ABSTRACT
Springing up naturally on the frontier, the practice of democracy received from it a new validity and became the determining factor in the nationalism that America was creating in the early years of the nineteenth century. Democracy became the common faith of the West, and in becoming the common faith of the West it was put in the way of becoming the common faith of America. Henry Clay was the hero of the new West, the spokesman of the new ambitions. He early convinced himself that government was not doing its full duty unless it helped its citizens to make money, and he persistently pressed on Congress the need of federal aid to develop the West. If governors and legislators and judges got uppish he would throw them out of office and put in others who better understood the rights of free Americans.
