The pleasures and the toils of the life were alike peculiar. In the wilder parts the loneliness and the fierce struggle with squalid poverty, and with the tendency to revert to savage conditions, inevitably produced for a generation or two a certain falling off from the standard of civilized communities. It needed peculiar qualities to insure success, and the pioneers were almost exclusively native Americans. The Germans were more thrifty and prosperous, but they could not go first into the wilderness. [Footnote: Michaux, p. 63, etc.] Men fresh from England rarely succeeded. [Footnote: Parkinson's "Tour in America, 1798-1800," pp. 504, 588, etc. Parkinson loathed the Americans. A curious example of how differently the same facts will affect different observers may be gained by contrasting his] The most pitiable group of emigrants that reached the West at this time was formed by the French [Footnote: observations with those of his fellow Englishman, John Davis, whose trip covered precisely the same period; but Parkinson's observations as to the extreme difficulty of an Old Country farmer getting on in the backwoods regions are doubtless mainly true.] who came to found the town of Gallipolis, on the Ohio. These were mostly refugees from the Revolution, who had been taken in by a swindling land company. They were utterly unsuited to life in the wilderness, being gentlemen, small tradesmen, lawyers, and the like. Unable to grapple with the wild life into which they found themselves plunged, they sank into shiftless poverty, not one in fifty showing industry and capacity to succeed. Congress took pity upon them and granted them twenty-four thousand acres in Scioto County, the tract being known as the French grant; but no gift of wild land was able to insure their prosperity. By degrees they were absorbed into the neighboring communities, a few succeeding, most ending their lives in abject failure. [Footnote: Atwater, p. 159; Michaux, p. 122, etc.]
Trouble with Land Titles.
The trouble these poor French settlers had with their lands was far from unique. The early system of land sales in the West was most unwise. In Kentucky and Tennessee the grants were made under the laws of Virginia and North Carolina, and each man purchased or preempted whatever he could, and surveyed it where he liked, with a consequent endless confusion of titles. The National Government possessed the disposal of the land in the Northwest and in Mississippi; and it avoided the pitfall of unlimited private surveying; but it made little effort to prevent swindling by land companies, and none whatever to people the country with actual settlers. Congress granted great tracts of lands to companies and to individuals, selling to the highest bidder, whether or not he intended personally to occupy the country. Public sales were thus conducted by competition, and Congress even declined to grant to the men in actual possession the right of pre-emption at the average rate of sale, refusing the request of settlers in both Mississippi and Indiana that they should be given the first choice to the lands which they had already partially cleared. [Footnote: American State Papers, Public Lands, I., 261; also pp. 71, 74, 99, etc.] It was not until many years later that we adopted the wise policy of selling the National domain in small lots to actual occupants.
Sullen Jealousy of the Pioneers.
Clouded Economic Notions.
The pioneer in his constant struggle with poverty was prone to look with puzzled anger at those who made more money than he did, and whose lives were easier. The backwoods farmer or planter of that day looked upon the merchant with much the same suspicion and hostility now felt by his successor for the banker or the railroad magnate. He did not quite understand how it was that the merchant, who seemed to work less hard than he did, should make more money; and being ignorant and suspicious, he usually followed some hopelessly wrong-headed course when he tried to remedy his wrongs. Sometimes these efforts to obtain relief took the form of resolutions not to purchase from merchants or traders such articles as woollens, linens, cottons, hats, or shoes, unless the same could be paid for in articles grown or manufactured by the farmers themselves. This particular move was taken because of the alarming scarcity of money, and was aimed particularly at the inhabitants of the Atlantic States. It was of course utterly ineffective. [Footnote: Marshall, II., p. 325.] A much less wise and less honest course was that sometimes followed of refusing to pay debts when the latter became inconvenient and pressing. [Footnote: The inhabitants of Natchez, in the last days of the Spanish dominion, became inflamed with hostility to their creditors, the merchants, and insisted upon what were practically stay laws being enacted in their favor. Gayarré and Claiborne.]
Vices of the Militia System.
The frontier virtue of independence and of impatience of outside direction found a particularly vicious expression in the frontier abhorrence of regular troops, and advocacy of a hopelessly feeble militia system. The people were foolishly convinced of the efficacy of their militia system, which they loudly proclaimed to be the only proper mode of national defence. [Footnote: Marshall, II., p. 279.] While in the actual presence of the Indians the stern necessities of border warfare forced the frontiersmen into a certain semblance of discipline. As soon as the immediate pressure was relieved, however, the whole militia system sank into a mere farce. At certain stated occasions there were musters for company or regimental drill. These training days were treated as occasions for frolic and merry-making. There were pony races and wrestling matches, with unlimited fighting, drunkenness, and general uproar. Such musters were often called, in derision, cornstalk drills, because many of the men, either having no guns or neglecting to bring them, drilled with cornstalks instead. The officers were elected by the men and when there was no immediate danger of war they were chosen purely for their social qualities. For a few years after the close of the long Indian struggle there were here and there officers who had seen actual service and who knew the rudiments of drill; but in the days of peace the men who had taken part in Indian fighting cared but little to attend the musters, and left them more and more to be turned into mere scenes of horseplay.
Lack of Military Training.
The frontier people of the second generation in the West thus had no military training whatever, and though they possessed a skeleton militia organization, they derived no benefit from it, because their officers were worthless, and the men had no idea of practising self-restraint or of obeying orders longer than they saw fit. The frontiersmen were personally brave, but their courage was entirely untrained, and being unsupported by discipline, they were sure to be disheartened at a repulse, to be distrustful of themselves and their leaders, and to be unwilling to persevere in the face of danger and discouragement. They were hardy, and physically strong, and they were good marksmen; but here the list of their soldierly qualities was exhausted. They had to be put through a severe course of training by some man like Jackson before they became fit to contend on equal terms with regulars in the open or with Indians in the woods. Their utter lack of discipline was decisive against them at first in any contest with regulars. In warfare with the Indians there were a very few of their number, men of exceptional qualities as woodsmen, who could hold their own; but the average frontiersman, though he did a good deal of hunting and possessed much knowledge of woodcraft, was primarily a tiller of the soil and a feller of trees, and he was necessarily at a disadvantage when pitted against an antagonist whose entire life was passed in woodland chase and woodland warfare. These facts must all be remembered if we wish to get an intelligent explanation of the utter failure of the frontiersmen when, in 1812, they were again pitted against the British and the forest tribes. They must also be taken into account when we seek to explain why it was possible but a little later to develop out of the frontiersmen fighting armies which under competent generals could overmatch the red coat and the Indian alike.
Individualism in Religious Matters.
The Great Revival.