Volume II Part 11 (1/2)

At the beginning of 1783, when the news of peace was spread abroad, immigration began to flow to Kentucky down the Ohio, and over the Wilderness road, in a flood of which the volume dwarfed all former streams into rivulets. Indian hostilities continued at intervals throughout this year, [Footnote: _Do_., p. 522. Letter of Benjamin Logan, August 11, 1783.] but they were not of a serious nature. Most of the tribes concluded at least a nominal peace, and liberated over two hundred white prisoners, though they retained nearly as many more.

[Footnote: _Pennsylvania Packet_, No. 1,079, August 12, 1783.]

Nevertheless in the spring one man of note fell victim to the savages, for John Floyd was waylaid and slain as he was riding out with his brother. Thus within the s.p.a.ce of eight months, two of the three county lieutenants had been killed, in battle or ambush.

The inrush of new settlers was enormous, [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] and Kentucky fairly entered on its second stage of growth. The days of the first game hunters and Indian fighters were over. By this year the herds of the buffalo, of which the flesh and hides had been so important to the earlier pioneers, were nearly exterminated; though bands still lingered in the remote recesses of the mountains, and they were plentiful in Illinois. The land claims began to clash, and interminable litigation followed. This rendered very important the improvement in the judiciary system which was begun in March by the erection of the three counties into the ”District of Kentucky,” with a court of common law and chancery jurisdiction coextensive with its limits. The name of Kentucky, which had been dropped when the original county was divided into three, was thus permanently revived. The first court sat at Harrodsburg, but as there was no building where it could properly be held, it adjourned to the Dutch Reformed Meeting-house six miles off. The first grand jury empanelled presented nine persons for selling liquor without license, eight for adultery and fornication, and the clerk of Lincoln County for not keeping a table of fees; besides several for smaller offences.

[Footnote: Marshall, I., 159.] A log court-house and a log jail were immediately built.

Manufactories of salt were started at the licks, where it was sold at from three to five silver dollars a bushel. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] This was not only used by the settlers for themselves, but for their stock, which ranged freely in the woods; to provide for the latter a tree was chopped down and the salt placed in notches or small troughs cut in the trunk, making it what was called a lick-log. Large grist-mills were erected at some of the stations; wheat crops were raised; and small distilleries were built. The gigantic system of river commerce of the Mississippi had been begun the preceding year by one Jacob Yoder, who loaded a flat-boat at the Old Redstone Fort, on the Monongahela, and drifted down to New Orleans, where he sold his goods, and returned to the Falls of the Ohio by a roundabout course leading through Havana, Philadelphia, and Pittsburg. Several regular schools were started. There were already meeting-houses of the Baptist and Dutch Reformed congregations, the preachers spending the week-days in clearing and tilling the fields, splitting rails, and raising hogs; in 1783 a permanent Presbyterian minister arrived, and a log church was speedily built for him. The sport-loving Kentuckians this year laid out a race track at Shallowford Station. It was a straight quarter of a mile course, within two hundred yards of the stockade; at its farther end was a canebrake, wherein an Indian once lay hid and shot a rider, who was pulling up his horse at the close of a race. There was still but one ferry, that over the Kentucky River at Boonsborough; the price of ferriage was three s.h.i.+llings for either man or horse. The surveying was still chiefly done by hunters, and much of it was in consequence very loose indeed. [Footnote: McAfee MSS. Marshall, Collins, Brown's pamphlets.]

The first retail store Kentucky had seen since Henderson's, at Boonsborough, was closed in 1775, was established this year at the Falls; the goods were brought in wagons from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, and thence down the Ohio in flat-boats. The game had been all killed off in the immediate neighborhood of the town at the Falls, and Clark undertook to supply the inhabitants with meat, as a commercial speculation. Accordingly he made a contract with John Saunders, the hunter who had guided him on his march to the Illinois towns; the latter had presumably forgiven his chief for having threatened him with death when he lost the way. Clark was to furnish Saunders with three men, a packhorse, salt, and ammunition; while Saunders agreed to do his best and be ”a.s.siduously industrious” in hunting. Buffalo beef, bear's meat, deer hams, and bear oil were the commodities most sought after. The meat was to be properly cured and salted in camp, and sent from time to time to the Falls, where Clark was to dispose of it in market, a third of the price going to Saunders. The hunting season was to last from November 1st to January 15th. [Footnote: Original agreement in Durrett MSS.; bound volume of ”Papers Relating to G. R. Clark.” This particular agreement is for 1784; but apparently he entered into several such in different years.]

