THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
At the end of the second decade of the nineteenth century, the people of
the United States were still in the main a homogeneous folk, native-born
descendants of native-born ancestors. The tide of immigration which was
by the end of the century to inundate the nation and transform its
character was just beginning to flow. Its volume between the close of
the Revolution and the year 1820, when the first official statistics
were collected, must remain a matter of conjecture. In 1817, the
painstaking Niles, in his _Register_, estimated that about twenty-two
thousand immigrants had arrived in that year in the ports of New York,
Philadelphia, and Boston, of whom four thousand were Germans and the
rest inhabitants of the British Isles. Fully one half of these British
subjects were brawny Irishmen, often a turbulent lot, but always in
demand for hard labor on the roads and canals which were projected in
every part of the Union. Among these newcomers, however, were many
undesirables. Not a few English parishes emptied their poorhouses by
sending the helpless inmates to the New World. Some of these deported
paupers, no doubt, found a livelihood and became respectable citizens;
but the records of almshouses in the Eastern States indicate that many
of these unfortunates had only exchanged one asylum for another. In the
Philadelphia poorhouses in the early thirties, from one third to one
half of the inmates were foreign-born. Cargoes of redemptioners came
into American ports as late as the year 1818. Of that traffic which was
bringing helpless Africans into bondage in the Southern States, more
will be said in a subsequent chapter.
Among the new arrivals, it goes without saying, were men and women, who,
and whose descendants, contributed mightily to the building up of
American Commonwealths. Entire communities seeking an asylum in the New
World continued to arrive as in the early years of the seventeenth
century. In 1817, a body of German separatists from Wuerttemberg, under
the leadership of Joseph Baumeler, landed at Philadelphia. Like the
English Pilgrims they sought freedom from religious persecution, but the
Plymouth which they founded was on a new frontier--at Zoar in the
wilderness of Ohio.
What particularly impressed every foreign traveler in America during
these years of transition and expansion was the incessant movement of
society. The earlier westward movement of population had never wholly
ceased, but it had been retarded by the war. The return of peace was
like the first warm days of spring. The roads leading West were fairly
inundated by a swelling stream of emigrants. An observer at the Genesee
turnpike noted a train of some twenty wagons and one hundred and sixteen
persons on their way to Indiana from a single town in Maine. A traveler
on his way from Nashville to Georgia, in January, 1817, met an
astonishing number of people from the Carolinas and Georgia who were
bound for the cotton lands of Alabama. He counted over two hundred
conveyances and three thousand people, driving herds of cattle and
droves of hogs before them. But the great highway to the West lay
through Pennsylvania. On the road from Chambersburg to Pittsburg,
Fearon, an intelligent and in such particulars a trustworthy English
traveler, counted one hundred and three stage-wagons, drawn by four and
six horses, proceeding from Philadelphia and Baltimore to Pittsburg, and
seventy-nine wagons bound in the opposite direction. "On the road,"
comments Fearon, "every emigrant tells you he is going to Ohio; when you
arrive in Ohio, its inhabitants are 'moving' to Missouri and Alabama;
thus it is that the point for final settlement is forever receding as
you advance, and thus it will hereafter proceed, and only be terminated
by that effectual barrier--the Pacific Ocean."
To this emigration all sections of the Union contributed. In the
back-country of New England--in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and
western Massachusetts--was a restive population little loved by the
governing class. President Timothy Dwight, of Yale College, described
these people as "impatient of the restraints of law, religion, and
morality," contentious, always complaining, and always indebted. They
were likely to be Baptists or Methodists, by persuasion, and Democrats
in politics. As small farmers their lot was a hard one. They needed only
the incentive of cheap lands in the West to sever the slender ties which
bound them to the stony hillsides of New England. Yet the older towns of
New England also complained of the Western fever which was carrying off
the available labor supply. Fearon found "the small and middling
tradesmen" always ready to sell out when business got bad and "pack up
for the back-country." The immediate destination of these New Englanders
was western New York. Within a decade what had been a frontier area was
filled with an industrious population eager to secure markets for the
surplus products of their farms.
