The First Quarter of the Century: Kentucky and Ohio

Manufacture on a large scale had no existence in the Southern States. Their capital was monopolized by agriculture, and the development of the manufacturing industries was left to the North. Thus the distinction between the industries, ideas, and condition of society in the two sections of the country steadily grew more marked, until no two civilized nations could have been socially more unlike. In the South society became divided into three well-marked classes, with little in common between them: the great land-owners, who posed as a veritable aristocracy; the lesser slave-holders, the middle class; and the poor whites, an ignorant and worthless rabble, who were despised even by the slaves. Slavery served as the foundation-stone of these distinctly-separated classes. In the North no such class-conditions existed. The tendency there was towards the breaking down of social distinctions, and to the merging of the population into one general mass, in which every man considered himself the equal of every other, and all rising or falling below the broad level was an individual - not a class - phenomenon. The diversity of conditions which thus arose between the Northern and Southern sections of the country was destined to have the most vital consequences in its succeeding history, and to give origin to a strife which had its final outcome in the civil war.

While these relations were arising between the Northern and Southern sections of the original States, the conditions for the formation of new States were rapidly appearing in the West. The vast territory east of the Mississippi had been gradually filling up since the era preceding the Revolution. Along the borders of the great lakes and on the banks of the Ohio settlements had early been founded, while Boone and his followers had crossed the Cumberland Mountains and led a tide of emigration towards the fair land of Kentucky. All these formed centres of departure for new pioneer movements, while from the Eastern States emigration pushed northward into Maine and westward into Vermont and central New York, forcing its way ever and ever deeper into the wilderness. McMaster gives a vivid description of the pioneer fever in 1800. Then Kentucky and New York were the Far West. The flood of emigration followed two routes. Of these New-Englanders chose the northern, via Albany and along the Mohawk valley to the wilderness beyond. Every trade and profession, except that of seamanship, was represented in these westward-flowing columns. A genuine pioneer fever arose. In front of the tide moved the speculators and land-jobbers, buying up the land, often in whole counties at a time. Then came the restless pioneer, who built his log cabin, girdled the trees, sowed a handful of grain, and then gave way to the impatient longing that possessed him, and moved on, to make way for a second line of settlers, with some money, who purchased his improvements and availed themselves of the results of his labor. These in their turn moved on, leaving the country more habitable behind them. Next came the permanent settlers, the founders of towns and villages, and civilization began to settle upon the land.

The hardships endured by these pioneers were severe. Food was scarce, their huts were rude and ill fitted to bear the inclemency of the winter, but the fever of adventure which possessed them kept them in steady march, the aborigines yielding step by step before them, and civilization, with slower but firmer steps, advancing in their rear.

The other route, that via the Ohio, was pursued by the aid of rude boats, which floated down the current with the families and household goods of the hardy emigrants. Towns and villages quickly dotted the fertile borders of this great stream. The savages, who had fiercely assailed the early voyagers, were driven back, and as early as 1794 a line of packet-boats had begun to ply between Pittsburg and Cincinnati. These, which made one voyage a month, were bullet-proof, and carried six small cannon, throwing one-pound balls. After Wayne's victory the stream flowed into the Northwest. In the census of 1800 the population of Ohio Territory was already 45,360, while Kentucky had a population of 220,950.

During the succeeding period the West filled up with remarkable rapidity. As new emigrants from the Old World poured into the Atlantic ports, many of the older settlers made way for them, and followed the routes described into the boundless West. After the purchase of Louisiana the stream crossed the Mississippi, and spread over the broad forest-region beyond. State after State was admitted into the Union, as the Territories gained the requisite population, until by 1820 to the original thirteen States were added eleven others. All the States now existing east of the Mississippi, with the exception of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida, were by that time admitted, while west of that river the two States of Missouri and Louisiana were members of the Union.