the Civil War were largely seeking free soil themselves. This movement
of some of the best Nordic stock out of the South just before and at
the beginning of the Civil War has not been given as much importance
as it deserves. It was a factor in the weakening of the South and the
strengthening of the North. While slavery was a curse in the opinion of
many an owner of a great plantation, he was caught in the system and
felt that he could not get away. The poor man, on the other hand, found
conditions less and less to his liking and many of the more intelligent
decided to get out of a country where they were obliged to compete
with Negro slaves and were looked down upon by their white neighbors.
In this way the lands along the Illinois Central Railway became a
lode-stone for ambitious and dissatisfied farmers from Tennessee,
Alabama, and even from Georgia. With the outbreak of hostilities this
trickle became temporarily a torrent as political refugees who did not
care to remain in a slave-holding republic at war with the American
Union began to seek freer air.
The railroads developed a new specialty in transporting whole families
with their furniture and agricultural implements to points in Illinois,
Iowa, and Wisconsin, while steamers made their way up the Mississippi
crowded with refugees and great numbers of Missourians crossed the
river to Illinois with all their worldly goods. Many of the latter
returned home after Missouri was cleared of secession, but their place
was taken by new streams of Southerners released by the victories of
Union armies and coming to join friends and relatives in southern and
central Illinois.
The decline of leadership in the South after the war was not due
entirely to the loss of its men on the battle-field. Although this
was by far the principal factor, another important one was the flight
from the South of many of those who were not in sympathy with the
fire-eating politicians who had forced secession upon often unwilling
communities.
Before this time, however, the streams of foreign-born which poured
into the Mississippi Valley had already begun to influence the
composition of the population of Illinois, so that even in 1850 one in
four was of alien birth. The largest element was German, who formed
farming communities, mainly in the northern and central part of the
State. By 1860 there were 130,000 of them in Illinois, together with
others who had also come from Pennsylvania.
Ireland sent the group of second importance, and the great internal
improvements in this period were largely the product of their labor. As
elsewhere the Irish showed little inclination for farming, which had
proved so ruinous to them in Ireland, and they made a restless floating
population in the large cities. In 1860 they represented four times
as large a proportion of the population of Chicago as they did of the
State as a whole.
The State attracted a large English immigration. The Illinois Central
Railroad had been built to a considerable extent with English capital,
and the stockholders saw a chance to increase the value of their shares
by promoting emigration to the lands owned by the company, so that by
1860 there were 41,000 English-born in the State.
Another large element of English descent, which had come into the
State in an extraordinary way, had already left. This was the group of
Mormon converts who were brought over from 1840 onward. By 1844 it was
estimated that of the 16,000 Mormon arrivals, 10,000 were English. Most
of these went west to Utah later, or were scattered within a few years.
The last important Nordic element in the State was that of the
Scandinavians who had only begun to come before the Civil War, at which
time there were little more than 10,000 of them in the State as against
87,000 Irish.
* * * * *
Michigan, owing to its proximity to Canada, and the importance of
Detroit as a headquarters, had a distinct French atmosphere in its
early days. Unlike those in some of the more distant settlements, the
French inhabitants at Detroit did not intermarry frequently with the
Indians, and they represent therefore a relatively pure French Canadian
stock. American immigration was slow, and not until 1805 did the
inhabitants become numerous enough to warrant a separate territory. As
late as the beginning of the War of 1812 four-fifths of the 5000 people
in Michigan were French. In 1817 the first steamboat appeared on the
waters of Lake Erie and the Erie Canal was begun, and from that time
the Americanization of the territory was rapid.
By 1830 a hundred ships, both steam and sail, were on the Lakes, and
a daily line ran between Buffalo and Detroit. In 1836 when the State
Constitution was adopted the population was nearly 100,000, mainly from
New England and its extension in western New York. The Empire State can
very definitely be called the parent of Michigan.
Many of the New England farmers who had bought farms from the great
land companies in western New York found themselves unable or unwilling
to complete their payments and sold their equities for enough to buy
government land in Michigan and move their families, while from the
rocky hills of Vermont a steady stream came without any intervening
stop. By this time many of the French Canadians had moved out, and of
eighty-nine names signed to the Constitution of 1835, not more than
three can be identified as French.
The tide of alien immigration at this period was late in reaching
Michigan. A group not found elsewhere was that of Dutchmen who came
like some of the earlier settlers, seeking religious tolerance and
freedom. The town of Holland has been a centre for them since 1847.
Of the 749,113 inhabitants of the State in 1860, one-fifth were
foreign-born, divided not unequally between English, Irish, Germans,
and mixed Canadians.
* * * * *
Wisconsin's first settlement was at the lead mines of the southwestern
part and attracted largely Ulster Scots from Virginia, Kentucky, and
Tennessee. A little later these were reinforced by another Nordic group
of Englishmen from Cornwall who formed an important element in that
region.
