(Colonial Population Density, 1775) (Early 19th Century New Territories) (Primary Western Trails)

Early 19th-Century Westward Expansion

• At the end of the Revolutionary War [a.k.a. 'War of Independence'] in 1783, the population of the newly-independent 13 colonies was still small and largely concentrated in the northeastern corridor between Boston and present-day Washington, D.C.

• Although the colonies claimed all of the former British territory east of the Mississippi, it was not well-explored or populated.

• The colonial population was still largely east of the Appalachians, which until the discovery of the Cumberland Gap and other mountain transit routes were a barrier to westward movement.

• Earlier movement westward from the colonies was primarily of younger males founding their own farms (following the concept of primogeniture, the oldest son usually inherited established family property), or of individuals or groups 'exiled' from the religious colonies of the New England states (see for example the theologist Roger Williams and Religion in Colonial America).

• At the beginning of the 19th century U.S. territory increased dramatically via the Louisiana Purchase, as well as subsequent land acquisitions.

• There was an urgent need to populate these new territories to legitimize the U.S. claim and defend them militarily, as well as to benefit from them economically.

• The first major immigration period (1820-1860) brought millions of immigrants yearly by the 1840s, motivated by famine, disease, war, and persecution in Europe and the attraction of political and religious freedom and economic opportunity in the United States (see also the Wikipedia Immigration to the United States).

• The westward movement of these immigrants was to change the American nation and promote new regional and national identities,

'Identity' Problems of America as a New Nation

• After independence from England, the new country was uncertain about its national 'identity'. No longer 'English' colonies, who were they now? English heritage itself was diminishing, as most people had been born in the U.S., and immigration from Europe (including French and German 'Hessian' soldiers who had participated in the Revolutionary War and had already produced a multicultural population.

• The country was proud of the democratic ideals for which it had fought the war, but with an increasingly diverse population, lacking a common heritage in politics, religion, language or cultural identity, a national focus was needed to bring people together.

• Nation-building and the creation of a cultural 'work ethic' became the common focus, with individual accomplishment and the acquisiton and development of one's own land became universal goals.

• Notions of 'equality' and the rejection of European class systems were part of the new national ideal (cf. Mark Twain story about the plain farmer with his felt hat in the court of Louis XV). These were later to be strengthened by the frontier experience, as all people would be 'equal' in the fight for survival; self-reliance and the ability to cooperate with others were the only things on which one could count.

• There was also an 'emotional' impetus for the nation-building; starting from John Winthrop's 1630 'City on a hill' declaration of a new American utopia based on religious purity (and later the new nation's democratic ideals), both former colonists and newly-independent 'Americans' had often boasted about the virtues of American life vs that of mother England.

• This was not received favorably in England; in 1820 the literary critic Sidney Smith's essay 'Who Reads an American Book?' stimulated the desire to 'show what the new America could do.' [There were similar views in America even decades later, for example those of Henry James.]

(The Route Taken by Lewis and Clark) (Primary Western Trails) (A Typical Wagon Train) (A Great Plains Homestead Sod House) (1890s Population Density [cf. F.J. Turner])

Trails and Metaphors of the Westward Movement

• The Westward movement might be thought to begin in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase, following which President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the Lewis and Clark expedition to investigate what had actually been purchased. Lewis and Clark began their journey from St. Louis up the Missouri River toward the Pacific Ocean in 1804, and concluded in 1806.

• Relatively soon thereafter, enticed by the promise of free and fertile lands, an abundance of natural resources [including gold and silver], and/or desires to establish their own independent communities far away from others, increasing numbers of people began to follow primitive trails westward across the Great Plains and through the Rocky Mountains toward the West.

• The best-known of these are the Santa Fe, Oregon, California and Mormon Trails, though there were numerous regional routes (such as the Southern, Gila, Applegate and Bozeman trails) and variations on all of these.

• Well-familiar from Hollywood films, the most popular metaphor for the westward movement is 'Conestoga' wagon trains of pulled by oxen, mules or horses. 'Trains' usually left St. Joseph or Independence, Missouri or Council Bluffs, Iowa in early spring, hoping to reach their destination in time to build shelters such as the 'sod house' shown at right before the onset of winter.

