Chapter 11

[93:1] "William and Mary College Quarterly" (Williamsburg, 1895), iii, p. 226. See Jefferson and Frye, "Map of Virginia, 1751," for location of this and Borden's manor.

[93:2] Brown, "The Cabells" (Boston, 1895), p. 53.

[93:3] _Loc. cit._, pp. 57, 66.

[94:1] Meade, "Old Churches" (Phila., 1861), 2 vols.; Foote, "Sketches" (Phila., 1855); Brown, "The Cabells," p. 68.

[94:2] _Atlantic Monthly_, vol. xci, pp. 83 _et seq._; Ford, "Writing of Thomas Jefferson" (N. Y., 1892), i, pp. xix _et seq._

[94:3] Byrd, "Dividing Line" (Richmond, 1866), pp. 85, 271.

[95:1] "N. C. Colon. Records," iii, p. xiii. Compare Hawks, "Hist. of North Carolina" (Fayetteville, 1859), map of precincts, 1663-1729.

[95:2] Raper, "North Carolina" (N. Y., 1904), chap. v; W. R. Smith, "South Carolina" (N. Y., 1903), pp. 48, 57.

[95:3] Clewell, "Wachovia" (N. Y., 1902).

[96:1] Ballagh, in Amer. Hist. Assoc. "Report," 1897, pp. 120, 121, citing Bassett, in "Law Quarterly Review," April, 1895, pp. 159-161.

[96:2] See map in Hawks, "North Carolina."

[96:3] McCrady, "South Carolina," 1719-1776 (N. Y., 1899), pp. 149, 151; Smith, "South Carolina," p. 40; Ballagh, in Amer. Hist. Assoc. "Report," 1897, pp. 117-119; Brevard, "Digest of S. C. Laws" (Charleston, 1857), i, p. xi.

[96:4] McCrady, "South Carolina," pp. 121 _et seq._; Phillips, "Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt" (N. Y., 1908), p. 51.

[96:5] This was not originally provided for among the eleven towns. For its history see Salley, "Orangeburg"--frontier conditions about 1769 are described on pp. 219 _et seq._; see map opposite p. 9.

[97:1] Gregg, "Old Cheraws," p. 44.

[97:2] Ballagh, _loc. cit._, pp. 119, 120.

[98:1] Compare the description of Georgia frontier traders, cattle raisers, and land speculators, about 1773, in Bartram, "Travels," pp. 18, 36, 308.

[99:1] See Willis, "Northern Appalachians," in "Physiography of the U. S." in National Geog. Soc. "Monographs" (N. Y., 1895), no. 6.

[100:1] Diffenderfer, "German Immigration into Pennsylvania," in Pa. German Soc. "Proc.," v, p. 10; "Redemptioners" (Lancaster, Pa., 1900).

[100:2] A. B. Faust, "German Element in the United States."

[100:3] See the bibliographies in Kuhns, "German and Swiss Settlements of Pennsylvania" (N. Y., 1901); Wayland, "German Element of the Shenandoah Valley" (N. Y., 1908); Channing, "United States," ii, p. 421; Griffin, "List of Works Relating to the Germans in the U. S." (Library of Congress, Wash., 1904).

[100:4] See in illustration, the letter in Myers, "Irish Quakers" (Swarthmore, Pa., 1902), p. 70.

[101:1] Shepherd, "Proprietary Government in Pennsylvania" (N. Y., 1896), p. 34.

[101:2] Gordon, "Pennsylvania" (Phila., 1829), p. 225.

[101:3] Shepherd, _loc. cit._, pp. 49-51.

[101:4] Ballagh, Amer. Hist. Assoc. "Report," 1897, pp. 112, 113. Compare Smith, "St. Clair Papers" (Cincinnati, 1882), ii, p. 101.

[101:5] Shepherd, _loc. cit._, p. 50.

[101:6] Mereness, "Maryland" (N. Y., 1901), p. 77.

[102:1] "Calendar Va. State Papers" (Richmond, 1875), i, p. 217; on these grants see Kemper, "Early Westward Movement in Virginia" in _Va. Mag._, xii and xiii; Wayland, "German Element of the Shenandoah Valley," _William and Mary College Quarterly_, iii. The speculators, both planters and new-comers, soon made application for lands beyond the Alleghanies.

[102:2] In 1794 the Virginia House of Delegates resolved to publish the most important laws of the state in German.

[102:3] See Bernheim, "German Settlements in the Carolinas" (Phila., 1872); Clewell, "Wachovia"; Allen, "German Palatines in N. C." (Raleigh, 1905).

