Contents[1] [Volume Three]
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Parrington, Vernon Louis
Introduction: The Great Revolution
xxiii
I. [A New America in the Making: Rise of capitalistic industrialism submerging the older agrarianism, the Enlightenment, the Jacksonian frontier]
II. [Aristocracy Dead: The principle of democracy accepted, yet driving toward a plutocracy. A middle-class, urban civilization]
III. [Cleavages: Western agrarianism; Eastern capitalism. The South confused, bitter, hesitant. Expansion of the frontier and the cities. The swift extension of the psychology of the city]
IV. [Changing Patterns of Thought: (1) From the frontier came the doctrine of preëmption, exploitation, progress; (2) From the impact of science came the dissipation of the Enlightenment and a spirit of realism; (3) From European proletarian philosophies came a new social theory]
V. [Certain Drifts: to unity, to realism, to criticism]
Book I: Changing America
Changes in traditional economies after the Civil War. The rise of American industrialism and the conquest of nature by science. The age of the middle class. The last flare-up of the spirit of the frontier
Part I
The Gilded Age
I. The American Scene
I. Free America: Half a continent awaiting preëmption; new raw materials—oil, steel, copper, coal. A new technique of exploitation—capital, transportation, machinery. Philosophy embraced in three ideals: preëmption, exploitation, progress
II. Figures of Earth: The flowering of Jacksonian frontier spirit, simplified to the acquisitive instinct; a crude, dynamic energy
10
III. Politics and the Fairy Godmother: The struggle within the Republican Party; the gospel of Whiggery and the triumph of the American System, Henry Clay
17
IV. The Great Barbecue: How capitalism and agrarianism fared—the Homestead Act and railway grants. The shift from governmental to private control
23
V. Folk Heroes
26
1. General Grant
27
2. Jay Cooke
31
3. Charles A. Dana
43
II. The Culture of the Seventies: With the decay of aristocratic controls, a loss of unity. Three strands: aristocratic, romantic, frontier
48
I. New England in Decay: The Genteel Tradition and the drift away
50
1. Thomas Bailey Aldrich and the Genteel
54
2. The New England Scene: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps; Harriet Beecher Stowe; Sarah Orne Jewett; Mary Wilkins Freeman
60
II. The Afterglow of the Enlightenment—Walt Whitman
69