Pig Iron

Historically, pig iron had been produced on “iron plantations” with sources of iron ore, large stands of trees that could be felled and converted to charcoal, limestone (or oyster shells), and water power sources to run the blast furnaces. If a plantation were sufficiently large, and the level of production were sufficiently restrained, the harvested timber would grow back in time to be cut again, making the plantation self-sustaining in fuel. When the costs of transportation were high, the raw materials needed to run a blast furnace could not be carried any appreciable distance if the furnace were to operate profitably. By contrast pig iron had sufficient value that it could be transported considerable distances and be sold at a profit. As the transportation costs fell, the furnace did not need to be located near all the inputs. Moreover, the use of steam power meant furnaces no longer needed to be near water-power sites. In 1860 this transition was in process.

Many producers of pig iron in 1860 still had their own sources of iron ore. The census enumerated 157 establishments that mined it in nine states, but these mines accounted for only 39.3 percent of the iron ore used in producing pig iron. In 1860 pig iron was made in only eighteen states, and the days had not yet arrived when a relatively small number of large blast furnaces would be fed iron ore carried long distances by rail and barge. Deposits of coal and iron ore in the Scranton, Pennsylvania, region led to the creation of a number of businesses including the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company and the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad Company. The iron and coal company used local resources to make iron products. The railroad company’s principal business was hauling coal to distant industries and cities; at the start of 1860 its rolling stock included 72 locomotives, 17 passenger cars, 369 freight cars, and 3,310 coal cars. Some of the otherwise empty coal cars returning to Scranton carried iron ore to the iron and coal company. Apparently the local ore was not of the best quality: an advertisement by the iron and coal company stated that the completion of the railroad brought to Scranton “Magnetic Ores from the best mines in New Jersey which, used in combination with other ores, produces a quality of Iron of superior strength, and of great durability”. By modifying the product, the company claimed, it turned a weakness into a competitive advantage.

Professional Officers

The years after the Mexican War offered few opportunities for career officers to exercise command under fire, and most of those involved battles with the Indians, who did not fight in the same manner as a conventional army. Moreover the Mexican War had been of a different scale than the Civil War. The American forces that engaged in the major battles in the Mexican War under the command of General Winfield Scott – Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Cherubusco, El Molino del Rey, and Chapultpec – numbered no more than 8,500 men and officers. The American forces that engaged in major battles under the command of General Zachary Taylor – Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and Buena Vista – were no more than about 6,600. The field armies of the Civil War consisted of tens of thousands of men, and none of the officers who led those armies had prior experience in commanding that many men. Thus the corps of professional officers had not gained experience that was relevant to their development as potential battle commanders. Most of the professional officers were competent; some were capable, and a few were gifted. The enduring problem for both the Federal and Confederate civilian leaders was to identify those military commanders whose performances would be consistently superior.

July 4, 1860

As the 1860 election campaign started the nation celebrated the eighty-fourth anniversary of Independence Day with cannon salutes at sunrise, midday and evening, church bells, parades, military drills, speeches, prayers, toasts, music and fireworks. In Richmond, Virginia the First Regiments, accompanied by Smith’s Band and Drum Corps, assembled at seven in the morning for a drill and parade and was dismissed at ten o’clock “thus avoiding all unnecessary exposure to the scorching rays of the noonday sun.” Fireworks and firearms caused at least 53 injuries in New York City.

Taos, in the New Mexico Territory, held its first major celebration of Independence Day. In the afternoon several hundred Indians from the Taos Pueblo “went through many of their quaint and fantastic dances in honor of our national jubilee.” The Fourth of July in Augusta, Georgia, involved a custom of unknown origin in which children in oversized clothing, referred to as the Fantastics, sang and played in the streets, asking for treats and playing tricks. In North Elba, New York, the Fourth was observed at John Brown’s grave by family members and others with readings of the Declaration of Independence and the Sermon on the Mount. In Boston the occasion featured an oration by Edward Everett.

In the featured race at the regatta in Providence, Rhode Island, the shell from Yale beat out the one from Brown. The Staunton Spectator of Staunton, Virginia, described the local Independence Day celebrations and observed that

In these days of disunion sentiment it is gratifying to witness a continued reverence for the day that gave birth to our great nation. It has often been asked, to which section would the glorious 4th of July belong, in the event of dissolution? We trust it may never become a practical question.

Charles Grandison Finney

The preachers of the Second Great Awakening softened doctrine with the message that salvation was available to all who sought God. Evangelical Christians used revival meetings – essentially political rallies in support of God’s candidacy – as an event to attract and entertain the curious and they used the press to engage large numbers individually through the printed word. Charles Grandison Finney, a noted revivalist and proponent of revivalist methods, advised ministers to study the measures used by politicians since their “object is to get up an excitement, and bring people out.” Reverend Finney urged people to use these methods not because they were pious or right but because they were “the appropriate application of mean to the end.” He continued:

The object of the ministry is to get all the people to feel that the devil has no right to rule this world, but that they ought all to give themselves to God, and vote in the Lord Jesus Christ as the governor of the universe.

