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As early as 1811, John Stevens began twenty years of fruitless efforts to interest capital in his dream of a steam railway. In 1814, in England, George Stephenson completed a locomotive, which found employment in hauling coal on short tracks; but no railway of consequence for passenger traffic was opened there until about 1830. After 1825, the question was much agitated in America; and July 4, 1828, the aged Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence, drove the golden spike that marked the beginning of the Baltimore and

[graphic][subsumed]

THE "DEWITT CLINTON," the first railroad locomotive that ran in New York. It made its first trip, August 9, 1831, from Albany to Schenectady. From a photograph of a "restoration."

Ohio. The same year witnessed a score of charters to projected lines; but construction was slow, from lack of experience and materials, and especially from lack of engineers to survey and construct roadbeds; and it was still thought commonly that about the only advantage for railroads over canals would lie in the freedom from interruption by ice in winter.

In 1830 less than thirty miles of track were in use, - and this only for "coaches" drawn by horses; but in 1840 nearly three thousand miles were in operation, and, for long thereafter, the mileage doubled each five years. The early rails

§ 562]

THE RAILROAD

475

were of wood, protected from wear by a covering of wrought iron "straps," perhaps half an inch thick, which had the awkward habit of curling up at a loosened end. The "coaches" imitated the shape of the stagecoach; but finally a form more adapted to the new uses was devised. The rate of progress on the first roads rose to fifteen miles an hour,- something quite beyond previous imagination. By 1850, the railroad had begun to outrun settlement, forging ahead into the wilderness, "to sow with towns the prairies broad," and to create the demand for transportation which was to feed it (§ 703 and map).

It was natural to treat the railway like any other improved road or public highway, so far as conditions would permit. Some States, at first, permitted any one to run cars over a line by paying proper tolls. But, in the absence of scientific system and of telegraphic train-dispatching, so many accidents occurred, that this plan was given up.' Then roadbed and train fell to one ownership.

It remained to decide whether that owner should be the public or a private corporation. Several States tried State ownership, as with canals (Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia); but lines ran from State to State in such a way as to make this practically impossible. No one in that day suggested that the nation should own and operate railroads; and so these tremendously powerful forces were abandoned to private corporations.2 Congress, however, has many times encouraged such corporations by immense grants of public lands along a proposed line in a "Territory," as State legislatures have done within State borders. Unhappily, such grants have often been made carelessly, if not corruptly, without proper security for adequate return to the public welfare.

1" Single-tax" reformers believe that this plan should be reintroduced un der the improved conditions of to-day.

2 Usually known to-day as "public-service" corporations (along with city gas companies, electric lighting companies, etc.) because they can exist only by grants of right-of-way and other privileges from the public, in return for expected services to the public.

CHAPTER L

THE "REVOLUTION OF 1828"

563. The victory of Jackson in the Nation was a sign and a result of a democratic victory that unknown men had been winning in the States. It was possible only because of a recent rapid extension of manhood suffrage. At Washington's election manhood suffrage was found in none of the thirteen States. At Jefferson's election it was practiced in only Kentucky and Vermont out of the sixteen States. By 1824 it was established in ten of the twenty-four commonwealths, and five others had removed all but nominal restrictions upon it.

Between 1792 and 1821, eleven new States had been admitted. Tennessee had an ineffective restriction on the franchise (removed in a new constitution in 1833); Ohio at first required payment of taxes as a qualification for voting; and Mississippi required either that or service in the militia. The other eight new states came in with manhood suffrage. Four of the older States also had followed in the footsteps of the progressive West Maryland adopted manhood suffrage in 1810; Connecticut, in 1818; in 1821, Massachusetts and New York reduced their former qualifications to tax payment or militia service, and in 1826 New York removed even this restriction.

