The Westward Movement. Various
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which lies between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghany Mountains and which is drained by the Shenandoah River. In 1716 Governor Spotswood of Virginia, with fifty companions, entered this valley near the present site of Port Republic, and with much ceremony took possession of the region in the name of King George of England. His purpose in pushing out into the valley was to head off the French, who at the time had already taken possession of the country west of the Alleghanies and were pushing east as fast as they dared.
Soon after the expedition of Spotswood the settlement of the Shenandoah began in earnest. First came a few settlers from the older parts of Virginia. Then came large numbers of the Scotch-Irish and Germans from Pennsylvania. These enterprising people by 1730 had crossed the Susquehanna and were making settlements in the Cumberland valley. In 1732 they began to move down into the Shenandoah valley and build rude cabins and plant corn-fields. In a few years so many people—Virginians, Scotch-Irish, and Germans—had settled in the valley that it became necessary for them to have some form of government. So in 1738 Virginia took the matter in hand and organized the Shenandoah region as a county and provided it with a regular government. Thus between 1700 and 1740 the strip of English civilization along the Atlantic seaboard was greatly widened, and the Frontier Line was carried westward over the Blue Ridge Mountains to the eastern base of the Alleghanies.
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT IN COLONIAL TIMES.
Connecticut and Rhode Island.
The progress of the Westward Movement in colonial times was slow. A hundred and fifty years passed before the frontier line was pushed beyond the Appalachian ridge. This slowness was due in part to the action of the English government. Soon after England (in 1763) came into possession of the country west of the Alleghanies the king issued a proclamation reserving most of the newly acquired territory for the use of the Indians and forbidding the governors of the colonies to grant lands to white men west of the mountains. If this plan had been carried out, English civilization would have been confined to the seaboard, and the richest and fairest portions of the earth would have been permanently reserved as a hunting-ground for savages and as a lair for wild beasts. But the War of the Revolution took the Western country from England and gave it to the United States. The Ohio valley was then thrown open to settlers, and white men from all parts of the world rushed into the new lands like hungry cattle rushing into new pastures. In twenty years after the acknowledgment of our independence (in 1783) the Frontier Line moved farther westward than it had moved in a century under British rule.
KENTUCKY.
The first great stream of Western emigration after the Revolution flowed into the region now included within the borders of Kentucky and Tennessee. This territory was a neutral hunting-ground for Northern and Southern Indians. The red men hunted over it, but did not live permanently upon it or claim it as their own. The district, therefore, was easier for the white man to settle than were the surrounding regions in which the Indians had permanent homes.
The settlement of the Kentucky region really began several years before the Revolution. In 1769 Daniel Boone, a great hunter and one of the most interesting of American pioneers, left his home on the Yadkin River, in North Carolina, to seek the wilderness of Kentucky. With five companions he passed through the gorges of the Cumberland Gap and reached the blue-grass region, "a land of running waters, of groves and glades, of prairies, cane-brakes, and stretches of lofty forests."
Daniel Boone.
Boone returned to North Carolina, but not to remain. His restless spirit still yearned for the beautiful banks of the far-off Kentucky. In 1773 he sold his farms, and with wife and children and about fifty persons besides started for Kentucky with the purpose of making a permanent settlement there. On the way, however, the party was attacked by Indians—for even in this neutral territory the Indian was sometimes troublesome—and Boone and his companions were compelled to turn back.
But the fame of the Kentucky country was now widespread, and its settlement was near at hand. In 1774 James Harrod of Virginia, with fifty men, floated down the Ohio River in flatboats, and, ascending the Kentucky River, selected the present site of Harrodsburg as a place for a settlement and built some cabins. The place was given the name of Harrodstown (afterward Harrodsburg) and was the first permanent settlement in Kentucky. The next year Boone safely reached Kentucky and founded the town of Boonesborough. In 1775 Lexington also was founded. "When the embattled farmers fired the shot heard round the world, a party of hunters heard the echo and baptized the station they were building Lexington." Louisville was founded in 1777.
While Boone and his followers were laying the foundation for a State on the banks of the Kentucky, other pioneers from North Carolina and Virginia were laying the foundations for another State on the banks of streams that flow into the Tennessee. In the very year (1769) that Boone visited the blue-grass region, William Bean of Virginia built himself a log cabin on the Watauga River. Pioneers came and settled near Bean, and in a short time several hundred people had their homes on the banks of the Watauga. This Watauga settlement was the beginning of the State of Tennessee.
North Carolina continued to let her Western children shift for themselves, until at last for their own defense and safety they organized as a separate State, and called the new State Franklin, in honor of Benjamin Franklin. John Sevier, the greatest of the early leaders in Tennessee, was elected governor of Franklin, and Greenville was made the capital of the State. But the State of Franklin had only a short life. North Carolina came forward promptly and asserted her rights, and by 1788 the officers of Franklin were all driven from power, the new State was dead, and North Carolina was again in full control of Tennessee.
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Early Ohio.
In the rapid and wonderful growth of Kentucky and Tennessee we see the first-fruits of the Westward Movement. Here out of the wilderness south of the Ohio had sprung up, almost overnight, two prosperous, populous, well-organized commonwealths, States that almost at once could hold their heads as high as the oldest and proudest of their sisters.
THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY; THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.
While pioneers from Virginia and North Carolina were moving into Kentucky and Tennessee, emigrants from the Northern States were moving into western New York, or were crossing the Alleghanies and settling the upper valleys of the Ohio. The settlement of western Pennsylvania began even before the Revolution. In 1770 Washington revisited the scenes of his early youth and found Pittsburgh a village of twenty houses. Fourteen years later he would have found it a town of two hundred houses and a thousand inhabitants. Western Pennsylvania filled rapidly with settlers, and soon pioneers began to float down the Ohio in flatboats and build their homes on the soil of the Northwest Territory. In a few years so many white people were living in this Western domain that it became necessary for them to have some form of government. So Congress (in 1787) passed the law known as the Ordinance of 1787, the most important law ever passed by a lawmaking body in America.
Emigrants descending the Tennessee River.
The great law of 1787 provided that, as the Northwest Territory filled up with people, it should be divided into States—not fewer than three and not more than five. Each State was to be governed according to the will of its voters; there was to be no slavery; religious liberty was guaranteed; education was to be encouraged; Indians were to be justly treated. When a community came to have as many as 60,000 inhabitants it was to be admitted into the Union as a State, with all the rights of the older States; during the time in which a community was too small for statehood it was to be governed as a Territory.
Such were the provisions of the Ordinance of 1787. The law breathed the spirit of freedom, and showed plainly that Western settlers could look forward to fair treatment at the hands of the national government. The Western communities were not to be dependent colonies;