America: The Last Best Hope (Volume II): From a World at War to the Triumph of Freedom (America: the Last Best Hope)

Respected scholar William Bennett reacquaints America with its heritage in the second volume of America: The Last Best Hope (Volume II). This engaging narrative slices through the cobwebs of time, memory, and prevailing cynicism to reinvigorate America with an informed patriotism.While national test scores reveal that American students know startlingly little about their history, former U.S. Education Secretary William J. Bennett offers one of the most gripping and memorable versions of the American story in print. Bennett brings American history to life with stories such as:when Time magazine named Hitler man of the yearEisenhower's bold actions documenting the horrors of the HolocaustNixon's comic opera uniforms for White House guardsReagan's most famous example of just saying'No'From upheavals of the Great Depression and WWII to the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, from the high drama of the Space Race to the gut-wrenching tension of the Cold War, Bennett slices through the cobwebs of time, memory, and prevailing cynicism to reinvigorate America with an informed patriotism.Praise for America: The Last Best Hope'This is the American history that Abraham Lincoln has long awaited.'-Harry V. Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided'Bennett has a gift for choosing the pithy, revealing anecdote and for providing fresh character sketches and critical analyses of the leading figures. This is an American history that adults will find refreshing and enlightening and that younger readers will find a darn good read.'-Michael Barone, US News & World Report'A worthy and necessary book for our time.'-Michael J. Lewis, Commentary'Bennett... has a strong sense of narrative, a flair for anecdote and a lively style. And the American story really is a remarkable one, filled with its share of brilliant leaders and tragic mistakes. Bennett brings that story to life.'-Alan Wolfe, The Washington Post'The role of history is to inform, inspire, and sometimes provoke us, which is why Bill Bennett's wonderfully readable book is so important. He puts our nation's triumphs, along with its lapses, into the context of a narrative about the progress of freedom. Every now and then it's useful to be reminded that we are a fortunate people, blessed with generations of leaders who repeatedly renewed the meaning of America.'-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life'The importance of America: The Last Best Hope probably exceeds anything Dr. Bennett has ever written, and it is more elegantly crafted and eminently readable than any comprehensive work of history I've read in a very long time. It's silly to compare great works of history to great novels, but this book truly is a page-turner.'-Brad Miner, American Compass'This lively book acknowledges mistakes and shortcomings, yet patriotically asserts that the American experiment in democracy is still a success story.'-School Library Journal

Chapter One

An Age More Golden Than Gilded? (1877-1897)

Why Great Men Are Not Chosen President. That was an important theme of Lord Bryce's two-volume study, The American Commonwealth. Many Americans then and since have uncritically accepted the British nobleman's dismissive commentary on the Great Republic. Today, we can take up Lord Bryce's challenge and suggest that Britain's rulers at that time were certainly no greater than our elected presidents. One thing should be clear from this study of our nation's experience: we Americans chose honorable, intelligent, and decent men. In the Executive Mansion in this era, we had Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, and McKinley. All these presidents have been denigrated by historians. "Great" they may not have been, but most countries in the world today would consider themselves blessed to have been governed by such men. Why should we Americans not appreciate them more?

I. A Gilded Age?

"The King of Frauds!" screamed the headlines that broke the story of the Crdit Mobilier story in 1872. "Colossal Bribery," the popular press howled. The scandal that ensued helped to tarnish the monumental achievement of the Transcontinental Railroad. For many Americans, the foreign name for the financing company made the whole thing even more fishy. For generations, American students have been taught that the "driving of the Golden Spike" was only accomplished at the cost of lining the pockets of compromised politicians with cash. Clearly, there was corruption involved in the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. Still, the project that Abraham Lincoln embraced and promoted achieved its goal in just seven years. In Canada, corruption abounded, too, and it took their government-run rail construction twenty years to complete. Russia's Trans-Siberian Railroad took forty years and was also awash in corruption.

Government grants to the railroads for construction were not gifts. They were loans intended to be paid back. And paid back they were-with interest. By 1898, the U.S. government was repaid $63,023,512 in principal and $104,722,978 in interest. To Harvard Professor Hugo Meyer, the U.S. taxpayer did not get bilked in the building of the Transcontinental Railroad: "For the government, the whole outcome has been financially not less than brilliant." If the government's interest had only been the investment, it would have been a great success. But we got a great national institution that helped immeasurably to bind up the nation's wounds from the Civil War. Those trains not only carried freight further and cheaper, reducing the price of goods, and not only carried immigrants "yearning to breathe" free, those trains also carried newspapers whose headlines deplored the very rails that made them truly national journals.

Railroads profoundly changed America. Until 1883, there were no time zones as we know them today. "Noon" occurred in each locality when the sun reached its zenith. Railroad schedules forced Congress to act to create "standard time zones." This is one of the measures for which railroads "lobbied" Congress. Should we consider this corruption? Hardly.

