Ohio History Journal

THE WESTERNIZATION OF NEW ENGLAND.

 

 

ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, LL. D.

[Mr. Hart is professor of American History at Harvard University;

the author of many standard and popular works on United States History.

In 1902 he was chosen editor-in-chief of the co-operative history of the

United States projected under the auspices of the American Historical

Association. The article herewith published was the address deliverd by

him at Marietta on the occasion of the erection of a tablet on the Mari-

etta College Campus, October 18, 1906, commemorating the Ohio Com-

pany of Associates.-EDITOR.]

 

"Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until

Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill

Shall come against him."

So spake the dread prophetess to Macbeth; so might have

spoken the seers of New   England, when, a century ago, they

saw the beginnings of rival commonwealths across the moun-

tains. For the New England of 1806 was still a close and sep-

arate community, proud of its history, exulting in its vigor,

abounding in wealth above its neighbors, strong in traditional

public spirit, imbued with a sense of its superiority to the rest

of the Union, and rejoicing in the colonies which it had planted

in the wilderness, to be centers of New England influence in

the West. Such occasions as this today give an opportunity to

review the influence of the East upon the West; to follow the

New Englanders all the way across New York and Pennsyl-

vania, and plant them on the banks of the Ohio, or of Lake

Erie. A few years ago, on an historical occasion of moment in

Wisconsin, a very eminent New Englander, the descendant of

two presidents, informed the audience before him that he was

probably the only person present who was aware that the site

of Madison had once been claimed as a part of the territory of

Massachusetts. If I were to suggest today that the Ohio Com-

pany, organized in Massachusetts, founded, named, built and

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260      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

made famous the city of Marietta, you would feel the same kind

of astonishment as that audience. You might go farther, you

might ask whether the Puritan fathers were to have no rest;

must they not only create their own immortal role upon the

world's stage, but appear before the curtain whenever the words

"New England" are heard? Why not leave them out today?

Why not assume for once that the religious, social and political

influence of New England is still going on its way spreading

ever wider, -

"Out there on the Archipelago,

In the region of the Horn,

Somewhere in the locks of the Equinox

And the Tropic of Capricorn."

 

Twenty years ago, when the English historian, Edward

Freeman, came over to lecture in America, he painfully evolved

the phrase. "New England and Old England," which seemed

to him to embody the novel historical truth that the old region

preceded and accounted for the new. Perhaps he was unaware

that during the English Commonwealth in Cromwell's time,

people had much to say about "The New England Way," by

which they meant principles of religious and political organi-

zation which had been proved in America, and could be put

into operation in the mother country. There is also a Western

Way, an Ohio Idea, if we can only find it, which has in like

manner affected the hive from which swarmed the New Eng-

land emigrants of 1788. And who could have a better oppor-

tunity to observe and record these subtle influences than one

who is himself an eastward emigrant, a son of Ohio planted in

Massachusetts? Not that I am too deeply planted! People

say that in Magnolia Cemetery at Charleston, South Carolina,

is a tombstone bearing the inscription, "Here lies the body of

John Wilkins, who came to this place when six months old and

died at the age of ninety-four. Although a comparative stranger

in Charleston, Mr. Wilkins' last days were soothed by the at-

tentions of the people of this city." Cambridge is more hos-

pitable; after only thirty years in Cambridge, one sometimes

begins to see prospects of no longer being a comparative stranger

there. On the other hand, as in the case of the person down on

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The Westernization of New England.         261

Cape Cod, who was said by her neighbors not to be a real Cape

Cod woman, inasmuch as her mother was born in Plymouth,

perhaps you will not accept as a proper representative of the

Ohio Company of Associates, a Western Reserve Yankee,

attendant on the shrine of the Connecticut Land Company.

Today however, northern and southern Ohio may in common

cause claim for themselves that their forefathers made New

England; and that the present generation in the West is helping

to re-make it.

 

INFLUENCE ON NEW ENGLAND PEOPLE.

