Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1916-02-12
Symbolism Of the West

Symbolism of the West
Always the West has influenced the older
part of the country. by it's competition and
it's attraction to settlers it has reacted
the East and given an added impulse to the
democratic movement on the Atlantic
board. But the West has been more than
geographical; it has also been symbolic. IT
has exemplihed and symbolized reaching
out, an emancipation, a struggle for freedom
from ancient forms and usages. 1t has meant
the frontier and the pioneer, physically and
spiritually The very winds have blown the
West back to the East. The geographical
limits of the West have been reached, but
the ineXhaustible spirit of the West is with
us yet, here, there and everywhere.
Even Thomas jefferson was a Westerner
with his Declaration of Independence, his
statute for religious freedom, his purchase of
Louisiana. Martin Van Buren, was bred in
an Eastern log cabin under Western condi-
tions Harrison was the hero of the North
west, Polk was a typical Tennesseean, eager
to expand the nation Webster called
Zachary Taylor frontier colonel" Andrew
Jackson with his fierce spirit, broke down
the traditions of conservative rule. lie began
the era of the popular hero And then came
Lincoln whose grasp of the AK handle of
the helm of the ship of state,
For him her old World molds aside she threw,
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
OF the uneXhausted West,
With stuff untainted shaped hero new,
Wide steadfast in the strength of God, and true.
His was no lonely mountain peak of mind
Thrustng to thin air DER our cloudy bars,
A seamark now now lost in vapors blind;
Broad prairie rather, genial leVel-lined,
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest
stars.
Nothing of Europe here
New birth of our new SOIL the first American
Paths in the Wilderness
Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky
in 1903. When the boy was seven years old
his father took the family across the Ohio
on a raft, with capital consisting of a kit
of carpenters tools and several hundred gal
Ions of whisky. II the custom of the
immigrant of the old Northwest on arrival
at the nearest point to his destination on
the Ohio, either TO cut out road to his new
home or to push up some tributary of that
river in a keel boat. In Indiana Abe Lin
coins father hewed path into the forest to
a new home in the southern part of the
State. For a year the family lived in a
"half-faced camp, or open shed Of poles.
Illinois, when Lincoln came to sangamon
County was just emerging from its pioneer
stage or rather tue cohqussI OF the forest
was giving way rapidly TO business and polit-
ical enterprise There We're still however,
such log houses in Illinois that described
bv an Englishman in 1S31-tWo rooms with
an omen fire in one of them that served in
winter both Tor heat and light. But cities
were growing up-chicago, Springfield and
others.
1t was a country of plain peOple-farmers
and Judges circuit riders and land specu-
lators. The plainest OF them all was lincoln.
In him they recognized themselves. They
helped elect their rail-splitter President OF
the United States.
They were commonwealth builders. The ex-
tsnsive period of pioneering mas passed the