Journal of Social Science Volume 45 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1907 Excerpt: ... 3. THE DRIFT OF EVENTS. BY MARTIN W. LITTLETON. In the development of a little more than a hundred years we have passed from a moral revolution to national and international materialism. We have gone through the periods of revolutionary patriotism, constitutional construction, administrative limitation, and moral expansion, and have reached the period in which man's desire for material wealth is the supreme motive of our race. If the first Americans fought and wrought for freedom, it was done under the strongest impulse of religious and civil liberty. If they gave power to the State and nation grudgingly, it was because the recollection of its abuse was fresh in their minds. If they were forced by irresistible events to form a more perfect union under the Constitution, they did it with much care to avoid making that union too powerful. If, year by year, they added interpretation and positive legislation to the powers of the general government, they did it under the whip and spur of a development which they could not control. If they set free the enslaved negroes and almost destroyed the Union in doing this, they did it under the gathering and increasing force of a moral revolt which became timely and inevitable on account of the admission of new States to the Union. Whatever doubt existed as to the growing power of the Union as a nation disappeared when it was seen how far the government had gone in the assertion of its authority in carrying on and concluding the war between the States. After the issues of the war were set definitely at rest and the country turned its attention to material development, we gradually took on, as a whole nation, the ambitions and appetites of people intent upon growing rich. Throughout all the years of our history the work of ...