history paper
A D o c u m e n t a r y R e a d e r
EDITED BY
WILLIAM A. LINK AND SUSANNAH J. LINK
THE
GILDED AGE AND
PROGRESSIVE ERA
EDITED BY
LINK AND
LINK
U n c o v e r i n g T h e P a s t D o c u m e n t a r y R e a d e r s i n A m e r i c a n H i s t o r y
“This treasure trove of documents is a terrifi c classroom resource. The Links chose carefully to achieve geographic, chronological, and thematic balance. The book’s organization represents all aspects of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and ties them together interpretatively. Professors will fi nd themselves assigning documents from the reader week after week. This is one of the most useful teaching books I’ve seen.”
Glenda Gilmore, Yale University
“Three cheers for William and Susannah Link, whose documentary reader offers interpretive structure and focus alongside its thoughtfully chosen collection of primary sources. This reader is authoritative while still compact, giving enough points of view to spark controversy without closing down conversation. It is the perfect companion to the US survey or more specialized courses in modern American history.”
Jane Dailey, University of Chicago
“Wisely selected fi rst-person accounts coupled with the editors’ trenchant introductions bring to life civics and society at the dawn of modern America. It is a valuable resource that will engage students.”
Andrew Haley, University of Southern Mississippi
Following the conclusion of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Progressive Era brought a wholesale restructuring of social and political institutions. The period from the 1870s through World War I was characterized by the nationalization of American life, the establishment of the United States as a global power, the refashioning of social relationships, and the reconstruction of the political system.
This volume gathers together documents that illustrate the variety of experiences and themes involved in the transformation of American political, economic, and social systems during this period, and presents the essential perspectives of race, class, gender, and culture. Situating the documents within their historical context, the book is divided into fi ve thematic sections: the American frontier after Reconstruction; the transformations that arrived with industrialization; the social and political crisis that gripped the United States at the end of the nineteenth century; reform; imperialism and war.
This collection enables readers to engage actively in historical interpretation and to understand the interplay between social and political forces in the period, exploring the experiences of people during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era from a variety of diverse perspectives.
William A. Link is Richard J. Milbauer Professor of History at the University of Florida. His publications include Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (2003) and Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern American Conservatism (2008).
Susannah J. Link is instructor in American history at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Cover image: ‘The Trust Giant’s Point of View’, cartoon by Horace Taylor showing John D. Rockefeller holding the White House and President McKinley in the palm of his hand, 1900. © Photos 12/Alamy.
Cover design by Simon Levy
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Uncovering the Past: Documentary Readers in American History Series Editors: Steven Lawson and Nancy Hewitt
The books in this series introduce students in American history courses to two important dimensions of historical analysis. They enable students to engage actively in historical interpretation, and they further students’ understanding of the interplay between social and political forces in historical developments.
Consisting of primary sources and an introductory essay, these readers are aimed at the major courses in the American history curriculum, as outlined further below. Each book in the series will be approximately 225–250 pages, including a 25–30‐page introduction addressing key issues and questions about the subject under consideration, a discussion of sources and method- ology, and a bibliography of suggested secondary readings.
Published
Paul G.E. Clemens The Colonial Era: A Documentary Reader
Sean Patrick Adams The Early American Republic: A Documentary Reader
Stanley Harrold The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Reader
Steven Mintz African American Voices: A Documentary Reader, 1619–1877
Robert P. Ingalls and David K. Johnson The United States Since 1945: A Documentary Reader
Camilla Townsend American Indian History: A Documentary Reader
Steven Mintz Mexican American Voices: A Documentary Reader
Brian Ward The 1960s: A Documentary Reader
Nancy Rosenbloom Women in American History Since 1880: A Documentary Reader
Jeremi Suri American Foreign Relations Since 1898: A Documentary Reader
Carol Faulkner Women in American History to 1880: A Documentary Reader
David Welky America Between the Wars, 1919–1941: A Documentary Reader
William A. Link and Susannah J. Link The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: A Documentary Reader
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The Gilded Age and Progressive Era
A Documentary Reader
Edited by William A. Link
and Susannah J. Link
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
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This edition first published 2012 © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Limited
Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley‐Blackwell.
Registered Office John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
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The right of William A. Link and Susannah J. Link to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
The Gilded Age and Progressive Era : a documentary reader / edited by William A. Link and Susannah J. Link. p. cm. – (Uncovering the past : documentary readers in American history ; 12) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4443-3138-7 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-4443-3139-4 (paperback) 1. United States–History–1865-1921–Sources. 2. United States–Politics and government–1865-1933–Sources. 3. United States–Social conditions–1865-1918–Sources. 4. Progressivism (United States politics)–Sources. I. Link, William A. II. Link, Susannah J. E661.G455 2012 973.8–dc23
2011034658
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in 10/12.5pt Sabon by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
1 2012
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22 The Gilded Age and Progressive Era
habit, was the only type possible under slavery. Thus was gathered in the hands of a splendid and chivalric oligarchy the substance that should have been diffused among the people, as the rich blood, under certain artificial conditions, is gathered at the heart, filling that with affluent rapture but leaving the body chill and colorless.