We have been taught that the last part of the nineteenth century was, in Mark Twain's inimitable phrase, a "Gilded Age." Its glitter, Twain winked, was only on the surface, only a thin veneer of shininess. The New York Times slammed the captains of industry who built great corporations as "robber barons." The title stuck. But Harper's Weekly saw through the propaganda: "Wherever [Commodore Vanderbilt] 'laid on' an opposition line, the fares were instantly reduced, and however he bought out his opponents ... or they bought him out, the fares were never again raised to the old standard." It was the American people who benefited from those lower fares. "Barons" had never before stooped to so perfectly serve the needs of the little guy.

Railroads were tying the country together. From 1870 to 1900, miles of rail increased from 52,922 to 193,346. Railroads dominated American life for one hundred years. Steel production went from a mere 1,643 tons in 1867 to a phenomenal 7,156,957 tons in 1897. The United States, by the end of the century, outstripped both Germany and Great Britain in steel production-a fact of far-reaching political and military significance. American inventiveness in this period-telephones, light bulbs, phonographs, sewing machines, typewriters, and automobiles-was not only a marvel in itself and not only changed Americans' lives forever, but it helped transform the world economy.

In saying all this, we must not lose sight of the fact that all the growth was not equally distributed throughout the country. It never is. The South, devastated by war, suffered from economic backwardness and from unjust Jim Crow laws that kept the races legally separated. They barred the way to progress for black and white Southerners alike. Immigrants piled into slums in the cities of the North. These blighted neighborhoods appalled reformers. The average immigrant family got out of the slums in less than fifteen years, and even these eyesores were often better than the grinding poverty they had known in the "Old Country." There is no denying there was corruption of our political system in the late nineteenth century. But, then as now, free government and a free press unleash the vast engines of reform.

II. Reform, Roosevelts, and Reaction

President Rutherford B. Hayes was scorned as Rutherfraud when an electoral commission handed him the presidency just two days before inauguration day in 1877. Hayes helped his own case with the American people. Nothing about his conduct of his office justified the word fraud. Upright, intelligent, and dignified, he formed a distinguished cabinet. He included such reformers as German immigrant Carl Schurz and William Evarts. Evarts's legal skill had saved Andrew Johnson from removal during the impeachment. Republican Party regulars, known as Stalwarts, were horrified. They were even more upset when Hayes named a former Confederate to his cabinet. He chose David M. Key of Tennessee as postmaster general. Hayes also elevated Kentucky's John Marshall Harlan to the U.S. Supreme Court. An ex-slaveholder, Harlan began a long and distinguished career committed to equal rights for all Americans. Of great symbolic importance was Hayes's nomination of Frederick Douglass to be U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia. It was the highest and most prominent appointive position yet attained by a black American.

Hayes's clean government record led some of the more cynical believers in the "spoils" system to sneer at him as "Granny Hayes." And these hardened party politicos were even more put off when the beautiful and intelligent first lady declined to serve alcohol at the Executive Mansion. "Lemonade Lucy" was a gracious and accomplished hostess. Her performance of her official duties was as well respected by Americans as that of Mrs. Julia Dent Grant. During Mrs. Hayes's years in the Executive Mansion, the "water flowed like champagne."

Because he had committed to serving only one term, Hayes did not flinch from fighting with Stalwarts in his own party over patronage positions. Civil service reform was a rising issue in the nation. Not all the Stalwarts were dull party hacks. With parliamentary skill and devilish wit, regulars like New York Senator Roscoe Conkling punctured what they saw as moralistic posturing for "snivel service reform." Conkling opposed his own president's efforts to appoint more public officials on the basis of merit and fewer in return for service to the party. "When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he was unconscious of the then underdeveloped capabilities and uses of the word 'reform.'"

Conkling's opposition to Hayes succeeded in delaying the "reform" effort. New York State was in the 1880s as big an electoral prize as California is today. Powerful bosses like Conkling were not to be trifled with. Even so, Hayes removed Chester Alan Arthur as collector of the Port of New York. Despite the unimportant-sounding title, this position was actually the premium patronage "plum" in the country. Tall and distinguished looking, with great, bushy side whiskers, Arthur was a capable public official. But the important thing was he was Conkling's man.

To replace Conkling's ally, Hayes nominated Theodore Roosevelt Sr. (father of TR). He sent Roosevelt's name to the Senate in October 1878. Conkling appealed to his fellow lawmakers to support the tradition of "senatorial courtesy." (This tradition means that a president will not appoint an official in a state if he does not have the support of the U.S. senator from that state, if they are of the same party. It continues to our day.) Conkling knew he was in the fight of his life. He snarled at the reformers, branding them "man milliners"-a not-too-veiled reference to homosexuals.

