Frontier in American History — I - The Significance of the Frontier in American History - Part 3

The exploitation of the beasts took hunter and trader to the west, the exploitation of the grasses took the rancher west, and the exploitation of the virgin soil of the river valleys and prairies attracted the farmer.

Good soils have been the most continuous attraction to the farmer's frontier.

The land hunger of the Virginians drew them down the rivers into Carolina, in early colonial days; the search for soils took the Massachusetts men to Pennsylvania and to New York.

As the eastern lands were taken up migration flowed across them to the west.

Daniel Boone, the great backwoodsman, who combined the occupations of hunter, trader, cattle-raiser, farmer, and surveyor--learning, probably from the traders, of the fertility of the lands of the upper Yadkin, where the traders were wont to rest as they took their way to the Indians, left his Pennsylvania home with his father, and passed down the Great Valley road to that stream.

Learning from a trader of the game and rich pastures of Kentucky, he pioneered the way for the farmers to that region.

Thence he passed to the frontier of Missouri, where his settlement was long a landmark on the frontier.

Here again he helped to open the way for civilization, finding salt licks, and trails, and land.

His son was among the earliest trappers in the passes of the Rocky Mountains, and his party are said to have been the first to camp on the present site of Denver.

His grandson, Col. A.

J.

Boone, of Colorado, was a power among the Indians of the Rocky Mountains, and was appointed an agent by the government.

Kit Carson's mother was a Boone.

[19:1] Thus this family epitomizes the backwoodsman's advance across the continent.

The farmer's advance came in a distinct series of waves.

In Peck's New Guide to the West, published in Boston in 1837, occurs this suggestive passage: Generally, in all the western settlements, three classes, like the waves of the ocean, have rolled one after the other.

First comes the pioneer, who depends for the subsistence of his family chiefly upon the natural growth of vegetation, called the "range," and the proceeds of hunting.

His implements of agriculture are rude, chiefly of his own make, and his efforts directed mainly to a crop of corn and a "truck patch."

The last is a rude garden for growing cabbage, beans, corn for roasting ears, cucumbers, and potatoes.

A log cabin, and, occasionally, a stable and corn-crib, and a field of a dozen acres, the timber girdled or "deadened," and fenced, are enough for his occupancy.

It is quite immaterial whether he ever becomes the owner of the soil.

He is the occupant for the time being, pays no rent, and feels as independent as the "lord of the manor."

With a horse, cow, and one or two breeders of swine, he strikes into the woods with his family, and becomes the founder of a new county, or perhaps state.

He builds his cabin, gathers around him a few other families of similar tastes and habits, and occupies till the range is somewhat subdued, and hunting a little precarious, or, which is more frequently the case, till the neighbors crowd around, roads, bridges, and fields annoy him, and he lacks elbow room.

The preemption law enables him to dispose of his cabin and cornfield to the next class of emigrants; and, to employ his own figures, he "breaks for the high timber," "clears out for the New Purchase," or migrates to Arkansas or Texas, to work the same process over.

The next class of emigrants purchase the lands, add field to field, clear out the roads, throw rough bridges over the streams, put up hewn log houses with glass windows and brick or stone chimneys, occasionally plant orchards, build mills, school-houses, court-houses, etc. , and exhibit the picture and forms of plain, frugal, civilized life.

Another wave rolls on.

The men of capital and enterprise come.

The settler is ready to sell out and take the advantage of the rise in property, push farther into the interior and become, himself, a man of capital and enterprise in turn.

The small village rises to a spacious town or city; substantial edifices of brick, extensive fields, orchards, gardens, colleges, and churches are seen.

Broadcloths, silks, leghorns, crapes, and all the refinements, luxuries, elegancies, frivolities, and fashions are in vogue.

Thus wave after wave is rolling westward; the real Eldorado is still farther on.

A portion of the two first classes remain stationary amidst the general movement, improve their habits and condition, and rise in the scale of society.

The writer has traveled much amongst the first class, the real pioneers.

He has lived many years in connection with the second grade; and now the third wave is sweeping over large districts of Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.

Migration has become almost a habit in the West.

Hundreds of men can be found, not over 50 years of age, who have settled for the fourth, fifth, or sixth time on a new spot.

To sell out and remove only a few hundred miles makes up a portion of the variety of backwoods life and manners.

[21:1] Omitting those of the pioneer farmers who move from the love of adventure, the advance of the more steady farmer is easy to understand.

Obviously the immigrant was attracted by the cheap lands of the frontier, and even the native farmer felt their influence strongly.

Year by year the farmers who lived on soil whose returns were diminished by unrotated crops were offered the virgin soil of the frontier at nominal prices.

Their growing families demanded more lands, and these were dear.

The competition of the unexhausted, cheap, and easily tilled prairie lands compelled the farmer either to go west and continue the exhaustion of the soil on a new frontier, or to adopt intensive culture.

Thus the census of 1890 shows, in the Northwest, many counties in which there is an absolute or a relative decrease of population.

