has ever been at any other time.
Except in Louisiana and Missouri, not over thirty thousand inhabitants
were to be found west of the Mississippi. The vast outer ranges of the
Louisiana purchase remained a mysterious wilderness. Indianapolis in
1827 contained twenty-five brick houses, sixty frame, and about eighty
log houses; also a court-house, a jail, and three churches. Chicago was
laid out in 1830. Thither in, 1834 went one mail per week, from Niles,
Mich., on horseback. In 1833 it was incorporated as a town, having 175
houses and 550 inhabitants. That year it began publishing a newspaper
and organized two churches. In 1837 it was a city, with 4,170
inhabitants. The Territory of Iowa had in 1836, 10,500 inhabitants; in
1840, 43,000. At this time Wisconsin had 31,000. So early as 1835 Ohio
had nearly or quite 1,000,000 inhabitants. Sixty-five of its towns had
together 125 newspapers. Between 1830 and 1840 Ohio's population rose
from 900,000 to 1,500,000; Michigan's, from 30,000 to 212,000; and the
whole country's, from 13,000,000 to 17,000,000. Before 1840, eight
steamers connected Chicago with Buffalo.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
John Tyler
From a photograph by Brady.

By 1840 nearly all the land of the United States this side the
Mississippi had been taken up by settlers. The last districts to be
occupied were Northern Maine, the Adirondack region of New York, a strip
in Western Virginia from the Potomac southward through Kentucky nearly
to the Tennessee line, the Pine Barrens of Georgia, and the extremities
of Michigan and Wisconsin. Beyond the Father of Waters his shores were
mostly occupied, as well as those of his main tributaries, a good way
from their mouths. The Missouri Valley had population as far as Kansas
City. Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa Territory had many settlements at
some distance from the streams. The aggregate population of the country
was 17,069,453, the average density twenty-one and a tenth to the square
mile. The mass of westward immigration was as yet native, since the
great rush from Europe only began about 1847. This was fortunate, as
fixing forever the American stamp upon the institutions of western
States. To compensate each new commonwealth for the non-taxation of the
United States land it contained, it received one township in each
thirty-six as its own for educational purposes, a provision to which is
due the magnificent school system of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa,
Minnesota, and