The old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The new South presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular move- ment—a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on the surface, but stronger at the core—a hundred farms for every plantation, fifty homes for every palace—and a diversified industry that meets the complex need of this complex age.
The new South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full‐statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the expanded horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because through the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed, and her brave armies were beaten.
2 Henry McNeal Turner on African American Civil Rights, 1889 5
Henry McNeal Turner (1834–1915) was born a free black in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina, and was largely self‐educated. Eventually becoming a preacher in the black African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, he served as an evangelist during the 1850s and eventually moved north to St Louis, Washington, DC, and Baltimore. In 1863, he helped to organize a regiment of black troops, serving as its chaplain. After the end of the Civil War, Turner moved to Georgia, and became an organizer for AME churches around the state. Meanwhile, he became an important leader in the Republican party, participating in Georgia’s Reconstruction constitutional convention in 1868. In 1880, he became an AME bishop, and he remained a fearless advocate of African American civil and political rights.
In these two letters, published in the New York Voice and the Christian Record, Turner protested the decision of the Supreme Court in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), which rendered the Civil Rights Act of 1875
5 Henry McNeal Turner, Civil Rights: The Outrage of the Supreme Court of the United States upon the Black Man (Philadelphia: Publication Department AME Church, 1889).
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The New South 23
unconstitutional. He wrote in a political environment in which the position of African Americans was besieged by white supremacists. Increasingly, their northern allies were abandoning them to white political control that occurred with the end of Reconstruction .
Amidst multitudinous duties I find, calling my attention, your note of recent date, asking me to briefly refer to the “Civil Rights Decisions,” which, since their delivery has drawn from me expressions which many are pleased to call severe adverse strictures upon the highest court in this country, and upon all of its judges save one, Mr. Justice Harlan. 6 It is to me a matter of that kind of surprise called wonder suddenly excited, to find a single, soli- tary individual who belongs in the United States, or who has been here for any considerable time, unacquainted with those famous FIVE DEATH DEALING DECISIONS. Indeed, sir, those decisions have had since the 15th day of October, a. d., 1883, the day of their pronouncement, more of my study than any other civil subject. I incline to the opinion that I have an argument which, taken as a concomitant of the learned dissenting senti- ments of that eminent jurist, Mr. Justice Harlan, would to a rational mind, make the judgment of Justice Bradley 7 and his associates a deliquescence—a bubble on the wave of equity—a legal nothing. You bid me in my reply to observe brevity. Shortness and conciseness seems to be the ever present rule, when the Negro and his case is under treatment. However, I am satisfied that in saying this, I do not convey your reason for commanding me to con- dense, “boil down.” The more I ponder the non‐agreeing words of that member of our chief assize, who had the moral courage to bid defiance to race prejudice, the more certain am I that no words of mine, condemnatory of that decision, has been sufficiently harsh.
March 1st, 1875, Congress passed an act, entitled, “An act for the preven- tion of discrimination on the ground of race, color or previous condition of servitude,” said act being generally known as the Civil Rights Bill,….
No sane man can read the record, law and authorities relating to these cases, without forming a conclusion that cannot be brushed away, that the bench of judges were narrow even to wicked ingeniousness, superinduced by color‐phobiism [ sic ]. Sane men know that the gentlemen in Congress who voted for this act of 1875, understood full well the
6 John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911), a Supreme Court justice who dissented from the major- ity decision in the case. 7 Joseph P. Bradley (1813–1892), appointed to the court in 1870, who delivered the majority decision in the case.
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24 The Gilded Age and Progressive Era
condition of our country, as did the powers amending the Constitution abolishing slavery. The intention was to entirely free, not to partly liberate.
The desire was to remove the once slave so far from his place of bond- age, that he would not even remember it, if such a thing were possible. Congress stepped in and said, he shall vote, he shall serve on juries, he shall testify in court, he shall enter the professions, he shall hold offices, he shall be treated like other men, in all places the conduct of which is regulated by law, he shall in no way be reminded by partial treatment, by discrimina- tion, that he was once a “chattel,” a “thing.” Certainly Congress had a right [to] do this. The power that made the slave a man instead of a “thing” had the right to fix his status. The height of absurdity, the chief point in idiocy, the brand of total imbecility, is to say, that the Negro shall vote a privilege into existence which one citizen may enjoy for pay, to the exclusion of another, coming in the same way, but clothed in the vesture covering the earth when God first looked upon it. Are colored men to vote grants to railroads upon which they cannot receive equal accommodation? When we ask redress, we are told that the State must first pass a law prohibiting us from enjoying certain privileges and rights, and that after such laws have been passed by the State, we can apply to the United States courts to have such laws declared null and void by quo warranto proceedings. 8 The Supreme Court, when applied to, will say to the State, you must not place such laws on your statute book. You can continue your discrimina- tion on account of color. You can continue to place the badge of slavery on persons having more than one‐eighth part of Negro blood in their veins, and so long as your State Legislatures do not license you so to do, you are safe. For if they, (the Negroes) come to us for redress, we will talk about the autonomy of the State must be held inviolate, referring them back to you for satisfaction.
