Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe, In the onward march of the people across the continent, in a thousand different valleys, at the foot of a thousand different mountains, beside a score of waterfalls, at the great meeting places the great places where the paths converge - there have been enacted the countless different incidents making up this great drama that we call our national history. I come this afternoon to this, my own country, and, please let me say, to you, my own people and Ohioan kindred, to address you briefly on a certain phase of the sociological aspect of our national history. Had I been sufficiently versed in political history, I might have chosen a topic which would have been more to your interest, perhaps, than the one I have selected. Had I followed the local history of my native state as closely even as I have pursued that of the states in which I have been resident since leaving you, I might have hoped to add something to the splendid collection of local data your Society is making. But I must choose as I can and speak to you on the unification of the American people through free migration and interstate communication. In this aspect of our national history, Ohio has been foremost; first in respect to her geographical situation; next in the contributions she has made to sister states, and especially in the fact that she has been the repository of some of the best blood that was produced on the Atlantic Coast Plain and the heritage of the finest intellectual and moral standards that have crossed the barrier of the Alleghenies. This remarkable Plain varies in width from fifty to two hundred miles. In it are located Concord and Lexington, Valley Forge and Yorktown. Upon it were enacted the stirring events that marked the birth of the different colonies. Here the people recruited their strength for the march across the continent. If you will remember, it took about four generations to produce the men who fought the Revolutionary War. George Washington was the fourth of the Washingtons in America. John Adams was the fourth of the Adamses. Samuel Adams the same. It is true that some men, like Robert Morris, the great financier of the American Revolu tion, had no American ancestry. Morris was born in England. But, generally speaking, on this Atlantic Coast Plain were bred three generations of men who were preparing this land of ours for freedom. For two hundred years these English, German, and Dutch colonists cast eager eyes toward the West; beyond them towered the summits of the great Appalachian system, barring the way to the West; while the French in their swift canoes, through the great lakes and over a dozen different portages to the Mississippi, simply cut a half circle around them from Quebec to New Orleans. But by and by the English began with uncertain steps to feel their way by numerous waterways and passes across the mountains. If I had here a map of the United States, I would call your attention to the fact that the first routes across the mountains were along navigable waters, illustrating one great point in local history in its relation to national history, that the waterways were the natural highways. The Hudson and Mohawk to the north, the Potomac and Monongahela in the middle and the James to the headwaters of the Tennessee and Cumberland to the southward offered a ready-made passage way to the waters of the Mississippi Valley. It is interesting to notice that there is today a great railway trunk line along each of these first routes. Our forefathers, groping their way across the continent, chose the lines of least resistance for their routes. In time the waterway gave way to the post road. It gave way to the canal, and the canal gave way to the railway. Today along the Hudson and Mohawk rivers we have the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, which goes far to the west; the West Shore Road paralleling it. Along the middle route, we have the Pennsylvania system and the Baltimore & Ohio system, and farther to the south, along the southern route, we have the Chesapeake and Ohio Road. These great trunk lines follow in large part the early pathways traced by the pioneers. If I had the frontier line of 1790 portrayed upon a map before me, you would find one protuberance of people (if I may so use the term) running up the Connecticut river, another running up along Lake Champlain, a third down through Pennsylvania encompassing the present city of Pittsburgh, and a fourth running out along the head waters of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. These were the early routes to the north and west, and each projection was caused by the presence of a waterway. The frontier has always moved fastest in the middle and slowest on the sides. This may be illustrated by a stream which flows fastest in the middle, because the current is retarded by the banks on either side. It may be illustrated still further by the fact that throughout the middle of our continent there lay ready-made to the use of these pioneers a continuous waterway. If in your mind's eye you will trace the Potomac to its source, you will remember that it rises very nearly at the headwaters of the Ohio river, requiring a portage of no great distance to unite the two waterways. When we once reach the Ohio it has a slightly southern turn, but in due time on the bosom of that river we shall reach the Mississippi in the west. The Mississippi River from the mouth of the Ohio to the mouth of the Mis souri has a northwestern turn. Following the Mis souri and the Kansas or Kaw River we are carried due west again until we come to the present situation of Topeka. Consequently, in the early days, before we had so completely stripped the land of timber and injured our navigable streams, we had navigable water from the Atlantic to the heart of our national domain. Over half the continent was traversed by the almost continuous streams named above. The frontier life which made use of these routes of travel produced the American character. Along the northern route passed the settlers, under Moses Cleaveland, to found the city of that name the pioneers in the territory of the Connecticut Reserve. Along the middle route went the pioneers who founded the city of Marietta, the first settlement in the Northwest Territory. Farther to the south, through the great Cumberland Gap, which someone has well called the "Gateway to the West," came in the early days, Daniel Boone, and other pioneers. Colonel Durret, of Louisville, had Daniel Boone's rifle; that is, he always claimed it was Daniel Boone's rifle. If it is not his rifle, it is just as good; because it shows the kind of rifle that men like Daniel Boone used to carry. Standing the butt of the rifle upon the floor, the end comes just between the eyes of a man of my stature. And you may still see upon the barrel the hammer marks where it was fashioned by hand. With these long rifles, with nothing but the bullet pouch, the powder horn and a bag of parched corn, the pioneer felt his way across the mountains, blazing his path with tomahawk marks on trees, so that he might find his way back to civilization. And these are the pioneer fathers of ours - Cleaveland at the north, Putnam in the middle, Boone, Robertson and Donaldson on the south-what a host of names flock |