The Frontier in American History

by Frederick Jackson Turner

But there are some issues which cannot be settled by compromise, tendencies one of which must conquer the other. Such an issue the slave power raised, and raised too late for support in the upper half of the Mississippi Basin. The Northern and the Southern elements found themselves in opposition to each other. "A house divided against itself cannot stand," said Abraham Lincoln, a Northern leader of Southern origin. Douglas, a leader of the Southern forces, though coming from New England, declared his indifference whether slavery were voted up or down in the Western Territories. The historic debates between these two champions reveal the complex conditions in the Northwest, and take on a new meaning when considered in the light of this contest between the Northern and the Southern elements. The State that had been so potent for compromise was at last the battle-ground itself, and the places selected for the various debates of Lincoln and Douglas marked the strongholds and the outposts of the antagonistic forces.

At this time the kinship of western New York and the dominant element in the Northwest was clearly revealed. Speaking for the anti-slavery forces at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1860, Seward said: "The Northwest is by no means so small as you may think it. I speak to you because I feel that I am, and during all my mature life have been, one of you. Although of New York, I am still a citizen of the Northwest. The Northwest extends eastward to the base of the Alleghany Mountains, and does not all of western New York lie westward of the Alleghany Mountains? Whence comes all the inspiration of free soil which spreads itself with such cheerful voices over all these plains? Why, from New York westward of the Alleghany Mountains. The people before me,—who are you but New York men, while you are men of the Northwest?" In the Civil War, western New York and the Northwest were powerful in the forum and in the field. A million soldiers came from the States that the Ordinance, passed by Southern votes, had devoted to freedom.

This was the first grave time of trial for the Northwest, and it did much eventually to give to the region a homogeneity and self-consciousness. But at the close of the war the region was still agricultural, only half-developed; still breaking ground in northern forests; still receiving contributions of peoples which radically modified the social organism, and undergoing economic changes almost revolutionary in their rapidity and extent. The changes since the war are of more social importance, in many respects, than those in the years commonly referred to as the formative period. As a result, the Northwest finds herself again between contending forces, sharing the interests of East and West, as once before those of North and South, and forced to give her voice on issues of equal significance for the destiny of the republic.

In these transforming years since 1860, Ohio, finding the magician's talisman that revealed the treasury of mineral wealth, gas, and petroleum beneath her fields, has leaped to a front rank among the manufacturing States of the Union. Potential on the Great Lakes by reason of her ports of Toledo and Cleveland, tapping the Ohio river artery of trade at Cincinnati, and closely connected with all the vast material development of the upper waters of this river in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, Ohio has become distinctly a part of the eastern social organism, much like the State of Pennsylvania. The complexity of her origin still persists. Ohio has no preponderant social center; her multiplicity of colleges and universities bears tribute to the diversity of the elements that have made the State. One-third of her people are of foreign parentage (one or both parents foreign-born), and the city of Cincinnati has been deeply affected by the German stock, while Cleveland strongly reflects the influence of the New England element. That influence is still very palpable, but it is New England in the presence of natural gas, iron, and coal, New England shaped by blast and forge. The Middle State ideals will dominate Ohio's future.

Bucolic Indiana, too, within the last decade has come into the possession of gas-fields and has increased the exploitation of her coals until she seems destined to share in the industrial type represented by Ohio. Cities have arisen, like a dream, on the sites of country villages. But Indiana has a much smaller proportion of foreign elements than any other State of the Old Northwest, and it is the Southern element that still differentiates her from her sisters. While Ohio's political leaders still attest the Puritan migration, Indiana's clasp hands with the leaders from the South.

The Southern elements continue also to reveal themselves in the Democratic southwestern counties of Illinois, grouped like a broad delta of the Illinois River, while northern Illinois holds a larger proportion of descendants of the Middle States and New England. About one-half her population is of foreign parentage, in which the German, Irish, and Scandinavians furnish the largest elements. She is a great agricultural State and a great manufacturing State, the connecting link between the Mississippi and the Great Lakes. Her metropolis, Chicago, is the very type of Northwestern development for good and for evil. It is an epitome of her composite nationality. A recent writer, analyzing the school census of Chicago, points out that "only two cities in the German Empire, Berlin and Hamburg, have a greater German population than Chicago; only two in Sweden, Stockholm and Göteborg, have more Swedes; and only two in Norway, Christiana and Bergen, have more Norwegians"; while the Irish, Polish, Bohemians, and Dutch elements are also largely represented. But in spite of her rapidity of growth and her complex elements, Chicago stands as the representative of the will-power and genius for action of the Middle West, and the State of Illinois will be the battle-ground for social and economic ideals for the next generation.

