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THE AMERICAN NATION
A HISTORY
FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES BY ASSOCIATED SCHOLARS
EDITED BY
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, L.L.D.
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ADVISED BY
VARIOUS HISTORICAL SOCIETIES
THE AMERICAN NATION
A HISTORY
LIST OF AUTHORS AND TITLES
GROUP I
FOUNDATIONS OF THE NATION
Vol. 1 European Background of American History, by Edward Potts
Cheyney, A.M., Prof. European Hist., Univ. of Pa.
Vol. 2 Basis of American History, by Livingston Farrand, LL.D.,
President Univ. of Colo.
Vol. 3 Spain in America, by the late Edward Gaylord Bourne, Ph.D.,
formerly Prof. Hist., Yale Univ.
Vol. 4 England in America, by Lyon Gardiner Tyler, LL.D., President
William and Mary College.
Vol. 5 Colonial Self-Government, by Charles McLean Andrews, Ph.D.,
Prof. Am. History, Yale University.
GROUP II
TRANSFORMATION INTO A NATION
Vol. 6 Provincial America, by Evarts Boutell Greene, Ph.D., Prof.
Hist, and Dean of College, Univ. of Ill.
Vol. 7 France in America, by the late Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D.,
formerly Sec. Wisconsin State Hist. Soc.
Vol. 8 Preliminaries of the Revolution, by George Elliott Howard,
Ph.D., Prof. Polit. Science Univ. of Neb.
Vol. 9 The American Revolution, by Claude Halstead Van Tyne, Ph.D.,
Head Prof. Hist. Univ. of Michigan.
Vol. 10 The Confederation and the Constitution, by Andrew Cunningham
McLaughlin, A.M., Head Prof. Hist., Univ. of Chicago.
GROUP III
DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATION
Vol. II The Federalist System, by John Spencer Bassett, Ph.D., Prof.
Am. Hist., Smith College.
Vol. 12 The Jeffersonian System, by Edward Channing, Ph.D., Prof.
Ancient and Modern Hist., Harvard Univ.
Vol. 13 Rise of American Nationality, by Kendric Charles Babcock,
Ph.D., Dean Col. Arts and Sciences, Univ. of Illinois.
Vol. 14 Rise of the New West, by Frederick Jackson Turner, Ph.D.,
Prof. Hist., Harvard University.
Vol. 15 Jacksonian Democracy, by William MacDonald, LL.D., Prof.
Government, Univ. of California.
GROUP IV
TRIAL OF NATIONALITY
Vol. 16 Slavery and Abolition, by Albert Bushnell Hart, LL.D., Prof.
Government, Harvard Univ.
Vol. 17 Westward Extension, by the late George Pierce Garrison,
Ph.D., formerly Prof. Hist., Univ. of Texas.
Vol. 18 Parties and Slavery, by Theodore Clarke Smith, Ph.D., Prof.
Am. Hist., Williams College.
Vol. l9 Causes of the Civil War, by Rear-Admiral French Ensor
Chadwick, U.S.N., retired former Pres. of Naval War College.
Vol. 20 The Appeal to Arms, by James Kendall Hosmer, LL.D., formerly
Librarian Minneapolis Pub. Lib.
Vol. 21 Outcome of the Civil War, by James Kendall Hosmer, LL.D.
GROUP V
NATIONAL EXPANSION
Vol. 22 Reconstruction, Political and Economic, by William Archibald
Dunning, Ph.D., Prof. Hist, and Political Philosophy, Columbia Univ.
Vol. 23 National Development, by Edwin Erie Sparks, Ph.D., Pres. Pa.
State College.
Vol. 24 National Problems, by Davis R. Dewey, Ph.D., Professor of
Economics, Mass. Inst. of Technology.
Vol. 25 America as a World Power, by John H. Latane, Ph.D., Prof.
Am. Hist., John Hopkins University.
Vol. 26 National Ideals Historically Traced, by Albert Bushnell
Hart, LL.D., Prof. Government, Harvard University.
Vol. 27 National Progress--1907-1917, by Frederic Austin Ogg, Ph.D.,
Prof. Political Science, Univ. of Wisconsin.
