America Aflame Quotes

“The Republicans did not set out to establish a strong national state or to facilitate the industrial revolution. They believed strongly in the American dream of hard work and upward mobility. They saw no contradiction between capital and labor, between wealth accumulation and equality. Even in the exigencies of war, they directed their legislation to their political base, the farmers and the small-town merchants. Their vision assumed the virtue of rural and small-town America. The majority of Republicans who enacted the legislation grew up on farms. Yet they created an industrial juggernaut that flung railroads across the continent and grew great cities from seaboard to seaboard that attracted thousands from those small towns and farms. These results must be counted among the most sterling examples of unintended consequences in American history.18”
― David R. Goldfield, America Aflame

“Fred Bailey, a young black runaway, changed his last name to Douglass in honor of Scott’s epic poem The Lady of the Lake. The hero of the epic was Lord James of Douglas, who was willing to give up his life to avert a bloody civil war between highlanders and lowlanders. Bailey’s black benefactor, Nathan Johnson of New Bedford, Massachusetts, suggested adding an extra s for good measure. Bailey would now be known as Frederick Douglass.”
― David R. Goldfield, America Aflame