They hesitated to throw themselves with hearty enthusiasm into the task of building a nation with a continent as its base.

They rather shrank from the idea as implying a lesser weight of their own section in the nation; not yet understanding that to an American the essential thing was the growth and well-being of America, while the relative importance of the locality where he dwelt was a matter of small moment.
Eastern Efforts to Shear the West's Strength.
The extreme representatives of this northeastern sectionalism not only objected to the growth of the West at the time now under consideration, but even avowed a desire to work it harm, by shutting the Mississippi, so as to benefit the commerce of the Atlantic States--a manifestation of cynical and selfish disregard of the rights of their fellow-countrymen quite as flagrant as any piece of tyranny committed or proposed by King George's ministers in reference to America.

These intolerant extremists not only opposed the admission of the young western States into the Union, but at a later date actually announced that the annexation by the United States of vast territories beyond the Mississippi offered just cause for the secession of the northeastern States.

Even those who did not take such an advanced ground felt an unreasonable dread lest the West might grow to overtop the East in power.

In their desire to prevent this (which has long since happened without a particle of damage resulting to the East), they proposed to establish in the Constitution that the representatives from the West should never exceed in number those from the East,--a proviso which would not have been merely futile, for it would quite properly have been regarded by the West as unforgivable.
A curious feature of the way many honest men looked at the West was their inability to see how essentially transient were some of the characteristics to which they objected.