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HISTORY MADE BY 
 PLAIN MEN 
 
 BY 
 
 LOUIS PELZER 
 
 REPRINTED FROM THE JULY 1913 NUMBER 
 OF THE IOWA JOURNAL OF HISTORY AND 
 POLITICS PUBLISHED AT IOWA CITY IOWA BY 
 THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF IOWA 
 
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 During the comparatively short era of man’s recorded 
 history his story has been told from various view-points:' 
 some writers have approached the subject with the con- • 
 viction that Religion is the key to History; another insists 
 that civilization has moved along with the drum and the 
 trumpet; a third that the State is the great central fact in 
 history, agreeing with Freeman that history is past politics; 
 Mr. Seligman has written on the economic interpretation of 
 history ; 1 while others have emphasized the biographical 
 element — the Alexanders, the Charlemagnes, the Bis- 
 marcks, or the Gladstones. 
 
 This paper is an attempt to examine another force which 
 permeates all the others, which is less tangible but omni¬ 
 present. This is the part played by Plain Men — those 
 individuals not endowed with greatness or with power, 
 whose spheres of operation are small and whose careers are 
 not perpetuated in marble, in the national archives, or in 
 the sifted products of historical study. 
 
 Hero-worship is a part of our moral nature which impels 
 us to render our tributes of admiration and praise to those 
 famous processions of statesmen, priests, poets, soldiers, 
 and inventors that have passed by and on. Their achieve¬ 
 ments survive them in the laws, the morals, or the institu¬ 
 tions which they were conspicuous in establishing or 
 adorning. Pageants, holidays, celebrations, and monu¬ 
 ments reveal this trait which is one of the qualities which 
 makes for a noble personal or national welfare . 2 
 
 1 Seligman’s The Economic Interpretation of History in the Political Science 
 Quarterly, Vol. XVI, p. 612. 
 
 2 Storrs’s Contributions made to our National Development by Plain Men in 
 the Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1896, Vol. I, pp. 
 37-63. 
 
 3 
 
4 
 
 HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 
 
 Interest in great men would alone be sufficient to per¬ 
 petuate their names. Their thoughts, deeds, and example 
 are such as to inspire, long after the actor has passed 
 away. Of Admiral Nelson Mr. Robert Southey has said : 3 
 “He has left us .... a name, and an example, 
 which are at this hour inspiring hundreds of the youth of 
 England: a name which is our pride, and an example 
 which will continue to be our shield and our strength. 
 Thus it is that the spirits of the great and the wise con¬ 
 tinue to live and to act after them: verifying, in this sense, 
 the language of the old mythologist: 
 
 ‘For gods they are, through high Jove’s counsels good, 
 Haunting the earth, the guardians of mankind. ’ ’ ’ 
 
 Hence let no one attempt to disparage the achievements 
 of those personages who have been in the fore of achieve¬ 
 ment nor to take from them the credit which is justly theirs. 
 “Great men,” Carlyle has said, “taken up in any way are 
 profitable company.” 
 
 But beyond question our homage and recognition should 
 not stop here but should extend likewise to the quiet, un¬ 
 adorned and oft unheralded achievements of that unnum¬ 
 bered, unnamed army of world’s workers designated here 
 as Plain Men. These with fewer opportunities and with 
 feebler powers have labored with industry, patience, and 
 not infrequently with great effect in advancing the world’s 
 progress. 
 