The second migration scattered agricultural communities throughout the
southeastern part of Wisconsin along the lake shore. This immigration
was almost wholly from the New England States and the New England
part of New York State, and was accomplished roughly in the years
1835 to 1850. By 1847 when Statehood was achieved the territory had a
population of nearly 250,000 and was virtually a New England colony.
Of the seventy-six men who composed the second Constitutional
Convention, one-third came from New York, one-third from New England,
and the rest were a scattering.
During the decade which ended with the Federal Census of 1850, the
growth of the State had been nearly 900 per cent, a record rarely
exceeded in America. This extraordinary surge was due largely to the
sudden arrival of a foreign element which has ever since made Wisconsin
a State apart from all the others. Even as early as 1850 one-third
of the population was actually foreign-born. Of the foreign-born who
came to the State during the territorial period, the British Isles
contributed about one-half and foreign-language groups the other
half. The English-speaking immigrants soon blended with the native
population, with the exception of the Roman Catholic Irish who were
less easily assimilated. In the decade before the Civil War there was
a stream of Belgian immigrants amounting to at least 15,000. Some
hundreds of Russians also came in and the Scandinavians had begun to
arrive, although they did not play an important part until after the
Civil War. Danes and Norwegians were beginning to come in some numbers
but few Swedes as yet.
The great immigration of this period was the German, which introduced
another partly Alpine element into the overwhelmingly Nordic population
of the United States. These had begun to come after 1830, when the
Revolution in France had stirred up similar, but less successful,
political upheavals in the parts of South Germany adjoining France.
Many of the politically discontented decided to leave the country
or were obliged to do so, and they found in Wisconsin conditions
particularly to their liking. In the first place the State offered a
variety of climate and soil that was not dissimilar to that in which
they were brought up. In the second place land was cheap and good and
there was much forest land for which the Germans showed a notable
preference. Not only was the possession of timber an asset, but it was
to the German immigrant a mark of social status. Forests had largely
disappeared in Germany, except on the great estates of the nobility.
Hence, to own a piece of forest land was a mark of superiority. Only
the few could afford the forest land in Germany but in Wisconsin every
small farmer could feel himself as good as the Duke or Prince whose
yoke he had renounced. A third important attraction after Statehood was
a provision that the alien could vote after only one year's residence.
This gave the Germans a political importance without delay which they
lost no time in using.
German settlement in the United States follows a belt beginning with
Pennsylvania and running due west through Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin,
Iowa, and Missouri. This was partly due to an avoidance of the Southern
States with whose products they were not familiar and with whose land
system and slave labor they were not sympathetic. Being in this belt
Wisconsin immediately took and retained such a prominence that patriots
from the "Fatherland" seriously urged that it become a genuine German
colony.
The Pennsylvania Dutch had already shown how little disposed the
German-speaking peoples were to become citizens of a new country with
a whole heart, and the new tide of immigration followed this example.
They attacked the public-school system from the beginning and insisted
on having their own schools and on having their children taught German
in the American schools. They kept their own social organization and
even went so far as to get the State laws published in the German
language in Indiana in 1858. This tendency toward hyphenation has made
the Germans a less valuable element in the American population up to
the present time than they should have been.
The early German immigration to Wisconsin was on the whole from
southern and central Germany, and was pre-dominantly Alpine in race and
Roman Catholic in religion. Statehood in Wisconsin coincided with the
unsuccessful Revolution of 1848 in Germany which started the real flood
of German immigration that reached its maximum numbers in 1854, and
continued with noticeable strength for more than a generation longer.
The principal Nordic emigration in the '40s was from Pomerania and
Brandenburg, and many of the South Germans, while largely Alpine, were
Protestants rather than Catholics. In 1863, just after the end of the
period here considered, the church authorities reported that Wisconsin
contained 225,000 German Lutherans as against 105,000 German Catholics.
After that the Germans pressed more and more into the northern and
central regions of the State.
Wisconsin then at the end of the period here considered (1860) had
probably the largest non-Nordic population of any of the American
States, although even here the Nordics were in a great majority. With
one-third of its population foreign-born, it was surpassed in this
respect only by California.
IX
THE MOUNTAINEERS CONQUER THE SOUTHWEST
Meanwhile the States of the lower Mississippi Valley were coming into
existence at a rapid rate.
* * * * *
Alabama had no American settlement until after the Revolution, save for
the sporadic appearance of adventurers or traders. But in 1798, when
the Mississippi territory was formed, including the present State of
Alabama, there was already a movement of settlers from the adjoining
States on the east and north, and this continued rapidly until checked
by the war with the Creek Indians in 1813 and 1814. This war advertised
the territory. Its termination threw the land open to settlement, and
more than 100,000 people located in Alabama within five years. The
slight French and Spanish element in Mobile and two or three other
places was soon reduced to insignificant proportions.
