Behind our veracity and largely responsible for it were a restlessness and a dissatisfaction resulting from energies that found no adequate Outlet. In all parts of the country this was the case. As a people "we are restless, fidgety, discontented, anxious for excitement," confessed the New York Herald. In Illinois times were hard. Every attempt at commercial or industrial enterprise had failed; farmers could not sell their crops at paying rates; with boundless force in heart and brain the young man could find nothing worth while to do. The state of mind in other parts of that section appears to have been similar. Indiana gave up all attempts to pay interest on her debt as early as 1840. All over the western border, said the American Review, "are great numbers of bold and restless spirits, men gathered out of all the orderly and civilized portions of society as its most turbulent members, and ready for any enterprise that can minister to their reckless manner of life and love of danger and of change;" and the West was already powerful in our national affairs. "Our people," wrote Calhoun, "are like a young man of 18, full of health and vigour, and disposed for adventure of any description.[1]
Such an intoxication of animal vitality demanded a fight, of course. "The multitude cry aloud for war," admitted the New York Herald in August, 1845. "Nine-tenths of our people, ceteris paribus, would rather have a little fighting than not," was the opinion of its neighbor, the Morning News. "LET US GO TO WAR," began a leader in the New York Journal of Commerce; "The World has become stale and insipid, the ships ought to be all captured, and the cities battered down, and the world burned up, so that we can start again. There would be fun in that. Some interest, — something to talk about." If such was the feeling in a high latitude, it must have burned hot at the south; and the young men of the Mississippi valley had special reasons for their ardor. The. region of western Tennessee had been settled by revolutionary soldiers, and they had left a rich inheritance of military traditions. Jackson towered above all other figures at the southwest, and his chief distinction was that of the sword. Everybody talked still of the war of 1812 and his brilliant exploit at New Orleans. Indeed, when the mind Wearied of the
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