11 - 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 (00:02):
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Nicholas Iliche. History of
the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary Riderbeard,
Part one, Chapter four, Chapter four The development of colonial nationalism.

(00:30):
It is one of the well known facts of history
that a people loosely united by domestic ties of a
political and economic nature, even a people torn by domestic strife,
may be welded into a solid and compact body by
an attack from a foreign power. The imperative call to
common defense, the habit of sharing common burdens, the fusing

(00:52):
force of common service. These things, introduced by the necessity
of resisting outside interference, act as an amalgam, drawing together
all elements except perhaps the most discordant. The presence of
the enemy allays the most virulent of quarrels, temporarily, at least.
Politics runs an old saying stops at the water's edge.

(01:15):
The ancient political principle so well understood in diplomatic circles,
applied nearly as well to the original thirteen American colonies
as to the countries of Europe. The necessity for common defense,
if not equally great, was certainly always pressing. Though it
has long been the practice to speak of the early
settlements as founded in a wilderness, this was not actually

(01:39):
the case. From the earliest days of Jamestown on through
the years, the American people were confronted by dangers from without.
All about their tiny settlements were Indians, growing more and
more hostile as the frontier advanced, and as sharp conflicts
over land around angry passions to the south and west.
Was the power of Spain humiliated, it is true, by

(02:02):
the disaster to the Armada, but still presenting an imposing
front to the British Empire. To the north and west
were the French ambitious, energetic, imperial and temper, and prepared
to contest on land and water. The advance of British
dominion in America, relations with the Indians, and the French

(02:24):
Indian affairs, it is difficult to make general statements about
the relations of the colonists to the Indians. The problem
was presented in different shape and different sections of America.
It was not handled according to any coherent or uniform
plan by the British government, which alone could speak for
all the provinces at the same time. Neither did the

(02:45):
proprietors and the governors who succeeded one another in an
irregular train have the consistent policy or matured experience necessary
for dealing wisely with Indian matters. As the difficulties arose
mainly on the frontiers, where the restless and pushing pioneers
were making their way with gun, and as nearly everything
that happened was the result of chance rather than of calculation.

(03:09):
A personal quarrel between traders and an Indian, a jug
of whiskey, a keg of gunpowder, the exchange of guns
for first personal treachery, or a flash of bad temper
often set in motion destructive forces of the most terrible character.
On one side of the ledger may be set innumerable
generous records of Squanto and Samoset teaching the pilgrims the

(03:33):
ways of the wilds, of Roger Williams buying his lands
from the friendly natives, or of William Penn treating with
them on his arrival in America. On the other side
of the ledger must be recorded many a cruel and
bloody conflict. As the frontier rolled westward with deadly precision.
The Peaquots on the Connecticut border, sensing their doom, fell

(03:56):
upon the tiny settlements with awful fury in sixteen thirty seven,
only to meet with equally terrible punishment. A generation later,
King Philip Son of Massasoy, the friend of the Pilgrims,
called the tribesmen to a war of extermination, which brought
the strength of all New England to the fields and
ended in his own destruction in New York. The relations

(04:19):
with the Indians, especially with the Algonkins and the Mohawks,
were marked by periodic and desperate wars. Virginia and her
southern neighbors suffered, as did New England. In sixteen twenty two,
Ope Kacano, a brother of Powhatan, the friend of the
Jamestown settlers, launched a general massacre, and in sixteen forty

(04:39):
four he attempted a war of extermination. In sixteen seventy five,
the whole frontier was ablaze. Nathaniel Bacon vainly attempted to
stir the colonial governor to put up an adequate defense, and,
failing in that plea himself headed a revolt and a
successful expedition against the Indian. As a Virginia outpost advanced

(05:00):
into the Kentucky country, the strife with the natives was
transferred to that dark and bloody ground, while to the southeast,
a desperate struggle with the Tuscaroras called forth the combined
forces of the two Carolinas and Virginia from such horror.
As New Jersey and Delaware were saved on account of
their geographical location, Pennsylvania, consistently following a policy of conciliation,

