THE middle years of the nineteenth cen-
tury found the Old Northwest showing unmistakable
signs of "growing up." By then each of its five terri-
torial divisions had achieved statehood; squatters and
brawling frontiersmen had long since departed for new
lands across the Mississippi and left behind the cleared
fields and peaceful communities. Institutions of culture
--schools, churches, theaters, newspapers, railroads, and
the telegraph--had brought in the leaven of civilization
and tempered, partially at least, the bleakness of western
life. The thinned ranks of old settlers might still recall
the hardships of bygone days and complain of the
decadence of the present, but that was a token of
approaching social maturity. Most Westerners were
intensely proud of the flourishing democratic society
which they had created out of the American wilderness.

Western men looked expectantly to the future for even
greater material rewards for their enterprise. They
looked to the past only for political and economic lessons
to guide them in the days ahead. But the lessons they
learned from the past were as diverse as the men them-
selves, as rife with contradictions as was the West. The
future of the Northwest could never look the same to the
boat builders and merchants of the Ohio River towns,
and to the investors in western railroads, to the owners

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