ABSTRACT
The Old Northwest attracted a fairly heterogeneous population: Yankees, Pennsylvanians, late-coming Germans, Southerners, and others. But the Old Southwest was homogeneous: it was settled almost entirely from Virginia and the Carolinas. Thus the spirit of the Old Southwest, which connected liberty with free-hold of land, also meant from the beginning that one defended one's own substance by one's own valor. In the Old Northwest, and throughout the Middle West which is its extension, the Irresistible Forces also move, in a tidal wave more vast and rapid than in the Southwest. The War of 1812, which hurt New England seaports, was as popular a war in the Northwest as it was in the Southwest; but except for Commodore Perry's victory on Lake Erie it was a rather dragging, unsatisfactory performance in the Northwest. The paternal support that the Northwest won from the Federal government helped to shape its genius and to distinguish it from its Western sister-region in the South.
