-L7 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 571 571 4 Conservation Resources Lig-Free® Type I F 476 .R78 Copy 1 THE NORTHWEST IN THE NATION BIKNNIAL ADDRKSS BEFORE THE State Historical Society of Wisconsin January 24, 1893 By THEODORE ROOSEVELT [Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Fortieth Annual Meeting.] WISCONSIN STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 1893 gQNVH THE NORTHWEST IN THE NATION. BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT. I almost wish I had chosen as a title '•' The Heart of Our Country," for I am speaking of the old Northwest, not of the new Northwest in the Rocky Mountains and on the Pacific Slope, but of what was the Northwest at the begin- ning of this century, of the states that ha^e grown up around the Great Lakes and in the valley of the upper Mississippi, the states which are destined to be the greatest, the richest, the most prosperous of all the great, rich and prosperous commonwealths which go to make up the mightiest republic the world has ever seen. These states, among which Wisconsin stands as the proud equal of her proud peers, form the heart of the country geographically, and they will soon become the heart in population and in political and social importance. Favored by a combination of soil and climate hardly elsewhere to be found, seated on the headwaters of the most important of navigable rivers and by the shores of the greatest inland seas of all the world, and peopled already by millions upon millions of a peculiarly thrifty and enterprising population, the material prosperity of these States of the woodland and the prairie is assured beyond all perad venture. Although the sowing is little more than begun we are already reaping and garnering a golden harvest. Yet I should be sorry indeed to think that before these states there loomed a future of material prosperity merely. I regard this section of the country as the heart of true American sentiment : I believe that here our native art and our native literature will receive no small portion of their full development. And when I speak of the literary ' Biennial address delivered before the Stale Historical Society of Wisconsin, in the Assembly Chamber, Tuesday evening, January 24, 1893. THE NORTHWEST IN THE NATION. 93 development I canaot forbear touching for a moment upon that kind of literary development which is promoted by just such an institution as that at the request of which I am here to-night. If the proper study of mankind is man, then the proper study of a Nation is its own history, and all true patriots should encourage in every way the asso ciations which record the great deeds, and the successes and failures alike, of the forefathers of their people. Es pecially should such a society as the State Historical Society of Wisconsin be encouraged, for it is not only the father of all such societies in the West, but it may safely be said to have done more in the interests of American his- torical study than any other one society of the kind in any other state. I hope to see you, my countrymen here, act as leaders of the American school of political thought, of the school na- tive born and reared on our own principles, and in accord- ance with our own beliefs, the school which believes in fearlessly demanding one's own rights and instantly conced- ing the rights of others, which belie v^es in justice to all, and frowns upon every species of civil or religious tyranny, whether the tyranny of the few or the tyranny of the many; in short, the school whose greatest exponent was the great- est American of the present century, Abraham Lincoln. I can speak to you to-night all the more freely because I know that deep in the hearts of every man in this Northwest is the belief that he is not only a citizen of his own state, but first of all a citizen of the entire United States ; that he is an American first and above everythmg : and so I, your fellow American, have a right to glory, as you do, in every deed of your ancestors, in every feat performed by the people of your state as by the people of my own, precisely as I challenge as my own, and as all other Ameri- cans', every rood of land between the Atlantic and the Pacific, from the Red River of the North to the Rio Grande. Prior to the Revolutionary War, the history of the North- west enters but slightly and remotely into the history of the people who founded the United States. The Indians who roamed over the soil held relations, sometimes of 94 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. war, sometimes of peace, with the French voyageurs and fur traders, who formed little villages here and there in the wilderness; and small parties of troops, carrying some- times the banner of Spain, more often the haughty standard of Britain, here and there erected stockaded forts, and exacted or coaxed a precarious allegiance from Indian and Frenchman alike. But the Northwest only became a part of our country as a consequence of the expedition of that adventurous hero, George Rogers Clark. The first Continental Congress was a thing of the past; the second Contiaental Congress had been held, the Dec- laration of Independence signed, Lexington and Bunker Hill had been fought, the terrible sufferings of the winter at Valley Forge had been eadured, Trenton had been won, Burgoyne's army had been captured, and the United States had definitely taken its position among the nations of the earth, and still the country between the Ohio and the Great Lakes remained unchanged in the hands of its former masters. Then, in the midst of the stress of the Revolu- tionary war, Clark, on his own motion, but with the co- operation of the great Virginians, Jefferson and Patrick Henry, raised a small force of some two hundred hardy frontiersmen, descended the Ohio, and falling unexpect- edly upon the French towns of the Illinois wrested them from the control of Britain. Vincennes, too, fell into his hands. The British commandant, marching down with a large force of British regulars, French volunteers, and In- dian auxiliaries from Detroit, retook the latter ; but Clark, striking across country with a resolute band of picked rifiemen, defying every species of fatigue and hardship, surprised and captured the British garrison. From that time on the flag of the United States floated without seri- ous molestation in the country adjoining the Ohio : and by the treaty of 1783 the entire Northwest was awarded to the United States. Nevertheless, the British remained in pos- session for a dozen years longer, and a series of desperate wars was waged by the United States armies against the Northwestern Indians, who were supplied with arms and ammunition, and even with allies and leaders, from the THE NORTHWEST IN THE NATION. 