224 ANDREW JACKSON 



while freely admitting the vastness and strength of the 

 Western country, and the picturesqueness of its annals, 

 have utterly failed to comprehend the importance of 

 its share in the political development of the American 

 nation. There could be no better illustration of this 

 than the crudeness of the opinions current in our liter- 

 ature and taught in our text-books concerning the 

 career of Andrew Jackson, the first American citizen 

 who crossed the Alleghanies to take his seat in the 

 White House. 



In studying the life of this great man, we must first 

 observe the characteristics of the people among whom 

 his earlier years were spent, and of whom he was to 

 such a marked degree the representative and leader. 

 So much has been said about the great influence of 

 New England in determining the character of the 

 West that we must be careful not to forget that in 

 point of time that influence has been distinctly second- 

 ary. It was Virginia, together with the mountain dis- 

 tricts of Pennsylvania and the Carolinas, that first 

 determined the character of the West. Before the 

 overflow of population from New England could 

 make much impression upon the Western territory, it 

 had a great work to do in occupying rural New York. 

 While people in Connecticut were still speaking of 

 Syracuse and Rochester as " out West," the pioneers 

 from Virginia and North Carolina had built their log 

 cabins on bluffs overlooking the Mississippi. A little 

 later this powerful Southern swarm passed on into 

 Missouri and Arkansas, and even invaded the North- 

 western Territory, where its influence was seen in 

 repeated attempts, on the part of the inhabitants of 

 the regions since known as Indiana and Illinois, to 



