The settlers on the Western waters were substantially the same in character North and South.
The Westerners Formed One People.
In sum, the western frontier folk, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, possessed in common marked and peculiar characteristics, which the people of the rest of the country shared to a much less extent.

They were backwoods farmers, each man preferring to live alone on his own freehold, which he himself tilled and from which he himself had cleared the timber.

The towns were few and small; the people were poor, and often ignorant, but hardy in body and in temper.

They joined hospitality to strangers with suspicion of them.

They were essentially warlike in spirit, and yet utterly unmilitary in all their training and habits of thought.