Part 35

_Francis Lieber._--Francis Lieber (1800-1872), a native of Berlin and a Ph.D. of the University of Jena (1820), came to America virtually a political exile, and, though an ardent worshipper of freedom, was at first, as Dr. Harley remarks, obliged to make his home in the very heart of the slave power. For twenty-one years he was professor of history and political economy in South Carolina College, being “the first great teacher in this country of history and politics as co-ordinated subjects.” From 1856 till 1860 he held the chair of political economy in Columbia College; and from 1860 till his death he was professor of political science in the Columbia Law School. The great works on which his fame rests are his “Political Ethics” (1838), “Legal and Political Hermeneutics” (1839), and “Civil Liberty and Self-Government” (1853). In writing these books he was a pioneer, and pointed out some important principles of American liberty. In his later years he gave much attention to international and military law. From his proposals originated the Institut de Droit International, started at Ghent in 1873, “the organ for the legal consciousness of the civilised world.”

_William Beach Lawrence._--Another writer whose name is linked with Columbia College is William B. Lawrence (1800-1881). Born in New York City, he graduated from Columbia in 1818, was admitted to the bar in 1823, and gave attention chiefly to international law. For a time he lectured at Columbia on political economy, defending free trade. Removing to Rhode Island, he served as acting Governor in 1852. In 1872-1873 he lectured on international law in the Columbian University at Washington. His works are marked by breadth of view and soundness of judgment. They include “The Bank of the United States” (1831), “Institutions of the United States” (1832), “Discourses on Political Economy” (1834), “The Law of Charitable Uses” (1845), “Commentaire sur les éléments du droit international” (1868-1880), and “The Treaty of Washington” (1871).

_Theodore Dwight Woolsey._--Theodore D. Woolsey (1801-1889) had a varied preparation for his notable career. Graduating at Yale in 1820, he studied law in Philadelphia, theology at Princeton, and Greek at Leipsic, Bonn, and Berlin. From 1831 till 1846 he was professor of Greek at Yale. Becoming president of Yale in 1846, he thenceforward confined his teaching to history, political science, and international law, and became eminent as a writer on subjects in these fields. Among his works are “An Introduction to the Study of International Law” (1860), “Essays on Divorce and Divorce Legislation” (1869), “Political Science” (two volumes, 1877), and “Communism and Socialism, in Their History and Theory” (1880).

_Henry Wager Halleck._--Chiefly known as a soldier, and as general of the armies of the United States from July, 1862, till March, 1864, Henry W. Halleck (1815-1872) was after all more skilled in the science of war than in its practice in the field. He studied at Union College and West Point, from which he graduated in 1839. Before the Lowell Institute in 1845 he lectured on the science of war; his lectures, published as “Elements of Military Art and Science,” were much used later as a training manual. The chief of his other works, “International Law, or Rules Regulating the Intercourse of States in Peace and War” (1861), abridged in 1866 for college use, still ranks among the highest authorities.

_Henry Charles Carey._--In his day the foremost champion of governmental protection to private industry was Henry C. Carey (1793-1879). The eldest son of Matthew Carey, the Philadelphia publisher, he devoted his early years to carrying on the bookselling and publishing business, retiring in 1835. His essay on “The Rate of Wages” (1835) was soon expanded into “The Principles of Political Economy” (1837-1840), which found favour abroad and was translated into Swedish and Italian. His other leading works were “The Credit System of France, Great Britain, and the United States” (1838), “The Past, the Present, and the Future” (1848), “Letters on the International Copyright” (1853), “The Principles of Social Science” (1858), and “The Unity of Law” (1873). Carey was originally a free-trader, but early became a supporter of protection on the ground of temporary expediency. Some of his views have been attacked as unwarranted and dogmatically expressed; it must be conceded, however, that he had a strong grasp of facts and that his works are an invaluable contribution to economic and social science.

_David Ames Wells._--For many years, it is safe to say, the leading economist in America was David A. Wells (1828-1898). He was descended from Thomas Welles, Governor of Connecticut in 1655-1658, was born at Springfield, Massachusetts, and was graduated from Williams College in 1847 and from the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard in 1852. For some years he taught physics and chemistry, and was engaged also in writing school text-books on these subjects. An essay (“Our Burden and Strength”) on the resources and financial ability of the United States (1864) brought Wells into prominence, while it did much to restore confidence in the Federal Government. President Lincoln summoned Mr. Wells to Washington, and appointed him chairman of the Revenue Commission of 1865-1866. As special commissioner of the revenue (1866-1870) he completed vast reforms in the complex system of revenue which had grown up during the war. Thereafter he was largely engaged in writing and speaking on economic topics. Among his books are “Robinson Crusoe’s Money,” illustrated by Nast (1876), “Our Merchant Marine: How It Rose, Increased, Became Great, Declined, and Decayed” (1882), “Practical Economics” (1885), “A Study of Mexico” (1887), “The Relation of the Tariff to Wages” (1888), and “Recent Economic Changes” (1898).

