href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@47351@[email protected]#illo_177.jpg" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">165

Henry Clay, Statesman and Abolitionist 184 Albert Gallatin, Promoter of the Cumberland Road 190 General Arthur St. Clair, Appointed Governor of Ohio by Congress 205 Gouverneur Morris, Promoter of the Erie Canal 212 De Witt Clinton, Friend of the Erie Canal Project 230 Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition 262 William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition 274 John Jacob Astor, Founder of Astoria 288 President James K. Polk 344

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CHAPTER I

The Part played in American History by the Pioneer's Axe.—Several Classes of Leaders in the Conquest of the Wilderness.—Patriotism even in those that were Self-seeking.—The Achievements of Cleaveland, Henderson, Putnam, Morris, and Astor, respectively.—Feebleness of the Republic in its Infancy.—Its need of Money.—The Pioneers were of all Races.—Other Leaders besides these Captains of Expansion accused of Self-seeking.—Washington as the Father of the West.—His great Acquisitions of Land.—His Influence on other Land-seekers.—Results of Richard Henderson's Advance into Kentucky.—Zeisberger's Attempt to form a Settlement of Christian Indians thwarted by the Revolution.—Rufus Putnam as a Soldier and a Pioneer.—As Leader of the Ohio Company of Associates, he makes a Settlement Northwest of the Ohio.—Three Avenues of Westward Migration: Henry Clay's Cumberland Road; the Erie Canal; the Baltimore and Ohio Railway.—These Avenues not laid between Cities, but into the Western Wilderness.

INTRODUCTORY: THE BROTHER OF THE SWORD

There is some ground for the objection that is raised against allowing the history of America to remain a mere record of battles and campaigns. The sword had its part to play, a glorious part and picturesque, but the pioneer's axe chanted a truer tune than ever musket crooned or sabre sang. And with reference to the history of our Central West, for instance, it were a gross impartiality to remember the multicolored fascinating story of its preliminary conquest to the exclusion of the marvellous sequel—a great free people leaping into a wilderness and compelling it, in one short century, to blossom as the rose.

To any one who seriously considers the magic awakening of that portion of the American Nation dwelling between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, there must sooner or later come the overpowering realization that the humble woodsman's broadaxe—that famous "Brother of the Sword"—has a story that is, after all, as fascinating and romantic as any story ever told.

It must be remembered that the sword made many conquests in this West, while the broadaxe made but one. France, and then England, possessed the West, but could not hold it, for the vital reason that this brother of the sword did not march in unison with those armies. In fact, both France and England attempted to keep the axe-bearing, home-building people back in order that the furs and the treasure yielded by the forests might not be withheld. But when the sword of a free people came across the Alleghanies the axe of the pioneer came with it, and a miracle was wrought in a century's time beside which the Seven Wonders of the Old World must forever seem commonplace.

Of the men who led this army of real conquerors of the West to the scenes of their labors there were many. Some were leaders because of the inspiration they gave to others, some were leaders because they in person showed the way, enduring the toil, the privation, the pestilence, and the fate of pioneers. In whatever class these men may be placed, they were in reality patriots and heroes, even though at the time they were accused of seeking private gain and private fortune. But through the perspective of the years it seems clear that whatever may have been their private ends,—good, bad, or indifferent,—they were extremely important factors in the progress of their age. Whether seeking lands as a private speculation, or founding land companies or transportation companies in conjunction with others, they turned a waiting people's genius in a new direction and gave force and point to a social movement that was of more than epoch-making importance. Whether it was a Cleaveland founding a Western Reserve on the Great Lakes, a Henderson establishing a Transylvania in Kentucky, a Putnam building a new New England on the Ohio River, a Morris advocating an Erie Canal, or an Astor founding an Astoria on the Pacific Sea, the personal ambition and hope of gain, so prominent at the time, does not now stand preëminent; in this day we see what the efforts of these men meant to a country whose destiny they almost seemed unwittingly to hold in their hands.

It will ever be difficult to realize what a critical moment it was when, for a brief space of time, only