e consequently was
brought into the union without slavery and Missouri with slavery. At the
same time there was drawn westward through the rest of the Louisiana
territory a line separating servitude from slavery.

THE SPIRIT OF THE FRONTIER

=Land Tenure and Liberty.=--Over an immense western area there developed
an unbroken system of freehold farms. In the Gulf states and the lower
Mississippi Valley, it is true, the planter with his many slaves even
led in the pioneer movement; but through large sections of Tennessee and
Kentucky, as well as upper Georgia and Alabama, and all throughout the
Northwest territory the small farmer reigned supreme. In this immense
dominion there sprang up a civilization without caste or class--a body
of people all having about the same amount of this world's goods and
deriving their livelihood from one source: the labor of their own hands
on the soil. The Northwest territory alone almost equaled in area all
the original thirteen states combined, except Georgia, and its system of
agricultural economy was unbroken by plantations and feudal estates. "In
the subdivision of the soil and the great equality of condition," as
Webster said on more than one occasion, "lay the true basis, most
certainly, of popular government." There was the undoubted source of
Jacksonian democracy.

[Illustration: A LOG CABIN--LINCOLN'S BIRTHPLACE]

=The Characteristics of the Western People.=--Travelers into the
Northwest during the early years of the nineteenth century were agreed
that the people of that region were almost uniformly marked by the
characteristics common to an independent yeomanry. A close observer thus
recorded his impressions: "A spirit of adventurous enterprise, a
willingness to go through any hardship to accomplish an object....
Independence of thought and action. They have felt the influence of
these principles from their childhood. Men who can endure anything; that
have lived almost without restraint, free as the mountain air or as the
deer and the buffalo of their forests, and who know they are Americans
all.... An apparent roughness which some would deem rudeness of
manner.... Where there is perfect equality in a neighborhood of people
who know little about each other's previous history or ancestry but
where each is lord of the soil he cultivates. Where a log cabin is all
that the best of families can expect to have for years and of course can
possess few of the external decorations wh