rough, but
the mere planning of it shows the feeling that was, at the bottom, the
strongest of those which knit together the Franklin men and the
Georgians. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., No. 125, p. 163.] They both
greedily coveted the Indians' land, and were bent on driving the Indians
off it. [Footnote: Va. State Papers, IV., pp. 256, 353. Many of the
rumors of defeats and victories given in these papers were without
foundation.]

The Franklin Men and the Indians.

One of the Franklin judges, in sending a plea for the independence of
his state to the Governor of North Carolina, expressed with unusual
frankness the attitude of the Holston backwoodsmen towards the Indians.
He remarked that he supposed the Governor would be astonished to learn
that there were many settlers on the land which North Carolina had by
treaty guaranteed to the Cherokees; and brushed aside all remonstrances
by simply saying that it was vain to talk of keeping the frontiersmen
from encroaching on Indian territory. All that could be done, he said,
was to extend the laws over each locality as rapidly as it was settled
by the intruding pioneers; otherwise they would become utterly lawless,
and dangerous to their neighbors. As for laws and proclamations to
restrain the white advance, he asked if all the settlements in America
had not been extended in defiance of such. And now that the Indians were
cowed, the advance was certain to be faster, and the savages were
certain to be pushed back more rapidly, and the limits of tribal
territory more narrowly circumscribed. [Footnote: Ramsey, 350.]

This letter possessed at least the merit of expressing with blunt
truthfulness the real attitude of the Franklin people, and of the
backwoodsmen generally, towards the Indians. They never swerved from
their intention of seizing the Indian lands. They preferred to gain
their ends by treaty, and with the consent of the Indians; but if this
proved impossible, then they intended to gain them by force.

In its essence, and viewed from the standpoint of abstract morality,
their attitude was that of the freebooter. The backwoodsmen lusted for
the possessions of the Indian, as the buccaneers of the Spanish main had
once lusted for the possessions of the Spaniard. There was but little
more heed paid to the rights of the assailed in one case than in the
other.

The Ethics of Such Territorial Conquest.

Yet in its results, and viewed from the standpoint of appli