The Text and Its Treatment

The manuscript material from which the text of “The Pioneer Condition and the Drift of Civilization in America” is drawn is contained in twelve folders in boxes 48–50 of the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, and is recorded in the microfilm edition of that collection from reel 41: frame 509 through reel 43: frame 13. The Library of Congress has labeled these twelve folders “A History of Civilization in the United States” and dated them “ca. 1860–70.” The title apparently comes from the first sheet of paper in the first folder, which bears the title “History of Civilization” and is signed “P.P. May 1905.” For the text presented below, the editors have supplied the overall title as well as titles for each section except section 1, which Olmsted called “A Pioneer Community of the Present Day.”

An important guide to Olmsted’s plan for organizing the texts presented here is found in three outlines he created in March 1868 while preparing for intensive work on the project during that year. The seven folders that provide the basic texts for sections 1–7 of the treatise below [584]match closely the subject matter and division of topics in these outlines. The folders correspond most closely to the outline titled “Plan, March, 1868” (Olmsted Microfilm, reel 42: frames 504–5, 507). The other two outlines were entitled “Plan (Modified) March 5th 1868” (Olmsted Microfilm, reel 42: frame 506) and “March 7th 1868” (Olmsted Microfilm, reel 42: frames 507–9).

Olmsted provided the following organizational framework in his “Plan, March, 1868”:

Much of the material in the twelve folders in the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers at the Library of Congress consists of early drafts, clippings from newspapers and magazines, and fragments arranged in no coherent order. There are six folders, however, where the manuscripts are enclosed in a large sheet of white paper with a chapter number and brief notation by Olmsted of the subjects dealt with in the enclosed material. These are folders 7–12 in boxes 48–50. Folders 7 and 9–12 correspond in subject matter to chapters I–IV and VI of Olmsted’s “Plan, March, 1868.” These folders provide the primary texts for sections 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7 of “The Pioneer Condition,” below. Section 2 below is a new chapter that Olmsted apparently added after he drew up his outlines of March 1868: the basic texts are found in folder 8, which Olmsted assigned the chapter number II, and in which he placed two long passages that he had apparently transferred from other chapters. There is no folder bearing a chapter number in the papers which corresponds to chapter V of the March 1868 outline. The principal source of relevant texts for that chapter is a group of manuscripts in folder 3 which are wrapped in brown [586]paper and labeled “B” and “(c)” (hereafter referred to as folder 3B). This folder provides the basic texts for section 6 below.

The chapters in folders 9, 10, and 12 (the basis of sections 3, 4, and 7 below) consist of paginated fair copy in ink that Olmsted extensively revised and expanded; they appear to be virtually complete and are presented here unchanged. In sections 1, 2, 5, and 6, the editors have incorporated some texts from other folders. The editors have felt justified in making such additions since the present arrangement of the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers collection at the Library of Congress cannot with assurance be said to reflect the condition in which Olmsted left the manuscripts. The quality and stage of completion of the manuscripts in folders 7–12 and 3B indicates that they were the texts with which Olmsted was forming his chapters. However, fragments that the editors have selected from folders 1 through 6 are equally clear and relevant to Olmsted’s themes. While he may not have found a way to incorporate them into his discourse, they deserve a place in the text the editors present here.

Section 1 of “The Pioneer Condition,” presented below with the title “A Pioneer Community of the Present Day,” is a description of Bear Valley and Mariposa County during Olmsted’s sojourn there in 1863–65. References in the text and the fact that some of the chapter was written on Mariposa Company stationery indicate that Olmsted began this section in California. Considerable parts of the first and last sections presented below, however, were written on the back of drafts of reports made for Olmsted, Vaux & Company in 1866. A few pages were written on the back of a draft advertisement for the suburban community of Riverside, Illinois, which Olmsted, Vaux & Company designed in 1868. Folder 7 contains two outlines for this section in addition to those in the three full plans of chapters mentioned above. One, dated March 15, gives what appears to be Olmsted’s last plan for his chapter I (Olmsted Microfilm, reel 42: frames 508–9). The other, undated, gives valuable insight concerning the intended relation to other chapters of the description of Bear Valley in chapter I (Olmsted Microfilm, reel 42: frame 502):

Olmsted’s title for section 1 appears on the cover-sheet for his chapter I in folder 7 (Olmsted Microfilm, reel 42: frame 522). It is a revised version of his original title on the cover-sheet, which was “Introductory observation in Cala: A Frontier Community of the Present Day.” In section 1 the editors have used all the relevant manuscripts from folder 7 (Olmsted Microfilm, reel 42: frames 463–615), and have added two selections from other folders.

