on May 26, 1790, created the territory south of the Ohio River for the benefit of Tennessee, and installed a government, sister to that which St. Clair was directing from his new seat at Cincinnati. In addition to Tennessee, the territory embraced the alleged strip ceded by South Carolina, and, in theory, the tract south of the Yazoo line. But since Spain was still in possession of the last, it gave small concern to Governor William Blount, whom Washington commissioned as first executive of the territory. There were not over 25,000 settlers in the new government when it was established; six years later when admitted to the Union it was alleged that the population of 77,262 was acquired only by counting in transients who were obliged to pass through eastern Tennessee on their way to Cumberland Gap and Kentucky.

The three districts that nature had created for the State of Tennessee made their impression upon the mind of the prospective commonwealth from its beginning. Eastern Tennessee is a region of parallel valleys, with high elevation, and with economic and agricultural resources different from those of the more level country on either side. Small farmers of the frontier type built it up; and in backwaters where there was no easy approach to any market, some of their descendants still remain and live the life of the eighteenth century in the twentieth. "Our contemporary ancestors," as they have been called, make it possible to visualize the life that was characteristic of the whole frontier in its earliest phase, with the exception of the aggressive spirit that speedily changed the face and prospect of the more favored regions. From the stagnant recesses of the mountains where economic development came slowly if at all, the pushing members of each succeeding generation have worked themselves out; leaving behind the dull ones and the unfortunates, whose retarded colonies are sprinkled among the valleys south of Pennsylvania.

Knoxville, founded on the Tennessee River in 1789, was at once the seat of eastern Tennessee and the capital of the territory. Here in 1794 the earliest legislature met, the population having grown enough to authorize it. And two years later, after the territorial census had been taken, here the convention met to frame a constitution and demand that Congress recognize Tennessee as a State.

Middle and western Tennessee, the other two districts, represent somewhat different geographic influences, that were followed by economic and social deviation. The middle region lies west of

the mountains and is dominated by the Cumberland River. In an agricultural way, it partakes of the character that the Blue Grass region of Kentucky possesses. It was settled first by James Robertson's colony at Nashville, and expanded as a region of plantations. Slaves were profitable here, as they were not in eastern Tennessee, and the resulting system of slave agriculture bred a different social atmosphere. In western Tennessee, the tract actually west of the Tennessee River and east of the Mississippi, the Chickasaw Indians remained in possession through the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Ultimately the cotton crop came to control the interests of western Tennessee, and Memphis, with its strategic position on the high bluffs of the Mississippi (the first good high ground above Vicksburg), became a gateway for the extension of an economic imperialism over the country still further west. But in the end of the seventeenth century, when the territory south of the Ohio was transforming itself into the State of Tennessee, middle Tennessee was the remote frontier; west Tennessee was Indian country, and eastern Tennessee was the center of political activity.

On the frontier of the Tennessee River, Blount had to deal with Indian danger and alien intrigue, somewhat as St. Clair was forced to meet them on the Ohio in the same years. But no engagement with the Cherokee stands out with the strategic significance of the Battle of Fallen Timbers, and no treaty had the farreaching effects of that at Greenville. Sevier and Robertson, leaders in the earliest stirrings of society, remained the prominent leaders through the Indian dangers and the political discussions. An element that was lacking in the Northwest Territory appeared in Tennessee in the chance for dubious speculation in Spanish profits. In Tennessee, more than elsewhere, the bond of interest in the United States was slight, and the temptation to n.ake something out of the international situation was strong. We do not know quite the extent or the manner in which Blount and Sevier, and others of their associates, like Wilkinson in Kentucky, took profits out of Spain. Some of the leaders were kept on the pay roll at New Orleans; others, like Clark and Blount, were ready to accept pay from France for a filibustering attack on Spain. After Tennessee became a State and Blount a senator, enough evidence appeared to warrant his impeachment. There was no conviction, since the Senate had already expelled him, and doubted, moreover, whether a senator was liable to impeachment.

In the case of Kentucky, Congress declared that it might become a State on a given date in the future, and Kentucky proceeded to make a constitution, without outside oversight. In Tennessee there was no such recognition until a delegation appeared at Philadelphia, reporting that a constitution had been made and that congressmen were ready to take their seats. Thereupon there was debate upon the propriety of the formation of a State with no more authority than the general provisions of the Ordinance of 1787, and there were members of Congress who would gladly have disciplined the new commonwealth for its presumption. But since most of these were of the party that had lost its grip upon the West, and even upon Congress, they were unable to delay action. On June 1, 1796, by an act effective at once, Tennessee was declared a member of the Union. Sevier, who had been the territorial delegate in Congress, was governor, Blount was one of the first senators, and a Nashville lawyer, Andrew Jackson by name, became the earliest representative.

