"American history can not be understood--no true interpretation of the events of American life can be given, except by a profound study of English history and English life. There are two great facts in the history of England:
1st. An apparent social stagnation, exhibited by the population for much more than a thousand years, from the fifth to the end of the sixteenth century.
2nd. A wonderful material and intellectual development displayed subsequently.*

Ecclesiaticism and loyalty were the early guides of Anglo-Norman society.* Of the great mass of people in the twelfth century, it may be said that their life was no more than waiting for death. The thought of the nation was turned to religion; in that it found consolation and rest.* What kind of system that could have been which was pretending to guide and develop society, and which must be held responsible for this prodigious destruction, excelling, in its insidious result, war, pestilence, and famine combined--insidious, for men were actually believing that it secured their highest temporal interests.* Freedom of thought was sternly repressed. The intention was to prepare men for life in another world, not to render them prosperous and happy in this.*

When Columbus made his successful voyage, the immediate effect of the discovery of America was that the commercial front of Europe was changed. It is hardly possible for us now to appreciate the wonderful social influence of that event. If during the Crusades multitudes rushed into Palestine to secure, as the reward of their piety and privation in this life, happiness in the next, so now there was a delirium for obtaining an instant, a present individual prosperity.*

In England successful commerce led at once to a new distribution of population. Individualism was rapidly developed. Self-interest displaced loyalty. A class of men, steadily increasing in political power from that day to this, gradually emerged, trained by their pursuits to large and liberal conceptions.*

For many previous years the enterprise of the nation had found gratification in invasions of France. But now things had changed. The useless nature of these military undertakings was universally recognized. Cressy, Poictiers, Agincourt, had lost their charm. A restless adventurer could see more profit in a voyage beyond seas than in bloody battles in France. He discovered that it was better for him to become rich by his own personal enterprise, and himself enjoy the fruits of his own exertions, than to shed his blood and waste his life in giving glory to his commander or his sovereign. It was impossible but that loyalty should decline, and self-interest take its place.* A change in national character occurred. Incentives, appealing to morals alone, lost their force; intellectual education began, and to every man, no matter what his station might be, the road to fortune was open. Individualism was fairly established.*

Ecclesiasticism tended to the controlling and governing of men, science sets them free. It favors the principle of individualism, inciting every one to seek his own advancement, and be the architect of his own fortune. In England, as soon as the artificial restraints of the old system were cast aside, and each person became an unshackled thinker and worker, the aggregate result, the national progress, was truly wonderful. Individualism, emerging gradually in the Middle Ages, receiving an impetus from the acts of Columbus and his successors, asserting its rights in the Reformation and in the English revolutions, allying itself to maritime enterprise, commercial undertakings, industrial art, . . . *

In the actual republics of Greece as in the fancied republic of Plato, man was considered only as an element of the state. The state was everything, man nothing. The Roman system was greatly superior to that. Rome regarded the province or kingdom she incorporated."*

AN ENGLISH LAWYER OR JUDGE Ninth-plate daguerreotype Probably taken in one of Richard Beard's English galleries c. 1845 (Click on the image to view further details)

"Aunty Moser Nov 27, 1852. Taken in her 103rd year of age." Sixth-plate daguerreotype Photographer unknown. (Click on the image to view further details)

The written provenance with this rather endearing character study of Aunty Moser documents her birth in the year 1749. She was 14 years old when the Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War. She was 27 years old when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. She was 40 years old when the 13 states ratified the Constitution of the United States.

"In 1700 there was not a single newspaper printed on the continent; in 1800 there were nearly 200.* In 1700 there were but two public libraries; one was in Massachusetts, the other in South Carolina. At the end of the century there were many hundreds.*

The early colonists developed their infant institutions with practically but little external control. The Atlantic Ocean served as a barrier to protect them from molestation. Perpetual wars and commotions in Western Europe drew attention from them. In favorable obscurity and oblivion the Cavalier and the Puritan devised their political forms. The coming of a new governor, the tampering with a charter, the arbitrary mandates of a king, had in reality little to do with the course that events were taking. On a free stage of action there was the largest personal liberty.*

The French war, as it is styled, involved great American interests, and is celebrated in American history not only because it introduced Washington as a military commander, but because it determined the destiny of America through the capture of Quebec by Wolfe, the conquest of Canada, and eventual cession, at the peace of Paris in 1763, of the Valley of the St. Lawrence and its dependencies to the English crown.*

For a long time the colonists experienced similar exterior pressure. At first they had to maintain themselves against the Indians; then they had a common enemy in the French; still later, both felt the tyranny of the mother country. A sentiment that it would be well for such feeble communities as they were to unite for mutual protection gradually gained strength."*

Robert Henderson must have been born about 1768. Scotland was united with England and Wales in 1707. As a youth during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Henderson likely watched events unfolding in America with a different perspective than the colonists across the ocean.

