of Slavery ... 561

Voices of Freedom: From Petition of Committee in Behalf of the


Freedmen to Andrew Johnson (1865), and From A Sharecropping
Contract (1866) ... 562

THE M AK ING OF R ADICAL RECONSTRUCTION ... 564


Andrew Johnson ... 564 H The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction ... 565
H The Black Codes ... 565 H The Radical Republicans ... 566 H The
Origins of Civil Rights ... 567 H The Fourteenth Amendment ... 568 H The
Reconstruction Act ... 568 H Impeachment and the Election of
Grant ... 569 H The Fifteenth Amendment ... 570 H The “Great
Constitutional Revolution” ... 570 H Boundaries of Freedom ... 571 H The
Rights of Women ... 572 H Feminists and Radicals ... 572
R ADICAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH ... 574
“The Tocsin of Freedom” ... 574 H The Black Officeholder ... 575 H
Carpetbaggers and Scalawags ... 576 H Southern Republicans in
Power ... 577 H The Quest for Prosperity ... 578
THE OVERTHROW OF RECONSTRUCTION ... 579
Reconstruction’s Opponents ... 579 H “A Reign of Terror” ... 579 H The
Liberal Republicans ... 581 H The North’s Retreat ... 582 H The Triumph
of the Redeemers ... 584 H The Disputed Election and Bargain of
1877 ... 584 H The End of Reconstruction ... 585

REVIEW ... 587

viii Contents
PA RT 4: TOWA RD A GLOBA L PRESENCE,
1870–1920
16 . A M E R I C A’ S G I L D E D A G E , 18 7 0 –18 9 0 . . . 5 9 0
THE SECOND INDUSTR I AL REVOLUTION ... 591
The Industrial Economy ... 592 H Railroads and the National Market ... 593
H The Spirit of Innovation ... 594 H Competition and Consolidation ... 595 H
The Rise of Andrew Carnegie ... 596 H The Triumph of John D.
Rockefeller ... 599 H Workers’ Freedom in an Industrial Age ... 600 H
Sunshine and Shadow: Increasing Wealth and Poverty ... 601
THE TR ANSFORM ATION OF THE WEST ... 602
A Diverse Region ... 602 H Farming on the Middle Border ... 604 H
Bonanza Farms ... 605 H The Cowboy and the Corporate West ... 606 H
The Chinese Presence ... 609 H Conflict on the Mormon Frontier ... 609 H
The Subjugation of the Plains Indians ... 610 H “Let Me Be a Free
Man” ... 611

Voices of Freedom: From Speech of Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé


Indians, in Washington, D.C. (1879), and From Letter by Saum Song Bo,
American Missionary (October 1885) ... 612

Remaking Indian Life ... 614 H The Dawes Act ... 615 H Indian
Citizenship ... 615 H The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee ... 616 H
Settler Societies and Global Wests ... 618 H Myth, Reality, and the Wild
West ... 619
POLITICS IN A GILDED AGE ... 619
The Corruption of Politics ... 620 H The Politics of Dead Center ... 621
HGovernment and the Economy ... 622 H Reform Legislation ... 622 H
Political Conflict in the States ... 623
FREEDOM IN THE GILDED AGE ... 624
The Social Problem ... 624 H Freedom, Inequality, and Democracy ... 624
HSocial Darwinism in America ... 625 H Liberty of Contract ... 626 H The
Courts and Freedom ... 627
LABOR AND THE REPUBLIC ... 628
“The Overwhelming Labor Question” ... 628 H The Knights of Labor
and the “Conditions Essential to Liberty” ... 629 H Middle-Class
Reformers ... 630 H Progress and Poverty ... 630 H The Cooperative
Commonwealth ... 631 H Bellamy’s Utopia ... 632 H Protestants and
Moral Reform ... 632 H A Social Gospel ... 633 H The Haymarket
Affair ... 633 H Labor and Politics ... 634

REVIEW ... 637

17. F R E E D O M ’ S B O U N D A R I E S , A T H O M E A N D
A B R O A D , 18 9 0 –19 0 0 . . . 6 3 8
THE POPULIST CH ALLENGE ... 640
The Farmers’ Revolt ... 640 H The People’s Party ... 641 H The Populist
Platform ... 642 H The Populist Coalition ... 642 H The Government and

Contents ix
Labor ... 644 H Populism and Labor ... 645 H Bryan and Free Silver ... 646
H The Campaign of 1896 ... 646
THE SEGREGATED SOUTH ... 648
The Redeemers in Power ... 648 H The Failure of the New South Dream
... 648 H Black Life in the South ... 649 H The Kansas Exodus ... 650 H The
Decline of Black Politics ... 650 H The Elimination of Black Voting ... 651
H The Law of Segregation ... 652 H Segregation and White Domination ...
653 H The Rise of Lynching ... 654 H Politics, Religion, and Memory ... 655
REDR AW ING THE BOUNDA R IES ... 656
The New Immigration and the New Nativism ... 656 H Chinese Exclusion
and Chinese Rights ... 657 H The Emergence of Booker T. Washington ...
659 H The Rise of the AFL ... 659

Voices of Freedom: From Booker T. Washington, Address at the Atlanta


Cotton Exposition (1895), and From W. E. B. Du Bois, “Of Mr. Booker T.
Washington and Others” (1903) ... 660
The Women’s Era ... 662
BECOMING A WORLD POWER ... 663
The New Imperialism ... 663 H American Expansionism ... 664 H The Lure
of Empire ... 665 H The “Splendid Little War” ... 666 H Roosevelt at San
Juan Hill ... 668 H An American Empire ... 668 H The Philippine War ... 669
H Citizensor Subjects? ... 672 H Drawing the Global Color Line ... 673 H
“Republic or Empire?” ... 674

REVIEW ... 677

18 . T H E P R O G R E S S I V E E R A , 19 0 0 –19 16 . . . 6 7 8
AN U RBAN AGE AND A CONSUMER SOCIETY ... 680
Farms and Cities ... 680 H The Muckrakers ... 682 H Immigration as a
Global Process ... 682 H The Immigrant Quest for Freedom ... 684 H
Consumer Freedom ... 685 H The Working Woman ... 686 H The Rise
of Fordism ... 687 H The Promise of Abundance ... 688 H An American
Standard of Living ... 689
VA R IETIES OF PROGRESSI V ISM ... 690
Industrial Freedom ... 690 H The Socialist Presence ... 691 H The Gospel
of Debs ... 691 H AFL and IWW ... 693 H The New Immigrants on
Strike ... 693

Voices of Freedom: From Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and


Economics (1898), and From John Mitchell, “The Workingman’s
Conception of Industrial Liberty” (1910) ... 694

Labor and Civil Liberties ... 697 H The New Feminism ... 697 H The Rise
of Personal Freedom ... 698 H The Birth-Control Movement ... 699 H
Native American Progressivism ... 699
THE POLITICS OF PROGRESSI V ISM ... 700
Effective Freedom ... 700 H State and Local Reforms ... 701 H Progressivism
in the West ... 701 H Progressive Democracy ... 703 H Government by
Expert ... 703 H Jane Addams and Hull House ... 704 H “Spearheads for

x Contents
Reform” ... 704 H The Campaign for Woman Suffrage ... 705 H Maternalist
Reform ... 707 H The Idea of Economic Citizenship ... 708
THE PROGRESSI VE PRESIDENTS ... 709
Theodore Roosevelt ... 709 H Roosevelt and Economic Regulation ... 710
H John Muir and the Spirituality of Nature ... 710 H The Conservation
Movement ... 711 H Taft in Office ... 711 H The Election of 1912 ... 712 H
New Freedom and New Nationalism ... 713 H Wilson’s First Term ... 714
H The Expanding Role of Government ... 714

REVIEW ... 717

19 . S A F E F O R D E M O C R A C Y: T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S
A N D W O R L D W A R I , 19 16 –19 2 0 . . . 7 18
AN ER A OF INTERVENTION ... 720
“I Took the Canal Zone” ... 721 H The Roosevelt Corollary ... 722 H Moral
Imperialism ... 723 H Wilson and Mexico ... 725
AMER ICA AND THE GREAT WA R ... 725
Neutrality and Preparedness ... 726 H The Road to War ... 727 H The
Fourteen Points ... 728
THE WA R AT HOME ... 730
The Progressives’ War ... 730 H The Wartime State ... 730 H The
Propaganda War ... 731 H “The Great Cause of Freedom” ... 732 H The
Coming of Woman Suffrage ... 732 H Prohibition ... 734 H Liberty in
Wartime ... 735 H The Espionage and Sedition Acts ... 736 H Coercive
Patriotism ... 736
WHO IS AN AMER ICAN? ... 737
The “Race Problem” ... 738 H Americanization and Pluralism ... 738

Voices of Freedom: From Woodrow Wilson, War Message to Congress


(1917), and From Eugene V. Debs, Speech to the Jury before Sentencing
under the Espionage Act (1918) ... 740

The Anti-German Crusade ... 742 H Toward Immigration Restriction ...