Section 1 contains a discussion of Mariposa County’s population and the ways in which the frontier blurs the class lines, habits, and values that settlers bring from older societies. Then comes a description of the relation of ethnic and racial groups to one another and the social alliances and organizations that first take form in pioneer society. Olmsted examines at length the arrangements for law enforcement in Bear Valley and the crimes committed against the Chinese, Indians, and blacks.

Section 2, “Defining Civilization,” contains two parts that Olmsted apparently took from other chapters to form the basis of a new chapter. He went no further in creating the new chapter. The two texts are in folder 8 (Olmsted Microfilm, reel 42: frames 616–37). The purpose of this chapter, judging from the material of the two parts, was to present Olmsted’s method of determining the principal qualities of civilization and the difference between civilization and barbarism. In addition, the editors have included in section 2 an alternate version of one of the two fragments that Olmsted set aside for inclusion in chapter II of his March 1868 plan. The editors have also added a concluding group of texts that discuss the “extent and diversity of the civilized communication” as a measure of civilization.

Section 2 begins with a description of society on the frontier in Bear Valley, emphasizing the transience of the population and the settlers’ predilection for frequent changes of occupation and place of residence. [588]Through a discussion of three residents—a Kentucky gambler, a German shoemaker, and an Indian, Olmsted sets forth the standards he used in assessing the assistance that such men would be to him in his efforts to improve and civilize Bear Valley. He concludes that his highest qualification is what he terms “communitiveness.”

Section 3, “The Low Level of Civilization of Early Emigrants from Europe,” was chapter II of Olmsted’s “Plan, March, 1868.” The paper cover for the chapter in folder 9 in the Olmsted Papers bears the title “Early Settlers Generally” and has the chapter number III.

The text presented here consists of paginated fair copy that Olmsted extensively revised, inserting many new pages of material. The manuscript text appears to be in nearly final form. The only other papers in folder 9 (Olmsted Microfilm, reel 42: frames 638–81) are a few fragments comparing recent immigrants to old ones, and three quotations from histories of the early Dutch settlement of New York that Olmsted did not utilize in the chapter.

In section 3, Olmsted asserts that a large proportion of early emigrants to America came from uncivilized elements of European society—that “the fountain head of the American stream of civilization . . . was not in the civilization of Europe, but in the uncivilization of Europe,” and that “the stream drew off chiefly those elements of the European populations which were most inharmonious and unmanageable in its civilization.” He also cites evidence showing the generally low level of civilization of the seventeenth-century British.

Section 4, “The Barbarizing Experience of Pioneers on the Frontier,” corresponds to chapter III of Olmsted’s plan of March 1868. The manuscript is in folder 10 (Olmsted Microfilm, reel 42: frames 682–716). Olmsted’s inscription on the paper cover enclosing the manuscript reads “earlier experience calculated to cultivate the uncivilized propensities as at Bear Valley—Influence thrown back”; the cover carries the chapter number IV. The manuscript is a paginated fair copy with some revisions. Some of these revisions were written on the back of drafts of reports for a subdivision in Long Branch, New Jersey, and the Massachusetts Agricultural College, both design projects of 1866. The manuscript appears to be in nearly final form, although perhaps not the entire treatment that Olmsted intended eventually to provide. The editors have therefore presented Olmsted’s full text with no additional material.

The text of section 4 emphasizes the large number of immigrants who lived at some period on the frontier line of settlement. It describes the violence and brutality of two hundred years of Indian warfare along the frontier.