Do you know of anything more degrading to our country, more damnable? The year after this decision the Republican party met with defeat, because it acquiesced by its silence in that abominable decision, nor did it lift a hand to strike down that diabolical sham of judicial monstrosity, neither in Congress nor the great National Convention which nominated Blaine and Logan. God, however, has placed them in power again, using the voters and our manner of electing electors as instruments in his hands. God would have men do right, harm no one, and to render to every man his just due. Mr. Justice Harlan rightly says that the Thirteenth Amendment intended that the white
8 “Quo warranto” referred to claims asserting that individual or governmental officials were wrongfully exercising their powers.
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The New South 25
race should have no privilege whatsoever pertaining to citizenship and freedom, that was not alike extended and to be enjoyed by those persons who, though the greater part of them were slaves, were invited by an act of Congress to aid in saving from overthrow a government which, theretofore by all of its departments, had treated them as an inferior race, with no legal rights or privileges except such as the white race might choose to grant. It is an indisputable fact that the amendment last mentioned may be exerted by legislation of a direct and primary character for the eradication, not simply of the institution of slavery, but of its badges and incidents indicating that the individual was once a slave. The Supreme Court must decide the inter‐State commerce law to be unconstitutional on account of interference with the State’s autonomy, for it must be remembered that Mrs. Robinson, 9 a citizen of Mississippi, bought a ticket from Grand Junction, Tennessee, to Lynchburg, Virginia, and when praying for satisfaction for rough and contumacious treatment, received at the hands of the company’s agent, she was informed by the Court, that the Court was without power to act. Congress had constitutional power to pursue a runaway slave into all the States by legislation, to punish the man that would dare to conceal the slave. Congress could find the poor fellow seeking God’s best blessing to man, liberty, and return him to his master, but Congress cannot, so say our honorable Court, give aid sufficient to the poor black man, to prove beyond all doubt to him that he is as free as any other citizen. Mr. Justice Harlan says: “The difficulty has been to compel a recognition of the legal right of the black race to take the rank of citizens, and to secure the enjoyment of privileges belonging under the law to them as a component part of the people for whose welfare government is ordained. At every step in this direction, the Nation has been confronted with class tyranny, which is of all tyrannies the most intolerable, for it is ubiquitous in its operation, and weighs perhaps most heavily on those whose obscurity or distance would draw them from the notice of a single despot. To‐day it is the colored race which is denied by corporations and individuals wielding public authority, rights fundamental in their freedom and citizenship. AT SOME FUTURE TIME IT MAY BE THAT SOME OTHER RACE WILL FALL UNDER THE BAN OF RACE DISCRIMINATION.” This last preceding sentence sounds like prophecy from on high. Will the day come when Justice Bradley will want to hide from his decree of the 15th day of October, 1883, and say non est factum ? I conclude with great reluctance these brief lines, assuring you that the subject is just opened and if desired by you, I will be glad to give it elaborate attention.
9 One of the plaintiffs in the case.
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26 The Gilded Age and Progressive Era
I ask no rights and privileges for my race in this country, which I would not contend for on behalf of the white people were the conditions changed, or were I to find proscribed white men in Africa where black rules.
A word more and I am done, as you wish brevity. God may forgive this corps of unjust judges, but I never can, their very memories will also be detested by my children’s children, nor am I alone in this detestation. The eight millions of my race and their posterity will stand horror‐frozen at the very mention of their names. The scenes that have passed under my eyes upon the public highways, the brutal treatment of helpless women which I have witnessed, since that decision was proclaimed, is enough to move heaven to tears and raise a loud acclaim in hell over the conquest of wrong. But we will wait and pray, and look for a better day, for God still lives and the LORD OF HOSTS REIGNS.
I am, sir, yours, for the Fatherhood of God, and the Brotherhood of man.
H. M. TURNER.
Atlanta, Georgia, January 4th, 1889.
3 William D. Kelley, from The Old South and New , 1888 10
William Darrah Kelley (1814–1890) was a longtime congressman and lawyer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A speech he delivered in 1854, denouncing the slave trade, brought him widespread attention at a time when the extension of slavery to the new US territories was a subject of intense national debate. When the Missouri Compromise was overturned, Kelley left the Democratic party and helped to found the new Republican party, which was dedicated to stopping the extension of slavery. His steady support for the Pennsylvania iron and steel industry earned him the nickname of “Pig Iron” Kelley. He served in the US House of Representatives from 1861 until his death in 1890. After the Civil War, Kelley was a staunch radical Republican, and he supported black suffrage and civil rights in the South. This account of the South comes from his visits and observations that were published as The Old South and the New in 1888 .
In this document, Kelley examines the prospects for change in the post‐ Civil War South. Like many other northerners, Kelley was taken with the possibilities of economic development in the South in railroads, mining, and industrialization. Indeed, his analysis sounds very familiar to the treatment provided by Atlanta’s Henry W. Grady.
10 William D. Kelley, The Old South and the New (New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1888), pp. 1–14.
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