Vol. 4 · No. 2

Malcolm J. Rohrbough, History Department, University of Iowa, USA

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Americans have always taken journeys. In the seventeenth century they moved to establish new church communities in New England and new plantations beyond the tidewater in Virginia and Maryland. In the eighteenth century individuals and families continued their searches for more fertile and cheaper lands beyond the reach of tax collectors and landlords. By 1750 they reached the crest of the Appalachian mountain range where they gazed toward the interior valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The success of the North American revolution and the establishment of an independent nation in 1783 intensified these migratory instincts, no longer blocked by London's imperial policies. For three generations after independence, from 1776 to 1850, Americans - families long on this continent and new immigrants - settled the interior of the continent and established thriving, albeit diverse societies based on widespread availability of land, ready access to water transportation, cultivation of staple crops for a commercial economy and, in the south, the growing use of slave labour (Rohrbough 1978).1