Vol. 28 Index to the Series, by David Maydole Matteson, A.M.,
Harvard College Library.
COMMITTEES ORIGINALLY APPOINTED TO ADVISE AND CONSULT WITH THE
EDITOR
THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Charles Francis Adams, LL.D., President
Samuel A. Green, M.D., Vice-President
James Ford Rhodes, LL.D., ad Vice-President
Edward Channing, Ph.D., Prof. History Harvard University
Worthington C. Ford, Chief of Division of MSS., Library of Congress,
THE WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Reuben G. Thwaites, LL.D., Secretary and Superintendent
Frederick J. Turner, Ph.D., Prof. of American History, Wisconsin
University
James D. Butler, LL.D., formerly Prof. Wisconsin University
William W. Wight, President
Henry E. Legler, Curator
THE VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
William Gordon McCabe, Litt. D., President Lyon G. Tyler, LL.D.,
Pres. of William and Mary College
Judge David C. Richardson
J. A. C. Chandler, Professor Richmond College Edward Wilson James
THE TEXAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Judge John Henninger Reagan, President
George P. Garrison, Ph.D., Prof. of History, University of Texas
Judge C. W. Raines Judge Zachary T. Fullmore
THE AMERICAN NATION: A HISTORY
VOLUME 14
RISE OF THE NEW WEST
1819-1829
BY
FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER, PH.D.
PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
WITH MAPS
NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1906, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
Printed in the United States of America
TO
THE MEMORY OF ANDREW JACKSON TURNER
MY FATHER
CONTENTS
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
AUTHOR'S PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviii
I. NATIONALISM AND SECTIONALISM (1815-1830). . . . . . . 3
II. NEW ENGLAND (1820-1830) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
III. THE MIDDLE REGION (1820-1830) . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
IV. THE SOUTH (1820-1830) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
V. COLONIZATION OF THE WEST (1820-1830) . . . . . . . . 67
VI. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE
WEST (1820-1830) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
VII. WESTERN COMMERCE AND IDEALS (1820-1830) . . . . . . . 96
VIII. THE FAR WEST (1820-1830) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
IX. THE CRISIS OF 1819 AND ITS RESULTS (1819-1820) . . . 134
X. THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE (1819-1821) . . . . . . . . . 149
XI. PARTY POLITICS (1820-1822) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
XII. THE MONROE DOCTRINE (1821-1823) . . . . . . . . . . . 199
XIII. INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS (1818-1824) . . . . . . . . . . 224
XIV. THE TARIFF OF 1824 (1820-1824) . . . . . . . . . . . 236
XV. THE ELECTION OF 1824 (1822-1825) . . . . . . . . . . 245
XVI. PRESIDENT ADAMS AND THE OPPOSITION (1825-1827). . . . 265
XVII. INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS AND FOREIGN TRADE (1825-1829) . 286
XVIII. REACTION TOWARDS STATE SOVEREIGNTY (1816-1829) . . . 299
XIX. THE TARIFF OF ABOMINATIONS AND THE SOUTH CAROLINA
EXPOSITION (1827-1828) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
XX. CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
[Proofreaders note: Index and Maps omitted]
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
In many previous volumes of the series, the region beyond the
Alleghenies has been recognized as an influence and a potentiality
in American history. Thwaites, in his "France in America," shows how
the French opened up the country and prepared the way; the Tennessee
and Kentucky settlements are described in Howard's "Preliminaries of
the Revolution"; Van Tyne's "American Revolution" goes into the
earliest western governments; McLaughlin's "Confederation and
Constitution" deals with the organization of the new communities by
Congress; Bassett's "Federalist System" and Channing's "Jeffersonian
System" show how the diplomacy and politics of the country were
affected by the appearance of a new group of equal states; while
Babcock's "Rise of American Nationality" carries the influence of
those states into a broader national life. Professor Turner takes up
the west as an integral part of the Union, with a self-consciousness
as lively as that of the east or south, with its own aims and
prejudices, but a partner in the councils and the benefits of the
national government which, as a whole, it is the aim of this volume
to describe.
