University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER II

THE CRADLE OF WESTWARD EXPANSION

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.[1] 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.[2]
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 176971.[3]
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.[4]

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."[5]

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."[6]

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.[7]

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.