Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 39 



The settlements grew up behind the shelter of the 

 federal troops of Harmar, St. Claire, and Wayne, 

 and of their successors even to our own day. The 

 wars in which the borderers themselves bore any 

 part were few and trifling compared to the contests 

 waged by the adventurers who won Kentucky, Ten- 

 nessee, and Texas. 



. In the Southwest the early settlers acted as their 

 own army, and supplied both leaders and men. 

 Sevier, Robertson, Clark, and Boone led their fel- 

 low pioneers to battle, as Jackson did afterward, 

 and as Houston did later still. Indeed the South- 

 westerners not only won their own soil for them- 

 selves, but they were the chief instruments in the 

 original acquisition of the Northwest also. Had 

 it not been for the conquest of the Illinois towns in 

 1779 we would probably never have had any North- 

 west to settle ; and the huge tract between the upper 

 Mississippi and the Columbia, then called Upper 

 Louisiana, fell into our hands, only because the 

 Kentuckians and Tennesseeans were resolutely bent 

 on taking possession of New Orleans, either by bar- 

 gain or battle. All of our territory lying beyond the 

 Alleghanies, north and south, was first won for us 

 by the Southwesterners, fighting for their own 

 hand. The northern part was afterward filled up by 

 the thrifty, vigorous men of the Northeast, whose 

 sons became the real rulers as well as the preservers 

 of the Union; but these settlements of Northerners 

 were rendered possible only by the deeds of the 

 nation as a whole. They entered on land that the 



