Archer Butler Hulbert

“ Kentucky became a hotbed of foreign emissaries, and the whirl of politics in that pivotal region a decade after the Revolution will daunt even the student of modern Kentucky politics. So patriotic and so faithful is that eastern West to-day that it is difficult to believe by what a fragile thread it hung to the trembling Republic on the Atlantic slope—"one nation to-day, thirteen to-morrow"—in those black days when Wilkinson and Burr and even George Rogers Clark "played fast and loose with conspiracy."
The Indian trails were the threads which first bound the East and the West. ”

“ WASHINGTON: THE PROMOTER OF WESTERN INVESTMENTS
What story of personal endeavor that had a part in building up a new nation on this continent can appeal more strongly to us of the Middle West than that of George Washington's shrewd faith which led him first to invest heavily in Western lands and signally champion that region as a field for exploitation? Indeed the record of that man's prescience in realizing what the West [Pg 40] would become, how it would be quickly populated, and how rapidly its acres would increase in value, is one of the most remarkable single facts in his history. ”

“ Two magnificent railways, standing prominent among the great railways of the world, have succeeded the old canals and that old-time Alleghany Portage Railway. But these great successes are not their richest possessions; they still own, we may well believe, that spirit which wrought success out of difficulty,—the persistent, irresistible ambition to better present conditions and overcome present difficulties, which is the very essence of American genius and the great secret of America's progress. ”

“ As one of the fruits of the much discussed "American System," championed by Henry Clay, the Cumberland Road was a popular success, though there was never a time when any measure concerning it could not secure a strong following in the House and the Senate.
The American System stood for a use of the public surplus for works of internal improvement; it was not a popular policy for a long time, but while in vogue it was of immeasurable benefit to the expanding country, its champions being veritable captains of the country's advance. ”

“ Whether it was a Cleaveland founding a Western Reserve on the Great Lakes, a Henderson establishing a Transylvania in Kentucky, a Putnam building a new New England on the Ohio River, a Morris advocating an Erie Canal, or an Astor founding an Astoria on the Pacific Sea, the personal ambition and hope of gain, so prominent at the time, does not now stand preëminent; in this day we see what the efforts of these men meant to a country whose destiny they almost seemed unwittingly to hold in their hands. ”

“ Washington was possibly the richest man in America, and half his wealth lay west of the Alleghanies; it has not seemed to be easy to remember that this statesman had a better knowledge of the West than any man of equal position and that he spent a large portion of his ripest years in planning minutely for the commercial development of a territory then far less known to the common people of the country than Alaska is to us of to-day.
To few men's private affairs has a nation had more open access than we have had to George Washington's. ”

“ When the old Northwest was carved out of a wilderness, there was no fear in the hearts of our forefathers that was not felt when Louisiana was purchased. The great fear in each case was the same—the British at the north and the Spaniard at the south. And in each case the leaven of the East was potent to leaven the whole lump. Great responsibilities steady nations as well as men; the very fact of [Pg 277] a spreading frontier and a widening sphere of influence—bringing alarm to some and fear to many—was of appealing force throughout a century to the conscience and honor of American statesmen. ”

“ And yet it is not too much to say that the history of our nation may be suggested in a skeleton way by a mere list of names, as, for instance, the history of the fourteenth century in Europe might easily be sketched. While we are proud to proclaim that America has given all men an equal opportunity, that the most humble may rise to the proudest position known among us, it yet remains singular [Pg x] that in this land where the popular voice has ruled as nowhere else almost every national movement or phase of development may be signified by the name of one man. ”

“ To present-day readers acquainted with so many wonderful feats of engineering of modern days, the history of the building of this canal must seem commonplace; the marvellous thing about it, after all, was its conception and the campaign of education which brought about its realization. One of the romantic phases of the story, that will forever be of interest to those of us who can never know a primeval forest, was the experience of the engineering corps crashing their way through the New York forests, where the surveyors' stakes could hardly be seen in the dense gloom. ”

“ As, in the dark days of the Revolution, the wary Washington determined, in case of defeat, to lead the fragment of his armies across the Alleghanies and fight the battles over again in the Ohio Basin, where he knew the pioneers would forever keep pure the spirit of independence, so men in later years have looked confidently to the Greater West, to the Mississippi Basin and old Louisiana, for as pure a patriotism (though it might appear at times in a rough guise) as ever was breathed at Plymouth Rock. ”

“ Yet Washington had marvellously influenced the nation's destiny by these "unprofitable" investments. The very position he occupied and which he was accused of misusing had powerfully stimulated the army that was carrying the broadaxe westward. In countless ways this man had given circulation to ideas that were inspiring and hopeful, and just so far as he believed he had failed as a private speculator, he had in reality triumphed mightily as the leading exponent of a growing Republic which was called upon to prove that it could grow. ”

“ The canal-builder had all that the road-maker [Pg 222] found to combat with above the ground,—the tangled mesh of bush, vine, and tree,—but he had also what was far more difficult to attack and conquer, namely, the tremendous labyrinth of roots that lay beneath the ground. Thus, his task was double that of the road-maker; and look as far as you will through our early history, you will not find an enterprise launched on this continent by any man or any set of men that will compare in daring with the promotion of this great work of interior improvement to which New York now set herself. ”

“ In fact, both France and England attempted to keep the axe-bearing, home-building people back in order that the furs and the treasure yielded by the forests might not be withheld. But when the sword of a free people came across the Alleghanies the axe of the pioneer came with it, and a miracle was wrought in a century's time beside which the Seven Wonders of the Old World must forever seem commonplace.
Of the men who led this army of real conquerors of the West to the scenes of their labors there were many. ”

