Before the Revolution, only a few people had gone over the Alleghany Mountains, a range within the Appalachian Mountain Range in the Eastern United States. The country to the west was inhabited by American Indians, who lived in villages for the most part widely separated, but who resisted the efforts of the European settlers to occupy any portion of the uninhabited wilderness west of the mountains. But, some years before the Revolution, Daniel Boone and other daring people, from North Carolina and Virginia, penetrated into the fertile lands of Tennessee and Kentucky, and formed settlements.

Some of the colonies had been chartered to run through to the Pacific Ocean, and these claimed all the territory west of them as far as the United States extended that is, to the Mississippi River. The Virginia charter, which was the oldest, made the line of that colony run "west and northwest." Under this charter Virginia claimed most of the territory north of the Ohio River, and all of that which now forms Kentucky. The territory lying north of the Ohio was ceded to the United States by Virginia and the other States claiming it.

In 1787, this territory was organized as "The Northwest Territory," and its government was regulated by an act which has since become very celebrated. It is commonly known as "The Ordinance of Eighty-seven," from the year in which it was adopted. The Ordinance of Eighty-seven declared that, in the Northwest Territory, all children of a father who died without a will should inherit the estate equally, thus doing away with the aristocratic privileges given to the oldest son under the English and colonial laws. It also forbade slavery in the territory north of the Ohio. This ordinance made Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin free states.

Soon after the adoption of this ordinance and the purchase of the American Indian title to the land, people began to pour into the Western country, now opened for settlement. A large number of Revolutionary officers and soldiers, impoverished by the war, were among these settlers. The first emigrants carried their few goods over the mountains on packhorses. At Pittsburg or Wheeling most of them embarked in large flat-boats roughly built of green lumber. In these they floated down the Ohio to one of the new settlements on its banks. The flat-boat was then broken up, and its planks used in building the settler's cabin. Pennsylvania wagons, after a while, took the place of the packhorse in the journey over the mountains to Pittsburg.

The people of this interior country were almost shut out from the world. They raised flax and sometimes grew wool, and spun and wove at home. Their spinning-wheels and looms were made by themselves. For chairs they made stools, their tables and bedsteads were such as they could make, and they used wooden bowls for dishes. They tanned their own leather, and made shoes at home. The husks of corn were used for making various articles, such as rope, horse-collars, brooms, and chair-bottoms. Barrels and bee-hives were made by sawing hollow trees into sections. By splitting one of these sections a child's cradle was constructed. For tea they drank a decoction of sassafras- root or the leaves of the crop-vine. Their sugar they got from the maple-tree. Their small boat was a canoe made from a single log, or a pirogue [pee-rogue'], which was a canoe enlarged by splitting it in the middle lengthwise and inserting a plank. The danger from American Indians was so great for many years that the settlers never went to their fields without carrying their rifles.

Whatever supplies the Western settlers got, they brought from the towns on the eastern side of the mountains, by means of packhorses and wagons. For these goods they exchanged furs, ginseng, and other light articles. The produce of Western farms was too heavy to be packed across the mountains. It could only be sold by floating it thousands of miles down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. This was done in very large flat-boats, which were rowed down the river with great sweeps, but could not be brought back against the current. The flat-boat people got home by taking passage on ships sailing from New Orleans to Virginia or Maryland, and then crossing the mountains to Pittsburg.

But, as there was a necessity for some trade up the river as well as down, there were presently used the "bargee" and the "keel-boat," both of which had sharpened bows, and could be toilsomely forced up against the stream by setting- poles, oars, and sails in turn, and which sometimes were towed, or "cordelled," by the boatmen walking along the shore. Four months were consumed in the voyage from New Orleans to Pittsburg. The boatmen were rude and lawless, and navigation was rendered dangerous by the American Indians and highwaymen that infested the banks of the rivers.

Louisiana, which then included almost the whole region between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, had been ceded by France to Spain, in 1762. Spain wished to deny the Americans the right to navigate the great river that formed our western boundary, and the people west of the Alleghanies wished the American government to seize the whole of Louisiana. In 1800 Louisiana was ceded back to France.

In 1803 two commissioners were sent to France by President Jefferson, with instructions to buy for the United States, if possible, a part of Louisiana, including New Orleans and the mouths of the Mississippi. But Napoleon, who then ruled France, fearing that England would seize the territory, took a sudden resolution to sell all of Louisiana to the United States. For this the United States paid fifteen million dollars. By this purchase the country acquired a great deal more territory than all she had before possessed, and there was opened to her the prospect of becoming one of the greatest nations on the earth.

The Louisiana Territory, the region about the mouth of the Mississippi was first explored by La Salle, and the first settlements in that region were made by the French in 1699. In 1722 New Orleans was made the capital of the colony. In 1727 wives were sent to the planters by the government, in imitation of the plan adopted for peopling Virginia a hundred years earlier. In 1762, after the English had taken Canada, the province of Louisiana was ceded to Spain. For a long time indigo was grown, but in 1794 sugar was successfully raised, and the colony was rendered prosperous at once. There had been much trouble between Spain and the United States about the navigation of the Mississippi, and the Western people wished to seize New Orleans and the lower Mississippi. The United States desired to buy a portion of Louisiana, but in 1800 Bonaparte procured its cession back to France. He entertained, along with other dazzling schemes, the project of rebuilding the French power in America. Monroe and Livingston were commissioned by President Jefferson to buy from France, if possible, the small portion of Louisiana so much desired by the United States, in order to secure the free navigation of the Mississippi; but Napoleon surprised the American commissioners by offering to sell the whole vast territory. French Louisiana included in whole or in part the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and the Territories of Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and the American Indian Territory — that is to say, there are at present twelve very large States and Territories almost wholly made from Louisiana as bought from France in 1803.

Aaron Burr, who had been Vice President in Jefferson's first term, had not been re-elected. Alter Louisiana was ceded to the United States, Burr formed a conspiracy to detach Louisiana and some of the Western States from the Union, and to revolutionize a part of Mexico. He enlisted soldiers in Ohio, and started down the river; but he was arrested and tried for treason. For want of evidence he was not convicted.