[102:4] See Wayland, _loc. cit._, bibliography, for references; and especially _Va. Mag._, xi, pp. 113, 225, 370; xii, pp. 55, 134, 271; "German American Annals," N. S. iii, pp. 342, 369; iv, p. 16; Clewell, "Wachovia; N. C. Colon. Records," v, pp. 1-14.

[103:1] On the Scotch-Irish, see the bibliography in Green, "Scotch-Irish in America," Amer. Antiquarian Soc. "Proceedings," April, 1895; Hanna, "Scotch-Irish" (N. Y., 1902), is a comprehensive presentation of the subject; see also Myers, "Irish Quakers."

[103:2] Fiske, "Old Virginia" (Boston, 1897), ii, p. 394. Compare Linehan, "The Irish Scots and the Scotch-Irish" (Concord, N. H., 1902).

[103:3] See MacLean, "Scotch Highlanders in America" (Cleveland, 1900).

[103:4] Hanna, "Scotch-Irish," ii, pp. 17-24.

[104:1] Halsey, "Old New York Frontier" (N. Y., 1901).

[104:2] MacLean, pp. 196-230.

[104:3] The words of Logan, Penn's agent, in 1724, in Hanna, ii, pp. 60, 63.

[104:4] Winsor, "Mississippi Basin" (Boston, 1895), pp. 238-243.

[105:1] See Thwaites, "Early Western Travels" (Cleveland, 1904-06), i; Walton, "Conrad Weiser" (Phila., 1900); Heckewelder, "Narrative" (Phila., 1820).

[105:2] Christian, "Scotch-Irish Settlers in the Valley of Virginia" (Richmond, 1860).

[105:3] Roosevelt gives an interesting picture of this society in his "Winning of the West" (N. Y., 1889-96), i, chap. v; see also his citations, especially Doddridge, "Settlements and Indian Wars" (Wellsburgh, W. Va., 1824).

[106:1] Bassett, in Amer. Hist. Assoc. "Report," 1894, p. 145.

[106:2] "N. C. Colon. Records," v, pp. xxxix, xl; _cf._ p. xxi.

[106:3] _Loc. cit._, pp. 146, 147.

[107:1] See the interesting account of Rev. Moses Waddell's school in South Carolina, on the upper Savannah, where the students, including John C. Calhoun, McDuffe, Legaré, and Petigru, were educated in the wilderness. They lived in log huts in the woods, furnished their own supplies, or boarded near by, were called to the log school-house by horn for morning prayers, and then scattered in groups to the woods for study. Hunt, "Calhoun" (Phila., 1907), p. 13.

[108:1] Scharf, "Maryland" (Baltimore, 1879), ii, p. 61, and chaps. i and xviii; Kercheval, "The Valley."

[108:2] Weston, "Documents," p. 82.

[109:1] See, for example, Phillips, "Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt," pp. 21-53.

[109:2] Hanna, "Scotch-Irish," ii, pp. 19, 22-24.

[109:3] Cobb, "Story of the Palatines" (Wilkes-Barre, Pa., 1897), p. 300, citing "Penn. Colon. Records," iv, pp. 225, 345.

[109:4] "Works" (Bigelow ed.), ii, pp. 296-299.

[109:5] _Ibid._, iii, p. 297; _cf._ p. 221.

[109:6] "Summary" (1755), ii, p. 326.

[110:1] "European Settlements" (London, 1793), ii, p. 200 (1765); _cf._ Franklin, "Works" (N. Y., 1905-07), ii, p. 221, to the same effect.

[110:2] Proper, "Colonial Immigration Laws," in Columbia Univ., "Studies," xii.

[111:1] Libby, "Distribution of the Vote on the Federal Constitution," Univ. of Wis. _Bulletin_, pp. 8, 9, and citations. Note especially "New Hampshire State Papers," x, pp. 228 _et seq._

[111:2] Libby, _loc. cit._, pp. 12-14, 46, 54-57.

[112:1] Farrand, in _Yale Review_, May, 1908, p. 52 and citation.

[112:2] Libby, _loc. cit._

[112:3] See Turner, "Rise of the New West" (Amer. Nation series, N. Y., 1906), pp. 16-18.

[112:4] Parkman, "Pontiac" (Boston, 1851), ii, p. 352.

[112:5] Shepherd, "Proprietary Government in Pennsylvania," in Columbia Univ. _Studies_, vi, pp. 546 _et seq._ Compare Watson, "Annals," ii, p. 259; Green, "Provincial America" (Amer. Nation series, N. Y., 1905), p. 234.

[113:1] Lincoln, "Revolutionary Movement in Pennsylvania" (Boston, 1901); McMaster and Stone, "Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution" (Lancaster, 1888).

