The marvelous progress of the upper Mississippi Valley is briefly told by a succession of dates. In 1838 Iowa was organized as a Territory; in 1846 it was admitted as a State; in 1848 Wisconsin was granted statehood; and in 1849 Minnesota was given territorial organization with boundaries extending westward to the Missouri.
Thus the Old Northwest had arrived at the goal set for it by the large-visioned men who framed the Ordinance of 1787; every foot of its soil was included in some one of the five thriving, democratic commonwealths that had taken their places in the Union on a common basis with the older States of the East and the South. Furthermore, the Mississippi had ceased to be a boundary. A magnificent vista reaching off to the remoter West and Northwest had been opened up; the frontier had been pushed far out upon the plains of Minnesota and Iowa. Decade after decade the powerful epic of westward expansion, shot through with countless tales of heroism and sacrifice, had steadily unfolded before the gaze of an astonished world; and the end was not yet in sight.
There is no general history of the Northwest covering the whole of the period dealt with in this book except Burke A. Hinsdale, The Old Northwest (1888). This is a volume of substantial scholarship, though it reflects but faintly the life and spirit of the people. The nearest approach to a moving narrative is James K. Hosmer, Short History of the Mississippi Valley (1901), which tells the story of the Middle West from the earliest explorations to the close of the nineteenth century, within a brief space, yet in a manner to arouse the reader's interest and sympathy. A fuller and very readable narrative to 1796 will be found in Charles Moore, The Northwest under Three Flags (1900). Still more detailed, and enlivened by many contemporary maps and plans, is Justin Winsor, The Westward Movement (1899), covering the period from the pacification of 1763 to the close of the eighteenth century. Frederick J. Turner, Rise of the New West (1906) contains several interesting and authoritative chapters on western development after the War of 1812; and John B. McMaster, History of the People of the United States (8 vols., 1883-1913), gives in the fourth and fifth volumes a very good account of westward migration.