Thus two Senators from each section were
created. In the House of Representatives, where strength depends upon
the distribution of population, no such balance could be maintained.
The attractiveness of the back lands as they were opened to settlement,
the ease with which farms could be secured from the public domain, the
rapid development of water-power, and the increasing immigration from
Europe, caused a rapid growth of population in the trans-Alleghenian
region. In 1800, only one settler had crossed the mountains to fourteen
remaining on the coast-plain. Ten years later one had crossed for every
six remaining behind, and in 1820 the proportion was one to four. There
had been some alarm manifest in the older States in earlier times,
because the power and prestige which they had enjoyed must eventually
be reduced if not lost through the rapidly growing West. But whatever
danger of this nature was realised became of secondary importance by
1820 to the larger question of the unequal distribution of the migrants
in the various parts of the West. Between 1810 and 1820, for instance,
Ohio had increased in population 151.
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