It was the glory of the Northwest to offer a competence to the
needy, the baffled, the discouraged, the tormented of the eastern
States and of Europe. The bulk of its fast-growing population
consisted, it is true, of ordinary folk who could have lived on
in fair comfort in the older sections, yet who were ambitious to
own more land, to make more money, and to secure larger
advantages for their children. But nowhere else was the road for
talent so wide open, entirely irrespective of inheritance,
possessions, education, environment. Nowhere outside of the
trans-Alleghany country would the rise of a Lincoln have been
possible.
Chapter XI. The Upper Mississippi Valley
While the Ohio country--the lower half of the States of Ohio,
Indiana, and Illinois--was throwing off its frontier character,
the remoter Northwest was still a wilderness frequented only by
fur-traders and daring explorers. And that far Northwest by the
sources of the Mississippi had been penetrated by few white men
since the seventeenth century. The earliest white visitors to the
upper Mississippi are not clearly known.
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