'American Colossus' from H.W. Brands sweeps us back to a pivotal era

Plain Dealer guest writer By Plain Dealer guest writer The Plain Dealer
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on December 20, 2010 at 6:00 AM
brands.jpgAmerican Colossus, Doubleday, 614 pp., $35

By Alan Cate

Shortly after the Civil War, an elderly Harvard professor marveled that the conflict had created a "great gulf between what happened before in our century and what has happened since, or what is likely to happen hereafter. It does not seem to me as if I were living in the country in which I was born."

He was right. The war settled two issues that had bedeviled the republic from inception. The United States was one indivisible nation, not a confederation of sovereign states. And slavery was abolished.

Yet these profound changes were only the beginning. Much more was to come.

During the final third of the 19th century, the United States transitioned from a rural, agrarian, provincial, inward-looking country to an urban, industrial, pluralistic world power. H.W. Brands, twice a Pulitzer finalist for biographies of Ben Franklin and FDR, masterfully chronicles this transformation in his compelling "American Colossus."

In his prologue Brands notes the near-simultaneous publication of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" and the Declaration of Independence. He observes that "the dual manifestos of 1776 were also dueling manifestos" and argues that "tension between capitalism and democracy" has always been the defining characteristic of American life.

The book's subtitle, "The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900," indicates which of these Brands thinks gained the upper hand after the Civil War.

This sweeping narrative centers on four great, related phenomena: industrialization, immigration, westward expansion and urbanization. Linking them was "the capitalist revolution" that enabled the building of railroads and steel mills, attracted armies of foreigners to these shores, impelled pioneers across wide prairies and drew millions to teeming cities.

These developments led to, among other things, savage labor-capital strife, a nascent union movement and epic political corruption. This was also an era when Republican Civil War veterans from the Buckeye State stood an excellent chance of becoming president. No fewer than five made it. As a contemporary witticism had it: "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some simply come from Ohio."

Brands treats all this and much more. As such, his account serves admirably as a survey history of Gilded Age America.

Colorful portraits abound, notably of titans such as J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and the father-son duo of Cornelius and William Vanderbilt. The elder roared, "What do I care about the law? Hain't I got the power?" The younger memorably dismissed the public interest: "The public be damned."

Meanwhile the devout Rockefeller intoned that "the power to make money is a gift from God."

Indeed, a particular joy of "American Colossus" is Brands' ability to adduce telling quotations, as well as turn felicitous phrases. For instance, of another publicly pious industrial baron Brands remarks "he read his Bible religiously but kept his ledger books in a different drawer."

Brands concludes by foreshadowing the early 20th-century emergence of the Progressive Era. He portrays this looming "democratic counterrevolution" as another swing of the pendulum in the eternal struggle between democracy and capitalism.

Yet while detailing the wretched excesses of capitalism's post-Civil War triumph, he is fair-minded enough to concede that "the capitalist revolution was in many ways the best thing ever to befall" ordinary Americans. In other words, for better and for worse, capitalism made modern America.

Alan Cate teaches history at University School in Hunting Valley, Ohio.