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The Conquest of the Old Southwest: The Romantic Story of the Early
Pioneers into Virginia, The Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky
1740-1790
by Archibald Henderson
November, 2000 [Etext #2390]
Project Gutenberg Etext, The Conquest of the Old Southwest: The
Romantic Story of the Early Pioneers into Virginia, The Carolinas,
Tennessee, and Kentucky 1740-1790, by Archibald Henderson
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THE CONQUEST OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST: THE ROMANTIC STORY OF THE
EARLY PIONEERS INTO VIRGINIA, THE CAROLINAS, TENNESSEE, AND
KENTUCKY 1740-1790
BY ARCHIBALD HENDERSON, Ph.D., D.C.L.
Some to endure and many to fail,
Some to conquer and many to quail
Toiling over the Wilderness Trail.
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1920
TO THE HISTORIAN OF
OLD WEST AND NEW WEST
FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER
WITH ADMIRATION AND REGARD
The country might invite a prince from his palace, merely for the
pleasure of contemplating its beauty and excellence; but only add
the rapturous idea of property, and what allurements can the
world offer for the loss of so glorious a prospect?--Richard
Henderson.
The established Authority of any government in America, and the
policy of Government at home, are both insufficient to restrain
the Americans . . . . They acquire no attachment to Place: But
wandering about Seems engrafted in their Nature; and it is a
weakness incident to it, that they Should for ever imagine the
Lands further off, are Still better than those upon which they
are already settled.--Lord Dunmore, to the Earl of Dartmouth.
INTRODUCTION
The romantic and thrilling story of the southward and westward
migration of successive waves of transplanted European peoples
throughout the entire course of the eighteenth century is the
history of the growth and evolution of American democracy. Upon
the American continent was wrought out, through almost superhuman
daring, incredible hardship, and surpassing endurance, the
formation of a new society. The European rudely confronted with
the pitiless conditions of the wilderness soon discovered that
his maintenance, indeed his existence, was conditioned upon his
individual efficiency and his resourcefulness in adapting himself
to his environment. The very history of the human race, from the
age of primitive man to the modern era of enlightened
civilization, is traversed in the Old Southwest throughout the
course of half a century.
A series of dissolving views thrown upon the screen, picturing
the successive episodes in the history of a single family as it
wended its way southward along the eastern valleys, resolutely
repulsed the sudden attack of the Indians, toiled painfully up
the granite slopes of the Appalachians, and pitched down into the
transmontane wilderness upon the western waters, would give to
the spectator a vivid conception, in miniature, of the westward
movement. But certain basic elements in the grand procession,
revealed to the sociologist and the economist, would perhaps
escape his scrutiny. Back of the individual, back of the family,
even, lurk the creative and formative impulses of colonization,
expansion, and government. In the recognition of these social and
economic tendencies the individual merges into the group; the
group into the community; the community into a new society. In
this clear perspective of historic development the spectacular
hero at first sight seems to diminish; but the mass, the
movement, the social force which he epitomizes and interprets,
gain in impressiveness and dignity.
As the irresistible tide of migratory peoples swept ever
southward and westward, seeking room for expansion and economic
independence, a series of frontiers was gradually thrust out
toward the wilderness in successive waves of irregular
indentation. The true leader in this westward advance, to whom
less than his deserts has been accorded by the historian, is the
drab and mercenary trader with the Indians. The story of his
enterprise and of his adventures begins with the planting of
European civilization upon American soil. In the mind of the
aborigines he created the passion for the fruits, both good and
evil, of the white man's civilization, and he was welcomed by the
Indian because he also brought the means for repelling the
further advance of that civilization. The trader was of
incalculable service to the pioneer in first spying out the land
and charting the trackless wilderness. The trail rudely marked by
the buffalo became in time the Indian path and the trader's
"trace"; and the pioneers upon the westward march, following the
line of least resistance, cut out their, roads along these very
routes. It is not too much to say that had it not been for the
trader--brave, hardy, and adventurous however often crafty,
unscrupulous, and immoral--the expansionist movement upon the
American continent would have been greatly retarded.
So scattered and ramified were the enterprises and expeditions of
the traders with the Indians that the frontier which they
established was at best both shifting and unstable. Following far
in the wake of these advance agents of the civilization which
they so often disgraced, came the cattle-herder or rancher, who
took advantage of the extensive pastures and ranges along the
uplands and foot-hills to raise immense herds of cattle. Thus was
formed what might be called a rancher's frontier, thrust out in
advance of the ordinary farming settlements and serving as the
first serious barrier against the Indian invasion. The westward
movement of population is in this respect a direct advance from
the coast. Years before the influx into the Old Southwest of the
tides of settlement from the northeast, the more adventurous
struck straight westward in the wake of the fur-trader, and here
and there erected the cattle-ranges beyond the farming frontier
of the piedmont region. The wild horses and cattle which roamed
at will through the upland barrens and pea-vine pastures were
herded in and driven for sale to the city markets of the East.
The farming frontier of the piedmont plateau constituted the real
backbone of western settlement. The pioneering farmers, with the
adventurous instincts of the hunter and the explorer, plunged
deeper and ever deeper into the wilderness, lured on by the
prospect of free and still richer lands in the dim interior.
Settlements quickly sprang up in the neighborhood of military
posts or rude forts established to serve as safeguards against
hostile attack; and trade soon flourished between these
settlements and the eastern centers, following the trails of the
trader and the more beaten paths of emigration. The bolder
settlers who ventured farthest to the westward were held in
communication with the East through their dependence upon salt
and other necessities of life; and the search for salt-springs in
the virgin wilderness was an inevitable consequence of the desire
of the pioneer to shake off his dependence upon the coast.
The prime determinative principle of the progressive American
civilization of the eighteenth century was the passion for the
acquisition of land. The struggle for economic independence
developed the germ of American liberty and became the
differentiating principle of American character. Here was a vast
unappropriated region in the interior of the continent to be had
for the seeking, which served as lure and inspiration to the man
daring enough to risk his all in its acquisition. It was in
accordance with human nature and the principles of political
economy that this unknown extent of uninhabited transmontane
land, widely renowned for beauty, richness, and fertility, should
excite grandiose dreams in the minds of English and Colonials
alike. England was said to be "New Land mad and everybody there
has his eye fixed on this country." Groups of wealthy or
well-to-do individuals organized themselves into land companies
for the colonization and exploitation of the West. The pioneer
promoter was a powerful creative force in westward expansion; and
the activities of the early land companies were decisive factors
in the colonization of the wilderness. Whether acting under the
authority of a crown grant or proceeding on their own authority,
the land companies tended to give stability and permanence to
settlements otherwise hazardous and insecure.