The State was settled either by those who came down some of the
rivers of that region, particularly from Tennessee, or by those
who came through Georgia, stopping long enough at the land office
in Milledgeville (then the State capital) to make the necessary
arrangements for acquiring title to real estate. An unimproved but
passable trail ran thence through Montgomery to Natchez, and over
this "Three Notch Road" (so-called from the blaze which marked it)
a stream of settlers from the Atlantic seaboard States passed into
the broad belt of rich blackland which quickly made Alabama and
Mississippi the heart of the Cotton Kingdom. Alabama is, for the most
part, the offspring of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and
Tennessee, and therefore represents almost entirely Scotch and English
blood. Its foreign-born population was negligible in 1860, amounting to
little more than 12,000, almost half of whom were Irish, in a total of
virtually a million.
* * * * *
Mississippi: As in most others of this group of States, the supposed
influence of the earlier French and Spanish settlements is more
sentimental than real. American settlers began to filter in after
1763, some coming even from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New England.
A few Loyalists drifted down to the Mississippi country during the
Revolution, joining the British who were attached to the district at
that time in military or administrative capacities. One of the elements
of this Loyalist immigration consisted of Scotch Highlanders from North
Carolina.
The census of 1850 furnished the first opportunity to ascertain the
origin of the population. The main immigration naturally was from
other Southern States which contributed 145,000 against 5000 from the
Northern States. In the same year 18,000 natives of Mississippi were
residing in other Southern States, principally in Louisiana, Texas,
Arkansas, Alabama, and Tennessee.
At the census ten years later the Mississippi natives, then located in
other Southern States, had almost doubled in number. The enumeration
gives an interesting picture of the way in which population was flowing
backward and forward between adjoining States at that time as it has in
almost every other period in American history.
Since the population of Mississippi before the Civil War was almost
identical in composition with the population of the other Mississippi
Valley slave States, most of which owed their inhabitants originally to
Virginia and subsequently to the States which Virginia had colonized,
it was not surprising that these people found it easy to move from
one part of this region to another. Of nearly 800,000 population at
the outbreak of the Civil War, the foreign-born, still mainly Irish,
constituted only one in a hundred. But nearly half of the population of
the State was colored, and thus no element of racial strength. In this
respect Mississippi's record was surpassed only by Georgia and South
Carolina. This latter State was the only one in which Negroes actually
outnumbered Whites at that time. Other Southern States later reached
the same unenviable situation, and it continued in South Carolina until
after the shift of Negro population which followed the World War.
* * * * *
Louisiana at the time of the Purchase in 1803 presented among its
50,000 residents a more varied group than could be found in any other
American State. The foundation of this population was French, the
Spanish element never having been important. These French seem to
have represented a much more heterogeneous lot than did the early
French-Canadians. One colonization scheme after another had been
launched in Paris, and settlers had been recruited by all sorts of
means, many of them of more than doubtful merit.
Here, however, as in other colonies, it must be remembered that the
final population represented not those who arrived, but those who both
survived and left posterity. This fact has too often been disregarded
in the accounts of the origins of the American population. If France
shipped prostitutes to New Orleans to provide wives for its soldiers,
nevertheless this is now of importance only in so far as such persons
left descendants. In one case, of which the details exist, forty-four
girls were sent out from France in 1722. They all married, but only one
left offspring.
Another element in the population was the Acadian refugees, who,
uprooted by the New England militia in 1758, were driven to almost
every part of the colonies. Some made their way to Louisiana, as
Longfellow has described, though drawing a very erroneous picture, in
_Evangeline_. Others were scattered through Maryland, Virginia, and
the Carolinas, in fact on almost every part of the Atlantic coast.
The total number of persons expelled from Nova Scotia at this time
probably did not exceed 6000, and many of these certainly died from
hardships. In any case only a minority was directed to Louisiana, so
that the original settlement of Acadians must represent a very small
part of the population. The so-called "Cajan" population of some of
the southern parishes of Louisiana is, at the present time, largely of
other origins, chiefly Negro.
Another group of French refugees came from Haiti by way of Cuba after
1800, when the Negro uprising there drove out the Whites. Many of these
were persons of good quality but as many as could do so went elsewhere
after peace returned.
Still another source of population was the notorious Mississippi
Bubble sponsored by the Scotchman John Law about 1717. This was the
period at which the Germans from the Palatine and adjacent regions
were emigrating in large numbers, as has been previously set forth in
detail, and 10,000 or more of them were persuaded to go to Louisiana.
According to accepted accounts, not more than 2000 of these Alpines
actually arrived, and when the bubble burst, they settled along the
Mississippi above Baton Rouge in a region which is still known as the
German Coast.