These States have been sending farmers to advance the frontier on the plains, and have themselves begun to turn to intensive farming and to manufacture.

A

decade before this, Ohio had shown the same transition stage.

Thus the demand for land and the love of wilderness freedom drew the frontier ever onward.

Having now roughly outlined the various kinds of frontiers, and their modes of advance, chiefly from the point of view of the frontier itself, we may next inquire what were the influences on the East and on the Old World.

A rapid enumeration of some of the more noteworthy effects is all that I have time for.

First, we note that the frontier promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American people.

The coast was preponderantly English, but the later tides of continental immigration flowed across to the free lands.

This was the case from the early colonial days.

The Scotch-Irish and the Palatine Germans, or "Pennsylvania Dutch," furnished the dominant element in the stock of the colonial frontier.

With these peoples were also the freed indented servants, or redemptioners, who at the expiration of their time of service passed to the frontier.

Governor Spotswood of Virginia writes in 1717, "The inhabitants of our frontiers are composed generally of such as have been transported hither as servants, and, being out of their time, settle themselves where land is to be taken up and that will produce the necessarys of life with little labour."

[22:1] Very generally these redemptioners were of non-English stock.

In the crucible of the frontier the immigrants were Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race, English in neither nationality nor characteristics.

The process has gone on from the early days to our own.

Burke and other writers in the middle of the eighteenth century believed that Pennsylvania[23:1] was "threatened with the danger of being wholly foreign in language, manners, and perhaps even inclinations."

The German and Scotch-Irish elements in the frontier of the South were only less great.

In the middle of the present century the German element in Wisconsin was already so considerable that leading publicists looked to the creation of a German state out of the commonwealth by concentrating their colonization.

[23:2] Such examples teach us to beware of misinterpreting the fact that there is a common English speech in America into a belief that the stock is also English.

In another way the advance of the frontier decreased our dependence on England.

The coast, particularly of the South, lacked diversified industries, and was dependent on England for the bulk of its supplies.

In the South there was even a dependence on the Northern colonies for articles of food.

Governor Glenn, of South Carolina, writes in the middle of the eighteenth century: "Our trade with New York and Philadelphia was of this sort, draining us of all the little money and bills we could gather from other places for their bread, flour, beer, hams, bacon, and other things of their produce, all which, except beer, our new townships begin to supply us with, which are settled with very industrious and thriving Germans.

This no doubt diminishes the number of shipping and the appearance of our trade, but it is far from being a detriment to us."

[23:3] Before long the frontier created a demand for merchants.

As it retreated from the coast it became less and less possible for England to bring her supplies directly to the consumer's wharfs, and carry away staple crops, and staple crops began to give way to diversified agriculture for a time.

The effect of this phase of the frontier action upon the northern section is perceived when we realize how the advance of the frontier aroused seaboard cities like Boston, New York, and Baltimore, to engage in rivalry for what Washington called "the extensive and valuable trade of a rising empire."

The legislation which most developed the powers of the national government, and played the largest part in its activity, was conditioned on the frontier.

Writers have discussed the subjects of tariff, land, and internal improvement, as subsidiary to the slavery question.

But when American history comes to be rightly viewed it will be seen that the slavery question is an incident.

In the period from the end of the first half of the present century to the close of the Civil War slavery rose to primary, but far from exclusive, importance.

But this does not justify Dr. von Holst (to take an example) in treating our constitutional history in its formative period down to 1828 in a single volume, giving six volumes chiefly to the history of slavery from 1828 to 1861, under the title "Constitutional History of the United States."

The growth of nationalism and the evolution of American political institutions were dependent on the advance of the frontier.

Even so recent a writer as Rhodes, in his "History of the United States since the Compromise of 1850," has treated the legislation called out by the western advance as incidental to the slavery struggle.

This is a wrong perspective.

The pioneer needed the goods of the coast, and so the grand series of internal improvement and railroad legislation began, with potent nationalizing effects.

Over internal improvements occurred great debates, in which grave constitutional questions were discussed.

Sectional groupings appear in the votes, profoundly significant for the historian.

Loose construction increased as the nation marched westward.

[25:1] But the West was not content with bringing the farm to the factory.

Under the lead of Clay--"Harry of the West"--protective tariffs were passed, with the cry of bringing the factory to the farm.

The disposition of the public lands was a third important subject of national legislation influenced by the frontier.

The public domain has been a force of profound importance in the nationalization and development of the government.

The effects of the struggle of the landed and the landless States, and of the Ordinance of 1787, need no discussion.

[25:2] Administratively the frontier called out some of the highest and most vitalizing activities of the general government.

The purchase of Louisiana was perhaps the constitutional turning point in the history of the Republic, inasmuch as it afforded both a new area for national legislation and the occasion of the downfall of the policy of strict construction.

But the purchase of Louisiana was called out by frontier needs and demands.

As frontier States accrued to the Union the national power grew.

In a speech on the dedication of the Calhoun monument Mr. Lamar explained: "In 1789 the States were the creators of the Federal Government; in 1861 the Federal Government was the creator of a large majority of the States."