"Robert Henderson at 80 years of age" Sixth-plate daguerreotype Photographed by Hughes of Glasgow, Scotland. c 1848 (Click on the image to view further details)

"During the latter part of the seventeenth century, a very general denial that the crown had a right of taxation drew the feeble colonies together, and a sentiment that it was desirable to have some kind of union for mutual protection and common defense disseminated itself by degrees. It became an imperative necessity in 1765, when the Stamp Act was passed. In July, 1773, Dr. Franklin recommended in an official letter a general assembly or a Congress of all the colonies. The first step taken with that intention was by the House of Burgesses of Virginia, which, having been dissolved by the royal governor, met at Williamsburg, and there recommended the holding of a general Continental Congress, . . . the result being the assembly of the first Continental Congress at Philadelphia, 1774. The second Continental Congress (Philadelphia, May, 1775) was held by recommendation of the first.*

The attitude of a revolutionary government was assumed. An army and navy were created, and Washington was appointed commander-in-chief. On motion of Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, seconded by John Adams, of Massachusetts, the colonies were declared independent July 4th, 1776."*

"Grandmother Prudence Weld at age of 99" Sixth-plate daguerreotype Attributed to E Finch of Medina, NY. c. 1843 (Click on the image to view further details)

If this daguerreotype of Prudence Weld was taken in 1843, she would have been born about 1744--just one year after Thomas Jefferson. She was probably married by the time England's Parliament levied the Stamp Act, and busy raising her family during the Revolutionary War. When George Washington was inaugurated President of the United States, Prudence may already have become a grandmother.

"Under the pressure of the war, concessions and compromises were made. Virginia ceded her claims to the Northwestern Territory, giving an imperial domain to the Union, and thereby insuring its permanency. On March 1st, 1781, the Articles of Confederation were finally adopted by the states. A few years of trial demonstrated the practical inefficiency of the Confederation. The war had closed, independence and peace had been secured . . . It became apparent that too much power had been retained by the states, too little granted to Congress.*

The Constitution was at length ratified and adopted. The states gave up the distinctive attributes of sovereignty. The first Congress under it met at New York on the 4th of March, 1789, and in the next month Washington was inaugurated President of the United States."*

"There are three acts in the drama of American national life.
1st--The development of a sentiment of Unionism which in time gathered strength sufficient to convert a train of feeble colonies scattered along the Atlantic coast into a great and powerful nation.
2nd--The separation or differentiation of that nation, chiefly through the agency of climate, into two sections conveniently known as the North and the South, or the free and the slave powers.
3rd--The conflict of those powers for supremacy."*

"The moral grandeur of the first President was as strikingly manifested by his conduct in reference to the Constitution as by the events of the Revolutionary War.

Washington had shown that he could bear adversity with fortitude, and strike when his opportunity came with irresistible vigor. In a manner unparalleled in history, he had declined the blandishments of ambition, descending without reluctance from the plenitude of power. [Even] when, in the evening of his life, he was constrained to confess, "Perhaps we have had too good an opinion of human nature," . . . he recommended to his reluctant countrymen a distasteful centralization. He solemnly taught them that liberty can not exist without order, and that order implies restraint. Once clearly perceiving the inevitable course of events, . . . his chief solicitude was to guide what it was obviously impossible to avoid.*

From his appointment to the command of the Revolutionary army to the day of his death (1799), he is the central figure in the picture of American life. He dealt with two great political facts--the emancipation of his native country from foreign rule, and its subsequent political organization. He dealt successfully with both. Indeed, these were the two facts with which the generation in which he lived was concerned. They engrossed, almost to the exclusion of every thing else, the public attention."*

"Re-elected president at the close of his first term, the influence of Washington thoroughly consolidated the nation. In him the jarring and jealous states not only acknowledged, but claimed a common ruler. He was found to excel in peace as well as in war; and as he had been fearless in action, so he was wise in council. . . . Superior to all selfish considerations, he was, without reward, faithful to the interests of his country. Cool, deliberate, indefatigable, and of unsullied integrity, he was never envious of another's virtue, for he was conscious of his own; and happier even during life than most of the race of men, he surmounted the greatest of human difficulties--he silenced envy. Considering every thing as subordinate to truth, his statesmanship was simple--it consisted only of uprightness and straightforwardness. The majesty of his character was expressed in the austere severity of his countenance. As if he had been more than mortal man, the admiration that was cherished for his memory by his immediate successors has given place to veneration, a sentiment that will last as long as honor and justice, virtue and liberty, are prized by the human race."*

"Daguerreotype of a painting of George Washington" Quarter-plate daguerreotype Photographer unknown. c. 1852 (Click on the image to view further details)