Louisiana and Aaron Burr 291 



under governmental supervision, and because of and 

 in accordance with governmental action; and it was 

 destined ultimately to receive the great mass of its 

 immigrants from the Northwest; but as yet these 

 two influences had not become strong enough to 

 sunder the frontiersmen north of the Ohio by any 

 sharp line from those south of the Ohio. The set- 

 tlers on the Western waters were substantially the 

 same in character north and south. 



In sum, the Western frontier folk, at the begin- 

 ning of the nineteenth century, possessed in com- 

 mon marked and peculiar characteristics, which the 

 people of the rest of the country shared to a much 

 less extent. They were backwoods farmers, each 

 man preferring to live alone on his own freehold, 

 which he himself tilled and from which he himself 

 had cleared the timber. The towns were few and 

 small; the people were poor, and often ignorant, 

 but hardy in body and in temper. They joined hos- 

 pitality to strangers with suspicion of them. They 

 were essentially warlike in spirit, and yet utterly 

 unmilitary in all their training and habits of 

 thought. They prized beyond measure their indi- 

 vidual liberty and their collective freedom, and were 

 so jealous of governmental control that they often, 

 to their own great harm, fatally weakened the very 

 authorities whom they chose to act over them. The 

 peculiar circumstances of their lives forced them 

 often to act in advance of action by the law, and this 

 bred a lawlessness in certain matters which their 

 children inherited for generations ; yet they knew 



