Ohio History Journal

Ohio Valley Hist. Ass'n, Fifth Annual Meeting.                                 119

 

of its officers which is confined to matters purely historical                                                                      I con-

gratulate the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania upon its won-

derful opportunities. It has a fertile field of operations, hitherto but

little cultivated; it has enlisted an interest in its reorganization which is

almost national; it is surely destined to a prosperous and brilliant future.

 

 

THE RELATION OF NEW ENGLAND TO THE OHIO VALLEY.

 

BY CARL RUSSELL FISH, PH. D.,

University of Wisconsin.

A year ago I delivered an address at Indianapolis on the "Decision

of the Ohio Valley in 1861," in which I spoke of the New England

element as one of the minor factors which contributed to the result.

No sooner had I descended from the platform then I was attacked by

three local students who denied that New England had part or parcel

in the history of the Valley. When, therefore, I was asked to read a

paper on New England's influence, at this meeting, which is an embodi-

ment of the feeling of unity and distinctiveness in the Ohio country, I

realized that my subject was not a popular one. Moreover, I soon con-

vinced myself that this was no new sentiment. On examining a list

of six or seven hundred steamboats plying on the Ohio, between 1829

and 1836, I discovreed only four names calculated to appeal to New

England pride: Boston, Bunker Hill, Vermont, and John Hancock.

While every other president, and most presidents' wives, received recogni-

tion, there was no Adams; and although nearly all other statesmen

braved their way through the rapids and the currents, together with Na-

poleon, Josephine, Science, Jack Downing, and so on, there was no

Webster.  A somewhat larger proportion of the owners and masters

were from the six states; but it was obvious that the names to conjure

with, the names and episodes which made history vivid to the mass of

the population, were drawn from the South and from the old mountain

frontier.

Yet New England contributed no small share to the peopling of

this fertile region which began about 1750 to spread its enticements be-

fore the inhabitants of the older settlements. First came scattered New

England families dissatisfied with the regulated life of the New England

towns and beckoned onwards by the greater economic opportunities of

what was then the West.    Such a family was that of the Lincolns,

moving in successive generations from England to Massachusetts, then

to New Jersey, on the Pennsylvania, through West Virginia to Ken-

tucky, and finally early in the nineteenth century crossing over to the

north bank. Before the Revolution, John Adams wrote: "The colonies

south of Pennsylvania have no men to spare, we are told. But we know

better; we know that all the colonies have a back country, which is

• 1
 

120       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

inhabited by a body of robust people, many of whom are emigrants from

New England, and habituated, like multitudes of New England men, to

carry their fuzees or rifles upon one shoulder, to defend themselves

against the Indians, while they carry their axes, scythes, and hoes upon

the other, to till the ground."

The influence of such pioneers was individual. They were too few

to impose their customs upon their neighbors, they inter-married with

other stocks, and they lost many of their New England characteristics,

but generally a core remained. Always they were inclined to look at

public questions from a moral point of view, and when a division

occurred as to the functions of government, they were apt to favor a

broader interpretation of them than their fellows from Virginia and the

Carolinas. They blended with the larger streams of emigration from

the southern and middle states, but in so doing contributed to them

slight shade of difference from their home communities, which helped

establish the distinctiveness of the valley population.

Not influence, but authority, not the tinging of an alien population

with their characteristics, but the chance to establish select communities

where the "sifted grain" might flourish uncontaminated by the tares of

the world, was the desire of the majority of New England emigrants.

Such was the plan of those Connecticut pioneers who before the Revo-

lution occupied northern Pennsylvania, and undeterred by the Indian

tomahawk and by the scarcely less hostile attitude of the white popula-

tion, persisted in establishing there a line of New England towns stretch-

ing to the sources of the Alleghany, although the courts decided that

their claim to the land was fantastic and untenable. Such, too, was the

plan of the company which in 1787 secured the Ohio Purchase, and in

1788 began the establishment of the most considerable New England

settlement in the valley, about the mouth of the Muskingum, with

Marietta as its center.  Composed of New Englanders and of those

kindred to them in tastes and ideals, they undertook their enterprise

only when assured of undisputed land titles and of a stable and satis-

factory form  of government.  "As the twig is bent so the tree is

inclined," a child may bend the twig, where a regiment could scarcely

incline the tree, and so it chanced, that they, acting while the country

was so young, were able in one particular at least to shape its future.

