The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers

by Simon Winchester

  Whether this change is all a consequence of the new existence of the Sandisfield Times, I cannot entirely say, though I suspect it to be so and wish it. For if it is, then it underlines and confirms one of the themes of the previous pages, that the creation of any sense of unity among a population of potentially disharmonious settlers almost always requires the deliberate agency of man. Community is seldom an organic thing, especially among migrants. It needs to be nurtured, facilitated, encouraged.

  In Sandisfield, a town now 250 years old, it rarely was. For most of the town’s existence, such constructive agency was minimal. There was the decision to tar some of the dirt roads in the 1920s, which helped. There was the coming of the telephone in the 1930s, which only a few could initially afford. Otherwise, very little. The railroad long since passed Sandisfield by. The stagecoach was infrequent. The local inns had fallen into disrepair. The store was moribund. There was little attempt ever made to bring the townspeople together—until 2010, when the newspaper arrived. Then, almost overnight, an untapped vein of mutual feeling and goodwill was tapped. The town changed, its people becoming suddenly welded into one, turned to a single purpose with a new, united identity.

  Far, far from this corner of the Berkshires, out in the great wilderness of the old American continent, there was once almost no sense of community either—until the immigrants came. There was little sense of oneness when America was peopled only by its original people. Native Americans were spread too far apart and were by geography just as isolated, though on a far larger scale, as were our villagers of today, huddled alone in their deep river valleys. And so there was little sense among the Shawnee, for instance, that they were bound in any way to the Iroquois or the Miami, little sense of brotherhood between the Comanche and the Sioux, or between the Blackfeet and the Crow. Common ancestry of the Indian people alone, the presence of common genes, was simply not sufficient to bind most of them together. Most ran their own fiefdoms, sheltered behind their palisades, warred with one another, formed uneasy alliances, never imagined the concept of continental nationhood.

  But then came the migrants, then came the nation, and then with it came the gathering notion that unity was, for so complex an entity, a matter of manifest need and desire. And so the annealing began. It began even though the migrant settlers could be every bit as foreign to one another as had been the Indians, with an immigrant from Finland, say, being in genetic and cultural fact very much more different from a Sicilian, say, than ever was a Cheyenne from a Hopi or a Cree.

  But as we know, this all changed. The United States was born and was slowly suffered into existence. What eventually set this new America apart from original America is that, through all of the republic’s years, there existed agencies that were deliberately bent to the task of creating community, creating the practical means for the forging of alliances for the common good of all.

  The agencies were large government bodies of power and influence that could design and build vast systems of roads, bring electricity to isolated farms, sponsor exploring expeditions involving thousands of scientists, and order into the unknown men like Lewis and Clark and demand that they ascertain the shape and nature of the nation.

  Some of the agencies were individuals, men with great vision, men like George Washington, Theodore Judah, Isham Randolph, Samuel Morse, and Thomas MacDonald, whose ideas and inventions, driven by the prospect of personal fortune, in most cases, similarly helped bind ever more tightly the peoples of the country together.

  Some of the agencies of man were small. Maybe they were groups or individuals who persuaded the unwilling or the recalcitrant, just as we did in our half-forgotten village in the hills, of the benefits of common purpose. Our newspaper has volunteers today whose ethnic origins are Italian, Greek, Scots, Irish, Japanese, Dutch, and Chinese. But all, in a uniquely American manner, see virtue and power in the new harmony that they have made, which manifests itself in the modest document that all can see and read on the first day of each month.

  This new sense of harmony may have been a long time coming to Sandisfield, Massachusetts, and there are other communities within the country that are more isolated and forgotten than ours, where disunity is more likely to be the watchword. Yet it cannot and should not be forgotten that the story of the United States of America is still a developing one, a continuing evolution, and that the union becomes ever stronger as a result of the pressures of steady change. After all, the very notion of change informs the Preamble to the United States Constitution: “We the people . . . in order to form a more perfect union . . .”

  The union, it was recognized back in the late eighteenth century, has to be made ever more perfect all the time. Our small-town newspaper is just one more step on the way. This is how it is done—our way, the American way.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As the idea for this book was born in part out of my long-held wish to become an American citizen, my first debt of gratitude must be paid to the United States government for finally approving my application to do so, and to the federal magistrate judge, the Honorable Marianne Bowler, for performing the swearing-in formalities on the deck of the great old warship the USS Constitution. I must also thank the captain of this venerable sailing vessel, Commander Timothy Cooper, for hosting an occasion made especially memorable by its unique maritime setting.

  There were twenty-five of us, all born as new Americans on a searing-hot Boston Independence Day afternoon, in a ceremony that I feel certain not one of us will ever forget. I was the oldest of the group, by far—although my friend and countryside neighbor Sir Brian Urquhart, who kindly accompanied me to offer much-needed moral support, decided, after finding the ceremony so profoundly moving, that he should apply for citizenship too. This British Army war veteran and United Nations undersecretary general had his oath administered the following year, when he was ninety-three years old.

