Ohio History Journal

INTER-STATE MIGRATION AND THE MAKING OF

THE UNION *

 

 

BY DR. EDWIN ERLE SPARKS

President Emeritus of the Pennsylvania State College

 

I hear the far-off voyager's horn;

1 see the Yankee's trail, --

His foot on every mountain-pass,

On every stream his sail.

. . . . . . . . .

Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe,

The steamer smokes and raves;

And city lots are staked for sale

Above old Indian graves.

I hear the tread of pioneers

Of nations yet to be;

The first low wash of waves, where soon

Shall roll a human sea.

In such words does the good poet, John Greenleaf

Whittier, picture the onward march of civilization

across the North American continent; the building of a

nation while conquering an empire.

I can fancy the poet writing that poem.     On the

desk before him lay an eagle's quill which some ad-

mirer had sent him from the Lake Superior region.

It had been made into a pen, and as the poet looked

at it, he said, "But yesterday the eagle was mon-

arch of the north-west: to-day comes man, plucks a

quill from the eagle, and fashions it into a pen.   So

civilization treads upon the heels of savagery."

* Annual address at meeting of the Ohio State Archaeological and

Historical Society, September 9, 1922.

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296       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe, The steamer smokes and raves; And city lots are staked for sale Above old Indian graves. In the onward march of the people across the con- tinent, in a thousand different valleys, at the foot of a

thousand different mountains, beside a score of water- falls, at the great meeting places -- the great places where the paths converge -- there have been enacted the countless different incidents making up this great drama that we call our national history. I come this afternoon to this, my own country, and,

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Interstate Migration and the Making of the Union 297

please let me say, to you, my own people and Ohioan

kindred, to address you briefly on a certain phase of the

sociological aspect of our national history. Had I been

sufficiently versed in political history, I might have

chosen a topic which would have been more to your in-

terest, perhaps, than the one I have selected.  Had I

followed the local history of my native state as closely

even as I have pursued that of the states in which I

have been resident since leaving you, I might have

hoped to add something to the splendid collection of

local data your Society is making.  But I must choose

as I can and speak to you on the unification of the

American people through free migration and inter-

state communication.  In this aspect of our national

history, Ohio has been foremost; first in respect to her

geographical situation; next in the contributions she

has made to sister states, and especially in the fact that

she has been the repository of some of the best blood

that was produced on the Atlantic Coast Plain and the

heritage of the finest intellectual and moral standards

that have crossed the barrier of the Alleghenies.

This remarkable Plain varies in width from fifty to

two hundred miles. In it are located Concord and Lex-

ington, Valley Forge and Yorktown. Upon it were en-

acted the stirring events that marked the birth of the dif-

ferent colonies. Here the people recruited their strength

for the march across the continent.  If you will re-

member, it took about four generations to produce the

men who fought the Revolutionary War. George Wash-

ington was the fourth of the Washingtons in America.

John Adams was the fourth of the Adamses.  Samuel

Adams the same. It is true that some men, like Robert

Morris, the great financier of the American Revolu-

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tion, had no American ancestry.  Morris was born in

England.   But, generally speaking, on this Atlantic

Coast Plain were bred three generations of men who

were preparing this land of ours for freedom. For two

hundred years these English, German, and Dutch

colonists cast eager eyes toward the West; beyond them

towered the summits of the great Appalachian system,

barring the way to the West; while the French in their

swift canoes, through the great lakes and over a dozen

different portages to the Mississippi, simply cut a half

circle around them from Quebec to New Orleans. But

by and by the English began with uncertain steps to

feel their way by numerous waterways and passes

across the mountains.

If I had here a map of the United States, I would

call your attention to the fact that the first routes across

the mountains were along navigable waters, illustrat-

ing one great point in local history in its relation to

national history, -- that the waterways were the natural

highways. The Hudson and Mohawk to the north, the

Potomac and Monongahela in the middle and the James

to the headwaters of the Tennessee and Cumberland to

the southward offered a ready-made passage way to

the waters of the Mississippi Valley.

It is interesting to notice that there is today a great

railway trunk line along each of these first routes. Our

forefathers, groping their way across the continent,

chose the lines of least resistance for their routes.  In

time the waterway gave way to the post road. It gave

way to the canal, and the canal gave way to the rail-

way. Today along the Hudson and Mohawk rivers

we have the New York Central and Hudson River Rail-

road, which goes far to the west; the West Shore Road

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Interstate Migration and the Making of the Union 299

paralleling it.  Along the middle route, we have the

Pennsylvania system and the Baltimore & Ohio sys-

tem, and farther to the south, along the southern route,

we have the Chesapeake and Ohio Road. These great

trunk lines follow in large part the early pathways

traced by the pioneers.

If I had the frontier line of 1790 portrayed upon a

map before me, you would find one protuberance of

people (if I may so use the term) running up the Con-

necticut river, another running up along Lake Cham-

plain, a third down through Pennsylvania encompassing

the present city of Pittsburgh, and a fourth running

out along the head waters of the Tennessee and Cum-

berland rivers.  These were the early routes to the

north and west, and each projection was caused by the

presence of a waterway.

The frontier has always moved fastest in the middle

and slowest on the sides.  This may be illustrated by

a stream which flows fastest in the middle, because the

current is retarded by the banks on either side. It may

be illustrated still further by the fact that throughout

the middle of our continent there lay ready-made to the

use of these pioneers a continuous waterway.  If in

your mind's eye you will trace the Potomac to its source,

you will remember that it rises very nearly at the head-

waters of the Ohio river, requiring a portage of no

great distance to unite the two waterways. When we

once reach the Ohio it has a slightly southern turn, but

in due time on the bosom of that river we shall reach

the Mississippi in the west.  The Mississippi River

from the mouth of the Ohio to the mouth of the Mis-

souri has a northwestern turn.  Following the Mis-

souri and the Kansas or Kaw River we are carried due

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west again until we come to the present situation of

Topeka.   Consequently, in the early days, before we

had so completely stripped the land of timber and in-

jured our navigable streams, we had navigable water

from the Atlantic to the heart of our national domain.

Over half the continent was traversed by the almost

continuous streams named above.

The frontier life which made use of these routes of

travel produced the American character.  Along the

northern route passed the settlers, under Moses Cleave-

land, to found the city of that name -- the pioneers in

the territory of the Connecticut Reserve.  Along the

middle route went the pioneers who founded the city of

Marietta, the first settlement in the Northwest Terri-

tory. Farther to the south, through the great Cumber-

land Gap, which someone has well called the "Gate-

way to the West," came in the early days, Daniel Boone,

and other pioneers. Colonel Durret, of Louisville, had

Daniel Boone's rifle; that is, he always claimed it was

Daniel Boone's rifle. If it is not his rifle, it is just as

good; because it shows the kind of rifle that men like

Daniel Boone used to carry. Standing the butt of the

rifle upon the floor, the end comes just between the eyes

of a man of my stature. And you may still see upon

the barrel the hammer marks where it was fashioned

by hand. With these long rifles, with nothing but the

bullet pouch, the powder horn and a bag of parched

corn, the pioneer felt his way across the mountains,

blazing his path with tomahawk marks on trees, so that

he might find his way back to civilization. And these

are the pioneer fathers of ours -- Cleaveland at the

north, Putnam in the middle, Boone, Robertson and

Donaldson on the south -- what a host of names flock

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Interstate Migration and the Making of the Union 301

to the lips as one thinks of these Columbuses of the land,

as they really were.  These pioneers, who always

figured largely in local history, went out into the ad-

venturous West, depending solely upon the power of

might, and taught us the great national trait of self-

dependence.  If I wanted to take national types, I

should take such local types as I have indicated crossing

the mountains.

As illustrating later times I should take the case of

John Calhoun, a type in local history before the type

in national history. Calhoun's grandfather was scalped

by the Indians far in the uplands of Virginia, and Cal-

houn showed that invincible hatred toward the Red man

which paved the way toward the almost extermination

of the Indian during his administration as Secretary of

War.

Going northward to the middle West, I should

choose Henry Clay as a type. He was a product of local

history; born in Virginia, the son of a dissenting

clergyman.  If he had lived in Virginia he would al-

ways have been under an aristocratic ban. His father

belonged to the dissenting church; he was a Baptist,

and was not permitted to use the churches of the es-

tablished religion. He preached often under the great

trees of Virginia to congregations coming miles in their

wagons to worship in God's first temples.  His son,

Henry Clay, born in aristocratic Virginia, migrated

across the mountains and came into democratic Ken-

tucky, and there he found others on the same plane as

himself. When he reached Kentucky as a young man

it was still the frontier. He said, in later life, he could

remember in those days how much the hunters depended

upon their rifles. One had to shoot his way into

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politics in Kentucky.  He himself told of entering his

first campaign.  He said, "I was a candidate for the

State Legislature, and one day I came upon a party of

men firing at a target, and before I knew it I was drawn

into the group.  I had been bred in a lawyer's office

and had never learned to use the rifle; but one of the

party said, 'Here's Harry Clay; he is a candidate for

the Legislature: let Harry Clay try a shot.' I tried to

get out of it. I said, 'Gentlemen, if I had my own gun

here I would shoot with you.'"  In truth, he did not

own a gun. "One of the hunters then held up his gun.

