pi Valley revealed to
the statesmen of the East, in the exultation of the war with France, an
opportunity for new empire building, it revealed to the frontiersmen,
who penetrated the passes of the Alleghanies, and entered into their new
inheritance, the sharp distinctions between them and the Eastern lands
which they left behind. From the beginning it was clear that the lands
beyond the Alleghanies furnished an opportunity and an incentive to
develop American society on independent and unconventional lines. The
"men of the Western Waters" broke with the old order of things,
subordinated social restraint to the freedom of the individual, won
their title to the rich lands which they entered by hard fighting
against the Indians, hotly challenged the right of the East to rule
them, demanded their own States, and would not be refused, spoke with
contempt of the old social order of ranks and classes in the lands
between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic, and proclaimed the ideal of
democracy for the vast country which they had entered. Not with the
mercurial facility of the French did they follow the river systems of
the Great Valley. Like the advance of the glacier they changed the face
of the country in their steady and inevitable progress, and they sought
the sea. It was not long before the Spaniards at the mouth of the river
realized the meaning of the new forces that had entered the Valley.

In 1794 the Governor of Louisiana wrote:

This vast and restless population progressively driving the
Indian tribes before them and upon us, seek to possess
themselves of all the extensive regions which the Indians
occupy between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, the Gulf of
Mexico, and the Appalachian Mountains, thus becoming our
neighbors, at the same time that they menacingly ask for the
free navigation of the Mississippi. If they achieve their
object, their ambitions would not be confined to this side of
the Mississippi. Their writings, public papers, and speeches,
all turn on this point, the free navigation of the Gulf by the
rivers . . . which empty into it, the rich fur trade of the
Missouri, and in time the possession of the rich mines of the
interior provinces of the very Kingdom of Mexico. Their mode
of growth and their policy are as formidable for Spain as
their armies. . . . Their roving spirit and the readiness with
which they procure sustena