While credit for the suggestion belong to Jefferson, and credit for

furthering the plan belongs to members of congress from all parts of

the country, it can scarcely be denied that the motive impulse for the

Ordinance of 1787 belongs to this purposeful body of New England

leaders, and the prohibition of slavery which that Ordinance carried was

one of the most potent pieces of constructive legislation ever passed by

an American legislature. It made the Ohio, to some degree, a boundary

instead of a bond of unity, and its influence is felt to this day in the

politics and the life of the country.

• 2
 

Ohio Valley Hist. Ass'n, Fifth Annual Meeting.         121

 

Early in the nineteenth century a number of similar, organized

movements took place to central Ohio. In 1802 a band of settlers from

Connecticut established Worthington in Franklin county, and a little

later a large number of the people of Granville, Massachusetts, decided

to try their fortunes in this new and pleasant county. Before leaving

home the emigrants organized their church, with pastor, deacons and

members, and they drew up a constitution to guide their life in their

new home. For forty-six days they moved westward, and finally halting

at what is now Granville, in Licking county, Ohio, they released their

oxen, and listened to a sermon from their minister.

All these settlements reproduced in many respects the characteristics

of the New England towns from which they had sprung. In all of them

education received attention. In 1797 Muskingum academy from which

developed Marietta College, was founded, in 1817 Worthington College

was established, Athens became, like the city from which it drew its

name, an educational center, and from all these radiated an influence

which helped color the surrounding population not of New England

stock.

After the introduction of the steamboat upon western waters, when

it became no longer necessary for prospective pioneers to tramp, like

those of Granville, for forty-six days beside their oxen-drawn wagons,

immigration began upon a larger scale. Moreover, just at this period

New England was more ready than before to supply the materials for

a larger movement.

After the close of the War of 1812 that region was in the throes

of an industrial revolution similar to that which earlier had driven

thousands of Englishmen to America, and that other which later became

one of the propelling forces of German immigration. The thirst for

adventure, and for freedom from the shackles of a thickly settled com-

munity, moreover, which earlier had incited many New Englanders to

migrate to New Jersey, New York, and Northern Pennsylvania, began

to prick their descendants to fresh movements beyond the mountains.

From these two sources came a stream of population which flowed con-

stantly, though now with greater, now with less volume, until after the

Civil War. This movement tended to become more and more a flitting

of individuals and of families, and less a series of organized exodus

such as those to Marietta and to Granville. Yet there remained as a

factor a desire to reproduce home conditions, and some tendency for

New Englanders to flock together.  The main current of this stream

went to the filling up of the Lake region, but by no means inconsiderable

portions diverged southwards into central and even southern Ohio and

Indiana, "Yankees" though unpopular, began to be found everywhere,

and to thrive, and certain localities came to have a decidedly marked,

even if not dominant New England strain. Such centers were to be

found in Wayne, Dearborn, and Switzerland counties, in eastern Indiana,

• 3
 

122        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

in Monroe, Morgan and Marion counties in the center, and in Vigo

county on the Wabash.

Finally during the same period there was another New England

movement, less imposing in numbers, but more potent in influence. It

was the period of the New England Renaissance, a period of intellectual

and moral stimulation. Men and women felt that they beheld the truth,

and if it was not the great encompassing white light of the whole truth,

at least their devotion to such bright rays as came within their vision

was whole-souled and became in many cases the predominant motive

of their lives. A great missionary impulse swept over the population,

and sent forth hundreds of preachers, who taught, to be sure, not one

simple gospel, but from many angles and by many methods of approach

proclaimed the truth as they saw it. The world, but particularly the

United States, they felt to be the New Englander's burden, and vigor-

ously they sought to bear it.

At the same time New England was suffering from a plethora of

educated men, or rather of men educated according to a fixed standard,

a standard worthy and ennobling, but with so little reference to prac-

tical fitting for earning a livelihood, that New England may be said to

have possessed then, as Germany does today, a learned proletariat.

