From 1816 to 1832, under the principle of the American system, it turned the scale in favor of protective tariff bills. Under Jackson its characteristic financial policy was expressed in the opposition to the United States Bank.
Its persistent influence induced Congress to abandon its earlier policy of forbidding settle ments by 'squatters + on unsurveyed lands and periodically to enact eniergency indemnifying pre-emption acts; and, finally, in 1841, it suc ceeded in securing a general pre-emption law the forerunner of the later Homestead Act of 1862.
Meantime through experience and strue the West caught the vision of continental tiny. The call of a farther West stimulated new explorations, resulting in continental trails. new problems of long distance government for Ore gon and a new California, and new Indian prob lems.
In the decade after 1840, its advancing fron tier influenced diplomatic relations in regard to Texas, Oregon and California. and bore a close relation to the political contests in regard to slavery.
Fostered by the liberal Federal policy which sold land cheaply for 'squatters' homes cad gave it freely to aid the construction of roads and canals, u received new impetus from the picturesque and spectacular rush to car. fermis which so rapidly grew to Statehood and peecipi tated new problems in American politics.
In 1848 its political influence aided the Demo crat nomination of Cass (or the Presidency. and also the nomination of Van Buren by the newly-formed Free Soil party. In 1860 it fur nished for the Presidency two candidates— Doug'las. whose support was in the border tone. and Lincoln, wham strength was in the north em none After 1864 its economic and politic! power coutinued to increase.
Although early regarded as the child of tti S.suth,, the Middle \Vest of the Ohio Valley re gion, with its commerce gradually diverted by the lakes and by rail to the East, became grad ually kss dependent upon the South and disap pointed the hopes of Calhoun and others planned too late to control it, politically as well as commercially, by the construction of a rail road from Charleston via Chattanooga to west ern terminals at Cincinnati and at Mobile.
In the critical issues presented by the War of Secession. it and the Upper Northwest fur lashed the men and the long trains of which drove back the three successive western lives of Confederate defense, opened the lifissis 4*, pierced the southern gateway of the Ap Valley at Chattanooga and drove e the Confederates to Atlanta. With deter mination that the control of the Isfississippl must belong to only one nation, it was a power ful force in preserving the integrity of the Union against the attacks of the slave-holdini anstocracy — as it had been in shaping the de sclopment of the nation. Its operations were considerably aided by the attitude of the Ap palachian frontier region of retarded develop ment — and especially by the new common of West Virginia, a child of the war. which by keeping the Baltimore and Ohio Rail way open for troop transportation between Fast and West, was a prominent factor in pro tee-tine Washington and in saving the Union.
Increased \1'e.stern political influence after the war was partly due to the leadership of rc turned soldiers 'Following the victory of th.
Union against disunion, new calls of the far ther West finally resulted in the construction ot Pacific railways with Federal aid, in a com plete change of Indian policy (by the acts o: 1871 re-enforced by the Dawes 'Indian Land !II Severalty' Act of 1887), and in a Greater West whose territory has been formed into self soverning commonwealths marking the extinc two of the last frontier.
Between 1870 and 1890 the importance of the West increased with the disappearance of the wilderness in the rapidly diminishing area between eastward and westward moving fron tiers which filially merged. In the Granget legislation of 1873, a phase of political discos tent looking to the government for relief, th. West was sustained by legal decisions which dared the way for the later Interstate Corn owe Commission and subsequent at Federal regulations of interstate commerce Mother important phase of Western influence, laving its ongtn in a period of declinirrg agri cultural prices contemporaneous with an in creased production of silver mines of the Rodcies, expressed itself in the Bland-Allison Silver Law of 1878 and the Sherman Silver Purchase Law of 1890. In the Populist move ment, a later phase of discontent especially prominent in States of the later frontier, th. West expressed a large faith in the power ot die national government to cure various evil control or ownership of public s, expansion of national currency and 'Overt, men t regulation of other economic NM of fife in the interest of the common its political influence was increased by a group of six new frontier States (North Dakota. South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho and Wyoming) in proximity to the new railroads of the farther Northwest, and it espe cially appeared as a factor in the revolutionixiag of the Democratic party under W. ). Bryan in the election of l896. The failure of the Vs estern political revolution was due in large part to the older States of the Middle West which, living become adjusted to conditions, had ceased to be discontented, were no longer political enemies of the East and refused to favor free Later, in 19l2 after leading his party to defeat three times, Mr. Bryan, as the champion of western interests, reached the height of his spectacular party leadership in the strategy of the Democrat convention at Baltimore which resulted in the nomination of Woodrow Wil son on a platform acceptable to the West. The West was thus the most potent factor in 1‘"ilson's nomination, and four years later it tint him to the White House a second time; California was the pivotal State in that election and while it returned Hiram Johnson, a Progres sive Republican, to the Senate, it chose Demo cratic presidential electors and their votes gave President Wilson a in the Electoral College. In l898, after the extinction of the last continental frontier, the West found for its ex pansive spirit new expression in the over-seas expansion which marked America's maturity as a world power; and later, with its discontent relieved by a tide of prosperity, it exerted a new national influence illustrated in the political 'in surgency) movement and in the subsequent Progressive movement for direct popular gov ernment and political control of economic life.