The Frontier in American History Part 23

Have we not here an ill.u.s.tration of what is possible and necessary for the historian? Is it not well, before attempting to decide whether history requires an economic interpretation, or a psychological, or any other ultimate interpretation, to recognize that the factors in human society are varied and complex; that the political historian handling his subject in isolation is certain to miss fundamental facts and relations in his treatment of a given age or nation; that the economic historian is exposed to the same danger; and so of all of the other special historians?

Those who insist that history is simply the effort to tell the thing exactly as it was, to state the facts, are confronted with the difficulty that the fact which they would represent is not planted on the solid ground of fixed conditions; it is in the midst and is itself a part of the changing currents, the complex and interacting influences of the time, deriving its significance as a fact from its relations to the deeper-seated movements of the age, movements so gradual that often only the pa.s.sing years can reveal the truth about the fact and its right to a place on the historian's page.

The economic historian is in danger of making his a.n.a.lysis and his statement of a law on the basis of present conditions and then pa.s.sing to history for justificatory appendixes to his conclusions. An American economist of high rank has recently expressed his conception of "the full relation of economic theory, statistics, and history" in these words:

A principle is formulated by _a priori_ reasoning concerning facts of common experience; it is then tested by statistics and promoted to the rank of a known and acknowledged truth; ill.u.s.trations of its action are then found in narrative history and, on the other hand, the economic law becomes the interpreter of records that would otherwise be confusing and comparatively valueless; the law itself derives its final confirmation from the ill.u.s.trations of its working which the records afford; but what is at least of equal importance is the parallel fact that the law affords the decisive test of the correctness of those a.s.sertions concerning the causes and the effects of past events which it is second nature to make and which historians almost invariably do make in connection with their narrations.[333:1]

There is much in this statement by which the historian may profit, but he may doubt also whether the past should serve merely as the "ill.u.s.tration" by which to confirm the law deduced from common experience by _a priori_ reasoning tested by statistics. In fact the pathway of history is strewn with the wrecks of the "known and acknowledged truths" of economic law, due not only to defective a.n.a.lysis and imperfect statistics, but also to the lack of critical historical methods, of insufficient historical-mindedness on the part of the economist, to failure to give due attention to the relativity and transiency of the conditions from which his laws were deduced.

But the point on which I would lay stress is this. The economist, the political scientist, the psychologist, the sociologist, the geographer, the student of literature, of art, of religion--all the allied laborers in the study of society--have contributions to make to the equipment of the historian. These contributions are partly of material, partly of tools, partly of new points of view, new hypotheses, new suggestions of relations, causes, and emphasis. Each of these special students is in some danger of bias by his particular point of view, by his exposure to see simply the thing in which he is primarily interested, and also by his effort to deduce the universal laws of his separate science. The historian, on the other hand, is exposed to the danger of dealing with the complex and interacting social forces of a period or of a country, from some single point of view to which his special training or interest inclines him. If the truth is to be made known, the historian must so far familiarize himself with the work, and equip himself with the training of his sister-subjects that he can at least avail himself of their results and in some reasonable degree master the essential tools of their trade. And the followers of the sister-studies must likewise familiarize themselves and their students with the work and the methods of the historians, and cooperate in the difficult task.

It is necessary that the American historian shall aim at this equipment, not so much that he may possess the key to history or satisfy himself in regard to its ultimate laws. At present a different duty is before him.

He must see in American society with its vast s.p.a.ces, its sections equal to European nations, its geographic influences, its brief period of development, its variety of nationalities and races, its extraordinary industrial growth under the conditions of freedom, its inst.i.tutions, culture, ideals, social psychology, and even its religions forming and changing almost under his eyes, one of the richest fields ever offered for the preliminary recognition and study of the forces that operate and interplay in the making of society.

FOOTNOTES:

[311:1] Annual address as the president of the American Historical a.s.sociation, delivered at Indianapolis, December 28, 1910. Reprinted by permission from _The American Historical Review_, January, 1911.

[313:1] Van Hise, "Conservation of Natural Resources," pp. 23, 24.

[316:1] _Atlantic Monthly_, December, 1908, vii, p. 745.

[317:1] [Although the words of these early land debates are quoted above in Chapter VI, they are repeated because of the light they cast upon the present problem.]