_Francis Amasa Walker._--Born in Boston, Francis A. Walker (1840-1897) graduated from Amherst at twenty, then served in the Union Army, becoming a brigadier-general. In 1869 he was put at the head of the Bureau of Statistics; he was superintendent of the Ninth and the Tenth Census, and held other prominent positions, including (1873-1881) the professorship of political economy and history at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale and (1881-1897) the presidency of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a prolific writer; of his economic works we can mention only “The Indian Question” (1874), “The Wages Question” (1876), “Money” (1878), “Money in its Relations to Trade and Industry” (Lowell Institute lectures, 1879), “Political Economy” (1883), “Land and its Rent” (1883), and “International Bimetallism” (1896). Walker’s influence as an economist was felt especially in connection with the theory of wages. “The central idea of his theory,” says Dr. Sherwood, “that the amount of wages under free competition tends to equal the product due to the labour, has been generally accepted, although not altogether as the direct result of his writing.”

_Henry George._--The theories of Henry George (1839-1896) have been widely discussed. They were first put forth in “Our Land and Land Policy” (1871), in which he held that the burden of taxation should be borne by the land and not by industry, and that thus opportunities for progress would be equalised. His most important book was “Progress and Poverty” (1879), which in a few years made George virtually the apostle of a new economic and social creed. Conservative economists have been slow to accept his single-tax theory; it has, however, called attention to the enormous waste and wrong that result from granting public franchises to private corporations without due compensation. His theory of wages, that they arise from a value created by the efficiency of the labourer, has been generally accepted and may be regarded as a real contribution to economic science.

=Some Other Writers.=--More than a generation of Williams College men sat under the teaching of Arthur Latham Perry (1830-1905), for thirty-eight years professor of history and political economy. Perry published his “Elements of Political Economy” in 1865; some twenty editions have since appeared. His advocacy of free trade in the sixties cost him many friends. He published also a work on “International Commerce” (1866) and smaller treatises on political economy. Elisha Mulford (1833-1885), a graduate of Yale College and an Episcopal clergyman, was the author of two highly powerful and stimulating books: “The Nation” (1870), dealing with the philosophy of the state, and “The Republic of God” (1880), a religious work of similar character. William Graham Sumner (born in 1840) became prominent for his advocacy of free trade and of the gold standard. Graduating at Yale in 1863, he studied at Göttingen and Oxford, then took orders in the Episcopal Church. Since 1872 he has been professor of political and social science at Yale. He has written “A History of American Currency” (1874), “Lectures on the History of Protection in the United States” (1875), “What Social Classes Owe Each Other” (1882), “Collected Essays in Political and Social Science” (1885), “The Financier and Finances of the American Revolution” (1892), and “A History of Banking in the United States” (1896). Another well known political economist is Richard Theodore Ely (born in 1854), a graduate of Columbia College (1876) and of Heidelberg (Ph.D. _summa cum laude_, 1879), who, as director of the School of Economics, Political Science, and History in the University of Wisconsin, has trained more teachers of economic science than any other American living and has exerted marked influence on the thought of his time. He has to his credit a long list of valuable publications; some of them are “French and German Socialism in Modern Times” (1883), “The Labour Movement in America” (1886), “Taxation in American States and Cities” (1888), “Socialism, an Examination of Its Nature, Its Strength, and Its Weakness, with Suggestions for Social Reform” (1894), “The Social Law of Service” (1896), and “Monopolies and Trusts” (1900). The tendency of the Government to regulate economic movements is in harmony with a doctrine of which he has been a bold champion. Another equally high authority on trusts and currency problems is Jeremiah Whipple Jenks (born in 1856), since 1891 professor of political economy at Cornell University. His “The Trust Problem” (1900) and “Trusts and Industrial Combinations” (1900) have circulated widely. President Woodrow Wilson (born in 1856) of Princeton, discussed elsewhere as a historian, must also be mentioned here for his standard work on “The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics” (1889), “An Old Master, and Other Political Essays” (1893), and “Mere Literature, and Other Essays,” in which large and sound views of government and its functions are set forth in a clear and attractive style.

=Ethnological and Linguistic Science.=--In the broad field of ethnological research the work of American scholars has been chiefly devoted to the native and primitive races of America. This offers, as has been pointed out by Mr. McGee,[23] “the finest field the world affords,” exhibiting nearly every stage of development and nearly every type of mankind; and American contributions to ethnology and anthropology have been correspondingly important. The names of Gallatin, Schoolcraft, Morgan, Powell, Brinton, will be at once recalled; probably the last named is our best known ethnologist. In the science of language our showing is, in point of numbers, somewhat more creditable. The lexicographical work of Webster, Worcester, Whitney, and March, and the grammatical work of Child and Gildersleeve have been recognised and appreciated the world over. In these sciences America’s debt to Germany is a heavy one. Most of our greater teachers of language received their professional training in Germany; and while fewer of our students now go to Germany for the doctor’s degree, the influence of German scholarship is still strongly felt among us.

