surprise. It was the father's ambition to leave a farm to every son
and, if the neighborhood was too densely settled easily to permit
this, there was the West--always the West.

This was a race of nation builders. No sooner had he made the
Declaration of Independence a reality than the eager pathfinder turned
his face towards the setting sun and, prompted by the instincts of
conquest, he plunged into the wilderness. Within a few years western
New York and Pennsylvania were settled; Kentucky achieved statehood in
1792 and Tennessee four years later, soon to be followed by
Mississippi in 1817 and Alabama in 1819. The great Northwest Territory
yielded Ohio in 1802, Indiana in 1816, Illinois in 1818, and Michigan
in 1837. Beyond the Mississippi the empire of Louisiana doubled the
original area of the Republic; Louisiana came into statehood in 1812
and Missouri in 1821. Texas, Oregon, and the fruits of the Mexican War
extended its confines to the Western Sea. Incredibly swift as was this
march of the Stars, the American pioneer was always in advance.

The pathfinders were virtually all of American stock. The States
admitted to the Union prior to 1840 were not only founded by them;
they were almost wholly settled by them. When the influx of
foreigners began in the thirties, they found all the trails already
blazed, the trading posts established, and the first terrors of the
wilderness dispelled. They found territories already metamorphosed
into States, counties organized, cities established. Schools,
churches, and colleges preceded the immigrants who were settlers and
not strictly pioneers. The entire territory ceded by the Treaty of
1783 was appropriated in large measure by the American before the
advent of the European immigrant.