The second determinative impulse of the pioneer civilization was
wanderlust--the passionately inquisitive instinct of the hunter,
the traveler, and the explorer. This restless class of nomadic
wanderers was responsible in part for the royal proclamation of
1763, a secondary object of which, according to Edmund Burke, was
the limitation of the colonies on the West, as "the charters of
many of our old colonies give them, with few exceptions, no
bounds to the westward but the South Sea." The Long Hunters,
taking their lives in their hands, fared boldly forth to a fabled
hunter's paradise in the far-away wilderness, because they were
driven by the irresistible desire of a Ponce de Leon or a De Soto
to find out the truth about the unknown lands beyond.
But the hunter was not only thrilled with the passion of the
chase and of discovery; he was intent also upon collecting the
furs and skins of wild animals for lucrative barter and sale in
the centers of trade. He was quick to make "tomahawk claims" and
to assert "corn rights" as he spied out the rich virgin land for
future location and cultivation. Free land and no taxes appealed
to the backwoodsman, tired of paying quit-rents to the agents of
wealthy lords across the sea. Thus the settler speedily followed
in the hunter's wake. In his wake also went many rude and lawless
characters of the border, horse thieves and criminals of
different sorts, who sought to hide their delinquencies in the
merciful liberality of the wilderness. For the most part,
however, it was the salutary instinct of the homebuilder--the man
with the ax, who made a little clearing in the forest and built
there a rude cabin that he bravely defended at all risks against
continued assaults--which, in defiance of every restraint,
irresistibly thrust westward the thin and jagged line of the
frontier. The ax and the surveyor's chain, along with the rifle
and the hunting-knife, constituted the armorial bearings of the
pioneer. With individual as with corporation, with explorer as
with landlord, land-hunger was the master impulse of the era.
The various desires which stimulated and promoted westward
expansion were, to be sure, often found in complete conjunction.
The trader sought to exploit the Indian for his own advantage,
selling him whisky, trinkets, and firearms in return for rich
furs and costly peltries; yet he was often a hunter himself and
collected great stores of peltries as the result of his solitary
and protracted hunting-expeditions. The rancher and the herder
sought to exploit the natural vegetation of marsh and upland, the
cane-brakes and pea-vines; yet the constantly recurring need for
fresh pasturage made him a pioneer also, drove him ever nearer to
the mountains, and furnished the economic motive for his westward
advance. The small farmer needed the virgin soil of the new
region, the alluvial river-bottoms, and the open prairies, for
the cultivation of his crops and the grazing of his cattle; yet
in the intervals between the tasks of farm life he scoured the
wilderness in search of game "and spied out new lands for future
settlement".
This restless and nomadic race, says the keenly observant Francis
Baily, "delight much to live on the frontiers, where they can
enjoy undisturbed, and free from the control of any laws, the
blessings which nature has bestowed upon them." Independence of
spirit, impatience of restraint, the inquisitive nature, and the
nomadic temperament--these are the strains in the American
character of the eighteenth century which ultimately blended to
create a typical democracy. The rolling of wave after wave of
settlement westward across the American continent, with a
reversion to primitive conditions along the line of the farthest
frontier, and a marked rise in the scale of civilization at each
successive stage of settlement, from the western limit to the
eastern coast, exemplifies from one aspect the history of the
American people during two centuries. This era, constituting the
first stage in our national existence, and productive of a
buoyant national character shaped in democracy upon a free soil,
closed only yesterday with the exhaustion of cultivable free
land, the disappearance of the last frontier, and the recent
death of "Buffalo Bill". The splendid inauguration of the period,
in the region of the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, and
Kentucky, during the second half of the eighteenth century, is
the theme of this story of the pioneers of the Old Southwest.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I THE MIGRATION OF THE PEOPLES
II THE CRADLE OF WESTWARD EXPANSION
III THE BACK COUNTRY AND THE BORDER
IV THE INDIAN WAR
V IN DEFENSE OF CIVILIZATION
VI CRUSHING THE CHEROKEES
VII THE LAND COMPANIES
VIII THE LONG HUNTERS IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE
IX DANIEL BOONE AND WILDERNESS EXPLORATION
X DANIEL BOONE IN KENTUCKY
XI THE REGULATORS
XII WATAUGA--HAVEN OF LIBERTY
XIII OPENING THE GATEWAY--DUNMORE'S WAR
XIV RICHARD HENDERSON AND THE TRANSYLVANIA COMPANY
XV TRANSYLVANIA--A WILDERNESS COMMONWEALTH
XVI THE REPULSE OF THE RED MEN
XVII THE COLONIZATION OF THE CUMBERLAND
XVIII KING'S MOUNTAIN
XIX THE STATE OF FRANKLIN
XX THE LURE OF SPAIN--THE HAVEN OF STATEHOOD
THE CONQUEST OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST
Chapter I. The Migration of the Peoples
Inhabitants flock in here daily, mostly from Pensilvania and
other parts of America, who are over-stocked with people and Mike
directly from Europe, they commonly seat themselves towards the
West, and have got near the mountains.--Gabriel Johnston,
Governor of North Carolina, to the Secretary of the Board of
Trade, February 15, 1751.
At the opening of the eighteenth century the tide of population
had swept inland to the "fall line", the westward boundary of the
established settlements. The actual frontier had been advanced by
the more aggressive pioneers to within fifty miles of the Blue
Ridge. So rapid was the settlement in North Carolina that in the
interval 1717-32 the population quadrupled in numbers. A map of
the colonial settlements in 1725 reveals a narrow strip of
populated land along the Atlantic coast, of irregular
indentation, with occasional isolated nuclei of settlements
further in the interior. The civilization thus established
continued to maintain a close and unbroken communication with
England and the Continent. As long as the settlers, for economic
reasons, clung to the coast, they reacted but slowly to the
transforming influences of the frontier.. Within a triangle of
continental altitude with its apex in New England, bounded on the
east by the Atlantic, and on the west by the Appalachian range,
lay the settlements, divided into two zones--tidewater and
piedmont. As no break occurred in the great mountain system south
of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, the difficulties of cutting a
passage through the towering wall of living green long proved an
effective obstacle to the crossing of the grim mountain barrier.
