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
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.
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,
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
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
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
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.