PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 187 



realize and act upon the theory of such sections and study them with 

 a thoroughness, an insight, and a power of constructive imagination 

 that may well be imitated by the economists and historians. Socio- 

 logists, also, like Professor Giddings, have attempted to state a 

 psychological classification of American sections. But as yet the his- 

 torian has hardly begun the serious study of sectionalism, in the con- 

 tinent as a whole. And yet this is a fundamental fact in American 

 history. We need studies designed to show what have been and are 

 the natural, social, and economic divisions in the United States. We 

 need to trace the colonization of these separate regions, the location, 

 contributions, and influence of the various stocks that combined to 

 produce their population. We should map the streams of migration 

 of the settlers from the various sections into new provinces, and the 

 areas of their settlement. Thus the composition of the sections will 

 be revealed. We should study their economic evolution, their peculiar 

 psychological traits, the leaders which they produced, their party 

 history, their relations with other sections. Such a treatment would 

 illuminate the history of the formation and character of the Ameri- 

 can people. 



Perhaps I may be permitted to illustrate this idea somewhat. 

 If the historian were to select the New England plateaus as the 

 province for his study, he would find that, after all the work that 

 has been done in New England history, there remain some of the 

 most fundamental problems for solution. Who is to trace for us the 

 spread of population into the interior and north of New England 

 during the second half of the seventeenth and the eighteenth cen- 

 tury? Such a study, unfolding the economic and social aspects of the 

 movement, the agrarian and religious causes at work, the modifica- 

 tion of the people, the effects upon the social structure of New Eng- 

 land, the party divisions and the institutions resultant, would give 

 us important data for understanding that portion of New England 

 which lies beyond the seaboard, and it would cast light upon the 

 subsequent movement and contributions of this interior folk to New- 

 York and the Middle West. A detailed economic history of New 

 England since the Revolution is sadly needed. It would bring out 

 the relations of New England's physiography to her development: 

 the pressure of population upon the hill regions; the transfer of 

 economic interest from the sea to the water powers, from commerce 

 to manufactures; the changing political attitude of the various 

 portions of the section in response to the changing industrial inter- 

 ests; the economic, social, and religious conditions that led to the 

 exodus from New England and the formation of a greater New Eng- 

 land in the West. At present we do not know enough about this 

 expansion of the New England people a movement certainly 

 comparable in its importance, in its influence upon American history, 



