07 - History of the United States, Vol. I by Charles Austin Beard, Mary Ritter Beard

Charles Austin Beard stands as one of the most pivotal American historians of the early 20th century, having penned hundreds of influential monographs, textbooks, and interpretive studies in history and political science. A proud graduate of DePauw University in 1898, he met and later married Mary Ritter Beard, a trailblazer in womens rights and one of the founders of Kappa Alpha Theta. Many of their works were collaborative efforts, reflecting their shared passions for feminism and labor movements, as seen in her notable book, *Woman as a Force in History* (1946). In 1921, the Beards released their groundbreaking *History of the United States*, which was praised for its innovative approach, treating topics thematically rather than chronologically. This method allowed for an exploration of movements, background contexts, and the interconnectedness of social, economic, and political forces. Their goal was to empower students to grasp the essence of American society and its place within global civilization. The books clarity and engaging style have established it as a top-tier resource for both students and the general public.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Leon Meyer. History of
the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary Ridderbeard,

(00:21):
Part one, Chapter six, Social and political Progress. Colonial life,
crowded as it was, of the hard and unremitting toil,
left scant pleasure for the cultivation of the arts and sciences.
There was little money in private purses or public treasuries

(00:42):
to be dedicated to schools, libraries, and museums. Few there
were with time to read long and widely, and fewer
still who could devote their lives to things that delight
the eye and the mind. And yet poor and meager,
as the intellectual life of the colonists may seem by
way of comparison, heroic efforts were made in every community

(01:04):
to lift the people above the plane of mere existence.
After the first clearings were opened in the forest, those
efforts were redoubled, and with lengthening years told upon the
thought and spirit of the land. The appearance during the
struggle with England of an extraordinary group of leaders familiar
with history, political philosophy, and the arts of war, government

(01:27):
and diplomacy itself bore eloquent testimony to the high quality
of the American intellect. No one, not even the most critical,
can run through the writings of the distinguished Americans scattered
from Massachusetts to Georgia, the Adamses, Ellsworth, the Morrises, the Livingstones, Hamilton, Franklin, Washington, Madison, Marshall, Henry,

(01:51):
the Randolphs, and the Pinkneys without coming to the conclusion
that there was something in American colonial life which fostered
minds of depth and powers. Women surmounted even greater difficulties
than the men in the process of self education, and
their keen interest in public issues is evident in many
a record, like the letters of Missus John Adams to

(02:12):
her husband during the Revolution, the writings of Missus Mercy
Otis Warren, the sister of James Otis, who measured her
pen with the British propagandists, and the Patriot newspapers founded
and managed by women, the leadership of the churches. In
the intellectual life of America, the churches assumed a role

(02:35):
of high importance. There were abundant reasons for this in
many of the colonies, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New England. Their
religious impulse had been one of the impelling motives in
stimulating immigration. In all the colonies, the clergy, at least
in the beginning, formed the only class with any leisure
to devote to matters of the spirit. They preached on

(02:58):
Sundays and taught school on wis They led in the
discussion of local problems and in the formation of political opinion,
so much of which was concerned with the relation between
church and state. They wrote books and pamphlets. They filled
most of the chairs in the colleges. Under clerical guidance,
intellectual and spiritual, the Americans received their formal education, and

(03:21):
several of the provinces the Anglican Church was established by law.
In New England, the Puritans were supreme, notwithstanding the efforts
of the crown to overbear their authority. In the middle colonies,
particularly the multiplication of sex made the dominance of any
single denomination impossible, and in all of them there was
a growing diversity of faith, which promised in time a

(03:45):
separation of church and state and freedom of opinion. The
Church of England Virginia was the stronghold of the English
system of church and state. The Anglican faith and worship
were prescribed by law, law, sustained by taxes imposed on all,
and favored by the governor, the provincial councilors, and the

(04:06):
richest planters. The established church, says Lodge, was one of
the appendages of the Virginia aristocracy. They controlled the vestries
and the ministers, and the parish church stood not infrequently
on the estate of the planter who built and managed it.
As in England, Catholic and Protestant dissenters were at first

(04:27):
laid under heavy disabilities. Only slowly and on sufferance, were
they admitted to the province. But when once they were
even covertly tolerated, they pressed steadily in until by the
Revolution they outnumbered the adherents of the established order. The
church was also sanctioned by law and supported by taxes

(04:49):
in the Carolinas after seventeen o four and in Georgia
after that colony passed directly under the crown in seventeen
fifty four. This in spite of the fact that the
majority of the nas inhabitants were dissenters. Against the protests
of the Catholics. It was likewise established in Maryland in
New York too. Notwithstanding the resistance of the Dutch, the

(05:10):
established Church was fostered by the provincial officials, and the Anglicans,
embracing about one fifteenth of the population, exerted an influence
all out of proportion to their numbers. Many factors helped
to enhance the power of the English Church and the colonies.
It was supported by the British government and the official