 The mighty currents of history are after all formed by 
 the great body of the people. The movers of the world are 
 not Atlas and Archimedes but the units of mankind. The 
 good rulers influence the varied interests of society some¬ 
 what as the mountains give direction to the wind. States¬ 
 men, generals, priests, and rulers — these are the creatures 
 
 3 Southey’s The Life of Nelson, p. 326. Edited by David Hannay. London: 
 William Heinemann, 1897. 
 
HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 
 
 5 
 
 rather than the creators of civilization . 4 Gladstone repre¬ 
 sents England; Napoleon, France; Luther is Germany, and 
 Illinois gave us Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking trait of the modern scientific 
 method, suggests a modern historian, is an appreciation of 
 the transcendent importance of the small, the inconspicu¬ 
 ous, and the obscure. The historians of the old school nei¬ 
 ther saw nor had any interest in the common routine and 
 humdrum of daily life. They were attracted to parliaments, 
 kings, wars, treaties, territorial changes, and nobles rather 
 than to the great mass of the plain people — how they lived, 
 what they thought, how they worked and how their infinite 
 number of units furnished the momentum for progress. 
 
 With these historians, continues this writer, “It was the 
 startling and exceptional that caught their attention and 
 which they found recorded in the sources on which they 
 depended. They were like a geologist who should deal only 
 with earthquakes and volcanoes, or, better still, a zoologist, 
 who should have no use for anything smaller than an ele¬ 
 phant or less romantic in its habits than a phoenix or 
 basilisk .” 5 
 
 Less calmly but perhaps more picturesquely another 
 writer has stated it: 
 
 But a little while ago it was assumed that a nation which had not 
 waded through centuries of blood had no history. To our more 
 refined sensibilities, pictures of battle-field agonies, catalogues of 
 death wounds, and barbarous atrocities are less congenial — I will 
 not say less profitable — than to the ruder tastes of Homer’s listen¬ 
 ers or to the lover of King Arthur romances. Narratives of sieges 
 and battles, of the discipline and movement of armies, and of inter¬ 
 national diplomacies; biographies of ministers and generals, the 
 idiosyncracies of great men; pictures of court intrigues, dainty 
 morsels of court scandals, recitations of the sayings of imbecile 
 
 * Cf. Bancroft’s Essays and Miscellany, Chapter V. 
 
 o Robinson’s The New History, pp. 48, 49. 
 
6 
 
 HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 
 
 monarchs, anecdotes of princes, the opinions of counsellors, or the 
 tortuous ways of political factions — these are not all of history . 6 
 
 Political institutions, rebellions, and crusades are but the 
 more visible manifestations of the undercurrents of racial, 
 economic, and religious forces. The forces of history¬ 
 making are less tangible and more complex than are those 
 in the physical world, and, since formation and progress 
 are through individual units, social evolution is slow. The 
 French Revolution was but the spectacular outburst of 
 forces which were deep-seated, slow, and of long duration 
 in the social structure of the common people of France. 
 “Forms of government may be radically changed,” says a 
 writer in Science, “but the alignment of classes, subordina¬ 
 tion, legal traditions, religious, ethical and social ideals 
 still remain inevitably to nullify or to modify the results of 
 the newly-made structure of government .” 7 
 
 Such a conception of history — as a study of the social 
 physics of the past — would record the progress as well as 
 the doings of man, and would rescue the achievements and 
 the memoirs of the “not-great” from their undue sub¬ 
 ordination to the abnormal, the unusual, and the pictur¬ 
 esque. 
 
 In the career of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard is reflected 
 a segment of the fur-trading era in Illinois . 8 For about 
 fifteen years this man was an Indian trader. Trading 
 houses were established; trails were laid out; the good will 
 and friendship of the Indians were cultivated; vast quan¬ 
 tities of blankets, powder, whiskey, and tobacco were dis- 
 
 6 Bancroft’s Essays and Miscellany, p. 79. 
 
 7 Carleton’s History-making Forces in the Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 
 LXXI, pp. 349-354. 
 
 s This story of the fur-trading activities of Hubbard has been constructed 
 from The Autobiography of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard which has been edited 
 with an introduction by Miss Caroline M. McHvaine, the Librarian of the 
 Chicago Historical Society. 
 
HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 
 
 7 
 
 tributed, and in return the furs of mink, beaver, muskrat, 
 fox, ermine, and lynx were bartered, canoed and portaged 
 to Mackinaw, the great mart of the Upper Lakes fur trade 
 and the headquarters of the American Fur Company. To 
 follow and to witness some of the activities of this man’s 
 career as an Indian trader, may reveal a cross-sectional 
 view of a vast business of the early Middle West. 
 
 Born in old Vermont in 1802 and entering the service of 
 the American Fur Company at the age of sixteen, Hub¬ 
 bard illustrated the old saying that “Vermont is the most 
 glorious spot on the face of this globe for a man to be born 
 in, provided he emigrates when he is very young.” 9 Near 
 Montreal, Canada, Hubbard joined the clerks, boatmen, 
 and hunters of the company, and on May 13, 1818, with 
 canoes heavily laden with goods for the Indian trade and 
 to the melodies of Canadian boat songs the expedition be¬ 
 gan its ascent of the St. Lawrence. 
 
 Toronto was reached in about a month. From there the 
 boats were hauled overland in ox-carts to Lake Simcoe and 
 the journey then continued in canoes to Lake Huron. Coast¬ 
 ing the northern shore of this great lake the canoes on July 
 4, 1818, arrived at Mackinaw. Here young Hubbard first 
 saw the hosts of voyageurs, clerks, merchants, and officials 
 of that mammoth corporation, the American Fur Company. 
 
 For a month Hubbard worked at counting great quan¬ 
 tities of skins of mink, raccoon, wild cat, fox, and lynx, 
 which had been collected by hundreds of traders and hunt¬ 
 ers from the vast area of the Great Lakes region. Hunting 
 and trading expeditions soon set out for their winter quest 
 for furs and young Hubbard was placed in a brigade des¬ 
 tined for the upper part of Illinois. 
 
 This brigade of twelve boats left Mackinaw on September 
 30, 1818, and skirted the eastern shore of Lake Michigan in 
 
 » Quoted in Johnson’s Stephen A. Douglas: A Study in American Politics, 
 
8 
 
 HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 
 
 a southerly direction. In three weeks Hubbard beheld Fort 
 Dearborn. Here for a few days the boatmen rested; boats 
 and canoes were repaired; and preparations for the south¬ 
 ward journey were made. 
 
 As the expedition resumed its southerly course trading 
 houses were established. The first was located near the 
 present city of Hennepin and the next three miles below 
 Lake Peoria. Paddling down the Illinois River and estab¬ 
 lishing posts every sixty miles on that stream the crew 
 reached St. Louis on November 6, 1818. Here for two 
 weeks Hubbard visited with relatives and friends and 
 helped to stock the canoes with goods for the Indian trade 
 in Illinois. 
 
 Hubbard had been placed in charge of the trading house 
 near the mouth of the Bureau River. Here with a band of 
 companion hunters he spent the winter of 1818-1819 and 
 lived upon raccoon, bear, turkey, swan, goose, crane, and 
 duck. Packs of Indian goods were sent to the Sacs on Rock 
 River and to the Kickapoos on the Wabash and bartered 
 for the rich peltries of these regions. Hunting trips also 
 added to the stores of furs in the trading house. 
 
 In March, 1819, Hubbard’s crew commenced its toilsome 
 return journey to Mackinaw. Laden with the rich products 
 of the season’s trading and hunting and manned by veteran 
 oarsmen the canoes were paddled and portaged toward the 
 Mecca of the fur traders. Other outfits from the St. Joseph 
 and the Calumet rivers joined the procession of boats which 
 were given a hearty welcome when they arrived at Mack¬ 
 inaw in May, 1819. 
 
 For five or six weeks Hubbard with about a hundred 
 others packed furs at Mackinaw. Dust and moths were 
 removed from the skins, which were then counted, stretched, 
 pressed, sorted, and invoiced. Then the neatly packed 
 bundles of otter, mink, beaver, bear, or wolverine were 
 
HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 9 
 
 transferred to boats destined for the fur markets of the 
 East and of Europe. 
 
