unnecessary that I should speak. Illinois gave to the North its
President; Mississippi gave to the South its President. Lincoln and
Davis were both born in Kentucky. Grant and Sherman, the northern
generals, came from the Mississippi Valley; and both of them believed
that when Vicksburg fell the cause of the South was lost, and so it must
have been if the Confederacy had been unable, after victories in the
East, to regain the Father of Waters; for, as General Sherman said:
"Whatever power holds that river can govern this continent."
With the close of the war political power passed for many years to the
northern half of the Mississippi Valley, as the names of Grant, Hayes,
Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley indicate. The population of the Valley
grew from about fifteen millions in 1860 to over forty millions in
1900--over half the total population of the United States. The
significance of its industrial growth is not likely to be overestimated
or overlooked. On its northern border, from near Minnesota's boundary
line, through the Great Lakes to Pittsburgh, on its eastern edge, runs a
huge movement of iron from mine to factory. This industry is basal in
American life, and it has revolutionized the industry of the world. The
United States produces pig iron and steel in amount equal to her two
greatest competitors combined, and the iron ores for this product are
chiefly in the Mississippi Valley. It is the chief producer of coal,
thereby enabling the United States almost to equal the combined
production of Germany and Great Britain; and great oil fields of the
nation are in its midst. Its huge crops of wheat and corn and its cattle
are the main resources for the United States and are drawn upon by
Europe. Its cotton furnishes two-thirds of the world's factory supply.
Its railroad system constitutes the greatest transportation network in
the world. Again it is seeking industrial consolidation by demanding
improvement of its vast water system as a unit. If this design, favored
by Roosevelt, shall at some time be accomplished, again the bulk of the
commerce of the Valley may flow along the old routes to New Orleans; and
to Galveston by the development of southern railroad outlets after the
building of the Panama Canal. For the development and exploitation of
these and of the transportation and trade interests of the Middle West,
Eastern capital has been consolidated into huge corporations, trusts,
and combinations. With the influx of capital, and the rise of cities and
manufactures, portions of the Mississippi Valley have become assimilated
with the East. With the end of the era of free lands the basis of its
democratic society is passing away.
The final topic on which I shall briefly comment in this discussion of
the significance of the Mississippi Valley in American history is a
corollary of this condition. Has the Mississippi Valley a permanent
contribution to make to American society, or is it to be adjusted into a
type characteristically Eastern and European? In other words, has the
United States itself an original contribution to make to the history of
society? This is what it comes to. The most significant fact in the
Mississippi Valley is its ideals. Here has been developed, not by
revolutionary theory, but by growth among free opportunities, the
conception of a vast democracy made up of mobile ascending individuals,
conscious of their power and their responsibilities. Can these ideals of
individualism and democracy be reconciled and applied to the twentieth
century type of civilization?
Other nations have been rich and prosperous and powerful, art-loving and
empire-building. No other nation on a vast scale has been controlled by
a self-conscious, self-restrained democracy in the interests of progress
and freedom, industrial as well as political. It is in the vast and
level spaces of the Mississippi Valley, if anywhere, that the forces of
social transformation and the modification of its democratic ideals may
be arrested.
Beginning with competitive individualism, as well as with belief in
equality, the farmers of the Mississippi Valley gradually learned that
unrestrained competition and combination meant the triumph of the
strongest, the seizure in the interest of a dominant class of the
strategic points of the nation's life. They learned that between the
ideal of individualism, unrestrained by society, and the ideal of
democracy, was an innate conflict; that their very ambitions and
forcefulness had endangered their democracy. The significance of the
Mississippi Valley in American history has lain partly in the fact that
it was a region of revolt. Here have arisen varied, sometimes
ill-considered, but always devoted, movements for ameliorating the lot
of the common man in the interests of democracy. Out of the Mississippi
Valley have come successive and related tidal waves of popular demand
for real or imagined legislative safeguards to their rights and their
social ideals. The Granger movement, the Greenback movement, the
Populist movement, Bryan Democracy, and Roosevelt Republicanism all
found their greatest strength in the Mississippi Valley. They were
Mississippi Valley ideals in action. Its people were learning by
experiment and experience how to grapple with the fundamental problem of
creating a just social order that shall sustain the free, progressive,
individual in a real democracy. The Mississippi Valley is asking, "What
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"
The Mississippi Valley has furnished a new social order to America. Its
universities have set new types of institutions for social service and
for the elevation of the plain people. Its historians should recount its
old ambitions, and inventory its ideals, as well as its resources, for
the information of the present age, to the end that building on its
past, the mighty Valley may have a significance in the life of the
nation even more profound than any which I have recounted.
