The annual value of the agricultural products of the whole country was increased, during this ten years, by $1,000,000,000, and much the largest part of this increase was in the Valley.

The investment of capital from sources outside the Valley was very extensive. The people themselves had all they could do here to lay foundations. The farms were to be opened; private dwellings, fences, barns, agricultural implements and stock, absorbed vast sums. In older sections the public buildings for State, county, city or town and neighborhood uses; the roads, grading, paving, waterworks and various municipal undertakings, of city and country, had already been supplied. Here, they must be furnished while the people were in the act of settlement. Countless millions were so expended, and often by the help of loans from outside capitalists, for which they paid high interest. It was not, therefore, only its own people that were enriched. The gain in personal property and real estate, since 1850, was made, by the census of 1860, to stand at $2,500,000,000. It is very likely that the actual production of wealth invested in various ways, within and without the Valley, not here included, would add one thousand million dollars more to this sum. In 1850 it had taken seventy-five years to accumulate property worth $3,100,000,000 in the Valley, and it was nearly doubled between that year and 1860.

It seems a marvelous tale to tell; yet this was small compared with gains at a later period. All this was but laying foundations. Only a part of the resources lying near the surface had been gathered. They still lay on the surface, offering themselves to the first comer, in inexhaustible profusion; and beneath the surface, to be sought by practiced skill, there was a bottomless ocean of material for wealth.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE VALLEY IN 1860.

It is not easy to see how a people and a region could have been better fitted to each other than these Anglo-Americans, with an infusion of industrious Europeans, and the Mississippi Valley. The long Geological Ages had given it the precise form and outlets to be desired. By the help of facilities for communication with the Atlantic and Europe the right stimulus was given at the right time; by its barriers against ingress and egress in the early days a degree of isolation and discipline was possible, through a period sufficiently long to make a permanent impression, of the most desirable kind, on the character of the race which was to possess and rule it. Vegetable life had helped to store it with iron, with petroleum and coal, and gathered the richest surface mould; animal life had aided in various ways to strengthen its soil and furnish it with suitable qualities of rock for all its general purposes. Fire and water, expansion and contraction, ocean and lake and marsh, sun and winds and rain, were all controlled so as to do their work for the great advantage of this favored region. The history of Mound Builders, Indians, and European nations in their enterprises in the New World, had all been guided so that the right people should find no invincible difficulties in taking possession of its virgin treasures.

So, also, Anglo-American history on the Atlantic side of the Alleghanies had reached the most favorable point when the theatre of significant events was extended westward; the ambitions of France, Spain and England, and the schemes of Aaron Burr failed; the necessities of France and the foresight of Napoleon united every slope of the Valley politically as the Mississippi united them naturally. At the critical time the

steamboat was invented for its waters, and again the railroad for its plains and prairies, and the markets of England were thrown open by free trade just when the Valley was ready to fill them with its produce. Thus, all the seeming accidents that played an important part in its history tell a tale of foresight and supervision-were made determining influences to accumulate and preserve a vast mass of material to be yielded up to those who would use it wisely, at the right moment to give an immense impulse to the progress of civilization.

Hardy, bold and ready for conflict and deprivation as only the rude backwoodsman can be; intelligent, industrious and attached to legal order as Anglo-Saxons naturally are; the adventurous, untaught and poor pioneers faced the forest, the red hunter and the hardships of an interior settlement without shrinking and conducted themselves with singular prudence. The chief difficulties surmounted, independent, uncurbed by arbitrary power or by education, the bold boisterousness of their young men seemed likely to reduce society to chaos. Nothing of that kind occurred. It was the flush of buoyant health, of overflowing vigor and the consciousness of capability, rather than the license of vice. It settled into highly civilized and polished ambition when once the idea was caught and the opening appeared. It was the roughness of the uncut diamond which intercourse with men soon rubbed down, revealing the rare quality beneath.

This people, with hints, suggestions and example alone from the other side of the mountains, formed their own institutions, selected their own laws and officers, legislated for themselves and became responsible for the prevalence of liberty and law. They made many a mistake in questions of detail, but none in constitutional principles. The mistakes they well knew how to remedy. The result was security to property, with the healthiest freedom of action; general morality, without painful constraint. This wise moderation and good order highly favored the influx of people and of money. The

&

FINANCIAL AND SOCIAL DANGERS AVOIDED.

369

quiet and intelligent could come without fear and investments could be made with confidence. Every possible barrier to the truest progress was thrown down; every possible encouragement to active enterprise was given. With such a prudent policy, Eastern and European capital stood ready to aid all useful undertakings. It was only necessary to show that they would pay by a speedy development. The greatest trouble was not too little confidence, too short a credit, but too much. Not too much trust in men, but in the rush of business. If development go fast in one direction it may outrun the progress made in others. An army must move together; its divisions must be in supporting distance. The divisions of industrial progress did not all move with equal step in the Valley, at times, and disorder sometimes appeared in the finances. But this was only temporary. A little time for the laggard branches to come up, a careful revision of past policy, and the race commenced anew.

The political history of the States was singularly free from resistance to constituted authority. A single case in Western Pennsylvania, of rebellion against a tax of the General Government, occurred during the administration of Washington in 1792. The Government was firm and opposition disappeared. Yet men were self-seeking and ambitious-there was more liberty to be so here than anywhere else in the world-every man had a recognized right to his opinion and to advocate it; every man was free to act, so he did not violate the law. There often appeared to be much turbulence; party spirit ran high and self-seeking did not always regard public or individual good. Every period had its peculiar troubles and fears; each party was sure the other would ruin the State or country; there were always examples enough of roguery, of crime, of artful maneuvering for illegal advantages, of stratagems to acquire place and power, to fill the timid and shortsighted with apprehension for the future. That future showed that those fears were gratuitous. The

main facts were most honorable to the people, the parties and the multitude of individuals. Evils truly threatened vanished, not by main force, nor so much by excess of general purity, as by the law of interest.

Society is a body, as fully organized by natural relationships and laws as a human body. It has vital forces, like any other organized body, and its health can be secured best by an unrestricted operation of these forces; too much government coddling interferes with them; there was the minimum of government here; they had nowhere, in any place or time, operated so fully as in the Valley. The result was health and soundness. The vigor of life subdued and expelled disorder; a tendency to equilibrium-to justice and respect for public and personal right-asserted itself. That is a point of great importance; it has had much to do with the safe and rapid progress of American institutions.

Under all these favoring circumstances, by dint of an active, natural, healthy life-a life full of labor, where all were thrown on their own resources, and no system of organized favoritism helped one and oppressed another-progress was great to an unheard of degree. Almost every feature of the history of this region-the northern Valley especially-was so favorable, so rich in solid results, that it might seem almost as if the people ought to be spoiled by their own success. But life was too healthy and busy for that. It is the idle who are most likely to be demoralized by wealth.

There was, however, in 1860, a dark reverse to this bright side. It had gradually been taking form and consistence from the adoption of the Constitution. The labor systems of the North and South were in violent contrast, in some respects, and constantly tended to the disadvantage of each. The industrial difference was irreconcilable. The interest of the

upper Valley required the full development of the lower; that it should be filled with a population such as naturally belonged with its great and various resources. As it was,