 National Broadcasting Company in conjunction with the Fund for Adult Education presents Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. July 1831. The Territory of Michigan. What are these pioneers in the wilderness? A restless, reasoning, adventurous race which does coldly what only the ardor of passion can explain. A nation of conquerors who submit themselves to the savage life without ever allowing themselves to be seduced by it and who shut themselves in the American solitudes with an axe and some newspapers. The Ark of Civilization. A study in American character. Item 4 in the series Democracy in America. Prepared by the Division of General Education of New York University under the direction of George Probst, American Historian. A series designed to bring to life the America of 1831 as recorded by Alexis de Tocqueville and so to illuminate the image of democracy itself. A study in American character. The Ark of Civilization. Listen, Tocqueville. The voice of the wilderness. Almost the only sound we have heard in these silent Michigan forests. Bumon, this wilderness began outside the little town of 2000 souls. Detroit. The last city in the Northwest. And it was only a mile from Detroit. This road entered the forest for good. The territory of Michigan is a vast solitude. But in it, I think, I see the still empty cradle of a great nation. You know, Tocqueville, this dense forest, this is the frontier. The frontier is here all the time, ready for the taking. Anyone who wants to can pick up his family and move to the west and every day they do it. On this boundless continent, nature herself favors the cause of the people. The great fact of America is the presence of the wilderness, the frontier. You've forgotten another fact, and one that's just as important. What? This morning we were in a pioneer's cottage. What was it like? A long cabin, one window with a muslin curtain, a rough floor of trodden earth, the home of a frontiersman braving the miseries of a savage life exposed to the furthest fevers and the tomahawk of the Indian. That's what I mean. And also what? Next to the chimney was stretched a map of the United States. The plank shelf was rough, but it held a Bible whose cover and edges are already worn by the piety of two generations. A book of prayers and Milton Shakespeare. Yes, but the table was of green wood with a bark still on it. But on that table, a teapot of British China, silver spoons, cracked teacups and some recent New York newspapers. In America, even on the frontier, Beaumont, there is only one society. It may be either rich or poor, humble or brilliant, trading or agricultural, but it is composed everywhere of the same elements. The plain of a uniform civilization has passed over it. Civilization? That cabin had only one room. There was not even a partition. The wind blew through the cracks in the wall. But the family that lived in it came from New England and brought with them democracy and equality. That cabin Beaumont was itself a little world, an arc of civilization lost in the midst of an ocean of leads. In July 1831, Beaumont and I spent two weeks in the wilderness of the new territory of Michigan. We left Detroit on horseback and for days we went through these great forests. For Beaumont and I did not simply listen to what people told us about the frontier, we did our best to see for ourselves. Our guides were Chippewa Indians. With a silent savage at our side, we went on and on. The forest never changing. It was only in the evening after sundown that we reached the tiny village of Pontiac, 20 very neat and pretty houses lost in the woods. We went to the best inn called the Yellow Tower and Beaumont and I were introduced as usual into what is called the bar room. I'm heading for Ohio. You can live cheaper there than anywhere else. Give me Illinois. You can buy the most fertile lands in the Mississippi Valley. Pick them up, dirt shoes. Now what about Indiana? Now I hear that Indiana is wonderful. Let's talk to the landlord. There he is. The big fat man. He looks like a great peasant from Normandy. He may look it, but I'm sure it's deceptive. There are no peasants in America. All the same, he's got a taste like a Normandy, that mild candied expression and underneath as sharp as you like. I'm sure you'll know everything about this new territory. I'm sure I will, but I shall be asking him. Perhaps he will not like Frenchman to be too inquisitive. But let's pretend that we are thinking about buying land in Michigan. Settling, you mean? Settling. If we pretend we are on our way to Saginaw and business, any amount of questions will seem perfectly reasonable to America. Excellent. Sir. Sir. Huh? You following me, gentlemen? Yes, sir, we were. I wonder if you could give us a little advice. Oh. What kind of advice? This gentleman and myself are from France. We are interested, shall we say, in the question of Settling in the territory of Michigan. And we hoped you might be able to enlighten us. Boys, you came to the right corner. Judge Jamesa Bagley, at your service. Judge Bagley? But I thought you were our landlord. That's right. I'm a judge here, as well as landlord of the yellow cabin. I'm going to vote for Henry Clay. He's a man of the people. Clay's taking you into that tattered old Cody. Where's just for a campaign? He's England. He's just courting your vote. All right. Who are you for? I'm for President Andrew Jackson. The White House has been a better place since