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 savings3, postpone4 our differences, go hungry, and even give up life itself, it is not because it is a rich, extensive, well-fed and populous5 nation; it is because from its early days America has pressed onward6 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 philosophical7 revolution. Broad and generous as are our sympathies, widely scattered8 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 shores, and which inspired the hopes of the pioneers.
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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 tragic9 story of a futile10 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 imperialistic11 force that wills the death of democracy and would send the freeman under the yoke12. Essential as are our contributions of wealth, the work of our scientists, the toil13 of our farmers and our workmen in factory and shipyard, priceless as is the stream of young American manhood which we pour forth14 to stop the flood which flows like moulten lava15 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 résumé 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, martyrs16, heroes, epics17, wars, thou bear'st the other continents,
Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant18."
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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 migrations21 to the Mississippi Valley and those of the Old World in other centuries, he said:
It is now not a barbarous multitude pouncing22 upon old and decrepit23 empires, not a violent concussion24 of tribes accompanied by all the horrors of general destruction, but we see the vigorous elements—peaceably congregating25 and mingling26 together on virgin27 soil—; led together by the irresistible28 attraction of free and broad principles; undertaking29 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 cosmopolitan30 nation without marching over the dead bodies of slain31 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 dispersed32 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 [338]of free humanity, whose mother country is the world, they established the Republic of equal rights where the title of manhood is the title to citizenship34. 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 noblest blood of martyrs has been shed; for this has mankind waded35 through seas of blood and tears. There it is now; there it stands, the noble fabric36 in all the splendor37 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 homely38 annals are glorified39 as a part of the story of the building of a better system of social justice under freedom, a broader, and as we fervently40 hope, a more enduring foundation for the welfare and progress under individual liberty of the common man, an example of federation41, of peaceful adjustments by compromise and concession42 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 forefathers43, the pioneers, gathered in their neighborhood to raise the log cabin, and sanctified it by the name of home, the dwelling44 place of pioneer ideals, so we meet to celebrate the raising of this home, this shrine45 of [339]Minnesota's historic life. It symbolizes46 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 worthy47 of preservation48 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.
I regard the American people as a great embryo50 poet, now moody51, now wild, but bringing out results of absolute good sense; restless and wayward in action, but with deep peace at his heart; exulting52 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 possessed53 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 reverence54 the dreams of their youth."
The dreams of their youth! Here they shall be preserved, and the achievements as well as the aspirations55 of the men who made the State, the men who built on their foundations, the men with large vision and power of action, the lesser56 men in the mass, 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 [340]impatiently with narrow or selfish or class ends, as well as of those who labored57 with patience and sympathy and mutual59 concession, with readiness to make adjustments and to subordinate their immediate60 interests to the larger good and the immediate safety of the nation.
In the archives of such an old institution as that of the Historical Society of Massachusetts, whose treasures run to the beginnings of the Puritan colonization61, the students cannot fail to find the evidence that a State Historical Society is a Book of Judgment62 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 varied63 nation has its own peculiar64 past, its special form of society, its traits and its leaders. It were a pity if any section left its annals solely65 to the collectors of a remote region, and it were a pity if its collections were not transformed into printed documents 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 sketch67 in some of its outstanding aspects, and chiefly in the generation before the Civil War, for it was from those [341]pioneers that the later colonization to the newer parts of the Mississippi Valley derived68 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 essentially69 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 wilderness70 of forest and prairie beyond the "edge of cultivation71." 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 geographic72 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 majestic73 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 massive glacial sheet which covered that mighty74 basin and laid down treasures of soil. Vast forests of pine shrouded75 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, copper76 and iron in such form and quantity 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 [342]of promise, and made a new era of colonization. In the unity77 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 passionately devoted78 to the ideal of equality, but it was an ideal which assumed that under free conditions in the midst of unlimited79 resources, the homogeneous 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 instinctively80 opposed was the crystallization of differences, the monopolization81 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 stifling82 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 mere83 success in the game, by which the abler men were able to achieve pre?minence gave to the successful ones no right to look down upon their neighbors, no vested title to assert superiority as a matter of pride and to the diminution84 of the equal right and dignity of the less successful.
