Progress was the byword of America's Gilded Age, a time of
technological innovation, industrial growth, and overseas
expansion. It was an era of emancipation for former slaves,
settlement houses for immigrants, and colleges for women.
Anti-saloon leagues called for the prohibition of alcohol, while
citizens demanded labor regulations and food and drug laws.
Confronted by all these forces of change, the Supreme Court
appeared the bastion of conservatism in case after case as it
defended the old moral and social order. Progressive reformers of
the time as well as historians of the twentieth century have
depicted the era's nine justices as aging reactionaries or, worse,
accused them of championing a laissez-faire, imperialistic reading
of the U.S. Constitution. Now, in Guardians of the Moral Order,
Mark Bailey rises to their defense. The conservatism of the Supreme
Court from 1860 through 1910, he argues, reflects not a conversion
to the gospel of wealth but a steadfast belief in the vision of man
and society grounded in eighteenth-century Enlightenment ideas and
nineteenth-century moral science. As college students, the justices
learned these values through the philosophy courses central to the
antebellum curriculum. As judges, their understanding of the law as
a branch of moral science influenced their rulings on a wide array
of social, political, and economic issues. Taking the approach of
an intellectual historian, Bailey examines the college education
and legal training that these justices received. He then looks at
their speeches and writings, both on and off the bench, to discover
their views on such topics as the definition of private property,
racial equality, and the rights of peoples in America's newly
acquired territories. An unflagging faith in a divinely ordained
natural order, he concludes, provided these men with their model
for the social and moral order. The worldview cherished by these
men was shared by many Americans educated in antebellum schools,
colleges, and law offices. Theirs was not a reactionary
conservatism rabidly opposed to change but a deeply ingrained
belief in immutable moral truths upon which civilization itself
depended. If we are to understand the Gilded Age, as Bailey so
convincingly demonstrates, we must acknowledge that ideas matter.
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