Expansion and Conflict

Expansion and Conflict

The purpose of this volume is to show the action and reaction of the most important social, economic, political, and personal forces that have entered into the make-up of the United States as a nation. The primary assumption of the author is that the people of this country did not compose a nation until after the close of the Civil War in 1865. Of scarcely less importance is the fact that the decisive motive behind the different groups in Congress at every great crisis of the period under discussion was sectional advantage or even sectional aggrandizement. If Webster ceased to be a particularist after 1824 and became a nationalist before 1830, it was because the interests of New England had undergone a similar change; or, if Calhoun deserted about the same time the cause of nationalism and became the most ardent of sectionalists, it was also because the interests of his constituents, the cotton and tobacco planters of the South, had become identified with particularism, that is, States rights. And corollary to these assumptions is the further fact that public men usually determine what line of procedure is best for their constituents, or for what are supposed to be the interests of those constituents, and then seek for powers or clauses in State or Federal Constitutions which justify the predetermined course. This being, as a rule, true, the busi[Pg vi]ness of the historian is to understand the influences which led to the first, not the second, decision of the Representative or Senator or President or even Justice of the Supreme Court. Hence long-winded speeches or tortuous decisions of courts have not been studied so closely as the statistics of the cotton or tobacco crops, the reports of manufacturers, and the conditions of the frontier, which determined more of the votes of members of Congress than the most eloquent persuasion of great orators. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 21537
Author: Dodd, William Edward
Release Date: May 19, 2007
Format: eBook
Language: English