lutionary struggle, and rendered possible the settlement of Kentucky," and, therefore, the winning of the West. Lewis's army consisted of men from Botetourt and Fincastle;' but those counties then embraced all Southwestern Virginia, even extended to "the waters of the Mississippi." On their homeward march, after the victory, the officers held a notable meeting near the mouth of the Hockhocking. They had followed Lord Dunmore; but they were Americans in full sympathy with the Continental Congress. Fearful lest their countrymen might not know that they were as one with them in the struggle which was looming up with ever increasing blackness, they passed resolutions professing devotion to their King and to the dignity of the British Empire, but they added that this devotion would only last while the King deigned to rule over a free people, for their love for the liberty of America exceeded all other considerations and they would exert every power for its defence, not riotously but when regularly called forth by the voice of their countrymen."

The men of the West took little share in campaigning against the British and Hessians. In the exigencies of the unequal war they were left to take care of themselves, and were fully occupied in "holding the wooded wilderness that stretched westward to the Mississippi,"

1 2 Henry, 103.

21 Henry, 204-205. 3 I Winning of the West, 238-240.

and in laying therein the foundations of many future commonwealths. Only trained woodsmen could have occupied successfully the regions out of which so many States have been carved. Patrick Henry and Jefferson and Wythe encouraged Clark to whose tact, energy, courage, and executive ability in his momentous expedition of 1778-1779, we owe the acquisition of the West, and the defeat of the British and the Indians. The British commander records his mortification at having to yield Fort Vincennes in 1779" to a set of uncivilized Virginia woodsmen armed with rifles, and Roosevelt says had Clark "in this most memorable of all the deeds done west of the Alleghanies in the Revolutionary War" been defeated, "we would not only have lost the Illinois but in all probability Kentucky also."' The British were never able subsequently to shake the hold of the Americans upon this section; and the Indians became quiet until their hostilities were far less formidable. In the war of the Revolution, Great Britain sought to "stop the westward growth of the English race in America, and to keep the region beyond the Alleghanies as the region where only savages should dwell."" The arms used by savages against both organized foes and helpless noncombatants, were supplied from British arsenals. Clark, in his campaign, in Illinois and the Northwest, and Boone in Kentucky, encoun12 Winning of the West, 84, 85, 90. 22 Ib., 6.

1

2

tered Indians officered and armed by the British.' Under provocation, the Western pioneers sometimes retaliated eye for eye, scalp for scalp, but to courage they joined openhanded hospitality, generous neighborhood, a rough common sense and the true American capacity for extemporizing government. In 1772, on the head-waters of the Tennessee, was organized a government. A written constitution was formed, "the first ever adopted west of the mountains, or by a community composed of American born freemen. They were the first men of American birth to establish a free and independent commonwealth on the continent." For six years this government con tinued in full vigor, and came to an end in 1778, when North Carolina organized Washing ton County, which included all of what is now Tennessee. Physical geography is a potent factor in national unity. In the war between the States, probably no one fact, apart from mere sentiment, was so controlling in the purpose and effort to prevent "the wayward sisters from departing in peace,” as the need of the Mississippi River for a highway of commerce, and the danger of letting its mouth remain in the possession of a foreign power. The Mississippi River and valley are ours largely by reason of the energy, the courage, the patriotism of the winners of the West, the

1 2 Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, 421. 21 Winning of the West, 183-186.

fearless, adventurous, unconquerable pioneers from Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The constant wars carried on by them in their own independent way, for the protection of houses and families, were at their own expense, as they served without pay, and furnished their own rifles and ammunition, their own food and clothing. As Nehemiah's men builded with swords girded by their side, so these watchful men tilled their ground and felled the forests with their trusty rifles ever within ready reach. Roosevelt ascribes to the backwoodsmen the credit of the King's Mountain battle, and says the victory was of farreaching importance, ranking among the decisive battles of the Revolution, cheering the patriots throughout the Union, giving a decisive blow to loyalists and causing Cornwallis to retreat from North Carolina. 1

1 I Ib., 238–240. 2 Ib., chap. IX.

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CHAPTER VI.

THE Continental Congresses, which began their sessions at Philadelphia on the 5th of September, 1774, "under the severe pressure of a common fear and an immediate necessity of action," lasted for nine years, until the valid ratification of the Articles of Confederation. It is necessary to inquire into the exact relation of these Congresses to the States, because much misapprehension exists on the subject; and public men and historians have built theories and based arguments on palpable and demonstrable fallacies. Nearly all the fallacies in the literature of our constitutional history may be traced, wholly or in part, to assumptions in answer to this question. Our constitutional history cannot be written with authority until the question of fact here raised is settled by appeal to the detailed evidence on record." This evidence and the facts of American history have been obscured or perverted to sustain certain political theories, dogmas, or measures. Bold assumptions and perversions on this point have violently and suddenly jerked the Colonies. "from atomic colonial independence" into a blended organic nationality, from alliance for certain purposes into paramount indivisible sovereignty