The Great Migration
While the fate of the Northwest still hung in the balance, emigration
from the eastern States became the rage. "Every small farmer whose
barren acres were covered with mortgages, whose debts pressed heavily
upon him, or whose roving spirit gave him no peace, was eager to sell
his homestead for what it would bring and begin life anew on the banks
of the Muskingum or the Ohio." ¹ Land companies were then just as
optimistic and persuasive as they are today, and the attractions of the
western country lost nothing in the telling. Pamphlets described the
climate as luxurious, the soil as inexhaustible, the rainfall as both
abundant and well distributed, the crops as unfailingly bountiful; paid
agents went among the people assuring them that a man of push and
courage could nowhere be so prosperous and so happy as in the West.
¹ McMaster, History of the People of the United States, vol. III, p.
461.
As early as 1787 an observer at Pittsburgh reported that in six weeks he
saw fifty flatboats set off for the down-river settlements; in 1788
forty-five hundred emigrants were said to have passed Fort Harmar
between February and June. Most of these people were bound for Kentucky
or Tennessee. But the census of 1790 gave the population north of the
Ohio as 4,280, and after Wayne's victory the proportion of newcomers who
fixed their abodes in that part of the country rapidly increased. For a
decade Ohio was the favorite goal; and within eight years after the
battle at Fallen Timbers this region was ready for admission to the
Union as a State. Southern Indiana also filled rapidly.
For a time the westward movement was regarded as of no disadvantage to
the seaboard States. It was supposed that the frontier would attract a
population of such character as could easily be spared in more settled
communities. But it became apparent that the new country did not appeal
simply to broken-down farmers, bankrupts, and ne'er-do-wells. Robust and
industrious men, with growing families, were drawn off in great numbers;
and public protest was raised against the "plots to drain the East of
its best blood." Anti-emigration pamphlets were scattered broadcast,
and, after the manner of the day, the leading western enterprises were
belabored with much bad verse. A rude cut which gained wide circulation
represented a stout, ruddy, well-dressed man on a sleek horse, with a
label, "I am going to Ohio," meeting a pale and ghastly skeleton of a
man, in rags, on the wreck of what had once been a horse, with the
label, "I have been to Ohio."
The streams of migration flowed from many sources. New England
contributed heavily. Marietta, Cincinnati, and many other rising river
towns received some of the best blood of that remote section. The
Western Reserve--a tract bordering on Lake Erie which Connecticut had
not ceded to the Federal Government--drew largely from the Nutmeg State.
A month before Wayne set out to take possession of Detroit, Moses
Cleaveland with a party of fifty Connecticut homeseekers started off to
found a settlement in the Reserve; and the town which took its name from
the leader was but the first of a score which promptly sprang up in this
inviting district. The "Seven Ranges," lying directly south of the
Reserve, drew emigrants from Pennsylvania, with some from farther south.
The Scioto valley attracted chiefly Virginians, who early made
Chillicothe their principal center. In the west, and north of the Symmes
tract, Kentuckians poured in by the thousands.
Thus in a decade Ohio became a frontier melting-pot. Puritan, Cavalier,
Irishman, Scotch-Irishman, German--all were poured into the crucible.
Ideals clashed, and differing customs grated harshly. But the product of
a hundred years of cross-breeding was a splendid type of citizenship. At
the presidential inaugural ceremonies of March 4, 1881, six men chiefly
attracted the attention of the crowd: the retiring President, Hayes; the
incoming President, Garfield; the Chief-Justice who administered the
oath, Waite; the general commanding the army, William T. Sherman; the
ex-Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman; and "the Marshal Ney of
America," Lieutenant-General Sheridan. Five of the six were natives of
Ohio, and the sixth was a lifelong resident. Men commented on the
striking group and rightly remarked that it could have been produced
only by a singularly happy blending of the ideas and ideals that form
the warp and woof of Americanism.
Amalgamation, however, took time; for there were towering prejudices and
antipathies to be overcome. The Yankee scorned the Southerner, who
reciprocated with a double measure of dislike. The New England settlers
were, as a rule, people of some education; not one of their communities
long went without a schoolmaster. They were pious, law-abiding,
industrious; their more easy-going neighbors were likely to consider
them over-sensitive and critical. But the quality that made most
impression upon others was their shrewdness in business transactions.