In the beginning the settlements gradually extended westward from
the coast in irregular outline, the indentations taking form
around such natural centers of attraction as areas of fertile
soil, frontier posts, mines, salt-springs, and stretches of
upland favorable for grazing. After a time a second advance of
settlement was begun in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland,
running in a southwesterly direction along the broad terraces to
the east of the Appalachian Range, which in North Carolina lies
as far as two hundred and fifty miles from the sea. The Blue
Ridge in Virginia and a belt of pine barrens in North Carolina
were hindrances to this advance, but did not entirely check it.
This second streaming of the population thrust into the long,
narrow wedge of the piedmont zone a class of people differing in
spirit and in tendency from their more aristocratic and
complacent neighbors to the east.
These settlers of the Valley of Virginia and the North Carolina
piedmont region--English, Scotch-Irish, Germans, Scotch, Irish,
Welsh, and a few French--were the first pioneers of the Old
Southwest. From the joint efforts of two strata of population,
geographically, socially, and economically distinct--tidewater
and piedmont, Old South and New South--originated and flowered
the third and greatest movement of westward expansion, opening
with the surmounting of the mountain barrier and ending in the
occupation and assumption of the vast medial valley of the
continent.
Synchronous with the founding of Jamestown in Virginia,
significantly enough, was the first planting of Ulster with the
English and Scotch. Emigrants from the Scotch Lowlands, sometimes
as many as four thousand a year (1625), continued throughout the
century to pour into Ulster. "Those of the North of Ireland . .
.," as pungently described in 1679 by the Secretary of State,
Leoline Jenkins, to the Duke of Ormond, "are most Scotch and
Scotch breed and are the Northern Presbyterians and phanatiques,
lusty, able bodied, hardy and stout men, where one may see three
or four hundred at every meeting-house on Sunday, and all the
North of Ireland is inhabited by these, which is the popular
place of all Ireland by far. They are very numerous and greedy
after land." During the quarter of a century after the English
Revolution of 1688 and the Jacobite uprising in Ireland, which
ended in 1691 with the complete submission of Ireland to William
and Mary, not less than fifty thousand Scotch, according to
Archbishop Synge, settled in Ulster. Until the beginning of the
eighteenth century there was no considerable emigration to
America; and it was first set up as a consequence of English
interference with trade and religion. Repressive measures passed
by the English parliament (1665 1699), prohibiting the
exportation from Ire land to England and Scotland of cattle,
beef, pork, dairy products, etc., and to any country whatever of
manufactured wool, had aroused deep resentment among the
Scotch-Irish, who had built up a great commerce. This discontent
was greatly aggravated by the imposition of religious
disabilities upon the Presbyterians, who, in addition to having
to pay tithes for the support of the established church, were
excluded from all civil and military office (1704), while their
ministers were made liable to penalties for celebrating
marriages.
This pressure upon a high-spirited people resulted inevitably in
an exodus to the New World. The principal ports by which the
Ulsterites entered America were Lewes and Newcastle (Delaware),
Philadelphia and Boston. The streams of immigration steadily
flowed up the Delaware Valley; and by 1720 the Scotch-Irish began
to arrive in Bucks County. So rapid was the rate of increase in
immigration that the number of arrivals soon mounted from a few
hundred to upward of six thousand, in a single year (1729); and
within a few years this number was doubled. According to the
meticulous Franklin, the proportion increased from a very small
element of the population of Pennsylvania in 1700 to one fourth
of the whole in 1749, and to one third of the whole (350,000) in
1774. Writing to the Penns in 1724, James Logan, Secretary of the
Province, caustically refers to the Ulster settlers on the
disputed Maryland line as "these bold and indigent strangers,
saying as their excuse when challenged for titles, that we had
solicited for colonists and they had come accordingly." The
spirit of these defiant squatters is succinctly expressed in
their statement to Logan that it "was against the laws of God and
nature that so much land should be idle while so many Christians
wanted it to work on and to raise their bread."
The rising scale of prices for Pennsylvania lands, changing from
ten pounds and two shillings quit-rents per hundred acres in 1719
to fifteen pounds ten shillings per hundred acres with a
quit-rent of a halfpenny per acre in 1732, soon turned the eyes
of the thrifty Scotch-Irish settlers southward and southwestward.
In Maryland in 1738 lands were offered at five pounds sterling
per hundred acres. Simultaneously, in the Valley of Virginia free
grants of a thousand acres per family were being made. In the
North Carolina piedmont region the proprietary, Lord Granville,
through his agents was disposing of the most desirable lands to
settlers at the rate of three shillings proclamation money for
six hundred and forty acres, the unit of land-division; and was
also making large free grants on the condition of seating a
certain proportion of settlers. "Lord Carteret's land in
Carolina," says North Carolina's first American historian, "where
the soil was cheap, presented a tempting residence to people of
every denomination. Emigrants from the north of Ireland, by the
way of Pennsylvania, flocked to that country; and a considerable
part of North Carolina . . . is inhabited by those people or
their descendants." From 1740 onward, attracted by the rich lure
of cheap and even free lands in Virginia and North Carolina, a
tide of immigration swept ceaselessly into the valleys of the
Shenandoah, the Yadkin, and the Catawba. The immensity of this
mobile, drifting mass, which sometimes brought "more than 400
families with horse waggons and cattle" into North Carolina in a
single year (1752-3), is attested by the fact that from 1732 to
1754, mainly as the result of the Scotch-Irish inundation, the
population of North Carolina more than doubled.
The second important racial stream of population in the
settlement of the same region was composed of Germans, attracted
to this country from the Palatinate. Lured on by the highly
colored stories of the commercial agents for promoting
immigration--the "newlanders," who were thoroughly unscrupulous
in their methods and extravagant in their representations--a
migration from Germany began in the second decade of the
eighteenth century and quickly assumed alarming proportions.
Although certain of the emigrants were well-to-do, a very great
number were "redemptioners" (indentured servants), who in order
to pay for their transportation were compelled to pledge
themselves to several years of servitude. This economic condition
caused the German immigrant, wherever he went, to become a
settler of the back country, necessity compelling him to pass by
the more expensive lands near the coast.