An ill-natured English traveller, John Davis, visiting Louisiana in the
year before the Purchase of 1803, has left the following picture of
these two elements as they appeared to him:
"The Acadians are the descendants of French colonists, transported
from the province of Nova Scotia. The character of their
fore-fathers is strongly marked in them; they are rude and sluggish,
without ambition, living miserable on their sorry plantations, where
they cultivate Indian corn, raise pigs, and get children. Around
their houses one sees nothing but hogs, and before their doors great
rustic boys, and big strapping girls, stiff as bars of iron, gaping
for want of thought, or something to do, at the stranger who is
passing.
"The Germans are somewhat numerous, and are easy to be distinguished
by their accent, fair and fresh complexion, their inhospitality,
brutal manners and proneness to intoxication. They are, however,
industrious and frugal."
A small Spanish settlement, New Iberia, was made in 1779 of colonists
largely from Andalusia and the Canary Islands. At least the former
element doubtless contained Moorish blood.
Finally, there was an immigration from the American colonies which had
been coming in for a generation previous to the Purchase. One of the
first groups was from North Carolina. From time to time other small
bodies of settlers crossed the mountains to the Tennessee River, where
they constructed flat boats and floated down to the Ohio and thence
to the Mississippi. A few years later a group of Scotch Highlanders
from North Carolina arrived, settling near Natchez. The early American
immigration to Louisiana came on the whole from the upland parts of
the Southern States, and was therefore Scotch and English. After the
Purchase a similar immigration increased greatly in numbers.
The census of 1860, which credited the State with 708,002 people,
revealed that only 81,000 of these were foreign-born, the Germans and
Irish being in about equal numbers. Nearly all of the remainder who
were not natives of the State were born in adjacent States of the
Mississippi Valley, the Whites being made up in about equal proportions
of native-born and those born in nearby States. The former contained
much of the old French and mixed stock; the latter was almost entirely
of British antecedents.
* * * * *
Arkansas, at the time of the Louisiana Purchase, did not contain 500
white people. The current of immigration down the Mississippi had gone
past the Post at the mouth of the Arkansas River without taking the
trouble to turn aside. Settlement can scarcely be said to have begun
before 1807, and at the census three years later there were only 1000
people in the territory.
It was not until after the passage by Congress in 1818 of the Land Act
that the pioneers, each carrying in a leather wallet a certificate
which entitled him to a homestead, began to work their boats up the
current of the Arkansas River. There was a steady though not rapid
arrival of settlers from Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, and
particularly Tennessee--which has often been regarded as the original
parent of Arkansas.
Attempts have been made to trace a line of migration from the first
settlement in North Carolina, the undesirable character of which was
mentioned earlier, through Tennessee and down into Arkansas, and to
attribute to this element of the population the backwardness of some
parts of the last-named State. A few settlers came from Georgia or
Alabama up the Mississippi River but this involved a long struggle with
a strong current and it was easier for them to settle in the blacklands
of Mississippi or Louisiana.
There were about 14,000 persons in Arkansas in 1817 when it was created
a Territory. Thereafter it made a steady growth, derived generally from
all the Southern States of the Mississippi Valley, until nearly the
time of the Civil War when Indiana and Kentucky began to contribute
some settlers. Its population therefore was in general made up almost
wholly of British stock. Its 1860 population of 435,350 was one-fourth
black, the Whites being almost wholly native-born, a thousand Germans
and a thousand Irish being lost in the mass.
* * * * *
Missouri must be considered from a double point of view. As a French
outpost, St. Louis had become the refuge of much of the French
population of the whole Northwest Territory when that passed under
English control, and for many years the city remained a foreign
settlement. Scattered settlers began to occupy the river banks after or
even during the Revolution. In the westward march of population down
the eastern slope of the Mississippi Valley small groups soon began to
enter Missouri, until at the census of 1810, they amounted to 20,000
persons occupying a strip of land along the Mississippi with a small
isolated settlement at the lead mines.
On the other hand, as a territory where slavery was permitted, Missouri
naturally attracted emigrants from Virginia and North Carolina,
Kentucky and Tennessee. Within ten years after the Louisiana Purchase
it was estimated that four-fifths of the people in Missouri were
Americans and they were rapidly moving from the river back into the
interior.
The Missouri River was naturally an avenue of access for these people.
The interior of the State soon began to have the collective name of
"Boone's Lick" because the Boones had made salt in that district in
1807. A real rush into this region began about 1817, and Kentucky
showed its loyalty to its adopted son (who it will be remembered was a
Pennsylvanian by birth) by contributing 90 per cent of the immigration.
The State has been called the daughter of Kentucky and within
limits this is not inappropriate. Tennessee, however, was strongly
represented. The whole population was in general of the upland element
originally from Virginia and North Carolina, largely Ulster Scotch in
its more remote origin.