Four historic movements, separate yet continuous, like the four acts of a mighty drama, and all having profound influence on our literature, are crowded into the latter half of the eighteenth century in America. The first is social and industrial; it is concerned with the rapid increase of trade and wealth as America's natural resources are discovered, with the spread of education, and with the phenomena of town as contrasted with country life. For America is no longer an experiment, a "trade venture" as England first regarded her; she is beyond all expectation a success, and has ambition of becoming a nation. Where once the forest stood, dark and silent, the sun now shines on prosperous farms; the frontier hamlet of log cabins is now a bustling town; and with the town come inevitably the newspaper, the high school, the theater, the beginning of music, poetry and all the fine arts. Very different this from the Jamestown of John Smith, the Boston of John Winthrop! Here are highways to follow, instead of the old buffalo and Indian trails. With prosperity and social pleasures, men begin to think less of theology and "other-worldliness," which were prominent in the early days, and more of this present life aid opportunity. Whittier, who has the deepest insight into Colonial life, notes the changing standards, in "The Preacher," as he looks upon an old country church and considers the waning glory of Edwards:

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The second great movement, leading toward the climax of union and nationality, takes us into the midst of tumult and upheaval which followed the Stamp Act of 1765. And perhaps the most noteworthy thing in this fateful movement is its unexpectedness. Only two years earlier the whole country had rejoiced with England over the Treaty of Paris, which meant two mercies to the Colonies: that the raids, massacres and general barbarism of the French and Indian War were all things of the past; and that English rather than French ideals had finally prevailed in America, leaving man free here to work out his salvation, not in the shadow of military despotism, but in the full sunshine of Anglo-Saxon liberty. To make such peace, such opportunity possible, the Colonies had given twenty thousand of their young men, and a sum equal to forty millions of our present money; and they were content with their sacrifice.

Then, at the very season of their rejoicing, King George and his ministers resolved, with colossal stupidity, on two measures: that the Colonies were to be taxed by the British Parliament to support a British army; and that no settlers should be allowed west of the Allegheny Mountains. That the tax was small was of no consequence; it was the big injustice that struck the loyal Colonists like a blow in the face. And just as the rich Ohio and Mississippi valleys were cleared of French troops, our pioneers, pressing eagerly into the spacious country, must halt and turn back into a narrow land; because, forsooth, an English king had covenanted with his "royal brother of France" that the whole splendid territory should be reserved forever for a handful of roving savages. Such things were not to be endured by free men. While towns and cities of the Atlantic coast were in an uproar over one proclamation, men of the woods and mountains quietly ignored the other. So loyalty was changed to distrust, and the Revolution began while Americans still treasured the memories of a war in which they had fought shoulder to shoulder with Englishmen against a common enemy.

The first effect of the Stamp Act, and of the uproar which followed it, was to unite the Colonies and prepare them for nationality. They contained at this time only a million and a half of widely scattered people. There was no particular grouping of interests; each colony stood firm by itself, zealously guarding its own rights; and we have little excuse for dividing them into Northern and Southern, and so making false distinctions in our national life and literature. There were superficial differences among them, to be sure, and doubtless certain colonies had more frequent and intimate connection with England than they had with each other; but when the first American or Continental Congress meets at Philadelphia, in 1774, our attention is focused, not on divisions and differences among the members, but rather on their unity, their concord, their amazing resemblances. Here are fifty-five delegates gathered from the four corners of a vast territory. Here are Cavaliers and Puritans, Catholics and Protestants, ministers, teachers, merchants, artisans; and lo! all these men speak the same speech, cherish the same ideals, and are instantly ready to elect and follow the same leader. For the words of Otis and Samuel Adams have been heard far beyond the borders of Massachusetts, and Patrick Henry's speech has rung like a bugle call through all the American settlements.

So, though there is as yet no nation on this side of the Atlantic, there is a prophecy in the air, and the prophecy is voiced by South Carolina when she declares, "The whole country must be animated with one great soul, and all Americans must resolve to stand by one another even unto death." Of all the spoken or written words of the eighteenth century, these seem, to a literary man, the most significant. That "one great soul," all aflame with the love of freedom and justice, symbolizes the unity of aim and spirit among the Colonies immediately preceding the Revolution.

The third act of this stirring drama is the Revolutionary War, that epic struggle against odds, which makes the blood of an American tingle every time he reads it anew. We are so accustomed to think of it, and of our independence, as the result of a supreme effort of our whole people, that it occasions a shock of surprise to learn that the Revolution was fought and won by only a part,—perhaps the smaller and, in the matter of this world's goods, probably the poorer part of our Colonial ancestors. The heroism of the war consists partly in this: that the Continental army had to fight front and guard rear at the same time; that while it faced a superior force of open enemies, behind it was a larger body of American Tories, foes of its own household, ready at any moment to give secret or open aid to the British. So also the prose and poetry that we cherish, as reflecting the spirit of '76, is only a portion, the Whig portion, of Revolutionary letters. And the wedge which split our life and literature into two sections was the famous Declaration of Independence, which is commonly considered the symbol of national unity.

