THE HOME-BUILDING INSTINCT 



spirit of nationality, the people concerned in our second 

 era of colonization developed a rugged Americanism be- 

 fore unknown. This spirit was typified in the character 

 of Abraham Lincoln, who was one of its products. 



The third era of colonization followed the War of the 

 Rebellion, as the second had followed the War of the Revo- 

 lution, and largely for the same reason. The cessation 

 of hostilities and the disbandment of the armies turned 

 back into the paths of peace hundreds of thousands of 

 veterans. They were filled with an over-mastering desire 

 for homes. They longed for a chance to work for them- 

 selves, as their fathers and forefathers had done. Uncle 

 Sam was still proprietor of a vast estate of virgin and 

 fertile soil. The homestead law beckoned to the return- 

 ing hosts like the finger of fate. The result was the 

 phenomenal settlement of the Upper Mississippi Valley 

 and the creation of States where the old soldier reigned 

 all but supreme. In a period of twenty years after the 

 war Nebraska jumped from a population of twenty-eight 

 thousand to nearly half a million ; Kansas from one 

 hundred thousand to a round million; Iowa from six 

 hundred thousand to a million and six hundred thousand ; 

 Dakota from five thousand to one hundred and forty 

 thousand, while Minnesota also added more than half a 

 million to her total. 



The movement never paused until it encountered an 

 obstacle beyond the power of the individual settler to 

 overcome. This obstacle was aridity the failure of 

 rainfall to meet the demands of agriculture. The im- 

 petus of the movement carried its vanguard across the 

 danger-line and into the territory where existence could 

 not be maintained without resource to methods then lit- 

 B 17 