[114:1] "Notes on Virginia." See his table of apportionment in Ford, "Writings of Thomas Jefferson," iii, p. 222.

[115:1] "Debates of the Virginia State Convention, 1829-1830" (Richmond, 1854), p. 87. These debates constitute a mine of material on the difficulty of reconciling the political philosophy of the Revolution with the protection of the property, including slaves, of the lowland planters.

[115:2] _Loc. cit._, p. 407. The italics are mine.

[116:1] McCrady, "South Carolina, 1719-1776," p. 623.

[117:1] Brevard, "Digest of S. C. Laws," i, pp. xxiv, 253; McCrady, "South Carolina, 1719-1776," p. 637; Schaper, "Sectionalism in South Carolina," in Amer. Hist. Assoc. "Report," 1900, i, pp. 334-338.

[117:2] Schaper, _loc. cit._, pp. 338, 339; Calhoun, "Works" (N. Y., 1851-59), i, p. 402; _Columbia_ (S. C.) _Gazette_, Aug. 1, 1794; Ramsay, "South Carolina," pp. 64-66, 195, 217; Elliot, "Debates," iv, pp. 288, 289, 296-299, 305, 309, 312.

[117:3] Schaper, _loc. cit._, pp. 440-447 _et seq._

[118:1] Turner, "Rise of the New West," pp. 50-52, 331; Calhoun, "Works," i, pp. 400-405.

[118:2] "N. C. Colon. Records," vii, pp. xiv-xvii.

[118:3] See Bassett, "Regulators of N. C." in Amer. Hist. Assoc. "Report," 1894, pp. 141 (bibliog.) _et seq._; "N. C. Colon. Records," pp. vii-x (Saunder's introductions are valuable); Caruthers, "David Caldwell" (Greensborough, N. C., 1842); Waddell, "Colonial Officer" (Raleigh, 1890); M. De L. Haywood, "Governor William Tryon" (Raleigh, N. C., 1903); Clewell, "Wachovia," chap. x; W. E. Fitch, "Some Neglected History of N. C." (N. Y., 1905); L. A. McCorkle and F. Nash, in "N. C. Booklet" (Raleigh, 1901-07), iii; Wheeler, "North Carolina," ii, pp. 301 _et seq._; Cutter, "Lynch Law," chap. ii. and iii.

[119:1] Bassett, _loc. cit._, p. 152.

[119:2] Wheeler, "North Carolina," ii, pp. 301-306; "N. C. Colon. Records," vii, pp. 251, 699.

[120:1] "N. C. Colon. Records," viii, p. xix.

[120:2] Turner, in _Amer. Hist. Review_, i, p. 76.

[120:3] "N. C. Colon. Records," vii, pp. xiv-xxiv.

[121:1] Weeks, "Church and State in North Carolina" (Baltimore, 1893); "N. C. Colon. Records," x, p. 870; Curry, "Establishment and Disestablishment" (Phila., 1889); C. F. James, "Documentary History of the Struggle for Religious Liberty in Virginia" (Lynchburg, Va., 1900); Semple, "The Virginia Baptists" (Richmond, 1810); Amer. Hist. Assoc. "Papers," ii, p. 21; iii, pp. 205, 213.

[122:1] See Ballagh, "Slavery in Virginia," Johns Hopkins Univ. "Studies," extra, xxiv; Bassett, "Slavery and Servitude in the Colony of North Carolina," _Id._, xiv, pp. 169-254; Bassett, "Slavery in the State of North Carolina," _Id._, xvii; Bassett, "Antislavery Leaders in North Carolina," _Id._, xvi; Weeks, "Southern Quakers," _Id._, xv, extra; Schaper, "Sectionalism in South Carolina," Amer. Hist. Assoc. "Report," 1900; Turner, "Rise of the New West," pp. 54-56, 76-78, 80, 90, 150-152.

[122:2] See F. J. Turner, "State-Making in the West During the Revolutionary Era," in _American Historical Review_, i, p. 70.

[122:3] Hening, x, p. 35; "Public Acts of N. C.," i, pp. 204, 306; "Revised Code of Va., 1819," ii, p. 357; Roosevelt, "Winning of the West," i, p. 261; ii, pp. 92, 220.

[124:1] Alden, "New Governments West of the Alleghanies" (Madison, 1897), gives an account of these colonies. [See the more recent work by C. W. Alvord, "The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, 1763-1774" (1917).]

[124:2] Thwaites, "Daniel Boone" (N. Y., 1902); [A. Henderson, "Conquest of the Old Southwest" (N. Y., 1920), brings out the important share of up-country men of means in promoting colonization].