It was saved from the distress which this might have occasioned by the

call for men with such training from other parts of the country, and

particularly from the Northwest. As professors in fresh water colleges

and academies, as tutors in plantation homes, as school masters in the

little red school houses, they spread over the country, inspired with

their missionary zeal, and carrying the pure flame of their idolism and

the treasures now great now small of their learnings. For a time New

England may almost be said to have furnished the schoolmasters for

the nation, and nowhere was this more true than in the valley of the

Ohio.

Such were the elements from which New England influence in the

valley sprang. It remains to assess that influence. It is to be noticed

that the New England settlements, and to a very great degree the indi-

vidual New England settlers, were confined to the North bank.    It

followed that the New England element gave weight to those influ-

ences which were dividing the valley rather than to those which were

uniting it. This tendency was increased, moreover, by the fact that

politically the north bank was divided into several different units each

organically connected with a part of the lake region, where the New

England element was so much more powerful. Had the north bank

formed one or more states, with a boundary on the watershed between

the Ohio and the lakes, the history of the whole country would have

differed materially from what it has been, and the influence of New

England on the institutions of the valley would have been much less.

It was largely through this alliance between the New England

• 4
 

Ohio Valley Hist. Ass'n, Fifth Annual Meeting.          123

 

element in the valley with that in the lake districts, that to the great

numbers of educational establishments founded by individual initiative,

was added the substratum of a public schools system in each of the

states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Foreshadowed from the first by

the grant of the sixteenth section of each township, and aided by further

grants for schools and universities, the laws which put those grants into

operation, and which formulated the basic principles upon which Am-

erican education rests today, were for the most part the work of New

England men, and it was they who organized the systems thus pro-

vided for, and manned the institutions during their early period of storm

and stress

As the school comes home to everyone, so does local government,

and here also New England influence has been marked. The settlers

from the South had been accustomed to an all powerful county, those

from New England to an all powerful town. Out of this conflict of

tradition come the mixed system in which local functions were divided

between the county and the town, which has now so long prevailed in

Ohio and Indiana. The looser, optional system of Illinois, which allows

either method, has resulted in the fact that the river portion of that

state, where we have seen that the New England element was very small,

has retained, almost entirely, the Southern method.

The omnipresent school and the almost universal township, then,

were both largely due to the influence of the New England stock, ex-

erted either directly from within the valley, or indirectly through the

presence of New Englanders from the lake regions in the state legis-

lation and constitutional conventions. Other results are to be traced

more immediately to the presence of large bodies of New Englanders

in particular localities. From year to year, from  decade to decade,

through good fortune and bad fortune, from the times of Andrew Jack-

son to those of William Taft the political map of the northwestern

states preserves a substantial identity. Of the 271 counties making up

the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, 98 have remained Republican

in such crucial elections as those of 1856, 1868, 1888 and 1900; 89 have

remained constantly Democratic, and only 84 have changed. Almost as

great a stability is preserved if we extend the study back into the strug-

gles of the Whigs and Democrats; and it becomes all the more evident

if it be pressed beyond the counties into the townships and communities

of which they are composed. At first sight these districts seem scattered

in hopeless confusion over the maps of the states. There is a permanent

Democratic patch in north central Ohio, about Sandusky, and extending

south through Pickaway county, another in northwestern Ohio adjoining

one in northeastern Indiana about Fort Wayne. There are permanent

Republican patches in northwestern and southeastern Ohio, and in the

west, adjoining central Indiana, and so on.

An examination shows that some of these persistent evidences of

• 5
 

124       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

party loyalty are due to local industries, to conditions of transportation,

to the towering influence of great personalities, but perhaps the most

generally significant clue is the origin of the population. That the New

England population was generally Whig and almost universally Repub-

lican is a well-known fact, and a study of New England settlement to

a considerable degree explains the strength of these parties in certain por-

tions of the valley. Thus the Marietta district largely accounts for the

little group of counties along the Ohio and Muskingum which for many

years remained a Whig and Republican island in the midst of a sea

of Democrats. Washington, and Athens counties, and Noble after its

creation, never waver in their loyalty. In Delaware county, in central

Ohio, the same causes produced the same results, a later influx of New

England made Knox, which had not been Whig, Republican steadily

from the beginning of that party. In Indiana, New Englanders and anti-

slavery Quakers from North Carolina kept Wayne county in line from

1838. In the center, Monroe, Marion, and Morgan counties, while not

so steady, showed the same influences, while in the south and west.