[321:1] [I have outlined this subject in various essays, including the article on "Sectionalism" in McLaughlin and Hart, "Cyclopedia of Government."]

[322:1] [It is not impossible that they may ultimately replace the State as the significant administrative and legislative units. There are strong evidences of this tendency, such as the organization of the Federal Reserve districts, and proposals for railroad administration by regions.]

[329:1] [See R. G. Wellington, "Public Lands, 1820-1840"; G. M.

Stephenson, "Public Lands, 1841-1862"; J. Ise, "Forest Policy."]

[333:1] Professor J. B. Clark, in Commons, ed., "Doc.u.mentary History of American Industrial Society," I. 43-44.

XIII

MIDDLE WESTERN PIONEER DEMOCRACY[335:1]

In time of war, when all that this nation has stood for, all the things in which it pa.s.sionately believes, are at stake, we have met to dedicate this beautiful home for history.

There is a fitness in the occasion. It is for historic ideals that we are fighting. If this nation is one for which we should pour out our savings, postpone our differences, go hungry, and even give up life itself, it is not because it is a rich, extensive, well-fed and populous nation; it is because from its early days America has pressed onward toward a goal of its own; that it has followed an ideal, the ideal of a democracy developing under conditions unlike those of any other age or country.

We are fighting not for an Old World ideal, not for an abstraction, not for a philosophical revolution. Broad and generous as are our sympathies, widely scattered in origin as are our people, keenly as we feel the call of kinship, the thrill of sympathy with the stricken nations across the Atlantic, we are fighting for the historic ideals of the United States, for the continued existence of the type of society in which we believe, because we have proved it good, for the things which drew European exiles to our sh.o.r.es, and which inspired the hopes of the pioneers.

We are at war that the history of the United States, rich with the record of high human purposes, and of faith in the destiny of the common man under freedom, filled with the promises of a better world, may not become the lost and tragic story of a futile dream.

Yes, it is an American ideal and an American example for which we fight; but in that ideal and example lies medicine for the healing of the nations. It is the best we have to give to Europe, and it is a matter of vital import that we shall safeguard and preserve our power to serve the world, and not be overwhelmed in the flood of imperialistic force that wills the death of democracy and would send the freeman under the yoke.

Essential as are our contributions of wealth, the work of our scientists, the toil of our farmers and our workmen in factory and shipyard, priceless as is the stream of young American manhood which we pour forth to stop the flood which flows like moulten lava across the green fields and peaceful hamlets of Europe toward the sea and turns to ashes and death all that it covers, these contributions have their deeper meaning in the American spirit. They are born of the love of Democracy.

Long ago in prophetic words Walt Whitman voiced the meaning of our present sacrifices:

"Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy, Of value is thy freight, 'tis not the Present only, The Past is also stored in thee, Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the Western Continent alone, Earth's resume entire floats on thy keel, O ship, is steadied by thy spars, With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee, With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st the other continents, Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant."

Shortly before the Civil War, a great German, exiled from his native land for his love of freedom, came from his new home among the pioneers of the Middle West to set forth in Faneuil Hall, the "cradle of liberty," in Boston, his vision of the young America that was forming in the West, "the last depository of the hopes of all true friends of humanity." Speaking of the contrast between the migrations to the Mississippi Valley and those of the Old World in other centuries, he said:

It is now not a barbarous mult.i.tude pouncing upon old and decrepit empires, not a violent concussion of tribes accompanied by all the horrors of general destruction, but we see the vigorous elements--peaceably congregating and mingling together on virgin soil--; led together by the irresistible attraction of free and broad principles; undertaking to commence a new era in the history of the world, without first destroying the results of the progress of past periods; undertaking to found a cosmopolitan nation without marching over the dead bodies of slain millions.

If Carl Schurz had lived to see the outcome of that Germany from which he was sent as an exile, in the days when Prussian bayonets dispersed the legislatures and stamped out the beginnings of democratic rule in his former country, could he have better pictured the contrasts between the Prussian and the American spirit? He went on to say:

Thus was founded the _great colony of free humanity_, which has not old England alone, but the _world_ for its mother country. And in the colony of free humanity, whose mother country is the world, they established the Republic of equal rights where the t.i.tle of manhood is the t.i.tle to citizenship.

