s reason for the masterful politicians of the cotton
country to watch the Northwestern frontier. Michigan had become a State
in 1837, Iowa and Wisconsin in 1846, and Minnesota was to enter the
Union in 1858. There were four Territories, Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon,
and Washington, that might be admitted at any time. California was
growing powerful, and she was already lost to slavery if not to the
South. And a free State was likely to be formed in Colorado. Seven
thriving Northwestern States and five promising Territories gave every
assurance that the seat of political influence was about to be shifted
to the upper Mississippi Valley. Moreover, the economic changes that
were taking place in that region were such as might have alarmed
conservative men both South and East.

The removal of the Indians from Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois had
paralleled the similar removal from the lower South. But during the
fifties, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota succeeded in pushing the natives
into the arid Nebraska Territory. And now as the great "American Desert"
proved to be desirable country for the pioneers, it was proposed to
shift the Northwestern Indians into the Southern hinterland, now known
as Oklahoma, and thus to bar the way of the planter civilization to New
Mexico and California.

An equally important factor in the development of the Northwest was the
invention and manufacture of grain-planting and harvesting machinery by
Cyrus McCormick and others about 1845. This enabled the farmers to
increase their operations very much as the Whitney gin had done for the
cotton farmers of 1800. Still the transportation of wheat and corn is so
difficult that no great revolution would have been possible but for the
simultaneous building of thousands of miles of railways which opened
to grain production the vast prairie lands remote from the rivers. The
manufacture of farm implements and the building of railroads made the
Northwest a staple-producing area of greater importance than the South
had been, though this was recognized by only a few men before the
beginning of the Civil War.

[Illustration: Wheat Areas in 1860]

The value of the wheat and corn crops of the Northwest increased from
$80,000,000 in 1850 to $225,000,000 in 1860. In addition to this the
Northwest produced pork in great quantities for the cotton plantations,
and fresh meats for the industrial cities of the East. The railways, of
which mention has already been made, t