One who attempts to look beneath the surface cannot accept
this easy method of treatment. Beneath the surface new tendencies
develop long before they demand recognition; an institution may
be decaying long before its weakness is apparent. The American
Revolution began not with the Stamp Act but at least a century
earlier, as soon as the settlers realized that there were three
thousand miles of sea between England and the rude country in
which they found themselves; the Civil War began, if not in early
Virginia, with the "Dutch Man of Warre that sold us twenty
Negars," at least with Eli Whitney and his cotton gin.
Nevertheless, certain dates or short periods seem to be flowering
times. Apparently all at once a flood of invention, a change of
methods, a difference in organization, or a new psychology
manifests itself. And the decade of the Civil War does serve as a
landmark to mark the passing of one period in American life and
the beginning of another; especially in agriculture; and as
agriculture is the basic industry of the country it follows that
with its mutations the whole superstructure is also changed.
The United States which fought the Civil War was vastly different
from the United States which fronted the world at the close of
the Revolution. The scant four million people of 1790 had grown
to thirty-one and a half million.
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