[125:1] Turner, in "Alumni Quarterly of the University of Illinois," ii, 133-136.

[125:2] [It has seemed best in this volume not to attempt to deal with the French frontier or the Spanish-American frontier. Besides the works of Parkman, a multitude of monographs have appeared in recent years which set the French frontier in new light; and for the Spanish frontier in both the Southwest and California much new information has been secured, and illuminating interpretations made by Professors H. E. Bolton, I. J. Cox, Chapman, Father Engelhart, and other California and Texas investigators, although the works of Hubert Howe Bancroft remain a useful mine of material. There was, of course, a contemporaneous Old West on both the French and the Spanish frontiers. The formation, approach and ultimate collision and intermingling of these contrasting types of frontiers are worthy of a special study.]

IV

THE MIDDLE WEST[126:1]

American sectional nomenclature is still confused. Once "the West" described the whole region beyond the Alleghanies; but the term has hopelessly lost its definiteness. The rapidity of the spread of settlement has broken down old usage, and as yet no substitute has been generally accepted. The "Middle West" is a term variously used by the public, but for the purpose of the present paper, it will be applied to that region of the United States included in the census reports under the name of the North Central division, comprising the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin (the old "Territory Northwest of the River Ohio"), and their trans-Mississippi sisters of the Louisiana Purchase,--Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. It is an imperial domain. If the greater countries of Central Europe,--France, Germany, Italy, and Austro-Hungary,--were laid down upon this area, the Middle West would still show a margin of spare territory. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo constitute its gateways to the Eastern States; Kansas City, Omaha, St. Paul-Minneapolis, and Duluth-Superior dominate its western areas; Cincinnati and St. Louis stand on its southern borders; and Chicago reigns at the center. What Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore are to the Atlantic seaboard these cities are to the Middle West. The Great Lakes and the Mississippi, with the Ohio and the Missouri as laterals, constitute the vast water system that binds the Middle West together. It is the economic and political center of the Republic. At one edge is the Populism of the prairies; at the other, the capitalism that is typified in Pittsburgh. Great as are the local differences within the Middle West, it possesses, in its physiography, in the history of its settlement, and in its economic and social life, a unity and interdependence which warrant a study of the area as an entity. Within the limits of this article, treatment of so vast a region, however, can at best afford no more than an outline sketch, in which old and well-known facts must, if possible, be so grouped as to explain the position of the section in American history.

In spite of the difficulties of the task, there is a definite advantage in so large a view. By fixing our attention too exclusively upon the artificial boundary lines of the States, we have failed to perceive much that is significant in the westward development of the United States. For instance, our colonial system did not begin with the Spanish War; the United States has had a colonial history and policy from the beginning of the Republic; but they have been hidden under the phraseology of "interstate migration" and "territorial organization."

The American people have occupied a spacious wilderness; vast physiographic provinces, each with its own peculiarities, have lain across the path of this migration, and each has furnished a special environment for economic and social transformation. It is possible to underestimate the importance of State lines, but if we direct our gaze rather to the physiographic province than to the State area, we shall be able to see some facts in a new light. Then it becomes clear that these physiographic provinces of America are in some respects comparable to the countries of Europe, and that each has its own history of occupation and development. General Francis A. Walker once remarked that "the course of settlement has called upon our people to occupy territory as extensive as Switzerland, as England, as Italy, and latterly, as France or Germany, every ten years." It is this element of vastness in the achievements of American democracy that gives a peculiar interest to the conquest and development of the Middle West. The effects of this conquest and development upon the present United States have been of fundamental importance.

Geographically the Middle West is almost conterminous with the Provinces of the Lake and Prairie Plains; but the larger share of Kansas and Nebraska, and the western part of the two Dakotas belong to the Great Plains; the Ozark Mountains occupy a portion of Missouri, and the southern parts of Ohio and Indiana merge into the Alleghany Plateau. The relation of the Provinces of the Lake and Prairie Plains to the rest of the United States is an important element in the significance of the Middle West. On the north lies the similar region of Canada: the Great Lakes are in the center of the whole eastern and more thickly settled half of North America, and they bind the Canadian and Middle Western people together. On the south, the provinces meet the apex of that of the Gulf Plains, and the Mississippi unites them. To the west, they merge gradually into the Great Plains; the Missouri and its tributaries and the Pacific railroads make for them a bond of union; another rather effective bond is the interdependence of the cattle of the plains and the corn of the prairies. To the east, the province meets the Alleghany and New England Plateaus, and is connected with them by the upper Ohio and by the line of the Erie Canal. Here the interaction of industrial life and the historical facts of settlement have produced a close relationship. The intimate connection between the larger part of the North Central and the North Atlantic divisions of the United States will impress any one who examines the industrial and social maps of the census atlas. By reason of these interprovincial relationships, the Middle West is the mediator between Canada and the United States, and between the concentrated wealth and manufactures of the North Atlantic States and the sparsely settled Western mining, cattle-raising, and agricultural States. It has a connection with the South that was once still closer, and is likely before long to reassert itself with new power. Within the limits of the United States, therefore, we have problems of interprovincial trade and commerce similar to those that exist between the nations of the Old World.

