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.
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
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.
By the cessions of Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, the Old
Congress had come into
nominal possession of an
extensive public domain, and a field for the
exercise of
national authority. The
significance of this
fact in the
development of
national power is not
likely to be overestimated. The first
result was the
completion of the Ordinance of 1787, which provided a
territorial government for the Old Northwest, with provisions for the
admission of States into the Union. This
federal colonial system guaranteed that the new
national possessions should not be governed as
dependent provinces, but should enter as a group of sister States into the
federation.While the importance of the
article excluding slavery has often been pointed out, it is
probable that the provisions for a
federal colonial organization have been at least equally
potential in our actual
development. The full
significance of this
feature of the Ordinance is only appreciated when we
consider its
continuous influence upon the American
territorial and State
policy in the westward
expansion to the Pacific, and the
political preconceptions with which Americans
approach the problems of
government in the new
insular possessions. The Land Ordinance of 1785 is also
worthy of
attention in this
connection, for under its provisions almost all of the Middle West has been divided by the
government surveyor into rectangles of sections and townships, by whose lines the
settler has been
able easily and
certainly to
locate his farm, and the forester his "forty." In the
local organization of the Middle West these lines have played an important part.
It would be
impossible within the limits of this paper to detail the history of the
occupation of the Middle West; but the larger aspects of the
flow of
population into the
region may be sketched. Massachusetts men had formed the Ohio Company, and had been
influential in shaping the
liberal provisions of the Ordinance. Their land
purchase, paid for in soldiers' certificates, embraced an
area larger than the State of Rhode Island. At Marietta in 1788, under the
shelter of Fort Harmar, their bullet-proof
barge landed the first New England
colony. A New Jersey
colony was planted soon after at Cincinnati in the Symmes Purchase. Thus American
civilization crossed the Ohio. The French settlements at Detroit and in Indiana and Illinois belonged to other times and had their own ideals; but with the
entrance of the American
pioneer into the
forest of the Middle West, a new
era began. The Indians, with the
moral support of England, resisted the
invasion, and an Indian war followed. The
conquest of Wayne, in 1795, pushed back the Indians to the Greenville line, extending irregularly across the State of Ohio from the
site of Cleveland to Fort Recovery in the middle point of her present western
boundary, and secured
certain areas in Indiana. In the same
period Jay's
treaty provided for the
withdrawal of the British posts. After this
extension of the
area open to the
pioneer, new settlements were rapidly formed. Connecticut disposed of her
reserved land about Lake Erie to companies, and in 1796 General Moses Cleaveland led the way to the
site of the city that bears his name. This was the beginning of the
occupation of the Western Reserve, a
district about as large as the parent State of Connecticut, a New England
colony in the Middle West, which has maintained, even to the present time, the
impress of New England traits. Virginia and Kentucky settlers sought the Virginia Military Bounty Lands, and the
foundation of Chillicothe here, in 1796, afforded a
center for Southern
settlement. The
region is a modified
extension of the limestone
area of Kentucky, and naturally attracted the emigrants from the Blue Grass State. hio's history is deeply
marked by the
interaction of the New England, Middle, and Southern colonies within her borders
By the opening of the nineteenth
century, when Napoleon's
cession brought to the United States the
vast spaces of the Louisiana Purchase beyond the Mississippi, the pioneers had hardly more than entered the
outskirts of the
forest along the Ohio and Lake Erie. But by 1810 the
government had extinguished the Indian
title to the unsecured portions of the Western Reserve, and to great tracts of Indiana, along the Ohio and up the Wabash Valley;
thus protecting the Ohio highway from the Indians, and opening new lands to
settlement. The
embargo had destroyed the
trade of New England, and had weighted down her citizens with
debt and
taxation; caravans of Yankee
emigrant wagons, precursors of the "
prairie schooner," had already begun to
cross Pennsylvania on their way to Ohio; and they now greatly increased in number. North Carolina back countrymen flocked to the Indiana settlements, giving the
peculiar Hoosier flavor to the State, and other Southerners followed, outnumbering the Northern immigrants, who sought the eastern
edge of Indiana.
