Page 19 - 2015_Cabin Days curriculum booklet

The legislature in 1836 authorized three major canal projects, the Central Canal,
Whitewater, and Wabash & Erie extension. There was to be a macadamized road from New
Albany to Vincennes. And most exciting, a railroad, running from Madison on the Ohio to
Indianapolis to Lafayette. To finance this grand public works project Indiana borrowed ten
million dollars at five percent interest, this at a time when state revenue was about
$120,000 a year.

Hoosier pioneers eagerly looked forward to a transportation network that would connect
them to the outside world. Farmers, merchants, and travelers would move from cabins and
villages to the market places of the nation and even the world.

The legislature authorized this mammoth system in spite of pioneers' professions of
preference for small government, no taxes, independence, and self-sufficiency. And they did
so because they believed so strongly in the future.

Now we know they failed. In the short run, at least, the system of 1836 went bankrupt and
created a large embarrassment for Indiana. The pioneer generation often failed. But
optimists know failure. And despite failure this pioneer generation flourished on the strong
base of optimism.

It is the spark and spunk of this generation that excites me, not their superhuman heroism.
Despite a keen sense of limits they planned for change and believed in progress. Despite
evidence that much could go wrong, they hoped much more would go right. That way of
thinking is their legacy for us.

Some might be thinking that was then. The times are different in the 1990s. We know real
limits, we understand failure, and we seek shelter. We can't do it all. We must cut, not
build.

Perhaps. But I would suggest a different legacy--one of optimism, one that celebrates
Indiana's best traditions, from the Constitution of 1816 to our own time, not a mindless or
heroic celebration, but one more ambiguous, one that gives a real base on which to build
rather than romantic myths and legends. Our pioneer legacy comes from a people far more
ambiguous and far more interesting than those heroic myths.

So, as the twentieth century moves to an end, I'll look back to the Constitution of 1816 and
to the Hoosier pioneers and hope for the future of Indiana into the twenty-first century.