The Frontier in American History | Page 9

offered the virgin soil of the frontier at
nominal prices. Their growing families demanded more lands, and
these were dear. The competition of the unexhausted, cheap, and easily
tilled prairie lands compelled the farmer either to go west and continue
the exhaustion of the soil on a new frontier, or to adopt intensive
culture. Thus the census of 1890 shows, in the Northwest, many
counties in which there is an absolute or a relative decrease of

population. These States have been sending farmers to advance the
frontier on the plains, and have themselves begun to turn to intensive
farming and to manufacture. A decade before this, Ohio had shown the
same transition stage. Thus the demand for land and the love of
wilderness freedom drew the frontier ever onward.
Having now roughly outlined the various kinds of frontiers, and their
modes of advance, chiefly from the point of view of the frontier itself,
we may next inquire what were the influences on the East and on the
Old World. A rapid enumeration of some of the more noteworthy
effects is all that I have time for.
First, we note that the frontier promoted the formation of a composite
nationality for the American people. The coast was preponderantly
English, but the later tides of continental immigration flowed across to
the free lands. This was the case from the early colonial days. The
Scotch-Irish and the Palatine Germans, or "Pennsylvania Dutch,"
furnished the dominant element in the stock of the colonial frontier.
With these peoples were also the freed indented servants, or
redemptioners, who at the expiration of their time of service passed to
the frontier. Governor Spotswood of Virginia writes in 1717, "The
inhabitants of our frontiers are composed generally of such as have
been transported hither as servants, and, being out of their time, settle
themselves where land is to be taken up and that will produce the
necessarys of life with little labour."[22:1] Very generally these
redemptioners were of non-English stock. In the crucible of the frontier
the immigrants were Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed
race, English in neither nationality nor characteristics. The process has
gone on from the early days to our own. Burke and other writers in the
middle of the eighteenth century believed that Pennsylvania[23:1] was
"threatened with the danger of being wholly foreign in language,
manners, and perhaps even inclinations." The German and Scotch-Irish
elements in the frontier of the South were only less great. In the middle
of the present century the German element in Wisconsin was already so
considerable that leading publicists looked to the creation of a German
state out of the commonwealth by concentrating their
colonization.[23:2] Such examples teach us to beware of

misinterpreting the fact that there is a common English speech in
America into a belief that the stock is also English.
In another way the advance of the frontier decreased our dependence on
England. The coast, particularly of the South, lacked diversified
industries, and was dependent on England for the bulk of its supplies.
In the South there was even a dependence on the Northern colonies for
articles of food. Governor Glenn, of South Carolina, writes in the
middle of the eighteenth century: "Our trade with New York and
Philadelphia was of this sort, draining us of all the little money and
bills we could gather from other places for their bread, flour, beer,
hams, bacon, and other things of their produce, all which, except beer,
our new townships begin to supply us with, which are settled with very
industrious and thriving Germans. This no doubt diminishes the
number of shipping and the appearance of our trade, but it is far from
being a detriment to us."[23:3]
Before long the frontier created a demand for merchants. As it retreated
from the coast it became less and less possible for England to bring her
supplies directly to the consumer's wharfs, and carry away staple crops,
and staple crops began to give way to diversified agriculture for a time.
The effect of this phase of the frontier action upon the northern section
is perceived when we realize how the advance of the frontier aroused
seaboard cities like Boston, New York, and Baltimore, to engage in
rivalry for what Washington called "the extensive and valuable trade of
a rising empire."
The legislation which most developed the powers of the national
government, and played the largest part in its activity, was conditioned
on the frontier. Writers have discussed the subjects of tariff, land, and
internal improvement, as subsidiary to the slavery question. But when
American history comes to be rightly viewed it will be seen that the
slavery question is an incident. In the period from the end of the first
half of the present century to the close of the Civil