The greatest Americans were those who settled this country.
George Dangerfield: "... the settler who committed himself to the westward migration wa like a man entering a whirlpool, who passed as he sank the various stages of civilization, all of them intensely active, and who sank, more often than not, forever out of sight and memory..."
"... the movement was relentless and imaginative, and the backwoodsmen who sold their rude clearings or abandoned them at the first approach of civilization, and 'lit out for the tall timber,' were more typical than were those who settled in one place for the rest of the lives.."
"The pioneer farmer was a restless man, as in a world of cheap land and dear capital he might well be; and he moved as often as he felt attracted by the thought of better soils just ahead, selling his cleared land for a small profit."
"... the majority of settlers, upon reaching a destination, began by hewing out a clearing in the midst of the forest... After this, if a settler were fortunate enough to have accessible neighbors, which was by no means always the case, he summoned them to a 'raising,' with whisky and a frolic, and the log cabin was built by a communal effort."
"The pioneer farmer raised his own wool, cotton, and flax for his summer and winter clothing, which his women spun and wove into garments; his cap was fashioned out of raccoon fur; he was shod from the skins of deer or cattle..."
"His household furniture, his farming utensils, his harness, were all homemade... The valiant women helped with the planting, the hoeing, and the raking at harvest time; and if there was milking to be done, they did that too..."
"The backwoodsman who dragged his wife and children on and on into the forest, and away from the face of civilization, was a highly imaginative type—'half-wild and wholly free'—a curious variant of classical cenobite..."
"The 'generals, colonels, and majors; who infested land-office towns like Kaskaskia were not obsessed with some idea of social distinction; while they probably used these self-bestowed titles as a screen for some very sharp practices..."
"...they were just as probably expressing their belief in the uncommonness of the common man. For it was the common man who, like a giant, subdued the wilderness, and the frontier never forgot it."
—George Dangerfield, The Era of Good Feelings
Malachi 4:6
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