• Wagon trains all needed an elected 'captain', an agreed route and destination, one or more reliable guides, adequate supplies for the trip and beyond, enough participants to ensure survival against the threats they would face, and beyond this considerable luck if they were to succeed. Seldom did all speak a common language. Proper food preparation, mechanical, medical, and other needed skills were in short supply.

• A typical wagon train lasted 4-6 months and would have 10% or more fatalities en route (over 40% for the infamous Donner Party). The routes were across treacherous terrain where both 'black hat' ruffians and hostile Indians were common. Numerous people drowned in attempts to cross swift and wide rivers, were shot while hunting or trying to defend themselves, or perished from disease, infection, heat, cold or malnutrition, or from stampeding buffalo or poisonous snakes.

• Nonetheless, the West was eventually settled. On the grand historical scale, this was an immense accomplishment, and along with it numerous population traits and American 'core values' can be said to have had their origin (cf. Frederick Jackson Turner's 'frontier theory' of American History). It also shaped the formation of American English, and resulted in a number of new associations for existing English terms, such as for those of 'frontier' and the phrasal verb 'to fix'.

U.S. Immigration History and Religious Values (cf. Europe)

• Oscar Handlin, in The Uprooted, observed "Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history." The contributions of each group of immigrants to the development of American values may be at least as significant as Frederick Jackson Turner's 'Frontier Theory'.

• Both American immigration and the western settlement movement were influential on the high degree of 'religiosity' still characteristic of American life, unlike in Europe and most other prosperous nations (cf. August 2010 Gallup Poll on religiosity worldwide and the US-2 Religion in America outline).

• The many religious exiles and freedom-seekers in the New England colonies produced the 'City on the Hill' metaphor of American religious/political responsibility and sense of moral destiny

• 19th-century ethnic immigration often included groups from the same regions of their homeland. They spoke the same language, had the same cultural values, and often were ideologically motivated to create new 'model communities' on the American frontier based on their group's language and social and political values (cf. German Settlement in Missouri: New Land, Old Ways, Whereto? Germans Joined Germans and German-Americans)

• Once settled on farms and in small towns in the Midwest and West, life often revolved around churches and cultural groups based on the immigrants' common language, shared cultural values and mutual aspirations (see for example the story of Johann David Rau). Often there was a sense of 'liberation values' within the ethnic churches, cf. their European origins, and feeling of responsibility to 'enlighten' or 'minister to' others.

• Parallel to their church life, German-American cultural groups included the Turnvereins (based on the philosophy of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (see also American Turners Records, 1853-2004). Starting in the 1850s Turner Halls were built in German-American communities throughout the Midwest, many of them still in existence.

• Similar churches and cultural organizations also existed for almost all other immigrant groups who had enough members in the same local areas, all characterized by a strong pride in their linguistic and cultural identity. These different groups gave a secure basis for civic engagement with each other, and provided a foundation for the subsequent creation of larger community identities which were increasingly more 'American'.

The 'South' as an Exception to General U.S. Cultural and Linguistic Blending

(American English Dialect Regions #1) (American English Dialect Regions #2) (Southern Railroads During the Civil War)

• The immigration-driven Western movement also resulted in several American regional distinctions, those of the Northeast and particularly the South, with these two regions having been outside the general flow.

• Most 19th century immigrants arrived at ports in the central Northeastern states, either at New York's Castle Garden or Ellis Island or in Baltimore, Boston, or Philadelphia. For quicker access to destinations in the Midwest or Southwest, New Orleans or Galveston were often the ports of choice.

• Most immigrants arrived with little money and only what few possessions they could carry with them. Most stayed in or around the port of entry only until they had earned enough money to travel further inland, though for certain immigrant groups (particularly Italian and Jewish), many would stay in 'Little Italy' areas of New York or Philadelphia, for example, or in Jewish communities in Brooklyn, Baltimore and Boston.

• The majority who went westward in search of land or minerals took routes to or through the Midwest, with the first wave gradually spreading after they had passed the Appalachians, and subsequent groups often heading to Missouri where they would wait until they had the resources to join a wagon train across the Great Plains.

