This Is
Not Teaching Of The Highest Order; But It Is Teaching Well Adapted
To Human Circumstances, And Has Obtained For Itself A Wide Credit.
One Is Driven, However, To Doubt Whether Even This Teaching Is Not
Too High For The Frontier Man.
Is it possible that a frontier man
should be scrupulous and at the same time successful?
Hitherto
those who have allowed scruples to stand in their way have not
succeeded; and they who have succeeded and made for themselves
great names, who have been the pioneers of civilization, have not
allowed ideas of exact honesty to stand in their way. From General
Jason down to General Fremont there have been men of great
aspirations but of slight scruples. They have been ambitious of
power and desirous of progress, but somewhat regardless how power
and progress shall be attained. Clive and Warren Hastings were
great frontier men, but we cannot imagine that they had ever
realized the doctrine that honesty is the best policy. Cortez, and
even Columbus, the prince of frontier men, are in the same
category. The names of such heroes is legion; but with none of
them has absolute honesty been a favorite virtue. "It behoves a
frontier man to be smart, sir." Such, in that or other language,
has been the prevailing idea. Such is the prevailing idea. And
one feels driven to ask one's self whether such must not be the
prevailing idea with those who leave the world and its rules behind
them, and go forth with the resolve that the world and its rules
shall follow them.
Of filibustering, annexation, and polishing savages off the face of
creation there has been a great deal, and who can deny that
humanity has been the gainer? It seems to those who look widely
back over history, that all such works have been carried on in
obedience to God's laws. When Jacob by Rebecca's aid cheated his
elder brother, he was very smart; but we cannot but suppose that a
better race was by this smartness put in possession of the
patriarchal scepter. Esau was polished off, and readers of
Scripture wonder why heaven, with its thunder, did not open over
the heads of Rebecca and her son. But Jacob, with all his fraud,
was the chosen one. Perhaps the day may come when scrupulous
honesty may be the best policy, even on the frontier. I can only
say that hitherto that day seems to be as distant as ever. I do
not pretend to solve the problem, but simply record my opinion that
under circumstances as they still exist I should not willingly
select a frontier life for my children.
I have said that all great frontier men have been unscrupulous.
There is, however, an exception in history which may perhaps serve
to prove the rule. The Puritans who colonized New England were
frontier men, and were, I think, in general scrupulously honest.
They had their faults. They were stern, austere men, tyrannical at
the backbone when power came in their way, as are all pioneers,
hard upon vices for which they who made the laws had themselves no
minds; but they were not dishonest.
At Milwaukee I went up to see the Wisconsin volunteers, who were
then encamped on open ground in the close vicinity of the town. Of
Wisconsin I had heard before - and have heard the same opinion
repeated since - that it was more backward in its volunteering than
its neighbor States in the West. Wisconsin has 760,000
inhabitants, and its tenth thousand of volunteers was not then made
up; whereas Indiana, with less than double its number, had already
sent out thirty-six thousand. Iowa, with a hundred thousand less
of inhabitants, had then made up fifteen thousand. But neverthless
to me it seemed that Wisconsin was quite alive to its presumed duty
in that respect. Wisconsin, with its three-quarters of a million
of people, is as large as England. Every acre of it may be made
productive, but as yet it is not half cleared. Of such a country
its young men are its heart's blood. Ten thousand men, fit to bear
arms, carried away from such a land to the horrors of civil war, is
a sight as full of sadness as any on which the eye can rest. Ah
me, when will they return, and with what altered hopes! It is, I
fear, easier to turn the sickle into the sword than to recast the
sword back again into the sickle!
We found a completed regiment at Wisconsin consisting entirely of
Germans. A thousand Germans had been collected in that State and
brought together in one regiment, and I was informed by an officer
on the ground that there are many Germans in sundry other of the
Wisconsin regiments. It may be well to mention here that the
number of Germans through all these Western States is very great.
Their number and well-being were to me astonishing. That they form
a great portion of the population of New York, making the German
quarter of that city the third largest German town in the world, I
have long known; but I had no previous idea of their expansion
westward. In Detroit nearly every third shop bore a German name,
and the same remark was to be made at Milwaukee; and on all hands I
heard praises of their morals, of their thrift, and of their new
patriotism. I was continually told how far they exceeded the Irish
settlers. To me in all parts of the world an Irishman is dear.
When handled tenderly he becomes a creature most lovable. But with
all my judgment in the Irishman's favor, and with my prejudices
leaning the same way, I feel myself bound to state what I heard and
what I saw as to the Germans.
But this regiment of Germans, and another not completed regiment,
called from the State generally, were as yet without arms,
accouterments, or clothing.
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