Lyman Beecher's A Plea For The West

The West was a blank slate: a new land with uncharted areas with unfamiliar scenery, animals, and inhabitants, as well as different weather patterns. The West was an entire new place to view. It could be settled about in so many different avenues. It was up to the individuals in the East and South to move west and make it a place of success. Additionally, a whole new way of thinking was born into the region. In the excerpt from the A Plea for the West, written by Lyman Beecher, the author argued that the West had much importance to start out on the right foot and become a place that is respectable and stable. There are no churches, schools, homes, or anything that the East and the South already boasted during that time period. Beecher even

Different than how the East was developed, the West was to be assembled and settled much faster than any other portion of the country. “The later peopled states of New-England did by no means come as rapidly to the same state of relative, intellectual and moral culture as many portions of the West have already arrived at, in the short period of forty, thirty, and even twenty years” (Beecher). It was to be established basically in the blink of an eye. With the quick establishment in the region, it was sought out that that area of the nation would have churches and educated people to make it a prosperous place. The eastern half of the United States had time to develop. New groups of people from Europe and all over the world came to settle to escape religious persecution or just make a better way of life in the East. In the same sense, those that were tired of the East and wanted a new livelihood, decided to travel west and make a better home. The West was wild. It was untamed and needed people to come develop and make it a booming part of the country. Therefore, the West being settled could be developed even better than how the East and South were developed. The individuals back then yearned to have the West be great, and perhaps even better than the East. They could look to how the East was made, and

Religion is much more than attending church on Sundays in the morning. It is a way of life. People give money to their churches, they volunteer to help the youth in their area; the West needed these values to make it be a grand place, not a place that was barbaric. If the West was not settled successfully, the nation may not have been able to inhabit lands like in the present state of Utah; Mexico could still hold onto that area. If that had occurred, life today would be completely different for the citizens of the United States. Religion was needed to make the land strong and to prosper into the upcoming