Tecumthe, rendered
desperate by the
advance into his hunting grounds, took up the
hatchet, made wide-reaching alliances among the Indians, and turned to England for
protection. The Indian war merged into the War of 1812, and the settlers strove in
vain to add Canadian lands to their
empire. In the
diplomatic negotiations that followed the war, England made another
attempt to
erect the Old Northwest beyond the Greenville line into a
permanent Indian
barrier between Canada and the United States; but the
demand was refused, and by the treaties of 1818, the Indians were pressed still farther north. In the meantime, Indian treaties had released
additional land in southern Illinois, and pioneers were widening the bounds of the old French settlements. Avoiding the rich savannas of the
prairie regions, as
devoid of wood,
remote from
transportation facilities, and suited only to grazing, they entered the hard woods-and in the early twenties they were advancing in a wedge-shaped
column up the Illinois Valley.
The Southern
element constituted the main
portion of this
phalanx of ax-bearers. Abraham Lincoln's father joined the
throng of Kentuckians that entered the Indiana woods in 1816, and the boy, when he had
learned to
hew out a
forest home, betook himself, in 1830, to Sangamon county, Illinois. He represents the
pioneer of the
period; but his ax sank deeper than other men's, and the plaster cast of his great
sinewy hand, at Washington, embodies the training of these
frontier railsplitters, in the days when Fort Dearborn, on the
site of Chicago, was but a
military outpost in a
desolate country. While the hard woods of Illinois were being entered, the
pioneer movement passed also into the Missouri Valley. The French lead miners had already opened the southeastern
section, and Southern mountaineers had pushed up the Missouri; but now the planters from the Ohio Valley and the upper Tennessee followed, seeking the
alluvial soils for
slave labor. Moving across the southern
border of free Illinois, they had awakened regrets in that State at the loss of so large a body of settlers.
Looking at the Middle West, as a whole, in the
decade from 1810 to 1820, we
perceive that
settlement extended from the shores of Lake Erie in an
arc, following the banks of the Ohio
till it joined the Mississippi, and thence along that river and up the Missouri well into the
center of the State. The next
decade was
marked by the increased use of the steamboat; pioneers pressed farther up the streams, etching out the hard wood forests well up to the
prairie lands, and forming
additional tracts of
settlement in the
region tributary to Detroit and in the southeastern part of Michigan. In the
area of the Galena lead mines of northwestern Illinois, southwestern Wisconsin, and northeastern Iowa, Southerners had already begun operations; and if we except Ohio and Michigan, the
dominant element in all this overflow of
settlement into the Middle West was Southern,
particularly from Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina. The settlements were still
dependent on the rivers for
transportation, and the areas between the rivers were but lightly occupied. The Mississippi constituted the
principal outlet for the products of the Middle West; Pittsburgh furnished most of the supplies for the
region, but New Orleans received its crops. The Old National road was built
piecemeal, and too late, as a whole, to make a great
artery of
trade throughout the Middle West, in this early
period; but it
marked the northern borders of the Southern
stream of
population, running, as this did,
through Columbus, Indianapolis, and Vandalia.
The twenty years from 1830 to 1850 saw great changes in the
composition of the
population of the Middle West. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 was an epoch-making
event. It furnished a new
outlet and inlet for northwestern
traffic; Buffalo began to grow, and New York City changed from a
local market to a great
commercial center. But even more important was the place which the
canal occupied as the highway for a new
migration.
