magnitude
than that of the public lands." When we consider the far-reaching
effects of the government's land policy upon political, economic, and
social aspects of American life, we are disposed to agree with him. But
this legislation was framed under frontier influences, and under the
lead of Western statesmen like Benton and Jackson. Said Senator Scott of
Indiana in 1841: "I consider the preemption law merely declaratory of
the custom or common law of the settlers."

It is safe to say that the legislation with regard to land, tariff, and
internal improvements--the American system of the nationalizing Whig
party--was conditioned on frontier ideas and needs. But it was not
merely in legislative action that the frontier worked against the
sectionalism of the coast. The economic and social characteristics of
the frontier worked against sectionalism. The men of the frontier had
closer resemblances to the Middle region than to either of the other
sections. Pennsylvania had been the seed-plot of frontier emigration,
and, although she passed on her settlers along the Great Valley into the
west of Virginia and the Carolinas, yet the industrial society of these
Southern frontiersmen was always more like that of the Middle region
than like that of the tide-water portion of the South, which later came
to spread its industrial type throughout the South.

The Middle region, entered by New York harbor, was an open door to all
Europe. The tide-water part of the South represented typical Englishmen,
modified by a warm climate and servile labor, and living in baronial
fashion on great plantations; New England stood for a special English
movement--Puritanism. The Middle region was less English than the other
sections. It had a wide mixture of nationalities, a varied society, the
mixed town and county system of local government, a varied economic
life, many religious sects. In short, it was a region mediating between
New England and the South, and the East and the West. It represented
that composite nationality which the contemporary United States
exhibits, that juxtaposition of non-English groups, occupying a valley
or a little settlement, and presenting reflections of the map of Europe
in their variety. It was democratic and nonsectional, if not national;
"easy, tolerant, and contented;" rooted strongly in material prosperity.
It was typical of the modern United States. It was least sectional, not
only because it lay between North and