In a state like Ohio, within whose limits in 1787 the only

residents were wild Indians, the garrisons of military posts, and

a few squatters, sullenly hiding themselves from the troops who

ejected them whenever found, the elements of the original popu-

lation were all external. Ohio drew in people as a dry sponge

sucks in water; but within the first decade, a trickling stream of

emigrants began to pass farther westward, till today more than a

million born Buckeyes are a part of the population of other

states and territories; of these about ten thousand are settled in

New England; the state of Massachusetts has received over five

thousand of them and has contributed only about seven thousand

five hundred to the present population of this state. It is not

for me to say how far the quality of these re-emigrants compares

with that of the sturdy pioneers of 1788. No one can study

the history of the Ohio Company without a strong feeling of ad-

miration for the character and pluck of the first settlers, and of

the thousands who followed them from New England. At both

ends of the line, Rufus Putnam stands as one of the most ad-

mirable men of his time, realizing the dictum of Emerson: "A

sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries

all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school,

preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township,

and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on

his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast

with his days, and feels no shame in 'not studying a profession,'

for he does not postpone his life, but lives already." Never was

there a broader or livelier spirit of enterprise, and I am proud to

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be the husband of one of Rufus Putnam's kinsfolk, and to find in

the list of Putnam's friends, who signed the petition in 1783, the

name of John Hart, of Connecticut, from among my own kins-

folk.

When Major Denny visited the little colony in 1788, he re-

corded, "Those people appear the most happy folks in the world;

greatly satisfied with their new purchase. But they certainly are

the best informed, most courageous and civil strangers of any

people I have yet met with." Not only were the fathers of

the Ohio Company enterprising, they were far removed from the

supposed New England austerity and reserve. Manasseh Cutler

was treated with "A handsome dinner with punch and wine.

The General and ladies from the garrison, very sociable." And

the prototype of this gathering today appears to have been that

described by Cutler on Sunday, August 24, 1788. "Cloudy this

morning, and very muddy. Attended public worship in the hall

in Campus Martius; the hall very full; had but one exercise.

People came from the Virginia shore and from the garrison."

The ladies, too, then as now, contributed to the charms of Mari-

etta. The circumspect Rev. Manasseh Cutler thought "Mrs. Mc-

Curdy very agreeable," and "Miss Symmes a very well accom-

plished young lady." Another traveler regrets to reflect upon

"Miss Symmes' amiable disposition and highly cultivated mind,

about to be buried in the wilderness." The world of fashion even

extended to the Indian belles, for Cutler writes of a stately squaw,

Madame Zanes. "It is said that she had on three hundred

brooches, and that her whole dress cost her five hundred dollars."

Yet, contrary perhaps to the general impression, the New

Englanders, after a year or two, were probably never a majority

of the people of Ohio. The settlers in the Symmes Purchase came

from the Middle States; of the Virginia bounty lands, from the

South. Outside of the Reserve and the Ohio Company, there

are few distinctively New England centers in the state; and al-

most from the beginning, there were several elements of foreign

birth. Denny found a number of Germans among the garrison

of Fort Harmar, some of whom doubtless married and became

the ancestors of some of you. The French of Gallipolis con-

tributed a vivacious element. The Scotch-Irish spread from

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The Westernization of New England.         263

Pennsylvania and Virginia and North Carolina into Southern and

Central Ohio, and today, though by no means the most heterogen-

eous of the states, Ohio has over four hundred and sixty thousand

foreigners, of whom about fifty thousand are Englishmen, sixty

thousand Irishmen and over two hundred thousand Germans.

A like change may be traced in New England, which in 1787

had by far the purest strain of English blood in the New World;

except for a few French Huguenots and stray Scotchmen, Irish-

men and Dutchmen, the New Englanders were the direct de-

scendants of the English emigration which came over between

1620 and 1640. But now, how different! Out of six million New

Englanders, more than a million and a half were born outside the

United States, and another million and a half born of foreign

parents. Of the three million people in Massachusetts, nearly a

million were born abroad, eight hundred thousand are of foreign

parentage, and about four hundred thousand more are natives of

other states, leaving only about eight hundred thousand Massa-

chusetts people in Massachusetts. This foreign immigration to

New England is of course not in any way the result of the similar

influx into the West; but it brings upon New England exactly

the problems which the Western people have to solve.

