nd.

[Illustration: ROADS AND TRAILS INTO THE WESTERN TERRITORY]

=The Admission of Kentucky and Tennessee.=--When the eighteenth century
drew to a close, Kentucky had a population larger than Delaware, Rhode
Island, or New Hampshire. Tennessee claimed 60,000 inhabitants. In 1792
Kentucky took her place as a state beside her none too kindly parent,
Virginia. The Eastern Federalists resented her intrusion; but they took
some consolation in the admission of Vermont because the balance of
Eastern power was still retained.

As if to assert their independence of old homes and conservative ideas
the makers of Kentucky's first constitution swept aside the landed
qualification on the suffrage and gave the vote to all free white males.
Four years later, Kentucky's neighbor to the south, Tennessee, followed
this step toward a wider democracy. After encountering fierce opposition
from the Federalists, Tennessee was accepted as the sixteenth state.

=Ohio.=--The door of the union had hardly opened for Tennessee when
another appeal was made to Congress, this time from the pioneers in
Ohio. The little posts founded at Marietta and Cincinnati had grown into
flourishing centers of trade. The stream of immigrants, flowing down the
river, added daily to their numbers and the growing settlements all
around poured produce into their markets to be exchanged for "store
goods." After the Indians were disposed of in 1794 and the last British
soldier left the frontier forts under the terms of the Jay treaty of
1795, tiny settlements of families appeared on Lake Erie in the "Western
Reserve," a region that had been retained by Connecticut when she
surrendered her other rights in the Northwest.

At the close of the century, Ohio, claiming a population of more than
50,000, grew discontented with its territorial status. Indeed, two years
before the enactment of the Northwest Ordinance, squatters in that
region had been invited by one John Emerson to hold a convention after
the fashion of the men of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield in old
Connecticut and draft a frame of government for themselves. This true
son of New England declared that men "have an undoubted right to pass
into every vacant country and there to form their constitution and that
from the confederation of the whole United States Congress is not
empowered to forbid them." This grand convention was never held because
the heavy hand of the government fell upon the leaders; but t