EMIGRATION.
When the tide of emigration began to flow from New England to the newly
opened land of promise in the West, Vermont still offered virgin fields
to be won by the enterprising and ambitious young men of the older
States. Thousands of acres, capable of bounteous fruitfulness, still lay
in the perpetual shadow of the woods, untouched by spade or plough; and
the forest growth of centuries was itself a harvest worth the gathering,
while wild cataracts still invited masterful hands to tame them to
utility.
Some decades elapsed before the young State began to furnish material
for the founding and growth of other new commonwealths, except such
restless spirits as can never find a congenial place but in the foremost
rank of pioneers. Such an one was Matthew Lyon, who, having borne his
part in the establishment of the first State of his adoption, early in
the century removed to Kentucky, then farther westward to Missouri, in
whose territorial government he had become the most prominent figure
when death set a period to his enterprise and ambition.
Though there were yet vast tracts in Vermont awaiting the axe and the
plough, the fertile lands of the West began to draw from the State a
steadily increasing flow of emigration. The tales of illimitable acres
unencumbered by forest, and warmed by a genial climate, were attractive
to men tired of warfare with the woods, and the beleaguering of bitter
winters. The blood of their pioneering fathers was fresh in their veins,
and impelled them to found new homes and new States.
The first migrations were made in wagons drawn by horses or oxen, and
beneath whose tent-like covers were bestowed the bare necessities of
household stuff and provision for the tedious journey.
After leave-takings as sad as funerals, the emigrants sorrowfully yet
hopefully set forth. Slowly the beloved landmarks of the mountains sank
as the miles lengthened behind them, and slowly unfolded before them
level lands and sluggish streams. The earlier stages of the journey were
relieved by trivial incidents, and the new experience of gypsy-like
nightly encampment by the wayside; but as day after day and week after
week passed, the new and unfamiliar scenes, still stranger and less
homelike, grew wearisome to the tired men and jaded, homesick women and
children, and incident became a monotonous round of discomfort.
In 1825 a swifter and easier path was opened to the West when, two years
after the Champlain Canal had connected the waters of Lake Champlain and
the Hudson, the Erie Canal was completed. The new thoroughfare was
thronged with emigrants, of whom Vermont furnished her full share of
families, and of enterprising young men seeking to better their fortunes
in the land of plenty known there in common speech as "The 'Hio," or in
that farther region of prairies whose western bound was the golden
sunset, and where they whose plough had turned no virgin soil till the
axe had first cleared its path should behold the miracle of fertile
plains that had never been shadowed by forest. When the long journey was
accomplished, a quarter of the continent lay between them and the old
home; and though they lived out the allotted days of man, the separation
of kindred and friends was often as final as that of death.
Mails were weeks in making the passage that is now accomplished in a few
days; and the grass might be green on the graves of kindred and friends
in the old or the new home before tidings of their death brought a new
and sudden grief from the distant prairie, or from the New England
hillside, where its pain had already grown dull with accustomed loss.
The course of emigration tended westward nearly within the parallels of
latitude that bound New England, and but few pioneers of Vermont birth
diverged much below the southward limit of a region whose climate,
kindred, emigrants, and familiar institutions, transplanted from the
East, most attracted them.
The fertile lands of Ohio were chosen by many, while more were drawn to
Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, in all of whom
Vermonters took their place as founders of homes and free commonwealths,
and gave each some worthy characteristic of that from which they came.
When gold was discovered in California, many Vermonters flocked thither
in quest of fortune, and many remained there to become life-long
citizens of the State in whose marvelous growth they were a part.
From their inauguration, the great railroad systems of the West have
made another and continuous drain upon the best population of the East;
and in every department of the enormous business men of Vermont birth
and training are found conspicuously honored for their ability and
integrity.
The rapidly growing cities, the immense sheep and cattle ranches, and
all the new enterprises of the whole West, have drawn great numbers of
ambitious young Vermonters to every State and Territory of the wonderful
region. Indeed, there is not a State in the Union in which some
Vermonters have not made their home; but however far they may have
wandered from the land of their birth, they cherish the mountaineer's
love of home, and a just pride in the goodly heritage of their
birthright.
Wherever in their alien environment they have congregated to any
considerable number, they are associated as Sons of Vermont. Chicago
boasts the largest society, as its State does the greatest number of
citizens, of Vermont birth.[106] St. Louis has a large association of
the kind, as have other Western cities. Even so near their old home as
Boston,[107] Worcester, Providence, and Brooklyn, the Sons of Vermont
gather annually to refresh fond memories, and celebrate the virtues of
their beloved State.
To fill the place left by this constant drain on its population, the
State has for the most part received a foreign element, which, though it
keeps her numbers good, poorly compensates for her loss.
Invasions of Vermont from Canada did not cease with the War of the
Revolution, nor with the later war with Great Britain. On the contrary,
an insidious and continuous invasion began with the establishment of
commercial and friendly relations between the State and the Province.