As we have noted, the year 1774, when the first Continental Congress assembled, found the American colonies singularly united in spirit. Up to that time, and even later, they were splendidly loyal to England, and only a few bold, visionary spirits, like Henry, and Samuel Adams, had dreamed of a separate national existence. Then, sudden and startling as a thunderbolt to a great part of the country, came the Declaration of Independence; and every man was called upon to make instant decision between the new and the old. It was a tense, dramatic moment, like that in which Elijah built his altar on Mount Carmel and cried aloud to his people: "How long halt ye between two opinions?" It meant not only the separation of nation from nation; it divided a man from his neighbors and friends, and sometimes a father from his own sons and daughters. Our histories are often eloquent—and well they may be—on the subject of Franklin's patriotism; but they are silent concerning Franklin's son, who accepted a British office here, probably also a British bribe, and was a Tory, a secret enemy of the cause for which his father labored. There is a fine stirring story of Edmund Randolph, and of many another young Patriot, whose hearts ran ever ahead of their Virginia thoroughbreds as they hastened at the first call to join the army of Washington; but we hear little at this time of the father, John Randolph, who followed the English governor Dinsmore over seas, and remained a Tory exile during the Revolution. And these are but types of thousands of such family divisions.

So, the ringing of the famous Liberty Bell, on July 4, 1776, divided the country for the first time into two hostile parties: the Whigs, or Patriots, who supported the new government; and the Tories, or Loyalists, who remained true to old England, as their fathers were before them. There was no separation into North, Middle, and South; but every colony, every town and hamlet, was a house divided against itself. The Patriots were the younger, the more enthusiastic party, and speedily gained control of the state governments. For them the bells rang, the cannon roared, the bonfires blazed to heaven; but we must not assume that this voiced the joy of a whole nation. For every man who ran out to join the jubilation, there was another man who hurried into his house, in grief or rage, and slammed the door behind him. Nor are we to conclude, from the Revolutionary literature which survives on our bookshelves, that the young Patriots monopolized the patriotism of the land. The Tories were quite as sincere, quite as patriotic, quite as liberty-loving; only they sought liberty, as all the Colonists had done for a century past, by maintaining their rights as Englishmen. Utterly misjudging the new movement, they regarded the Patriots as ungrateful rebels; many of them took up arms to suppress the "unholy rebellion"; many more gave secret aid to the British. The Patriots, on the other hand, sadly misjudged their opponents, calling them traitors to the cause of liberty. Thousands of intelligent Loyalists were driven out of the country, and their property was seized; thousands more were looked upon with suspicion or hatred. In Loyalist counties, a too-zealous Whig was promptly ostracized, or hanged, as the case might be; in Patriot districts, a suspected Tory might be ridden out of town on a rail, or else given a horrible coat of tar and feathers. Altogether it was a hard and bitter separation of old friends and neighbors, so bitter that in many places the Revolution seemed more like a barbarous civil strife than a united struggle against foreign oppression. The Partisan , etc., give vivid pictures of this civil strife in the Carolinas. Cooper's The Spy portrays the plots of Whig and Tory in New York.") ?>

The fourth great movement of this period is political, and includes the long struggle to form a national constitution. It is the most tense, the most critical, the most fateful movement in all our history. To understand this, we must remember that democracy in America has two essential elements: representation and federation. The first was inherited from England by the Colonists, who from the beginning showed their training and independence by electing their own representatives to the House of Burgesses, or Assembly, or General Court, as the Colonial legislatures were variously called. The second element, of federation, was new in the world. The problem of welding a number of free states into a single free nation had never been solved, or even attempted; and America, as she set herself to the mighty task, had no precedent to guide her. Alone and amid endless difficulties she began her work. Her people were hopelessly divided over questions of state and personal rights involved in or threatened by federation; and the effort to form a nation came perilously near to disrupting the Colonies just after the Revolution had united them. Again there were two parties: the Federalists, who thought first of the nation and sought as much power as possible for the national government; and the Anti-Federalists, who distrusted and feared the monarchial tendency of every centralized government since time began, and who were determined to keep the governing power as largely as possible in the hands of the individual states. The struggle reached a climax in Philadelphia, in 1787, when Washington called to order the leaders of the Colonies in thought and action,—"an assembly of demigods," Jefferson calls them,—and after four months' debate they produced the Constitution of the United States, "the noblest work," according to an English statesman, "ever struck off at a given time by the mind and purpose of man."

Somewhere in the midst of all this mighty struggle our national life began; but as a nation we have no natal festival, for the simple reason that none can tell us when America was born. Some date it at the first Continental Congress; some at the Declaration of Independence; some at the inauguration of Washington, whose noble personality held the discordant states together until the new government was established and organized; and a few follow Lowell, who, with fine poetic insight, places the birth of the new nation on the day when Washington took command of the army, no longer Provincial but Continental, on July 3, 1775: