AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY SEVENTY YEARS AGO 271 



with which these new states were formed, as the 

 obstacles to migration were removed. The chief 

 obstacles had been the hostility of the Indians, and 

 the difficulty of getting from place to place. During 

 the late war the Indian power had been broken by 

 Harrison in the North and by Jackson l in the South. 

 In 1807 Robert Fulton had invented the steamboat. 

 In 1811 a steamboat was launched on the Ohio River 

 at Pittsburg, and presently such nimble craft were 

 plying on all the Western rivers, carrying settlers and 

 traders, farm produce and household utensils. This 

 gave an immense impetus to the Western migration. 

 After Ohio had been admitted to the Union in 1802, 

 ten years had elapsed before the next state, Louisiana, 

 was added. But in six years after the war a new 

 state was added every year: Indiana in 1816, Missis- 

 sippi in 1817, Illinois in 1818, Alabama in 1819, Maine 

 in 1820, Missouri in 1821 ; all but one of them west of 

 the Alleghanies, one of them west of the Mississippi. 

 In President Monroe's second term, while there were 

 thirty senators from the Atlantic states, there were al- 

 ready eighteen from the West. It was evident that 

 the political centre of gravity was moving westward 

 at a very rapid rate. 



In the new Southern states thus created below the 

 thirty-sixth parallel the South Carolinian type of 

 society prevailed. In all the others there was an ex- 

 tensive and complicated mixing of people from dif- 

 ferent Atlantic states. Toward 1840, after Ericsson's 



1 " It has been pleasant too to revise many of my ideas and opinions : 

 for my youthful memories go back to the days when Jackson was like a 

 bogy to frighten naughty children ! Boston was a place of one idea then." 

 Extract from a letter of Mr. James Day to Dr. Fiske. 