An important current of movement from West to East,

which has no returning eddy is that of students of the higher

learning. Universities, colleges, technical schools, professional

schools, musical and art institutes, academies are fed constantly

by supplies from the West. This applies not simply to the stu-

dents, but to the teachers: there is hardly a college in the East

which does not include within its faculty Western men, not only

of its own graduation, but from Western institutions; one of the

most efficient professors of Yale College is a graduate of Western

Reserve, and formerly a professor in that institution; and within

a few days Harvard University, in seeking for a Dean to organize

and direct the new graduate school of applied science, chose a

graduate of Ohio State University. Partly from these students

who find careers in the East, partly from the return of the

children of New Englanders, partly from direct emigration, the

alumni of Western institutions begin to accumulate in numbers

and in power in the New England cities; Oberlin College, Michi-

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264      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

gan University, Western Reserve University have vigorous clubs

in Boston. The numeous professional and business men in that

city, who count the West to be their great Alma Mater, have

called for the recent organization of a Western Club, which is to

maintain sound principles in this center of intellectuality.

 

LANGUAGE.

The reason why so many Western people are found in the

East is two-fold: First, they discover opportunities; and second,

they are competent to improve them. Eastern men go West for

precisely the same reason. It is significant that such an inter-

change should be established in the face of some local prejudice

and preference in both sections. The truth is that the barrier is

broken down: there is little distinction of appearance of manner

between the Easterner and the man of the Middle West. I knew

a professor of geology who went out to investigate a mine, and

arranged himself in local raiment of slouch hat, rough clothes and

trousers thrust into his boots. He was met by the proprietor of

the mine, who had prepared himself to meet the stranger in his

presumed native costume by putting on a black suit and a tall hat.

Nor could they decide which was Lady and which was Tiger.

The supposed Shibboleth of dialect was never determining and

has now almost ceased to exist. I knew of an Eastern lady who,

on meeting an Iowan, said to her: "You don't seem to talk like

a Westerner, you talk very much as we do; but then, I have only

known one Western person before I met you." "Yes, and where

did she come from?" "She came from Baltimore."

Leaving aside such misapprehension, there is no Western

dialect, and indeed, almost no New England dialect. Though I

have spent twenty-five years of my life in New England, I have

never heard the Yankee dialect of Lowell's Biglow Papers, or

anything approaching it, except in the Western Reserve of Ohio,

where my Uncle Gad, my Aunt Eunice, and my third cousin

Lovicy "wanted to know" and "haouw you talked" to the heart's

content. Never shall I forget Mrs. General Pierce's comment

upon the wealthy friend who did not bring her sons up to do

something useful. "I says to Mrs. Kimball, says I, haouw you

air a missin' on't." Still Mrs. General Pierce was a New Hamp-

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The Westernization of New England.         265

 

shire woman, who had brought with her the treasures of her own

home language. I have married into a New Hampshire family,

and thereby became conversant with similar expressions, which

would hardly be found in the mouth of a born Westerner, such as:

"Now do be a man or a mouse, or a long-tailed rat, with your

pockets full of gold and silver," or, "He don't want it no more

than a toad wants a tail, every bit and grain," or "Money enough

and two dollars over," which is more than our millionaires appear

to possess. I know when a person of uncertain temper looks

"wapish" and when the indecisive person "wee waws" in his opin-

ions. I have seen things "as nice as a cotton hat," and condoled

with woes "which would make a bird shed tears." I am familiar

with that unwillingness to make a positive assertion which takes

refuge in the statement that a bankrupt "haint been any more suc-

cessful in business than he expected to."

To balance these expressions with Western phrases of equal

significance would be difficult, except perhaps the favorite Buck-

eye expression "Going to go." But though Noah Webster's dic-

tionary was made in New Haven and Worcester's in Cambridge,

New England no longer has a monopoly of the American lan-

guage. If we seek the exact spot where the mother tongue is

spoken in the average form, would it not logically be found at

the geographical center of population, which, as all the world

knows, is near Columbus, Indiana? Certainly there is an Ameri-

can pronunciation of the English language which prevails with

little alteration from the Hudson River westward to the Mis-

sissippi, and which from year to year undermines the more pre-

cise and perhaps accurate speech of the born New Englander.