Over most of the Province of the Lake and Prairie Plains the Laurentide glacier spread its drift, rich in limestone and other rock powder, which farmers in less favored sections must purchase to replenish the soil. The alluvial deposit from primeval lakes contributed to fatten the soil of other parts of the prairies. Taken as a whole, the Prairie Plains surpass in fertility any other region of America or Europe, unless we except some territory about the Black Sea. It is a land marked out as the granary of the nation; but it is more than a granary. On the rocky shores of Lake Superior were concealed copper mines rivaled only by those of Montana, and iron fields which now[129:1] furnish the ore for the production of eighty per cent of the pig iron of the United States. The Great Lakes afford a highway between these iron fields and the coal areas of the Ohio Valley. The gas and oil deposits of the Ohio Valley, the coal of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and eastern Kansas, the lead and zinc of the Ozark region and of the upper Mississippi Valley, and the gold of the black Hills,--all contribute underground wealth to the Middle West.

The primeval American forest once spread its shade over vast portions of the same province. Ohio, Indiana, southern Michigan, and central Wisconsin were almost covered with a growth of noble deciduous trees. In southern Illinois, along the broad bottom lands of the Mississippi and the Illinois, and in southern and southwestern Missouri, similar forests prevailed. To the north, in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, appeared the somber white pine wilderness, interlaced with hard woods, which swept in ample zone along the Great Lakes, till the deciduous forests triumphed again, and, in their turn, faded into the treeless expanse of the prairies. In the remaining portions were openings in the midst of the forested area, and then the grassy ocean of prairie that rolled to west and northwest, until it passed beyond the line of sufficient rainfall for agriculture without irrigation, into the semi-arid stretches of the Great Plains.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the forested region of this province was occupied by the wigwams of many different tribes of the Algonquin tongue, sparsely scattered in villages along the water courses, warring and trading through the vast wilderness. The western edge of the prairie and the Great Plains were held by the Sioux, chasing herds of bison across these far-stretching expanses. These horsemen of the plains and the canoemen of the Great Lakes and the Ohio were factors with which civilization had to reckon, for they constituted important portions of perhaps the fiercest native race with which the white man has ever battled for new lands.

The Frenchman had done but little fighting for this region. He swore brotherhood with its savages, traded with them, intermarried with them, and explored the Middle West; but he left the wilderness much as he found it. Some six or seven thousand French people in all, about Detroit and Vincennes, and in the Illinois country, and scattered among the Indian villages of the remote lakes and streams, held possession when George Washington reached the site of Pittsburgh, bearing Virginia's summons of eviction to France. In his person fate knocked at the portals of a "rising empire." France hurried her commanders and garrisons, with Indian allies, from the posts about the Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi; but it was in vain. In vain, too, the aftermath of Pontiac's widespread Indian uprising against the English occupation. When she came into possession of the lands between the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Great Lakes, England organized them as a part of the Province of Quebec. The daring conquest of George Rogers Clark left Virginia in military possession of the Illinois country at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War; but over all the remainder of the Old Northwest, England was in control. Although she ceded the region by the treaty which closed the Revolution, she remained for many years the mistress of the Indians and the fur trade. When Lord Shelburne was upbraided in parliament for yielding the Northwest to the United States, the complaint was that he had clothed the Americans "in the warm covering of our fur trade," and his defense was that the peltry trade of the ceded tract was not sufficiently profitable to warrant further war. But the English government became convinced that the Indian trade demanded the retention of the Northwest, and she did in fact hold her posts there in spite of the treaty of peace. Dundas, the English secretary for the colonies, expressed the policy, when he declared, in 1792, that the object was to interpose an Indian barrier between Canada and the United States; and in pursuance of this policy of preserving the Northwest as an Indian buffer State, the Canadian authorities supported the Indians in their resistance to American settlement beyond the Ohio. The conception of the Northwest as an Indian reserve strikingly exhibits England's inability to foresee the future of the region, and to measure the forces of American expansion.