For well-nigh sixty years the influx of German immigrants of
various sects was very great, averaging something like fifteen
hundred a year into Pennsylvania alone from 1727 to 1775. Indeed,
Pennsylvania, one third of whose population at the beginning of
the Revolution was German, early became the great distributing
center for the Germans as well as for the Scotch-Irish. Certainly
by 1727 Adam Miller and his fellow Germans had established the
first permanent white settlement in the Valley of Virginia. By
1732 Jost Heydt, accompanied by sixteen families, came from York,
Pennsylvania, and settled on the Opeckon River, in the
neighborhood of the present Winchester. There is no longer any
doubt that "the portion of the Shenandoah Valley sloping to the
north was almost entirely settled by Germans."
It was about the middle of the century that these pioneers of the
Old Southwest, the shrewd, industrious, and thrifty Pennsylvania
Germans (who came to be generally called "Pennsylvania Dutch"
from the incorrect translation of Pennsylvanische Deutsche),
began to pour into the piedmont region of North Carolina. In the
autumn, after the harvest was in, these ambitious Pennsylvania
pioneers would pack up their belongings in wagons and on beasts
of burden and head for the southwest, trekking down in the manner
of the Boers of South Africa. This movement into the fertile
valley lands of the Yadkin and the Catawba continued unabated
throughout the entire third quarter of the century. Owing to
their unfamiliarity with the English language and the solidarity
of their instincts, the German settlers at first had little share
in government. But they devotedly played their part in the
defense of the exposed settlements and often bore the brunt of
Indian attack.
The bravery and hardihood displayed by the itinerant missionaries
sent out by the Pennsylvania Synod under the direction of Count
Zinzendorf (1742-8), and by the Moravian Church (1748-53), are
mirrored in the numerous diaries, written in German, happily
preserved to posterity in religious archives of Pennsylvania and
North Carolina. These simple, earnest crusaders, animated by pure
and unselfish motives, would visit on a single tour of a thousand
miles the principal German settlements in Maryland and Virginia
(including the present West Virginia). Sometimes they would make
an extended circuit through North Carolina, South Carolina, and
even Georgia, everywhere bearing witness to the truth of the
gospel and seeking to carry the most elemental forms of the
Christian religion, preaching and prayer, to the primitive
frontiersmen marooned along the outer fringe of white
settlements. These arduous journeys in the cause of piety place
this type of pioneer of the Old Southwest in alleviating contrast
to the often relentless and bloodthirsty figure of the rude
borderer.
Noteworthy among these pious pilgrimages is the Virginia journey
of Brothers Leonhard Schnell and John Brandmuller (October 12 to
December 12, 1749). At the last outpost of civilization, the
scattered settlements in Bath and Alleghany counties, these
courageous missionaries--feasting the while solely on bear meat,
for there was no bread--encountered conditions of almost
primitive savagery, of which they give this graphic picture:
"Then we came to a house, where we had to lie on bear skins
around the fire like the rest . . . . The clothes of the people
consist of deer skins, their food of Johnny cakes, deer and bear
meat. A kind of white people are found here, who live like
savages. Hunting is their chief occupation." Into the valley of
the Yadkin in December, 1752, came Bishop Spangenberg and a party
of Moravians, accompanied by a surveyor and two guides, for the
purpose of locating the one hundred thousand acres of land which
had been offered them on easy terms the preceding year by Lord
Granville. This journey was remarkable as an illustration of
sacrifices willingly made and extreme hardships uncomplainingly
endured for the sake of the Moravian brotherhood. In the back
country of North Carolina near the Mulberry Fields they found the
whole woods full of Cherokee Indians engaged in hunting. A
beautiful site for the projected settlement met their delighted
gaze at this place; but they soon learned to their regret that it
had already been "taken up" by Daniel Boone's future
father-in-law, Morgan Bryan.
On October 8, 1753, a party of twelve single men headed by the
Rev. Bernhard Adam Grube, set out from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,
to trek down to the new-found haven in the Carolina
hinterland--"a corner which the Lord has reserved for the
Brethren"--in Anson County. Following for the most part the great
highway extending from Philadelphia to the Yadkin, over which
passed the great throng sweeping into the back country of North
Carolina--through the Valley of Virginia and past Robert Luhny's
mill on the James River--they encountered many hardships along
the way. Because of their "long wagon," they had much difficulty
in crossing one steep mountain; and of this experience Brother
Grube, with a touch of modest pride, observes: "People had told
us that this hill was most dangerous, and that we would scarcely
be able to cross it, for Morgan Bryan, the first to travel this
way, had to take the wheels off his wagon and carry it piecemeal
to the top, and had been three months on the journey from the
Shanidore [Shenandoah] to the Etkin [Yadkin]."
These men were the highest type of the pioneers of the Old
Southwest, inspired with the instinct of homemakers in a land
where, if idle rumor were to be credited, "the people lived like
wild men never hearing of God or His Word." In one hand they bore
the implement of agriculture, in the other the book of the gospel
of Jesus Christ. True faith shines forth in the simply eloquent
words: "We thanked our Saviour that he had so graciously led us
hither, and had helped us through all the hard places, for no
matter how dangerous it looked, nor how little we saw how we
could win through, everything always went better than seemed
possible." The promise of a new day--the dawn of the heroic
age--rings out in the pious carol of camaraderie at their
journey's end:
We hold arrival Lovefeast here,
In Carolina land,
A company of Brethren true,
A little Pilgrim-Band,
Called by the Lord to be of those
Who through the whole world go,
To bear Him witness everywhere,
And nought but Jesus know.
Chapter II. The Cradle of Westward Expansion
In the year 1746 I was up in the country that is now Anson,
Orange and Rowan Counties, there was not then above one hundred
fighting men there is now at least three thousand for the most
part Irish Protestants and Germans and dailey increasing.--
Matthew Rowan, President of the North Carolina Council, to the
Board of Trade, June 28, 1753.
The conquest of the West is usually attributed to the ready
initiative, the stern self-reliance, and the libertarian instinct
of the expert backwoodsmen. These bold, nomadic spirits were
animated by an unquenchable desire to plunge into the wilderness
in search of an El Dorado at the outer verge of civilization,
free of taxation, quit-rents, and the law's restraint. They
longed to build homes for themselves and their descendants in a
limitless, free domain; or else to fare deeper and deeper into
the trackless forests in search of adventure. Yet one must not
overlook the fact that behind Boone and pioneers of his stamp
were men of conspicuous civil and military genius, constructive
in purpose and creative in imagination, who devoted their best
gifts to actual conquest and colonization. These men of large
intellectual mold-themselves surveyors, hunters, and
pioneers--were inspired with the larger vision of the
expansionist. Whether colonizers, soldiers, or speculators on the
grand scale, they sought to open at one great stroke the vast
trans-Alleghany regions as a peaceful abode for mankind.