New England place names reappear in widening circles-

Bostons and New Bostons, Springfield, Massachusetts; Spring-

field, Ohio; Springfield, Illinois; Springfield, Missouri; Spring-

field, Kansas. In some of these cases, as for instance, Granville

Ohio, the new settlement was made by the emigration of a whole

community, taking with it church, schools and town-meeting.

This influence of nomenclature is hardly reciprocal, though future

historians may perhaps inquire whether great statesmen like

Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and Trumbull were born in the

Ohio counties which bear the same names; and whether by any

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chance the parents of Marie Antoinette could have given her that

pleasant name because they had been settlers in the French colony

near the agreeable town of Marietta.

 

EDUCATION.

Perhaps it might be fanciful to set up the West as the creator

of the present New England standard of pronunciation, which

shows the debilitating influence of Middle States, Southern and

English locutions, as well as of Western, but in the training of

youth, the shuttle has flown from the Atlantic to the Mississippi,

and back again. It was Humphreys in his poem on the Future

State of the Western Territory, who predicted in 1787( ?)

 

"Then oh, blest land! with genius unconfin'd.

With polish'd manners, and the illumin'd mind.

Thy future race on daring wing shall soar,

Each science trace, and all the arts explore."

And Humphreys had good reason to expect a high state of culture

in the West, for like the first Englishmen who came to New

England, the earliest settlers of this newer England included

men of high intellectual power and excellent training. Manasseh

Cutler, a graduate of Yale, was one of the most versatile and

accomplished men of his time - minister, school master, botanist,

member of Congress and commonwealth founder. His son re-

lates of him that in his school he was equally successful in pre-

paring for college, teaching theology and instructing in the art

of navigation. Among the other settlers was "Major Dean Tyler,

a scholar and a gentleman, educated at Harvard College." Put-

nam had been successful as farmer, military officer and surveyor.

These were men, educated, not only in the schools, but in the

practical side of life, men of foresight and daring, men of re-

sources and courage.

One of their first solicitudes was for the proper bringing up

of youth. A great deal of twaddle has been written about the

origin of free public schools in America. Massachusetts, New

York and Virginia contend for the honor of first introducing

them; but not one of those communities previous to the Revolu-

tion ever established a system of what we call free public schools,

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The Westernization of New England.       267

supported wholly by taxation and open equally to boys and girls.

Outside of New England there was, when Marietta was planted,

no such thing in the United States as a system of state supported

schools of any kind, and in New England they were poorly

taught, worse housed and not supervised at all. Nevertheless,

the Ordinance of 1785 affirmed the public importance of educa-

tion by reserving one thirty-sixth of the new land for the support

of schools, and the Ordinance of 1787 inculcated the principle

that "schools and the means of education shall forever be en-

couraged;" while in the contract of the Ohio Company, Cutler

secured a section in each township for the support of the schools,

another "for the support of religion," and two whole townships

for a university, as the gift of Congress to the new community.

The principle of the duty to educate the youth was permanent;

the educational land grant was fleeting, for the experience of a

century has shown that no American community can be depended

upon to protect such gifts, either by a system of leases, or by

holding the land for a high price. Within the present limits of

the city of Chicago were original school lands, which if properly

husbanded would support the whole system of public schools

magnificently, but of which only a few thousand square feet re-

main in public ownership. Even the indirect reflex of these

grants, in the creation out of the proceeds of the Western Reserve

of a permanent Connecticut school fund, in the judgment of the

authorities of that state has served to educate the people of

Connecticut chiefly into spending as little as possible beyond their

proportion of the state fund.

The great significance of the schools in the Ohio Company's

purchase, as in the Reserve, is that the people would have them,

fund or no fund; and that they early adopted the idea of giving

to girls equal educational opportunities, in the common schools.