 The next season Hubbard spent at the trading and hunt¬ 
 ing grounds on the Muskegon River in Michigan, from 
 whence another cargo of peltries was sent to Mackinaw. In 
 the following season he exploited the area of the Kala¬ 
 mazoo River Valley, being accompanied by three Canadians 
 and one Indian. 
 
 Thus Hubbard spent winter after winter in the forests 
 and on the streams, and at every spring returned to dis¬ 
 charge his cargo at Mackinaw. For some time the Indians 
 had known him as Pa-pa-ma-ta-be or the “Swift Walker”. 
 In 1824 he was given the general superintendence over the 
 trading houses of the American Fur Company on the Illi¬ 
 nois River. 
 
 Between Fort Dearborn and a point about one hundred 
 and fifty miles south of the present town of Danville he laid 
 out a path or road known as “Hubbard’s Trail”. On this 
 route he established trading houses forty or fifty miles 
 apart. To these posts goods for the Indian trade were 
 carried from Fort Dearborn by pack horses and thus the 
 slow and laborious transportation by boat was discon¬ 
 tinued. 
 
 Annual visits to Mackinaw continued and during his 
 career as a fur-trader his total number of trips to that point 
 amounted to twenty-six. In 1827 he was made a special 
 partner of the American Fur Company and in the next year 
 bought out its entire interests in Illinois. For about five 
 more years he prospered in the business of trading with the 
 Indian tribes. But, after the disastrous defeat of the Sacs 
 and Winnebagoes in the Black Hawk War in 1832, the 
 Indians were forced to withdraw from Illinois to the reser¬ 
 vations beyond the Mississippi. This event marks the end 
 of the fur traffic in Illinois. 
 
10 
 
 HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 
 
 Hubbard’s career, thus described, spans in the main the 
 transition era from fur-trading to agriculture in Illinois, 
 and exhibits the last stages of this primitive form of barter. 
 Furthermore, his activities typify the initiative, the ag¬ 
 gressiveness, and the efficiency of the American Fur Com¬ 
 pany in its control of the Indian trade on a large scale. 
 
 “Just what the American Fur Company meant to Illi¬ 
 nois”, declares a student of Hubbard’s career, “it is diffi¬ 
 cult for us of the present to realize. But when we reflect 
 that the few white settlements sprinkled here and there in 
 the wilderness would have been practically out of touch 
 with the world save for the river traffic carried on by this 
 first of American ‘trusts,’ and when we remember that the 
 Indians were held in check not so much by force as by the 
 self-interest of trade, we conceive its import to our fore¬ 
 bears, not merely from the trade standpoint, but from the 
 human side as well.” 10 
 
 Few people have ever heard of Gershom Flagg, a pioneer 
 of Illinois, whose career illustrates one of the currents of 
 westward migration from New England in the forepart of 
 the last century. 11 These streams of migration starting 
 from the eastern seaboard regions widened and overflowed 
 into the valleys of the Ohio, the Wabash, the Illinois, and 
 the Mississippi. Gershom Flagg never won a battle, nor 
 wrote a statute, nor sat in the Senate nor ran for President 
 of the United States. Nevertheless, in the migration and 
 settlement by this man there is typified that westerning 
 expansion which made possible the construction of high- 
 
 10 Quoted from Miss Mcllvaine’s introduction to The Autobiography of 
 Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard, p. xi. 
 
 11 For the materials from which this story of Gershom Flagg has been con- ' 
 structed the writer is indebted to the Pioneer Letters of Gershom Flagg. These 
 Letters are skillfully edited, with introduction and notes, by Dr. Solon J. Buck 
 of the University of Illinois and are published in the Transactions of the 
 Illinois State Historical Society, 1910, pp. 139-183. 
 
HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 
 
 11 
 
 ways, the building of churches and schools, and the found¬ 
 ing of American homes and Commonwealths. It will repay, 
 it is believed, a few minutes time to associate with such a 
 man who was a participant, an observer, and a describer. 
 
 Eight hundred and ninety-eight miles were covered by 
 this youth of twenty-four in the fall of 1816 in the first 
 section of his migration from Richland, Vermont, to Spring- 
 field, Ohio. Reaching Troy, New York, Flagg and his com¬ 
 panion passed the old Dutch settlement of Schenectady and 
 soon reached Utica. From the thirteen-year-old village of 
 Rochester their road led to Niagara Falls, Buffalo, and then 
 along the lake to the port of Erie. Pennsylvania was 
 crossed; and in Ohio the villages of Cadiz, Cambridge, 
 Zanesville, Lancaster, Columbus, and Urbana marked their 
 route. The trip had taken forty-seven days at the rate of 
 nineteen miles per day and Flagg explained, “We came a 
 roundabout way I suppose but I think we took the best 
 road.” 
 
 Here in Champaign County, Ohio, Flagg remained for 
 several months. Families of emigrants were arriving from 
 New York, Vermont, and other States, penniless and with¬ 
 out grain for their worn-out horses. “I believe Many peo¬ 
 ple who come to this Country are greatly disappointed”, 
 he writes in one of his letters to Vermont. Hardships and 
 high prices were inducing not a few families to move on to 
 Indiana or Missouri. “The good thing[s] in this Coun¬ 
 try”, he wrote, “are Plenty of Grain which makes large fat 
 horses and Cattle Rich Land ready cleared, some Whiskey 
 plenty of feed for Cattle, Plumbs, Peaches, Mellons, Deer, 
 Wild turkies, Ducks, Rabits, quails, &c &c &c, little more 
 Corn. The bad things are, Want of Stone, Want of timber 
 for building, Bad Water, which will not Wash .... 
 Bad Roads, ignorant people, Sick Milk, Sick Wheat, a plenty 
 of Ague near the large streams Bad situation as to trade.” 
 
12 
 
 HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 
 
 Again young Flagg looked to the westward from whence 
 came reports of land surveys and sales, speculation, the 
 founding of towns, and mineral riches. Describing the 
 stimulation from these rumors, he wrote to his mother in 
 Vermont in February of 1818: “the Missouri & Illinois 
 feever Rages greatly in Ohio, Kentucky, & Tennessee and 
 carries off thousand[s]. When I got to Ohio my Ohio fee¬ 
 ver began to turn but I soon caught the Missouri feever 
 which is very catchin and carried me off.” 
 
 In the summer of 1817 Flagg travelled the seventy-five 
 miles from Springfield to Cincinnati. The Queen of the 
 West was then a growing city of over 7000. Observing 
 that the government land upon the Wabash was taken up 
 and that the other Indiana lands were still held by the tribes 
 of Indians, he decided to go on to St. Louis. In partnership 
 with another young Vermonter he next purchased a flat- 
 boat which they covered and stocked with provisions. 
 Leaving the bustling city of Cincinnati on October 19, 1817, 
 the boat floated down the Ohio River, past the Falls of the 
 Ohio and the mouth of the Wabash, and reached Cairo — a 
 distance of 645 miles from Cincinnati by water. Placing 
 the chests and trunks on a keel-boat bound for St. Louis the 
 two men covered the remaining distance of 174 miles on 
 foot and reached that city on November 19, 1817. 
 
 St. Louis, this young pioneer found, was a place of thriv¬ 
 ing business activity. Brick and frame houses were being 
 constructed; printing offices, banks, and a steam sawmill 
 were in operation; corn, wheat, potatoes, beef, lumber, and 
 brick were selling at high prices; labor was $20 per month; 
 board was $3.50 to $6.00 per week and town lots were selling 
 from $500 to $3000 each. 
 