If this democracy of Southern pioneers, this Jacksonian [343]democracy, was, as its socialist85 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 class. 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 competition should result in the hopeless inequality, or rule of class. Ever a new clearing must be possible. And because the wilderness seemed so unending, the menace to the enjoyment86 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 association.[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 intervention87 of governmental institutions was one of their marked characteristics. The log rolling, the house-raising, the husking bee, the apple paring, and the squatters' associations whereby they protected themselves against the speculators in securing title to their clearings on the public domain88, the camp meeting, the mining camp, the vigilantes, the cattle-raisers' associations, the "gentlemen's agreements," are a few of the indications of this attitude. It is well to emphasize this American trait, because in a modified [344]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 association 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 associations were in America not due to immemorial custom of tribe or village community. They were extemporized89 by voluntary action.
The actions of these associations had an authority akin19 to that of law. They were usually not so much evidences of a disrespect for law and order as the only means by which real law and order were possible in a region where settlement and society had gone in advance of the institutions and instrumentalities of organized society.
Because of these elements of individualistic competition and the power of spontaneous association, pioneers were responsive to leadership. The backwoodsmen knew that under the free opportunities of his life the abler man would reveal himself, and show them the way. By free choice and not by compulsion, by spontaneous impulse, and not by the domination of a caste, they rallied around a cause, they supported an issue. They yielded to the principle of government by agreement, and they hated the doctrine90 of autocracy91 even before it gained a name.
They looked forward to the extension of their American principles to the Old World and their keenest apprehensions92 came from the possibility of the extension of the Old World's system of arbitrary rule, its class wars and rivalries93 and interventions94 to the destruction of the free States and democratic institutions which they were building in the forests of America.
If we add to these aspects of early backwoods democracy, its spiritual qualities, we shall more easily understand them. [345]These men were emotional. As they wrested95 their clearing from the woods and from the savages96 who surrounded them, as they expanded that clearing and saw the beginnings of commonwealths97, where only little communities had been, and as they saw these commonwealths touch hands with each other along the great course of the Mississippi River, they became enthusiastically optimistic and confident of the continued expansion of this democracy. They had faith in themselves and their destiny. And that optimistic faith was responsible both for their confidence in their own ability to rule and for the passion for expansion. They looked to the future. "Others appeal to history: an American appeals to prophecy; and with Malthus in one hand and a map of the back country in the other, he boldly defies us to a comparison with America as she is to be," said a London periodical in 1821. Just because, perhaps, of the usual isolation99 of their lives, when they came together in associations whether of the camp meeting or of the political gathering100, they felt the influence of a common emotion and enthusiasm. Whether Scotch101-Irish Presbyterian, Baptist, or Methodist, these people saturated102 their religion and their politics with feeling. Both the stump103 and the pulpit were centers of energy, electric cells capable of starting widespreading fires. They felt both their religion and their democracy, and were ready to fight for it.
This democracy was one that involved a real feeling of social comradeship among its widespread members. Justice Catron, who came from Arkansas to the Supreme104 Court in the presidency105 of Jackson, said: "The people of New Orleans and St. Louis are next neighbors—if we desire to know a man in any quarter of the union we inquire of our next neighbor, who but the other day lived by him." Exaggerated as this is, it nevertheless had a surprising measure of truth for the Middle West as well. For the Mississippi River was the great [346]highway down which groups of pioneers like Abraham Lincoln, on their rafts and flat boats, brought the little neighborhood surplus. After the steamboat came to the western waters the voyages up and down by merchants and by farmers shifting their homes, brought people into contact with each other over wide areas.
This enlarged neighborhood democracy was determined106 not by a reluctant admission that under the law one man is as good as another; it was based upon "good fellowship," sympathy and understanding. They were of a stock, moreover, which sought new trails and were ready to follow where the trail led, innovators in society as well as finders of new lands.
By 1830 the Southern inundation107 ebbed108 and a different tide flowed in from the northeast by way of the Erie Canal and steam navigation on the Great Lakes to occupy the zone unreached by Southern settlement. This new tide spread along the margins110 of the Great Lakes, found the oak openings and small prairie islands of Southern Michigan and Wisconsin; followed the fertile forested ribbons along the river courses far into the prairie lands; and by the end of the forties began to venture into the margin109 of the open prairie.
