United States (U.S.A.)

UNITED STATES (UNITED STATES A.). - A confederation of 48 states, one federal district (D. C.) and two territories (Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands), on which depend, in America, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands (Antilles) and the Canal Zone (of Panama), and in Oceania some of the Samoan Islands and Guam (Marianas), besides the islands of Micronesia formerly under Japanese mandate, which the U. S. A. hold in trusteeship.

I. GEOGRAPHY

Even considered only for the extent of their metropolitan territory (7,827,076 sq. km., including 117,207 sq. km. of inland waters, but excluding 156,172 sq. km. belonging to the federal portion of the Great Lakes, which the U.S.A. share with neighboring Canada), the U.S.A. rank among the major powers of the earth. Counting Alaska as well (destined to form the 49th State of the Union), this surface rises to 9.5 million sq. km. (1/16 of the emerged lands). Combining metropolitan territory and dependencies together, the U.S.A. exceed 11 million sq. km., but they drop to 4th place in the world, after the British Commonwealth, the U.S.S.R. and the French Union, even though they dispose of a surface greater than the whole of Europe.

By the position of their metropolitan territory, the U.S.A. differ from the other major world powers in being in direct contact with only two other States - Canada to the N., Mexico to the S. (whose frontiers are for the most part conventional) - notwithstanding that their international stature involves them in the political problems of every corner of the earth. Such an ample territory, which alone occupies more than 1/3 of the North American continent, and far more than its ecumenical area, cannot fail to present notable regional differences. In substance, however, its structure is rather simple: a great median plain area, stretching from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, which two mountain strips flank from the W. (Pacific) and from the E. (Atlantic), segregating it from direct oceanic influence. Of the two strips, the eastern one, more slender (Appalachians or Alleghanies), constituted by a bundle of parallel ridges, separated by broad longitudinal valleys and extending for ca. 1600 km. with a width of 70-200, rises a little beyond 2000 m. and preserves an aspect rather of medium than of high mountain, with rounded ridges and valleys and little pronounced slopes. The Appalachians are faced toward the nearby coast by a platform (Piedmont) a few hundred meters high, from which the rivers plunge in a series of waterfalls (Fall line) onto the coastal fringe (Coastal plain). This gradually narrows from S. to N., where it is cut into broad bays, which correspond to the lower valleys of the major rivers (Hudson, Delaware, Chesapeake).

The western highlands, incomparably more extensive, consist of at least three mountain bundles, one of them internal, which from the Canadian border pushes as far as the Rio Grande (Rocky Mountains), and two close to the Pacific coast, separated from the first by means of a series of plateaus of differing character (the basaltic tableland of the Columbia to the N., the arid one of Colorado to the S., cut by deep cañons, and, between the two, the Great Basin, a vast complex of reliefs and basins, dotted with marshes and salt lakes). Despite their height (numerous peaks exceed 4000 m.), not even the Rockies closely recall the Alps here: the forms are, as a rule, gentler, and, owing to the relative scarcity of rains, there is less abundance of waters, glaciers and forests. By contrast, the double mountain strip that rises along the Pacific is copiously watered by the sea winds from the SW.; therefore the reliefs there are clad in splendid forests and glaciers are more frequent, locally. A series of broad valley furrows (Great Valley of California, Puget Sound) detaches from the outermost coastal chains that one, rich in volcanoes, which takes the name of Cascade Range (Mt. Shasta, m. 4390) and the Sierra Nevada (Mt. Whitney, m. 4420) which continues it to the S.

The central plains, which constitute, in substance, the basin of the Mississippi, merit that name only in correspondence with the lower course of the latter; for the rest, and especially between the Mississippi and the Rockies, they consist of a broad plateau, which the tributaries of the rivers divide into strips, isolated by deep valleys. The 100th meridian W. Greenwich, approximately, distinguishes there an eastern region more humid and suited to cultivation (Prairies), from the western one in which the steppe dominates, with an essentially pastoral vocation (Great Plains).

To the notable variety of topographic conditions there correspond, naturally, climatic differences; nevertheless the greater part of the U.S.A. (to the E. of the Rockies) is characterized by temperate-continental regimes, with rains predominantly in summer (winter in the States of the S.), which decrease from the Atlantic toward the W. On the internal plateaus these conditions are exacerbated, determining sub-desert or desert climates, while in the

In the circum-Pacific belt the rains are more copious and generally fall in winter, but with a tendency to decrease again toward the south (California). In general, the coastal countries here have a Mediterranean-type climate, milder and more uniform than those on the Atlantic, whose conditions, in turn, prove in this respect less mild and more changeable than those of European countries at the same latitude. Moreover, the regions near the Atlantic are often devastated by the terrible cyclones that form in the Caribbean Sea and cross the West Indies, the eastern U.S.A. and the North Atlantic. Toward the south, along the Atlantic coast (Florida and the Gulf of Mexico), the climate takes on an increasingly distinctly subtropical character, with intense heat and rather abundant precipitation.

The territory of the U.S.A. can thus be divided, from the physical-economic point of view, into four major units: in the north, east and center a temperate-humid region, with well-developed agriculture, and in particular cereal growing, and livestock raising; in the south a subtropical region, which yields cotton, rice and tobacco; in the west, an arid region, in which alongside livestock raising cereal growing is nevertheless possible with artificial irrigation; and on the Pacific, a region of Mediterranean character, in which citrus fruits, vines and fruit trees above all thrive. Each of these regions possesses mineral reserves in greater or lesser abundance. But the exploitation of these riches has not reached the same level everywhere, so that, despite the great impetus given to every kind of economic activity, especially as a result of the last two great world wars, the U.S.A. still retain, over fairly extensive areas, the appearance of a new country.

Moreover, mass colonization began rather late. At the time of discovery, the Indians living in the territory of the U.S.A. did not exceed one million, and the total population, which was about 3 million in 1776 (at the proclamation of independence), barely exceeded 23 million in 1853, when the metropolitan territory reached its present extent. But from 1820 to 1930 more than 37 million individuals immigrated to the U.S.A. (8 million in the decade 1900-11 alone), among whom at first English, Scots, Irish, Germans, Scandinavians and Finns predominated, and later Italians, Slavs, Jews and Hungarians. According to the latest census (1950), the population amounts to 150.7 million inhabitants, of whom Negroes (numerous especially in the southern and southeastern regions) form approximately 10%, Indians (reduced to a few hundred thousand individuals) barely 2%, while a high percentage (impossible to calculate exactly) is represented by those born abroad, or by foreign parents (nearly 7 million Germans, 4 1/2 million Italians, over 3 million Irish and as many Poles and Canadians, etc.). The population density (19 per sq. km.) is rather low (slightly higher than that of Sweden), but the differences from region to region are notable: while the western highlands are almost depopulated (fewer than 1 inhabitant per sq. km. in the State of Nevada), the Atlantic states have indices even above 200 inhabitants per sq. km. (Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts). Taking into account the territories controlled by the U.S.A., their population rose (1951) to 155.4 million inhabitants, of whom 2.5 in America (2.2 in Puerto Rico) and 635 thousand in Oceania.

As for economic development (and indeed also from the political-military point of view), there is no doubt that the U.S.A. today represent the greatest world power, which is a consequence not only of the proportion that falls to them in the totality of natural resources of every kind, in a new country and open, at least at first, to mass collaboration, and permeated ab origine by an unlimited spirit of initiative, as well as of the scale of magnitude on which these resources could be exploited, but also of a technical progress that general well-being and the aspiration to individual gain have brought to a very high level, both average and absolute.

The tendency to achieve in every form of activity the maximum output with the minimum employment of human labor, and therefore on the basis of a rational planning that takes into account all the factors of production and stimulates it with the help of an ever more widespread and efficient mechanization, is visible also in agriculture, which remains, despite the tremendous industrial development, one of the most solid foundations of the national economy. In 1950 agriculture absorbed only 17% of the active population (10% during the Second World War), but the 8.3 million employed use about 10 million motorized means. Of the United States territory less than 1/5 is cultivated (and 4/5 in the eastern half of the country alone): yet the U.S.A. harvest, among other things, from 50 to 60% of the corn, from 1/5 to 1/3 of the cotton, more than 1/4 of the tobacco, from 1/5 to 1/4 of the oats, from 1/6 to 1/7 of the wheat produced in the whole world. More than half of the arable land (184.1 million hectares) is destined for cereals and yields in the first place corn (from 35 million tons in 1934-38 to 79 in 1950; the corresponding figures will also be given hereafter in millions of tons), followed, in decreasing order of quantities produced, by wheat (19.5-27.5), oats (14.0-21.5), barley (45-65.3), rice (9.6-17.2) and rye (10.3-5.7). While corn is consumed entirely within the country, wheat allows a notable export (6.5; the highest figure among all world exporters, in 1950).

After cereals comes, in importance, cotton, cultivated in the southeastern states (5.8-2.1 of fiber; 4.0-6.0 of seed): 1/2 of the fiber production and almost the entire seed (oil) production are absorbed by the domestic market. Also notable are the crops of soybeans (1.2-7.8) and flax (0.2-1). For tobacco, the U.S.A. are at the head both of production (0.6-0.9) and of world export, while for sugar the production of sugar beet and that of cane still fail to satisfy national consumption. Fruit growing has had great development (California, Florida, the Great Lakes region), which feeds a flourishing industry; alongside citrus fruits, California produces grapes (16 million hl., as much as Spanish production in 1950), destined in part for winemaking. Reduced, because of intensive reforestation, is the output of the forests, now limited to the Pacific states (douglas fir) and to Florida (pitch pine), which nevertheless gives rise to substantial industries (paper, furniture), even if no longer sufficient for the domestic market.

Agriculture and livestock raising are closely linked: by number of head (78.3 million; a figure surpassed only by India) and by the importance of the industrial production connected with it, cattle come first, raised especially in the central states (meat) and northeastern states (milk), followed by swine (57.1; first place in the world), characteristic of the corn region, sheep (31.7), equines (6.0 horses; 2.3 mules), and goats (2.4). Fishing is also flourishing: for certain specialties (oysters, sardines, salmon) the U.S.A. occupy one of the first, or indeed the first place in the world.

To this solid agrarian structure and to the accessory activities that complete it there is joined an even more grandiose industrial expansion, whose possibilities appear practically unlimited, given the extraordinary abundance and variety of the mineral resources at the disposal of the U.S.A. Productive materials of energy, in the first place: coal (the U.S.A. extract more than 1/3 of the world quantity: 505 million tons in 1950, of which 1/2 from the Appalachian deposits) and petroleum (270 million tons, 53% of the world total), to which must be added hydroelectric resources, estimated at 45 million HP and which yielded, in 1950, a production of 590 million HP (1st place in the world).

Of the most important minerals destined for industrial processing, the U.S.A. lack, wholly or in part, only tin, manganese, chromium, nickel, and uranium; for all the others the national production is as a rule equal to the need, and in many cases exceeds it. Iron, copper and zinc are produced in a measure that touches or surpasses half of the world quantity. The first comes for the most part from the regions of Lake Superior and from Alabama; the second especially from the western plateaus, which also yield lead (from 1/4 to 1/3 of the world total) and silver (of which the U.S.A. are the largest producers after Mexico); the third from Missouri. Besides in California, it is now extracted in Colorado and in South Dakota (60 thousand kg.; 4th place in the world); abundant productions are also offered by bauxites, sulphur, phosphates and potash.

By their industrial development the U.S.A. leave far behind all the other countries of the world: there is no longer a branch in which production has not established itself with those characteristics that are its distinctive marks: standardization, rationalization, mechanization and the concentration of enterprises (trust), which all have, more or less, a worldwide resonance. If some branches of activity stand out among the others - for example, the metallurgical industries (steel: 2/5 of world production) and the mechanical ones (4/5 of the automobiles, 3/4 of the typewriters built in the whole world) - especially for their localization in determined districts, their distribution over the vast metropolitan territory obeys criteria of economic convenience that make it possible to provide first of all for the exceptional dimensions of the internal market: which is another of the distinctive characteristics of American industry. The result is a multiplicity of industrial regions, each of which has, or accentuates, its own peculiar character: the iron and steel and metallurgical ones in the sector nearest the Great Lakes, the textile ones in the central Atlantic States, those of timber in the northern and southern Atlantic States, around the Great Lakes and along the Pacific; the food ones a little everywhere, but especially in the north-eastern central States.

