ike the Germans they pushed
south into the Piedmont of Virginia, and along the Alleghany slope of
the Shenandoah, and into the Southern up-country as far as the Savannah
River. Sometimes mixing with the Germans, the main body of the
Scotch-Irish was everywhere farther west. Too martial to fear the
Indians, and too aggressive to live at peace with them, they were the
true borderers of the century, the frontier of the frontier, forming,
from Londonderry in New England to the Savannah, an outer bulwark,
behind which the older settlements, and even the peace-loving Germans
themselves, rested in some measure of security.

The German or Scotch-Irish immigrant was doubtless grateful to the
Government which offered him a refuge; but in the breast of neither was
there any sentimental loyalty to King George, or much sympathy with the
traditions of English society. Whether Mennonite or Moravian, German
Lutheran or Scotch Presbyterian, they were men whose manner of life
disposed them to an instinctive belief in equality of condition, whose
religion confirmed them in a democratic habit of mind. That every man
should labor as he was able; that no man should live by another's toil
or waste in luxurious living the hard-earned fruits of industry; that
all should live upright lives, eschewing the vanities of the world, and
worshiping God, neither with images nor vestments nor Romish ritual, but
in spirit and in truth:--these were the ideals which the foreign
Protestants brought as a heritage from Wittenberg and Geneva to their
new home in America. And if we may accept the impressions of an English
observer, life in the Shenandoah Valley was in happy accord, in the
middle of the century, with the arcadian simplicity of these ideals. "I
could not but reflect with pleasure on the situation of these people,"
says Richard Burnaby. "Far from the bustle of the world, they live in
the most delightful climate, and the richest soil imaginable; they are
everywhere surrounded with the most beautiful prospects and sylvan
scenes; ... they ... live in perfect liberty; they are ignorant of want,
and acquainted with but few vices. Their inexperience of the elegancies
of life precludes any regret that they possess not the means of enjoying
them; but they possess what many persons would give half their dominions
for, health, content, and tranquillity of mind."

[Illustration: Area of German Settlements and Frontier Line in 1775.]

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