My friends, if I had a thousand tongues, and a voice as strong as the thunder of heaven, they would not be sufficient to impress upon your minds forcibly enough the greatness of this idea, the overshadowing glory of this result. This was the dream of the truest friends of man from the beginning; for this the n.o.blest blood of martyrs has been shed; for this has mankind waded through seas of blood and tears. There it is now; there it stands, the n.o.ble fabric in all the splendor of reality.

It is in a solemn and inspiring time, therefore, that we meet to dedicate this building, and the occasion is fitting to the time. We may now see, as never before, the deeper significance, the larger meaning of these pioneers, whose plain lives and homely annals are glorified as a part of the story of the building of a better system of social justice under freedom, a broader, and as we fervently hope, a more enduring foundation for the welfare and progress under individual liberty of the common man, an example of federation, of peaceful adjustments by compromise and concession under a self-governing Republic, where sections replace nations over a Union as large as Europe, where party discussions take the place of warring countries, where the _Pax Americana_ furnishes an example for a better world.

As our forefathers, the pioneers, gathered in their neighborhood to raise the log cabin, and sanctified it by the name of home, the dwelling place of pioneer ideals, so we meet to celebrate the raising of this home, this shrine of Minnesota's historic life. It symbolizes the conviction that the past and the future of this people are tied together; that this Historical Society is the keeper of the records of a noteworthy movement in the progress of mankind; that these records are not unmeaning and antiquarian, but even in their details are worthy of preservation for their revelation of the beginnings of society in the midst of a nation caught by the vision of a better future for the world.

Let me repeat the words of Harriet Martineau, who portrayed the American of the thirties:

I regard the American people as a great embryo poet, now moody, now wild, but bringing out results of absolute good sense; restless and wayward in action, but with deep peace at his heart; exulting that he has caught the true aspect of things past and the depth of futurity which lies before him, wherein to create something so magnificent as the world has scarcely begun to dream of. There is the strongest hope of a nation that is capable of being possessed with an idea.

And recall her appeal to the American people to "cherish their high democratic hope, their faith in man. The older they grow the more they must reverence the dreams of their youth."

The dreams of their youth! Here they shall be preserved, and the achievements as well as the aspirations of the men who made the State, the men who built on their foundations, the men with large vision and power of action, the lesser men in the ma.s.s, the leaders who served the State and nation with devotion to the cause. Here shall be preserved the record of the men who failed to see the larger vision and worked impatiently with narrow or selfish or cla.s.s ends, as well as of those who labored with patience and sympathy and mutual concession, with readiness to make adjustments and to subordinate their immediate interests to the larger good and the immediate safety of the nation.

In the archives of such an old inst.i.tution as that of the Historical Society of Ma.s.sachusetts, whose treasures run to the beginnings of the Puritan colonization, the students cannot fail to find the evidence that a State Historical Society is a Book of Judgment wherein is made up the record of a people and its leaders. So, as time unfolds, shall be the collections of this Society, the depository of the material that shall preserve the memory of this people. Each section of this widely extended and varied nation has its own peculiar past, its special form of society, its traits and its leaders. It were a pity if any section left its annals solely to the collectors of a remote region, and it were a pity if its collections were not transformed into printed doc.u.ments and monographic studies which can go to the libraries of all the parts of the Union and thus enable the student to see the nation as a whole in its past as well as in its present.

This Society finds its special field of activity in a great State of the Middle West, so new, as history reckons time, that its annals are still predominantly those of the pioneers, but so rapidly growing that already the era of the pioneers is a part of the history of the past, capable of being handled objectively, seen in a perspective that is not possible to the observer of the present conditions.

Because of these facts I have taken as the special theme of this address the Middle Western Pioneer Democracy, which I would sketch in some of its outstanding aspects, and chiefly in the generation before the Civil War, for it was from those pioneers that the later colonization to the newer parts of the Mississippi Valley derived much of their traits, and from whom large numbers of them came.

