The Wisconsin Emigrant: For Educators

This song is useful for introducing a lesson on early westward expansion, Manifest Destiny, or even the roots of Free Soil politics.

You can ask students to discuss mobility and economic opportunity as contemporary concepts. How does the song’s back-and-forth resemble conversations twenty-first-century Americans have when considering a move? Why do people move away from their hometowns? This conversation can serve as a springboard to discussing regional economies, land value, the role home ownership plays in American imaginaries and identity formation, or the rhetoric surrounding “pioneers” and the frontier. What role does mobility play in the American story? Are Americans today more or less likely to move than they were in the past?

Instructors may want to ask students about the land itself. Much of the textual and artistic imagery surrounding westward expansion depicts a sense of empty land waiting for white settlers as vanguards of civilization. Do students believe this? Discuss Native American geographies and cultures. How did the environmental changes brought by white settlement change the way Native Americans lived? What happened to Native Americans who lived in the Northwest Territory after the Northwest Ordinance?

The gendered nature of the singer-couple’s discussion may also serve as an opportunity to discuss the gendered stereotypes inherent in Americans’ self-image and in the Western imaginary. What and who do we think of when we think of life on the frontier? Are African Americans prominently featured in images of the West? Why or why not? What does this say about the labor, politics, and rhetoric of westward expansion? How did land use, agricultural practices, and demographic composition differ between the North, South, and West? This could be revisited when introducing the antebellum Free Soil movement.

Vocabulary

yield- to provide or produce an agricultural product

Additional Resources