  Shannon Such, a widely admired New York immigration lawyer who has become a good personal friend, patiently guided the reams of paperwork through the byways of the various bureaucracies. Her tireless assistant, Victoria Gelardi, managed to keep me cheerful throughout the seemingly endless and tiresome process, even when yet more papers were demanded and more fingerprints taken than I seemed to have fingers. To all, my most grateful thanks.

  But all of this is prologue. The remainder of this heartfelt appreciation is for the legions who were kind enough to offer counsel, comfort, and shelter during the researching and writing of the book itself. In particular I owe much to the stimulating company of Arvid Nelson, whose knowledge not only of environmental history but also of the complexities of the American frontier is profound, and who underscored his loyalty both to me and to this book from the very outset—first by helping to refine my initial ideas, and then closely reading the completed typescript and making myriad suggestions for improvement. His unwavering support throughout has been crucial and necessary, and I thank him without reservation.

  Out on the road, and back at my desk here in the Massachusetts countryside, there were many whose offers of help, both great and small, helped bring this book into being. While none can be held responsible for any failures of fact or interpretation—any mistakes are mine alone—all did their best for me as best they knew how, and I shall be eternally grateful to those who follow:

  Rupert Allman, who first alerted me to the literature of the interstate highway system; Greg Ames of the St. Louis Mercantile Library, and an expert on river traffic on the Mississippi; Kurt Andersen, an enduring admirer of Omaha, Nebraska, where he was born; David Haward Bain, of Middlebury College, Vermont, who has written extensively both on railroad history and on the exploits of Clarence King; Andrew Bertalna of American University, Washington, DC, in whose custody were the papers of Thomas MacDonald; my ever-helpful and supportive friend Renee Braden of the National Geographic archives in Washington, DC; Amanda Bryden, Collections Manager of Historic New Harmony, Indiana; James T. Campbell, a Stanford University history professor with
an abiding interest in the interstate highway system, together with his delightfully hospitable parents, Ralph and Patricia Campbell, who welcomed me so warmly into their home when I met them in the tiny town of Morrison, Illinois; Kathleen Carlucci of the Thomas Edison Museum in Menlo Park, New Jersey; Jeff Carter; David Cenciotti, a writer on aviation who guided me through the complex world of in-air emergencies; Steve Colby, an expert on the Cumberland Road; Val Coleman, an elder statesman–neighbor friend in the Berkshires who read an early draft of the book and made scores of useful comments; Mark Davis of Union Pacific in Omaha; David Dolak of Columbia College in Chicago who helped my research into the Chicago ship canal; the staff of the Equinix server farm in Palo Alto, including Ally Khantzis, Melissa Neumann, and Keith Patterson; Andrea Faling, of the Nebraska State Historical Society Archives; Phillip Forbes, of the Montana-based civil engineering firm of Morrison-Maierle, Inc.; the late Philip Fradkin, biographer of Wallace Stegner and an all-round expert on the American West; Robert Germann, of the US Army Corps of Engineers; my eternally kind and enthusiastic helpmeet Leslie Gordon of the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California; Tom Halstead of Gloucester, Massachusetts; map collector and atlas authority extraordinaire Derek Hayes of Vancouver, British Columbia, who kindly supplied many of the older maps used in this book; Sara Bon Harper at Monticello; Doug Hecox of the US Department of Transportation; Mary Hess, at SUNY Oswego, who is steeped in the history of the Erie Canal; my late friend Christopher Hitchens; Paul Israel, the editor of the papers of Thomas Edison; Doug Jensen, ticket agent with Amtrak at Emeryville, California, who was kindness personified; Kirk Johnson, best-known for his work at the Denver Museum of Natural History, but who now runs the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC; Professor Markes Johnson of Williams College, an expert on early American geology; Tom and Pat Judge, farmers of Ames, Iowa; Jeffrey Key and his son Jason, of Helena, Montana, who interrupted a Sunday-morning fishing trip to show me the Gates of the Mountains; Michael Korda, who wrote so vividly about Dwight Eisenhower; Gary Mechanic, who knows much about the history of the Chicago portage; Charles Meinert, Delmar, New York, a book dealer who proved of inestimable help in locating some hard-to-find WPA guides; Arlen Miller, an Amish farmer in Nappanee, Indiana, who sports a very un-Amish interest in Petter diesel engines; John Morrison Jr. of Morrison-Maierle, builders of Interstate 90 through Montana; Melissa Murphy, owner of Sweet Melissa’s in Laramie, Wyoming, makers of the best pies in America; James O’Neal, a specialist in early radio and a critic of Aubrey Fessenden’s broadcasting claims; Matthew Pearcy, historian of the US Army Corps of Engineers; Gabriele Rausse, arborist and Director of Gardens at Monticello; Marty Reuss, a specialist on the Atchafalaya River; Jack Robertson of the Monticello Library; Jeff Rosenberg, an old friend and colleague at National Public Radio; John Sciortino, who told me many interesting things at his barbershop in Council Bluffs, Iowa; Bill Siemering, a great believer in the importance of and power for good of radio, and who helped found NPR; Jennifer Sahn, editor of Orion magazine; Kenton Spading of the Corps of Engineers; Nelson Spencer, publisher of the redoubtable Waterways Journal; Ken Stewart of the South Dakota Historical Society; Earl Swift, author of Big Roads; Alan Thompson, of the Bureau of Land Management in Montana; Sean Visintainer of the St. Louis Mercantile Library; Monica Webb of Wired West; Stephen White, whose boundless fascination with early photography has resulted in his amassment of one of the country’s more remarkable and eclectic image collections, was more than generous in allowing me to browse through and then use several of his pictures; Terry Wiltz, a captain on the Illinois waterway; Thomas Wixon, resident in Mississippi but a relative of America’s first and only official geographer, Thomas Hutchins; and the ever-kindly Rex Ziak of Astoria, Oregon.

