Nowhere did the West exert a more marked influence than in the domain of Politics. It freed men from traditions. It gave them a new and a more progressive view of political life. Henceforth they turned with impatience from historical arguments and legal theories to a philosophy of expediency. Government, they concluded, was after all a relative affair. "Claim Rights" were more important to the pioneer of Iowa than "States Rights." The Nation was endeared to him; and he freely gave his first allegiance to the government that sold him land for $1.25 an acre. He was always _for the Union_, so that in after years men said of the Commonwealth he founded: "Her affections, like the rivers of her borders, flow to an inseparable Union." But above all the frontier was a great leveler. The conditions of life there were such as to make men plain, common, unpretentious--genuine. The frontier fostered the sympathetic attitude. It made men really democratic and in matters political led to the three-fold ideal of Equality which constitutes the essence of American Democracy in the 19th century, namely: Equality before the Law, Equality in the Law, Equality in making the Law. The pioneer of the West may not have originated these ideals. The first, Equality before the Law, is claimed emphatically as the contribution of the Puritan. But the vitalizing of these ideals--this came from the frontier, as the great contribution of the pioneer. IV SQUATTER CONSTITUTIONS It may seem strange to class the customs of the pioneers among the early laws of Iowa. But to refer to the "Resolutions" and "By-Laws" of the squatters as political Constitutions is more than strange; it is unorthodox. At the same time History teaches that in the evolution of political institutions, customs precede statutes; written laws follow unwritten conventions; the legal is the outgrowth of the extra-legal; and constitutional government is developed out of extra-constitutional government. One need not search the records of antiquity nor decipher the monuments for illustrations of these truths; for in the early political history of Iowa there is a recurrence of the process of institutional evolution including the stage of customary law. Here in our own annals one may read plainly writ the extra-legal origin of laws and constitutional government.