In 1830 the Middle West contained a little over a million and a half people; in 1840, over three and a third millions; in 1850, nearly five and a half millions. Although in 1830 the North Atlantic States numbered between three and four times as many people as the Middle West, yet in those two decades the Middle West made an actual gain of several hundred thousand more than did the old section. Counties in the newer states rose from a few hundred to ten or fifteen thousand people in the space of less than five years. Suddenly, with astonishing rapidity and volume, a new people was forming with varied elements, ideals and institutions drawn111 [347]from all over this nation and from Europe. They were confronted with the problem of adjusting different stocks, varied customs and habits, to their new home.
In comparison with the Ohio Valley, the peculiarity112 of the occupation of the northern zone of the Middle West, lay in the fact that the native element was predominantly from the older settlements of the Middle West itself and from New York and New England. But it was from the central and western counties of New York and from the western and northern parts of New England, the rural regions of declining agricultural prosperity, that the bulk of this element came.
Thus the influence of the Middle West stretched into the Northeast, and attracted a farming population already suffering from western competition. The advantage of abundant, fertile, and cheap land, the richer agricultural returns, and especially the opportunities for youth to rise in all the trades and professions, gave strength to this competition. By it New England was profoundly and permanently114 modified.
This Yankee stock carried with it a habit of community life, in contrast with the individualistic democracy of the Southern element. The colonizing115 land companies, the town, the school, the church, the feeling of local unity, furnished the evidences of this instinct for communities. This instinct was accompanied by the creation of cities, the production of a surplus for market, the reaching out to connections with the trading centers of the East, the evolution of a more complex and at the same time a more integrated industrial society than that of the Southern pioneer.
But they did not carry with them the unmodified New England institutions and traits. They came at a time and from a people less satisfied with the old order than were their neighbors in the East. They were the young men with initiative, with discontent; the New York element especially was [348]affected by the radicalism116 of Locofoco democracy which was in itself a protest against the established order.
The winds of the prairies swept away almost at once a mass of old habits and prepossessions. Said one of these pioneers in a letter to friends in the East:
If you value ease more than money or prosperity, don't come . . . Hands are too few for the work, houses for the inhabitants, and days for the day's work to be done. . . . Next if you can't stand seeing your old New England ideas, ways of doing, and living and in fact, all of the good old Yankee fashions knocked out of shape and altered, or thrown by as unsuited to the climate, don't be caught out here. But if you can bear grief with a smile, can put up with a scale of accommodations ranging from the soft side of a plank117 before the fire (and perhaps three in a bed at that) down through the middling and inferior grades; if you are never at a loss for ways to do the most unpracticable things without tools; if you can do all this and some more come on. . . . It is a universal rule here to help one another, each one keeping an eye single to his own business.
They knew that they were leaving many dear associations of the old home, giving up many of the comforts of life, sacrificing things which those who remained thought too vital to civilization to be left. But they were not mere materialists ready to surrender all that life is worth for immediate gain. They were idealists themselves, sacrificing the ease of the immediate future for the welfare of their children, and convinced of the possibility of helping118 to bring about a better [349]social order and a freer life. They were social idealists. But they based their ideals on trust in the common man and the readiness to make adjustments, not on the rule of a benevolent119 despot or a controlling class.
The attraction of this new home reached also into the Old World and gave a new hope and new impulses to the people of Germany, of England, of Ireland, and of Scandinavia. Both economic influences and revolutionary discontent promoted German migration20 at this time; economic causes brought the larger volume, but the quest for liberty brought the leaders, many of whom were German political exiles. While the latter urged, with varying degrees of emphasis, that their own contribution should be preserved in their new surroundings, and a few visionaries even talked of a German State in the federal system, what was noteworthy was the adjustment of the emigrants120 of the thirties and forties to Middle Western conditions; the response to the opportunity to create a new type of society in which all gave and all received and no element remained isolated121. Society was plastic. In the midst of more or less antagonism122 between "bowie knife Southerners," "cow-milking Yankee Puritans," "beer-drinking Germans," "wild Irishmen," a process of mutual education, a giving and taking, was at work. In the outcome, in spite of slowness of assimilation where different groups were compact and isolated from the others, and a certain persistence123 of inherited morale124, there was the creation of a new type, which was neither the sum of all its elements, nor a complete fusion125 in a melting pot. They were American pioneers, not outlying fragments of New England, of Germany, or of Norway.