[Map: Land Sales and Land Offices to 1821]
Before a very large number of New Englanders passed beyond western New
York, emigrants from the Middle States were pushing into the Ohio
country, where Harrison's victories had opened vast tracts to the white
settlers. The earliest settlers in Indiana and Illinois, however, were
of Southern extraction. Tennessee and Kentucky, having no longer a
supply of good land at low prices, sent the younger generation on to a
new frontier. In the year 1816 the father of Abraham Lincoln took his
family across the Ohio on a raft and hewed his way into the timber lands
along the river bottoms of Indiana. With these migratory Kentuckians
went also descendants of the Germans and the Scotch-Irish who had
peopled the Great Valley in the previous century. Even from the
Carolinas came all sorts and conditions of men,--poor whites, Quakers,
Baptists,--small farmers whom the advancing plantation system was
driving from the uplands.
Even more significant than this advance of population into the region
north of the Ohio was the contemporaneous movement from the Southern
Seaboard States into the cotton lands of the Gulf plains. The way had
been prepared by Andrew Jackson's conquest of the Creeks. Alabama was
the immediate goal of the migrating Southerner. From Kentucky, also, but
more particularly from Tennessee, stalwart pioneers entered this new El
Dorado. The father of Jefferson Davis was one of those who tried their
luck in the alluvial plains of the lower Mississippi. By the year 1820,
the area of settlement had extended from southern Tennessee to Mobile,
and from Mobile to the Mississippi along the Gulf.
[Illustration: The Cotton Crop in the United States 1801-1834
Based on Estimates furnished to Congress by the Secretary of Treasury
Figures indicate the crop in million pounds
Shaded segments indicate the Gulf States]
The causes and consequences of this colonization of the Southwest form a
vital chapter in the economic history of the country. In the year before
the war, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia produced 75,000,000 pounds
of cotton; the only other cotton-raising States, Tennessee and
Louisiana, produced 5,000,000 pounds. Ten years later, the Seaboard
States raised 117,000,000 pounds; the Southwest, 60,000,000. In another
decade the States of the Southwest had outstripped the Old South. This
comparison throws a flood of light upon Southern history. The invention
of the cotton gin had made possible the cultivation of the short-staple
cotton plant, which was the only variety that could be raised profitably
in the uplands. Occurring just at the moment when the use of the power
loom in factories was giving an unprecedented stimulus to the
manufacture of cotton, the cotton gin worked a revolution in Southern
life and industry. From the tidewater, with its large plantations
worked by African slaves, the cultivation of cotton passed into the
region above the fall-line of the rivers, where the small farmer
practiced a diversified agriculture. Socially and politically the two
regions had always been distinct. The gentlemen planters of the
tidewater, with much the same outlook as the English gentry of the same
period, regarded the democratic yeomen of the Piedmont with distrust not
unmixed with contempt. By excluding them from their proportionate
representation in the state legislatures, the aristocratic planters
maintained an ascendency which was at once political and social. But as
cotton-growing became more profitable and advanced into the interior,
the farmer of the uplands found himself pushed to the wall. Either he
must adopt the plantation system and purchase slaves, or sell his land
and move on. For want of capital large numbers chose the latter
alternative and swelled the numbers of those who had already set their
faces westward.
The communities which within six years after the Treaty of Ghent were
admitted into the Union as the States of Mississippi and Alabama, did
not at first differ materially from Indiana and Illinois, which became
Commonwealths at the same time. Much the same obstacles confronted the
pioneer in the pine forests of Mississippi as in the hard woods of the
Northwest. Either as squatter or _bona fide_ purchaser he had with the
aid of his neighbors hewed out a clearing, or single-handed girdled the
trees, and laid the sills of his log cabin. A "raising" or "frolic" was
one of the few opportunities for social intercourse in the hard life of
the frontiersman. Between the stumps of his clearing he planted his
first crop of Indian corn; and what the soil did not yield for his
sustenance, he supplied with his trusty rifle. Time wrought vast
transformations in these new communities. The thriftless, who scratched
the surface of the ground and then sold out to a newcomer of sterner
fiber, passed on to a new frontier. Log cabins gave way to frame houses.
Clearings became well-tilled farms. Better methods of cultivation
extracted a surplus of produce which could be sent to market. Along the
rivers of the Northwest, cities sprang up like mushrooms.