Two distinct classes of society were gradually drawing apart from
each other in North Carolina and later in Virginia--the pioneer
democracy of the back country and the upland, and the planter
aristocracy of the lowland and the tide-water region. From the
frontier came the pioneer explorers whose individual enterprise
and initiative were such potent factors in the exploitation of
the wilderness. From the border counties still in contact with
the East came a number of leaders. Thus in the heart of the Old
Southwest the two determinative principles already referred to,
the inquisitive and the acquisitive instincts, found a fortunate
conjunction. The exploratory passion of the pioneer, directed in
the interest of commercial enterprise, prepared the way for the
great westward migration. The warlike disposition of the hardy
backwoodsman, controlled by the exercise of military strategy,
accomplished the conquest of the trans-Alleghany country.
Fleeing from the traditional bonds of caste and aristocracy in
England and Europe, from economic boycott and civil oppression,
from religious persecution and favoritism, many worthy members of
society in the first quarter of the eighteenth century sought a
haven of refuge in the "Quackerthal" of William Penn, with its
trustworthy guarantees of free tolerance in religious faith and
the benefits of representative self-government. From East
Devonshire in England came George Boone, the grandfather of the
great pioneer, and from Wales came Edward Morgan, whose daughter
Sarah became the wife of Squire Boone, Daniel's father. These
were conspicuous representatives of the Society of Friends, drawn
thither by the roseate representations of the great Quaker,
William Penn, and by his advanced views on popular government and
religious toleration. Hither, too, from Ireland, whither he had
gone from Denmark, came Morgan Bryan, settling in Chester County,
prior to 1719; and his children, William, Joseph, James, and
Morgan, who more than half a century later gave the name to
Bryan's Station in Kentucky, were destined to play important
roles in the drama of westward migration. In September, 1734,
Michael Finley from County Armagh, Ireland, presumably
accompanied by his brother Archibald Finley, settled in Bucks
County, Pennsylvania. According to the best authorities,
Archibald Finley was the father of John Finley, or Findlay as he
signed himself, Boone's guide and companion in his exploration of
Kentucky in 1769-71. To Pennsylvania also came Mordecai Lincoln,
great grandson of Samuel Lincoln, who had emigrated from England
to Hingham, Massachusetts, as early as 1637. This Mordecai
Lincoln, who in 1720 settled in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the
great-great-grandfather of President Lincoln, was the father of
Sarah Lincoln, who was wedded to William Boone, and of Abraham
Lincoln, who married Anne Boone, William's first cousin. Early
settlers in Pennsylvania were members of the Hanks family, one of
whom was the maternal grandfather of President Lincoln.
No one race or breed of men can lay claim to exclusive credit for
leadership in the hinterland movement and the conquest of the
West. Yet one particular stock of people, the Ulster Scots,
exhibited with most completeness and picturesqueness a group of
conspicuous qualities and attitudes which we now recognize to be
typical of the American character as molded by the conditions of
frontier life. Cautious, wary, and reserved, these Scots
concealed beneath a cool and calculating manner a relentlessness
in reasoning power and an intensity of conviction which glowed
and burned with almost fanatical ardor. Strict in religious
observance and deep in spiritual fervor, they never lost sight of
the main chance, combining a shrewd practicality with a wealth of
devotion. It has been happily said of them that they kept the
Sabbath and everything else they could lay their hands on. In the
polity of these men religion and education went hand in hand; and
they habitually settled together in communities in order that
they might have teachers and preachers of their own choice and
persuasion.
In little-known letters and diaries of travelers and itinerant
ministers may be found many quaint descriptions and faithful
characterizations of the frontier settlers in their habits of
life and of the scenes amidst which they labored. In a letter to
Edmund Fanning, the cultured Robin Jones, agent of Lord Granville
and Attorney-General of North Carolina, summons to view a piquant
image of the western border and borderers: "The inhabitants are
hospitable in their way, live in plenty and dirt, are stout, of
great prowess in manly athletics; and, in private conversation,
bold, impertinent, and vain. In the art of war (after the Indian
manner) they are well-skilled, are enterprising and fruitful of
strategies; and, when in action, are as bold and intrepid as the
ancient Romans. The Shawnese acknowledge them their superiors
even in their own way of fighting . . . . [The land] may be truly
called the land of the mountains, for they are so numerous that
when you have reached the summit of one of them, you may see
thousands of every shape that the imagination can suggest,
seeming to vie with each other which should raise his lofty head
to touch the clouds . . . . It seems to me that nature has been
wanton in bestowing her blessings on that country."
An excellent pen-picture of educational and cultural conditions
in the backwoods of North Carolina, by one of the early settlers
in the middle of the century, exhibits in all their barren
cheerlessness the hardships and limitations of life in the
wilderness. The father of William Few, the narrator, had trekked
down from Maryland and settled in Orange County, some miles east
of the little hamlet of Hillsborough. "In that country at that
time there were no schools, no churches or parsons, or doctors or
lawyers; no stores, groceries or taverns, nor do I recollect
during the first two years any officer, ecclesiastical, civil or
military, except a justice of the peace, a constable and two or
three itinerant preachers . . . . These people had few wants, and
fewer temptations to vice than those who lived in more refined
society, though ignorant. They were more virtuous and more happy
. . . . A schoolmaster appeared and offered his services to teach
the children of the neighborhood for twenty shillings each per
year . . . . In that simple state of society money was but little
known; the schoolmaster was the welcome guest of his pupil, fed
at the bountiful table and clothed from the domestic loom . . . .
In that country at that time there was great scarcity of books."
The journals of itinerant ministers through the Valley of
Virginia and the Carolina piedmont zone yield precious mementoes
of the people, their longing after the things of the spirit, and
their pitiful isolation from the regular preaching of the gospel.
These missionaries were true pioneers in this Old Southwest,
ardent, dauntless, and heroic--carrying the word into remote
places and preaching the gospel beneath the trees of the forest.