The Germans were most strongly represented in the Missouri Valley, in St. Louis, in Illinois opposite that city, and in the Lake Shore counties of eastern Wisconsin north from Milwaukee. In Cincinnati and Cleveland there were many [350]Germans, while in nearly half the counties of Ohio, the German immigrants and the Pennsylvania Germans held nearly or quite the balance of political power. The Irish came primarily as workers on turnpikes, canals and railroads, and tended to remain along such lines, or to gather in the growing cities. The Scandinavians, of whom the largest proportion were Norwegians, founded their colonies in Northern Illinois, and in Southern Wisconsin about the Fox and the head waters of Rock River, whence in later years they spread into Iowa, Minnesota and North Dakota.
By 1850 about one-sixth of the people of the Middle West were of North Atlantic birth, about one-eighth of Southern birth, and a like fraction of foreign birth, of whom the Germans were twice as numerous as the Irish, and the Scandinavians only slightly more numerous than the Welsh, and fewer than the Scotch. There were only a dozen Scandinavians in Minnesota. The natives of the British Islands, together with the natives of British North America in the Middle West, numbered nearly as many as the natives of German lands. But in 1850 almost three-fifths of the population were natives of the Middle West itself, and over a third of the population lived in Ohio. The cities were especially a mixture of peoples. In the five larger cities of the section natives and foreigners were nearly balanced. In Chicago the Irish, Germans and natives of the North Atlantic States about equaled each other. But in all the other cities, the Germans exceeded the Irish in varying proportions. There were nearly three to one in Milwaukee.
It is not merely that the section was growing rapidly and was made up of various stocks with many different cultures, sectional and European; what is more significant is that these elements did not remain as separate strata126 underneath127 an established ruling order, as was the case particularly in New [351]England. All were accepted and intermingling components128 of a forming society, plastic and absorptive. This characteristic of the section as "a good mixer" became fixed130 before the large immigrations of the eighties. The foundations of the section were laid firmly in a period when the foreign elements were particularly free and eager to contribute to a new society and to receive an impress from the country which offered them a liberty denied abroad. Significant as is this fact, and influential131 in the solution of America's present problems, it is no more important than the fact that in the decade before the Civil War, the Southern element in the Middle West had also had nearly two generations of direct association with the Northern, and had finally been engulfed132 in a tide of Northeastern and Old World settlers.
In this society of pioneers men learned to drop their old national animosities. One of the Immigrant Guides of the fifties urged the newcomers to abandon their racial animosities. "The American laughs at these steerage quarrels," said the author.
Thus the Middle West was teaching the lesson of national cross-fertilization instead of national enmities, the possibility of a newer and richer civilization, not by preserving unmodified or isolated the old component129 elements, but by breaking down the line-fences, by merging133 the individual life in the common product—a new product, which held the promise of world brotherhood134. If the pioneers divided their allegiance between various parties, Whig, Democrat33, Free Soil or Republican, it does not follow that the western Whig was like the eastern Whig. There was an infiltration135 of a western quality into all of these. The western Whig supported Harrison more because he was a pioneer than because he was a Whig. It saw in him a legitimate136 successor of Andrew Jackson. The campaign of 1840 was a Middle Western camp meeting on a [352]huge scale. The log cabins, the cider and the coonskins were the symbols of the triumph of Middle Western ideas, and were carried with misgivings137 by the merchants, the bankers and the manufacturers of the East. In like fashion, the Middle Western wing of the Democratic party was as different from the Southern wing wherein lay its strength, as Douglas was from Calhoun. It had little in common with the slaveholding classes of the South, even while it felt the kinship of the pioneer with the people of the Southern upland stock from which so many Westerners were descended138.
In the later forties and early fifties most of the Middle Western States made constitutions. The debates in their conventions and the results embodied139 in the constitutions themselves tell the story of their political ideals. Of course, they based the franchise140 on the principle of manhood suffrage141. But they also provided for an elective judiciary, for restrictions142 on the borrowing power of the State, lest it fall under the control of what they feared as the money power, and several of them either provided for the extinguishment of banks of issue, or rigidly143 restrained them. Some of them exempted144 the homestead from forced sale for debt; married women's legal rights were prominent topics in the debates of the conventions, and Wisconsin led off by permitting the alien to vote after a year's residence. It welcomed the newcomer to the freedom and to the obligations of American citizenship.
