A. L. Bishop — The State Works of Pennsylvania. 151 



Pennsylvania. Another existed in the northern part of Ken- 

 tucky, and small ones along the Cumberland river in Tennessee 

 and at the junction of the Kanawha with the Ohio river in what is 

 now West Virginia. Excepting a few garrisoned posts, these were 

 the principal western points yet reached east of the Mississippi.* 



The beginning of the nineteenth century showed' a marked change. 

 The settled areas along the Atlantic coast had now become con- 

 siderably broader, while the frontier in ISTew York and Pennsyl- 

 vania had been pushed back until about three-fourths of each state 

 had been populated. Ohio had been occupied on both its eastern 

 and southwestern borders, and the settlements in Kentucky and 

 Tennessee had reached out toM^ards each other until they now 

 formed one large and flourishing community. A continuous chain 

 of immigration extended also from the forks of the Ohio in Penn- 

 sylvania along its western border to Lake Erie. 



By 1810 still greater movements were in progress, especially in 

 the west. More than half of Ohio and large parts of Kentucky and 

 Tennessee had been reclaimed from the wilderness. At the close 

 of the second decade of the century, most of Ohio was settled and 

 population was working its way rapidly into southern Indiana and 

 Illinois,' and southeastern Missouri. f 



The westward movement, as yet inconsiderable compared with its 

 later history, was now sufficiently important to attract the atten- 

 tion of the East, whose far-seeing citizens had early looked forward 

 to the future economic importance of the vast region beyond the 

 mountains. To secure for their own state a predominating influ- 

 ence in the trade of the West became at once the ambition of leading 



* Tliese and the following facts concerning the distribution of population 

 until 1820 have been gathered from Scribner's Statistical Atlas of the 

 United States, the Census Reports, and the Statistical Atlas of the United 

 States (1903) published by the United States Government. 



t The Statistical Atlas of the United States (1903), p. 26, states that in 

 1790 not more than 5 per cent, of the population of the United States was 

 west of the Appalachian mountains. Hence not more than 196,460 people 

 were there at this time. 



The census reports show that in 1800 the western states and territories con- 

 tained 387,183 inhabitants; in 1810 the number was 1,075,398; and ten 

 years later it had increased to 2,207,476. If we include the population of 

 western Pennsylvania and Virginia in 1820, the total population of the West 

 at this time was a little more than 2,600,000. 



Tlie total population of the United States was — in 1790, 3,929,214; in 

 1800, 5,308,483; in 1810, 7,239,881; in 1820, 9,633,822. 