They could drive a bargain and could discover loopholes in a contract in
a fashion to take the average backwoodsman off his feet. "Yankee trick"
became, indeed, a household phrase wherever New Englander and Southerner
met. Whether the Yankee talked or kept silent, whether he was generous
or parsimonious, he was always under suspicion.
What of the "Long Knives" from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Kentucky who
also made the Ohio lands their goal? Of books they knew little; they did
not name their settlements in honor of classic heroes. They were not
"gentlemen"; many of them, indeed, had sought the West to escape a
society in which distinctions of birth and possessions had put them at a
disadvantage. They were not so pious as the New Englanders, though they
were capable of great religious enthusiasm, and their morals were
probably not inferior. Their houses were poorer; their villages were not
so well kept; their dress was more uncouth, and their ways rougher. But
they were a hardy folk--brave, industrious, hospitable, and generous to
a fault.
In the first days of westward migration the favorite gateway into the
Ohio Valley was Cumberland Gap, at the southeastern corner of the
present State of Kentucky. Thence the Virginians and Carolinians passed
easily to the Ohio in the region of Cincinnati or Louisville. Later
emigrants from more northern States found other serviceable routes.
Until the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, New Englanders reached the
West by three main avenues. Some followed the Mohawk and Genesee
turnpikes across central New York to Lake Erie. This route led directly,
of course, to the Western Reserve. Some traveled along the Catskill
turnpike from the Hudson to the headwaters of the Allegheny, and thence
descended the Ohio. Still others went by boat from Boston to New York,
Philadelphia, or Baltimore, in order to approach the Ohio by a more
southerly course.
The natural outlet from Pennsylvania was the Ohio River. Emigrants from
the western parts of the State floated down the Allegheny or Monongahela
to the main stream. Those from farther east, including settlers from New
Jersey, made the journey overland by one of several well-known roads.
The best of these was a turnpike following the line that General Forbes
had cut during the French and Indian War from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh
by way of Lancaster and Bedford. Baltimore was a favorite point of
departure, and from it the route lay almost invariably along a turnpike
to Cumberland on the upper Potomac, and thence by the National Road
across the mountains to Wheeling. In later days this was the route
chiefly taken from Virginia, although more southerly passes through the
Blue Ridge were used as outlets to the Great Kanawha, the Big Sandy, and
other streams flowing into the Ohio farther down.
Thus the lines of westward travel which in the East spread fan-shape
from Maine to Georgia converged on the Ohio; and that stream became, and
for half a century remained, the great pathway of empire. Most of the
emigrants had to cover long distances in overland travel before they
reached the hospitable waterway; some, especially in earlier times, made
the entire journey by land. Hundreds of the very poor went afoot,
carrying all their earthly possessions on their backs, or dragging them
in rude carts. But the usual conveyance was the canvas-covered
wagon--ancestor of the "prairie schooner" of the western plains--drawn
over the rough and muddy roads by four, or even six, horses. In this
vehicle the emigrants stowed their provisions, household furniture and
utensils, agricultural implements, looms, seeds, medicines, and every
sort of thing that the prudent householder expected to need, and for
which he could find space. Extra horses or oxen sometimes drew an
additional load; cattle, and even flocks of sheep, were occasionally
driven ahead or behind by some member of the family.
In the years of heaviest migration the highways converging on Pittsburgh
and Wheeling were fairly crowded with westward-flowing traffic. As a
rule several families, perhaps from the same neighborhood in the old
home, traveled together; and in any case the chance acquaintances of the
road and of the wayside inns broke the loneliness of the journey. There
were wonderful things to be seen, and every day brought novel
experiences. But exposure and illness, dread of Indian attacks, mishaps
of every sort, and the awful sense of isolation and of uncertainty of
the future, caused many a man's stout heart to quail, and brought
anguish unspeakable to brave women. Of such joys and sorrows, however,
is a frontier existence compounded; and of the growing thousands who
turned their faces toward the setting sun, comparatively few yielded to
discouragement and went back East. Those who did so were usually the
land speculators and people of weak, irresolute, or shiftless character.
An English traveler, Morris Birkbeck, who passed over the National Road
through southwestern Pennsylvania in 1817, was filled with amazement at
the number, hardihood, and determination of the emigrants whom he
encountered.
