First states

much more slowly. The earliest religious meetings in the Middle West were held by traveling ministers called "circuit riders." The camp meeting, a sort of combination of picnic and religious service, was very popular during the early history of this section. In the course of time, as the population grew, all the leading religious denominations organized permanent churches.

New States.-Five new states were added to the original thirteen before the War of 1812. Vermont was admitted into the Union in 1791, Kentucky in 1792, Tennessee in 1796, added to the Ohio in 1803, and Louisiana in 1812. The rapid settlement of Union the West which began after the War of 1812 resulted in the formation of a new state each year for six years beginning with 1816. The eighteen states which made up the Union when the war closed had grown to be twenty-four by 1821, just half the number that were in the Union a hundred years later.

of the Middle West

This rapid increase in the number of states in the Union was due to the marvelous growth of the Middle West at that Rapid growth time. This growth was especially marked in the old Northwest Territory. When Ohio became a state in 1803 it contained about fifty thousand inhabitants. In 1820 its population was nearly six hundred thousand-more people than were then living in the old state of Massachusetts. The population of the Territory of Indiana was twenty-eight thousand in 1810. Indiana became a state in 1816, and by 1820 it had nearly one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, while, farther west, Illinois was beginning to grow rapidly and was admitted to the Union in 1818.

Rush into the lower South

When the first American pioneers started to go to Louisiana after its purchase from the French in 1803, some of them settled on the east side of the Mississippi River in the Territory of Mississippi. After General Jackson broke the power of the Creek Indians in 1813 there was, as we have seen, a great rush to occupy the cotton lands of the lower South. In 1817 Mississippi became a state. Its population doubled between 1810 and 1820. Even more rapid was the growth of Alabama, which came into the Union two years later, in 1819.

When the people who were crowding into the Territory of Missouri and Missouri sought its admission into the Union they were delayed for a time by a great controversy over the question whether the

Maine

proposed state should be slave or free. We shall hear more of this controversy presently when we study the history of slavery in our country. Just at this time, Maine, which had been a part of Massachusetts, wanted to become a separate state. Massachusetts gave her consent and Maine was admitted as a free state in 1820. This made it easier to admit Missouri as a slave state in 1821.

Nine of the eighteen states in the Union in 1815 were free states and nine were slave states. In admitting the new states Free states which were added to the Union during the next six years it is and slave evident that Congress was trying to maintain a balance between

states

the North and the South. The free state of Indiana in 1816 was followed by the slave state of Mississippi in 1817. Free Illinois in 1818 was immediately offset by slave-holding Alabama in 1819. Maine in 1820 and Missouri in 1821 still maintained the equilibrium between the sections.

For years after 1821 the new states of the Middle West were filling up with settlers. It was fifteen years before another state was added to the Union. Then in 1836 Congress admitted Arkansas

and

the slave state of Arkansas, and early in 1837 restored the Michigan balance between slavery and freedom by making the free state of Michigan.

The Rising Western Cities.-While the pioneers were swarming into the new states in the Middle West, towns and

began

How a town cities were springing up all over that region as if by magic. As soon as there was a considerable number of settlers in any locality a store was apt to be opened at some convenient point. Soon a tavern made its appearance near the store. Presently a blacksmith shop, a sawmill, and possibly a gristmill were set up. The people, who were employed in these places naturally built their homes near by, and in this way a

How some towns grew to be cities

The river front at Louisville, Kentucky, one of the half dozen important cities on the Ohio.

town began. Often a frontier town was named for a leading settler, as Zanesville or Vicksburg.

Great numbers of these little frontier towns never grew to be more than villages. But if such a village were the natural market and trading center of a large farming district, and in addition if it were favorably situated upon a navigable river or a main traveled road, it soon grew into a large town with many stores, a bank, and a newspaper. By and by a railroad came to add to its trading facilities, and a factory was built to give employment to its surplus labor. The Mississippi Valley is dotted with hundreds of thriving little cities which have grown up in this way.

Because of their favorable situation for commerce some of