Composing Pioneers: Personal Writing and the Making of Frontier Opportunity in Nineteenth-Century America

Composing Pioneers: Personal Writing and the Making of Frontier Opportunity in Nineteenth-Century America by William Edward Wagner A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor David M. Henkin, Chair Professor Waldo E. Martin Jr. Professor Samuel Otter Fall 2011 Composing Pioneers: Personal Writing and the Making of Frontier Opportunity in Nineteenth-Century America Copyright 2011 by William Edward Wagner Abstract Composing Pioneers: Personal Writing and the Making of Frontier Opportunity in Nineteenth-Century America by William Edward Wagner Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor David M. Henkin, Chair Few slogans occupy a more prominent place in popular mythology about the frontier than the exhortation, “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.” Despite its enduring popularity, surprisingly little scholarly attention has been devoted to probing the constellation of ideas about movement, place, masculinity, and social mobility that is captured in this short phrase. This dissertation explores how, in the decades between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, Americans began to think and write about the possibilities for “growing up” with new cities, towns, and agricultural communities on the frontier. Although politicians, newspaper editors, booster theorists, and popular authors figure prominently in this story, no group did more to construct and promote this masculine, entrepreneurial, and place-centered vision of the frontier than young men from middle-class backgrounds who migrated to new states and territories in the trans-Appalachian West during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. In their diaries, letters, travel narratives, and pioneer memoirs, these migrants generated an unprecedented volume of writing about the possibilities for financial, social, and professional mobility in a new country. Their writing not only shaped popular perceptions of frontier opportunity in their own time; it also left an indelible mark on historical memory of westward expansion in nineteenth-century America. This study begins by examining how aspiring merchants, lawyers, farmers, land speculators, and other young men used personal writing to survey the geography of opportunity in the trans-Appalachian West. As they searched for valuable real estate or an advantageous place to settle, many began their reconnaissance by writing letters to peers, relatives, and business associates, requesting personalized intelligence about conditions in particular frontier settlements. Not content to rely on second-hand reportage, some set out on prospecting journeys, traveling great distances to purchase land or investigate opportunities in the many new towns and villages springing up throughout the nation’s interior. During their journeys, prospectors used travel diaries and letters to collect and synthesize geographical intelligence, and to relay their findings to family members or business partners who were implicated in their decisions about relocation or speculation. All of this evaluative writing helped usher in a new conception of the frontier as a landscape of discrete places—cities, towns, and counties—whose 1 relative advantages and future prospects could be assessed and compared with great precision. In the months or years after they settled down in emerging towns or agricultural districts, young migrants used a variety of novel writing practices to assert their commitment to their adopted homes, and to fashion themselves as community builders. Some composed boosterish letters to family and friends, speculating about their own prospects and the prospects of their chosen abode. Others produced elaborate narratives of their migration experiences, chronicling the meandering westward journeys that led them to their new place of residence. In the late nineteenth century, many of these antebellum migrants also produced pioneer memoirs, a new type of personal narrative that wove together the story of their own financial, social, and professional striving with the history of their towns, counties, and states. Through their letters, migration narratives, and reminiscences, they constructed and popularized a new image of the pioneer as a young man who moved west, found a permanent home, and grew up with the country. As the later chapters of this dissertation will show, this vision of pioneer masculinity exaggerated some aspects of their experiences and obscured many others. Nevertheless, it became a central part of frontier mythology for many generations to come. 2 For my parents, Bill and Millie Wagner i TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………........iii INTRODUCTION………………………….……………………………………………..1 CHAPTER ONE Spies in the Land of Canaan: Letters of Advice about Emigration………………………………………………………..22 CHAPTER TWO Taking a View of the Country: Prospecting Journeys in the Trans-Appalachian West…………...45 CHAPTER THREE Castles in the Air: Speculating about Personal Prospects and the Prospects of Places………………….67 CHAPTER FOUR An Unlimited and Uncertain Journey: Narrating Transience and Settlement ……………………………93 CHAPTER FIVE Growing Up with the Country: Pioneer Narratives and Historical Memory…………………….120 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………144 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In writing this dissertation, it was hard to ignore the parallels between my own journey and those of the nineteenth-century migrants I was studying. Like them, I had set off on one of the great adventures of my life, full of naïve enthusiasm, with only a dim sense of the challenges that lay ahead. And like so many of their migration experiences, my road to completing this dissertation included dead ends and wrong turns that sometimes left me despairing of ever reaching my destination. Fortunately, my will to continue traveling was sustained by an immensely supportive network of family, friends, advisers, and fellow travelers. It is unlikely that I could have completed this project without them, and if I had, the journey certainly would have been far less rewarding and fun. First and foremost, I wish to thank the members of my dissertation committee for their supreme attentiveness, constant encouragement, and incisive criticism. Professor David Henkin was all that I could have asked for in a dissertation chair. At every stage of the process, he offered precisely the right mix of intellectual freedom, astute feedback, and firm guidance. It has been an incredible privilege to learn the historian’s craft from such a brilliant scholar and wonderful human being. I am similarly grateful to Professor Waldo Martin, who played a crucial role in my initial decision to study at U.C. Berkeley, and who provided sage advice throughout my graduate career. I will always look back with great fondness on our many lunchtime meetings, where we would inevitably blend substantive, academic discussion with intricate analysis of the latest Duke basketball game. Finally, Professor Samuel Otter read this dissertation with great care and provided a wealth of insights and suggestions. His comments on my first chapter draft were especially helpful in clarifying my sense of the project’s scope, structure, and significance. My research was facilitated by generous financial support from the American Antiquarian Society, the Bancroft Library, the William L. Clements Library, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the Newberry Library, and the Winterthur Library. In addition to supplying funding, these institutions offered me access to librarians, curators, and administrators who shared their ideas and expertise, directing me to a wealth of relevant archival documents and secondary literature. I am especially grateful to Jim Grossman, Thomas Knoles, Richard McKinstry, Ted O’Reilly, Caroline Sloat, and Susan Snyder, all of whom offered invaluable research leads and provided a sense of community during the many months that I spent on the road, gathering source material for this dissertation. A number of fellow graduate students at U.C. Berkeley and elsewhere helped refine my ideas and offered camaraderie throughout the writing process. In the History Department at Berkeley, Chris Agee, Cory Brooks, Candace Chen, Bill Goldman, Radhika Natarajan, Paddy Riley, and Teddy Varno proved to be not only talented and supportive colleagues, but also outstanding friends. As members of the Antebellum History Dissertation Group, Michelle Branch, Kathryn Eigen, Amy Lippert, MacKenzie Moore, and Ariel Ron read chapters of this dissertation and provided feedback that greatly improved the final product. On the research trail, I had the good fortune to iii befriend Ken Cohen, a gifted historian who quickly became my sounding board for new ideas. Our late-night debates about a wide range of historical subjects never failed to remind me of what I find so exciting about the discipline. During my time away from this project, close friends in the Bay Area, New York, and Washington D.C. kept me laughing, active, and well fed. Justin Tomljanovic and Jessica Ulmer were the closest thing I had to family in San Francisco. It would be hard to overstate how much our weekly dinners, camping trips, and adventures around the city contributed to the completion of this project. When I first arrived in Berkeley, my housemates, Taylor Perron, Becky Rosen, and Ken Haig, went to great lengths to help me get acclimated to graduate

Load more