old Hickory is in it. He's just a man for the people and as immovable as a rock. Let's go into another room where we can get a little piece of quiet. Now, if you'll just step this way, I'll take a candle with me and we better have a map of the Michigan territory. You see, business opens all doors. In here. That's the style. There we are. Pray be seated. Thank you. Now then, let's get it straight. You're from France. You want to settle here. Let us say we are interested. You're interested. Good. Well, let's begin with France and just stuff that candle. With you, labor is cheap and land is dear. Well, here things are very different. The cost of land is nothing. And the labor of man is beyond price. Then to establish yourself in America, capital is highly necessary. Oh, no, no. You need capital. I shouldn't advise anyone to seek his fortune in the Michigan territory unless he has about $200 handy. Around here, unclear land costs a dollar an acre. Now, that's about the price of a day's work. That means that the fellow can earn enough in one day to buy an acre of land. But once he's bought it, then the fund starts. Why, it costs $4 to get an acre cleared of trees. So, he does it himself. Alone, usually. Backbreaking labor, too. You are speaking of unclear land. Sir, that's all there is for hundreds of miles. Maybe thousands, for all I know. It's the clearing of that land where you have the trouble and expense. Now, first you put up a tent, then you fell the trees and make a cabin. Meantime, you live off salt, pork, and a couple of barrels of meal. You let a few cattle run around. That doesn't cost you anything. Most settlers are young fellas with families. They put in an acre of potatoes and the rest in wheat. And corn. I tell you, corn is the providence of the wilderness. It's the corn that saves the family when poverty, sickness, or carelessness has prevented a large enough clearing. There's nothing harder than the first years after the clearing. And you must keep working. For left to itself, the ground is marshy and unhealthy. It sounds very dangerous. You hit the right word for it. It is dangerous. Wild beasts. Indians. Oh, occasionally. Fever, as much as anything. Often, when you travel in the fall, you'll find a whole family down with fever. What do they do? Put up with it. No doctor? Sixty miles to a doctor. They do like the Indians. They die. Or they get better, as God sees fit. How is it in our wanderings in these forests? We have not met any Europeans. I should have thought immigrants from Europe would have come to the frontier. No, sir. The frontier is no place for such people. They stop in the East Coast cities, become servants or artisans. Why, from last May, when the ice melted up to the first of July, they came to Michigan in two months, about 5,000 new settlers. But the Detroit land agent tells me there wasn't among them 200 immigrants from Europe. Only Americans have the courage to face the frontier. They know how to buy prosperity at the price of misery. The land belongs to the American. It is quite true that the cost of land is almost nothing and the labor of man beyond price. It would be difficult to describe the eagerness which the American rushes forward to secure this immense booty that fortune offers. We had the idea that as in Europe, the more remote parts of the country, these tiny places, often very poor, would have customs very different from the rest of the nation. So that as in Europe, there might be in effect a difference of several centuries between different parts of the same nation. I thought that in America, I might find all the transitions of the social state at once from the opulent city patrician to the savage and the wilderness. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of all the countries in the world, America is the least fitted to show this particular side. In America, there is only one society. You penetrate parts scarcely cleared. You perceive finally a cleared field, a cabin composed of half cleared logs with a tiny window. You think you've come at last to the home of an American peasant, but you're wrong. You step into this place which seems the asylum of all the miseries, but the owner wears the same clothes as you. He speaks the language of the cities. On his road table are books and newspapers. And what does he say to you? Well, that's the country I've always been interested in. Home of Lafayette, you know. Well, of course you'd know. These, like European countries, interest me. See, here, I've been trying to draw up a system for the defense of Belgium. I've always been interested in strategy, politics too, you know. You'll likely want to hear my views on what's wanted for the prosperity of France. Here's what I can figure out you Frenchmen could do with some good advice. Let me tell you what you ought to do. You see, it is the same everywhere. You would think you were talking to a rich landed gentleman who has come to spend a few nights in his hunting lodge. And in fact the log cabin is only temporary for the American. A house north spacious for his needs will replace the cabin and shelter his children who will in their turn go out and once more send the arc of civilization into the great ocean of leaves. Inevitably this has had its effect on the American character. There is not a country in the world where man more confidently seizes the future where he so proudly feels that his intelligence makes him master of the universe like he can fashion