742 H Groups Apart: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Asian-Americans ...
743 H The Color Line ... 744 H Roosevelt, Wilson, and Race ... 745 H W. E. B.
Du Bois and the Revival of Black Protest ... 745 H Closing Ranks ... 746 H
The Great Migration and the “Promised Land” ... 747 H Racial Violence,
North and South ... 748 H The Rise of Garveyism ... 748
1919 ... 749
A Worldwide Upsurge ... 749 H Upheaval in America ... 750 H The Great
Steel Strike ... 750 H The Red Scare ... 751 H Wilson at Versailles ... 752 H
The Wilsonian Moment ... 753 H The Seeds of Wars to Come ... 755 H The
Treaty Debate ... 756

REVIEW ... 759

Contents xi
PA RT 5: DEPRESSION A ND WA RS,
1920–1953
2 0 . F R O M B U S I N E S S C U L T U R E T O G R E A T
DEPRESSION: THE T WENTIES,
19 2 0 –19 3 2 . . . 7 6 2
THE BUSINESS OF AMER ICA ... 764
A Decade of Prosperity ... 764 H A New Society ... 765 H The Limits of
Prosperity ... 766 H The Farmers’ Plight ... 767 H The Image of Business ...
768 H The Decline of Labor ... 769 H The Equal Rights Amendment ... 770
H Women’s Freedom ... 771
BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT ... 772
The Retreat from Progressivism ... 772 H The Republican Era ... 773
HCorruption in Government ... 774 H The Election of 1924 ... 774 H
Economic Diplomacy ... 775

Voices of Freedom: From Lucian W. Parrish, Speech in Congress on


Immigration (1921), and From Majority Opinion, Justice James C.
McReynolds, in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) ... 776

THE BIRTH OF CI V IL LIBERTIES ... 778


The “Free Mob” ... 779 H A “Clear and Present Danger” ... 779 H The
Court and Civil Liberties ... 780
THE CULTU RE WA RS ... 782
The Fundamentalist Revolt ... 782 H The Scopes Trial ... 783 H The
Second Klan ... 784 H Closing the Golden Door ... 785 H Race and the Law
... 787 H Pluralism and Liberty ... 788 H Promoting Tolerance ... 789 H The
Emergence of Harlem ... 790 H The Harlem Renaissance ... 791
THE GREAT DEPRESSION ... 792
The Election of 1928 ... 792 H The Coming of the Depression ... 793 H
Americans and the Depression ... 794 H Resignation and Protest ... 795
HHoover’s Response ... 796 H The Worsening Economic Outlook ... 797 H
Freedom in the Modern World ... 798

REVIEW ... 801

2 1: T H E N E W D E A L , 19 3 2–19 4 0 . . . 8 0 2
THE FIRST NEW DEAL ... 804
FDR and the Election of 1932 ... 804 H The Coming of the New Deal ...
806 H The Banking Crisis ... 807 H The NRA ... 808 H Government Jobs ...
810 H Public-Works Projects ... 810 H The New Deal and Agriculture ...
811 H The New Deal and Housing ... 813 H The Court and the New Deal
... 815
THE GR ASSROOTS REVOLT ... 815
Labor’s Great Upheaval ... 815 H The Rise of the CIO ... 817 H Labor and
Politics ... 818 H Voices of Protest ... 818 H Religion on the Radio ... 819

xii Contents
THE SECOND NEW DEAL ... 820
The WPA and the Wagner Act ... 820 H The American Welfare
State ... 822 H The Social Security System ... 822
A RECKONING W ITH LIBERTY ... 823
FDR and the Idea of Freedom ... 823

Voices of Freedom: From Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Fireside Chat” (1934),


and From John Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the
Grapes of Wrath (1938) ... 824

The Election of 1936 ... 827 H The Court Fight ... 827 H The End of the
Second New Deal ... 828
THE LIMITS OF CH ANGE ... 829
The New Deal and American Women ... 829 H The Southern Veto ... 830
H The Stigma of Welfare ... 831 H The Indian New Deal ... 832 H The New
Deal and Mexican-Americans ... 832 H Last Hired, First Fired ... 833 H A
New Deal for Blacks ... 833 H Federal Discrimination ... 834
A NEW CONCEPTION OF AMER ICA ... 835
The Heyday of American Communism ... 836 H Redefining the People ...
836 H Promoting Diversity ... 838 H Challenging the Color Line ... 838 H
Labor and Civil Liberties ... 839 H The End of the New Deal ... 841 H The
New Deal in American History ... 842

REVIEW ... 845

2 2 . F I G H T I N G F O R T H E F O U R F R E E D O M S : W O R L D
W A R I I , 19 4 1–19 4 5 . . . 8 4 6
FIGHTING WORLD WA R II ... 848
Good Neighbors ... 848 H The Road to War ... 849 H Isolationism ... 850 H
War in Europe ... 851 H Toward Intervention ... 851 H Pearl Harbor ... 852
The War in the Pacific ... 853 H The War in Europe ... 855
THE HOME FRONT ... 858
Mobilizing for War ... 858 H Business and the War ... 859 H Labor in
Wartime ... 860 H Fighting for the Four Freedoms ... 861 H Freedom from
Want ... 862 H The Office of War Information ... 863 H The Fifth Freedom
... 864 H Women at Work ... 865 H The Pull of Tradition ... 866
V ISIONS OF POSTWA R FREEDOM ... 866
Toward an American Century ... 866 H “The Way of Life of Free Men” ...
867 H An Economic Bill of Rights ... 868 H The Road to Serfdom ... 869
THE AMER ICAN DILEMM A ... 869
Patriotic Assimilation ... 870 H The Bracero Program ... 871

Voices of Freedom: From League of United Latin American Citizens,


“World War II and Mexican Americans” (1945), and From Charles H.
Wesley, “The Negro Has always Wanted the Four Freedoms,” in What
the Negro Wants (1944) ... 872

Mexican-American Rights ... 874 H Indians during the War ... 874 H
Asian-Americans in Wartime ... 874 H Japanese-American Internment

Contents xiii
... 875 H Blacks and the War ... 877 H Blacks and Military Service ... 878
H Birth of the Civil Rights Movement ... 878 H The Double-V ... 879 H
What the Negro Wants ... 879 H An American Dilemma ... 880 H Black
Internationalism ... 881
THE END OF THE WA R ... 882
“The Most Terrible Weapon” ... 882 H The Dawn of the Atomic Age ...
883 H The Nature of the War ... 884 H Planning the Postwar World ... 884
HYalta and Bretton Woods ... 885 H The United Nations ... 886 H Peace,
but Not Harmony ... 886

REVIEW ... 889

2 3 . T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S A N D T H E C O L D W A R ,
19 4 5 –19 5 3 . . . 8 9 0
OR IGINS OF THE COLD WA R ... 892
The Two Powers ... 892 H The Roots of Containment ... 893 H The Iron
Curtain ... 893 H The Truman Doctrine ... 893 H The Marshall Plan ... 895
H The Reconstruction of Japan ... 896 H The Berlin Blockade and NATO
... 896 H The Growing Communist Challenge ... 897 H The Korean War ...
897 H Cold War Critics ... 901 H Imperialism and Decolonization ... 902
THE COLD WA R AND THE IDEA OF FREEDOM ... 902
The Cultural Cold War ... 903 H Freedom and Totalitarianism ... 904 H
The Rise of Human Rights ... 905 H Ambiguities of Human Rights ... 905
THE TRUM AN PRESIDENCY ... 907
The Fair Deal ... 907 H The Postwar Strike Wave ... 907 H The Republican
Resurgence ... 908 H Postwar Civil Rights ... 908 H To Secure These
Rights ... 910 H The Dixiecrat and Wallace Revolts ... 910 H The 1948
Campaign ... 911
THE ANTICOMMUNIST CRUSADE ... 912
Loyalty and Disloyalty ... 913 H The Spy Trials ... 914 H McCarthy and
McCarthyism ... 915 H An Atmosphere of Fear ... 916 H The Uses of
Anticommunism ... 916 H Anticommunist Politics ... 917