Early in the century, a few French Canadians, seeking the small fortune
of better wages, came over the border, and along the grand waterway
which their noble countryman had discovered and given his name, and over
which so many armies of their people had passed, sometimes in the
stealth of maraud, sometimes in all the glorious pomp of war. At first
the few new-comers were tenants of the farmers, for whom they worked by
the day or month at fair wages, for the men were expert axemen, familiar
with all the labors of land-clearing, and as handy as Yankees with
scythe and sickle; while their weather-browned wives and grown-up
daughters could reap and bind as well as they, and did not hold
themselves above any outdoor work.
After a while some acquired small holdings of a few acres, or less than
one, and built thereon log houses, that with eaves of notched shingles
and whitewashed outer walls, with the pungent odor of onions and
pitch-pine fires, looked and smelled as if they had been transplanted
from Canada with their owners.
When the acreage of meadow land and grain field had broadened beyond
ready harvesting by the resident yeomen, swarms of Canadian laborers
came flocking over the border in gangs of two or three, baggy-breeched
and moccasined habitants, embarked in rude carts drawn by shaggy
Canadian ponies. After a month or two of haymaking and harvesting, they
jogged homeward with their earnings, whereunto were often added some
small pilferings, for their fingers were as light as their hearts. This
annual wave of inundation from the north ceased to flow with the general
introduction of the mowing-machine; and the place in the meadow once
held by the rank of habitants picturesque in garb, swinging their
scythes in unison to some old song sung centuries ago in France, has
been usurped by the utilitarian device that, with incessant chirr as of
ten thousand sharded wings, mingling with the music of the bobolinks,
sweeps down the broad acres of daisies, herdsgrass, and clover.
Many Canadians returned with their families to live in the land which
they had spied out in their summer incursions, and so in one way and
another the influx continued till they have become the most numerous of
Vermont's foreign population.
For years the State was infested with an inferior class of these people,
who plied the vocation of professional beggars. They made regular trips
through the country in bands consisting of one or more families, with
horses, carts, and rickety wagons, and a retinue of curs, soliciting
alms of pork, potatoes, and breadstuffs at every farmhouse they came to,
and pilfering when opportunity offered. In the large towns there were
depots where the proceeds of their beggary and theft were disposed of.
They were an abominable crew of vagabonds, robust, lazy men and boys,
slatternly women with litters of filthy brats, and all as detestable as
they were uninteresting. They worked their beats successfully, till
their pitiful tales of sickness, burnings-out, and journeyings to
friends in distant towns were worn threadbare, and then they gradually
disappeared, no one knows whither.
Almost to a man, the Canadians who settled in Vermont were devout
Catholics when they came; but after they had been scattered for a few
years among such a preponderant Protestant community, most of them were
held very loosely by the bonds of mother church. Except they were
residents of the larger towns they seldom saw a priest, and enjoyed a
comfortable immunity from fasting, penance, and all ecclesiastic
exactions on stomach or purse. On New Year's Day, perhaps the members of
the family confessed to the venerable grandsire, but after that suffered
no religious inconvenience until the close of the year. Now and then one
strayed quite out of the fold and took his place boldly among the
heretics, and apparently did not thereby forfeit the fellowship of his
more faithful compatriots. But when the flock had become large enough to
pay for the shearing, shepherds of the true faith were not wanting. With
that steadfast devotion to the interests of their church which has
always characterized the Catholic priesthood, these men began their work
without ostentation, and have succeeded in drawing into the domination
of their church a large majority of the Canadian-born inhabitants of
Vermont and of their descendants, as completely as if they were yet
citizens of the province, which Parkman truly says, is "one of the most
priest-ridden communities of the modern world."
What this leaven may finally work in the Protestant mass with which it
has become incorporated is a question that demands more attention than
it has yet received.
The character of these people is not such as to inspire the highest hope
for the future of Vermont, if they should become the most numerous of
its population. The affiliation with Anglo-Americans of a race so
different in traits, in traditions, and in religion must necessarily be
slow, and may never be complete.
No great love for their adopted country can be expected of a people that
evinces so little for that of its origin as lightly to cast aside names
that proudly blazon the pages of French history for poor translations or
weak imitations of them in English, nor can broad enlightenment be hoped
for of a race so dominated by its priesthood.
Vermont, as may be seen, has given of her best for the building of new
commonwealths, to her own loss of such material as has made her all that
her sons, wherever found, are so proud of,--material whose place no
alien drift from northward or over seas can ever fill.
FOOTNOTES:
[106] "The first president of this association was Guerdon S. Hubbard, a
Vermonter, who was instrumental in founding and establishing the city of
Chicago, who went there in 1819, and later, ten years afterwards, when
Chicago only had a fort and one house."--George Edmund Foss.
[107] S. E. Howard.