ome
entitled to Territorial legislatures were deemed by the settlers to be
arbitrary and unsuited to their needs. There was much popular feeling
against them. On one occasion St. Clair was mobbed in Chillicothe, the
then capital of Ohio, with no other effect than to procure a change of
capital to Cincinnati. Finally both Sargent and St. Clair were removed
by Jefferson, early in his administration.

The Jeffersonians the Champions of the West.

The Jeffersonian Republican party did very much that was evil, and it
advocated governmental principles of such utter folly that the party
itself was obliged immediately to abandon them when it undertook to
carry on the government of the United States, and only clung to them
long enough to cause serious and lasting damage to the country; but on
the vital question of the West, and its territorial expansion, the
Jeffersonian party was, on the whole, emphatically right, and its
opponents, the Federalists, emphatically wrong. The Jeffersonians
believed in the acquisition of territory in the West, and the
Federalists did not. The Jeffersonians believed that the Westerners
should be allowed to govern themselves precisely as other citizens of
the United States did, and should be given their full share in the
management of national affairs. Too many Federalists failed to see that
these positions were the only proper ones to take. In consequence,
notwithstanding all their manifold shortcomings, the Jeffersonians, and
not the Federalists, were those to whom the West owed most.

Right of the Westerners to Self-Government.

Whether the Westerners governed themselves as wisely as they should have
mattered little. The essential point was that they had to be given the
right of self-government. They could not be kept in pupilage. Like other
Americans, they had to be left to strike out for themselves and to sink
or swim according to the measure of their own capacities. When this was
done it was certain that they would commit many blunders, and that some
of these blunders would work harm not only to themselves but to the
whole nation. Nevertheless, all this had to be accepted as part of the
penalty paid for free government. It was wise to accept it in the first
place, and in the second place, whether wise or not, it was inevitable.
Many of the Federalists saw this; and to many of them, the Adamses, for
instance, and Jay and Pinckney, the West owed more than it did to most
of the Republi