Voices of Freedom: From Joseph R. McCarthy, Speech at Wheeling


(1950), and From Margaret Chase Smith, Speech in the Senate (1950) ...
918

The Cold War and Organized Labor ... 920 H Cold War Civil Rights ... 920

REVIEW ... 923

PA RT 6: W H AT K IND OF N ATION?
1953–2015
24 . A N A F F L U E N T S O C I E T Y, 19 5 3 –19 6 0 . . . 9 2 8
THE GOLDEN AGE ... 930
A Changing Economy ... 930 H A Suburban Nation ... 932 H The Growth
of the West ... 933 H A Consumer Culture ... 934 H The TV World ... 935 H

xiv Contents
A New Ford ... 935 H Women at Work and at Home ... 937 H A Segregated
Landscape ... 938 H Public Housing and Urban Renewal ... 939 H The
Divided Society ... 939 H Religion and Anticommunism ... 940 H Selling
Free Enterprise ... 941 H People’s Capitalism ... 942 H The Libertarian
Conservatives ... 943 H The New Conservatism ... 943
THE EISENHOWER ER A ... 944
Ike and Nixon ... 944 H The 1952 Campaign ... 945 H Modern
Republicanism ... 946 H The Social Contract ... 947 H Massive Retaliation
... 947 H Ike and the Russians ... 948 H The Emergence of the Third World
... 949 H The Cold War in the Third World ... 950 H Origins of the Vietnam
War ... 950 H Mass Society and Its Critics ... 951 H Rebels without a
Cause ... 952 H The Beats ... 953
THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT ... 954
Origins of the Movement ... 955 H The Legal Assault on Segregation ... 955

Voices of Freedom: From Martin Luther King Jr., Speech at


Montgomery, Alabama (December 5, 1955), and From The Southern
Manifesto (1956) ... 956

The Brown Case ... 958 H The Montgomery Bus Boycott ... 960 H The
Daybreak of Freedom ... 961 H The Leadership of King ... 961 H Massive
Resistance ... 962 H Eisenhower and Civil Rights ... 963 H The World
Views the United States ... 963
THE ELECTION OF 1960 ... 964
Kennedy and Nixon ... 964 H The End of the 1950s ... 966

REVIEW 969

2 5 . T H E S I X T I E S , 19 6 0 –19 6 8 . . . 9 7 0
THE CI V IL R IGHTS REVOLUTION ... 972
The Rising Tide of Protest ... 972 H Birmingham ... 972 H The March on
Washington ... 974
THE K ENNEDY Y EA RS ... 975
Kennedy and the World ... 975 H The Missile Crisis ... 976 H Kennedy and
Civil Rights ... 977
LY NDON JOHNSON’S PRESIDENCY ... 978
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ... 978 H Freedom Summer ... 978 H The 1964
Election ... 980 H The Conservative Sixties ... 980 H The Voting Rights
Act ... 982 H Immigration Reform ... 982 H The Great Society ... 983 H The
War on Poverty ... 983 H Freedom and Equality ... 984
THE CH ANGING BLACK MOVEMENT ... 985
The Ghetto Uprisings ... 985 H Malcolm X ... 986 H The Rise of Black
Power ... 987
V IETNAM AND THE NEW LEFT ... 988
Old and New Lefts ... 988 H The Fading Consensus ... 989 H The Rise of
SDS ... 990 H America and Vietnam ... 991 H Lyndon Johnson’s War ... 992

Voices of Freedom: From Barry Goldwater, Speech at Republican


National Convention (1964), and From Statement of Purpose, National
Organization for Women (1966) ... 994
Contents xv
The Antiwar Movement ... 996 H The Counterculture ... 997 H Personal
Liberation and the Free Individual ... 998 H Faith and the Counterculture
... 998
THE NEW MOVEMENTS AND THE R IGHTS
REVOLUTION ... 1000
The Feminine Mystique ... 1000 H Women’s Liberation ... 1001 H Personal
Freedom ... 1002 H Gay Liberation ... 1002 H Latino Activism ... 1003 H
Red Power ... 1004 H Silent Spring ... 1004 H The New Environmentalism
... 1005 H The Rights Revolution ... 1006 H Policing the States ... 1007 H
The Right to Privacy ... 1007
1968 ... 1008
A Year of Turmoil ... 1008 H The Global 1968 ... 1009 H Nixon’s Comeback
... 1010 H The Legacy of the Sixties ... 1011

REVIEW ... 1013

2 6 . T H E T R I U M P H O F C O N S E R V A T I S M ,
19 6 9 –19 8 8 . . . 10 14
PRESIDENT NI XON ... 1015
Nixon’s Domestic Policies ... 1016 H Nixon and Welfare ... 1016 H
Nixon and Race ... 1017 H The Burger Court ... 1018 H The Court and
Affirmative Action ... 1019 H The Continuing Sexual Revolution ... 1019 H
Nixon and Détente ... 1021
V IETNAM AND WATERGATE ... 1022
Nixon and Vietnam ... 1022 H The End of the Vietnam War ... 1023 H
Watergate ... 1024 H Nixon’s Fall ... 1025
THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE ... 1026
The Decline of Manufacturing ... 1026 H Stagflation ... 1026 H The
Beleaguered Social Compact ... 1027 H Labor on the Defensive ... 1028 H
Ford as President ... 1029 H The Carter Administration ... 1029 H Carter
and the Economic Crisis ... 1030 H The Emergence of Human Rights
Politics ... 1031 H The Iran Crisis and Afghanistan ... 1032
THE R ISING TIDE OF CONSERVATISM ... 1034
The Religious Right ... 1034 H The Battle over the Equal Rights
Amendment ... 1035 H The Abortion Controversy ... 1036 H The Tax Revolt
... 1037 H Conservatism in the West ... 1038 H The Election of 1980 ... 1038
THE REAGAN REVOLUTION ... 1039
Voices of Freedom: From Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle (1971),
and From Richard E. Blakemore, Report on the Sagebrush Rebellion
(1979) ... 1040

Reagan and American Freedom ... 1042 H Reagan’s Economic Policies


... 1042 H Reagan and Labor ... 1043 H The Problem of Inequality ... 1044
H The Second Gilded Age ... 1045 H Conservatives and Reagan ... 1045
H Reagan and the Cold War ... 1046 H The Iran-Contra Affair ... 1047 H
Reagan and Gorbachev ... 1048 H Reagan’s Legacy ... 1049 H The Election
of 1988 ... 1049

REVIEW ... 1051


xvi Contents
2 7. F ROM T R I U M PH T O T R AG E DY, 198 9–200 1 ... 10 52
THE POST– COLD WA R WORLD ... 1054
A New World Order? ... 1054 H The Gulf War ... 1054 H Visions of
America’s Role ... 1054 H The Election of Clinton ... 1055 H Clinton in
Office ... 1056 H The “Freedom Revolution” ... 1057 H Clinton’s Political
Strategy ... 1058 H Clinton and World Affairs ... 1058 H The Balkan Crisis
... 1059 H Human Rights ... 1060
GLOBALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS ... 1060
The Computer Revolution ... 1062 H The Stock Market Boom and Bust
... 1064 H The Enron Syndrome ... 1064 H Fruits of Deregulation ... 1065 H
Rising Inequality ... 1065
CULTU RE WA RS ... 1067
The Newest Immigrants ... 1067

Voices of Freedom: From Bill Clinton, Speech on Signing of NAFTA


(1993), and From Global Exchange, Seattle, Declaration for Global
Democracy (December 1999) ... 1068

The New Diversity ... 1072 H The Changing Face of Black


America ... 1075 H The Spread of Imprisonment ... 1076 H The Burden of
Imprisonment ... 1077 H The Continuing Rights Revolution ... 1078 H Native
Americans in the New Century ... 1079 H Multiculturalism ... 1079 H
The Identity Debate ... 1080 H Cultural Conservatism ... 1080 H Family
Values in Retreat ... 1081 H The Antigovernment Extreme ... 1081
IMPEACHMENT AND THE ELECTION OF 2000 ... 1083
The Impeachment of Clinton ... 1083 H The Disputed Election ... 1084 H
A Challenged Democracy ... 1085
THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11 ... 1085
REVIEW ... 1089

2 8 . A N E W C E N T U R Y A N D N E W C R I S E S . . . 10 9 0
THE WA R ON TER ROR ... 1091
Bush before September 11 ... 1091 H “They Hate Freedom” ... 1092 H The
Bush Doctrine ... 1093 H The “Axis of Evil” ... 1093
AN AMER ICAN EMPIRE ? ... 1094
Confronting Iraq ... 1094 H The Iraq War ... 1095 H Another Vietnam? ...
1095 H The World and the War ... 1096
THE AFTERMATH OF SEPTEMBER 11 AT HOME ... 1097
Security and Liberty ... 1097 H The Power of the President ... 1099 H The
Torture Controversy ... 1099 H The Economy under Bush ... 1100
THE W INDS OF CH ANGE ... 1101
The 2004 Election ... 1101 H Bush’s Second Term ... 1101 H Hurricane
Katrina ... 1102 H The New Orleans Disaster ... 1102 H Battle over the
Border ... 1102 H Islam, America, and the “Clash of Civilizations” ... 1105
H The Constitution and Liberty ... 1105 H The Court and the President ...
1106 H The Midterm Elections of 2006 ... 1107 H The Housing Bubble ...
1107

Contents xvii
Voices of Freedom: From Opinion of the Court in Obergefell v. Hodges
(2015), and From Barack Obama, Eulogy at Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopal Church (2015) ... 1108

