about a hundred miles farther north, ending at the mouth of the
Yazoo. The discovery of this secret article aroused great indignation in
Spain. As a matter of fact, the disputed territory, the land drained by
the Gulf rivers, was not England's to grant, for it had been conquered
and was then held by Spain. Nor was it given up to us until we acquired
it by Pinckney's masterly diplomacy. The treaty represented a mere
promise which in part was not and in part could not be fulfilled. All
that it really did was to guarantee us what we already possessed--that
is, the Ohio valley and the Illinois, which we had settled and conquered
during the years of warfare. Our boundary lines were in reality left
very vague. On the north the basin of the Great Lakes remained British;
on the south the lands draining into the Gulf remained Spanish, or under
Spanish influence. The actual boundaries we acquired can be roughly
stated in the north to have followed the divide between the waters of
the lake and the waters of the Ohio, and in the south to have run across
the heads of the Gulf rivers. Had we remained a loose confederation
these boundaries, would more probably have shrunk than advanced; we did
not overleap them until some years after Washington had become the head
of a real, not merely a titular, nation. The peace of 1783, as far as
our western limits were affected, did nothing more than secure us
undisturbed possession of lands from which it had proved impossible to
oust us. We were in reality given nothing more than we had by our own
prowess gained; the inference is strong that we got what we did get only
because we had won and held it.

The Backwoods Governments.

The first duty of the backwoodsmen who thus conquered the west was to
institute civil government. Their efforts to overcome and beat back the
Indians went hand in hand with their efforts to introduce law and order
in the primitive communities they founded; and exactly as they relied
purely on themselves in withstanding outside foes, so they likewise
built up their social life and their first systems of government with
reference simply to their special needs, and without any outside help or
direction. The whole character of the westward movement, the methods of
warfare, of settlement, and government, were determined by the extreme
and defiant individualism of the backwoodsmen, their inborn independence
and self-reliance, and their intensely democratic spirit. The west