The Great Lakes by James Oliver Curwood

Not long ago, I was on a Lake freighter pounding her way up Huron on the "thousand-mile highway" that leads to Duluth. Beside me was a man who had climbed from poverty to millions. He was riding in his own ship. His interests burned ten thousand tons of coal a year. He was one of the ore kings of the North -- as rough as the iron he dug, filled to the brim with enthusiasm and animal energy of the Lake breed; a man who had helped to make the Lakes what they are, as scores of others like him have done. Before and behind us there trailed the smoke of a dozen of the steel leviathans of the Inland Seas. I had asked him a question, and there was the fire of a great pride in his eyes when he answered.

"It would make a nation by itself -- this Lake country! " he said. "And it would be America. It's America from Buffalo to Duluth, every inch of it, and the people who are in it are Americans. That's American smoke you see off there, and American ships are making it; they're run by a thousand or more American captains, and they're Americans fore 'n' aft, too. We've got only eight States along the Lakes, but if we should secede to-morrow the world would find us the heart and power of the nation. That's how American we are!"