o
companies and to individuals, selling to the highest bidder, whether or
not he intended personally to occupy the country. Public sales were thus
conducted by competition, and Congress even declined to grant to the men
in actual possession the right of pre-emption at the average rate of
sale, refusing the request of settlers in both Mississippi and Indiana
that they should be given the first choice to the lands which they had
already partially cleared. [Footnote: American State Papers, Public
Lands, I., 261; also pp. 71, 74, 99, etc.] It was not until many years
later that we adopted the wise policy of selling the National domain in
small lots to actual occupants.

Sullen Jealousy of the Pioneers.
Clouded Economic Notions.

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 his wrongs. Sometimes these efforts to obtain relief took the
form of resolutions not to purchase from merchants or traders such
articles as woollens, linens, cottons, hats, or shoes, unless the same
could be paid for in articles grown or manufactured by the farmers
themselves. This particular move was taken because of the alarming
scarcity of money, and was aimed particularly at the inhabitants of the
Atlantic States. It was of course utterly ineffective. [Footnote:
Marshall, II., p. 325.] A much less wise and less honest course was that
sometimes followed of refusing to pay debts when the latter became
inconvenient and pressing. [Footnote: The inhabitants of Natchez, in the
last days of the Spanish dominion, became inflamed with hostility to
their creditors, the merchants, and insisted upon what were practically
stay laws being enacted in their favor. Gayarre and Claiborne.]

Vices of the Militia System.

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. Th