(05:26):
was likewise spared until her western vanguard came into full
conflict with the allied French and Indians. Georgia, by clever
negotiations and treaties of Alliance, managed to keep on fair
terms with their belligerent Cherokees and Creeks, but neither diplomacy
nor generosity could stay the inevitable conflict. As the frontier advanced,

(05:46):
especially after the French soldiers enlisted the Indians in their
imperial enterprises. It was then that the desultory fighting became
general warfare. Early relations with the French during the first
decades of French exploration and settlement in the Saint Louis County,
the English colonies engrossed with their own problems gave little

(06:09):
or no thought to their distant neighbours. Quebec, founded in
sixteen o eight Montreal in sixteen forty two, were too
far away, too small in population, and too slight in
strength to be much of a menace to Boston, Hartford
or New York. It was the statesmen in France and England,
rather than the colonists in America, who first grasped the

(06:30):
significance of the slowly converging empires in North America. It
was the ambition of Louis the fourteenth of France, rather
than the labors of Jesuit missionaries and French rangers, that
sounded the first note of colonial alarm. Evidence of this
lies in the fact that three conflicts between English and

(06:50):
the French occurred before their advancing frontiers met on the
Pennsylvania border. King Williams's War from sixteen eighty nine to
sixteen ninety seven, Queen Anne's Swore from seventeen o one
to seventeen o three, and King George's War from seventeen
forty four to seventeen forty eight owed their origins and
their endings mainly to the intrigues and rivalries of European powers,

(07:14):
although they all involved the American colonies and struggles with
the French and their savage allies. The clash in the
Ohio Valley, the second of these wars, had hardly closed, however,
before the English colonists themselves began to be seriously alarmed
about the rapidly expanding French dominion in the west. Marquis

(07:37):
and Joliet, who opened the Lake region, and the Salle,
who in sixteen eighty two had gone down the Mississippi
to the Gulf, had been followed by the builders of forts.
In seventeen eighteen, the French founded New Orleans, thus taking
possession of the gateway to the Mississippi as well as
the Saint Lawrence. A few years later, they built Fort Niagara.

(08:00):
In seventeen thirty one, they occupied Crown Point. In seventeen
forty nine, they formally announced their dominion over all the
territory drained by the Ohio River. Having asserted this lofty claim,
they set out to make it good by constructing, in
the years seventeen fifty two to seventeen fifty four, Fort
Le Boeuf near Lake Erie Fort Venango, on the upper

(08:23):
waters of the Allegheny and Fort Dusna at the junction
of the streams forming the Ohio. Though they were warned
by George Washington in the name of the Governor of
Virginia to keep out of territory so notoriously known to
be property of the Crown of Great Britain, the French
showed no signs of relinquishing their pretensions the final phase

(08:48):
the French and Indian War. Thus it happened that the
shot which opened the Seven Years War, known in America
as the French and Indian War, was fired in the
wilds of Pennsylvania. There began the conflict that spread to
Europe and even Asia and finally involved England and Prussia
on the one side, and France, Austria, Spain, and minor

(09:10):
powers on the other. On the American soil. The defeat
of Braddock in seventeen fifty five and Wolfe's exploit in
capturing Quebec four years later were the dramatic features on
the continent of Europe. England subsidized Prussian arms to hold
France at bay. In India on the banks of the Ganges,

(09:30):
as on the banks of the Saint Lawrence, British arms
were triumphant. Well, could the historian write conquest equaling in
rapidity and far surpassing in magnitude those of Cortes and
Pizarro had been achieved in the East? Well, could the
merchants of London declare that, under the administration of William Pitt,

(09:51):
the imperial genius of this worldwide conflict, commerce had been
united with and made to flourish by war. From the
point of view of the British Empire, the results of
the war were momentous. By the peace of seventeen sixty three,
Canada and the territory east of the Mississippi except New Orleans,

(10:12):
passed under the British flag. The remainder of the Louisiana
territory was transferred to Spain, and French imperial ambitions on
the American continent were laid to rest. In exchange for Havana,
which the British had seized during the war, Spain ceded
to King George the colony of Florida. Not without warrant
did Maclay write in after years that Pitt was the

(10:35):
first Englishman of his time, and he had made England
the first country in the world. End of Chapter four