AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEST 315 



All the states and territories we are considering furnished 

 men for the armies. Up to December i, 1864, Illinois raised 

 197,000 soldiers ; Iowa, 70,000 up to December 31, 1864 ; Wis- 

 consin, 75,000 up to December 31, 1864. 



And yet, despite this drain of men, the West grew. Statistics 

 of population, immigration, and the sale of new lands furnish a 

 body of evidence that cannot be gainsaid. They show the arrival 

 of new people, the making of new farms, a continued progress in 

 Western agriculture while war was raging in the South. It was 

 the new settlers, aided in part by labor-saving machinery, who 

 reaped the usual crops and the annual increase thereto, and 

 clinched the prosperity of the West. 



A further illustration of the growth of the West is to be seen 

 in the sway of the Western markets over the rival commercial 

 cities of the East. The chief aim of the seaboard cities, in their 

 attempts to extend their trade, was to secure improved transporta- 

 tion facilities westward. New York, by the construction of the 

 Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, secured new connections 

 with the lake route at Cleveland, and also with Cincinnati and 

 the Southwest. In a great ship-canal convention, attended by 

 two thousand people and presided over by the Vice-President of 

 the United States, New York joined her interests with Chicago 

 in memorializing Congress to improve, for military and commer- 

 cial reasons, the Illinois and New York canals. This she was led 

 to do by Chicago's threat to send her grain seaward over the 

 Canadian and St. Lawrence route. Philadelphia completed a new 

 railroad to Erie, to compete with the new Atlantic and Great 

 Western, and, in opposition to the Chicago-New- York canal 

 schemes, favored the improvement of the Ohio River. She also 

 secured new connections with Cincinnati and Chicago. Boston, 

 with only one road to the West, endeavored to divert the termi- 

 nus of the Grand Trunk from Portland to herself, to tap that road 

 at Ogdensburg, New York, to divert the Erie Canal traffic at 

 Albany by completing the Hoosac Tunnel, and to build a new 

 road to the terminus of the Erie at Newburgh, New York. The 

 obvious explanation of the great public interest in these and 

 similar transportation projects is that the West appealed to all as 



