A History of the American People

about four miles in length and one mile wide ... complete with pure springs of cold water in
abundance.' Once a cabin, 16 by 24 feet, had been built, they began the hard task of breaking up
the prairie. This done, Brush wrote, No weeds or grass sprung up upon such ground the first year and the corn needed no attention with plough or hoe. If got in early, good crops were yielded, of corn and fodder.' He added:Provisions in abundance was the rule ... no one needed
to go supperless to bed. The Ten Brook family moved to what became Parke County, Indiana, in
autumn 1822. There were twenty-seven of them altogether-three interrelated families, three
single men, two teamsters, thirteen horses, twenty-one cows, two yoke-oxen, and four dogs.
Their first priority was to build a strong cabin. The soil was rich but virgin. Working throughout
the winter, they had cleared 15 acres by the spring and fashioned 200 fence-rails. They had l00
bushels of corn for winter-feed and spring planting. They put two more acres under potatoes and
turnips. The spring brought seven calves, and that first summer they made forty 12-pound
cheeses, sold at market for a dollar each. The harvest was good. They not only ground their own
corn but made 350 pounds of sugar and 10 gallons of molasses from the same soil they cleared
for corn. Their leader, Andrew Ten Brook, recounted: After the first year, I never saw any scarcity of provisions. The only complaint was that there was nobody to whom the supplies could be sold.' The sheer fertility of the soil made all the backbreaking work of opening it up worth while. In the Lake Plains-parts of Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan-a vast glacier known as the Wisconsin Drift had in prehistoric times smoothed off the rocks and laid down a deep layer of rich soil containing all the elements needed for intensive agriculture. The settlers, steeped in the Old Testament, called it Canaan, God's Country, because it yielded a third more than the rest, known asEgypt.' Some of the settlements in the years after 1815 became celebrated for quick
prosperity. One was Boon's Lick, a belt 60 miles wide on each side of the Missouri River which
became Howard County in 1816. It boasted superb land, pure water, as much timber as required,
and idyllic scenery. By 1819 the local paper, the Missouri Intelligence, produced at the little
town of Franklin, offered a spring toast: Boon's Lick-two years since, a wilderness. Now-rich in cotton and cattle!' It was widely reputed to be the best land in all the West. Moreover, the tendency was for the land price to come down-in the 1820s it was often as low as $1.25 an acre. The modern mind is astonished that, even so, it was regarded as too high and there was a clamor for cheaper or even free land. Many settlers were termed ‘squatters.’ This simply signified they had got there first, paid over money immediately after the survey but before the land wassectionalized' for the market. They risked their title being challenged by
non-resident purchasers-speculators. By the end of 1828 two-thirds of the population of Illinois
were squatters. Their champion was Thomas Hart Benton (1782-1858), Senator 1821-51. He
sensibly argued against a minimum price for Western lands, proposing grading by quality, and he
insisted that settlers pay compensation for improvements, passing a law to this effect. In frontier
areas, speculators were naturally hated and took a risk if they showed their faces. A Methodist
preacher recorded at Elkhorn Creek, Wisconsin: `If a speculator should bid on a settler's farm, he
was knocked down and dragged out of the [land] office, and if the striker was prosecuted and
fined, the settlers paid the fine by common consent among themselves. [But] no jury would find
a verdict against a settler in such a case because it was considered self-defense. [So] no
speculator dare bid on a settler's land, and as no settler would bid on his neighbor, each man had
his land at Congress price, $1.25 an acre."
All the same, speculation and land dealing were the foundation of many historic fortunes at
this time. And powerful politicians (and their friends) benefited too. When a popular figure like