If the Ohio was the gateway to the West, the Mississippi was the great central avenue upon which the western people from all sections met in friendly trade, so that the original feeling of solidarity was strengthened by continuous intercourse and the realization of mutual interests. The different environment at the headwaters and mouth of the river never succeeded in separating completely the western people. Here the idea of the unity of the country took deeper root than in the East, where statehood meant more and nation less. It was in the Middle West that, as the struggle between North and South drew near, national leaders were developed and where the strongest efforts were made to hold the country in unity.
Western Democracy.
The West has moulded our national character even more than New England with her far-famed and narrow Puritanism; for the West has been the cauldron into which the nations of the world have poured their streams of immigrants and from which has come the national type. This amalgamation of character began in the oldest West, when Irishmen, Englishmen, Scotch-Irish, and Germans settled in the region between the falls of the seaboard rivers and the mountains, stretching from Vermont to Georgia. Here was moulded the new type of man, who was to populate the greater West across the mountain ridges. In an environment of primeval conditions, in the struggle with the Indians and the forests there was developed a self-reliance of character, differing in many ways from any single European type. This new man of the West admired the doer of deeds, condemned all reliance on traditional or family position, scorned State authority, and loved independence. In the soil of the new West, created by these men, the doctrines of Rousseau flourished luxuriantly. All unconscious, the frontiersmen were putting into practice the most radical philosophy of the French Revolution. It was on the frontier that those conservative traditions of Europe, which lingered years afterwards in the more settled East, were swept away, and American democracy was really bred. It was on the border of the older frontier that the spokesman of this democracy, Thomas Jefferson, lived; and it was out of the new West that the hero of democracy, Andrew Jackson, came.
The Newest State Association and an Older One
THE CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF HISTORY TEACHERS.
BY H. W. EDWARDS, OF BERKELEY.
The first meeting of the California Association of History Teachers was held in Berkeley, July 14, in connection with the summer session of the University of California. The following papers were read:
“History in the Grammar School”—J. B. Newell, University of California.