'Here is Old Bess', he said, 'if you can not shoot with

Old Bess you could not shoot with your own gun.' Not

willing to give offense, Clay said, 'I took the gun, and

I aimed about where I thought the target was; I shut

my eyes and pulled the trigger.' A great shout went

up. I had hit the bull's-eye right in the center exactly.

One said, 'Harry Clay, that is an accident: you do that

again.'  He said, 'When the rest of you have done

that well, I will do it again.'"

As we go on toward the West we get more of

these types. If I wanted a type of the pioneer of the

middle West, I should go no farther than that first

great original American, Abraham Lincoln.  Suppose

Lincoln had been born and reared over on the Atlantic

Coast Plain; suppose he had inherited for three or four

generations the instincts of that plain, reflected as those

instincts were from the Old World.                But he was born

and raised on the western frontier.                Reared without

that inheritance and without those eastern surround-

ings, he became an original American because he was

separated by the Appalachian Mountains from the

European environment of the Atlantic Coast Plain.

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Interstate Migration and the Making of the Union 303

He was an original man.     The frontiersman made

local history, and he had to be an all-around man. Lin-

coln was an all-around man; he learned no piece-work

on the frontier.  Lincoln was a rail-splitter; he was a

postmaster; he was a soldier for a short time; he was a

flat-boatman, and a farmer on a small scale; a lawyer,

a statesman -- an all-around man.    He often called

himself a jack of all trades. And yet, when he became

President of the United States, he needed above all

things to be an all-around man. The Nation needed a

man who could be statesman, president, diplomat, finan-

cier, soldier -- all these things; and the compelling en-

vironment of the frontier had made Lincoln the man

for the occasion.

What does the poet, Lowell, say?

Nature, they say, doth dote,

And cannot make a man

Save on some worn-out plan,

Repeating us by rote:

For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,

And, choosing sweet clay from the breast

Of the unexhausted West,

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new.

When Abraham Lincoln was climbing up the pegs

set in the wall in the little cabin in which he dwelt, to

sleep throughout the night in a garret upon a bed made

of hay and fodder, it was the compelling environment

of local history that was making a national character.

When his mother died there in that lonely cabin in In-

diana, there was no physician within eighteen miles, and

she died of that unknown, indefinite thing they called

"milk sickness," that swept over the frontier.  Some

thought it came from the cows eating a poisonous herb

and trasmitting the poison to human beings.   Such

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304      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

were the hardships of the frontier. If I go still farther

west I should take Thomas H. Benton as a type: and

as a representative of the interests of a single state,

Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois -- all belonging to what

was the stump-speaking age of the frontier.

When the history of the seventeenth, eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries is finally summed up, it is safe to

say that no incident will be more marvelous than the

evolution of the American nation and the unification of

the American people. The exemplification of self-gov-

ernment on such a magnificent scale must claim a large

share of attention; especially its development on a ter-

ritory measured by thousands of miles in extent and by

nearly a hundred million of people dwelling contigu-

ously. The republics of Greece, the states of Holland

and the republic of Switzerland by contrast become

mere counties in extent and population.

Yet the success of this vast Republic depends in the

last analysis upon the unification of its people.  In-

sularity, contiguity, intermingling, inter-commercial

relations, freedom of movement to and fro -- all these

have been contributory to the upbuilding of the Repub-

lic and the conquest of the continent.  This conquest

has been accomplished in a shorter time than that of

any other territory containing anything like the same

extent. Above all, it has been done in this brief space

of time without losing any of the arts of higher civiliza-

tion.  It is to be supposed that the front line of

people on its onward march would have become re-

duced to a lower scale of living, to a lower standard

of ideals, and would have lost something of the higher

ideals and standards which they had left behind in the

older states from which they had emigrated.

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Interstate Migration and the Making of the Union 305

A little thought of the effect of hardships upon

human character, of the stimulating effect of labor and

toil for subsistence, of the development of will power

in a climate not too severe for human life nor yet too

soft and enervating will show the reasons for this preser-

vation of the American character and even for the ab-

sorption of constant Nile-like deposits of foreign con-

tributions to our racial soil.  Witness the difference

between our nation, occupying a temperate zone where

severe winters compel incessant toil and storing of foods

during the summer season and the over-hardships of

the Esquimo to the north of us or the indolent and

care-free nation on the south.  Why should anyone

subject himself to toil when a dinner may be gathered

from a tree or a drink from a cactus plant?