Although this pioneer society was preponderantly an agricultural society it was rapidly learning that agriculture alone was not sufficient for its life. It was developing manufactures, trade, mining, the professions, and becoming conscious that in a progressive modern state it was possible to pass from one industry to another and that all were bound by common ties. But it is significant that in the census145 of 1850, Ohio, out of a population of two millions, reported only a thousand [353]servants, Iowa only ten in two hundred thousand and Minnesota fifteen in its six thousand.
In the intellectual life of this new democracy there was already the promise of original contributions even in the midst of the engrossing146 toil and hard life of the pioneer.
The country editor was a leader of his people, not a patent-insides recorder of social functions, but a vigorous and independent thinker and writer. The subscribers to the newspaper published in the section were higher in proportion to population than in the State of New York and not greatly inferior to those of New England, although such eastern papers as the New York Tribune had an extensive circulation throughout the Middle West. The agricultural press presupposed in its articles and contributions a level of general intelligence and interest above that of the later farmers of the section, at least before the present day.
Farmer boys walked behind the plow147 with their book in hand and sometimes forgot to turn at the end of the furrow148; even rare boys, who, like the young Howells, "limped barefoot by his father's side with his eyes on the cow and his mind on Cervantes and Shakespeare."
Periodicals flourished and faded like the prairie flowers. Some of Emerson's best poems first appeared in one of these Ohio Valley magazines. But for the most part the literature of the region and the period was imitative or reflective of the common things in a not uncommon149 way. It is to its children that the Middle West had to look for the expression of its life and its ideals rather than to the busy pioneer who was breaking a prairie farm or building up a new community. Illiteracy150 was least among the Yankee pioneers and highest among the Southern element. When illiteracy is mapped for 1850 by percentages there appears two distinct zones, the one extending from New England, the other from the South.
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The influence of New England men was strong in the Yankee regions of the Middle West. Home missionaries151, and representatives of societies for the promotion152 of education in the West, both in the common school and denominational colleges, scattered themselves throughout the region and left a deep impress in all these States. The conception was firmly fixed in the thirties and forties that the West was the coming power in the union, that the fate of civilization was in its hands, and therefore rival sects153 and rival sections strove to influence it to their own types. But the Middle West shaped all these educational contributions according to her own needs and ideals.
The State Universities were for the most part the result of agitation154 and proposals of men of New England origin; but they became characteristic products of Middle Western society, where the community as a whole, rather than wealthy benefactors155, supported these institutions. In the end the community determined their directions in accord with popular ideals. They reached down more deeply into the ranks of the common people than did the New England or Middle State Colleges; they laid more emphasis upon the obviously useful, and became co?ducational at an early date. This dominance of the community ideals had dangers for the Universities, which were called to raise ideals and to point new ways, rather than to conform.
Challenging the spaces of the West, struck by the rapidity with which a new society was unfolding under their gaze, it is not strange that the pioneers dealt in the superlative and saw their destiny with optimistic eyes. The meadow lot of the small intervale had become the prairie, stretching farther than their gaze could reach.
All was motion and change. A restlessness was universal. Men moved, in their single life, from Vermont to New York, [355]from New York to Ohio, from Ohio to Wisconsin, from Wisconsin to California, and longed for the Hawaiian Islands. When the bark started from their fence rails, they felt the call to change. They were conscious of the mobility156 of their society and gloried in it. They broke with the Past and thought to create something finer, more fitting for humanity, more beneficial for the average man than the world had ever seen.
"With the Past we have literally157 nothing to do," said B. Gratz Brown in a Missouri Fourth of July oration158 in 1850, "save to dream of it. Its lessons are lost and its tongue is silent. We are ourselves at the head and front of all political experience. Precedents159 have lost their virtue160 and all their authority is gone. . . . Experience can profit us only to guard from antequated delusions161."
"The yoke of opinion," wrote Channing to a Western friend, speaking of New England, "is a heavy one, often crushing individuality of judgment and action," and he added that the habits, rules, and criticisms under which he had grown up had not left him the freedom and courage which are needed in the style of address best suited to the Western people. Channing no doubt unduly162 stressed the freedom of the West in this respect. The frontier had its own conventions and prejudices, and New England was breaking its own cake of custom and proclaiming a new liberty at the very time he wrote. But there was truth in the Eastern thought of the West, as a land of intellectual toleration, one which questioned the old order of things and made innovation its very creed163.