In a way the west is simply a broader east, for up to the end of the
period covered by this volume most of the grown men and women in the
west came across the mountains to found new homes--the New-Englander
in western New York; the Pennsylvanian diverging westward and
southwestward; the Virginian in Kentucky; the North-Carolinian in
Tennessee and Missouri and, along with the South-Carolinian and
Georgian, in the new southwestern states; while north of the Ohio
River the principal element up to 1830 was southern.
To describe such a movement and its effects, Professor Turner has
the advantage to be a descendant of New-Yorkers, of New England
stock, but native to the west, and living alongside the most
complete collection of materials upon the west which has ever been
brought together--the Library of the Wisconsin State Historical
Society. His point of view is that the west and east were always
interdependent, and that the rising power of the western states in
national affairs was a wholesome and natural outcome of forces at
work for half a century. The transformation of the west from a rude
and boisterous frontier to a group of states, soon rivaling their
parent communities in population and wealth, was not unlike the
process through which Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and Virginia
passed as colonies, except that the inland people accepted ideals
and standards originally English, but worked out and put into shape
by their colonist fathers.
As the volume treats of the nation, and not simply of any section,
it contains three chapters (i., ii., iii.) on the social and
political life in New England, the middle region, and the south. The
next four chapters are a systematic account of the west as the
settler and the traveler saw it. between 1820 and 1830. In chapter
v., on Colonization, the settlers are traced from their old homes to
their new ones by road and river. Chapter vi., off Social and
Economic Development, is a picture of frontier life in the forest
and on the farm; chapter vii. brings into relief the need of a
market and the difficulty of reaching tide-water with western
products--a subject taken up again in the two later chapters on
internal improvements; chapter viii., on The Far West, goes with the
trapper into the mountains and then across the continent to
California and to Oregon, which were included in the ambitions of
the buoyant westerner.
Chapters ix. to xi. are a narrative of a succession of national
questions involving all sections--the commercial crisis of 1819; the
Missouri Compromise, which was in good part a western question; and
the slow recrystallization of political parties after 1820. Chapter
xii. is on the Monroe Doctrine, which included eastern questions of
commerce, southern questions of nearness to Cuba, and western
questions of Latin-American neighbors. Chapters xiii. and xvii.
describe the efforts by internal improvements to help all the
states, and especially to bind the eastern and western groups
together by the Cumberland Road and by canals. Chapters xiv. to xvi.
take up the tariff of 1824, the presidential election of that year,
and its political results. Chapter xviii. brings into clear light
the causes for the reaction from the ardent nationalism described in
Babcock's American Nationality. With chapter xix., on the tariff of
1828 and the South Carolina protest, the narrative part of the
volume closes. The Critical Essay on Authorities and a wealth of
foot-notes carry the reader back to materials little studied
hitherto, and prepare the way for many detailed investigations.
The aim of the volume is not to show the Rise of the New West as
though it were a separate story, but to show how the nation found
itself in the midst of questions involving the west, and how all
parts of the Union were enriched and stimulated by the appearance of
a new section. It opens up new vistas of historical study.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
In the present volume I have kept before myself the importance of
regarding American development as the outcome of economic and social
as well as political forces. To make plain the attitude and
influence of New England, the middle region, the south, and the
west, and of the public men who reflected the changing conditions of
those sections in the period under consideration, has been my
principal purpose.
The limits of the volume have prevented the elaboration of some
points well worthy of fuller treatment; and, by the plan of the
series, certain aspects of the period have been reserved for other
writers.
I desire to express my cordial appreciation of the friendly
criticism and assistance I have received from the editor, Professor
Hart. To Professor Carl R. Fish, Professor A. A. Young, and Dr. U.
B. Phillips, my colleagues, I am indebted for a critical reading of
several chapters. I have drawn on the manuscript sources possessed
by Dr. Phillips for information on many points of southern history.
Several of the topics dealt with in the volume have been
investigated by graduate students in my seminary; particularly I
have profited by the papers of Professor Homer C. Hockett on the
Missouri Compromise and the rise of Jacksonian democracy; of Mr.
