Rise of the New West, 1819-1829

by Frederick Jackson Turner

It must not be forgotten that, in these years of entrance upon its industrial career, the middle region was also the scene of intellectual movements of importance. These were the days when the Knickerbocker school in New York brought independence and reputation to American literature, when Irving, although abroad, worked the rich mine of Hudson River traditions, and Cooper utilized his early experience in the frontier around Lake Otsego to write his "Leatherstocking Tales." Movements for social amelioration abounded. The lighting of New York City and Philadelphia by gas diminished crime. Reform movements with regard to imprisonment for debt and the improvement of the condition of prisons, temperance movements, improvements in the administration of the public schools, and the increase in the number of high-schools were all indicative of the fact that this new democracy was not unresponsive to ideals. Among the New England element of western New York, as has already been pointed out, there arose some of the most interesting religious and political movements of the period, such as Mormonism, Spiritualism, and Antimasonry. The Presbyterians and Baptists found a sympathetic constituency in the new regions. It is easy to see that the traits of these western counties of the middle states were such that idealistic political movements, as antislavery, would find in them effective support.

Obviously, the political traits of this section would have a significance proportionate to the power of its population and resources. On the whole, the middle region was the most democratic section of the seaboard, but it was managed by the politicians under a system of political bargaining for the spoils of office. The old ascendancy which the great families exercised over New York politics [Footnote: Becker, "Nominations in Colonial New York" (Am. Hist. Rev., VI., 261).] was on the wane. The rise of the western half of the state diminished the influence of the successors to the patroons; but, nevertheless, family power continued to make itself felt, and a group of new men arose, around whom factions formed and dissolved in a kaleidoscope of political change.

During the colonial period, executive patronage and land grants had been used to promote the interests of the men in power, and the reaction against executive corruption resulted in a provision in New York's constitution of 1777 whereby the executive was limited by the Council of Appointment. The state was divided into four districts, and one senator from each was selected by the House of Representatives to serve in this council. [Footnote: Fish, Civil Service, 87.] By 1821 the council appointed 8287 military officers and 6663 civil officers. Nearly all the state officers, all the mayors, militia officers, and justices of the peace fell under its control.[Footnote: Hammond, Political Parties in N.Y., II., 65.] This concentration of the appointive power in the hands of the dominant faction brought the system of rotation in office, and the doctrine that to the victors belong the spoils of war, to a climax. It led to the building up of political machines by the use of offices, from the lowest to the highest, as the currency for political trading. The governor was checked, but the leaders of the party in power held despotic control over the offices of the state.

This bargaining was facilitated by the extension of the system of nominating conventions. From the local units of town and county upwards, the custom of sending delegates to conventions had early developed in the state. It had become a settled practice for the representatives of one local unit to agree with those of another regarding the order in which their favorite sons should receive office. Town bargained with town, county with county, district with district. In place of the system of control by the established classes, New York's democracy was learning to elaborate the machinery of nomination by the people; but in the process there was developed a race of managing politicians, and the campaigns tended to become struggles between personal elements for power rather than contests on political issues.

The finished product of New York politics is shown in Van Buren, the devotee of "regularity" in party and the adroit manager of its machinery. Shrewdness, tact, and self-reliant judgment, urbane good- humor, mingled with a suspicious and half-cynical expression, were written on his face. "Little Van" was an affable, firm, and crafty politician. Although he was not a creative statesman, neither was he a mere schemer. He had definite ideas, if not convictions, of the proper lines of policy, and was able to state them with incisive and forcible argument when occasion demanded. To him, perhaps, more than to any other of the politicians, fell the task of organizing the campaign of Crawford, and afterwards of making the political combinations that brought in the reign of Andrew Jackson. He was the leader of that element of New York politics known as the Bucktails, from the emblem worn by the Tammany Society. Clinton, his opponent, exercised an influence somewhat akin to the Livingstons, the Schuylers, the Van Rensselaers, and the other great family leaders in the baronial days of New York politics. Brusque, arrogant, and ambitious, he combined the petty enmities of a domineering politician with flashes of statesman-like insight, and he crushed his way to success by an exterminating warfare against his enemies. Around him gathered a personal following embracing one wing of the Republicans, aided by a large fraction of the old Federal party. For the most part, his strength lay along the line of the Erie Canal and in the regions where the New England element was strong.