(05:31):
class sent out to the provinces. Its bishops and archbishops
in England were appointed by the King, and its faith
and service were set forth by acts of Parliament. Having
its seat of power in the English monarchy, it could
hold its clergy and missionaries loyal to the crown, and
so counteract to some extent the independent spirit that was

(05:51):
growing up in America. The Church, always a strong bulwark
of the state, therefore had a political role to play here,
as in England. Able bishops and far seeing leaders firmly
grasped this fact about the middle of the eighteenth century
and redoubled their efforts to augment the influence of the
Church in provincial affairs. Unhappily, for their plans, they failed

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to calculate in advance the effect of the methods upon
dissenting Protestants, who still cherished memories of bitter religious conflicts
in the mother country Puritanism in New England. If the
established faith made for imperial unity, the same could not
be said of Puritanism. The Plymouth Pilgrims had cast off

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all allegiance to the Anglican Church and established a separate
and independent congregation before they came to America. The Puritans,
essaying at the first task of reformers within the church,
soon after their arrival in Massachusetts, likewise flung off their
yoke of union with the Anglicans. In each town, a
separate congregation was organized, the male members choosing the pastor

(06:59):
of the tea and the other officers. They also composed
the voters in the town meeting, where secular matters were determined.
The union of church and government was thus complete, and
uniformity of faith and life prescribed by law and enforced
by civil authorities. But this worked for local autonomy instead
of imperial unity. The clergy became a powerful class, dominant

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through their learning and their fearful denunciations of the faithless.
They wrote the books for the people to read. The
famous Cotton Mather having three hundred and eighty three books
and pamphlets to his credit. In cooperation with the civil officers,
they enforced a strict observance of the Puritan Sabbath, a
day of rest that began at six o'clock on Saturday

(07:44):
evening and lasted until sunset on Sunday. All work, all trading,
all amusement, in all worldly conversation were absolutely prohibited during
those hours. A thoughtless maid servant, who for some earthly
reason smiled in church, was in Dane being banished as
a vagabond. Robert Pike, a devout Puritan, thinking the sun

(08:05):
had gone to rest, ventured forth on horseback one Sunday
evening and was luckless enough to have a ray of
light strike him through a rift in the clouds. The
next day, he was wrought into court and fined for
his quote ungodly conduct with persons accused of witchcraft. The
Puritans were still more ruthless when a mania of persecution

(08:28):
swept over Massachusetts in sixteen ninety two. Eighteen people were hanged,
one was pressed to death, many suffered imprisonment, and two
died in jail. Just about this time, however, there came
a break in the uniformity of Puritan rule. The Crown
and Church in England had long looked upon it with disfavor,

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and in sixteen eighty four King Charles the Second annulled
the old charter the Massachusetts Bay Company. A new document,
issued seven years later wrested from the Puritans of the
colony the right to elect their own governor and reserved
the power of appointment to the King. It also abolished
the rule limiting the suffrage to church members, substituting for

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it a simple property qualification. Thus, a royal governor and
an official family certain to be Episcopalian in faith, and
monarchists and sympathies were forced upon Massachusetts, and members of
all religious denominations, if they had the required amount of property,
were permitted to take part in the elections. By this

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act in the name of the Crown, the Puritan monopoly
was broken down in Massachusetts, and that province was brought
into line with Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, where property,
not religious faith, was the test for the suffrage. Growth
of religious toleration, though neither the Anglicans of Virginia nor

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the Puritans of Massachusetts believed in toleration for other denominations.
That principle was strictly applied in Rhode Island. There, under
the leadership of Roger Williams, liberty and matters of conscience
was established in the beginning. Maryland by granting in sixteen
forty nine freedom to those who professed to believe in

(10:12):
Jesus Christ opened its gates to all Christians, and Pennsylvania,
true to the tenets of the Friends, gave freedom of
conscience to those quote who confess and acknowledged the One,
almighty and Eternal God to be the Creator, upholder, and
ruler of the world by one circumstance or another. The

(10:33):
Middle colonies were thus early characterized by diversity rather than
uniformity of opinion. Dutch Protestants, Huguenots, Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, New Lights, Moravians, Lutherans, Catholics,
and other denominations became too strongly entrenched and too widely
scattered to permit any one of them to rule if

(10:55):
it had desired to do so. There were communities, and
indeed wholeseconds, where one or another church prevailed, but in
no colony was a legislature steadily controlled by a single group.
Toleration encouraged diversity, and diversity in turn worked for greater toleration.
The government and faith of the dissenting denominations conspired with

(11:19):
economic and political tendencies to draw America away from the
English state. Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, and Puritans had no hierarchy
of bishops and archbishops to bind them to the seat
of power in London. Neither did they look to that
metropolis for guidance in interpreting articles of faith. Local self

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government and matters ecclesiastical helped to train them for local
self government in matters political. The spirit of independence, which
led dissenters to revolt in the Old world, nourished as
it was amid favorable circumstances in the New World. Made
them all the more zealous in their defense of every
right against authority imposed from without. End of Chapter six