PRESIDENTS AND THE WEST
WHILE CAMPAIGNING FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1860, ABRAHAM Lincoln was asked to write a pair of autobiographical sketches for voter information. In recalling a childhood spent in “a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals, still in the woods” and how as a 21-year-old he’d helped his family relocate from Indiana to Illinois by driving an ox-drawn wagon, Lincoln wasn’t simply reciting the dry facts of his life. He was tapping into a mythology that had long powered the American presidency.
Westward expansion, frontier moxie, the lure of the wild, and a spirit of self-sufficiency drove America’s political vision of itself throughout the 19th century. Protecting, expanding, and enhancing that vision has defined it ever since. Each U.S. president has had a special relationship with the West. Each created policies and supported or opposed legislation that shaped it, for better and worse.
The West has never been an easy place. Viewed through a historical lens, failures in Western policies bedevil the reputations of many leaders. By crusading for and signing the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and for his connection to the subsequent Trail of Tears tragedy, Andrew Jackson left a tarnished legacy.
Such painful episodes are difficult to confront. But contemporary reassessment of history doesn’t negate the achievements of the men who embraced the promise of the West with
