behind, and built their cabins and
block-houses here and there in the great forest land. They elected their
own military leaders, and waged war on their own account against their
Indian foes. They constructed their own governmental systems, on their
own motion, without assistance or interference from the parent States,
until the settlements were firmly established, and the work of civic
organization well under way.

Help Rendered by National Government.

Of course some help was ultimately given by the parent States; and the
indirect assistance rendered by the nation had been great. The West
could neither have been won nor held by the frontiersmen, save for the
backing given by the Thirteen States. England and Spain would have made
short work of the men whose advance into the lands of their Indian
allies they viewed with such jealous hatred, had they not also been
forced to deal with the generals and soldiers of the Continental army,
and the statesmen and diplomats of the Continental Congress. But the
real work was done by the settlers themselves. The distinguishing
feature in the exploration, settlement, and up-building of Kentucky and
Tennessee was the individual initiative of the backwoodsmen.

The Northwest Won by the Nation as a Whole.

The direct reverse of this was true of the settlement of the country
northwest of the Ohio. Here, also, the enterprise, daring, and energy of
the individual settlers were of the utmost consequence; the land could
never have been won had not the incomers possessed these qualities in a
very high degree. But the settlements sprang directly from the action of
the Federal Government, and the first and most important of them would
not have been undertaken save for that action. The settlers were not the
first comers in the wilderness they cleared and tilled. They did not
themselves form the armies which met and overthrew the Indians. The
regular forces led the way in the country north of the Ohio. The Federal
forts were built first; it was only afterwards that the small towns
sprang up in their shadow. The Federal troops formed the vanguard of the
white advance. They were the mainstay of the force behind which, as
behind a shield, the founders of the commonwealths did their work.

Unquestionably many of the settlers did their full share in the
fighting; and they and their descendants, on many a stricken field, and
through many a long campaign, proved that no people stood above t