Tomahawk Rights and Corn Titles 109 



form of house made it the universal symbol of early American 

 life. 



Sturdy of body and tersely picturesque of speech, these 

 men poured into the American language a striking metaphor, 

 Gaelic in its penetration to essentials, but making use of 

 homely and roadside terms, as the frontiersman utilizes for his 

 need whatever lies close to hand. Lincoln's tongue was taught 

 them. The oratory of Clay and Calhoun sprang from the 

 same mountain source. From it, too, flowed the powerful 

 clarity of John Marshall's mind. 



All these men felt the pulse of the country beating under 

 the ground they hoed. With corn, and with the strength and 

 energy it gave to them, they opened the west. Not only that, 

 but they forced the west on a reluctant east. New England 

 and Philadelphia could protest spending fifteen millions of 

 dollars for Louisiana; the backwoodsmen had delivered their 

 ultimatum: make the Mississippi an American road for Ameri- 

 can tobacco, corn, pork, lard and lumber to go to an American 

 market, or we will secede. "We will take on Spain with one 

 hand, and lick the eastern states with the other." 



Once over the mountains these backwoodsmen spread along 

 the river valleys of the midwest. Strengthened by the fatness 

 of that land they influenced political affairs in this country for 

 several generations. Through the first half of the last century 

 one heard in Congress the language of the American Back 

 Woods. The Adams family might shrink from its colloquial- 

 ism; but what Yankee satirist has outdone Charles Sumner's 

 retort to his detractors: "These gentlemen criticize me for lack 

 of that in which the billy-goat is their equal, and the wild ass 

 their superior." 



The spirit of the backwoodsmen was symbolized in our 

 time by Sergeant Alvin Yorke whose capture, single-handed, 

 of 132 German prisoners, was characterized by Marshal Foch 

 as "the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of 

 all the armies of Europe." Alvin Yorke was born in a cabin 

 made out of a corn crib. When his parents married, they 