 Twenty-six miles east of St. Louis Flagg located 264 
 acres of land near what is now Edwardsville in the county 
 of Madison, Illinois. Returning to the flourishing land 
 
HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 
 
 13 
 
 market at St. Louis, he was unable to secure employment as 
 a government land surveyor. In the previous winter 
 (1816-1817) eighty surveying companies had monopolized 
 this business and had surveyed several millions of acres. 
 Furthermore, Flagg complained that the “Surveyor Gen¬ 
 eral has three or four Brothers with 15 or 20 other con¬ 
 nection all surveyors.” 
 
 Here upon his land this young farmer labored and pros¬ 
 pered. Speculation and hard times came on but the thrifty 
 pioneer lived upon “my earnings and not upon my credit or 
 speculation”. The oppressive heat of the summer of 1820 
 he describes in a non-terrestrial term; but in that season he 
 plowed or broke more than 120 acres of new prairie with 
 four yoke of oxen and with a man to drive them. Forty 
 acres were fenced in and a log house was built. “We have 
 pretty tight times here,” he wrote the next year. “Most of 
 the People are in debt for Land and many otherwise more 
 than they can posably pay.” His market report for that 
 year is as follows: corn, 12 y 2 cents per bushel; wheat, 50 
 cents; flour, $3.00 to $3.50 per barrel; pork, $2.50 to $3.00 
 per barrel; and whiskey, $.25 per gallon. 
 
 Political and religious conditions were noted by this pio¬ 
 neer. In 1824 he believed that the majority of the people in 
 Illinois favored John Quincy Adams for President with 
 Clay as a second choice. The next year he states that ‘ ‘ our 
 political squables and quarrels have subsided” and that the 
 slavery question in Illinois had been settled forever. Re¬ 
 ferring in 1836 to the eastern solicitude for the spiritual 
 welfare of the people in the Mississippi Valley when Bible 
 societies and missionary enterprises were being projected, 
 he wrote in a tone of some impatience: “I do not see but 
 the cause fl[o]urishes as well here as in other places the 
 people here contribute freely for the support of Preachers 
 both in money and good living which is the main thing.” 
 
14 
 
 HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 
 
 Possessing a clear title to 270 acres of land in 1821, 
 Flagg continued to prosper. Four years later he speaks 
 of his flourishing orchards of peach, cherry, and pear, be¬ 
 sides several log buildings. In addition he possessed four 
 yoke of oxen, three good ploughs, two wooden carts, sleds, 
 a grindstone, two axes, shovels, hoes, etc. In June of 1825 
 he had purchased 1500 acres of valuable land for the unpaid 
 taxes which amounted to $103.00. 
 
 Confiding his financial rating, he wrote to his brother in 
 1821: “I owe $56 dollars and have due to me $110 from good 
 men and have $34 in cash on hand. I have twelve shirts six 
 pair Pantaloons 6 vests ten cravats & handkerchiefs two 
 round abouts 4 pair stocking two pair shoes one Coat in 
 Short I suppose my whole property to be worth about $1500 
 in cash and now I suppose I have been particular enough 
 on that subject at any rate I do not wish any one to see this 
 letter except yourself.” 
 
 For forty years, until his death in 1857, this man was a 
 resident of Illinois, and, as in the case of thousands of 
 other pioneers his neighborhood became a reservoir into 
 which population from the east filtered. Of his eight 
 younger brothers and sisters five followed him to Illinois — 
 four settling in Madison County. His sister’s family like¬ 
 wise removed to Illinois shortly after her death, and as late 
 as 1850 one of his nephews from the East moved to Paw 
 Paw, Illinois. “The descendants of these brothers and 
 sisters”, says Dr. Buck, “are now scattered all over the 
 United States from Vermont to California and thus the 
 history of this family typifies in a way the spread of the 
 American people across the continent.” 12 
 
 In this spread of population over the continent the plain, 
 aggressive Americans coming singly, in pairs, in families 
 
