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. [11] 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 rôles in the drama of westward migration.
[12] 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.
[13] 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.
[14]
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." [15]
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." [16]
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. [17]
Such, then, were the rude and simple people in the back country of the
Old Southwest--the deliberate and self-controlled English, the
aggressive, land-mongering 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 and 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.