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aspect, as may be seen from the following table of the electoral vote of 1800:
The vote of
New England was a unit, 39 for the Federalists.
The vote of the
South was nearly a unit, 48 for the Republicans and 4 for the Federalists.
The vote of the
Middle States was nearly equally divided, 25 for the Republicans, 22 for the Federalists.
Of the
Republican majority of 8 votes, the
West furnished 7.
What was known in that day as ‘the
West,’ embraced the ceded country between
the Alleghanies and the
Mississippi river.
In this country were two States.
Kentucky had been made a State by consent of
Virginia in 1792, and
Tennessee, ceded by
North Carolina in 1790, had been admitted by Congress in 1796, being the first State erected out of Federal territory.
The rest of this country was still in territorial apprenticeship, but
Ohio was approaching statehood and other territories were growing rapidly.
A strong bond of sympathy, social and political, bound the
Western people to their parent States, while
Virginia, the Carolinas, and
Georgia felt motherly pride in their Western daughters.
