e to collect what was owing to him. There was much mob
violence, and a general relaxation of the bonds of law and order. Even
nature turned hostile; a terrible drought shrunk up all the streams
until they could not turn the grist-mills, while from the same cause the
crops failed almost completely. A hard winter followed, and many cattle
and hogs died; so that the well-to-do were brought to the verge of
bankruptcy and the poor suffered extreme privations, being forced to go
fifty or sixty miles to purchase small quantities of meal and grain at
exorbitant prices. [Footnote: Clay MSS. Letters of Jesse Benton, 1782
and '83. See Appendix.]

This distress at home inclined many people of means and ambition to try
their fortunes in the west: while another and equally powerful motive
was the desire to secure great tracts of virgin lands, for possession or
speculation. Many distinguished soldiers had been rewarded by successive
warrants for unoccupied land, which they entered wherever they chose,
until they could claim thousands upon thousands of acres. [Footnote:
Thus Col. Wm. Christian, for his services in Braddock's and Dunmore's
wars and against the Cherokees, received many warrants; he visited
Kentucky to enter them, 9,000 acres in all. See "Life of Caleb Wallace,"
by Wm. H. Whitsitt, Louisville, 1888.] Sometimes they sold these
warrants to outsiders; but whether they remained in the hands of the
original holders or not, they served as a great stimulus to the westward
movement, and drew many of the representatives of the wealthiest and
most influential families in the parent States to the lands on the
farther side of the mountains.

At the close of the Revolution, however, the men from the sea-coast
region formed but an insignificant portion of the western pioneers. The
country beyond the Alleghanies was first won and settled by the
backwoodsmen themselves, acting under their own leaders, obeying their
own desires, and following their own methods. They were a marked and
peculiar people. The good and evil traits in their character were such
as naturally belonged to a strong, harsh, and homely race, which, with
all its shortcomings, was nevertheless bringing a tremendous work to a
triumphant conclusion. The backwoodsmen were above all things
characteristically American; and it is fitting that the two greatest and
most typical of all Americans should have been respectively a sharer and
an outcome of their work. Washington hims