Evolution of American Agriculture/Chapter V
CHAPTER V
The period of western expansion.
1783 — 1830
THE EFFECT of the Revolutionary War was to nationalize the lands between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, thus creating a public domain and laying the foundation for a national land policy. Indeed, since the relation of the people to the land is a fundamental factor in all history and the basic factor in economics, it is absolutely necessary to refer first to all the land policy and point out the methods by which a region of practically 296,000 square miles was transferred, in the course of about 130 years, into private hands.
Apparently there never was any other idea in the American mind than that the public domain should become private property as rapidly as possible. And, since the colonists were casting off all the major incumbrances of Kingly rule and feudalism, the Ordinance of 1787 is of the greatest importance, for it not only provided for republican government and made provisions against slavery, but determined the form of land tenure in the public domain. Land was to be held in "fee simple" to be freely transferred by bargain and sale, and the estates of persons dying without will were to be divided among their heirs in equal parts. This ordinance not only determined the form of land ownership for the West, but the old states, which yet had feudal tenures, changed their forms to be in accord with it.
The only question that ever arose was, whether the transfer of land from public to private ownership should be strictly for financial benefit or should be made on social considerations; that is, whether the national treasury should be enriched or whether the settler should be primarily benefitted and the government reap its returns by the early improvement of the property and its consequent rise in taxable value. The Revolutionary War debt caused the first idea to prevail for a time, but gradually the results of such a policy became apparent and there was a change to the other view and the social motive came to predominate altogether.
There were five stages to this transition. The first from 1783 to 1800, when the land was sold for cash in tracts of six hundred and forty acres upwards, with an annual sale of about 100,000 acres. The second, from 1800 to 1820, during which quarter sections at $2 an acre on four annual payments were the minimum sales, and 15,500,000 acres were finally disposed of. The third stage, from 1820 to 1841, when forty acre tracts at $1.25 cash per acre were the minimum, and 76,000,000 acres were sold. During this period there was a genuine riot of speculation in Western lands, which induced the passage of the Pre-emption Act of 1841, and ushered in the fourth stage ending in 1862. During this stage the lands were sold in limited quantities to actual settlers at $1.25 per acre, and in the twenty-one years more than 69,000,000 acres became private property. The final stage was reached in 1862, when the first Homestead Act became a law and the settler was granted one hundred and sixty acres on proving a period of actual residence and improvement. The operation of this law, together with the Timber Culture Act, the Desert Land Act, grants of land for educational purposes, grants to railways, canals, irrigation and drainage projects, have practically exhausted the available arable lands, and the present public domain consists of desert sections, national parks, and national forest reservations. The prospective settler must now comb the Western half of the continent for "smuggled" tracts or migrate to the mosquito infested tundra of Alaska, a region that does not yet figure in our agricultural reports to an appreciable extent.
Next to the land policy, cotton plays an important part in the national development, and due to it slavery was prolonged as an American institution. Short staple cotton had been known from the earliest settlement, for it was cultivated by the Southern Indians, but the great labor attending its preparation for the spinning wheel had made it unprofitable to grow even with slave labor. But in 1786 the long staple cotton was introduced into the South from the Sea Islands, and in 1793 Eli Whitney invented the saw gin which enabled a single man to clean 1,000 pounds of the fiber in a day. Immediately cotton was not only a commercial possibility, but became a highly profitable commodity. The invention of a remarkable series of textile machines in England, which was the home of the weaving industry, brought a great demand for the fiber, and the South, with a suitable climate, slave labor and Whitney's gin, was in a position to supply the demand. By 1803, cotton became the leading product in the South.
As slavery had thrived on tobacco in the early days of the colonial period, it now thrived on cotton in the early days of the national existence. Undoubtedly slavery would have died a natural death but for this development of the cotton growing industry. And yet, slavery stifled the South by preventing immigration into that region. Free labor cannot exist comfortably alongside the slave, because it is called upon to help bear the stigma that is cast upon labor by the fact of slavery.
Slavery also contributed to continue the custom of "land killing" so common to the Americans—that is, the cropping of a field until it is exhausted and then moving on to a new one; it increased the tendency away from small farms to great plantations, and prevented the early adoption of more efficient tools and methods because the slave could not be trusted to use them.