Vanderberg county, with Evansville, and Vigo, with Terre Haute, scarcely

ever left the ranks of the Whigs and Republicans, although surrounded

by Democratic country. Thus Rufus Putnam and the other New Eng-

land pioneers left an impress, until now permanent, upon the valley, an

impress tangible and definite, which can be weighed at the ballot tax,

and which enters into the calculations of politicians.

I have no desire to exaggerate the influence of the New England

element. In mentioning certain definite things which they have con

stituted to the development of this region, I do not leave out of mind,

though I am forced to leave out of my paper, certain other definite

contributions of other stocks and other elements. Especially in recount-

ing their loyalty to their traditional parties, I wish not to seem to pre-

judge the question of whether they were right or wrong. The influence

of the New Englanders in the valley was somewhat greater than their

numbers alone would have assured, in part at least, because of the

political union between the valleys of the lakes and of the river. Still

in the valley the South was stronger, and the Middle States stronger

still, while even before the Civil War the foreign population had be-

come a factor. Yet there remains one function that they performed,

and which was perhaps the most important, for it was connected with

the peculiar and special place of the Ohio in American history.

From its first appearance this river was a nationalizing influence.

In 1748 the keen-scented land speculator began to sniff profits in its

fertile bottoms and its navigable waters. Already the French were aware

of its strategic commercial and military importance, and the struggle

began for its control. Soon blood was shed, and as Voltaire said, "A

torch lighted in the forests of America, put all Europen in conflagra-

tion."  For the first time a sentiment of American nationality was

• 6
 

Ohio Valley Hist. Ass'n, Fifth Annual Meeting.          125

 

aroused, and Franklin put forth his famous cartoon of the snake di-

vided into twelve parts, with the motto: "Join or die."

Again under the Confederation, the only thing which saved that

futile attempt at government from inanity, and gave the government

a national importance, was its acquired ownership and administration

of the national domain, which to the man of the day meant the Ohio

valley.

It was a matter of vital moment that this territory, won by the

whole country and forming a national possession, should have a national

population, drawn from no one section, but rather from all, that it might

become a place where the different elements could mingle, become con-

versant with and tolerant of one another's peculiarities and aware of

each others virtues.  It was just such a mingling which took place,

particularly to the north of the river, and its results are apparent in its

political history. Its population became in many respects the most Am-

erican, the least sectional, of that of any part of the country, its com-

mon political life became the school which best fitted men for the

leadership of the entire country. It is not an accident that Ohio always

has a presidential candidate and usually a president. The valley ex-

cluding the Tennessee and Cumberland, has furnished five presidents

and five important presidential candidates. Three other presidents and

one other great candidate have come from states of which the valley

is a part and in which the meeting of every legislature is like a con-

gress in petto, because of the representation of the traits, the virtues

and the vices, the intelligence and the prejudices of all parts of the

country. Half of these men have been of New England stock, which

is in itself sufficient evidence of its influence.

It is not, therefore, for itself alone that the New England element

is important. It is because it has been one of several elements. It

is not because of its solidity and cohesiveness, that it deserves recogni-

tion, but because giving, it also has known how to receive. Its final

rating in the history of the Valley depends on the fact that its presence

enabled the Ohio basin to become truly a melting pot of the nation,

to appreciate the sentiments and policies of all its parts, to sympathize

with their traditions, and to assume a national point of view. It was

characteristic of the valley that at the time of the Civil War it de-

layed its decision until all hope of reconciling the more isolated, less

complex, and therefore more radical sections had passed away. It was

characteristic that when that time came its decision was on the side

of nationality. When the New England element in its population has

become indistinguishable, its influence will still remain as one of the

compotent elements in that American population which nature decrees

shall live on the banks of that stream which flows between and binds

together the sections of this vast and diverse nation.

• 7