The "New Purchase" was thrown open to settlers in the following spring; and the opening brought scenes of a kind destined to be reënacted scores of times in the great West during succeeding decades--the borders of the new district lined, on the eve of the opening, with encamped settlers and their families ready to race for the best claims; horses saddled and runners picked for the rush; a midnight signal from the soldiery, releasing a flood of eager land-hunters armed with torches, axes, stakes, and every sort of implement for the laying out of claims with all possible speed; by daybreak, many scores of families "squatting" on the best pieces of ground which they had been able to reach; innumerable disputes, with a general readjustment following the intervention of the government surveyors. The marvelous progress of the upper Mississippi Valley is briefly told by a succession of dates. In 1838 Iowa was organized as a Territory; in 1846 it was admitted as a State; in 1848 Wisconsin was granted statehood; and in 1849 Minnesota was given territorial organization with boundaries extending westward to the Missouri. Thus the Old Northwest had arrived at the goal set for it by the large-visioned men who framed the Ordinance of 1787; every foot of its soil was included in some one of the five thriving, democratic commonwealths that had taken their places in the Union on a common basis with the older States of the East and the South. Furthermore, the Mississippi had ceased to be a boundary. A magnificent vista reaching off to the remoter West and Northwest had been opened up; the frontier had been pushed far out upon the plains of Minnesota and Iowa. Decade after decade the powerful epic of westward expansion, shot through with countless tales of heroism and sacrifice, had steadily unfolded before the gaze of an astonished world; and the end was not yet in sight. Bibliographical Note