To move from human geography to an analysis of the regional systems created across the early Midwest is to shift our attention from the long-term, stable, persisting realities of regional life to the day-to-day, year-to-year efforts of individuals and groups to make a living, establish social and political lives, and contribute to the development oftown or county culture. Not surprisingly, both individual and group efforts initially focused on economic development. Most immigrants had, as we have shown, come west for economic reasons and thus perceived the land and the environment as capital or wealth and viewed most of their actions in economic terms. This perspective manifested itself not only in the gradual reorientation of settlement activity according to economic criteria, but also in the efforts by settlers to found scores, if not hundreds, of towns and then to connect them by establishing steamboat lines, building roads, and improving communications. From such actions would eventually emerge a coherent regional system that would serve as the context for the evolution of a distinctive regional society and culture. In focusing on the regional system, I hope to demonstrate that just as most individual economic activity was defined according to regional rather than to individual or aggregate dynamics and criteria, so too local society, culture, and politics in nineteeth-century America can best and most accurately be understood in their regional, rather than local or national, context.

Towns

The establishment of towns was deeply imbedded in the process of settlement between 1800 and 1850. Some towns, which began as early forts or trading posts, were indeed the “spearheads of the frontier.”