is to the modern Cockney, or the Rome of Tiberius to the present
inhabitant of the Palentine Hill. Only sixty years have passed, but
with them has passed away civilization, with its modes of thought
and sentiment, its ethics and its politics. The country had
but one fifth of its present population. A third of our area was
still held by Mexico. Wealth was as yet the poet's dream or the
philosopher's night-mare. Commerce was a subordinate factor in
our civilization. Agriculture was the occupation of the people
and the source of wealth. Cotton was king not only in the field
of business, but in that of politics. The world still maintained
its attitude of patronizing condescension or haughty contempt toward
the dubious experiment of "broad and rampant democracy." Dickens
had just written his shallow twaddle about Yankee crudeness and
folly. Macaulay was soon to tell us that our Constitution was "all
sail and no anchor." DeTocqueville had but recently published his
appreciative estimate of the New World civilization. Americans knew
they had less admiration than they claimed and had lurking doubts
that there was some ground for the ill-concealed contempt of the Old
World toward the swaggering giant of the New, and a fixed resolve
to proclaim their supreme greatness with an energy and persistence
that would drown the sneers of all Europe. It was a time of
egotism, bluster and brag in our relation to the foreign world, and
of truckling submission in our home politics to a dominant power,
long since so completely whirled away by the storm of revolution,
that it is hard to realize that half a century ago the strongest
bowed to its will.

Douglas was in no sense a reformer or the preacher of a crusade.
He was ready to cheerfully accept the ethics of the time without
criticism or question. Political morality was at its nadir.