FOOTNOTES:
[177:1] Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association for
1909-10. Reprinted with the permission of the Association.
[177:2] _Harper's Magazine_, February, 1900, p. 413.
[178:1] Roosevelt, "The Northwest in the Nation," in "Proceedings of the
Wisconsin Historical Society," Fortieth Annual Meeting, p. 92.
[182:1] "Franklin's Works," iv, p. 141.
[186:1] [See the author's paper in _American Historical Review_, x, p.
245.]
[187:1] Cutler's "Cutler," ii, p. 372.
[188:1] "Jefferson's Works," iv, p. 431.
[189:1] [See on the Cotton Kingdom, U. B. Phillips, "History of
Slavery"; W. G. Brown, "Lower South"; W. E. Dodd, "Expansion and
Conflict"; F. J. Turner, "New West."]
[198:1] "Congressional Globe," 35th Congress, First Session, Appendix,
p. 70.
[199:1] "Seward's Works" (Boston, 1884), iv, p. 319.
VII
THE PROBLEM OF THE WEST[205:1]
The problem of the West is nothing less than the problem of American
development. A glance at the map of the United States reveals the truth.
To write of a "Western sectionalism," bounded on the east by the
Alleghanies, is, in itself, to proclaim the writer a provincial. What is
the West? What has it been in American life? To have the answers to
these questions, is to understand the most significant features of the
United States of to-day.
The West, at bottom, is a form of society, rather than an area. It is
the term applied to the region whose social conditions result from the
application of older institutions and ideas to the transforming
influences of free land. By this application, a new environment is
suddenly entered, freedom of opportunity is opened, the cake of custom
is broken, and new activities, new lines of growth, new institutions and
new ideals, are brought into existence. The wilderness disappears, the
"West" proper passes on to a new frontier, and in the former area, a new
society has emerged from its contact with the backwoods. Gradually this
society loses its primitive conditions, and assimilates itself to the
type of the older social conditions of the East; but it bears within it
enduring and distinguishing survivals of its frontier experience. Decade
after decade, West after West, this rebirth of American society has gone
on, has left its traces behind it, and has reacted on the East. The
history of our political institutions, our democracy, is not a history
of imitation, of simple borrowing; it is a history of the evolution and
adaptation of organs in response to changed environment, a history of
the origin of new political species. In this sense, therefore, the West
has been a constructive force of the highest significance in our life.
To use the words of that acute and widely informed observer, Mr. Bryce,
"The West is the most American part of America. . . . What Europe is to
Asia, what America is to England, that the Western States and
Territories are to the Atlantic States."
* * * * *
The West, as a phase of social organization, began with the Atlantic
coast, and passed across the continent. But the colonial tide-water area
was in close touch with the Old World, and soon lost its Western
aspects. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the newer social
conditions appeared along the upper waters of the tributaries of the
Atlantic. Here it was that the West took on its distinguishing features,
and transmitted frontier traits and ideals to this area in later days.
On the coast, were the fishermen and skippers, the merchants and
planters, with eyes turned toward Europe. Beyond the falls of the rivers
were the pioneer farmers, largely of non-English stock, Scotch-Irish and
German. They constituted a distinct people, and may be regarded as an
expansion of the social and economic life of the middle region into the
back country of the South. These frontiersmen were the ancestors of
Boone, Andrew Jackson, Calhoun, Clay, and Lincoln. Washington and
Jefferson were profoundly affected by these frontier conditions. The
forest clearings have been the seed plots of American character.