 12 Quotation from Buck’s introduction to the Pioneer Letters of Gershom 
 Flagg. 
 
HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 
 
 15 
 
 and in colonies were the type which transplanted schools, 
 churches, and town-meetings. As late as 1880 there were 
 12,588 citizens in Michigan who were natives of Vermont. 
 The migratory spirit of these easterners had many years 
 before passed into verse: 
 
 Come, all ye Yankee farmers who wish to change your lot, 
 Who’ve spunk enough to travel beyond your native spot, 
 
 And leave behind the village where Pa and Ma do stay, 
 
 Come follow me, and settle in Michigania,— 
 
 Yea, yea, yea, in Michigania. 13 
 
 When the first public land sales began in this State at 
 Burlington on November 19, 1838, land-hungry settlers 
 from nearly every State in the Union were there. The 
 Massachusetts Yankee was present to seize any bargain; 
 the Kentuckian with his soft southern accent mingled with 
 his brethren from South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and 
 Tennessee; large numbers were gathered from Illinois, 
 Ohio and Indiana; the Hadleys were registered from South 
 Carolina; and besides there was present a considerable 
 group of settlers who had but lately come from the District 
 of Columbia. 14 
 
 In the staid records of these land sales as preserved in 
 Washington, D. C. appear descriptions of the tracts sold, 
 the prices, the date, and the amount of sale. In the thou¬ 
 sands of names there recorded one can find hut very few 
 names of men whose constituency of acquaintances or repu¬ 
 tation was wider than the neighborhood or county from 
 whence they had come. These were plain, uncelebrated men 
 making history that was fundamental in State-building. 
 Though the bidding in of a tract of 160 acres and its later 
 settlement would seem to be acts divorced from any glamor 
 
 is Quoted from Farmer’s History of Detroit and Michigan in Mathews’s 
 The Expansion of New England, p. 227. 
 
 uPelzer’s Augustus Caesar Dodge, pp. 55-61. 
 
16 
 
 HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 
 
 and romance they were of the highest importance in the life 
 of the settler. 15 To him they meant a livelihood, property, 
 security, and a Christian home. 
 
 It was estimated that for the public sales at Burlington 
 between November, 1838, and June, 1840, ninety per cent 
 of the lands sold fell into the hands of actual settlers. It is 
 perhaps true that nowhere in the history of settlement and 
 immigration can there be found a more democratic and a 
 sounder economic condition — a condition for which these 
 plain settlers were the basis. 
 
 It is the common, average man who has furnished mass 
 or collectivity. However great may have been the influence 
 of a dominating personality there are whole fields of history 
 where such influence is but slightly possible; as for example 
 in customs, language, mythology, and sometimes in law and 
 industry. Those designated as leaders must have an under¬ 
 standing of the will, the feelings, and the vague ideas of the 
 social body of common people. In this wise strong person¬ 
 alities can push forward policies or creeds to a fuller clear¬ 
 ness and a wider acceptance. 16 
 
 Says Hegel in describing what he calls the “World- 
 Historical Individuals”: “Such individuals had no con¬ 
 sciousness of the general Idea they were unfolding, while 
 prosecuting those aims of theirs; on the contrary, they were 
 practical, political men. But at the same time they were 
 thinking men, who had an insight into the requirements of 
 the time — what was ripe for development .” 17 
 
 This is but another way of saying that laws — moral and 
 
 15 Cf. preface to Treat’s The National Land System 1785—1830. 
 
 is Cf. Dow’s Features of the New History: Apropos of Lamprecht’s 
 “Deutsche Gescliichte’’ in the American Historical Review, Vol. Ill, pp. 431- 
 448, (435). 
 
 n Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History (Translated by J. Sibree, 
 1894), pp. 30, 31. 
 
HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 
 
 17 
 
 statutory — to be successful must have a measure of accept¬ 
 ance or approval from those units which make up the 
 masses of the common people. As the Mississippi could not 
 be, were it not for its tributaries, so Andrew Jackson’s 
 career would have been impossible but for the prejudices, 
 ideals, and strength which arose from that stratum of soci¬ 
 ety known as Western Democracy. 
 
 It has been stated that the essential factor in the building 
 up of the British Empire has been the colonist rather than 
 the colonel, the settler rather than the sergeant; the men 
 who have wielded the spade and trowel rather than the 
 sword and spear. 18 So in the colonization of America it was 
 hy plain men from England, Holland, and France that ideals 
 were transplanted and a new nation founded. And, it was 
 by the hunters, fur-traders, tree-fellers, farmers, and 
 miners who swarmed across the Mississippi River that the 
 Louisiana territory was won for the United States rather 
 than by the diplomats in Washington and Europe. It was 
 by the unsuspected but irresistible powers of these plain 
 folk that the Americanization of the Mississippi Valley was 
 accomplished. 19 
 
 The Middle West is preeminently the product of the 
 plain people. “All through American history democracy 
 
 is Pollard’s Factors in Modern History, p. 239. 
 
 “Yet, with few exceptions, the writers of history, until a comparatively 
 recent period, have written chiefly of wars and words, of soldiers and poli¬ 
 ticians, and have neglected the matters of more real moment to the seriously 
 interested student of man — matters pertaining to his origin and development, 
 to his daily life and pursuits, his migrations and colonies, his taboos, cere¬ 
 monies, social culture, and religions.”—Hanna’s The Wilderness Trail, Vol. I, 
 p. XIII. 
 
 i» Cf. Roosevelt’s The Winning of the West (Standard Library Edition), 
 Vol. IV, pp. 276, 281. 
 
 “The history of the occupation of the West is the story of a great pilgrim¬ 
 age. It is the record of a people always outstripping its leaders in wisdom, in 
 energy and in foresight. A slave of politics, the American citizen has none the 
 less always proved himself greater than politics or politicians. ’ ’— Hough’s 
 The Way to the West (Bobbs-Merrill Edition, 1903), p. 2. 
 
18 
 
 HISTORY MADE BY PLAIN MEN 
 
 has been like a trade-wind, blowing over from the sunset. 
 The young States of the Ohio Valley led in multiplying the 
 number of elective offices, in introducing rapid rotation in 
 office, in submitting State constitutions to popular ratifica¬ 
 tion. Class bulwarks of colonial date were thus pounded to 
 pieces by the surf of democratic sentiment from the West. 
 Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democracy, Lincoln Repub¬ 
 licanism, Grangerism, Populism, Bryan Democracy, Roose¬ 
 velt Republicanism — wave after wave has rolled seaward, 
 loosing the East from its Old-World or ‘ first-family ’ or 
 ‘best-people’ moorings. Some of these impulses were 
 wrong-headed and died away, others prevailed, and the sum 
 of these successful Western initiatives is what we offer to 
 the world as the American political system.” 20 
 
 A study and appreciation of the contributions made by 
 Plain Men is a distinct phase of the newer history. It is a 
 study of history from its understructure and foundations to 
 its capitals and colonnades. “The real life of the American 
 nation spreads throughout forty-eight commonwealths. It 
 is lived in the very commonplaces of the shop, the factory, 
 the store, the office, in the mine, and on the farm. Through 
 the commonwealths the life and spirit of the nation are best 
 expressed. And every local community, however humble, 
 participates in the formation and expression of that life and 
 spirit.” 21 And that is the history made by Plain Men. 
 
 Louis Pelzer 
 
 The State University of Iowa 
 Iowa City 
 
 20 Quoted from Ross’s The Middle West in The Century Magazine, Vol. 
 LXXXIII, No. 5, pp. 686-692. 
 
 21 Quoted from Shambaugh’s The West and the Pioneers in the Wisconsin 
 State Historical Society Proceedings, 1910, pp. 133-145. 
 
 F