Times were changing, when Tennessee entered as the sixteenth State. Part of the West was no longer sheer frontier. In central Kentucky there were signs of stability and wealth, as there were in western Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Local leaders had begun to grow on local roots, and frontier points of view had gained coherent spokesmen. The ubiquitous printer had made his way across the mountains, with his irrepressible news sheets. The Pittsburgh Gazette (July 29, 1786) was the first west of the mountains. This was followed by John Bradford's Kentucke Gazette (August 11, 1787), and by William Maxwell's Centinel of the NorthWestern Territory, that made its appearance at Cincinnati November 11, 1793. The historian turns to the early issues of these newspapers in vain, when he hopes for details upon the settlement of the communities that maintained them. Only by accident does local news creep in. But in the large discussions of national policy, and in news of the foreign events upon which national policy was based, they provide a sure guide to both the political theories of the new frontier and the party practice.

CHAPTER XI

POLITICAL THEORIES OF THE FRONTIER

THE American frontier was not founded upon any antecedent theory of imperial or domestic growth, but emerged with a form largely dictated by the status of its land, the life that the early settlers could not avoid living upon that land, and the inheritance of ideas that the residents possessed. It was a common law process, similar to that which had in England built up the body of legal doctrine and political practice. The foreign experience that shaped American public growth before 1800 was so completely English that frontier society and institutions are plainly the result of old habits modified by new environment.

As frontier thought became weighty enough to be heard across the mountains, in the councils of the United States, it was both possible and necessary to analyze it and to identify those elements that were indigenous, and those that were inherited from either the colonial or the European past. The most important of those that were native and unavoidable grew out of the fact of isolation and distance, which bred self-confidence, equality, and distrust of the absentee.

Isolation is a condition precedent to the development of any frontier. Professor Turner has pointed out the differences between the various frontiers of the missionary, the hunter, the soldier, the stockman, and the farmer. Their common quality lies in the fact that a few men were making the first occupation of a vast waste, and when the farmer came along behind the roamers who had already traversed his region, and perhaps advertised it, he built his cabin in a loneliness that was lightened rarely by other human presence, Indian or white. For years the cabins remained far from each other, separated by wastes of forest. Among themselves, or with their former homes, there could be few connections. The frontier family could not escape the sense of loneliness and selfdependence that lessened the binding force of prior ties, and stressed the value of immediate experience. The recollections that they had of home were most often those of youth, that had never been fully admitted into the confidences of its elders, nor allowed to share and learn the responsible burdens of public life. A back

ground of general impressions, not checked up with precise information, existed everywhere among them. And as the period of separation lengthened, the memories blurred. There developed both sentimental reminiscence and a full consciousness of separation.

The life of the average frontier settler provides the details that make up the picture of the whole; the experience of those that were successful built up the mental attitude. There were many failures, who never finished a farm, who lived always in squalor, and turned shiftless as lack of success became a habit. These made a vivid impression on the eye of the outside visitor who described the West; but the traits that frontiersmen valued in their leaders were those of their luckier or wiser neighbors. Self-confidence was the first of these.

Old age and middle life have always been restive under the aggressive nerve of youth. Ignorance and self-confidence seem to them to be bred together, while their own conservatism appears only the natural product of experience. Here along the frontier was a whole community of youth, thrown upon its own resources to make success or failure. The consequence of success was more self-confidence. The failures moved on, moved back, or died. The self-made man became the normal leader. Deprived of the restraining voice of age, and led by the intensified initiative of youth, the West became a seat of impatient independence.

The self-confidence of western thought operated against a background of equality. It was an equality of fact rather than of theory. It has been quite possible, as democratic ideals have developed, for a man to accept their principle but dislike their practice. Civilization is founded upon the subordination of individual aspiration and accomplishment to the common good, but not many men have loved the giving up that this entails. Along the frontier, men came to accept the idea of equality with greater ease than usual, because as they looked around them, they saw men equal.

In few communities have wealth, station in life, education, or refined taste brought less immediate profit to their possessor than on the frontier. It was as hard for the rich as for the poor to build the cabin, clear the cornfield, extract the first unwilling crop, and raise the children through the perils of childhood. There were few things that money could buy, in the form of either goods or service; and small leisure for the enjoyment of intellectual or social