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Chapter X. Sectional Cross Current
The War of 1812 did much in America to stimulate national pride
and to foster a sense of unity. None the less, the decade
following the Peace of Ghent proved the beginning of a long era
in which the point of view in politics, business, and social life
was distinctly sectional. New England, the Middle States, the
South, the West all were bent upon getting the utmost advantages
from their resources; all were viewing public questions in the
light of their peculiar interests. In the days of Clay and
Calhoun and Jackson the nation's politics were essentially a
struggle for power among the sections.
There was a time when the frontier folk of the trans-Alleghany
country from Lakes to Gulf were much alike. New Englanders in the
Reserve, Pennsylvanians in central Ohio, Virginians and
Carolinians in Kentucky and southern Indiana, Georgians in
Alabama and Mississippi, Kentuckians and Tennesseeans in Illinois
and Missouri--all were pioneer farmers and stock-raiser's,
absorbed in the conquest of the wilderness and all thinking,
working, and living in much the same way.
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