Michigan. Between 1830 and 1840 the population of the State leaped from
31,000 to 212,000, in the face of the fact that the heavy debt of the
State and the crisis of 1837 turned from her borders many of the
thrifty, debt-hating Germans. The vast majority of the settlers were New
Yorkers. Michigan is distinctly a child of the Empire State. Canadians,
both French and English, continued to come as the lumber interests of
the region increased. By 1850 Michigan contained nearly 400,000
inhabitants, who occupied the southern half of the State.
But she now found an active competitor for settlement in Wisconsin. In
this region two forces had attracted the earlier inhabitants. The
fur-trading posts of Green Bay, Prairie du Chien, and Milwaukee
constituted one element, in which the French influence was continued.
The lead region of the southwest corner of the State formed the center
of attraction for Illinois and Southern pioneers. The soldiers who
followed Black Hawk's trail in 1832 reported the richness of the soil,
and an era of immigration followed. To the port of Milwaukee came a
combined migration from western New York and New England, and spread
along the southern tier of prairie counties until it met the Southern
settlers in the lead region. Many of the early political contests in the
State were connected, as in Ohio and Illinois, with the antagonisms
between the sections thus brought together in a limited area.
The other element in the formation of Wisconsin was that of the Germans,
then just entering upon their vast immigration to the United States.
Wisconsin was free from debt; she made a constitution of exceptional
liberality to foreigners, and instead of treasuring her school lands or
using them for internal improvements, she sold them for almost nothing
to attract immigration. The result was that the prudent Germans, who
loved light taxes and cheap hard wood lands, turned toward
Wisconsin,--another _Voelkerwanderung_. From Milwaukee as a center they
spread north along the shore of Lake Michigan, and later into northern
central Wisconsin, following the belt of the hardwood forests. So
considerable were their numbers that such an economist as Roscher wrote
of the feasibility of making Wisconsin a German State. "They can plant
the vine on the hills," cried Franz Loeher in 1847, "and drink with happy
song and dance; they can have German schools and universities, German
literature and art, German science and philosophy, German courts and
assemblies; in short, they can form a German State, in which the German
language shall be as much the popular and official language as the
English is now, and in which the German spirit shall rule." By 1860 the
German-born were sixteen per cent of the population of the State. But
the New York and New England stream proved even more broad and steady in
its flow in these years before the war. Wisconsin's population rose from
30,000 in 1840 to 300,000 in 1850.
The New England element that entered this State is probably typical of
the same element in Wisconsin's neighboring States, and demands notice.
It came for the most part, not from the seaboard of Massachusetts, which
has so frequently represented New England to the popular apprehension. A
large element in this stock was the product of the migration that
ascended the valleys of Connecticut and central Massachusetts through
the hills into Vermont and New York,--a pioneer folk almost from the
time of their origin. The Vermont colonists decidedly outnumbered those
of Massachusetts in both Michigan and Wisconsin, and were far more
numerous in other Northwestern States than the population of Vermont
warranted. Together with this current came the settlers from western New
York. These were generally descendants of this same pioneer New England
stock, continuing into a remoter West the movement that had brought
their parents to New York. The combined current from New England and New
York thus constituted a distinctly modified New England stock, and was
clearly the dominant native element in Michigan and Wisconsin.
The decade of the forties was also the period of Iowa's rapid increase.
Although not politically a part of the Old Northwest, in history she is
closely related to that region. Her growth was by no means so rapid as
was Wisconsin's, for the proportion of foreign immigration was less.
Whereas in 1850 more than one-third of Wisconsin's population was
foreign-born, the proportion for Iowa was not much over one-tenth. The
main body of her people finally came from the Middle States, and
Illinois and Ohio; but Southern elements were well represented,
particularly among her political leaders.
The middle of the century was the turning-point in the transfer of
control in the Northwest. Below the line of the old national turnpike,
marked by the cities of Columbus, Indianapolis, Vandalia, and St. Louis,
the counties had acquired a stability of settlement; and partly because
of the Southern element, partly because of a natural tendency of new
communities toward Jacksonian ideals, these counties were preponderantly
Democratic. But the Southern migration had turned to the cotton areas of
the Southwest, and the development of railroads and canals had broken
the historic commercial ascendancy of the Mississippi River; New Orleans
was yielding the scepter to New York. The tide of migration from the
North poured along these newly opened channels, and occupied the less
settled counties above the national turnpike. In cities like Columbus
and Indianapolis, where the two currents had run side by side, the
combined elements were most clearly marked, but in the Northwest as a
whole a varied population had been formed. This region seemed to
represent and understand the various parts of the Union. It was this
aspect which Mr. Vinton, of Ohio, urged in Congress when he made his
notable speech in favor of the admission of Iowa. He pleaded the
mission of the Northwest as the mediator between the sections and the
unifying agency in the nation, with such power and pathos as to thrill
even John Quincy Adams.