The admission of little children to mixed schools, and of larger

girls to separate sections of the common schools was not unknown

in New England; and there were a few co-educational academies

prior to 1787. It was the West, however, with its widely diffused

population, that taught the country the immense financial saving

of large school expenditures. The success of the Western com-

mon schools, however crude and imperfectly organized, stimulated

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the Eastern states, so that fifty years from the founding of Ohio,

every Northern state had general public schools; and in girls'

academies, and female seminaries, and in a few girls' high schools,

opportunities for advanced instruction began. It was the West

which first recognized the possibility of a college education for

girls, as the founders of Oberlin College put it in 1833, "The

elevation of the female character, by bringing within the reach

of the misjudged and neglected sex all the instructoral privileges

which have hitherto unreasonably distinguished the leading sex

from theirs." Then in 1841 Oberlin began the conferring of the

degree of A. B. on women. It was in Iowa that women were

first admitted to the free privileges of a State University.

In this development, Ohio led the way. The foundation of

Muskingum Academy in 1797 (or 1798) made possible the first

step above the common schools; and the incorporation of a State

University at Athens in 1801, followed by Miami University and

Marietta College, emphasized the determination of the community

to give its children the same kind of advantages that they had in

the East.

It is impossible to say how far these things have reacted upon

the older part of the country, but it is significant that the Moseley

commission of English educational experts, a few years ago,

pitched upon the University of Wisconsin as the typical Ameri-

can University. The idea of State Universities has so far worked

backward into New England, that Maine and Vermont have

adopted it, though in the other four states the ground is prac-

tically pre-empted by endowed Colleges of great prestige. But

those endowed Colleges have been modified, both by the example

of Western institutions and by the competition of their growing

rivals. Coeducation, which does not accord with New England

traditions, has penetrated into many of the public and private

Universities of the East, and has only been stayed by the creation

of splendidly housed and excellently taught separate women's

Colleges, while the two great Universities of Harvard and Co-

lumbia have neutralized the demand for the education of the girls

by setting up adjunct Colleges for women, a kind of lightning

rods to carry away the electricity. In this respect influence seems

to be moving a second time westward, inasmuch as this so-called

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The Westernization of New England.         269

"co-ordinate system of education" has been adopted at Western

Reserve University, and in part at the University of Chicago;

while in several of the State Universities the students tacitly ap-

prove it by declining to affiliate with the women members of

their classes in class organizations, or social events.

 

 

POLITICAL METHODS.

A larger, more direct and more easily traceable influence of

the West upon the East has been in the development of govern-

ment and political methods. In 1787 the machinery both of gov-

ernment and of parties was comparatively simple; state officers.

were few; appointive officers had secure tenures; elective officers

were often chosen for many successive terms, and political parties

were not yet constructed on a national basis. Political chicanery,

fraud and corruption were by no means unknown; it was no

political Arcady. More than two centuries ago, when a ballot

was being taken in the Boston town meeting, it is recorded that

"The Inhabitants proceeded to bring in their votes, & when the

Selectmen were Receiving 'em at the Door of the Hall they ob-

served one of the Inhabitants Vizt: John Pigeon to put in about

a dozen with the word Yea wrote on all of 'em, and being charged

with so doing he acknowledged it."  In 1765 a Philadelphia

politician wrote to a friend that the way to win was to "let it be

spread through the country, that your party intend to come well

armed to the election, and that you intend, if there is the least

partiality in either sheriff, inspectors, or managers of the election,

that you will thrash the sheriff, every inspector, Quaker and

Mennonist to a jelly;" adding, "I see no danger in the scheme

but that of a riot." The Western people had some early acquaint-

ance with these methods. Ephraim Cutler complains that when a

candidate for the colonelcy of his militia regiment in Ohio, the

election was held in secret and without due notice; that even then

he got a majority of the votes, but was nevertheless deprived of

his office.

