y of New Orleans and the Crescent, which the preachers
compared to ancient Babylon, as centers of vice and lewd fashion, were
the marvels of the West, and they carried the burden of grain, tobacco,
and cotton which crowded the wharves of New Orleans. Cincinnati was the
pork-packing and manufacturing center of the West, sending its salted
meats and farm implements to the plantations of the lower South in
ever-increasing volume. St. Louis was the home of the most important
commercial monopoly of the time, the American Fur Company, which had an
undue influence in national politics, and of which John Jacob Astor was
the millionaire head, to whom all Americans looked up as one of the
great figures of his generation. From the old half-French, half-American
town caravans of explorers, trappers, and traders set out each spring
for the Far Northwest, whence they returned annually with their loads of
furs and their tales of the wonderful Oregon country. But New Orleans,
with its population of 50,000, its European life and rather easy morals,
its slave marts and miles of cotton wharves, was the wonder of the world
to Western eyes like those of young Abraham Lincoln, who visited the
city about this time. There, rich men lived in splendid mansions, served
by scores of negro slaves; there, great newspapers were published and
shrewd speculators from all parts of the world bought cotton and
imported luxuries for the newly rich of the Southwest.

It was this great West, pulsating with life and vigor, filled with hope
for the future, restless and eager, at once democratic and
imperialistic, which put the resolute and dictatorial Andrew Jackson in
the President's chair in 1829. And never was constituency more truly
represented than was that of the West in the wiry old man whom they
called "Old Hickory." Accustomed to the hardships of the poor in his
youth and to the responsibility of the well-to-do merchant and cotton
planter in middle life, he had experienced most that was common to his
fellows and had gained a prestige which in their admiring eyes surpassed
that of all other men since Thomas Jefferson. Brave and generous,
plain-spoken and sometimes boisterous, he embodied most of the
qualities that compelled admiration throughout the Mississippi Valley.
No matter what Webster or Calhoun or even Clay said of "Old Hickory," it
was not believed in the back-country until the President himself had
confirmed the story. Jackson was the second A