The gigantic industrial organization of the U.S.A. would not be conceivable without an adequate development of the means of communication. The railways measure over 360 thousand km. (1/3 of the world network), but they are by now in decline in the face of the expansion of the automobile, which has at its disposal an imposing road network (5.3 million km; 48 million motor vehicles, that is roughly one for every 3 inhabitants, against one for every 70 in Italy), and of air transport, which is increasing very rapidly (738.7 million km traveled; 14.2 million passengers). Equally clear, after the Second World War, has become the supremacy of the merchant marine, which in 1950 registered fully 25.2 million tons of mechanically propelled shipping, thus surpassing Great Britain and representing by itself about 1/3 of the world total.

Typical of the present-day U.S.A. are the dimensions and the economic and political importance of urbanization; it may be calculated that about 60% of the population lives concentrated in cities, many of which have had a very rapid topographical and demographic development. Of those that exceed 100,000 inhabitants (the so-called "large cities," which in 1950 numbered 10 out of the 876 existing in the whole world), more than a dozen are now counted which, with or without their immediate surroundings (metropolitan districts), now exceed 1 million inhabitants.

The distribution of the large urban centers, as indeed that of the population in general, still shows an evident contrast between the northeastern sector of the country, between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, upstream of the Ohio confluence, on the one hand, and the interior regions, in which large cities still represent exceptional occurrences, on the other; while other urban concentrations in a phase of sure expansion have arisen along the Pacific, both to the S. (California) and to the N. (between Puget Sound and the lower Columbia). These cities, all of more or less recent origin, are clearly distinguished from the old European urban centers by certain characteristics common to them all and which make them all resemble one another: the extent of the city area, in which a large part is given over to parks and gardens and public and private lawns, the regular form of the plan, the absence of walls and of limits toward the periphery, the separation between the inner core (City), or business district, dense with public buildings and monuments, surmounted by skyscrapers, and the more extensive residential quarters, in which isolated buildings prevail and large edifices rarely find a place. It should be noted that the capitals of the States do not as a rule coincide with the most populous, or most active, or economically most important cities; sometimes centers with a population of fewer than 10,000 inhabitants have such a function. The aim was thus to assure the centers chosen as seats of government above all a suitable position with respect to the territory of the individual States, and also conditions of tranquillity and isolation, so that the administration of the States themselves would not be disturbed by that of business, and the interests of a few or of a single city would not prevail over the common ones. However, with

TABLE 1.

the evolution undergone not only by the Federation, but also by many of the most important States between 1776 and the end of the Second World War, which led the U.S.A. to a position of economic and political supremacy without precedent in modern history, certain capitals, and the federal capital Washington itself, have also become metropolises, though without reaching the proportions of those that owe their size to the development of industries, of commerce, or to their singular geographical position.

The U.S.A. is organized as a federal republic; the states composing it vary greatly in size, population and economic importance, in keeping with their history, their economic development and the phases through which local and national evolution has passed. The average area of these states works out at roughly half the territory of Italy (163,300 sq. km.); the average population is about 3.1 million inhabitants. But it is easy to see from the table below how greatly these conditions differ not only from state to state, but from group to group of states. A comparison with the data of previous censuses brings out the tendency that has by now clearly taken shape, toward a sharpening of the contrast between the periphery and the interior. Indeed, the Atlantic states (in the first place Florida) and those on the Pacific (and in the first place California) are growing, at the expense of the arid regions west of the Mississippi, which constitute areas of emigration.

In the American confederation the individual states enjoy broad autonomy with regard to internal policy and administration (education too falls among these prerogatives). For the rest, legislative power belongs to a bicameral Congress: a Senate of 96 members, two for each state, elected by indirect universal suffrage for 6 years and renewable by one third every 2; and a House of Representatives of 435 members, elected by direct universal suffrage for 2 years. Executive power is exercised by a president, also elective (by indirect vote), who has very broad powers, holds office for 4 years and may be re-elected. The Constitution of the U.S.A. goes back, in substance, to the one approved at Philadelphia in 1776, during the movement for independence.

Giuseppe Caraci

II. CIVIL HISTORY

1. The colonial period

Henry VII, founding his rights on the voyages that the Cabots had undertaken in his service, had claimed for England as early as 1497 the continent where the U.S. were to arise. However, English merchants and adventurers undertook the first, fruitless attempts at colonization only under the reign of Elizabeth, especially after the defeat suffered by the Spanish Armada (1588), which opened the seas to English supremacy. Meanwhile the Dutch founded colonies in New Netherland, the Spanish in Florida, the French in the region of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence.

According to English law, the entire claimed territory belonged to the Crown, which could dispose of it at will. In its grants, it created two types of colonies: corporate (that is, granted to a company) and proprietary (granted to an individual), leaving the beneficiaries broad autonomy in the exercise of power and guaranteeing the colonists the traditional rights of English citizens: fundamental among these, even if limited by many restrictions, was that of self-government. From the founding of Virginia (1607), which was the first, to 1733, thirteen colonies arose along the Atlantic strip. Eight of these subsequently became royal provinces, with governors appointed by the sovereign and possessing broad powers. But conflicts between the constituted authority and the populations were frequent. The colonists had an active part in the local and central administrations of their respective territories, but the regulation of mutual relations and of those with foreign countries was the responsibility of England. Nevertheless the numerous wars of the time and the necessities of defense against the Indian tribes, which represented a constant threat, served to create a certain solidarity among the various provinces.

Waves of immigration, ever more frequent and numerous, of diverse origin and moved by multiple reasons (political and religious persecutions, economic hardships and the promise of a better future, a spirit of adventure), conferred on the population a composite and heterogeneous character; however the predominant and, one might say, catalyzing element, especially after 1660, was the English one. After the Peace of Paris (1763), which closed the long conflict between France and England, sanctioning English dominion over Canada and in the Mississippi valley, English expansion in the new world had no obstacles and was increased by the industrial revolution which, creating a problem of overpopulation in the mother country, favored emigration. At the end of the 18th century the three most numerous ethnic groups, after the English one, were: the Irish, the Scottish and the German. Then came the Dutch and Swedes (descendants of dissolved colonial empires) and the French.

2. Independence

With the second half of the century, relations between England and the colonies became tense. With the treasury impoverished by the latest wars, the English government adopted a series of laws aimed at replenishing it at the expense of the colonies. These received with growing impatience the imposition of such taxes, appealing to the English custom according to which any fiscal measure had to be voted by the taxpayers themselves. Strong in their ancient traditions of autonomy and liberty, consolidated thanks to the difficulties to which the exercise of power was subject because of the distance of the mother country, the colonists appealed to them, accusing Crown and Parliament of wanting to subvert the age-old foundations of the Anglo-Saxon political order. Largely because of the intransigence of George III the conflict worsened and, having chosen the path of open rebellion, the thirteen colonies declared their independence (1776), united in a confederation (1777) and fought a long and hard war which, begun badly for the insurgents, after varying fortunes ended in their favor, through the tenacity and skill of General George Washington, with the Peace of Paris (1783).

Emerging exhausted from the struggle, governed by an ineffective constitution, divided by autonomist tendencies, the new confederation had to face a troubled period of economic and social difficulties. The conservative classes, in order to safeguard the conquered independence and unity, promoted the adoption of a new Constitution (1787), approved after the lively opposition of those who, following the colonial experience and influenced by the current ideologies, feared a strong central power. It limited the power of the individual States, giving the country a central (federal) government inspired by the division of powers, with a president who, as was said, gathers in himself the powers of a republican monarch and of a monarchical prime minister, and a bicameral system, in which the various States have an equal number of seats (2) in the Senate and a representation proportional to their respective populations in the lower House. This constitution, with the addition of certain amendments, presided over the progressive growth of the confederation from the 13 original States to the present 48 and is still in force. The first president was Washington and under his government there crystallized that ideological contrast which, personified in the two major statesmen of the time - Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, and Jefferson, Secretary of State - led to the founding of two opposing parties, then called Federalist and Republican, which, representing the two fundamental political currents expressed by American reality, were to, under new names and often mutually appropriating aims and programs, contend for power and alternate in the government of the country. Hamilton, who restored the economic situation and was in a certain sense the founder of American capitalism, aimed at the constitution of a strong State, and upholding commercial-financial interests was the exponent of conservatism. Jefferson, who had given the new Republic with the declaration of independence its "tables of the law" and by enunciating its ideal motivation had created in the country a national consciousness, defended state particularism against the interference of central power and was the representative of southern agrarian interests. The conflict between these two currents was sharpened by the outbreak of the French Revolution, which had notable internal repercussions, the Republicans having sided in its favor and the Federalists fighting it tooth and nail. The conflict was resolved in 1800 with the Republican victory, which marked the dissolution of the Federalist party and the beginning of a thirty-year government of the Jeffersonian party.

3. Continental expansion

The capital, after a brief stay in New York and Philadelphia, was transferred to Washington, while expansion toward the West continued without pause, constituting the "epic" of American history and the salient fact of the decades following the War of Independence. As pioneers, adventurers, and colonizers won new territories for civilization, these passed under federal control, until—once certain requirements were met (they had to have a minimum of 60,000 inhabitants, a constitution, a legislative body, etc.)—they were admitted into the Confederation as States. In the period 1791-1821, no fewer than 11 more States thus came to stand alongside the original 13. This progressive expansion gave rise to countless bloody conflicts with the Indians, until the survivors of that proud people were completely subjugated. Meanwhile the Americans, impatient of the presence of other governments on the continent, purchased Louisiana from Napoleon (1803) and in 1819 drove Spain out of Florida. The attempt at expansion toward Canada, however, undertaken in 1812 for reasons of national prestige (which England had wounded by arrogating to itself the right to inspect American shipping), was not successful. English naval supremacy, especially after Napoleon's defeat, was able to make itself felt, and by the Peace of Ghent (1814), with which the war ended, Canada remained an English possession.

During the subsequent period, of peace and prosperity, new States were constituted; commerce and above all industry developed greatly, favored by the wars, which had prevented the importation of European products, and then by the adoption of high protective tariffs. Having proclaimed, through the Monroe Doctrine (v.), isolationism and the absolute independence of the new world with respect to Europe, the U. S. consolidated their unity and their federal ties, despite state particularisms, thanks to the authoritative broad interpretations of the powers of the federal government, sanctioned by the Constitution, upheld for over thirty years by John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

4. The Civil War

A latent dissension, however, was coming to the surface in all its gravity. While in the Northern States slavery, never very extensive, was dying out naturally, in the Southern ones it had become the pillar of the agricultural economy, which rested precisely on the very low cost of labor and on its total servitude. The slaves were Negroes imported from Africa as early as 1619; in 1770 they amounted to one sixth of the population. In the question of slavery the federal government could not intervene in any way, inasmuch as the Constitution made no mention of it, and to abolish it throughout the entire territory, as the abolitionists demanded, a constitutional amendment was necessary, approved by a two-thirds majority, while the slave and anti-slave States were evenly balanced, despite the efforts made by each of the two sides to prevail. The Ohio River marked the dividing line between the two types of civilization, and each State that entered the Union north of the river was counterbalanced by a new State to the south. When in 1820 Missouri, a slave territory, entered the Confederation, to balance its entry a part of Massachusetts was cut off, making it the small State of Maine. Moreover, a parallel was fixed as the dividing line for the entire vast territory still open to expansion toward the West (Missouri compromise). By this expedient the solution of the problem was postponed by some decades; meanwhile new pioneers penetrated into Spanish Texas and settled along the Pacific coast.

After the long predominance of the Jeffersonian party, political struggles regained vigor, first on regional bases and subsequently on party bases. Republicans called the followers of Hamilton, like him concerned with limiting the power of the individual States, centralizing it in the federal government, and with favoring industry; with a vast following, therefore, in the Northern States. Democrats, on the other hand, were called the followers of Jefferson, strenuous defenders of states' prerogatives and of the agricultural economy.

The industrial policy of the Republicans, once they came to power, harmed the Southern States, which reacted by succeeding in electing Andrew Jackson to the presidency. Disregarding the will of Congress (Parliament) and considering himself the direct representative of the people, he established the practice of reserving public offices, both major and minor, for his own adherents (spoil system). Under his presidency the first workers' organizations appeared, the right to vote was democratically extended in every type of election and the suffrage for presidential elections was broadened; this led to the appearance of true professionals of politics. To Jackson goes the merit of having defended the intangibility of the Union, crushing in a historic conflict the secessionist ambitions of one State, South Carolina, which, opposed to a new federal law on tariffs, threatened the unity of the country. With the rapid opening of new lines of communication and the introduction of faster means of transport, economic progress seemed to know no limits.