Prophetic Bishop Berkeley had said in colonial days:

"Westward the course of empire takes its way."  As

early as 1837 the French visitor to America, De Tocque-

ville, saw the importance of this steady westward move-

ment of the people of America and declared that they

flowed on "like a people driven onward by the relent-

less hand of God himself."  We ourselves seemed not

to grasp the significance of this advance until recent

times. To only a few of its aspects will my time per-

mit me to call your attention this afternoon.

Last autumn I stood by invitation of your Society

and a patriotic society of the energetic women of your

state before the house of General Rufus Putnam, at

Marietta, to help celebrate the coming of that noble band

of pioneers from far-off Massachusetts to found the

first colony to the north and west of the Ohio river.

Your Society honors itself in honoring these historic

sites by the erection of tablets and monuments for

Vol. XXXII--20.

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306     Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

future generations to receive the inspiration which must

come from Ohio's historic heritage.  The heroic men

and the brave and enduring women who settled there

had crossed the fearful barrier of the Allegheny Moun-

tains. Where once they had been held back and cooped

up on the Atlantic Coast Plain by these lofty mountains,

they were now cut off by them from their friends and

relatives remaining on the coast.  They were isolated

and thrown upon their own resources.    Thus was

American character developed and initiative engen-

dered.

In order to people these new lands and territories,

additions of population were necessary at regular in-

tervals.  Naturally there have been three sources upon

which we have drawn for increase of state population:

1. Migrants from one state to another. 2. Importa-

tion of foreign born. 3. Birth of children.

The first of these is the one of which we hear little.

The second has absorbed our attention.  Transfer of

person and property from one commonwealth to an-

other is so easily accomplished by us as compared with

the people of the Old World that we pay slight heed

to shifting of residence, except in the matter of voting.

A citizen may at will pass with his family and property

from one state to another without being conscious of

having crossed a boundary line.

The shifting of surplus population from the older

to the newer states has thus built up and peopled the

civilized continent in a manner unparalleled in history

and not likely to be equalled on any unsettled continent

of the future.  Increase of communication and of

means of transportation are responsible for the onward

march of the people from the Atlantic to the Pacific

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Interstate Migration and the Making of the Union 307

over a space of three thousand miles in longitude and

nearly as great in latitude in the brief time of two

hundred and fifty years; or, at the most, in three hun-

dred years.  From Jamestown in 1619 to California

in 1869, about the time of the completion of the Pacific

railway lines to the coast, marks the first span; and to

1919 the second.

The East has always been the hive from which these

swarms of people went forth into the new West to de-

velop it and bring its standards up to those of the states

they left behind. "Out of the cradle, rocking endlessly,"

sings Whitman of this spectacle.  Greeley, in giving

his advice to the young idlers of the East to "Go West,

young man," might well have said, "Go due west," for

that is what the people have done. The movement of

the people has been almost wholly due west along the

same lines of latitude.  Let a few statistics from a

census report bear out the statement.

Take the state of Ohio in 1900, for example.  At

that time increased means of transportation had not

abnormally enlarged the number of persons who mi-

grated permanently from one state to another and gives

us a more accurate data than later reports.  In that

year there were in Ohio 215,000 American-born resi-

dents, natives of another state. Where had they come

from? From the eastward. Due east of Ohio lies the

commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  In 1900 there were

131,000 natives of Pennsylvania residing in Ohio, more

than from any other state, and as many as from all the

other states together.  New York furnished Ohio the

second largest number of citizens from other states --

yet but little over one-third the number from Pennsyl-

vania.

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Further to the eastward lie the New England states.

Of these Massachusetts gave 7,000 but New Jersey,

more due east, with a population of half a million less

than Massachusetts, more than equalled her contribu-

tion to Ohio. Connecticut, Vermont, Maine and New

Hampshire followed in order.

Of the South Atlantic states, Georgia was the most

populous. How many Georgians had come northwest

to live in Ohio?   While Pennsylvania had given

131,000, or more than half the outside-born residents of

Ohio, Georgia had sent 1,700, but little over one per

cent as many.   Virginia, the next largest southern

state and much nearer to Ohio, gave her 32,000 while

New York supplied nearly twice as many. And it is

to be remembered that those were in part the pre-

West Virginia days when nothing but the Ohio river

lay between the states of Ohio and Virginia.

If your patience will allow, let us now examine the

due west movement from Georgia and see whence it led

in inter-state migration.  Two and a quarter million

Georgians had sought other states for permanent resi-

dence, nearly as many as were left within the state. Of

those migrating, Alabama had attracted the largest

number, followed by Tennessee.

