Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/390

358 Causes of the westward migration. [1793-1820 general restored confidence and credit. The war between France and Great Britain, which began in 1793, was followed by the return of good times in the commercial States. The demand for ships and sailors, lumber, fish, and breadstuffs, caused by the opening of the ports in the French West Indies, gave employment to hundreds of thousands of people and checked the rush of emigrants westward. But in the southern States the movement still continued ; and when the century closed nearly 400,000 persons were living west of the Alleghany Mountains. The early years of the nineteenth century sent another wave of population over the mountains. The peace in Europe from 1801 to 1803 brought back dull times on the seaboard. The trade with Europe and the West Indies fell off. The demand for American lumber, fish, and farm produce declined. The government was selling its land on credit ; and so many emigrants went west that, in 1803, Ohio was admitted into the Union as a State. Then came the renewal of war in Europe, the opening of a greater trade than ever, and four years of wonderful prosperity. But the " long embargo " from 1807 to 1809 ruined trade and commerce ; and though the rise of manufactures gave some relief to the unemployed, times again became hard. Men again sought the West ; and, when the census was taken in 1810, more than one-seventh of the population dwelt in the States and Territories west of the Alleghany Mountains. The commercial restrictions of 1810-12 and the second war with Great Britain swelled the stream of emigrants, which after 1815 became enormous. There was then no longer any great demand for American ships and sailors, or for the produce of American farms. Great Britain closed her West Indian ports to American ships, and flooded the markets of the United States with British manufactures. Business of every sort was ruined ; the currency was in disorder ; the few manufactures which had grown up since embargo days were seriously threatened ; the ocean carrying-trade was passing into the hands of foreigners ; and the country entered on a period of four years of the hardest times ever experienced. A wild rush for the West now began; and from 1816 to 1820 the great western highways were choked with emigrants. By 1817 this emigration was at its height; and in the spring of that year families set out for the West from almost every city and town on the seaboard. The few that went from any one town might not be missed, but gathered on the great highways to the West they made an endless procession of waggons and travellers. On one of the western highways in New York 260 emigrant waggons passed a tavern in nine days, besides hundreds of persons on foot or on horseback. A gatekeeper on a Pennsylvania turnpike reported 2001 families as having passed between March and December, 1817, all bound West. At Easton, Pennsylvania, a town on the route from the Eastern States to Pittsburg, 511 waggons and 8000 pei-sons were counted going West during one month. A traveller,