In the
march of the New England people from the
coast, three movements are of
especial importance: the
advance from the seaboard up the Connecticut and Housatonic Valleys
through Massachusetts and into Vermont; the
advance thence to
central and western New York; and the
advance to the
interior of the Old Northwest. The second of these stages occupied the
generation from about 1790 to 1820; after that the second
generation was ready to
seek new lands; and these the Erie Canal and lake
navigation opened to them, and to the Vermonters and other
adventurous spirits of New England. It was this combined New York-New England
stream that in the thirties poured in large
volume into the
zone north of the settlements which have been described. The newcomers filled in the southern counties of Michigan and Wisconsin, the northern countries of Illinois, and parts of the northern and
central areas of Indiana. Pennsylvania and Ohio sent a
similar type of people to the
area adjacent to those States. In Iowa a
stream combined of the Southern
element and of these settlers sought the wooded tributaries of the Mississippi in the southeastern part of the State. In
default of
legal authority, in this early
period, they formed squatter governments and land associations,
comparable to the action of the Massachusetts men who in the first
quarter of the seventeenth
century "squatted" in the Connecticut Valley.
A great
forward movement had occurred, which took
possession of oak openings and prairies, gave birth to the cities of Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Minneapolis, as well as to a
multitude of lesser cities, and replaced the
dominance of the Southern
element by that of a modified Puritan
stock. The railroad
system of the early fifties
bound the Mississippi to the North Atlantic seaboard; New Orleans gave way to New York as the
outlet for the Middle West, and the day of river
settlement was succeeded by the
era of inter-river
settlement and railway
transportation. The change in the
political and
social ideals was at least
equal to the change in
economic connections, and together these forces made an
intimate organic union between New England, New York, and the newly settled West. In estimating the New England
influence in the Middle West, it must not be forgotten that the New York settlers were mainly New Englanders of a later
generation.
Combined with the streams from the East came the German
migration into the Middle West. Over half a million, mainly from the Palatinate, Würtemberg, and the
adjacent regions, sought America between 1830 and 1850, and nearly a million more Germans came in the next
decade. The larger
portion of these went into the Middle West; they became pioneers in the newer parts of Ohio, especially along the
central ridge, and in Cincinnati; they took up the hardwood lands of the Wisconsin counties along Lake Michigan; and they came in important numbers to Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan, and to the river towns of Iowa. The
migration in the thirties and forties contained an exceptionally large
proportion of educated and
forceful leaders, men who had struggled in
vain for the
ideal of a
liberal German
nation, and who contributed important
intellectual forces to the communities in which they settled. The Germans, as a whole, furnished a
conservative and
thrifty agricultural element to the Middle West. In some of their
social ideals they came into
collision with the Puritan
element from New England, and the
outcome of the
steady contest has been a
compromise. Of all the States, Wisconsin has been most deeply influenced by the Germans.
By the later fifties, therefore, the
control of the Middle West had passed to its Northern
zone of
population, and this
zone included representatives of the Middle States, New England, and Germany as its
principal elements. The Southern people, north of the Ohio, differed in important respects from the Southerners across the river. They had sprung largely from the humbler classes of the South, although there were important exceptions. The early
pioneer life, however, was ill-suited to the great plantations, and slavery was excluded under the Ordinance. Thus this Southern
zone of the Middle West,
particularly in Indiana and Illinois, constituted a mediating
section between the South and the North. The Mississippi still acted as a
bond of
union, and up to the close of the War of 1812 the Valley, north and south, had been fundamentally of the same
social organization. In order to
understand what follows, we must bear in
mind the outlines of the
occupation of the Gulf Plains. While
settlement had been crossing the Ohio to the Northwest, the
spread of cotton
culture and negro slavery into the Southwest had been equally
significant. What the New England States and New York were in the
occupation of the Middle West, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia were in the
occupation of the Gulf States. But, as in the case of the Northwest, a
modification of the
original stock occurred in the new
environment. A greater
energy and
initiative appeared in the new Southern lands; the
pioneer's
devotion to exploiting the
territory in which he was placed transferred slavery from the
patriarchal to the
commercial basis. The same
expansive tendency seen in the Northwest revealed itself, with a
belligerent seasoning, in the Gulf States. They had a
program of action. Abraham Lincoln migrated from Kentucky to Indiana and to Illinois. Jefferson Davis moved from Kentucky to Louisiana, and thence to Mississippi, in the same
period. Starting from the same locality, each represented the
divergent flow of streams of
settlement into contrasted environments. The
result of these
antagonistic streams of
migration to the West was a
struggle between the Lake and Prairie plainsmen, on the one side, and the Gulf plainsmen, on the other, for the
possession of the Mississippi Valley. It was the
crucial part of the
struggle between the Northern and Southern sections of the
nation. What gave slavery and State
sovereignty their
power as issues was the
fact that they
involved the question of
dominance over
common territory in an expanding
nation. The place of the Middle West in the
origin and
settlement of the great slavery
struggle is of the highest
significance.
