Civil Government in the United States Considered with Some Reference to Its Origins Part 11

19. Compare the town-meetings of New York with those of New England.

20. What was the government of the New York county?

21. How did this government compare with that of the Virginia county?

Section 2. _Settlement of the Public Domain._

[Sidenote: Westward movement of population.]

The westward movement of population in the United States has for the most part followed the parallels of lat.i.tude. Thus Virginians and North Carolinians, crossing the Alleghanies, settled Kentucky and Tennessee; thus people from New England filled up the central and northern parts of New York, and pa.s.sed on into Michigan and Wisconsin; thus Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois received many settlers from New York and Pennsylvania. In the early times when Kentucky was settled, the pioneer would select a piece of land wherever he liked, and after having a rude survey made, and the limits marked by "blazing" the trees with a hatchet, the survey would be put on record in the state land-office. So little care was taken that half a dozen patents would sometimes be given for the same tract. Pieces of land, of all shapes and sizes, lay between the patents.... Such a system naturally begat no end of litigation, and there remain in Kentucky curious vestiges of it to this day. [5]

[Footnote 5: Hinsdale, _Old Northwest_, p. 261.]

[Sidenote: Method of surveying the public lands.]

[Sidenote: Origins of Western towns.h.i.+ps.]

In order to avoid such confusion in the settlement of the territory north of the Ohio river, Congress pa.s.sed the land-ordinance of 1785, which was based chiefly upon the suggestions of Thomas Jefferson, and laid the foundation of our simple and excellent system for surveying national lands. According to this system as gradually perfected, the government surveyors first mark out a north and south line which is called the _princ.i.p.al meridian_. Twenty-four such meridians have been established. The first was the dividing line between Ohio and Indiana; the last one runs through Oregon a little to the west of Portland. On each side of the princ.i.p.al meridian there are marked off subordinate meridians called _range [6] Then a true parallel of lat.i.tude is drawn, crossing these meridians at right angles. It is called the _base line_, or standard parallel. Eleven such base lines, for example, run across the great state of Oregon. Finally, on each side of the base line are drawn subordinate parallels called _towns.h.i.+p lines_, six miles apart, and numbered north and south from their base line. By these range lines and towns.h.i.+p lines the whole land is thus divided into towns.h.i.+ps just six miles square, and the towns.h.i.+ps are all numbered. Take, for example, the towns.h.i.+p of Deerfield in Michigan. That is the fourth towns.h.i.+p north of the base line, and it is in the fifth range east of the first princ.i.p.al meridian. It would be called towns.h.i.+p number 4 north range 5 east, and was so called before it was settled and received a name.

Evidently one must go 24 miles from the princ.i.p.al meridian, or 18 miles from the base line, in order to enter this towns.h.i.+p. It is all as simple as the numbering of streets in Philadelphia.[7]

[Footnote 6: The following is a diagram of the first princ.i.p.al meridian, and of the base line running across southern Michigan. A B is the princ.i.p.al meridian; C D is the base line. The figures on the base line mark the range lines; the figures on the princ.i.p.al meridian mark the towns.h.i.+p lines. E is towns.h.i.+p 4 north in range 5 east; F is towns.h.i.+p 5 south in range 4 west; G is towns.h.i.+p 3 north in range 3 west.

[Ill.u.s.tration] As the intervals between meridians diminish as we go northward, it is sometimes necessary to introduce a correction line, the nature of which will be seen from the following diagram:-- [Ill.u.s.tration: DIAGRAM OF CORRECTION LINE.]]

[Footnote 7: In Philadelphia the streets for the most part cross each other at right angles and at equal distances, so that the city is laid out like a checkerboard. The parallel streets running in one direction have names, often taken from trees. Market Street is the central street from which the others are reckoned in both directions according to the couplet

"Market, Arch, Race, and Vine, Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce, and Pine," etc.

The cross streets are not named but numbered, as First, Second, etc.

The houses on one side of the street have odd numbers and on the other side even numbers, as is the general custom in the United States. With each new block a new century of numbers begins, although there are seldom more than forty real numbers in a block. For example, the corner house on Market Street, just above Fifteenth, is 1501 Market Street. At somewhere about 1535 or 1539 you come to Sixteenth Street; then there is a break in the numbering, and the next corner house is 1601. So in going along a numbered street, say Fifteenth, from Market, the first number will be 1; after pa.s.sing Arch, 101; after pa.s.sing Race, 201, etc. With this system a very slight familiarity with the city enables one to find his way to any house, and to estimate the length of time needful for reaching it. St. Louis and some other large cities have adopted the Philadelphia plan, the convenience of which is as great as its monotony. In Was.h.i.+ngton the streets running in one direction are lettered A, B, C, etc., and the cross streets are numbered; and upon the checkerboard plan is superposed another plan in which broad avenues radiate in various directions from the Capitol, and a few other centres. These avenues cut through the square system of streets in all directions, so that instead of the dull checkerboard monotony there is an almost endless variety of magnificent vistas.]