The Great Recession ... 1111 H “A Conspiracy against the Public” ... 1111
H The Collapse of Market Fundamentalism ... 1113 H Bush and the
Crisis ... 1113 H The 2008 Campaign ... 1114 H Obama’s First Inauguration
... 1115
OBAM A IN OFFICE ... 1116
The Health Care Debate ... 1117 H Financial Reform ... 1117 H The
Problem of Inequality ... 1118 H The Occupy Movement ... 1118
THE OBAM A PRESIDENCY ... 1119
The Continuing Economic Crisis ... 1119 H Postracial America? ...
1121 H Obama and the World ... 1123 H The Rise of ISIS ... 1124 H The
Republican Resurgence ... 1125 H The 2012 Campaign ... 1126
FREEDOM IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTU RY ... 1128
Exceptional America ... 1128 H Varieties of Freedom ... 1130 H Learning
from History ... 1131

REVIEW ... 1133

APPENDIX
DOCUMENTS
The Declaration of Independence (1776) … A-2 H The Constitution of
the United States (1787) … A-5 H From George Washington’s Farewell
Address (1796) … A-16 H The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments
and Resolutions (1848) … A-21 H From Frederick Douglass’s “What,
to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July?” Speech (1852) … A-24 H The
Gettysburg Address (1863) … A-27 H Abraham Lincoln’s Second
Inaugural Address (1865) … A-28 H The Populist Platform of 1892 …
A-29 H Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address (1933) … A-32 H
From The Program for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
(1963) … A-35 H Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address (1981) … A-36
H Barack Obama’s First Inaugural Address (2009) … A-39
TABLES AND FIGU RES
Presidential Elections … A-42 H Admission of States … A-50 H Population
of the United States … A-51 H Historical Statistics of the United States:
Labor Force—Selected Characteristics Expressed as a Percentage of
the Labor Force, 1800–2010 … A-52 H Immigration, by Origin … A-52
H Unemployment Rate, 1890–2015 … A-53 H Union Membership as a
Percentage of Nonagricultural Employment, 1880–2015 … A-53 H Voter
Participation in Presidential Elections, 1824–2012 … A-53 H Birthrate,
1820–2015 … A-53

GLOSSA RY H ... A-55


CREDITS H ... A-83
INDEX H ... A-87

xviii Contents
MAPS CH APTER 23
Cold War Europe, 1956...898
CH APTER 15 The Korean War, 1950–1953...900
The Barrow Plantation...555 The Presidential Election of 1948...911
Sharecropping in the South, 1880...559
The Presidential Election of 1868...570 CH APTER 24
Reconstruction in the South, 1867–1877...583 The Interstate Highway System...936
The Presidential Election of 1876...584 The Presidential Election of 1952...946
The Presidential Election of 1960...966
CH APTER 16
The Railroad Network, 1880...594 CH APTER 25
U.S. Steel: A Vertically Integrated Corporation...598 The Presidential Election of 1964...980
The Industrial West...​607 The Vietnam War, 1964–1975...993
Indian Reservations, ca. 1890...616 The Presidential Election of 1968...1010
Political Stalemate, 1876–1892...621
CH APTER 26
CH APTER 17 Center of Population, 1790–2010...1017
Populist Strength, 1892...643 The Presidential Election of 1976...1029
The Presidential Election of 1896...647 The Presidential Election of 1980...1039
The Spanish-American War: The Pacific...667 The United States in the Caribbean and Central
The Spanish-American War: The Caribbean...667 America, 1954–2004...1048
American Empire, 1898...670
CH APTER 27
CH APTER 18 Eastern Europe after the Cold War...1056
The World on the Move, World Migration 1815– The Presidential Election of 1992...1057
1914...684 Immigrant Populations in Cities and States, 1900
Socialist Towns and Cities, 1900–1920...692 and 2010...1071
The Presidential Election of 1912...712 Origin of Largest Immigrant Populations by State,
1910 and 2013...1074
CH APTER 19 The Presidential Election of 2000...1084
The Panama Canal Zone...721
The United States in the Caribbean, 1898–1941...722 CH APTER 28
Colonial Possessions, 1900...724 U.S. Presence in the Middle East, 1947–2015...1098
World War I: The Western Front...729 The Presidential Election of 2008...1115
Prohibition, 1915: Counties and States That Banned Percentage of Population Below the Poverty Line,
Liquor before the Eighteenth Amendment 2014...1120
(Ratified 1919, Repealed 1933)...735 The Presidential Election of 2012...1127
Europe in 1914...754
Europe in 1919...755 TA BL ES A ND FIGURES
CH APTER 20 CH APTER 16
The Presidential Election of 1928...793 Table 16.1 Indicators of Economic Change,
1870–1920...592
CH APTER 21
Figure 16.1 Railroad Mileage Built, 1830–1975...593
Columbia River Basin Project, 1949...805
The Presidential Election of 1932...806 CH APTER 17
The Tennessee Valley Authority...811 Table 17.1 States with over 200 Lynchings,
The Dust Bowl, 1935–1940...812 1889–1918...655
CH APTER 22 CH APTER 18
World War II in the Pacific, 1941–1945...855 Table 18.1 Rise of the City, 1880–1920...683
World War II in Europe, 1942–1945...857 Table 18.2 Immigrants and Their Children as
Wartime Army and Navy Bases and Airfields...861 Percentage of Population, Ten Major Cities,
Japanese-American Internment, 1942–1945...876 1920...685

List of Maps, Tables, and Figures xix


Table 18.3 Percentage of Women 14 Years and Older Table 26.1 Rate of Divorce: Divorces of Existing
in the Labor Force, 1900–1930...686 Marriages per 1,000 New Marriages,
Table 18.4 Percentage of Women Workers in Various 1950–1980...1020
Occupations, 1900–1920...687 Table 26.2 The Misery Index, 1970–1980...1027
Table 18.5 Sales of Passenger Cars, 1900–1925...688 Figure 26.2 Real Average Weekly Wages,
1955–1990...1028
CH APTER 19 Figure 26.3 Changes in Families’ Real Income,
Table 19.1 The Great Migration...747 1980–1990...1044

CH APTER 20 CH APTER 27
Figure 20.1 Household Appliances, 1900–1930...766 Table 27.1 Immigration to the United States,
Figure 20.2 The Stock Market, 1919–1939...770 1961–2010...1070
Table 20.1 Selected Annual Immigration Quotas Figure 27.1 The Projected Non-White Majority:
under the 1924 Immigration Act...786 Racial and Ethnic Breakdown...1076
Figure 27.2 Unemployment Rate by Sex and Race,
CH APTER 21 1954–2000...1076
Figure 21.1 The Building Boom and Its Collapse, Table 27.2 Home Ownership Rates by Group,
1919–1939...813 1970–2000...1077
Figure 21.2 Unemployment, 1925–1945...828 Figure 27.3 Institutional Inmates as a Percentage of
the Population by Sex and Race, 1850–2010...1078
CH APTER 22
Figure 27.4 Change in Family Structure,
Table 22.1 Labor Union Membership...860
1970–2010...1080
CH APTER 24 Figure 27.5 Median Ages of First Marriages,
Figure 24.1 Real Gross Domestic Product per Capita, 1970–2010...1080
1790–2014...931 Figure 27.6 Women in the Paid Workforce,
Figure 24.2 Average Daily Television Viewing, 1940–2010...1081
1950–1970...935
CH APTER 28
Figure 24.3 The Baby Boom and Its Decline...937
Figure 28.1 The Housing Bubble...1110
CH APTER 25 Figure 28.2 Portrait of a Recession...1112
Figure 25.1 Percentage of Population below Poverty Figure 28.3 Income Inequality in the United States,
Level, by Race, 1959–1969...984 1910–2010...1118

CH APTER 26
Figure 26.1 Median Age at First Marriage,
1947–1981...1019

xx List of Maps, Tables, and Figures


PREFACE

G
ive Me Liberty! An American History is a survey of American history from the
earliest days of European exploration and conquest of the New World to the
first decades of the twenty-first century. It offers students a clear, concise nar-
rative whose central theme is the changing contours of American freedom.
I am extremely gratified by the response to the first four editions of Give Me Lib-
erty!, which have been used in survey courses at many hundreds of two- and four-year
colleges and universities throughout the country. The comments I have received from
instructors and students encourage me to think that Give Me Liberty! has worked well
in their classrooms. Their comments have also included many valuable suggestions
for revisions, which I greatly appreciate. These have ranged from corrections of typo-
graphical and factual errors to thoughts about subjects that needed more extensive
treatment. In making revisions for this Fifth Edition, I have tried to take these sugges-
tions into account. I have also incorporated the findings and insights of new scholar-
ship that has appeared since the original edition was written.
The most significant changes in this Fifth Edition reflect my desire to integrate the
history of the American West and especially the regions known as borderlands more
fully into the narrative. In recent years these aspects of American history have been
thriving areas of research and scholarship. Of course earlier editions of Give Me Liberty!
have discussed these subjects, but in this edition their treatment has been deepened