In the early history of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, a modified form of slavery existed under a
system of
indenture of the colored
servant; and the
effort of Southern settlers in Indiana and in Illinois to reintroduce slavery are
indicative of the importance of the pro-slavery
element in the Northwest. But the most
significant early
manifestation of the
rival currents of
migration with
respect to slavery is seen in the
contest which culminated in the Missouri Compromise. The
historical obstacle of the Ordinance, as well as
natural conditions, gave an
advantage to the anti-slavery settlers northwest of the Ohio; but when the Mississippi was crossed, and the
rival streams of
settlement mingled in the
area of the Louisiana Purchase, the
struggle followed. It was an Illinois man, with constituents in both currents of
settlement, who introduced the Missouri Compromise, which made a modus vivendi for the Middle West, until the Compromise of 1850 gave to Senator Douglas of Illinois, in 1854, the
opportunity to reopen the
issue by his Kansas-Nebraska bill. In his
doctrine of "squatter-
sovereignty," or the
right of the territories to
determine the question of slavery within their bounds, Douglas utilized a
favorite Western
political idea, one which Cass of Michigan had promulgated before. Douglas set the love of the Middle West for
local self-
government against its preponderant
antipathy to the
spread of slavery. At the same time he brought to the
support of the
doctrine the Democratic party, which ever since the days of Andrew Jackson had voiced the love of the
frontier for
individualism and for
popular power. In his "Young America" doctrines Douglas had also made himself the spokesman of Western
expansive tendencies. He
thus found important sources of
popular support when he invoked the localism of his
section. Western appeals to
Congress for
aid in
internal improvements,
protective tariffs, and land grants had been indications of
nationalism. The
doctrine of squatter-
sovereignty itself catered to the love of
national union by presenting the
appearance of a non-sectional
compromise, which should
allow the new areas of the Middle West to
determine their own institutions. But the Free Soil party, strongest in the regions occupied by the New York-New England colonists, and having for its
program national prohibition of the
spread of slavery into the territories, had already found in the Middle West an important
center of
power. The
strength of the
movement far surpassed the actual voting
power of the Free Soil party, for it compelled both Whigs and Democrats to
propose fusion on the
basis of
concession to Free Soil doctrines. The New England settlers and the western New York settlers,-the children of New England,-were keenly alive to the importance of the
issue. Indeed, Seward, in an
address at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1860, declared that the Northwest, in
reality, extended to the
base of the Alleghanies, and that the new States had "matured just in the
critical moment to
rally the free States of the Atlantic
coast, to call them back to their
ancient principles."
These Free Soil forces and the nationalistic tendencies of the Middle West proved too strong for the opposing doctrines when the real
struggle came. Calhoun and Taney shaped the
issue so logically that the Middle West saw that the
contest was not only a war for the
preservation of the Union, but also a war for the
possession of the unoccupied West, a
struggle between the Middle West and the States of the Gulf Plains. The
economic life of the Middle West had been
bound by the railroad to the North Atlantic, and its interests, as well as its love of
national unity, made it in every way
hostile to
secession. When Dr. Cutler had urged the desires of the Ohio Company upon
Congress, in 1787, he had promised to plant in the Ohio Valley a
colony that would stand for the Union. Vinton of Ohio, in arguing for the
admission of Iowa, urged the position of the Middle West as the great unifying
section of the country: "Disunion," he said, "is
ruin to them. They have no
alternative but to
resist it whenever or wherever attempted. . . . Massachusetts and South Carolina
might, for aught I know, find a dividing line that would be
mutually satisfactory to them; but, Sir, they can find no such line to which the western country can
assent." But it was Abraham Lincoln who stated the
issue with the greatest
precision, and who voiced most clearly the
nationalism of the Middle West, when he declared, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this
government cannot
endure permanently half
slave and half free."
