omic independence, and expansive tendencies, and
the primitive pioneer society of the frontier, frugal in taste,
responsive to leadership, bold, ready, and thorough in
execution--there evolved the militant American expansion in the Old
Southwest.

A conspicuous figure in this society of Virginia emigrants was a
young man named Richard Henderson, whose father had removed with
his family from Hanover County, Virginia, to Bute, afterward
Granville County, North Carolina, in 1742. Educated at home by a
private tutor, he began his career as assistant of his father,
Samuel Henderson, the High Sheriff of Granville County; and after
receiving a law-license, quickly acquired an extensive practice.
"Even in the superior courts where oratory and eloquence are as
brilliant and powerful as in Westminster hall," records an
English acquaintance, "he soon became distinguished and eminent,
and his superior genius shone forth with great splendour, and
universal applause." This young attorney, wedded to the daughter
of an Irish lord, often visited Salisbury on his legal circuit;
and here he became well acquainted with Squire Boone, one of the
"Worshipfull Justices," and often appeared in suits before him.
By his son, the nomadic Daniel Boone, conspicuous already for his
solitary wanderings across the dark green mountains to the
sun-lit valleys and boundless hunting-grounds beyond, Henderson
was from time to time regaled with bizarre and fascinating tales
of western exploration; and Boone, in his dark hour of poverty
and distress, when he was heavily involved financially, turned
for aid to this friend and his partner, who composed the law-firm
of Williams and Henderson.

Boone's vivid descriptions of the paradise of the West stimulated
Henderson's imaginative mind and attracted his attention to the
rich possibilities of unoccupied lands there. While the Board of
Trade in drafting the royal proclamation of October 7, 1763,
forbade the granting of lands in the vast interior, which was
specifically reserved to the Indians, it was clearly not their
intention to set permanent western limits to the colonies. The
prevailing opinion among the shrewdest men of the period was well
expressed by George Washington, who wrote his agent for
preempting western lands: "I can never look upon that
proclamation in any other light (but I say this between
ourselves) than as a temporary expedient to quiet the minds of
the Indians." And again in 1767: "It (t