eople of the up-country, or back-country, who
lived near and among the forest-clad mountains, far away from the
long-settled districts of flat coast plain and sluggish tidal river,
were known to themselves and to others as backwoodsmen. They all bore a
strong likeness to one another in their habits of thought and ways of
living, and differed markedly from the people of the older and more
civilized communities to the eastward. The western border of our country
was then formed by the great barrier-chains of the Alleghanies, which
ran north and south from Pennsylvania through Maryland, Virginia, and
the Carolinas,[1] the trend of the valleys being parallel to the
sea-coast, and the mountains rising highest to the southward. It was
difficult to cross the ranges from east to west, but it was both easy
and natural to follow the valleys between. From Fort Pitt to the high
hill-homes of the Cherokees this great tract of wooded and mountainous
country possessed nearly the same features and characteristics,
differing utterly in physical aspect from the alluvial plains bordering
the ocean.

So, likewise, the backwoods mountaineers who dwelt near the great
watershed that separates the Atlantic streams from the springs of the
Watauga, the Kanawha, and the Monongahela were all cast in the same
mould, and resembled each other much more than any of them did their
immediate neighbors of the plains. The backwoodsmen of Pennsylvania had
little in common with the peaceful population of Quakers and Germans who
lived between the Delaware and the Susquehanna; and their near kinsmen
of the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains were separated by an
equally wide gulf from the aristocratic planter communities that
flourished in the tide-water regions of Virginia and the Carolinas. Near
the coast the lines of division between the colonies corresponded fairly
well with the differences between the populations; but after striking
the foothills, though the political boundaries continued to go east and
west, those both of ethnic and of physical significance began to run
north and south.

The backwoodsmen were Americans by birth and parentage, and of mixed
race; but the dominant strain in their blood was that of the
Presbyterian Irish--the Scotch-Irish as they were often called. Full
credit has been awarded the Roundhead and the Cavalier for their
leadership in our history; nor have we been altogether blind to the
deeds of the Hollander and the Hug