the West and removal of Indians from Cotton,
Tobacco and First "Western" Grain Belts.

Reproduction of part of Tanner's Map of 1840]

With the tariff question "definitely" settled, the internal improvements
demands temporarily in abeyance, the Bank "out of the way," and with a
growing prestige both at home and abroad, Jackson might now have
formulated the other Western ideals, free homesteads, the re-claiming of
Texas, and the occupation of Oregon. But this was all left to Van Buren,
the man already practically chosen to carry forward the policies of the
"old hero." However, without a free homestead law or even a preemption
system, on which Benton had long insisted, the West was filling up with
people in an unprecedented manner. The population of Alabama was only a
little more than a hundred thousand in 1820; in 1835, it was not less
than half a million. Mississippi counted seventy-five thousand in 1820;
in 1840, its population had increased sixfold. The same story was told
by the statistics of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa.
There was life, vigor, and rapid growth in all the accessible parts of
the region which worshiped the President. Jackson's election was an
advertisement of the West; the long debates in Congress about checking
emigration to the Mississippi Valley increased the desire to go to the
new and happy country; and the hard times of 1833-34 set thousands of
men upon the highways leading to the promised land. And in the Western
States every effort was made to attract people. Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois built waterways which should feed the Mississippi or Erie Canal
commerce, and thus make Western life profitable as well as free and
unconventional. Where canals could not be constructed would go the great
government road, passing through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and its
state-built branches. Even railroads were projected in that far-off
country. In the Southwest the network of rivers offered transportation
facilities to the increasing crops of cotton, and ambitious men flocked
there to "make fortunes in a day." Sargent Prentiss, the poor New
England cripple, went to Mississippi about 1830, and in six years he
was both rich and famous; John A. Quitman, the preacher's son, of New
York, worked his way about the same time to the lower Mississippi
country, and in a few years was receiving an annual income of forty
thousand dollars. John Slidell left New York City a bankrupt in 1819,
but soon