Rise of the New West, 1819-1829

their own midst, New England was obliged to cross populous states in order to reach the regions into which national life was expanding; and her son

m was still strong upon her, and the unity of her moral life was exceptional. Moreover, up to the beginning of the decade with which we have to deal, New England had a population of almost unmixed English origin, contrasting sharply, in this respect, with the other sections. [Footnote: For the c

ed only a little over one hundred thousand souls, at a time when New England's population was over one million, had in 1820 reached a population of nearly two millions and a quarter, while New England had not much over a million and a half. Ten years later, the latter section had less than two millions, while the western states beyond the Alleghenies had over three millions and a half, and the people northwest of the Ohio River alone numbered nearly a million and a half. In 1820 the total population of N

ontrol of the neutral trade during the European wars. The close of that period saw an apparent decline in her relative maritime power in the Union, but the shipping and commercial interests were still strong. New England possessed half the vessels owned in the United States and over half the seamen. Massachusetts alone had a quarter of the ships of the nation and over a third of the sailors. [Footnote: Pitkin, Statistical View (ed. of 1835

for details. But the figures for New England were more complete than for the other regions; the product of her cotton mills increased in value from two and one-half million dollars in 1820 to over fifteen and one-half millions in 1831; and her woolen products rose from less than a million dollars to over eleven million dollars. In Massachusetts alone, in the same years, the

ites of factory towns, and the industrial revolution which, in the time of the embargo, began to transfer industries from the household to the factory, was rapidly carried on. A labor class began to develop, farmers moved into towns, the daughters worked in the mills. It was not long before Irish immigrants found their way to th

e quantities from the other sections. The raising of cattle and sheep increased as grain cultivation declined. The back-country of Maine particularly was being occupied for cattle farms, and in Vermont and the Berkshires there was, towards the close of the decade, a marked tendency to combine the small farms into sheep pastures. Thus, in the tariff agitation of the latter part of the decade, these two areas of western New England showed a decided sympathy with the

stry that had characterized the colonial period, slaughtering their cattle and hogs, and packing their cheese. When the cold weather set in, caravans of Vermont farmers passed, by sledges, to the commercial centers of New England. [Foot

e clergy were prominent characteristics of the Connecticut government. [Footnote: Dwight, Travels, I., 262, 263, 291; Welling, "Conn. Federalism," in N. Y. Hist. Soc., Address, 1890, pp. 39-41.] The ceremonies of the counting of votes for governor indicated the position of the dominant classes in this society. This solemnity was performed in the church. "After the Representatives," wrote Dwight, the president of Yale College, "walk the

and newer communities, and, where they were strongest, there was certain to be a considerable democratic influence. Not only did these denominations tend to unite against the Federalists and the Congregationalists, but they found useful allies in the members of the old and influential Episcopal church, who had with them a common grievance because of the relations between the state and C

us. By her constitutional convention of 1818, Connecticut practically disestablished the Congregational church and did away with the old manner of choosing assistants. [Footnote: Baldwin, "The Three Constitutions of Conn.," in New Haven Colony Hist. Soc., Papers, V., 210-214.] In the election of 1820 the Republican candidate for governor was elected by a decisive vote, and all of Connecticut's representation in the lower house of Congress was Republican, [Footnote: Niles' Register, XVIII., 128.] although, in 1816, the Federalist

other states of New England. The discussion in that state between the Unitarian and orthodox wings of the Congregational churches tended, on the whole, to moderate the extreme views of each, as well as to prevent their united domination. In her constitutional convention of 1820, Massachusetts refused to do away with the advantage which the Congregational church had in the matter of public support, and it was not unti

sis for subsequent political conflicts. Just before he took his seat in Congress in 1823, Webster lamented to Judge Story that New England did not get out of the "dirty squabble of local politics, and assert her proper character and consequence." "We are disgraced," he sa

y; in southern New England the fortifications of Federalism and Congregational power lay in a wide belt along th

and complain incessantly, as well as bitterly, of the extortions of mechanics, farmers, merchants, and physicians; to whom they are always indebted. At the same time, they are usually possessed, in their own view, of uncommon wisdom; understand medical science, politics, and religion, better than those, who have studied them through life." These restless men, with nothing to lose, who were delighted with innovation, were, in his judgm

all, "the clustering of habitations in villages instead of dispersing them at intervals of a mile over the country." The spires of the white churches of separate hamlets dotted the landscape. Simple comfort and thrift were characteristic of th

f-consciousness, that self-scrutiny, almost morbid at times, by which the Puritan tried to solve the problem of his personal salvation, to determine whether he was of the elect,

utiny" in Connecticut. [Footnote: Tudor, Letters on the Eastern States (ed. of 1821), 60.] Not to be one's brother's keeper and not to assent to the dictates of community sentiment were indications of moral laxity. This long trainin

tablished order carried with them a body of ideas regarding conduct and a way of looking at the world that were deeply influenced by their old Puritan training. If, indeed, they revolted from the older type of Calvinism in the freer air of a new country, they were, by this sudden release from restraint, likely to develop "isms" of their own, which revealed the strong

cess among the New-Englanders of New York and Ohio. Antimasonry and spiritualism flourished in the Greater New England in which these emancipated Puritans settled. Wherever the New- Englander went he was a lead

ligion had been progressing. The Unitarian revolt, of which Channing was the most important leader, laid its emphasis upon conduct rather than upon a plan of salvation by atonement. In place of original sin and total depravity,

prosperous classes of the community. Attempting to adjust themselves between the old order of things on the one side, and the new forces of evangelism and liberalism on the other, another great body of Congregationalists found a middle ground in a movement of modified Calvinism

e influence of the Unitarian movement, the influence of European romantic literature, and the influence of German philosophy. Before long the Transcendentalists proclaimed the new idealism that was showing itself about Bo

England by his noble commemorative orations and enriched his arguments before the courts by the splendor of his style. He united the strong, passionate nature of his backwoods father with a mind brought under the influences of the cultured society of Boston. John Quincy Adams, also, had been professor of rhetoric and oratory at

ls for the laborers flourished in the new centers of manufacturing. The smaller educational centers, like Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Amherst, and Williams, where the farmer boys of New England worked their way through college, sent out each year men to other sections to become leaders at the bar, in the pulpit, in the press, and in the newer colleges. The careers of Amos Kendall, Prentiss, and others illustrate these tendencies. In short, New England wa