"Empirical" an Epithet

Elisha Bartlett, professor of medicine at the University of Maryland, cautioned that causation lay beyond the reach of medical knowledge of the time, and he urged fellow physicians to base their therapies upon clinical experience rather than deduction from principles. Although to contemporary ears Professor Bartlett sounds prescient, his remarks were not typical of sentiments voiced within the profession at the time. Medicine is – and was in 1860 a body of knowledge accumulated through the experiences of prior years and generations. Although a physician’s body of received knowledge might have been based upon empirical experiences of prior generations, his practice was an informed undertaking based upon what he learned and knew, not an empirical undertaking based upon what he was deducting as he went along. In fact physicians used the word “empirical” as an epithet to describe and criticize medical treatment that was not based upon the established knowledge of orthodox medicine.

Bleeding, purging, and puking the patient remained primary medical therapies. Doctors removed large quantities of a patient’s blood by opening a vein with an instrument called a lancet. Smaller quantities of blood were removed by a process called cupping or by application of leeches. Physicians caused patients to purge their bowels by administering doses of calomel, a mercury compound that acted as a laxative. It had an antiseptic effect, but it was poisonous. The physician induced vomiting by applying doses of tartar emetic, an antimony compound that also had an antiseptic effect and was poisonous. During the decades leading up to 1860, “heroic” doses of tartar emetic and calomel were not uncommon.

Economic Matters

The fundamental transactions that make up the economic activity of American society have not changed materially since 1860: people buy and sell products and services, they rely upon financing as the universal lubricant to facilitate transactions, and the prices of publicly traded securities (stock and bonds) fluctuate in reaction to various events in anticipation of their expected effects upon profits and interests rates. By today’s standard the involvement of the government in ordering and regulating transactions and markets in 1860 was slight. Moreover, subsequent experience has shown that such ordering and regulation can be both beneficial and pernicious – beneficial when it penalizes fraud and corruption and fosters fairness and equality of access to economic resources and pernicious when marginal benefits are achieved at substantial cost or when artificial scarcities restrict access to economic resources. The various markets in 1860 operated well enough but were capable of substantial improvement, and the same judgment is valid today.

Phrenology

Phrenology also was a social philosophy drawn from a scientific hypothesis asserting that the laws of nature rewarded healthy behavior and punished unhealthy behavior, and the lives of individuals and society in general could be improved by discovering and teaching the laws of nature. This facet of phrenology encouraged education. Consistent with the appetite for popular entertainment, phrenology became an industry that provided both lectures about phrenology as a science and a social philosophy and demonstrations of phrenological examinations of living subjects, featuring interpretations of their characters from the shapes of their skulls. In addition practicing phrenologists analyzed individuals and offered them advice on how best to live their lives – the same services one might seek today from a therapist or counselor.

By 1860 phrenology as a scientific theory was in disrepute. Animal experiments failed to establish its claim that specific biological functions were located in specific parts of the brain. The complexity of the mental faculties that phrenology associated with these areas was criticized by those who believed that the basic mental functions were more fundamental than the various mental faculties described by phrenology. For example, one 1860 critique observed that phrenology included memory as an attribute of all the separate mental faculties – an observation that anticipated the better-known critique of phrenology written by William James in 1900, in which he said the portion of the brain competent to support a faculty described by phrenology “would need to be an entire brain in miniature”.

Phrenology had been introduced to the United States at a time when interest in public education was rising, so its emphasis on education as a means of improving individuals and society found a receptive audience. Horace Mann – who, as the first secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education (appointed in 1837) became a noted educational reformer – believed in phrenology. The apparent potential of phrenology as a social philosophy was great. It asserted that nature rewarded certain types of behavior and punished others, and these laws of nature were discoverable and could be taught. The primary expositor of this philosophy gave as an example the notion that a moderate diet combined with moderate physical and mental exercise promoted physical and mental health. Such observations were reasonable, but they did not necessarily support the assertions of the social philosophy based upon them. Nonetheless, the assertions of using education to improve society and that educational techniques could be used to bring the various faculties of the mind into a more productive balance had obvious appeal to reformers who sought to promote public education and improve the treatment of the insane.

