Even before the War ended, a great immigration started towards the mines and farms of the trans-Mississippi country.

There was probably no important town or district west of the Alleghanies that did not absorb a considerable number.

In most instances, too, our ex-soldiers became leaders in these new communities.

Perhaps this movement has its most typical and picturesque illustration in the extent to which the Northern soldiers opened up the oil-producing regions of western Pennsylvania.

Venango County, where this great development started, boasted that it had more ex-soldiers than any similar section of the United States.
The Civil War period also forced into prominence a few men whose methods and whose achievements indicated, even though roughly and indistinctly, a new type of industrial leadership.