  Quite overenthused by my subject and possibly carried away by the delight at my new citizenship—or, more probably, as Disraeli once said of Gladstone, “inebriated by the exuberance of my own verbosity”—I first delivered a typescript that was far, far too long. But by carefully employing the grace, tact, and editorial skills that I have come to know and admire over the last several years, Henry Ferris, my editor at HarperCollins, saw to it that the book was eventually distilled to a manageable size, and without losing any of the flavor and tone I first intended. I am a firm believer that all truly good books are the result of intimate and constructive collaboration between writer and editor; should this volume ever come to be kindly regarded, then it should be known that all is a consequence of the endeavors of Henry Ferris just as much as of my own.

  Cole Hager, editorial assistant in New York, managed with patience and good humor the innumerable blizzard of details that always attend the creation of a book; and in London my editor Martin Redfern was supportive and enthusiastic throughout.

  I am grateful, as always, to my agent, Suzanne Gluck, and to her colleague in London, Simon Trewin, as well as to Eve Atterman and Samantha Frank, peerless in their roles as legendary William Morris assistants.

  And that I am finally thanking, as always, my wife, Setsuko—for her patience and forbearance, close reading, and wise advice—allows me a connection and a means of offering one final story, one that suggests yet another kind of acknowledgment:

  When the young man who is now my father-in-law, Makoto Sato, left the war-ruined Japan of the early 1950s to come to America, he found himself, more by chance than intent, enrolled as a student at Kentucky State College in Frankfort, Kentucky. This was, at the time, a historically black institution—one of more than a hundred such colleges, sited predominantly in the former slave states, that offered education to African Americans who had been excluded from the federally funded Land Grant colleges. Mr. Sato was one of only three foreigners in KSC’s Class of ’57—a class whose commencement speaker happened to be the then little known Dr. M. L. King of Birmingham, Alabama.

  On one of the research excursions for this book in 2013, I found I was due to pass through Frankfort and suggested that my eighty-four-year-old father-in-law come along. On learning that he had not been back to Kentucky for the previous fifty-six years, I called the school’s head of alumni affairs—Garland Higgins—who promptly organized a red-carpet welcome that was as memorable as it was generous.

  It occurred to me on leaving the campus that hot summer’s day—a campus that was now teeming with white students and with non-Americans, as is presently the case with most of this country’s historically black colleges—that institutions like this have also played vital roles in helping to weld the endless magical confusion of today’s America into one. The kindness and vision that was expressed a half century ago by the men and women of Kentucky State College to this lone migrant from Japan, and who is now, like me, a new naturalized American too, seems to be all part of a story for which I, and countless others, must surely also feel a deep and abiding sense of gratitude.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  While most of the books listed below provided me with specific assistance, perhaps none were of greater general value than the WPA Guides to America, of which I managed to collect more than fifty, including all of the main state guides, during the months I was writing. The quality, accuracy, and simple beauty of the writing in these small Depression-era masterpieces complement still the heroic achievement of their creation, the volumes serving as an ever-present reminder on my bookshelves that there are times in any history when government can achieve truly great and lasting things for the common good. I also made continual use of my treasured copy of the National Atlas of the United States of America, which I bought in Washington in 1970, during the Nixon era. The atlas, a giant of a thing, was made and published by the US Geological Survey, a government body within the Department of the Interior that for a century and a half has been intimately involved in exploring and uniting the states, thereby benefiting the entire country.

  Abbott, Shirley. The National Museum of American History. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1981.

  Ambrose, Stephen E. Nothing Like It i
n the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

  Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: Huebsch, 1919; Signet Classics, 1993.

  Anfinson, John O. The River We Have Wrought: A History of the Upper Mississippi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

  Arsenault, Raymond. Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

  Atwood, Kay. Chaining Oregon: Surveying the Public Lands of the Pacific Northwest, 1851–1855. Blacksburg, VA: McDonald & Woodward, 2008.

  Bain, David Haward. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Viking, 1999.

  Bakeless, John. The Eyes of Discovery: America as Seen by the First Explorers. New York: Dover, 1961.

  Barone, Michael, and Chuck McCutcheon. The Almanac of American Politics 2012. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

  Bartlett, Richard A. Great Surveys of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962.

  Beebe, Lucius, and Charles Clegg. Hear the Train Blow. New York: Dutton, 1952.