While the growing Northwest owed more to the rest of the world than it was likely to pay in half a century, its leaders saw that it must continue to expand its area and improve its economic life. Undoubtedly the one leader who best understood the needs of his region was Stephen A. Douglas, Senator from Illinois and perpetual candidate for the office of President of the United States. Young, active, and ardently patriotic, Douglas had been among the first to see during the Polk Presidency that the old Western policy of internal improvements and freer lands for all who might come must be changed. The West, even the Northwest, was firmly attached to the Democratic party; but the center of that great organization was the South. The leaders of that section looked more and more to free trade as a national policy. If they succeeded, as there was every reason to expect they would succeed, there would be no more easy money for the building of canals and roadways. Moreover, the South was now jealous of the expanding Northwest, and her leaders were growing more hostile toward the idea of free lands for the Northwestern settlers. Douglas and his friends in both houses of Congress worked out a new policy during the years 1845 to 1850. It was to induce the Federal Government to give large tracts of public land to the Northwestern States on condition that they be given again by the States to railroad corporations as aids to the building of new lines. The roads would sell their lands at good prices, the Government would sell its remaining lands at high prices after the building of the roads, and the farmers would cheerfully pay these higher prices if markets for wheat and corn could be created. The leaders of the lower South were interested in this new American system, for there was government land in their States and they needed railroads quite as much as the Northwesterners. Capitalists of the East and Europe would be enlisted because the great tracts of rich land would be security for money they might lend at high rates to the roads. Finally, the increasing armies of immigrants gave assurance that the railroad lands could be sold easily.