Royal B. Way, now instructor in history in Northwestern University,
on internal improvements; and of Dr. W. V. Pooley and Mr. A. C.
Boggess on the settlement of Illinois. Mr. S. J. Buck, my assistant
in American history, prepared under my direction some of the maps,
particularly those of congressional votes.
The map of western fur-trading posts in Captain Chittenden's
excellent History of the American Fur Trade furnished the basis for
the map of western posts and trails. In the construction of the map
of highways and waterways, I have used the map of H. S. Tanner,
1825, and Hewett's American Traveller (Washington, 1825). From the
maps in the Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology have
been drawn the data for the map of Indian cessions. The editor
kindly supplied the map of Russian settlements and claims.
For the portrait of Henry Clay, which forms the frontispiece, thanks
are due to Mr. Charles Henry Hart, of Philadelphia, the owner of the
life-mask made by J. H. Browere.
FREDERICK J. TURNER.
RISE OF THE NEW WEST
CHAPTER I
NATIONALISM AND SECTIONALISM (1815-1830)
The history of the United States is the history of a growing nation.
Every period of its life is a transitional period, but that from the
close of the War of 1812 to the election of Andrew Jackson was
peculiarly one of readjustment. It was during this time that the new
republic gave clear evidence that it was throwing off the last
remnants of colonial dependence. The Revolution had not fully
severed the United States from the European state system; but now
the United States attained complete independence and asserted its
predominance in the western continent. It was in this period that
the nation strengthened its hold on the Gulf of Mexico by the
acquisition of Florida, recognized the independence of the revolting
Spanish-American colonies, and took the leadership of the free
sisterhood of the New World under the terms of the Monroe Doctrine.
The joyous outburst of nationalism which at first succeeded the
dissensions of the period of war revealed itself in measures passed
in Congress, under the leadership of Calhoun and Clay; it spoke
clearly in the decisions of Judge Marshall; and in the lofty tone of
condemnation with which the country as a whole reproached New
England for the sectionalism exhibited in the Hartford Convention.
[Footnote: Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chaps, ix.,
xviii.; Gallatin, Writings, I., 700.]
It was not only in the field of foreign relations, in an aroused
national sentiment, and in a realization that the future of the
country lay in the development of its own resources that America
gave evidence of fundamental change. In the industrial field
transportation was revolutionized by the introduction of the
steamboat and by the development of canals and turnpikes. The
factory system, nourished by the restrictions of the embargo and the
war, rapidly developed until American manufactures became an
interest which, in political importance, outweighed the old
industries of shipping and foreign commerce. The expansion of
cotton-planting transformed the energies of the south, extended her
activity into the newer regions of the Gulf, and gave a new life to
the decaying institution of slavery.
From all the older sections, but especially from the south and its
colonies in Kentucky and Tennessee, a flood of colonists was
spreading along the waters of the west. In the Mississippi Valley
the forests were falling before the blows of the pioneers, cities
were developing where clearings had just let in the light of day,
and new commonwealths were seeking outlets for their surplus and
rising to industrial and political power. It is this vast
development of the internal resources of the United States, the
"Rise of the New West," that gives the tone to the period. "The
peace," wrote Webster in later years, "brought about an entirely new
and a most interesting state of things; it opened to us other
prospects and suggested other duties. We ourselves were changed, and
the whole world was changed. . . . Other nations would produce for
themselves, and carry for themselves, and manufacture for
themselves, to the full extent of their abilities. The crops of our
plains would no longer sustain European armies, nor our ships longer
supply those whom war had rendered unable to supply themselves. It
was obvious, that, under these circumstances, the country would
begin to survey itself, and to estimate its own capacity of
improvement." [Footnote: Webster, Writings (National ed.), VI., 28.]
These very forces of economic transformation were soon followed by a
distinct reaction against the spirit of nationalism and
consolidation which had flamed out at the close of the War of 1812.
This was shown, not only in protests against the loose-construction
tendencies of Congress, and in denunciations of the decisions of the
great chief-justice, but more significantly in the tendency of the
separate geographical divisions of the country to follow their own
interests and to make combinations with one another on this basis.