In the Revolutionary days, the settlers crossed the Alleghanies and put
a barrier between them and the coast. They became, to use their phrases,
"the men of the Western waters," the heirs of the "Western world." In
this era, the backwoodsmen, all along the western slopes of the
mountains, with a keen sense of the difference between them and the
dwellers on the coast, demanded organization into independent States of
the Union. Self-government was their ideal. Said one of their rude, but
energetic petitions for statehood: "Some of our fellow-citizens may
think we are not able to conduct our affairs and consult our interests;
but if our society is rude, much wisdom is not necessary to supply our
wants, and a fool can sometimes put on his clothes better than a wise
man can do it for him." This forest philosophy is the philosophy of
American democracy. But the men of the coast were not ready to admit its
implications. They apportioned the State legislatures so that the
property-holding minority of the tide-water lands were able to outvote
the more populous back countries. A similar system was proposed by
Federalists in the constitutional convention of 1787. Gouverneur Morris,
arguing in favor of basing representation on property as well as
numbers, declared that "he looked forward, also, to that range of new
States which would soon be formed in the West. He thought the rule of
representation ought to be so fixed, as to secure to the Atlantic States
a prevalence in the national councils." "The new States," said he, "will
know less of the public interest than these; will have an interest in
many respects different; in particular will be little scrupulous of
involving the community in wars, the burdens and operations of which
would fall chiefly on the maritime States. Provision ought, therefore,
to be made to prevent the maritime States from being hereafter outvoted
by them." He added that the Western country "would not be able to
furnish men equally enlightened to share in the administration of our
common interests. The busy haunts of men, not the remote wilderness, was
the proper school of political talents. If the Western people get power
into their hands, they will ruin the Atlantic interest. The back
members are always most averse to the best measures." Add to these
utterances of Gouverneur Morris the impassioned protest of Josiah
Quincy, of Massachusetts, in the debates in the House of
Representatives, on the admission of Louisiana. Referring to the
discussion over the slave votes and the West in the constitutional
convention, he declared, "Suppose, then, that it had been distinctly
foreseen that, in addition to the effect of this weight, the whole
population of a world beyond the Mississippi was to be brought into this
and the other branch of the legislature, to form our laws, control our
rights, and decide our destiny. Sir, can it be pretended that the
patriots of that day would for one moment have listened to it? . . .
They had not taken degrees at the hospital of idiocy. . . . Why, sir, I
have already heard of six States, and some say there will be, at no
great distant time, more. I have also heard that the mouth of the Ohio
will be far to the east of the center of the contemplated empire. . . .
You have no authority to throw the rights and property of this people
into 'hotch-pot' with the wild men on the Missouri, nor with the mixed,
though more respectable, race of Anglo-Hispano-Gallo-Americans who bask
on the sands in the mouth of the Mississippi. . . . Do you suppose the
people of the Northern and Atlantic States will, or ought to, look on
with patience and see Representatives and Senators from the Red River
and Missouri, pouring themselves upon this and the other floor, managing
the concerns of a seaboard fifteen hundred miles, at least, from their
residence; and having a preponderancy in councils into which,
constitutionally, they could never have been admitted?"
Like an echo from the fears expressed by the East at the close of the
eighteenth century come the words of an eminent Eastern man of
letters[208:1] at the end of the nineteenth century, in warning against
the West: "Materialized in their temper; with few ideals of an ennobling
sort; little instructed in the lessons of history; safe from exposure to
the direct calamities and physical horrors of war; with undeveloped
imaginations and sympathies--they form a community unfortunate and
dangerous from the possession of power without a due sense of its
corresponding responsibilities; a community in which the passion for war
may easily be excited as the fancied means by which its greatness may be
convincingly exhibited, and its ambitions gratified. . . . Some chance
spark may fire the prairie."
Here, then, is the problem of the West, as it looked to New England
leaders of thought in the beginning and at the end of this century. From
the first, it was recognized that a new type was growing up beyond the
seaboard, and that the time would come when the destiny of the nation
would be in Western hands. The divergence of these societies became
clear in the struggle over the ratification of the federal constitution.
The up-country agricultural regions, the communities that were in debt
and desired paper money, with some Western exceptions, opposed the
instrument; but the areas of intercourse and property carried the day.
It is important to understand, therefore, what were some of the ideals
of this early Western democracy. How did the frontiersman differ from
the man of the coast?
The most obvious fact regarding the man of the Western Waters is that he
had placed himself under influences destructive to many of the gains of
civilization. Remote from the opportunity for systematic education,
substituting a log hut in the forest-clearing for the social comforts of
the town, he suffered hardships and privations, and reverted in many
ways to primitive conditions of life. Engaged in a struggle to subdue
the forest, working as an individual, and with little specie or
capital, his interests were with the debtor class. At each stage of its
advance, the West has favored an expansion of the currency. The pioneer
had boundless confidence in the future of his own community, and when
seasons of financial contraction and depression occurred, he, who had
staked his all on confidence in Western development, and had fought the
savage for his home, was inclined to reproach the conservative sections
and classes. To explain this antagonism requires more than denunciation
of dishonesty, ignorance, and boorishness as fundamental Western traits.
Legislation in the United States has had to deal with two distinct
social conditions. In some portions of the country there was, and is, an
aggregation of property, and vested rights are in the foreground: in
others, capital is lacking, more primitive conditions prevail, with
different economic and social ideals, and the contentment of the average
individual is placed in the foreground. That in the conflict between
these two ideals an even hand has always been held by the government
would be difficult to show.