The annexation of Texas, desired by the slave States for the possibility of vast plantation cultivation in that territory, led to war with Mexico (1846-47), which ended with the conquest of new regions (New Mexico, Arizona, California), while by virtue of an agreement with England Oregon was annexed. In 1848, therefore, the Confederation had reached its present continental boundaries and, in order to obtain an inter-oceanic route, had already in 1846 stipulated an agreement with Colombia for free passage across the isthmus of Panama.

The acquisition of the new territories raised once again the question of slavery. California, having given itself an anti-slavery constitution, asked to be admitted into the Confederation (1849), arousing the protests of the South. A new compromise allowed its admission (1850), excluding the possibility that in the new States that might arise from the territories taken from Mexico slavery could be forbidden or abolished. But since, Texas aside, none of those territories lent itself to a slave economy, their entry into the Confederation as States would have given the preponderance to the anti-slavery States, which could thus have voted the necessary abolitionist amendment and suppressed slavery in all the U.S. For

To restore the balance, the Southern states attempted various coups in lands suited to their economy (Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras). But while the abolitionists fought their battle on the ethical plane, and their cause, in continuous progress, acquired the force of a categorical imperative, the slaveholders appealed to reasons of a practical order, that is, to the impressive demographic increase of the Negroes, who in some states were more numerous than the whites, and above all to the necessary defense of the Southern economy, to which abolitionism would have dealt a mortal blow. Therefore after 1850 the conflict became open and intransigent, and the slaveholders, seeing their cause in danger because of the firmness of the Northerners, passed to the offensive. In 1854 they obtained from Congress the abolition of the Missouri Compromise, leaving new territories (Nebraska and Kansas) free to adopt slavery or not. The resulting indignation in the North led to the formation of a new Republican party, which in 1860 came to power with Abraham Lincoln (v.). After his election, the Southern states precipitated events: seven of them proceeded to constitute themselves into a new Confederacy. Faced with Lincoln's decision to preserve the Union, war became inevitable. The North, rich in industries, though having control of the fleet, was nevertheless less prepared militarily; the South, on the other hand, counted in vain on English and French intervention. Lincoln, by sanctioning the liberation of the slaves as of Jan. 1, 1863, conferred on the war the character of a crusade that excluded any compromise. The battle of Gettysburg (1863) turned events in favor of the Northerners, who in 1865 completed the occupation of the Southern states, just as Lincoln was assassinated by a Southerner. The disappearance of the President, who had shown both firmness and moderation, led to an ill-advised policy against the vanquished, upon whom, with the abolition of slavery, a whole series of humiliations was imposed that exasperated them. Martial law was necessary to impose the so-called reconstruction of the South, that is, its re-entry into the Confederacy, which was in reality an occasion for exploitation by adventurers come down from the North. The South sought to defend itself with the creation of secret associations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, which had the purpose of keeping the Negroes in subjection. With time hatreds and resentments diminished, but a period of general pacification could be inaugurated only in 1877, with the presidency of Hayes, during which the South regained full rights. This, however, did not resolve the problem of the coexistence of the two races, still open and burning today. The whites maneuvered in their own favor by promoting state legislation that greatly reduced the scope of the constitutional amendments and in practice deprived the Negroes of all political freedom. Added to this were the aforementioned systems of intimidation, which together have served to keep the Negroes, up to the present, in conditions of inferiority.

5. The rise of imperialism

During 24 years of Republican administration, despite many errors, the country had overcome the crisis of a civil war, had expanded without pause at the expense of the Indian tribes, by now confined to special federal reservations; had acquired Alaska from Russia for a sum of money; had given enormous impetus to industries and to agriculture, which was itself becoming industrialized; had welcomed ever larger and more frequent waves of emigrants who arrived from Europe to populate the great cities and the vast expanses open to exploitation. The government passed to the Democrats with the election of Cleveland as president (1885-89). The country, wholly absorbed in its own development, was completely estranged from the rest of the world and seemed to have no foreign policy problems. The great industrial interests began to exercise on the political plane an influence that was to grow and extend with time, an influence whose expansion was favored by the grandiose resources of the country, but which issued in frequent conflicts with the agricultural and working classes; while the trade unions resorted to demonstrations, even violent ones - particularly serious were the riots in Pittsburgh in 1877 and in Chicago in 1894 - to assert the rights of labor and to protest against big industry, which among other things tended to use low-cost labor, imported directly from Europe, at the expense of American workers.

The question of protective tariffs, desired by industrial interests, brought the Republicans back to power, and they kept it for 16 years. On the other hand it became ever more difficult to distinguish and differentiate the programs of the two parties, which seemed to be inspired by pragmatism and empiricism rather than by precise and clearly definable ideologies. With the Republicans the nascent imperialist movement received great impetus, and under the banner of the so-called manifest destiny it issued in the war with Spain over Cuba (1898), desired by the U.S. in order to dominate economically and militarily the Gulf of Mexico and Central America, a war resolved in four months; it led to the purchase from Spain itself of the Philippine Islands and to the annexation of Puerto Rico as a colonial territory; and to ever greater interference in the questions of the Far East, where the U.S. intervened against the Boxers and then advocated the "open door" policy; and finally to the impetus given to the construction of a fleet. The push beyond the continental borders was favored by the end of the "frontier," the moving line of demarcation between colonized and virgin territory, whereby the expansionist drive turned outward, translating into imperialism and taking concrete form, among other things, in the convening of a Pan-American conference (1889; v. PANAMERICANISM). The U.S. made themselves its promoters, aiming to win for themselves a position of economic hegemony with regard to Latin America and accompanying diplomatic action with a policy of force, which won the conquest of various islands including Hawaii. Theodore Roosevelt, who came to power at the beginning of the new century, pursued such a policy in Central America with great energy. Having approved the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, since Colombia was temporizing and seemed to want to resist American pressure, the proclamation of the Republic of Panama was encouraged, which became in fact an American protectorate. The U.S. began to make their influence felt in international politics, mediating the conflict between Russia and Japan (1905). The authority of the federal government expanded, promoting legislation on trusts, on immigration - which was beginning to cause concern because of its vast and ever-growing proportions and because of the difficulty and reluctance to assimilate on a large scale elements foreign to the original Anglo-Saxon stock - and on many other controversial questions of domestic policy.

A more pronounced tendency toward conservatism, which emerged with the presidency of Taft, who succeeded Roosevelt, provoked the split of a progressive wing led by Senator La Follette. The Democrats took advantage of this to regain power in 1912 with Woodrow Wilson and to modify considerably those domestic policy directives that had been most affected by Republican influence, reducing tariffs, giving a new regulation to the banking system, etc. Foreign policy, however, remained unchanged, especially with regard to Mexico, even though Wilson, a convinced Calvinist, clothed it in ideal motivations which, though valid, in practice redounded to the advantage of American interests, which aimed to insert themselves into the Mexican economy.

6. The Two Wars

At the outbreak of the Great War the U.S., taking refuge in traditional isolationism, declared themselves neutral, reserving the right to continue their trade with the belligerents, that is, owing to the blockade imposed on Germany, only with the countries of the Entente and with the neutral ones. The systems adopted by the Germans to confront the situation (sabotage in America and submarine warfare against American shipping) precipitated the intervention of the U.S. (1917), after a vain attempt by Wilson to arbitrate a peace between the belligerents. This intervention, in conformity with the missionary and Puritan spirit that permeates American custom and demands the reconciliation of earthly interests with divine reasons, was decided in the name of democracy and the freedom of peoples and assumed the character of a crusade with which it was presumed to put an end to all wars. The intervention, primarily economic in nature, became military in 1918. But America's presence made itself felt more in the organization of peace than in the conduct of the war. Yet once the war was over, while public opinion showed clear signs of having emerged disillusioned from the interventionist experience and of wishing to return to the path of isolationism, Wilson was forced, in Paris, to let fall, one after another, his "14 points" and found himself obliged to accept the compromises imposed on him by the European situation. He thus found himself isolated in his battle, no longer supported by the country, which had largely turned against him; and when at great cost he obtained the inclusion of the Covenant of the League of Nations - the construction dearest to his heart - in the peace treaty, it was only to see his work disavowed by his country, by then opposed to finding itself involved in European affairs. This state of mind and an incipient economic crisis brought the Republicans back to power in 1921. During their administration, European immigration was further reduced (to 3% annually, for each nation, of the contingent of fellow nationals already resident in the country), in order to satisfy workers' protests against cheap labor; while to favor agricultural interests a high tariff was introduced on imports of foodstuffs. The U.S., estranging themselves from Europe, were concerned with safeguarding their interests in the Far East. The conference for the limitation of armaments, convened in Washington in 1921, was directed to this end. In 1924, on the other hand, a new, further restrictive law on immigration was adopted: a clear symptom of a growing nationalism.

Having failed in the attempt to create a third, progressive party, political struggle had once again narrowed to the two traditional parties, while Prohibition (v.), adopted in 1920 to remedy the excessive use of alcoholic beverages, not only proved ineffective but created new and more serious problems, so much so that it was repealed in 1933.

In 1929, however, a very grave economic crisis, with worldwide repercussions, begun with the collapse of the stock market and the closing of the banks, followed by unemployment and misery on proportions hitherto unknown, shook American optimism to its foundations and determined the return to power of the Democratic party with Franklyn D. Roosevelt (1933), on whom fell the task of setting the country back on its feet. This he did with the New Deal, an energetic program of direct government intervention aimed at stimulating economic activity while at the same time imposing a more equitable social justice. The first radical measure adopted was the National Industry Recovery Act, by which the government assumed control of all industries, not in the socialist or communist manner, but by summoning industrialists to the capital and imposing on them the acceptance of certain conditions (a reduction of the working day, an increase in minimum wages, the right of unions to negotiate, etc.), which was violently opposed by conservative classes and finally declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The New Deal aimed to give immediate relief to the unemployed, whom the individual states and local bodies could not provide for, and to implement a long-term plan for agricultural and industrial recovery. This naturally enormously increased the public debt. By the autumn of 1934 the situation began to improve and in the elections of 1936, violently fought around the New Deal, Roosevelt won a crushing victory. 1937 was a year of great union battles, after in 1935 the "Congress of Industrial Organizations" (C.I.O.) had been constituted, which aimed to replace the "American Federation of Labor," organized horizontally, with vertical unions, comprising all the workers of a given industry.

In 1933 the U.S. had recognized the Soviet Union, in 1934 they had granted independence to the Philippines; in 1935 the Neutrality Act had been approved, by which it was forbidden to supply arms or money to eventual belligerents. But with the outbreak of the Second World War international questions, until then neglected, the country being entirely absorbed by the New Deal, regained preeminence. The lend-lease law, urged by Roosevelt who hoped, by helping the democracies, to avoid direct intervention, was approved in 1941, after in 1940, creating a precedent in American history, he had been reelected to the presidency for the third time.

Attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor (1941), the U.S. entered the war against the Axis powers and, thanks to the extraordinary industrial and military potential at their disposal, in a short time played a determining part in the victorious conduct of the conflict in Asia as in Europe; while in South America they replaced an openly hegemonic policy practiced previously with a more fruitful policy of "good neighborliness."

With Harry Truman, who found himself assuming the presidency upon Roosevelt's death (1945) and who proved himself a faithful continuer of his work, the U.S. found themselves at the end of the conflict in a position of absolute preeminence. At first they turned their power and authority to organizing peace, placing great hopes in the constitution of the United Nations; at a later time, as the Soviet danger became ever more menacing, to bringing together and unifying, with the Atlantic Pact, in a coordinated defensive effort the nations of the free world, while at the same time favoring their rebirth and economic recovery after the destruction of war. In domestic policy, on the other hand, the Fair Deal aimed to continue Roosevelt's work, proposing among other things to free the Negroes from their political and social minority status.

From Jan. 1953, following the victory of the Republican party in the elections of Nov. 1952, General Dwight David Eisenhower has assumed the presidency of the U.S.