So it was that when the
civil war in Kansas grew into the Civil War in the Union, after Lincoln's
election to the presidency, the Middle West, dominated by its combined Puritan and German
population, ceased to
compromise, and turned the
scale in
favor of the North. The Middle West furnished more than one-third of the Union troops. The names of Grant and Sherman are
sufficient testimony to her
leadership in the field. The names of Lincoln and Chase show that the presidential, the
financial, and the war powers were in the hands of the Middle West. If we were to
accept Seward's own
classification, the
conduct of
foreign affairs as well belonged to the same
section; it was, at least, in the hands of representatives of the
dominant forces of the
section. The Middle West, led by Grant and Sherman, hewed its way down the Mississippi and across the Gulf States, and Lincoln could
exult in 1863, "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great Northwest for it, nor yet
wholly to them."
In
thus outlining the relations of the Middle West to the slavery
struggle, we have passed over important extensions of
settlement in the
decade before the war. In these years, not only did the
density of
settlement increase in the older portions of the
region, but new waves of
colonization passed into the remoter prairies. Iowa's pioneers, after Indian cessions had been secured,
spread well toward her western limits. Minnesota, also, was recruited by a
column of pioneers. The
treaty of Traverse de Sioux, in 1851, opened over twenty million acres of
arable land in that State, and Minnesota increased her
population 2730.7 per cent in the
decade from 1850 to 1860.
Up to this
decade the
pine belt of the Middle West, in northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota had been the field of operations of Indian traders. At first under English companies, and afterward under Astor's American Fur Company, the traders with their French and half-breed boatmen skirted the Great Lakes and followed the rivers into the forests, where they stationed their posts and
spread goods and whiskey among the Indians. Their posts were centers of
disintegration among the savages. The new wants and the demoralization which resulted from the Indian
trade facilitated the purchases of their lands by the
federal government. The trader was followed by the seeker for the best
pine land "forties"; and by the time of the Civil War the
exploitation of the
pine belt had fairly begun. The Irish and Canadian choppers, followed by the Scandinavians, joined the
forest men, and log drives succeeded the trading
canoe. Men from the
pine woods of Maine and Vermont directed the
industry, and became magnates in the
mill towns that grew up in the forests,-millionaires, and afterwards
political leaders. In the
prairie country of the Middle West, the Indian
trade that centered at St. Louis had been important ever since 1820, with an
influence upon the Indians of the plains
similar to the
influence of the northern
fur trade upon the Indians of the
forest. By 1840 the
removal policy had effected the
transfer of most of the eastern tribes to lands across the Mississippi. Tribal names that
formerly belonged to Ohio and the rest of the Old Northwest were found on the map of the Kansas Valley. The Platte country belonged to the Pawnee and their neighbors, and to the north along the Upper Missouri were the Sioux, or Dakota, Crow, Cheyenne, and other horse Indians, following the
vast herds of
buffalo that grazed on the Great Plains. The
discovery of California gold and the opening of the Oregon country, in the middle of the
century, made it
necessary to
secure a road
through the Indian lands for the
procession of pioneers that crossed the prairies to the Pacific. The
organization of Kansas and Nebraska, in 1854, was the first step in the
withdrawal of these territories from the Indians. A
period of almost
constant Indian
hostility followed, for the
savage lords of the
boundless prairies instinctively felt the
significance of the
entrance of the
farmer into their
empire. In Minnesota the Sioux took
advantage of the Civil War to rise; but the
outcome was the
destruction of their reservations in that State, and the opening of great tracts to the pioneers. When the Pacific railways were begun, Red Cloud, the
astute Sioux chief, who, in some ways, stands as the
successor of Pontiac and of Tecumthe, rallied the
principal tribes of the Great Plains to
resist the
march of
civilization. Their
hostility resulted in the peace
measure of 1867 and 1868, which assigned to the Sioux and their allies reservations embracing the
major portion of Dakota
territory, west of the Missouri River. The
systematic slaughter of millions of
buffalo, in the years between 1866 and 1873, for the sake of their hides, put an end to the
vast herds of the Great Plains, and destroyed the
economic foundation of the Indians. Henceforth they were
dependent on the whites for their food
supply, and the Great Plains were open to the
cattle ranchers.