From this point the history of the Southwest diverged from that of the
Northwest. The virgin lands of the Gulf attracted also the planter with
his capital invested in African slaves. Once again the small farmer felt
the combined pressure of social and economic forces. He saw his
wealthier neighbor acquire the more fertile lands; he found himself
thrust into a socially inferior class; and again he yielded to fate.
While a democratic society of self-reliant yeomen was developing in the
northern half of the Mississippi Valley, a society based upon a
plantation economy and aristocratic in its outward characteristics was
forming in the Gulf States. Yet in its aggressiveness and commercial
enterprise, the new South resembled the Northwest rather than the old
South.
[Map: The West as an Economic Section in 1820]
While the South was producing staples for an ever-growing market, it
became itself the market for the surplus products of the Northwest. An
active internal trade sprang up between the sections in spite of the
natural barriers to commercial intercourse. Live stock could be driven
to market. It was a common occurrence to see droves of thousands of
"razor-back" hogs on their way from Kentucky to the Seaboard States,
feeding on nuts and roots by the way. Rivers were the chief highways for
such produce as could not provide for its own locomotion. The Western
waters floated all sorts of craft, from the lumber raft to the flatboat,
laden with pork, cheese, butter, flour, corn, and whiskey. The greater
part of these boats were makeshifts, and made no return voyage. It was
not until 1809 that a barge was warped upstream from New Orleans to
Nashville. The entire traffic on the Mississippi and the Ohio was
carried on until 1817 in less than a score of keel boats, which made the
voyage downstream from Louisville to New Orleans in about forty days,
and upstream in ninety. When, then, a steamboat succeeded in making a
return voyage in twenty-five days, it was hailed as an epoch-making
performance. In the next year twenty steamboats were competing for the
river traffic; and three years later (1820) seventy-two were in actual
service. Yet the steamboat did not drive the flatboat from the Western
rivers. So late as 1840 one fifth of the freight handled on the lower
Mississippi was carried in flatboats or barges.
The rapid rise of this internal commerce between the farmer of the
Northwest and the cotton planter of the South increased the ability of
both to purchase manufactures in the Eastern markets. Both sections had
wants which they could not supply by their simple household industries.
They had to import not only their farming implements, but most of those
articles, useful or ornamental, which were thought indispensable to a
higher civilization. "Spots in Tennessee, in Ohio, and Kentucky,"
comments an English traveler, "that within the lifetime of even young
men, witnessed only the arrow and the scalping knife, now present the
traveler with articles of elegance and modes of luxury which might rival
the displays of London and Paris." Most of this stock was transported
over the mountains from Philadelphia or Baltimore. In 1820, three
thousand wagons carried to Pittsburg, the distributing center of the
West, nearly eighteen million dollars' worth of merchandise.
The commercial interests of the East were quick to see the possibilities
of this new market. An eager rivalry sprang up between the merchants of
New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Everywhere ways and means of
cheaper transportation were discussed. In this subject the Western
farmer was vitally interested, for freight charges added nearly one
third to the cost of merchandise transported over the mountains. The
cotton planter of the Seaboard States, also, feeling the competition of
the Southwest, where riverways were abundant and easily navigable, saw
the need of better roads to tidewater, in order to lessen the cost of
marketing his produce.
The popular demand for better roads was not recent. All the States had
encouraged, directly or indirectly, the building of turnpikes and
bridges. Between 1793 and 1812, Pennsylvania had chartered fifty-five
turnpike companies, and other States had been scarcely less ready to
grant articles of incorporation to stock companies. Private enterprise
had, indeed, done much to improve communication along the seaboard.
Turnpikes and bridges had shortened the journey by stage from Boston to
Washington to four and a quarter days by the year 1815. The city of New
York was in 1816 within twenty-four hours of Albany by the Hudson River
steamboats.
Numerous canal companies had also been chartered; but of all the canals
projected, only three had been completed when the War of 1812 began: the
Dismal Swamp Canal in Virginia, the Santee Canal in South Carolina, and
the Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts. It remained for New York to usher
in a new era in internal communication by authorizing in 1817 the
construction of the Erie Canal. In the ardent imagination of its chief
promoter, De Witt Clinton, this canal was destined to be "a bond of
union between the Atlantic and Western States" and "an organ of
communication between the Hudson, the Mississippi, the St. Lawrence, the
Great Lakes of the North and West, and their tributary rivers," creating
"the greatest inland trade ever witnessed" and transforming New York
into a vast emporium of commerce and "the granary of the world."
This bold bid for Western trade alarmed the merchants of Philadelphia,
particularly as the completion of the national road threatened to divert
much of their traffic to Baltimore. In 1825, the legislature of
Pennsylvania grappled with the problem by projecting a series of canals
which were to connect its great seaport with Pittsburg on the west and
with Lake Erie and the upper Susquehanna on the north.
The magnitude of the transportation problem was such, however, that
neither individual States nor private corporations seemed able to meet
the demands of an expanding internal trade. As early as 1807, Albert
Gallatin had advocated the construction of a great system of internal
waterways to connect East and West, at an estimated cost of $20,000,000.
But the only contribution of the National Government to internal
improvements during the Jeffersonian era was an appropriation in 1806 of
two per cent of the net proceeds of the sales of public lands in Ohio
for the construction of a national road, with the consent of the States
through which it should pass. By 1818 the road was open to traffic from
Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling, Virginia.
In 1816, with the experiences of the war before him, no well-informed
statesman could shut his eyes to the national aspects of the problem.
Even President Madison invited the attention of Congress to the need of
establishing "a comprehensive system of roads and canals." Soon after
Congress met, it took under consideration a bill drafted by Calhoun
which proposed an appropriation of $1,500,000 for internal improvements.
Because this appropriation was to be met by the moneys paid by the
National Bank to the Government, the bill was commonly referred to as
the "Bonus Bill." "Let it not be forgotten," said Calhoun in advocacy of
his bill, "that it [the size of the Union] exposes us to the greatest of
all calamities,--next to the loss of liberty,--and even to that in its
consequences--disunion. We are great, and rapidly--I was about to say
fearfully--growing. This is our pride and our danger; our weakness and
our strength.... We are under the most imperious obligation to
counteract every tendency to disunion.... Whatever impedes the
intercourse of the extremes with this, the center of the Republic,
weakens the Union."
The one section which was impervious to these national considerations at
this moment was New England; but it was President Madison, and not New
England, who defeated the Bonus Bill. On the day before he left office,
Madison sent to Congress a notable veto message. Reverting to his
earlier faith, he pronounced the measure unconstitutional. Neither the
express words of the Constitution nor any fair inference could, in his
judgment, warrant the exercise of such powers by Congress. To pass the
bill over his veto was impossible. Monroe, too, in his first message to
Congress intimated that he also held strict views of the powers of
Congress. The policy of internal improvements by Federal aid was thus
wrecked on the constitutional scruples of the last of the Virginia
dynasty.
Having less regard for consistency, the House of Representatives
recorded its conviction, by close votes, that Congress could appropriate
money to construct roads and canals, but had not the power to construct
them. As yet the only direct aid of the National Government to internal
improvements consisted of various appropriations, amounting to about
$1,500,000 for the Cumberland Road.
Circumstances were also pressing the claims of the Far West upon the
Government. Beyond the scattered settlements of Illinois and Indiana
extended vast forests, known only to the Indians and the fur traders.
With the experiences of the war fresh in mind, the new Secretary of War,
Calhoun, urged upon the Government the necessity of taking resolute
measures to hold this territory. Laws excluding foreigners from the
Indian trade were passed; forts were established at strategic points
like Chicago, Prairie du Chien, and Green Bay; and in 1820, Governor
Cass, of the Michigan Territory, was sent on an expedition through the
Wisconsin forests into Minnesota, to assert American claims wherever
British influence was still felt.
Still farther west lay an almost unknown region of imperial dimensions.
Save where venturesome pioneers had pushed up the Arkansas and the
Missouri, and where the Spaniards maintained their feeble hold in the
Southwest, no white men inhabited the great prairies which swept
westward to the foothills of the Rockies. Only nomadic Indian tribes and
occasional traders followed the buffalo trails across this wide expanse.
Between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific was the region which Lewis
and Clark had penetrated. Along the valley of the northern branch of the
Columbia River, the Hudson's Bay Company had planted their trading
posts. Farther to the south lay Spanish California and the ill-defined
region to the eastward over which _presidios_ maintained a shadowy
jurisdiction.
