28 The Winning of the West 



The New Englander who was not personally inter- 

 ested in the lands beyond the Alleghanies often felt 

 indifferent or hostile to the growth of the trans- 

 montane America; and in their turn these over- 

 mountain men, these Kentuckians and Tennessee- 

 ans, were concerned to obtain a port at the mouth 

 of the Mississippi rather than the right to move 

 westward to the Pacific. There were more men in 

 the new communities than in the old who saw, how- 

 ever imperfectly, the grandeur of the opportunity 

 and of the race-destiny ; but there were always very 

 many who did their share in working out their des- 

 tiny grudgingly and under protest. The race as a 

 whole, in its old homes and its new, learns the les- 

 son with such difficulty that it can scarcely be said 

 to be learnt at all until success or failure has done 

 away with the need of learning it. But in the case 

 of our own people, it has fortunately happened that 

 the concurrence of the interests of the individual and 

 of the whole organism has been normal throughout 

 most of its history. 



The attitude of the United States and Great Brit- 

 ain, as they faced one another in the Western wil- 

 derness at the beginning of the year 1791, is but an- 

 other illustration of the truth of this fact. The British 

 held the lake posts, and more or less actively sup- 

 ported the Indians in their efforts to bar the Ameri- 

 cans from the Northwest. Nominally, they held the 

 posts because the Americans had themselves left un- 

 fulfilled some of the conditions of the treaty of 

 peace; but this was felt not to be the real reason, 



