Frontier in American History — III - The Old West - Part 6

This theme deserves more space than can here be allotted to it; but a rapid survey of conditions in this respect, along the whole frontier, will at least serve to bring out the point.

In New England as a whole, the contest is less in evidence.

That part of the friction elsewhere seen as the result of defective local government in the back country, was met by the efficiency of the town system; but between the interior and the coast there were struggles over apportionment and religious freedom.

The former is illustrated by the convention that met in Dracut, Massachusetts, in 1776, to petition the States of Massachusetts and New Hampshire to relieve the financial distress and unfair legislative representation.

Sixteen of the border towns of New Hampshire sent delegates to this convention.

Two years later, these New Hampshire towns attempted to join Vermont.

[111:1] As a Revolutionary State, Vermont itself was an illustration of the same tendency of the interior to break away from the coast.

Massachusetts in this period witnessed a campaign between the paper money party which was entrenched in the more recently and thinly-settled areas of the interior and west, and the property-holding classes of the coast.

[111:2] The opposition to the constitutions of 1778 and 1780 is tinctured with the same antagonism between the ideas of the newer part of the interior and of the coast.

[112:1] Shays' Rebellion and the anti-federal opposition of 1787-88 found its stronghold in the same interior areas.

[112:2] The religious struggles continued until the democratic interior, where dissenting sects were strong, and where there was antagonism to the privileges of the congregational church, finally secured complete disestablishment in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

But this belongs to a later period.

[112:3] Pennsylvania affords a clear illustration of these sectional antagonisms.

The memorial of the frontier "Paxton Boys," in 1764, demanded a right to share in political privileges with the older part of the colony, and protested against the apportionment by which the counties of Chester, Bucks, and Philadelphia, together with the city of Philadelphia, elected twenty-six delegates, while the five frontier counties had but ten.

[112:4] The frontier complained against the failure of the dominant Quaker party of the coast to protect the interior against the Indians.

[112:5] The three old wealthy counties under Quaker rule feared the growth of the West, therefore made few new counties, and carefully restricted the representation in each to preserve the majority in the old section.

At the same time, by a property qualification they met the danger of the democratic city population.

Among the points of grievance in this colony, in addition to apportionment and representation, was the difficulty of access to the county seat, owing to the size of the back counties.

Dr. Lincoln has well set forth the struggle of the back country, culminating in its triumph in the constitutional convention of 1776, which was chiefly the work of the Presbyterian counties.

[113:1] Indeed, there were two revolutions in Pennsylvania, which went on side by side: one a revolt against the coastal property-holding classes, the old dominant Quaker party, and the other a revolt against Great Britain, which was in this colony made possible only by the triumph of the interior.

In Virginia, as early as 1710, Governor Spotswood had complained that the old counties remained small while the new ones were sometimes ninety miles long, the inhabitants being obliged to travel thirty or forty miles to their own court-house.

Some of the counties had 1,700 tithables, while others only a dozen miles square had 500. Justices of the peace disliked to ride forty or fifty miles to their monthly courts.

Likewise there was disparity in the size of parishes--for example, that of Varina, on the upper James, had nine hundred tithables, many of whom lived fifty miles from their church.

But the vestry refused to allow the remote parishioners to separate, because it would increase the parish levy of those that remained.

He feared lest this would afford "opportunity to Sectarys to establish their opinions among 'em, and thereby shake that happy establishment of the Church of England which this colony enjoys with less mixture of Dissenters than any other of her Maj'tie's plantations, and when once Schism has crept into the Church, it will soon create faction in the Civil Government."

That Spotswood's fears were well founded, we have already seen.

As the sectaries of the back country increased, dissatisfaction with the established church grew.

After the Revolution came, Jefferson, with the back country behind him, was able finally to destroy the establishment, and to break down the system of entails and primogeniture behind which the tobacco-planting aristocracy of the coast was entrenched.

The desire of Jefferson to see slavery gradually abolished and popular education provided, is a further illustration of the attitude of the interior.

In short, Jeffersonian democracy, with its idea of separation of church and state, its wish to popularize education, and its dislike for special privilege, was deeply affected by the Western society of the Old Dominion.