III. RELIGIOUS HISTORY

In the U. S. there are currently about 256 churches and religious sects, totaling close to 80 million faithful. They have no official recognition, except as voluntary associations among citizens, and all of them, great and small, enjoy equal rights before the law. Each one of them, taken by itself, represents a minority. On the other hand, certain common traits are found in all of them, impressed by the environment, and particularly: an intense individualism, which has, so to speak, shattered religious consciousness and has led Americans to give the word "Church" a sinificant parish rather than universal meaning; and a marked earthly optimism, due to the country's historical development.

1. Catholicism

Although the American population was originally and is still predominantly Protestant, the primacy among the various religious communities taken individually belongs to Catholics, who now approach 30 million. This primacy eloquently testifies to the extraordinary progress of the Church in the U.S., if one considers that at the time of the War of Independence (1776) Catholics in the 13 colonies constituted a negligible minority of about 25,000. Most of them were settled in Maryland which, founded in 1634 by Lord Baltimore, was the first successful English attempt at Catholic colonization in the new continent. Lord Baltimore had intended to make the colony a refuge for his coreligionists; but with the Restoration such immigration diminished noticeably and the need to populate the colony caused numerous non-Catholics to flock there, soon placing the original colonists in the minority. Nevertheless Maryland, even after the Anglican Church became the state church there (1702), continued to distinguish itself, as later did Pennsylvania, where numerous German Catholics found asylum in the early 18th century, for its tolerance toward Catholics. These were in fact the only colonies where they were not persecuted. The hostile treatment reserved for Catholics throughout the colonial period was due, besides religious animosity, to reasons of a political nature, and precisely to the fear that Spain, established in the Floridas, and France in Louisiana, might spread a civilization that the Anglo-Saxon element considered alien and hostile. Only the expulsion of France and Spain from the continent put an end to this order of concerns.

The main problem for Catholics of the colonial period was that of the clergy. Lord Baltimore had entrusted the spiritual care of Maryland to the Jesuits, who however, soon abandoned by the proprietor of the colony, found themselves continuing their work on their own initiative, even though hindered by the severe restrictions imposed on them. Precisely for lack of spiritual assistance (various attempts made to transfer secular orders to America had little success), it is estimated that about 1 million faithful were lost to the Church in the 18th century.

Only after the War of Independence, to which they had given their support, with a Catholic numbered among the very signers of the historic Declaration, could Catholics secure all the rights and privileges of full citizenship. It was therefore only with the rise of the confederation that Catholicism could develop freely in North America, and in this first phase of its progress stands out the figure of John Carroll (v.), a Jesuit educated in France, who dedicated himself to the difficult task of consolidating the Church in the new Republic. Reliable data on its development in the first half of the 19th century are nevertheless lacking: around 1800 Catholics are estimated to have been about 100,000 and in 1850 1,600,000. Carroll was for 5 years (1784-89) only apostolic prefect, finding it therefore difficult to obtain the obedience of his clergy. Only when he was named bishop of Baltimore (1789), with jurisdiction over the whole country, could he carry out his work with full effectiveness and establish sufficient control over the parishes, in which the laity had ended up predominating, favored by the law that attributed ownership of the place of worship to the Congregation. Besides this right, which the Church had to admit for a certain period, the laity also arrogated to themselves that of choosing their own pastors. These autonomist tendencies led to the attempt to found an American Catholic Church, free from any tie with Rome, which, having begun in Virginia in the early 1800s, then spread to South Carolina, favored by the particular historical moment and by the republican enthusiasm of the clergy recently arrived from Ireland. The danger of a schism was averted thanks to a compromise by which the rights of the lay parish leaders were nominally preserved, but supreme authority was recognized as belonging to the episcopate.

The other problem that Bishop Carroll and his successors had to solve was that of giving an adequate clergy to the ever more numerous parishes. English priests, especially after the War of Independence, were not willing to go to America; while the work of the German priests of Pennsylvania was limited to their own countrymen. With the French Revolution there was a notable influx of French religious. It was a cultured and well-prepared clergy; but precisely for this reason, besides because of language difficulties, it could not satisfy the needs of a rather rough population. More than along the Atlantic coasts, where they left no lasting traces, the French religious carried out a meritorious activity in the interior of the country, particularly in the territory that formed the object of the Louisiana Purchase. They had been recruited in France with an announcement that said: "We offer you neither salary nor reward nor rest nor pension, but much and hard work, a poor dwelling, few consolations, many disappointments, frequent illnesses, a violent or solitary death and an unknown grave."

The French clergy was soon succeeded, in the cities and elsewhere, by the Irish, which proved the most suited to the task, the Irish element having come to constitute, especially toward the middle of the 19th century - when a terrible famine occurred in southern Ireland and induced a quarter of that population to emigrate to the U.S. - the bulk of American Catholicism and preparing to become the greatest coefficient of its growth. The common language and the ease of assimilation helped ensure that the Irish, whose number was constantly increased by successive waves of immigration (by 1880 it already amounted to 4 ½ million), soon took a position of preeminence and leadership. Control of the Church in America remained always and firmly in their hands: Irish bishops always held all the principal dioceses. Of humble origins and very poor, the Irish knew how to climb the social ladder rapidly and, keeping their group relatively intact, by the third and fourth generation they came to transfer many local and state administrations, especially along the Atlantic coast, into Catholic hands. Suffice it to say that in New England Catholics are now in the majority and in the city of Boston, which was the stronghold of American Protestantism, they now traditionally control the local administration.

The ranks of the Church meanwhile swelled also thanks to immigrations of other origin (between 1830 and the First World War 5 million Germans entered the U.S., of whom it is estimated that a third were Catholics). In the second half of the century practically all European Catholic communities contributed their share of immigrants to the vast and continuous flow that was swelling the country's population.

The rapid transformation of the Catholic minority into a considerable and ever-growing community did not fail to provoke a reaction. Toward the middle of the 19th century this took shape in a movement known as "nativism," through which the jealous and at times violent self-defense of the original Anglo-Saxon group against the new population, considered alien and unassimilable, manifested itself. It thus came about that the recognition and tolerance granted to Catholics were followed by hostility and manifestations of true and outright persecution. The "Know Nothing Party," which arose in 1852, proposed the political proscription of Catholics, drawing on the animosity of the revolutionary period toward everything that smacked of Europe and on the concerns that the presence of a huge mass of Irish raised. Around 1880 the "American Protective Association" succeeded the aforementioned party, and afterward appeared the Ku Klux Klan, which continued its dangerous activity, provoking countless episodes of persecution and violence.

In the question of slavery, the Church took an attitude of moderation and balance. In accordance with the federal Constitution, it neither condemned nor condoned slavery, favoring a gradual process of emancipation rather than radical and violent solutions. Despite the differing attitudes of Catholics, according to their belonging to one side or the other, the Church was not disturbed by any schism: the only religious community to emerge intact from the tragic conflict, which served to increase its prestige.

In the last two decades of the 19th century a new immigration began which, unlike the previous ones, came from eastern and southern Europe and settled especially in the cities. In thirty years it brought fully 5 million Catholics into the U.S., imposing on the Church the task of providing for the spiritual care of some thirty communities uprooted from their land and differing in language and traditions. The Church, very often constituting the only guide for these people, generally very poor and uneducated, had the great merit of facilitating their assimilation and of contributing effectively to making them good citizens. The success of this mission of hers, however, was not unaccompanied by a progressive assimilation and adaptation of Catholicism itself to forms of life and thought proper to the U.S., which the American clergy seemed to favor in this period. To this dangerous tendency the Church applied a brake with the encyclicals of Pius IX (1864) and then of Leo XIII, who in 1899 addressed to Cardinal Gibbons (v.) the apostolic letter Testem benevolentiae, which condemned religious Americanism and reaffirmed and defended the imperishable values of Catholicism threatened by attempts at compromise with the new civilization.

Having overcome the uncertainties provoked by the fear that such an appointment might arouse reactions, in 1893 the first apostolic delegate was appointed; while with the new century the Church saw the ranks of the faithful greatly increased, thanks to continuous immigrations, to the prolificness of Catholic families and also to numerous conversions.

With regard to Prohibition, which was adopted on a national scale immediately after the First World War, the Church maintained an attitude of reserve, which experience proved well justified.

Very notable has been the contribution of the Church in the cultural field, particularly in that of education. Initially it directed its efforts to higher education, out of the need to form and prepare a local clergy, distinguishing itself from other educational institutions by a greater severity of studies and by a more faithful adherence to classical or traditional systems. Subsequently the Church's scholastic activity, in which the Jesuits were the most zealous, extended also to the other levels of study, in order to cope with the progressive secularization of the public schools. Equally notable has been its explicitly charitable activity, especially in the large cities, where various religious orders have built and run renowned hospitals.

2. The other religions

There are as many as 243 Protestant sects, of which an important minority (Baptists, Congregationalists, Quakers, Unitarians, etc.) is organized on congregational bases, that is, in which the individual congregations are self-sufficient in absolute independence. The reasons for this bewildering diversification and, one might almost say, atomization of religious consciousness in the U.S. are to be sought first of all in the heterogeneity of the population. All the religions of colonial America were of European importation; today twenty different varieties of Lutheranism are found in the U.S., all of European origin. Complete religious freedom, to which must be added the extreme individualism that characterized the pioneers, was another of the factors that favored the rise of new sects and denominations, while the presence of the Negroes and then the Civil War, with the divisions it provoked, contributed to subdividing and fragmenting even further the already numerous existing sects. The three largest in the country (Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians) split, and only the Methodists have been able, in recent times, to recompose the schism. In general, the divisions that characterize American Protestantism are to be attributed, rather than to theological controversies, which practically came to an end around 1840, to cultural and social differences and to political and economic conflicts, to which an ethical justification was given.

A State Church of a Protestant character had been established toward the end of the 17th century in 9 of the 13 colonies, even if only in Anglican Virginia and in Congregationalist New England did the official religion have the majority. From the 18th century onward, American Protestantism especially outside New England, took on a radicalizing direction due to the large immigration of European nonconformists (French Huguenots, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, German Pietists) and to a series of waves of religious fervor, called revivals, which beginning in 1725 started periodically to sweep across the country, popularizing the religion that until then had been almost a prerogative of the wealthier classes, and served to accentuate its egalitarian character.

This religious radicalism, which had notable repercussions also on the political terrain, ended by bringing about the complete separation of Church and State which, matured in the climate of the time and sanctioned by the Constitution, was favored by the fact that, in any case, it would not have been possible to reach, amid such disparity of faiths and sects, an agreement for a national Church.

As a result of this separation and through the influence of the Calvinist tradition, whose traces are found not so much on the theological plane (which, moreover, in America never had predominant importance) as in the place assigned to religion in American civilization, the distinction between the sacred and the profane has been lost and the "Church" has become one of the many associations to which the citizen may belong. This conception has given rise to an egalitarianism not only individual but also institutional, conferring on religion a pragmatic value, of a means to an end: good government, honesty in business, etc. The most numerous and influential sect of the colonial period had been the Congregationalist, followed by the Presbyterian, the Baptist, the Episcopal, the Quakers, the German and Dutch Reformed Churches and the Methodists. It was the differing participation of these various sects in the expansion of the country and in the colonization of the West that determined their further development. It thus happened that the Congregationalist and Episcopal Churches, which, having been State Churches, had assumed an aristocratic character, withdrawing from that great adventure, lost their position of preeminence. A similar fate, albeit for different reasons, befell the Reformed and Lutheran Churches, disadvantaged by their character as sects imported from continental Europe and therefore foreign in language; while the Quakers exhausted their missionary zeal toward the middle of the 18th century and from then on contented themselves with defending the solid social position they had acquired. It was therefore the Baptists and the Methodists, and to a lesser extent the Presbyterians, who labored most in following and assisting the pioneers. That is, it was the "Churches of the poor," the radical sects, that emerged from the "crossing of the continent" as the principal ones of the country, even if their development was disturbed by the fractures that the Civil War provoked in them.

Before emancipation there were no independent Negro Churches, except in the North, where slavery had never taken root. In the South the Negroes had been welcomed, especially in the period preceding the Civil War, into the Churches of the whites. They separated from them after liberation, to form their own Churches, often with the help of the corresponding and equivalent Churches of the whites. The Negroes, who today number about 14 million, are divided into as many as 34 separate sects, which have come to be added to those already existing. The majority are Baptist (about 7 million). The religion of the Negroes bears the mark of the 200 years of their slavery and, unlike that of the whites, which has a social background and is concerned with applying the principles of Christianity to earthly life rather than being committed to eternal life, has a biblical and transcendent character, while the condition of inferiority from which they still suffer in political and social life has made the Church their principal institution.

