outhern third of the State, with narrow tongues of inhabited land
stretching up the river valleys toward the north. Two slave States
flanked the southern end of the commonwealth; almost half of its area
lay south of a westward prolongation of Mason and Dixon's line. Save for
a few Pennsylvanians, the people were Southern; the State was for all
practical purposes a Southern State. As late as 1883 the Legislature
numbered fifty-eight members from the South, nineteen from the Middle
States, and only four from New England.

Of the great national issues in the quarter-century following the War
of 1812 there were some upon which people of the Northwest, in spite
of their differing points of view, could very well agree. Internal
improvement was one of these. Roads and canals were necessary outlets
to southern and eastern markets, and any reasonable proposal on
this subject could be assured of the Northwest's solid support. The
thirty-four successive appropriations to 1844 for the Cumberland
Road, Calhoun's "Bonus Bill" of 1816, the bill of 1822 authorizing
a continuous national jurisdiction over the Cumberland Road, the
comprehensive "Survey Bill" of 1824, the Maysville Road Bill of
1830--all were backed by the united strength of the Northwestern
senators and representatives.

So with the tariff. The cry of the East for protection to infant
industries was echoed by the struggling manufacturers of Cincinnati,
Louisville, and other towns; while a protective tariff as a means of
building up the home market for foodstuffs and raw materials seemed to
the Westerner an altogether reasonable and necessary expedient. Ohio
alone in the Northwest had an opportunity to vote on the protective bill
of 1816, and gave its enthusiastic support. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois
voted unitedly for the bills of 1820, 1824, 1828, and 1832. The
principal western champion of the protective policy was Henry Clay, a
Kentuckian; but the Northwest supported the policy more consistently
than did Clay's own State and section.

On the National Bank the position of the Northwest was no less emphatic.
The people were little troubled by the question of constitutionality;
but believing that the bank was an engine of tyranny in the hands of an
eastern aristocracy, they were fully prepared to support Jackson in his
determination to extinguish that "un-American monopoly."

There were other subjects upon which agreement was reached either with
difficulty or not a