EASE AND COMFORT OF SETTLEMENT WITH RAILROADS. 261

The eager desire of the American people to acquire full possession of the great wealth the Valley offered them was now fully met by facilities equal to their need.. The East poured its people west in a mighty flood. The peasants and artisans of Europe came by the hundred thousand, replacing the drain from the East as well as multiplying the emigrants to the West. There was a transfer of millions from the East to the West. It hardly bore the character of emigration, for the railroads often received considerable communities of friends and neighbors, with all their movable comforts and belongings, set them down together, on some vacant spot on the beautiful prairies, and, in a brief space, furnished them all the means of replacing their abandoned homes by still more beautiful ones. In a year or two the farms had been fenced and tilled, the buildings put in order, the village artisans settled to their callings, the school and church supplied, and a mature, orderly and prosperous community was pursuing its quiet way as before in the East. "Going West" was no longer becoming pioneers, to suffer deprivation, to pass through years of struggle with difficulty before the comforts and advantages left could be replaced. With every facility for instantly surrounding themselves with all the conveniences of life, and entering immediately on the work of production, they had all the advantages of distant markets brought to their doors, and a considerable income could be immediately obtained.

It was a vast change, suddenly wrought, and the more suddenly that it was now chiefly the prairie that was sought. The accessible timbered regions had been settled before. With so much ease and convenience of replacing homes and incomes, the transfer from the East to the West was made in masses, and the gain of population in the Valley between 1850 and 1860 was quite as great as had been the whole number as late as the year 1838. Wisconsin had received about 470,000; Texas nearly 400,000; Tennessee and Kentucky had gained about 250,000; Ohio 260,000; Illinois more than 800,000; Indiana

320,000; Missouri 500,000; Iowa 480,000; Minnesota 166,000; Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana about 190,000 each; Michigan 350,000; Arkansas 227,000; Kansas over 100,000, and Nebraska nearly 30,000. Some other gains raised the whole number considerably above 5,000,000. The center of population for the United States was already within the limits of the Valley, and every condition of a still greater growth and prosperity was abundantly supplied, had enterprise remained unchecked and chiefly confined east of the Rocky Mountains. Human affairs are so arranged that the spring and summer of a great prosperity are usually followed by a winter of great disaster. It so occurred at this time, though not without important compensations.

CHAPTER XII.

CONSTITUTIONAL BEGINNINGS BY THE EARLY SETTLERS.

The people of the colonies which furnished the pioneers of the Mississippi Valley were not all of one nationality by descent; they were from various classes of society in the Old World; and many of the principles that were to be afterward embodied in the institutions they created lay, in the earlier times, undeveloped in their minds. They were truly attached to the mother country, and the customs ruling in the ancient homes of their memories and affections were, so far as they were suitable, continued in their new surroundings. Yet, in spite of their loyalty to influences and bonds that reached across the Atlantic, they were all of the stock which had built up a vigorous, though turbulent, civilization on the splendid ruins of the Roman Empire it had overthrown, and their circumstances in the New World insensibly developed the stronger and nobler features of character which lay at the root of European history. They were of the races of the Feudal Knights of Chivalry and Romance, of the Crusaders, and of the Northmen-of the races that had covered Europe with battle-fields, that scarcely ever rested from fighting, and yet grew more thoughtful and wise from age to age.

Transplanted to America with chartered rights to defend against all attacks, with endless trials of fortitude and courage while subduing a wilderness and conquering the warlike Indians, the same resolute character that had kept Europe in tumult for fifteen hundred years was more and more drawn out. When they made a point they held to it; truly civilized, they felt the value of legal governments on which the security of property, the comfort of life, and the strength of the community against public enemies depend; they respected author

ity, endeavored to keep within legal limits in resisting its exactions, and argued and diplomatized with much patience for years; but what they had resolved authority should not force on them they resisted with unwavering constancy. All the colonies, differing much in many other things, were endowed with this sturdiness of character. There was a repressed fervor-held in check by prudence and habit-that consistently animated their lives as a whole. Not much remarked on ordinary occasions, it broke out with intensity at great crises. This fiery resoluteness lay partly in reserve for emergencies, and partly as a steady, stimulating force at the springs of action. It is the most useful and admirable contradiction in character any people can possess.

These elements of character crossed the mountains with the pioneers of the Valley and were still further developed there by a severe and peculiar discipline. The Indian dashed against them, as against a rock, and rebounded wounded and broken. The French, the Spanish and the English tried against them all their arts of war, of diplomacy, and of glittering promises, with the same result. While, few and unprotected, they were struggling to build homes and open farms in a vast ocean of forest in the far interior, and the colonies on the coast were confronting the navies and armies of England, they stood successfully at bay before the Indians, who, stimulated by British agents and furnished with British arms, sought to sweep them down by the bullet, the tomahawk and the firebrand. They not only stood firm; they knew how to strike back with great effect. They completely defeated the British Indian Policy in the Valley, and held the outposts of the new Republic against great odds-not as soldiers but as farmers. Their main business was agricultural; fighting was only undertaken when not to be avoided, or to secure relief from attack.

It was extremely fortunate that this people, intent only on industrial progress, secured possession of the richest and best

FORTUNATE ESCAPE OF THE VALLEY FROM FOREIGN RULE. 265

agricultural region in the world instead of the Spanish, French or English. Under the control of a foreign government, which would have subordinated the interests of their subjects here to their European policy, and have deprived them of the freedom of action and the stimulus to enterprise necessary to great results, there would have been a repetition, more or less complete, of the history of Canada and the Spanish American colonies. Could the French habitans of Canada have developed as freely as the Anglo-Americans in the Valley, their history would have been prouder and more impressive. Under the policy pursued by France and Spain their colonists stagnated; both character and enterprise lay dormant. Although England was considerably wiser than France or Spain her colonial policy remained a huge stumbling block to her colonies until within the last fifty years, and a part of her recent wisdom is due to the influence and example of free America.

One hundred and forty-four years after the death of De Soto, La Salle, representing the humane and courteous side of the old chivalry brightened with the morning rays of a new civilization and a riper age, fell a victim to Jesuit intrigue and the disappointed passions of his followers. Had he lived and prospered he would have held the lower and central Valley and a new France would have taken root in the prairies, and, in alliance with the Indians, have confined Anglo-American development to the Atlantic Slope for a long period, at least. The character of the Republic, could it have come into being so surrounded with adverse influences, must have been extremely different. More compact and concentrated, it would have been more European, its thought less free, its growth less expansive. The spirit of modern justice can not shed a tear over the tragic fate of the heart-broken De Soto. He embodied, for the Valley, the inhumanity of his country and times—it was fitting that an ambition so brutal and unholy should find a grave in the waters of the Mississippi. La Salle belonged