But there are some issues which cannot be settled by compromise,
tendencies one of which must conquer the other. Such an issue the slave
power raised, and raised too late for support in the upper half of the
Mississippi Basin. The Northern and the Southern elements found
themselves in opposition to each other. "A house divided against itself
cannot stand," said Abraham Lincoln, a Northern leader of Southern
origin. Douglas, a leader of the Southern forces, though coming from New
England, declared his indifference whether slavery were voted up or down
in the Western Territories. The historic debates between these two
champions reveal the complex conditions in the Northwest, and take on a
new meaning when considered in the light of this contest between the
Northern and the Southern elements. The State that had been so potent
for compromise was at last the battle-ground itself, and the places
selected for the various debates of Lincoln and Douglas marked the
strongholds and the outposts of the antagonistic forces.
At this time the kinship of western New York and the dominant element in
the Northwest was clearly revealed. Speaking for the anti-slavery forces
at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1860, Seward said: "The Northwest is by no
means so small as you may think it. I speak to you because I feel that I
am, and during all my mature life have been, one of you. Although of New
York, I am still a citizen of the Northwest. The Northwest extends
eastward to the base of the Alleghany Mountains, and does not all of
western New York lie westward of the Alleghany Mountains? Whence comes
all the inspiration of free soil which spreads itself with such cheerful
voices over all these plains? Why, from New York westward of the
Alleghany Mountains. The people before me,--who are you but New York
men, while you are men of the Northwest?" In the Civil War, western New
York and the Northwest were powerful in the forum and in the field. A
million soldiers came from the States that the Ordinance, passed by
Southern votes, had devoted to freedom.
This was the first grave time of trial for the Northwest, and it did
much eventually to give to the region a homogeneity and
self-consciousness. But at the close of the war the region was still
agricultural, only half-developed; still breaking ground in northern
forests; still receiving contributions of peoples which radically
modified the social organism, and undergoing economic changes almost
revolutionary in their rapidity and extent. The changes since the war
are of more social importance, in many respects, than those in the years
commonly referred to as the formative period. As a result, the Northwest
finds herself again between contending forces, sharing the interests of
East and West, as once before those of North and South, and forced to
give her voice on issues of equal significance for the destiny of the
republic.
In these transforming years since 1860, Ohio, finding the magician's
talisman that revealed the treasury of mineral wealth, gas, and
petroleum beneath her fields, has leaped to a front rank among the
manufacturing States of the Union. Potential on the Great Lakes by
reason of her ports of Toledo and Cleveland, tapping the Ohio river
artery of trade at Cincinnati, and closely connected with all the vast
material development of the upper waters of this river in western
Pennsylvania and West Virginia, Ohio has become distinctly a part of the
eastern social organism, much like the State of Pennsylvania. The
complexity of her origin still persists. Ohio has no preponderant social
center; her multiplicity of colleges and universities bears tribute to
the diversity of the elements that have made the State. One-third of
her people are of foreign parentage (one or both parents foreign-born),
and the city of Cincinnati has been deeply affected by the German stock,
while Cleveland strongly reflects the influence of the New England
element. That influence is still very palpable, but it is New England in
the presence of natural gas, iron, and coal, New England shaped by blast
and forge. The Middle State ideals will dominate Ohio's future.
Bucolic Indiana, too, within the last decade has come into the
possession of gas-fields and has increased the exploitation of her coals
until she seems destined to share in the industrial type represented by
Ohio. Cities have arisen, like a dream, on the sites of country
villages. But Indiana has a much smaller proportion of foreign elements
than any other State of the Old Northwest, and it is the Southern
element that still differentiates her from her sisters. While Ohio's
political leaders still attest the Puritan migration, Indiana's clasp
hands with the leaders from the South.
The Southern elements continue also to reveal themselves in the
Democratic southwestern counties of Illinois, grouped like a broad delta
of the Illinois River, while northern Illinois holds a larger proportion
of descendants of the Middle States and New England. About one-half her
population is of foreign parentage, in which the German, Irish, and
Scandinavians furnish the largest elements. She is a great agricultural
State and a great manufacturing State, the connecting link between the
Mississippi and the Great Lakes. Her metropolis, Chicago, is the very
type of Northwestern development for good and for evil. It is an epitome
of her composite nationality. A recent writer, analyzing the school
census of Chicago, points out that "only two cities in the German
Empire, Berlin and Hamburg, have a greater German population than
Chicago; only two in Sweden, Stockholm and Goeteborg, have more Swedes;
and only two in Norway, Christiana and Bergen, have more Norwegians";
while the Irish, Polish, Bohemians, and Dutch elements are also largely
represented. But in spite of her rapidity of growth and her complex
elements, Chicago stands as the representative of the will-power and
genius for action of the Middle West, and the State of Illinois will be
the battle-ground for social and economic ideals for the next
generation.
