The Westerners were a farmer folk who lived on the clearings their own hands had made in the great woods, and who owned the land they tilled.

The gentry strove hard to secure a good education for their children, and in Kentucky, as in Tennessee, made every effort to bring about the building of academies where their boys and girls could be well taught.

Kentucky grew as rapidly as Colorado grew, a hundred years later; but Denver grew thirty or forty times as fast as Lexington had ever grown.

In the strongly marked frontier character no traits were more pronounced than the dislike of crowding and the tendency to roam to and fro, hither and thither, always with a westward trend.

Boone, the typical frontiersman, embodied in his own person the spirit of loneliness and restlessness which marked the first venturers into the wilderness.

When Kentucky became well settled in the closing years of the century, he crossed into Missouri, that he might once more take up his life where he could see the game come out of the woods at nightfall, and could wander among trees…

They were exceedingly jealous of their individual liberty, and wished to be interfered with as little as possible.

The fact that the Government did so little for the individual and left so much to be done by him rendered it necessary for the individuals voluntarily to combine.

It gratified their intense love of independence; the lack of refinement did not grate on their rough, bold natures; and they prized the entire equality of a life where there were no social distinctions, and few social restraints.

The life was as free as it was rude, and it possessed great fascinations, not only for the wilder spirits, but even for many men who, when they had the chance, showed that they possessed ability to acquire cultivation.

The pioneer in his constant struggle with poverty was prone to look with puzzled anger at those who made more money than he did, and whose lives were easier.

The backwoods farmer or planter of that day looked upon the merchant with much the same suspicion and hostility now felt by his successor for the banker or the railroad magnate.

He did not quite understand how it was that the merchant, who seemed to work less hard than he did, should make more money; and being ignorant and suspicious, he usually followed some hopelessly wrong-headed course when he tried to remedy…

The frontier virtue of independence and of impatience of outside direction found a particularly vicious expression in the frontier abhorrence of regular troops, and advocacy of a hopelessly feeble militia system.

They had to be put through a severe course of training by some man like Jackson before they became fit to contend on equal terms with regulars in the open or with Indians in the woods.

These facts must all be remembered if we wish to get an intelligent explanation of the utter failure of the frontiersmen when, in 1812, they were again pitted against the British and the forest tribes.

They must also be taken into account when we seek to explain why it was possible but a little later to develop out of the frontiersmen fighting armies which under competent generals could overmatch the red coat and the Indian alike.

The extreme individualism of the frontier, which found expression for good and for evil, both in its governmental system in time of peace and in its military system in time of war, was also shown in religious matters.

No preacher or exhorter was suffered to speak unless he had the power of stirring the souls of his hearers.

The preaching, the praying, and the singing went on without intermission, and under the tremendous emotional stress whole communities became fervent professors of religion.

The people received a new light, and were given a sense of moral responsibility such as they had not previously possessed.

The whole West owes an immense debt to the hard-working frontier preachers, sometimes Presbyterian, generally Methodist or Baptist, who so gladly gave their lives to their labors and who struggled with such fiery zeal for the moral…

More important still were the radical changes brought by the Norman conquest; chief among them the transformation of the old English tongue into the magnificent language which is now the common inheritance of so many widespread peoples.

England's insular position, moreover, permitted it to work out its own fate comparatively unhampered by the presence of outside powers; so that it developed a type of nationality totally distinct from the types of the European mainland.

The vast movement by which this continent was conquered and peopled cannot be rightly understood if considered solely by itself.