behind the shelter of the federal troops of Harmar, St. Claire, and
Wayne, and of their successors even to our own day. The wars in which
the borderers themselves bore any part were few and trifling compared
to the contests waged by the adventurers who won Kentucky, Tennessee,
and Texas.

In the Southwest the early settlers acted as their own army, and
supplied both leaders and men. Sevier, Robertson, Clark, and Boon led
their fellow pioneers to battle, as Jackson did afterwards, and as
Houston did later still. Indeed the Southwesterners not only won their
own soil for themselves, but they were the chief instruments in the
original acquisition of the Northwest also. Had it not been for the
conquest of the Illinois towns in 1779 we would probably never have
had any Northwest to settle; and the huge tract between the upper
Mississippi and the Columbia, then called Upper Louisiana, fell into
our hands, only because the Kentuckians and Tennesseeans were
resolutely bent on taking possession of New Orleans, either by bargain
or battle. All of our territory lying beyond the Alleghanies, north
and south, was first won for us by the Southwesterners, fighting for
their own hand. The northern part was afterwards filled up by the
thrifty, vigorous men of the Northeast, whose sons became the real
rulers as well as the preservers of the Union; but these settlements
of Northerners were rendered possible only by the deeds of the nation
as a whole. They entered on land that the Southerners had won, and
they were kept there by the strong arm of the Federal Government;
whereas the Southerners owed most of their victories only to
themselves.

The first-comers around Marietta did, it is true, share to a certain
extent in the dangers of the existing Indian wars; but their trials