Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 37 



questions save those of the preservation of the Union 

 itself and of the emancipation of the blacks have 

 been of subordinate importance when compared with 

 the great question of how rapidly and how com- 

 pletely they were to subjugate that part of their 

 continent lying between the eastern mountains and 

 the Pacific. Yet the statesmen of the Atlantic sea- 

 board were often unable to perceive this, and indeed 

 frequently showed the same narrow jealousy of the 

 communities beyond the Alleghanies that England 

 felt for all America. Even if they were too broad- 

 minded and far-seeing to feel thus, they yet were 

 unable to fully appreciate the magnitude of the in- 

 terests at stake in the West. They thought more of 

 our right to the North Atlantic fisheries than of 

 our ownership of the Mississippi Valley; they were 

 more interested in the fate of a bank or a tariff than 

 in the settlement of the Oregon boundary. Most 

 contemporary writers showed similar shortcomings 

 in their sense of historic perspective. The names 

 of Ethan Allen and Marion are probably better 

 known than is that of George Rogers Clark; yet 

 their deeds, as regards their effects, could no more 

 be compared to his, than his could be compared to 

 Washington's. So it was with Houston. During 

 his lifetime there were probably fifty men who, east 

 of the Mississippi, were deemed far greater than 

 he was. Yet in most cases their names have already 

 almost faded from remembrance, while his fame 

 will grow steadily brighter as the importance of his 

 deeds is more thoroughly realized. Fortunately, in 