Theodore Roosevelt Sr. was not a career politician. He was a scion of one of New York's great Dutch families. A dedicated husband, father, and community leader, the senior Roosevelt hated the rough-and-tumble of politics. He was completely unprepared to be in the middle of a national battle royal, especially an ugly political row over presidential patronage. The senior Roosevelt's reaction to political and personal attack was to draw inward. His nomination was voted down by Conkling's friends in the Senate, 31-25. The man called "Greatheart" by his wide circle of admiring family and friends kept the hurt inside. Young Theodore wrote to his sister Bamie after their father's rejection: "We have been very fortunate in having a father whom we can love and respect more than any man in the world." When his father died of stomach cancer just four months later, young Theodore was stunned and almost broken. It would have been hard for TR not to believe that the brutal confirmation fight his revered father had been through had killed him. For the rest of his life, Theodore Roosevelt would battle "the vested interests" with a passion and a force that defied logical analysis.

Hayes's last years in office were stormy. Despite anti-Chinese riots in San Francisco and heavy pressure to sign the bill, he vetoed a Chinese Exclusion Act passed by Democrats in 1879. He also vetoed Democrats' attempts to roll back black voters' rights in the South. Hayes's Ohio friend, Congressman James A. Garfield, called this veto message by far the ablest he had ever produced. Hayes also expressed increasing concern for the status of marriage in the United States. He went so far as to ask Congress to bar polygamists from holding office or serving on juries.

By committing himself in advance to only one term, Hayes limited his political clout. Nonetheless, he took quiet satisfaction in the 1880 nomination of his close friend to succeed him. James A. Garfield was selected by Republican delegates following the collapse of a third-term boom for ex- President Grant. Hayes was even philosophical when the pro-Grant Stalwart faction of the Republican Party put the ousted Chester Alan Arthur on the ticket as the vice presidential nominee. Ohio and New York had become the keys to the election of a president, and the Republicans had balanced their ticket with care.

Garfield was elected over a lackluster Democrat, Winfield Scott Hancock. Like old General Winfield Scott, Hancock had been a great general but a poor candidate. The Garfield-Arthur ticket won by a mere 9,500 votes. But at least they had won. The Garfield campaign stressed his stellar war record. They recirculated the dramatic story of Garfield's ride into a panicked crowd on Wall Street. It was the day news came of Lincoln's assassination. Bravely, Garfield had charged into the crowd, calming them with these words: "Fellow citizens! God reigns and the government at Washington lives!" His timely action probably averted a riot or financial collapse. Garfield was a multitalented man. Among large immigrant audiences, he spoke German. He would entertain his friends by having them call out Shakespeare quotations. He would then simultaneously translate them into Latin and Greek, writing them out with both hands.

The country had little chance to embrace this gifted man. On 2 July 1881, barely four months after he was inaugurated, a disgruntled office seeker shot Garfield. Charles A. Guiteau stalked the young president into Washington's Union Station. Crying, "I'm a Stalwart and now Arthur is president," he shot Garfield in the back. The president lingered throughout the brutally hot Washington summer. Various doctors came to the Executive Mansion to try their skills. Still, the president weakened. Urgently, they called Alexander Graham Bell to come and use his telephone equipment to locate the bullet. "The whole world watched and hopes and fears filled every passing hour. No one could venture to predict the end so long as the position of the bullet remained unknown," Bell recalled. Bell was frustrated when he could hear nothing but static. Bell even went so far as to buy a slab of meat and fire a bullet into it. His equipment performed flawlessly. But what the president's doctors had neglected to tell Bell was that the stricken Garfield lay on a steel-spring mattress. This caused static on the line. Some of those who had put their unwashed fingers into the president's wound now leaked word of Bell's failure to the press. Some in the press even accused Bell of being a faker. Poor Bell was to learn that he had greater freedom in America than in his native Scotland, but he also lacked the protections of Britain's stringent libel laws.

America had survived her second presidential assassination in just sixteen years. Guiteau was soon tried, convicted, and hanged. There were lingering questions about whether President Arthur would align himself with Conkling and the Stalwarts, or whether he would follow the path of reform laid out in Garfield's all-too-brief tenure. Arthur was an urbane New Yorker, known to his friends as "Our Chet." Fashionable and suave of manner, he soon returned champagne and whiskey to presidential receptions. That's all the Stalwarts got. Arthur stunned them by signing the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883. Arthur also committed the nation to a naval rebuilding program. Surely, he had seen the need when he served as collector of the Port of New York.

Arthur had burned too many bridges with the movers and shakers of the Republican Party, however, to be considered for a second term. We now know that he was secretly suffering from Bright's disease, a kidney malfunction. He died soon after leaving the White House. A contemporary put it well: "I am only one in fifty-five million, still in the opinion of this one fifty-five millionth, it would be hard to better President Arthur's administration." Actually, Mark Twain spoke for far more than his one voice. As a publisher generously said of Arthur: "No man ever entered the presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired ... more generally respected."

(Continues...)

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