CHAPTER X.
Liquidation in the Mississippi Valley.—Relief Measures.
T might naturally be supposed that frontier society, consisting of a very sparse population with few and poor means of communication, would not easily be united on any opinion or policy. It is very true that such society had a very low social organization, and that the civil authority was powerless to enforce the most salutary measures which were irksome and unpopular, but the history of all our societies in their early stages has shown that they are far more susceptible to gusts of passion and storms of opinion than older societies. One chief explanation appears to be that life was so dull and tame that any excitement, and especially social contact, was eagerly sought. Men went twenty miles to the county town to see the Court come in. A camp meeting, a barbecue, a convention, sufficed to draw together all the people of a county. On these occasions passion, prejudice, argument, etc., inflamed the people, and the mysterious sympathy of a crowd seemed to act more intensely on people who were unused to it. The orators curried popularity and applause. The crowd was very capricious. It was not easy to tell in advance what would "take" and what would fall dead.[1] The ambitious men sought only to perceive the currents of popular feeling. The consequence was that they always exaggerated the tendencies which had once started. They tried to distinguish themselves by their zeal and excess in the popular cause. Therefore everything tended to run the current of the moment to excess and abuse.
If these facts are noted they go far to explain the extravagances of the relief system, of paper money banking, of internal improvements, etc.
There is in every commercial community a general indebtedness. It is constantly being dissolved and renewed. It is quite a different thing when a simple agricultural community consists of householders, nearly every one
- ↑ The indignation over the Wiggins' loan of 1831, by which the paper of the Bank of the State of Illinois was redeemed, was unsurpassed in Illinois, except when the legislature passed a law prohibiting small bulls from running at large. This was to improve the breed. The people were furious and "took sides with the little bulls." (Ford, 107.)
