Chapter 28

LIFE AND MANNERS IN THE FOURTH DECADE

[1835]

By the census of 1830 the United States had a population of 12,866,020, the increase having been for the preceding ten years about sufficient to double the inhabitants in thirty years. There were twenty-four States, Indiana having been taken into the Union in 1816, Mississippi in 1817, Illinois in 1818, Alabama in 1819, Maine in 1820, and Missouri, the last, in 1821. Florida, Michigan, and Arkansas were the Territories. The area, now that Florida had been annexed, was 725,406 square miles.

Comparatively little of the soil of Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin had as yet been occupied, though settlements were making on most of the larger streams. The southwest had at this time filled up more rapidly than the northwest. In 1830 the centre of population for the Union was farther south than it has ever been at any other time. Except in Louisiana and Missouri, not over thirty thousand inhabitants were to be found west of the Mississippi. The vast outer ranges of the Louisiana purchase remained a mysterious wilderness. Indianapolis in 1827 contained twenty-five brick houses, sixty frame, and about eighty log houses; also a court-house, a jail, and three churches. Chicago was laid out in 1830. Thither in, 1834 went one mail per week, from Niles, Mich., on horseback. In 1833 it was incorporated as a town, having 175 houses and 550 inhabitants. That year it began publishing a newspaper and organized two churches. In 1837 it was a city, with 4,170 inhabitants. The Territory of Iowa had in 1836, 10,500 inhabitants; in 1840, 43,000. At this time Wisconsin had 31,000. So early as 1835 Ohio had nearly or quite 1,000,000 inhabitants. Sixty-five of its towns had together 125 newspapers. Between 1830 and 1840 Ohio's population rose from 900,000 to 1,500,000; Michigan's, from 30,000 to 212,000; and the whole country's, from 13,000,000 to 17,000,000. Before 1840, eight steamers connected Chicago with Buffalo.