From one point of view the United States, even in this day of its
youth, was more like an empire than a nation. Sectionalism had been
fundamental in American history before the period which we have
reached. The vast physiographic provinces of the country formed the
basis for the development of natural economic and social areas,
comparable in their size, industrial resources, and spirit, to
nations of the Old World. In our period these sections underwent
striking transformations, and engaged, under new conditions, in the
old struggle for power. Their leaders, changing their attitude
towards public questions as the economic conditions of their
sections changed, were obliged not only to adjust themselves to the
interests of the sections which they represented, but also, if they
would achieve a national career, to make effective combinations with
other sections. [Footnote: Turner. "Problems of American History,"
in Congress of Arts and Sciences, St. Louis, II.]
This gives the clew to the decade. Underneath the superficial calm
of the "Era of Good Feeling," and in contradiction to the apparent
absorption of all parties into one, there were arising new issues,
new party formations, and some of the most profound changes in the
history of American evolution.
The men of the time were not unaware of these tendencies. Writing in
1823, Henry Clay declared that it was a just principle to inquire
what great interests belong to each section of our country, and to
promote those interests, as far as practicable, consistently with
the Constitution, having always an eye to the welfare of the whole.
"Assuming this principle," said he, "does any one doubt that if New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and the Western
States constituted an independent nation, it would immediately
protect the important interests in question? And is it not to be
feared that, if protection is not to be found for vital interests,
from the existing systems, in great parts of the confederacy, those
parts will ultimately seek to establish a system that will afford
the requisite protection?" [Footnote: Clay, Works, IV., 81, 82;
Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., II., 1997, 2423.]
While the most prominent western statesman thus expressed his
conviction that national affairs were to be conducted through
combinations between sections on the basis of peculiar interests,
Calhoun, at first a nationalist, later the leader of the south,
changed his policy to a similar system of adjustments between the
rival sections. John Quincy Adams, in 1819, said of Calhoun: "he is
above all sectional and factious prejudices more than any other
statesman of this union with whom I have ever acted." [Footnote:
Adams, Memoirs, V., 361, VI., 75.] But Calhoun, by the close of the
decade, was not only complaining that the protective policy of
certain sections set a dangerous example "of separate
representation, and association of great Geographical interests to
promote their prosperity at the expense of other interests," but he
was also convinced that a great defect in our system was that the
separate geographical interests were not sufficiently guarded.
[Footnote: Am. Hist. Assoc., Report 1899, II., 250.] Speaking, in
1831, of the three great interests of the nation--the north, the
south, and the west--he declared that they had been struggling in a
fierce war with one another, and that the period was approaching
which was to determine whether they could be reconciled or not so as
to perpetuate the Union. [Footnote: Am. Hist. Rev., VI., 742; cf.
J.Q. Adams, in Richardson, Messages and Papers. II., 297; J. Taylor,
New Views, 261; [Turnbull]. The Crisis, No. 2.]
We see, therefore, that, in the minds of some of the most
enlightened statesmen of this decade, American politics were
essentially a struggle for power between rival sections. Even those
of most enlarged national sympathies and purposes accepted the fact
of sectional rivalries and combinations as fundamental in their
policies. To understand the period, we must begin with a survey of
the separate sections in the decade from 1820 to 1830, and determine
what were the main interests shown in each and impressed upon the
leaders who represented them. For the purposes of such a survey, the
conventional division into New England, middle region, south, and
west may be adopted. It is true that within each of these sections
there were areas which were so different as to constitute almost
independent divisions, and which had close affiliations with other
sections. Nevertheless, the conventional grouping will reveal
fundamental and contrasted interests and types of life between the
various sections. In the rivalries of their leaders these sectional
differences found political expression. By first presenting a
narrative of forces in the separate sections, the narrative of
events in the nation will be better understood.
A sectional survey, however, cannot fully exhibit one profound
change, not easy to depict except by its results. This was the
formation of the self-conscious American democracy, strongest in the
west and middle region, but running across all sections and tending
to divide the people on the lines of social classes. This democracy
came to its own when Andrew Jackson triumphed over the old order of
things and rudely threw open the sanctuary of federal government to
the populace.