Even if they were too broad-minded and far-seeing to feel thus, they yet were unable to fully appreciate the magnitude of the interests at stake in the west.
They thought more of our right to the North Atlantic fisheries than of our ownership of the Mississippi valley; they were more interested in the fate of a bank or a tariff than in the settlement of the Oregon boundary.

Most contemporary writers showed similar shortcomings in their sense of historic perspective.

The names of Ethan Allen and Marion are probably better known than is that of George Rogers Clark; yet their deeds, as regards their effects, could no more be compared to his, than his could be compared to Washington's.

So it was with Houston.

During his lifetime there were probably fifty men who, east of the Mississippi, were deemed far greater than he was.