in, rather than led the march towards, continental supremacy.  In shaping the nation’s policy for the future their sense of historic perspective seemed imperfect.  They could not see the all-importance of the valley of the Ohio, or of the valley of the Columbia, to the Republic of the years to come.  The value of a county in Maine offset in their eyes the value of these vast, empty regions.  Indeed, in the days immediately succeeding the Revolution, their attitude towards the growing West was worse than one of mere indifference; it was one of alarm and dislike.  They for the moment adopted towards the West a position not wholly unlike that which England had held towards the American colonies as a whole.  They came dangerously near repeating, in their feeling towards their younger brethren on the Ohio, the very blunder committed in reference to themselves by their elder brethren in Britain.  For some time they seemed, like the British, unable to grasp the grandeur of their race’s imperial destiny.  They hesitated to throw themselves with hearty enthusiasm into the task of building a nation with a continent as its base.  They rather shrank from the idea as implying a lesser weight of their own section in the nation; not yet understanding that to an American the essential thing was the growth and well-being of America, while the relative importance of the locality where he dwelt was a matter of small moment.

    Eastern Efforts to Shear the West’s Strength.

The extreme representatives of this northeastern sectionalism not only objected to the growth of the West at the time now under consideration, but even avowed a desire to work it harm, by shutting the Mississippi, so as to benefit the commerce of the Atlantic States—­a manifestation of cynical and selfish disregard of the rights of their fellow-countrymen quite as flagrant as any piece of tyranny committed or proposed by King George’s ministers in reference to America.  These intolerant extremists not only opposed the admission of the young western States into the Union, but at a later date actually announced that the annexation by the United States of vast territories beyond the Mississippi offered just cause for the secession of the northeastern States.  Even those who did not take such an advanced ground felt an unreasonable dread lest the West might grow to overtop the East in power.  In their desire to prevent this (which has long since happened without a particle of damage resulting to the East), they proposed to establish in the Constitution that the representatives from the West should never exceed in number those from the East,—­a proviso which would not have been merely futile, for it would quite properly have been regarded by the West as unforgivable.