CHRISTIAN THE EXAMINER. MAY, 1867. ART. I. WESTERN EMIGRATION AND WESTERN Ar the close of the Revolutionary War, the vast region bounded by the Alleghanies, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Lakes was a wilderness. The early attempt at French colonization had failed. The thirteen old colonies had resigned their misty claims of dominion in the far-off country, in favor of the new government. As early as 1790, this whole area was dedicated to Freedom by the new Congress of the United States; and an untrodden world invited a new experiment in human affairs. Then began that most wonderful movement of modern times, which, under the name of Western emigration, in seventy-five years has created five great States, rejuvenated the three most powerful of the older colonies, and planted therein a population of nine millions. Since that day, the people of the United States have come into possession of a vaster region, between the Mississippi and the Pacific, and organized it into seventeen free States and territories, containing a population of three millions. The close of the war of the Rebellion beheld this entire district inhabited by twelve million people, and bound together by a common devotion to American institutions. And, what is vastly more important, this population, gathered from the whole world, shows unmistakable signs of crystallizing into a new and decided Western character. VOL. LXXXII. -NEW SERIES, VOL. III. NO. III. 223 |