Globalization of the United States, 1789-1861

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Dana, Edmund. Geographical Sketches on the Western Country: Designed for Emigrants and Settlers: Being the Result of Extensive Researches and Remarks. Cincinnati: Looker, Reynolds and Co, Printers, 1819.

Edmund Dana. Geographical Sketches on the Western Country: Designed for Emigrants and Settlers.... Cincinnati: Looker, Reynolds and Co., Printers, 1819. Title page.

Dana divided the United States into two mutually beneficial sections: an “east” committed to oceanic commerce and a “west” committed to agricultural production.

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From considering the constitution and fate of any other republic which has existed, no correct inferences can be drawn by way of reasoning from analogy, which are applicable to the United States. It is true, the Achean League among the ancient Greeks, and the confederacies of the Swiss Cantons, and Seven United Provinces, in modern times, bore a remote resemblance to our national compact. In some few points there was a distant likeness; but, in the modes of thinking among the common people, whose minds from infancy had been strongly imbued with republican principles of independence; and perfect equality — in the education of youth by common schools — in the means of acquiring useful knowledge by extensive commerce — by the art of printing — by the establishment of social libraries, accessible to all classes of the community — by the circulation of pamphlets and newspapers — in the great variety of climate; whereby the states most remote are most closely connected by the ties of commerce, mutually advantageous — and in the cool deliberate good sense and political information, generally pervading all classes of the citizens, who view with disgust, and as the harbingers of tyranny, all riotous mobs and tumultuous assemblies, and attempts to sever the union; — in these prominent features which distinguish our countrymen, there are nq points of comparison between the American and any other republic of which history has transmitted any notice.

The great national and commercial privileges of the ocean are open, almost exclusively, to the inhabitants of the east; and an immense body of rich, wonderfully productive interior lands, to the people of the west. The one possesses the ships and the sailors; the means of transportation to foreign markets; and the other, the abundant produce; each finding in a free commercial intercourse (that effectually could be preserved not otherwise than by living under the same laws) whereby mutual wants can be supplied by mutual means; all closely drawn to a harmonious union by the strongest ties of consanguinity, early friendships and mercantile connexions. What demon of discord can be so potent as to create motives of disunion, and to dissolve these bands asunder? The east by ploughing the ocean will protect the maritime rights of the nation, without which the surplus produce of the west would not be worth raising; while the west by ploughing the land, feed them; furnish raw materials for clothing; and defend the frontiers. By severing the union, the physical strength of the whole is diminished. Each section having a new enemy to contend with, the more inveterate, from being an old friend; a perpetual source of hostilities is created; a kind of social wars ensue, always the most distressing and destructive that can be found in the annals of history.

We think it will not be romantic to predict that the period is not far distant, when the United States and the potent empire of Russia will be the two great master nations of the world. If the extensive coast of California be ceded to the latter, we may, perhaps, without being taken for maniacs, hazard an opinion, that the people of this western region will eventually be compelled to defend themselves against the encroachments of that gigantic power. Should this event happen after a disunion, how bitterly would posterity curse those progenitors who effected it! But we will not anticipate so disastrous an event. To conclude: — a government organized as is that of the federal compact, is a grand political arch, cemented together by the love of liberty, deriving strength from its own ponderous weight; whose keystone is the federal union, which imparts combination and stability to the whole political edifice; and will, we trust, like an ancient pyramid of Egypt, resist the ravages of time and the united efforts of human skill and ambition to annoy it.