be created out of the public domain, with definite land surveys instead
of tomahawk marks, with an endowed system of public schools, Ohio
gained a political pre-eminence among the newer States and a national
prestige which has scarcely yet been rivalled.

The solution of the problem of the frontier was thus so easily and
permanently solved by the Central Government in its home-making policy
that one scarcely appreciates the fear of Washington and others
interested in the back country lest it become a refuge for outlaws and
banditti. Mingling with the savages, it was feared that these outcasts
would create a constant menace to the advance of civilisation. Colonial
governors had much difficulty in controlling the "lawless banditti of
the borders." The first settlers across the mountains were considered
in England as "uncultivated banditti" and as "fanatical and hungry
republicans" and the "overplus of Ireland's population." So late as
1835, De Tocqueville, the French commentator on America, declared that
Americans who quit the posts of the Atlantic to plunge into the western
wilderness were adventurers, impatient of restraint, greedy of wealth,
and frequently men expelled from the State in which they were born.
But he had no doubt that in time society would assume as much stability
and regularity in the remote West as it had done upon the coast of the
Atlantic ocean.

At the time, the action of Congress called fresh attention to the
attractiveness of the back country and the possibilities there when
population should warrant the erection of States. Stanzas of Philip
Freneau represent the feeling of the day:

"What wonders there shall Freedom show,
What mighty _States_ successive grow.