The United States of Optimism

The late 1830s and early '40s were a bad time in Missouri and most everyplace else in the U.S. People were broke and in debt after a boom in land speculation along the routes of new canals and railroads. In the bust that followed—what became known as the Panic of 1837—banks failed or cut off credit. One Missourian, a 36-year-old storekeeper and self-educated lawyer with a sick wife (a malaria epidemic had swept the Midwest) announced on a day in 1843 that he wanted to start over in the Oregon Territory: "I am done with this country," he said. "Winters it's frost and snow to freeze a body; summers the overflow from the Old Muddy drowns half my acres. Taxes take the yield of them that's left. What say, Maw? It's God's country."

Easier said than done. Outfitting a covered wagon to hit the Oregon Trail and buying a team of oxen cost $1,500—a lot of money. Like many of his neighbors, our shopkeeper went to his creditors, and they were many. He told them he could never pay them back if he stayed in Missouri, so why didn't they lend him more money to go west, and he would pay everything back? They did. And he did. It took him almost 10 years. Others who went west, too, usually repaid their debts back home.