95 British trading and military posts of the Great Lakes; and it was not until after Mad Anthony Wayne won the battle of the Fallen Timbers from the Shawnese. Wyandottes, Dela wares, and their confederates, and until Jay, with the approval of Washington, had negotiated his treaty with England, that the entire country passed under American control. The Northwest was not won as was the Southwest. In the Southwest it was the individual initiative of the front- ier settlers which added to our country state after state. This was true in the days when Daniel Boone crossed through the frowning Alleghany forests and wandered to and fro for months in the beautiful country of Kentucky without seeing a human face; in the years when the free settlers formed on their own motion the short-lived and well-nigh forgotten commonwealths of Wautauga, Tran- sylvania, Franklin, and Cumberland, and out of them built the states of Kentucky and Tennessee; at the time that Andrew Jackson led his pioneer soldiery against the Creeks, and again when Austin brought his first colony to Texas, a,nd Davy Crockett fell at the Alamo, and Houston won the battle of San Jacinto. The movements of the South west- erners were in advance of governmental action. In the Northwest, too, there was much movement of the same sort. The stark frontier fighters, the pioneer settlers, the backwoods hunters, men like Brady and McCullough, Weitzel and Mansker, of English, Scotch. Irish and Ger- man stock, with a few Huguenots and Hollanders mixed in (men of the kind immortalized in the works of Fenni- more Cooper), were cast in the same mould, whether they dwelt in the valleys of the Monongahela and the Alle- ghany, or in those of the Cumberland and the Tennessee. They were stout of body and strong of will, these our pioneer forefathers.- They had the typically American capacity for self-help; they were self-reliant of spirit, and on the other hand they possessed also the power of organi- zation and combination. Each man struck off into the wilderness by himself, provided with the two characteristic weapons «nd tools of the American backwoodsman, the q6 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. long rifle and the shapely light-headed axe. Each cleared! a section of the forest for himself, built his own rude log cabin, tilled with his own hands the stump-dotted clearing,, and protected himself by his own skill and prowess against the assaults of brute or human foes. But as rapidly as the settlers became at all numerous they united to form some kind of town, county, or village government, electing their own peace officers to supervise their domestic concerns, 'precisely as they elected their own military leaders in time of warfare against the savages. Each little community took as a matter of right a full measure of local self-gov- -ernment from the beginning, and at the same time accepted in an almost equal matter-of-course way the primary fact that all these communities were to be regarded as united in a national whole. This attitude of mind, this combina- tion of individual liberty on the one hand, with on the other a strong sense of nationality and appreciation of that orderly government which can only come through the supremacy of law, and by the recognition of the headship of the federal authority, was highly typical. It marks- the sharp contrast between the successful settlement of the country north of the Rio Grande by the men of our people,^ and the disintegration and bloody chaos through which the South American republics are passing in emerging from the condition of colonial vassalage into that of sovereign statehood. It is very interesting to read of the ways of life and habits of thought of these old pioneers, especially in their own journals and records, couched in the vigorous, homely English which was the tongue of their ordinary household use. As we read these documents they bring before us the pictures of the pioneers themselves as they went about their various pursuits and duties. We can see the family or group of families journeying wearily through the wil- derness, the laden pack animals driven in single file, with may be a gaunt cow or two and a yoke of oxen; the women ride, and the young children are carried in panniers on some quiet old horse, the boys drive the loose stock, and the older men slouch ahead, rifle on shoulder, ever alert for THE NORTHWEST IN THE NATION. Q7 ambush a,nd sudden attack. Or, perhaps they drift down •some broad river in hup^e flat- bottomed, square-ended scows, always in dread of the Indians wlien they have to land at night, or when the current sweeps them too near the im- penetrable forests which line the banks. We can see the •cabin with its walls of chinked, unhewn logs, its puncheon floor, great fire place and rude furniture, the skins of bear, elk, or buffalo lying on the bed; and the block houses and stockaded hamlets in which the population gather for refuge during Indian forays; and the rude log school house and the rude I04 meeting house which are raised in •each straggliny; frontier village as the children of the set- tlers grow lip. We can see t^e stark husbandman wielding his ax or tilling the ground, while his wife indoors is busy with that woman's work which never ceas-s, whether get- ting ready the dinner to which the men are summoned from the fields