_Pierre Étienne Duponceau._--Duponceau (1760-1844) was one of the pioneers of American philology. Born in France, he came to America in 1777 as secretary to Baron Steuben, served in the American army as captain till 1781, and afterward practised law in Philadelphia, becoming well known. He wrote treatises on law: “Exposition sommaire de la constitution des États-Unis d’Amérique” (1837); and in linguistics: “English Phonology” (1818), “Mémoire sur le système grammatical des languages de quelques nations indiennes de 1’Amérique du Nord” (1838), which was awarded a medal by the French Institute, and “A Dissertation on the Nature and Character of the Chinese System of Writing” (1838).

_Albert Gallatin._--The long and illustrious political career of Albert Gallatin (1761-1849) must not detain us here. Most of his literary and ethnological work was done in his later years. In 1836 he published his “Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United States, East of the Rocky Mountains, and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America.” In 1845 appeared his “Notes on the Semi-Civilised Nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America.” He founded the American Ethnological Society in 1842; and he is rightly known and will be remembered as the father of American ethnology.

_Henry Rowe Schoolcraft._--Among the most prominent of early American ethnologists was Henry R. Schoolcraft (1793-1864). His grandfather, James Calcraft, formerly a British soldier under Marlborough, had kept a large school in Albany County, New York, and because of this his name was changed to Schoolcraft. At an early age Henry Schoolcraft became a student of mineralogy, chemistry, natural philosophy, and medicine. In connection with his father’s glass-making enterprises in New Hampshire, Vermont, and western New York, he was engaged for some time in building glass-works, and in 1817 began to publish a work on “Vitreology.” Conceiving a desire to travel in the Far West, he started in 1818 on a journey down the Ohio and up the Mississippi. A book resulting from this, on the mineralogy of the West, made him well known. Another expedition was described in “Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley” (1825). In 1828 he was the leader in founding the Michigan Historical Society and in 1832 he helped found the Algic Society, for the reclamation and study of the Indians. A narrative of his work and experiences was embodied in “Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers, 1812 to 1842,” a work full of the flavour of the primitive West. Other works were “Algic Researches” (1839), a collection of Indian allegories and legends; “Oneota, or The Characteristics of the Red Race in America” (1844-1845); “The Red Race of America” (1847); and “American Indians, their History, Condition, and Prospects” (1850), an immense work covering a wide range of subjects. His books did much to promote knowledge of Indian life and thought.

_Charles Pickering._--Another well-known ethnologist, Charles Pickering (1805-1878), born in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, graduated at Harvard College in 1823 and took his degree in medicine in 1826. He accompanied Commodore Wilkes in the _Vincennes_ on its exploring voyage around the world in 1838-1842 and later visited India and Eastern Africa. His great work was “The Races of Man and their Geographical Distribution” (1848); later works of importance were “The Geographical Distribution of Animals and Man” (1854) and “The Geographical Distribution of Plants” (1861).

_Lewis Henry Morgan._--Lewis H. Morgan (1818-1881), born at Aurora on Cayuga Lake, New York, and graduated from Union College in 1840, became interested in studying the Indians through having organised a society called “The Grand Order of the Iroquois,” which he wished to model after the ancient Iroquois Confederacy. The first literary fruits of his studies were his “Letters on the Iroquois” (in _The American Review_ in 1847). Finding that he must neglect his law practice or abandon his Indian studies, he determined to publish all his materials and then cleave to law. In 1851, then, appeared “The League of the Iroquois,” in which were fully explained the organisation and government of the celebrated Iroquois Confederacy, and which formed the first scientific account of an Indian tribe. A few years later, urged by Henry, Agassiz, and others, he took up his studies again, and began an investigation which was extended to embrace the whole world, and which resulted in his scholarly “Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family,” published in 1871, as No. 17 of the Smithsonian “Contributions to Knowledge.” In 1881 he gathered his materials on tribal organisation into an epoch-making philosophical treatise on “Ancient Society,” which materially helped to lay the foundations of our modern science of governmental institutions.

_John Wesley Powell._--Major John W. Powell (1834-1902) became conspicuous both as a geologist and an anthropologist. He studied at two or three small Western colleges, served in the Civil War, and then taught geology in two Illinois universities. In 1867 he travelled in the Colorado Rockies and thenceforward for many years was busied with surveys and explorations of the Far West. From 1881 till 1894 he was director of the United States Geological Survey, resigning to become director of the Bureau of Anthropology. He made many important contributions to the sciences which interested him, publishing “Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries” (1875), “Report on the Geology of the Uinta Mountains” (1876), “Report on the Arid Region of the United States” (1879), “Introduction to the Study of the Indian Languages” (1880), “Studies in Sociology” (1887), “Canyons of the Colorado” (1895), and “Physiographic Processes, Physiographic Features, and Physiographic Regions of the United States” (1895).