In a
preface written in 1872 for a new
edition of "The Oregon Trail," which had appeared in 1847, Francis Parkman said, "The wild
cavalcade that defiled with me down the gorges of the Black Hills, with its paint and war plumes, fluttering trophies and
savage embroidery, bows, arrows, lances, and shields, will never be seen again." The prairies were ready for the
final rush of
occupation. The
homestead law of 1862, passed in the midst of the war, did not
reveal its full importance as an
element in the
settlement of the Middle West until after peace. It began to
operate most actively, contemporaneously with the
development of the
several railways to the Pacific, in the two decades from 1870 to 1890, and in
connection with the
marketing of the railroad land grants. The
outcome was an epoch-making
extension of
population.
Before 1870 the
vast and
fertile valley of the Red River, once the
level bed of an
ancient lake, occupying the
region where North Dakota and Minnesota meet, was almost virgin
soil. But in 1875 the great Dalrymple farm showed its advantages for wheat raising, and a
tide of farm seekers turned to the
region. The "Jim River" Valley of South Dakota attracted still other settlers. The Northern Pacific and the Great Northern Railway
thrust out laterals into these Minnesota and Dakota wheat areas from which to draw the nourishment for their
daring passage to the Pacific. The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul, the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, Burlington, and other roads, gridironed the
region; and the unoccupied lands of the Middle West were taken up by a
migration that in its
system and
scale is
unprecedented. The railroads sent their agents and their
literature everywhere, "booming" the "Golden West"; the
opportunity for
economic and
political fortunes in such rapidly growing communities attracted multitudes of Americans whom the
cheap land alone would not have tempted. In 1870 the Dakotas had 14,000 settlers; in 1890 they had over 510,000. Nebraska's
population was 28,000 in 1860; 123,000 in 1870; 452,000 in 1880; and 1,059,000 in 1890. Kansas had 107,000 in 1860; 364,000 in 1870; 996,000 in 1880; and 1,427,000 in 1890. Wisconsin and New York gave the largest fractions of the
native element to Minnesota; Illinois and Ohio together sent perhaps one-third of the
native element of Kansas and Nebraska, but the Missouri and Southern settlers were strongly represented in Kansas; Wisconsin, New York, Minnesota, and Iowa gave North Dakota the most of her
native settlers; and Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and New York did the same for South Dakota.
Railroads and steamships
organized foreign immigration on
scale and
system never before equaled; a high-water mark of American
immigration came in the early eighties. Germans and Scandinavians were rushed by
emigrant trains out to the prairies, to fill the
remaining spaces in the older States of the Middle West. The
census of 1890 showed in Minnesota 373,000 persons of Scandinavian parentage, and out of the
total million and one-half persons of Scandinavian parentage in the United States, the Middle West received all but about three hundred thousand. The persons of German parentage in the Middle West numbered over four millions out of a
total of less than seven millions in the whole country. The
province had, in 1890, a smaller
proportion of persons of
foreign parentage than had the North Atlantic
division, but the proportions
varied greatly in the
different States. Indiana had the lowest
percentage, 20.38; and, rising in the
scale, Missouri had 24.94; Kansas 26.75; Ohio 33.93; Nebraska 42.45; Iowa 43.57; Illinois 49.01; Michigan 54.58; Wisconsin 73.65; Minnesota 75.37; and North Dakota 78.87.