Michigan is two States. The northern peninsula is cut off from the southern physically, industrially, and in the history of settlement. It would seem that her natural destiny was with Wisconsin, or some possible new State embracing the iron and copper, forest and shipping areas of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota on Lake Superior. The lower peninsula of Michigan is the daughter of New York and over twelve per cent of Michigan's present population were born in that State, and her traits are those of the parent State. Over half her population is of foreign parentage, of which Canada and England together have furnished one-half, while the Germans outnumber any other single foreign element. The State has undergone a steady industrial development, exploiting her northern mines and forests, developing her lumber interests with Saginaw as the center, raising fruits along the lake shore counties, and producing grain in the middle trough of counties running from Saginaw Bay to the south of Lake Michigan. Her state university has been her peculiar glory, furnishing the first model for the state university, and it is the educational contribution of the Northwest to the nation.

Wisconsin's future is dependent upon the influence of the large proportion of her population of foreign parentage, for nearly three-fourths of her inhabitants are of that class. She thus has a smaller percentage of native population than any other of the States formed from the Old Northwest. Of this foreign element the Germans constitute by far the largest part, with the Scandinavians second. Her American population born outside of Wisconsin comes chiefly from New York. In contrast with the Ohio River States, she lacks the Southern element. Her greater foreign population and her dairy interests contrast with Michigan's Canadian and English elements and fruit culture. Her relations are more Western than Michigan's by reason of her connection with the Mississippi and the prairie States. Her foreign element is slightly less than Minnesota's, and in the latter State the Scandinavians take the place held by the Germans in Wisconsin. The facility with which the Scandinavians catch the spirit of Western America and assimilate with their neighbors is much greater than is the case with the Germans, so that Wisconsin seems to offer opportunity for non-English influence in a greater degree than her sister on the west. While Minnesota's economic development has heretofore been closely dependent on the wheat-producing prairies, the opening of the iron fields of the Mesabi and Vermilion ranges, together with the development of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Duluth and West Superior, and the prospective achievement of a deep-water communication with the Atlantic, seem to offer to that State a new and imperial industrial destiny. Between this stupendous economic future to the northwest and the colossal growth of Chicago on the southeast Wisconsin seems likely to become a middle agricultural area, developing particularly into a dairy State. She is powerfully affected by the conservative tendencies of her German element in times of political agitation and of proposals of social change.

Some of the social modifications in this State are more or less typical of important processes at work among the neighboring States of the Old Northwest. In the north, the men who built up the lumber interests of the State, who founded a mill town surrounded by the stumps of the pine forests which they exploited for the prairie markets, have acquired wealth and political power. The spacious and well-appointed home of the town-builder may now be seen in many a northern community, in a group of less pretentious homes of operatives and tradesmen, the social distinctions between them emphasized by the difference in nationality. A few years before, this captain of industry was perhaps actively engaged in the task of seeking the best "forties" or directing the operations of his log-drivers. His wife and daughters make extensive visits to Europe, his sons go to some university, and he himself is likely to acquire political position, or to devote his energies to saving the town from industrial decline, as the timber is cut away, by transforming it into a manufacturing center for more finished products. Still others continue their activity among the forests of the South. This social history of the timber areas of Wisconsin has left clear indications in the development of the peculiar political leadership in the northern portion of the State.

In the southern and middle counties of the State, the original settlement of the native American pioneer farmer, a tendency is showing itself to divide the farms and to sell to thrifty Germans, or to cultivate the soil by tenants, while the farmer retires to live in the neighboring village, and perhaps to organize creameries and develop a dairy business. The result is that a replacement of nationalities is in progress. Townships and even counties once dominated by the native American farmers of New York extraction are now possessed by Germans or other European nationalities. Large portions of the retail trades of the towns are also passing into German hands, while the native element seeks the cities, the professions, or mercantile enterprises of larger character. The non-native element shows distinct tendencies to dwell in groups. One of the most striking illustrations of this fact is the community of New Glarus, in Wisconsin, formed by a carefully organized migration from Glarus in Switzerland, aided by the canton itself. For some years this community was a miniature Swiss canton in social organization and customs, but of late it has become increasingly assimilated to the American type, and has left an impress by transforming the county in which it is from a grain-raising to a dairy region.