53, A Womqn in the Westword Movement
(t824)
Source: Elizabeth F. EIIet, Pioneer Women of the West (New York,
fi52),
PP.388'9s.
The westward migration plays a central part in American lore. The image
of the hardy pioneer triumphing over the wilderness (and Indians) has
been
immortalized in countless works of literature and Hollywood
movies. Reality on the frontier was often less appealing, especially for pioneer women.
The end of the War of r8rz, which broke the power of Indian tribes in
the Old Northwest and ended the British presence there, unleashed a wave
of migration from eastern states. Land was cheap, but travel remained
extremely difficult.In this account, written in r824, Harriet L. Noble
describes her family's migration from New York to Michigan, then a
sparsely settled territory (it would not become a state
until
r83Z). Her
vivid description of the hardships her family endured places special
emphasis on the burdens pioneer life placed on women. Nonetheless, she
ends by reaffirming the opportunities offered by westward migration
and her family's decision to move West.
Mv HUSBAND wAS seized with the mania, and accordingly made
preparation to start in |anuary with his brother. They took the Ohio
route, and were nearly a month in getting through; coming by way
of Monroe, and thence to Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. Mr. |ohn Allen
and Walter Rumsey with his wife and two men had been there some
four or five weeks, had built a small house, moved into it the day my
husband and his brother arrived, and were just preparing their first
meal, which the newcomers had the pleasure of partaking. They
spent a few days here,located a farm a little above the town on the
river Huron, and returned through Canada. They had been so much
pleased with the country, that they immediately commenced preparing to emigrate; and as near as I can recollect, we started about
the zoth of September, r824, for Michigan.
We traveled from our house in Geneva to Buffalo in wagons. The
roads were bad, and we were obliged to wait in Buffalo four days for
a boat, as the steamboat
After waiting
so
"Michigan" was the only one on the lake.
long we found she had put into Erie for repairs, and
had no prospect of being able to run again for some time. The next
step was to take passage in a schooner.. .. We were seven days on
Lake Erie, and so entirely prostrated with seasickness, as scarcely to
little ones. I had a little girl of
three years, and a babe some months old, and sister Noble had six
children, one an infant. It was a tedious voyage; the lake was very
rough most of the time, and I thought if we were only on land again,
I should be satisfied, it was a wilderness. I could not then realize
what it would be to live without a comfortable house through the
winter, but sad experience afterwards taught me a lesson not to be
forgotten.
be able to attend to the wants of our
a
I think it was on the 3d of october we started from Detroit, with
pair of oxen and a wagon, a few articles for cooking, and such nec-
essaries as we could not do without. It was necessary that they
should be few as possible, for our families were a full load for this
mode of traveling. . . . My sister and myself could assist but little, so
fatigued were we with walking and carrying our infants.... We
were all pretty cheerful, until we began to think of lying down for
the night. The men did not seem to dread it, however, and were
soon fast asleep, but sleep was not for me in such a wilderness. I
could think of nothing but wild beasts, or something as bad; so
that I had the pleasure of watching while the others slept. It seemed
a long, long night, and never in my life did I feel more grateful for
the blessing of returning d"y. . . . we met a large number of Indians;
and one old squaw followed us some distance with her papoose,
determined to swap babies. At last she gave it up, and for one I felt
relieved.
we
two log houses between this and Ann Arbor. About
the middle of the afternoon we found ourselves at our journey's
end-but what a prospect? There were some six or seven log huts
passed
occupied by as many inmates as could be crowded into them. . . . we
cooked our meals in the open air, there being no fire in the house
but a small box-stove. ... we lived in this way until our husbands
got a log house raised and the roof on; this took them about six
weeks, at the end of which time we went into it, without door, floor,
chimney, or anything but logs and roof.... we enjoyed uninterrupted health, but in the spring the ague with its accompaniments
gave us a call, and by the middle of August there were but four out
of fourteen who could call themselves well. We then fancied we
were too near the river for health. We sold out and bought again
ten miles west of Ann Arbor, a place which suited us better. . . . The
next thing wanted was a chimney; winter was close at hand and
the stone was not drawn. . .. My husband and myself were four
days building it. I suppose most of my lady friends would think a
woman quite out of "her legitimate sphere" in turning mason, but I
was not at all particular what kind of labor I performed, so we were
only comfortable and provided with the necessaries of life.
I am not of a desponding disposition, nor often low-spirited, and
having left New York to make Michigan my home, I had no idea of
going back, or being very unhappy. Yet the want of society, of church
privileges, and in fact almost every thing that makes life desirable,
would often make me sad in spite of all effort to the contrary. I had
no ladies' society for one year. . . except that of sister Noble and a
Mrs. Taylor, and was more lonely than either of them, my family
being so small.
When I look back upon my life, and see the ups and downs, the
hardships and privations I have been called upon to endure, I feel no
wish to be young again. I was in the prime of life when I came to
Michigan-only twenty-one, and my husband was thirty-three.