What these
statistics of
settlement mean when translated into the
pioneer life of the
prairie, cannot be told here. There were
sharp contrasts with the
pioneer life of the Old Northwest; for the
forest shade, there was substituted the
boundless prairie; the
sod house for the log
hut; the continental railway for the old National Turnpike and the Erie Canal. Life moved faster, in larger masses, and with greater
momentum in this
pioneer movement. The
horizon line was more
remote. Things were done in the
gross. The
transcontinental railroad, the
bonanza farm, the steam
plow, harvester, and thresher, the "league-long
furrow," and the
vast cattle ranches, all suggested
spacious combination and systematization of
industry. The largest hopes were excited by these conquests of the
prairie. The
occupation of western Kansas may
illustrate the
movement which went on also in the west of Nebraska and the Dakotas. The
pioneer farmer tried to push into the
region with the old methods of
settlement. Deceived by rainy seasons and the railroad advertisements, and recklessly
optimistic, hosts of settlers poured out into the plains beyond the
region of
sufficient rainfall for
successful agriculture without
irrigation. Dry seasons starved them back; but a
repetition of good rainfalls again
aroused the
determination to
occupy the western plains. Boom towns flourished like
prairie weeds; Eastern
capital struggled for a chance to share in the
venture, and the Kansas farmers eagerly mortgaged their possessions to
secure the
capital so freely offered for their
attack on the
arid lands. By 1887 the
tide of the
pioneer farmers had flowed across the semi-
arid plains to the western
boundary of the State. But it was a hopeless
effort to
conquer a new
province by the forces that had won the prairies. The
wave of
settlement dashed itself in
vain against the conditions of the Great Plains. The
native American
farmer had received his first
defeat; farm products at the same
period had depreciated, and he turned to the
national government for reinforcements.
The Populistic
movement of the western half of the Middle West is a
complex of many forces. In some respects it is the latest
manifestation of the same forces that brought on the
crisis of 1837 in the earlier
region of
pioneer exploitation.That
era of over-confidence,
reckless internal improvements, and land purchases by borrowed
capital, brought a
reaction when it became
apparent that the
future had been over-discounted. But, in that time, there were the farther free lands to which the
ruined pioneer could turn. The
demand for an
expansion of the
currency has
marked each
area of Western
advance. The greenback
movement of Ohio and the eastern part of the Middle West grew into the
fiat money, free silver, and land
bank propositions of the Populists across the Mississippi. Efforts for cheaper
transportation also appear in each stage of Western
advance. When the
pioneer left the rivers and had to
haul his crops by
wagon to a market, the
transportation factor determined both his profits and the
extension of
settlement. Demands for
national aid to roads and canals had
marked the
pioneer advance of the first third of the
century. The "Granger" attacks upon the railway rates, and in
favor of governmental
regulation,
marked a second
advance of Western
settlement. The Farmers' Alliance and the Populist
demand for
government ownership of the railroad is a
phase of the same
effort of the
pioneer farmer, on his latest
frontier. The proposals have taken increasing proportions in each
region of Western Advance. Taken as a whole, Populism is a
manifestation of the old
pioneer ideals of the
native American, with the added
element of increasing
readiness to
utilize the
national government to
effect its ends. This is not unnatural in a
section whose lands were originally purchased by the
government and given away to its settlers by the same
authority, whose railroads were built largely by
federal land grants, and whose settlements were protected by the United States army and governed by the
national authority until they were carved into rectangular States and admitted into the Union. Its
native settlers were drawn from many States, many of them
former soldiers of the Civil War, who mingled in new lands with
foreign immigrants
accustomed to the
vigorous authority of European
national governments.