While the vast majority of the Protestant sects are of European importation, some may be considered typically American manifestations. Particularly important among these are that of the Mormons, founded in 1830, which counts almost a million faithful, concentrated in the State of Utah, with a markedly social character; and "The Church of Christian Scientist" ("Christian Science") founded in 1879. Both of these sects carry on an intense missionary activity. A liberal Protestantism, akin to the German one, flourished in the second half of the 19th century, while toward the end of the century and up to the First World War the proponents of a progressive Protestantism came to the fore. The centrifugal and schismatic tendency exhausted itself toward the end of the last century, when an opposite direction set in, toward federation, which took concrete form among other things in the founding of the "Federal Council of the Churches of Christ" (1908), with the aim of increasing the practical influence of religion, which today gathers all the principal sects, except the Lutherans, who have always held themselves aloof from any attempt to secularize Christianity, in the footsteps of Calvin, and the Southern Baptists. It does not include, however, the small sects, which are generally jealous of their own autonomy and independence. Not the least reason for this federative impulse, which is still found within Protestantism, is the growing influence of Catholicism.

The third largest religious group is made up of the Jews, who number about four and a half million, of European origin and for the most part gathered in the large cities, especially in New York. They are divided into Orthodox, Conservative and Reform.

Slavery, New York 1918; G. H. Barnes, The anti-slavery impulse 1830-44, ibid. 1933; A. C. Cole, The irrepressible conflict 1830-65, ibid. 1934; J. G. Randall, The Civil War and Reconstruction, ibid. 1937. For the second half of the 19th century and the 20th century: C. E. Merriam, Amer. Political Theories, New York 1903 (also for the preceding period); S. Perlman, A history of Trade Unionism in the U. S., ibid. 1922; G. M. Stephenson, A history of Amer. Immigration 1830-1924, Boston 1925; R. S. Baker, W. Wilson, 8 vols., Garden City 1927-39; C. R. Langley - A. R. Foley, Since the Civil War, New York 1935; G. Myers, History of the great Amer. fortunes, ibid. 1936; Dan E. Clark, The West in Amer. history, ibid. 1937; T. A. Bailey, A diplomatic History of the Amer. People, ibid. 1940; R. H. Gabriel, The course of Amer. democratic thought, ibid. 1940; M. L. Hansen, The immigrant in Amer. History, Cambridge, Mass., 1940; A. M. Schlesinger, Political and social growth of the Amer. People 1865-1940, New York 1941; G. Myrdal, An Amer. dilemma, ibid. 1944; U. Faulkner, Decline of laissez-faire 1897-1937, ibid. 1951 and From Versailles to the New Deal, New Haven 1951; G. F. Kennan, Amer. Diplomacy 1900-50, Chicago 1951; A. Nevins, New Deal and world affairs, New Haven 1951; A. J. Y. Allen, Amer. Economy 1880-1940, London 1951; F. Stern, Capitalism in America, New York 1951. Religious history: M.-A. André, Le catholicisme aux Etats-Unis, Paris 1905; J. A. Burns, The Cath. school system in the U. S., New York 1908; Martin I. J. Griffin, Catholics in the Amer. Revolution, 3 vols., Ridley Park Pa. 1907-11; J. T. Campbell, Pioneer Priests of North America, 3 vols., New York 1910-13; J. A. Burns, Growth and development of the Cath. school system in the U. S., ibid. 1912; R. F. Foerster, The Italian emigration of our times, Cambridge, Mass., 1919; R. Canevin, Catholic growth in the U. S., Pittsburg 1923; J. M. Mecklin, The Kly Klaw Klan, New York 1923; G. Shaughnessy, Has the immigrant kept his faith? A study of immigration and Cath. growth, ibid. 1925; G. Chinard, Les réfugiés Huguenots en Amérique, Paris 1925; C. Augustine, The canonical and civil status of Cath. parishes in the U. S., St. Louis and London 1926; G. N. Shuster, The Cath. spirit in America, New York 1927; R. Niebuhr, The social sources of denominationalism, ibid. 1929; C. Hollis, The Amer. Heresy, ibid. 1930; T. C. Hall, The religious background of Amer. culture, Boston 1930; A. W. Baumgartner, Cath. journalism: a study of its development in the U. S., 1789-1930, New York 1931; Sister M. M. Bowler, A hist. of Cath. colleges for women in the U. S. A., Washington 1933; J. A. Baissee, France and the Establishment of the Cath. Hierarchy: The myth of French interference (1783-84), Baltimore 1934; T. P. Phelan, Catholics in colonial days, New York 1935; Sister M. Augustana (Ray), Amer. opinion of Roman Catholicism in the XVIII Century, ibid. 1936; E. T. Clark, The small sect in America, Nashville 1937; J. A. Burns - B. J. Kohlbrenner, A Hist. of Cath. education in the U. S., New York 1937; G. J. Ganaghan, The Jesuits of the Middle U. S., 3 vols., ibid. 1938; R. A. Billington, The Protestant crusade: a study of the origin of Amer. Nativism, ibid. 1938; R. Bandier, The Cath. Church in Luisiana, New Orleans 1939; T. Maynard, The story of Amer. Catholicism, New York 1941; W. W. Sweet, Religion in colonial America, ibid. 1942; R. H. Lord - J. E. Sexton - E. T. Harrington, Hist. of the Archdioc. of Boston, acc., 1804-1943, 3 vols., ibid. 1943; B. Y. Landis, Yearbook of Amer. Churches, Lebanon, Pa.; W. W. Sweet, Revivalism in America. Its origin, growth and decline, New York 1944; W. L. Sperry, Religion and our divided Denominations, Cambridge, Mass., 1945 and Religion in America, New York 1946; W. W. Sweet, The Amer. Churches, New York-Nashville 1948; Anson P. Stokes, Church and State in the U. S., 3 vols., New York 1950. Gabriele Nuatti

IV. EVANGELIZATION

1. Evangelization of the Indians

In the present-day U. S. evangelization began in Florida. The five Franciscans of Narvalz's expedition reached there in 1528, but were killed.

The evangelization efforts of the years 1538, 1547, and 1559 likewise remained without success. The Jesuit mission, founded in 1565 at St. Augustine, ended with the massacre of the missionaries in 1571. From 1577 the Franciscans repeated their attempts with some fruit among the Timuaca and Yamene Indians, but this mission too was destroyed in 1601 and many missionaries were murdered. Later, flourishing missions could be founded, and in 1634 there were 44 stations with about 30,000 Christians. A new field opened up to the Franciscans during the 16th century in New Mexico, discovered as early as 1538 by Fr. Marco da Nizza. After vain attempts, a stable mission was founded in 1598. It too was disturbed on various occasions in the course of the 17th century, and then completely destroyed in 1680 with the massacre of 23 Franciscans, and it was reopened toward the end of the century. From New Mexico the Franciscans in 1628 had been able to extend their activity into Arizona and, toward the end of the century, also into Texas, where in the 18th century the mission became most flourishing. From their mission of the northwestern Mexican province, Sonora, the Jesuits pushed northward toward the end of the 17th century. Fr. Eusebio Chino (1644-1711) was especially notable for his explorations in the Pimeria Alta and Lower California and for his cartographic works. The mission of Lower California was founded in 1697 by Fr. Giovanni Maria Salvatierra (1648-1717). After the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 the Franciscans took possession of the missions of the Pimeria and of California, extending the latter northward, where chiefly through the work of Fr. Junipero Serra (1713-84) the foundations were laid of the celebrated Indian missions and reductions of California, which in 1823 amounted to 21 stations with about 30,000 Christian Indians. It was therefore Spanish Franciscans and Jesuits who led the Indians of the states of Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and California to the faith, coming from the south. The missions among the Indians of the northern states, on the other hand, were begun by the Jesuits starting from Canada. From 1648 they founded some missionary stations among the Abenaki Indians in the present state of Maine. In 1646 Frs. Isaac Jogues and Jean de La Lande attempted a foundation among the Iroquois Indians in the present state of New York, where they suffered martyrdom.

After the war of extermination of the Iroquois against the Hurons, during which Fr. Jean de Brebeuf with 4 companions were martyred, the Jesuits resumed the mission among the Iroquois, disturbed however by continual wars. Toward the end of the 17th century the Jesuits moved further south, founding stations among the Indians of the present states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The Indians of Illinois in 1725 were all Catholics, while the missions among the Sioux in Minnesota had scant results. In Louisiana, a French colony on the Mississippi, the Jesuits and the secular priests of the Seminary of Québec worked in the 18th century at the Christianization of several Indian tribes. The mission was destroyed in 1729 on the occasion of the rebellion of the Natchez Indians, and some missionaries were killed. Once the rebellion had ceased, the mission could rise again only in part. The suppression of the Society of Jesus and the upheavals

The political upheavals of the second half of the 18th century caused an almost total stagnation of the missions in the north of the present-day U.S. Even the Franciscan missions of the southern States suffered severely because of the proclamation of Mexico's independence, on which they still depended at the beginning of the 19th century, and they slowly headed toward complete ruin.

Unfortunately, only with extreme slowness could the reconstruction of the missions among the Indians be accomplished in the 19th century. The U.S. government published various laws to facilitate the civilization of the Indians, who were increasingly decimated by the whites, by diseases and by wars, and indeed in 1819 it assigned 10,000 dollars a year for Indian schools, which for the most part went to the Protestants. Only in the report of 1824 is there found for the first time also a Catholic Indian school, to which 800 dollars were assigned, while the Protestants were given 11,000 dollars. Once the Catholic Church in the U.S. had been reorganized in the first half of the 19th century, the missions among the Indians too were gradually resumed. Secular priests and religious devoted themselves to these missions in various States: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Kansas, Nebraska. The most famous of the missionaries was the Jesuit Pierre-Jean De Smet (1801-73), who succeeded in converting many Indians in the Rocky Mountains, gathering them into reductions. He was also a peace mediator between the Indians and the Government.

When the government confined the Indians to reservations, these "Indian Agencies" were entrusted to the missionaries for the "Peace Policy" of 1870. Although, however, in 38 of these the Catholic missionaries had been the first, they received charge of only 8. For the defense of the rights of Catholics, Archbishop Roosevelt Bayley of Baltimore founded in 1874 the "Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions," which in the end in 1880 obtained full freedom for the Indians and the missionaries. This, however, was more than once not respected. The "Bureau" sought to organize the Indian schools, all the more so since after 1900 the subsidies from the Government ceased. One of the most eminent benefactresses of the "Bureau" and of the Indians was Mother Katharina Drexel, who from 1898 to 1908 gave 799,157.37 dollars, that is, more than half of the current expenses. Three other organizations: The Catholic Indian Missionary Association from 1875 to 1900, The Society for the Preservation of the Faith among the Indian Children from 1901 and The Marquette League from 1904 gathered the means necessary for the founding, maintenance and development of the Indian missions. Since 1877 the "Bureau" has published a magazine which since 1902 bears the title "The Indian Sentinel." According to the latest statistics contained therein (June 1951), Catholic missions exist in 80 reservations of the States of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. The number of priests is 220, of nuns 518, of scholastics and brothers 77, of school teachers 40, of catechists 100. The chapels are 413, the schools 61 with 8,152 Indian children. In a total population of about 400,000 Indians, more than 100,000 are Catholics.

2. Evangelization of the Negroes

Before the emancipation of the Negro slaves of the U.S. in 1865, the Catholic Church could take care only of the Negro slaves who in Maryland, in Alabama and especially in Louisiana had embraced the faith of their Catholic masters. In Maryland in 1839 a congregation of black nuns was founded, "The Oblate Sisters of Providence," for the education of black children. In 1842 there followed in New Orleans the founding of another congregation of nuns, "The Sisters of the Holy Family." The lack of priests, however, did not permit a more effective work to be carried out. In the slave-holding States of the South, where as a result of the cotton plantations the number of Negro slaves had risen in 1860 to about 4 million, the work of conversion on the part of the Catholic Church was not permitted, both because of the small number of Catholics and because of the aversion of the masters and of public opinion. Therefore, at the moment of the emancipation of the slaves, the majority of the Negro slaves joined Protestant sects, endangering the faith of the few Negroes who were already Catholics.

