The Conquest of the Old Southwest | Page 6

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