Out of the Ordinary

Notwithstanding the strong societal pressures toward conformity with accepted sexual roles, the public had a fascination with people who stepped outside what was considered the norm. The stories of two remarkable women – one unknown and one well known – serve as examples. Charley, age 19, was arrested in New York City in 1856. Born Ellen London in New Orleans, on her fifteenth birthday she had put on men’s clothing and taken a job as a messboy on a riverboat; later she worked as a bartender New York City. Charley found that she got along better in men’s clothing and could get better wages. At five feet three inches tall, with her black hair cut short, she was described as a “perfect love of a fellow”. When she was arrested for prostitution, Charley was unemployed and was paying her way from her savings. The New York Times carried the news under the headline “An Unfeminine Freak – A Girl in Man’s Clothes” although the story and the tenor of the reporter’s questions reflected curiosity and sympathy. In the absence of any evidence to corroborate the charges, the magistrate dismissed them. Her true gender made public, Miss London said she planned to join her sister in California.

Eliza Gilbert’s career was somewhat different. Born in Ireland, she spent her early years in India among the British army families. Through her beauty, presence, and grace as a dancer – aided, no doubt, by her charm and genius for both self-promotion and reinventing herself – she gained fame in Europe under the name Lola Montez. Her successes and reversals were due principally to the facts that she flouted convention and defied established authority. She had liaisons with Franz Liszt and King Ludwig of Bavaria; the latter named her the Countess of Landsfeld. She fled Bavaria during the 1848 uprisings and eventually relocated to California, where she reestablished her fame as a dancer. She later became an actress and a popular lecturer, and she published a book of beauty tips and another with stories of love throughout the ages. The New York Times reported her appearances and mentioned her in its pages at least a half dozen times during 1860. Her ability to stay in the public eye, attract lecture audiences, and sell books indicated she was entertaining, and she maintained the public’s interest in her both because and in spite of her unconventional life. Today she would be considered a celebrity.

Militia

Independent militia companies rose in the absence of state militia service. The companies generally had fine uniforms and aspired to precision drilling that indicated a greater interest in martial display than martial prowess. In 1860 the Chicago Zouaves, numbering about 100 men, declared themselves the best-organized and drilled military company in the country and made a tour of the eastern United States to show off their abilities. Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth, a protégé of Abraham Lincoln, led the Chicago Zouaves. The touring company consisted of about 50 men and officers and an 18-piece band. According to the New York Times, “The full Zouave uniform consists of loose scarlet pants, with a gold cord over a blue stripe, high gaiters and leggings; blue vest with orange braid, and a peculiar pattern of moiré, antique facing; a jacket of blue with red and orange trimmings, and bell buttons, and a jaunty little red cap with black band and orange trimmings.” The Chicago Zouaves were met with great acclaim. During July and August 1860, with the presidential election campaign in full swing, they visited twenty cities and towns, including New York City, Boston, West Point, and Washington City, where they performed for President Buchanan.

Written and Printed Words

Mass media in 1860 took the form of the printed page. A handpress of the sort Benjamin Franklin used during the eighteenth century, still in limited use in 1860, could turn out 50 copies an hour. Steam presses used in 1860 could turn out more than 20,000 newspapers an hour. The advances in printing technology, however, had not eliminated the tedious work required to prepare to print a page of text: each letter was an individual piece of metal type picked and positioned by a compositor’s hand.

The capacity to produce printed materials existed in all states in 1860, although the northern states had a proportionally larger portion of the printing industry. In 1860, printing required paper, and the papermaking industry was widespread although not so nearly ubiquitous as printing. Only 15 of 19 northern states and 8 of 15 southern states had firms that made paper. The industry produced paper worth $20.1 million, of which 91.3 percent was made in the northern states.

The volume of paper produced in the United States indicated the importance of print media in the government and society. In 1856 the United States had a population comparable to the populations of Britain and France but produced two to three times as much paper per capita as those countries – the United States produced 6.4 tons of paper per 10,000 people while Britain produced 2.4 tons and France produced 2.0 tons.

No Gifts of Prophesy

The men who approved and signed the Declaration of Independence did not possess any gifts of prophecy of which we are aware, but having created a nation that consisted principally of towns and farms arrayed across a thin strip of land along the Atlantic coast of North America, they probably did not foresee that in 1860, the eighty-fourth year of Independence, the United States would stretch across the continent, the settled eastern portion would extend to and across the Mississippi River, and that two states on the Pacific coast would be organized and admitted to the union. They knew about water power, steam power, and electricity – Benjamin Franklin had become an international celebrity for his experiments that established that lightning was electricity. They knew as well that large-scale manufacturing was expanding in Europe. Some of them, no doubt, regarded those factories as “dark Satanic Mills” (William Blake’s phrase from a few decades later), but we cannot reasonably expect that they would have anticipated the degree to which these mechanical forces and this means of organizing production would transform and bind the expanding nation together with a wealth of manufacturing, economical transportation, and telegraphic communication.