The Evangelicals' Western Vision: Union, Emigration, and Empire in the Long Civil War Era

Abstract

This project examines the nineteenth century emigration aid movement by which northern evangelical reformers subsidized westward expansion. Settlers used subsidies to defray the cost of transportation and import the foundations of communities, including presses, churches, and schools. Reformers used emigrant aid in an attempt to build the ideal western society, one that would reflect the political and religious obligations that they saw as central to the survival of the Union. Believing they could transform the West into a free-soil, free-labor, evangelical example for the nation, reformers used emigrant aid as a vehicle to implement their vision of a virtuous society. Although reformers had many concerns about the West, including foreign immigration, religious plurality, and racial diversity, these men and women were initially successful by framing their concerns in the language of free labor and republicanism. After the Civil War, reformers could no longer unite through their opposition to slavery. Charitable donors were less willing to fund emigration schemes when there was no immediate political threat to the Union. Although westerners had always resisted the paternalism of the Northeast, they also increasingly had more power to implement their own plans for the region. This project compares the settlement movements of California Gold Rushers, Latter-day Saints in Utah, Orphan Train emigrants, free-state settlers in antebellum Kansas, and the Exodusters. It shows that colonization was not the result of a singular vision of Manifest Destiny but a product of debates among reformers and westerners. The emigration aid movement demonstrates the many complicated layers of the American empire, as the state, the reformer, and the emigrant all vied for control over the West.