About these New York rivals were grouped many lesser lights, for the political organization tended to create a multitude of able political leaders, many of them capable of holding high position, but few of them swayed by compelling ideas or policies.

In Pennsylvania, where the spoils system and the nominating convention developed contemporaneously with the movement in New York, there were even fewer men of the highest political rank. Gallatin's effective career belongs to an earlier period, and he had no successor, as a national figure, among the Pennsylvania party chieftains.

CHAPTER IV

THE SOUTH (1820-1830)

In the decade which forms the subject of this volume, no section underwent more far-reaching changes than did the group of South Atlantic states made up of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, with which this chapter will deal under the name of the south. Then it was that the south came to appreciate the effect of the westward spread of the cotton-plant upon slavery and politics. The invention of the cotton-gin by Eli Whitney, [Footnote: Am. Hist. Review, III., 99.] in 1793, made possible the profitable cultivation of the short-staple variety of cotton. Before this, the labor of taking the seeds by hand from this variety, the only one suited to production in the uplands, had prevented its use; thereafter, it was only a question of time when the cotton area, no longer limited to the tidewater region, would extend to the interior, carrying slavery with it. This invention came at an opportune time. Already the inventions of Arkwright, Hargreaves, and Cartwright had worked a revolution in the textile industries of England, by means of the spinning-jenny, the power-loom, and the factory system, furnishing machinery for the manufacture of cotton beyond the world's supply.[Footnote: M. B. Hammond, Cotton Industry, chaps, i., ii.; Von Halle, "Baumwollproduktion," in Schmoller, Staats und Social- wissenschaftliche Forschungen, XV.] Under the stimulus of this demand for cotton, year by year the area of slavery extended towards the west. In the twenties, some of the southern counties of Virginia were attempting its cultivation; [Footnote: Va. Const. Conv., Debates (1829-1830), 333, 336; Martin, Gazetteer of Va. and D. C. (1836), 99.] interior counties of North Carolina were combining cotton-raising with their old industries; in South Carolina the area of cotton and slavery had extended up the rivers well beyond the middle of the state; [Footnote: Schaper, "Sectionalism and Representation in S. C.," in Am. Hist. Assoc. Report, 1900, I., 387- 393.] while in Georgia the cotton planters, so long restrained by the Indian line, broke through the barriers and spread over the newly ceded lands. [Footnote: Phillips, "Georgia and State Rights," in Ibid., 1901, II. 140 (map).] The accompanying table shows the progress of this crop: It is evident from the figures that tidewater South Carolina and Georgia produced practically all of the cotton crop in 1791, when the total was but two million pounds. By 1821 the old south produced one hundred and seventeen million pounds, and, five years later, one hundred and eighty millions. But how rapidly in these five years the recently settled southwest was overtaking the older section cotton crop (in million pounds)[Footnote: Based on MacGregor, Commercial Statistics, 462; cf. De Bow's Review, XVII., 428; Von Halle, Baumwollproduktion, 169; Secretary of Treasury, Report, 1855-1856, p. 116. There are discrepancies; the figures are to be taken as illustrative rather than exact; e.g., De Bow gives seventy million pounds for Mississippi in 1826.] [Table omitted] is shown by its total of over one hundred and fifty millions. By 1834 the southwest had distanced the older section. What had occurred was a repeated westward movement: the cotton-plant first spread from the sea-coast to the uplands, and then, by the beginning of our period, advanced to the Gulf plains, until that region achieved supremacy in its production.