[589]

Section 5, “The Decivilizing Current in American Society,” corresponds to chapter IV of the plan of March 1868. In the Olmsted Papers manuscript the core of this chapter is folder 11 (Olmsted Microfilm, reel 42: frames 718–70), whose enclosing sheet of paper is labeled, “How the barbaric propensities are manifested in general—schools churches state Rights & c.” It bears the chapter number V. The manuscript in folder 11 is less coherently organized and is in a less finished condition than the two preceding chapters. Much of the paper used was Mariposa Company stationery. The editors have included in section 5 all of the relevant texts found in folder 11 and have supplemented those texts with a dozen fragments from other folders. Some of the shorter fragments come from folder 3a, a group of texts enclosed in a brown paper cover with Olmsted’s identifying title, “Decivilizing.” The editors have also included six fragments from folder 3B that are clearly relevant to the themes of Olmsted’s chapter IV.

The first part of section 5 describes the loss of civilizing influences and civilized customs on the frontier, particularly old skills and work standards. Much of what is apparently civilized in a society begun on the frontier, he asserts, is in fact shallow and artificial. There is a lack of demand and respect for “brain value” (that is, considered judgment based on study) unless it can produce immediate commercial success. This quality of frontier society, Olmsted observes, would later manifest itself in the low level of scholarship and statesmanship that evolved in the United States. The last part of section 5 contains Olmsted’s severe review of churches in America as agents of civilization.

Section 6, “The Civilizing Current in American Society,” corresponds to chapter V of the plan of March 1868. The principal source for material on this theme is found in folder 3B, enclosed in brown paper and bearing the notation in Olmsted’s hand, “Secondary Tendency Recompenses Ultimate results on character & as to progress of civilzn.” The editors have included in section 6 nearly all the fragments found in folder 3B (Olmsted Microfilm, reel 42: frames 113–280); they have also included several fragments from earlier folders. This is the part of the 1868 outline on which Olmsted made the least progress, perhaps because it was to be the last substantial chapter. The fact that the basic material for section 6 is not contained in a sequentially numbered folder among folders 7–12, and that Olmsted left no place for it in his numbering of the folder covers and put no chapter number on the folder, suggests that he may have given up the idea of a chapter on the civilizing forces at work in America, despite the obvious importance of the question to his study and the fact that such a chapter appears in both of his outlines of March 1868. He may have thought that he had not sufficiently developed [590]the method of analysis that he refers to at the beginning of section 7 below. His apparent inability to secure usable conclusions from the statistics gathered by U.S. Sanitary Commission inspectors during the Civil War may also have discouraged him from bringing the chapter to a more finished state. It is also possible that folder 12, presented here as section 7, contains the beginning of a chapter on comparative method and other themes that Olmsted decided he should include before presenting a chapter on the nature and strength of the civilizing tendency in American life.

In the texts included in section 6, Olmsted attempts to identify ways in which the frontier condition of society was expected to prepare the way for, and then promote, the eventual creation in the United States of a higher level of civilization, for the mass of the people, than had been or would be achieved in the older hierarchical societies from which the ancestors of Americans had emigrated. Here Olmsted decries the “passivity” of the civilization of the mass of people in Europe, the constraints on them, and their reliance on authority for the maintenance of civilization. He contrasts this with the manner in which people on the American frontier, in the process of building a society, were coming to understand “the first principles of social organization.” He also traces the early stages of development of social organization as he observed them on the California frontier.

The texts continue with Olmsted’s discussion of the “winnowing of the settlements.” He shows how dissipated and “bohemian” men on the frontier move continually, failing to marry and perpetuate themselves, while other men of intelligence and strong will, who would have been leaders of dissolute elements in “old & hard-screwed” societies, find their conservatism strengthened by the frontier. These men become the leaders and founders of society there. Though not yet civilized themselves, they prepare the way, through their discipline, perseverance, temperance, and industry, for the development of civilization. Stressing the importance of family affection as a civilizing element on the sparsely settled frontier, Olmsted also points out the value placed on women and children. He compares this to the lack of family affection and the training in tyranny over others that characterized the education of England’s upper class at that time.