Thus the settlers could no longer always kill their own game; and there were churches, schools, mills, stores, race tracks, and markets in Kentucky.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1777-1779.

Organization of the Holston Settlements.

The history of Kentucky and the Northwest has now been traced from the date of the Cherokee war to the close of the Revolution. Those portions of the southwestern lands that were afterwards made into the State of Tennessee, had meanwhile developed with almost equal rapidity. Both Kentucky and Tennessee grew into existence and power at the same time, and were originally settled and built up by precisely the same cla.s.s of American backwoodsmen. But there were one or two points of difference in their methods of growth. Kentucky sprang up afar off in the wilderness, and as a separate ent.i.ty from the beginning. The present State has grown steadily from a single centre, which was the part first settled; and the popular name of the commonwealth has always been Kentucky. Tennessee, on the other hand, did not a.s.sume her present name until a quarter of a century after the first exploration and settlement had begun; and the State grew from two entirely distinct centres. The first settlements, known as the Watauga, or afterwards more generally as the Holston, settlements, grew up while keeping close touch with the Virginians, who lived round the Tennessee head-waters, and also in direct communication with North Carolina, to which State they belonged. It was not until 1779 that a portion of these Holston people moved to the bend of the c.u.mberland River and started a new community, exactly as Kentucky had been started before. At first this new community, known as the c.u.mberland settlement, was connected by only the loosest tie with the Holston settlements. The people of the two places were not grouped together; they did not even have a common name. The three cl.u.s.ters of Holston, c.u.mberland, and Kentucky settlements developed independently of one another, and though their founders were in each case of the same kind, they were at first only knit one to another by a lax bond of comrades.h.i.+p.

In 1776 the Watauga pioneers probably numbered some six hundred souls in all. Having at last found out the State in which they lived, they pet.i.tioned North Carolina to be annexed thereto as a district or county.

The older settlements had evidently been jealous of them, for they found it necessary to deny that they were, as had been a.s.serted, ”a lawless mob”; it may be remarked that the Transylvanian colonists had been obliged to come out with a similar statement. In their pet.i.tion they christened their country ”Was.h.i.+ngton District,” in honor of the great chief whose name already stood first in the hearts of all Americans. The doc.u.ment was written by Sevier. It set forth the history of the settlers, their land purchases from the Indians, their successful effort at self-government, their military organization, with Robertson as captain, and finally their devotion to the Revolutionary cause; and recited their lack of proper authority to deal promptly with felons, murderers, and the like, who came in from the neighboring States, as the reason why they wished to become a self-governing portion of North Carolina. [Footnote: The pet.i.tion, drawn up in the summer of '76, was signed by 112 men. It is given in full by Ramsey, p. 138. See also Phelan, p. 40.] The legislature of the State granted the prayer of the pet.i.tioners, Was.h.i.+ngton District was annexed, and four representatives therefrom, one of them Sevier, took their seats that fall in the Provincial Congress at Halifax. But no change whatever was made in the government of the Watauga people until 1777. In the spring of that year laws were pa.s.sed providing for the establishment of courts of pleas and quarter sessions in the district, as well as for the appointment of justices of the peace, sheriffs, and militia officers; and in the fall the district was made a county, under the same name. The boundaries of Was.h.i.+ngton County were the same as those of the present State of Tennessee, and seem to have been outlined by Sevier, the only man who at that time had a clear idea as to what should be the logical and definite limits of the future State.

Upholding the Law.

The nominal change of government worked little real alteration in the way the Holston people managed their affairs. The members of the old committee became the justices of the new court, and, with a slight difference in forms, proceeded against all offenders with their former vigor. Being eminently practical men, and not learned in legal technicalities, their decisions seem to have been governed mainly by their own ideas of justice, which, though genuine, were rough. As the war progressed and the southern States fell into the hands of the British, the disorderly men who had streamed across the mountains became openly defiant towards the law. The tories gathered in bands, and every man who was impatient of legal restraint, every murderer, horse-thief, and highway robber in the community flocked to join them. The militia who hunted them down soon ceased to discriminate between tories and other criminals, and the courts rendered decisions to the same effect.

