Excerpt from The Spirit of Old West Point, 1858-1862 At that time our country differed widely from that in which we are now living; and so great have been the changes that, could the leading merchants of our cities of fifty years ago, or the farmers who settled amid the primeval timber of the West, return, they could not distinguish one street from another, and would look in vain for the fields and woods that met their eyes from the doorstep. The population of the country, now rising eighty millions, was less than thirty two millions, not counting the territories; and of these, nineteen millions were in the Northern, or free states, and twelve in the Southern, or slave states. The frontier was along the western boundary of Arkansas, and thence north to the Canadian line. The great tide of emigration that set in with the building Of the National Road was still flowing west; while the railroads and tele graph were just beginning to push their way thither. Steamboats, called floating palaces, could be seen at almost every bend of the beau tiful Ohio and on every long reach Of the sol emnly impressive Mississippi. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.