• While immigrants did go to join family members in Northeastern cities such as Boston, they did not do so in large numbers, and seldom did they go inland in the Northeast. This relatively small region, with its harsh climate, had been the first colonial area to be settled, and little usable farmland or other ability to earn a living still remained.

• Seldom did immigrants go to the American South, which until the end of the Civil War was slave territory, in which the immigrants could seldom get jobs to earn a living. The subtropical climate of the Deep South was also very different from that of the immigrants' homelands; immigrants strongly tended to seek conditions that were as similar as possible to what they had been familiar with (e.g. Finns, Swedes and Norwegians to Minnesota and upper Michigan; Germans wherever there was a relatively moderate climate with good farmland and ample supplies of water, etc.).

• This population bypassing of the South can easily be seen in the two American English dialect maps at right, where the top one particuarly seems to suggest a dialect correlation with the old Western wagon trails. Areas with particular dialects are those which were largely excluded from population intermingling. Note the regions of the Appalachian and Ozark 'hillbillies' in the middle image as interesting examples of this.

• Curiously, the bypassing can also be seen in the Civil War-era southern states railroad map at right. Notice how almost all of the railway tracks have an east-west orientation, with only one major rail line having a north-south axis. This was of great advantage to the army of the Confederacy during the war, as they were able to move defensive troops quickly along the east-west axis, whereas the Northern forces had few rail links to carry troops and supplies southward.

• This population bypassing is why the 'Old South' remained so fixed in its ways from the 19th century through the mid-20th century, and why the novels of William Faulkner, for example, based on an extended family living in Yoknapatawpha County in northern Mississippi much more resemble the Forsyte Saga of England's John Galsworthy, for example, than any of Faulkner's American literary colleages from other U.S. regions. The 'Old South' only began to change slowly into the 'New South' in the 1960s and 1970s, when greater interaction began to develop with other U.S. regions, and, especially with the advent of industrial air conditioning, jobs began to leave the Northern 'rust belt' toward new locales with lower taxation and a snow-free climate.

Regional 'Identities' of the Northeast, Midwest and West

• The Northeast, Midwest and West have their own identities as well, based on their geography and chronological role in American history.

• The Northeast is regarded as the 'oldest' region of the country, as the first dominant colonies were here. It is a region of heritage, still epitomized to some extent by the Boston 'Brahmins' or more recently the Kennedy family. It is a region known for world-class higher educational institutions, including most of the Ivy League universities. The liberal politics of the urban Eastern seaboard contrast sharply with the conservatism of the rural hinterlands of each state. Boston is a center of education; New York the center of commerce, banking, media and entertainment, among many others. Washington D.C., the nation's capital, is its political center, though also widely known for its outstanding museums and other cultural attractions.

• The Midwest is regarded as 'America's heartland,' a state of mind as well as a place. It is where the ordinary American lives and works, as symbolized in the 'Middletown' studies of Robert and Helen Lynd, who chose a locale [Muncie, Indiana] where ' two streams of colonists' moving westward from the Northeastern and South-Central states met and blended into a common denominator of the U.S. Agriculture is the common denominator of the Midwest, even if such cities as Chicago and Detroit have long been known for their trade and industry. Politically the Midwest is conservative yet pragmatic, not quick to take up new ideas, but willing to do so if they prove better than those of the past.

• The West is known as the 'newest' and overall still least-populated of the U.S. regions. It was the last to be settled, and its large expanses of mountains and deserts are still largely empty. Many of the largest tribal lands of the U.S. 'Native American' Indian population are in the West, particularly those of the Navajo and Hopi tribes of the '4 corners' region.

  The West has a reputation for innovativeness, thanks in part to Silicon Valley, Silicon Forest in Oregon, and Microsoft in and around Seattle, not to mention the film, music and other media industries of the Los Angeles area. The West shares with the Northeast a coastal, multiethnic, progressive, outward-looking and international mentality which is the basis for terms such as 'flyover country' referring to the rest of American over which airplanes pass when carrying artists and executives between New York, Boston, Washington and Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.