Preface xxi
and expanded. I have also added notable works in these areas to many chapter bibliog-
raphies and lists of websites.
The definition of the West has changed enormously in the course of American
history. In the colonial period, the area beyond the Appalachians—present-day Ken-
tucky, Tennessee, and western Pennsylvania and New York—constituted the West.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the term referred to Ohio, Michigan, Ala-
bama, and Mississippi. After the Civil War, the West came to mean the area beyond
the Mississippi River. Today, it is sometimes used to refer mainly to the Pacific coast.
But whatever its geographic locale, the West has been as much an idea as a place—an
area beyond the frontier of settlement that promised newcomers new kinds of free-
dom, sometimes at the expense of the freedom of others, such as native inhabitants and
migrant laborers. In this edition we follow Americans as they constructed their Wests,
and debated the kinds of freedom they would enjoy there.
Borderlands is a more complex idea that has influenced much recent historical
scholarship. Borders are lines dividing one country, region, or state from another.
Crossing them often means becoming subject to different laws and customs, and
enjoying different degrees of freedom. Borderlands are regions that exist on both
sides of borders. They are fluid areas where people of different cultural and social
backgrounds converge. At various points in American history, shifting borders have
opened new opportunities and closed off others in the borderlands. Families living for
decades or centuries in a region have suddenly found themselves divided by a newly
created border but still living in a borderland that transcends the new division. This
happened to Mexicans in modern-day California, Arizona, and New Mexico, for exam-
ple, in 1848, when the treaty ending the Mexican-American War transferred the land
that would become those states from Mexico to the United States.
Borderlands exist within the United States as well as at the boundaries with other
countries. For example, in the period before the Civil War, the region straddling the
Ohio River contained cultural commonalities that in some ways overrode the divi-
sion there between free and slave states. The borderlands idea also challenges simple
accounts of national development in which empires and colonies pave the way for ter-
ritorial expansion and a future transcontinental nation. It enables us, for example, to
move beyond the categories of conquest and subjugation in understanding how Native
Americans and Europeans interacted over the early centuries of contact. This approach
also provides a way of understanding how the people of Mexico and the United States
interact today in the borderland region of the American Southwest, where many fami-
lies have members on both sides of the boundary between the two countries.
Small changes relating to these themes may be found throughout the book. The
major additions seeking to illuminate the history of the West and of borderlands are
as follows:
Chapter 1 now introduces the idea of borderlands with a discussion of the areas
where European empires and Indian groups interacted and where authority was fluid
and fragile. Chapter 4 contains expanded treatment of the part of the Spanish empire
now comprising the borderlands United States (Arizona, California, New Mexico,
Texas, and Florida) and how Spain endeavored, with limited success, to consolidate its
authority in these regions. In Chapter 6, a new subsection, “The American Revolution
as a Borderlands Conflict,” examines the impact on both Americans and Canadians of
the creation, because of American independence, of a new national boundary separat-

xxii Preface
ing what once had been two parts of the British empire. Chapter 8 continues this theme
with a discussion of the borderlands aspects of the War of 1812. Chapter 9 discusses
how a common culture came into being along the Ohio River in the early nineteenth
century despite the existence of slavery on one side and free labor on the other. Chapter
13 expands the treatment of Texan independence from Mexico by discussing its impact
on both Anglo and Mexican residents of this borderland region. Chapter 14 contains a
new examination of the Civil War in the American West.
In Chapter 16, I have expanded the section on the industrial west with new discus-
sions of logging and mining, and added a new subsection on the dissemination of a
mythical image of the Wild West in the late nineteenth century. Chapter 17 contains an
expanded discussion of Chinese immigrants in the West and the battle over exclusion
and citizenship, a debate that centered on what kind of population should be allowed
to inhabit the West and enjoy the opportunities the region offered. Chapter 18 exam-
ines Progressivism, countering conventional narratives that emphasize the origins
of Progressive political reforms in eastern cities by relating how many, from woman
suffrage to the initiative, referendum, and recall, emerged in Oregon, California, and
other western states. Chapter 20 expands the treatment of western agriculture in the
1920s by highlighting the acceleration of agricultural mechanization in the region and
the agricultural depression that preceded the general economic collapse of 1929 and
after. In Chapter 22 we see the new employment opportunities for Mexican-American
women in the war production factories that opened in the West. In Chapter 26, there
is a new subsection on conservatism in the West and the Sagebrush Rebellion of the
1970s and 1980s. Chapter 27 returns to the borderlands theme by discussing the con-
sequences of the creation, in the 1990s, of a free trade zone connecting the two sides of
the Mexican-American border. And Chapters 27 and 28 now include expanded discus-
sions of the southwestern borderland as a site of an acrimonious battle over immigra-
tion—legal and undocumented—­involving the federal and state governments, private
vigilantes, and continuing waves of people trying to cross into the United States. The
contested borderland now extends many miles into the United States north of the
boundary between the two nations, and southward well into Mexico and even Central
America.
I have also added a number of new selections to Voices of Freedom, the paired
excerpts from primary documents in each chapter. Some of the new documents reflect
the stronger emphasis on the West and borderlands; others seek to sharpen the juxta-
position of divergent concepts of freedom at particular moments in ­American history.
And this edition contains many new images—paintings, broadsides, photographs,
and others—related to these themes.

Americans have always had a divided attitude toward history. On the one hand, they
tend to be remarkably future-oriented, dismissing events of even the recent past as
“ancient history” and sometimes seeing history as a burden to be overcome, a prison
from which to escape. On the other hand, like many other peoples, Americans have
always looked to history for a sense of personal or group identity and of national cohe-
siveness. This is why so many Americans devote time and energy to tracing their fam-
ily trees and why they visit historical museums and National Park Service historical
sites in ever-increasing numbers. My hope is that this book will convince readers with
all degrees of interest that history does matter to them.

Preface xxiii
The novelist and essayist James Baldwin once observed that history “does not refer
merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes
from the fact that we carry it within us, . . . ​[that] history is literally present in all that
we do.” As Baldwin recognized, the force of history is evident in our own world. Espe-
cially in a political democracy like the United States, whose government is designed to
rest on the consent of informed citizens, knowledge of the past is essential—not only for
those of us whose profession is the teaching and writing of history, but for everyone.
History, to be sure, does not offer simple lessons or immediate answers to current ques-
tions. Knowing the history of immigration to the United States, and all of the tensions,
turmoil, and aspirations associated with it, for example, does not tell us what current
immigration policy ought to be. But without that knowledge, we have no way of under-
standing which approaches have worked and which have not—essential information
for the formulation of future public policy.
History, it has been said, is what the present chooses to remember about the past.
Rather than a fixed collection of facts, or a group of interpretations that cannot be
challenged, our understanding of history is constantly changing. There is nothing
unusual in the fact that each generation rewrites history to meet its own needs, or that
scholars disagree among themselves on basic questions like the causes of the Civil
War or the reasons for the Great Depression. Precisely because each generation asks
different questions of the past, each generation formulates different answers. The past
thirty years have witnessed a remarkable expansion of the scope of historical study.
The experiences of groups neglected by earlier scholars, including women, African-
Americans, working people, and others, have received unprecedented attention from
historians. New subfields—social history, cultural history, and family history among
them—have taken their place alongside traditional political and diplomatic history.
Give Me Liberty! draws on this voluminous historical literature to present an up-
to-date and inclusive account of the American past, paying due attention to the expe-
rience of diverse groups of Americans while in no way neglecting the events and
processes Americans have experienced in common. It devotes serious attention to
political, social, cultural, and economic history, and to their interconnections. The
narrative brings together major events and prominent leaders with the many groups
of ordinary people who make up American society. Give Me Liberty! has a rich cast of
characters, from Thomas Jefferson to campaigners for woman suffrage, from Franklin
D. Roosevelt to former slaves seeking to breathe meaning into emancipation during
and after the Civil War.
Aimed at an audience of undergraduate students with little or no detailed knowl-
edge of American history, Give Me Liberty! guides readers through the complexities of
the subject without overwhelming them with excessive detail. The unifying theme
of freedom that runs through the text gives shape to the narrative and integrates the
numerous strands that make up the American experience. This approach builds on
that of my earlier book, The Story of American Freedom (1998), although Give Me Liberty!
places events and personalities in the foreground and is more geared to the structure
of the introductory survey course.
Freedom, and the battles to define its meaning, have long been central to my own
scholarship and undergraduate teaching, which focuses on the nineteenth century
and especially the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction (1850–1877). This was a
time when the future of slavery tore the nation apart and emancipation produced a

xxiv Preface
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Pyscomancy, or Sciomancy,

An art among the ancients of raising or calling up the manes or souls


of deceased persons, to give intelligence of things to come. The witch
who conjured up the soul of Samuel, to foretel Saul the event of the
battle he was about to give, did so by Sciomancy.

