The author examines the issues affecting the election for Missouri's first governor in 1820 of Alexander McNair over the former Missouri Territorial governor William Clark. The great influx of new people to Missouri felt Clark was too "soft" on the Indians and didn't do enough to open up new land for settlement. The author concludes, "Clark had done all he could, he thought, to balance the land rights of all the parties--federal government, Native American tribes, and individual settlers.... Oddly enough, his efforts at reaching an arrangement fair to all sides satisfied none."