The West laid emphasis upon the practical and demanded that ideals should be put to work for useful ends; ideals were tested by their direct contributions to the betterment of the average man, rather than by the production of the man of exceptional genius and distinction.
For, in fine this was the goal of the Middle West, the [356]welfare of the average man; not only the man of the South, or of the East, the Yankee, or the Irishman, or the German, but all men in one common fellowship. This was the hope of their youth, of that youth when Abraham Lincoln rose from rail-splitter to country lawyer, from Illinois legislator to congressman164 and from congressman to President.
It is not strange that in all this flux165 and freedom and novelty and vast spaces, the pioneer did not sufficiently166 consider the need of disciplined devotion to the government which he himself created and operated. But the name of Lincoln and the response of the pioneer to the duties of the Civil War,—to the sacrifices and the restraints on freedom which it entailed167 under his presidency, reminds us that they knew how to take part in a common cause, even while they knew that war's conditions were destructive of many of the things for which they worked.
There are two kinds of governmental discipline: that which proceeds from free choice, in the conviction that restraint of individual or class interests is necessary for the common good; and that which is imposed by a dominant66 class, upon a subjected and helpless people. The latter is Prussian discipline, the discipline of a harsh machine-like, logical organization, based on the rule of a military autocracy. It assumes that if you do not crush your opponent first, he will crush you. It is the discipline of a nation ruled by its General Staff, assuming war as the normal condition of peoples, and attempting with remorseless logic168 to extend its operations to the destruction of freedom everywhere. It can only be met by the discipline of a people who use their own government for worthy ends, who preserve individuality and mobility in society and respect the rights of others, who follow the dictates169 of humanity and fair play, the principles of give and take. The Prussian [357]discipline is the discipline of Thor, the War God, against the discipline of the White Christ.
Pioneer democracy has had to learn lessons by experience: the lesson that government on principles of free democracy can accomplish many things which the men of the middle of the nineteenth century did not realize were even possible. They have had to sacrifice something of their passion for individual unrestraint; they have had to learn that the specially113 trained man, the man fitted for his calling by education and experience, whether in the field of science or of industry, has a place in government; that the rule of the people is effective and enduring only as it incorporates the trained specialist into the organization of that government, whether as umpire between contending interests or as the efficient instrument in the hands of democracy.
Organized democracy after the era of free land has learned that popular government to be successful must not only be legitimately170 the choice of the whole people; that the offices of that government must not only be open to all, but that in the fierce struggle of nations in the field of economic competition and in the field of war, the salvation171 and perpetuity of the republic depend upon recognition of the fact that specialization of the organs of the government, the choice of the fit and the capable for office, is quite as important as the extension of popular control. When we lost our free lands and our isolation from the Old World, we lost our immunity172 from the results of mistakes, of waste, of inefficiency173, and of inexperience in our government.
But in the present day we are also learning another lesson which was better known to the pioneers than to their immediate successors. We are learning that the distinction arising from devotion to the interests of the commonwealth98 is a [358]higher distinction than mere success in economic competition. America is now awarding laurels174 to the men who sacrifice their triumphs in the rivalry175 of business in order to give their service to the cause of a liberty-loving nation, their wealth and their genius to the success of her ideals. That craving176 for distinction which once drew men to pile up wealth and exhibit power over the industrial processes of the nation, is now finding a new outlet177 in the craving for distinction that comes from service to the union, in satisfaction in the use of great talent for the good of the republic.
And all over the nation, in voluntary organizations for aid to the government, is being shown the pioneer principle of association that was expressed in the "house raising." It is shown in the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., the Knights178 of Columbus, the councils and boards of science, commerce, labor58, agriculture; and in all the countless179 other types, from the association of women in their kitchen who carry out the recommendations of the Food Director and revive the plain living of the pioneer, to the Boy Scouts180 who are laying the foundations for a self-disciplined and virile181 generation worthy to follow the trail of the backwoodsmen. It is an inspiring prophecy of the revival182 of the old pioneer conception of the obligations and opportunities of neighborliness, broadening to a national and even to an international scope. The promise of what that wise and lamented183 philosopher, Josiah Royce called, "the beloved community." In the spirit of the pioneer's "house raising" lies the salvation of the Republic.
