ABSTRACT
Twentieth-century American liberalism can be explained in most of its essentials in terms of the overarching influence of one set of ideas, those of social evolution. The ideas of John Stuart Mill appeared to be gaining considerable attention when, after the Civil War, they ran into the irresistible force of the ideas of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. The industrial northeast and the midwest provided the cultural sources for American thought for at least three-quarters of a century after the Civil War and, although this thought divided into two fairly distinct camps, it was liberal in its common fundamental assumptions. The English landed interests of nineteenth century had inherited belief that ownership of property entailed obligations and duties to community, and they regarded individualistic justifications claimed for capitalistic enterprise as attempts by those owning forms of property to escape their responsibility for welfare of less fortunate in society.
