Americans: Born in 1815

How the Frontier made the American People not Independence

July 4th 1776 is the day that the Thirteen Colonies assumed, among the Powers of the Earth, separate and equal station becoming the independent thirteen united States of America. Yet, while the Thirteen States were Independent, I do not fully believe that “America” was born. So much of what makes America, “America,” had yet to be fully formed. The War for Independence would not end for another seven years. The modern government of the United States, the Constitution, would not be established and ratified by all original Thirteen States until 1790, fourteen years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

But these events, momentous as they were, pale with what was still to come. One of the quintessential elements of “America,” and the “American,” is a restlessness of the soul, discontentment with their current lot and a fervent optimism that the best was always ahead. For that the young republic would need the West.

Before the Revolution, the Appalachians had served as the marker of Anglo-American civilization. The land beyond was wild land, unfit for a civilized people. Those colonials who chose to go out into the Western regions were maligned and seen as troublemakers and savages. This did not change after Independence. George Washington himself would bemoan the kind of men who moved into the western territories, calling them:

[B]anditti who bid defiance to all authority

Timothy Flint would write the Western lands were:

[A] grand reservoir for the scum of the Atlantic states

There was no grand romance in Western Settlement. To leave existing society and emigrate into the hinterlands was the lot of societal rejects. Even in territory that had been settled for generations and integrated into an existing state, their still existed powerful prejudice from those on the coast against those in the upcountry. Yet despite the disgust many in the East held for the ‘backwoodsman,’ the Western Territories were still organized, opened and promoted for settlement by the Federal Government.

Slowly but surely, booster literature, both public and private, extolling the virtues of the Western lands would circulate throughout the United States and initiate a sea change in the minds of Americans. The West would come to be a land of opportunity: a Biblical Paradise nearly on par with the Garden of Eden. The virgin soils of the West promised to make any free hold farmer richer than he could ever imagine back East. For a fraction of the work too.

Settler Revolution

By 1815, someone who went West was no longer a “banditti” or “scum,” but a “settler” and a “pioneer.” Western settlement had not only become respectable, it had become romantic. Productive and cheaper land helped sell Western plots, but it was dreams which truly pushed settlement over the top. From 1815-1819 about 400,000 settlers would enter into the Northwest territories, compared with a mere 195,000 from 1805-1815. A similar situation would play out in the Southwestern territories, encompassing modern states from Alabama to Texas. The whole region would go from a population of 153,000 in 1810 to 457,000 in 1820.

Settlement had become a mania. One that would boom and bust throughout the 19th Century. Wherever Americans dreamed of riches and a better life, they flocked to by the hundreds of thousands. No matter that for every three towns that would mushroom in year, two would become ghost towns the next, there remained a relentless romantic optimism towards to the West. When the Frontier was closed, when the pioneer spirit had settled the United States from Appalachia to the Pacific, that settler spirit still remained. A restlessness of the soul, an inability to remain content in one’s own circumstances, a relentless belief that the best would lay ahead. The essential American spirit would drive the country beyond the borders of North America into the Pacific and the Atlantic and in time establish a global hegemony.

---

I’ve recently gotten a pet supply company (www.pettechworld.com) as a sponsor. If you want to support me, you can make an order through them for you basic pet needs. As a History in Story reader, you get an exclusive 10% off on your next purchase from PetTech World. Just use the code HISTORY10OFF at checkout on www.pettechworld.com. It's the perfect opportunity to upgrade your pet care game and show your furry friends how much you love them. The company is based in the USA, so shipping is only available there.