This then is the heritage of pioneer experience,—a passionate2 belief that a democracy was possible which should leave the individual a part to play in free society and not make him a cog in a machine operated from above; which trusted in the common man, in his tolerance184, his ability to adjust differences with good humor, and to work out an American [359]type from the contributions of all nations—a type for which he would fight against those who challenged it in arms, and for which in time of war he would make sacrifices, even the temporary sacrifice of individual freedom and his life, lest that freedom be lost forever.
The End
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1
passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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savings
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| n.存款，储蓄 | |
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postpone
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| v.延期，推迟 | |
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populous
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| adj.人口稠密的，人口众多的 | |
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onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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imperialistic
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| 帝国主义的，帝制的 | |
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yoke
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| n.轭；支配；v.给...上轭，连接，使成配偶 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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lava
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| n.熔岩，火山岩 | |
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martyrs
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| n.martyr的复数形式；烈士( martyr的名词复数 )；殉道者；殉教者；乞怜者（向人诉苦以博取同情） | |
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epics
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| n.叙事诗( epic的名词复数 )；壮举；惊人之举；史诗般的电影（或书籍） | |
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triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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migration
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| n.迁移，移居，（鸟类等的）迁徙 | |
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migrations
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| n.迁移，移居( migration的名词复数 ) | |
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pouncing
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| v.突然袭击( pounce的现在分词 )；猛扑；一眼看出；抓住机会（进行抨击） | |
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decrepit
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| adj.衰老的，破旧的 | |
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concussion
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| n.脑震荡；震动 | |
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congregating
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| （使）集合，聚集( congregate的现在分词 ) | |
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mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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30
cosmopolitan
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| adj.世界性的，全世界的，四海为家的，全球的 | |
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slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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32
dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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citizenship
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| n.市民权，公民权，国民的义务(身份) | |
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waded
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| （从水、泥等）蹚，走过，跋( wade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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glorified
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| 美其名的，变荣耀的 | |
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fervently
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| adv.热烈地，热情地，强烈地 | |
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federation
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| n.同盟，联邦，联合，联盟，联合会 | |
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42
concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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43
forefathers
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| n.祖先，先人；祖先，祖宗( forefather的名词复数 )；列祖列宗；前人 | |
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44
dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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46
symbolizes
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| v.象征，作为…的象征( symbolize的第三人称单数 ) | |
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47
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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48
preservation
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| n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持 | |
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49
portrayed
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| v.画像( portray的过去式和过去分词 )；描述；描绘；描画 | |
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50
embryo
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| n.胚胎，萌芽的事物 | |
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51
moody
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| adj.心情不稳的，易怒的，喜怒无常的 | |
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52
exulting
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| vi. 欢欣鼓舞，狂喜 | |
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53
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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54
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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55
aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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56
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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57
labored
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| adj.吃力的，谨慎的v.努力争取(for)( labor的过去式和过去分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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58
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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59
mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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60
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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61
colonization
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| 殖民地的开拓，殖民，殖民地化； 移殖 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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63
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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67
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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geographic
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| adj.地理学的，地理的 | |
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majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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shrouded
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| v.隐瞒( shroud的过去式和过去分词 )；保密 | |
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copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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monopolization
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| n.独占，专卖，垄断 | |
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stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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diminution
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| n.减少；变小 | |
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socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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intervention
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| n.介入，干涉，干预 | |
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domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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extemporized
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| v.即兴创作，即席演奏( extemporize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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autocracy
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| n.独裁政治，独裁政府 | |
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apprehensions
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| 疑惧 | |
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rivalries
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| n.敌对，竞争，对抗( rivalry的名词复数 ) | |
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interventions
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| n.介入，干涉，干预( intervention的名词复数 ) | |
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wrested
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| （用力）拧( wrest的过去式和过去分词 )； 费力取得； （从…）攫取； （ 从… ） 强行取去… | |
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savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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commonwealths
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| n.共和国( commonwealth的名词复数 )；联邦；团体；协会 | |
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commonwealth
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| n.共和国，联邦，共同体 | |
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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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101
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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saturated
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| a.饱和的，充满的 | |
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stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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presidency
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| n.总统(校长，总经理)的职位(任期) | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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inundation
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| n.the act or fact of overflowing | |
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ebbed
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| （指潮水）退( ebb的过去式和过去分词 )； 落； 减少； 衰落 | |
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109
margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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110
margins
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| 边( margin的名词复数 )； 利润； 页边空白； 差数 | |
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111
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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112
peculiarity
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| n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖 | |
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113
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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114
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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115
colonizing
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| v.开拓殖民地，移民于殖民地( colonize的现在分词 ) | |
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116
radicalism
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| n. 急进主义, 根本的改革主义 | |
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117
plank
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| n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目 | |
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118
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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119
benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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120
emigrants
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| n.（从本国移往他国的）移民( emigrant的名词复数 ) | |
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121
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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122
antagonism
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| n.对抗，敌对，对立 | |
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123
persistence
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| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
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124
morale
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| n.道德准则，士气，斗志 | |
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125
fusion
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| n.溶化；熔解；熔化状态，熔和；熔接 | |
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126
strata
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| n.地层（复数）；社会阶层 | |
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127
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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128
components
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| （机器、设备等的）构成要素，零件，成分； 成分( component的名词复数 )； [物理化学]组分； [数学]分量； （混合物的）组成部分 | |
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129
component
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| n.组成部分，成分，元件；adj.组成的，合成的 | |
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130
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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131
influential
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| adj.有影响的，有权势的 | |
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132
engulfed
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| v.吞没，包住( engulf的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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133
merging
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| 合并（分类） | |
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134
brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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135
infiltration
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| n.渗透；下渗；渗滤；入渗 | |
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136
legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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137
misgivings
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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138
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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139
embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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140
franchise
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| n.特许，特权，专营权，特许权 | |
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141
suffrage
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| n.投票，选举权，参政权 | |
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142
restrictions
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| 约束( restriction的名词复数 )； 管制； 制约因素； 带限制性的条件（或规则） | |
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143
rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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144
exempted
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| 使免除[豁免]( exempt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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145
census
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| n.(官方的)人口调查，人口普查 | |
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146
engrossing
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| adj.使人全神贯注的，引人入胜的v.使全神贯注( engross的现在分词 ) | |
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147
plow
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| n.犁，耕地，犁过的地；v.犁，费力地前进[英]plough | |
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148
furrow
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| n.沟；垄沟；轨迹；车辙；皱纹 | |
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uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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150
illiteracy
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| n.文盲 | |
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151
missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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152
promotion
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| n.提升，晋级；促销，宣传 | |
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153
sects
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| n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 ) | |
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154
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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155
benefactors
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| n.捐助者，施主( benefactor的名词复数 )；恩人 | |
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156
mobility
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| n.可动性，变动性，情感不定 | |
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157
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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158
oration
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| n.演说，致辞，叙述法 | |
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159
precedents
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| 引用单元； 范例( precedent的名词复数 )； 先前出现的事例； 前例； 先例 | |
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160
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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161
delusions
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| n.欺骗( delusion的名词复数 )；谬见；错觉；妄想 | |
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162
unduly
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| adv.过度地，不适当地 | |
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163
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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164
Congressman
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| n.（美）国会议员 | |
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165
flux
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| n.流动；不断的改变 | |
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166
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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167
entailed
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| 使…成为必要( entail的过去式和过去分词 )； 需要； 限定继承； 使必需 | |
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168
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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169
dictates
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| n.命令，规定，要求( dictate的名词复数 )v.大声讲或读( dictate的第三人称单数 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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170
legitimately
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| ad.合法地；正当地，合理地 | |
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171
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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172
immunity
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| n.优惠；免除；豁免，豁免权 | |
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173
inefficiency
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| n.无效率，无能；无效率事例 | |
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174
laurels
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| n.桂冠，荣誉 | |
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175
rivalry
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| n.竞争，竞赛，对抗 | |
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176
craving
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| n.渴望,热望 | |
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177
outlet
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| n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄 | |
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178
knights
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| 骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马 | |
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179
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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180
scouts
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| 侦察员[机，舰]( scout的名词复数 )； 童子军； 搜索； 童子军成员 | |
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181
virile
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| adj.男性的；有男性生殖力的；有男子气概的；强有力的 | |
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182
revival
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| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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183
lamented
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| adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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184
tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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