Western United States

“ But the larger part of what has been distinctive and valuable in America's contribution to the history of the human spirit has been due to this nation's peculiar experience in extending its type of frontier into new regions; and in creating peaceful societies with new ideals in the successive vast and differing geographic provinces which together make up the United States. Directly or indirectly these experiences shaped the life of the Eastern as well as the Western States, and even reacted upon the Old World and influenced the direction of its thought and its progress. ”

“ What enthusiasm was aroused for the peaceful settlers of the Middle West, whose neighbor was fifty miles away, by that ancient saga, that heroically done, misspelled story of Lewis and Clark? There was still to be room enough and chance enough in the West.
II. AGAINST THE WATERS THE UP-STREAM MAN.
In 1810 the Western frontier of the United States slanted like the roof of a house from Maine to Louisiana. The center of population was almost exactly upon the site of the city of Washington. ”

“ The Western States are the pioneers of civilization, and have a dauntless, less educated, and more turbulent character, approaching, as you draw towards the setting sun, very much to the half-horse, half-alligator, and paving the way for the arts and sciences of Europe with the rifle and the axe. ”

“ The West is now turning a little back toward the East, and I have found some people, who probably had some ancestral connection with New England, but whose birth, early residence, and business life were in the West, who have come back to the old home. All this is pleasant, all this is surety of the future of our country. It is pleasant to know that the South is being obliterated, that all that made it distinctive in the sense of separation or alienation is being gradually wiped out. ”

“ The citizens of the Eastern states, during the last century, inherited their environment; those of the Western states chose and formed theirs, as did the emigrants to New England two hundred years ago. ”

“ While this great national advantage is secured, our social and commercial intercourse is increased and promoted with Germany, Great Britain, and other parts of Europe, with all the countries on the west coast of our continent, especially with Oregon and California, and between the northern and southern sections of the United States. ”

“ However they may be settled, the great fact will remain essentially the same, that the two continents of this Western Hemisphere shall yet bear up a stupendous social, political, and religious structure, wrought by the American mind, moulded and coloured by the hues of American thought, and animated and united by an American soul. ”

“ But when the boundless resources that now lie hidden in its hills and mountains shall have become developed—when the vast plains shall have been settled—and towns, villages and farm houses arise in the lonely wilderness, and the teeming soil be cultivated—who then will be able to estimate the value of this great territory of the West? In ten years, the West will have a majority in the United States Congress; in a century, a large portion of it will contain a population as dense, perhaps, as that of the Atlantic States. ”

“ In the people of the United States of North America, the grandest and most colossal state founded by England or any other country of which we have any historical record, we may recognise the indomitable courage, the energy and spirit which was one of the characteristics of the Northern race to whom a great part of the people belong. The first settlement of the country, territory by territory, State by State—the frontier life with its bold adventures, innumerable dangers, fights, struggles, privations and heroism—is the grandest drama that has ever been enacted in the history of the world. ”

“ Towns and cities replaced crude settlements and provided secure bases from which to look out at the wonders of the land. The newly arrived settlers made the West their own. And, to compress time and events into a few words, some people began to think about protecting some of the uniqueness of the West. ”

“ This force is not equally distributed throughout the country, the census of 1900 showing that the Northwest is in many respects the predominant section of the Union. But the Middle states and New England still retain their lead in matters of culture, and are very progressive, while the Pacific states have developed wonderfully, as also the South, whose future is full of promise. ”

“ Under the caption of The West, we arbitrarily are grouping all of the states lying west of a line running north and south from the western borders of the Dakotas to the eastern edge of New Mexico. This excludes part of that great region long known in America as the Great West,—a country that is no more, and never again can be on the face of this earth, unless war and pestilence one day shall quite remove our present human population. ”

“ While the war was being carried forward on the eastern borders of the States, and the people suffered grievously from the natural consequences of the prolonged struggle, the spirit of enterprise was no less alive in the remoter provinces, and adventurers were advancing towards that Great West which has ever been so attractive to the American mind. ”

“ Here, then, is the problem of the West, as it looked to New England leaders of thought in the beginning and at the end of this century. From the first, it was recognized that a new type was growing up beyond the seaboard, and that the time would come when the destiny of the nation would be in Western hands. ”

“ Two decades hence no man will question the quality of Northwestern civilization. If the East is losing something of its distinctive Americanism through the influx of foreign elements and the decay of its old-time farming communities, the growth of the Northwest, largely upon the basis of New England blood and New England ideas, will make full compensation. ”

“ The fortunes of the West are guided by emigrants and the descendants of emigrants from New England, the Middle and the border States, and while adopted citizens, nearly all of a desirable class, are in a majority in many parts of the West, most of the western men and women also, of national fame, can trace an American pedigree for several generations. ”

“ In short, it was a region mediating between New England and the South, and the East and the West. It represented that composite nationality which the contemporary United States exhibits, that juxtaposition of non-English groups, occupying a valley or a little settlement, and presenting reflections of the map of Europe in their variety. It was democratic and nonsectional, if not national; "easy, tolerant, and contented;" rooted strongly in material prosperity. It was typical of the modern United States. ”