The plenary Council of Baltimore in 1866 decreed a mission among the Negroes on a vast scale. But organized missionary activity began only with the arrival of the Mill Hill Fathers in 1871, who established their center in Baltimore and in 1893 founded a special congregation, called "St. Joseph's Society," erecting missionary stations among the Negroes of the various States. In 1872 the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit also undertook the mission of the Negroes, in 1874 the Benedictines, in 1906 the Fathers of the Divine Word, in 1907 the Missionaries of Lyons and later Franciscans, Redemptorists, Scheut Fathers, Passionists, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, etc. To subsidize the missions both among the Negroes and among the Indians, the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore instituted in 1884 the "Commission for Catholic Missions among the Colored People and Indians." In 1881 the Franciscan Sisters of Mill Hill also joined the other nuns who carried out the missions among the Negroes. Later there were other congregations, such as in 1888 the "Sisters Servants of the Holy Ghost and Mary Immaculate," in 1891 the "Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament."

According to the statistics of 1948, the number of churches rises to 423 with 640 priests, belonging to 29 institutes, and 77 secular priests. Two major seminaries and two minor ones, destined exclusively for the formation of Negro priests, are directed by the Josephites of Mill Hill and by the Fathers of Steyl: so far 44 priests have come out of them. In works of education, care of the sick and social activity, 1,894 nuns belonging to 96 institutes and 38 brothers belonging to 18 congregations work. The number of Negro Catholics is 362,427 and the schools number 366 with 64,847 pupils.

V. LEGAL STATUS OF THE CHURCH

While the members of the American Commission were signing in Paris the peace treaty that ended the War of Independence, the apostolic nuncio in France sent a note to President Franklin, in which he offered good wishes for the new Republic and, as a sign of friendship and benevolence, informed both the President and the government that the ports of Civitavecchia and Ancona were open to American ships (Dec. 15, 1784). A few years later, on June 26, 1797, Giovan-Battista Sartori was appointed as the first consul of the U.S. at the pontifical Court; in 1800 he left Rome, ceding the office to his brother Vincenzo. In 1806 the post was offered to John S. Cogdell, who was unwilling to accept it; on March 3, 1823, Felice Cicognani was elected, and he was also instructed by the U.S. Department of State to use his good offices to resolve the disagreements between the pontifical Court and the Mexican Government.

On Jan. 9, 1837, he was succeeded by George W. Green, American by birth, who was later removed because of the complaints of Americans residing in Rome to the Secretary of State, and was replaced by Nicola Browne on July 26, 1845.

The task of these consuls was rather economic in nature, although they had cordial and friendly relations with the Holy See.

Consul Browne, sympathizing with the reforms of Pius IX and with his manner of governing, took many steps to establish full diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the U.S. In his dispatches he pointed out to Secretary of State Buchanan the inadequacy of consular representation alone.

The Secretary of State informed President Polk, who recommended the request in his message of Dec. 7, 1847, to the 30th American Congress. After a long debate, both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, the decision was taken to send to Rome a chargé d'affaires with the rank of minister plenipotentiary, in the person of Jacob L. Martin, secretary of the American embassy in Paris.

This appointment took place in the year 1848, in which the war broke out between the U.S. and Mexico, regarded by the pontifical Government as a Catholic State. The mission had no religious character; it was viewed in America only from the economic aspect: the American diplomat did not represent the U.S. before the Holy Father as head of the Catholic Church, but as sovereign of the pontifical State.

The various ministers who succeeded one another maintained the theory of non-intervention with regard to the affairs of the pontifical State, in accordance with the instructions they received from the Department of State. The Holy See maintained the same policy with regard to the U.S. During the conflict with Mexico and in the subsequent events that began in 1860, both the Supreme Pontiff and Cardinal Antonelli, on many occasions, expressed the intention not to intervene in the internal questions of the Confederation.

At the beginning of the Civil War the Pope sent three letters to eminent ecclesiastical personalities of the U.S.: one to the archbishop of New Orleans, another to that of New York, and the third to the bishop of Cincinnati: these documents had no political purpose but merely highlighted the duties of charity and brotherhood to which Catholics and all right-minded people were to adhere.

President Jefferson Davis replied with a letter of thanks which he entrusted to Mann (1864). The Holy Father, having received the document, replied with another letter in which he expressed his satisfaction and hoped for peace in the Confederation. The document had only a spiritual purpose; it was not the Pope's intention to recognize the Confederation: in fact the words of the inscription "President of the Confederate States of America" had been placed there as a simple form of courtesy.

At the same time, in the city of Montréal, a rumor had spread that the Vatican recognized the "Southern Cause." The document on which the rumor was based was false. Cardinal Antonelli, owing to pressure from minister King, had to write a letter in which, having denounced the falsity of the document, he confirmed non-intervention. A few days later the cardinal secretary, in a conversation with minister King, again reaffirmed the point of view of the Holy See, but at the same time declared to the Minister that it was the desire of the Holy See that slavery be abolished.

Secretary of State Seward was satisfied with the communications received from minister King. In the same year the bishop of Charleston, Msgr. Lynch (South Carolina), arrived in Rome with the specific aim of obtaining recognition of the Confederacy by the Holy See; but the mission was not successful.

In 1866 the war ended and Lincoln was elected president, who in his message to the Union had words of tolerance and Christian charity. Both the Supreme Pontiff and Card. Antonelli expressed their admiration for the President's good intentions. The Pope's policy was always neutral and inspired by cordiality: thus, when a certain John S. Surratt, implicated in the assassination of President Lincoln, fled from the Union and enlisted in the pontifical army, despite the absence of extradition agreements between the two States, Card. Antonelli resolved the difficulty by ordering the arrest of the criminal, who managed to escape but was caught by the police in the city of Alexandria.

The Holy See deemed the time had come to establish diplomatic relations with the U.S. In 1853 the apostolic nuncio in Brazil, Msgr. Bedini, was sent to the U.S., with a personal letter from Pius IX to President Pierce. The mission had three purposes: to settle questions concerning the property of the Catholic Church; to examine the possibility of sending a nuncio to the American Government; to consult the American hierarchy on the general condition of the Church in the Union. The legate was received with demonstrations of sympathy, but opponents were not lacking. In New York his life was attempted; in Cincinnati a protest demonstration was staged, in Philadelphia a procession, and in Boston his effigy was burned. Despite this apparent failure the Pope's policy toward the U.S. did not change, but on every occasion His Holiness was ready to welcome the requests of the Americans and to protect their rights, as when, the properties of the American family Perkins and of other American citizens having been damaged in 1859 at Perugia, Card. Antonelli gave ample satisfaction to the American government. Thus, for the incidents of 19 March 1860 in Piazza Colonna, the Holy See gave satisfaction to the American government, especially for the offenses committed against consul Glentworth. Card. Antonelli declared categorically that the soldiers had received no instruction and that their excesses were to be attributed solely to private initiative.

The good will of the Holy See encountered strong opposition in America. On 18 March 1867 the Secretary of State

Seward informed general King, minister in Rome, that Congress, on 28 Feb. of the same year, had decided not to appropriate any sum for the Roman legation. Minister King, surprised by this decision, set out in various dispatches the reasons that should have made Congress reflect on such a sudden decision. But his arguments were to no avail. On 30 June 1867 the decree of suppression was approved and on 1 Jan. 1868 general King tendered his resignation to President Andrew Johnson.

Congress took this decision first of all because it intended to take revenge on general King and on the pontifical authorities, who seemed to support the President and the Secretary of State on the question of reconstruction, in opposition to the ideas expressed by Congress. Furthermore, the warning signs of the end of the Papal State gave American leaders an occasion to side with Italian nationalism. Lastly, Congress wanted to retaliate against the Vatican for the closing of the American Protestant church in the territory of Rome.

The closing of the American legation did not include the closing of the Consulate, which remained open until 20 Sept. 1870. Armstrong, the last consul, barely had time to witness the fall of Rome: he was confirmed in office as American consul to the Italian Government.

In the Second World War President Roosevelt deemed it opportune to re-establish relations with the Holy See. To overcome the difficulty that Congress would have raised, he sent a personal representative of his: Myron C. Taylor, who was given the «ad personam» rank of ambassador. Pius XII made contact with the President through the apostolic delegate Msgr. Cicognani and Card. Spellman: the first relations occurred at the end of 1939 and the beginning of 1940. At Christmas 1939 the President sent a letter to His Holiness, to which the Supreme Pontiff replied on 7 Jan. 1940. Other letters followed: of the greatest importance is the exchange of letters of Christmas 1940 and Easter 1941; in them one can see how intense the work of the Holy See was for the attainment of peace. In the subsequent relations the work of the Holy Pontiff was carried out in favor of the wishes that justice and clemency be used, in favor of the victims of war that their sufferings be alleviated, and on the organization of a lasting peace.

On 12 Apr. 1945 Roosevelt died and Harry Truman succeeded him, who kept Taylor as his personal representative to the Supreme Pontiff until 1950. Following Taylor's resignation, President Truman appointed general Clark, who was unable to reach Rome because of the opposition that arose in the U.S., opposition based on the principle of the separation of Church and State and on the principle of freedom of religion.

It must be recognized, however, that the American Constitution does not exclude the cooperation of the Government with religion, as the liberals and radicals and the other parties opposed to the Catholic religion would like. This conclusion is evident if one carefully examines the history of the amendment to the Constitution, which was drafted in the following formula: «Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof». Therefore the eventual appointment of a representative in Rome would encounter no obstacle in the American Constitution.

Giuseppe Damisia

VI. LITERATURE

The so-called American literature of the colonial period has a purely historical and documentary, political and religious importance, but it should not be neglected, inasmuch as it validly contributed to establishing the characteristics of the American mentality.

Among the earliest documents are the not impartial accounts of Captain John Smith: A description of what happened in Virginia (1612) and The general history of Virginia, published in London in 1624. In New England the Calvinism and the religious and political fanaticism of the first colonizing communities are amply attested in the writings of Increase Mather (1639-1723) and of his son Cotton Mather (1663-1728), the former the author of Remarkable Providence, in which he maintains the divine intervention in the work of the colonizers; the latter of Remarkable Providence on the same subject, of The wonders of the invisible world on witchcraft, which father and son cruelly persecuted, and of Magnalia Christi americana, an exalted chronicle-history of New England. The authoritarian tendency is matched, from the very origins, by an opposing egalitarian tendency, represented at the outset by the principles of the Pilgrims of the Mayflower who landed in America in 1620. The two opposing tendencies can be traced throughout the entire course of United States literature. Thus, in the 18th century, we find ourselves faced with a Jonathan Edwards (1703-58), a visionary Calvinist, obsessed with the idea of evil and of predestination, and at the same time an opponent of the Dutchman Arminius and of the Arminians, and then with a Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), eclectic, progressive, utilitarian and fundamentally optimistic, who well represents the other aspect of the American character. A figure apart is that of the Americanized Frenchman Jean de Crèvecoeur (1735-1813) who, having become a farmer in his adopted country, left it at the outbreak of the Revolution and published in London his Letters from an american farmer (1780). Franklin favored and promoted the Revolution but does not figure among its true actors. Of these, mention should be made of Thomas Paine (1737-1809), the most democratic of the revolutionaries, who gives expression to his anti-monarchic sentiments in Common sense (1776), to his rationalism and his anti-dogmatism in The rights of man (1792), which he wrote and published in France, and in The age of reason (1793), and to a form of agrarian distributionalism in Agrarian justice (1795); Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), third president of the U. S., the author of the Declaration of independence (1776); the conservative Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804); the moderate John Adams (1735-1826).

