184 The Winning of the West 



mental attitude rarely crystallized into hostile deeds, 

 its very existence, and the knowledge that it did ex 

 ist, imbittered the men of the West. Moreover the 

 people among whom these feelings were strongest 

 were, unfortunately, precisely those who on the ques 

 tions of the Union and the Constitution showed the 

 broadest and most far-seeing statesmanship. New 

 England, the towns of the middle States and Mary 

 land, the tidewater region of South Carolina, and 

 certain parts of Virginia were the seats of the sound 

 est political thought of the day. The men who did 

 this sane, wholesome political thinking were quite 

 right in scorning and condemning the crude unrea 

 son, often silly, often vicious, which characterized 

 so much of the political thought of their opponents. 

 The strength of these opponents was largely derived 

 from the ignorance and suspicion of the raw country 

 districts, and from the sour jealousy with which the 

 backwoodsmen regarded the settled regions of the 

 seaboard. 



But when these sound political thinkers permitted 

 their distrust of certain sections of the country to 

 lead them into doing injustice to those sections, they 

 in their turn deserved the same condemnation which 

 should be meted to so many of their political foes. 

 When they allowed their judgment to become so 

 warped by their dissatisfaction with the traits in 

 evitably characteristic of the earlier stages of fron 

 tier development that they became opposed to all 

 extension of the frontier; when they allowed their 

 liking for the well-ordered society of their own dis- 



