" As recently as a century ago, it used to be said of the
French army under the Empire, that every soldier carried the baton of
the Field-Marshal in his knapsack. And this ideal of equality and
individuality was fixed in the American mind.
Not that I for a moment mean to imply that in my belief the middle of
the last century, or the twenty years anterior to the Civil War, was a
species of golden age in our American annals. On the contrary, it was,
as I remember it, a phase of development very open to criticism; and
that in many respects. It was crude, self-conscious and self-assertive;
provincial and formative, rather than formed. Socially and materially
we were, compared with the present era of motors and parlor-cars, in the
"one-hoss shay" and stove-heated railroad-coach stage. Nevertheless,
what is now referred to as "predatory wealth" had not yet begun to
accumulate in few hands; much greater equality of condition prevailed;
nor was the "wage-earner" referred to as constituting a class distinct
from the holders of property. Thus the individual was then
encouraged,--whether in literature, in commerce, or in politics. In
other words, there being a free field, one man was held to be in all
respects the equal of the rest. Especially was what I have said true of
the Northern, or so-called Free States, as contrasted with the States of
the South, where the presence of African slavery distinctly affected
individual theories, no matter where or to what extent entertained.
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