A true literature of invention is born in America only with the 19th century, under the influence of English and continental literature, but with original touches and native contributions. Brockden Brown (1771-1810) imitated the sensational tales of the English pre-Romantics and in Edgar Huntley (1799) left the first example of a tale set among the Indians; Washington Irving (1783-1859), who sojourned for a long time in England and visited Spain, was a happy mediator between the old and the new culture, creator of the popular figures of Diedrich Knickerbocker and of Rip van Winkle, author of the refined and humorous exotic tale The Alhambra (1832). James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) is the unsurpassed master of the adventure tale of the Redskins, but in The Spy (1821) he attempted, in the footsteps of Walter Scott, the historical novel, drawing inspiration from the War of Independence, while The Bravo (1831) has as its setting the Venice of the doges. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) is among American writers the one who has enjoyed the greatest renown in Europe, and especially in France; he has, so to speak, renewed the tale of adventure and horror with deeper perspectives and darker psychic resonances, and accordingly he achieved a hallucinated intensity in his verse. With Poe the whimsical and evasive "tale" asserts itself in America, and remains one of the most typical products of all American literature. A more measured and self-aware artist was Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), whose masterpiece is The scarlet letter (1850), a powerful analysis of souls tormented by evil and remorse, against the background of pioneer America; his last novel is The marble faun (1880), written after a sojourn in Italy and set in Rome. An isolated figure, whose disorderly but powerful work greatly influenced modern American narrative and in Europe was first acclaimed by R. L. Stevenson, is that of Herman Melville (1819-91). Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) was a naturalist and meticulous describer of nature, an analytical spirit and at the same time naively romantic, as he appears in his masterpiece Walden (1854), a consummate stylist. Ralph

Waldo Emerson (1803-82) is among the most representative writers of America and the leader of that "transcendentalism" in which the currents of American idealism and Romanticism are officially defined in more expansive ways than in Poe, Melville, or Hawthorne himself. In his essays and in his verse there persist, merging into a serene and admirable stylistic composition, heterogeneous notes such as deism, eclecticism, and romantic "enthusiasm." The call for a national literature, contained in his address The American scholar (1837), was hailed as a sort of intellectual counterpart to the "Declaration of Independence." Other poets of the same era are: William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), a delicate singer of nature who takes his start from Wordsworth; John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), an optimistic spirit who dedicates his best verse to the celebration of rural life and to the anti-slavery struggle and writes, in opposition to the Calvinism of the Puritans, calm hymns later adopted by various American Churches; the two men of letters and poets James Russel Lowell (1819-91) and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82). The former became, after the Civil War, the official poet of the Northerners. Of him we recall, besides the youthful and exuberant Eudymion of Keatsian derivation, the vernacular and humorous verse of The Bigelow Papers (1st series 1849, 2nd series 1866), a precious contribution to the anti-slavery cause, the graceful verse satire of A fable for critics (1848) and the late philosophical poem The cathedral, inspired in him by the cathedral of Chartres. The latter enjoyed in his lifetime an exaggerated official fame. Apart from his translation of the Divine Comedy, which possesses no notable merits, he is now remembered above all for certain brief compositions, among which are some fine sonnets on Dante. Among the poets one should not forget Sidney Lanier (1842-81), a Southerner of French origin who suffered in his health because of the Civil War and died prematurely. Of him we recall the pathetic Sunrise, composed on his deathbed. But the most genuine and authentic voice in 19th-century American poetry is that of Walt Whitman (1819-92). His moralism is often questionable and at times is a moralism in reverse, his democracy often identifies itself with anarchism, his philosophy and his religion are inconsistent beyond measure, but he knew how to graft with most happy instinct, though not always with fineness of taste, the vigorous plant of realism onto the old romantic trunk, and with his luxuriant and most daring language he gave the fundamental tone, for good and for ill, to subsequent American literature; an epigone of the Romantics, he was at the same time the forerunner and the pioneer of the realists, with whom American literary production acquires its own vital and unmistakable characteristics, with growing prestige in Europe.

It is precisely regional narrative that, after the Civil War, offers the reader new fields of inquiry, introducing him to settings hitherto ignored, and heralds the establishment of the realist currents. Bret Harte (1836-1902) colorfully represents, though not without a certain artificiality, the milieu of the gold prospectors in California in The Luck of Roaring Camp (1868), a story that is perhaps his masterpiece, and in the novellas and novels that followed it. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), known under the pseudonym Mark Twain, wins the interest of readers of all ages throughout the world with his flavorful description of scenes of river life on the banks of the majestic Mississippi in Life on the Mississippi (1875) and by portraying with a rich and broad vein of humor the exploits of two adventurous boys conceived by his exuberant imagination: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, while he shows the cruder and less pleasant aspects of his comic spirit in commenting on his travels in Europe. A conscious realist, though tempered by his own cultural experiences, and a theorist of realism was William Dean Howells (1837-1920), who in his most mature work feels the influence of Tolstoy. From the new demands of realism Henry James (1843-1916) also sets out; he moved to Europe, dedicating his talent to the introspective analysis of his characters, especially his heroines, and to stylistic research, becoming a devotee and almost an ascetic of narrative art. But even before our century realism had also known radical and violent forms, e.g. in The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1871-1900), and the social novel already announces itself with the restless Jack London (1876-1916). Alongside the first realists one may recall certain humanists and historian-essayists, the greatest of whom is Henry Adams (1838-1918), who in Mont St. Michel and Chartres (1904) and in The Education of Henry Adams (1907) extols the religious unity of the Middle Ages and the cult of the Virgin. In the 20th century realism and naturalism assume cruder and more violent forms, permeating themselves with social and sexual problems, becoming exacerbated in rebellion against every convention of custom and language. Some writers nevertheless remain within the orbit of tempered realism and stylistic research. Thus Edith Wharton (1862-1937), a cultivated and refined storyteller; Booth Tarkington (1869-1946), author of historical and political novels and a genial humorist; Willa Sibert Cather (1876-1947), converted to Catholicism, who splendidly evokes stories of pioneers and in Death Comes for the Archbishop celebrates the odyssey of two French missionaries in New Mexico. Imaginative storytelling is cultivated by the humorist James Branch Cabell (b. 1879), the popular creator of Jurgen, and by the elegiac Thornton Wilder (b. 1897). In the novels of Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) the romantic myths survive and decline into the desolation and disillusionment of post-war society. Verism and naturalism reach extreme positions in Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945), whose attention is entirely absorbed by sexual problems and dramas; William Faulkner (b. 1897), who in his gloomy novels employs a highly personal analytical language; Ernest Hemingway (b. 1896), the most vigorous prose writer of his age; John Steinbeck (b. 1902). Sinclair Lewis (b. 1885) remains instead within the sphere of moderate realism with his satire, fundamentally good-natured, of the American bourgeois. Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) settled in Paris, where she attempted a language whose technique might somehow conform to the technique of the cinema. Alongside the naturalists are ranged the critics H. S. Canby (b. 1878) and Henry L. Mencken (b. 1880). An isolated figure of a poetess who, through the boldness of her imaginative language, will set an example for posterity is that of the mystic Emily Dickinson (1830-86). Of the poets of our century, setting aside Eliot and Ezra Pound, who now belong to European poetry, mention should be made of the classicist William Vaughn Moody (1869-1910); the neo-traditionalist Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935); the naturalist Robert Frost (b. 1875), a healthy and vigorous poet of nature; Amy Lowell (1874-1925), poet and literary critic who in her salon presided over the baptism of the "imagists"; in the Whitmanian tradition one may include, alongside Carl Sandburg (b. 1878), Edgar Lee Masters (1869-1950), Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931), a wandering and adventurous poet who ended as a suicide; Robinson Jeffers (b. 1887), the most violent and exasperated of these poets. Among the poets of the school of Eliot and Ezra Pound the most significant are Archibald MacLeish (b. 1892), who is also a political figure, and, among the youngest, Karl Shapiro (b. 1913), a poet and critic of marked personality. Among the mystics are to be named Thomas Merton (b. 1915), the Trappist poet also known for his autobiography The seven storey mountain, and Robert Lowell (b. 1917), of the family of J. A. Lowell and of Amy Lowell, himself also converted to Catholicism. Among the neo-humanists, who reacted against the excesses of naturalism, mention should be made of George Santayana (1863-1952), Spanish by birth but naturalized American, philosopher, essayist and author of a semi-autobiographical novel: The last puritan (1936), of great stylistic merit, which has obtained a well-deserved success.

Augusto Guidi

VII. ART

Scant remains of constructions from the pre-Columbian civilizations, datable to the 12th-13th centuries, survive in the Southern regions that originally belonged to Spain (Rito de los Frijoles, Taos, Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico; Mesa Verde, Colorado; White House in Canyon de Chelly, Betatakin Ruin and Walpi, Arizona).

In the South, during the colonial period, a religious architecture flourished, adhering to the forms of the Spanish-American Baroque, in which, through the influence of Aztec and Maya art, the decorative patterns are exaggerated to the point of overwhelming the structural values. More sober and stylistically coherent are the missionary constructions (examples in the missions of San Juan de los Caballeros, 1598, New Mexico; Santa Barbara, 1713, and the cathedrals of St. Francis and St. Faith, 1713, California; of St. Augustine, 1793, Florida; of New Orleans, 1792, Louisiana). Modeled on Spanish prototypes are also the complexes of the old southern coastal fortifications (e.g., Forts San Marco and St. Augustine, Florida; the Cabildo, Louisiana). On the whole, these buildings constitute the most original and stylistically elevated nucleus of American colonial art.

Further north, along the Atlantic coast, English and Dutch immigration transplanted forms of disparate derivations, in hybrid combinations. It would be an arduous undertaking to isolate or even to differentiate chronologically the various varieties: the overlapping of styles is a characteristic of American architecture. The intention of reproducing the buildings of the countries of origin — not idle, be it noted, like European theoretical academicism, but rooted in the sentiment of the emigrants, and therefore capable of being set in a wholly particular climate that has no counterpart in Europe — induced architects to virtuosities of transcription, of which examples are found here and there. In religious architecture, the English-type Flamboyant Gothic predominates, along with late-Renaissance Serlian and Palladian forms, mediated by English, Dutch, Swedish models, or even derived from the plates of Inigo Jones or of the Vitruvius Britannicus, which enjoyed such wide diffusion in the new continent (examples: Smithfield, Va., St. Peter's, 1703; Farmington, Conn., Congregational Church, ca. 1775; Providence, R. I., Baptist church, 1775; New York, St. Paul's Chapel, with a tetrastyle portico, 1765; Philadelphia, Christ Church, 1727-54; Boston, Trinity Church, King's Chapel, 1753).

If religious and public building generally does not depart from these conventions, the development of civil architecture is different: a positive sense of functionality and practicality characterizes the constructions of the pioneers, mostly improvised architects, formed through direct experience, which would be transmitted from generation to generation, constituting one of the most pronounced aptitudes of the American character. Typical constructions of the colonial period are the wooden houses with a portico or loggia, with slender and short columns, a choice determined not by an aesthetic criterion but by the imposition of the English government, which, for the needs of its navy, prohibited the use of tree trunks exceeding 16-18 inches in diameter. Masonry buildings, on the other hand, conform to criteria determined by local possibilities of procuring suitable material: thus in Pennsylvania, for example, the use of rough stone prevails, in the South that of brick. An entire complex of colonial buildings has been preserved, through the efforts of a special cultural foundation, in the model town of Williamsburg.

The styles that simultaneously had their development in Europe (Elizabethan, Georgian, Rococo, etc.) gave rise to analogous currents, more easily identifiable, but until 1790 no general and preponderant orientation can in any case be discerned. The great building boom that followed the proclamation of independence allowed American builders to gain ground rapidly on the Europeans and to move, in less than a hundred years, to the forefront in the experimentation with new materials and methods of construction, produced or invented by modern technology and offered in great quantity by industry; but this did not happen, as would have been natural, through an organic development of the premises already laid down in the colonial era, but rather by overcoming the entanglement of experiments such as the Roman Neoclassicism imposed by Jefferson (the third president personally designed the State Capitol of Richmond, the colonnades and the rotunda of the University of Charlottesville, Va., his own country house at Monticello, Albemarle County, Va.; and he launched the projects for the "Capitol" of Washington by William Thornton, 1761-1827, and for the White House, by the Irishman James Hoban), which was succeeded by a Greek Neoclassicism (Classical Revival, promoted by Nicholas Biddle, a veteran of the Greek war, and supported by the magazine Port Folio, as well as by Minard Lafever's Modern Builder's Guide, 1833), and a Neo-Gothic period (analogous to the English Gothic Revival around 1840), the latter of which left its most typical manifestations in religious architecture (Trinity Church, 1846, St. Patrick's Cathedral, 1850, both in New York). But precisely at this time, outside of official architecture, a construction method known as the Balloon Frame asserted itself, whose oldest surviving example appears to be the church of St. Mary in Chicago (1833). "It consists essentially — as Zevi writes — of a series of equidistant wooden studs that form walls, floors and roof alike. The structure is then covered by a double layer of boards that guarantees its rigidity."