“ THE FATE OF LOVEJOY'S PRINTING-PRESS
Ever since the thirteen colonies that lay along the Atlantic coast had become a nation ambitious men had heard the call, "Go West, young man, go West!" There was plenty of fertile land in the country beyond the Alleghany Mountains, and it was free to any who would settle on it. Adventure beckoned men to come and help in founding new states, and many, who thought the villages of New England already overcrowded, betook themselves to the inviting West. ”

“ The expansive spirit of the West grew by what it fed on. The Ohio valley coveted Canada, and the South wished Florida, where England exercised an influence upon the Spanish administration. It was the West that took the lead—bringing on the war of 1812. In the peace negotiations in 1814 Great Britain tried to establish a neutral zone of Indian country between Canada and the Ohio Valley settlements, but by the treaty [5] the United States retained its former possessions. ”

“ She has sought to make no gain of it; on the contrary individuals may have felt undoubtedly some natural regret, at finding the relative importance of their own states diminished, by the growth of the west. But New England has regarded that as in the natural course of things and has never complained of it. Let me see sir, any one measure favorable to the west which has been opposed by New England since the government bestowed its attention to these western improvements. ”

“ The line between the East and the West, advancing from the Alleghanies to the Rockies112 and then part of the way back, has never stayed long enough in one zone to be precisely drawn, but it has always been sharply felt. Since Colonial times the East has meant many things—wealth, stability, contacts with Europe, refinement, industry, centralized finance—and the West has meant many things—hardship and adventure, El Dorado, outlawry, self-reliance, agriculture, vast enterprise ”

“ To-day the historical societies of many Western States issue each year a volume filled with material of great interest—matter that will be of enormous value to the historian who shall set down the story of the development of the West. ”

“ The United States has been represented to the British and Irish emigrants by the free States—the Northern States and the great West—and the British and German emigrant who finds himself in the South, has drifted there through the Northern States, and either is a migratory labourer, or hopes to return with a little money to the North and West, if he does not see his way to the possession of land and negroes. ”

“ As matters stand at present in the United States, it must not be forgotten that the Northern States have always offered a most important guarantee to the Southern in case of a servile war, or any disturbance of that kind. ”

“ With the westward movements of the millions of human beings who have occupied the North American continent have gone the institutions and constitutions of the east, modified in their journey westward by the varying conditions of the life of the people. ”

“ Thus the Government of the United States, no less than the people and authorities of Minnesota, were represented in the north-west movement.”
No matter how prosperous a colony of Great Britain may he, a colony it must be so long as it is not independent. The first result of the prosperity of an American colony is its independence as a State, and its incorporation as a member of the common sovereignty. ”

“ In a democracy, every one legislates, and every one legislates for his own interests. The Eastern States will still be wealthy and formidable, from their population; but the commerce of the principal Eastern cities will decrease, and they will have little or no staple produce to return to England, or elsewhere, whereas the Western States can produce every thing that the heart of man can desire, and can be wholly independent of them. ”

“ The original thirteen States have expanded into forty-five, embracing the vast area between the two oceans and extending from the British possessions to the Gulf of Mexico. To them has now been added our colonial territory, so vast in extent that, like the British Empire, the sun never sets on our dominions. Where a hundred years ago were only a few scattered villages and towns, imperial cities now raise their heads. Thousands of square miles of forest and solitude have given place to cultivated farms, to factories, and workshops that hum with the wheels of industry. ”

“ I desire the growth and prosperity of the West, and the fullest development of its vast and extraordinary resources. I wish to bring it near to us, by every species of useful communication. I see, not without admiration and amazement, but yet without envy or jealousy, States of recent origin already containing more people than Massachusetts. These people I know to be part of ourselves ”

“ The West has witnessed more changes than has the East. The common impression, and one to which all Americans are bred, leaves paleface Western occupation to a modern day. Whenever one’s thought wanders to what is old in this country one inevitably sets his face towards the East. ”

“ On the whole, the things that I saw and heard made the West exceedingly attractive to me. This was something of the America that I had seen in my dreams; a new country, a new society almost entirely unhampered by any traditions of the past; a new people produced by the free intermingling of the vigorous elements of all nations, with not old England alone, but the world for its motherland; with almost limitless opportunities open to all, and with equal rights secured by free institutions of government. ”

“ It was from personal letters first of all that I learned of the powerful corrective force, which is being established against American materialism along the Western coast. There is to-day an increasingly finer surface for the spiritual things of art and life, the farther westward one travels across the States. It is a conviction here that the vital magic of America's ideal, promulgated in the small eastern colonies, will be saved, if at all, by the final stand of its defenders with their backs to the Pacific. ”

“ This is the heart of what may be called the Old West, which we now call the Middle West, using the term to denote that great group of rich and powerful States which literally forms the [2] heart of the country. It is a region whose people are distinctively American in all their thoughts, in all their ways of looking at life ”

“ The small man is in office, but the big man, his master, is outside. The mischief is brought prominently forward in connection with the sale of public lands in the North-West, which have been claimed as the heritage of the people, and indeed of all the nations of the world. The government land attracted the hardy labour of all countries, covering the western west with thriving towns and populous counties. ”

“ The West will shape our destinies because she will have more people and a greater territory, and because the whole development of the Western country is such as to make it peculiarly the exponent of all that is most vigorously and characteristically American in our national life. ”