But these old ideals of the American
pioneer, phrased in the new
language of
national power, did not meet with the
assent of the East. Even in the Middle West a change of deepest
import had been in
progress during these years of
prairie settlement. The
agricultural preponderance of the country has passed to the prairies, and manufacturing has developed in the areas once
devoted to
pioneer farming. In the
decade prior to the Civil War, the
area of greatest wheat
production passed from Ohio and the States to the east, into Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin; after 1880, the
center of wheat growing moved across the Mississippi; and in 1890 the new settlements produced half the
crop of the United States. The corn
area shows a
similar migration. In 1840 the Southern States produced half the
crop, and the Middle West one-fifth; by 1860 the
situation was reversed and in 1890 nearly one-half the corn of the Union came from beyond the Mississippi. Thus the settlers of the Old Northwest and their crops have moved together across the Mississippi, and in the regions
whence they migrated
varied agriculture and
manufacture have sprung up.
As these movements in
population and products have passed across the Middle West, and as the
economic life of the eastern
border has been intensified, a huge
industrial organism has been created in the
province,-an
organism of
tremendous power, activity, and
unity. Fundamentally the Middle West is an
agricultural area unequaled for its
combination of space,
variety, productiveness, and
freedom from interruption by
deserts or mountains. The huge water
system of the Great Lakes has become the highway of a
mighty commerce. The Sault Ste. Marie Canal, although open but two-thirds of the year, is the
channel of a
traffic of greater
tonnage than that which passes
through the Suez Canal, and nearly all this
commerce moves almost the whole
length of the Great Lakes
system; the chief ports being Duluth, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo. The
transportation facilities of the Great Lakes were revolutionized after 1886, to
supply the needs of
commerce between the East and the newly developed lands of the Middle West; the
tonnage doubled; wooden ships gave way to steel; sailing vessels yielded to steam; and huge docks, derricks, and elevators, triumphs of
mechanical skill, were constructed. A
competent investigator has lately declared that "there is
probably in the world to-day no place at
tide water where ship plates can be laid down for a less price than they can be manufactured or purchased at the lake ports."
This
rapid rise of the
merchant marine of our inland seas has led to the
demand for deep water canals to
connect them with the ocean road to Europe. When the fleets of the Great Lakes
plow the Atlantic, and when Duluth and Chicago become seaports, the water
transportation of the Middle West will have completed its
evolution. The
significance of the
development of the railway systems is not
inferior to that of the great water way. Chicago has become the greatest railroad
center of the world, nor is there another
area of like size which equals this in its railroad facilities; all the forces of the
nation intersect here. Improved terminals, steel rails, better rolling
stock, and
consolidation of railway systems have accompanied the
advance of the people of the Middle West.
It is important that the Middle West should
accomplish this; the
future of the Republic is with her. Politically she is
dominant, as is illustrated by the
fact that six out of seven of the Presidents elected since 1860 have come from her borders. Twenty-six million people live in the Middle West as against twenty-one million in New England and the Middle States together, and the Middle West has
indefinite capacity for growth. The educational forces are more
democratic than in the East, and the Middle West has twice as many students (if we count together the
common school,
secondary, and
collegiate attendance), as have New England and the Middle States combined. Nor is this educational
system, as a whole,
inferior to that of the Eastern States. State universities crown the
public school
system in every one of these States of the Middle West, and
rank with the universities of the seaboard, while
private munificence has furnished others on an unexampled
scale. The
public and
private art collections of Pittsburgh, Chicago, St. Paul, and other cities
rival those of the seaboard. "World's fairs," with their important
popular educational influences, have been held at Chicago, Omaha, and Buffalo; and the next of these
national gatherings is to be at St. Louis. There is
throughout the Middle West a
vigor and a
mental activity among the
common people that
bode well for its
future. If the
task of reducing the Province of the Lake and Prairie Plains to the uses of
civilization should for a time overweigh art and
literature, and even high
political and
social ideals, it would not be surprising. But if the ideals of the pioneers shall
survive the
inundation of
material success, we may expect to see in the Middle West the rise of a highly
intelligent society where
culture shall be reconciled with
democracy in the large.