[Sidenote: and of Western counties.]

If now we look at Livingston County, in which, this towns.h.i.+p of Deerfield is situated, we observe that the county is made up of sixteen towns.h.i.+ps, in four rows of four; and the next county, Washtenaw, is made up of twenty towns.h.i.+ps, in five rows of four. Maps of our Western states are thus apt to have somewhat of a checkerboard aspect, not unlike the wonderful country which Alice visited after she had gone through the looking-gla.s.s. Square towns.h.i.+ps are apt to make square or rectangular counties, and the state, too, is likely to acquire a more symmetrical shape.

Nothing could be more unlike the jagged, irregular shape of counties in Virginia or towns.h.i.+ps in Ma.s.sachusetts, which grew up just as it happened. The contrast is similar to that between Chicago, with its straight streets crossing at right angles, and Boston, or London, with their labyrinths of crooked lanes. For picturesqueness the advantage is entirely with the irregular city, but for practical convenience it is quite the other way. So with our western lands the simplicity and regularity of the system have made it a marvel of convenience for the settlers, and doubtless have had much to do with the rapidity with which civil governments have been built up in the West. "This fact,"

says a recent writer, "will be appreciated by those who know from experience the ease and certainty with which the pioneer on the great plains of Kansas, Nebraska, or Dakota is enabled to select his homestead or 'locate his claim' unaided by the expensive skill of the surveyor." [8]

[Footnote 8: Howard, _Local Const. Hist. of U. S._, vol. i. p.

139.]

[Sidenote: Some effects of the system.]

There was more in it than this, however. There was a germ of organization planted in these western towns.h.i.+ps, which must be noted as of great importance. Each towns.h.i.+p, being six miles in length and six miles in breadth, was divided into thirty-six numbered sections, each containing just one square mile, or 640 acres. Each section, moreover, was divided into 16 tracts of 40 acres each, and sales to settlers were and are generally made by tracts at the rate of a dollar and a quarter per acre. For fifty dollars a man may buy forty acres of unsettled land, provided he will actually go and settle upon it, and this has proved to be a very effective inducement for enterprising young men to "go West." Many a tract thus bought for fifty dollars has turned out to be a soil upon which princely fortunes have grown. A tract of forty acres represents to-day in Chicago or Minneapolis an amount of wealth difficult for the imagination to grasp.

[Sidenote: The reservation for public schools.]

[Sidenote: In this reservation there were the germs of towns.h.i.+p government.]

But in each of these towns.h.i.+ps there was at least one section which was set apart for a special purpose. This was usually the sixteenth section, nearly in the centre of the towns.h.i.+p; and sometimes the thirty-sixth section, in the southeast corner, was also reserved.

These reservations were for the support of public schools. Whatever money was earned, by selling the land or otherwise, in these sections, was to be devoted to school purposes. This was a most remarkable provision. No other nation has ever made a gift for schools on so magnificent a scale. We have good reason for taking pride in such a liberal provision. But we ought not to forget that all national gifts really involve taxation, and this is no exception to the rule, although in this case it is not a taking of money, but a keeping of it back. The national government says to the local government, whatever revenues may come from that section of 640 acres, be they great or small, be it a spot in a rural grazing district, or a spot in some crowded city, are not to go into the pockets of individual men and women, but are to be reserved for public purposes. This is a case of disguised taxation, and may serve to remind us of what was said some time ago, that a government _cannot_ give anything without in one way or another depriving individuals of its equivalent. No man can sit on a camp-stool and by any amount of tugging at that camp-stool lift himself over a fence. Whatever is given comes from somewhere, and whatever is given by governments comes from the people. This reservation of one square mile in every towns.h.i.+p for purposes of education has already most profoundly influenced the development of local government in our western states, and in the near future its effects are likely to become still deeper and wider. To mark out a towns.h.i.+p on the map may mean very little, but when once you create in that towns.h.i.+p some inst.i.tution that needs to be cared for, you have made a long stride toward inaugurating towns.h.i.+p government. When a state, as for instance Illinois, grows up after the method just described, what can be more natural than for it to make the towns.h.i.+p a body corporate for school purposes, and to authorize its inhabitants to elect school officers and tax themselves, so far as may be necessary, for the support of the schools? But the school-house, in the centre of the towns.h.i.+p, is soon found to be useful for many purposes. It is convenient to go there to vote for state officers or for congressmen and president, and so the school towns.h.i.+p becomes an election district. Having once established such a centre, it is almost inevitable that it should sooner or later be made to serve sundry other purposes, and become an area for the election of constables, justices of the peace, highway surveyors, and overseers of the poor.

In this way a vigorous towns.h.i.+p government tends to grow up about the school-house as a nucleus, somewhat as in early New England it grew up about the church.

[Sidenote: At first the county system prevailed.]