On October 20, 1818, Benjamin Rush and Albert Gallatin, ministers to
England and France respectively, concluded a convention with Great
Britain which left the fate of the Oregon country in suspense for a
period of ten years. To the British claims of prior discovery by Cook
and Mackenzie and of prior occupation by the Hudson's Bay Company, the
American commissioners opposed the claims based on the voyage of Captain
Gray in 1792 and on the founding of Astoria by John Jacob Astor in 1811.
It was finally agreed that the northern boundary of the United States
should run from the Lake of the Woods to the Stony Mountains, along the
forty-ninth parallel, and that the disputed country beyond the mountains
should be occupied jointly for a period of ten years. An agreement was
also reached regarding the Newfoundland and Labrador fisheries.
On another frontier conditions existed to which Congress could not
remain indifferent. East Florida was still a thorn in the side of
Georgia and Alabama. The province had become a rendezvous for pirates,
filibusters, renegade Indians, and runaway negroes. Creek warriors who
would not submit to the loss of their lands had taken refuge with their
kinsmen, the Seminoles, and were inciting malcontents of every stripe
against the whites. A band of negroes, estimated at not less than a
thousand in number, together with some Creek Indians, had taken
possession of an abandoned fort on the Apalachicola and had terrorized
the country for miles around. The Spanish commander at Pensacola was
summoned to destroy this pirates' nest and to disperse the marauders;
but he was either unable or unwilling to do so, and in 1816 a red-hot
shot from a United States gunboat blew up the magazine of the negro
fort, killing nearly three hundred men, women, and children. Early in
1818, in equally summary fashion troops of the United States expelled a
band of freebooters from Amelia Island.
The slight regard which the United States paid to the territorial
sovereignty of Spain in Florida sprang from a general conviction that
Spain could not and would not observe the provisions of the Treaty of
1795. Spain had then agreed to restrain the Indians living within her
borders from attacking the citizens or Indians of the United States.
President Monroe seemed to assume that Spain had forfeited her rights
over Florida. At all events, he authorized General Andrew Jackson to
assume command of the forces at Fort Scott and to call on the governors
of adjacent States for militia to terminate the war. This order of
December 26, 1817, was stated in dangerously broad terms. Jackson did
not doubt for an instant that it authorized him to pursue the Indians
into Florida. To his mind the time seemed opportune for the seizure of
East Florida as an indemnity for the outrages committed by the
Seminoles. He wrote to the President to this effect. "Let it be
signified to me," said he, "through any channel (say Mr. J. Rhea) that
the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States
and in sixty days it will be accomplished."
To his dying day Jackson maintained that the President signified his
approval through Congressman Rhea, of Tennessee. Monroe denied that he
had read Jackson's letter until after the exploits which so nearly
plunged the country into war with Spain. Whatever may be the truth of
the matter, General Jackson acted in accord with what he believed to be
the President's desires. With a thousand men he marched across the
border and was soon in possession of St. Mark's. Among those who fell
into his hands was Alexander Arbuthnot, a Scotch trader who was
suspected of inciting the Indians. Continuing his march, Jackson
surprised and captured Suwanee, another rendezvous of Indians and
runaway negroes. Here he found Robert Ambrister, another British
subject, who was also regarded as a suspicious character. Returning to
St. Mark's, Jackson handed these two suspects over to a court martial,
which found both guilty of giving aid and comfort to the enemy and of
inciting or waging war against the United States. Arbuthnot was hanged
from the yardarm of his own schooner; Ambrister was shot. The fall of
Pensacola finished the campaign. By the end of May, 1818, Florida was in
the possession of the troops of the United States and Jackson was on his
way to Tennessee, the idol of his men and a national hero in the
estimation of the people of the Southwest.
The outcome of these exploits might easily have been war with both Spain
and Great Britain. Don Luis de Onis, the Spanish Minister at Washington,
immediately suspended the negotiations then in progress respecting the
Floridas and made a spirited protest "against these acts of hostility
and invasion." He demanded the immediate restitution of the places which
had been seized, indemnity for all damage to property, and the
punishment of General Jackson. As for Great Britain, Lord Castlereagh
afterward said that, such was the temper of Parliament and the country,
war might have been produced by holding up a finger and an address to
the Crown carried by an almost unanimous vote.