564. These reforms had been carried against vehement protest by the elder statesmen. The aged John Adams and the stalwart Webster made stubborn resistance in Massachusetts. In New York, Chancellor Kent, a great lawyer and a noble man, pleaded with the constitutional convention not to " carry desolation through all the fabric erected by our fathers," or "put forth to the world a constitution such as will merit the scorn of the wise and the tears of the patriot." In Virginia (1830), only a slight gain was made, because of the opposition of Marshall, Madison, and Randolph, ancient foes, who joined hands to shut out 80,000 White citizens from the vote.

§ 566]

CHANGES IN POLITICS

477

Everywhere but in the West, leadership in the old party of Jefferson had fallen into the hands of aristocrats. With striking unanimity, North and South, such leaders now publicly denounced the war cry of Jackson "Let the people rule" as ominous of the "tyranny of mere numbers" and "destructive of the checks and balances of the Constitution." 1 In the Federal presidency itself, Monroe and Adams had brought back the pomp and ceremonial against which Jefferson had contended.

565. The election of Jackson then, even more than that of Jefferson, marks a true "revolution" in American society. Again a new generation had come upon the stage—and indeed upon a new stage. The victory of Jackson was the victory of the new West over the old East; and in the East itself it was the victory of the newly awakened labor class. Everywhere it was the victory of a new radical democracy, untrained, led by "men of the people," over the moderate democracy of Jefferson, led by trained, leisured, cultured "gentlemen." 2

Jeffersonian democracy had feared government: Jacksonian democracy was eager to use it. The old democracy had taught that the people should be governed as little as possible: the new democracy taught that the people might govern as much as they liked. More,-drunk with its victory, democracy began to insist not merely that majorities ought to be supreme, as the best policy, but even that majorities were always right: 66 vox populi, vox Dei."

566. The wider suffrage after 1825 brought other political changes. (1) The franchise was used more directly. In an increasing number of States, the governors and judges were chosen by the people instead of by the legislatures. So, too, of presidential electors: in 1800 ten States of the sixteen chose

1 Dodd's Expansion and Conflict, 11, gives some illustrations.

2 To compare the exterior of Abraham Lincoln (frontispiece), and the log cabin in which he was born (page 419), with the portrait of Jefferson on page 426 and the photograph of Monticello on page 411, is to glimpse some of the contrast between Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy.

electors by legislatures; in 1828 only two of the twenty-four did so, and after that the only State to continue the practice was South Carolina.

(2) The presidency gained power. It was no longer filled, even in theory, by a select coterie. Jackson's friends liked to call their leader "the chosen Tribune of the people." The Nation found it easier to express its will in choosing one man than in choosing a Congress in hundreds of local units, often largely upon local issues.

(3) The two matters just mentioned combined to bring out a larger vote. The election of 1789 was fiercely contested in New York, but only one vote was cast for every 27 inhabitants. In 1828 that State cast a vote for every six inhabitants. Pennsylvania cast 47,000 votes in 1824, but 150,000 in 1828. In Massachusetts only one man in 19 went to the polls in 1824; but after 1828 the proportion was rarely under 1 in 8.

(4) Property qualifications for office disappeared rapidly. (5) Test oaths were abolished, so that Jews and Catholics I could hold office.

(6) The union of State and Church in Connecticut and Massachusetts (§ 269) was overthrown.

(7) This greater democracy in politics brought social changes also. After the extension of the suffrage in Connecticut in 1818, public officers ceased to wear cockaded hats, powdered wigs, or knee-breeches and silk stockings.

567. Andrew Jackson dominated America for twelve years (1829-1841), for his control reached over into the administration of his successor and political heir, Van Buren. He was of Scotch-Irish descent, and his boyhood had been passed in the backwoods of North Carolina, in bare poverty. Picking up some necessary scraps of knowledge, he removed to the newer frontier of Tennessee to practice law. He was a natural leader; and his incisiveness and aggressiveness forced him to the front. In 1797 Tennessee sent him as her first Representative to Congress, for which life at that time he seems

to have been little fitted.

Gallatin noticed him only for his

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