Rhabdomancy,

Was an ancient method of divination, performed by means of rods or


staves. St. Jerome mentions this kind of divination in his
Commentary on Hosea, chap. vi. 12.; where the prophet says, in the
name of God: My people ask counsel at their stocks; and their staff
declareth unto them: which passage that father understands of the
Grecian Rhabdomancy.
The same is met with again in Ezekiel, xxi. 21, 22. where the
prophet says: For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the
way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination; he made his
arrows bright; or, as St. Jerome renders it, he mixed his arrows; he
consulted with images; he looked in the liver.
If it be the same kind of divination that is alluded to in these two
passages, Rhabdomancy must be the same kind of superstition with
Belomancy. These two, in fact, are generally confounded. The
Septuagint themselves translate ‫ חצים‬of Ezekiel, by ῥαβδος, a rod;
though in strictness it signifies an arrow. So much however is
certain, that the instruments of divination mentioned by Hosea are
different from those of Ezekiel. In the former it is ‫ עצו‬etso, ‫מקלו‬
maklo, his wood, his staff: in the latter ‫ חצים‬hhitism, arrows. Though
it is possible they might use rods or arrows indifferently; or the
military men might use arrows and the rest rods.
By the laws of the Frisones, it appears that the ancient inhabitants
of Germany practised Rhabdomancy. The Scythians were likewise
acquainted with the use of it: and Herodotus observes, lib. vi. that
the women among the Alani sought and gathered together fine
straight wands or rods, and used them for the same superstitious
purposes.
Among the various other kinds of divination, not here mentioned,
may be enumerated: Chiromancy, performed with keys;
Alphitomancy or Aleuromancy, by flour; Keraunoscopia, by the
consideration of thunder; Alectromancy, by cocks; Lithomancy, by
stones; Eychnomancy, by lamps; Ooscopy, by eggs; Lecanomancy,
by a basin of water; Palpitatim, Salisatio, παλμος, by the pulsation
or motion of some member, &c. &c. &c.
All these kinds of divination have been condemned by the fathers
of the Church, and Councils, as supposing some compact with the
devil. Fludd has written several treatises on divination, and its
different species; and Cicero has two books of the divination of the
ancients, in which he confutes the whole system. Cardan also, in his
4th Book de Sapientia, describes every species of them.
ORACLE.

The word oracle admits, under this head, of two significations:


first, it is intended to express an answer, usually couched in very
dark and ambiguous terms, supposed to be given by demons of old,
either by the mouths of their idols, or by those of their priests, to
those who consulted them on things to come. The Pythian[36] was
always in a rage when she gave oracles.
Ablancourt observes that the study or research of the meaning of
Oracles was but a fruitless thing; and they were never understood
until they were accomplished. It is related by Historians, that Crœsus
was tricked by the ambiguity and equivocation of the oracle.
Κροισος Άλυν διαβας μεγαλην αρχην καταλνσει. rendered thus in
Latin:—
Crœsus Halym superans magnam pervertet opum vim.
Oracle is also used for the Demon who gave the answer, and the
place where it was given. (Vide Demon.)
The principal oracles of antiquity are that of Abæ, mentioned by
Herodotus; that of Amphiarus; that of the Branchidæ, at Didymus;
that of the Camps, at Lacedemon; that of Dodona; that of Jupiter
Ammon; that of Nabarca, in the Country of the Anariaci, near the
Caspian sea; that of Trophonius, mentioned by Herodotus; that of
Chrysopolis; that of Claros, in Ionia; that of Mallos; that of Patarea;
that of Pella, in Macedonia; that of Phaselides, in Cilicia; that of
Sinope, in Paphlagonia; that of Orpheus’s head, mentioned by
Philostratus in his life of Appolonius, &c. But, of all others, the oracle
of Apollo Pythius, at Delphi, was the most celebrated; it was, in
short, consulted always as a dernier ressort, in cases of emergency,
by most of the princes of those ages.—Mr. Bayle observes, that at
first, it gave its answers in verse; and that at length it fell to prose, in
consequence of the people beginning to laugh at the poorness of its
versification.
Among the more learned, it is a pretty general opinion that all the
oracles were mere cheats and impostures; calculated either to serve
the avaricious ends of the heathen priests, or the political views of
the princes. Bayle positively asserts, they were mere human artifices,
in which the devil had no hand. In this opinion he is strongly
supported by Van Dale, a Dutch physician, and M. Fontenelle, who
have expressly written on the subject.
There are two points at issue on the subject of oracles; viz. whether
they were human or diabolical machines; and whether or not they
ceased upon the publication and preaching of the Gospel?
Plutarch wrote a treatise on the ceasing of some oracles: and Van
Dale has a volume to prove that they did not cease at the coming of
Christ; but that many of them had ceased long before the coming of
that time, and that others held out till the fall of Paganism, under the
Empire of Theodosius the Great, and when it was dissipated, these
institutions could no longer resist.
Van Dale was answered by a German, one Mœbius, professor of
Theology, at Leipsic, in 1685. Fontenelle espoused Van Dale’s
system, and improved upon it in his history of oracles; wherein he
exposed the weakness of the argument used by many writers in
behalf of Christianity, drawn from the ceasing of oracles.
Balthus, a learned Jesuit, answered both Van Dale and Fontenelle.
He labours to prove, that there were real oracles, and such as can
never be attributed to any artifices of the Priests or Priestesses; and
that several of these became silent in the first ages of the Church,
either by the coming of Jesus Christ, or by the prayers of the Saints.
This doctrine is confirmed by a letter from Father Bouchet,
missionary to Father Balthus; wherein it is declared, that what
Father Balthus declares of the ancient oracles, is experimented every
day in the Indies.
It appears, according to Bouchet, that the devil still delivers
oracles in the Indies; and that, not by idols, which would be liable to
imposture, but by the mouths of the priests, and sometimes of the
bye-standers; it is added that these oracles, too, cease, and the devil
becomes mute in proportion as the Gospel is preached among them.
It was Eusebius who first endeavoured to persuade the christians
that the coming of Jesus Christ had struck the oracles dumb; though
it appears from the laws of Theodosius, Gratian, and Valentinian,
that the oracles were still consulted as far back as the year 358.
Cicero says the oracles became dumb, in proportion as people,
growing less credulous, began to suspect them for cheats.
Two reasons are alleged by Plutarch for the ceasing of oracles: the
one was Apollo’s chagrin, who, it seems, “took it in dudgeon,” to be
interrogated about so many trifles. The other was, that in proportion
as the genii, or demons, who had the management of the oracles,
died and became extinct, the oracles must necessarily cease. He adds
a third and more natural cause for the ceasing of oracles, viz. the
forlorn state of Greece, ruined and desolated by wars. For, in
consequence of this calamity, the smallness of the gains suffered the
priests to sink into a poverty and contempt too bare to cover the
fraud.
Most of the fathers of the church imagined it to be the devil that
gave oracles, and considered it as a pleasure he took to give dubious
and equivocal answers, in order to have a handle to laugh at them.
Vossius allows that it was the devil who spoke in oracles; but thinks
that the obscurity of his answers was owing to his ignorance as to the
precise circumstances of events. That artful and studied obscurity,
wherein, says he, answers were couched, shew the embarrassment
the devil was under; as those double meanings they usually bore
provided for the accomplishment. When the thing foretold did not
happen accordingly, the oracle, forsooth, was always misunderstood.
Eusebius has preserved some fragments of a Philosopher, called
Oenomaus, who, out of resentment for having been so often fooled
by the oracles, wrote an ample confutation of all their impertinences,
in the following strain: “When we come to consult thee,” says he to
Apollo, “if thou seest what is in the womb of futurity, why dost thou
use expressions that will not be understood? if thou dost, thou takest
pleasure in abusing us: if thou dost not, be informed of us, and learn
to speak more clearly. I tell thee, that if thou intendest an equivoque,
the Greek word whereby thou affirmedst that Crœsus should
overthrow a great Empire, was ill-chosen; and that it could signify
nothing but Crœsus’ conquering Cyrus. If things must necessarily
come to pass, why dost thou amuse us with thy ambiguities? What
dost thou, wretch as thou art, at Delphi; employed in muttering idle
prophesies!”
But Oenamaus is still more out of humour with the oracle for the
answer which Apollo gave the Athenians, when Xerxes was about to
attack Greece with all the strength of Asia. The Pythian declared, that
Minerva, the protectress of Athens, had endeavoured in vain to
appease the wrath of Jupiter; yet that Jupiter, in complaisance to his
daughter, was willing the Athenians should save themselves within
wooden walls; and that Salamis should behold the loss of a great
many children, dead to their mothers, either when Ceres was spread
abroad, or gathered together. At this Oenamaus loses all patience
with the Delphian god: “This contest,” says he, “between father and
daughter, is very becoming the deities! It is excellent, that there
should be contrary inclinations and interests in heaven! Poor wizard,
thou art ignorant who the children are that shall see Salamis perish;
whether Greeks or Persians. It is certain they must be either one or
the other; but thou needest not have told so openly that thou
knewest not which. Thou concealest the time of the battle under
these fine poetical expressions, either when Ceres is spread abroad,
or gathered together: and thou wouldst cajole us with such pompous
language! who knows not, that if there be a seafight, it must either be
in seed-time or harvest? It is certain it cannot be in winter. Let things
go how they will, thou wilt secure thyself by this Jupiter, whom
Minerva is endeavouring to appease. If the Greeks lose the battle,
Jupiter proved inexorable to the last; if they gain it, why then
Minerva at length prevailed.”
OURAN, OR URAN, SOANGUS,