The great contribution of the West to American government

has been the extension of the suffrage. For years nobody out

there was rich except.in the ownership of undeveloped lands, and

the usual property qualifications were easy to acquire, so that the

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universal suffrage of white men speedily came about. The desire

to stimulate immigration led to the offer of suffrage to naturalized

citizens and even to declarants. This flame of popular govern-

ment swept backward across the mountains, and within about

forty years from the planting of Ohio had practically overrun

every New England State. This was the youth of the world;

this was the glorious time when men believed in the educating

power of the ballot; when "government by the consent of the

governed" came as near realization as is humanly possible, when

the immigrants on the whole justified the belief that responsibility

brings reason and caution; when special privileges of property

holders or tax payers disappeared. The Western communities,

with something like equality of conditions, could furnish equality

of opportunities; and exhibited to the world an example of real

democracy. The East with its accumulated wealth, its tradition

of social distinctions, and its variety of occupations seemed less

fitted for such a process; nevertheless the right to vote was suc-

cessfully extended to the day laborers and mill-hands of New

England. The influence of universal suffrage has in our day

been much diminished, first, by the wide-spread disposition to ex-

clude a race of ten millions altogether, and second, from the

neutralizing influence of masses of voters, casting their ballots as

directed by employers, or by political machines; but there is as

little likelihood of any serious diminution of this privilege in New

England as in any part of the country.

Another influence of the West upon the East has been in

the development of the idea of rotation in office. In New England,

from Colonial times, it was expected that any efficient public

servant, Governor, Judge or Assembly man, would be returned

for a succession of years; thus Jonathan Trumbull was seven-

teen times elected Governor of Connecticut. Partly because of

the unpopularity of Governor St. Clair during his fourteen years

of service in the Northwest Territory, and partly because of the

feeling that any man was good enough to clothe a public office,

such long public service never obtained in the West, and from

the replacing of elective officers at the end of brief terms, the idea

of rotation extended to appointive officers, even to small positions.

The sweeping out of political opponents, whenever a new party

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The Westernization of New England.        271

got control of the State government, began in Pennsylvania and

in New York, but the idea that a public office is a gift and not an

opportunity a good thing which ought to be passed from hand to

hand, instead of an instrumentality for rendering a public service,

grew very slowly in New England and was powerfully reinforced

by the influence of the West.

In one of the arts of government the founders of the Ohio

Company furnished a brilliant example. Never was there a more

ingenious, systematic and successful piece of lobbying than that

of Rev. Manasseh Cutler before the Congress of the Confedera-

tion. He came down to New York in July, 1787, armed with

forty-three letters of introduction to members of Congress and

other influential people; he dined with the president of the Board

of Treasury; he paid his respects to the president of Congress; he

called on members of Congress; he made a list of the members

opposed to his project, in order to "bring the opponents over."

"In order to get at some of them, so as to work powerfully on

their minds," says he, "in some instances we engaged one person,

who engaged a second, and he a third, and so on to a fourth be-

fore we could effect our purpose," an early instance of the mystic

power of "influence." He finally reduced the opponents to three,

about whom he said, "Of Few and Bingham, there is hope, but

to bring over that stubborn mule of a Kearney I think beyond our

power." He placated St. Clair by advocating his appointment to

the Governorship of the Northwest Territory; and he finally ac-

complished his purpose by making a combination with the pro-

moters of the Scioto Company, whose only object was to get "an

option," which they might sell out without putting any money

into the enterprise, and who organized a system of American and

French companies and holding companies, which might be studied

by some of our modern corporations with great profit to them-

selves and corresponding damage to the public interest. But all

this machinery was set in motion, simply to accomplish a purpose

of great benefit to the United States, and the land operations of

the Ohio Company, though less successful financially than was

hoped, showed an openness and straightforwardness in striking

contrast to the shady manipulation of the Scioto Company, which

resulted in fraud, bankruptcy and misery to all concerned. Cut-

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272       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

ler's lobbying was arch-angelic compared with the contemporary

scheme of the Cuyahoga Purchase, to which he alludes in his

diary. Certain Canadians and others in 1796 got a fraudulent

Indian Treaty, under which they claimed about five million acres

south of Lake Erie; and they did their best to secure a confirma-

tion from Congress; eventually the promoters were glad to accept

six hundred dollars in settlement of their preposterous claims,

which approach recent land transactions in Oregon for their bare-

faced impudence.

