Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read this ebook for free! No credit card needed, absolutely nothing to pay.
Words: 161936 in 69 pages
This is an ebook sharing website. You can read the uploaded ebooks for free here. No credit cards needed, nothing to pay. If you want to own a digital copy of the ebook, or want to read offline with your favorite ebook-reader, then you can choose to buy and download the ebook.
THE LIFE OF JOHN MARSHALL
THE LIFE OF JOHN MARSHALL
INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ON AMERICA
Were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than it now is.
That malignant philosophy which can coolly and deliberately pursue, through oceans of blood, abstract systems for the attainment of some fancied untried good.
The only genuine liberty consists in a mean equally distant from the despotism of an individual and a million.
In the same year, 1789, that the American Republic began its career under the forms of a National Government, the curtain rose in France on that tremendous drama which will forever engage the interest of mankind. And just as the American Revolution vitally influenced French opinion, so the French Revolution profoundly affected American thought; and, definitely, helped to shape those contending forces in American life that are still waging their conflict.
While the economic issue, so sharp in the adoption of the Constitution, became still keener, as will appear, after the National Government was established, it was given a higher temper in the forge of the French Revolution. American history, especially of the period now under consideration, can be read correctly only by the lights that shine from that titanic smithy; can be understood only by considering the effect upon the people, the thinkers, and the statesmen of America, of the deeds done and words spoken in France during those inspiring if monstrous years.
The naturally conservative or radical temperaments of men in America were hardened by every episode of the French convulsion. The events in France, at this time, operated upon men like Hamilton on the one hand, and Jefferson on the other hand, in a fashion as deep and lasting as it was antagonistic and antipodal; and the intellectual and moral phenomena, manifested in picturesque guise among the people in America, impressed those who already were, and those who were to become, the leaders of American opinion, as much as the events of the Gallic cataclysm itself.
George Washington at the summit of his fame, and John Marshall just beginning his ascent, were alike confirmed in that non-popular tendency of thought and feeling which both avowed in the dark years between our War for Independence and the adoption of our Constitution. In reviewing all the situations, not otherwise to be fully understood, that arose from the time Washington became President until Marshall took his seat as Chief Justice, we must have always before our eyes the extraordinary scenes and consider the delirious emotions which the French Revolution produced in America. It must be constantly borne in mind that Americans of the period now under discussion did not and could not look upon it with present-day knowledge, perspective, or calmness. What is here set down is, therefore, an attempt to portray the effects of that volcanic eruption of human forces upon the minds and hearts of those who witnessed, from across the ocean, its flames mounting to the heavens and its lava pouring over the whole earth.
Unless this portrayal is given, a blank must be left in a recital of the development of American radical and conservative sentiment and of the formation of the first of American political parties. Certainly for the purposes of the present work, an outline, at least, of the effect of the French Revolution on American thought and feeling is indispensable. Just as the careers of Marshall and Jefferson are inseparably intertwined, and as neither can be fully understood without considering the other, so the American by-products of the French Revolution must be examined if we would comprehend either of these great protagonists of hostile theories of democratic government.
At first everybody in America heartily approved the French reform movement. Marshall describes for us this unanimous approbation. "A great revolution had commenced in that country," he writes, "the first stage of which was completed by limiting the powers of the monarch, and by the establishment of a popular assembly. In no part of the globe was this revolution hailed with more joy than in America. The influence it would have on the affairs of the world was not then distinctly foreseen; and the philanthropist, without becoming a political partisan, rejoiced in the event. On this subject, therefore, but one sentiment existed."
Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg
(0)More posts by @FreeBooks
