A History of the American People

He was right and the proof that the American free system worked is the historic fact-the rapid
and successful settlement of the Mississippi Valley. This is one of the decisive events in history.
By means of it, America became truly dynamic, emerging from the eastern seaboard bounded by
the Appalachians and descending into the great network of river valleys beyond. The Mississippi
occupation, involving an area of 1,250,000 square miles, the size of western Europe, marked the
point at which the United States ceased to be a small, struggling ex-colony and turned itself into
a major nation.'
The speed with which representative governments were set up was an important part of this
dynamism. In addition to Kentucky and Tennessee, the first trans-Appalachian states, Ohio
became a state in 1803, Louisiana in 1812, Indiana in 1816, Mississippi in 1817, Illinois in 1818,
Alabama in 1819, Missouri in 1821, Arkansas in 1836, Michigan in 1837. Insuring rapid
progress from territory to state was the best way Washington could help the settlement, though
under the Constitution it could also build national roads. The first national road, a broad,
hardened thoroughfare across the Appalachians, was open in 1818 as far as Wheeling, whence
settlers could travel along the Ohio River. By the early 1830s the road had reached Columbus,
Ohio. Further south, roads were built by state and federal government in collaboration or by
thrusting military men like General Jackson, who in 1820, as commander of the Western Army,
strung a road between Florence, Alabama, and New Orleans, the best route into the Lower
Mississippi area. There were also the Great Valley Road, the Fall Line Road, and the Upper
Federal Road. They were rough by the standards of the new McAdam-Telford roads in Britain
but far superior to anything in Latin America, Australasia, or trans-Ural Russia, other vast
territories being settled at this time. In addition there were the rivers, most of them facing in the
direction of settlement. Even before the steamers came, there were hundreds, then thousands, of
flatboats and keelboats to float settlers and their goods downriver. By 1830 there were already
3,000 flatboats floating down the Ohio each year. In 1825 the completion of the Erie Canal,
which linked the Atlantic via the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, made easy access possible to
the Great Plains. It also confirmed New York's primacy as a port, especially for immigrants, as
they could then proceed, via the Canal, straight to new towns in the Midwest. From that point on
steamboats were ubiquitous in the Mississippi Valley, not only bringing settlers in but taking
produce out to feed and clothe the people of America's explosive cities-only 7 percent of the
population in 1810, over a third by mid-century.
The pattern of settlement varied enormously but salient features were common. With every
township, the first structure to be built was a church, to serve farming families already scattered
around. Then came a newspaper, running off copies even when townsfolk were still living in
tents. Then came traders, doubling up as bankers when required, then proper bankers and
lawyers at about the same time. The lawyers lived by riding with the local judge on a horseback
circuit, by which they became well known, and they sat in the legislature the moment it was set
up-so the grip of the attorneys was firm from the start. Justice was fierce and physical, especially
for thieves, above all for horse-thieves. By 1815, the pillory, ears cut off and nailed up, and
branding on the cheek were becoming rare. But whippings were universal. The tone of settlers'
justice was epitomized in Madison County, Tennessee in 1821 when a local thief, Squire' Dawson, was sentencedto be taken from this place to the common whipping-post, there to
receive twenty lashes well laid on his bare back, and that he be rendered infamous, and that he
then be imprisoned one hour, and that he make his peace with the state by the payment of one
cent.` There we have it-imprisonment was costly, fining pointless when the miscreant had no
money, but there was no shortage of bare back.