The name of an imaginary set of magicians in the island


Gromboccanore, in the East Indies.
The word implies men-devils; these people, it seems, having the
art of rendering themselves invisible, and passing where they please,
and, by these means, doing infinite mischief; for which reason the
people hate and fear them mortally, and always kill them on the spot
when they can take them.
In the Portuguese history, printed 1581, folio, there is mention of a
present made by the king of the island to a Portuguese officer, named
Brittio, ourans, with whom, it is pretended, he made incursions on
the people of Tidore, killed great numbers, &c.
To try whether in effect they had the faculty ascribed to them, one
of them was tied by the neck with a rope, without any possibility of
disengaging himself by natural means; yet in the morning it was
found he had slipped his collar. But that the king of Tidore might not
complain that Brittio made war on him with devils, it is said he
dismissed them at length, in their own island.
DREAMS, &c.

The art of foretelling future events by dreams, is called


Brizomancy.
Macrobius mentions five sorts of dreams, viz. 1st, vision; 2d, a
discovery of something between sleep and waking; 3d, a suggestion
cast into our fancy, called by Cicero, Vesum; 4th, an ordinary dream;
and 5th, a divine apparition or revelation in our sleep; such as were
the dreams of the prophets, and of Joseph, as also of the magi of the
East.
Origin of Interpreting Dreams.
The fictitious art of interpreting dreams, had its origin among the
Egyptians and Chaldeans; countries fertile in superstitions of all
kinds. It was propagated from them to the Romans, who judging
some dreams worthy of observation, appointed persons on purpose
to interpret them.
The believers in dreams as prognostics of future events, bring
forward in confirmation of this opinion, a great variety of dreams,
which have been the forerunners of very singular events:—among
these are that of Calphurnia, the wife of Julius Cæsar, dreaming the
night before his death, that she saw him stabbed in the capitol: that
of Artorius, Augustus’s physician, dreaming before the battle of
Philippi, that his master’s camp was pillaged; that of the Emperor
Vespasian dreaming an old woman told him, that his good fortune
would begin when Nero should have a tooth drawn, which happened
accordingly.
Cæsar dreaming that he was committing incest with his mother,
was crowned Emperor of Rome; and Hippias the Athenian Tyrant,
dreaming the same, died shortly after, and was interred in his
mother earth. Mauritius the Emperor, who was slain by Phocas,
dreamed a short time previous to this event, that an image of Christ
that was fixed over the brazen gate of his palace, called him and
reproached him with his sins, and at length demanded of him
whether he would receive the punishment due to them in this world
or the next; and Mauritius answering in this, the image commanded
that he should be given, with his wife and children, into the hands of
Phocas. Whereupon Mauritius, awakening in great fear, asked
Phillipus, his son-in-law, whether he knew any soldier in the army
called Phocas, he answered that there was a commissary so called;
and Phocas became his successor, having killed his wife and five
children. Arlet, during her pregnancy by William the Conqueror,
dreamed that a light shone from her womb, that illumined all
England. Maca, Virgil’s mother, dreamed that she was delivered of a
laurel branch.
The ridiculous infatuation of dreams is still so prominent, even
among persons whose education should inform them better, and
particularly among the fair sex, that a conversation seldom passes
among them, that the subject of some foolish inconsistent dream or
other, does not form a leading feature of their gossip. “I dreamed last
night,” says one, “that one of my teeth dropped out.”—“That’s a sign,”
replies another, “that you will lose a friend or some of your
relations.”—“I’m afraid I shall,” returns the dreamer, “for my cousin
(brother, or some other person connected with the family or its
interests,) is very ill,” &c.
Opinions on the cause of dreams.
Avicen makes the cause of dreams to be an ultimate intelligence
moving the moon in the midst of that light with which the fancies of
men are illuminated while they sleep. Aristotle refers the cause of
them to common sense, but placed in the fancy. Averroes places it in
the imagination. Democritus ascribes it to little images, or
representations, separated from the things themselves. Plato, among
the specific and concrete notions of the soul. Albertus to the superior
influences which continually flow from the sky, through many
specific mediums. And some physicians attribute the cause of them
to vapours and humours, and the affections and cares of persons
predominant when awake; for, say they, by reason of the abundance
of vapours, which are exhaled in consequence of immoderate
feeding, the brain is so stuffed by it, that monsters and strange
chimera are formed, of which the most inordinate eaters and
drinkers furnish us with sufficient instances. Some dreams, they
assert, are governed partly by the temperature of the body, and
partly by the humour which mostly abounds in it; to which may be
added, the apprehensions which have preceded the day before; which
are often remarked in dogs, and other animals, which bark and make
a noise in their sleep. Dreams, they observe, proceeding from the
humours and temperature of the body, we see the choleric dreams of
fire, combats, yellow colours, &c.; the phlegmatic, of water, baths, of
sailing on the sea, &c.; the melancholics, of thick fumes, deserts,
fantasies, hideous faces, &c.; the sanguines, of merry feasts, dances,
&c. They that have the hinder part of their brain clogged with viscous
humours, called by physicians ephialtes incubus, or, as it is termed,
night-mare, imagine, in dreaming, that they are suffocated. And
those who have the orifice of their stomach loaded with malignant
humours, are affrighted with strange visions, by reason of those
venemous vapours that mount to the brain and distemper it.
Cicero tells a story of two Arcadians, who, travelling together,
came to Megara, a city of Greece, between Athens and Corinth,
where one of them lodged in a friend’s house, and the other at an
inn. After supper the person who lodged at the private house went to
bed, and falling asleep, dreamed that his friend at the inn appeared
to him, and begged his assistance, because the innkeeper was going
to kill him. The man immediately got out of bed much frightened at
the dream but recovering himself and falling asleep again, his friend
appeared to him a second time, and desired, that as he would not
assist him in time, he would take care at least not to let his death go
unpunished; that the innkeeper having murdered him, had thrown
his body into a cart and covered it with dung; he therefore begged
that he would be at the city gate in the morning, before the cart was
out. Struck with this new dream, he went early to the gate, saw the
cart, and asked the driver what was in it; the driver immediately fled,
the dead body was taken out of the cart, and the innkeeper
apprehended and executed.
FATE.

Fate, in a general sense, denotes an inevitable necessity,


depending on some superior cause. It is a term much used among
the ancient philosophers. It is formed a fando, from speaking; and
primarily implies the same with effatum, i. e. a word or decree
pronounced by God; or a fixed sentence, whereby the deity has
prescribed the order of things, and allotted every person what shall
befal him. The Greeks called θμαρμενη, quasi, θρμος, nexus, a
change, or necessary series of things, indissolubly linked together;
and the moderns call it Providence. But independent of this sense of
the word, in which it is used sometimes to denote the causes in
nature, and sometimes the divine appointment, the word Fate has a
farther meaning, being used to express some kind of necessity or
other, or eternal designation of things, whereby all agents, necessary
as well as voluntary, are swayed and directed to their ends.
Some authors have divided Fate into Astrological and Stoical.
Astrological fate, denotes a necessity of things and events,
arising, as is supposed, from the influence and positions of the
heavenly bodies, which give law to the elements and mixed bodies, as
well as to the wills of men.
Stoical fate, or FATALITY, or FATALISM, is defined by Cicero, an
order or series of causes, in which cause is linked to cause, each
producing others; and in this manner all things flow from the one
prime cause. Chrysippus defines it a natural invariable succession of
all things, ab eterno, each involving the other. To this fate they
subject the very gods themselves. Thus the poet observes, that the
“parent of all things made laws at the beginning, by which he not
only binds other things, but himself.” Seneca also remarks, Eadem
necessitas et deos alligat. Irrevocabilis divina pariter et humana
cursit vehit. Ipse ille omnium conditor et rector scripsit quidam
fata, sed sequitur; semel scripsit, semper paret. This eternal series
of causes, the poets call μοιραι, and parcæ, or destinies.
By some later authors Fate is divided into Physical and divine.
The first, or Physical fate, is an order and series of physical causes,
appropriated to their effects. This series is necessary, and the
necessity is natural. The principal or foundation of this Fate is
nature, or the power and manner of acting which God originally gave
to the several bodies, elements, &c. By this Fate it is that fire warms;
bodies communicate motion to each other; the rising and falling of
the tides, &c. And the effects of this Fate are all the events and
phenomena in the universe, except such as arise from the human.
The second, or divine Fate, is what is more commonly called
Providence. Plato, in his Phædo, includes both these in one
definition; as intimating, that they were one and the same thing,
actively and passively considered. Thus, Fatum Est ratio quædam
divina, lexque naturæ comes, quæ transiri nequeat, quippe a causa
pendens, quæ superior sit quibusvis impedimentis. Though that of
Bœtius seems the clearer of the two:—Fatum, says he, est inhærens
rebus molilibus despositio per quam providentia suis quæque nectet
ordinibus.
PHYSIOGNOMY[37], ΦΥΣΙΟΓΝΩΜΙΑ.