The Virginian reform movement, however, was unable to redress the grievance of unequal apportionment.

In 1780 Jefferson pointed out that the practice of allowing each county an equal representation in the legislature gave control to the numerous small counties of the tidewater, while the large populous counties of the up-country suffered.

"Thus," he wrote, "the 19,000 men below the falls give law to more than 30,000 living in other parts of the state, and appoint all their chief officers, executive and judiciary."

[114:1] This led to a long struggle between coast and interior, terminated only when the slave population passed across the fall line, and more nearly assimilated coast and up-country.

In the mountain areas which did not undergo this change, the independent state of West Virginia remains as a monument of the contest.

In the convention of 1829-30, the whole philosophy of representation was discussed, and the coast defended its control as necessary to protect property from the assaults of a numerical majority.

They feared that the interior would tax their slaves in order to secure funds for internal improvements.

As Doddridge put the case:[115:1] The principle is that the owners of slave property must be possessed of all the powers of government, however small their own numbers may be, to secure that property from the rapacity of an overgrown majority of white men.

This principle admits of no relaxation, because the weaker the minority becomes, the greater will their need for power be according to their own doctrines.

Leigh of Chesterfield county declared:[115:2] It is remarkable--I mention it for the curiosity of the fact--that if any evil, physical or moral, arise in any of the states south of us, it never takes a northerly direction, or taints the Southern breeze; whereas, if any plague originate in the North, it is sure to spread to the South and to invade us sooner or later; the influenza--the smallpox--the varioloid--the Hessian fly--the Circuit Court system--Universal Suffrage--all come from the North, _and they always cross above the falls of the great rivers_; below, it seems, the broad expanse of waters interposing, effectually arrests their progress.

Nothing could more clearly bring out the sense of contrast between upland and lowland Virginia, and the continued intimacy of the bond of connection between the North and its Valley and Piedmont colonies, than this unconscious testimony.

In North and South Carolina the upland South, beyond the pine barrens and the fall line, had similar grievances against the coast; but as the zone of separation was more strongly marked, the grievances were more acute.

The tide of backwoods settlement flowing down the Piedmont from the north, had cut across the lines of local government and disarranged the regular course of development of the colonies from the seacoast.

[116:1] Under the common practice, large counties in North Carolina and parishes in South Carolina had been projected into the unoccupied interior from the older settlements along their eastern edge.

But the Piedmont settlers brought their own social order, and could not be well governed by the older planters living far away toward the seaboard.

This may be illustrated by conditions in South Carolina.

The general court in Charleston had absorbed county and precinct courts, except the minor jurisdiction of justices of the peace.

This was well enough for the great planters who made their regular residence there for a part of each year; but it was a source of oppression to the up-country settlers, remote from the court.

The difficulty of bringing witnesses, the delay of the law, and the costs all resulted in the escape of criminals as well as in the immunity of reckless debtors.

The extortions of officials, and their occasional collusion with horse and cattle thieves, and the lack of regular administration of the law, led the South Carolina up-country men to take affairs in their own hands, and in 1764 to establish associations to administer lynch law under the name of "Regulators."

The "Scovillites," or government party, and the Regulators met in arms on the Saluda in 1769, but hostilities were averted and remedial measures passed, which alleviated the difficulty until the Revolution.

[117:1] There still remained, however, the grievance of unjust legislative representation.

[117:2] Calhoun stated the condition in these words: The upper country had no representation in the government and no political existence as a constituent portion of the state until a period near the commencement of the revolution.

Indeed, during the revolution, and until the formation of the present constitution, in 1790, its political weight was scarcely felt in the government.

Even then although it had become the most populous section, power was so distributed under the constitution as to leave it in a minority in every department of government.

Even in 1794 it was claimed by the up-country leaders that four-fifths of the people were governed by one-fifth.

Nor was the difficulty met until the constitutional amendment of 1808, the effect of which was to give the control of the senate to the lower section and of the house of representatives to the upper section, thus providing a mutual veto.