In his journal (1755-6), the Rev. Hugh McAden, born in
Pennsylvania of Scotch-Irish parentage, a graduate of Nassau Hall
(1753), makes the unconsciously humorous observation that
wherever he found Presbyterians he found people who "seemed
highly pleased, and very desirous to hear the word"; whilst
elsewhere he found either dissension and defection to Baptist
principles, or "no appearance of the life of religion." In the
Scotch-Irish Presbyterian settlements in what is now Mecklenburg
County, the cradle of American liberty, he found "pretty serious,
judicious people" of the stamp of Moses, William, and James
Alexander. While traveling in the upper country of South
Carolina, he relates with gusto the story of "an old gentleman
who said to the Governor of South Carolina, when he was in those
parts, in treaty with the Cherokee Indians that 'he had never
seen a shirt, been in a fair, heard a sermon, or seen a minister
in all his life.' Upon which the governor promised to send him up
a minister, that he might hear one sermon before he died." The
minister came and preached; and this was all the preaching that
had been heard in the upper part of South Carolina before Mr.
McAden's visit.
Such, then, were the rude and simple people in the back country
of the Old Southwest--the deliberate and self-controlled English,
the aggressive, landmongering Scotch-Irish, the buoyant Welsh,
the thrifty Germans, the debonair French, the impetuous Irish,
and the calculating Scotch. The lives they led were marked by
independence of spirit, democratic instincts, and a forthright
simplicity. In describing the condition of the English settlers
in the backwoods of Virginia, one of their number, Doddridge,
says: "Most of the articles were of domestic manufacture. There
might have been incidentally a few things brought to the country
for sale in a primitive way, but there was no store for general
supply. The table furniture usually consisted of wooden vessels,
either turned or coopered. Iron forks, tin cups, etc., were
articles of rare and delicate luxury. The food was of the most
wholesome and primitive kind. The richest meat, the finest
butter, and best meal that ever delighted man's palate were here
eaten with a relish which health and labor only know. The
hospitality of the people was profuse and proverbial."
The circumstances of their lives compelled the pioneers to become
self-sustaining. Every immigrant was an adept at many trades. He
built his own house, forged his own tools, and made his own
clothes. At a very early date rifles were manufactured at the
High Shoals of the Yadkin; Squire Boone, Daniel's brother, was an
expert gunsmith. The difficulty of securing food for the
settlements forced every man to become a hunter and to scour the
forest for wild game. Thus the pioneer, through force of sheer
necessity, became a dead shot--which stood him in good stead in
the days of Indian incursions and bloody retaliatory raids.
Primitive in their games, recreations, and amusements, which not
infrequently degenerated into contests of savage brutality, the
pioneers always set the highest premium upon personal bravery,
physical prowess, and skill in manly sports. At all public
gatherings, general musters, "vendues" or auctions, and even
funerals, whisky flowed with extraordinary freedom. It is worthy
of record that among the effects of the Rev. Alexander Craighead,
the famous teacher and organizer of Presbyterianism in
Mecklenburg and the adjoining region prior to the Revolution,
were found a punch bowl and glasses.
The frontier life, with its purifying and hardening influence,
bred in these pioneers intellectual traits which constitute the
basis of the American character. The single-handed and successful
struggle with nature in the tense solitude of the forest
developed a spirit of individualism, restive under control. On
the other hand, the sense of sharing with others the arduous
tasks and dangers of conquering the wilderness gave birth to a
strong sense of solidarity arid of human sympathy. With the lure
of free lands ever before them, the pioneers developed a
restlessness and a nervous energy, blended with a buoyancy of
spirit, which are fundamentally American. Yet this same
untrammeled freedom occasioned a disregard for law and a defiance
of established government which have exhibited themselves
throughout the entire course of our history. Initiative,
self-reliance, boldness in conception, fertility in resource,
readiness in execution, acquisitiveness, inventive genius,
appreciation of material advantages--these, shot through with a
certain fine idealism, genial human sympathy, and a high romantic
strain--are the traits of the American national type as it
emerged from the Old Southwest.
CHAPTER III. The Back Country and the Border
Far from the bustle of the world, they live in the most
delightful climate, and richest soil imaginable; they are
everywhere surrounded with beautiful prospects and sylvan scenes;
lofty mountains, transparent streams, falls of water, rich
valleys, and majestic woods; the whole interspersed with an
infinite variety of flowering shrubs, constitute the landscape
surrounding them; they are subject to few diseases; are generally
robust; and live in perfect liberty; they are ignorant of want
and acquainted with but few vices. Their inexperience of the
elegancies of life precludes any regret that they possess not the
means of enjoying them, but they possess what many princes would
give half their dominion for, health, content, and tranquillity
of mind.--Andrew Burnaby: Travels Through North America.
The two streams of Ulstermen, the greater through Philadelphia,
the lesser through Charleston, which poured into the Carolinas
toward the middle of the century, quickly flooded the back
country. The former occupied the Yadkin Valley and tile region to
the westward, the latter the Waxhaws and the Anson County region
to the northwest. The first settlers were known as the
"Pennsylvania Irish," because they had first settled in
Pennsylvania after migrating from the north of Ireland; while
those who came by way of Charleston were known as the
"Scotch-Irish." The former, who had resided in Pennsylvania long
enough to be good judges of land, shrewdly made their settlements
along the rivers and creeks. The latter, new arrivals and less
experienced, settled on thinner land toward the heads of creeks
and water courses.
Shortly prior to 1735, Morgan Bryan, his wife Martha, and eight
children, together with other families of Quakers from
Pennsylvania, settled upon a large tract of land on the northwest
side of the Opeckon River near Winchester. A few years later they
removed up the Virginia Valley to the Big Lick in the present
Roanoke County, intent upon pushing westward to the very
outskirts of civilization. In the autumn of 1748, leaving behind
his brother William, who had followed him to Roanoke County,
Morgan Bryan removed with his family to the Forks of the Yadkin
River. The Morgans, with the exception of Richard, who emigrated
to Virginia, remained in Pennsylvania, spreading over
Philadelphia and Bucks counties; while the Hanks and Lincoln
families found homes in Virginia--Mordecai Lincoln's son, John,
the great-grandfather of President Lincoln, removing from Berks
to the Shenandoah Valley in 1765. On May 1, 1750, Squire Boone,
his wife Sarah (Morgan), and their eleven children--a veritable
caravan, traveling like the patriarchs of old--started south; and
tarried for a space, according to reliable tradition, on Linville
Creek in the Virginia Valley. In 1752 they removed to the Forks
of the Yadkin, and the following year received from Lord
Granville three tracts of land, all situated in Rowan County.
