Michigan historical collections. [Vol. 17]

300

ANNUAL MEETING, 1890.

from Spain, and the region now occupied by Michigan and Wisconsin,
and had even added a state beyond that river. Into these new states
the current of emigration steadily flowed from the east for a generation,
leaving Michigan an unsurveyed and almost unknown wilderness. When
this, our state, was admitted into the union, Missouri had been a sovereign state sixteen years, Illinois nineteen years, Indiana twenty-one
years, and Ohio thirty-five years.
During this sweep of population into the great middle states of the
west, there was a long period of suspense in state making; for it is
to be noted that when Arkansas and Michigan were respectively
emblazoned as the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth stars on the national
flag, they were the first addition which the flag had received in
fifteen years. It seems as if in this extended interval, while Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri had become leading commonwealths, and
had long been shining conspicuous in the national galaxy, the territory
of Michigan had been preserved a choice portion of the national heritage to receive the very best elements of civilization and statehood
that America could confer. Former periods found these elements less
fully developed and less complete. Later periods have found them
subject to an admixture that made them less destinctively and less
purely American.
The political and social institutions which Michigan received at its
formation, were like choice seed wheat which is obtained by the farmer
after many generations of judicious selection, thorough sifting, and
careful culture. These free institutions which had their remote origin
in Germany, which were subsequently transplanted to England and, after
centuries of development under peculiarly favorable conditions, were
again removed and transferred to New England and the colonies adjacent, and there improved and developed for their final planting in Michigan, in the decade that followed the settlement of Kalamazoo, were never
so perfect, were never so well fitted for insuring human welfare, as when
they were lodged in this virgin wilderness of Michigan. In no part of
the globe had these institutions, whose growth under the mellowing
influence of the gospel makes modern history, become so thoroughly
developed as the instrument of good society and good government, as
when, in 1829, and the few following years, they were brought by New
Yorkers, New Englanders, Pennsylvanians and other pioneers, to be
incorporated into the commonwealth of Michigan.
When the propitious time arrived for the making of our State, no
one man took a pre-eminent place in this task. There was no chief
builder; but the builders were the pioneers who swarmed into the for