by a blast from the conch shell, or working on the homemade garments with which her family are clothed. The hunters, the daring Indian fight-rs, stand out in their picturesque dress, with their fringed leggins and their tasseled hunting shirts belted in at the waist wiih the girdle from which hang tomahawk and hunting knife, and wearing on their heads caps of coon skin or wolf skin. Or again, brief records bring before us the magistrjtes of the little colony assembled in the improvise 1 court house to deal out that justice which is in accordance with the spirit rather than in the letter of the law. These frontiersmen lived a life which is now fast vanish- ing away; there is no longer any frontier; and yet even to-day their analogues can be seen in the farther west. There they are the heroes of rope and revolver, who wander their lives long over the great plains, guarding the innu- merable herds of branded cattle and shaggy horses, or liv- ing as hunters and trappers in the innermost recesses of the Rockies. The grim hunters of the mountains and wild rough-riders of the plains are the true spiritual descendants and representatives of that hardy frontier folk which, dar- ing the mystery of the unknown, plunged into the vast forests of the Ohio basin and into the regions lying around 98 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. the Great Lakes, and in their blood and sweat laid the foundations of fair states. Nevertheless, fully admitting the immense part played in the history of the Northwest by the essentially American spirit of individualism, which was so conspicuous in the southwest, another fact must be taken into account. The Northwest, unlike the Southwest, was essentially the child of the federal government; it was essentially the creature of the union, and it is right and fitting that it should now be the heart and head of the union. Whereas in most of the southwest the struggle against the original lord of the land, whether Indian or Spaniard, was made by the front- iersmen fighting for their own hand, in the Northwest the decisive and telling conflicts were those waged by federal armies commanded by federal generals — although of course in the ranks of these armies the sinewy pioneers them- selves usually formed the bulk of the force. It was a national army, organized under the direction of Washing- ton and led by that fine old Revolutionary hero, Mad Anthony Wayne, which won the fight of the Fallen Timbers from the warriors of the banded tribes of the Northwest, within sight and hearing of the British fort whence these Indians had drawn their supplies and arms. A few years later we were again plunged into war with the Indians and British for the possession of this region, and the British commissioners appointed to negotiate a treaty of peace at first insisted that there should be established here in the Northwest, including this very state, a great neutral zone of territory between the United States and Canada, to be allotted in perpetuity to the Indian tribes. That this was not done was due to the final outcome of the dreary campaigns which began with the triumph at Tippeca- noe, were rendered memorable by such disasters as that of the River Raisin, and closed with the victorious fight on the River Thames, in Canadian territory; while the American commissioners at Ghent, acting for the whole nation, stood firmly for the western people; and the decisive battle was that won by Perry and the national squadron on Lake Erie. Thus here again we see the struggle for the Northwest THE NORTHWEST IN THE NATION. 99 maintained by the federal armies under federal leadership, and backed by federal diplomacy. It was thus with the affairs of peace quite as markedly as those of war. Whereas the Southwestern territories grew each as seemed right in its o vn eye, the stites around the Great Lakes sprang into being under that famius ordi- nance, almost the last passed by the Contin* ntal Congress, which prohibited all slavery in the Northwestern Terri- tory. Several times attempts wt re made by the Terrional legislatures to get congress to nullify this ordinance, but in each instance congress steadily refused. The far-reaching effects of this action of the national government upon the welfare and prosperity not only of the Northwest but of the whole union are incalculable and almost incredible; and th's was a boon gained by the action of the federal govern- ment itself. In the same way the first permanent settle- ment of American citizens beyon t the Ohio was undertaken with the direct aid and encouragement of the central authorities. Thus the old Northwest, the middle or northern west of to day, was the true child of the federal government, and the states now composing it, the states lying around the Great Lakes and in the valley of the upper Mississippi, sprang into being owing to the direct action of the union founded by Washington. It was a striking instance of his- toric justice that in the second great crisis of this nation's history, the Northwest, the child of the union, should have saved the union, and should have developed in Abraham Lincoln the one American who has the right to stand along side of Washington; while it was from the Northwest that those great soldiers sprang, under whose victorious leadership the Northern armies fought to a fin- ish, once and for all, the terrible civil war. It was the Northwest which preserved the union in the times that tried men's souls, and it is the Northwest which to-day typifies alike in inner life and in bodily prosperity those conditions which give us ground for the belief that our union will be perpetual, and that this great nation has be- fore it a career such as in all the ages of the past has never been vouchsafed to any other. LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 014 571 571 4 • LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 571 571 4 Conservation Resources Lie-Free® Type I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 571 571 4 # Conservation Resources Lig-Free® Type I Pb 8.5, Buffered