e of later frontiers. Although, as
has been said, the frontier towns had scattered garrison houses, and
palisaded enclosures similar to the neighborhood forts, or stations, of
Kentucky in the Revolution, and of Indiana and Illinois in the War of
1812, one difference is particularly noteworthy. In the case of
frontiersmen who came down from Pennsylvania into the Upland South along
the eastern edge of the Alleghanies, as well as in the more obvious case
of the backwoodsmen of Kentucky and Tennessee, the frontier towns were
too isolated from the main settled regions to allow much military
protection by the older areas. On the New England frontier, because it
was adjacent to the coast towns, this was not the case, and here, as in
seventeenth century Virginia, great activity in protecting the frontier
was evinced by the colonial authorities, and the frontier towns
themselves called loudly for assistance. This phase of frontier defense
needs a special study, but at present it is sufficient to recall that
the colony sent garrisons to the frontier besides using the militia of
the frontier towns; and that it employed rangers to patrol from garrison
to garrison.[47:1]

These were prototypes of the regular army post, and of rangers,
dragoons, cavalry and mounted police who have carried the remoter
military frontier forward. It is possible to trace this military cordon
from New England to the Carolinas early in the eighteenth century, still
neighboring the coast; by 1840 it ran from Fort Snelling on the upper
Mississippi through various posts to the Sabine boundary of Texas, and
so it passed forward until to-day it lies at the edge of Mexico and the
Pacific Ocean.

A few examples of frontier appeals for garrison aid will help to an
understanding of the early form of the military frontier. Wells asks,
June 30, 1689:

1 That yo{r} Hon{rs} will please to send us speedily twenty
Eight good brisk men that may be serviceable as a guard to us
whilest we get in our Harvest of Hay & Corn, (we being unable
to Defend ourselves & to Do our work), & also to Persue &
destroy the Enemy as occasion may require

2 That these men may be compleatly furnished with Arms,
Amunition & Provision, and that upon the Countrys account, it
being a Generall War.[48:1]

Dunstable, "still weak and unable both to keep our Garrisons and to send
out men to get hay for our Cattle; without doeing which wee cannot
subsist,