The Cabinet of President Monroe was divided over the course to be
pursued. Calhoun insisted that Jackson had virtually committed an act of
war, which should be promptly disavowed. But Adams held--and the
President was inclined to side with him--that in reality Spain had been
the aggressor, and that Jackson had not violated the spirit of his
orders. In order to terminate the war, Jackson had been obliged to cross
the Spanish line. He had not done so with the purpose of waging war upon
Spain.
[Map: Treaty with Spain 1819]
Following a memorandum made by the President, Adams replied to Don Onis
in this spirit. Later, in a masterly state paper, he set forth the
intolerable conditions which obtained on the Florida frontier. The lax
conduct of the Spanish authorities was held to justify the aggressive
measures of Jackson. The United States was prepared to restore Pensacola
and St. Mark's whenever Spain should give guaranties for the observance
of treaty obligations. So far from consenting to punish Jackson, the
United States demanded the punishment of those Spanish officials who had
so flagrantly violated the obligations of the Treaty of 1795. "Spain
must immediately make her election either to place a force in Florida at
once adequate for the protection of her territory and to the fulfillment
of her engagements, or cede to the United States a province of which she
retains nothing but the nominal possession." This latter alternative,
indeed, the Administration never lost from view.
Confronted by the revolt of all her American colonies, Spain could
hardly resist this insistent pressure upon a province which she could
neither govern nor defend. On February 22, 1819, Don Onis set his hand
to a treaty which ceded the Floridas in return for the assumption by the
United States of claims of American citizens against her to an amount
not exceeding $5,000,000. The treaty contained also a definition of the
boundary between Spanish and American possessions on the North American
continent. Beginning at the mouth of the Sabine River, the line ran
along that river to the thirty-second parallel; thence due north to the
Red River, which it followed to the hundredth meridian; thence north to
the Arkansas and along that river to its source; thence to the
forty-second parallel, which it followed to the Pacific. As the United
States renounced all claims to the west and south of this boundary, so
Spain surrendered whatever shadowy title she had to the Northwest.
The ratification of the Florida Treaty was delayed by the attempt of the
Spanish Crown to grant extensive tracts to certain grandees, and by the
vigorous opposition of Henry Clay in the House of Representatives. The
treaty seemed to him a bad bargain. "What do we get?" he cried. "We get
Florida loaded and encumbered with land grants which leave scarcely a
foot of soil for the United States. What do we give? We give Texas free
and unencumbered, and we surrender all our claims on Spain for damages
not included in that five millions of dollars." He challenged the right
of the President and Senate to alienate territory without the consent of
the House. Behind Clay's opposition lay some personal pique against the
President and his Secretary of State; but he voiced, nevertheless, the
spirit of the Southwest, which already looked toward Texas as a possible
field of expansion and resented its surrender.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The westward movement is described in various chapters of volumes
IV and V of McMaster, _History of the People of the United
States_. The significance of the movement is best explained in F.
J. Turner, _Rise of the New West, 1819-1829_ (in _The American
Nation_, vol. 14, 1906), which contains also excellent chapters on
the social and economic life of the different sections of the
country. The highways and waterways to the West are described in
A. B. Hurlbert, _Historic Highways of America_ (10 vols.,
1902-05). A summary account of the development of transportation
is given in J. L. Ringwalt, _Development of Transportation Systems
in the United States_ (1888). Among the biographies which
contribute materially to an understanding of the new West may be
mentioned Theodore Roosevelt, _Thomas H. Benton_ (1887), and James
Parton, _Life of Andrew Jackson_ (3 vols., 1860). Edward
Eggleston, _The Circuit Rider_ (1888), and the _Autobiography of
Peter Cartwright_ (1856), touch upon important aspects of frontier
life. The importance of the German element in American history is
admirably set forth in Faust, _The German Element in the United
States_ (2 vols., 1909). The spread of New Englanders in the West
is described by L. K. Mathews, _The Expansion of New England_
(1909). The diplomatic negotiations which resulted in the cession
of Florida are reviewed by F. E. Chadwick, _The Relations of the
United States and Spain_ (1909).