The Winning of the West, Volume One | Page 5

rule by a government of justice and
orderly liberty.
To use the political terminology of the present day, the whole western
movement of our people was simply the most vital part of that great
movement of expansion which has been the central and all-important
feature of our history--a feature far more important than any other since
we became a nation, save only the preservation of the Union itself. It
was expansion which made us a great power; and at every stage it has
been bitterly antagonized, not only by the short-sighted and the timid,
but even by many who were neither one nor the other. There were
many men who opposed the movement west of the Alleghanies and the
peopling of the lands which now form Kentucky, Tennessee, and the
great States lying between the Ohio and the Lakes. Excellent persons
then foretold ruin to the country from bringing into it a disorderly
population of backwoodsmen, with the same solemnity that has in our
own day marked the prophecies of those who have seen similar ruin in
the intaking of Hawaii and Porto Rico. The annexation of Louisiana,
including the entire territory between the northern Mississippi and the
Pacific Ocean, aroused such frantic opposition in the old-settled regions
of the country, and especially in the Northeast, as to call forth threats of
disunion, the language used by the opponents of our expansion into the
Far West being as violent as that sometimes used in denouncing our
acquisition of the Philippines. The taking of Texas and of California
was complicated by the slave question, but much of the opposition to
both was simply the general opposition to expansion--that is, to
national growth and national greatness. In our long-settled communities
there have always been people who opposed every war which marked
the advance of American civilization at the cost of savagery. The
opposition was fundamentally the same, whether these wars were
campaigns in the old West against the Shawnees and the Miamis, in the
new West against the Sioux and the Apaches, or in Luzon against the
Tagals. In each case, in the end, the believers in the historic American
policy of expansion have triumphed. Hitherto America has gone
steadily forward along the path of greatness, and has remained true to
the policy of her early leaders who felt within them the lift towards

mighty things. Like every really strong people, ours is stirred by the
generous ardor for daring strife and mighty deeds, and now with eyes
undimmed looks far into the misty future.
At bottom the question of expansion in 1898 was but a variant of the
problem we had to solve at every stage of the great western movement.
Whether the prize of the moment was Louisiana or Florida, Oregon or
Alaska, mattered little. The same forces, the same types of men, stood
for and against the cause of national growth, of national greatness, at
the end of the century as at the beginning.
My non-literary work has been so engrossing during the years that have
elapsed since my fourth volume was published, that I have been unable
to go on with "The Winning of the West"; but my design is to continue
the narrative as soon as I can get leisure, carrying it through the stages
which marked the taking of Florida and Oregon, the upbuilding of the
republic of Texas, and the acquisition of New Mexico and California as
the result of the Mexican war.
Theodore Roosevelt
EXECUTIVE CHAMBER, ALBANY, N. Y. January 1, 1900.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER
I.--THE SPREAD OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES
II.--THE FRENCH OF THE OHIO VALLEY, 1763-1775
III.--THE APPALACHIAN CONFEDERACIES, 1765-1775
IV.--THE ALGONQUINS OF THE NORTHWEST, 1769-1774
V.--THE BACKWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES, 1769-1774
VI.--BOON AND THE LONG HUNTERS; AND THEIR HUNTING
IN NO-MAN'S-LAND, 1769-1774
VII.--SEVIER, ROBERTSON, AND THE WATAUGA

COMMONWEALTH, 1769-1774
VIII.--LORD DUNMORE'S WAR, 1774
IX.--THE BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA; AND LOGAN'S
SPEECH, 1774
X.--BOON AND THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY, 1775
XI.--IN THE CURRENT OF THE REVOLUTION--THE SOUTHERN
BACKWOODSMEN OVERWHELM THE CHEROKEES, 1776
XII.--GROWTH AND CIVIL ORGANIZATION OF KENTUCKY,
1776
APPENDICES: APPENDIX A--TO
CHAPTER IV
. APPENDIX B--TO
CHAPTER V
. APPENDIX C--TO
CHAPTER VI
. APPENDIX D--TO
CHAPTER VI
. APPENDIX E--TO
CHAPTER VII
. APPENDIX F--TO
CHAPTER IX
.
[Illustration: Map. The West during the Revolution. Showing
Hamilton's route from Detroit to Vincennes; Clark's route from
Redstone to the Illinois, and thence to Vincennes; Boon's trail, on the
Wilderness Road to Kentucky; Robertson's trail to the settlement he
founded on the Cumberland; the water route from the Watauga to
Nashboro, that taken by the _Adventure_; the march of the
backwoodsmen from the Sycamore Shoals to King's Mountain. The

flags denote the battles of the Great Kanawha, the Blue Licks, the
Island Flats of the Holston, and King's Mountain; and the assaults on