The Project Gutenberg EBook of The New Nation, by Frederic L. Paxson

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Title: The New Nation

Author: Frederic L. Paxson

Editor: William E. Dodd

Release Date: January 31, 2009 [EBook #27953]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: Copyright, 1912, Moffett, Chicago

[Signature]Woodrow Wilson]

THE NEW NATION

BY

FREDERIC L. PAXSON

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

[Illustration: logo]

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. The
Constitution emerged from the confusion of strife and reconstruction
substantially unchanged, but the economic development of the United
States in the sixties and seventies gave birth to a society that was, by
1885, already national in its activities and necessities. In many ways
the history of the United States since the Civil War has to do with the
struggle between this national fact and the old legal system that was
based upon state autonomy and federalism; and the future depends upon
the discovery of a means to readjust the mechanics of government, as
well as its content, to the needs of life. This book attempts to narrate
the facts of the last half-century and to show them in their relations
to the larger truths of national development.

FREDERIC L. PAXSON.

CONTENTS

I. THE CIVIL WAR 1

II. THE WEST AND THE GREENBACKS 20

III. THE RESTORATION OF HOME RULE IN THE SOUTH 39

IV. THE PANIC OF 1873 59

V. THE HAYES ADMINISTRATION 75

VI. BUSINESS AND POLIT