The separation of the Western man from the seaboard, and his
environment, made him in a large degree free from European precedents
and forces. He looked at things independently and with small regard or
appreciation for the best Old World experience. He had no ideal of a
philosophical, eclectic nation, that should advance civilization by
"intercourse with foreigners and familiarity with their point of view,
and readiness to adopt whatever is best and most suitable in their
ideas, manners, and customs." His was rather the ideal of conserving and
developing what was original and valuable in this new country. The
entrance of old society upon free lands meant to him opportunity for a
new type of democracy and new popular ideals. The West was not
conservative: buoyant self-confidence and self-assertion were
distinguishing traits in its composition. It saw in its growth nothing
less than a new order of society and state. In this conception were
elements of evil and elements of good.
But the fundamental fact in regard to this new society was its relation
to land. Professor Boutmy has said of the United States, "Their one
primary and predominant object is to cultivate and settle these
prairies, forests, and vast waste lands. The striking and peculiar
characteristic of American society is that it is not so much a democracy
as a huge commercial company for the discovery, cultivation, and
capitalization of its enormous territory. The United States are
primarily a commercial society, and only secondarily a nation." Of
course, this involves a serious misapprehension. By the very fact of the
task here set forth, far-reaching ideals of the state and of society
have been evolved in the West, accompanied by loyalty to the nation
representative of these ideals. But M. Boutmy's description hits the
substantial fact, that the fundamental traits of the man of the interior
were due to the free lands of the West. These turned his attention to
the great task of subduing them to the purposes of civilization, and to
the task of advancing his economic and social status in the new
democracy which he was helping to create. Art, literature, refinement,
scientific administration, all had to give way to this Titanic labor.
Energy, incessant activity, became the lot of this new American. Says a
traveler of the time of Andrew Jackson, "America is like a vast
workshop, over the door of which is printed in blazing characters, 'No
admittance here, except on business.'" The West of our own day reminds
Mr. Bryce "of the crowd which Vathek found in the hall of Eblis, each
darting hither and thither with swift steps and unquiet mien, driven to
and fro by a fire in the heart. Time seems too short for what they have
to do, and the result always to come short of their desire."
But free lands and the consciousness of working out their social
destiny did more than turn the Westerner to material interests and
devote him to a restless existence. They promoted equality among the
Western settlers, and reacted as a check on the aristocratic influences
of the East. Where everybody could have a farm, almost for taking it,
economic equality easily resulted, and this involved political equality.
Not without a struggle would the Western man abandon this ideal, and it
goes far to explain the unrest in the remote West to-day.
Western democracy included individual liberty, as well as equality. The
frontiersman was impatient of restraints. He knew how to preserve order,
even in the absence of legal authority. If there were cattle thieves,
lynch law was sudden and effective: the regulators of the Carolinas were
the predecessors of the claims associations of Iowa and the vigilance
committees of California. But the individual was not ready to submit to
complex regulations. Population was sparse, there was no multitude of
jostling interests, as in older settlements, demanding an elaborate
system of personal restraints. Society became atomic. There was a
reproduction of the primitive idea of the personality of the law, a
crime was more an offense against the victim than a violation of the law
of the land. Substantial justice, secured in the most direct way, was
the ideal of the backwoodsman. He had little patience with finely drawn
distinctions or scruples of method. If the thing was one proper to be
done, then the most immediate, rough and ready, effective way was the
best way.
It followed from the lack of organized political life, from the atomic
conditions of the backwoods society, that the individual was exalted and
given free play. The West was another name for opportunity. Here were
mines to be seized, fertile valleys to be preempted, all the natural
resources open to the shrewdest and the boldest. The United States is
unique in the extent to which the individual has been given an open
field, unchecked by restraints of an old social order, or of scientific
administration of government. The self-made man was the Western man's
ideal, was the kind of man that all men might become. Out of his
wilderness experience, out of the freedom of his opportunities, he
fashioned a formula for social regeneration,--the freedom of the
individual to seek his own. He did not consider that his conditions were
exceptional and temporary.
Under such conditions, leadership easily develops,--a leadership based
on the possession of the qualities most serviceable to the young
society. In the history of Western settlement, we see each forted
village following its local hero. Clay, Jackson, Harrison, Lincoln, were
illustrations of this tendency in periods when the Western hero rose to
the dignity of national hero.