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Various
The Westward Movement
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066249373
Table of Contents
BEGINNINGS OF THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK AND THE CONQUEST OF THE NORTHWEST
DANIEL BOONE AND THE FOUNDING OF KENTUCKY
THE FIRST EMIGRANT TRAIN TO CALIFORNIA
RÉSUMÉ OF FRÉMONT'S EXPEDITIONS
ROUGH TIMES IN ROUGH PLACES A PERSONAL NARRATIVE
KIT CARSON, LAST OF THE TRAIL-MAKERS
THE MACMONNIES PIONEER MONUMENT FOR DENVER
THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA
THE GREAT NORTHWEST IN THE EARLY EIGHTIES
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
PEOPLING THE WEST
From Europe's proud, despotic shores
Hither the stranger takes his way,
And in our new-found world explores
A happier soil, a milder sway,
Where no proud despot holds him down,
No slaves insult him with a crown.
From these fair plains, these rural seats,
So long concealed, so lately known,
The unsocial Indian far retreats,
To make some other clime his own,
Where other streams, less pleasing, flow,
And darker forests round him grow.
No longer shall your princely flood
From distant lakes be swelled in vain,
No longer through a darksome wood
Advance unnoticed to the main;
Far other ends the heavens decree—
And commerce plans new freights for thee.
While virtue warms the generous breast,
There heaven-born freedom shall reside,
Nor shall the voice of war molest,
Nor Europe's all-aspiring pride—
There Reason shall new laws devise,
And order from confusion rise.
Philip Freneau.
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
BEGINNINGS OF THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
By S. E. Forman
In 1636 Thomas Hooker, the pastor of the church at Newton (now Cambridge), moved with his entire congregation to the banks of the Connecticut and founded the city of Hartford. Hooker did not like the way the Puritans acted in matters of government. He thought religious affairs and state affairs in the Massachusetts Bay Colony were bound too closely together. He thought also that more people ought to be allowed to vote than were allowed that privilege in the Puritan colony. Besides, was not the rich valley of the Connecticut a better place for homes than the rocky and barren hills around Boston? Hooker and his followers took their wives and children with them. They carried their household goods along and drove their cattle before them. As they moved overland through the roadless forests of Massachusetts, they took the first step in that great Westward Movement which continued for more than two hundred years and which did not come to an end until the far-off Pacific was reached.
At the opening of the eighteenth century in almost every colony there were great areas of vacant land, and colonial growth for many years consisted mainly in bringing these lands under cultivation and filling them with people. This development necessarily took a westward course, for if the English colonists went far to the north they met the French, and if they went far to the south they met the Spanish. In New York the Westward Movement between 1700 and 1740 was very slow, because the progress of the English was opposed not only by the French, but also by powerful tribes of Iroquois Indians. But in the western part of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina the Indians were less troublesome and there were as yet no French at all. So it was from Pennsylvania and from the southern colonies that the settlers first began to move in considerable numbers toward the West.
Savannah in 1741.
The first important westward movement of population began with the settlement of the beautiful