Neither of us knew the reality of hardship. Could we have known
what it was to be pioneers in a new country, we should never come,
but I am satisfied that with all the disadvantages of raising a family
in a new country, there is a consolation in knowing that our children are prepared to brave the ills of life, I believe, far better than
they would have been had we never left New York.
Questions
r. In what ways did the
experience of moving West alter traditional
expectations of women's roles?
79. George Henry Evons, "Freedom of the Soil,,
(1844)
Source:Working Manls Advocate (New york, fune r, fi44).
The economic depression that lasted from r837 into the early rg4os
inspired a rash of plans to improve the conditions of American workers.
one idea, popularized by George Henry Evans, was land reform. An immigrant from England who in r8z9 became the editor of The working Man's
pro-labor newspaper published in New york city, Evans argued
that the monopolizationof land by large owners was destroying ordinary
citizens'prospects for economic independence. Appealing to the tradi
Aduocate, a
tional equation of landownership with economic freedom, Evans pointed
to access to western land as a way of combating unemployment and low
wages in the East and the only alternative to permanent economic dependence for American workers. Evans's plan for the government to provide
free land in the west to settlers would be enacted into law in the Homestead Act of r862.
ArrrR rHn RnvoLUrroN,
which placed a vast increase of power
in the hands of the people in this country, the masses thought, and
thought truly, that they had the means of establishing the best government that the world ever saw. They made their first essay, they
completed their machine, and its workings were so far superior to
the operations of the old monarchial machinery, that they thought
their machine had attained perfection, and they began to grow vain
of the applause of the great and good throughout the world. Land
was cheap and easily accessible, and every thing went on prosperously for a time....Yet... although national improvements
progressed rapidly, and nationalwealth increased, yet the condition
of the working man was not improved! The rich were growing richer
and the polr polrerlThe non-producer was getting more andthe pro-
ducer
/ess
of the fruits of industry! How was this?.
edy is now discovered, and one that
will
..
A simple rem-
go far toward perfectingthis
machine of self government. The great defect, which has hitherto
enabled a few to live sumptuously without labor on the labor of the
many. .. is now discovered to be the Monopoly of the Soil. . ..
It is urged by the aristocracy in England, as an argument against
universal suffrage, that we have madenouse ofitto ameliorate our con-
dition, and that we still tolerate slavery.
...
Monarchy, to use
a
compre-
hensive phrase of a black writer, "stole the black man from his land,
and his land from the red man," and then he apportioned the stolen
bodies and the stolen land among a few of his own color to whom he
made the remainder of the whites as dependent for the means of exis-
tence as were the blacks themselves. And now, because
in seventy
years Democracy has not freed itself from the gigantic, complicated
trifold scheme of plunder entailed upon her, she is to be taunted
as
though the original sin was hers! We hurl back the charge in old Monarchy's teeth, and tell him that infant Democracy is now perfecting a
plan that will not only restore their rights to the blacl$, the Indians,
and the landless whites of this continent, but will contribute essentially, we trust, to the liberation of universal man; for all this good will
a restoration of the Equal right to the Land. . . .
Evidently, it seems to us, it is they'rsf duty of Democracy to decree
result from
the freedom of the soil.
Questions
r.
How does Evans try to explain the existence of economic inequality in
country of political democracl2
z.
Does Evans appear to be a
critic of slavery
as
well
as
land monopoly?
a
CHAPTSR
T3
il llnusu iliuiilsil ,lt{[-10il
17. John L, O'Sullivcn, Mqnifest Destiny (1845)
Source, lohn L. O'Sulliuan, "Annexatio4 " United States Magazine, and
Democratic Review, VoI. 17 (uly/August t84;),pp. S-ro.
The expansionist spirit of the r84os was captured in the phrase "manifest
destiny," coined by |ohn L. O'Sullivan, a New York journalist. O'Sullivan,
employed it to suggest that the United States had a divinely appointed
mission to occupy all of North America. This right to the continent was
provided by the nation's mission to extend the area of freedom. In the
excerpt that follows, O'Sullivan defends the annexation of Texas, and sug-
California, then a province of Mexico, would be the next area to
into the United States, linked to the rest of the country by a
new transcontinental road. O'Sullivan foresees the day when one government will control the entire North American continent. The spirit of manifest destiny would soon help to justify the Mexican War and, half a
gests that
be absorbed
century later, the annexation of Puerto Rico and the Philippines as a result
of the Spanish-American War.
Ir
rs rrME nowforall oppositionto annexation ofTexas to cease . . .
Texas is now ours. Already before these records are written, her
convention has undoubtedly ratified the acceptance,by her congress, of our proffered invitation into the Union; and made the requisite changes in her already republican form of constitution to
245
adapt
it to its future
federal relations. Her star and stripe may
already be said to have taken their place in the glorious blazon of
our common nationality; and the sweep of our eagle's wing already
includes
land.
within its circuit the wide extent of her fair and fertile
She is no longer to us a mere geographical
space-a certain combination of coast, plain, mountain, valley, forest, and stream. she is no
longer to us a mere country on the map . . . It is time when all should
cease to treat her as alien, and even adverse.. . and cease. . . thwarting our policy and hampering our power,limiting our greatness and
checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the
continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our
yearly multiplying millions.