Emigration from Georgia to Texas illustrates the

ease with which the people will leap over intervening

lands and settle upon those that are made attractive by

a crisis or by sudden repute.  The third largest con-

tribution from Georgia was given to the far-off state of

Texas.   Here the settlers passed through Alabama,

Mississippi and Louisiana to reach the fabulous lands

of Texas.  "Texas or bust" had followed the acquisi-

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Interstate Migration and the Making of the Union 309

tion of the Mexican lands as "Pike's Peak or bust" fol-

lowed the days of '49 and California.

With your permission I shall carry the statistical

investigation a step further and make inquiry concern-

ing the migration from the state of Ohio.  To the

average Ohioan, such an inquiry would seem to be of

no avail; for what true native of Ohio can conceive of a

man migrating voluntarily from its prosperous and

happy limits to drag out an attenuated existence in any

other state of the Union? Unbelievable as it is, never-

theless, in 1900 there were 178,000 natives of the real

mother of presidents who had for one reason or an-

other removed to Indiana and 137,000 so short-sighted

as to have removed to Illinois. Then followed Kansas,

Michigan and Iowa in order.

In contrast with these states lying mostly in a west-

ern direction from Ohio, Mississippi could boast of only

1,500 Buckeyes within her limits whilst Texas has

nearly ten times as many.  Distant Oregon had taken

nearly six times as many residents away from Ohio as

had Louisiana. This so-called "due westward" move-

ment is owed, as you will readily have surmised, to cli-

matic reasons.  A northern climate will attract north-

erners and a southern climate will similarly affect south-

erners.  Similar climates mean similar occupations,

similar food crops, similar agricultural working condi-

tions and similar clothing and manner of living. The

Ohioan migrating to Iowa finds all these things much

the same in his new home as they were in the home he

has left behind; but if he removes to Mississippi or to

Maine, he finds all known customs and practices largely

overthrown and must learn new ways of living and of

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working.    This means loss of time and loss of wealth.

One can only guess at the amount of money that has

been lost by adventurous farmers, who have been suc-

cessful in raising corn and hogs in Ohio, going to de-

velop orchards and raise citrus fruit in Florida or in

California.

Thus I have tried to show how the states lying to

the west have been recruited by fresh swarm after

swarm of people who left the eastern home hive and

"struck out for the tall timber" of a western state or

territory with a freedom of movement which could not

in the least be comprehended in a European country.

This movement of the people continued in its great task

of covering the continent from East to West until the

front line had about reached the Great Plains, as the

western prairies of what is now Kansas and Nebraska

and the Dakotas were called.  Then came a sudden

turn of the tide, a deflection of the stream which had

set in westwardly for so many years.  Gold was dis-

covered in California. In 1840, no enumeration of

that state was made for the region was part of Mex-

ico. In 1850, there were nearly 100,000 people within

the bounds of modern California and that number had

increased more than four times over in the next ten

years.

This started a counter movement from west to east

which in time affected Idaho, Nevada and Arizona.

This is shown by the fact that in 1900 there were 7,195

residents of Nevada who were natives of California and

only 60 who had come from Ohio.  But this back fire

died out in the arid regions between the Sierra Nevada

and the Rocky Mountains. Now there are 88 Ohioans

living in Kansas to every one Californian.

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Interstate Migration and the Making of the Union 311

Nor has there ever been any other marked return

movement.   The course of empire has never pursued

its way from west to east, save for those who were dis-

satisfied with the West and returned to some eastern

state and also naturally for those who were given in

marriage.  Ohio sent 16,762 citizens to dwell in the

state of Washington. That state reciprocated by send-

ing 253 Washingtonians to live in the Buckeye state. It

would, consequently, require the migration eastward of

16,509 Washingtonians to balance the books with Ohio.

Ohio has given to Minnesota eighteen times as many

people as she has received from the northwestern state.

Nor is there a difference in the proportions of ex-

change of citizens in the southern states.  Texas has

been a pronounced offender in taking away many citi-

zens and returning but few. From Tennessee she drew

130,000 inhabitants and repaid that state with 4,000.

From distant Massachusetts she attracted 1,524 people

and gave in return one-fourth as many. She took away

25,000 people from Illinois and repaid for them with

3,000.  In Ohio there are 1,075 Texans residing; in

Texas 10,588 Ohioans resident.

In this interchange of people, some see the real birth

of the unity of the Nation; the failure of secession; the

force which has helped to overcome the decentralizing

tendencies of various race contributions; and the per-

petuity of the church, the schools, newspapers and all

the higher attributes of our civilization.  Well may

one, after even such a brief and inadequate considera-

tion of inter-state migration, have a new conception of

that clause in our beloved Constitution which reads,

"The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privi-

leges and immunities of citizens in the several states."

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