The caption of one indictment that has been preserved reads against the defendant ”in toryism.” He was condemned to imprisonment during the war, half his goods was confiscated to the use of the State, and the other half was turned over for the support of his family. In another case the court granted a still more remarkable order, upon the motion of the State attorney, which set forth that fifteen hundred pounds, due to a certain H., should be retained in the hands of the debtor, because ”there is sufficient reason to believe that the said H's estate will be confiscated to the use of the State for his misdemeanours.”

There is something refres.h.i.+ng in the solemnity with which these decisions are recorded, and the evident lack of perception on the part of the judges that their records would, to their grandchildren, have a distinctly humorous side. To tories, and evil-doers generally, the humor was doubtless very grim; but as a matter of fact, the decisions, though certainly of unusual character, were needful and just. The friends of order had to do their work with rough weapons, and they used them most efficiently. Under the stress of so dire an emergency as that they confronted they were quite right in attending only to the spirit of law and justice, and refusing to be hampered by the letter. They would have discredited their own energy and hard common-sense had they acted otherwise, and, moreover, would have inevitably failed to accomplish their purpose.

In the summer of '78, when Indian hostilities almost entirely ceased, most of the militia were disbanded, and, in consequence, the parties of tories and horse-thieves sprang into renewed strength, and threatened to overawe the courts and government officers. Immediately the leaders among the whigs, the friends of order and liberty, gathered together and organized a vigilance committee. The committee raised two companies of mounted riflemen, who were to patrol the country and put to death all suspicious characters who resisted them or who refused to give security to appear before the committee in December. The proceedings of the committee were thus perfectly open; the members had no idea of acting secretly or against order. It was merely that in a time of general confusion they consolidated themselves into a body which was a most effective, though irregular, supporter of the cause of law. The mounted riflemen scoured the country and broke up the gangs of evil-doers, hanging six or seven of the leaders, while a number of the less prominent were brought before the committee, who fined some and condemned others to be whipped or branded. All of doubtful loyalty were compelled to take the test oath. [Footnote: Haywood, p. 58. As Haywood's narrative is based largely on what the pioneers in their old age told him, his dates, and especially his accounts of the numbers and losses of the Indians in their battles, are often very inaccurate. In this very chapter he gives, with gross inaccuracy of detail, an account of one of Sevier's campaigns as taking place in 1779, whereas it really occurred after his return from King's Mountain. There is therefore need to be cautious in using him.]

Such drastic measures soon brought about peace; but it was broken again and again by similar risings and disturbances. By degrees most of the worst characters fled to the Cherokees, or joined the British as their forces approached the up-country. Until the battle of Kings Mountain, the pioneers had to watch the tories as closely as they did the Indians; there was a constant succession of murders, thefts, and savage retaliations. Once a number of tories attempted to surprise and murder Sevier in his own house; but the plot was revealed by the wife of the leader, to whom Sevier's wife had shown great kindness in her time of trouble. In consequence the tories were themselves surprised and their ringleaders slain. Every man in the country was obliged to bear arms the whole time, not only because of the Indian warfare, but also on account of the inveterate hatred and constant collisions between the whigs and the loyalists. Many dark deeds were done, and though the tories, with whom the criminal cla.s.ses were in close alliance, were generally the first and chief offenders, yet the patriots cannot be held guiltless of murderous and ferocious reprisals. They often completely failed to distinguish between the offenders against civil order, and those whose only crime was an honest, if mistaken, devotion to the cause of the king.

Land laws

Early in '78 a land office was opened in the Holston settlements, and the settlers were required to make entries according to the North Carolina land laws. Hitherto they had lived on their clearings undisturbed, resting their t.i.tle upon purchase from the Indians and upon their own mutual agreements. The old settlers were given the prior right to the locations, and until the beginning of '79 in which to pay for them. Each head of a family was allowed to take up six hundred and forty acres for himself, one hundred for his wife, and one hundred for each of his children, at the price of forty s.h.i.+llings per hundred acres, while any additional amount cost at the rate of one hundred s.h.i.+llings, instead of forty. All of the men of the Holston settlements were at the time in the service of the State as militia, in the campaign against the Indians; and when the land office was opened, the money that was due them sufficed to pay for their claims. They thus had no difficulty in keeping possession of their lands, much to the disappointment of the land speculators, many of whom had come out at the opening of the office. Afterwards large tracts were given as bounty, or in lieu of pay, to the Revolutionary soldiers. All the struggling colonies used their wild land as a sort of military chest; it was often the only security of value in their possession.