The North Central States as a whole is a region comparable to all of Central Europe. Of these States, a large part of the old Northwest,--Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin; and their sisters beyond the Mississippi--Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota--were still, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the home of an essentially pioneer society. Within the lifetime of many living men, Wisconsin was called the "Far West," and Minnesota was a land of the Indian and the fur traders, a wilderness of forest and prairie beyond the "edge of cultivation." That portion of this great region which was still in the pioneering period of settlement by 1850 was alone about as extensive as the old thirteen States, or Germany and Austria-Hungary combined. The region was a huge geographic mold for a new society, modeled by nature on the scale of the Great Lakes, the Ohio Valley, the upper Mississippi and the Missouri. Simple and majestic in its vast outlines it was graven into a variety that in its detail also had a largeness of design. From the Great Lakes extended the ma.s.sive glacial sheet which covered that mighty basin and laid down treasures of soil.

Vast forests of pine shrouded its upper zone, breaking into hardwood and the oak openings as they neared the ocean-like expanses of the prairies.

Forests again along the Ohio Valley, and beyond, to the west, lay the levels of the Great Plains. Within the earth were unexploited treasures of coal and lead, copper and iron in such form and quant.i.ty as were to revolutionize the industrial processes of the world. But nature's revelations are progressive, and it was rather the marvelous adaptation of the soil to the raising of corn and wheat that drew the pioneers to this land of promise, and made a new era of colonization. In the unity with variety of this pioneer empire and in its broad levels we have a promise of its society.

First had come the children of the interior of the South, and with ax and rifle in hand had cut their clearings in the forest, raised their log cabins, fought the Indians and by 1830 had pushed their way to the very edge of the prairies along the Ohio and Missouri Valleys, leaving unoccupied most of the Basin of the Great Lakes.

These slashers of the forest, these self-sufficing pioneers, raising the corn and live stock for their own need, living scattered and apart, had at first small interest in town life or a share in markets. They were pa.s.sionately devoted to the ideal of equality, but it was an ideal which a.s.sumed that under free conditions in the midst of unlimited resources, the h.o.m.ogeneous society of the pioneers _must_ result in equality. What they objected to was arbitrary obstacles, artificial limitations upon the freedom of each member of this frontier folk to work out his own career without fear or favor. What they instinctively opposed was the crystallization of differences, the monopolization of opportunity and the fixing of that monopoly by government or by social customs. The road must be open. The game must be played according to the rules. There must be no artificial stifling of equality of opportunity, no closed doors to the able, no stopping the free game before it was played to the end.

More than that, there was an unformulated, perhaps, but very real feeling, that mere success in the game, by which the abler men were able to achieve preeminence gave to the successful ones no right to look down upon their neighbors, no vested t.i.tle to a.s.sert superiority as a matter of pride and to the diminution of the equal right and dignity of the less successful.

If this democracy of Southern pioneers, this Jacksonian democracy, was, as its socialist critics have called it, in reality a democracy of "expectant capitalists," it was not one which expected or acknowledged on the part of the successful ones the right to harden their triumphs into the rule of a privileged cla.s.s. In short, if it is indeed true that the backwoods democracy was based upon equality of opportunity, it is also true that it resented the conception that opportunity under compet.i.tion should result in the hopeless inequality, or rule of cla.s.s.

Ever a new clearing must be possible. And because the wilderness seemed so unending, the menace to the enjoyment of this ideal seemed rather to be feared from government, within or without, than from the operations of internal evolution.

From the first, it became evident that these men had means of supplementing their individual activity by informal combinations. One of the things that impressed all early travelers in the United States was the capacity for extra-legal, voluntary a.s.sociation.[343:1] This was natural enough; in all America we can study the process by which in a new land social customs form and crystallize into law. We can even see how the personal leader becomes the governmental official. This power of the newly arrived pioneers to join together for a common end without the intervention of governmental inst.i.tutions was one of their marked characteristics. The log rolling, the house-raising, the husking bee, the apple paring, and the squatters' a.s.sociations whereby they protected themselves against the speculators in securing t.i.tle to their clearings on the public domain, the camp meeting, the mining camp, the vigilantes, the cattle-raisers' a.s.sociations, the "gentlemen's agreements," are a few of the indications of this att.i.tude. It is well to emphasize this American trait, because in a modified way it has come to be one of the most characteristic and important features of the United States of to-day. America does through informal a.s.sociation and understandings on the part of the people many of the things which in the Old World are and can be done only by governmental intervention and compulsion. These a.s.sociations were in America not due to immemorial custom of tribe or village community. They were extemporized by voluntary action.