roads by land counted for little against New York's water communication with the West, and in 1826 she began her own system of canals from the Susquehanna to Pittsburg, - with a 42-mile portage over the Alleghany ridge. From the great highways, too, cheap but helpful “State roads" and private turnpikes began to radiate in other parts of the West. Ohio and Illinois lacked stone for road building, but they invented a "plank road" long a favorite in those States. The trees along the "right of way" furnished heavy hewn planks, which were laid side by side on a prepared level surface of earth. The success of the Erie and Pennsylvania canals overstimulated canal building. In particular, the new States Orgy of road building in the West entered upon an orgy of building far beyond their means. Between 1825 and 1840 nearly five thousand miles of costly canals were constructed in America, of which four fifths were either needless or were replaced soon by the railroad. The rapid growth of the "New West" through the period 1815-1830 had never had a parallel in history. Between Unparalleled the admission of Ohio and that of Louisiana there growth had been an interval of ten years (1802-1812). Now in six years six States came in: Indiana, in 1816; Mississippi, 1817; Illinois, 1818; Alabama, 1819; Maine, 1820; and Missouri, 1821. During the next decade the Western States grew at the rate of from a hundred to a hundred and fifty per cent, while Massachusetts and Virginia remained almost stationary. Ohio in 1830 had a million people, — more than Massachusetts and Connecticut together. The center of population in 1830 was 125 miles west of Baltimore; and the Mississippi valley contained more than three and a half millions of our total population of thirteen millions, while a million more, in the back districts of the older States, really belonged to this Western movement. Since 1800, the West had grown from a tenth to a third of the nation. New England's total population was only two million, and she had RAPIDITY OF GROWTH, 1815-1830 403 gained only half a million in the last decade (even including the growing "frontier" State of Maine), while the Mississippi valley States had gained a million and a half. Indiana in the decade from 1810 to 1820 grew from 24,000 to 147,000! Throughout the period, Virginia held first place as mother State for the new commonwealths both north and Virginia still south of the Ohio. Dr. Turner, whose New West the mother is so often quoted in this chapter, has some inter- State esting figures to show the preponderance of Southern im migration. Of the Illinois legislature in 1833, he tells us, 58 members were from the South, 19 from the Middle States, and only 4 from New England. As late as 1850, two thirds the population of Indiana was Southern in origin. Indeed, the "Hoosier" element was, originally, wholly from North Carolina. New later New England was populating her own frontier counties in Maine, and also, in good measure, the western districts of New York and the Lake region of Ohio. Her England sons did not begin to come in large numbers into immigration the great central valley until the close of this period. So far as they did come, they were from her western democratic farming communities. They kept much of the old Puritan seriousness and moral earnestness, mingled with a radicalism like that of original Puritans of the Roger Williams type. They were reformers and "come-outers" in religion and politics and society. Temperance movements, Mormonism, Abolitionism, Bible societies, Spiritualism, Anti-masonry, schools and colleges, when such things came in the West, all found their chief support from this element of the population. CHAPTER XXIII FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1815-1830 boundary FROM Waterloo to the Crimean War (1815-1854), Europe had no general war. This made it easier for the United States to withdraw from European entanglements; The and, with one great exception (page 407), our Northern foreign questions were concerned mainly with unsettled boundaries. The Treaty of 1783 had drawn our northern boundary from the Lake of the Woods "due west" to the Mississippi. But Pike's exploration1 had made clear that the Mississippi rose almost "due south" of that lake. Moreover, the line between the Louisiana Province and the British Possessions had never been determined. The Treaty of Ghent referred the matter to inquiry by a mixed commission; and the "Convention of 1818" between England and the United States fixed the boundary at the 49th parallel from the Lake of the Woods to the "Stony Mountains." "Disarma Lakes A still more important "Convention" the preceding year (also provided for in the Treaty) had made a vast gain for humanity. The two nations agreed that neither should keep armed vessels (except revenue cutters) ment" on on the Great Lakes. This humane and sensible the Great arrangement is the nearest approach to disarmament yet reached by international agreement. For the century since, in striking contrast to the constant threat of all European frontiers with their frowning fortresses crowded with hostile-minded soldiery, Canada and the 1 In 1805 Jefferson had, for a second time, made part of the small army useful in the interest of scientific exploration: Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, with a small company, traced the Mississippi from St. Louis to its source, and afterward explored the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red rivers (map after page 378). United States have smiled in constant friendliness across the peaceful waters that unite our lands. Claims to Oregon at this time was an indefinite territory between Spanish California and Russian Alaska. No bounds had really been drawn for any one of these three regions. The American basis for claiming Oregon has been stated (page 379). Russia and Spain both claimed it because of their adjacent possessions. More serious were England's claims. Like all the claimants, England had territory adjacent to this "no man's land"; like the United States, she needed, through that land, an opening on the Pacific from her inland territory; and she had other titles corresponding closely to our own. To leave out of account the ancient discovery by Captain Cook, Vancouver had explored the coast in an English vessel in 1792, just before Gray sailed into the mouth of the Columbia. The year following, Alexander McKenzie, in the employ of the Hudson Bay Company, reached the region overland from Canada. Then during the War of 1812, Hudson Bay officers seized Astoria, and England now had possession. But in the negotiations with England in 1818 John Quincy Adams (Monroe's Secretary of State) put forward emphatic claim to the whole Oregon district. The “Convention" postponed settlement of the question, leaving the territory open for ten years to occupation by both parties. Then, in the Florida treaty of 1819-1821, Adams secured from Spain a waiver of any claim she might have had north of the 42d parallel (map facing page 371). We looked upon this "quitclaim" from Spain as an acknowledgment that Oregon belonged to the United States. Thus the matter rested. In 1828 the agreement with England for joint occupation was renewed, subject to a year's And Eastern notice by either country. The debates in Conindifference gress showed that body rather indifferent to the matter. The predominant feeling was that we could never occupy so inaccessible and "barren" a region, and ought not to if we could. There were enthusiastic Westerners, |