it to his liking. Born often under another sky placed in the middle of an always moving scene himself driven by the irresistible torrent which drives all about him. The American has no time to tie himself to anything. He grows accustomed only to change and ends by regarding it as the natural state of man. He feels the need of it, more he loves it for the instability instead of meaning disaster to him seems to give birth only to miracles all about him. The frontier line at present in 1831 is moving westward about 17 miles a year. It runs from Detroit to Louisiana but there are vast islands of wilderness east of that line. In July we arrived in a strange little Indian filled town in the northern part of New York state. The name of the town was Buffalo and it was full of people passing through on their way to the west. That's where they're going. New Englanders moving into the Michigan Peninsula. Are the settlers often New Englanders? Pretty nearly always. The last settlers anyway. They come through here headed for Detroit. A dear born wagon, a feather bed, a saddle and a bridle, and some knick-knack in the way of a machine for a shell and corn, hatchling flax or what I know a manufacturer in wooden nutmegs for family use and all headed for Michigan. You're boys who would like to change your lot who's spunky enough to travel beyond your native spot and leave behind the little in Michigan night. Most interesting, madam. Both you and your husband have made this trip on the lake's steamboat. Most interesting, we have picked up many valuable ideas. Well, we're from New England. We've got the valuable ideas and likely they'll do you good. I guess you don't have too much in the way of information at home. No, he's just showing off. You're interested in Michigan, eh? Yes, we are. I'll tell you a story about a fellow that bought land in Michigan. Don't you believe a word of it? Someone calls by one day and says, whose land was this that you bought? Bogs. What's the soil? Bogs. What's the climate? Fogs. Where do you get to eat? Hogs. Where do you build your house of? Logs. Do you have any neighbors? Frogs. There you are, sir. That's the truth about the forest settlements. You won't hear it from many. Don't believe a word of it. The movement to the west becomes a sort of game of chance which people pursue for the emotions and excites as much as for the gains it gets them. Sometimes, indeed, the progress of man is so rapid that the wilderness reappears behind him. The forests stoop to give him passage and spring up again when he is past. And what about the Indians? These frontier lands belong to them? I think the Indians are in a hopeless situation. I think so too. If they stay savage, they're pushed back. If they try to civilize themselves, the pressure of the white man's society ruins them. They perish if they wander, and if they settle, they perish also. And yet the Americans treat them with great attachment to all the formalities of law. Remember, as we passed through Memphis, how we watched the expulsion of one of the most celebrated and ancient American peoples. I still cannot forget the sight of those poor Choctaw forced from their homes to cross the Mississippi in the middle of winter. Yes, in weather that was 14 below zero. 7,000 Choctaw Indians were set down in the solitudes of Arkansas. And they did not cheer me, Tocqueville, to learn that these poor people were being moved from their homes with all due formality of law and treaty. And yet, I suppose, that it is better than the way the Spaniards treated the savages they found on their frontier. Well, the Spaniards were unable to exterminate the Indians by unparalleled atrocities. Nor did they succeed even in wholly depriving them of their rights. But the Americans of the United States have accomplished this twofold purpose with singular felicity, tranquilly, legally, philanthropically, and without violating a single great principle of morality in the eyes of the world. It is impossible to destroy men with more respect for the laws of humanity. The life of the frontier is made by the American character, and it makes that character. But of course, the American brought his character with him to the frontier. In Canada, and in the whole of South America, there was a frontier that physically was much the same as the United States. But the life there was very different. For the men came to it with different historical beginnings, different customs, and different laws. On the American frontier, men buy and sell whole towns and settlements and speculate in western cities. Now, when the United States purchased this land lying between the flint of my Chattahoochee rivers from the Creek Indians, they made a lottery of it, and every white man of legal age in the state of Georgia had a right to draw for a fine lot of 200 and two and a half acres precisely if you follow me. Go ahead, I'll follow you. But this portion right here at the foals of the Chattahoochee are a very beautiful situation. Seems as though. Well, in this section of five miles square is the town, and I can offer you choice lots of half an acre or an acre or even larger. Where's the center of town? Oh, right that way in that Pineywood section. And right now, we're in an area surrounded by professional men. Mind your foot in between those stumps there. You'll find it kind of swampy so. Oh, there you are. Too late. Never mind. Soon dry off. Yeah, that's too bad. Well, this is also a cause of manufacturing