[117:3] This South Carolina experience furnished the historical basis for Calhoun's argument for nullification, and for the political philosophy underlying his theory of the "concurrent majority."

[118:1] This adjustment was effected, however, only after the advance of the black belt toward the interior had assimilated portions of the Piedmont to lowland ideals.

When we turn to North Carolina's upper country we find the familiar story, but with a more tragic ending.

The local officials owed their selection to the governor and the council whom he appointed.

Thus power was all concentrated in the official "ring" of the lowland area.

The men of the interior resented the extortionate fees and the poll tax, which bore with unequal weight upon the poor settlers of the back country.

This tax had been continued after sufficient funds had been collected to extinguish the debt for which it was originally levied, but venal sheriffs had failed to pay it into the treasury.

A report of 1770 showed at least one defaulting sheriff in every county of the province.

[118:2] This tax, which was almost the sole tax of the colony, was to be collected in specie, for the warehouse system, by which staples might be accepted, while familiar on the coast, did not apply to the interior.

The specie was exceedingly difficult to obtain; in lack of it, the farmer saw the sheriff, who owed his appointment to the dominant lowland planters, sell the lands of the delinquent to his speculative friends.

Lawyers and court fees followed.

In short, the interior felt that it was being exploited,[118:3] and it had no redress, for the legislature was so apportioned that all power rested in the old lowland region.

Efforts to secure paper money failed by reason of the governor's opposition under instructions from the crown, and the currency was contracting at the very time when population was rapidly increasing in the interior.

[119:1] As in New England, in the days of Shays' Rebellion, violent prejudice existed against the judiciary and the lawyers, and it must, of course, be understood that the movement was not free from frontier dislike of taxation and the restraints of law and order in general.

In 1766 and 1768, meetings were held in the upper counties to organize the opposition, and an "association"[119:2] was formed, the members of which pledged themselves to pay no more taxes or fees until they satisfied themselves that these were agreeable to law.

The Regulators, as they called themselves, assembled in the autumn of 1768 to the number of nearly four thousand, and tried to secure terms of adjustment.

In 1770 the court-house at Hillsboro was broken into by a mob.

The assembly passed some measures designed to conciliate the back country; but before they became operative, Governor Tryon's militia, about twelve hundred men, largely from the lowlands, and led by the gentry whose privileges were involved, met the motley army of the Regulators, who numbered about two thousand, in the battle of the Alamance (May, 1771).

Many were killed and wounded, the Regulators dispersed, and over six thousand men came into camp and took the oath of submission to the colonial authorities.

The battle was not the first battle of the Revolution, as it has been sometimes called, for it had little or no relation to the stamp act; and many of the frontiersmen involved, later refused to fight against England because of the very hatred which had been inspired for the lowland Revolutionary leaders in this battle of the Alamance.

The interior of the Carolinas was a region where neighbors, during the Revolution, engaged in internecine conflicts of Tories against Whigs.

But in the sense that the battle of Alamance was a conflict against privilege, and for equality of political rights and power, it was indeed a preliminary battle of the Revolution, although fought against many of the very men who later professed Revolutionary doctrines in North Carolina.

The need of recognizing the importance of the interior led to concessions in the convention of 1776 in that state.

"Of the forty-four sections of the constitution, thirteen are embodiments of reforms sought by the Regulators."

[120:1] But it was in this period that hundreds of North Carolina backwoodsmen crossed the mountains to Tennessee and Kentucky, many of them coming from the heart of the Regulator region.

They used the device of "associations" to provide for government in their communities.

[120:2] In the matter of apportionment, North Carolina showed the same lodgment of power in the hands of the coast, even after population preponderated in the Piedmont.

[120:3] It is needless to comment on the uniformity of the evidence which has been adduced, to show that the Old West, the interior region from New England to Georgia, had a common grievance against the coast; that it was deprived throughout most of the region of its due share of representation, and neglected and oppressed in local government in large portions of the section.

The familiar struggle of West against East, of democracy against privileged classes, was exhibited along the entire line.

The phenomenon must be considered as a unit, not in the fragments of state histories.

It was a struggle of interior against coast.