The same year that the land office was opened, it was enacted that the bridle path across the mountains should be chopped out and made into a rough wagon road. [Footnote: However this was not actually done until some years later.] The following spring the successful expedition against the Chicamaugas temporarily put a stop to Indian troubles. The growing security, the opening of the land office, and the increase of knowledge concerning the country, produced a great inflow of settlers in 1779, and from that time onward the volume of immigration steadily increased.

Character and Life of the Settlers.

Many of these new-comers were ”poor whites,” or crackers; lank, sallow, ragged creatures, living in poverty, ignorance, and dirt, who regarded all strangers with suspicion as ”outlandish folks.” [Footnote: Smythe's Tours, I., 103, describes the up-country crackers of North Carolina and Virginia.] With every chance to rise, these people remained mere squalid c.u.mberers of the earth's surface, a rank, up-country growth, containing within itself the seeds of vicious, idle pauperism, and semi-criminality. They cl.u.s.tered in little groups, scattered throughout the backwoods settlements, in strong contrast to the vigorous and manly people around them.

By far the largest number of the new-comers were of the true, hardy backwoods stock, fitted to grapple with the wilderness and to hew out of it a prosperous commonwealth. The leading settlers began, by thrift and industry, to acquire what in the backwoods pa.s.sed for wealth. Their horses, cattle, and hogs throve and multiplied. The stumps were grubbed out of the clearings, and different kinds of grains and roots were planted. Wings were added to the houses, and sometimes they were roofed with s.h.i.+ngles. The little town of Jonesboro, the first that was not a mere stockaded fort, was laid off midway between the Watauga and the Nolichucky.

As soon as the region grew at all well settled, clergymen began to come in. Here, as elsewhere, most of the frontiersmen who had any religion at all professed the faith of the Scotch-Irish; and the first regular church in this cradle-spot of Tennessee was a Presbyterian log meeting-house, built near Jonesboro in 1777, and christened Salem Church. Its pastor was a pioneer preacher, who worked with fiery and successful energy to spread learning and religion among the early settlers of the southwest. His name was Samuel Doak. He came from New Jersey, and had been educated in Princeton. Possessed of the vigorous energy that marks the true pioneer spirit, he determined to cast in his lot with the frontier folk. He walked through Maryland and Virginia, driving before him an old ”flea-bitten grey” horse, loaded with a sackful of books; crossed the Alleghanies, and came down along blazed trails to the Holston settlements. The hardy people among whom he took up his abode were able to appreciate his learning and religion as much as they admired his adventurous and indomitable temper; and the stern, hard, G.o.d-fearing man became a most powerful influence for good throughout the whole formative period of the southwest. [Footnote: See ”East Tennessee a Hundred Years Ago,” by the Hon. John Allison, Nashville, 1887, p. 8.]

Not only did he found a church, but near it he built a log high-school, which soon became Was.h.i.+ngton College, the first inst.i.tution of the kind west of the Alleghanies. Other churches, and many other schools, were soon built. Any young man or woman who could read, write, and cipher felt competent to teach an ordinary school; higher education, as elsewhere at this time in the west, was in the hands of the clergy.

As elsewhere, the settlers were predominantly of Calvinistic stock; for of all the then prominent faiths Calvinism was nearest to their feelings and ways of thought. Of the great recognized creeds it was the most republican in its tendencies, and so the best suited to the backwoodsmen. They disliked Anglicanism as much as they abhorred and despised Romanism--theoretically at least, for practically then as now frontiersmen were liberal to one another's religious opinions, and the staunch friend and good hunter might follow whatever creed he wished, provided he did not intrude it on others. But backwoods Calvinism differed widely from the creed as first taught. It was professed by thorough-going Americans, essentially free and liberty-loving, who would not for a moment have tolerated a theocracy in their midst. Their social, religious, and political systems were such as naturally flourished in a country remarkable for its temper of rough and self-a.s.serting equality. Nevertheless the old Calvinistic spirit left a peculiar stamp on this wild border democracy. More than any thing else, it gave the backwoodsmen their code of right and wrong. Though they were a hard, narrow, dogged people, yet they intensely believed in their own standards and ideals. Often warped and twisted, mentally and morally, by the strain of their existence, they at least always retained the fundamental virtues of hardihood and manliness.