About the hamlet of Salisbury, which in 1755 consisted of seven
or eight log houses and the court house, there now rapidly
gathered a settlement of people marked by strong individuality,
sturdy independence, and virile self-reliance. The Boones and the
Bryans quickly accommodated themselves to frontier conditions and
immediately began to take an active part in the local affairs of
the county. Upon the organization of the county court Squire
Boone was chosen justice of the peace; and Morgan Bryan was soon
appearing as foreman of juries and director in road improvements.
The Great Trading Path, leading from Virginia to the towns of the
Catawbas and other Southern Indians, crossed the Yadkin at the
Trading Ford and passed a mile southeast of Salisbury. Above
Sapona Town near the Trading Ford was Swearing Creek, which,
according to constant and picturesque tradition, was the spot
where the traders stopped to take a solemn oath never to reveal
any unlawful proceedings that might occur during their sojourn
among the Indians. In his divertingly satirical "History of the
Dividing Line" William Byrd in 1728 thus speaks of this locality:
"The Soil is exceedingly rich on both sides the Yadkin, abounding
in rank Grass and prodigiously large Trees; and for plenty of
Fish, Fowl and Venison, is inferior to No Part of the Northern
Continent. There the Traders commonly lie Still for some days, to
recruit their Horses' Flesh as well as to recover their own
spirits." In this beautiful country happily chosen for settlement
by Squire Boone --who erected his cabin on the east side of the
Yadkin about a mile and a quarter from Alleman's, now Boone's,
Ford--wild game abounded. Buffaloes were encountered in eastern
North Carolina by Byrd while running the dividing line; and in
the upper country of South Carolina three or four men with their
dogs could kill fourteen to twenty buffaloes in a single day."
Deer and bears fell an easy prey to the hunter; wild turkeys
filled every thicket; the watercourses teemed with beaver, otter,
and muskrat, as well as with shad and other delicious fish.
Panthers, wildcats, and wolves overran the country; and the
veracious Brother Joseph, while near the present Wilkesboro,
amusingly records: "The wolves wh. are not like those in Germany,
Poland and Lifland (because they fear men and don't easily come
near) give us such music of six different cornets the like of wh.
I have never heard in my life." So plentiful was the game that
the wild deer mingled with the cattle grazing over the wide
stretches of luxuriant grass.
In the midst of this sylvan paradise grew up Squire Boone's son,
Daniel Boone, a Pennsylvania youth of English stock, Quaker
persuasion, and Baptist proclivities. Seen through a glorifying
halo after the lapse of a century and three quarters, he rises
before us a romantic figure, poised and resolute, simple,
benign--as naive and shy as some wild thing of the primeval
forest--five feet eight inches in height, with broad chest and
shoulders, dark locks, genial blue eyes arched with fair
eyebrows, thin lips and wide mouth, nose of slightly Roman cast,
and fair, ruddy countenance. Farming was irksome to this
restless, nomadic spirit, who on the slightest excuse would
exchange the plow and the grubbing hoe for the long rifle and
keen-edged hunting knife. In a single day during the autumn
season he would kill four or five deer; or as many bears as would
snake from two to three thousand pounds weight of bear-bacon.
Fascinated with the forest, he soon found profit as well as
pleasure in the pursuit of game; and at excellent fixed prices he
sold his peltries, most often at Salisbury, some thirteen miles
away, sometimes at the store of the old "Dutchman," George
Hartman, on the Yadkin, and occasionally at Bethabara, the
Moravian town sixty odd miles distant. Skins were in such demand
that they soon came to replace hard money, which was incredibly
scarce in the back country, as a medium of exchange. Upon one
occasion a caravan from Bethabara hauled three thousand pounds,
upon another four thousand pounds, of dressed deerskins to
Charleston. So immense was this trade that the year after Boone's
arrival at the Forks of Yadkin thirty thousand deerskins were
exported from the province of North Carolina. We like to think
that the young Daniel Boone was one of that band of whom Brother
Joseph, while in camp on the Catawba River (November 12, 1752)
wrote: "There are many hunters about here, who live like Indians,
they kill many deer selling their hides, and thus live without
much work."
In this very class of professional hunters, living like Indians,
was thus bred the spirit of individual initiative and strenuous
leadership in the great westward expansionist movement of the
coming decade. An English traveler gives the following minute
picture of the dress and accoutrement of the Carolina
backwoodsman.
"Their whole dress is very singular, and not very materially
different from that of the Indians; being a hunting shirt,
somewhat resembling a waggoner's frock, ornamented with a great
many fringes, tied round the middle with a broad belt, much
decorated also, in which is fastened a tomahawk, an instrument
that serves every purpose of defence and convenience; being a
hammer at one side and a sharp hatchet at the other; the shot bag
and powderhorn, carved with a variety of whimsical figures and
devices, hang from their necks over one shoulder; and on their
heads a flapped hat, of a reddish hue, proceeding from the
intensely hot beams of the sun.
Sometimes they wear leather breeches, made of Indian dressed elk,
or deer skins, but more frequently thin trowsers.
On their legs they have Indian boots, or leggings, made of coarse
woollen cloth, that either are wrapped round loosely and tied
with garters, or laced upon the outside, and always come better
than half-way up the thigh.
On their feet they sometimes wear pumps of their own manufacture,
but generally Indian moccossons, of their own construction also,
which are made of strong elk's, or buck's skin, dressed soft as
for gloves or breeches, drawn together in regular plaits over the
toe, and lacing from thence round to the fore part of the middle
of the ancle, without a seam in them, yet fitting close to the
feet, and are indeed perfectly easy and pliant.
Their hunting, or rifle shirts, they have also died in a variety
of colours, some yellow, others red, some brown, and many wear
them quite white."
No less unique and bizarre, though less picturesque, was the
dress of the women of the region--in particular of Surry County,
North Carolina, as described by General William Lenoir:
"The women wore linses [flax] petticoats and 'bedgowns' [like a
dressing-sack], and often went without shoes in the summer. Some
had bonnets and bedgowns made of calico, but generally of linsey;
and some of them wore men's hats. Their hair was commonly
clubbed. Once, at a large meeting, I noticed there but two women
that had on long gowns. One of these was laced genteelly, and the
body of the other was open, and the tail thereof drawn up and
tucked in her apron or coat-string."
