There was still plenty of room for the rude cabin and stump-dotted clearing of the ordinary frontier settler, the wood-chopper and game hunter.

Folk of the common backwoods type were as yet more numerous than any others among the settlers.

In addition there were planters from among the gentry of the sea-coast; there were men of means who had bought great tracts of wild land; there were traders with more energy than capital; there were young lawyers; there were gentlemen with a taste for an unfettered life of great opportunity; in short there were adventurers of every kind.
All men who deemed that they could swim in troubled waters were drawn towards the new country.

The more turbulent and ambitious spirits saw roads to distinction in frontier warfare, politics, and diplomacy.
Merchants dreamed of many fortunate ventures, in connection with the river trade or the overland commerce by packtrain.

Lawyers not only expected to make their living by their proper calling, but also to rise to the first places in the commonwealths, for in these new communities, as in the older States, the law was then the most honored of the professions, and that which most surely led to high social and political standing.