Then, in a section dealing with manners, Olmsted claims that the obsequiousness and insolence commonly found in England compares unfavorably with the honest and independent, if surly, manner of settlers on the American frontier. He asserts that much apparently civilized behavior in England is mere fashion and imitation, an overlay hiding fundamental barbarism. He contends that the mass of Americans, honest but unmannered, are “nearer the true type of gentleman in character” than the mass of people in England.

[591]

Finally, this section presents Olmsted’s observations on government in America and England.

Section 7, “The Prospect for Civilization in America,” corresponds to chapter VI of the March 1868 outline, “How does this appear in larger affairs?” and even more closely to part VII of the outline of March 7, 1868, “Conflict of tendencies. Prospect of the Future. The question of culture [& mediocrity].” The manuscript is in folder 12 (Olmsted Microfilm, reel 43: frames 3–13) and presents the issues that Olmsted outlined on the enclosing sheet of paper:

We may conclude that we are gaining on barbarism and bring all up to a certain grade of civilization. But it may remain question whether we are building to a higher civilization—tendency to hold all down to a certain genl level. A Chinese limited civilization is aimed at by some. Question must be left an open one. Nothing decided as yet, fallacious argument of English writers. Failure to produce eminent men result of demand for practical.

To Sections 1–7 of “The Pioneer Condition” the editors have added two sections, which they have entitled “Introductory Material” and “Postscript, c. 1868.“ “Introductory Material” presents fragments that Olmsted apparently prepared for use in an introduction to his treatise on the frontier and American civilization. The fragments have three principal themes. One is the French historian François Guizot’s image of civilization as a flowing river and his assertion that the crucial question to ask is what a country has added to that river. A second theme deals with Olmsted’s qualifications as a commentator on American society. The third theme is the inadequacy and erroneousness of commentary on the United States written by English travelers.

Olmsted’s reading of the travel accounts of William Howard Russell and Anthony Trollope early in the Civil War provided an important impetus for the observations he made in the following years. The issue was of such concern to Olmsted, and lay behind so much of his thinking, reading, and observing during the 1860s, that the editors have felt it appropriate to present his most important commentary on English travelers in the introductory section of “The Pioneer Condition.”

In the texts of the introductory section, Olmsted offers an extended critique of the writings of English travelers. He argues that they derived their pessimistic conclusions about America both from their own prejudices against democracy and from what they learned from Americans who themselves believed the American republican experiment to be a failure. Olmsted then demonstrates how wrong both groups were in their predictions of the way the North would respond to secession from [592]the Union by the South. He uses the question of the loyalty of Americans and Englishmen to their respective governments to demonstrate the superiority of Americans in that quality, despite anticipations to the contrary by intelligent and well-informed Englishmen.

The last section of “The Pioneer Condition,” entitled “Postscript, c. 1868,” consists of a general introductory statement that Olmsted wrote after the Civil War. It expresses his dismay at the corruption rampant in the American republic following the war, stresses the new urgency of understanding the events of the time, and claims that his method of analysis will yield a clearer understanding of developments in the United States than other approaches being used at the time.

Texts drawn from folders 1–12 that the editors judge were written as discrete sections are separated from each other by a centered line. The reels and frames of the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers microfilm on which the text for each section can be found are given in brackets at the beginning of each section. Additional reel and frame numbers are given at points within the section where the published text shifts to material on a different part of the microfilm. (For instance, see the end of the first part of section 1, where the text shifts from reel 42: frame 596 to reel 42: frame 501, and then to reel 42: frames 497–98 [page 631].) In some sections of microfilm indicated by a run of frame numbers (e.g., reel 42: frames 535–96), there may be frames from which no text has been taken; these frames usually contain notes, outlines, newspaper clippings, or the reverse side of the sheets on which Olmsted wrote his text. The text drawn from the manuscript reproduced in a run of microfilm frames does not always follow the exact sequence of the frame numbers; this is due primarily to the disordering and rearrangement of the manuscript that users have introduced over the years. The editors’ purpose in providing reel and frame numbers is to indicate the section of the microfilm where the material in the printed text can be found. In respects other than those discussed above, treatment of the text is as outlined in the Editorial Policy section of this volume. Textual alterations are presented in Appendix II.