_Daniel Garrison Brinton._--Daniel G. Brinton (1837-1899) of Philadelphia was one of the leading archæologists of the New World. Graduating at Yale in 1858 and at the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, in 1860, he served as a surgeon in the war and from 1867 to 1887 was editor of _The Medical and Surgical Reporter_. From 1886 until his death he was professor of American linguistics and archæology at the University of Pennsylvania. He has to his credit a long list of important books and papers, only a few of which can be mentioned here. He began to publish in 1859 (“The Floridian Peninsula, Its Literary History, Indian Tribes, and Antiquities”). From boyhood he took a deep interest in the study of the American Indians; and in 1868 he published “The Myths of the New World.” He also wrote, on Indian subjects, “American Hero Myths” (1882), “The American Race” (1892), and numerous ethnological and linguistic papers. He also both edited (for the most part) and published “The Library of Aboriginal American Literature” in eight volumes (1882-1885). In the controversies between science and theological dogma he was a pronounced radical. Along with his scientific labours Dr. Brinton found time for some studies in poetry, especially of Browning and Whitman.

_Noah Webster._--Among students of linguistic science the first to be mentioned in point of time, and one of the first in importance, is Noah Webster (1758-1843), a native of Hartford, Connecticut, and a graduate of Yale College, whose “Grammatical Institute of the English Language” (spelling-book, grammar, and reader) appeared in 1783-1785. These books had an immense sale. The grammar showed originality, but was partly superseded by Murray’s. Webster published also “Dissertations on the English Language” (1789), a more advanced “Philosophical and Practical Grammar of the English Language” (1807), and “Origin, History, and Connection of the Languages of Western Asia and of Europe” (1807); the last being one of the first fruits of Sir William Jones’ identification of Sanskrit in 1786. The great work of Webster’s life, however, was his “American Dictionary of the English Language,” first published in 1828. Revised in 1847, 1864, and 1890, this is now the “International” and enjoys a large sale. The edition of 1901 contains 2528 pages.

_Lindley Murray._--Lindley Murray (1745-1826), a native of Pennsylvania, made a fortune in trade at the time of the Revolution, and then settled at Holdgate, near York, England. Here he wrote his “Grammar of the English Language” (1795), which by 1816 had swollen to two volumes. In 1818 he published an “Abridgement,” which went through some six-score editions. It laid great stress on syntax, and was a terror to generations of students.

_Joseph Emerson Worcester._--For many years the only rival of Webster’s Dictionary was Worcester’s. Like Webster, Joseph Emerson Worcester (1784-1865) was a graduate of Yale College. After teaching for a time at Salem, Massachusetts, he settled at Cambridge. After various lexicographical labours, he issued “A Universal and Critical Dictionary” (1846), containing “in addition to the words found in Todd’s edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, nearly 27,000 words for which authorities are given.” In 1860 this was expanded into the quarto “Dictionary of the English Language,” which included about 104,000 words. In a memoir of Dr. Worcester, Ezra Abbot said:

The tendency of his mind was practical rather than speculative. As a lexicographer, he did not undertake to reform long-established anomalies in the English language: his aim was rather to preserve it from corruption; and his works have certainly contributed much to that end. In respect both to orthography and pronunciation, he took great pains to ascertain the best usage; and perhaps there is no lexicographer whose judgment respecting these matters in doubtful cases deserves higher consideration.

_Goold Brown._--Most of our grandfathers got their knowledge of English grammar from the text-books of Goold Brown (1791-1857). His education was obtained at the Friends’ School in Providence, Rhode Island, his birthplace. He became a successful teacher and for twenty years conducted an academy in New York City. His “Institutes of English Grammar” appeared in 1823 and with an elementary work had an enormous circulation. His “Grammar of English Grammars” (1851), which brought him wide reputation, has been called “the most exhaustive, most accurate, and most original treatise on the English language ever written.” This is absurdly high praise; yet the book is undoubtedly a monument of industry, and has been for many earnest souls “a court of last resort on matters grammatical.”

_George Perkins Marsh._--In his day a distinguished diplomatist and man of letters, George P. Marsh (1801-1882) made substantial contributions to philology. He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1820 and studied law. He soon turned to studies in language and in 1838 printed privately a translation of Rask’s “Icelandic Grammar.” His “Lectures on the English Language” (1861) were delivered originally at Columbia; his “Origin and History of the English Language” (1862) was a course of Lowell Institute lectures.