Old America seems to be breaking up [he wrote] and moving westward. We
are seldom out of sight, as we travel on this grand track, towards the
Ohio, of family groups, behind and before us.... A small wagon (so light
that you might almost carry it, yet strong enough to bear a good load of
bedding, utensils and provisions, and a swarm of young citizens--and to
sustain marvelous shocks in its passage over these rocky heights) with
two small horses; sometimes a cow or two, comprises their all; excepting
a little store of hard-earned cash for the land office of the district;
where they may obtain a title for as many acres as they possess
half-dollars, being one fourth of the purchase money. The wagon has a
tilt, or cover, made of a sheet, or perhaps a blanket. The family are
seen before, behind, or within the vehicle, according to the road or the
weather, or perhaps the spirits of the party.... A cart and single horse
frequently affords the means of transfer, sometimes a horse and
pack-saddle. Often the back of the poor pilgrim bears all his effects,
and his wife follows, naked-footed, bending under the hopes of the
family." ¹
¹ Quoted in Turner, Rise of the New West, pp. 79-80.
Arrived at the Ohio, the emigrant either engaged passage on some form of
river-craft or set to work to construct with his own hands a vessel that
would bear him and his belongings to the promised land. The styles of
river-craft that appeared on the Ohio and other western streams in the
great era of river migration make a remarkable pageant. There were
canoes, pirogues, skiffs, rafts, dugouts, scows, galleys, arks,
keelboats, flatboats, barges, "broadhorns," "sneak-boxes," and
eventually ocean-going brigs, schooners, and steamboats. The canoe
served the early explorer and trader, and even the settler whose
possessions had been carried over the Alleghanies on a single packhorse.
But after the Revolution the needs of an awakening empire led to the
introduction of new types of craft, built to afford a maximum of
capacity and safety on a downward voyage, without regard for the demands
of a round trip. The most common of these one-way vessels was the
flatboat.
A flatboat trip down the great river was likely to be filled with
excitement. The sound of the steam-dredge had never been heard on the
western waters, and the stream-bed was as Nature had made it, or rather
was continually remaking it. Yearly floods washed out new channels and
formed new reefs and sand-bars, while logs and brush borne from the
heavily forested banks continually built new obstructions. Consequently
the sharpest lookout had to be maintained, and the pilot was both
skilful and lucky who completed his trip without permitting his boat to
be caught on a "planter" (a log immovably fixed in the river bed),
entangled in the branches of overhanging trees, driven on an island, or
dashed on the bank at a bend. Navigation by night and on foggy days was
hazardous in the extreme and was avoided as far as possible. If all went
well, the voyage from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati could be completed in six
or eight days; but delays might easily extend the period to a month.
One grave danger has not been mentioned--the Indians. From the moment
when the slow-moving flatboat passed beyond the protection of a white
settlement, it was liable to be fired on, by day or by night, by
redskins; and the better-built boats were so constructed as to be at
least partially bullet-proof. Sometimes extra timber was used to give
safety; sometimes the cargo was specially placed with that aim in view.
The Indians rarely went beyond the water's edge. Their favorite ruse was
to cause captive or renegade whites to run along the bank imploring to
be saved. When a boat had been decoyed to shore, and perhaps a landing
had been made, the savages would pour a murderous fire on the voyagers.
This practice became so common that pioneer boats "shunned the whites
who hailed them from the shores as they would have shunned the Indians,"
and as a consequence many whites escaping from the Indians in the
interior were refused succor and left to die.
When the flatboat reached its destination, it might find service as a
floating store, or even as a schoolhouse. But it was likely to be broken
up, so that the materials in it could be used for building purposes.
Before sawmills became common, lumber was a precious commodity, and
hundreds of pioneer cabins in the Ohio Valley were built partly or
wholly of the boards and timbers taken from the flatboats of their
owners. Even the "gunnels" were sometimes used in Cincinnati as
foundations for houses. In later days the flatboat, if in reasonably
good condition, was not unlikely to be sold to persons engaged in
trading down the Mississippi. Loaded with grain, flour, meats, and other
backwoods products, it would descend to Natchez or New Orleans, where
its cargo could be transferred to ocean-going craft. But in any case its
end was the same; for it would not have been profitable, even had it
been physically possible, to move the heavy, ungainly craft upstream
over long distances, in order to keep it continuously in service.