Part 1 (1/2)

Rise of the New West, 1819-1829.

by Frederick Jackson Turner, PH.D.

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 Const.i.tution” deals with the organization of the new communities by Congress; Ba.s.sett'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 Babc.o.c.k'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 princ.i.p.al 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 Ma.s.sachusetts and Pennsylvania and Virginia pa.s.sed 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 c.u.mberland Road and by ca.n.a.ls. 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 Babc.o.c.k'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 att.i.tude 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 princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sistance 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 ma.n.u.script 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 a.s.sistant 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 (Was.h.i.+ngton, 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.