 

THE PROBLEM OF COLONIZATION.

In still another way the West has been the instructor of the

East. In the literature of the time, we find two significant

phrases: Manasseh Cutler speaks of the settlement as a "colony,"

and Rufus Putnam calls the United States "an empire." Both

words denote the conception that the United States consisted of

two separate sections, the states and the territories or dependen-

cies. Theodore Roosevelt thinks the foundation of Marietta an

easy task compared with that of their neighbors in Kentucky and

Tennessee. "The dangers they ran and the hardships they suf-

fered," says he, in his Winning of the West, "in no wise ap-

proached those undergone and overcome by the iron-willed, iron-

limbed hunters who first built their lonely cabins on the Cumber-

land and Kentucky."   It is true that there was a springtime of

intoxication of adventure and danger in the Southern settlements;

that the Kentuckian might shout with the dweller of the Heaven-

kissing Himalayas.

 

'O Joy! In the olden time the Head-Father-Spirit made the earth,

(He) the Sky-Existing-One made this earth,

He clothed the stony bosom of this tearful earth with fertile fields

When the men were made and the jointed bamboos and the trees.

At the same time were we, the sons of the (one)-mother-flesh jolly fel-

lows.

 

O Joy! The mulberry trees were made with the rice and other food

plants,

The running rivers were made with their fleeing fishes,

And fleeing sky-birds were made with the worms and insects,

And the rainbow was made by our old first great-grandfather,

(But) our troubles were made by our old first great-grandmother."

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The Westernization of New England.       273

In this joy of the undiscovered the Ohio Associates perhaps

did not share; but they knew many of the dangers of the frontier.

For them the volleys of Indian musketry blazed out along the

wooded bluffs of the Ohio; into their skulls sank the tomahawk;

to their houses were applied the torch. The Kentuckian was but

exchanging one log-house for another, leaving the buck for the

buffalo; the New Englander was turning his back on comfort and

prosperity. The Kentuckian expected to remain a backwoods-

man; the Ohioan, from the first conception of Putnam in 1783,

had no intention of anything but ultimate statehood and member-

ship in the Federal Union. The Northwest Territory was the

school of future States; its constitution, the great Ordinance of

1787 is a document which stands alongside Magna Charta and the

Declaration of Independence as a bold assertion of the rights of

the individual.

Especially was this difference of moral purpose visible in the

slavery clause of the Ordinance. The Kentuckian and the Ten-

nessean carried along his slave, if he had any, and drifted into a

status of permanent slave-holding; the Ohio Company insisted

on the first national condemnation of slavery, and in spite of the

strong influence of Southern settlers, every State formed out

of the Northwest Territory, persisted in freedom. These two

lessons were read by older States. The influence of Ohio, and

Indiana, and Illinois helped to hold Connecticut, and New York

and Pennsylvania and New Jersey to their schemes of gradual

emancipation. From the Ohio Purchase and from Western Re-

serve sprang two streams of anti-slavery sentiment, which united

in a Western abolition movement, as vigorous and more effective

than the New England movemnet. Thus the New England

people, in sowing the seed of liberty and equal justice were pre-

paring a crop, not only for their Western children, but for their

kindred remaining on the Atlantic coast.

After all, is not the great reason for the influence of the West

on New England, the earlier influence of New England on the

West, which still goes on unchecked and unmeasured? If the

West sends eastward ideals, ideas, men and wealth, New England

sends westward wealth, men, ideas and ideals. In the world of

Vol. XVII -18.

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274        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications. the mind, in the realm of action, there is no longer an East or a West; we all listen to Walt Whitman: "I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be, blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work. The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the day-at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs."   It is in this sense that Birnam Wood has at last come to Dun- sinane, that the New-Anglicized West has become the tutor of his schoolmaster, that the child and the grandsire are twin brothers. Of New England it might be said, as Bacon said of Rome, "It was not Rome that came upon the world, but the world that came upon the Romans; and that is the sure way of great- ness."

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