THERN BACKWOODSMEN OVERWHELM
THE CHEROKEES, 1776.

The great western drift of our people began almost at the moment when
they became Americans, and ceased to be merely British colonists. They
crossed the great divide which sundered the springs of the seaboard
rivers from the sources of the western waters about the time that
American citizens first publicly acted as American freemen, knit
together by common ties, and with interests no longer akin to those of
the mother country. The movement which was to make the future nation a
continental power was begun immediately after the hitherto separate
colonies had taken the first step towards solidification. While the
communities of the sea-coast were yet in a fever heat from the uprising
against the stamp tax, the first explorers were toiling painfully to
Kentucky, and the first settlers were building their palisaded hamlets
on the banks of the Watauga. The year that saw the first Continental
Congress saw also the short, grim tragedy of Lord Dunmore's war. The
early battles of the Revolution were fought while Boon's comrades were
laying the foundations of their commonwealth.

Hitherto the two chains of events had been only remotely connected; but
in 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence, the struggle
between the king and his rebellious subjects shook the whole land, and
the men of the western border were drawn headlong into the full current
of revolutionary warfare. From that moment our politics became national,
and the fate of each portion of our country was thenceforth in some sort
dependent upon the welfare of every other. Each section had its own work
to do; the east won independence while the west began to conquer the
continent. Yet the deeds of each were of vital consequence to the other.
Washington's Continentals gave the west its freedom; and took in return
for themselves and their children a share of the land that had been
conquered and held by the scanty bands of tall backwoodsmen.

The backwoodsmen, the men of the up-country, were, as a whole, ardent
adherents of the patriot or American side. Yet there were among them
many loyalists or tories; and these tories included in their ranks much
the greatest portion of the vicious and the disorderly elements. This
was the direct reverse of what obtained along portions of the seaboard,
where large numbers of the peaceable, well-to-do people stood loyally by
the king. In the up-country, however, the Presbyteria