Civilization Trending Westward tion of Utah and New Mexico the last link of local civil government between Maine and California was completed. Except the unorganized Indian country, every foot of American soil was now subject to the law of State or Territory. Of States there were thirty-one; of Territories, five. The line of the Missouri Compromise divided the public domain into free and slave soil. Geographically, the division was equal, except the southern part of California. This extended below the line. Three-quarters of a century had now passed since the Declaration of Independence. Population had increased from two and a half to twenty-three millions, and the public domain from less than nine hundred thousand to nearly three million square miles. During this time the centre of population had moved westward nearly four miles, on an average, each year. The frontier had reached the Pacific, but in the middle of the continent there lay a wilderness, more than a thousand miles wide, whose eastern edge was in Iowa, whose western was at the Nevada mountains. The ceaseless tide of immigration had reached the Indian tribes, had surrounded their best lands, had extinguished their titles, and had compelled them to migrate into the Indian country. About the middle of the century the white man and the Indian stood face to face in the centre of the continent, disputing for its sovereignty. The history of the tribes east of the great river during the first half of the century was to be repeated west of it during the second half. No political party had raised a voice for the Indian, and but one State had made it possible for him to become an American citizen.* Within a few years foreigners had begun to arrive in large numbers.† Nine-tenths of the population were, however, native-born; yet the number of foreigners in the country was nearly equal to its population at the outbreak of the Revolution. Native-Americanism discriminated against the foreigner, but its force was impotent, except in the slave-holding States. It followed that the Northern States and Territories profited by their coming, and in the Northwest there was rivalry among the States to make them welcome.§ Gradually some parts of the West, as in Wisconsin, came to consist largely of foreign settlements. The laws were printed in German in several States, and newspapers in the language of the new-comers began to appear. The Irish did not go West. They preferred the cities and towns of the East, but many of them found temporary employment on the railroads and canals in course of construction all over the North. Their sons were sent to school, and the next generation of Americans included them among its successful merchants, doctors, law *Wisconsin, constitution of 1848, Art. iii., Sec. 1. + Since 1841. See the debates in the Louisiana Convention of 1845, in the Kentucky Convention of 1849, and in the Virginia and Maryland conventions of 1850. See the Wisconsin Convention debates of 1847 and the debates in the Convention of Michigan in 1850. Building Up the Cities of the West yers, preachers, and politicians. The Germans wanted farms, and therefore they passed westward, locating all the way from New York to Iowa. Canadian immigrants located near the great lakes engaged in farming, and, to a larger extent, in milling and in starting great lumber industries. A few Englishmen and Scotchmen settled in the South, became prosperous planters and earnest advocates of slavery. Their sons usually entered politics and became highly influential. The Irish, the Germans, the Scandinavians, and the Canadians sedulously avoided slave soil. They were men who had to work for a living. The number of cities containing eight thousand people, like the urban population, had doubled in ten years. New York, the largest city in the country, contained a little over five hundred thousand people.* No longer was the increase in city population limited to the Atlantic seaboard. The large towns in Ohio-Cleveland, Akron, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati; in Indiana-Fort Wayne, Indianapolis; in Michigan, Detroit; in Wisconsin, Milwaukee; in Illinois Chicago, Joliet, Peoria, Quincy; in Iowa-Dubuque, Burlington; in Missouri, St. Louis and Kansas City-were gaining more rapidly than the towns of the East. They were fast becoming manufacturing centres, and around them lay rich farms and near them prosperous villages. In these the conspicuous buildings were the school-house and the churches; and in the * In 1850, 515,547. larger towns, these and the factories. The houses in the West were generally of wood. In the East, brick and stone had been commonly used since the country was settled. Throughout the North, in the New England and New York belt, the dwelling-houses were usually of the New England style, built of wood, painted white, with green blinds. In the South, the richer planters lived in commodious mansions, whose architecture would now be called colonial. Both North and South abounded in loghouses and unpainted one-story cabins. now common. Wealth was the dispenser of social rank; less was made of ancestral distinctions than now. It was a new country, and the most populous centres were not two hours' travel from wild lands or primeval forests. Few homes had the luxuries If there were rugs or carpets, they were mostly home-made. Rarely were there pict ures or that miscellaneous collection of ornaments we call bric-à-brac. Wall-paper was a luxury. Organs and pianos were almost unknown. To own a melodeon or a dulcimer was evidence of wealth and elegance; to play either gave distinction. Rarely did a church have an organ, but the leader of the choir had a tuning-fork. As yet no church was struggling over the question whether to call a minister or to buy a pipe - organ. Churches were usually built by local carpenters, who donated their work. These buildings were barren of ornamentation, were never elegant, and rarely comfortable. The building was one vast room, planned to contain the preacher and his listeners. The early churches Early Religious Practices of the People were not heated. With prosperity came huge boxstoves, long enough to burn four-foot wood. Usu ally the stoves were set near the doors, in a location conveniently accessible to the wood-pile. The sinuous stove-pipe ran near the ceiling, the full length of the church. Forests were consumed, but a church was rarely warm. There were no separate rooms or adjoining buildings for Sunday-schools or church entertainments. Indeed, except the too - frequent lottery, by means of which the church was built or the minister paid, church entertainments were quite unknown. In summer-time, betwixt haying and harvest, or in the autumn, after the harvest was gathered, here and there over the country might be heard the voices of great camp-meetings. About the time when Lincoln was first a candidate for the Assembly these meetings were religious caravansaries. Gradually the Presbyterians, who seem to have originated them, abandoned them to the Baptists and Methodists. In many parts of the country they were relied on as the only practicable method of bringing the people together for religious worship. They were attended, not infrequently, by all the population within a circuit of fifty miles. Amid profound and irrepressible excitement sermons were preached which strongly moved the listeners, and which lingered long in the memory as events of a lifetime. Some of us who remember in our school-readers William Wirt's touching description of the blind preacher may have wondered in our mature years whether that majestic figure which Wirt drew |