The spread of the cotton industry was the only change the agricultural South experienced during this period. Tobacco spread Westward into Kentucky and Tennessee and the cattle industry thrived in the same region. Virginia and Kentucky began the breeding of mules from a stock of jacks that had been sent to this country from France and Spain by Lafayette and the King of Spain as presents to General Washington.
If slavery stopped the gap to immigration in the South, there was no such obstacle in the North, and from 1785 until almost the close of the nineteenth century the great exodus of the peoples poured Westward—the most wonderful and inspiring fact in all American history. The great land hunger of the race was being fed, the wilderness being peopled, the promised land entered, Caucasian destiny fulfilled. As a child, I stood with my father at the gate of our farm in Illinois and saw the later tide of this great migration pouring onwards toward the West. He had come from Poland on the crest of an earlier flood of immigrants and could appreciate the wonderful significance of their endless wagons, the trudging pilgrims, the worn and weary livestock. From him I caught an understanding and an inspiration that more than forty years have not been able to efface.
The American "settler" with his ax, the most energetic and destructive agent the world has ever seen, leveled the great forest which stretched continuously from the Atlantic Coast to the end of Lake Erie on the North and far beyond the Mississippi River on the South. A genius of the lamp! At his call whole states have risen over night! And yet, during the period of this expansion there were comparatively few changes in the general character of agriculture. Some significant beginnings were commencing to appear, prophetic of the changes that later would occur. In 1797, Charles Newbold invented the cast iron plow, but the farmers said it poisoned the soil, and wouldn't use it. Jethro Wood also took out patents on cast plows and was the first man to seek a mouldboard that would give the least resistance.
Societies for the improvement of agriculture began to form in this period and an intelligent importation of improved breeds of livestock from Europe got under good headway.
In 1783, Ringgold, Groff and Patton of Baltimore began the importation of Shorthorn and Hereford cattle from England. The first bull of their importation was sent to Kentucky in 1785, and in 1817 Colonel Sanders of that State sent to England for twelve head of the best stock that could be bought. Shorthorns were introduced into New York in 1792 and into Massachusetts in 1818. Henry Clay imported Herefords in 1817. Others followed a little later.
In horse breeding, the famous "Messenger," father of the American trotting horse, was brought to Philadelphia from England in 1788, and Justin Morgan (son of True Briton, an imported British horse), was foaled in Massachusetts in 1793, and became the progenitor of the celebrated breed of all-purpose horses known as the "Morgan horses."
The first merino sheep were imported in 1793 and, later, when the Napoleonic wars disrupted a great part of European industry and agriculture, sheep raising became an important industry. There were 5,000 imported merinos in the country by 1809, and in 1813 wool sold at from $2 to $3 a pound.
Hogs multiplied in the frontier settlements and came into greater demand for food as the game was killed off, thus stimulating the production of corn and a greater clearing away of the forests. Cincinnati became an extensive pork packing center and traded, not only with the East, but, after the invention of the steamboat, had extensive commercial relations with Ohio and Mississippi River points as far as New Orleans.
During all this period the people were especially well fed; their energetic stirring of the fertile soil produced an abundance; but opportunity for exchange were severely limited by the lack of transportation. In Western Pennsylvania the farmers turned their corn into a paying crop of whisky and the "Whisky Insurrection" came as the result of a tax laid on their enterprise which took all its profit away. The Ohio Valley used the river as an outlet and traded largely with the South, which grew cotton and had the money to pay for pork and corn.
The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 made a great change in the agricultural world. The tide of immigration swung Northward and following the line of the Canal and the Great Lakes, settled North Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. Wheat was easier to raise in these Northern latitudes and, as it stood transportation better than corn, became the money crop of that region. The traffic generated by this new avenue of transportation flowing through New York City, caused that place to advance ahead of Baltimore and Philadelphia and become the leading city of the country.
On the whole it was a splendid period, when every white man was his own master, and the conquest of the wilderness developed qualities that, though they may become perverted, must ever compel our admiration.
