The Northwest.

The settlement of the Northwest had been begun under influences which in the end were to separate it radically from the Southwest.  It was settled under Governmental supervision, and because of and in accordance with Governmental action; and it was destined ultimately to receive the great mass of its immigrants from the Northeast; but as yet these two influences had not become strong enough to sunder the frontiersmen north of the Ohio by any sharp line from those south of the Ohio.  The settlers on the Western waters were substantially the same in character North and South.

    The Westerners Formed One People.

In sum, the western frontier folk, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, possessed in common marked and peculiar characteristics, which the people of the rest of the country shared to a much less extent.  They were backwoods farmers, each man preferring to live alone on his own freehold, which he himself tilled and from which he himself had cleared the timber.  The towns were few and small; the people were poor, and often ignorant, but hardy in body and in temper.  They joined hospitality to strangers with suspicion of them.  They were essentially warlike in spirit, and yet utterly unmilitary in all their training and habits of thought.  They prized beyond measure their individual liberty and their collective freedom, and were so jealous of governmental control that they often, to their own great harm, fatally weakened the very authorities whom they chose to act over them.  The peculiar circumstances of their lives forced them often to act in advance of action by the law, and this bred a lawlessness in certain matters which their children inherited for generations; yet they knew and appreciated the need of obedience to the law, and they thoroughly respected the law.

    Decadence of Separatist Feeling.

The separatist agitations had largely died out.  In 1798 and 1799 Kentucky divided with Virginia the leadership of the attack on the Alien and Sedition laws; but her extreme feelings were not shared by the other Westerners, and she acted not as a representative of the West, but on a footing of equality with Virginia.  Tennessee sympathized as little with the nullification movement of these two States at this time as she sympathized with South Carolina in her nullification movement a generation later.  With the election of Jefferson the dominant political party in the West became in sympathy with the party in control of the nation, and the West became stoutly loyal to the National Government.

    Importance of the West.

The West had thus achieved a greater degree of political solidarity, both as within itself and with the nation as a whole, than ever before.  Its wishes were more powerful with the East.  The pioneers stood for an extreme Americanism, in social, political, and religious matters alike.  The trend of American thought was toward them, not away from them.  More than ever before, the Westerners were able to make their demands felt at home, and to make their force felt in the event of a struggle with a foreign power.