part of town. You see the sign on that cabin over there, and not the frame one, the log one. Bakehouse. Bakehouse, right. As you see we're coming along real quick, real progress. You surely are. That's wonderful. Exactly what it is. Look at the board on the big tulip tree. T. Gordon, attorney at law. Civilizations undoubtedly on the mark. And of course we're having a railroad meeting this evening, high time. It's nearly 18 months since the first settler put up his cabin. High time for a railroad. Now, if you're interested in a lot in this thriving town, step along here where the auction's going on. But mind the stumps. Don't want to twist an ankle. A brilliant auctioneer we have. Very witty. Local man, of course. One of the founding fathers. Been here over a year. Much appreciated in this part of the state. Is that that swamp we were in? It's good land, rich. Real rich land. Yeah, that too, sir. Down to well water. Well, this land is so rich it produces 60 bushels of frogs to the acre. And you don't need to spend money on fencing. No need to incur expense in that regard. There's enough alligators right on the spot to form an excellent strength. All you have to do is catch them. And then, of course, should drive them alligators head downwards with their tails sticking up in the air. Now, then, sir, I'm on my bed for this fine prize of land. The life of the frontier is often spirited and gay. Often, but not always. I remember the innumerable pioneer families we visited in their lonely cabins in the forest clearing. This man was not born in the solitude where he dwells. His own desire has thrown him into the labors of the wilderness. To become well-to-do, he has braved exile, loneliness, and death with a perseverance and a scorn for life that one might call heroic. He made this effort one day. He has been renewing it for years. He's a man capable of such sacrifices, a cold and insensible being, ought not one on the contrary to recognize in him one of those mental passions, so burning, so tenacious, so implacable. Look across the hearth at the young wife who, while seeing to the preparation of the meal, rocks her youngest son on her knees. Her clothes even yet proclaim a taste for adornment ill-extinguished. But time has weighed heavily on her. In her prematurely pale face and her shrunken limbs, it is easy to see that existence has been a heavy burden and that she has been exposed to unbelievable miseries for the solitude of the forests. She has exchanged the charms of society and the joys of her youthful home. It's on the bare ground of the wilderness that her nuptial couch was placed. Around this woman crowd half-naked children, shining with health, careless of the morrow, veritable sons of the wilderness. But civilization is flowing into the woods and the whole westward removal is carried forward, directed and dominated by New Englanders. The talent of the New Englander is universal. He's a good farmer, an excellent schoolmaster, a very respectable preacher, a capital lawyer, a sagacious physician, an able editor, a thriving merchant, a shrewd peddler and a most industrious tradesman. Being thus able to fill all the important posts of society, only a very few immigrants from New England are able to imprint a lasting character on a new state, even if our number is much inferior to that of the other settlers. I know of no better specimen of human character than a New Englander transferred to the western states. I see the destiny of America embodied in the first Puritan who landed on these shores. The origins of the American is the first cause of the prosperity of the United States. The early settlers imported equality of condition and intellect, bequeathing to their descendants the manners and opinions that control you both most to the success of our republic. With space and elbow room for liberty, the frontier is also the guarantee of order, for men who feel themselves ill at ease can move to the west. Brave. But brave by calculation, they esteem only the results of victory. They hold that glory is a vain noise and that man is coming to the world to acquire ease and the comforts of life. The way of escape is always to the west and this gradual and continuous progress of the European race towards the Rocky Mountains has the solemnity of a providential event. It is like a deluge of men rising unabatedly and daily driven onwards by the hand of God. You have just heard The Ark of Civilization, a study in American character, item four in a series based on Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. This series presented by the National Broadcasting Company was prepared by the Division of General Education of New York University under the direction of George Probst, American historian, produced in the studios of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation by Andrew Allen, script by Lister Sinclair, music by Lucio Agostini. This series, Democracy in America, is made possible by a grant from the Fund for Adult Education as part of a general course of study of the nature of American society. For information about the use of these de Tocqueville dramatizations for study or discussion and how to secure these new materials about American democracy at a reasonable charge, write to the American Foundation for Continuing Education. Post Office Box 749, Chicago 90, Illinois. Now this is Ben Grower inviting you to join us next week for item five, Any Woman is a Lady on Democracy in America.