Michigan is two States. The northern peninsula is cut off from the
southern physically, industrially, and in the history of settlement. It
would seem that her natural destiny was with Wisconsin, or some possible
new State embracing the iron and copper, forest and shipping areas of
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota on Lake Superior. The lower peninsula
of Michigan is the daughter of New York and over twelve per cent of
Michigan's present population were born in that State, and her traits
are those of the parent State. Over half her population is of foreign
parentage, of which Canada and England together have furnished one-half,
while the Germans outnumber any other single foreign element. The State
has undergone a steady industrial development, exploiting her northern
mines and forests, developing her lumber interests with Saginaw as the
center, raising fruits along the lake shore counties, and producing
grain in the middle trough of counties running from Saginaw Bay to the
south of Lake Michigan. Her state university has been her peculiar
glory, furnishing the first model for the state university, and it is
the educational contribution of the Northwest to the nation.
Wisconsin's future is dependent upon the influence of the large
proportion of her population of foreign parentage, for nearly
three-fourths of her inhabitants are of that class. She thus has a
smaller percentage of native population than any other of the States
formed from the Old Northwest. Of this foreign element the Germans
constitute by far the largest part, with the Scandinavians second. Her
American population born outside of Wisconsin comes chiefly from New
York. In contrast with the Ohio River States, she lacks the Southern
element. Her greater foreign population and her dairy interests contrast
with Michigan's Canadian and English elements and fruit culture. Her
relations are more Western than Michigan's by reason of her connection
with the Mississippi and the prairie States. Her foreign element is
slightly less than Minnesota's, and in the latter State the
Scandinavians take the place held by the Germans in Wisconsin. The
facility with which the Scandinavians catch the spirit of Western
America and assimilate with their neighbors is much greater than is the
case with the Germans, so that Wisconsin seems to offer opportunity for
non-English influence in a greater degree than her sister on the west.
While Minnesota's economic development has heretofore been closely
dependent on the wheat-producing prairies, the opening of the iron
fields of the Mesabi and Vermilion ranges, together with the development
of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Duluth and West Superior, and the
prospective achievement of a deep-water communication with the Atlantic,
seem to offer to that State a new and imperial industrial destiny.
Between this stupendous economic future to the northwest and the
colossal growth of Chicago on the southeast Wisconsin seems likely to
become a middle agricultural area, developing particularly into a dairy
State. She is powerfully affected by the conservative tendencies of her
German element in times of political agitation and of proposals of
social change.
Some of the social modifications in this State are more or less typical
of important processes at work among the neighboring States of the Old
Northwest. In the north, the men who built up the lumber interests of
the State, who founded a mill town surrounded by the stumps of the pine
forests which they exploited for the prairie markets, have acquired
wealth and political power. The spacious and well-appointed home of the
town-builder may now be seen in many a northern community, in a group of
less pretentious homes of operatives and tradesmen, the social
distinctions between them emphasized by the difference in nationality. A
few years before, this captain of industry was perhaps actively engaged
in the task of seeking the best "forties" or directing the operations of
his log-drivers. His wife and daughters make extensive visits to Europe,
his sons go to some university, and he himself is likely to acquire
political position, or to devote his energies to saving the town from
industrial decline, as the timber is cut away, by transforming it into a
manufacturing center for more finished products. Still others continue
their activity among the forests of the South. This social history of
the timber areas of Wisconsin has left clear indications in the
development of the peculiar political leadership in the northern portion
of the State.
In the southern and middle counties of the State, the original
settlement of the native American pioneer farmer, a tendency is showing
itself to divide the farms and to sell to thrifty Germans, or to
cultivate the soil by tenants, while the farmer retires to live in the
neighboring village, and perhaps to organize creameries and develop a
dairy business. The result is that a replacement of nationalities is in
progress. Townships and even counties once dominated by the native
American farmers of New York extraction are now possessed by Germans or
other European nationalities. Large portions of the retail trades of the
towns are also passing into German hands, while the native element seeks
the cities, the professions, or mercantile enterprises of larger
character. The non-native element shows distinct tendencies to dwell in
groups. One of the most striking illustrations of this fact is the
community of New Glarus, in Wisconsin, formed by a carefully organized
migration from Glarus in Switzerland, aided by the canton itself. For
some years this community was a miniature Swiss canton in social
organization and customs, but of late it has become increasingly
assimilated to the American type, and has left an impress by
transforming the county in which it is from a grain-raising to a dairy
region.