This tendency may be observed in almost all the western states and territories, even to the Pacific coast. When the western country was first settled, representative county government prevailed almost everywhere. This was partly because the earliest settlers of the West came in much greater numbers from the middle and southern states than from New England. It was also partly because, so long as the country was thinly settled, the number of people in a towns.h.i.+p was very small, and it was not easy to have a government smaller than that of the county. It was something, however, that the little squares on the map, by grouping which the counties were made, were already called towns.h.i.+ps. There is much in a name. It was still more important that these towns.h.i.+ps were only six miles square; for that made it sure that, in due course of time, when population should have become dense enough, they would be convenient areas for establis.h.i.+ng towns.h.i.+p government.

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

1. What feature is conspicuous in the westward movement of population in the United States?

2. What looseness characterized early surveys in Kentucky?

3. What led to the pa.s.sage of the land ordinance of 1785?

4. Give the leading features of the government survey of western lands:--_a_. The princ.i.p.al meridians.

b. The range lines, c. The base lines.

d. The towns.h.i.+p lines.

5. Ill.u.s.trate the application of the system in the case of a town.

6. Contrast in shape western towns.h.i.+ps and counties with corresponding divisions in Ma.s.sachusetts and Virginia.

7. Contrast them in convenience and in picturesqueness.

8. What had the convenience of the government system to do with the settlement of the West?

9. What were the divisions of the towns.h.i.+p, and what disposition was made of them?

10. What important reservations were made in the towns.h.i.+ps?

11. Show how these reservations involved a kind of taxation.

12. What profound influence has the reservation for schools exerted upon local government?

13. Why did the county system prevail at first?

Section 3. _The Representative Towns.h.i.+p-County System in the West_.

[Sidenote: The town-meeting in Michigan.] The first western state to adopt the town-meeting was Michigan, where the great majority of the settlers had come from New England, or from central New York, which was a kind of westward extension of New England.[9] Counties were established in Michigan Territory in 1805, and towns.h.i.+ps were first incorporated in 1825. This was twelve years before Michigan became a state. At first the powers of the town-meeting were narrowly limited. It elected the town and county officers, but its power of appropriating money seems to have been restricted to the purpose of extirpating noxious animals and weeds. In 1827, however, it was authorized to raise money for the support of schools, and since then its powers have steadily increased, until now they approach those of the town-meeting in Ma.s.sachusetts.

[Footnote 9: "Of the 496 members of the Michigan Pioneer a.s.sociation in 1881, 407 are from these sections" [New England and New York].

Bemis, _Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest_, J. H. U.

Studies, I., v]

[Sidenote: Settlement of Illinois.]

The history of Illinois presents an extremely interesting example of rivalry and conflict between the town system of New England and the county system of the South. Observe that this great state is so long that, while the parallel of lat.i.tude starting from its northern boundary runs through Marblehead in Ma.s.sachusetts, the parallel through its southernmost point, at Cairo, runs a little south of Petersburg in Virginia. In 1818, when Illinois framed its state government and was admitted to the Union, its population was chiefly in the southern half, and composed for the most part of pioneers from Virginia and Virginia's daughter-state Kentucky. These men brought with them the old Virginia county system, but with the very great difference that the county officers were not appointed by the governor, or allowed to be a self-perpetuating board, but were elected by the people of the county. This was a true advance in the democratic direction, but an essential defect of the southern system remained in the absence of any kind of local meeting for the discussion of public affairs and the enactment of local laws.

[Sidenote: Effects of the Ordinance of 1787.]

By the famous Ordinance of 1787, to which we shall again have occasion to refer, negro slavery had been forever prohibited to the north of the Ohio river, so that, in spite of the wishes of her early settlers, Illinois was obliged to enter the Union as a free state. But in 1820 Missouri was admitted as a slave state, and this turned the stream of southern migration aside from Illinois to Missouri. These emigrants, to whom slaveholding was a mark of social distinction, preferred to go where they could own slaves. About the same time settlers from New England and New York, moving along the southern border of Michigan and the northern borders of Ohio and Indiana, began pouring into the northern part of Illinois. These new-comers did not find the representative county system adequate for their needs, and they demanded towns.h.i.+p government. A memorable political struggle ensued between the northern and southern halves of the state, ending in 1848 with the adoption of a new const.i.tution. It was provided that the legislature should enact a general law for the political organization of towns.h.i.+ps, under which any county might act whenever a majority of its voters should so determine.[10] This was introducing the principle of local option, and in accordance therewith towns.h.i.+p governments with town-meetings were at once introduced in the northern counties of the state, while the southern counties kept on in the old way. Now comes the most interesting part of the story. The two systems being thus brought into immediate contact in the same state, with free choice between them left to the people, the northern system has slowly but steadily supplanted the southern system, until at the present day only one fifth part of the counties in Illinois remain without towns.h.i.+p government.

[Footnote 10: Shaw, _Local Government if Illinois_, J. H. U.

Studies, I., iii.]