generation before was "fresh, untouched, unbounded, magnificent
wilderness," [Footnote: Webster, Writings (National ed.), V., 252.]
was now nearly a million, surpassing the combined population of
Massachusetts and Connecticut.

A new section had arisen and was growing at such a rate that a
description of it in any single year would be falsified before it
could be published. Nor is the whole strength of the western element
revealed by these figures. In order to estimate the weight of the
western population in 1830, we must add six hundred thousand souls
in the western half of New York, three hundred thousand in the
interior counties of Pennsylvania, and over two hundred thousand in
the trans-Allegheny counties of Virginia, making an aggregate of
four million six hundred thousand. Fully to reckon the forces of
backwoods democracy, moreover, we should include a large fraction of
the interior population of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, North
Carolina, and Georgia, and northern New York. All of these regions
were to be influenced by the ideals of democratic rule which were
springing up in the Mississippi Valley.

In voting-power the western states alone--to say nothing of the
interior districts of the older states--were even more important
than the figures for population indicate. The west itself had, under
the apportionment of 1822, forty-seven out of the two hundred and
thirteen members of the House of Representatives, while in the
Senate its representation was eighteen out of forty-eight--more than
that of any other section. Clearly, here was a region to be reckoned
with; its economic interests, its ideals, and its political leaders
were certain to have a powerful, if not a controlling, voice in the
councils of the nation.