From Milwaukee as a center, the influence of the Germans upon the social
customs and ideals of Wisconsin has been marked. Milwaukee has many of
the aspects of a German city, and has furnished a stronghold of
resistance to native American efforts to enact rigid temperance
legislation, laws regulative of parochial schools, and similar attempts
to bend the German type to the social ideas of the pioneer American
stock. In the last presidential election, the German area of the State
deserted the Democratic party, and its opposition to free silver was a
decisive factor in the overwhelming victory of the Republicans in
Wisconsin. With all the evidence of the persistence of the influence of
this nationality, it is nevertheless clear that each decade marks an
increased assimilation and homogeneity in the State; but the result is a
compromise, and not a conquest by either element.
The States of the Old Northwest gave to McKinley a plurality of over
367,000 out of a total vote of about 3,734,000. New England and the
Middle States together gave him a plurality of 979,000 in about the same
vote, while the farther West gave to Bryan a decisive net plurality. It
thus appears that the Old Northwest occupied the position of a political
middle region between East and West. The significance of this position
is manifest when it is recalled that this section is the child of the
East and the mother of the Populistic West.
The occupation of the Western prairies was determined by forces similar
to those which settled the Old Northwest. In the decade before the war,
Minnesota succeeded to the place held by Wisconsin as the Mecca of
settlers in the prior decade. To Wisconsin and New York she owes the
largest proportion of her native settlers born outside of the State.
Kansas and Nebraska were settled most rapidly in the decade following
the war, and had a large proportion of soldiers in their American
immigrants. Illinois and Ohio together furnished about one-third of the
native settlers of these States, but the element coming from Southern
States was stronger in Kansas than in Nebraska. Both these States have
an exceptionally large proportion of native whites as compared with
their neighbors among the prairie States. Kansas, for example, has about
twenty-six per cent of persons of foreign parentage, while Nebraska has
about forty-two, Iowa forty-three, South Dakota sixty, Wisconsin
seventy-three, Minnesota seventy-five, and North Dakota seventy-nine.
North Dakota's development was greatest in the decade prior to 1890. Her
native stock came in largest numbers from Wisconsin, with New York,
Minnesota, and Iowa next in order. The growth of South Dakota occupied
the two decades prior to the census of 1890, and she has recruited her
native element from Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and New York.
In consequence of the large migration from the States of the Old
Northwest to the virgin soils of these prairie States many counties in
the parent States show a considerable decline in growth in the decade
before 1890. There is significance in the fact that, with the exception
of Iowa, these prairie States, the colonies of the Old Northwest, gave
Bryan votes in the election of 1896 in the ratio of their proportion of
persons of native parentage. North Dakota, with the heaviest foreign
element, was carried for McKinley, while South Dakota, with a much
smaller foreign vote, went for Bryan. Kansas and Nebraska rank with Ohio
in their native percentage, and they were the center of prairie
Populism. Of course, there were other important local economic and
political explanations for this ratio, but it seems to have a basis of
real meaning. Certain it is that the leaders of the silver movement came
from the native element furnished by the Old Northwest. The original
Populists in the Kansas legislature of 1891 were born in different
States as follows: in Ohio, twelve; Indiana, six; Illinois, five; New
York, four; Pennsylvania, two; Connecticut, Vermont, and Maine, one
each,--making a total, for the Northern current, of thirty-two. Of the
remaining eighteen, thirteen were from the South, and one each from
Kansas, Missouri, California, England and Ireland. Nearly all were
Methodists and former Republicans.[238:1]
Looking at the silver movement more largely, we find that of the Kansas
delegation in the Fifty-fourth Congress, one was born in Kansas, and the
rest in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maine.
All of the Nebraska delegation in the House came from the Old Northwest
or from Iowa. The biographies of the two Representatives from the State
of Washington tell an interesting story. These men came as children to
the pine woods of Wisconsin, took up public lands, and worked on the
farm and in the pineries. One passed on to a homestead in Nebraska
before settling in Washington. Thus they kept one stage ahead of the
social transformations of the West. This is the usual training of the
Western politicians. If the reader would see a picture of the
representative Kansas Populist, let him examine the family portraits of
the Ohio farmer in the middle of this century.
In a word, the Populist is the American farmer who has kept in advance
of the economic and social transformations that have overtaken those
who remained behind. While, doubtless, investigation into the ancestry
of the Populists and "silver men" who came to the prairies from the Old
Northwest would show a large proportion of Southern origin, yet the
center of discontent seems to have been among the men of the New England
and New York current. If New England looks with care at these men, she
may recognize in them the familiar lineaments of the embattled farmers
who fired the shot heard round the world. The continuous advance of this
pioneer stock from New England has preserved for us the older type of
the pioneer of frontier New England.