It is wholly untrue, and rrnlrrr,,o'orrrr.lues, the pretense that the
annexation has been a measure of spoliation, unrightful and unrighteous of military conquest under forms of peace and law of territorial aggrandizement at the expense of justice.. ..
The independence of Texas was complete and absolute. It was an
independence, not only in fact, but of right. . . .If Texas became peopled with an American population, it was by no contrivance of our
government, but on the express invitation of that of Mexico herself;
accompanied with such guaranties of state independence, and the
maintenance of a federal system analogous to our own. .. She was
released, rightfully and absolutely released, from all Mexican allegiance, or duty of cohesion to the Mexican political body, by acts
and fault of Mexico herself, and Mexico alone. There was never a
clearer case. It was not revolution; it was resistance to revolution:
and resistance under such circumstances as left independence the
necessary resulting state, caused by the abandonment of those
with
whom her former federal association had existed.
Nor is there any just foundation for the charge that annexation is
a great pro-slavery measure calculated to increase and perpetuate
that institution. Slavery had nothing to do with it. opinions were
and are greatly divided, both at the North and South, as to the influ-
it on slavery and the slave states. . . .
will make at least one free state from
among those in which that institution now exists-to say nothing
ence to be exerted by
Every new slave state in Texas
of those portions of Texas on which slavery cannot spring and
grow-
to say nothing of the far more rapid growth of new states in the free
West and Northwest, as these fine regions are overspread by the
emigration fast flowing over them from Europe, as well as from
the Northern and Eastern states of the Union as it exists. . . .
California will, probably, next fall away from the loose adhesion
which, in such a country as Mexico, holds a remote province in a
slight equivocal kind of dependence on the metropolis. Imbecile and
distracted, Mexico never can exert any real government authority
over such a country.. ..
In the case of California this is now impossible. The Anglo-Saxon
foot is already on its borders. Already the advance guard of the irresistible army of Anglo-Saxon emigration has begun to pour down
upon it, armed with the plough and the rifle, and marking its trail
with schools and colleges, courts and representative halls, mills and
meetinghouses. A population will soon be in actual occupation of
California, over which it will be idle for Mexico to dream of dominion. They will necessarily become independent. All this without
agency of our government, without responsibility of our people . . .
And they will have a right to independence-to self-governmentto the possession of the homes conquered from the wildness of their
own labors and dangers, sufferings and sacrifices-a better and a
truer right than the artificial title of sovereignty in Mexico, a thousand miles distant, inheriting from Spain a title good only against
those who have none better. Their right to independence will be the
natural right of self-government belonging to any community strong
enough to maintain it.... This will be their title to independence;
and by this title, there can be no doubt that the population now fast
streaming down upon California will both assert and maintain that
independence.
Whether they will attach themselves to our Union or not is not to
be predicted with any certainty. Unless the projected railroad across
the continent to the Pacific be carried into effect, perhaps they may
not; though even in that case, the day when the empires of the Atlantic and Pacific would again flow together into one, as soon as their
inland border should approach each other. But that great work, colossal as appears the plan on its fiISt suggestion, cannot remain long
unbuilt.
Its [the transcontinental railroad] necessity for this vely pulpose of
binding and holding together in its iron clasp our fast settling Pacific
region with that of the Mississippi Valley, the natural facility of the
route, the ease with which any amount of labor for the construction
can be drawn in from the overcrowded populations of Europe, to be
paid in the lands made valuable by the progress of the work itself and
its immense utility, to the whole commerce of the world with the
whole eastern coast of Asia, alone almost sufficient for the support of
such a road-these considerations give assurance that the day cannot
be distant which shall witness the conveyance of representatives
from Oregon and California to Washington [D.Cl within less time
than a few yeals ago was devoted to a similar journey by those from
Ohio; while the magnetic telegraph
will
enable the editors of the San
the Nootka Morning News,
inaugural before the
President's
first
half
of
the
to set up in type the
echoes of the latter half shall have died away beneath the lofty porch
Francisco [Jnion,the Astoria Evening Post, or
of the Capitol, as spoken from his lips.
Away, then,
with all idle French talk of balances of power on the
American continent. There is no growth in Spanish America! Whatever progress of population may be in British Canada, is only for
their own early severance of their plesent colonial relation to the
little island 3,ooo miles across the Atlantic; soon to be followed by
annexation, and destined to swell the still accumulating momentum of our progress.
And whosoever may hold the balance, though they should cast
into the opposite scale all the bayonets and cannon, not only of
France and England, but of Europe entire, how would
it kick the
beam against the simple, solid weight of the 250, or 3oo million, and
American millions destined to gather beneath the flutter of the
stars and stripes, in the fast hastening year of the Lords 1845!
Questions
r. What connection
does O'Sullivan see between manifest destiny and the
idea of American freedom?
z. What does O'Sullivan mean when he describes America's destiny to
rule the entire continent as "manifest"?
I