Louisiana and Aaron Burr 251 



error. The experience of Blount when he occupied 

 the exceedingly difficult position of Territorial Gov- 

 ernor of Tennessee showed that it was quite possible 

 for a man of firm belief in the Union to get into 

 touch with the frontiersmen and to be accepted by 

 them as a worthy representative; but the virtues of 

 St. Clair and Sargent were so different from the 

 backwoods virtues, and their habits of thought were 

 so alien, that they could not possibly get on with the 

 people among whom their lot had been cast. Neither 

 of them in the end took up his abode in the Terri- 

 tory of which he had been Governor, both returning 

 to the East. The codes of laws which they enacted 

 prior to the Territories possessing a sufficient num- 

 ber of inhabitants to become entitled to Territorial 

 legislatures were deemed by the settlers to be arbi- 

 trary and unsuited to their needs. There was much 

 popular feeling against them. On one occasion St. 

 Clair was mobbed in Chillicothe, the then capital of 

 Ohio, with no other effect than to procure a change 

 of capital to Cincinnati. Finally both Sargent and 

 St. Clair were removed by Jefferson, early in his 

 administration. 



The Jeffersonian Republican party did very much 

 that was evil, and it advocated governmental prin- 

 ciples of such utter folly that the party itself was 

 obliged immediately to abandon them when it under- 

 took to carry on the government of the United 

 States, and only clung to them long enough to cause 

 serious and lasting damage to the country; but on 

 the vital question of the West, and its territorial 



