THE NEW NATION

BY

FREDERIC L. PAXSON

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY FREDERIC L. PAXSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS
U.S.A.

PREFACE

A new nation has appeared within the United States since the Civil War,but it has been only accidentally connected with that catastrophe. TheConstitution emerged from the confusion of strife and reconstructionsubstantially unchanged, but the economic development of the UnitedStates in the sixties and seventies gave birth to a society that was, by1885, already national in its activities and necessities. In many waysthe history of the United States since the Civil War has to do with thestruggle between this national fact and the old legal system that wasbased upon state autonomy and federalism; and the future depends uponthe discovery of a means to readjust the mechanics of government, aswell as its content, to the needs of life. This book attempts to narratethe facts of the last half-century and to show them in their relationsto the larger truths of national development.

Frederic L. Paxson.

CONTENTS

• The Civil War
• The West and the Greenbacks
• The Restoration of Home Rule in the South
• The Panic of 1873
• The Hayes Administration
• Business and Politics
• The New Issues
• Grover Cleveland
• The Last of the Frontier
• National Business
• The Farmers' Cause
• The New South
• Populism
• Free Silver
• The "Counter-Reformation"
• The Spanish War
• Theodore Roosevelt
• Big Business
• ...