The Colonization of the West, 1820-1830

TIE rise of the new West' was the most significant fact in American history in the years immediately followilng the War of 1812. Ever since the beginnings of settlement on the Atlantic coast a frolntier of settlement had advanced, cuttilig ilnto the forest, pushing back the Indian, and steadily widening the area of settlemiient and civilization in its rear. There had been a West even in early colonial days; but then it lay close to the coast. By the middle of the eighteenth centtury the West vas to be found beyond tide-water passing toward the Alleghleny mountains. WVhen this barrier was crossed and the lands on the other side of the mountains were won, in tlle days of the Revolution, a new and greater , more influential on the nation's destiny, was created. The men of the Western Waters or the Western 'World , as they loved to call themselves, developed under conditions of separation from the older settlements and from Europe. The lands, practically free, in this vast area not only attracted the settler, but furnished opportunity for all men to hew out their own careers. The wilderness ever opened a gate of escape to the poor, the discontented, and the oppressed. If social conditions tended to crystallize in the East, beyond the Alleghenies there was freedom. Grappling with new problems, under these conditions, the society that spread into this region developed inventiveness and resourcefulness; the restraints of custom were broken, and new activities, new lines of growth, new institutions were produced. Mr. Bryce has well declared3 that the West is the most American part of America. . . . What Europe is to Asia, what England is to the rest of Europe, what America is to England, that the Western States and Territories are to the Atlantic States. The American spirit-the traits that have come to be recognized as the most characteristic-was developed in the new