“ Washington had led his ragged armies to victory, England had been fought completely to a standstill, and the victor had returned safely to the peace and quiet of his Mount Vernon farms amid the applause of two continents. And then, in a few weeks, we find the same man with a single attendant beating his way through the tangled trails in hilly West Virginia, inspecting for himself and making diligent inquiry from all he met concerning the practicability of the navigation of the upper Monongahela and the upper Potomac. ”

“ In almost every one of our preceding stories of America's captains of expansion, save that of the Lewis and Clark expedition only, a private enterprise has been our study, and each story has been woven around a personality. ”

“ The leader of the armies was now to become a leader of a people, and at the outset his eye is uplifted and his faith great. With prophetic genius his face, at the close of his exhausting struggle, is turned toward the West. It is certain that Washington could not have known what a tremendous influence the new West was to have in the perplexing after hours of that critical period of our history. ”

“ As you fly through that beautiful territory watered by the Mohawk, Seneca, and Onondaga rivers to-day, it is hardly possible to re-create, with any measure of truth, the old-time appearance of the land. It was well into the nineteenth century before a good road was ever built in Central New York; indeed, during the years while the Erie Canal was being built, the necessary materials for the building, and provisions for the builders, were transported thither in the winter season because at that time only was it accessible by any known means of transportation. ”

“ Three canals were factors in this great social movement, especially the Erie Canal, which was conceived by the inspiration of Morris and achieved by the patient genius of Clinton. As a promoter of the West, Thomas, father of our first railway, must be accounted of utmost importance. Is it not of interest that the famed Cumberland Road was not built to connect two large Eastern cities, or a seaport or river with a city? It was built from the East into the Western wilderness—from a town but little known to an indefinite destination where the towns were hardly yet named. ”

“ It is only because Washington became well known to a continent and a world as the leader of a people to freedom, that it has been easy to forget what a great man he still would have been had there been no Revolution and no Independence Day. How well known, for instance, is it that Washington was surveying lands on the Great Kanawha and Ohio rivers only four years before he received that remarkable ovation on his way to take command of the Continental Army under the Cambridge Elm? ”

“ Thus the old dream of the youth is brought forward again by the thoughtful, sober man; these words echo the spirit of Washington's whole attitude toward the West—its wealth of buried riches, its commercial possibilities, its swarming colonies of indomitable pioneers. ”

“ Within ten years, Connecticut sent a brave squad of men through the wilderness of New York to found Cleveland; Virginia sent of her brain and blood to found one of the most important settlements in Ohio in the fair Scioto valley. These four settlements, before 1800, in the Black Forest of Ohio were typically cosmopolitan and had a significant mission in forming, so far west as Lake Erie and so far south as the lower Ohio, the cosmopolitan American State par excellence. ”

“ Here, if anywhere on the continent, men had been brave; here, if anywhere, men had dropped into deathless graves. He was greatly interested in the future, though the ringing notes of the past must have stirred his heart deeply; and I can see the lad with bended head listening to catch every word of a speaker who would talk of the present feeling of the dreaded Shawnees, who refused to acknowledge that the Six Nations had any right to sell to white men their fine hunting-grounds between the Ohio and the Tennessee. ”

“ Why now, a score of years later, should New York representatives vote money from the national treasury for objects no less national or needful than the Erie Canal? Several neighboring States (Ohio, for instance) had declined to invest funds in the Erie Canal venture when it was first promoted; why now should New York representatives vote national funds (such a large part of which came from New York ports) for improvements in these States, whose delegates in Congress refused aid to the Erie Canal in its dark hours? ”

“ The coming of the Ohio Company to Marietta meant many things to many men, but the one great fundamental fact is of most importance. The founding of Marietta by Rufus Putnam in reality made possible the Ordinance of 1787—of which Daniel Webster said, "I doubt whether one single law of [Pg 124] any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked, and lasting character."
The heroic movement which has justly given Rufus Putnam the title "Father of Ohio" has been one of the marvellous successes of the first century of our national expansion. ”

“ It is marvellous how America has imperiously called upon so many distant heaths for men with a [Pg 284] genius for hard work and for daring dreams; it called St. Clair from Scotland, Zeisberger from Moravia, and Gallatin and Bouquet from Switzerland; and now a German peasant boy, inheriting blood and fibre, felt early in his veins this same mystic call, and saw visions of a future possible only in a great and free land. At an early age he went to London, where he remained in an elder brother's employ until the close of the Revolutionary War ”

“ It is remarkable that, throughout the western expansion of the United States after the Revolution, our northern pioneers from Pennsylvania to Oregon should have [Pg 269] felt—in many cases bitterly—the tricky, insulting hatred of British traders and their Indian allies. As Washington in 1790 laid at the door of British instigators the cause of the long war ended by Wayne at Fallen Timber, so, all the way across the continent our pioneers had to contend with the same despicable influence, and were driven by it to deeds which made them, in turn, equally despised by their northern rivals. ”

“ Measured by the hopes it inspired and not by miles, judged by the power it was expected to exert in national life and not by the ruins that now mark its ancient track, this road from the Potomac to the Mississippi must be considered a most significant monument to those wild but splendid years when as a people we were first facing some of the most fundamental questions of existence. ”

“ Russian Empire became strong, then as truly from the clear-visioned inspiration of Washington came the first attempts to bind our East and West into one—a union on which depended the very life of the American Republic. Here and now we find this man firmly believing truths and theories which became the adopted beliefs of a whole nation but a few years later. ”