In the direction indicated by this functionality, rooted, as has already been said, in the colonial and missionary tradition, American architecture would soon achieve a world primacy. The masonry work of Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-96) and of the Chicago school, whose greatest exponent was Louis Henry Sullivan (1856-1924), as later of Frank Lloyd Wright (1869, living), the champion of organic architecture, would reverse the flow of influences. Richardson's masterpiece, inspired by French Romanesque, whose volumetric significance the artist knew how to interpret, drawing original consequences from it, is Sever Hall at Cambridge, Mass. (1877-79). The Chicago school, heir to Richardson's lesson, erected in the Middle West a series of Romanesque buildings, to which its precursory greatness is entrusted, of which testimony is borne, in its harmonious solutions, for example, by the imposing Monadnock Block by J. W. Root in Chicago (1891), the first modern skyscraper. It is precisely to this school that the development of the technique of skeleton-framed skyscrapers is owed, with the increasingly rational use of reinforced concrete. Sullivan, who was also a theorist in Kindergarten Chats (1901) and in The Autobiography of an Idea (1922) — the principle "form follows function" is his, adopted and carried to the extreme consequences by his followers - he asserted his personality in the Auditorium (in partnership with Adler, 1886-90), and in the Carson, Pirie, Scott Department Store (1899), in Chicago, exemplary for the perfect balance achieved in the module by the horizontal and vertical grids. On the value of Wright's work, from which the revolutionary solutions of many European architects largely derive, such as the Swiss Charles Edmond Jeanneret (Le Corbusier), the German Walter Gropius and the Austrian Richard Neutra, the controversy is still open; but if his preconceived disavowal of Italian Renaissance architecture cannot be shared by us, the importance that certain of his brilliant intuitions, applied to buildings of very different purposes, have acquired over time is no less for that. The solidity of his structures was clamorously demonstrated during the earthquake that in 1923 destroyed a large part of Tokyo, but left his Imperial Hotel absolutely unscathed. From 1887 to 1942, in addition to a considerable number of projects, approximately 250 buildings of his authorship are counted, and it may reasonably be held that they constitute, after the Second World War, the point of orientation for all the most advanced civil construction in Europe. The principle of organic architecture that he advocated is expressed very clearly in this statement of his: "From the beginning I have been certain that architecture truly worthy of the name comes out of the earth; it is the nature of the ground, the industrial conditions of the place, the type of material that must necessarily determine the form of every good building" - and the now famous Falling Water house at Bear Run (Penn.), of 1936, indicates in what manner he applied this principle. Wright also devoted himself to religious building, erecting at Oak Park the Unity Church (1906), in Cubist-Expressionist modes, that is to say, relying on volumetric solutions.

Painting. - The iconophobia of the Quaker and Puritan currents, predominant throughout the whole sphere of Anglo-Saxon culture, stood in the way of a rapid development of the other figurative arts. But spontaneous manifestations - on the level of craftsmanship and amateur work - were not lacking in any settlement inhabited by pioneers. The Museum of American Folk Art in New York has patiently accumulated in its rooms the artifacts of such origin which, though they very rarely attain to art, nonetheless furnish documents of extreme interest for the study of the nascent American civilization. On the level of a more evolved - but still mediocre - figurative culture is the production of many European painters who emigrated between the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th. Among these stands out the Swede Gustavus Hesselius (1682-1755), author of a Last Supper in the church of St. Barnabas (Queen Anne's Parish, Md., 1721). Closer ties with European currents were established by the Scotsman John Smibert (1688-1751) and the Englishman Peter Pelham (1684-1751).

The first native artist of any merit was Robert Feke (b. at Oyster Bay, L. I., in 1705, d. at Barbadoes in 1750); active at Newport, Boston, Philadelphia. Indulging the fashion for history painting, John Singleton Copley (b. at Boston in 1737, d. at London in 1815) and Benjamin West (b. at Philadelphia in 1738, d. at London in 1820) acquired fame; they were also good academic portraitists. Greater fluency is revealed by Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), Washington's official portraitist, and by Henri Benbridge (1744-1812), who was in Rome a pupil of Batoni and of Mengs, in London of West, and returned to America in 1770, exerting a notable influence. This period is concluded by Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), a painter of marked ability, though he remains anchored to English portraiture, in the manner of a Gainsborough and a Reynolds.

The neoclassical era teems with painters, but the involution brought about by formulas ends by stifling every spontaneous expression. Not without charm, even though it often degenerates into a search for oleographic effects, is instead the landscape painting of the so-called "Hudson River School" (Thomas Cole, 1801-48; Asher B. Durand, 1796-1886), especially insofar as it offers the starting point for the affirmation of a personality of note, such as George Innes (1825-94), emulator of Turner and Constable.

Up to this moment painting remains tributary to European models, looking especially to France. The scant patronage of the wealthy American classes hindered the formation of a native tradition. All the most gifted artists were forced to emigrate to France, where they had the opportunity, in daily contact with the lively schools of the capital, to bring themselves up to date and to graft themselves onto the living core of European linguistic research. To this European atmosphere belong therefore the best painters that America produced in the 19th century: James Mac Neill Whistler (1834-1903), after a long stay in Paris in which he came into contact with the Impressionists, moved to England, where he remained until his death, acquiring European renown. His manner is excellent, especially in small-format pictures and in portraits, of sure construction and frank brushwork. John La Farge (1835-1910), of a French family, was a pupil of Couture, and was particularly affected by the influence of Delacroix and Chasseriau. Having returned to America, he gave the impulse to the great cycles of decorative frescoes that characterize the end of the century. To him belong the frescoes in Trinity Church in Boston, the frescoes and stained-glass windows of the Church of the Ascension in New York, the decorations of the Walker Art Gallery of Boudoin College in Brunswick, Me. (together with Thayer and Vedder). Between La Farge and Innes move Alexander Halwig Wyant (1836-92), Homer Dodge Martin (1836-97), Winslow Homer (1836-1910) and others. The most personal and whimsical among the painters at the turn of the two centuries is Albert Pinkham Ryder (1848-1917), author of seascapes and nocturnes in which one admires the precise intuition of tonal relationships and the ample breath of the spatial composition. Of an easier vein, and also more inclined to accommodate himself to fashions, is John Singer Sargent (1858-1925), considered the greatest painter of his generation, widely known also in Europe. His most important works are the portraits and frescoes of the Boston Public Library.

Besides the decorative complexes already mentioned of La Farge and Sargent, a mention is deserved by the frescoes of the Waldorf Ballroom in New York done by Blashfield and Low, and those of the Library of Congress in Washington executed by Vedder, Walker and Alexander.

Sculpture. - Sculpture was, among all the arts, the last to establish itself, because of an even greater Puritan repugnance toward anatomy, and perhaps also because of the lack of suitable marbles.

The original tendency of native sculptors is in the key of a documentary realism, to which there is opposed, in the neoclassical era, a group of artists, educated in Europe in the schools of Canova and Thorwaldsen, who in their works sought to exalt - in the cold manner of neo-Hellenic stylization - events and personages of recent American history. H. Kirke Brown (1814-86) erected the statue of Washington in Union Square in New York; T. Ball (1819-1911) that of the same president in the public gardens of Boston, and Martin Millmore (1844-83) the monument to the soldiers and sailors in the Boston Common; Erastus D. Palmer (1817-1904) preferred allegorical compositions, today preserved in the Museum of New York (The White Captive, Peace in Bondage, etc.). Sculptural production nonetheless attests, in comparison with painting, a greater coherence of style, which in freer forms is transmitted, by way of J. Q. Adams Ward (1830-1910) and William Rimmer (1816-79), to the succeeding generation, to which belong artists of great worth such as Olin Levi Warner (1844-96) and above all A. Saint-Gaudens, who stayed a long time in Paris, where he executed his best things (Statue of Adm. Feragut, Joan of Arc, Equestrian Statue of Gen. Sherman, Amor Charitas). In his wake proceed Daniel Chester French and also Paul Weyland Vartlett (1866-1925), author of the equestrian statue of La Fayette in Paris, in the Place du Carrousel.

The present panorama of American art, open to all influences, does not yet allow a summing up. Particular prominence has been acquired in these last years by the Cuban school, which has won admiring approval, exerting a perceptible influence on the many avant-garde movements, created, also through the presence in America of European masters, in the principal cities of the continent.

Riccardo Averini

VIII. SCHOOL SYSTEM

In the U.S.A., contrary to the universal European tradition, there is no single school system, nor a single federal authority in this regard. Instead of a federal minister who presides over and coordinates all school initiatives and activities at the national level, there are for the individual States several committees or superintendents, to whose competence the solution of problems connected with teaching is entrusted. The federal government, through a special office at the Department of the Interior, limits itself to a benevolent coordination, carrying out inquiries, publishing reports, accounts, journals and pamphlets aimed at guiding the individual schools and the analogous offices established in all the States of the Confederation. This has shown, in practice, how much the work of the central government is susceptible of considerable development and broad updating, without any need to interfere with the activity of the controls over the schools. Control is left to the individual States and to the local administration, which see to strengthening and making more efficient the organization of the competent offices, providing them with ever more adequate means and specialized personnel, without for this reason substantially changing the character of the central office, which always remains consultative and informational in nature and expresses its good will with verbal attestations and, in certain circumstances, also with financial interventions.

The outline of the school system of the U.S.A. can be summarized as follows:

1. Pre-elementary education: a) Nursery school or kindergarten (Nursery school) from 2 to 5 years, where, among others, the Fröbelian and Montessori methods prevail, ever better adapted to the freedom of movement that the child needs; b) Children's Garden (Children Garden), from 5 to 6 years, generally attached to the elementary schools and with the aforementioned methods.

2. Elementary education (Elementary School), which is 8 years in the schools that maintain the traditional usage, still quite widespread; 6 years in the more modern schools, which tend to gain ever greater ground. This elementary school directs its activity in a twofold direction: a) either following the Dalton and Winnetka methods, it maintains a predominantly psychological orientation and tends toward an ever greater individualization; b) or, following the "project method" and inspired by Dewey's sociologism, it tends toward an ever greater socialization.

3. Secondary or middle education: a) Junior High School of 3 years, which strives to adhere to and support the age of adolescence and to proceed to the diagnosis of the psychological type of the children; b) followed by the Senior High School, likewise of 3 years, which follows the principle of the equal formative efficacy of the various disciplines, and with the multilateral organization of its courses and its teachings, leaves the pupils ample freedom of choice of studies; c) or, in place of these two, the High School of 4 years, where the traditional usage of the 8-year elementary school has been followed. This secondary school generally includes, within the same institution, "general and academic courses," which open the way to the courses of higher education (Preparatory School), and "vocational courses," which are ends in themselves (Terminal School). The common type of school, which embraces these two subtypes, is called the Comprehensive or General High School. There is also another type of secondary school, which is an end in itself, though less widespread, the Trade School, which gives technical instruction for those entering industry.

4. College: A four-year higher institution, distinguished into various types: a) College of Liberal Arts, the most widespread, where a general and special education is imparted in the field of letters and in the field of sciences. At the end of the course it confers the degree of bachelor in letters or in sciences (Bachelor of Arts = B. A. or Bachelor of Science = B. S.); b) Vocational College, where the pupils are prepared for the profession of teachers, engineers, agricultural or commercial experts.

5. University: the four-year College course is followed by the three-year university course (Graduate School), in the various branches of medicine, engineering, law, pedagogy, journalism, etc. At the end of the first year one obtains the degree of Master in letters or in sciences (Master of Arts = M. A. or Master of Science = M. S.); at the end of the third year one obtains the doctorate in philosophy (Doctor of Philosophy = Ph. D.) or, with a greater preparation in the respective field of specialization, the doctorate in pedagogy, or social sciences, or engineering or law, or medicine, etc. (Doctor of Education = Ed. D.; or Social Science = D. S. Sc.; or Engineering = D. Eng.; or Law = LL. D.; or Medicine = M. D.), etc.

Catholic educational institutions, in 1950, numbered 12,038, divided as follows: diocesan seminaries 72; seminaries of religious Orders 376; colleges and universities 225; diocesan and parochial secondary schools 1576; private secondary schools 806; parochial elementary schools 7914; private elementary schools 588; protective institutions 129; orphanages and nurseries 352. - See plates LXXX-LXXXV.

Celestino Testore