While Daniel Boone was quietly engaged in the pleasant pursuits
of the chase, a vast world-struggle of which he little dreamed
was rapidly approaching a crisis. For three quarters of a century
this titanic contest between France and England for the interior
of the continent had been waged with slowly accumulating force.
The irrepressible conflict had been formally inaugurated at Sault
Ste. Marie in 1671, when Daumont de Saint Lusson, swinging aloft
his sword, proclaimed the sovereignty of France over "all
countries, rivers, lakes, and streams . . . both those which have
been discovered and those which may be discovered hereafter, in
all their length and breadth, bounded on the one side by the seas
of the North and of the West, and on the other by the South Sea."
Just three months later, three hardy pioneers of Virginia,
despatched upon their arduous mission by Colonel Abraham Wood in
behalf of the English crown, had crossed the Appalachian divide;
and upon the banks of a stream whose waters slipped into the Ohio
to join the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, had carved the
royal insignia upon the blazed trunk of a giant of the forest,
the while crying: "Long live Charles the Second, by the grace of
God, King of England, Scotland, France, Ireland and Virginia and
of the territories thereunto belonging."
La Salle's dream of a New France in the heart of America was
blotted out in his tragic death upon the banks of the River
Trinity (1687). Yet his mantle was to fall in turn upon the
square shoulders of Le Moyne d'Iberville and of his brother--the
good, the constant Bienville, who after countless and arduous
struggles laid firm the foundations of New Orleans. In the
precious treasury of Margry we learn that on reaching Rochelle
after his first voyage in 1699 Iberville in these prophetic words
voices his faith: "If France does not immediately seize this part
of America which is the most beautiful, and establish a colony
which is strong enough to resist any which England may have, the
English colonies (already considerable in Carolina) will so
thrive that in less than a hundred years they will be strong
enough to seize all America." But the world-weary Louis Quatorze,
nearing his end, quickly tired of that remote and unproductive
colony upon the shores of the gulf, so industriously described in
Paris as a "terrestrial paradise"; and the "paternal providence
of Versailles" willingly yielded place to the monumental
speculation of the great financier Antoine Crozat. In this Paris
of prolific promotion and amazed credulity, ripe for the colossal
scheme of Law, soon to blow to bursting-point the bubble of the
Mississippi, the very songs in the street echoed flamboyant,
half-satiric panegyrics upon the new Utopia, this Mississippi
Land of Cockayne:
It's to-day no contribution
To discuss the Constitution
And the Spanish war's forgot
For a new Utopian spot;
And the very latest phase
Is the Mississippi craze.
Interest in the new colony led to a great development of
southwesterly trade from New France. Already the French coureurs
de bois were following the water route from the Illinois to South
Carolina. Jean Couture, a deserter from the service in New
France, journeyed over the Ohio and Tennessee rivers to that
colony, and was known as "the greatest Trader and Traveller
amongst the Indians for more than Twenty years." In 1714 young
Charles Charleville accompanied an old trader from Crozat's
colony on the gulf to the great salt-springs on the Cumberland,
where a post for trading with the Shawanoes had already been
established by the French. But the British were preparing to
capture this trade as early as 1694, when Tonti warned Villermont
that Carolinians were already established on a branch of the
Ohio. Four years later, Nicholson, Governor of Maryland, was
urging trade with the Indians of the interior in the effort to
displace the French. At an early date the coast colonies began to
trade with the Indian tribes of the back country: the Catawbas of
the Yadkin Valley; the Cherokees, whose towns were scattered
through Tennessee; the Chickasaws, to the westward in northern
Mississippi; and the Choctaws farther to the southward. Even
before the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the South
Carolina settlements extended scarcely twenty miles from the
coast, English traders had established posts among the Indian
tribes four hundred miles to the west of Charleston. Following
the sporadic trading of individuals from Virginia with the inland
Indians, the heavily laden caravans of William Byrd were soon
regularly passing along the Great Trading Path from Virginia to
the towns of the Catawbas and other interior tribes of the
Carolinas, delighting the easily captivated fancy and provoking
the cupidity of the red men with "Guns, Powder, Shot, Hatchets
(which the Indians call Tomahawks), Kettles, red and blue Planes,
Duffields, Stroudwater blankets, and some Cutlary Wares, Brass
Rings and other Trinkets." In Pennsylvania, George Croghan, the
guileful diplomat, who was emissary from the Council to the Ohio
Indians (1748), had induced "all-most all the Ingans in the
Woods" to declare against the French; and was described by
Christopher Gist as a "meer idol among his countrymen, the Irish
traders."
Against these advances of British trade and civilization, the
French for four decades had artfully struggled, projecting tours
of exploration into the vast medial valley of the continent and
constructing a chain of forts and trading-posts designed to
establish their claims to the country and to hold in check the
threatened English thrust from the east. Soon the wilderness
ambassador of empire, Celoron de Bienville, was despatched by the
far-visioned Galissoniere at Quebec to sow broadcast with
ceremonial pomp in the heart of America the seeds of empire,
grandiosely graven plates of lasting lead, in defiant yet futile
symbol of the asserted sovereignty of France. Thus threatened in
the vindication of the rights of their colonial sea-to-sea
charters, the English threw off the lethargy with which they had
failed to protect their traders, and in grants to the Ohio and
Loyal land companies began resolutely to form plans looking to
the occupation of the interior. But the French seized the English
trading-house at Venango which they converted into a fort; and
Virginia's protest, conveyed by a calm and judicious young man, a
surveyor, George Washington, availed not to prevent the French
from seizing Captain Trent's hastily erected military post at the
forks of the Ohio and constructing there a formidable work, named
Fort Duquesne. Washington, with his expeditionary force sent to
garrison Captain Trent's fort, defeated Jumonville and his small
force near Great Meadows (May, 1754); but soon after he was
forced to surrender Fort Necessity to Coulon de Villiers.
The titanic struggle, fittingly precipitated in the backwoods of
the Old Southwest, was now on--a struggle in which the resolute
pioneers of these backwoods first seriously measured their
strength with the French and their copper-hued allies, and
learned to surpass the latter in their own mode of warfare. The
portentous conflict, destined to assure the eastern half of the
continent to Great Britain, is a grim, prophetic harbinger