The Evolution of a Liberal Capitalist Civilization

Abstract

The Civil War marked a decisive stage in the evolution of a society unlike any which the world had known. The defeat of the rural society of the South left the masters of the North in undisputed control of the nation, meant the acceptance of the Northern ideology as the national ideology, and placed the businessman firmly in the centre of the American stage. It is easier to generalize about this triumphant civilization than to understand it. It placed a high value upon material success, but it believed itself to be thoroughly idealistic. It admired business efficiency but accepted government which was usually inefficient and often corrupt. It tolerated the flamboyance of wealth but retained a strict moral code. It achieved much in the realm of popular and higher education but accorded little prestige to the intellectual. Its thriving new cities could show some of the worst slums and its prosperous business and residential areas some of the ugliest architecture in the world. Sensitive Americans joined with upper-class Englishmen to attack the manners and the hypocrisy of the age; agrarian radicals piled up a vocabulary of abuse against the masters of capital which was to be appropriated by modern Marxists; conflicts between capital and labour sometimes attained a savagery beyond anything which Europe could show.