There seems to be something in Physiognomy, and it may perhaps


bear a much purer philosophy than these authors (see Note,) were
acquainted with. This, at least, we dare say, that of all the fanciful
arts of the ancients, fallen into disuse by the moderns, there is none
has so much foundation in nature as this. There is an apparent
correspondence, or analogy between the countenance and the mind;
the features and lineaments of the one are directed by the motions
and affections of the other: there is even a peculiar arrangement in
the members of the face, and a peculiar disposition of the
countenance, to each particular affection; and perhaps to each
particular idea of the mind. In fact, the language of the face
(physiognomy,) is as copious, nay, perhaps, as distinct and
intelligible, as that of the tongue, (speech.) Thanks to bounteous
nature, she has not confined us to one only method of conversing
with each other, and of learning each other’s thoughts; we have
several:—We do not wholly depend on the tongue, which may
happen to be bound; and the ear, which may be deaf:—but in those
cases we have another resource, viz. the Countenance and the Eye,
which afford us this further advantage, that by comparing the reports
of the tongue, (a member exceedingly liable to deceive,) with those of
the face, the prevarications of the former may be detected.
The foundation of Physiognomy is the different objects that
present themselves to the senses, nay, the different ideas that arise
on the mind, do make some impression on the spirits; and each an
impression correspondent or adequate to its cause,—each, therefore,
makes a different impression. If it be asked how such an impression
could be effected, it is easy to answer; in short, it is a consequence of
the economy of the Creator, who has fixed such a relation between
the several parts of the creation, to the end that we may be apprized
of the approach or recess of things hurtful or useful to us. Should this
not be philosophical enough for our purpose, take the manner of the
Cartesian language, thus: the animal spirits moved in the organ by
an object, continue their motion to the brain; from whence that
motion is propagated to this or that particular part of the body, as
is most suitable to the design of nature; having first made a proper
alteration in the face by means of its nerves, especially the
Pathetici and Motores Occulorum. See Dr. Gurther’s work, anno
1604.
The face here does the office of a dial-plate, and the wheels and
springs, inside the machine, putting its muscles in motion, shew
what is next to be expected from the striking part. Not that the
motion of the spirits is continued all the way by the impression of the
object, as the impression may terminate in the substance of the
brain, the common fund of the spirits; the rest Dr. Gurther imagines,
may be effected much after the same manner as air is conveyed into
the pipes of an organ, which being uncovered, the air rushes in; and
when the keys are let go, is stopped again.
Now, if by repeated acts, or the frequent entertaining of a private
passion or vice, which natural temperament has hurried, or custom
dragged on to, the face is often put in that posture which attends
such acts; the animal spirits will make such passages through the
nerves, (in which the essence of a habit consists,) that the face is
sometimes unalterably set in that posture, (as the Indian religious
are by a long continued sitting in strange postures in their pagods,)
or, at least, it falls, insensibly and mechanically, into that posture,
unless some present object distort it therefrom, or some
dissimulation hide it. This reason is confirmed by observation: thus
we see great drinkers with eyes generally set towards the nose; the
abducent muscles (by some called bibatorii, or bibatory muscles,)
being often employed to put them in that posture, in order to view
their beloved liquor in the glass, at the time of drinking. Thus, also,
lascivious persons are remarkable for the oculorum mobilis
petulantia, as Petronius calls it. Hence also we may account for the
Quaker’s expecting face, waiting the spirit to move him; the
melancholy face of most sectaries; the studious face of men of great
application of mind; revengeful and bloody men, like executioners in
the act; and though silence in a sort may awhile pass for wisdom, yet
sooner or later, St. Martin peeps through the disguise to undo all. “A
changeable face,” continues Dr. Gurther, “I have observed to show a
changeable mind, but I would by no means have what has been said
be understood as without exception; for I doubt not but sometimes
there are found men with great and virtuous souls under very
unpromising outsides.”
“Were our observations a little more strict and delicate, we might,
doubtless, not only distinguish habits and tempers, but also
professions. In effect, does there need much penetration to
distinguish the fierce looks of the veteran soldier, the contentious
look of the practised pleader, the solemn look of the minister of state,
or many others of the like kind?”
A very remarkable physiological anecdote has been given by De La
Place, in his “Pièces Interrestantes et peu connues.” Vol. iv. p. 8.
He was assured by a friend that he had seen a voluminous and
secret correspondence which had been carried on between Louis
XIV. and his favourite physician De la Chambre on this science: the
faith of the monarch seems to have been great, and the purpose to
which this correspondence tended was extraordinary indeed, and
perhaps scarcely credible. Who will believe that Louis XIV. was so
convinced of that talent, which De la Chambre attributed to himself,
of deciding merely by the physiognomy of persons, not only on the
real bent of their character, but to what employment they were
adapted, that the king entered into a secret correspondence to obtain
the critical notices of his physiognomist. That Louis XIV. should
have pursued this system, undetected by his own courtiers, is also
singular; but it appears by this correspondence, that this art
positively swayed him in his choice of officers and favourites. On one
of the backs of these letters De la Chambre had written, “If I die
before his majesty, he will incur great risk of making many an
unfortunate choice.”
This collection of Physiological correspondence, if it does really
exist, would form a curious publication. We, however, have heard
nothing of it.
De la Chambre was an enthusiastic physiognomist, as appears by
his works: “The Characters of the Passions,” four volumes in quarto;
“The art of Knowing Mankind;” and “the Knowledge of Animals.”
Lavater quotes his “vote and interest” in behalf of his favourite
science. It is no less curious, however, to add, that Phillip Earl of
Pembroke, under James I., had formed a particular collection of
portraits, with a view to physiognomonical studies.
The great Prince of Condé was very expert in a sort of
Physiognomy which shewed the peculiar habits, motions, and
positions of familiar life, and mechanical employments. He would
sometimes lay wagers with his friends, that he would guess, upon the
Pont Neuf, what trade persons were of that passed by, from their
walk and air.
The celebrated Marshal Laudohn would have entered when young,
into the service of the great Frederick, King of Prussia; but that
monarch, with all his penetration, formed a very erroneous judgment
of the young officer, (as he himself found in the sequel,) and
pronounced that he would never do; in consequence of which
Laudohn entered into the service of the Empress-Queen, Maria
Theresa, and became one of the most formidable opponents of his
Prussian Majesty. Marshal Turrene was much more accurate in his
opinion of our illustrious John Duke of Marlborough, whose future
greatness he predicted, when he was serving in the French army as
Ensign Churchill, and known by the unmilitary name of the
“handsome Englishman.”
In the fine arts, moreover, we have seen no less accurate
predictions of future eminence. As the scholars of Rubens were
playing and jesting with each other, in the absence of their master,
one of them was accidentally thrown against a piece on which
Rubens had just been working, and a considerable part of it was
entirely disfigured. Another of the pupils set himself immediately to
repair it, and completed the design before his master returned.
Rubens, on reviewing his work, observed a change, and a difference
that surprised and embarrassed him. At last, suspecting that some
one had been busy, he demanded an explanation; adding, that the
execution was in so masterly a manner, that he would pardon the
impertinence on account of its merit. Encouraged by this declaration,
the young artist confessed, and explained the whole, pleading, that
his officiousness was merely to screen a comrade from his master’s
anger. Rubens answered, “if any one of my scholars shall excel me, it
will be yourself.” This pupil was the great Vandyck.
Lavater, who revived physiognomy, has, unquestionably, brought
it to great perfection. But it may justly be doubted whether he is not
deceived in thinking that it may be taught like other sciences, and
whether there is not much in his system that is whimsical and
unfounded. Every man, however, has by nature, something of the
science, and nothing is more common than to suspect the man who
never looks his neighbour in the face. There is a degree of cunning in
such characters, which is always dangerous, but by no means new.
“There is a wicked man that hangeth down his head sadly; but
inwardly he is full of deceit. Casting down his countenance, and
making as if he heard not. A man may be known by his look, and one
that hath understanding, by his countenance, when thou meetest
him.”—In several of Lavater’s aphorisms, something like the
following occurs: “A man’s attire, and excessive laughter, and gait,
shew what he is.”

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